Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

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Legislating Bowel Movements: North Carolina and LGBT Discrimination

by Kenneth Vandergriff in Current Events, LGBT

I wasn’t alive during the Civil Rights marches of the 1960s. I wasn’t alive during the Vietnam War protests of the late 1960s and 1970s. But I was alive to see the Berlin Wall fall, the Soviet Union crumble, and the rights of my LGBT friends become a reality.

I cried tears the day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage because my LGBT friends who had lived so long as simply life partners could now enjoy the same benefits in the eyes of the law that my wife and I do.

I also cried tears last Wednesday because the legislature of my state, North Carolina, passed a bill which legalizes discrimination against my LGBT friends, as if they did not already experience discrimination — the only difference is that now that discrimination is legal.

The new law overturns Charlotte’s local LGBT non-discrimination ordinance, prohibits other local governments from passing LGBT non-discrimination ordinances, and requires students in public schools and publicly funded universities and colleges to use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender listed on their birth certificate.

What the hell are the elected officials of North Carolina thinking? What’s worse is that they called a special session to ramrod this hateful, discriminatory piece of legislation through.

It doesn’t take faith in a higher power to understand that all people are created equal. No one person is inferior to another, though society often tries to tell us they are. I, however, do have faith in God. I read… [Read more…] about Legislating Bowel Movements: North Carolina and LGBT Discrimination

A Year Without Mormonism

by Bryan Bostick in Christian Issues

A year ago, my wife and I stepped back from our faith tradition. For us, the reasons are valid. Others may disagree. We all see the same things through different lenses. Although we shouldn’t expect everyone else to share our opinions or worldviews, we can hope for mutual respect. Where respect is lacking, we often feel misjudged.

One of the most disturbing things I’ve seen during the past year is that both extremes try to label the other: “Brainwashed vs. Apostate,” “Wheat vs. Tares,” and “Sheeple vs. Servants of Satan.” Both sides attempt to paint the other as lost, unfeeling, misguided, or unintelligent. Reality shows that your experience is not my experience, but that doesn’t mean we don’t share a broader sense of principles, ethics, moral values, and above all, humanity.

In the early phase of my faith transition, I cared more about knowing the cold, hard Truth (with a capital T) than maintaining loyalty to a particular tradition. Now, I see that traditions and community do matter. If the point of life is to serve others, cultivate relationships, and be happy, then faith traditions can help make that happen.

Growing up, our family drove a Ford Country Squire station wagon. From my perspective, it wasn’t unlike the Griswold’s Wagon Queen Family Truckster, but from my mom’s viewpoint it might as well have been a BMW. Within that vehicle, there were many Speak & Spell marathons, dead-arms, and silent treatments. There were also great conversations and fond… [Read more…] about A Year Without Mormonism

Was Jesus' death necessary for our salvation? (the seventh saying from the cross)

by Chuck Queen in Christian Spirituality

Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

These words of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel are equivalent to Jesus’s words in John’s Gospel, “It is finished.” The Gospels of Mark and Matthew include only one saying of Jesus from the cross: His cry of abandonment, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The other six sayings of Jesus are found in Luke and John.

In Mark and Matthew the emphasis is on Jesus as a participant in our suffering. Jesus shares our pain and loss. Jesus knows what it is like to feel forsaken, even by God. Jesus, for the most part, is a passive victim. In Luke and John, Jesus is still a victim, but he is not passive. There is no sense of Jesus feeling forsaken in Luke or John. In Luke’s portrait, Jesus dies as a courageous and faithful martyr. We need both portraits. We need to know that God suffers with us, that God identifies with our experiences of forsakenness and feelings of abandonment. But we also need to know that neither Jesus nor God was surprised by the crucifixion, and that God incorporated Jesus’s death into God’s redemptive plan. In Luke, Jesus is the overcoming victim, offering his life sacrificially.

By sacrifice I do not mean that Jesus died to appease God’s wrath, or satisfy God’s justice, or pay some debt owed to God. I do not mean that Jesus bore a penalty imposed by God. I have said before Jesus did not die to save us from God. We do not need to be saved from God. We… [Read more…] about Was Jesus' death necessary for our salvation? (the seventh saying from the cross)

Three Glorious Surprises in the Resurrection

by Josh Way in Christian Issues

The resurrection of Jesus is too often either co-opted for conservative Christian triumphalism or reduced to a magic trick that proves Jesus’s divinity. The actual accounts of the resurrection in the synoptic gospels are odd and beautiful and full of unexpected details. Here are three deeply significant aspects of these strange tales that might have been obscured by traditional readings of the Bible.

