What Neo-Christian "Internationalism" Looks Like

St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kyiv

[See You] Next Year in Kyiv?

https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/next-year-in-kyiv?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

by Diana Butler Bass

February 23, 2022

When it comes to Russian Orthodoxy,

Kyiv is essentially Jerusalem.

While the secular media tries to guess Vladimir Putin’s motives in Ukraine, one important aspect of the current situation has gone largely ignored: Religion.

I’m no expert in Eastern European history, but my training in church history offers a lens into the events in Ukraine. In effect, the world is witnessing a new version of an old tale — the quest to recreate an imperial Christian state, a neo-medieval “Holy Roman Empire” — uniting political, economic, and spiritual power into an entity to control the earthly and heavenly destiny of European peoples.

The dream gripping some quarters of the West is for a coalition to unify religious conservatives into a kind of supra-national neo-Christendom. The theory is to create a partnership between American evangelicals, traditionalist Catholics in western countries, and Orthodox peoples under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church in a common front against three enemies — decadent secularism, a rising China, and Islam — for a glorious rebirth of [post-colonial] moral purity and Christian culture.

In the United States, Trumpist-religion is most often framed as “Christian nationalism.” It is, indeed, that. But it is also more — it is the American partner of this larger quest for Christian internationalism. No one has articulated this more clearly than Steve Bannon, who, despite his legal troubles, remains a significant force as a kind of philosophical apostle in right-wing Christian circles for a neo-Christendom.

There have been a few bumps on the way to this Humpty-Dumpty hope of reassembling a Christian Roman Empire, however. Interestingly enough (and I’ll leave this to future historians to sort out), American evangelicals bought into this neo-medieval project wholesale, having been prepared for far right nationalism by their fondness for racial and gender hierarchies. The most democratic form of Protestantism will evidently sell its soul to keep black people and women in their “place.”

The hardest partner to recruit to neo-Christendom has been the Catholic Church. The election of Pope Francis in 2013 proved a major stumbling block for the emergence of a right-wing global political order. The new Pope eschewed all such schemes in favor of opening up the church to the poor, outcasts, and the marginalized with a social vision that questions capitalism and the destruction of the Earth. Neo-medieval Catholics — often referred to as “trad Caths” — haven’t taken this well and have mounted a decade of resistance to Francis that may well culminate in something like the Avignon schism of the fourteenth century. So far, however, Pope Francis remains in charge.

Until recently, it appeared that Vladimir Putin had successfully co-opted Orthodoxy into this globalist triumvirate, making for a surprising love fest between American evangelicals and the Russian strongman. Just this week, former Secretary of State and stalwart evangelical Mike Pompeo praised Putin. Outside observers might think Putin was firmly in control of the future of Orthodoxy vis-a-vis neo-Christendom.

Except he wasn’t. The Ukrainian Orthodox had other ideas.

And that’s a real problem. Because when it comes to Russian Orthodoxy, Kyiv is essentially Jerusalem.

More than a thousand years ago, in the 980s, the pagan Prince Vladimir of Kyiv consolidated the Rus people of modern-day Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine into a single realm. When his emissaries reported back to him on the glories of Christian Constantinople, Vladimir converted to their religion, brought his people into the Byzantine church through a mass baptism, and married a Christian imperial princess. Under his rule, Kyiv became a prosperous and peaceful city at the heart of a new Christian empire, complete with churches, courts, monasteries, and schools, as well as civic programs to care for the poor. Known as Vladimir the Great, he was eventually canonized as St. Vladimir and his memory is celebrated by Eastern Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Anglicans, and some Lutherans.

In the 1200s, however, Kyiv suffered a number of assaults from rival Rus princes and Mongol invaders. Many Rus people moved north and east to the newer cities of Vladimir and Moscow where, under the Czars, the Russian church eventually grew to be one of the richest, most powerful churches in the Orthodox world. With the shift, an Orthodox tradition founded under the auspices of Constantinople became a church under the authority of a patriarch in Moscow.

This has created tension between Ukraine and Russia for centuries, in some ways brought to a head in the Soviet period, with rival forms of Orthodoxy either choosing to resist Communism or cooperate with Moscow. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine had several different Orthodox churches, only one of which was in close relationship to Moscow.

In 2018, two of those Ukrainian churches and some of the Moscow-leaning Orthodox parishes joined in a union and created a newly unified Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a fully independent national ecclesial body under no control from Moscow, with its head in the ancient seat of Orthodoxy in Kyiv.

Putin and the Moscow Russian Orthodox church authorities protested. They’ve been claiming the 1,000 years of Kyiv Christianity as its own — basically appropriating Ukraine’s church history — to the point of erecting a gigantic (and controversial) statue of St. Vladimir outside of the Kremlin. Putin [conveniently] wants the weight of tradition on his side, and St. Vladimir validates both his religious and political aspirations. There should be no doubt that Putin sees himself as a kind of Vladimir the Great II, a candidate for sainthood who is restoring the soul of Holy Mother Russian. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, would like to remind the Russians that they were the birthplace of both Orthodoxy and political unity in Eastern Europe.

The St. Vladimir statue outside of the Kremlin. It is BIG.

