conservative

Beauty, Bodies and Blunders

April 5, 2013 by Bo Sanders 28 Comments

President Obama got in some hot water for a compliment he paid California Attorney General Kamala Harris. He said:

You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake. She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country — Kamala Harris is here. (Applause.) It’s true. Come on. (Laughter.) And she is a great friend and has just been a great supporter for many, many years. [via The Los Angeles Times]

A remark like that is never going to go over well. It was just one sentence but we could talk for days about it!

I know that I am an odd bird in that I often see the silver lining in things that other people think are really bad – like taking the Lord’s name in vain. I like that people do it. It means that the name of God still carries some gravity. No one is cursing Thor when they smash their thumb with a hammer. No one is blaspheming Zeus when they get cut off in traffic. Anyway …

I was happy to see the outrage and level of outcry over the President’s remarks. I love when stuff like this happens outside the walls of the church and I think to myself “Ok, it’s not just us that are sensitive, reactive and protest-ant. Good, I was starting to worry”.

You have to forgive me. I come from a very muscular – testosterone – ‘Wild at Heart’ brand of Christianity. In the last decade I have migrated to a progressive – critical theory – ‘She Who Is’ brand of faith.

The thing that has been most difficult for me is to figure out what to do with the body.

As a contextual theologian and an Ancient-Future practitioner, I am deeply concerned with issues of incarnation and embodiment of the gospel. Our faith can not be merely intellectual, super-natural or institutional. Our faith must embodied, or in-bodied and lived-out.

I have figured out, through 6 years of blogging, how to talk with conservative, evangelical, and charismatic Christians about almost everything related to faith and practice in ways that they can hear. The issues of sexuality remain the most illusive.

The problem seems to relate to a giant pot-hole in the road to understanding that is so treacherous it almost doesn’t leave enough room to move without careening into the pit of ‘natural design’.

What complicates matter all the more is that there is a serious ditch on the other side of the road – one that was dug by Augustine’s legacy (I hate Augustine’s influence on church history) regarding the badness of the body, a specifically sexuality.

Here then is the issue: If I am talking about somebody and I’m listing all of that they bring to the table in areas of smarts, relationship, experience, and capacity … am I to act like they don’t have a flesh container? It asks me to act like they have no body.

Yes. That is what we want you to do. Jonathan Chait at New York explains:

For those who don’t see the problem here, the degree to which women are judged by their appearance remains an important hurdle to gender equality in the workforce. Women have a hard time being judged purely on their merits. Discussing their appearance in the context of evaluating their job performance makes it worse. It’s not a compliment. And for a president who has become a cultural model for many of his supporters in so many other ways, the example he’s setting here is disgraceful. [New York]

Even while I write this I can hear my more conservative Christian brothers saying “That is ridiculous! This is the sissy-fication of our culture.” To which I can only reply,”Yes. It is the leveling of a historically unequal playing field.”

I get why culturally, we don’t want the President even acknowledging her flesh container at all. We don’t want pastors commenting on congregant’s looks. I get it.

But as thinking christians, is anyone else worried about the implications for this kind of willful charade? Do we think that President Obama doesn’t see her? Are we under the impression that he doesn’t notice her beauty? Do we think that she, in her private moments, doesn’t want to be found attractive? Do we think that she doesn’t invest time and energy in her looks?

“It doesn’t matter! Just don’t say it. Not ever ever ever.” And I get that. What I am asking about is the ramifications for the embodied practices of the life of faith. What we have learned from church history (and reality TV)- from fundamentalist pastor’s daughters to celibate priests – is that repression of desires in one place (public) is bound to cause pressure which bubbles up some place else (private).

We have to break the ‘old boys network’ mentality. I get that. I am worried about the secondary effect of perpetuating a deadly dualism between body and mind/soul.

I clearly need help thinking this through. Anyone want to chime in on this?

Filed Under: church history, engaging, latest, media, news, politics, post-something, thinking Tagged With: Attorney General, Augustine, body, book, books, California, church, conservative, controversy, female, feminist, gender, God, hot water, image, incarnation, jesus, Kamala Harris, Liberal, looks, prayer, President Obama, sex, sexual, sexuality

Homosexuality: the difference between TV and Greek Tragedy

March 27, 2013 by Bo Sanders 21 Comments

Blogging is a fascinating way to interact with people over an issue or topic.

Once in while a blog will unexpectedly come back to life after months of lying dormant. It usually happens when A) somebody references it month later B) when the topic hits the news again. The dying embers leap back to life in flame!

This week my old post on and Evangelical approach to same-sex marriage has fired back up – for obvious reasons. I’m not going to link there because I just can’t wade into the 195 comments without getting lost. I did, however, want to report about a most interesting exchange that came out of it.

Someone who disagreed with my saying that ‘homosexual’ as we currently understand and conceive of the term, never existed until the 19th century. Some people keep wanting to argue about sexual acts and missing that there are broader issues of orientation and identity that were not addressed in Greco-Roman culture or the greek language of the New Testament.

