Will You Be Using Eco-Palms on Palm Sunday?

The Washington Post (Religion News Service) is reporting that some congregations are moving toward eco-palms for their Palm Sunday celebrations. 

Combining ecology and theology, hundreds of churches are choosing "eco-palms" for their Palm Sunday services this year.

The idea is resonating with congregations that had not given much thought to where palms come from. But many of them have taken an interest in similar causes, such as fair trade coffee, which benefits Third World coffee growers.

. . .

Activists say Palm Sunday, when Christians recall Jesus's entry into Jerusalem, is the perfect time to draw attention to the issue. Always a week before Easter, Palm Sunday will be celebrated tomorrow by most Christian denominations; Eastern Orthodox churches will celebrate the day a week later.

The movement involves agricultural experts at the University of Minnesota, who work with an exporter that has taught harvesters how to operate with less waste and fewer middlemen. Proponents of eco-palms say typical harvesting practices emphasize quantity rather than quality, provide harvesters with scant earnings and threaten birds and other wildlife that thrive in the shaded forests where the palms grow.

The 22-cents-a-frond price for eco-palms is more than double what some other fronds cost, but it includes 5 cents to help Latin American communities with development projects such as building a school kitchen or providing health care or insurance.

(Posted by Trask)

Passover on the Gulf Coast

The Washington Post (Religions News Service) is reporting on how surviving Katrina for some Jews has offered new meaning to the passover.

As residents of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast prepare for Passover, which celebrates the Jewish people's escape from slavery in Egypt, it is as if they have lived through an epic of their own.

"You're talking about Exodus, where you're going from something terrible, being under the rule of Pharaoh, toward freedom," said Lori Beth Susman, a board member of a conservative synagogue in Biloxi, Miss. "For many of us, the last seven months have been that kind of journey."

Congregations along the Gulf Coast find themselves at different places on that journey after August's arrival of Hurricane Katrina, the costliest hurricane in U.S. history. Their Passover plans reveal the many ways Katrina continues to affect their religious lives, from damaging their synagogues to still scattering once-close members of congregations.

Traditionally, Passover is celebrated with a Seder dinner, at which the story of the Exodus is told. Families often have a first-night Seder at home, and many synagogues hold a second-night Seder. This year, the holiday begins at sundown Wednesday and lasts eight days for Orthodox and Conservative Jews, and seven days for Reform Jews.

(Posted by Trask

Gay Film Festival and Vagina Monologues Allowed on Campus at Notre Dame

The New York Times is reporting on a controversial decision to allow some non-Catholic art forms on campus. Stephen Barr at First Things has some interesting commentary on this issue.

The University of Notre Dame will continue to allow a gay film festival and the play "Vagina Monologues" on campus, its president announced yesterday. The decision was a sharp turnaround from a speech that the president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, gave to faculty members and students in January questioning the appropriateness of such events on a Roman Catholic campus.

In the speech, Father Jenkins said he objected to the "graphic descriptions" of sexual experiences in "The Vagina Monologues" and its portrayals of human sexuality outside traditional relationships between men and women. Conservative Catholics said the events, which have been held on campus for several years, contradicted church teachings on sexuality.

After hearing from hundreds of students, faculty members, alumni and administrators in the last 10 weeks, Father Jenkins said he saw "no reason to prohibit performances of 'The Vagina Monologues' on campus." The gay film festival will also continue.

(Posted by Trask)

The Threat to Religious Freedom of Non-Profit Religious Ministries

Richard John Neuhaus at First Things has some interesting commentary on the current threats to religious freedom at non-profit religious organizations.

Some tough words from the usually understated and scrupulously cautious Mark Chopko, general counsel of the U.S. bishops conference. Surveying legislative and regulative initiatives impinging upon various medical, social, and educational ministries, he says religious institutions are being “subjected to pressures to conform to the culture in ways that are contrary to their teachings. These pressures are overt and subtle, direct and indirect . . . Our institutions are under pressure to deliver services exactly as their secular counterparts do” and “the ability of religious institutions to ask that those who work for us act in harmony with the mission of the Church is under assault.”

In some places, says Chopko, the political process “is dominated by legislators and interest groups that believe Catholic ministries and practices are out of touch and should either be forced to reform through the process of law or withdraw from those ministries.” “At its core, this debate is not only about abortion or contraception or lifestyle or any particular issue; it is about an expansive government remaking religious agencies in its own image and likeness.”

(Posted by Trask)

The Judas We Never Knew

Collin Hansen at Christianity Today has an article on the gospel of Judas.

[T]hanks to this text, we can further confirm what we already know about Gnostics—those pesky heretics condemned by early-church leaders like Irenaeus. Don't get confused by mentions of Jesus and Judas. This is no Christian text. The Gospel of Judas did not circulate until about 150 years after Jesus died. Let's put it this way: This new text tells us nothing more about Jesus' relationship with Judas than does Jesus Christ Superstar.

. . .

I talked with Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary hours before he was scheduled to lecture at Princeton, Pagels's employer. He explained some peculiarities about the group that gave us the Gospel of Judas. Turns out these "Cainite Gnostics" earned their moniker rehabilitating disgraced biblical figures, including Cain, the Sodomites, and Judas.

Bock also pointed out that Scripture does include some contrasting perspectives on Judas. Mark portrays Judas as a bumbler, just like the other disciples who misunderstood Jesus' teaching. Writing later, John explains Judas differently. Judas exploits his position as treasurer to steal from the till, and Jesus calls him a "devil" (John 6:70).

