www.moviesfoundonline.com/who_wrote_the_bible.php 

This British documentary is one of the best on the subject that I’ve seen. It is very well done. ENJOY!!

*Update- This documentary can also be found at "Google videos", along with many other interesting documentaries on religion and spirituality. Thanks Sam!

Medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, speaking of the things we must leave behind when seeking God, asserted that “the ultimate leave-taking is leaving God for God,” meaning that the very idea of God is itself an obstacle to understanding the real God. Theism obstructs worship; what a radical concept!

Last November I had the pleasure of hearing Tony Campolo speak at a two-day event in Chattanooga hosted by the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church. In one of his talks, Tony warned the audience that the next group of people to be persecuted in the United States would likely be Muslims and Arab Americans. "As Christians, we can’t let this happen," he said. "These are our neighbors, created in the image of God. They deserve our love and respect."

Tony’s statement stood out to me, as I had never really considered the plight of Muslim Americans before. Now his words seem almost prophetic, as news of protests and book burnings fill the airwaves each night.

It is of course frustrating to watch as some of the same folks who so passionately defend the second amendment seem ready to do away with the first when it applies to someone else’s freedom to worship. But far more troublesome to me is the fact that many Christians are passionately protesting the building of Islamic community centers in New York and Mufreesboro on the basis that such centers are “offensive” or that they “threaten the American way of life.”

Have these Christians forgotten that our first allegiance is not to our own interests or to the “American way of life,” but rather to the Kingdom of Heaven?

When God decided to wrap himself up in flesh and live among us, he placed himself in the context of perhaps the most oppressive and cruel empires in history. Those listening to him would have had clear memories of injustice, ridicule, heavy taxation, and even genocide at the hands of the tyrannical Roman government. And yet to those who had every right to fight back, every right to be biter and offended, Jesus said:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.  Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”

Jesus remained faithful to these teachings all the way to the cross and they were so diligently observed by the first Christians that they refused to fight back in the midst of terrible persecution. One wonders how we went from boldly declaring the gospel from dungeons and stoning pits to complaining to upper management when department stores don’t play Christian music at Christmastime.

There is a tragic disconnect from the way of Jesus when Christians join the chorus of those saying, “We will respect your faith when you respect ours” or “You can build a mosque in New York when we can build a church at Mecca.”  Jesus did not teach us to be good to those who are good to us and tolerant of those who are tolerant of us. As he pointed out, “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?”

What makes us different is that we love when we’re not supposed to. We love unconditionally.

Of course, implying that all Muslims are violent extremists and therefore fit into the category of “enemy” is about the same as implying that all Catholics molest children or that all evangelicals sympathize with Westboro Baptist Church. So we must give our Muslim neighbors the benefit of the doubt before assuming motive. But even if the builders of these centers are doing so with anti-American sentiments or for the purpose of ridicule, how should Christians respond?

Sarah Cunningham said it well in a post on the Q blog, where she wrote:

Regardless of our personal political beliefs or the outcome of this scenario, Jesus did not come as a political revolutionary but as one bearing a message of transcendent spiritual truth. Part of his example, although unconventional and unpopular in the wider pop-culture, was a mandate to “love our neighbors,” to “love our enemies,” and to “pray for those who persecute us.” No matter how you view these Muslims, I am certain that at least one of these apply. The Christian faith maintains that God loves and wants relationship with every person on every side of this argument.

As the country becomes more ethnically and religiously diverse, there will be those who say the Church can only survive if we fight to the death to preserve our civic religion—keeping prayer in public schools, keeping the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and keeping mosques out of our neighborhoods. But I am convinced that the only way for the Church to survive in a post-Christian world is to do the exact opposite.  We must preserve our identity as a distinct, set apart Kingdom that does things Jesus’ way—not the world’s way, not even America’s way. We must continue to grow and expand, not through a sense of entitlement or a fight for power, but through unconditional service and love.

The constitution dictates that Muslims should be able to worship when and where they please.

Compassion compels us to reach out to those who are still hurting from 9-11 and who are understandably struggling to forgive.

And the way of Jesus calls us to love whichever individuals in this story are hardest for us to love.

…Guess I should say a prayer for Glenn Beck. 

Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery?

It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the politicians are “fiddling while the economy burns.”

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”

Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?

In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.

They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. A select quote from soldiers from in Afghanistan and Iraq expressing concern over the mosque is pure propaganda and an affront to their bravery and sacrifice.

The claim is that we are in the Middle East to protect our liberties is misleading. To continue this charade, millions of Muslims are indicted and we are obligated to rescue them from their religious and political leaders. And, we’re supposed to believe that abusing our liberties here at home and pursuing unconstitutional wars overseas will solve our problems.

The nineteen suicide bombers didn’t come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. Fifteen came from our ally Saudi Arabia, a country that harbors strong American resentment, yet we invade and occupy Iraq where no al Qaeda existed prior to 9/11.

