James Cone, Father of Black Theology, Part 1

https://homebrewedchristianity.lpages.co/upsettingthepowers/

James Cone, Father of Black Theology

Part 1

DOES CHRISTIANITY MAKE A DIFFERENCE? AND IF

IT DOES, WHAT KIND OF DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

- Adam Clark

BLACK THEOLOGY BECOMES THE SITE FOR THE

FUTURE OF FAITH IN AMERICA.

- Tripp Fuller

RACISM IS A PROFOUND CONTRADICTION OF THE GOSPEL.

NO ONE CAN BE A REPRESENTATIVE OF JESUS AND TREAT

OTHERS AS SUBHUMAN. THERE CAN BE NO COMPROMISE 

ON THIS POINT. ANY THEOLOGY WHICH DOES NOT FIGHT

WHITE SUPREMACY WITH ALL ITS INTELLECTUAL STRENGTH

CANCELS ITS CHRISTIAN IDENTITY.

- James Cone

Adam Clark and Tripp Fuller Present:

A 6 Week Online Pop-Up Learning Community

Launching January, 2022

SIGN UP NOW

6 Feature Sessions

Adam & Tripp will facilitate our feature sessions that include a mini-lecture, conversation, and Q&A as we dig into powerful curated readings.

6 Guest Interviews

Each week we will have a special guest theologian visit whose own work was shaped by the legacy of James Cone.

Online Community

Everyone will be invited to join the private online group to connect with other nerds and have access to everything in Audio/Video on the class resource page.

Black Theology & the Future of Faith

“Racism is a profound contradiction of the gospel. No one can be a representative of Jesus and treat others as subhuman. There can be no compromise on this point. Any theology that does not fight white supremacy with all its intellectual strength cancels its Christian identity.” - James Cone

Why the Legacy of James Cone Matters

White supremacy is America’s most cherished heresy. It is a theological error entailing the death and domination of black bodies. The White Church has not simply been silent and sidelined in the march toward liberation, but an ideological ally and institutional accomplice of supremacy culture. George Floyd’s last words as he was murdered by the State, “I can’t breathe,” ignited a collective gasp in which a larger multitude and diversity of citizenry had the scales fall off their eyes and found their lips and lungs reanimated to speak, “Black Lives Matter.”

For some, this is a new shout and for others, it is too familiar. If black lives matter to our life as a species and a church, then it is time to listen to the voices who have already been speaking and living this gospel proclamation. As James Cone, the Father of Black Theology said,

“There can be no Christian theology that is not identified unreservedly with those who are humiliated and abused. In fact, theology ceases to be a theology of the gospel when it fails to arise out of the community of the oppressed. For it is impossible to speak of the God of Israelite history, who is the God revealed in Jesus Christ, without recognizing that God is the God of and for those who labor and are overladen.”

We hope this online class in Black Theology is disrupting and revitalizing.

Sign Up Now

6 Session Class Themes

Each week during the class we will have a main session with Adam & Tripp exploring a central theme from the legacy of James Cone. These sessions will center on curated reading selections and include mini-lecture, textual deep dives, conversation and QnA with the group.

• Why Black Theology Matters

• Disciplinary Decadence: the Emergence of Black Theology

• From Black Power to Black Lives Matter

• Christ from the Underside

• Women Hold Up Half the Sky

• James Cone as World Teacher

Relevant Youtube Videos

Upsetting the Powers: the Legacy of James Cone

Dec 14, 2021

James Cone was right: Black Theology

& the moment with Adam Clark

Jul 7, 2020

Tripp Fuller on Progressive Christianity

Jul 30, 2019

* * * * * * * *

Adam Clark

Xavier University

Dr. Adam Clark is Associate Professor of Theology at Xavier University. He is committed to the idea that theological education in the twenty first century must function as a counter-story. One that equips us to read against the grain of the dominant culture and inspires one to live into the Ignatian dictum of going forth "to set the world on fire." To this end, Dr. Clark is intentional about pedagogical practices that raise critical consciousness by going beneath surface meanings, unmasking conventional wisdoms and reimagining the good. He currently serves as co-chair of Black Theology Group at the American Academy of Religion, actively publishes in the area of black theology and black religion and participates in social justice groups at Xavier and in the Cincinnati area. He earned his PhD at Union Theological Seminary in New York where he was mentored by James Cone.

Tripp Fuller

University of Edinburgh

Dr. Fuller is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Theology & Science at the University of Edinburgh. He recently released Divine Self-Investment: a Constructive Open and Relational Christology, the first book in the Studies in Open and Relational Theology series. For over 12 years Tripp has been doing the Homebrewed Christianity podcast (think on-demand internet radio) where he interviews different scholars about their work so you can get nerdy in traffic, on the treadmill, or doing the dishes. Last year it had over 3.5 million downloads. It also inspired a book series with Fortress Press called the Homebrewed Christianity Guides to... topics like God, Jesus, Spirit, Church History, etc. Tripp is a very committed and (some of his friends think overly ) engaged Lakers fan and takes Star Wars and Lord of the Rings very seriously.

Special Guests

As we explore our centering themes in our main sessions, we also have a second session each week with a special guest. Each of these guests will share about their own relationship with Cone, the way he shaped theology, and how some of his insights have continued to be expanded and developed in their work.

