Brian McLaren recently posted his thoughts on voting, saying that the most important thing to him was what kind of a framing story each candidate lived by. In his book Everything Must Change, McLaren talks about the importance of the kind of framing story we live by. There are a few stories that keep popping up in human culture. Here are a few of the stories Brian mentioned when he visited the Bronx this year...

1. Domaination Story - legitimizes the powers that be.
2. Revolution Story - explains the situation for the oppressed and stirs them to revolt.
3. Scapegoating Story - explains the situation by blaming an outside party.
4. Withdrawl Story - justifies non-participation and isolation, rejecting other stories.

He said that in every one of these cases, Jesus offers a different story. For the domination story, Jesus subsitutes the story of humility and serving others. For the revolution story, Jesus subsitutes reconciliation and loving your enemies. For the scapegoating story Jesus subsitutes taking our own sin more seriously than the others. For the withdrawl story Jesus subsitutes incarnational love that isn't afraid to get it's hands dirty.

In Brian's post he suggests that John McCain is still living by an us/them story, much like the story of Domaination and the Scaptegoating story. In contrast Barack Obama is living out of a reconciliation narrative. Interesting thoughts. Check out the post, I think it's one of the most thoughtful endorsements of a candidate I've encountered.

Labels: Emerging Church, Politics, Theology

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So I've been on quite the blogging hiatus lately. I've been traveling quite a bit this summer, to the streets of Philadelphia with some amazing people for a weekend mission, to Kansas City for some youth ministry observation/spiritual retreat and of course to Malawi, Africa. Other than the travel I've tried to take it easy this summer and take some Sabbath before youth group kicks off again this Fall. I know that many of you have been waiting for me to blog about Africa, and believe me that's coming. I want to do it justice and be thoughtful in how I write those posts... so be patient, they're coming.

But that brings me to tonight's post. One thing I inherited from my parents was an intense interest in politics. And despite my intention to abstain from this election, I'm still watching a lot of political coverage and am interested in the race. Last week Kara and I watched Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention and were very impressed by it. Barack's vision for America is one that seems healthy for the country and fair to "the least of these." The last part of the speech where he spoke about moving beyond the partisan extremisim and towards a shared common purpose was SO GOOD.

And as a political junkie and one who is committed to being fair and non-partisan I tuned in tonight to see Sara Palin and others speak. I thought Huckabee's speech was fair and decent for the most part. Huckabee has been consistent and dependable in not getting into dirty politics and I respect him for it. Romney and Giuliani were another story. I felt like their speeches were the kind of dishonest partisan speeches that are more demonizing the opponent than speaking about what they're for... and I'm so tired of it. I'm tired of it when Democrats do it and I'm tired of it when Republicans do it. Because Romney's speech came first it's the one that I was the most upset with so I thought I'd just vent publicly a bit tonight. I'm including a few of his most troubling quotes and my responses to them here. His speech is in red and is indented.

Click here for the full text of Mitt Romney's speech.

Last week, the Democrats talked about change. But let me ask you - what do you think Washington is right now, liberal or conservative? Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitution rights? It's liberal!

The people in Guantanamo Bay are HUMAN BEINGS. Human beings, who like Americans deserve the right to habeas corpus. How can we ever tell if those human beings are terrorists if they are never charged and are never allowed to see the evidence against them? Is Mitt Romney against trying suspected criminals? Does Mitt Romney think you are guilty as long as George W. Bush thinks you're guilty? Does he think that if you aren't born in the United States you should not be "rewarded" with basic human rights?

And I'll say this, YES, it IS liberal to extend all human beings basic human rights. It IS liberal to try suspected criminals instead of capturing people from all over the world and then locking them up indefinitely. Those are liberal principles. Principles the United States was founded on.

Is a Congress liberal or conservative that stops nuclear power plants and offshore drilling, making us more and more dependent on Middle East tyrants? It's liberal!

It seems to me that investing in renewable, green energy is the best way to break the addiction to foreign oil... and OIL in general. I don't see Republicans wanting to break the addiction to oil, just the addiction to oil from other places. Drilling offshore will only bring that oil online in TEN YEARS. It's a commitment to a dying form of energy in a time when we need to be moving towards the future of energy.

Is government spending - excluding inflation - liberal or conservative if it doubles since 1980? It's liberal!

Does spending billions and billions on invading foreign countries factor into government spending? Does spending 50% of the nation's budget on the military factor into government spending? Let's just be honest about the ENTIRE budget. If we weren't spending billions on new ways to kill people we'd have enough to pay teachers more AND lower taxes.

We need change all right - change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington - throw out the big government liberals and elect John McCain!

Who has been running all three branches of the government for 6 of the past 8 years? Hmmm, it's conservatives. Now they only have 2 of the 3 branches of government and they're complaining as if they were in exile!

They think we have the biggest and strongest economy in the world because of our government. They're wrong. America is strong because of the ingenuity and entrepreneurship and hard work of the American people.

Straw man argument. I've never heard a Democrat say that, and Mitt Romney is not a mind-reader.

We strengthen our people and our economy when we preserve and promote opportunity. Opportunity is what lets hope become reality.

Yes, when it's promoting opportunity for citizens. We don't need any more "opportunity" for Exxon.

Opportunity expands when there is excellence and choice in education, when taxes are lowered, when every citizen has affordable, portable health insurance, and when constitutional freedoms are preserved.

Constitutional freedoms? Like the ones Bush has trampled on?

Liberals would replace opportunity with dependency on government largesse. They grow government and raise taxes to put more people on Medicaid, to take work requirements out of welfare, and to grow the ranks of those who pay no taxes at all. Dependency is death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity.

Straw man argument again. Obama has worked on programs moving people from welfare to work.

It's time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother!

Big Brother? Like wire-tapping? Sounds like Bush to me.

Did you hear any Democrats talk last week about the threat from radical, violent Jihad? Republicans believe that there is good and evil in the world. Ronald Reagan called-out the Evil Empire. George Bush labeled the terror-sponsor states the Axis of Evil.

Democrats talk about "fighting terrorism" but no, they don't use your unhelpful and ever evolving scare-tactic labels. Implying that Democrats don't talk about fighting terrorism just because they don't say "radical violent Jihad" or "extremist militant Islam" or whatever is misleading.

And at Saddleback, after Barack Obama dodged and ducked every direct question, John McCain hit the nail on the head: radical violent Islam is evil, and he will defeat it!

Dodging and ducking every direct question? More like being thoughtful and reflective... and humble. And seriously, John McCain is going to defeat a religious movement? Are you kidding me?

Republicans prefer straight talk to politically correct talk!

Then why does the Defense Department call dead Iraqi civilians "collateral damage?"

To this we are all dedicated and I firmly believe, by the providence of the Almighty, that we will succeed.

President McCain and Vice President Palin will keep America as it has always been - the hope of the world.

In the span of two sentences Romney invokes God and then says that America, this country at this point in time is the "hope of the world." (Which by the way Obama says too) That is just so wrong. The Kingdom of God is the hope of the world, and the Kingdom of God is NOT the United States. When Romney and others say this, they're worshiping themselves.

All this devotion to America and the flag is in effect a way to worship ourselves and worship what we stand for. It's idolatry.

Labels: Politics, Theology

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It's election year and once again I find myself rethinking what it means to be Christian in the midst of presidential campaign season. But before I get into what I'm currently thinking I'd like to take just a moment to rewind and give you a quick history of me, my faith and presidential elections. I realize it's a short history but nonetheless...

2000
This was the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in. In the primary I was rooting for Dan Quayle and in the general election I voted for George W. Bush. And let me tell you, I voted FOR Bush. It wasn't an ambivalent vote or a "lesser of two evils" vote. I believed in George W. Bush. I thought he was going to be great. I had a big cut out of his head taped down in my CD case along with other pop-culture paraphernalia. While I never saw Al Gore as "unChristian" (he's Baptist) I definitely understood Bush to be the "Christian candidate." This was my freshman year in college and I was still deeply influenced by a fundamentalist understanding of Christianity. As I walked through the halls of the Christian ministry department at my college I saw that one professors had a Clinton/Gore bumper sticker on their door. It shocked me. I had never encountered a Christian who was "pro-Clinton." Another professor had a sign in his office saying "Jesus was a Liberal." At this point in my faith and in my college carreer such moments were logic-defying for me.

2004
My second go-round found me much less optimistic than before. My views on politics had changed drastically thanks to Christians like John Howard Yoder - a Mennonite pacifist, Stanley Hauerwas - a Methodist theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer - an underground Lutheran pastor in Nazi Germany... and many others. I no longer had any "hope" in the American government, I was becoming more and more enchanted with God's kingdom and God's restoration of creation and at the same time less and less impressed with the American kingdom and it's attempts at fixing the world by dominating it. During this election the driving issues for me were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I shrugged my shoulders and voted for Kerry. I didn't expect Kerry to buy into God's radical plan of change and shalom but he was the "lesser of two evils" from my perspective. So I half-heartedly tossed a vote his way in 2004. Just FYI, Nader wasn't on the ballot in Missouri.

2008
Here we go again, round three. As I've posted before, I don't plan on voting this time. Partly because I was getting really excited about Obama. I kept finding myself really hoping he would become president and bring some fundamental change to our country. It scared me. It was easy to get caught up in the hoopla of Obamania... and lose sight who I really believe will bring fundamental change in the world. Thanks to Obama's subtle shift to the right, I've become much more skeptical of him and am frustrated with enough that I no longer have such temptations. This kind of detached skepticism is where I would want to be as a Christian in the voting process, but at least this year I'm still planning to give away my vote to someone who is voiceless.

More and more I'm beginning to appreciate the political perspective of people like Dr. Martin Luther King. His idea was, don't endorse anybody. Endorsing a candidate just makes it easy for them to count you as a part of their base and then move on and ignore you. Instead, King advocated inviting politicians on both sides to endorse your movement, your platform and to do so all through the campaign and on through their time in office. I think this way guards us from the danger of getting yanked around by parties and also guards us against buying into their agenda as a compromise for the influence we think we have.

Shane Claiborne has a great article about this way of engaging politics as a Christian called "Advise Everyone, Endorse No One." Check it out here. I think Shane's take on it is a healthy blend of King's emphasis on being influential without being co-opted and with a robust skepticism of American politics in light of the Kingdom of God.

Zack Exley over at Revolution in Jesusland recently posted about McLaren and the Matthew 25 Network's endorsement of Obama. While I'm not one to champion Christian groups endorsing (I like Shane's approach better), this is the way to do it if they must.

Labels: Life, Politics, Theology

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Over the years I've encountered several metaphors for sin and how it separates us from God. Here are two common ones.

Sin is a giant chasm that separates us from God.
Sin is a giant wall that separates us from God.

These metaphors are usually accompanied by commentary about how "God can't handle sin," or how "God just can't be in the same room as sin." While I understand the language of separation when talking about sin, I'm finding these metaphors really unhelpful because they limit God, and inevitably make sin the stronger force. I don't think any of us want to say that, but these metaphors imply that. As if to say that sin is something you could use to ward off God, or that sin is God's Kryptonite. I think what we really want to be saying is that sin cannot handle God, or that sin couldn't bear to be in the same room as God, etc.

In light of that, help me to think of some new metaphors that would speak of the separation caused by sin but still have a robust theology of God's dominion. What metaphor would you use?

