I saw this book, Jesus Was An Episcopalian (And You Can Be One Too!): A Newcomer’s Guide to the Episcopal Church
Episcopal Church
Jesus was an Episcopalian?!
Chilton on his new book “Abraham’s Curse”
I came across this article today. I commented earlier on an interview with Bruce in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the same book. Having not yet read the book, my questions remain…
Q&A with: Bard College’s Bruce Chilton | PoughkeepsieJournal.com | Poughkeepsie Journal
Q&A with: Bard College’s Bruce Chilton
Tell us about “Abraham’s Curse.”“Abraham’s Curse” shows how human sacrifice has been incorporated within Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the story of the patriarch’s offer to kill his own son. Such sacrifice has been fundamental to who we are, from the Stone Age until the present day. But “Abraham’s Curse” also reveals the hidden wisdom within ancient texts that turns patriarchal violence into the promise of blessing.
What is the book’s fundamental message?
At base, I want to show both that human societies, especially in the Abrahamic traditions, resort too easily – and without reflection – to the sacrifice of their young, and yet that these traditions have also produced the means to overcome that curse.
Has writing this book affected your personal life?
The murder of a young woman on the doorstep of my church in 1998 made me realize my emotional engagement with the topic of sacrifice had to be expressed. The book has permitted me to see that once what seemed a purely intellectual interest in fact was grounded in a profound and troubling human atavism.
Photo: Trinity Church, Fishkill NY
I am on the road today and tomorrow, but after lunch today I had the privilege of visiting one of the oldest Anglican churches in America. Trinity Church, Fishkill NY is over 250 years old and the building itself is 240 years old. The historical marker reads:
Organized by Rev. Samuel Seabury [in] 1756, built 1760. Provincial congress met here Sept. 1776. Used as hospital during Revolution
It is a very simple structure, not in the original layout, but form (so the rector told me). Note the stain-glass. There is no depiction of human or animal forms, but the lovely geometric representation of the Trinity. (Does anyone know what that is called? There must be some specific name, there always is in iconography.)
Lenten Devotional: What are we doing?
1 Therefore let us go on toward perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God, 2 instruction about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. (Heb. 6:1-2)
The Episcopal church is now well known for our fractions and factions. The debate, it is often stated, is about human sexuality and sexual practices, but I am not so sure. Even without arguing that the aforementioned debate is centered around one’s view of the primacy of Scripture (or lack thereof) it is clear to me that the ECUSA and most main line denominations are, in fact, debating far more foundational issues.
No, strike that. They are not debating these foundational issues, but rather they are avoiding them completely by poking in the sand. I mentioned earlier in the month that I was at a retreat with another priest and two seminarians. In that post I was commenting on the fact that the priest stated that she could not believe in a God that required the death of anyone, let alone his own son. At that moment, I failed to report, the seminarian behind me whispered, “that’s replacement theory.” Ugh. I will assume he knew the word “atonement,” but amazingly he did not realize that it was such a central concept of the New Testament.
All of that is by way of commenting that the teachings that the author of Hebrews understood as fundamental and central to Christianity are not foundational for many of our churches any more. The debates that are raging over sexuality are obscuring the fact that many seminarians graduate without understanding, let alone believing, the “basic teaching about Christ.”
How is it, for example, that preaching about the literal resurrection of Jesus is so exceptional at Easter? Or why is it that so many people I meet, including many seminarians and ministers, are stunned to realize that Jesus, more than any other figure in the New Testament, is the one who taught us about the coming day of judgment, about heaven and hell? These are not Victorian constructs intended to keep people in the vicious clutches of a misogynistic hierarchy. They are instead basic teachings of the New Testament, the Church, and ancient Judaism.
Yet before we know how to crawl we are trying to run the New York marathon. We are trying to mix our own tapioca pudding before we are weaned from our mother’s breast. My interactions with others is not so limited to assume that these folks haven’t read the Bible or that those who have gone to seminary didn’t have good teachers. But at some point there is a disconnect between what is claimed in the New Testament as basic teachings regarding Jesus and what is actually believed and promulgated in our parishes. Many very smart and well educated people have very good and thoughtful reasons for no longer holding to the creeds. But it should not surprise us that without having that firm foundation of which Hebrews speaks about we are unable to deal with the tertiary issues that take up so much of our time and energy. If we are not all working from the same base, the same premises and principles, then we will never be able to build a satisfactory and sustainable solution to these issues.
So let us again renew and affirm that foundation and “let us go on toward perfection.” And I take further encouragement from our author’s assurance that “even though we speak in this way, beloved, we are confident of better things in your case, things that belong to salvation” (Heb. 6:9).
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Read previous posts in this “devotional” series in this archive.
Rick is Right
As is so often the case, my friend Rick is right.
Presiding Bishop – Heal thyself!
Turns out that five Anglican primates have announced their intention to boycott the 2008 Lambeth Conference. (I wish they would not. Even if it turns out Lambeth 2008 is a waste of time and effort – at least give it one last chance if only to prove that playing by the rules is a waste of effort and time.) Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church had something to say about this:
The gathering will be diminished by their absence, and I imagine that they themselves will miss a gift they might have otherwise received… None of us is called to ‘feel at home’ except in the full and immediate presence of God. It is our searching, especially with those we find most ‘other,’ that is likely to lead us into the fuller experience of the body of Christ. Fear of the other is an invitation to seek the face of God, not a threat to be avoided.
Insofar as any bright eight year old can understand this I offered the following response at Midwest Conservative Journal by Christopher Johnson:
A painfully obvious question is whether she regards orthodox Anglican (arch)bishops as ‘Other’. (Just as rhetorically she assumes they regard her/ECUSA as ‘Other’.) And if so – are they a threat to be avoided? Does she think that searching with these orthodox/conservative Anglican leaders she and the TEC will be led into a fuller experience of the body of Christ?
We may surmise (such as from the aforementioned NPR interview) that her answer would indeed be ‘yes’. But we may also surmise that she already knows what this fuller experience of Christ looks like. She already knows where the search will take them. We may then challenge her and TEC – is it possible that by engaging the ‘Other’ (where ‘Other’ = Anglican leaders who differ strongly with you, those who may boycott Lambeth) your search will lead *you* (and TEC) somewhere you do not expect? such that you might need to do some repenting? (Fairness requires we raise the possibility that both ’sides’ will be led somewhere new that none of them expect.)
Her invocation of ‘Other’ may be rhetorical hypocrisy. (My guess it is.) She expects ‘them’ to walk with her (as ‘Other’ to them) but is not open to the reverse. But perhaps her rhetoric is somehow sincere. But even then is she sincerely open to its implications?
I am reminded by a famous question often asked by Linus the theologian from the cartoon “Peanuts”. “Has it ever occurred to you that you could be wrong?”
(Via http://livethetrinity.net/feed/atom/.)
