Author Archives: unitarian reform

03/3/08

Taking The Bible Seriously Does Not Mean Taking It Literally

Meaghan McDermott reports, in today’s Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, on the finale of a four-week series of sermons by Rev. Lee Ann Bryce of Community Christian Church in the town of Chili, asserting a friendly relationship between science and religion, and a non-idolatrous approach to scripture.

The story quotes Rev. Bryce saying, “It is possible to believe in miraculous stories while not believing the stories are the literal truth.  Taking the Bible seriously does not mean taking it literally.”

AUR would contest that so-called Literalists actually interpret the Bible “literally.”  Despite their proud self-description as Literalists, they often resort to metaphorical interpretation of scripture, in regard to “Lamb of God” or the dragon the the Apocalypse, for example. 

On close observation, the interpretation of fundamentalists is always materialistic or quasi-materialistic in nature: apocalyptic figures are seen as external political entities rather than internal spiritual forces, and the afterlife is conceived as a sort of science-fiction alternate reality, just like this world in all of its artifacts and sensory characteristics, but just somehow “better.”  Materialism is a much more accurate description of the allegedly fundamentalist approach to scripture and religion than literalism.

However, Community Christian’s solution to the heresy of bibliolatrous “literalism” is right on the mark, emphasizing the spiritual meaning of scripture, and the incomparable nature of God.  Speaking to the error of Creationism, one member of Bryce’s congregation ponders, “The Bible says God created the world in seven days.. if God is infinite, what is a ‘day’?”

Bryce is also one of over 11,000 clergy members who have signed on to the Clergy Letter Project rejecting the Creationism of bibliolaters and encouraging school boards to teach good science, rather than bad religion, in biology class.  Kudos to Rev. Bryce, and to much thanks to the Democrat & Chronicle for reporting on this story.

02/29/08

The Idolatry of the Book

The new A J Jacobs book, The Year Of Living Biblically, is creating quite a stir.  It is the story of a self-described “agnostic Jew” who decided to spend a year of his life following all of the rules in Jewish scripture.  (Given practical restrictions, Jacobs eschewed certain rules, like stoning adulterers in the street.)  It is being discussed as a commentary on a religious life.

But, is it really?  Jacobs remains agnostic, even though he claims (somewhat absurdly) that parts of the biblical legal traditions, like rituals and the Sabbath, can be “sacred.”  What this seems to mean for Jacobs, in the absence of a belief in God, is that they provide psychologically therapeutic benefits; wearing biblically-mandated all-white outer garments, for example, lightened his mood.

This sort of reduction of religion’s role to psychotherapy is no more legitimately “religious” than the way Creationists often reduce religion to natural history.  If religion is to be anything, then it has to be something on its own terms, not just an amateur version of psychology, sociology, history, legal theory, or moral philosophy. Continue reading →

02/14/08

Taking Religion Seriously

Today I would like to talk about the lack of seriousness in religion.  Religion, whether conservative or liberal, often fails to take its subject matter as something real.  Conservatives are more concerned with the sancrosanctity of  received stories about God than God Himself, and liberals are more concerned with God as a story than as a Creator. 

When studying religion, I could not help but notice that the way we talk about religion typically focuses on the terminology and ideology of the religions themselves rather than exploring the subject matter referenced by those terms and ideologies. 

For example, does it make sense to use the same word “god” when talking about the Latin Jupiter and the Jewish El (אל), since Jupiter is a creature while El is uncreated?   If a god (little “g”) is just a divine creature, isn’t that more like an angel, ghost, jinn, or fairy than like uncreated God?  

And, don’t most of these multiple-god religions have some uncreated entity backstage of the universe, bringing it all into existence, as some forms of Hinduism have their Ishvara?   If our definition of what constitutes a theos (θεός) is unclear or equivocal, then isn’t all of our talk about monotheism vs. polytheism just a lot of bunk: not just our coffee-shop-and-sports-bar talk but even the professional work of religious scholars? 

Why should the terminology of Religious Studies (as it is being called lately) be defined any less precisely than any other field of knowledge? Continue reading →

02/7/08

The Political Implication of Trinitarian Talking Points

A recent brouhaha in the United Kingdom over the hosting of a Women’s World Day of Prayer service outlines the problematic relationship of Trinitarian churches with their own Trinitarian beliefs.

As reported in the Burnley Citizen newspaper, Anglican, Baptist, and Methodist churches in Padiham rejected the invitation of the Padiham Nazareth Unitarian Chapel to host the annual event celebrating Christian unity, which falls on the first Friday of March. The Roman Catholic Church, interestingly enough, accepted. Continue reading →

02/4/08

Anthony Robinson’s Articles of Faith

Before endorsing Seattle Post-Intelligencer guest columnist Anthony Robinson’s three-part series on “Why Religion Matters,” we wanted to read through them all.  They only got better as he went along. Here are the entries of this well-informed and insightful series:

Religion And Its Institutions Are Worthy Of Respect

Religion Is An Integral Part Of The Total Scheme Of Things

Many Religions Wrongly Center On Human Ego

02/4/08

A Fellow Monotheist Echoes AUR Teachings

Art, the Universal Language of Religion by Naif al-Mutawa in today’s Lebanon Daily Star newspaper, contains this remarkably inciteful message about the idolatry of scripture:

When people first communicated through the use of images, idols were – well, idolized. As methods of communication improved, the written word – in the form of holy books – often took the place of these idols. The more concrete the interpretation of a word, the more the actual image of that word is being idolized. Words communicate a depth and breadth of meaning that transcends the sum of their letters … In essence, then, a rigid interpretation of God’s words by man is nothing more than idol worship.

We unreservedly concur with this assessment. It is not only images of stone and wood that can turn us from God to the worship of created things.

01/30/08

End of the Interval, Start of Eastertide

It’s been rather busy here, so we’ve missed a few key events.

 Today is, of course, the 12th Day of Defiance: the Day of the Spark commemorating the 258th anniversary of Jonathan Mayhew’s sermon Discourse On Submission, asserting the moral right of people to overthrow an unjust government.  (The full text can be found here.) John Adams called this sermon “the spark that ignited the American Revolution.”

Commentary on Mayhew’s role in the Revolution can be read at the Ludwig von Mises Institute website and Christian History Institute at Gospelcom.net.

This year, Interval overlaps with Eastertide!  Friday the 25th, Spear King’s Day in the Interval Calendar, was also the first of the 12 Days of Carnival which culminate on Mardi Gras, which falls very early this year, on February 5th.

 Celebrate Liberty, and enjoy the Carnival!

01/21/08

Martin Luther King Jr., American Prophet

It is quite appropriate that the (actual) birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. falls on the 9th Day of Defiance in the AUR calendar, in the middle of Nika Week, which commemorates a moment when competing factions joined together to stand against oppression in the Byzantine Empire just as the multiracial crowds that gathered before Dr. King joined together to stand against Jim Crow oppression in the United States.

But Martin Luther King is significant to AUR for other reasons, not only his ecumenical attitude but also the purity of the way he often spoke of God’s relationship with Creation, and his commitment of character to the will of God. Continue reading →