Category: Religion

The Man and the myth

I mentioned last week that I was ordering the book Jesus for the Non-Religious by John Shelby Spong, the retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. I thought I should pass along my impressions.

This book is incorrectly titled. It’s about Jesus, but it is not written so far as I can tell for the non-religious. It appears to be directed to the very religious in fact, to convince them to take a harder look at what we actually know about Jesus.

Spong takes that look and concludes — surmises would be more accurate — that most of what we think we know about Jesus is simply untrue. He explains that much of what is found in the New Testament is based on writings in the Torah and other books of the Old Testament. He argues that Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, writing 40 to 70 years after Jesus died, were convinced that Jesus was the messiah and so elaborated on what little they actually knew by relying on Old Testament prophecy and Jewish liturgy to fill out the story. Spong doesn’t believe, for example, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem (he says Nazareth), that Jesus had a father (or stepfather) named Joseph (who knows), that Jesus was crucified at Passover (more likely later in the year), that Barabbas existed (in Hebrew the name means son of God) or that any of the miracles ascribed to Jesus make sense (get real people).

Clearly the story of the ascension is not history. When one rises into the sky, one does not get to heaven. One either goes into orbit or escapes the gravitational pull of the earth and drifts into the infinity of space.

The gospels were interpretative, not historical.

The question for Bishop Spong then becomes, what was it about this man Jesus that made him so special that a few decades later the gospel writers were telling his story embellished with the most profound Jewish liturgy?

The issue that this analysis has raised over and over again is that there must have been something about this Jesus that was so powerful that it seemed appropriate for his disciples to wrap around him the sacred symbols of their worship, the myths of their messianic expectations, the most sacred heroes of their tradition, magnified to supernatural proportions. There was something about him that caused them to conclude that the God in whom they believed was present in and somehow with the Jesus they had known.

Spong’s answer is that Jesus overcame the tribal, racial, sexist and religious prejudices of his time, preaching an acceptance of all, a forgiveness to all, a “he who is without sin” approach to the human community. The goodness of his words, and his life, were overpowering to those that knew him. He wasn’t God, but he was made into a god.

The primary problem I had with this book are the leaps of faith Spong makes in his reasoning. Just because certain things are counterintuitive or unlikely does not mean they did not happen, however improbable. Just because certain passages in one text mirror those in an earlier text does not mean the later story must be untrue. To my thinking, if an individual arguing the opposite points made the same type of weak-tea arguments, I’d reject them. The same should apply here. Spong’s briefs would be thrown out of any court.

Nonetheless this is an interesting and provocative book that believers and non-believers alike might wish to read.

Saint Valentine

The first representation of Saint Valentine appeared in a The Nuremberg Chronicle, a great illustrated book printed in 1493. [Additional evidence that Valentine was a real person: archaeologists have unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to Saint Valentine.] Alongside a woodcut portrait of him, text states that Valentinus was a Roman priest martyred during the reign of Claudius the Goth [Claudius II]. Since he was caught marrying Christian couples and aiding any Christians who were being persecuted under Emperor Claudius in Rome [when helping them was considered a crime], Valentinus was arrested and imprisoned. Claudius took a liking to this prisoner — until Valentinus made a strategic error: he tried to convert the Emperor — whereupon this priest was condemned to death. He was beaten with clubs and stoned; when that didn’t do it, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate [circa 269].

Saints are not supposed to rest in peace; they’re expected to keep busy: to perform miracles, to intercede. Being in jail or dead is no excuse for non-performance of the supernatural. One legend says, while awaiting his execution, Valentinus restored the sight of his jailer’s blind daughter. Another legend says, on the eve of his death, he penned a farewell note to the jailer’s daughter, signing it, “From your Valentine.”

… He is the Patron Saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travellers, young people. He is represented in pictures with birds and roses.

Saints & Angels – Catholic Online

Bracketed material in original.

Luke, Chapter 2

1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.

2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)

3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, (because he was of the house and lineage of David,)

5 to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

16 And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.

18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

[King James Version]

Why didn't they choose a time of the year when stores weren't so crowded?

The date of Easter is determined according to the lunar calendar, while the date of Christmas is fixed on the solar calendar. Before 325, there was no official celebration of the birth of Christ, and Easter was celebrated by some Christians on Passover (a lunar holiday) and by others the following Sunday. The rationale: Christ’s last supper took place on or around Passover, he was crucified on a Friday, and the festival of Easter celebrates his resurrection two days later.

In 325, church officials at the First Council of Nicaea formalized the date of Easter in an effort to get everyone to celebrate on the same day (and also, possibly, to dissociate it from the Jewish Passover feast). From then on, the holiday was celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon after March 21, the start of spring.

At the same time, the council inaugurated Christmas by making Dec. 25 the Feast of the Nativity. Because Christmas was not directly related to a lunar holiday, and because it had never been celebrated before—the date of Christ’s birth is not mentioned in the Bible, and questions about it had been settled by a proclamation from the pope just five years earlier—the council was able to establish an unambiguous date for the celebration.

