The Morphing of the Emergent Church

I wandered unto the templed mountains of Thy holy hills and there found My Redeemer...

In light of the Emergence Christianity 2013 conference that met in Memphis, Tennessee, this past January, a few evangelicals have proclaimed Emergent Christianity dead and its birthright to a second Protestant Reformation not to have happened. Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt were its hosts, providing a short Q&A on the eve of the event. And later this fall, the AAR is hosting an Open and Relational Theology conference around the theme of Emergent Christianity. To which Homebrewed Christianity is likewise calling for papers from all walks of life to this same conference. Add to this John Caputo's conference in April in Springfield, Missouri, re postmodernism and the church and it seems that Emergent Christianity is doing quite nicely with its lower profile. Mostly because I suspect that many Emergent Christians have been quietly absorbing what Jesus' message and mission must mean to them, their church, and community.

 

Around West Michigan, Cornerstone University is hosting a conference on creation and Scripture, which doesn't mean that they have changed their position on 7-Day Creationism so much as they have felt the necessity to revisit the issue of what evolution and science means to the church theology today. And though Rob Bell has left Mars Hill Church for a breather from the evangelical flames of diatribe and rhetoric, Mars Hill itself is still progressing along the courses set for it a decade earlier - living out a Jesus faith, serving others, and ministering to the poor and needy.

 

After two decades of emergent passion and output one would expect a movement to pause, regather itself, and probe through the many directions and meanings of its past self, images and identity. And it is this sort of pause that is allowing non-emergent believers and churches to catch up and begin absorbing what the emergent movement has been focusing on these past many years. So that, rather than remaining as a loose movement of emergent affiliates, emergent Christianity is morphing into a generalized emergent attitude of contemporary Christian thought and action. And given the choice between being a nationally recognized (or global) movement - or that of living out a Jesus faith - I believe we would all hope for the latter course as an investment of minds, bodies, energy and prayer.

 

Consequently, the article I've included today, though written by a Dallas Seminary group of editorialists (Dallas, TX) believing the Emergent Christian movement is dead and gone, has quite thoughtfully pointed out to us the many helps, twists, and turns, that Emergent Christianity has brought to Evangelical Christianity from all walks of life. And rather than brushing it off as another "I told you so" mindset, am actually believing it to have helpfully shown Emergent Christianity's significant spiritual impact and legacy to date.

For many Christians, Evangelicalism is the religion that is dead, not their faith in Jesus, nor their belief that the contemporary church must be more affective in its outreach, ministries, and witness. And I suspect that Satan and his leagues are now having a harder time than ever before in extinguishing the Jesus flames of repentance and commitment when compared to the state of the Christian church at the end of late Modernism (1980s - 1990s). Under the mighty hand of God, and by His Holy Spirit, the secular modern church has been scattered. And we should not despair of holding to a past movement and tradition that must die and be put away. Including yesteryear's denominationalism. For it is to the mind of Christ, and to the attitude of unity and fellowship, that the postmodern church of today must join itself to. Not to a felicity of program, media supremacy, and ideological might and muscle.

We are servants of Christ, and the reformation presented by another kind of Christianity - that of Emergent Christianity - has been used mightily of God to remove the hardness of hearts, and delusion of religious faith for that of a truer Jesus faith. I have nothing but thanks to express towards all past emergent Christians who have prayed and laboured for the Son of Man raised to the right hand of our Creator Redeemer. These faithful have been the brave, martyred, believers willing to question Christian tradition and ideology against that of a nonliving, unconfessing faith. Now let us build upon this foundation laid by building wisely, humbly, in grace and fellowship, regardless of name or labels to come, that we be one in the body of Christ, in His Spirit, and by His Word.

 

R.E. Slater

March 7, 2013

 

 

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What Happened to the Emerging Church?

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2013/01/what-happened-to-the-emerging-church/#commentspost

 

by Michael Patton

January 14, 2013

What happened to the emerging church? I don’t know.

 

For many years, it was the talk of the town. From its advocates to its antagonists, the emerging church gave everyone fodder for conversation. Bloggers knew every day what they were going to blog about. Revolutionists always had a distinguished place in the world. Revisionists had many friends who would take up the same rifle and shotgun. Deconstructionalists all held their distinguished hammers. If you were an emerger, you were not alone.

 

However, today things have changed. No one blogs about it. No one claims the name anymore. No publisher would dare accept a book about the emerging “thing” that happened in the forgotten past. Why? because around the year 2009, the identity of the emerging church went silent and many (some enthusiastically) put a gravestone over its assigned plot. In fact, I even paid my respects.

 

What happened to the emerging church? Which emerging Church?

 

Defining the “emerging church” is as difficult today as it was in the bygone days. No one ever agreed. It touched so many issues: ecclesiology, soteriology, epistemology, anthropology, and sociology. You could ”emerge” with any or all of these issues. In general, the emerging church represented a disenchantment with the traditional methodology and beliefs, primarily within the Evangelical church. It was an ununified movement of deconstructing. Many deconstructed theology. Some deconstructed liturgy. Others deconstructed truth altogether. The key unifying factor was that people were disillusioned with the folk religion they had been given, and were willing to stand up as reformers in whichever area housed their ensuing bitterness. But there was not much unity with regard to their beliefs. They just did things differently. They believed differently than their parents.

 

What happened to the emerging church? Who was involved in this?

 

The “movement” claimed advocates as diverse as Mark Driscoll, Scot Mcknight, Rob Bell, Doug Pagitt, Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and Dan Kimball. For many of these, it was their only claim to “fame.” Now that it has died out, many of us cannot even spell their names. Some were reassumed back into their parental fold of Evangelicalism, others continue their crusades without much fanfare or publicity.

