Jump to content

Dude Abides

Members
  • Posts

    8
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Dude Abides

  1. Campbell was an academic and those books you mention here aregeared toward that audience, if I remember correctly. Have you tried "Myths to Live By"? I remember it being a lot more accessible. There's also the book version of "Power of Myth." That was the first book I got by Campbell (and Bill Moyers). It's basically the transcript of their interview with lots of amazing illustrations.
  2. Hi Paul, Nice to see The Big Lebowski is abiding in the Land Down Under! I guess that's how the whole durn human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself across the sands of time...
  3. Hi Annie, We have a fairly inclusive UU group, but "god-talk" and Christianity can be a little touchy. I've given a couple lay sermons (one inspired by Sara Miles' book Take This Bread about her communion experience and another near Christmas last year on whether Jesus is still relevant to UUism *spoiler: I argued he is*) and they were generally well received with one exception (I remember one person bristling at the communion sermon where I said I was still hungry for the communion experience and wondered if there were new, non-ritualistic ways it could be infused in UU food-related activities). However, there have been a couple rare occasions that have frustrated me. One involved someone complaining about a quote by Emerson (Emerson of all people!) that someone had hung over the door. The complainer was offended that the quote had the word "God" in it (the quote was taken down) and another involved someone who was a bit more traditionally Christian than I am feeling insulted when someone (rather rudely imo) dissed his Christian beliefs (he ended up leaving the fellowship soon after, unfortunately). As I mention, I'm considering beginning a small group at the fellowship for people interested in exploring progressive Christianity. I suspect there will be some who won't like that, but I'm confident the community in general will be supportive
  4. Hi Karlfischer, My wife and are pretty much on the same page (or at least in the chapter) when it comes to what we believe. We go to the UU fellowship together, though she and I also had gone to a Christian denomination together as well. Like me, she's interested re-exploring Christian teachings, but we're not interested in joining another Christian church for various reasons. Our kids have been involved at the UU fellowship as they grew up, but unfortuntely there's not a very good teen program there. My wife and I talk with them about our beliefs and ask them about what they believe (and we help them develop their interests and find ways to be engaged in the community), but we're not imposing any overtly religious belief system on them. I think our philosophy as a couple and as parents is to love each other for who we are (our authentic selves) and to encourage/support each other in developing our deepest potential. I hope this makes sense. It's early in the morning and I'm still waking up.
  5. I'm currently reading "Zealot" and believe it's relatively accurate based on my general study of early Chrsitianity. When I studied the New Testament in a master's class, though, we didn't go as deeply into the history of rebellion in Judea as Aslan does. So, like you, I wondered if Aslan's emphasis on the political turmoil of the time was overstated. When I did some some online research, I found a New York Times review of the book written by a professor of religious studies at Yale. Here's what he wrote: Mr. Aslan’s thesis is not as startling, original or “entirely new” as the book’s publicity claims. Nor is it as outlandish as described by his detractors. That Jesus was a Jewish peasant who attempted to foment a rebellion against the Romans and their Jewish clients has been suggested at least since the posthumous publication of Hermann Samuel Reimarus’s “Fragments” (1774-78). The most famous case for the thesis is the 1967 book by S. G. F. Brandon, “Jesus and the Zealots.” Mr. Aslan follows Mr. Brandon in his general thesis as well as in many details, a borrowing that should have been better acknowledged. (Mr. Brandon gets only a cursory mention in the notes.) And the basic premise that Jesus was zealous for the political future of Israel as the kingdom of God on earth is neither new nor controversial. SNIP A real strength of the book is that it provides an introduction to first-century Palestine, including economics, politics and religion. Mr. Aslan uses previous scholarship to describe the precarious existence of Jewish peasants and the lower classes, and how the Romans and the Jewish upper class exploited the land and the people. He explains not just the religious but also the economic significance of the Temple, and therefore the power of the priestly class controlling it. SNIP But the book also suffers from common problems in popularization, like proposing outdated and simplistic theories for phenomena now seen as more complex. Mr. Aslan depicts earliest Christianity as surviving in two streams after Jesus: a Hellenistic movement headed by Paul, and a Jewish version headed by James. This dualism repeats 19th-century German scholarship. Nowadays, most scholars believe that the Christian movement was much more diverse, even from its very beginnings. There's more at this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/books/reza-aslans-zealot-the-life-and-times-of-jesus-of-nazareth.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 I'm liking the book a lot, but I would love to find something more in depth about the diversity of the early Christian movement.
