You are currently browsing the daily archive for December 22, 2015.
On this date in 1534 (Dec. 22nd), Martijn Pietersz was beheaded in #Rotterdam, Netherlands. Martijn had been rebaptized eight months earlier, in April, so he was an #Anabaptist. However, he was arrested and executed not for being an Anabaptist, but for being a pickpocket.
~The Marginal Mennonite Society Martyrs Series.
This is a revision of a post originally published on December 24, 2009.![[Icon of the Annunciation]](https://ecumenics.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/annunciation-ustug-style.jpg?w=490)
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars.…
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings.
Those are the first and last stanzas of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem, “Christ Climbed Down.”1 The poet’s understanding of a particular (and peculiar) dogma may have been off — the “Immaculate Conception” doctrine refers to the conception of Mary, not to that of Jesus Christ — but that’s not the worst of his heterodoxies, at least from broadly accepted Christian perspectives. For many Christians, the…
View original post 1,035 more words
Amish Online Encyclopedia
An online resource on Amish culture
<img class=”alignleft size-full wp-image-5153″ title=”amish online information encyclopedia” src=”http://amishamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/amish-online-encyclopedia.png” alt=”amish online encyclopedia” width=”85″ height=”85″ />The Amish Online Encyclopedia (AOE) examines a diverse range of topics, including Amish life, culture, and belief.
The AOE is based on academic research as well as input from Amish themselves, including church leaders, lay members, and historians. Sources of further information are offered at the end of each article.
* * * Links to Quaker Organizations and other Resources* * *
Quakerism today spans a wide theological spectrum. Among the several branches of Quakerism there are different forms of church organization and worship. The organizations below reflect some of the diversity among Friends today.
Friends World Committee for Consultation: http://fwccworld.org/
FWCC is the umbrella organization for the 400,000+ Friends (Quakers) around the world. Their purpose is to encourage fellowship among all the branches of the Religious Society of Friends.
American Friends Service Committee: http://afsc.org/
The AFSC is a Quaker organization that promotes lasting peace with justice, as a practical expression of faith in action, nurturing the seeds of change and respect for human life that transform social relations and systems.
Conservative Friends: http://www.conservativefriend.org/
A website maintained by Conservative Friends of Ohio Yearly Meeting with links to the two other Yearly Meetings of Conservative Friends, Iowa Yearly Meeting and North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative). These Friends are concerned to conserve the original Christian Quaker tradition, including unprogrammed meetings for worship.
Friends General Conference: http://www.fgcquaker.org/
FGC provides services and resources for individual Friends, meetings, and people interested in the Quaker way. FGC is an association of regional Quaker communities in the U.S. and Canada working together to nurture a vital Quaker faith. These Friends are liberal and their meetings for worship are unprogrammed.
Friends United Meeting: http://fum.org/
An international association of Friends (Quakers) with 30 regional Friends’ bodies around the world. FUM yearly meetings work together in Christian evangelism, global partnership, leadership development, and communications. Their meetings for worship are programmed or semi-programmed and they employ pastors.
Earlham School of Religion: http://esr.earlham.edu/
ESR is a Christian seminary in the Quaker tradition located in Richmond, Indiana. It places high emphasis upon the value of listening for and discerning God’s call into ministry, grounded in distinctives such as integrity, equality, and peace. In addition to both residential and distance degree programs, ESR offers annual gatherings: a Writer’s Colloquium, a Spirituality Gathering, and a Leadership Conference.
Pendle Hill: http://pendlehill.org/
Pendle Hill is a Quaker center welcoming all for Spirit-led learning, retreat, and community. Its vision is to create peace with justice in the world by transforming lives. Come for a private retreat, a weekend workshop, or for its residential program for one, two, or three ten-week terms.
A Ministry of Prayer and Learning devoted to the School of the Spirit:http://schoolofthespirit.org/
This ministry serves the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and is dedicated to helping all those who wish to be more faithful listeners and responders to the inward work of Christ, the Inward Teacher. They offer silent retreats and a two-year program on Being a Spiritual Nurturer.
QuakerQuaker.Org http://www.quakerquaker.org/
Dedicated to “Primitive Chrisitianity Revived Again”, this site highlights some of the best blogs and other writings by contemporary Quakers.
