{"id":1540,"date":"2012-07-03T19:00:51","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T02:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/gc2012\/?p=1540"},"modified":"2012-07-03T19:00:51","modified_gmt":"2012-07-04T02:00:51","slug":"butler-bass-believing-behaving-and-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/butler-bass-believing-behaving-and-belonging\/","title":{"rendered":"Butler Bass: Believing, Behaving, and Belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Religion AND Spirituality – or – Religion VS. Spirituality<\/strong>
\nBy Ellen Johanson with Pastor Alice Hedges<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Pacific Northwest Annual Conference welcomes Diana Butler Bass as she presents two teaching sessions focusing on hope, the perceptions, change, and developing community relationships.<\/em><\/p>\n

Diana Butler Bass presented a picture of the church in America in two teaching sessions held on Friday. She talked about religion, spirituality, church decline, opportunities for awakening the church and said that \u201cHope is elusive. Hope is not just a word. It is something we have to work on. It is something we do together.\u201d According to Bass, \u201cpeople love to talk about decline but fear talking about awakening\u201d which she defined as \u201cthe breaking in of God to our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

She spoke about events that occurred in the last decade which have changed Americans\u2019 perceptions of religion. Since 9\/11, the Roman Catholic child abuse scandal, mainline church disagreements over homosexuality, and the marriage of Evangelical beliefs with the Republican Party, many people have negative associations with religion. Violence, abuse, incivility\/exclusion, and political partisanship are now tied to faith beliefs.<\/p>\n

Bass also said that religion is associated with \u201cinstitutional church\u201d while spirituality is associated with experience and relationship. The basis of the institutional church is believing (creed and dogma), behaving (rules and techniques) and belonging (membership and choice). All of this results in people thinking that Christianity is about getting the answers right, living by the rules, and passing the test.<\/p>\n

When talking of spirituality the three B\u2019s (believing, behaving and belonging) are still important but their emphasis changes from what you believe to how you believe, from what you do to how you act and from what is your membership to who are you? This change results in a focus on relationships and community.<\/p>\n

People in the Pacific Northwest are comfortable with a \u201cboth-and\u201d focus on spirituality and religion rather than pitting the two against each other. Bass sees this as hopeful. Based on the standing ovation she received, the engaging questions posed by the audience and the many positive comments from laity and clergy who said they \u201cloved\u201d the presentation, \u201cenjoyed her stories\u201d and thought her delivery was \u201centertaining\u201d her message was a highlight of the day.<\/p>\n

\n

Ellen Johanson serves as the Regional Media Center Manager.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religion AND Spirituality – or – Religion VS. Spirituality By Ellen Johanson with Pastor Alice Hedges The Pacific Northwest Annual Conference welcomes Diana Butler Bass as she presents two teaching sessions focusing on hope, the perceptions, change, and developing community relationships. Diana Butler Bass presented a picture of the church in America in two teaching […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":1543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-conversation"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/BLOG_DianaButlerBass.jpg?fit=600%2C307&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-oQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1549,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions\/1549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}