Everything You Wanted to Know about God but Were Afraid to Ask!

South African sunset, photo by Wade Jones.

My final post on my blog “Progressive Christian Reflections” will occur on June 30, 2021. More than ten years of posts will remain available to you on the blogsite, https://chrisglaser.blogspot.com and I encourage you to enjoy them. I regret that I never created an index of post titles, but the search engine in the upper left corner of my blog can help you find posts of interest by typing in a subject, topic, name, scripture reference, religious season or holy day. Or you may work through them by year and month listed in the right column. 

Though they may have been written with current events in mind, I intended them each to be read meaningfully at any point in time. You may continue to contact me at my email address used by the delivery service or by leaving a comment on a particular post. FeedBurner has announced it will discontinue all subscription services sometime in July, the occasion for my timing. It has been a pleasure writing this blog, but now, I believe, is a time for silence, something I considered when writing the Zen series. 

I assure you I am well, content, and thankful to God for this extension of my ministry. Thank you for your interest, comments, correspondence, and contributions. I am grateful to Metropolitan Community Churches for recognizing this blog as an “Emerging Ministry” and ProgressiveChristianity.org for reposting many of my reflections, as well as the dozens of Facebook pages that allowed me to provide links to particular posts. I am grateful for the free services of Blogspot, Google, and the delivery service, FeedBurner. I am grateful for artist and friend Becki Jayne Harrelson and my husband Wade Jones for their technical and moral support.

To date, the blog has had 510,000 visits, a count that does not include almost 500 free weekly subscribers. Once donations were possible, the highest annual income was $2,000.  Subscriptions have always been free and the blog non-monetized (no ads). Permission has always been granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Donations may still be made through the links provided at the end of this post. Thank you! 

Today’s post appeared on July 20, 2016:

 

Months ago I mentioned on this blog that I had finally picked up Karen Armstrong’s book, A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Perhaps reflective of our desire for theological ignorance, I found it discounted on the remainder table at my neighborhood Barnes & Noble. 

I must admit that, at times, I have been slogging through it, sometimes even setting it aside for days at a time. But I read all such books in the context of my morning prayers, hoping for inspiration along the way, so I just read a portion each day. The book is well-written and comprehensive, but overwhelming in its detailing of our fitful attempts to “know” God. Right now I’m flailing in the chapter on the Enlightenment and actually looking forward to next chapter’s “The Death of God?” Whew, what a relief after all this kvetching! (Apparently, making God a product of reason makes him/her/they more easily dispensable or at least optional. Stay tuned.) 

Of course I’ve read other books on the history of religion, but there were many surprises and aha’s for me in this book. 

Armstrong not only writes of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but also of Hinduism and Buddhism, though to a lesser extent. What surprised me is how various religions often paralleled and sometimes informed one another’s trains of thought. Given our contemporary insistence on religious divisions, I found it consoling that there are historically points of agreement and sometimes civil disagreement. 

There are also periods of dysfunctional fighting within and among religions, and though each have suffered their unfair share of persecution and unpopularity, it seems to me that Jews got the worst of it, long before the Shoah, or Holocaust. Made me more sympathetic to the raison d’être of the state of Israel. 

What struck me also is that all religions have had their intelligentsia—their philosophers and academics and scientists—which has helped shape the religions as we know them.  And that those who tried to make religion only “of the heart,” could be among the most dangerous because of their subjectivity that resisted intellectual scrutiny. 

I had the biggest challenge reading about Islam. I was already familiar—if vaguely—with many of the names and general movements in other religions, but there were so many names and movements in Islam—both unfamiliar because of my lack of education as well as sounding exotic—that it reminded me of a classic Russian novel, having so many characters! 

I found the chapter on the Reformers particularly disheartening, especially Armstrong’s treatment of Martin Luther—at this point I reminded myself that Armstrong is a former nun, but that gave me little solace, given her obvious command of religious history. Calvin came off better, I’m happy to say, given my Presbyterian background, though later development of his thoughts on predestination is scary. 

You might have guessed that I would be drawn to the chapter and segments on the mystics and mystical traditions, by which all religions were blessed. I was already familiar with many, but now to read of their experiences and insights in relation to one another and their respective religious traditions made me esteem them yet more highly. To me, they provide a salvific thread to what was often a brutal enterprise of religion and theology. 

