Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Christianity in Process - Part 3a, Donna Bowman










* * * * * * *





June 20, 2022 By Tripp Fuller

I have so much fun talking nerdy with Donna Bowman. I’m so pumped to have her back on the podcast and a part of the Christianity in Process series. Donna Bowman is professor of interdisciplinary studies in the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas.

In this conversation we discussed:

  • how Donna started as a Southern Baptist and found Process thought
  • the nature of an open future
  • Tripp complains about John Calvin being very very unBiblical and sub-Christian 🙂
  • Donna gives a shout-out to her homeboy Karl Barth
  • Should we fear the mystery of God?
  • the problem with Christian Triumphalism
  • what is happening in worship?
  • what is a religious tradition and how does it live?
  • Tripp gives a process reading of the song “Every Move I Make”
  • the nature of ordinary lived theology
  • Donna shares about getting into Blaseball… an online baseball + horror game
  • Tripp gets excited about the upcoming Thor film
  • how Donna moved beyond an impersonal, Ground of Being style, deity


Donna Bowman: Flowing with the Living God
June 20, 2022


I have so much fun talking nerdy with Donna Bowman. I'm so pumped to have her back on the podcast and a part of the Christianity in Process series.  Donna Bowman is professor of interdisciplinary studies in the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas.


Previous Podcast visits from Donna Bowman







* * * * * * *


COMMENTS BY MAUREEN SMITH
Student of Christianity in Progress
[edits are mine - r.e. slater]


I just listened to the podcast with Tripp interviewing Donna Bowman as part of our class. I never heard of her before and liked her a lot. It was also fun to hear briefly from Tripp’s daughter Cora.

Again with a lot of trepidation, I’m going to tell you some of the highlights that stood out for me. You should definitely listen to the podcast and might want to do that before reading my recap. Anyway, for whatever it’s worth….

I’m going to start where they ended, when Tripp asked Donna “Who is God?” I’m going to put her answer in quotes, even though I couldn’t get it all and there is some paraphrase:

“The God I {Donna Bowman] was able to start reconnecting with had a fatal flaw [in traditional Christianity] —[God was spoken of] not as a person but as a force. That’s why (Karl) Barth became so important to me. He pointed to [a personal God] we know as Jesus. God is a person people met [in the gospels] and were changed by [him].

“I [Donna Bowman] used to put Paul down, but I don’t any more. Paul grabbed onto one thing about Jesus, his death and resurrection. That’s where he saw the story of that person and the living presence of that person. I resonate with that.

“We have that opportunity too. We can resonate with different parts of that person. That was good news to me. Instead of theorizing about God I can encounter God.”

---


Back to the beginning. Donna grew up as a Southern Baptist, as Tripp did. She doesn’t think of God the same way then as she does now. She said it’s the difference between a doctrine or a book that we have to align ourselves with and being in the flow of something that’s moving. (The title of the podcast is “Flowing With the Living God.”)

Donna teaches a class, In Search of a Healthy Religion. One of her students latched onto the idea of a living God. Donna said evangelicals often talk about ”the living God,” but that can be more a slogan than a reality.

The name of Donna’s class made me think: God is such a mystery that none of us can really know what God is like. We have to find a theology that makes sense to us and works for us. Process theology works pretty well for me. I understand that it may not work for others.

When Donna was in college she took a logic class from a professor named Will Power (his real name!) who asked a question that changed her thinking. What if knowing the future is a logical impossibility? She came to understand that it doesn’t limit God to say God can’t know the future any more than to say God can’t make a square circle.

Donna loves Karl Barth. She said Barth inherited Calvinism but didn’t go all the way with Calvin. Calvin put God’s sovereignty above God’s love. Barth put God’s love first. Barth took it all the way to universalism, which is something Donna loves about him but she knows not everyone can go there. (I do.)

---

  • She said the biggest problem with the Christianity she grew up with was the triumphalism. Tripp said that is linked to patriarchy and white supremacy and abusive power.
  • Donna said creeds and liturgy in worship are important to her because they link her to people all over the globe and across time and put her in touch with a living changing stream. What she means by the words isn’t the same as what others mean, and that’s good. A diversity of interpretation is a strength not a weakness.
  • The flow of worship means that she isn’t looking for God through the roof but in the faces of other people and maybe in knowing that nobody else means the words exactly as she does. [hence, the embrace and enjoyment of difference v. sameness - re slater]
  • Donna decided some years ago that instead of just writing books about how she sees things she should listen to how ordinary people understand their faith. She interviewed a lot of people, mostly women, about what it meant to them when they made prayer shawls, when they made pussy hats, when they made masks for the pandemic. That sounds so great. I wish she’d said more about it.
  • She said that as hellish as the internet and social media can be, God is working there and people are finding community there. I guess we can testify to that.
  • This sort of blew my mind, but she said she is super into something called blaseball, a baseball simulation combined with a horror game. People discover solidarity with each other there. They support each other. They recognize each other.
  • I think it was Tripp who said “The living and life-giving God is going to call every community and if it can’t happen in a church it can happen somewhere else.”
  • Donna said people are breaking out into community, and things look bad on a big scale but she takes hope in the small places people are finding each other. The wind blows where it will.



No comments:

Post a Comment