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There was a post on my Facebook page yesterday from a very nice person asking what I thought about an article describing buses going around San Francisco with an advertisement that said: “Killing Jews is Worship of Allah.”

We had been discussing various laws being proposed around the country to protect American from being taken over by Sharia law. I said I thought the laws were intended to play off anti-Islamic prejudice. I challenged people who disagreed to name one state in the Union that was in any threat of falling into Islamic law.

Instead, when I opened my Facebook page, I saw an article claiming that Hamas or some other Islamic group was trying to trigger jihad against Jewish people by renting ad space buses, I was of course suspicious. There is certainly a deadly anti-Semitism in the world, and it is to be deplored wherever it raises its voice, but this had the feel of a “false flag” operation, where someone says or does something heinous and gives credit to their enemy.

One of the authorities sited in the article was Pamela Geller, executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative. It so happened I had set aside an article on how she had been barred from speaking at CPAC, a conservative group. When I tried to find who had actually rented the ads, it was, of course, Geller’s own group.

Geller told the AP that they took out the ads to show the:

“Reality of jihad and root causes of terrorism, from the words of jihadists themselves.”

“City officials denounce our ads, but not the actual quotes from high-profile jihadists calling for holy war and genocide, our new campaign focuses on how jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism.”

Okay, so I don’t know what supremacism is, and neither does Webster’s, but I groaned out loud as I thought of my poor trusting friend who takes the word of these groups to believe that America and Christianity are under constant attack from one villain or another.

An interesting note: Geller later accused that very conservative group of, “enforcing the Sharia.” She accused, of all people, Grover Norquist of having ties to radical Islam:

“This year I could not get an event, I was banned,” she said, though also noted that in the past, “I wasn’t warmly welcomed because of the influence of what can only be described as Muslim Brotherhood facilitators or operatives like Suhail Khan (a Muslim who served under the Bush administration) and  Grover Norquist (his wife is Muslim).”

I grieve for my friends who fall prey to these kinds of fearful and hateful messages. They are often kind and intelligent, but have been taught not to test the messages of their group for veracity. They have been taught that fact checking intellectuals are “elites” or “illuminati,” and that anyone who debunks the message of their group is clearly a part of the conspiracy. What a small horizon and ominous sky under which which to live one’s life.

It is too early to know much about the new pope. The white smoke has barely cleared the sky over the Vatican. I have just read this morning’s New York Times article on him, and have a few thoughts on the challenges already lying before this new pope.

The selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio appears to have been a brilliant political choice. He comes from the Western hemisphere, which might shore up the growing rift between the Eurocentric Vatican and a restless Catholic Church in the Americas. He is a theological and social conservative, which means he has the approval of more traditional Catholics. He is also very smart, and is said to be fascinated with science.

His personal story is truly inspiring. When he became a Cardinal, he refused the rich lodgings offered to him, and lived in a small house where he cooked for himself and even took public transportation. There are St. Francis like stories of him kissing the feet of AIDS patients and of criticizing priests who refused to baptize children born out of wedlock.

But pity is not the same things as respect, and charity is not the same thing as justice. The new pope is on record saying that gay marriage and adoption are, “a maneuver by the devil” and “a war against God. His views have been described as “medieval” by Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner .

The Catholic Church has a history of being of two minds in South America. The nuns and priests stood with the people, but too often the Vatican has condemned liberation movements in South America. There are times when, if the church does not speak out for the weak, it has sided with the powerful. The question waiting to be answered is whether this new pope will stand for justice, or mere charity.

There is little question that the new pope is sincere. As a person, he may be a modern day St. Francis, but the challenges that confront our world will need something more from Pope Francis than pity for the poor, it will require solidarity with them as well. And that could mean standing up to some of the people who give vast sums of money to the church.

It may be a good thing to adopt a lifestyle of voluntary poverty, but where people still feed and clothe you. It is a better thing to protect the involuntary poor from predation by the rich.

It may be a good thing to study science, but it is a better thing to honestly face what science actually says about human sexuality.

It may be a good thing kiss the feet of AIDS patients, but it is a better thing to respect the person who has the disease, even if they are gay; and not to demonize such persons and their families.

It may be a good thing to baptize children born out of wedlock, it is a better thing not to stigmatize them in the first place by condemning all sex outside of marriage as evil.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/world/europe/new-pope-theologically-conservative-but-with-a-common-touch.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&hp

There was a very strange and wonderful version of Christianity practiced in the desert of North Africa in the early centuries after the faith was born. That lost tradition of the desert sages was one of poverty, humility and wisdom. One of my favorite stories (as best I can remember it) is of a monk who was very devout. He went out alone one day to study scripture more intensely. When he returned to the monastery the other monks noticed that he wasn’t carrying his Bible. “Brother, where is your Bible?” cried one of the pious monks. The monk responded from his newfound peace, “I have sold the book that tells me to sell everything and give it to the poor.”

