Emerging Pensees

Are Emergents Merely Liberal?

2011-08-05T20:04:00.003-05:00

A mild debate has been stirred up in the blogosphere over a guest post by Brandon Morgan over at theologian Roger Olson's blog in which Brandon suggests that emergents are not critical enough of liberal mainline theology, and thus are in danger of not offering any meaningful alternative to liberal Christianity. Olson himself followed up Brandon's post by seconding his concerns and encouraging everyone to read it. A few days later, Tony Jones responded by challenging both Morgan and Olson to support their analysis with more than anecdotal evidence. Olson was apparently hoping for a more positive reception of Morgan's critiques and thus put up another post asking whether emergents are able to take constructive criticism. While I don't think I can give a response that is any more positive than Tony's (seeing as how I generally just disagree with Morgan's assessment), I did feel compelled to respond. The following is comment which I posted at Olson's blog and have chosen to also re-post here. If you wish to react to my comments, I would recommend that you do it over at Olson's blog rather than here so that it will be part of the wider discussion (since my blog doesn't get much traffic anymore.)

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As a deeply involved participant in the emerging conversation, I will venture a response to Brandon’s initial post. My apologies for not doing so sooner, but it was only recently brought to my attention.

The part of Brandon’s post that I resonated with most was when he asked “Have Emergent folks succeeded in transcending the evangelical-progressive division in American Protestantism. Have they formulated a holistic theological approach able to include the benefits of both sides and jettison the negative aspects?” I like especially how he framed this in terms of keeping the good and rejecting the bad from both traditions. That, I feel is what the emerging church is all about, valuing all traditions, but not blindly or uncritically – what Brian McLaren described as “generous orthodoxy.”

However, I was disappointed that Brandon went on to frame the rest of his post around what the emerging church was (or was not) rejecting about the liberal/mainline traditions. He made it seem like unless we could show ourselves to be thoroughly different than liberal mainliners in all of the ways that he himself thought we should be different, we therefore simply were liberals who ought to just own it and join those denominations. But why such a heavy emphasis on difference? What happened to “including the benefits of both sides”? If emergents happen to be embracing some of the same themes and theologies and emphases as more traditional mainliners, what is so horrible about that? Aren’t there many good and important aspects of those traditions that need to be reclaimed by post-conservative emergents who were lacking those insights in their evangelical upbringings? Must we only ever be about critique?

But the fact that some of us are embracing some aspects of the mainline tradition doesn’t mean we have uncritically swallowed all of it. As someone who was raised in a very conservative evangelical background, but has also recently gotten a masters degree at a liberal mainline seminary, I have close personal experiences with both traditions – and I can confidently say that being an emergent was not just the same as being a liberal mainliner. In some ways I was still much more “conservative” than many of my mainline classmates. In other ways, I was much more “progressive”. For instance, both my “emergent” passion for mission and my openness to innovation and experimentation in ministry methods and liturgical practices, was rather different from much of what I experienced of the mainline approach. However, I get the sense from Brandon’s post that those weren’t exactly the specific differences that he thinks I ought to have had with my liberal mainline friends – which may simply reflect Brandon’s own personal opinion about the relative merits of the liberal theological tradition, an opinion which I and other emergents may or may not share. Ultimately, however, I think what set me apart as an emergent was not where I happened to fall on any particular issue of theology or practice, but simply on my openness to questioning and re-imagining all of it – theology, liturgy, ministry, whatever. Hence the inherently conversational nature of emergence Christianity – it’s not about where you land, it’s about whether you’re willing to place everything on the table and engage in the dialogue in the first place.

(BTW, I also want to note that I’m uncomfortable with how unprecise we’re being in throwing around this term “liberal”. As Roger Olson himself has recently noted on this very blog, “liberal theology” is a very specific thing historically speaking, and is really very rare among Christians these days, even in the mainline denominations. It properly only refers to the classic liberalism of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Most mainliners, chastened by the neo-orthodox critiques of the mid-twentieth century, have tempered or refined their theologies quite a bit since then. So if you want to accuse emergents of [merely] being “liberal,” I think you need to be a little more specific about which aspects of mainline theology you’re referring to with that term. It’s really a very diverse and nuanced tradition.)

Another factor that I don’t think Brandon recognized in his post was the reality that the emerging church is not exclusively a post-evangelical movement. Many emergents already are and have long been mainliners – people like Phyllis Tickle, Nadia Bolz-Webber, Carol Howard Merritt, Bruce Reyes-Chow, Adam Walker Cleaveland, Troy Bronsink, Karen Sloan, Ryan Kemp-Pappan, Nanette Sawyer, Karen Ward, Jonny Baker, and many others. That’s why it seems a little odd when Brandon asks why emergents don’t just join the mainline denominations – some have already been there there all along.

That being the case, I think it should be recognized that each of us are more qualified to critique what we know first-hand. Thus it is natural for post-evangelical emergents to be more critical of their evangelical background while withholding judgment on the liberal mainline which we are much less familiar with. I agree with Brandon that there needs to be an emergent critique of that tradition as well, but shouldn’t we leave that to those emergents who are themselves mainliners? It’s the whole “No one’s allowed to make fun of my mama except me!” thing. Just seems sort of rude and tacky to go tearing into someone else’s tradition when you aren’t a part of it and don’t really know that much about it firsthand anyway.

Anyhow, I guess you could say my response to Brandon’s post boils down to this: implying that emergents are [merely] liberal really misses a lot of the complexity and nuance of both the emerging movement and of mainline theology itself. Thus, as Tony Jones noted, Brandon’s claim needs to be based on more detailed examination and not simply anecdotal impressions, as well as more thorough definition of what exactly it means to be “liberal”. I think if one engaged in that examination, it would become clear that most emergents like some aspects of “liberal” theology, but have not embraced it in every aspect. In other words, we’ve been doing exactly what Brandon said we should, “including the benefits” and “jettisoning the negative” (though some of us may disagree with Brandon on what, specifically are the benefits and what are the negatives).

P.S. I do also want to highlight one other point Tony Jones brought out – Brandon’s odd use of “they” instead of “we” when talking about the emergent movement. If, as both he and Roger Olson seem at pains to emphasize, Brandon really is an insider to the emergent movement, why this distancing language? It immediately makes it feel like yet another outside attack rather than friendly constructive criticism from the inside. That was unfortunate, and probably contributed to the number of “defensive” responses you may have gotten.

Liberalism, Evangelicalism and Emergence

2011-07-16T23:37:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine recently posted this article by Truett Seminary prof Roger Olson to my Facebook wall, asking for an emergent's take on it. Since I'm blogging again (for the moment), I thought I'd cross post my reply to him here as well.

Though you should read the whole article, here is the section of it that I especially had in mind in my response:

I think the liberal theological ethos is best expressed in a nutshell by liberal theologian Delwin Brown (a convert to liberal theology from evangelicalism) in his dialogue with Clark Pinnock in Theological Crossfire: An Evangelical/Liberal Dialogue. There Brown asks THE CRUCIAL QUESTION of modern theology: “When the consensus of the best contemporary minds differs markedly from the most precious teachings of the past, which do we follow? To which do we give primary allegiance, the past or the present?” Brown rightly gives the evangelical answer: “We ought to listen to the hypotheses of the present and take from them what we can, but ultimately the truth has been given to us in the past, particularly in Jesus, and the acceptance of that is our ultimate obligation. Everything the contemporary world might say must be judged by its conformity to biblical revelation.” (Of course evangelicals differ among ourselves about WHAT biblical revelation says, but all evangelicals agree that the revelation of God given in Jesus and the biblical message takes precedence over the best of modern thought WHEN THERE IS AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT between them.)

Then, Brown speaks for all liberal theologians when he gives the liberal answer to the crucial question: “Liberalism at its best is more likely to say, ‘We certainly ought to honor the richness of the Christian past and appreciate the vast contribution it makes to our lives, but finally we must live by our best modern conclusions. The modern consensus should not be absolutized; it, too, is always subect to criticism and further revision. But our commitment, however tentative and self-critically maintained, must be to the careful judgments of the present age, even if they differ radically from the dictates of the past.” (p. 23)

Here's what I had to say:

Olson (whom I've met in person on occasion) is absolutely correct in his description of the liberal tradition as being significantly more specific and defined than the sloppy way we tend to throw around terms like "liberal" and "conservative." What I've discovered attending a mainline "liberal" seminary is that what is considered "liberal" within evangelical circles is still rather "conservative" within the mainline world. For instance, in the mainline world, neo-orthodox theologians like Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Jurgen Moltmann, etc. are considered to be on the conservative edge of things, whereas evangelicals wouldn't even consider reading these folks until just recently because they were thought to be too "liberal".

As for the "emergent" take on it, I can really only speak for myself, but I think that a lot of us would say this whole argument about "past" vs. "present" in terms of truth and sources of authority sort of misses the point for us. What ever happened to "All truth is God's truth?" If it's true, then who cares whether it comes from the past or the present. And if God reveals God's self in more than just scripture, if truth can be found in the world and in common and ordinary human experiences (i.e. what ever happened to "common grace" and "natural theology"?) , then why should we act as if there is some kind of competition between this truth and the truth of scriptural or incarnational revelation?

Furthermore, I think that Olson's dichotomy between "biblical revelation" and the "hypotheses of the present" frames the issue in entirely the wrong way. It makes it seem as if what we have to choose between is "God's truth" and "human speculation" (and framing it this way, who could possibly want to side against God's truth?) But that places too much faith in human ability to rightly interpret scripture. The real choice we face is between past (humanly created) hypotheses about how to interpret scripture (and other sources of revelation), and more recent (humanly created) hypotheses about how to interpret scripture (and other sources of revelation). It's all just human speculation. None of us, evangelical or liberal or emergent, has any right to claim unfiltered access to divine revelation by whatever means. The difference I see, then, between evangelicals and liberals is that evangelicals are those who are less willing to alter their previously held hypotheses and interpretations of the Bible in light of other, newer sources of truth, whereas liberals are those who are willing to do so.

Where the emergent Christian differs with both of these, IMHO (and just in my personal opinion), is in our relative comfort with ambiguity. Both conservative evangelicals and classically liberal Christians are involved in the pursuit of some sort of unshakable foundation for religious belief - whether in a supposedly inerrant biblical text, or a supposedly universal religious experience. The postmodern, emergent Christian, however, has given up on this Quixotic quest for certainty. We know that all of our attempts to get at deeper, religious truths - whether based on scripture or on modern learning - are limited and perspectival and error prone, AND WE'RE OKAY WITH THAT! We don't see that as such a bad thing. It's simply a part of the human condition, and it is one of the prerequisites of genuine faith, which is based not on certain knowledge but on hope and trust despite our lack of certainty. It is also a prerequisite of ethical action in the world, which requires not to impose our own absolutist visions of "the way things ought to be" on everyone else apart from a more specific and tangible concern for real human people, but rather to listen and learn from the Other in order to truly understand what it would mean to love them in the way they actually desire to be loved.

The Wild Goose as a Sign of Hope

2011-07-14T21:23:00.009-05:00

I know this is long overdue, given that the Wild Goose Festival ended nearly three weeks ago. However, since I was busy traveling home from it for half that time (took a detour through Michigan on our way back to Texas), and having been in a French class since getting back, I haven't really had time to sit down and process all this until now. I also know that it's weird to be posting something on this blog now when I haven't really posted here in nearly a year. However, since I don't really have any other place to publish this right now, and I do actually hope to revamp this blog a little bit and maybe even start using it again occasionally, here it is anyway.

For the small handful of my readers who may still not be aware of this event, the Wild Goose Festival was four-day festival held at Shakori Hills, North Carolina (on a rural property just 20 minutes south of Chapel Hill), that focused on justice, spirituality, music, and art. It was organized and sponsored by a broad circle of progressive Christian leaders and organizations, and attended by around 1200 evangelical, post-evangelical, emergent, mainline, and none-of-the-above Christians (and a few others from outside the Christian category as well). Basically it consisted of all of us camping together for a long weekend, surrounded by a non-stop program of speakers, panel discussions, music performances, worship opportunities, and innumerable informal conversations. All while battling the heat, the ticks, the sleep deprivation, the rambunctious children, and the water spigots that were waaayyy too far away from the actual camping areas.

By this point, dozens of others have already put up their own reflections, too many for me to link to here, though you can find a good collection of links here if you're interested in reading more. (You can also see some amazing photos of the event by Courtney Perry here.) From what I could tell, both from the vibe at the festival and reading through the recaps afterwards, it seemed that there were a lot of different festivals going on for the different folks there. That is, I think the Wild Goose was experienced differently depending on why one came to it in the first place, what one hope to get out of it, and especially what circles one was a part of beforehand. For me, the Wild Goose Festival was primarily an "emergent" event, since those were the people I knew and connected with there. For others, however, I think the Wild Goose was more of a neo-monastic event, or a Sojourners/social activist event, or an event for the more innovative types among the mainline traditions, or maybe, for some, just a Christian folk music festival with a few talks thrown in.

For me, however, the best part of the event was simply getting to reconnect with friends, both new and old. It was great how many of my Facebook-only friends became real-life acquaintances at the Wild Goose. It got to the point where whenever I met someone new I had to ask whether we were already "friends" online or not. Of course, since my wife and I were juggling the care of our two young children the whole time, we had very low-expectations about how many of the sessions we would get to actually attend, and our experience did not fail to live up to our expectation. In all, I only managed to actually sit in on a small handful of the talks offered, and eavesdropped on a couple more while keeping one eye attuned to my kids playing on the other side of the field. That was okay though. I'd wholeheartedly echo the sentiment of Michael Toy who put it to me this way, "I'm just here to hang out with my friends. If I happen to hear some of the content too, that's just a bonus."

What I did get to experience of the event, however, was fantastic. I loved hearing from and having the privilege of briefly sitting down with Civil Rights leader Vincent Harding (former speech writer for Martin Luther King, Jr.), as well learning from current Civil Rights activist Willie Barber, head of the North Carolina NAACP. Richard Twiss' session on being both a Native American and a Christian was excellent, and Bart Campolo's story about how and why he stopped being a semi-important evangelical leader had me nodding at the similarities between his own experience and mine (though I was never "semi-important"). It was also extremely refreshing to see a church planting panel consisting of three middle-aged women instead of a bunch of young, goateed, hipster guys. Overall, I loved the diversity at the event. Besides all the white male speakers (whom I know and love but have heard enough times before to know exactly what they were going to say), there were also plenty of options to hear from those who didn't exactly fit into the white, male or straight categories - and those were generally the sessions I sought out. Along those lines, I was also thrilled to get to hear Jennifer Knapp, one of my favorite Christian artists back in the day, perform again on stage. I loved how she just stopped in the middle of her set and so non-chalantly asked "So y'all know I'm a lesbian, right? Hope that doesn't make any of you uncomfortable." Followed by an invitation to the whole crowd to help he make an "It gets better" video.

Speaking of that, one of the things I loved most about the Wild Goose was how openly issues of sexuality and other controversial topics (universalism, for instance) were able to be talked about. Childcare duties prevented me from hearing most of the formal talks on these subjects, but throughout the festival there was no sense (that I could perceive) of avoiding such topics, or of being afraid to express a particular position on them (whether conservative or liberal). I had been a little apprehensive about this beforehand, since some of the sponsors and organizers were still mostly in the evangelical world, and I wasn't sure if this might prompt them to avoid or ignore such litmus-test type issues. Fortunately this was not the case. That alone tells me that a tipping point has been reached among progressive evangelicals - most of us are way past the point of caring whether the conservatives are going to condemn us for our opinions and are just going to say what we actually think regardless. As Bart Campolo put it, it's amazing how much freer you are to admit both to yourself and to everyone else what you actually think once your career and income no longer depend on believing a certain thing - and, with some exceptions, I think most Wild Goose attendees were already in that place of no longer needing the approval or money of the conservative evangelical world.

Indeed, I think the Wild Goose Festival as a whole represents a kind of tipping point for the progressive/emergent Christian movement that has been building over the past several decades. While it was in vogue a few years back to proclaim the "death" of the emerging church, what I think the Wild Goose Festival demonstrates is that the emerging movement was not dead but simply growing in less visible ways as the mainstream evangelical marketing machine moved on to the next fad. That in itself was not a bad thing, as it left those of us committed to genuine emergence free to go on building something more lasting and substantial sans the hype. The Wild Goose Festival was the coming together, finally, after more than half a decade without any sort of common, nationwide gathering, of all these many bubbling, swirling, converging and emerging efforts that have been taking shape across the whole spectrum of 21st century Christianity - the emergents, the activists, the radicals and new monastics, the burned-out on church/religion/Christianity but still in love with Jesus, the ones full of questions who simply want to know they're not the only crazy ones out there, as well as those who couldn't care less about the labels and the controversies but resonate with an approach to faith that is big enough for love and mystery and joy and diversity and passion and compassion and creativity. There is a new kind of Christianity growing in our midst in this country and around the world, and the Wild Goose Festival was not the creator of it, nor the culmination of it, nor, but merely a sign of its existence and vitality. The people who attended were but a small fraction of those around the country - pastors, professors, lay persons sitting in the pews of all kinds of churches, or those who have simply walked away from institutional Christianity altogether - who resonate with this approach to faith. Each person there represented dozens, if not hundreds more who would have liked to come but couldn't or didn't for various reasons. Next year I would be surprised if the Festival didn't double or even triple in attendees, and after that, who knows. I could be wrong, but in the years and even decades to come, its possible that we will see the Wild Goose Festival grow into one of the most significant gatherings in American Christianity. And that gives me hope - hope for the future of our faith and for the mission of God in the world.

BTW, here are links to all the other Wild Goose SynchroBloggers - this doesn't exhaust the totality of people reflecting on the Goose, but it's a healthy start.

Anna Snoeyenbos – Wild Goose Festival – A Spirit of Life Revival
Lee Smith - Goose Bumps: Opportunities Everywhere for Offense. A Fair and Objective Review
Ryan Hines – 30 Years Later – “Controversy” at Wild Goose
Karyn Wiseman – Flying With the Goose
Kyla Cofer – I went to the Wild Goose Fest and came back in love
Brian Gerald Murphy – Born Again (Again) at Wild Goose
Chris Lenshyn – Chasing the Wild Goose
Cherie at Renaissance Garden – Wild Goose Return
Deborah Wise – Wild Goose Chasing
Custodianseed – “every day they eat boiled goose”
Will Norman – Back from the Wild Goose Fest
Martin at Exiles in NY – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose
Kerri at Practicing Contemplative – Waterfowl in My Life
Allison Leigh Lilley – Chasing the Wild Goose and Catching the Wild Goose: Thanks and First Thoughts and A Pagan Goes To The Wild Goose – Part One
Abbie Waters – Jessica: A Fable
Steve Knight – Why Wild Goose Festival Was So Magical
Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying
Michelle Thorburg Hammond – I heart Jay Bakker and Peter Rollins
Matthew Bolz-Weber – Remembering Wild Goose
Paul Fromberg – Celebrating Interdependence Day
David Zimmerman – Wild Goose Festival: A Recap
Unfinished Symphony – Wild Goose Reflections – Part 1, Wild Goose Reflections – Part 2 Making Art Collages, Wild Goose Reflections – Part 3 Photoblogging, and Wild Goose Reflections – Part 4 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Dan Brennan – U2, the Wild Goose, and Deep Freedom
Mike Croghan – The Wild Goose is Not Safe
John Martinez – The Table
Callid Keefe-Perry – Gatekeeping the Goose
Eric Elnes – The Inaugural Wild Goose Festival: Recovering Something Lost
Shay Kearns – The Power of a T-Shirt, Apologizing to Over the Rhine, and Public vs. Private (Part One)
Glen Reteif – Duck Duck Goose
Peterson Toscano – I’ve Been Goosed, What I Carried Into Wild Goose, and What I Blurted Out at Wild Goose
Seth Donovan – About More than “The Gays”
Exiles in New York – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose
Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying
TSmith – What I’ll Take From Wild Goose
Dale Lature – Wild Goose Reflection
Steve Hayes – Wild Goose Chase?
Minnow – Grace Response
Christine Sine – Encounters With A Thin Space
Jeremy Myers – Giving Up the Wild Goose Chase
Robert – Thoughts On the Inaugural Wild Goose
Anna Woofenden – Slippery Slope Reflections
Wendy McCaig – Loosing The Goose
Joey Wahoo – Into The Wild
Rachel Swan – goosed
Patricia Burlison – I Called Life
Jason Hess – While At the Goose
The Bec Cranford – Wild Goose
Anthony Ehrhardt – Chasing The Wild Goose on Independence Day
Joel DeVyldere – So Lost at Last-(In the Woods)
MK Anderson – Listening To The Wild Goose
Jamie Arpin-Ricci – Wild Goose Fest
Unfinished Symphony – #5 – The Last Post … for a while

Blog Hiatus... Obviously

2010-11-05T22:59:00.003-05:00

I know it's been forever since I've posted anything here. My apologies for just letting it drop without explanation. I didn't intend to just stop blogging, but for the past three months or so I've just been too insanely busy to put up anything at all of substance (and most of my insubstantial stuff I post to Facebook now instead of here). Since my last post at the beginning of August I led a mission trip to Haiti, and then immediately started my PhD program at Baylor the day I got back. Since then my time has been completely consumed with studies, driving back and forth to Waco, and caring for the kids. That, compounded with the fact that Julie also started a grad school program at the local Episcopal seminary this fall, means that I've had no time at all to write. And that's not likely to change any time in the near future, so, until further notice, I guess I should just officially say this blog is on hiatus.

