"Luther's Reformation", The Economist, November 8, 2017
hit below.
the_stand_-_luther’s_reformation.pdf
hit below.
the_stand_-_luther’s_reformation.pdf
Who won the Reformation?
500 years after Martin Luther are we really better off?
To read an assessment, "download file" below.
| who_won_the_reformation__-_the_new_york_times.pdf |
What's the key to human social evolution? Religion, this scientist
suggests
What's the key to human social evolution? Religion, this scientist suggests
by JULIE ZAUZMER
The Washington Post
BOSTON — In humans' mysterious journey to become intelligent, socializing creatures like no other in the animal world, one innovation played an essential role: religion.That's the theory that a preeminent evolutionary scientist is setting out to prove.
"You need something quite literally to stop everybody from killing everybody else out of just crossness," said Robin Dunbar. "Somehow it's clear that religions, all these doctrinal religions, create the sense that we're all one family."
Dunbar, an evolutionary psychology professor at Oxford University, gained some measure of fame more than 20 years ago for his research on the size of animals' social networks. Each species of primate, he found, can manage to keep up a social bond with a certain number of other members of its own species. That number goes up as primates' brain size increases, from monkeys to apes.
Humans, Dunbar found, are capable of maintaining significantly more social ties than the size of our brains alone could explain. He proved that each human is surprisingly consistent in the number of social ties we can maintain: About five with intimate friends, 50 with good friends, 150 with friends and 1,500 with people we could recognize by name. That discovery came to be known as "Dunbar's number."
And then Dunbar turned to figuring out why Dunbar's number is so high. Did humor help us manage it? Exercise? Storytelling? That riddle has been Dunbar's quest for years - and religion is the latest hypothesis he's testing in his ongoing attempt to find the answer.
"Most of these things we're looking at, you get in religion in one form or another," he said.
Dunbar is just one of a recent wave of scientists who are interested in how religion came to be and how people have benefited from it. "For most of Western intellectual history since the Enlightenment, religion has been thought of as ignorant and strange and an aberration and something that gets in the way of reason," said Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame who studies religion. "In the last 10 or 20 years on many fronts, there's been a change in thinking about religion, where a lot of neuroscientists have been saying religion is totally natural. It totally makes sense that we're religious. Religion has served a lot of important functions in developing societies."
In the case of Dunbar and his colleagues, they already published research demonstrating that two other particularly human behaviors increased people's capacity for social bonding. In the lab, they showed that first, laughter, and second, singing, left research subjects more capable of forming connections with other people than they were before.
Religion is the remaining key to explaining humans' remarkable social networks, Dunbar thinks. "These three things are very good at triggering endorphins, making us feel bonded," he said last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting, where he presented his team's research on laughter and singing and introduced the forthcoming research on religion.
Religion includes numerous elements of Dunbar's earlier studies on endorphin-producing activities. Lots of singing, to start. Repetitive motion triggers endorphins, he said, noting that traditions from Catholicism to Islam to Buddhism to Hinduism make use of prayer beads.
Plus, researchers have shown that doing these activities in synchronized fashion with other people drastically magnifies the endorphin-producing effect: Picture the coordinated bowing that is central to Muslim, Jewish and Catholic worship.
And Dunbar's most recent published research demonstrated the effectiveness of emotional storytelling in bonding groups of strangers who hear the story together - again, a fixture of religious worship.
"What you get from dance and singing on its own is a sense of belonging. It happens very quickly. What happens, I suspect, is that it can trigger very easily trance states," Dunbar said. He theorizes that these spiritual experiences matter much more than dance and song alone. "Once you've triggered that, you're in, I think, a different ballgame. It ramps up massively. That's what's triggered. There's something there."
Dunbar's team will start research on religion in April, and he expects it will take three years. To begin, he wants to map a sort of evolutionary tree of religion, using statistical modeling to try to show when religious traditions evolved and how they morphed into each other.
Of course, religious people themselves might find Dunbar's theory odd - most don't think of religion existing to serve an evolutionary purpose, but of their faiths simply being true.
But Smith thinks one can easily have faith in both God's truth and religion's role in human development. "From the religious point of view, you can say this . . . . God created humans as a very particular type of creature, with very particular brains and biology, just so that they would develop into the type of humans who would know God and believe in God," Smith said. "They're not in conflict at all."
He added: "A lot of people assume, falsely, that science and religion are zero-sum games: that if science explains something, then religion must not be true. . . . If you were God and wanted to set up the world in a certain way, wouldn't you create humans with bigger brains and the ability to imagine?"
One more research finding on the place of God in our brains - remember Dunbar's number, the five intimate friends and 50 good friends and 150 friends each person can hold onto? Dunbar says that if a person feels he or she has a close relationship with a spiritual figure, like God or the Virgin Mary, then that spiritual personage actually fills up one of those numbered spots, just like a human relationship would. One of your closest friends, scientifically speaking, might be God.
Can you Explain the Trinity?
http://www.journalnow.com/news/columnists/everydayreligionquestionscanyouexplainthetrinity/article_72098a1abae051fb8ba1268cf0fb0b1d.html
Everyday Religion Questions: Can you explain the Trinity?
21 hrs ago
Q: Could you explain the Christian concept of the Trinity?
Answer: Every Sunday many Christians utter the words, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” I can remember as a young boy wondering about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Even later I still have difficulty explaining them, but I have learned that those words have had a complicated history with many interpretations and revisions. Please note the interpretations do not diminish the purpose of the prayer. People who use this phrase are Trinitarians.
To answer your question honestly, I would have to say, no.
I would have to add that I have never read anyone who could give clear explanations. I can discuss the history and the different theories about the Trinity. First, let me note that the word “trinity” does not appear in the Bible. Some argue that it was prefigured in the Old Testament when God is reported to have said in Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Judaism never interpreted the phrase as Trinitarian, but more as a literary or regal “us.” Christians often cite Matthew 28:19 in which Jesus commanded His disciples to baptize, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The three are listed, but there is no mention of the Trinity or that the three are one. Tertullian, an early Christian writer, is reported to be the founder of western Latin theology and the first to use the word “trinity” in relationship to Christianity. The usage of the Trinity can be found in the worship of many ancient religions.
The discussion of the Trinity began at the Council of Nicea in 325 when Christians accepted that Jesus was fully divine, God incarnate. Athanasius convinced the assembled bishops that Jesus, the Son, was of the same substance as God, the Father. He was eternal, uncreated, and fully divine, and the Holy Spirit which proceeded from the Father also was God’s presence. The doctrine of the Trinity was the Church’s attempt to make sense of the Biblical witness.
Following Nicea, the Christian concept of Christ’s nature and the Trinity was studied and theories were formulated, and I will give just a few examples. Apollinaris (died in 390), bishop of Laodicea in Syria, taught that Jesus had a human body and spirit, but His mind was divine. He felt that Jesus’ omniscience required a divine mind. Nestorius (died in 450) insisted that Jesus was fully human and fully divine and that the two natures coexisted in Him. Nestorius’ view officially was condemned by the first council at Ephesus in 431 because his theory had no real union of the divine with the human. History tells us that the struggle to define God, Christ and the trinity covered many centuries and was costly for those who dared to be different. Nestorius was among many who were condemned for heresy.
In this struggle to define the beliefs of the church, another problem with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost was the labeling of polytheism. To avoid tritheism, three distinct Gods, the Church, for a period, leaned toward modalism. This view presented the idea that the one God manifested Himself in three modes of existence.
The orthodox view of Christ’s nature was finally defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Cyril, supported by Pope Leo I, concluded that Jesus had two perfect natures, divine and human, truly united without doing damage to either nature. He did not explain this viewp; he simply declared it to be true. Finally, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 concluded, “It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds.” The council did not explain how one can be three or three can be one.