Because I an activist for women’s rights and for issues like gay marriage, I often find myself on the wrong end of a “deadly assault with Bible.” Usually that assault features the words of Paul, so people are surprised to hear me use St. Paul from time to time in sermons. Every ancient figure will seem flawed in retrospect. I love to read Thomas Jefferson, but at times I am stunned by words that are clearly racist by our modern standards. Every such historical figure should be lifted up, not as a model to be imitated, but as bridge humankind crossed to get where we are today.

Any defense of Paul must begin with the recognition that some of the books that bear his name were not, in fact, written by him at all. The label “Second Paul” refers to those books like Ephesians and Colossians that were written by latter members of his group. No one should be judged alone on how their words were later twisted and misused. Paul’s greatest ambition later in life was to bring Greeks and Jews together to form a new humanity.  It is unclear how conscious Paul was that his great principle, “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female,” implied universal human rights. Would St. Paul not know that, when he said “the letter of the law kills,” that his own words would also be relativized? Is it possible that Paul did not realize when he called the church to freedom as an end in itself, that is own authority over others would be overturned as well?

No human being can last long on a pedestal. Even at his best, Paul was a mixed bag. When his words are used to defend racism, sexism or homophobia, we need not know if the sayings are authentic to reject them. But, we might also realize that we ourselves will someday will be judged in the harsh light of a wiser and more sensitive humanity. Paul, like all of us, was embedded in his time. We have a duty to disbelieve and disobey Paul when his words are untrue or unhelpful. But like Jefferson, and every other flawed figure of history, we should also recognize that, for many of us, Paul was a major pillar in the bridge that allowed us to outgrow him. It was he who gave us the torch that today allows us to see his own short comings.

What follows is a youtube video of people along the beach who see a young boy drowning. Instinct seems to take over and they collect to make a chain to save the boys life. Money, status, nation or sectarian belief play little if any role in this moment.

In our discussions of religion and politics, this part of ourselves is what we have forgotten. There is yet hope for our species if we can but remember.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VorMfyO5oJg&feature=player_embedded#!

“If we want to start a serious and sincere discussion on climate change we should know that it is about the struggle between two ways of living, between two cultures: the culture of trash and death, versus the culture of life and peace. This is the core of the discussion on climate change. In order to preserve the planet, life and the human species, we must end Capitalism!” -Evo Morales

I was asked an interesting question yesterday:

I have a question for you, since you are a bit of an expert. I grew up with the Interpreters Bibles on the shelf. If you will recall they were published in 1951 by the Methodist publishing house. There are many articles in them that would be considered quite controversial even by todays standards. My question is: Why weren’t these controversial when they came out way back in the 50’s? And….if it were normal theological reading for Mainline preachers back in the 50’s, where did all these people go? Is liberal theology a casualty of the rapid shrinkage of the Mainline, or is the answer more complicated? Perhaps it was a Northern thing and the South was just always theologically conservative? Anyway, this puzzles me everytime I flip through them wondering “where did the theological liberals go?”

I went to seminary at Austin Presbyterian Seminary, which I suppose could be called a liberal institution. We were exposed to historical textual criticism there, but there was an unspoken assumption that most people could not face such stark truths. So I learned that there is no one preserved biblical text, only fragments sewn together by informed guesswork. I learned that our Christian stories were often duplications of earlier stories. But I also learned to hide these facts like an actor learns to hide a rope behind the backdrops without it being seen. The purpose of the omission, was never to deceive, but not to upset people unnecessarily.

Most liberal ministers have the kind of critical biblical tools of which you speak, but they sit unread on their shelves after seminary. They are usually viewed as an inert understructure of the real task of a minister, which is to make people’s lives better. The images of the Bible may be myths, some liberal ministers reason, but they are helpful myths. In other words many liberal ministers are taught to play shopping mall Santa Claus. We know the beard is fake, but it makes the children happy.

Many liberal ministers learn to make a mosaic of the broken pieces of theology. They show how evolution and creation can both be true. Not realizing that, to uncritically include both, they must understand neither. Such religion lives, but only as a hybrid mule which does not reproduce. It lives, but only for a generation or two. Consider the work of the great liberals of fifty years ago, few of them speak to us today.

Conservative theologians have it much easier. They treat historical textual criticism as a kind of arrogant rebellion. This allows them to have a living faith, but only so long as they reject the truths of a modern scientific worldview. Their beliefs do not work in an evolving world, so they simply deny evolution. Such religion works perfectly, but only in an imaginary second world of angels, demons, heavens and hells.

