CyberGroup Discussion - Spiritual Innovators

	Each of the ClickToSee websites below opens in a new window. When done, close new window to return to this page.	Quotations
		Background Essay
	The Paula Gordon Show. An online summary of this broadcasters work including video clips and considerable text. Of the hundreds of people she has interviewed on site there are 32 under the subject of "spirit". Her interview of Robert Funk is an objective summary in 6 Conversations of his life and views. You may want to revisit her site often.
	The Jesus Seminar Forum at Rutgers University. A "bridge to Jesus scholarship on line."
	The Westar Institute. The home of the Jesus Seminar and the base of operations for Robert Funk, its founder.
	From Grace Cathedral (Episcopal) in San Francisco, "Honest to Jesus: A Conversation with Author Robert Funk" in real audio. Highly recommended. 41 minutes.
	A countervailing opinion from Duke University. It is not only the evangelicals that disagree with Jesus Seminar, it is also the conservative mainstream of the Christian Church. Here is a tempered and reasoned criticism.
	Religious Tolerance.org This organization in Ontario has an excellent and objective page on these matters, looking squarely at the propositions of the Jesus Seminar and why some think differently.
	HODOS is a Greek term (meaning "way" or "path") used by early Christians to identify themselves as followers of the vision taught by Jesus of Galilee. This egroup aims to be a cyber community where people can be intentional in shaping their lives by the wisdom and the practice of the historical Jesus. Drawing on the work of contemporary Jesus studies, as well as other traditional and modern sources, participants encourage one another in exploring, developing and sustaining ways of life that are shaped by the wisdom of the Galilean sage. The only requirement for participation is a genuine interest in these goals and processes. These folk (also on Yahoo) are an eclectic ecuemenical community that support and debate Funk's work. Drop in and listen once in a while.

Quotations

"The Judeo-Christian world is a special case of the basic mythic story people have lived by for four thousand years. The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution collapsed that cosmic shelter. Science is revealing an open-ended universe with an oncoming future, unknown and unknowable, not fixed or predetermined. That’s exciting! And challenging. We have internal compasses we can trust when we choose to be honest, give up lying and dissembling. That’s hard. But we’re not without moral anchors, from across the ages, guides to whom we can turn for guidance. The real Jesus is just such a person, a social critic, dissident and sage.”

"It is time for us [scholars] to quit the library and study and speak up . . . . The Jesus Seminar is a clarion call to enlightenment. It is for those who prefer facts to fancies, history to histrionics, science to superstition"

"The gospels are now assumed to be narratives in which the memory of Jesus is embellished by mythic elements that express the church's faith in him, and by plausible fictions that enhance the telling of the gospel story for first-century listeners"

"I know many of the theological leaders of the churches, and I know they're at sea, as all of us are. We're about to cross a watershed of enormous significance. What's on the other side is difficult to say."

"Together we are at risk before the mysteries of life. The quest for the historical Jesus is a small piece of that great adventure. Minor though it may be, it requires the same devotion to truth as all our other pursuits, the resolute willingness to confront the facts, and the unblinking determination to tell all. In other words, it demands that we be honest to Jesus."

The Context of the Story of Robert Funk by Jock McTavish

The story of Robert Funk is the story of The Jesus Seminar. The Jesus Seminar is a very particular child of our time and very much the child of Robert Funk.

There has been over the last century a curious phenomena in Christian Academy. The education of the the Christian ministry and priesthood has kept up fairly well with other disciplines of the university in embracing modern ideas. Knowledge and debate have been open and active and vital. Theological Debate, Biblical Criticism, Archeological Discovery, Ecuemenical Dialogue, a Changed Understanding of Missionary Purpose, have been taught to each generation of ministers and priests. But for a variety of reasons an astounding thing has been happening for a hundred years - when they graduated, they did not speak from their pulpits of these matters. So the church membership were left with essentially a medieval level of religious understanding as they tried to cope with a modern world day to day. This is not the least of reasons why so many have dropped away from religion.

Robert Funk's reaction to this after a life in the parish, the seminary and finally the secular university was grief and disillusionment. Yet he found in this grief a challenge that led to his founding the Westar Institute. He saw a great need to address the "pervasive religious illiteracy that blinds and intimidates ... those in positions of authority in the church and in our society." He felt a "profound public ignorance" of the gospels and of Jesus and so identified his first project - the Jesus Seminar. He then enlisted a host of scholars with similar view. Now this was par for the course. Every seminary has such a school, such a project, such a spirit. But Robert Funk was a modern man so he adopted media smart ways of letting the world know of this work. If the seminaries wouldn't spark their students, and if the churches wouldn't be influenced by it's theologians, why then Westar would market the work and publicize new ideas directly to the public.

The work became rather famous (infamous in some circules). 30 Scholars and 200 Fellows (specialists) participated in the work of evaluating which might be the true words of Jesus, in the light of modern biblical scholarship. The issue was this. Most people Christians and non-Christians alike take the gospels quite literally as an historical record. So the "words" of Jesus are just exactly that. But scholarship has for a century in an increasingly intense focus learned to differentiate the gospels and these words and to understand the context of the many parts. It is not a matter as many think of truth and error, but of the most complex manner whereby society records its story.

The methods adopted were progressive, collaborative, ecuemenical and cumulative and always in the public eye. In these ways he brought to many, a new sense of exitement. That the Jesus Seminar did their work in a public way and reported to the public and to no church authority is unique. Finally the bushel was lifted from the lamp of understanding and all could see the light. Theological matters long held from church members were now on the shelves of regular book sellers and in full review at Amazon.com.

The first project of the Words of Jesus was completed with the publishing of "The Five Gospels: the search for the authentic words of Jesus" in 1993. The second project of the Deeds of Jesus was completed with the publishing of "The Acts of Jesus: the search for the authentic deeds" in 1998. Current projects are the Paul Seminar, the Canon Seminar and the Acts Seminar.

Robert Funk continues to be the teacher. He tours and speaks and writes. The spirit that has sustained him continues in his seventies to uplift and encourage him. There is a link above to the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco where a 41 minute interview is on-line in audio format. It is well worth the listen. The spoken word carries an element of conviction that printed words lack. And when he speaks of a coming reformation that will make Luther's reformation a minor affair, one wonders if it might be so.

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