Introduction:

“… and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  John 8:32, NRSV

 
“To abandon facts if to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.  The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.” Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century.  (To keep track of the shocking number of lies uttered daily by President Trump, stay tuned to The Washington Post.)

The Bible bears good news for us and for our time.  It is not “fake news”.  While much of it is not factual, even its mythical stories deliver enduring truths. How does the Bible cast light on the crisis facing our nation today?

This study of the Bible seeks inspiration in it for the defense of American democracy.  Our approach to the biblical texts will model the resistance required to stop our nation’s current slide toward totalitarianism.  Just as we must interpret our present crisis without dogmatic preconceptions, we’ll read the Bible without a doctrinal filter.  We’ll read it meditatively: letting it lift us above fear and frustration and direct us into deliberative action.  We’ll read the signs of our present times in historical context, and read the Bible in the same way.  We’ll be listening for echoes from the Bible resonating from the US Constitution.

The people of Israel clamored for a king in a time when the country was under threat of invasion.  The  prophet Samuel’s eloquent and prescient warning to them against the dangers of tyranny (I Samuel 8:4-20) rings as true today as it did then.  In the mythical story in Mark 5:1-3 of the “legion” of demons that Jesus drove out of a man and into a herd of pigs, which were being raised to feed the Roman legion occupying Israel, we find another example of the deep disdain for oligarchy that is fixed in the DNA of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible was an inspiration to the founders of this nation to embed checks and balances against tyranny into the US Constitution, and today the Bible inspires us to preserve them.

“If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.”  So wrote the avant-garde playwright and anti-communist activist Vaclav Havel, who went on to become the first president of the Czech Republic after the communist system there was overthrown.  In America, Christianity has become a tool of a dominant political system built on lies.  One need look no further than at Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ abuse of Romans chapter 13 to persuade Americans that the Bible says it is right to separate refugee children from their parents at the US/Mexico border.  We must resist this perversion with a search for truth about the Bible itself, revealing how its stories can give us strength and hope.

Should it be surprising that many of the folks who claim to take the Bible literally also claim that climate change is a Chinese hoax, Obama was born in Kenya, and the poor will get richer if the rich get richer?  “Alternative facts” in religion are directly related to belief in “alternative facts” in politics.  There is a direct causal link between the Reagan era in the 1980’s, when fundamentalist Christianity allied with the Republican Party, and the current President’s denial not just of facts, but of the existence of factuality itself.  Republicans manipulated fundamentalist/evangelical Christians into supporting their anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-immigrant, anti-government agenda by pandering to the worst instincts of nativism, racism, and paranoia – the very opposites of the message and example of Jesus.  Now our country is reaping the resulting bitter harvest of hatred and mendacity.

Christianity is part of our country’s problem.

But it is also part of the solution.  Faithfully following Jesus’ law of love inspires us to stand up for full LGBTQ equality, immigrant rights, women’s rights, environmental protection, and robust social insurance and universal health coverage for all – especially for the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens.  Studying the historical roots of the Bible, without supernaturalistic presumptions, primes us to promote scientific and social progress and fact-based, compassionate public policies.

Christianity suffuses American culture in profound ways.  So the ways we interpret the Bible have serious political consequences.  Here we’ll look fearlessly and critically at both the Bible and the daily news, and prayerfully seek guidance for our activism to preserve our endangered freedoms.

Companion Texts to the NRSV Bible:

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder, a Yale history professor who incisively diagnoses the present danger posed by Trump and the Republicans to the survival of democracy in this country, and offers prescriptions for action.  This short book will set the stage for all that is discussed in this Bible study.

Progressive Christians UnitingDeeper Love: Faithful Rhetoric for Progressive Social Changeby Jim Burklo, editor.  A short, practical guide to the use of religious and spiritual language in progressive social activism. It gives a concise historical context for the current crisis in our democracy, and Christianity’s role in it.

