Alternate universes

My friend Bill reminds me of Will Campbell. For most of his life, Campbell was a self-described “deep water Baptist,” as was his father. Campbell asked, “Daddy, do you believe in infant baptism?” Campbell’s father replied, “Believe in it? Hell, I’ve actually seen it.”

This week, Bill and I discussed alternate universes. Not the kind that are explored in physics classes. Both Bill and I would be in “listen only” mode in a science class about the Cosmos. But Bill and I have experienced close encounters with alternate universes of the human kind.

My hunch is that you have, too. Alternate universes can be found on the Internet, in neighborhoods, within congregations, and among family members. We can live, play, work or worship side-by-side yet never connect at a deep level, talking past each other about really important things.

Maybe a starting point is to ask, “How are things on your planet?”

From “‘Alternative facts’ tops list of 2017 notable quotes,” by Rebecca Savransky, The Hill, December 12, 2i017

40 years in the wilderness

In the big scheme of things, given the 2000+ year history of Christianity and the 200+ year history of its Methodist variations, debate about homosexuality is a very recent phenomenon. However, it has been a major reality of my lifetime (which began in 1950) and my clergy years (which began in 1970). I was a college student finishing my second year of parish ministry when the 1972 General Conference approved restrictive language about homosexuality. The New York Times reported: After heated debate, the general conference of the United Methodist Church declared today that homosexual had “sacred worth” but that homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

I attended the 1984 General Conference as one of ten monitors representing the Commission on the Status and Role of Women, networking with other progressive groups. A New York Times article, “Methodists Bar Homosexuals from Ministry” began with: The General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed legislation today that rules out the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals. The article’s third paragraph focused on what some participants called the “seven last words”:

The homosexuality issue was addressed when the delegates added a phrase to the Book of Discipline, which governs the church, that calls for ”fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness” as a qualification for ordination to the ministry.

This week, in 2024, the General Conference removed these relatively recent restrictions to the Book of Discipline, ending my tribe’s 40 years in the “wilderness.” The Associated Press noted: This change doesn’t mandate or even explicity affirm LGBTQ clergy, but it means the church no longer forbids them.

From “United Methodists repeal longstanding ban on LGBTQ clergy,” by Peter Smith, Associated Press, May 1, 2024

Coffee with Diana

Technology helps me adapt an ancient faith rhythm–an early focus for the day, which I consider prayer, a consciousness that seeks to embrace all reality within the realm of self-transcending grace.

A cup of coffee accompanies Substack emails of the day, sent overnight from several trusted sources: Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Hubbell, and Joyce Vance. Then follows a daily meditation (also emailed overnight) from Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation.

Yesterday, a second cup of coffee was accompanied by a Diana Butler Bass newsletter (which comes twice weekly via Substack email). Her passion is the history of religion and she always moves me deeper into a realm of consciousness that for me is a realm of prayer.

Bass knows evangelical Christianity’s foray into religious nationalism. (More about her on Friday.) Yesterday, Bass covered an evangelical battle among Congressional Republicans.

From “The Great Divorce? Evangelical Style,” in The Cottage, a newsletter via Substack by Diana Butler Bass, April 23, 2024.

Closure

The upcoming closure of Birmingham-Southern College awakens memories from my years as pastor in Jackson, Tennessee (2005-2010). While there and into 2011, I was a trustee of Lambuth University. When the university’s president told an emotional student assembly that the school would close, he asked me to offer a prayer. That was tough.

A year or so earlier, at one of many fund-raising meetings with friends of Lambuth, I was introduced by a student as an alumnus. I thanked him for the honor, but said, “I’m not a Lambuth alumnus, but I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been here.” Lambuth had operated on a shoestring for decades and the Great Recession put the school over the edge.

While in Jackson, I remembered with envy the relative strength of Birmingham-Southern. Upon my return to metro Birmingham in 2010, I discovered that BSC was not as strong as in the Neal Berte era (1976-2006). Institutions do not die suddenly and, usually, death is due to multiple causes. Today, it’s difficult to be a small liberal arts college.

Lambuth became the University of Memphis– Lambuth Campus, Jackson’s first four-year public university. Closure is painful for students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends. Church-related colleges are rooted in a tradition that embraces death and resurrection. This doesn’t remove the pain, but it provides a basis for hope to face the unknown with grace.

From “Nearly 170-year-old private college in Alabama says it will close at the end of May,” by the Associated Press, via NBC News, March 27, 2024

Looking ahead

Our recent Sunday School theme has been stories of Jesus healing the sick, including some who were dead or believed to be dead. Easter’s worship theme was–no surprise–a Jesus resurrection story.

Resuscitation is a postponement of death. I see resurrection as a thorough transformation that begins in the here and now and involves a process of change that can be both gradual and sudden.

From Joe Biden’s State of the Union address: “…the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are: It’s about how old our ideas are,” he said. “You can’t lead with ancient ideas that only take us back.”

The best ancient ideas call us to look ahead: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

From “What Jesus’s death and resurrection means for evil,” a two-minute YouTube excerpt of a 2014 Veritas Forum conversation between N.T. Wright and Shelly Kagan. The entire conversation, “Living Well in Light of Death,” is available in a March 17, 2022 podcast.

Why I show up at church

For me, faith has never been about duty or obligation. Faith is saying “Thank You” for life and for the undeserved gift and experience of grace. A faith community is a gathering of grateful people who say and sing in myriad ways, “How can we serve?” “How can we make a difference?”

