Easter Sunday Thoughts: Jesus and Transcending Politics
Bishop Spong and beyond: The politicization of religion is a failure, and not what Jesus is about.
I’ve been watching some old movies and TV shows circa the 80s and I’m struck by how much more freely people mentioned Jesus, even in an offhand way (“Thank you, Jesus”) in otherwise secular television.
Some people think I’m not a Christian because of my pursuit of Sufism, but I’m just a very open-minded, universalist type of Christian. I’m more of the mind of Paramahansa Yogananda; Jesus was an avatar, a manifestation of God on the planet; God-centered Christ Consciousness is what we all need to be striving for.
As such, I think Jesus can be the answer to many of our world’s problems, but not in the fundamentalist and rigid version of Christianity that elevates an allegedly infallible Bible as a mini-God or idol to be obeyed literally without thinking.
The idea that God would send you to hell for not believing in a 20th century Western version of Jesus as put forth by American pastors is…well…silly. Or that you somehow get a free pass by saying one prayer to accept Jesus.
Accepting Jesus is a good thing; surrendering and repenting is very powerful, don’t get me wrong. But to me, a kind and loving God offers many paths to the divine, and doesn’t punish people to Hell for philosophical or theological opinions.
A Church Without God? What?
All that said, I’m also not down with the progressive re-writing of Jesus as a knee-capped, earthly socialist activist, who would have agreed with all modern tenants of left-wing political thought and discourse, but had no spiritual powers.
One of the most weirdly powerful theological leaders in the now dying Episcopal Church was Bishop John Shelby Spong (1931-2021), who by the time of his death was an avowed atheist. He denied not only Jesus’s divinity but the existence of God and questioned the afterlife:
The bishop claimed he wanted to “save” Christianity by deleting all parts conflicting with modernism and its particular version of science. But by his life’s end, theological modernism had largely expired, its themes no longer perceived as relevant for persons born after the 1960s.
Spong in his final years belonged to the now largely defunct Jesus Seminar, which voted with marbles on which scriptures were authentic, always rejecting verses that claimed the supernatural. With those scholars, Spong rejected divine interventions, including Jesus’ deity, resurrection, virgin birth and miracles. In the end, Spong denounced theism itself. He also questioned Christian teachings about the afterlife and suggested that their primary purpose was control of human behavior in this life.
“Heaven and Hell have got to go,” the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey retired bishop lectured at United Methodist-affiliated Drew Theological School after authoring his 2010 book Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. “Nobody knows what the afterlife is all about; nobody even knows if there is one.”
So why the hell was this literally godless man a preeminent bishop in one of the previously most powerful mainline Christian traditions? Stubbornness? Hubris? Sabotage?
I grew up in the Episcopal Church, left when I went to college, came back 20 years later, and left again when I realized the church was a spiritual shell of its former self, promoting progressive politics over Jesus’s true teachings.
Mind you, I had been a progressive for many decades, and a new ager, and I’m still not conservative when it comes to religion and spirituality. For me to leave an “open-minded” church like the Episcopal Church may seem incongruous; after all, you won’t see any Sufis hanging out at your local Baptist Church.
But why be a church at all if you don’t believe in God, soul, or an afterlife? What’s the point? Pointless ritual? Social club?
Now, not all Episcopal priests are atheists, but the church bulletins were becoming filled with political calls to action on all the issues du jour; drive by any Episcopal Church these days and you will be sure to see some sort of sign or flag out front advertising today’s Big Cause: It was Black Lives Matter for a little while, then LGBTQ+ flags, perhaps covid vaccines, possibly a Ukraine flag or two, and probably gun control these days.
I would also not want to go to a church that was advertising the opposite: Imagine a conservative church that was covered in MAGA flags, massive paintings of Trump in some sort of grandiose pose, NRA leaflets and AR-15s displayed in the nave, and pro-life activists with big massive placards showing aborted baby parts on the front lawn.
No, I don’t want partisan politics in my church in either direction.
In all of this focus on 21st century American politics, Jesus is an often afterthought, or is worse, weaponized to promote a specific political view.
For example, following the mass shooting of Christians, including children, at an elementary school in Nashville by a transgender activist, conservative media went on a feeding frenzy when a transgender priest at a liberal Lutheran denomination compared the bloodlust crowds at Jesus’s crucifixion to Americans who are opposed to transgender ideology. The ultimate call in this sermon was for more gun control.
It’s this sort of divisive politicization of Christianity that I’m not a fan of.