Further infuriating Putin is the fact that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as an independent body. While this fight between Moscow and Kyiv is internally significant for Russians and Ukrainians historically, it also has larger global ramifications for the future. Katherine Kelaidis at Religion Dispatches explains:

"On one side of the conflict is the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the culturally and linguistically Greek cleric, who has historically claimed leadership of [Eastern] Orthodoxy. For the better part of a century, the Patriarch of Constantinople has moved toward the West and arguably many of its values. Today’s incumbent on the Apostolic Throne of St. Andrew speaks the language of human rights, religious freedom, and trust in science. This position arises in no small part from the Patriarchate’s own precarious role as a representative of minority religion in Turkey."

At the same time, the [Russian Orthodox] Patriarch of Moscow, having reclaimed much of his post’s former political influence in a post-Soviet Russia, has taken to spearheading not only the traditionalist Orthodox cause, but acting as support and symbol to religious conservatives around the world.

The conflict in Ukraine is all about religion and what kind of Orthodoxy will shape Eastern Europe and other Orthodox communities around the world (especially in Africa). Religion... this is a crusade, recapturing the Holy Land of Russian Orthodoxy, and defeating the westernized (and decadent) heretics who do not bend the knee to Moscow’s spiritual authority.

If you don’t get that, you don’t get it. Who is going to control the geographical home, the “Jerusalem,” of the Russian church? Moscow? Or Constantinople? And, what does claiming that territory mean for Orthodoxy around the world? Will global Orthodoxy lean toward a more pluralistic and open future, or will it be part of the authoritarian neo-Christendom triumvirate?

We don’t know how this is going to unfold. But — here’s the key point — economic sanctions are unlikely to work if you believe your side is divinely sanctioned. That’s what Putin thinks he’s got: the approval of God.

You just know Putin wants to celebrate Easter — this one or next — in Kyiv.

- DBB

[edits are mine: re slater]

A Personal Note

The religious cultural background of the regional war between Moscow and Kyiv which Putin seems to be conveniently pursuing under the auspices of religion appears to be motivated by a number of reasons, one of which could be religious.

If it is religious, then what Putin believes is a God-ordained call for "Christian unity" from the paganism of the West (and China in the East) appears to come under the banners of a neo-conservative, post-colonial version of a Christian Imperial Empire otherwise known as Neo-Christian Dominionism or Kingdom Reconstruction as yearned for by such  contemporary conservative Christian illuminaries as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Sr., Norman Geisler, Wayne Grudem, and a host of other Neo-Calvinistic "Christian" types supporting Trump's failed and corrupt American presidency supporting White Christian Nationalism ala White Supremacy.

The real Church of Jesus follows Jesus alone - NOT the unholy, unloving, and ungodly teachings of self-proclaimed false prophets, teachers and leaders. Leaders who have conflated and conflicted the missional church of Jesus Christ from its ministries of love, healing, care, and wholeness both spiritually and physically, psychologically and ecologically. Ministerial missions preaching the work and ministries of Jesus both to the individual as well as to polyplural, multi-ethnic and religious societies.

Sacred societies which are built upon giving families, communities, and a vast array of inter/intrapersonal societal connections with its community members and localities in trade, worship, recreation, and competition. But become secular societies when unloving religious faiths and beliefs are displayed and experienced by unloving acts and deeds by its church goers and societal members.

The fact is, God sees people. People who love and people who don't love. The idea of sacred and secular is one of act and deed not simply in a sect's declaration of what it believes to be sacred or secular. Bankrupt beliefs are anchored in hate, hypocrisy, willful ignorance, and segregated care. All is sacred unless man - especially religious man - makes its secular.

As Jesus' brother James says, "We know one another by our works and not simply by our deeds." And the Apostle John says, "Beloved, walk in love as you have been loved...."

Thus and thus, the current despicable war waged by Putin's "religious form of neo-Christian Russia" which is being cruelly forced upon the peoples of the sovereign state of Ukraine illustrates exactly what a paganized form of Christianity looks like.... It looks like its past historical forms of Christianized purges, crusades, and societal sectarian division. Like a war against all those who don't live up to the conservative "forms" of what a Christian should look like, be, think, or act. This then is what Christian Dominionism looks like post-Trumpianism ala Putin.

R.E. Slater

March 12, 2022 

• A List of influential Evangelical Leaders over the past 30 years (1990s-present)

Processual Consciousness and Integrated, Complex Astrobiological Intelligence

Seeing the Universe as a Cosmic-Connectedness

Processual Consciousness and Integrated,

Complex Astrobiological Intelligence

The Disequilibrium of Entropic Spaces

Speaks to Cosmic Self-Awareness

by R.E. Slater

The What and The Why

The first question I suppose I should answer is how does science continually end up here on a bible blog? Firstly, because it interests me. Secondly, because theology should never rest alone in a vacuum from any stream of life. Which means religion and theology should always be integrated with all material, ethical, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects of our cosmic world.

Further, a major part of Process Philosophy and Theology, if not its entirety, is it's panrelational, panexistential, and panpsychic qualities bourne along inside it's Whiteheadian bones (as in, Alfred North Whitehead, the British mathematician and philosopher).

When Whitehead proposed his organic theory of matter and the universe (The Philosophy of Organism, later to be known as Process Philosophy) he didn't intend for it to continue the Enlightenment/Scientific Era's reductionary outlook upon the nature of scientific cosmology. He intended to end its unnatural formulations and return to Hegel's shortened life's work to extend and uplift it beyond where it ended.

Whitehead did this by acknowledging Einstein's Relativity Theory of the Large and the resultant Quantum Physics Theory of the Small by escalating their separate revelations together into an integrum of cosmological significance beyond their mere disconnected parts.