Serene Jones

President of Union Theological Seminary

Kelly Brown Douglas

Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School

at Union Theological Seminary

Gary Dorrien

Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics

at Union Theological Seminary

Andrea White

Associate Professor of Theology and Culture

at UnionTheological Seminary

Robert Ellsberg

Editor-in-Chief of Orbis Books

TBA

super awesome theologian

The Rise of Dominionism and the Christian Right

The Rise of Dominionism and the Christian Right

God does not call Christians to "Suppress the Rights of Others" but to

"Express the Rights of Others." No, my friends, Christianity isn't being

persecuted; it is persecuting those around it for not being Christian.

- re slater

I give Tripp Fuller a lot of credit for speaking kindly to the radicalized far right church while trying to draw it back to its lost faith. But yesterday's Capital demonstration in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, showed the nation all too clearly what toxic "Christian" Dominionism really is all about. It's the old idea of creating Old Testament governance into postmodern societies. It enforces religious ("biblical") prejudice and principles that are uncivil and undemocratic upon complex polyplural public societies.

Let me say it again, the American society is not a Kingdom society. Nor are its democratic institutions in want of Kingdom-like Reconstructions. Like Christian Zionism, Christian Dominionism is extreme in its attitudes towards others; is oppressively unhealthy in all aspects of its outlooks to others (including those of its members within); and leads to greater societal division and hatred as exampled by Trumpism's injustice and oppression, circa 2016-2020, in the United States. In fact, I'll go farther and state that the belief system held by the radical Christian far right is unGodly, unBiblical, and unJesus like.

As example, look at the Washington D.C. Rally held earlier this past summer of 2020 which intentionally sought to bring far right Christians together "to repent of sin and pray for the nation." What I had hoped would come of it did not come to pass. I had hoped that Christians would recommit themselves to loving the world around them. Instead, it focused on their rights and civilities as they saw them, denied the pandemic virus, and became more strident in their convictions that what they were doing was God-sent and judged worthy.

And yet, by their continual actions of suppressing democratic votes throughout the year of 2020 and by storming the Capital on January 6, 2021, we can see that it's efforts of repenting were a big fail. The rally had only served to gin-up more strident voices and unrepentful spirits.

Essentially, the DC Rally provided more self-justification among radicalized Christians to conduct unholy/unloving actions against its American brothers and sisters of all colors and faiths, and to create a roiling stridency of temperament, attitude, and deeds against America's civil democracy. Which, among other things, included deep voter racial suppression and extortion of the truth supporting radical Q’anon conspiracies and lies.

What the fake-Christian DC Rally really created was an unholy baptism and avowal of permission by radical Christians to commit religious tyranny against a civil society. Thus I speak to its efforts as Dominionist in perspective. Or, as a secular effort at Christian reconstruction of God's Kingdom here on earth. Most certainly, the far right has given itself permission to any future acts of violence, hate, and exclusion, by condoning or conscreting itself to these tasks because of their surreptitious DC Rally. Which is highly unfortunate and exactly opposite the direction the God I declare would have them pursue.

Folks, this isn't Christianity. Christianity is a radical faith by its demand for personal transformation into the loving image of Christ Jesus. But not as a radicalized faith demanding an overall of civil democracy designed for all religious faiths and beliefs. Nor do we live in the Old Testament any longer. Its dead and gone. We live in the present. Not the past.

And importantly, Christianity is a trans-national, trans-generational, trans-geographic, trans-religious, and trans-temporal faith. When God comes in everything we think and believe must be conformed to Jesus' love and faith in people. It embraces our wills while also deconstructing our wills. The Christian faith is a faith of charity, forgiveness, and wellbeing.

The Christian faith is meant by God to be pliable, flexible, and adaptable to any economy, culture, religion, or society. It isn't meant to be all one thing. Just because ancient bible cultures were used to kingdom-based governments in the Near East doesn't mean kingdom-based government is the preferred vehicle of government by God. No. If anything, kingdoms were oppressive and dominating over other cultures and societies. They did not recognize the polyplural rights and liberties of others.

In contrast, democratic institution goals are to recognize and support the polyplural rights and liberties of its citizen-based societies. Democracies are designed to be less oppressive of its people, more entertaining to everyone's equality and rights, and interwoven in layered complexities of social networking, work, and play.

Christianity is a peaceable religion and not meant for violence however much one reads of it in the Old Testament or thinks about the end times of Christ coming again by world tribulation or armageddon. And though we might dispute the future, a loving God is always a loving God in any future. The trials and tribulations we bring upon ourselves is our own judgment for not obeying God to love and respect one another. God doesn't come back to reap havoc and calamity upon the world, but is here presently intending to prevent us from doing the same to ourselves. The lesson of Revelation is to repent and love. To forget and show mercy even as our Lord Jesus had done.

What was done by "bible" people back then in the past isn't what's to be done today. Process Theology says we are to grow and expand from our present wickedness and learn to love and accept one another. "Love God, Love One Another." This commandment is what makes Christianity r-a-d-i-c-a-l. The Sermon on the Mount is our new "Torah" Commandments by God to share His love with all the world... AND each other.

