A New Template for Religion: A Conversation with Michael Morwood, Part 2

Column by Rev. David M. Felten on 14 September 2017 3 Comments

What follows in interview form is the second of three columns inspired by a presentation Michael Morwood offered at the Common Dreams Conference in Brisbane, Queensland, in 2016. In this installment, Morwood offers a new perspective on revelation, a re-visioning of who Jesus was, and continues with thoughts on whether our conventional ideas of religion have any real value anymore.

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Question

Are there parts of the Old Testament that are said to be relevant today and why?

Answer

Dear Janet,

I think a case could be made that all of the Hebrew Scriptures are relevant today. One really can’t truly understand all of the many nuances, or perceive the many allusions, contained in the books of the New Testament without being familiar with the Hebrew scriptures that they expand upon. A very high percentage of the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are either direct quotes from verses in the Hebrew texts, or are obvious riffs upon and variations on them. Moreover, if we seek to follow Jesus, we’d do well to be familiar with the texts that informed and inspired him. Based upon the topics he spoke most about, and which verses he tended to quote or allude to the most, it seems clear that Prophets and the Psalms were the books that Jesus spent the most time with, followed by the books of the Torah. So, one might say that the Prophets and the Psalms were Jesus’ “canon within the canon.” And he clearly employed a hermeneutic (interpretive lense) of love as he grappled with those texts that were written long before he was born and sought to make them relevant for his time. I think we’d do well to do the same.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement frequently employed motifs from the Hebrew texts – especially Exodus; as well as Micah, and the other prophets. That was just four decades ago. And, tragically, that Movement still has work to do.

On a related note, I’ve encountered not a few liberal and progressive Christians who say, “I don’t believe in the God of the Old Testament. I only read the New Testament.” Not only is this problematic for the reasons mentioned above, it’s actually committing the “heresy” known as Marcionism. I don’t normally use that word, but in this case I’m okay with it. Marcion felt that “the God of the Old Testament” was cruel and monstrous and that the “God of the New Testament” is markedly different and more loving. While there clearly are a few passages in the Hebrew texts that are most unfortunate and unhelpful and many of us might wish they weren’t there at all, it is unfair and intellectually dishonest to assert that there is only “one God” or “one theology about God” in the Hebrew texts. There are far more books in the Hebrew scriptures than in the New Testament (39–46 depending on who is counting) and they contain as many, and in fact more theologies about God. The books therein are in conversation with each other – and in the case of Isaiah for instance, within themselves. They are a midrash of assertions, discussions, and dissenting voices. This messy project is ongoing and very much relevant today.

Finally, here is a link to a resource that I wrote that many have found helpful: “16 Ways Progressive Christians Interpret the Bible.” I hope this helps.

~ Rev. Roger Wolsey

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Unmasking the Sources of Christian Anti-Semitism - Part 2

Spong

Intolerance and bigotry seem to be written into the very fabric of religious life, causing people to act in ways that are diametrically opposed to what they say they believe. A tremendous need for certainty that overwhelms our rationality appears to be part of our very humanity. It is visible in the excessive claims that every religious system makes for both its ultimate truthfulness and its exclusiveness. Listen to the language of religion: "We possess the only truth." "Our scriptures are the inerrant Word of God." "Our Pope is infallible." "No one comes to God except through our particular pathway." These pious claims are little more than the power assertions of frightened people. To validate these claims it becomes psychologically necessary for believers to attack and dismiss any competing religious system, setting the stage for religious persecution, religious violence and religious bigotry. Everywhere one looks in the world today, one discovers the manifestations of that human need. God is always invoked to justify our cruelty, our attacks and our prejudice.

Religion began its journey through history as a dimension of tribal life, interpreting the world to a particular clan of people. In time, individual tribes merged into larger and larger constellations until in our day three major religious systems dominate the world. Hinduism and its child Buddhism are dominant in the eastern part of the world; Islam blankets the Middle East, and the Judeo-Christian faith holds sway over the western world. Judaism, while the mother of Christianity, exists today as a tiny presence in an overwhelmingly Christian world, constantly resisting efforts at assimilation. Over the centuries Christianity, as part of the dominant west, had no great need to engage the other religions of the world. Islam could be ignored at least since the eighth century, when in the battle of Tours the Muslims were driven out of Europe. The eastern religions were also generally outside the orbit of western consciousness and thus they raised no great concerns. However, Judaism as a minority tradition inside the dominant system, was a living symbol that Christian claims were not universally acknowledged. While Christians were regularly making assertions of divine revelation, of a heavenly invasion by God to save the world or claiming that they alone control the exclusive doorway into God, there were Jews in their midst constantly reminding them that not all people believed as they did. In that place deep down in our souls, where the hysteria of powerlessness collides with the security-providing mechanisms, which make self-consciousness and humanity itself possible, religious prejudice is born. Anti-Semitism is thus the constant shadow, the ever- present underside of Christian claims of certainty.

In my last column, I began a walk back through history to trace the development of anti-Semitism in the Christian West. I started with the holocaust in the middle years of the twentieth century in Nazi Germany and journeyed until I reached the time of the bubonic plague in the fourteenth century. I continue that trek this week in search of the origin of this prejudice that has been a constant reality inside the Christian tradition.

