Culture

Call In Challenge: the Church & the World

May 14, 2013 by Bo Sanders 2 Comments

On the most recent TNT, Bo threw out a theory that the dichotomy between ‘Church & World’ doesn’t work well anymore.

Part of the thought came from the book Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective by Craig A. Carter which revisits Niebuhr’s influential 1951 work “Christ and Culture”.

Part of it came from The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words by Deborah Tannen, and part of it was a critique of The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas as well as Luther’s famous construct of the ’2 Kingdoms’.

The main point of contention is that what is now called ‘culture’ is a byproduct of Christendom (part of the church) and is therefore not the same thing that Paul was writing about in the New Testament. The church and the world are not entirely alien to each other. The church is filled with people from the culture and the culture is deeply impacted (or has been) by the church.

So when we quote passages like Romans 12: 1-2 to be not conformed to the world, we have a messier delineation of those categories – precisely BECAUSE they have bled into each other so thoroughly throughout history.

Callid had a different take on the issues as a Quaker. I hope that you will listen to the episode and give us your take!

What do we do with these categories in the 21st century? Go to the homepage and use the SpeakPipe on the right hand side of the screen to leave us an MP3 message for an upcoming TNT.

Filed Under: church history, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, Culture, God, Hauerwas, history, jesus, Niebuhr, Stanley Hauerwas, world

TNT: Same Sex Marriage, Rob Bell and His Detractors

March 26, 2013 by Bo Sanders 3 Comments

Happy Birthday! HomeBrewed is celebrating its 5th and BoDaddy is celebrating his 40th!

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On this episode of the Theology Nerd Throw-down, Tripp and Bo talk about same-sex marriage, Rob Bell and his detractors.

This all started when Tripp posted about big platforms coming out in support.

Then Bo posted about Rob and his detractors.

It came to a head when Bo responded to an odd post about how this paints Jesus in a weird light.

You will have to listen to the hour long conversation to put all the pieces together.

At the end – we talk about this Summer’s book series called “High Gravity” with Peter Rollins.

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Filed Under: engaging, latest, TNT Tagged With: Bible, book, books, change, church, Culture, david fitch, Emergent, gay, gay marriage, God, history, homosexual, jesus, Liberal, Rob Bell, same sex marriage

Living Out Faith Loud (Day 15)

March 7, 2013 by Bo Sanders 12 Comments

I’m blogging my way through Neighbors and Wisemen for Lent. Today we read chpt. 15 where the author tells us a story about Dr. John Perkins’ visit to a packed Reed College auditorium.

For those of you who don’t have the book, here are some selections from the chapter to get you up to speed.

With his simple Southern accent, he set the stage of racial and economic injustice in America. He began with his childhood and walked the room through the essential and painful drama of the 1960s. He unapologetically insisted that the disparities of race and class remain today.

From there Dr. Perkins moved to his own thoughts on the very real plight of America’s disenfranchised and marginalized communities. He expressed how these populations have been systematically removed from the national consciousness, and affirmed the absolute need for a new generation, one fueled by compassion and a sacrificial life.

Tony was shocked at the amazing reception Dr. Perkins got from a student body that allegedly not only had no interest in Christianity but a real and serious dislike of all things Christian. Then he says:

“Reedies want the same thing that Jesus wants. They want authenticity, not hypocrisy. They want faith that leads to activism, not institutionalism. They want to believe in something not because it is redundantly preached but because it is sacrificially lived.”

Yesterday I mentioned Christianity’s territorial participation in the Culture Wars that developed in the 20th century. Whether you think I was too partisan or pessimistic in my assessment of the situation, what you can not get around is that there is a problem.

We have a problem.

More specifically, we have a problem with how we frame the cultural conflicts. When we use the militaristic language of “combat” we miss what may be really going on. As I said earlier this week, our language about combat not only influences how we interpret our experiences, it is actually creating those experiences at some level.

I’m going to say this again: while I do not like drawing lines and attempt to be generously orthodox, it seems to me that there is a kind of christianity that the world is fine to let us hold and actually finds quite intriguing. Dr. Perkins has that kind of faith. He even gets to use Jesus’ name without folks getting offended or upset.

There is however another type of Christianity that is not as well received. This other kind of Christianity, in many ways, is seen to make the world a worse place. I think that I know at least part of why that is the case.

