random

Mutants and Mystics with Jeffery Kripal: HBC episode 134

February 14, 2012 by Bo Sanders 5 Comments

Whose ready for some mystical, mutant, comic book, and science fiction fun? I know I am!

Prof. Jeffery Kripal joins the podcast this week to philosophize about his love for the paranormal and mystical part of human experience. In doing so he turns to the wonderful world of comic books and science fiction but not as a reporter or historian but as a place where deep metaphysical issues and religious questions are being addressed through pop culture. I have been thrilled to share this conversation ever since we recorded it. While many of our regular listeners won’t be able to go everywhere Jeff goes philosophically…Gnosticism & psychedelic drugs… I am confident his cultural exegesis and mapping of mystical narratives will have you entertained and intrigued.

Mutant Linkage…

* Mutants & Mystics was a Patheos book club so there are a ton of blog reviews, a Kripal interview, round table, sample from the book, and more…check it out.

* Ryan Parker has the most uber-awesome review of the book

* If you dig the interview check out Jeff’s podcast The Impossible Talk Podcast where he and his film making partner Scott Hulan Jones have “sophisticated, open discussions of and lectures on the paranormal and anomalous dimensions of American culture.”

*Now for a fun moment from X-men…

Standard Podcast [ 1:23:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Filed Under: conversations, engaging, features, living, podcast, random, science, thinking

Clarifying the Quadrilateral

January 27, 2012 by Bo Sanders 4 Comments

a quick follow up to the post earlier this week

I wanted to thank everyone who gave feedback on the Four Locations of Theology in the 21st century post from earlier this week. I appreciate the comments here, on facebook, and the emails. It has given me a lot to think about and I wanted to clarify three themes that have emerged.

Three clarifications:

Reason seems to be the suspicious quadrant. Every time I bring up quadrilateral, more than half of the conversation will be centered on reason. This week was no exception. Reason draws the most concern – which is funny to me because tradition is the one that I find most suspect.

Here is the thing I would want to clarify: the other 3 themes of Scripture, Tradition and Experience all have reason woven into them. Those who wrote the scriptures, those who established the tradition and even our won experience are all saturated with reason. It is inescapable. The scriptures did not fall from the sky! They passed through the author’s minds and were processed with reason. Same with tradition. The creeds were not divined in some sort of supernatural ceremony. The were constructed and reasoned. Our experiences are interpreted utilizing our filters, frameworks and lenses.

It seems important then to clarify that those three are not independent of reason but are dynamically intertwined with it. It would be useless to take out reason (as some have suggested) because it interlinked and inescapable.

It may be that the quad needs something else. Some suggested replacing one of the 4 elements with an alternative. My favorite idea came from my friend Raphael who said

“I suggest we add a fifth source for the practice of theology in the 21st century: Imagination!”

Admittedly, it would no longer be a quad! but I think that the tradeoff is that you would get adventure and zest incorporated and not just a static, conserving, or historical product.

There are no guarantees. Even if we could all agree to utilize the quad for the theological endeavor, there is no guarantee that we would all come up with some thing or come out with the same conclusions. This seems to be a major concern – that we can not ensure the outcome of such an endeavor.

I am surprised at the conserving nature of such mentalities! People are ok to ‘go on the journey’ as long as we predictably end up basically where we started.

Think all you want. Explore new thoughts and incorporate science … just don’t stray too far from the foundations of antiquity! Integrate new realities and account for ongoing historical developments … just make sure that you end up with the same thing we started with.

I have not overstated this hesitancy and resistance. But the reality is that there are no guarantees. You may start out an Evangelical and end up being an Emergent type working in a Mainline church with Process theology as your main conversation partner! (for instance)

In summary:

You can’t get rid of reason, it is already present in the other three. Scripture, Tradition and Experience are inextricably laced with it.
The quad may need a little something extra. The 21st century may require some zest, adventure and imagination
There are no guarantees. While we want to honor the historical expression and provide continuity with the trajectory … it might look a little different and think a little different than it did in the 3rd or 17th century.