Now in retirement, most Sundays are DONSA (“Days of No Scheduled Activities”). Yesterday’s Sunday School lesson about healing helped me reflect on our son’s decades with a disabling illness. Yesterday’s worship helped me explore giving and receiving forgiveness “seventy times seven.”

We heard Nikita Gill’s poem, “Hearts Like Wildflowers, Hearts Like Yours”: I hope you are blessed with a heart like a wildflower. Strong enough to rise again after being trampled upon, tough enough to weather the worst of the summer storms, and able to grow and flourish even in the most broken places.

From “In the broken places,” by Yi, Medium, March 28, 2019

Mentors over time

Health and time are two of our greatest gifts. I’m grateful for mentors over time. Around age 24, I was helped by Sojourners, a magazine-producing community led by Jim Wallis, who was then just 26.

Now, Jim is 75 and I’m 73. A more recent mentor is Don Manning-Miller, a bit older than Wallis and a long-time activist in the Civll Rights movement and other liberatory expressions of the Judeo-Christian tradition. For Don, love is the central reality of the “Christ Gestalt,” which seeks to interpret and live out the tradition’s prophetic components in today’s world. Don engages Process Theology, Progressive Christianity and panentheism.

Don’s recent email to some friends is an example of why he is among my mentors:

Jim Wallis has a new book coming out on “Civic Discipleship.”  Although I’ve moved pretty far from what appears to be Jim’s foundational theological position, I have almost always found his keen sense of what it all means to be on the mark. And by keeping a tentative foot in the evangelical camp he provides a bridge to a more intelligent and relevant faith for people becoming disgruntled with the shackles and inhumane stance of fundamentalism. And the term “Civic Discipleship” resonates. In a piece I wrote about elections and the church several years ago, which was so appropriate for so many of them it was published at least twice following election cycles, I said, “We have made voters, not citizens and converts, not disciples.”  Discipleship without encompassing the civic is not discipleship but self indulgence.

The False White Gospel is scheduled for publication in April, 2024

Bonus: Dom Crossan

I depart from my Monday-Wednesday-Friday rhythm for a word about John Dominic Crossan, a member of my personal faculty. Who’s on your faculty? I added Alexei Navalny to my faculty yesterday. His death underscores the obscenity of Trump’s “do whatever the hell they want” comment.

Back to Crossan. Today is his 90th birthday. He’s Irish-American, which is enough to merit consideration for the faculty. He is one of the more formidable New Testament scholars of the 20th and 21st Centuries, notably: The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant.”

If you’re a Crossan fan or opponent, curious about the Bible or like things Irish, I recommend his delightful 1993 autobiographical essay, “Almost the Whole Truth,” from the Westar Institute’s Fourth R Magazine, Volume 6-5, September-October, 1993. His final paragraph:

I never presume that we find the historical Jesus once and for all. I never separate the historical Jesus from the Christ of faith. Jesus Christ is the combination of a fact (Jesus) and an interpretation (Christ). They should neither be separated nor confused, and each must be found anew in every generation, for their structural dialectic is the heart of Christianity.

From “John Dominic Crossan,” Faith and Reason

A helpful dream

My dreams tend to die at the opening day, though Melatonin helps me sleep longer and enables me to remember more dreams. Morton Kelsey and John Sanford taught me to use dreams as a tool for self-understanding: What part of my life is represented by each character in a dream?

Recently, Donald Trump made his first appearance in my dreams. It was thoroughly ordinary. I was driving an automobile. He was in the passenger seat. On our way to a state park, I pulled into a service station at the edge of a small town. Trump, who had been totally silent, asked, “Is this the state park?”

What a dumb question! Was he preoccupied, oblivious? Maybe his subdued presence indicates I’m now less fearful and worried since his candidacy seems to be faltering. Like the Wizard of Oz, the pulled-back curtain reveals his ordinariness. In the dream, I realized he’s “just a guy.”

What of me is in the Trump character of my dream? I can be preoccupied and oblivious, denying (or hiding from) my own powerlessness, the recognition of which–in faith, as in the Twelve Steps–is the beginning of healing. E. Jean Carroll said of Trump, “He’s just a guy.” So am I. Therein lies grace.

From “Carroll says Trump is ‘nothing. We don’t need to be afraid of him.’” by Miranda Nazzaro, The Hill, January 29, 2024

Two problems with “King”

Christ the King, introduced on the Sunday before Advent in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, was outdated and largely ignored from the outset. The Pope, concerned about war, secularity and communism, sought to put Christ “back” on the world’s throne. The first problem with Christ the King is that the Pope missed the essential point that the Kingdom of God is non-hierarchical.

The second problem with Christ the King is gender exclusivity. Pope Pius XI died in 1939, before gender inclusive language became widely used in the early 1970s. Bruce Rahtjen endured the rapid obsolescence of his 1968 book’s title: Biblical Truth and Modern Man. “Our Father-Mother who art in heaven….” is a prayer form that invites a broader, more holistic understanding of God.

Both problems are helped by our re-discovery of feminine biblical imagery and by our re-discovery of artistic expressions of the feminine for deity, the universe, and the faith community. Regarding art traditions around Mary, the mother of Jesus, an Eastern Orthodox art theme depicts Mary as the Mother of God. A Roman Catholic art theme depicts Mary as the Queen of the Universe.

From the Facebook page of Our Lady Queen of the Universe Catholic Church, (OLQU), Huntsville, Alabama