In the article Olson is trying to fight off criticisms from the ultra-reformed, or rabbid-Calvinist wing of the Evangelical camp. Folks like MacArthur, Piper, Driscoll, and Mohler – besides being continuously contentious – are always throwing around words like heresy and orthodoxy at folks like Olson, Rob Bell, and Brian McLaren (all former pod guests).

 Here is the thing: there is no Evangelical Orthodoxy

I love reading books like Revisioning Evangelical Theology by Stanley Grenz, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage by Donald Dayton, History of Evangelical Theology by Roger Olson.  I was part of the the Lussane gathering of young leaders in Malaysia. I was very vocal last summer that Evangelical is not only a political term but has deep theological implications and is inherently and historically theological (I used Bebbington’s 4 indicators) .

 But there are two things I think need to be clear:

I got a book called the Evangelical Catechism. It is a compilation of consensus beliefs from 200 leaders, pastors, and thinkers that were surveyed. I like the book – but that is not the same as a catechism! We have no Pope, no ability to call a council, no catechism … so we need to knock it off with the “Orthodox” insistence and throwing around the word  “heresy”. LOOK: there actually is an ‘Orthodox’ church and they think that  the likes of Driscoll, MacArthur, and Piper (as well as the rest of us) has lost their way!  *

1) There is no evangelical catechism and there is no evangelical orthodoxy!  I proposed earlier this week that a dynamic conversation is the best we can hope for (I am partial to the Wesleyan quadrilateral). Can we have consensus? Ok. Can we have conversation? Absolutely. Is there a governing body to enforce your brand of ‘orthodoxy’? NO – so knock it off. Get some new words in your vocab. Think of some other ways to say what you want to say and stop pretending like you believe only what the early church believed. It fantasy at best and delusion at worst.

2) You can’t kick me out of the family. We all have siblings that think we are off and even wrong. Some brothers don’t talk to each other for years … but they are still family. That is not what determines if you are a part of a family! It is not how it works. So snuggle up sister! We are in this together, like it or not, we have the same parent, we were birthed through the same water, and we have the same blood. We don’t have to agree on everything – but stop trying to kick me out of the ‘fam’ bro! We are in this for eternity.

Now I know someone will come along and say “I told you its a meaningless term” … but I want to say

Hey Mr. Jones – if you don’t want to be evangelical that is fine. But some of us call this family and it means a lot to us. If you are done with the term, fine. But to us it has deep meaning we still use it as a family name. If you don’t count yourself as a member anymore – that is your call. But stop telling us who are inside the conversation that Evangelical doesn’t mean anything. It does to us. 

We may not have a catechism or an actual orthodoxy, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t a  living branch on the family tree.

I also shared some thoughts about Christian unity and conformity on a TNT episode. 

* I appreciate the real Orthodox and have learned much from them.

I have said before that I respect Tim and that he does not think God helps the Broncos win football games.

Why I love Tim: He works incredibly hard, has an amazing energy, lives out his faith, and serves orphans. This guy is incredible!

Why I hate his success: If you are in the NFL, you are gifted. Every player is extraordinarily talented … and I think that those talents come for God. I would prefer if we said that every player was blessed by God –  some acknowledge it and some are quite vocal about.

The assertion that God blesses one player more than another is where I run into the problem: that God is picking and choosing this person over that one – and interfering in this moment but not that one is a view of God that is irresponsible and indefensible. 

 I will go as far as to say that it is somewhere between superstition and missing the entire point of Jesus’ life and message. This certainly is not a Christian view of God.

Last week Tripp had a blog posted by Rachel Held Evans where he said that God was not omnipotent and that the future is not determined. In the TNT podcast that comes out today, Tripp and I talk about the line of reasoning that some people took in not only their objection to Tripp’s note but came to the defense of an omnipotent conception of God . Some people just came out and said “the book of Job shows that God is omnipotent”. This is a terrifying sentence to hear from a Christian.

There are three things about Job that need to be clear:

• It is not a newspaper report. It is a dramatic presentation (broken into distinct acts).
• That God rewards those who do right and love God and punishes those who disobey and turn away from God … is exactly what the book of Job is written against. That is against the narrative of Job’s life story at the beginning and against what God says at the end.
• Christians believe that Jesus lived a perfect life – and was brutally murdered. I see that as the Death of Job’s God. That old concept of God died on the Cross.

So the BIble doesn’t teach this view of God and the history of the world does not reflect this view. God does not reward those who are faithful and put down those who are evil. The evil prosper and the righteous suffer as much as everyone under that evil. 

We have to stop with this superstitious system of rewards and benefits that treats God like God as some sort of cosmic Gum-ball Machine.  It is extremely hurtful and insulting.  The part that baffles me is how prominent the view is among evangelicals … who make bold claims about being based on the Bible and ‘being Biblical’.

This view of the interfering God who doles out blessing to ‘His’ favorites is a relic of the past that we must outgrow.

This antiquated, superstitious view needs to die on the Cross so that the God revealed in Christ can be resurrected for our time. 

 For those of you who don’t know her, Julie Clawson is the author of Everyday Justice, a pastor, blogger, Emergent leader and former podcast guest. She is one of the conversation partners at the upcoming Emergent Village Theological Conversation at the end of January. (www.ProcessTheology.org). Her blog is in my top 10. 

Background: I love going to the movies. As a student, I usually only go the theatre on Summer break (blockbuster action films + air-conditioning = awesome) and on Winter break (tired brain + Christmas money = fantastic).

Last week I saw two movies and was quite intrigued by a pattern that I noticed during the trailers: women being tough guys. The three trailers were for Underword: Awakening with Kate Beckinsdale, Haywire with Gina Carano (both action films) and The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher.