Jesus and guns are wrong. The bible and hypocrisy doesn't work. And faith must be seen apart from lying lips and injurious deeds. The proof? Look at what President Trump has done and continues to do. Look at his elected officials who voted against State Rights on January 6, 2021, this week. And look at that same day's seditious "Christian" mobs as they tried to prevent the People's vote for a more just president and society be actualized against all the horrors it saw under the Trump administration.

And yet, a day later, radical Christians and their elected officials are continuing to speak smooth lies, gaslighting each other with more deceitfulness, blaming societal failures on liberals, and generally unrepentful and unloving.

"What ye sow so shall ye reap," my brothers. If radical Christians want anarchy and fascism it will come with the same violence it is being birthed with by its own hands. And it will fall hard upon it's head.Shutting mouths at the horrors it has created. Let's not go this far. Let's truly repent and call upon the God of Salvation to truly redeem our black hearts.

But whether you call today's far right "Christian" oppressions Godly judgment or not, its source is a direct corollary showing to us a defunct radicalized religion masquerading as Christianity while being embraced by its unholy faithful and disruptable leaders.

R.E. Slater

January 8, 2021

2 Peter 2 (NIV)

False Teachers and Their Destruction

2 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell,[a] putting them in chains of darkness[b] to be held for judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. 10 This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh[c] and despise authority.

Bold and arrogant, they are not afraid to heap abuse on celestial beings; 11 yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not heap abuse on such beings when bringing judgment on them from[d] the Lord. 12 But these people blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish.

13 They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.[e] 14 With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed—an accursed brood! 15 They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Bezer,[f] who loved the wages of wickedness. 16 But he was rebuked for his wrongdoing by a donkey—an animal without speech—who spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

17 These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. 18 For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” 20 If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22 Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”[g] and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”

Footnotes

2 Peter 2:4 Greek Tartarus

2 Peter 2:4 Some manuscripts in gloomy dungeons

2 Peter 2:10 In contexts like this, the Greek word for flesh (sarx) refers to the sinful state of human beings, often presented as a power in opposition to the Spirit; also in verse 18.

2 Peter 2:11 Many manuscripts beings in the presence of

2 Peter 2:13 Some manuscripts in their love feasts

2 Peter 2:15 Greek Bosor

2 Peter 2:22 Prov. 26:11

* * * * * * * * *

We need to call Trump Christians back

to the faith they left

Article link

SUSAN M. SHAW, SENIOR COLUMNIST  |  JANUARY 7, 2021

i

"The Father's Forgiveness," Daniel Bonnell.

Joe Biden is the next president of the United States. Despite allegations, falsehoods and lies, no election fraud affected the outcome of the race. That’s simply a fact.

I’m not sure what will become of evangelical Trump supporters now that their expectation of God’s intervention to give Trump the election has not been fulfilled and now that we won’t have outrageous, false and divisive tweets emanating from the White House all through the day and night. I imagine some will continue down the rabbit hole of QAnon and apocalyptic fanaticism, but I am hoping many will decide to make their way back to the central tenets of Christian faith — love, truth, justice, peace, hope and welcome.

Susan Shaw

As we move into the Biden-Harris era, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we invite Trump-supporting evangelicals back into the fold of the church.

Not so long ago, I was introduced to a song, “Hymn for the 81%.” It’s a song for evangelical Trump supporters from someone raised by them in the church. These lyrics stopped me in my tracks: “You said to love the lost, so I’m loving you now.”

Much to my surprise, that image immediately evoked incredible compassion for Trump-supporting evangelicals: They are lost.

I felt the impact of that word. In a single moment, all the feelings of my evangelical upbringing rushed upon me. I felt the emotions of a little 6-year-old girl walking the aisle while the congregation sang “Just as I Am.” I recalled all those Sunday school teachers and GA leaders and pastors and ministers of music teaching me that we were to love the lost, and I remember the mix of relief and joy and release of knowing “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

All those memories and emotions swept over me like an avalanche as I realized that Trump-supporting evangelicals got lost somewhere along the way. They are lost. And that changes my responsibility toward them.

Feminist activist Loretta Ross says that rather than calling people out, we should be calling them in. Calling in, Ross says, is “a call out done with love.” Calling in “means you always keep a seat at the table for them if they come back.”

We have to leave a light on for them.

“At the core of the Christian story is the possibility of redemption.”

At the core of the Christian story is the possibility of redemption. No matter what we do, the Gospels tell us, we can repent and change our ways. No one is too far gone for the love of God to reach, to convict, to receive, to transform.

I think about what we heard in all those invitation hymns:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling

Calling for you and for me.

See, on the portals he’s waiting and watching,

Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home,

Ye who are weary, come home.

Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home.

Just as I am without one plea,

But that thy blood was shed for me,

And that thou bidd’st me come to thee,

O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

I’ve wandered far away from God.

Now I’m coming home.

The paths of sin too long I’ve trod.

Lord, I’m coming home.

Coming home, coming home,

Never more to roam.

Open wide thine arms of love.

Lord, I’m coming home.

Come home. That is the invitation we must offer evangelicals who supported Trump and who became lost in the mixture of Christian nationalism, white supremacy and authoritarianism that promised them it would bring in God’s community through the exercise of raw power.

