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

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from 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

Sunday, August 8, 2021

Index - American Politics and the Church




INDEX TO AMERICAN POLITICS AND THE CHURCH


Powerful! Willie STUNS With “Stand Up” Performance!
 American Idol 2021, Apr 19, 2021



"Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

 


CHRISTIAN HUMANISM = SOCIAL JUSTICE

Imposter Christianity vs (DEI) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, (CRT) Critical Race Theory, & Intersectionality?





























CHRONOLOGICAL


Authoritarianism has entered the Church; but not in a good way...


America Divided: What the Surveys Say...



White Christian Nationalism in the United States – Session 1


Organization - Christians Against Christian Nationalism




Online Conference - Christians Against "White Christian Nationalism"


Responding to the Capitol Insurrection

The Power of God's Love - A New Christian Center


Evangelical Leaders Open Letter Condemning Christian Nationalism


Jesus and the Christian Faith v Christian Nationalism




The Politics of Love in an Age of Qanon


The Rise of Dominionism and the Christian Right


CosmoEcological Civlizations - PostCapitalistic Economies & Politics, Part 3a - unfinished


CosmoEcological Civlizations - PostCapitalistic Economies & Politics, Part 2b - unfinished


CosmoEcological Civlizations - PostCapitalistic Economies & Politics, Part 2a














The Bad (UnChristian) Idea that was "The Crusades" both Then and Now


David Congdon - No, The American Church is Not in Exile


Living in the Days of Our Ancestors: Doing the Unpopular Thing


Reflecting on "A City Upon a Hill." American Exceptionalism, Civil Religion, and True Christianity


The Choice Before Nations to Love and Forgive


Meet the ‘Nones,’ the Democratic Party’s biggest faith constituency


Is There a Crisis in Conservative Protestantism? (How To Engage the Moral Politics of the Day)


"A City on a Hill," by Governor John Winthrop


Cornel West Speaks Out re Martin Luther King's Meaning of "I Have a Dream" for America

T
The Religious Beliefs of America's Founding Fathers & the Need for Christian Theism in Ruling Government


A "Call to Faith by Breaking Faith," by Ross Douthat, NYT


The Failure of Christianity is a Modern Myth

S
Society-at-Large & Government Actually are Better at Fixing Poverty


Humanity Is Not Defined By "Militarism" and "Consummerism"


"The Day America Died" and the Birth of Postmodernism


The Deism (or, Natural Religion) of Some of America's Founding Fathers


Pluralism, Tolerance and Accommodation: In You, the Kingdom of God Has Come









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Sunday, August 1, 2021

The Power of God's Love - A New Christian Center




"I've been asked lately how Open and Relational theologians think about God's power. So I posted an excerpt from my new book as a blog. It gives a quick overview of some primary ways Open and Relational advocates think about divine power." - Thomas Oord

Like myself, and many others, Tom Oord is part of a movement fleshing out a new vision of God as opposed to many past centuries of visionaries preferring to answer the question of God in terms of strength and almightiness.

Let's simply say those conceptual thoughts of the past are false non sequiturs which deserve a better direction for the church than the ones we are witnessing now in Trumpian politics of "kingdom dominionism" or in past church anathemas speaking hate and war as historically attested to in the past since the death of Christ (crusades, inquisitions, European wars of belief v belief, etc).

God's Love is God's Power

Open and Relational Theology (ORT) approaches God and life through God's love rather than by God's power as other theologies have taken.

Such power approaches have been seen through contemporary evangelical theologies of the last 200 years or more (Puritan theologies, Jonathan Edwards, etc). They also include many of the church's past classical theologies and church creeds acknowledging God's love but speaking divine power as their sacred/secular belief centers.

Why? My guess is that if God has a heavenly kingdom and is bringing this kingdom to earth than God's kingdom must be driven by power and not by such weak, elemental things as love, right?

The church's picture of God's kingdom is like that of man's kingdoms. But remember, Jesus said God's kingdom is unlike our kingdoms. Yet the church, not listening to Jesus, constructed its model of God's kingdom like the models it has seen all around itself from the kingdoms of this world since time immemorial.