One such person – let’s call him TM – engaged the issue this way:

For example, the statement “The Bible (the inspired written word of God) is not talking about homosexuality. It didn’t exist.” seems somewhat confusing, even if we only focused on the Roman era of indulgences of the First Century. Are you suggesting that homosexuality didn’t exist in this era… simply because they may have called it something else?

This is along the lines of your attempt to make a point about television – in one sense, it didn’t exist; and yet in another, it did – as plays/theater. Are you suggesting that simply because the presentation was different that there weren’t actors and actresses who presented drama, comedy, tragedy and more to a mass audience? Are you really going to argue that because a word didn’t exist that means the concept didn’t exist?

Do you see the how the analogy works? This is really important to see because those who sincerely believe that they are being faithful to the scriptures are often mashing contemporary experiences into ancient writings in a way that is … how should I say this?
Let’s try it a different way: when your faith is constructed in such a way that you need your sacred text to speak to every area of your life – then you will, by necessity, fit your modern data into the provided molds.

My response to TM included 3 points of departure:

“TV is indeed different from ancient theatre.

1) One can sit alone in a house and watch TV, absent of the social connection and crowd interaction.

2) One can also change the channel when it gets boring. You can not do that at the theatre.

3) Plays also so do not have commercials which deeply influence us.

In those three ways I would say that one can not simply say “TV and theatre are the same” as you have.

You are comfortable mashing modern categories onto the ancient & calling them the same. This willingness to mash is why you are frustrated that the Bible isn’t talking about what we are talking about. TV is a different medium than ancient theatre – I hope that you can see that.”

It seems like a great example of the where the ‘two’ sides are missing each other in this debate.

It reminds me a great deal of the ongoing issues of conservatives ‘starting in the middle’ that I am perpetually having to point out.

That is where Ray Comfort takes the highly refined and cultivated modern banana and reads meaning, design, and intention back into it by the ‘creator’ – even going as far as it’s fit to the human hand, its easy pull tab opening, and its built-in disposal wrapping.

Maybe it would be easier for us to talk about TV & theatre in a categorical way before we wade into the elevated hostilities of the same-sex debate.

Filed Under: bible stuff, church history, conversations, engaging, latest, media, news, politics, public policy, thinking Tagged With: ancient, Bible, church, conservative, court, gay, God, homosexual, homosexuality, jesus, marriage, modern, news, paul, same sex, science, TV

Lessons from Blogging at Jesus Creed on Progressive & Liberal

February 19, 2013 by Bo Sanders 21 Comments

I had the honor of guest blogging for Scot McKnight yesterday. It was a good opportunity to try something out with a different crowd. It was instigated by last weeks post in response to Roger Olsen and Scot McKnight.

It was a fantastic conversation and I learned several things that I will take with me into future engagements. Here are some observations:

I learned to clarify the difference between people in the pew and theologians.

I go to a mainline school and work at a mainline church. I have an amalgamation in my mind of the ‘average liberal’. But if you are in the conservative camp, your main engagement and concern is with Liberal theologians who have a high profile.

If was starting the post over, I would address this up front and make an early distinction. I think that would have helped.

I learned not to use the word ‘versus’ if you don’t mean adversarial.

Neither Scot nor I think liberal is necessarily a bad thing. Roger Olsen does. But some of the readers at JesusCreed think in adversarial binaries. I was not trying to say that progressives are good and liberals are bad. I was simply trying to distinguish the two – not pit them against each other. The argument culture is so strong – especially in conservative circles – that I should have preempted that.

I learned that those in systematic approaches struggle to recognize non-systematic approaches.

This is an obvious and inherent problem. If you value systematic approaches, of corse you will criticize something as ‘not systematic’ and think that stands alone are a critique. I was trying to point out that conservative, liberal, evangelical, emergent, and progressive are not 5 categories of the same thing. Some are positions. Some are loyalties. Some are approaches.

Here is what I ended up with:

Since my Cobb quick-definition was not working for folks I thought I would ‘shift’ the emphasis and see if this language worked better:

Liberal – a constellation of loyalties inherited from the Enlightenment that is settled/assumed.

Progressive – an approach that integrates such influences as Feminist, Liberation and Post-Colonial critiques explicitly.

I’m open to help refining this if you are a self-procliamed liberal or progressive

My favorite response came from TJJ and it has me smiling ear to ear.

Qualities of a progressive ………as viewed by an evangelical……….

A. See more “grey” in their approach to scripture issues: inspiration, inerrancy, revelation.
B. Allow for more of a continuum on doctrinal/theological issues: hell, salvation, sin, depravity, exclusiveness of Gospel, etc.
C. More open ended on social issues : gay marriage, illegal immigration.
D. Trends more democratic/progressive politically
E. White, college degree and often more, affluent, alcohol, NPR, Toyota/Honda, MSNBC/CNN

Oh my. That is good.

At first read you may say “yeah – of course”.

But look at it again. It’s actually pretty helpful to see it all in one place.

I would love to hear your thoughts on any part of this whole episode.

