Progressive Christianity

 This is the second of two week 1 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

How would you describe progressive Christianity for an inquiring parishioner? What particularly resonated for you in Brown’s discussion of it in Chapter 1 and what, if anything, troubled or challenged you about it?

I thought Chapter 1 of Brown was amazing. I'm very much looking forward to reading the rest of the book. I saved the following quote to refer to in one of my required CUA polity papers:

Progressive Christianity is not a “you just have to believe it” point of view. But neither, for us, are good reasons the same as “proofs.” They are not the kind of argument the conclusion of which any reasonable person will necessarily accept if he or she understands the argument. Good reasons don’t force assent. I will put it this way: “Good reasons” are reasons for believing something that a person who does not share that belief can nevertheless respect. They are reasons that someone else thinks to be credible even if they are not compelling for him or her.

 I think that this idea of good reasons rather than proofs is a key to understanding progressive Christianity and how it differs from both fundamentalism and liberal Christianity. I would explain progressive Christianity as follows:

Progressive Christianity comes from a baseline of assuming that we are well-intentioned Christian believers, trying to follow Jesus as best we know, but acknowledging that because as Paul puts it "we see as through a glass darkly" and the documents we have (predominantly The Bible, but also the writings of Christians since) were written under a different cultural understanding (even as our parents grew up with different cultural understandings than we did), we cannot always know exactly "What Would Jesus Do?" As progressive Christians we accept that what we can do is attempt to come up with reactions and reasoning that other well-intentioned Christian believers can agree are respectable and respectful, even if they themselves would come to a different conclusion. Likewise, we recognize that those who have come to a different conclusion in a respectable and respectful manner are still well-intentioned, devout fellow Christian believers.

 Brown, Delwin. What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? A Guide for the Searching, the Open and the Curious. New York, Church Publishing Incorporated, 2008.

Background and Faith Stance as of February 2022

This is the first of two week 1 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

By way of self-introduction, describe your denominational background and your current faith stance in general terms using the concepts of embedded and deliberative theologies. What has drawn you to taking this course?

The terms embedded and deliberative theology come from our textbook, Stone and Duke How to Think Theologically, 3rd Edition. Embedded Theology is "the understanding of faith disseminated in the church and assimilated by its members in their daily lives." Deliberative Theology is "a process of reflecting on multiple understandings of the faith implicit in the life and witness of Christians in order to identify and/or develop the most adequate understanding possible."

I was raised in the Unitarian-Universalist Association and my parents were essentially theist. We celebrated most holidays - secular, Jewish and secularized Christian (in the case of Christmas and Easter) - and the most commonplace of family events with my mom's best friend who was like an aunt or second-mom to us. She was a devout Jew and we lived in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood for 4 years of my childhood (as in, there wasn't anywhere nearby to buy bread during Passover.) I gained a strong embedded understanding of Judaism (in addition to UUism) and learned as an adult that the only reason we didn't go to synagogue was that my father was opposed to Zionism and our local synagogue was strongly Zionist. As I was in my teens and twenties, I gained more of an understanding and connection to Unitarian Universalism and as part of seeking more of a deliberative understanding, found a historic Unitarian (Unitarian Church of America) book at a local used bookstore, Letter and Spirit by Richard Metcalf. This book lead me to an understanding of Christianity that I could and did embrace. (Like many Unitarians of the 1800's he was also a universalist.) I joined the Christian small group in my church and started paying attention to what the UUCF (Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship) was doing.  

I had thought about ministry in my 20's but it didn't feel right and I ended up with a career in tech. In my late 40's I both had to stop doing tech work for medical reasons and realized I had a call to chaplaincy. As I looked for options on how to do that without traditional seminary (particularly without meeting the UUA denominational requirements with their strong focus on preparing for the business of managing a church, often at the expense of pastoral care training), I decided to take part in an extremely accessible undergraduate fundamentalist focused chaplaincy program, because while many of the people in need of spiritual care in my area (and the US in general), have a fundamentalist or evangelical embedded theology (including those who have rejected but not replaced them), I really knew very little about it. Studying fundamentalist theology on a deliberative basis was not entirely a sociological experiment for me. In particular, in having to study apologetics against universal salvation, I found the arguments so uncompelling that further study and reflection made me realize that to me universalism is the core of Christianity.  As I was finishing that program, I contacted the Christian Universalism Association asking about their education program and they basically recruited me to join their denomination (I don't think we have publicly announced yet that we filed the IRS paperwork to officially be a denomination rather than a parachurch organization in January, but it isn't a secret.) I have been gaining both embedded and deliberative theology experience around Christian Universalism since, helping start an online CUA church and working on my chaplain track ordination requirements. 

