Bishop in the Grove is just shy of three years old. The coming Solstice is its anniversary.

I’ve written here about my doubts, my interests, my questions and my fears. I’ve engaged with Pagans, polytheists, Druids, Christians, atheists, Buddhists, Humanists, and many a wayward Witch. I’ve written my way into and out-of Paganism, and I’ve found myself reoriented back toward the religion of my youth. This blog has documented a great many shifts in my thinking; some exciting for my readership, and others not so much. I’ve offended people, challenged people, encouraged people, praised people, and in all of it done my best to be honest, kind and thoughtful.

I’ve fallen short a few times, but I’ve given it my best.

And now it’s time to say goodbye to this blog.

I’m no longer walking in that grove I entered into back in 2010. I’m investing myself in a completely different study, one that is not the blending of Pagan and Christian paths that I thought it might be. I’m building community with other Christians — on ground and in person — and I’m planning to undergo a focused course in spiritual direction after the 1st of the year. I’m actively discerning what feels like a “call”, and considering the possibility that this call is one to ministry. I’m not certain whether this is a call to ordained or lay ministry, or whether it might just be a call to a simple Christian practice. But I know that my heart is being pulled to serve others. That’s how this whole wonderful mess got started.

Writing on this blog allowed me to cultivate a voice I never knew I had. It validated the part of me that isn’t the performer, or the “minor-league celebrity,” or any of the other things I’ve been known for in my music career. It validated something much simpler and more ordinary, but also much richer and more complex: the pull toward the Divine.

I will continue to write about my journey on my new web journal, Holy, and I will keep BITG online as a web archive. I’m looking forward to using the new Ghost blogging platform, which emphasizes simplicity in web publishing. It’s much less dependent on the “bells and whistles” you might find in a WordPress backend. I’ve given thought to blogging my way through the Episcopal Lectionary, or maybe even the Daily Office. I’m not sure yet. But feel free to follow along, if you’d like.

I pray that all those who have visited this blog and contributed to my spiritual journey continue to grow in your own spiritual lives. I pray that you be led to the spiritual homes that nurture you, and that inspire you to engage fully with the world you live in. I pray that you increase your capacity to love, and that you extend this love outward and inward without reservation.

Thank you for walking with me.

Blessings, Teo

Letting go of Bishop in the Grove by Teo Bishop

I feel a distance from that awareness of God I had during my first days of reawakening to Christ.

I don’t blame this on anyone, most especially the people who’ve welcomed me into their community. It’s been wonderful to meet Christians with whom I could share my experiences of God, and who could witness to me their own spiritual journey. I’ve been hungry for community for a long time, it seems.

If anything, I think this may be an issue of language and tense.

Any language which places the reality of the Kingdom of God in some far off place creates in me a feeling of distance. When the Kingdom becomes “Heaven,” or an afterlife, I feel a distance. When the Kingdom becomes some ideal, unapproachable place, I feel a distance. When our conversations about the reality of God in the world putter out, and we instead worry ourselves with the politics of the Church or the ways in which one denomination is superior or inferior to another, I feel a distance.

This sensation of distance has come up quite often lately. It’s uncomfortable, and I find myself frustrated rather quickly over it. My “conversion experience” was little more than one, clear moment in which I consented to believe in God. It was as immediate as anything I’ve ever felt. It was a thoroughly present tense experience. So when I feel this distance from God, or from God’s Kingdom in the world, I feel like something must be wrong.

But as uncomfortable as that feeling may be, I wonder if this sensation of distance is exactly the right thing to be happening right now.

It’s Advent, the season in which we are called to wait for the coming Christ, the light which will shine in the darkness, illuminating all things. My personal theology says that Christ has come already, and the light is already shining. Jesus was that light, and he came to show that light to all who would see, and to call each of us to bear witness to it.

But in Advent we feel a distance. We feel the darkness.

The Pagan in me says that’s probably the most natural thing in the world.