 

What happened to the emerging church? Emerging what?

 

Well, maybe I do have a good guess. The emerging church never unified and, therefore, was never a movement at all. It was doomed from the beginning. Those who were percieved as leaders rarely agreed with each other. Some just wanted to change the way the Lord’s Supper was handled; others wanted to redefine the atonement of Christ. Some simply wanted to identify with the culture and get a tattoo here and there; others wanted to get rid of Hell. Some wanted to distance the church’s identity from politics; others wanted to change the church’s stand on issues such as homosexuality and abortion. Some wanted to have incense burning in their church building; others wanted to get rid of the church building altogether.

 

In 2006, people began to distinguish between the “emerging church” and the “emergent church.” Internally, I think many thought this would save the emerging church from being identified with its more radical and liberal representatives who were teaching doctrines that fell outside of the historic Christian faith. These more radical representatives, such as Brian McLaren and Rob Bell, were called “emergent.” The more orthodox brand was labeled “emerging.” However, this rebranding did not help. Eventually, everyone disassociated with the name altogether (at least as far as I know).

 

What happened to the emerging church? No landing gear.

 

I suppose one could say the plane never landed. The emerging church asked Christians to re-think their faith. They asked us to deconstruct our beliefs. They asked us to doubt everything. They asked us to take a ride in the emerging plane and fly for a bit. This was to gain some perspective and let us know that we Evangelicals are not the only ones out there. They asked us to look at Christianity with new eyes. Many of us jumped on this plane with great excitement. Many of us were already on a plane very similar to this. We all wanted to gain some perspective. However, the emerging plane never landed. It soon became clear that there was no destination. There was no runway on which to land and the emerging plane did not even have landing gear. The deconstruction happened with no plans of reconstructing. The emerging journey became an endless flight that did not have any intention on setting down anywhere. Many people jumped out, skydiving back home. The rest, I suppose, remained on the plane until it ran out of gas.

 

What happened to the emerging church? It is still around.

 

There will always be reformers needed in the church. In fact, the Great Reformers said that the church is reformed and “always reforming” (semper reformanda). Every one of us must go through a deconstructing process, questioning our most basic beliefs. This can do nothing but make us more real to a world who believes we are fakes. Therefore, in some sense, many in the emerging church were reformers who served the church well. Others were part of a more radical reformation and suffered from their complete detachment from the historic Christian faith.

 

But certian aspects of the ethos of the emerging church should be within all of us. We should never be satisfied with the status quo. We should always be asking questions and bringing to account our most fundamental beliefs. We need to identify with the culture at the same time as we hold on to the past. I believe Robert Webber, though never really called an emerger, was a great example of our continued need to reform. His Ancient-Future Faith was a great example of how we can hold on to, respect, learn from, and identify with our past, yet push forward into an exciting future.

 

The name “emerging” became tainted by the radical reformers associated with the movement. But the “best-of” the emerging church lives on. Indeed, the ethos of the emerging church never dies, as the church is reformed and always reforming.

 

 

 

Allowing Biblical Narrative to Rise Above Bibliolatry

Are Christian Fundamentalists actually Polytheists?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/09/are-christian-fundamentalists-actually-polytheists/

 

by Pete Enns

September 3, 2012

Comments

 

I came across this quote recently from James A. Sanders, Old Testament scholar, translater and editor of the Psalm Scroll (Dead Sea Scrolls), and former professor (retired) from Claremont School of Theology:

 

Another form of idolatry or polytheism that has emerged in Western Christianity in reaction, in part, to Enlightenment study of the Bible, and that needs also to be eschewed, is that of bibliolatry – viewing the Bible as somehow divine. God is divine, not the Bible! Hard-core fundamentalism and literalism, born in extreme reaction to contextual study of the Bible, have so idolized the Bible as to abuse it.

 

Canonical criticism proposes to understand the Bible as canon not as a box of ancient jewels forever precious and valuable, but as a paradigm of the struggles of our ancestors in the faith over against the several forms of polytheism from the Bronze Age to the Roman Empire. (From Sacred Story to Sacred Text, p. 5)

 

Maybe not the most subtle way of putting it, but Sanders makes a good point.

 

I resonate with a couple of things here. First, I regularly come across a phobia in Fundamentalism concerning the historical context of Scripture. The reason is that such study presents regular challenges to Fundamentalist ideology. But, a serious study of Scripture in its historical context, however unsettling at first, will sooner or later lead to a deeper, more real place.

 

Second, when seen in historical context, the Bible is not a collection of proof texts, like loose earrings in a jewelry box, but a canonical narrative. The Bible, despite its historical variety, is a grand narrative compiled and composed in the wake of Israel’s grand national struggle in Babylonian exile, which recounts Israel’s religious struggles throughout its history, both as they contend with the polythiesm of the other nations and with their own struggles with their own God.

 

From this perspective, the Bible is not a series of verses that tell you what to do or think, but a grand story that shows you what the life of faith looks like.

 

To paraphrase Sanders, he is saying something like this:

 

Put the Bible in its place and then you will see its deep religious value. If you treat the Bible as a rulebook dropped out of heaven, you will miss the purpose for which the Bible was written in the first place.

 

Just something to think about in this Labor Day afternoon.

 

[Sanders is also the author of Canon & Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism and Torah and Canon.]

