Sarah and Hagar: Now This Is an Allegory

Reference Texts: Genesis 16:1-11; Galatians 4:22-28

On the Importance of the Ishmael Story to Metaphysical Interpretation

When thinking about the Hebrew Patriarchs, which people seldom do these days, probably one of the last persons to pop into mind would be Abraham’s first-born son, Ishmael. In fact, when I teach the Hebrew Scriptures, people sometimes wonder if Ishmael really was a patriarch. After all, he doesn’t make the New Testament; he’s AWOL from the list of heroes in Hebrews 11 and is certainly not listed in the genealogies of Jesus by either Matthew or Luke. Ishmael’s fifteen minutes of fame comes from the twenty by-name references to him in the Hebrew Bible, mostly in Genesis. Although fourteen years older than his half-brother Isaac, Ishmael is not fated to inherit Abraham’s wealth or position. Not surprisingly, Ishmael utters not a word of dialogue, and during in his greatest scene in Genesis 21, he is not even called by name.
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And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, "What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him. [1]

("The boy"? That's racist, Lord!) Then, in the middle of the Abraham-Isaac story, Ishmael is discarded like a secondary character in a suspense thriller. We are sympathetic, but he’s expendable. Obviously, the biblical writers and editors needed to include Ishmael, but centuries later the Hebrew authors of Genesis were still not inclined to give him their blessing even if the story made the lad a sympathetic figure. As Abraham’s eldest son, Ishmael remained a threat to Isaac’s supremacy, despite the fact that these tales of national origins were clearly legendary.

This enigmatic patriarch has always intrigued me, especially because the Ishmael-Isaac rift lingers in headline news today. In this brief essay, I will explore the historical-critical significance of Ishmael and apply some of those insights to develop a metaphysical interpretation of the first Arab. As a by-product of the process, we'll see how Ishmael provides a biblical imprimatur for the practice of metaphysical interpretation of the scripture.

FIRSTBORN
Abram’s concern for his advancing years and Sarai’s aged bareness was more than a tale of two fruitless old people. In the ancient world, children were everything. They guaranteed the continuation of the bloodline, kept the family property from falling into the hands of strangers or the government, and provided the only possible shelter for old age and retirement. Having children also made it possible for artisans to pass on their skills to the next generation. In an era before public schools and trade unions, the importance for the wider community of this educative function within the family cannot be overestimated. If the village blacksmith had no sons, the next generation would have no blacksmiths.

Leadership in ancient social systems came almost exclusively from the descendents of the most powerful men in society. This was actually an efficient system to maintain public order before the rise of modern democratic governments. Without a clear line of succession, ambitious secondary players would vie for the top spot and often drag the community into bloodletting. At the highest levels, when a king failed to produce male offspring, it usually meant the most catastrophic upheaval a society can experience, civil war. Since Abram was the leader of his people, he needed to provide a successor before the cohesive unit he had forged dissolved with his demise. The Book of Genesis says that Abram was able to muster a raiding party of 318 fighting men from those “born in his house” to rescue his nephew Lot (Genesis 14:13-16). Since he had no children yet, these warriors must have come from the community of kinsmen and servants that formed around and traveled with Abram and Sarai. He needed to give them hope for a future.

Sarai offered her “Egyptian maid” Hagar as a surrogate mother to meet for Abram’s need for children. The practice sounds barbaric today, but concubines and female slaves were often held in large numbers to insure the lineage and provide amusement for powerful men. I Kings reports: “King Solomon loved many foreign women…among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines.” (11:1, 3) Regrettably, women were property in the ancient world, and only the senior-most female in a household wielded any power. Sarai was the first wife, whose duty was to produce an heir. She had failed, so she offered what was in her culture a legally and morally acceptable alternative in the person of her young slave woman, Hagar. The result was predictable. Hagar’s child grew strong and his father loved him, which hardly gave Sarai the kind of pseudo-parental comfort she had envisioned. Sooner or later—especially when her own son was born—Ishmael had to go.

This narrative provided a legendary framework for the continuing suspicion and conflict between Israelites and the people who eventually became known as Ishmaelites. Historically, the Interpreter’s Bible reports that the real Ishmaelites probably passed from the scene some time during the ninth century B.C.E. By the time Genesis was written, after Israel was an established Kingdom in the Holy Land, the term Ishmaelites had begun to mean the Bedouins, who were the likely descendents of that older, more obscure group. Today, most Arabs trace themselves back to their definitive Patriarch, Ishmael. [2]

LET’S GET METAPHYSICAL
The interesting thing about doing a metaphysical interpretation of Ishmael’s story is that it is the only tale in the biblical library specifically declared to be an allegory by another part of the Bible. In Galatians 4:22-24, Paul writes:

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. Now this is an allegory…[3]

From this quote we can surmise that allegorical interpretation has the explicit approval of at least one major player in the NT field. Paul’s interpretation of the story holds that Hagar’s child represents slavery, whereas Sarah’s son stands for freedom. He cleverly links the “freedom” of accepting the Christian gospel with the “slavery” to the spiritual conditions of “sin” and “death”, which he believed was rampant in the world. For Paul, not nationality but consciousness determines ones condition before God. While we might not accept his complete formula (i.e., his belief that those who are outside the Christian circle are slaves to sin), we can affirm the mechanism by which one becomes harmonized with the Divine. Thought and belief are required, not rituals like circumcision.

However, there are deeper understandings to be had when considering the Ishmael legend, which is the whole purpose of Metaphysical Interpretation. All characters, places, and events are symbolic of individual soul’s struggle to grow; they are benchmarks along the route to Christ consciousness. As the Apostle Paul said, they are best understood as allegories. Ironically, modern scholarship has given us better equipment to evaluate the content and context of the Bible than even Paul had, because today we understand the history and development of the biblical text better than the people who in isolation wrote the pieces which later became the Old and New Testaments. Outfitted with this toolbox, Metaphysical Interpretation digs for deeper meanings found below the surface of the biblical story.

We begin by looking at the names of the players. First, Abram and Sarai are the parental planners who engineer the boy’s appearance. Both receive name changes soon after, and names are highly important in understanding the deeper meaning of biblical passages, especially in the OT, which often self-consciously employs symbolism. In Mysteries of Genesis Charles Fillmore wrote: “The change in name always denotes a change in character so pronounced that the old name will no longer apply to the new person.” [4]

According to the Metaphysical Dictionary of the Bible, Abram means “Father of exaltation” which “is the name that the author of Genesis gave to the quality through which man has faith in the forces invisible.” [5] When he becomes Abra-ham this new name takes on dual meaning: “Father (source, founder) of a multitude” and “the power of the mind to reproduce its ideas in unlimited expression.” [6] The following are from interpretative statements that Charles Fillmore wrote:

The new name, Abraham, “father of a multitude,” when we apply it individually means that our faith is to be expressed by bringing the multitude of our thoughts into the realm of Spirit and under the guidance of the Christ. [7]

Abraham is also linked to the faith faculty.
Abraham represents faith, the first great faculty developed or “called out” by man in the unfoldment of his spiritual nature or Christ Mind. Faith is that faculty by which we know God as omnipresent Spirit substance…Abraham represents faith in its early establishment in consciousness, and his life portrays different movements of this faculty on the various planes of action in man’s being. [8]

When considering the Sarai/Sarah name change, we discover a profound transformation in consciousness; Sarai means “bitter, contentious, dominative, quarrelsome”; but her new name, Sarah, is Hebrew for “princess, noble woman, noble lady”. [9]