Filed Under: church history, conversations, latest, post-something Tagged With: argument, blog, book, books, conservative, evangelical, Jesus Creed, Liberal, progressive, Roger Olsen, Scot McKnight

what is happening IN religion – or when we talk about God

January 24, 2013 by Bo Sanders 44 Comments

This weekend I will finish reading two books that we were given through the podcast (thank you publishers). The first is Peter Rollins new on The Idolatry of God and the second is Phil Snider’s Preaching After God.

I have recently edited podcasts with both of these authors. [We put out the Phil Snider TNT this morning]

It is very clear to me that we have an emerging situation (trying not to say problem) on our hands. With the introduction of a new wave of postmodern or ‘radical’ theology [listen to the Caputo introduction here] – progressive and emergent christians are drinking in lots of innovative and challenging concepts about God that may not have a real God behind them.

This is fine IF the listener/reader knows what they are imbibing. What is increasingly concerning for Tripp and me is the consequence when people don’t know that the god of the 21st century philosophers is not exactly the god you hear about on Sunday morning.

Is there a danger in people reading a ‘how (not) to speak of god’ and then just quoting it from the pulpit like they would quote any other historical person? Folks in the deconstruction camp are not real eager to answer this one.

I have some thoughts on the matter so I thought I would throw them out here for consideration.

Intro: It is severely unhelpful to frame this in an either/or way. “Either God is X like the Bible/Creed/Tradition say OR Religion is the equivalent of Santa Clause &Tooth Fairy and we might as well all go home.”

That reductive approach is foolish and silly. There is far too much going on in religion – and the Christian religion specifically – to say things like that.*

I propose that there are – at least – 5 things happening IN the christian religion:

Experience
Formation
Event
Mystery
Potentially Something Real

Experience - People who were not raised in the faith convert and/or have crisis experiences that powerfully impact them. People experience the presences of something they interpret as bigger than themselves.

We can talk about transcendence or phenomenology but what we can not deny is that people experience something in religion. As someone from a charismatic-evangelical background it is so clear to me that much of our talk about God and religion in progressive-emergent circles misses this very real component.

Is experience the whole story? NO! And those who reduce it down to that are equally as errant. It is not the main thing nor is it nothing. It does not account for everything but neither can it be dismissed outright. People’s experience must factor into the equation.

At minimum do the Kantian thing and say that religious people’s experience is real but incomplete to understand the whole picture (noumenon) – like 6 blind people with their hands on different parts of the elephant – each thinking they are describing something unique: a tree (leg) a rope (tail) a wall (belly) and a giant leaf (ear) and an enormous snake (trunk).

Formation - I get in trouble for liking the post-liberal writing of George Lindbeck (Nature of Doctrine) but I think that this is exactly where it comes into play. The role that the christian tradition, sacred text and vocabulary plays is that forms us a people. It forms character within us as well as the way that we participate in community.

I am in dialogue with the work of Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue) for this very reason. While I disagree with his solution, I think that he is spot-on in his analysis and concern. Not only does our culture live in a chaotic time – but the very ethical assumption that would allow us to even HAVE the conversation have been eroded and now we can’t even debate! At least within the Christian church there is a common vocabulary. We may debate the definition of the terms but we have an arena in which to engage each other.

In this sense, the faith functions. As Elizabeth Johnson (She Who Is) is so good at pointing out: the words that we use function in our imagination, our communities and in the tradition.

Event - John Caputo (Weakness of God) and those who follow his Derridean ways prefer to speak of the name of God as an event. There is an event housed in the name of God the beckons us – we respond to this call … and are not that concerned wether there is a caller, or if we can know that there is one.

It is undeniable that something happens when God’s name is invoked. It triggers something in us. It calls for something from us. It makes some claim or demand to be dealt with differently than other words and concepts.

I like Caputo’s illumination of this shadow world. There is something deeply insightful about his explorations. Those who want to dismiss it because it isn’t enough on it’s own, are missing the point. Something happens if ‘God’ is invoked … and that would happen even if there were no ‘God’ per se because (as I said above) the concept functions. – it does something in us,

Voltaire said,”If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” That is because ‘god’ does something in us – demands something from us. It maybe not ripping off our customers, it may get us through a tough time or help us to sleep at night – or even face the end of life with dignity. But in the name of God is an event that lays hold of us.

Mystery - I am fascinated with the apophatic tradition. I have no interest is appropriating it … but I am mesmerized by the fact that it even exists. Describing god by what she is not? Brilliant.

I also have been looking in historic understandings of analogy. Which works for me because I do not believe in univocal speech. When we call god ‘father’ we are using an analogy – god is like our best conception of father-liness … but it saying that is also included an understanding that God is not actually a father. Our use of the word is not a 1:1 equivalence.

Elizabeth Johnson challenged us over a year ago that every time we say ‘god’ that we must say it three times. I do this every day now!

God beyond us. This is that transcendent other or Kant’s noumenal real.
God within us. This is the experiential component.
God at work all around us. This could be the event.

When I say ‘god’ I always say God beyond me – within me – and at work all around me.

Potentially Something Real - the final component in my 5 sided web is the possibility that there really is something to all of this – more than just phenomenon or imagination or tradition or vocabulary – and that the language of religion is at least getting some of it right.

If we don’t leave open the potential that something real is really happening – that a real god is actually acting – then we may be missing the biggest part of the puzzle and thus have an incomplete picture.

___________

* Just because YOU haven’t thought of the multiplicity of layered meanings happening in the Christian expression doesn’t mean that it is an all or nothing game.Don’t be that person who says “If Santa Clause isn’t real, then Christmas isn’t worth celebrating”. Or “If Creation did not happened exactly like it is described in Genesis then the whole BIble is untrustworthy and unbelievable.”

Filed Under: engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, caputo, Catholic, concepts, conservative, Emergent, emerging, evangelical, God, jesus, Language, mystery, Phil Snider, postmodern, preaching, radical, Spirit, tradition, Voltaire, words

Preferring the Past: Phyllis Tickle, Radical Orthodoxy and the Tea Party

January 18, 2013 by Bo Sanders 73 Comments

There has a been an uproar this week over Phyllis Tickle’s closing comments at last weekend’s big emergent event in Memphis. It was a party to celebrate Phyllis and her book “Emergence Christianity”.

Friend of the podcast, Julia Clawson (who was at the gathering) wrote an amazing reflection on the odd series of events. You can read about it on Julie’s blog - One Hand Clapping.

I watched from an entranced distance as the whole thing unfolded this week. Apparently Phyllis connected the dots from women in the work place, to the Pill (birth control), to Christendom’s demise. All of which sounded good to me!

Then it took an unprecedented turn as Phyllis, it turns out, was not saying that was a good thing and suggested moms needed to get back to cooking dinner for their families and telling bible stories.

This threw everyone a little bit. There were already concerns about the lack of women, people of color, and LGBT voices on the stage. The trainwreck had just started (read Julie’s report for the actual progression of thought).

I read a number of responses including

Krista Dalton - who is scared of the witch hunt

Amaryah Shaye Armstrong - who want to retire the word ‘privilege’

Stephanie Drury – on covert misogyny

Suzannah Paul - tragically hip: privilege & the emerging church

Sarah Bessey – who is done fighting for a seat at the table

I also read some less measured responses and even attacks on twitter.

Now all of this happened while I was saying “The future of Christianity is not to be found in Europe’s past” in a critique of Radical Orthodoxy’s proposal to return to Aquinas and the Greek polis as a model.

I also had somebody staying in my house who is from a Red-State and who is tormented on Facebook by Tea-Party ‘supporters’ who are concerned, among other things, about the loss of their ‘old time religion/county’.

Back to Phyllis Tickle. There is some debate if she had the flu which caused her to not nuance like she normally does and thus spiral back to 1957.

I want to give her the benefit of the doubt personally. I almost can’t believe she said it – or meant it like it sounded … but for the purpose of our conversation here:

Let’s pretend that Phyllis said what she meant and meant what she said.

Do you think that the past was better? Is the solution to what ails us in the present going back to something in the past that we need to reclaim for our future?

I am not under that impression. I hold that all theology is contextual theology and so all expressions (even the Biblical record & the creeds) are neither universal nor timeless. All expressions are particularly located and unavoidably time bound. All products are embedded in a place and located in time.

Just to be clear: I love history. But I have no fascination with the past. It was what it was. We should learn from it but we can not return to it.

Someone reported that Barry Taylor – who I study with – said just the day before Phyllis’ odd statement that when we indulge nostalgia we re-create a past that never existed in the first place and how the only way to move is forward.

It reminds me of the book The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap. There are so many aspect to this romantically remembered past that need addressing. The two biggest hiccups seem to be

It was never really like that.
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube – as they say.

Preferring the past is something like fantasy. It is part imagination and part escape. Even if it were like we imagine it, the simple fact is that we can’t go back. We don’t live then and can’t get there. There is nothing helpful about reminiscing for a romanticized imagined past.

This is why I like the post-liberal perspective of George Lindbeck (Nature of Doctrine) – not because that is what I want people to do but because he helps me understand what people are already doing. [What Phyllis said about moms and christian formation in the home could be taken right out of the post-lib playbook!]

What Phyllis is suggesting, is what the post-Libs and Radical Orthodox are driven by. It’s what the Tea Party wants for politics. It is a preference for the past.

I appreciate the past. I try, where I can, to honor the road that led us here. I try to find continuity with the tradition and embrace, where possible, historical practices that lead to life in an emerging reality.

Families have changed. That does not mean that we have to either-or go back to mom in the kitchen or give up on discipling the next generation. There are innovative and creative ways to encourage the formation of christian character in our young people.

To prefer the past is a game of selective remembering and editing. It is a least farcical and at worst harmful. God has place us here – now. That is a gift and an opportunity.

The nature of religion has a conserving element to it that unfortunately sometime goes from being one of the significant player in the room to the high-chair tyrant demanding its way.

I write all of this for several reasons. The first is that I simply can not believe that Phyllis said it. But she did and so I can not imagine that she meant it like it sounded. It just seems unfathomable to me.

