Author Archives: Obie Holmen

Anti-Semitism in the New Testament

Methodist professor of Religion and Bible, Joel Allen, offered an insightful blog post this week entitled, Be Fair to the Pharisees: Guarding Against Anti-Jewish Attitudes.  There is a persistent sense that the Pharisees were the bad guys in Jesus’ life and ministry, Allen suggests, and he offers his own daughter’s silly campfire ditty as exhibit A.  “I don’t want to be a Pharisee, ‘cuz they’re not fair, you see,” sang the nine year old.

Allen offers a cogent rebuttal to the view that the Pharisees were self-righteous, legalistic hypocrites who emphasized the letter of the law over its spirit.  His argument is that this is an over-generalization, a broad brush attitude that overlooks the many Pharisees who had the same critical attitude toward the “system” as did Jesus.  “While Jesus certainly had abuses in the practice of Pharisaic piety and hypocrisy to condemn, he was not alone. Other rabbis had similar criticisms of their fellows,” says Allen.  He calls on history and mentions Hillel, the leading Pharisee sage who offered his own version of “The Golden Rule,” a generation before Jesus.

I think that Professor Allen’s well written piece is right on, and I wholeheartedly subscribe to his views.  Here is my basic view: The New Testament wrongly characterizes Israelite religion in general and the Pharisees in particular.  The New Testament demonizes and scapegoats the Pharisees, and even more hurtfully, all the Jews.  As Allen reports, following his time spent at Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati,

One of the things that surprised me in studying the Bible with rabbinical students was the degree to which they perceived the New Testament to be fundamentally anti-Jewish. As an orthodox Christian, I found it troubling to hear the teachings of Jesus described as ‘anti-Jewish’ and as contributing factors to Jewish suffering.

Allen suggests that the gospels lack a balanced view that fails to include the whole cloth of Pharisaism.  Let me carry the argument a step further by offering two historical reasons why the New Testament offers only a partial and biased view of Pharisaism.  What is important, I think, is a further evaluation of the history that occurred between the life and times of Jesus and the time when the books of the New Testament were written or compiled.  Jesus’ ministry is commonly dated to around 30-33 CE, the letters of Paul to the 50’s, Mark’s gospel to around 70, Matthew and Luke to the 80’s, and John to the 90’s.

I suggest that two historical factors were at play that caused the New Testament writings to become ripe with anti-Jewish polemic and to grossly overstate the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, erroneously lumping them with the aristocratic Sadducees, and between Jesus and his fellow Jews.  The first is the conflict between Paul’s Gentile mission and the Jewish, Jerusalem followers of Jesus led first by Peter but soon by James, the brother of Jesus.  The second is the cataclysmic Jewish civil war and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans circa 70 CE which obviously occurred several generations after the time of Jesus but during (Mark) or before the compilation of the gospels (Matthew, Luke, and John).

Must Gentile Christians follow the ceremonial and symbolic rules of Torah, including circumcision, dietary practices, and Sabbath and festival observance?  That was the basic issue between Paul and the Jerusalem church that came to a head nearly a generation after the death of Jesus.  An “apostolic assembly” occurred in Jerusalem in the late 40’s to consider the issue, followed immediately by the “Antioch incident” in which Paul broke with James and Peter and set out on his independent missionary journeys.  Much of Paul’s subsequent theology grows out of this basic dispute with the “Judaizers,” and the tone of his writings often became intemperate.  He referred to Jerusalem emissaries as “peddlers of God’s word,” “false apostles,” “deceitful workers,”  “false brothers,” “dogs,” and “evil workers.”  Often, his polemic against the ceremonial Torah and those who promoted it sounded distinctly anti-Semitic, a sad irony for the Pharisee born of the tribe of Benjamin.

“The Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, they displease God.”  Paul’s improvident words contained in 1st Thessalonians, the very first writing of the New Testament, indict not only the apostle to the Gentiles but subsequent generations of Christians who uncritically accepted his words at literal, face value.   The danger of treating Paul’s writings as the infallible, inerrant Word of God becomes obvious.