In spiritual symbology woman represents the soul or intuitive part of man. Sarah is the higher phase of the soul. In Sarai the soul is contending for its rightful place in consciousness…[10]

Sarah’s maidservant, occupies an interesting place in Metaphysical Interpretation. Although the victim of Sarai’s bitterness, Hagar was not entirely helpless. After all, she had given birth to the heir of Abram, the leader. This position made her feel somewhat secure, and the triumphant Hagar began to become what later ages will call “uppity” in the face of her mistress. A close examination of the meaning of her name shows how ill-fated this tactic would be. Hagar means “flight, to flee one’s country, fugitive, wanderer, stranger”. [11]

Mr. Fillmore tries to justify Sarah’s mistreatment of her slave by seizing on the scene where Hagar’s son was “mocking” the newborn child of Sarah, but this wording in the KJV is translated “playing with” in the NRSV. [12] This mistake was probably unavoidable since the KJV was the only translation widely available to Fillmore, however a much more compatible picture arises with the better wording: the natural child “plays” with the child of spiritual promise, just as human passions when properly harmonized with spiritual principles can result in a balanced, holistic approach to life. Twice ill-treatment at the hands of her mistress drives Hagar into the wilderness, which metaphysically can stand for the “multitude of undisciplined and uncultivated thoughts,”[13] and both times she hears the voice of God amid her despair.

That Hagar “hears” God is significant in relationship to the name of her son. Ishmael, half-African child of Abraham and Hagar the Egyptian, means “who God hears, understanding of God, whom God understands, who is obedient to God”. This last definition ("who is obedient to God") is especially fascinating when we consider that Ishmael is the legendary father of the Arabs, most of whom today are Muslim, which means in Arabic “one who surrenders” to the will of God. [14] The African connection in Ishmael’s line is reinforced when we read that “his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.” [15]

Unfortunately, the implicit racism of this story is reinforced by Charles Fillmore himself. He wrote: “Egypt signifies the darkness of ignorance, obscurity…flesh consciousness, sense consciousness, or material consciousness.”[16] One could argue that the consciousness of racism works so insidiously that people often fall into the error-belief of racial superiority/inferiority and are unaware of its ugliness until the hateful period has passed. Even people of high spiritual consciousness are susceptible to the dehumanizing tendencies of their age, but that does not excuse the offense of racism against God's One Presence and the Christ-within. Racism is an attempt to negate the central divine Truth that All are One in God, and therefore by the definition of Unity teachers like the late Ed Rabel, it is the very outpicturing of sin itself. Very few people on earth could look Jesus Christ in the eye and proclaim they have never had a prejudiced thought, or have never felt the stirrings of discomfort when encoutering people of other races, religions, cultures, and language groups. We shall overcome, but we aren't there yet.

Another, kinder interpretation of Egypt might be to see it as representing the best that humans can achieve without a fuller understanding of the divine potential within them. Thus, when the “human” Hagar produces a child who achieves recognition by God as the father of a great nation, we can see this as symbolic of the soul’s struggle to know Truth, and the hope that all paths lead to Christ consciousness. Fillmore seems to allow this kind of possibility when he defines metaphysically the Egyptians as “thoughts that pertain to the subjective consciousness in its unawakened state”, [17] although I would have preferred a similar interpretative generosity about Egypt itself.

This final player is Isaac, whose name means “laughter” and, according to the MBD, stands for “Divine Sonship”. [18] Isaac, who was offered as a blood sacrifice by Abraham until prevented by God from carrying out the gruesome ritual, is a prefigure of Jesus Christ, whom some Christian authors say was offered as a sacrifice for all humanity.

METAPHYSICAL INTERPRETATION
The elements of the story are now in place. If we operate under the Fillmorean premise that all events, people, and places are symbolic of the soul’s growth, we can draw the following allegorical conclusions about the Ishmael legends. The Faith faculty in us (Abram) can become impatient for demonstration, especially if we allow our contentious thoughts (Sarai) to challenge our trust in Truth principles. We take the easy way out and flee to Hagar for a quick fix, believing we must solve the problem ourselves because God is not trustworthy. When these uninspired but well-intentioned actions produce results (the child), we can still hear (Ishmael) the Truth if we abandon our reliance on things in the outer world and go into wilderness of our inner, undisciplined thoughts and be calmed by listening for the voice of God. The children of our human nature and the children of our spiritual nature will both father great multitudes of demonstrations in the outer and spiritual enlightenment in the inner life. The outer man must be brought to a point where he becomes obedient to the voice of Spirit within, and the inner man must learn to liberate his joy for life (Isaac) by trusting in the Faith faculty (Abraham).

VALUE OF METAPHYSICAL INTERPRETATION
This ancient method of discovering allegories in the plain meaning of the text continues to be an excellent way to explore the depths of Scriptural Truth. While, hopefully, no one would pretend that the interpretation given above was what the authors/editors of Genesis intended to say when they recorded the Ishmael legends, certainly the elements of this elucidation are present in the words of the text.

Since the Apostle Paul practiced allegorical interpretation, one can scarcely be criticized for taking up the tools of the trade and applying them to the same texts. Through working on its allegorical meaning—even though he arrived at conclusions most of us find suspect--St. Paul nevertheless validated the methodology of Metaphysical Interpretation. Therefore, Ishmael must be consider the cardinal patriarchical legend in the biblical library for New Thought Christianity.

This is the importance of the Ishmael story to Metaphysical Interpretation.

Biblical Texts:

GENESIS 16:1-11
1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, 2 and Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.
3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. 4 He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.
5 Then Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!"
6 But Abram said to Sarai, "Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please." Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.
7 The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, "Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?"
She said, "I am running away from my mistress Sarai."
9 The angel of the Lord said to her, "Return to your mistress, and submit to her." 10 The angel of the Lord also said to her, "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude." 11 And the angel of the Lord said to her, "Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.”

PAUL'S LETTER TO THE GALATIANS 4:22-28
22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. 23 One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise.

24 Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written, "Rejoice, you childless one, you who bear no children, burst into song and shout, you who endure no birth pangs; for the children of the desolate woman are more numerous than the children of the one who is married." 28 Now you, my friends, are children of the promise, like Isaac.


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NOTES:
1. Genesis 21:17-18, NRSV.
2. Cuthbert A. Simpson, “Introduction and Exegesis of Genesis” in The Interpreter’s Bible, Volume I, George Buttrick, ed. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1978), 663.
3. Galatians 4:22-24, NRSV.
4. MG, 151.
5. MBD,18
6. Ibid., 17.
7. MG, 151.
8. Ibid., 116.
9. MBD, 573.
10. MG, 155.
11. MBD, 247.
12. Genesis 21:913, NRSV: “But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.‘”
13. MBD, 677.
14. Keith Crim, ed., The Dictionary of World Religions (NY: HarperCollins, 1989), 508.
15. Genesis 21:21, NRSV.
16. MBD, 183.
17. Ibid., 184.
18, Ibid., 299.

In the Shade of a Petrified Tree

Carol-Jean and I stopped by the rock show in Lincoln, MO, yesterday on the way back from preaching at Warsaw. And I bought some rocks. It may sound strange that a cheapskate like me--who hates paying a dollar for a bottle of water, something which covers 3/5 of the planet--would spend about twenty dollars for a handfull of rock, considering that the whole planet is made of it. But these nonprescious rocks are special. For example, I bought two small meteorites. It's silly, but as a space & sci-fi nut I am always thrilled to put my hands on stone which came from another world. And I bought a small, polished nugget of Missouri's state stone, creatively named Mozarkite.

