Episode Notes Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works. Amity: This week we continue an exploration to investigate influential and problematic saint  Paul of Tarsus in The More You Know. First we are going to Texas to discuss why we don’t live there - and it has nothing to do with our exes - in Not Necessarily the Good News. Not Necessarily the Good News And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. - Genesis 2.7 On September 1, 2021, 666 new laws went into effect in Texas. Just this number should be a warning to anyone with a modicum of popular culture and/or religious understanding. Included in these laws are such things as an open carry law for firearms requiring no training or license, the banning of the teaching of critical race theory, and several modes of voter suppression. I will come back to some of those in the future probably, but in addition, an abortion law was entered into the books and that’s what I want to speak about today. Texas' new abortion law, which went into effect after the Supreme Court did not weigh in, could prevent the vast majority of abortions in the state. It prohibits abortions once cardiac activity is detected in an embryo. That can happen as early as about six weeks, before many people even know they are pregnant. Unlike other similar bills across the country, Texas' law doesn't set criminal penalties for violating the ban. Instead, the law allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps someone get an abortion. This timeline doesn’t make any sense in terms of the reality of menstruating individuals. The timing would line up with an 8-12 day late period - which could happen for all manner of reasons outside of pregnancy, thus basically disallowing anyone from seeing an abortion at any time.  It’s a bounty - Texas has put a bounty of $10,000 per individual - be it the pregnant party, their partner, the driver, hotel or motel employees, doctors, nursed, instacart workers - anyone who “helps someone get an abortion”  I read a bible passage at the beginning of this segment. Largely, the abortion debate in this county is fueled by so-called Christians who have pushed the idea that life begins at conception, which is starkly contrasted by Genesis, which refers to the breath of life, presumably indicating that the first breath is the indication of life. This follows most scientific thought which balks at late term abortion of fetuses that would be viable outside of the womb - and the reason that late term abortions are extrordinarily rare and are usually in cases of inviability or grave danger the the carrier. In this country, a living woman carrying a fertilized egg has less bodily autonomy than a corpse.  https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1032894148/in-texas-666-laws-take-effect-sept-1-including-many-conservative-priorities https://jezebel.com/the-texas-abortion-provider-who-defied-s-b-8-has-been-1847711763?utm_campaign=Jezebel&utm_content=1632177335&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1xN2osrdpMRtaTJQXFgVb3vUge95ZOkTuf6C884DE5wm5-l0fTzYYlikI https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/us/texas-abortion-lawsuit-alan-braid.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR1haJw-T7NRmOlbEBoPj4whPC9udS5lyEr6-Tyls3xIhFAHHQQ8OuNEY6k The More You Know I remember having a lunch with a friend, a practicing Jew, who discussed Jesus with me. He talked about reclaiming Jesus as a jewish man, from a jewish rabbinical tradition.  He said that Christianity was really the fault of Saint Paul, who he considered a lunatic.  A few years later I was discussing this idea with another jewish friend, who agreed that Jesus taught within the traditions of Judaism, but Saint Paul twisted and changed things to make a new, anti-semetic  religion. It’s a very common criticism. As we have seen Paul was a man eager to assert his Jewishness, and constantly remind his readers of his religious education and credentials. He would never want to be seen as the man who separated Christianity from Judaism, but with some of his statements, he severed the connections. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/who-was-paul https://www.huffpost.com/entry/apostle-paul-lived-and-died-as-a-dedicated-jew_b_3376350 Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Our Internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Without Works

