By Thomas Schmidt
I’d heard of Marcus Borg and his work with Bob Funk and the Jesus Seminar, but never met him until Janet, my wife, led me to him. In January of 2007 Janet, after her ordination at Brite Seminary, visited me, renewing our path which began at TCU in the ’50’s. I presented her with a rose, she gave me Borgs’ “The Heart of Christianity.” A couple months later we attended a workshop with Marcus and John Dominic Crossan at Eden Seminary in St. Louis. I was immediately impressed with his humility, his scholarship, his adherence to scientific and historical methods. He asked about mutual friends at Brite. Since then we met him several times, and I have kept up the contact at lectures he gave at denomination conventions and locally here in the Northwest.
He was shocked when he heard of Janet’s death in 2012 and showed concern last spring when we talked in Seattle that her work with local congregations was continuing. That had been his major concern, one to which he dedicated his life. He saw the failure of local churches to teach the new (400 year old) cosmology, and the scientific methods, and the latest discoveries of ancient sources, at the local level as dangerous. He regarded that failure of leadership to be contributing to the church’s inability to maintain a believable story and a serviceable morality, contributing to views that were destroying our common humanity and our sustaining world. He was saddened about the continued control of the Christian faith by a reactionary, uneducated doctrinaire orthodoxy that continued to be under the influence not of the historical Jesus calling for a new kingdom in which we would love our neighbor, but under the influence of profit accumulation by the ruling classes of states and their temples.
That spirit, acceptance of science moderated by moral concerns, delivered with a great humility and love of poetry, is what I will remember and honor. And I will continue, in my small way, to continue that message to the laity in our faith, and the world faith that envelops us all. You are resurrected, Marcus.
