Yes, it is that time of year when observers of many aspects of life create their personal list of the “Ten Best …..”, etc..

In 2018 I had the privilege of watching quite a few movies, but only one was unique in the manner in which it affected my emotions AND my thinking. It is a film that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in current events, ethics, and theology – or any one of those.

This film has been reviewed in The Tyee by Dorothy Woodend.

Two of the paragraphs of Woodend’s review are:

“The temptation to look for an overarching idea or umbrella under which an entire year of films can be collected is something of a fool’s errand. But I am just that fool, and if there was one film that summed up the current moral moment, it was Paul Schrader’s First Reformed.

Schrader, to put it mildly, is an uneven filmmaker. Raised as a strict Calvinist he came late to movies, but went on to pen Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ, and directed American Gigolo. Sure, he has also made a number of horrendous films, but the man has something to say, and his latest, First Reformed, charges full force at religion, corporate malfeasance, environmental collapse and the agonized search for meaning. And I do mean agonized. This isn’t the most fun thing to watch over the holidays, but it is riveting in ways that I did not expect. Made with rigour and purpose, it is also possessed of a seriousness and mystery that’s rare in contemporary cinema.“

The whole, excellent review can be accessed at:

https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2018/12/12/Year-In-Film-First-Reformed/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=121218

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At the most recent gathering of the General Council of the United Church of Canada the topic of racism within the church surfaced as a result of a “powerful” speech given by Rev. Paul Walfall of Edmonton.

Is “the church” listening?

Rev. Paul Douglas Walfall speaks at General Council in Oshawa, Ont. on Friday, July 27, 2018. (Credit: United Church/Flickr/Creative Commons)

The text of his adder to the General Council can be found at:

https://ucobserver.org/columns/2018/07/paul_walfall_general_council/

A subsequent interview with The Observer can be found at:

https://ucobserver.org/interviews/2018/08/paul_douglas_walfall_interview/

On May 24, 2018 The Walrus published an article, with the title above,written by Michael Coren. In it Coren argues that the secular “left”, and “progressive” Christians ought to find common cause ( a “joint enterprise ) and work together.

We can add more beauty and life to this world through cooperation, no?

Some of what Coren writes is:

“There are those on the left who see religion as a distraction from the genuine challenges of poverty, echoing the Marxian notion of faith as the “opiate of the people.” Having watched Christian groups try to restrict the rights and freedoms of lgbtq people, they are angry at religious leaders who support and defend arch-conservative administrations. In return, I offer the vision of a joint enterprise based on the moral agenda we share: a dedication to the social values that liberate the very people to whom Jesus devoted his work and teachings. He came for everybody but certainly seemed to prefer the poor and needy. He came to provoke the complacent and empower the vulnerable. He was never a figure of the status quo.”

For the full commentary from Coren, go to The Walrus at: https://thewalrus.ca/conservatives-dont-own-jesus/

 

Roman Catholic‒United Church Dialogue Releases Report on Climate Change

Published on July 19, 2018

The report explores the spiritual resources of our common tradition for addressing climate change and working for ecological justice. It includes practical, faith-filled suggestions for action to address the ecological crisis of the anthropocene.

The Roman Catholic‒United Church of Canada Dialogue has released a report on climate change entitled The Hope within Us. Since October 2012, the Roman Catholic‒United Church of Canada Dialogue has met eight times to explore our churches’ responses to the ecological crisis, with particular attention to climate change. The report explores the spiritual resources of our common tradition for addressing climate change and working for ecological justice. While not turning away from the real dangers of the ecological crises, the dialogue provides a vision of hope, based on our common Christian faith, that a new relationship between humanity and creation is possible. The report writes:

“So we hold to two poles of a single paradoxical truth. First, Christians have a responsibility to act faithfully even when we see our actions as small and insignificant. Second, our ground for hope is not in ourselves, but in that which comes when we lose hope in our own powers and put our hope in the One through whom all things were made and in whom all things will find their fulfillment. It is a hope that knows resurrection lies beyond death and the tomb. We experience hope not as a secure possession or achievement but as a mysterious gift that we receive more fully as we act upon it.”

In addition, the report addresses fundamental questions such as: What is our theology of creation, of Earth and our place in it, and of the environment and its future? What, in light of our present situation, are the key issues for the churches, today and tomorrow? What, in particular, should our two churches do together and with others? The dialogue marked the areas of consensus found on these important questions, but also noted areas where different emphasis lay, or where further dialogue and understanding are needed. Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home and The United Church of Canada’s faith statement A Song of Faith provided a rich resource for the dialogue and are reflected throughout the report.

The Hope within Us report also includes Earth Hour Vigil, an ecumenical prayer service prepared by the dialogue and offered to our churches, ecumenical partners, and wider networks to promote Earth Hour as a celebration and commitment to compassionate action for creation’s well-being.

The Roman Catholic‒United Church of Canada Dialogue is sponsored by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and The United Church of Canada.

Over 250 clergy and United Church of Canada staff personnel have endorsed a letter to the new Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford. In the letter, the premier is requested to reconsider his stances on refugees, supervised drug injection sites, and the province’s sex-ed curriculum.

