Of love, kindness, justice and community

 It is a long-held opinion of mine that the belief system as encapsulated in the Nicene Creed is far removed from the teaching of Jesus with its emphasis on loving your neighbour, kindness, helping, justice and sense of community.  The following articles express in excellent fashion these themes and I commend them to you for your attention.  

Progressive Christian Network Britain  (PCN Britain):

CHURCHES, WAKE UP! Carl Krieg, Ph.D. who describes himself as “progressive mainline”, offers a critique of the Church and a vision for the future. https://progressivechristianity.org/res.../churches-wake-up/ He suggest the following: “Change the message, returning it to what Jesus actually taught and did. That change is basic, and it conforms to what people need and want to hear because everyone understands love. The current images of what the church represents- sacrifice on a cross, walking on water, even hell- must be replaced by images of love and community, images that represent who God is and who we are. A non-dogmatic approach is mandatory and would open the doors to people who come from different backgrounds and are at differing stages of life and faith formation. There must be no room for a fundamentalist attitude of “here it is, take it or leave it”. It is that attitude, masquerading as faith, that made the pews empty in the first place. The purpose of the church is not to convert, not to get people to join. The purpose of the congregation is to continually grow in awareness and fellowship within itself, while also providing for society at large a welcoming place where spirituality, love, and justice are practiced. Should those efforts prove successful, growth will come naturally”.

Kris Kratzer:

Salvation only becomes real in your heart the moment you realize that you were never lost to begin with. Everything else is religious poison pimped as the cure.

Because God doesn't give us a new heart, God reveals the beauty and goodness that was always and already there.

So, the Gospel isn't about getting people into heaven, it's about bringing wholeness to the earth and all humanity, here and now.

That's why Jesus was never focused on believing a set of beliefs, but on loving extravagantly. Actions mean everything, so much that, for Jesus, he counts them all as belief.

For Jesus, lip service is nothing, human service is everything.

Therefore, heaven or hell was what you brought to earth and its people, before it ever became your eternity.

Because, when it's all said and done, your heart is where you spend forever.

Jim Rigby:

WAS THE EARLY CHURCH "SOCIALIST?"

I know it can be a jolt to hear anti-capitalist sermons at a Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. I understand some people assume I am projecting modern leftist thoughts onto a first century religion that was focused on a pie in the sky heaven, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

The early church was a clarion call for economic justice for all people. The economic justice called for by the Jewish prophets may not have been Marxist, but it WAS a call to value universal human rights over regional property rights. The early church called followers to serve our ENTIRE human family, not just our own nation or culture. We do not have to use the words “socialism” or “capitalism” to understand the early church but we do have to weigh ANY economic system by how it cares for the poor and sojourner.

Judaism and the early church weren’t persecuted by Rome because of their theology. They were persecuted for political reasons, namely because they refused to participate in the violence and hoarding required by any empire, including the American Empire today. When the bishops were brought together by the Roman emperor and told to reduce Christianity to creeds and rituals, they were were actually being told to renounce the the core teachings of Jesus and to take up the hymns and creeds to a dead savior. Defined by rituals and theology instead of ethics, the church could now violate everything Jesus taught and still call themselves “Christian.” By removing the Sermon of the Mount from the center of Christianity the church could now praise Christ and serve Caesar.

Obviously, capitalism was not a developed system in Jesus’ day, but the Jewish religion was incredibly clear about not enriching oneself through charging interest. The practice was called “usury” and it would include unregulated capitalism as a source of evil. Here are some quotes from the early church that can help us better understand the heresy of MAGA Christian Nationalism.

Saint Basil the Great condemned using property rights as a justification for economic inequality. He compared it to someone who claims seats in a theatre and will not let late comers have them. Basil said, “That’s what the rich are like; having seized what belongs to all, they claim it as their own on the basis of having got there first.” Saint Basil is also quoted as saying, “When people strip others of their clothes, they are called “thieves.” Should not those who have the power to clothe the naked but do not be called the same? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry. The cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked. The shoes you allow to rot belong to the barefoot. The money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. You do injustice to everyone whom you could help but do not.”

Saint John Chrysostom said, “Mine” and “thine” – these chilling words which introduce innumerable wars into the world – should be eliminated from the church. Then the poor would not envy the rich, because there would be no rich. Neither would the poor be despised by the rich, for there would be no poor. All things would be in common. He also said, “I am a Christian. One who answers thus has declared everything at once—their country, their profession, their family; the believer belongs to no city on earth but to the heavenly Jerusalem.” (St. John Chrysostom 347CE – 407CE)

Many early church screen converts based more on justice than piety. Hippolytus (170AD – 236AD) wrote: “The professions and trades of those who are going to be accepted into the community must be examined. The nature and type of each must be established… brothel, sculptors of idols, charioteer, athlete, gladiator…give it up or be rejected. A military constable must be forbidden to kill, neither may he swear; if he is not willing to follow these instructions, he must be rejected. A proconsul or magistrate who wears the purple and governs by the sword shall give it up or be rejected. Anyone taking or already baptized who wants to become a soldier shall be sent away, for he has despised God.”

Christian Nationalism may feel very pious, but what kind of peacemaker will kill other people because they were born on the other side of an imaginary line? The early church was also clear that the new faith needed to be international if it was going to be an answer to war. “Shall we carry a flag? It is a rival to Christ.” (Tertullian 160CE – 220CE).

Jesus lived long before Marx or Adam Smith. No one really knows what he would think about either system, but what is clear is that no economic system is a justification for economic injustice. What is clear is that Jesus was not talking about pie in the sky salvation so much as making it on earth as we want it to be in heaven. It seems to me Christian nationalism is a heresy completely repudiated by the early church.