Category Archives: Religion

Resource: Progressive Jews – Beyt Tikkun

Thanks to subscriber Janet Dawson for drawing attention to this when we are thinking about the situation in Palestine.

Link to website

MISSION

We believe in a Judaism of love and transformation: We heal ourselves and our world through joyful and meaningful spiritual practice, loving relationships, social activism, and revolutionary consciousness.

Beyt: A House – A welcoming, joyful space for spiritual seekers

Tikkun: Healing, repair, and transformation of ourselves and our world

A Synagogue: A Jewish Renewal community of prayer, ritual, custom, and study. We integrate spiritual and prophetic consciousness with spiritual activism to create a more loving and just world.

Without Walls: You don’t have to be Jewish, religiously observant, or in the Bay Area to pray with us, learn with us, or be a member of our community.

HISTORY

Beyt Tikkun: A Synagogue Without Walls is a spiritual home for politically progressive people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, both local to the Bay Area and throughout the world, incorporating Jewish spiritual wisdom, practices, and rituals. A central theme of Judaism is to heal and repair ourselves and the world. We uplift those parts of our tradition that embody the revolutionary consciousness characterized by love of the stranger, a movement toward freedom and justice, and a critique of imperial power and thinking. The audacity of the Hebrew prophets guides our spiritual and religious practices and mandates us to challenge oppression in all its manifestations.

This is the core of what our founder Rabbi Michael Lerner envisioned when he started Beyt Tikkun in 1996. Rabbi Lerner was mentored by Abraham Joshua Heschel at the Jewish Theological Seminary and received rabbinic ordination from a rabbinic beyt din directed by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of Jewish Renewal. Rabbi Lerner has shaped the religious life of Beyt Tikkun and empowered us to continue his legacy.

Rabbi Lerner’s prophetic vision infuses our liturgy, our rituals, our inclusive, egalitarian, and loving community, our advocacy, and our social action. Through his involvement in social justice work and as a psychologist studying the psycho-dynamics of working people, Rabbi Lerner became deeply aware of the isolation many people experience in their day-to-day lives and recognized the centrality of creating religious communities that nurture its members. At Beyt Tikkun, we strive to co-create the community and the world we want by manifesting love and care for each other,  the stranger, and the planet. We show up for each other and for those in need.

We use traditional liturgy infused with Hasidic joy, spiritual depth, feminist wisdom, and a critical consciousness which allows us to continually innovate while retaining the core of traditional Jewish worship. We support those in Israel and Palestine who seek justice and security for all and an end to the occupation. We are aware that for peace and justice to prevail, we have to challenge the global capitalist ethos of domination, selfishness, and materialism and replace it with a new ethos of love and caring for each other and the planet. Our liturgy, our rituals, our services, and our community embrace this loving and caring ethos.

Rabbi Cat Zavis is an accomplished lawyer, spiritual social justice activist, and visionary leader with over 20 years experience in empathic and people-centered leadership and collaboration. She has served as co-editor of Tikkun magazine and executive director of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, where she has trained over 1,000 people in Prophetic Empathy and Revolutionary Love. To learn more about Rabbi Cat Zavis and listen to her teachings, click here.

As Rabbi Cat Zavis rises to the rabbinic leadership position, we accept the challenge to grow in response to this evolving and challenging era, bringing continued renewal to the expression of our faith and philosophy.

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An offer: Invigorating and empowering individuals

 

Max Dodd is a subscriber who lives in Sydney. Based on work he has done over several years, he is offering free to groups of people and congregational leaders who would like to make worship experiences more personally invigorating and empowering his time and knowledge. He says:

October 2022

Christianity seems so much in decline with falling numbers in congregations of all mainstream denominations.    Too often I fear we are hearing that the problems are insoluble and that we have to accept the situation.

I could not agree less.   While I am well aware of the falling numbers and the aging of those found in the pews on Sundays, I feel that we are too willing to see the situation as irreversible.