“Our evangelistic task is to call people home, to call them in.”

Our prophetic task is to speak truth, denounce injustice and advocate for justice for all people. And, at the same time, our evangelistic task is to call people home, to call them in.

This story gets passed around a lot. I can’t find any verification that it’s true, but I think, true or not, it points to something important about calling people in. As the story goes, in a people group in Africa, when someone commits an unjust or illegal act, the community brings the perpetrator to the center of the village, and then all the community members come and tell this person all the good things this person has done. The community believes, as the story goes, that people are good but makes mistakes and forget who they really are. By telling them all the good they’ve done, the community seeks to remind them of who they are and reconcile them to the group.

Let’s call evangelical Trump supporters in. I’ll start:

• You taught me to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love my neighbor as myself.
• You introduced me to a world that was much bigger than my hometown and told me to love them too.
• You told me to love my enemies.
• You taught me to love the Bible and read it because God could speak to me through its words.
• You told me I could be anything God called me to be.
• You taught me to give generously, without thought of return or reciprocation.
• You taught me to tell the truth.
• You found a way to accommodate difference when it was up close and personal and love people who were unlike you — the lesbian aunt, the agnostic friend, the weird kid, the deaf neighbor, the immigrant co-worker.
• You stopped to change a tire for a stranger; you took a meal to a bereaved family; you volunteered at a local shelter; you drove an older person of a different political party to vote; you served as a conversation partner in a language program for refugees; you visited sick people in the hospital; you helped Habitat for Humanity build a house; you started a clothes closet in the church basement.

People are much more than the worst thing they ever did. We have to make a way back for evangelical Trump supporters who may want to come home. I know that’s hard after everything we’ve witnessed the past four years.

“We have to make a way back for evangelical Trump supporters who may want to come home.”

If nothing else, though, the gospel is a story of lavish grace and welcome, a banquet set for a prodigal son, workers who came late to the field, a thief on a cross, all of those in the highways and hedges. In fact, we ourselves are recipients of this lavish grace, this love without limit, and, as my friend Paula Sheridan once said, “We are not the maître d at God’s table. We don’t get to decide who gets seated and who doesn’t.”

My Southern Baptist church did indeed tell me to love the lost. Our Trump-supporting evangelical siblings are lost. They followed a demagogue and lost sight of Jesus. If we want to follow Jesus, we have to make a way back for them; we have to seek them out like a lost coin or a lost sheep and call them in, “out of shameful failure and loss, into the glorious gain of (the) cross; out of unrest and arrogant pride, into (Christ’s) blessed will to abide; out of the depths of ruin untold, into the peace of (Christ’s) sheltering fold.”

This must be our response to the past four years: Come home. Come home.

Susan M. Shaw is professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore. She also is an ordained Baptist minister and holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Her most recent book is Intersectional Theology: An Introductory Guide, co-authored with Grace Ji-Sun Kim.

Christian Resolutions 2021 - In the Face of Uncertainty, "How Should We Then Live?"

In the Face of Uncertainty,

"How Should We Then Live?"

Resolutions for 2021

by R.E. Slater

December 9, 2020

"Faith is not certainty. It is the courage to live with uncertainty."

I wrote down the statement above in 2012 as a remembrance to the days of blackness which I had been delivered from; which had suddenly enter my life with an unknown ferocity for nearly an entire year shy one month back in 2011. We all have heard the stories that when the Spirit of God calls it comes in the midst of our cluttered lives with a force which upends everything we're doing. So it was for me from 2011-2012.

At the very moment I was asking God the deep, grief-filled laments He had laid upon my heart, these then became that same moment when a period of spiritual darkness suddenly descended upon me. When God let loose all my spiritual moorings to my past church teachings, religious beliefs, and personal convictions. It came hard and it came suddenly. But not as a turned to atheism or agnostism . But as an atheism to my faith. A distrust of it. Perhaps a hatred of it.

I felt this intense spiritual rupture as soon as God came into my life with a whirlwind of darkness and deep spiritual lostness. And as I stood within feeling its force upon my soul I remember not wanting to be there as all grounds of being gave way. And then, just as surprisingly God left too. He left me as immediately as He had brought me into this barren wastelands. Alone. No one. No thing. Alone. It was a pit of darkness without seeming hope.

And there I was. Day after day, month after month, with this deep burden holding me in a place of unknowing and uncertainty. Normally, I would have fled such a dungeon but not in this period of my life. Here I knew I must stay. And learn. And rejoice. To let go. To receive abandonment. To only be removed by the Spirit when God had chosen my darkness to lift. Until then I was withheld from the Land of the Living where the Holy One dwelt.

More curious, I did not wish to rush the process. To leave this place of unbeing. To tell God, "Enough. I've learned your lessons now let me go." No, the Spirit forbade me to entertain such thoughts. I shut my mouth to listen. To contemplate. To hear the meditations placed there upon my heart. To discern my remaining days against the past days I had lived. To let my wilderness journeys take me where I must go. To not rush the process. To wait like the children of Israel under Moses in a wilderness of abandon. Of nourishment. Of failure. And of renewed faith. Who believed a promise land would some day come to them and their generations but not by their biding until they had learned the lessons God was bringing to them in their hundredfolds.

