Summer Education - Speaking Christian

Education at Spring Creek will continue through the summer with a new learning opportunity for adults, age 16 and up.  Pastor Ivan will be leading a series exploring the book Speaking Christian by Marcus Borg.

The class will be offered at 2 different times during the week.  Note that these are 2 separate sections, you would attend one class per week, not both.  The days and times would be:

Tuesday mornings at 10am - beginning on June 4th

-OR-

Thursday evenings at 6:30pm - beginning on June 6th

The author, Marcus J. Borg is professor emeritus in the philosophy department at Oregon State University, where he held the Hundere Chair in Religion and Culture, and author of the New York Times bestselling Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, The Heart of Christianity, The Last Week, and Jesus. He was an active member of the Jesus Seminar when it focused on the historical Jesus and he has been chair of the historical Jesus section of the Society of Biblical Literature..

Borg asserts that modern Christians are steeped in a language so distorted that it has become a stumbling block to the religion. He argues that Christianity’s important words, and the sacred texts and stories in which those words are embedded, have been narrowed by a modern framework for the faith that emphasizes sin, forgiveness, Jesus dying for our sins, and the afterlife. Here, Borg employs the “historical-metaphorical” method for understanding Christian language that can restore for us these words of power and transformation. For example,

• Redemption: now narrowly understood as Jesus saving us from sins so we can go to heaven, but in the Bible it refers to being set free from slavery.
• Savior: now refers to Jesus as the one who saves us from our sins, but in the Bible it has a rich and wonderful variety of meanings having nothing to do with the afterlife.
• Sacrifice: now refers to Jesus’s death on the cross as payment for our sins, but in the Bible it is never about substitutionary payment for sin.

In Speaking Christian, Borg delivers a language for twenty-first-century Christians that grounds the faith in its deep and rich original roots and allows it once again to transform our lives.

The cost for the book is $12, including tax and shipping. Please see Pastor Ivan (or email him at pastorivan@springcreekucc.com) and we will try and order them all at once.  Versions are also available for the Kindle and Nook devices.