Episode 44: Paul versus His Past

Episode Notes I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works. This week we will talk about hypocrisy in the Church- and continue with our conversation about the most problematic declarations of a problematic saint in The More You Know. First, we are going to discuss current hypocrisy, ethics in journalism, and leaps of logic in Not Necessarily the Good News Not Necessarily the Good News Path of thought: Headline: “Catholic leader whose organization voted to deny Biden communion caught using gay dating app” Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, the general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had lead the charge to deny President Biden communion for his abortion stance and I started interested in the hypocrisy angle so common in GOP politicians and clergy. However, when I went to research the story, I was faced with a couple of articles from the WSJ, one of which referred to “conservative Catholic publication, The Pillar.” Read that article and two things stood out - the repeated phrase “According to commercially available records of app signal data obtained by The Pillar” and a lengthy section of the article written, supposedly in relation to Burrill’s position in cracking down on child abuse in the church but clearly just written to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia. https://www.upworthy.com/catholic-monsignor-who-pushed-to-deny-joe-biden-communion-caught-using-a-gay-dating-app https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/pillar-investigates-usccb-gen-sec https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/07/20/bishop-misconduct-resign-burrill/ The More You Know What informed Paul’s negative opinions of homosexuality as a legitimate way to express love? We know that he was a conservative who wanted to anchor the new faith in Old Testament tradition. There are several verses in the Old Testament about the, “sin,” of homosexuality. For instance: If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:13 Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination. Leviticus 18:22 Add to this nearly identical stories in both Genesis 19: 1-11 and Judges 19: 16-24 involving roving gangs of homosexual rapists who prey on men travelling from city to city. In both cases the travelling men are sheltered by, “righteous,” elders who offer their virgin daughters to the lustful mob in an attempt to placate their needs. In one case the mob is stopped by angels. In the other the rapists accept the travelling man’s offered concubine and rape her to death. The endless cycle of kings that follow the book of Judges take turns indulging and preventing idol worship, and encouraging or punishing the male and female prostitutes that were a part of those rites. This explains why Paul, in the book of Romans, concludes that idol worship is the cause of homosexuality, and describes this as part of his construct on the origin of sin: Why did Paul add these condemnations when Jesus and the rest of the disciples did not? Paul seems to have felt that it was his job to place the new Christianity in the context of the old religion. Try to make it acceptable to people coming from Judaisim. The irony is that Paul’s evangelism eventually spread outside of Jewish communities and into gentile groups. Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Sprong has written on the idea that Paul himself was a homosexual man, and that his struggle with his own urges were the basis for his writings excluding them from salvation in the new religion. Bishop Sprong’s writings were inspired by theologians like Arthur Darby Nock, who visited the idea of Saint Paul as a struggling gay man. There is no actual evidence to support the idea that Saint Paul was gay. It is a concept that we must acknowledge in discussing him, but there is not biblical or extra biblical historical source that supports the theory. Others scholars have felt keenly the contradiction we brought up last week; that the same man who wrote such powerful passages about the love of God could not be the same man who wrote hurtful passages condemning sexual choices that are out of people’s control. The idea here is that these passages were added later by translators and some early churchmen. That could be the case, but there is no proving it, at least not with the documents we have on hand. Finding a very old manuscript without the anti-homosexual additions would be the only way to prove it. In the end we can accept what we have: a stridently anti-gay Paul, who for his own reasons, has excluded same sex love from acceptable expression, even insisting that God has set up this rejection. Of course, as we learned last time, this is the same man who insisted that some people were, “vessels of wrath,” created by God to demonstrate his redemptive, or punishing power. If we accept all scripture is infallible, then we have to accept this as part of our faith. The prejudice is not only justified, but endorsed by God. If we say that the scripture is only right when divinely inspired, how do we make the distinction between inspired and uninspired? Maybe there is another way to look at it. Maybe, as Christians, we use the words of Jesus as a meter, and measure all of the stories as consistent with the spirit of Christ’s teaching. If we look at the scriptures through a Christ powered lens, we can see where an apostle’s personal opinions or struggles made it into the work. Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Our Internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode 43: Pretty and Witty

Episode Notes This week we continue an exploration to investigate influential and problematic St. Paul of Tarsus in The More You Know.  But first we’re going to visit the Supreme Court in a brief detour of Not Necessarily the Good News.  Not Necessarily the Good News In its final week of session, SCOTUS ruled in favor of a Philidelphia Catholic charity that wouldn’t allow same-sex foster parents. In the grand tradition of solving a problem that doesn’t exist, in 2018 CSS declared that would not consider same-sex couples as potential parents for foster children. When it found out, the city of Philadelphia insisted that all its contractors agree not to discriminate. So the charity sued. It said endorsing same-sex couples as foster parents would violate its religious teachings about marriage. In response, Philadelphia said the charity was free to express and practice its religious views but not to dictate the terms of municipal contracts. The city also said the charity was not being punished for its religious views, noting that it still has city contracts, worth millions of dollars a year, to perform other services for children in foster care. SCOTUS did rule in favor of the charity, but kept its ruling narrow. The court rejected the urging of Catholic Social Services, one of 30 agencies that contract with Philadelphia to find homes for abused and neglected children, for a broad ruling that would allow religious objections to overcome anti-discrimination laws. ... The More You Know The book of Romans is a primer in Christian theology as Saint Paul constructed it. It is one of the most referenced books in the New Testament, and venerated by many Christians It was started as a letter written to the Church of Rome somewhere in  47 - 57 AD, partly to raise funds for a missionary expedition to Spain. In it Paul lays the foundation of a new theology of Christ in the context of Jewish teachings, particularly the Pharisaic tradition he was educated in.  In Romans Paul meant to show that Jesus was the culmination of jewish teaching and ideas. Jesus was the completion of all God's promises to the Jewish people. Judaism alone, without Jesus Christ, is an incomplete faith. For that reason alone Romans is a deeply problematic book.  In the book Paul sets up questions that one might raise from the traditional scriptures, then answers them as the authority on Christian teaching. It goes on this way, raising a question, generating a response, then responding to the question raised by the response.  Sometimes, it has to be said,  he paints himself into a corner.  ... Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Our Internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Vessels of Wrath