 

 

 

Ken Page: "Our Insecurities Can Reveal Our Deepest Gifts"

 

How Our Insecurities Can Reveal Our Deepest Gifts

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-love/201109/how-our-insecurities-can-reveal-our-deepest-gifts

 

Published on September 24, 2011 by Ken Page, L.C.S.W. in Finding Love

 

In my decades of practice as a psychotherapist, this is the insight that has inspired me most:

 

Our deepest wounds surround our greatest gifts.

 

I've found that the very qualities we're most ashamed of, the ones we keep trying to reshape or hide, are in fact the key to finding real love. I call them core gifts.

 

It's so easy to get lost in the quest for self-improvement. Every billboard seduces us with the vision of a happier, more successful life. I'm suggesting an opposite road to happiness. If we can name our own awkward, ardent gifts, and extricate them from the shame and wounds that keep them buried, we'll find ourselves on a bullet train to deep, surprising, life-changing intimacy.

 

Over the years, I realized that the characteristics of my clients which I found most inspiring, most essentially them, were the ones which frequently caused them the most suffering.

 

Some clients would complain of feeling like they were "too much"; too intense, too angry, or too demanding. From my therapist's chair, I would see a passion so powerful that it frightened people away.

 

Other clients said they felt that they felt like they were "not enough"; too weak, too quiet, too ineffective. I would find a quality of humility and grace in them which would not let them assert themselves as others did.

 

Clients would describe lives devastated by codependency, and I would see an immense generosity with no healthy limits.

 

Again and again, where my clients saw their greatest wounds, I also saw their most defining gifts!

 

Cervantes said that reading a translation is like viewing a tapestry from the back. That's what it's like when we try to understand our deepest struggles without honoring the gifts that fuel them.

 

When we understand our lives through the lens of our gifts it's as if we step out from behind the tapestry and really see it for the first time. All of a sudden, things make sense. We see the real picture, the moving, human story of what matters most to us. We begin to understand that our biggest mistakes, our most self-sabotaging behaviors were simply convulsive, unskilled attempts to express the deepest parts of ourselves.

 

Susan came to therapy after her boyfriend of two years left her. She had put the whole of her heart and all her energies into her relationship, and when it ended, she felt utterly destroyed. "Why can't I let go and move on like he did, or as my friends tell me I should?" she asked me on her first visit.

 

As she described her relationship history, I saw a consistent quality of kindness in her; a soft-heartedness which people kept taking advantage of. Susan appreciated these qualities in herself, but she also felt like they were a curse. (That very ambivalence is one of the main indicators of a core gift.) I sensed that a key to her healing lay precisely there. Again and again, we worked at helping her reframe her sensitivity not as a weakness, but as a gift that she-as well as her former partners-didn't know how to honor.

 

It sounds simple, but seeing these qualities as a gift was the foundation of new dating life for her. By seeing their worth, she could learn to understand, honor, and even treasure them.

 

When Susan looked at her life through the lens of her gift, she felt triumphant. "I was right all along!" she said. "Those things that bothered me about my boyfriends bothered me for a reason. I wasn't crazy. I just didn't honor my gift and I found men who were all too happy to agree with me."

 

I've named the approach I used with Susan "Gift Theory." The easiest way to explain Gift Theory is by starting with the image of a target. Every ring inward toward the center moves us closer to our most authentic self. In the center of the target, where the bull's-eye is, lie our core gifts.

 

Core gifts are not the same as talents or skills. In fact, until we understand them, they often feel like shameful weaknesses, or as parts of ourselves too vulnerable to expose. Yet they are where our soul lives. They are like the bone marrow of our psyche, generating a living stream of impulses toward intimacy and authentic self-expression. But gifts aren't hall-passes to happiness. They get us into trouble again and again. We become most defensive-or most naïve-around them. They challenge us and the people we care about. They ask more of us than we want to give. And we can be devastated when we feel them betrayed or rejected.

 

Since the heat of our core is so hard to handle, we protect ourselves by moving further out from the center. Each ring outward represents a more airbrushed version of ourselves. Each makes us feel safer, puts us at less risk of embarrassment, failure, and rejection. Yet, each ring outward also moves us one step further from our soul, our authenticity, and our sense of meaning. As we get further away from our core gifts, we feel more and more isolated. When we get too far, we experience a terrible sense of emptiness.

 

So, most of us set up shop at a point where we are close enough to be warmed by our gifts, but far enough away that we do not get burned by their fire. We create safer versions of ourselves to enable us to get through our lives without having to face the existential risk of our core.

 

The Gift Theory model invites us to discover what our core gifts are (most of us don't really know), to extricate these gifts from the wounds that keep them buried, and to express them with bravery, generosity, and discrimination in our dating life, work-a-day lives, and relational lives. When we do this, we find healthy love moving closer.

 

If you're looking for love, try to discover your own gifts. They shine in your joys and strengths, but they also live-and hide-right in the heart of your greatest insecurities and heartbreaks. If you learn to lead with them in your dating life, you will find-almost without trying-- that you're experiencing mutual attractions with people who love and treasure the very gifts you're discovering.

 

In future blogs, we'll explore in much greater detail how to discover your own core gifts. In the meantime, I invite you to take two or three minutes to reflect on the following question:

 

Are there essential qualities in you which have sometimes felt more like a curse than a gift? Perhaps you haven't known how to handle them, or maybe you've had the painful experience of other people misunderstanding or taking advantage of them. Take a minute to begin to put words on these qualities. As you name them, you'll learn to honor them, and you'll come to understand your struggles, your intimacy journey and your life story in a new way.

 

If you'd like to sign up for Ken's free upcoming teleclass "Discovering your Core Gifts" or wish to receive information on his classes, events and writings, please click here.

 

© 2011 Ken Page,LCSW. All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

Rob Bell: What We Talk About When We Talk About God

 

 

 

 

 

What We Talk About When We Talk About God by Rob Bell

 

 

 More Info

 

 

 

Pastor Rob Bell explains why both culture and the church resist talking about God, and shows how we can reconnect with the God who is pulling us forward into a better future. Bell uses his characteristic evocative storytelling to challenge everything you think you know about God. What We Talk About When We Talk About God tackles misconceptions about God and reveals how God is with us, for us, ahead of us, and how understanding this could change the entire course of our lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love Wins for Teens

 

 

 

 

 

A Christian Review: History Channel's "The Bible" Miniseries

 

Watching Mark Burnett's version of "The Bible" on the History Channel last night made me think that it could have been more appropriately titled "The Mythologies of Modern Evangelical Christianity." Its grasp of ancient biblical history, cultures, and the biblical record was abysmal. In short, its a film about the ideology of Evangelicalism's own "approved" version of biblical doctrine. One to which Emergent Christian theology is thankfully replacing.

 

Positively, the film created a pathos of spiritual and emotional experience between the believer willing to trust God for his or her life while expecting God's direct intervention based upon this act of trust and belief. In the case of the bible, those believers who heard God's word aright did find God's help and intercession. For those believers who misheard God's calling and direction found only hardship and faith's bankruptcy. We see its parallels even now today between true biblical faith and religious delusional calling and interpretation.

 

Thankfully, Mel Gibson's version of Jesus can now be replaced by Burnett's version.... Gibson's picture was of an earthy, very tortured and abused, version of the Son of God as His kingship is rejected on this earth. Burnett's thankfully is one of the Son of Man's uplifted redemption for mankind; and, of His atonement for sin's destruction and ruin upon His holy creation. Only a holy God of love and justice can do this - who was born as the incarnate Son of God and raised as the Prince of Life and Everlasting God as our Priest and Mediator (sic, the book of Hebrews), kneading His heart to the heart of mankind.

At the last, the death knell of evangelicalism can be heard tolling in Burnett's remake of The Bible. We should be thankful for Christianity's past 200 years of struggle with Industrial society's Enlightenment and Secular Modernism, but be willing to gladly close its end chapters as we move forwards into Christianity's postmodern, emergent phase of recapture and reimagination of God, man, and all things biblical and spiritual. Emergent Christianity and its theology are the new frontiers of faith and contemporary relevancy. In it may be found that ancient, orthodox faith of the Bible - ever old, yet ever new.

 

R.E. Slater

March 5, 2013

*Addendum: I would caution readers to not be so quick to think of the Bible as simply a collection of "stories" as mentioned by Dr. Joel Hoffman in the Huff Post. Yes, I do understand what he means by this, and do think he has a legitimate observation. However, as an emergent Christian, we too hold the bible "near and dear" and are careful to interpret difficult sections of the bible appropriately. The age of biblical characters, the number of Israelites leaving Egypt, and scribal renditions of later culture backwards into earlier biblical proceedings should be recognized. But we do not jettison them all under the categorical label of "stories" lest we oversimplify the Word of God. Nor do we include everything in the Bible as "literal" for to do so is to likewise misapprehend God's Word.

 

Moreover, Dr. Hoffman also is catching on to another area reflected here on this blog site which is the tendency by Christians to read in their own cultural expectations and values into the Ancient Near-Eastern settings of the Bible. This form of reading is unhelpful, and serves to support Evangelical ideology rather than Biblical accountancy. Good theology derives from careful analysis of the Biblical narrative. If the narratives of the Bible are misunderstood than we will misunderstand the God of the Bible behind the narrative. Hence, Christians are to proceed with caution when handling the Word of God.

 

R.E. Slater

May 2, 2013

 

 

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The Bible - http://www.history.com/shows/the-bible

"The bible is HISTORY's new docudrama featuring unforgettable stories from the Books of Genesis to Revelation. Find out about all 10 hours of the series on www.History.com.

Wikipedia Info on Film Series - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_(TV_series)

 

 

The Bible Isn't The History You Think It Is

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-joel-hoffman/the-bible-isnt-history_b_2803409.html

 

by Dr. Joel Hoffman

March 4, 2013

 

Some stories in the Bible were meant to be history, others fiction. But modernity has obscured the original distinction between the two kinds of biblical writing, depriving readers of the depth of the text.

 

Perhaps surprisingly, this confusion lies at the heart of the History Channel's miniseries "The Bible," which continues the pattern of blurring history and fiction, and thereby misrepresenting the nature of the Bible to its viewers.

 

One way to understand the difference between history and fiction in the Bible is through the Old Testament's natural division into three parts:

1. The world and its nature (Adam to Terah).
2. The Israelites and their purpose (Abraham to Moses).
3. The Kingdom of Israel and life in Jerusalem (roughly from King David onward).

Even a cursory look reveals a clear and significant pattern.

 

In the first section, characters live many hundreds of years, and in the second, well into their second century. Only in the third section do biblical figures tend to live biologically reasonable lives.

 

For example, Adam, in the first section, lives to the symbolic age of 930, and Noah lives even twenty years longer than that. Abraham, from the second section, lives to be 175, his son Issac to 180, and Jacob "dies young" at the age of 147. But the lifespans from King David onward, in the third section, are in line with generally accepted human biology.

 

Furthermore, historians mostly agree that only the third section represents actual history.