Modern Enlightenment Christianity – an inheritance from Christendom and the Inquisitions – seeks to categorize, compartmentalize, then control the categories. It is forceful, muscular Christianity. Much more like the Romans in power than the type of power we see Jesus utilizing.

Think that I am over stating it? Look at Dr. Perkins. What if it came out that he did not have perfect theology? What if he held some views about social issues that did not meet the litmus test contemporary clashes? Would he be discounted? Marginalized? Attacked and discredited? I don’t think that there is any doubt.

Part of this comes from our categorization of ortho-doxy and ortho-praxy. We live in a climate when the former (right-belief) is far more scrutinized than the latter (right-action).

The seminary that Tony and I went to tries to correct this by adding another overlapping area called ortho-pathy (right feeling). This is a spiritual formation-discipleship emphasis.

That is a move in the right direction. What I fear is that we have become so ingrained with this rabid obsession with our form of orthodoxy that we not only neglect the other two but would discount someone like Dr. Perkins who’s life speaks so loudly about Jesus that his words do not have to.

Our contemporary spiritual climate is so inflamed with animosity, conscientiousness, adversarial approaches, combative critiques, and dismissive polemics that we become gun-shy about adopting the kind of faith that makes the world a better place and shines a welcome light in dark situations.

If you think that this world is full of spiritual poo and it is only a matter of time before Jesus steps back in with vengeance and flushes this world down the eternal drain … then any good we do now is no more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

In that case the only thing that really matters is right belief (orthodoxy) for which we will be judged …

Well, you know the rest. The us-them mentality becomes completely acceptable. The neglect of right-living (orthopraxy) and right-being (orthopathy) becomes justifiable.

I would simply say that Jesus’ story of the sheep and the goats seems to put far more concern on being judged by our right actions than any theological litmus test. So not only does God seemed more concerned about it, but the world what God loves seems more attracted by it.

I loved this story about John Perkins’ visit to the college. I am inspired at one level and completely discouraged at another.

Is it just me?
Am I overstating the scope of the problem?

Filed Under: conversations, latest Tagged With: Bible, book, books, Christianity, church, Culture, faith, George Fox, God, jesus, John M. Perkins, judge, justice, orthodoxy, orthopraxy, Portland, race, religion, Seminary, society, Tony Kriz, world

Day 7: Sodom’s Sin Wasn’t Sexual

February 22, 2013 by Bo Sanders 11 Comments

iI am blogging my way through Neighbors & Wisemen for Lent. Today we are in chapter 7.

The final sentence hits you hard.

“True hospitality pushes past what we can afford to give up and makes deposits in accounts we can never lose.”

It is truly humbling, and a bit disturbing, to be in a hospitality culture. When you ,as a visitor, are given the first, the best, the most – even though you know there was great sacrifice in oder to provide it – it can be upsetting.

What was eye opening for me when I began to travel internationally was to see this kind of hospitality and to recognize that this foreign hospitality was far more like what I read about in the Bible than the customs of my U.S. American culture.

The irony is that we were bringing the gospel to them. That felt weird at some level.

The line that hit me the hardest in this chapter was not about hospitality however. It was

“How could I possibly compete with the threat of eternal damnation?”

Which is a really good question.

How can you compete with the threat of eternal damnation?

The answer is that you can’t. It is a trump card of sorts. It holds great power in our imagination.

Give Me That Old Time Religion

I love the Bible. Or at least I thought I did until I began to study it.

Take hospitality for instance. When most people hear Sodom & Gomorrah then think of a sexual act. But there are two interesting things in the Bible about Sodom – one is in the story itself and one comes much later.

In the story itself, you see that the whole scenario is set up by a lack of hospitality. Lot will not leave the visitors in the town center as the sun sets. Lot insists that these strangers come to his home.

This sort of thing is shadowed in the New Testament when Jesus famously talks about the sheep & the goats of the final judgement. I needed a place to stay and you gave me one. You took me in.

So I ask myself a simple question: am I like Lot going into the city center to see if anyone needs a place to stay?
The answer, unfortunately, is no.

Then there is the other part of the Bible where the prophet – speaking for God – explains what God’s problem with Sodom & Gomorrah was.

Ezekiel 16:49 says

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”

Ouch.

But wait… I thought their sin was … ya know…

That’s the odd part of the story. That night the men of the village surround Lot’s house and threaten to violate his guests. He is SO hospitable that he even offers his own daughters in order to protect these visitors. This is a kind of hospitality I have no frame of reference for.