  6. Welcome! I'm a newbie too-bee... Your open-ended, free-flowing approach to ministry sounds very intriguing. I look forward to learning more.
  7. Thank you, Joseph. Yes, the experiential part of religion is what is most important to me. That's why I love what Jesus says about loving something beyond yourself (God) with everything you are, as well as loving others (especially others outside your comfort zone) as you love yourself, being more important than the Law and the Prophets. I'm really glad I found this place. I just wish I could find an offline version of it in the "real" world. Maybe that's what will happen if I manage to get a UU Christian group going.
  8. Hmmm. I thought I knew what I wanted to say until I saw this empty white block looking back at me. To introduce myself: I'm in my late 40s, married, three kids (16 year old son, 14 year old twins: boy and girl). For over a decade now I've been a Unitarian Universalist, but there is a long and winding theological road leading up to becoming a UU. For the first decade of my life, I remember going to church maybe twice back when I visited my grandparents when I was maybe 4 years old. So I never really understood all those movies about Jesus I saw on TV when I was growing up. For me, my most perplexing theological question I had at the time was what did all of that have to do with chocolate bunnies and that queasy sugar high I got on Easter morning. In th mid-'70s, my family had a lot of difficult times and we got into a non-denominational church that rented out a meeting room at a local lumberyard and handed out those bizarre JT Chick tracts. We eventually joined a rural United Methodist church for a while. I became quite a little born-again true believer and even thought I wanted to be an evangelist when I grew up. The kind of literalistic Christianity I embraced really was something of an anchor for me in stormy waters; however, in my adolesence, the reassuring answers that kind of faith gave me couldn't address the increasingly complex questions I was beginning to have. So I left Christianity from about high school through my early 20s and even tried to be an atheist for a brief while, but it didn't do much for me. It was around this time that Bill Moyers did his show on the power of myth with Joseph Campbell (which really resonated with me on a very profound level). It was also at this time that I found a certificate studies program on theological studies at Georgetown University that promised to provide participants with an overview of the current scholarship on the New Testament. It was around this time, too, that I read Bishop Spong's book on saving the Bible from fundamentalism. Ironically, learning about the historical Jesus and the origins of the Gospels as faith documents (and not literal historical accounts) ended up reviving my faith and, as a result, I experienced something on such a profound level that it transformed my life dramatically. Unfortunately, when I joined a mainline church, I found that what I had learned (and more importantly, had experienced) while at Georgetown was not what was valued and preached in the church. For awhile I thought there was room for me in the church, but eventually, I began to feel embattled as a wave of neo-orthodoxy (and homophobia) rose in the denomination. That wave (among other things) ended up pushing me away from the Christian church and into UUism. Because of my positive experience at Georgetown, I never rejected or became angry with Christianity (as some UUs are), but I liked the openess and freedom UUism encourages. I've already gone on for too long ( so much for that empty white block looking back me ), so I'll just finish up by saying as much as I enjoy the freedom in UUism, I also am feeling the need to re-engage Christianity again, especially after I gave a lay sermon on Jesus at the UU fellowship I attend on the Sunday before Christmas last year. I'm considering starting a UU Christian lay group there, if anyone is interested; even if they're not, I'm still interested in reconnecting with progressive Christianity. Which is what brings me here, I suppose. Looking forward to getting to know you.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

terms of service