Thanks for all your feedback, thoughts, and concerns. I appreciate the conversation.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, emergent, engaging, latest, living, philosophy, random, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, experience, God, jesus, John Wesley, quadrilateral, reason, scripture, tradition, Wesley, Wesleyan

Theology Nerds Are Sexy…the shirt

January 24, 2012 by Tripp Fuller Leave a Comment

Some would call it luck and others providence but the other day I saw a guy at the local coffee shop wearing a shirt that said “nerds are sexy” and I said to myself, “who wants to stay up all night talking computer code?” All nerds aren’t sexy but theology nerds are! Just then I received an email from the good people at ooShirts asking me if I would like to review some sample custom t shirts. They said I could design them on their site with ease and receive them at my door in less than a week. I agreed to review their product here and in less than a week I had a couple ‘Theology Nerds Are Sexy” T shirts to share with a few Deacons.

The ooShirt website is easy to use and you can either design your shirt their or upload your design. The only complaint I could have is that during the design process you don’t see how what you are doing design wise is impacting the actual cost per shirt. Other than that the experience was great. The shirts were high quality Tees and the graphics are much more legit than the glorified iron on graphics at Cafe Press. If you are on the look out for a cool gift, a way to promote your blog\podcast, or sweet youth retreat T shirt supplier check out the good people at ooShirts for your custom shirt needs.

Filed Under: random

TNT: Prayer and Process reaction

January 15, 2012 by Bo Sanders 6 Comments

In this half-hour, Tripp and Bo chat about last week’s:

It is a wild and woolly 30 minutes as they prepare for the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation. You have two week to sign up and get yourself to Southern California.

p.s. it was 76 and sunny here yesterday*

* previous results do not guarantee future success

Standard Podcast [ 35:43 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Filed Under: bible stuff, church history, conversations, emergent, engaging, features, latest, podcast, prayer, random, thinking, TNT Tagged With: Bible, book, books, Calvin, calvinism, evangelical, God, jesus, john cobb, Kurt Willems, Paul Capetz, prayer, Process, rachel held evans, theology, TNT, Tony Jones

Rachel Responses

January 8, 2012 by Bo Sanders 18 Comments

Our friend Rachel Held Evans (podcast with her is here) posted a blog by our own Tripp Fuller that got an amazing response (287 comments at this posting). Tripp responded all day Friday, I did quick responses Saturday and Sunday night. I thought it would it would be fun to post them all here as a conglomeration of ideas that are open for discussion.

Omnipotence: A Compliment Jesus Wants You to Take Back

I (Tripp) have one important rule to guide my theological thinking: God has to at least be as loving as Jesus.
It seems rather obvious for a Christian, given our confession that Jesus was indeed the ‘image of the invisible God,’ but throughout church history, God, Jesus’ Abba, has been given a very theologically destructive compliment– namely that God is Omnipotent , All Powerful.

While this philosophical compliment is absent in Scripture, yet present throughout much theology, it was John Calvin that made God’s power the ultimate theological principle. I used to be a Calvinist. I read Calvin’s Institutes in high school, used Charles Spurgeon sermons for devotions, and quoted Jonathan Edwards to my crazy Arminian friends in college. Then I realized the God I had come to know in Christ was way too awesome for my Calvinist theology. The theology was not simply off, but set against God’s nature, name, and essence being love.

This isn’t to say Calvinists aren’t Christians (or that I wasn’t when I was there theologically). I am simply saying that omnipotence is a theological compliment Jesus wants you to take back for four reason:

1. An omnipotent deity is responsible for the evil in the world. When God can do whatever God wants to do, whenever God wants to do it, everything that happens is either the direct will of God or permitted by God. Of course Calvin, in his obsession with making God uber-powerful, rejects the idea of God’s permissive will and keeps God as the prime actor in all actions. That means God has willed genocide, murder, rape, cancer, abuse, and the torture of children. When God is omnipotent, one can read history as the will of God, and history is way too full of evil, suffering, and violence to imagine it as revelatory of God’s will. If God ever willed the violent death of an innocent child, then that God is not Jesus’ Abba or worthy of a Christian’s worship.

