The UmBlog

Bad religion asks parents to sacrifice their children. Bad religion is cultural. Bad religion looks for scapegoats. Bad religion always find scapegoats in those with less power. Bad religion kills kids. Abraham's story in Genesis 22 is a story of good religion prevailing over bad. image source    Abraham lives in a culture which not only approves of child sacrifice, but even encourages it for assistance from the deities. Abraham believes his deity wants him to also perform this act of devotion. But after he ties his son up, he has an encounter with God unlike any previous one. It appears God changed his mind.  More likely, Abraham changed his mind about God. Evangelical and fundamentalist christians also live in cultures where they think their deity asks them to bind their children, to not let them live in truth their sexual identity. Hence, these children who normally benefit from the protective effects of religion on suicidal thoughts and tendencies actually experience ...

At times in its past, the United States of America has found money to make restitution for things gone wrong. For example, 9/11 "The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, created by Congress, distributed $7 billion to survivors and victims' families. There have been 2,983 families of those who died and received an average of just over $2 million tax-free per claim, according to Kenneth Feinberg, former pro bono administrator of the fund." ABC news The 9/11 memorial in NYC? "The foundation that runs the memorial estimates that once the roughly $700 million project is complete, it will cost $60 million a year to operate." NBC news Americans are paying for this, not Saudi Arabia where the 9/11 bombers came from. But America wants to "never forget." When the US violated the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans on the west coast after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entrance to the 2nd World War, it recognized the wrong and President R...

Here is the quick summary. This book is a 5 star thesis with a 2 star execution. Great ideas benefit from great editors. I really hope Ronald Goetz 's book, The Galilee Episode , gets picked up by a real publisher with an editorial team to cut this rough gem into a thing of beauty it deserves. Goetz's spiritual journey started at a young age, resulting in Bible college and 15 years in the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination then in the United Methodists for the past 30 years or so. At some point he saw this passage in Luke 17 with new eyes. 34 I tell you, on that night two men will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. 35 Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left. I have to say I never thought of these passages in their plain reading before myself, but in the fundamentalist goggles I inherited. Why are two guys sharing a bed at night? Maybe because they are gay partners. And did you know "grinding" is not...

 I've written a couple other posts on this topic before, here and here . Jesus and his followers, in the footsteps of the Jewish prophets before them, chose which writings to elevate and which writings to minimize. Jesus did this to Moses when he said an eye for an eye was not God's way in his sermon on the mount. But Jesus also does this in his temptation. His accuser shows up and says, "yo, you can get a lot of followers by doing this miracle based on the Psalms by jumping off this high place, because the Psalmist prophecies God won't let you foot dash against a rock. Maybe you'll levitate or something." And Jesus, who must have stubbed his toe multiple times in his life is like, "you is a fool, why you gotta take poetry literally like that, also the book says don't test God like that, Fool." Jesus pointed out to my younger fundamentalist self that some things in the scriptures are more important than others. If you use the lenses of love is G...

I used to have an abundance of pro-life blog posts on here. I took them down because I no longer think my male opinion carries even the weight of electrons on this blog. I do consider myself pro-life, not just pro-birth, and believe the church and the government should support not only pregnant mothers but post-natal mothers and children. Please see my post from last year. " policy proposal: pay pregnant women and at home parents ". If you are an evangelical woman who has had or is considering an abortion and if wracked with guilt, I'd like to offer a minority report on the biblical exemption for abortion. We start with Exodus 21 . The first eleven verses fall into the category I've written about many times here under the label, "not everything biblical is Christian", meaning these slave laws are awful and not Christ-like at all. Starting at verse 12 though we get to the capital crimes. Again, I'm pro-life so I don't think a Christ follower should be...

source Luke 16 The Message (MSG) The Story of the Crooked Manager  1-2 Jesus said to his disciples, “There was once a rich man who had a manager. He got reports that the manager had been taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses. So he called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? You’re fired. And I want a complete audit of your books.’  3-4 “The manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve lost my job as manager. I’m not strong enough for a laboring job, and I’m too proud to beg. . . . Ah, I’ve got a plan. Here’s what I’ll do . . . then when I’m turned out into the street, people will take me into their houses.’  5 “Then he went at it. One after another, he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 “He replied, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ “The manager said, ‘Here, take your bill, sit down here—quick now—write fifty.’ 7 “To the next he said, ‘And...

I read with joy and anger the comments under Gabrielle Union's tweet introducing the world to her gender non-conforming child Zaya. Meet Zaya. She's compassionate, loving, whip smart and we are so proud of her. It’s Ok to listen to, love & respect your children exactly as they are. Love and light good people. pic.twitter.com/G2lLVdD2VT — Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) February 11, 2020 I wish every kid could have such supportive parents. But out came the bible verse quoting trolls among others. But don't christians believe in an immaterial soul? That the mind is greater than the brain? That there is a spirit as well as a body? If people are truly materialists, then certainly they can make the argument that chromosomes determine who Zaya is. But christians do not tend to be materialists. So if Zaya asserts her identity as distinct from her chromosomes, wouldn't this be a proof for christians to say, "there is something more to us than our materials and...

