Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Rob Bell Is Not a Litmus Test

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/mayweb-only/robbelllitmustest.html

What one thinks about 'Love Wins' is no test of faith.

Mark Galli
posted 5/05/2011

I've had a number of conversations lately where, not surprisingly, the topic shifts to Rob Bell's Love Wins. That's when a strange dynamic creeps into some conversations. If the person with whom I'm talking has read my review of the book, or knows I had some critical things to say, he's naturally hesitant to openly praise the book. The usual first move at that point is to say, "I don't agree with everything in the book, but …" And what follows is hardly unalloyed enthusiasm. It's usually a qualified, almost worried appreciation for this part or that. It's as if some people feel guilty for liking the book. Perhaps people who really like the book don't even bother to talk to me, but I suspect something else is going on.

That something else is related to what a Christian journalist friend told me: She feels she has to carefully craft anything she writes about Bell, lest she be suspected of really liking him—or disliking him. The atmosphere in some meetings where people are talking about Bell's book, well, it feels like some people have to apologize for reading the book. Or they seem concerned that if they like it, their theology will be questioned.

In short, it's starting to feel like Rob Bell is becoming a litmus test. If you like Bell, your orthodoxy may be suspect. And if you want to proclaim your orthodox [(evangelic)] credentials, you simply have to condemn Love Wins.

As far as this phenomenon is true, it is silly. That it is silly doesn't mean it is not a powerful current. But as far as it is true, it is a current we evangelicals must swim against.

First, Rob Bell loves Jesus. He wants to see lots of people come to believe in Jesus. He wants to see the world transformed in Jesus' name. He really thinks the Bible is a book through which Jesus speaks authoritatively. He believes in miracles. He believes Jesus is coming again. I could go on. The point is that Bell shares a number of values that are dear to evangelicals. He is, in short, a brother in Christ.

Naturally, because he's a brother doesn't mean one has to agree with everything he says. Brothers disagree, sometimes over important things. And sometimes the biggest blowups happen inside families! But they remain family—unless one party says he disowns the rest of the family.

Second, to make Bell's Love Wins a litmus test is a touch hypocritical. At any given time, there are always a few books on Christian bestseller lists that teach something odd, and we don't shriek in panic in the way many have over Love Wins. Probably the most controversial of late has been The Shack. There are a few theologically troubling ideas in that book, no doubt, but for the most part, evangelicals have "forgiven" Paul Young his theology at those points in favor of the book's larger theme of redemption in Christ. We recognize that an author trying to repeat the old, old story in fresh ways will sometimes overstep the bounds of traditional theology. But most of us do not judge another's orthodoxy based on their reaction to The Shack. We recognize that people read and react to The Shack for all types of reasons, and we are charitable about that.

Third, I believe we have no choice in this day but to listen to and respond charitably to ideas we had thought were settled long ago, ideas that make us feel uncomfortable, ideas that seem to threaten our faith. We've entered a new stage in church history, the Internet Age, in which all manner of beliefs are but a mouse click away. We are virtual neighbors to Catholics, Hindus, Muslims, atheists, Arians, Pelagians, Universalists, and so on and so forth. And their websites often present views that in small and large degrees differ from mainstream evangelicalism—and they express those views reasonably and compellingly. We can no longer get away with name calling—"Universalist!" "Arian!"—and think that is enough.

No, we live in a time when we must engage afresh all these permutations of orthodoxy, heterodoxy, heresy, paganism, and apostasy. I for one welcome the opportunity, and want to hear the best cases that can be made against historic Christian faith, and the best cases for alternate views. If the historic Christian faith cannot stand up to such arguments, we should abandon it as soon as we can. But this is hardly likely, because when it comes to doubts about this historic faith and alternatives to it, well, there is really nothing new under the sun. What we have now is a divinely ordained opportunity to clarify again what we believe in the midst of a highly pluralistic world. It isn't as if the church has never been here before: the world of the earliest church was the just as pluralistic as ours, and the church managed very well, thank you.

That means we're going to have to get used to some card carrying evangelicals experimenting with ideas that centrists, like me anyway, consider less than helpful. But if a writer tries to ground his argument in Scripture, and identifies himself as a member of the body of Christ, charity requires me first to humbly listen. Who knows what God might want to say to us in this moment? It also means I should listen not just to the argument, but also to the problem he is trying to solve. Very few people present a new way of conceiving a doctrine unless they are trying to solve a genuine problem in the church.

