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Book Share: “Rescuing the Bible from Frundamentalism
I had to take a break from all of my reading do focus on school, but some events over the past week have taken that pressure off of me (I may delve into those at a later date, but not now) and I’m again able to spend my free time reading for pleasure.
This new found free time ended up in a trip to Borders where I got a few books for the next few weeks. The first one I am diving into is "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" by John Shelby Spong. While I thought that "Misquoting Jesus" would be the most challenging book I ever read in regards to the way I look at the Bible, this book takes it several steps farther. I’m talking a complete smack in the face on how I think about things.
If you enjoyed “Misquoting Jesus” then I’ll say you certainly need to read through “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism,” and even if you don’t agree with all of it (I certainly don’t even a hundred pages into the book) it’s a needed read.
For now here are a few of my favorite quotes thus far.
"Those whose religious security is rooted in the literal Bible do not want that security distrubed. They are not happy when facts challenge their biblical understanding or when nuances in the text are introduced or when they are forced to deal with either contradictions or changing insights. The bible, as they understand it, shares in the permanence and certainty of God, convinces them that they are right, and justifies the enormous fear and even negativity that lie so close ot the surface in fundamentalistic religion. For biblical literalists, there is always an enemy to be defeated in mortal combat."
"There is always a danger in believing that you and your people are somehow God’s specially chosen. The obvious corollary is that your enemies are God’s specifically “unchosen,” and very soon they are thought of as God’s rejected…. Every nation, including the United States, when it operates under a theory of divine election or manifest destiny, can be especially distorted.”
"Unless theological truth can be separated from pre-scientific understandings and rethought in ways consistent with our understanding of reality, the Christian faith with be reduced to one more ancient mythology that will take its place alongside the religions of Mount Olympus. Those who insist on biblical literalism thus become accomplices in bringing about the death of the Christianity they so deeply love. Ironic though it may seem, the success of fundamentalism in many ways guarantees the death of the very things these Christian folk affirm.”
pluralism
For starters, I should lay out my beliefs on heaven/hell. I’m not a literal interpretation guy, I don’t think that there is actually a lake of fire that souls will burn in eternal conscious torment. I believe there is such thing as separation from God, but don’t necessarily think that the choice has to be made here. I think I’ll be spending quite a bit of time with some Hindus, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, members of many other religious in the life after death, and as Wright terms it “The life after life after death.”
Now that that’s out of the way… I’m not a pluralist either, at least not a religious pluralist. In fact, I’m downright against religious pluralism, at least in the sense that there are many ways to heaven. Let’s face it, the notion that any way is OK is a complete crock of contrived bull manure. I think there is only one way to heaven, or the New Earth after heaven (again if your an N.T. Wright fan), I think the whole “Way, Truth, and Life, No one comes to the Father but by Me” thing is true.
So to recap- I think that pretty much everyone gets to be in “Heaven” but I think the only way to “Heaven” is Jesus. (Please forgive my use of the quotes around Heaven, that whole issue is murky) So to repeat myself, I am not a religious pluralist.
Now, in case you missed it, a recent Pew Study shows that 70% of Americans (please note it says Americans here, not Evangelicals) believe that there are many paths to heaven (Religious Pluralism), and “57% of Evangelical Christians were willing to accept that theirs might not be the only path to salvation.”
This is actually bad news to me. In my opinion, we need to understand other religions, work with other religions, learn from other religions, but fully understand that Jesus is the only way to into “Heaven.” Some may say this is a good thing, and I hope they are saying it because it shows that Evangelicals and Americans in general are more accepting of other religions, but we need to understand that deeper than that acceptance is what appears to me as a weakening of our religious understandings.
I don’t want to come across as Fundamentalist or even Evangelical here, but I do what to emphatically state that we need to understand that if we believe the narrative of the Bible to be true, than Jesus is the only way of restoration, and that way is not narrow in the sense that not many people will be allowed through (as some Bible thumpers beleive) but is narrow in the sense that it is the only way.
Forgive me for the repetition, but I take this issue quite seriously, and I feel like it just shows another way that the church as we know it is failing to provide any sort of solid theology for the laeity to understand the gravity of “salvation theology.”
(HT: Blake Huggins)
oh politick
Well, I finally decided to submit myself to a senatorial campaign for the ‘08 election cycle. One of my senators, Saxby Chamblis, certainly does not stand for many of the thigns I stand for. He is a member of the now infamous Cobourn Seven, and it’s reprehensible to me to vote against AIDs releif. He has also scored a whopping 0 on environmental issues (wiki), which is another major issue to me. Then take into his voting record on the war (pro), gay rights (anti) and universal health care (anti), then it’s really a no-brainer that I’m voting against him.
So, where does that leave me in the area of who to vote for? Well, after a few hours of research (yes only hours, but you can’t do that much research on smaller campaigns with essentially grassroots challengers), I’m going with Rand Knight.
Pro-environment, pro-fair trade, pro-universal health care, so he’s got three wins there. Really a lot of his rhetoric is in line with where I stand, and I think we need a democrat from Georgia to help balance out these things.
I just got an e-mail from his staff asking if I can do phone bank calls. I’m not a huge fan of that, but we’ll see. I’m definitely gonna drive down to their office and pick up some literature to look over, but I’m going to assume that it won’t say much more than what’s on his site (which is a lot).
The only thing I’m worried about is his lack of name recognition, the CEO of the largest county in Georgia (who knew they had CEO’s of counties btw) is also running int he primaries, and if we’re going off name recognition (which happens all the freaking time) then the CEO has a better shot.