It does however give us a chance to do three things:

Examine the habit of having only professional speakers or authors as the voices of our conferences and movement.

Move toward what I suggested for the Wild Goose Festival and have all sessions be conversations between thinkers and practitioners. Make all of our gatherings dialogues and not keynote addresses where a polished figure does their schtick.

Initiate a changing of the guard. If we don’t like how folks are invited to the table, we are free to make different tables. If we want to hear different voices, this is a great chance to do so. There is clearly a conversation about gender and sexuality that needs to be had. This might be the open door we need to set that up.

I would love to hear your thoughts, questions, and concerns.
HBC also releases a conversation with Tickle today. It was recorded before the conference so the controversy does not come up.

Filed Under: emergent, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: barry taylor, Bible, book, books, comments, conservative, controversy, emergence, event, family, Feminism, God, Julie Clawson, Lindbeck, mothers, Phyllis Tickle, radical orthodoxy, the Pill, tradition, Women

Moving Toward Multiplicity

January 9, 2013 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

Listening to Howard Zinn (author of the classic A People’s History of the United States) at a town hall meeting style presentation recorded in 2007 (you can get it on Itunes from WGBH Politics) I was struck by the need to recognize the sheer complexity of issues and multiplicity of perspectives.

To state it as simply as possible: Not everything is the same. When we attempt to represent EVERYthing as if it were represented by ONE thing, we often neglect the complexity and multiplicity involved in the matter.

I will use two examples that Howard Zinn illustrated well at the community forum, then address the issues that it seemed relevant to connect to.

Zinn takes on the idea of “Family values”. Some conservative political interest say that they represent ‘family values’. But he asks “Which family?” I think it is a valid question. There are families with single moms and multiple kids, divorced dads raising a family, there are foster families, adoptive families, multi-generational families living in the same house. There are lesbian couples with no kids and gay couples with kids. My wife are were D.I.N.K.s (double income – no kids) hen she lost her job while were trying to adopt (which fell through recently) and every permeation you can imagine.

Which family is represented by Focus on the Family’s values? It is erroneous to act as if there is one kind of family and that you represent their values.

That is, unless you are saying that you value only one type of family.

That would be fair enough but you would have to stop using the phrase ‘family values’. Some families value making money or achieving success. Some value conformity. Some value religious adherence above all else. Some value military service while others value independent thinking or even civil disobedience.

Zinn says the same thing about the ‘National interest’. I am a big fan of Paul Kahn’s Political Theology and both he and Zinn talk about President’s ability to declare war or even launch the nuclear codes should the President deem it ‘in the national interest’.

But which of the many National interests? The Nation is not interested in only one thing. There are hundreds or thousands of interests. Unfortunately the reductive mono-speak is code. These buzz-words become code-words for an assume-unstated single issue that clouds the true complexity behind the language.

Zinn touched another example which has been showing up in a lot of my reading lately. The phrase ‘We the people’ is a magnificent ideal. I admire the phase and the idea behind it so much. But I think that it is worth noting that when it was written – we the people were not in the room. At the time of it’s writing, not every ‘we’ was represented.

There were no native americans in the room, no women, no blacks, no commoners. Just land-owning white males. But they had an idea – and it is that idea that we love!

I actually think that this is the exact type of trajectory mentality that we see in a progressive reading of the New Testament. When Paul says in Galatians 3:28 that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” He is doing this exact thing. He wrote in prophetic expectation using the 3 categories employed in his day were being broken with resurrection power. Barriers between nationality (or race), legal status and gender were being dissolved. My assertion is that it was not for the purpose of homogenization but for multiplicity! The former containers can not contain what it being poured out and welling up in Christ’s new life.

This is why I don’t sweat the fact that Paul appears to by anti-gay (though I argue that he was not anti-gay in the same way that those who quote him today are). You have to read Paul on a trajectory. Within the fruit of the Spirit of God is seed of liberation and transformation. So like ‘We the people’ – it looks forward to a greater reality than was present at it’s writing. Contained within the words is an ideal not yet realized. That is part of why I don’t want to conserve the reality of the time of it’s writing, but spring board off of it to be propelled to a greater one.

We can get caught up in reductive views that ignore the inherent complexity that we are dealing with. For instance, “Is the world essentially good or bad?” or “Are humans inherently evil or innately good?” That kind of simplicity is blind to the multiplicity of factors that we are dealing with in any conversation and allowing the conversation to be framed that way almost ensured that no progress will be made.

Good people still do bad things or even do good things with poor motivation. People who do bad things often love their own families.

We do ourselves a great disservice when we allow our media to talk about ‘the evangelical vote’ or even ‘the black perspective’ as if those parameters only mean one thing or as if everyone within designations voted the same way or believe all the same things, hold all the same values and act in unison. It is fictitious, deceptive and paralyzing.

You can’t even say ‘gun owners’ and mean one thing! Our language (and the dualism behind it) is crippling our culture.

