[Oe List ...] OE Digest, Vol 65, Issue 96

Fri Sep 18 03:23:01 CDT 2009

This conversation on healthcare hit very close to home this past week. The
death of my cousin, Beth Rickey from Louisiana is a prime example of how our
medical/health care system is broken. Beth became somewhat famous for a
while for exposing David Duke when he ran for LA Governor; he had not left
behind his KKK and Neo-Nazi actions in his bid for Governor. He he was
defeated. He was running against Edwin Edwards, another crooked LA
politician, known for his corruption. One of the slogans in that race, "Vote
for the Crook, not the Nazi!" She was the person that stopped Duke. Jim
Stovall's father, a Methodist minister, was one of the coalition members
that worked to defeat Duke. You can find out more in most of the articles
about her death. 

But that's not the reason I'm writing. Beth died homeless and penniless, but
not forgotten. Family and close friends helped her numerous times, but none
of us could take on her serious health issues and humongous medical bills.
For 13 years she had been struggling to cure a serious aliment picked up in
Mexico. She also developed Crohn's Disease. The medicines for these were
exorbitant. She couldn't get insurance for a prior condition(s). She
couldn't hold a job because of her illnesses. Even with all of that, her
death was unexpected.

If you Google Beth Rickey you get over 100 articles in various news media.
The ones I've read a mostly accurate.

R.I.P. Beth Rickey   [Mark Hemingway]
Rickey, a conservative Republican activist, was the individual most
responsible for bringing about David Duke's downfall and keeping him out of
the Lousiana governor's office. Quin Hillyer's obituary in The Washington
Times is touching, and highly recommended. 09/15 12:55 PMShare

Here's the link:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/15/beth-what-can-we-do/

Here is another: http://www.forward.com/articles/114205/

Beth knew many people; these two writers were among them. David Duke
commented on Beth's death at his website.

Pat Rickey Tuecke

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Today's Topics:

   1. a new religious mode (Jean Watts)
   2. 9/17/09, Spong:  The Origins of the New Testament,	Part I:
      Introduction (elliestock at aol.com)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:05:59 -0500
From: "Jean Watts" <jeanwatts at cox.net>
Subject: [Oe List ...] a new religious mode
To: <oe at wedgeblade.net>
Message-ID: <C7A3756EAB5B407A87F808E92C1C85CE at JEANSLAPTOP>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

Jack Gillis wrote: 
"Why aren't we remembering our own deep and profound insight that there will
be no New Social Vehicle without a New Religious Mode?"

Been thinking the same thing.... and another colleague just sent me these
quotes today:

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood
and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the
endless immensity of the sea."   
- Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry

"Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to
or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply
interconnected with one another.  Working on our own consciousness is the
most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a
supreme creative act."
- Ram Dass

I wonder, just what is the 'New Religious Mode' today? And where do we see
it emerging in ourselves or others?
Jean

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:22:15 -0500
From: Jack Gilles <icabombay at igc.org>
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] An excellent article on Health Care costs
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>
Message-ID: <970E70B2-836E-4189-A0E3-943B7A464474 at igc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed";
	DelSp="yes"

Herman,

This article is fantastic!  It's if for the first time the  
contradiction is named (for me) and we can see what needs to really  
happen.  No longer am I distraught over the loss of the "public  
option".   It is not addressing the contradiction.  What it does  
clarify for me is something that I have brooding about throughout all  
these emails zinging back and forth.  Why aren't we remembering our  
own deep and profound insight that there will be no New Social Vehicle  
without a New Religious Mode?  I find this article not only says that,  
but points out what areas we need to work in to make it happen.  And  
his words that as of now, that possibility is becoming less not more  
prevalent is sobering.  I personally feel that this thinking and  
action is what we need to focus on, not just our method for coming up  
with an analysis and plan (ToPs Methods).  Anyway, thanks for bringing  
this to our attention and I hope everyone will read it.