We shall see, I’ll keep you posted.
the sbc (part deux)
So, two more news stories came out today regarding the SBC, and I thought I’d address them both. (USA Today & AJC)
In the USA today article, Frank Page, who had been trying to reform the party during his term, was quoted saying:
“I have admonished — lovingly but firmly — our convention not to get too close to any political party, parties change. I think we need to stay close to issues, and not hold allegiance to political parties.”
Which I must applaud. Actually, the more I read about Page and the changes he *tried* to bring, the more I like the guy. Page himself has even met with Obama, and says he will not blindly hold to either political party. I think that’s great advice that we can all learn from. I do fear that I may fall onto the democratic side of things, if the republic side continues to be resoundly pro-war, but thats a tangent for another post.
Anyways, contrast the above quote with this snippet from the AJC article:
The appointments Hunt will make will define whether he plans to hew the party line or open the leadership up to those outside the traditional circle of power, Key said.
Hunt said, “We went through 12 years of conservative resurgence, which I think was wonderful.
So, I am again concerned with the types of political moves the party will make. One point I forgot to mention yesterday was that Georgia’s Governor is a member (and Sunday School teacher) of Johnny Hunt’s church, which should shed a bit more light on how political they are.
So Blake asked yesterday if I thought that Johnny would “roll back the clock” on things like climate change, and I’ll answer “No” to that. I think that there is too much pressure globally to ignore climate change. Instead, I think that Johnny will increase the SBC’s social justice program, these two paragraphs from the USA Today article clues you in on that:
His church sponsors numerous outreaches into its Cherokee County community beyond the evangelism that has defined Southern Baptists. It has a food pantry, a ministry to burned-out pastors, English classes for immigrants and numerous ways to reach out to young people. In October, the church plans a three-day drive that will include free food and health care for the needy and it will send volunteers in the community to repair homes and clean up public spaces.
Hunt calls the program Loving Loud and wants to inspire the convention with it as well.
So, we’ll watch and wait to see how this all works out. I’m hopeful (about the social aspect), yet just a little bit worried (about the politics like homosexuality, and the right to buy alcohol on Sunday).
a thought on the sbc
So, Johnny Hunt has been announced as the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention. This interested me greatly, considering I’ve both been a member of an SBC church (note the alliterated B’s on the website), and attended Johnny’s church (I wasn’t a member there though, if that matters), in fact, I literally live less than a mile from Johnny’s church. So, I know just a bit about both of these organizations, and I’ll say I was a little shocked when I read the announcement in the AJC this morning (link), apparently the AJC’s opinions mirrored my own.
Josh Brown had made mention, a few months ago, that the SBC is in serious decline, and made the point of poor mode/method as the cause of this, and I must say that I agree with him. However, seeing the growing number of New Reformers (or as the AJC article calls them, young reformers) I had hoped that a fresh breath would be given to the SBC (and all baptists for that fact). I know several progressive steps had already been taken, namely the mention of global climate change as a large issue of our time, and thought that perhaps the organization was changing.
Well, with this appointment, I’m pretty sure I’m wrong.
Seriously, I remember the few services I attended at FBCW (Johnny Hunt’s church), there was always some sort of fundamentalist political overtone (please note, I’m not knocking the political overtones in services, I would likely discuss politics were I to ever step up to a pulpit). The two large issues I remember that were brought up are gay rights and abolitionism eerr… Sunday Alchohol Sales. I remember being told that if we were to vote Yes to Sunday Alcohol Sales our nation would fall even farther into moral decay. As far as gay marriage goes, I only remember being told that we needed to support the constitutional amendment in our state (Georgia) that would prohibit gay marriage from being legal.
Now, there are several good things that go on at FBCW. They have a, if I may use the term, kick-ass homeless help program, complete with both training (for the homeless) and I think nearly daily meals (they travel down to Atlanta to do so). They also have a program to help ministers who have in some way screwed up (affairs, stealing, etc) and are more often than not, kicked out of their churches instead of being taken care of. If Johnny is able to bring these sorts of programs to the SBC as a whole, than I would view his appointment as a LARGE success.
However, I’m worried that his appointment will be seen as a rallying cry to make the SBC into a PAC of the religious right.
For now, my prayers and my heart certainly go out in hope that a great change shall be had within the organization.
back to the grind
Well, after the insanity that was last week (working a ton at my job), things have settled down to the same old grind they were at a few months ago. I find myself sitting, once again, in the coffee shop at school, waiting for class to start, trying to make some headway into a college career that makes me want to quote Tommy Boy.
Did you hear I finally graduated?
Yeah. And just a shade under a decade too. All right.
Ahh, good movie, but sadly each semester brings me closer and closer to that scene.
Anyways, like I said, I haven’t had much time to blog lately, but (even more) sadly, I haven’t had anything decent to blog about. I could post up about my motorcycle, but I’m too lazy to go take pictures of it, and whats the fun in a motorcycle post without pictures? Really, other than school not much is going on in my life right now.
Honestly, right now I’m in a rather apathetic stage, where essentially all of this anti-establishment/empire stuff is catching up to me. I’m at a point where I realize how big the walls are, and how much easier it is to live within the confines of those walls.
The question is, how long can someone go against the system before the fatigue finally over takes them? I understand the need for sabbath, can one really take a sabbath from fighting the system? How does one refresh themselves?