What we need to do is again to be clear of what it is we are offering.   For too long churches have offered first class accommodation in some abstraction (post death) of heaven and have been preoccupied with institutional survival for its own sake.   Contemporary people see these issues with astonishment as absurdities of the highest order and pass by on the other side.    We are rarely seen for the leadership of the world and earthly effectiveness or for the invigoration of the spiritual experience to which all teachings of all religions (of both East and West) all point.

I am sure that the solution lies in our discovering that the ultimate truth of existence we are offering is an existential experience of the Greater in our daily lives and the empowerment and invigoration that goes with that experience.   As one whose Sunday morning involves some time in a coffee club which has had a “service of worship” with which to commence, I am so disappointed that what is offered seems so little to have to do with the challenges of life of Monday and their due management.

I wish to be allowed to present to the members of your congregation a vision of spiritual experience that is of the empowerment and invigoration of which I spoke in the preceding paragraph.   Such presentation could take the form of an address to a service or even as a special event.    I would indeed be providing a small book of inspiration to spiritual growth that I call Ambitious Transcendence a series of essays I put together in Europe in 2013.   I shall be happy to make a copy of it available to you.

I am suggesting all of this not as one who is simply wishing “to stir the pot” but as an older and (dare I suggest?) reasonably intelligent citizen whose life experience has been blessed by the development of spiritual wisdom and its most practical application to the day by day adventures of a complete life.

Please do not be offended by my candour.   I am on the same side as you are with the same hopes for the presentation of spiritual wisdom and life-giving encouragement to action.

To examine some of my material go to: Maxwell Dodd

MAXWELL DODD

A Gift of Encouragement

Spooner Dodd Consulting Services

Post Office Box 462

EDGECLIFF    NEW SOUTH WALES     2027

 Telephone: 0410 940 183

 maxdodd23@gmail.com

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A New (Nicene) Creed

Some of our subscribers have been discussing creeds. We thought everyone might like to look at this. Does this raise any questions or reactions?

by Don Welch on May 24, 2013

We believe in God,
the creative force that sustains and
nurtures humanity in ways
beyond our understanding.

We believe that Jesus of Nazareth
embodied the power of this force;
extraordinarily able to grasp its meaning,
he revealed this face of reality to us
in his life and teaching.

Because he was human, like us,
through grace and mercy
he offers us access
to this incomprehensible power.

There are forces in our lives
that assault humanity,
that bring suffering, degradation
and death.
Because of the strength of such forces,
Jesus was rejected and killed.
But death did not silence his voice.

Evil will not eradicate the good that
he showed us, a good that
lives in us and through us.

The power of this creative force
is at work in our lives today.
Our forefathers and mothers
gave witness to this source of life and
goodness in their words and deeds.
We, as members of this community
of faith, will likewise give witness
in our words and deeds.

Secure in our faith, we will fear no evil.
When we falter, goodness and mercy
will rescue us.
Beyond our lives, grace will abound. Amen.

First published in ProgressiveChristianity.org at ProgressiveChristianity.org : Nicene Creed (NEW)

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Recommended Broadcast – Traditionalism

From Dr Ian Brown, Convenor Redcliffe Explorers Group.

Greetings friends,

As with most other groups at the present time, gatherings of the Redcliffe Explorers are in abeyance until we‘re confident that our members, families and friends are shielded from corona virus infection. However, community compliance with physical distancing instructions seems to be having a very positive effect, and it may be possible for us to resume before the end of the year, possibly in September. Let’s hope!

I’m sure we’ve all found plenty to keep us occupied during the ‘lockdown’ period, including listening to some very informative podcasts and television programs. One fascinating (and slightly scary) talk last Saturday may be of interest – it was Geraldine Doogue’s interview with Benjamin Teitelbaum on Traditionalism. Broadcast on ABC Radio Saturday Extra (30/5/20), it can be accessed by clicking on the link below. Teitelbaum is assistant professor of Ethnomusicology and Affiliate Faculty in International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of a recent book War For Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right. He points out that ‘Traditionalism‘ with a capital ‘T’ is not the same as ‘traditionalist’.