But feel free to keep checking back from time to time. You never know...

Review of Marcus Borg's "Putting Away Childish Things"

2010-08-05T21:23:00.003-05:00

When I received a offer from Harper One to review a free copy of Marcus Borg's new novel, Putting Away Childish Things: A Tale of Modern Faith, I was intrigued.* I have never actually read anything by Borg before, but I've heard a lot about him. Mainly I've heard that he is an almost stereotypical theological liberal - a member of the Jesus Seminar that questions the historical authenticity of the gospels, the physical resurrection of Jesus, and probably his divinity as well. On the other hand, I also knew that he was friends with NT Wright, a more conservative scholar whom I very much respect, and so I figured that if the two of them could get along, Borg probably wasn't such a bad guy, regardless of whether or not one agreed with his theology.

And to be honest, while I have been "emerging" out of conservative evangelical theology myself for the past decade or so, in many ways I'm still very "conservative" in my theology (perhaps "historically orthodox" would be a better term). All that to say that while I am sympathetic to the kinds of questions Borg raises, and while I have moved away from the kind of Christianity that he likewise rejects, I can't say that I'm exactly on the same page with him either. It's just that the answers I've found in asking the questions are different than the answers he's arrived at.

The difference, in my opinion, at least based what I can tell from this novelized form of his ideas, is modernity. Borg still seems to be swimming in the Enlightenment stream, with all of it's assumptions about how humanity has simply "outgrown" certain kinds of beliefs (e.g. miracles, a personal God, divinely inspired scripture, etc.). For instance, at one point in the book, the main character, a Religion professor at a small Midwestern liberal arts college, tells an evangelical student who is struggling with her faith that Christianity is "not very much about believing things that are hard to believe," that it's more about simply "centering more and more deeply in God."

While I agree that Christianity isn't primarily about believing in the right doctrines, and that centering in God is a very good thing, on the other hand, I don't see why the "difficulty" of certain beliefs are necessarily reasons to chuck them either. Furthermore, in this book at least, Borg never really gives an argument about why certain beliefs are necessarily more "difficult" anyway. In the story, he has the professor teaching a class entitled "Religion and the Enlightment," where she touches on the way the Enlightenment brought into question assumptions about the Bible, about Jesus, and about the meaning of faith itself (a few whole chapters are more or less transcripts of the professor's lecture during these class sessions). But she never really says why we should prefer the Enlightenment view to other views. Borg just seems to assume that modern is better.

The thing its, I, and many other emergents that I know, consider ourselves post-modern - that is, we question the universal validity of the Enlightenment worldview as well. Sure, we'll entertain the questions that an Enlightenment worldview raises against certain Christian beliefs, but we're not so quick to assume that the Enlightenment thinkers must be right and traditional views must be wrong. (C.S. Lewis, whom Borg apparently thinks very highly of, called that "chronological snobbery.") On the other hand, we're not going to automatically privilege tradition either (which is where I get into trouble with my more conservative friends - and even some of my more creedal mainliner friends). In fact we're often more likely to land on a "both/and" than one or the other.

For instance, at one point in the novel a couple of Borg's characters get into a discussion about Jesus' miracles, specifically the feeding of the multitudes. Citing 19th century German theologian David Strauss who first put forth these arguments, Borg's characters suggest that when we stop to imagine how the miracle could have actually happened (i.e. what would we have observed if we were actually there?) anything we could come up with is patently absurd and "impossible to imagine as actual events." Thus, argues Strauss, we ought not bother with the question of whether or not such miracles actually happened. Whether one thinks they did or not, the question misses the point. The point, for Strauss (and also for Borg), is the symbolic meaning of the stories - what deeper truths they tell us beyond a mere historical record of events.

And I agree with Borg - the important thing in the biblical stories are these deeper meanings - and yet I still don't see a good reason to necessarily reject their historical factuality. Perhaps I'm simply not "modern" enough, but trying to imagine the miracle happening doesn't actually strike me as inherently absurd or impossible. I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't seem to resonate with the concerns Borg raises. I don't see why a biblical story can't be a historical event AND have a deeper meaning. I'm not saying that every biblical story has to be a historical event to be meaningful, but neither do I see why some of them couldn't be historical as well. Nor do I think that the question of historicity is entirely irrelevant. At times, the "deeper meaning" of a story may in fact change depending on whether or not it actually happened at some point. History and historical events are themselves meaningful. A completely ahistorical Christianity (which I don't think is what Borg is arguing for) is a very different religion from one that is embedded within the historical record and portrays faith as something intrinsically bound up with the movements of history. And indeed, in the end, Borg's definition of faith was a bit too overly-individualized to me (again, a common trait of modern religion, of both the liberal and conservative varieties) - focused mainly on personal religious experiences, but without a clear sense of how God is, and has been, and continues to be working for justice and peace and the ultimate reconciliation of all things in and through human history as well. (Something I didn't find much of in my conservative upbringing either to be honest.)

But to be fair, I should repeat that this is the first book of Borg's I have read, so I can't say that he never addresses those aspects of faith - just that they didn't seem to be strong themes in this book.

At any rate, as a story, the novel was engaging enough, though I'm probably personally biased by the fact that I am myself an aspiring professor of religion - I want to be the characters in this book someday! That being the case, I really enjoyed this inside look at what the life of a religion professor can be like. However, I'm not sure how interesting this will be to folks who don't resonate quite so strongly with the main characters. The whole book is essentially about the main character's decision whether or not to accept a position at a different school - about her struggles back and forth, and all the complicating factors that get thrown into the mix. Beyond that, the book doesn't really go anywhere. In fact, it ends once she makes the decision. Borg uses the character's dilemma to illustrate what he understands "having faith" to be all about. At the risk of potentially giving away the ending, I'll just say that he distinguishes between faith as assensus, fidelitas, and fiducia, and clearly prefers the latter to the other two - another either/or where I'd prefer to have a both/and.

Besides' the main character, Kate Riley's, class sessions and conversations, Borg also uses a series of conversations among several other secondary characters (some other professors, some students at the college) to lay out his other ideas, and this is where the book becomes quite didactic (which Borg fully admits and makes no apologies for in the introduction to the book). In fact, the best comparison to this novel is Brian McLaren's New Kind of Christian series - a fictional story whose main purpose is to raise questions and communicate ideas. The plot, and in Borg's case, realistic dialogue, are entirely secondary. At times I really felt like I was reading Borg's own lecture notes. Not that I really minded. As long as you go in knowing that about the book, and not expecting great literature instead, it's no big deal. Like I said, I still enjoyed the book and felt engaged with the story right up through the end.

Bottom line is that this book is a worthwhile read if you happen to be struggling with some of the same kind of "Religion vs. Enlightenment" questions that Borg's characters are, or if you'd like to see a "real life" example of how his own approach to faith would get played out in a person's life. Some of the questions he raises and the experiences he describes will definitely resonate with many emergent folks like myself, and others as well I'm sure, whether or not they ultimately find Borg's answers satisfying. About the best thing I can say about this book, however, is that it has intrigued me to read more of Borg's other, non-fiction, stuff. Now that I've gotten the "light" version, I'd like to dig in a little more and see if my impression that he is still too wedded to an Enlightenment mindset is actually the case. After all, in a novel like this it is sometimes hard to tell what is the author's actual opinion and what belongs solely to his characters.

If I've intrigued you enough to read it now yourself, you can order your own copy of Borg's book here.

* While this book was a freebie, I should give disclaimer that that fact in no way affects my judgment or review of the book. As I've said before, if you honestly think I would sell out my convictions and integrity for a $26 book, then why are you even reading this blog in the first place?

Favorite Austin Eats

2010-07-31T23:36:00.002-05:00

My culinary tastes have certainly evolved over the years. When I was a kid, eating out meant McDonalds or Pizza Hut, and those were a pretty dang special treat. Granted, when I was a kid my dad was the manager of a buffet restaurant called Sweden House - akin to an Old Country Buffet - so we actually "ate out" there several times a week. However, we were there so often that it had long since ceased to feel like "eating out." Either way though, the range of my experience was pretty much limited to typical American meat-and-potatoes type cuisine. Ethnic food was mostly limited to "Mexican" (i.e. taco night) and "Italian" (i.e. lasagna). Of course, this wasn't just because we didn't want to try different things, when I was 11 we moved to rural Michigan where you literally couldn't get anything besides generic American fast-food - at least not without driving an hour or more to the nearest "big city." Not that I was complaining - as a teenager I still thought a McDonald's Double Cheeseburger was pretty much the ideal food.

When I got to college I decided that life was too short not to experience all the good and unique things the world has to offer, and set myself a goal to finally branch out and expose myself to new experiences and different kinds of food. Gradually, over a number of years, I tried out Chinese, Thai, Mediterranean, Indian, and even Sushi. Even then, however, it was a relatively rare occurrence, especially since the middle-class and lily-white Chicago suburbs where we lived still didn't offer a whole lot in the way of diversity - more than the rural midwest to be sure, but still there were far more Chilis and Olive Garden's than affordable sushi or Indian places. And when we moved out to the farthest edge of the Chicago 'burbs, the situation got even worse - where we had to drive 20-minutes just to get to a Red Robin.

That's one of the reasons we enjoy living in Austin so much - it's such a diverse city when it comes to cuisine - so many different types of food, and tons of unique local restaurants. We love being able to try new things all the time, but of course after a while we end up settling on a few favorites as well. In that regards, after being here for about two years now, I thought it was time to list a few of our favorite Austin eateries:

Mediterranean/Middle Eastern

Dimassi's Mediterranean Buffet - we recently discovered this place up in NW Austin along 183. When it comes to ethnic food, I'm a big fan of the buffet concept (even if the quality of the food is thereby somewhat diminished), mainly because I don't really know what a lot of it is, and the buffet lets me try out lots of different stuff. Dimassi's has two really long buffet lines, with lots of great options. The best dish here by far, however, are their lamb shanks - literally falling off the bone. The baklava for dessert is really good too.

Alborz Persian Cuisine - this nice little place on Anderson Lane has both a buffet and a regular menu. They also have belly-dancers on weekend evenings. I had never had Persian before, but it is thoroughly enjoyable and very unique - kind of a half-way point between Middle Eastern and Indian food (which, of course, geographically speaking, it is). It wasn't nearly as spicy as Indian, and had a lot more sweet flavors (lots of cranberries, cinnamon, and ginger).

Asian

Indian Palace - this is a standard Indian buffet just off of Mopac on Far West Blvd, nothing real unique (if you're already a fan of Indian buffet's), just everything we like.

Thai Cuisine - an unoriginal name but very good Thai food up on Parmer Lane, just northwest of Mopac.

Crave Thai & Sushi Bar - this is down on the Drag next to UT, and has really good sushi (we haven't even tried the "Thai" part of the menu) and saki. We often go here for dinner before heading down to 6th Street or wherever for our nights on the town.

Madam Mam's - we've only been to the one on the Drag by UT, though I think a new one just opened up on Anderson Lane next to the Alamo Village Drafthouse. Pretty standard Thai food, but very good.

Maki - this is a create-your-own sushi place up in the Arbor Walk along north Mopac and 183. The quality of sushi isn't fantastic, but it isn't bad either, and I like being able to make it with exactly the ingredients that I want. We also love that we're able to make "kid-friendly" sushi (usually with chicken, fruit, and cream cheese) that Emma and Aidan will eat.

African

Aster's Ethiopian Restaurant - if you've never had Ethiopian food, you're missing out. In some ways it's similar to Indian (lots of vegetables and spices, and you pick up the food with your bread), but very different as well. We love it. Oh, and the coffee is out of this world (which makes sense, since coffee originated in Ethiopia). Just have it black with one spoonful of sugar.

European

Simplicity Wine & Eats - another new discovery, this is a little wine and tapas bar on Burnet Rd in north-central Austin, not too far from the Triangle. The food is really, really good, and the vibe is very laid back - more like a neighborhood bar (except classier).

La Madeline - though this is a small chain (we've come across them in Dallas too), it has really good and affordable French dishes (not the fine-dining type, but more of the corner cafe variety). It's open for breakfast too, which is a plus.

Mexican/Tex-Mex

El Chile - this local chain (which has three locations in Austin - all of which are great, though the atmosphere is better at the downtown and East Manor restaurants) has some of the best mole we've had, and really good salsa and queso as well.

Posados Cafe - this Tex/Mex place up along I-35 in Pflugerville is one of ours (and our kids') favorites. Not only is the food good, but meals come with free sopapillas and ice cream for dessert.

Chuy's - though this chain isn't exclusive to Austin, the vibe is very Austin-y, and the good is great! I especially like that they feature New Mexican items like blue corn enchiladas and hatch green chiles.

Torchy's Tacos - cheap (but good) taco places are one of those things we just didn't have up in the Midwest, but that I've come to appreciate since moving down to Texas. Among them, Torchy's (tag line: "Damn Fine Tacos") is one of the best, and an Austin original. This was one of my go-to places for a quick bite within walking distance of my Seminary (on the Drag), though they have several locations around town.

American

Kerbey Lane Cafe - another unique Austin eatery, Kerbey Lane is a classic - very unique dishes, and the Kerbey Queso (with white queso and guacamole mixed together) is fantastic. The only downside is that, even with three (or four?) locations around town, they still always seem to be packed.

Pok-e-Jo's BBQ - though this probably isn't the absolute best Texas BBQ place in Austin, it's the one that is closest to our house (literally right around the corner), and one of Emma's favorite places to eat.

Razoos Cajun - Cajun food is another thing that we don't really have in the Midwest, but that I've come to enjoy since moving down south. Though this is a chain restaurant, it still seems pretty authentic, and very good.

Amy's Ice Cream - Amy's is an Austin classic, and always has very unique flavors (including beer and liquor flavored ice cream).

Burgers

Phil's Ice House - Phil is Amy's (of Amy's Ice Cream) husband, and connected to one of the ice cream shops in north central Austin on Burnet Rd is this burger place that has, for my money, the best, and most unique burgers in town. If you go, get the 78704 burger. Don't ask why, just get it. Oh, and we love the outdoor playground for the kids they have there as well.

TerraBurger - an organic fast-food joint. Yes, it's still fast-food, but the quality of the ingredients is way, way better, and so is the taste.

Delis

Jason's Deli - though it's a nationwide chain, it's still a really good deli, and one that I first encountered down here in Austin. I especially like that they're making an effort to eliminate the use of High Fructose Corn Syrup from all their items (including their sodas). Real food always tastes so much better.

Kneaded Pleasures - a local deli near Julie's parents' house on Far West Blvd that also serves gelatto. Yum!

Schlotzsky's Deli - though it's now a nationwide chain, Scholtzsky's got their start right here in Austin. Known for their unique bread, this is one of Julie's favorite "fast food" places.

Brew Pubs

Flying Saucer - recently discovered this pub in The Triangle. They have great beers and German food, including an amazing soft pretzel covered in bratwurst, sauerkraut and cheese!

Opal Divine's - there are several locations around Austin, and apparently each one has a unique menu. The one near out house, on the corner of Parmer and Mopac, has really good pub standards - e.g. burgers, fish 'n chips, etc.

And in a catgory all by itself...

The Alamo Drafthouse - a quirky movie theater, brew pub, and restaurant all in one. What more could you ask for? It's gotten to the point where we no longer want to go to the movies anymore if it's not at the Drafthouse.

Of course, a lot of these favorites are based on where we live up here in North Austin. I know that if we lived closer in to Central Austin, and had the time and money to eat out more often, or to go to the really nice restaurants, there are tons more good places I could add to the list. These are just the ones convenient to us that we keep going back to. Do y'all Austinites have any others that you would recommend we try?

Busy Summer

2010-06-20T21:03:00.002-05:00

You'd think I'd fallen off the face of the planet given how little I post here anymore. It's just that I've been pretty busy since the end of the school year. Since my last post I've taken a mini-vacation down to the Gulf, graduated from Seminary, built a deck, helped my wife put on our church's VBS, and spent lots of time with the kids while Julie works on her next book. All that, combined with all the other projects online and around the house that I want to get done in the next few months, not to mention preparing a team from our church to go to Haiti this August, is conspiring to keep this blog fairly quiet. Sorry about that. I do actually have a few ideas for posts I'd like to put up soon, so hopefully I will be able to make some time for that in the near future. Of course, once I start my PhD studies at Baylor this Fall I'll have even less time to post. So yeah, this blog isn't dead, but don't be surprised if new content continues to stay at the once or twice a month level.

Escobar on New Men and Social Change

2010-05-17T09:10:00.002-05:00

"In the past they told us not to worry about changing society because what we need is to change men. New men will change society. But when the new men begin to worry about changing society, they are told not to worry, that the world has always been bad, that we await new heavens and a new earth and that this world is condemned to destruction. Why try to make it better? What's even worse is that those who teach this are the ones who enjoy all the advantages that this passing world offers, and they passionately defend them whenever they are endangered."

~Samuel Escobar in Is Revolution Change?

Walker Cleaveland's "Brief History of Presbymergent"

2010-05-15T09:20:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Adam Walker Cleaveland for highlighting (and hosting a pdf version of) my ginormous paper on Presbymergent and Mainline Emergence in his latest post at Pomomusings. He says it inspired him to write more about Presbymergent himself, a "brief" history, which I can only assume is in contrast to my 50-page monstrosity :)

At any rate, I'm looking forward to reading more of his reflections. Check it out.

More Conferences

2010-04-23T10:16:00.005-05:00

Here's some more great conferences coming up this year:

The UnConference

Washington DC - May 24-26

Origins Event

Los Angeles - July 23-24

Celtic Spirituality and Radical Activism

Northern Ireland - August 17-24

2010 Emergent Village Theological Conference

Postcolonialism and the Missional Future of the Church

Atlanta - November 1-3

FREE Kindle Download of Julie's Book!

2010-04-22T10:18:00.003-05:00

Earth Day is turning 40 and what better way to celebrate our commitment to sustainable living than with our everyday actions. Finding doable ways each of can commit to loving God by caring for creation is a significant part of what it means to pursue everyday justice. So in honor Earth Day, Amazon is offering a free download of the Kindle edition of Julie's book, Everyday Justice.

That’s right – a free digital copy of Everyday Justice!

From midnight to midnight on Thursday April 22 (Earth Day) downloading Everyday Justice from Amazon will cost you nada. So there’s no excuse to not find out simple everyday ways that you can care for our world and the people who inhabit it. And I know, not everyone has a Kindle. It doesn’t matter, there are Kindle apps available for Macs, and PCs, and iPhones, and BlackBerry’s, and iPads. If you are reading this blog, you most likely own at least one of those. Remember – this is only a 24 hour deal, so seize the opportunity while it’s hot.

So celebrate Earth Day and download your free Kindle copy of Everyday Justice.

I Didn't Learn It From the White Males

2010-04-19T09:50:00.006-05:00

This post is for a Synchroblog that asks the question, what is emerging in the church? This effort is partially in response to the recent Sojourners article by Soong-Chan Rah and Jason Mach alleging that the emerging church conversation has largely been dominated by white male hipsters, and partially just to celebrate all the good things that are in fact emerging. So even though I am a white male (though decidedly un-hip), I did want to contribute and speak to my own experience of being led into this conversation through non-white, non-western voices in the first place.

About ten years ago I had just finished a degree in philosophy at Wheaton College (where I had my first introduction to postmodernism) and was working towards a Masters in Missions and Intercultural Studies. While I was already beginning to rethink my theology and worldview thanks to those postmodern philosophers, I hadn't yet even heard of names like Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt or whoever. Instead what I was encountering through my grad studies were the myriad of ways that Christianity gets expressed in indigenous cultures around the world, whether through African Independent Churches, South Asian Christianity, Native American churches, etc. It was here that I began to realize how diverse the Christian faith really is, and how culturally bound my own versions of faith were as well. Thankfully through this exposure I was also introduced to the concept of contextualization - the idea that just as God chose to incarnate God's self in a particular first-century Jewish culture in order to communicate the gospel to the people of that time and place, so can the gospel be incarnated and re-contextualized to many other times and places and cultures. The fact that African Christians were able to take the gospel and adapt it to their indigenous cultures, or that Native American Christians were able to be Christians and yet still integrate their ancient customs and religious practices, inspired me to think that maybe, just maybe, we white Western Christians could also have the freedom to adapt our received traditions and belief systems to our own emerging postmodern culture.

