You’re invited to a Sunday-Morning Bible study led by the Rev. Linda Chase, focused on a book by Marcus Borg called The Heart of Christianity. Borg is a top notch Biblical scholar who writes in a manner which everyone can understand.
An excerpt from the book:
“We live in an exciting time in the life of the church. In the past few decades, an emerging vision of Christianity has begun to take root among both clergy and laity in mainline denominations in North America. It is a vision of Christianity that takes the Bible, God, and Jesus just as seriously as did the earlier vision of Christianity.Christianity is centered in the Bible. Of course, it is ultimately centered in God, but it is the God of whom the Bible speaks and to whom it points. God is also known in other ways and other religions, I am convinced, but to be Christian is to be centered in the God of the Bible. This is a mark not of Christian exclusion, but of Christian identity. The Bible is for us a Christians our sacred scripture, our sacred story.
Yet the Bible has become a stumbling block for many. In the last half century, probably more Christians have left the church because of the Bible than for any other single reason. More precisely, they left because the earlier paradigm’s way of seeing the Bible cease to make sense to them. Contemporary biblical literalism-with its emphasis on biblical infallibility, historical factuality, and moral and doctrinal absolutes -is an obstacle for millions of people.
The emerging paradigm provides an alternative to biblical literalism. To use the three adjectives with which I describe it: a historical, metaphorical and sacramental understanding of the Bible. With these words, I attempt to describe a view that is broadly shared by mainline biblical scholars who are involved in the life of the churah and by laity and clergy shaped by modern study of the Bible. And though I here emphasize and illustrate its approach to the Bible, I think it applies to the creeds and other normative Christian teachings as well.”
If you want to tackle the thought-provoking insights written in this book, come join the Bible study group on the following Sundays: October 13, 20, 27, November 3 and 17. The class will be from 11:30 – 12:30 p.m. We will meet in the CE Annex and on the Sundays when we have food, we will get our food and eat together.
Each participant will need a book and the cost is $15. Monies are available to help with the cost if needed.