Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

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An Advent Poem

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality, Poetry

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

of the setting-free kind

truth
the setting-free kind if you know it
you should speak it
sing it like Mary did in the Bible: “God casts the mighty

from their thrones and fills the hungry with good things.”
but sounds of children’s growling bellies never score
in department store magnificat melodies.
doesn’t anybody get that “gentle Mary meek and mild” was

rasping out a revolution song? her belly swelling with
truth no one would want to hear: “God has scattered
the proud in their conceit. God has cast down the mighty from
their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” but how could we know? she was

“just a woman.” a teenager pregnant before her time and worse
pregnant before the wedding. what could a woman’s body
know? so somebody positioned her in a tableau and
left her there until Christmas day. then with

Mary attic-stored until the next cyber Monday
we sing instead Jesus loves me songs while our ears ring with
clatter from posturing pundits and politicians who can’t hear
the difference between the fickle-false fire of their own voices and

truth of the setting-free kind.

 

About Jill Crainshaw
Jill Crainshaw is a PCUSA minister and Blackburn Professor of Worship and Liturgical Theology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. She is the author of several books on worship and ministry.… [Read more…] about An Advent Poem

Three Reasons I Am a Christian Universalist

by Chuck Queen in Christian Issues

Before I tell you why I am a universalist, I must first clarify the kind of universalist I am. I don’t believe that one who has been a hateful jerk just automatically walks into a kin-dom of love upon death. There is nothing to suggest that simply passing through death would transform a hater into a lover. How would someone with prejudice, greed, a thirst for vengeance, etc. be able to exist in a realm of self-giving love?

So, I believe that everyone will somehow, someway, someday be changed into a compassionate, loving person. I believe that the most evil, murderous tyrant will one day be transformed into a good and caring person.

How does that happen? I don’t pretend to know. How long will it take? Again, I have no idea about that either. I see life as evolutionary, developmental, and progressive. Therefore, I am not dismissive of divine judgment in the life to come, though I see that judgment as corrective, restorative, and redemptive, not punitive and retributive. Whatever divine judgment involves (and once again, I don’t pretend to know), I believe its aim is to bring about repentance and conversion.

I must also concede that while I believe that eventually all persons will repent and be transformed into loving, compassionate, caring persons, there is also the possibility that not every person can be saved/transformed/healed/made whole. It is a cooperative effort. We must participate in our healing and liberation. And as long as we are free to choose, there is always… [Read more…] about Three Reasons I Am a Christian Universalist

Advent Three:  Crocus Blossoms in Desert Places

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

While searching a closet for Christmas decorations the other day, I pulled out a dusty wooden box, the shipping crate kind that has a lid. I had forgotten all about having that box, and as I coaxed it from its hiding place, I realized that I couldn’t even remember what was in it. When I lifted the lid, the ghosts of lifetimes past slipped out to hover over my shoulder as I explored the contents.

My grandma was a crochet wizard. During long winter nights, she sat in her blue recliner, her lap and feet getting cozier by the hour as her nimble fingers grew yet another “mile a minute” afghan. The box I pulled out of the closet held peculiar odds and ends of Grandma’s handiwork. A coaster half-finished. Bits and pieces of squares for a granny throw. A clear plastic bag stuffed with a rainbow of left-over yarn ends from projects long since completed.

My fingers lingered in the rows of each unfinished piece. For which niece or grandchild had she been wizarding this one? What design yet to be revealed had she been stitching?

I am the only person in our family other than Grandma who crochets. Grandma taught me when I was six years old. I guess that is why I inherited the box when she died. “If anyone will know what to do with all of these leftovers,” my mother said, “you will know.”

I’m not sure I do know what to do. Not with these forgotten but now found fragments and not with the fragments of things that seem to be slipping… [Read more…] about Advent Three:  Crocus Blossoms in Desert Places

It's Hard to Go to Church in Trump's America

by Holly Love in Current Events

It’s hard for me to go to church these days.

It’s hard for me to give up my precious, fleeting family time to transport my toddler across town, stand in a room with people I don’t know and listen to a sermon that’s just a little too long. It’s hard to go by myself with my son when my husband is working, and it’s hard to go as a whole family on my husband’s Sundays off, when we would really rather be doing something else together. It’s hard to make the effort. Especially now.

