Question & Answer
Bill Sherman from Nantucket, Mass, writes:
Question:
I attended an event sponsored by an Episcopal Seminary, likely laying foundations for fundraising. Hearing how seminarians are prepared for their encounter with fundamentalists, e.g. those anticipating the Rapture, I posed the question: Can (and should) Christianity be experienced fully and to good effect on a non-metaphysical platform? Expressed differently, will the graduates of this seminary generally be comfortable ministering to a congregation that finds metaphysical formulations of Christianity off-putting?
The response I received was to the effect that, while some Episcopalians have a non-metaphysical faith that works for them, the role of metaphysics remains strong. I take from that an assumption that a proper formation of seminarians need not include serious consideration of Christian faith without metaphysics.
While I believe that financial support of seminaries is critical to a vibrant future for the church, that future seems to me at risk if seminarians aren’t encouraged to envision a faith without metaphysics. Are some (Episcopal) seminaries less frightened by traditionalists and fundamentalists? Your writings are acknowledged but, at least in this case, kept at a distance. What have you found hopeful in the formation of our future church leaders?
Answer:
Dear Bill,
It is difficult to respond to a report from an event at an Episcopal seminary at which I was not present. My experience is that people hear very different things at the same gathering. You also use the word metaphysical as if its meaning is simple and universally the same. That is also not my experience. Metaphysical literally means beyond the physical as if there is a division between the physical and the non-physical that everyone understands. That is not the case. So allow me to try to respond to what I think you are asking in your letter.
In most theological seminaries, it is my concern that the students are being prepared for positions of leadership that will no longer exist in another generation. It is not simply a matter of metaphysics. It is a matter of God being defined in theistic terms when only people inside religious ghettos still think of God this way. By theistic terms I mean that definition of God as a being, supernatural in power, dwelling somewhere external to this world, usually thought of as “above the sky” and capable of intervening in human history in supernatural ways to answer prayers or to accomplish the divine purpose. That is the primary understanding of the God who is worshipped in most seminary chapels and parish churches. It permeates our liturgies, our hymns, our prayers and our sermons. Indeed in some services it is so stifling that one leaves worship tied up in knots. This is the all-seeing God of judgment before whom we kneel and beg for mercy, a God frequently confused with Santa Claus, who is making a list and checking it twice!. I think this theistic definition of God died over the last 500 years of expanded knowledge, yet it still lives in the imaginations of the traditionally religious. The idea that Jesus is understood as the incarnation of this theistic deity into a human life is one more aspect of the same mentality.
Then when the purpose of Jesus’ life is described as “dying for my sins,” we find ourselves dealing with a deity who is a monster. Proclaiming a “Father God,” who supposedly kills his divine son to bring about forgiveness (how that works is never explained), is not to recognize that this definition of God presents God as the “ultimate child abuser.” This Christology also still assumes the truth of “original sin,” an idea that died when we first discovered that there was no original perfection from which we might have fallen, but rather, an evolving process that took us over billions of years from single cell life to complex, self-conscious life. So the idea of a good creation, followed by a fall into sin, followed by redemption from this fall by God in the work of salvation, which restores us to that status for which we were originally intended, simply no longer makes sense to modern ears. Religious thinking dies slowly, but the death of traditional forms of religion over the last hundred years has been startling. I do not think many of our denominational seminaries have come anywhere close to addressing these things. Some live in denial and assert that there is no collapse going on in organized religion. Some despair that religion is becoming violent and extremist, something that is part of the death process itself. Some pretend that the old way of doing religion, which hasn’t worked for years, will somehow begin to work if we only learn to do it better. Few are willing to walk into the gathering storm and to engage the issues openly, having already concluded they are not capable of doing this.
These are clearly exceptions in the world of theological education. The seminary I attended in the mid 50’s introduced me to the work of Paul Tillich, who is the singular theologian of the 20th century who tried to address these issues. At the same time, that seminary never mentioned to me the name of Rudolf Bultmann, who had revolutionized New Testament scholarship in the first half of the 20th century. I will never forget my New Testament professor’s notes, which were yellow with age. I enjoyed many members of my faculty, but in fact they were deeply rooted in the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth, a World War I theologian, and did not relate me very well at all to the world I would have to engage in the 20th and now the 21st century. As I sought to find ways to do effective ministry in that world, my seminary clearly withdrew its support for me and my ministry. The Dean of my seminary now uses phrases like “progressive orthodoxy,” an oxymoron if I ever heard one. He also seems to deny that there is a statistical collapse in mainline churches today.
Denominational schools will only very rarely be radical centers of theological learning, for they live under the threat of the ecclesiastical hierarchies whom they serve and some well-heeled and, therefore, presumably, not intellectually radical contributors.
If I were going to seminary today, I would look first to ecumenical centers like Union Seminary in New York City, Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. I would plan to supplement that seminary’s education with active participation in a congregation that understood the meaning of modern ministry. Short of that I would go to one of the Consortium Centers, where the Consortium actually functions and is not just a theory. The best of these, in my opinion, is the Consortium around the University of California, where the individual denominational schools have pooled their libraries and cross referenced their courses in all the member schools. It is hard to confuse education with propaganda in such a place. Next in line among my preferences would be a theological school that is part of and is related to a University. The School of Religion at Drew University (a Methodist institution in Madison, New Jersey) is an excellent example. It is hard to hide inside religion when students and faculty both must interact daily with students and faculty in other parts of a university.
