Notes from Evolving Faith Conference 2019

*"The Bible is not the fourth member of the Trinity."
Following Jesus made one speaker a feminist.  For me, following Jesus nullified my feminist identity.
There is a strong critique of the "purity culture".  Yes, Jesus dined with sex workers, but He also said "sin no more".
"Religion" means "ligament, rediscover our wholeness.
The Garden of Eden is the womb of our childhood, idyllic, but we were meant to "leave home" and till the soil.  So it wasn't a punishment to be kicked out.
*"My view of God is not the same as God."
Systems keep you from having to think for yourself.
Seminary teaches us to objectify God.
*"Evolving doesn't always require an exodus.  Sometimes it just requires an exfoliation."
A people with holy imagination who didn't throw away the Bible though it was used to keep them in bondage.  They didn't throw away Jesus, even though crosses were burned in their yard. (re: African-Americans)
*"What the Lord requires also requires the Lord."
"White supremacy is the inaccurate retelling of history."

Decolonialization... this keeps coming up.  How do I do it?  When teaching history in our homeschool, the first thing I must keep in mind is to try to avoid excessive Euro/White-centrism.  The Greeks were not actually the oldest democracy but rather Native American nations.  And the US was not merely built on the freedom of religion (that was only true for most of the White settlers), but on forced labor (African slaves did not come here for freedom!) and on cultural genocide and resettlement (Native American peoples did not "come here", they were here first).  It matters to tell all of the narratives.  But outside of this teaching of history, how else do I decolonize?

If it's not good news for women, for people of color, for members of the LGBTQ community, for the disabled, for immigrants, for the poor... then it is not good news.

Luke 1, written by Brown, colonized people: "In the days of King Herod, in the days of a despot, in the days of a man who loved to build tall buildings and put his name on it, in those days...God broke into the world."

Brown Jesus, indigenous Jesus, colonized Jesus is here to set the image of God free.

If God is love and the Holy Trinity is relationship, then sin is anything that breaks relationships.