So I have to ask myself a second question:
Am I, as Ezekiel 16:3 outlines,

arrogant?
overfed?
unconcerned?
not helping the poor and needy?

Unfortunately the answer to all four of these is yes. I have Sodom’s sin problem.

I thought Sodom’s sin problem was … ya know …

No. It turns out that homosexuality is not Sodom’s sin. Well that is convenient! Are you telling me that in the richest country the has ever existed – where we have an obesity problem … and a Bible in every hotel room … that Christian preachers are more concerned with something that never happened that with what the Bible says was the real problem?

Yes. We make Sodom’s sin one of sex that never happened rather than the lack of hospitality and care that we as affluent Americans so often imitate.

At least we are going to heaven. After all, we have the gospel and we take it to them.

No, unfortunately something odd has happened where our gospel has so often not compelled up to go out in the city center and make sure that everyone has a place to sleep – but instead we put our energy into

A) preaching against others’ sin and

B) going to another country to tell them why they should believe what we do.

It is an interesting little knot we have tied for ourselves.

Filed Under: bible stuff, conversations, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, church, Culture, God, homosexuality, hospitality, jesus, missions, sin, Sodom, Tony Kriz

What Is Rick Warren Reading?

February 22, 2013 by Bo Sanders 65 Comments

Rick Warren provided some of us with a lot of fun the past two days on Twitter. He had sent out a message:

“New churches: Buy land as soon as you can but delay building for as long as you can. Cant explain all the reasons here.”

This set off one of the funniest followup memes I have seen called #RickWarrenTips.

Those, however, are not the Warren tweets that I want to discuss. Earlier Warren had fired two out of the blue shots at ‘liberals’. I had just finished my progressive and liberal post at Jesus Creed and so I was really interested.

Here are his two quotes:

Liberal theology cannot sustain a local congregation. It kills churches. In fact, It only survives due to tenured academics.

and

Liberal theology has never created any university. It just sucks the life our of those that were started by Bible believers.

Plenty of people had push-back on the last bit of revisionist history. I’m not so concerned with the accuracy of his content …my question is what do you think spawned or sparked it?

What is Rick Warren reading that even has him thinking about liberals?
Did he get in an argument with someone?
Is he watch watching something on TV about liberals?
Is he watching Fox News or something?

So I thought it would be fun to throw it out here and see what wild speculations you might have.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, media Tagged With: #rickwarrentips, Bible, book, church, Culture, God, jesus, Liberal, Rick Warren, twitter, University

Day 3: Betrayed by a Kiss

February 18, 2013 by Bo Sanders 17 Comments

I am uncomfortable in my own body. Not that I want to be. It just kind of happens in our culture.

When I was a senior in High School I still kissed my dad on the lips. I had done since I was a kid and it had never dawned on my to stop.

One night I was going out with a couple of new friends I had just met and they came over to my house to pick me up. As was my custom, the last thing I did before leaving was report to my parents when I would be home (or at least where I was going) and then kiss each of my folks on the lips.

As we exited the house, my new friends walking in front of me, one of them made a disparaging remark about the oddness that I still kissed my dad. I was instantly filled with embarrassment – and maybe shame for not thinking of this myself – and I did not know what to do with my body and the surge of emotions that I was feeling.

I did what many teenage boys do when they are frustrated … I punched my new friend in the back of the head.

It doesn’t make any more sense to me now then it did that night – but it was my response to the situation none the less.

The cross-cultural nature of Neighbors and Wisemen is one of my favorite aspects. The writing is terrific too. This is simply one of the best paragraphs I have read:

Touch was stolen from me. It was stolen from me by the American story. It was stolen from

me by our puritanical religious roots, and by an entertainment culture that turns affection into sensuality. It was stolen from me by a thousand church scandals that have left pastors afraid to even talk to a parishioner behind closed doors. And it has been stolen from me by a generation of homophobia that calls all same-gender affection into question.

Society and religion have bedded together to relegate touch to either the sexual or the inappropriate, with little in between.

This probably would not bother me so much if I hadn’t bought into the gospel. The problem for us a Western christians is that our gospel is one of incarnation. It is supposed to be about being fully embodied.

As the Message puts it: The word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.

In the original language it says that God ‘tabernacled’ with us. God set up a tent and camped with us … in body.

I try to take the Bible seriously. When I was an Evangelical pastor I ran into a problem. Passages like Romans 16:16 and 2 Corinthians 13:2 say “Greet each other with a holy kiss”. I tried to encourage people to do this … but it wasn’t received that well.