Heaven-Sent Wildernesses

This place of spiritual abandonment. Of blackness. Where no God lived was where I thrived and grew under the Spirit of God's embrace. I cannot explain it. Still can't. God had left me. He was gone. Nowhere to found. But not His Spirit. Though God had left He had also left His Spirit. I felt the Spirit's comfort during the days of wilderness. Which I know sounds crazy but it felt very "Jesus-like. Very Cross-like" as Jesus cried out "Do not abandon Me, My Father." "Where are You?" "I give my forsaken soul unto Your care." And though Jesus felt His Father-God had left Him, the Spirit of God enveloped His very soul and being. This was my experience.

I didn't like it. It disrupted everything in my life. But it meant everything to me as well. I was in a place to unlearn what I had learned so that I might relearn what I had unlearned in a different manner. It was a deep dive into the very heart of personal belief deconstruction. Of removing religious certainties for faith's uncertainties. Of learning to discern the doctrinal and creedal injustices and untruths I had been taught over a lifetime by gifted teachers having learned it from earlier gifted teachers. It was seriously difficult. And seriously needed a length of time to wander through just listening and learning from the Spirit of God. I could not escape this place until I had learned to undo all my past. It would be a very long time.

It disrupted my life, my family, my work, my faith, my church, my friends, and my family when they chose to slow down and listen. No one wished to sit with me. I had no friends like Job to lament with me, who, as it turned out, were a worthless lot altogether. It was me, alone, in sackcloth, lamenting loss. The loss of a Christian faith I had committed my entire life too. And in the disruption the more curious thing was that no souls were affected around me but my own soul. Whether I was being rejected, becoming unwashed, beheld as fallen from the faith. I know not. With the except of God's Spirit I was alone. It did not grieve me as my destruction if untrue, should be alone. But it did rejoice my heart that this aloneness was also my temple of sanctuary unentered by unholy feet. Here, God and I communed, without interruption, for a very long time.

And when the time came to leave this heaven-sent wilderness of rocks and sand and spiritual hardship I found myself back where I had started but seriously different. "I was no longer who I once was." I had changed but the world I had left was still the same old, unsanctified world of spiritual death and secular faith. One speaking death into the lives of the living. It was then I knew what my calling should be. Not till then. Just then. It set my course perhaps for the remainder of my days. DV (Latin, Deus Volent, "God Willing")

Lands of Unbelief and Calling

It became readily clear my calling was one of guiding other like-minded souls through their own personal wildernesses to the lands of bounty and blessing. Having no personal socio-religious platforms in the church any longer to speak from I used what I had left... my pen and my interests. I had by then transitioned from full-time self-employment to earning a recent Master Naturalist certification from Michigan State University to help me in volunteering with area earth groups, organizations, political organizations, and educational institutions. I had a passion to speak to green technology, green infrastructure, and much, much later, to developing a theology of (cosmo)ecological civilizations.

Thus I had chosen to publicly volunteer my time to the communities about me while at the same time to write and edit my knowledge and training. Having originally retired to write a life list of poems, my Jeremiah-like experience now turned me to developing a traunch of writings concentrating on repairing and respeaking what a contemporary theology might look like if such a thing could be envisioned and written down. At once, it became raw, painful, and sorrowful. But it was as well releasing, revitalizing, renewing. Along the way I learned I was not alone in my burdens but like Elisha had thousands about me having trod the same paths and writing of their experiences (1 Kings 19 NASB) of a God who had left the church to re-establish His own Church again.

At the last, I came to see this time as a gift of God. One that came belatedly in life. Others, like Rachel Held Evans, had gone before me. She was one of the thousands I later came to know, read, and sympathize with; who had take similar Spirit-filled journeys into the unknown to come back and speak out against unchurchly practices of unlove and unfaith.

I look back now and understand that God had prepared a special set of people ahead of time to lead His people who were falling from their faith into religious practices and fellowships of unfaith. Who would speak against the normative churchly practices of hate and judgment to learn to see again their abandoned communities about them as God saw them. I think of Shaine Clairborne's Red Letter Christians whom we heard one day at Mars Hill under Rob Bell.

  

I call this period of the church the years of Trumplicanism or Trumpvangelism. Horrid years of unlove and unfaith. It showed the earthly church for what it was. Ungodly, secular, motivated by racism and bigotry over truth, love, and justice. It was a thing to be condemned and abandoned. Once Christian fundamentalism and Evangelicalism had its place in the stream of life. Today, it has cast off by the ten thousands the Nones and Dones discouraged by the faith practices of their fallen church. To theses God has sent his disciples ahead into the wilderness to lead those seeking Jesus again and no longer the false prophets and teachers of their faiths.

  

In hindsight, I think the wisdom of God has helped prepare the church for the difficult times it has entered into. Not unlike my own lands of waste and barrenness are these conservative lands of unknowing and darkness misled by their own unsanctified leaders. Yet I tell you that a "Faith which is not certain is a Faith that can give courage in live the days of ahead of uncertainty."

“Faith is not certainty. It is the courage to live with uncertainty.”