 

The reasonable ages in the third section of the Bible, and, in particular, the wildly exaggerated ages in the first, suggest that the authors of the Old Testament intended only the third part as history. Underscoring this crucial difference, some of the lifespans in the first two sections are so absurd as to defy literal interpretation. These hugely advanced ages are central clues about the point of the stories.

The Old Testament contains a wide range of texts in addition to stories: laws, prayers, moral codes, and more. But even the stories come in more than one variety. Noah and the Great Flood are not in the same category as Moses and the Ten Commandments, and both are different than King David and the First Temple.

 

History and fiction mingle throughout the Old Testament, so these divisions are just rough guides. Jeremiah's historical description of the siege on Jerusalem is not the same as Ezekiel's non-historical vision of the dry bones, just as there are historical elements (like the invention of fire-hardened bricks) even in the non-historical account of the Tower of Babel.

 

The interesting point here is not that some of these stories happened and some didn't (though that's almost certainly true). The point is that the Bible itself portrays them differently, only presenting some of them as having happened. In other words, sometimes "believing the Bible" means believing that a story in it didn't happen.

 

The situation not unlike a modern newspaper, which combines news with opinion, puzzles, comics, etc. The news can be accurate even if the comics are not. The same is true for the different parts of the Bible.

 

The New Testament similarly offers more than just stories, and, as with the Old Testament, only some of the stories in the New Testament were meant as history. Others were intended to convey things like theology and morality. The account of Jesus' life in the Gospels is not the same as the beast in Revelation or Adam's life in Genesis. (The issue of different categories for Jesus and Adam is a matter of fierce modern debate because of its potential theological significance and its interaction with the theory of evolution.)

 

All of this is important for people who want to believe, for instance, that a man named Jesus was crucified in ancient Jerusalem (as described in the Gospels) even if they don't believe that a donkey spoke aloud (Numbers); or that Jews lived in Jerusalem during the first millennium BC (Kings, for example) even if they didn't leave Egypt 600,000 strong (Exodus).

 

More generally, this recognition that Bible stories are not all the same is part of understanding the essence of the Bible, and is crucial for people who believe that the Bible remains relevant even if parts of it aren't true.

 

Like combining a newspaper's news with its comics, painting the Bible with a single brush obscures its original nature. Unfortunately, by using the same style to dramatize all the biblical stories, the History Channel's "The Bible" — regardless of its other qualities — distorts the Bible's original spirit, and does a disservice both to history and to the Bible. 

 

'The Bible' Miniseries on History Channel Gets Poor Reviews

http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/the-bible-miniseries-history-channel/2013/03/04/id/492943

 

by Alexandra Ward

March 4, 2013

 

Sunday's premiere of "The Bible," a new miniseries on the History Channel that dramatizes scenes from what one producer calls "the most debated book of all time," may not have gotten the best reviews from television critics, but the show's creators still expect the holy drama to draw record numbers.

 

Divided into five two-hour episodes, the series covers Genesis to Revelation with one overarching narrative, according to Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, "The Bible" husband-and-wife producer team. Burnett is known for his work on "Survivor" and "Celebrity Apprentice."

 

"The Bible" highlights some old favorites — Noah's ark, Adam and Eve, and the Exodus — and includes both the Old and New Testaments. The series, despite its modest $22 million budget, has an action film feel, with a lot of computer-generated scenes meant to wow audiences.

 

"We wanted it to look, sound and feel like a $100-million production, not some old donkeys-and-sandals movie of the past," Downey said. "We have incredible special effects with Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus walking on water. We have this amazing international cast. We set out to create scale."

 

But Sunday night's premiere left most critics scratching their heads. Here's an overview of what everyone's saying about "The Bible."

 

The New York Times – Neil Genzlinger

 

Overall feeling: Mark Burnett missed out on a good opportunity to do something great.

 

"The result is a mini-series full of emoting that does not register emotionally, a tableau of great biblical moments that doesn’t convey why they're great. The Red Sea parts no more convincingly here than it did for Charlton Heston in 1956."

 

The Hollywood Reporter – Allison Keene

 

Overall feeling: The show struggles with identifying its central audience.

 

"Unfortunately, The Bible is fractious and overwrought. Others are sure to pick apart the deviations from the sacred text, but that's just the beginning of the miniseries' issues. In the end, this is the most well-known and popular book in the history of humanity for a reason—it's exciting and interesting and full of hope. The Bible is unfortunately none of these."

 

The Los Angeles Times – Robert Lloyd

 

Overall feeling: It's been done.

 

"The Bible according to Burnett and Downey is a handsome and generally expensive-looking production, but it is also flat and often tedious, even when it tends to the hysterical, and as hard as the Hans Zimmer soundtrack strains to keep you on the edge of your sofa, the dialogue is pedestrian and functional… It is 'psychological' only in obvious ways, with the poetry of the King James version all but ignored."

 

The Miami Herald – Glen Garvin

 

Overall feeling: Totally unbelievable.

 

"With the pace of a music video, the characterizations of a comic book and the political-correctness quotient of a Berkeley vegetarian commune — laughably, the destruction of Sodom is depicted without the faintest hint of the sexual peccadillo that takes its name from the city — this production makes Cecil B. DeMille look like a sober theologian. 'The Bible' marks the first attempt at drama by reality-show maven Mark Burnett, whose soul I would consider in serious jeopardy if it hadn’t already been forfeited during the second season of 'Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?'"

 

The Christian Post's Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, however, called the miniseries "a remarkable spiritual and emotional experience."