An important aspect of my personal theology is that I believe very strongly that neither trinitarianism or unitarianism should be used as part of a test of belief. This is in part because I have seen trinitarianism be a huge stumbling block for people's belief. I think it is also problematic that they are often poorly understood even by many who claim a belief in one or the other. I personally lean towards trinitarianism, but I suspect that they are merely examples of imperfect models for understanding the nature of God and the relationship of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and that in the next life, we will understand they are both (all) incomplete. I believe these models are only useful to the extent that they improve our relationship with God and need to be released if they are a stumbling block.

I decided to take this class because I really enjoyed Understanding The Bible as a Progressive Christian. This class looked interesting and on a practical level, I believe it will help me formalize some of the ideas I need to put into the essays I am required to write as part of my candidate process for the CUA. 

Joshua, Ruth and the model minority

This is the "reflection paper" from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education. It was written during the 4th week of class, but not published here until class was over.

Describe the treatment of non-Israelites as portrayed in Joshua 3:7-17 and in the Book of Ruth. Give examples of similarities and differences in the ways that God and/or God’s people treat non-Israelites in the two works. How does Progressive Christianity understand these similarities and differences? Use the questions at the “Three Worlds of the Text” website to guide your thoughts.

In Joshua 3:7-17 (specifically, Joshua 3:10, where Joshua tells the people of Israel that God "will completely remove the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites before you."), non-Israelites are barriers to be removed, not actually humans.* In Ruth, Ruth is often viewed as a heroine. But I think a better model is that of "the town's black", the exception to the rule in otherwise white-only towns discussed in James Loewen's book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. To quote Lowden "Decades after death, such a person may get warm retrospective articles in the local newspaper." (p. 290) This is similar to, but not the same, as the myth of the model minority. I live in Oregon, which has the sad distinction of having been formed as the only state to specifically exclude "negros and mulattos", constitutional discrimination that remained in effect until 1926 and was followed by numerous official and unofficial exclusion rules. The story of Ruth is very reminiscent to me of some of the historical figures of my current town of Eugene. For instance, there is Wiley Griffith, who is known for conducting the mule towed streetcar in town circa 1890, owning the mule, and being a favorite of local children. A mural about him was recently put on a wall near my friend's house in part as graffiti prevention. Or maybe of Pearlie Mae Washington and Annie Mimms, black women who hosted black performers and visiting student athletes in their homes - conveniently located just outside the city limits, performers who were invited to perform for white citizens but not welcome in the white-only hotels as late at the 1970s. I did not grow up in Eugene, I didn't learn about Wiley Griffith and his mule and the Mimms and Washington families in 7th grade Oregon history (although I did learn about some of the token blacks of Portland, but not the extent of racial exclusion in Oregon.) These are stories I learned just existing in Eugene in the 10 years I've lived here. The story of Ruth reads a lot like these stories, it seems like it's about Ruth, but then you start looking at it a little more and there isn't really a lot about Ruth herself and her thoughts and feelings, just Ruth in relationship to the dominant culture. We start out hearing about Naomi and her troubles and her generosity in excusing her daughter-in-laws from the usual expectations a widow owes to her husband's family and end the story showing Boaz's generosity in acting as kinsman redeemer and marrying Ruth, followed by  a genealogy to show that King David descended from Ruth, making the story important to the story of Israel. If Ruth had been an Israelite, would Naomi have had to trick Boaz into doing his duty as kinsman redeemer? Or would the "nearer redeemer" first mentioned in Ruth 3:12 have jumped to do so?

I think that as Progressive Christians, we have a tendency to overlook the implied genocide of the other groups in the Joshua passage (which is more explicit elsewhere in Joshua) and to read into Ruth what we want to see, particularly around women in the Bible. (The article we read, What’s Rape Culture Got To Do With The Book Of Ruth?, shows several examples of this kind of thinking.) Many progressive churches and institutions have ongoing issues with confusing the presence of members of minority groups (of whatever type) and actual inclusion. Ruth may itself be symbolic of that kind of thinking.

