religion Archives - Page 10 of 11

ROG answers Arthur’s Question on Irreligiosity

I’m more irritable with perversions of Christianity than I am with the irreligious. I think it’s because they are SUPPOSED to be on “my” team.

One of my favorite people in Blogistan, Arthur@AmeriNZ, asks:

You know—of course, you do—you had me scurrying for my dictionary to consider the relative merit of “gauntlet” v. “gantlet”. I give you the victory on points.

But that’s not my question. You are religious and at least some of your readers are not. How hard is it for you to overlook what I can only assume is, if not blasphemy, then as close as you can get? Some of us are a bit more stroppy in our irreligiousity than others, so I’m wondering how you reconcile that with your own faith. Or, is it that your faith allows for those who are of differing—even non-religious—beliefs?

This is something that I, as a heathen, have long wondered about.

Arthur, I hyperlinked “stroppy” for my American readers, because I had never heard of the word until I saw or heard you use it.

I think my faith journey has been helpful. I was “saved” watching Billy Graham at someone’s house on Oak Street in Binghamton, NY when I was nine years old. This house is about a half-block from my church, a couple of blocks from my house. I mention this because it wasn’t an event that took place either at home or my church.

Went to Friday Night Bible Club almost every week for years. Figured that I was destined to become a minister, and others felt similarly. But here’s when things went off track. The more I read and studied, the less the whole thing was making sense. Some of the Old Testament stuff, especially in Leviticus, was troubling and confusing. I had a very difficult time with the notion of missionaries needing to “save the savages” in other countries from their “inferior” religions. In particular, I was told that all the Hindus in India were going to go to hell, and I did (and still do) have some real difficulty with that.

So I started drifting away from Christianity in college, though I still hung out with the campus ministry occasionally. Around this time, I read a book about Mahatma Gandhi. There’s a quote in there, and I’m paraphrasing, but in response to the question of why Gandhi didn’t become a Christian since he was an admirer of the teachings of Jesus Christ, he replied, “I’d become a Christian if I had ever met one.” Think that was a great retort.

In my 20s, I drifted theologically, flirting with various faiths, including the Moonies, and occasionally no faith at all. When I found my way back to Christianity over time in my 30s, it was with a more – what’s the word? – adult (?) sensibility, better able to deal with seemingly inherent contradictions of living faith and document.

As I was doing a Bible study in the mid-1990s, one of the exercises was to go to a faith tradition different from my own. I went to a now-defunct Coptic (Egyptian Orthodox) church on Madison Avenue in Albany and spent about three hours there. After the service, I was engaged in conversation with a member. He wanted to know what my religious background was; I told him that I was a Protestant, a Methodist at the time. He said to me, as nicely as one can, “You do know you’re going to go to hell, don’t you?” This had to do with the fact that Protestants, unlike Catholics and Orthodox, do not subscribe to the literal belief in transubstantiation. That certainly helped my understanding of faith in the world from a different perspective, and how it felt to be the “other” theologically.

Indeed, I always engage people in religious conversations, if they want (and I have time) because all it can do is hone my own faith. Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door? Come on in!

So, Arthur, the long answer to the question, is that irreligiosity bothers me far less than it seems to bug others, maybe because I’ve been there. “Opiate of the masses”? If that works for you. The late Christopher Hitchens’ tirade against the idea of God/faith? Fine. (Although this writer does have a valid point about Hitchens in a wider context.) Let’s face it, faith can be a bit scary, like stepping out into the void as Indiana Jones did in the third movie.

Actually, I’m more irritable with perversions of Christianity than I am with the irreligious. I think it’s because they are SUPPOSED to be on “my” team. So those Westboro Baptists tick me off far more than atheists. The peculiar intersection of Christianity and Americanism I find troubling because I believe Jesus was fighting the status quo, not embracing it.

I like many comedy movies about God. George Burns as God (Oh God), Morgan Freeman as God (Bruce Almighty). I love Monty Python’s Life of Brian so much that I bought it on DVD just this year.

Arthur, I’m not overlooking blasphemy; indeed, I happen to find it helpful to me. And yes, my faith allows room for those who are of differing— even non-religious— beliefs from me, because I think that is the Jesus message.

Sidebar: there was a discussion in adult Bible education at church a few weeks ago, and there was a conversation about whether people know you’re a Christian. One guy said that it would be unlikely. He didn’t wear a cross, carry around a Bible (like I did my first two years in high school – really), so how would anyone know? I suppose I DO want people to know – surely people at work know that, at least, I sing in a church choir. I mention faith periodically in this blog, I hope, but not TOO often. To proselytize would be anathema to me; this is what I believe, but I’m not saying that’s how someone else should feel. On the other hand, if you think, “he’s not so bad, for a Christian,” that’d be a plus.
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Still taking questions.

Roger Answers Your Questions, Tom the Mayor and Jaquandor

Presbyterians are much more deliberative than Methodists.

Jaquandor, the Buffalo area’s finest blogger, asks:

1. Are there any words you dislike, just because of the sound of them and not necessarily the meaning?

Used to be that German words I tended to dislike as too guttural. The K sound would get stuck on the roof of my mouth. But I’ve mellowed, and nothing immediately comes to mind.

2. Are there any subjects you really want to know more about and yet never seem to get around to learning about?

Oh, yeah, dozens, everything from various sciences, such as astronomy and botany; to languages, which I do not seem to have a talent for, starting with Spanish and Latin. But I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I probably won’t do anything about it unless I give up something else, and evidently, I’m not willing to do that.

3. Are you surprised that gay marriage passed in New York? (I am, a little….)

Heck, yeah. It failed miserably some 600 days earlier when the State Senate was controlled by the Democrats. OK, “controlled” is probably an overstatement, since it was pretty chaotic. The last two governors supported it, and it didn’t matter. And it passes with a Republican-controlled Senate? More like shocked.
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Tom the Mayor, once a mail order whiz at FantaCo, among other attributes, asks:

Are all the members of your church as Liberal as you are? could you be a good Christian, yet disagree with the beliefs of your church’s leaders?

Tom asks simple questions which I will complicate in answering.

Somehow, as a result of singing in my old church choir at my grandmother’s funeral in May 1983, it got me to decide to start attending church again, after more than a decade of mostly not going. But I couldn’t just go back to a church like the one from my childhood, which I loved then, but found that my theological development was not in tune with that church’s theological positions.

So I went church shopping.

When I first attended Trinity United Methodist Church, it was June 13, 1982. I remember this quite well because the day before, I was at an anti-nuke rally in New York City. The minister, the late Stan Moore, said something quite positive about the rally in his sermon, and this endeared him, and the church, to me. While the shopping continued for some months, I decided I wanted to be there by the end of the year, though I didn’t actually join until December 1984.

In that congregation, I did have leadership roles, first as vice-chair, then chair of the Administrative Board, which was the church’s meeting of the whole, then chair of the Council on Ministries, which was the chairs of the major service committees. I left, not because of theology, but autocracy, involving a change in church structure under a subsequent minister which made it less accountable to the congregation.

I started attending First Presbyterian in the spring of 2000 and joined in 2002. At some point, I was an elder there, but didn’t enjoy it; I think I’m all meetinged out.

So to your actual question: if by the church, you mean the congregation, most of them are as liberal as I am, though by no means all of them. I remember having a conversation with one of them at the (late) YMCA, where you used to work. He mentioned that one of the Clintons, Bill or Hillary, was having a book come out, and he, who reads the New York Post, a conservative tabloid, every day, said he was sure that I would be buying the book from that “liberal”. I surprised him by stating that I didn’t think the Clintons were liberal at all.