1. Jesus returns in peace, unexpectedly.

Clearly no one in the gospel stories expected Jesus to be resurrected. Even when Jesus made cryptic predictions about his death and vindication, his followers told him to stop talking crazy and asked when he was going to become king and kill all the bad guys. In its native Jewish context, the designation “messiah” had little to do with dying and coming back to life and everything to do with winning wars. After Jesus was executed, no one was looking at their watch wondering what was taking him so long. They were defeated and dejected. Their candidate was gone. The end.

And so when Jesus is resurrected, according to the synoptic gospels, it’s a surprise that completely blindsides his friends and followers. The shock and terror of the disciples is dramatized in the gospel texts, and we sympathize. Running into someone you watched die would be unsettling, to say the least. But once again, a deeper consideration of the historical and political background amplifies the drama. No one had ever imagined that a messianic… [Read more…] about Three Glorious Surprises in the Resurrection

In Our Bones: Holy Week Reflections

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

Holy Week begins this Sunday, on Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday, many Christians process into worship, colorful banners and streamers and emerald palm branches dancing in the air as they go.

I do not dance with ease on any day. I stumble even more on Palm Sunday. My uncooperative sense of rhythm is only part of the problem. I process with awkward reluctance because my heart and mind are reluctant to grapple yet again with the seven days Christians have marked as Holy Week.

What makes this particular version of Sunday through Saturday holier than other weeks of Sundays through Saturdays? Judging by recent news headlines, I think it is fair to say that human endeavors will not do much to create an ecology of particular or peculiar holiness during this week (though I suppose we can be on the lookout every week for those moments when human courage and faith ease or even transform some element of communal brokenness). How do our ritual actions during this week we call “holy” speak of God in and to communities crucified every day to appease the gods of discrimination or commerce or politics? What do our 21st century embodiments of Jesus’s story mean in a world where violence or racism or war destroy life and where too many of the wrong things and not enough of the right things are resurrected? These questions trouble my feet as I make my way in fits and starts along well-traveled Holy Week pathways.

But I am a liturgical theologian.… [Read more…] about In Our Bones: Holy Week Reflections

The Cosmic Cross (the sixth saying of Jesus from the cross)

by Chuck Queen in Christian Spirituality

A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:29).

According to a consensus of scholarship, Mark’s Gospel was written first just before, during, or shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E. One to two decades later the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were written. Finally, one to two decades after Matthew and Luke came the Gospel of John. All the Gospels are first and foremost spiritual and theological proclamations of the meaning of the story of Jesus, not historical reports. But John’s symbolism, Jesus monologues, and metaphorical storytelling takes it to a new level.

In John the cross of Jesus is the culmination of a cosmic drama. At the cross, the worlds of ungrace and grace collide; the powers of death and life meet with explosive force. As Jesus anticipates his death he says, “Now is the judgment of the world (the domination system), now the ruler of the world will be driven out” (12:31). The ruler of the world, mythical or real, is the representative, the epitome of the power of evil and hate that crucified Jesus. This is the power that entered into the heart of Judas (13:2) and why he is called a devil (6:70). John’s Gospel is cosmic theater, depicting the clash between good and evil as the clash between the world/the Devil and Christ.… [Read more…] about The Cosmic Cross (the sixth saying of Jesus from the cross)

Living in the Real World of Gray

by Christy Wood in Christian Issues

I was raised in a world of black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, us versus them. Granted, my parents were more tolerant than a lot of the super-conservative, homeschooling families I knew, but the atmosphere was still there. And, it didn’t help that I naturally tend to think this way anyway.

Let me give you some examples. Yikes!

Wrong and bad things (in no particular order): dating, college, women wearing pants, public school, blue jeans, bearded men, women with short hair, being friends with the opposite sex, Disney movies, any movie rated more than PG, movie theaters, white bread, pork, music with a “back-beat” (e.g. rock and roll, CCM, country, etc.) tattoos, multiple piercings … you get the point.

Good and right things (contrasted to the bad ones): courtship, women in skirts and dresses, homeschooling, khaki slacks (for males), clean shaven faces, women with long, flowing, gently curled hair, sticking with friends of your own gender, movies rated G and PG that weren’t Disney (preferably old fashioned ones), homemade whole wheat bread, beef and chicken, classical music or instrumental hymns, one set of small stud earrings for females only, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, you might think that’s extreme. You might be asking what this has to do with “normal” Christians.