It’s the cold season of Samhain in the Northern Hemisphere, and everything around me is going dormant. There are no leaves on the trees outside my office. The ground is frozen. The days are dark, and the nights come in the middle of the afternoon. This weather makes it rather easy to believe that the lifeblood of the world is running dry.

But the promise of Advent is that “the glory of God shall be revealed.” In this season of darkness, the season preceding the Yule celebrations of my friends and lovers of the earth, I am being called to be at peace with my own sense of waiting; my own experiences of distance. I am being called to suspend my need for God to be here right now, because God will be here.

God is always forthcoming.

I just need to be patience, and make myself ready.

So perhaps next time I find myself in a conversation in which God is placed over there, or the Kingdom is talked about in future tense, I will try to remember the words of Isaiah: “the glory of God shall be revealed”. I will try and quell my impatience with the remembrance that there is value in the waiting. I will try to embrace the distance.

There is much work to be done in the world. There are many who need to be served, cared for, clothed, fed, loved. I have so much to do yet.

But it is a fine thing to wait.

To wait, and prepare.

Photo by Eduardo Diez Viñuela

Distance by Teo Bishop

Last night I was standing at my kitchen counter, reading the first chapter of Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written, by Marcus J. Borg.

I read the following words and made an audible, “Oh.”

“By viewing the documents of the New Testament in their historical context, we recognize that they were not written to us and for us, but to and for the ancient communities that produced them.”

I knew this already, but something in Borg’s concise language drove the point home.

I was not raised in an atmosphere of Biblical literalism. I did not grow up believing that every word of the Bible had been uttered by God, Himself. “Cultural context” came up often in the bible studies of my late teens and early 20’s, but not nearly enough in conversation with other Christians. Most often the messages of the Bible were framed in a very modern context, as though the book was some sort of how-to manual for everyday life.

I’m not sure that it was written to function in that way. Borg states,

“To try to read the New Testament without taking into account its historical context produces misunderstanding. What we read is about “their then,” not directly about “our now.”

[emphasis mine]

I find that most of the conflicts I have with the ideologies of Biblical literalists, and the religious practices built around said literalism, are rooted in this “misunderstanding” that Borg speaks of. Pulling Bible passages to prove a point, to defend a modern conservative political position, or to alienate or shame someone seem like a misuse of Scripture to me. Always has.

The Bible, when read as nothing more than a rule book, can easily become a tool of the modern-day Pharisees. And if I recall, Jesus did have a few things to say about the Pharisees.

Borg places the books of the New Testament in chronological order, starting with 1 Thessalonians and ending with 2 Peter, with the Gospels falling somewhere in the middle. Read them in this order, Borg asserts, and you begin to see a completely different picture of how early Christians came to understand the relevance of the person of Jesus. Their understanding about Jesus evolved over time. It was not revealed in the Gospels, as the current ordering of the New Testament might have you think; rather, the Gospels were the product of years of Christian oral and aural tradition.

Borg’s position is undoubtably threatening to Christians who would like to simplify Jesus into a one-dimensional symbol (i.e., Savior, Redeemer of Sins, God Incarnate, etc.). It gets even more complicated when you consider that the language popularly used to describe Jesus, himself, has its own history.

Regarding the emperor Augustus:

“…Octavian became “Augustus.” The word means “he who is to be worshipped and revered.” He was heralded not only as “Augustus,” but also as “Son of God” and “Lord.” He was called the “savior of the world” who had brought “peace on earth” by ending the vicil war that was tearing the empire apart. His birth was the beginning of the “gospel,” the “good news” (the Greek word used in the New Testament and translated into English as “good news” or “gospel”). Stories were even told about his divine conception: he was the son of the god Apollo.”

This is not news to most Pagans. The evidence of other divine-human hybrids in world mythology has been used to dismiss the uniqueness of Christianity. Jesus is just another in a long line of Sons of God(s). This is not altogether untrue.