While doing research for my own novel about Paul, I read a fascinating series of essays entitled, “Jesus through Jewish Eyes”, a collection of views of current rabbis and Hebrew scholars.  In general, Jesus was treated quite well as a long lost Jewish brother, a Torah teacher who spoke with the cutting voice of a prophet.  In private correspondence with one of the contributors, I asked a related question, “What do Jewish scholars think of Paul?”  The answer was decidedly different.  Paul was the apostate who perverted Israelite religious rituals, symbols, and myths into a Hellenized amalgam that splintered Christianity away from Jesus’ Jewish roots.  Hyam Maccoby, a particularly anti-Pauline Hebrew scholar, has authored two books entitled, “Paul, the Mythmaker” and “Jesus, the Pharisee.”  His titles say it all.

We don’t need to go nearly so far as Maccoby to understand that Paul’s tone is decidedly discordant to Jewish ears.   We must also recognize the hostility between Paul and the Jerusalem church as the bass line of his disharmonious writings.

In 66 CE, the political firestorm in Jerusalem burst into the conflagration of civil war: sect against sect, class against class, brother against brother. Josephus, a Hebrew aristocrat who later joined the Romans, provided an eyewitness account.

Now after these were slain, the zealots and the multitude of the Idumeans fell upon the people as upon a flock of unclean animals, and cut their throats; and for the ordinary sort, they were destroyed in what place soever they caught them. But for the noblemen and the youth, they first caught them and bound them, and shut them up in prison, and put off their slaughter, in hopes that some of them would turn over to their party; but not one of them would comply with their desires, but all of them preferred death before being enrolled among such evil wretches as acted against their own country … the terror was upon the people so great, that no one had courage enough either to weep openly for the dead man that was related to him, or to bury him.

When the Romans moved in and finished the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, Israelite society was forever changed.  Over a decade later, the Pharisees regrouped as rabbinical Judaism, but any affinity with the Jesus sect was long forgotten.  The rabbis now contended with the Jesus movement for the synagogues.  The church of Jesus had become associated with the Gentile enemies, and the Christian writings reflected the new political realities.  It was the Jews, not Pontius Pilate, who bore responsibility for the death of Jesus, and the gospel compilers washed their hands of their Jewish roots.  The political undercurrents of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s wafted through the Jesus stories of the gospel accounts.

The writings of the New Testament sound anti-Semitic, at least to Jewish ears, and Christians must come to grips with this reality.  Even more importantly, Christians must accept that Jesus had much in common with many of his Pharisee peers, his Jewish brothers.  As Allen concludes, “Let’s be fair to the Pharisees, or we’re not being fair, you see?”

Book Review: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, by John Shelby Spong

sju aerial In the early 90’s, I was still practicing law in St Cloud, Mn, but I was also taking graduate classes at the School of Theology of St John’s University in Collegeville.  Located in a hardwood forest of the residual “Big Woods” and nestled amongst lakes and hills fifteen miles up the freeway from St Cloud, the campus was invigorating and study with the Benedictines enlightening.  It was a time of intellectual awakening for me, a realization that I didn’t need to leave my brain at home when I went to church.  My fascination with Scripture, theology, and church history burned hot.

That process took a significant step forward one day as I perused the cluttered bookshelves of the campus book store when I happened upon a paperback entitled, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, a Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture, by John Shelby Spong.   Spong was the Episcopal Bishop of Newark who penned his book following a series of televised debates – first with Jerry Falwell (“Jerry [was] not well equipped for such a debate”] and then with other evangelicals.  Spong suggested his motivation was “to place the biblical and theological debates that are commonplace among scholars at the disposal of the typical churchgoer.”  Spong’s book became a national bestseller. 

Read more …

Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Prevention Act passes Senate

Retired Law Professor Howard Friedman has an interesting blog he calls Religion Clause.  He posts several items daily, relating to court cases and legislative actions that impact the first amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

This morning, Professor Friedman reported on Congressional action on the so-called “Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Protection Act”.  Matthew Shepherd was the young  man from Wyoming who was brutally tortured then murdered for no apparent reason except that he was gay.  His mother is now the leading advocate for the bill.  Friedman reports,

On Thursday night, the U.S. Senate agreed to add the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act as an amendment to the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act. First by a vote of 78-13, the Senate agreed to an amendment clarifying that the hate crime provisions should not be construed or applied to infringe on First Amendment rights. Then the Senate voted 63-28 to invoke cloture on the hate crimes bill [overriding a Republican filibuster attempt]. Voice vote passage immediately followed.