More than this, it was missiologists working outside of the West, people like David Bosch or Lesslie Newbign, and especially Latin American theologians like C. Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar, who first developed the "missional" ideas that have become so significant among American emerging church folks as well now. The idea of a holistic, integral mission that addresses both spiritual and physical needs, and doesn't divide the world into "sending" and "receiving" nations, or even into "the church" and "the world," but sees the whole of life as a mission and the kingdom of God at work in the whole world, is something that was being talked about outside the West decades before some of us here in the States started reading about it and being inspired by it.

In other words, for me at least, this idea of creating an emerging, missional, postmodern faith didn't come by listening to a bunch of hip white males, it came by listening to the voices of the non-Western world and learning from their examples. They led the way. Whatever is emerging among white American Christians was pioneered by them first, and we owe them a debt.

This is true for me, and I know it is true for many of the well-known white male emergent leaders as well. Ask most of them who inspired many of these ideas for them in the first place and they'll often point to these same non-Western voices. None of us are trying to claim credit for it, or trying to say that we invented it. We're simply trying to learn from whoever we can, and follow the lead of these global pioneers as the church continues to emerge here in our own context as well.

This is what I see emerging in the church both globally and locally, and it gives me hope.

UPDATE: Here are links to some of the others who have contributed to this Synchroblog. Good stuff!

Pam Hogeweide compares the emerging church movement to a game of ping pong.

Sarah-Ji comments that the emerging questions people are asking are far bigger than any defined movement.

Sharon Brown writes about using labels as an excuse.

Peter Walker reflects on how the emerging church conversation helped him recognize his power and privlege as a white male.

Dave Huth post a on new ways to talk about religion.

Kathy Escobar finds hope in seeing a spirit of love in action emerging in the church.

Nadia Bolz-Weber reflects on the the beautiful things she sees emerging in her church community.

Chad Holtz writes on our Our Emerging Jewishness.

Julie Kennedy describes her organic entry into the emerging church and reflects on moving forward with a new public face.

Dave Brown comments on the emerging church and swarm theory.

Danielle Shroyer reflects on what she sees emerging in the church.

Brian Merritt offers his pros and cons of the emerging church.

Julie Clawson is grateful for emerging globalized Christianity.

Susan Philips points out that emergence happens as G-d redeems our shattered realities.

Jake Bouma suggest that what is emerging is a collapse into simplicity.

Liz Dyer believes a chastened epistemology is a valuable characteristic emerging out of the church today.

Rachel Held Evans writes on what is changing in the church.

Tia Lynn Lecorchick describes the emerging movement as a wood between worlds (from The Magician's Nephew).

Amy Moffitt shares her journey towards a theology of humility.

Travis Mamone comments on the need for the emerging church to rely on the word of God.

Sa Say reflects on the the prick of doubt.

David Henson lists what he sees as what is emerging in the church.

Angela Harms writes in in defense of emergent.

Wendy Gritter asks how we can listening to the voices from the margins.

Bruce Epperly comments on the largeness of spirit of emerging spirituality.

Linda Jamentz reflects on listening to the voices from the margins in church.

Lisa Bain Carlton hopes that our emerging conversation can respond humbly to our moment in time.

Christine Sine asks how far are we willing to be transformed.

What I'll be doing for the next four years...

2010-04-18T00:20:00.003-05:00

For those of you who aren't Facebook friends with me (or missed the one random post where I announced it), I guess I should mention here that I got in to Baylor University for their PhD program in Religion. I'll be studying Church History, and, more specifically, the historical roots of the emerging movement in America.

I was wait-listed about a month and a half ago, so it's been a little nerve wracking, and I had already started exploring a few other options before I got word that I was accepted. However, now that I'm in I'm excited to be starting studies either next Fall or this June (depending on whether I can place out of the German reading class). So yeah, that's what I'll be doing for the next four years of my life :)

Conference Season

2010-03-31T10:19:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to call your attention to some great conferences coming up in the next month. Already there's been the Convergence women's conference in Portland and the Theology After Google conference at Claremont. But not to worry, there are plenty more on the docket. In fact, if you wanted to, you could go to something every weekend from now until May. You can find links to all of these in my right-hand sidebar, but here's another list:

Pete Rollins' Insurrection Tour

Multiple Cities from now until April 11 (including Austin this evening!)

Emerging Christianity Conference

Center for Action & Contemplation, Albuquerque, NM - April 9-11

Free For All

Durham, NC - April 15-16

A Sustainable Faith

St Petersburg, FL - April 23-24

Q Gathering

Chicago, IL - April 28-30

TransFORM: East Coast Gathering

Washington DC - April 30-May 2

Amahoro Gathering 2010

Mombasa, Kenya - May 3-10

Journey Evangelism Series

2010-03-23T20:51:00.005-05:00

Last month I contributed a series of posts for the newly redesigned website for my church here in Austin, Journey Imperfect Faith Community. I decided to focus on the topic of "evangelism" because of my desire to see Journey grow and bless even more people like we've been blessed by it. Anyhow, here are links to all five of my posts if you are interested in reading them. (BTW, I had a 300 word limit, which is why they are so short and why I don't say everything I potentially could have about the subject.)

Part I: The E-Word

Part II: Sharing Joy in the Midst of Suckiness

Part III: Hope in Action

Part IV: Love is Limited

Part V: Hide It Under a Bushel: No!

The Creed of Saint Patrick

2010-03-17T12:48:00.005-05:00

According to tradition, this creed is the response Patrick gave to the Druid priestess, Ethne, and her sister when they inquired about the nature of St. Patrick's God:

Our God, God of all men,
God of heaven and earth,

sea and rivers,
God of sun and moon, of all the stars,
God of high mountains

and of lowly valleys,
God over heaven, and in heaven,

and under heaven.

He has a dwelling
in heaven and earth and sea
and in all things
that arc in them.

He inspires all things,
He quickens all things,
He is over all things,
He supports all things.

He makes the light of the sun to shine,
He surrounds the moon and stars, and
He has made wells in the arid earth, placed dry islands in the sea
and stars for the service of the greater luminaries.

He has a Son coeternal with Himself,
like to Himself;
not junior is Son to Father,
nor Father senior to the Son.

And the Holy Spirit
breathes in them;
not separate are Father
and Son and Holy Spirit.

Brian McLaren on Plato & Aristotle

2010-03-15T22:19:00.004-05:00

Nathan Gilmour, who knows way more about Greek philosophy than I ever will (and that is in fact saying something, since I actually do know quite a bit about Greek philosophy), recently raised some criticisms of Brian McLaren's treatment of Plato & Aristotle in A New Kind of Christianity. I thought about raising these same questions of Brian myself for part of the Q&R series we just did, but to be honest the questions were better coming from Nathan than from me anyway. Fortunately Brian was willing to respond to Nathan's concerns, and has posted his reply here.

A New Way of Knowing the World

2010-03-12T21:36:00.005-06:00

"According to the postmodern view of reality, agency, activity, and influence are characteristics not just of human beings but of all animals, of trees and plants, of oceans and winds, of mountains and of the earth as a whole. These terms fit different entities in different ways. But to understand everything we know as alive, as having relations of interdependence with others, as changing others and being changed by them, is closer to the contemporary understanding of reality than is the subject-object model, which claims that only the human knower is alive, active, and influential while everything else (and often other people, to the extent that they are objectified) is dead, passive, and unchanging. The ecological model of knowing rests on the assumption that the world is composed of living, changing, growing, mutually related, interdependent entities, of which human beings are one. None of these entities is a mere object; all, in different ways, are subjects."

~ Sallie McFague, Super, Natural Christians

100,000 Baby!

2010-03-11T12:46:00.002-06:00

So I just noticed that apparently the last series of posts with Brian McLaren finally put my stat counter for this blog over 100,000 unique visitors in the 5-years since I put the counter on it. Woo hoo!!!

Citations

2010-03-09T15:20:00.003-06:00

Maybe it's because I'm in grad school, but it feels wrong to write a review of McLaren's book without citing all the other reviews I read in preparation for my own. I linked to a few in my post, but didn't even come close to scratching the surface of the ones out there that I looked at (which themselves were only a tiny fraction of all the ones out there now.) I've also included a few more decent reviews that have come out since I wrote my own. I certainly don't agree with all of these, and some even make me angry, but it is important to listen to people who think differently than yourself, and get multiple perspectives on any issue, so if you're interested in reading the good, the bad, and even the ugly, here you go:

Mostly Positive

Joe Bumbulis - A New Kind of Christianity: Too far, not far enough...or is that even the point? a book review

Ron Cole - An ancient recipe, with a new label...A New Kind of Christianity, Part 2

Jeremy Fackenthal - Brian McLaren's New Kind of Christianity is delightfully rabbinic

Nathan Gilmour - A New Kind of Christianity: A Review for The Ooze Viral Blogs

Chad Holtz - A New Kind of Christianity (Part I): De-Jewing Jesus, Part II - The Bible, Part III - Is God Violent?, Part IV - Who is Jesus?, Part IV (2) - Who is Jesus?

Helen Mildenhall - Review: A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren

Mike Morrell - Brian & Spencer’s Excellent Adventure, On the McLaren Nay-sayers, The Excellency of Christ in ‘A New Kind of Christianity’, Brian McLaren: ‘I enthusiastically affirm the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. I’m a wholehearted Trinitarian.’

Matt Ritchie - A New Kind of Christianity (multiple posts)

Mostly Negative

Darryl Dash - Ending the Discussion Before It Starts, Review: A New Kind of Christianity

Kevin DeYoung - Christianity & McLarenism: Ten Questions and Ten Problems

Dave Fitch - McLaren’s New Kind of Christianity – There’s a parting of the ways here – and that’s alright – Towards a New Missional Nicaea (Someday)

Bill Kinnon - Brian Wants to Frame the Reviews: 'If you disagree with me, you are probably a Fundie!', Reviewers Reviewing McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity, A Question or Two About Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren is Not a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, Responding to Brian McLaren's Response to Me

Scot McKnight - CT Review: Brian McLaren's New Kind of Christianity (and conversation about it)

Trevin Wax - Why Brian McLaren's New Book is Good for the Emerging Church

Mike Wittmer - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11

Downright Nasty

Tim Challies - A New Kind of Christianity

Mr. Pye - Brian McLaren is a Fucking Idiot

A Few People Who Wanted to Weigh-In Without Actually Reading the Book

Brother Maynard - A New Kind of Conversation: Why I Might be Neo-Emergent

Jamie Arpin-Ricci - A New Kind of Christianity

Some of Brian's Responses

A New Kind of Christianity: response to Morrell and McKnight

A New Kind of Christianity: cont'd

A New Kind of Christianity: cont'd 2

Reviews: A New Kind of Christianity ... Christianity Today, Part 1

Reviews: A New Kind of Christianity... Christianity Today, Part 2

Brian McLaren Clarifies Some Questions About ANKoC: Part IV

2010-03-08T13:26:00.003-06:00

Here's the last of my questions for Brian McLaren about his most recent book, A New Kind of Christianity. You can read the rest here: Part I, Part II, Part III.

4) How do you respond to recent criticisms that you have mis-represented evangelical theology with your Greco-Roman six-line narrative?

Many forms of the real Christianity experienced on the ground by many people - in both Protestant and Catholic settings - has many of the negative elements of the six-line narrative I talked about. Of course there are positive elements right along with the negative ones, which brings us back to the "let's try to get beyond dualism, even though it's an ingrained habit for all of us" discussion we had earlier. Of course I'm not talking about the best idealized forms of the faith that every group holds in their hearts.

And of course, I said this in the book many, many times. Here's one example from p. 27:

We are not reassessing or repenting of "Christianity" as a sacred abstraction representing the highest and best ideals of Christians everywhere. Instead, we are beginning to reassess and repent of the actual versions and formulations of the faith we have created We are acknowledging that the Christianities we have created - or constructed - deserve to be reexamined and deconstructed, not so that we may slide into agnosticism, atheism, or secular patriotic consumerism, but so that our religious traditions can be seen for what they are. They are not simply a pure, abstracted, and ideal "essence of Christianity," but rather they are evolving, embodied, situated versions of the faith - each of which is unfinished, imperfect, and sometimes pretentious, and each of which is often beautiful and wonderful, renewable and serviceable too.

I should add - as at least one respondent did on one of the blogs - that not only is the six-line narrative what a lot of people in our churches are hearing, but it's also what a lot of people outside the church are hearing, which is a big deal for those of us who believe in evangelism.

Again, I can see how some folks would not see this. If they think John Stott's Basic Christianity or C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity is reflected much in actual Christian faith on street level ... they haven't been where I've been. In most places in the global south in my experience, Benny Hinn and Joyce Myers (I'm not equating them, just making an observation) are a thousand times more well-known and influential than John Stott or C. S. Lewis. Most Muslims don't think "Jurgen Moltmann" or "Karl Barth" when they think Christianity: they think "George Bush" and "Pat Robertson." Most non-churchgoing Americans don't think of the kind of sophisticated, historically-rooted faith debated in our best seminaries; they think of the kind of faith presented on "TBN" and so on. So I hope my book will stimulate the good folks at North Park Seminary and elsewhere to realize that we're actually colleagues in a rather urgent mission ... seeking to embody and advocate for a more faithful, thoughtful, socially responsible, and ultimately Christ-like Christian faith. That's of course what I mean by a new kind of Christian faith.

Brian McLaren Clarifies Some Questions About ANKoC: Part III

2010-03-06T13:34:00.004-06:00

Here's the third of my questions for Brian McLaren about his most recent book, A New Kind of Christianity. You can read the rest here: Part I, Part II.

Here's my third question:

3) In both your discussion of whether God is violent, and in your outline of the seven quests you seem to offer an evolutionary/developmental history of religions in which older, more primitive and more violent forms eventually progress and evolve into "higher" forms. I have a few concerns about this view. a) Doesn't this play into the Modern myth of progress whereby we believe our current forms of religion to be inherently superior to everyone else's (even if we admit that they're not yet fully evolved)? b) Is this even historically accurate? For instance, monotheism and polytheism have coexisted throughout history, many noble forms of polytheism still currently exist in our world today, and it doesn't seem as if one necessarily developed out of the other.

Great question. The other day I read through all the comments on a couple of blogs - well over two hundred - and several people brought this up, as did the CT review itself. First, as some people have already pointed out, to make a simple equation - evolution = modernistic progress - is pretty facile. There was a modernistic kind of evolutionary theory, and there are postmodern forms, and still other forms will follow no doubt. Similarly, to say that later is always superior or that more advanced is always good and less advanced is always bad is also simply ridiculous. That's like saying that lions are superior to grass, or that lions are good and grass is bad, when in fact lions can't survive without gazelles that eat grass, and when lions die, they fertilize grass that feeds gazelles. It's all connected and interdependent. So much of our us/them thinking flows from a set of modernist assumptions that a lot of us left behind a long time ago, or started trying to leave behind. Because they're deeply ingrained in all of us. And that's not bad! It's just there.

So let's talk about evolution. Evolution produces dinosaurs, ground sloths, and mastodons. My guess is that dinosaurs were more advanced in many ways than the primitive birds that outlived them and evolved into the birds we have today. And ground sloths could have been much more advanced in evolutionary terms - I'm just guessing here - than the tree sloths that still survive today, and mastodons may have been more advanced - I don't know - than the elephants that survive today. Many times, the more advanced forms become extinct and the more primitive forms survive. The key to survival isn't how advanced you are, but how adaptable you are, or how well suited you are to an environment that may or may not change. And on top of that, there are huge variables in how change happens ... like sudden meteor impacts and gradually advancing ice ages ... that mess up any simple schemas of progression.

So just as you said regarding monotheism and polytheism, when something new develops out of something else, it doesn't always replace it. Sometimes the two coexist for millennia. So you still have very primitive crocodiles that have hardly changed for millions of years, plus many species of lizards that have been evolving constantly into many new forms from common amphibian ancestors with the crocodiles - again, I'm just making this up, not knowing the details of crocodile and chameleon evolution. And there are times when adaptation involves losing features, losing previous advances, losing previous capacities ... so snakes lose their legs, and some cave species lose their eyes, and whales lose their legs and ability to walk on land.

That, to me, is a beautiful thing about evolution in God's creation, as opposed to a facile formulaic caricature of evolution. Survival of the fittest doesn't mean what so many people think it means - that everything moves towards one form surviving by eliminating all other forms. Evolution is this amazing random factory that produces novelty, interdependence, growth and challenge and development ... story as opposed to state.

I think it's a kind of fourth-grade understanding of evolution that makes all these false assumptions ... that newer is better, that newer replaces older, that advanced survive and primitive don't, that primitive is bad (or the reverse!) and so on. By the way, in an evolutionary mindset as I understand it, it could be that a hundred years from now, Evangelicalism, Mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, Pentecostalism, and Eastern Orthodoxy as we know them could all be tiny embattled minorities, having been largely replaced by vicious, ugly, and "primitive" forms of fundamentalism or magical prosperity theology ... Or Christianity and Islam and Judaism could be reduced to almost nothing through mutually assured nuclear destruction, and nearly everyone could have decided that it's just too dangerous to believe in one God. It makes me think of Paul in Romans and Jesus in John 15, reminding the early disciples that they shouldn't be arrogant: they're a branch that has been grafted in for a time, but if they don't bear good fruit, they won't remain in their blessed position.

Which brings some other factors into the mix: power, arrogance, and complacency. Let's say that you and I agree as Christians that theism is more true and "better" than atheism. Could it still be true that atheists have an important job to do, for some time at least - to keep theists from becoming too powerful, too arrogant, too complacent, and too challenge them to greater maturity? Or could it be that the doubts raised by atheists are the only thing that will push theists to a more mature understanding of God? (And of course, if atheists were in power, they would similarly need to be challenged by theists, or they would become no less powerful, arrogant, and complacent. And if atheism were in fact truer and better - as atheists believe, we theists could still bring some blessings and benefits to atheists they wouldn't have without us.)

I started watching this science fiction show Caprica recently, and I think they're playing with these kinds of questions in that series, with monotheists and polytheists squaring off. In that light, might we even be able to talk about how the doctrine of the trinity is a way of avoiding some of the dangers of an unmodified monotheism, by keeping alive in our concept of God the idea of otherness? It's very easy to have otherness without unity, or unity without otherness, but it seems to me that in the beauty of the trinity, we have oneness and one-anotherness.

I'm sure all of this will make no sense to some people, but you asked an interesting question that stimulated these thoughts.

I have one final question and response from Brian that I'll post here on Monday.

Brian McLaren Clarifies Some Questions About ANKoC: Part II

2010-03-05T13:03:00.009-06:00

As I've mentioned, Brian McLaren has graciously offered to answer some of the questions I have for him about his latest book, A New Kind of Christianity. I posted Part I here yesterday. (Update: here is Part III as well.)

Here is Part II. I asked:

2) Quite a few critics (both conservatives and liberals in fact) have accused you of simply rehashing classic liberal theology. I'm curious as to how well-read you are in the past century or so of liberal theology and whether you think your "new kind of Christianity" really is "new", or whether it has significant parallels in the liberal tradition? Are you in fact simply recapitulating what has already been said by others (Rauschenbusch? Harnack? Bultmann? Gutierrez? Borg?), or are you building on or critiquing them in any way?

Again, this feels to me like people are thinking more dualistically than narratively, in those stereotypical neoplatonic terms (admitting all the complexities we both know lie behind that term). Are there really two eternal and unchanging categories of theology, one liberal and the other conservative, one on the side of the angels and the other on the side of the demons? Isn't it more true to say that there's a story going on, and that within that story arguments arise, and that good and smart people see some truth in both main sides in the argument and throw their energies there, even though they see weaknesses in their side and strengths in the other side? I mean, can't we admire both Erasmus and Luther, for example, or both Desmond Tutu - who's pretty "liberal" in conventional terms - and Billy Graham, who is himself a lot more liberal than say Pat Robertson? And isn't it more true to say that among the broad community of liberals, there are statements and counterstatements, advances and reversals, reversals and then advances, trackbacks and circlings and repentances and rediscoveries? Isn't the same thing going on among conservatives? And doesn't each grow in conversation not only among themselves but even with their antagonist?

Your question itself acknowledges that this kind of binary thinking is terribly unhelpful. For example, Bultmann and Gutierrez strike me as radically different thinkers. I love what I read of Gutierrez but I take a completely different tack than Bultmann, who I read back in college. I've never read Harnack, but based on a little reading I just did about him, it sounds like I'm stumbling into territory he pioneered regarding the shift from Hebraic to Greek thinking. I'm more open to miracle and mysticism than he was, and I would never reject the Gospel of John as he did simply because it's less "historical" in the modernist sense. As you know, I deal in depth with several passages from the fourth gospel in the book. As for Rauschenbusch, I loved Christianity and the Social Crisis. When I read Tom Wright and Marcus Borg's book on Jesus, I was so glad to be able to listen to both of them, and felt each was stronger than the other at some points, and would hate to have to become the friend of one and the enemy of the other - especially because the two of them were modeling friendship where they disagreed.

By the way, there's been a lot of discussion regarding "theology after google," and it's very relevant to this discussion. Unitarians are reading Rob Bell and Don Miller. And Southern Baptists are reading Walter Brueggemann and Brian McLaren (not to equate the two!). So the old days of segregation and apartheid between liberals and conservatives are over. The gatekeepers will keep guarding their front gates, but the back fence is down.

