Remembering John Cobb and His Transdisciplinary Theology

 Several months ago, I intended to post a blog article today titled “Happy 100^th Birthday, Dr. Cobb!” He was alive and well at that time, but sadly, he passed away about six weeks ago. Still, I am remembering him today/tomorrow and I hope you will enjoy learning a little more about him and his theological thinking. 

John Boswell Cobb Jr. was born on February 9, 1925, and passed away on the day after Christmas. He was a “missionary kid” (MK), born in Kobe, Japan, to parents who were Methodist missionaries.

Until age 15, John lived primarily in Kobe and received most of his early education in the multi-ethnic Canadian Academy in that central Japan city. (Several of the Baptist MKs I knew in Japan, including the two children of Dickson Yagi [introduced below] went to high school at Canadian Academy.)

Dr. Cobb taught theology at the Claremont School of Theology (in California) from 1958 until his retirement in 1990. In 2014 he became the first theologian elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his interdisciplinary work in ecology, economics, and biology.

At least 25 years ago, Dr. Cobb moved to Pilgrim Place, a retirement home in Claremont. Thinking Friend Dickson Yagi was a faculty colleague of mine at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan. Not long after Dickson returned to the U.S., Dr. Cobb invited him to retire at Pilgrim Place, which he did in 2002.

Last August, I wrote to Dickson regarding Dr. Cobb. Dickson responded, “John Cobb’s brain is as sharp as ever. ... He lives in the partial nursing quarters now, so I don’t see him very often. But he still speaks in public .... He is a very courteous and pleasant, intelligent man.”*¹

John Cobb has been influential in a wide range of disciplines, including biology, ecology, economics, social ethics, and theology. I find his thought and writing quite valuable because of how he sees these disciplines as being interrelated and overlapping.

As Wikipedia correctly states, “Although Cobb is most often described as a theologian, the overarching tendency of his thought has been toward the integration of many different areas of knowledge.” Indeed, this sort of integration is what theology ought to be but so often hasn’t been.

Ecological themes have been pervasive in Cobb's work since 1969 (!), when he turned his attention to the ecological crisis. He became convinced that environmental issues constituted humanity’s most pressing problem. His book Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology was published in 1971.

In 1973, Cobb and his colleague David Ray Griffin (1939~2022) co-founded the Center for Process Studies (CPS) at Claremont.*² Three years later, they published Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, a book of singular importance.

In the Foreword, the authors reject much of the traditional theistic understanding of God, according to which “God seems to be the archetype of the dominant, inflexible, emotional, completely independent (read “strong”) male. Process theology denies the existence of this God” (p. 10).*³

Cobb published Becoming a Thinking Christian in 1993. The first paragraph of the Preface states that the book is for people who are lay Christians “in one of the oldline Protestant churches.”

Cobb perceived that many intelligent people in the churches “are still operating out of a simplistic view of faith. Too many have been led to assume that faith is incompatible with intellectual challenge and integrity. … that is the problem to which this book is addressed.”

I fully agree with Cobb’s expressed purpose for that book. In fact, it was just the following year that I started writing a somewhat similar book provisionally titled “Christian Faith and Intellectual Honesty.”

Because of soon being elected to heavy administration responsibilities at the educational institution where I had taught university and seminary classes since 1968, I was, sadly, unable to make much progress on that writing project.

My strong desire, as well as Cobb’s, is for all Christians to be thinking Christians—as well as for all those who are no longer, or never were, Christians to be thinking people. Most of my blog readers are, thankfully, such people, and many of them are on my Thinking Friends mailing list.

I hope some of you will now go to a library or to Amazon.com (or elsewhere) and obtain a copy of Cobb’s book. (There are several “very good” used copies available at Amazon for less than $7.00, including postage.)

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*¹ I heard Dr. Cobb speak in Japan (in 1995) as well as in the U.S., and I visited with him personally on both occasions. In the 1980s when I taught at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Cobb attended an academic meeting there.  At the close of the meeting, I had the privilege of driving him to the Kansas City International Airport and much enjoyed the conversation we had on that occasion. I fully agree with Dickson’s closing words about him.

*² In 1974, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki (b. 1933) received her Ph.D. degree at Claremont Graduate School. A few years later, she authored God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (1982, 1989). After teaching in various universities, she was a faculty member at Claremont School of Divinity from 1990 until her retirement in 2002. During that time, she was also a co-director of CPS. At an academic meeting in 2006, I had the opportunity to hear her speak and to have a private conversation with her.