As I said, I cannot fully explain how the Trinity works, but I, like most Christians, simply affirm it as a divine mystery. Trinitarianism still is a part of Christian theology, but some denominations do not uphold it. As always, I support speculation, debate and study, but it becomes clear that our ability to comprehend the nature of the Godhead is limited. If God is the ultimate, then we may think of God as life and love. We may not be able to define God and these words clearly, but we can experience them.
Earl Crow taught religion and philosophy at High Point University. He has pastored churches and still performs weddings, preaches and offers seminars. He majored in religion at Duke University and attended the Duke Divinity School and has studied at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and received his doctorate from the University of Manchester, England. His column is published Saturdays in the Journal If you have questions about religion or faith, email Earl Crow at e crow1@triad.rr.com.
http://www.journalnow.com/news/columnists/everydayreligionquestionscanyouexplainthetrinity/article_72098a1abae051fb8ba1268cf0fb0b1d.html
Everyday Religion Questions: Can you explain the Trinity?
21 hrs ago
Q: Could you explain the Christian concept of the Trinity?
Answer: Every Sunday many Christians utter the words, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” I can remember as a young boy wondering about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Even later I still have difficulty explaining them, but I have learned that those words have had a complicated history with many interpretations and revisions. Please note the interpretations do not diminish the purpose of the prayer. People who use this phrase are Trinitarians.
To answer your question honestly, I would have to say, no.
I would have to add that I have never read anyone who could give clear explanations. I can discuss the history and the different theories about the Trinity. First, let me note that the word “trinity” does not appear in the Bible. Some argue that it was prefigured in the Old Testament when God is reported to have said in Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Judaism never interpreted the phrase as Trinitarian, but more as a literary or regal “us.” Christians often cite Matthew 28:19 in which Jesus commanded His disciples to baptize, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The three are listed, but there is no mention of the Trinity or that the three are one. Tertullian, an early Christian writer, is reported to be the founder of western Latin theology and the first to use the word “trinity” in relationship to Christianity. The usage of the Trinity can be found in the worship of many ancient religions.
The discussion of the Trinity began at the Council of Nicea in 325 when Christians accepted that Jesus was fully divine, God incarnate. Athanasius convinced the assembled bishops that Jesus, the Son, was of the same substance as God, the Father. He was eternal, uncreated, and fully divine, and the Holy Spirit which proceeded from the Father also was God’s presence. The doctrine of the Trinity was the Church’s attempt to make sense of the Biblical witness.
Following Nicea, the Christian concept of Christ’s nature and the Trinity was studied and theories were formulated, and I will give just a few examples. Apollinaris (died in 390), bishop of Laodicea in Syria, taught that Jesus had a human body and spirit, but His mind was divine. He felt that Jesus’ omniscience required a divine mind. Nestorius (died in 450) insisted that Jesus was fully human and fully divine and that the two natures coexisted in Him. Nestorius’ view officially was condemned by the first council at Ephesus in 431 because his theory had no real union of the divine with the human. History tells us that the struggle to define God, Christ and the trinity covered many centuries and was costly for those who dared to be different. Nestorius was among many who were condemned for heresy.
In this struggle to define the beliefs of the church, another problem with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost was the labeling of polytheism. To avoid tritheism, three distinct Gods, the Church, for a period, leaned toward modalism. This view presented the idea that the one God manifested Himself in three modes of existence.
The orthodox view of Christ’s nature was finally defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Cyril, supported by Pope Leo I, concluded that Jesus had two perfect natures, divine and human, truly united without doing damage to either nature. He did not explain this viewp; he simply declared it to be true. Finally, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 concluded, “It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds.” The council did not explain how one can be three or three can be one.
As I said, I cannot fully explain how the Trinity works, but I, like most Christians, simply affirm it as a divine mystery. Trinitarianism still is a part of Christian theology, but some denominations do not uphold it. As always, I support speculation, debate and study, but it becomes clear that our ability to comprehend the nature of the Godhead is limited. If God is the ultimate, then we may think of God as life and love. We may not be able to define God and these words clearly, but we can experience them.
Earl Crow taught religion and philosophy at High Point University. He has pastored churches and still performs weddings, preaches and offers seminars. He majored in religion at Duke University and attended the Duke Divinity School and has studied at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and received his doctorate from the University of Manchester, England. His column is published Saturdays in the Journal If you have questions about religion or faith, email Earl Crow at e crow1@triad.rr.com.
A White Church No More
By RUSSELL MOORE MAY 6, 2016, New York Times, May 6, 2016
YEARS ago, members of a Southern Baptist church in suburban Birmingham, Ala., who couldn’t figure out why their church was in decline asked a friend of mine for advice. The area had been majority white during the violent years of Jim Crow. While civil rights protesters were beaten and children were blown apart by bombs, church members had said nothing. That would be “political,” church members said, and they wanted to stick to “simple gospel preaching.”
As the years marched on, the area became majority black. The congregation dwindled to a small band of elderly whites who now lived elsewhere. They tried, they said, to “reach out” to the church’s African-American neighbors, but couldn’t get them to join.
A canvass of the area would have told them that the church had already sent a message to those neighbors when it had stood silent in the face of atrocity. Those neighbors now had no interest in bailing out a congregation with a ministry too cowardly to speak up for righteousness when it had seemed too costly to do so.
As of this week, the nation faces a crazier election season than many of us ever imagined, with Donald J. Trump as the all-but-certain nominee of the Republican Party. Regardless of the outcome in November, his campaign is forcing American Christians to grapple with some scary realities that will have implications for years to come.
This election has cast light on the darkness of pent-up nativism and bigotry all over the country. There are not-so-coded messages denouncing African-Americans and immigrants; concern about racial justice and national unity is ridiculed as “political correctness.” Religious minorities are scapegoated for the sins of others, with basic religious freedoms for them called into question. Many of those who have criticized Mr. Trump’s vision for America have faced threats and intimidation from the “alt-right” of white supremacists and nativists who hide behind avatars on social media.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech did not envision that more than 50 years later “Go back to Africa” would be screamed at black protesters or that a major presidential candidate would tweet racially charged comments. Some American Christians may be tempted to ignore these issues, hoping they are just a wave of “political incorrectness” that will ebb in due time. That sort of moral silence shortchanges both our gospel and our future.
When many secular Americans think of evangelicals, they think of old, white precinct captains in Iowa or old, white television evangelists and their media empires. But that’s not what evangelical Christianity is. Evangelical Christianity is committed to conserving the orthodoxy of the church, is rooted in the authority of the Bible over every competing authority and has a zeal to see people come to Christ by being “born again” through faith in him.
The center of gravity for both orthodoxy and evangelism is not among Anglo suburban evangelicals but among African Anglicans and Asian Calvinists and Latin American Pentecostals. The vital core of American evangelicalism today can be found in churches that are multiethnic and increasingly dominated by immigrant communities.
The next Billy Graham probably will speak only Spanish or Arabic or Persian or Mandarin. American evangelicals often use the language of “revival” — a word that is sometimes co-opted by politicians to mean a resurgence of a politically useful but watered-down civil religion. A congregation that ignores the global church can deprive itself of revival by overlooking those places where the Spirit is working.
The thriving churches of American Christianity are multigenerational, theologically robust, ethnically diverse and connected to the global church. If Jesus is alive — and I believe that he is — he will keep his promise and build his church. But he never promises to do that solely with white, suburban institutional evangelicalism.