Scientifically, relativistic quantum gravity is the cosmic glue physicists are trying to use to bring both the Relativity and Quantum theoretical views together. But in Whitehead, his intention was philosophical. As in the areas of metaphysics and ontology and what those would mean for societal ethics.

Whitehead was looking to bring holism into non-holistic thinking. And for today's Whiteheadian Process Theologian - whether Christian, Buddhists, Jewish, or Islamic - such an endeavor is looking for the cosmic significance - and Cosmic Signifier - to the matter and energy lying behind the cosmic whole.

The Significance of the Processual Whole

Hence, Whiteheadian Process Philosophy and its *compending religious auxiliary known as Process Theology (*compendium - a concise but comprehensive summary of a larger work) each require the view of a universe which is in communication with itself. A deeply integrated and relational communication by however its quantum energies and forces are measured. There is within and about the substance of this cosmic whole we call the universe a kind of panpsychic communication (some may describe this as an aural communication) between itself in particular, and outwardly with the entirety of cosmological matter and forces.

In the human species we call this kind of self-awareness as "consciousness". In the material world of science it may describe this communal interaction as vibrational signaling utilizing frequencies of light, sound and plasmic radiation. In the spiritual world of religion one may call it God or a spirituality of some kind. But however we call this transactional activity found throughout the universe, it is structurally connected in communicating within itself, across itself, and outside of its cosmic "environmental" biomes.

Examples?

• Colonies of ants and bees communicate to their fellow members across their nests and hives.

• Living masses of trees seem to know "who" their competing neighbors are - whether beneficial or invasive.

• Competing entropy systems, whether biological coral reefs - or the mantle of the earth itself - work together to fed off lost energy in the seas and deep within the earth, converting destructive forms of energy into beneficial landscapes inviting more complex entropic systems to become participatory symbiotic hosts and guests.

A processual world, like a processual entropic universe, bears within itself a kind of restorative equilibrium energy by which everything comprehends everything else throughout its "inorganic and organic" spaces. Informing, or communicating, to the other spaces via reactionary entropic cycles of life and death in whatever way we, as humans, might describe these cosmic terms signifying relationship to the experiencing other which are highly aware of their cosmic environments whether as an energy, or as a force, or by some other means of complex communication science might describe as the natural laws of thermodynamics. The point? The universe is not found in its parts and pieces but also in its whole. Its mass. Its entirety as a complex cosmic organism (using the broadest of terms).

Cycles of Processual, Processing, Cosmic Awareness

Human consciousness is not unique nor singular to itself. The universe breathes a kind of "consciousness" within its spaces even as biological spaces do the same as mentioned above.

Human consciousness is but another non-unique expression of a universal "consciousness" or "awareness" of itself. When we look at an ant's intelligence in comparison to a monkey's, a dolphin's, an elephant's, pig, cat, or dog, their consciousness are different in kind to each other even as they are different in kind to our own - or to the cosmic universe we live within.

For science to investigate whether the earth has its own planetary "intelligence" isn't quite the same as asking whether a planetary intelligence is like to our own. As unique and special as the human conscience is it could well be speculated that the earth's planetary intelligence is every bit as connected, integrated, and unique to itself as we are in our own mental, physical, and spiritual capacities.

Moreover, even as dietary regimen, exercise, and spiritual pursuits keep a body's soul in healthy communication with it's complexly integrated environments, so too does the earth's planetary wellbeing have health factors of its own measured in:

• the volcanic activity of released poisonous gases;

• the increasing deoxygenation of earth's densely populated forested jungles due to human ingress and destruction across the Canadian, Siberian, African, and Amazonian biotic masses; and,

• the deadly pollutionary deaths the earth is absorbing into itself measured across its acceding and accretional environmental habitats.

To the degree we, or the earth, remain healthy, indicates the degree to which we better understand how our human-technological imprint on the earth remains healthy or not by how we enable the earth to self-regulate it's own planetary IQ.

Processual Entropy as a Quixotic Amorphous Life-Giver

Remember, entropy is always present within a system turning chaos into occasional results of random wellbeing for entropic states wired to work in this way. In this case, a hot Earth required for its planetary health unique ways to dissipate it's primal heat. Given what it had on hand to use, organic life was able to arise to participate in cooling down the earth lest it boil away into a hot Mercury-like rock.

Though astrophysicists may deny any IQ (Intelligence Quotient) to the Earth's planetary comprehension of itself, Process Thought states the opposite to the science's mechanistic assertion of "matter v mind" reductionism. If the Earth is considered within it's larger cosmological context, the earth's planetary intelligence is everywhere about us. Presently in its disruptive stages to itself due to our disruptive interference to its equilibrium-establishing rhythms and flows.

But Earth's planetary IQ is here and is something we need to attune ourselves to in order to live with the Earth in a more beneficial give-and-take entropic balance of wholeness and completeness. Our species is yet too young and immature to participate with our planet's complexly integrated cosmological IQ. Hopefully we will learn to grow into it and become better participating ecological partners.

Processually Integrated Religions Recognize Evolving Processual Creations

In a Christian context, processual living may be described as learning to live within the flows and rhythms of the Spirit of God. Not only to one another as a human species but to the earth surrounding us.

The Native Americans spoke of these matters in their primal religions even as the Eastern religions of the East do as well. Christianity is but one religion among many which shares a common core to the earth, waters, and sky above.