*³ The paragraph on the previous page where they reject the idea of God as a “controlling power” is very similar to the fundamental idea of Thomas Jay Oord, whom I introduced in my January 10 blog post.

Note: Dr. Cobb’s last book was published in 2023, shortly after his 98^th birthday, and much of that book was written in 2022. It is titled simply Confessions and is a very personal—and timely—book. I bought the $10 Kindle version last year and carefully read the 200+ pages. I highly recommend it. 

Serious Concerns about the Short-term Future of USAmerica

A week has now passed since the 47^th president’s first full day in office, and it is hard to express adequately how calamitous these days since his inauguration have been for the country—and the world. Consider the following list of Trump’s troubling decisions and two additional serious concerns. 

Here are six of the worst changes begun by Trump’s “executive orders” and shifts in government policies that have occurred since January 20. (A whole article could easily be written about each of these.)

* Changes from prosecuting the January 6, 2021, wrongdoers to pardoning them and persisting in promotion of the “big lie” regarding the 2020 election.

* Changes from policies to combat climate change and ameliorate the growing ecological crisis to adopting those that will accelerate harmful global warming.

* Changes from accepting asylum seekers and other immigrants seeking to protect their lives and well-being to rejecting even those currently in the U.S.

* Changes from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion of all citizens so there can be social justice for all to fostering dominance by White males.

* Changes from honoring past treaties with Panama to threatening to use force if necessary to gain control over the Panama Canal again.

* Changes from a government of, by, and for all the people of the country to one definitely tilted to a government of, by, and for billionaires.*¹

The “idolatry” surrounding President Trump is one of my main concerns. In his inaugural speech, which even prominent conservative columnist George Will said was one of the worst in U.S. history, the 47^th POTUS said he was spared by God from the assassin’s bullet in order to make America great again.

What hubris for the President to claim that God saved him on the same day the nation was honoring MLKing Jr., who was killed by an assassin! He also referred to “our God,” whom he seems to think wants the U.S. to be greater even though that would be detrimental to most of the rest of the world.

This “idolatry” is fostered by conservative evangelical Christians such as Franklin Graham, who in one of the inaugural prayers intoned, “Father, when Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, You and You alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by Your mighty hand.”

Trump seems to gloat at the fact that many conservative Christians consider him as the “savior” of a failed nation, and in his inaugural speech he referred to January 20 as “Liberation Day.”

Trump’s alignment with Christian nationalists is also a troubling concern. Two of his nominees for prominent offices are outspoken in this regard.

Russell Vought is Trump’s choice to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought, who was highly involved in the production of Project 2025, has called Trump “God’s gift” to America who was elected to restore the nation’s Christian calling “as a nation under God.”*²

Pete Hegseth is another highly questionable Trump appointee. Last Friday in a tie Senate vote that was broken by VP Vance, Hegseth was approved as the new U.S. Secretary of Defense, and he assumed that office on January 25.

Six weeks before the inaugural address on Jan. 20, the New York Times posted an article titled “Pete Hegseth and His ‘Battle Cry’ for a New Christian Crusade” (see here). That seems to have been more than just a figure of speech.

In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth wrote, “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must.” In that book, he also suggests the possibility of future violence: “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

There are many reasons why Hegseth is unfit for a seat in the President’s cabinet. But I agree with Robert P. Jones, who objected primarily to “his support for Christian nationalism, “a set of beliefs that undermine the bedrock principles of a racially and religiously pluralistic democracy.”*³

Jones and I agree that there should be peace and justice for all USAmericans.

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*¹ At the end of his inaugural address, Trump mentioned the “golden age” of America that has “just begun.” Trump’s love for gold is well known, but it needs to be noted that in nearly all cultures, gold represents luxury and wealth as well as greed and excess. So, it is no surprise that most of Trump’s top appointees are billionaires, which reminds me of the old twist of the meaning of the “golden rule”: those who have the gold make the rules.

*² See this January 7 post by Baptist News Global is titled “Russell Vought: The gung-ho Christian nationalist who helps Trump be Trump.”

*³ Jones (b. 1968) is the founder and president of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Here is a link to Jones’s instructive January 16 article about Hegseth.