There has been a great “De-centering” that has happened to humanity in the past 500 years. If you just look at the effect starting with Copernicus and continue to Darwin, the earth is not the center of the universe and neither are humans.

It would do us well to move from a reductive mentality (center/ order) to a dynamic interplay of emergent elements. When we recognize the complexity and multiplicity involved in the reality behind our ‘code words’, we will begin to access the real issues that face us.

Filed Under: conversations, engaging, latest, living, media, news, politics, thinking Tagged With: book, books, church, conservative, Emergent, family values, Focus on the Family, Galatians 3, gay, history, homosexuality, Howard Zinn, Language, Liberal, Media, paul, Paul Kahn, politics, progressive, science

That Sentence about Seminaries

November 20, 2012 by Bo Sanders 5 Comments

Once in a while you run into a sentence that hits you like a ton of bricks. You can read thousands of sentences in order to get to it.

Only rarely do you see it coming. Once in a while you are in a chapter that is so rich and nourishing that the sentence is just the Pièce de résistance.

Over the past 21 years, I have 5 sentences that have hit me like this. I can tell you exactly where I was when I first read them and why they hit me so hard. I say 21 years ago because that is essentially when I started reading. I was captain of the football and basketball teams in High School and didn’t so much … how do they say? … read.

It was after High School when I was no longer at my parents house – and I couldn’t make sense of my faith – that I picked up a copy of Josh McDowell’s apologetic classic: Evidence that Demands a Verdict. On that first page was sentence that stabbed my in the heart. That was the first of the 5 sentences.

Yesterday in the spirited exchange of comments on my blog post “You have to believe in Hell, Predestination, Election and the Book of Revelation” Nate Gilmore (you can hear his Georgia via Iowa drawl on last week’s TNT) was responding to a little bit of a fun rabbit trail we had going about seminaries and said:

At least in online encounters, I’ve seen far more appeals to authority, citing “Biblical scholarship” as if it were a monolith, from liberals than from right-wingers. In my own experience, the conservatives are much more interested in seeing the argument worked out than in “experts say that…” claims.

This is one of my favorite topics of discussion! I love this topic! Not because I agree with the binary between Conservative and Liberal (I don’t – I can’t after reading The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen, which contains 1 of my 5 sentences) but because I have a story about it – a story that holds the last of my 5 sentences.

The Story:

I was writing my Master’s Thesis on Contextual Theology and I was utilizing a lot of material from a specific author – a real authority on the subject. In the midst of completing the Thesis I was accepted into the PhD program at a large Evangelical shool where he teaches and I was even appointed to study with him! It was an amazing honor.

After the Thesis was over, I was reading as much of his work as I could and I ran into a sentence from which I never recovered. He was talking about the need for innovation in the way we do Seminary – something that I am very passionate about – and he made a quick point about the difference between Liberal and more Evangelical seminaries in Africa.

He said that in Africa, Evangelical seminaries are much bigger, grow faster and produce more pastors because they are very method focused. They teach future pastors what to do.
Liberal seminaries, however, while being much smaller, are where almost all the innovation happens. His observation was that the difference came down to permission. His caution was that innovation can not become syncretism.

Its not that his point was especially earth-shattering or unique. There was just something in the way he said it … or perhaps it was the gravity he carried as my future PhD Advisor … but I put down the book, went for a walk, and decided that I needed to go a different direction. I turned down my appointment to the school and enrolled in a totally different program at a Liberal institution (Claremont School of Theology).

It was odd that someone I respected said something I agreed with, and the end result is that I knew I had to go a different direction than them.

This is the reason that I went into Practical Theology. It bridges the gap between these Liberal and Conservative approaches. It also attempts to bridge that gap between the Church and the Academy. It also addresses the false gap between theological theory and practice.

I’m so happy with my decision. Every time seminary education comes up, that sentence rushes to the front of my mind. My father (who was recently on the podcast) now runs the D.Min at his Evangelical seminary – so the topic of seminary education comes up a lot.

I don’t normally subscribe to the Conservative/Liberal binary, but in this case I concede the framing of the discussion because the institutions themselves identify this way and teach this way in a sort of self-reinforcing manner.

You may not like the split, but if those on the inside are telling you that there is a significant difference … you may just have to go with it for a while and see where the road takes you.

I just wanted to share my little story and see if anyone had any thoughts on the subject.

Filed Under: latest, thinking Tagged With: argument, author, book, books, change, conservative, Culture, evangelical, future, innovate, Liberal, reading, scholarship, Seminary

You have to believe in Hell, Predestination, Election and the Book of Revelation

November 18, 2012 by Bo Sanders 63 Comments

On last week’s TNT I said something that I have heard a lot of positive – and some negative – feedback on. I thought it would be good to continue the conversation here on the blog.

My assertion was that: If you are a Christian, you have to believe something about hell. It is just not an option to say “I don’t believe in hell”. The word ‘hell’ is in the English version of the Bible and you can’t just say, as a Christian, that you don’t believe it. You can hold that it was a burning garbage dump in a valley outside Jerusalem that Jesus makes a poetic illusion to … but you have to believe something about hell.

