Monday, January 31, 2022

Healing Worship Experience with a Church from my Childhood

 I had a healing experience this weekend.

As most of you probably know, I was raised in a pretty toxic and abusive fundamentalist Christian environment - actually, more than one. Some of this was a result of my father's untreated serious mental illness and some of it was the result of the toxic nature of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity (and, to be honest, religious leadership in any community can exacerbate the narcissistic personality disorder that my father had, but fundamentalism does so in a much more intense and unchecked way). I had already left fundamentalism behind by the time I was in high school.
Last night, I had the desire, which I acted upon, to list all the congregations I've regularly worshiped with in my life. Looking at the list certainly confirms that I've led a "sectually promiscuous" life (an Orthodox rabbinical student at Yeshivat Maharat who is a mutual follow on Twitter, when I used that phrase recently in a tweet, responded by saying, "HOW is sectually promiscuous not your handle?", lol). I also decided to look up the websites of my childhood churches, and was pleasantly surprised by one of them, the First Baptist Church of Jefferson City, Tennessee.
After a couple of disastrous pastorates in the Assemblies of God, around the time I was turning 10, my father decided to return to the Southern Baptist fold, and we joined this church for a few months before he was called to pastor another Southern Baptist congregation. It was larger than most of the churches I was a part of growing up, and the children's programming was decent. To my great surprise, I discovered that while this church is still connected with the Southern Baptist Convention (I gather rather tenuously), their primary affiliation is now the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a more moderate Baptist denomination that came out of the SBC after the fundamentalist takeover. The CBF ordains women and, while not yet fully lgbt-affirming, are grappling with the issue and not reflexively anti-lgbt like the Southern Baptists (with a spectrum of views among Cooperative Baptist congregations). Indeed, this congregation now has a female minister on their staff.
I decided to watch a service last night. Definitely not what my preference is worship-wise these days, but also not what I remember growing up (there was a "hymn of commitment" after the sermon, but the minister who preached said that if anyone wanted to talk to him, to do so after the service or at any time, effectively making this NOT an "altar call" or "invitation"), and the sermon was pretty good and did not express the fundamentalism that I regularly heard growing up - it was a good expository sermon on the incident of Moses and the burning bush - and, frankly, very similar to what I've heard rabbis say in synagogues.
This evening, I remembered that today is actually the fiftieth anniversary of my baptism, which took place in another Southern Baptist church. I decided to watch the recording of this morning's service, and again, had a fairly similar experience. Tonight, the sermon was on the Ten Commandments - he's doing a sermon series "What I Learned from Moses" - I would quibble with a couple of things he said, which I think one might also hear in much more liberal Christian churches, but again, overall, a good sermon.
I'm not going to return to the Baptist fold. I will continue doing what I'm doing religiously (indeed, I attended a Zoom Talmud class this morning and Zoom Bible class this evening, both through the local Orthodox synagogue I attend along with another more liberal synagogue). I'm sure my theology is different from that of the minister.
But it was healing to know that one of the churches I was a member of as a child with my parents has moved on from the toxic fundamentalism in which I was raised and is, from what I can tell, a healthy spiritual environment, and for that I am grateful. And it was something I needed to know on this day.

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

New Chapter

In a little less than an hour, at midnight bringing in July 1, 2021, I will officially retire as the presiding bishop of the Independent Catholic Christian Church (ICCC). The Mission Episcopate of St. Michael, my episcopate, will at that time become an independent ministry, although certainly remaining in cordial fraternal relationship with the ICCC. I will celebrate a couple of more masses in the parish over the next couple of months and consecrate my successor, most likely in September. It is possible, after a year apart, that there may be further ministry collaboration. 

I am feeling drawn toward other ministries, most likely teaching and writing. The next year will a sabbatical year. In fact, the biblical sabbatical year, in which the land rests, the shmita year, will begin on Rosh Hashanah of 5782, which begins on Monday night of Labor Day. This will be a time of rest (well, other than my secular job) and discernment for me as I discern what G!d has in store for me next.