Note: Even though quite long, I recommend reading this GoodFaithMedia January 27 post titled Pete Hegseth: Religious Extremism in a Brooks Brothers Suit by Jemar Tisby, PhD, Professor of History at Simmons College of Kentucky, a faith-based HBCU. 

Celebrating 500 Years of Anabaptism

“The Martyrdom of Felix Manz” was the title of a blog post I made in January 2013. In that post, I noted that on January 21, 1525, “a group of people met in the house where Felix lived with his mother, and they formed a new faith fellowship” based on baptism after an open confession of faith in Jesus.

Today and in the weeks/months ahead, the 500^th anniversary of that January 21^st gathering is being widely celebrated by Anabaptists around the world. 

Anabaptist World Inc. is a “journalistic ministry serving the global Anabaptist movement.” Danielle Klotz, the Executive Director of that ministry, calls this month’s edition of that magazine a “special issue for a big milestone.” And indeed, a 500^th anniversary is a big milestone.*¹  

The combined membership of all Anabaptist churches comprises a very small percentage of Christians worldwide. According to the centerfold of the publication just mentioned, the “approximate number of baptized Anabaptist church members around the world is 2.13 million.”

Only 22 countries have more than 10,000 Anabaptist church members, and surprisingly, Ethiopia is the country with the most, nearly 515,000. The U.S. is next, with 456,000. It can be argued, though, that Anabaptists have had influence through the centuries that outstrip their relatively small membership.

Anabaptists are “the most radical reformers” in Protestant Christianity. The quoted words are the title of a major article in the above-mentioned magazine. The author, Anabaptist scholar Valerie G. Rempel, avers, “Appealing to scripture alone, Anabaptists broke with tradition to follow Jesus literally.”

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 with the ideas and activities of Martin Luther in Germany. In 1518, soon after becoming the priest of Grossmünster, the prestigious church in Zürich (Switzerland), Ulrich Zwingli began a similar reformation of the Roman Catholic Church there.

Both of those reformation movements, however, preserved the basic rituals of the Catholic Church. The sacrament of infant baptism was deemed especially important. But the Jesus-followers who met in sight of Grossmünster Church on 1/21/1525 could find no biblical support for such baptism.

Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel were young men who agreed with Zwingli’s reformation activities, but they thought his work was too slow. So, rejecting infant baptism (which they denied as being true baptism), the small group gathered in Manz’s home performed and accepted “believer’s baptism.”

Their “radical” reformation put them at odds with both the religious and civic leaders in Zürich —and they were soon considered heretics by both the church and the state. Manz was executed by drowning on January 5, 1527, and in the following years, thousands of Anabaptists were imprisoned or killed.^*2

From the beginning the Anabaptists emphasized discipleship. They believed that following Jesus meant living according to his teachings as found in the Gospels.*³ Jesus’ command, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43) was taken literally. To kill in the name of Jesus was unthinkable.

There are many differences among Anabaptists today. Progressive Mennonite churches, such as the one I am a member of, are far different from the various conservative Mennonite groups and the Amish. But from the beginning until the present, pacifism has been a core belief of all types of Anabaptists.

As I wrote in a blog post in 2012 (see here), “I decided while still in high school that pacifism is the position I should espouse because of being a follower of Christ.” So, I was long a “closet Anabaptist” until joining Rainbow Mennonite Church in July 2012.

The Southern Baptist Convention (that I was closely related to for nearly 50 years) as well as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (that I was later a part of for over 10 years) agree with the Anabaptists on believer’s baptism, and until SBC’s swing toward fundamentalism, on the separation of church and state.

But neither of those Baptist groups endorses pacifism, and the former especially has traditionally emphasized the New Testament writings of the Apostle Paul (and the “Roman road”) even more than the four Gospels. They tended to proclaim the Gospel about Jesus more than the message of Jesus.

Currently, 500 years after its beginning, the Anabaptist understanding of the Christian faith is still badly needed—and maybe more so in the U.S. now than ever because of the growing emphasis on Christian nationalism in this country.  

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*¹ Dawn Araujo-Hawkins is one of the nine members of Anabaptist World’s Board of Directors. She is a member of Rainbow Mennonite Church, where June and I are also members.

*² The name “Anabaptist,” meaning “re-baptizer,” was initially used in derision of the first participants in the “radical reformation” which began in 1525. For more detailed information (and a couple of pictures) about the beginning of Anabaptism, I highly recommend “Five Centuries of the Radical Reformation” (see here), the Jan. 16 Substack post by Thinking Friend Brian Kaylor.