(Photo by Patrick Campbell/University of Colorado)
Professor Benjamin Teitelbaum

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/traditionalism-and-steve-bannon-and-others/12288156

Keep safe,

Shalom

Ian

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Religion and Ethics: Rising Tensions in Rome

If you have seen the Oscar-nominated movie The Two Popes, you will know it ends with Francis and his predecessor, Benedict, cheering on their teams, as Argentina and Germany play each other in the soccer world cup.

This fictional account of their relationship is drawing millions of viewers. But in real life there’s widening gulf between the so-called Francis and Benedict factions of the church.

The cause of the latest tension is a new book about compulsory celibacy for priests. Are hard-line traditionalists in the church using the 93-year-old former Pope to undermine Francis and his reforms?

For a video clip from the ABC Religion and Ethics site on this topic, go to The Two Popes.

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Same faith – different perspectives

The Christian Right and Left in USA are driven by the same bible but argue for totally different interpretations.

“While conservative evangelicalism tends to focus on sin, repentance, and salvation, the Christian Left identify Christ’s radical love and inclusion for marginalized people as the locus of their faith. “

The whole article is available at: They couldn’t be more different

CHICAGO, IL – APRIL 14: Marchers, led by Cardinal Blase Cupich, walk through the Englewood neighborhood calling for an end to the violence that has plagued the city on April 14, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. The marchers stopped several times to reflect on the Stations of the Cross and to read out the names of Chicago homicide victims. With 14 homicides so far in 2017, Englewood is one of the most violent neighborhoods in the city. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

“Although some belong to historically conservative denominations, liberal Christians are helping to frame conversations around issues such as environmental action, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s reproductive health, immigration, racial equity, affordable housing, and wealth disparity. “

Is this same set of differences now clearly manifest in the Australian church?

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Personal reflection: ‘Two ways’

Marking NAIDOC Week

While on an extended journey through the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of NW Australia, I have been exploring indigenous spirituality through their amazing art. In particular, I have been ‘captured’by the artists of the Mowanjum people and the work of the noted white artist Mark Norval. Mark and Mary Norval are artists and teachers based in Derby whose lives for four decades have become entwined with those of the Mowanjum community made up of the Worora Wanumbul and Ngarinya tribes. The latter three groups are Wandjima tribes. Theirs is a part of the oldest religion in the world still practiced.

Their supreme spirit being is the Wandjima (see illustration).

Larinywar Spirit Wandjima 1998 Donny Woolagoodja

Only these three tribes see the Wandjima as the true creators of the land. Most of the other aboriginal tribes of Australia believe that the ‘Dream time snake’ or ‘Rainbow Serpent’ was the main creative force.

Mark Dorval, who has dedicated many years to encouraging indigenous artists has explained that some of the people of the Mowanjima believe that these Wandimas control everything that happens on the land, in the sky and in the sea. They created the people, the animals and the baby spirits that reside in the rock pools or sacred places throughout the Kimberleys. I was pleased to procure the following painting by emerging great young artist Tanisha Wungundin-Allies as she put the finishing strokes on her work.

Tanisha has sold over 250 paintings. Quite an achievement for any artist. My painting held by Derby Norval Gallery attendant.

Like most complex cultures, including Christian, opinions differ about creation. In one theme, the people had no laws or kinship until the Wandjima came down from the Milky Way. Until then they were wandering around lost. Familiar? These originals are portrayed in what (white) people call the Bradshaw figures. The ‘big boss’ Wandjima brought many other Wandjima to drive out the evil spirits which were taking ther babies. (The Wandjima had the power of the Rainbow Serpent which slid around everywhere and made all the rivers valleys and mountains. The snake represents Mother Earth.)

So the story continues of how the Wandjima originally painted their own faces and bodies in the caves. Their power is so strong they don’t have to speak. Their eyes are powerful – big and black like a cyclone and the lines around their heads can mean clouds, rain, or lightning.

