Replies

I second Alexandre’s statement about how much I have enjoyed watching the recordings and listening to the thoughtful questions shared during the sessions. I wish that I could attend as well.

I have typically written an independent forum post, but I wanted to respond to this one for several reasons. First, I want to thank Dennis for emphasizing the author’s insight on gender. That was a critical part of the piece for me as well.

Second, I want to thank you Bhavana for your insight each week. I have learned so much for your posts and your questions. Thank you for bringing your perspective to this discussion and asking tough questions. I want to add more about your struggle with the concept of “lure.”

As we close out this week with a look at Christianity, I do find it frustrating that my historical faith has failed so miserably in living up to the ideals of the Jewish people and those of Jesus Christ and his initial followers. When I see injustice in this country, it is too often perpetuated and supported by those who claim to be “Christian.” I read about how God works from a process though perspective, and I see the world falling so short.

I worry that process thought is failing me as I ponder questions of theodicy. Why is God’s lure not stronger? Perhaps I am falling into the trap of relying on this word “lure.” I think about going fishing. You always want to select the best possible lure. Why is God not using the best possible lure to attract people towards beauty, creativity, and diversity?

Finally, I love love love the line – That Jesus just is…an invitation to engage in a different enchantment.

[Brian Cromer]

Thank you for posting Bhavana your experience. I was touched by the story where you witnessed a Muslim praying and its profound impact on your own faith.

• This reply was modified 11 months ago by Brian Cromer.

Roni,
I appreciate your sharing this view. I can relate to what you’re saying. I lead a congregation of folks who are predominantly LGBTQ but who have fairly conservative religious views based on their own backgrounds. I feel like I need to “enlighten” them with my changed views. One specific area I struggle with relates to the use of exclusively masculine pronouns for God. I have tried to model using inclusive pronouns. I have tried to explain why it matters. I have tried to initiate discussions with congregants about how our fixed views of God as masculine are problematic. I quote Mary Daly’s famous line, “If God is male, then the male is God.”
I also clash sometimes with this idea of a conquering Lord and king. It has been an issue with the lyrics of contemporary Christian music. On Easter, however, I took a different approach and allowed people to choose songs that meant something to them. The requirement was that they had to explain though why they selected this particular song. It has helped to contextualize the lyrics and made the music more about a person’s story in their faith. Taking the approach of listening more to people and why they feel strongly about their ideas of God has helped me. But I do feel that I have a long way to go. I like Leslie’s metaphor of the flexed versus stretched bicep. Something for me to consider as I continue to serve.

I grew up within the Southern Baptist tradition, where the lines between faith and life were sharply drawn and strictly patrolled. Fundamentalist theology was not just something taught; it was something absorbed, saturating every part of my early worldview. God was framed narrowly—as a judge, a king, a father (always male, always distant). In that environment, there wasn’t room for difference or doubt, let alone for queerness. Even so, the structure of church life—community gatherings, heartfelt hymns, the instinct to turn toward something bigger than myself—wove itself into me. It became a trellis I didn’t know I was growing along, shaping how I experienced belonging, shame, and hope.
As a teen, I tried to pray away the gay. When God didn’t answer those prayers, I felt completely abandoned. I turned to the chaplain at my college for help, and he told me that I could be gay and Christian (quite extraordinary for a chaplain at a Baptist college to say in 1992). I still wanted to participate in my faith tradition so I tried to keep the parts of myself separate: the faithful churchgoer and the newly out gay boy trying to navigate a different world. I served as organist for a Southern Baptist church in Syracuse, NY, hoping that if I could just work harder, behave better, pray longer, maybe the pieces could hold together. But bifurcating my life only deepened the fracture. Eventually, the strain became too great.
When I moved to Chicago in 1993 to attend Northwestern Law school, I stopped going to church. After graduation, I moved to San Diego and practiced as a corporate lawyer for twenty years. In 2016, I left corporate law because my job no longer aligned with my values. My husband and I moved to Palm Springs, California. It was shortly after Trump 1, and I wanted to reconnect with something greater in those moments of chaos and uncertainty. We joined a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and I served as chair of the worship committee. I felt that deepening connection with the divine spirit of life. For various reasons, we moved from California back to my childhood city in South Carolina. The UU churches were a long drive, but we found a PCUSA church that basically held the same tenets as my UU congregation. I served there as a ministry assistant for a new pastor. She encouraged me to go to seminary at Columbia (Decatur, GA). Seminary helped me build a theological framework where complexity and queerness were not threats to faith, but expressions of it.
During my summers, I interned at a progressive Baptist church, believing I might finally be able to bring all of myself to ministry. I served there for two years, but when it came time for ordination, my sexuality became an issue. My husband and I met a third in 2020, and the three of us were in a committed relationship. I was out and open to the people I worked with and for at the church, and it was not an issue until an interim pastor took over. I do not think that churches understand the queer community. They felt progressive by embracing gays that follows heteronormative lifestyles. Mine did not (although it is very biblical to have multiple partners). I was asked to withdraw my ordination. Fortunately, I had found a calling at a predominantly LGBTQ church. I no longer see faithfulness as conformity to rigid expectations. Instead, I understand it as the stubborn, sacred act of building spaces where the excluded are not just tolerated but treasured. The trellis of my religious life bears the scars of pruning, but it still stands—and it is from those very scars that new life continues to grow.

