Disclaimer: These interviews are my account of what was said. I tried to represent to the best of my ability, the intent of the interviewees. They vary in accuracy, however, as some interviewees edited their statements to better reflect their intent; others did not. Some names and places have been fictionalized to protect the anonymity of the interviewees.

Jenny, who is interested in learning in general and who is a writer herself.  I met Jenny at the Kenmore Residence Club in San Francisco, one of my first temporary housing situations after moving there to pursue higher education a few years after completing my bachelors degree.  Jenny was a student at Friends World College which also was characterized by writing and independent study. 

She had traveled in Southeast Asia and comes from a secular Jewish home.  Her mother is atheist/agnostic and her father is a scientist, though spiritual in his own way.  Being Jewish, she questions what she feels are paternalistic and judgmental Jewish cultural characteristics.  She identifies with Buddhism for her spiritual beliefs and finds there values of nonjudgmentalism and empathy which she personally values.  She also has found in Buddhism the value of humanitarianism which fits with positive Jewish values she was raised with. 

Jenny is married to a Muslim man and finds similarities between Jewish and Muslim cultures, such as foods, words, jokes and music and realizes that there are close cultural roots.  Recently, their son was invited to a “sleepover” and the mother of the friend asked if it was OK for their son to go to church on Sunday.  Jenny responded that it was fine, being open minded to different experiences for her child.  Her husband, however, didn’t want him to go to church, making the point that at his young age he is impressionable and they should experience religious practices together as a family.  So the family did not take him to church which happened to be Catholic, and they didn’t go at all as it turned out.

~~~

Tom, my husband, when asked one Sunday why he hadn’t gone to church that day, responded that he had been to the “church of nature.”  Tom’s father was a Presbyterian minister but he doesn’t belong to church as an adult.  He feels he learned some good values from that upbringing.  Like most children of ministers, he understands and learned well the depth of the goodness of the tradition but is also very aware of the hypocrisy.  His father tried to do social change work but received only divided support from his parishioners.  He ended up working as a chaplain at a mental hospital, where he felt he could make a difference. 

Tom believes that when religions become too dogmatic and closed, they stifle spiritual growth and peaceful interactions between the people of the world.  His perception of Creation Spirituality is that it respects and is supportive of the telling of creation stories from around the world. 

Tom has a personal meditative process which he learned from Eastern mystical tradition.  His first experience was a trip to a Zen monastery while in college in the 1970s.  Every day he tries to get into a meditative state.  A technique he uses is to focus on his breathing.  He feels all of life should be a meditation.  Prayer is often described as talking to God.  He said that meditation is when you listen and God talks.  I know that Tom is concerned about social issues and he enjoys spending time in nature and in qualitative interactions with other people.

~~~

My father, the late Rev. Leland Jackson, decided to become a minister after seeing a spiritual being glowing with swirling light, which comforted him at a low point in his youth.  He later turned away from his interest in the ministry for a time because he was disillusioned after hearing gossip by some minister's wives.  However, later he turned back to the previous decision.  I don’t know if it had to do with the fact that in the interim, while serving in the military, he was called in during boot camp, from a field where he learned to use a bayonet, to be told that his mother had died.  As this news was told to him he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard a voice from an unseen source, telling him that “all is well with your mother.”

My father made a change after being a parish pastor for several years, to become a chaplain.  He worked the rest of his career as a hospital chaplain.  As a result of his chaplaincy training in counseling, he became greatly interested in Carl Jung and dreams.  He had read somewhere that dreams came to be looked down upon because of the Bible passage in Jeremiah, 27:9 which says, “Do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your soothsayers, or your sorcerers…“; As I read on in the passage, it seems that to use this phrase alone is to take it out of context as it pertains to a particular situation in Jeremiah and not necessarily to all situations.  In another book my father used to give away copies of, Dreams, A Way to Listen to God, the author Morton Kelsey says that people have stopped listening to dreams because of scientific, rationalistic and secular ways of thinking.

My father was influenced by his dreams and encouraged others to learn from their dreams.  He was a member and chair of the Friends of Jung for awhile in the small metropolis where I grew up in northern Illinois.  He used to say that he would have liked to have learned about Carl Jung’s work with dreams and spirituality during seminary.  There was a very real spiritual quality to my father’s experience that he felt should be supported by religion.  Other than that he has been a faithful and devout Christian.  However, he did say to me at least once that he thought that people’didn't understand what they were saying by merely reading and repeating aspects of the Lutheran liturgy during services, which I agree with.  My father emphasized the importance in finding meaning in whatever happened. He liked to talk about the Jungian concept of synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence. Another Jungian concept I learned from him was individuation, that the souls develops and learns and changes.

My father read many books about Jung and dreams and one called Alternative Realities by Lawrence LeShan.  He and my mother took a biofeedback course once and he told me that while he and my mother were resting and practicing relaxation techniques, he saw an unknown being standing and looking on from the foot of his bed.  I learned a lot about dreams from him, but have not had or sought out similar paranormal experiences.

*

I showed what I wrote here about my father to him not long afterward.  In spite of severe memory loss and difficulty hearing, he read it three times and said, “That all happened… it’s all true.”  Then he said that he has suggested to people that there are different ways to look at things.  There is more to learn, which sometimes happens accidentally.  It is important to be open to other ideas for this to happen.  This is consistant with how I have heard him speak about things in the past.

An interesting side story is that a few books have been written by the daughter of A.D. Mattson, the Augustana theologian who I discussed at length earlier, about her conversations with her father after his death, through a psychic “medium.”  I have read Ruth Mattson’s book, Witness from Beyond, which was comforting to me, and gave me assurance that life must continue in another form beyond this one.  I heard her speak on a panel at an Augustana Heritage Gathering along with a Lutheran minister who is psychic and can communicate with another realm beyond this life. 

Corinthians Chapter 12 states that people are gifted with many abilities such as wisdom, knowledge, faith, to heal, to bring about miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, various tongues and interpretation of tongues.  It goes on of course to say that no matter what your gifts, if you don’t have love, they are not important.  It doesn’t say that different abilities are not of value.  It just puts them in perspective.

~~~

At that same panel with the psychics just mentioned, a retired Lutheran minister spoke who lives in Oakland, California, Dr. John Nasstrom spoke about popular spirituality movements.  John Nasstrom grew up in Michigan and went to the Augustana seminary in Rock Island, Illinois.  He served as a pastor in Butte, Montana in the 1950s.  He worked for several years in the field of social work.  He worked for Lutheran World Relief in Brazil and the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A.  In retirement he has studied adult and popular education for a Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley and like me, is interested in Grundtvig.  For awhile he tried to put together a folk school in Oakland.  He has worked with religious leaders of various denominations in Oakland to create dialogue with school teachers about how incorporating spirituality into their work with children. 

At the panel, he quoted Martin Marty who said, “When people stop believing in God, they believe in everything.”   He said that “when spirituality speaks, theology listens,” quoting from a book, New Beginnings for Respectful Dialogue.  It is no longer acceptable to choose between theology and spirituality as insights grow.   Spirituality is linked to theology and contemplation as meditation become mainstream.  

John said he questions the gospel as a message to save people out of a world of sin.  Teilhard de Chardin has said that existence is moving toward consummation in God or Christ.  The Omega is at the end of human history.  Chardin said that we are spiritual beings who are having a human experience, not the other way around.  He has read Original Blessing and interprets popular spirituality as evidence of a move from religion to spirituality.  He doesn’t believe in Original Sin.

John Nasstrom has changed his views about three specific truths.  He mailed me an essay in describing them.  In the pursuit of seeking the truth, what he now sees as true are understandings rather than beliefs.  The first of the three is that he understands he has been created a perfect, divine, child of God.  His old understanding was that there was no divinity in him, though once in awhile a spark of the divine in everyone, except for Jesus who was perfect.  His new understanding came to him as a result of studying writings on spirituality and especially, A Course in Miracles.  Sin is a less useful term than error.   Humans do err and make mistakes, such as the belief in original sin. The greater error is to pronounce judgments on others and not take responsibility for our own failings.

The second understanding is that understanding leads to knowing about or experiencing God.  He has gained new understanding of knowing as a result of the discovery of new ancient Gnostic texts, which seem to emphasize the presence of the Kingdom of God as something to know as a part of self knowledge, and he quotes from Elaine Pagels’ book, The Gnostic Gospels.

The third new understanding he has come to is that the term salvation has to do with restoration of harmony in human relationships.  The Course in Miracles presents the idea, not so much that sins are forgiven, but the mistaken notion of separation is forgiven.  This way, so-called “sins” are handled in a deeper way.  If sin is unreal, then there is no need for the idea of sacrifice.  Rather than looking on Jesus as a sacrifice, he views him as the Master Teacher.  He quotes from author Marcus Borg, that Jesus was a “teacher of wisdom,…a spirit person” and “mediator of the sacred.” 

In John Nasstrom’s visits to different kinds of churches, he has found that they too emphasize the divinity of Jesus and has a central place in their teaching as Master Teacher, even when there were other sages in history to inspire them as well.  The Bible and other Holy Scriptures were used in sermons and writings in Centers for Meditation which were founded by people from Hindu and Buddhist countries, many of whom had been raised in mainline Christian churches.

What he would like to see changed in churches that would make him feel more comfortable in worship, in light of these new understandings are the following. 1) Meditation must be at the center of church practice; 2) New types of study groups should study new things, including meditation, the Gnostic Gospels and A Course in Miracles; and 3) Revisions in liturgy should be made reflecting how these new understanding apply to what is celebrated in Holy Communion.

