Tacoma Atheists » Mark Driscoll

Mission improbable

Amanda — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:59:41 +0000

Oh, Mars Hill… if you’re around, and feel like dealing with a missionary, go to Grey Gallery and Lounge on 11th between Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill Mondays at 5:30pm. Maybe they’ll try to “fix you.”

Guess who’s coming to visit us on Capitol Hill, folks? Mars Hill Church.

This week, Mars Hill’s Joel Fariss—a deacon at MH’s downtown church—wrote a blog post entitled “Mission in Capitol Hill.”

Capitol Hill is majestic in its standing among Seattle culture shapers, with its long Broadway avenue freckled with dirty Thai restaurants and hipster clothing stores, as well as a statuesque presence in the coffee world. Among these elite caverns of caffeine lies Bauhaus Coffee and Books. Bauhaus has long been a Capitol Hill landmark and is seen by locals as a comfortable place to hang out… literally. Just the other week I looked towards the door as I saw legs of black lace wrapped in a tight and short leather skirt which met the fur shawl that fell from the shoulders of a beautiful… man.

A MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A guy I know has been creating some really cool relationships with some of the staff there over the last year. The fruit of his ministry is amazing considering the hostility that most hold towards Christianity on the hill. Farris goes on to quote a bunch of scripture relating to Mars Hill’s mission to spread the word of God, fix the sinners, etc.

Then, Fariss writes:

This is what Mars Hill is doing on Capitol Hill: Living life intentionally. We are loving our neighbors, eating with them, serving the city with them. We have a vision to serve and love Capitol Hill to see the hill transformed to love and serve Jesus.Are You In?

I would love to talk with you more about the gospel of Jesus and the implications thereof, you can find me every Monday at Grey Gallery and Lounge on 11th between Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill: 5:30pm.

Yes, the same misogynistic, hipster church — which compared homosexuality to cancer — wants to come here and save you from yourself.

Grey’s management says they weren’t contacted Fariss or Mars Hill and aren’t sure what to expect, come Monday. “If it’s just [Fariss] and a couple people having a beer and talking about god, I don’t have a problem, but if it’s a mission thing then it’s not something we would tolerate,” says Grey Gallery and Lounge owner Erik Guttridge. “If it were to be a sort of mission at Grey, we’ve asked people to leave [for similar things] before.”

When contacted about his “mission” Fariss seemed a bit rattled. He danced around Mars Hill’s stance on homosexuality, saying that he disagreed with Pastor Mark Driscoll’s gay-cancer analogy, but still believes all you gays are sinners.

His best-but-totally-incomprehensible explanation:

“I believe that if there have been negative things said about homosexuality, where those statements are coming from, they are coming from the same place on a biblical or Christian perspective on abusive fathers or other injustice in the world. Maybe the same place we would say victims find themselves in. People are victimized in certain ways.”

The last anti-gay church that tried to get a foothold in Capitol Hill didn’t last long. This time, all the queers, punks, militant atheists and lovable godless weirdoes should head over to Grey next Monday, pack the place and make Mars Hill feel as welcome as possible.

Mark Dricoll, the cussing pastor

Amanda — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:36:36 +0000

Well, I’m not sure what to say about this NYT story, except that religious folk pitch fits about profanity and sex on the TV, but I suppose it’s OK from the pulpit???

Church attendance and torture: what’s the connection?

Valerie Tarico — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:15:22 +0000

Valerie Tarico, Ph.D. is a psychologist in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth, the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org, and the host of Christianity in the Public Square, Moral Politics Television, Seattle.

The circles I run in include a fair number of recovering fundies — people who were raised on the notion that morality comes from Jesus. In fact, the former Calvinists among us were taught that anyone who is not “washed in the blood” is utterly depraved. For real. Seattle Calvinist mega-minister, Mark Driscoll, had this to say to his flock: “If the resurrection didn’t literally happen, there’s no reason for us to be here. If the resurrection didn’t literally happen, there are parties to be had, there are women to be had, there are guns to shoot, there are people to shoot.” (Have you heard that Calvinism is all the rage?)

Children are hard-wired to be credulous, to accept what they are told—which means that this shit gets inside people at a gut level — which means it takes a lot of work to get it back out. Recovering fundies spend a fair bit of time reminding each other that just because something got wired into your brain before your critical faculties developed doesn’t mean it’s true. So of course last week’s Pew report about churchgoing and torture approval made the rounds.