Here is what I have noticed. Christians, even “normal” ones, are often terrible at living in the real gray world. We choose sides and endlessly… [Read more…] about Living in the Real World of Gray

The Patriarchy Shop

by Sara Roberts Jones in Christian Issues

A small gold bell above the front door rang, announcing a new customer. A young woman stepped into the richly-decorated interior of the Christian Patriarchy Shop.

The shopkeeper, dressed in a tailored dark suit, leaned over the polished oak and marble counter. “Welcome! If you want life the way God wants life, you’ve come to the right place! How may I help you?”

The woman smiled tentatively. “Hi. I’m looking for a new one of these. I was told I had to get it here.”

She laid a large purse on the counter top. It was dark leather. Stamped on the front in faded yellow letters was:

life

“I just turned twenty-two,” she added. “I’m ready for a bigger one.”

The shopkeeper smiled. “I’ve got exactly what you need!” He opened a cabinet and withdrew another bag. It was much larger. Engraved into its smooth leather surface in flowing silver letters was:

Life.

“This is ideal for a woman in your situation,” he explained. “See how much bigger it is. There’s a special pocket here to store your heart — I assume you locked it away in a box and you’ve given the key to your father?”

“Well…”

“And you’ll see that this bag has lots of different sections. Here’s where you put your church ministry, here’s where you add your advanced homemaking skills, and don’t forget to fill up this baby pocket with lots and lots of longing! You can’t start wanting babies too soon.”

She examined the bag with interest. “It’s lovely, but I’m not sure it’s everything I need. I really love… [Read more…] about The Patriarchy Shop

Did God forsake Jesus? (The fifth saying of Jesus from the cross)

by Chuck Queen in Christian Spirituality

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

When Mother Teresa’s private journals were published after her death, the startling revelation to so many was that her writings spoke of long periods where the absence of God was more real to her than God’s presence. In these extended dry periods, she did not sense nor feel God’s presence.

The only word that Mark’s Gospel tells us Jesus uttered from the cross was this word of abandonment: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It’s a question, not a declaration and it reflects the sense of God’s absence that overtook Jesus when he was hanging on the cross.

Jesus is echoing the cry of the Psalmist in Psalm 22, who is looking for God’s deliverance, but God does not act. Jesus was not expecting deliverance. He had already conceded to his fate. He wrestled with this in Gethsemane. Mark tells us that he was “distressed and agitated” and said to Peter, James, and John, whom he asked to accompany him and pray for him, “I am deeply grieved, even to death” (Mark 14:33–34). He asked his “Abba,” his good and compassionate Father/Mother to take the cup from him, but it was not to be.

The “cup” that Jesus refers to was not just the cup of physical suffering unto death. It was that, but it was much more. This is where Mel Gibson’s version of the passion got… [Read more…] about Did God forsake Jesus? (The fifth saying of Jesus from the cross)

We Have Met the Beast and It Is Us

by Josh Way in Christian Issues

Somehow this is still a thing. Christian leaders and politicians routinely make fearmongering overtures about “the antichrist,” “the beast,” the cosmic boogeyman who will bring about the End Times™ and coincidentally happens to be their ideological opponent. Just pick a public figure you don’t like, label them “dangerous,” throw in a vague appeal to “biblical prophecy,” and you’re good to go.

Even as we roll our eyes, we think we know exactly which Bible prophecy is being referenced: the book of Revelation and its warning of a coming antichrist. But it’s not simply that the words of Revelation are being misappropriated as contemporary political fodder, they have been completely misread and misunderstood in the first place. If we take an educated and careful look at the relevant passages, a very different picture comes into focus. Spoiler Alert: there is no singular “antichrist” figure in Revelation. There are several metaphorical “monsters” in the text, but the nearest contemporary analog for the beast in question is not a Muslim warrior, a popular Pope, or a socialist President. It’s something far more insidious and familiar.

(Actually) Reading Revelation

First things first, the word “antichrist” never appears in the text of Revelation. Something like it can be found in John’s epistles, but not here. There are “beasts” in Revelation, a few of them, and to put them into proper context we’ll need a quick overview of the whole thing.

The final book in the… [Read more…] about We Have Met the Beast and It Is Us