~~~

Kirsten did not know specifically about Creation Spirituality and said she did not think it was a mainstream Lutheran concept. She suggested I read Environmental Ethics, by Joseph Sittler, a Lutheran professor and author of the 20th century.

I asked her about her Lutheran beliefs. She commented on a theme the previous Sunday in her ELCA church on the Christian concept of the Trinity, when three aspects of God are emphasized: God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. She said this concept represents how she thinks about faith: that it is about relationship with God, other people and all of Creation. She said we can't be Christian in a vacuum; we need community.

She said that the more she meditates about her faith, the less committed she is to doctrine. She doesn't believe Jesus is the only way to salvation and that God has been revealed to people through other faiths. I asked her if she had read anything by Elaine Pagels and she had read her book on the Gnostic Gospels a long time ago.

She talked about the uniqueness of the Christian faith. The concept of Grace is very significant. The concept that "God acts" is unique to Christianity, while other faiths emphasize the actions of people more. She has heard it said that religion is people's quest for God, however, she said, Christianity is God coming to people. She quoted the Lutheran hymn, "I sought the Lord and afterwards I knew, he moved my soul to seek him seeking me…" The focus is on God's activity. Our role is to respond to God's call to be in relationship with people and creation.

She shared a perception of Norwegian Lutheran churches. Swedish Lutherans have always been very respectful of authority whereas Norwegians American Lutherans have not. This is because when Sweden controlled Norway, they controlled the politics and religion. Norwegians came to mistrust authority as a result and have consequently emphasized localized control over their congregations. This behavior apparently continued with the immigrants to the U.S.

~~~

Danielle Welliever, at the time of the interview, worked for the national ELCA, as the Director for Environmental Education and Advocacy.  I first met her when she was invited to speak at my church for a forum series I organized, called, “Faith in the World.”  I later spoke to her on the phone for an interview regarding Creation Spirituality, Lutheranism and her faith. 

I asked about her own ethnic origins.  She grew up in eastern Washington State and though her father was a Scandinavian mixture, her mother’s German Lutheran culture was dominant.  They belonged to the American Lutheran Church (ALC), which included Norwegian as well as German Lutherans.  It was very pietistic and legalistic.  Growing up, she was afraid to wrestle with big ideas as there were so many rules to follow.  As a Lutheran she did not feel free to embrace creation spirituality.  Danielle now defines Creation Spirituality as God renewing the face of all creation. 

In the Pacific Northwest, Danielle said, Creation Spirituality is quite common.  She told me about a book called The None Zone by Patricia Killen.  On the census and other government forms, many people in the Northwest check “None” for religion.  Many there don’t feel guilty if they don’t go to church to worship God.  People can worship God and be in community with others and with creation as they commune with creation. She said it means a lot more to belong to a denomination like Lutheranism in the Midwest, than it does in the Pacific Northwest.

She was working as director of public policy for the Lutheran synod of Washington state when she ran into a lot of prejudice while talking to parishioners about poverty.  People were not generally aware of classism and racism and how power and money affect society to the detriment of some and betterment of others. She decided to go to seminary to learn how to talk to people about theological questions in this context.

She emailed me about a study conducted in seminary. She conducted 50 interviews with Lutherans throughout Washington State, asking seven questions, mainly about their understanding of God and their own role in creation.  The last question focused on the concrete.   The question, “where do you think God fits into the world of climate change” was met with almost universal nonchalance.   Generally, people were not able to make much connection.  With her research concluded, she believed that the Church needed to focus more on the work of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinitarian God.  The Spirit’s work is described in the creeds developed by the 4th century Church.  Martin Luther described the work of the Holy Spirit with the words “calls, gathers and enlightens.”

Danielle wonders how we can bring a sense of awe and wonder of being a part of God’s Creation into church.  She wonders if creation defines spirituality or vice versus, like a red orange or orange red crayon.  She recommended that I read a book on spirituality and ecology, The Trinity and the Kingdom, by Jurgen Moltmann, a German Lutheran systematic theologian who develops theology with a rigorous approach to scripture, history and tradition.  At the time of the interview, Danielle hoped to move back to the Pacific Northwest and to apply for a grant to do an environmental health project with Lutheran Community Services.        

~~~

Rev. Gerald Swanson was campus pastor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, a suburb to the north of Los Angeles, California, from 1969-1986, was director of the Learning Resource Center and assistant professor of English in 1999.  I read on a website that he and his wife, Dr. Jan Bowman, were given the Christus Award “recognizing individuals who serve higher education in the ELCA and work to strengthen the bridge between the church and the university.”  Jan was involved with the ELCA, the Peace and Justice Education Task Force and the Christian Faith and Liberal Arts Study Group.  As a professor, she developed courses in integrated, global and women’s studies (Moorpark Acorn).

Rev. Swanson was referred to me by his brother, the late Rev. Richard Swanson, who had encouraged me to contact him in the past, knowing that we both were interested in Creation Spirituality, but I didn’t follow through until this interview.  Richard told me his brother’s home was like a Benedictine monastery and both were Benedictine Oblates, a lay position with that order, which apparently is open for those from other denominations.  He said that Gerald’s wife has taught spirituality courses as well as English.

I interviewed Gerald Swanson on the phone.  He said in 1977 or ’78, he was introduced to Fox’ book, Becoming a Musical Mystical Bear, and he invited him to spend three days at the campus in 1978.  In the 1980’s, he attended a summer institute of ICCS.  He has followed Fox’s work and taught Creation Spirituality using Original Blessing as the basis for interim classes, a short course between semesters, at the college.  He said the concepts were very opening and expanding for students.  He didn’t attempt to relate it to Lutheranism and other established faiths, however. 

He appreciates the concept of art as a healing path and the deep sense of radical ecumenism that includes the environment.  Fox’s ecumenical imagining and thinking is very inter-religious, grassroots and open.  It is not just interchurch but approaches religion from the broadest standpoint.  I believe he was speaking in reference to the Cosmic Christ when he said that the reality of incarnation goes back to the beginning of the universe.  By confining ourselves to the Christian era we cut ourselves off from seeing incarnation from the beginning of time. 

Rev. Swanson is part of the World Community of Christian Meditation (wccm.org) which meets in a homes and is very ecumenical.  Their community is led by his wife.  This international organization had a gathering in Belfast in 2000 which they attended.  The Dalai Lama spoke, and from a little research on the internet, it appears that the Dalai Lama is involved with the WCCM ongoingly.  The Swansons are also still part of a Lutheran church in Thousand Oaks as well.  They take frequent trips to Sweden and have friends and family there.  He understood my ideas about Grundtvig and the Happy Danes as one way to relate Lutheranism to Creation Spirituality. 

~~~

Andrea Turner is a classmate at WISR.  She has had several religious influences.  She grew up in a progressive Baptist church in Philadelphia and her father was a Baptist minister.  At an early age she also attended Quaker camps and schools.  These two traditions blended well together.

While the doxology and trinity were main themes within her Baptist beginnings, the importance of community, the gathering of the masses to help one another, were major lessons that have been etched into her spiritual experiences to this day.  She learned it is important to do what you can on earth and treat everyone with respect.  Depending on how you do this, you will go to heaven or hell when you die.  If you were good, the heavens will open up and be wonderful to you.  You should treat everyone well and vote besides.  The Baptists emphasized worship as well as social justice which made them progressive.  The Quakers provided the connection between thought and social responsibility through introspective meditation and thinking as well as social justice action activities.

Andrea doesn’t believe in pie in the sky.  She believes that once you die you die and that’s that.  She believes that heaven and hell are right here on earth.  She still believes that we are to do unto others with respect and care for one another and to help each other wherever we can.

She has also learned from Buddhism about being mindful, conscious and fully into the moment, which helps her to center and anchor.  She looks at it from a personal growth and development standpoint in terms of her individual needs and being fully conscious of her acts and path to follow.

She said she is pantheistic in the sense of embracing all of nature and experiencing life as art.  She said that we’re all one.  This philosophy is all embracing.  Her beliefs embrace all life, music, hugging a tree or a person, or caring for another person in a moment.  She is conscious of being present.  Being consciously aware at all times is an inner struggle. How to balance that and be one with it all is an ongoing struggle which is the spirituality of life.

She has experienced organized religion through social justice movements.  She is comfortable going to any institutional church, synagogues or Buddhist temple.  Her father, a minister, is of African and Native American lineage.  Her grandfather was African and her grandmother was Native American.  She has explored the roots of her heritage through each of these spiritual traditions in hopes of finding the essence of her being.   Andrea said she can embrace and support what others struggle with in the order to come to terms with being one with whomever or whatever they worship.

Andrea sings with the Freedom Song Network and Vukani Mawethu, a choir singing South African liberation music, both of which are in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She is an artist and exhibits her work in oils, acrylics and collage, using natures materials to create themes of and for social change.  She has studied art in Mexico.  She also works with seniors and has always worked in social services in some shape fashion or form.