The truth of the matter is that it’s hard for me to go to an evangelical church in the wake of Trump’s election. I don’t think I belong there anymore.

I don’t belong with a group of people that by and large believes Trump is worthy of being president.

I feel uprooted, disoriented. Homeless. The evangelical church is the body into which I was born and raised, where I was educated and how I came to faith. I’m not sure where to go next.

Knowing that 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, I was interested to see how the leaders at our new church here in Atlanta would handle the election aftermath. Would they be silent about it? Call for unity? Reference it obliquely? Or speak out against Trump’s nativism, racism, mysogyny, etc.?

On the second Sunday after election day, the pastor at church preached a sermon on living out the gospel in everyday life. I was cautiously hopeful that he would reference the obvious elephant in the room, but he didn’t get any more explicit than saying something like “our… [Read more…] about It's Hard to Go to Church in Trump's America

Why the Bible Doesn’t ‘Clearly Say’ Anything

by Don M. Burrows in Christian Issues

If it’s a day ending in Y at Unfundamentalist, it’s probably a day on which we’ve gotten some version of the following from one of our detractors: “Your argument seems to be with the Bible.”

These are the people who believe the Bible to be the Definitive Word of God, and who believe, even when offered any number of nuanced arguments about why that’s problematic, that “the Bible clearly says X,” about any given issue.

If you are saying those words in English, living in present-day America, then you are uttering either an obfuscation or an outright lie. Because the Bible doesn’t “clearly say” much of anything.

Sure, it isn’t as though most of the New Testament contains completely opaque Greek. Much of it is quite straightforward. But the Biblical texts get especially sticky on matters of theology and social politics, when verses are used to declare people sinners or unfit for heaven. In such a context, a verse like “No one gets to the Father except by me” calls for a much greater discussion than a verse like “they went down into Nazareth” (though issues of narrative flow are even raised for the latter).

This is because the Bible is written in ancient languages, and ancient languages are particularly difficult for us to nail down, since no one is currently alive speaking them as living models of communication. So scholars work hard to tease out the meaning of problematic passages using the tried-and-true tools of philology—the study of ancient… [Read more…] about Why the Bible Doesn’t ‘Clearly Say’ Anything

Advent Two: Stumped while Seeking Peace in Zootopia

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

A shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse,
   and a branch shall grow out of his roots…

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
   the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
   and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
   their young shall lie down together;
   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
   and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
   on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
   as the waters cover the sea.

from Isaiah 11:1-10.

Reading this text after scrolling through my newsfeed’s local and global headlines of ongoing incidents of distrust, rage, and violence, I wonder: how does this zootopia the ancient book of Isaiah describes work anyway? Can basic wilderness instincts change so that neither animals nor humans will hurt or destroy each other or the earth on God’s mountain? Where in these uncertain days is this life-generating mountain of Isaiah’s and the peace-loving creatures and people who dwell there? I can’t find it with my GPS, and I want to travel there, run like the wind to get there as soon as possible. I want to make a home there. I want to rub my hand without fear… [Read more…] about Advent Two: Stumped while Seeking Peace in Zootopia

The Gift

by Brettany Renee Blatchley in Christian Spirituality, LGBT

Life goes on whatever our place and circumstances: love, joy, pain, and loss all seem to join hands as sisters.

My father in-law is named Bill; twenty-five years ago we met when I asked for the hand of his youngest daughter in marriage. Bill is eighty-eight and in the point in his Alzheimer’s where he can barely eat, hardly moves, and rarely makes a recognizable utterance. We love Bill, one of the smartest and kindest people I have ever met. His wife Barbara, a bit younger, faithfully cares for him with the help of a full-time, at-home nurse. We think that this will be our last Christmas with Pop and one of our last with Mom…

…These recent years, I have kept a low profile around Pop as Mom has gradually witnessed me transition. I am the same person, only different: always as much a daughter-in-law as I was a son, maybe more: now I look, sound and behave more a daughter than their own daughter, my spouse…

Pop’s mind has been declining for years, though he was a much sought-after engineer until his retirement at seventy-eight–his work probably saved a LOT of lives, but only God knows.