2. An omnipotent deity is not capable of genuine relationships or love. Loving relationships require openness, vulnerability, risk, and genuine duration. We intuit this. For example, when two lovers consummate their marriage in a passionate act of sweet love-making, it is their freedom vulnerability, and willingness to risk that make their intercourse an act of love and not rape. If one side of the relationship is determined, it just isn’t a relationship. I remember in my Calvinist past thinking that God elected me to love God, but being coerced sounds much more like a relationship to a gangster than God. There’s a big difference between a puppet and a person, an object and a subject. The God of Jesus created, sustains, and redeems people, children of God.

3. An omnipotent deity runs eternity like a tyrannical dictator. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Paul said that, and I think it makes perfect sense. Of course, if Calvin is correct and God is actually the one in charge, then it becomes a bit odd…or flat our disgusting…to simultaneously think God elects people to suffer for all eternity for their sins. That’s worse than me spanking my son for eating a cookie I made and gave to him. This image of God is morally bankrupt and need not be defended. Instead we could imagine God to be a Woman who seeks out each lost coin until it is found, or a faithful and patient Father waiting to throw a party for the return of his son. These images sound like a God as loving as Jesus.

4. An omnipotent deity builds crosses. The cross and resurrection are the center piece of the faith. The cross of Jesus was not simply a convenient way for Jesus to die so that God could raise him from the dead, but a symbol of Rome’s power. Rome and only Rome built crosses and put people on them. Jesus died with the power of empire inscribed on his cross-dead body. It is that body that God raised from the dead, and it is the future of the Cross-dead Christ that we as Christians share. Yet for some reason, we so easily speak about God’s power as if God was being revealed in the building of crosses and not in their bearing. God’s self-revelation in Jesus was a rejection of the coercive, determining, and controlling power that the empires of this world love so much for the power of love. Infinite divine love, the freedom it gives, the risks it takes and the possibilities it continuously creates offer an alternative ultimate theological principle for Christian theology and one I think coheres with the story of Jesus.

Process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once stated that, “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…. But the deeper idolatry, of the fashioning of 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.”

This observation rings true to me, but Caesar’s lawyers do not have to have the last word and Christian theology does not need to protect an idolatrous image of God anymore.

Process is a theology that has grown over the last 100 years from the philosophy of Mr. Whitehead. It is a global community (big in China and Europe) that engages both theory and practice with contemporary scholarship. For those who take it theologically, it is a way to address the Bible that is fully faithful to Jesus‘ vision, while integrating modern Biblical scholarship at every level.

The easiest access point for most is to say that because God IS love, then God’s very nature is loving, and so God’s use of power is not coercive – it is persuasive (almost seductive).

So God is not omnipotent.

Secondly, God is omniscient in that God knows all there is to know – but the future is undetermined.

Thirdly, God is omnipresent in an even more radical way than traditionally thought.

Lastly, God is neither immutable nor impassable – those are concerns of early Greek thought and not from the Christian scripture.
So quit saying God is omnipotent. Jesus was just too loving for that to stick.

To learn more about Process Theology, check out Marjorie Suchocki’s short PDF intro (free), and Bruce Epperly’s book, Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed.

___

Thank you all for the amazing conversation today – and even the push-back! This is the major development of our era over the previous centuries … the people of god in theological dialogue I want to make three general responses to some clear trends that have been displayed here:

1) Open Theology: folks are right (like Kurt Willems) to say that there is a significant distinction between Open and Process thought. Open is only/primarily concerned with the nature of the future. They hold that God reserves the right to do whatever God wants … its just that in love God has chosen to limit God’s self. It’s like God is just being nice but “He” doesn’t have to if “He” doesn’t want to.