If you live in a culture that does not greet with a kiss … it can be quite uncomfortable to start just because you believe in Jesus.

This problem betrays a much larger issue. We have developed an elaborate matrix of interpretation to weed out things that were ‘cultural’.

Here is the stinker of the situation though – the people who take the Bible the most seriously (according to themselves) don’t realize that the whole thing is cultural! That is what the Bible is: a collection of cultural expressions that are all deeply embedded in time and place.

The result is that people who say that they read the Bible literally don’t great each other with a holy kiss even thought they are explicitly instructed to in the Bible. Why? Because that part was cultural.

Stuff like this became my undoing. It may seem silly now, but it used to really gnaw at me. It was like a rock in my shoe and I just had to stop, sit down, and deal with it.

There are so many aspects to this. Several years ago I was with my dad in Malaysia for a global conference and all week I would see young leaders from Africa walking with him holding hands. We had a great talk culture and body.

I have been blessed to be an uncle of lots of nephews and nieces. Without daughters of my own, I never know – at what age do you stop holding hands with your nephews and nieces? Is it 11 or 15 or 18 or … I’ve decided that it is never. As long as they are OK with it, I am OK with it. But the question itself exposes the bigger problem.

Why is this even an issue? The answer is not a good one for the gospel.

Tony takes this to the exact place I was planning to go – church.

Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. We have been betrayed by our not greeting each other with a holy kiss. The problem is that the gospel is, at its core, an embodied truth. We are the body. We are the body of Christ.

Does anyone else see this as a problem?
Does anyone else struggle with the physical practices of church tradition and specifically Lent?
Is it just my or is central to christianity to em-body the gospel?

I would love your feedback.

Filed Under: conversations, latest Tagged With: Bible, body, book, books, church, Culture, God, gospel, holy kiss, jesus, kiss, neighborhood, Tony Kriz

The Thing That Science Can’t Get Over

February 17, 2013 by Bo Sanders 19 Comments

I read the most interesting excerpt this weekend. In the Esquire Culture Blog entitled “Deep Thought For Sunday” the author talks about the uproar in the scientific community around last years publication of Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos.

It may help to know that the subtitle of Nagel’s book is “Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False”.

The post – quoting from a Aeon article – says:

In ancient science (or, as it used to be called, natural philosophy), teleology held that things — in particular, living things — had a natural end, or telos, at which they aimed. The acorn, Aristotle said, sprouted and grew into a seedling because its purpose was to become a mighty oak. Sometimes, teleology seemed to imply an intention to pursue such an end, if not in the organism then in the mind of a creator. It could also be taken to imply an uncomfortable idea of reverse causation, with the telos — or ‘final cause’ — acting backwards in time to affect earlier events. For such reasons, teleology was ceremonially disowned at the birth of modern experimental science.

This, of course, was not received well in the scientific community.

The ideas in the book were berated as ‘outdated’. Steven Pinker complained about ‘the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker’.
The Guardian newspaper trumpeted it as ‘the most despised science book of 2012’.

The Aeon article introduced it this way :

Science can’t stop talking in terms of ‘purposes’, but if the universe cares about us, it has a funny way of showing it

I know that there are many in the Homebrewed network are are far more up on science than I am. So – even though I am very interested in the subject – I thought it would be a good idea to ask the Diaconate.

What do you make of the controversy surrounding purpose or teleology in contemporary science?
It there a way that we, as a theological community, can contribute to the conversation?
Is it inherently problematic to attempt to do so?
Is there a silver lining to this ongoing controversy for those of us who want to hold onto faith?

Looking forward to your insights and responses!

Filed Under: engaging, latest, science, thinking Tagged With: Aeon, blog, book, books, Culture, Esquire, God, Mind and Cosmos, purpose, science, teleology, telos, Thomas Nagel

Day 2: Double Vision

February 15, 2013 by Bo Sanders 23 Comments

I am not a fan of dualism. For the most part I push back against simple binaries. This is not because they are inherently evil. It is because they so often do not accurately reflect the reality of the situation. They are a misconstruel of the data that neglects the complexity of variables present within most every situation.

There are three things in this chapter of Neighbors and Wisemen that stick out to me. Each of them is based around a binary.

Double Insulation

The opening story features a passionate preacher from Tony’s youth. I grew up, not just in an evangelical environment, but in a holiness tradition. If you did not have this experience, then there may be a concept that you are unfamiliar with. It is called double insulation.

We took seriously verses such as

Jude 1:23 hating even the clothing stained by the flesh.

Romans 12:2 ”Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

James 1:27 ”Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

2 Peter 2:20 ”they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.

So not only were we to protect ourselves from being tainted by sin, but we were to distance ourselves from those who did not take serious measures to keep themselves from sin.

It wasn’t enough that we were careful. We needed to be careful about those who weren’t careful.

This is why I like the way that Tony talks about two teams. I would love to hear about your experience of two teams – what did that look like in your tradition or context?

Not Reading the Road Signs

If you were driving in a foreign country you would notice all sorts of odd looking road signs. Road signs are not a universally regulated or agreed upon system. Each place is a little different.

Regardless if you recognized or were familiar with the sign – you would be a fool not observe the sign or attempt to decipher and obey them.

But when it comes to cultural road signs – we as Westerners are often guilty of doing exactly that. Stories like Tony’s interaction with this older women are fascinating to me. I am both intrigued and horrified by the cultural insensitivity that so often accompanies foreign missions.

I have experienced this ‘young people are not aloud to sit on the floor’ fertility thing. I have experienced the ‘don’t drink water too fast’ thing. I have experienced the art of drinking Turkish coffee in the Balkans.

The question is: why do we think that they are being silly or superstitious when they tell us how to proceed culturally?

The answer is an uncomfortable one. It has to do not just with cultural superiority but with an inherited and unquestioned Enlightenment mindset.

See, the problem is that the cultural behavior (or superstition) is accompanied by a physics (or sometimes metaphysics) explanation. If she had said ‘we don’t let young or unmarried people sit on the floor in our culture’ that might have been ok. But when infertility or ‘a curse’ or ‘spirit’ is introduced … we are prone to blow through the cultural road sign and say “that is silly – that is not how things work”.

There are two teams. One who knows how things really are.

My question is, why do we ignore cultural signs when we would never dream of taking that approach to signs when driving. Why not listen to the other team? Especially if we are on their home field?

The answer is an uncomfortable one.

God of the Quasar

I am fascinated by this story of reading Scientific America. I’m not questioning that God spoke to someone through magazine. I don’t question people’s experience. What I am always intrigued by people’s interpretation of their experience.

If this guy thought that God was speaking to him through this magazine … why did he not think that it was the Islamic god? Why did he think that it was the Christian god?

Especially when, as was pointed out , clearly the folks at Scientific America don’t even subscribe to the Christian god!

Is it because he had not experienced this in Islamic worship so it must be a foreign explanation? Or is it because the magazine was published in West and since there are two teams … this man who God was speaking to had to switch teams?

And if that is the case, is that the good news of the gospel?

I only thought of that because the chapter was entitled ‘Gospel’.

I would love your thoughts on any or all of this.

Filed Under: conversations, latest Tagged With: Bible, Culture, Foreign, God, holy, missions, science, Tony Kriz

The Silent White Guy and Invisible Black Women

February 6, 2013 by Bo Sanders 15 Comments

A record number of people read the post yesterday “Beyonce and the Bigger Question”. I want to thank everyone who commented on the blog, FaceBook and Twitter for making the conversation so fruitful and constructive. It is a difficult question and we certainly have an issue with race in our society.

I am also glad that people seemed to like the idea of Critical Theory and the structure of the questions that I put forward.

I did notice 2 places where the conversation trickled to an drip.

One is the issue of what white guys are allowed to talk about.

Two is the way to talk about the role of black women in our society without picking on Beyonce.

Let me give those some background:

My friend Hollie Baker-Lutz tweeted yesterday a sentiment that I hear quite frequently

“Uh oh, overheard in the university cafe: “and I can’t say anything in that class cuz I’m a white male, which is the worst thing u can be.”

I get this all the time from guys young and old alike. I think something may be missing from that equation however.
Here are two things it would be helpful to add to the mix:

an acknowledgement that the world is changing.
a familiarity of the word hegemony.

If you add those 2 things, it has been my experience that people are generally open to hear what you have to say. People are quite interested.

What they are not interested in is the hegemonic refrain. See, here is the problem: because that is the dominant cultural narrative … they have already heard it. They know it well. They may know it better than you because they have had to deal with it – whereas you have only assumed it and benefited uncritically from it.

