October 18, 2008 @ 4:11 pm | Category: politics, theology/church
Yes, it’s an option and no, it’s not unchristian. Here is a view that many have endorsed in the Mennonite Weekly Review,
Elections give us the illusion of choice, but the choices usually are options offered by the “oligarchies,” options shaped by lobbyists and bankrolled by corporations. Candidates make promises but then have no power to keep them. Social change shaped by Christian values usually comes outside the political process.
If you want to know more about not voting as a legitimate Christian position, you may be interested in Electing Not to Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for Not Voting, edited by Ted Lewis. Not voting in America has a bad reputation among Christians and why should it? Whatever you decide, I do believe that one of the problems is that we think all problems are ultimately solved through politics.
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July 26, 2008 @ 3:19 pm | Category: community, theology/church
I am currently reading Being Consumed:Economics and Christian Desire by William T. Cavanaugh. The author provides a theological and cultural analysis of our consumer society. He presents consumerism not as materialism, but as spirituality gone wrong. Consumerism has many of the elements associated with spirituality: the search for transcendence, detachment, community, and human solidarity. Cavanaugh provides an economic ethic based on the Eucharist in which the ultimate consumption of the body of Christ relativizes all other consumption. The economic belief in scarcity, because human desire is unquenchable, is met with the abundance of life in Christ. I believe this book provides important insights on how people of faith are to live in a world dominated by stuff. This might be a very good group discussion topic.
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August 19, 2007 @ 8:57 am | Category: theology/church
Here is a recent interview that I did with Steve Brown. Check it out.
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May 9, 2007 @ 11:16 am | Category: gender/feminism, theology/church
See this video by Jennifer Roach about the sad history of women in Christianity. A history that betrays the message and work of Jesus. One tragic response to the youtube post of the video was:
“Sometimes I wish God had made me a man. I feel that He cursed me by making me a woman sometimes.”
It would be one thing if we could look at our history and say we are beyond this. Then we could see these men as products of their time and leave it at that. However, negative ideas about women remain and are alive and well. Not only in the hearts of men but of women. The spiritual implications are immense.
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April 7, 2007 @ 11:15 am | Category: spirituality/religion, theology/church
The Entombment by Caravaggio, 1602
I can’t remember the first time I saw a baptism, I am sure it was a full body dunk of an adult convert to Christianity. I distinctively remember the first foot washing I witnessed at a pentecostal camp meeting. Since then both adult baptisms and foot washings are a rare thing. What has remained more frequent is the holy meal. Even this seems to be threatened with extinction due to neglect. If it wasn’t for those high church people, God bless them, it would gone by now, lost to efficiency and televised church services.
To me the loss of these practices is an indication that the fundamental understanding of the Christian faith as an embodied religion is disappearing, at least in the US. The Christian faith has always held that the body matters. Even after allowing for its lapses into gnosticism. The body matters enough for God to take on flesh, die, and defeat the great enemy of humanity, death, in a resurrection. No matter what pop culture will tell us about a “good death” the Christian faith says that the only good death is death defeated. Ask the billions of unsophisticated people in the world what they fear most for themselves, and their loved ones, and they will tell you death. Death from hunger, disease, and human brutality. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is good news for them and for us. It means that our bodies matter and that we can hope to live eternally not as disembodied spirits in some ethereal plane but in the wonder of humanity - our bodies. That is why for two thousands years Christians have proclaimed, He is risen!
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March 4, 2007 @ 8:51 pm | Category: global issues, theology/church
Today I had the opportunity to hear a lecture by Philip Jenkins, the author of The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. In it he writes about how the center of Christianity is moving to Africa and Asia where the bible is a living book. Christianity as experienced by the global south is charismatic, engaged with overcoming spiritual powers, and liberating for women. In taking the Old Testament stories seriously they are able to draw tremendous power which yields dignity and freedom for women.The same stories that are often considered misogynistic in the west and unworthy of women are the stories in which global south women find their freedom. Stories like the rape of Tamar, the murder of the concubine in Judges 19 and Ruth’s and Naomi’s sojourn all become redemptive metaphors for the experiences of women everywhere. As we learn to read these stories through the freshness of their eyes, instead as old and forgotten fables, maybe they can have the same power to transform our very different lives.
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January 21, 2007 @ 11:42 am | Category: politics, theology/church
Yesterday I started the day by laughing at the idea of a Christian Taliban like in this blog posting by Bible Girl. It’s the sort of accusation that comes up when Christian parents are trying to control what their own children are being taught or exposed to. It’s usually voiced by westerners who have no clue what it is to live under the Taliban. In Christianity the idea of compulsion in belief goes smack against the voluntary nature of the faith. By the afternoon, I had gained sobriety with this story. It reports that the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has dismissed Sheri Klouda, professor of Hebrew, for being a woman. Some at the institution believe that it’s unseemly that a woman teach men biblical Hebrew. If they are to remain consistent to their view that a woman should not exercise “authority” over a man, any man, I don’t think they will care for the possibility of a woman being president of the US either. If this mentality was to have any cultural traction women ( and the whole society) would be in a whole lot of trouble. Women occupy too many positions where they exercise authority over men and are indispensable like the police and judges. Fortunately, this idea and those who hold it will remain in the dusty nooks of their own private institutions. Can we say irrelevant?
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August 17, 2006 @ 7:18 pm | Category: art, theology/church, Pop Culture
Religion professor Donna Freitas has a giddy NPR commentary about Madonna’s recent performance of staging her own mock crucifixion. Drawing the attention of the Vatican, Madonna’s latest stunt has been all over the news so it’s hard to miss. Is Madonna’s performance blasphemy or good art helping us identify with Jesus in our own and diverse ways? Which brings up a deeper question. Is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ a unique historical and spiritual event or merely a metaphor or symbol we created, and therefore, whose meaning we can change at will? If Christianity and its metaphors are created by us then Madonna is a superb social critic. If the cross is a unique act of God then Madonna’s act quickly becomes unintelligable and profoundly irrelevant. Maybe the definition of blasphemy is to take something profoundly true and make it irrelevant.
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August 15, 2006 @ 3:03 pm | Category: global issues, theology/church
Over 60 scholars, activists and leaders will speak at a conference in Manhattan October 17-19. If you are interested in what some women are up to in religions as diverse as Islam to Zoroastrian this is the place to hear and see it all.
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April 8, 2006 @ 9:14 pm | Category: spirituality/religion, media, theology/church
With all the current publicity mounting for the forthcoming Da Vinci Code movie anything Gnostic promises to get media attention. For a while now, Mary Magdalen has been the center of academic and popular deconstruction, now Judas may take her place. The National Geopraphic Society has published a study on the lost Gospel of Judas which portrays Jesus actually asking Judas to betray him. With the proliferation of Jesus clones it is getting much harder for a true spiritual seeker to identify him in the crowd. The problem is made worse by the pretention of “scholarship”. If you are interested in what is driving the academy and media and what history really tells us, read Hidden Gospels by Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religion at Penn State.
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