Also, John Longhurst, an Anabaptist journalist who since 2003 has been the faith page columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press (the oldest newspaper in Western Canada), is the author of the informative Jan. 18 column, “2025 marks the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism.”

*³ Although Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran, his best-known book, known in English translation as The Cost of Discipleship, was first published in German (1n 1937) under the title Nachfolge, which literally means “following.” Since its publication in English translation in 1948, it has been highly appraised by Anabaptists as well as by many in other Christian denominations.

 

 

Are There Things God Can’t Do?

Thanks to my good friend Fred Herren, last year I became acquainted with theologian Thomas Jay Oord. God Can’t (2019) is the only one of his many books that I have read in its entirety, and initially I was “put off” by the book’s title. After reading it, though, I mainly agreed with Oord’s main points. 

Thomas Jay Oord was long a pastor and theologian in the Church of the Nazarene. Born and raised in Washington state, Oord (b. 1965) graduated from Northwest Nazarene College (now University, NNU) in Idaho in 1988.

After serving as a pastor of a Nazarene church for several years in Washington state, he enrolled in Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, graduating with a Master of Divinity. While in seminary, he was a pastor in nearby Lenexa, Kansas.

After earning his Ph.D. degree at Claremont Graduate University in California, he taught theology at Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts and then for sixteen years taught at his alma mater (NNU). Since 2020, Oord has been directing doctoral programs of the online Northwind Theological Seminary.*¹

God Can’t, Oord’s thought-provoking book, is about theodicy, the attempt to resolve the problem of evil that arises when all power and all goodness are simultaneously ascribed to God. If God can prevent all evil, why doesn’t a loving God do that? That is a basic problem for traditional theology.

Oord explains his reason for writing God Can’t: “I wrote this book for victims of evil, survivors, and those who endure senseless suffering. I wrote it for the wounded and broken who have trouble believing in God, are confused, or have given up faith altogether” (3).

His book, though, is also of considerable help for all of us who know people who have trouble believing in God's existence because of the suffering in their own lives or that which they see starkly in the world around them.

Oord insists that “God loves us all, all the time.” He goes on to assert, “Every idea I advocate in this book assumes God is loving” (11-12). This leads him to reject belief in God’s omnipotence and to emphasize what he terms God’s amipotence.*²

According to Oord, “God’s nature is uncontrolling love.” Thus, “God’s love is inherently uncontrolling” (26). That is why God “can’t prevent evil singlehandedly. God’s love governs what God can do” (27). So, here is Oord’s “Belief #1”: “God Can’t Prevent Evil Singlehandedly” (44).*³

How could God be considered all-loving if God could unilaterally prevent evil but didn’t do so? By substituting amipotence for omnipotence, though, Oord concludes, “I can whole-heartedly adore my uncontrolling Creator, knowing God neither causes nor allows the evil I’ve experienced or know” (183).

And then he leaves these final words: “The Lover of the Universe empowers and inspires us to live lives of love. Let’s cooperate with this uncontrolling God of love!” (186).

Much more needs to be said about Oord’s challenging book, but I will mention just one more important thing I realized afresh from reading it. Much of what Christians have said about prayer is based on an erroneous view of God. So often God is asked to do what an uncontrolling God cannot do.

Back in August 2016, I wrote about this in connection with reports that Jimmy Carter was “cancer free” after being diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2015. I encourage you to (re-)read that post (here).

I realize more fully now that it is simply “wrong” to pray for God to heal anyone or to perform other “miraculous” deeds. Yes, I believe in prayer, but not prayers that seek to change God or to “beg” God to do things that God could not do.

So, yes, given the loving, noncontrolling nature of God, there are some/many things God can’t do. But rather than that decreasing our devotion to God, such realization should cause our faith in God to deepen and to strengthen our determination to work with God for the betterment of the world around us.

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*¹ For more detailed information about Oord, see his website at https://ThomasJayOord.com. That site includes this recent news: “In 2024, Oord was taken to trial in the Church of the Nazarene for being queer affirming. The verdict was the removal of his ministerial license and membership in the denomination.” Last August, my friend Brian Kaylor interviewed Oord about his expulsion from the Church of the Nazarene. You can  hear that interview here.  