~~~

I believe I first met Rev. Steve Harms while helping to organize an interfaith prayer vigil in Contra Costa County, along with local museum directors, a Native American organizer and others as part of some events intended to spread awareness about the use of the Native American name, Black Hawk, in that region.  It is interesting to me that the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County was organized not long after that vigil.  Pastor Harms is at Peace Lutheran Church in Danville.  They have a labyrinth on their website, which is an ancient form of outdoor maze for meditation.  I have noticed that other churches have labyrinths as well these days. 

I interviewed Pastor Harms recently over the phone.  Pastor Harms’ ethnicity is German Lutheran. He group up Missouri Synod and joined Semenex, while he was president of student body at college.  Semenex became the AELCA which eventually merged with the ELCA.

He talked about being in a living context of the exploration of interfaith.  He feels, however, that his classical education as a Lutheran has enough richness of spiritual depth by itself and that it is a big mistake to seek elsewhere and not go deeply into the meaning and wisdom of the teachings of one’s own tradition.  It is a failure to talk about the Incarnation and God’s compassion but avoid engagement in history.  Most people don’t expect their faith to make a difference in their own life, but keep it on the shelf.  He sees Creation Spirituality as planted within classical Christian teachings, including elements that have been buried but are nevertheless, present.  The stories of Jesus are frequently about his presence at parties, exemplifying that life is celebration. 

There are elements of Christianity that are universal, one is that everyone is a child of God and another is that we belong to each other and to God deeply. It is deceitful of fundamentalist religion to say that Christianity is an exclusive club.  A third is the tremendous affirmation of the earth.  The Trinitarian understanding is that God as creator has made all things good which has become broken and alienated but redeemed and renewed in Christ.  And in the spirit that energy of Christ is moving, dancing, infecting and infusing all life with a new sense of wholeness.  A fourth universal element is the integration of that classical Christian message that we are being healed both personally and in relationships in community, in the whole of society and finally the cosmos.

Pastor Harms is thankful for Creation Spirituality, though he feels less of a need to pull from other traditions.  In the early 1990’s, Thich Nhat Hahn, was telling people to go back where they came from.  He said they can continue to practice Zen, but that everything they need is already within their own tradition: Christian, Jewish or Islamic.

Buried inside of institutional realities is cultural garbage and Americana.  It has been our reluctance and resistance as church leaders to refuse to engage what faith practice means in our time and in our context.  His belief is that in the Christian understanding, the living Christ is alive and permeating our lives.  People want to box the faith but that has nothing to do with the Christian experience or is a minority viewpoint.

Zen is not a religion and that is equally true of Christian faith.  It transcends and in order to be alive you are in an organic relationship, so things are always changing, in spite of tonnage of doctrines and insights along the way,  People are forever creating new ways of understanding who they are, what it means to be human and discerning how we manifest the faith in our time.  We agreed that postmodernism is both-and, a blessing and a curse.

Pastor Harms has an artist friend who says artists are not ahead of their time but may see more keenly than others and have a sharper focus.  Andy Warhol’s painting of tomato soup would have made no sense in 1500s.  Once it has entered consciousness it may pervade and become perennial but until its time is ripe, it doesn’t speak to human consciousness.  In the same way the faith is constantly evolving but it gets trapped; people think you can talk about Christian faith as being in a box.

If it’s true to life, Christianity and other religions need to be constantly creative experiences in order to be alive and keep growing.  The concept of religion is dead inert beliefs about the way things have been which may not necessarily address the present.  They may have wisdom to share from the past, but not the solution. 

Creation Spirituality is a compatible friend/partner but not brand new out of the box.  The concept of grace is an  immense value in Lutheran tradition.  He said we shouldn’t have a separate church, but be underground agents in other Christian traditions

People can be very respectful in the interfaith community, thankful and reconciling.  They have had monthly interfaith gatherings and a variety of experiences over the years.

The Lutheran community is often so conservative, closed off and shut down and narrow minded, yet the viewpoint of their beliefs are so potentially open and this bothers him.  There have been wonderful Lutheran voices and lights from time to time, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoeller, who led a Lutheran resistance to Hitler, Dorothy Soelle, author of Beyond Mere Obedience, Brother Roger, the founder of the Taize Community in France.  Matt Groenig, the creator and designer of the Simpsons was raised Lutheran.  He has gone deep enough so that his brilliance is magnificent on religious topics and others.  Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts was also Lutheran.  Two years ago, Time Magazine featured three women whistle blowers at the FBI and two of the three were Lutheran.

On the one hand invisible and don’t like to blow their own horn.  On the other, the Lutheran Social Service national budget is nationally larger than Catholic Charities

Lutherans have been poor at developing public relations.  For close to a decade, internationally, no one tops Lutheran World Relief.  When there are crisis on the ground they are the first people to figure out what is needed and have the least overhead.  Lutherans are not as isolated as they tend to think but we haven’t made it clear to our own Lutheran family, the variety and depth and beauty that is being practiced out this faith.

Rev. Farasani in South Africa, a Dean which is not quite a bishop from 1977-87, was imprisoned four times and brutally tortured.  Someone in the old government said they had only two clergy to fear and he was one of them.  He was finally banished into exile and survived.  Nelson Mandela called him back when he became president and said he must serve in the Parliament.  He had the stature of Desmond Tutu, who is Anglican, but we in Lutheran church have not honored him and promoted him.

When they had their first vote, in South Africa, in his home region where the Venda people live, the Northeast section, which is comparable to our Midwest.  The Venda people voted over 80% the ANC. The next highest, was Capetown, which was in the high 60s.  He worked with Stephen Bikko as he grew up.  The Lutheran church has been a controversial church in South Africa.  There tremendous stories of this depth around the globe but rarely do we here much about them.

~~~

Esther Ho belongs to the Ecumenical Peace Institute board in Berkeley.  She grew up in Kansas and was raised in the Church of the Brethren.  She was a member of the Presbyterian Church from the early 1960’s to the late 1980’s.   Then she returned to the Church of the Brethren, which she believes has been primary in her faith formation.  She doubts that very many people in that denomination have any knowledge of Creation Spirituality, though she herself has read works by Matthew Fox and has heard him speak.  She is drawn by his openness to truth from various traditions, not just Christianity.  She has read the first part of The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, and found the first few pages to be powerful, in addressing what is being done to Mother Earth.  She has seen similar facts about the environmental crisis before, but this was more of a spiritual approach to what can be done about it.

Esther participates in interfaith organizing.  She is drawn to Creation Spirituality, partly because it seems to be in dialogue about ideas and she is trying to formulate her own ideas about how different faiths should relate one another.  She has some questions about how she as a Christian should view other faiths and how to talk to people about other faiths while remaining true to her own faith.  She finds that in many interfaith settings, people don’t talk much about their own faith.  She asks, “How should we talk about Jesus?  Or should we?”  Her faith is important to her and is built solidly on the teachings of Jesus, but she doesn’t want to offend others who come to God from a different route.  She appreciates that Fox has a broader vision and seems to be listening to other faiths.  She asked him once about these concerns, and he suggested reading his book on the Cosmic Christ.

Esther has explored various spiritual movements through reading but has not participated much in such groups.  Her upbringing had a strong spiritual base, but taught  specific ways to live a spiritual life and not so much about exploring other ways to be spiritual.  She thinks that a lot of the rush to embrace Eastern religions on an individual basis was caused by the failing of Christian churches to be deeply spiritual.  She feels it's helpful and important to open ourselves to ways others have deepened their spirituality.  That doesn’t mean she thinks her denomination is necessarily faulty, but she thinks it could be enriched. 

She thinks Christianity tends to be one of the more exclusive faiths as many Christians believe that if you’re not Christian you’re not going to heaven.  Though she finds a universal sense of welcoming people in the teachings of Jesus, she knows many churches that are pretty exclusive.

Her tradition does not emphasize original sin.  It emphasizes peace and simple living and following Jesus, with no creed other than Jesus.  It is similar to other mainline churches in terms of its festivals, but the main difference is its emphasis on opposing war and living simply, though she feels it is not strong enough on either of those.  She finds many in other denominations who are equally or more strongly concerned about these issues.  However, the Brethren are able as a denomination to make statements about peace and war that the Assemblies of other denominations are unlikely to get passed.  Their emphasis on simple living has enabled them to be strong on environmental issues. 

As she was growing up, the idea that simple living required wearing “plain clothes,”  similar to what the Amish wear, had largely broken down in the Midwest, but other ways of living simply had not clearly evolved.  As she came into more contact with people of other denominations, she  felt some embarrassment about the tradition of simple living she grew up in, but when she discovered people in other denominations who were interested in simple living and protecting the environment, she woke up and began to appreciate her own heritage more.

~~~

Vicki is a friend I have known since college when we were both members of Campus Church at Augustana.  After taking our campus pastor, Richard Swanson’s (Swanie’s) class on the literature of walking, we were part of a group of friends that liked to walk together.  Walking became a type of meditation for of us. The community of Campus church emphasized holistic health through walking together and healthy food.  Once in awhile, Swanie led sunrise walks often to Sylvan Island by the Mississippi River, just in time to see the egg yolk of the sun pop over into the horizon. We frequently had simple potlucks, called Common Meals, at church.  On Maundy Thursday, church members cooperated to cook a big pot of soup after which there was party (The Last Supper).  For communion someone often  baked fresh bread. 

Vicki especially liked the intellectual inquiry and expansion of ideas at Campus Church.  She feels that Creation Spirituality overlaps with Lutheran theology in its emphasis that sin was not the first thing to come along and its emphasis on forgiveness, salvation by grace and that grace is a gift.  I asked her for a definition of grace and she said, “the fullness of life and love in relationship with the divine.”

I remember Vicki talked about Grainger Westberg, a Lutheran in Chicago who started the idea for health centers at churches.  A quick search on the internet brought the following information:

Dr. Grainger Westberg, a Lutheran pastor and hospital chaplain, started parish nursing in 1984 with a pilot project in Illinois.  He says it is vital to bring “the spiritual dimension to healing.”  Dr. Westberg lists the basic roles of the parish nurse as: health educator, counselor, teacher of volunteers, liaison with community organizations, and clarifier of the close relationship between faith and health.” The parish nurse movement is a response to the needs of many people for basic wellness and prevention strategies, as well as an examination of the ministries of Jesus and his disciples (Fitch 2004, 8).

Vicki grew up Presbyterian in Central Illinois, though her Italian father, a son of Italian immigrants, was Catholic and her mother was Presbyterian.  She said “I was baptized Presbyterian at age 10 because my mother had the notion that I needed to ‘choose’ the church I was to be baptized in.  I think she confused baptism and confirmation.  I don’t feel I truly chose a church for me till I joined Campus Church at Augustana.”

Vicki went to Methodist church with her mother’s parents sometimes.  She happened to decide to attend Augustana as it caught her interest but not because of the Lutheran or Swedish background.  At Augie, Vicki first was involved with Campus Crusade, an evangelical group which emphasized Bible Study and having Jesus at the center of your life, though not the born again emphasis of more extreme evangelical groups.  After Augie she worked in Worcester, Massachusetts through a Lutheran program, Associates in Diaconal Ministry, for a year or so where she went to a Pentecostal church.  There she was part of a community of people she worked with as well as worshipped with.  She liked the emphasis on music, losing oneself in the experience of music and prayer and the oneness with the holy spirit that developed with the whole group in that process.  She became disillusioned with them when she realized that this church emphasized the concept that faith resulted in works in the sense that they said you have to believe right so good things will happen to you.

Living in the greater Chicago area later on, she got a degree in pastoral studies.  There, she learned about feminist theology as well as counseling.  She was able to get in touch with her own deep emotions of grief, pain and anger as well as inner growth and became disillusioned with the shallowness of the Lutheran church she was going to where the pastor seemed to just want everyone to be happy.  The support for her inner journey was not found at church.  Vicki said, “I experimented with moving outside the bounds of Christianity to find a living expression of personal growth with the presence of divinity.”

Now where she lives in Colorado, Vicki sometimes practices Buddhist meditation but doesn’t plan to join a Buddhist organization.  She also practices a daily Buddhist prayer form called metta, which is aimed at developing/ increasing compassion.  She identifies most with what she calls the “Sacred Feminine” which has to do with the life force and is similar to but not the same as and deeper for her than the concept of God. 

She plans to continue exploring this path, and is looking for a community to share the exploration.  She may help to develop a temple to the Sacred Feminine with someone who combines Feminist and Buddhist spiritual principles.  Part of the meditative aspect of this new philosophy is to accept what is, whatever you feel strongly about and bring it to your heart and learn to be with it and accept what it is rather than trying to resist or deny what is painful or to change it or make it different.

The concept of the Sacred Feminine embodies Jungian archetypes, as well as a concept of the Divine Mother that is both outer and within.  She finds it to be a way for women to embrace and value the fullness of their own embodied spirituality. Right now for her, this path has elements of both Buddhist and Feminine Spirituality, involving mostly individual reading, study and meditation, with occasional classes and meditation retreats to deepen understanding and experience.  She learned this week in class (adult education class at Naropa University) that spiritual development along this Sacred Feminine pathway parallels the creative process – and that seems to tie in with Creation Spirituality, and its four stages.

She has found that the concept of sin is not that useful to her, which is one of the appeals of Creation Spirituality.  She has ended up incorporating the Christian concept of the existence of some form of divinity (as opposed to strict Buddhism, where there is no divine being) and taking from Buddhism the path of acceptance of what is, that can be achieved through the practice of meditation.

~~~

Dr. Miltown's parents were Conservative Jews.  His grandfather was Orthodox, an older tradition, which he follows, where people learn directly from Scribes and Rabbis in a very antique format. 

Early on in life, he began to study Eastern thought, which he finds is not contradictory to Jewish thought in many ways.  In Jewish tradition, they don’t say the name of the source of all being.  They talk about the one who can not be named.  Similarly, the Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao; it would diminish it to try to describe it.  You can’t reduce the “void.”  Jewish relationship to the source of all is direct.  The Eastern philosophical relationship to “void” or “reality” is also direct.  It is knowable but not speakable.    He studied martial arts with his father beginning in 1947 and began the art of meditation when he discovered a chapter on it in a jiu jitsu pamphlet that he had ordered from the back of a comic book.  At age 13 he learned about Rosicrucians and also began reading Eastern thought.

His  paternal grandparents came from the Ukraine where his grandmother was a spiritual healer.  He remembers going outside at night with his father and laying on their backs, looking at the stars and the immensity of the universe.  This was an important spiritual activity for his father. 

Dr. Miltown's grandfather immigrated first to the U.S. and sent for his grandmother in 1905.  Life was difficult and they were poor in the Ukraine.  It was better here, but they were still poor.  His neighbors had a large house in north Minneapolis where Jews came from Germany after the war, until they found somewhere else to go.  He remembers sitting in the basement, hearing the horror stories of concentration camps and related experiences.

Jews were heavily persecuted in the Ukraine and still are in the U.S.  Just as Jews have been persecuted by communists, Dr. Miltown says that Christians are also persecuted by the Left.   He feels the secular Left is anti-religion and religious morality. 

He said that the Hindu Vedas (from which Buddhism sprang as well) and the Jewish Torah come from a spiritual orientation but the core of Islam, Jihad, is world domination, though this aspect of it is called the “lesser Jihad.”   Though the greater Jihad is a spiritual path, the lesser Jihad is still integral and there is no latitude away from that.  I asked him about the Sufis, an Islamic mystical movement.  He said that "if Rumi had written the Qu'ran, the world would have been a paradise."  

He said that Sufis are hated, and are being persecuted in Chechnya by the most austere and radicalized fundamentalist group, because to refute, or alter any part of the Koran is to become an apostate.  He said that Islam is to the Judaic Christian tradition what white supremacy is to American Christianity.  He feels that total intolerance of other religions is not something liberals want to look at.  Liberals ignore the fact that Moslems have been killing Christians and anyone not Muslim all over the world, without cease or remorse, for 1400 years.  There is a need for reformation within Islam but he doesn’t think any of the movements for this are very viable so far.   Dr. Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus, Princeton University, has had George Bush’s ear which has influenced his policy in the Middle East, hoping to promote a reformation. Dr. Miltown can be reached at drmiltown@yahoo.com.

~~~

Pastor Alan Bray is the minister at my parents’ church.  My mother has told me that they celebrate Creation Sunday there in the spring.  She likes Pastor Bray becomes when he leads the service he seems to infuse meaning into the words, rather than just reading them indifferently.  She encouraged me to interview him and I met him briefly when in St. Peter, Minnesota where they live, and followed it up with a phone call interview the next day.

I told Pastor Bray about my writing about folk schools.  He said the smaller rural congregations used to serve in a way similar to folk schools, but that has gone by the wayside as people today are less united around church and are into their individual activities.  His church has about 1200 members, but only about 325 attend every Sunday, Though this is typical for mainstream Protestant churches, it saddens him.  Everyone has spiritual needs which many are satisfying for themselves somewhere.  The church offers important assistance, but there are a lot of other voices.

He wonders how the church can best provide a center and place to find grounding.  He said we can’t be all things to all people.  Like a radio station, the tradition can be a focal point.  Often people return to church at key points in their lives such as when they get married or baptize their children.  When people drop their children off for Sunday School, often they don’t stay for the service.  He wonders why they relate to the church in some ways but not others.  He regularly meditates while running and thinks about his confirmation class.  He wants to write letters to them to let them know he misses them, but hasn’t followed through. 