Today’s artists who are loyal to the cultural tradition (or faith) are obligated to keep the Wandjima happy by continuing to paint them – a tradition that emerged long before the Pyramids of Egypt were contemplated and passed down through hundreds of centuries. The belief in the Wandjima is as strong today as it was for their ancestors.

Many Mowarjim people today follow the ‘two ways’ as a result of the Christian teachings brought to them 90 years ago by Presbyterian missionaries. Most have been able to integrate both cultures to form a unique Mowanjim ‘religion’ in which they believe that God was responsible for creating the Wandjima. Some have discarded the Wandjima altogether and others hold uniquely to the Wandjima spiritual power and shrug off Christianity.

This culture is still evolving as is Christianity. For me this experience has helped to give me greater understanding of the causes for culture clash and an appreciation of people like Mark Norval who give so much of themselves to helping indigenous people grow their wonderful identity and story.

Paul Inglis 14th July 2019.

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A Church for our times

 

 

As a Mission, we provide community based services to Bondi and the Eastern Suburbs. Our goal is to turn good intentions into great action with a large dose of compassion. Our programs are designed to:

Connect people and break down the facelessness of modern urban communities – you care more for the people you know;

Provide a helping hand to those who are struggling in life and a means to get back onto their own path;

Connect people, those wanting or in need, with the opportunity for growth, prosperity, and sense of belonging;

Shepherd our environment and leaving it improved for the next generation.

Chapel by the Sea is a community hub for the exploration of spirituality, justice, community building, creativity and human and eco-solidarity. We are inclusive of all faiths, including agnostics and atheists and all people. We have developed a range of programs and made the Chapel available to other groups with these goals.

The Chapel’s ministry, under the leadership of Rev John Queripel, seeks to promote Jesus as a liberating life-giver. At the heart of Jesus’ ministry is his commitment to the vision of a society where right relations would be present between all people. To that end we work toward justice, peace, harmony and reconciliation with a particular concern for the poor and marginalized both in our community and the world.

Chapel by the Sea celebrates the Christian faith – that God loves us all and entered our world as the man Jesus Christ to bring us forgiveness, joy, hope and peace. We also believe life is to be celebrated as something beautiful and creative. The Chapel service and programs are open to all those interested in building a stronger community and helping others. Our congregation and volunteers share their skills, passions and ideas at our events, community and childcare centres, for which we are truly grateful.

For more information about this UCA congregation go to: Chapel by the Sea

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Opinion: A Basis of (for) Union …. not a Basis of (for) the Uniting Church

THE UNITING CHURCH AND THE DEATH OF NON-CONFORMITY.

John Gunson

In 2017 we celebrated both the 40th Anniversary of the Uniting Church in Australia and the 500th Anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Europe.

These seminal events were worth celebrating, not because they defined forever how we should understand and define the nature of the church and of Christian faith, but because they were declarations of exactly the opposite, namely that “the church” must be under constant reformation.

The very last thing we ought to do is to assume or believe that the so-called “truth” arrived at at a certain point in history is the final truth about either faith or life. The evil and ignorance of such a position is of course best illustrated by the tragedy of Christendom, the approximately 1200 years that preceded the Reformation when Church and State were co-terminus, and when the church decided on what was truth, not only in the religious sphere, but in every human field of knowledge and endeavour, including science and law.

Without the Protestant Reformation the vast advances in human knowledge and well-being that we enjoy today may not have occurred. The “Enlightenment” itself would have been a much greater struggle without this challenge to the church’s control of all truth.

I have no desire to return to the Reformation’s re-definitions of Christian faith and church. They are as dated and imperfect as that which preceded it, which was largely defined by a very flawed, political and academic process which occurred in 325CE under the Roman Emperor Constantine, a definition of Christian faith and expression of church that bears little resemblance (if any) to the foundational events of Christianity in the early decades of the Common era.

The Uniting Church came into being, however, not to reform the churches’ doctrinal positions nor to escape coercive and corrupt leadership and practices, as in the 15th century, but because of an overwhelming ecumenical spirit that saw the scandal of competing denominations of common “free church” or non-conformist origin, and because of a mutually held, and in hindsight naïve and impossible dream of ultimately moving on to greater Christian union with Anglicans and others.