…I never told Bill that I am transgender and that I needed to become myself: a woman. He has known me as the one he entrusted to love and help his baby daughter through all her life-long illnesses. I never introduced him to Brettany, to Renée: I did not want to make his confused days even more difficult. So I smiled, spoke and touched gently, and helped move, bathe, and change him.… [Read more…] about The Gift

If all are saved, then why follow Jesus?

by Matthew Distefano in Christian Issues

“If all are saved, then why follow Jesus?” is one of my least favorite inquiries. The question assumes that if there is no eternal hell awaiting those who fail to choose Jesus as their “personal Lord and Savior” in this life, then Jesus is not worth following. As if our primary concern as Christians should be the afterlife, rather than ushering in the at-hand kingdom of heaven. Ugh!

But, despite the annoyance this question causes me, let’s explore a few answers, shall we?
Answer 1: The Gospel Brings Peace
“As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” ~ Eph. 6:15

“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” ~ Phil. 4:7

In case you haven’t noticed, our world is shrouded in violence. Syria is a mess. Palestine is in shambles–so too are Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Honduras, Brazil, Mexico, and the list goes on. This list also includes my country, the United States of America. Even as I write this, the United States–a supposedly “Christian” nation, as I’m often told–just chose for its President a “Christian” man whose solution for defeating terrorism is, in part, to “take out their families,” over a “Christian” woman notorious for her pro-war voting record and dubious political dealings.

Some Christian nation!

On top of this precarious political situation, our city streets are also witnessing increased… [Read more…] about If all are saved, then why follow Jesus?

An Inappropriate Christmas

by Zach Christensen in Christian History

This past Sunday, many people began celebrating Advent, the season in which the majority of Western Christian churches commemorate the birth of Jesus. As we progress toward Christmas, there will be a many sermons preached about shepherds, wise men, innkeepers who are total jerks, and unplanned visits from angels. However, there is one passage from the birth narrative of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew that I think truly captures the meaning of Christmas.

In Matthew 1:1-17, there is a genealogy of the family tree that led up to Jesus. If you have ever read the Bible, you usually skip this part (at least at face value, it is about as interesting as reading a phonebook). Why would the author lead with something like this? But there is something included in these verses that is not often noticed.

Over the course of the genealogy, the writer deliberately includes the names of four women. In a patriarchal world that considered women to be second-class citizens or property, this was an extraordinarily radical thing to do (if you read all of the other genealogies in the Bible or from any literature from the time, none of them include women). More importantly, the women included are not what anyone would ever expect.

In verse 3, the writer lists Tamar. In the book of Genesis, Tamar was widowed, disguised herself as a harlot, was taken by her father-in-law (Judah, who did not realize it), and bore a child named Perez. By the standards of their day, this was considered incest, and is… [Read more…] about An Inappropriate Christmas

Advent One: Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

What if there isn’t enough light?

The question became an earworm one morning after I skidded across the internet and ran into an intriguing sermon by Father Sean Mullen titled: “Is There Enough Light?”

Is there? Our world has been bedazzled quite enough by sparks and sparkle, glitter and glitz. But what about light, the hope-fueled kind our groaning eyes scan the darkening skies in search of during the season of Advent. We so need it—genuine luminosity—in places where spears of violence have extinguished the sun and fear has chilled even children’s bones. We need light and a lot of it to show us the way down the perilous paths that seem to stretch out before us.

Many Christian communities will hear words from Isaiah 2:1-5 on this First Sunday in Advent. A promise in these verses from the Advent lectionary is that swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. After making this seemingly absurd prediction, the poet calls out across the centuries: “Come, let us walk in the light of God!” What a fierce and fiery light God’s light must be to be able to bend swords and spears so that battlefields become feast-making fields. This is Advent light? How are we to walk in such a light?

Perhaps “Will there be enough light?” is not the right question for our uncertain times. A more vital question to ponder may be how we, as God’s plowshare people, can find the courage to walk in and with God’s intense and… [Read more…] about Advent One: Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning