SPIRITUAL APOLOGETICS — INTRODUCTION
The first draft text in a forthcoming Kindle book
I was ordained in 1961 as an Evangelist. This status was never formally activated. It was selected because I was fully qualified as a graduate of Union Theological Seminary to be ordained and receive the benefits of such a status. But I was a journalist and editor and therefore required a different status than the common one of a normal pastor or church executive.
Over the years I had many occasions to reflect on the fact that I was hardly an evangelist. I had no interest in winning souls to the Presbyterian fold or for that matter to Protestantism or for that matter to any existing religious organization.
I had a successful decade through the 1960s and my efforts created a prize-winning magazine, RENEWAL, radio and film documentaries, and a widely-read book called THE GRASS ROOTS CHURCH: A MANIFESTO FOR PROTESTANT RENEWAL.
In 1969 I organized a confrontation with the National Council of Churches to press member churches to give reparations to the Black community. This effort was roundly rejected by the NCC although I was successful in Boston due to the favorable action of a leader named Avery Post who managed to transfer a million dollars to local Black leaders.
Two forces powered my future. I had a severe problem with Christianity. And my career as a sort of editorial renegade was fading away rapidly. I moved from Chicago to Stockbridge, MA, where Jonathan Edwards endured his own exile centuries earlier.
By the end of the 1970s I had formed a serious, in-depth answer to why Christianity was so problematic to me. The complex phrase I arrived at as the basic problem was “creedal messianism”. I kept writing and among the books that foreshadowed my analysis was JESUS AND JIM JONES. I still regard it as among the most significant of my works.
Virtually every marker that characterized Jim Jones had antecedents in the New Testament articulation of Christianity as the formal religion it became. I now see that the bulk of the New Testament is a completely sensible presentation of a religion which justifies the various structures of faith communities that continue to exist.
The problem is that Jesus was neither messianic nor Messiah. He was the articulator and messenger of heaven. I shall have much more to say about this because since I wrote and self-published BEYOND CREED, and now I have happily accepted being an evangelist, I have come to embrace a universal spirituality which has no membership, no leaders, no organization, no salaried staff. Nothing!
Heaven is a declaration that we do not die, that we are not at heart evil, that there is no eternal hell, and that there is an active part of existence that we have most often ignored. Heaven is real and it contains all who have lived and passed on ever, anywhere in God’s Cosmos.
I have been blessed with a long-enough life to enjoy the revolutionary changes wrought by the rise of cyber-existence and the mushrooming of quantum consciousness. I still have the theological chops to speak relevantly about the challenges facing religion. And I believe I have been given the vision to make at least introductory sense about where we are going.
My title is SPIRITUAL APOLOGETICS.
By “Spiritual” I mean universal. The spirituality I advocate will be made clear in the coming sections. By “Apologetics” I suggest to the theological community everywhere that the time has come to recognize the end of separated religions. They must melting into the oneness which signifies that we have become universal persons and that enlightenment is growth in consciousness within each of us.
Positivity reigns for real.
This will be a stumbling block for many. It may be too soon to believe. But my job is to try. And for one who was ordained almost 70 years ago as an evangelist it is about time to suggest what the good news really is.