Episode Notes Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works. Amity: This week we will begin an exploration of an equally influential and problematic saint in The More You Know. But first a moment of prayer in Not Necessarily the Good News. Not Necessarily the Good News On March 24, 2021, Representative James Talrico led the Texas House of Representatives in an Invocation at the start of the session. I will read it now in its entirety. “Holy Mystery: you have so many names. The Torah calls you Creator, the Quran calls you Peace, the Gita calls you Destroyer, the Dharma calls you Truth, and the First Epistle of John calls you perhaps the most beautiful name of all: Love. You are the strange love uniting all things. The love that drew elements together after that Big Bang; the love that drew life itself from those primordial oceans; the love that drew us all to this exact moment. The love we were born of, the love we exist in, and the love we will one day return to. In my faith, you expressed yourself through a barefoot rabbi who embodied your perfect love. A crucified carpenter who gave only two commandments: love God and love neighbor. Because there is no love of God without love of neighbor. Help us love not just in word, but in action. Help us honor not just the name of Jesus, but the way of Jesus. Help us... free the oppressed, feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, release the prisoner, welcome the stranger, forgive the enemy, and above all: protect your Creation. The Word of God is Love. Let us not be hearers of your Word, but doers of your Word—in our families, in our communities, and in this chamber. Not just with prayers, but with policies. Not just personal love, but political love. Holy Mystery: open our minds, open our hearts, open our hands so that we may build a new world in the shell of the old. A world that is more just, more free, more whole, and more in love with you. In all your many names, we pray. Amen.” Now this was read in an active session of a state legislature in a country whose Constitution explicitly spells out a division between church and state, so I can understand people being upset about the recitation of any prayer in that context. However, the outcry that actually occurred was much different. Rep. Jonathan Strickland tweeted: “I am disgusted such blasphemy was spoken in the chamber. Lord forgive us for turning our state over to this trash. Where are the bold followers of Jesus Christ?” - Now this is also a man who called vaccines sorcery, so we don’t need to go down his particular rabbit hole. But he wasn’t alone in his ire, and there were other supporters that agreed that this, possibly the least offensive, most inclusive prayer that I have ever heard. - Thoughts? Next up, let’s meet the man of the hour, or next few hours, in The More You Know. The More You Know So, church attendance is down. People are no longer declaring church or even religious affiliations. Why are people turning from faith and faith communities? Among the vailid reasons is a concern about the rigidity of religious dogma, and how it discourages and marginalizes some communities. Religions like Buddhism and Christianity started as a rejection of contemporary conservative religious values. In Jesus’ time minor functions of daily life were strictly monitored by religious authority. Sin was everywhere. Not just sins that we think as deadly sins, but little things. Any kind of work on the Sabbath day could transgress the law. That could include spitting, or a woman carrying a brooch that weighed over a prescribed amount. Forgiveness of sins was granted by a priest and the proper sacrifice had to be offered to secure God’s forgiveness. Sins were erased by rituals, the elements of which were purchased at the temple, using special temple money. There was an exchange rate for that too. The more money you had, the more secure you were in God’s favor. If you could not afford these sacrifices, you were living in sin, a social outcast. Jesus pushed back, sometimes physically, against this restrictive version of faith, a belief system meant to exclude people, particularly the economically deprived and marginalized. Jesus bypassed all the trauma and public humiliation for transgressors and just went along forgiving people their sins. “Your sins are forgiven,” he would say, and they felt accepted by God. It cost them nothing except a will to change and sincere belief. Jesus’ kind of Christianity is not what people are rejecting. Where Jesus taught a faith of freedom and liberation, most modern people associate Christianity with conservatism and spiritual exclusion. Those are the same things that Jesus argued against! Why does Christianity mean misogyny and bigotry to unchurched people? Well, much of it can be put down to the writings of one influential man. His writings took Christianity in a decidedly conservative direction. For example: "Women should remain silent in the churches, They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." Here is another example of his spiritual wisdom. He explains the orgins of homosexuality: “... God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” Lets stop there; there are only three specific times where homosexuality is mentioned in the New Testament. All three specific mentions are negative, and all of them have a single author: Paul the Apostle, formerly Saul of Tarsus. His story is complicated and his personality is contradictory. He started as a man out to persecute the early Christians, and then became a staunch and combative Christian convert. He was a proud Jew, and a strong believer in the primacy of the Jewish people and their primacy in the new faith, yet he rejected this, eventually calling his valued religious education, “fertilizer.” For two thousand years Christians have had to reckon with Saint Paul’s contribution to the New Testament. He is remembered as a father of the church and its doctrine, but he never met Jesus, and encountered him only in a mystical vision. A friend once described it this way; “Jesus was a rock star. Paul was an accountant.” Where Jesus tore up the rules and shouted down authority, Paul endorsed new restrictive rules, rules that he sometimes claimed were divinely inspired and equally his own ideas. Historical Paul (This episode) His name was Saul, originally. He may have been named after King Saul, the first King of Israel. Like King Saul he was a member of the tribe of Benjamin. He was a roman citizen, and had a latinized name: Paul. He used the name Paul when addressing a gentile audience. He grew up in Tarsus, an ancient city in what is now Turkey, It was considered an academic center, and Paul was a product of its educational system. He was a proud and pious jew who came from a family who leaned into the Pharisee interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures. He was sent from Tarsus to Jerusalem to receive his formal religious education from Gamaliel, a teacher of enormous reputation. While living in Jerusalem, he found that members of Christian church, all loyal jews, were worshipping at synagogue, and making new converts. He resented them. It might have been that as a foreign born jew, he was anxious to show his devotion to his ancestral faith. He did have a fanatical drive to preserve his faith in a way that would have pleased his teachers. Whatever the reason he personally participated in the execution of a young Apostle, Stephen. After that he became an active member of the hunt to expose Christians. He inveigled his way into the priestly community and even got a license from the high priest at Jerusalem to arrest and imprison Christians in neighboring communities, bringing them to Jerusalem for judgment and possible execution. On one of these hunting trips, a trip to Damascus, he has a vision of Christ. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do." The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Paul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything. — Acts 9:3–9, NIV He is struck blind, and remains that way until he reaches Damascus and is helped along by a man named Ananias who was warned to find Paul in a dream. He effects a miraculous cure for Paul, and he becomes an ardent evangelist for the religion he was persecuting. He became a missionary, preaching to far flung corners. He made three excursions, reaching the christian communities, teaching, creating new ideas about how to run the church, and gathering monies to fund new missionary expeditions. Twenty years after persecuting the new faith, he becomes the victim of a mob of angry jews who accuse him of defiling the synagogue by inviting gentiles. This cases a riot, broken up by roman soldiers. They arrest him. There is a trial, to which the mob is present. It is very like the circumstances that led to Jesus’ execution, but Paul has a trick to pull: To appeal, as any roman citizen has the right, to roman laws rather than jewish ones. This was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing his death sentence, but he prevented it long enough to continue his long disciplinary letters to the churches he helped found. Over the next five episodes we will talk about Saint Paul’s controversial ministry, and the long shadow he cast over Christianity. The Topics will include: Vessels of Wrath: Paul’s strange explanation of Evil. Women in the Church Doctrines on Gay inclusion in the Church Paul’s troubled relationship with Judaism An overview of all that we have learned. In the next few episodes we will take a look at the peripheral saint whose writings became the foundation of Christian conservatism. Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Our Internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Better Call Saul

