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Let's talk about 17th century England. Why? Because so much about American Protestant beliefs and culture come from it. The King James Bible was a political stake in the ground. The Westminster Confession was an Act of Parliament during the English Civil War. It was a compromise between Anglicans and Presbyterians to oppose radical Puritans and Catholics. The 1689 Second London Confession legitimized the Baptists as a result of the Act of Toleration passed by Parliament as part of the Glorious Revolution. The creation of these documents was incredibly political. It harkens back to the creation of the Nicene Creed, the Council of Chalcedon, and the formation of the biblical canon in the early church. I discuss why people still look at these periods with rose-colored glasses, and how the propaganda of those times still deeply affects us today. I won't call it a sham, but there's lots of power politics and chicanery in Christian history. It was always there, and it is still here. There was never a purer period in the history of the church than today. 

I made an error about the Three Forms of Unity: They are the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Belgic Confession (1561), and the Canons of Dort (1618-1619). These are the basic documents for the Dutch Reformed Church. These informed the creation of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646-1649).

#christianhistory #KingJamesBible #KJV #WesterminsterConfession #WestminsterStandards #EnglishCivilWar #1689Confession #GloriousRevolution #Theology #edmonds #edmondspres #pcusa

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Does God express emotions? This is a more central question than it seems. It’s a significant clue to how you see the sovereignty of God, whether God changes, and whether God is affected by prayer. If God shows the emotion of regret, does that mean God is weak? To illustrate these differences, I do a deep dive into two verses that feature the Hebrew word Neecham. The theological bias of Bible translations are revealed in what words are used for Neecham: repent, relent, regret, feel sorrow, grieve, have compassion or comfort. I review the implications of these in two different passages. 

#ESV #NRSV #bible #calvinism #hebrew #edmondspres #pcusa

Jeremiah 42:10
ESV If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up; for I relent of the disaster that I did to you.

NRSVue If you will only remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you and not pluck you up, for I am sorry for the disaster that I have brought upon you.

RSV If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up; for I repent of the evil which I did to you.

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Today I am excited to welcome Elle, who goes by @LiterallyTheBible on TikTok and YouTube. She is reading the Bible from cover to cover as a non-religious gal. Her approach to Bible reading chapter by chapter is so insightful and refreshing. I've been really impressed with her analysis, her questions, and her response to comments. I think it is a great example for how we can approach Bible reading. Now that she has made it through the 50 chapters of Genesis and now into Exodus, I will ask her about her impressions and about the feedback she has been getting.

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I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Lynn Huber, Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University and an expert on the Book of Revelation. I have been following her on TikTok, and I was intrigued by her commentary about queer perspectives on Revelation. She brings a sense of excitement and love for the book, which many people approach with a sense of fear and retribution. I don't shy away from Revelation like many Presbyterians do, and I have preached several times about the many ways to interpret it. So, I was excited to hear about Dr. Huber's work and really wanted to interview her. 

References: 
"Revelation: Wisdom Commentary" by Lynn Huber and Gail R. O'Day
Robyn Whitaker, "Revelation for Normal People"
Greg Carey, "Rereading Revelation"
Barbara Rossing, "Rapture Exposed"

We also spoke about these biblical scholars: Candida Moss, Sandra Glahn, Lynn Cohick, Luke Timothy Johnson, Sarah Emanuel, Mitzi Smith, Steve Gregg, Eric Thomas, Yii-Jan Lin

#revelation #rapture #queer #lgbtq #queerchristian #edmonds #edmondspres #pcusa

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Christians love Replacement. Replacing Judaism with the New Covenant. Replacing the Jewish people as the Chosen people of God. Replacing Islam in the Holy Land during the Crusades. In America, replacing indigenous people with white Christian people. Replacing native religions around the world with missionaries. Lately, replacing the words of Jesus with nationalism and political tribalism. It has a long history, when the Roman Empire subsumed Christianity into the empire. Later, the Gospel of Jesus was replaced with theologies like Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory as a singular theology of Protestants. Hebrews 8:10-13 explicitly replaces the Old Covenant with the New Covenant by quoting Jeremiah 31:31-34 verbatim. Old Testament scholars Walter Brueggemann and John Goldingay warn that we should be careful to not engage in supersessionism, or replacement theology. I define supersessionism and offer a balanced approach that honors both the Hebrew Scriptures and their integration into Christian theology. 

#newcovenant #supersessionist #replacementtheology #edmonds #edmondspres #pcusa

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People use the narrow gate metaphor that Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount to feed their persecution complex and to exclude others. I frequently come across egregious misrepresentations of these passages. Often spoken with cult-like intentions, it is always meant to instill fear. Was this Jesus's intent? Was he using fear to encourage people to follow him instead of the religious leaders of his time? That was certainly part of it, but it also gave comfort to an oppressed people by offering them an alternative to the strict application of the law or just going along with the bullies. These passages are hard to consider because these verses are some of the clearest examples of where audience and context matter. It is why simplistic interpretations are so easily weaponized by people today. Nuance and context are hard for many Christians. I discuss these verses and compare it to the seemingly contradictory when Jesus said, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light," in Matthew 11:30. 