Consequently, such power-based theologies emphasize divine power over divine love and can be seen on their emphasis of divine holiness over divine embracement; divine determinism over indeterminate agency; divine wrath as God's main attribute towards all humanity; and divine righteousness as the uncrossable bridge without Jesus who leads away from godly condemnation and damnation.

In contrast, ORT says, "No, God's love is the only sufficient comprehender of God's relation to creation and humanity." All other power dynamics must first submit to God's love. If they do not, or cannot, than such approaches - or comprehensions of God - are anathema to the Person and Work of both God and Christ Jesus.

This then is what is meant as the "elemental things of this world." God's love is the finest, most discrete element underlaying all other constructs of God's creational space. Love defines all relationships. And when it doesn't, all relationships are upside-down to one another starting with God and ending up with man and this earth.

A New Christian Center

When God and faith are centered in love then divine holiness and power find a more helpful orientation within the genre of biblical, moral, and ethical theodicy (e.g., the problem of sin and evil in a God created creation).

Sin and evil are not the last words in church beliefs, doctrines, dogmas, or creeds.

Nor is divine wrath, judgment or God's distance away from us (transcendence).

In ORT, God is imminently near, speaking and creating sustaining environments of love moment-by-moment as He can in a world of sin and evil.

By God's heart and by God's ever-nearness (eternal immanence) in our lives, God desires to embrace and carry us (and creation too!) toward better worlds of affirming wellbeing, nurture, empowering re-creative novelty, and deeper worlds of loving relationship to all things.

In this, and many other ways, God's love must both center and define the Christian faith as well as all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological solidarity with one another in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil.

R.E. Slater
August 1, 2021







    

    




God’s Power in Open and Relational Theology

by Thomas Jay Oord
July 28th, 2021

Open and relational theology says we best understand God’s power in ways consistent with our experiences and the world. It draws from scriptural stories and passages that speak of God acting without controlling others.

In Open and Relational Theology: An Introduction to Life-Changing Ideas, I explore how open and relational advocates think about God’s power.

God’s Power and Love

Many open and relational thinkers use the logic of love to make sense of what God can and can’t do. If we think love does not manipulate, for instance, we should remove “manipulation” from activities God does. Or if our experience of freedom suggests God must not control, we remove “overrides freedom” from divine activities. If we think a loving God who could prevent evil would, we remove “God prevents evil singlehandedly” from activities God does. If we think love doesn’t abuse, torture, or sell children into slavery, we take those activities off the list of things God does or wants from others. And so on.

Open and relational scholars use sophisticated arguments to explain their views. They draw from scriptures, philosophy, experience, and more. Most of this work occurs at academic conferences, in scholarly books, or on websites dedicated to complex ideas. To explore them, check out those resources at the conclusion of this book.

An open, relational, and loving God acts but does not control.

Power Proposals

“But why is God’s power relational and persuasive?” we might ask.

Some open and relational theologians think that after creating the universe, God chose to self-limit. Out of love, says this view, God gives freedom and agency to creatures, metaphorically withdrawing to allow them autonomous choice. I call this “voluntary divine self-limitation.”

Others think metaphysical laws or the God-world relationship prevent God from controlling. In this view, God isn’t choosing to be persuasive; persuasion is built into the structures of existence. God can’t unilaterally determine others, because it’s impossible.

Still others appeal to the logic of free will. For them, God can’t simultaneously grant freedom and not grant it. That’s not logical. Giving free will means God can’t control those to whom the gift is given. These free agents might include people, animals, birds, angels, demons, or more. A God who gives freedom can’t control what happens.

My View of God’s Power

My view says God can’t control, because uncontrolling love comes first in God’s unchanging nature. Because God can’t deny the divine nature, God can’t control anyone or anything.

As I see it, outside forces or factors don’t constrain God. Nor does God voluntarily self-limit. God necessarily expresses self-giving and others-empowering love, because that’s what divine love does. I call this “the uncontrolling love of God” or the “essential kenosis” view. I have explained my views in various books.[i]

An Open and Relational God Acts

None of the views I’ve listed says God is absent from our lives or the world. Open and relational thinkers don’t believe God sits on Mars eating popcorn, uninvolved in the affairs of planet earth. God isn’t sitting in the upper deck watching the ballgame below.

These views also reject a “do-nothing” God. God isn’t a couch potato who eats your ice cream but never helps to clean the house. The Creator and Sustainer is more than the glue of the universe, more than a noninteractive Ground of Being. God is active rather than inert.

God is a universal agent who acts directly in relation to creation, without controlling.

Notice also that open and relational thinkers offer proposals about how God really acts. They aren’t saying, “God’s ways aren’t anything like ours.” Instead of a mysterious black box, they propose understandable models to describe divine activity. They use analogies connected to creaturely action.












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Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Evangelical Leaders Open Letter Condemning Christian Nationalism


Capitol Insurrection on January 6, 2021


Evangelical Leaders Statement
Condemning Christian Nationalism's role
in the January 6th Insurrection


"As leaders in the broad evangelical community, we recognize and condemn the role Christian Nationalism played in the violent, racist, anti-American insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6.

"We recognize the damage done by radicalized Christian Nationalism in the world, the church, and in the lives of individuals and communities. 

"We know from experts on radicalization that one of the key elements is a belief that your actions are "blessed by God" and ordained by your faith. This is what allows so many people who hold to a Christian Nationalism view to be radicalized. 

"While we come from varied backgrounds and political stances, we stand together against the perversion of the Christian faith as we saw on January 6, 2021. We also stand against the theology and the conditions that led to the insurrection.

"Over the centuries, there are moments when the Church, the trans-national Body of Christ-followers, has seen distortions of the faith that warranted a response. In ages past, the Church has responded by holding emergency councils in order to unilaterally denounce mutations of the Christian faith, and to affirm the core values at the heart of Christianity. It is in that spirit that we unite our voices to declare that there is a version of American nationalism that is trying to camouflage itself as Christianity -- and it is a heretical version of our faith. 

"Just as many Muslim leaders have felt the need to denounce distorted, violent versions of their faith, we feel the urgent need to denounce this violent mutation of our faith. What we saw manifest itself in the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is a threat to our democracy, but it is also a threat to orthodox Christian faith. The word "Christian" means "Christ-like." As leaders in the Church, we do not agree on everything, but we can agree on this -- Christians should live in a way that honors Jesus, and reminds the world of Him. 

"As Jesus himself said, "They will know that you are my disciples by the way you love" (John 13:35). No Christian can defend the unChristlike behavior of those who committed the violence on January 6. Not only was it anti-democratic, but it was also anti-Christian. 

"On January 6 we saw the flags claiming Trump's name, calling for violence, and raising the name of Jesus. We saw images of a police officer being beaten with an American flag and another being crushed in a doorway. We know an officer was murdered in the act of insurrection. We witnessed the cross and the gallow being erected. We saw and heard the prayer the insurrectionists prayed from the Senate desk in Jesus' name. Many of us recognized the content, the structure, and the style of that prayer as matching our own churches and faith.
"But we reject this prayer being used to justify the violent act and attempted overthrow of the Government. 

"We have witnessed the rise of violent acts by radicalized extremists using the name of Christ for its validity in the past, including the deadly actions in Charlottesville in 2017. We join our voices to condemn it publicly and theologically.

"We recognize that evangelicalism, and white evangelicalism in particular, has been susceptible to the heresy of Christian nationalism because of a long history of faith leaders accommodating white supremacy. We choose to speak out now because we do not want to be quiet accomplices in this on-going sin. But we also want to celebrate the long tradition of prophetic Christian witness in this nation that has challenged white supremacy and violent Christian nationalism. Though the KKK in the South claimed the symbol of a Christain cross, prophetic Black Christians formed and discipled children in Birmingham, Alabama who led a nonviolent witness in the face of dogs and firehoses. Though an appeal to "biblical values" has been used to demonize immigrants, undocumented Christians in America today have led a movement that insists upon the dignity and full humanity of all undocumented people. There is a powerful Christian witness for the common good in our past and in our present. White evangelicals in America can grow in faithfulness by following this cloud of witnesses, including the many white freedom-fighters who risked their lives standing up for love in the face of violence and hatred. 

"We urge all pastors, ministers, and priests to boldly make it clear that a commitment to Jesus Christ is incompatible with calls to violence, support of white Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, and all religious and racial prejudice. 

"Just as it was tragically inconsistent for Christians in the 20th Century to support the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi ideology, it is unthinkable for Christians to support the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, QAnon, 3 Percenters, America Firsters, and similar groups. 

"We urge faith leaders to engage pastorally with those who support or sympathize with these groups, and make it clear that our churches are not neutral about these matters: we are on the side of democracy, equality for all people, anti-racism, and the common good of all people.

"Instead of seeing the United States as God's chosen nation we thank God for the church around the world that calls people of all races, tongues and nations to the knowledge and love of God. Instead of seeing any particular political leader or party as divinely appointed, we believe in the prophetic and pastoral ministry of the church to all political leaders and parties. Instead of power through violence, we believe in and seek to imitate the powerful, servant love practiced by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

"Our faith will not allow us to remain silent at such a time as this. We are also aware that our world needs more than a statement right now… we need action. 

"Every one of the signers of this declaration is committed to taking concrete steps to put flesh on our words. We will combat bad theology with better theology. We will resist fear with love. We will tell the truth about our nation’s history. 

"We will seek to repair and heal the wounds of the past. We will seek racial justice on a personal, ecclesial, and systemic level. We will support organizations led by people of color. We will listen to and amplify the voices of people of faith who have been marginalized by the colonizing force of white supremacy and Christian Nationalism. 

"We will do our best to be faithful to Jesus, and to those Christ called “the least of these."


* * * * * * * * * *



The scene outside the Capitol on 6 January. The presence of Christian nationalists
was evident during the insurrection. | Photograph: Shafkat Anowar/AP



Evangelical leaders condemn role
of Christian nationalism in Capitol attack

by Ed Pilkington in New York
February 24, 2021


Pastors reject ‘perversion’ of Christian nationalism and say
they do not want to be ‘quiet accomplices in this ongoing sin’


More than 100 prominent evangelical Christian pastors and church leaders have spoken out against what they call the “perversion” of Christian nationalism and the role it played in enabling the violent insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January.

In an open letter released on Wednesday, the evangelical leaders say they are speaking out now because they do not want to be “quiet accomplices in this ongoing sin”.

They call on all church people to clarify that Christianity is incompatible with “calls to violence, support of white Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, and all religious and racial prejudice”.

The letter, first reported by NPR, notes that the evangelical community in the US has long been susceptible to the “heresy” of Christian nationalism – the belief that the country is fundamentally Christian and run by and for white conservative Americans. The signatories blame that tendency on church leaders accommodating white supremacy over many years.

As a result the ideology of Christian nationalism was allowed to flourish and helped to legitimize the 6 January attack by giving participants the false impression that their actions were “blessed by God”, the religious leaders said.

The presence of Christian nationalists was evident during the insurrection. Rioters carried signs proclaiming “Jesus Saves” and “In God We Trust”, and crosses were erected among the crowd.


A Reporter’s Footage from Inside the Capitol Siege | The New Yorker
Jan 17, 2021



A video of the unfolding catastrophe filmed by the New Yorker magazine showed one of the seditionists saying a prayer from the rostrum of the US Senate. He said: “Thank you Heavenly Father for gracing us with this opportunity to stand up for our God-given unalienable rights … and to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs.”

Among the influential figures who signed the letter were Jerushah Duford, granddaughter of the TV evangelical preacher, the late Billy Graham. She told NPR that the events of 6 January had long been brewing. “It felt like this was a symptom of what has been happening for a long time,” she said.

White evangelical Christians remained remarkably loyal to former president Donald Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. They voted for him on both occasions by about 80%, exit polls showed.

A survey by the American Enterprise Institute earlier this month found that 60% of white evangelicals continue to believe Trump’s “big lie” that last November’s election was stolen from him and that he should have been returned to the White House.
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