The essence of the bill is to increase the juridical penalties when a defendant is convicted of a felonious act of violence against another and the act was proven to be motivated by:

prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim

What is most curious about the whole issue is the nature of the opposition.

Senator McCain pontificated his righteous indignation that the bill was attached to the National Defense Act.  Whether one agrees or disagrees with the process of legislative wrangling, at least the Senator from Arizona had some rational basis for his opposition.  The same cannot be said of the right wing rumor mongering that is downright false.

Pam Spaulding in her popular blog, Pam’s House Blend, lists the lies and their refutation, relying on talking points arranged by People for the American Way.

Lie number 1, which comes from James Dobson’s Focus on the Family:

Because the liberals in Congress would not define sexual orientation, we have to assume that protection under the law will be extended to the 30 sexual disorders identified as such by the American Psychiatric Association. Let me read just a few of them: bisexuality, exhibitionism, fetishism, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, prostitution, sexual masochism, urophilia, voyeurism, and bestiality.

Indeed, some right wing organizations refer to the Matthew Shepherd bill as the “Pedophilia Protection bill.”  Spaulding reports that the estimable Pat Robertson suggests the bill will “protect people who have sex with ducks.”

Here’s the truth:

Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation by anyone’s definition – only in the imagination of Religious Right organizations and political figures trying to derail the legislation with the most inflammatory charge they can come up with. As Rep. Tammy Baldwin pointed out during debate, sexual orientation is explicitly defined in the federal hate crimes statistics act as “consensual heterosexuality and homosexuality. And in spite of the Right’s claims about paraphilias, the American Psychiatric Association defines sexual orientation very clearly as homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality.

Despite Dobson’s lie that the “the liberals in Congress would not define sexual orientation", the bill clearly does that.  Secondly, “sexual orientation” is clearly defined by the American Psychiatric Association as “homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality”. Pedophilia and the rest of Dobson’s list that rolls off his tongue so easily are not included in the definition of sexual orientation. 

Lie number 2, the bill violates rights to free speech and expression and also violates the freedom of religion.

“if anybody speaks out about homosexuality, says it’s a sin, says its wrong, says it’s against the Bible, that individual would be charged with a quote, hate crime.”

These are Robertson’s words, but they reflect the false claims of a broad swath of the religious right.

Here’s the truth:

First, according to Professor Friedman, the Senate  yesterday passed an amendment 78-13 that clarified that the act “should not be construed or applied to infringe on First Amendment rights.”  According to the language of the act itself,

3) CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS.—Nothing in this division shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), including the exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment and peaceful picketing or demonstration. The Constitution does not protect speech, conduct or activities consisting of planning for, conspiring to commit, or committing an act of violence.
(4) FREE EXPRESSION.—Nothing in this division shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual’s expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual’s membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs.

Second, the act presupposes a felonious act of violence against another.  In other words, it is not speech or thought or expression or association that is actionable – it is only a physical act of violence against another that rises to the level of a felony. The act does not criminalize behavior that was previously legal; it merely adds penalities to actions that are already criminal when that criminal act is motivated by hate against a protected group.

As an active member of a Christian congregation and a Christian denomination, I am galled at the self-righteous, judgmental, and deceptive actions of the self-appointed watchdogs of morality on the religious right whose behavior seems to me to be decidedly unchristian.  One has to wonder about the religious right’s abject failure to follow the command, You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.  Mr. Dobson, Mr. Robertson, and the rest of your ilk, you do not speak for me.

Christian myths

Carl McColman, in his blog of spirituality, The Website of Unknowing, offers a delicious discussion of a spiritual middle ground between militant fundamentalism and angry atheism, a place of holy agnosticism:

the landscape of the Divine Mystery, where mythical religion need not be entirely dismissed but rather can be rehabilitated into a narrative of personal and collective transfiguration, even if its old truth claims must be re-evaluated in the light of science.

  and further described as:

a world where theists and atheists, both of whom know that they know “the truth,”  can transcend their limited/partial perspectives and embrace the profound mystery that lies beyond the limits of their knowing.