Christianity's own distinctive lies in its story of God's Incarnation as Jesus, who is acclaimed to be fully God and fully human (not half-and-half like skim milk). And the Christian story speaks particularly to the atonement the Creator God of the universe brought to mankind through Jesus's life, ministry, death, and resurrection.

In this theological matter the other religions lie mute. But when looking around us, these same religions tell the story of life and death, of atonement and redemption. Perhaps not in the same way as the Hebrew-Christian bible overtly declares but in their similarities of theme and construct, wisdom and retribution, purpose and goal.

All acknowledged religions peer into the universe to see life itself built deep down inside its unfolding, driving forces overcoming, and overcomed, by other forces of life and death and life renewed again. The Christian story is not unique or alone in  this cosmic story. In the story of God lies the story of Jesus in His own story of life and death and life renewed again.

In its processual form this same redemptive story of atonement is retold everywhere about us. We only need to look beyond the cycles of tragedy and death, or our own caustic material Westernization, to see it.

R.E. Slater

March 12, 2022

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The Iberian Peninsula at night from orbit. (NASA)SPACE

Astrophysicists Say 'Planetary Intelligence' Exists…

But Earth Doesn't Have Any

https://www.sciencealert.com/astrophysicists-say-planetary-intelligence-exists-but-earth-doesn-t-have-any

by Peter Dockrill

February 21, 2022

We tend to think of intelligence as something that describes just one individual. But it's possible to describe all kinds of collectives as intelligent, too – whether we're talking about social groups of humans, enclaves of insects, or even the mysterious behavior of slime mold and viruses.

By extension, could intelligence be observed on a much grander scale – perhaps that of an entire planet? In a newly published paper, a team of space scientists explores this tantalizing question, reaching some surprising conclusions about our very own Earth.

"An open question is whether or not intelligence can operate at the planetary scale, and if so, how a transition to planetary-scale intelligence might occur and whether or not it has already occurred or is on our near-term horizon," the team writes.

They note that understanding this question could help us to steer the future of our planet; however, according to their own criteria, it looks like we're not there yet.

"We don't yet have the ability to communally respond in the best interests of the planet," says astrophysicist Adam Frank from the University of Rochester.

"There is intelligence on Earth, but there isn't planetary intelligence."

According to the researchers, the emergence of technological intelligence on a planet – a common reference point in astrobiology research – should perhaps be viewed not as something that happens on a planet but to a planet.

In such an interpretation, the evolution of planetary intelligence would represent the acquisition and application of a collective body of knowledge operating across a complex system of different species at the same time, and in a harmonious way that benefits or sustains the whole biosphere.

Unfortunately – and obviously – humans and Earth are not at that point yet.

In fact, Frank and his co-authors say we've only made it to the third stage of their hypothetical timeline for the development of planetary intelligence.

• In the first stage, characteristic of a very early Earth, a planet with an 'immature biosphere' develops life, but there are insufficient feedback loops between life and geophysical processes for co-evolution of different kinds of life.

• In the second stage, the 'mature biosphere' has developed.

• Next, a planet could become the third stage: an 'immature technosphere', where Earth currently is. In this stage, technological activity has developed on the planet, but it's not yet sustainably integrated with other systems, such as the physical environment.

• If those tensions can be resolved, however, an immature technosphere stands a chance to develop to the final stage: a 'maturing technosphere', where feedback loops between technological activity and other biogeochemical and biogeophysical states act in sync to ensure maximum stability and productivity of the full system.

• This idealized state is where Earth should be trying to get to, the researchers argue. "Planets evolve through immature and mature stages, and planetary intelligence is indicative of when you get to a mature planet," says Frank.

"The million-dollar question is figuring out what planetary intelligence looks like and means for us in practice because we don't know how to move to a mature technosphere yet."

According to the researchers, we currently sit on a precipice, where our collective actions clearly have global consequences, but we are not yet in control of those consequences.

If, in tandem with other forces on the planet, we can develop a balance where those consequences become controlled, we might finally evolve – as a planet – to the next level.

"A transition to planetary intelligence, as we described here, would have the hallmark property of intelligence operating at a planetary scale," the researchers write in their paper. "Such planetary intelligence would be capable of steering the future evolution of Earth, acting in concert with planetary systems and guided by a deep understanding of such systems."

The paper was published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

JESUS DE/CONSTRUCTED FOR LENT, PART 2 OF 6

JESUS D/C SERIES

JESUS DE/CONSTRUCTED FOR LENT, PART 1 OF 6

JESUS DE/CONSTRUCTED FOR LENT, PART 2 OF 6

JESUS DE/CONSTRUCTED FOR LENT, PART 3 OF 6

JESUS DE/CONSTRUCTED FOR LENT, PART 4 OF 6

JESUS DE/CONSTRUCTED FOR LENT, PART 5 OF 6

JESUS DE/CONSTRUCTED FOR LENT, PART 6 OF 6

JESUS DE/CONSTRUCTED - FINAL AUDIOS, VIDEOS, & RESOURCE LINKS

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JESUS DE/CONSTRUCTED FOR LENT

PART 2 OF 6

The class will cover two books. Diana’s Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence and Tripp’s The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to Jesus: Lord, Liar, Lunatic . . . Or Awesome?. If you are super nerdy you may want to check out Tripp’s Divine Self-Investment.

UPDATE

Tripp’s book has proved hard to find for many of you. HERE is a PDF of the book. We just ask you don’t share it and if inspired purchase a delayed or digital copy.