In Love Wins, Bell reinterprets some biblical themes (e.g., last judgment, atonement) because he believes the way we've traditionally talked about these themes is not faithful to the Bible and pushes people away from Jesus. I think he's right that the way we've talked about substitutionary atonement and hell have hardly been biblical much of the time, and thus these doctrines have caused more problems than they have solved. But as I said in my review, I believe his solution will actually undermine his desire to win people to Jesus. Furthermore, as I will argue in a forthcoming book, the main problem with Love Wins is that the Good News is even better—deeper, richer, more complex—than it lets on. That I champion the historic Christian view on these matters, and that Bell offers a decidedly minority view, doesn't make Bell a heretic, though he may be unbiblical at points. It does mean that the burden of proof rests on his shoulders. And more to the point here, the fact that so many resonate with Bell's concerns about these themes means we need to wrestle with them afresh.

And not because it's a good idea to dialogue ad infinitum. God forbid! I've been a part of two mainline Protestant denominations much of my life, both of which seem to think that dialogue is an end in itself. On many crucial issues, even after thirty years of dialogue, they are reluctant to let their yes be yes and their no be no. Certainly for individuals, and more so for churches and denominations, there comes a time to clarify and confirm exactly what they believe, for example, about the atonement and hell. But if a book comes out that demonstrates from the reaction to it that tens of thousands of believers are wrestling with these issues, we best first step back, listen hard to the doubts and concerns, and re-engage charitably.

We are wise to nurture an atmosphere in churches, and families, and websites where any question can be asked without fear of judgment, where theological ideas are addressed and not merely dismissed. We sometimes act as if Jesus said, "I might be the way and the truth and the life—unless a better idea comes along." No, we can have complete confidence in the face of any question because we know that whatever is true has its origins in God's truth in Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ really is the Truth that sets us free. This will require in many instances some sensitive listening and hard intellectual work. But who said love, even loving God with the mind, would not entail suffering?

We have to become radically Protestant again. At times like these, there arises a longing in Protestant breasts for the magisterium, for an authoritative body to pronounce a final verdict to deal with the troublemakers by edict. But that is not a Protestant theology of the church and the Holy Spirit. We believe that God is sovereign in his church, that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth, that through discussion and debate, a sifting process allows the truth of God in Christ to deepen and broaden. If Jesus is truly Lord of his church, his truth will make its way into the church's life, one way or another. Our job is to prayerfully read Scripture, talk with one another in the bonds of love, and, yes, when the time comes, make the tough calls. Again, a congregation or a denomination has the perfect right and responsibility to say, "This conversation is over for now. This is what we believe. Let us move forward in mission grounded in this article of faith." There are times to call a spade a spade, and to say clearly that someone is engaging in false teaching and it's damaging the health of the church. All this is part of the sifting process of the Holy Spirit in history. But we are wise not to end some conversations before they've even started, especially when it often seems that the Spirit may be starting the troubling conversation afresh in the first place.
I have enjoyed many conversations with people who have read Love Wins and my review of the book. I look forward to more such conversations. They have reinforced some of my prejudices and forced me to rethink others—there's that sifting process. When entered into freely and without fear, in love and not in judgment, they have been occasions to love God more deeply in the company of brothers and sisters in Christ. There are perhaps more urgent ways to love God and neighbor in a desperately hurting world, but this is certainly not an unimportant one.
Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today, and author of the forthcoming Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit (Baker).

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Welcome to Shelbyville

Watching the PBS special reported by Christianity Today seemed very applicable to two earlier posts mentioned here on this blog. One dealt with "Tolerance, Pluralism and Accomodation" (http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/05/kingdom-of-god-has-come.html) and the other spoke of Christianity's postmodern global re-messaging by Carl Raschke's 2008 book entitile GloboChrist - (http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/03/postmodernism-carl-raschkes-globochrist.html).

More than ever Christianity has gone global due to the internet and social networking and is owned by no culture but by all cultures. This independent film documentary's portrait of a small southern American town  struggling to learn how to welcome America's newest refugees and immigrants succiently emphasizes how prejudices and biases must be banished in order to live together as "one nation under God" (to quote the American motto found on its coinage).  And from this writer's perspective, as one CHRISTIAN nation under God made from ALL the nations of mankind - if you will, a reversal of the ancient concept of Babel. For the kingdom of God has come upon men through Jesus Christ our Lord who will rule and be sovereign over all kings and kingdoms, powers and dominions. There is no nation but Christ's composed of all cultures, all heritages, all peoples from around the world!

- skinhead 
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Uneasy Alliances in the Heart of the Bible Belt

Tennessee town's tolerance tested in "Welcome to Shelbyville," airing on PBS

shelbyville.jpg

These are familiar passages to many in the Bible Belt, including the residents of Shelbyville, Tennessee. But putting such words into practice is much easier said than done. That's the premise of Welcome to Shelbyville, a documentary airing tonight (10/9c) on PBS's Independent Lens.


It's a fascinating look at how a small town grapples with a rapid influx of foreign refugees, including a growing Latino population and, in more recent years, many Muslims from Somalia. Most of the film was shot in the days prior to the 2008 Presidential election, when America was already facing many changes. But for this small Tennessee town, the changes seemed to come faster than many residents were prepared for.