And yet I don’t find my newfound sense of faith shaken or torn apart. I do not believe that the God who quietly called to me through a moment of service was calling me into a legalistic system of “right belief” or “right piety”. My experience of calling, although it garnered a certain amount of media attention on account of my career in music, was not a sensational one. It was a calling born of simple service to a person in need.

I think there is relevance in understanding the person of Jesus, just as I believe that Jesus points to the Divine in a very particular, important way. And Borg reminds us that to have said within the context of early Christianity that Jesus was the “Son of God” was to make a political statement about the nature of power, rulership and authoritarianism. It was an act of subversion, even as it was a statement of theology.

This is no small point.

This, for most mainline Protestants in the West, is a revolutionary way of thinking about Jesus.

Borg writes,

“The gospels, Paul’s letters, and the other New Testament writings use the language of imperial theology, but apply it to Jesus. Jesus is the “Son of God”–the emperor is not. Jesus is the “Lord”–the emperor is not. Jesus is the “Savior” who brings “peace on earth”–the emperor is not. The contrast is not just a matter of language. The contrast is also about two different visions of how the world should be. The world of the domination system is a world of political oppression, economic exploitation, and chronic violence. The alternative is a world in which everyone has enough and no one needs to be afraid. The gospel phrase for this is the “kingdom of God,” the heart, as the gospels proclaim, of Jesus’s message.”

[emphasis mine]

Thanks to this book I find myself reading Scripture with a new passion. Now I am reading to get a better sense of who these early Christians were, and to understand what motivated them to create community around this crucified man.

I am reading with the knowledge that these words were not written for me, even as they continue to transform my heart.

Evolution of The Word: A *new* New Testament by Teo Bishop

In mid-November I payed a visit to an Evangelical Bible College with my friend, Jason Pitzl-Waters. Jason had been invited to speak to the World Religions class about Paganism, and he thought that bringing me there to talk about my journey through Paganism and back to Christianity would be useful to them. His logic was pretty simple: conversion narratives can be messy, and it’s important that we try not to over-simplify them to suit our own biases.

I would be lying to say that I wasn’t going into that classroom with some biases of my own. There have been very few occasions when I felt like I had anything in common with Evangelicals. They have always seemed to be the kind of Christians I was not.

They were the stand up and wave your hands Christians; I was the sit down and become still Christian.

They were the talk about God like you really know Him Christians, because of course you do if you’ve read the Bible; I was the talking about God in genderless terms Christian, because making God into a dude seems political (and probably incorrect), and I didn’t presume to know or understand God — Bible or not.

They were “inerrant” and “infallible” Christians; I was an “inspired” and “open to interpretation” Christian.

And, for the most part, these things still hold true.

I also felt pretty othered by Evangelicals for being gay, especially when I lived in Nashville. There was no place for me at their table. Some said so in no uncertain terms. My gayness was just the Devil trying to take a hold of my life, a college friend told me after I came out to her.

We didn’t stay friends for very long.

In all fairness I’ve probably done some othering, too. I’ve probably made assumptions that weren’t accurate, or labeled Evangelicals as “the crazy ones.” In fact, I know I have. I’ve never really understood the way they talked about God, or Jesus, or their faith. It was like we were talking about different Gods, or different Jesuses, or different Christianities altogether.

But when I started talking to the class about my recent experiences, and the way that reaching out to those in need was the primary catalyst for my return to the Christian faith and practice, I saw an intimate recognition in their eyes. They understood my experience in a way that I hadn’t expected them to.

They got me.

I was speaking a language that the Evangelicals understood. I was talking Evangelical-talk. The encounter which led me back to the Church, which continues to lead me to explore the meaning of discipleship, and which causes me to say things like, “I feel as though God is calling me to serve others somehow,” is the kind of encounter that led some of these adults to an Evangelical Bible Seminary.

I don’t know that recognizing a commonality with Evangelicals means that I’m supposed to become one, or that I even could if I wanted to. Our differences are still pronounced. I am still gay. I still approach scripture as an inspired work. The ethos of Episcopalianism still makes a lot more sense to me.

But I know something about Evangelicals now that I didn’t before. Many of them have had an experience which they identify as God interjecting, intervening, or altogether breaking open their lives.

I can relate.

While we may be different in a lot of ways — a lot of important ways — I am not unlike an Evangelical.

Photo by 72dots

Not unlike an Evanglical by Teo Bishop

I don’t want to be a voice for the Newly Saved.

I don’t want to be looked at as an example of what happens when Christ enters a person’s life.

I don’t want to stand as a representative for all the Pagan converts out there, as though Pagans are so unified a group that there could be such a thing as a “Pagan convert.”

I appreciate the prayers and the support from the Christians who’ve reached out to me on Twitter, but I’m afraid that they have unrealistic expectations of me. I feel like they’re looking at me to fulfill some sort of Prodigal Son role; my story simply fitting into a narrative that they already understand.

I think that all of our stories are more nuanced and complicated than we’d like to admit publicly.

I’m unnerved that immediately after my story was exposed to the largely Christian audience of The Blaze I received my first hateful comment from a white supremacist.

Christians should take note: there is a hateful contingent among you, speaking mean-spirited things in the name of God. It should worry you. It should cause you to take a closer look at your theology, your war-language, your relationship to the “least among us,” your need to be “right” and your engagement with those who you perceive are not.

My concerns and reservations come after a long week of worrying; worrying about being misunderstood, or misrepresented, or misread. I’ve worried that Christians will see me as a champion of The Cause, and Pagans will see me as The Villain. I’ve worried that my hyper-awareness of Audience will get in the way of me listening for the movement of the Spirit in my life. I feel like the experience I had with the woman on the street — the experience which has since become a talking point on the Glenn Beck show — was a call to something. I think it may be a call to ministry of some sort, but I start to get agitated when strangers rush to tell me that they know exactly what I’m being called to.

How can they? How can they know the direction of my own life when I’m still trying to figure that out?

God works in mysterious, disruptive, seemingly illogical ways. We can pretend that God’s Will is a single thing, or a simple thing, or an easily discernible series of choices, but it’s not. We can try to tweet “God’s Will”, but unless the tweet reads “Love God, & love your neighbor as yourself,” we’ll probably be wrong.

So I don’t want to be a voice for the Newly Saved. I don’t want anyone to look to me and expect to see a cookie-cutter Christian. If you think you’ve “won one for the team,” I encourage you to reevaluate your us/them mindset.

Our call is to love.

That’s it.

Period.

Everything else is politics.

If our actions are not an extension of the directive to love, we’re missing the mark.

Photo by Renee Silverman

A voice for the Newly Saved by Teo Bishop

I didn’t grow up in a bible-crazy church.

That may sound like an unnecessary disclaimer, but it’s the kind I feel myself wanting to make these days.

There was plenty of scripture in the Episcopal services — more, I’ve been told, than you’ll find in your typical Sunday service at an Evangelical church — but there wasn’t a real emphasis on bringing scripture into your daily life. We weren’t encouraged, for example, to memorize verses. I was never put on the spot to recall scripture or to draw connections between the ordinary stuff of my life and the events in the lives of Bible characters. We heard the readings on Sunday and that was about it.

But now I find myself excited about the Bible. The New Testament, specifically. Tonight I even proposed starting up a Bible study with a few members of the church I’ve been attending. My enthusiasm was impossible to hide, and it looks like we may start to organize one soon.

I think the bible-craziness started when I picked up a copy of the The Kingdom New Testament a few days back at Powell’s. The translation has completely changed the way I think about reading the Gospel. The work by N. T. Wright, former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and current chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews, is amazingly approachable. I’ve flown through the Gospel of Matthew in no time at all. Couldn’t put it down.

I haven’t really paid attention to the Bible for years. It wasn’t a part of my paradigm as a Pagan. We were not a People of The Book (although many say lovingly that Pagans are a People of The Library). But now, after the chaos from the recent developments in my life is starting to calm, I’ve been opening up to scripture again. In fact, I’m been turning to it for comfort and solace. I’ve been reading without a clear agenda, and this new translation makes it even easier to do that. The language is so common, so approachable (while still being praised for its good scholarship in translation) that I feel like I’m being offered a richer, more digestible take of the meaning of Jesus’s life and death.

I’m reading the Gospels as entire books, too, rather than parsing them out section by section. There’s value to doing that of course, but each Gospel has a particular arch that you don’t pick up on if you’re dissecting it verse by verse. It’s nice to finally be able to view that arch more clearly.

All of this feels new and fresh, and a little foreign to me. I feel myself drawn to meditation on scripture. The stories are captivating me. They’re pulling me in. The scriptural readings from the Daily Office and the Lectionary have been speaking to me in very intimate, personal ways.

But I wonder — is this how people in the bible-crazy churches feel? Do they feel inspired to read the Gospel the way that I feel right now? For me, it’s like there’s something hidden in those stories of Jesus that I can’t put my finger on. I think that hidden thing may be connected to the feeling of being called into closer relationship with God. It’s also connected to the consistent pull I’m feeling toward some kind of service. Do they feel that way, too?

Maybe “bible-crazy” is too harsh; too sweeping.

I think biblical literalism is crazy. And I think that using the Bible as a weapon against others is also crazy.

But being inspired by scripture? Being drawn together in community around the reading and reflecting upon scripture?

Is that so “bible-crazy”?

Or is that just an organic, meaningful component of being a Christian?

Bible-crazy by Teo Bishop

“Excuse me,” the voice said from off to my side. “Can you help me?”

She was an old woman, perhaps in her 80’s. Her bones looked small and fragile. She wore a dirty coat. For some reason the coat really bothered me. This woman shouldn’t have been out there in the cold. She should have been in a home; in a warm, clean place. She should have been cared for. But instead she was on the sidewalk beneath the Sur la Table, calling me to her.

“Yes. How can I help you?”

Perhaps she wanted money. I would have given it to her, no questions asked.

“Could you help me stand up? I need to get turned around so that I can walk up to Whole Foods.”

She was sitting, hunched over the walker about half a block from the grocery store. I placed my hands under her shoulders as gently as I could and lifted her up. She moved as though my speed might break her, so I let her set the pace. Once she was standing and redirected she thanked me, and headed on her way. It was a simple goodbye. All she wanted was that small bit of help and nothing more.

I turned to see my husband with tears in his eyes. That’s his natural response to seeing people in pain, or dogs without homes, or whenever he thinks about kids so poor that they might not ever get a gift from their parents.

I pulled him close to me.

After a few minutes we made our way back toward our original destination, Powell’s Books. We were just a few feet into the store, climbing down the stairs towards the bookshelves when it happened. Into my head came the thought,

“I’m just going to go ahead and believe in God.”

My first response was to think,

“What? What does that even mean?”

The thought felt like it was mine but also not mine, as though there was something outside of me motivating it. It’s like the thought happened to me. It didn’t feel like some kind of clouds-parting conversion experience. It was just a calm, still voice making the declaration that I was going to believe in God.

In the Patheos article, What Is A Christian, Marcus Borg unpacks the etymology of “believe” in a way that sheds light on what this unexpected thought may mean in my life.

He writes:

… The language of “believing” has been part of Christianity from the first century onward. But it didn’t refer primarily to believing the right theological beliefs. It meant something like the English word “beloving.” To believe in God and Jesus was to belove God and Jesus. Namely, it meant to commit one’s self to a relationship of attentiveness and faithfulness. Commitment and fidelity are the ancient meanings of faith and believing.