If you mean the Presbyterian Church USA, our congregation is definitely more liberal than some. But of course, this depends on your meaning of liberal. If feeding the hungry, clothing the needy is “liberal”, then it’s almost the whole denomination that is liberal. If it’s something such as the role of gays in the life of the church, the Albany Presbytery, which represents our church, is more progressive than others. But given the fact that the PCUSA denomination in 1997 created MORE restrictive language re participation of gays as ministers, elders, and deacons, then in May 2011 agreed to less restrictive language, not many people bolted the church when either event occurred.

Presbyterians are much more deliberative than Methodists. The fact that our Presbytery was at odds – no, too harsh, disagreed – with the PCUSA on gay ordination for over a decade was surprisingly not a big deal.

Oh, one other thing: I wanted Trinity UMC to take more of a stand on gay rights issues when I was involved there in the 1990s. It was downplayed because the church had “made a proclamation” back in 1979 or 1975, or whenever, which preceded my tenure there, and that seemed, to some, to be enough. So it’s not just a matter of beliefs; it’s acting on the beliefs, regularly. My current congregation participates in the Gay Pride parade annually, with our rainbow tapestry hanging from the bell tower as well as over the entrance, as an ongoing, living, breathing statement of faith.

Did I actually answer the question?

January Ramblin’

The Rev. Roger Green was a priest of the Church of England.

Finding a Religious Common Ground. A reminder that the religions that sometimes divide us have much history in common. (CBS Sunday Morning)

From the Wikipedia:
One relatively minor aspect of the [Green Hornet] character that tends to be given limited exposure in the actual productions is his blood relationship to the Lone Ranger, another character created by [Fran] Striker. The Lone Ranger’s nephew was Dan Reid. In the Green Hornet radio shows, the Hornet’s father was likewise named Dan Reid, making Britt Reid the Lone Ranger’s great-nephew.

On November 11, 1947, radio show episode “Too Hot to Handle”, Britt tells his father that he, Britt, is the Green Hornet. After Dan’s initial shock and anger, Dan refers to a vigilante “pioneer ancestor” of theirs that Dan himself had ridden alongside within Texas. As he expressed pride in and love for his son, the Lone Ranger theme briefly played in the background.
The Lone Ranger property was sold to another company in the 1950s, which resulted in a legal complication that precluded The Lone Ranger from being directly associated with the Green Hornet.

And here’s a joint chronology of the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet.

The Lone Ranger intro
Fred Foy, the announcer of the Lone Ranger, who died in December 2010, recreating the intro
the last 3/4s of the William Tell Overture by Rossini, the final section of which is the Lone Ranger theme

All The World Is Waiting or should be. Interesting history in five minutes, of the best known female character in comics, Wonder Woman.

Who could play the Marvel Comics character, the Black Panther?

Sean Smith resigned as L.A. bureau chief of Entertainment weekly to join the Peace Corps, which he wrote about in this Newsweek article. My favorite paragraph:
“Writing about Hollywood is like being a reporter at Disneyland. At first, you can’t believe that you get to spend every day in The Happiest Place on Earth. Everyone wants to ask you about your work. You’re surrounded by princesses, and the sky sparkles with pixie dust. But as the years go on, you learn about the oily machinery that manufactures all that enchantment. You see what Cinderella’s really like when that glass slipper comes off. And then one day you notice that the magic is gone, and all you’re left with is a small, small world.”

Daniel Johnston’s “Infinite Comic Book of Musical Greatness”
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Google Alert finds

A Friend Like Charlie
Charlie Green is 14 (on Feb. 16) and his father, Roger Green, is 70. They are bound together more than just by blood. It’s music that also binds them.

Teaming up with CareerBuilder provides our national, regional, and local advertisers with access to job seekers in towns and cities where we’ve not traditionally been present,” said Roger Green, Managing Director, Newsquest Digital Media. “Plus it provides our audience with the greatest number of opportunities for jobs and careers.”

Roger Green made this Freedom of Information request to Devon County Council; definitely my kind of thing.

The Rev. Roger Green was the father of Timothy Green. Roger was born about 1611 in England and came to Virginia in 1635 on the ship Abraham at the age of 24 years. The Rev. Roger Green was a priest of the Church of England and was active in establishing the Church of England in Virginia and North Carolina.

