First posted online 2008 May 04.
Our choir conductor asked us to write short responses to some questions for an upcoming concert. He asked, "How has being involved with NJGMC changed you"? I wrote In 1998 I found my voice at a summer camp that reached out to youth music ministers at Chinese churches. During my membership in the Protestant faith, music was an essential tool for coordinating the community to witness its most fundamental beliefs. I received dismissive resistance and disrespectful judgment when I came out in college, first as an agnostic/atheist, then as a gay man. Christianity and I parted on unfriendly terms. I kept singing, but I performed no outreach repertoire for a decade. Joining NJGMC reminded me that music was a tool to convey personal experiences and hopes for community reconciliation in emotional and artistic terms that written platforms sometimes cannot. By joining NJGMC I met members of living, inclusive Christian faiths. NJGMC reminded me that music was a tool for nurturing and healing society, and through NJGMC I found a community that affirmed for atheists, as much as it affirmed for adherents of any other faith, the responsibility and privilege of bearing witness to social needs and hopes.
on Saturday afternoon, 2008 May 3. Equality Forum 2008
This afternoon the choir sang at the 2008 Equality Forum National Faith Service in Philadelphia, PA. http://www.equalityforum.com/2008/interfaith.cfm The speaker was the retired Anglican Bishop John Shelby Spong who affirmed what I had written the preceding day. Traditional conservative literal Christian theology claimed that through disobedience humankind fell from its God-given perfection to worthless dependence on divine salvation. Literally, Jesus is sacrificed in humankind's place. This obsession with worthlessness is a form of congregational abuse, which then leads the abused congregation to abuse others: Jews, African slaves, African Americans, women, and now queer minorities. Spong explains that minority oppression and its roots in self-denigration explain Christianity's modern battles with Darwinian evolution and lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and the rest of the queer alphabet soup. Darwin claimed that humanity is a work in progress; we never fell from perfection. We need no rescue, and in liberal interpretation Jesus is not a barbaric sacrifice for our wretchedness, but an example for us to improve ourselves. The LGBT community happens to be the in-vogue minority group upon which to transfer abuse. Spong reads in the book of John the purpose of Jesus: that humankind might have life and have it abundantly. In other words, Jesus showed how we might be ourselves without putting others down, eventually freeing us to give ourselves to others. Spong opened his sermon by apologizing to the LGBT community for the suffering that the Christian community has wrought. Christian atheism
Spong belongs to a group of theological dissenters who use the name Christian in ways that no one from my childhood church ever would. I would consider Spong and similar liberal Christians atheists. They do not take literally the concept of a divine magic man in the sky or even anywhere "out there." Instead, the concept of God is more like a quality, like that of perfect Love. Jesus held the title of Lord for showing what this God was. Jesus was raised from death when his work and teachings continued God in the world after his physical death. I see no serious distinction between my beliefs and Spong's. Anglican Christian atheism reminds me of Unitarian Universalism and Reform Judaism. These religions share two aspects. First, each of them affirms liberal humanitarian principles. Don't mess with people just because they are different. One would probably find among adherents of these faiths many members of the American Civil Liberties Union. Second, each of these religions bear witness to the hopes for using a long-cherished human belief system for humanitarian good in a modern world. These religions recognize people's spiritual or aspiritual inclinations as tools that can be honed for global benefit. I hold that my atheism, scientific atheism, is a religion like those just mentioned. I support the American Civil Liberties Union and I keep alive the practice of natural science because I think it deserves a chance to be a tool for spreading well-being and kindness. I prefer to think of disbelief or the absence of belief as examples of belief systems in the sense that negative numbers are part of the real number line even though sometimes they are distinguished from the positive values. Furthermore, a common thread among atheists is the expectation that no evidence shall ever surface persuading the scientific method of the presence of personal God-like beings. Strictly speaking I remain agnostic on this issue since I live purely in the present. Strictly speaking it is a matter of faith to believe fully that no such evidence shall ever appear. Let me get back to the philosophy at another time. Let me end by saying that these religions agree that we can improve the human condition by cherishing and reflecting upon diverse spiritual heritages, and the responsibilities and privileges of bearing witness to social needs, hurts, and hope belong to all people regardless of specific spiritual heritage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shelby_Spong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A.T._Robinson
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