Even the two most frequently heard Christian creeds, the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, reflect this understanding. They both begin with the Latin word credo, most commonly translated into English as “I believe.” But the Latin roots of credo mean “I give my heart to.”

(emphasis mine)

Looking at it now I think that this is what happened in the moment those words came into my mind: I gave my heart to God. It was hardly an altar call experience. In fact, it didn’t feel like something I was making a choice about at all. It was just the natural response to this encounter on the street.

My heart has not been the same since that woman reached out to me. Something inside me feels differently, as though my capacity to feel was just increased exponentially. The thought of people in pain, people without food, people without the feeling of love in their lives — these things have been affecting me in a way that they never have before — even during my pre-Paganism Christianity.

God likely doesn’t need my help, but this woman did. And others like her do. The lesson I take from this experience (perhaps the first lesson of many) is that through serving others I experience the love of God. Through giving freely of myself I come to better understand Christ. When I serve, I experience the Divine within myself and in others.

This woman called me back to beloving God by allowing me to serve her. It’s a calling I cannot deny or easily dismiss.

Photo by Jlhopgood

Go ahead and belove by Teo Bishop

I went to the Catholic cathedral in downtown Los Angeles because I wanted to buy a cross. Specifically, I wanted to buy a replica of the cross that the Pope wears. It’s kind of an unusual thing for me to do. I’m not Catholic. My grandmother is, and being raised Episcopalian, a denomination my mother lovingly called “Catholic Lite,” I’m familiar with the phenomenon of Pope-love. I’ve just never had a case of it, myself.

But then comes along Pope Francis, acting all salt-of-the-earth Christian-like, and I want to wear his cross. I want to remember him, and I like the idea that he’s out there praying for me.

I picked up the small, pewter replica, along with a prayer card for St. Francis (I’ve always loved his “Make me an instrument” prayer) and a little Pope/St. Francis reversible medal. It was a veritable Catholic shopping spree, and appropriately inexpensive.

I left the shop and headed across the courtyard to the cathedral. The building is staggeringly beautiful. It’s more modern than any other cathedral I’ve seen. The lines are unusual, as is the shape of the structure.

The sign by the door said, “Welcome to your cathedral.”

That’s nice, I thought.

The interior did exactly what a cathedral is supposed to do: it inspired in me a feeling of awe and wonder. It made me feel small, but not insignificant. It felt womb-like, peaceful and quiet. There were art students scattered about sketching and taking photographs of the architecture. Their business didn’t disturb me, and I made my way to a pew in the middle of the room.

I sat there for a long while and was still. Then I let my eyes lift upward to the large tapestries on either side of the room. These pieces of art were tall — perhaps 12 or 15 feet high — and they stretched from the back of the sanctuary to the front. Each panel of the tapestry contained depictions of figures from Christian history. It was ecumenical, too: there were Protestants and Catholics, Saints and other Christians who’d made an impact in the history of the Church.

That’s amazing craftsmanship, I thought.

Then I realized that the figures were all facing the same direction, lined up one behind the other. They were each looking forward with expressions of sorrow, hopefulness, or a deep and visible reverence.

I followed their gaze to its natural conclusion and realized that these people, these ordinary people like me, were all staring at the same thing: the simple, black iron crucifix standing on the floor behind the altar.

For a moment I stopped breathing.

All of this grandeur, all of this extraordinary art was there for the sole purpose of drawing my attention back to this one man. I found myself sitting there, and at the same time standing behind an untold number of Saints, all resting our sight on this one man.

I placed the Pope’s cross around my neck and tucked it into my shirt. I took a deep breath and let it out. I bowed my head and sat in silence.

Click on images to see original sources and authors (CC).

This one man by Teo Bishop

I’ve been to dozens of baptisms in my life, but this one was different.

