There have been times when I've sided with some of our 'founding fathers' in contempt for the religious practitioners who have conflated that poor, unsuccessful, would-be Jewish leader into a re-incarnation of Thor and the mouthpiece for their own miserable and ignorant minds. Ok, it's been more than many times and the Jesus I hear about most often is merely the blunt instrument in the hands of the angry and the ugly and the stupid.
Yes, I've read Dom Crossan and the Jesus Seminar people, but since he still implies that I'm the village idiot for not believing that the man he portrays as a man is more than a man, he only gets a partial pass from me. But then, on occasion, I bump into people like Bishop Shelby Spong who would restore that humanism, that tolerance that was amputated when Christianity was refashioned in the age of Constantine onwards, to its original place.
Of course I disagree profoundly about the nature of things, but about the nature of what we think and do and do to others, he restoreth something in me, even if it's not quite faith.
Great to see this here. I posted it this morning and have pput it up on facebook.
ReplyDeleteThis is the sort of Christian who has been drowned out by the nonthinking televangelists that more often than not turn out to be charlatans.
I think Christian churches have, particularly in America, made themselves irrelevant and often dangerous by stressing non-questioning acceptance; trashing the idea of reason itself, setting themselves up as enemies of humanism.
ReplyDeleteThat Showtime religion; that old crime religion, isn't good enough at all and the idea that the dumb and incurious and the uninterested in truth shall be saved while the smart shall not has risen to the top like algae choking the life out of a pond.
Crossan once wrote that he doesn't actually attend church any more because of the requirement that one leave one's brains outside. And his is too big for the parking lot.
I've been a long time fan of Bishop Spong and he is not as unique as you may think. The people with whom I regularly associate, if they are followers of Christianity, are of the Bishop Spong type. Thoughtful, well informed people don't fall for a doctrine of hate and superstition. Sermons about hell fire and damnation are not my cup of tea and I'm not radically unusual. The zealots make for better copy. No one cares that I oppose burning the Quran but it's news when a crazy pastor with less than 50 followers declares that he is going to hold a book burning. I am appalled at the hijacking of Christianity by people who are focused on self-interest and judgment of others and I share your disdain for those who perpetrate such beliefs. Great harm has been done in the name of Christianity but then human beings corrupt all that we touch.
ReplyDelete"Great harm has been done in the name of Christianity but then human beings corrupt all that we touch."
ReplyDeleteWe do that indeed. I think being a good person has more to do with being a good person than with what religious beliefs one is trained in. Any religion can be used to justify anything, but unaffiliated compassion is harder to pervert, I think.
Spong is unique enough when you consider the billions who are nothing like him, but claim to be religious none the less. Somehow I think that a smart, compassionate and generally good person doesn't need the idea of a cosmic accountant or judge or punisher to be the way he is and she is somehow better for just doing good for goodness' sake. He'd make a fair Buddhist and a righteous Parsee and a decent Jew and probably a good Muslim if we didn't quibble about minor priestly nonsense.
But then there are Christians who place little value on good works in terms of whether God elects you or not. It's all predestined, or it's all about reciting the right formulae to send you to the afterlife. . . In fact there's a Christian to suit any complex rearrangement of moral principles and self preservation, the will to power and piety. It's all confusing and self contradictory to me and I feel better off without it.