In case you missed it, Pew released survey data showing that the more frequently someone went to church, the more likely they were to approve of torture. (So much for total depravity on the outside.) Church attendance in this case may be a proxy for conservative religious belief. Of the groups surveyed, Evangelical Christians were most likely to think that torture is often or sometimes ok (62%), followed by Catholics (51%), followed by mainline Protestants (46%). Nonbelievers were least likely to agree (40%).

What’s the deal? Over at the Washington Post religion blog, On Faith, modernist theologian Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, suggested that maybe the problem is rooted in theology, what is called the “penal theory of atonement.” Jesus gets torture and death because the rest of us deserve it. So through the twists and turns of theo-logic, Jesus getting tortured to death turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to the human race. It’s the way believers escape the fate that awaits the rest of us — and is a part of God’s perfect, loving plan.

“For Christian conservatives,” Thistlewaite says, “severe pain and suffering are central to their theology.” In evidence, she points to Evangelical enthusiasm for Mel Gibson’s movie, a theologically justified orgy of Hollywood torture. She has a point. Convinced of the film’s salvific merit, my mother’s church bussed in teens and made special arrangement for wheelchair-bound elderly. Wouldn’t want them to miss that half-hour beating scene.

Does penal atonement theology lead to torture approval? Could be. A host of other hypotheses were suggested in response to Thistlewaite’s article, most of them none too flattering in their assessment of those Evangelical churchgoers:

It’s political. They’ve allowed the GOP instead of the gospel to shape their thinking.
They don’t think. Being a Christian requires you to torture logic every day.
Christians have a higher duty to protect innocents than prisoners.
Since God approves of torturing most of the human race for eternity it must be ok.
Witch drowning, heretic burning, even medieval waterboarding – the Church has a lot of practice at torture.
Evangelicalism is authoritarian — so is torture.
Anyone who believes in torture isn’t a true Christian.
They approve because it’s Muslims who are being tortured.
The ends justify the means in saving souls; the ends justify the means elsewhere.
Since Christian leaders are saved, they can do no wrong.
Evangelical Christianity is a tribal religion, focused on distinguishing in-group from out-group, and out-group actors don’t have rights.
Christians walk around with an instrument of torture dangling from their necks.
Many Christians misunderstand the message of Christ.

After spending 10 years watching my tired father twitch in church, I’ll confess to my personal favorite: “Sometimes sermons are such that congregants who cannot fall asleep feel that torture is part of God’s plan; this does not imply that they like it.”

But one comment actually made me think. It was from a nonbeliever who expressed her dismay, not that so many Christians were willing to condone torture, but that so many nonbelievers did too. Christian fundamentalism may increase tolerance of torture, but if so, it is part of a broader problem.

Scholar Riane Eisler (author of “The Chalice and the Blade,” and “The Real Wealth of Nations”) offers a framework that may lend some relevant insights. Eisler proposes that all institutions, ideologies, and relationships can be thought of on a continuum from domination orientation to partnership orientation. In a domination orientation, people are caught up in the business of competing for control. You either eat or are eaten, and given the option, most people would rather be at the top of the food chain. Underlings use what power they do have: manipulation, deceit, passive resistance, even suicide. Those in power do harm, often because they perceive that the alternative is “being done to.” Being the torturer is better than having your hands tied behind your back and a hood over your head.

Evangelical Christianity has a strong dominance orientation. The metaphor of “spiritual warfare” is ubiquitous. Onward Christian Soldiers. Dominionists seek to take control of the reins of power to rule the rest of us according to Biblical principles. In the church I grew up in, women were taught to submit, even to abuse. My pastor gave a full sermon on breaking the will of his two year old. Spare the rod…

But the rest of us are not immune from this mentality of domination either, which ultimately is a mentality of fear, the fear of exploitation or insufficiency. It’s so — primate. Unless the weaker monkey can sneak, the dominant monkey will eat all the grapes. Unless the weaker chimp can sneak, the dominant chimp will get to mate with all the best females. But even our primate cousins would have impossibly wretched lives without the rudiments of compassion and cooperation. Chimpanzees both seek help from one another and give it. Rhesus monkeys have been willing to starve for a week rather than shocking another monkey to get fed (Hauser, pp. 354-355). Their behavior reflects a complex blend of domination and partnership strategies dictated largely by instinct. But, our intelligence allows us more behavioral flexibility than any other species. We who call ourselves Homo Sapiens Sapiens — wise, wise — have the power to understand fear and domination deeply and to orient our personal relationships and social institutions toward the other end of the continuum.

