© 2004 Christian*New Age Quarterly. All rights reserved.
The following is an article which appeared in the October-December 2004 issue of Christian*New Age Quarterly. To order this issue of Christian*New Age Quarterly, send $3.50 ($5.00 outside the USA) to Christian*New Age Quarterly, PO Box 276, Clifton, New Jersey 07015-0276. For more information, see www.christiannewage.com.
The Jesus Seminar Takes a Bite of the Big Apple
by Alan Bentz-Letts and Ralph Peters
It took a long time for the Jesus Seminar to make its way to New York City. As an extreme example of modern secularization and a center of global power, the Big Apple would seem an inviting location for one of the Seminar's quarterly meetings. Certainly no effort was spared in securing a truly stellar lineup of speakers for the March 3-6, 2004 gathering at the sleek Marriott Marquis Hotel on Times Square. Yet the audience turnout was far from overwhelming, and frustration was voiced by at least some participants.
The Jesus Seminar was founded in 1985 by Robert Funk as a collaborative enterprise of a self-selected group of biblical, historical and theological scholars who sought to evaluate the sayings of and stories about Jesus for historical authenticity. The publication of The Five Gospels1 and The Acts of Jesus 2 after twelve years of meetings elicited front cover stories in national newsmagazines, as well as much controversy. The Seminar has gone on to other topics (like Paul and the biblical canon), and has also attempted, from its inception, to bring its findings to the general public and, indeed, to the ordinary Christian worshipper in the pew. It has established a large group of interested layfolk, called "associates," who attend the meetings and provide financial and moral support for the founding organization, Westar Institute.
The theme of the conference was "The Future of the Judeo-Christian Tradition in the Second Axial Age."3 The philosopher Karl Jaspers had coined the phrase "first axial age" to refer to the period from 800 BCE to 200 CE, when virtually every major civilization witnessed the appearance of key religious figures, prophets and sages. The second axial age denotes, according to the Seminar, the revolution in Western thinking from 1600 on produced by the Enlightenment and the rise of modern science, including the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin. The last one hundred years are apparently included by the Seminar in this age, even though other commentators would mark ours as the start of a new historical period: the "postmodern" era.
Four subthemes of the conference stand out in retrospect. First, how far can or should the Christian tradition be liberally revised, radically transmuted or even jettisoned altogether in order to carry the essential and enduring elements of faith forward into the future? Second, given our contemporary understanding of the origins of the universe and the ecological crisis, how must Christianity transform itself to harmonize with the new cosmology and to become an earth-friendly religion? Third, what are our moral obligations to church and society in this dawning global age? One of the prominent speakers, James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword,4 focused on the crisis in American Roman Catholicism and the need for a grassroots, laity-led democratization of that church. Fourth, speakers such as Karen King5 and Elaine Pagels6 discussed how the Gospel of Mary and the Gnostic Gospels help us to understand the origins of the Christian movement, as well as its gender politics, and to interpret, in fresh and interesting ways, the books which made it into the New Testament canon. The Gospel of John is a case in point.
In response to the first subtheme, Robert Funk, Marcus Borg and retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong represented a "liberal revisionist" option, while figures such as Don Cupitt and Lloyd Geering took a more radical approach. The latter two, heavily influenced by the likes of existentialism and Nietzsche, argued that the word "God" does not refer to any objective reality (the nonrealist position), but only to aspects of the secular, human experience. In response to a question from Cupitt, Marcus Borg, the author of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time,7 called for a "critical realist" position: God does exist, in some sense, as an independent reality apart from and transcendent of human beings, but the mystery of God defies any attempts to define and capture it in human concepts. It was very interesting to see Borg, a key figure in the Jesus Seminar and an influential critic of traditional Protestant theology, take the more moderate stance here. The Jesus Seminar does not have one monolithic viewpoint; instead, diversity and debate thrive among its representatives.
Anne Primavesi, with her personal roots planted firmly in the nature-sensitive medieval tradition of Celtic Christianity, was ideally equipped to articulate the theological meaning and ethical imperatives which follow from Jim Lovelock's Gaia theory. Gaia originally designated the earth goddess of ancient Greece. In contemporary scientific terms, Gaia denotes the self-regulating capacities of the atmosphere, the seas and the land working in tandem with the plants, animals and microorganisms of our planet. For example, the sun has increased its heat output directed toward the earth on the order of 25% over the past few million years, yet the earth has not heated up in any corresponding way. The ongoing production of clouds, among many of the mechanisms, reflects the sunlight back into space and keeps the earth more or less "just right" for the flourishing of life.
Eugenie Scott, as Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, has engaged in court battles with creationists all over the country. She stressed that creationism is really a continuum of positions, with significant diversity of ideas.
The final sessions of the conference featuring many of the women speakers were probably the best attended and also the most engaging. Besides Karen King and Elaine Pagels, Karen Armstrong gave a personal, moving account of her new autobiographical work, The Spiral Staircase.8 This was a welcome break from the overly intellectual atmosphere of the rest of the conference.
The typical format of each session consisted of a one-hour talk by one of the speakers, followed by questions from one or two respondents sitting on the stage with the speaker, or from a line of Seminar "Fellows" sitting in reserved places at the front of the audience. There then might be time for one or two questions from the general audience. This format led to considerable frustration on the part of some in the audience.
One of the main purposes of this conference was to encourage the spread of Jesus Seminar scholarship into local congregations, as well as to support ministers and others who have spoken up for this scholarship, sometimes at considerable risk to their reputations and vocations. A paper distributed to the registrants before the conference promoted the idea of a movement to bring thoroughgoing change to the church.
Yet the elitism of the conference format dashed the expectations of those who came hoping for a general discussion amongst all participants. Certainly, many there had considerable knowledge and experience within the Christian churches. But little or no opportunity was provided to connect the main speakers and general audience for brainstorming and strategizing on what steps to take next. Nor was there any breakdown into small groups over the period of the conference. An immense opportunity was lost!
This first foray of the Jesus Seminar into the unfamiliar terrain of New York City certainly exposed participants to some of the top biblical, spiritual and theological minds in the world today. That made the conference worthwhile in itself.9 In addition, many would pay homage to the Jesus Seminar for the way it has broken open the orthodox stranglehold on the interpretation of Christianity. Yet the format of individual talks with little followup made the conference a fragmented experience, with little way for an overall theological perspective to begin to emerge. Other aspects of the conference — its high price, its intellectualism, and especially its elitism — stood in the way of its own announced goal of bringing change to the church.
1 Robert Funk, Roy Hoover and the Jesus Seminar, new translation and commentary, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan Scribner, A Polebridge Press Book, 1993).
2 Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, A Polebridge Press Book, 1998).
3 Cosponsored by the New York Open Center.
4 James Carroll, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003).
5 Karen L. King is author of The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2003).
6 Elaine Pagels is author of The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage Books, 1979; Random House, 1989).
7 Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (New York: HarperCollins, 1994; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).
8 Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
9 Tapes of the individual speeches can be ordered through the Westar website, www.westarinstitute.org.
A longstanding and frequent contributor to the pages of C*NAQ, the Reverend
Dr. Alan Bentz-Letts is Protestant Chaplain at Hofstra University in Hempstead,
NY. With a doctorate in religious studies, Dr. Ralph Peters is Chair of the
Department of Psychology at Concordia College in White Plains, NY. Both coauthors
have been associated with Lutheran campus
ministry.
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