It might surprise many of you to know that a lot of thought goes into these ocassional blog entries pertaining to the subject of religion. Though despite knowing that Easter was coming up for a very long time and reflecting upon many different things from many different angles, I confess I haven’t anything particularly fascinating to say.

I would however like to leave you with some words from Canada’s best known religion writer, Tom Harpur. The Spirit Of Things‘ Rachael Kohn asked if those reading the Bible literally were ‘getting the message wrong.’

Tom Harpur:

I think yes, I think they are getting parts of it very wrong. I mean for example, if you’re on a Billy Graham Crusade and you hear him preaching, this whole picture of yourself as a massa damnata or whatever it was St Augustine called it – a mass of sin – and you have be dangled over the flames of hell in order to be sufficiently needy that you reach out for the answer that they ust so conveniently have ready to hand you. I think doing that to people can be very cruel. I know people who went to the Billy Graham Crusade with deep, deep, deep problems and got ‘saved’ and went out later on and took their own life.

This happened with an Oxford student friend of mine, and Billy came to Oxford. You know, I’m not blaming Billy for that. But the last thing this person needed was to be told there was some instant answer to his need, or to be told that he was the terrible sinful person in the eyes of God needing the shed blood of someone long ago. Does that make any sense anyway really? It doesn’t make any sense to me. And I don’t think it makes very much sense to an awful lot of people who stop to really think about it. Does it make sense that one person could take on himself the sins of Buchenwald and Auschwitz and all the camps? I mean just to mention one sick phase in our history. Could all the sin of all the people of all the world be taken away by any amount of blood of any amount of perfect paragons? I don’t think so.

Happy Easter…

Meaning is a funny thing.

A boy, when asked to draw something that reminded him of Christmas, draws a stick figure character (apparently) of Jesus Christ. The boy is promptly sent home and sent off for psychological evaluation. It was a reaction that had even some of my atheist friends crying “overkill.” Was this political correctness gone mad? An extreme action to enforce some sort of separation between church and state? An appropriate response from a concerned teacher (in a nation with a particular history of school shootings)?

Who knows… Infact the more you dig into the story, the more confusing it becomes. But what interests me here is religion and it’s symbols. It is one thing to associate Jesus with Christmas, but why the crucifix? I mean, don’t misunderstand me; the cross is an important part of the Jesus story. It is symbolic of the sacrifice God made obtensibly on behalf of all of humanity. But it is the domain of the Easter story. Christmas is more concerned with baby Jesus, the immaculate virgin birth.

Or is it?

Clay Nelson on Christmas, Theologies and Billboards:

To make the news at Christmas it seems a priest just has to question the ‘literal-ness’ of a virgin giving birth. Many in society mistakenly think that to challenge literalism is to challenge the norms of Christianity. What progressive interpretations try to do, however, is to remove the supernatural fluff and delve into the deeper spiritual truth of this festival. Christian fundamentalism believes a supernatural male God who lived above sent his sperm into the womb of the virgin Mary. Although there were a series of miraculous events surrounding Jesus’ birth – like wandering stars and angelic choirs – the real miracle was his death and ressurrection 33 years later.

In the Fortean Times 1993 Diary, compiled by Paul Sieveking and Val Stevenson, there is an interesting note on the 21st January (incidentally my own birthday). It reads:

The day of St. Agnes, patron saint of sheep. She is probably the Roman-Jewish version of Agna, an incarnation of the Ewe goddess Rachel. Like the Virgin Mary, she came from ‘immaculate’ parents. In spite of being pre-Christian, not to mention closely connected with sacred prostitutes, her relics are preserved in Rome and constantly adored by the faithful. Unfortunately for her credibility, Agnes is said to have been martyred in the reign of Constantine – when Christians were not persecuted.

Two thoughts occur to me. Just how rare were ‘immaculate’ births; and how problematic such tales must be if we cannot confirm the circumstances of a person’s death (what with dying – unlike immaculate conception – being an observed and documented phenomena)?

Of course these things are just the tip of a much more problematic iceberg. It is the kind of iceberg that Clay Nelson alludes to. It is this underlying conflict between literalism and non-literal readings of texts within the same traditions. Even listening to Nelson’s sermon for the first time I wondered why some sections were (as he puts it) “supernatural fluff” and others were “miraculous.”

