PoMo Pirate

Are you still here?

2008-12-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

Well a handful of you have yet to turn off this RSS feed and go to my new website. You should go to it here and enjoy the newest podcast with John Dominic Crossan.

NEW WEBSITE - New Podcast

2008-03-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

I have a new website and if you haven't gone there you should, but more than a new website my friend chad and I started a podcast. The episode up now is our attempt to figure out what we were doing, but in the next few weeks there will be come cool interviews with tony jones and brian mclaren. check it out here: http://trippfuller.com/

NEW WEBSITE - trippfuller.com

2008-02-27T21:09:00.000-08:00

I now have a new blog\webiste. www.trippfuller.com
If you have this blog bookmarked or on a reader please change it. I am going to try to not suck and do more AND hopefully learn how to use technology more efficiently. On the new site I have a list of ideas or things i am gonna try. Feel free to give me some advice over there.

Elgin Wants to be an 80's Rock Star

2008-02-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

This was my favorite part of Christmas and now that I have figure out how to post videos I thought I would share Elgin rockin' it out at only three weeks.

Prayer for Patient Power

2008-02-02T22:44:00.000-08:00

You know who you are
You made every living thing and are the source of
all that is beautiful
all that breaths
all that grows
all that comes into being
be it through a Womb or a Word

You know who we are
You know we like to convince ourselves we know and instead our enlightenment creates
all the anxiety over death
all the pride over truth
all the desire over people
all the fear that keeps us stuck
as victim and thief

Disturb us to hope
Convict us to listen to the power of the living that came to know death with us

patient power is the power of love
patient power is beautiful
patient power breaths
patient power grows
patient power makes a way
and leaves a trail of life in its wake

Amen

"Frequently" is being gracious

2008-01-29T23:56:00.000-08:00

I am lecturing in place of Dr. Tupper in the Systematic Theology class tomorrow at Wake Forest University's Divinity School and his absence lined up with a lecture on sin. I think I am going to use this quote to point out the inevitability of sin for social beings such as ourselves and the relationship of sin and evil within the world's social ills, but the last sentence is real zinger.

Social sin consists in an arrangement of a society or culture in which one or more groups of people are systematically excluded, oppressed, or violated in their humanity. Such a situation is evil because it diminishes or destroys human beings as measured against the intrinsic value of the human person. It is sin because we know that ultimately the arrangement of society depends on human freedom and can be changed. In other words, human beings are responsible for this situation. But this responsibility is precisely social and not individual. The paradox consists in sharing some measure of responsibility for a social situation as a member of a society, while not having any controlling individual freedom or power relative to the same situation. Frequently this intrinsic tension is either not experiences or simply denied in highly individualistic cultures. - Roger Haight "Human Freedom and a Christian Understanding of Salvation"

"Biblical," older than "change" and "hope"

2008-01-24T20:15:00.000-08:00

So this is more of a confession, but today is the third day in a row I unintentionally got in a conversation only to find out it was actually an opportunity for me to informed on my deviance from 'biblical' truth. I have found I can talk to almost anyone about most things except for conservative Christians. Atheist, Jewish, Agnostic, Hindu, and Muslim friends don't make me agree with their presuppositions when we talk, but for three days three different conservative Christians did not know how to have a conversation without me agreeing to their assumptions about the Bible. They couldn't figure out if I was one of them or a non-believer, as if the only legitimate opinion a Christian could have was their own. Not because they are arrogant, but because it is Biblical. So below is my observation and then I am going to ask for some advice if you have any.

Everyone knows the fights among conservative evangelicals over the Bible. There are all kinds of theories of inspiration and fights over language. Is the Bible innerrant, infallible, God's answer book, unquestionable Truth, and so on. While those are important discussions for some, I don't feel tempted to deify the Bible, make the text itself sacred, or come up with some unnecessary and presumptuous compliment about that Bible that then makes me squeamish when I read the terrifying and outlandish texts. Basically I am saying that there is enough in the Bible I don't want to claim for God that making the text itself the point isn't even attractive to me.

For example, the Bible has plenty of slave owners who get good face time and there is ample material for at least 15 good pro-slavery sermons in there. Believe me I took Baptist history where famous expositors of scripture come to conclusions like, "the holding of slaves is justifiable by the
doctrine and example contained in Holy writ; and is; therefore
consistent with Christian uprightness, both in sentiment and conduct" (Richard Furman ). There is just no one 'biblical' interpretation of most things. In fact, the word 'biblical' is a word that unnerves me. I actually read (or think about reading) the Bible every day with the expectation to commune with the Spirit and be engaged in spiritual transformation - hopefully towards the pattern of Christ - BUT when I hear 'biblical' it usually serves as a conversation stopper. When someone says "belief or action X is biblical" they mean "my belief or action X is one that I find in scripture (or my religious authority said was in scripture) and since these 66 books all agree on everything, X is God's opinion. So on behalf of God I can no longer talk to you without rolling my eyes in holy indignation unless you yield to my opinion. To be charitable and sympathetic would be to compromise X which, while being my opinion, is really - thank God - God's. Believe X or get the X!" Maybe if the word biblical meant "belief or action X is one sensible and legitimate interpretation of the diversity of witnesses within scripture that could apply to this situation, issue, or idea," but it doesn't function this way in conversation. Furman makes some wonderfully 'biblical' points about the sacred support of slavery. Abolitionists made some equally 'biblical' points against slavery, though they had a smaller total number of biblical footnotes. Hopefully one can see why something being 'biblical' does not necessarily make it wonderful. Despite the 'biblical' status of slavery I think it is horrible and thoroughly unchristian.

There are other more contentious issues in our contemporary setting than this one, though slavery remains a cloaked part of our economic reality, such as issues of gender, sexuality, and violence for which the 'biblical' phrase gets thrown around and I just want to say that is not how I want the Christian community to come to its decisions (or more appropriately justify their decisions). I would like to say, I read the Bible with a liberating hermeneutic that coheres with both the inclusion of Gentiles and rejection of slavery and brings me to support the full dignity and humanity of women, homosexuals, my enemies, and Republicans.

SO QUESTION: Is there an option for conversations with 'biblical' Christians that does not necessitate
a. being purposefully vague (though it feels deceitful) so they do not notice a difference or actually understand the meaning of your statements
b. deciding to play within their framework and attempt to make your point or deconstruct theirs without ever saying why and how you actually came to your conclusion.
c. accept that their hermeneutic does not make conversation with any difference possible and walk away thinking that they are ignorant fundies who need to be enlightened...for those who have eyes.....

A and B are uncomfortable ethically and are made presuming a certain elitist stance. C is something I work hard at avoiding and may give up for Lent.

ohhhhh I thought of another example during that yelling spell. About every way of ordering the life of the Church is biblical if you pick the right passages. I can understand being a Catholic, or a Presbyterian, or a Congregationalist..... all biblically. There are verses that sound like Christ wanted to give the disciples special ontological power and create a sophisticated hierarchy to solidify power, but even there we can employ the liberating hermeneutic (PS - it is called the Free Church).

Ricoeur on Parables and Imagination

2008-01-21T07:52:00.000-08:00

Parables, paradoxes, hyperboles, and extreme commandments all disorient only to reorient us. But what is reoriented in us? and in what direction? I would say that what is reoriented by these extreme sayings is less our will than imagination. Our will is our capacity to follow without hesitation that once-chosen way, to obey without resistance the once-known law. Our imagination is the power to open us to new possibilities, to discover another way of seeing, or acceding to a new rule in receiving the instruction of the exception.
- Paul Ricoeur "The Logic of Jesus, the Logic of God" in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (281)

Fretheim on God's Relationality

2008-01-09T07:47:00.000-08:00

In his ground-breaking study of God and Creation throughout the Hebrew scriptures Terence Fretheim makes an important insight on God's relationality:

God is present and active in the world, enters into a relationship of integrity with the world, and both world and God are affected by that interaction. In this relationship, God has chosen not to stay aloof but to get caught up with the creatures in moving toward the divine purposes for creation, and in such a way that God is deeply affected by such engagement.

-Terence Fretheim, God and the World in the Old Testament: A Relational Theology of Creation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005) 109.

Great Free Theology Audio and Articles

2007-12-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

I love finding good theology stuff online and I recently ran into a bunch that were interesting so I thought I would share them.

1. Jon Sobrino's interview from sojourners. It is a great little article about his theological conflict with Rome, working among the poor, and how suffering influences his reflection on the Cross.

2. Leron Shults shared three articles online and they are all worth reading. "Nothing More Lovely" demonstrates how theology can be both rigorous reflection and inspiring doxology.

3. John Cobb and his process friends had a one day blogging outburst that was great and hopefully it will continue. There is also audio here of his lecture "Why Faith Needs Process Philosophy," which includes commentary on 9-11, Karl Barth, Thomists, and a good intro to process thought.

4. A blog with a giant list of links to major works of continental philosophy in pdf format.

Sobrino on the West's only unquestioned dogma of the Christmas season

2007-12-17T22:46:00.000-08:00

"The unquestioned dogma of profit...We are speaking of those fundamentalisms - individualism, comfort, or pleasure (so soft in appearance, but with grave consequences) - that are accepted without justification and unquestionably prized and promoted. We are speaking also of the simplistic and infantile attitudes that may express themselves in very pretentious language, sometimes in the political sphere and very frequently in the religious."

What will we do to uphold this orthodoxy?

"Accept as normal the arrogance and dominance of some human beings with respect to others. And it accepts obedience to the empire's directives as necessary, or at least comprehensible, if we want to be assured of a 'good living,' 'success,' and 'security,' or whatever passes for definitive salvific goods."

What is the practice of this gospel?

"We are dehumanized by our selfishness...Such dehumanization is assumed with an attitude of impotence and naturalness ("that's the way things are!), and it is hardly noticeable since, in contrast to the evils that produced physical death or move people toward it, the evils of the spirit are not so obviously calculable. But they are harmful."

- Jon Sobrino, No Salvation Outside the Poor: Prophetic-Utopian Essays (40-41)

This book just came out so you should get it while it's hot.

Deep Shift Excitment in NC

2007-12-15T15:27:00.000-08:00

I am very pumped about the upcoming Deep Shift event here in NC. Brian McLaren is bringing an interactive experience with music, art, discussion, just coffee, and Brian speaking around the content of his newest and best book yet.

If you haven't read the book you should, but to tempt you I will point you to three appetite inducers.

- The Other Journal has a great, revealing, and down right fun interview to read. So go read it.
- The Emergent Village Podcast has an interview with Brian and Tony Jones. So go listen to it.
-Finally, if you haven't checked out Brian blogging at Table For One.....go blogger-read it.

My brother-in-law Cory, Steven (the bio-brother), and I are going to the event. It will be my first night of not going to bed at 7pm with the new baby so if you thinking about going, GO and I promise to go out until the early morning and discuss theology while we smoke fine cigars.

So if you are going to be there or are interested check out the Charlotte Deep Shift blog. If you haven't paid yet there is a discount code from our friends in the Emergent Village cohort in Charlotte.

Caputo on Radical Orthodoxy

2007-12-15T10:13:00.000-08:00

I found this comment as an end note in John Caputo's The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event:

Radical Orthodoxy is a movement that turns the quaint and (self-)comforting idea that everything is either a Christian metaphysics of participation (that is, Radical Orthodoxy) or nihilism, by which they seem to mean variants of their version of Nietzsche or Derrida, which for them means that human existence is awash in an irrational flux. So Radical Orthodoxy, which gives us a choice between being Cambridge Thomists or nihilists, needs to expan its horizons. (310)

McLaren talking with secular fundies

2007-12-05T20:24:00.000-08:00

I had three friends email me about Brian McLaren blogging this week at Table For One and so I checked it out. If you haven't read Brian's new book you will see him summarize himself well. Most importantly are the comments under each blog. If you want to see how to engage in religious dialog with a secular fundamentalist check it out. Brian always tells people that at his heart he is an evangelist and here I think we can see how an evangelist who
counts conversations and not conversions shares, listens, and responds. For all three of you who shared thanks.

My New Son has Arrived

2007-12-05T10:07:00.001-08:00

Here is Elgin Thomas Fuller. He arrived at 4:51 am yesterday. He is doing great. Now back to see him and mommy.

"Theologies of the Two-Thirds World: Three-Thirds Important for the Western Church"

2007-12-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

Table Talk, a Wake Forest University Divinity School student group I helped to start, had Dr. Rob Sellers come to give a super lecture and now you can hear it. Dr. Sellers spent 25 years living in Indonesia and the Philippines and has committed his life and academic pursuits to inter-faith dialogue and trying to help fellow Westerners understand the theologies coming out of Asia, Africa, Latin and South America. He's spent about two months preparing a presentation for Table Talk specifically and its brilliance is here for you to enjoy. Download and Listen Here!

Emerging Left

2007-11-28T12:56:00.000-08:00

The emergent conversation is full of honest and courageous conservative evangelicals who take the risk to say just what they are emerging from and why. When I talk with them or read things they write it is always refreshing to see such an honest and forward person reflecting and transforming their understanding of faith in light of their questions and journey. What has been less visible or audible in the conversation are those of us who are not emerging from the theological right, but the left. I think of myself as a member of the emerging left. Before entering the conversation you would have had trouble getting me to say much of anything with confidence theologically past Schleiermacher's 'Feeling of Absolute Dependence' or Tillich's 'Ground of Being or Being-Itself' or how like Borg I had seen Jesus again 'for the first time.' I still read and love those three (and I think Schleiermacher is more identifiably Christian than many enemies give him credit for). What I am going to attempt to do is articulate what it was like to theologically emerge from the left. Not that you can generalize my journey that is still in process for all the emerging left, but I am sure it will be easy enough to see how it differs and highlights different transformations than my sisters and brothers on the right.

Since the more progressive Christians are as diverse as the conservative ones it may be helpful for you to know that I am a progressive Baptist (yes we do exist), went to an ecumenical seminary, currently am employed at a Disciples of Christ church, have always lived in the Bible belt, am a preacher's kid, have been married 5.5 years to a wonderful female minister who grew up in a fundamentalist home, and have a kid arriving any day now. I guess you could say I am emerging left out of the south land. Well the first thing I am going to look at is the topic that creates the most tension in conversation with those emerging from the right, the Bible. I am thinking ofplayfully entitling it 'the Bible is not a salvage yard or a dead bunny.'

Scot McKnight doesn't smoke Swisher Sweets

2007-11-28T06:57:00.000-08:00

Alright, for some reason listening to the AAR audio while I played Star Wars Battle Front lead me to some confusion. A 2.5 hour lecture is tough when you can't see the panel's beautiful faces, so I listened while electronically taking over the Death Star. Any way I thought I heard Scot tell Tony that he had a Swisher Sweet when he was outside smoking and just the mention of the cigar that should not be named bothers me. It is like a divinity student telling you their favorite 'translation' of the Bible is the Living paraphrase. BUT, I guess I did not have ears to hear Scot's true words quoted below. Scot displays just how a true emerging cigar smoker responds to the idea of a Swisher Sweets:
@23:50 into the conversation audio......
Scot is telling a story about reading a book and bird watching and Tony inerrupts with a question.
TOny: "Did you have anything in your right hand?
Scot: "Like a cigar?"
Tony: "yeah"
Scot: "I don't know, a good one. Not a cheap one like a Swisher Sweet,"

Amen Hallelujah.

My APOLOGY: Scot I am sorry for not listening well and questioning your emerging cigar status. It appears that with Blue Jeans, a real cigar, and the best blog out there you could be more emerging than Tony. Clearly you emerge past me who was distracted from listening to your voice well because of a violent video game and my radical othering of Swisher Sweets.

Emergent @ AAR Audio and Why Swisher Sweets are not Emerging....An aside for Scot McKnight

2007-11-27T18:34:00.000-08:00

Andy Rowell is my new hero. As some of you know my wife is about to pop out our first child so I couldn't go to AAR this year and I missed the Process \ Radical Orthodoxy showdown and the Emergent Church panel with Tony Jones, Scot McKnight and Diana Butler Bass. Andy is from Duke so he didn't make it to see my favorite living Methodist theologian John Cobb bring the theological ruckus, but he did get the Paul and Empire audio and few other dialogical treasures. Go and listen.

I thought Scot's 6 questions were insightful and was proud to hear he rocked out the new Blue Jeans. Tony and DBB's squabble was humorous and I think it brought things out of both of them you wouldn't have seen otherwise. The only thing that really bothered me was Scot McKnight admitting to smoking swisher sweets. Swisher Sweets are for cigars what Boone's Farm is to wine. When he came to NC with Tony Jones he brought a travel humidor with 5 Hoyo De Monterey Excalibur #1s. While he was here we also had Rocky Patel vintage 1990's and Cuban Montecristo #3's(See here). Just how one could take such strides in their wardrobe and take so many steps back in their cigar choice is troublesome. Swisher sweets are processed, chemical infused, pseudo-tobacco. It is difficult to taste the tobacco when you smoke one but each one of them tastes the same. They are dry-cured and made by machines. Real cigars, authentic cigars, organic cigars are those that come from the earth to a craft workers' hand and to your mouth. A real cigar is made by God, the earth, and human beings (Ikons even). It is a piece of organic art. It tastes different depending on the soil, location of the plant, weather from the of growth, aging process and length, size of the cigar, blend of tobaccos, when you smoke it, how you cut it, light it, and who you smoke with. Real handmade cigars are emergent or emerging if you will. Swisher Sweets are what were are emerging from in the cigar world.

For those of you who have yet to experience a real cigar or join in an emergent conversation let me know and I will open my humidor of friendship for you and match a perfect cigar with a great cup of coffee and you will hopefully never find yourself smoking Swisher Sweets again. It appears I will need to mail Scot a Christmas gift on behalf of all emerging cigar smokers.

For some reason at every Q&A session with academics or church people atonement comes up. I have a theory some other emergent types should test out. If you bring up atonement and they freak out because the idea of a mosaic of atonement theories seems ludicrous then they are probably an evangelical. If on the other hand they look at you like you are Jerry Falwell the moment you act like atonement matters then you are probably talking to a mainliner. On that note everyone should read Scot McKnight's book on atonement and then try out the golf bag metaphor.

My Reflection from the last Dogwood Abbey Gathering

2007-11-27T18:28:00.000-08:00

This is the reflection that started off the sermonic discussion at the last Abbey gathering. If you are interested go here and find it.

