The Heart of Christianity

Section Internet Links	Wayne's Notes	Jock"s Notes	Back to Index
Wayne's Notes. A. Opening Perspective As our opening devotional suggested (William Safire article: TsunamiDisaster - Where Was God? NYTimes, January 10th, 2005) we are committed tobiblical scholarship helping us to refine and grow our faith. To honest and intensive questionning, in a place of freedom to express our ideas without fear of reprimand and ridicule. We have been doing these studies for quite a few years, and always look forward to a new book and a new group. Thanks for participating this time! Over the past number of years, we have recognized as one of the key characteristics of our adult studies a keen attention to the theme of ³Holy Manners.² We have made some effort to describe, in previous introductions, what we mean by that term. Jock borrowed the ³Holy Manners² theme from a presentation by Marion Pardy, a former moderator of the United Church of Canada. She advocated it as the way people in the church should engage each other in all that we do. We try to apply ³Holy Manners² to our adult studies (see the heading of our course on the website for background information). Tonight, I would like to present this simple design as a way of focusing our class theme: HOLY Manners Meanings from the Heart of Faith Moments It is our hope that - as we engage Marcus Borg¹s The Heart of Christianity for people who are no longer satisfied with an earlier faith and seek to struggle creatively with an emerging faith, suitable for your life today - we will do so in a spirit of holy manners hoping to locate some holy meanings from the Heart of Faith that come to us through serendipitous holy moments along the way. B. Holy Manners Guidelines: (combining insights from Pardy and others) 1. We want to keep God at the centre of all we do. 2. We wish to encourage the full and equitable involvement of all participating. 3. We hope to listen carefully to each other without interruption. 4. We like it when people venture to share what it important to them. 5. We welcome the conflict of ideas as a natural outcome of the engagement. 6. We would like participants to anticipate and expect ³ah ha² moments along the way. C. Heart of Christianity Course Goals: 1. To become familiar with key ideas from Marcus Borg in his book The Heart of Christianity 2. To discuss, debate, learn together and support one another in a community that practices authentic hospitality, holy manners and relational learning 3. To distinguish between two responses to faith; an earlier and an emerging paradigm (idea context or gestalt) to help us discern what is helpful and a hindrance. 4. To integrate a personal spirituality with a workable faith in a church context (hoping to have important ³ah ha² moments of discovery by developing ³a theology that fits²). 5. To combine focused content sessions with group discussion (plenary and small groups). 6. To see all this as part of a personal process of life-long learning and growth in faith. D. Purpose of the Book (xi-xv, 17): The Heart of Christianity seeks to describe the emerging way of seeing Christianity. It is written primarily for people for whom the earlier visiion of Christianity no longer works but who would still like to be part of the church. In a time of change and conflict within the church, what is the heart of Christianity? What is most central to an authentic Christianity and Christian life today? This book seeks to build bridges of understanding and is committed to exploring the differences between the earlier and emerging paradigms. The author subcribes to the theory that there is no single right way of understanding Christianity and single right way of being Christian. Each of us has a responsibility to develop a personal faith and to be able to give a worthy account of it. E. Characteristics of this Course: 1. The book focuses on how an intelligent, perceptive Christian evolved from using an ³early faith paradigm³ to what Marcus Borg calls an ³emerging paradigm³. We want to keep asking ourselves and each other ³how does what I am learning apply to my life?³ 2. The author is essentially a theological peacemaker. He seeks, wherever he can do so with integrity, to build bridges of respect and understanding between people who follow early and emerging faith paradigms. He believes that healthy debate between advocates of both paradigms is essential for growth in faith. 3. We believe, with Borg, that God provides teachers and mentors to help us find the way when the faith struggle grows difficult. 4. While the book is written by a liberal American academic, with roots in the Dakotas and a teacher for many years on the Pacific coast, our task is to apply his wisdom to our own particular lives and Christian communities. 5. Notes, quotes and more extensive resource links from our presentations and class input will be posted to the website so people can keep up with what is going on here. Use of the Faith Futures Material from Australia and the U of C Fall University faculty/staff course learnings.
Jock's Notes. MORE.- The theme of this new study, that Marcus Borg introduces is that we can rediscover faith in what we have known, but we need a little MORE. The heart of Christianity is larger than any of us. And it includes MORE than we imagined. The new develops from what has gone before. Religion at its core is for many people first about belief. Discussion often becomes dispute over creedal specifics - a list of absolutely necessary commitments - a list of truths. The "earlier paradigm". In my own spiritual journey, I seem to have crossed a river without a bridge. The sides of this river have been called: conservative and liberal, traditional and progressive. But this hasn't helped much - it's been like a football match with each side hollering for its own side and insulting the other. In Borg's terms they are "an earlier vision and an emerging vision of Christianity". I like the clarity and dynamic of that metaphor. And with Holy Manners again being our guideline, I hope we become better at bridge-building. I have gradually come to the understanding that these perspectives are capable of being not alternative but complementary views. I have not abandoned the old as I have embraced the new. I just believe in MORE. Two poets illuminate this for me best. TS Elliott in "Little Gidding" said this: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. and the 13th century Muslim Sufi poet Rumi said this in his "Elephant in the Dark": Some Hindus have an elephant to show. No one here has ever seen an elephant. They bring it at night to a dark room. One by one, we go in the dark and come out saying how we experience the animal.. One of us happens to touch the trunk. "A water-pipe kind of creature." Another, the ear. "A very strong, always moving back and forth, fan-animal." Another, the leg. "I find it still, like a column on a temple." Another touches the curved back. "A leathery throne." Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk. "A rounded sword made of porcelain." He's proud of his description. Each of us touches one place and understands the whole in that way. The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant. If each of us held a candle there, and if we went in together, we could see it. So I came to see truth not as exclusive, but as complementary. I came to see the truths I was raised with not as false, but as a basis of further truth. I came to believe in MORE. For me, religious study is not unlike scientific study. I work in high tech. I have had to learn in the world, rather than school so I learned what was needed to explain what was encountered. The vast majority of the folks in my working world neither know nor want to know the theory behind what they do, except beyond the most rudimentary aspects. This is a very successful and efficient strategy for most situations. But for a fraction of the time, an understanding that is orders of magnitude greater is required to understand the problem at hand. Most of the time simple algebra and trigonometry is sufficient. But sometimes statistics and calculus are the only way to deal with an engineering problem. MORE. It seems so also in religious study. The vast majority of people find no difficulty in their faith in taking the scriptures in a slightly flexible but literal fashion. This has stood for 2000 years! It is a successful and efficient strategy for most situations. In times past, those that found MORE have had to be secret in order to survive. We are a fortunate generation. We are free to speak, to gather, to act. Scholarship abounds and information flows freely. There are many within the Christian community responding to the offer of MORE. Borg's special genius is that he says remarkable things without leaving a trail of controversy behind him. This success is partly due to his respect for both old and new. He is offering us MORE.

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