“A Spiritual
Reformation (and this time we really mean it)” a sermon in 2 parts
Dr. Roger Ray and David Ketchum
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO July 25, 2017
Adapted from
Ms. Hirsi Ali’s book, “Heretic: Why Islam Needs a
Reformation Now”
Instead of
letting Islam off the hook with bland clichés about the religion of peace, we
in the West need to challenge and debate the very substance of Islamic thought
and practice. We need to hold Islam accountable for the acts of its most
violent adherents and to demand that it reform or disavow the key beliefs that
are used to justify those acts.
As it turns
out, the West has some experience with this sort of reformist project. It is
precisely what took place in Judaism and Christianity over the centuries, as
both traditions gradually consigned the violent passages of their own sacred
texts to the past. Many parts of the Bible and the Talmud reflect patriarchal
norms, and both also contain many stories of harsh human and divine
retribution. As President Barack Obama said
in remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast last month, “Remember that during
the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of
Christ.”
I was in seminary in 1979 when the Episcopal
Church in America sought to update its then 200-year-old Book of Common Prayer.
The language of the old Book of Common Prayer was deeply rooted in the English
of both Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
My liturgy professor was an Episcopal priest who
was on the frontlines of the explosive controversy that was taking place within
the Episcopal Church over this sudden modernization of their services.
Anglophiles, it turns out, were less willing to
make changes than Catholics had been twenty years earlier when Vatican II set
aside their centuries of devotion to Latin in favor of the various languages
where Catholic mass was being celebrated. One very staunch Episcopal lady was
reported to have said, “If Jesus Christ could see this new prayer book he would
turn over in his grave.”
I’ve lived through several contentious
reformations in the protestant churches where I grew up and where I cut my
teeth as a puppy preacher.
I remember the hot debates about setting aside
the King James Version of the Bible in favor of more modern translations.
I watched my home church being torn apart but
such momentous decisions as allowing a divorcing elder to remain an elder in
the church. I remember the first time women were allowed to serve communion and
to be elected to the church board, and finally to be ordained and hired as
pastors in Disciple congregations.
And, of course, I have been in the thick of the
battle to acknowledge the validity of same sex relationships and to see gay
people successfully given leadership positions both in the laity and in the
clergy of our churches.
We talk about the Reformation led by Martin
Luther in the 16th century as a
singular event but, in fact, religious
reformation is going on all of the time. Luther set a ball in motion that has
given birth to literally thousands of variations on Protestantism. In fact, I
would argue that the main branch of the reformation led by Luther, in many
ways, surrendered after a few generations and essentially went back to being
Catholic in almost every meaningful way other than in name.
No one would try to teach a science class with a
fifty-year-old textbook. I have taken Spanish I three times at Drury University
over the past decade and I had to buy and new and improved textbook every time.
I don’t know that Spanish has really evolved as quickly as all that but the
textbook industry knows a good thing when they see it.
But when it comes to religion, it seems like our
values go in an opposite direction. Even in the pseudo religions of new age
adherents, there seems to always be to claim to have accessed some ancient
wisdom, almost all of which sprung from the possibly deranged imagination of
some modern eccentric, but still, their claim to legitimacy is that they are
reintroducing ancient Native American, or Celtic, Druid, or Egyptian insights.
I have loved and benefited tremendously from
yoga classes over the past 20 years but I can hardly keep from giggling when
some overly enthusiastic instructor calls out Hindi terms and claims to be
showing us ancient Hindu practices.
The cross legged, seated images seen in ancient
Indian art and sculpture is not so much an example of yoga as it is simply how
people sit on a floor when they don’t have chairs. Very little about yoga from
even a hundred years ago would appear to be even slightly familiar in a modern
yoga studio but there is some resistance to acknowledging that modern yoga
practice is good for you for lots of reasons and ancient yoga practice is not.
Almost every part of modern yoga is not only not 5000 years old, it mostly was
developed since 1960. That is, I am older than almost all of yoga and I have
five more years before I can sign up for Medicare.
I am a biblical scholar. I have spent years in
grad school studying Christian and Jewish scriptures and I have taken several
classes in the ancient texts of other religions but folks, all of those texts
were written by people who did not know where the sun goes at night. The plays
of William Shakespeare contain some amazing psychological insights into human
character but you would not want to use Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet as a
psychology textbook.