There are some expected comments from local rednecks and old-timers, mostly borne out of misunderstanding or fear, but there are some encouraging scenes involving local churches who are putting feet to the gospel, trying to roll out the red carpet for their new neighbors. It's a challenge, but it's a challenge they are working hard to meet -- whether through large events, door-to-door visits, or ESL classes. There are some sensitive (and some not so sensitive) insights from pastors and religious leaders.


"The movement of people from one place to another, how we acclimate to other cultures, and the resulting fusion of humanity has always fascinated me," says director Kim Snyder. "During my Masters work in foreign relations at Johns Hopkins, I was most interested in social change as it played out in more personal rather than national or historic narratives. Welcome to Shelbyville evolved out of a deep desire over the past decade to tell stories that would not only raise awareness about complex social problems, but that could go one step beyond to highlight people and communities that were tackling these problems with innovative solutions that might ignite social change.


"Welcome to Shelbyville chronicles a year in the life of one town in the rural South grappling with the challenges of rapid demographic change. With focus on Shelbyville as a microcosm of current day trends in immigration that are landing an increasing number of newcomers in rural locales, my intent was to provide a snapshot of this phenomenon through the voices of ordinary citizens, both U.S. and foreign-born, who are often navigating these challenges without much precedent or guidance." It's worth watching for any community or congregation that is serious about putting feet to the gospel, and reaching out to the strangers among us. Here's the trailer:





About the Film

Somali immigrant Hawo smiles in the foreground as she sits on a sofa with Guadalupe, a fellow Shelbyville resident.     Stephen, a white resident of Shelbyville, shakes hands with Mohamed, a newly arrived Somali immigrant as they enter a community meeting.

Welcome to Shelbyville is a glimpse of America at a crossroads. In this one small town in the heart of America's Bible Belt, a community grapples with rapidly changing demographics. Just a stone's throw away from Pulaski, Tennessee (the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan), longtime African American and white residents are challenged with how best to integrate with a growing Latino population and the more recent arrival of hundreds of Muslim Somali refugees.

Set on the eve of the 2008 Presidential election, the film captures the interaction between these residents as they navigate new waters against the backdrop of a tumultuous year. The economy is in crisis, factories are closing, and jobs are hard to find. The local Tyson chicken plant is hiring hundreds of new Somali refugees, and when a local reporter initiates a series of articles about the newcomers, a flurry of controversy and debate erupts within the town.

Just as the Latino population grapples with their own immigrant identity, African American residents look back at their segregated past and balance perceived threats to their livelihood and security against the values that they learned through their own long struggle for civil rights. As the newcomers — mostly of Muslim faith — attempt to make new lives for themselves and their children, leaders in this deeply religious community attempt to guide their congregations through this period of unprecedented change. Through the vibrant and colorful characters of Shelbyville, the film explores immigrant integration and the interplay between race, religion, and identity in this dynamic dialogue. The story is an intimate portrayal of a community’s struggle to understand what it means to be American.

Being Human 4


by RJS
posted May 24, 2011

Chapter 2 of Joel B. Green’s book Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible is entitled “What does it mean to be human?” In this chapter he addresses the title question from two directions, scientific and biblical. In the post last Tuesday I considered the scientific evidence for the connection of human life with the rest of animal life including a consideration of the material features that may, or may not, make us distinctly human. In this post I would like to put up for conversation some of the biblical perspective on human uniqueness.

Moving from science to the bible, Dr. Green starts by describing several problems or pitfalls in the consideration of a biblical view of the nature of humanity. He proceeds to consider a few passages of scripture and wraps up with an sketch of what he finds as the biblical basis for human distinctiveness.

The evidence for the nature of humanity found in the bible is implicit not explicit. We are not told “this is the nature of humanity” rather we have texts that assume a view, counter other views though to be errant, or project ideas about the nature of humanity into a discussion of the future new heavens and new earth.

There is a problem of method. There is no simple method, be it appeal to culture, word study, or appeal to the afterlife, which, when applied to the scripture, will permit easy discovery and understanding of the biblical view of the nature of humans.

Most importantly, there is an ever present danger of imposing our current ideas about the human person on the text rather than listening to what the text has to say. This is really the big problem. The approach of substance dualism is something that Dr. Green claims we project into the text rather than extract from the text. Here he looks specifically at the healings by Jesus to provide an example. Physical blemish kept a person from access to God and the community of God’s people. Cleansing a leper restored him to God and to community (Mt 8:1-4). In another example healing is connected with the forgiveness of sin, in fact healing is tantamount to the forgiveness of sin (Mt 9:2-8). Humans are unified wholes.
Here we find no room for segregating the human person into discrete, constitutive “parts,” whether “bodily” or “spiritual” or “communal.” (p. 49)
Is the dualist view of human persons as body and soul something we read from the text or we read into the text?