Many fellow conservatives say they understand the property rights and 1st Amendment issues and don’t want a legal ban on building the mosque. They just want everybody to be “sensitive” and force, through public pressure, cancellation of the mosque construction.

This sentiment seems to confirm that Islam itself is to be made the issue, and radical religious Islamic views were the only reasons for 9/11. If it became known that 9/11 resulted in part from a desire to retaliate against what many Muslims saw as American aggression and occupation, the need to demonize Islam would be difficult if not impossible.

There is no doubt that a small portion of radical, angry Islamists do want to kill us but the question remains, what exactly motivates this hatred?

If Islam is further discredited by making the building of the mosque the issue, then the false justification for our wars in the Middle East will continue to be acceptable.

The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer.

Conservatives are once again, unfortunately, failing to defend private property rights, a policy we claim to cherish. In addition conservatives missed a chance to challenge the hypocrisy of the left which now claims they defend property rights of Muslims, yet rarely if ever, the property rights of American private businesses.

Defending the controversial use of property should be no more difficult than defending the 1st Amendment principle of defending controversial speech. But many conservatives and liberals do not want to diminish the hatred for Islam–the driving emotion that keeps us in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don’t want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty.

The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. This is like blaming all Christians for the wars of aggression and occupation because some Christians supported the neo-conservatives’ aggressive wars.

The House Speaker is now treading on a slippery slope by demanding a Congressional investigation to find out just who is funding the mosque—a bold rejection of property rights, 1st Amendment rights, and the Rule of Law—in order to look tough against Islam.

This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.

We now have an epidemic of “sunshine patriots” on both the right and the left who are all for freedom, as long as there’s no controversy and nobody is offended.

Political demagoguery rules when truth and liberty are ignored.

~The Dalai Lama

Today’s debate on homosexuality pits an emerging consciousness against a dying definition. The old definition asserts that homosexuality is a choice that evil, perverted or subhuman people make. It cannot, therefore, be tolerated. People whose depravity causes them to choose "this lifestyle" must be converted or removed lest they destroy the social order; if they are homosexual because of a mental illness, they must be cured or isolated lest they infect the health of all our citizens. That is the definition, stated honestly but more baldly than its proponents will appreciate, that is held by those who call themselves conservative or traditional Christians. They are, however, a frightened majority because every statistical study indicates that this point of view is declining. To defend this position by claiming that the refusal to accept this perspective will destroy "the unity of the Church," is a breathtakingly bankrupt idea. Trapped inside dying definitions, these Christians assume that not to agree with them places their critics on the side of immorality and moral anarchy.

The emerging new consciousness, on the other hand, rejects every part of that definition. It asserts that homosexual people are neither morally depraved nor mentally sick, since one’s sexual orientation is not a choice; but something to which one awakens. It is like the dawning realization that one is male or female, part of a particular race or nation or even right or left-handed. A just and moral society cannot be erected on a premise that some human beings are subhuman or perverted, not on the basis of their doing but on the basis of their being. It matters not what any source of ancient wisdom has previously declared. The Bible, for example, was once quoted to support slavery, to oppose science and to prevent women from achieving equality. On every one of those issues the Bible was quite simply wrong. To quote it now to uphold the evil of homophobia is no less wrong. These efforts will fail as they always do. The ultimate tragedy is, however, that some church leaders, ever on the wrong side of great moral questions of history, never seem to learn history’s lesson that any prejudice once publicly challenged by a new consciousness is doomed.

As I survey the debate on this issue in all parts of the Christian tradition, a tragic failure of leadership is once again depressingly obvious. The Roman Catholic hierarchy simply takes the old definition and labors first to defang it and then to perfume it. They call homosexuality "unnatural," or "a deviation," urging that it be suppressed wherever possible and controlled where not possible. Homosexuality, however, has now been incontrovertibly identified as present in the world of higher mammals. It also appears to be a stable and unchanging percentage of the human race at all times and in all places. These data suggest that homosexuality is not unnatural at all but is a minority aspect of the created order that appears quite normally in all higher forms of life. Furthermore, this negativity in the Roman Catholic tradition is without character since it is both known and privately acknowledged that a major percentage of Roman Catholic clergy throughout history, including today, have been and are gay males. To watch the leaders of this church condemn that which is a fact in the lives of its cardinals, bishops and priests is either dishonest or an act of unconscious psychological denial.

The evangelical and fundamentalist churches proclaim that these definitions of antiquity embody the eternal truth of God and any attempt to change them is either the work of Satan or a godless secular spirit that is challenging the word of God in the name of immorality. Yet the new consciousness is dawning there too. As long ago as 1988, the Southern Baptist Convention voted by over a 90% majority to "reaffirm" its condemnation of homosexuality as "behavior repugnant to God" and "condemned by scripture." They seemed not to recognize that any definition that has to be reaffirmed is no longer holding. The only questions are how protracted will the debate be and how many people will be hurt before that prejudice dies. When anyone seeks to protect a dying definition, failure is inevitable.