Although I will continue to celebrate the eucharist daily at home, I will be worshiping with two synagogues I have become a non-Jewish member of - the Society Hill Synagogue and the South Philadelphia Shtiebel. They have welcomed with open arms over the last couple of years and I know that those are the places I am meant to be right now.

I am grateful for the over 19 years with the ICCC and pray that they have many blessings as they, too, discern their next steps. I appreciate your prayers. 




Monday, April 27, 2020

My First Theological Disagreement with My Parents


I was raised in a particular theological framework, which taught that all people above the “age of accountability” (not a specific age per se, but rather the age at which a child is aware of right and wrong and can be held responsible for sin – those who never develop the mental capacity for this being considered infants for theological purposes) have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, as it states in Romans 3:23, and have therefore merited eternal damnation in the literal fires of hell – or, more precisely, the lake of fire, which is worse than hell, hell being the jail before the white throne judgement at which the sentence to the eternal prison of the lake of fire is given. It was often taught and preached that all sins are equally bad, because every sin is an affront to God, and none is worse or less offensive than another. The only way to escape hell/the lake of fire is to be saved, to be born again, to ask and trust Jesus to forgive one’s sins, believing in his resurrection and publicly confessing him as lord and savior.

My father, having narcissistic personality disorder and getting into arguments with the board of deacons of his church when I was between the ages of 10 and 12, subconsciously got back at them by preaching publicly that many people – including some deacons and Sunday school teachers – thought they were saved/born again but really weren’t and, when they died, would “split hell wide open” – a favorite frequent phrase of my father’s. And he preached this on Sunday and Wednesday nights, the services that the devout attended. Those who only came on Sunday morning could easily be seen as lost (the term for the unsaved) – but that those who came on Sunday and Wednesday nights as well might go to hell was a testament to the seriousness of the sins churchgoers committed.

Of course, there was only one person who was “convicted” by such preaching and worried about his own salvation and who therefore came down the aisle during the invitation during one of the 57 verses of Just As I Am – and that was me. My father was clearly surprised, and you could tell I wasn’t the one he was trying to get down the aisle – my mother tried to convince me there was nothing to worry about, while my father encouraged my doubts and tearful prayers, but also said those who worried about their salvation were the ones who really were saved – it was the complacent who didn’t worry about it who were actually damned.

Sometime after that I came down the aisle again, at age 10 (we were in that particular congregation when I was between ages 10 and 12) – this time not in tears doubting my salvation, but “surrendering to the call to preach”, ready to dedicate myself to be a preacher and maybe a foreign missionary. An elderly deacon died not long after that, and as we were on the church steps waiting for the coffin to be taken out of the church, I remember telling my mother and another woman in the church that I knew how I wanted to die – my mother nervously said “you want to be raptured, right?” – but no, I wanted to martyred in a foreign land, killed for the faith of Christ as had been the Southern Baptist missionary Bill Wallace whose biography I had read from the church library for a foreign missions book challenge the church held. I have no idea what the other woman thought of this exchange.

Around this time, I got a Gideon New Testament with the plan of salvation – and I marked it up with the scriptures that one could use to lead someone to Christ – and began haranguing my classmates, er I mean witnessing to them about the necessity of salvation. (I was 11 by this point, as I remember being in sixth grade with a teacher who had been a football coach who dipped snuff in front of the class, spitting the tobacco juice into a coffee cup.) I think I convinced one classmate to go through the process – I doubt that it had any lasting effect, but some of the older boys in my Royal Ambassadors group (the youth group for boys in Southern Baptist churches) commended me for this “soulwinning” success.

So it is against this theological backdrop that I started thinking about the death penalty and how it was a horrifying injustice, because there might always be some hope, however slim, that a convicted murderer or the like might nonetheless find his way to repentance and be saved. Given that our whole life was devoted to the task of saving as many people as possible from the horrors of eternal conscious torment in hell/lake of fire, it made sense to me that the death penalty was completely at odds with the gospel (as I understood it from my parents) and that therefore Christians should want to abolish it. If God had mercy on us enough to send his Son Jesus Christ to die a horrible death on the cross as an atonement for our sins, then surely the least we could do is do everything in our power to bring everyone, including prisoners, to salvation.

