The Unorthodox Gatherings

In today's episode we talk about the human need to be connected to meaningful values, more specifically to intrinsic values versus extrinsic values.  We also discuss how society is specifically geared toward extrinsic values and how this is having harmful affects on people. 

We're starting a new series on connection, utilizing Johann Hari's bestselling book, "Lost Connections". The book explores systemic causes of depression and anxiety. The Unorthodox Gatherings is using the book to understand how our Western Society facilitates these disconnections and how we as humans and faith communities can facilitate more meaningful connection. Today's episode looks at the valu...

In this conversation, we wrap up our series on Empire with a discussion on the modern day Christian's response to Empire in our society. We start with a comparison to the empire of Rome as a comparative lens for seeing similar attributes today and then discuss what it looks like to incorporate the responses we see in the New Testament from Jesus, Paul, and apocalyptic literature. 

We were blessed to have the presence of Professor Kelly Dagley, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies, who presented an excerpt of her dissertation on Women's experience of migration with an amazing comparison to the Book of Ruth. This gave an incredibly humane look at the experience of migration and the dangers women face. Media, and especially our politics, negate these experiences and Profess...

While being perhaps the most influential writer within the library of the Bible, Paul is probably also the most misunderstood. This is because Paul is the author of only 7 of the 13 letters attributed to him. Also, for centuries Paul has been read through this Augustinian-Lutheran lens, rather than a Jewish lens. Today's conversation centers on the 7 authentic letters of Paul and the egalitarian c...

Western Christianity has framed Jesus' purpose as one of getting individuals to an afterlife paradise. However, when read in context, we see the gospels are these radical anti-imperialist commentaries against Rome and Roman values. The Empire of God was meant to be a stark contrast to worldly empires and the task of the Christian is to bring God's Empire to earth. 

Plainly put, one cannot understand Christianity, nor the Jesus movement without understanding Rome. The Jesus movement was centered into responding to this massive empire in a transcendent way that is a commentary against all empires. Yet, Western Christians weren't raised with this background. This episode begins a 4 part series on empire, with the focus of this one on the Roman Empire that compl...

Hermeneutics is a fancy way of saying how we interpret ancient texts. For pastors who go to seminary, hermeneutics involves learning the languages the texts were originally written in, the history of that time, the support of anthropologists, etc. Most of the people who attend churches don't have that educational background, so in this episode we discussed the various hermeneutical models with whi...

Idolatry is one of those concepts that is rarely talked about in mainline churches, but regularly addressed in Evangelical ones. Today we go through its meaning in the Bible and look at how it's been misused in our own modern times to help understand how not only that some of the biggest perpetrators of idolatry are the Church and Christians, but some of the biggest idols are Christianity, the Bib...

In this episode we discuss the biggest mistranslation in the Bible, and here's the crazy part: it's only a preposition. Entire theologies and doctrines have been based on this mistranslation, some of the worst abuses committed by the Church were based on this mistranslation, and entire political blocs are based on this mistranslation. We go through not only what the mistranslation is and how it oc...

Today's conversation focuses on Cornel West's essay, The Crisis of Christian Identity in America. He presents two perspectives of Christianity that he calls Constantinian Christianity and Prophetic Christianity. We talk about the differences between the two and their implications in our lives. 

This is Part 1 of our 3-week series on Liberation and we're working with Dorothee Sölle's 3 Frameworks of Christianity. There's a handout for this conversation that would be really helpful if you're listening to this.  Click here to look at the handout. 

As a prime for our 3 week series on Liberation coming up, the conversation today was centered on what the purpose of faith is. We talked about personal experiences, how purpose of faith has been viewed in the mainstream, and ultimately tried to create a contextual purpose of faith. The conversation might be a bit muffled because we're abiding by the county's mask mandate, but next week I'll have a...

Belief has been framed as the foundational condition of Christianity. Few, if any, other religions have this condition, and frankly, neither does Christianity - at least not the way it's understood today. This conversation was a deconstruction of belief. We looked at the Greek text of the New Testament and talked about both belief misuse and hopefully positive attributes. 

It's interesting to look at a timeline of Christian development. In this gathering we looked at some of the hallmark moments in this timeline to understand better what informed Christian dogmas and doctrines that were created and see how little was developed from the first 3 centuries of Christianity when it was a religion of the persecuted. We used a graphic in this conversation, which I forgot t...

We had a really powerful reaction to our conversation on Historical Criticism; so much so that it was hard to realize how much church doctrine was created outside of the context in which the Bible was written. In this gathering we look at the positives of Historical Criticism and why it's so needed for faith communities today and in the future. 

Historical Criticism is a fancy way of describing the process of looking at an ancient text in the context in which it's written. While it might seem like the most obvious way to understand any ancient texts, most are not read this way. Historical Criticism is such a controversial topic that more conservative religious institutions have called it a heresy and have put significant resources in tryi...