Responsible Religion

I was present some years ago when a senior professor of Christian theology told a Muslim professor that equality between the sexes was a Christian value and not a Muslim one. The Muslim let it pass; I protested. Equality between the sexes has not in general been a Christian value, it has been one most churches have learned, belatedly, from the secular state. In this country women had votes and could stand as MPs decades before most churches accepted women ministers. The picture shows two women counting ballot papers. On some topics the state is a more reliable arbiter than many religious organisations are. Because some religions feel able to threaten people with eternal damnation, they have felt that killing or injuring people to save their immortal souls was Fair Dos. I'm not arguing that the State is always and everywhere a safe guardian, it clearly is not; but a secular state probably will not take sides in religious conflicts. (The secular state becomes a hazard in another...

St Joseph portrayed by Michael O Brien of/in Ontario Canada Christmas is too cut and dried, it needs re thinking, re-experiencing. Here are three exasperated tries. Joseph, you don't get nearly enough praise Was it you who taught Jesus tolerance of sinners? In one picture I have seen, you bring him flowers to play with. Mary at times may have had the sense of God with her; did you? The angel said to you, "If you look after Mary as your wife you will be doing what God wants", but that sense Must often have deserted you and left you feeling like A man cuckolded in advance "Let the Father of the Baby Gather cherries for thee!" ----------------------------------- OK Mary you never asked to be called Mother of God or even Virgin Especially not Virgin! You fell a victim to the wrong man and your Father and brothers could not For whatever reason get him to Do the Right Thing And Joseph came to believe If he was to look after...

A subject on which I feel very strongly. The picture is supposed to be the Good Samaritan. Neighbourliness is not the same as friendship, it's what you do for people who are not your friends, for whom you possibly feel no affinity at all. They need help and you can provide it, so you do, at least up to a point. I think St Peter will be asking us, And how much did you do for people you merely ran into, who were Not Your Kind at all? I suspect the Good Samaritan was not broke; widow's mites would not pay accommodation for an injured man for several days, and the GS was carrying oil and wine. But the GS gave his time also, and that is harder. I can't produce the reference, but an experiment on theology students had lots of them stepping past an apparently ill person on their way to an appointment they had been told was important. NB just in case anyone doesn't know, Jews regarded Samaritans as traitors; a Good Samaritan is like, I don't know, a Good EDLer? Afte...

I don't count as a Christian in any mainstream sense because I don't buy Redemption or any status for Jesus higher than that of other "prophets", ie people who lived very close to God and shared what they learned for others' benefit. But I really buy the Crucifixion and Resurrection as momentous-- and as a package, each pretty pointless without the other. Thus I need an account of what it was all about that make it crucial or very nearly crucial (nice pun there) but will not rely on Jesus as Only Son of God. I think God is shared-awareness-that-prizes-all-creatures-but-is-not-all-powerful. I think access to that shared awareness may be the birthright of animals but humans lost it by relying too much on speech. It can be cultivated and is cultivated by the prophets, perhaps especially Jesus. He felt God felt he could do something very momentous and "instructive" by getting crucified, and so he did it.  The Romans tried, up to a point, to give t...

These are the Keys Jesus supposedly awarded to St Peter, the keys of the Kingdom. He gave them to him before Peter promised to stick with him no matter what, and then disowned him three times, but not before Peter had developed the habit of opening his mouth and putting his foot in it. So if this story has some truth to it Jesus selected as Judge a man who would always have to have allowances made for him. (Interestingly, Peter does pass Paul's requirement that an Overseer/ episcopos should be a married man.) I have an amusing but moving image of a sort of Board Meeting in Heaven at which the participants are Jesus, St Peter, and God. They are discussing how humankind are coming along. The impatient one is Jesus who made, allegedly, the biggest and most painful effort to put humankind right. He says "They should be doing better than this by now". Peter, as is his wont, says "But you have to make allowances". And God says "But the suffering, the...

Yet another bearded male: this picture is supposed to show Zoroaster participating in the school at Athens. The following is a straight lift from Wikipedia: Zoroaster emphasized the freedom of the individual to choose right or wrong and individual responsibility for one's deeds. This personal choice to accept  aša  or arta (the divine order), and shun  druj  (ignorance and chaos) is one's own decision and not a dictate of Ahura Mazda. For Zarathustra, by thinking good thoughts, saying good words, and doing good deeds (e.g. assisting the needy or doing good works) we increase this divine force  aša  or arta in the world and in ourselves, celebrate the divine order, and we come a step closer on the everlasting road to being one with the Creator. Thus, we are not the slaves or servants of Ahura Mazda, but we can make a personal choice to be his co-workers, thereby refreshing the world and ourselves. Oneself as co-worker with God appeals to me, not least...

I had a Quaker parent and an atheist parent. They did not argue about religion much, but they are both (or versions of them) at work in my head and heart. There is no question of my trying to do without religion, but the religion has always to be responsible to something outside itself. For example, I think that religion must not try to justify itself in terms of what happens in an afterlife. There may be an afterlife; it seems to me unlikely but not out of the question. But the responsibility of the religious to the rational means that religion must show the good it does in terms of this  life. My own heritage is Christian and I feed on a low church version of that very often, but I cannot imagine Jesus sanctioning the exclusion from Paradise <whatever that  is>of people who came to God by another route than his. So other religions must in general have equal status.  This in turn means that any claims Jesus made to uniqueness have to be explained away. --That...