I vividly remember being in the back seat of the car with my parents when we went shopping, and I told them this – and was shocked at the reaction. My father started railing about how horrible murderers and child molesters were and that if someone were to attack me he would absolutely kill them (oblivious to the difference between acting in self-defense and someone in prison for life). My mother agreed with my father. And they saw my views as an attack on the “biblical” mandate of capital punishment. I could not understand the absolute thwarting of any possibility of salvation that the death penalty would impose – and the cognitive dissonance between my parents’ teaching of the utter gratitude we, as miserable sinners, ought to feel at the salvation we received although utterly unworthy – and the rejection of giving that mercy to others. I also did not understand how, in one context, all sins were the same, yet in another context they were not. I don’t know that I made the connection at the time, but Jesus told the parable about a servant who was forgiven a large debt by his master who then refused to show mercy and forgive a much smaller debt owed the servant by another servant – when the master learned of this, he turned the servant over to the tormentors – we studied this parable in “Training Union”, a  Baptist Sunday evening version of Sunday school – we even acted it out, and a girl in the class wanted to be a “tormentor”, which made the teacher laugh because it was obvious she didn’t know what the word meant.

They did not convince me – and this was the beginning of my move away from their theology. That someone could be sent to hell, God’s hands completely tied because of the sinful behavior of his Christian followers, seemed to me to be utterly unjust – and ultimately this began my road to a universalist theology.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

My Response to Draft Dodger Trump's anti-Trans Tirade

The Independent Catholic Christian Church stands in solidarity with the trans community.  We baptize trans people, we welcome trans people to the table to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we ordain trans people, we marry trans people.  Trans people baptize us, trans priests celebrate the Eucharist for us, trans bishops ordain us, trans priests absolve our sins and anoint us for the healing of our sickness.  We are enriched by the gifts of those who are trans.  We call on other parts of society to join us in this welcome, and call those who exclude trans people to repent of their sin of hatred and exclusion.


Tuesday, June 27, 2017

My response to the Chicago Dyke March's Ugly Anti-Semitism

I am a gay man and a Christian clergyperson in a fully lgbt-accepting church. My church often has a table at Pride festivals. I wear a clerical collar to these events -- and a rainbow lei over it to make certain people know I am there in support and not in condemnation. We give out rosaries (with crosses on the end) and gospels of John. I can assure you that many lgbt people raised in antigay Christian homes find clerical collars, rosaries, and scriptures triggering. Yet I've never been asked to leave. I've been welcomed -- even by people who come by to say that have left the church and are never coming back, but are grateful there are those of us willing to work for change. If my clerical collar, rosaries, and scriptures can be welcome in this space, there is NO LEGITIMATE REASON OF ANY KIND for the Star of David to be rejected. The Central Conference of American Rabbis is the largest rabbinical organization in the world -- a couple of years back, they elected a lesbian rabbi as their president. That's sort of analagous to the Roman Catholic Church electing a lesbian pope. Even the Unitarian Universalists just elected their first female president this week, and have yet to elect an lgbt president. For the Dyke March to aggressively attack a religion that has done so much for the lgbt community is beyond repulsive. I hope the mainstream lgbt community will do our best to embrace the values of inclusion and diversity that the organizers of the Dyke March hold in contempt.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Proposal for a Flexible Form of the Office - Part I, Section B

Part I:  Psalter
Section B:  Weekly Psalter without repetition

For the weekly Psalter scheme that mostly eliminates repetition, this is what I propose.  I actually have two sub-options – one that would preserve the practice of eight offices a day, and one that would reduce the number to five, with one day office replacing Prime, Terce, Sext, and None (in the tradition of some Anglican orders, I will call this Diurnum). 