Episode Notes This week we do something a little different as we go to media for our source. We watched 1960's Inherit the Wind, based on a play based on a trial set in the south in the 1920s pitting a school teacher against the state for uttering Charles Darwin's name in his class. We discuss the spectacle, the oration, the acting and the ice cream alongside some name drops (Ussher, we see you) and some missed opportunities (division of church and state?). It's an interesting and slightly different discussion. Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Inheretance

Episode Notes Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works. Today, a short exploration into the work of Bishop Usher. But first, Amity has a condemnation of the Vatican she would like to speak to. Amity: I am using my inherent white woman power to demand to speak with Catholicism’s manager about a piece of news being reported that the Vatican, and thus the Pope, has issued a ruling said that the church should be welcoming toward gay people, “with respect and sensitivity,” but not endorse their unions. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/world/europe/vatican-same-sex-unions.html https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-16/vatican-refuses-to-bless-same-sex-unions/13251548 Thank you for indulging me in my ire, now let’s talk about the Archbishop that brought us, apparently, so many of today’s evangelical beliefs. Who is Bishop Ussher? He is the man who discovered the age of the earth. No, really, he figured this out. Bishop James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, Chief Primate of all of Ireland, published his 1650 masterpiece, Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world, the chronicle of Asiatic and Egyptian matters together produced from the beginning of historical time up to the beginnings of Maccabees. His work added together the chronologies mentioned in the Bible, taking into account historical resources from extra biblical sources. The New Testament is easier to account for because it includes historical characters like Caesar Augustus and Pontius Pilate. The Old Testament also mentions historical figures, like Nebuchanezzar, and Cyrus of Persia. Bishop Ussher was a genuine scholar who put a great deal of research into his computations. He took into account other systems for measuring time, including constructs like lunar calendars. It took into account other historians, like Josephus. He incorporated the great scientists of his age like Kepler, the German mathematician and astronomer whose work was inspired Newton. The final result was a calendar that accounted for all of the different historical dates, and astronomical tables, and he came up not only with a date, but a time. Now this could seem like the story of an eccentric who made up his own schedule for the age of the earth, but he was an earnest historian and scientist. He created a historical timeline taking into account all of the historical sources available to him. In a world before the fossil record, before disciplines like paleontology, and when archeology was in its infancy, he tried to make sense of the world. Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Our Internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

House of Ussher

Episode Notes Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works. Amity: Today we will investigate an instance of heathen idolatry a CPAC. Yes, someone a actually made and worshipped a golden idol. There is a historical precedent for this, and we discuss that in The More You Know. First, though, we are going to speak about taking a stand in a brief edition of Canon Fodder. Canon Fodder Popular Bible teacher Beth Moore may be the most high-profile Southern Baptist to publicly cut ties with the conservative evangelical denomination in the last year, but she is not the only one to go. Some say a string of recent departures should serve as a wake-up call for the Nashville-based network of churches. "Southern Baptists need to do some soul searching of why so many African-American leaders have left and now why their most prominent woman leader has left," said Ed Stetzer, a Southern Baptist pastor and executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. When the author and Bible teacher Beth Moore announced she was leaving the Southern Baptist Convention this week, she cited the “staggering” disorientation of seeing its leaders support Donald J. Trump, and the racism and sexism revealed in her community by his presidency. Ms. Moore is not the leader of a church, a role inaccessible to Southern Baptist women. But as an itinerant speaker, she attracts significantly larger — and more engaged — audiences than most church leaders. Ms. Moore has an electric stage presence. She is also an “exegetical powerhouse,” said Kate Bowler, a historian at Duke Divinity School who wrote about Ms. Moore in her 2019 book, “The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities.” Rather than simply telling personal stories or offering generic inspiration, she goes deep on biblical texts that can look dry or complicated to the untrained eye. Ms. Moore’s books are ubiquitous in evangelical Bible studies, which are often targeted to one gender; like secular book clubs, they tend to function as intimate social gatherings as well as sites of literary analysis. In recent