Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

Guest Author

What the Bible Is

by Chuck Queen in Christian History, Christian Issues

The written documents that constitute our Bible are snapshots of an evolving, developing, dynamic faith frozen in time.

The faith exhibited in these written sources thrived in an oral culture that did not depend on written materials. Writing materials were expensive and few could actually read and write. So the stuff of faith – stories, poetry, wisdom sayings, etc. – were passed down orally. This oral tradition was flexible, fluid, and easily adaptable to different situations and historical contexts.

This process meant that faith was constantly on the move – changing, growing, branching out into new forms, and always finding fresh expressions in different settings.

Consider one example: The various ways the Jesus saying, “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first,” is interpreted and employed with other Jesus sayings in the Gospels.

In Mark it occurs in a context where Jesus assures Peter that those who have left much to be his followers will gain much,
Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Mark 10:28-31).
In the… [Read more…] about What the Bible Is

What I Wish Everyone Knew About Sex Addiction

by April Kelsey in Christian Issues, Current Events

Once again, Josh Duggar is in the news. And, once again, my heart is heavy.

Last week it was revealed that Josh had a paid account on Ashley Madison, a website for people seeking affairs. Josh subsequently released a statement in which he admitted being “unfaithful” to his wife Anna and having a “secret addiction” to pornography—implying that he is, perhaps, a sex addict.

I wouldn’t doubt it at all. I see the patterns clearly.

Josh’s story is very personal for me. In many ways, I have lived this story and continue to live it. I was raised in a fundamentalist household. I was a victim of sexual abuse. My family fell apart after my father’s indiscretions became too much to bear. I know too well what is happening in Anna Duggar’s world right now.

In light of this, here are 10 things I wish everyone understood about sex addiction:

Sex addition is real. The term “addiction” in this case is controversial; some people prefer “compulsion.” No matter what people choose to call it, it is a real physiological and psychological condition. Just like compulsive eating or alcoholism can be used to cope with stress, so can sex. The dopamine feedback cycles and resulting insensitivity a sex addict experiences through their behavior are the same as those experienced by other kinds of addicts.

Sex addiction is a coping strategy. Whether it is to assuage low self-esteem, relieve feelings of neglect or abandonment, or avoid the stress and boredom of… [Read more…] about What I Wish Everyone Knew About Sex Addiction

Is God in Control?

by Chuck Queen in Christian Issues

How does God interact with the world? Does God directly manage and determine the course of global and human events? Many Christians think so.

Several years ago a parishioner who was dying of cancer and had only days left said to me, “I know there must be a reason for this.” She was not asking me what I thought. She was telling me how she made sense of her suffering and impending death. It was not the time to engage her theology. I simply tried to be a pastoral presence in her final days.

Not long ago I inquired about another friend fighting cancer. She informed me it was in remission, which she attributed to the power of prayer. She spoke of a song that meant a lot to her, which she had been listening to and “affirming in her heart.” The song is by Twila Paris and proclaims,

God is in control
We believe that his children will not be forsaken
God is in control
We will choose to remember and never be shaken
There is no power above or beside him, we know
Oh, God is in control, oh God is in control

I beg to differ.

I can affirm that God’s children (which includes all of us) will never be forsaken, but I cannot affirm that God is in control. God is clearly not controlling much of anything. Terrible, tragic things happen every few seconds in our world and God does nothing about them.

Theologians debate the question of theodicy: if God is all-powerful and God is good, then why is there is so much horrible evil and tragedy in the world?

Process theologians question God’s… [Read more…] about Is God in Control?

Encountering Christ on Death Row

by Darryl Ward in Christian Issues

 

View image | gettyimages.com

 

One of my most memorable experiences of being in church as a child was hearing “The Judgement of the Nations” (Matthew 25:31-46) read aloud, which includes Jesus saying:
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
No other text from the Bible has ever resonated with me so much. It helped me understand that through loving those who are the most unloved and the most outcast we can demonstrate our love for God. Few in society are more unloved and more outcast than those who are in prison — especially those who are on death row.