Since Matins and Vespers do not include repetition (other than the Invitatory Psalm 95), I have left these untouched.  For Lauds, I have used one of the repeating Psalms for each weekday, with the unique daily Psalm, using 51 for Fridays.  For Compline, I use the longest Psalm, 91, for Sunday, with the other three used successively on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and again on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

For the eight-office option, Prime has the daily Psalm (with 54 on Saturday, which has no daily Psalm) and 119 is distributed among Terce, Sext, and None.  For the five-office option, Psalm 119 is included with the Prime option for the one office of Diurnum. 

Here is the scheme in full:

MORNING:

Matins:
Daily:  Invitatory: 95
Sunday: First Nocturn:  1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9-10 (one Psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate), 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Second Nocturn:  16, 17, 18
Third Nocturn:  19, 20, 21
Monday: 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38
Tuesday: 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52
Wednesday: 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 68
Thursday:  69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80
Friday: 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 94, 96, 97
Saturday: 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109

Lauds:
Sunday:  93, 100 – during Pre-Lent and Lent, 51 and 118 are recited instead
Monday: 5, 63
Tuesday: 43, 67
Wednesday: 65, 148
Thursday: 90, 149
Friday: 51, 143
Saturday: 92, 150

DAY OFFICE OPTION A:

Prime:
Sunday:  118 (except Pre-Lent and Lent, 93 & 100 recited instead), Athanasian Creed recited as last Psalm (this was superseded on certain Sundays – however, I would require it every Sunday as part of the weekly Psalter recitation)
Monday: 24
Tuesday: 25
Wednesday: 26
Thursday: 23
Friday: 22
Saturday: 54

Terce:
Sunday: 119:1-8
Monday:  119:33-40
Tuesday:  119:57-64
Wednesday:  119:81-88
Thursday:  119:105-112
Friday:  119:129-136
Saturday:  119:153-160

Sext:
Sunday:  119:9-16
Monday:  119:41-48
Tuesday:  119:65-72
Wednesday:  119:89-96
Thursday:  119:113-120
Friday:  119:137-144
Saturday:  119:161-168

None:
Sunday:  119:17-32 (two sections instead of the usual one)
Monday:  119:49-56
Tuesday:  119:73-80
Wednesday:  119:97-104
Thursday:  119:121-128
Friday:  119:145-152
Saturday:  119:169-176

DAY OFFICE OPTION B:

Diurnum (replaces Prime, Terce, Sext, None)
Sunday:  118 (except Pre-Lent and Lent, 93 & 100 recited instead), 119: 1-32, Athanasian Creed recited as last Psalm (this was superseded on certain Sundays – however, I would require it every Sunday as part of the weekly Psalter recitation)
Monday: 24, 119:33-56
Tuesday: 25, 119:57-80
Wednesday: 26, 119:81-104
Thursday: 23, 119:105-128
Friday: 22, 119:129-152
Saturday: 54, 119:153-176

EVENING:

Vespers:
Sunday:  110, 111, 112, 113, 114-115 (one psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate)
Monday: 116:1-9 (separate psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate, verse division as in Hebrew), 116:10-19 (separate psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate, verse division as in Hebrew), 117, 120, 121
Tuesday: 122, 123, 124, 125, 126
Wednesday:  127, 128, 129, 130, 131
Thursday: 132, 133, 135, 136, 137
Friday: 138, 139, 140, 141, 142
Saturday: 144, 145, 146, 147:1-11(separate psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate, verse division as in Hebrew), 147:12-20 (separate psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate, verse division as in Hebrew).