years, Ms. Moore has achieved a new fame online that is distinct from her writing and speaking career. On Twitter in particular, where she has more than 950,000 followers, she found a new audience including men and non-Christians, and space to speak on topics beyond her usual portfolio of women’s issues and spirituality. Her new outspokenness has turned her into a kind of avatar for evangelical women who may be theologically conservative but are increasingly uncomfortable with the cultural politics they have seen revealed in their churches since the 2016 election. In August, Ms. Moore issued a thread that read like a fiery sermon, directly addressing the racism she saw in the white evangelical world. “White supremacy has held tight in much of the church for so long because the racists outlasted the anti racists,” she began. “Outlast THEM.” She exhorted her readers to ignore name-calling and to take the long view. And, as always, she directed them back to the text: “Stay in your Bibles,” she wrote, advising her followers to read the Old Testament prophets, starting with Isaiah, for insight into “God’s displeasure over injustice.” Then read through the Gospels, she wrote, and the rest of the New Testament: “Read, read, READ.” About her departure, she has said: "I love so many Southern Baptist people, so many Southern Baptist churches, but I don’t identify with some of the things in our heritage that haven’t remained in the past," "I do not believe these are days for mincing words. I’m 63½ years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/beth-moore-evangelical-women.html https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/11/bible-teacher-beth-moore-black-pastors-cut-ties-southern-baptists/4652217001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/09/beth-moore-southern-baptist-convention-president-donald-trump/6931983002/ The More You Know Lemuel: Imagine that you are the leader of your people. You didn't want the job, but you were given it by a powerful and impetuous tribal God who cannot be resisted, even by the most powerful empire on earth. Jehovah, the fierce God of the enslaved hebrews remembered his promise to his often delinquent people by rolling through Egypt, crushing all opposition to his will. He directed you to take his people out into the desert to their ancestral homelands. The people you are leading are not prepared for this. They are hardy from the rigors of living exclusively to work, but they are not prepared for mass migration through a hostile region filled with wild animals, and wild men. Worse than this, those people don’t remember this tribal God who rescued them! They have been in Egypt for so long they only know the Egyptian Gods, and not this strange, invisible God who is terrifying! Yes, Jehovah is terrifying! He is invisible, and he is everywhere. He could be over your shoulder, watching you when you sleep, watching you always. He has a very rigid idea of right and wrong. Do you want to anger him? Amity: Hell No! Lemuel: Jehovah turns rivers to blood! Jehovah kills firstborn children! Jehovah sets up world leaders so that he can crush them and their kingdoms into powder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-K8qi_AoXI Lemuel: In the interests of scholarship, I will point out that the scripture cited in Pulp Fiction is not genuine. The desert trek is hard on the ancient Hebrews. They have been divorced from their culture and religion for many years. While stopping at Mount Sianai, the place where Jehovah first revealed himself to Moses, and there God revealed that he would reveal himself. The mountain would become holy; people were not allowed to approach on pain of death. They had to wash their clothes, bathe, and abstain from sex. God was going to appear in thunder and lightening and something that would sound like a trumpet blast. Moses would go up the mountain and talk to him. Jehovah gives Moses a very specific set of laws. Ten of them. The first of his commandments was this: “You shall have no other gods before me. As if that was not clear enough, God explains his directive in detail: You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Now, while Moses was speaking to the Most High, the Hebrews were in a desert camp, terrified of the noises and clouds and thunder. When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods[a] who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods,[b] Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. Jehovah warns Moses that the people have turned against him and were worshipping an idol. Moses has to convince Jehovah not to kill the israelites for the offense. Moses descends from the mountain, and discovers the worshiping the calf.. In a rage he shatters the commandments, written on slabs of stone, and demands the camp separate into separate groups, those loyal to Jehovah, and those who are not. Then he orders the priests to slaughter the disloyal. Yes, the Old Testament was all about hard men, and hard women, and a God who could not be disobeyed. I bring this story up because it illustrates something about the nature of the new conservative movement. It no longer has a clear set of morals, motives, or ideas. It is a cult, and the deity they worship is also made of gold. Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Our Internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode 38: Heathen Idolatry