But the piece which I am holding in my hand while contemplating this blog entry is shown in the picture, above. It's a chunk of petrified wood. The photo doesn't do it justice. You can see lines in the bark and it really looks like a broken tree branch. Of course, all the organic material has long since leached into the earth, replaced by the minerals of the fossilizing process. But nature makes filecopy when She petrifies wood, and so I am holding the record of a branch that was some millions of years ago on a tree, with leaves or pine needles bristling its woody arms.

I wonder what kind of creatures rested under the shade of this tree. One of my primordial, small furry ancestors, perhaps? Or an ambush predator, hiding in the leaves until lunch walks by. There's a thought. If he gets that furry ancestor, there may not be a human race some day. The sun rose and warmed its bark; seasons changed, rain fell, dry spells came and went... All without human intervention.

In fact, the Cosmos has been operating perfectly well, thank you very much, without human engineering required. Nature seems to know what to do and She just does it. Sure, the natural order is not always pretty, not always kind-hearted, not always fair to the weaker creatures. Nature nevertheless seems to have a program which runs quite well, and, given the proper conditions for life to emerge, She eagerly manufctures an almost infinite diversity of well-adapted living organisms for every available bio-niche.

Could it be that this program, which churns out life with its adaptive characteristics, is another word for Divine Order? Not the order of predesintaion, rather the opportunity to respond to free-acting circumstances and to create like an artist from the materials at hand. When theologians speak of "deep history" they mean that God--however conceived--was not just sitting around, thwddling his anthropocentric thumbs, waiting for 13.7 billion years (plus or minus) until humanity appeared less than a millions years ago.

This realization, provoked by Copernicus and driven home by the late Carl Sagan, has grave consequences for Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other religionists. It removes humanity from center stage and places them on a tiny planet revolving around an ordinary yellow star among upwards of four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way glaxy, which is just one of perhaps 50-100 billion galaxies. God must have business elsewhere, or He/She needs to be fired as CEO of the Cosmos for flagrant mismanagement of resources.

So, what was God doing when the first mammals scurried under my tree branch to seek shelter from the noonday heat? Divine Order suggests that God was the process. The whole process. The symphonic movement of evolution providing the musical score to the cosmic geology of worlds born and stars exploding. The dance of great, swirling galaxies, turning like dervishes in the cold black of space, with each particle of matter-and-energy, down to the quantum level, empowered to choose and create and respond and anticipate and make beauty blossom in ways more diverse than any mind can comprehend.

This is Divine Order. And having reflected on deep history with you, I don't feel bad at all about spending $1.50 to hold a little chunk of it petrified in my hand...

Not Dumb, Numb

A Brief Treatise On the Amazing Capacity of the Human Mind for Self-Deception
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"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." (John 20:29)

People will believe what they want to believe, which is both encouraging and frustrating to those of us who work in theological education. It is encouraging that people hold steadfast in their beliefs, because life will challenge anyone who tries to walk a spiritual path.

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Yet, blind faith in established beliefs can also be frustrating to those of us who observe human religious activity, because unexamined, embedded beliefs can divide people into walled compounds where the only communication between groups is to lob the occasional word-grenade over the wall at one's neighbor. Sometimes, the chosen weapon is not merely words.

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What is it about the human mind which exposes people to the risks of self-delusion and the denial of reality? Take an historical example: the death of Abraham Lincoln.

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President Lincoln was shot dead. You've seen dramatizations of his assassination. People living in 1865 America had no motion picture or TV cameras, but they had their newspaper accounts and photographs of the corpse. He was buried in Springfield, Illinois. After a plot to steal the body was thwarted in 1871, rumors that Lincoln was not in the box continued. So, the coffin was re-opened five times: December 21, 1865, September 19, 1871, October 9, 1874, April 14, 1887, and September 26, 1901. After the 1901 opening, 23 witnesses testified that it was in fact Lincoln. Yet the rumors continued.

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Why did so many people question something which was an established historical fact, i.e., Lincoln was dead and buried in that box? Why did rumors persist that Elvis Presley did not die but escaped somehow into self-imposed obscruity, away from the limelight he cherished all his adult life? What about the JFK-lives rumors? Or the persistent whispering during my youth that Hitler was alive and well and living in Argentina? What about the resurrection of Jesus? (Oops! That raises the question to a whole new level. Disregard.)

Lincoln was assassinated so long ago, you say. Okay, let's take a more recent example. Ronald Regan was adored by the Religious Right, even though he never attended worship services or permitted them to be held at the White House. His Hollywood lifestyle (including divorce) was hardly a family values epitome, and his wife was a New Ager who consulted astrologers. And whom did this reprobate defeat? Jimmy Carter, a life-long Baptist Sunday School teacher, married to the same woman, abstemious and almost puritanical in his personal affairs.

When meditating on the soci-political turmoil of the world, especially when applying religious solutions to complex problems, it is probably wise to remember the words of Harry Emerson Fosdick:

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth. [1]

Or, in the immortal words of popular wisdom, "Putting lipstick on a pig..." Well, you know the rest of the story.
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[1]Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Living of These Days (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 230.

Last Paper; Last Class; Writing Begins Soon

My journey to a doctorate has been circuitous. I have wanted to study academic theology since I was an undergraduate at the University of Idaho. But life intervened. A career in the US Army Chaplaincy continually took me to remote locations without the kind of specialized educational facilities where I could earn a doctoral degree in theology or religious studies. Then I retired--to a church in Augusta, Georgia, which I quickly learned was the only city in the continental USA without a theological seminary. Well...that's not true. There are plenty of cities without seminaries, but it just felt like another isolated tour of duty. After thirteen years in Georgia, I took a church in Sacramento, California. Surely here would be an opportunity for advanced study!

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Nope. The closest theological seminary with a program I could enter was at San Francisco, three hours and many light years away from my small church in Sacto. And then it happened. Unity Institute decided to become a fully accredited theological seminary, and it advertised for Unity people to fill teaching positions--people with their doctorates in religious studies.

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Okay, that wasn't me. I had a only Master of Divinity albeit from a respectable graduate school, Lancaster Theological Seminary of the United Church of Christ (1976, Magna Cum Laude, first in class). I read the blurb asking for applicants with doctoral credentials in religious studies to Carol-Jean, my lovely wife, and added, "I wish them good luck. We don't have anybody."

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Well, that was an exaggeration. Of course, we have people with advanced degrees in Unity, but the statistical universe of a small denomination like ours means that the number of Unity people with those extremely specific, extremely high-level qualifications will be very small.

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A little while later, a subsequent blurb squeaked a plea for anybody with Masters degrees. I applied, and the desperate nature of our academic situation became apparent when they hired me for the job of upgrading theological education in Unity. One bright spot: A condition of employment was that I would seek and obtain a doctorate as quickly as possible. Since St.Paul School of Theology in KCMO offers a top-notch D.Min. program. After so many years of tailgating outside the academic arena, the game was finally ON.

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I joined the faculty at Unity Institute in August 2005 and began my studies for the Doctor of Ministry degree that January, 2006. If all goes well--and if my D.Min.project, Lyceum 2008, doesn't bomb--I should be getting my Doctor of Ministry degree in May 2009. One month short of my 63rd birthday. Better late than never. (It is a sobering thought that by the time the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas was my age, he had been dead 12 years.)

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The paper below is the last paper for the last regular class. It is a rewrite, because the first draft was not acceptable to the professor. (And I say: Good for her!) The paper talks about prophetic ministry, Unity's understanding of social and theological critique, and the place that Lyceum 2008 might play in awakening our people to the possibilities which may present themselves when we open scholarly dialogue with other denominations and other traditions. Anyway, here it is...not exactly deathless prose, but some of you will slog through it and perhaps find some good ideas folded into the completed assignment. (Some of my astute readers will note that this is a much longer version of the Blog written 08-21-08.)

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Note to my students: The next major writing I'm required to do will be my doctoral praxis thesis, a research/practicum document which may reach 150 pages. So, this is the last "short" assignment. Now, doesn't that make those itty-bitty 20 pp. papers I assign seem acceptably brief?
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CHS 515 Prophetic Ministry


POST-SEMINAR FINAL PAPER

Lyceum Project as Prophetic Ministry
Thomas W. Shepherd, M.Div.

August 31, 2008

Saint Paul School of Theology, June Term 2008

Dr. Patricia Beattie Jung, Instructor
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Lyceum Project as Prophetic Ministry

Walter Brueggemann’s central theme in his book The Prophetic Imagination (2001) is the identification of an ongoing conflict between prophetic consciousness and royal consciousness, the antiphonal struggle between the dominant political and economic institutions of society and the spiritual consciousness of a covenantal sub-community. Brueggemann defines this sub-community by four characteristics. 1) It would be a repository of deep memories which, through story and song, link the events of today with this long struggle for justice and fidelity to God. 2) It would share a sense of pain when interacting with the world, empathy grounded in Christ-like compassion. 3) It would be grounded in hope, a sense of the trustworthiness of God. 4) Finally, the prophetic sub-community would understand the need for generation-spanning discourse to reinforce its members in times to come.[1] “The prophet must speak metaphorically about hope but concretely about the real newness that comes to us and redefines our situation.”[2]

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At first reading, the specific thrust of his argument, indeed the argument of all the writers studied in this course, seems to be a rather Marxist view of the gospel in which the prophet calls for progressive confrontation of the wealthy and powerful with the aim of socio-political liberation and the redistribution of wealth and resources to the poor and weak. However, Brueggemann is sophisticated enough to see that biblical prophets were not merely calling for social action but for a truly radical transformation in the consciousness of their target audiences, Israel first, and later the world. He writes:

I believe that Moses did not engage in anything like what we identify as social action. He was not engaged in a struggle to transform a regime; rather, his concern was with the consciousness that undergirded and made such a regime possible.[3]

Brueggemann sees the prophetic call primarily as a summons to spiritual maturity and personal responsibility, which must predicate any specific redress of societal ills. Indeed, the danger for those who hasten to the prophetic call is not found in explicit acts of accommodation to royal consciousness; the hazard to prophetic authenticity is found in this ongoing tendency of religionists to move toward compromise and accommodation itself.

…prophetic ministry has to do not primarily with addressing specific public crises but with addressing, in season and out of season, the dominant crisis that is enduring and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated.[4]

Religious zeal too easily drifts from kneeling before YHWH at Mount Sinai to groveling at the feet of Pharaoh. From a pragmatic view the temptation to accommodation is enormous; the Establishment offers the most rewards to a royal prophet, not the least of which is a sense of all-rightness with the world. Brueggemann rightly sees that the chief danger for the prophet is not destruction but domestication, and he declares we will never truly understand The Prophetic Imagination “unless we see the connection between the religion of static triumphalism and the politics of oppression and exploitation.”[5] Social action alone, without a keen sense of this domesticating tendency in our religiosity, is inadequate. Brueggemann is effectively standing the Epistle of James on its head: works without faith is dead, and faith must be clear about for Whom it works.

However virtuous a program of socio-economic activism may be, one could just as easily argue that humanity actually needs spiritual liberation, a universal rise in consciousness from a self-image of “weak and poor” to “powerful and wealthy”, to unleash the potential of human creativity and transform this planet in a way that contributory, patronizing schemes of redistribution have never imagined. Brueggemann touches on this in his third characteristic, i.e., a prophetic sub-community maintains hope despite appearances to the contrary because God’s promises are trustworthy. Yet, he also knows that a self-defined, covenantal community is not automatically identifiable with the Kingdom of God on Earth.

Dangers of Ethical Monotheism
Indeed, virtually every religious assembly sees itself as the authentic, modern expression of the primordial faith. Roman Catholics trace their institutions back to Jesus’ commission to the Apostle Peter, yet Mormons celebrate the restored, biblical priesthood. Baptists proclaim the primitive gospel of Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God; Unitarians reason they have re-discovered the radical humanity in the man of Nazareth. Even my denomination, Unity, falls into step with this drum beat to exclusivism by claiming to teach the religion of Jesus instead of the religion about him. Yet, this kind of theological one-upmanship is ineluctable. The central Truth of the Christian faith must be found in the doctrine of one’s home church, or why stay home?

The conviction of the theological rightness of one’s faith is more-or-less required for all who profess a religious view of the world. All too easily this sense of rightness morphs into conflict with other viewpoints, especially when fueled by ethnical monotheism’s demand for justice and its metaphysical dualism between good and evil. If there is only one God, Who rewards good and punishes evil, it rapidly becomes necessary to identify and suppress all other points of view as not simply erroneous but as evil itself. My friend Bhante Wimala, the traveling Buddhist monk who is engaged in world-wide relief activities for the desperately poor or all faiths, has said to me that no army has ever marched to convert the world to Buddhism because Buddha saw humanity as one and the struggle to reach enlightenment as taking many different routes. It is an idea which the dualistic West has not yet embraced.

Royal Consciousness and the Challenge of Jihadis
With the passing of time this tendency toward stabilization and standardization slides smoothly into royal consciousness, ministering to the status quo and accepting the oppressive world order as divinely given. This movement toward cooperation between secular power and religious authority is the tendency against which prophetic imagination must struggle, Brueggemann insists.

If accommodation is a temptation for establishment religion based on ethical monotheism, radical religious organizations have their own set of dangers. Writing just before the momentous events of 9-11, Brueggemann had no way to anticipate the shock which Western religionists would experience after the United States was attacked by terrorists who thought they were doing God’s Will. Five years later, Harold J. Recinos reflects on the irony of a profoundly religious nation like the USA being attacked by self-sacrificial believers who think of our country as the Great Satan:

Mainline Christians who counted on religion to summon moral power for the good of all people find themselves today sitting at the foot of the cross grappling with silence. Who can believe that pious people motivated by religious belief can use violence and murder to promote their cause?[6]

The model which emerges when the thoughts of Brueggemann and Recinos merge looks less like a tug or war between the forces of royal and prophetic consciousness than a three-sided conflict with royal consciousness at one corner, prophetic at the other, radical pietism at the third—all pulling their way. Not only is the battle between prophetic insight and status quo, the third factor of violent activism threatens both covenantal prophetic community and chapel of the King. The events of 9-11 have shaken Western religionists profoundly. Some Christians and Jews appear simply unable to believe the murderous conspirators were men of faith. Yet, the undisputed fact remains that when the hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center and plunged to earth in Pennsylvania, the hijackers were praying, “God is great!” As a result of these tumultuous socio-political events, any theological work must consider the dangers of religious zeal when formulating a theory of prophetic ministry.[7]

What is Prophetic Ministry?
Brueggemann’s definition of prophetic ministry requires active verbs: “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”[8] (Italics original.) He rightly observes that prophets must not simply criticize but has an obligation to provide alternatives.

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However, Brueggemann says that establishment religiosity prizes harmony above all. Regardless of how well intended the prophetic propensity to sing solo may be, it invariably causes prophets to be plucked from the Temple choir and thrown in the Lion’s den. Status quo religion is “grossly uncritical, cannot tolerate serious and fundamental criticism, and will go to great lengths to stop it.”[9] Royal consciousness is tone-deaf to the psalm-like hymnody of well-phrased critical thought, even when the prophet sings of positive alternatives. Good temple musicians stroke their harps and puff into sonorous horns to summon and soothe the faithful; they are not shrill trumpeters or whistle-blowers.

Prophetic Ministry: Response and Servanthood
In his book Where Have All the Prophets Gone? (2006) Marvin A. McMickle describes prophetic preaching as that which shifts the attention of a congregation from what they are doing in the local church to what is happening outside the sanctuary.

Prophetic preaching then asks the question, “What is the role or the appropriate response of our congregation, our association, and our denomination to the events that are occurring within our society and throughout the world?”[10]

McMickle is helpful in expanding the definition beyond criticism to response. He drives this home later in the book when he talks about the standard, old church sign which reads, “Enter to Worship, Depart to Serve.” Too many American Christians, McMickle says, are comfortable with worship but have done little about servanthood in the world beyond the church building. McMickle identifies this lackadaisical attitude— prayer-and-praise without subsequent action in the real world—with Bonhoeffer’s category of cheap grace. He argues that Christians using a local church for the priestly functions of ministry, i.e., as their private prayer chapel or as a place for personal rejuvenation, runs contrary to the prophetic vision of a transformed people moving forward to transform the world.[11]

The servant model of Christian life requires an understanding of the issues which the people of God must face in their lives. McMickle wants parishioners to experience prophetic preaching that will follow the lead of Robert McCracken and 1) kindle the mind, 2) energize the will, 3) disturb the conscience and 4) stir the heart to action.[12]

Method or Message?
Although and specific content of the prophetic message presented in the books we have studied is profoundly liberal and progressive, one could argue that the method of the prophetic ministry is a separate consideration from any message which the prophet delivers. Who among us does not approach the themes discussed in these books with an embedded theology? Perhaps this is a critique of prophetic ministry in general. It is one thing to speak one’s truth with love; it is another order of magnitude to make the claim to be speaking the truth of God.

An example of misplaced prophetic energies might be Oral Robert’s infamous declaration that God told him so much money had to be raised by such-and-such a date or the Lord would call him home. The Rev. Mr. Roberts arguably fulfilled all four of McCracken’s categories. The “prophetic” message: 1) kindled the minds of his parishioners to the possibility that God was alive and active in their midst; 2) energized their will to contribute to Oral Roberts’ ministries; 3) disturbed their consciences when confronted with the idea that Rev. Roberts might actually die for the faith if they were inactive; and 4) stirred many hearts to action—they gave money, and we are still talking about it years afterward!

Permit me a personal example. During my twenty years as a US Army Chaplain I worked with ministers, priests and rabbis representing a cross section of American life. One memorable character I met while stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, was Chaplain Billy Goodwin, who at that time was an ordained Assembly of God minister on active duty. He was an excellent counselor and an energetic speaker, but he had a tendency to make claims for special revelations from on high. Not surprisingly, he felt perfectly comfortable communicating theses divine bulletins to the worshipping military congregation. One day he showed me a letter he was about to send to soldiers and families who had been attending our chapel. It began: “God has directed me to write to you and say…”

Apparently, this was typical language for his home church, because he was surprised when I flinched at the wording. When I asked why he was telling them the message was from the Almighty, he said, “Well, because I believe God wants me to write to them!” I suggested another tactic. “Tell them, ‘I believe God wants me to write to you and say…’ That way, if they don’t like your suggestions, they are just disagreeing with you, not with God.” He smiled and said he would do that. Billy was an amiable fellow.

When I tell this story, it always occurs to me that every clergyperson faces the same problem as Chaplain Billy: How does anyone summon the audacity to stand before a group of people and with integrity tell them what you believe God wants them to know? In a larger sense, every sermon—perhaps every instance of pastoral interaction with a member of the congregation—is a form of prophetic ministry.

Bonhoeffer and King: “Finding Themselves” in Different Circumstances
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also a chaplain; he ministered and preached to believers in German prison camps because that is where he found himself. One could argue for a double meaning to the previous sentence: Bonhoeffer found himself a prisoner and found himself in the role of chaplain to the helpless. Bonhoeffer’s journey to Grenzfall (tyrannicide) could be seen as an ultimate rejection of royal consciousness in favor of a total embrace of the prophetic mantle.[13]
Indeed, the buoyant optimism of nineteenth century American Transcendentalism and its European counterparts could not float in the turbulent seas of the twentieth century. Theology and Philosophy had moved beyond Absolute Idealism long before Bonhoeffer made his move. Idealism had died a generation earlier, summarized by the immortal words of a Canadian medical officer after the Battle of the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below. [14]

Yet, even in the pessimistic, existentialist twentieth century, not everyone responded to bloodshed by preventative killing. Although Martin Luther King, Jr., was sober realist, a man who had seen violent acts against his people, King never conceded the need for the prophet to take up arms and become a purveyor of violence. He found comfort in the same prophetic vision as Brueggemann, that of a covenantal community which joins hands to oppose the tendency toward royal consciousness:

As Christians we must never surrender our supreme loyalty to any time-bound custom or earth-bound idea, for at the heart of our universe is a higher reality--God and his kingdom of love--to which we must be conformed.[15]

As a young scholar King had become skeptical of what he saw as liberalism’s “superficial optimism” and undo emphasis on the perfectibility of humanity. He nevertheless continued to believe that people were made in the image of God and had the capacity to rise above their limitations.[16] King urged people to be wise in worldly affairs yet tender-hearted in their dealings with one another. He wanted people to become “disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.”[17] For King, this meant following the “Father, forgive them” model of Jesus and eliminating one’s enemies by transforming them into friends.[18]

Both men were aware of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s work, but events in Nazi-dominated Europe pushed Bonhoeffer to reject Gandhi’s demand for absolute nonviolence. One might ask if a conspiracy with fellow Christians to murder Adolph Hitler constituted an authentic act of prophetic consciousness or an inverse form of royal consciousness, i.e., did Bonhoeffer’s zeal to return Germany to its peace and stability cause him to act de facto for the State, albeit an idealized state, as he conceived it to be? Was Grenzfall an act grounded in biblical prophecy, Christian jihad, or power politics?

Martin Luther King, Jr., found himself in an entirely different set of circumstances. He had no single demonic figure whose removal might right the balance in the world. Furthermore, although King stood in prophetic opposition to an oppressive political and social order, the people of the Jim Crow South saw themselves as fundamentally moral and upright. They were good Christians. His task was to bring public attention to the actuality of suffering and oppression under segregation, but this would only have positive results if there were moral values which would be moved by the cognitive dissonance produced when “Christian” whites turned police dogs and water hoses on non-violent Civil Rights protestors. Using the biblical imagery of Moses and the Children of Israel fleeing Pharaoh’s chariots, King did not hesitate to label the segregationist practices of his white Christian neighbors with that fine old Anglo-Saxon word, evil.[19] Here he is one with Bonhoeffer, perhaps with most prophets in history. Naming the specific ills of the day seems to be a hallmark of prophetic ministry, even though Brueggemann insists this is ancillary to identifying the root cause of injustice in the power structures of society and the religiosity which supports them.