Process make a clear philosophical assertion that God is not just self-limiting. God’s essence IS love and that is the determining criteria of interpretation.

Thomas Jay Oord does a great job at addressing Philippians 2: this beautiful poem that illustrates a wonderful truth and draws a dramatic picture of how we should BE in the world – like Christ.

2) Classic theology, Calvinism and Theodicy: I really like that folks have objections. They should. My only concerns are with the “we are making God in our image” and “ this is too philosophical” objections.

I want to clarify – Process doesn’t start with the problem of evil, it was just an access point for this format of conversation. If people look at their theology’s approach to scripture, its philosophical underpinnings, and its accounting for evil… If one holds to an approach of the past, sees it flaws, and says “I can live with that problem” – that is one thing. BUT if someone doesn’t see the in-congruence (and thus ‘there is no problem’) then THAT in itself is creating a 2nd problem.

I think that you would really enjoy looking into “Process Theology – an introduction” by Cobb and Griffin… especially pages 108-110 which deal with the Trinity.

Two things that I want to address are A) the baby and the bathwater B) making God in our own image.

I get what folks are saying. Here are a couple of things to consider:

A) No one wants to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater … per se

That analogy actually illustrates an interesting patriarchy/hierarchy. IT comes from and era when Dad bathed first, Mom and then the kids … to the point that by the time one got to the baby … the bathwater was SO filthy that It was actually possible to lose the baby in the dirty water and throw it out.
We have indoor plumbing now. We take care of our babies. That proverb, that mentality, and that concern may need to be revised for the contemporary situation.

Theology is no different.

A) Making God is our own image: no one wants a God that is just a big version of themselves projected onto the screen of the heavens. This kind of anthropomorphic imagining has happened so often in history that there is a huge rubbish heap of Gods (Thor, Zeus, Rah, etc.) that folks have no time for anymore.

While we are not interested in making a god in our own image, we are in danger of making our concept of god just that irrelevant if we continue to use only frameworks from the 2nd – 16th century.

Process makes an important distinction between Primordial and Consequential nature of God (called the Di-Polar nature of God). This is an essential element to engaging the huge concept and historic understanding that we are dealing with.

I would be interested in your response to this! – Bo

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, emergent, engaging, latest, random, thinking Tagged With: blog, book, books, Cobb, Emergent, Process, rachel held evans, Tripp Fuller

Talking to Tebow’s God

December 14, 2011 by Bo Sanders 43 Comments

I have held off as long as I could but I think we better talk about this now before it goes any further.

Tim Tebow is a phenomenon is the media these days. His Denver Broncos football team is on a 6 game winning streak and he is 7-1 as their starting Quaterback. Despite his apparent limitations (skills) he has orchestrated a series of amazing comebacks during the winning streak. That is a big deal! Any fan would love to have their team on this kind of a roller coaster – come from behind – frenzy.

That, however, is not what makes this news.

This past week the Broncos beat my beloved Chicago Bears in overtime after a miraculous set of circumstances turned the game around in the 4th quarter. The Tebow’s teammate picks up the story there:

“Tebow came to me and said, ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ because God has spoken to him,” Woodyard told The Denver Post this week.

It was Woodyard who then stripped Bears running back Marion Barber to hand the football — and the game — back to Denver.

For Tebow, just another day at the office.

“I believe in a big God and special things can happen,” he said, after he erased a 10-0 deficit against Chicago in the final 2:08 of regulation. “It’s not necessarily prophesying, but sometimes you can feel God has a big plan.”

Woodyard, for one, has no lingering doubts: “For all the Tebow haters: You better start believing.”

I want to be clear this before I say anything else: I am not hating Tebow. In fact, I like him. I like how he uses his summers to serve needy people in other countries. I like that he works so hard. I like that he is unorthodox in his throwing motion and scrabbling technique. I like that he is so sincere and transparent about his faith.