Pastor Bray grew up in the Augustana Synod, but attended Augustana College in South Dakota, which had a Norwegian heritage.  He was less interested in church for awhile in his life.  He taught English as a second language in Hong Kong for a while.  He became reinterested in church when he returned to his home church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where the minister was a social activist.  Later he went into the ministry and worked for awhile with that same minister as a minister himself in another parish.  He also worked in Germany as a minister for five years. 

~~~

I spoke to Ruth and Frank G., who live in Minnesota.  Ruth grew up in China as her parents were Swedish Lutheran American missionaries there.  They were more liberal than some parents, she said, and not heavy handed.  They weren’t strict and didn’t tell her what she couldn’t do.  They were taught to pray, and that God was always with them.  She said her parents had serenity because of their faith, which gave them all a sense of stability while living in a foreign land.

The native people they lived among had fearful images in their temples, which her parents called idols.  They were superstitious and wore caps with a hole at the top to let the spirit out.  They were afraid if you complimented their children, that something bad might happen.  They also lived among Animists, Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims and Confucianism, and many of them worshipped their ancestors.  One time the church bought some property for the mission, which was a graveyard.  The graves were disinterred and moved under tents, so the heavens couldn’t see what they were doing. 

In 1932, when she was a child, her whole family was kidnapped by communists and taken into the mountains.  Then the mother and children were let go but the father was detained.  They want him to see what they were doing for the peasants, so that he would not say anything bad about communism.  Their father preached Christianity, which was not at odds with communism, and eventually he was released.  Years later her brother was in China and was told that that incident had been a mistake occurring in a time of turmoil.

*

Frank received a doctorate in psychology from the University of Minnesota.  As a child, he didn’t attend church until 13 or 14, but he had some Christian instruction during childhood at a Presbyterian church because at that time, the public schools allowed kids to be released from school one afternoon a week for religious school.  His father was Catholic but his mother was Protestant.  When they got married, the Catholic priest lectured them on how to raise a Catholic.  His father didn’t like that and said that when the child was old enough, he could choose for himself.  At 15, when participating with a friend in a youth group at a Congregational Church, he and his siblings were baptized. 

Frank went to Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota and majored in speech with a minor in English.  He taught at Gustavus Adolphus during the war.  They had to teach outside their disciplines as it was hard to get enough teachers.  He has had every job from teacher to college president at various institutions.  He also was the secretary of college education for the LCA.  He said that the Lutheran seminary in Chicago, LSTC, is the spiritual heir of the Augustana Synod as well as Finnish and Danish churches among other churches that started it. 

He talked about spirituality, which implies a relationship to God or assumes there is someone to whom one is relating.  He feels that an emphasis on spirituality alone misses the key of Jesus life, that justice is its message regarding how we treat our fellow men (and women).  There is little in scripture that supports individualistic piety. Justice is a critical element.  Piety is an effort to gain and feel a personal relationship to God and Jesus.

One problem with religion is when there is a literal rather than symbolic interpretation.  Many traditional Lutherans might say a symbolic interpretation is atheism.  A creedal Christianity is literal rather than seeing Christianity as a wonderful myth or story that embellishes facts and enables people to bring together all the crucial questions of life.  The Pauline Christians developed a more literal interpretation than many early Christians.  The Council of Nicea also changed the face of Christianity.  Creedal and literal Christianity has become dominant.

Each culture interprets Christianity in its own way. Because sheep were considered undesirable animals in Japan, early missionaries could not proclaim Jesus as the Lamb of God, but called him the mirror of God.  In the same way, Christianity took over pagan festivals like the winter solstice.  The Apostle Paul brought to people a more literal approach that has been well articulated by theologians into a fully developed literal view of Christianity for addressing hard questions and the meaning of life. 

Frank wishes they could find an Aramaic text for Jesus’ sayings, which were all spoken in a picturesque language.  There are some surviving passages you wouldn’t dare take literally such as, “if thine hand offend thee, cut it off.”  Gradually, scholars shed some literal interpretations and found reasons to interpret them differently.  The outcome of a literal versus symbolic approach can be quite different.

Frank feels that eternal life or immortality is through our genes or children, or what you have accomplished in life.  Literalists believe there is a house of mansions to go to.  I shared with him about my father’s experiences of other realms of possible existence, and he conceded that we don’t know all there is to know.

I mentioned to Frank about my recent interview with a friend who is concerned about Islam.  He agreed that there is potential for reformation in Islam but not enough signs of Muslim leaders and scholars people doing anything about liberating women, spiritualizing jihad, and applying critical/historical analysis to such passages in the Koran as those in which youth are promised, if they become martyrs to wipe out the infidel, that they’ll receive 70 virgins and eternal life.  He suggested I read writings by Arundhati Roy to help understand current social justice issues.

~~~

I interviewed my sister, Leanne, who joined the Bahai religion as a young adult.  In response to my topic relating to Lutheranism, she said she wasn’t sure what the best definition of Lutheranism is.  There have been a range of issues, challenges and responses to an old structure.  She felt that she grew up in a more flexible and open minded atmosphere compared to our mother’s upbringing where social rules were more relaxed than other Lutheran denominations.  She thought it depends on one’s minister.  She felt our dad encouraged open mindedness and flexibility in looking at belief. 

In the 1960’s there was an active youth movement in response to the Viet Nam war.  She can’t compare that to what is going on now as she has been out of touch.  There were Leadership Lab conferences and a Love conference in Windsor, Canada (love being the initials for a phrase beginning with Lutheran).  They looked at sexuality because of social problems.  There was a good effort to involve youth and create an environment to discuss contemporary issues in relation to faith, which she appreciated.

In joining the Bahai’s, she never felt she abandoned Christianity or faith in Christ, but gained a universal understanding of religion.  It hit home and resonated for her.  The Bahai view is that that all religions should be one as they come from one God.  The different founders of world religion are all expressions of manifestations of God.  God never left man alone and created divine souls and teachers to bring the revelation of God to people.  We don’t abandon one religion for another.  Humankind  progresses spiritually over time as a whole. 

She believes that Baha’u’llah has been the most recent manifestation for today.  Their social teachings are the most up-to-date with the times we live in.  While other religions are responding to changes in society, the Bahai religion has a plan for the renewal of religion that is aware of these changes.  Other religions use old teachings and institutions from hundreds to thousands of years ago.  Historically, Adam was the first manifestation of God in this era.  Since then there have been Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, Zoroaster, and Jesus Christ.

The Bahai religion is all about creating one world that is united globally.  Their social teachings revolve around this.  These teachings include:

-the equality of men and women

-the elimination of prejudice

-universal education, and

-spiritual solutions to economic problems, addressing the disparity between rich and       poor.

Bahais look at the human family from the perspective that there is one belief in God; they recognize that all religions came from one God even though they have different founders and are part of one universal faith.  They also believe in the goal of unity between science and religion.  Science at its extreme can be too materialistic and religious extremes are fanatic.  That “these two should agree,” is a Bahai teaching.  The truth of one should support the truth of the other reality and not be at odds.  We often don’t see this because of our limited understanding as creatures in our Creator’s World.  Even now the world is moving in the direction of these Bahai teachings and they are becoming prime issues and pivotal points in the world today for social discussions, fears and arguments.

~~~

Rev. Mary Halvorson is a co-pastor with her husband at Grace University Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I worked as a part-time lay minister a few decades ago.  I am glad to see they have evolved to this point of having female and male clergy leadership, from the time when I was there. 

Mary’s grandfather was a successful business man who invented Spam and didn’t approve of her father, Loren Halvorson, who went to St. Olaf college in Minnesota and went on to become a minister.  His father thought the way of a theologian was the lesser path.  Thus it was rebellious for him to achieve a Masters of Divinity and he went on to study to achieve a PhD in social ethics.  He studied in Germany and his focus was the lay movement of the early church.  He taught at the seminary in St. Paul for 30 years half time and half time worked at the American Lutheran Church (ALC) headquarters in the higher education division.  He was involved with the Lutheran World Federation Dept. of Human Rights Studies.  So she grew up as a professor’s kid.  When they lived in Germany, her mother studied many retreat centers and after they retired in Minnesota, her mother started the ARC retreat center.

Mary’s parent’s rich background influenced her development. She often experienced worship in a circle in with her parents, and saying the words of institution together which was a different as well as ecumenical way of doing it.  She went to Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.  Recently Mary went on a three month sabbatical with a grant for clergy renewal.  She visited communities of faith around the world that are dealing with change and paradoxes of life and being open about how that is played out in worship practice as well as “in reach” (inward meditation) and outreach.  Grace Church is nestled in a University neighborhood, so one third of the people who worship there are visitors, which is unique.

She learned that it is important to stand on what is essential in forming religious practice.  In the book of Acts, the early Christians engaged in prayer, worship and held things in commons with acts of care and compassion.  They discerned what is essential and what is not.  The Sojourners community, the Church of Our Saviour, in Washington, D.C., has a ministry but does not have a building or a denomination as it feels those are not essential.  People can get caught up in institutions and money and forget the heart of the message, which is what is the spirit encouraging and pulling us to do, which may be taking risks, being bold.  She said you can plan and strategize until you are blue in the face and not accomplish things.  It is better to be responsive and do things based on your faith.  She referred to Martin Luther’s statement preceding the Reformation when he said, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”  Deep prayer is tied hand in hand with deep lives of action.

She referred books published about reconciliation which came out of a religious community in Northern Ireland, where Catholics and Protestants have been face to face in conflict, as well as the Taize community in France.  They talk about detaching from jealousy and anger.  The church needs to do that with people who are not like us. 

She has read Matthew Fox’s work and heard about it from others at the ARC retreat center.  They talked about the role of church leaders as partner with members.  She referred to Fox’s theme of dancing Sarah’s circle vs. climbing Jacobs ladder, relation to partnership between clergy and lay people.  Everyone can contribute gifts, ideas and leadership.  The church has not been the best at listening to the laity.  The priesthood of all believers is proclaimed by the church, but not lived out.  A smart leader knows when to get out of the way.  There is always going to be tension and this is a sign of life.  Change is inevitable and brings tension which can be painful and hard, but it means you’re alive.  There is a sense of coming from a tradition but you have to be open to what’s new.  She feels every worship service should reflect that tension. 

I asked her about Norwegian leaders with an alternative visions.  She said the president of the ALC, Frederick Shiotz, was known for believing in and living a simple lifestyle.  David Preus, a later president of the ALC was an important leader who was strongly academic.  She encouraged me to read Gravity and Grace by Joseph Sittler, which has an environmental and Creation centered focus.  Mary said her parents came out of the Norwegian free church, which was skeptical of institutional control and congregations were more autonomous.

Grace Church is now undergoing renovation to become accessible to wheelchairs and to develop new meeting spaces.  They celebrate Creation Sunday in April when they pay attention to the four elements: earth, air, fire and water, dance around a May Pole and have farmers preach; Peace Sunday on May Day, Reconciled in Christ (being open to gays and lesbians) another Sunday, and also have a Sunday to focus on children.  She sees worship as blending old and new.  Grace has been a good place to dream and live out ideas.