*² In April 2023, Oord published a new book under the title The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence. He coined the latter word, which means all-loving, to use in place of the former word, which means all-powerful. Christian theology has often talked about God as being omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Those are not biblical terms, however, and Oord firmly believes that the latter term should be replaced by his new term, amipotence.

*³ Oord’s other basic beliefs articulated in this book: #2, “God feels our pain”; #3, “God works to heal”; #4, “God squeezes good from bad”; and #5, “God needs our cooperation.”

Note: Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs reminded me that Rabbi Harold S. Kushner’s bestselling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1991) presents ideas quite similar to Oord’s. I read Kushner’s book back in the 1990s but didn’t remember that similarity while reading Oord, who does not mention Kushner. 

Happy New Year of the Snake (again)

Although it is still December 31 here in the U.S., rather than making this post at around 5:30 a.m., as I normally do, I am posting it at 9:00 (CST). This later time is midnight, the beginning of 2025, in Japan where I lived for so long. So it is now the Year of the Snake there, the same as in 2013.*¹  

People who are born in the Year of the Snake have positive character traits according to the Japanese (Chinese) zodiac. They are “deep thinkers, speak very little, and possess tremendous wisdom. They are fortunate in money matters and will always be able to obtain it.”*²

June and I are delighted to be expecting our third great-grandchild in May. We hope she will have the characteristics associated with those noted in the previous paragraph. Of course, there are also a few negative characteristics associated with each zodiac sign, so she will have to work to overcome those.

Consider what has happened in the Year of the Snake previously. While the snake does not have the strong negative connotations in Japan/China as it does in the West, awful things happened in the world in the Year of the Snake four times in the first half of the twentieth century.

The first Year of the Snake in the 1900s was in 1905. The Russo-Japanese War, which began in 1904, ended in a victory for Japan in September 1905. That war, fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan, resulted in 130,000 (or more) deaths, about 2/3 of them Japanese. 

Twelve years later, in 1917, the United States declared war on Germany and became embroiled in what was called the Great War then and World War I later.  As many as 8,000,000 soldiers and 13 million civilians died as a result of that war, although U.S. deaths were fewer than 120,000.

The next Year of the Snake was 1929. On October 29^th of that year, the Wall Street Crash marked the beginning of the worldwide Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average did not return to its peak close of September 1929 until November 1954. 

And then in 1941, twelve years later, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7 occurred. The next day President Roosevelt called that a “date which will live in infamy,” and the U.S. declared war on Japan. There were at least 60 million deaths in that war, about 3/4 of them civilians.*³

Fortunately, the years 1953, 1965, 1977, and 1989 were years with no notably horrific world events. But the first Year of the Snake in this century, 2001, was certainly a traumatic one for the U.S.

2025 will be a different sort of “year of the snake” in the U.S. “Snake in the grass” is a common English expression. Since in Japan snakes do not have a “bad” reputation, though, there is no similar Japanese phrase. A Japanese website says the English idiom means “an enemy disguised as a friend,” or “someone you can’t trust.”

On January 20, the 47^th POTUS will be inaugurated. While I am generally careful not to use unkind, pejorative language, I am only one among many who think that he and several of his Cabinet nominees can be legitimately characterized as “snakes in the grass.”

Candace Osmond is a “grammarist writer,” and she says (here) that a “snake in the grass” personality type refers to “someone who appears friendly and likable on the surface but has hidden agendas and will do anything to get what they want. They usually manipulate and deceive others to achieve their goals.”

Ms. Osmond gives no examples, but sadly, it seems hard to deny that the incoming President clearly exhibits that sort of personality, and some if not many of his nominees seem to have that trait also.

So, I wish you all the very best in the Year of the Snake, but I also urge you who are U.S. citizens to be careful not to be deceived by the “snakes in the grass” who will constitute what may well be a kakistocracy, that is, “a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.”

Since snakes repeatedly shed their skins, they are often seen as a symbol of regeneration in Japan. May this Year of the Snake be the beginning of the regeneration of good government here in the U.S.!

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*¹ I have written this article with little overlap to what I said in the post with the same name I made that year. Some of you may want to read that post (here) since many of you were not on my Thinking Friends mailing list then. The only comments on that post were from Craig Dempsey and Anton Jacobs, who are two of the three or four TFs who have commented most often over the past twelve years, and I much appreciate their many meaningful, thought-provoking comments.