According to Bock, the balance of Scripture indicates Judas expected a different type of Messiah. Disappointed, he turned in Jesus, whom he considered a threat to the Jewish nation. "Judas is a reflection of anyone who ends up rejecting Jesus," Bock said. "It's a tragic story—not something to shake your finger at, but something to be sad about."

Much more tragic and sad than rehashing an old debate about the legitimacy of orthodoxy.

A Washington Times article from today also contains some good information.

    A lineup of scholars assembled by National Geographic yesterday admitted the book has no proven link to the Judas who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, committed suicide soon after he betrayed Jesus.
    "There is no independent historical tradition behind this text," said the Rev. Donald Senior, president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. The writers of the Gospel of Judas, he added, "made its characters to be mouthpieces of their own theology."
    Marvin Meyer, a Bible and Christian studies professor at the Albert Schweitzer Institute at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., called the document a "mystical portrayal" combining Jewish mysticism and Platonism, which sees matter, including the human body, as imperfect, transitory and less than the ideal world of the spirit.

(Posted by Trask)

Why the Gospel of Judas Betrays the Truth

The Washington Post is reporting on the discovery of a new gnostic gospel known as the Gospel of Judas. 

The National Geographic Society released yesterday the first modern translation of the ancient Gospel of Judas, which depicts the most reviled villain in Christian history as a devoted follower who was simply doing Jesus's bidding when he betrayed him.

The text's existence has been known since it was denounced as heresy by the bishop of Lyon in A.D. 180, but its contents had remained an almost total mystery. Unlike the four gospels of the New Testament, it describes conversations between Jesus and Judas Iscariot during the week before Passover in which Jesus tells Judas "secrets no other person has ever seen."

The other apostles pray to a lesser God, Jesus says, and he reveals to Judas the "mysteries of the kingdom" of the true God. He asks Judas to help him return to the kingdom, but to do so, Judas must help him abandon his mortal flesh: "You will sacrifice the man that clothes me," Jesus tells Judas, and acknowledges that Judas "will be cursed by the other generations."

Scholars said the 26-page document was written on 13 sheets of papyrus leaf in ancient Egyptian, or Coptic, and was bound as a book known as a codex. It is one of dozens of sacred texts from the Christian Gnostics, who believed that salvation came through secret knowledge conveyed by Jesus.

There is very good reason not to believe this gnostic account of Judas. Gnosticism is a belief system, which says that the material world is evil and sinful because the material deteriorates our souls. Therefore, they hold to a belief in a "secret knowledge" that will allow them to achieve salvation from the repressive effects of the material world. In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus offers to tell Judas about the "secret kingdom," and he asks Judas to help free himself from the oppression of his mortal body. These teachings are heresy, and they are incredibly inconsistent with the Old Testament tradition and the teachings of Jesus Christ. 

I am going to focus on why there is no reason that one should believe this account of the Gospel of Judas. The first huge problem is authorship. It is unknown who wrote this book. There is no evidence, for example, that Judas authored this gospel, and in fact, the evidence on that is to the contrary. According to Matthew, Judas was seized by guilt and remorse for what he had done. (27:3) He attempted to return the 30 pieces of silver that the chief priests and elders had paid him to betray Jesus, but they rejected it. (27:3-4) Judas threw the money into the temple, left, and hanged himself. (27:5) There are a number of problems produced by this passage. Why would Judas feel such extreme remorse if Jesus had told him to do this as a way for Jesus to escape the oppression of his mortal flesh? Judas committed suicide before Jesus was even brought before Pilate. It seems extremely unlikely that Judas both hatched a plot to betray Jesus and authored a 26 page document in the less than one week that separated when Jesus supposedly told this information to Judas and when Judas committed suicide. It seems similarly unlikely that he would have had a chance to communicate so much information to someone else who wrote it down.

This is the difference between the four gospels in the Bible and gnostic writings. According to Gary Habermas, all of the gospels in the New Testament were written either directly by one of the apostles or by a person under the direct influence of the apostles. Therefore, these are eyewitness recordings of the life of Jesus Christ. They were also all written extremely close to the death of Jesus Christ. All four gospels were written within "thirty-five to sixty-five years after the death of Jesus, close enough to allow for accurate accounts." Therefore, it is known that all of the gospels in the New Testament were written either by eyewitnesses or people under the influence of eyewitnesses within 35-65 years after the death of Jesus Christ. This is a powerful statement about the reliability of the New Testament accounts.

The Gospel of Judas was probably written long after the life of Jesus Christ by a person who did not know Judas nor was an eyewitness to the events. According to scholar Charles Hedrick, the "original Gospel of Judas was probably written in Greek in the second century AD." There is a major separation of time between when Judas was alive and when this document was authored. There is no reason to believe that a person writing about Judas this long after he was alive would have any knowledge about the topic that could in anyway compare to the information provided by the gospels. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that most of the information in the Gospel of Judas is not made up. And at the very least, one must concede that the account of the gospels in the New Testament is far more reliable than the Gospel of Judas.

Since the New Testament accounts are more reliable, lets look at what the New Testament gospels have to say about Judas. Matthew 27:3 says "Judas betrayed . . . him [Jesus]." Mark 3:19 says "Judas Iscariot . . . betrayed him [Jesus]." Luke 22:3 says, "Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot . . ." John 13:2 says, "the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus." The most persuasive basis for rejecting the idea of a virtuous Judas comes directly from Jesus in John 6:70: "Then Jesus replied, 'Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!' (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.)" The gospels conclude that Judas was driven by Satan and not Jesus to make his decision, and they report that he betrayed Jesus.

(Posted by Trask)