~~~

Cynthia grew up in a Congregational church in Andover, Massachusetts.  It was a small town and they got anyone who came out of seminary.  When she was growing up the minister happened to be Baptist, so she went to Youth for Christ and accepted Christ as her personal savior at age 16.  Hers was the only Black family in town and this was their only social life.  A neighborhing town had more people of color and her older siblings went there to church. 

In college she planned to become a minister.  She had a feminist perspective, that since women weren’t accepted, she wanted to break this barrier.  She went to Bible Studies and looked at comparative religions, seeking the truth.  She was president of the Protestant Christian organization on campus and brought in speakers from different religions.  There were a lot of Jews as well as Catholics at the school.  There were so many kinds of Protestants, they had to do something to bring them together: to inform and build solidarity.  They had Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Pentecostals as well as Quakers.

Her mother and her mother’s father had been Baptist.  Her father didn’t go to church, that she knew of.  Her father’s ritual was to drink beer on Saturday night.  Her siblings became all different things as they grew up.  In the process of going to college she began to question.  The judgmentalism in the church, that nobody measured up and they were the only people with the right answer and no one else was going to heaven bothered her.  People insisted that we take the Bible literally and she had a problem with that.  She found contradictions in the Bible and was becoming socially political, mostly around the formation of Israel as a state and Jews going back there.  She had a lot of Jewish friends as Protestants were a minority.  Everyone she knew was reading Exodus by Leon Uris and they all learned to dance the Horah. 

The Civil Rights movement was beginning in the last 1950’s and her brother became very involved, though she didn’t go to the South.  In Boston there weren’t many marches as they didn’t think they had much of a race problem there.  Her faith was slipping.  She went to different churches around Boston and went to altar calls to accept Christ as her personal savior, however she didn’t believe what she used to.  She moved to San Diego, California and joined a Black Presbyterian church which was good for her.  It was more intellectual, OK to question and they were encouraged to discuss, though the minister was a right wing Republican organizer. 

She lived in Germany for a year and was married for six weeks and came home pregnant.  When she brought her son to church and left him with childcare, they put him in a crib which he wasn’t used to and he cried and became sick to his stomach.  She realized it was very hard for to believe a lot of the faith in the Presbyterian church, even though it was better than Baptist.  She had been very connected to the minister and administration and helped out with a lot of behind the scenes work.  She was privy to too much information and cattiness and disagreements.  There were petty conflicts while getting ready to go to synod, that should not have been part of the church experience.  The only real relationship the Black church had to White churches seemed to be when their choir was invited to sing. 

The Presbyterian church had a lot of upper middle class people and a lot of money.  Some Presbyterians seemed to be evangelical, with a born again focus and a more literal interpretation of the Bible, than others.  She taught school during the year and worked as a camp counselor some summers and noticed that the kids came from wealthy families.  85% of the members of the church were college graduates.  The small town church she had grown up in had been more working class and humble and people didn’t act like they were better than others.  By the 1970’s, Cynthia rejected organized religion.  She didn’t believe in religion and wanted to work on cultural inclusion in the school curriculum.  The more political she became, the less she believed in. 

As a teenager, she had been the most fanatic religious person and preached to and tried to save her family.  As they have got religion since, here siblings are now evangelistic as she was before.  One brother became Jehovah’s Witness, which are very interracial and rose very high as an elder.  However, they are not supposed to socialize with non-believers so he wasn’t able to be part of the family activities.  Her family was very large and when she was young, they took over for the church choir during the summers.  Whenever they get together they sing.  She and five sisters sang for a Baptist church in Nova Scotia when visiting a cousin there.  She felt hypocrisy singing religious hymns when she was not believing them anymore.

Eventually Cynthia defined herself as agnostic.  She corresponded for awhile with the Baptist minister of her youth, who she met again when a sister died, at the service.  He said he was agnostic too and he thought anyone who studied religion would always question. 

Then she realized she was atheistic, but was afraid to tell anyone.  She is not a believer but is spiritual and has struggled to find what that means for her.  She remembers when she was 6 years old, singing at a neighborhood Catholic church, in a folk mass.    Music has kept her associated with religion longer than she would have otherwise. She struggles with how people can believe in a white man’s religion that was used to oppress them.  She doesn’t see missionaries as good guys.   Reading my paper on Creation Spirituality has given her some new information and perspectives to lessen the gap between organized religion and her own spiritual path.  She has not been drawn to the New Age movement, but her son is.  She says he depends on the universe to guide his decisions and doesn’t push to organize his life through standard methods.  He rejects capitalistic America.  Cynthia has always had a strong belief in the spirit in people and their abilities and said, “If there is a God, its in people.”   

~~~

I first met Rev. Brian Stein-Webber at an interfaith retreat at Asilomar and was glad to see another Lutheran there.  I was there as a member of the Ecumenical Peace Institute in Berkeley.  He is a pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Oakland.  He works half time there and half time as director of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County, which he told me Steve Harms helped form out of the Council of Churches there in 1997.  The Council of Churches became the Interfaith Council soon after I helped set up an interfaith network there regarding the Black Hawk neighborhood, as I described in the interview with Pastor Harms.  

Brian said he understands Matthew Fox from the people around him who have studied him, including his wife who is a marriage and family therapist and his campus pastor in college, Gerry Swanson, in the mid 1970’s who I have already interviewed.   He said there is much variation among Lutherans in Europe and their American descendants.  He believes that Swedish and some Danish Lutherans are the most liberal and that Norwegian-Americans and some German-Americans are fairly conservative on many issues.  Lutherans in general, he thinks, tend to be rather open to Matthew Fox, but don’t want to leave behind certain doctrines.  One theme that is currently being discussed is “atonement.”  A few questions being asked by some faculty leaders at PLTS (seminary in Berkeley) is “What was did we do that was so bad that Jesus had to die for us and was the crucifixion divine child abuse?”  

They are suggesting that the meaning of at-one-ment, the salvific effect of Jesus’ death, was not to atone for our sins but to bring us together.  Brian recommended that I speak to some theological professors to understand this concept better.  He commented that the Ten Commandments are preceded by the statement, I am the Lord your God, and are based on unconditional love and should be understood in that light.  

Brian was raised in an Augustana church in Southern California.  He found them a fairly cheerful mediator of the Lutheran tradition which had a lot of great leaders in the middle of the last century.  He said the Swedes were not really heavy on sin; the Danes were more split, and the Norwegians generally had a more stern morality.  The Augustana synod he experienced held tradition strongly but lightly and was characterized by being willing to listen to other people.  

He has no trouble doing interfaith work and is willing to listen.  He doesn’t feel it is up to him to decide whether people go to heaven or hell.  He doesn’t believe he has the answer that everyone else has to conform to and said that wasn’t part of the Augustana heritage.

He said that the main challenge in the next 10-20 years will be how we come to terms with the exclusive claims of Christianity.  How can we let others be themselves but still evangelize? Martin Luther used the Latin term for what is not essential, “A dia phora,” which was linked to the “may” rubrics in instruction for the liturgy.  

I interpret what Brian was saying to mean that Lutherans will need to continue to decide what is essential to their belief as they interface with other religions as the world gets bigger but smaller at the same time as we encounter more people of diverse faiths.  He said this is a difficult time for moderates.  Common civility, the bonds that hold people together in unity, can only go so far and are being strained between modern and traditional understandings.  Some Lutherans nowadays think we should go back to tradition while others want to unmoor and become Community Churches.  In relation to my work of relating Creation Spirituality to Lutheranism, he said he thought the Lutheran Church is about twenty years behind popular society in its understandings of what people are thinking and doing.

I said something which has recently occurred to me, that there has been some historical prejudice between Catholics and Lutherans.  He said the Interfaith Council, which started as Protestant, now has about six or seven out of 35 Catholic parishes as members.  He finds the Catholic Churches have the best and most organized lay movement.  I had been thinking about this in conjunction with their openness to Matthew Fox’ work, which came out of a Catholic context. Though Lutherans may be open to Matthew Fox' work, there weren't many at the institute when I was there.  I suspect this may have to do with a reluctance to associate with Catholics, though there seems to be a lot of agreement about his speeches and books which are very popular in their appeal.