Grace & Peace,

Jack

**********************************

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:42:11 -0400
From: elliestock at aol.com
Subject: [Oe List ...] 9/17/09, Spong:  The Origins of the New
	Testament,	Part I: Introduction
To: Dialogue at wedgeblade.net, OE at wedgeblade.net
Message-ID: <8CC05CCF01DE20C-4FBC-12C9B at webmail-m079.sysops.aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Print this Article 

Not a member?Subscribe now! 

Now Available!
Eternal Life: A New Vision Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and
Hell
By John Shelby Spong
About the new book

Bishop Spong will soon be reading from and signing his new book at various
locations, including Outwrite in Atlanta on September 29. More locations to
be announced soon.

>From the book's publisher: 

"Browse Inside" the book 

Find a Bookseller 

Buy the Book in Bishop Spong's Online Bookstore

Thursday September 17, 2009 

The Origins of the New Testament
Part I: Introduction

I launch today a series of columns that will appear regularly over the next
twelve to eighteen months. As I always do in this column, this series will
augment the essays that are time sensitive and that seek to illumine
contemporary issues through my theological lens. Last week's column on the
health care debate is a case in point. 
The purpose of this unfolding series is to take you, my readers, deeply into
those books that constitute the New Testament. There are twenty-seven in
number and together they form the volume that arguably has been the most
influential and shaping piece of narrative writing in the history of the
world. The earliest book of the New Testament is probably I Thessalonians,
generally dated around the year 51 CE, while th
e latest is probably II Peter, generally dated around the year 135 CE. The
influence of this book, while always powerful, has been both positive and
negative. On the positive side it is clear that the institution called the
Christian Church, which grew out of these twenty-seven books, has inspired
quite literally millions of people in many ways. Most of the great
universities of the world were begun as part of the Christian Church's
commitment to knowledge and, in particular, to impart to people the saving
knowledge of the sacred scriptures. Most of our healing institutions, from
hospitals to hospice, arose out of that Christian sense that every human
life is of infinite worth, which carried with it the compelling need to
alleviate suffering insofar as it is possible. Most of the great art of the
ages, at least up until the 17th century, has as its content scenes from
these twenty-seven books. These art treasures are of such immense value
today that for the most part they are stored in the world's greatest museums
as a constant source of enrichment for the people. Most of the great music
of the ages, at least up until the dawn of modernity, was an attempt to put
the primary themes of the New Testament into the indelible sounds that we
today still recognize and sing. One thinks of the St. Matthew Passion and
the St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach and of the Christmas Oratorio,
"Messiah" by George Frederick Handel as familiar and much loved cultural
treasures. One cannot understand the history o
f the Western world or explore these cultural artifacts without becoming
deeply aware of the i mpact the New Testament has had on the life of our
civilization. 

There is, however, also a dark side of the New Testament that must be faced
and lifted beyond the stained glass accents of antiquity into full
consciousness. The New Testament has had victims whose lives have been
diminished at best and destroyed at worst by the direct impact of reading
from this "sacred" source. I think of the Jewish people who have suffered
throughout Christian history because of this book. The words attributed to
the Jewish crowd by Matthew in his narrative of the crucifixion, "his blood
be upon us and upon our children," have caused much Jewish blood to flow in
everything from the Crusades to the Holocaust. The Fourth Gospel's use of
the phrase "The Jews," spoken so often through clenched teeth, has not
infrequently been used to legitimize anti-Semitism. The portrayal of a man
called Judas, a name that is nothing but the Greek spelling of the name for
the entire Jewish nation, as the anti-hero of the Jesus story, served to
give permission to Christians through the ages to justify their feeling of
revenge against this ethnic group of people. Lost in this hostile passion is
the truth that Jesus was a Jew, the disciples were all Jews and the writers
of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were also Jews. The only
possible exception to this statement is Luke, thought to be the author of
both the gospel that be
ars his name and the book of Acts, who is believed to have been born a
Gentile, but to have converted to Judaism and thus to have come through the
Synagogue into the Church. This means that when we read the New Testament,
we are reading only the words of Jewish writers, interpreting the experience
and impact of the Jewish Jesus primarily in the light of the Jewish
Scriptures and under the ongoing influence of the Synagogue traditions of
the Jews. Yet these books have fueled over the centuries a killing frenzy of
anti-Semitism. The single greatest carrier of this hostility has been
nothing less than our Sunday school curricula and materials. Jewish people
thus have a hard t ime seeing these twenty-seven books as "sacred
scriptures." 