Though the populist church as turned to follow an opposite path by embracing what they should have let go God has turned many onto the paths of His Spirit. And as a process guy who always sees an open future, I know God will address my wayward brethren's path some day to join us. It may be awhile but in the meantime we pray for their souls and discernment.

Entering then into 2021 I believe we must always learn to live with uncertainty and doubt in all matters of faith, bible, and God. This statement is just as relevant today as it was for me back in 2012. Either we allow the Lord to burn the dross clinging to our faith of Jesus or continue to live under the cancerous idolatries of its faith in the Pharaohs of the land. The Pharaohs whom Israel fled from under a former member of Pharaoh's family, Moses. An adopted son who had adopted the pagan culture of his land but now was led to lead his people into the wilderness to unlearn in order to relearn what their holy faith was about. And by way of a clue let me tell you they learned to love and trust again. Not fear and hate.

Conclusion

And finally, let me say that I would tweak our phrase a bit by saying:

"Great opportunities come with uncertainty."

• Thus and thus an open and relational process-based faith fears no future but the future unholy churchmen would build and control. Men who fear the future, act unkindly and without honor, who corrupt all the good they would destroy. An open and relational process faith rejects the conformity of the church to sin and evil.

• Thus and thus we join together to create fair and equal poly-pluralistic ecological civilizations which are postmodern, post-capitalism, post-socialism - removing all the bad but not all the good found in these systems such as greed and control for benevolence and trust.

• Thus and thus Ecology is the center of a return to humanitarianism and earth justice for all societies. It gives both democracies and autocracies a worthy goal to move towards with one another. It is peaceable, sharing, other-centered.

• Thus and thus the church repents and rejects its unloving bankrupt teachings and returns to the faith of Jesus from the lands of Eqypt.

• Thus and thus Christians abandon the secular world of power and return to the holy worlds of loving service.

• Thus and thus the charlatans within Christianity are abandoned for teachers of the Spirit blessing the world with the Spirit's grace gifts of forgiveness and mercy to one another.

• Thus and thus we, the faithful, live up to the banners and slogans we once claimed with vigor to "walk with Jesus daily" (WWJD).

• Thus and thus we repent of our worldly faith, rip it apart, and learn to see God as love and not judgment. To strip repugnant officious creeds and doctrines of their hatreds and ungodly judgments to see the good, the loving, the beautiful.

• And finally, thus and thus we see uncertainty ever and always as Jesus-filled opportunities to build, create, and lead the church and humanity by embracing the world with goodness, love, and trust. To reject hatred and division. To hold unto lovingkindness and justice for all against the preening religious harlots who speak ungodliness and sedition to the God who loves. 

R.E. Slater, DV

"Thank you Lord for those you prepare who go ahead of us."

"Land of Smoke and Mountains, an uncertain land, a beautiful land"

A Process-Based Reading of the Living God and His Word

 

A Process-Based Reading of the Living God and His Word

I woke up today still burdened by a subject I'm not sure how to approach. My burden is that I cannot get past the idea of how many in the church, including the church itself, is reading the bible heretically.

Reading the bible plainly (or literally) has caused a lot of unloving words and deeds to be done in the name of the God of Love. Reading the bible spiritually (metaphorically or allegorically) is also unhelpful in that it gets away from the historical nature of God's revelation being communicated to ancient peoples many years ago.

Comparative literary analysis has been a large help when approaching the bible from a historical, grammatical, and contextual point of study. But it also neglects reading the bible from an evolving sociological, psychological, and philosophical point of study (or, paradigms; sic, sociological frames of context).

These last three areas especially have caused theologians and philosophers to question how we are reading the bible today. The question before us then is this:

"Is God's revelation always a product of being in a relationship with the God of the universe? Or did God speak once, and we are left alone with only the bible as God's spokeman?"

The short answer is yes. The bible is not God's only means of revelation, but that God is always present and communicating with us through His Spirit as individuals, communities, and societies.

More so, because of humanity's long histories of societal experience we have been evolving in our generations and civilizations in our attitudes of love, responsibility, and identity of ourselves in relation to each other, the world at large, and to very creation itself.

Is the Bible Relevant?

My first burden is that our 21st century ideas of society will not be found in civilizations thousands of years before us. Yes, smatterings of them, but not in any cohesive, formulated, or directional way. The beauty of process-based cultural history is that each succeeding generation and regional cultural has its own unique beliefs and identities. We learn from one another when we study the past as well as study the present. But we cannot expect to find any one generation or culture to have lived and thought "perfect lives and perfect thoughts". It’s never been done and never will be done. Not even in the bible. That is to say, the bible is a time-dated study of ancient cultural beliefs which have some pertinence today and some not (cultural dress, foods, practices, and idiom for one).

Saying this means that in a process-based world its very nature is one of evolving from one moment to the next. This was true for bible people then and cultures of their time even as it is true for us now in our generations and varied histories. We are always evolving as a creation; always, concrecsing forwards (growing, moving uniquely forwards). It may be two steps forwards and one step backwards; it may be with interation, interruption and discontinuity; it may be with harm and death; but it always forwards on a path of survival, wellbeing, and restorative livelihood.

