Nick the Nevermet

Derek,

Thanks for this thread. I have no questions (yet), but I wanted to let you know I'm enjoying & learning.

I completely agree the idea that there is a nigh-unbridgeable gap between our subjective experiences and "true, objective" reality or God or whatever. Because of what I've been reading lately, I'm rather taken with some ideas about eternity, but I realize I also don't know what I'm talking about

But yes, my big point was exactly what you just said: even if I accept God is eternal, our understandings of the divine should nevertheless continue to change and develop. Knowing anything is a problematic issue; and that does not get any less complicated when dealing with God, the divine, or spiritual matters.

Doug,

I tend to agree with you about God being eternal & unchanging, though that is not a universally agreed upon point. Open theism & process theology both have robust arguments for how God changes. (as an unrelated side note, I always love when I find theological debates that don't map onto poitics, and the eternity of God qualifies). However, I'm unsure how relevant that is to this thread.

Your second point, about people changing, is something I also agree with and think is relevant, however. This entire thread is about how people change, including their attitudes toward sexuality and their understanding of the Word of God. Ironically, one of the biggest ways people change is in the pursuit of certainty & stability, which is basically what George meant when he talked about fundamentalism. For example, the PC(USA) denomination only felt the need to put anti-gay language in the rules of ordination after gay rights became an issue. "Fear of change" made the organization more visibly homophobic.

mysaviorjc,

Generally speaking, appeals to what is and is not natural are on dangerous ground.

As such, I am extremely hesitant to make arguments regarding the worth/godliness of people based on their ability to reproduce. Such arguments put individuals who are sterile and people who do not wish children in a problematic situation.

There is a featured article in this week's TIME magazine about Rob Bell and his book. The TIME correspondent seems to think that Pastor Bell's opinions are new and revolutionary. I found the article interesting, but not particularly worth shouting about. As someone has already pointed out in this thread, Mr. Bell is just joining the "modern" church.

 

Hal

It's amazing and frustrating how much the American image of Christianity is a certain type of conservative (politically and otherwise) evangelical Protestantism. The farther you move away from that, the "less Christian" you are in the eyes of much of the US. It's frustrating, to say the least.

Sorry - intentionality is not part of worship planning. Worship is on automatic. No attempt to build the congregation's repertoire of songs it knows how sing - no learned flexibility with a variety of worship order and types that are comfortable - no exploring new language and metaphors. Too often hymns have images that reinforce a substitutionary model of the crucifixion which few members believe in.

 

Dutch

Ah, gotcha. It is never a good thing when the meaning gets emptied out of things through habit and taken-for-grantedness. Worse when people may have some problems with the forgotten meanings.

 

Nick,

PC(USA) is making progress, I guess.

Yeah, Amendment A is moving forward nicely. It hasn't officially won yet, but things are looking good, with even more favorable votes since that press release you posted. Sadly, this probably means more than a few churches will be breaking from PC(USA), insistent in their hetero-normative organization. Nevertheless, it is a very good thing.

This is fine and dandy but, at least at my church, worship has been abandoned and the liturgy is on default. Maybe the new pastor will bring an ear for new language, hymns and metaphors. Today's preacher was a sub for interim and didn't know that we almost never use the newer hymnal so the average age of the hymns was 25-30 years instead of 100

I should never try to think before coffee, but I didn't follow you here. What do you mean that worship has been abandoned in your church? No communion? No prayer? Nobody shows up?

The pastor who was fired had written a number of controversial posts on his blog not associated with his church. Gay marriage and other radical ideas. The non-existence of hell was the last straw for the church who fired the young pastor.

 

The wonder of all this, to me, is that this is more evidence that the conservative church is moving beyond its fundamental base. No Hell, evolutionary Christianity, and save the earth type efforts are signs that they won't be stuck in a narrow, fearful attitude towards the world.

 

I don't always like that they are controlling the conversation with issues that are so 20th century but there are signs of movement.

 

Take Care

 

Dutch

Yeah, it's neat watching the various factions of a given church, looking at what groups support what political and religious beliefs and why, and how those groups negotiate or conflict with one another. On the flip side, pro-gay rights is sometimes framed in the PC(USA) as an unbiblical agenda being thrust upon laymen by pastors who believe in "liberation theology." (I put it in quotes because the definition seems to be "stuff we don't like")

Removed redundant quoted post ....JM

I find the controversy surrounding Bell fascinating. Here is this guy, part of the "emergent church" (which even if I'm applying the term correctly, I still haven't figured out exactly what it means), with his feet squarely put on American evangelical ground. And now he's written a book which is getting him accused of being a heretic and a universalist, and a Methodist pastor just got fired for agreeing with him.