While these stories, on the surface, seem to show opposing views of non-Israelites, Joshua viewing them as an other to exclude and kill and Ruth showing the story of a Moabite woman being welcomed into the Israeli community, I think that really they are both about exclusion. In Joshua, all non-Israelites are excluded. In Ruth, a non-Israelite is allowed to exist because she makes herself useful to Israelites. She's the exception that proves the rule that non-Israelites are bad, not someone treated as valuable in and of herself.  Ruth 4:16-17a where Ruth's child is shown as belonging to Naiomi, further cements Ruth  herself as unimportant, she is relegated to the role of surrogate, not mother.  'Naomi took the child and held him to her breast, and she became his guardian.  The neighborhood women gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.”' (Ruth 4:16-17a CEB) This reflects a pattern still seen today where people from countries that do not allow surrogacy contract with foreign women in countries where surrogacy is legal, such as the US, Canada and India. Additionally, the book of Ruth takes place (and is likely authored) later than Joshua. It may partially function as apologia for why there are still non-Israelites around when Joshua said God was going to "remove them before you."

* Also, I want to highlight that in this passage in Joshua, God tells Joshua that he will make him like Moses, Joshua himself is the one who says God will completely remove the other groups.

James's Lowden's website - https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/

Online museum exhibit "Racing To Change: Oregon's Civil Rights Era: The Eugene Story" that includes the Black pioneers mentioned and the racism they faced - https://mnchexhibits.uoregon.edu/racing-to-change/

Summary of Galatians 2

 This is the second of two week 6 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Summarize the story Paul tells in Galatians 2 with attention to the issues raised by Osiek concerning women and foreigners.

Galatians 2 starts out with Paul in the middle of recounting his background and credentials in becoming an apostle. Paul reports that 14 years after he was last in Jerusalem (and about 17 or 18 years after his conversion based on information in 1), he had a revelation that he needed to go to Jerusalem to consult with the apostles there. He was accompanied by Barnabas and Titus (who was a Greek gentile). In Jerusalem he met with the apostles to share what he was preaching to the Gentiles and make sure he wasn't leaving anything important out. He specifically says he wasn't looking for approval because that comes from God. The Jerusalem leaders did not feel the need to add anything except that he "remember the poor" (collect donations for the central Jerusalem church), something he claims was always his goal. He gives the fact that he was not asked to circumcise Titus as proof that the Jerusalem leaders agreed with him that it was unnecessary for gentile Christians to convert to Judaism or follow Jewish law. (Circumcision is both part of converting for men and required for Jews in the law and  Paul uses circumcision as a symbol of both converting and following all the rules of the law.) It was agreed that he would focus on preaching to the gentiles and both the 3 of them and Paul's mission to the gentiles was treated as equal in value to the preexisting apostles to the Jews and the mission of sharing the good news among the Jews. This wasn't uncontroversial among the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and some of them tried to force Paul to make the gentile believers follow the Law out of obligation, not out of God's will or in accordance to anything in the truth Paul was preaching, but he did not give in to the social pressure.

Despite this being settled, and Cephas following this advice, Cephas gave in to public pressure and started again promoting the need to follow the law, convincing others to go along with him, and Paul called him out for hypocrisy and shares his teaching on this with his readers: Whether born a Jew or Gentile, it is impossible to become righteous just by following the Law, it requires Christ. The most important thing is to live for God and follow Christ. If we try to do that via the law, we break the law. If we ignore the grace of God and try to follow the law, Christ died for nothing.

Galatians Genre and Setting

This is the first of two week 6 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Identify the genre and Sitz im Leben (literally, “setting in life”; the many contexts that shape a work, e.g., geography, historical era, purpose, et.c.) of Galatians.

Galatians is a pastoral epistle. That is to say, a letter specifically written for the purpose of meeting the needs of a set of Christians in following their faith in their day to day life. It was written by Paul to the members of churches he had originally founded but was now getting (bad) advice from other sources.  Like many of Paul's churches, these churches were predominantly made up of gentiles who had started following Christ. We know from 2:1 that it occurs after his meeting with the apostles in Jerusalem which is occurred around 49 CE, likely late 40's to early 50's CE. These churches were likely in the Roman province of Galatia. Although we don't know specifically were these churches were, we do know from Acts that in Galatia, Paul completed missionary work in Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. The purpose of the letter was to correct errors in the church members' Christian walk based on advice they received from later missionaries who were encouraging them to be more Jewish - convert to Judaism (including circumcision) and generally follow the Torah, or law.  At this point in early Christian history, the movement was trying to determine whether or not it was a part of Judaism or separate and if separate to what extent. 