We live in a processed based world. A world God inhabits and has given His essence too. Not only by His design but created from God's Essence. Which is why creation is always moving forwards restlessly, generatively. And as it moves forward it restores, it creates opportunities for goodness and wellbeing, it seeks for peace, harmony, and balance. Evolution in its essence is a process filled with God Himself. Its nature can be fierce and wonderful, unique and uniquely in motion, resplendent and dangerous, in the exercise of its God-given freedom.

Saying this means for me that those oral transcribers who wrote down the legends of the bible had their own beliefs and societal standards even as the oral histories of the originators had their own beliefs and cultural worldviews. But being time-bound, whether Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the Judges, Kings, and Prophets, or the generations after them writing and re-writing down those stories, none of those historical events and personages could escape their own or, their society's, evolving thoughts and ideas about God, themselves, and their place and purpose in this life.

How Are We to Read the Bible?

Which brings me back to my burden. Is the bible written down perfectly? Or was it meant as a starting point for communication between God and man? If we take the "magic" out of the transmission process where traditional systematics teach that God wrote the bible ONCE AND FOR ALL using men and women to communicate His revealed Word, then we are left with a God using time-bound evolving culture's to communicate an early expressive theology that ended with its expression.

An earlier theology which wasn't intended to be complete nor completed when speaking of an infinitely evolving God amid an evolving, dynamic creation. I say an "evolving" God because of His experience with an evolving creation. God's experience with creation is moment-by-moment just as creation experiences itself. And I like the word infinite in that it speaks more fully of a process-based creation, if not of God Himself as He is in eternal process with creation as its Creator.

Is it correct then to state the bible to be a record of an earlier, ancient theology serving as a means to begin collectively thinking about God and learning to listen to Him through His Spirit? If so, then the bible isn't fully as evolved in its theology as we would like to think of it as. And if not, then we must admit the bible's theology is historically bound by its theologies and philosophies of its earlier cultures.

This seems a radical proposition but perhaps we shouldn't regard the bible as the once-and-for-all definite word of God. When we have its follows have committed some very un-godlike thinking and actions in their day. A processed-based reading of the bible would regard it as a product of its times and a beginning point for discussion re ethics, morality, and even the atonement of God through Jesus.

So then, how are we to be guided by the bible if we cannot be guided by its stories and illustrations? Might I simply suggest we be guided by the Author of the bible Himself? By Jesus and His words and deeds? By the idea of God's love and what it means to be loving?

If so, then when reading of the violence of Israel towards its neighbors in the Old Testament, or the violence at the end of the world as perceived by five hundred years of speculative eschatologists of the time (from the third century BC to the second century AD) may not be what God is intending. Violence is never love. And preaching a God of violence is antithetical to God's essence (nature) as a God of love. But isn't God a God of judgment? Hmmm, let's discuss that next....

Sin and Evil

Holding the belief that God is in control of everything may have been how one thought of God in ancient times but after centuries and centuries of sin and evil one can say in the affirmative that God is not in control of everything. In the Old Testament I read again and again the sentiment by the biblical ancients that if God is God then He is always in control. Thinking through in the New Testament of Jesus' words and His sentiments on this subject of God being in control we Jesus' word to be a bit more nuanced yet those who later wrote down His words in the early church - as well as the apostles' revelations - came back to their own societal beliefs and restrictions claiming a controlling God.

Since the bible is a product of its historical generations I wouldn't expect NOT to see these sentiments. It is exactly what I expect to find - that the OT and NT are fully consistent in speaking of God as a controlling God of historical events and coming futures. This is borne out by the biblical text as by product of its ancient transcribers. And yet, God is not a controlling God. Why is this? Let me suggest a couple of ideas....

Because God gave to man freewill it is implicit that with freewill comes an undetermined future. Each are part-and-parcel of the other being divine gifts granted creation. To say God is in "control" is not necessarily the best word to use then - even though the sentiment wishes to give the God of creation and of its salvation His rightful place of glory and honor. The problem of theodicy - that is of sin and evil - in a free willed world can be stated immediately that by its nature God cannot be in control. We are using the wrong word to express how we think of God's sovereignty.

Lately, the problem of theodicy is being answered in redirecting the idea of theodicy back upon what a God of love would do when creating a free willed creation. Originally I thought God "chose" to give man freewill but, I've learned since then that creational freewill originated because of God's love. Love is not a choice. In its essence divine love means the ability to choose as well as to live in an open, undetermined future.

ORPT

Thus, the Arminian-based (sic, Wesleyan) idea of an "Open and Relational (Process-based) Theology" has been born to answer the problem of theodicy. ORPT states God is fully sovereign but not in control of creation. Rather, God is a fully-pledge participant with creation in its direction, evolvement, and fulfillment. Though God is not in control of indeterminate, freewill event and future, God is fully imbued within creational structures by gifting creation with His Essence, His Spirit if you will, which flows through all things.

That sin and evil are is because they are the other half of the coin of goodness and love. This defines freewill. The choice between good and evil. Creation is both a product of good and evil even as it struggles against it to find its fulfillment in obedience and submission to its essence. That essence being of course the essence of God. It is no mystery to see this eternal struggle in the evolution not only of creation but in humanity's society evolution to find goodness, beauty, and love in this world. As long as creation exists so too will this titanic struggle continue.

