Category: DOC Thoughts
Whose Brand of Christian Witness?
For a while now I’ve argued that the Christianity proclaimed by the Church has more to do with the Apostle Paul and Constantine than it does with Jesus of Nazareth. Paul’s organizing of “the Way” broke from his Jewish heritage and was secularized Gentile communities. Constantine legitimized Christianity as a system of domination, blessed its further organization, and the thinking that became the orthodoxy of “substitutionary atonement.” Is there no other way to understand Jesus of Nazareth? Is there no other reason that he is an important teacher or leader in his time and ours?
Ross Douthat recently wrote an article in the New York Times, “Can Liberal Christianity be Saved?” He is arguing that conservative Christian theology is superior to liberal Christian theology or the social gospel movement. I’ve read several good responses to his thoughts, convictions, and read of attendance numbers. This piece by Bryon Williams on the Huffington Post is the best I’ve read so far, but of course it confirms what I’ve thought and believed for a long time. A few paragraphs. Click the article title to read more.
Constantine Christianity or the Teachings of Jesus?
by Bryon Willimas | The Blog | Huffington Post | 07/24/2012
Early Christianity was a rebellious underground movement until Roman Emperor Constantine made it his religious practice in A.D. 312. Constantine’s conversion was based on what he viewed as a victorious sign from God prior to going into battle. His successor, Theodosius I, made it the official religion of Rome in A.D. 380. These events did more for the spread of Christianity than any proselytizing efforts conducted by the Apostle Paul.
We should disabuse ourselves of the notion that there was at one time a liberal theology that served as the dominant ethos for the church as a whole. From the ministry of Jesus into the present day, liberal theology has found itself on the outskirts against a conservative theology that offered the perceived security of predictability.
But strident claims of vaunted superiority of the theology we embrace ultimately serves to obfuscate what’s really at the core of those beliefs. Is it a Roman Emperor whose faith is based on war and domination that we subscribe or that of a Mediterranean peasant from Nazareth who places the radical notion of inconvenient love at the core of his movement?
the latest “Sightings”
If anyone that is part of the planning team for our next General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) reads this blog, here is an idea from the UU’s that is worth considering for our future gatherings. Maybe this is what the youth program could consider doing in some way when we gather in Orlando next summer. Here is a reprint of the latest, “Sightings” from the Marty Center.
A “Justice General Assembly” for Unitarian Universalists
by Dan McKananDelegates to this year’s Unitarian Universalist General Assembly tried something new. Together with local partners in Phoenix, Arizona, they convened a “Justice General Assembly” challenging the human rights abuses inherent in the United States immigration system. For five days, Unitarian Universalists gathered with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Mi Familia Vota, Tonatierra Nahuacalli, Los Comités de Defensa del Barrio, Puente, Somos America, and Borderlinks. Justice General Assembly included worship, workshops, service projects, voter registration, theatrical presentations, and a massive candlelight vigil at the gates of the notorious “Tent City” jail, where persons without documents are detained and denied the basic rights most people in the United States take for granted.
Justice General Assembly began as a compromise: the meeting had been scheduled long before Arizona passed SB 1070 and immigration rights advocates called for a boycott. At the 2010 General Assembly, delegates debated the boycott vigorously, then rallied around the idea of dispensing with “business as usual” and coordinating the Phoenix meeting with local partners.
For Unitarian Universalists, a strong emphasis on justice is nothing new—all General Assemblies are chock-full of justice-related workshops, and in recent years all feature at least one act of public witness. What was new was the expanded emphasis on partnership, and the creation of accountable relationships with specific partner organizations. Together, delegates and partners learned to practice the “cultural humility” that enables common work for justice.
This entailed some surprises: delegates in 2011 had assumed that partner organizations would value action more than talk, and so eliminated the procedure for making immediate social justice statements from the 2012 agenda. It turned out that the partners were very eager for Unitarian Universalists to join the Episcopal Church in condemning the “Doctrine of Discovery”—the notion, first articulated by medieval and early modern popes but then incorporated into US case law, that Christian nations could assert sovereignty over non-Christian peoples they had “discovered.” The delegates approved a strong statement that also called for US implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—but doing so required some fancy parliamentary footwork.
Prior to Justice GA, some Unitarian Universalists had worried that a stronger emphasis on justice would come at the expense of spirituality. But delegates in Phoenix discovered that few tradeoffs were needed. This General Assembly featured expanded worship time, with both justice and ecumenical partners fully included. Participants also learned that only certain forms of partnership can be achieved in a large scale gathering. Partners were elated to see two thousand people from around the country join them for three hours in the heat outside Tent City. But delegates who longed for intense, one-on-one encounters with Arizona immigrants were disappointed: the ratio of 3700 delegates and other Unitarian Universalists to roughly one hundred partner representatives made this impossible. Many people left Phoenix determined to seek out new encounters at home.
In some respects, Justice GA was just the beginning of partnership. Participants contributed tens of thousands of dollars from their personal funds to the partner organizations (as well as a similar amount to the Arizona Immigration Ministry, a UU organization created to coordinate the partnerships), but they did not discuss a permanent budgetary commitment to partnership work. Back in the late 1960s, the issue of such commitment nearly split the tradition, when the denomination first made and then partly rescinded a million dollar budgetary commitment to the Black Affairs Council, a UU group created to foster partnership with organizations promoting black empowerment. The resulting controversy left many advocates of partnership bitterly disappointed. Justice GA helped heal some of those lingering wounds, but it only began to address the tough questions of reparation and shared power that Unitarian Universalists and other people of faith had grappled with in the 1960s.
By the end of the week, most delegates were determined to make aspects of Justice GA into “business as usual” for future gatherings. They selected “Reproductive Justice” as the denomination’s next “Congregational Study Action Issue” in part because the proposal envisioned a partnership with Sister Song—the women of color collective that has pioneered the concept of “reproductive justice”—comparable to the Arizona partnership on immigration. The future of Unitarian Universalism may well be intertwined with that of many justice-seeking movements.