I have read enough feminist literature to know that there is a principle (which Thatcher made famous) that “In a man’s world …” a women often has to out ‘man’ the guys in order to break into the boys club and be taken seriously.

In a system where we have been socially conditioned to see certain behaviors and attributes as ‘leadership’ or ‘strength’ – or in the church as ‘anointing’ – then women must over-do it in order to overcome the intrinsic biases and gain credibility in a system geared to evaluate by masculine expectations. (people point to Joyce Meyer as a Christian example)

This is a real problem.

THEN I was reading your blog this week and you bring up the Lego Ads making their way around Facebook and tie it into both modesty and obesity. As a youth pastor I have read everything from Reviving Ophelia to Queen Bees and Wannabes ,that explains why girls treat each other the way that they do, and I recognize that there are deep underlying issues. Let’s be honest, these deep issues will not be solved by quoting some Bible verses or ‘going back to the way things were in the Bible’.

So here are my questions: 

1. What do we do with the karate-chopping drop-kicking gun-shooting heroines of violence on the silver screen these days? On one hand, it is nice to women getting these big-deal leading roles in major films… on the other hand, are they real portrayals of women-ness or is it the bad kind of mimicry -  like ‘Girls Gone Wild’ as a picture of sexual liberation or power.

Most important of all Christian put together a killer collection of thinkers, writers, and ministers to answer a some dangerous and banned questions about Jesus…the kind of questions in which the asking and the answering can be costly.  Each author had just a few paragraphs to answer the question and they did so right next to others so the reader can compare, contrast, yell, and go ‘hmm.’  Not only was Christian wise enough to ask Tripp about Jesus’ sexual fantasias but he also brought some ‘A’ game to the podcast.  Hope you enjoy the conversation!

Don’t forget to sign-up for the Emergent Village Theological Conversation coming up in sunny SoCal Jan 31-Feb 2.  Remember to put ‘Deacon Wine Tour’ in the referral box if you want to join the fun.  If you already signed up and want to come just email me.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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’.
3. 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.

1. I’m allergic to contempary Christian music.
2. I never believed in the inerrancy of the Bible (and think it’s rather obvious it’s not inerrant) and got tired of hiding that fact.
3. I realized biblicism (the notion that the Bible is infallible, internally consistent, universally applicable, contains all the truth we need, and makes us certain about most everything) is intellectually hallow and dishonest (see The Bible Made Impossible).
4. I think it’s not only fine to try to ascertain what Jesus meant or what Bible authors meant, in the original culture, but more importantly, if we don’t, we’re not taking the Bible seriously. We love tradition over truth.
5. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to pick and choose what one thinks is inspired and true in the Bible. After all, that’s how the Bible was composed. Someone else picked and chose and copied and translated, so why can’t we? Why do we have to take it on faith and they get to decide? How does one do that you ask? Have an open mind, look at objective biblical scholarship, use some common sense, and let the Spirit speak to your heart. What? You think that’s crazy? If accepting everthing at face value works, then why does evangelicalism have a thousand denominations and opinions about what the Bible teaches?
6. Despite 2-5 above, I think much of the Bible is inspired by God.
7. After studying the historical and cultural context of the Bible and learning how it has sometimes been miscopied, and frequently mistranslated and misinterpreted (by people who care more about tradition than truth), I find it a remarkably progressive book–okay, okay, minus that stuff about genocide and killing women and children, etc.
8. I might be called to love him, but I don’t like Rick Warren, and especially those Hawaiian shirts he wears.
9. R.C. Sproul defending Mark Driscoll makes me a bit nauseous. Okay, a lot nauseous.
10. I not only think believing in The Rapture is delusional, but also believing we live in the end times too.
11. I believe Jesus already returned (figuratively) in the first century (you gotta read my book).
12. I believe the Bible teaches the good guys get left behind (again, it’s in the book).
13. I sometimes agree with R.C. Sproul. For example, he actually pretty much believes #11 too.
14. Going to a U2 concert is a spiritual experience for me.
15. I no longer believe evolution is the enemy.
16. I think intelligent design is a grand idea that needs to be seriously considered.
17. I think one can be a practicing gay or lesbian and still follow Christ.
18. I’m a microbrew enthusiast and love to talk theology over a couple of brews.
19. Rick Perry makes me really nervous (but not as much as Sarah Palin).
20. I hate sexual exploitation but find some erotica perfectly acceptable for adults.
21. I think the evangelical church is sex-negative (okay, there are a few good evangelical marriage sex manuals out there, but that’s the only exception).
22. I think Charlize Theron is hot and I’m not afraid to admit it.
23. I voted for Barak Obama. I still support him but see a lot of things he could do better.
24. I hate it when Republicans accuse Obama of doing or proposing things that George W. Bush (increased the deficit by $5 trillion) and Ronald Reagan did (raised taxes 11 times).
25. I think what evangelicals call “church” is a non-biblical, man-made construct (back to my book, and yes, these are shameless plugs!).
26. I think nine times out of ten spiritual disciplines (praying, fasting, time in the Word, worship, going to cutting-edge, spiritual conferences, and following the latest, trendy book — think Purpose Driven Life) becomes a legalistic treadmill.
27. After studying the issue and examining the historical and biblical evidence, I became a Universalist.
28. I think the emergent “conversation” is good (and I really like Brian McLaren), but wish they’d come to a concluson once in awhile. Just for grins.
29. I often disagree with Bishop Spong, but sometimes I do agree with him.
30. I like Bishop Spong way more than Rick Warren or Mark Driscoll.
31. I think the truth is embodied in a composite of Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Please comment, challenge me, and share your own lists of where you’re at!

