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

Monday, November 8, 2021

Introducing SuperScholar Diana Butler Bass



 
Diana Butler Bass (Ph.D., Duke) is an award-winning author of eleven books, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America's most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality, especially where faith intersects with politics and culture.
Her bylines include The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN.com, Atlantic.com, USA Today, Huffington Post, Christian Century, and Sojourners. She has commented in the media widely including on CBS, CNN, PBS, NPR, CBC, FOX, Sirius XM, TIME, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and in multiple global news outlets.
Her website is dianabutlerbass.com and she can be followed on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. She writes a twice-weekly newsletter - The Cottage - which can be found on Substack.

Amazon Link


How can you still be a Christian?

This is the most common question Diana Butler Bass is asked today. It is a question that many believers ponder as they wrestle with disappointment and disillusionment in their church and its leadership. But while many Christians have left their churches, they cannot leave their faith behind.

In Freeing Jesus, Bass challenges the idea that Jesus can only be understood in static, one-dimensional ways and asks us to instead consider a life where Jesus grows with us and helps us through life’s challenges in several capacities: as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence.

Freeing Jesus is an invitation to leave the religious wars behind and rediscover Jesus in all his many manifestations, to experience Jesus beyond the narrow confines we have built around him. It renews our hope in faith and worship at a time when we need it most.

The Grassroots Movements which preserved Jesus's message of Social Justice for 2,000 years and it's impact on the Church today.

For too long, the history of Christianity has been told as the triumph of orthodox doctrine imposed through power. Now, historian Diana Butler Bass sheds new light on the surprising ways that many Christians have refused to conform to a rigid church hierarchy and sought to recapture the radical implications of Jesus's life and message.


Amazon Link

Diana Butler Bass, one of contemporary Christianity’s leading trend-spotters, exposes how the failings of the church today are giving rise to a new “spiritual but not religious” movement. Using evidence from the latest national polls and from her own cutting-edge research, Bass, the visionary author of A People’s History of Christianity, continues the conversation began in books like Brian D. McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity and Harvey Cox’s The Future of Faith, examining the connections—and the divisions—between theology, practice, and community that Christians experience today. Bass’s clearly worded, powerful, and probing Christianity After Religion is required reading for anyone invested in the future of Christianity.







The Cottage

Drop in. Sit down. This is a place to explore faith and spirituality. Especially for those who feel dissatisfied, discomforted, or uncertain about religion — and who need a different angle, a new view of things of the spirit. Here you’ll find both inspiration and thoughtful commentary. My door is open.

Notice: this space isn’t The Sanctuary or The Parsonage or even The Retreat. This is The Cottage. That’s because I’m not a clergy person or a paid religious professional. I’m a writer, speaker, and itinerant teacher.

And The Cottage is a real place in my backyard where I write, think, reflect, and even meditate and pray.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote that a woman needed a room of her own to write. My house is too modest for a separate office (I wrote two of my early books in my family room!), so we built this cottage in our yard to accommodate my library and my work. From here, I’ve written blogs, articles, essays, and books – and these days it serves as a makeshift television and recording studio! I look out of the Cottage to the garden and from there out to the world, which means that I view spirituality, religion, and faith from my backyard.

But unlike Virginia Woolf, I didn’t want to keep the cottage as my “own.” I wanted to open it up, invite in my friends and readers, to share the magic and the hard work of this space — and so I created The Cottage on Substack. Here, I’ll share what I’m writing, what trends I see, how faith is growing and changing, issues of concern, and things that I find interesting or challenging or beautiful. And, as The Cottage community grows, I’ll host conversations and threads so we can get to know each other — and share our questions, concerns, hopes, and gratitudes. It is good to have friends in these hard days. To feel less alone.

And, by way of full introduction, I am a Christian (even though that label is more than a bit awkward these days) and I write from that perspective, with a generous heart toward wisdom wherever it is found. The “creed” that guides me most closely aligns with these 1,000 year old words from the mystical poet Ibn Arabi:

There was a time I would reject those
who were not of my faith.
But now, my heart has grown capable
of taking on all forms.
It is a pasture for gazelles,
An abbey for monks.
A table for the Torah,
Kaaba for the pilgrim.
My religion is love.
Whichever the route love’s caravan shall take,
That shall be the path of my faith.

Or, in the simple words of Jesus: “Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Wherever you are on your journey, I’m glad your route has led to The Cottage.





Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is an award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality.

