Song: Take My Life and Let It Be | Song: Stand |

Friends,

Mom and Dad have successfully been fêted. The sun is out. Next I head to NYC to do one of my favorite tasks: cleaning out a storage shed. Okay, not really fun!

-Elizabeth

Authors Who Changed My Faith

As we head toward All Saints day, I've been thinking about the saints that influenced my life. During seminary we often write our "spiritual autobiography" and that includes thinking about the people who have helped form our faith. For me this was largely family--grandparents, parents, and of course Aunt Bethie. I am grateful to have had such a supportive and faithful family.

But this year I've been thinking about how I have come to see my faith as "orthopraxy" rather than "orthodoxy". I think about what faith calls me to do rather than what faith calls me to believe. These aren't the only options, the english word "faith" in our bibles is sometimes about the Greek credo or creed, but is often pistis, which means trust. Faith is also something that can be about "knowing" and other times is about "mystery". Honestly for me sometimes the mystery leads to plain old doubt. For each of us we have some combination of these forms of faith.

And many inputs form these many angles to our faith.

Today I'd like to share with you what I read in seminary that comes back to me again and again. These are the saints that wrote about faith, and in their writing impacted by faith journey. These are all "old" because I went to seminary twenty-eight years ago. But they still feel relevant to me today.

We'll start with Walter Wink, because I met him before seminary and he probably influenced my decision to go to seminary. He wrote Transforming Bible Study: A Leaders Guide. This book transformed how I see the Bible. His argument is that the bible need not only be studied, it can be experienced. We can put ourselves into the text and find meaning for our lives that doesn't require knowing what either the author or later editor was trying to say. The bible can speak to us on an emotional and experiential way. Walter Wink is a serious academic who analyzes the texts and has written many scholarly analyses. Those academic critiques are important to our understanding, but they are not the only way to engage the bible.

Next I will offer the work of Delores Williams, the author of Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Feminist God-Talk. From her I learned the concept that when faced with impossibilities, people can choose to keep on keeping on. Just keep going. This is highly relevant to our present political climate. Williams is the founder of the idea that there is a womanist theology that is different from that of white woman feminists, and different from black men's theologies. She was my first introduction to different atonement theologies.

Similar to keeping on, Elsa Támez introduced me to The Scandalous Message of James: Faith Without Works is Dead. I grew up in a family where this message was hanging on our walls, where others might have "God bless this house". But Tamez' mujeurista theology (theologies growing out of South America) also focuses on the idea that biblical patience is not about quiet waiting for change, but is forceful persistence toward God's rule that was needed in the first century and is needed now.

Kwok Pui-Lan's book Discovering the Bible in the Non-Biblical World was an eye-opening experience for me. She makes a point I could not have come to on my own: the Hebrew Bible is comes from a very specific cultural tradition, and the New Testament grows from that. But the good news of Jesus Christ can grow out of, and into, any cultural tradition. For some people the Old Testament is Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Ancestor Worship. Those cultural backgrounds adjust how the believers read, hear, and interpret Jesus' teaching, death, and resurrection in ways that can expand all people's understanding. Western thought does not own the good news of Jesus Christ just because the faith started in that culture. This required me to engage in a radical rethinking of my own culture.

Similarly Nancy Eiesland overturned my understanding of how body and soul are connected in her book The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability. The notes in my bible from high school show that I had a highly dualistic view of bodies--I didn't know the idea that "I am a soul wearing a body" was what I believed. Eiesland describes how disability helps us recognize that we are our bodies. The aches, pains, abilities, and inabilities are essential to our life, and to our soul. They are not separate beings. She challenges us to engage in the brokenness of Jesus' crucified body as essential to that story.

In the same way that we cannot be disconnected from our bodies, our faith story cannot be disconnected from the community we are part of. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian Dominican priest who created the language Liberation Theology, also wrote the small book We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People. Our faith is created not only by our own experiences, but by the community we are a part of. Those around us, whether we agree with them or disagree, are shaping who we are and what we believe. To the extent that we can invite them into conversation, engage their ideas, interact as equals in the journey, our neighbors will deepen our spiritual journey.

Which returns me to Walter Wink. His book The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium, is essential to the Christian faith. He explores how to be a pacifist in a violent world, and how to recognize the false narrative offered by the myth of redemptive violence (and by many movies!) Jesus' message does not support responding to bad violence with "good" violence and neither should we.

These are my saints this holiday season. Who are yours?.

Let me know who are the important writers developing your faith? What do you read as congregation? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
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Sloan Wainwright and her song Stand. I get to hear her at Music Camp every summer. (4:28)

Take My Life and Let It Be Arranged by Jesse Fortner, vocals by Rebekah Edwards. This is on Sound Cloud which requires you to login but is free. (2:58)

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