Quaker Studies: http://www.bhfh.org/qsp/
An adult religious education program located in New England that offers local and online courses related to Quakerism.
Quaker Finder http://quakerfinder.org
Use this site to locate Friends Meetings across the US & Canada. Includes pastoral meetings but appears to have much more complete listings of unprogrammed meetings, especially those affiliated with FGC (which hosts the site.
Inward Light http://www.inwardlight.org/
Letting God lead: our worship, lives, faith communities & world. Peter-Blood Patterson’s website has many useful resources and links related to Quaker faith and practice today.
* * * Websites with early Quaker texts * * *
Earlham School of Religion’s digital Quaker collection:http://esr.earlham.edu/dqc/
DQC is a digital library containing full text and page images of over 500 individual Quaker works from the 17th and 18th centuries. The proprietary software developed for Earlham School of Religion provides multiple search functions and an interface for viewing pages.
Quaker Heritage Press online documents: http://www.qhpress.org/texts/index.html
QHP aims to make available various historical Quaker writings that have been allowed to go out of print, including a valuable collection of documents from the beginning of the Quaker movement.
Street Corner Society: http://www.strecorsoc.org/quaker.html#overview
An extensive collection of early Quaker writings along with commentary.
A review of Matthew Fox’s Confessions: the Making of a Post-Denominational Priest
The revised and updated version of Matthew Fox’s autobiography, Confessions, tells the story of a courageous and creative theologian, a Roman Catholic priest who articulated a life-affirming theology about the sacredness of all creation. He was silenced by the Vatican, however, and expelled from his order. Like early Quaker George Fox, Matthew Fox has asked deep questions about the nature of God and life, and he found answers he was able to put into fresh language. Both taught about the life of the Spirit in ways that were liberating and spiritually energizing for many people. Both men also found themselves in the midst of great controversy, accused of heresy.
When Confessions: the Making of a Post-Denominational Priest first came out in 1996, I hurried to buy a copy. I had been making my own long, expansive journey from the theology of my childhood church, and I was eager to read the story of the priest who wrote books with provocative titles such as Original Blessing and The Return of the Cosmic Christ. Matthew Fox was known for something called Creation Spirituality, a theology that affirms the sacredness and wholeness of all creation. Creation Spirituality is not the same thing as pantheism, which worships creation as God. Instead, it sees that God is in everything, and everything is in God. What God is is greater than creation, but infuses all created things. This is called panentheism. Matthew Fox sees traces of this theology in the Scriptures and in the teachings of some celebrated Christian mystics. He teaches that the world has been suffering from an outdated theology that has shaped the West in ways that are devastating to the planet’s people, creatures, and ecology. He insists that this destructive theology, perpetuated through institutional Christianity, does not spring from the teachings of Jesus.
Matthew Fox attended seminary during the reign of Pope John XXIII, and he felt the fresh winds of the Spirit that were ushered in at that time. The Second Vatican Council opened the Roman Catholic Church to the modern day and to ecumenical dialogue. In the late sixties, the Dominican order sent Fox to Europe to get a Ph.D. in theology. On the advice of Thomas Merton, the young priest chose to study in Paris. He went with a burning question: “What is the relationship between prayer and social justice?” His mentor at the Catholic Institute in Paris, the esteemed scholar Père (Father) M. D. Chenu, gave his theology students permission to be poets and artists as well as scholars. He taught them to distinguish between a dualistic fall/redemption theology that denigrated the earth, women, and all things feminine, and a creation-centered spirituality that emphasized wholeness. It was a time of cultural turmoil, the era of the Civil Rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War. Many of Fox’s fellow theology students were priests from Latin America interested in liberation theology. In Paris in the late sixties, he found himself in the midst of student riots and worker strikes. Père Chenu encouraged his students to bring their theology alive by engaging in the streets.
Ever afterwards, Matthew Fox sought to articulate a relevant Catholic theology for our time, one that sees the earth and all beings as worthy of reverence. At Mundelein College in Chicago and later at Holy Names College in California, he created and headed a graduate program called the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS). His goal was to encourage a spirituality of wholeness, integrating body, mind, and spirit. Mysticism, prophecy, social justice, and culture were all part of the curriculum. Academic study was combined with poetry, art, and movement. Fox invited gifted teachers from other spiritual traditions, and also from science, to join the noteworthy faculty. This caused controversy among conservative Catholics.
After the death of Pope John XXIII in 1963, the Roman Catholic Church began lurching away from the innovations of the Second Vatican, contracting back into an old conservative stance. Cardinal Ratzinger was appointed head of the department of the Vatican once called the Roman Inquisition. His mission was to weed out liberal progressives in the church. According to Confessions, the Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), “silenced, denounced, expelled, and often drove into poverty or early death over 105 theologians for doing exactly what theologians need to do: think.” (424) Matthew Fox was one of them. Cardinal Ratzinger found fault with several things in Fox’s teaching and writing. First was that he sometimes referred to God as Mother. He also focused on the Original Blessing of life, rather than on the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin. In his interfaith work, Fox joined in practices with Native Americans and people of other religions.
Fox was defended by the Dominican board that examined him and cleared him of heresy. Nonetheless, in 1988 Fox was silenced by the Vatican, forbidden to speak in public, teach, or publish any new books for a year. In obedience, he took a sabbatical. During that time he traveled to South America, where he visited with another silenced Catholic priest and theologian, Brazilian Leonardo Boff, a Franciscan known for his work on behalf of the poor and oppressed. Later, however, when Fox refused to close ICCS, he was expelled by his order, the Dominicans. He had to find a new home for his school, so he started the Institute of Creation Spirituality (ICS), in Oakland, California. These events brought greater public attention to Creation Spirituality.
The 1996 edition of Confessions ended shortly after his expulsion, which felt to Fox like being hit by a train. Soon afterwards, he became ordained in the Episcopal Church, where his theological thinking, exploring, and teaching were welcome. The newly expanded edition of Confessions includes the story of the twenty years since then. These have been years of greater freedom. Fox has continued to be a popular speaker and a prolific writer. He has continued to champion radical kinds of education, and he has been led to experiment with fresh forms of liturgy that appeal to young people. His Cosmic Mass shows multi-media images from around the planet and the universe; it also involves a great deal of lively music and dancing. Each Cosmic Mass includes both celebration and mourning; each has a different theme, highlighting the suffering of oppressed people and the earth as well as the courageous work of prophetic people. Without his former institutional backing, however, Fox has struggled financially to make his innovations in education and liturgy available.
The new sections of Confessions contain some harsh criticisms of the two previous Catholic popes and the socially and theologically conservative hierarchy appointed by them. Speaking of “thirty-four dark years in recent Catholic history,” he condemns the church not only for expelling more than one hundred of its theologians, but also for protecting pedophile priests, and for opposing feminism and movements to support workers, the poor, and native peoples. He cites the huge decline in numbers of Catholics attending church services on a regular basis during those decades, especially the young people. In his anguish over the backward movement in the church since the Second Vatican Council, he has asked himself why God would allow this. His conclusion is that the Holy Spirit wants to, “end the structure of the church as we know it and to push the restart button on Christianity so that it more readily expresses the person and teachings of Jesus.” (424) He is glad that Pope Francis is attempting to bring the focus of the Roman Catholic church back to those teachings. He applauds Francis for daring to “speak of climate change and eco-devastation as a terrible sin.” (437) However, Fox does not see the future of religion in institutional churches. He believes that on the whole, the young people of the world are looking elsewhere, and that, “The Holy Spirit seeks a deep spirituality of action rather than a propping up of religious institutions.” (438)
For Quakers who know the story of George Fox, there is much about Matthew Fox’s biography that is familiar. In some discoveries, George was ahead of Matthew by 350 years. George Fox is included in a list made by Matthew Fox of Christian mystics who have espoused some of the tenets of Creation Spirituality in the past. He gives George Fox 3.5 stars out of 4. Matthew Fox has worked to resurrect such teachings from past Christian history. At the same time, he has made a fresh, earnest attempt to receive continuing revelation. He believes ecumenical and interfaith dialogue are imperative; the insights of all religions can work together to “inspire our species to undergo the transformations required of our souls and societies and institutions.” (426) His recent work also helps bring together the insights of mysticism with those of science. Along with other important theologians such as Thomas Berry, Fox has been working to help create a New Story for our time that helps human beings to understand and embrace our true place in the sacred order of God’s creation. It is necessary and life-affirming work needed to help humanity turn away from the ecological destruction which has resulted from the disrespectful and unsustainable way we have treated the earth. The God that Matthew Fox celebrates is a Creator who endows everyone with sacred creativity meant for wholeness and for the healing of each other and the planet.