 I think that we may have overdone it on the cross. It is out of proportion.  I want to I hear more about the empty tomb (resurrection) and the coming of Holy Spirit (pentecost). 

Just this week I have run into multiple conversations on the subject. They are all good on their own – but it is the larger picture that I am concerned about. From Daniel Kirk’s fantastic post about Luke-Acts, to Kurt Willems and Tony Jones or Roger Olson.  It can seem like , for Protestant Evangelicals – it’s ‘all atonement theory – all the time’.

Last week my friend A.J Swaboda said “Discipleship is photo-shopping the cross into every picture and angle of my life.”  I asked him if the empty tomb  wouldn’t be more appropriate. He said (wisely) that you can’t have one without the other.

So is that what we are doing? Is ‘the Cross’ shorthand for the whole story? Is it assumed that when we say ‘Cross’ we mean also Resurrection and Pentecost?

That would make me nervous.

Here is my concern: in the resurrection God spoke a new word over the world. I would like to live into that new word and participate with God’s Spirit who was given as a gift and a seal of the promise.

To obsess on the cross and related atonement theories is to live perpetually in the old word and to camp in the final thing that God said about the old situation.

It manifests in odd ways too. When my school, Claremont, was entering into a new venture of a Multi-Faith University, new logos were drawn up for each participating school. One symbol and one color for each represented religion or tradition. It is actually a cool branding that sends a message I can really get behind.

The problem is that we, as the Christian representative, got a red logo with… the Cross as our symbol. Ugh. Really?   We couldn’t have gone with the Flame or the Dove or the Bible or anything else?  What is the deal with the Cross obsession? Is it really the best representative for what the whole religion is about?

I know that Tripp is going to say something about “How the cross bearers became the cross-builders” which is a consistently good point about the historic shift. It has also takes on weird Colonial connotations that have compromised its essential message.

I’m just a little Crossed-out. It’s too much. It is out of proportion with the other elements of our faith and used disproportionally to the other symbols we have.

I would like to see us move into God’s new word for the world – and move out of our perpetual lingering in God’s last word over the old world.

The topic of gender, femininity, and sexuality were the touch points.  I am going to highlight 3 controversial blogs from this week … but first I want to acknowledge that it mirrored (albeit in a much smaller way) something happening in the larger culture that we are embedded in.

This was also a week that saw the Penn State football sexual abuse scandal rock the nation, the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations, and several other national news story related to discrimination, abuse, and harassment.

These three christian conversations that follow are not happening in a vacuum – perhaps that is why they illicit such a heated response and so much attention. It impacts all of us.

Post 1:  from Stuff that Christians Like – a post called ‘Girls with a Past’ was a little test (written by a man) that women could take to see if one qualified as intriguing or not.  It was satire (which not everyone gets or likes) and it pointed out a real problem. Now, some people were offended and took it out on the author. I just want to say that the situation is infuriating but we can’t take it out on the person who illustrates the problem, Jon was articulating a severe inconsistency between what we say and what we do in the ‘church’.

Here is his post: http://www.jonacuff.com/stuffchristianslike/2011/11/stuff-christians-guys-like-girls-that-have-a-past/ let me know what you think.  It got over 500 responses.

Post 2: Rachel Held Evans (one of my favorite bloggers) put up a post called “13 things that make me a bad feminist”. It is part of a series that she does from time to time – she has also admitted to being a bad ‘evangelical’ and ‘progressive’.  This post went over like a lead-balloon . This led to a guest-post the following day.

Here is the post: http://rachelheldevans.com/13-things-lousy-feminist . It got 149 responses.

Post 3: my co-host Tripp Fuller came out of the closet as not being ‘open and affirming’ on a video from Two Friars and a Fool. His contention was that affirming letters – whether L, B, G, Q, T, I or any other dash or asterisk – is an inherently limited response. It has two great dangers:

1. it makes us feel like what have really done something, when all we have really done is 
2. conceded the initial ground rules to the entrenched system.

The problem is that the system is capitalism and that means that ‘acceptance’ is becoming both something to market and a new group to be marketed to.

Tripp’s point of contention is that the gospel of Jesus calls the whole system into account. We can’t concede the rules of the game and then think that we are going to bring about the best-of-all-possibilities. The structure itself must be contested. The system can not be catered to – it must be undermined and subverted. People are too valuable to God to be classified by their genitalia or the genitalia of who they are attracted to. This was not received too well for the most part.

Here is the post: http://twofriarsandafool.com/2011/11/identity-politics-are-not-the-gospel/ it got 84 responses.

___

My take:

• The 3,000 year old gender roles in the oldest parts of the Bible merely reflect that culture’s understanding and are not the last word on ‘natural’ design.
• The 2,000 year old gender roles in the New Testament were written in context where women were basically property. They need to be revisited and revised.
• The idea of ‘original sin’ is a constructed idea and not biblical. What it is addressing, however, is real and I think we all acknowledge that. It needs to be addressed in better ways without pre-modern understandings imposed upon it.  
• Until we address these three subject the conversation will always circle around and around in endless and unhelpful loops of misunderstanding: 1) social conditioning 2) constructed reality 3) biological implications of being mammals.

I would be very excited to enter into this conversation if we did not live in such a contentious and acidic ‘Argument Culture‘.  Thoughts? 

• Can one gain the needed perspective to level a valid critique on the program as a whole if one is a participant?
•  Is it possible to escape ones location and particular constructs to the degree that a valid attempt might be made at a critique of the enterprise one is socialized in?

I believe that it is.

