Nuns on the Frontier

Nuns on the Frontier, by Anne M. Butler (New York Times, 15 May 2012)

Excerpts:

The recent Vatican edict that reproached American nuns for their liberal views on social and political issues has put a spotlight on the practices of these Roman Catholic sisters. While the current debate has focused on the nuns’ progressive stances on birth control, abortion, homosexuality, the all-male priesthood and economic injustice, tension between American nuns and the church’s male hierarchy reaches much further back.

In the 19th century, Catholic nuns literally built the church in the American West, braving hardship and grueling circumstances to establish missions, set up classrooms and lead lives of calm in a chaotic world marked by corruption, criminality and illness. Their determination in the face of a male hierarchy that, then as now, frequently exploited and disdained them was a demonstration of their resilient faith in a church struggling to adapt itself to change.

Link: Nuns on the Frontier

Is the black church guilty of spiritual hypocrisy in same-sex marriage debate?

Is the black church guilty of spiritual hypocrisy in same-sex marriage debate? By John Blake (CNN, 12 May 2012)

Excerpts:

Why would the black church cite scripture to exclude gays when a similar approach to the Bible was used to enslave their ancestors? “It’s so unfortunate,” says James Cone, one the nation’s most influential black theologians and author of “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” “The literal approach to scripture was used to enslave black people,” he says. “I’ve said many times in black churches that the black church is on the wrong side of history on this. It’s so sad because they were on the right side of history in their own struggle.” Call it historical irony: Black church leaders arguing against same-sex marriage are making some of the same arguments that supporters of slavery made in the 18th and 19th centuries, some historians say. Both groups adopted a literal reading of the Bible to justify withholding basic rights from a particular group.

Link: Is the black church guilty of spiritual hypocrisy in same-sex marriage debate?

When A Medieval Knight Could Marry Another Medieval Knight

When A Medieval Knight Could Marry Another Medieval Knight, by Eric Berkowitz (The AWL, 8 May 2012)

Excerpts:

Eric Berkowitz's new book Sex And Punishment, out today from Counterpoint, is a fascinating survey of how legal systems over the millenia have attempted to regulate and police sex. In this excerpt, a discussion of the once-wide acceptance of same-sex unions between men in Europe of the Middle Ages.

Despite the risks, devotional relationships between men were common in Europe at the time, at least among the literate, and many of these affairs must have included sex at some point. Knights, aristocrats, and especially clerics left expansive evidence of their intense passions for male lovers, relationships that often ended in side-by-side burials. A letter from a respected monk–scholar in Charlemagne’s court named Alcuin (circa 735–804) to a beloved bishop shows how thick those relations sometimes became:

I think of your love and friendship with such sweet memories, reverend bishop, that I long for that lovely time when I may be able to clutch the neck of your sweetness with the fingers of my desires. Alas, if only it were granted to me, as it was to Habakkuk, to be transported to you, how would I sink into your embraces . . . how would I cover, with tightly pressed lips, not only your eyes, ears, and mouth but also your every finger and your toes, not once but many a time.

Link: When A Medieval Knight Could Marry Another Medieval Knight

When Same Sex Marriage Was A Christian Rite

When Same Sex Marriage Was A Christian Rite: Link 1 or Link 2

Excerpts:

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.

Is the icon suggesting that a gay "wedding" is being sanctified by Christ himself? The idea seems shocking. But the full answer comes from other early Christian sources about the two men featured in the icon, St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who were Christian martyrs. These two officers in the Roman army incurred the anger of Emperor Maximian when they were exposed as ‘secret Christians’ by refusing to enter a pagan temple. Both were sent to Syria circa 303 CE where Bacchus is thought to have died while being flogged. Sergius survived torture but was later beheaded. Legend says that Bacchus appeared to the dying Sergius as an angel, telling him to be brave because they would soon be reunited in heaven.

While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early Christian church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly intimate. Severus, the Patriarch of Antioch (512 - 518 CE) explained that, "we should not separate in speech they [Sergius and Bacchus] who were joined in life". This is not a case of simple "adelphopoiia." In the definitive 10th century account of their lives, St. Sergius is openly celebrated as the "sweet companion and lover" of St. Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus's close relationship has led many modern scholars to believe they were lovers. But the most compelling evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, written in New Testament Greek describes them as "erastai,” or "lovers". In other words, they were a male homosexual couple. Their orientation and relationship was not only acknowledged, but it was fully accepted and celebrated by the early Christian church, which was far more tolerant than it is today.

Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and ritual.

Link 1 or Link 2

See also: Civil Partnership, Medieval Style (Daily Mail, 11 May 2012)

Erasure of an Aboriginal temple

Erasure of an Aboriginal temple, by Patti Miller (Eureka Street, 2 May 2012)

Excerpts:

For thousands of years there was a sylvan temple on the banks of the river near where I was born. I have never seen the temple because most of it was destroyed before I was born, but I know what it looked like because it was described and sketched by an early ethnologist travelling in the area. It had a mile long avenue of trees carved with serpents, forked lightning, meteors and various hieroglyphs, leading to an earth-walled circular space where a giant human figure, also made of earth, reclined.