 

"The theme of God's love and hope for all humanity is the thread that holds the entire series together," Tunnicliffe wrote. "I received a fresh new perspective on many of the famous Bible stories: Looking through the eyes of Sarah as she thinks that her husband, Abraham, has sacrificed their son Isaac; listening to Noah telling the story of Creation to his children on the ark; agonizing with Mary (played by Roma Downey) as she sees her son, Jesus, beaten and crucified. These and so many other stories allow you to connect with the characters on a deep emotional level."

 

 

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Worlds Most Inspirational Story Ever!!









[spoiler alert]

This story actually makes a pretty good case for Open Theism besides all the angles one could approach it from - from time and place, the harsh realities of life, coincidence, miracles, help from unexpected sources, what it means to have a good, responsible court system, hope, love, charity, benevolence.... the list is endless. But rather than preach or ruin the story let's just focus on what the story means to you. Which in hindsight then will make a pretty good case for Narrative Theology and how our lives cross-sect with God's restless activity, whether we know it or not.     - res

A Recommitment to Human Rights and to the Civil Intolerance of Torture

 

 

I often wonder if the movie "Zero Dark Thirty" relieves American audiences of the awful images and guilt of terroristic beheadings and torture committed against itself and other Western civilizations during this past decade of America's unabated war on terror. That it says to America's enemies that you may expect as worst in retaliation and retribution. And although this is small comfort to those who have suffered or lost their lives both here and abroad - whether friend or foe - a civilized country should always remember to temper its frustrations and griefs from employing similarly horrendous methodologies utilized by opposing countries and their gang of thieves and rogues.

Especially for Christians who are charged by Jesus to love and to justice in a past ancient biblical world rife with torture and injustice committed by countries large and small. And perhaps this a contemporary example of an actualizing American myth as it works itself off the silver screen and x-box games into the public venue of historical actualization and acceptance by fell deeds of inhumanity taking root within the incorporated behavior of its people's consciousness. Transversing to American policies committing her to do the same to her enemies should they continue in their support and participation of terrorism - rather than pursuing more civilized methods of civil dissonance and patient diplomacy. An actualizing myth in the sense of moving America's acceptance of such brutal interrogation onto the public docks of coercive policies both domestic and international.

And by recent judgement it seems that America's public posture may have drastically changed since 2001 during our present war on terrorism from selective practices of enactment to aggressive policies of enforcement and methodology. Not that it hadn't ever been done before, but that it is now being pursued so vigorously, however the means employed (waterboarding being one such practice). To this precedence the several articles below would caution restraint and general disuse realizing that barbarity can come to any culture idealizing freedom and liberty. Certainly, laudable aspirations for any nation, but especially venomous to a nation not actively practicing its constitutionally appointed rights and mandates to even those whom it would consider as its enemies. Turning a blind eye to its inherent charters of constitutional humanity and pursuing more brutal policies to its own destruction and demise.

Thus, we would advocate the lessening of saber rattling in Hollywood, and in caustic media portrayals of America, and a return to a more civil restraint of mind and conscience. But this cannot be done by national mandate and laws, but from within a society's heart and soul. That we demonstrate an America no longer epitomized by its international image as a self-serving protector of its own rights, to that of a country more cautionary and respectful in its policies and aggrievement proceedings, corporate resolutions, and stands on solidarity with other similarly aggrieved countries. Providing, as it were, a common ground of civil ideology from which to work in recreating an era of peace from the turmoils and manifold injustices currently existing between hostile nations in grievance with America.

To not be content with mythologizing our enemies as zombies, aliens, predators, vampires, and stereotypical images of thuggery and violence. Nor promoting ourselves in the form of anti-heroes, or by roving mob attitudes of kangaroo-court justice, or cowboy gallantry. But focused on the legitimate rights and needs of even our enemies chaffing at America's deployment of force and strength against its coffers of blood money and capitalistic lust. To stand down from actualizing our mythologized ideas of ourselves by returning to a more civil engagement of humanity found in personal and corporate practices of public service to disenfranchised minorities and dispossessed ghettos everywhere replete within the 21st Century's moiling masses of humanity. Crying out, as it were, for merciful justice, human rights advocacy, meaningful and permanent civil services, beneficial civil infrastructures, and generally, personal empowerment.

By realizing that by serving the needs of others we might re-establish our own balance of civility towards a more corporate posture of compassionate human rights and solidarity previously unimagined or expected. Relieving us of our guilt and fears ingrained by previous policies orientated towards war and suppression in the name of defense and security. And thereby reducing us to an isolated, posturing population of brawn and muscle rather than focusing on the legitimate needs and outcries of our enemies as fellow human beings reacting to the capitalistic oppression and unjust rape of their people and resources. Even if it were by America's willful propping up of oppressive heads of state within their own regional jurisdictions of control and oversight pursuant to America's goals rather than to that country's means and interests.

America is a great county. Made great by its idealized version of itself as a "City on a Hill" planted within its own heart by its originating forefathers who were refugees themselves fleeing political, religious, and civil persecution. Determined to rediscover their personal rights within a new society no longer hostile to their differences and heritage. Forefathers who wished to open America up to all dispossessed refugees of oppression seeking asylum, basic human rights, civil liberties, and humanitarian forms of justice. It was the right of every man under God to which the American constitution provided political structure and will. However, we harm ourselves by not more actively exploring how to help and assist other countries in obtaining what little freedoms and liberties we have carved out for ourselves by God's largess and blessing. Though lately it would seem that we have not committed our ways nor our will to God's benevolence and grace. For without this most basic human commitment America's corporate responsibility for its behaviors and policies will disintegrate under its own self-interests. Hence, we must work everyday as a blessed people to humanize the best forms of our citizen government in order to better enact peace, freedom, and responsible relations to a world racked by pain and injustice. This would include the Muslim countries no less than to China and Russia.