But let me say it very bluntly: if by liberal, someone means naturalistic, rejecting the possibility of the mystical or miraculous, denying the authority of the Scriptures, denying the resurrection, blah, blah, blah - I'm not a liberal. If by liberal, someone means free to think, free to ask questions, free to seek truth and God, then I would hope all of us could be liberals. If by conservative, someone means unwilling to think or ask questions because one already has the truth nailed down in a pristine form, then I'm not a conservative. But if a conservative is someone who wants to learn from the past, someone who loves the Scriptures and respects the creeds and most importantly loves Jesus, then I would hope everyone could be conservative. But this is where I think "a new kind of Christianity" comes into play, because a lot of us don't want to have to stay in the old dualism.

Frank Schaeffer recently said something to the effect that the one sin that won't be forgiven by some religious folks is the failure to hate their enemies. I worry sometimes that this kind of thinking sneaks into our hearts in the liberal-conservative debates, and I don't think it's Christlike.

Sorry to ramble on, but that's my honest response to the assumptions behind your question. It's so funny that some conservatives want to paint me as a liberal, because I get exactly the response from many liberals that you describe in your review, Mike. Sort of a condescension, like, "You? Liberal? You're only a slightly less ignorant and superstitious conservative!"

By the way, neither category among Protestants - conservative or liberal - cuts any mustard with our brothers and sisters who begin the conversation with the issue of apostolic succession! Both sides are in the wrong boat from the start, arguing about which is the better wing of the false and schismatic church.

Again, thanks Brian!

You can find Part I here and I'll be posting Part III tomorrow.

Brian McLaren Clarifies Some Questions About ANKoC: Part I

2010-03-04T14:42:00.008-06:00

Brian McLaren has graciously offered to answer some of the questions I have for him about his latest book, A New Kind of Christianity, which I reviewed here last week. Given the amount of misunderstanding and rather uncharitable accusations floating around out there about Brian's book, Brian and I agreed that this might be a great way to help bring some clarity to the conversation. I had a number of different questions for him, and he provided rather lengthy responses, so I'll be posting them here one question at a time over the next several days. You'll notice that as an aspiring church historian my questions tend to run in that vein, so I apologize if I didn't happen ask the questions most burning in your own mind, but I hope some of you will find these responses illuminating nonetheless.

Here's first question I asked:

1) More than a few times in the book you seemed to adopt the "Fall of the Church" narrative common to many Protestants (and especially Anabaptists and Restorationists, not to mention the Social Gospel folks), in which the mainstream of Christianity took a very bad detour shortly after the time of the apostles and only now are we rediscovering what the message of Jesus was really about. My questions for you about this are: a) Is it really so bad as all that? Aren't there any streams in Christian history where the gospel you describe in ANKoC can be found? What happened to a "generous orthodoxy"? b) If you really do think this is a wholly new rediscovery, isn't it a little bit arrogant to claim that we're the first ones to have been able to figure it out? And more importantly, wouldn't that imply a rather pessimistic view of the Holy Spirit and her work of guiding the church throughout the past 20 centuries? c) If you're not actually saying that, then what would be a better way to understand your own view of church history?

Brian responded to each part of my question separately:

Is it really so bad as all that?

Thanks for asking about this. It's a bit disappointing to see some folks problematizing a couple issues like this so as to make any consideration of the questions I'm raising unimportant. First, I think the Anabaptists, Restorationists, and Social Gospel folks do have a point when they talk about the fall of the church. Isn't it more than a little strange that the religion that loves, follows, and worships a crucified man forges an alliance with the empire that did the crucifying and then starts painting crosses on their shields - not evoking the meaning given to the cross by the faith, namely, forgiveness and grace, but evoking the fear of crushing dominance by which an empire expands and maintains power? That's not a little thing. And it stretches into many other areas ... the religion that follows a king who washes feet and was crucified ends up mirroring the structure of the empire of the very "rulers of the gentiles" of whom Jesus said "You shall not be like them." Again, this isn't a tiny matter.

But even though I think these are major issues, if I had believed in the fall of the church narrative, I would have used the term. I wonder if people see the irony: throughout the book I'm questioning the whole paradigm that fall language sets up. Why would I import that paradigm here? The fall paradigm assumes you start with something in a perfect, pristine state and then it falls into a state of absolute evil ... an all-or-nothing matter. I don't follow that dualistic paradigm on either side of the equation. I don't think the church was ever pristine. I think it was wonderfully human from the start ... good and flawed, a mix of hope and hypocrisy, dignity and dishonor just like all of us are still today. My coming of age paradigm isn't dualistic. Childhood isn't good and adulthood bad or the reverse. It's all just there, what it is, interdependent, full of narrative surprises.

On that issue of dualism, I really think a lot of people need to try to understand what my friend Fr. Richard Rohr is saying about nondual thinking. In many ways, his new book "The Naked Now" and mine should be read together.

Aren't there any streams in Christian history where the gospel you describe in ANKoC can be found?

Absolutely! I think it's everywhere to some degree, because the gospels were read in every church service through most of history - one of the great strengths of our liturgical churches, by the way. But I think it shines out very brightly in many beautiful resurgences, but none of them perfect or pristine (I just don't think in those terms when I think of creatures ... only the Creator is light in whom there is no darkness at all, and even more amazing, that light overcomes darkness!). I would point to Benedict, to the Celts, to St. Francis and the communities that he inspired, to the Anabaptists, to the Quakers, to the early Methodists and earliest Pentecostals, and to many others. But again, none of these groups are perfect or ideal, and the others aren't terrible and fallen. I don't buy into that unfallen/fallen dualism at all. We're all in this together.

What happened to a "generous orthodoxy"?

I guess it must have seemed that I was being ungenerous to versions of Christianity that became violent in the Roman way? There I would want to echo Paul - the problem isn't flesh and blood people; the problem is a "spirit" in the Walter Wink sense, a spirit that, as Jesus said, motivates people to kill other people and think they're doing God a service. And I feel I need to be very direct when addressing that spirit, because it's still around, and frankly, I think if it were to express itself in today's world as it did in, say, racism or apartheid or anti-semitism or colonialism or crusades or inquisitions in the past, its beachhead would be in two places, first in the nation today that is most like Rome in the ancient world, and second, in the networks today that are most like the Zealots in the ancient world.

If you really do think this is a wholly new rediscovery, isn't it a little bit arrogant to claim that we're the first ones to have been able to figure it out?

Of course that would be arrogant. But I never say anything like that. If there is a wholly new discovery, it's the revelation of God that comes through Jesus. That's been there all along, and it's up to us in every generation to receive that revelation and take in all of it we can. I'm sure I've only imbibed the tiniest fraction of it, so I would never ever claim to have "figured it out!" I do echo John Robinson's words, that the Lord always has more truth and light to show forth from his holy word. And I do believe that Jesus was right when he said that there are things that his disciples at any moment can't bear to hear, so the Holy Spirit brings us along as we're ready and able to learn - not just as individuals, but as churches, denominations, nations, civilizations. So I just want to be listening to what the Spirit is telling us now, just as our ancestors sought to hear what the Spirit was telling them then.

I try to make this clear in the book again and again - I'm not in any way saying we've arrived. Sheesh, that would be arrogant! (Although, ironically, those who are claiming that I say this seem in some ways to be saying it themselves - as in, "He hasn't arrived; We arrived a long time ago!") Again, we've got to get beyond that dualism that wants to say "we're right, they were wrong; we've arrived, they haven't." I try to model a different way of seeing things in the book, but it's notoriously hard to break old habits, both for me and for my readers, I'm sure. I try to make clear: my metaphor isn't dualistic statements/debates/states, but rather narrative questions/conversations/quests. So just because we're trying to get something through our heads now ... that doesn't mean we have any right to feel superior, that we're now in the "good" state and others are in the "bad" state. We wouldn't be getting what we're getting now unless our ancestors got what they got before us. We wouldn't be doing calculus if they hadn't created algebra. We wouldn't be doing Einstein if they hadn't done Newton. It's not us better-than them, but us because of them, us and them on a common quest across not only generations but millennia. It's not better and worse, good and bad.

And more importantly, wouldn't that imply a rather pessimistic view of the Holy Spirit and her work of guiding the church throughout the past 20 centuries?

I hope what I've just said addresses that. I'm not denying for a minute that the Holy Spirit was at work. I see the Spirit at work everywhere; today I'm listening, maybe tomorrow I won't be, which is why we all need to pay attention to our hearts, our receptivity, our repentance. This is so much about spirituality and heart, not just intellect and argument.

But I don't want to miss the importance of your question, so let's take the story of slavery, which I address in Chapter 7. Back in the 19th century, people could have said the same thing to the abolitionists. "Are you denying that the Holy Spirit has been at work in us all these centuries when we have accepted slavery as normative? Aren't you being pessimistic about the Holy Spirit? And arrogant too?" And of course, pro-slavery advocates did say exactly these things. For me the key is stepping out of the whole dualistic mindset that sees one group as perpetually right and another group as hopelessly wrong. I just don't see it that way. This also relates to the brief section where I talk about movements and institutions near the end of the book. I don't think that God is in movements and not in institutions, or the reverse. I think God is in both ... and God is trying to get each to contribute and listen to the other without becoming the other.

If you're not actually saying that, then what would be a better way to understand your own view of church history?

To me, it's a story of growth. But I think we'll get deeper into that in your question about evolution. For now, try this: what if the church sits in relation to God the way science sits in relation to the physical universe. Both are communities. Both are interacting with their appropriate subject. But are making their very best observations at any given moment. Both are filled with statement and counterstatement, theory and countertheory. And both are making painstaking progress over time. There are both breakthroughs and setbacks, advances and retreats. It's not smooth and neat or predestined. There are some rabbit trails and dead ends. Later forms don't mock their ancestors, but neither do they feel afraid to move beyond the assumptions of their ancestors to ask new questions and sometimes overturn old theories. Nobody says (today at least) that Einstein was unorthodox because he dared to see the world outside the lenses given him by Sir Isaac Newton. They see Einstein as the successor to Newton, as standing on his shoulders, so to speak. So I see church history as a kind of parallel to scientific history ... just as reality is always there for science to engage with, the Spirit of God is always present for us to engage with. And just as science can get so involved with its theories or internal politics or funding squabbles or pursuit of wealth that is sometimes loses its way, so can we. But reality - and God - are always waiting for us to return to, to engage with, to learn from, to be curious about. How does that work? (I wish I would have included something like this in the book, now that I think about it ...) No analogy is perfect, of course ...

By the way, this analogy would provide another reason why the Bible and the spiritual life are so important to me, which is one of the things that my most liberal friends might still see as conservative and evangelical. If stones and light and water and organisms are the realities that scientists engage with, it seems to me that the Scriptures and life in the presence of God are the realities that we Christians engage with. And that's why I appreciated in your review that you mentioned how the book has some engagement with Scripture in each question. I was shocked to see some of the commenters on the blogs completely ignore that, and actually claim that there was no Scriptural engagement. I guess we all see what we want to see, and find it hard to see what we don't want to see. I really hope that readers will take my engagement with Scripture seriously - grappling with Jonah, Job, John, Romans, Acts, Genesis, etc.

Thanks Brian. I'll be posting Part II tomorrow.

Book Review: McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity

2010-02-25T10:14:00.007-06:00

Brian McLaren doesn't get around to explaining his underlying motivations for writing this book until the very last chapter.* There he explains that while touring a few years ago for his Everything Must Change conferences, he realized that he couldn't get the crowd to discuss the things he was really passionate about (i.e. the four global crises he addresses in EMC) because all people wanted to talk about were his controversial theological ideas. As he put it:

"Gradually I realized that my conversation partners simply couldn't address life-and-death issues like poverty, the planet, and peace from within the conventional paradigms they inherited... Those inherited paradigms couldn't simply be outflanked; they needed to be confronted, questioned, and opened up, which then shaped the direction this book has taken."

In other words, A New Kind of Christianity is Brian's attempt to lay it all out there, to come clean about where he stands on all kinds of controversial topics so that, once he's done, those who are still listening can get on with addressing more important issues along with him. And indeed, this book is a remarkably clear exposition on where Brian stands on everything from the authority of scripture to homosexuality to religious pluralism, and a whole host of other controversial questions. Never again will critics be able to accuse Brian of dodging hard questions or refusing to be pinned down. With this book Brian lays all his cards on the table.

Ostensibly the book addresses 10 big questions:

1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
2. How should the Bible be understood?
3. Is God violent?
4. Who is Jesus and why is he important?
5. What is the gospel?
6. What do we do about church?
7. Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
8. Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
9. How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?
10. How can we translate our quest into action?

Now I know a number of commentators have said that while they like Brian's questions, they are no longer comfortable with his answers, and while that is perfectly fine (as I've said many times, this emerging conversation was never about having to agree with any particular author or leader) let me say right up front that I am not among them. For those of us who have been tracking with Brian this whole time, what he says in this book really comes as no surprise and really isn't even all that shocking. For the most part what Brian outlines here is pretty much where I am at in my own theology as well.

Throughout the book Brian frames his responses to each of these questions around an overarching critique of what he calls the "Greco-Roman six-line narrative." By this he means a very pervasive view of Christianity which sees the whole story in terms of 1) Edenic Perfection - 2) Fall - 3) Condemnation - 4) Salvation - 5) Heaven for Believers - and 6) Hell and Damnation (i.e. "eternal conscious torment") for Unbelievers. According to Brian, this narrative is not actually biblical, but has crept into Christianity through the influence of Neo-Platonic philosophy and Roman Imperialism. Now I know some reviewers have critiqued Brian for wrongly laying this all at the feet of Plato, and others have pointed out that what Brian is actually critiquing is the Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative common to most Reformed theologies, and that this is significantly different than Platonism, and I think they both have a good point. As an aspiring church historian, and one who has some background in historical philosophy, I agree that Brian's account is grossly over-simplified. Though in his defense I would point out that a) in broad strokes it's not wrong, and Brian does actually acknowledge the complexity (see for instance his footnotes to chapter 4); and b) that for a book like this, it's simply not possible for Brian to get into all the nuances. Brian is trying to suggest where some of these ideas might have originated, not give a detailed account of the history of Christian theology. In so doing he makes the book more accessible to the average reader, but necessarily reduces some complexities.

However, I would also argue that ultimately it doesn't matter if Brian inaccurately labels this six-line narrative as "Greco-Roman", or if he oversimplifies the account of where it came from. Regardless, the reality is that this narrative exists, is quite common within many conventional forms of Christianity both today and throughout church history, and, as Brian argues, is not necessarily the most natural way of understanding the biblical narrative once we replace our conventional theological lenses for more historically authentic Hebraic ones (though I wouldn't go so far as to say the six-line narrative is "unbiblical," and I'm not sure Brian would either - it's all about what set of lenses you're using to interpret it). When we use these lenses, Brian suggests, we will begin to see the narrative as being less about an ontological fall from a state of perfection to a state of corruption, and more about a continually unfolding narrative in which an originally good creation (and note that "good" is different than "perfect") progressively and tragically decends into evil and systems of increasing complexity and injustice, while God continues to create opportunities for goodness and redemption to ultimately prevail. Having gone back to the Bible with these same set of lenses myself in recent years, and having found much the same thing, I have to say that I think Brian is on the right track.

Using this "new" foundation, Brian then tackles the rest of his questions. While I don't have the time to go into detail on each of them, just to summarize, Brian suggests 2) that we should read the Bible not as a legal constitution but as a community library; 3) that the violence of God in the Bible should be understood as earlier and insufficent understandings of God in a continually evolving and deepening revelation of God's character which ultimately culminates in the Divine Incarnation in Jesus, through whom we need to completely rethink our view of God; 4) that Jesus himself is the bringer of "a new Genesis, a new Exodus, and a new kingdom come"; 5) that the gospel is all about this new kingdom - a kingdom of peace, justice, and inclusive love; 6) that churches, in all their denominational diversities, should strive to become schools for learning how to practice Christlike love and which embody and communicate the good news of the kingdom; 7) that reading the Bible in the "new" ways he suggests (i.e. not as a legal constitution) and apart from the "Greco-Roman" narrative will lead us to stop condmening gays and lesbians, and help us think more maturely about a whole host of pressing issues regarding human sexuality; 8) that our eschatology should not be about an impending "end of the world", but about a continually unfolding creation and ever expanding kingdom of peace and liberation; 9) that within this kingdom we can welcome the religiously "other" without condemning or trying to assimiliate them, while still holding true to our own commitment to Jesus and offering Jesus and his kingdom to others as a free and gracious gift; and 10) that our quest for a new kind of Christianity needs to lead us beyond mere ideas into practical action in the world towards the goal of healing, liberation, unity, and ubuntu - an African word that means something like "one-another-ness, interconnectedness, joined-in-the-common-good-ness, and profound commitment to the well-being of all."

What pleasantly surprise me the most is how Brian deliberately based his case for each of these positions on a fairly in-depth and well-supported reading of key biblical passages. He wrestles with Genesis, Job, Revelation, John, Romans, and many other passages. He doesn't shy away from the "hammer" passages either (John 14:6 for instance) that his critics often use to try and nail him as a heretic, but instead dives right in and offers compelling alternative readings of them. In other words, while critics might disagree with his interpretations, no one can justifiably accuse Brian's views of being "unbiblical". And interestingly, few of the critical reviews I have read so far - and they are legion - have even bothered to take on Brian's use of scripture. They are content to critique Brian's views as "different" from their versions of Christian orthodoxy (and therefore automatically "wrong") but fail to address the biblical passages that undergird them.

Indeed, this accusation of un-orthodoxy is by far the most common response among critical reviewers. They rightly ascertain that Brian's version of the biblical narrative and the gospel, his view of scripture, and his opinions on homosexuality and religious pluralism are significantly different than most traditional evangelical views, and for most of these bloggers, stating that much is simply enough. To say that he is different is synonymous with saying his views are not "Christian" (and some do say explicitly that). They claim that Brian is light-years off the map of "historic Christian Orthodoxy", and that his views are "a repudiation of the church’s understanding of God and the gospel". But of course all this simply begs the question. Brian admits up front that he is offering a different take on the biblical narrative (it's right there in the title "A New Kind of Christianity"), but the question is not whether it is different, but whether it is right. Are Brian's proposals a better way of understanding the biblical narrative and the message of Jesus or not? Frankly I haven't found many critics who have bothered to engage Brian on that question at all.

I also find these accusations fairly ironic in light of my own recent experiences attending a moderate-to-liberal mainline Presbyterian seminary. Yes, by evangelical standards, Brian is pretty far off the map. However, by mainline Protestant standards, Brian barely even registers as a "liberal" at all. After all, Brian still wholeheartedly affirms the ancient creeds, which of course means he's a Trinitarian and believes in the divinity and bodily Resurrection of Christ, not to mention a whole lot of other beliefs that would fall under the category of "historic orthodox Christian faith". For instance, elsewhere Brian has affirmed that:

"I certainly believe in the need for saving faith, for forgiveness, for hope beyond death, for the pursuit of orthodox articulations of belief, for overcoming the damning effects of sin, for rejecting wholeheartedly the idea that we can be saved by our own efforts or through religion, and so on."

Frankly, compared to some of the liberal Christian theologies I have encountered here at seminary, Brian is still rather conservative. And in fact, what he is saying is not entirely new either. It has deep resonances with many different streams of Christianity throughout the history of the church, from the mainline liberal/social gospel tradition, to Anabaptists, the monastics, Eastern Orthodoxy, and many of the early Church Fathers and Mothers, not to mention non-Western and Third World post-colonial theologians, among many others. Indeed, one of the questions I have for Brian is whether he recognizes this fact, and in what prior streams he himself sees examples of his "new" kind of Christiany in, since to be honest, too often in the book it did feel like Brian was falling into the common Protestant trap of writing off the whole of Christian history since Constantine and acting like we've only just now rediscovered what it's really about. And while I do think there is a continual unfolding of truth through the Spirit, which means the gospel in our time is never going to look exactly like it has in the past, at the same time, I don't think it's a good idea to imply that the Spirit has not been active at all until she got to us. Not that I think Brian actually believes that, but it came across that way more than a few times in what he wrote. As a historian, I'd like him to be a bit more careful with that sort of thing.

Another thing that I'd have liked Brian to be a bit more careful about is the way he talks about those who disagree with him. At times in the book it came across as if he was painting with a very broad brush and rather condescendingly implying that anyone who disagreed with him were fundamentalists or fear-based, or reacting out of their vested interests (in jobs, positions of authority, etc.) Of course this has been a frequent criticism from a number of critical bloggers, and Brian has actually taken the time to respond to it and clarify his intent. As I suspected, he did not intend to paint with a broad brush at all, and really was only talking about those of his critics who do in fact fit his description of hateful, fear-based fundies, but that he certainly didn't mean to imply that this is everyone who happens to disagree with him. Nonetheless I wish Brian would have been a little more careful about this and offered a few more qualifiers to explain who and what he was actually talking about. As it was, I fear he may have unnecessarily alienated a good number of readers who felt he was unjustly caricaturing them or too quickly dismissing their own deep convictions.

