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Diana Butler Bass Profile picture
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17 Dec, 4 tweets, 1 min read
What is the matter with seminary education? I just had to explain to a really smart student who Charlotte von Kirschbaum was -- no one ever told him about Karl Barth's live-in secretary/mistress who basically co-authored (without credit of course) the "Church Dogmatics."
She was Barth's student. He moved her into house to "help" his wife and assist with his writing.
Christianity Today calls it Barth's "steadfast adultery."

Ugh.
I actually learned about this at an evangelical college -- from a prof who loved Barth but who was very disturbed by Barth's personal life.

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More from @dianabutlerbass

Diana Butler Bass Profile picture
23 Nov
Thanksgiving and Christmas are so beautiful - my favorite time of the year. Not only do I love the celebrations but I love the rich spiritual and theological dimensions that attend them.
That we have a holiday to recall gifts, generosity, and gratitude - a day that spiritually "fits" with many traditions, including religious and secular ones - is lovely.

Less than 20 countries have a day set aside for Thanksgiving. And we're one of them!
Gratitude is such an important spiritual practice, a fundamental human practice really. It is truly something we share no matter how or if we believe in God.

And for Christians, it is an often unnoticed but important theological theme across the entire New Testament.
Read 9 tweets
Diana Butler Bass Profile picture
17 Nov
In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus literally said "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (debts=Aramaic "choba").

William Tyndale purposefully translated it as "trespasses" because he feared English readers would think Jesus wanted monetary debt abolished.
Choba meant both sin and debt.

I think Jesus knew exactly what he meant. Sin was debt and debt was sin. A rich theological ambiguity that reflects both Jesus' concern for forgiveness and the command for Jubilee.
It is vaguely hilarious that a 16th language scholar was worried that regular people would see the Bible as justification to cancel debts - and that he felt it his mission to put a lid on such a literal reading.
Read 8 tweets
Diana Butler Bass Profile picture
3 Nov
Well, on this election eve, a few words.

Over the last 4 yrs, I've done my best here to help you thru this storm - lending voice to Christians who have known Trump threatened both our democracy and the beauty of the faith we treasure.
I am so grateful for the friends and allies made in this bleak time. For those who reached over religious, political, and racial boundaries to stand for and act on justice. To embody the better angels of the American soul.

We have formed a great cloud of witnesses.
We have listened to and learned from one another. We have changed in good ways. We've had our hearts broken. But we have remained true to the America we believe can come into being.

Despite in all, we believe in common good, love of neighbor, and decency and kindness.
Read 12 tweets
Diana Butler Bass Profile picture
19 Oct
FYI: to reporters re: Arizona, Mormons, and Democrats.

The Arizona's powerful Udall family were mostly Democrats - there's a proud tradition of Mormon D's in the SW. And the Udalls specifically opposed Goldwater-style Republicanism.
In Arizona, Mormons and evangelicals do NOT generally get along. They are often religious competitors. Mormons often find evangelicals full of hubris and not appropriately humble enough about their faith.

Evangelicals think Mormons are going to hell.
What was surprising to me (having grown up in Arizona) was when Mormons and evangelicals (along w/AZ white Catholics) formed a kind of political truce around the religious right's vision of "family values."

But this was never an easy truce.
Read 11 tweets
Diana Butler Bass Profile picture
19 Oct
It saddens me that we've come to think of our lives with the thin labels "left" and "right."

Life is poetry, prose, love, joy, hope, surprise, mystery, wonder, awe, beauty, challenge, suffering, question, doubt, faith, transformation, tenderness, compassion, empathy, sadness...
None of that is "left" or "right."
To look at the world as see "left" and "right" is to see the most narrow rendering of humankind, to limit the possibility of love breaking in, to shrink our own souls.
Read 4 tweets
Diana Butler Bass Profile picture
19 Oct
For the last 2 months, I've been writing about faith, spiritual practices, politics & religious change. Visit The Cottage where you'll find timely reflections on issues that vex our souls & the body politic.

Readers tell me it gives them hope.

dianabutlerbass.substack.com
Some popular recent posts:
On the importance of voting in this election:
dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/no-pearl-clu…
Read 6 tweets

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