To simply bask in ignorance, to shy away from facts, can masquerade as ‘simple faith’, or veil our foolish acts; and then the world will look at us, a church so old and stale, no longer worth …

A socio-cultural model of Judean ethnicity is developed, being a synthesis of (1) Sanders’ notion of covenantal nomism, (2) Berger and Luckmann’s theories on the sociology of knowledge, (3) Dunn’s “four pillars of Second Temple Judaism” and his “new perspective” on Paul, (4) cultural or social anthropology in the form of modern ethnicity theory, and, lastly, (5) Duling’s Socio-Cultural Model of Ethnicity.

That bedrock of Jesus’ teaching did however have implications as to how we might order our lives in society; in closer alignment with what those scriptures depict as something more akin to what the divine had in mind. As well as how we ought to treat one another, without vacuous pretence or self-embellishment.

“Can Christianity Survive the Prejudice of Christians? A Revolution in Faith and Ethics” presented by John Shelby Spong from Vann Center for Ethics on Vimeo

The great dividing line for two religions and the relationship between them is the period of 66-70 CE, which ended in the destruction of both Jerusalem and the great “Second Temple”. For Jews of the time this destroyed the political, economic and religious organization of Israel….

Now there are at least two major types of people who do take seriously what is said in the New Testament (NT), which I’m summarizing here as “the Gospel.” Here are the two types, for our purposes in this very brief summary of NT understanding as it relates to who wrote the books…

Indeed the Jesus Movement began as a resistance movement to the empire. While Christianity began as a counterpoint and an alternative to Empire, with Constantine it became wedded to the empire and shaped by empire with the purpose of unifying the realm.

The common dream most people have of one day having more than they already have seems to have remained as fleeting and elusive as ever. Meanwhile, the gross disparity and widening gap in this country between the haves and the have-nots has reached a point where an oligarchy of corporate interests posing as individuals shape public opinion and outspend each other as never before in partisan attempts to buy an election.

The issue of the gods we believe in made headlines this week when Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party Republican candidate for US Senate in Indiana, stated that pregnancies stemming from rape, however horrible, are “something God intended to happen.”[1] While Mourdock has sought to soften the impact of his statement, I believe that his words reflected his – and many other Christians – understand of God’s presence in the world.

As an Episcopalian I regularly recite the Apostles’ Creed and pray the Lord’s Prayer. In doing so, I stand with Jesus’ early followers as they struggled to find words that could frame how their lives were being renewed beyond comprehension. My life also is being renewed beyond comprehension, or so I’m convinced, as I try to live out the self-giving embodied in the common life Jesus began. But I live in a vastly different time and place from those of Jesus’ early followers. My everyday assumptions about the world and how it works are vastly different, not final truths, mind you, but still different, and just as inescapable as people’s everyday assumptions back then.

Stories of generosity and justice, about prophetic preaching and speaking truth to power.

Why would a Jewish American doctor risk serving the medical needs of Palestinian children in the occupied territories of the West Bank?

There is a war going on which need not be fought. It is the conflict between the God of traditional Christian thought and the theoretical/factual assumptions of science. This is conceptual mortal combat. Young spiritual seekers are often the collateral damage.

“So what do progressives do about the God thing?”

Sermon by Rev. Rich Lang with University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle on “Marriage Equality As Christian Sacrament” rooted in Matthew 16: 5-19 recorded October 14, 2012.