There are probably a few other points I would quibble with as well in the book, but they would just be nit-picky, and areas that I'd rather converse about than critique (his evolutionary views of religion and social progress for instance). The bottom line for me however, as I said before, is that I still like where Brian is going and the responses he gives to these ten questions. I don't think he has given a definitive last word on any of it, nor (contrary to what some are assuming or perhaps hoping for) is he drawing any sort of line in the sand and forcing other "emergent" folks like myself to necessarily agree or disagree with him on any of it. Yes, some of us will agree with Brian and others will have reservations, but those who think it's all about whether we agree or disagree with Brian are simply misunderstanding the fundamental nature of the emerging conversation. Brian is simply offering more food for thought, fodder for conversation, and an invitation to continue the journey with him regardless of whether or not we are entirely on the same page. I for one am happy to go with him.

*Disclaimer: In the interest of putting any potential biases up front, I should say that 1) I received a free copy of this book to review for this blog. That fact, however, has not bearing whatsoever on my opinion of it one way or another. Honestly if you think a $25 book is enough to make me sell-out my deepest convictions, what are you even doing reading my blog? ;) And 2) Brian is a personal friend. I know him. He knows me. We've hung out. That potentially does affect my opinion of this book, though hopefully only in the sense that I am thereby inclined to read it more charitably and carefully, and in that I have more direct experience and a larger degree of context with which to interpret what he says, and thus can perhaps achieve a greater degree of clarity about what I think he really means.

Why I'm NOT Leaving Emergent

2010-02-17T23:11:00.005-06:00

Though all the navel-gazing us emergents tend to engage in can get tiresome after a while (especially for those of us doing the gazing), given all the recent posts about folks wanting to distance themselves from emerging Christianity (and/or Emergent Village) for one reason or another, I thought it might actually be helpful for someone to reaffirm why they are NOT leaving, lest the scores of newcomers who are just now joining the conversation start to worry that they missed the party and no one wants to hang out with them anymore. (Because in my position as one of the EV Cohorts Coordinators, I can honestly say that I get a good half-dozen requests from folks still interested in emerging Christianity and wanting to start a new local expression of it for every "I'm leaving emergent" post out there.)

So here's why I'm NOT leaving emergent:

1. I don't really think the theology of guys like Brian or Doug or Tony (or Danielle or Phyllis or Julie) or whoever is all that radical, "unorthodox," or shocking. In fact, I still pretty much agree with most of it. Not all of it of course (it'd be pretty strange to find someone with whom I agree on anything 100%) but enough that I don't feel the need to post scathing theological treatises accusing anyone of heresy. Bottom line, I like the directions the conversation has been going and I'm not scared off by the questions some folks have been asking or the answers some folks have been giving. A lot of it is pretty much where I'm at too. So I'm more than happy to remain a part of this conversation.

(I should also point out that by the standards of contemporary liberal theology, what most emergent writers are doing is still very, very traditional by comparison - and still historically "orthodox" in a broad sense - maybe not strictly Augustinian anymore in some cases, but not unorthodox. As I've discovered during my time at a moderate to liberal mainline seminary, being on the progressive end of emergent theology barely even makes me a liberal Christian here.)

2. It's not about theological agreement anyway. Even if I did have major disagreements with any of the major voices in the conversation, what I like about the emerging church is that I could just speak up and say so without having to break relationships. There are no requirements that any of us agree on any particular point of theology in order to be in relationship with one another. That is the whole point - the EC intends to be an open and safe space for all perspectives, with the one requirement that you be willing and able to agree to disagree and continue to respect and love one another even when you do (or at least try to - none of us are perfect). It's because of this openness to diverse viewpoints and differing theologies that I am still happy to remain emergent.

3. There are good people here. Like I said, the emerging church is defined not by agreement, but by relationships, and we've found some good ones here. People who are on a similar journey to us, even if we're not all at the same place along the way all the time. We discovered friends, acquaintances, and even kindred spirits along this journey - people like Sarah and Ryan, Karen, Steve, Makeesha, Mike, April, Jen, Rick & Leslie, Bob & Lisa, Jeff, Tony, Andrew, Kristine, Fred, Kevin, Nanette, Scot, Dave, Spencer, Rich & Rose, Jim, Rebecca, Rachel, Mark, Matt, Erin, Fran, Brian, Jimi, etc... etc..., and still more whom I only know through avatars or emails - and I see no good reason to just turn my back on these relationships, no matter how many others think the conversation is over or has gotten too heretical or whatever.

4. It's about the Kingdom of God. All the talk, all the blogs, all the books, all the conferences are just a motivational kick in the pants to get us out there engaging in mission for the good of the world on behalf of the Kingdom. It was the emerging church that introduced me to the gospel of the kingdom - to the vision of God's reign of compassion and justice and peacemaking and joy becoming a reality in this world around us. And that's a passion that I'm not about to back away from or give up on. Of course I'm not saying that the emerging church is the only place where this kingdom vision is found, but it's where I've found it, and what the movement is still primarily about for me. I don't want to leave this kingdom-movement, if anything I want to see even more people catch the vision and get on board with it. There's work to be done, and we're wasting too much time arguing over whose theology is more orthodox or who is willing to wear what label anymore.

5. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are still people who are just stumbling upon the emerging church conversation for the first time every day. As part of the EV Cohorts Team, I get to interact with many of these people on a regular basis, and it would be a real shame if those of us who have been around the conversation for a long time now and maybe are a little tired of going over the same ground one more time, just decided to pack it up and leave when there are people out there who need our help and a listening ear - who need to know, as Spencer Burke is fond of saying, that they're not the only crazy ones out there.

The reality is that there are still A LOT of people out there who have been burned by the church, by destructive and oppressive forms of faith, or who simply have questions about faith that they're not allowed to express in the contexts they are in - and the emerging church is still a safe haven for many of these folks to find the freedom to ask their questions and be in process without judgment or exclusion. The reasons the emerging church started in the first place - i.e. the flaws and dysfunctions of conventional Christianity - haven't yet disappeared, so why should the emerging church disappear? Until the church stops spiritually abusing people or denying them the freedom to fully explore their doubts and other promptings from the Spirit, there will always be a need for a safe space, and thus I will remain here so that I can be one of the ones to offer it to them.

Anyhow, there are other reasons too, I'm sure, but this is what comes to mind off the top of my head. Thus, for all these reasons and more, I am NOT leaving the emerging Christian conversation. If anything, I intend to continue my journey "futher up and further in." Anyone who wants to is welcome to join me.

Jon Stewart on the SOTU

2010-01-29T10:07:00.003-06:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Speech Therapy

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

I loved Jon Stewart's summary of the SOTU. Maybe it was insulting or a bit of a downer for the President to focus so much on the negatives, but personally I'm glad the he used the opportunity to give a big F-U to everyone who has stood in the way of actually substantially addressing the problems we face as a nation (including both Republicans and Democrats, the media, big business, and even himself), because frankly that's how a lot of us are feeling about it all too. The issues are too serious to keep up all this partisan/media crap. Enough with tea parties and false accusations and empty rhetoric and obstructionism - we've got problems to solve. Let's get on with it.

We got spanked the other night, and we needed it.

Help Haiti

2010-01-13T14:28:00.002-06:00

I'm sure most of you know by now about the massive and devastating earthquake that struck the impoverished nation of Haiti yesterday evening. I was at the gym and saw it on CNN minutes after it happened. Some of you may also remember that I have personal connections in Haiti, and have gone there in the past to help build a school and serve the people of a small village called Marfranc, about 100 miles west of the epicenter of the quake. While I'm sure we are all heartbroken by the tragedies going on in Haiti right now, it becomes even more "real" to me since I can put faces and names to the people affected by it. In the village where my friends live and work many homes have been destroyed - no word yet on local deaths and injuries there in Marfranc, though the people I know in particular are okay, as are their family members in the capital. Haitian officials estimate the total number of casualties will be in the hundreds of thousands (not unbelievable, considering that most of the capital city of Port-au-Prince just literally collapsed.)

Dozens of aid organizations, both religious and non-religious, governments and NGOs, have already sprung into action, and on behalf of my friends and the beautiful and desperate people of Haiti I urge you to join in and offer help as well in any way that you can, and through whichever organization you most prefer. (CNN has a good list of charitable options.) Personally I will be giving to the organization of which I have been a part that serves there in Marfranc, New Life for Haiti. NLFH focuses on building schools and clinics, educational sponsorships for children, and agricultural development. While I honestly don't care which organization you send your support through (just do something!), I will say that one of the huge advantages of New Life for Haiti is that it is entirely volunteer run, so 98% of all funds will go directly to aid and development in Marfranc and the surrounding river valley, no organizational overhead or governmental middle-men to worry about. The plan right now, according to my friend Fran Leeman who heads the NLFH, is to put all donations into helping the people of Marfranc rebuild their homes. As Fran put it:

Our organization, New Life for Haiti, is accepting donations to buy cement to help rebuild homes in Haiti. I can guarantee you that despite all the various aid from governments that will flow into Haiti in the weeks ahead, homes will not be rebuilt. The immediate aid will be medical, clearing rubble from roads, and getting Port au Prince's already crumbling infrastructure (roads, electric, water) operable. All these are necessary, but for our part as a small organization, we are are going to look beyond the next few weeks to rebuilding homes in the area where we work. You can donate to buy cement that will rebuild a home at http://newlifeforhaiti.org. If you are part of a church or other community, please ask them to take a special offering for Haiti relief. There are many good organizations those funds can be given to. If you would like to send it our way, we will use 100 percent of it well.

At any rate, once again, I don't care which organization you send support through - just choose the one that best fits your own ideals and personal concerns - but please, please, do something. The extreme poverty Haitians lived in every day was already unimaginable, even before the quake. I can't even get my head around what they must be going through now. And this isn't just some place on the other side of the world (as if that should matter). Haiti is less than an hour and a half flight from Miami. They're right next door.

Religionless Christianity and the Emerging Church

2009-12-22T22:37:00.005-06:00

The following is a paper I recently for a class on Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Religionless Christianity and the Emerging Church

Brian McLaren, one of the key influencers of the emerging church, recently responded to a seminary student’s query regarding whether Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thoughts on religionless Christianity are being worked out in that movement. He said:

“As you know, "the emerging church movement" is very diverse and maybe more of a conversation than a movement, so I'm quite certain many folks associated with things emerging wouldn't know much about Bonhoeffer, and others of us would be deeply interested in him and in this intriguing concept, and would see ourselves as trying to work it out in practice.”

McLaren’s reply speaks firstly to the fact that the emerging church is not just a singular, easily definable movement that would universally embrace a concept like “religionless Christianity.” However McLaren also suggests that there are streams of the emerging conversation that would be interested in this. I am interested in McLaren’s response here, since this seminarian’s question is the same as my own. I want to know both what Bonhoeffer likely meant by the phrase “religionless Christianity,” and also whether we can perhaps see an example of it being worked out within some elements of the emerging church.

What is Religionless Christianity?

This term, “religionless Christianity” is one of Bonhoeffer’s most provocative and enigmatic ideas, coming, as it does, in the prison letters written to his friend Eberhard Bethge, shortly before his execution by the Nazis. It first occurs in a letter dated April 30th, 1944, where Bonhoeffer writes:

“What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today… We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more… if therefore man becomes radically religionless what does that mean for ‘Christianity’?… How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? Are there religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity – and even this garment has looked very different at times – then what is a religionless Christianity?” (Bonhoeffer 1971, 279-280)

Bonhoeffer goes on to develop some of his own answers to these questions in his subsequent letters, and yet much of his thought on the matter remains skeletal at best. The crux of his discussion seems to hinge on three key terms: “religionlessness” or what he prefers to call the “world coming of age,” “religion” itself, and finally his “non-religious interpretation of Christian doctrine.” Much has been made of these terms over the past sixty years, and many writers tend to project their own ideas onto Bonhoeffer without carefully considering what he actually meant. Thus, in order to avoid falling into this trap myself, I thought it would be prudent to turn to the source closest to Bonhoeffer, namely Bethge, to see what he understood these terms to mean in their original context.

World Come of Age

The “world coming of age” is Bonhoeffer’s preferred term for what we would call the general trend of “secularization” in Western cultures over the past 500+ years. According to Bonhoeffer, the world no longer needs the “God hypothesis” to help us make sense of morality, politics, science, psychology, etc. (360) God, as a metaphysical concept that helps us bridge the gaps in those areas where human reason breaks down, has been increasingly pushed to the margins and made irrelevant and superfluous. For Bonhoeffer the point here is not merely blind faith in human “progress,” but rather “autonomy.” Humanity is “growing up” and becoming responsible, rational, autonomous “adults” who can think and judge for ourselves without the crutch of religion to fill in the gaps. (Bethge 1968, 98)

What is truly unique in Bonhoeffer’s thought, however, is that, in contrast to most other Christian thinkers, he sees secularization as a good thing – indeed as a culmination of the Christian worldview. (Bethge 1967, 77) As Bonhoeffer himself puts it, “Our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him… Before God and with God we live without God.” (Bonhoeffer, 360) For Bonhoeffer this coming of age meant liberation from all the idolatries of “religion,” and a restoration of God to the center of life, rather than its margins.

Religion

What then did Bonhoeffer mean by “religion?” For Bonhoeffer “religion” is a negative term, something that Christianity needs to move beyond, and while his use of it is nebulous and hard to pin down, (Wustenberg 1998, 29) Bethge indentifies five characteristics of religion that emerge from Bonhoeffer’s discussion in his Letters. First, religion is individualistic. According to Bonhoeffer, religion moves God from the world into the “personal” and “inner” and “private” sphere, (Bonhoeffer, 344) causing the religious person to become so preoccupied with their own interior states that they neglect caring for others. (Jenkins 1962, 34)

Second, religion is metaphysical, by which Bonhoeffer is referring to the elaborate conceptual framework developed in conjunction with both Greek philosophy and later with nineteenth century idealism by which God is described and defined as something separate and above and apart from this world. Bonhoeffer claims that this framework now primarily serves to insulate the believer from the truly revolutionary and this-worldly message of the gospel. (Bethge 1968, 54-55)

Third, religion is provincial. In a secular world, religion is increasingly pushed to the margins of life and society, called on occasionally for vestigial ceremonial functions – holidays and the like, but otherwise only occupying an ever diminishing sphere of human existence. (Bethge 1967, 79)

Fourth, religion is the deus ex machina. God is called in only when human reason or resources reach their limit. God becomes a god-of-the-gaps, a solution to life’s problems and turned to only out of weakness or need. However, as Bonhoeffer points out, this can only go on until humans push the boundaries of their limitations out a little further, making God that much more unnecessary and superfluous. (Bonhoeffer, 281-82)

Finally, religion creates a privileged class of insiders who see themselves as uniquely blessed by God and thereby set themselves over and against any outsiders – the reprobate, unbelievers, etc. This exclusivism gets expressed in “the patronizing, feudalistic character of Christian institutions and creeds [which] had transformed the freeing majesty of the powerless servanthood of Christ into power-structures of sterilizing dependencies.” (Bethge 1968, 56)

Non-religious Interpretation of Christian Doctrines

If Bethge is right about Bonhoeffer’s description of “religion”, then a “non-religious” Christianity would be non-individualistic, non-metaphysical, non-provincial, non-deus ex machina, and non-privileged. What it would be in a positive sense, on the other hand, is more difficult to define, especially since Bonhoeffer didn’t live long enough to fully flesh this out. A few things, however, can be gleaned from his letters. For instance, he talks about wanting to speak of God “not on the boundaries but at the centre, not in weakness but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man’s life and goodness.” (Bonhoeffer, 282) In other words, Bonhoeffer wanted to move beyond a provincial, god-of-the-gaps, to a God who was to be found in all aspects of life, whether overtly “religious” or not. Rather than the metaphysically transcendent God who is “beyond” this world, Bonhoeffer wanted to locate God’s transcendence in his very presence in this world and especially in the human other. (381-82)

Finding God in the midst of life also means, however, that God is present in our weaknesses and sufferings. Bonhoeffer’s non-religious interpretation is a theologia crucis insofar as the God who is found in the totality of life is also found on the cross. (Bethge 1967, 81) It is only in God’s powerlessness and suffering, not in omnipotence or control, that God can help us.

This leads to the third aspect of Bonhoeffer’s non-religious interpretation, which is its Christological focus on Jesus as the “man for others” through his participation in our humanity in all our limitations and weakness. This lifts Jesus out of a merely out of a merely speculative or metaphysical realm and places him squarely in an ethical, existential and theological context. (Bethge 1968, 69) It also defines our own relation to God – we are to live “a new life in ‘existence for others,’ through participation in the being of Jesus,” (Bonhoeffer, 381) both individually and communally. As Bonhoeffer says, “The church is the church only when it exists for others…The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.” (382-83)

What Religionless Christianity Is Not

Given some of the incorrect ways the term “religionless Christianity has since been appropriated by others, it is also important to say what it is not. First, it is not pure secularism that rejects Christian belief altogether. As Bethge points out, Bonhoeffer’s non-religious interpretation was always a Christological interpretation, and “religionlessness” for him does not mean mere atheism, but a turning from a religion on the margins of life to Christ who is with and for us in the center of life.

Similarly, Bonhoeffer is not rejecting theology or doctrine, nor trying to replace these with a purely ethical Christianity. Instead, he is trying to reformulate Christian doctrine in a way that will be relevant for a world that has moved beyond the need for “religion.” (Lehmann 1968, 27-35)

Nor is Bonhoeffer merely rejecting the institution of church. While he does offer critiques of a church which is supported by and in collusion with the power of the State, the worship and sacraments of the church are still, as always, central for him. (Bethge 1967, 82) In all of this, then, Bonhoeffer is not merely offering a facile critique of Christian worship, institutions, or theology, but is instead presenting a far more thorough rethinking and reformulation of all of these for our secular world.

Is the Emerging Church “Religionless Christianty”?

As McLaren suggested, there may be elements of the contemporary emerging movement engaged in this same kind of rethinking and reformulation that Bonhoeffer pointed to. But, to begin with, what exactly is this “emerging church”? Tony Jones, former National Coordinator for Emergent Village, defines it as “The specifically new forms of church life rising from the modern, American church of the twentieth century.” (Jones 2008, xix) He goes on to describe the emerging church as a mash-up of new kinds of faith communities and adventurous theology that seeks to engage with postmodern philosophy and culture and move beyond the weaknesses of both mainline and evangelical Christianity. (xviii-xix) As McLaren pointed out however, this means that the emerging church is not simply one thing, but a conversation consisting of many different streams depending on which aspects of contemporary Christianity are brought up for re-examination, whether worship practices, institutional structures, or theology. While often discreet, these streams do overlap, and indeed, as Phyllis Tickle has pointed out, the emerging church could also be called the converging church, inasmuch as it tends to embrace and recombine the many diverse traditions of Christianity in new ways. Thus, for instance, it is not uncommon to find charismatic Anglicans, Baptist Taize services, evangelicals for social justice, and Presbyterians holding jazz vesper services. As Tickle puts it, a new center is forming as Christians move beyond their former divisions to embrace more diverse expressions of the faith. (Tickle 2008, 123-144)

This convergence also points to the fact that the emerging church is not simply a new splinter group. Rather, it is a form of renewal that is happening at the outer edges of all segments of the Christian family, across denominations and among non-affiliated Christians, both inside and outside existing institutional structures. In fact, speaking of an emerging “church” may be misleading in this regard. It is perhaps more accurate to talk about emerging Christianity rather than a distinct emerging church.

For the purposes of this paper, then, I will focus on only the particular stream of emerging Christianity that seems most likely to be moving in the direction of Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity. For instance, McLaren points to Peter Rollins, a philosopher and emerging leader from Northern Ireland, as one example of someone who is explicitly trying to fill in and live out Bonhoeffer’s vision. Indeed, Rollins frequently cites Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity as a precursor to the kind of postmodern, emergent theology he himself is working on, (Rollins 2008, 102-104 and 2009, 62-64) and while he asserts that “other thinkers have done the work that Bonhoeffer signaled and hinted at,” Bonhoeffer is nonetheless an important transitional thinker who still has a prophetic voice for today. I propose that emerging thinkers like McLaren and Rollins, along with those influenced by them, reflect Bonhoeffer’s vision in at least three regards: theology, mission, and community.

Theology

Throughout his books Rollins develops an “a/theistic” theology where one is always in the position of disbelieving what they believe because God is always beyond what our theological propositions and metaphysical concepts can capture. (2006, 25-30) This is essentially the same direction Bonhoeffer is moving with his non-metaphysical Christianity. Similarly, Rollins, like Bonhoeffer, also locates God’s transcendence not in distance or remoteness or the unknown, but in immanence, in what Rollins calls “hyper-presence.” (23-25) Along with Bonhoeffer, Rollins affirms that God is found not at the margins of life, but at the center. The consequence of this for Rollins, as with Bonhoeffer, is that God’s presence and “power” is located in the weakness and suffering of Jesus. In this regard Rollins also moves us beyond provincial, deus ex machina religion, to a God who truly with and for us.