Daniel Engber – Slate Magazine

The name of the person we call Jesus was Yeshua. Jesus is the English version of the Greek version of Yeshua.

BTW, its Joshua at the battle of Jericho and Jesus who was born on Christmas because the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek. There is no sh sound in Greek, hence Iesous. It was still Iesus in the original King James Bible (1611).

Source for information on name, Brian Palmer – Slate Magazine.

Best it is the season to be holy line of the day

“This time of year, many cultural Catholics — call them seasonal, the less-than-perfect, less frequent church-goers — feel a need to worship. They may be drawn to the ritual, the community, the music, a bright, hopeful message in the season of darkness.”

Timothy Egan while writing about the Bishop of Providence and Patrick Kennedy.

Egan’s line resonated with this cultural Catholic.

This is spooky news

The poll released on Wednesday showed that three-in-ten Americans say they have felt in touch with a dead person and 18 percent say they have seen or been in the presence of a ghost.

Other Pew surveys have shown that relatively few Americans would identify an Eastern religion or New Age spirituality as their core faith. But about a quarter of those surveyed say they believe in aspects of Eastern religions.

Nearly 25 percent said they believed in reincarnation and 23 percent said yoga was a spiritual practice. Twenty six percent said they believed “spiritual energy” could be found in objects such as trees.

A quarter said they believed in astrology, while 16 percent of U.S. adults think that an “evil eye” exists or that some people can cast curses or spells on others. Among black Protestants the evil eye figure is 32 percent.

Reuters via Yahoo! News

Here’s the Pew report — Many Americans Not Dogmatic About Religion.

Best line of the day

“If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for Texas schoolchildren.”

Texas Governor Ma Ferguson while vetoing a bill to authorize Spanish primary grade instruction during the 1920s.

Story told during Stanford University course Historical Jesus available at iTunes U for free. [link opens iTunes] The course consists of 10 audio files; each runs from 90-100 minutes.

The opening lecture in the series is “Call Me Yeshua.” If his mother had called the person we know as Jesus in his native Aramaic, Yeshua is most likely what she would have called. The name Jesus is a Latin translation of a Greek name which was derived from the Aramaic. The modern equivalent of Yeshua is Joshua.

Sex and power

Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, takes a look at the C Street House, “the secretive religious enclave on Capitol Hill thrust into the news by its links to three political sex scandals.”

An excerpt:

If sexual license was all the Family offered the C Street men, however, that would merely be seedy and self-serving. But Family men are more than hypocritical. They’re followers of a political religion that embraces elitism, disdains democracy, and pursues power for its members the better to “advance the Kingdom.” They say they’re working for Jesus, but their Christ is a power-hungry, inside-the-Beltway savior not many churchgoers would recognize. Sexual peccadilloes aside, the Family acts today like the most powerful lobby in America that isn’t registered as a lobby — and is thus immune from the scrutiny attending the other powerful organizations like Big Pharma and Big Insurance that exert pressure on public policy.

Money quote: “If you’re chosen, the normal rules don’t apply.”

Most provocative paragraph of the day

There is a reason why nobody takes the Vatican seriously on the issues of poverty, pre-emptive war and the death penalty. It’s because the Vatican never puts any muscle behind its pronouncements on issues like that. The folks in and around the Chair of Peter take out the big hammer on only two general issues — their own power, and where people put their pee-pees and with whom, and what might issue from same. That’s why Catholic bankers can go on merrily charging interest on loans, even though both the Council of Nicaea and the Third Lateran Council — to say nothing of Popes Clement V and Sixtus X — condemned the practice as usury, which has been considered a serious sin for a lot longer than has, say, contraception.

Charles Pierce, excerpted from a slightly longer piece.

Religion in America

According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:

  • Just more than half of the American population is Protestant
  • Just less than a quarter are Catholic
  • Another 3 percent are other Christian; e.g., Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness or Orthodox
  • Just less than 2 percent are Jewish
  • Buddhists, Hindu, Muslim and other world religions account collectively for nearly 2 percent
  • Other faiths such as Unitarian, New Age or Native American account for about 1 percent
  • About 12 percent of Americans claim to be unaffiliated — half of these say religion is important, half say it is not
  • And 4 percent are non-believers

Other slices.

  • Roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics
  • 28% of the population has left the faith of their childhood for another religion – or none at all (44% if you count intra-Protestant changes)
  • 25% of 18-29 year olds say they are unaffiliated

Epiphany

Today is the Epiphany, one of the three major Christian celebrations along with Christmas and Easter. The Epiphany is celebrated by most Christians on January 6 to commemorate the presentation of the infant Jesus to the Magi or three wise men.

The celebration of the Epiphany began in the Eastern Church and included Christ’s birth. However, by the 4th century, the various calendar reforms had moved the birth of Christ to December 25, and the church in Rome began celebrating January 6 as Epiphany.

Epiphany is derived from the Greek epiphaneia and means manifestation or to appear. In a religious context, the term describes the appearance of a divine being in a visible or revelatory manifestation.