Historical Setting of Ruth

This is the second of two week 5 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Describe the historical setting of the Book of Ruth. Discuss the possible scenarios that hypothesize an early date (~1000-600 BCE) or to a late date (after 500 BCE) for its composition.

The Book of Ruth is set in Bethlehem in Judea during a good harvest season after a time of extended famine.

The text itself starts "During the days when Judges ruled" (Ruth 1:1a CEB), this sets an earliest possible date of sometime after Saul's reign. However, it ends with a genealogy that leads to David, which sets David's reign as the earliest possible date. (I think you can argue that's a later addition, but a couple generations is still in the early window.)

The language used is often representative of the earlier window. However, it contains some grammar and idioms representative of later Biblical Hebrew. The author may have attempted to use archaic language as a stylistic element but did so imperfectly, resulting in some then contemporary usage mixed in. Eskenazi argues for intentional archicisms by pointing out that the older language mainly occurs in the dialog of the older generation (Naomi, Boaz). Fentress-Williams mentions another explanation, the story could have circulated orally during the earlier period and been written down later.

Ruth is sometimes called the first short story and Alter reports that the later period was marked by "the veritable explosion of new narrative genres," which would make a new literary form more likely. However, we don't have to consider Ruth to be a short story, it has a lot of elements in common with folk tales, a type of story often referred to as "timeless." 

Ruth could be viewed as apologia for King David's mixed ethnic background, a task that would only have been necessary during the early period, because by the later period he was uniformly revered. This is in line with Rabbinic sources that attribute Ruth, along with Judges and Samuel to the prophet Samuel, possibly in response to a controversy about David's qualifications for kingship. (Eskenazi) At the same time, it's possible that his mixed background was a possibly open, but unspoken secret during his lifetime. (Fentress-Williams) On the other hand, Ruth could be a response to the post-exilic passages in Ezra where foreign wives and mixed children were to be sent away, offering a defense of such family members.

This is by no means an exhaustive discussion of the evidence regarding dating this book, but I feel like other scenarios either depend on one of the above  or reflect the same issues in a slightly different form.

Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary: The Writings. W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.

Eskenazi, Tamara Cohn, and Tikva Simone Frymer-Kensky, editors. Ruth רות: the traditional Hebrew text with the new JPS translation. 1st ed, Jewish Publication Society, 2011.

Fentress-Williams, Judy. Ruth. Abingdon Press, 2012.

The Temple in Kings versus Chronicles

This is the first of two week 5 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Understanding the Bible as a Progressive Christian through Pathways Theological Education.

Outline the major differences between the story of the building of the Jerusalem Temple as told in 1 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles. Infer the reasons for those differences based on your reading of Guenther.

There were 3 major differences between these two stories that immediately stood out to me. 

 Chronicles contains more of a focus on David's role in planning and conceiving the temple, while Kings moves the focus to Solomon carrying out the plan. Both include Solomon's words of blessing and prayer at the temple dedication, although Chronicles includes more detail.

 God appears in dramatic and miraculous ways in the Chronicles account, both during the dedication ("a cloud filled the Lord’s temple. The priests were unable to carry out their duties on account of the cloud because the Lord’s glory filled God’s temple" (2 Chronicles 5:13b-14 NRSV, this is also 1 Kings 8:10-11) and "As soon as Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the entirely burned offering and the sacrifices, while the Lord’s glory filled the temple. 2 The priests were unable to enter the Lord’s temple because the Lord’s glory had filled the Lord’s temple. " (2 Chronicles 7:1-2)) and later in a detailed vision to Solomon while dreaming. (A short summary of a similar vision appears at a different point in Kings.) 

Another difference that made an impression on me was who did the manual labor. Both versions report that conscripted workers were used. However, in Kings they appear to have been chosen equitably from the entire population. In Chronicles, they were mostly or only immigrants depending on how you interpret the description. While this seems minor, I think there is an important difference between "we labored with our own hands to create this, each taking on their fair share" and "we forced others to make this for us, at little real sacrifice on our part." I think you could argue that working on a community project such as the temple could be a path to respect from and inclusion in the greater community, but we don't see any evidence of that happening.