The question is whether evangelicals will be on the right side of Jesus. That will mean standing up for the church’s future leaders, and for our mission, especially when they are politically powerless. American Christianity faces a test of whether we will identify as Christians first. Majorities come and majorities go. And sometimes a silent majority is too silent for its own good.
The Bible calls on Christians to bear one another’s burdens. White American Christians who respond to cultural tumult with nostalgia fail to do this. They are blinding themselves to the injustices faced by their black and brown brothers and sisters in the supposedly idyllic Mayberry of white Christian America. That world was murder, sometimes literally, for minority evangelicals.
This has gospel implications not only for minorities and immigrants but for the so-called silent majority. A vast majority of Christians, on earth and in heaven, are not white and have never spoken English. A white American Christian who disregards nativist language is in for a shock. The man on the throne in heaven is a dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking “foreigner” who is probably not all that impressed by chants of “Make America great again.”
Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, is the author of “Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel.”
"The War for the West Rages On"
"The War for the West Rages On," BETSY GAINES QUAMMEN, New York Times, JAN. 29, 2016
Bozeman, Mont. — THE armed siege of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, which continued Friday even after one of the occupiers was killed in a confrontation with authorities, is the latest battle in a Nevada family’s war with the federal government. It shows little sign of abating.
Anger over the federal government’s control of hundreds of millions of acres across the West has been smoldering for over a hundred years. The takeover was part of a campaign that has its roots in the settlement of the West and the desire to transfer control of these lands — the national forests, parks, wildlife refuges and rangeland — to the states.
The Oregon confrontation was led by two sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who led an armed standoff of his own against federal authorities in 2014 over his illegal grazing on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management.The difference between the Bundys and many other ranchers who rage over federal control of land is that they believe God is on their side. I visited the Bundy family last year on their remote ranch and melon farm in southeastern Nevada for research I’m conducting on the history of Mormon culture and the use of public land. The Bundys are Mormons and interested me because of their extreme position against the government and their engagement of militia groups in their cause.
They were welcoming and eager to answer my questions. What emerged in our three hours of conversation in the living room of their modest ranch house was a passion and a sense of entitlement that they believe is anchored in their deep history in the region. They also embrace a strange amalgamation of Mormonism, libertarianism and a rightwing reading of the Constitution. The Bundys trace their roots to some of the first Mormons who settled along an isolated and rugged stretch of the Virgin River, in a place so desolate that it seems impossible to make a living there. But they did, and in doing so, they put their stamp on it, in the Bundys’ view. From the moment their ancestors’ horses took a sip of water or ate the grass, “a beneficial use of a renewable resource” was created, Cliven Bundy told me.
“That’s how our rights are created,” he explained. “So now we have created them and we use them, make beneficial use of them, and then we protect them. And that’s sort of a natural law, and that’s what the rancher has done. That’s how he has his rights. And that’s what the range war, the Bundy war, is all about right now, it’s really protecting those three things: our life, liberty and our property.”
In Mormon doctrine, the American Constitution is a divinely inspired text that must be protected. This view goes back to the days of the prophet Joseph Smith, who believed the Constitution existed to provide religious freedom and agency, the right of people to choose how they lived. In 1840, Smith warned that “this Nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground when the Constitution is upon the brink of ruin; this people will be the Staff upon which the Nation shall lean and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction.”
The Bundy family sees itself as that Staff. Mr. Bundy carries in his pocket a copy of the Constitution, which he believes draws its inspiration from the Bible. He told me: “Don’t we believe that Jesus Christ is basically the author of the Bible? Well, if the Constitution is inspired, who is the author? Wouldn’t that author be Jesus Christ again?” Mr. Bundy’s reading of the Constitution has been heavily influenced by the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a Mormon, fervent antiCommunist and right wing political thinker who believed that most federal landholdings are unconstitutional.
The Los Angeles Times reported that many Bundy followers in Oregon carried with them a copy of the Constitution annotated by Skousen. “That’s where I get most of my information from,” Cliven Bundy told the paper. But while Joseph Smith focused on the First Amendment as a bulwark against the persecutions of Mormons, the Bundys are focused on the 10th Amendment, which they believe severely restricts the federal government’s power to possess land. (Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints have condemned the Oregon takeover and said in a statement that they were “deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they were doing it based on scriptural principles.”)
The Bundy worldview aligns closely with the states’ rights movement and efforts in the West to transfer federal lands to the states and local governments. Just last week, eight ranchers in Utah announced that they would stop paying grazing fees to the federal government and put the money into escrow until ownership of the federal land they lease is resolved. “This is as an act of civil disobedience in response to a long trail of abuses,” a lawyer connected to the effort told The Salt Lake City Tribune.
Now the Bundy sons are in jail, and one of them, Ammon, in a statement issued by his lawyers, urged his followers to go home and hug their families. But a subsequent post on the Facebook page of the Bundy Ranch that has since been deleted issued this call to arms:
“ALERT! From Ammon’s wife, Lisa: Ammon would not have called for the patriots to leave. We have lost a life but we are not backing down. He didn’t spill his blood in vain! Hold your ground … Ranchers come and stand! … Militia come and stand!”
The war with the federal government over the West seems far from finished.
Betsy Gaines Quammen is a doctoral candidate at Montana State University.
Bozeman, Mont. — THE armed siege of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, which continued Friday even after one of the occupiers was killed in a confrontation with authorities, is the latest battle in a Nevada family’s war with the federal government. It shows little sign of abating.
Anger over the federal government’s control of hundreds of millions of acres across the West has been smoldering for over a hundred years. The takeover was part of a campaign that has its roots in the settlement of the West and the desire to transfer control of these lands — the national forests, parks, wildlife refuges and rangeland — to the states.
The Oregon confrontation was led by two sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who led an armed standoff of his own against federal authorities in 2014 over his illegal grazing on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management.The difference between the Bundys and many other ranchers who rage over federal control of land is that they believe God is on their side. I visited the Bundy family last year on their remote ranch and melon farm in southeastern Nevada for research I’m conducting on the history of Mormon culture and the use of public land. The Bundys are Mormons and interested me because of their extreme position against the government and their engagement of militia groups in their cause.
They were welcoming and eager to answer my questions. What emerged in our three hours of conversation in the living room of their modest ranch house was a passion and a sense of entitlement that they believe is anchored in their deep history in the region. They also embrace a strange amalgamation of Mormonism, libertarianism and a rightwing reading of the Constitution. The Bundys trace their roots to some of the first Mormons who settled along an isolated and rugged stretch of the Virgin River, in a place so desolate that it seems impossible to make a living there. But they did, and in doing so, they put their stamp on it, in the Bundys’ view. From the moment their ancestors’ horses took a sip of water or ate the grass, “a beneficial use of a renewable resource” was created, Cliven Bundy told me.
“That’s how our rights are created,” he explained. “So now we have created them and we use them, make beneficial use of them, and then we protect them. And that’s sort of a natural law, and that’s what the rancher has done. That’s how he has his rights. And that’s what the range war, the Bundy war, is all about right now, it’s really protecting those three things: our life, liberty and our property.”
In Mormon doctrine, the American Constitution is a divinely inspired text that must be protected. This view goes back to the days of the prophet Joseph Smith, who believed the Constitution existed to provide religious freedom and agency, the right of people to choose how they lived. In 1840, Smith warned that “this Nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground when the Constitution is upon the brink of ruin; this people will be the Staff upon which the Nation shall lean and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction.”
