Category Archives: Abrahamic Traditions

Abrahamic Traditions, Activism, Politics

atheists in foxholes

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This article asks profound questions and underscores the lack of true tolerance in the nation (and the world?) today. As an interfaith minister this is one of the times I really feel that lack. The idea that a profession of faith, any faith, sincere or insincere, is automatically morally superior to atheism is extremely uncomfortable to me. As if religious morality hasn’t led us all into a morass of violence and recrimination.

Addressing atheism was one of the (many, I grant) places where my short seminary training let me down. For a group positing tolerance and understanding among people, somehow they still manage to slice off little bits of humanity.

I’m actually reminded a bit of my Epicurean days (circa 2000), when I believed down to my bones that the soul was mortal and this single animated existence was my only mark upon the universe. Perhaps the well-known adage, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” would have been better rendered, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we end, and all chances for physical or spiritual experience cease.” This is life, right now, this moment, the conscious experience of emotions and sensations distinct from any idea of God or afterlife.* Afterlife is just that: after life. Live first, and respect those who do so with no anticipation of later reward, but simply to revel in this marvelous experience of being human.

Matthew Chapman: At Last A Comic Book Atheist Hero – Living Now on The Huffington Post:

Pat Tillman, an extraordinarily square-jawed football player who gave up a lucrative professional life to go and fight for his country, was at first hailed as a hero by a military eager for good publicity. When it was discovered Tillman died as a result of “friendly fire” — he was shot at close range in the forehead, which seems a little too friendly — his family pressed hard for a more thorough investigation. Lt. Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, an officer with responsibilities for Tillman’s unit, complained that his relatives were being so insistent because, like Pat, they were atheists.

*Full Disclosure: I am not an atheist. I have a religion, although it isn’t a mainstream practice. As part of that religion, I believe in the concept of panentheism, the Divine immanent in the universe as well as transcending it. For me the energy/spirit that lives in every cell in my body is the Ultimate Reality, which some call “God” (and others call Physics). But for the purposes of this paragraph, and the article to which I link, “God” is a word describing a particular, discrete deity-type, the Jehovah/Father of the Abrahamic traditions. With that type in mind, I do believe that the experience of life on all its levels – spiritual, mental, physical, emotional – is distinct from God and the afterlife.

Abrahamic Traditions, Celebrations, Christianity, Judaism

Interfaith Op/Ed

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Scott Korb & Leon Morris make a compelling argument that is both astute and intrinsically interfaith in their opinion piece, first published Dec 17th in the Baltimore Sun and reprinted today in the Chronicle:

Christmas Belongs to Christians

The essential discussion touches on one of my personal difficulties with the entire concept of interfaith ministry in its many forms: the loss of significance of cultural and religious events by attempting to make them “fit” into a dominant cultural paradigm.

It’s not that I think that the interfaith movement is wrong – I’d not be an interfaith minister if I did. I simply think that the movement is not about creating a common approach to spirituality, but rather finding a common ground for respecting and tolerating each other’s unique spiritualities.

I am reminded of something my mother heard in a lecture by Jill Carroll of the Boniuk Center at Rice University. Mom caught the lecture on public access, and related some of it to me when I moved back to Houston. She told me that Ms. Carroll said that tolerance does not require approval, permission, sympathy, or understanding of the other person or practice. One simply allows the other person to do as they believe is right, while they allow the same. (I am attempting to catch a rerun or a podcast of the lecture to quote it more effectively, but whether the quote is accurate or not, the point is well made.) Tolerance, the cornerstone of the interfaith movement, involves no great leaps of cooperation to show the other side how harmless/familiar/similar this side really is. It does not require an outsider to take part in order to fully appreciate the delicate nuances of practice.

Tolerance is simple, and non-intrusive.

It is a question both fascinating and pertinent, whether the “Happy Holidays” and “Season of Light” phenomena constitute an intrinsic devaluing of the practices and beliefs they purport to celebrate.

Can Unity of Spirit come from the forceful melding of cultural traditions, or should the global community, and especially America, practice tolerance and education in lieu of religious monism? Let the cultural melting pot proceed at its own pace; we needn’t hurry it along by invoking the cultural whisk quite yet.

As for me, I have celebrated Winter Solstice with dear friends, through dancing and song, thinking often of dearest spiritual sisters celebrating that night far away in New York. I have enjoyed a family White Elephant Party. I plan to partake of certain family traditions for Wigilia, a Polish Christmas Eve celebration, with my parents. Come Christmas Day I will play games – board games, card games, word games – probably long into the night, with my extended family. And on January 6th, I will light a candle for the feast of the Epiphany, make wishes for the New Year, and plan my charitable giving.
That is an interfaith celebration based on my personal spiritual path, my childhood memories, and respect for the cherished beliefs of my family and friends. Those things are important to me in a way that the practices of other religions cannot be; that does not lessen my tolerance, nor for that matter my respect and awe at other religious ceremonies, simply reflects my own experience of the season.