Humans as individuals vs human in community. The problems that arise from imposing modern assumptions on the text go beyond dualism though. The notion of community and the importance of place in community was more significant in the ancient culture where the bible was shaped and written. We tend to define identity in terms of self-sufficiency, self-determination, self-autonomy, self-legislation, and the individual inner person – taking ideas from Charles Taylor Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. This modern view of human identity is in contrast with the view of human persons implicit in the biblical text.
The point is that constructions of personal identity that pervade the world of the interpreter are easily read back into the texts under scrutiny, and yet, in the case of the human self discerned by Taylor, can stand at odds with biblical anthropology at almost every turn. … These include such emphases as the construction of the self as deeply embedded in social relationships and thus the importance of dependence/interdependence for human identity; a premium on the integrity of the community and thus the contribution of individuals to that integrity; the assumption that a person is one’s behavior – that is, that one’s dispositions are on display in one’s practices; an emphasis on external authority – that is the call to holiness is a call to human vocation drawn from a vision of Yahweh’s “difference”; and the reality of dualism vis-a-vis good/evil, resident in and manifest both outside and inside a person. (p. 50)
So what is found in scripture? Dr. Green looks specifically at Genesis 1-2 and concludes that humans are fundamentally relational – with God, with each other, and with the world. To bear the divine image is to have a distinct role and vocation in creation. The vocation is part of the covenantal relationship with God.
What is this quality that distinguishes humanity? God’s words affirm the creation of the human family in its relation to himself, as his counterpart, so that the nature of humanity derives from the human family’s relatedness to God. The concept of the imago Dei, then, is fundamentally relational, or covenantal, and takes as its ground and focus the graciousness of God’s own covenantal relations with humanity and the rest of creation. The distinguishing mark of human existence when compared with other creatures is thus the whole of human existence (and not some part of the individual). (p. 63)
Turning to the Psalms and then New Testament Dr. Green finds the same theme of covenant, relationship, and vocation in community as the defining nature of the human person. After looking at the terms image and glory, especially in relationship to the place of Christ as the image of God, and a brief comment on the nature of salvation (more of that in a later chapter), he concludes that both science and scripture paint a view of human persons as characterized by embodiedness and relationality. But the bible gives us a more complete view in two ways:
First, In presenting the physical embeddedness of the human family, they [the biblical materials] highlight the vocation of humanity in relation to the created order – not only in relation to other humans, but also in relation to the cosmos. Second, the biblical materials urge the view that a biblical theology of humanity must have as its primary point of beginning and orientation the human in a partnering relationship with God. (p. 71)
The biblical view of human persons, according to Dr. Green, is centered on community and relationship, not on individuals. The question of body, soul, and personal identity from a modern perspective distorts our understanding of scripture, our appreciation for the story of Israel in the Old Testament (including the issues raised in the posts on God Behaving Badly), and our understanding of salvation in the New Testament.

What do you think? Is the nature of humanity in the Bible primarily relational, covenantal, and vocational?

Do we over value the nature of humanity as individual identity?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net
If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.


Monday, May 23, 2011

Why I can't give up the label "Evangelical"


by Roger Olson
posted May 23, 2011

Friends and acquaintances on both the right and the left and nowhere on the theological spectrum (I don’t insist that everyone be somewhere on that spectrum) have asked me why I continue to call myself “evangelical”–given all the problems with that term today.

Well, I respond, what else would I call myself? Just Christian? That label has just as many problems and always gets the response “What kind of Christian?” Protestant? Again, too vague and inclusive. I am both of those, but if I use them alone or in tandem to identify my theological orientation people rightly ask “What kind of Christian and what kind of Protestant?’

All my life I’ve called myself an “evangelical Christian” or, when I was very young but old enough to be aware of these things, knew I was part of a wider Christian community called “evangelical.” To us, evangelical was synonymous with “authentically Christian” as opposed to “nominally Christian.” When I was a teenager deeply involved in Youth for Christ, for example, I knew which churches in our midwest city of about 100,000 people were evangelical in that sense and which were just (in our eyes, anyway) religious clubs. And we knew that some good Christians stayed in their nominally Christian churches which did not make their churches evangelical or them less than fully and authentically Christian. So, it was complicated, but not too complicated.

When did “evangelical” become a problem for me and many others who proudly wore that label for decades? First, when Jerry Falwell began calling himself an evangelical and, second, when the mass media began depicting Falwell and Pat Robertson and people associated with the Religious Right as “the” evangelical–i.e., as the leading spokesmen for the movement.