I have noted before that I am a big fan of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a civil rights worker in the 60’s and a profound and prolific author.  He offers much the same idea in his “depth theology” that suggests:

The grand premise of religion is that man is able to surpass himself; that man who is part of this world may enter into relationship with Him who is greater than the world; that man may lift up his mind and be attached to the absolute … How does one rise above the horizon of the mind? How does one find a way in this world that would lead to an awareness of Him who is beyond this world? It is an act of profound significance that we sense more than we can say … concepts are second thoughts. All conceptualization is symbolization, an act of accommodation of reality to the human mind.  Quotations from God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

Rudolph Bultmann, the giant of 20th century liberal theology and critical Biblical analysis, also chimes in with similar thoughts.

It may be said that myths give to the transcendent reality an immanent, this-worldly objectivity. Myths speak about gods and demons as powers on which man knows himself to be dependent, powers whose favors he needs, powers whose wrath he fears. Myths express the knowledge that man is not master of the world and his life, that the world within which he lives is full of riddles and mysteries and that human life also is full of riddles and mysteries.

While the fundamentalists claim literal truth for their myths and the atheists correctly debunk such claims, the knowing beyond knowing becomes lost. I think what Carl McColman, Rabbi Heschel, and Rudolph Bultmann have in common is the notion that we may celebrate the truth in the myths even as the myths are untrue. 

New Title: A Wretched Man, a novel of Paul the apostle

Based upon discussions with my publisher, I have decided to drop The Jewish Gentile as my novel’s title.  The new title is A Wretched Man, a novel of Paul the apostle.  This is based on the famous line in Paul’s letter to the Romans, “Wretched Man that I am!  Who will save me from this body of death?”

The publisher is performing the final edit, and we are discussing cover designs.

The Bishops did it!

In the bicameral legislative system of the Episcopal General Convention, the LGBT community has been holding its breath awaiting the action of the House of Bishops.  Earlier, the House of Deputies voted overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution that would effectively counter the 2006 resolution that put a halt on ordaining gay bishops.  Now, the House of Bishops has done the same.

Here is the press release from Integrity USA, the Episcopal LGBT advocacy group:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ANAHEIM, CA (July 13, 2009)–By a nearly 2-1 margin, the bishops of the Episcopal Church passed an amended version of resolution D025, which effectively ends the "BO33 Era" and returns the church to relying on its canons and discernment processes for the election of bishops. "While concurrence on the amended resolution by the House of Deputies is necessary before it is officially adopted by the church as a whole," said Integrity President Susan Russell, "there is no question that today’s vote in the House of Bishops was an historic move forward and a great day for all who support the full inclusion of all the baptized in the Body of Christ."

"It was a tremendous privilege to be a witness to the courage and candor of the bishops who spoke truth to each other and to us–and who called the Episcopal Church to speak our truth to our Anglican Communion brothers and sisters and to the world.

"The truth is we are a church committed to mission–we are a church committed to the full inclusion of all the baptized in that mission–and we are a church committed to creating as broad a place to stand as possible for ALL who wish to be part of this great adventure of being disciples of Jesus.

"In this carefully constructed and prayerfully considered resolution, our Presiding Bishop got what she both asked for and voted for: a positive statement about where we are as a church in 2009–a church striving to actually become the church former Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning called us to be nearly 20 years ago now…a church where there are no outcasts."

"The debate on the floor of the House of Bishops made it VERY clear that our bishops knew exactly what they were doing when they passed this by a nearly 2-1 margin. The resolution passed today by the House of Bishops was another step in the Episcopal Church’s ‘coming out’ process–and it sends a strong ‘come and see’ message to anyone looking for a faith community where God’s inclusive love is not just proclaimed but practiced."

It’s a good day to be an Episcopalian.  For watchers of LGBT issues within Christian communities, the next event will be the ELCA convention in MPLS in August.  As I have noted previously, I will be present and will live blog the Lutheran gathering.

Book Review: Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri

Last night, I attended a book club meeting at the Monkey See bookstore in downtown Northfield, Mn.  Jerry, the bookstore owner, hosted Phil and Barb, Mary, Charlene, and author Tom Swift whose own book, Chief Bender’s Burden, has been getting lots of favorable publicity lately.  At the once-a-month get together, we discussed the short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Lahiri

read more …

Bad news for Progressive Catholics

A pair of news items or blog posts crossed my desk in the past few days that ought to be of concern for progressive Catholics.  The first is the Vatican’s investigation into US nuns, and the second is the news that a major Catholic reform group is nearly broke.