Some people get upset that he is always cramming his faith in their face. That is not what concerns me. It is his brand of faith that concerns me.

I have been very forthright that A) this is the camp of evangelical-charismatic zeal that I was raised in and emerged from B) that the epistemology behind ‘hearing from God’ … and the interventionist assumptions behind a ‘super’ natural worldview are antiquated relics of a pre-modern understanding and are untenable in the 21st century. If you want a more nuanced explanation, listen to “Pentecost for Progressives” [here] - starting in minute 55 OR read the summary [here].

This is the season of Advent and we do tell the story of God speaking to Mary. That is not what I am contesting.

I try to never-ever play this next card… but the cards that I have been dealt has forced my hand:

Are you under the impression that God cares who wins a football game and intervenes to bring it about but doesn’t care enough about the thousands of children who are starving to do something about it?

Are you telling me that god knows but doesn’t care, or that God cares but doesn’t know, or that god could do something but won’t or that god would do something but can’t?

Look, I am not an either-or guy. I hate binaries, dualisms, and us vs. them mentalities. But when someone says that this is how God is… sometimes it forces you to say that I believe this God to be a false creation of human imagination – nothing more than an athropomophic projection.

______

Three things for clarification:

I could be wrong. He keeps winning and people say ‘If Joel Osteen wasn’t doing something right, he wouldn’t have 37,000 people who go to his church.” In America, success = correct.
The Calvinists could be right. God chooses whom ‘He’ wants to. I don’t want to be one of those people who say “If God is not the way I believe they-she-he is, the I am not going to worship them-her-him.” I will worship God no matter what way God turns out to be… but I happen to really like the Jesus of the 4 canonical gospels… just sayin’.
Tim Tebow himself has hinted in the past that he does not believe in an interventionist god. Bob Costas alluded to this to in his amazing speech. It’s not Tebow that concern me – its Tebow’s fans.

Filed Under: bible stuff, conversations, engaging, latest, media, news, post-something, prayer, random, thinking Tagged With: 3:16, 4th quarter, Bob Costas, book, books, Chicago Bears, comeback, Denver Broncos, dumb, football, God, jesus, miracles, NFL, prayer, quaterback, stupid, Tebow, Tim, Tim Tebow, winning, wrong

Systematics and Activism: A Response to a Missed Meeting

November 20, 2011 by Deacon Hall 2 Comments

While it has been some time since I have blogged, I plan to make up for this fact soon. I have been in the process of editing some videos from a class that I’m currently teaching called Philosophy of Human Nature. I’ll post these on Homebrewed soon, and I sincerely hope that they’ll be of some use to you all. In the mean time, I’m at American Academy of Religion sitting in a Starbucks far too late to make the Homebrewed Christianity event taking place on the other side of the city. Knowing that part of the idea of this event is to both call into question and defend a notion of acaemic theology, I’m taking the chance to add my two cents while I can. I will focus my efforts on systematic theology.

Let me first of all start off by admitting that I cannot defend the whole enterprise called systematic theology. That is, I cannot defend it as some absolute set of propositions each of which relate to another in an eternal unified whole. I think that this point stands in two important sense. First, for those who would defend such a view of systematics, I don’t believe that they’re defending systematics as a whole but, generally, their own systematic positions, which is a power move to the utmost degree (conscientiously advocated or not). Systematics is and must remain open both in terms of the fallibility of human knowing and in terms of the flow of being in its becoming. Our propositions and understandings of God do, will, and must change. Neither can I defend the general hubris by means of which systematic theologians have upheld this discipline in the past. Systematic theology is not an end in itself, which it has too often been taken to be, but a means toward the proclamation of the Word in thought, word, and deed.

For now, I want to focus on the critique that I believe is taking place tonight that academic theology is “impractical,” unable to do anything about the contemporary situation. To that I say, precisely.