The row is not a pleasant place. “We all die a little bit on the row each day,” wrote Richard Michael Rossi, who spent more than 20 years on death row in Arizona before dying of natural causes. Depending on which state they are incarcerated in, death row inmates could be locked up for 23 hours a day in tiny cells with no natural light and fed only inadequate servings of inedible food which is shoved through slots, all while waiting in anguish to be killed.

No matter what they may have done, nobody deserves this. For some inmates, it becomes too much, and they willingly give up all their appeals to hasten their executions. These prisoners, who have abandoned hope, are euphemistically called… [Read more…] about Encountering Christ on Death Row

It's Time to Give the Gospel of Thomas Its Due

by Chuck Queen in Christian History

The spiritual wisdom to be found in the Gospel of Thomas just may be the kind of spiritual wisdom contemporary Christians most need.

The Gospel of Thomas is part of the collection of fifty-two texts (thirteen papyrus books – “codices”) discovered in December of 1945 by an Egyptian peasant digging for fertilizer near the modern city of Nag Hammadi. The Gospel of Thomas is a compilation of wisdom sayings attributed to Jesus, some of which parallel sayings in the Synoptic Gospels. It represents the kind of Christianity that flourished in Syria by at least the last part of the first century. It may have even been written as early as the Synoptic Gospels.[1]

In this Gospel Jesus performs no miracles or healings, there is no link to or claim that Jesus fulfills prophesy, and there is no passion or resurrection narrative. Jesus does not die for sins in the Gospel of Thomas. Salvation is found in the struggle to understand and appropriate the wisdom Jesus taught and embodied.

I find it particularly significant that in Thomas there is no announcement of an apocalyptic kingdom that will disrupt the present world order. In Thomas the kingdom of God is here and now.

Thomas, like the Synoptic Gospels, affirms that the kingdom of God was a central focus of Jesus’ teaching, but in the Synoptics the kingdom is referenced in both present and future tenses. Some of the references are simply ambiguous. In Mark 1:15 (also Matt. 4:17) Jesus announces that the kingdom is “at hand” (RSV) or… [Read more…] about It's Time to Give the Gospel of Thomas Its Due

Making Room for the Celibate and Gay

by in LGBT

When it comes to facing down the shrill imprecations of televangelists and street protesters, or the assignment of blame for earthquakes and other disasters, there’s hardly a more longsuffering group of people in America than gays and lesbians. But even some of the staunchest opponents of same-sex relationships have begun to acknowledge that their churches may have room for celibate gays and lesbians. It’s a unique historical development and one that presents the gay community with an important choice—but maybe not the most obvious one.

There’s a popular idea that all major world religions universally condemn homosexuality. It isn’t true, and it’s time to put an end to this destructive myth. On the other hand, there’s an equally popular wholesale rejection of religion by many gays and lesbians. It’s just as shortsighted and unfair. I know because I used to share the view. I left Christianity when I was eighteen. My reasons had nothing to do with its stance on homosexuality, but early on I couldn’t appreciate how meaningful religion could be to so many intelligent, kind people.

But there’s a recent transformation taking place that signals positive change: not only are religious communities opening up to the LGBT community, but individual gays and lesbians are insisting on their place in the pew. It’s a natural and important development for gay and lesbian history. Despite such an encouraging development, the gay community is still largely holding on to one final, related but… [Read more…] about Making Room for the Celibate and Gay

God Our Mother

by in Christian Spirituality

I am becoming increasingly aware of the limitations of language when we talk about God. It has many forms, but usually sounds something like this: “Dear Heavenly Father.” I’ve often used this phrase to talk to and about God. It’s not wrong, per se, but I recognize the limiting and biased nature of it. This is the language that I have inherited through repetition and tradition. But how would others look at me if I prayed, “Dear Heavenly Mother?”

How I talk about God affects what I think about the divine and the world. There is a correlation between my perspective and my language—each serves and supports the other. By calling God “Father,” I am saying that God is like a man, including the physical and emotional properties that coincide with this image. Am I unknowingly hindering my understanding of all that God is by gendering and humanizing the nature of God?

I recently finished my second and final Hebrew class. As we studied the Hebrew Bible, I realized two things:

There is no gender-neutral noun in the Hebrew language. In other words, language forces the reader/translator to refer to God as masculine or feminine (in a human sense).

