Week 1: Breaking Wholeness
A note from Joe: Lately I’ve been reading John Green’s bestseller The Anthropocene Reviewed, a series of essays on aspects of modern life and the way they are influenced by contemporary humanity. This series is inspired by that book and recent conversations in various contexts about the concepts of sin and holiness.
Anthropocene
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Anthropocene
noun
An·thro·po·cene ˈan(t)-thrə-pə-ˌsēn: the period of time during which human activities have had an environmental impact on the Earth regarded as constituting a distinct geological age
The concept of the Anthropocene era in which we now exist is that the period of time in which humans have inhabited the earth is profoundly different than all previous geologic eras precisely because of humanity’s ability to impact the planet and its biodiversity.
Which raises an interesting existential question: if there is a God, and that God created all things, was the earth created for human inhabitance, or are humans just a small part of the overall Divine design?
Theologically, those questions invite us into a deeper quest to discover God’s intent…which, in turn, leads us to questions about how we relate to this God and the created cosmos.
For generations, the concepts of holiness and sin have been deeply entwined with the way we humans see ourselves in relationship to the Divine. For the next several weeks at New Wineskins, we’ll be examining those concepts through the lens of human observation, including how we interpret them and the authority we grant to the Bible, our traditions, and the Church to help us do so.
Each week during this series we’ll interact with video content from The Work of the People that examines various aspects of these issues and invites us into conversations about what they mean. We’ll give special attention to the perspectives of people from marginalized communities…those who often bear the brunt of our corporate sins and definitions of holiness that center traditional power structures.
Join us this Sunday, July 30, in the New Wineskins Virtual Theology Pub powered by Zoom as we kick off what promises to be a fascinating series of conversations by hearing from Lisa Sharon Harper about how the root of what we call “sin” is the breaking of relationships…and what we can do about it.
Click here to view this week’s discussion video (email address required)
6:00pm ET: Happy Half-Hour (informal meet & greet time)
6:30pm ET: Presentation & conversation begin
Sin & Holiness in the Anthropocene Series
(Tentative: subject to change)
- July 30: Breaking Wholeness: Lisa Sharon Harper on sin as the breaking of relationship
- Aug. 6: Womanist Theology: Dr. Barbara Holmes on the perspective of Black women in the search for wholeness
- Aug. 13: Pure and Undivided: Cynthia Bourgeault on the oxymoron of personal salvation
- Aug. 20: Hypocrite: Fr. Richard Rohr on our tendency to “act out” Christianity rather than be transformed
- Aug. 27: Amnesia Therapy: Marlon Hall on the ways art informs wholeness
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