Again, as with the scandal about the “end of the world,” I blame the media for the good label “evangelical” becoming problematic. I talk to media people fairly often. Just last week, in the run up to the “end of the world” day (May 21) I was interviewed by a local reporter. I mentioned to her the Luther quote about planting a tree today (if he knew the world would end or Christ would return tomorrow). She thought Luther was sometime in the 1800s!

Most stories I see and hear in the media about “evangelicals” are so distorted and uninformed that I can hardly stand to watch them or read them. Most journalists (with a few notable exceptions) have come to use the term for anyone or group they consider religiously fanatical or theocratic.

So, I understand why some of my friends and acquaintances want me to give up the label.

However, I’m stubborn and don’t want to give the media (and fundamentalists) the privilege and power to define good religious labels wrongly. I also don’t know what label I would turn to to begin to define my particular kind of Christianity. Whatever label I use will need some explaining. And it’s just naive to think we can get away from all labeling.

Call me Don Quixote, but I think rescuing “evangelical” from the media and the fundamentalists is worth the attempt.

In the meantime, however, I do have to qualify my particular brand of evangelicalism. So I have used the qualifier “postconservative.” Occasionally, if I know I don’t have time to explain that (!), I’ll just use “progressive.”

All labels have their problems and, to be sure “evangelical” is fraught with them. But I am not giving it up. Instead, I will fight for it. To me, it is virtually synonymous with “God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving” Christianity. Of course, that needs unpacking also.

One thing I find helpful when talking to someone or a group with time to listen is to distinguish between the evangelical ethos and the evangelical movement. I see myself as participating in both, but I am more comfortable claiming the evangelical ethos than I am identifying with the evangelical movement– at least as it is viewed by most people.

So, most of the time, when I say I am evangelical I mean I am a Protestant Christian who believes authentic Christianity requires a conversion experience of regeneration and that faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and repentance for sin are necessarily included in that. It cannot be merely an “enlightenment,” so to speak–a new way of thinking.

Of course, much more could be said about the true meaning of evangelical, but my point here is simply that, for me, it is still a good and useful label, but it needs qualifying–just like all one word labels do.
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As an aside, I have lately written to Roger Olson and asked how he would understand the term "emergent Christian" or "emerging Christian" to which his reply is that of a "progressive or post-conservative" evangelical Christian, that is, and evangelical Christian who sees the need to update his church and faith and fellowship in line with the postmodernistic times that Christianity has entered into. As with any label, whether "progressive," "post-conservative," "emerging," or "emergent" we should balance those descriptors off with the writer, author, movement, church, association, etc that is utilizing (or abusing) it. Curiously, this can be as applicable to a movement's founder as to his (or her) critics.

For example, I like Rob Bell, but not all things Rob says are things I would be in agreement with. Perhaps I feel he strays a bit from an orthodoxy that doesn't support his statements biblically. Still, I find him very useful in enlightening myself and many others with the shortcomings of "evangelicalism" as much as the "benefits" of an emerging Christianity as he re-interprets the gospel of Jesus within a framework I deem to call "Inauguration Eschatology."

But like Roger says, too often we simply don't understand the content of the terms we freely banter about, and more-often-than-not, we usually misrepresent them. So it is necessary to study and discuss, dialogue and interact with each other over as many issues as is necessary to proper convey Jesus to a lost and sinful world, as much as to ourselves, lost in a wilderness of follies and ideas.

Thus this blog I've created on all things "emergent" (or emerging, or progressive, or post-conservative) as I try to sort things through the various postings I've read and have found helpful to the teaching and illumination of Scriptures. And not just from an "emergent vein," but in the faithful use of an historical orthodoxy from all church ages past, all church leaders, teachers, and preachers past, in the discernment of God's Word. In a word, I wish to "update" our foundational orthodoxy into this present age of man with all of its upheavals, discontents, disappointments, misunderstandings and shortsightedness.

And with that said, I pray that we continue to use our "good senses" praying for Spirit-filled illumination and discernment in the task of following Jesus as best as we can. For ultimately, it takes a fellowship of like-minded, good-hearted, discerning Christians to do this task together, as we examine and expound the truths of God's Word as best as we can understand it, apply it, live it, breath it, believe it, practice it, teach it, share it, testify of it, and be at peace with it in our heart-of-hearts.

- skinhead

The End of Evangelicalism 7

As with any movement or name it is always best to understand both the pros as well as the cons of any position or ideology. Rollins, McLaren, and Hirsch have all been quoted on this blog regarding their very helpful and positive directional material to Christianity. So with that said, here is David Fitch and Scot McKnight's additional rejoinders of both the positives and negatives of each man's ministry. And I would suppose that even with ourselves, our friends or non-friends, each may say as much about our own personal doctrines, "-isms," and leanings. But so often it is hard to maintain a "balanced view" of things when in the thick of transformative events, and yet, a well-informed moderation is always helpful (if possible) in reporting current events within and outside of Christianity.