Diana’s passion is sharing great ideas to change lives and the world—a passion that ranges from informing the public about spiritual trends, challenging conventional narratives about religious practice, entering the fray of social media with spiritual wisdom and smart theology, and writing books to help readers see themselves, their place in history, and God differently. She does this with intelligence, joy, and a good dose of humor, leading well-known comedian John Fugelsang to dub her “iconic,” the late Marcus Borg to call her “spontaneous and always surprising,” and Glennon Doyle to praise her “razor-sharp mind” and “mystical heart.”

She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of eleven books. Her bylines include The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN.com, Atlantic.com, USA Today, Huffington Post, Spirituality and Health, Reader's Digest, Christian Century, and Sojourners. She has commented on religion, politics, and culture in the media widely including on CBS, CNN, PBS, NPR, CBC, FOX, Sirius XM, TIME, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and in multiple global news outlets. In the 1990s, she wrote a weekly column on religion and culture for the Santa Barbara News-Press, which was distributed nationally by the New York Times Syndicate.

Her work has received two Wilbur Awards for best nonfiction book of the year, awards from Religion News Association for individual commentary and for Book of the Year, Nautilus Awards Silver and Gold medals, the Illumination Book Award Silver medal, Books for a Better Life Award, Book of the Year of the Academy of Parish Clergy, the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize for Church History, Substack Fellowship for Independent Writers, and Publishers Weekly’s Best Religion Book of the Year.

She and her husband live in Alexandria, Virginia, with their dog and their sometimes-successful backyard garden.


Sunday, November 7, 2021

Lions and Lambs - A vision of humanity living together with one another.




Isaiah 11.6-9

6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them.

7 The cow and the bear shall graze;

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.

9 They shall not hurt or destroy

in all my holy mountain;

for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.



And the lion shall lay down with the lamb...

by R.E. Slater

When I read verses like Isaiah 11.6ff it tells me that the God of Love who is unwilling to be God without us also urges us to learn to live together in love and kindness towards one another. That we, God's children, are unwilling to be called such if we refuse to love one another.

The biblical hope in Isaiah 11 s for predatory people to stop destroying their fellow vulnerable members. To hold, rather, a vision of living rightly together with one another in supportive communion, grace, forgiveness, mercy, equality, and fairness without slander, harm, gracelessness, thoughtlessness, or hate.

The heavenly communities we envision here on earth must first begin here, on earth, with us, everywhere. Otherwise we have not done our job disobeying Jesus to live peaceably with one another.

And if you think about it, there is no magic formula in heaven which brings people together, as so many people here on earth  believe. If Jesus is the magic formula than the possibility of heaven lies also here on earth with us, and it is we, Jesus' followers, who are not allowing this to happen.

So many say, "God wins." Which is not true, God wins ONLY when "Love wins." Otherwise the formula is backwards. Fear, hate, racism, ends when love wins, not God. 
God works through us to create the possible. If we refuse then God cannot work. The God of Love is the God of the possible who has enlivened His love in us. Submit, therefore, and be enlivened to God's Spirit of love.

Love is relational. It relates to all things - from earth to people. Live love, be love, seek love-and-reparation with all. Be the lion that humbles itself to live with God's lambs. Those without hope. Of a different color. Who believe differently (not toxically like so much of the Christian religion bent on "overcoming evil with evil").
Be the dove of peace, the sacrificial Lamb of God, the Servant of El Shaddai, who whispers, "Peace be still." God wins when Love wins.

R.E. Slater
November 7, 2021






The Lion shall lie down with the lamb

by By  on May 26th, 2011


Here’s a phrase that has morphed from it’s biblical origins.  Isaiah wrote about “the wolf dwelling with the lamb while the leopard lies down with the kid… and the young lion” (Isaiah 11:6).  Yet, as with a phrase like “Pride goeth before a fall." it’s the abbreviation that has survived the test of time: "the lion shall lie down with the lamb."

But however it’s phrased, what could sound more unnatural than a wolf or lion lying down with a lamb?

It’s a vision that has drawn mockery from many quarters:
—  “Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn” (Martin Amis)
—  “No absolute is going to make the lion lie down with the lamb unless the lamb is inside.” (D.H. Lawrence)
—  “The lion will lay down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep.” (Woody Allen)

Isaiah has painted a deliberately provocative scene.  Nature, as Tennyson reminded us, is red in tooth and claw.  How absurd to think that nature itself could be tamed!  What could possibly bring about such a cosmic reversal?

Well, as ever, Isaiah answers by pointing us to the Messiah.  In the face of warring nations and warring nature, Isaiah continues to set our hope on a miraculous birth.  He will be called Immanuel or the Prince of Peace, or here in chapter 11 He’s called “the Branch.”

