Honest Study of the Bible and the Tradition

With some clarity regarding the thorniness of the term “church,” my faculty colleagues at Sophia Theological Seminary, Drs. Melissa Jackson and Jon Barnes, and I have attempted a rough analysis of the negative forces pressuring the body of believers today.  Each element of this analysis, in turn, evokes as a response how Sophia seeks to prepare individuals and a community for embodying the ministry of reconciliation in today’s context.

First, a fundamental inauthenticity, even a profound hypocrisy, plagues the broader community that identifies itself as the body of Christ. The Gospel is clear concerning God’s love for everyone, concerning the fact that, in Christ, there is no gender, ethnic, or social hierarchy, and concerning the clarion call to make peace, to do justice, and to facilitate reconciliation.  Unfortunately, however, the history of the church is too often the story of being on the wrong side of affairs:  resisting civil rights advances, endorsing unjust wars, and perpetuating components of a social and economic structure that silently oppresses minorities. Currently, for example, many in the US who identify themselves as followers of Jesus support government actions apparently designed to intimidate, denigrate, injure, and even kill indiscriminately.  This attitude that divides and demeans contrasts sharply with Jesus’ congratulations for the “peacemakers, who will be called the children of God,” who have been charged with “the ministry of reconciliation.”

Sophia addresses this inauthenticity through careful study of the Bible’s (both portions) staunch insistence on the value of being human, on the notion that doing must be consonant with being, on the recognition that faith and action are but sides of a single coin. At Sophia, students and faculty together honestly examine and acknowledge the history of Christianity’s impact, negative and positive, on human history, human societies, and human beings. At Sophia, students and faculty together will explore avenues and means for redressing the plague of inauthenticity through an audacious commitment to following Jesus.