Book of Insight: "Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church"

2007-11-26T06:38:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Becky Garrison's newest book 'Rising from the Ashes' and liked it so much I thought I would try to wet your appetite. This is the newest book in an emerging genre I call 'emerging church...wtf,' where the author has examined a host of emerging communities or people so that they can then offer a synthetic assessment of the movement. I have a number of those such books and I will be honest and say they can't keep my attention, so I put them down to read somePannenberg or Baudrillard . After reading Garrison's book I figured out that while a nice analysis where you can pick up a book and see an organized list of characteristics found in emerging churches is pleasant, it feels synthetic and not so emerging of an approach. The traditional book in the 'emerging church...wtf' genre ends up eliminating the particularities, the disagreements, the personalities, and relationships that make the movement refreshing, at least to me. Garrison may havetranscended the category because her book preserves the oddities of the divergent emerging voices she interviewed for the book. How did she do that you may ask? Good question, the book is a collection of interviews conducted through a variety of media (phone, AIM, blog, and in person) that are then organized around the themes of the ten chapters. There are interviews with big names like Diana Butler Bass, Tony Jones, NT Wright, and Phyllis Tickle but when you get done you won't remember much of what they said. The stars of the book are the host of people who are lesser known emerging practitioners and thinkers, who when placed beside the big names demonstrate just how much good stuff is missed by most books in the genre. A few things you will notice if you are smart enough to buy and read will be a high concentration of Episcopal voices, many of which sustain my favoriteconversation throughout the book - what do we do with the Book of Common Prayer. I am not Episcopal, Baptist in fact, but this discussion shows the diversity the emerging conversation can have on one issue and after taking it in you will not say this is what an emergent type would do with the Book of Common Prayer. You will also hear arguments over the role and proper function of technology, ritual, tradition, and innovation. You will read a book that is packed full of theology but not more than threesentences of theology that isn't practical and nothing practical in the book isn't treated as theology. The real reason you should get this book is because it has so many great quotes to steal or appropriate. When you read it you will be grateful that Garrison was a good member of the emerging movement and knew that the best way to get to the point is to keep asking good questions. Here are some zinger-of-a-quotes I found.

"Christianity at its core doesn't explain life, but it brings life."

"Like it or not, liberation has to happen for the oppressor, who is acting out of a place of fear and not liberation."

"We are political but not partisan. We're value driven but not ideological. We are civil but not soft. And we are involved, but we are not used or co-opted by other forces, be they government or commercial."

"Ritual is embodied participatory action."

"Ritual is what people consciously and deliberately choose to do again."

"The liturgy is our work, the work of the people. Now you get to listen closely to where God is calling us, and to bring that wisdom and insight to light in the worship that we all share."

"If you start with pure reason, you'll never get your heart fully enough involved to get down and change things."

"Anglican churches - need to become wombs of the divine - centered on transformative community centered on love and justice."

****My Favorite Question and Answer I couldn't edit****
Which population do you feel are especially drawn to these ancient spiritual practices, and why?

"Younger-than-Baby-Boomer folks: members of my own generation are stilled mired often in 'rebelling against the Establishment' and deconstructing beyond meaning every traditional image or resource. What Boomers don't get is that such zeal is not a universal - it is culturally conditioned and has hit itsexpiration date. Younger folk don't have any interest in gathering and hearing why they no longer have to believe the story-as-it-was-told-when-they-were-little. There is no more 'establishment' as envisioned by the 'Me-Generation.' All there is left is an economy, and a crushing array of people and forces willing and eager to sell everything to blocks of people identified as a 'demographic.' Churches of all ilk fall into this same anxious, predatory pattern of selling, and many denominations haveunapologetically adopted wholesale marketing techniques and called it 'evangelism.' Younger folk do not want Jesus sold to them as a commodity. they want a faith that is free and authentic and are open to manifestations of that faith that have stood the test of time and might throw a little light on an alienated and market-driven age."

Well all those quotes are from people who are not big names and those snippets are part of much larger and beautiful conversations. Go read it and enjoy. Thanks Becky for putting this together.

The Cross and the Lynching Tree

2007-11-24T10:38:00.000-08:00

Bill Moyers interviewed one of America's greatest theologians, James Cone. The interview was amazing and should be viewed in its entirety by all decent human beings in America. Because most of the world did not have James Dunn for Ethics in grad school and there developed an addiction to Bill Moyers I don't want to ruin the interview with my commentary but I would point you to how the connection of the cross and lynching tree would change Christian theology and practice in America.

GO WATCH IT HERE

Walter Lowe on understanding salvation

2007-11-14T20:34:00.000-08:00

"On reflection, it is not self-evident that the best way to present the Christian Gospel - the good news - is to begin with the negative. If one begins by making a pact with the negative, so to speak, will that not color what comes after? Is there not the risk that, despite one's best intentions, the radical good of the Gospel will be endlessly deferred? That it will never stand forth in its own right?"

"Christ and Salvation" in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. by Kevin Vanhoozer (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 236.

The Return of the PoMo Negro "Applause!!"

2007-11-14T20:28:00.000-08:00

My favorite theo-blogger is back in the saddle and if you know what is good for your eyes you will go see his newest series on CEO style leadership in faith communities. Anthony, blog author, is a very insightful and astute thinker who I am glad to call friend. Read on.

Advent: Compassion not Consumption

2007-11-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

Atheism on the comeback

2007-11-05T20:06:00.000-08:00

Brian McLaren has finally demonstrated that he is in fact an atheist. It is pretty clear from this video that he doesn't think the God revealed in Christ is an American Empire building War-monger. He may have even sneakedly suggested other dubious things that I dare not mention, but I am sure you will hear them if you have ears to hear.

Thanks Brian. Been thinking the same thing for a while.

Sermon: Friendship and the Path of Salvation

2007-11-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

Here is the audio of my sermon from Sunday November 4th at New Community Church in Raleigh, NC. I thought it went well and the audio is pretty good. You won't get to see me run around so you will have to use your imagination. Any way if you have 42 minutes, yes I did preach on the long side, and want to listen enjoy it.

BTW: I have no idea where I got the koodies and the cross imagery from but it worked. I am not sure I will use it again.

Excited About the Cobalt Season in North Carolina

2007-11-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

That is right I am super-pumped about the Cobalt Season coming to town. You can be there too for a lyrical assault on the imperial illusion. Check them out in action and get excited.

The Dogwood Abbey is hosting the Cobalt Season for a house show
Tuesday November 6th.

Cost = $5.00 or purchase of a CD.

Location = 631 S. Green St., Winston-Salem, 27101

Schedule = 6 PM Cook-out, 7 PM the music starts.

Bring = A side or dessert and a favorite beverage.

Jews Don't Need to be Perfected

2007-11-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

Ann Coulter usually irritates me, but her attempt at theology is even worse than her militant political rhetoric. I would say dirty things about her but I think she is so asinine that she can speak for herself and I can avoid being as crude as her. For all my Jewish friends I would like to say that she does not speak for me and most Christians I know. Jews don't need to be perfected but Ann Coulter's theology might need some help.

The Advent of Advent

2007-10-31T14:29:00.000-07:00

Every year it seems that Christmas starts earlier. With all the warm weather we have been having I found myself in shorts running into a store to grab Alecia the materials for baking a pumpkin pie and to my surprise the employees were transitioning the isle of special dedication to Santa and company. In my head I thought ‘oh no Christmas already.’ It’s not that I am against Christmas, in fact I love the stories of the first Christmas in scripture and even more the advent season in which the church anticipates God’s incarnation during the four weeks leading up to Christmas but what bothered me in the store that day was how businesses and culture are already anticipating the season of anticipation. The closer Christmas gets the more I realize that I am not anticipating God’s coming to us, the coming of the one who brings peace on earth, goes first to social outcasts (shepherds), excites foreigners (wise men), scares the political head into killing (Herod), and brings God’s promise of hope for all creation. I am anticipating a two month tear of rampant go-go-go in which I spend more time, energy, money, and focus on culture’s consumer based Christmas and not the Christian Christmas. I always hope to get the Jesus story into the season’s business but it is difficult to have the Jesus story, the story of peace and anticipation of God’s coming to history define the way I live through the season. While stores and society are preparing to celebrate consumption, I want to find a way to consume less and give more to the poor. While culture speeds up the pace of life’s rhythm, I want to slow down enough to be a friend, husband, and father (in a few weeks) who journeys with and beside. While my ears will again be bombarded with familiar songs and these ancient stories and my eyes with flashing lights, I want to find a place as silent and as dark as the shepherds’ field where I can hear the angel’s song and see the glory of God’s messengers. As the world around us hyperbolizes things as they are, I want the hope of God’s coming to turn the world upside down.

God
who was incarnate in a no-name peasant Jew, born under Political oppression and Religious suppression, may you grant us the courage to be not distracted, mystified, and seduced by a reality foreign to your advent. Lead us not into the temptation of relational malnutrition and consumption celebration but deliver us with the gift of faith, faith that indeed you have and are coming to our world, its oppression and suppression to establish your peace and your kingdom on this earth. May the advent season be a time where you find room in our hearts, minds, and souls - may you work a work of transformation and create in our community a community of witness to the new hope the world has in your arrival
Come Lord Jesus
Amen

Moltmann's Eschatological Panentheism

2007-10-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

"In the end, however, the new heaven and new earth will become the 'temple' of God's indwelling. The whole world will become God's home. Through the indwelling of the SPirit, people, and churches are already glorified in the body, now, in the present. But then the whole creation will be transfigured through the indwelling of God's glory. Consequently the hope which is kindled by the experiance of the indwelling Spirit gathers in the future, with panentheistic visions. Everything ends with God being 'all in all.' The Trinity and the Kingdom (104-105)

Communion This Sunday

2007-10-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

This was the first time I lead communion in my sweet robe and stole so I tried to come up with a liturgy that would break it in good. Here it is. I combined a Kenyan liturgy, the Didache, and some original material.
Call To The Table

It is good and our delight indeed to give you thanks and praise, Motherly Father, Fatherly Mother, living God, Holy Love, supreme over the world. Creator, Provider, Saviour and Giver. From a wandering nomad you created your family; for a burdened people you raised up a leader; for a confused nation you chose a king, for a rebellious crowd you sent your prophets; for a broken world that can not save itself you gave yourself and offer the gift of God’s Reign; for every person created in your image yet trapped in sin you seek reconciliation and offer the gift of eternal life. At this table we find ourselves having been pursued by you whose nature and name is Love. May all come and receive the gift of God.

Elder prays for Communion

We thank thee, our Gifting God, for the life and knowledge which was made known to us through Jesus your Son. As this broken bread was once scattered on the mountains, and was gathered together to become one, so may your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom; for thine is the glory, and the power, through Jesus Christ, for ever.

Eat Bread - Sit down

Stand - Encourage the Cup

Receive the gift and be transformed by the God who made you, knows you, redeems you, and promises to journey with you through this life into the next.

We thank thee, our Gifting God, for the holy vine of David, which was made known to us through Jesus Christ your Son; to thee be the glory for ever.

The Deacs

2007-10-12T08:16:00.001-07:00

Last night I went to the Wake Forest \ Florida State football game and it was awesome. The ACC better recognize that Wake is for real again. Check out the ESPN highlights.

Prayer from 10-07-07

2007-10-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

Creator, Scared Artist of life and beauty meet us here today
We find ourselves gathered and reflecting on art and its role in our lives as your people
Let us not be tempted to keep you disembodied
for you came to us fully human and in the flesh
Let us not be tempted to limit your revelation to mere word
for Christ made sacred all of life, the trivial, the pain, and the joy
Be here and challenge our hearts to dream of new ways to express your love for all creation
Continue your masterpiece of redemption among us
Just as your Word, your revealing masterpiece, became flesh in the person of Jesus
Embodied love not limited to things simply spoken or seen
May we too find our identity by embodying your love
Creator, Sacred Artist, do your work in us
Amen

Free Burma

2007-10-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

Why? Here

Tony Jones Agrees, John MacArthur is a Gnostic

2007-10-02T22:09:00.000-07:00

Tony Jones has made my day. In a sermon last Sunday, which you can hear here, he not only responded to the Yoga bit on CNN I posted a while ago but called MacArthur out as a modern day Gnostic. I have thought this since May when I went to a luncheon with him here in Winston, but never posted something about it. I will think of how to tell the story while you listen to Tony. Emerge on Tony.

UPDATE: Tony has a sweet new blog post that pertains which i enjoyed.

The Serpent, Conversation, and the Truth War

2007-10-02T22:07:00.000-07:00

A friend from SEBTS asked me how I would respond to the theological challenges Driscoll brought up in his lecture at the Convergent Conference. I told him that if you assume as much as foundational to the Christian Faith as Driscoll does it is hard to respond other than to say, 'you don't speak for all Christians, but you do a great job as a cool beer drinking fundamentalist from the Reformed tradition.' So my goal here is just to point out how one might have a different framework for thinking that can lead to Driscoll-judged 'heretical conclusions' while being a committed Christian and attentive reader of scripture. I had list of different possible entry points but it is hard to pass up on Driscoll borrowing ammo from John MacArthur about the 'danger' of the emergent 'conversation.'

I saw both Driscoll and MacArthur attack the viability of the emergent conversation because it was a dreaded 'conversation' that lead to the fall. Basically they look at the story of Eve and the Serpent (not Satan in Genesis) where she ends up eating the fruit in disobedience to God and sharing it with Adam which results in a bunch of fractured relationships between Eve, Adam, and God. On the surface this looks like a good reason to avoid theological conversation, especially if the theological dialogers are either a women or a reptile, because in this text a conversation leads to the disobedience that has been cursing us ever sense. After making these observations the assumption, at least how I understood it, was that the emergent conversation is similar to the conversation of Eve and the Serpent and should therefore be avoided by all sanctified people. MacArthur went as far to say, (and I am quoting from my napkin when I attended a luncheon with him) "you need to realize we are in a war, the truth war, and it began not with an invasion of an army but with a conversation." The point both Driscoll and MacArthur want to make is having a conversation is a threat, not a fertile ground for truth. If they are right then the emergent conversation is a really big mistake and we should just get our bibles and John Calvin commentaries out and work them until Jesus comes back. I think this idea (not the people) is not only stupid and impractical but actually an impoverished reading of the Genesis text. I think the story of the relational breakdown in Genesis 3 would have benefited from more conversation and not less. In fact, if this story is telling us how we got to be in the situation we are in, namely in a matrix of fractured relationships (God, Self, Others, Creation), then the opposite is true and truth needs conversation.

I don't want to talk forever, so I am going to just point out some conversations that should have happened and then you go read your bible and see if you think I could be on to something.

#1: Adam should have been honest and told Eve the truth about God's command. In Gen. 2:16-17 says to Adam pre-Eve "‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." Then when Eve answers the Serpent's question about God's command she says in Gen 3:3 "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” So what is different in how God gave the command to Adam and how Eve presumably heard it from Adam?
- First, she doesn't know what the tree is but only where it is. The command of God given for a good redemptive purpose is turned into command without a reason though Adam kept the divine threat.
- Second, Eve's rendition includes a command not to touch the fruit. Why would God's command have changed? Did the fruit grow cooties or did Adam punk out from having a real conversation with his partner and instead just built a legalistic shelter around a command of God to avoid having to explain its life giving purpose and God's good intention for the command. Instead of having a real and honest conversation about truth, meaning, God, values, and the world they lived in Adam apparently said, "Don't eat, Don't Touch, or Die."
- Lastly an observation. How did Eve get suckered in by such a stupid question, "Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?" Other than the question was on a topic Adam should have been conversing with her about it doesn't make sense why you would take this question seriously. I imagine Eve, the Bible's first theologian, was looking for a place to have a conversation and wasn't finding it with her partner so she entered into a conversation with the no good crafty serpent at the first sign of open space to actually converse about truth. If Adam had started an emergent cohort or simply told his own faith experience instead of building legalistic ethical bunkers then Eve would have said, "You sneaky serpent we only avoid eating from one tree, for this reason, it serves this purpose, and is a way I honor and connect to my loving God."

#2: Adam should have entered the truth war by conversing with Eve while the serpent was present. In the text you have Eve decide she wants knowledge (something Adam didn't do much talking with her about) and so she first touches the fruit and then eats it. If Adam had said when she touched it, "Eve we need to talk, I didn't tell you the truth about the fruit. We can touch it just not eat it and here is why....insert conversation.....gaining of knowledge.....because God loves and desires the best for us....will you forgive me for not being honest and eliminating conversation about truth in our relationship" then maybe things would have gone differently. Instead Eve disobeys Adam's made up rule and God's without knowing the truth of the situation, all in her search for knowledge. This could have been avoided by a real theological conversation with Adam. See Adam was the one 'in the know' and his desire to avoid a conversation set up the conditions for disobedience. The point here is that while Eve disobeyed the command first, truth was absent because of a lack of conversation not because of conversation.

Well read the bible and let me know what you think.

There is a more detailed discussion about the Genesis 3 text over at The Flaming Heretic? (a super sweet moravian theo-blogger)

The Driscoll Train and The Invite Person or Dude

2007-10-01T20:53:00.001-07:00

Steve Knight posted a giant summary of the responses to Driscoll rolling around the internet. Also a little FYI, The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has canceled their invite of Doug Pagitt to an event later this month. Outside of not being surprised, thinking they are still going the way of the buffalo, and desiring to avoid using bad language I want to say something to whomever initially invited Doug. I am glad you are still in the NCBSC. I am also glad you thought about trying to get new voices in. I am sorry your attempt failed because Driscoll called out your invite of his heretic friend, who is probably out a couple thousand for the canceled speaking engagement, during his guest lecture at SEBTS. I am glad that you are there invite dude. If you are down right now remember the 'p' of tulip and keep on chooglin. (p=perseverance of the saints)

UPDATE: here is a great post by Tony Cartledge that explains what happens. also, steve knight was right the invite person was apparently Chad Hall and he is no longer a NCBSC employee......

Citizenship with God and Country

2007-09-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

So I have been reading through Reinhold Niebuhr's 'Moral Man and Immoral Society' and then I saw this video of Rene Padilla and thought hmmm..... well I haven't got too much passed the hmm.....

Driscoll, Acts 29, and the Demerging Church

2007-09-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

Some of you know that I have been working with an association of Baptist churches with a focus on helping their church planting team. This job made it possible for me to attend the Acts 29 church planter's bootcamp last week in Raleigh and to experience the latest edition of Mark Driscoll's attempt at being the personal paraclete for the emerging church movement. I went knowing that I wouldn't fit in with the theological agenda of Acts 29, but I guess I assumed that there would be enough room for me to breathe and learn about how they have effectively networked to plant churches. I say this because despite my rather harsh assessment of the event, I have no problem with people starting all kinds of faith communities that connect people to God even if they have a different theological imagination.

The host church, Vintage 21, in my hometown of Raleigh, is a place friends of mine worship and serve in, so I am thankful they exist. Acts 29 is an organized and effective machine, run by a group of Dudes who are passionate about their faith and network. With that said, I would like to just say that what I experienced was far from anything emerging. I have been to a bunch of minister's conferences with Emergent leaders, those friends of Driscoll who he was slandering the next day at the Convergent conference () and who have been part of the 'conversation' for a while.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

At the bootcamp we had 6 sessions of monologues that amounted to theological diatribes in which the only viable theological stance was surprisingly theirs, a compassionate conservative Reformed theology. (OK, Chan Kilgore didn't diatribe and this doesn't apply to him. In fact he was the only one I was thankful to have heard.) So in this two days of Reformed 2.0 rhetoric what did I learn?

* That to be "gospel-centered" you have to hold to a list of theological conclusions that were not all developed and connected until the 17th century.
* That what the postmodern world needs is more white Dudes preaching hour-long exegetical sermons in which all texts mean Christ and Christ means Acts 29 Reformed 2.0 Christianity.
* That no pastor's wife should have a job or desire "household duties to be divided equally between the man and woman"
* That you can insist all elders be "not violent" while at the same time saying that, should a church planter deviate from the Reformed 2.0 agenda in an egalitarian way (e.g., "getting pushed around by a feminist"), Mark Driscoll will personally fly out to your church and "kick you in the throat."
* That a bootcamp of called church planters need not include dialog until after the full 8 hours of Reformed 2.0 downloading is done (and then discussion is moderated, filtered, and nothing more than a pony show for Driscoll to say more entertainingly outlandish things).