Let me be clear, here: we must act within our world and open paths in this world toward peace, justice, and love. I will never decry the importance of something like “action,” often expressed as “activism.” However, activism acts on a worldview that it believes to be true, if not absolutely, then certainly with a great degree of probability. This is where disciplines like systematic theology come in.

Systematics and other academic-theological disciplines are, for one, activities in their own right. They are analyses of the world or past worlds as the are and have been such that in these worlds. The difference is, however, between the activity of thinking in systematic or academic theological terms and other activities (or activisms)is that thought is a manner of activity that opens up new interpretive possibilities–new ways of understanding the complex web of beings-in-relation that forms our world.

In this regard, the focus of systematic theology is not found in ensconcing a particular actuality (a possibility come to fruition through, say, bodily activity); it is found in opening up ever greater interpretive possibilities–interpretive possibilities that expose the complexities of the world in which we live at least enough to yield some humility in the theologian and activist alike. Systematics, then, brings nuance to a world that we too often want to interpret in the blacks and whites of “absolutely right” and “absolutely wrong,” which usually yields the violent logic of “me against them.” Systematics, then, holds a critical function (in the strict sense of critical), positing space between a overriding desire to act directly and the need to think that action through.

In saying this, however, I would contend that the proof of my argument is in the pudding. Thus, I want, secondly, to challenge skeptics of this idea to a task. For 30 days, read someone–an op-ed columnist, perhaps–with whom you greatly disagree. (I make my critical thinking students do something like this, by the way.) Come to know their thought and be able to think their thought after them to such a degree that you’re able to predict how they would be able to approach specific questions. Get into the intelligibility of what they say. I believe that you will have a simultaneous experience. You will be freed not from your disagreement of the person but of your desire to belittle them. This is no small step as too often it is our desire to belittle that deprives from basic understandings of opposing positions. You will also become freed, however, to see through holes in your previous worldview such that, even if you’re still not open to this particular person’s thought in and of itself, you are open to new positions and new possibilities from other persons with competing worldviews.

Take all that and apply it to the attempt to illuminate a basic theological worldview, and you’ll hopefully see the importance of systematic theology and its practice. Systematic theology illuminates new possibilities for the expression of faith for the activist and theologian alike such that neithers’ expression could remain absolute in its contextuality.

Does this, by the way, mean that the activist must stop her work? Absolutely not! It simply reminds the activist that it takes more than their work to open the possibility of their work in the first place. Her work will open up new grounds by means of which to think through world, for sure; but it also rests on the illumination of worldviews that both she and others have opened up through theological and philosophical exploration in the first place.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, philosophy, random, thinking

TNT: Hauerwas and the Evangelicals

August 27, 2011 by Bo Sanders 5 Comments

Theology Nerd Throwdown!

This is part 3/3 for Tripp and Bo sitting down to chat about the terms Evangelical, Progressive, Emergent and Liberal.

A number of authors come up. Here is a handy list of the books that get mentioned and any relevant Homebrewed podcast they appeared in.

Stanley Hauerwas who wrote The Peaceable Kingdom and Resident Aliens.

Marjorie Suchocki (episode 39 ) authored The Fall to Violence and In God’s Presence.

Peter Rollins appeared in episode 91 and wrote How (not) to Speak of God.

Brian McLaren (episode 93 ) has both Everything Must Change and a New Kind of Christianity.

John Dominic Crossan (episode 34) has written many book including God and Empire.

Stanley Grenz authored a list of amazing books including a Primer to Post-Modernism and Beyond Foundationalism. My favorites is probaby Theology for the Community of God and

Standard Podcast [ 46:16 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Filed Under: church history, latest, random, thinking, TNT

Gladly Keeping Separate Paths: A Response to Deacon Bo and Brandon Morgan

August 15, 2011 by Deacon Hall 2 Comments

I have just finished reading Deacon Bo’s great post—a response to Brandon Morgan, who guest wrote on Roger Olson’s blog. In this blog, Deacon Bo asked, in the true spirit of dialogue, for Brandon Morgan to engage with him in a conversation over a series of questions to that Morgan himself asked on that blog. The questions have to do with the relationship of the mainline and emergent churches, which Morgan asks as follows:

Why haven’t Emergent folks joined the mainline denominations?
Why have the negatives of evangelicalism been so easy to describe and virulently rebuke, while the negatives of the mainline denominations have barely shown up in Emergent concerns?
Why hasn’t the Emergent critique of evangelicalism’s involvement with the American nation-state and its tendency toward creating theologically exclusive boundaries not found root in a critique of mainline denominations, whose political interests also conflate the church with nation-state interests?

I do not need to recap Deacon Bo’s responses, but I’m especially fond of the way he answers the third question. I’d highly suggest reading it. That said, I’d like to respond to Deacon Bo and Brandon Morgan alike concerning the first question asked: Why haven’t Emergent folks joined the mainline denominations? I want to respond with another question: why would we mainliners want emergent folk to join our churches? I’ll proceed by proposing and rejecting a few possible answers. (Note the caveats at the end.)**

One reason for a mainliner to suggest this move is that, indeed, the mainline side of this debate is in material decline and has been for some time. (I want to be absolutely clear, here, I’m speaking hypothetically, here, not at all of Morgan’s intentions.) As Deacon Bo rightly points this fact out, the mainline churches are dying. “Death,” however, is a subtle, spiritually loaded term thrown around by emergent folk too often (again, not by Bo in his post), and it signifies that, somehow, God has rejected us and our stubborn, recalcitrant ways. I doubt it—at least not the God to whom I pray. In fact, this death may be little more than the consolidation of over-extended parishes, which will occur over the next 7-15 years. After such a consolidation, there will probably be a critical mass able to sustain each parish, Diocese, and affiliated publishing companies.

But after such a consolidation, I would still want to ask, so what? Why would we want persons to come and join our parishes who do not value the same facets of the Christian faith that we value? This need not mean we reject anyone who does not want to be a part of the parishes that we currently run, nor does it mean that we ought to devalue their persons. However, I would certainly question the wisdom of making any overarching attempt at appeasing such persons and trying to get them to join this particular club. Indeed, there’s plenty of space in the US and, frankly, in the Kingdom of God for various expressions of Christ to co-exist (prayerful aside: Dear God help me for just quoting the corniest bumper-sticker ever made) through a variety of structures. Thus, I again ask in response to both emergent and mainline folk alike who want emergent folk to join mainliners: why does there need to be a hegemony of Christian values or structures, either mainline or emergent? Why must we two room together when, in fact, we could simply be friendly neighbors?

Of course, I also offer the same question to emergent folk who, at times, wrongly seem to believe that there is no room for mainliners within the Kingdom. Thus, I can put the above re-phrasal of the above question in another way, too, one more explicitly directed to emergent folk: other than what I perceive as valid critiques of the mainline church’s over-politicization of its institutional structures to the end of often forgetting the importance of the proclamation of the Gospel, when I hear critiques from emergent folk of the things that Mainline folk tend generally to value—tradition and historical lineage, liturgical and unvaried worship style, community-church orientation—I always think to myself that those are precisely the reasons that I attend, and live within, the Episcopal Church and its structures. I want mainline churches, in fact, to get out of their over-politicization (as Bo mentions) and remember their dedication to their traditions–theological and liturgical–as important out-flowings of the Spirit! That said, I think Bishops are important spiritually, historically, and functionally (with the Lutherans, however, I affirm the absolute equality of ALL believers and give Bishops no “ontological” priority); I want a liturgy that I know, and trust, that allows me to ground my week in the constancy of the God’s loving Spirit; I value the creedal expressions and interpretations of a faith that have outlasted any critique of them, that give voice in a way far more profound than they gain credit for these days in expressing God as Emanuel; and I greatly value the communities who center themselves in service and worship around precisely these things. Indeed, were those things changed, I would go to a different church!