I draw my inspiration for analogy from the cancer cell. A cancer is comprised of the same biological material as the body that gives rise to it. They share the same biological makeup and DNA. The difference is that the cancer cell is participating in a different narrative than the other cells that make up its host body. This narrative in turn directs the cancerous cells to behave differently from the organism that houses it and behave in such a way that undermines that body to the point of threatening its very existence.

Aware critiques  are in this same way cancerous to their host organism. Though it is comprised of the same genetic material and from the same biological makeup, it operates in such a way to undermine the dominant project and subvert the enterprise altogether. Aware critiques are housed within systemic frameworks and are inherently (genetically) of the same substance.

I argue that location determines the resulting direction of critique. Aware critiques may originate from the center and provided a valid critique.

Admittedly, it is not sufficient on its own but it remains credible none the less. I actually think that it may carry more weight in most scenarios than a critique that comes from the outside and non-invested,  as they may be dismissed as mere complaint.

There is a significant voice and substantive critique that can come only from those who participate in any given system as it is.

Over a decade ago I read an amazing book called The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen that forever changed the way I was able to see and participate in the toxic, adversarial, binary system that had evolved. It haunts me as I watch the political environment and media circus unfold in front of me.

The other day I stumbled across another good reminder from the past. Alasdair MacIntyre pointed out that

all contemporary debates are really between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals.

I found this in a Dictionary of Theology, where the author added “Thus there is little room for the criticism of the system itself.” In a post the other day I said that “in the end the structure is nearly unchanged. The system is never in danger. The machine doesn’t even slow down. The Powers are never in jeopardy. It eats new ideas with barely a burp – let alone beginning to buckle.” 

Stated simply: there is a real danger is assuming our inherited  structures. When we presume the giveness of our constructed systems we are inflicted with a blindness that is more than debilitating to dialogue – it is corrosive to the very intent and virtue of our stated ideals. When the system is assumed:

1. we begin to major on the minors.
2. we create blind-spots that leave us vulnerable to critique

The result then is that we either take on a defensive posture, turn aggressive, or become paralyzed and withdrawal all together. It is the social equivalent of  the “Fight-Flight-or Fright” reflex .

When we don’t examine our inherited assumption or unwilling to engage our constructed social conditioned-ness, we open the door to something quite hazardous to the Gospel message. Beyond compromise and conflict as either/or options is a real cancerous effect on community.

Our political views and denominational persuasions are not the all or nothing ‘far right vs. far left’ spectrum with a huge gap in the middle that has been presented to us. They are kinds within the same system. They are not different in kind – they are only different in degree. And when we realize this, we are afforded the possibility to step back the arena and gain some perspective on the structure as a whole. That is is the only way that system itself will ever be critiqued – the only ways that the Powers the Be will ever get challenged.

 A few weeks ago Joerg Rieger cautioned about a type of Christianity that was a cheerleader for the system, that reinforced the status quo, and participated in society in way that strengthened Empire.

I have said before I come from a background where this type of thinking is not just disorienting but alienating. The focus is on individuals – with little mention of anything systemic. The goal is the salvation of souls for the afterlife – with no address of collective issues.

It was reading Walter Wink  “the Powers the Be” that radically impacted the way I could see this. I have since encountered other writings and teachers who have opened the subject even further.

Now, it is odd to look at the central figure of our faith and ask how did Jesus ever get portrayed as a guy who basically told people to be nice and obey the rules? Cornell West would talk about him be sanitized, deodorized, and neutralized. Someone else might call this being a chaplain to the empire.

Tripp and I have a theme that shows up in our personal conversations on a fairly regular basis. It revolves around the idea that variable X or Y may be changed or tweaked, but the outcome of the equation is never in doubt. A specific issue may be protested, but the machine itself in never in danger. Certain areas can be challenged or  even overhauled, but the system itself is never in jeopardy.

This is not limited to Empire. It goes beyond hegemony. It is not limited to Capitalism.

The powers that be, or the system, or the machine (as you prefer) is an omnibus. It can absorb – incorporate – and co-op any variation, deviation, or even challenge … and in the end the structure is nearly unchanged. The system is never in danger. The machine doesn’t even slow down. The Powers are never in jeopardy. It eats new ideas with barely a burp – let alone beginning to buckle.

 We could talk about an anarchist musical band that signs a record contract, or a retail store that sells Buddhist trinkets from ‘the far east’, or a seminar on Native American spirituality that meets in a university classroom… but I don’t want to get sidelined.  

Benjamin Barber in his book Jihad vs. McWorld talks about the market in such a way that sketched a picture (for me) of a machine that needs to be fueled by new authentic-indigenous expressions, otherwise it runs dry and burns out on it’s own the boredom of its generic repetitions and knock-offs.

“McWorld cannot then do without Jihad: it needs cultural parochialism to feed its endless appetites. Yet neither can Jihad do without that world: for where would culture be without a commercial producers who market it and the information and communication systems that make it known?”  

We have talked with Joerge Rieger (ep. 116) about a theological look at global economics. We have talked with Graham E. Fuller (ep. 117) about a historical perspective on East-West relations.

I am curious about the theological address of some revolutionary response to the machine. We talk about Jesus and Empire. We talk about the Constantinian compromise. We have the Hauerwasian response that gets interpreted as withdrawal & testimony. Cornell West wants us to be Prophetic.

What is the theological answer to the question that the machine is asking? Certainly, like Tripp is fond of saying, we have to be about more than a slightly kinder gentler empire. Jesus challenged the status quo of his day – economic, militaristic, racial, gender, and religious. How does a follower of Jesus address a system of oppression, domination, invasion and economic disparity?  Thoughts?