Another salvific thread for me was Eastern Orthodox thinking that we can’t possibly know God as he/she/they is in actuality. Also I liked the idea that God is “no thing,” somewhat of a parallel to what I’ve read of Buddhism’s “no thing.” 

By comparison, Armstrong explains how talkative Christianity became in the West, with its emphasis on doctrine and systematic theology. Instead, in Eastern Orthodox understanding, we need silence to understand/experience God, which I believe is central to a spiritual life. Of course, then we might come back to a religion “of the heart” and the subjectivity that is potentially dangerous. But communing with God was to be of the mind as well, and within the context of a spiritual community and a spiritual tradition that can serve as correctives. 

As a progressive Christian, two other things were of particular interest: 

First, literalism was rare and “untraditional”: there was a deep respect for and valuing of the place of myth in all religious traditions. Myth and storytelling reveal something deeper about our human experience than can be explained. To take them “literally” is to do them and us and even God, a disservice. 

And second, those who treated others badly and judgmentally were doing so out of their anxiety and fear of an angry god too demanding to please. 

Once the Bible begins to be interpreted literally instead of symbolically, the idea of its God becomes impossible. To imagine a deity who is literally responsible for everything that happens on earth involves impossible contradictions. The “God” of the Bible ceases to be a symbol of a transcendent reality and becomes a cruel and despotic tyrant. (p 283) 

Could it be that a deliberately imaginative conception of God, based on mythology and mysticism, is more effective as a means of giving his people courage to survive tragedy and distress than a God whose myths are interpreted literally? (p 286) 

Armstrong suggests the benefit of discovering God using “the imaginative disciplines of prayer and contemplation,” and the danger of assuming God as a “fact.” (p 291) 

In one of my earliest books and again, in one of my posts on this blog, I wrote that we can get into trouble when we treat matters of faith as matter-of-fact. 

 

Copyright © 2016 Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

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For All the Saints

My thanks to West Hollywood UCC’s congregation and church council, its pastor Rev. Dan Smith and moderator Dr. George Lynch, for making my presence here possible!

Today I am with a St. Louis gathering of saints of varying faith communities who have worked hard and suffered long to make those communities more inclusive of lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender and intersex people, aptly named Rolling the Stone Away: Generations of Love and Justice. (Click on the link if you wish to see any of it live-streamed.)

I know or know of most of those whose leadership has helped the reformation of our faith communities into more welcoming places for LGBT membership, ministries, and marriages. Even traditions and denominations which have yet to see “more light” have become better at acceptance than they were.

As a result of our efforts and that of activists of the broader LGBT community, the culture, at least in the West, has made an enormous shift in how it views us.

This week many of us observe the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation alongside All Saints Day. It’s important to remember that neither saints nor reformers are perfect people who “have it all together.” But they share a vision of our better selves, of our beloved selves, of our better and beloved communities.

Invited too to St. Louis are new activists who will carry us through generations to come. I have often said and written that movements are led by future generations.

During a Vietnam War protest on my college campus, one of the speakers railed against us, “Where were you when…” and then mentioned some earlier cause or demonstration. My friend and now Facebook friend, Lindsay Taylor, shouted back, “I was in the fifth grade!”

From 1977 to 1987, I served as founding director of the Lazarus Project, a first-of-its-kind ministry of reconciliation between the church and the LGBT community. During that decade we established the annual Lazarus Award, which was given to the often unrecognized and unheralded individuals bringing such reconciliation. It went to many obvious heroes and she-roes, including the Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson of MCC and the Rev. Dr. Jane Adams Spahr of the Presbyterian Church.

Years after I departed as director, the Lazarus board decided to award it to the former Presbyterian Stated Clerk, William P. Thompson, a controversial choice given his earlier opposition to LGBT ordination. I was asked to return to serve as emcee of the dinner. Though Thompson was being given the award because of his very public and courageous change of mind on the issue, feelings ran high among those unforgiving of his past opposition.

So I used Jesus’ parable of the laborers hired at different times of the day to work in a vineyard, yet given the same reward. It’s a parable about the nature of liberation.

“All those who supported welcoming gay people in the church in the 1950s, please stand or raise your hands,” I said. Then, “All those who supported it in the 1960s, please stand or raise your hands.” And on through the decades, till we reached the current decade, the 1990s, and, by then, everyone was standing or raising their hands. I concluded, “Just as the laborers who came at different times to work in the vineyard, we all came at different times to welcome LGBT people.” The point was we were all here now.