The Hebrew Bible was written in a patriarchal society so, naturally, they chose to portray God as male. This is not an attractive part of biblical history, but the ugly truth is that women were second-rate citizens in the culture of that day. An androcentric society wrote an androcentric book? Makes sense.

Thoughts matter. Language… [Read more…] about God Our Mother

I Would Have Defended My Abuser, Too

by April Kelsey in Current Events, Fundamentalism

Last week, I learned that the Duggar family will be participating in a documentary on child sex abuse in conjunction with Darkness to Light and Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).

Last month, Jill and Jessa Duggar appeared on Fox News to talk about their abuse experience and how they’ve forgiven their brother Josh for molesting them. In the interview, the young women minimized what was done to them, saying that Josh was merely “sexually curious” and that the abuse wasn’t that bad.

Though it turned my stomach, it did not surprise me at all. Had a TV reporter sat down with me at age 24, I would have said pretty much the same thing.

At age 8, I was similarly molested by someone close to me. At the time the abuse occurred, I knew that it was wrong, or at least very weird. But I didn’t understand it. Growing up in fundamentalism means that you often don’t have words to explain experiences that occur outside of your worldview–words like rape, consent, agency, autonomy, erotic, vagina, and molestation. For the first three years post-abuse, I was confused about what happened. I wasn’t angry, just confused. I didn’t know what had happened to me or how to contextualize it.

But then, when I was about 11 years old, the reality hit me out of the blue. Suddenly, I had a word to explain my experience. And with that word came the rage. I knew then, without a doubt,… [Read more…] about I Would Have Defended My Abuser, Too

Are Atheists Just Rebelling Against God?

by Randal Rauser in Book Reviews

We’re all familiar with the atheist caricature: that rude and crude purveyor of mockery and disdain for everything religious. We’ve encountered him in “God’s Not Dead,” we regularly see him (or more rarely, her) being pilloried on conservative Christian blogs, and there’s a whole cottage industry of Christian apologetics books that are intent on serving the righteous smackdown to atheists. In the words of theologian Randal Rauser, “These days within the Christian community, especially within North America, the atheist has assumed the mantle of the despised and distrusted social pariah on the margins.”

Rauser has had enough of the vitriol and is on a mission to alter the course of dialogue between Christians and atheists. His slender but robust new book, Is the Atheist My Neighbor?: Rethinking Christian Attitudes toward Atheism (Cascade Books, $15), tackles the Christian disdain for atheism head-on, with a call for Christians “to repent of prejudices against atheists.”

Is the Atheist My Neighbor? offers a comprehensive and decisive refutation of the widely-held Christian perspective that atheists actually do believe in God. This viewpoint is what Rauser calls the Rebellion Thesis: “While atheists profess to believe that God does not exist, this disbelief is the result of an active and culpable suppression of an innate disposition to believe in God which is borne of a hatred of God and a desire to sin with impunity.”

Rauser surveys attitudes toward… [Read more…] about Are Atheists Just Rebelling Against God?

Your "Deeply Held Religious Belief" Isn't Biblical

by April Kelsey in Christian Issues, Current Events

Most of us know the story. An Oregon bakery was found guilty of discrimination and ordered to pay $135,000 in emotional damages for refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, the business owners claiming that such an act would violate their “religious beliefs” against gay marriage.

The phrase “deeply held religious beliefs” has taken center stage in several recent legal battles — most notably in the Hobby Lobby birth control case, and again when a photographer in New Mexico refused to photograph a gay wedding.

The more I hear the words “deeply held religious belief,” the more uneasy I feel. I wasn’t sure why until I had read through the umpteenth article on the subject. And that’s when I realized that the so-called “beliefs” being defended aren’t actually rooted in scripture.

The verse that nearly all of these Christians cite in support of their behavior is Romans 1:32, claiming that it says God not only judges people who sin, but also those who simply approve of sin.

First of all, there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that says selling someone a product in the course of legal business shows approval of the buyer’s lifestyle or behavior. Nothing.

Second, that’s not what the scripture even says. Here it is, in context:

“Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness,… [Read more…] about Your "Deeply Held Religious Belief" Isn't Biblical