Easter Edition

Brilliantly doctored Bush v. Jesus photo credit: Atrios@blogspot.com


Demon Princess wants to start out here with some whining, certain that Spring is NEVER going to arrive here, in the-more-than-usually-dreary-drippy-rainy Northwest this season. The entire population, by all rights, should be on suicide watch, but they're not, interestingly. Leaving your intrepid girl reporter to conclude that anybody in the Puget Sound Region not already on the popular antidepressant-meds-washed-down-with Starbucks diet regime is sure to be signing up this year.

What a great franchise idea. I'm certain that people in other regions could benefit, too, even those not afflicted with the passive-agressive "have-a-nice-day-now-fuck-off" bug the way our friendly locals are. I prefer my hostility out in the open so I can address it, & have it addressed, but how fun would that be?

However, despite the personal travails I endure here, I wanted to leave my small circle of readers a positive message of hope in a nod to the fact that it IS Easter. Besides, having lived elsewhere for a long, long time, I know that this is not the normal state of things. Just one of Seattle's less-charming aspects. The scenery is magnificent, when you can actually see it.

Heretic chick that she is, Demon Princess liked this article a great deal, & so shares these excerpts with y'all.

From yesterday's Christian Science Monitor an article entitled, "Christian Mavericks Find Affirmation in Ancient Heresies."

"When the Rev. John Buehrens gives his Easter sermon this Sunday, he'll borrow a page from an unlikely source: the Gospel of Judas. The gnostic text, unveiled by scholars with fanfare last week, portrays Jesus Christ as an enigmatic guru who venerates Judas, teaching him secret accounts of creation and approving his imminent betrayal.

"Many Christians might find that offensive, or, like Mr. Buehrens of Unitarian First Parish in Needham, Mass., silly. But as an emblem of Christianity's long tradition of dissenting voices, the text is for him an inspiration nonetheless.

"'An awful lot of what passes for orthodoxy today is something Jesus would have despised," Buehrens says, noting Christian support for "imperialism and militarism." As a challenge to orthodoxy in its time, he says, the Judas story is "a reminder that no single interpretation of the Christ event can exhaust the spiritual implications.'

"Across the country, observers say, the Gospel of Judas is striking a chord with progressive Christians. Not so much for its heretical theology, but as an ancient symbol of their modern mission to update what defines faithfulness. It's an approach that's winning approval from scholars, who say Christianity has always attracted diverse beliefs. But others worry that this revisionism misrepresents time-tested truths.

"Modern theologians attracted to the Judas gospel are reminding today's dissenters that they follow a long, legitimate tradition. At last week's press conference, four academics used either "diverse" or "diversity" to describe what the text reveals about the beliefs and attitudes of the early church. If the church was so varied in its early days, they suggest, then contemporary Christians can perhaps accept the growing diversity of beliefs and lifestyles in their religious communities as well.

"The Christianity of the ancient world was even more diverse than it is today," says Bart Ehrman, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a former fundamentalist Christian turned self-described "happy agnostic" - someone who claims it cannot be known if God exists. "My hope is that when people see how diverse Christianity was in its origins, [they] will be a little bit more tolerant of diversity in Christianity today."

"That may be easier said than done. One reason: many of early Christianity's most steadfast figures rejected gnostic teachings as heresy - that is, false representations of Jesus' life and of God's nature. (Gnostic doctrines assert rival divine beings and emphasize salvation through secret knowledge.) Although heresy is seldom a matter of public debate in the 21st century, the problem of embracing all beliefs that purport to be "Christian" persists.

"To think that noncanonical texts legitimizes diversity today 'is to ignore the fact that that diversity was not accepted [in the early church],' says Ronald Simkins, director of the Kripke Center for the Study of Religion & Society at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. 'It's a naive use of history.'"
...
"'Whoever is in power decides what's heresy," [Minister] Carson says. "We don't tell people what to believe. We only encourage them to have closer contact with God.'"

Who defines what's Christian?

"Yet the same standards hold from age to age, regardless of who's in charge, according to Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

"'You can have disagreements about doctrinal interpretations of particular issues - that's why we have Catholics, and we have Presbyterians, and we have Baptists, and we have Methodists.... But if you deny the resurrection [or other core teachings], well, according to historic Christianity, you are beyond the pale.'"

"For some the debate isn't about theology; it's about freedom of conscience.

"The Rev. Jayne Oasin, a social justice officer for the Episcopal Church, USA., says that 'to consider there to be only one truth is to me a form of oppression.'"

Yay, Rev. Jayne!

And for the rest of y'all I have a (non-doctored) photo of a really big bunny rabbit, coming up next. Happy Easter, all!
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And it's WEAL!