Mission

Emerging leaders like Rollins are not simply redefining our conception of God, they have also been speaking to how this conception informs the purpose of the church. If there is any term which unites almost all the various streams of the emerging conversation it is “missional,” which points to the idea that the church exists within the world for the sake of the world, not merely for its own sake. As McLaren puts it, “missional faith asserts that Jesus came to preach the good news of the kingdom of God to everyone… the gospel brings blessing to all, adherents and non-adherents alike.” (McLaren 2004, 110-111) This Christ-centered, missional approach directly parallels Bonhoeffer’s Christological vision of a non-privileged Christianity, a church that exists “for others” just as Jesus was the “man for others.”

Community

Emerging Christianity goes beyond simply talking about these ideas however. While Bonhoeffer opened the door to the possibility of a religionless Christianity, a whole host of emerging faith communities are currently engaged in trying to actually live it out. As Rollins asserts, “I believe that we are beginning to witness the development of dynamic faith collectives which Bonhoeffer would have recognised as concrete manifestations of his lonely prison thoughts.” Rollins specifically mentions a handful of these by name, including his own Ikon community in Belfast. I could also personally list scores of other emerging faith communities that, in my opinion, are, to lesser or greater degrees, expressions of Bonhoeffer’s “Religionless Christianity”. These communities are focused on exploring 1) new post-religious theological directions, 2) a missional vision, and 3) authentic, inclusive life-together. While emerging Christianity is certainly too diverse to say that these characteristics are universally found among all emerging churches, these particular streams of it at least are legitimately recognizable as expressions of Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity.

_____________________________________

Works Cited & Consulted

Bonhoeffer Sources

Barth, Karl. “From a Letter to Superintendent Herrenbruck.” In World Come of Age, ed. Ronald Gregor Smith. 89-92. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967.

Bethge, Eberhard. “Bonhoeffer’s Christology and His ‘Religionless Christianity’.” In Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, ed. Peter Vorkink. 46-72. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.

—. “The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Theology.” In World Come of Age, ed. Ronald Gregor Smith. 22-88. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967.

—. “Turning Points in Bonhoeffer’s Life and Thought.” In Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, ed. Peter Vorkink. 46-72. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters & Papers from Prison. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971.

Greggs, Tom. “Religionless Christianity in a complexly religious and secular world: Thinking through and beyond Bonhoeffer.” In Religion, Religionlessness and Contemporary Western Culture, eds. Stephen Plant and Ralf K. Wustenberg. 111-125. Franfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008.

Jenkins, Daniel. Beyond Religion: The Truth and Error in ‘Religionless Christianity’. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962.

Lehmann, Paul L. “Faith and Worldliness in Bonhoeffer’s Thought.” In Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, ed. Peter Vorkink. 25-45. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.

Prenter, Regin. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth’s Positivism of Revelation.” In World Come of Age, ed. Ronald Gregor Smith. 93-130. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967.

Pugh, Jeffrey C. Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times. New York: Continuum, 2009.

van Buren, Paul M. “Bonhoeffer’s Paradox: Living With God Without God.” In Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, ed. Peter Vorkink. 1-24. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.

Wustenberg, Ralf K. A Theology of Life: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998.

Emerging Church Sources

Caputo, John D. The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.

—. What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernity for the Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007.

Clawson, Michael. “The Converging Church.” Emerging Pensees website. October 9, 2006.
http://emergingpensees.blogspot.com/2006/10/converging-church.html (accessed November 30, 2009).

—. “What is the Emerging Church?” Emerging Pensees website. September 25, 2006. http://emergingpensees.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-is-emerging-church_25.html (accessed November 30, 2009).

Jones, Tony. The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

McLaren, Brian. A Generous Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004.

—. “Q & R: Bonhoeffer and ‘religionless Christianity’.” BrianMcLaren.net. http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/blog/q-r-bonhoeffer-and-religionless.html (accessed December 9, 2009).

Rollins, Peter. How (Not) to Speak of God. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006.

—. “Religion, Fundamentalism and Christianity.” PeterRollins.net. June 26, 2008. http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=54 (accessed November 30, 2009).

—. The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2008.

—. The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009.

—. “Toward Religionless Christianity.” PeterRollins.net. June 20, 2008. http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=51 (accessed November 30, 2009).

Tickle, Phyllis. The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008.

Advent Reading - Joy & Grief

2009-12-20T21:54:00.003-06:00

One of my pastors, David Gentiles, passed away tragically and unexpectedly this week. Even though this Sunday was the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Sunday when we light the candle of Joy, it was also a time of mourning for our faith community. I was honored that they asked Julie and I to do the Advent candle reading. We were given a beautiful reading written by another member of our community, Renee French. What she expressed, together with the context of mourning and remembering David, gave new meaning for me to the Christmas story of God taking on human flesh and dwelling among us in the midst of all our grief and suffering.

Here is what we read :

Today, maybe ironically or perhaps appropriately, we light the candle of Joy.

When we deal with loss, and when we find trouble, we can feel very empty and alone. We can feel scared. It's a world with loss, and betrayal, and pressures, and worries. It's a world in which it's easy to forget the message that Joy is real.

But Joy is real. We gather to remember that. We stand together as followers of Jesus. The story that God came into this world, in the midst of poverty and darkness and fear, and Joy shone like light and beauty and strength and courage and power.

The early Christian teacher Paul told the Jesus people in Philippi,

"Find your joy in God, always. Let me say this again: find your joy. Be gentle with every single person. Do not worry about any single thing. Instead, in every moment, give thanks to God and ask for what you need. And God's peace - the peace that God gives, that cannot be understood - will guard the gates to your hearts and minds."

Joy is at the heart of the journey through Advent to Christmas: Joy in the knowledge of what God has done through the eges, joy in the realization that God is able and that God does change things for the better, joy in the assurance that God can enter into our lives no matter what our situation may be. The Apostle Paul calls us to a life of rejoicing:
. . to live a life full of rejoicing and gentleness
. . . to put aside worry in the confidence that the Lord is near
. . . . to lift our requests in prayer, with thanksgiving
. . . . . to trust that the Peace of God will guard our hearts and minds.

Please pray with us:

In a world of busyness and worry, of grief and fear, we come to you God, and ask for help. We hear the message that the Christ-child is coming into the world where we are. That the Word becomes flesh and blood and moves into our neighborhood. That You, God, are with us, intimately intertwined in our every moment. But it is hard to believe. So help us see that Your Joy, God, is real, and that we can experience it, and live it, and share it. Amen.

This reading was followed by this video by Jonny Baker, set to Sufijan Stevens' version of O Come, O Come Emmanuel, which was simply beautiful:

unwrap our darkness from jonny baker on Vimeo.

David

2009-12-18T23:16:00.003-06:00

Mourning the loss of my friend and pastor David Gentiles.

He left the world better than he found it.
1951-2009

Incarnation Didn't Just Happen at Christmas

2009-12-06T10:31:00.002-06:00

“Already in the eternal will and decree of God He was not to be, nor did He will to be, God only, but Emmanuel, God with man, and, in fulfillment of this “with,” this man, Jesus of Nazareth. And in the act of God in time which corresponds to this eternal decree, when the Son of God became this man, He ceased to all eternity to be God only, receiving and having and maintaining to all eternity human essence as well. Thus the human essence of Jesus Christ, without becoming divine, in its very creatureliness, is placed at the side of the Creator. It is a clothing which he does not put off. It is His temple which He does not leave. It is the form which He does not lose. It is an organ the use of which He does not renounce. He is God in the flesh – distinguished from all the idols imagined and fashioned by men by the fact that they are not God in the flesh, but products of human speculation on naked deity… To the extent that according to this will and decree, and in this act, God is with us in this way, we too in the same way – in the human essence of this One from among us – are with God… There is therefore, no knowledge of God, no calling upon Him, no worship, no trust or hope, no obedience to His will, no single movement towards Him, which on any pretext or in any way can escape His humanity (and therefore our own), in in which the Father and the Spirit can be sought except in and by Him.”

~ Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics IV/2, 100-101)

Have a Fair Trade Christmas

2009-11-29T16:05:00.007-06:00

For the past few weeks our church here in Austin has been using the following video from Trade as One to encourage us to buy Fair Trade this Christmas season. (Which is one of the reasons I love our church here.)

The great thing about this is that it uses the system itself to work for justice. While undermining our consumer capitalist world-system may ultimately be necessary, it's not replaceable overnight, and those of us who are still going to shop for Christmas presents and still need to buy other things from time to time as well need ways that we can make a difference even within this system. So if you're going to shop, buy Fair Trade wherever and whenever possible.

BTW, for some reason as I watch this video, I keep thinking of one of the most ridiculous arguments against Fair Trade that I've ever heard, which is that Fair Trade won't work because it asks people to pay more for no tangible benefit to themselves except the "Fair Trade" label, and the warm fuzzy feelings they get from helping others. And yet we consumers choose to pay more all the time for even more ridiculous intangible benefits like designer labels, brand names, etc. and the warm, fuzzy feelings they get from being "hip" and "stylish" (even when you can buy something that looks exactly the same for a fraction of the price at the discount store down the road). If people can be induced to make purchase decisions for these sorts of silly reasons, why can't we hope that people can also be persuaded to choose Fair Trade items for much better reasons. And why not let it start with you and me this holiday season?

New Support for Jewish Intermarriage

2009-11-14T09:19:00.004-06:00

A good friend of mine recently got married to a great Jewish guy. She is an emergent Christian who is an active part of a Presbyterian emerging church. As you can imagine, there are some unique challenges that go along with a committed Christians marrying a practicing Jew. In characteristic fashion, my friend has enthusiastically dived head-first into these challenges and is passionate about helping others who are also experiencing them. As part of this she has started a new blog called Fifty Percenters: in praise of the non-traditional Jewish family. As she put it to me:

I am working on a blog project with a woman in Montreal that is trying to create an online community of people who are engaging Judaism in non-traditional ways. We are trying to move beyond the discussion of whether or not intermarriage will destroy the Jewish people by working from the premise that it will not, that it is here to stay and that some of us need to take leadership roles for how to constructively help Judaism adapt to this new dynamic.

It seems like a worthwhile project to me. If you or anyone you know are touched by this issue of Jewish intermarriage or you're interested in simply being a support or finding our more, I'd encourage you to check it out and pass along the link to others.

What I Like About the New Health Care Bill

2009-11-08T22:00:00.005-06:00

Of course no piece of legislation is perfect, and quite frankly I personally wanted something far more radical and yes, "socialistic", than this current bill (which, despite what you'll hear from the Right, bears almost no resemblance to anything that could justifiably be labeled "socialism"). Nonetheless, I am very excited that the House finally passed an honest to goodness health care reform bill that seems to actually have some decent features that will directly make life better for me and my family. I haven't looked closely at every aspect of this bill yet, so I can't speak to all of its shortcomings (of which it's sure to have many), but here are a few of the things I like about it:

1) A public option, which, besides creating real competition that will force insurance companies to actually serve their clients better, will also give folks to chance to opt-out of the crappy private system if they want to, and stop sending 30% or more of our premiums to line the pockets of insurance company shareholders.

2) Creates a health insurance exchange that will enable individuals like me who don't get insurance through an employer to get the same benefits that group buyers do.

3) Caps out-of-pocket expenses, which for me and my family can currently be more than $20,000 annually.

4) Prevents insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, which is the major reason Julie and I currently have absolutely no choice in which health insurance we use and therefore no recourse whenever Humana decides to screw us over. If other insurers would cover us, we could shop around for a better plan and actually let the market work the way it's supposed to.

5) Subsidies to help poor Americans get coverage - another measure that might benefit my family directly, since, as a graduate student, I currently have very little actual income. I also think that, whatever other nice features the bill offers, the most important thing is making sure that the millions of people who can't currently afford health care are in fact covered. No one should have whether they live or die or can live healthily be determined by how much money they (or their parents) make.

6) An amendment to keep federal funds from covering abortions (though individuals still have the right to pay for their own abortion coverage). While I know most liberals won't like this one, I for one am glad that this issue will be taken off the table and therefore cannot be used as a red-herring by the Right to block the entire bill. I also think its fair that those of us who disagree with the practice of abortion shouldn't have to have our tax dollars used to pay for them.

Anyhow, here's to hoping these features survive in the Senate's version of it. It's exciting to think that something might actually happen with all of this. That substantial change for the better is in fact possible.

Julie on theOoze.tv!

2009-11-06T10:59:00.000-06:00

Haitian Storytelling

2009-10-29T09:56:00.004-05:00

I recently encountered a great quote from the book Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, a sort of personal narrative/anthropological study of one scholar's experiences with Haitian Vodou:

"Family memories are held collectively; some persons know much more than others, but no one knows it all. The full story, or I should say, the real story, cannot be written down. The full story can only be performed by a noisy family group, with each member adding his or her versions. The real story exists only for the transitory period in which the family takes pleasure and finds meaning together in bringing their past alive."

I've experienced this sort of thing a few times even in our own culture - think about the times when you've just got back from some really amazing awesome experience with a group of friends (like after a youth group retreat or a road trip), and all of you are trying to explain it to someone else at the same time - but it's much more rare than in Haitian society apparently. I think this is one of the great advantages that a predominantly oral culture like theirs has over a written culture like ours - for us stories become fixed, not dynamic or collaborative, and we are thereby deceived into thinking that there is only ever one, authoritatively "true" rendition of the past.

Christianity 21 Highlight Video

2009-10-18T17:22:00.003-05:00

Here's the highlight video from Christianity 21. Julie shows up at about the 1:33 mark:

Umair Haque's Generation M Manifesto

2009-10-17T20:05:00.002-05:00

Umair Haque, an innovative strategic business advisor, has posted an awesome statement of what so many of us are starting to see is wrong with the world, and, more importantly, what we'd like to see instead. It's encouraging to see someone in the business world say things that resonate so deeply with the same kinds of things those of us in the church world have been saying for quite a while now as well. Not being in that world, I don't know whether I agree with every single point he makes or not, but I do think he's pointing in the right direction. Check it out:

The Generation M Manifesto

Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.

You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.

You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.

You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.

You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today's markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.

You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.

You didn't care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.

You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.

You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.

You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing stuff that matters.

You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We're not for sale: we're learning to once again do what is meaningful.

There's a tectonic shift rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. The last two points above are what express it most concisely. I hate labels, but I'm going to employ a flawed, imperfect one: Generation "M."

What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s.

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who's Gen M? Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from.

Gen M isn't just kind of awesome — it's vitally necessary. If you think the "M"s sound idealistic, think again.

The great crisis isn't going away, changing, or "morphing." It's the same old crisis — and it's growing.

You've failed to recognize it for what it really is. It is, as I've repeatedly pointed out, in our institutions: the rules by which our economy is organized.

But they're your institutions, not ours. You made them — and they're broken. Here's what I mean:

"... For example, the auto industry has cut back production so far that inventories have begun to shrink — even in the face of historically weak demand for motor vehicles. As the economy stabilizes, just slowing the pace of this inventory shrinkage will boost gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the nation's total output of goods and services."

Clearing the backlog of SUVs built on 30-year-old technology is going to pump up GDP? So what? There couldn't be a clearer example of why GDP is a totally flawed concept, an obsolete institution. We don't need more land yachts clogging our roads: we need a 21st Century auto industry.

I was (kind of) kidding about seceding before. Here's what it looks like to me: every generation has a challenge, and this, I think, is ours: to foot the bill for yesterday's profligacy — and to create, instead, an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity.

Anyone — young or old — can answer it. Generation M is more about what you do and who you are than when you were born. So the question is this: do you still belong to the 20th century - or the 21st?

Love,

Umair and the Edge Economy Community

PS - Fire away in the comments with thoughts, questions, or — because I've left a ton of awesomeness out of this post — more examples of Gen M people and organizations.

What should Christians be known for in 100 years?

2009-10-16T09:37:00.003-05:00

Julie spent last weekend up in Minneapolis at the Christianity 21 conference. She has an update here. I'm still totally jealous that I couldn't be there. :)

Anyhow, one of the cool things that came out of the conference was a list Lauren Winner presented of 21 Things Christians will hopefully be known for by the end of the 21st century. Here's what she suggested:

By the end of the 21st century, Christians will...
1. Be peacemakers.
2. Be expected to be the first ones to show up when disaster strikes.
3. Rest, because they know they're not the ones in charge.
4. While resting, reconfigure their work.
5. Live well in their bodies, whether by their diet, their sex lives, or the clothes they wear.
6. Practice boredom. They will not succumb to the "fetish of the new or the cult of novelty" when it comes to their faith.
7. Be truth-tellers, even if the answer is "I don't know." Even "authenticity" and confession can be a pose.
8. Practice silence in small and big ways, including in solitude.
9. Live in communities where everyone has access to power, and everyone can and will share it with others.
10. Live in communities where women can do anything.
11. Go to church with the people they live near.
12. Persist in making Kingdom demands. This means taking the same request to God, over and over!
13. When we think about God, we think about what needs to change next. This is largely informed by Tozer: what we think about when we think about God is the most important thing about ourselves.
14. Eat fewer strawberries. We will tread lightly on the planet and not risk the energy and harm to our planet just so we can have strawberries in January.
15. See ourselves as small characters in a larger story. As Winner's colleagues at Duke suggest, a "saint" can fail in a way that a "hero" cannot, which opens the doors to ideas like forgiveness and new possibilities of God.
16. Lament. ("We don't do this well. Jews do it a bit better.")
17. Throw good parties. Afterall, we're here to practice for the heavenly banquet!
18. Not gossip. This means talking about someone who is not present. Period.
19. Have unity without obliterating diversity, and that's because of the Trinity.
20. Understand something about grace (despite our 19 wonderful attributes above).
21. Describe reality and the spiritual sacraments in such a way as to "make mouths water and hearts hunger."

via Kyria Blog

Russell Rathbun Guestblog: The Life and Death of the Church is a Beautiful Thing

2009-10-12T08:41:00.006-05:00

As promised, Russell Rathbun has dropped in to share a bit of his new book, nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation. Russell is a great guy and a very good writer, and this new book, while short and to the point, carries a great message. Here's what his publisher had to say about him and the purpose of the book:

Russell Rathbun is a founding minister with Debbie Blue of House of Mercy, a pioneering emergent church in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also the author of the new book nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation (Judson Press) which responds to recent reports of Christianity's image problem. In nuChristian, Rathbun offers practical suggestions for leaders who want to reach out to the new generation with a Christlike community that is

Transparent
Holistic
Loving
Engaged
Just
Humble

Rathbun invites us to move beyond statistics and defensiveness to hear a new generation’s critique and to be authentic about who we are as flawed human beings saved by a gracious God.

Below is an excerpt adapted from nuChristian:

The Life and Death of a Church Is a Beautiful Thing

There is the sort of general belief that a church is an institution that has a long, long history and therefore should have a long, long future. Of course, there are historic churches in this country that have been around for 150 or 200 years; in Europe some have been active for 500 years and a few for nearly a millennium. However, the average life of a church is around 60 years, which is just long enough for young energetic believers to question their parents’ understanding of what church should be. These youthful believers often band together and form a new church, to grow that church and to grow up together in that church, to get married there, to have children and raise them, to watch their children leave, to play golf together when they’re retired, and then to die and be buried there. The average life of a church is about the time it takes one generation to live their lives together as an expression of the body of Christ. I think this is a beautiful thing. It should not be mourned but celebrated.

Christianity is a dynamic faith, a moving faith. Jesus is always on a journey, always moving. In the Old Testament, the patriarchs were always moving—from one territory to another, usually in obedience to God’s call. It sometimes seems that when the people of God stop moving and set down roots, that’s when things start to stagnate. In the arc of history God’s ability to reconcile the world to God’s self will not be hindered if your local church closed its doors because the next generation goes off and starts something new, in the same way God’s work would not be hindered if my church closed its doors.

Guest blogger Russell Rathbun to visit next week!

2009-10-07T20:25:00.004-05:00

I'm excited to announce that ~~sometime next week~~ UPDATE: this coming Monday, author/pastor Russell Rathbun will be contributing to Emerging Pensees as part of a blog tour for his new book, nuChristian: finding faith in a new generation, which is a response of sorts to Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyon's recent popular book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters. Whereas Kinnaman and Lyon's book highlighted all the negative impressions younger generations have about Christianity, Russell's book tries to offer some solutions to these perceptions. Specifically, he encourages churches to accept these criticisms (rather than getting defensive about them) and seek instead to be authentic about both who we are, and who are striving to become.

Anyhow, Russell is a great guy who I've had the privilege of hanging out with on a couple of occasions, and his previous book, Post-Rapture Radio was nothing short of genius; so yeah, be sure to check back here in a few days to see what Russell has to say.