You might imagine from the temple that I was born in Greece, or Egypt, or perhaps India, but the fact is I was born and grew up near the Macquarie River in central west NSW. The sylvan temple, as described by the ethnologist, John Henderson, was the largest and most important sacred site for the Wiradjuri people along the river. Like all temples, it was used for protecting and conveying secret spiritual knowledge to the initiated and people came from hundreds of miles to be part of rituals and ceremonies.

Link: Erasure of an Aboriginal temple

How To Win A Culture War And Lose A Generation

How To Win A Culture War And Lose A Generation, by Rachel Held Evans

Excerpts:

When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images? : “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too involved in politics.”) 

 Link: How To Win A Culture War And Lose A Generation

Buddhism and a Sustainable World: Some reflections (Geoffrey Samuel)

The Spirited Voices of Muslim Women in Islamic Reform Movements: Amina Wadud

Women Imams - Amina Wadud

Reza Aslan: God, Globalization & Ending the War on Terror (FORA.tv)

Reza Aslan: God, Globalization & Ending the War on Terror from Berkeley Arts and Letters on FORA.tv

Reza Aslan: How to Win a Cosmic War (FORA.tv)

Reza Aslan: How to Win a Cosmic War from Whole Earth Films on FORA.tv

America’s ‘angriest’ theologian faces lynching tree

America’s ‘angriest’ theologian faces lynching tree, by John Blake (CNN, 21 April 2012) 

Excerpt: 

When he was boy growing up in rural Arkansas, James Cone would often stand at his window at night, looking for a sign that his father was still alive. Cone had reason to worry. He lived in a small, segregated town in the age of Jim Crow. And his father, Charlie Cone, was a marked man. Charlie Cone wouldn’t answer to any white man who called him “boy.” He only worked for himself, he told his sons, because a black man couldn’t work for a white man and keep his manhood at the same time. Once, when he was warned that a lynch mob was coming to run him out of his home, he grabbed a shotgun and waited, saying, “Let them come, because some of them will die with me.” 

 Link: America’s ‘angriest’ theologian faces lynching tree
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The Wisdom of Women Written Out of History

The wisdom of women written out of history, by Bettany Hughes (The Guardian, 10 April 2012)

Excerpts:

The female of the species is more deadly than the male, cautioned Rudyard Kipling. Given Kipling's love of mythology and prehistoric studies, he should perhaps have added "and smarter". Because of all deities of wisdom across the globe and through known time, the massive majority – 97% – were (or are) female. Mankind, for the vast span of human experience, has worshipped at the shrine not of the god, but the goddess, of wisdom.

Flesh-and-blood women, it seems, have managed to draw strength from this fact. Women were often accepted as the prime educators in their communities, but individuals also exploited the currency of sacred wisdom with surprising results. Religion is an easy target for accusations of repression and misogyny, but achievement in the sacred and therefore socio-political sphere was often an option for women, thanks not to brawn, but to brain.

Link: The wisdom of women written out of history

Finch's Cultural Exchange

Finch's Cultural Exchange, by Damien Hansen (Today Tonight, 26 March 2012)

Excerpts:

For many, suburban pockets like Bankstown in Sydney, or Coburg in Melbourne, are like countries within a country, with their own rules, their own dress code and their own language. But now one person has been welcomed in and granted access to seek out the truth of this culture, and dispel the urban myths. That person is former Miss Universe Australia, TV star and model, Rachael Finch.

Link: Finch's Cultural Exchange

Children in the Liturgy

Children in the Liturgy, by Louis Weil

The Revd. Dr. Louis Weil is the James F. Hodges and Harold and Rita Haynes Professor Emeritus of Liturgics at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California.

Excerpts:

Children are startlingly direct in engaging signs. I knew one child, an extraordinary child named Sean, just two in his father's arms. His parents hadn't decided yet whether to let him have communion, but as I placed the sacrament in his father's hand, Sean reached out to me and said, "I want Jesus too." As a rule I don't give the sacrament to a child until the parents approve, so I blessed Sean and afterwards talked to his parents. When I had talked to them before they had said, "We need some sign that he knows what he's doing." This time I said, "Well, if you want a sign, I think you've been given a sign." The next Sunday, we made Sean a communicant.

Children experience something on a deep level, not heavy-handed or didactic but very direct, from observing adults. Adults' reactions are profoundly important. By their reactions adults share, subtly but directly, in the formation of the attitudes of the children. What I remember from my childhood experiences in the synagogue are the great dramatic acts in the liturgy, the carrying in of the Torah, for example, and the effect those acts had on others in the congregation.

I'm eager NOT to impose a liturgy basically designed for children on the adult community. Some special occasions may present reasons for offering children's liturgies, but in general I want us to create a liturgy which is inclusive in broader sense. In fact, we ought not to lose sight of the elderly at the other end; interestingly, they pose some of the same questions that children do. But for now, let's focus on the children.

Link: Children in the Liturgy