- skinhead
* * * * * * * * *
 

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/05/23/the-end-of-evangelicalism-7/

by Scot McKnight
posted May 23, 2011

My friend David Fitch, in The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Theopolitical Visions) , observes that the new forms of evangelicalism are a witness to some form of discontent. He includes the emerging church, the missional church, neo-monasticism and the organic house-church movement. These, Fitch contends, are the “contours of the post-evangelical landscape” (179).

The questions we need to face are these: What forms of evangelicalism do you think will be most vibrant in the next twenty years or so? Is evangelicalism itself changing, or are these splinter groups with only a few years to survive? Do you think the NeoReformed/NeoPuritan movement is another witness to discontent?

David Fitch focuses on three groups in this time of discontent who are providing plausible, yet inadequate, visions for the “birthing of a renewed Christian political presence for our time” (179).

He takes up his three themes again (Inerrant Bible, Salvation, Christian Nation) and sketches how seminal, young, post-evangelicals are proposing ideas: Peter Rollins, Brian McLaren, and Alan Hirsch with Michael Frost. By the way, Fitch thinks James Davison Hunter’s proposal of “faithful presence” is a form of NeoAnabaptism, and I completely agree.

With each of these young theologians, Fitch sees both promise and problems. So, Peter Rollins: while Rollins clearly points us to the capturing of God in Bible and while he pushes us into apophatic theology to remind us that the infinite God cannot be contained by human words, and while he wants us to focus not so much on believing the right things but believing in the right way, Fitch says Rollins is in danger of de-incarnationalizing the Word of God. The Christian is called both to affirm the centrality of Scripture as the place where God has spoken and to land in particular ways in particular settings. For Rollins Scripture can become another Master-Signifier without content. He also thinks his liturgies run the same risk.

Brian McLaren points out the problem of a too other-worldly salvation and of a decisionism that does not lead to transformation and the need to focus God’s mission in kingdom theology and to do all of this in the now, but he thinks McLaren is in danger of de-eschatologizing the kingdom by separating it too much for a robust christology or ecclesiology and a future eschatology. He thinks Brian is too close to seeing Jesus too much as guide and exemplar away from the ruling Lord and Christ. Kingdom too easily can become another nebulous Master-Signifier where advocacy for justice loses its trinitarian and eschatological bearings.

And he sees much of value in Hirsch and Frost in their pushing against the consumerist and attractional church, and their advocacy for organic missional work, and for a dispersed church but they run the risk of de-ecclesiologizing the church’s relationship to society. (Too much missional claims do this.) The practices of the church are too separated from the mission of the church. Which practices? eucharist, baptism, preaching, fellowship, gifts, etc.. Their claim that the proper order is christology, mission and then ecclesiology runs the risk of a Christ too separated from the church and its practices, and can suggest too individualistic of a soteriology and mission.

Thanks David. Good job. Much to think on here.


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Friday, May 20, 2011

Heaven Has A Name and It's Called Sidney

Resurrection | in memory of Sidyney

by Mason Slater
posted on May 19, 2011

A week and a half ago our cousin, Sydney Potjer, passed away due to complications from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).

She was six years old.

Losing someone so young has been devastating, but that we had even six years with Sydney was a miracle. When diagnosed at one year old with SMA she was not expected to live past two. Yet due to her parents incredible 24-hour a day care for her, and her determination to keep fighting, she was able to be part of our lives for far longer.

In those six years Sydney touched many people, with her ready smile, infectious personality, and desire to see the best for everyone around her. This was evident at her funeral last week, when her entire class from school gathered to sing songs in her memory, and over 400 people attended the service.

Our local paper, the Grand Rapids Press, did an article on Sydney’s life which you can read here.

In it her mother, Kami, recounts a conversation she had with Syd “She was excited about going to heaven and seeing Jesus. She said, ‘I want to go there. I want to see Jesus.’ Of course, she wanted to come back home afterward.

That story was told a number of times over the week, and on the second or third telling it struck me. Yes, it’s cute, and sweet, and touching,

but it’s also spot on.

Sydney, unbeknownst to the reporter or most of those gathered to honor her memory, had summarized the Biblical hope far better than we often hear it from pulpits and professionals.

When God’s people die they do indeed go into his presence, protected and comforted by our Lord, but then, later, we do “come back home”.

And Jesus will be coming with us, to restore this place and set all things to rights.

This hope, of not just disembodied bliss in heaven but real grounded resurrection hope for new life and new creation, has been especially poignant over the past couple weeks.

It’s easy to intellectualize our theology, but right now resurrection has a face to it for me, Sydney’s. A girl who, because of her SMA, was bound to a power chair, and in the resurrection will be able to experience this place as she never was able to before.

I have no doubt that Sydney is free already of her illness, but someday she will be able to walk the fields of Byron Center, play a softball game without any help, even ride a horse.