It was precisely this dream that lay behind the Uniting Church’s expression of it’s faith in the “Basis of Union”. Two significant factors guided the expression and content of “The Basis”. The first and most significant was the deliberate calculation that other, especially larger denominations such as the Anglicans, would not take us seriously if we did not, like them, stand under a largely universally accepted definition of faith such as the historic Nicene Creed, which we carefully re-expressed in the Basis of Union.

Second was the purely accidental fact of history that the young “turks” of the three negotiating non-conformist churches (over-represented on the Joint Commission preparing for the union of their respective churches) were largely, if not entirely, the product of a Barthian theological education and who were moving away from their denominational roots to a neo-orthodox theological position. I have to confess that I was one of them at that time, but not myself on the Joint Commission.

Also on the Joint Commission were a number of senior Congregational representatives who were alarmed, both by this step backward to neo-orthodoxy, but equally by any effort to appear to limit the possibilities of a growing, on-going understanding of the truth, or, as some would have put it, the on-going revelation of the Holy Spirit, and the findings of new scholarship.

These insightful representatives of both the Reformation spirit and of their non-conformist heritage, deliberately fought for the inclusion of para. 11 in the Basis of Union, to ensure that that Basis did not in the future restrict the Uniting Church’s ability to respond to new ways that the Holy Spirit might be leading us, and the new discoveries and insights into our origins and our faith that contemporary and future scholarship would inevitably bring us.

The young neo-orthodox “turks” on the Joint Commission would not themselves have introduced para 11. For them the “Basis of Union” was not simply to be the basis on which we came together or united, but the on-going permanent basis of the Uniting Church. So, if they had to bow to the Congregationalist insistence about para 11 it was imperative that it be drafted with sufficient ambiguity to both satisfy the non-conformists, but to allow some of its interpreters 40 years later to misunderstand, and hence misinterpret, the original purpose of its inclusion in the Basis. Fortunately, the uniting document is correctly called the Basis of Union (i.e. the basis on which we agreed to come together), not The Theological Basis of the Uniting Church.

As readers can see, the practical effect of the neo-orthodox majority on the Joint Commission was to reject the foundational principles of reformation of the three non-conformist traditions they were there to represent, in favour of a return to orthodoxy, along with the impossible dream of a return to the bosom of mother church.

So, the Uniting Church, born out of a great ecumenical vision and hope, has effectively managed to deny both the reformation and non-conformist traditions which the three uniting churches had nurtured and expressed for hundreds of years. And it has replaced its ecumenical vision and reforming spirit with a craven desire to be accepted as orthodox by the other branches of the church universal.

Thus the Uniting Church, through some mistaken view that the Holy Spirit has spoken definitively and for all time in 325CE, and fortunately also in the Basis of Union, is afraid to embrace contemporary movements of reform or contemporary scholarship that doesn’t fit with Constantinian or Barthian presuppositions.

There never was only one interpretation of church and gospel until Nicea; and to equate Nicea with the guidance of the Holy Spirit is not only heresy, it is also blasphemy. Diversity, freedom and the necessity of on-going reformation are essential to the Reformation and non-conformist tradition. Since Constantine, uniformity, authority and institutional bureaucracy have been the defining marks of orthodoxy, and are alive and well in the Uniting Church.

It would seem that the Uniting Church has left it too late to reclaim its heritage, especially its Congregational heritage which regrettably was never understood by the other two partners, and has been completely lost in the Uniting Church. But if our church is to have a future it needs to move on from the Basis of Union as para 11 of the Basis encourages it to do.

While the Uniting Church in Australia has many strengths that flow from its greater size and resources, it has failed entirely in its reforming function that its three former denominations once represented in the life of the church at large and the community in which it lives.

Non-conformity is now dead in Australia, and the Uniting Church is moving rapidly towards the same fate.

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