The Revised and Updated Confessions is available at:http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Revised-Updated-Making-Postdenominational/dp/1583949356/
Micah Bales <micahbales@gmail.com>
One of the central mottos of the radical movements of the 1960s was: Question authority. The Baby Boomer generation was coming of age, caught up in the culminating battles of the civil rights movement. They faced conscription into an unjust war in Vietnam, where reports of atrocities resounded louder every day. Increasingly, America’s young people were forced to make a choice – your country, or your soul.
Many in this rising generation were convinced that the whole system was rotten. It would have to be razed to the foundations – by any means necessary – so that a new, more just order could be established. The traditional authority structure of politicians, businessmen, church leaders, and generals could no longer be relied upon.
While perhaps embarrassing to the aging Boomers today, the popular slogan, Don’t trust anyone over 30, captured the spirit of this time. Anyone who had been around long enough sucked in by the powers that be simply couldn’t be relied upon to drive substantive change. Unfettered young people would have to chart a new way forward. This broken world, teetering on the edge of nuclear annihilation, would require a whole new set of values if we were to survive.
The mass abandonment of religious observance in the last 50 years is reflective of the way that the Christian community has often been seen playing chaplain to the powers of domination rather than lifting its voice on behalf of the oppressed. It doesn’t help that there are still today many reactionary elements within the Christian community that seek a return to their old place of political preeminence. This only reinforces the impression that the church is a shill of right-wing demagogues and corporate magnates.
Yet amidst the cultural wreckage left in the wake of the 1960s, a door has opened for the church to find a new way of relating to power. Almost unnoticed amidst the prostitution of the mainstream church to the violent systems of power and control, there has been an emerging alternative witness.
The prophetic stream of the church is growing on the margins of Empire, calling this whole rotten system into question. The true church of Jesus is caring for the needy and oppressed – especially those who are being rejected as unclean by the mainstream congregations. There is a church that is being the church – in spite of the church.
A revolution is coming (and it is here now) that is just as significant as the cultural upheavals of the 1960s. The Boomers helped to question the false authority that was leading us down a path to destruction, and we have a new set of national values as a result. Thanks in large part to their efforts, we can now count anti-racism, feminism, the embrace of LGBT people, and much more, as part of what we aspire to as a nation. Now it is time to translate these new values into a holistic way of life that can stand as an alternative to the death machine of Empire.
The radical project looks different today. Before, radicalism was about deconstructing and calling into question the structures and authorities that held our world in a death grip. Today, we are called to the equally radical task of building new, prophetic institutions that can embody the values that shined so brightly in the civil rights and anti-war struggles of the 1960s.
For those of us in the church, it is time to begin developing with earnest the new forms of community, worship, prophetic witness, and hospitality that are needed for a new era of Christian discipleship. Sprouting out of the rubble of 1960s deconstructionism, we are called to create something new. In the crumbling shell of Empire, we have an opportunity to grow movements that give life and bless the world around us.
Many in my parents’ generation mistakenly believe that they have failed. I have heard many Boomers lament the “failure” of their generation’s revolution. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The apparent strength of today’s military-industrial complex is illusory. It has never been weaker. Thanks to the pioneering work of previous generations, and the continuing inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we have been given everything we need to overcome this dark world order.
The groundwork has been laid. All we need now is the will to build on that foundation.
Do we have the courage to enact the beautiful, loving society we know God created us for? It is possible now. There’s nothing more we need to know. We have all the tools in our hands. We can begin living in the Kingdom today.
What will be your next step?
Happy birthday, Kenneth Rexroth (Dec. 22, 1905 – June 6, 1982)! #Poet. #Pacifist. #Anarchist. Wobbly (member of the Industrial Workers of the World). Conscientious objector during World War II. Soapbox speaker. Known as the “Father of the Beats” (though he rejected the association). Quotable quote: “I’ve had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.” Buried in Santa Barbara Cemetery, Santa Barbara, California.
~The Marginal Mennonite Society Heroes Series.
Ecumenics without churchs by www.quaccheri.it 