New Reformation
I heard about this guy on an NPR news report. He's a professor of theology in Oakland named Matthew Fox, President Emeritus Wisdom University. He has writen over twenty books on his views on theology. His latest work is a new list of "95 Thesies: Articles of Faith for a Christianity for the Third Millennium" can be found here: [url]http://www.matthewfox.org/sys-tmpl/door/[/url] Here are a few that I found intersting:
4. God the Punitive Father is not a God worth honoring but a false god and an idol that serves empire-builders. The notion of a punitive, all-male God, is contrary to the full nature of the Godhead who is as much female and motherly as it is masculine and fatherly.
8. All are called to be prophets which is to interfere with injustice.
10. God loves all of creation and science can help us more deeply penetrate and appreciate the mysteries and wisdom of God in creation. Science is no enemy of true religion.
11. Religion is not necessary but spirituality is.
13. Spirituality and religion are not the same thing any more than education and learning, law and justice, or commerce and stewardship are the same thing.
15. Christians must distinguish between Jesus (an historical figure) and Christ (the experience of God-in-all-things).
24. Creativity is both humanity’s greatest gift and its most powerful weapon for evil and so it ought to be both encouraged and steered to humanity’s most God-like activity which all religions agree is: Compassion.
27. Ideology is not theology and ideology endangers the faith because it replaces thinking with obedience, and distracts from the responsibility of theology to adapt the wisdom of the past to today’s needs. Instead of theology it demands loyalty oaths to the past.
29. No matter how much the television media fawn over the pope and papacy because it makes good theater, the pope is not the church but has a ministry within the church. Papalolotry is a contemporary form of idolatry and must be resisted by all believers.
30. Creating a church of Sycophants is not a holy thing. Sycophants (Webster’s dictionary defines them as “servile self-seeking flatterers”) are not spiritual people for their only virtue is obedience. A Society of Sycophants — sycophant clergy, sycophant seminarians, sycophant bishops, sycophant cardinals, sycophant religious orders of Opus Dei, Legioneers of Christ and Communion and Liberation, and the sycophant press--do not represent in any way the teachings or the person of the historical Jesus who chose to stand up to power rather than amassing it.
54. The Holy Spirit works through all cultures and all spiritual traditions and blows “where it wills” and is not the exclusive domain of any one tradition and never has been.
55. God speaks today as in the past through all religions and all cultures and all faith traditions none of which is perfect and an exclusive avenue to truth but all of which can learn from each other.
56. Therefore Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism are a necessary part of spiritual praxis and awareness in our time.
68. Pedophilia is a terrible wrong but its cover-up by hierarchy is even more despicable.
69. Loyalty and obedience are never a greater virtue than conscience and justice.
70. Jesus said nothing about condoms, birth control or homosexuality.
71. A church that is more preoccupied with sexual wrongs than with wrongs of injustice is itself sick.
72 Since homosexuality is found among 464 species and in 8 percent of any given human population, it is altogether natural for those who are born that way and is a gift from God and nature to the greater community.
73 Homophobia in any form is a serious sin against love of neighbor, a sin of ignorance of the richness and diversity of God’s creation as well as a sin of exclusion.
74. Racism, Sexism and militarism are also serious sins.
4. God the Punitive Father is not a God worth honoring but a false god and an idol that serves empire-builders. The notion of a punitive, all-male God, is contrary to the full nature of the Godhead who is as much female and motherly as it is masculine and fatherly.
8. All are called to be prophets which is to interfere with injustice.
10. God loves all of creation and science can help us more deeply penetrate and appreciate the mysteries and wisdom of God in creation. Science is no enemy of true religion.
11. Religion is not necessary but spirituality is.
13. Spirituality and religion are not the same thing any more than education and learning, law and justice, or commerce and stewardship are the same thing.
15. Christians must distinguish between Jesus (an historical figure) and Christ (the experience of God-in-all-things).
24. Creativity is both humanity’s greatest gift and its most powerful weapon for evil and so it ought to be both encouraged and steered to humanity’s most God-like activity which all religions agree is: Compassion.
27. Ideology is not theology and ideology endangers the faith because it replaces thinking with obedience, and distracts from the responsibility of theology to adapt the wisdom of the past to today’s needs. Instead of theology it demands loyalty oaths to the past.
29. No matter how much the television media fawn over the pope and papacy because it makes good theater, the pope is not the church but has a ministry within the church. Papalolotry is a contemporary form of idolatry and must be resisted by all believers.
30. Creating a church of Sycophants is not a holy thing. Sycophants (Webster’s dictionary defines them as “servile self-seeking flatterers”) are not spiritual people for their only virtue is obedience. A Society of Sycophants — sycophant clergy, sycophant seminarians, sycophant bishops, sycophant cardinals, sycophant religious orders of Opus Dei, Legioneers of Christ and Communion and Liberation, and the sycophant press--do not represent in any way the teachings or the person of the historical Jesus who chose to stand up to power rather than amassing it.
54. The Holy Spirit works through all cultures and all spiritual traditions and blows “where it wills” and is not the exclusive domain of any one tradition and never has been.
55. God speaks today as in the past through all religions and all cultures and all faith traditions none of which is perfect and an exclusive avenue to truth but all of which can learn from each other.
56. Therefore Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism are a necessary part of spiritual praxis and awareness in our time.
68. Pedophilia is a terrible wrong but its cover-up by hierarchy is even more despicable.
69. Loyalty and obedience are never a greater virtue than conscience and justice.
70. Jesus said nothing about condoms, birth control or homosexuality.
71. A church that is more preoccupied with sexual wrongs than with wrongs of injustice is itself sick.
72 Since homosexuality is found among 464 species and in 8 percent of any given human population, it is altogether natural for those who are born that way and is a gift from God and nature to the greater community.
73 Homophobia in any form is a serious sin against love of neighbor, a sin of ignorance of the richness and diversity of God’s creation as well as a sin of exclusion.
74. Racism, Sexism and militarism are also serious sins.
posted by NctrnlBst at 1:34 AM
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