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: 2 And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; 3 And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: 4 But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.  5 And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them… 9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.  (Isaiah 11:1-9)

When the true King reigns in righteousness, the world is set to rights.  This is not a spiritual truth divorced from historical and physical reality.  There will be a day when actual wolves and actual lambs graze together contentedly.  When seals will swim happily with great white sharks.   When children will play with crocodiles.

Impossible! Ridiculous! Fairytales! you might say. Yet Isaiah refuses to live in a double-decker universe. We often think that Christian truths apply to a spiritual realm while the real business of life occurs on some irredeemable physical level. We might concede that Jesus has spiritual power but, we imagine, it has no bearing on the way of the world.

But Isaiah cannot believe in such a divorce of spiritual and physical.  He believes in a very earthy Messiah.  He believes in God with us.  A God who becomes a Child.  A God who really enters into our world – to be born as a human king.   The power of heaven will enter into this world from the inside.  Not simply to grant spiritual benefits to spiritual people, but to remake His own creation.

We know that the false king, Adam, brought spiritual and physical death.  Well then, is Christ less powerful than Adam?  Is His victory less decisive than Adam’s fall?  No.  Therefore Christ, when He comes again, will bring spiritual and physical redemption to the ends of the earth.

The believer in Christ has a physical hope – death defeated, wars vanquished, disease abolished, nature itself brought to peace and prosperity:

6 And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. 7 And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.  8 He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it. 9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.  (Isaiah 25:6-9)



Thursday, November 4, 2021

Homebrewed Christianity - Walking with Soren Kierkegaard, Part 4




Homebrewed Christianity - 
Walking with Soren Kierkegaard,
Part 4





Faith, Doubt and Kierkegaard
with J. Aaron Simmons
November 3, 2021
This week, J. Aaron Simmons joins me to discuss philosopher/theologian Soren Kierkegaard. Although Kierkegaard died in 1855, his message has deep resonance and relevance today. Enjoy!  
NOTE: Those into process theology like myself should also listen to the podcast with Catherine Keller which is next in line after Aaron's Kierkegaarde podcast. - re slater






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SHORT TAKES, RESOURCES, AND MORE

NOTE: Pay especial attention to Stephen Backhouse below. - re slater

Søren Kierkegaard on Reintroducing Christianity into Christendom
by Stephen Backhouse
Sep 20, 2017


Christendom, rather than being an official connection between a government and a religion, is most often found in attitudes and mistaken assumptions. In today's Seven Minute Seminary, Dr. Stephen Backhouse demonstrates how Søren Kierkegaard can be appropriated to challenge our core assumptions about identity and allegiance.



PHILOSOPHY - Soren Kierkegaard
Jun 26, 2015


Soren Kierkegaard is useful to us because of the intensity of his despair at the compromises and cruelties of daily life. He is a companion for our darkest moments.

 


Greatest Philosophers In History | Søren Kierkegaard
Aug 18, 2020


Søren Kierkegaard was a profound and prolific 19th century writer and philosopher in the Danish Golden Age of intellectual and artistic activity. He wrote about how we choose to live and what it means to be alive, centred in the individual or “existing being”. He is regarded as the father of Existentialism. The stress of subjectivity is one of Kierkegaard’s main contributions.

His concept of anxiety or angst is one of the most profound pre-Freudian works of psychology. His most popular work includes the leap of faith, the concept of angst, the three stages on life (aesthetic, ethical, religious), among others.


Amazon Link

The Essential Kierkegaard Paperback
May 30, 2000

by Søren Kierkegaard (Author),
Howard V. Hong (Editor), Edna H. Hong (Editor)

This is the most comprehensive anthology of Søren Kierkegaard's works ever assembled in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton's authoritative Kierkegaard's Writings series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, the selections represent every major aspect of Kierkegaard's extraordinary career. They reveal the powerful mix of philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary criticism that made Kierkegaard one of the most compelling writers of the nineteenth century and a shaping force in the twentieth. With an introduction to Kierkegaard's writings as a whole and explanatory notes for each selection, this is the essential one-volume guide to a thinker who changed the course of modern intellectual history.

The anthology begins with Kierkegaard's early journal entries and traces the development of his work chronologically to the final The Changelessness of God. The book presents generous selections from all of Kierkegaard's landmark works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, and The Sickness unto Death, and draws new attention to a host of such lesser-known writings as Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air. The selections are carefully chosen to reflect the unique character of Kierkegaard's work, with its shifting pseudonyms, its complex dialogues, and its potent combination of irony, satire, sermon, polemic, humor, and fiction. We see the esthetic, ethical, and ethical-religious ways of life initially presented as dialogue in two parallel series of pseudonymous and signed works and later in the "second authorship" as direct address. And we see the themes that bind the whole together, in particular Kierkegaard's overarching concern with, in his own words, "What it means to exist; . . . what it means to be a human being?

Together, the selections provide the best available introduction to Kierkegaard's writings and show more completely than any other book why his work, in all its creativity, variety, and power, continues to speak so directly today to so many readers around the world.

 




Quick Facts

Birthday: May 5, 1813

Girlfriend: Regine Schlegel (Ex)

Died At Age: 42

Sun Sign: Taurus

Also Known As: Søren Kierkegaard

Born Country: Denmark
Born In: Copenhagen, Denmark

Famous As: Philosopher, Theologian & Religious Author

Father: Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard
Mother: Ane Sørensdatter Lund Kierkegaard
Siblings: Peter Christian Kierkegaard

Died On: November 11, 1855
Place Of Death: Copenhagen, Denmark

Who was Soren Kierkegaard?

  • Soren Kierkegaard was a famous Danish philosopher, theologian and religious author.
  • He was well known for his criticism of the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel.
  • His philosophical work generally deals with the issues of living as a “single individual” and giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking.
  • His work in theology focuses mainly on Christian ethics and institution of the Church. It also deals with the difference between the purely objective proofs of Christianity and a subjective relationship to Jesus Christ.
  • Kierkegaard was also interested in human psychology and his psychological work explores the emotions and the feelings of individuals when facing situations in life.
  • His intellectuality was influenced by Socrates and the Socratic Method.
  • Kierkegaard’s earlier works were mainly written under various pseudonymous characters, presenting their own distinctive viewpoints and interacting with each other.

Childhood & Early Life

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on 5 May 1813, in Copenhagen. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, a wealthy hosier, was a self-made man; he was intelligent, but melancholic. Søren’s mother, Ane Sørensdatter Lund, was his second wife. His first marriage to Kirstine Nielsdatter was childless.

Raised as a shepherd boy, Michael experienced great hardship in his childhood. One day, while alone on the heath, he cursed God for his adversities and loneliness. In later years, he believed that he had earned God’s wrath because of that, successfully transmitting his belief to his children.

Before her marriage, Ane Sørensdatter, a cheerful but uneducated woman, was a housemaid with the family. After Kirstine’s death, she found herself pregnant with Michael’s child, which compelled him to marry her. That he got his maid pregnant soon after his wife’s death also added to Michael’s burden of guilt.

Born the youngest of his parents’ seven children, Søren had three sisters and three brothers, out of whom five died young. While Michael was convinced that all his children would die young because of his sin, Søren and his brother, Peter Christian, later a renowned bishop, lived to experience adulthood.

As a child, Søren idolized his father, quickly developing a bond with him, going out with him on imaginary walks during bad weather. During these walks, taking place within the confine of the study, his father would describe the make-believe sights, helping him to develop his power of imagination.

During this period, he probably also inherited from his father his heavy burden of guilt and a belief that his father’s long life and wealth was actually God’s revenge. It often made the young boy depressed and gloomy.

In 1821, after finishing his education at an elementary school, Søren was enrolled at Østre Borgerdyd Gymnasium, a well-regarded “School of Civic Virtue” in Copenhagen. Here, he had a classical education, excelling in Latin and history, finally graduating in 1830.

In 1831, he entered the University of Copenhagen with theology. But he soon lost interest in that, instead being drawn towards literature and philosophy, especially studying fictitious literary figures like Don Juan and Faust, trying to find an existential model that he could follow.

Although he was aware about his father’s sense of gloom since his childhood, quite often becoming depressed because of that, it was only in 1834 that he came to know the reasons. It came as a shock, making him leave home, abandoning the Christian faith in which he was brought up.

Estranged from his father, living with mental turmoil, he began a new search. In 1835, he wrote, “The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.… What is truth but to live for an idea?”

In 1838, Søren returned home, being reconciled not only with his father, but also with Christianity, deciding to live by its tenets. Also after his father’s death in the same year, he decided to complete his formal education, financing it with his inheritance of approximately 31,000 rigsdaler.

In June 1841, he completed his dissertation, ‘Om begrebetironi med stadigthensyntil Socrates’ (On the Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates), defending it in September. Finally on 20 October 1841, he graduated from the University of Copenhagen with a Magister Arutim.



Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Homebrewed Christianity - Walking with Soren Kierkegaard, Part 3




Homebrewed Christianity - 
Walking with Soren Kierkegaard,
Part 3

Henry David Thoreau suggests that if we are going to go for a walk, then we must be willing to get lost. In other words, we can’t think or live in truth without being willing to be challenged at our core. Our deepest beliefs, our moral and religious commitments, and our social visions all have to be at stake in order for us to “walk” with others. This is especially true when it comes to Kierkegaard. A Christian who stood against Christendom, a philosopher who is committed to religious upbuilding, and a parent of existentialism and postmodernism who influences thinkers from Heidegger to Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard has been accused of everything from moral nihilism to radical individualism, and from irrationality to misanthropy. And yet, a perennial philosopher of paradox, Kierkegaard speaks profoundly to where we currently find ourselves. His critique of Christian nationalism, objectivist scientism, and an economic logic whereby power and status indicate dignity all offer profound resources for thinking carefully about who we are and receiving inspiration for who we hope to be. Ultimately, this course is an invitation to go for a walk with Kierkegaard, and maybe to get lost along the way. - Tripp Fuller


Join Tripp & Aaron on Facebook -
https://www.facebook.com/homebrewedchristianity



Getting Lost & Finding Faith:
Walking with Kierkegaard
Sep 29, 2021


Tripp Fuller
I am pumped to have Dr. J Aaron Simmons joining
me for an upcoming class on Soren Kierkegaard. 

Here's his invitation to the fun!


J. Aaron Simmons holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University and is currently a Professor of philosophy at Furman University in Greenville, SC (USA). He is the President of the Søren Kierkegaard Society (USA) and has published widely in philosophy of religion, phenomenology, and existentialism. Among his authored and edited books are God and the Other: Ethics and Politics After the Theological Turn; The New Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction; Kierkegaard’s God and the Good Life; and Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion. He and his wife, Vanessa, have been married 20 years and have an 11 year old son, Atticus. Although Aaron loves doing philosophy, he would almost always rather be fishing. Check out Aaron’s youtube channel: “Philosophy for Where We Find Ourselves,” and his TedX talk (also on youtube): “The Failure of Success.”


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October 12, 2021 By Tripp Fuller

Aaron Simmons is back on the podcast to preview our upcoming reading group – Walking with Kierkegaard. In this conversation we give 5 reasons the church needs Kierkegaard today. We hope you enjoy it and check out the class and giveaway below.

5 Reasons the Church needs Kierkegaard today:
  1. Kierkegaard reminds us that faith is about lived commitment, not simply about right belief.
  2. Kierkegaard helps us see that Christian Nationalism is anti-Christ.
  3. Kierkegaard shows what it means to seek faithfulness, rather than success.
  4. Kierkegaard stresses the radical inclusivity of the call: “Come all who are heavy burdened.”
  5. Kierkegaard models what it looks like to see humility as the condition of confidence.

5 Reasons the Church Needs Kierkegaard
Oct 12, 2021


Join the online reading group with Aaron and Tripp here:


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6 Feature Sessons:
Course Outline and Readings

Week 1 (11/9): Biography and Early Writings (pp. 3-12)

In this first week, we will cover Kierkegaard’s life and general socio-cultural and philosophical contexts. Then, we will look at some of his early journal entries in which he lays out some of the main concerns that will show up across his authorship: subjectivity, decision, passion, and faithful existence.

Week 2 (11/16): Either/Or (pp. 37-83)

This week, we will look to Kierkegaard’s first major text in his official authorship. In the two parts of Either/Or, he outlines the first to modes of living: aesthetics and ethics. We will consider each and pay attention to the ways in which they are not just chronological steps, but persistent temptations for how to take ourselves up in the world.

Week 3 (11/23): Four Upbuilding Discourses (pp. 84-92) and Fear and Trembling (pp. 93-101)

Here we will consider what is arguably Kierkegaard most famous book, and yet one of the most complicated. In Fear and Trembling, he looks to the story of Abraham and the binding of Isaac in order to consider how Abraham could rightly be considered the “father of faith,” rather than simply a murderer. In order to set up Fear and Trembling, we will look to an Upbuilding Discourse that helps to situate the text in terms of “religious” existence as the utmost possibility for human life.

Week 4 (11/30): Concluding Unscientific Postscript (pp. 187-229; 242-246)

Turning from philosophy of religion to questions of epistemology, the Postscript is Kierkegaard at his most existentialist. During this week we will consider his famous claim that “subjectivity is truth” and see why he places the religious emphasis on “how” we worship, rather than simply “what” we believe.