The gathering I am attending is a time for reunion and remembrance, reflection and thanksgiving, as well as passing the prophetic mantle on to those who will continue the reformation of our faith communities and of our world.  

As the sometimes missing verse of James Russell Lowell’s hymn “Once to Every One and Nation” goes: 

New occasions teach new duties,

Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still and onward,

Who would keep abreast of truth.

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Reform or Revolution?

An 80-year-old Nicaraguan told us this was her first 

opportunity to vote for the candidate of her choice. 

Her red-inked thumb shows she has been to the polls.

Pat Hoffman, a spiritual guide for me, turned to me during a particularly dry presbytery meeting in the 80’s and asked, “Chris, would you like to go to Nicaragua?” Without missing a beat, I replied, “Sure! Can we go now?!” Anything to escape an ecclesiastical wilderness.

A word about Pat. We wrote our first books together, mine being Uncommon Calling, about LGBT efforts to reform the Presbyterian Church, and hers being Ministry of the Dispossessed, about ministry among the farmworkers of California. We met for lunch every couple of weeks, exchanging and reviewing each other’s books, chapter by chapter. Sometimes we met for tea at Trump’s (yeah, really!) in Beverly Hills; we couldn’t afford their formal tea, but we found we could share a pot of tea and two scones in its stylish bar for a total of $10.

Pat was helping organize a group of twenty Presbyterians, Disciples, and United Methodists under the auspices of Church World Service to witness Nicaragua’s first free and fair election after deposing the despot Somoza, occurring the same week as Reagan was seeking re-election while illegally funding the contras—the counter-revolutionaries who opposed the Sandinista government. A U.S. warship sailed menacingly off Nicaragua’s coast while we were there, and we heard two sonic booms each day as U.S. spy planes flew low overhead.

A Maryknoll sister (left) briefed us on what 

was happening. Pat Hoffman is in yellow.

There are many stories to be told about that trip, including the one when we decided to “crash” the American election party at the U.S. Embassy, where we had earlier met with a diplomat explaining what we considered misguided U.S. policy—after which Pat, with a mischievous smile, asked me, “Is he one of yours?” I laughed, realizing her “gaydar” was as astute as mine.

Anyway, about ten of us crammed into two tiny taxis and showed up election night outside the gate of the highly fortressed U.S. Embassy.  The taxi I was in arrived first, so I jumped out of the car and ran up to the gate. As quickly, I was met with bayonetted rifles of several soldiers running out of the waterless moat that surrounded the embassy! To the soldier at the gate, I explained why we were there. He put me on the phone to his commander inside, who politely explained that the party was not at the embassy itself, rather at a hotel, and that it was “by invitation only.”

A few days before we had been welcomed at the Nicaraguan election festivities, which required no such invitation. There we joined hundreds of Nicaraguans in an open soccer field listening to American music as election results began to trickle in—but only after walking through unlighted downtown areas of Managua destroyed by a devastating earthquake years before, never restored because Somoza drained the economic aid that came from other countries. In the darkness, we had to avoid manholes missing their covers.

Me, sitting beneath Che Guevara.

The reason I bring this up is all the talk about “revolution” in this current election. A history professor with us explained that Nicaragua had experienced a true revolution, but by contrast, she shared many historians’ view that the so-called “American Revolution,” was actually a rebellion, because it did not turn upside down the class system, putting “lower” classes, however defined, in charge. It was still largely governed by wealthy, educated, propertied white men.

I was a little peeved at her for disillusioning me about our seminal American event, but I saw her point. Still, our Founding Fathers and Mothers did set in place a system potentially “of the people” that would radically transform the government, society, and culture. Yet we are a representative democracy, not an absolute democracy.

So it gives me pause whenever the word “revolution” is tossed about so loosely as it has been this year. I had felt uncomfortable when activists in my own LGBT movement claimed ours was a “revolution.”  I thought it was too audacious and unrealistic to believe our activities could turn things upside down, as it was said of the first Christians (see Acts 17:6).

Others of us viewed our efforts more modestly and humbly as reformers. The system, both church and government, provided opportunities for reform, and look what the LGBT movement has accomplished in a generation!

