Dr. Marcus Borg (author of The Heart of Christianity) will be the Robert McAfee Brown lecturer at First Presbyterian Church Palo Alto from November 7-9. All events are open to the public and childcare will be provided. We invite you to join us for what promises to be an incredible weekend. From The Heart of Christianity:
“Christianity is a way of life: that is its heart. To be Christian means living ‘the path' within this tradition. At the heart of Christianity is the way of the heart – a path that transforms us at the deepest level of our being. At the heart of Christianity is the heart of God – a passion for our transformation and the transformation of the world. At the heart of Christianity is participating in the passion of God.” Here are a couple of great ways to prepare for the lectureship: Read the Book: To fully enjoy the November 7–9, 2008 Lectureship Weekend series, you are invited to read Dr. Borg's book “The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith.” Copies are available for sale at First Presbyterian Church.
Attend a Study: Join with a group of people studying Dr. Borg's book, The Heart of Christianity, with the Rev. Richard Roe September 14 to October 19 - Six Sundays 9:30-10:30 AM at First Presbyterian Church Palo Alto as part of the Sunday adult study series.
Also, on November 2nd, 9:30 to 10:30am Dr. Catherine Murphy, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Santa Clara University, will conduct the adult study session in preparation for Dr. Borg's visit. Lectureship Weekend Schedule:
You are welcome to join us at any or all sessions of the Nov. 7-9 2008 Lectureship Weekend. Childcare will be provided at all events. Friday November 7th
Friday, Nov. 7 - 7:30 to 9:00 pm
Keynote followed by reception
Two Visions of Christianity
Suggested donation $10-$20 (No one turned away for lack of funds) Saturday November 8th
Saturday, Nov. 8 – 10:00 to 2:00 am Two Study Sessions and Lunch
Suggested donation $15-$25
Study Session I – 10:00 to 11:30
Seeing God and Jesus Again:
Jesus as Revelation of God's Character and Passion
Lunch: 11:30 to 12:30
Study Session II – 12:30 to 2:00 pm
Seeing Congregational Life Again: Centering in God and God's Passion Sunday November 9th
Sunday, Nov. 9 – 9:30 to 10:30 am
Study Session
Hearing the Birth Stories Again
Sunday, Nov. 9 - 11:00 to noon
Worship with Marcus J. Borg preaching About Dr. Marcus Borg: (From Wikipedia) Marcus J. Borg is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar and a liberal religious author. He holds a D.Phil. from Oxford University and is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture, an endowed chair at Oregon State University. He lectures widely and occasionally appears in the national news media. He is currently president of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars and a columnist for Beliefnet. A best-selling writer, Borg is among the most widely known and influential voices in progressive Christianity.
Borg was born in 1942 into a Lutheran family of Swedish and Norwegian descent, the youngest of four children. He grew up in the 1940s in North Dakota, and attended Concordia College, Moorhead, a small liberal arts school in Moorhead, Minnesota. While at Moorhead he was a columnist in the school paper and held forth as a Conservative. After a close reading of the Book of Amos and its overt message of social equality he immediately began writing with an increasingly liberal stance and was eventually invited to discontinue writing his articles due to his new-found liberalism. He did graduate work at Union Theological Seminary, and obtained masters and D.Phil degrees at Oxford under George Caird. Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright had studied under the same professor, and many years later Borg and Wright were to share in coauthoring The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, an amicable study in contrast. Following a period of religious questioning in his mid thirties, and numinous experiences similar to those described by Rudolf Otto, Borg became active in the Episcopal church, in which his wife serves as a priest.
Borg advocates entering into relationship with God as more important than belief about God. He has a panentheist understanding of God, which sees God as both indwelling in everything and transcendent. He teaches that a historical-metaphorical approach to the Bible is more meaningful for today's world than is the historical-grammatical approach or that of biblical literalism. He also distinguishes between the pre-Easter Jesus, who was a Jewish mystic and the founder of Christianity, and the post-Easter Jesus, who is a divine reality that Christians can still experience personally.
Borg does not believe that the bible has to be taken literally if it is to be taken seriously. Indeed, he purports that truths can be found in the many messages and metaphors of the Bible stories even though he states that such stories may not have actually happened at all. Rather than asking what the events in certain New Testament stories actually were, he challenges his audience with another question - what effect must this man Jesus have had on the people he came into contact with for so many rich stories to have been written about him after his life? | 