I sat in the back of All Saints in Beverly Hills, a lovely little church in an obscenely wealthy part of the world, and I watched babies have water poured over the heads. I watched parents smile as the priest anointed their children’s foreheads with oil in the sign of the cross. Godparents stood by, beaming. Those parts were no different than what would happen at any other baptism.

What was different is how I felt inside.

I felt like this was happening at a crucial moment in my own life. I needed to be here. I needed to be witness to this. And, without a doubt, I needed to stand up and renew my baptismal covenant.

So I stood with the congregation and affirmed that I belonged to God, that I would seek to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, and that I would look for and seek to share the love of Christ in the world. I said I’d reject the forces of evil, too, and while I’m not really down with that language (still not a dualist) I said it anyway. I said every part of the covenant because it felt like the thing I was supposed to do in that moment.

There’s this unique push and pull going on right now between what I feel like is my will and what feels like something wholly other from my will. I’m hesitant to say that its God’s Will, but I will say that there have been moments in the past several weeks which have lined up in a way as if to say —

Yes. This is where you belong. Open your heart to this. Focus your mind on this. Be transformed by this.

All of those experiences pointed me back to God, and to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

I know that the public response to my recent transition (a word I prefer used over “conversion”) has been softened a bit because I’ve occupied this “middle way” between Christianity and Paganism. I read a number of Pagans who’ve said something to the effect of “we need more people with blended traditions represented in the world.”

Honestly, I’m a little burnt out on being a representative of anything. It was never my intention when I set up this blog to be a spokesperson for all of Pagandom (as if such a thing could even exist!), and it certainly isn’t my intention now to be a representative of Christopaganism, or for all of Christianity for that matter. I can’t shoulder that weight. And I don’t really think that Pagans or Christians need me too. If Paganism has taught me anything it’s that people need to know themselves, and they need to respond honestly and boldly to the callings they experience in their heart. That’s where Divinity is easiest to find. There, and in the hearts of those around us. That’s where we should be looking first; not in the clouds, or in the myths, or in the middle of a perfectly orchestrated ritual (although It’s there, too). We need only look into the hearts of those around us to find the spark of the Divine; to find what Christians call the Christ.

It’s right there. It’s always been just right there.

A friend and well-known Pagan told me “You know, Teo, I think people just want to know if you’re going to be a Carl McColman or a River Higginbotham.”

To that I think, I don’t know what God would have for me in any of this.

I suppose that makes me more like Carl, doesn’t it?

In my heart I know that there is more nuance to the spiritual life than can be represented in a single covenant or contained in a single religion. I know that the promises of faith and devotion we make are necessarily negotiated in each moment of each day after we make them. We have to keep making those same promises again and again. Each new time brings with it a new need to come out to ourselves and to the world. We say,

This is what I am, I think. I’m probably more than this; more than I can even realize. But this is what I am.

So if feeling compelled to reaffirm my Baptism makes me a Christian (and I think some would say that it does, unequivocally) then I guess I’m coming out as a Christian now.

A complicated Christian.

A gay Christian.

A Christian who thinks a lot like his Pagan friends, and who may have more in common with most Pagans than with most Christians.

But a Christian, nonetheless.

Photo by  simonella_virus

A Christian, nonetheless. by Teo Bishop

This is the kind of conversation my husband and I have over text messages:

Teo:

When was the King James Bible published?

Sean:

1600s

Teo:

And before that time, how did Christians come to know the Gospel?

Or even have a complete sense of what “The Bible” was?

Sean:

Oh, there were other, earlier versions of the Bible

King James commissioned a bible, some say, in repentance for his rather obvious homosexuality.

Teo:

Wow.

Sean:

Keep in mind, though, that even after King James, most people were illiterate and too poor to own books. So, most people knew the Gospel simply from attending church. Households did not have Bibles

Teo:

I just got to wonder how many thousands of people pre-King James knew the story of Jesus, and a vague sense of it’s place in the greater context of Jewish scripture, and how many didn’t, There was this long period of time when pre-Christian beliefs and practices (i.e. paganisms) existed side-by-side with a growing Christian faith.