Abrahamic Traditions, Ancient Traditions, Christianity, History, Local

Dr. Elaine Pagels on Judas

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This evening Dr. Elaine Pagels spoke at Rice University on the topic of the newly published Gospel of Judas and its impact on the scholarship of early Christianity.

I had no real idea what to expect of the presentation, which was part of the Archaeological Institute of America’s Local Lecture Series. The venue was a gorgeous lecture hall, with a reception at the student center across the street. There were quite a lot of people there, mostly white, mostly middle-aged or elderly, although I spotted a few folks who were likely students. I hadn’t thought of it until I sat down in the hall, but it would have been a fantastic gathering for some local networking, if I’d had even a couple of contacts to aid with introductions. Perhaps I can continue to attend and figure out who the important people are.

I am, of course, a great fan of the various ancient texts which make up the Nag Hammadi Library and other sources of “lost” Christian writings. As Dr. Pagels pointed out, though, the name “lost” gospels is a misnomer. They weren’t lost, they were systematically and deliberately suppressed by the orthodoxy. These texts point out tremendous conflict in the early Christian movement, highlighting dissenting voices in debates about the nature of God, the Resurrection, and the amount of foreknowledge Jesus had about events.

According to Dr. Pagels, the author of the Gospel of Judas is a very angry Christian who is expressing a lot of objection to the practice of church leaders’ encouragement of voluntary martyrdom. In addition, there is a bit of mystery tradition as the author describes a “secret teaching” Jesus gave to Judas before asking Judas to betray him as part of a larger plan. The mystery involves a higher spiritual existence that gives a kind of immortality that is distinctly different from the idea of bodily resurrection put forward by traditional Christianity.

The vision of the spiritual plane that overlays this one echoes so many mystical traditions, from paganism to Sufism to even some Hellenistic philosphy. One of the phrases from her lecture sticks in my mind discussing death: stepping into God. That is really the attitude that the author of the Judas manuscript takes toward Jesus’s death. He was demonstrating that great mystery, showing through his own transcendence the power of leaving behind one’s physical body.

I am put in mind of Paul’s initial conversion, which if I recall correctly was a vision of light by the side of the road. That’s the kind of Resurrection I could imagine, a spiritual power that transcends the physical world and can reach infinitely through space and time.

One major point in the discussion touched on current events: the issue of the glorification of martyrdom. In the Gospel of Judas, Judas is described as scolding the other disciples for sacrificing children on the altar. There is a question to read between the lines there – what has the Church become, what kind of God do we worship, who would want the blood of our children? Are we turning to human sacrifice now? This question is born out of the cultural glorification of martyrdom during the 2nd century among the Church orthodoxy. And the Gospel is just the sort of dissenting viewpoint that modern scholars and Christians have never heard.

Early Church fathers went out of their way to tell their naive and trusting faithful not just that martyrdom was glorious when it was necessary, but that it was so glorious and desirable that they should activiely seek it out. There is a very great difference between telling someone to be willing to die for their beliefs if they are arrested, and telling someone that they should throw themselves at the cops to die in glory for their faith and secure their place in Heaven. Incredible, how parallel that seems on the surface to the current pattern of Islamic radicalism and their glorification of martyrdom through murder-suicide.

Yet, as Dr. Pagels pointed out, the early Christians were a persecuted minority that did face death if caught. To tell them that it was better to accept martyrdom than to deny their faith was in line with Christian thought. Early Christians never murdered non-Christians or bystanders in their pursuit of glorious martyrdom, though. There was a distinct difference in the context. Still, Dr. Pagels mentioned that upon reading the Gospel of Judas she was put in mind of an Imam today, protesting the great movement of glorious martyrdom through terrorism. This is a voice of protest as well as a mystical revelation.

The one topic Dr. Pagels only touched on briefly was the spiritual relevance of this Gospel and the others of the “lost” texts. She said that she did not read the texts as a minister would. That, of course, made me want to read them from that perspective. I will have to see about getting my hands on the texts and reading from several perspectives now.

On the whole I was fascinated by the lecture and discussion, and look forward to seeing Dr. Pagels’s forthcoming book on the subject next spring. I am also looking forward to exploring more of the Archaeology, Religion, Interfaith, and Cultural resources of the sponsoring organizations: Rice, AIA, The Boniuk Center, and The Center at Christ Church Cathedral.