Moreover, we do well to realize that we do not stand alone in our fears, our angers, nor our sufferings, within this world that we live in. That many times over it has been the sad experience of other woeful citizenry caught between powers of oppression. From Eastern Europe, to the Muslim masses, to the impoverished African countries controlled by fierce, inhuman gun lords and tyrannical governments. To SE Asia's experiences of aggressive sino-socialism, even to countries in South America and Mexico powerless to stop the rape and pillage of their own citizenry before the cruel hands of powerful crime and drug lords. For this America bears responsibility to lead by strength, and by strength of will, in all matters of human resolution, protection, civility, and justice. Even to unempowered nations ravaged by sin and hatred within their own assemblies and land-bound contracts with one another.

Hence, we do not wish to turn a blind eye to our own governmental policies as citizens of Nazi Germany once did. A Catholic Christian country that became inhuman and hellish to the very state of humanity itself. Nor to become powerless citizens before the creation of an oppressive state system by the hands of our own making in its socialistic and militaristic endeavors. Charged with the simultaneous mandates of peace and humanity but found within its parts to be anything but that. But to become citizens actively declaring to our government and media industry a stronger will of intolerance to any deviations from Jesus' mandates to love and to service to one another. To behave ourselves wisely and not to become caught up in the lifeboat malpractices of ethical confusion to the general harm of those "unlike" ourselves. To consider every man, woman, and child, as an image bearer of God, and precious in His holy sight. To mandate the right of civility and humanity in actualizing terms that would remove any images and myths that would reduce us to civil impoverishment and divine judgment.

Movies like "Zero Dark Thirty" cannot be so much ignored or boycotted as accepted and published in public declaration to just how far we have strayed from America's former commitments to life and liberty for all mankind. Rather than denying Hollywood's horror flicks and indiscretionary violence for violence sake, it should reawaken us by putting our pulse upon the lifeblood of our great nation and forthrightly declare to us our fears, our shame, guilts and sin. Fighting Hollywood and the media is not the issue here. It is we ourselves that this industry is portraying. And it to ourselves that we must work to change by the help of Almighty God and in the power of His Holy Spirit. For within the heart of man is sin and darkness. And in man's rebirth through Jesus can be found light and life. It is to this Kingdom that we wish to share and envisage with all the nations of the earth.

Consequently, music and movies, novels and news, may more accurately tell us of ourselves than we may wish to accept or believe - though we would pay dear coinage for any revisionary image of ourselves that we can find - myths and game technology included. For in those images do we find our actualized versions of ourselves if we continue to allow our selfish absorptions to continue and progress. But these are imperfect, dithering images made by man in his own lamentable image, and not in the Son of God's own image of grace and goodness. Against which we find hope in any local municipality, corporation, school, college, church, or community group, promoting the welfare of others by active service, giving, personal involvement and participation. These are the laudable sublime practices of a liberating nation wishing to break its stereotypes by opening up hand and heart to the needs of those around it. For it is by giving of ourselves that we may find ourselves. By focusing upon the needs and rights of all men - even our perceived enemies - if we wish to dispel the boogie-man of our fears and nightmares, fantasies and delusions.

R.E. Slater
February 25, 2013

 

 

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Is This (Torture as Entertainment) What We Have Come To?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/02/is-this-torture-as-entertainment-what-we-have-come-to/

 

by Roger Olson

February 24, 2013

Comments

 

A New York Times article by Samuel G. Freedman (republished in my local newspaper Feb. 23, 2013 under the headline “Through a theological lens”) discusses the film “Zero Dark Thirty” and its implications for the subject of torture.

 

The movie is about the investigation leading up to the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound and depicts scenes of people being tortured for information leading to that.

 

The article quotes Princeton theologian George Hunsinger asking “What does it say about American culture that torture has become a form of entertainment for us?” Hunsinger rightly, I believe, concludes that “Torture has been normalized since Sept. 11 in a way that’s unimaginable.”

 

According to the article, a Pew Research Center poll found that between 2004 and 2011 a majority of Americans came to favor use of torture against suspected terrorists.

 

Evangelical ethicist David Gushee says “Our culture has almost lost the ability to have a genuinely moral conversation.” What he means, and I agree, is that pragmatism has swept away almost all sense of ethical absolutes.

 

I won’t be viewing “Zero Dark Thirty.” Nor do I rent movies I know show scenes of torture. It’s amazing how often, however, such scenes appear in “family films” rated PG-13. [Amen - res]

 

One movie I will recommend that contains a rather gruesome torture scene is one most people seem to have forgotten: The Siege (1998). It shows one of the problems with torture. An innocent man is tortured to death.

 

Many experts have argued that torture doesn’t work because under torture suspects will say whatever they think their tormenters want to hear. Another problem, of course, is that nobody knows with certainty whether the person being tortured has the information desired. Finally, it’s a slippery slope. If torturing the suspect doesn’t work, why not torture his family in front of him? Once pragmatism replaces absolutes there’s no place to stop.

 

But those are pragmatic arguments against torture. From a Christian point of view, if not just a civilized one, torture is wrong because it violates the dignity of a person created in God’s image and likeness.

 

I would like to suggest that torture in movies (and some TV shows) has become a new form of pornography. It’s widespread use demonstrates that many viewers want it. They must get some kind of enjoyment out of watching another person’s pain.

