Author Archives: Obie Holmen

Favorite Quotations

I have added a permanent page to my blog entitled “Favorite Quotations”.  Here they are in post form.

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last.  Do you fix your eyes on such a one?  Job 14:1-3a NRSV 

 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. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel   

I believe that Christ was a man like ourselves; to look upon him as God would seem to me the greatest of sacrileges and an evidence of paganism.  Leo Tolstoy 

Paulinism has always stood on the brink of heresy.  Karl Barth 

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.  Rudolf Bultmann 

It is time that Christians were judged more by their likeness to Christ than their notions of Christ. – Lucretia Mott, Quaker abolitionist and women’s rights advocate (1793-1880) 

I am powerless, and my life is unmanageable, but a power greater than myself can restore me if I only let go. AA Twelve steps (paraphrase)

Prop 8 Court decision due

The California Supreme Court has announced that its Prop 8 decisions will be made public at 10:00 on Tuesday, the 26th of May.

Episcopalian priest, Susan Russell of Sacramento, and her partner will be among those waiting.  She calls the GLBT friendly faith community to vigil in her blog, An Inch At A Time.

California “Decision Day” is Tuesday … May 26 … stay tuned for more info as it comes in! Meanwhile, here are some links from our friends at California Faith for Equality:

By 10:00am on Tuesday, 36,000 of our community will know if their marriages will continue to hold legal standing. Thousands more will know if our Constitution really protects all Americans.

We have been waiting for months, but we have not been idle. Our faith and LGBT communities across the state are prepared to act for and celebrate justice. Here are three things you can do to be prepared for Decision Day and the days after:

Sign up for National Center for Lesbian Rights text service to know exactly when and how the Decision comes down.

Dial in with hundreds of other people of faith on Friday @ 10am. RSVP to http://bit.ly/zAszd for call-in information.

Attend a Decision Day event in your area and Meet CA Faith for Equality in the Middle at our “Faith Tent.” You can find Decision Day events listed in the websites in the right column.

I’ll be sitting at my desk in Northfield, Mn, but my thoughts and prayers will be with all.

“Few born Angels” and Paul the Apostle

Paul will be a frequent guest/contributor/subject in this blog.  Next to Yeshua of Nazareth, Paul is undoubtedly the most important person in the history of Christianity.  And, apart from his importance, the apparent complexities and conflicts in his personality, as suggested by his writings, are fascinating subjects for speculation.  I will indulge my own speculations in my forthcoming novel, A  Wretched Man, which features Paul as the main character.

read more …

The decline of religion (UPDATED X 2)

My new best blog-friend (Doug Kings at Cyber Spirit Cafe) and I have exchanged posts and comments about the decline of religion, and today he raises the topic again by referencing a recent post of Andrew Sullivan.  In the London Sunday Times, Sullivan says:

[R]eligion must absorb and explain the new facts of modernity: the deepening of the Darwinian consensus in the sciences, the irrefutable scriptural scholarship that makes biblical literalism intellectually contemptible, the shifting shape of family life, the new reality of openly gay people, the fact of gender equality in the secular world. It seems to me that American Christianity, despite so many resources, has ignored its intellectual responsibility.

If Sullivan is right, why?  Why have religious progressives surrendered the podium to the religious right?  Why have we allowed others to claim theirs is the only voice of christendom?  Blogger Rich Warden suggests  “that the far right has given religion a bad rap, made it untouchable in the progressive community.”

Perhaps the better question is not “why”, but “how”.  How do we take it back?  How do we put a progressive face on American religion?

UPDATE: In a May 22 post, Soong-Chan Rah, offers an optimistic take.  He suggests that Christian immigrants will keep Christianity vital and breakdown Christian “racial and ethnic lines with a shared value system rather than a political agenda.”

When I was a pastor in Boston, I consistently heard the lament over the decline of Christianity in the city of Boston.  However, the Boston I knew was filled with vibrant and exciting churches.  New churches were being planted throughout the city.  Christian programs and ministries were booming in the city.  Boston is alive with spiritual revival, particularly among the ethnic minority communities.  But very few seem to recognize this reality, even as this trend begins to appear nationally.

UPDATE # 2: Here’s a post that ties together my discussion on the decline of religion with my discussion of Douthat and Dan Brown.  The Naked Theologian, references Douthat’s article about Dan Brown:

[R]eligious trends are shifting toward a “generalized ‘religiousness’ detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.”  While a growing numbers of Americans are abandoning organized religion (Douthat bases this claim on recent polling data), they are, by and large, not opting for atheism. The stay-at-home religionists are actively seeking and building their own eclectic and high-personalized theologies “with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away.” 