The Bundy family sees itself as that Staff. Mr. Bundy carries in his pocket a copy of the Constitution, which he believes draws its inspiration from the Bible. He told me: “Don’t we believe that Jesus Christ is basically the author of the Bible? Well, if the Constitution is inspired, who is the author? Wouldn’t that author be Jesus Christ again?” Mr. Bundy’s reading of the Constitution has been heavily influenced by the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a Mormon, fervent antiCommunist and right wing political thinker who believed that most federal landholdings are unconstitutional.
The Los Angeles Times reported that many Bundy followers in Oregon carried with them a copy of the Constitution annotated by Skousen. “That’s where I get most of my information from,” Cliven Bundy told the paper. But while Joseph Smith focused on the First Amendment as a bulwark against the persecutions of Mormons, the Bundys are focused on the 10th Amendment, which they believe severely restricts the federal government’s power to possess land. (Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints have condemned the Oregon takeover and said in a statement that they were “deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they were doing it based on scriptural principles.”)
The Bundy worldview aligns closely with the states’ rights movement and efforts in the West to transfer federal lands to the states and local governments. Just last week, eight ranchers in Utah announced that they would stop paying grazing fees to the federal government and put the money into escrow until ownership of the federal land they lease is resolved. “This is as an act of civil disobedience in response to a long trail of abuses,” a lawyer connected to the effort told The Salt Lake City Tribune.
Now the Bundy sons are in jail, and one of them, Ammon, in a statement issued by his lawyers, urged his followers to go home and hug their families. But a subsequent post on the Facebook page of the Bundy Ranch that has since been deleted issued this call to arms:
“ALERT! From Ammon’s wife, Lisa: Ammon would not have called for the patriots to leave. We have lost a life but we are not backing down. He didn’t spill his blood in vain! Hold your ground … Ranchers come and stand! … Militia come and stand!”
The war with the federal government over the West seems far from finished.
Betsy Gaines Quammen is a doctoral candidate at Montana State University.
"How Politics Has Poisoned Islam"
"How Politics Has Poisoned Islam'"
Mustafa Akyol, New York Times, February , 2016
ISTANBUL —
We Muslims like to believe that ours is “a religion of peace,” but today Islam looks more like a religion of conflict and bloodshed. From the civil wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen to internal tensions in Lebanon and Bahrain, to the dangerous rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Middle East is plagued by intraMuslim strife that seems to go back to the ancient SunniShiite rivalry.
Religion is not actually at the heart of these conflicts — invariably, politics is to blame. But the misuse of Islam and its history makes these political conflicts much worse as parties, governments and militias claim that they are fighting not over power or territory but on behalf of God. And when enemies are viewed as heretics rather than just opponents, peace becomes much harder to achieve.This conflation of religion and politics poisons Islam itself, too, by overshadowing all the religion’s theological and moral teachings. The Quran’s emphasis on humility and compassion is sidelined by the arrogance and aggressiveness of conflicting groups.
This is not a new problem in Islam. During the seventhcentury leadership of the Prophet Muhammad, whose authority was accepted by all believers, Muslims were a united community. But soon after the prophet’s death, a tension arose that escalated to bloodshed. The issue was not how to interpret the Quran or how to understand the prophet’s lessons. It was about political power: Who — as the caliph, or successor to the prophet — had the right to rule? This political question even pit the prophet’s widow Aisha against his soninlaw Ali. Their followers killed one another by the thousands in the infamous Battle of the Camel in 656. The next year, they fought the even bloodier Battle of Siffin, where followers of Ali and Muawiyah, the governor of Damascus, crossed swords, deepening the divisions that became the SunniShiite split that persists today.
In other words, unlike the early Christians, who were divided into sects primarily through theological disputes about the nature of Christ, early Muslims were divided into sects over political disputes about who should rule them.It is time to undo this conflation of religion and politics. Instead of seeing this politicization of religion as natural — or even, as some Muslims do, something to be proud of — we should see it as a problem that requires a solution.This solution should start with a paradigm shift about the very concept of the “caliphate.” It’s not just that the savage Islamic State has hijacked this concept for its own brutal purposes. The problem goes deeper: Traditional Muslim thought regarded the caliphate as an inherent part of Islam, unintentionally politicizing the faith for centuries. But it was not mandated by either the Quran or the prophet, but instead was a product of the historical, political experience of the Muslim community.
Moreover, once Muslim thought viewed the caliphate as an integral part of the religion, political leaders and Islamic scholars built an authoritarian political tradition around it. As long as the caliph was virtuous and lawabiding, Islamic thinkers obliged Muslims to obey him. This tradition did not consider, however, that virtue was relative, power itself had a corrupting influence and even legitimate rulers could have legitimate opponents.In the mid19th century, the Ottoman Empire, then the seat of the caliphate, took a major step forward in the Muslim political tradition by importing Western liberal norms and institutions. The sultan’s powers were limited, an elected Parliament was established and political parties were allowed. This promising effort, which would make the caliph the head of a Britishstyle democratic monarchy, was only halfsuccessful. It ended when republican Turkey abolished the very institution of the caliphate after World War I.
Not all Islamic thinkers took this line. The 20thcentury scholar Said Nursi saw politics not as a sacred realm, but rather a devilish zone of strife. “I seek refuge in God from Satan and politics,” he wrote. His followers built an Islamic civil society movement in Turkey, asking only religious freedom from the state. Contemporary Muslim academics such as Abdelwahab ElAffendi and Abdullahi Ahmed AnNa’im have articulated powerful Islamic arguments for embracing a liberal secularism that respects religion. They rightly point out that Muslims need secularism to be able to practice their religion as they see fit. I would add that Muslims also need secularism to save religion from serving as handmaiden to unholy wars of domination.
None of this means that Islam, with core values of justice, should be totally blind to politics. Religion can play a constructive role in political life, as when it inspires people to speak truth to power. But when Islam merges with power, or becomes a rallying cry in power struggles, its values begin to fade.
Mustafa Akyol is the author of “Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty,” and a contributing opinion writer.
Mustafa Akyol, New York Times, February , 2016
ISTANBUL —
We Muslims like to believe that ours is “a religion of peace,” but today Islam looks more like a religion of conflict and bloodshed. From the civil wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen to internal tensions in Lebanon and Bahrain, to the dangerous rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Middle East is plagued by intraMuslim strife that seems to go back to the ancient SunniShiite rivalry.
Religion is not actually at the heart of these conflicts — invariably, politics is to blame. But the misuse of Islam and its history makes these political conflicts much worse as parties, governments and militias claim that they are fighting not over power or territory but on behalf of God. And when enemies are viewed as heretics rather than just opponents, peace becomes much harder to achieve.This conflation of religion and politics poisons Islam itself, too, by overshadowing all the religion’s theological and moral teachings. The Quran’s emphasis on humility and compassion is sidelined by the arrogance and aggressiveness of conflicting groups.
This is not a new problem in Islam. During the seventhcentury leadership of the Prophet Muhammad, whose authority was accepted by all believers, Muslims were a united community. But soon after the prophet’s death, a tension arose that escalated to bloodshed. The issue was not how to interpret the Quran or how to understand the prophet’s lessons. It was about political power: Who — as the caliph, or successor to the prophet — had the right to rule? This political question even pit the prophet’s widow Aisha against his soninlaw Ali. Their followers killed one another by the thousands in the infamous Battle of the Camel in 656. The next year, they fought the even bloodier Battle of Siffin, where followers of Ali and Muawiyah, the governor of Damascus, crossed swords, deepening the divisions that became the SunniShiite split that persists today.