A New York Times article reports:

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.

[Many nuns] fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

A decade and a half ago, I was privileged to study at the St John’s School of Theology in Collegeville, Mn, a progressive Benedictine community.  The students at the SOT typically belonged to one of three categories: a) candidates for the priesthood, b) nuns or other Catholic women, and c) protestants such as myself.  Of these three groups, the male candidates for the priesthood were often the least serious students — a sweeping generalization, to be sure, and there were numerous priest candidates who were the exception to this rule.  On the other hand, the female religious were usually more serious students, but an outsider could also see how they chafed at their secondary status.

The well known and publicized shortage of Catholic priests is a very real problem.  But, the loss of the leadership of outstanding women is also very real.  The Times article suggested that the number of nuns in the US has shrunk to 60,000 compared to 180,000 in 1965.  Me thinks the Vatican’s investigation will hardly be received as a note of encouragement.

Secondly, Michael Paulson reports in the Articles of Faith blog out of Boston that Voice of the Faithful, a reform group formed in response to the sexual abuse crisis of the American priesthood, is out of funds.

The organization has had three goals — supporting abuse victims, supporting "priests of integrity,” and ‘to shape structural change within the Catholic Church.” That third goal has made it the subject of criticism from some conservatives, and its affiliates have been barred from meeting on church property in some dioceses.

Paulson reports that the VOTF has issued an urgent fund raising appeal.  You may donate through the VOTF website.

But, a comment on the post probably reflects the attitude of many:

This is the most phoney [sic] of all of these groups… They ought to go and start their own church, the the [sic] 25,000 others who have dissented from Church teaching and authority. It is about control and trying to conform the faith to its own dissenting standards… the tragedy of the abuse crisis (and it was a crisis and wrong) gave it temporary cover. It is just a matter of time where VOTF will be another footnote in Church history, and thank God for that.

Episcopal mid convention report

Roughly half way through the Episcopal convention, excitement and tension is building as the repeal of the 2006 moratorium on gay bishops moves forward.  As part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, the proposed change faces resistance from without as well as within.  When conservatives within the Church of England raised the suggestion that a conservative, breakaway group in the US (ACNA) might receive official recognition, the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church warned that such action would only promote schism, according to an article in the Washington Times.

ANAHEIM, Calif. | The presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church warned the Church of England not to foment schism in America, responding to a threat made over the possibility that the U.S. church will start ordaining actively gay bishops.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said Sunday, in response to questions from The Washington Times, that calls by conservatives in the Church of England for recognition of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) over gay-related issues would wound her church, already split by the secession of conservative dioceses and congregations to form the ACNA.

She urged Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to remember the "pain of many Episcopalians in several places of being shut out of their traditional worship spaces, and the broken relationships, the damaged relationships between people who have gone and people who have stayed." 

"Recognition of something like ACNA is unfortunately likely only to encourage" further secessions, she said, reminding the Church of England that "schism is not a Christian act."

The parliamentary procedure of the Episcopal convention posits a bicameral approach.  On Sunday, The House of Deputies passed Resolution D025 (70-31 in the lay order and 74-35 in the clergy order).  Among other things, the resolution provides: “Affirm that God has called and may call partnered gay and lesbian people to any ordained ministry,” according to Walking with Integrity, the official blog of Integrity USA.  The measure must also be passed by the House of Bishops to become official.

In her personal blog (An Inch at a Time), the President of Integrity, Pastor Susan Russell, speaks to both optimism and pessimism as the convention waits on the Bishops.  The excitement is also palpable on a couple of weekend postings on the Integrity Blog: We Could have Danced All Night offers a glowing report of the Friday night Eucharist of 1200 LGBT Episcopalians and the stirring sermon of Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris (the first woman bishop in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion).  The Integrity Blog also offers a daily YouTube update. 

 

Of course, there are many other items of business at the convention, and the blog of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation provides daily updates on issues pertaining to poverty and hunger.