Class Outline

We will have 6 weekly sessions each Thursday at 5pm ET. In addition to these sessions, there will be a special visit from the author of After Jesus Before Christianity: a Historical Exploration of the first two centuries of Jesus Movements.

• 3/3 SESSION 1: De/Constructing Jesus & the Lenten Journey
• Reading: the introduction to Freeing Jesus and chapter 1 of the Guide to Jesus

• 3/10 SESSION 2: the Consequences of C.S. Lewis’ Worst Idea
• Reading: Guide to Jesus ch 2-4

• 3/17 SESSION 3: from Executed Prophet to Cosmic Christ
• Reading: Guide to Jesus ch 5-7

• 3/24 SESSION 4: Freeing Jesus from Christendom Capture
• Reading: Freeing Jesus ch 1-3

• 3/31 SESSION 5: One Jesus, One Story, & a Multitude of Christs
• Reading: Freeing Jesus ch 4-6

• 4/7 SESSION 6: De/constructed Jesus & the Journey of Holy Week
• Reading: Freeing Jesus conclusion & Guide to Jesus ch 8

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Amazon Link

The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to Jesus

Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Or Awesome?

by Tripp Fuller

Christology is crazy. It’s rather absurd to identify a first-century homeless Jew as God revealed, but a bunch of us do anyway. In this book, Tripp Fuller examines the historical Jesus, the development of the doctrine of Christ, the questions that drove christological innovations through church history, contemporary constructive proposals, and the predicament of belief for the church today. Recognizing that the battle over Jesus is no longer a public debate between the skeptic and believer but an internal struggle in the heart of many disciples, he argues that we continue to make christological claims about more than an “event” or simply the “Jesus of history.” On the other hand, C. S. Lewis’s infamous “liar, lunatic, and Lord” scheme is no longer intellectually tenable. This may be a guide to Jesus, but for Christians, Fuller is guiding us toward a deeper understanding of God. He thinks it’s good news—good news about a God who is so invested in the world that God refuses to be God without us.

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CLASS 2 VIDEO

1:58:50

Jesus De/Constructed with Diana and Tripp

Mar 10, 2022

YouTube Video - Paid Content

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Outline of "JESUS" BOOK

by Steve Thomason

Homebrewed Guide to Jesus chapters 2-4

by Steve Thomason | Mar 7, 2022

I am currently reading Homebrewed Christianity Guide to Jesus by Tripp Fuller as part of a class taught by Tripp Fuller and Diana Butler-Bass.

Below are my notes from chapters 2-4.

The book introduces recent scholarship about Jesus and a really helpful and inclusive way to be a radical disciple of Jesus in this present moment. I find it life-giving.

You are welcome to join the class. It is awesome. CLICK HERE to check it out.

This book is the more accessible version of Tripp’s Book Divine Self-Investment, which I illustrated (a little) here.

by Steve Thomason

by Steve Thomason

by Steve Thomason

by Steve Thomason

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CLASS 2 VIDEO

1:58:50

Jesus De/Constructed with Diana and Tripp

Mar 10, 2022

YouTube Video - Paid Content

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Jesus DeConstructed VIDEO Session 2

Class Notes

with Diana Butler-Bass and Tripp Fuller

by Steve Thomason

Mar 10, 2022

by Steve Thomason

Here are my notes from Session 2 of Jesus De/Constructed with Diana Butler-Bass and Tripp Fuller. It was an excellent session. I sectioned out the different parts and placed them in a more linear fashion below. Scroll down to get a sense of how the session flowed. Enjoy!

This session was based on chapters 2-4 of Tripp’s Book Homebrewed Guide to Jesus. See my notes of those chapters here.

CLICK HERE to view these notes as a PDF. Feel free to download and print.

by Steve Thomason

by Steve Thomason

by Steve Thomason

by Steve Thomason

by Steve Thomason

 

by Steve Thomason

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LENT SESSION 2 NOTES

C.S. LEWIS RIGHT or WRONG?

Who is God?

1 - Truth (ambiguous: whatever is truth is truth)

2 - Spirit (disembodied and animating life source for all things)

3 - Love (ethic and moral to live by)

Jesus is fitted into the God picture by what He said, did, and had done.

But the church wants to talk about God's perfection over his love, for instance.

Stories shape how we view God, and Jesus, and Spirit.

Moses at the Burning Bush

God: "Moses, where are you?"

Moses: "Here am I Lord!"

...They converse then...

Moses: "Who do I say you are has sent me?"

God: "I am the One who is becoming to be."

Hence, the "Here I am" is meeting "the I AM" on the holy ground of encounter between God and our spirit which did not cease in the Moses moment in the bible. God meets with us today too. We, like God, are the beings who are becoming, both God and man. This illustration shares the words of God to our spirits beyond the words we write, speak or sing. God's Spirit ministers to our spirit even as our spirit ministers to God's.

Further

• God is not an object. God is a relationally divine Being... God is SUBJECT
• God is eternal... God never existed because God always was...

Cultural Distractions in the Church

Church is oriented to non-Jesusy things such as authority, control, power,  influence, dominionism, patriarchy, white nationalism of some order, and so on... known as Protestant Fundamentalism or Catholic Fundamentalism or American Fundamentalism

Shall the Fundamentalist Win?

by Harry Emerson Fosdick

(see article at end of post below)

CS LEWIS

Lewis asked the question a long time ago whether Jesus was Lord, Liar, or Lunatic.

But can Jesus be cornered into only these three fundamentalist categories??