And you make a good point.

Sean:

Yep. Home practice was much more pagan, I’d think. But people attended Church. In the Middle Ages, it wasn’t just monks and nuns who prayed 7 times a day, either. The Christian life was much more like Islamic practice. But prior to the Middle Ages, Christianity was a sort of magical tradition, and Jesus was sometimes seen as the greatest of the Pagan leaders, opening up a new path to wisdom and enlightenment.

The only way syncretism really works is if it looks enough like the original religion that people are convinced they don’t need to convert at all.

This is probably one of the reasons why Arthur become mythologized as a king who would return. And why his greatest quest — even though he was otherwise Pagan — was to retrieve the Holy Grail.

I’m speaking mostly from a European, early Middle Ages perspective. How people knew the Gospel in classical times — in Rome and Greece — before there was any sort of wide, paperbound dissemination of the book, I’ve no idea.

Something I do know, from my study of Classical culture and language, though, is that Hellenistic and Roman gods were not as central to those folks lives as reconstructionists like to pretend. The switch to Jesus was pretty easy, perhaps because he was seen as an active god, one who wasn’t just a story or just a metaphor. Most educated Greeks and Romans understood the Gods as metaphors.

Teo:

It’s interesting to me that there are SO MANY people in the past 2000 years who have had some close, personal connection to the story of Jesus, and yet their understandings of that story could be so radically different from mine.

Sean:

Yes. One of the brilliant (from the perspective of literary analysis) aspects of the Jesus story is its timelessness. It is adaptable for people of many cultures, across centuries.

He remains popular for some of the same reasons that Shakespeare’s plays remain popular.

His messages get at the very heart of the human dilemma.

Teo:

You know, there’s a big, heart-shaped part of me that thinks of Jesus as the gateway to understanding God. I really love the idea that he is both fully human and fully divine. It makes humanity and divinity seem both completely different and yet totally compatable.

Sean:

Yep.

This changes the meaning of “God” into something only possible to understand through reflection and consideration. And something that can forever be discussed, debated, deliberated. The word “God” then becomes so slippery. Immediate, distant; intimate, foreign. For linguists, that slippage in language is a form of the erotic. And thus God becomes erotic.

Teo:

Your brain is so hot.

Sean:

Thanks.

This is why any fundamentalist perspective on your return (carefully chosen word, that) to Christian thought is immediately wrong. Because that return is exactly informed by your work within Paganism. There’s a seat at your table for both, primarily because, at the bottom of it all, there aren’t conflicts between them.

Teo:

Yes.

The sin/redemption bit does seem to be a distinction, though. I was struck by how much of that language was off-putting to me during the Morning Prayer service yesterday, and yet how at the same time I find Nadia’s theology so attractive.

Sean:

For me, it’s always important to recognize that sin/redemption are not dependent on Jesus. He showed us a transactional metaphor. In every small way, we must die and be reborn whenever we repent, whenever we modify our behavior, apologize, change our thought patterns. There are very likely similar metaphors (actually, I can think of some from the Mabinogian right now) within Pagan traditions.

Jesus showed us we are already whole. We just need to go through some shit to recognize it.

Teo:

Again and again, often.

Sean:

Yep.

And the avoidance of that cycle, that effort… that’s sin. The only real one. To live in a deficit of existence (not my words… from Giorgio Agamben).

Jesus said: Crucifixion is a bitch, but look what it leads to!

Teo:

Jesus just became a drag queen.

Sean Morris:

“Oh, so now you’re Jesus.”

Teo Bishop:

HA!

Teo:

Would you mind if I published this little bit of conversation on my blog?

Sean:

Not at all.

Text Message God-Talk with my Husband by Teo Bishop