Episode Notes Get Thee Behind Me, Felicia! I want to speak a moment about US Representative from the state of Georgia Margery Taylor Greene. This woman makes me want to say some very rude and uncharitable things but I am an adult and will do my best to engage with this subject in a mature way. Ms. Greene is a white woman from the south that subscribes to several conspiracy theories and has a long history of speaking some extremely heinous things.  On the floor of the House on February 3, she lied about changing her beliefs and whether she had said these things since being elected. She was rewarded with a standing ovation from the Republican caucus.  When it came time for the Republicans to vote whether or not to discipline her, they opted not to, prompting Nancy Pelosi to hold a vote of the entirety of the house of representatives. It was only at that point, when the people whose deaths she had actively campaigned for got a say, that she was censured and removed from her posts on the Education and Labor Committee and the Budget Committees. This woman should be removed from the legislature entirely. She is a danger every day she walks into the Capitol building. With no committee assignments she is now free to wreak havoc in a multitude of ways and has made statements indicating that this is what she wanted - martyrdom and free-time. Isn’t there some saying about idle hands? https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2021/jan/30/closer-look-marjorie-taylor-greene/540696/?bcsubid=5b564e43-821a-4006-a090-c7b307a93c91&pbdialog=reg-wall-login-created-tfp https://www.wsj.com/articles/marjorie-taylor-greene-says-she-regrets-qanon-comments-11612467411 https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2021/02/04/marjorie-taylor-greene-quotes https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jeffhood/congresswoman-majorie-taylor-greene-my-former-sunday-school-teacher/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=FBCP-TCL&fbclid=IwAR1uUX3A6qBv5LaluJ9mbxpbOhYFUa2bCrWtChaqELxJuJNTkXMsihAWv18 The More You Know Last time we discussed the different kinds of ideas that are classed as Creationism. In this segment we will try to understand the actual reason for all the fuss.  Let's go back to what Creationists are defending: A literal interpretation of the creation story that starts the Bible. Two stories begin the book of Genesis. One is filled with details about the origins of the universe,  a six day cycle of creation that culminates with the creation of Mankind, male and female and the serious charge that they are stewards of creation, maintaining balance and order. This story tells of  man and woman created simultaneously, of a world where there is no killing for food because all life is vegetarian.  The second story, In Chapter Two and Three, is about the origin of man, but also about the origin of evil. It starts with the creation of man, and the creation of woman from man, and their being left to tend a special garden with metaphysical trees. Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Our Internet home: withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode 35: A Return to Creation