Week 5 (12/7): Works of Love (pp. 277-311)

Although Kierkegaard is often charged with not having a developed ethics, in Works of Love we see a profound attempt at thinking through what it means to enact neighbor-love as a command from God.

Week 6 (12/14): Practice in Christianity (pp. 372-384), Two Discourses at Friday Communion (pp. 385-392), For Self-Examination (pp. 393-403), Judge for Yourself! (pp. 404-410), “My Task” (pp. 445-448), Simmons “Militant Liturgies” (link to be provided)

For this last week, we will continue in the vein of Kierkegaard late upbuilding work that was directly critical of “Christendom” in the name of “Christianity.” We will pay particular attention to his critique of Christian nationalism and how we can apply his texts to our contemporary cultural contexts.


Monday, November 1, 2021

EcoCiv Korea Conference Invite - November 4/5 & 11/12, 2021




A Decade to Make a Difference:
Making A Difference by Changing the Way 
We Think & Teach

It is our conviction, and that of our partners, that society needs to change at a level far deeper than most people realize. Solar panels, electric cars, and carbon taxes get nowhere close to addressing the underlying causes of our complex social-environmental challenges. The interconnection of our world’s biggest problems requires a paradigm shift—a transformation of our social and economic organization that is guided by a change in values and worldviews. As reports from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicate, time is running short…we only have a decade to make a difference.

EcoCiv Korea is launching “A Decade to Make a Difference” conference series on the urgent need for civilizational change. This year, our two-day international conference will focus on making a different through religion and education. The event will be fully online via Zoom with simultaneous translation. The first day will focus on “Religions and Higher Education for Ecological Civilization,” while the second day will focus on “Ecological Transition Education and Food.”

Below is a schedule outline. Details on speakers and panelists forthcoming.

All times listed are Seoul Time. Simultaneous translation (English and Korean) will be provided unless otherwise noted.



November 5: Making A Difference Through Religious Education

9:00-9:20 Keynote: John B. Cobb, Jr. “A Decade to Make a Difference: The Urgent Need for Civilizational Change”

9:20-9:30 Audience Q&A

9:30-10:20 Morning Dialogue Part 1 What Can Religions Do to Make a Difference?

10:20-10:40 Audience Q&A

10:40-10:50 Break

10:50-11:40 Morning Dialogue Part 2 Religious Education: Uniting University and Church for Civilizational Change

11:40-12:00 Audience Q&A

Day 1 Concludes

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November 12: Ecological Transition Education and Food

9:00-9:20 Keynote: A Decade to Make a Difference

9:20-9:30 Audience Q&A

9:30-10:20 Morning Dialogue Part 1 Education for Ecological Civilization

10:20-10:40 Audience Q&A

10:40-10:50 Break

10:50-11:40 Morning Dialogue Part 2 Climate, Food, and Education for Sustainable Development

11:40-12:00 Audience Q&A

12:00-2:00 Lunch Break

Afternoon Sessions: Korean Language Only (No Translation)

2:00-2:20 Plenary Talk Heeyeon Cho, Superintendent for Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

Afternoon Dialogue Part 1 From Organic Free School Lunch to Climate School Lunch

3:00-3:30 Audience Q&A

3:30-3:40 Break

3:40-4:40 Afternoon Dialogue Part 2 Round Table with Students

4:30-4:50 Audience Q&A

4:50-5:00 Concluding Remarks for Day 2


REGISTER HEREclick here



* * * * * * *


SPEAKERS

Welcome and Intro


Philip Clayton, President, Institute for Ecological Civilization


Sungyoung Kang, President, Hanshin University


Keynote Speaker - John B. Cobb Jr.
Professor Emeritus of the Claremont School of Theology, theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist

Morning Dialogue Part 1 - What Can Religions Do to Make a Difference?