In other words, unlike the early Christians, who were divided into sects primarily through theological disputes about the nature of Christ, early Muslims were divided into sects over political disputes about who should rule them.It is time to undo this conflation of religion and politics. Instead of seeing this politicization of religion as natural — or even, as some Muslims do, something to be proud of — we should see it as a problem that requires a solution.This solution should start with a paradigm shift about the very concept of the “caliphate.” It’s not just that the savage Islamic State has hijacked this concept for its own brutal purposes. The problem goes deeper: Traditional Muslim thought regarded the caliphate as an inherent part of Islam, unintentionally politicizing the faith for centuries. But it was not mandated by either the Quran or the prophet, but instead was a product of the historical, political experience of the Muslim community.
Moreover, once Muslim thought viewed the caliphate as an integral part of the religion, political leaders and Islamic scholars built an authoritarian political tradition around it. As long as the caliph was virtuous and lawabiding, Islamic thinkers obliged Muslims to obey him. This tradition did not consider, however, that virtue was relative, power itself had a corrupting influence and even legitimate rulers could have legitimate opponents.In the mid19th century, the Ottoman Empire, then the seat of the caliphate, took a major step forward in the Muslim political tradition by importing Western liberal norms and institutions. The sultan’s powers were limited, an elected Parliament was established and political parties were allowed. This promising effort, which would make the caliph the head of a Britishstyle democratic monarchy, was only halfsuccessful. It ended when republican Turkey abolished the very institution of the caliphate after World War I.
Not all Islamic thinkers took this line. The 20thcentury scholar Said Nursi saw politics not as a sacred realm, but rather a devilish zone of strife. “I seek refuge in God from Satan and politics,” he wrote. His followers built an Islamic civil society movement in Turkey, asking only religious freedom from the state. Contemporary Muslim academics such as Abdelwahab ElAffendi and Abdullahi Ahmed AnNa’im have articulated powerful Islamic arguments for embracing a liberal secularism that respects religion. They rightly point out that Muslims need secularism to be able to practice their religion as they see fit. I would add that Muslims also need secularism to save religion from serving as handmaiden to unholy wars of domination.
None of this means that Islam, with core values of justice, should be totally blind to politics. Religion can play a constructive role in political life, as when it inspires people to speak truth to power. But when Islam merges with power, or becomes a rallying cry in power struggles, its values begin to fade.
Mustafa Akyol is the author of “Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty,” and a contributing opinion writer.
The Words that Killed Medieval Jews
The Words That Killed Medieval Jews
By SARA LIPTON DEC. 11, 2015
DO harsh words lead to violent acts? At a moment when hate speech seems to be proliferating, it’s a question worth asking.
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch recently expressed worry that heated antiMuslim political rhetoric would spark an increase in attacks against Muslims. Some claim that last month’s mass shooting in Colorado Springs was provoked by Carly Fiorina’s assertion that Planned Parenthood was “harvesting baby parts”; Mrs. Fiorina countered that language could not be held responsible for the deeds of a “deranged” man. Similar debates have been occasioned by the beating of a homeless Hispanic man in Boston, allegedly inspired by Donald J. Trump’s antiimmigration rhetoric, and by the shooting deaths of police officers in California, Texas and Illinois, which some have attributed to antipolice sentiment expressed at Black Lives Matter protests.
No historian can claim to have insight into the motives of living individuals. But history does show that a heightening of rhetoric against a certain group can incite violence against that group, even when no violence is called for. When a group is labeled hostile and brutal, its members are more likely to be treated with hostility and brutality. Visual images are particularly powerful, spurring actions that may well be unintended by the images’ creators.\The experience of Jews in medieval Europe offers a sobering example.Official Christian theology and policy toward Jews remained largely unchanged in the Middle Ages. Over roughly 1,000 years, Christianity condemned the major tenets of Judaism and held “the Jews” responsible for the death of Jesus. But the terms in which these ideas were expressed changed radically.
Before about 1100, Christian devotions focused on Christ’s divine nature and triumph over death. Images of the crucifixion showed Jesus alive and healthy on the cross. For this reason, his killers were not major focuses in Christian thought. No antiJewish polemics were composed during these centuries; artworks portrayed his executioners not as Jews, but as Roman soldiers (which was more historically accurate) or as yokels. Though there are scattered records of antiJewish episodes like forced conversions, we find no consistent pattern of antiJewish violence.
In the decades around 1100, a shift in the focus of Christian veneration brought Jews to the fore. In an effort to spur compassion among Christian worshipers, preachers and artists began to dwell in vivid detail on Christ’s pain. Christ morphed from triumphant divine judge to suffering human savior. A parallel tactic, designed to foster a sense of Christian unity, was to emphasize the cruelty of his supposed tormentors, the Jews.
Partly out of identification with this newly vulnerable Christ, partly in response to recent Turkish military successes, and partly because an internal reform movement was questioning fundamentals of faith, Christians began to see themselves as threatened, too. In 1084 the pope wrote that Christianity “has fallen under the scorn, not only of the Devil, but of Jews, Saracens, and pagans.” The “Goad of Love,” a retelling of the crucifixion that is considered the first antiJewish Passion treatise, was written around 115580. It describes Jews as consumed with sadism and blood lust. They were seen as enemies not only of Christ, but also of living Christians; it was at this time that Jews began to be accused of ritually sacrificing Christian children.
Ferocious antiJewish rhetoric began to permeate sermons, plays and polemical texts. Jews were labeled demonic and greedy. In one diatribe, the head of the most influential monastery in Christendom thundered at the Jews: “Why are you not called brute animals? Why not beasts?” Images began to portray Jews as hooknosed caricatures of evil.
The first records of largescale antiJewish violence coincide with this rhetorical shift. Although the pope who preached the First Crusade had called only for an “armed pilgrimage” to retake Jerusalem from Muslims, the first victims of the Crusade were not the Turkish rulers of Jerusalem but Jewish residents of the German Rhineland. Contemporary accounts record the crusaders asking why, if they were traveling to a distant land to “kill and to subjugate all those kingdoms that do not believe in the Crucified,” they should not also attack “the Jews, who killed and crucified him?”
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jews were massacred in towns where they had peacefully resided for generations. At no point did Christian authorities promote or consent to the violence. Christian theology, which applied the Psalm verse “Slay them not” to Jews, and insisted that Jews were not to be killed for their religion, had not changed. Clerics were at a loss to explain the attacks. A churchman from a nearby town attributed the massacres to “some error of mind.”
But not all the Rhineland killers were crazy. The crusaders set out in the Easter season. Both crusade and Easter preaching stirred up rage about the crucifixion and fear of hostile and threatening enemies. It is hardly surprising that armed and belligerent bands turned such rhetoric into antiJewish action.
For the rest of the Middle Ages, this pattern was repeated: Preaching about the crusades, proclamations of Jewish “enmity” or unsubstantiated anti Jewish accusations were followed by outbreaks of antiJewish violence, which the same shocked authorities that had aroused Christians’ passions were then unable to restrain. We see this in the Rhineland during the Second Crusade (1146), in England during the Third Crusade (1190), in Franconia in 1298, in many locales following the Black Death in 1348, and in Iberia in 1391.
Sometimes the perpetrators were zealous holy warriors, sometimes they were opportunistic business rivals, sometimes they were parents grieving for children lost to accident or crime, or fearful of the ravages of a new disease.
Some may well have been insane. But sane or deranged, they did not pick their victims in a vacuum. It was repeated and dehumanizing excoriation that led those medieval Christians to attack people who had long been their neighbors.
Today’s purveyors of antiMuslim, antiimmigrant, antipolice and anti abortion rhetoric and imagery may not for a moment intend to provoke violence against Muslims, immigrants, police officers and health care providers. But in the light of history, they should not be shocked when that violence comes to pass.
Sara Lipton, a professor of history at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, is the author of “Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of AntiJewish Iconography.”