Roni,
Thanks for sharing this poem! is a stunning expression of process philosophy in poetic form. I love how it upholds and illuminates Whiteheadian thought through its imagery and movement. I especially appreciate its emphasis on becoming and how our first moments shaped us.
Brian

Dr. Davis,

I was responding to the quote on the bottom of page 7 “We alone are the privileged bearers of the imago Dei.” I thought that you were pushing back against this in claiming that this reinforces a view of nature as a separate and foreign “other.” Thanks for the clarification on this.

Dr. Davis,

Thanks so much for the suggestions! I’ll definitely look into these. I was reading an article this morning from The Christian Century about the Chicago Statement on inerrancy of the Bible. In reflecting on the basis for the declaration of biblical inerrancy in 1978, I see so much of substance metaphysics in the arguments that the Bible has to be a fixed infallible “substance” that is never changing; a substance that is a perfect, direct expression of an unchanging God; a substance that contains truth in its text and does not reveal itself in any ongoing way; an eternal object that is separate from the experiences of the reader.

Roni, your words are devastatingly beautiful, and I feel the weight of them. The image of a small child crushed under a bombed building, of parents carrying their child’s body to burial, of those a world away mourning through a screen—this is the kind of suffering that shatters easy answers. You are right to say that, in those moments, we need a God who is not just with the universe in some abstract sense but with the child in their final breath, with the parents in their unspeakable grief, and with those of us who can do nothing but weep.

For me, this is precisely why the consequent nature of God is not an insufficient comfort—it is the best and only God I can believe in. If God is all-empathetic, then God is in the rubble with the child. God is crushed beneath the weight of war, feeling every last sensation of fear and pain. God is in the trembling hands of the parents, in the wail that escapes their lips, in the silence that follows when grief makes it impossible to speak. For me, the power of process thought is that God does not stand outside of suffering, allowing it from a distance, but is inside of it, experiencing it fully, holding it eternally.

I hear your longing for justice, for a life after life where the scales are balanced, where the children lost to senseless violence are held safe at last. I do not dismiss that longing—it is holy. And yet, for me, the deepest hope is not in a final reckoning but in the unwavering presence of a God who never abandons, who never turns away, who takes every wound into the divine life and transforms suffering through love. If there is any justice, it is in a God who refuses to let the child’s existence be meaningless, who gathers up every moment of joy and pain, who makes sure that nothing—no life, no suffering, no love—is ever lost.

So, I stand in prayer with you. I stand in lament. And I believe, with everything in me, that the best God is the one who weeps with us, suffers with us, and loves without end.

I so appreciate your framing this question about God’s power as evidenced in the Gospels. I really am considering how I might pursue this further as my capstone project for this class so THANKS!

I am intrigued by your statement about the difference between the synoptic Gospels and John’s Gospel. Bernard Loomer’s distinction between relational power and unilateral power offers a compelling lens for these texts. Relational power, in Loomer’s terms, is the power of mutuality, persuasion, and interdependence, whereas unilateral power is about control, dominance, and imposition of will.

At first glance, it might seem that the Synoptic Gospels lean toward relational power, with their emphasis on Jesus’ engagement with marginalized people, his parables about the kingdom of God as a seed growing in partnership with creation (Mark 4:26-29), and his ultimate act of self-giving love on the cross. In contrast, John’s Gospel contains more explicit divine claims (“I and the Father are one” – John 10:30), signs that seem to assert God’s authority rather than invite cooperation, and a Jesus who is more declarative than dialogical.

However, I would push back against a hard division between the Synoptics and John.

While John does emphasize Jesus’ divine authority in ways that could be read as unilateral power, it also presents a deeply relational vision of God. The opening of John’s Gospel (John 1:1-18) isn’t just a theological statement about Jesus’ divinity—it’s a powerful vision of a God who moves toward creation in deep relationship. Instead of a distant ruler exerting control from above, John presents a God whose very nature is relational. The Word (Logos) isn’t separate from God but exists in intimate connection. From the very beginning, God’s essence is about relationship, not solitary power.

This relational nature is also seen in creation itself. John tells us that everything came into being through the Word, meaning the world isn’t just the result of a divine command but an extension of God’s presence and love. Creation is not something controlled from afar but something formed through connection. This challenges the idea of God’s power as unilateral and instead suggests a power that invites participation.

The most striking example of this is the Incarnation: “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” The Greek literally says that Jesus “pitched his tent among us.” This more literal translation really puts God in the center of human life. In my view, these verses do not show God as a force or domination but instead show a Good deeply present with us.