~~~

I first saw Rev. Lucy Kolin when I went to a concert by an East African choir at her church, Resurrection, in Oakland.  My uncle was a missionary in Tanzania for forty years and I traveled to East Africa with my parents for a month before my senior year in high school, so have an interest and feel some familiarity with East Africans.  She told me when I recently met her for an interview, that one-third of the members at her church are African.

Pastor Lucy grew up in Queens, New York and has spent most of her life on either the east or west coast, with some time in the Midwest.  Her mother was Lutheran and her father was Polish and Catholic.  When she was small they attended a United Lutheran church which merged into the LCA (as did the Augustana Synod).  That church died out and since she was attending a Missouri Synod school, they joined that church as well.  The Missouri Synod provides private schools for children through college.  She said it was a great education at the time and emphasized liberal arts.  Many people think of Missouri Synod as very conservative.  They may be that on some issues, but on most, perhaps are closer to mainstream. 

A defining incident happened to her at age eleven, when her mother was active in opposing school bussing in the public schools, even though Lucy attended a private school.  She remembered two pastors had opposite plans: one to block the bussing, the other to support it.  She wondered how two people on the same path could have such different conclusions.  Her mother asked her to help to do a specific task in support of the opposition movement which Lucy refused to do.  She had been used to obeying her parents, however, she wasn’t punished, perhaps because they were both so shocked.  Ever since then she has been “peeling the onion” and referring back to that pivotal event when she linked her faith to social life. 

Lucy wanted to be a minister but women weren’t allowed to in the Missouri Synod.  After college, she taught in a Lutheran School, then worked in a radical Mission Synod parish in lower Manhattan, which advocated for the poor and homeless.  Then she worked for the Rockefeller Foundation for ten years and also achieved a library science degree.  Eventually she moved west in 1979, attended PLTS, the Lutheran seminary in Berkeley in the 1980’s, and has worked at churches in the Bay Area since then. 

Pastor Lucy has read several of Matthew Fox’s books and is intrigued by what he thinks about many questions.  She prefers pondering questions to answers.  She happens to know Matthew Fox in the context of a homeless person who they both try to support in the neighborhood where they both live and work. 

She thinks Fox is right and helpful in terms of helping Christianity to remember that when God created the world, it was Good and Originally Blessed.  She thinks they may approach sin in a different way.  She agrees with him, that sin is a narrowing of the circle of goodness and Creation.  He sees sin as being disconnected from God or neighbor and that there are evil consequences of living in a disconnected way.  However, she  thinks he places more emphasis on institutional sin and justice.  Lucy emphasizes a juggling act between personal, community and global perspectives.  I’m sure Fox wouldn’t disagree with her, but she hasn’t found this multi-dimensional focus in what she has read. 

I mentioned during our conversation that I had slightly dented someone’s car that morning and had given my phone number to the owner.  I told her that while talking to her I realized a way to calm my irritation.  It occurred to me what a previous interviewee, Mary Halvorson, had said, that it is important to let tension be present as we deal with the complexities of life, and applying this idea put me more at ease.

Lucy said she finds that when you live intentionally, you don’t deny or try to escape from the resulting tension of trying to live with caring and generosity as well as sacrifice in the best sense, for self, neighbor, community and the world.  She feels if there were no tension, that would be stagnation or a living death.  Without tension, there would always be peace, a great “om.”  When you don’t live intentionally, you don’t have to examine anything and aren’t challenged to grow, which is boring, like living in a bubble.

She says that Fox is interested in new creation which will happen here, and not never never land.  This perspective is concrete and has a real earth dimension.  It does not mean gritting your teeth now and getting a pristine environment later when you die.  The next phase (beyond this life), she believes, will not be boring or without tension. 

I told her about my interested in Grundtvig and the importance of culture.  Lucy said that by living with diversity in community at her church, they are being schooled in other cultures.  The more they engage one another, they more something new results, that does not deny the old but is not the same.  Other cultures can give us ideas about other ways to do things. 

This was how I had felt when I traveled around the world to East Africa when visiting with my parents.  I shed many concerns about petty requirements to fit in at school, as I saw that people lived simply and in other countries and did not need all the things we Americans have to be happy.  Pastor Lucy has engaged in conversations with African immigrants about how to show respect for elders, how they have committees to fund weddings, how they grew up in rural settings and are more connected to the soil and rain and temperature.  These conversations can cause communities to consciously and unconsciously evolve and change for the better.

Many of their church members have always been Lutheran. Others explore other faiths, including the Jewish organization, Tikkun, and Buddhist and Zen meditation.  She hopes the church will be a place to experience the widening of a circle as a blessing, not a threat.

~~~

Rev. Verlyn Smith is a retired Lutheran pastor who I probably first became acquainted with through People of Faith Peacemakers, a group that met to network and educate each other about peacemaking in a church basement once a month over morning refreshments in Minneapolis, while I worked as a lay minister at Grace University Lutheran Church.  Later he served there as pastor after I had moved a way.  He was in the Bay Area recently to visit his son and we met at Jack London Square in Oakland.  I remember Verlyn said to me once that I rattled a lot of cages, which I took as a compliment, to mean my style of social change was to be stirring things up a little in a lot of different causes. However, I am aware that one can get into trouble doing too much stirring.

Verlyn said the term spirituality is amorphous.  People say, “I’m not religious but I’m very spiritual.”  He thinks that is cowardly and “hiding behind a word” that many can’t give a definition for.  It is not a term Protestants have used, it comes from the Roman Catholic tradition.  He thinks piety is the closest synonym, though “that has gotten bad press as meaning arrogant, stuffy and holier than thou which it isn’t, historically.” 

He is not sure what the consensus is on the meaning of spirituality: you can’t have spirituality without spirit.  Christians believe in the Holy Spirit and God, some reality beyond ourselves.  Spirituality is what each of us finds within: the best part of ourselves.  It is about finding one’s hidden self and expressing that.  It needs the notion of society and justice and caring for people who are hurting, however.  On the other hand, being Christian can be very self-centered, with the focus on saving one’s self from hell. 

Verlyn likes Matthew Fox’s work, has been influenced by him and has led several sermons that were inspired by Original Blessing.  His upbringing was based on the sin and redemption motif, which has dominated Lutheranism.  Original Sin, he said, has been a big doctrine in Lutheranism.  His family were Holy Danes, who were driven off the farm in South Dakota and moved to Rapid City where they joined a Norwegian Lutheran church.  He didn’t think the Happy Danes were that much different, doctrinally, except that they could play cards and dance in church.  The Reformation theology was Confessional Theology.  Lutheranism comes out of the Confessions, the Book of Concord and the Augsburg Confession, the same basic tenets as Roman Catholicism.  Luther didn’t reject theology except the dependence on works for salvation.

He says there is such a thing as doctrinal fundamentalism which is not Biblical.  It means looking at doctrines in the Confessions as absolute, infallible and inerrant.  He has felt that it’s probably good for a church to unite around a theological core, but that can become a terrible burden, a huge big box to carry around. 

When Verlyn was in seminary, he found it to be a fundamentalist school.  It was a Norwegian Lutheran seminary, which was not progressive.  He has been given a hard time for saying that by one of his friends.  However, I can agree, as I experienced that when I got an application from them as a young adult.  I was put off by a question asking how Jesus had saved me.  As a primarily Midwestern rural church, the Norwegian Lutheran synod was not up with the latest theological teachings.  The Swedish church had strength in the East partly because of the early Swedish settlements on the East coast that predated the mass Scandinavian immigration of the latter 19^th century by a couple centuries.  The Augustana Synod joined the ULCA, the oldest Lutheran American synod as well as the Happy Dane Synod and others, to form the LCA.  The LCA had various  strongholds in Pennsylvania and other Eastern U.S. locations, including South Carolina as well Chicago.  The ALC (formed by Norwegians and others) was centered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a smaller big city more removed from the East Coast.  I’m sure that those in the East were more connected  to the development of cutting edge theology of big schools there as well as in Europe.

Verlyn Smith was influenced by the senator, George McGovern, whose life was devoted to making society more caring and just.  He was also influenced by well known theologian Paul Tillich in his approach to religion and society.  Beyond his Masters of Divinity from seminary in Minnesota, he did graduate work at the University of Chicago.  His dissertation had to do with Constructive or Systematic theology, which was a more philosophical approach.  Joseph Sittler, a theologian and author (mentioned by earlier interviewees) was one of the earliest people he remembers who talked about Ecology and was a mentor to him.  Sittler preached at the World Council of Churches and had influence far beyond the German Lutheran seminary in Maywood, a suburb of Chicago.  Verlyn wasn’t able to finish a doctorate because of technical disagreements with his adviser and/or administration.

Rev. Smith worked as regional director of campus ministry for 10 western states, including California, for several years and later worked in campus ministry in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well at Grace University Lutheran Church from 1984 to 1992, after I was involved there.

His concern for peace and justice issues are based on the simple concept that Jesus said we should love our enemies, and everybody and care for the downtrodden and poor.  If one is a follower of Jesus Christ, “they need to get in touch with that.”  Jesus reflects God as force for peace and justice. 

He said Creation Spirituality doesn’t reject Western Theology and the sin-redemptive motif, but it wants to set along side it an overlooked motif found in eastern mystics and Eastern Orthodox.  He mentioned the Lundensian theology which came out of Lund, Sweden and Berggrav, a Bishop from Norway.  They emphasized less focus on the cross and Good Friday and more on the Easter message.  Swedish Theologian Gustaf Aulen wrote Christus Victor, emphasizing Christ more as victor rather than victim.  The focus on Jesus Christ as victor over death and evil is different from an emphasis on a more Catholic emphasis on Jesus’ death, which can be morose and “pietism gone sour.” 

Verlyn said this theme is not that different from what Matthew Fox teaches.  Fox is not that different but another voice in the choir.  He said Fox is modest, though he sometimes may come across as arrogant.  He has not been trying to revolutionize the church.  It is sad that he was silenced and edged out of the Catholic Church, though he withdrew voluntarily.  Verlyn likes Fox’s emphasis that broadens the spectrum.  There are many different witnesses. 

Lately there has been talk about the concept of atonement by theologians (as mentioned in an earlier interview).  Anselm’s theology about the suffering of Christ as needed to satisfy God’s requirement to redeem sinful humans was one interpretation and it became the most dominant in the West, though he was not the only witness.  Abelaar had another perspective.     

I researched on the internet and found out that Abelard’s interpretation was that God’s “limitless love overrules his need for justice.  The focus of the Atonement is not Satan or God …. It is the individual human seeking wholeness.” (Robinson 2004)

Verlyn said it is important to hear all the voices in the choir.  If we try to analyze it and just look at the altos, it’s not very exciting.  “You would hope that they sing in harmony.  There is even some dissonance in music, so why not in theology?”

He feels that Confessional Theology can be a burden, though it is one way to look at things.  He became very upset and almost quit at times while at seminary and felt he didn’t belong there.  However, one professor, Warren Quanbeck, who taught contemporary theology, stopped him from quitting several times by giving him another perspective.  “Every one else was back in the old books,” in the early 1950s at Luther seminary in Minnesota. 

Verlyn said the first article of Luther’s Small Catechism (on Creation) is “really neat” and we’d have much more environmental focus if we looked at it more often.  He stopped using the Apostle’s Creed for awhile at Grace Church.  He didn’t want to call God father or make the virgin birth an absolute.  He also didn’t like all the “He” language, which in the green hymnal, the main one used by the ELCA, is even more frequent than in previous hymnals.  He said it is wrong to absolutize an era, which is what is done when outdated language and concepts such as in the Creed are used.   The doctrine of the Virgin birth no longer works in modern times.  However, he was told at seminary that if we throw that out, we throw out the divinity of Jesus. Verlyn believes it is OK to and would be a good idea to relook at all of these concepts.