© 2015 The New York Times Company
Claim by the Islamic State for attack on Paris
For an insight into the thinking of the Islamic State (ISIL) read the claim of responsibility for the attacks on Paris, the translation of which follows below. Note in particular the theological justification for the attack
Islamic State
France
Urgent: Statement about the Blessed Paris Invasion on the French Crusaders
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
The Almighty said: “And they thought that their fortresses would defend them from Allah! But Allah's (Torment) reached them from a place whereof they expected it not, and He cast terror into their hearts so that they destroyed their own dwellings with their own hands and the hands of the believers. Then take admonition, O you with eyes (to see).” [Al-Hashr: 2]
In a blessed attack for which Allah facilitated the causes for success, a faithful group of the soldiers of the Caliphate, may Allah dignify it and make it victorious, launched out, targeting the capital of prostitution and obscenity, the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe, Paris… Youths who divorced the world and went to their enemy seeking to be killed in the cause of Allah, in support of His religion and His Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, and his charges, and to put the nose of His enemies in the ground. So they were honest with Allah, we consider them thusly, and Allah conquered through their hands and cast in the hearts of the Crusaders horror in the middle of their land, where eight brothers wrapped in explosive belts and armed with machine rifles, targeted sites that were accurately chosen in the heart of the capital of France, including the Stade de France during the match between the Crusader German and French teams, where the fool of France, Francois Hollande, was present.
[They also targeted] the Bataclan Conference Center, where hundreds of apostates had gathered in a profligate prostitution party, and other areas in the 10th and 11th and 18th [arrondissements] and in a coordinated fashion. So Paris shook under their feet, and its streets were tight upon them, and the result of the attacks was the death of no less than 100 Crusaders and the wounding of more than those, and unto Allah is all praise and gratitude.
Allah had granted our brothers their wish and gave them what they loved, for they detonated their belts in the gatherings of the disbelievers after running out of ammunition, we ask Allah to accept them among the martyrs and make us follow them.
Let France and those who walk in its path know that they will remain on the top of the list of targets of the Islamic State, and that the smell of death will never leave their noses as long as they lead the convoy of the Crusader campaign, and dare to curse our Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, and are proud of fighting Islam in France and striking the Muslims in the land of the Caliphate with their planes, which did not help them at all in the streets of Paris and its rotten alleys. This attack is the first of the storm and a warning to those who wish to learn.
Allah is Great
“But honor, power and glory belong to Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad), and to the believers, but the hypocrites know not.” [From Al-Munafiqun: 8]
From https://ent.siteintelgroup.com/Statements/is-claims-paris-attacks-warns-operation-is-first-of-the-storm.html ------------
Islamic State
France
Urgent: Statement about the Blessed Paris Invasion on the French Crusaders
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
The Almighty said: “And they thought that their fortresses would defend them from Allah! But Allah's (Torment) reached them from a place whereof they expected it not, and He cast terror into their hearts so that they destroyed their own dwellings with their own hands and the hands of the believers. Then take admonition, O you with eyes (to see).” [Al-Hashr: 2]
In a blessed attack for which Allah facilitated the causes for success, a faithful group of the soldiers of the Caliphate, may Allah dignify it and make it victorious, launched out, targeting the capital of prostitution and obscenity, the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe, Paris… Youths who divorced the world and went to their enemy seeking to be killed in the cause of Allah, in support of His religion and His Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, and his charges, and to put the nose of His enemies in the ground. So they were honest with Allah, we consider them thusly, and Allah conquered through their hands and cast in the hearts of the Crusaders horror in the middle of their land, where eight brothers wrapped in explosive belts and armed with machine rifles, targeted sites that were accurately chosen in the heart of the capital of France, including the Stade de France during the match between the Crusader German and French teams, where the fool of France, Francois Hollande, was present.
[They also targeted] the Bataclan Conference Center, where hundreds of apostates had gathered in a profligate prostitution party, and other areas in the 10th and 11th and 18th [arrondissements] and in a coordinated fashion. So Paris shook under their feet, and its streets were tight upon them, and the result of the attacks was the death of no less than 100 Crusaders and the wounding of more than those, and unto Allah is all praise and gratitude.
Allah had granted our brothers their wish and gave them what they loved, for they detonated their belts in the gatherings of the disbelievers after running out of ammunition, we ask Allah to accept them among the martyrs and make us follow them.
Let France and those who walk in its path know that they will remain on the top of the list of targets of the Islamic State, and that the smell of death will never leave their noses as long as they lead the convoy of the Crusader campaign, and dare to curse our Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, and are proud of fighting Islam in France and striking the Muslims in the land of the Caliphate with their planes, which did not help them at all in the streets of Paris and its rotten alleys. This attack is the first of the storm and a warning to those who wish to learn.
Allah is Great
“But honor, power and glory belong to Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad), and to the believers, but the hypocrites know not.” [From Al-Munafiqun: 8]
From https://ent.siteintelgroup.com/Statements/is-claims-paris-attacks-warns-operation-is-first-of-the-storm.html ------------
"Are the Unitarian Universalists Christians?
At a recent Open Forum, a member shared a column, "Everyday Religious Questions," from the Winston Salem Journal . For the answer to "Are Unitarians Universalists Christians?", go here and scroll to bottom or article..
How Jesus Became God
Our Fellowship has watched and discussed one of the video lectures of Bart D Ehrman entitled "How Jesus Became God". To see the list of 24 videos (30 minutes each) go here.
Recently a local newspaper, the Winston Salem Journal,(8.22.15) featured a question and answer exchange which addressed this topic. Read it below. Also, Paul has shared a review of Edhrman's book which contains similar chapters with specific critical comments on the video we have seen and discussed. To read the review go here.
Everyday religious questions: Is Jesus Christ God, too?
Winston Salem Journal, 8.22.2015
Posted: Friday, August 21, 2015 5:37 pm
Earl Crow/Columnist
Q: Patrick wrote asking about the divinity of Jesus Christ. He presented the same basic reasoning employed by the noted English scholar and lay theologian, C.S. Lewis. In 1941, Lewis delivered a series of radio lectures which later (1952) were published under the title “Mere Christianity.” It became a very popular book in which he argued that Jesus could not be relegated to just a great moral teacher. Either he was God as he claimed or he was a lunatic akin to a man who believes he is a poached egg or he was the “Devil of Hell.”
Answer: Jesus did accept the term “Son of God,” and he seemed to have had a special relationship with God the Father. He called him “Abba” meaning, “Daddy.” Although Jesus claimed to be one with the Father, I know of no passage in which he uses the words, “I am God.” Many people cite passages from the Bible to prove Jesus to be God. One of the verses used is in Acts 20:28, KJV, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with His own blood.”
Does this passage mean that God purchased with his blood indicating that they are one? Another verse is in Titus 2:13 KJV, “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glories appearing of the Great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” This verse seems to name Jesus as the Great God. What is true is that Jesus consistently subordinated himself to the Father as a Son. After considerable debate in the early Christian Church, the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) declared Jesus, the Son, to be fully and eternally divine, of the same substance with the Father.
Since then, Christians have adopted this action as an article of faith. As Christianity spread across the Mediterranean world, it adopted many of the concepts and the terminology of the Greek philosophical world. It began to employ non-Biblical terms such as “same substance,” “hypostatic union,” and “transubstantiation.”
I believe the question of who was Jesus is paramount to the Christian faith, but I am not comfortable with being limited to the options given by C.S. Lewis. In appreciation of Lewis, one of my favorite quotes comes from him: “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” But to declare that Jesus was either this or that is too restrictive. I think the issue is not so much a question of Jesus’ nature, but more of who is He in your life and how do you respond to the lessons he taught.