Back in seminary, I wandered the stacks of the library transfixed in each book, reading earlier versions of the Christian myth. I realized that many of the stories in the New Testament were iterations of earlier myths which meant that the message of Christianity was older than our own version, and that because it was born of so many cultures, its message was either false, or universal. I found that insight breathtakingly exciting. Only a symbol can give us both roots and wings.

If Christianity is not to go the way of Mithraism, it must constantly go through a reformation more radical than anything Luther could have imagined. We must bring every belief and practice before the mysterious fire of real life. We must consecrate everything before the living fire of our one common life in this very instant. Neither hiding from the facts nor stitching together the old and new will take us where we need to be.

What we see when we look at the Bible is the mystery of life as it was understood in the images of an ancient culture. What we are seeking is not the frozen magma of their cultural expression, but the volcanic fire which breathed those words, and has breathed us as into being as well. We must leave behind any theology which consists of sifting through the ashes of dogma and tradition and return to the fire of life which gives every religion its light.

Every living worldview is radical. “Liberal” or “conservative” are both stages of a sure death. Liberal theology that survives by splicing together the living and the dead can only produce a Frankenstein. Even the best liberal scholarship of the historical Jesus movement will produce at best a mummified Jesus. A conservative Christianity that survives by denying new discoveries is already dead.

Science is making peace with whose parts of the universe we know. Religion is making peace with those parts of the universe we do not and cannot know. Religion is about the mystery of things. By definition there are no experts on mystery. So all the professors, liberal or conservative, who parade in their big hats or big titles are wearing the costumes of children. I can line my office with the best books, I can punctuate my speech with Greek and Hebrew embroidery; but, by definition, I do not and cannot know what I’m talking about.

There are no experts on mystery.

These days we need a decoder to understand what our leaders say. So I want to offer a new part of our blog, Rev. “Rigby’s Magic Decoder Ring.”

“Too big to fail,”

decoded, really means:

“To rich to jail.”

It must be great to be popular. I wouldn’t know. You see I am an American.

As further fodder in the continuing question “why do they hate us?” Afghan President Hamid Karzai said yesterday that Americans and Taliban share the goal of destabilizing the nation of Afghanistan in order to justify an American presence.

It is possible that Karzai is feeling the heat after being humiliated by the United States. After a promise to hand over Bagram Prison to the Afghan government, the US reneged at the last moment making clear to everyone that the President is not really in charge of his own country so long as Americans are there.

Bagram Prison was run by the United States with CIA influence. It is widely believed in Afghanistan that the United States was abusing prisoners there. Karzai, trusting promises from the Obama administration, had announced in his inaugural address that Afghans would be put in charge of the prison. Obviously, he was humiliated publically when the US did not come through.

The Afghan people see news reports from the US predicting chaos after the Americans leave. Recent bombing by the Taliban would seem evidence in that direction. The President looking helpless in front of his own people cannot help public confidence.

 “His prestige as president was degraded in the eyes of the public by the Americans’ refusal to hand over responsibility of the prison to the Afghans,” said Atiqullah Amarkhel, a former Afghan Army general and a military analyst. “I think it drives him crazy when he sees it’s not happening.”

Mr. Amarkhel added: “It also shows a deep sense of distrust between two onetime allies. To the public, it means all the power is with foreigners.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/world/asia/karzai-accuses-us-and-taliban-of-colluding-in-afghanistan.html?_r=0

There are two ways to escape the insanity of religion. You can reject religion altogether, or you can dissolve into them all.

I call myself “Christian” or “Presbyterian” but I do not understand those words as positions necessarily opposed to other viewpoints. I am simply describing my own footprint in the greater topography of worldviews, all of whom have something to teach me.

For example, last night was the celebration of Maha Shivaratri or the Night of Shiva. From Hinduism I have learned how religion can be a poetic expression of the energies of the universe as experienced by every human being. Shiva represents cosmic destruction, but not as a bad thing. Creation, Nurture and Destruction are a kind of sacred trinity for many Hindus. They believe we must learn to dance with them all.

A westerner can be quite shocked to see the sexual organs on display in some Hindu celebrations, but such images are simply a way for human beings to imagine the creative energies of life. In many such religions, sin is the illusion of an independent and separate self, and salvation, immortality or enlightenment is finding our one true Self, which is our common life with all.

So last night many Hindus sang a hymn to Shiva:

We meditate on the Three-eyed reality which permeates and nourishes all like a fragrance. May we be liberated from death for the sake of immortality, even as a cucumber is severed from bondage to the creeper.

I call myself “Christian,” but I also know that true religion is about love and about life, and so I can recognize that one life even when it is called by a different names, or by no name at all.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/10/maha-shivaratri-2013-the-great-night-of-lord-shiva-photos-bhajans_n_2846731.html