Over the last 5 years I have been transitioning toward more of a Professional and Academic location. This is not as simple as it might appear. It is complicated by the presence of two variables:

1. I continue to be a pastor while I am in the Doctoral program. The church and the academy do not always communicate that well, are not always focused on the same things, and have developed a level of distrust/suspicion at points.
2. My field in the academy is Practical Theology. This discipline is primarily focused on the activity of the local congregation-community and so even my academic pursuit is church oriented.

The result of this is that I seem to have the same two conversations on a fairly predictable monthly loop. One conversation is with my former congregants who knew me as only a pastor. The second conversation is with my fellow students who are pursuing an interest in one of the “Big 4” Theological disciplines (Philosophical, Historic, Systematic, or Biblical).

The first conversation with former congregants who are suspicious or or unaware of theology usually finds me trying to explain that “theology is a 2nd order reflection – or a 2nd tier discipline – that as a practical theologian I recognize is not the main event (1st order) but an examination OF  that main event.”  I compare it to being in the balcony  watching those who are in the auditorium who are watching what is happening on stage.   I am concerned with the interaction between the stage and the auditorium. I am not focused on the stage primarily. I am analyzing and describing, from a 2nd tier position, the dynamic that is at work and its effect.

The second conversation is usually with people much further into theology than I am. I am continuously explaining that I am not looking for a system to buy into wholesale or a framework that accounts for everything in a totalizing way. I am simply looking for conversation partners.

• I am intrigued by Liberation Theology by am not (as of yet) convinced of God’s preferential concern for the poor. I want to hear what Gutierrez and Boff have to say.
• I am not a Whitehead-ian (yet) but love John Cobb and the host of other Process thinkers (Epperly, Suchoki, etc.)
• I am not Catholic but get so much from Elizabeth Johnson, John Caputo, Karl Rahner and Joseph Bracken.
• I think that George Linbeck and Hans Frei are really onto something about theology and scripture, but I am certainly no Wittgensteinian.
• I am fascinated by Paul Knitter and John Hick but have no interest in trying to defend a Kantian dualism in order to explain how a Barth style-Protestant might access the noumenal real (an actual challenge I received when quoting Paul Knitter).

Admittedly, I don’t understand the “guilty by association” Lord of the Flies atmosphere that seems to previal in many post-Barth theological conversations. I am simply looking for dialogue partners. This fits my field, as Practical Theology is an inter-disciplinary endeavor.

Unfortunately, I get accused of being a “cafeteria Christian” – picking and choosing what I will take from each discipline or tradition. I am accused of theological “Bricolage”…  I choose to call it Mosaic thinking – piecing together the little elements that present a fuller picture of the whole.

On one hand I get why people are repelled by the lingering attitude of “total buy in”. On the other hand, I simply embrace that this is the atmosphere under which I am transitioning toward being a theologian.

I would love your thoughts. 

I grew up with Josh McDowell being the most reasonable (pun intended) voice of faith. I even went to the Billy Graham School of Evangelism and focused on apologetics. I bought Ravi Zacharias books on tape (and later CDs) and used my best stuff when I spoke to college groups or at outreaches. I loved it and it went pretty well most of the time.

At one point the questions changed and then the answers didn’t seem to work as well. Around this same time I read Brian McLaren and Len Sweet and, like a billiard ball struck by the cue ball, I was radically redirected into a different trajectory. Actually, truth be told, I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t figure it out until I was cautioned about using N.T. Wright as my go-to scholar. One day it just hit me: if McLaren and Wright are the far edge before you are ‘out of bounds’ then I might be playing the wrong game… or least have been taught the wrong rules.

I went to a progressive Evangelical seminary* (by that I mean that it acknowledged post-modernity and interacted with biblical scholarship) and then moved again to a radically liberal Doctoral program and started working at a Mainline church.  I love the doctrinal freedom and the intellectual integrity, even as I do miss a couple of things as well.

Perhaps the greatest adjustment I have had to make is not just the absence of apologetics (which is noticeable) but the presence of apologizing for our Christian heritage/perspective. It gives me whiplash every time I realize that we have moved from apologetics to apologizing for Christianity. 

Now, I have strong anabaptist leaning and I am as suspicious of Christian-ism as anyone. But I think that we are in real danger here.

A very popular blog from a renowned scholar came out this week that asked if Progressive Christianity is the last best hope for the future of the church. I’m not convinced that it is, in fact I’m nervous about the future of this branch of the family tree. Do I think that the nature of the universe and science are with us? Absolutely. Do I worry about the organizational and motivational challenges that seem to work against us? Definitely.

Forgive me if you think that I am being harsh. I am simply trying to say that if we who are not conservative-fundamentalist go into the world feeling bad about what we represent and embarrassed about the tradition that we have inherited, it doesn’t provide much to build on.

As a contextual theologian I am a huge proponent of articulating our particular – constructed – embedded – conditioned located-ness. But if we are going to walk around with our tails between our legs people will mistake our epistemic humility for being spineless and impotent. 

I’m proud to be a thoughtful Christian. I think that we bring something great to the world. I have no interest in apologizing for speaking from a Christian perspective, but neither do I have any desire to concede the microphone or public spotlight to less-thoughtful [since no one is thought-less] Christian voices (ie. Pat Robertson) just because they are loud and proud.

p.s. I have been contending for the inherent theological value of the terms Evangelical, Liberal, Progressive, and Emergent.
p.p.s McLaren has a great story about not being spineless  in Inter-religious dialogue during my interview with him.