The institution of slavery was affirmed throughout history from words in the
New Testament. Slavery was practiced in the west by God-fearing,
Bible-reading Christians. The popes at various times owned slaves. The
section of the United States that fought fiercely to preserve this evil
institution was also known as the Bible Belt. It was the Bible-reading
people of the South who made lynching legal, who replaced slavery with
segregation and who resisted every effort to keep racial justice from being
achieved. Much of their justification for this behavior came from quoting
St. Paul, who in his letter to Philemon urged the runaway slave Onesimus to
return to his master, while simultaneously urging Philemon, his master, to
be forgiving to his slave. In the Epistle to the Colossians, Pa
ul, or one of his disciples, instructed slaves to be obedient and masters to
be kind. Perhaps it could be said that a kinder and gentler slavery is
better than a cruel and harsh one, but it is to be noted that Paul clearly
accepted the legitimacy of this cruel institution, making no effort to
abolish it and thus legitimizing it in the minds of others for centuries.
One wonders how those who were enslaved and their descendents might view the
New Testament from which texts were cited to justify both slavery and
second-class citizenship. These scriptures were not sources of life to these
victims of our prejudice. 

Women have also not fared well at the hands of these male written, male read
and male interpreted books of the New Testament. They have rather fed the
deep-seated cultural misogyny of the ages with such admonitions as those
found in Ephesians for wives to obey their husbands, or in Corinthians for
women to keep quiet in church, or in Timothy where women are forbidden to
exercise authority over men. Under the influence of the New Testament women
in the Christian world were denied higher education for centuries. As a
result they were denied entrance into the professions, denied the right to
vote, denied the ability to own property in their own name and denied
leadership roles in the Christian world until well into the 20th century.
When progress did come for women it was driven by the secular spirit while
organized religion as expressed in the Christian Church resisted these
changes with sc
ripture-quoting vehemence. In major sections of the world this anti-feminist
Bible-laced rhetoric continues to be articulated both officially through
ecclesiastical bodies and by individual believers. One wonders how women
would ever be drawn to the texts of this book. 

The same could also be said for the victimization of the gay, lesbian,
bi-sexual and transgender segments of our population. They too have lived
throughout history with Bible-fueled hostility that manifested itself in gay
bashing and in actual murder. Texts were quoted from Romans that called
homosexuality "unnatural" and condemned it, to references in other epistles
that mistranslated the Greek word arcenokoitus, which refers to a passive
male, as deviant, sodomite or pervert, even though its original meaning
appears to have been male prostitutes. There is no doubt that the center of
homophobia in the western world today remains the Christian Church, now
ghettoized from the mainstream of society, and is regularly articulated by
Christian voices from the Pope to Pat Robertson. One wonders how homosexual
people could ever appreciate the message of the New Testament. 

In my experience, I do not find it possible to overestimate the levels of
biblical ignorance present today inside the Christian population. Most of
these just-cited abuses rise out of that ignorance. Much preaching that
emanates from both Catholic and Protestant pulpits not only reflects that
ignorance, but also continues to spread it. 

In this series of columns I will, therefore, attempt to counter t
his biblical ignorance and to break the grip that it has on much of our
population. While seeking to avoid the technicalities of biblical
scholarship that seem to amuse so many in the academy, I will try to state
clearly how these books came to be written and so endeavor to oppose the
rampant literal misunderstanding that embraces so much of our culture today
in regard to the Bible. I will go into both the meaning and the key points
of each book in the New Testament, as I have done in past years with the
books of the Old Testament. I will try to show the differences among the
four gospels that reveal more contradictions than most people believe to be
possible. I hope you will enjoy the journey. I know I will.