Even as old an institution as Christianity has the power to learn. That may be one of the most important take-aways from the Pew study. Yes, as many people pointed out, the Church has a history of embracing torture, sanctifying it theologically and using it to defend purity of belief. And yes, those Christians who are still stuck defending the “fundamental” belief agreements made in the Fourth Century may be stuck defending torture as well. But Christians like Thistlewaite who have been willing to re-evaluate the old regula fidei or rules of faith have moved both theologically and morally. Many mainliners center their theology not in “penal atonement” but in radical hospitality. Call it love. Like partnership oriented Humanists, Buddhists and others they teach their children how to think rather than what to think and don’t feel a need to “break” them to control their spiritual quest. If that doesn’t help us to outgrow torture, I don’t know what will.

Ancient Mythic Origins of the Easter Story

Valerie Tarico — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:33:10 +0000

Evangelicals across the political spectrum, from Pat Robertson to Jim Wallis, seek to shape our government and life-ways by appealing to the authority of the Christian Bible. It is virtually impossible to understand American politics without understanding the book that drives their priorities. Given that three quarters of Americans are Christians, I would argue that it is virtually impossible to move forward as a people without growing our understanding of the Book. The Christian Bible culminates in a death and resurrection story. What is this story, and where did it come from?

In this post, Valerie Tarico, author of The Dark Side, interviews Dr. Tony Nugent, scholar of world religions and mythology. Dr. Nugent is a symbologist, an expert in ancient symbols. He taught at Seattle University for the past fifteen years in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and is a Presbyterian minister.

Easter is coming. Some people are saying that the crucifixion and resurrection narratives simply retell the cycle of seasons, the death and return of the Sun. Others say that these stories are literal histories. But you say the reality is more complicated than either of these. You argue that the Easter stories — the death and resurrection of Jesus have very specific mythic origins.

I view the story of Christ in the Gospels of the New Testament as a powerful and spiritually wise sacred story. While the story is told as if it happened, it is a theologically and mythically constructed history. The conclusion of the story, the account of Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection and ascension to heaven, has many layers. But at its core I would say it is an historicized version of a very ancient myth from Mesopotamia, the Cradle of Civilization, the land we today call Iraq.

Some stories speak to people in a deep spiritual way. These sacred stories are what are called “myths” in the field of religious studies. Despite our common usage, a myth traditionally is not just a false tale. Rather, it is a story that, at least at one point in time, had a very powerful spiritual resonance. The story of death and resurrection I refer to is one such story. In the Sumerian tradition, in which much of the Bible is rooted, the story is called, “From the Great Above to the Great Below.” It is also called “The Descent of Inanna.” The Sumerian goddess Inanna is the personification of the planet Venus and a major deity in the Sumerian pantheon. There is also a Babylonian version of the myth, which is called “The Descent of Ishtar.”

A long, long time ago, before humans were even created, Inanna, the “Queen of Heaven,” took a journey to the Underworld, a realm under the control of her sister Ereshkigal. She says she’s doing this to attend a funeral, but her real motivation is unclear. Before heading out, Inanna gives instructions to her assistant about rescuing her if she runs into trouble, which she does.

Inanna is instructed by the gatekeepers to take off one article of clothing at each gate in order to pass through. She thus arrives naked at her destination, where she is arrested, put on trial by the judges of the Underworld, convicted of an undisclosed crime, sentenced to death, tortured, and hung on a wooden stake. The result of her death is that the earth becomes sterile. Plants start drying up, and animals stop breeding. Unless something is done, all life on earth will end. After Inanna has been hanging on the stake for 3 days, her assistant realizes her mistress is in trouble and goes to the other gods for help. First to Enlil, then to Nanna, and neither of them will help. Then she goes to Enki, who creates, from his fingernails, two creatures who take the plant and water of life down to the Underworld, sprinkle them on Inanna, and bring her back to life and to the upper world.

Inanna is part of the prototype for Jesus and the Easter story. After she gets out of the underworld, we are introduced to her husband Dumuzi. When mythic stories get passed from one culture to the next, sometimes one character can split into two or two characters come together. In this case, the Jesus of the resurrection story blends parts of Inanna and Dimuzi.

The Underworld goes by a number of names, including “the Great Earth” and “the Great City”, and it is also called the “Land of No Return.” If, as a result of an extraordinary resurrection from the dead, someone does escape from the Underworld, a substitute must be provided. So when Inanna returns, she searches for someone to take her place. She doesn’t want to send anyone who has been missing her and mourning her down there, but when she finds her husband Dumuzi on his throne, totally unconcerned about her being gone, she decides that he will be her substitute. His brother-in-law Utu, the Sun-god, helps him to escape. But, a compromise is reached. Dumuzi will spend 6 months of every year in the Underworld. During the other 6 months, his devoted sister will substitute for him. Life and fertility thus return to the earth.