I have a big list of things I noticed, but what bothered me most is that the Acts 29 response to our new postmodern situation is to grip a thoroughly modern Reformed theology in the Dude's right hand really tight and then think he is better than a fundamentalist because he has a beer in his left hand. This isn't emergent, it is demergent. This is the disgruntled indie rocker's version of the Reformation.

There is much to learn and keep from the Reformation, a movement that was thoroughly modern, but there is reason to give pause to returning to it with a clinched fist. Right now I think the last thing the Church needs are white dudes with clinched fists, especially when what they are clenching is "God's Truth." Throughout modernity white Dudes have had God's truth in their hands too much, and behind them are ditches filled with God's and\or their enemies. (This confusion is easy when you have truthtightly gripped in a fist)

The emergent "conversation" Driscoll is so scared of, and the questions that many of us at the bootcamp had in our minds and couldn't ask, are important. It may be my depravity talking, but I imagine God not scared of conversation, I imagine that truth is not dependent on myself, Doug Pagitt, Karen Ward, or Mark Driscoll, and I am confident that, as the Church finds its bearing in a new world, we don't need any more clinched fists, for it is God's world and God's truth after all.

My Therapist's Description of Human Depravity

2007-09-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

Bill, my favorite therapist, posted a video from a house show he did where he shared a piece of the wisdom he has shared with me over the years.

BTW...I am more convinced than ever that we all need to be in addiction therapy. I haven't managed to find a local MA (Mammon Anonymous) or WA (Warrior Anonymous) group.

The Truth War On Yoga

2007-09-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

Oh my, this is just unbelievable. Not only is this discussion ridiculous but the fact CNN covered it on 9-11 is even more troublesome. I think john macarthur is crazy and he normally proves it when I listen to his radio show, but this may be a whole new level of detachment from reality. If either Doug or John is suppose to be a gnostic, a heretical label John labels Doug and his emergent friends with, then why is the gnostic the one advocating an embodied wholeness and why is the gnostic the only one who appears sane?

Rauuuuuschenbusch!!!

2007-09-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

I am participating in a Blog-o-riot based on Walter Rauschenbusch's classic Christianity and the Social Crisis. Being its 100th anniversary, my love for Walter, and his sweet Baptist skills I hope you go take a look at the series over at the Pop Theology website.

Blogosis

2007-09-11T15:19:00.001-07:00

Theron, my middle school baptist youth minister who became Orthodox just wrote an amazing post on 'theosis,' which is one of the most powerful doctrines of the Orthodox church. If you have the time to read a moving articulation of the cosmic work of God in Christ do it and share some love with Theron.
Check it out: http://swordinfire.blogspot.com/2007/09/theosis.html

Online quizes and theological self-disclosure

2007-08-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

So I found this theology quix online that will tell you wht theologian you are. What was most surprising to me was not that it told me I was Moltmann with a close Tillich second, but that I got 0% of Augustine. I have always thought that as a Protestant Augustine would always be in the back of my mind ruining my theological imagination, but apparently this survey has revealed that I may have escaped Augustine's clutches.

btw, there were no Trinity questions on the quiz and if you are a theolophile see if you can guess who the possible theologians are by the questions.

You scored as Jürgen Moltmann, The problem of evil is central to your 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

100%

Paul Tillich

73%

Friedrich Schleiermacher

67%

John Calvin

53%

Charles Finney

53%

Anselm

47%

Martin Luther

40%

Karl Barth

33%

Jonathan Edwards

20%

Augustine

Which theologian are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

The Baptist Covenant and Exclusion

2007-08-23T07:50:00.001-07:00

I was surprised to hear that the new Baptist Covenant decided that in the interest of unity they would excluded the participation of two 'pro-gay' groups. (Story Here) The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (AWAB) and the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America were told that they could not participate as groups, but that they could be present as individuals. This is surprisingly similar to the reasoning and language used to describe the participation of individual Southern Baptist churches and individuals, but not the convention as a whole. The difference being the Southern Baptist Convention doesn't want to be a part of it as a group and these two 'pro-gay' groups want to. Now I am not sure why I should be surprised, but I always hear the non-SBC Baptists talk about how they really believe in church autonomy and the beauty of our ability to participate with each other where we can, while respecting difference when necessary. If this is true why can't two 'pro-gay' groups think Jesus was on target when he preached his first sermon in Luke 4 (the theme for the whole event)? No 'pro-gay' group would come expecting that everyone there would agree with them, but that everyone present wants to cooperate in diversity to seriously follow the vision Jesus casts in Luke 4. Why can't groups who are not 'pro-gay' be as Baptist as the 'pro-gay' groups and come to celebrate and cooperate around the message of Jesus?

The New Baptist Covenant has posted the themes of the plenary sessions:
Unity in Seeking Peace with Justice
Unity in Bringing Good News to the Poor
Unity in Respecting Diversity
Unity in Welcoming the Stranger
Unity in Setting the Captive Free

Does anything stick out as odd if both our more conservative and 'pro gay' sisters and brothers in Christ can't be present as the groups they represent?

The Photographic Prophet and the Will-to-Heal

2007-08-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

I love my church here in Winston. Over the last three years I have come across a number of prophets in the community. There were those who came to visit like James Forbes, “Buzz” Thomas, Paul Fiddes, and John Cobb. Then there are a bunch who serve, share, and worship with me each week. My favorite are the single women at least 40 years older than me, which is something I would not think I would ever say. This past week we had a new prophet in residence and it was one of the most refreshing and hope-filled moments I have had in a building with a steeple in a long time. Stewart Gerarad, a 24-yearold artist of the photographic variety, showed up with a sampling of the photos from his most recent collection on display here in Winston titled “Augmented Reality.” There was bit of news surrounding his exhibit after two photos with nudity in them were found in a closet. Apparently in the ‘Christian city of Winston, here in the Bible belt’ that kind of stuff shouldn’t be around. Aside from engaging in a debate of what classifies as art or the religiously imperialistic tone of the wanna-be ‘critic,’ I was struck by the insight of a number of comments Stewart made in a 30 minute interview with our Education minister Ken Myers. (Since its been a week I am not sure if he said what I am reporting during the public forum or afterwards in a conversation, but here we go. Plus other than what I wrote on 3x5 card the quotes are paraphrases)

Stewart, while not a church-goer since youth group, is not foreign to religion or the Christian faith. In fact he mentioned being ‘sword drill champion’ at his church growing up. In church speak that means he memorized a bunch of bible verses and knew the Protestant ordering of the two testaments. Point being, at some point he was heavily involved in his faith community. Ken asked him couple different ways why he wasn’t compelled to stay in a church to which he said, “When I got older I came to see that religion, at least how I had experienced growing up, wasn’t attached to the reality I was living in. Plus I did the whole Christian thing enough to have Jesus on tap.” Something that stuck out to me was his use of the word “pure.” He didn’t use it with a good protestant guilt complex, but as something treasured, valued, and even messily honest. In a response to a question about postmodernity and ‘why photography,’ he made a rather profound even prophetic observation about postmodern purity. There are a bunch of forms of art, most of which have a form of technical perfection. There are things like painting with a bunch of styles that you perfect the technique to do and then new digital based art that with the mastery of more technology there are more possibilities. Photography is simply the image. It is limited by what was actually present in history at the moment of the shot, it is limited by vision of a single lens, and is limited to the power present of a single sense, sight. The photo is pure in the postmodern sense. Stewart said, “technical perfection doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t get the image right.” Images are revelatory beyond the confines of technique and system, they reveal reality that is true but often ignored for the sterile, clean, edited, socialized, and manufactured existence we know. The stark difference Stewart saw between religion and reality was a prophetic judgment of our faith-imaging, not our religious speak that ‘sounds’ religion to the center of our life, but the substance in the religious images of our community. Where are the images of reality in religion? Is the religious reality imaginable? Bearable? Simply speakable?

When pressed by questions on how to get his postmodern people to church Stewart said, “I would think you should create a recovery zone that anyone can come to and those with the will-to-heal can find partners.” A pure community with postmodern sensitivity is one where the reality of life can find an open space to be as messily honest as need be and a community that encourages the will-to-heal. I imagine that this community is one where it is ok for the cross present and dirty or should I say pure.

what do you think when you see......

2007-07-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

A friend sent this picture to me a while ago and I put it on my CPU's background. It has received very diverse responses when plugging myself into a projector for different teaching engagements, so I thought I would see if anyone else got a rise out of it.

McLaren on Justice, Power, and the Kingdom

2007-07-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

I mentioned this video to a friend and said I would post it here. Enjoy, it isn't that hard. Peace.

Save Mr. Stogie

2007-07-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

Well if my senators (Burr and Dole) and House Rep. (Fox) don't holla back about the farm bill's participation in the exploitation of the Two-Thirds world farmers maybe they will about saving cigars from being lumped into cigarette tax increase. Check it out.

Barmen Declaration 2.0?

2007-07-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked a number of his friends what pisses them off about Christianity in the key of USA and so here is what I wrote.

What pisses me off...The people of the cross-bearer have become the most efficient cross-builders in human history. This is done through the demonic mixture of nationalism, fear-mongering, militarism, consumerism, and theo-capitalism. The ignorance of the church in American is preserved by its baptism of a mythic view of reality, with reigning myths like 'just war,' the chosen nation, christian nation, innocent nation, and the coming millennial nation. Some how the teachings of Jesus (like the Sermon on the Mount) have become idealistic babble, the confession of faith ('Jesus is Lord') is heard as a requirement for running for president and not challenging the reigning Caesar-like structures of our world, and the resurrection of the crucified one is turned into a commodity the church possesses and lord's over everyone else and not the single most important event in cosmic history where God's coming upside-down Reign is placed permanently on the horizon of history. With this said, I think it is the American church's use of the faith in its colonizing of the globe, truth, and power and its perverting of the gospel into a palatable culture\power dominate civil religion that stands as the source of our problem. The Barmen declaration was a Christian theological statement because it could not exist without shaping the community.

Now I need to go watch my Romero dvd or listen to some Rage Against the Machine....I love the church by the way, so don't get ill if you don't loose sleep over these issues.

2007-07-09T19:14:00.000-07:00

Elgin + St. Francis = fun before bed. At night my son-in-process and I have a little night vigil and maybe a little theological discussion so he starts off on the right (or left, depending on who is judging) foot. Tonight Elgin and I did some reading from St. Francis of Assisi, maybe the coolest 'reformer,' and we got to this quote.

"Unhappy is the religious person...who instead of keeping the things the Lord has spoken to his heart and demonstrating them by a life of quality, tries to make them known by talking about it. That person may receive nothing more than an earthly reward, and those who regarded that person's words will take away little fruit."

Hopefully Elgin will talk a little less than his Dad and live with heart felt compassion given to him by his Creator.

Two Sweet Free Articles

2007-06-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

SO today I cam across to free theology articles that I support you reading.

1. Tony Jones was rejected by Wheaton who decided not to publish his plenary lecture at their theology conference this year. So, go read it and realize just how to combine baseball, the early church fathers, and emerging churches together.

2. Marjorie Suchocki, the most kind theologian I have ever met, has her introduction to Process Theology lecture at the Process and Faith website for free. If you ever had any interest in Process Theology, then check it out.

Important Question

2007-06-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

So I got some good books for my birthday, but now I have the trouble of picking which to read first. I generally read two or three at a time, but even then this is a difficult decision. Here they are.
1. The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology ed. by Kevin Vanhoozer
2. The Fragile Absolute by Slavoj Zizek
3. Liberal Theology: A Radical Vision by Peter Hodgson
4. Liberating Paul: the justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle by Neil Elliott
5. The Emerging Christian Way includes Marcus Borg, Sallie McFauge, Matthew Fox...
6. Christianity and the Postmodern Turn: Six Views ed. by Myron B. Penner
7. Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times by Joerg Rieger
8. Simple Church by Thom Rainer & Eric Geiger
9. The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God by Charles Hartshorne

Emerging Community Vision pt.2

2007-06-18T09:06:00.001-07:00

Part One, Christocentric Community is here.

Sacramental Living: The cultural landscape of modernity created a rigid and attentively maintained distinction between sacred and secular space. In a postmodern context this divide is no longer life giving and so the emerging community will seek to sacramentalize spaces, places, faces, and name traces of God’s creative goodness in the world. This process of sacramentalizing life includes worship but extends to the life of each member in their daily living. The goal is that the life of the community be one that is attentive to the presence of God, that celebrates the goodness of God’s world, and creates space for the grace of God to permeate its life together.
1. Worship: The worship services will be geared toward a holistic expression of the Gospel. In modernity the written\spoken media dominated the life of the worship service so that the Word of God was equated to the reading of scripture and its exposition in a sermon. While these both have their place in worship the community will also seek to express God’s story through the diversity of media available (including the arts), seek to engage more senses through interactive – participatory elements of worship, and intentionally shape worship to the liturgical calendar so the church’s story grounds the life of the community. [ex. The sermon would not be the centerpiece of the worship service and would more than likely not be a monologue of imparting knowledge, but more dialogical and engaging. OR Baptist theology of baptism and an Anglican view of Communion.]
2. Community: The relationships in the community will be valued at a premium. The relationships between the members, guests, the community, the marginalized, and God are all part of the universally expanded network of Godbelovedness our Abba has called us to live in love with. The first commitment of a member is a commitment to these relationships and their flourishing. The community and its living should be an open space of grace that gives the welcome of Christ to all, inviting all it encounters to a transformative relationship with God, and being there to encourage and help each other along the journey. [ex. When someone joins the community the community will change because they are a part of it. The community promises to become a place where we can flourish together and so everyone is asked to share something that is part of their giftedness and uplifting to the community.]
3. Vocation: Part of taking down the sacred-secular divide is demolishing the ordained – laity divide. The Emerging Community would not only seek to incorporate its members into the life of the church and its service to the world, but also help develop an understanding of vocation where each member sees their own occupation as part of the church’s ministry and service to God. The community would be a community of ministers who serve in a variety of occupations in the city they are called to serve. [ex. If there is a teacher in the community, they are known as a minister of education and child of God development. If there is a lawyer, they are known as a minister of legal services for the coming of God’s kingdom.]

Who's Afraid of Post-Modernism?

2007-06-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

James K. A. Smith gives an interesting introduction to postmodernity that could work for those with little or no theology\philosophy background. Each chapter focuses on a film that he uses to draw out the meaning behind bumper sticker phrases by the most noted of the deconstructionist philosophers. For a general setup of pomo in chapter one he uses ‘the Matrix.’ Chapter two is a discussion of Derrida, the superb film ‘Memento,’ and Derrida’s infamous line ‘there is nothing outside the text.’ Chapter three looks at Lyotard, ‘O Brother Where Art Thou?’ and those evil ‘metanarratives’ modernity gave us. Chapter four is on Foucault, ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ and the connection between power-knowledge- discipline. Despite being generally leery of a Radical Orthodox (RO) theologian using philosophy - because I assume they are generally setting up their RO-spike where ‘bame’ being RO is now the best option for the theologian enlightened by Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard – I really enjoyed and appreciated the first four chapters and think they can stand on their own without agreeing with chapter 5. In chapter 5 Smith gives a proposal that the emerging church be RO and brings a really great film, ‘Whale Rider’ as his back up. I will admit to having a prejudice against RO because to me it is more like theological BO, really old and musky. I decided to read a little on RO before getting harsh on it, so if you have suggestions leave them (Andrew…..). But for now I recommend reading the first four chapters, you can decide about the fifth yourself, and if polled on whether or not the emerging church should go RO I vote no…..but you don’t have to agree.

Soul Graffiti

2007-06-17T21:24:00.001-07:00

Emergent folks often talk about following Jesus or living in the way of Jesus, but rarely is this phrase followed by story after story of a life in process of Christo-transformation. If you want to hear some of these stories and be challenged by them then go get Mark Scandrette’s new book ‘Soul Graffiti.’ The book is organized into four parts that follow the initial teaching of Jesus in gospel of Mark and the though Scandrette does occasionally give direct theological reflection, the book itself is story driven and oh so compelling. When you get done you will either be fired up that someone in the First World is actually identifiably Christian, which gives you hope for yourself or be irritated that you read a book that ended up challenging you to the core. Or both. Scandrette is a luring story-teller which enables his family and community in San Fran to untame Jesus and the gospel for the reader. He mentions taking the risk of being offended by Jesus and his teachings and his stories reveal to us just how offended we need to get, but also how rewarding a life on the way of Jesus can be. If you want to be encouraged, challenged, and have a stack of super sweet stories to bring up next time some one asks what following Jesus looks like the get it, read it, and do it.

Thinking Blogs

2007-06-07T13:42:00.001-07:00

I got tagged by Andrew in the thinking blogger meme. My job is to tag 5 blogs that get my head moving. I guess I am not suppose to tag Andrew since he tagged me, but you should still check his out if you haven't.

1. Pop Theology: This is blog by a couple theology and culture Phd students. One of them, Ryan Parker is not only super-sweet but does actual theological reflection of film. The kind of reflection you won't take just to youth group, but to actual discussion with adults.

2. The Parish: This is Greg Horton's blog. It is always interesting and candid. He often says what I would say if I had the fortitude he did. The comments are also good on his blog.

3. Knightopia: Steve is not only a passionate christian but greatly underestimates his own ability to think theologically. Not only that but he is actually a thinker and nice at the same time, something I try to emulate.

4. Greensboro Abbey: Zach's journaling here is exciting and refreshing for many of us baptists who freak out when we read most baptist theology blogs. Though it's a new blog, it is very engaging for the reader.

5. Leron Shults: I always think when Leron speaks. After reading through Pannenberg's Systematic Theology last summer I have been attracted to his students who are working for a more postmodern theology and since he has a blog he is my favorite.

Alrighty there you have. Go, Read, Think

new conversation weeked update

2007-06-05T21:34:00.000-07:00

here. Mary McClintock Fulkerson is joining the conversation and more.

Christology and Omnipotence

2007-06-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

So I haven’t been ignoring Christology, just trying to figure out what to say next that doesn’t presume too much. I came up with a list of issues that I wrestle with and thought I might set them out here and try to cast a general framework for my thinking. No idea what will come next.

One of my deepest theological convictions is that omnipotence, in the God can do anything-anywhere-anytime sense, is one of the biggest theological errors of the church. It shows up most any place, but a number of important questions are raised in Christology if you can’t envision God being omnipotent and the Abba of Jesus at the same time. The power of God is much more than an abstract issue in my mind, because religious people tend to imitate their understanding of God (on their best days) and if God sets the world right through coercive power and force it is logical or at least pragmatic for followers of God to do so. I could go on here, but will save my anti-empire spill for later. The point for me is that if God is relational love, then a reconciled creation can not be accomplished by the force of divine will. Any way, here are some Christology issues that need to be looked at if you are against an imperialist incarnation. If you have more ideas, questions, or issues to discuss holla at me. If you want to get ill on heretic go see Zach who is talking about homosexuality. Everyone knows it’s much more “in” to condemn heretics for their view of sexuality and not Christology.