Given this, when re-reading of the bible's ancient cultural dispositions we see that earlier generations really had a difficult time in describing how God is God and yet not in control of everything. the Process philosopher and theologian will say that this is not a problem. God is in control but in a different kind of way. God's control is one which releases creation to become what it was made to become. Who empowers creation to overcome sin and evil? To become that which is kind and loving, good and holy. God doesn't "force" a free willed creation to become this, God "assists" a free willed creation in becoming what it was made for; that is, for unbounded fellowship with itself and with its God.

Again, finding these sentiments in the bible can be found, it’s just that those oral legends and transcribed records believed in theological ideas of a "controlling God". The ancients did not have the many-centuries "backwards" look we have today of wars, revolution, societal experiments, enlightenment, dis-enlightenment, and so forth. Our backwards look gives us the advantage to speak of God in a different way than earlier, evolving generations were able to think of God. But again, in a process world, nothing is static, not even our beliefs.

Conclusion

Is it fully allowable then that God may be perceived as speaking to us through our own generations, commentaries, and preaching? Sure, why not? God is always communication to creation. To the trees, rocks, wind, earth, moon, and stars. Why not then mankind?

How God spoke and was perceived by the ancients is no less different in our generations today. God's bible is in the people who speak for God, who disagree with heretical church sentiments and beliefs, who write, who author, who reflect philosophically on God and consider what our scientific and academic discoveries are telling us about God today.

I would fully expect an "incomprehensible" God to be an evolving story of "comprehensibility." That is, God began with ancient primal man in his thoughts who thought "just maybe, there was a God, perhaps a God beyond all other Gods" (read James A. Michener's book, The Source). From there, the "story of God" has been evolving... even unto this day.

All that can be said of a God of love and salvation can never be said in several generations, not even across many generations. The Story of God is an evolving story of enlargement, beauty, holism, and grandness. I, for one, am not surprised that what I thought I knew about God continues to surprise me. Surprise me in that God continues to become larger than the God I thought I knew and been taught to know by wise and holy men and women.

The bible of common men and women was becoming a collection of narratives of holy-and-unholy men-and-women learning who God is in their lives. (1) This God is always in the state of revealing Himself beyond our imaginations. (2) That the bible is a product of its times, albeit many, many centuries earlier. But (3) when its stories ended its lessons did not. The bible is being written and re-written by the philosophers and theologians of every century. Its lessons are being written upon our heart by the Spirit of God breathing into our imaginations what a God of love means to the generations of today.

This God of the bible is not static. God is a "living, breathing, relational cosmic entity" who wishes to be in a living relationship with us as we face an open future of good and bad.

Our story is God's story even as God's story can be our story. The Spirit presence and relationship we have with the divine is manifold: From a simple walk on the beach to a walk on the moon; from beholding the wonder of our firstborn to the wonder we find in the books of the academics; from sliding into Homeplate without a prayer of a chance of making it, to looking up at the twinkling stars far above.

The Wonder of God is everywhere, and we shouldn't be surprised not to hear His Voice upon the deeps of heavy hearts awashed the sins and evils of the day. A God who speaks against the unfairness and injustice of society being committed towards each other. Who speaks through its newspapers, through podcasts, even through social media, challenging hearts, motives, and purposes. The bible is being rewritten afresh upon the hearts of God's people speaking out against the ill we are doing to God's Self, His love, His salvation, to one another, and to His creation.

The bible is every bit of our experience today even as God was back then in the ancient's lives. We may think of the bible as a one-time revelation - or as a series of one-time revelations - but what if it was marking the "officious" beginning of God speaking to mankind all the time, in every way possible?

What if the bible is not a dead thing but an expanding compendium reaching beyond old, dead-and-gone, cultural thinking of God, to the best of humanity's thoughts, discoveries, and deeds of God? That instead of thinking of the bible in literal ways as a collection of stories time-bound and time-dated in its theologies, that instead we might consider the bible's lessons as the first steps of humanity towards understanding and developing Christ-centered theologies emphasizing God's love and His work of redemption throughout the concourses of humanity's livelihoods?

God has not ceased speaking. God is speaking everywhere and in every way. Through every culture, every generation, and every soul burdened to resist evil and speak for right and truth. Do not think only one agency, the church, may speak for God. When such agencies lose their way, God finds the rocks of this world to speak out His Word like the turbulent winds sent across the treetops. Words of weight and infinite wisdom. 

God raises up babies from carpenter's cradles to challenge the establishment. From raises up the cries of the Church Fathers, the burdens of missionaries, revolutionaries, scientists, novelists, poets, and orators. God raises up the children of the next generation to re-right the lostness of their parent's generations. To stand against unrighteousness and war. To seek revolutionary ways to not lose this earth to the plagues we have unleashed upon it. God's prophets and disciples of this world is the now generation willing to envision a God who is beyond our imaginations. A God whose mystery continues to amaze us as we study His heavens, His creation, one another, and the wisdom of the ages.

Be amazed. God speaks today!

R.E. Slater
October 21, 2020

I wrote a helpful parallel article some months later

which may be pertinent to the discussion here:

Integral Hermeneutics ala

Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorems:

The Post-Structuralism of the

Hermeneutics of Belief or Suspicion