And all of it will be free from the effects of sin, and death, and pain because, in his resurrection, Jesus was victorious over all that takes life from his people, and in his life we see the promise of the life to come.

Grace and peace.

*Images from the book Art that Tells the Story*

1984 vs. Brave New World | Our own Distopia


by Mason Slater
posted on May 20, 2011

I have an inexplicable love for all things distopian, so I was intrigued when I came across this comparison of two of my favorites in that genre, 1984 and Brave New World.

Though 1984 was, in my opinion, the better read, this comparison argues that Brave New World might be a more accurate critique of contemporary culture. That rings quite true to me, and in fact I've had this very conversation with friends before.

Like Fahrenheit 451, Huxley's Brave New World features a society who, for the most part, can be relied on to oppress themselves with little outside help. Sure, both books feature powerful enforcers, but the majority of the work is left to the people.

People who volunteer to ban books because they are seen as dangerous, and because they are entranced by more immediate forms of media. People who are kept in line not through force, but through entertainment. People who don't challenge the status-quo not because of fear of retaliation (though that comes as well), but out of fear of losing a privileged position.

We worry about 1984, but it may actually be a Brave New World that we are on the path towards.

The illustration is based on Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, and was recently featured at Theology and Culture.





e

.

The Industrial Eden

“For a long time now we have understood ourselves as traveling to some sort of industrial paradise, some new Eden conceived and constructed entirely by human ingenuity.

And we have thought ourselves free to use and abuse nature in any way that might further this enterprise.

Now we have overwhelming evidence that we are not smart enough to recover Eden by assault, and that nature does not tolerate or excuse our abuses.

If, in spite of the evidence against us, we are finding it hard to relinquish our old ambition, we are also seeing more clearly every day how that ambition has reduced and enslaved us.”

- Wendell Berry “Nature as Measure” in Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food


The Great Disappointment

http://rachelheldevans.com/great-disappointment

by Rachel Held Evans
May 20, 2011
Repent! Jesus is coming soonphoto © 2011 Ben Sutherland | more info (via: Wylio)

In 1831 a Baptist preacher from New York announced that careful study of Scripture revealed that Jesus Christ would return to earth sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. Before long, William Miller would draw over 50,000 followers to his cause. Dubbed "Millerites" by a skeptical public, the group would spend the next 13 years preparing for Judgment Day.

Miller’s first two projected dates for the Apocalypse (March 21 and April 18) passed without incident. Undeterred, he recalculated and prepared his followers to expect Christ’s return on October 22, 1844. This time, he said, he knew without a doubt.

People made final arrangements, gathered together, and waited to be raptured.

But October 22 came and went like any other day, and as soon as the sun set the devastation among Miller’s followers took hold. As one Millerite reported, "Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before... We wept, and wept, till the day dawn."

They called it The Great Disappointment.

Now it looks as though history is about to repeat itself.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, Family Radio broadcaster Harold Camping has garnered quite a following by predicting that the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011. Many of his followers have quit their jobs, emptied their bank accounts, and travelled the country handing out tracts and pamphlets to warn others of their impending doom, news reporters in tow.

The nice thing about completely crazy religious people is that they make slightly less crazy religious people like you and me feel better about ourselves. Oh I’ve had some fun at Camping’s expense—retweeting jokes about requesting pagan airline pilots on Saturday, sharing weather reports that include “rapture” in the weekend forecast, giggling at the plan to leave empty pairs of clothes at notable places around the country, and speculating on what Camping and company will do on Sunday morning when the sun rises once again.

And yet, deep down, I know the difference between us is not so great.

I confess that beneath my playful derision lies a hint of fear, not that I’ll be “left behind” but that I’m already caught up—in a delusion, in false hope, in a God of my own making…and perhaps, in a looming Great Disappointment.

Like it or not, Harold Camping and his followers make us laugh because we see a small piece of our faith in theirs. They are exaggerated caricatures of ourselves.

We too are guilty of projecting onto God our expectations and desires.

We too can get overconfident in our interpretations of the Bible.

We too expect God to judge the way we think he should judge, act when we think he should act, be who we think he should be.

And, you gotta admit, there’s a chance that we too might be absolutely, devastatingly, irrecoverably wrong.

If disappointment is about thwarted expectations, then we have all been disappointed by God at one time or another. My hope is that when the sun rises on May 22, Harold Camping will repent of his overconfidence and delight in a God who is bigger than his expectations and whose plans for this world far exceed anything he could ever ask or imagine.

My prayer is that I do the same.

1 Town, 50 People, 1 very difficult Question



Very interesting video... it makes me want to ask the
same question, that is,"What's mine?"