Incarnation without Invasion: I am generally wary of describing the incarnation in a way that the initiator, should it not be God, sound more like the description of a military invasion.

Biology and Cosmology of Baby Jesus: Just how did the conception, birth, and coming of the Christ happen? My goal is to use the phrases “seminal logos” and “God sperm” as many times as possible, because it still makes me giggle.

Prophecy, Prediction, and Fulfillment: How could a Messiah be prophesied about, it actually be Jesus, and God not plan out history? That questions just makes me shiver if no other reason than I may have gone through a period in middle school where I used Josh McDowell’s “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” to witness to a Jewish friend. Sorry Raphael, you tolerated a bit of religious presumptuousness from me, stayed friends, and laid hands on me at my ordination. (Raphael is the handsome Hebrew in the picture with Alecia and I from my ordination service.)

Resurrection without Coercion: I think it is possible but I am not sure what I would do if it wasn’t so this may be a spectacle in theological projecting. I know Corbin (if he has the internet yet after leaving me in Winston-Salem) will let me know the error of my ways.

EMERGING COMMUNITY VISION pt.1

2007-06-03T21:04:00.000-07:00

This summer I am interning with the local baptist association and their church plants. One of my jobs is writing up a brief description of a potential emerging community that could be used to help explain it to church people who may not know anything about the emergent movement so that they have some idea what they are supporting. I came up with a couple points and here is the first. If you have any ideas for being more clear feel free to share. Yes, I do know it is not really possible to describe an emerging community when it doesn't exist. I am just trying to get some kind of community vision guide together to hopefully firm up support. Enjoy.

Christocentric Community: The story of Jesus’ life, ministry, cross, resurrection, and active presence through the Spirit is the center piece of the community. As it develops it will begin with the story of Jesus, because in Christ we come to know who God is, God’s desire for creation, and the world’s future in God. First and foremost the community is living in the way of Jesus. Three parts of the ministry of Jesus will serve as guideposts to Christocentric life in the community: mysticism, mission, and message.
1. Mysticism. The story of Jesus reveals a world that God has created and in which God is actively present and working. Jesus lived and practiced the presence of God, whom he knew intimately as Abba, and this experience transformed his message and empowered his mission. An emerging community would be intentional on creating space for the Spirit of God to come in surprising and intimate ways. In a culture that is spiritual but not religious the followers of Jesus should actively proclaim and practice the Abba-intimate mysticism of Jesus.
2. Mission. For an emerging community there is an identification of the mission of Jesus with the mission of God. Jesus proclaimed and brought the presence of the kingdom of God. He also empowered and sent his disciples to do same. For this reason the kingdom of God is the most important theological concept for understanding the work of church. This community will intentionally focus itself on the mission of God and seek to participate. Doing so means that the community will be externally focused, people driven, and seek healing and reconciliation.
3. Message. Jesus is not just the one who made God present in a dynamic and mystical way, nor is he just the one who proclaimed the mission of God for the world, but Jesus himself was the message. His message was not simply preached but embodied. Jesus, the Word of God, is more than words and so the emerging community will witness to the message of God through embodiment. Every media and every relationship can become a spirit-filled medium for revelation and transformation of God. Recognizing this means the message of the community is more than words and doctrine but an invitation to experience the presence of God and embody the way of Jesus.

Graduation

2007-05-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Best Two Profs on Planet Earth

My Pannenberg Minion

My favorite 2 div students (who happen to be my wife and bro)

My Class and Profs

Len Sweet Audio pt 1

2007-05-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

I posted the first segment of Len Sweet's audio from the 'Remix\Reboot' event. Check it out.

Whitehead on Caesar-fying God

2007-05-06T14:33:00.000-07:00

"When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers…The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly. In the official formulation of the religion it has assumed the trivial form of the mere attribution to the Jews that they cherished a misconception about their Messiah. But the deeper idolatry, of fashioning God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers was retained. The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar."
Process and Reality 342

The Gospels, Jesus, and Christology

2007-05-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

So a friend and I were in a conversation about Christology, which is just the fancy word for theology about the person (how human\divine stuff works out) and the work (what was accomplished in Christ). I promised I would attempt to write a few blog entries that are not completely useless and hopefully helpful, so here is part one and more or less where we spent the most of our time talking. Of course this is just my opinion, so don't get upset if you don't like it. I'm not sure i always do.

The Gospels are an important source for theology, but for Christology there can be no other more important source. While the Gospels are the substance for historical retrieval, they cannot be understood as direct historical accounts or “remembered history” because the Gospels are the result of the early church’s communal remembering, retelling, and reflection on the history of Jesus. The Gospels are not narratives that could have been written by a biographer of Jesus or even by Peter directly after Pentecost. The Gospels can best be understood as “Theological history,” in that the Gospel narratives tell the story of the historical man from Nazareth written from a post-Easter perspective. After the cross and resurrection the identity of Jesus, as Son of God, that existed throughout his life became clear. The historical act of identification for Jesus the Son of God led to the theologizing of the history of Jesus so, as my theology prof likes to say, “all the stories of Jesus have been washed in the blood of his cross and polished in the light of the empty tomb.” Said another way, after Easter the history of Jesus was retold in a way that (re)shaped the stories in light of the resurrection identity of Jesus. So Jesus had a gospel-effect on the (re)telling of the Gospel narratives. The history of Jesus that was retold in the Gospels is different than the gospel itself who is Jesus. To tell the stories of Jesus from an Easter perspective with a gospel-effect was not an underhanded act of the evangelists, but a means to effectively present both the history and truth of Jesus in the single narrative. If the Gospels are taken as history and their Easter perspective is not acknowledged, what was a life full of contingencies is presented to the reader as the divinely ordained plan of God. Therefore, the history of Jesus must be acknowledged as separate and deviating from the theologized Gospel accounts. Recognizing this allows one to seek the historical Jesus contained beneath the imaginative constructs of the Gospel texts and engage Christology from below. Christology from below is not an inappropriate starting point for Christology because it is the very place the earliest disciples pursued Christological thought. The history a Christology from below seeks and begins from is the history behind the stories that served as the substance of the early disciple’s Christology.

That last bit in italics I think is stated too strong, because it's not like we have much to go on outside of the actual canonical Gospels. The point I am going for is just that the actual person of Jesus who lived is the foundation of the faith and Christology. The Gospel texts are foundational theological reflections about the person.

Why I Need to find $ to go to AAR in november.

2007-05-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

Joint Session of the Open and Relational Theologies Unit and the Christian Systematic Theology Group

“Radical Orthodoxy and Process Theology”
Chairs: Thomas Jay Oord & James K. Smith

-- Graham Ward, “The Bride of Christ: Creation, Christology, Ecclesiology”

-- Catherine Keller, “Reciprocating Gifts: Truth, Politics and Participation in Process”

-- John Milbank, “Change and Participation”

-- John Cobb, “Rethinking Tradition”

Process theology 2, Radical Orthodoxy 0.

The Good, The Bad, and the Something

2007-04-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

The Good: I am done with div school in 2 weeks
The Bad: The Heat are not in the NBA playoffs any more
The Something: I preached today at New community and you can hear it.

Project Presentation

2007-04-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

PostProtoTheoEpistemic Projectilicitiness
Or, The things you will never talk to your congregation about unless you care about Jesus really mattering in the World

Senior Projects:
Tripp Fuller
“Becoming Jesus’ Church in the Post-Colonial World: Reframing the Mission and Power of God”

Corbin Boekhaus
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End”: Creation and Eschatology in Dialogue with the Natural Sciences

Corbin, Tripp, and Jesus want you to be there!

Thursday, April 26, 2007
3:30pm - 5:30pm
Wingate Hall Room 302

Pannenberg on the Church and the Kingdom

2007-04-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

Christ points the Church toward the Kingdom of God that is beyond the Church. To the degree that the Church follows his pointing and heeds his reminder, the Kingdom of God will manifest itself through the Church. But note that this is quite different from attributing to the Church in its established structures the dignity of being the Kingdom of Christ. The rule of Christ is effected wherever man becomes aware of the coming Kingdom of God and lives in accord with that awareness. This may happen in the Church. It should be expected to happen in the Church. But the rule of Christ cannot be identified with the Church’s existence as a organized community in the world. The theological identification of the Church with the Kingdom of Christ has all too often served the purposes of ecclesiastical officials who are not attuned to the Kingdom of God. Many Christians, especially church leaders, like to think they are in procession of the truth, or at least that they possess the ultimate criterion of the truth. Because they feel themselves to be indispensably related to the very Kingdom of Christ, they fail to recognize the provisional character of all ecclesiastical organizations. They are unable to stand humbly before the coming Kingdom of God that is going to bring about the final future of the world. They are blinded to the ways in which even now, proleptically, the future manifests itself in the world (and not just in the Church, nor even always through the Church). Precisely because the Church mistakes herself for the present form of the Kingdom, God’s rule has often had to manifest itself in the secular world outside, and frequently against, the Church. - Theology and the Kingdom of God (77-78)

Pannenberg on 'The Beloved"

2007-04-11T21:05:00.000-07:00

"True love nurtures wholeness, granting to the beloved the authenticity and independence of his existence. Creative love does not ask the beloved for his dependency but for his personhood...the eyes of love perceive yet unrealized possibilities...Love, on the one hand, envisions in the beloved the destiny of his life and the promise of life's fulfillment. Love views the beloved with the eyes of God. Yet love too respects the beloved. He anticipates that the potential will be realized through the other person's own decision and effort. Love can support, but it does not seek to control, the struggle towards realization." - Theology and the Kingdom of God (118-119)

Church Identity in a Post-Colonial World: Mark 1:1

2007-04-09T22:40:00.000-07:00

What does a post-colonial theology of the church look like? A Big and important question, but here is one place to start. The first verse of the first (oldest) gospel about JC.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God Mark 1:1

This passage is the beginning Mark’s gospel and an important place to begin to search for a reservoir of ecclesial identity in our age of identity crisis and identity fabrication. In these few verses we see how Mark identifies Jesus and the foundation for Jesus’ own self-understanding. As the church of Jesus Christ it is only logical that the identity search of those ‘in Christ’ be informed by the identity given to Jesus himself by his first story teller. Setting this opening to the book in its first century context and in particular in its imperial context will help us identify the how expansive an outlook Mark had for the God Movement present in Jesus.
Mark does not begin his gospel as a traditional Hellenistic biography, by noting the character to which the author is concerned, but instead claims that this story is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. This simple phrase is a loaded one, for it first claims that the text one is about to read or hear is simply the start and does not contain the complete good news; or better yet, the good news is more than a text that can be read and digested and more than story that can be heard and remembered, the good news of Jesus Christ is about more than one person’s life or a past happening, but something that has had its beginning and is still present. The good news is not just an event or a singular happening, it is a life determining reality that moves from this storyed beginning to an end yet unknown.
Good news is not a benign term in Mark’s historical context. The good news was proclaimed when there was a military victory and was expanded to mean “the good news of peace and prosperity” following a military victory. We also know that good news (also translated good tidings or gospel) was used in the emperor cult and was associated with the “empire’s benefits such as an emperor’s birth, military conquest, or accession to power.” One famous example is the Priene inscription which originated within a decade of Jesus’ birth that declares the emperor Augustus to be the “savior” and “concludes with the line ‘the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning for the world of good tidings that came by reason of him.” Seeing that Rome pronounced “divine sanction for its empire, claiming that the gods had chosen Rome to manifest the gods’ sovereignty, presence, agency, and blessings on earth,” Mark’s counter claim about the beginning of the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ is made quite radical. In this context the following claims that Jesus is the ‘Christ,’ the anointed king of Israel, and ‘Son of God’ take on an even greater meaning. Rome had already anointed a king for Israel and already had a ‘son of God’ in resident. Caesar, the Herods, and the structures they represent had a gospel and Mark set the one beginning in Jesus over against it. Regardless of the other interpretive categories at work, Mark’s title for his narrative deliberately parodies the political propaganda of the reigning empire.
If this is how Mark starts his gospel it is no wonder that it ends with Salome, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James fleeing the empty tomb after being seized by terror and amazement; “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” When read in a first century context this fear makes perfect sense, because there was already a good news in circulation, an anointed one on the throne, and a son of God ruling the established order. If the empty tomb of the crucified, but resurrected Jesus means the good news of Jesus Christ, kingdom-proclaimer, Son of God, did not die on a cross, then this story is not through and is just beginning. If the expansive claim of Mark is true, one should be fearful because the good news of Jesus is not so good for those on the take from the current arrangement under the Roman domination system. One who benefits from the imperial power structure is much more inclined to protect the world as it is. The peace of Rome is kept on the backs of the poor and the blood of resisters. Cross-building coercion is scary even if the tomb of the cross-bearer is empty.

Emerging Fear and the SBC

2007-04-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

How do you draw more attention to the emerging movement? Like This. If you say blanket statements like the emerging church is "one of the most dangerous and deceptive movements to infiltrate the ranks of Southern Baptist life," you could think that might be an overstatement of fearful dread over the unknown, but I think not. The SBC should fear the emerging movement, because emergent types do two things that can ruin the SBC. 1-Talk 2-Think And they do these at the same time. What happens when these two powerful forces join hands, thinking and talking, you realize you don't need to continue to be subject to the fear mongering of modernity in its worst form. Hell is the religious fear-bearing motivation and Islamo-fascism is the political form. (Well there are more like French atheists, homosexuals and liberals.) So I agree with Roger Moran, the SBC should fear the Emerging movement. Moran is not moron, just observant. Well I would say those baptists who were exiled from the convention with emerging leanings don't want the bureaucracy back. Keep all you stole or won. I think the baptist Fall or Ascension in 79 may have been the best thing that could have happened for real baptists (other than the bitterness part). Power corrupts and convention power corrupts the gospel into conventional fluff.

Bill Leonard makes a good observation, "The Southern Baptist Convention is growing increasingly terrified that they've spent all this time recreating the denomination in this (conservative) image, and now nobody cares," he said. "Young seminarians are challenging them on issues and saying, 'Your vision of reality is not ours.'" OH how I hope this is true.

[an aside] I know the SBC is the Southern Baptist Convention, but I decided sometime in high school always to use SBC instead. I think it parallels Kentucky Fried Chicken’s switch to KFC because they had genetically altered their chicken so much they couldn’t keep it in the name. I bet the KFC story is an urban legend, but I think it works well with the SBC.

Tripp went Rev

2007-04-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from my rev-making service. Dr. Tupper preached, my Pops did the charge, and tons of friends and family came. It was a super time and service.

Tripp on the internet

2007-03-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

I already posted this, but now I am on the CBF of North Carolina website, so if you want to print out my presentation you can get it here.

News Flash

2007-03-27T08:46:00.001-07:00

Check it

Friendship as Missional Foundationalism Pt 3

2007-03-23T07:33:00.000-07:00

'Zacchaeus stopped there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’
Luke 19:8-10