*² From “The Twelve Signs of the Japanese Zodiac,” posted by Ms. Namiko Abe in June 2024 at this link. That article gives an explanation of all twelve of the animals included in the zodiac cycle in Japan. The same zodiac is used in China where the traditional lunar calendar is used, so the Chinese New Year won’t begin until January 29.

*³ These statistics come from the website of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans (see here). According to that source, the number of U.S. WWII deaths was under 420,000.

Revelation: The Most Misunderstood Book in the Bible

Just over 50 years ago, Vernard Eller, the eminent Anabaptist scholar, published a book titled The Most Revealing Book in the Bible. It was, of course, about the Book of Revelation. While that is doubtlessly true, I am calling Revelation the most misunderstood book in the Bible.*¹  

The Book of Revelation was the discussion topic of Great Books KC at its monthly meeting on December 6. That discussion group started in 2004, and I introduced it in a blog post for the first time in October 2014 (see here).

Although I attended regularly for many years, last month I attended Great Books KC again for the first time since last December. They have a “rule” that each year some book of the Bible will be discussed, and last year that book was the Old Testament book of Job.

Especially since this year’s selected book of the Bible was Revelation, I made the effort to drive down to the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library to attend and take an active part in the discussion of that last book of the Bible, which is so often misunderstood and misused.

While some of the 13 attendees (most of whom participated via Zoom) had a fairly good understanding of Revelation, several were clearly perplexed by it and some seemed to have a serious misunderstanding, which is seemingly true of the general public.

Misunderstanding of Revelation was augmented by Hal Lindsey, who died last month, two days after his 95^th birthday. Most of you recognize his name and remember him as the author of The Late Great Planet Earth (1970).

Lindsey’s book sold more than 10 million copies before the end of the 1970s, becoming the best-selling nonfiction book of the decade. By this and his later books, Lindsey “brought the once-obscure theology of dispensationalist premillennialism into the mainstream.”

Moreover, “Lindsey’s books demonstrated an incredible appetite for apocalyptic speculation … and paved the way for many other prophecy writers, including Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, and Joel Rosenberg …. introducing wide audiences to the concepts of the Rapture, the Antichrist, and the mark of the beast.”*² 

In March 2015, nearly ten years ago, I made a blog post titled “Do You Believe in the Rapture.” Although I did not mention Revelation, the widespread belief in what dispensationalist Christians call the Rapture is based on a literal interpretation of Revelation and, to a lesser degree, on a few other parts of the Bible.*³  

Belief in the Rapture is one of the major misinterpretations of Revelation that has been held by many Christians since the early part of the 20^th century, and especially since Lindsey’s 1970 book.

In my remarks at the Great Books KC December meeting, I emphasized the following points, which I am now sharing briefly.

** Revelation was written primarily for the Jesus-followers who were living “then and there” rather than for people “here and now.”

** Revelation was written in apocalyptic language that should be taken seriously, but not literally. As N.T. Wright writes, Revelation “is full of strange, lurid and sometimes bizarre and violent imagery.” That eminent New Testament scholar goes on to say,

This book in fact offers one of the clearest and sharpest visions of God’s ultimate purpose for the whole creation, and of the way in which the powerful forces of evil, at work in a thousand ways but not least in idolatrous and tyrannous political systems, can be and are being overthrown through the victory of Jesus the Messiah and the consequent costly victory of his followers.

   (These quotes are from the Introduction of Wright’s 2011 book Revelation for Everyone.)

** Despite all the violence depicted in Revelation, the focus is clearly on the non-violent Lamb, the historical Jesus who was crucified and resurrected.

Revelation, properly understood, has a direct link to Christmas. By far, the best-known part of Messiah, Händel’s superlative oratorio, is Hallelujah Chorus, which is often performed in celebration of Christmas.

The words of Hallelujah Chorus come from Revelation 19:6, 11:15, and 19:16. During this busy week before Christmas, perhaps you can take four minutes to listen to those words being impressively sung (here) by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

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*¹ The title of a blog post I made in October 2017 is “Revelation: The Most Misused Book in the Bible.” I encourage you to click on this link and read it (again). There are 30 comments (including my responses) posted below that article, and according to Blogger.com, there have been about 550 pageviews of that post.

*² These quotes are from a lengthy and informative 11/27/24 article in Christianity Today magazine (see here).