A more obvious, but in my opinion likely minor difference is that Kings includes more detail about the amazing craftsmanship of the items in the temple and attributes the work to specific craftspeople, while Chronicles attributes the making to Solomon, while at the same time being clear that it was made at his direction. (As an aside, I think this is an important possibility to remember when we see authorship of Biblical texts attributed to David and Solomon, like the temple fittings they may have been commissioned.) I think both authors were trying to give an accurate picture of both the scope of work involved and help their readers form a mental portrait of the glory, beauty and craftsmanship of the temple and that the differences have more to do with the authors' respective writing styles than any intended difference in message.

Gunther posits that the reason for the differences between these two accounts is that they are "historical interpretations" by two different authors, with two different viewpoints and goals. He believes that Kings is part of a longer story (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) by a single author, the Deuteronomist. "The Deuteronomist traces the story of the people under the terms of the Sinaitic covenant, emphasizing Israel’s obligation to observe all the commandments, to reverence the LORD alone and to worship him only at the central, authorized shrine." Before going on to Gunther's view of the author of Chronicles, I want to point out that the inherent respect for a "central, authorized shrine" would be higher for one that was built by the community and thus belonged to "all of us." This may explain why the Deuteronomist described the conscription process as random and egalitarian.

Getting to the author of Chronicles, Gunther believes "the Chronicler is concerned to demonstrate the continuity of God’s redemptive activity from creation to the time of the restoration following the Babylonian exile."  This continuity of activity explains why God's activities in Chronicles are more obvious and dramatic than in Kings. The Chronicler holds up David as the ideal king and ruler and is equally complementary of his son and heir Solomon. (Gunther also mentions that the Chronicler is more concerned with kings being right with God (or not) at the end of their life and values repentance, it would be hard to hold David as an ideal without doing so.) Valuing David so highly explains why the Chronicler's story of the temple starts with David making the plans and handing them over to Solomon. This combined with his strong approval for Solomon explains why he speaks of Solomon as the doer of tasks that Solomon merely commissioned - if Solomon "made the pilar" (or whatever) when actually he commissioned it; David "made the temple" by setting his son up to build it. This may also explain his pointing out the fact that immigrants did the manual labor - if it wasn't "us", it was Solomon and by extension David. If it was "us" (randomly chosen people of Israel), then "we" deserve some of the glory. 

In both cases, the contents of Solomon's speeches and letters, the reply from the King of Tyre (particularly in Chronicles), and God's word in the vision are used to further the viewpoints of the authors. This doesn't necessarily make either source more or less accurate, these are at best summaries of what was said and naturally, what is important to the summarizer is going to make a summary. God's vision to Solomon is particularly illustrative of this. In Kings, the description of the vision is very short and basically a summary of the Deuteronomist's viewpoint. "The Lord’s word came to Solomon, Regarding this temple that you are building: If you follow my laws, enact my regulations, and keep all my commands faithfully, then I will fulfill for you my promise that I made to your father David. I will live among the Israelites. I won’t abandon my people Israel."(1 Kings 6:11-13 NRSV) However, the Chronicler ends the story of the temple with a much more detailed dream vision.  It is the end of this vision that I want to highlight, 2 Chronicles 7 19-22 NRSV:

But if any of you ever turn away from and abandon the regulations and commands that I have given you, and go to serve other gods and worship them,  then I will uproot you from my land that I gave you, and I will reject this temple that I made holy for my name. I will make it a joke, insulted by everyone.  Everyone who passes by this temple—so lofty now—will be shocked and will wonder, Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and temple? The answer will come, Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt. They embraced other gods, worshipping and serving them. This is why God brought all this disaster on them.

Remember that the Chronicler is writing after the temple has been destroyed and trying to show that God is still actively working for the audience's redemption. By setting a reason why God would allow the temple to be destroyed in the story of the temple's creation, the Chronicler is able to set up even the destruction of the temple as God being present.

Finally, I want to say that I find it interesting that Christians have issues with "inconsistencies" between the histories in Kings versus Chronicles (and I have seen this myself), when we have 4 Gospels with similar parallels and differences that we usually manage to ignore.

Guenther, Allen R. “Kings and Chronicles: Interpreting Historical Interpretation.”  Direction Journal, vol. 11, no. 2, Apr. 1982, pp. 4–15, https://directionjournal.org/11/2/kings-and-chronicles-interpreting.html.