salvation\the movement of God in the context of friendship
Zacchaeus responded quickly to Jesus’ proclamation of belonging and despite the protest of the holy grumble Jesus came as a guest and friend to the table of Zacchaeus. There is some space here in the story. We do not know what the decision of the grumblers was. Did they stay outside in the holy huddle even though Jesus would be leaving them behind, did they stomach becoming a guest of Zacchaeus’ too, or maybe they even realized what was going on and stayed in the company of Jesus by participating in the friendship of the God Movement. While we do not know what happened with that particular crowd, it would not be far fetched to imagine their response was as varied as our own today. Yet these verses are no longer focusing on the conflict between the crowd’s vision of Zacchaeus and that of Jesus’, but instead the transformation of Zacchaeus as a new friend of God.
The text emphasizes the radical and quick response of Zacchaeus to his new found circle of friends. The divine initiative and proclamation of belonging shakes Zacchaeus to his core. Before they even make it to his home he stops and voluntarily offers half of his possessions to the poor and promises to make four-fold restitution to all he defrauded. Surely this was good news for those grumbling minutes before. Those to whom Jesus most identified with and called blessed - the poor, hungry, and weeping - were frustrated by Jesus’ movement towards the exemplar sinner and recipient of prophetic woes – the rich, full, and happy. What occasioned this radical transformation is the embrace of God through the person of Jesus. Zacchaeus as rich, tax-collecting, poor exploiting, empire supporting, sinner was embraced into the friendship of God. In response to his new friendship and not prior to it, Zacchaeus repents in the fullest measure. The teachings of Jesus never fare well for the rich and Zacchaeus and Levi are the only ones who respond favorably. Why would friendship with God be so difficult that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God? This is not only a perplexing question, but one the affluent church of the first world should attentively listen to. The response of Zacchaeus is revealing, because moments after entering the friendship of Jesus he entered into friendship with the people of Jesus. The overwhelming majority of Jesus’ people were the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. Jesus’ preferential option for the poor creates a dilemma for the rich and this dilemma is one of friendship and not obligation. Obligation is not a category of friendship, because friends are attentive to the situation of each other and respond out of love for the other. When Zacchaeus entered the belonging friendship of God he was now attentive to the situation of his new friends. They were no longer people to be exploited and bled for his own gain, but people he was now going to live with in the presence of Jesus. The repentance of Zacchaeus was not first to God, but the people of God – the friends of God. In the context of these relationships the sin of Zacchaeus is revealed as social and not simply private and individual. The salvation Jesus identified and proclaimed was then as social as the sin. The gospel is social, more social than sin because in the consummation of the God Movement creation will find its intended identity in the friendship of God.
The condemnation of the injustice practiced by Zacchaeus comes when his oppressed Other is no longer dehumanized. In the presence of Jesus they too are given names, identities, and the God given value of life is made known. The dichotomy of oppressed and oppressor is over come in the bounds of friendship in God. The evangelization of the power wielders is a liberating one, but not in a detached way. Friendship as the foundational context of the gospel helps Zacchaeus and his contemporaries in every age realize that “only by participating in [the marginalized] struggles can we understand the implications of the gospel message and make it have an impact” in our relationships with them. Those who enter into the friendship of God “do with their own resources what God has been doing with God’s, that is, [empowering] those who are powerless.” It is important then to notice, as members of the contemporary church of Zacchaeus, the nature of his response which is two fold. His first response is to shed his abundance. In light of his new friends struggling to have their own necessities met Zacchaeus rids himself of his gluttony of mammon and simply gives half of his possessions to the poor. The realization in the context of friendship is that much of his impressive pile of stuff was in fact not his own. In response he gives half of his possessions to the dispossessed around him because he was no longer going to be possessed by his possessions or continue to perpetuate the lie that he in fact had the right to wealth while his friends struggled for necessities. What this first act is not is charity. This act was not detached from his inclusion into the friendship of Jesus and Jesus’ ensuing pronouncement of salvation. It is only in the context of friendship and repentance that the God movement “becomes Good News for Zacchaeus and salvation enters his house.” When one on the take from Rome became friends with Jesus, when he experienced the presence of the God Movement in real relationship, he recognized his sin and did more than give charity. He repented for having extorted what was not properly his. When the wealthy and powerful enter the God Movement they see a friend in need as a call to confession for having taken more than their share and justified their thievery by adopting the dehumanizing world view of Empire – here Rome. The lesson learned is simple, “the ultimate evil of riches is relational: the oppression of the poor.”
The second voluntary act of Zacchaeus is even more telling if our comfort and imperial hermeneutic led us to interpret the first as simple charity. Here Zacchaeus promises to make a fourfold restitution if he has cheated anyone. The ’if’ here is conditional only in the sense that specific acts of extortion will come to light as he lives in relationship to his new friends. What he is committing himself to is the most stringent demands given in Torah for stealing. The conditional form of his statement is connected to having never seriously thought of life otherwise. In the past, like many of us privileged people, he did not think twice from reaping the benefits of a system that culturally marginalizes, economically exploits, and politically oppresses a majority of the human population. Since it was his job and he broke no laws he was not stealing, but playing fair by the rules making all his wealth his own earnings. After entering the friendship of God this previous determinative reality is revealed as an idolatrous interpretive reality whose God is mammon. The rich are those left to chose who they will serve, for you cannot serve both God and mammon. When Zacchaeus says ‘if’ he is in effect admitting he does not know what it would look like to give himself to the God Movement and live in the loving mutuality of friendship with those who now have a name. At first glance he knows it requires a shedding of wealth, but immediately after that realizes that as he comes to be shaped more fully by his new relationships he may, and more than likely will, realize he has extorted someone. If he discovers this while living his life with the marginalized he will repay them fourfold. Zacchaeus has publicly committed himself to the God Movement and is in the process of being shaped by its vision or better yet, he is being converted. Today in the 21st century the affluent first world church also needs friendships that bring relational accountability “to those who are forced to provide us with “the good life” at their expense,” because abstract ethics are not only contrary to the nature of friendship, but easily manipulated. Manipulation is contrary to true friendship, for in friendship there is an unforsakable solidarity funded by the love of God. The ‘if’ of Zacchaeus is a commitment not to defend his privilege, he will not blunt the gospel to a spiritual language with no consequence in the world he and his friends live in. The repentance and new found stance of Zacchaeus “leads to a redistributive form of justice in which those defrauded by an exploitive system are repaid fourfold…The restoration of kinship status involves repentance, and repentance involves redistributing what has been taken falsely.” Zacchaeus took on a new interpretive frame work, the God Movement. In the framework of human empire, “the rich are all the people who live with tightly clenched hands. They are neither dependant on others nor open for others. The rich can only be helped when they recognize their own poverty and enter into fellowship with the poor.” Zacchaeus made this transition and joined the Movement. At this point, and not earlier, does Jesus say “today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’
What does salvation mean here? It is clearly contextual, social, and a far cry from the individualist gospel present in church today. It does not promise security or prosperity in any worldly fashion and is decidedly obtuse and backwards to the logic of success and empire. The salvation of Zacchaeus is multifaceted and cannot be limited to a question of eternal destination. When Zacchaeus joined the God movement he claimed his identity as a son of Abraham, he came to be identified by his blessing of others. Zacchaeus’ blessing of others is not in his giving of material wealth and restitution - that was part of his relational repentance - his blessing of others comes in the reorganization of his life and relationships to no longer be a slave of mammon, but a friend of God. He will bless others by living for the common good of his friends and not preserving the good life for himself.
Just before arriving to Jericho and healing the blind man Jesus was asked a question that assumed a very impoverished view of salvation, one that we will see is foreign to the gospel. A rich ruler asks ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ It is no surprise that the rich ruler wants to discuss eternal destiny with economic terms of inheritance, because he envisions salvation as a possession given by God to individuals. The poor experience inheritance as the preservation of the oppressive system which ensures longevity to the gains of the wealthy. Jesus then asks him if he knows the commandments related to inter-human relationships – “you shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and mother.” All these inter-human commandments the rich ruler reports to have kept since he was young, but Jesus knows that there is still one thing a miss so Jesus says, “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Jesus was not using hyperbole to point out some spiritual struggle between his wealth and belonging to God, it was clearly physical. The commandments Jesus listed, and he did know them all, were those centered on human relationships. He then says one thing is lacking. The rich ruler thought of these categories in very individualistic terms and missed the point, just as he did when he started the conversation about eternal destiny. Sure he had not personally broke the law and stole from the poor directly, but this is not keeping the commandment of God not to steal. As we have seen in the salvation story of Zacchaeus the relational notion of theft only becomes clear to the rich when they are friends with the oppressed. In order to both answer the Rich Ruler’s question and not compromise the integrity of the God Movement, Jesus is left to offer him what he needed but could not fathom due to his love of stolen wealth. The Rich Ruler was after one thing only, confirmation of his current life style’s compatibility with an eternal inheritance. Outside of joining the friendship of God, Jesus could not give him what he wanted; a neutered gospel of confirmation that keeps the affluent happy, healthy, and heaven bound without one having to every enter into the friendship of God which will transform all who dare to enter. The Rich Ruler however does understand Jesus, since on hearing this he was sad because he was rich. We do not know what happens to this Rich Ruler, he may have responded later in life. We know the friendship of God is as near as the marginalized and the offer is always open.
In response to this direct confrontation with wealth the disciples ask just who then can be saved to which Jesus replies, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.” This question was more than a question of the salvation of the wealthy but of anyone. Jesus’ answer leads us back to where we started, friendship with God. Salvation is impossible for mortals, but for God it is friendship. Salvation for one and all is then joining the movement of God in friendship. This truth will surely revolutionize our theology, but more than that our mission. As the church most akin to Zacchaeus we must refuse to describe friendship as something that can be had without the inclusion of our Two-Thirds world sisters, brothers, and enemies. We must take the advice of Martin Luther King seriously who said that “we will either live together as sisters and brothers or perish together as fools.” How would our relationships change with the marginalized should be become friends and realize that they are the global majority who live in poverty and we are the affluent global minority? We must also refuse to be ministers who preach a sermon that leaves Zacchaeus in a tree and the Rich Ruler happy. If we are to be a Jesus’ church, then we will share in the mission of Jesus and preach the message of Jesus. At the foundation of the God Movement which we hope to be a part of is friendship. Friendship is the only foundationalism that can support the Good News, because friendship is the only relational structure that can begin with love for the Other in every varied form.

Friendship as Missional Foundationalism Pt 2

2007-03-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

So he ran ahead and climbed a sycomore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ Luke 19:4-7

friendship and the missional initiative
Now we have no idea why Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus. There are a lot of good reasons different people want to see Jesus. The blind man had a good reason, the hemorrhaging women had a good reason, the Centurion had a good reason, the rich ruler had a good reason because he was an attentive Torah keeper since he was a little youngster though it ended up backfiring, but this rich chief tax-collector in the Gospel of Luke that says “woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation” decides he wants to see Jesus. We could say curiosity got the best of him, but that just doesn’t preach too well. How about we decide that there was a little excitement in Zacchaeus’ ear every time he heard about Jesus, maybe he knew that somewhere there was an answer for the problem he was in. Zacchaeus was not always a tax collector, he grew up like any other good Jewish boy, he knew the great stories of God bringing redemption and liberation to Israel. Zacchaeus knew the current situation well and that if he wanted to assure himself and his family security, food, home, and a future there seemed to be only one real legit option, namely join the other team. If you can’t beat Rome – Join Rome. The human race has continued to be plagued by Empires that operate on the bully system, using its military and economic strength to exploit other peoples. Zacchaeus was caught in a sick and twisted system. He had become part of what was wrong for with his world and thought maybe this God Movement he heard Jesus talking about might be the answer. Perhaps it had a place in it for those with a compromised faith and imperial allegiance.
Having been kept from Jesus by the traveling worship circus, Zacchaeus ends up in a tree trying to get a glimpse of Jesus. The action of Jesus here is revealing both of the nature of the God Movement and character of God. The emphasis of this passage is on the initiative of Jesus. Jesus came to Zacchaeus, halting the holy huddle’s celebration, and said “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” Jesus had not been to Jericho before but he knew who Zacchaeus was when he saw him. This may seem an act of divine omniscience, but that is in no way necessary for those of us who have been a member of any worshiping body for decent amount of time. Part of being socialized into any social group is learning just who is to be ignored, those to be tolerated, those to be ceaselessly praised, and those like Zacchaeus who were cursed, labeled, and actively shunned. Jesus listened well enough to those around him to know just who the man up in the tree was, though he had never seen him before. The chief tax-collector was an Other for this community, Jesus knew this and so he stopped the praising to give a sermon. This sermon of messianic action was titled “It all begins with friendship.”
When Jesus initiates an encounter with Zacchaeus he does so in friendship. This friendship is Jesus’ acceptance and identification with the despised imperial assenting, his own people forsaking, rich because he taxes all these people poor and gives some to Rome, Zacchaeus - identification with this man is the boldest example of the remarkable liberty Jesus exercised. Where the welfare of any person was at stake Jesus ignored all the taboos and social protocol, especially those of the worshiping community around him. They had missed the point and focused their life, energy, and focus inward. Jesus’ sermon of friendship was for an external focus. Those who want to be a part of Jesus’ church will follow the method of Jesus and too have an external focus. For the church to share the mission of Jesus, to participate in the God movement it too will seek out, value, and affirm the Other as an Other for God’s sake. Zacchaeus could not “see who Jesus was” from a tree or by participating in a traveling worship service where he was not welcome, but only as a friend – at table. Jesus, knowing who was not welcome and why they were not welcome, went to them with an open invitation to friendship. This is the welcome of Christ. This is nature of the God Movement – Scandal. This is how Jesus came to be known as a friend of sinners, he “offered them inclusion in the kingdom not only while they were still sinners but also without requiring repentance as normally understood.” There would have been no complaints if Jesus had stopped on the road, looked up at Zacchaeus, and said “If you repent of your participation in Rome’s exploitation of these people, liquidate the wealth you have amassed by stealing it under the guise of legal legislation, and redistribute it today, salvation would come to you and I would take this worship service to your house.” The method of Jesus’ mission was not to get the sinners to conform to believe the right things, behave to the expectations and requirements expected of them and only then will they be accepted and belong to the community. The opposite is true. The God Movement begins by letting all know that they first belong. Without the adoption of any behavior or beliefs Zacchaeus belongs in the God Movement, because it is for all, especially the sinners and outcasts.
For the gospel to have integrity in a postmodern context it must be centered in friendship. Friendship is the only stance that can facilitate the openness of the gospel. Too often we assume truth or God is our possession we own, we believe we have exactly what the Other needs. Even if we hide this hubris under a guise of ‘seeker sensitivity’ it is not true friendship as practiced here by Jesus. The friendship of Jesus brings with it the messianic banquet, it is not simply the invitation to the group who gets in, but it is in fact its arrival. The friendship of Christ is an “unpretentious relationship,” because friend is not a function but a relational reality. Friendship is not a thing or a single event, but a reality that will shape one’s own existence. Friendship for both Jesus and his followers today includes vulnerability, because God’s friendship is permanent. The friendship of God becoming the foundation for ministry requires a shift in missional focus. Regularly we are rhetorically violent and on occasion the possession of truth becomes physical, but “force and violence spoil human relationships. Friendliness makes them live and keeps them alive. That is why ultimately friendship is stronger than enmity. The world will belong to enduring friendship.” If this is true, then God is not to be possessed and given, but instead we are to create relational space for God to come in our relationships. If we think we have everything that is just what we will miss. One may know truth, but no one knows it absolutely. When Jesus came to Zacchaeus he came with an open hand offering the good news of his belonging and not a clinched fist of righteous judgment. Truth is not a sword, but relational reality of friendship grounded in the God who is love.

The radical openness of Jesus’ friendship is not the contrived openness that exists in many forms today. It is not the Enlightenment ideal of tolerance, because Jesus did not wave at Zacchaeus he embraced him. It is not compromising middle ground of ‘open but not affirming,’ because Jesus did not treat Zacchaeus as a rich tax-collecting sinner, but a human being created in the image for whom he came to pronounce the God Movement’s message of belonging. To Jesus, Zacchaeus had a name with one label attached – beloved of God. Jesus does something that is so difficult to do, he refused to play politics with a human being, even one he would identify as part of the problem. The invitation of friendship given by God in Christ is as far reaching as creation. One could be tempted to miss this radical method of evangelism practiced here by Jesus, but as Luke tells the only words Jesus in the story are those which share in the divine initiative of friendship and the pronouncement of salvation. These two words and in particular the first word, are rarely part of our ‘evangelism strategy’ and one can wonder what an institution of friendship would look like. To be sure, humanity would be the only requirement for participation. To take this seriously all the work of the church must begin with the welcome of Christ. In our going out and their coming in, the first thing must be the embrace of friendship with the Other. The welcome of Christ is an embrace, not just words. It is goes to each person and includes the particularities of each individual life. The welcome of Christ is more than the welcome of the church. It cannot be an official greeting at a service or a handshake when one enters, for the welcome of Christ is centered in the friendship seen in Jesus – “an open and total friendship that goes out to meet the other.” When friendship is our foundational stance, we will exist in relationship to and for the Other and God will not be a possession but a presence that comes in the midst of friends.
The crowd’s response to Jesus’ friendship initiative is telling. The holy huddle who started off praising God for the healing of the blind man has now taken a final turn away from participation in the God Movement they were celebrating. After prohibiting Zacchaeus from getting to Jesus and making Jesus able to identify their vilified Other he had yet to meet, the holy huddle becomes a holy grumble. I like to imagine that it was not everyone, but Luke tells us that “All that saw it began to grumble.” What is even more striking is the nature of the grumble. It takes the form of holy indignation, “He has gone to be a guest of one who is a sinner.” What a presumptuous stance to think Jesus could be your own guest without also being the guest of a sinner. While this is clearly a false presumption, it is all too contemporary. The crowd did what many communities do; they define themselves over against something. When any community understands its boundaries in the negative, they are necessarily a turn away from violence. Important here is that the boundary of the God Movement founded on friendship is defined in the positive. It is an always expanding, ever embracing, and categorically porous movement of the divine. If there is to be a negative boundary it is not drawn by the followers of Jesus, but by the Other. Those who fear the intimacy and transformative power of friendship’s persuasive love can draw a line, but the people of friendship cannot. Both then and today the holy grumble is far from the holiness of the relational God revealed in the person and mission of Jesus. To grumble at the befriending of any sinner, is to grumble at the every activity and realization of the presence of God.

Friendship as Missional Foundationalism Pt 1

2007-03-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

(1 of 3) My reflections on the radical nature of Friendship and its function in the missional church. This is the basic content from my CBF presentation I did with Zach. Enjoy.

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. Luke 19:1-3

the traveling worship circus and Zacchaeus
When Jesus came to Jericho he was no longer focusing only on his ministry, but had made the turn towards Jerusalem where the God Movement’s conflict with the worldly powers would come to head. Jericho is the location for two incidental happenings that reveal the nature of the God Movement in two profound ways. The first is necessary for understanding the context of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus. With a crowd behind him and Jerusalem over the Jericho horizon, a blind man is told that the commotion he hears is the entourage of Jesus and so he calls out for mercy. Those at the front of Jesus’ band of travelers try to silence the man, but the blind man’s voice is heard and Jesus restores his sight. The blind man called out for mercy from Jesus and despite the organized ignoring and silencing by “those who were in front,” Jesus came to the man and restored his sight. The response of “all the people” was the immediate praise of God. The blind man saw who Jesus was and when his sight was restored all the people praised God, even those who thought Jesus should not have been bothered apparently broke out in praise. This traveling choir of praise was the entourage of Jesus as he entered Jericho. They entered with praise on their lips for the active presence of God in their midst.
Zacchaeus lived in Jericho and from what Luke tells us his social status was as clear as that of the blind man, Zacchaeus was a chief tax-collector, rich, and unquestionably a sinner. Jericho was an important city, a commerce center for the region and a fertile agricultural environment. The warmer climate inspired the Herods to build a winter palace in Jericho and so Rome’s client rulers invested a good bit of money into building a Roman style city out of Jericho. Being the head of tax-collection in a city that architecturally demonstrated the disparity between the rich and poor was not a friend making profession. While we are not sure what exactly ‘chief’ tax-collector means, we do know that personal and property taxes were collected by the Roman government directly, leaving the tax-collectors to collect customs. Rome was very sneaky in constructing an empire, it took all it could get and then farmed out a system that would lead to unlimited opportunities of exploitation. Zacchaeus was rich because he was in cahoots with Rome, he had bought into an imperial system of exploitation, and in doing so became the scapegoat for this community. In the minds of Jesus’ praise team Zacchaeus, this guy, was what was wrong with the world.
While on the surface Zacchaeus seems like a particularly depraved person, becoming rich off the exploitation of so many and supporting the foreign domination system of Rome, he made a compromise many of us could easily make. In the midst of the Roman empire there were not many options for ensuring food, safety, and a home for your family and none of them were without some form of imperial allegiance and service. In the first century, the meeting of these basic needs required you to be part of the 2 to 3 percent of the population who benefited from the organizational structure of the known world. Most people would not have the opportunity to join this group of elites and so they were faced with no other option than a life of poverty without security where half of children die before the age of 10 and where strategic food shortages and military threat preserved the ‘peace.’ It may be near impossible to think of Zacchaeus as something other than a sinner, but it sure is easy to imagine making the same decision.
Zacchaeus, the rich tax-collecting sinner, wanted and needed to see Jesus. When Luke establishes him as undeniable sinner the reader knows that he needs to see Jesus, but like so many other sinners he heard enough stories in the first century grapevine that we wanted to see Jesus. Oddly enough the crowd once again is the impediment to the one in need, but this time it is not those up at the front who shun Zacchaeus but the nature of the group itself. Remember the crowd began praising God after the healing of the blind man and this celebration traveled as they came into Jericho. The crowd had gotten so worked up in its celebratory praise over the real presence of God in their midst that someone who wanted and needed to see Jesus could not. This traveling worship service had become a circus. They were all so involved and focused on the show that they failed to create space and an opportunity for the outsider to come in contact with Jesus. The traveling worship circus is then judged by Jesus, because once again he moves outwards towards the outsider, a sinner who could not find a place in the worship of the friend of sinners. It is important to remember that even worship focused on the actual movement of God in the world with Jesus in the middle of it, can inhibit the mission of the church. Here worship kept someone who wanted and needed to see Jesus from doing so.

St. Jerome on wealth

2007-03-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

St. Jerome said that “For all riches proceed from injustice, and unless one has lost, the other cannot find. So this proverb seems to me most true: either a rich man is unjust or he has inherited from an unjust man.” Here we see that the ultimate evil of riches is relational.

A Refreshing Conversation

2007-03-13T23:42:00.000-07:00

This was not the first time Patrick and I had this conversation. He left a small rural town and showed up at the University with a Gideon’s Bible in his glove compartment, the Roman’s road written on a note card in his wallet, hundreds of Contemporary Christian CD’s that sound just like ‘the real thing,’ and a Bible drill training that would make any youth minister proud. He didn’t bring his Bible or a track to our meeting this time, just the same question he had asked before but this time I think he meant it. “I never knew people like this existed. I mean I don’t even know what to do. There are so many lost people and I don’t even know how to help them find the truth or…I mean I can’t even figure out where they are and what they are looking for or even what their questions mean. At this point I am beginning to wonder if I am not as lost as they are…. Where is God here? Why isn’t the good news good enough? Do you know what I mean?”