Let me offer up, however, what are perhaps the two most important reasons I would question any attempt at trying to draw emergent folk into the Mainline. First, and on a very critical note, there is for me a dangerous trend in emergent circles that I believe they have appropriated from their previous Evangelical circles–it is a trend, at any rate, I try to leave behind in my past life. They are far too reliant on big personalities to ensure their success as communities of worshippers for me to be comfortable with. I don’t want to be a part of a church that points to a person in the form of a pastor or a spiritual leader; I want a church whose leader deflects attention by pointing to Christ himself and the love he exuded. For whatever failures one can attribute to the mainline, including being anti-entrepreneurial (a critique that I often hear and very much agree with), its peoples do not rely on cults of personality. They rely on structures that, yes, are sometimes all too absent personality but nonetheless able to point toward God, through Christ and his proclamation, despite the person “in charge” of them. (Whether the will continue to do so is a different question.) Unless these facets of emergent life are left behind, I don’t actually want emergent folks in mainline churches, even if I’m happy to worship beside them and appreciate the fullness of their Christian faith despite them not existing within my structures.

Second, and on a far friendlier note, I ultimately think that Deacon Bo is right: generally, emergent folk don’t want to be here. They find spiritual fulfillment and divine love elsewhere. Why should I want to detract from their experience by trying to right them and bring them forcibly “for their own good” into my community? Despite even my harshest critique above, emergent folk are doing fine, and I have no wish to take away from what they have found.

**I completely understand that certain emergent folk do, in fact, reside within the mainline church structures and want to remain there. But, it seems to me, such emergent persons are often “ignored” within the emergent community itself. One questions that I have, then, is whether there are several “senses” to the word emergent, including who fits where and why. Those to whom I’m responding in this blog probably would not include emergent “sympathizers,” for lack of a better term, already within mainline church structures. It would be those who think mainline structure are either (a) meaningless or (b) pointless.

Filed Under: emergent, latest, random, thinking

The Good Samaritans of Alabama

August 13, 2011 by Deacon Hall 3 Comments

The New York Times just published a storyabout a cadre of Bishops in Alabama suing the state over the passage of a new and tough immigration law. They (rightly) claim that this law is so ambiguously written that it could disallow them the right to act toward immigrants as they claim Christians are commanded: as good Samaritans. I don’t pretend to know what the right answer for immigration reform is in the US; I tend to think that the way that each side often looks at the current issue is, on the right, xenophobic and, on the left, unsustainable. However, I’m not trying to conjure another simplistic debate one way or the other in this post. (I’m implicating my above views in this st

atement.) What I would like to say is that I’m in complete solidarity with my own Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, and the Roman Catholic Church of Alabama on this matter and that they and their suit will be in my prayers.

Perhaps more importantly from a theological-political level, however, the issue raises for me the importance of the separation of Church and State in the U.S. and the tension that exists between the ultimate allegences of each institution. On the one hand, the Church stands always and forever for a Kingdom that we cannot bring but must do our best to imitate in the here and now; they are right to see this as a “Kingdom issue,” for lack of a better term. In this Kingdom, there is neither Jew or Greek, man or woman. All tribalisms die. On the other hand, the State necessarily stands for the collective interests of its people, protecting them and their material and legal well-being first. (I’m not claiming that’s what the State of Alabama is actually doing, by the way; I’d probably believe just the opposite. I won’t doubt that the State is trying to protect its citizens, however.) This means the state is a tribal formation grounded in the idea of common-law and heritage.

However these tensions between Church and State ought to play themselves out within individuals and institutions, the beauty of this particular issue is how it exemplifies the impossibility of the situation: that these two institutions do and will butt heads. If they don’t, one of the two institutions is doing something wrong!

Filed Under: engaging, latest, media, news, politics, public policy, random

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The Good Samaritans of Alabama

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