Increasingly I encounter religious proponents who stress the importance of not taking religious texts so literally. Take for example Brian McLaren’s take on the Book of Relevation:

My background, before becoming a pastor, I was a college English teacher, so my background was literature, and that’s been something of an advantage to me in approaching the Biblical text because when you study literature, one of the first questions you ask is ‘What’s the genre of this piece of literature’ and the Book of Revelation is in the genre of Jewish apocalyptic literature. We had dozens of examples of this genre from about the 2nd century BC to the 1st and 2nd century AD, and when you put the Book of Revelation back into that genre, just like putting Jesus back in a setting, you put that document back in a setting, you read it completely differently. It stops being a prediction about the end of the world and it becomes a way to talk about what was going on at that moment.

Now there are two theories about the Book of Revelation. One is that it was written in the 60s and the other in the 90s, but either way it was written under a period of intense persecution of Christians by the Roman Emperor, and they were being killed and brutally persecuted and blamed for all kinds of things. And under that regime, the Book of Revelation says ‘Don’t give up hope, don’t give up your faith, in the end it will triumph.’ But it uses subversive language to do that, and what’s happened is, without being aware of the rules of the genre, people have interpreted it to say all kinds of outrageous things.

Genre and historical context should help with understanding religious texts, but I suspect where these things aren’t known to the reader, the meaning becomes a very open ended thing. This is what it says, and this is what it means.

I am reminded of a musician and composer I once worked for. She had released an album of mostly improvised piano pieces. She was set to play one on live television. “Is that how long it goes for?” a segment producer asked. She answered the question with yet another question. “How long do you want it to be?”

Merry Christmas!

I recently mused over the word play of a local church sign. The puns were so cringeworthingly awful that I couldn’t help but laugh. “The Best Vitamin For A Christian is B1,” it exclaimed. And during another week, “Give the devil an inch and he’ll become a ruler.”

Today’s message me wonder. It read:

Silence is often misinterpreted but it is never misquoted.

[ad#adsense250]The links between the other messages and Christianity seemed obvious. This one had me slightly baffled. You can never misquote Jesus’ silence? Something about the church’s response to systematic sexual abuse within the clergy? Perhaps the local Presbyterian church reached a conclusion similar to that of my friend Daniel. He ultimately decided that God answered prayers in the same way a piece of cheese did. Of course I’m being silly. God answers all prayers it is just that sometimes the answer is no… or [the sound of crickets chirping]

One group of people who will not go quietly however are New South Wales HSC students. Religion students are crying foul at one of questions that appeared on their final exam, which apparently baffled many students and reduced some to tears.

The thing that interested me though was the subject matter of the offending question. According to ABC News online:

She [McAuley Catholic College student Lauren Priest] says the question began with a quote and then asked students to assess, in relation to the quote, how Christianity is a living religious tradition in the life of its adherents.

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you must, but has the Department of Education done a deal with the Bible Society? It seems interesting that such a question should coincide with the Bible Society’s “Jesus: All About Life” campaign.

I don’t know what this quote was, or who was quoted. I’m not even familiar with the curriculum for this subject. But, wow, if students at a Catholic College can’t make a case for Christianity as a living religious tradition… that’s kind of “interesting” – don’t you think?

Happy Sunday!

I fear I may have been a tad too generous in thinking there might’ve been a more thoughtful purpose to the Bible Society’s Jesus: All About Life advertising campaign than prosletysing… A Bible Society brochure has cleared up all the question marks.

From the brochure:

The ‘Jesus. All About Life’ campaign is all about helping you understand what Jesus said about what he called ‘the abundant life’ or ‘life to the max.’ Many people find this hard to accept because they think that being a Christian means you have to stop doing anything you enjoy and instead walk around being boring and dull.

You think so? Really? The primary reason that people opt for a non-Christian religious practice (or no religious practice) is because they’re worried about walking “around being bored and dull”? You don’t think belief or life experience might factor into this equation?

[ad#adsense250]That there was human life before Jesus, that there were other religious traditions before and after Christianity, that there were (as Tom Harpur noted) “Christ figures [plural] and Christ communities and many Christianities” are of no consequence here. That is unsurprising; uncertainities do not create converts, especially not within people who base their religious orientation on its proximity to excitement and ‘life to the max.’