I do.

Tripp goes to a CBF meeting

2007-03-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

SO Zach and I are doing a little ditty at the state CBF meeting next week. It is based on part of my current project I am writing "Becoming Jesus’ church in the post-colonial world:reframing the mission and power of God." It is a post-colonial theology of the church that is based on a post-colonial reading of the synoptic narrative. Any way the piece for CBF is called "Friendship and Salvation: Advice for the missional church from the wee little man." Once Zach and I have done it I will post it for those who may be interested but not in Hickory.

McKnight and Tony pt.2

2007-03-07T09:15:00.000-08:00

Check it out here. There is some more discussion from the audience here, but Tony will tell you that everyone is a relativist.

Romero Quote for thought

2007-03-06T22:35:00.000-08:00

There aren't two categories of people.

There aren't some that were born to have everything,
leaving the rest with nothing,
and a majority that has nothing
and cannot taste the happiness
that God was created for all.

The Christian society that God wants
is one in which we share the goodness
that God has given for everyone.javascript:void(0)
Publish

Oscar Romero - 12.16.1979

Moltmann Rocks!

2007-03-04T22:09:00.000-08:00

Check out these sweet lectures. Moltmann makes me happy.

Len Sweet Fun

2007-03-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

April 14th I am starting a new endeavor, Kin-dom Nexus. Basically I am going to organize “more-intimate-than-a” conference type things with authors and artists. The goal is to create more conversational engagement between people, which is code for talking about things that matter while having fun. On April 14th will be Kin-dom Nexus part One with Len Sweet. He is calling the conversation “Remix and Reboot: Becoming Jesus’ Church in the 21st Century.” If you are interested or would pretend to be because you don’t want Tripp’s first attempt to be his last, then registrar on the website. There are flyers and things on the website if you feel like proselytizing Christians into coming, so maybe the church will be less dodo in the future. If you bring friends then I could hook you up with a free pass, so check it out and join the ranks if it sounds interesting.

Scot McKnight interviews Tony Jones

2007-03-04T20:45:00.000-08:00

This is the first part of a two part interview of Scot McKnight interviewing Tony Jones from the 'Keeping Jesus Revolutionary' conference at UNCG last weekend. Here you will hear Tony say what he would do if he was President, tell his born-again experience at a camp 'cry night,' emergent evangelism, his attempt at giving three theological influences, his love for philosophy, how the emergent village got started, why B-Mac is so popular, and how friendship is the center piece of the EV.

2007-02-27T23:55:00.000-08:00

This is a sweet picture of Zach and I hanging with Scot McKnight and Tony Jones this weekend at our conversation weekend we put on. The weekend was awesome and I will post some mp3s of the conversations and talk about them then - once I get a new chord that wont' hiss at me. For now I wanted to let you in on a vision of the emergent eschatological banquet. Friends talking about theology and enjoying fantastic Rockey Patel cigars. Scot and I had Vintage 1990 Churchills, which are among the greatest things on God's planet. Zach and Tony had the Rockey Patel 'Edge' series which are a little cheaper than the 90, but still has the complex smoke Rockey's are known for. The best thing about a Rockey, outside of being served at the eschatological banquet, is the fullness of flavor without the gigantic amount of nicotine from similar cigars, say a Comacho. Any way, if you wondered what the emerging heaven looks like here it is. If we ever cross paths and you want to visit this anticipatory reality let me know, I will most likely be packing cigars and can create an 'opt out' situation for you. P.S. The reference to Spencer Burke's eschatology is in no way an endorsement. Save your money and buy Moltmann's eschatology.

Len Sweet @ Kingdom Nexus, April 14th

2007-02-26T10:17:00.000-08:00

The Kingdom Nexus is something I am working on in Raleigh and will hopefully work to create space for a local people to develop a Kingdom Imagination. The first event will be in April with Len Sweet and is titled "Remix and Reboot: Becoming Jesus' Church in the 21st Century." If you are within driving distance think about coming. If you can get a group to come we can organize a deal for you.
Peace

Prepare Yourself

2007-02-26T10:04:00.000-08:00

Soon the audio of Scot McKnight's Interview with Tony Jones will be posted. If you are interested in the Emergent\ing Movement\Church you will want to hear it. Tony does not pull the infamous 'emergent' move and respond to a direct question by talking around it for 10 minutes. I will try to get the first thirty minutes of it up this evening after class.

What Does the Postmodern Negro and PoMo Pirate have in Common?

2007-02-21T22:09:00.000-08:00

Tonight I chatted to Anthony Smith (postmodern negro) and it was just flat out energizing. We are both involved in the emergent conversation and so we were talking about random conversations we have gotten in with interested onlookers trying to figure it out and came to two general things that need to be either more emphasized or brought into the conversation. Emergent leader types are so concerned about keeping everyone happy at being in the conversation that sometimes you can’t tell what they think or mean at all. Now I am down with letting anyone who wants to join in do so, but someone’s presence isn’t an excuse for being dishonest or avoiding being truly clear. I have talked to multiple conservative people about the emergent church and basically felt like I was being witnessed to by a representative from true Christianity. Then if I am honest about some random topic (if they are scared of emergent types it is usually God letting too many sinners into heaven, not having enough confidence in Truth to use it as a sword on others, being too loving to the homosexual community, advocating too much feeding of mouths and not sin sick hearts, and being too honest about how the majority of the institutional church in America is not identifiably Christian…now that is an excursus) the conversation ends and it becomes an attack on some straw figure version of my own theological opinion they learned at an apologetics conference. That isn’t a conversation. I vote that people involved in the emergent conversation, when pressed on something, say exactly what they think and then let the other share too. If being in a room with a Jesus follower who thinks that the war in Iraq is a disgusting sin that requires repentance or that believing in truth does not mean a human can know it absolutely, makes the conversation partner unable to keep conversing then so be it. I know not everyone in the conversation agrees on issues, but we should on the value of conversing and that requires honesty. If getting everyone to be honest means some people don’t want in that is their choice. We should always provide room for any voice and be as articulate and honest as those who seek us out to save our theology. Being honest will be perceived by the ‘modern’ conservatives (and liberals) as emergent finally letting their true sub-Christian –insert their favorite category used to label people you demonize and ignore – selves be known. I bet that when, perhaps a smaller group of people get honest about becoming a gospel people in our contemporary setting others will come and join because we will have effectively separated ourselves from being associated with the groups who left the gospel to be the Empire’s chaplain and publicist. (an aside: this may sound political and it is, but not partisan. when we screw the two-thirds world again with our farm bill and subsidize American crops and facilitate the growing debt and starvation of sisters and brothers around the world it will have happened with a democrat congress)

The second thing is the need for real conversation about the American churches role in colonialism. That is another conversation, but it might step on too many toes (including my own) and the upcoming Emergent Manifesto might not sell as many copies to fundies who think our souls can still be saved….then again we might get cult status at Bob Jones and their missions class might buy it.

Well Anthony and I’s conversation was really good and this rambling does not reflect anything other than me being up late and responding to what we talked about. I do think it’s cool that this suspect movement leads to a 24 year old white Baptist dude in Winston Salem becoming friends with an African-American father who is a reformed Pentecostal in Charlotte.

My third or fourth love

2007-02-12T14:03:00.000-08:00

After God, Alecia, and maybe Pebbles comes my love for cigars. Here is the shrine I keep in my office.

Pirates and Empire?

2007-02-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

This was hilarious. Thanks Chad for sending it. It is like a new school house rock diddy. Peace.

Christian….what does that mean?

2007-02-10T14:18:00.001-08:00

Christian….what does that mean? I guess I may have never thought this was a question that needed to be answered, but here is why I ask. I was talking the other day with a longtime friend of mine. He didn’t grow up with ‘religious’ parents, so all he got was a heavy dose of southern civil religion – which may or may not be that friendly to actual transformative encounters with God. Well my friend and I were talking about what you might call global issues or things that matter, but for both of us they are the reasons we lose sleep at night. After sitting there for a while and mourning the breaking point feeling we shared he asked a question, “I know you are bound to have an explanation, but you seem to be too observant and care too much to be a Christian.” Underneath that question is something I think the church in America needs to think about and hopefully respond to in a positive way.

When the growing segment of the American population with no attachment to the church think a ‘Christian’ they think of a very particular strand of the faith when. ‘Christian’ equals that segment that manages to get huge amount of face time and have even managed to become a cultural stereotype of ignorance, fanatical nationalism, crusader mentality, and compassionless judgment. I’m not sure that the stereotype is accurate to all visible conservative evangelicals, but the crazies do get enough money to stay on TV and radio waves around the nation. In response to my friend I made a case that the gospel not only acknowledged the realities that worried us, but responds to them and calls the followers of Jesus to do the same. He asked why in all the hours of playing drinking games to TV preachers all he knew was the God took his frustration out on Jesus and this gave you ticket to heaven and a means to worldly success if you signed up. “Christianity seems to be a way to avoid the world’s ills and wash your hands of the situation in the name of God,” my friend said “and that is just intolerable.”

After this conversation I decided that there is not one Christian faith, but a multiplicity of Christianities. The one I am committed to and seek after is the one that takes Jesus’ message seriously and proclaims a God who is love for every one.

By the end of the conversation my friend said, “if what you said about Jesus is true then I can understand wanting to follow him and not giving up on God.” So I ask myself again, what does Christian mean? I am not sure, but in the mean time there is fiercely loving Jewish man calling me to follow.

The Wired Parish Weight Loss Plan

2007-02-02T16:09:00.000-08:00

Wired Parish is my weight loss plan. You probably have two questions. What is wired parish and how does it lead to weight loss. Well Wired Parish is a super sweet podcast network that I subscribe to. Every week itunes automatically downloads new episodes from a variety cool and relevant shows about the Church, following Jesus, and our postmodern context. The self subscribed tagline they use is “connecting the most challenging and profound voices of the church with people who want to make a difference.” If you fall in the ‘want to make a difference’ category then “Tune In – Turn On – Get Wired.” I know this sounds like a lofty idea, but it is true. They have weekly episodes from big names like Len Sweet, Brian McLaren, and Reggie McNeal, but perhaps the best part is the awesome voices you will discover like the “Practicing Pentecost” crew(with fellow NC emergent fellows Steve Knight and Anthony Smith), “The Parish” (2 Friends who talk candidly about their life and theological reflection), “On the Verge” (Tim Conder and a variety of his friends chating about being a missional people) and “Pop Culture and Philosophy” (2 Christian Philosophy PhDs who want to help the church have intelligent and reflective discourse about real pertinent issues). There are more too, but since this is a post about my new weight loss plan I may save other wired parish reflections for later. Any way, back to the plan.

The Plan:
1- Subscribe to Wired Parish.
2- Download Episodes
3- Listen to Episodes While Exercising
4- Don’t Eat Food Your Body Doesn’t Want
5- Look Sexy and Be a More Reflective Christian

I personally use a treadmill and lift weights in my basement, but since these are podcasts you just need an iPod and you can take the plan anywhere you exercise. The coolest part is that Greg Horton, Jay Kelly, and Len Sweet get to be my personal trainers, inspiring and encouraging me to become a healthier person. Their success far out weighs Karl Barth’s attempt when he went through Church Dogmatics with me on the treadmill.

If you combine two podcast worth of exercise four days a week with a healthy low calorie diet, you too can join the wired parish health revolution. So far I have lost 17 pounds. Of course I started off as a big boy, but by eliminating sugared drinks, fried food, and eating half as much as I use to I have put an end to my emerging gut. On a serious note becoming healthy and lowering consumption is also an ethical issue, as my missionary doctor told me “it’s hard to consume 2000 more calories than you need and large amounts of meat that took even more energy to produce when our sisters and brothers in Christ are starving around the world.” I think he’s right and hopefully with my wired parish cohort of personal trainers I will stay on track for a healthier and more reflective self.

Bill Leonard Makes Me Smile!

2007-02-02T12:23:00.000-08:00

Here is an interview Baptist Today did of my divinity school Dean. It kicks metaphorical buttocks. Enjoy.

Sweet Barth Quote

2007-02-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

Originally spotted by Ben Myers

God so loved'—not the Christian, but—'the world'. 'I am the light of the world', says the Lord, and by His own self-giving He passes the light on to His disciples: 'Ye are the light of the world!' It is the duty of the real Church to tell and show the world what it does not yet know. This does not mean that the real Church's mission is to take the whole or even half the world to task. It would be the servant of quite a different Master if it were to set itself up as the accuser of its brethren. Its mission is not to say 'No', but to say 'Yes'; a strong 'Yes' to the God who, because there are 'godless' men, has not thought and does not think of becoming a 'manless' God—and a strong 'Yes' to man, for whom, with no exception, Jesus Christ died and rose again. How extraordinary the Church's preaching, teaching, ministry, theology, political guardianship and missions would be, how it would convict itself of unbelief in what it says, if it did not proclaim to all men that God is not against man but for man. It need not concern itself with the 'No' that must be said to human presumption and human sloth. This 'No' will be quite audible enough when as the real Church it concerns itself with the washing of feet and nothing else. This is the obedience which it owes to its Lord in this world.

—Karl Barth, "The Real Church," Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings 1946-52 (London: SCM Press, 1954), 73.

Rauschenbusch "Why I am a Baptist"

2007-01-22T20:24:00.000-08:00

Prelude

Why am I a Baptist? Well, at the outset, because VV my father was one. He was a Lutheran minister in Germany; he came to America, got into contact with the Baptists, found in their teachings the truths that he had been groping for and, under great loss of position and trouble of soul, became a Baptist. If he had remained a Lutheran minister in Germany, I should probably not be a Baptist minister in America. There is no use in denying that our family relations and the training of our childhood exert a very strong influence on all of us and determine our religious affiliations for us. In countries that have an “Established Church” it is considered a horrible and impious thing for anyone to leave the religion of his fathers, and even in our country; which is the paradise of religious liberty and individualism, only a minority of persons are so strongly swayed by individual convictions that they can break the soft and twining bonds of family love and family tradition. Most men are Catholics or Protestants or Jews, because their parents were Catholics or Protestants or Jews, and that’s all there is of it. If the angels tonight should steal a hundred Baptist babies and replace them by Episcopalian babies, it is fair to assume that the babies which might have grown up to champion episcopacy and the apostolic succession and the Prayer Book, would learn to smile the smile of conscious superiority at those very things. There are some of us who have become Baptists from simple conviction, and have had to leave the denomination of their parents to follow where truth led them. But the majority of us were born in Baptist families, and I am one of that majority.

But that expresses only half of the truth. We are Americans because we were born so. But it is our duty and our right clearly and increasingly to understand what our country stands for and to adopt as our personal principles those ideals of democracy and equality on which our national life is founded. We are

Americans by birth; but we must become Americans by personal conviction. In the same way we may be Baptists by birth, but we must become Baptists by conviction. And no man is a true Baptist until his inherited tendency has been transformed into conscious purpose. In a big freight yard you can watch a locomotive distributing a freight train over the various sidings. It will bunt a car along and let it roll along by itself. The car moves, but it moves by the power of inertia. It has no living energy in it. By and by it will slow up and stop. No Baptist boy or girl ought to grow up to resemble that car. They must develop their own Baptist convictions and run under their own steam. They have inherited a great legacy of truth; let them learn what is already theirs; let them hold by the surer title of personal acquisition what is theirs by hereditary right.

I began by being a Baptist because my father was, but today I am a Baptist, because, with my convictions, I could not well be anything else. I now stand on my own feet and am ready to give an account of the faith I hold.

It is a good thing to raise the question: “Why are you a Baptist?” I wish all our church members had to answer it clearly and fully. It is possible to be a Baptist on small grounds or on large grounds. Some man will say: “I am a Baptist because the Greek word baptiso means immerse. That is quite true, but that is a pretty small peg to hang your religious convictions on. A near-sighted child was taken to the Zoo and stood in front of the lion’s cage. The lion’s tail was hanging down through the bars. “But I thought the lion was different,” said the child, “it looks like a yellow rope. So there are Baptists who have hitherto discovered only the tail-end of our Baptist ideals and convictions and it is no wonder that they turn out as narrow as the tail they devoutly believe in. It is possible to play “Nearer, my God to Thee” with one finger on a little reed-organ of four octaves. But it is very different music when the same melody is played with all the resources of a great pipe-organ and in all the richness of full harmony. Little beliefs make little men. Many Baptists are cut on a small pattern because their convictions are so small.

The minds of men are widening today. There are large thoughts pouring and flooding all about us. And men who have grasped great ideas in one part of their life feel impatient of petty ideas in any other part of their life, especially in their religion. Only a large faith, built on generous, gigantic lines will win the thoughtful men and women of the future. I do believe that we Baptists have a magnificent body of truth—free, vital, honest, spiritual, and wholly in tine with the noblest tendencies of our age. But we must realize its largeness and present it in all its out-of-door greatness and freshness, and not show people a few dried plants and stuffed animals as exponents of the Promised Land to which God has led us and to which we invite them.

In the next issue of the Monthly I shall try to set forth some of the convictions that have become dear to me personally. I can not guarantee that my ideas will measure up to the full Baptist stature. Indeed, the likelihood is all the other way. No one man is likely to see the whole, nor even to say the whole of what he sees. If I fall short, this is a free country, and anybody is at liberty to hoist the Baptist colors on a taller pole than mine.

Why I Am a Baptist
My First Reason

Baptists emphasize the primacy of personal Christian experience

Religion has taken a great variety of forms in the various Christian bodies. Take a solemn mass in a Roman Catholic cathedral, with the dim religious light, the swelling music, the candles, the trooping of the priests and acolytes, the wafting of the incense, the tin-He of the bell, the prostration of the people as the wafer is miraculously transformed into the very body of the Lord. Take on the other hand a little experience meeting in a country church where one simple soul after the other arises to tell in rude words of its dealings with God. How far apart they are! And yet it is only fair to believe that all Christian bodies aim at the same thing:to bring the human soul into saving contact with God through Christ and to secure for it the knowledge and power of a holy life. Let us rejoice that we are all one in that fundamental aim.

But on the other hand it is only true to assert that some religious bodies seek to attain that aim by means that hinder the soul from finding God more than they help it. Judaism, too, sought God with its elaborate temple worship, its bloody sacrifices, its detailed forms. But Christ taught us to approach God by a simpler and more spiritual way. The all-important question of just where to worship and how to worship was relegated to the background as obsolete and outgrown for those who had learned to worship God in spirit and in truth. All religious bodies carry with them a good many clinging remnants of their childhood stage, beliefs and customs that were superstitious in their origin and never belonged to genuine Christianity. And some religious bodies have squarely refused ever to strip these things off; they cherish remnants of heathenism as their most precious and fundamental possessions. Thus it becomes a matter of importance for an intelligent Christian to inquire where he can find Christianity in its least adulterated form. Where is the fundamental aim of bringing the human soul into saving fellowship with God attained most clearly? Where is worship most spiritual? Where is attention least diverted from what is essential in the religious and ethical life?

