PLATTSBURGH — The Plattsburgh United Methodist Church provides two subjects for Grownup Research this winter with “Dwelling the Questions,” a e book and a DVD Research, in addition to “Unstated,” a Sunday afternoon video sequence, which can be screened throughout Black Historical past Month on the church.

The Rev. Phil Richards, church pastor, and Rev. Sally White will co-teach.

“Dwelling the Questions is a brand new e book research, DVD research, that lives on the Christian religion and the Christian life from a progressive standpoint,” Richards mentioned.

“The premise is why the church is within the questions enterprise moderately than the solutions enterprise. What we’re is questions that persons are asking round their religion journey, their non secular lives and so forth and recognizing that oftentimes the church is targeted on the reply versus moderately than giving individuals a chance to have a look at the questions.

“It’s a bit completely different in that it invitations us to have a look at it that manner. It’s completely different as a result of we’re going to focus far more on our humanity. We’re going to focus far more on conventional ideas of theology and bringing them updated for the twenty first century. and we’re going to speak concerning the challenges going through the church at the moment and the Christian religion at the moment.”

BOOK STUDY SYNOPSIS

Pastors David Felten and Jeff Procter-Murphy, together with Bible students and high church lecturers, present a primer to a church motion that encourages each Christian to “stay the questions” as a substitute of “forcing the solutions.”

Dwelling the Questions explores issues many church buildings are afraid to handle together with the humanity of Jesus and homosexuality, and examines in a brand new mild conventional religion subjects such because the Bible, atonement, salvation, the rapture, and extra, the discharge mentioned.

These two authors state on the outset: “Individuals are dissatisfied with the core message, dogma, and observe of the Christian religion in at the moment’s world.”

The e book is split into three sections on Journey, Reconciliation, and Transformation. Twenty-one subjects are coated together with sexuality and homosexuality, which has been controversial.

Felten and Procter-Murphy quote the well-known Protestant preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick who mentioned: “Stagnation in thought or enterprise means loss of life for Christianity as definitely because it does for every other important motion. Stagnation, not change, is Christianity’s most threatening enemy, for it is a progressive world.”

The authors name Progressive Christians to stay out their genuine combine of religion and doubt, to observe nonviolence, to face in solidarity with the poor, to eschew the idolatry of wealth, and to hunt “justice and inclusivity in a tradition dominated by suspicion and worry.”

DVD STUDY SYNOPSIS

Dwelling the Questions isn’t the product of a denominational workgroup or different institutional effort geared toward merely dressing up the theological establishment. As a substitute, it’s the response to the seek for a sensible instrument to convey collectively, equip, and re-educate pondering Christians.

That includes 30 acclaimed students, theologians and different consultants, LtQ2 consists of 21 periods which can be provided in sequence or as three impartial flights of seven items every: “Invitation to Journey,” “Honoring Creation” and “Name to Covenant.”

Contributors embody Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby Spong, Walter Brueggeman, Diana Butler Bass, Robin Meyers, Matthew Fox, Brian McLaren, Amy Jill Levine and Stephen Patterson.

“Harrell Beck was a theology professor at Boston College has the quote on the very starting of the e book,” Richards mentioned.

“He says that the start of true knowledge is asking the questions for which there are not any solutions. I actually love that quote. This obtained on my radar about 10 years in the past once I came across a brand new curriculum that was being provided, and I’ve provided it in different church buildings. I made a decision that I wished to start to re-offer it right here in Plattsburgh. They produce packages to assist individuals wrestle with fundamental questions which can be usually averted by the church round the actual wants of the communities. So that they’ve been these sorts of issues.”

UNSPOKEN SYNOPSIS

It’s an in-depth look into the Christian heritage of Africa and folks of African descent, meant to dispel the notion of Christianity being an completely white man’s faith.

Is Christianity a white man’s faith?

Unstated takes an in-depth have a look at the Christian heritage in Africa and examines how historic occasions have formed at the moment’s vastly common perspective of Christianity.

Unstated tells the story of the historic and nuanced relationship between the Christian religion and African descendants. Christianity is commonly labeled because the white man’s faith. Standard knowledge assumes tales of Jesus of Nazareth’s life, loss of life, and subsequent resurrection traveled from Jerusalem to Rome earlier than in the end taking root in western Europe. Christianity unfold in lots of instructions following Christ’s crucifixion within the Center East, and most of the oldest Christian traditions hint again to Africa.

Unstated contains a well-curated group of historians, spiritual students, and cultural influencers who, on this groundbreaking movie, look at the actual historical past of one of many world’s most generally practiced religions. Unstated exhibits a plethora of data that reveals how Africa accepted Christianity from the start and the way African Christianity has performed an integral half in world historical past.

Within the introduction to the movie, Unstated examines the false historic narrative of Christianity, Africa, and the imposition of white views on the faith. False tales have lengthy permeated via communities worldwide and have uncovered generations to fixed misinformation over many millennia plus at the least 400 years of imposed disgrace.

Half one voyages again to the pre-Constantine period of the first via 4th centuries to fulfill distinguished black figures within the Bible, discover early African practices of Christianity, uncover the relentless persecution endured by Christians of the time, and look at the claims that Christianity is a replica of Kemetic or Egyptian spiritualism. Watch to be taught the aim of the Council of Nicaea, meet the attendants of the Council, and be taught of the Emperor’s position within the pivotal occasion.

Viewers are invited to witness the golden period of early African Christianity from the 4th to sixteenth centuries as we chart the emergence of Islam and discover Christianity’s enduring prominence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Then examine the results of European colonialism and find out about the important thing influences for Martin Luther and the European Reformation, which was truly born in Africa 100 years earlier and is now acknowledged because the Protestant sect of Christianity.

Unstated appears at European colonists’ position in fashionable Christian religion practices as students clarify why colonization, usually acknowledged because the origin of Christianity in Africa, is chargeable for the mutation of age-old Christian traditions on the African continent. This was performed via ideas of white Jesus, Christian clothes, and Christian names, which don’t have any historic basis.

“You’ll uncover the reality, that this ship has landed a lot of hundreds. Not simply white individuals. Not simply black individuals. However individuals of each tribe, nation, and tongue. The Gospel is larger than one ethnic group.”

Half two begins with Christianity and racial oppression, and covers the interval between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, analyzing Christianity’s position in slavery. That is the interval when the narrative of African Christianity was most corrupted by what one scholar calls “Protestant supremacy,” the precursor to white supremacy. Historians then delve into how slave masters and enslaved individuals seen and practiced Christianity otherwise, uncover what Christianity meant to enslaved individuals, and reply why slavery seems within the Bible.

Shifting into the current day, Unstated takes a tough have a look at Christianity in our fashionable world, post-American slavery. Unstated paperwork the beginnings of the black church, the Civil Rights Motion, and black liberation theology, after which investigates the connection between the black church and the black neighborhood.

That includes intimate conversations with among the world’s foremost Biblical and cultural students and influencers, Unstated clarifies the significance of educating early African Christianity. The aim right here is to supply assurance for these fighting Christianity as a white man’s faith. Certainly, because the consultants interviewed within the movie assert, “Christianity has all the time been a various motion,” by no means meant to be centralized in a single location. As one of many students interviewed for the movie says, “You’ll uncover the reality, that this ship has landed a lot of hundreds. Not simply white individuals. Not simply black individuals. However individuals of each tribe, nation, and tongue. The Gospel is larger than one ethnic group.”

“We’re going to supply it throughout Black Historical past Month,” Richards mentioned.

“We’re actually excited to have the ability to supply each of these two completely different alternatives this winter.”