*George Fox Evangelical Seminary 

I love when he says things like:

The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payment for offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace. The kingdom is a way of living, not in eternity, but in time, a way of living with out why, living for the day, like the lilies the field–figures of weak forces–as opposed to mastering and programming time, calculating the future, containing and managing risk. The kingdom reigns whenever the least and most undesirable our favor all the best and most powerful or put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails when ever the one is preferred to the ninety-nine, whenever one loves one’s enemies and hates one’s father and mother while the world, which believes in power, counsels us to fend off our enemies and keep the circle of kin and kind, of family and friends, fortified and tightly drawn.”  - The Weakness of God p. 15

All of this has been on my mind lately because of two upcoming events:

•  At Soularize (October 18-20 in San Diago) I will get to meet and share the stage with John Caputo at our Homebrewed Christianity live 3-D event.
• I have been editing both the Merold Westphal interview where Tripp asks about Wesphal’s good friend & sparring partner John Caputo as well as the Kevin Corcoran (Church in the Present Tense) interview for the following week. Both are not the biggest fans of what Caputo brings to the table.

In part two of the Westphal interview, Westphal asserts that he finds Caputo’s brand of ‘theology’ a bit like “thin soup”.  His thinking  (starts in minute 21 and goes to minute 28) is that if the promise of the future is just the logical possibility that the future will be better than the present, that is just wishing. What we need, he says, is a more active speech-act performing God.

He then goes on to say that he doesn’t understand why Caputo continues to call himself a Catholic and then takes it even further to ask why he even calls himself religious! What?

Is this where we are at in Christian theology these days? I hear this line of thinking all the time (albeit not often from someone as renowned as Westphal).

 I think that the future is a tough thing to be too dogmatic about. I get Panneberg’s proleptic possibility in his eschatology of hope. But that is hope … which, in my mind, is like one degree removed from wishing. So the acceptable options are a) certianty or b) hope, but anything less confident than that is unacceptable?

I know that Westphal’s thinking is based on much bigger issues than just the future, but it is an odd one to focus on in my opinion.

Let me be clear so that we don’t get off topic. I love reading John Caputo. I don’t just mean on philosophy or about other thinkers. I mean when he talks about Christianity – as a Christian.

I find him both intellectually inspiring and spiritual nourishing. So when somebody calls what he brings to the table ‘thin soup’, I am a bit perplexed.

Normally, I am not one to get defensive – so is it enough to simply say that I disagree with the honorable guest of Episode 114 on this one?

There have been two things that have come across my plate recently that have caused me to ask a second set of questions about the whole conversation. The first is a quote from the book “Postcolonialism” by Robert Young.

 As soon as any contemporary intellectual or political movement is established, arguments will always follow about its name. This is because naming involves important form of political power structures, as is clear from the ways in which feminism, queer theory and black studies have had to wrestle with the implications of the naming process. The drawback of any name that ends in an ‘ism’ is that it will be taken to imply a set of shared ideas, and a single, homogeneous ideology. Such a characterization will of necessity be a broad generalization, produced after the event. The practice is always far more diverse and heterogeneous… (p. 63)

The second was some push back I got from a friend who took exception to my assertion that people who self-identify as Emergent should have at least a cursory knowledge of emergence theory. I am concerned that emergent not simply be used to denote what we are not. It is not enough to use it as a marker for not being traditional, conservative, denominational, etc. It has to have a basis in some conceptual famework that in some way connects with what or how we see the movement/conversation actually operating. I think that it does.

My concern here is twofold.
A) That both Emergent (as a concept) and Evangelical (as a theological identifier) could become disconnected from the words that supply their titles/labels. I told my friend “if the emerging conversation has nothing to do with emergence theory , then it could have just as easily been called the Leopard church or Zebra conversation. it would have no identifying connection to that which it refers.”
B) I have a similar concern about Evangelical. I have said before I would like to see the term theologically tied to some historical markers. I use Bebbington’s 4 themes and then try to expand them a little bit for contemporary developments. What I do not want to see happen is for it to come to mean “Republican” or Religious Right or any predominately political de-marker.

I first heard of the emerging church from Eddie Gibbs before the founding of Emergent Village. He talked of the developments in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and then England. I was under the impression that those participating in the conversation were taking their cue from and engaging the conceptual perspective of emergence thought.

Now, it might be right that the American manifestation was not rooted in emergence thought but only utilized the word as a label that could be branded and marketed. But that would be disappointing to find out … although there is one aspect that would actually make a lot more sense. It would explain why just over a decade into the conversation it seems for have lost some of its initial steam and continues to come under criticism for lacking real traction on the ground. Could it be that this is at least in part due to the lack of philisophical-theoretical basis in the very thought that it derives its name from?

A name is not just a name. It means something. It comes from somewhere. It denotes something. It can stand in contrast to or exclude other labels. It has the possibility to explain, inspire and even direct. Is it possible that at part of the loss of momentum in the Emerging conversation is a disconnection from its philosophical referent? Is it possible the contention over the label Evangelical is about control, but is being made possible by a lack of historical grounding?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

“Freedom isn’t free”. You see on T-shirts, bumper stickers and hear it is discussions about past wars. I get it. I see what is behind the saying.
No, freedom isn’t free – not in this world of selfish sin (on a small scale) and dominating Empire (on a big scale) but I think that it is important to make two clarifications about this saying.

Freedom is not solely the result of our military – and freedom is not all our military does.

• The first one is important to clarify because in our Military Industrial Complex (Dwight Eisenhower warned of it and those who profit from it in his farewell speech), our the freedom that we enjoy is not bestowed  by military action. That is not the source of our freedoms.
• The second one is important to clarify because freedom is not the only business that America’s foreign policy participates in. The US involvement in S. America, Asia, Africa and Europe is not simply explained as a ‘force for freedom’. There is a lot more going on than just a heart for global democracy.