Initial assumptions:

1)  The Bible is a collection of human writings about the quest of the ancient Jewish and early Christian people to work out their relationships with God and with each other.  We read the Bible to help us do the same.  Anything in the Bible that looks miraculous or contrary to the normal functions of the natural world should not be presumed to be factual, but rather mythological. In ancient times, the distinction that now exists between factual and fictional narratives did not exist in the same way as it does now.  The Bible does not ask us to “believe” it as if it were a collection of facts or a set of legal prescriptions that necessarily should be affirmed or followed outside their original cultural contexts.  Rather, its writings challenge our spiritual and moral imaginations, inviting us to use them as rich language for expressing our journeys of faith.  Ancient biblical myths can have great power in positively transforming our lives today.  In this study, we will study the Bible from the perspective of non-doctrinal, academic scholarship, richly illuminating the spiritual and cultural milieus out of which the texts were formed.  I recommend the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.  It is perhaps the most accurate English translation from the most reliable Hebrew and Greek ancient texts.

2)  Christianity is old, huge, and messy!  There is no one way to be sincerely and truly Christian.  The church is not and never was a single, monolithic organization or fixed set of beliefs and practices.  So Christians today have very many choices about how to be Christian.  This is both liberating and confusing.  Here we embrace that freedom and that uncertainty, prayerfully opening our hearts to what can be learned and practiced of value in all of the branches of our rich and varied faith tradition.

3)  In Christianity, there is no one final answer to the question:  Who or what is God? In different parts of the Bible, God is portrayed contrastingly as one local divinity among others, the head of a council of divine beings, a universal supernatural power, the essence of existence, a jealous and vengeful father, a human being named Jesus of Nazareth, and Love itself. Within Christianity, we have choices about how to understand the nature of God.

4)  Likewise, there is no one final answer to the question:  Who was Jesus?  Divine?  Human?  Both?  A rabbi, a supernatural being, a radical revolutionary?  Almost nothing is known about him other than what is found in the gospel stories of the New Testament, which are largely mythological accounts reflecting multiple early Christian interpretations about who he was, what he said, and what he did.  By the time the letters in the New Testament were written, already there were differing schools of thought about the nature and identity of Jesus.  The diversity of views has kept growing since.  Christians have very many choices about how to understand and relate to Jesus, the central character of the faith.  In this study, we will explore several understandings of the nature and the message of Jesus.

5)  Other religions may be as good for other people as Christianity is for us.  Religious pluralism reflects the spiritual humility that is intrinsic to Christian faith.  How could the religion of a humble man, Jesus of Nazareth, get so full of itself that it could claim to be the only true faith for humankind?  This study of the Bible aims to stay grounded in spiritual and religious humility.  Whatever we say, whatever we discover, there will still be room for further learning and revelation.

6) What matters most in Christianity is not how we believe, but how we love.  Christianity is the exercise of radical compassion, even toward our enemies.  To help us grow in love, we practice the Christian spiritual disciplines of worship, social and political engagement, service, contemplative or meditative prayer, study, music, and artistic expression.</strong
7)  Christian love impels us to take care of our fellow people and to take care of our planet.  That means working to change not only ourselves, but also our social and political systems, in order to reflect Jesus’ radical compassion.  This includes active resistance to forces that demean, degrade, and damage our fellow citizens and our world.  This will be the primary focus of our study.

Note to study leaders:  All 1.5 hr sessions will begin with a “check-in” time of fellowship, a contemplative, mindful, prayerful reading of the texts from the Bible,  a brief talk by the leader about the textual, historical, and cultural issues relating to the passages, and an open conversation among participants about how the passages relate to our lives and our callings as activist citizens. (I urge that study leaders strive to create an atmosphere of calm, meditative reflection in their groups.  This is a time when many citizens are feeling a lot of stress about the country’s political situation.  This study is intended to help participants channel this energy positively, and ground their souls in a wider, deeper context.) We’ll be using the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.  Bible passages and assigned readings should be read by participants before each session.  Ideally, participants should read all of “On Tyranny” by the second session, in order to optimize discussion of its points throughout the study. The book is short!  But if that is not possible, I suggest they read at least two chapters of it per session.  I suggest that study leaders read all the assignments and watch the videos ahead of time.  For background on the scripture passages, I recommend the New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV), the Five Gospels by the Jesus Seminar, and God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now by John Dominic Crossan.

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