I would go on to broaden that assertion. I would say that you must believe in predestination, election, and the Book of Revelation.

All 4 of these are topics that l have personally heard people say “I don’t believe in __”

You have to believe something about hell.
You have to believe something about predestination.
You have to believe something about election.
You have to believe something about the Book of Revelation.

It is is just not an option to say “I don’t believe in hell”. Jesus did. If you are a Christian, you have to hold some belief about it.

Paul spoke of predestination. Election is a theme in scripture. You can’t just say ‘I don’t believe in Revelation’. You can object to how some people interpret and preach the Book of Revelation … but you can’t ‘not believe’ it.

Why It Matters:

I come from an Evangelical-Charismatic background and am now employed at a Mainline church and attend a Mainline school. I am passionate that thoughtful progressive Christians can not make the same mistake that Liberals made in the past century. By ‘de-mythologizing’ the Bible they undercut the very foundation that the tradition is built on.

It is like sawing the very branch that your a sitting on … on the tree side of the branch! What do you think is going to happen? You are left no place to perch.

I love Biblical Scholarship. I delight in post-modern and progressive theology. I take seriously the post-colonial critique and the perspective of feminists and queer theory. But it does us no good if we know what we don’t believe about something but do not have the ability to present in a constructive way what we do believe about those very subjects.

There is so little value in participating in a community based on a tradition where one does not believe in the very words of that faith’s sacred text.

Why even do it? I think that is why so many ‘nones’ have just opted out. I actually greatly respect those who participate in the emergent conversation and who are valiantly attempting to update their denomination from within. It is far easier to just walk away from the entire project all together … and many have.

So How Do I Do It?

Predestination: Forget about the historical hyper-Calvinist understanding that you ‘don’t believe in”. Romans 8:29 says “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”

Who did God foreknow? Everyone. What are they predestined to? To be conformed to the image of the Son. Does everyone arrive at their destination? No.

Predestination might be, what some Process thinkers would be called, an ‘initial aim’. It is God’s desire for all. God doesn’t always get what God wants ( see 1Timothy 2:4).

Election: Karl Barth said it clearly. God elected Jesus. All humanity is involved in that election. All who are ‘in Christ’ are elect.

The Book of Revelation: You may not like the ‘Left Behind’ / Hal Lidsey / Jack Van Impe interpretation of the Book of Revelation … but you can’t, as a Christian, say that you don’t believe in it. It’s in the Bible. You have to believe something about it.

The Book of Revelation was a political critique of the Roman Empire of the first two centuries written in the genre of the ‘apocalyptic’. It is not predictive of the 21st century. But we don’t want to throw it away! What we need, more than ever, is to imitate it and write an apocalyptic critique of our as-it structures, systems and institutions of injustice and our empire. We need a prophetic imagination.

You can’t say, as a Christian, that you don’t believe in this stuff. You have to believe something about this stuff. My suggestion is that we just believe more informed better stuff about these topics. The simple fact is that we are community of people centered about a sacred text and it is simply not acceptable to say ‘I don’t believe in something’. We are free to not believe in some people’s interpretation – but we have to believe something about it.

Thoughts? Questions? Comments?

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, Charismatic, Christian, church, conservative, elect, election, evangelical, God, hell, history, jesus, Karl Barth, Liberal, predestination, progressive, revelation, tradition

Rape, Republicans and God’s Will

October 25, 2012 by Bo Sanders 14 Comments

Yet again a Republican candidate has come out with an outlandish comment about rape that has drawn widespread criticism from those outside the ideological bubble.

The most recent incident was from Indiana Congressman Richard Murdoch during a debate this past week. This is the latest in what has become a consistent string of rhetoric for white conservative men – notably on the heels of Senate candidate Todd Akin’s introduction of ‘legitimate’ rape into our vernacular.

Apparently Akin, who is on the House Science Committee, thinks that a women’s body can sense if the conception was because of ‘legitimate’ rape and take of the matter on its own. Richard Murdoch took it a step further, beyond biology, and introduced theology into the mix. The resulting pregnancy would be ‘God’s will’.

Let me be clear: I get why some people hate abortion. I do. I get it. I was raised watching movies like ‘Silent Scream’ and listening to Carmen rap/sing about our nation’s demise and invitation of God’s wrath. I get it. That is not what I want to address here.

My concern is with the consistent and frequent rhetoric that is coming from the conservative right on the issue of rape.
There are 3 reasons that this hits so close to home for me:

My wife ran the rape crisis hotline and prevention education for the county where we lived in NY. For a decade this was a major part of our life and focus.
As a minister, I have sat with countless women and heard their stories. We have walked a really tough road of recovery and healing with many.
I have traded my narrow/shallow theological adolescence for a more critical-aware- sophisticated-and progressive one.

These three things come together is a very painful way for me when I hear these continuing statements from non-women candidates.

One starts to ask “What exactly is going on with these guys? What in the world are they thinking?”
If two is a trend and three is a pattern then this is a full-blown school of thought!