Compline:
Sunday:  91
Monday:  4
Tuesday:  31:2-6 (Hebrew verse numbers)
Wednesday:  134
Thursday:  4
Friday:  31:2-6 (Hebrew verse numbers)
Saturday:  134


Monday, August 15, 2016

Proposal for a Flexible Form of the Office - Part I, Section A

Part I:  Psalter
Section A:  The Psalter Scheme that serves as the Basis for all Psalter Scheme Options

The jurisdiction I serve has as one of its hallmarks "liturgical diversity", meaning that a wide variety of liturgical rites are in use.  The great thing about this is that people have the freedom to draw upon the vast and varied riches of liturgical tradition to find what is most meaningful for them. The disadvantage, as our seminarians have complained, is that different people will be praying different psalms in the Office on a given day, and in other ways the mythical "unity" (really uniformity, not unity) that the Office supposedly has had will not exist.  (I say this because there was always more diversity than realized – the monastic Office has a different Psalm scheme than the secular Office did, for example, although there were some commonalities.)

Another disadvantage is that not all versions of the Office are created equal.  Ideally, the Psalms should be prayed through regularly, Scripture read through regularly, and substantial prayer be offered.  Not all versions of the Office do these things equally well.

I have no intention of imposing one version of the Office, or allowing it to be imposed.  But if I were to come up with a common breviary, this is how I'd go about it.

First, the Psalms.  Ideally, these would be said weekly, keeping Psalms whole (with the exception of Psalm 119, the longest, which has 22 natural sections of 8 verses apiece, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is distributed over the Prime, Terce, Sext, and None, and of the small portion of Psalm 31 recited at Compline, which doesn't really "count" since the complete Psalm 31 is recited at Matins on Mondays), and repeating some of the Psalms daily or near-daily.  The pre-1911 secular Roman breviary does this (with the caveat that the whole Psalms are according to the Septuagint/Vulgate division, not the Hebrew division).  The monastic Office eliminates the integrity of keeping Psalms whole, and splits Psalm 145 between Vespers on Friday and Saturday, as well as having a number of Psalms split within an Office, with multiple antiphons.  The 1911 Office eliminates all weekly repetition other than feast days, Psalm 95 as the Invitatory, and Psalm 51 in Lauds on penitential days.

Of course, living in the modern world with a full-time job and often a family makes the weekly Psalter all but impossible.  The Book of Common Prayer, beginning in 1549, has divided the Psalter into 60 sections, one for Morning and Evening Prayer for each day of the month.  (Unfortunately, recent BCP's have come up with new schemes that have even less recitation of the Psalms, such as the 1943 American lectionary option for the 1928 BCP that omits some Psalms entirely, and the seven-week scheme in the 1979 BCP.)  The Liturgy of the Hours produced by the Roman denomination after Vatican II has a four-week scheme that unfortunately omits 3 psalms entirely as well as verses of other Psalms.  And, unfortunately, many now say only Lauds and Vespers, thus leaving out many of the Psalms.  It does retain a nod to repetition with some weekly repetition of a few Psalms.

The Monastic psalter does have a lot of commonalities with the pre-1911 Secular scheme (many liturgical scholars believe the latter is older, and that the Monastic scheme was essentially a revision of it).  However, the 1911 scheme only retains a few similarities, particularly on Sundays and feast days, and the same could be said of the Liturgy of the Hours.  The BCP scheme has nothing in common with the Roman schemes.  Thus, those using these different Psalm schemes are not saying Psalms in common.

The idea of making a flexible Psalm scheme has been tried before, in at least one place.  Oxford University Press put out the Monastic Diurnal for the use of Anglican religious communities and edited by Canon Winfred Douglas.  This followed the Monastic use, but using the Book of Common Prayer and King James Bible translations.  It contained the texts for all of the offices except Matins. Canon Douglas later produced the Monastic Diurnal Noted, which contained plainchant melodies for the texts in the Monastic Diurnal, and an Anglican community of women put out Monastic Matins, containing Matins to complement the Diurnal.  All of these books have been reprinted by Lancelot Andrewes Press.  In the mid-1960's, another version of Monastic Matins was produced that divided the Matins psalms into a four-week scheme.  Each day's Matins traditionally has 12 psalms in the Monastic scheme, and this version put 3 psalms from each day for a particular week – so the first three sections of Monday's psalms would be for week 1, the second three for week 2, and so on.

I would propose doing something similar with the pre-1911 Secular scheme.  I would have four general options:  the scheme as it stands – weekly with quite a bit of repetition, a weekly scheme without repetition, a two-week version, and a four-week version.  Everyone doing the first three would automatically, as part of that, be doing the psalms done in the four-week version, thus ensuring that there would be common palms done on a daily basis by everyone.  Within the two- and four-week options, I would have further options to do two offices a day or more – the daily psalms in the general option would be done, but the number of offices they are distributed among would differ based on whether only two offices are recited or more.  (Even within the weekly non-repeating scheme, fewer than eight offices could be an option.)

In the pre-1911 and Monastic offices, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and Compline have mostly fixed Psalms each day (with a little variation in Lauds and Prime, and in the Monastic Office, Terce, Sext, and None as well), while Matins and Vespers have a lot of variation, the majority of the Psalms being recited in these two offices.  Of course, on double feasts, the scheme is interrupted, and as time went on, more and more feasts became doubles, doing increasing violence to the weekly Psalter scheme.  One of the commendable reforms of 1911's Divino Afflatu was to direct that most doubles would use the weekday Psalter, with the exception of first- and second-class doubles and some greater doubles.  I would be tempted to suppress the use of feast day Psalter schemes (with the antiphons providing the needed material for celebrating the feast day), and would, at the very least, strictly limit their use.

More specifically, here is the pre-1911 scheme. (All Psalms are given in the Hebrew numbering.)

Matins:
Daily:  Invitatory: 95
Sunday: First Nocturn:  1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9-10 (one Psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate), 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Second Nocturn:  16, 17, 18
Third Nocturn:  19, 20, 21
Monday: 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38
Tuesday: 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52
Wednesday: 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 68
Thursday:  69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80
Friday: 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 94, 96, 97
Saturday: 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109

Lauds:
Daily:  51 (except Sundays outside of Pre-Lent and Lent), daily psalm, 63, 67, daily Old Testament canticle, 148, 149, 150 (the last three are recited as one psalm under one Gloria and antiphon)
Daily Psalm:
Sunday:  93 (in place of 51), 100 – during Pre-Lent and Lent, 51 and 118 are recited instead
Monday: 5
Tuesday: 43
Wednesday: 65
Thursday: 90
Friday: 143
Saturday: 92

(I will address the daily Old Testament canticles in another post.)

Prime:
54, daily psalm, 119:1-16, 119:17-32
Daily Psalm:
Sunday:  118 (except Pre-Lent and Lent, 93 & 100 recited instead), Athanasian Creed recited as last Psalm (this was superseded on certain Sundays – however, I would require it every Sunday as part of the weekly Psalter recitation)
Monday: 24
Tuesday: 25
Wednesday: 26
Thursday: 23
Friday: 22
Saturday: none
Note:  some maintain that, prior to the post-Trent reform of the office, psalms 22 -26 were recited daily, rather than distributed through the week – if anyone were to prefer that option, that would be acceptable

Terce:
119:33-48, 119:49-64, 119:65-80

Sext:
119:81-96, 119:97-112, 119:113-128

None:
119:129-144, 119:145-160, 119:161-176

Vespers:
Sunday:  110, 111, 112, 113, 114-115 (one psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate)
Monday: 116:1-9 (separate psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate, verse division as in Hebrew), 116:10-19 (separate psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate, verse division as in Hebrew), 117, 120, 121
Tuesday: 122, 123, 124, 125, 126
Wednesday:  127, 128, 129, 130, 131
Thursday: 132, 133, 135, 136, 137
Friday: 138, 139, 140, 141, 142
Saturday: 144, 145, 146, 147:1-11(separate psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate, verse division as in Hebrew), 147:12-20 (separate psalm in Septuagint/Vulgate, verse division as in Hebrew).

Compline:

Daily: 4, 31:2-6 (Hebrew verse numbers), 91, 134

Note:  The next posts in this series will present the modified options for non-repeating weekly, biweekly, and four-week recitations of the Psalter, as well as the Scripture lectionary question and prayers.