In Latin America, today is Día de los Santos Reyes, the day to exchange Christmas presents to coincide with the arrival of the three gift-bearing kings or wisemen.

Adoration of the Magi

Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi
The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1445
Samuel H. Kress Collection
National Gallery of Art

La Virgen de Guadalupe

Today is the 477th anniversary of the appearance of La Virgen de Guadalupe on the cloak of Juan Diego.

Virgen de Guadalupe

Guadalupe is, strictly speaking, the name of a picture, but the name was extended to the church containing the picture and to the town that grew up around the church. It makes the shrine, it occasions the devotion, it illustrates Our Lady. It is taken as representing the Immaculate Conception, being the lone figure of the woman with the sun, moon, and star accompaniments of the great apocalyptic sign with a supporting angel under the crescent. The word is Spanish Arabic, but in Mexico it may represent certain Aztec sounds.

Its tradition is long-standing and constant, and in sources both oral and written, Indian and Spanish, the account is unwavering. The Blessed Virgin appeared on Saturday 9 December 1531 to a 55 year old neophyte named Juan Diego, who was hurrying down Tepeyac hill to hear Mass in Mexico City. She sent him to Bishop Zumárraga to have a temple built where she stood. She was at the same place that evening and Sunday evening to get the bishop’s answer. The bishop did not immediately believed the messenger, had him cross-examined and watched, and he finally told him to ask the lady who said she was the mother of the true God for a sign. The neophyte agreed readily to ask for sign desired, and the bishop released him.

Juan was occupied all Monday with Bernardino, an uncle, who was dying of fever. Indian medicine had failed, and Bernardino seemed at death’s door. At daybreak on Tuesday 12 December 1531, Juan ran to nearby Saint James’s convent for a priest. To avoid the apparition and the untimely message to the bishop, he slipped round where the well chapel now stands. But the Blessed Virgin crossed down to meet him and said, “What road is this thou takest son?” A tender dialogue ensued. She reassured Juan about his uncle, to whom she also briefly appeared and instantly cured. Calling herself Holy Mary of Guadalupe she told Juan to return to the bishop. He asked the sign for the sign he required. Mary told him to go to the rocks and gather roses. Juan knew it was neither the time nor the place for roses, but he went and found them. Gathering many into the lap of his tilma, a long cloak or wrapper used by Mexican Indians, he came back. The Holy Mother rearranged the roses, and told him to keep them untouched and unseen until he reached the bishop. When he met with Zumárraga, Juan offered the sign to the bishop. As he unfolded his cloak the roses, fresh and wet with dew, fell out. Juan was startled to see the bishop and his attendants kneeling before him. The life size figure of the Virgin Mother, just as Juan had described her, was glowing on the tilma. The picture was venerated, guarded in the bishop’s chapel, and soon after carried in procession to the preliminary shrine.

The coarsely woven material of the tilme which bears the picture is as thin and open as poor sacking. It is made of vegetable fibre, probably maguey. It consists of two strips, about seventy inches long by eighteen wide, held together by weak stitching. The seam is visible up the middle of the figure, turning aside from the face. Painters have not understood the laying on of the colours. They have deposed that the “canvas” was not only unfit but unprepared, and they have marvelled at apparent oil, water, distemper, etc. colouring in the same figure. They are left in equal admiration by the flower-like tints and the abundant gold. They and other artists find the proportions perfect for a maiden of fifteen. The figure and the attitude are of one advancing. There is flight and rest in the eager supporting angel. The chief colours are deep gold in the rays and stars, blue green in the mantle, and rose in the flowered tunic.

(The Catholic Community Forum, taken from a 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia article)

The Church of Beethoven

Albuquerque, N.M., is no different from any other American city, in terms of its religious life; you’ve got churches, synagogues, a couple of Unitarian congregations and a mosque. But an abandoned gas station along old Route 66 is the unlikely home for another kind of Sunday-morning service, and it’s one that you won’t find anywhere else. It’s called the Church of Beethoven.

NPR tells about the spiritual experience you can get at a former gas station.

Thanks to Veronica for the tip.

Does praying she’s back in Alaska soon count?

Whoever would like to make a commitment to pray for Sarah Palin can go to www.prayforsarahpalin.com and enter their zip code. A marker will automatically be placed on the prayer coverage map, which can be viewed live in Google maps. There are approximately 43,000 zip codes in the United States. Our goal is to have people praying for Sarah Palin in every zip code. I believe prayer changes things.

PrayForSarahPalin via MoJo Blog

Heavenly Father

If you pray for a torrential downpour to disrupt the acceptance speech of a candidate you do not support, but the night of the speech is clear and pleasant.

But then speeches in favor of the candidate you do support are altered by a massive storm more than a thousand miles away.

Then don’t you have to take that as a message from God? How could one be an answer to prayers and not the other?

Feast of the Assumption

Today, August 15, is the Feast of the Assumption, the principal feast of the Blessed Virgin. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the feast celebrates both the “happy departure of Mary from this life” and the “assumption of her body into heaven.” That she “was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things” is a principle of Catholic dogma.