Recently a local newspaper, the Winston Salem Journal,(8.22.15) featured a question and answer exchange which addressed this topic. Read it below. Also, Paul has shared a review of Edhrman's book which contains similar chapters with specific critical comments on the video we have seen and discussed. To read the review go here.
Everyday religious questions: Is Jesus Christ God, too?
Winston Salem Journal, 8.22.2015
Posted: Friday, August 21, 2015 5:37 pm
Earl Crow/Columnist
Q: Patrick wrote asking about the divinity of Jesus Christ. He presented the same basic reasoning employed by the noted English scholar and lay theologian, C.S. Lewis. In 1941, Lewis delivered a series of radio lectures which later (1952) were published under the title “Mere Christianity.” It became a very popular book in which he argued that Jesus could not be relegated to just a great moral teacher. Either he was God as he claimed or he was a lunatic akin to a man who believes he is a poached egg or he was the “Devil of Hell.”
Answer: Jesus did accept the term “Son of God,” and he seemed to have had a special relationship with God the Father. He called him “Abba” meaning, “Daddy.” Although Jesus claimed to be one with the Father, I know of no passage in which he uses the words, “I am God.” Many people cite passages from the Bible to prove Jesus to be God. One of the verses used is in Acts 20:28, KJV, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with His own blood.”
Does this passage mean that God purchased with his blood indicating that they are one? Another verse is in Titus 2:13 KJV, “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glories appearing of the Great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” This verse seems to name Jesus as the Great God. What is true is that Jesus consistently subordinated himself to the Father as a Son. After considerable debate in the early Christian Church, the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) declared Jesus, the Son, to be fully and eternally divine, of the same substance with the Father.
Since then, Christians have adopted this action as an article of faith. As Christianity spread across the Mediterranean world, it adopted many of the concepts and the terminology of the Greek philosophical world. It began to employ non-Biblical terms such as “same substance,” “hypostatic union,” and “transubstantiation.”
I believe the question of who was Jesus is paramount to the Christian faith, but I am not comfortable with being limited to the options given by C.S. Lewis. In appreciation of Lewis, one of my favorite quotes comes from him: “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” But to declare that Jesus was either this or that is too restrictive. I think the issue is not so much a question of Jesus’ nature, but more of who is He in your life and how do you respond to the lessons he taught.
The Concept of Grace
"Grace is an ancient notion, and it has a kind of universal hold on us — whether we’re religious or not, many of us relate to the idea of grace as a comfort to the soul, a form of love, a way to get through difficulty.
Being human can hurt. It hurts because we are — most of us — compassionate creatures. We are linked to one another in the way that animals, . . . are not. We can hear about a senseless shooting in a church miles away and feel our hearts drop on the floor."
Consider the comments on "grace" below by Sarah Kaufman on the occasion of the Charleston massacre.
Why Obama’s singing of ‘Amazing Grace’ is so powerful
By Sarah Kaufman , Washington Post, June 26
“This whole week, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of grace,” said President Obama today, just before he broke into
song at the funeral for South Carolina State Sen. Clementa Pinckney, a pastor killed along with eight others in last
week’s Charleston, S.C., church shooting. The song Obama sang, of course, was “Amazing Grace.”
Obama isn’t the first president to speak about the concept of grace. One of my favorite quotes about grace is by John
F. Kennedy, who said, “I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.” But this was an
exceptional moment, when a president spoke at length about something so tender, so ephemeral and so difficult to
describe that we don’t ever talk much about it. Obama chose this occasion for a surprisingly profound exploration of
what grace means here, today, and for all of us.
We all come to the word “grace” with different perceptions. But whether we think of divine love, or easy, elegant
movement, or gentle and welcoming behavior, at the root of these ideas is a sense of joyous giving — a giving of
oneself to something greater. In his eulogy, Obama directed us to the graceful generosity that characterized
Pinckney’s life.
“Reverend Pinckney … conducted himself quietly and kindly and diligently,” said the president, speaking on the
College of Charleston’s campus. “He encouraged progress not by pushing his ideas alone but by seeking out your
ideas, partnering with you to make things happen.
“He was full of empathy and fellow feeling, able to walk in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes,”
Obama said. That’s a perfect description of grace. As spiritual leaders, philosophers and humanitarians through time
have shown us, being able to feel what others feel, see things from their perspective, is at the essence of grace. You
forget yourself and reach out to others. (Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela: all experts at getting out of
their own heads and making deep connections with others.)
That sense of physically reaching out, leaning toward other people, is embedded in the word “grace.” We get it from
the Latin gratia, which came from the Greek charis, which originally meant “favor,” as in a gift or act of kindness that
one person extends to another, in a gesture of offering.
It’s no wonder, Obama continued, that one of Pinckney’s Senate colleagues remembered Pinckney as “the most
gentle of the 46 of us, the best of the 46 of us.”
“What a good man,” he added. “Sometimes I think that’s the best thing to hope for when you’re eulogized, after all
the words and recitations and resumes are read, to just say somebody was a good man.”
Obama expanded his meditation on grace to include a wider circle of goodness and giving. He spoke of “the grace of
the families who lost loved ones; the grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons; the grace
described in one of my favorite hymnals, the one we all know — Amazing Grace.
“According to the Christian tradition,” he continued, “grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something
we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God.” This is true of many other religions — Judaism and the Islamic tradition, for example — that hold dear the idea of freely given compassion as a divine quality.
I’m fascinated by grace, and I’ve written a forthcoming book about it, “The Art of Grace.” This is why I was so
astounded to hear Obama sing “Amazing Grace” and read his eloquent words on a subject that just isn’t discussed
and explored in such a public way anymore. He’s right to bring it up, to show us how grace can be perceived, and that
it is worth noticing. Grace is an ancient notion, and it has a kind of universal hold on us — whether we’re religious or
not, many of us relate to the idea of grace as a comfort to the soul, a form of love, a way to get through difficulty.
Being human can hurt. It hurts because we are — most of us — compassionate creatures. We are linked to one
another in the way that animals, say, are not. We can hear about a senseless shooting in a church miles away and feel
our hearts drop on the floor.
But if we didn’t feel this pain, we wouldn’t also feel the comfort. Perhaps this explains why “Amazing Grace,” surely
one of the best known songs in the English speaking world, is so uplifting. I find it has an uncannily graceful way of
blending a verbal message of hope with the living sensation of it. I can’t hear that song without feeling some stir of
longing or resolve.
Resolve, in fact, is what Obama so expertly tapped into, in the most powerful part of his eulogy. I don’t mean his
singing, which was quite lovely, or his voicing of a hope that we may all be worthy of God’s grace. The capstone was
the way he expressed his final wish: a wish for God’s grace on the United States of America–pausing to place
emphasis on “united.”
That word had a force to make you shiver, because of the way Obama had led up to it. One man’s generosity, one
community’s sacrifice and forgiveness, one overarching power urging us to “find our best selves” — and now one
nation, united in all of those: generosity, sacrifice, love.
For that is indeed the most amazing grace, the kind that can bring us together in the shared experience of our own
humanity. Even — and especially — when being human hurts.
Sarah Kaufman received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She is the author of THE ART
OF GRACE: On Moving Well Through Life, coming in Nov. 2015. She has been The
Washington Post's dance critic since 1996, and after logging time in opera houses, black
boxes, and dive bars, what moves her most is seeing grace happen where she least
expects it.