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...

Consider this story about the founder of the Abrahamic faiths. Genesis 16:1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. from the Met A couple of things we know from later on in Genesis is that Abraham outlives Sarah and takes other concubines and has children with them. The story of Hagar and Ishmael is not direct from Sarah. It's hard to believe Sarah would volunteer her slave to be raped by her husband. In fact, it's much easier to believe Abraham got frustrated waiting on Sarah and, on his own initiative, impregnated Hagar. In fact, the relationship could have even been...

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...

My blog has plenty of evidence to demonstrate I am a pro-life person. My twitter account will also show I am not anti-choice, acknowledging that the mother's circumstances and decision does not need to be explained or justified to me or any other man. I'm also pro-life in that I am against the death penalty. I'm also pro-life in that I think government should offer enough aid for the flourishing of children long after they are born medically, educationally, food security, and healthy living conditions ...sort of like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Certainly getting rid of lead paint had a tremendous positive impact in the lives of a generation and likely led to the dramatic drop in crime in the 90's instead of the racially biased stop and frisk. But now we have a greater risk, climate change. The build up of CO2 in our atmosphere is directly correlated to the burning of hydrocarbons , basically compressed forests from ages past, and slash an...

Amazon link One reaction to a transgender person in my former fundagelical approach to the world is to believe such a person is deceived by the devil if not fully cooperating with Satan. In fact, it is such a demonic act that one should not even participate in using the person's new name. The observational, scientific understanding of sex, gender, genitalia, and brain structure are not yet allowed to disagree with Moses's binary assertion that in the beginning God created them male and female. Compassion is not allowed to overrule bronze age judgments, the very issue Jesus fought against in his interactions with his contemporary Bible-thumpers. Experience forces us to reconsider the primacy of scripture. For Jesus, it was an encounter with a Gentile woman . For Peter it was a dream about eating non-kosher food. For me it was the coming out of a family member. For Jonathan Williams, it was his dad, a successful leader of a large fundagelical church planting organization, ...

Today's gospel reading in the lectionary got me thinking about this problem I used to have with the Bible. Mark 12:28 One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: “Which is most important of all the commandments?”  29-31 Jesus said, “The first in importance is, ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.”  32-33 The religion scholar said, “A wonderful answer, Teacher! So lucid and accurate—that God is one and there is no other. And loving him with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that’s better than all offerings and sacrifices put together!” 34 When Jesus realized how insightful he was, he said, “Y...

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...

I went to Christian summer camp quite a bit as a kid. We sang a lot of choruses with catchy melodies. They were fun and theological. One of my favorites when I was 12 started out with the line "Somewhere in outer space, God has prepared a place, for those who trust him and obey." Here is a cute video of some kids singing it. I was a very enthusiastic singer of this song back in the day, though I'm not keen on its theology anymore. The song moved me so much I was inspired to draw a picture about it. I drew my cabin flying through space, including comets and moons and spiral galaxies in the background. I had my multi-color pen with me at camp so it was also a polychromatic picture and the cabin was drawn in perspective! I spent a lot of time on that picture, probably an entire free period. I was quite proud of it when I finished and showed it to my cabin counselor, who was nice about it. I left it on my bunk and went to dinner and evening chapel. When I got back that ...

Pope Francis writes this week a letter to the People of God in response to the horrific abuse unsealed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General. It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion. I think this is a good example for other churches to follow as Evangelical churches are facing it's own #metoo and #churchtoo scandals, e.g. Bill Hybels and Willow Creek. If only churches would get ahead of these before they become public scandals. If only the church could proclaim, "we heard complaints, we believed the vic...

The wild raspberries in my yard are in full flourish! We've been picking them for the past couple weeks, but have not pulled in a haul like this one last night! I could have picked more if it were not 90% humid, if the mosquitos were not picking me, and if I had more than shorts on to protect me from the thorns. I do have a few scratches because the delicious fruit kept beckoning me. If I could just stretch a little further...each scratch from the thorn was worth going in a little deeper into the hedge. But what if I cut off a bunch of the thorny raspberry canes and sent a picture to Instagram with the caption, "can't wait to eat these raspberries, stems, leaves, thorns, and fruit" #itsallgood #allfromGod #nopartwasted #highfiber? People would think I was nutty and may even be concerned with my health, risking perforation of my esophagus, stomach, and on down. On the other hand, people who were part of the #eattheentirecane movement would cheer me on. They would d...

In the early 1600's religious separatists fled their country from fear of persecution. The location was known to other explorers, but an epidemic had left the native population decimated and weak. The immigrants considered the epidemic and the stores of food left behind as God's blessing. However, they suffered terribly adjusting to the new world, nearly half of them died. The indigenous people had mercy on them and helped those remaining. Other immigrants came and joined the struggling outpost. They made treaties with the people who owned the land and cared for it for hundreds of generations. Then they violated those treaties, over and over and over. Not one treaty was kept. Natives were captured and sold into slavery in the sub-tropics where they died. Since they were no good as agricultural slaves, african slaves were imported. The natives were continually pushed out of their land, even the ones who converted to the immigrant religion. Natives were promised an entire ter...

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...