These accusations aren't biblical.

• Sure, yes, the Lord part is there. And sure the Jews didn't believe Jesus was God. And more probably Jesus was a prophet for those Jews who followed Jesus. But for Jesus' enemies Jesus was regarded as a problem for the Temple's relationship with Rome (along with a problem for the formal religious structure of Judaism itself.

• Lunatic? - Nope. Not there.

• Liar? - Ditto

Jesus regarded these accusations by his detractors as blasphemous statements to the love of God being displayed through miracles, ministries, and preaching he had been doing throughout the Canaan and Judah.

Tripp goes on a rant and it was lovely. Diana is never at a loss of words when tagging up with Tripp.

Too much here to unpack.... listen to the video.

G'night!

R.E. Slater

March 10, 2022

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First Presbyterian Church, New York City - Internet Archive- from The Services in celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the founding of the Old First Presbyterian Church in the city of New York.

"SHALL THE FUNDAMENTALISTS WIN?"

Defending Liberal Protestantism

in the 1920s

article link

Urban as well as rural Americans flocked to fundamentalist and evangelical churches in the 1920s. “Liberal” Protestants sought to reconcile faith and science and to slow what they saw as the reactionary tendencies of fundamentalism. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s influential 1922 sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?,” called for an open-minded, intellectual, and tolerant “Christian fellowship.” Though the sermon cost him his post at New York’s First Presbyterian Church, his views represented those of an influential Protestant minority, and Fosdick enjoyed a long career at Riverside Church, built for him by John D. Rockefeller. Following the Scopes trial and a well-publicized scandal involving well-known pastor Aimee Semple McPherson and a mysterious lover, fundamentalists began to lose the prominence they enjoyed in the 1920s. But religious fundamentalism would remain a vital political force in American life.

This morning we are to think of the fundamentalist controversy which threatens to divide the American churches as though already they were not sufficiently split and riven. A scene, suggestive for our thought, is depicted in the fifth chapter of the Book of the Acts, where the Jewish leaders hale before them Peter and other of the apostles because they had been preaching Jesus as the Messiah. Moreover, the Jewish leaders propose to slay them, when in opposition Gamaliel speaks “Refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God ye will not be able to overthrow them; lest haply ye be found even to be fighting against God.” . . .

Already all of us must have heard about the people who call themselves the Fundamentalists. Their apparent intention is to drive out of the evangelical churches men and women of liberal opinions. I speak of them the more freely because there are no two denominations more affected by them than the Baptist and the Presbyterian. We should not identify the Fundamentalists with the conservatives. All Fundamentalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are Fundamentalists. The best conservatives can often give lessons to the liberals in true liberality of spirit, but the Fundamentalist program is essentially illiberal and intolerant.

The Fundamentalists see, and they see truly, that in this last generation there have been strange new movements in Christian thought. A great mass of new knowledge has come into man’s possession—new knowledge about the physical universe, its origin, its forces, its laws; new knowledge about human history and in particular about the ways in which the ancient peoples used to think in matters of religion and the methods by which they phrased and explained their spiritual experiences; and new knowledge, also, about other religions and the strangely similar ways in which men’s faiths and religious practices have developed everywhere. . . .

Harry Emerson Fosdick portrait- Library of Congress - Courtesy of the Special Collections Department University of Iowa Libraries.

Now, there are multitudes of reverent Christians who have been unable to keep this new knowledge in one compartment of their minds and the Christian faith in another. They have been sure that all truth comes from the one God and is His revelation. Not, therefore, from irreverence or caprice or destructive zeal but for the sake of intellectual and spiritual integrity, that they might really love the Lord their God, not only with all their heart and soul and strength but with all their mind, they have been trying to see this new knowledge in terms of the Christian faith and to see the Christian faith in terms of this new knowledge.

Doubtless they have made many mistakes. Doubtless there have been among them reckless radicals gifted with intellectual ingenuity but lacking spiritual depth. Yet the enterprise itself seems to them indispensable to the Christian Church. The new knowledge and the old faith cannot be left antagonistic or even disparate, as though a man on Saturday could use one set of regulative ideas for his life and on Sunday could change gear to another altogether. We must be able to think our modern life clear through in Christian terms, and to do that we also must be able to think our Christian faith clear through in modern terms.

There is nothing new about the situation. It has happened again and again in history, as, for example, when the stationary earth suddenly began to move and the universe that had been centered in this planet was centered in the sun around which the planets whirled. Whenever such a situation has arisen, there has been only one way out—the new knowledge and the old faith had to be blended in a new combination. Now, the people in this generation who are trying to do this are the liberals, and the Fundamentalists are out on a campaign to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship. Shall they be allowed to succeed?

It is interesting to note where the Fundamentalists are driving in their stakes to mark out the deadline of doctrine around the church, across which no one is to pass except on terms of agreement. They insist that we must all believe in the historicity of certain special miracles, preeminently the virgin birth of our Lord; that we must believe in a special theory of inspiration—that the original documents of the Scripture, which of course we no longer possess, were inerrantly dictated to men a good deal as a man might dictate to a stenographer; that we must believe in a special theory of the Atonement—that the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placates an alienated Deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner; and that we must believe in the second coming of our Lord upon the clouds of heaven to set up a millennium here, as the only way in which God can bring history to a worthy denouement. Such are some of the stakes which are being driven to mark a deadline of doctrine around the church.