The trick is to reframe the whole experience. You’re not being ‘converted’ rather you’re discovering how to experience ‘an abundant life.’ The three steps towards this process involve accepting Jesus (as “not just another spiritual option…” but as God), asking (specifically about the death and ressurrection of Jesus and atonement), and finally changing (converting?)…

Increasingly when I approach the subject of religion I am noticing two distinct camps of people. Those that have a very visceral experience of their religious practice, they tend to talk in expressions that embody and celebrate their belief. They might exclaim, “God is love!” or “Jesus loves me” and feel loved. Often these people don’t have a particularly sophisticated theology, and you could probably argue that they don’t need one. (I think from the earlier remark about walking ‘around being boring and dull’ it is safe to assume that these are the kind of people being targeted by this campaign.) Then there are other people who consider religious ideas as ideas, and consider them in a context much larger than their own religious tradition. I don’t particularly understand how one could commit to a religion without a thoughtful discourse about revelation, particularly, and atonement. Because really religion isn’t about morality necessarily, it is about the divine and the mysterious – the mysterium tremendum, it is about the nature and existence of God and whether that force reveals itself and interacts with humanity or not. And what, if any, implications that might have for us as a species. So how do you know God? Through the religious texts, through the relevations he made through individuals? How do you evaluate religious texts? Which prophets are the ‘true’ prophets; and which are mouthpieces for the devil, or suffering from mental illness? Which God(s) are the true one(s) and which the ‘false’ idols? But most importantly consider your own process; how did you come to know these things? How did you decide? What’s your method?

You may have seen the banners (especially if you’re in New South Wales). “Jesus: All About Life,” they read. It is an initiative of the Bible Society, in conjunction with marketing company Taurus. Although I didn’t know that at the time. I asked my mother (a dedicated Anglican) if the signs were something to do with her particular church. She told me that it was actually an initiative across ‘all the churches.’

I looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and said, “Well, at least the ones that believe in Jesus.”

But the general idea and hope is to produce dialogue among those faiths that incorporate Jesus as a central figure – Catholicism, Christianity (various denominations) and Judaism, I suppose.

Daniel Willis, CEO of The Bible Society, talking to Rachel Kohn on The Spirit of Things:

Well I’m saying people don’t know what Jesus said and here is the opportunity, in this campaign, to put out there the actual words that Jesus said. Because when you look at what Jesus said you find he’s actually a very radical person. He was counter-cultural. [...] So what we’ve ended up with I think over the centuries is the message of Jesus being clouded by movies, by what other people have said, by what the church has added to it. And when you get back to what Jesus said it actually makes sense and it under girts the values we all want.

[ad#adsense250]This was a major stumbling block for me. I am not a biblical scholar but I am reasonably convinced Jesus never said anything to the effect of ‘the shetland pony was an absolute cinch’ (as he does in a Jesus: All About Life radio ad). Whether you treat the Bible as literal truth, as allegory or as fiction, it is important to appreciate the distinction between ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ (an invitation to speculate) and ‘What Did Jesus Do?’ (as recorded within these texts). That Willis freely acknowledges that without a understanding of the Bible many artistic, literary and pop culture references are lost on individuals while feeling he has license to further cloud ‘the message of Jesus’ within the context of this campaign is perplexing. But it seems to be a broader trend within Christian traditions, one that sees this kind of embellishment as permissable if it exists within a generally accepted narrative and understanding of Jesus.

And even the tagline ‘All About Life’ is open to interpretation. In what ways is Jesus ‘All About Life’? Does Jesus’ supposed relevance to life relate to him as a historical figure, as the key to ‘salvation’ in the Christian tradition, as a ‘personal’ figure? If you accept the idea of a ‘personal Jesus’ over a historical one, suddenly the popular tendency towards speculation and embellishment makes perfect sense.

Writer and former religious reporter, Tom Harpur:

I can’t prove to anyone Jesus Christ or Muhhammad or whomever never existed. And in one sense, it doesn’t really matter because the average Christian has a mythical Christ that they’re talking about anyway. You take ten people coming out of a service anywhere on a Sunday and ask them what their picture of Jesus is. And you’ll find it is not exactly something that can be replicated because everybody has their own personal Jesus. This is a creation of the religious imagination. Not that they have been brainwashed, but taught, or however you want to put it by a religious tradition into thinking a certain way about it. But I mean, Christ in you, Paul says. How can a historical person be in you? I fail to understand.

I don’t have a personal Jesus. Like Harpur, I struggle with the historical Jesus. And I wonder what the ‘word of Jesus’ might do for me, as a non-believer, that modern morality cannot? Perhaps the emphasis on Jesus (as opposed to God) is about highlighting the New Testament in favour of the Old Testament (with its burnt offerings and slavery). I once suggested that the Harry Potter books had as much to say about life as the Bible did. I was being flippant at the time, but there is a great truth here. Any compelling work of literature encapsulates themes and ideas that relate to life and morality and personal and societal values. Modern texts have a modern frame of reference and perhaps a greater understanding of the complexity of modern life, as well as a broader sense of community values. Certainly the bible’s relationship with women, homosexuals, slavery and human sacrifice is a far cry from modern day morality. And at the point where you selectively embrace teachings of Jesus have you not in effect elected a ‘personal Jesus’ over a historical one?