The leaders of the mainline churches, aware of the new consciousness, pretend that some compromise is possible. They seek to protect unity by attempting to civilize the debate until a new consensus arrives. They count "the unity of the church" as a worthy goal even as that forced unity violates that Institution’s integrity. Yet, that is what is present today in the main line churches. If homosexuality is a given not a chosen way of life, the continued violation of gay and lesbian people, in order to preserve unity with the Church’s homophobic constituency,  is simply immoral. Not to bear corporate witness to those who still languish in the dying definitions of the past is to turn one’s back on the very meaning of the Christ. Do we imagine that Jesus’ invitation was, "Come unto me, some of ye." instead of "Come unto me, all ye?" Can any Church discriminate against any child of God and still sing, "Just as I am, without one plea, O Lamb of God, I come"?

Slavery in the United States could not be compromised in the 19th century because slavery was finally understood as a moral issue. Homosexuality cannot be compromised in the 21st century because it too is a moral issue. To the threats of parts of the Christian Church to leave if homosexual people are welcomed fully without any distinction, the body of Christ must be prepared to say, "That is your choice but we do not compromise truth to comfort you in your prejudice. The Church’s doors will be open when your consciousness is finally formed and you decide to return, but we will not reject homosexuals now to avoid offending you. If the essence of our Christ is summed up in words that John’s Gospel attributes to him, "I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly," then the choice is clear. Homophobia diminishes life; it does not make it more abundant. It must be ended; it cannot be tolerated even by making it kinder and gentler.

To the leaders of the Churches today I say: "Stop playing ecclesiastical games. Compromising truth never serves the cause of unity. The call of Christ is not to be all things to all people. The time for negotiating and compromising is over. It matters not if you are the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury or one of the heads of the various national and international bodies of Christians around the world, both the moral integrity of the Christ you claim to serve and your ability to speak for Christ on any other issue are at stake. There is no room for waffling on this moral imperative. The idea that you will allow politicians to advocate placing discrimination against homosexual persons into the Constitution of this country, while your voices are either in agreement or remain deafeningly silent, is an embarrassment. If it takes a split in the body of Christ to make this generation understand that homosexuality, like slavery, is a non-debatable, moral issue, then for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, you must be willing to pay that price."

- The Dalai Lama

Anne Rice Story

"Emerging" may suggest to you a recent development or perhaps part of a new movement in post-modern Christianity. However, it originated in the same time period as the first paradigm and was the result of Christianity’s encounter with the Enlightenment. It started with a few intellectuals in the 16th century and spread to academia and theological circles by the 18th & 19th centuries. In the 20th century, it became the dominant understanding in divinity schools and seminaries of mainline (non-evangelical) churches, being familiar to clergy for several generations. However, it was not presented to laity at the grass-roots level until recently, and is still unknown to many.

Instead of a defensive rejection of Enlightenment knowledge, it involves a discerning integration of that knowledge, which comes from the human sciences. It takes seriously the growing awareness of religious pluralism, which makes it difficult to believe that only one religion is the true religion. The integration of modern knowledge needs to be done discerningly and to be done critically to avoid reductionism.

Rather than seeing the gospels as a "divine" product and therefore inerrant, and rather than interpreting them literally and factually, this paradigm sees them as human products that are to be read as a combination of historical memory and metaphorical narrative.

All texts to be studied need to be put into the historical context of the community and the time in which they were written. This was first applied to The Pentateuch of the Old Testament  and later to The gospels. The gospels came to be understood as products of the early Christian communities where the author/authors resided. These communities were testifying to what Jesus had become in their lives in the decades after his historical life. The gospels tell us how the communities told the story of Jesus using both memory and testimony.

With this in mind, the Old Testament becomes Israel’s story of Israel, not God’s story of Israel. The gospels are not God’s story of Jesus, but early Christianity’s story of Jesus.

Seeing the Bible and the gospels as human products involves no denial of the reality of God or the presence of the Spirit in the process. There is within this paradigm a place for a robust affirmation of the reality of God. A Christianity without that robust affirmation of the sacred is of little importance to most who call themselves Christian.

This change in how the Bible and gospels are seen in this paradigm marks the birth of the modern historical study of Jesus (historical-critical). 

The gospels are the result of a historical process, telling us what Jesus had become to his followers in the last third of the 1st century.

The gospels combine memory and testimony. Some of what they report is remembered. Some of what they report is a more fully developed understanding that came about in the decades between Jesus’ death and the writing of the gospels.

The gospels combine memory and metaphor, historical memory with metaphorical narrative.

There is a distinction between Jesus the teacher, social activist, healer, etc; and what Jesus became after his death. There are important differences between the two.

The result of this paradigm, this way of seeing Jesus leads to a way of telling the story of Jesus quite different from the most familiar ways of telling the story that many of us grew up with. This paradigm results in a sketch of Jesus that is persuasive, compelling, inviting and challenging.

*Information for this post is from Marcus Borg’s, "Jesus, Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary"