29 Comments

I neglected to factor in the time difference and missed the second session of Freeing Jesus. Is there anyway I can watch after the fact?

Jane

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Thank you so much. It has taken me decades and an M.Div. and Ph..D. to get where I can appreciate your truth. Damn, evangelicalism is hard to overcome.

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Love your work and grateful to my teacher Rabbi Larry Hoffman for elevating it to me in school. As a Jewish person growing up in Indiana, I was always struck by how intimately people spoke of Jesus, as if he was sitting next to me in class. As an outsider, I found it incredibly alienating - I was so jealous of the intimacy, but also freaked out by it. This Jesus-as-friend theology ultimately impacted my own. For a while (and this had precedence because some origins of Reform Judaism were similar) I sought out a transcendent God, who parted seas - but didn't play a role in daily life, or at least wasn't sitting next to me in French class. It wasn't until rabbinical school after reading tons of Christian sermons and lots of philosophy classes that I could see how the intimacy could exist in Jewish tradition, too. Now I'm drawn to all the ways people access relationship with the Divine. THank you!

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Did you sing tbe hymn, "What a friend we have in Jesus"?

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I am fortunate Jesus has been my friend, loving me all my life. While at least one Sunday School teacher has long ago been forgiven for what she taught about the Bible I was fortunate to learn from the best Faithful & Bible Teacher in the world--my mother. It has only been as an adult that I have come in contact with life long "Christians" who story is so different than mine. I ordered the book on the day it was released from your website. In this world my corner of it anyway I want to show /"teach" , a loving, brave Jesus off the cross. At t he same time in no way do I want to negate that part of the story when people are ready for it. Another look at Jesus is extremely and we are blessed to have it from your clear writing style. I am still on the first part. So glad to be a part of t his community so when I have a question I come to The Cottage.

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Perhaps the Society of Friends got its name from that Bible verse. I grew up in a Quaker church.

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Fascinating. The Jesus of my liberal Protestant Sunday school seemed to me a sap -- a cover for the cruelty of the class stratification which my church existed to ratify. Good WASPs showed themselves in church. And that seemed all there was. Fortunately, God gets around our best efforts to obscure Her.

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Apr 16, 2021Liked by Diana Butler Bass

Diana, you write so authentically about freeing Jesus from where he is found in some churches. I believe there is also a need to free Jesus from the Bible. When I say to some of my "religious friends" that Jesus is more important than the Bible, they just shake their heads and say "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. Jesus is IN the bible." And I hear Jesus, as you did, "Get me out of here." - Doug Carpenter

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Thanks, Diana, for the gentle reminder of the blessings of a liberal Sunday School, and the challenges so many others face in deconstructing the 'judging Jesus' -- and for the reminder to those of us who preach how critical our messages are for the "little ones" in our midst -- messages of acceptance and joy instead of fear and judgment.

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This really resonates with me. I grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical denomination. By my mid-twenties, I was firmly convinced that Satan was correct, that God was indeed the most horrifying individual in the universe. It has taken 40 years to make my way back from that place to a place where I can envision God as kind.

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Please, focus on Jesus, not your book!

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This week Richard Rohr has been writing his daily meditations on Friendship. The ultimate in relationship. It is the basis of the trinity as he describes it. Love and Friendship.

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Apr 16, 2021Liked by Diana Butler Bass

So nicely put. Thank you, Diana, for helping us all on this journey.

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Thank you for this. John 15.15 has been my nucleus verse for the past decade. Jesus is my friend! Yes. Looking forward to reading your new book.

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A question: As the nation becomes increasingly un-churched, megachurched, end-times fixated, (i.e. evangelized) and politically polarized is there even the will necessary to work to create a common-ground, 21st-century-and-beyond version of the better Jesus we all need?

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