The Jerusalem Seminar
A 2-day comprehensive course on public theology
The Jerusalem Seminar
Spend a Friday night and a full Saturday for a more comprehensive “how-to” course about what public theology is all about.
Worship
To open the seminar, Marcia will host an agape meal/dinner with a “table-chat” sermon and communion. We can pray, listen, learn, and break bread together, although we may still be physically apart due to COVID-19. The Spirit brings us together. The group fully participates by discussing the Old Testament and Gospel readings together. Members of the group will read our Bible passages aloud and lead the prayers of the people. If we are meeting in person, we will sing some easy Taizé songs to enrich our worship.
Biblical-rootedness in our call to political theology mission
We need to understand how our call to public mission not only comes directly from the bible, but that our discipleship is mandated. To gain that understanding, we will discuss the call of Moses in the Hebrew Testament. Following that, we will explore Jesus’ call to public ministry on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection from the Gospel of Luke. A number of interactive exercises will help us mine the vast riches from our sacred text.
Prayer
To conclude our evening, like Jesus, we will “turn our face to Jerusalem.” Understanding discipleship requires us stop at the cross of Christ to contemplate what our call actually is. As followers of the Way, the earliest name for the Christian movement, we must recognize our duty to help usher in the reign of God and then figure out how to do that. Marcia will assign some prayer and reflection questions as homework and preparation for our work together the next day. Our spiritual investment in mission preparation is essential to our spiritual growth and effectiveness as missioners in the public square. There’s no quiz, so don’t worry!
Private and public power in focus
After prayer and good food, next, (re)discover our role as the Body of Christ—that is, thinking and acting like we are one Body. We’ll search out what it means to be the Body of Christ, by working together. Key New Testament passages give us our road map. Coupling that biblical map with our private and public skills and passions brings our focus together. Each of us has a call, special gifts of the Spirit, skills, aptitudes, knowledge, and training.
Understanding what these forms of power, individually and collectively, endows us with the passion and ability to do exponentially more to usher in the reign of God. Many tools exist to make this process easy to do, but also fun and inspiring. Find out about your private power and what you are passionate about. Learn how to join this power with your fellow congregants or group members to develop your public power for achieving greater justice in our society, in small ways and in big ways. Both are important.
The First Amendment and charitable work
American constitutional law is complex and can intimidate people, but it does not have to do that. We can create a fundamental understanding of what we can do as private citizens, and as groups. Rules do apply to tax-exempt charities especially when participating in election campaigns. Through case studies, we will break into small groups to work out fact patterns that we encounter. This grows our knowledge base and cultivates confidence about this important topic.
Lunch break
Identifying an issue to act on publicly
Did you know that you already are a theologian? By reflecting on your faith, the sacred texts, current events, and your natural reaction, you are thinking as a theologian. You do not need letters after your name to be a theologian. The disciples did not have theological degrees. They had their faith and a desire to be close to Jesus and imitate his ministry. You already are a political theologian, just as they were. When you speak about your faith in the public square, you are working as a public or political theologian. This section focuses on becoming comfortable with this fact and finding ways to act as a political theologian. Through some fun and enlightening exercises, we will demonstrate to each other how we already think like a political theologian.
Popcorning some local issues as first PT actions
As homework prior to our seminar, you were asked to brainstorm about a possible PT action for your group to adopt. Mother Marcia gave you some questions to help you generate ideas. Here, we will examine those suggestions and choose a few to work on together for the remainder of our seminar.
Q&A followed by benediction
Your take-aways from The Jerusalem Seminar:
Your take-aways from The Jerusalem Seminar will show you how we can make a difference, even if it seems like our social problems are too complex. Through the seminar, Mother Marica will prepare you to:
- Give a definition of political theology that is easy to remember for you and anyone who asks.
- Give deep-level descriptions of two foundational biblical stories about the primary political theologians of the Bible, Moses and Jesus.
- Explain our call to political theology by applying the Call of Moses, and Jesus’ Call to the followers on The Road to Emmaus to our mission.
- Clarify why it is vital that we understand our personal and group sources of power through personality inventories and asset-mapping.
- Identify special skills that you bring to Christ’s table to do mission through political theology.
- Articulate the meaning of working as the body of Christ using individual power and public power, skill, and passion.
- Describe what rights the First Amendment gives us and how we can use them as individuals and through charitable work.
- Explain why we are already political theologians.
- Identify a mission that your group can begin working on now through a brainstorming session. We appoint mission guides. Then we put everything together from the seminar to develop a mission and action steps.
- Conduct a debrief of our first mission led by the guides. We do this to learn what to repeat, what needs improvement and what should be scrapped.
The guides will have a one-hour telephone/online consultation with Mother Marcia to share the debrief and discuss next steps
In Jerusalem, our Redeemer returned to give his life for speaking truth to power in a dangerous world. He did so that we would have a better life and hope in the Resurrection. He did so without the protection of the First Amendment.
In The Jerusalem Seminar, we give our time, talent and tithe, to develop as powerful missioners and political theologians in our localities. We have so much to offer with the protection of the First Amendment . . .