Labels: Theology, Youth Ministry

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Brian McLaren was in town last night speaking about his new book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope. It was an excellent presentation, one of those "big idea" kinds of presentations that just build and build. I thought he did a great job of packing all of these concepts into a 1 1/2 hour presentation. While I felt like I was keeping up with him, tracking with where he was going, I still left with my head spinning. There was just so much that he covered and the implications are innumerable.

Later in the evening Brian joined us at the Princeton Emergent Cohort and we were also joined by the North Jersey Emergent Cohort. We packed 20+ people into a small corner of the Yankee Doodle Tap Room. It was a great time of informal conversation and we picked Brian's brain about Narrative Theology, Stanley Hauerwas, Radical Orthodoxy, global economies and local economic practices, Wendell Barry, Plato, eschatology, N.T. Wright, Andrew Perriman, terrorism, the presidential election, pastoral care, dealing with conflict in the local church and the writing process. It was a great conversation with a great thinker.

I've loved all of Brian's books that I've read so far but I had Everything Must Change on the backburner. No more. After last night I want to dig deeper into what Brian's getting at in this book because I think it's going to be incredibly important for the church as we quit playing "intramural games" as he put it, and start addressing how the Gospel frames and narrates our lives in such a way that we are sent into the world in a posture of serving, reconciling, compassion and healing.

If this stuff excites you like it does me, be sure to check out the Deep Shift tour. Brian will be in the Bronx May 2-3rd. If you can't make it to the tour be sure to check out everythingmustchange.org where people are contributing and dreaming of ways to change the world one act at a time.

Labels: Discipleship, Emerging Church, Life, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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As I've been preparing for an upcoming series on sexuality in our High School ministry I've been trying to read some fresh stuff that engages sexuality from a theological point of view with special attention towards discipleship. I've been pretty underwhelmed by so much of the church's teaching on sexuality for so long. I've used curriculum that I felt went straight for the "what's over the line" question and felt schizophrenic in it's mixture of guilt and affirmation of sex. As I teach on sex I wanted to really do an excellent job of engaging sexuality, theology and discipleship this time around. So two books immediately hit the top of my "must read" list. 1. Rob Bell's Sex God and 2. Lauren F. Winner's Real Sex. I've heard Winner speak on the topic of chastity in a break out session at Youth Specialties this past year and she was great.

I'm really glad I took the time to read Bell's book before engaging this subject with the youth at our church. Bell's style of writing is so conversational that it belies the deep theological work he's doing in this book. Bell's catch phrase quickly becomes "this is really about that." And over and over again he makes connections between sexuality and spirituality and about how "this" is really all about "that." Bell's definition of sexuality alone was extremely helpful.

"For many, sexuality is simply what happens between two people involving physical pleasure. But that's only a small percentage of what sexuality is. Our sexuality is all of the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other, and with God (42)."

Hmm, sexuality is all the ways we try to reconnect? That means that even the celibate can practice and express their sexuality. And on the very next page Bell makes this point saying,

"Some of the most sexual people I know are celibate.

They sleep alone.

They have chosen to give themselves to lots of people, to serve and give and connect their lives with beautiful and worthy causes (43)."

Bell takes this understanding of sexuality to deconstruct our culture's definition of sexuality. Some of the most overt expressions of "sexuality" in our world are the exact opposite of real sexuality. To illustrate this Bell describes the infamous "Red Light District" in Amsterdam where women sit in store front windows advertising themselves for prostitution. The transaction that happens between a man who goes to one of these prostitutes and the woman herself is just that, a transaction. Physical sex happens, but there is no reconnection. Indeed this kind of sex only serves to further divide and isolate the two parties. The man uses the woman for his own physical gratification and the woman falls deeper into the darkness of her situation. This is the exact opposite of two human beings reconnecting, and we still call it sex.

Bell's treatment of pre-marital sex is good. As far as I remember he never even used the term "pre-marital sex." Instead Bell contrasts "taking your clothes off" and "getting naked." Anyone can take their clothes off and have sex, but in the end this is not true reconnection. Real reconnection happens in physical sex when both parties can be naked with one another. Being naked is about way more than taking off clothes, it's about trust, it's about security, it's about accepting the other person with all their faults and still loving them. It's about being willing to die for the other person and the promise to remain faithful. Getting naked requires the commitment of marriage, the commitment to serve one another as Christ did the church. As always, "this" is really about "that."

I could go on and on... needless to say, I thought it was a great book.

Labels: Books, Discipleship, Emerging Church, Theology, Youth Ministry

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A few days ago I finished Jesus for President and I've already lent it out to the first person on the growing waiting list. What a magnificent book! If you went to seminary and constantly had your nose stuck in a Hauerwas or Yoder book but wished you could lend a more accessible version to someone... this is that book. It isn't dumbed down, let me be clear about that, it's just that this book was really written for the church. This isn't the kind of conversation that takes place in the ethereal upper layers of academia, this is the best Kingdom-of-God theology taken to the streets. And what would we expect? Shane & Co aren't professors, they're subversive prophets living in the abandoned places of the empire. Making their own clothes, living with the poor, dumpster diving for food... always pointing to Jesus. They are living at the margins pointing us to Jesus. They are shouting with their lives (and this book) that the America we live in is a pitiful and fallen Kingdom not worth our allegiance.

The Eagle is fake, the Eagle is dead.

Follow the Lamb!

Labels: Books, Discipleship, Emerging Church, Military, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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Last week I picked up a book that I've been looking forward to reading for several months now. I didn't even know that it had been released until I was wondering the isles of my local Barnes & Noble and bumped into the display for Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw's new book Jesus For President. I'm about a third of the way through it now and it's everything I was hoping it would be. Claiborne & Co have taken theologians and biblical scholars close to my own heart and made them scandalously accessible to an general audience. The book (so far) is tackling our own ideas about empire by taking a look at God and the people of God and their relationship to empire. The book is a creative mish-mash of art and prose and Kingdom Propaganda. This book provokes us towards a Christian imagination of politics and calls us to seriously rethink where our hope and allegiance really lay. Go pick it up now!

Labels: Books, Discipleship, Emerging Church, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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Labels: Christian Time, Theology

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by wendell berry

What hard travail God does in death!
He strives in sleep, in our despair,
And all flesh shudders underneath
The nightmare of His sepulcher.

The earth shakes, grinding its deep stone;
All night the cold wind heaves and pries;
Creation strains sinew and bone
Against the dark door where He lies.

The stem bent, pent in seed, grows straight
And stands. Pain break in song. Surprising
The merely dead, graves fill with light
Like opened eyes. He rests in rising.

(from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, p. 25)

Thanks to Church and PoMo Culture for the Wendell Berry poem.

Labels: Christian Time, Theology

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A few weeks ago we hosted a youth worker training night for the Middle School and High School shepherds at our church. Mike King was gracious enough to come facilitate the training for us. Mike is the President of YouthFront, an interdenominational youth ministry assisting organization. They put on a lot of concerts, community service events, camps, prayer retreats and the like to be a service to youth ministries in the Kansas City area. But another focus of YouthFront is training youth workers and that happens all over North America, primarily through their branch called SonLife. Both Mike and the President of SonLife, Chris Folmsbee, have recently written some amazing books for youth ministry, Presence Centered Youth Ministry and A New Kind of Youth Ministry respectively.

What's funny is that I didn't meet Mike during some big youth event or camp while I was in Kansas City, I met him at Seminary. Mike's in his 50's, he's the President and CEO of an incredibly successful youth ministry organization but he still has a passion for learning and thinking theologically about ministry. If you pick up his book you'll see what I mean. So it was a pleasure to have Mike come and do some training with our youth shepherds. He was very encouraging and affirming about the work that's happening in our church. It's always good to be with friends. Later Mike had breakfast with some of our staff at the Princetonian Diner and after that he and I went to Small World Coffeehouse to hang out until he got picked up on his way to visit Ian Cron and the youth workers at Trinity in Greenwich, CT.

What a great week.

Labels: Discipleship, Emerging Church, Life, Theology, Youth Ministry

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I just reviewed a chapter of John D. Caputo's new book What Would Jesus Deconstruct? over at Church at Postmodern Culture.  If you're into that kind of stuff go check it out here.

Labels: Books, Theology

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Chris Folmsbee presented in one of the "Super Seminars." His was all about a narrative approach to youth ministry. As a youth pastor who has been deeply shaped by narrative theology and is in turn beginning to use narrative theology in youth ministry I was naturally drawn to his seminar. That and Chris brought his ministry SonLife to Kansas City and now works with my friend Mike King at YouthFront.

Chris really hit on a lot of the same ground Lauren Winter did in her chastity seminar on the foundational idea that we have to start with the story of God before we ever get to sexual ethics (or whatever).

In a similar vein Chris helped us to see that the foundation of youth ministry is the Story of God. On that foundation is built the next level, Theology, what we say about God based on His story. Then comes the Identity & Calling, or what we can say about ourselves based on the Story and who God is... and the implications of what that calls us to. Then that calling or implication moves towards a Rule of Life, how do we approach life in light of the Story, in light of who God is, in light of who we understand that calls us to be. Then... and only then, can we talk about behaviors and practices in a way that is truly rooted in the gospel.

Chris's critique of youth ministry is a good one, we have for too long started with the behaviors and practices... what good kids should be like, etc. and then tried to get to the story of God from there. While it's well intentioned, it gives no context to why of all those behaviors and practices might be important. This was the same point I believe that Lauren Winter was making in her seminar on chastity, we have to do the hard work of weaving the gospel in to the lives of kids before we can start talking about concrete practices of the Christian life.

We need to be honest enough to say that Christian living isn't just about "common sense." The stuff we do is weird and odd and while it might seem really wise and good to an older generation the younger generation needs to be brought along to find themselves in the Story of God before we can ask them to live like Christians.

That involves a risk on our part. It means we work harder at weaving the gospel into the lives of our students before we try to instill "Christian ethics" into them, because without the foundation of the Story of God those practices will be rooted in a very shallow soil and inevitably will wash away when they leave "youth ministry" behind.

Labels: Discipleship, Theology, Youth Ministry

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Shane Claiborne was tonight's general session speaker. These speakers are usually the "big guns" and are charismatic, charming, well polished, impressive... you know, the kind of speakers that make you wish you were way better at speaking or preaching. And as we all know Shane Claiborne just wrote a book in the past two years that has just been hugely important for so many of us. It's turned this little-known servant of Jesus from the rough part of Philly and made him somewhat of a Christian rock-star. People are calling him our generation's Mother Teresa, etc, etc. I love Shane's heart, I love his vision, I love what he's about. And Shane is all about Jesus. Tonight he showed us that, while simultaneously begging the question if we are indeed all about Jesus. You see Shane was flown in here to be tonight's "big gun speaker" and after about 30 seconds of intro, playing with fire and a joke, Shane just launched into the Sermon on the Mount... and I mean ALL OF IT. Then he ends with "Wow, that was the greatest sermon ever preached. Jesus give us the courage to live it out."

Done.

Exit stage right.

There was an interesting reaction. On the one hand a lot of people are thinking, what?? he got paid the big bucks and got center stage to just go up and read from the bible? I could have done that. Then immediately following those judgmental thoughts came the reflection on just how hyped up we get on "good speakers" and how distant Jesus' words have become to us when we hear the greatest sermon ever preached and find ourselves thinking we didn't get what we came for. You could feel the awkwardness rise in the air as people began to wonder to themselves "was that really IT?" and then a reverence fall over the crowd as we realized what we had just thought and how pitiful we can be at times.

Labels: Discipleship, Life, Theology, Youth Ministry

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This morning I was flipping through the channels and came across TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network). TBN has a special place in my heart, ever since two summers ago when I was living with Brian Schafer in a pre-cable tv apartment and one of the only over-the-air channels we got was TBN. It was so much fun to watch because it was always so incredibly bad. It was like watching The Colbert Report... for Christians. I highly recommend this by the way, watch TBN, but don't get all riled up and take it seriously. Instead, pretend it's religious satire (a la The Door) and you'll have a hoot.

Okay, back to my story. I come across TBN and pause just long enough to see that Ann Coulter is on "Behind the Scenes" talking about her new book. I've posted a section of the interview at the bottom of this post. At one point the interviewer asks about her own background in the church. She talks about growing up in a Presbyterian church in Connecticut and how her mom didn't like the "political" sermons her pastor would preach against Vietnam. They would later leave the church later in favor of one that wasn't "political." Coulter's critique of her "political" pastor was simply, "that's not what most Christians want." The way she talks about it her mother wanted a church that would offer some kind of benign emotional therapy and nice singing, but never denounce a war. Apparently Coulter has been critiqued by some bloggers for not actually going to church, she responded by saying that 1. She does go to church but that 2. liberals are so "biblically ignorant" that they don't realize that Christians don't have to go to church. We don't have to go to church, Coulter contends, because Christ died for our sins.

What I found so surprising was just how mainstream Coulter was for a few seconds there. Coulter's understanding of the Gospel is so shaped by an American Civil Religion (coming out of... liberalism!) that God's concern is just about him and you. God doesn't get involved in politics unless we invoke him for our own cause, and there really is no need for the church since it's all about you and God to begin with. These two theological commitments I think a great deal of American Christians share with Ann Coulter.

For all of Coulter's talk of "being biblically literate" she apparently doesn't pick up on the Missio Dei (Mission of God) to renew all of creation, to redeem the world (not just you). The redemption of the world being an incredibly political kind of thing, especially because God says this redemption will take place in the life, death and resurrection of his Son and not through the war on terrorism, state welfare, the United Nations or even "taking back our Country for God." Secondly, Coulter apparently misses large swaths of scripture where God calls a people (plural) into covenant to follow him, to be a blessing to the world, and to be the vehicle for God to come and dwell among us. As the church we are the body of Christ on earth, we live in continuity with Israel as we live out the mission of God in the world. Just one reason why it is important for Christians to be a part of the church. To be a part of the church means that people like Ann would have to take communion with "liberals." Church is the place where God destroys the walls we put up between each other and since Ann's primary goal in life seems to be building those walls, it's just more convenient for her to take the "just me and God" route.

Labels: Civil Religion, Politics, Theology

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Now that I'm working in a church again I've started to think about this whole "tax exempt status" our churches have. Tax exemption doesn't really sit right with me. Here's why tax exemption makes me raise an eyebrow. I had a conversation with a pastor friend of mine several years ago about why he supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. In the end, the constitutional ban on same sex marriage had to do with tax exemption. That was his last straw. "You see," he said, "if they legalize gay marriage, they can force the church to start marrying gay people. And if we say no... they'll take away our tax exempt status!"

There's a big difference between the Christian rite of marriage performed by the church and that legal thing you get at the county courthouse, so I don't care too much about what's in the constitution concerning marriage, because the constitution does not determine the sacred rites of the church. I wouldn't oppose a constitutional amendment against being resurrected from the dead either, because I think God (and not the constitution) gets to determine what will and will not be for his church.

Okay, so back to tax-exemption. Does it make anyone else feel slightly icky that the church is put in this position of "owing" something to the state? I sometimes feel like the tax-exemption thing is like the "favor" that a mafia don has done for a church, and our response naturally is to not make a fuss when the don does something that doesn't sit right with us, out of our gratitude for his favor. And this is exactly how it works, when a church starts getting "to political" there are always threats of taking away the all sacred tax-exempt status. Well so what?! Martin Luther King Jr. had some pretty political things to say once upon a time. The gospel is always reaching out into culture and stirring up trouble. What if we were to scared to follow the gospel into the world because we thought it might mean we have to start paying taxes?

Now, to argue the other side for just a second... I certainly don't want a portion of my tithe money going to build fighter jets and bombs. But is this "innocence" worth the private and non-political box that the nation sticks the church in? There's got to be a better way.

What do you think? Are you for or against the tax-exempt status for churches?

Labels: Civil Religion, Politics, Theology

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Kara and I walked over to our favorite local theatre last night to catch the Invasion. Thanks to Rusty for the heads up on this film several weeks ago. The Invasion was an interesting thriller playing in the schoolyard somewhere between zombie movies and twilight zone episodes about space aliens. This alien invasion/zombie/virus outbreak thriller doesn't wait long to let the cat out of the bag, you know exactly what's going on within the first part of the film but that only serves to unnerve you all the more for the duration of the film. (spoiler alert) The crux of the problem are these microscopic alien spores that attach themselves to your cells, effectively hijacking your DNA and therefore you, without changing anything about your appearance or memory. This process happens during REM sleep after you have come in contact with one of the spores (through a kiss, a handshake, or you know... getting pinned down and having your face puked on!). What becomes one of the creepiest elements of the film is the nonchalant way in which the ever increasing number of aliens calmly "hunt" down people, infect them and then let them loose, knowing that all it will take to bring the prey to "their side" is a little bit of sleep. The infected show no emotion and act like automatons, it feels at times like a massive case of group-think a la 1984, and as we learn later (spoiler alert) that's exactly what's happening. The infected are still human, although mentally in some kind of sleep like state, and the aliens have a very real kind of mental connectedness to one another. As one of them says towards the end describing his own existence,

"I am still Ben, but I am also so much more. I am connected to everyone else. There is no more "other."

What gave depth to this otherwise great zombie/sci-fi thriller flick was the commentary on human nature and it's relationship to theodicy (the problem of evil). As we begin to see in the film, rather than the infection causing worldwide chaos and war to break out it actually leads to worldwide peace. At one point we see George W. Bush and Hugo Chávez shaking hands as they sign a treaty together. However, the cost of this kind of peace and eradication of poverty is something like joining the Borg. The cost of being truly human - the presence of evil in the world. A doctor at the end of the film is asked if the infection was eradicated and he replies with the last lines of the film,

"Just take a look at a newspaper. For better or worse, we're human again."

This understanding of human nature, that evil is essential to our nature, is common in our culture. We often hear the phrase "I'm only human," used to justify terrible wrongs we commit against one another. But what does our understanding of Christ's incarnation tell us about human nature? It seems as though in Christ we can begin to understand that our bent towards evil is less-than human, it is indeed a betrayal of our humanity, and the way in which Jesus lived is what it looks like to be truly human.

So I'll end with some questions for us to discuss. How might that understanding (re)narrate the underlying assumptions of the Invasion? How does this understanding still resist the automaton alternative of a complete loss of individuality as the way towards living in peace?

Labels: Film, Theology

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Last night CNN and YouTube hosted an interesting debate between the democratic candidates for president. It was an interesting format. Rather than having the moderator, or audience members ask pre-screened and predictable questions CNN pre-screened 38 YouTube questions that were just slightly less predictable than usual. At least it was creative.

I blog today not to swoon over some candidate or talk about how "well" one candidate did in the debate but rather to examine a very powerful American myth we saw last night and what happened when one man challenged that myth. The myth is this, American soldiers never die in vain. To suggest that soldiers die (or have died) for no good reason cuts across many other strongly held American myths and calls into question the legitimacy of violence as a means of solving conflict. To suggest that American soldiers die in vain is to suggest that war is a mistake, or worse, sinful. And yet war, more than most things, is the glue that holds these American myths together.

And last night Mike Gravel said that soldiers (both Vietnamese and American) had died in vain during Vietnam. He continued to say that soldiers dying in Iraq today are dying for no good reason. (click for the Video here) Mike Gravel challenged the pervasive American myth that it is impossible for an American soldier to die in vain. It took only seconds for many of the other candidates to rush to the defense of this myth, Barak Obama said "I never think that troops like those coming out of the Citadel who do their mission for country are dying in vain." John Edwards said, "I don't think any of our troops die in vain when they go and do the duty that has been given to them by the Commander in Chief." After the debates Chris Dodd attacked the premise again, saying he was offended by such a statement.

As a Christian I don't hold the same assumptions that American soldiers can never die in vain. Some are saying that today we are living in the Pax Americana, or "American Peace," a notion that America's military and economic dominance is creating world peace, an idea borrowed from ancient Rome and the Pax Romana. But ancient Christians rejected the Pax Romana as a sad and twisted parody of the peace of Jesus Christ. In the same way, "American Peace" is based upon military violence, war and economic manipulation of the poor. This is a far cry from the peace of Jesus Christ, and so when American soldiers die for the Pax Americana... what in the end are they dying for? When America sends men and women to kill and die for a false "peace" that will be exposed by God and replaced by the real and lasting nonviolent peace of Jesus Christ how can we understand anything other than cooperating with God in the peace of his Kingdom today as anything other than working in vain?

We as Christians must not get caught up in these American myths, we must be people of the truth. We must tell the truth. And the truth is, God invaded this world through the quiet and humble birth of a Jewish boy named Jesus. From that day forth a Kingdom of peace has been breaking into this world. That Kingdom of God is the way of the future, but it is also happening today. We Christians are called to live today the way God would have us all live in his Kingdom. We are witnesses to the world that peace is possible now, and we are people who can say such bold things and act on them because we believe in resurrection.

There is no lasting peace other than the Kingdom of God. So when people die or kill for a false peace what can it be other than to kill or die in vain?

Labels: Politics, Theology

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I know it's been a few days since I've posted on EP but I felt as though I should really give Sharon Huey's sermon (click for the mp3) some time to digest and work on me before posting a sentence or two of summary and then moving on.

Sharon's sermon spoke deeply to many of us. As clumsy as it may be, I'll try to sum up a bit of what she had to say that's been at work in me of late. Those of us who meet at EP every summer tend to lean towards the "radical" and the "revolutionary" streams within this family called church. Our heroes are people like the Berrigan Brothers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, MLK Jr., Oscar Romero, etc. We tell stories of revolutionary saints, people of God who would not bow to the patriotism of their day but sought to be radically obedient to God and work for justice and mercy in their communities. When we think of Jesus we don't think of a "nice" guy who spoke in sound bytes easily turned into daily calendars by Hallmark. We think of the wild-eyed Son of God, on a mission, ready to overturn tables and smash the status quo.

But the beatitude passage from Matthew 5 that Sharon shared with us reveals the kind of people who showed up for Jesus' revolution. To be blunt, nobodies. Jesus' revolution wasn't made up of the steely and hardened Kingdom fighting crew we sometimes wish the church was made from these days. It was the awkward disciples, who didn't always "get" Jesus, the people on the margins of society, the poor, the sick.

And yet how often do we as pastors, or laity groan because our churches are filled with people who just don't "get" Jesus, people with problems, people with crap in their lives. We sometimes wish for the "lean, mean revolutionary force" for the Kingdom of God and are stuck with these embarrassingly human people. Sharon reminds us that the Kingdom being made of these people is the revolution.

Some of us have been a part of churches that really embodied a revolutionary Kingdom of God kind of life. But then we move on and run into these "embarrassingly human" churches that just don't "get" Jesus like we think we do. And this is what I've been mulling over. Because I feel this frustration deeply for both good and bad reasons. I feel this frustration because I long, like many of us, to see the church shed its allegiances to poisonous civil religion, rampant materialism, and the suburbification of the Gospel. But all too often I allow this frustration to be a form of self-righteousness rather than about a longing for God's spirit to take hold of the church. I forget that if the church wasn't made up of losers who don't come close to being the kind of Kingdom revolutionaries like MLK or the Berrigan bros that I wouldn't be a part of this family either. I forget that discipleship is a long road and not a status of those who "get" it.

Labels: Discipleship, Life, Theology

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Today was day one of the 2007 Ekklesia Project gathering. This is my third year attending the annual conference and it really has come to resemble something of an extended family of sorts. I've often been asked to describe what EP is or what EP does and it has been difficult to sum up in a short mission statement what we really are all about... but we know it when we see it. As Phil Kenneson said tonight, we're not quite an academic conference and we're not entirely a "church" conference although those both seem to characterize a lot of what we do. Perhaps, as Phil suggested, we're more like a family reunion. These EP conferences are about friendships between pastors, theologians and laity who share convictions about a few core things. Among these are the conviction that as disciples we are first and foremost a people defined by Jesus (not America, not the Denver Broncos, not our Alma Matter, etc), also that real discipleship must take place within community and we share the conviction that we are a people formed and shaped by many things, so the church must be active in faithfully forming disciples in the way of Jesus. This was just a little bit of an introduction to tonight's talk by Phil.

I'll post more about Sharon Huey's sermon from earlier in the afternoon. I'm posting a link to all three audio recordings from today here as well.


Brent's Opening Comments.mp3

Afternoon Worship.mp3

What Are We Doing Here.mp3

Labels: Discipleship, Life, Theology

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Kara and I walked down the street to the theater last night to see Evan Almighty the sequel to Bruce Almighty starring Steve Carell. Okay, so being a Christian makes watching "God movies" a complicated experience. On the one hand there is this instinct to hold the film at arm's length and critique every frame that doesn't match up with my own theology. Being a seminary grad makes this all the more appealing. Then there's this other side of me that really wants to see something good, something of real value in a film like this. So I've usually come to movies with the bar set very very low for theological orthodoxy. Doing so means that I've been surprised a time or two by how many things a "God film" got right. Case in point, Bruce Almighty's theme of God's non-coercive love for us.

So before I get into what I thought Evan Almighty did right I'll just lay out a few of my beefs lest anyone think I'm an uneducated heretic. Okay, God in Evan is only vaguely the Trinitarian God of Jesus. God here is pictured as more or less the kind of nice dude we Americans tend to think of... kinda (I'll take issue with this later). God's "mission" for humanity is incredibly easy for Americans to swallow: ARK (Acts of Random Kindness). Loving one's enemies and sacrificing creature comforts to be better stewards of creation are hardly "random" acts of "kindness" but are disciplines lived out in community. But you know what, Stanley Hauerwas didn't write the screenplay for Evan Almighty so I approached it like he didn't.

Whew. Now that I've sufficiently "distanced" myself from the theology of the film and hopefully convinced you that I am not dropping out of Orthodox Christianity and enlisting in Evan-anity let me tell you what I think this film got right. By the way, thanks to Scott for writing a similar post.

1. God loves his creation. Creation meaning ALL of creation, not just us humans. God is concerned with the lack of stewardship of plants and animals at the expense of human consumption.

2. God is funny. God is a God of laughter.

3. God is amused by what we seem to think are really important "plans" we have for this life. God is more concerned with our obedience to his will and joining in the Missio Dei (Mission of God) than with our image, our job, etc. God is content that we makes ourselves foolish by joining his mission. For more on this check out Scot McKnight's post about Missional Jesus.

4. God loves everybody and is about the business of redeeming relationships, corrupt political systems, and even urban sprawl. God acts to redeem.

5. God interprets the scriptures. God actually reads Genesis allegorically rather than scientifically.

6. God does not "zap us with fuzzy feelings" but gives us opportunity to practice love/patience/etc.

7. God is the main actor in the events that transpire but does so through people (like Evan) who forsake themselves to follow God's lead. God works through broken, fallen people.

8. God smiles when fathers put their family before their careers.

Those are just a few of the surprising theological themes in Evan Almighty that I thought were profoundly true. So go check it out. Realize that there are going to be some shallow or cheesy moments that don't live up to our theology and that the Missio Dei can't be summed up by "Acts of Random Kindness." But go with an open mind, this film might just surprise you with how much it does get right.

Labels: Film, Theology

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This weekend I flew out to Doylestown, PA to interview at a Methodist church for a youth ministry position. It was a really encouraging experience. I met with several passionate adult leaders and students over the course of two days and had some very exciting conversations about youth ministry and how God is leading youth ministry in some very exciting and creative directions.

On my flights to and from the east-coast I was finally able to read Mike King's book, Presence-Centered Youth Ministry. I met Mike two years ago here in Kansas City and immediately felt a kinship with his vision for youth ministry. He began telling me about his book back then so I've been looking forward to reading it for a few years now. In the mean time I've gotten a big chunk of what was in the book through conversations with Mike at school (we both are attending NTS), church or around town in any of the many places I keep running into Mike. I was surprised that Mike's candid words all made it through the editing process! By that I don't mean that Mike is a loose cannon or offensive, but he is an important prophetic voice in youth ministry and it was just refreshing to know that what is on the page is what comes out of Mike's heart, not a watered-down "easily digestible" youth ministry package.

Mike challenges us youth ministers look past the short-vision goals of increased attendance and into our own souls. Page after page Mike is leading us into a vision of youth ministry that is first and foremost about seeking the face of God. Much of what Mike offers as practical advice in the book he deliberately asks the youth pastor not to try to teach to the youth group next week. This is not a book full of hip postmodern techniques that will wow teens, it is a book about doing ministry out of the abundant overflow of a life lived in intense communion with Christ. What important advice for us to hear! We often are so caught up in "consuming" spiritual practices or techniques so that we can pass them along to youth without ever really letting those practices sink anchors in our own lives. Mike's book will call you to slow down, listen to God and practice youth ministry out of the overflow of love of God.

Highly highly recommended for those involved in any kind of ministry, youth ministry especially.

Labels: Discipleship, Theology, Youth Ministry

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A while back I was riding in the car listening to NPR when they re-aired a peabody award winning broadcast of "This American Life" a favorite show of mine produced by Chicago Public Radio. The broadcast was titled Habeas Schmabeas. Here is a description of the topic "Habeas Schmabeas" tackles...

The right of habeas corpus has been a part of our country's legal tradition longer than we've actually been a country. It means that our government has to explain why it's holding a person in custody. But now, the War on Terror has nixed many of the rules we used to think of as fundamental. At Guantanamo Bay, our government initially claimed that prisoners should not be covered by habeas—or even by the Geneva Conventions—because they're the most fearsome enemies we have. But is that true? Is it a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes?

What followed was one of those gripping stories that makes you sit in your car outside your apartment for 45 minutes because you don't want to miss anything by running inside. You can download the entire episode for free here. What I learned offended the American side of me, to hear about how the constitution is simply ignored or put on hold when it is deemed inconvenient to those in power. Don't we write these rules specifically for hard times when we'd be tempted to abuse power?

From a Christian standpoint what distressed me even more was the de-humanizing abuse many of these prisoners are forced to undergo. Far from buying into the excuses that "this is a different kind of war calling for different kinds of tactics," I am compelled to reflect on Jesus' parable of the indebted prisoner who is freed only to turn around and put those who owed him money into prison. What does forgiveness look like in the midst of a world racked by terrorism? Would Jesus put a "temporary hold" on forgiveness in the face of terrorism declaring that new more modern tactics were needed to fight "extremism?" Or is forgiveness a form of religious extremism in itself? I certainly think so. If prisoners do indeed need to be held captive can it be done while still honoring their God-given dignity? Can their captors be committed to truthfulness and honesty instead of secrecy and deception?

We are often told that the world changed on Sept. 11th, that we now must operate in a "post-9/11" mentality. Does that apply to being a disciple of Jesus Christ? Did being a Christian change on 9/11? Do we get to temporarily set aside things like forgiveness and loving our enemies in the midst of a world filled with terrorism?

OR are forgiveness and love the very ways Jesus taught us to fight such evils?

Labels: Military, Politics, Theology

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Derek Webb has put to music what John the revelator put to papyrus so many years ago. Listen to the eschatalogical hope...

This Too Shall Be Made Right
by Derek Webb

People love you the most for the things you hate
And hate you for loving the things you can't keep straight.
People judge you on a curve
And tell you you're getting what you deserve
and this too shall be made right.

Children cannot learn when children cannot eat.
Stack them like lumber and children cannot sleep.
Children dream of wishing wells
Whose waters quench all the fires of hell.
and this too shall be made right

The earth and sky and the sea are all holding their breath.
Wars and abuses have nature goraning with death.
We say we're just trying to stay alive,
It looks so much more like a way to die.
and this too shall be made right

Yes there's a time for peace, there is a time for war.
There's a time to forgive and a time to settle the score.
A time for babies to loose their lives.
A time for hunger and genocide.
and this too shall be made right

Oh, I don't know the suffering of people outside my front door.
I join the oppressors of those I choose to ignore.
I'm trading comfort for human life,
And that's not just murder, it's suicide.
and this too shall be made right

Oh, this too shall be made right.

Labels: Music, Theology

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Labels: Film, Funny, Theology

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Having heard some high praise for the recent Frank Miller adaptation, 300, I trekked off to the theatre a few weekends ago to catch it myself. What followed was an interesting mix of emotions for me. I am usually easily able to suspend disbelief and enter into the world of a film, and it is indeed almost always my goal to do so when watching a film. But some films make that really really hard to do. Or maybe to put it more accurately; sometimes John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas make that really hard to do.

300 lacks nothing in stylistic cinematography or art direction. Every single frame lives in a creative land somewhere between Miller's original comic book and modern day Photoshop art. The texture and style of the film exude a larger-than-life mythical quality that enhance the tale of 300 Spartans fighting off Xerxes' vast armies. It is a story that can only be told in paintings and campfire tales, and in that regard 300 does exceedingly well.

Some have called 300 one-part Art Film one-part Action-Adventure war movie. I would agree, and the first part is done masterfully. But it's that nagging issue of content that kept irking me about the second part of 300. While I was continually drawn into this Spartan world by the artistic beauty I was constantly ejected from it as I heard Yoder, Hauerwas and especially Jesus ringing in my ears.

The overtones of what Walter Wink calls "redemptive violence" are nowhere more pronounced than in 300. The Spartan culture while shown as a somewhat barbaric solider society is nonetheless glorified in perhaps every barbaric trait other than their systematic killing of "less than ideal" babies. While this is shown in a horrific light, the rest of their violent ways are glorified as essential parts of a "rational" and "democratic" society. The overtones connecting American culture and military (especially American Marines) to the Spartan warriors are obvious. King Leonidas' wife, Gorgo lectures the politicians about the necessity for violence using today's popular phrase "freedom isn't free." All these themes kept me from truly entering the movie. Instead I held it at arms length, thinking to myself, this is exactly what Jesus subverts in the Roman empire. This society built on violence, the culture that disciples its people in warfare no matter the personal cost to children and wives. The Roman empire Jesus lived under and was crucified by was heavily influenced by the Spartan legends and ethos. This is the same warrior-culture that the Gospel has a harsh judgment for, and while we have tended to privatize our war-making, we Americans buy into many of the same illusions that the Spartans did.

I kept trying to see where Christians would fit into this whole story (had they been around back then). I think that the Jesus people wouldn't be caught dead on the side of Xerxes, the Persian emperor who called himself a God. The followers of Jesus wouldn't march with the Persian army in it's goal to conquer the world. But neither would the Jesus people devote their lives to being discipled as killing machines in the city of Sparta. The Spartan story of redemptive violence would be in direct conflict with the followers of Jesus who practiced redemptive suffering.

Labels: Film, Military, Non-Violence, Theology

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Purg and I caught Black Snake Moan a few weekends ago. This is the story of Lazarus (a man who's wife has left him for his younger brother), Rae (a young girl who was abused as a child and now is literally an nymphomaniac) and ??? (Rae's boyfriend who is eventually kicked out of boot camp for an anxiety disorder). If you haven't seen the poster or TV spots, then you don't know about one of the most interesting oddities of this film. Lazarus takes it upon himself to redeem Rae from her wicked and sad state, but his methods are not taken from any pastoral care and counseling class. No, Lazarus chains Rae to his radiator to keep her from running off on him and avoiding the "desert" she must travel in order to be transformed.

I really appreciated that Black Snake didn't fall into a number of tired cliches about judgmental clergy or protagonist-redeemers who are misunderstood. Ben Witherington gives us some very good thoughts on the film here.

Just a word of warning, the film is pretty raw and gritty and earns it's R rating. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in high school or younger.

Labels: Film, Theology

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Kara and I saw Bridge to Terabitha a few weekends ago, thanks to Mike's recommendation. What a surprisingly wonderful film! If your kids aren't old enough to sit through Pan's Labyrinth, Terabithia may well be a great alternative. I was particularly drawn into the story of a young boy named Jesse who lives in the country and have a love for drawing. Reminds me of someone I know...

Jesse deals with what most kids do, bullies and the like. But this school year Jesse meets an interesting new girl named Leslie who just happens to live next door to him. Leslie is a poet. Together the artist and the poet learn to use their imaginations to build a whole new kingdom in the forest where bullies can be bested in battle. The imaginary kingdom of Terabitha begins to inform the real life world at school that Jesse and Leslie encounter everyday. They are able to draw on their imaginations to change things at school in some really redemptive ways.

One day Leslie invites herself to Church with Jesse's family and during the service she is enthralled by the stories and the stained glass. In the truckride home she says "that whole Jesus thing is very interesting isn't it?" The conversation that ensues between Leslie, Jesse and his younger sister May Belle is priceless. Leslie says these insightful words after May Belle and Jesse proclaim that you have to go to church and believe the bible or you'll burn in hell... "You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to believe it and I think its beautiful."

Amen.

Labels: Film, Theology

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What is required for salvation? We often answer this differently than Jesus did...

Check out this article at Christianity Today.
"Jesus and the Sinner's Prayer"

via Mike King

Labels: Theology

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Oh wait... actually Ben Witherington offers a genuine and generous critique of Velvet Elvis while completely affirming Rob Bell's theology, direction and ministry. Oh that we would all learn to be this generous in our "sharpening" of each other.

Check out Witherington's post here.

Labels: Emerging Church, Theology

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There's a great discussion going on over at KC Armstrong's blog Easily A Muse. What started out as a book review has become a conversation about the emerging church and the character of postmodernism and modernism from a Christian point of view.

Labels: Emerging Church, Theology

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I've been meaning to blog about Pan's Labyrinth for a while now. I first saw it back in January when Kara was in town. I was expecting it to be great, I'd heard so much good stuff about it before going, and I wasn't disappointed. Pan's Labyrinth was everything that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wasn't... frighteningly dark, sinister, subtler in its allegory and definitely not for kids. Pan's Labyrinth is brutally violent early on in order to convince us of the ruthlessness of the antagonist. Later in the film more scenes could have shown even more violence but mercifully don't.

For those of you who were confused like me, Pan is the name of a Faun. Not this particular faun, but a faun. In Spain where the film was made it was named Faun's Labyrinth. Okay, now that aside... Pan's Labyrinth begins with an "incarnation" of sorts. The king of the underworld's daughter escapes to go live among us land-dwelling people, but as a consequence she dies a mortal's death like us. But the King waits for her soul to return one day in another body. The rest of the story takes place in WWII Spain where fascists are fighting off guerrillas in the forest. Ofelia, a young girl is the stepdaughter of a fascist general (Yet another movie about children living in a broken world). She encounters a faun at the bottom of a spiral staircase in the center of a giant labyrinth behind the fascist stronghold.


The faun gives Ofelia several tasks to complete before the moon is full. The first, Rusty pointed out (perhaps soon in blog form), could be an allegory of capitalism. The second is retrieving something from behind a tiny door with a key from her first mission. She retrieves a knife from the door and gets into some trouble on the way back. The last mission requires that she get her newborn baby brother and meet the faun at the labyrinth. When shes does so he tells her that the knife is to draw blood from her brother. Well if the faun wasn't sketchy enough the entire film now it's obvious... he, like almost everyone else in Ofelia's life is rotten. She refuses and just as she does her fascist stepfather stumbles upon her, snatches his son back and promptly kills Ofelia. She lies at the mouth of the staircase in the center of the labyrinth, blood running out of her nose. This is the scene that opened the film. Just as it seems like this movie is going to end one long train wreck of violence and cruelty Ofelia opens her eyes in paradise. Her father, the king of the underworld welcomes her home and the faun tells her that she passed the final test. She chose to shed her own blood rather than that of an innocent.

Obvious Christ-figure metaphor aside, what I find even more fascinating is Ofelia's resurrection and how it completely (re)narrates the tone of the film. What was once macabre is now a celebration. What was once a tragedy is now a comedy (in the Greek sense). Her resurrection bears witness to a deeper reality. Her fascist stepfather has no real power, his violence is in vain a mere illusion of power.

Labels: Film, Theology

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I have recently been hearing a LOT about Tony Dungy's faith. When I say a LOT, I don't mean in content but in frequency. This usually happens when anyone on a Super Bowl winning team goes to church or prays or if they've just read "Wild at Heart."
(Seriously. Jon Kitna read "Wild at Heart" during his "comeback" with the Bengals a few years ago and Christians went nuts over him)

We Christians go batty when celebrities turn out to be Christians... or if Celebrities have even read a Christian book. Why? Does this mean for instance that the Colts are a Christian team? Does this mean that good Christians can't root for their own godless football teams because Tony Dungy prays? Woe to me and my heathen Broncos! No, I don't think its about that. We hear about these celebrity Christians because like most Americans, Christians are obsessed with celebrity. We bow at the cult of celebrity with the rest of our VH1 viewing countrymen.

What is it about Christians going batty for Celebrities becoming (or turning out to be) Christians? Evangelicals spend a lot of time and energy maligning Hollywood and celebrities but as soon as one of them turns out to be "one of us," then all criticism is laid aside and we get them a book deal and tv time as soon as evangelically possible. It seems to me that the reasons throngs of people are obsessed with celebrities are the same reasons that Christians are also obsessed with Christian-celebrities. Celebrities are people used to live out vicarious fantasy lives. Why do so many people care about who Paris Hilton is dating? Because in some way or another her dating life is either a vicarious way for them to be in a relationship or is a false promise that they can one day also be that famous, that adored and that rich. We fawn over celebrities not so much based on their merit as much as the hope that one day we too can be like them.

This is a problem for Christians because our Lord did not come to show us 7 highly-effective habits for our best life now! He revealed the upside-down Kingdom of God where the poor and marginalized are first class citizens and the rich and famous are last. While the "saints" of popular culture tell us that we can be anything we want to if we just work hard enough, or are shocking enough or have the right body, Jesus tells us that we can be his disciples if we are willing to give all that up. Jesus' message is in direct competition with the celebrity-message.

The problem is that we are a people so shaped by celebrity we tend to buy into the unspoken assumptions that come along with it. We start to think that "successful" people are famous, rich and beautiful. We define success by how high one can climb on the social ladder. Celebrities obviously fit this model of success. So when a Christian becomes a celebrity or better yet, when an already-Celebrity becomes a Christian, in some kind of round-about way it legitimizes our own faith. "See, Christians can be successful too! We're also cool and famous!"

One of the many problems with holding up the image of a celebrity Christian is that we rarely examine the content of their faith and certainly don't hold them to much of any standard. It is not their theology or lived out practice that makes them a good example, it is their status as a celebrity. We Evangelicals particularly fall into this trap because we think that celebrity Christians are automatically great evangelists based on their fame alone. Walk into any Christia... I mean Family Christian Bookstore and see how many celebrity Christian books you find on the shelves. Chuck Norris, Kurt Warner, Stephen Baldwin, Joe Gibbs just to name a few. And why? Because we think we can harness the power that comes with the cult of celebrity (and I mean cult in the most literal sense) for evangelistic good. It's a nice idea, but it's wrong. As Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message." If we think we can take the cult of celebrity with it idolatrous tenancies and preoccupation with wealth and fame and just plug Christians into that model and still be true to the gospel we're sadly deceived. Instead we will produce a "gospel" that will be overly spiritual (to the point of being gnostic) and reinforce our own desire for wealth, fame and influence.

This is the same kind of mentality that says to youth pastors, first reach out to the "cool" kids because where they go, the rest will follow. The problem with this is of course that it's counter to what Jesus taught us! He tells us to reach out to the least of these, the unpopular, the uncool, the nerds, the kids who don't bathe as often as they should because the Kingdom of God looks like these! The "good news" is not that unpopular kids or unemployed adults can become Christian and then climb the social ladder to the places where Tony Dungy and Chuck Norris reside. The gospel is that even when the world says you're unsuccessful, lame, oppressed, poor that Jesus meets you there... Jesus lives there and that the Kingdom of God is not like this world. The first shall be last in his Kingdom and the last shall be first! The gospel says that it is more honorable to hang out with dying people who can't help you network, who won't ever write you a good reference than it is to win the super bowl.

When we don't examine their theology or lived out practices beyond statements like "George Bush goes to a study on the book 'The Prayer of Jabez' every month," we get what we deserve, a Christianity more concerned with celebrity than with discipleship. The above quote is enough for a great deal of Christians to believe that Bush is a Christian in the exact same way they are a Christian, that he is concerned with discipleship and becoming more and more like Christ every day but going to a Prayer of Jabez study does not a disciple make! Now, I'm trying really hard not to say "George Bush is not a Christian." I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that if we really think he is a Christian and are going to hold him up as an example for other Christians we'd better know more of his story than "he read the Prayer of Jabez."

"It is through your kneeling and holding hands that they shall know you are my people."
- Jesus?

It is this same rush to claim someone as our own that results in Enlightenment-deists who denied the divinity of Christ, like Thomas Jefferson and other "founding fathers" to be held up as Evangelical heroes. Few bother to examine what they actually believed and lived, it's enough for us that Jefferson mentioned a "higher power" once and we're happy to claim him as our own.

Maybe our "Christian celebrities" should be people like Shane Claiborne and Mother Teresa rather than already-celebrities who happen to be Christian. Christian Saints are witnesses to us that following Jesus into the dumps, to the margins of society is what the Kingdom is all about. Christian martyrs are witnesses to us that we too can one day resist living on the world's terms, that we can live in the way of Jesus even if it means we will be killed for doing so.

So is it nice that Tony Dungy is a Christian? Sure. But Tony Dungy and You and I are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ and that journey does not end in celebrity. It is not a journey of "climbing the ladder" but it is a journey of humility, of faithfulness to God in the way of Jesus. So all of us Christians, Tony Dungy included, need to keep our eyes fixed on the example of the Saints, of the martyrs and most importantly of our Lord, and not that of celebrity-Christians.

Labels: Funny, Sports, Theology

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Eric Lee tagged me to put up my list of best books of theology published in the past 25 years.

This is the criteria:

Name three (or more) theological works from the last 25 years (1981-2006) that you consider important and worthy to be included on a list of the most important works of theology of that last 25 years (in no particular order).

1. Torture and Eucharist by William T. Cavanaugh 1998
2. Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon 1989
3. Between Cross & Resurrection by Alan E. Lewis 2001

Labels: Books, Theology

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I recently saw the 2nd 5 hour episode of the new season of 24 which plays 9 times a day back to back to back on the new 24 network formerly known as FOX or some such thing. Part of me expected to actually like the show despite all my nay-saying over the years about how nothing in 24 would appeal to me. Part of me thought that, as it was the case with LOST, I would become an addict.

BUT NO! 24 was everything I thought it would be: a "we're constantly being threatened by terrorists and need to be 'saved' by people like Jack Bauer, poorly acted, cliché laden, obsessed with America, 'we'll get them' voyeurism" show. Sure its tense but that alone does not explain the amount of hysteria over this show.

Example from this past week's episode 2 of 193 straight hours of heart-pounding 24 action...

Jack Bauer

I'm not afraid of dying.
In China I wasn't afraid of dying, I was afraid of dying for nothing.
Now I know I'm dying for something.

That "something" was intelligence about where a terrorist was hiding out. I laughed out loud when I heard those lines.

So, my question to all of you 24 fans is this... WHY do you love this show so much? It is usually better than this? WHAT is the reason you are so in love with it?

Labels: Military, Theology

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It wasn't until college that I met the forgotten Martin Luther King Jr. Like everyone else I had met the civil rights leader in grade school, learning about him in history texts and on MLK Jr. day. This man was so monumentally popular in US history, held up as a saint who helped make racial equality part of what it means to be an American. But I didn't meet the other MLK until years later and I've come to find out that most people never meet this other MLK. It was in his last years here on earth that Martin Luther King Jr. turned his attention towards the growing poverty in the United States and towards the systems that help cause and maintain such poverty. He turned his attention towards the growing militarism of the United States and towards the wars being fought. Indeed MLK had the courage to say that the United States was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." It was this MLK that our country has forgotten. This MLK was assassinated. The words of this MLK still have a prophetic word for us today.

Thanks to Mark Bilby for this article about the forgotten MLK.

Labels: Life, Military, Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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Labels: Books, Civil Religion, Theology

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Labels: Christian Time, Civil Religion, Theology

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Labels: Life, Theology

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Labels: Theology

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As most of you know I live in Kansas City. Many of you are also aware of what's been going on next door to us over in Kansas with the whole intelligent design being taught in schools controversey. It just goes to show how self-centered I can be, but having worked through this issue way back in jr. high I just assumed that since I had made up my mind it must not still be that big of an issue right? That my friends is wrong. Recently this became apparent when some folks in my church attended a seminar on intelligent design over in Kansas. They came back with a lot of enthusiasium about this hot "new" topic and wanted to bring the discussion to our own church.

Well before I get into that, let me first give you a little of my own story. I grew up in a conservative little farming & oil town in New Mexico where being a follower of Jesus was linked with a very conservative evangelical understanding of the world, and the "L" word (liberal) was akin to foul language. My parents are very conservative and in the early 90's my father proudly thought of himself as a "ditto-head." In the midst of this world my mother stuck out as one of the few (if not the only) Christians I knew who was a firm believer in theistic evolution. Mom is a scientist and comes from a family of scientists. Mom is also a committed follower of Christ. I found Mom's paradox puzzling as a kid who's only understanding of Christianity was a pretty fundamentalist one. But it didn't take long for me to understand where my mother was coming from, she believed that God is creative enough to use something as amazing as evolution to create this world and the species in it. In fact that made a lot of sense to me and has ever since.

So fast forward to 2005, and the intelligent design debate raging around these parts. When these folks came back to the church pumped up about intelligent design my first reaction was one of defensiveness. My own history of balancing my faith in Christ with theistic evolution wasn't always encouraging. Where I grew up, being a Christian and agreeing with Darwin were pretty much proof that you were a "secular humanist" and weren't really a Christian... not born again anyway. So my gut instinct has been to defend those kids who find evolution to be particularly compelling but even more so are devoted to following Christ. Seeing them get the cold-shoulder from their church peers has always bugged me and I've wanted to be a champion for them saying, "there's room for them among us!" So when my fellow brothers from Church suggested working intelligent design into what I was teaching I felt like I was going to be pressured to tell smart scientific kids that they had to choose, God or science.

After a few emails and a short talk I found out that these parents feel like their kids (who believe in intelligent design) are being told they can't be good scientists because they believe that God created our world and the life so abundant in it. So they want to champion their kids and say, "you can be a Christian and a good scientist!" And to that I say amen. I suppose that my own preconcieved notions of "the MidWest" made me think that it would be the theistic evolutionary kids who would be shunned (and in Kansas, I bet that's still a reality). I still have a lot of reservations about trying to prove how and where and when God went beyond the normal process of evolution to "speed things up" as it were. I am content to let God's ways be a mystery and have faith that God is creative, God is the creator, without the complexity of blood-clotting doing it for me. I think that intelligent design as an apologetic for Christianity or as a tool for evangelism is a bad and dangerous idea, but to understand that the God of Jesus Christ did create this world and continues to create and will eventually redeem all of creation, plants and animals included... there surely is room for that to co-exist with (and enrich!) science.

I just finished a book by Brian D. McLaren called The Story We Find Ourselves In, and Brian does an amazing job of walking through some of these issues, and also tying them into the larger story of God creation, calling, redeeming and consumation of this world.

What about you, did you grow up in a place where either your faith or intelligence was questioned because of how you understand creation? How do you encounter this today?

Labels: Life, Theology

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Yesterday I got back from a weekend retreat south of Kansas City that YouthFront puts on twice a year. It's called the Altar. This three-day retreat for youth was... well amazing. From the moment we drove onto the campground to the moment we left every corner, every nook & cranny of the 600 acre camp wispered "come and pray to the Lord."

While YouthFront's camp has all the "campy" stuff you'd expect for a year-round youth & retreat camp (a lake, canoes, a big sports field, etc.) what set it apart was the intentionality of creating sacred spaces all over the camp for retreatants to pray and draw close to the Lord. What made it even better was the intentionality of conveying a sense of sacredness in places such as the chapel, where once loud students became silent when they walked into a dark candle-lit room with blue pillars of light that told us visually, this is holy space. At the north end of the campground there was a huge prayer labryinth carved out of a shoulder-high field of wild grass. Prayer at the altar was not merely a "close your eyes and sit" kind of prayer, but the sacred spaces called us to pray as we walked, pray as you create art in the prayer tent, pray as you walk the path of the stations of the cross.

That alone would have made youthfront's campground stand apart in my experience at Christian camps (and I've been around). But what made this weekend particularly special and might I add, Christian, was the focus on the poor. The theme of the weekend was God's special love for the poor and our response to them. Wow. For some reason this crucial revolutionary part of the Christian faith is seldom passed down to our youth (at least in my experience), or if it is, we spiritualize it so that God doesn't really love the poor that way, God doesn't have a bias towards the downtrodden and oppressed, this is just to show that... whatever, insert spirtualized lesson here. Not this weekend. When we talked about the poor, we talked about real issues that the poor face. For instance, Friday night during our worship gathering as we sang quite possibly one of the best worship songs I've ever heard (Words to Build a Life On, apparenly by someone from Jacob's Well), there were images of the victims of Hurricane Katrina on the screen. Interrupting these images were some disturbing facts like:On Sept. 8, President Bush issued an executive order suspending the application of the Davis-Bacon Act in the hurricane ravaged areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. The law requires federal contractors to pay workers the average or "prevailing" regional wage for public construction projects. The act's suspension allows contractors to pay as little as $5.15 an hour - the current federal minimum wage - for these projects. Wow. Well that might just ruffle some feathers out there. Of course it does, and so does the gospel of Jesus, the good news to the poor. But so often we don't want to hear the good news to the poor because it is judgement on us, the rich. So for one, it was refreshing to talk about the poor and really talk about it, not skirt around the issue where we all get to stay clean and comfortable. And Hallelujah that this is what we're teaching our youth that faith in Christ is. This is the meaty, revolutionary, life-changing gospel that they want, not the purpose driven, well-marketed gospel of their parents generation.

Built into our time of focusing on the marginalized were several conversations and a film viewing. The film we watched was a documentary called Invisible Children. Wow, that film blew my mind, and better still called my teens to action. We had several conversations about poverty. One that I joined was based around the question "Why are the poor poor?" The other was based on the question "Can we be Christians and ignore the poor?" Without getting into it all, I'll just say that these were great conversations and brought to the forefront a lot of issues that many youths were just unaware of, but now want to be involved in following Jesus and cooperating with God in the redemptive restoration of creation by blessing the poor and working to make unjust systems more just. So this was a youth retreat... wow. I'm really stoked about the vision that Mike King and the leadership at youthfront have for youth ministry.

Labels: Emerging Church, Life, Theology

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Last night I tried something very different for our teens. I'm starting them through a Tarentino-esqe chronology of the narrative of scripture. We're starting in Genesis, skipping to Revelation, then back to the middle of the story and finally to "Chapter 29" (ie: Acts 29... ie: us, today). More and more I'm learning that I need (and WANT) to be creative in preparing lessons for the teens. As I've been thinking and praying and brainstorming about how to present these stories in engaging and creative ways I've come across some good guides like Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones and most recently Mark Miller. So last night was the first night of starting out this narrative. We began with Genesis.