Methodist Lessons for the Emerging Church

2009-10-05T09:12:00.000-05:00

I'm currently in a class on the history of Methodism. It's really fascinating, especially these past few weeks as we've looked in-depth at the life and ministry of John Wesley and the beginnings and growth of the Methodist Revival. Basically Methodism started as a renewal movement within the Church of England, John and his brother Charles never intended to start their own sect or denomination. They simply wanted to revitalize faith within the existing church. To do this John spent his time traveling the length and breadth of England, preaching to crowds in churches and fields, and, out of this, starting hundreds of "societies" (what we would call small groups) whose purpose was to encourage those who responded to his revival messages to continue deepening in their faith and practice of the Christian life. Of course Wesley wasn't the sole originator of the Methodist revival. There were dozens of popular preachers traveling throughout England (and the American colonies) at this time who were called by the name Methodist, some of whom were connected with John's efforts, and many others who disagreed with him on various points and were doing their own thing separate from John. In fact, often "Methodist" societies would spring up independently in various places, and John or Charles would come along after the fact and offer to connect them into their larger group of "United Societies". Eventually this movement grew too large and was forced to separate into a new denomination, but that in itself is a testimony of sorts to the success of the Wesleys in bringing about the change they wanted to see in the church.

As I read about Wesley's life and the beginnings of the Methodist movement, I couldn't help but be struck by the many parallels with the emerging church movement in our own day. While the theology and emphases are somewhat different, in terms of methods and organization, it's very similar. The emerging church is not a centralized movement, rather it is a kind of "revival" or "renewal" that is popping up all over the place, in lots of different contexts and for lots of different reasons - sometimes within the existing church, and sometimes as new church plants or separate groups. Of course there are a few well-known speakers, authors, and influencers who work to draw people into the movement, but no one person who is the sole head or leader in any sense. And like the early Methodists, there are lots of little emerging groups (e.g. cohorts, churches) that are popping up everywhere, sometimes in connection with network like Emergent Village, and sometimes completely on their own. These groups are diverse in their emphases and particular interests, but they are united in their desire to see the church "emerge" into something new and wonderful.

I won't hide the fact that I would like to see the emerging church actually grow as a movement, and even take on more deliberate shape and structure. Like the Wesleys, I'm not at all interested in seeing it become a new denomination separate from all the others, but at the same time, I'm not with those who want to keep it so nebulous and unstructured that we can never really make a lasting impact on the broader church. Call me crazy, but I actually believe in the message and values of the emerging church, and I believe that the things we are talking about and discovering together about theology, about worship, about the church, and all the rest, are important and needed in the whole body of Christ. I want to see us make a difference. I want to see real change happen in both the church and in the world. I'm not content to do our own little thing, to be exclusive or unengaged with the rest of the church. I want to see this movement grow, to become more connected with one another, and to begin uniting around a core set of identifiable passions and values that we want to share with the rest of the church.

I think Wesley has some things to teach us about how to do this. In my opinion, there were two main things that he did which gave the Methodists the push they needed to go beyond a nebulous and momentary revival, to a full-fledged movement with lasting results. First, he traveled and, by his physical presence, connected the diverse societies into something larger than themselves. This is something that I think is desperately needed currently, among the many, various "emerging-ish" churches out there certainly, but most especially among all the cohorts currently affiliated with Emergent Village. In my experience cohorts are a vital part of the emerging conversation - they're where local, face-to-face community happens, where new and challenging ideas can be worked out in a safe environment, and where these new ideas can then be carried out to the various established churches (and other spheres of life) represented in a cohort to produce real fruit for the kingdom of God.

Pesonally, I've been working on the Cohorts Team of Emergent Village for the past few years, and in that time I've received literally scores of requests for new cohorts all over the country, and helped many of those get off the ground by encouraging and advising folks (usually via email) on how to do that. However, I've also seen a lot of cohorts or attempted cohorts fizzle and die for lack of a clear sense of purpose, connection or direction, and a lack of continued support, encouragement, and equipping by folks like myself who are just too busy to act as consistent liason for Emergent Village. To put it shortly, what I think we need is a John Wesley type who could dedicate himself or herself to multiplying, growing, equipping and encouraging these cohort groups. More than that, an Emergent John Wesley could help connect each of these scattered "societies" into something larger than themselves, help them not feel so alone or overwhelmed - and to help give them a purpose of reform and renewal in the larger Body of Christ that would go beyond simply deconstructing and complaining about what is wrong with the existing church. I intend to write a follow-up post soon outlining even more specifically what I think an Emergent John Wesley job description would entail.

The second major thing Wesley did to build the Methodist movement was to put a lot of effort into writing and defining what the core theology and beliefs of Methodists were all about, and then disseminating this to the various preachers and leaders of the societies. Frankly, I think something like this is also needed currently in the emerging church. Now I know emergents, by definition, shy away from anything like a "statement of faith", and that's as it should be, IMHO. Part of the point of the emerging conversation is that we are learning and growing together regardless of any theological differences. However, the flip-side of this openness is that we can tend to lack any sense of cohesion or common purpose. What is it that makes one "emergent", and what's the point anyway? What's our message, what are we hoping to accomplish? I've given some thought to this (and, again, I hope to write a follow-up post outlining this in more detail), and I think it is possible to identify a few unifying aspects of the emerging movement that nonetheless don't limit or exclude the diversity among us. In good evangelical fashion I've boiled them down to three, semi-alliterated points:

Kingdom: by this I mean a commitment to working on behalf of Christ and his Kingdom in this world (in all the various forms this can take). This would include terms like "missional" and "social justice", as well as "evangelism". Bottom line, is that I think all emergent folks are united by a passion to work for the good of the world on behalf of God. I think this can be a driving purpose of our efforts without unnecessarily narrowing or limiting the emerging movement in a way that excludes any who want to be a part of it.

Convergence: rather than being sectarian, or claiming (as most other reform movements have done in the past) that we alone finally have figured out the right way to be Christians and do church, the emerging conversation is described by what many have called a deep ecclesiology - a commitment to honor and serve and learn from the church in all her forms. As Doug Pagitt put it once, we don't want to define ourselves by what we're are not. Rather, we want to define ourselves by what we're kinda like - Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Anabaptist, Anglican, Pentecostal, Reformed, Evangelical, Liberal, whatever. While we have critiques of all of these, we also embrace all of these as well. We're not an opposition movement, we're an inclusion and renewal movement.

Conversation: by this I mean the relational aspect of this movement - we are bound together, despite (and really, in celebration of) any differences, by a simple commitment to be in relationship with one another. The emerging church is a safe place, a place to ask the questions, to explore theology, try new practices, and pursue God in both new and ancient ways without fear of condemnation or exclusion. The only requirement is that you have to likewise be willing to extend this safety and respect to others yourself. That doesn't mean we minimize or cover over our differences, quite the contrary, we celebrate and learn from them. All it means is that no matter our differences, love wins.

(Incidentally, these parallel the four Values of Emergent Village, though I've included both number 1 and 3 in my first point.)

What I would like to see is the cohorts and churches associated with the emerging movement become more explicit and vocal about these three defining characteristics (or some variation of them) as a defining statement of what we're all about. I'd like to see these (or something like them) become the unifying and driving force behind everything we're trying to accomplish - something to give shape and purpose to the movement, without thereby limiting it or excluding others. Personally I think these three are broad and inclusive enough (and yet also specific enough) to fulfill this goal. I think these are what we need to working towards as we seek to renew and reform the existing church. Just as Wesley intended the Methodists to be an inclusive movement that would bless the whole church, the emerging church needs to likewise unite around a few core values that we want to offer as a gift to the whole Body of Christ.

Of course all of this is just in my personal opinion. What do the rest of y'all think?

The Rapture (revised version)

2009-09-21T23:44:00.009-05:00

As a kid I used to read those horrendous/disturbing/hilarious "Chick Tracts" - those, little cartoon tracts that express some of the most extreme Fundamentalist theology out there; e.g. Catholics aren't really Christians and the Pope is the Anti-Christ, role-playing games are a recruiting tool for full blown witchcraft and Satan worship, "Christian" rock musicians have sold their soul to Lucifer, STDs are God's punishment for having sex outside of marriage, etc. Even back then I knew there was something not quite right about their theology.

Anyhow, maybe you've seen this one that deals with the End Times and the Rapture:

Well postmodern philosopher/writer/iconoclast Pete Rollins just recently took this whole theme and created a parody version of a Chick Tract, but with a very different message.

Unfortunately the whole tract is not up online yet (though you can see a few panels here), and currently the only way to get a copy is in person from Pete (which Julie managed to do this past weekend at a conference they were both speaking at). However Pete did post the basic text of it online and I've copied it below. Read it all the way through to get to the twist at the end.

The Rapture
by Peter Rollins

Just as it was written by those prophets of old, the last days of the Earth overflowed with suffering and pain. In those dark days a huge pale horse rode through the Earth with Death upon its back and Hell in its wake. During this great tribulation the Earth was scorched with the fires of war, rivers ran red with blood, the soil withheld its fruit and disease descended like a mist. One by one all the nations of the Earth were brought to their knees.

Far from all the suffering, high up in the heavenly realm, God watched the events unfold with a heavy heart. An ominous silence had descended upon heaven as the angels witnessed the Earth being plunged into darkness and despair. But this could only continue for so long for, at the designated time, God stood upright, breathed deeply and addressed the angels,

"The time has now come for me to separate the sheep from the goats, the healthy wheat from the inedible chaff"

Having spoken these words God slowly turned to face the world and called forth to the church with a booming voice,

"Rise up and ascend to heaven all of you who have who have sought to escape the horrors of this world by sheltering beneath my wing. Come to me all who have turned from this suffering world by calling out 'Lord, Lord'".

In an instant millions where caught up in the clouds and ascended into the heavenly realm. Leaving the suffering world behind them.

Once this great rapture had taken place God paused for a moment and then addressed the angels, saying,

"It is done, I have separated the people born of my spirit from those who have turned from me. It is time now for us leave this place and take up residence in the Earth, for it is there that we shall find our people. The ones who would forsake heaven in order to embrace the earth. The few who would turn away from eternity itself to serve at the feet of a fragile, broken life that passes from existence in but an instant."

And so it was that God and the heavenly host left that place to dwell among those who had rooted themselves upon the earth. Quietly supporting the ones who had forsaken God for the world and thus who bore the mark God. The few who had discovered heaven in the very act of forsaking it.

Just speaking personally, I love Pete's twist on this dispensationalist doctrine. I grew up with this kind of eschatology - indeed, until I got to college I had never even heard there were any other beliefs about the end times, nor that "the Rapture" was an extra-biblical concept invented by an English sectarian in the mid-1800s - and while it's been a long time since I've held to those beliefs (not since a former pastor introduced me to preterism), I don't think I realized until reading Pete's tract just how self-serving and uncompassionate the theology of Rapture truly is. It's all about escape - about leaving behind a world of suffering people so that all us Christians can go relax and party in heaven while our friends and neighbors and loved ones are stuck down here to endure hell on earth. But what in the world could that sort of message have to do with the Christian gospel about a Suffering Servant who came down from heaven to live among us and offer to help bear our burdens? What does it have to do with the message this Suffering Servant proclaimed about God's will being done "on earth as it is in heaven", and NOT "may we escape this earth to go live with God in heaven"? I love Pete's message that it is those who care more about the suffering and injustice in this world than they do about escaping it to be with God that are actually closest to God's own heart. To me that's what it really means to be a follower of Jesus, the Suffering Servant.

Anyhow, I hope these tracts become available for bulk-order soon. I think it's a message that needs to get out there, and I for one will be more than willing to hand them out on street corners or leave them at restaurants in lieu of a tip in order to help spread the good news. (Just kidding about that last bit though. I would be willing to take them around to a few fundamentalist churches though and slip them into the tract rack when they're not looking. ;)

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

2009-09-18T17:27:00.004-05:00

I'm likely overgeneralizing here, but why does it seem like whenever I point out what I see as the bad behavior of conservatives (whether theological or political) one of the first responses I get is usually "Well, your side does it too!" I can't recall how many times I've said something here about the close-mindedness of evangelicals for instance (which after all, is my own tribe), only to have someone respond, "Yeah, well, mainline liberals aren't any better." Or the number of times I've posted something about the dirty politics of the Republicans on Facebook, only to have someone reply, "Well, the Democrats do the same thing."

There are a number of things that bother me about this response:

1) It doesn't actually deal with the issue at hand. It's an evasion tactic that shifts the focus of debate from whether or not said behavior is actually acceptable, to "who started it". As such, it seems like basically a way of avoiding responsibility for one's own actions. So what if the other side does it? Does that thereby excuse your side from doing it too? Do two wrongs make a right? It's especially ironic when conservatives do this. I mean, aren't they supposed to be all about "personal responsibility", not just passing the buck?

2) The "your side does it too" response falsely assumes that I am actually on the "other side". This is not a safe assumption, whether theologically or politically. For instance, while I may be "post-evangelical", evangelicalism is still my heritage and the tribe I most easily identify with, so when I point the finger at the short-comings of evangelicals, it's not pointed at "them" so much as "us". And to be sure, I'm definitely not standing on the side of the mainline "liberals" either. Just because I've moved somewhat beyond evangelicalism doesn't mean I've therefore become a mainliner. That has become abundantly clear to me the more time I spend at my mainline Presbyterian seminary. I respect, love, and am intrigued by my mainline brothers and sisters here, but in many ways I still feel like an outsider looking in. So when folks tell me that "the mainliners do it too", my first thought is "Great, so what? I'm not a mainliner so what does that have to do with me?"

Likewise with politics, just because I no longer identify with the Republicans (though at one point in my life I was, literally, a card-carrying member) doesn't mean I therefore am a Democrat. I'm just as happy to criticize their antics as well (as I did, for instance, just the other day when I posted a Facebook complaint about how the Dems need to just let this Joe Wilson thing just drop.) Thus, when folks respond "The Dems do it too!" again my response is "Yeah? So what? They suck too. But shouldn't you be worried about your own side?"

Of course, I'm sure some might wonder why, if I don't consider myself either conservative or liberal in either of these spheres, why my critiques are usually directed primarily at the conservative side (which, I'll freely admit, they typically are). The answer is because, as I said above, the conservative side of things is where I come from and what I know. I can critique evangelicals because in some ways I still am one. And I can criticize Republicans because not too long ago I was one. However, not having ever been a mainliner, nor a devoted Democrat, I have a harder time pointing out their faults simply because I'm not as familiar with them. Indeed, it feels somewhat unfair and inappropriate for me to criticize them without fully understanding them. It's the whole "nobody better criticize my momma except me" thing. When you're part of (or have been part of) the family, you have a right to point out its faults. But when you're an outsider (and always have been), one has an obligation to understand before critiquing. (Which is one of the reasons I'm here at a mainline Seminary - in order to understand what makes mainliners tick so that I can better understand the critiques of my mainline Emergent friends.)

Anyhow, I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post, though of course it would be extremely ironic if the response to it was "well, liberals use this same evasion tactic too!" So let me be the first to say it, yes of course they do it too, and more than that, I'm sure I've done it too at times - I'm certainly not perfect. So why don't we all commit to dealing with the actual issues from now on, and not try to avoid seeing them in our own side (whichever side that is) by only ever pointing them out in the other. Let's all agree that "well, your side does it too", is never a valid counter-argument, especially when you haven't yet dealt with the fact that your own side is also doing it.

Listening

2009-09-16T09:21:00.004-05:00

I'm in a class on Dietrich Bonhoeffer this semester at Seminary. I've encountered Bonhoeffer before in undergrad, and to be honest, I'm having some of the same issues with him this time around as I remember having then. I'm currently reading Life Together, and to be honest, in some places his thinking is just too dichotomistic, too either/or, too church vs. world for my taste. (Though our lecture in class today explained that a lot of this probably has to do with the fact that he's a Lutheran, which, according to H. Richard Niebuhr anyway, tends to think in these paradoxical dichotomous terms quite often.)

On the other hand, at many points he also nails things right on, and I appreciate some of his psychological insight into community dynamics. Today the thing that struck me the most was his advice about listening as one of the chief tasks of ministry. He writes:

Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of live for the brethren is learning to listen to them.... Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

How true this is! I know it's one of the biggest things I struggled with as a pastor, and continue to struggle with to be honest. There are so many times when I just want to dominate a conversation, and times when I have to consciously, deliberately keep my mouth shut or force myself to ask the other person a question so as not to let myself do that. And (having pointed the finger first at myself, I feel slightly better pointing it at others as well), I can't tell you how many other pastor's I've known that just love to hear themselves talk and will barely let you get a word in edgewise. There was the time in Yorkville, for instance, when we were just starting off on the church plant and I was trying to meet with all the local pastors. One of them took me out to lunch, but didn't ask me a single question about our plant the whole time. He spent the entire time telling me all about their church and how he had single-handedly grown it from 50 people to 800 people in the past five years. I literally don't think I said more than two or three sentences the entire conversation.

And it's not just that one guy (who admittedly, probably had some ego issues). Even pastors that I've known well and highly respect were not always very good listeners and almost never asked questions. They were very passionate about their things, and very eager to share all about them with me, but never got around to asking about my passions. And what concerns me is that I see this same tendency in a few of my classmates at Seminary too. There are a great group of people here, and I love all of them, but there are more than a few who can be so excited and passionate about what they're into, that they rarely let others into the conversation, and they almost never ask questions of others. This is a problem for folks who are going ministry and wanting to lead churches. If they can't learn to listen now, how will they be able to do it as pastors?

Anyhow, anyone who knows me knows how often all this is true of me as well, so I don't say this in judgment, but just as a caution to anyone who wants to go into ministry and as a reminder to myself - learn to ask questions and learn to listen.

New Structure and Passion for Emergent Village

2009-09-11T09:32:00.003-05:00

Big changes have been afoot at Emergent Village over the past few months, and Julie and I have both been an active part of them (especially Julie). This letter was sent out a few days ago (along with this video) to the friends of Emergent Village, detailing the new structure of Emergent Village, as well as its renewed vision and hope for the future.

Greetings!

You may remember back in April that a number of people invested in Emergent Village gathered in Washington, D.C., to discuss the future of this conversation. In May that group of 24 shared our stories from the weekend and expressed our hopes for what is to come. With the previous EV leadership ready to step down, this was a prime opportunity to take stock of where Emergent Village has been over the past decade. Over the past few months those of us who gathered in D.C. have been discerning carefully and thoroughly where God is calling us together. Though we are by no means finished dreaming for the future of the Village, here’s our summary of the process thus far.

In our recent conversations we distinguished four recurring emphases to guide the way we structure the Village: collaboration, distribution, transparency and localization. We want to hear what you are doing, connect you with others, open up channels of communication between diverse voices, and highlight the powerful and creative places of emergence happening in our backyards. And guess what? All of them involve YOU.

Emergent Village has always centered on relationships that find their common ground in seeking new, creative and sustainable ways of following Jesus, and that create glimpses of the present and coming Kingdom. As we move ahead, we want to continue to create intentional means of connecting people. We’ve been describing this intentionally relational space as the Village Green. The Village Green will take on many forms: gatherings and events, local cohort meetings and conversations, book groups, web resource sharing, news updates and more. In all instances, the Village Green is a generative environment where missional friendships are nourished.

For the Village Green to flourish, it needs YOU to ignite that generative energy at the local and grassroots level. The Village Green is open for planting seeds, throwing parties, living justly, discussing new ideas, connecting with new people, creating music and art and poetry, and yes, even sitting around discussing theology. As a way of encouraging, organizing and advancing these efforts, we’ve created eight working groups around the things we are most passionate about. A number of Villagers have already found their way to these groups and have started conversations about what the future of the Village Green looks like from there. And now it’s your turn to do the same. This is YOUR Village. We invite you to jump in on one or more of these groups by contacting the team point person(s) and contributing to the planning, the dreaming and the doing. If you think we’ve missed something or just feel like adding something new, let us know by contacting any of the people listed below.

Here are the working groups:

Arts: The Village has always been a place of creativity, and we want to continue in that direction by supporting, networking and highlighting artists of all kinds in the Village. If you would like to help foster arts on the Green, contact Troy Bronsink (troybronsink@mac.com) or Makeesha Fisher (makeesha@gmail.com).

Cohorts: In many ways, cohorts are the heart of the Village. This is a great on-ramp for people to get involved in the conversation, make new friends and discuss new ideas. If you want to help organize and resource our network of cohorts, contact Sarah Notton (sarahnotton@gmail.com) or Mike Clawson (mike.clawson@gmail.com).

Communications: Our relationships will only be as strong as our communication. So, a team of folks have been invited to steward our venues of communication to make sure that they are open, consistent, and empowering others. There will plenty of ways to help us spread the word around the Village and beyond. Already you’ll notice the fresh look and feel of the Emergent/C. If your gifts might serve this team, contact Tim Snyder (tksnyder@gmail.com)

Events: As a generative friendship, Emergent Village hopes to promote face-to-face interaction around compelling and creative ideas through a number of events. It has been part of our practice in the past to encourage Villagers to attend at least one event per year to sustain and grow relationships. If you want to help dream and implement future events, contact Randy Buist (randybuist@comcast.net) or Anthony Smith (postmodernegro@gmail.com).