'Shall the Fundamentalists Win' title page - Internet Archive

If a man is a genuine liberal, his primary protest is not against holding these opinions, although he may well protest against their being considered the fundamentals of Christianity. This is a free country and anybody has a right to hold these opinions or any others if he is sincerely convinced of them. The question is—Has anybody a right to deny the Christian name to those who differ with him on such points and to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship? The Fundamentalists say that this must be done. In this country and on the foreign field they are trying to do it. They have actually endeavored to put on the statute books of a whole state binding laws against teaching modern biology. If they had their way, within the church, they would set up in Protestantism a doctrinal tribunal more rigid than the pope’s.

In such an hour, delicate and dangerous, when feelings are bound to run high, I plead this morning the cause of magnanimity and liberality and tolerance of spirit. I would, if I could reach their ears, say to the Fundamentalists about the liberals what Gamaliel said to the Jews, “Refrain from these men and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be everthrown; but if it is of God ye will not be able to overthrow them; lest haply ye be found even to be fighting against God.”

That we may be entirely candid and concrete and may not lose ourselves in any fog of generalities, let us this morning take two or three of these Fundamentalist items and see with reference to them what the situation is in the Christian churches. Too often we preachers have failed to talk frankly enough about the differences of opinion which exist among evangelical Christians, although everybody knows that they are there. Let us face this morning some of the differences of opinion with which somehow we must deal.

We may well begin with the vexed and mooted question of the virgin birth of our Lord. I know people in the Christian churches, ministers, missionaries, laymen, devoted lovers of the Lord and servants of the Gospel, who, alike as they are in their personal devotion to the Master, hold quite different points of view about a matter like the virgin birth. Here, for example, is one point of view that the virgin birth is to be accepted as historical fact; it actually happened; there was no other way for a personality like the Master to come into this world except by a special biological miracle. That is one point of view, and many are the gracious and beautiful souls who hold it. But side by side with them in the evangelical churches is a group of equally loyal and reverent people who would say that the virgin birth is not to be accepted as an historic fact. . . . So far from thinking that they have given up anything vital in the New Testament’s attitude toward Jesus, these Christians remember that the two men who contributed most to the Church’s thought of the divine meaning of the Christ were Paul and John, who never even distantly allude to the virgin birth.

Here in the Christian churches are these two groups of people and the question which the Fundamentalists raise is this—Shall one of them throw the other out? Has intolerance any contribution to make to this situation? Will it persuade anybody of anything? Is not the Christian Church large enough to hold within her hospitable fellowship people who differ on points like this and agree to differ until the fuller truth be manifested? The Fundamentalists say not. They say the liberals must go. Well, if the Fundamentalists should succeed, then out of the Christian Church would go some of the best Christian life and consecration of this generation—multitudes of men and women, devout and reverent Christians, who need the church and whom the church needs.

Consider another matter on which there is a sincere difference of opinion between evangelical Christians: the inspiration of the Bible. One point of view is that the original documents of the Scripture were inerrantly dictated by God to men. Whether we deal with the story of creation or the list of the dukes of Edom or the narratives of Solomon’s reign or the Sermon on the Mount or the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, they all came in the same way, and they all came as no other book ever came. They were inerrantly dictated; everything there—scientific opinions, medical theories, historical judgments, as well as spiritual insight—is infallible. That is one idea of the Bible’s inspiration. But side by side with those who hold it, lovers of the Book as much as they, are multitudes of people who never think about the Bible so. Indeed, that static and mechanical theory of inspiration seems to them a positive peril to the spiritual life. . . .

Here in the Christian Church today are these two groups, and the question which the Fundamentalists have raised is this—Shall one of them drive the other out? Do we think the cause of Jesus Christ will be furthered by that? If He should walk through the ranks of his congregation this morning, can we imagine Him claiming as His own those who hold one idea of inspiration and sending from Him into outer darkness those who hold another? You cannot fit the Lord Christ into that Fundamentalist mold. The church would better judge His judgment. For in the Middle West the Fundamentalists have had their way in some communities and a Christian minister tells us the consequences. He says that the educated people are looking for their religion outside the churches.

Consider another matter upon which there is a serious and sincere difference of opinion between evangelical Christians: the second coming of our Lord. The second coming was the early Christian phrasing of hope. No one in the ancient world had ever thought, as we do, of development, progress, gradual change as God’s way of working out His will in human life and institutions. They thought of human history as a series of ages succeeding one another with abrupt suddenness. The Graeco-Roman world gave the names of metals to the ages—gold, silver, bronze, iron. The Hebrews had their ages, too—the original Paradise in which man began, the cursed world in which man now lives, the blessed Messianic kingdom someday suddenly to appear on the clouds of heaven. It was the Hebrew way of expressing hope for the victory of God and righteousness. When the Christians came they took over that phrasing of expectancy and the New Testament is aglow with it. The preaching of the apostles thrills with the glad announcement, “Christ is coming!”

First Presbyterian Church, New York City

In the evangelical churches today there are differing views of this matter. One view is that Christ is literally coming, externally, on the clouds of heaven, to set up His kingdom here. I never heard that teaching in my youth at all. It has always had a new resurrection when desperate circumstances came and man’s only hope seemed to lie in divine intervention. It is not strange, then, that during these chaotic, catastrophic years there has been a fresh rebirth of this old phrasing of expectancy. “Christ is coming!” seems to many Christians the central message of the Gospel. In the strength of it some of them are doing great service for the world. But, unhappily, many so overemphasize it that they outdo anything the ancient Hebrews or the ancient Christians ever did. They sit still and do nothing and expect the world to grow worse and worse until He comes.