The Christian faith as Baptists hold it, sets spiritual experience boldly to the front as the one great thing in religion. It aims at experimental religion. We are an evangelistic body. We summon all men to conscious repentance from sin, to conscious prayer for forgiveness. We ask a man: “Have you put your faith in Christ? Have you submitted your will to His will? Have you received the inward assurance that your sins are forgiven and that you are at peace with God? Have you made experience of God”? If anyone desires to enter our churches we ask for evidence of such experience and we ask for nothing else. We do not ask him to recite a creed or catechism. The more simple and heartfelt the testimony is, the better we like it. If it is glib and wordy, we distrust it. Experience is our sole requisite for receiving baptism; it is fundamental in our church life.

We apply the same test to our ministry. The first thing we ask a candidate is about his conversion and Christian experience. The next thing we ask him is if he is conscious of being personally called to the work of the ministry; that also probes for experience with God. Finally we ask him for his views of doctrine, but there, too, we discourage any mere recitation of what is orthodox, and are best pleased if all his intellectual beliefs are plainly born of inward conviction and experience.

Thus our church membership and our ministry are both based on religious experience. So is the ordinary course of our church life. Take our churches right through and nothing so draws and wins them in preaching as the note of personal experience of God; nothing so touches and melts them in the social meetings as the heart-note of experience. When we insist so strongly on true baptism, it is not an insistence on external forms, but a protest against any external form that has no experience back of it. Baptism of believers is an outward act plus an inward experience. Infant baptism, we believe, is an outward act minus any inward experience, and we will have none of it.

In this direct insistence on conscious personal experience a true Baptist Church is about as clear-cut and untrammeled as any religious body can well be. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, also seeks to put a man in contact with the grace of God, but the grace of God is received through the sacraments. In the regenerating water of baptism, in the mysterious wafer of the communion, in the absolution pronounced by the priest in the sacrament of penance, they say a man meets God. But does he? Or does he only meet the Church? Has the Church not interposed a lot of man-made ceremonies between the soul and God, so that thousands who punctiliously go through all this ritual never experience God in fact, and are kept from doing so by the very things in which they are taught that they meet him?

I have repeatedly attended confirmation services in the Lutheran Church and was deeply interested in them. The children there are examined as to their knowledge of the catechism and of passages of Scripture. They recite them from memory. I wish Baptist children knew as much of the Bible and the hymns of the church by heart. I regard the systematic instruction given for months previous to confirmation as one of the finest features of the Lutheran Church and wish we could copy it. It offers an unrivaled opportunity for a devout pastor. But when the mental exercise of memoriter recitation is made the test for admission to the Church and its sacrament, personal experience is supplanted by something totally different and inferior. I know from personal contact with the people how many get the impression that such instruction makes a person a Christian.

Some churches make much of ritual and sacrament, in the belief that this furnishes access to God.

Others make much of a formulated creed, in the belief that correct intellectual comprehension is the fundamental thing in the Christian life. Baptists have simplified ritual until we have only two obligatory ritual actions left, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and we insist on experience as the essential ingredient in these too. We believe in clear convictions of truth, but we have no formulated creed to which anybody, minister or layman, is required to assent. Intellectual statements of belief are useful if they are the outgrowth of personal experience: if not, they are likely to be a harmful substitute for experience.

Now consider how great a thing it is for a church body to assert that a man may and must come into direct personal relations with God, and to adapt all its church life to create such direct and spiritual experiences in men. I have met people in other churches who not only have no such experience themselves, but they doubt if anybody can have it.•It seems presumption to them for a man to assert that he knows he has received pardon from God and is living in conscious fellowship with him. Yet what is all the apparatus of church life good for, if it does not help men to that experience?

The great mass of men take their religion at second hand. Some strong religious soul in the past has had a real experience with God. He tells others about it; they believe it and then take their belief in his experience as a substitute for having any such experience themselves. The religion of the past is deposited in the Bible, the creeds, the rites and beliefs of the Church, and men devoutly rehearse all that and assent to it, and think that is religion. It is no more religion than moon-light is sunlight. The thoughts and experiences of others are invaluable to us because they enrich and broaden our own, but in religion nothing will take the place of personal experience. In the study of the natural sciences the modern method is to put the student into direct contact with nature. The dissection of a single animal will give more realizing knowledge of biology than the best textbooks in which a student reads what others have observed. Baptists believe in advanced methods in religion. They confront the soul with God.

Experimental religion is necessarily free and voluntary. Men can compel attendance at the mass. They can compel subscription to a creed. They cannot compel an inner experience. It has to be free and spontaneous. And nothing has any value in the sight of God that is not the free outflow of the man’s life. What would we care for the compulsory love of a wife or child? What does God care for compulsory faith and adoration? When we insist on experience, and not on ritual or creed, we place religion where it is necessarily free, and then, if it is freely given, it has value in God’s sight.

Experimental religion is more likely to have an outcome in moral life than any other kind. In the lower forms of heathen religion ritual is nearly all there is of religion; morality is only an incidental outcome. Every real rise in the evolution of religion makes it less ritual and more ethical. In the higher forms of religion there is always danger of gliding back into the lower stages, and of emphasizing ritual at the expense of morality. When we insist on repentance from sin and submission to the will of God, that is a religious experience directly leading to a higher moral life. Such religion lends the most powerful reinforcement to ethical duty and is of high service to the common life of humanity.

We can see how profoundly important such a direct experience of God is from the fact that in times of doubt it is often the only thing that remains unshaken. Many a man has felt his intellectual beliefs crumbling away, and yet his faith in God has weathered the storm like a granite cliff When arguments went to pieces, he could still say: “But I know that God made a new man of me; the experience I had in years gone by is just as certain to me as that I am alive.” And on that basis he was able to build up a wider faith. A church that helps men to personal experience of religion, therefore helps them to the most essential and abiding thing in the moral and spiritual life.

I like to think also that a church body which demands religious experience and that alone is deeply democratic. It takes a trained mind to understand the fine distinctions of the creeds. It takes a good deal of historical information merely to understand the ritual and symbols of some of the old churches. If anybody knows just what each garment means which a Catholic priest wears before the altar, and how this garb originated and what changes it has passed through, he knows enough history to write a book. On the other hand, experience of God is open to the simplest mind, just as love is. A little child can love before it can think. A poor German or Italian mother cannot follow the new learning which her children get in this country, but she can outclass anybody in loving them. The intellect is aristocratic; human love and religious faith are both democratic.

When we Baptists insist on personal experience as the only essential thing in religion, we are hewing our way back to original Christianity. The gorgeous ritual that drapes the limbs of the ancient churches was wrought out piece by piece in later generations, and modern historical scholarship is constantly making it clearer that the shimmering silk of which those garments are made and the golden threads with which they are embroidered, were taken from the heathenism of the ancient world. The insistence on correct thinking, on exact orthodoxy of definition, was likewise a product of Greek intellectualism after Christianity had amalgamated with the Greek civilization of the heathen world. These things were not part of Christianity as the apostles knew it. Much less were they part of the Christianity of Jesus himself Original Christianity was exceedingly

simple; it was just a new life with God and a new life with men. Faith in Christ was a spiritual experience. Those who believed in him, felt a new spirit, the Holy Spirit, living in their hearts, inspiring their prayers and testimonies, melting away their selfishness, emboldening them to heroism. Paul called that new life “faith.” That word with him does not merely mean an intellectual belief It is a kind of algebraic symbol, expressing the inner religious experience and life in Christ.

I am a Baptist, then, because in our church life we have a minimum of emphasis on ritual and creed, and a maximum of emphasis on spiritual experience, and the more I study the history of religion, the more I see how great and fruitful such a position is.

When I claim such a purely spiritual religion for Baptists, I am well aware that not all Baptists possess it. Many do not even realize that that is the essence of our Baptist faith. We have some who insist on immersion in a purely legal and ritualistic spirit. We have others who would be only too glad if we had an iron-dad Baptist creed with a thousand points that they might insist on

it. I know, too, that “experience” with very many is a very shallow emotion, copied often from others, and passing away again without changing life and conduct at all, unless it be to add religious conceit to all other faults. This is the smallness and pettiness that is inseparable from human life. But our Baptist faith, like our American political constitution, is founded on great principles, and even if some misuse it or misunderstand it, or are inwardly traitors to it, its greatness lifts others up to it. Baptists uphold Baptist principles; and Baptist principles in turn lift up Baptists.

Why I Am a Baptist
My Second Reason

Baptists practice democracy in our organized church lift

In the last issue of the Monthly I set forth how important and valuable it seems to me that Baptists in all their church life emphasize the necessity of personal experience with God and thus confront the soul with Him to work out its spiritual salvation. As Moses or Elijah or John the Baptist met God alone amid the lonely crags of the desert, so we want every man to go into that inner solitude of his own soul where no man can follow him, to hear the still small voice of the Eternal and to settle the past and the future with the great Father of his spirit.

But religion is not a purely individual matter. Nothing in human life is. We are social beings, and all elements of our life come to their full development only through social interchange and cooperation. A man working alone is an inefficient producer; by division of labor and cooperation the productive efficiency of all is multiplied. A person educating himself is at a great disadvantage compared with a student who has teachers and fellow-students to stimulate him. Our pleasures, our affections, our moral aspirations are all lifted to higher power and scope by sharing them with others. An isolated individual is to that extent a crippled man. We never realize all our powers and enthusiasms until we shout with others in a public meeting, or keep step with others to the drum-beat, and see the flag, which is the symbol of our common life, leading us forward.

It stands to reason that religion, too, demands social expression, and will come to its full strength and richness only when it is shared with others. And so in fact we find it. There is a sweetness in private prayer, but there is an additional thrill when we join in a heartfelt hymn and are swept on the wave-crest of a common emotion. Most of us have come to the great religious decision in life only under the influence of social emotion. With most of us the flame of religious longing and determination would flicker lower and lower in the course of the years, if it were not fanned afresh by contact with the experiences and the religious will-power of others. When Jesus said that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is in the midst of them, he expressed the profound truth that his presence is fully realized only in a Christian society; it may be a very small group, but it needs at least one other human heart next to ours to be fully sensible of the Christ.

The Christian church gets its justification from these fundamental facts of human nature. It is not an end in itself It is always a means to an end. It is to create and foster the religious life in the individual; it is to build up the Kingdom of God in all humanity.

Christians have had no end of controversy about the proper organization of the church. The Roman Catholic church holds that there is no true church apart from the bishops and the Roman pope. Pope Boniface VIII in 1302 solemnly asserted: “The one and unique church has one body, and one head, namely Christ, and the vicar of Christ, Peter, and the successor of Peter. Further we declare, assert and define that for every human being it is absolutely essential for salvation that he be subject to the Roman Pontiff” Pope Pius IX in 1854 reiterated that “it is part of faith that outside of the apostolic Roman church no one can be saved.” The Episcopal church holds that all ministerial authority is derived through the ordination coming down through the historic episcopate, and that Presbyterian and Baptist ministers, while they may be very good men and blessed of God in saving souls, are not ministers of the Christian church in the proper sense. Thus the one church makes salvation and the other makes ministerial authority depend on connection with the right church organization. There are Baptists, too, who are ready to assert that none but a Baptist church is a true church at all.

To my mind the essential matter is not that a church body is very ancient, or that it has a continuous history, but that it embodies the Christian spirit in the method of its organization, and by its very constitution offers the largest possible opportunity to its members to live a truly Christian life together. The fundamental question is not even whether a certain church order is biblical, but whether it is Christian. The Bible merely helps us to see if it is Christian.

Now I think our Baptist church organization, though it is faulty in many ways and though it creaks and groans as it works along, just as all other human organizations do, is built on very noble Christian lines and therefore it is dear to me.

* It tries to create an organization of really Christian people. It admits to membership only those who deliberately apply for it and who can assert that they have met Christ and love him and want to follow him. It scrutinizes their statements to save them from self-deception and votes to receive them only if it feels confident that there is a real beginning of conscious spiritual life. It also eliminates from its membership those who are manifestly not living a Christian life. It may make many mistakes in receiving too quickly and in excluding too slowly, but at least it tries to keep its membership clean and homogeneous. Churches may become so worldly that it is hard to see any line dividing them from the world, but still the principle is embedded in the very constitution of our church life, and that always offers a ready possibility of reformation. On the other hand with other churches their very constitution works the other way. Individual pastors in such churches may strive to create a really Christian fellowship, but their churches neutralize these efforts by admitting everybody through the gate of infant baptism.
* Our churches are Christian democracies. The people are sovereign in them. All power wielded by its ministers and officers is conferred by the church. It makes ample room for those who have God-given powers for leadership, but it holds them down to the service of the people by making them responsible to the church for their actions. That democracy of the Baptist church-Cs 15 something to be proud of One of the noblest elements in the life of our Teutonic ancestors was that their village communities governed themselves in the town meeting. That has been called the mark of the Aryan race. It was the germ of all popular liberties. A Baptist church meeting is exactly that sort of self-governing assembly of the people. It is more democratic than delegated government by a presbytery. It also corresponds more completely to primitive Christianity. The farther we get back to apostolic Christianity the completer is the democracy we encounter. The Roman Catholic church is a benevolent despotism. All power flows from the pope downward. That type of church organization originated under the despotism of imperial Rome and has perpetuated the political ideas and customs of that epoch. Government by bishops also has strong affinities for a monarchy. As James I said: “No bishop, no king.” He saw in the bishops the best props against Puritan democracy. Our congregational government originated in a great wave of popular democracy in England, and has embodied and perpetuated the democratic ideals of the Puritan Revolution. I am proud to think that our church life is in harmony with that great ideal of government of the people, by the people and for the people, which mankind is slowly toiling to realize.
* Our Baptist churches recognize no priestly class. Our ministers are not essentially different from the laity. According to Catholic and high church views a priest receives an indelible character in ordination which enables him to do things which no other man can do. We take no such view of our ministry and I thank God we do not. The havoc which priestly assumption of power has wrought in the history of the church is incalculable. The priest is an inheritance from heathenism. He is needed only if there are magic sacraments to be offered or administered. Jesus was not a priest, nor the creator of priests. Other churches have only a vague line of demarcation between the church and the world, but a very sharp line of demarcation between the ministry and the laity. We reverse that. We have a sharp line of demarcation between church and world, but only a vague line between ministry and laity. Which is most Christian?
* We have no hierarchy within our ministry. We have no rector above the vicar, no bishop above the rector, no archbishop above the bishop, no pope above them all. Jesus bids us call no man father or mater, but all of us are to be brethren, and the only greatness is to be by preeminent service (Matthew 23:1-12). That settles all hierarchies for me. Some have greater natural gifts than others, and that inequality should be frankly recognized. Some have a holier character and deeper spiritual insight, and they should have honor and leadership accordingly. But fraternity in the ministry.
* Our churches have home-rule. Each church is sovereign in its own affairs. In that respect we follow the same principle on which our country is built up. One cause why our cities are so badly governed is because they lack home-rule and are run by distant State legislatures. Every man knows best where the shoe pinches him, and every community on the whole is best acquainted with its own affairs. The self-government of our churches does not hinder them from joining with others in fraternal cooperation, in associations and State conventions, in city missions societies and national missionary organizations. I do think, however, that our Baptist churches have lagged in this voluntary cooperation, and have too generally allowed each church to struggle along as best it could. In Rochester, for instance, we have no adequate organic expression of our unity.
* Our Baptist churches decline all alliances with the State. They accept no dictation from the State in their spiritual affairs. They ask no favors from the State, except that they accept such exemption from taxation as the State grants to all institutions which labor for the common good and not for private profit. Baptists insisted on this separation between church and State at a time when the principle was novel and revolutionary. Some Baptists seem to think that this separation is based on the idea that the spiritual life has nothing to do with the secular life. I utterly deny that assertion and think it a calamitous heresy. Our Baptist forefathers insisted on that separation because they saw that it wrought mischief when unspiritual men, actuated by political or covetous motives, tried to interfere with the centers of religious and moral life. To let the churches alone meant to let the religious and moral life of the nation work out its own problems unhampered and unthwarted by baser considerations and forces. But in turn it was also found that the political life of the nation is freed from a warping and disturbing influence when ecclesiastical questions are removed from politics. Other churches have had to be wrenched loose forcibly from their hold on public income and political power. Baptists have the far nobler and prouder position of declining these things voluntarily and of being pioneers in that principle toward which the civilized nations are slowly drifting.

My second reason for being a Baptist is, then, that Baptist churches in their very constitution approximate Christian principles of organization and give a fair chance to any Christian community to form a Christian social life. They seek to organize communities of really Christian people. They trust the people with self-government and form Christian democracies. They have no priestly or clerical class set apart from the people. They have no graded hierarchy in the ministry. Their local churches combine home-rule with fraternal co-operation. And they are on principle free from any entangling alliance with non-religious forces.

I know well that Baptist churches have not lived up to these magnificent principles. Churches, like individuals, are in perpetual danger of backsliding. There are churches that admit almost anybody and exclude scarcely anybody. There are Baptist churches in which a small junta of men rule and democracy has become a mere name. There are Baptist ministers who are more priestly in spirit and temper than the present pope. But it is a great thing for a nation to have adopted a constitution guaranteeing freedom, even if that nation is ridden by bosses and sold out to those who pay; it is a great thing for a young man to have committed himself definitely to a life of unselfish service, even if he is often led away by selfish impulses; and it is a great thing for a body of churches to have embodied such advanced Christian principles in their very constitution, even if individually or collectively they drop below them.

Why I Am a Baptist
My Third Reason

Baptists insist that a Christ-like lift, not ritual, characterizes true worship and pure religion

The first reason which I gave for embracing my Baptist inheritance with heartiness and intelligence, was that personal religious experience is cultivated among Baptists. The second was that our church organization is approximately Christian in its essence. My third reason deals with the concept of worship.

I can best make this clear by going back a little into the history of religion. In the rude and primitive forms of religion, worship is mainly an attempt to “get on the right side” of the gods. Men are afraid of the terrible powers of nature, of thunder, disease, blight, flood and drought, and they try to placate and conciliate the supernatural beings who show their displeasure by sending these terrors on helpless mortals. So they offer sacrifices and piteous prayers just as they would bring gifts and wail before the angry human despots with whose ferocity and whims they were well acquainted. Men want good harvests, health, offspring, revenge and protection, and they tell the gods of their wants and bring them presents to win their help and favor. To ward off evil and to secure favors is the main object of worship in these lower stages of religion.

But each god has his peculiar tastes and disposition which must be consulted. One god likes rice and flowers; another wants the smell of burning mutton or beef; another insists on human blood. They have their sacred places where they have appeared and where they can best be approached. They have their sacred names and formulas by which they can be summoned. And they have their priests, who are experts on all these matters and are allowed to draw near the god and offer sacrifices on behalf of the ignorant and unclean folk—for a consideration. These forms of worship are handed down from generation to generation, and are carefully preserved in the memory of the experts, for their effectiveness depends on the very wording of a prayer or on a prostration to right or left. In heathen Rome the priests muttered ancient prayers which they no longer understood. Religion is marvelously conservative about the forms of worship. All old religions are full of petrified usages.