~~~

Rev. Warren Nielsen is the Pastor of Christ the King Lutheran Church in Fremont, California.  I happened to find him through a search on the internet which led to his church’s website, where it mentioned his “Happy Danish” background.  It also says that he is interested in Creation Spirituality, “an emphasis on the importance of living in communion with God and the whole creation.”  It also says that he enjoys Dances of Universal Peace, a “practice of circle folk dances derived from sacred phrases sung in many languages and from many religious traditions.”

I interviewed him over the phone.  Warren has attended ten summer institutes on Creation Spirituality.  He recommended the book, And a Time to Dance, a novel about the Danish American Lutheran Church by Beryl Knudsen as well as Church Divided, by Torvold Hansen, which I actually already have.  He grew up in Wisconsin and Nebraska, attended Dana College in Blair, Nebraska and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.  His parents live in a Elkhorn, Iowa, where sober Danes settled, which is not far from Kimballton, Iowa, a Glad Dane community where his mother grew up.  They spend four months in Solvang, California, a Happy Dane community, in the winter.  His uncle, A. Everett Nielsen, wrote a novel about an Episcopal priest who became a bishop, called The Bishop’s Secret.  The bishop in the story was the son of a Danish missionary.  The novel talks about Grundtvig and Happy Dane themes.  His uncle is a retired Lutheran pastor who was once actually a runner-up to become a Lutheran bishop.

Warren is less focused currently with Creation Spirituality and more concerned about keeping a Lutheran Christian faith perspective alive.  However, he would like to see Creation Spirituality become more a part of the Church.  He attends Dances of Universal Peace at a Quaker Center in Ben Lomond.   He grew up experiencing folk dancing as part of his church life.  We talked about the fact that everyone didn’t have that experience, which he understood, though it sounded like there was a time when he thought everyone danced at church camps when he was a child.  His father, W. Clayton Nielsen, a retired pastor, is 81 years old now and is still very active in the church.  He was the caller of dances at summer church camps for many years.

Besides dancing, they did lots of singing, especially from the book, A World of Song, no longer published, which has folk songs from all over the world.  Songs and dances were equally key elements of Happy Dane culture.  Early world music has been important since the 1930’s.  When Warren first danced Sufi dances with Neil Douglas-Klotz, in association with a Creation Spirituality institute, it seemed very natural to him to be singing and dancing with a religious spiritual orientation.  This was not that different from dancing at church camp, though there they were just for fun and to celebrate life, culture and humanity.

At gatherings in Solvang, California, a strong Danish cultural community, they sing from a book, Favorites from a World of Song, reprinted in 1984 and published by Jim Nussle, a legislator in Iowa of Happy Dane heritage.  His uncle, Paul Nussle, was Warren’s internship supervising pastor and mentor at Grace Lutheran in Santa Barbara, California.  It just happened that the internship was near Solvang, where he was exposed to the Happy Dane traditions at Bethania Lutheran Church.

When Warren went back to seminary he wrote a paper comparing the differences between pietistic and Happy or Drunken Danes, as they were called by some, derogatorily, and which they didn’t like being called.  Holy Danes didn’t like being called sad.  Holy Danes believed in inner piety and to not demonstrate outward worldliness.  For Happy Danes, however, card playing, dancing, and drinking alcohol moderately were OK.

There were theological differences as well as variations in how the Bible was interpreted.  He drew from the book, Christ and Culture, by H. Richard Niebuhr, which talks about several ways of looking at Christ in culture.  Grundtvig supported the idea that Christ worked through culture.  Others said Christ was against culture.  Holy Danes emphasized personal conversion and an individualistic, personal piety.  Happy Danes believed that spirituality was much more connected to the whole community and they celebrated life with God in our midst.  “That totally fits with Creation Spirituality…. Our community includes not just a group of humans but all of life. “ That theme is in Grundtvig’s teachings also.  There is a strong emphasis on baptism.  You are welcomed as part of God’s family and the extended family of life.  For Warren, baptism brings that together: “rooted, grounded, watered and washed in God.”  The union of flesh and creation is a sacramental idea, including bread and wine as Christ's body and blood, and water for washing in baptism.  God chose to become involved with creation, fully human as well as divine and being with us in all of those ways.

There is much about God and Creation in A World of Song.  Some themes and titles of songs include: The Joy of Living; We Hike Over Dew-Freshened Hills and other songs about hiking; The Happy Ploughman; The Mountain Cottage; Spring is in the Air; I Love the Ocean, from a poem by Hans Christian Anderson; and The Oats, about farming.  A lot of them were copywrited in 1941.  His favorite begins with “Evening star up yonder, teach me like you to wander and includes the phrases, “…teach me to be a blessing…Mighty ocean teach me, Songbirds teach me.”  Another is “Oh how lovely is the evening.”  They are about experiencing life in the world and enjoying it.  One by Grundtvig is “The Simplicity of Life.”  “Give me a simple life, a merry heart and kings may keep their pomp and garments splendid….”

Warren’s Dad grew up near Tyler, Minnesota, where there is an American Danish folk school with programs throughout the year.  His mother grew up in Kimballton, Iowa and felt sorry for the kids in Elkhorn because they couldn’t dance in high school.  At 10:00 at night, a lot of kids would drive over to Kimballton to dance.  She was born in 1924.  This happened around 1940.

He recently went to the regional Lutheran Church Camp, Mt. Cross, in Felton near Santa Cruz, CA.  A lot of what brings the youth together spiritually is constant singing together.  They sing Christian and contemporary world songs and popular songs rewritten with Christian language, like what he remembers from church camp growing up.

His Uncle A. Everett Nielsen went to a gathering led by Matt Fox in 1985, the first one Warren went to as well.  His uncle thought some of the language was an “in” language” and not as democratized to everyone, but he still liked it a lot.  It’s a rich tradition and valuable.

There was a down side during the first half of the 20^th century for the Happy Danes.  They were not as ready to switch to the English language.  Wanting to keep their Danish heritage in church, they hung on to tradition, were not as integrated and less accepting of others as they might have been.  They probably would have preferred that their kids just marry Happy Danes.  His dad had been raised with a more pietistic attitude and at first felt guilty about folk dancing when he went to Grandview College in Des Moines, Iowa.  Warren’s mother-to-be, Virginia, wasn’t going to date him if he wouldn’t dance and he changed his mind to became more of a "Happy Dane" at age 17.