For me, the Incarnation is the ultimate act of relational power: rather than remaining distant, God chooses to enter into the vulnerabilities and limitations of human life. A God of unilateral power might have remained removed from suffering, but a God of relational power joins creation fully, experiencing joy, pain, and even death.

Another aspect of John’s gospel where I see a more relational God is with respect to the frequent concept of “abiding.” When Jesus says, “Abide in me as I abide in you” (John 15:4), he is describing a reality where identity, purpose, and being itself are intertwined. Far beyond mere presence or connection, “abiding” is about dwelling within, being shaped by, and shaping in return. This is not a static relationship but a dynamic participation in divine life, much like process thought’s understanding of God as deeply engaged in the world. To abide in Jesus is not just to follow his teachings but to be immersed in the very flow of divine love, responding to and being transformed by it. Likewise, for Jesus to abide in us means that divinity is not external or imposed but experienced from within—woven into the fabric of our becoming.

I think that John’s Gospel ultimately can be read through a process thought lens. Instead of a God who dictates from a distance, we see a God who chooses to live with us, draws close, abides with us, and who loves us. This vision of God’s power is not about coercion but about mutuality—inviting us into a relationship that transforms.

I so appreciate your sharing your story and your perspective on how labels not only open the door to our own creativity and novelty but also for those around us.

I really appreciate your desire for a more grounded understanding of God, one that connects with direct experience rather than remaining an abstract concept. I think your sense of being part of “something” larger—something you both belong to and serve—is deeply resonant with a process-relational understanding of God.

In addition to God as the lure toward greater possibilities, I resonate with the idea of God as the aggregator of all experience—the One who holds, receives, and weaves together all that has been. In a process-relational view, no moment is ever lost; every joy, every sorrow, every act of love or struggle becomes part of the unfolding reality that God embraces. This means that God is not just the future-oriented pull toward beauty and justice but also the ever-present witness and companion to all existence. I find deep meaning in the idea that our lives, our choices, our pain, our struggles, and even the seemingly insignificant moments contribute to the divine life. God is enriched by our experiences and, in turn, offers back transformed possibilities for the world. In this way, God is both the co-creator of what will be and the sacred memory of all that has been, holding it in love.

I think about moments in my life when I felt that I needed God the most. Specifically, I go back to my senior year in college when I was struggling to “pray away the gay” and no longer have same-sex attractions. I had prayed for years and years for God to “heal” me, but God never answered that prayer. I never felt a “lure” towards being straight. But, when I got to the point of desperation where it seemed better to end my existence rather than risk sinning, I went to the chaplain at my Baptist college for help. He actually told me that I could be gay and Christian. That moment marked a turning point for me. When I went back and prayed for God to show me the way, that was when I felt the lure / the pull towards being my authentic self. It was a bodily experience. I heard God’s voice telling me that I was created to be different. God not only wanted me to bring my novelty and creativity into the world, but God needed me to do so. There was a shift in my soul that I felt like an electric shock. Aligning myself with God’s purpose for my life allowed me to experience divine love in a new way. And in a way that led me to want to share that divine love with others. It was a transformative moment of becoming.

For me, this experience solidified my understanding of God not as a distant or coercive force but as the One who journeys with us, holding our pain, our questions, and our becoming. God does not demand conformity to rigid expectations but continually invites us toward greater wholeness, toward a deeper embrace of who we are created to be. And because God is enriched by our experiences, each of our stories—our struggles, our revelations, our moments of transformation—becomes part of the divine life itself. This is why I see God not only as the lure toward possibility but also as the One who receives and remembers, ensuring that no moment of our existence is wasted. In this way, to know God is not to grasp an abstract concept but to live into relationship—one that calls us, sustains us, and, in the end, affirms that our authenticity is not just allowed but divinely necessary.

I really appreciate how you frame Whitehead’s thought as a corrective lens or new hermeneutic for reading the Bible. It’s striking how process thought restores a dynamic, relational, and unfolding vision of God—one that resonates with the biblical witness far more than the static, hierarchical models that have long shaped Christian theology.

I appreciate your reflections on how we might rethink liturgy. Would your thinking apply to the Bible itself? If God is constantly changing, then can we rely on books that are thousands of years old to tell us about the God of today? Not that the Bible does not contain wisdom as it points to God, but why would we put a cover on writings that purport to guide us towards the Divine?

One aspect of Whitehead’s view of God that I find interesting is God as the integrator of experience through God’s consequent natures. Each actual entity contributes to the flow of reality, but these contributions need to be integrated into a coherent role. I find this thought very helpful in thinking about meaning in suffering. God is with us in our suffering, changing God’s divine experience and integrating those into a larger, redemptive process. This gives meaning to the pain and suffering of all creatures, bringing these experiences together into a harmonious whole. I guess we could call that integrator something else, but I find it interesting that Whitehead chose to stick with the word God.