The End of Evangelicalism 6

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/05/20/the-end-of-evangelicalism-6/
 
by Scot McKnight
posted May 20, 2011
 
I begin with this claim: the church, the local church as well as the church universal, is a politic. Instead of supporting a political party, which confuses the church into serving two masters, the church strives to be a politic. These are my words, not David Fitch’s, but I think they get to the heart of David’s section on how the church is to recover the core of our politics for mission. The problem is the Christian Nation vision, but the solution is to abandon that and to become a politic under the Lordship of Jesus, a politic of the kingdom of God. Fitch, in The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology (Theopolitical Visions) examines four theologians.

The questions we need to face are these: How is your church shaping the politic of the church as part of God’s mission in this world? How is your church a “politic”? The gospel is performed as well as proclaimed. How does it perform the mission of God? Has your church been co-opted by political partisanship?

They are Henri du Lubac, William Cavanaugh, Nathan Kerr and John Howard Yoder. Here’s how he ties them together:

Lubac’s focus is on the Body of Christ in his physical body, in the Eucharist and in the church, but the eucharist has become a place for spectating instead of embodying that Body. Cavanaugh, another Catholic theologian, contends the eucharist births a political presence and engages society for redemption and renewal. It is thus a subversive presence.

Nathan Kerr, however, subverts both of these ideas (and Fitch’s) by contending the church is the church when it is dispersed into mission. Missiology precedes ecclesiology. The church becomes a non-site place! This leads to John Howard Yoder … who advocates the church as those who live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ — when the church embodies the “gifts.” It lives today what the world is to become. The church does this in binding and loosing, breaking bread, baptism, the gifts, and the rule of conversation.

And the church does this as the body that extends the incarnation, by living the kingdom, and by having a porous boundary.

Now Fitch digs: “Evangelicals have put forth the church as Christ’s voluntarist army dispersing individuals into the world to do the work of Christ and his mission.” He says it is “the social body of His Lordship (His Reign) incarnating Christ in the world for God’s mission” (166).

The Sunday gathering is in order to be shaped together into his body for the world in eucharist, preaching the Word and re-entry into the world. Sunday gatherings are not to be distinguished from daily living.


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The Cycle of Hope in Life & Death

Take heart… there is Hope!
http://peterrollins.net/?p=2818

by Peter Rollins
posted 6/5/11

I remember, when I was young, reading a short story by the great Philip K. Dick about a man who discovers that insects are highly evolved beings intent on destroying humanity. If I remember correctly the insects communicate to one another through a form of ESP that the man is suddenly able to pick up.

He gains this unusual skill purely by accident late one evening while sitting in his house. The insects that he overhears quickly realise this and immediately send out a message to millions of other insects, telling them that the man must die.

Within a matter of seconds a mass of insects start appearing from everywhere. They ooze out of cracks in the wall, they slide through the slit beneath the door, and they flood from the gaps between the floorboards.

But just as it would seem that everything is lost dozens of spiders drop down from the ceiling and form a circle around the terrified man. One of these spiders addresses him saying, “You have discovered that the insects of the world are here to destroy humanity, but don’t worry we spiders have been placed here to protect you”.

The vast sea of insects edge ever closer as the spiders close ranks around the distraught man.

“Is there any hope?” he cries as the insects circle around him in their millions.

“It’s difficult to say,” replies one of the spiders, “there are so many of them. But we think there might be hope, so be courageous”

Soon the insects reach the circle of spiders and begin the overrun them.

Again the man pleads to the spiders, asking if there is any hope and again they reply with a cautious “yes”.

More minutes pass and soon the insects are crawling all over the man, millions of them. They begin to overrun his body and sliver into his various orifices.

“What’s happening” chokes the man to one of the few remaining spiders, “I thought you said there was hope”

“There is,” replies the spiders, “I promise that there is.”

“But I am dying” he shouts with his last breath, “they are killing me.”

“Oh” replied the spider, before succumbing to the flood of insects, “I’m sorry, but we never meant that there was hope you. We mean that there might just be hope for your species.”

As I reflect upon this story I am reminded of how much I want there to be hope for me… for my circle of friends… for my life. But perhaps this very narrow understanding of hope is not only misguided, but actually oppressive.

For there is a necessary shadow side to the belief that there is hope for me as I face my own demise and it is the sense that there really is no hope at all. These are not two separate realities but rather intimately tied to one another as heat is to light. Both of these feelings are centred upon me and focus upon my tightly bounded circle of reality.

But there can be a profound sense of peace as we expand the concept of hope beyond ourselves and the idea of our own longevity. Whether or not we will persist as an individual is not settled one way or the other when we expand our understanding of hope but rather becomes irrelevant (whether one believes in it or not). Rather we find a certain comfort in seeing ourselves as part of something much bigger, as participating in the ongoing manifestation of life herself. And that, whether or not there is any hope for us, there might just be hope for life, hope that she will eternally spring forth from the dark void of nothingness.