Selma: As Told by a Unitarian Minister
In Memoriam
Unitarian Universalist Martyrs
James Reeb, January 1, 1927-March 10, 1965, Selma
Viola Liuzzo, April 11, 1925-March 24, 1965, On Road from Selma to Montgomery
“ James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston who had come for the second march was attacked with a club in front of the Silver Moon Café, a hangout for whites. Being turned away by the small local hospital in Selma (reported to be full at the time), Reeb's companions were forced to take him to University Hospital in Birmingham, two hours away. Reeb died on Thursday, March 11 at University Hospital with his wife by his side.”
March 11, 1965
James Reeb (January 1, 1927 — March 11, 1965) was a Unitarian_Universalist minister from Boston, Massachusetts who, while marching for civil rights in Selma, Alabama, was beaten to death by segregationists He was 38 years old.
James Reeb was born in Wichita, Kansas. As a Unitarian_Universalist minister, Reeb was active in the civil rights movement, and encouraged his parishioners to do the same. With his wife and four children, he lived in poor black neighborhoods where he felt he could do the most good. Until a few months before his death, he had been Assistant Minister at All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, D.C.
A member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Reeb took part in the Selma to Montgomery protest march in 1965. While in Selma on March 9, Reeb was attacked by a white mob armed with clubs, which inflicted massive head injuries. He died in a Birmingham hospital two days later. His death resulted in a national outcry against the activities of white racists in the Deep South, although some expressed indignation that it took the death of a white man to incite such a national outcry. This is to be compared with the case of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot by police in Selma two weeks earlier while protecting his mother from a beating; his case attracted much less national attention.
President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the events in Selma "an American tragedy," which, he said, should strengthen people's determination "to bring full and equal and exact justice to all of our people." Johnson's voting rights proposal reached Congress the Monday after Reeb's death.
March 25, 1965
Viola Gregg Liuzzo (April 11, 1925 – March 25, 1965) was a civil rights activist from the U.S. state of Michigan and mother of five, who was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members after the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama. One of the Klansmen in the car from which the shots were fired was a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant.[1] After her death, she was the subject of a smear campaign by the FBI. Liuzzo's name is one of those inscribed on a civil rights memorial in the state capital. She died at the age of 39.
The First Crusade
"THE first victims of the First Crusade, inspired in 1096 by the supposedly sacred mission of retaking Jerusalem from Muslims, were European Jews. Anyone who considers it religiously and politically transgressive to compare the behavior of medieval Christian soldiers to modern Islamic terrorism might find it enlightening to read this bloody story, as told in both Hebrew and Christian chronicles."
read the article here.
read the article here.
Three practical ideals
for getting through the day
1. Want what you have;
2. Do what you can; and
3. Be who you are.
From Forest Church's sermon, "How to Make the Most of
Hard Times",
"Our Liberal Faith"
" Unitarian Universalist Faith is not a believe
whatever you choose to believe faith, rather it is a faith in which each of us
is free to believe what we are each compelled to believe based upon a free and
disciplined search for truth…"
Excerpt taken from UU Faith Sermon by D. Doreion Colter,
for getting through the day
1. Want what you have;
2. Do what you can; and
3. Be who you are.
From Forest Church's sermon, "How to Make the Most of
Hard Times",
"Our Liberal Faith"
" Unitarian Universalist Faith is not a believe
whatever you choose to believe faith, rather it is a faith in which each of us
is free to believe what we are each compelled to believe based upon a free and
disciplined search for truth…"
Excerpt taken from UU Faith Sermon by D. Doreion Colter,
For Insights Consider Articles BelowFollowing below are articles offering "points of view". To read, hit the links provided.
Mega Churches: Why?$600,000 in one Sunday's collection plate! Read the article, "$600K taken from safe at Osteen's megachurch".
Alone, yet not Alone“Alone, Yet Not Alone,”
David Brooks, New York Times, January 28, 2014, "Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described one experience of faith in his book “God in Search of Man”: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement...get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for gran, ted. Everything is phenomenal. ...To be spiritual is to be amazed.” And yet Heschel understood that the faith expressed by many, even many who are inwardly conflicted, is often dull, oppressive and insipid — a religiosity in which “faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion.” To read more, go here. The Way to Produce a PersonFor a fascinating treatment of how to consider one's purpose in life, go here.
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Pope Francis and the argument for compassionate capitalism
One of the unpleasant side effects of modern medicine — experienced during a recent convalescence — is the omnipresence of television. Its controls are built into your hospital bed, just beside the nurse’s call button. The screen hovers over your head like an IV — drip, drip, drip — distracting, anesthetizing.
This prolonged exposure served to demonstrate how different the holiday shopping season is from the season of Advent. By tradition, Advent is a time of quiet waiting and reflection, looking forward to a fulfillment we can’t cause or hasten. It culminates in a pregnant teenager saying: “Be it to me according to your word.” The shopping season — as evidenced by loud, repetitive commercials — is all about seizing the objects of our desires. Christmas songs are turned into commercial jingles. “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” in the gospel according to J.C. Penney, becomes, “Do you see what Liz sees? A jacket, a skirt and peep-toe shoes. She’ll be rocking the peep-toe shoes.” A philosophy that finds meaning in consumption is so common as to be hardly noticeable. But Pope Francis has noticed. In his recent, rambling, rambunctious apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel,” he (among many other points) criticizes “a deified market” and “a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.” He is particularly tough on ideologies that assume economic growth is a sufficient social goal and that would deny to governments an active role in humanizing free markets. Some American conservatives, issuing a different sort of papal bull, have accused the pope of “pure Marxism” and being “the Catholic Church’s Obama.” In the process, they are demonstrating how ideology can become a consuming substitute for faith. Defenders of market economics — and I count myself one — should recognize that global capitalism is the most powerful force of modernity, with a mixed influence on traditional ideals and institutions. It has taken hundreds of millions of people out of poverty; it has also encouraged individualism and loosened bonds of family and community. It has produced innovation and extended lives. But in the absence of certain social conditions — the rule of law, equal opportunity, effective public administration — capitalism can result in caste-like inequality. As my colleague E.J. Dionne Jr. points out, the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere naturally has a more skeptical take on globalization. He empathizes with the marginalized: exploited migrants, bonded laborers, people in sexual slavery. This is the dark side of markets — the sale of life and dignity. And Francis vividly warns against the “globalization of indifference.” The pope is hardly a neo-Marxist. He talks of business as “a noble vocation.” He rejects a “welfare mentality.” But he argues that market outcomes are not always identical to social justice and calls for public “investment in efforts to help the slow, the weak or the less talented to find opportunities in life.” Those surprised that Catholic social thought is incompatible with libertarianism haven’t been paying attention — for decades. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI said the same. And all warned of the danger when a mode of economic exchange becomes a mind-set. Absent a moral commitment to human dignity, justice and compassion, capitalism is conducive to materialism, individualism and selfishness. It is a system that depends on virtues it does not create. In “The Joy of the Gospel,” Francis returns to the defining theme of his papacy: the priority of the person. Human beings have an essential value and nature. They can’t be reduced to economic objects or to the sum of their desires. “We do not live better,” he says, “when we flee, hide, refuse to share, stop giving and lock ourselves up in our own comforts. Such a life is nothing less than slow suicide.” The pope contends that individualism can dull us to the requirements of justice, and that prosperity can be a prison. In making this case, Francis is demonstrating that Christian faith is not an ideology; it stands in judgment of all ideologies, including the ones we justify in the name of freedom. This should not be surprising during Advent, given the revolution that arrived, unexpectedly, among the poor and humble. Nothing said by Francis is more radical than the words of that teenage girl long ago: God “has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he has sent away empty.” Michael Gerson, Washington Post December 10, 2013 4 in 5 in US Near PovertyTo read about this, go here.
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