Persephone, and many other dying and rising gods, represent the seasonal cycles. In Christianity, one way the story changes is that it is detached from this agricultural cycle. The dying happens just once.

We know that the story of Inanna/Ishtar is the oldest, and the prototype for all other death/rebirth myths because it is one of the earliest epic myths recorded. We know this because it has been found inscribed on cuneiform clay tablets found in the sands of Iraq by archaeologists, and because linguists have deciphered the Sumerian language and provided translations in English. This was a popular myth, and so we have multiple copies of it, or of portions of it. The earliest tablets inscribed with this story date to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, and it is thought to have been originally formulated about 2,100 BC, i.e., 4,200 years ago.

Both Inanna and Jesus both travel to a big city, where they are arrested by soldiers, put on trial, convicted, sentenced to death, stripped of their clothes, tortured, hung up on a stake, and die. And then, after 3 days, they are resurrected from the dead. Now there are a number of significant differences between the stories. For one thing, one story is about a goddess and the other is about a divine man. But this is a specific pattern, a mythic template. When you are dealing with the question of whether these things actually happened, you have to deal with the fact that there is a mythic template here. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there wasn’t a real person, Jesus, who was crucified, but rather that, if there was, the story about it is structured and embellished in accordance with a pattern that was very ancient and widespread.

The second part of the Inanna myth focuses on her husband Dumuzi, who is the prototype of the non-aggressive, non-heroic male — the opposite of the warrior-god in the ancient pantheon. The summer month, which corresponds to our month of July, is named after him in both the Babylonian and Hebrew calendars. During this month each year, his followers — mostly women — mourn his death. From the Inanna myth, and a few others, we know that he is resurrected. But, unlike Jesus, who dies and is resurrected once, he dies and is resurrected each year. There are other major differences.

However, there really are a lot of similarities between the personalities and the stories of Jesus and Dumuzi:

They both are tortured and die violent deaths after being betrayed by a close friend, who accepts a bribe from his enemies.
They both have a father who is a god and a mother who is human.
Dumuzi’s father, the god Enki, also has many similarities to Yahweh, the father of Jesus.

Other than this gospel story, are there any other signs of Inanna’s influence on Christianity or on Easter?
Inanna became known outside of Mesopotamia by her Babylonian name, “Ishtar”. She is a personification of Venus, the evening star. There is also a male aspect of the deity who is the morning star. At the end of the Book of Revelation when Christ speaks to John he says, “I am the bright morning star.” In ancient Canaan, Ishtar is known as Astarte, and her counterparts in the Greek and Roman pantheons are known as Aphrodite and Venus. In the 4th Century, when Christians got around to identifying the exact site in Jerusalem where the empty tomb of Jesus had been located, they selected the spot where a temple of Aphrodite (Astarte/Ishtar/Inanna) stood. So they tore it down and built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest church in the Christian world.

Easter was traditionally called ‘Pascha’, and still is in many languages, named after the Jewish festival of ‘Pesach’ or Passover. In the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon world we have come to name the holiday ‘Easter’. This name is almost surely a reference to the goddess Ishtar. In the pagan spiritual traditions of Germany and England in the medieval period, Ishtar, came to be called the goddess Easter. As a deity of resurrection and rebirth, Easter became strongly associated with the season of springtime and ultimately gave her name to Christianity’s main holy day.

Mark Driscoll, rising Evangelical star, told his Seattle congregation: “If the resurrection of Christ didn’t literally happen, there is no reason for us to be here.”
Well, many Christian theologians see the crucifixion and resurrection as a spiritual story about hope beyond despair, redemption and new life, but they are not the ones who get the media attention. I consider myself to be a Christian in a spiritual sense, not in a doctrinal sense. This means my Christianity is defined by values, spiritual practices, and faith rather than belief in a specific set of doctrinal agreements. Before the 4th Century, when orthodoxy was established, Christianity was characterized by heterodoxy — many different forms of belief.

If the resurrection of Christ didn’t literally happen, or if there is no life beyond this one, that has shouldn’t have any bearing on whether life now is worth living. Nor should Christianity be regarded as the only true religion. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and other faith traditions are surely just as true and holy as Christianity. From my vantage point, where values and practices are the heart of Christianity, what is strange is how people like our recent president think it’s OK to practice torture can sincerely call themselves Christians. Like the bumper sticker says, “Who would Jesus waterboard?” Christ’s torture and crucifixion mean that we are called to put an end to such practices in human affairs! Right-wing evangelical Christianity is really the opposite of what Christ was about. And those who subscribe to an intolerant, arrogant, inhuman form of Christianity don’t see that they’re really following a religion that is antichrist.