Side by side with these to whom the second coming is a literal expectation, another group exists in the evangelical churches. They, too, say, “Christ is coming!” They say it with all their hearts; but they are not thinking of an external arrival on the clouds. They have assimilated as part of the divine revelation the exhilarating insight which these recent generations have given to us, that development is God’s way of working out His will. . . .

And these Christians, when they say that Christ is coming, mean that, slowly it may be, but surely, His will and principles will be worked out by God’s grace in human life and institutions, until “He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied.”

These two groups exist in the Christian churches and the question raised by the Fundamentalists is—Shall one of them drive the other out? Will that get us anywhere? Multitudes of young men and women at this season of the year are graduating from our schools of learning, thousands of them Christians who may make us older ones ashamed by the sincerity of their devotion to God’s will on earth. They are not thinking in ancient terms that leave ideas of progress out. They cannot think in those terms. There could be no greater tragedy than that the Fundamentalists should shut the door of the Christian fellowship against such.

I do not believe for one moment that the Fundamentalists are going to succeed. Nobody’s intolerance can contribute anything to the solution of the situation which we have described. If, then, the Fundamentalists have no solution of the problem, where may we expect to find it? In two concluding comments let us consider our reply to that inquiry.

The first element that is necessary is a spirit of tolerance and Christian liberty. When will the world learn that intolerance solves no problems? This is not a lesson which the Fundamentalists alone need to learn; the liberals also need to learn it. Speaking, as I do, from the viewpoint of liberal opinions, let me say that if some young, fresh mind here this morning is holding new ideas, has fought his way through, it may be by intellectual and spiritual struggle, to novel positions, and is tempted to be intolerant about old opinions, offensively to condescend to those who hold them and to be harsh in judgment on them, he may well remember that people who held those old opinions have given the world some of the noblest character and the most rememberable service that it ever has been blessed with, and that we of the younger generation will prove our case best, not by controversial intolerance, but by producing, with our new opinions, something of the depth and strength, nobility and beauty of character that in other times were associated with other thoughts. It was a wise liberal, the most adventurous man of his day—Paul the Apostle—who said, “Knowledge puffeth up, but love buildeth up.”

Nevertheless, it is true that just now the Fundamentalists are giving us one of the worst exhibitions of bitter intolerance that the churches of this country have ever seen. As one watches them and listens to them he remembers the remark of General Armstrong of Hampton Institute, “Cantankerousness is worse than heterodoxy.” There are many opinions in the field of modern controversy concerning which I am not sure whether they are right or wrong, but there is one thing I am sure of: courtesy and kindliness and tolerance and humility and fairness are right. Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.

As I plead thus for an intellectually hospitable, tolerant, liberty-loving church, I am, of course, thinking primarily about this new generation. We have boys and girls growing up in our homes and schools, and because we love them we may well wonder about the church which will be waiting to receive them. Now, the worst kind of church that can possibly be offered to the allegiance of the new generation is an intolerant church. Ministers often bewail the fact that young people turn from religion to science for the regulative ideas of their lives. But this is easily explicable.

Science treats a young man’s mind as though it were really important. A scientist says to a young man, “Here is the universe challenging our investigation. Here are the truths which we have seen, so far. Come, study with us! See what we already have seen and then look further to see more, for science is an intellectual adventure for the truth.” Can you imagine any man who is worthwhile turning from that call to the church if the church seems to him to say, “Come, and we will feed you opinions from a spoon. No thinking is allowed here except such as brings you to certain specified, predetermined conclusions. These prescribed opinions we will give you in advance of your thinking; now think, but only so as to reach these results.”

My friends, nothing in all the world is so much worth thinking of as God, Christ, the Bible, sin and salvation, the divine purposes for humankind, life everlasting. But you cannot challenge the dedicated thinking of this generation to these sublime themes upon any such terms as are laid down by an intolerant church.

The second element which is needed if we are to reach a happy solution of this problem is a clear insight into the main issues of modern Christianity and a sense of penitent shame that the Christian Church should be quarreling over little matters when the world is dying of great needs. If, during the war, when the nations were wrestling upon the very brink of hell and at times all seemed lost, you chanced to hear two men in an altercation about some minor matter of sectarian denominationalism, could you restrain your indignation? You said, “What can you do with folks like this who, in the face of colossal issues, play with the tiddledywinks and peccadillos of religion?” So, now, when from the terrific questions of this generation one is called away by the noise of this Fundamentalist controversy, he thinks it almost unforgivable that men should tithe mint and anise and cummin, and quarrel over them, when the world is perishing for the lack of the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith. . . .

The present world situation smells to heaven! And now, in the presence of colossal problems, which must be solved in Christ’s name and for Christ’s sake, the Fundamentalists propose to drive out from the Christian churches all the consecrated souls who do not agree with their theory of inspiration. What immeasurable folly!

Well, they are not going to do it; certainly not in this vicinity. I do not even know in this congregation whether anybody has been tempted to be a Fundamentalist. Never in this church have I caught one accent of intolerance. God keep us always so and ever increasing areas of the Christian fellowship; intellectually hospitable, open-minded, liberty-loving, fair, tolerant, not with the tolerance of indifference, as though we did not care about the faith, but because always our major emphasis is upon the weightier matters of the law.

Source: Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Christian Work 102 (June 10, 1922): 716–722.

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