Ontario United Church ministers behind a letter to Premier Doug Ford are inviting people to share these graphics. (Credit: OntarioUCCMinisters.org)

The full text of the letter can be found at: https://ontariouccministers.org

In Ontario there’s plenty of controversy over the unilateral decision of the Doug Ford government to revert to the 1998 educational curriculum.

A well-respected minister in the United Church of Canada, Rev. Dr. Cheri DeNovo has written a column in The Observer on this action. The column speaks of the rights of those who are marginalized, and of Christian love and respect for our neighbours.  Part of what Rev. DiNovo writes is as follows:

“Soon, I will be hand-delivering a letter to Premier Doug Ford or Deputy Premier Christine Elliott, a woman I admire and consider a friend, signed by dozens of United Church clergy, asking the premier to exercise compassion and justice on a number of issues, one of them being to protect our children by informing and educating them so that they can protect themselves.“

The whole column can be accessed at: https://ucobserver.org/columns/2018/07/ontario_sex_ed_curriculum_reversal/

 

The following reflection by Jim Taylor is an excellent reflection on how the Bible, and scripture, has been used in the past, and not so recent past, to justify the actions taken by those who have political power. In fact, I too have been guilty of this offence. In the particular case that Taylor is reflecting on, Romans 13:1 was used to justify how a government has incarcerated children.

Beware of politicians quoting Bible verses

By Jim Taylor  – Sunday, June 24, 2018

For a hundred years, the Canadian government took children from their parents and incarcerated them in Indian Residential Schools. For their own good. The feds have since issued apologies. They’ve paid around $5 billion in compensation. And all governments have paid many billions more in welfare, prisons, and social assistance.

In the 1950s, the B.C. government took Doukhobor children away from their families, and locked them up in a prison camp in New Denver. For the children’s own good, of course.

In the 1960s, various governments did the Sixties Scoop. Once again Indigenous children were separated from their parents and placed with white foster families. For their own good, of course.

We’re now reaping a bitter harvest of alcoholism and drug dependency, of depression and suicide, of adults who don’t know how to be parents.

I know about the trauma of foster parenting and adoption personally. My grandson was adopted from Ethiopia. At 11, he’s still working through the after-effects of being torn from his natural family, shipped from orphanage to orphanage, and finally brought to Canada.

Adoption data suggests that if you can adopt during a child’s first year, separation anxiety will fade in two or three years. Separation at two will probably take five years. Separation at seven or eight may never be overcome.

And then the Trump administration set a policy of removing children from parents who enter the United States illegally, and locking the children up in detention centres.

 Can’t we ever learn from past mistakes?

A policy in search of justification

Last Sunday, Father’s Day, William Rivers Pitt wrote that there were already 1,469 children locked into in “an old Walmart outside of Brownsville, Texas… which was given the grimly Orwellian name Casa Padre, or ‘Father’s House’.”

To his credit, the president overruled his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. Children can now stay with their parents. In jail. Sessions had claimed earlier, to a gathering of law officers in Fort Wayne, Texas, that St. Paul himself endorsed strict enforcement of immigration laws — which, by Sessions interpretation, included ripping children from their mothers’ arms. He quoted Paul, in his letter to the Christians in Rome, saying, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities…”

Sessions didn’t get the quotation quite accurate, but that never matters when using the Bible as a back-up authority. Claiming that the Bible says so is usually sufficient.

Collection of mixed messages

 In reality, you can use the Bible to prove almost anything. I have yet to encounter a topic that can’t be defended by quoting some biblical verse.

If you know the right verses, the Bible commends incest, polygamy, betrayal, treason, adultery, civil disobedience, drunkenness, cold-blooded murder, slavery, genocide, and ecocide.

The Bible contradicts itself. The prophet Isaiah had a famous instruction: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks…  Another prophet, Joel, reverses it: “Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears.”

Which one y’ gonna choose?

Two days before Sessions quoted Paul in support of strict immigration enforcement, the Southern Baptist Convention cited Scripture six times for immigration reform.

Once again, which one y’ gonna choose?

Not anyone’s final word

The standard Protestant Bible contains 66 books, written by at least 50 different people –not counting the Psalms, known to have at least 57 more authors — over about 1500 years.

I’m an editor. I have worked with books where multiple authors contributed chapters. It was almost impossible to achieve consistency. Even though they were all writing about the same subject, to the same standards, in the same time period.

Expecting consistency in a text created over 15 centuries is like expecting pigs to do long division.

And don’t quote me the verse that says, “All scripture is inspired by God.” That verse was not written to be part of the Bible; it was a personal letter to a young man named Timothy. When it was written, the only scriptures it could refer to were the Jewish scriptures, which we now condescendingly call the “Old Testament.” The New Testament didn’t get finalized until 367 AD.

But that doesn’t matter to Jeff Sessions.

All that matters is finding a verse he can quote to support his policies, to people who think the Bible is the final word on everything. Even if that policy goes against everything we have learned from family studies, psychology, and post-trauma treatment, and against the message of the Bible as a whole.

Anytime politicians quote the Bible to prove their point, beware!

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Copyright © 2018 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved. To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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