Critique of Confrontational Model for Prophetic Ministry
However, one could argue that as on-target as Brueggemann’s observations are, he is aiming at the wrong target. Certainly, religious systems which have successfully articulated their values to a given society are inclined to support the social order which they have in a large part helped to construct. How could it be otherwise? What is missing here is not the voice of a John the Baptist decrying Herod’s marriage to a brother’s widow, nor even the cry of a Jesus who momentarily, understandably, loses his customary broadmindedness, takes a whip, and drives the money-changers from the Court of the Gentiles. What is missing is a change in the value system of the larger society, which can only be brought about by changing one person at a time. I am not arguing for conversion or anything resembling a traditional decision for Christ. I am also not arguing that Bonhoeffer and King were wrong for taking decisive action in the world in which they found themselves; quite the contrary. Specific instances of social ills must be met with specific remedies: tyrannicide for Bonhoeffer, nonviolent protest for Martin Luther King., Jr.
I am arguing that prophetic consciousness, as described by Brueggemann and the other authors we studied in this course, can only reach its goal of a just society under God if it moves beyond confrontation to transformation of the individual. What is required, to borrow Brueggemann’s terms, is a radical transformation in consciousness and not just regime change within the Establishment.[20] In this sense, I would define consciousness as the emotional-intellectual-social weltanschauung of a postmodern, twenty-first century society.

Less than such a transformation can only spawn a new sense of injustice as those in power are ousted and become the new oppressed. This is the silent rage felt by suburban whites, who tend to vote against their best economic interests year after year because the Republican Party tells sends them subtle messages about returning to Ronald Regan’s vision of a white-dominated, middle class, suburban, post World War II America. Until the vision changes to that of a new generation, Israel must wander in the wilderness.

Idealism Re-visited
Despite wars and rumors of wars, Unity never relinquished the optimistic, monistic, idealistic vision of Transcendentalism. Our writers and theologians still affirm the divine nature of humanity, taking seriously the imago Dei regardless of appearances to the contrary. The prophetic tradition within our movement aims at calling people to the higher vision of their potential as sons and daughters of God. We see all sentient beings as fully divine and fully human, to include the main example of this indwelling divinity, Jesus of Nazareth. Such a prophetic word from our tradition, properly explored by theological reflection and communicated via modern networking, has the potential to transform the consciousness of humanity, one person at a time. The outrageous possibilities of such a claim remain unexplored today because the potential apologists for Metaphysical Christianity are unequipped to play in the major leagues of theological dialogue. In fact, one could argue that Unity’s longstanding aversion for intellectual discourse indicates we have yet to show up for spring training. To communicate a prophetic vision today requires an understanding of contemporary issues and their antecedents, plus the ability to translate one’s insights into the common language of Christian theology.

Means to the Goal: Lyceum and Journal
Therefore, I hold that establishing an annual academic conference open to religious scholars from around the world (“The Lyceum at Unity Village”) and offering its proceedings in a new publication, the Unity Institute Journal of Theology (UIJT) will, over time, contribute to New Thought Christianity’s fuller participation in the ongoing theological dialogue, increase Unity’s involvement with the wider Christian community, and measurably affect the consciousness of society at large. Such involvement will allow the powerful insights of New Thought to flow outward from Unity while the circulating exchange of ideas will bring new possibilities to us from thinkers and spiritual leaders of other traditions. This is my thesis project; this is also the center of my life’s work. There are, however, some major obstacles to overcome in the consciousness of the Unity Movement before two-way communication with religious scholarship beyond our borders can commence.

Anti-Intellectual, Anti-traditionalist
Historically, my home denomination, the Association of Unity Churches International, has been rather anti-intellectual and anti-traditionalist, so the insights, ideas and tools available to clergy and religious scholars from mainstream Protestant and Catholic traditions have seldom found their way into Metaphysical Christianity. Even among the ordained Unity clergy, there is almost no tradition of theological reflection, no widespread understanding of modern biblical scholarship, little sense of church history, and an appalling lack of awareness about the very tools required to make our gifts available to a wider Christian world. The intellect has been described as inferior to, and often in conflict with, intuitive insights gleaned in personal meditation.

Again and again, Unity foundational writings take a swipe at the intellectual approach to religion, like this supposedly objective question in the study guide of Fillmore’s 1939 book, Jesus Christ Heals: “Is it better to seek understanding through intellectual reasoning or through divine inspiration?”[21] Since dialogue among biblical scholars and theologians provides a context of continuity for the Christian community, it is precisely this juxtaposition of intellectual reasoning over and against divine inspiration which has perpetuated Unity’s isolation; we have been an archipelago somewhere over the horizon, far from the mainland of Christian thought.

Prophetic Possibilities: Mystical Consciousness
Nevertheless, the kind of prophetic ministry which Unity practices could be understood in the classical model of a call to righteousness, if such a call were expanded to include teaching and healing ministry aimed at introducing people to the imago Dei, which we identify as their inherent divine nature. Of course, few people reflect this in a developed way in this world, but as the process of spiritual education of humanity goes on the more Christ-like people will become. This hopeful vision coincides with the central goals of New Thought Christianity, i.e., to examine and demonstrate those categories of spirit which transcend apparent lack and limitations, to take seriously the power of God working in and through the Cosmos, and to develop specific, practical techniques for releasing such spiritual power into the real world. [22] Like Paul addressing the Athenians on Mars hill, Unity needs metaphors with which to translate the exciting, empowering insights of New Thought Christianity into the symbolic language of the twenty-first century Christian world.

Lyceum and Theological Journal as Prophetic Ministry
An established program of theological conferences and the publication of an academic New Thought Christian journal has the potential to mitigate some of the historic, anti-intellectual tendencies of the Unity movement, to inspire its scholars to explore and develop more fully Unity’s contribution to Christian thought, and to encourage ministers and laypeople to join the discussion about the role of the Church in service to humanity. Consequently, the title of my praxis thesis will be Converting Full-Length Mirrors into Open Doors: Offering New Thought Christianity a Lyceum for Theological Dialogue by Creating and Publishing a Unity Institute Journal of Theology.

If we see prophecy the way Walter Brueggemann does—as an ongoing, reappearing, God-intoxicated voice who speaks revolutionary truth to power and gathers a community around this new vision—then Unity does have a prophetic voice, especially in the area of spiritual development. It also seems unmistakable that this prophetic vision will be better served if people in my home denomination learn how to dialogue with scholars and pastors of other Christian denominations. An annual academic conference with its proceedings subsequently published in a new theological journal—targeted at Unity ministers, paraprofessionals, and college-educated members—could provide a venue for theological reflection and give our people a place to advance new ideas, perhaps encouraging greater involvement with progressive Christians wherever Unity people live.

Benefits of Lyceum and UIJT for Unity Movement
The work of prophetic ministry has a precursory educational component. People must be alerted to the need for change and given the tools to begin their great work, whatever the project may be. If we see prophecy the way Walter Brueggemann does—as an ongoing, reappearing, God-intoxicated voice who speaks revolutionary truth to power and gathers a community around this new vision—then Unity does have a prophetic voice, especially in the area of spiritual development. It also seems unmistakable that this prophetic vision will be better served if people in my home denomination learn how to dialogue with scholars and pastors of other Christian denominations. It is my hope that the Lyceum series and the ongoing publication of a Unity Institute Journal of Theology will provide a venue for the prophetic vision of Unity to interact with the wider Christian community for the mutual benefit of both.