Moderator - Dr. Andrew Schwartz
Executive Director, Center for Process Studies & 
Assistant Professor of Process and Comparative Theology

Panelists


Audrey Kitagawa
President/Founder of the International Academy for Multicultural Cooperation, the President of the Light of Awareness International Spiritual Family


The Rev. Dr. Sooil Chai
Senior Pastor at Kyungdong Presbyterian Church, Seoul, South Korea


Mary Evelyn Tucker
Founder of the field of "religion and ecology." Professor at Yale University

Morning Dialogue Part 2 - Religious Education: Uniting University and Church for Civilizational Change


Moderator - The Rev. Dongwoo Lee, Ph.D. Candidate
Director of Ecological Civilization Korea

Panelists


Dr. Jeffery Kuan
President, Claremont School of Theology


The Rev. Dr. Chul Chun
Dean of School of Theology at Hanshin University


Laurel Kearns
Founder of Green Seminaries Initiative, Associate Professor of Sociology and Religion and Environmental Studies, Drew Theological School


Event Co-Sponsors:

· Institute for Ecological Civilization

· Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

· Korea Green Foundation

· Hanshin University

· Center for Process Studies


REGISTER HERE - click here









Sunday, October 31, 2021

‘The Internet Remains Undefeated’ Must Be Defeated


PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES; SECRET LAB INSTITUTE



“The internet remains undefeated” glorifies
the removal of context, nuance, and thought.


‘The Internet Remains Undefeated’ 
Must Be Defeated

by Zak Jason
September 24, 2021


The classic comment and caption has become a meme in its own right.
Harmless as it may seem, a close study reveals dark undertones.


THE BIG BOAT stuck in the Suez Canal, Oprah waving off Meghan and Harry with her “Stop it” hands, all the Teletubbies boinking one another blue as the sun baby watches approvingly, a photo bashing trans athletes shared by Donald Trump Jr. These memes are unified not only in encapsulating the lunacy of 2021, but in the four words that have consistently appeared beside them and countless others, in captions as well as comments: “The internet remains undefeated.”

Surely you’ve seen these words, but maybe you haven’t read them. (Congratulations on your sanity.) An apolitical, amoral stand-in equally for lol, and thank you, used for both schadenfreude and firgun, “The internet remains undefeated” is the internet of phrases about the internet, existing everywhere and nowhere, meaning everything and nothing. A seemingly benign expression—until you say it back.

The internet remains undefeated.
The internet remains undefeated.
The internet remains undefeated.

The more I encounter these words, the more they pierce me with mortal dread. It’s not just the rotten onion of their ambiguity: When did the internet’s winning streak begin? What, or who, is it undefeated against? Ourselves, maybe. But then why are so many of us so jubilant about reminding ourselves that we’ve defeated ourselves? And what would, could, should defeating the internet look like? But my disdain for the saying is also because of its underlying sentiment. The true terror of “The internet remains undefeated” is that it’s most often used in lighthearted contexts, yet exposes the deepest darkness of our lives online, a darkness that we’ve become either blind to or numb to.

SEARCHES ON THE term “undefeated internet” suggest that the oldest extant usage of the ghastly phrase might belong to Timothy Hall (@peoplescrtic), a film critic and meme lord from Seattle. On the morning of August 12, 2013, he posted on Instagram a meme of a scowling Russell Westbrook, the mercurial NBA dynamo, photoshopped into a character selection screen from the arcade classic Mortal Kombat, with the caption “The internet remains undefeated.” It’s a textbook usage, the kind Hall says he’s been deploying on social media and in group chats in the years since. To him, the saying epitomizes the internet as the world’s great equalizer. “You can be POTUS,” he says, “or you can be a soccer mom yelling at a game, not knowing you’re being filmed. Everyone is fair game to become a meme. Maybe it’s POTUS who makes you into a meme, or maybe it’s my 14-year-old nephew. You may not know it’s your day, you just have to ride the wave and let the internet defeat you until it’s someone else’s turn.”

But Hall can’t take credit for coining the phrase; he says he must’ve picked it up from someone on the internet along the way. “If someone ever claimed to have invented it,” he adds, “the internet would defeat them. That’s the beauty of it.”

To a wide-ranging group of social media users like Hall, “The internet remains undefeated” is, on its face, a simple expression of joy, or nostalgia for a more joyous era of the internet. Ryan Milner, a professor of internet culture at the College of Charleston and author of The World Made Meme, says the phrase harkens back to a time, between roughly 2003 and 2013, when the internet was “still kind of this other place that didn’t operate by and could maybe transcend real-world rules.” This was the heyday of early YouTube and message boards like Something Awful, 4chan, and Reddit, “when you saw a flurry of subcultural activity and content creation that became kind of a tone setter for people who are still extremely online.” So in 2021, people comment “The internet remains undefeated” to a flourishing of memes about Bernie Sanders and his mittens or the discord between your fall plans and the Delta variant, because it recalls when life online seemed less about livestreamed mass murders and the algorithmically driven death of democracy and more about rickrolling and lolcats. At the surface level, says Milner, the phrase “is a way to kind of appreciate when the early spirit of collective creativity online resurfaces.”

