The UmBlog

Matthew Fleischer did a great job surprising me with his previous book, The Old Testament Case for Non-violence . He follows the same methodology of considering New Testament texts of violent nature in their context and against the explicit teachings of Jesus in this new book while fairly considering other interpretations and following them to their logical ends. I may have much in common with Fleischer especially being a big fan of Jesus. However, I'm no longer a fan of verse by verse argumentation. I used to do that. Not only am I tired of it but I can no longer ignore the humanity beset by time bound mores and prejudices wrapped up in these texts. Fleischer carries a burden I won't, which is every verse is God-breathed, even the terrible ones, while he tries to defend Jesus' pacifism. I arrive at the same conclusion, but my route is shorter than his. If the reader is of the "biblical christianity" background and persuasion, this is a book to wrestle with. I...

Orbis books I've known about this book for a few years, but I have not been emotionally healthy enough to read it until now. I don't think I ever really began to understand the depths of white supremacy in the evangelical church until the Black Lives Matter movement started. When I used that hashtag and advocated against police lynchings and found myself not only removed from my church's opinion in general, but actively pushed back against. Michael Brown's lynching by a policeman in 2014 was the beginning of my steep slide into depression and out of the evangelical church. Somehow, I was still surprised when 80% of white evangelicals voted for an fascist racist. I was surprised by African-Americans were not. African-Americans like James Cone, who grew up in Jim Crow Arkansas, were all too familiar with white christians who did not see the paradox of going to a lynching Saturday night and a worship service Sunday morning.  The white supremacist christians did not ma...

This proposal comes from the intersection of Tish Harrison Warren's article, Pro-Lifers Aren’t Hypocrites , at Christianity Today and Tori William Douglas's article, How I became radically pro-choice , on her blog, with some assistance from Andrew Yang's policy proposal of universal basic income . Here is an important quote from William Douglas's piece. The second was a quote, shared by my friend Jon, by Sister Joan Chittister, which you’ve likely read all over the internet by now. "I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is." Harrison Warren...

This story is the context for my thoughts on President Trump. Luke 18:9-14  (NIV) The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector 9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” In the King James English, a "publican" is a tax collector. In Jesus' times, the Romans recr...

There is a lovely chap on Twitter, Blake Chastain , who I first heard use the appellation "exvangelical." He even has a podcast about it. I find it a helpful term and want to explore it in my own experience. This has been a long evolution and I will use my blog to look back on my spiritual journey out of white american evangelicalism. I have written 359 book reports. I have read more books than I have written about, but I read a great deal on genocide, inspired by the atrocities recorded in the bibilical story of Joshua, conqueror of Canaan. In his story, his god tells him to have no mercy and kill men, women and children. This was explained to me by my evangelical leaders that it was more merciful to kill the kids then raise them as their own. via GIPHY Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real. To be widely read is dangerous in a small minded theological construct. Studying genocide makes such absurd explanations even harder to swallow. Even then I found...

The gospel of Matthew has this well known tirade of exasperation against the religious leaders who opposed Jesus. It's sometimes referred to as the "seven woes." He's furious with their religious duplicity. We get famous metaphors from this like "straining a gnat and swallowing a camel," and "you all are like white-washed tombs, pretty on the outside, full of rot on the inside." One of the outstanding admonishments is, v.23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." In other words, the religious leaders were too busy with weighing out their spices for the church to be bothered with justice, mercy, and faith. Their priority was retaining the power they enjoyed over serving others, as God's representatives. Jesus calls them actors (the translation of ...

On Thursday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders endorsed this interpretation of Trump’s remarks, saying that “I don’t think the term the president used was strong enough...it took an animal to stab a man 100 times and decapitate him and cut his heart out,” referring to a particularly gruesome murder committed by MS-13 gang members. - Vox We once kept runner ducks in our backyard. I woke one morning to let the ducks out of their overnight shelter and found the plywood and cinder blocks shoved aside. The ducks had been killed but not eaten. It was possible a fox, a fisher cat, or a bobcat. It's as if the ducks were killed for fun by the predator. What the predator did not do was arrange a display of the victimized ducks. Unlike MS-13, their hearts were not cut out. Unlike some Mexican cartels, the victims were not hung on an overpass as a warning to others. Animals are not intelligent enough to "send a message" to rivals or snitches.Animals do not keep body parts o...

Jesus said. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18 The United States is known as a Christian nation. The united States has the highest incarceration rate in the world . Both of these statements cannot be true at the same time. Cuba and Russia and China have lower incarceration rates than the US. Post genocide Rwanda has a lower incarceration rate than the US. Racially-divided South Africa has 1/2 the incarceration rate of the US. Post-Christian Europe, the bogeyman of fundamentalist preachers has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Egypt has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Indonesia has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Non-religious Japan has 1/10th the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Pakistan...

The judgment of the sheep and the goats Definition of  worship from Merrian Webster worshipped   also   worshiped ;  worshipping   also   worshiping transitive verb :  to honor or reverence as a divine being or supernatural power 2 :  to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor, or devotion  a celebrity  worshipped by her fans intransitive verb When one worships, one regards another being with respect, honor and devotion. Now consider this parable of Jesus. Matthew 25:31-33 “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left. 34-36 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you i...

Equally Wed Luke 6:22 “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. I am reading Richard Beck's book, Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted . As a progressive believer and professor of psychology, Beck reconciles the concept of the devil/Satan/Old Scratch with the evil systems in this world and our own selfish ways. One of the outworkings of his thinking, as I read last night, is the falsehood of separating Jesus' two commands, love God and love your neighbor as yourself as two loves, instead of one. He writes, ...loving human beings is loving God and loving God is loving human beings. Only one love is at work, with n...

