John Ryan

I attend a Catholic Church in the next town over from me. The Catholic Church feels like home for me. I grew up attending Catholic Mass, so the liturgy and tradition is special to me. I moved away from religion at the age of sixteen, becoming an atheist agnostic, until I recently regained a belief in God. I disagree with much of Vatican/Magisterium since I am a progressive. Yet, I am not very concerned with the ontological validity of the religious propositions spoken in the liturgy. I believe the purpose of liturgy is to create a thin place, where we can feel the Sacred flow through us. And I am not sure any other service could do arouse quite the same emotions and bring me to that thin place than the Catholic Mass. I have considered trying the Episcopalian Mass, as it is very similar to the Catholic Mass. If specific beliefs of the Church you attend are very important to you as a progressive, I recommend the Episcopalian Church.

I lack a belief in the ontological reality of a Devil, or personified evil. So, I view the personification of evil in a metaphorical sense with Christus Victor.

I am an ardent supporter of the Christus Victor model of atonement. Satisfaction theory and penal substitution remove the good news from the gospel. God becomes the enemy of humankind, since it is His judgement that poses the greatest existential threat to the human experience. Rather than being the One we should be afraid of, God and Jesus are liberators in the Christus Victor model. Sin is understood as chains which bond us to the evil of this world, and through Christ we are freed from being a slave to evil. I highly recommend reading Derek Flood's Penal Substitution vs. Christus Victor. It is the best primer to Christus Victor I have come across. I am not going to lie, it is lengthy, but honestly it is so worth it.

While I think the argument that atheists have no basis for morality is wrong, and I do not think the existence of God solves the problem of morality at all, people should be able to voice their opinions on the matter. It is a popular belief that the existence of God is necessary for morality (e.g. divine command theory). To silence that viewpoint is not the proper course of action. Much better to deconstruct their argument and show them their foolishness.

I do love Dan Savage. The man is a God-send. I would have to criticize your assertion that Jennifer's Body is a horror porn. The camera always cuts away for the gory death scenes, so it is pretty light horror; it is a dark comedy after all. Let me ask you if you have ever seen the film in its entirety, since it is actually has a very deep and intellectually stimulating plot? Then again, if you are not specifically looking for the hidden message in the plot, I can see how you could miss it completely. I would just like to know if you have seen it so that I know if I have to walk you through the plot line or not. I can talk all day about the film, since it is one of my favorites, and I am actually in the process of working on a cultural studies journal article about the feminist Christian themes underpinning the film.

The construct of masculine and feminine traits is merely a human construction. What was considered masculine thousands of years ago, is considered feminine today. Thus if they are ever employed as a metaphor for the Sacred, we should always remember they are our lens to view God, not any aspect of God, Himself/Herself/Itself.

So do you have to be a Christian to embrace God? Or can you embrace God as a Buddhist' date=' Muslim or Wiccan?[/font']

The Soviet Union was virulently anti-gay, and virulently anti-religion at the same time.

I am pretty positive I never said that all men feel an equal attraction to both genders/sexes. Queer theory says nothing of the kind. It is difficult to grasp the concept without a background in Derridan deconstruction and social constructionism, since queer theory is really just Derridan poststructuralism applied to sexuality. I would not deny that boys and girls (at a young age) often have an innate attraction to one sex over the other. However, I would deny that the concept of "homosexuality" is merely a synonym for "innate attraction to the same-sex".

Well, queer theory criticizes the spectrum developed by Kinsey of homosexuality on one side and heterosexuality on the other. It is not that it necessarily denies that we might have innate desires towards on "sex/gender". Rather, it doubts that the sexual categories we create reflect our innate essence. In the view of queer theory, sexual categories are seen as adopted identities. For instance, in our American cultural-linguistic framework, we have this idea of "coming out," but in Ancient Greece, the idea of a homosexual identity was absent. There was no concept of "homosexuality" to "come out" about.

I like the metaphor of the Devil very much. Sometimes when you are tempted to do bad things, it feels as if there is this other presence compelling you. I find its corollary in the phrase "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." We often intellectually want to do what is right, but our id (to use Freudian terminology) keeps gnawing at us, and whispering into our ears.

I read the passages about the Devil and devils metaphorically. I love the quote from The Duchess of Padua, written by Oscar Wilde, which reads: "We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell."

If you view sin in the general paradigm of bondage, and not just as "bad things you have done," then the problem disappears.

The image of the river is taken from the Tao Te Ching, and "die into God" is a phrase Marcus Borg likes to use. See Borg's Agnostic About the Afterlife.

The problem with the heaven/hell dynamic is that it assumes we are omniscient in this life. And I mean this quite literally. It assumes that the choices we make are wholly our own and not the result of the social structures in which we grow up. It necessarily purports that I, who grew up in a white, middle-class New Jersey home, is the same as someone who grows up in a poor Iraqi family. The denial of all influence from the social structure is required to believe in the Hell you purport. For if we do not know the truth (i.e. are not omniscient) in this life, then it is almost certain that we would choose to embrace the love of God upon death and realizing the truth. It is only possible for us to say that those who reject God in this life, would reject Him in the next life, with any certainty if we are omniscient. I am not being comical here. I literal mean it omniscience on the part of men and women is necessary for your assertions to be true. I personally do not believe the soul survives death. When this mortal body perishes, our soul/spirit will return into the oneness of God. We are like cups of water drawn from the river, which is the Sacred. When we die, our cup is poured back into the river. We die into God.

Well, our society's construction of homosexuality is very much linked with the idea of it as a life-style. There is an idea of what a homosexual man is, beyond purely same-sex attraction. For example, the idea that a homosexual male is an invert is still wildly popular. When people pejoratively say something/someone is acting "gay," it does not simply mean they are acting as if they are attracted to the same-sex. That makes absolutely no sense. The strength of Derridan deconstruction is that it reveals to you the hidden ideological content of words we imagine not to be ideological. It is also the idea that homosexuality becomes a social identity. Coming out of the closet is perceived in our culture as the assertion or revelation of a hidden identity, which makes us who were are. I align myself predominantly with the tradition of queer theory in studies of sexuality. What it essentially argues is that sexuality is fluid, multi-faceted and regulatory. Hetero, homo and bisexuality are human-created categories which fail to adequately reflect reality. They are useful, but the danger lies in believing that they truly reflect our core identities, and not merely an identity we adopt through the socialization process.

I love Barrington Moore's The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. In the chapter on India, he criticizes Ghandi for believing in an idyllic vision for India, based upon a subsistence agrarian life-style. As such, Moore faults Ghandi for consigning millions and millions of Indians to death by starvation, since subsistence farmers' lives hang on the fate of the weather. While Ghandi was a great man, he needed a stronger commitment to transformation, as opposed to a return to the past.

I am a little dumbfounded why you would be baptized in a Church, where you vehemently disagree with the Pastor. One of my attractions to Catholicism is the rather generalized Mass sermon. It is usually about social justice or some such common Biblical message. It is not like Baptists and many Protestant denominations where if you disagree with the pastor's theology, you will have a difficult time fitting in with the service and congregation.

That is one of the popular progressive interpretations. There cannot be "homosexuals" before the linguistic category existed. If you mean "innate same-sex attraction" by the word "homosexuality," then I would agree. However, the construct of homosexuality extends beyond mere innate attraction.

I am still not comfortable with translating it as condemnation of "same-sex acts," however. There is much evidence to suggest the word is in reference to an economic-sexual sin, such as sleeping with young prostitute boys. I have no idea. Only snippets are available at this time, if I am not mistaken.

First of all, let me apologize for not realizing Greek text turns into gibberish on the forums. Secondly, I insinuated that classic translations, such as the NIV, err when they translate "arsenokoites" as "homosexuals."

The warm welcome is very much appreciated. And yes, it is a cool re-conversion story, or at least I think so. Some of my old friends want me to participate in a Bible study at their fundamentalist Church, so I might just use that opportunity to share my story. It will be hilarious me thinks. I am aiming for gaping mouths. Ironically, homosexuality was one of the main reasons I de-converted from Christianity, and it is also an integral part of my re-conversion. I am guessing God has a sense of humor.

Well, I think it is relatively easy to discern the bias in a translation such as this, whereas the bias in other classic translations is better obscured. Most people are not well versed enough to realize that "αρσενοκοιτης" translated as "homosexuals" is highly improper. Anybody with a background in Queer Theory or Michel Foucault understands that "sexuality" and "homosexuality" are modernist-linguistic constructs that arose out of the rising movement of psychology and advances in medicine. Yet, if you have never read these philosophical-sociology works teasing out the ideological construction of hetero/homosexuality, the bias in choosing "homosexuals" as English equivalent of the original Greek will remain hidden.

It is a bold idea, and I think it will be useful for a great many people who are not very hardcore. For me personally, there is a certain grandeur to the archaic language of the Bible that I would not trade.

White, Male, Marxist, writer, thinker, gentle.