Justice: One of the clear themes that came out of our time together in April was our common desire to see justice embodied in our communal life together and fostered in our individual lives, and to bring more stories of justice to the table. If you want to help foster our emphasis on justice, contact Kelly Bean (bean.kelly@gmail.com) or Wendy Johnson (Wendy.J@episcopalmn.org).

Resources: The Village Green is a great place to share ideas, and a wonderful place of conversation for Jesus Way followers to find encouragement and support. Through articles, books, podcasts, and lots of other mediums, we are all invited to share our collective wisdom for the greater good of the Kingdom. Contact Mike Stavlund (mikestavlund@gmail.com) or Brittian Bullock (brittianbullock@gmail.com) to help resource the Green.

Village Council: To help coordinate the efforts between these eight areas and to encourage the conversation even further into this next season of Emergent, the group from D.C. selected six people to serve on the new Village Council. The Village Council also makes up the Board of Directors for EV’s non-profit purposes and will handle some of the organizational necessities of EV. VC members will serve no more than two consecutive years. This year, the Village Council members are: Melvin Bray (melvinbray@gmail.com), Troy Bronsink (troybronsink@mac.com), Julie Clawson (julieclawson@gmail.com), Dwight Friesen (quest@scn.org), Eliacin Rosario-Cruz (eliacin@gmail.com) and Danielle Shroyer (danielle@journeydallas.com). How we choose future Village Councils is still yet to be determined, but we look forward to inlcuding more of you in this process down the road.

Web: The EV website and other digital media venues provide a virtual space for the Village Green in between our face to face encounters. The web also provides access to resources and offers a place of connection for newcomers. If you have ideas about supporting our virtual Village, contact Jon Irvine (jonirvine.com@gmail.com) or Michael Toy (the.michael.toy@gmail.com).

Thanks to ten years of dedication, passion, and vision, the soil on the Village Green is rich. We’ll do all we can to create and maintain this generative space because we are convinced that we’re far better together than we are apart. After all, that’s the definition of emergence—the collective becomes more than simply the sum of its parts. And isn’t that what this Kingdom is all about? So, fellow Villagers, we have only one question for you: What will YOU do on the Village Green?

Sincerely,
Danielle Shroyer, Melvin Bray, Troy Bronsink, Julie Clawson, Dwight Friesen, and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

I Pledge

2009-09-04T22:06:00.004-05:00

I found this video to be rather inspiring:

Basically the video is about being the change we want to see in the world by pledging to do simple, practical things to make the world a better place - things like helping at a food pantry, smiling more, giving to Unicef, buying a hybrid, or conserving water. This is what I found to be inspiring - it's an important reminder that each of us can do something to help others, no matter how big or small.

The video also has a slight political overtone as well, since it begins with a quote from President Obama, and has a couple of pledges about "being of service to Barack Obama". It was these aspects of the message that led parents in the Salt Lake City area to protest it being shown at an elementary school assembly (the article about this is how I encountered the video in the first place). Personally, I agree that it probably shouldn't have been shown in a public school context. And I have to admit that I too was a little uncomfortable with the pledges to be of service to Obama. While I generally like our President and (mostly, though not entirely) agree with his agenda, I'm not simply going to blindly follow wherever he leads without question. Besides which, I also agree with the critic in the article who pointed out that Obama is here to serve we the people, not vice versa. If they had pledged (as JFK exhorted us) to be of service to our country, that would be less problematic. But of service just to one man? I'm not down with that.

However, that's not all the protesting parents took issue with. They also went on to decry some of the other pledges as "leftist propaganda". For instance, as the article notes:

Gayle Ruzicka, president of conservative Utah Eagle Forum, said the video was blatantly political. She said other offensive pledges [besides ones not to give the finger while driving, and to replace one's obnoxious care with a hybrid] included... pledges to not use plastic grocery bags and not flush the toilet after urinating.

"It's very inappropriate to show a radical, leftist propaganda piece that political to children," Ruzicka said. "If parents want their children to learn about those things and do them in the home, wonderful, fine, but it's not the place of the school to show a one-sided propaganda piece to children without parents knowing about it."

Cieslewicz said such values should be decided in the home, not at school.

"They shouldn't be troubling our youth with the woes of the world and making them feel like we're in slavery or they have to worry about how many times they flush the toilet or if they have a plastic water bottle," Cieslewicz said, referring to pledges in the video to "end slavery."

These complaints I have much less sympathy for. Issues like energy and water conservation, and especially something like ending modern day slavery should not be seen as partisan political causes. These are things that should concern any responsible citizen and moral human being. Is it "leftist propaganda" to say that we should take care of God's creation? Is it "leftist propaganda" to declare that slavery is a moral evil and should be eradicated? Are these people so deeply entrenched in the culture wars that they can't bring themselves to support any cause that they perceive to be in any way associated with "the left", no matter how self-evidently righteous it is? Is it really more important for your side to "win", than for you to help millions of slaves go free?

At any rate, check this video out. It has a great message, even if it takes a couple of missteps. On a personal note, Emma was looking over my shoulder as I was posting it to my Facebook profile, and she insisted on watching it. Afterwards (and after I explained to her what a "pledge" was), she decided that she wanted her pledge for making the world a better place to be that she would say "I love you more". That, to me, was even more inspiring than the video. :)

Book Review: A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church

2009-09-03T11:20:00.006-05:00

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I got Warren Cole Smith's A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church in the mail. The title had intrigued me, and I wondered what kind of issues Smith would raise, and whether they'd be at all similar to my own quarrels with evangelicalism. I didn't look much closer at the book beyond the title, and once I did, it quickly became apparent that Smith's complaints were not too likely to mirror with my own. My first clue was the fact that Smith is a regular contributor to WORLD magazine, which is kind of like a print media version of Fox News for the Christian world. The second clue was the list of endorsers, which included several individuals, Dr. Michael Horton and Dinesh D'Souza for instance, with whom I have significant theological and philosophical disagreements. Nonetheless, I was still intrigued enough to keep reading. Besides, it's always a good idea to expose oneself to differing viewpoints on a regular basis.

What I found, is that I did in fact share a number of Smith's concerns about contemporary evangelicalism, but for very different reasons, and with very different ideas about the necessary solutions. Oddly enough, at times it even left me wanting to defend some of the same evangelical practices that I would be likely to critique in other contexts (the "seeker-friendly" mega-church movement for instance.) Smith's main "quarrels" center on the contemporary evangelical sub-culture. He identifies what he sees as five main problems:

1) Its disconnection from Christian history or tradition and with little vision for the future (what he calls the "new provincialism", a term he borrows from poet and essayist Allen Tate).
2) A "triumph of sentimentality", by which he means what he thinks has been an overemphasis on God's love and mercy to the exclusion of God's power and judgment, or human sinfulness.
3) The Christian-industrial complex, which he sees as corrupting true Christian community with marketing and money.
4) "Body-count evangelism", which he blames on the legacy of 19th century evangelist Charles Finney and sees as sacrificing depth of discipleship for the sake of higher numbers of superficial converts.
5) What he calls "the great stereopticon", by which he mainly means television, though he would also include most other forms of visual media, and which he thinks undermines God's "preferred medium" of communication, i.e. words.

It should be said that Smith admits right up front that he is writing for "theologically conservative, evangelical" Christians, so I really can't fault him when I just flat out disagree with some of his assumptions about the way things ought to be versus the way things are. He's not writing for someone like me. That said, I found that on at least a few points (especially his critique of the Christian-industrial complex and some aspects of his critique of body-count evangelism) I did agree with his assessment of what was wrong. I just didn't buy into his assumptions about why they were wrong, or how things ought to be instead. It's hard to summarize all the ways in which this was the case, but I guess I could just say that his approach was a bit too conservative, Calvinist, dogmatic, and generally negative towards anything new for my taste.

And, to be honest, on a number of points I really felt like he was overstating his case against contemporary evangelicalism, and failing to note that a lot of the current trends (e.g. contemporary worship music, seeker-sensitivity, grace-oriented preaching, visual and dramatic arts in worship, innovative ministry methods, attempts at cultural relevance, etc.) that he criticizes are themselves reactions to and corrections for even bigger problems in the traditional churches that contemporary evangelicalism has evolved out of (e.g. stale and lifeless worship, a ghetto-mentality in churches that turned off newcomers and seekers, an over-emphasis and on moralism and judgmentalism to the exclusion of the "good" part of the "good news", etc.) Reminding myself of this actually made me more sympathetic towards contemporary evangelicalism than I typically am. In this regard the book felt even more negative and critical than many of us emergent types often get accused of being. Whereas most emergents want to take the good and leave the bad from the evangelical world, for Smith (with the exception of a few positive examples he lifts up at the end) it seemed like it was almost all bad - like evangelicalism had taken a wrong turn shortly after Jonathan Edwards, and has been in a downward spiral ever since.

However, while this book certainly isn't targeted towards and emergent audience, I have a feeling that it will have a certain appeal to those in the anti-institutional, organic church/simple church stream of the conversation, and especially those who resonate with guys like Frank Viola or George Barna. For those who are deeply disillusioned with the hype and marketing and consumerism of the evangelical sub-culture, or who have been burned-out or repulsed by the superficiality of the mega-church world, this book will speak to those issues. Personally though, I was not impressed, and I found the "positive vision" he tried to cast in the last few chapters to be rather scattered and exceedingly thin (it basically comes down to church planting).

For a much more thorough critique of these same sorts of ills (from a pastor and scholar, as opposed to a journalist), I'd instead recommend my friend Dave Fitch's book The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies. While I don't always agree with Dave either, I find his take on all this to be much more nuanced and well-argued (not to mentioned geared towards postmoderns like myself) than Smith's.

Everyday Justice is here!

2009-09-03T00:34:00.004-05:00

We just got the actual copy of Julie's book here at our house tonight. It's real! We can hold it in our hands. So excited!

BTW, while it's still on pre-order mode at Amazon, it looks like you can already order it directly from the IVP site if you are so inclined.

2009-08-28T10:14:00.002-05:00

Subscribe to Generate Magazine!

2009-08-25T11:12:00.002-05:00

It's time to subscribe to GENERATE, the new magazine by friends of Emergent Village. It's gonna be great. Here is a brief description:

GENERATE exists as a forum to retell the stories of the grassroots communities and individuals who are finding emerging and alternative means to follow God in the Way of Jesus. We hope to create an artifact of this historical conversation. These stories will be transmitted through narrative, works of visual art, documented performances, verse, fiction, non-fiction, essays, and interviews.

We/you are the conversation; our art, our lives, our hopes and failures all meet up with God’s approaching dreams for creation. We converse and in doing so spread the news that we are not alone — that joy is found in our generative friendship. GENERATE seeks to communicate the hope we find in Kingdom living, the hope we have in living the Way, the hope that is present in the highest highs and the lowest lows of daily life.

Click here to subscribe!

"I'm not dead yet..."

2009-08-22T22:41:00.002-05:00

No, this blog isn't dead. I've just been on the road for the past two weeks (visiting friends and family in Illinois and Michigan - not to mention Arkansas, Indiana & Missouri) and haven't had time to write or post. I actually have a number of things I've been wanting to put up, but just haven't been able to lately. Check back later this coming week hopefully.

Is Democracy Compatible with Christianity?

2009-07-30T18:39:00.003-05:00

I've been reading Mark Noll's The Old Religion in a New World recently, and he cites the following quotation by a 19th century American Catholic, Orestes Brownson, which I found interesting:

"Catholicity is theoretically compatible with democracy..., but practically, there is, in my judgment, no compatibility between them. According to Catholicity all power comes from above and descends from high to low; according to democracy all power is infernal, is from below, and ascends from low to high."

I can certainly see how this issue would be a problem for Catholic Christians, most of whom would agree with Brownson's assertion that power descends from high to low, even if they don't necessarily make the connection that this thereby validates a hierarchical political order (from God to Pope to King to the People) as much as a hierarchical spiritual one. However, I think there are probably many other Christians besides just Catholics that would likewise agree with the basic premise that power and authority descends from high to low, from God to human authorities, and thus might recognize a conflict between their faith and the basic premise of democracy. On the surface it seems a persuasive argument. After all, most Christians, I think, would affirm that all power ultimately comes from God.

However, it occurs to me that affirming God as the source of power and authority does not necessarily imply anything about its direction, whether ascending or descending. Indeed, if what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 about God choosing the lowly, the foolish, and the weak things of this world, and what he says in Philippians 2 about Christ giving up his power and condescending to the weakness of humanity is true, then one could argue that God-given power does not filter down from high to low among human beings, but rather that it begins with the lowest, the least, and the common. In that sense, God's power is very compatible with the essence of democracy: the idea that legitimate power derives from the will of the governed - those on the bottom of the social pyramid - not from the will-to-power of those on top. God empowers the weak, not the strong - those on the bottom, not on top. Power, in God's kingdom, descends all the way down, so that only then can it begin to filter back up.

Not being Catholic, I can't say whether this conception of power is compatible with "Catholicity", though I would think that it would have much in common with the kenotic theology of Saint Francis for instance. However, I do think it is a legitimate and profoundly Christian conception.

Why I'm a "Progressive"

2009-07-14T16:50:00.007-05:00

I've gotten into a number of debates on Facebook recently, usually revolving around either healthcare reform, Obama's economic recovery policies, or some combination of the two. (BTW, Facebook debates are exceedingly annoying since they tend to take place in the comments of someone's status update, are limited in the number of characters you can type, and have no text editing capabilities... but I digress.) Anyhow, I don't intend to rehash the finer points of either of these issues here, but I did want to comment on an insight I had in the course of these debates - I think I finally figured out what being a "progressive" means to me.

(As a caveat - I should clarify that in this post I will be giving my own personal definition of "progressive, along with my personal definitions of "conservative" and "liberal". These may or may not line up with 1) historic, technical, or "official" definitions of any of these terms, or 2) your own personal definitions of them. I really don't care. I'm not talking about your definitions or the official definitions, so please don't overwhelm my blog with comments like: "That's not real conservativism" or "That's not how I define progressive" or whatever. This post is only about how I tend to understand the terms.)

I've been calling myself a "progressive" (politically speaking) for a while, but up till now I mainly meant it as a sort of vague contrast with "liberal", since 1) I don't necessarily line up perfectly with what is usually thought of as "liberal", and since 2) these days it's more often used as an epithet or an insult than as a meaningful description. Progressive seemed like a better alternative, both because it has less baggage, and because it connotes something forward looking, action-oriented, and optimistic.

It's that forward looking spirit that I realized really gives progressive politics their defining character. It is a reformist approach, one that sees the brokeness in the way things are now, both in the public (e.g. government) and private (e.g. corporate) sector, but is optimistic and proactive about fixing them and working towards a better world. Progressives don't see either one of these, public or private, as the sole cause of our problems, nor as the whole of the solution, but are interested in reforming both and using both as tools towards the goal of a more harmonious and just society.

This, according to my definitions, is the difference between progressives and both conservatives and liberals. Conservatives, to greatly oversimplify (and to focus primarily on the economically "libertarian" type conservatives who seem to have taken over the movement in the past couple of decades), are those who generally see the government as the "problem" and favor laissez-faire, "free market" solutions. Liberals, on the other hand, generally see the government as the solution to most of the problems created by the "free market" and corporate rapaciousness. Progressives, by contrast, see both the government and corporations as part of the problem, but also see them both as part of the solution. Progressives don't just want to scrap one in favor of the other, we want to overhaul the whole system, in all of its parts, from top to bottom. We don't just want more government or less government, we want better government (and better industry).

So, for instance, a liberal looks at our health care industry and says "Private industry really made a mess of things, the government should fix it," and a conservative looks at the same mess and says "The government can't fix anything, it'll just make things worse. Let's just do nothing and trust private industry to fix itself." A progressive, however, says, "you're both right, the industry is a mess, and so is government, so let's fix both!" In other words, a progressive approach owns the mess, and the responsibility for cleaning it up, instead of trying to pass the buck onto whichever side they like least. A progressive tries to change the system instead of just complaining about the parts we don't like, since we realize that "the government" and "those capitalists" aren't some evil opponents out there somewhere. They are "us" (see, for instance, the first line of the Constituion, "We the people..."). We are all part of the system, and thus we all have a responsibility to try and change it for the better.

And it's an optimistic approach: it believes that we actually can change the system and make things better over the long term - that "progress" is possible - and thus encourages us to actually get involved both in the public/political sphere, as well as in our individual lives to produce change. It doesn't fall into the kind of fatalism I see all around me these days - the kind that says "nothing will ever really change, and you're too insignificant to make a difference, so don't even bother." Progressives were chanting Obama's slogan "Yes We Can!" before he ever came up with it, and we were quoting Gandhi's exhortation to "be the change you wish to see in the world", long before it became ubiquitous.

This optimism is not based on some blind faith or wishful thinking, nor even (for us progressive Christians) on some retrograde, post-millenial theology that says human effort is capable of ushering in the Kingdom of God all on its own. Instead it is based on the very simple and rather obvious fact that sweeping social change has happened many, many, many times before, and there's absolutely no reason we shouldn't expect it to happen again, and therefore no reason we shouldn't seek to play a part in shaping and directing that change. After all, just look how much has changed since the Revolutionary War, for instance, or since the original "Progressive Era" in America, or since the Civil Rights era, or since the Fall of the Soviet Union, etc... None of these changes happened magically. Real people fought and struggled and worked towards their visions of a better world, and they achieved some, if not all, of their dreams. There's no reason why we shouldn't do the same.

That's why I call myself a "progressive".

BCE

2009-07-10T17:20:00.003-05:00

If I could indulge in some random history geek stuff for a moment, I've just been reflecting on the terms historians currently use to replace the old Christian dating system. Of course most people are familiar with the designations BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, i.e. "in the year of our Lord"). However, in academic writing one is generally expected to use the alternate terms BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era).

On the whole I'm in favor of these alternatives. As a Christian it seems disrespectful and unloving towards other, non-Christian folks to simply expect them to adopt our way of looking at things. If one does not accept Jesus as Lord, then it is a falsehood for them to refer to this as the year of "our" Lord, and expecting them to do so feels rather imperialistic and arrogant. However, the irony, in my opinion, is that the designation "Common Era" doesn't actually solve the problem. It's still imperialistic to refer to the past 2000 years as a "common era" for anyone who is not actually a Christian. It's not shared in common by Muslims, for instance, or Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, animists, etc.

Personally I think it would be more accurate and least offensive for CE and BCE to simply refer to "the Christian Era" and "Before the Christian Era". After all, everyone already knows what is being referred to, regardless of what you call it. And the term "Christian Era" simply names it for what it is without implying that non-Christians have to necessarily identify themselves within it if they don't want to (after all, many other cultures and religions - Islam, Hinduism, China, Judaism - have their own way of counting the years). It wouldn't require a confession of faith like AD does, nor would it mean falsely claiming that all people hold this system in "common", when in fact many have been forced to adopt it as a result of Western imperialism, or simply out of convenience/necessity.

Welcome to the Future

2009-07-08T18:14:00.002-05:00

As an interesting counterpoint to the country song I mentioned in my previous post, I heard this newer one on the radio today:

"Welcome To The Future" by Brad Paisley

When I was ten years old,
I remember thinkin' how cool it would be,
when we were goin' on an eight hour drive,
if I could just watch T.V.

And I'd have given anything
to have my own PacMan game at home.
I used to have to get a ride down to the arcade;
Now I've got it on my phone.

He-e-ey...
Glory glory hallelujah.
Welcome to the future.

My grandpa was in World War II,
he fought against the Japanese.
He wrote a hundred letters to my grandma;
mailed em from his base in the Philippines.

I wish they could see this now,
where they say this change can go.
Cause I was on a video chat this morning
with a company in Tokyo.

He-e-ey...
Everyday is a revolution.
Welcome to the future.

He-e-ey...
Look around it's all so clear.
He-e-ey...
Wherever we would go and well we...
He-e-ey...
So many things I never thought I'd see...
happening right in front of me.

I had a friend in school,
running-back on a football team,
they burned a cross in his front yard
for asking out the home-coming queen.

I thought about him today,
everybody who's seen what he's seen,
from a woman on a bus
to a man with a dream.

He-e-ey...
Wake up Martin Luther.
Welcome to the future.
He-e-ey...
Glory glory hallelujah.
Welcome to the future.

One the one hand, it's good to know that not all country singers see our contemporary society as completely awful. On the other hand, the thrust of most of the song seems to be "hey, ain't all this newfangled technology cool?" Though I do appreciate the last verse, which, without directly referring to Obama (I doubt you could get away with that with a country/western audience) still points to how far we've come in race relations over the past couple of generations. And I suppose the middle verse, besides celebrating improved communication technologies, could also be seen as celebrating the fact that old enemies can now be friends and business partners in such a relatively short amount of time.

I'm not sure how I feel about how he uses religious language to celebrate these innovations and developments, however. On the one hand you can say that he's referencing the Christian eschatological vision of a world of peace and reconciliation. On the other hand, the technology references in conjunction with "Glory glory hallelujah" make it seem too much like he's worshipping human cleverness or looking towards some kind of techno-topia. But maybe I'm overthinking it too much.

Anyhow, I just thought it was an interesting contrast with the other song.