This prayer is included in Prayers for The New Social Awakening: Inspired by the New Social Creed.
In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God
and She was known as Sophia.
A Prayer for Mothers
to do justice blog
Why Do Christians Fight Over the Bible?
Last week I wrote a blog post about the Supreme Court’s deliberations regarding marriage equality. The point of the piece was to highlight that the term “biblical marriage” is largely used by conservative and right-wing Christians and politicians as if it were equivalent to the form of monogamous, heterosexual, companionate marriage that conservatives venerate. It’s not.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I have personally been in one of those of monogamous, heterosexual, companionate marriages for over twenty years and it suits me just fine. But, my marriage in no way resembles the form or ideal of marriage as practiced and represented in the bible. That was really the point of the post.
We live neither in the Ancient Near East or the Greco-Roman world out of which the Hebrew Bible and New Testament arose. There are many, many aspects of daily life and even the practice of our faith that have changed over time. This is what it means to be part of a living faith tradition – to live into the lives that God has given to us and prayerfully and faithfully discern how God is calling us to live into our future.
As a Christian ethicist and an ordained Presbyterian minister, I value the Bible a great deal. I study it often and read it with my children. I think the real source of disagreement within Christianity is how we approach, understand, interpret, and value the Bible.
There are three primary ways in which people read and interpret the Bible, while some people may integrate aspects of the second and third approaches, the biblical literalists usually reject the idea that they are engaging in interpretation. I don’t expect this will convince them otherwise, but it does help explain the vicious anger and internecine attacks of biblical literalists on Christians who read the Bible in a different way.
Biblical Literalists – These folks believe that the Bible is the pure and true revelation of God to humanity. As such it represents God’s revelation for how we are supposed to live our lives, worship God and prepare for the life to come. Biblical literalists believe that we can turn to the Bible for the answers in how to determine appropriate ethical behavior in our society. They believe that the words of the Bible are to be read literally and enforced. Most biblical literalists are also fundamentalists of some sort or another and they also believe that their faith is not only the way they should live their own lives, but that the correctness of their beliefs provides them with a moral imperative to impose their morality on others – both through moral suasion and through the legislative process.
Interpretive Method – People who use this method of reading the bible recognize that there is no “objective” way to the read the biblical text that does not, to some extent, impose our own cultural biases, experiences and attitudes into that reading. This approach draws on one of the oldest methods of biblical interpretation dating back to the ancient Jewish practice of “midrash.” Ancient Jewish scholars who recognized that many of the biblical stories were incomplete and that some of them actually contradicted each other used the technique of midrash to explain, theologize, hypothesize and tell stories about the stories. Contemporary Christians who use this method recognize that every person, in every culture, and in every time who has ever read the stories has “interpreted” them in some way or the other even if they were not aware of it. This becomes even more true in an age and society that primarily relies on translations of the bible.
Historical-Critical Approach – People who use this approach are interested in trying to discern first what the meaning of a particular text or story was in its own day and time. That means that attention is paid to the original language and different possible meanings for words than we might understand today. Attention is paid to other historical documents of the period that might help us understand the cultures surrounding the Israelite people and that consequently might help us understand the bible itself better. There is an attention to trying to understand reasons behind prohibitions in the bible in an attempt to discern whether or not these are still valid prohibitions in modern times.
I approach the Bible as both a historical document and a witness to my faith and my tradition. There is much for me to learn from its sacred wisdom but it is also a living manifestation of God’s presence with us in a faith-filled community. Part of our responsibility, as people of faith, is to discern the deep theological insights that can help us to live faithfully in our world today.
Read the rest of this post at Huffington Post blog here.
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Biblical Marriage is Not What You Think
This week’s Supreme Court debates about the definition of marriage echo the same debates that have been dominant in communities and states across the country for the past several years. Justice Kennedy, who appears conflicted about where he stands on this issue, expressed his concern about changing a conception of marriage that “has persisted for thousands of years.”
In truth, like most social institutions, the institution of marriage has shifted and changed over the years in ways that have strengthened it and made it both more accessible and more just.
Two hundred years ago we debated whether or not slaves should be allowed to marry. One-hundred and fifty years ago we debated whether married women should remain their husband’s property under the principle of coverture (the principle of two-becoming-one-flesh), or whether women should be regarded as their own persons, with full rights and responsibilities. Forty-seven years ago we debated whether or not interracial marriages should be legal.
In 1967, the Loving v. Virginia ruling eradicated states law prohibiting interracial marriage and thus transformed the institution of marriage yet again, in ways that struck down discriminatory state laws in much the same way that a ruling in the current case might do.
That ruling read, in part, “Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man [sic],” fundamental to our very existence and survival . . .To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes . . . is surely to deprive the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”
Even more recently, we have debated no-fault divorce, marital rape laws, and now marriage equality. In each of these cases where we have debated about the nature of the institution of marriage, we have shifted and expanded our understanding in ways that moved us a little closer toward justice in our society.
But, so often in this debate it is Christianity and the Bible that is brought up as the ultimate weapon in defense of a marriage between one man and one woman. The Genesis text that states that man shall leave his parents and join with wife to become one flesh is trotted out as “proof” that God has defined marriage as between one man and one woman.