Are they just trying to fire-up their base? Are they trying to out religion each other? Are they so fixated on abortion that it blinds them to the absurdity of their other positions?

Or is it worse than that? Is it that there view of God is fundamentally determining this stuff? I’m afraid that this might be true. I think that these might be really good hearted christian men who have bought into a view of God that is so limited and narrow that it necessarily dictates utterances like we have been hearing.

I am suspicious that one’s view of God is like an operating system on a computer and that given enough time, this N. American conservative/fundamentalist program that gets downloaded just inherently comes with some unavoidable glitches and bugs that eventually result in stances like we have been seeing.

Thomas Jay Oord posted the following on Facebook:

Candidate Richard Mourdock’s statements about rape, pregnancy, and God’s intentions point out a major problem with most theologies. John Calvin summarized the problem well, “There can be no distinction between God’s will and God’s permission! Why say ‘permission’ unless it is because God so wills?” The Mourdock episode suggests that those who (rightfully) object to his statements implicitly support a view of divine power closer to process theology’s view, even though they may not realize it.

I’m not trying to pick a fight. I am not trying to be partisan. I am simply heartbroken about these hurtful things that have consistently come to the surface during this election cycle.

Maybe a new guideline should be put in place: as a candidate you are not allowed to talk about rape unless you have walked a mile in those shoes.

At a minimum, I would like to see the name of God disconnected from this subject in political arenas.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, news, politics, prayer, public policy, thinking Tagged With: abortion, conservative, debate, God, GOP, John Calvin, plan, politics, rape, religion, Republican, Richard Murdoch, Todd Akin, will

McLaren Changed His Mind

October 9, 2012 by Bo Sanders 6 Comments

Brian McLaren recently posted a very interesting note from a former fan who was feeling the need to ‘break ranks’ with the author over his position regarding homosexuality.

I wanted to post part of it here for several reasons.

I have been saying that ‘People Do Change Their Minds’.
We talked about Brian doing the religious ceremony for his son and his son’s partner on the last TNT.
In the post Brian quotes his new book – which we are giving away next week.
Brian doesn’t allow comments on his blog so I thought it would nice to host a little comparing of notes conversation.

After the reader’s very cordial note, McLaren begins his response by saying that we don’t actually have to break ranks with each other.

So, it’s important for you to know that if you hold a different view than I do, whatever the issue – I would not want to “break ranks” with you. In fact, I am continually enriched, instructed, and challenged by people who differ with me on this and other issues – and I hope the reverse could be true.

Brian’s second point is that in the current configuration of conservative v. liberal positions, some groups place a lot of pressure of people to ‘break ranks’ with those who differ – or they are in danger of ‘guilt by association’.

McLaren’s third point is that if you just look at sheer percentages, that if roughly 6% of every population is homosexual … if they were not forced to live in silence, in denial, or in the closet … that the numbers quickly become significant of people who are directly affected (parents, siblings, and friends) to the point that old views simply become untenable. [you will actually want to read McLaren's reasoning here if you plan to push-back on it.]

Then he gets to the quote from the book (p. 52).

I think of a friend of mine from the same background of Christian fundamentalism I hail from. When his son came out, he had no support to help him accept the possibility that his son could be both gay and good. With deep ambivalence, he stood with his tradition and condemned his son. The cost alienation from his son – was high, but it grew unspeakably higher when his son internalized the rejection and condemnation of his community and took his own life. Or I think of another friend, the mother of a gay son, also from my heritage. She came to me in secret to talk, knowing that one of my sons had come out around the same time as hers. Through tears she said, “I feel like I’m being forced to choose between my father and my son. If I affirm my son, I’m rejecting everything my father stood for. If I stand with my father, I’m rejecting my son.”
In religion as in parenthood, uncritical loyalty to our ancestors may implicate us in an injustice against our descendants: imprisoning them in the errors of our ancestors. Yes, there are costs either way.

Finally McLaren says the most interesting thing of all:
“I want to add one more brief comment. You ask, if we change our way of interpreting the Bible on this issue (my words, not yours) “- what else will happen next?” Here’s what I hope will happen. After acknowledging the full humanity and human rights of gay people, I hope we will tackle the elephant in the room, so to speak – the big subject of poverty. If homosexuality directly and indirectly affects 6 – 30% of the population, poverty indirectly and directly affects 60 – 100%. What would happen if we acknowledged the full humanity and full human rights of poor people? And then people with physical disabilities and mental illnesses and impairments? And then, what after that? What would happen if we acknowledged the spiritual, theological, moral value – far beyond monetary or corporate value – of the birds of the air, the flowers of the field, of seas and mountains and valleys and ecosystems? To me, Jesus’ proclamation of the reign or commonwealth of God requires us to keep pressing forward, opening blind eyes, setting captives free, proclaiming God’s amazing grace to all creation.”

And that is why I thought the conversation might be worth hosting here. What are you thoughts about the last part?

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: blog, book, books, break ranks, Brian McLaren, ceremony, change, conservative, CT, gay, homosexual, homosexuality, Liberal, news, note, son

Claremont School of Theology