I can’t help but think that if the Nashville shooter had actually been taught to follow Jesus, to love everyone and forgive, instead of the likely rigid religious view of Jesus that perhaps her parents had, that shooting would have never happened.
And the thing is, while progressive Christianity has unfortunately gone down the path of politics instead of spirituality, they are reacting to a conservative Christianity that is often less loving and more judgmental than anything else.
Granted, conservative Christians aren’t quite so in your face as progressive Christians…you won’t see MAGA flags hanging on the front of the average conservative church…well, usually.
But conservative Christians are often not practicing the love of Jesus either. For example, you can be critical of trans ideology without being hateful about it. Many (not all) conservative Christians can get into a nasty habit of lecturing and quoting Bible verses instead of listening and being loving.
I recently joined a health and wellness group on Telegram connected with a Christian healer. I introduced myself and mentioned I was a writer and had a Substack named “Wholistic.” I linked to that blog, not this one, and said zero about spirituality or paranormal stuff.
I was immediately bombarded with a rant about how “many spiritual healing modalities” are basically being guided by evil spirits, a holier-than-thou missive apparently triggered by the name “Wholistic.” …and I had said zip about Reiki or anything else new age. This sort of thing can get tiring to say the least.1
At any rate, it’s difficult to get away from divisive issues in any spiritual community these days, although my Sufi Shaykh pledges to not discuss politics and is mostly successful at this.
I do partake in community offerings of another, more liberal Sufi group, which I won’t name, and I have on the authority of one of the murshids (teachers) there that the group is now being torn apart by hand-wringing over identity politics, too many “white people” in the group, and arguments over prayers by their “guru” that some deem to be patriarchal.
The politics has taken over the group…and as usual, it’s making things worse, not better.
The murshid actually had a young female Sufi student suddenly turn on him and freak out because she felt he was being too patriarchal and “controlling” in his teachings. And yet, knowing this man, who is one of the most gentle, thoughtful people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, there is no way in hell he was being pushy or disrespectful.
The student, who left, was likely being driven by some toxic teachings she heard elsewhere, perhaps on a college campus, warning her about men who are too confident in what they say.
Except, if you are going to have private sessions with a senior teacher who is decades older than you are…you should be going there to get some direction, no? If you are sitting with a teacher to just have them verify your own opinions, why bother?
My point here is really…when you let political ideology be the main lens through which you view everything, you’ll likely see everything in a distorted and divisive manner.
On the other hand, if we go back to Jesus’s basic teachings, they are to love God and your neighbor, to repent and forgive. Perhaps more importantly, Jesus also had his disciples give up their possessions to follow him. “Possessions” to me is more than just stuff. Possessions can include identities, political affiliations, and stubborn belief systems.
Jesus himself was killed because he said the “wrong things” and offended people. Those people who killed him would rather commit permanent, deadly violence on someone than allow their beliefs to be challenged.
But if we truly follow Jesus, we empty ourselves, allowing ourselves to be opened up to something bigger and better: the light of God, which transcends political ideologies and yes, even religious belief systems.
To truly follow Jesus isn’t to vote Democrat or Republican, but to let go of those attachments to connect to God’s light and love, which can transcend all of our petty squabbles…if we can just let the light in.
But there’s no room for the light if you are already filled up an external identity and rigid ideology.2
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)[b] 10 Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 13 Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’
I’m frankly tired of people claiming that stuff outside their belief system is inspired by evil spirits. For conservative Christians, Reiki is of the devil, but to conservative Sufis, praying the rosary is a form of idolatry. Every religion seems to deem everything outside of it as bad or evil, but that’s an oversimplification of the world.
In Sufism, we call these things “nafs” - or ego attachments. A good portion of postmodern philosophy that fuels intersectional identity politics is actually highly nafs-driven, and perhaps I’ll write up more about why that is one of these days.
One of the reasons I became a Roman Catholic was b/c the United Church had gotten to the point where a minister in Toronto vocally said she didn't believe in God. I always was drawn to the Catholic mass. I felt at home. I watched this twice today. I've watched other documentaries. There were some new discoveries in this one (although he missed the part where the Tarma it the temp. of the human body.
Some people judge. Some people judge who are Christians. Some are not. The bottom line is, it is the humans who are imperfect. As we watch biblical prophesy play out in real time, my faith has been solidified.
If you can, I recommend a watch (this is a short documentary, but it is full of science).
https://youtu.be/KEhjwCsDDsc
July 4th... Is Independence Day.