I come next to that bizarre period of western history that we call the Crusades. The desire to win eternal reward and the need to oppress a rising religious threat, combined with an obsession to free our holy places from the control of the infidels, fueled centuries of crusading fervor. The holy city of Jerusalem, which included such sites as the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Hill of Calvary and the place of Jesus' tomb in Joseph's garden, were all being "defiled" by Muslim control. Six miles away lay the little town of Bethlehem, the sacred birthplace of Jesus, also under Islamic auspices. Encouraged by the Vatican, local princes identified this external Muslim enemy and were easily able to rouse the population of Europe into a frenzy. Eternal reward, it was said, awaited those who led a contingent of followers to the Holy Land to kill the infidels and free the holy places. Some battalions of Christian crusaders were large, led by the ruling kings of Europe. Some were smaller, led by a local duke or nobleman. Others were organized by a single citizen who usually had more enthusiasm than wisdom. Militarily, all of them were quite unsuccessful. The Holy Land has generally remained under Muslim control until this day, but the crusades left a hatred deep in the souls of the Islamic people and nations, that plagues the western world at this very moment.

In our search for the origins of anti-Semitism, we need to note that most of these fervent Christian soldiers who set off on these "romantic" crusades, never actually made it to the Holy Land. They only made it to one or two villages or towns away from their homes where they acted out their vehemence against the only "infidels" they could find in these communities that were unfortunate enough to be in their pathway. The infidels there were not Muslims but Jews. "One infidel is as good as another," became the motto of these crusaders as the Jews were killed in village after village. They deserved it the Christians said. They killed Jesus and, more than that, they had admitted it, bragged about it and accepted the consequences for themselves and their children. That is what the "Word of God" had stated. The echoes of the words penned by Matthew that had the crowds take responsibility for the blood of Jesus and volunteering that blame for their children in generations as yet unborn were not far from the minds of these Christian warriors.

This persecutory mentality had also expressed itself even earlier in European history when the Christians barred the Jews from owning land. To survive economically they became bankers and jewelers. Christians were taught that usury was sinful so no Christian could charge interest on loans. This made it unprofitable for Christians to engage in banking, thus opening a rich market that allowed Jews to become the dominant financiers of Europe. Kings borrowed money from Jewish bankers to underwrite their wars and even their crusades. This enabled the Christians to feed their stereotypical prejudices that portrayed Jews as moneygrubbers, who would do anything for money. If there were any doubts about this, the story of Judas Iscariot was retold. Had he not betrayed the Lord for thirty pieces of silver? It all fitted together. Christians needed the Jewish bankers but they hated them simultaneously.

Banking was not a safe haven for Jews. Whenever the king's debts to Jewish financiers became excessive, it was easy for him to begin another round of persecutions in which Jewish property would be confiscated. That property frequently included those liquid assets called bank loans and the king's debts disappeared into thin air! In time, the Christians would abandon their principles about the sinfulness of interest. Banking was too lucrative an enterprise to leave in Jewish hands. Another layer of anti-Semitism is thus laid bare.

Continuing this journey backward through time, we arrive at the period of Christian history in which the church celebrated its Founding Fathers -- Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Jerome, Tertullian and John Chrysostom, just to name a few. They were the key players as the church learned how to survive in a period of persecution and to prepare their faith tradition to become the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, which happened in the fourth century. It is fascinating to discover how deep and virulent the anti-Jewish rhetoric was in almost every one of these "Fathers." Their words, when read today, are still chilling. Jews were called "evil, vermin and unclean people." They were said to be 'unfit to live.' Christians were taught that it was a virtue to hate Jews actively. They castigated and caricatured the Jewish faith in ways that would make it impossible for a faithful Jew to recognize it as his or her faith. Jews were not to be trusted, not to be allowed access to power, not be considered as potential friends, not to be people with whom any Christian would break bread.

When we arrive at the second century, still searching for the origins of this prejudice that seems to have infected Christians at a very early stage, we come to a man named Marcion who did his work around 140 C.E. Marcion regarded the God of the Jews as a demonic figure. He proposed that Christians rip the Old Testament out of their Bibles and edit out of the New Testament any references to the God of the Jews. His desire was to sever Christianity from its Jewish roots and allow it, even force it, to deny its own ancestry. Marcion might be called the culmination of the first great wave of Christian anti-Semitism. The church to its credit refused to go along with Marcion, ultimately condemning him as a heretic, but Marcion's anti-Semitism was destined to continue to exert its ugly prejudice in the life of the church. Marcion forced the early church to draw up its own Canon of Scripture, which quite specifically included the Old Testament. It could hardly have done otherwise since the canonical gospels included thousands of references to the Hebrew Scriptures. Those Jewish texts had long been the primary way through which Christians had portrayed Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Christians even began to appropriate Jewish concepts to themselves, calling themselves "God's Chosen People, God's elect," and identifying themselves as the New Israel. To do this implied that the Jews no longer had a right to these claims, since they were defined by the Christians as God's rejected, the ones who did not live up to their calling. "He came to his own and his own received him not," is the way the fourth Gospel described it.

The next step backward in this journey takes us into the New Testament itself. We Christians do not like to face the fact that anti-Semitism is present in the gospels themselves, but it is. The word of God actually teaches us to hate. Exploring that will be my topic next week.

~ John Shelby Spong
Originally published May 12, 2004

 

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