In a higher stage of religious development men want .1. personal contact with the deity. They have a sense of impurity and defilement. They are told that by being bathed with water or anointed with oil, or touched with hot blood—all, of course, with the proper magic formula—they will be supernaturally cleansed, and made holy and freed from the power of the evil forces. Men now have a deep sense of the frail and perishable nature of mortal life; they long for immortality and the assurance of it. They are told that if they pass through certain mysterious rites, they will come under the protection of the gods who rule the hereafter and will be saved from death; or something of the divine life will enter into them and survive death. Thus in this higher stage of religion men seek expiation of guilt, freedom from impurity, victory over death, direct and concrete contact with the deity. In this stage, too, the forms of worship are supposed to be of the utmost importance. If they are not performed exactly, they lose their power.

To anyone who knows the dense pall of superstition that has hung over mankind, it is a wonderful relief to pass from this smoke of incense and burnt-offering to the outdoor air and sunlight in which Jesus walked with his Father. The crew of supernatural despots who want sacrifices and who love to see men cringe and implore, has vanished away, and the Best Being in the universe bows down with fatherly love. Holy places, holy times, holy formulas, holy experts are all left behind, and the only thing God asks for is love for himself and love for our fellowmen. The old cowering fear of the slave is gone, and instead we see the free love and obedience of the son and child of God. Jesus did not pray because he had to or because he wanted to get something from

God, but because he loved to pray and speak to his Father. To become a disciple of Jesus means to learn to think of God and live with Him as Jesus did, and to let all life be transformed by that new knowledge and faith.

Paul understood Jesus. His contest against the Law was a mighty effort to cut away the old forms of religion that cramped and gagged the spirit of religion, and to set Christians free to look at Christ before them and to listen to the Spirit within them. Read Romans 8, or Galatians from that point of view.

But the old religious habits of mind were very strong in men. It took hard work to emancipate the Jewish Christians from their old Jewish forms of religion, and the people who had lived in heathenism very soon created a new system of ceremonialism, which had a Christian face but a pagan spirit. Christianity had only two religious acts in which form counted for anything, baptism and the Lord’s Supper; one was a bath, the other a meal. These two simple acts of daily life were used to express great spiritual thoughts. But men with pagan habits of mind seized on these and saw in them just what they were

looking for. Baptism was to them a mystic cleansing which washed away guilt and defilement, a magic bath from which a man rose regenerate as a new man with the past all cleaned away. When they heard the words “This is my body, this is my blood,” they felt that in some mysterious way Christ was really present in the bread and wine, and when they swallowed the elements, his divine life entered into them and gave them the assurance and power of immortality. These superstitious ideas became ever more powerful and concrete as time passed; they were adopted by theologians and defended as part of the essence of Christianity. Gradually it was believed that Christ was not merely present in the sacrament; the bread and wine were actually changed into his body and blood and chewed with the teeth, and this new body of Christ, which was created under the magic formula of the priest, was offered anew to God in the sacrifice of the mass. A new priesthood early grew up, equipped with mysterious powers to consecrate the sacraments and to forgive sins. Additional sacraments were developed. Christianity once more had its holy places, holy times, holy formulas, its sacrifice and incense, its set prayers and all the apparatus of worship, just like the heathen religions, only more so. Through it all still breathed the spirit of Jesus with pitying and saving power, but the saving power was largely in spite of what was called Christian worship, and not by means of it. And this established religion was exceedingly conservative and anxious to keep things just as they had been, and refused to let the spirit of Jesus educate it up to better things. Just as the ancient heathen priest in Rome muttered formulas in a dead language, so the Christian priest in Rome chants his formulas in Latin, which was a living language when Christianity began and is now a dead language. The Greek Church, too uses a ritual language which has become unintelligible to the people. This is merely a trifling indication of the petrifying conservatism in religion.

The Reformation was a rising of the religious and I democratic and national spirit against this dead inheritance of the past. Among other things the Reformation simplified worship and swept out a great mass of superstitions ceremonial. In some countries the break from Catholic forms of worship was far more thorough than in others. The Calvinistic churches in Switzerland, France, Holland, Scotland and parts of Germany were very thorough; the Lutheran churches in Germany and Scandinavia not quite so thorough; and the Church of England least of all. The Baptists, and all those bodies with whom we are historically connected, marched in the vanguard of Protestantism. That is one reason why I am a Baptist, because by being a Baptist I am a radical Protestant. I can help to cleanse Christianity of the mass of heathen influence which leaked in during the early centuries and was afterward so religiously preserved and cherished. I can help to bring humanity to that simple, ethical, spiritual worship which Jesus taught and which has been so sadly overlaid by the gilded and jeweled worship of a paganized church.

Baptists are, in fact, more Protestant than the great Reformers on some points. The Reformers all retained infant baptism. But infant baptism was part and parcel of that very paganizing tendency which I have tried to describe. It grew out of a double root: the belief that original sin damns even infants to hell; and the belief that baptism regenerates. If baptism saves and if children need salvation, of course human love wanted the children to be baptized in order to save them from the risk of hell. There was widespread doubt about infant baptism at the beginning of the Reformation, but to reject it would have meant churches of baptized believers and would have unchurched the great mass of men. The Reformers recoiled from so sweeping a change, largely for political reasons, and infant baptism was maintained, defended and extolled. It was an alien element in Protestantism, and has been most subtly influential in opening the door to other alien elements in worship, organization and doctrine. It is now slowly dying out. Modern Protestant Christians no longer believe that unbaptized infants go to hell through their original sin, nor do they believe that baptism regenerates. And if a baby does not need baptism and if baptism does not do it any good, why should the baby be baptized? Other sentimental reasons are now used to prop the custom, but the number of infant baptisms is constantly decreasing. People are sensibly concluding to give their children a chance to be baptized when it will mean something to them. Of course Baptists have largely helped to bring this result about. They made a cleaner sweep of the old pagan leaven at the outset, and the slow development of the purified Christian spirit in modern Protestantism is swinging their way.

The real worship, the only thing that God really cares I for, is a Christ-like life. To live all the time in the consciousness of the love and nearness of God, to merge all our desires and purposes in His will to walk humbly before Him and justly and lovingly with all men, this is the real Christian worship. Without that no prayer, no song, no “divine service on Sunday is more than discordant noise in the ears of God. That is what Paul meant when he tells us to offer our bodies, our own selves, as a living sacrifice, and says that will be our “reasonable service,” that is, our rational form of worship. He was well acquainted with many irrational forms of worship. When James says that a pure and undefiled “religion” consists in helping the helpless and keeping ourselves unspotted from the world, the word “religion” means liturgy or ceremonial. A loving and pure life is the true liturgy of Christian worship.

The life of Jesus was as full of religion as a nightingale is full of song or a rose full of fragrance, but the bent of his life was away from the inherited forms of worship, and he can scarcely be said to have taught new forms. He taught a prayer when his disciples asked for it, but that prayer was meant to teach utter simplicity. In our common worship we shall come closest to the spirit of true Christianity if every act is full of joy in God and his fellowship, love for one another, hatred for all evil, and an honest desire to live a right life the sight of Christ. Our worship should eliminate as far as possible all selfish greed, all superstition, and all untrue and unworthy ideas about God. It should clear our conception of the right life by instructing our moral nature; it should give our will strong, steady, lasting impulses toward righteous action; and it should breed and foster habits of reverence and the faculty of adoration.

For all this the way is cleared in our Baptist religious life. It is made easy for us to be simple, truthful, spiritual. We are not led into temptation to slip back into superstition by the survival of pagan forms in our ritual. If our service has a fixed liturgy with responsive features and artistic adornment, that is not necessarily a departure from Baptist fundamentals. “When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing.” Just how much spirituality and essential religion there is in a given Baptist church service, is another question. That depends entirely on the men and women who engage in it. It may be utterly barren and dead. But even then there is an advantage in our simplicity of form, for the deadness will not be hidden and masked by the borrowed life of mere ceremonial. An unspiritual priest may sing the mass more beautifully than the sweetest saint, but a Baptist minister or church cannot be dead long without having men know it, and then there is a fair chance for repentance.

Why I Am a Baptist
My Fourth Reason

Baptists tolerate no creed the Bible alone is sufficient authority/or our faith and practice

Religion appeals to the whole of man and finds expression in the various sides of his nature. There is an intellectual element in all religion, and that grows stronger as we follow the development of religion from the rude and barbarous people to the civilized nations. We cannot help reflecting on this world about us and this soul within us. How did the world originate? Was it made by a good or a bad power with a wise purpose or through folly? If a good being made it, why is there so much suffering and evil in it? How did sin and death come into the world? How can man be saved from sin and its penalty? What comes after death? What is the

future of the world and of the human soul? These are questions with which natural science and philosophy deal, but they are also religious questions and a religious man craves an answer, and seeks in some way to build up a satisfactory and harmonious edifice of thought in which his intellect can dwell content.

But the answer which contents a man at one stage of his life is outgrown at the next stage. If he is a growing man, his belief must keep on growing and adjust itself to his expanding information. The same thing is true of mankind at large. If an African chief believes that the world ends on the other side of the mountains and that his god makes a new sun every day and extinguishes it the evening, that is a satisfactory scheme of the universe for him, but not for a boy of ten in our schools. If Christians in the Middle Ages believed that our earth was the universe, and that the stars were set in various crystal globes which revolved around the earth, that was a religious and scientific conception of the universe which satisfied men in that day, but we live in a vaster world now, and a man would commit intellectual suicide if he tried to “stand pat” on that explanation of God’s universe. To the moral feelings of a past age it seemed quite right and fair that God should condemn men for a sin which Adam committed and that all heathen were hopelessly lost. Our moral judgment has been made more tender and true by the more searching tuition of the spirit of Christianity, and we repudiate such ideas about God’s dealings with mankind. It is of the utmost importance that the individual and the race shall retain the capacity for growth in religious thought. It is fatal to make the religious thought of one age binding for a higher age. It condemns a grown man not to put away childish things but still to think and talk like a child.

Yet that is what religion has very commonly done. I After Christianity had become the State religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great, it was a matter of great concern to the emperors that the Church should remain united and not be broken up by bitter doctrinal fights. So, if some doctrinal question was giving trouble, they summoned a great council of bishops and had them decide by a mere majority vote on the profoundest questions. Moreover these councils were usually packed and engineered by wire-pulling exactly like modern political conventions, and the result was usually reached by compromises or intimidation. Yet when the result was reached, it became the binding law of orthodoxy, and men believed that the Holy Ghost, who had promised to lead the Church into all truth, had guided the decisions. Such a general council could not err, and its decisions were binding on all Christian thinkers. Such infallible decisions increased as the centuries went on, and each was riveted around the Church like an iron hoop around a barrel. Hoops are good around barrels, but I should not advise putting nice, tightly fitting hoops around the body of a growing child. It is hard to overstate the damage that was done to the intellectual and moral and religious growing power of humanity by this incubus of dead authority. For instance the doctrine of transubstantiation, that is, the belief that the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper are actually changed into the flesh and blood of Christ, was the product of the Dark Ages. When education and science were at their lowest stage, when the civilization of the ancient world lay buried under the raw barbarism of the Tentonic tribes, when superstition sprouted like toadstools belief was evolved which laughs at common sense and reason. But the Catholic Church solemnly adopted it, and now American Catholic scholars of the twentieth century have to believe it. And they do. But they can not without crippling their intellect in other ways.

While the Reformation was in progress, the Reformed bodies also produced creeds in plenty. They grew at first out of political necessities. For instance, in 1530 the Lutheran party in Germany was in great danger of being persecuted and suppressed by the Emperor. At the Diet of Augsburg they presented a Confession, a summary of their belief, to show that they agreed with the Catholics on all vital points and were not so bad as they had been made out to be. This Augsburg Confession was drafted by Melancthon, who was by nature a timid soul and at that time desperately frightened, and he kept all the braver assertions of the Reformation carefully out of sight. It is easy to sympathize with this conciliatory attitude in that dangerous situation. But this Confession afterward was adopted as

one of the creeds of the Lutheran Church and still has to be accepted and subscribed as a binding statement of Gospel truth. It is very hard, almost impossible, to get rid of a creed again after it is once adopted. Our Presbyterian brethren have long been restless under the straight Calvinism of their Westminster Confession, and it has cost them a long struggle to secure some modification of it. The great church historian Harnack, knowing how tenaciously creeds cling to a church, was lost in admiration when American Presbyterians first began to make the effort.

Now we Baptists have no authoritative creed. Our ministers and professors are not required solemnly to declare that they adopt some obsolete statement as their belief and will always teach that. We have a couple of summaries, called the New Hampshire and the Philadelphia Confession, which are often adopted by newly organized churches, but no one is complied to use them. So far as I remember I never read either of them until I had been several years a Baptist minister, and when I did read them, I was not interested in them. This freedom from creeds has left Baptists free to grow without jars and struggles. We used to be strict Calvinists, just like our Presbyterian brethren, and we, too have insensibly grown away from rigid Calvinism, but we have had no creed to tinker and no conflict about it. Like Topsy, we just “growed.”

Yet Baptists have been remarkably free from doctrinal vagaries. They have not moved zig-zag, but in a fairly straight line. There was enough conservative instinct to balance their thinking without carrying a big stick of timber on their shoulders to balance them. Baptists have always insisted that they recognize the .L)Bible alone as their sufficient authority for faith and practice. There are, indeed, many Baptists who have tried to use the Bible just as other denominations use their creeds. They have turned the Bible into one huge creed, and practically that meant: “You must believe everything which we think the Bible means and says.” They have tried to impose on us their little interpretation of the great Book as the creed to which all good Baptists must cleave.

But fortunately the Bible is totally different from a in the dark, this creed. A creed contains sharply defined and abstract theology; the Bible contains a record of concrete and glowing religious life. A creed addresses itself to the intellect; the Bible appeals to the whole soul and edifies it. A creed tells you what you must believe; the Bible tells you what holy men have believed. A creed is religious philosophy, the Bible is religious history. A creed gives the truth as it looked to one set of clever men at one particular stage of human history; the Bible gives the truth as it looked to a great number of God-filled men running through many hundreds of years. The strength of a creed is in its uniformity and its tight fit; the beauty of the Bible is in its marvelous variety and richness. A creed imposes a law and binds thought; the Bible imparts a spirit and awakens thought.

Any collection of historical documents growing right out of human life, would be more useful and instructive to after-times than the cleverest piece of abstract thinking done by a single man or group of men. The epoch-making treatises of the past grow obsolete with fearful rapidity; human nature with its love and hate and fear and hope and sin and passion is always the same, and what was true in the days of Rameses II under the shadow of the pyramids, is true in the days of Roosevelt I under the shadow of the sky scrapers. Hence creeds are dead and the Bible is alive. And such a life in it! A unique and gifted nation, with a lofty conception of God and a thrilling faith in him, preserves the thoughts of its most daring thinkers, its prophets and revolutionists, its poets and religious historians, and the whole collection throbs with the living breath of God— if only we have a mind to respond. And then comes the Highest One of all, the Son of God and the King of Humanity, and his life and thought are preserved in artless books, and the powerful impulse which he gives to human souls records itself in a series of letters and tracts, and these are added to the Old Bible of the Jewish people as the New Bible of the Christian people.

These books are the deposit of the purest and freshest form of Christianity. It is the mountain-brook before it had grown muddy in the plain by the inflow of other waters. The New Testament has been the conscience in the heart of the Church, always warning and recalling it from its sinful wanderings. It is still calling us up higher today, beyond traditional Christianity to the religion of Christ. In the New Testament lies the power of perpetual reformation for the Church. Baptists, in tying to the New Testament, have hitched their chariot to a star, and they will have to keep moving.

It seems to me a great thing that Baptists are not chained by creeds, but have taken the Bible as their authority. The full significance of that principle has never yet appeared among us. We have paralyzed the Bible by turning it into a law book and a collection of proof texts. We have often refused to take it in its own plain meaning to comprehend the larger sweep of history in it. We have fussed about trifles in it and have missed the greatest things. We have reduced it all to a single level, as if Esther was equal to Isaiah, and the Old Testament to the New, and Zephaniah or Jude to our Lord Jesus Christ. But my faith is that the old veil of Moses will yet be taken away from the Bible and its full light will break forth.

This is the last reason which I shall give for being a Baptist. Baptists have not bound the religious intellect by the adoption of a creed, and they have undertaken to learn what the Bible can tell them and to guide their life thereby. This is to me a satisfactory adjustment between the two great principles—of Freedom and Authority:

between the initiative of the individual and the authority of the church; between faithfulness to the past and obedience to the call of the future. I do not mean that Baptists have been faultless in their application of these principles; they have sinned and bungled more often than not. But the principle is right and has a saving power of guidance in it.

POSTLUDE

Herein ends this little series. The articles were written off-hand and amid the pressure of other work, and their faults crave a kindly judgment. My hope was that a few people might actually take time to read them and be helped to a clearer understanding of their own faith and the nature of our denomination and that some who have been familiar with the principles of our denomination, would get some new light by approaching the familiar subject by fresh ways.

Sometimes while writing these articles I felt in doubt whether I was doing good or harm. I should do harm if I gave Baptists the impression that ‘we are the people and there are no others.” We are not a perfect denomination. We are capable of being just as narrow and small as anybody. There are fine qualities in which other denominations surpass us. I do not want to foster Baptist self-conceit, because thereby I should grieve the spirit of Christ. I do not want to make Baptists shut themselves up in their little clam shells and be indifferent to the ocean outside of them. I am a Baptist, but I am more than a Baptist. All things are mine; whether Francis of Assisi, or Luther, or Knox, or Wesley; all are mine because I am Christ’s. The old Adam is a strict denominationalist; the new Adam is just a Christian.

Twelve propositions on same-sex relationships and the church

2007-01-21T16:37:00.000-08:00

This is a post over at Faith and Theology by Kim Fabricius. I liked the post and the dialog so much I thought I would pass it on.
paxclick me!

Rauschenbusch on Kingdom Centrality for Jesus and Church

2007-01-18T22:01:00.000-08:00

"Jesus always moved with a purpose and his purpose was the Kingdom of God…the social redemption of the entire human race on earth. If we regard him in any sense as our leader and master, we cannot treat as secondary what to him was the essence of his mission. If we regard him as the Son of God, the revelation of the very mind and will and nature of the Eternal, the obligation to complete what he began comes upon us with an absolute claim to obedience" - Christianizing the Social Order67

"We do not want less religion; we want more; but it must be a religion that gets its orientation from the Kingdom of God. To concentrate on personal salvation, as orthodoxy was done, or on soul culture, as liberalism has done, comes close to refined selfishness. All of us who have been trained in egotistic religion need a conversion to Christian Christianity, even if we are bishops or theological professors. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, and the salvation of your souls will be added unto you." - Christianizing the Social Order 464

Rauschenbusch on getting Jesus wrong

2007-01-18T21:57:00.000-08:00

"Imagine Jesus, with the dust of Galilee on his sandals, coming into the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople in the fifth century, listening to dizzy doctrinal definitions about the relation of the divine and human in his natures, watching priests performing the gorgeous acts of worship, reciting long and set prayers, and offering his own mystical body as a renewed sacrifice to their God! Has anyone ever been misunderstood as Jesus has?"
- Christianity and Social Crisis, 94.