I HIGHLY recommend the Slacktivist blog's discussion of the knee-jerk purity tests some evangelicals are applying to Bell (actually, I just highly recommend the Slacktivist blog in general - Fred Clark is awesome).

Anyhow, I was basically seeing a ton of smoke, and I was asking if anyone has actually seen the fire, and if they had, could they tell me more about the fire. ...I beat that metaphor up within an inch of its life, but I think I got my point across

EDIT: I don't have time right now, but I will watch those vids tomorrow.

I am utterly fascinated by how much controversy there is regarding Love Wins by Rob Bell.

I am not reading it right now, but I'm curious if anyone here is, and what they think of it. Thanks.

It seems to me that in this new "home", we have taken quite a few steps backwards. Before we left our old website, the issue of the Bible as the foundation of our thinking had been most thoroughly refuted and few of us were debating "facts" based on various conflicting Biblical assertions.

 

Now we are back to quoting scripture as "proof" and "evidence" as if the Bible had merely to be sifted through to discern the "truth" of our nature and existence. This, I assert, is folly and will lead inevitably to the same confusion that has plagued Western Civilization since mankind first conceived of a tangible diety and made up stories about the planets and the stars and Heaven and Hell and "Evil" and "Sin" and their own virtuosity as a group versus other groups' "Sinful" nature.

 

What goodness has emerged from quoting the Bible as a source of wisdom and truth?

This never occurred in this thread.

EDIT: I have a bad habit of not writing a second or third sentence when necessary. My apologies. Slavish devotion to the Bible is a bad thing, and a whole host of horrible things are done in the name of Biblical inerrancy and other problematic theological ideals which you will not found defended by the average poster here. That said, to blast a guy for wanting to check whether the King James accurately translated a term as slavish devotion seems... misplaced.

I don't know about commentaries from a specifically progressive point of view, but the Oxford Bible Commentary and Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible strike me as being of use for a critical, non-sectarian understanding of the texts.

While I don't own either of these, I do own the The New Interpreter's Study Bible, which also seems solid.

I don't know a commentary for the entire Bible. I'd recommend finding commentaries on specific books. I don't have my copy handy, but I suspect that Borg's book on the Bible might be useful here. I'll check that tonight and get back to you.

As far as biblical commentaries I've actually, read, I've only read one: Barth's commentary on Romans, and I can't recommend that to people unless they don't mind dense academic writing (EDIT: If you don't mind that, however, it's an awesome book). As I posted in another thread, though, it has some overlap with progressive Christianity in that he rejects biblical literalism the way its usually defined in the US, he is passionate in his argument that Christians don't have a monopoly on Righteousness, and a few other things. He also has a few views that are in conflict with a progressive POV, but its good to get challenged a little here and there

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/70912/june-20-2006/bart-ehrman

misquoting Jesus

http://www.scripturezealot.com/2009/04/11/stephen-colbert-talks-sense-to-bart-ehrman/

Jesus interrupted

 

 

Are either of these the one to which you refer?

 

Great thread! Thanks!

 

Kath

Hmm

That wasn't quite as contentious as I remember it. I hate when that happens.

Thanks for your reply Grampa~

 

I'm glad to hear of your church. I'm not gay but I am a supporter of gay rights. Being a Presbyterian church, I wonder how they preach the bible and avoid the whole "abomination" thing.

 

Thanks also for response from JosephM!

 

Kathy

Hi Kath,

Much like I am not Dutch in another thread, I'm not Grandpa Wombat here

Nevertheless, here is a good place to start on things with the PC(USA). This page is on the ordination of homosexuals, and this one has work to deal with matters of what is Biblical.

Yeah, I read that article as well.

Based on my interactions with conservative fans of Colbert, I think some of them really are that clueless, and others aren't. Some people seem to know he's intentionally a parody, but still thinks he stumbled on and says "the politically incorrect truth" on a regular basis (even if he doesn't know it's the truth).

Colbert is extremely fascinating when he turns his attention toward religion. He's quite left-leaning politically and is a proud Catholic who teaches Sunday School. His talents at deflating the self-righteous are well suited to religious demagogues, but at the same time he's not fully predictable. A few years back he interviewed Bart Ehrman, and kinda-sorta dropped character and started genuinely disagreeing with the demythologized account of Christianity he was offering.

Anyhow, I wasn't sure if this was 100% appropriate for the forum, but I felt like sharing. If it wasn't, I apologize.

Saw this clip, and felt I should share:

Stephen Colbert Corrects Bill O'Reilly on Christian Care of the poor.

Enjoy.