The Naked Theologian, a UU PHD candidate, makes a Bonhoeffer like charge of “cheap grace” that has diluted American religion.

Another answer:  many of us are quasi-universalists–any God worthy of that name loves us and is simply too good to condemn us.  We’ve removed God from the judge’s bench in the sky.  The all-about-love God, the one to whom we’re willing to pray, no longer sits in judgment of us.  God loves us, unconditionally.

And since God loves us, unconditionally, God loves us regardless of how much money we make (how we made it and what we do with it) or how many times we’ve been married (even if our kids end up with exponentially-more-difficult lives).

So, is the unconditional-love God really the kind of God we want?

The “theology” of Dan Brown

ross-douthatConservative commentator Ross Douthat (author of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream) sees a sinister theology behind the popular novels of Dan Brown.  In a NY Times op ed piece, Douthat suggests that The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and the soon to be released The Lost Symbol are more than wildly popular pulp fiction.  “He’s writing thrillers, but he’s selling a theology,” says Douthat.

The “secret” history of Christendom that unspools in “The Da Vinci Code” is false from start to finish. The lost gospels are real enough, but they neither confirm the portrait of Christ that Brown is peddling — they’re far, far weirder than that — nor provide a persuasive alternative to the New Testament account. The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — jealous, demanding, apocalyptic — may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he’s the only historically-plausible Jesus there is.

read more …

From the “Website of Unknowing”

One of my favorite contemplative, spiritual blogs is The Website of Unknowing.  The following “Quote for the Day” post reminds us that contemplation without action is selfish (faith without works?).

Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.

Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

A new church home

Last Sunday, my wife and I joined a new congregation, only the second church I have ever belonged to other than the one I was baptized and confirmed in, returned from afar to raise our family in, buried my mother in, and where I served as president, sang in the choir, and taught adult education. 

But change is good.  We have moved to a college town and retirement community.  The new church is bristling with energy from all ages.  We were one of twenty-one family units to join on Sunday, including 5 retired pastors and a professor or two. I have volunteered to teach adult ed, but this will be a pretty sophisticated crowd.

There is plenty of excitement about my novel about Paul the apostle to be published this fall, but I worry that it may be offensive to some.

swap claim code

Technorati Profile

Freedom of religion?

daniel-hauserIn Minnesota, thirteen year old Daniel Hauser and his mother are on the lam today, seeking to avoid court ordered chemotherapy and radiation treatments.  The boy apparently has a treatable cancer but stopped treatments after one month and substituted alternative care including herbs and vitamins for purported religious reasons.  When the boy’s doctors called this to the attention of authorities, a local court received evidence and ordered that the treatments be reinstated. 

That was all in the past.  Today’s news is that testing showed the cancer returning, and the boy and his mother have disappeared, perhaps in the company of another woman who may be a California attorney.  A national warrant has been issued for the mother’s arrest.

While adults may freely choose to refrain from medical treatment for religious reasons, a child may not nor may the parents decide such a weighty issue for him.  The end of this story is not known, but it is a tragedy in the making that involves the life of a young man and the legal and moral consequences to his mother if it does not end well.

A blog on the blogger news network suggests the boy is illiterate and three years behind his age group.

A quick review of early blogs and comments suggests overwhelming support for the authorities and disagreement with the mother but not all.  One commenter on another blog refers to the authorities and doctors as “medical nazis.”

Gay marriage scoreboard

From the ashes of disappointment following the California Prop 8 results in November, new hopes arise this Easter season with a string of court and legislative victories.  Starting with the unexpected court mandate of marriage equality in Iowa, legislative victories in New England have gained momentum with the latest news that the New Hampshire governor will sign a marriage equality bill once the legislature works out minor details.  New York and New Jersey may soon follow.

Despite the “sky is falling” predictions of many conservatives, the Massachusetts experience proves the opposite.  May 17th will be the 5th anniversary of the first same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.  The occasion will be a time of celebration and reflection.  Michael Cole in the HRC Back Story blog provides a brief retrospective, including video of early celebrations, on the historic Massachusetts day five years ago.

From the standpoint of Christian denominational support for GLBT equality, the national convention of the ELCA in Mpls this summer will be the next battlefield.  Early procedural skirmishes suggest that chances are good that the ELCA will join the Episcopal church and the UCC as mainline denominations that support gay clergy ordination and marriage equality.