The second issue came from my friend Janisha when she wrote in response to yesterday’s post:

I appreciate your article and your attempt to think deeply. I don’t think anyone except for black women can truly determine what are primary and secondary issues.
The place of black women in society as a primary issue has with it endless complications, including “taking back one’s physicality in the face of generations of oppression and marginalization.”
My place in this culture is directly linked to taking back my physicality, because my black womanhood is my physicality. They aren’t different. they cannot be separated. I will argue again, that this conversation is difficult to have unless you are a black woman, because who else can fully understand the implications of Beyonce?

MP responded:

I get what you (Janisha) are saying about the black woman conversation and I don’t want to butt into it, white man that I am. But that conversation would be about actual black womanhood, whereas this one is about public spectacle, one created and much enjoyed by white men. So there’s a white man conversation to be had about why we (white men) have created a category of “black women” who occupy this particular place in our spectacle.

… Bo, I wonder how to tackle the issue of “what place black women hold in our culture” without picking apart actual cases like Beyonce’s half-time show??

MP makes 2 excellent points!

- The first situation I would compare to ‘reader response’ approaches to text. We have the author-text-reader.
In this case we have Beyonce-Performance-Viewer.

So each of us viewers is related to the performance differently so ‘white men’ and ‘black women’ may be relating to the performance differently.

- In the second I just think that we need to be VERY clear the difference between an example and an anecdote. Focusing in one example can be illustrative or it can be problematic.

I would hesitate to use this performance by Beyonce as an example – she is not the only one who dances like this. Lots of performers do. Also white women (like Christina and Britney) do. So it is not unprecedented.

NFL Cheerleading squads do many of the same moves in much the same outfits … the difference is that
A) they don’t have a microphone and
B) we don’t know their name.

Which is a HUGE difference.
If we want to talk about male sexuality and football we should have the Cheerleader conversation. That is every team – every week.

If we want to have the ‘place that black women hold in our society’ conversation, then we would ask a different set of questions. Like ‘where were the other black women during the 5 hour broadcast of America’s largest TV event of the year?’ Since it is a commercial event … maybe we would even take a look at the commercials and ask how black women were represented.

Either way – isolating the one performance by Beyonce is not our best starting point.

Filed Under: conversations, engaging, latest, living, media, news, thinking Tagged With: Beyonce, black, cheerleaders, Christian, commercials, controversy, Culture, God, half time, hegemony, men, performance, privilege, race, racism, sex, sexuality, society, song, songs, SuperBowl, theology, white, Women

The Crowd the Critic and the Muse with Michael Gungor

February 5, 2013 by Bo Sanders 1 Comment

Musical artist Michael Gungor joins us for a conversation about creativity, spirituality and the deeper things of life.

His new book is called The Crowd, The Critic, and the Muse along with all of the band’s amazing collection of music.

The songs you hear in this episode are from the live Creation Liturgy album.

Amazon says “ An award-winning, globetrotting musician, Gungor also reveals his personal journey as an artist and creator, a tale of moving from innocence to wisdom, from simplicity to complexity and back again, a tale of leaving home and returning in a new, better, and more creative way.” Plus they have made the Kindle edition SUPER affordable.

This is a really fun conversation with only one downside … the final minutes of the recording dissolved into unusable audio. We are left wanting for more. When Michael gets back in the country, maybe we can finish what we started!

Remember: Easter comes early this year so Lent starts on February 13. Bo will be blogging through the book Neighbors and Wisemen every weekday through the Lenten Journey. Come and join the conversation!

This episode is sponsored by the Subverting the Norm Conference 2 in Springfield Missouri April 5th and 6th. Thanks to both Drury University and Phillips Theological Seminary for sponsoring the conference and making it the most affordable two-day event of the year.

*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

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Filed Under: engaging, podcast, songs, thinking, worship Tagged With: album, art, becky, book, books, church, Critic, crowd, Culture, genre, God, Gungor, inspiration, life, Muse, music, twitter, Worship

Claremont School of Theology

Call In Challenge: the Church & the World

TNT: Same Sex Marriage, Rob Bell and His Detractors

Living Out Faith Loud (Day 15)

Day 7: Sodom’s Sin Wasn’t Sexual

What Is Rick Warren Reading?

Day 3: Betrayed by a Kiss

The Thing That Science Can’t Get Over

Day 2: Double Vision

The Silent White Guy and Invisible Black Women

The Crowd the Critic and the Muse with Michael Gungor

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