A bonus effect of an annual theological symposium and ongoing publication of a theological journal would be to further the goal of upgrading Unity Institute’s Master of Divinity program to a fully accredited status. To be true to its calling, a graduate institution should offer the world a forum for unfettered, scholarly conversation about important issues. The special province of a theological seminary is to provide such a venue for religious and spiritual discussion at a higher level than is ordinarily found in other church-related gatherings or publications. Such a gathering of the brightest and best in New Thought Christian theology can inspire, encourage, challenge and empower serious discussion of the Unity message in academic settings across the world. I suspect this kind of transformative interaction is a goal of prophecy to which all the authors we studied could subscribe.
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Notes:
[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), xvi.
[2] Ibid., 67.
[3] Ibid., 21.
[4] Ibid., 3.
[5] Ibid., 7.
[6] Harold J. Recinos, Good News from the Barrio (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 71.
[7] Debra Burlingame, “On a Wing and a Prayer,” Wall Street Journal, 12/06/06, online source: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009348 (accessed: 08-23-08)
[8] Brueggemann, 3.
[9] Ibid, 4.
[10] Marvin A. McMickle, Where Have All the Prophets Gone? (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2006), 2.
[11] Ibid., 85-86.
[12] Ibid, 90-93.
[13]Larry Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 122.
[14] John McCrea, “In Flanders Fields” (Arlington National Cemetery Website: online source http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm), accessed 08-13-08.
[15] Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (NY: Harper & Row, 1964), 11.
[16] Ibid. 166.
[17] Ibid. 15.
[18] Ibid. 47.
[19] Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (NY: Harper & Row, 1964), 78-79.
[20] Brueggemann, 21.
[21] Fillmore, Jesus Christ Heals (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1939), 202.
[22] “New Thought” and “Metaphysical Christianity” refer to a theological tradition flowing from nineteenth century idealism, transcendentalism and the “science of mental healing” movements. Christian Science is the best known example from that era, but New Thought theology differs significantly from that of Mary Baker Eddy, who denied the reality of matter. Unity is probably best described as a Christianized form of monistic panentheism.

Michelle, Ma belle

Monday night Michelle Obama showed America and the world what a happy, successful family looks like. She utterly charmed the Democratic National Convention and the television audience, and her autheticity, warmth and genuine goodness totally disarmed the TV pundits who normally pounce on every speech and tear the speaker to shreds. She converted me from a lukewarm supporter to a raving Obama maniac in less than 45 minutes. It was no easy task.

I have been a Hillary Clinton supporter. Maybe it's because I loved Bill Clinton's presidency so much, even with his indescretions. Maybe because Hillary represents so many women who have struggled to break through the glass ceiling. Maybe because I like her policies, or her unflappabled resolve to fight until the last round. Maybe because she looks good in pantsuits. But as much as I admire Hillary and wanted--read: still want--her to be president some day, Michelle Obama and her family have showed me something which the nation needs more desperately than I imagined before tonight. We need to believe in the goodness of people again, like we did during the Kennedy era.

Ted Kennedy's speech earlier was received with even more emotion by the delegates, many of whom remember his brothers. Several newsmen, including MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, mentioned the 1964 Democratic Convention at Atlantic City, held just nine months after the Kennedy Assassination, when the crowd greeted Robert F. Kennedy with twenty-two minutes of spontaneous, irrepressible applause.

I saw Jack Kennedy in 1960 when he came to my home town of Reading, Pa., and spoke from a specially constructed wooden platform in the city square. I was fourteen years old. The public schools in that heavily Democratic town released all students to go and hear the presidential candidate. Thousands of people of all ages gathered in Penn Square that sunny afternoon. His motorcade was late. Democratic officials filled the waiting time with speeches and introductions of local candidates. Then he arrived, and the raw excitement was elctrifying.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was ful of vigor, a tanned, well-groomed, young-looking man in his early forties. I recall he wore a dark suit and tie, not the typical white shirt without sports coat which today's politicians wear to shown they're one of us. He was a Harvard educated Kennedy; he was NOT one of us. But when spoke about the need to "get America moving again" after eight years of Dwight D. Eisenhower, something in his manner seemed...presidential? After a short stump speech Kennedy got in his motorcade and headed for Allentown, thirty miles away. He was already late for that crowd, which had doubtless gathered and was listening to the same lackluster local politicians stall for time until he arrived.

Four years later in August of 1964 I attended that Democratic National Convention held in Atlantic City, NJ. I wasn't a delegate; I was an 18-year-old soldier on leave after Basic Training, attending the Convention with my recently graduated friends from the Teen-Dems in Reading. I shamelessly capitalized on the fact that I was in uniform, mooching passes from delegates to a political convention and selling a few on the Boardwalk for a nice profit. Now that I reflect on what I was doing, I realize it was probably illegal, but back then I didn't see anything wrong with a little private enterprise. I got passes for the evening events and used them for myself and friends, too. I heard LBJ speak and Hubert Humphrey, too.

But the greatest moment came, as Keith Olbermann said, when we rose to greet Bobby. I was in the upper gallery that night, like one of the soldier-guests who are always invited to observe presidential speeches and political conventions. For twenty-two minutes, everyone cheered and applauded. Several times, Robert Kennedy tried to begin. He was drowned out every time. The chair tried to gavel the crowd to order, but we would have none of it. And every time Bobby tried to speak, the noise grew louder and he backed away from the microphone with that characteristic Kennedy smile. There was such an enormous outpouring of emotion. JFK's death had hit them hard, and here was his brother, the Attorney General of the United States, the next Kennedy in the line of succession. The crowd needed to cheer. They needed to hope. But you know the rest of the story, how four years later another assassin cheated America out of what could have been a restoration of Camelot.

Obama has stopped what some had seen as Hillary's attempt to re-establish another golden era. But this time it was the people who rose up and cheered him across the finish line. Instead of looking backward, people desperately wanted a future they could believe in. A post-racial, post-modern America that remembers its ideals.

Tonight, Teddy Kennedy closed the door and padlocked Camelot forever. Michelle Obama opened another door and showed us a future we can believe in, where all kinds of families work together and love one another and America regains its moral heritage. Raise high your torch, Lady Liberty, then pass it on to a new generation. The applause dies away, but the dream lives again.

Lyceum 2008 -- Prophetic Ministry?

Walter Brueggemann’s central theme in his book The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress Press, 2001) is the identification of a struggle between prophetic consciousness and royal consciousness, the antiphonal struggle between the dominant political and economic institutions of society and the spiritual consciousness of a covenantal sub-community. Brueggemann defines this sub-community by four characteristics. 1) It would be a repository of deep memories which, through story and song, link the events of today with this long struggle for justice and fidelity to God. 2) It would share a sense of pain when interacting with the world, empathy grounded in Christ-like compassion. 3) It would be grounded in hope, a sense of the trustworthiness of God. 4) Finally, the prophetic sub-community would understand the need for generation-spanning discourse to reinforce its members in times to come.[1]

“The prophet must speak metaphorically about hope but concretely about the real newness that comes to us and redefines our situation.”[2]

The specific thrust of his argument, indeed the argument of many socially conscious Christian writers, seems to be a rather Marxist view of the gospel in which the prophet calls for progressive confrontation of the wealthy and powerful with the aim of socio-political liberation and the redistribution of wealth and resources to the poor and weak. However virtuous this economic plan may be, one could just as easily argue that what humanity actually needs is spiritual liberation, a universal rise in consciousness from a self-image of “weak and poor” to “powerful and wealthy”, which could unleash the potential of human creativity and transform this planet in a way that contributory, patronizing schemes of redistribution have never imagined. Brueggemann touches on this in his third characteristic, i.e., a prophetic sub-community maintains hope despite appearances to the contrary because God’s promises are trustworthy.