People also use the phrase, Milner adds, as a way of “reacting to the randomness of what they encounter online.” Every piece of content “is made by a real person at the other end of the tubes. But we just see the funny picture. So instead of saying ‘Tim from Madison, Wisconsin, remains undefeated,’ we tend to collapse everything from everyone as being from ‘the internet,’ as if it’s this singular mystical being.” In that sense, the saying is a collectivist antivenom to unhinged individualism online.

“The internet remains undefeated” glorifies the removal of context, nuance, and thought.

But exuberant and egalitarian as the expression may appear, its undertones are much darker. For one thing, “The internet remains undefeated” is also a symptom of what Milner and fellow internet culture scholar Whitney Phillips call fetishistic flattening. This is the tendency for internet users to fixate on a meme or tweet itself, and not consider how or why it was created, the backstory of who or what’s being depicted and shared, or who may be harmed in the process. (The “Hide your kids, hide your wife” song, which belittles the man in the original clip, and deepfaked drunk Nancy Pelosi are all standard examples of fetishization.) In this way, “The internet remains undefeated” glorifies the removal of context, nuance, and thought. “Undefeated” in particular also captures how on social media, context is subsumed by combativeness. Beneath the surface, says Milner, the phrase is often “antagonistic and barbed,” and of “an atmosphere where how funny you are about what you produce and say, and how many people respond no matter what you say, is seen as a competition.”

Of course, context removal and ruthless competitiveness are embedded in dozens of other popular memes and replies to memes: Distracted Boyfriend, Galaxy Brain, Swole Doge vs. Meek Doge, so and so “woke up and chose violence.” But whereas those all celebrate the defeat of a single common enemy or idea lampooned in the meme itself, what makes “The internet remains undefeated” so deflating is that it celebrates our own collective defeat of ourselves. The internet’s unstated, vanquished opponent is us, the users who both consume and are the butts of the memes that phrase is often a response to. But deep down we all understand that we are also the internet, as the ones who populate it, generate its content, and created it in the first place. As Jeffrey Bloechl, a philosophy professor and phenomenologist at Boston College, told me, any problems that appear on the internet “can be traced back to things we human beings either did or failed to do when we made the thing.” After all, he adds, humans designed the internet to be boundless. “If the internet, strictly as internet, is fundamentally mathematical, it cannot itself be the source of any limits.” By that logic, “there is no way not to wonder whether in unleashing a power that is undefeated,” one that can transcend the limits of our own bodies and minds, we’ve also unleashed “a power to change what we are,” a power to defeat the human condition.

That is the horrifying economy of Those Four Words: There is no more haunting a distillation of the unstoppable seepage of technology into every fabric of our being than “The internet remains undefeated.” These words are a glaring reminder that the internet, of which I am a part, is defeating me. That in the moment I am reading them, I am devoting my attention not to my wife, infant daughter, friends, family, colleagues, wind rattling the window pane, or my breathing, but to what faceless strangers are saying about Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friends’ balls, and to what quippy things I should be saying to faceless strangers about Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friends balls. That gif of the Teletubbies having tantric sex? It exists only in my smooth, broken brain, a brain the internet broke so that I think in the way the internet wants me to think.

THE SUBTEXT OF “The internet remains undefeated” is a vaguely Zen koan: “We remain undefeated against ourselves.” Yes, it speaks to humanity’s ability to harness the internet to conquer individuals with collective humor. But it also speaks to how we’ve been harnessed by the internet’s power—a power we bestowed— and feel powerless to do anything about. Saying those four words only seems to perpetuate that unfortunate reality.

But recognizing this can also be a first step in taking power back. It’s telling that we often use these words in the silliest of circumstances—that even when we can all seem to set aside our many polarized differences and come together to laugh about someone hiding a testicle-swelling STD with fake symptoms of the Covid vaccine, someone still says “The internet remains undefeated” as a reminder that we are constantly fraying our humanity online. In that sense, the act of saying that “the internet remains undefeated” is an act of condemning what the saying itself celebrates. A human typed those words, words that can attune fellow humans to just how very online we are, but can also remind us that we have a choice. We can either fall right back into the unthinking slipstream and let the internet remain undefeated, or take our raised awareness and step away.

---

Zak Jason runs WIRED's research team, overseeing the fact-checking of stories for print, web, and video. He also edits WIRED's op-eds. He has written about everything from terrorism to Kidz Bop for the New York Times Magazine, Slate, and The Guardian. Before WIRED, he was a writer and fact-checker for... Read more