#salvation #narrowgate #widepath #yokeiseasy #jesussaves #edmonds #edmondspres #pcusa

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I am delighted to welcome Jeremy Steele to the podcast today. I love his content on TikTok so much. He reached out to creators with podcasts. I jumped at the chance to interview him, and he graciously agreed!

Church attendance statistics are notoriously difficult to decipher, but people latch onto the latest reports as signs of a turnaround or that their favorite segment is gaining new interest. Recently, Churchtrac showed an increase in Millennial attendance led by men. A slight uptick in fundamentalist evangelical churches engagement appears to be responsible for this. Is it a continuation of the young restless reformed movement?

In my public-facing ministry and my work within the Presbyterian Church USA, I'm regularly told that my church is dying because it is "woke." Young men say they've left my church for more fundamentalist churches. It is always about LGBTQ affirmation and women in ministry, and not really about Jesus. For every one of them, however, I hear from at least ten others who say they will never go to church again because the church is hateful and hypocritical. So I ask, why then aren't fundie churches growing by leaps and bounds, rather than just attracting people who left mainline churches? Where will people turned off by the church go? 

 See Jeremy's links at https://jeremy-steele.com/ , including his podcasts, TikTok and other resources. 
You can join Jeremy's community at https://www.patreon.com/skepticpastor 

#jeremysteele #digitalchurch #liturgicalworship #emergingchurch #edmonds #edmondspres #pcusa

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How can you justify cruelty as a Christian? It has a very long tradition, from the Crusades to Slavery and Jim Crow to Mass Deportations today. These were all and are still perpetuated and justified by Bible believing Christians. This justification and hypocrisy is the main critique of Christianity. How can a religion that exhorts love and kindness be so unloving and unkind? Simple, just redefine what love and kindness are, and voila, you can justify anything. This is exactly what is happening with the current discussions about "Empathy is Sin." I have spoken frequently about hyper-Calvinists like John Piper, who do this redefinition by saying that empathy is not in scripture. In this episode, I discuss the origins of the word empathy and why it is considered invalid by some people. Then I describe the reason we needed to adopt the word empathy in English. Next, I explore the Hebrew word "rachamim" and the Greek word "parakaleo," discussing how they are often used to describe something closer to empathy than just mercy or compassion. 

#rachamim #parakaleo #empathy #compassion #mercy #empathyissin #edmonds #edmondspres #pcusa

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The Church is in desperate need of Reform. Which direction should we go? Rediscovering doctrines of the past? Reforming our doctrines for a new era? There is a lot of disagreement about what is needed. I argue that we must do both.  

The motto of the Presbyterian Church USA is "Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda" which is Latin for "The Church reformed, always reforming." Which has been quoted in different forms and cherished by Reformed Christians since the Dutch theologian Jodocus van Lodenstein wrote it in the 1670s. Swiss theologian Karl Barth revived and popularized the term in 1947 harkening back to St. Augustine. But that's where the agreement ends. 

Conservative Presbyterians see it as reexamining and seeking doctrinal purity, confirming the long-held myth that the Reformation was primarily about recapturing a long-lost purity in the church that  Catholics had corrupted. 

Conversely, most PCUSA people see it as a natural part of the ongoing revelation of the church and that God brings us to new understandings of the Gospel. This is most clearly exhibited in the nearly 300-year gap between the Westminster Standards of 1649 and the 20th-century confessions. I ask what happened in that 300 years? And why were attempts for a new confession rejected? I describe why this is particularly important now. The last century from the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the wholehearted evangelical Christian embrace of right-wing nationalism in our era shows that the church is in desperate need of reform again. 

#refomed #reformation #semperreformanda #karlbarth #edmonds #edmondspres #pcusa

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Whenever you ask whether God changes or that God learns, It is usually met with a resounding "No!" But then you must ask, what is the point of prayer? When you look at scripture, it says explicitly many times that God changes. "But God knows everything" goes the reasoning. So most people have to do logical backflips to make omniscience work with free will and change. So did God make a giant mistake? Why does God keep making new agreements, Covenants with His people? There a several schools of thought on this and we must wade through millennia of dogma to have this make sense. We have already determined that God can't predetermine the future. So then, does God know all possible outcomes? I offer several ways to think about it differently. As Richard Rohr says, Creation is ongoing. God is never done creating. Creation is change and relationship is with Creation is God's main goal in scripture. So yes, it is irrefutable that God changes.

Reference: "The Universal Christ" by Richard Rohr

#omniscience #godchanged #jeremiah #exodus #immutability #edmonds #edmondspres #pcusa