Episode Notes This week a touch of good news with a large group of clergy finally taking a stand on the right side of history and then we get further into our series on Creationism. Stand Up and Testify Last month, more than 370 religious leaders from around the world are calling for a global ban on conversion therapy.  The declaration, spearheaded by the Global Interfaith Commission on LGBT+ Lives, also calls for an end to violence and criminalization against L.G.B.T.Q. people. “We recognize that certain religious teachings have, throughout the ages, been misused to cause deep pain and offense to those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex,” the commission said in a statement. “This must change.”   https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55326461 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/world/conversion-therapy-pledge.html The More You Know The common idea is that Creationism is the belief that all of the elements of the natural world were created, in their present state, by a supernatural acts by divine forces. That is not entirely true. There is more than one kind of Creationist belief.  Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Our Internet home: withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode Notes For our first episode of the new year, we will spend a little time discussing a positive step for our country in Canon Fodder, and Lemuel visit an interest he’s had since childhood and discuss dinosaurs, and how they fit into the fundamentalist narrative in, The More You Know. Canon Fodder 2021 has already been quite a year. Within the first week, the sitting president of the United States fanned the flames of a coup attempt, aided by capitol police, that led to the flying of the Confederate flag within the halls of Congress for the first time ever and the death of at least 5 individuals. But that’s not what we are speaking on today- other than to say that this was a violent coup attempt and those that perpetrated it are traitors to the United States. We will undoubtedly speak more on the subject with the distance of time.  We want to talk of happier things today. And so I offer the name Stacy Abrams (pen name Selena Montgomery) for canonization today.  https://fairfight.com/about-stacey-abrams/ https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/the-internets-ecstatic-stacey-abrams-hero-worship-is-icky.html https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/selena-montgomery The More You Know Dinosaurs. I like dinosaurs. I started learning about them when I was young, and, as a little boy they were all I could read or talk about. I had many dinosaur books in my library, books that were geared towards children and young people because they had the best illustrations. When I was about eleven someone gifted me a book on Dinosaurs that was endorsed by the Institute for Creation Research. The book described the wrong headed thinking of secular scientists who taught evolution as a biological process, on people who denied the literal story of the flood of Noah, and, the part that attracted me the most, the idea the dinosaurs might be still with us, lurking in American rainforests, and African Jungles.  For years the ideas in the book stuck with me. I thought it was my responsibility, as a Christian, to believe the ideas in the book, and reject evolution as an idea, because it was represented as being in opposition with my faith.  Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Our Internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode 35: Jurassic Snark

Episode Notes Today we will have an open discussion about bad Supreme Court decisions and COVID in, “Not Necessarily the Good News.” Then, we learn about the prodigal son in, “The More You Know. NOT NECESSARILY THE GOOD NEWS: When we spoke last about the Supreme Court, it was in reference to the latest addition - at that time only a nominee - now a full fledged justice who is already on the wrong side of history and humanity with a couple of the court’s latest rulings. A phrase that is likely to make my heart sink numerous times over the coming years is “in a 5 to 4 decision” and it is with that phrase that we enter the deeply wrong rulings coming out from the court in favor of churches that have protested strict COVID measures. The arguments, first in a case from New York state brought by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel of America and then in a case from California brought by Pasadena-based Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry, which has churches across the state, were that the restrictions on gathering for worship were harsher than those on gathering to distribute food or provide shelter, two things that were often happening in the same buildings as where they seek to worship. https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/26/politics/supreme-court-religious-restrictions-ruling-covid/index.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-california-coronavirus-church/2020/12/03/fcf4fcf8-357d-11eb-a997-1f4c53d2a747_story.html THE MORE YOU KNOW: Jesus was a story-teller. He taught very complicated ideas through simple, memorable parables. Sometimes, as we learned with, “The Good Samaritan,” the intention of his story gets lost in the re-telling, and, after so many years, acquires unintended new meanings. Most people think of the story of the Prodigal Son as the story of a lost son finding his way home. That’s just one part of the parable, and it has plot twists. The story is the last of three stories on a similar subject included in the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. The parable of the lost lamb, of the lost coin, and the prodigal son, were used to address criticism from the Pharisees. The Pharisees, if you remember, were an influential religious party that mostly agreed with Jesus on matters of theology ( they believed in an afterlife, for instance ) but did not like his liberal interpretations of scriptures, or his disregard for their devotion to cultural tradition. We are told that Jesus had gathered an undesirable element in his public following. Since he would often bring crowds from the street into the temple, there may also have been the concern that these undesirables might come into the temple. The story starts this way, with a father and two sons, like the stories of Abraham and Issac/Ishmael, or Issac and Essau/Jacob. Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Transcripts available at our internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Prodigal Truths