Roger Green, age 80, of Huntington [Indiana], died at 9:05 p.m. Monday (January 25, 2010) at Oakbrook Village in Huntington.

With God On Our Side

I’ve been watching God in America on PBS recently. I will grant that the criticism that it does not touch on non-Christian faiths as much as it ought is valid, but I still think the series has validity, and I’ve already recommended it to my church’s adult education coordinator. Maybe the series SHOULD be called “Christanity in America.”

That caveat aside, it is an interesting take on the conflicting views of faith in the country, never moreso than in the period right before and during the Civil War, when slavery was attacked and defended using the very same Bible. On the show, one abolitionist minister cites Exodus 21:16, “Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death.” Meanwhile, a pro-slavery preacher quotes Leviticus 25:45, 46 – “You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life.” This fight split the Methodist, baptist and Presbyterian denominations for decades.

Meanwhile, the slaves themselves are attracted to the liberation theology of Moses leading his people to freedom, epitomized by Exodus 3: 7-8: “The LORD said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Thing is that most of these people had a certainty that God supports their particular take on the word because they believe – at least the non-slaves – in the notion that the United States is uniquely blessed by God. Interesting, one person in this period was less certain about God’s will, and that was President Abraham Lincoln, a man with a good Old Testament name.

The parallels with modern-day America are clear. There are some who claim to have a direct line to the Almighty when it comes to what is required/desired/permitted/omitted. The rest of us, not so much, except that God couldn’t POSSIBLY have meant THAT, at least not any more.

Anyway, it reminded me of the Bob Dylan song With God On Our Side, performed here by Joan Baez.

Reformation Rap QUESTION

I’ve long wondered what God did think of all of the different denominations, some created more by differences of style than of doctrine. Is God pleased with the diversity of worship experiences, or is She really ticked off?

It’s Reformation Sunday tomorrow. As a long-time Methodist, I had no idea what that meant and had barely heard of it. But now, as a Presbyterian, in a church in the “Reform tradition,” it’s a bigger deal. It commemorates the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door.

Someone sent me this a couple of days ago:
We religious instruction teachers are always looking for ways to engage the students. In my class last year, I likened Martin Luther’s dilemma to: how would they (the students) feel, if they came home to find their families imprisoned and tortured, and it won’t stop until they say that Sammy Hagar was Van Halen’s better frontman? We’d all agreed, beforehand, that Van Halen’s a great band, “but you MUST renounce Diamond Dave, and embrace Sammy, or you’ll get your dad’s OTHER EAR in ANOTHER package!” They stood up at their table, and shouted & pointed in my face, and I had soooo much fun getting them all stirred up while humming “Why Can’t This Be Love?” and dissing the tune to “Panama…” It’s why I teach 🙂

There was also a link to something called the 95 Theses, a 2007 rap done to the tune of Jay-Z’s 99 Problems. I’ve provided three links; the third starts with a short commercial.

95 Theses
95 Theses
95 Theses

Found these lyrics in several places, including here:

If you havin’ Church problems then don’t blame God, son
I got ninety-five theses but the Pope ain’t one.

Listen up, all my people, it’s a story for the telling
’bout the sin and injustice and corruption I been smelling:
I met that homie, Tetzel, then I started rebelling…
One Five One Seven – that’s when it first went down.
Then the real test was when it started spreading around.
Sixty days to recant what I said? Father, please!
You’ve had, what? Goin’ on fifteen centuries?
“Oh snap, he’s messin’ with the holy communion.”
But I ain’t never dissed your precious hypostatic union!…

I was struck most by this section:

But you forgot about me and my demonstration?
Like you can just create your own denomination?
“We don’t like this part, so we’ll just add a little twist.”
Now we Anglican, Amish, and even Calvinist.
I gave you the power, you gone and abused it.
I gave you God’s truth, you just confused it.

Shout out to Johann Gutenberg … I see you baby.