One final note. A number of small churches across the English-speaking world
now use this column for their Sunday morning adult education classes. These
essays are subscribed to by the members of the various classes with extra
copies reproduced for visitors so that the class and the discussion can have
a common basis for discussion. The leader of the class simply convenes the
group and introduces the topic. That leadership role can be constant or
rotated so long as the purpose is accomplished to allow people to discuss
issues openly, to raise any questions they wish and to engage in any debate
that arises. When the group gets too large for discussion, it subdivides
into two groups. I am gratified to learn this and rejoice that this column
might be an instrument in the New Refo
rmation for which many of us yearn. At the very least I hope people find a
richness in this book that small ecclesiastical minds have tried for
centuries to hide from the average pew sitter. Have fun! 

? John Shelby Spong
?

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Deb McCollister from Nebraska writes:

Militant fundamentalism in any family of faith seems to threaten our world.
Readers of your newsletter are aware of Christian scholars who examine
long-held assumptions. Can you tell us about penetrating scholarship in
other faith walks, study that examines history while seeking meaning and
deeper truths?
Deb McCollister from Nebraska writes:

Militant fundamentalism in any family of faith seems to threaten our world.
Readers of your newsletter are aware of Christian scholars who examine
long-held assumptions. Can you tell us about penetrating scholarship in
other faith walks, study that examines history while seeking meaning and
deeper truths?

Dear Deb,

A very good question. The intellectual revolution that started with
Copernicus and traveled through Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein and
many others has had an enormous impact on the religious tradition of the
west in both Judaism and Christianity. We have also in both traditions been
dealing with critical biblical scholarship for about 200 years. That
scholarship, while welcomed by many, has also served to create a
fundamentalist backlash in parts of Christianity and Judaism. We have
certainly seen evidence of thi
s in the political arena, where the religious right has been very vocal in
America in the fight to restore prayer to the classrooms of public schools,
to resist the teaching of evolution, to oppose sex education and to keep
people like Terri Schiavo alive well after anything resembling real life had
long departed. 

In the less developed and less well educated parts of the world, religion
serves a variety of purposes. It gives hope to the hopelessness of the poor
and downtrodden. It links people with their ancestral past. It helps them
deal with the radical insecurity of human existence. When threatened by
challenging insights into the origins of these faith traditions, many
religious people who are unable to embrace or to process new religious ideas
turn defensive and become both rejecting and fundamentalist. There is not as
yet a tradition of radical religious scholarship in Islam that would call
into question the way fundamentalist Muslims today use the Koran to justify
violence. In the world of Buddhism and Hinduism I find today that the
intellectually elite simply walk out of religion into secularism. Religion
therefore becomes more and more the activity of the unlearned. It is
therefore more and more likely to resist change, which makes modernizing
that religious system all but impossible.

I am convinced that my religious heritage points me to truth that no
religion in and of itself can envision. I do not believe that secular
non-belief is the only alternative to being religious, but it takes hard
work,
 deep understanding, rich dialogue and a willingness to embrace vast amounts
of fear and insecurity to reach this conclusion. I can testify, however,
that to me it has been well worthwhile. As a witness to this truth let me
quote a retired bishop who said, "The older I get the more deeply I believe,
but the fewer beliefs I have." I think that is where I am and I believe that
is where all religious systems will have to go if they want to live in our
21st century world. 

Change must come, however, from within the religious system itself. It can
never be imposed from outside. So you and I, Deb, must work within the faith
of our fathers and mothers. I have found my journey into the depths of
Christianity to be the most exciting adventure and the most affirming
experience of my life. I invite others to journey with me into the
unfathomable mystery of God and life and being. 

? John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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