Unfortunately, these folks must have stopped reading their Bibles at the end of Genesis, chapter two. Even a cursory read of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament demonstrates that marriage was not understood or practiced this way at all.
Marriage in the Bible was much more about property rights, ensuring paternity of offspring, succession, political alliances and tribal stability than it was about companionship, mutual support and affection as we think of marriage today. The patriarchs of the Jewish and Christian tradition often had sex with multiple women, usually, but not always, for the purpose of procreation. Many of the women in the Bible who were slaves, or servants, or handmaids were reportedly “given” by the legal or primary wife to her husband for the purposes of securing children. The notion of consent, particularly for women, in matters of sexual intercourse is not a relevant moral norm in most of scripture.
continue to Huffington Post to finish reading this article.
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How Honoring Self Makes One a Better Mother
Jesus said that there is no greater commandment than to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. (Mk 12:31) Sometimes, the hardest part of this lesson is to love ourselves. Particularly for people who have been taught to put others needs before our own. For mothers, in a culture that demands self-sacrifice and putting the needs of our children before our own, this can be even more difficult. Sometimes, loving ourselves requires deeper self-knowledge and self-care than our culture recommends or even understands.
Continue reading How Honoring Self Makes One a Better Mother
Why I’m Ecumenical
The ecumenical movement and me
Growing up as a cradle Presbyterian and a preacher’s kid, Presbyterianism was my sociocultural world. When my father got angry with me or my sister, he would often preface his remarks with the exasperated endearment, “Child of the covenant!”
As an adult, I asked him why he did this. He explained that it was his reminder to himself of the sacred nature of his responsibility as a parent and of the vows he had made at our baptism. What it taught me was that I wasn’t just his daughter, I had a larger family, a covenant family—and that our baptismal vows were a lifelong commitment.
NC Republican Legislators Reject Facts, Embrace Emotion
There’s no doubt that the topic of abortion is emotionally loaded. Thursday’s (April 23) debate in the NC Senate over House Bill 465 revealed this in spades.
From Rep. Tricia Cotham’s brave disclosure of her own experience of abortion in response to a life-threatening medical complication in her first pregnancy to Rep. Pat McElraft’s story of her nephew and his wife who changed their mind about having an abortion after viewing an ultrasound, emotions were high.
Stories matter. They offer a personal context and a reference point for thinking about the topic of abortion, which is too often discussed in the abstract. However, it does matter how these stories are used in a legislative debate.
Continue reading NC Republican Legislators Reject Facts, Embrace Emotion
Connecting the Dots Between Wild Violets, Fracking, and Homelessness
It’s springtime in North Carolina. Between the redbuds, dogwoods, azaleas, wisteria, lily of the valley, and the wild violets – my yard is a riot of color. This is the time of year when my girls and I gather wild violets and make violet jelly to enjoy with our tea and scones and when we turn the compost into our raised bed to begin to prepare the soil for our modest annual attempt at tomatoes, basil, and the odd pepper or melon. A robin has built her nest just in view of the kitchen window and last weekend we bought a hand-carved wooden nest box that we hung in hopes that a hummingbird will lay her eggs alongside our robin.
Continue reading Connecting the Dots Between Wild Violets, Fracking, and Homelessness
Are Scholar-Activists Welcome in the Academy?
People enter the academy for a variety of reasons. Some of us love books and learning and see the academy as an avenue for life-long learning; others are passionate about a particular area of knowledge and inquiry and desire nothing more than to talk about it with others who share their passion; some colleagues of mine are gifted teachers who seek to open the minds of young people or to help them develop their intellectual curiosity; one colleague even told me years ago that he wanted to “be famous.”
My route to the academy came via the church and advocacy work that I did on behalf of women at the national office of the Presbyterian Church (USA) prior to entering seminary. I had read some feminist theory in college and discovered Rosemary Radford Ruether’s work on my own. After college I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life until I came across a job ad in a mission volunteer newsletter that read, “One person to work for the eradication of sexism at all levels of the church.” Wow, I said to myself, I want to do THAT!
Click here to read the rest of this post on the Feminist in Religion site
Contemplating College Admissions
My husband and I took our daughter on her first college visit last week. We were on spring break and for once, I was able to take the week off with my family (thank you sabbatical!!!!). There’s a great small college near where we were staying and we decided to drop in and check it out. She’s only a sophomore in high school but we thought it might help make the process more real for her.
The school is a small liberal arts college and one of the most progressive in the country. I think they top somebody’s “most vegan-friendly” list. The students were diverse and interesting, the class sizes were small, and the setting was beautiful. Our daughter was blown away – “Wow! Are all colleges like this?”
Safe Sex, Healthy Sex, Sacred Sex
A couple of years ago, when my daughter was in seventh grade, I got a notice from her school that I could go and sit in on her first sex education class. I was surprised at how few parents actually showed up and far more of us were parents of girls than boys.
The film they showed was from the 1980s, complete with ginormous pads that are so outdated to look ridiculous to these kids, not to mention the clothes and the hairstyles. I was a teenager in the 1980s and I couldn’t take the film seriously. Not only that, the genders were separated and the girls watched the “girl” film and the boys watched the “boy” film. I thought to myself – they should be watching each other’s films. They must have at least as many questions about what’s happening to their opposite sex friends’ bodies as they do to their own – maybe even more!
rebecca todd peters 