I’m a fan of Jim Rigby, a minister who serves St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. Amongst different issues, Jim identifies as a humanitarian who believes everyone, irrespective of their religion custom, and even within the absence of a religion custom, can affirm their core values by way of significant symbols in methods that don’t result in intolerance and oppression of our neighbors and all that lives upon the Earth. Sounds fantastic, constructive, and life-affirming, but nothing wanting remodeling our authoritarian, hierarchical, ecclesiastical establishments will obtain that type of peace.
That is one among Jim’s latest, common postings on Fb:
THE LIVING HEART OF RELIGION IS A REVOLUTION
Lovers of humankind search to liberate us to not make us obedient to spiritual hierarchy.
The founders of nice faiths come to awaken our minds to not suffocate the torch of our cause below bushels of dogma and platitudes.
The establishments that bear the names of those founders too typically deal with consolidating energy and on resisting various insights. They’re just like the lifeless fig tree cursed by Jesus.
Fundamentalism is commonly however the stiffened cadaver of religion. Fundamentalism is all that’s left when the new passions and trustworthy uncertainties of human authenticity have been drained.
Fundamentalism is all root and no blossom.
The dwelling pulse of faith is restored by returning to our personal trembling questions, to not another person’s unblinking solutions.
If we can’t query the dogma, and disobey the hierarchy, of any faith we’re known as by all that’s sacred to flee with out wanting back- lest we be became incurious and unfeeling pillars of salt.
The dwelling coronary heart of faith just isn’t an establishment, it’s a revolution.
I like the favored saying in some circles, “If you happen to meet the Buddha on the highway, kill him.” The Buddha here’s a image of non secular/non secular certitude. Counting on one other’s understanding and interpretation of a religion custom numbs and ultimately kills us—each actually (Bear in mind Jim Jones and the Kool-Assist? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/17/an-apocalyptic-cult-900-dead-remembering-the-jonestown-massacre-40-years-on) and metaphorically (the shortage of private energy we regularly expertise after we are “othered” by our spiritual establishment’s hierarchical construction). So, on this saying, we’re being admonished to kill (not actually) whoever interferes with our personal distinctive understanding, and expression of religion.
Fundamentalists spew “truths” from their “stiffened cadavers,” typically asphyxiating folks below their affect. Generally they don’t even notice the stifling nature of their very own message. When that lethal message turns into institutionalized in our religion traditions, nothing wanting a revolution is so as.
Come January, my buddy Dale (if all goes in line with plan) will turn out to be an ordained priest in The Episcopal Church. Proper now he serves in a energetic, Virginia parish. Once I taught Spiritual Research at a neighborhood college, Dale got here commonly to talk with my college students. Dale has advised me he’s drawn to a “revolutionary Jesus.” College students typically requested him if he believed within the literal resurrection of Jesus from the grave. Dale just isn’t a fundamentalist and doesn’t discover it helpful to talk of a literal resurrection (enshrined in Christian creeds and confessions) as important to the gospel message. There are methods to grasp the story of Jesus’ resurrection in ways in which don’t depend on literalism. I don’t imagine any Scripture was written to be understood actually. Dale needs to begin a revolution of affection and peace by working within the right here and now in direction of an honest and honest society—ending gun violence, dwelling wages for staff, bodily autonomy for ladies, and common well being care are however 4 issues he wish to see come about by way of a revolution in how the Church “lives out” the gospel story in society.
Gun violence just isn’t inevitable, however we behave as if it’s. Virtually day by day we hear about any person or a bunch of individuals gunned down. We shake our heads in dismay, launch these worn-out, dismal ideas and prayers in direction of the bereaved, and go about our enterprise—most frequently feeling powerless to impact change of any sort. Dale is satisfied the “revolutionary Jesus” offers us hope as Jesus persistently went up in opposition to the stifling, fundamentalist energy construction of his personal day. “Woe to you, academics of the legislation and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clear the surface of the cup and dish, however inside they’re stuffed with greed and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:25). What number of occasions have we heard? “My proper to bear arms is protected by the twond modification.” The twond modification is the polished outdoors of the cup! We refuse to see the loss of life and destruction inside that cup perpetuated by our society’s energy construction’s refusal to rock their hierarchical boat.
Dale created a 4-part collection on gun violence aptly titled, “Past Ideas and Prayers.” The primary half was a service of neighborhood lament over gun violence. The issue was named and the neighborhood’s expression of sorrow adopted. The service was significant to me. But, the litany’s first prayer started with the chief addressing “God the Father.” The folks responded “Have mercy on us.” Then he implored “God the Son.” The congregation responded once more, “Have mercy on us.” Lastly, he beseeched “God the Holy Spirit.” By this time, we who determine as ladies have been placed on the surface of the congregation’s try to speak with the Divine. Can the Christian Spirit be something aside from male after calling on the Father and the Son? Does addressing the deity as male matter? I contend it does. Gun tradition is inextricably related with “being a person” in our patriarchal society.
I applaud Dale’s efforts inside his church neighborhood to make a dent within the gun violence all of us expertise. I believe qualities reminiscent of aggression, management, and power—qualities we attribute to males—should be rethought in gentle of a male deity and the massacre we expertise day by day. Would possibly what follows be a risk?
Divine Mom, Daughter, and Information, might we develop stamina and fortitude working with You to create protected communities the place our weapons have been “overwhelmed all the way down to ploughshares.”
(Quote in sentence is from the prophet Isaiah.)