And why Jesus, why not God? I mean it’s all well and good to say this is not about ‘the church’ and rather about Jesus but there is clearly a proselytising element to this campaign.

Happy Sunday!

Jesus Christ: The Prequel
Ever wonder about Jesus’ early life? We are constantly reminded of the birth of baby Jesus in a manger, his miracles as an adult and his crucifixion and resurrection. But what about his formative years? We know he didn’t own a Nintendo Wii (they hadn’t been created yet) but beyond that there isn’t much to work with.

Fortunately a documentary comes to our rescue. Titled, “Jesus: The Lost Years,” the documentary attempts to utilise oral histories and archeological evidence to fill in the blanks.

I was particularly amused to read Trinity Broadcasting Network chief of staff Paul Crouch liken the life of Jesus to a role made famous by Harrison Ford:

“It’s kind of like watching an ‘Indiana Jones’ movie or a great mystery unfolding or being solved. They didn’t solve everything, but I found it very fascinating.”

Interestingly author Paul Perry (whose book the documentary is based on) also took some time off to investigate Marian apparitions and ‘flashes of light’ above churches.

“I was horrified”: Secret Worshippers
You might be familiar with the concept of the mystery shopper; someone is hired to go into a store and rate the service they receive in order to provide feedback to the employer or head office. But did you know there were ‘secret worshippers’ being unleashed onto unsuspecting churches who go around rating everything from the cleanliness of the toilets to the quality of the sermon?

Alexandra Alter (what a great last name to be writing about religious topics!) writes:

Harrison belongs to a new breed of church consultants aiming to equip pastors with modern marketing practices. Pastors say mystery worshippers offer insight into how newcomers judge churches — critical at a time when mainline denominations continue to shed members and nearly half of American adults switch religious affiliations.

Presumably it was such an encounter with a mystery worshipper that led St. Matthew to conclude: Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Number of the Turnbull
Australian leader of the opposition, Malcolm Turnbull has joined the lofty heights of Twitter. You can follow him here: @TurnbullMalcolm

What intrigued me the most, though, was the number of people following Mr. Turnbull at the time of publishing.

Draw your own conclusions…

Happy Sunday everyone!

Boy attends mass. Boy obtains eucharist (‘a small bread wafer blessed by a priest’). Boy goes about subjecting the ‘Body of Christ’ to a number of tests involving, well, boiling water, nail guns, swords and even ducks. This is the story of Webster Cook and his YouTube channel (fsmdude).

Webster Cook, as you might’ve already guessed, is an atheist. Though rather than taking up that long held tradition on YouTube of long, boring, tired monologues – he has a different way of demonstrating his beliefs; through performance art.

The conflict centres around what this wafer is, and what this wafer means. In the same way we have been informed that ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,’ Cook maintains that the wafer is just a wafer. Or, in his words: “a shitty tasteless piece of cardboard bread.” He points to the emotional reaction to his videos as further proof of irrationality.

Christians, however, tend to think of this wafer as The Body of Jesus Christ – either figuratively or literally. Certainly Catholics take this notion very literally. Speaking to WFTV.com, Father Migeul Gonzalez likens the act to kidnapping – for such is the voracity of his literal belief:

“It is hurtful,” said Father Migeul Gonzalez with the Diocese. “Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family.”

What Would Jesus Do (Without His Body)?

At times Cook seems unintentionally philosophical. In the video description to Eucharist desecration #13: Duck (featured above), he writes:

Ducks like Jesus, a lot!

(If I give them hosts, are they now blessed? Are they Holy Ducks?)

I mean, if this wafer is literally the body of Christ should it matter that the individuals digesting it (in this instance, ducks) do not cognitively understand what it represents? Should they not still feel the effects and reap the benefits?

This case raises a lot of questions regarding freedom of speech and religious persecution, the scope of which is too large for my consideration here. It is worth noting that Cook has returned the Eucharist to the Diocese of Orlando. However it appears this isn’t enough for many people and a petition has been set up encouraging YouTube to remove the channel.

It will be interesting to see how this ends. YouTube have proven time and time again they don’t cave easily to public opinion. My expectation is that the channel will only be removed if it is demonstrated that YouTube’s terms of service have been violated, or that Cook has infringed upon the copyright of a third party without their consent. Perhaps Jesus can file a DMCA notice for unauthorised use of his likeness. I mean his body is all over it…

Well the techno-savvy son of God would get himself a Twitter account, of course!

At first I assumed this was a spam account, but it would appear there is someone updating it and not providing malicious links.

It is worth noting, though, at the time of posting JesusSaveth has only 12 Followers. Apostles, perhaps?