I think this is appropriate to address on occasions like Memorial Day. It is not dishonoring to those who served and died to use our freedoms in order to call for accountability for America’s addiction to militarism or to examine America’s foreign policy.

In fact, seen from my point of view – it is downright honoring to utilize my freedom this way and it demonstrates an appreciation for the exact freedom that allows me to spend time on this day off to do so.

It seems more essential than ever in the current budget crisis.

Gareth Higgins said in his interview (Homebrewed  102) that looking at the budget and not accounting for the (untouchable) military expenditure is like being on weight watcher and not counting any of the points of an unhealthy breakfast and wondering why the program isn’t working.

It is one thing to say that our freedom comes at a price. No one is debating that. But to not count the cost and then wonder why we are flirting with bankruptcy is just foolishness disguised as patriotism.

On this Memorial Day, I am already dreading September 11th – the Ten year celebrations and the unquestioned, unchallenged national story.

What we need is theological examination of where freedom comes from and what is the real price.

Ohh I got one more Brian Ammons surprise for you soon….. a chapter that was banned from appearing in the Baptimergent book which did include my very straight chapter.

To begin with, I’d like to make a statement about my last post.  My basic premise in that post is quite simple: whatever the advertising world latches onto and uses for selling consumer goods sheds light on the ways in which that culture thinks and values. Because, in these previous commercials, advertisers latch onto a desire in our culture to form what we would consider “authentic” identities, we must take seriously as both a philosophical and theological category the notion of “authentic identity-formation,” or what I will simply call “authenticity” from here on out.

In this regard, I have been doing a lot of studies in Charles Taylor (the philosopher not the dictator) who takes up this notion of authenticity from a cultural and philosophical perspective.  According to Taylor, the ideal of authenticity as a contemporary ethical standard has emerged from several historical idea sources, all of which have been taken over and setup as standards in their own right.  So, the invention of individualism, the development of what will be called by Rousseau the ‘inner-voice of nature,’ and emergence of Romantic understandings of originality (none of which I will try to do justice to here) have all grounded the idea of authenticity.  So, for Taylor, the idea of authenticity is latently understood and lived by us as drive to become an original expression of humanity through our making explicit what is potentially within us. To put it a bit differently, we’ve all been imbued with different and unique “talents,” and the ethic of authenticity moves us to strive to make actual these talents, both becoming and forming for ourselves what we already are to some degree.

At a properly philosophical level, Taylor develops this idea in an interesting direction.  Philosophically, Taylor is highly critical of certain of our cultural appropriations of the idea of authenticity.  Our appropriations tend to be solipsistic, narcisstic, self-centered; persons who explicitly desire to become authentic often do so in such a way that they use others and the world surrounding them to make for themselves who they are and want to be.  But, according to Taylor, this appropriation of the ethic of authenticity is an aberrant one.  To become authentic is never to become such at the expense of the rest of the world, especially our fellow human beings; to become authentic rather, is to become so in light of, and in conversation, with the world and our fellow human beings (what Taylor calls our ‘dialogical horizons’), especially our direct communities and cultures.  To translate this critique in somewhat of the direction I want to take it, then, selfhood and the formation of individual identity depends on structures outside of the self that are irreducible to the self.  And to become truly authentic, for both Taylor and me, is to create oneself with a cognizance of these structures.

I will not move, here, into the possibility of all these structures; such a task would have to match Hegel’s attempts to unify knowledge and being in his Encyclopedia (a task that I think impossible in the first place).  But it is possible to say that there are certain of these structures that are contingent, for instance, that I was born in the Northwest of U.S. and was formed and formed myself in light of the possibilities afforded to me in that culture; There are, however, also such structures that are necessary (that if I’m born, I must die; death is a necessary structure in human existence).  The question I’m explicitly interested pertains to God and God’s necessity, namely, does God form a necessary identity structure such that, if I am not cognizant of God, I cannot be an authentic human being. For reasons that I will explain more later, I’m answering no: authenticity is possible without cognizance of God precisely because God must be understood as that which is more than necessary.

At any rate, I hope these cryptic statements are at least of some interest to you;  if not,  I’m afraid that conventional wisdom is right: that only my committee and one other person will ever actually read my dissertation

That’s a long quote, highlighting two important contemporary ecclesiological thinkers, both of whom I, in fact, respect, and a book with which I’m pretty much in agreement. However, what’s important to bring out of this quote is the degree to which these two thinkers and, frankly, the degree to which most persons in general misunderstand that ever-popular term ‘postmodern.’ What these thinkers describe is really still part of the modern project; a fallibalist understanding of truth and its relationship to humanity. I say this because postmodernity is much different than any simple claims on truth, though that is what it’s often reduced to.

Whether the Christian faith ought or ought not think in terms of postmodern critiques, I will have to leave to you to decide–you’ll find ample compatriots on both sides of this issue, the Radically Orthodox being perhaps the only ones that I know of who actually argue for ‘postmodern sensibilities’ Christianly in a way that is actually consistent with the trajectory of postmodernity (see the debate between Oliver Davies and Graham Ward in this book). But, I would say, to perhaps defend yourself either way with a sense of what postmodernity actually means, and not with the commodified senses of the ideas that are now tossed around in contemporary circles.

Take a look at this Roderick Video for a good interpretation of the postmodern and what Roderick sees as its problems. For a good example of its meaning, read the first half of this op-ed piece in light of Roderick’s break-down between reality and image.

healthcare.’