Just because something is centuries old does not
mean that it is superior to modern wisdom. In fact, the literature of ancient
religions reflect the best understanding that they had of themselves and the
world in which they lived that they could muster. We do not honor their search
for truth by denying the truth that is in front of us in deference to some
artificial fealty to the maturity of their thought in past centuries. Who would
want to go to see a 19th century dentist or an 18th
century surgeon? 
Religions are the language and values specific
to a culture, wedded to a particular time in history. It is not that one is
right and the other is wrong any more than you can say that Korean is superior
to French, or Spanish to German. Religions express the core beliefs and values
of a people in a particular place and time.
In ancient Israel, when they were surrounded by
hostile and competing tribes, it made sense for a man to have as many wives as
he could afford because having as many children as possible helped to build up
their numbers. For the same reason, homosexual relationships were discouraged.
By the time Israel was a settled land with all
of the usable farm land divided up among them, polygamy fell out of fashion and
monogamy became the rule. Still, in the time of Jesus, divorce largely left
women and children economically vulnerable so divorce was condemned in the
early church.
Religions have to evolve to remain relevant in
the modern world. 40 years ago virtually every world religion just knew without
a shadow of doubt that homosexuality was a sin, a perversion, and even the
American Psychiatric Association had a diagnosis for homosexuality as a mental
illness right up until 1986.
Still, in the presence of medical evidence and
psychological research, the American Psychiatric Association was able to make
changes that still remain out of reach for Southern Baptists, Catholics, nearly
all of Islam, and much of Judaism. The sciences are largely eager to
self-correct in the presence of new and better information. Religion should do
the same thing but there is a sad and self-defeating propensity in organized
religion to hold onto the past even when it is clearly wrong.
There are things that are morally,
psychologically, and spiritually sick about many ancient expressions of faith.
It is time, it is past time, for a major reformation in Christianity, Islam,
Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism that gets past misogyny, homophobia, racism,
exclusivism, and anti-intellectual superstition.
In 1985 Robert Funk left his teaching post to
start the Jesus Seminar, an
effort of several hundred religious scholars to
close the gap between religious academics and actual churches. He was
infuriated by the fact that mainstream pastors would go to grad school for
years, learn modern biblical critical skills and then go into parish life and
revert to being practitioners of magic and superstition… albeit, usually, not
because they had forgotten what they had learned but because they were trying
to avoid being fired.
I saw Bob Funk for the last time in January of
2005, just a few months before he died at the Seminar’s meeting in Santa Rosa,
California. One of the founders of the Seminar, John White, was telling Funk
about what a good job he thought I was doing in introducing seminar scholarship
into a mainstream church.
This was not typical of Bob and I am willing to
lay most of it at the feet of his advancing cancer and the medicines he was
taking, but his face lite up like a red light bulb and he gave me a pretty good
cussing for wasting my time in church. He had long given up on the church’s
ability to change, to let go of magical thinking, and to become relevant again.
Everyone listening to his little fit was
surprised. The Jesus Seminar ostensibly existed to do exactly what I was trying
to do but after 30 years, there is not a lot of success to point to. I
understand why he had given up. I understand why so many progressive people of
faith have given up on the church. I have seen the seamy underbelly of
organized religion. I have been ravaged by its evil excesses.
For years I have suffered from public criticism
from local pastors and church members who have accused me of not being a real
Christian, that my beliefs were no longer the beliefs of the faith they hold
dear. Well, I have finally come to agree with them.
I find no particular reason to be exclusively
Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish. We look for truth where it can be found
whether than is in ancient religious texts or in modern textbooks.
I long ago gave up on supernatural theism 
I have no opinions or beliefs about life after
death. For me, faith, spirituality, church, has everything to do with the here
and now.
It has to do with ethics, meaning, about
creating a just society and in finding personal depth and fulfillment. Church
is a place for learning, for inspiration, at times, for correction, but mostly
it is about being in community. Something about being around people who are, as
I am, flawed but trying, a little peculiar yet occasionally saintly, helps me
to be a better person.