 

This is a subject for sermons. I wish Christian pastors of all traditions would speak out about it and urge their congregations to 1) avoid movies that depict torture scenes, and 2) write e-mails to movie makers and theaters urging them to cease portraying torture. Maybe a boycott is in order?

 

 

 

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‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ Through a Theological Lens

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/a-theological-view-of-zero-dark-thirty.html?ref=samuelgfreedman&_r=0

 

by Samuel g. Freedman

Published: February 22, 2013

 

Almost nine years ago, journalists on “60 Minutes II” and at The New Yorker revealed a trove of photographs showing the abuse and humiliation of Iraqi detainees by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. The images of inmates variously stripped, hooded, leashed like a dog, piled into naked heaps and forced to simulate oral sex then spread widely, causing international outcry.

 

Even on the patriotic home front, the revulsion was widespread. President George W. Bush called the Abu Ghraib episode “abhorrent.” Senators across party lines, having been shown more than a thousand photos, described them as “appalling” and “horrific.”

 

At the 2013 Oscars on Sunday night, one of the nominees for best picture, indeed one of the most lauded films of the year, contains scenes of prisoner treatment that closely recreate the Abu Ghraib tactics. Yet in “Zero Dark Thirty"the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding, forms part of a heroic narrative, as a valiant C.I.A. officer tracks down Osama bin Laden.

 



A still from the Oscar-nominated movie "Zero Dark Thirty," in which

a Navy SEAL team raid Osama bin Laden's compound. Pictures by

"Jonathan Olley/Columbia Pictures."

 

There has been much debate about the film, primarily about its historical accuracy, but one might say not the right debate, not the deepest debate. Aside from a few Hollywood dissidents like Edward Asner, it has been left largely to theologians to call the film into question not on the pragmatic ground of its fealty to facts but on the moral ground of its message: that torture succeeds, and because it succeeds we should accept it.

 

“Our culture has almost lost the ability to have a genuinely moral conversation,” said Prof. David P. Gushee, 50, a Southern Baptist who directs the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University in Atlanta. “The utilitarian-type reasoning is the only vocabulary we have. The only way we can decide what to do is whether it works. That’s a terribly impoverished moral conversation. It leaves out the question of whether torture is intrinsically right or wrong.”

 

For the Rev. George Hunsinger, a Presbyterian minister who teaches at Princeton Theological Seminary, “Zero Dark Thirty” evoked the same kind of moral questions he associates with the American decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. But the film has the added complication of being something that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki never were: an instant box office product.

 

“What does it say about American culture that torture has become a form of entertainment for us?” asked Mr. Hunsinger, 67, who is involved with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. “Torture has been normalized since Sept. 11 in a way that’s unimaginable.”

 

That normalization can be measured in specific ways. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, “Zero Dark Thirty” has grossed $88 million at the box office and received the top prize from the New York Film Critics Circle. It will compete in five categories on Sunday’s Academy Awards, including best picture and best original screenplay.

 

The film has also received some criticism, which may dampen its Oscar prospects. Writing in The New York Review of Books, Steve Coll assailed “Zero Dark Thirty” for taking fictional liberties from the factual record, all the while asserting on-screen that it is “based on firsthand accounts of actual events.” Among the real episodes omitted, Mr. Coll pointed out, are the objections to “enhanced interrogation techniques” by certain military and legal officials during the Bush presidency.

 

Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war, joined with his Senate colleagues Carl Levin and Dianne Feinstein in writing an open letter to Sony Pictures, which released the film, declaring “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners is an unreliable and highly ineffective means of gathering intelligence.”

 

So, by the first argument, the film is flawed because it does not follow the historical record. By the second, the film is flawed because torture does not work. What neither argument takes up, but what some theologians have been wrestling with throughout the “global war against terror,” is what a civilized society should think about torture even if it does work.

 

In that respect, “Zero Dark Thirty” may have done an unintended favor to the national discourse by positing that torture, at least sometimes, succeeds. How do we feel about that? The numerous awards for the film already suggest that we feel tolerant, even approving. Polling by the Pew Research Center has shown a swing between 2004 and 2011, from a majority of Americans rejecting the use of torture against terrorist suspects to a majority favoring it.

 

In 2007, as opinion was shifting, Professor Gushee of Mercer University helped write “An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture.” While condemning Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States, and while affirming the nation’s right to self-defense, the declaration stated near its end:

 

“When torture is employed by a state, that act communicates to the world and to one’s own people that human lives are not sacred, that they are not reflections of the Creator, that they are expendable, exploitable, and disposable, and that their intrinsic value can be overridden by utilitarian arguments that trump that value. These are claims that no one who confesses Christ as Lord can accept.”

 

At least one such person offered a prominent rebuttal. Keith Pavlischek, who was then a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, faulted the declaration for not adequately distinguishing between captured terrorists and prisoners of war, and for not precisely defining torture.

 

At a theological level, he argued that the document had “explicitly repudiated Christian just war teaching.”

 

One can only wish that a similarly spirited discussion, one rooted in the concept of morality, might have gotten beyond religious and ethical circles and brought some gravitas to all the attention to the red carpet and Oscar pools.

 

But moviegoing is, in part, about escapism, and now that escapism apparently includes the matter of torture.

 

“By transforming all of this into suspenseful entertainment,” said Prof. James Turner Johnson of Rutgers, a scholar of just-war theology, “the film is presenting actions that there was a great deal of debate over into something that must be done, standard operating procedure. It tends to baptize it.

 

And the truth is that we, as a society, are looking away.”