I asked the students to remove their shoes, grab a paper towel, and prepare for half-an-hour more of silence and meditation. As they entered our youth room they noticed that the windows had been blacked out with trashbags. Then as they sat in a semi-circle I poured cold water on their feet. Lights out. Absolute darkness. Chaotic music began playing (I mixed four songs together: 18 - In Reverent Fear; Setting Sun - Chemical Brothers; Distance is Darkness - As I Lay Dying; Twenty-Three - Project 86). We sat there in the dark, feet wet, with this insane music blasting. In the begining there was a formless void of water, chaos, darkness. The music changes, it's peaceful, a man is calling out (A Dream Within a Dream - Dreadzone). God speaks into the darkness, "Let there be light." I light a candle in the middle of our room, right next to a cross that throws an awesome shadow on our wall. More time for meditation on God's first action in our world. Creating light. Chaos is no more. The music shifts yet again, this time a little more lively (God Moving Over the Face of the Waters - Moby). The accounts of creation, day one through five are read. When God separates the waters from the land we all dry our feet off with our paper towel. Time is given inbetween each day for meditation. As we come to day six when God creates humanity the music shifts again (Resurrection - John Debney) this time it is much more dramatic. After reading the account of God creating humanity in God's own image, I speak for a little time about the gift of the imago dei, the responsibility of the imago dei and how it redefines our identitiy as well as everyone else's. I call each student by name and ask them to come and light a candle as a symbol of God creating them in God's own image. When we finish we light a candle for someone who despises us or whom we despise as a symbol that they too were created in the image of God. I passed around a (non-toxic, water-based... I know which battles to choose folks) marker and ask them to tattoo the words imago dei on each other. It is significant that they be given this mark and not do it themselves because the imago dei is a gift. It is significant that they give it to someone else because we need to be reminded that our brothers and sisters are created in the imago dei.

It was different, but was certianly more powerful and interactive than a lecture... and SO much more fun to plan. Now the hard part is how to continue to be hands-on and physical in helping to embody these stories as I continue to teach... should be fun.

Labels: Emerging Church, Life, Theology

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Okay, so this is something that's bugged me for a long time. I took this picture at my church's INTERNATIONAL headquarters. Why do Christian churches, and institutions insist on flying the Christian flag below the US flag? It's as if we readily accept our role as chaplain to the state, an unquestioning support system to a pagan nation. We as the church are all to happy to be the "yes man" for America. If we were in prison, I'd use another term for the role the church has resigned itself to. If we're really an outpost for the Kingdom of God on earth, why fly other flags at all? What's wrong with just flying the Christian flag? This is just as offensive to me as flying the Christian flag under the North Korean flag, as if the Church was not unlike a county, province or territory under the authority of the larger more important state. Arrrrrrgh, I hate the civil religion!

Labels: Civil Religion, Politics, Theology

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Eric just told me that, D. Brent Laytham, the author of my most recent read, God is Not, wrote an article for the Christian Century titled "Loyalty Oath: a matter of ultimate allegiance" that I thought was really good. Check it out here or read the whole article below.



Loyalty Oath
A matter of ultimate allegiance
by D. Brent Laytham
Two years ago one of my students wrote a master's thesis defending just war, then joined the U.S. Air Force to train as a fighter pilot. I suppose you could look at this as pedagogical success: I'm a teacher who helped one of my students turn the corner from theory to practice. But as a pacifist, I took it pretty hard.

Time doesn't heal all wounds, but it's a pretty good salve for injured pedagogical pride. So I hadn't given Aaron much thought until I was asked to come down to the college president's office to meet with an officer of the Department of Defense. She showed me her badge and a pile of papers, all of which asserted that she was authorized to interview me about the character of my former student. Apparently, before you can get behind the controls of a multimillion-dollar fighter plane, the U.S. runs a high-level security check.

There were a number of mundane questions about how long and how well I had known Aaron. The questions became more interesting as they turned to relationships and to character. "Did Aaron associate with disreputable people?" she asked. "Yes," I said, "he hung out with Jesus." I was thinking, of course, about Jesus' habit of associating with radicals like Simon the Zealot, cheats like Zacchaeus and riff-raff like the woman at the well. Worse, as Christopher Marshall has pointed out in Beyond Retribution, Jesus populated his parables with criminals and was finally condemned as one himself. But what would my interviewer think? "I know what you mean," she confided. "I sometimes serve meals at my church's soup kitchen." Apparently Jesus is not disreputable enough to disqualify you from being trusted with high-tech weaponry.

"Does Aaron belong to any organization that puts him in contact with foreign nationals?" she asked. "Yes, he's a member of the church." I wasn't trying to be coy, but catholic. In Christ we find ourselves placed in a body politic without territorial borders—the holy catholic church. The Letter to Diognetus puts it this way: for us "every foreign country is [our] fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign." Thus, we have no foreign nationals in the church, or we are all foreigners; either way, we cannot imagine that some of us are "us," while others are "them." At least we shouldn't be able to imagine this.

"But did he associate with foreigners?" "Well," I replied, "we have a number of international students here at the seminary. I'm sure that Aaron had classes with them." I could have added that we intentionally seek to foster an awareness of global issues, hoping students from California will get to know students from Chile, wanting students from Korea to learn with students from Kansas, expecting that Mexicans and Minnesotans will pray together in every chapel.

She pursued the question, "How closely did he associate with them? Was it more than a normal amount?" How could I answer such a question, given the church's calling to show the world that its version of "normal" simply isn't? All I said was no. But I should have added, "The church is a 'sign, herald and foretaste' of the coming kingdom; we refuse to allow national borders to be mapped onto the body of Christ."

There were many other questions, the hardest of which was, "Is he a loyal American?" I had little doubt that for Aaron the answer is yes. But what could that attestation mean coming from me, who relishes Dorothy Day's retort "Of course we're un-American; we're Catholic"? I thought of Patrick Miller's recent pamphlet on the first commandment. In The God You Have he differentiates between loyalty to others and obedience to God. Loyalty, he says, may appropriately be given to spouse, family, neighbor or country. It roots in and expands on the fifth commandment. Obedience, on the other hand, belongs to God and God alone. It is rooted in the absolutely fundamental claim of the first commandment. First commandment first; obedience before, beneath and beyond every loyalty.

The problem with Miller's categories is that, in Caesar's hands, they can too easily become a distinction without a difference. In the U.S. there is assumed to be a smooth fit between discipleship and killing. That assumption, held so easily and unreflectively, trespasses against our obedience to God alone. I wonder whether my questioner understands that for descendants of Jeremiah and followers of Jesus, obedience to God may require us to refuse the state's claim to our loyalty. Does the Department of Defense grant that my fundamental obligation is not loyalty to country but obedience to God? I doubt it. In such circumstances, where Caesar cannot distinguish between our proper subjection and our ultimate allegiance, it may be best to say bluntly, "A loyal American? Of course not. I'm a Christian!"

But Aaron is a Christian too, and there's the rub. My testimony now contributes to the testing of his discipleship. Will he manage to live by the moral restraint of just war, to embody its refusal of easy congruence between killing and Christ, to always remember that obedience to God trumps loyalty to country or comrade? I can only pray that he will.
D. Brent Laytham teaches at North Park University in Chicago. He recently edited God is Not Religious, Nice, One of Us, an American, a Capitalist (Brazos).

Labels: Non-Violence, Politics, Theology

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This morning we heard from a pannel of 6 congregation members from two churches. Church of the Sojourners and Grace Fellowship Community, both in San Francisco, CA. The Sojourners folks talked to us about living in Christian community, simplicity, living on a small fixed income and other really facinating and attractive practices. The folks from Grace Fellowship talked a lot about membership as Catechism. Good stuff!

Congregations on the Frontlines.mp3 (1:20 - 40 MB)

Labels: Life, Theology

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Last night here in Chicago. It's been a great conference so far, met some great people and possibly most importantly I now have faces and voices to imagine when I read. Reading Michael Budde will never be the same... I mean the guy looks like grey-haired Teen-Wolf! We heard from all three of our presenters tonight. Questions were asked of them all by our moderator, then they got to discuss some stuff with each other and ended by answering questions from the rest of us.
Plenary Panel Discussion.mp3 (1:20 - 34MB)

Labels: Life, Theology

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Tonight we heard from our second Biblical scholar, Sylvia Keesmaat, author of the new commentary titled Colossians Remixed. While AKMA took us through the first three commandments, Syliva took us through the entire biblical narrative stopping to look at a few stories where scripture speaks to Empire. She traces the theme of power and violence through the bible.

She begins with Exodus 1, where Israel is in the heart of Egypt. The empire seeks control and oppresses by killing babies. But there is a small movement of resistance by four women, Moses' mother, sister and two midwives. It is God who defeats the empire. This sets the stage for understanding God as King.

Before the Israelites deny God as king and demand a king like the other nations have come the books of Judges and Ruth. In Judges a woman is gang-raped by raiders, she is chopped up into 12 pieces by her lord and sent out to Israel as he protests this affront to his property. The story ends in 600 12-year old girls being stolen to provide wives for the Benjaminites. The story ends in a plea for Monarcy, as if having a king would solve all these problems. BUT, Sylvia points out before Samuel comes the book of Ruth. Boaz protects Ruth, and when she comes to him in the night ready to sleep with him, he instead of taking advantage of her, follows Torah and goes before the elders to wed her. Sylvia gives this example of Boaz as someone who acts honorably according to Torah (even without a king). Then comes Samuel, and Sylvia points out that now that we have a king, the king himself rapes a woman then murders her husband. Later when David's firstborn rapes Tamar (2 Sam:13) he refuses to do anything about it. The sexual and military violence has become a part of the heart of the monarcy.

She moves on to Daniel, to give an example of how a follower of God can remin faithful empire. Syliva points out that Joseph is not the example, since he drew his people into slavery by driving such hard bargins over food. Daniel however resists empire in small ways that make a difference. They start eating their own food (rather than the imperial food) and eventually Daniel resists in even more overt ways by refusing to stop praying.

Sylvia ends with Luke (and since my battery ran out this is where my audio and notes end as well. I'll update this later when I get the full audio from the EP site.

The Bible and the Empire.mp3 (33 min - 15 MB)

Labels: Life, Theology

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This morning we heard from AKMA, his talk was called "The Strong Right Arm That Holds for Peace: Godliness a an Alternative for Empire" He spent a lot of time speaking about the insistence of the first three commands in the Decalogue that we hold no other God or loyalty over, above or against the LORD. We cannot have God on our terms, we cannot devise semi-gods that we can easily mold to our image, God cannot be rallied to our causes...

God is utterly useless to us.

That is, God is in no way to be used for our purposes. God is not our cheerleader, God is the LORD to whom all praise, worship and allegiance is due. God does not tolerate anything that comes between God's creation who is beloved and God's self.

This is especially clear in reference to symbols of idolatry. As AKMA pointed out in his presentation the Israelites would not tolerate foreign symbols of other Gods. They didn't just say you can put your symbols in our cities, but we refuse to worship the Roman Gods, they flat out did not tolerate the existence of Roman symbols within the Holy City. Fast forward to today when the strongest supporters of American symbols (the flag, the pledge of allegiance) are Jews and Christians. At one time we would not tolerate the presence of the symbols of other gods in our communities, much less giving loyalty to them. Now we actually fight to maintain our idolatry!

AKMA goes on to pass out a handout of an old advertisement for a soap called SAPOLIO. This ad had Lady Liberty stretching her arm out over the US and the colonies it was subduing at the time; the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. The ad reads,

The strong right arm that holds for peace
Shall with our nation's emblem go
To darker lands beyond the seas,
And light them with SAPOLIO.