New Thought Christianity and the Prophetic Tradition
This hopeful vision coincides with the central goals of New Thought Christianity, i.e., to examine and demonstrate those categories of spirit which transcend apparent lack and limitations, to take seriously the power of God working in and through the Cosmos, and to develop specific, practical techniques for releasing such spiritual power into the real world to improve physical and mental health, increase personal and societal prosperity, and improve the quality of relationships among the people. New Thought takes with utter seriousness the idea that the God-power within each person can actually do something in the physical world. We find ourselves called to announce to the world the great possibilities for health, wealth and happiness, for better relationships and deeper awareness of God. The central principle which underlies such a practical Christian belief system is often expressed in the phrase: “There is only one Presence and one Power in the universe, God, the Good omnipotent.”[3]

The newcomer to such claims might find them grandiose, naïve, perhaps even a touch narcissistic. Dietrich Bonehoeffer’s journey from pacifism to Grenzfall (tyrannicide) in some ways represents a movement in the opposite direction, away from optimism toward dark despair which provokes violent intervention by an essentially non-violent man. Indeed, the earlier buoyancy of Transcendentalism and its European counterparts was already absent in the thought-world of twentieth century theology before Bonhoeffer made his move.[4] Nineteenth century idealism had died a generation earlier, summarized by the immortal words of a Canadian medical officer after the Battle of the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. [5]

Despite wars and rumors of wars, Unity never relinquished the optimistic, monistic, idealistic vision of Transcendentalism. Our writers and theologians still affirm the divine nature of humanity, taking seriously the imago Dei regardless of appearances to the contrary. The prophetic tradition within our movement aims at calling people to the higher vision of their potential as sons and daughters of God. We see all sentient beings as fully divine and fully human, to include the main example of this indwelling divinity, Jesus of Nazareth. Such a prophetic word from our tradition, properly proclaimed, has the potential to transform the consciousness of humanity, one person at a time.

Not a Player
The outrageous possibilities of such a claim remain unexplored today because the potential apologists for Metaphysical Christianity are unequipped to play in the major leagues of theological dialogue. In fact, one could argue that Unity’s longstanding aversion for intellectual discourse indicates we have yet to show up for spring training. Prophetic ministry has a spiritual dimension, therefore the promulgation of spiritual principles, i.e., a call to righteousness, is an important component in any prophetic vision. However, to communicate a prophetic vision today requires an understanding of contemporary issues and their antecedents, plus the ability to translate one’s insights into the common language of Christian theology.

Means to the Goal: Lyceum and Journal
I hold that establishing an annual academic conference open to religious scholars from around the world (“The Lyceum at Unity Village”) and offering its proceedings in a new publication, the Unity Institute Journal of Theology (UIJT) will, over time, contribute to New Thought Christianity’s fuller participation in the ongoing theological dialogue and increase Unity’s involvement with the wider Christian community. Such involvement will allow the powerful insights of New Thought to flow outward from Unity while the circulating exchange of ideas will bring new possibilities to us from thinkers and spiritual leaders of other traditions. This is my thesis project for the doctoral program I am completing as part of my professional development as instructor of Historical and Theological Studies at Unity Institute; this is also the center of my life’s work.

Anti-Intellectual, Anti-traditionalist
Historically, Unity has been rather anti-intellectual and anti-traditionalist, so much that the insights, ideas and tools available to clergy and religious scholars from mainstream Protestant and Catholic traditions have seldom found their way into Metaphysical Christianity. The largest of the New Thought denominations, Unity could arguably be described as a movement with excellent insights into the nature of spirituality but little sense of its relationship to the complex family of religions commonly called Christianity. Even among the ordained Unity clergy, there is almost no tradition of theological reflection, no widespread understanding of modern biblical scholarship, little sense of church history, and an appalling lack of awareness about the very tools required to make our gifts available to a wider Christian world. The intellect has been described as inferior to, and often in conflict with, intuitive insights gleaned in personal meditation. For a classic example, Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore wrote:

Some persons confound the realm of knowledge about things formulated through the intellect with pure knowledge. Intellect and its plane of activity are not pure mind as the realm of matter is not Spirit. The same essences of being enter into both, but wisdom is sadly lacking in the intellectual realm. Intellect has formulated its conclusions from the sense side of existence instead of from the spiritual side, and these two sides are divergent.[6]


Again and again, Unity foundational writings take a swipe at the intellectual approach to religion, like this supposedly objective question in the study guide of Fillmore’s 1939 book, Jesus Christ Heals: “Is it better to seek understanding through intellectual reasoning or through divine inspiration?”[7] Since dialogue among biblical scholars and theologians provides a context of continuity for the Christian community, it is precisely this juxtaposition of intellectual reasoning over and against divine inspiration which has perpetuated Unity’s isolation. The New Thought archipelago lies somewhere over the horizon, far from the mainland of Christian thought.

Prophetic Possibilities: Mystical Consciousness
Nevertheless, the kind of prophetic ministry which Unity practices could be understood in the classical model of a call to righteousness, if such a call were expanded to include teaching and healing ministry aimed at introducing people to their inherent divine nature. Like Paul addressing the Athenians on Mars hill, Unity needs metaphors with which to translate the exciting, empowering insights of New Thought Christianity into the symbolic language of the twenty-first century Christian world. For example, Unity could be understood as a renewed, somewhat Easternized form of Christian mysticism. Some critics have claimed New Thought has more in common with Hinduism than Christianity, but this is an overstatement.[8] Historically, one could make the case for Unity’s monistic vision and sense of the indwelling Spirit by drawing parallels with Dionysius the Aeropagite, John Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckhart, and George Fox.

Since the denomination “grew up” as a laypersons movement, significant early thinkers in Unity had little awareness of the many points of contact with the intellectual and spiritual heritage available to them. This theological and historical illiteracy, coupled with the revivalist tendencies on nineteenth century American religious scene, produced twentieth century Unity writings which continued to display a sense of isolation from mainstream Christianity. Too often this primordial, developmental ignorance has persisted in Unity circles, sometimes outpicturing as anti-traditionalism which borders on religious xenophobia. Some Unity people have become suspicious of the word theology itself.

An established program of theological conferences and the publication of an academic New Thought Christian journal has the potential to mitigate some of the historic, anti-intellectual tendencies of the Unity movement, to inspire its scholars to explore and develop more fully Unity’s contribution to Christian thought, and to encourage ministers and laypeople to join the discussion about the role of the Church in service to humanity.

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[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), xvi.
[2] Ibid., 67.
[3] Myrtle Fillmore, Myrtle Fillmore’s Healing Letters, Francis W. Foulkes, ed., (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1954), 132.
[4]Larry Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 122.
[5] John McCrea, “In Flanders Fields” (Arlington National Cemetery Website: online source http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm), accessed 08-13-08.
[6] Charles Fillmore, Atom-Smashing Power of Mind (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1949), 89.
[7] Fillmore, Jesus Christ Heals (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1939), 202.
[8] Anderson, online lecture (http://www.websyte.com/alan/parl.htm).