Dear Tig,
If you have not yet watched Frontline's "From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians," I encourage you to do so. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/01/frontline-online-clickable-icons-with.html
Last night, I began my second viewing.
At Chautuaqua, I spent considerable time in lecture and seminar with John Dominic Crossan who is among the half dozen theologians repeatedly interviewed in "Jesus to Christ."
Thanks to Frontline, I am struck by Christianity's early appeal to slaves -- and other oppressed people -- because it posited universal equality before God.
Although we are far from achieving equality in our own time -- and in significant ways are regressing -- educated professionals like ourselves tend to presume equality.
Sadly, presumption and oblivion are joined at the hip.
In fact, equality is a "new thing under the sun" and was brought to us by "the son of God" whose brothers and sisters we are.
This radical idea of equality -- diametrically opposed to the top-down, dog-eat-dog, dominance-submission hierarchies of "the zoological world" -- is also explored in "How Christianity Gave Us Gay Marriage."
The profoundest truths are paradoxical.
Among other manifestations, "the last shall be first."
And the first last.
My Own Contact With Family Separation, And The Young Girl Who Died
(A Slave Family Story Told By UNC-CH Public Health Professor John Hatch)Love
Alan
Images Of Yeshua, A Nazarene Carpenter
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