Having said all that, let me add that if I had my life to live over again, I am not sure if I would change much of anything about my life path. I would still want to be a priest and a theologian. I am grateful that my church chose me to be one of its bishops. I think it is a better church because it allowed and even encouraged some of us to roam the edges of our faith and I believe that in time the Episcopal Church, and even my seminary, will appreciate what they now think of as my controversial ministry. The day will come when the things I thought of as frontier issues will seem retrogressive not radical. Then I will be criticized, not for being too radical, but for not being radical enough! I have every reason to believe that the churches I served as rector and the diocese I served as a bishop already do that.
John Shelby Spong
Announcements
Word Jazz
To be recited with the accompaniment of a saxophone by Jim Burklo
In the beginning is the Word
W-O-R-D
And the Word is with God
And the Word is God
And the Word is the bird
That Jesus talked about
When he pointed at the bird
In his Sermon on the Mount.
The birds of the air
Don’t store in the barn,
The birds, they never worry
So don’t you ever fret
Except against the strings
Of a guitar’s fretted neck
Or you’re gonna be a wreck
Wracked with anxiety
That you just don’t need
In heaven’s reality
That you are going to see
When you listen for the Word
In the singing of the bird
That the Almighty feeds
Day by day, while you pray
And say hey, Dear God
In your beginning is the Word
And like a winging bird
I’m feeling free
In the awesome presence
Of your eternity
That’s beyond theology
Defying explanation.
But we groan in expectation
Oppressed with the cogitation
That it’s cool to suffer from alienation
Drifting apart in inebriation
When we ought to be claiming your liberation
From fear and greed and discrimination.
Oh! the misery of comparing one to another
The wrongful judgment of sisters against brothers
Husband against wife
All that family strife
The religious hypocrisy
That claims superiority
To all of that the Word is No!
All that jive has got to go
Over the cliff where Jesus sent the hogs
Out of the eyes where he took out the logs
Out of the ears where he pulled out the mud
Off the cross where he shed all the blood.
The Word, the Word, the Word is YES
To all that for hearts and souls is best
Trust and faith and hope and grace
Belief in the future of the human race
The artistic, mystic
Pluralistic, humanistic
W-O-R-D
Whispered again to you and me
Can you hear it? Can you feel it?
Can you start to catch the beat?
Can you stand to feel the heat?
Can you sense the buzz about it
That is spreading on the street?
Are you hip to the Word
The still small silent Word?
The Word insinuated in the coolness of a cat
Who shows a brother kindness
Even when he plays the brat?
The Word that changes spelling
The Word that keeps on telling
The Word that’s still upwelling
From the depths of this and that
From the hearts of you and me
When we finally start to see
That the package that we bought
Was completely full of rot
That the only way to get it is to give up all we thought
That the way to find abundance is to share all that we’ve got
That the way to change the System is to blow ‘em all away
With the love in our intentions and the truth in what we say.
The Word, the Word, W-O-R-D
The ultimate cosmic graffiti
The Alpha, Omega, beginning and the stop
I’m prayin’ and I’m preachin’ till I finally gotta drop.
The Word, W-O-R-D
The Word is the sound of the tables Jesus turned
Dumping all the money for the sacrifices burned
Dumping all the lies of the powers that be
They say that freedom’s precious but they head toward tyranny.
Is the Word really heard when they tap our telephones
Can they hear the wails and moans
Of the mothers in the war
And the inner city poor
And the millions uninsured
To whose plight we’re so inured?
Are we listening
To the W-O-R-D?
That’s the ultimate verbal authority
Structuring our moral integrity
Giving us the spine
To stand for what’s divine
And do the thing that’s kind
Kind, kind.
Let’s just be kind.
And patient.
And humble.
And sweet.
And bold!
And free!
And Whee!
The serendipity!
Of knowing you and me
Express divinity!
Oh yeah! W-O-R-D –
I hear you in the forest
Behind a redwood tree
I hear you in the waves
That are crashing in the sea
I hear you in the desert
Speaking soft to me:
Peace
Truth
Forgiveness
Acceptance
Courage
Is there more, more, more, more
More you have to say?
Can I bear to really hear
That I’m nowhere nearly clear?
My ears burn, my feet are sore
My eyes sting, my fingers ache
Can I type another Word?
W-O-R-D
It seems absurd
That more could be in store.
Resonations, conflagrations,
Inhalations, excitations,
Inspirations, exclamations
I’m ready.
I’m birdlike.
I’m barnless.
I’m as hollow as a swallow
I’m as pinched as a finch
I’m as slow as a crow
Eager as an eagle
Un-uptight as a goose in flight
I’m a bird, God,
I’m your bird, Word,
I’m ready, Lord,
W-O-R-D
O let me be
All yours.
Amen.
From BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians (St Johann Press, 2008)
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