*³ According to the stats provided by Blogger.com, that post has, inexplicably, had nearly 3,700 pageviews. 

Note: Some of you may be interested in the 11/12/24 post by Religious Dispatches, “The Trump Administration’s Approach to Immigration is Inspired by the Bible — The Book of Revelation.” Here is a link to that provocative article about the grave dangers embedded in the widespread misunderstanding of Revelation. 

“O Little Town of Bethlehem”: Grieving the Ongoing Slaughter of Palestinians

Christmas Eve is just two weeks from today, and the popular Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” will be sung in many Christian churches that evening. So, this is a fitting time to think about the ongoing plight of the Palestinians in Bethlehem—as well as in Gaza and the entire West Bank. 

“O Little Town of Bethlehem” was written by Phillips Brooks. In the decades following his ordination as an Episcopal priest in 1860, Brooks (1835~1893) became whom many considered the greatest preacher of his day. While still a young man, he delivered a eulogy for slain President Lincoln in April 1865.

Later that year, Brooks traveled across the Atlantic to Europe and then made a pilgrimage to Bethlehem. On Christmas Eve, he assisted at a service in the Church of the Nativity, built over the traditional site of Jesus’ birth. Three years later he wrote "O Little Town of Bethlehem" for the children of his church.*¹ 

In 2015, 150 years after Brooks visited Bethlehem, I visited there for the first (and only) time. I took the short taxi ride from the south side of Jerusalem to the West Bank wall (or “separation barrier”). That structure, often called the “Wall of Apartheid" by Palestinians, was completed in 2006.

With my U.S. passport, I was able to pass through the wall with no problem. After observing what I could there, I then took another taxi to the main tourist sites in old Bethlehem. I was rather unimpressed, though, by the Church of the Nativity and the commercialism of the surrounding environment.*²

 I soon decided to go to the central shopping area of the city where I walked up and down the streets, observing ordinary Palestinians going about their daily activities. I quickly noticed the considerable difference between them and the Israelis I had seen in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Despite their close geographical proximity, they seemed to be living in a different, much earlier, time period. And most of them were not free to exit Bethlehem and travel to Jerusalem. They were mostly prisoners confined to their own “little town” of fewer than 30,000 people.

That and my experiences the next day traveling in East Jerusalem and the West Bank territories sparked the drafting of “The Plight of the Palestinians,” my 6/30/15 blog post, which I encourage you to read (again) by clicking here.

The plight of the Palestinians is far, far worse today than it was in 2015. That is true for the West Bank, but extremely, and increasingly, worse for Gaza now, 430 days after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

It is also bad again this year in Bethlehem. A recent article posted by Reuters is headlined, “Another bleak Christmas in Bethlehem….” The article includes an image (similar to the one above) of the creche created last year by the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem to depict the sickening rubble in Gaza.

And now, the situation there is so much worse. Just last week, Amnesty International concluded that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. Sadly, in the coming year, things may get even worse for both Gaza and the West Bank.

President-elect Trump has named Mike Huckabee as his choice for the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Last month, a Religious Dispatches post (see here), stated that Huckabee is a stalwart Christian Zionist who has made over 100 trips to Israel.

According to that article, “Huckabee has aligned consistently with the hawkish Israeli Right and its agenda of permanent occupation, expansion, and Jewish supremacy in Palestine.” 

The first verse of Brooks’s carol ends, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in you tonight.” In Bethlehem now, the fears of most people are undoubtedly stronger than their hopes—and around the world, many of us grieve the ongoing slaughter of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Then, the last verse concludes with the words “peace to all on earth,” which the angels sang on that first Christmas.*³ May God help us all to strive more diligently to make peace to all a reality in Bethlehem, Gaza, and everywhere across the globe!

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*¹ Click here if you would like to hear the carol being nicely sung. Also, here is a link to an informative piece, including several images, about Brooks written by the New England Historical Society.

*² A short time after his mother Helena visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem in 325–326 A.D., Constantine commissioned the construction of a church on the site traditionally considered the birthplace of Jesus.

*³ The wording of the original carol was updated in The New Century Hymnal (1995), cited above.

Note: “To Bethlehem” is a powerful new poem that begins “O little Town of Bethlehem / forgive us for the lie / our churches tell - that all is well / as Christmas Eve draws nigh.”  I encourage you to read the entire poem by clicking here.