One of the definitions of repentance is to change one's mind. In the gospels of Jesus, the story is told in Matthew and in Mark of him repenting of his nationalism. I'll share the pericope, then make my case. Pietro del Po , 1650. Matthew 15:21 Then Jesus left Galilee and went north to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Gentile woman who lived there came to him, pleading, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! For my daughter is possessed by a demon that torments her severely.” 23 But Jesus gave her no reply, not even a word. Then his disciples urged him to send her away. “Tell her to go away,” they said. “She is bothering us with all her begging.” 24 Then Jesus said to the woman, “I was sent only to help God’s lost sheep—the people of Israel.” 25 But she came and worshiped him, pleading again, “Lord, help me!” 26 Jesus responded, “It isn’t right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She replied, “That’s true, Lord, but even dogs are allowed...

" They have closed their heart to pity, and their mouth speaks proud things ." A line from today's lectionary reading reminds me of the American political climate. It's from Psalm 17, a lament about the writer's enemies and appeal to God for deliverance. How can this not be the prayer of everyone except white men in this country? Men assault women with impunity like their president . White nationalists who welcome nazis into their ranks march unhooded to protest immigration of brown people and the removal of white supremacy statues, men called by their president as " very fine ". Adults who were brought to this country without documents when they were children, only knowing this country as theirs, fear arrest and deportation , because the current dominant political party, refuses to pity them as the previous administration did. Sexual minorities are summarily dismissed from the armed forces by their president. White men can carry guns in protests an...

Not that I ever would be invited to be on this council of evangelical advisers , because of many reasons, I don't pastor a large wealthy church, I didn't endorse him, I don't flatter him by calling him God's chosen leader, and I'm not fundagelical anymore....but....if I was asked to serve, I'd consider it a Good Samaritan opportunity to help a deeply wounded enemy of mine who has little good will for me or my neighbors, especially brown skinned neighbors. wikipedia In the liturgy readings last week, I encountered again the obscure Hebrew prophet, Micaiah . King Ahab, a notorious Jewish king in the Hebrew scriptures, had a bunch of flattering court prophets who agreed with any plan he had and always told him god would support him. But this other Jewish king from the south wanted to hear from prophets from his school of theology. Ahab shrugged and was like, "yeah, I have one of those, but he's so negative, but sure I'll get him over here." ...

World War 2 was started by agressive nations motivated in part by racial supremacy. Hitler told Germans and Austrians that they were the superior race of Aryans. He also used the European Jewish population as a scapegoat for all the ills they had brought on themselves when they lost WW1. The Japanese also considered themselves a superior race and saw a distinction between themselves and all other Asian people in China, Korea, and the Pacific islands. In Japan, anyone not Japanese was sub-human. In central Germany, anyone not "Aryan" was sub-human as well. The United States sent to the slaughter nearly 300,000 Americans to defeat these racist ideologies. Ironically, the United States had its own racist ideologies to defeat within. Eighty years prior to WW2, over 200,000 Americans died in conflict over this very issue in the Civil War. Before and after that war, the US used genocidal means to eradicate it's own aboriginal population. A footnote in American history Hitle...

In response to the meme #blacklivesmatter some white supremacists tried to counter with the meme #alllivesmatter. African Americans have consistently responded saying "black lives matter" does not contradict all lives matter but points to the problem of disproportionate human rights violations against people of African heritage. In other words all lives do NOT matter if black lives do NOT matter. It fell on deaf ears. White supremacists claim any protesters who affiliate with black lives matter are terrorists. They are including many whites and many, many clergy. But when one shouts, nuance is not necessary. This weekend a white man from Ohio drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Chralottesville, Virginia. This small city decided to honor the injustice against black americans by renaming parks who had previously honored slave holding, secessionist generals from the Civil War, Lee and Jackson. The insecure men of the alt-right held a rally to protest this. Th...

After reading this long article by David Roberts at Vox I've been thinking about the possible solution to his detailed analysis of the problem, tribal epistemology . Roberts has little to offer for soultions except the self-acknowledged trope "listen to each other." It may be a trope, but it is half right. I believe the answer is deeper than that, it calls for a level of communication that does not rely on statistics, but on anecdotes. Personal stories can change people's minds. The stories I heard today on the latest Liturgists podcast, Advocacy , from Christina Cleveland and Mickey Scottbey Jones confirmed what I've been thinking. As one of them said, and the hosts confirmed, those of us with a bleeding heart perspective might be the only one in the social circle of our more conservative relatives or friends. To turn away from the opportunity to win someone close to us to a open handed posture with our personal stories is to miss the impact of a heart cha...

Before he passed away from brain cancer, David Kuo , a Republican speech writer and political activist wrote his memoir about the clash between his earnest faith and the politics that kept prevailing over it, Tempting Faith, and inside story of political seduction . Kuo's last job in the White House was in George W. Bush's office of faith based and community initiatives. This office was formed from Bush's campaign promises of compassionate conservatism, which promised to unleash public funds to faith based groups in order that they may serve the needy alongside secular or non-religious aid programs. A promise of $8 billion dollars for this program was never followed up on and only 1-3% of that amount ever trickled down from the Bush White House and Republican controlled Congress. Kuo fought hard for that funding, his faith in Jesus Christ, aligned with his desire to see more people aided not only materially but also spiritually. His credentials include a long list of ...