Episode Notes We have a freeform discussion about the election, the results, the meanings of both and where we go next. Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Transcripts available at our internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Election 2020 - Let's talk

Episode Notes Today we will have an open discussion about Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett in, “Not Necessarily the Good News.” And we will explore saviorhood, and how it does not apply to Donald Trump in, “The More You Know. NOT NECESSARILY THE GOOD NEWS: Judge Amy Coney Barrett is from the South and Midwest. Her career has been largely spent teaching while raising seven children, including two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome, and living according to her faith. She has made no secret of her beliefs on divisive social issues such as abortion. A deeply religious woman, her roots are in a populist movement of charismatic Catholicism. From her formative years in Louisiana to her current life in Indiana, Judge Barrett has been shaped by an especially insular religious community, the People of Praise, which has about 1,650 adult members, including her parents, and draws on the ecstatic traditions of charismatic Christianity, like speaking in tongues. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/us/politics/amy-coney-barrett-life-career-family.html THE MORE YOU KNOW: In a recent radio interview, Donald Trump Jr made this foolish statement about his father: “He literally saved Christianity, there's a war on faith in this country by the other side. I mean, the Democratic Party, the far left, has become the party of the quote-unquote atheist, they want to attack Christianity, they want to close churches, they want to - they're totally fine keeping liquor stores open, but they want to close churches all over the country.” Does he speak for Christianity? No. *NOTE: we say Donald Trump Jr. But these quotes should have been attributed to Eric Trump. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/520090-eric-trump-claims-his-father-literally-saved-christianity https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-trump-says-donald-trump-saved-christianity-2020-10 Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Transcripts available at our internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode 32: We Need to Talk About Amy

Episode Notes First up, on Friday, September 18th a cry went out over the land as the women of this country learned of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At 87, she had fought off colon cancer and several bouts of pancreatic cancer but was unable to overcome it one last time. On September 25th, she became the first woman and the first Jewish person to lie in state at the state capital, one more glass ceiling she broke with her tiny but inimitable frame. Then, in Stand Up and Testify, we first heard about Luyal Mayen on a segment of a CNN TV program. His story was intriguing: A Sudanese emigrant who launched his own company, Junub Games, after teaching himself coding while living in a Ugandan refugee camp. https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/09/13/lual-mayen-computer-game-champions-for-change-vpx.cnn https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/postlive/wplive/former-refugee-lual-mayen-says-video-games-like-salaam-can-encourage-empathy/2020/02/06/2ce71add-7a20-480d-925a-d0cc9e9ca94a_video.html https://www.franciscanmedia.org/jesus-extraordinary-treatment-of-women/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2019/10/14/once-he-was-refugee-now-hes-ceo-making-video-games-peace/ Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Transcripts available at our internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

She Was Loosed

Episode Notes Kimberley Guilfoyle is the kind of character who shows up a lot these days, and shows up a lot in American history: demagogue. Her personal history is checkered, as she has been the first lady of California, married to Democratic Mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom, and is currently dating Donald Trump Junior. She doesn't have a consistent allegiance, or an agenda, other than to remain in the spotlight for as long as she can. We rebuke ger in Get Thee Behind Me, Felicia. Then, in Pilars of Strength, we discuss Queen Esther. The Book of Esther is a good read, It is short, and full of palace intrigue, and the kind of twists that made Alexander Dumas a popular author; assasination attempts against the King, secret plots, and, like the story of Daniel, a clever attack on the Hebrew People. Like the Book of Daniel, our brave and resourceful Queen is able to use her favor with the King to advantage; changing the nature of one of those unchangeable Persian edicts. It is a good, ten chapter read. God is not referenced directly, not even once. If anything, God is present and the force that directs the destiny of the orphan girl, her cousin Moredecai, and even the mighty Persian empire. Find us on Twitter: @WithoutWorksPod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ withoutworkspod@gmail.com Transcripts available at our internet home: www.withoutworkspodcast.com Find out more at https://without-works.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode 30: Sister Sister

Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, bring you a show of news and culture debunking the errors of fundamentalism and showing the progressive nature of Christianity.

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