Of course, self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” get the lion’s share of press, but in so many cases, the reformers deliberately sculpting our institutions accomplish more in the long run. Self-proclaimed “messiahs” lead to disillusionment because too many followers don’t have the patience to do the hard work—including voting in midterm elections, campaigning for down-ballot candidates and issues, paying attention to so-called “lowly” offices like school boards and town councils, networking with other movements.

Even revolutions require reformers, as we have witnessed in Nicaragua since that election day in 1984. In my journal on the trip, I wrote: 

Election Day

Sunday, Nov. 4 

It’s like watching the birth of a child, the blossoming of a fruit tree, the first green after winter. It’s one of the most exciting experiences I’ve witnessed. Not just history. Not mere accomplishment. It is hope in action—not a fait accompli, not an ultimate answer, not the promised land—but a signpost along the way. And that’s just it—along the way. Nicaragua is moving—its people are moving. I am grateful to watch from along the way, instead of being in the way or far away.

 Where people are on the way, God’s Spirit is at work.

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 and photos Copyright © 1984 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author, photographer, and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Misplaced Devotion?

Our nearly sixteen-year-old dog, Hobbes, has been going through a rough patch of aging for the past two months. I know she will die, just as I will, but the process is fraught with stress and uncertainty, save the final outcome. She refuses her normal food, prompting Wade and me to improvise meals that are inviting yet bland enough not to upset her system. Her intestinal discomfort and its manifestations have led to disruption of our daytime schedules and our night’s sleep, as well as requiring energy in cleaning up everything from bedding to floors, so all three of us are very fatigued.

We have become practicing if not exactly believing Buddhists: Hobbes moves very slowly these days, mindfully taking each step, as in a walking meditation. Wade and I mindfully attend every morsel of food she either takes or rejects, as well as being mindful of her other bodily functions or lack thereof.

An ultrasound has revealed a mass on the liver, probably cancer, but she is too old to safely survive surgery (assuming we could afford it). The morning I write this, she steadfastly refuses even to taste her freshly cooked morning meal.

That’s the background of sitting down for our morning prayers (Hobbes likes to join me on the deck.) and reading more of Julian of Norwich’s contemplation of Jesus and God.  I will soon have a post finished that does Julian justice, but today I became the rebellious reformer. Today it felt like her devotion is misplaced: Jesus does not need us to contemplate him, nor does God or the Trinity. There are people and species and ecosystems in my New York Times who are the ones in real need of our devotion. Them and our poor dog, which I immediately feel guilty comparing.

So I pulled out my John Leith, Introduction to the Reformed Tradition. I know, he  wasn’t exactly a progressive in most people’s eyes, but he seems more progressive than most conservatives these days. I wanted to remind myself of the Reformers’ reservations about contemplation.

Thomas Aquinas asserted, “[A human being's] ultimate felicity consists only in the contemplation of God.”

But Calvinist theologian H. Richard Niebuhr wrote: 

To call the vision [a human being’s] greatest good is to make contemplation, however prepared for by activity and however issuing in action, the final end of life; to put the sovereignty of God in the first place is to make obedient activity superior to contemplation, however much of theoria is necessary to action. The principle of vision suggests that the perfection of the object seen is loved above all else; the principle of the kingdom indicates that the reality and power of the being commanding obedience are primarily regarded. 

In other words, “Faith without works is dead.” Or, more bluntly, do we contemplate our navels and do nothing to help the world?

Julian, however, might take issue with this view of contemplation. Her idea seems to be that we become what we contemplate, that we are “oned” with God, a transformation that leads us to compassionate action. Such action then is not mere obedience; rather, it comes as a heartfelt expression of who we are, oned with God. Talk about at-one-ment!

I can’t see how compassion comes from obedience; it must come from transformation in the presence of absolute, all-embracing love.

Hobbes and Wade and I are cases in point: we have tamed and transformed the beast in one another by our love, loyalty, and actions. That’s what spiritual community is all about.

“What the world needs now…” is contemplation of the God of love.

I’ll be in New York City this weekend, June 5-7 at Fort Washington Collegiate Church leading two Saturday workshops, “Sex & the Body of Christ,” and “Coming Out as Sacrament,” and preaching on “Your Will Be Done” from the Lord’s Prayer during the 10:45 Sunday morning worship. For details, click here.

Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here or mailing to Metropolitan Community Churches, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!