Class 1
Time:  9:00am Sunday
Meeting Location: Library
Leader: Mary Lu Funyak

Current Study is "Getting It Together - Families and the Bible"  

Class 2
Time:  9:00am Sunday
Meeting Location: Parlor
Leader: George Betz

Current  study is Early Christianity: The Experience of the Divine

 This study features Luke Timothy Johnson, former Benedictine monk and author of 20 books, including Living Jesus.  As Robert R. Woodruff Professor of New Testament at the Candler School of Theology at Emery University, he has twice received the "On Eagle's Wings Excellence in Teaching" award. 

For the past 300 years, spiritual experiences have largely been forced underground by the "Age of Reason", with its focus on material reality.  But the Bible is filled with accounts of spiritual reality.  Familiar encounters with the divine include Moses and the flaming bush, Jacob's ladder, Nathan's call, Mary Magdalene and the gardener, tongues of fire in Acts, and Paul on the road to Damascus.  

In "Early Christianity: The Experience of the Divine", Professor Johnson maintains that the most familiar aspects of modern Christianity – its myths, institutions, and morality – are only its outer "husk".  In this study, he will take us on a journey to find the "kernel" of Christianity's appeal:  religious experience.  We will travel back to Christianity's origins to identify the elements that first made it appealing and which still hold the secret of its ability to attract and transform followers. 

In introducing early Christian religious experience, Professor Johnson looks at questions that are new and exciting in the study of religion.  Was Christ the founder of Christianity?  Was Christianity's early growth due to his life and works or to his followers' powerful experience of his death and resurrection, their sense of having been transformed by the Holy Spirit? 

There has always been a struggle between "official" Christianity – its institutions and political roles – and "popular" Christianity, which most directly connects Christians to religious experience.  In the last 15 years or so, new methods have begun to be applied to the study of Christianity.  Among these is the approach taken in this study.  With these techniques, so-called "popular" Christianity may well come to be understood as real Christianity. 

All adults are invited to enjoy a cup of Equal Exchange coffee and join in this new and challenging study.  The series, moderated by George Betz, will continue through May.  George has led adult Sunday discussions at UPC for more than 20 years.