The demise of the functionalist understanding of religiosity has undermined the notion of state churches, which are mostly cultural museums for the culture at large in the states who still have them (France and England, for instance); and it has also undermined the notion of the American denominations, all which used to have some sort of preferenced say on moral…not legal…issues in the U.S. (again, I wrote about this in the previous blog).  This latter point is especially pertinent for us.  As I already talked about, persons such as Reinhold Niebuhr…who was once a pastor in Detroit, president of Union Theological Seminary, and in many ways a national Christian theologian and commentator…had moral authority within the United States really up through the 60s; and these “public theologians” had a say not merely within a specific church demographic, such as a Rick Warren does, but in the society as a whole…as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. points out in this article.

What I have said this demise of functionalism (and thus denominationalism) has caused is a sense that the church is no longer necessary to the social order.  Whether the churched readers like this statement or not, the social order as it stands no longer recognizes the church as having a genuine role in the moral governance of the country.  And because the general social order lacks this recognition, there is, metaphorically speaking, no room for the church to speak up as a church in the contemporary debates. In many parts of this country (certainly not all), to speak as a church, as a Christian, means nothing whatsoever; it’s about the equivalent of standing up at a town hall meeting and saying, just prior to speaking one’s mind on the issue at hand, that “I prefer to wear only one sock to bed at night.”  While this person might find their single-sockedness an important point of identification thought ought to buy them public respect, no one else cares.  In the same way, no matter how dear the church holds its own identity, it no longer holds any moral authority in the public eye.

I need to briefly take a step back here in order to, perhaps, more clearly define just what this social order is that I’m talking about.  In the U.S. and in other countries that have sought with varying degrees of success to promote civil rights, there exists, in many ways, no direct “common good.” In other words, there is no direct economic, political, or moral goal that the government seeks except the civil liberties of the people.  This statement is no doubt an ideal statement.  Of course the government gets involved in issues beyond the protection of civil liberties and often oversteps the bounds it set for itself, but usually only justifiably for the sake of the preservation of the conditions that allow its population to flourish as free individuals, that is, as individuals with civil liberties.  So there are city, state, and federal highways that allow us to visit one another and provide an economic infrastructure for us to create materials through which we live; there is a military to protect our way of living; and there ought (in my not so humble opinion) to be health care to protect our common health.  What the government does and does not get involved in is decided, however, not by the governing bodies and politicians themselves (another ideal statement), but by the people (or lobbying groups) whom they represent.  This means that the direction of the country’s governance is supposedly defined by the people, legislated by the politicians, and promulgated by the courts.

The U.S. democracy is supposed to be one for, by, and of the people.  Being “of” the people and what that means is important.  What it means is that there is a general sphere of civil dialogue (and I mean “civil” legally, not morally, as recent town hall protestors have shown) in the country.  There is a public debate taking place through newspapers, town hall meetings, and now the internet through which a series of public opinions are formed and developed , helping to set the trajectory of our legislative priorities as a country. This dialogue is, in many ways, a negotiating table at which many corporations, think tanks, unions, etc. have a say (it’s something like the U.N.’s Security Council, only more dysfunctional).  These various groups hammer out their agreements and disagreements, trying to sway public opinion to their side, and thus political actors to their side.

It is in this context that I say the moral authority of the church is gone. In other words, I am saying that our seat at the negotiating table has been taken away by the public at large, and that we’re now left in the waiting room.  And this is the precise reason we not only don’t, but really can’t, say anything about contemporary debates as a church and be taken seriously by our secular contemporaries.  So it is good that the UCC stands for single-payer health care, and (in my opinion) it should; but no one in the populace beyond the church cares.  I should also add as a bit of an aside for now that we may not like this status, but we ought not feel too terrible about it either.  Not only might it be a good thing at the end of the day, but also we’re not the only “organization” that has suffered this loss of prestige.  Without trying to figure out the previous century’s political players, what I can say is that economic pseudo-prophets (also known as economists) and “scientists” (a term that unfortunately has very little definite meaning anymore) have begun to hog most of the seats at the moral and legal negotiating table, making for one of the many issues that I will soon try to deal with in future blog posts.

So what can the church do?  I will not try to say what the mission of the church is other than to say that the church is, religiously speaking, Christ’s breath in the Holy Spirit into this world.  So, whatever we believe that means, we must first acknowledge that we gain our value-systems from precisely this point.  Our faith very much defines who we are, the diversity of questions and concerns that we have, and the various ways our respective churches see them through and act on them.  We ought to continue to let this sense of divine breath drive our value-systems while simultaneously acknowledging that most of the rest of the social order thinks we’re pointless, at least for now. And, in light of the loss of our place of moral preeminence, we might think of reengaging the world on two points.

For one,  like Chevy and Chrysler, we need to rebrand. We need to show (to use somewhat crass terms) that the product we purport to give is as good if not better than any competitor’s.  Thus, in the long term, we ought to stand as the church as a loving example of Christ, whatever that might be interpreted to mean; we ought to stand  in such a way that we might at least buy back a place of prophetic significance with some of the negotiators at the negotiating table.  Whether we will ever again have a seat at the table itself may neither be possible nor desired.  But that’s a question for a different day.

Secondly, and in the short term (which I’m more interested in right now) we ought to allow our value structures to inform our beliefs, but translate those beliefs into the most rationally and rhetorically compelling arguments that we can. We ought to try to influence public opinion in its own terminology while finding the core of our values in the breath of Christ.  Thus by “rationally and rhetorically compelling,” I think we must acknowledge that the language of the church does not hold; rather, the values issuing forth from the faith must be argued for in such a way that the public at large might see them as good.  I will try to provide some examples in the blogs to come as to how we might do this, precisely through the socio-economic and political terms generated in the modern secularizing movements.  In other words, for all the hurt secularization might be perceived to have cause the church, I will show why it might be a good thing and how certain trends in it might be used by the church to the social-order’s advantage, even on issues such as the contemporary health care debate.

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.

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.

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.