An American product that has won the patronage of the civilized world. The use of Sapolio is a distinguishing mark of enlightened people. Darkness, dirt and disease are driven before it. No nation is stronger than its homes. Sapolio makes bright clean and happy homes, and a powerful, progressive, peaceful nation is the result. Sapolio must clean, that the flag may civilize.

Imitations Disappoint.

the Flyer

AKMA points out that the ad agency apparently wasn't concerned with offending the religious community at this obvious distortion and there apparently wasn't any uproar. He goes on to point out the strength of the state to co-opt our language. Words such as justice or freedom are quickly redefined for and by the powers. Many pacifists have spent many a useless hours (myself included) telling people that "if you only understood that's not the real definition of justice/freedom." These explainations very rarely make any difference. AKMA points out that we do still have a term that isn't easily co-opted by the powers, and that is Godliness. Godliness is not a term that can be taken in service of unGodly things (at least for now).

I especially liked AKMA's challenge that we not solve differences by voting. The idea that some things are not really better than others, and we must decide these differences by numbers is not a Christian idea and rejects the claim that we are really under the authority of God even if God's will is not popular or is a minority viewpoint. Voting is in a way saying that we hold ourselves and our ability to choose based on how many of us agree over and above God's commandments.

The Strong Right Arm That Holds For Peace (1:02 - 28 MB)

Labels: Life, Theology

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It's the end of day one at the 2005 Ekklesia Project Conference here at DePaul University in Chicago. It's been a great time of meeting like-minded people and making new friends. They have a nice section of books here that is NOT helping me with that whole trying to live simply or not coveting stuff, not that I was doing that great, but 50% off Brazos books... good Lord! So I limited myself to just two books, I picked up Brent Laytham's book God is Not as well as Rodney Clapp's Tortured Wonders.

To begin with we heard from Rev. Lillian Daniel who brought us the word from Exodus and helped us to see Moses' smashing of the 10 commandments as itself disobedience to the 1st commandment. She also spoke on the importance of reclaiming our Christian language, as trained "idoaltry-finders" we should point out when our culture steals our divine language and use it to deify its own consumerist ideologies. She brought a pastoral tone to our gathering and was quite funny in doing so.

Our first session was done by William Cavanaugh, it was titled "The Empire of the Empty Shrine." He started by illustrating the uniqueness of the American political system as one that said, we refuse to have a God on our throne, our throne will be empty and this promises to be a good thing because countries that have had state churches, etc. often resort to violence. This empty throne of course is not empty, but instead of having one God is available to almost any, especially ourselves. At one point Cavanaugh said that our freedom to choose any God has become our God. So freedom (or in capitalist language, choice) becomes the God we worship, and because we have created this God, we essentially worship our own "virtue" of being the most universal people in the world.

He also spent some significant time at the begining speaking about the myth of a "Reluctant Empire." Most Americans today don't think that our global dominance came from an agenda to do so, instead believing the myth that we reluctantly fought facism in Germany and then Communism not because we sought these things out but because we have a responsibility to others to do this. After the fall of Communism the ideology of "openness" that apparently sets us apart from the world (in that it makes us the world's savior) didn't bring world peace, and that's because (we're told) that our very openness and rationality actually make us vulnerable to attack by our fragmented enemies such as Al Queda. It is much eaiser for a few dozen terrorists to cross a border than for a nation to do so, etc. And so when these "religous fanatics" come here and commit acts of violence (which shows their lack of openness and rationality) we see that peace isn't here yet, but can be achieved if we expand our military power further and wider and if we bomb the radicals into a higher rationality.

Finally Cavanaugh explored the use of battle in the OT and showed the corelation of God's blessing on the battlefield to military weakness. Craig Carter in The Politics of the Cross also addresses that the OT battles that God blesses and causes Israel to triumph are just that, battles that God won, not the might of the military. I mean one battle was won by banging on pots for Pete's sake! And when Israel begins to turn away from God to their own military might the Prophets rise up against such Idolatry, and when it is ignored Israel is defeated on the battlefield and eventually conqurered. But trusting in God doesn't seem to make for a good National Security policy to a lot of Christians... but trusting in the CIA and Militarism is most definitely idolatry.

Well that's just a short list of the highlights of what was a great presentation by William Cavanaugh. If you'd like the whole thing check it out here... I'll be recording all of the sessions, so that you poor Left Behind folk can join us here if only audibly.

The Empire of the Empty Shrine.mp3 (1:14 - 25 MB)

Other EP homies currently blogging the Conference: Kaz and Akma

Labels: Life, Theology

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Jeff over at my four walls took this picture... wowza. Go check out Lucas' site, pretty great stuff all around, not to mention he takes the time to take great pictures like this. What if we called the pastor and gently informed him that there is heresy on their church signage? I'm sure they'd like to know!

Labels: Theology

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Once again, ericisrad has made me aware of another cool "theology quiz" here.

You scored as Neo orthodox. You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God's most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth. Neo orthodox 96% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 86% Emergent/Postmodern 86% Roman Catholic 71% Charismatic/Pentecostal 39% Modern Liberal 36% Classical Liberal 32% Reformed Evangelical 29% Fundamentalist 4% What's your theological worldview?

Well I'm glad that I turned up 96% Neo Orthodox since I'm going to the Ekklesia Project conference next month. Now I know I belong ;)

Labels: Emerging Church, Life, Theology

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Here's an article I really enjoyed.

A revelation for the makers of Revelations
by Jason Byassee

Revelations is a new NBC miniseries designed to tap into the lucrative market of end-times belief—demonstrated by the success of the Left Behind novels. Actor Bill Pullman plays a Harvard scientist whose skepticism, be assured, will gradually be worn down by a Roman Catholic nun who believes signs of the "end of days" are upon us. That Pullman's child has been murdered by the Antichrist and that another now-comatose child is channeling his daughter's spirit while quoting the Bible in Latin from her hospital bed will, no doubt, help wear away his skepticism.

Since network television is new to making shows that deal sympathetically with religious themes, I thought they could use the following pointers.

Notes to the makers of Revelations:

1. It's Revelation. Not Revelations. It's singular, not plural. That's because it's the one revelation of Jesus Christ. Really. I looked it up. People who say "Revelations" show they don't know what they're talking about. I know you've already spent massively advertising this misnomer, and it's a common mistake, but it's still dumb, so please fix it.

2. Jesus hasn't come back for 20 centuries. Sorry to be so obvious here, but someone seems to have convinced you that the "end of days" is really near this time. You're not the first to think this, but everyone who ever has, has been wrong. Like when believers sold their stuff and expected the apocalypse at the turn of the first millennium - the year 1000. Or when someone wrote 88 Reasons the Rapture Will Happen in 1988. Or the Y2K nonsense. Trust us on this; we in the church have been waiting for Jesus to come "soon" for quite some time.

3. The New Testament was written in Greek. So when your lightening-struck brain-dead little girl starts "quoting scripture" and doing so in Latin, the aura created by the use of a dead language is punctured a bit by the fact that it's the wrong language she uses.

4. Catholics don't really believe in the rapture. I know you needed Catholics around to interpret the Latin-speaking brain-dead miracle-girl, but the Catholic Church, if pinned down, would be happy to tell you that the rapture is a heresy. Also most Catholic priests don't speak or hear Latin much anymore. And most nuns don't wear habits. Pre-Vatican II Catholicism makes for good costumes, but it makes your show look silly also.

5. Doctors and nurses don't really hope for patients to die so they can "harvest" their organs. All the Schiavo excitement might have you believe that impugning hard-working medical professionals will be good for ratings, but when little girls speak, even if it's scripture in Latin, doctors aren't generally eager to cut their organs out. This isn't really a religious observation, but I think I can make it safely all the same.

6. When Christians read Isaiah's prophecy that "a little child will lead them," they think it's referring to Jesus. Not to a baby floating on driftwood after an apocalyptic sinking of a cruiseliner in the Aegean Sea. And generally Christians are unpleased when verses that apply to Jesus are taken to apply to other people. Generally.

6a. It has subsequently become apparent that the child is, in fact, Jesus, now returned to earth. I promise you can't find me a Left-Behinder who believes in reincarnation, let alone in the reincarnation of Jesus - who is, after all, supposed to return in something of a blaze of glory. But do let me tip my hat to a rare instance of interreligious liberality. Even Buddhists can be offended by this program.

7. There is no Satanism in the bible. This will be a surprise, for clearly the satanic ritual around the murder of your lead character's daughter, and your Satanist character's quasi-omniscience - and his inability to bleed - all seem very fascinating to you. But for scripture and traditional Christianity, Satan is really not all that interesting. He doesn't get his own "religion," and he sure as hell doesn't know everything. That's what they pay youth counselors and Christian camps to do - scare youngsters by talking about Satanists. Because the Bible sure doesn't do it.

8. Bill Pullman is a lousy actor. You didn't need a professional religious person to tell you that, but you also didn't know it on your own.

9. The Bible is not a set of tarot cards. It is not a crystal ball. It is not an amulet to foresee the future. I know this is confusing, since the Christians you know seem to treat random verses as glimpses of geopolitical futures, but trust me. The Bible is a story about God's saving work in the world. It's very religious that way - it's mostly about God and God's people, and not so much about Satan or lightning-zapping little girls or satanic dismemberment. In fact, it's more about God's healing of this world than phantasmagoric pornography.

10. Shows that claim to be about the Bible and Jesus ought probably talk about the Bible and Jesus. Just a little. And maybe the creeds, as they interpret the Bible for the church. All you have to do is talk a little about Jesus' life. That sort of thing. As a preacher I know religious types expect this.

11. Ugly, banal, ridiculous, and hateful programming really gives no glory to God. And lucky for us in this case, no one watches it either.

12. Please read these notes fast, because your show's shelf-life is going to be about half that of the average rapture prediction. Don't say you weren't warned that the end is near.

Jason Byassee is assistant editor at The Christian Century and a Ph.D. candidate in theology at Duke University.

Sojo Article

Labels: Funny, Theology

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Thanks to ericisrad I took this little survey... glad with where I came out. I did find it kinda ironic that Eric scored so high with Barth AND Schleiermacher.... something scary is afoot.

ps- Being a good seminarian I think I read too much into the simple Calvinist questions (free will or not) and ended up coming out quite Calvinist, but I retain that I really am a good Wesleyan. Just my two cents for all those District Superintendents that read my blog.

You scored as Karl Barth. The daddy of 20th Century theology. You perceive liberal theology to be a disaster and so you insist that the revelation of Christ, not human experience, should be the starting point for all theology. Karl Barth 100% Anselm 87% John Calvin 87% Jürgen Moltmann 60% Jonathan Edwards 53% Augustine 47% Charles Finney 47% Friedrich Schleiermacher 40% Martin Luther 40% Paul Tillich 27% Which theologian are you?

Here's what my girlfriend Kara scored...

Kara scored as Jürgen Moltmann. The problem of evil is central to her thought, and only a crucified God can show that God is not indifferent to human suffering. Christian discipleship means identifying with suffering but also anticipating the new creation of all things that God will bring about. Jürgen Moltmann 80% Karl Barth 67% John Calvin 67% Friedrich Schleiermacher 60% Augustine 53% Charles Finney 47% Anselm 47% Martin Luther 27% Paul Tillich 27% Jonathan Edwards 20%

Labels: Life, Theology

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