June 29, 2009
When Rebecca Chopp, President of Colgate University (http://offices.colgate.edu/president/vita.asp) gave the Ann Evans Woodall lecure a few years ago she spoke of the importance of spiritual practice in making sense of faith to a generation raised on the internet. Even before her excellent lecture, we were using the term spiritual practice in enquirers’’ classes, sermons and the like. Since then I have noticed it cropping up all over the place as something new in the recovery of the ancient. The emerging church is a network of self described churches that to a large degree draw on ancient practice at the center of their communal life.
A recognized leader of that movement called Brian McLaren (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_McLaren ) has written an article for Sojourners Magazine (July, 2009 p.23-27) called ‘Everything Old is New Again’ urging that “activism shouldn’t be separated from spiritual practices”. Those ancient practices that are finding a home in post-modern Christianity include, in his view.
• Fixed Hour Prayer or in our tradition, the Daily Office
• Sabbath
• Liturgical year
• Sacred meal or what we talk about when we talk about the centrality of regular and committed gathering around the Lord’s Table
• Fasting
• Tithing
• Pilgrimage, something about which our tenth graders are teaching us and which our strategic thinking group is discussing as ‘transformational journeys’.
It strikes me reading this and reading much of the emergent church literature that we are well poised to be relevant in the next years of the life of the church. It also seems to me, after discussing some of these ideas with our program staff and vestry, we need to take into account the instinct and intuition in each generation that some people need to feel that they are part of something challenging and new, even within the tradition. Many of us may shudder at the memory of folk masses and clown Eucharists, the early unfortunate efforts at introducing liturgical dance or ‘alternative worship’. I suspect that part of preparing ourselves to be real and relevant in twenty five, fifty or one hundred years will be to pay attention to that instinct and include it in our common life in some way shape or form.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Attitudes toward gays in Britain
June 29, 2009
A recent opinion survey in Britain regarding attitudes toward gay people (results here: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/gayrights.pdf) suggests a significant shift in a relatively short period of time with a majority or close to it supporting equality on a number of levels including marriage equality. At the same time there is a fairly entrenched group of about 25-35% who are quite opposed to any liberalization or change in this area. It seems form reports and commentary in various newspapers that a number of them are Anglicans. This news comes in the same month when our breakaway brothers and sisters have fromed an Anglican Province for North America and elected the deposed Bishop of Pittsburgh as their Archbishop. The most obvious feature of this new sect is their vehement opposition to any change in attitude toward LGBT people. Ruth Gledhill of The Times has a very good comment in her blog available here: http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/06/church-out-of-touch-on-gays-says-times-poll.html
A recent opinion survey in Britain regarding attitudes toward gay people (results here: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/gayrights.pdf) suggests a significant shift in a relatively short period of time with a majority or close to it supporting equality on a number of levels including marriage equality. At the same time there is a fairly entrenched group of about 25-35% who are quite opposed to any liberalization or change in this area. It seems form reports and commentary in various newspapers that a number of them are Anglicans. This news comes in the same month when our breakaway brothers and sisters have fromed an Anglican Province for North America and elected the deposed Bishop of Pittsburgh as their Archbishop. The most obvious feature of this new sect is their vehement opposition to any change in attitude toward LGBT people. Ruth Gledhill of The Times has a very good comment in her blog available here: http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/06/church-out-of-touch-on-gays-says-times-poll.html
Freedom’s Prophet
June 29, 2009
Freedom’s Prophet is the title of a book by Richard J. Newman (New York University Press, 2008) about Richard Allen, the AME Church and the Black Founding Fathers. Episcopalians might be familiar with Allen through his friendship with his (slightly older) friend, Absalom Jones who was the first African American to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. The book is interesting as biography and history, but also for the argument it makes that Allen and others were as much founding fathers who gave shape to this nation as the white men we remember. His concluding sentences: “Indeed, black founders like Richard Allen had already linked black struggles for justice to American and global liberation. The nation we inhabit today—multiracial but far from beyond the conundrum of race as a defining feature of national consciousness—is as much a product of Allen’s prophetic soul as Hegel’s or Jefferson’s.” (p.299) I, for one, find that Newman has made his case with this book.
I was intrigued by many aspects of this history, unfamiliar to me, but none more so than the founding of bethel Church in Philadelphia and the separation of the AME Church from White Methodism. What might have appeared as unacceptable compromise in various political decisions’ about power and control, were in retrospect significant steps along the way to securing first, a system of checks and balances in church governance and later an audience among all races for Allen’s’ continuing indictment of slavery.
I hope that in the challenge to justice presented the church today by the pressing pastoral needs of her GLBT members is such that we will finally be able to put to rest compromise and shenanigans over this issue and will stop seeing some kind of unity in our communion and the full acceptance of GLBT people as mutually exclusive. A church that already allows relationship to shape doctrine and is able to shift perspective about everything from cosmology to anthropology in the recognition of the full humanity of black people and women do not need to split over what is purported to be doctrinal issues but seems to be revealed after all this time as prejudice of the kind condemned in scripture.
Freedom’s Prophet is the title of a book by Richard J. Newman (New York University Press, 2008) about Richard Allen, the AME Church and the Black Founding Fathers. Episcopalians might be familiar with Allen through his friendship with his (slightly older) friend, Absalom Jones who was the first African American to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. The book is interesting as biography and history, but also for the argument it makes that Allen and others were as much founding fathers who gave shape to this nation as the white men we remember. His concluding sentences: “Indeed, black founders like Richard Allen had already linked black struggles for justice to American and global liberation. The nation we inhabit today—multiracial but far from beyond the conundrum of race as a defining feature of national consciousness—is as much a product of Allen’s prophetic soul as Hegel’s or Jefferson’s.” (p.299) I, for one, find that Newman has made his case with this book.
I was intrigued by many aspects of this history, unfamiliar to me, but none more so than the founding of bethel Church in Philadelphia and the separation of the AME Church from White Methodism. What might have appeared as unacceptable compromise in various political decisions’ about power and control, were in retrospect significant steps along the way to securing first, a system of checks and balances in church governance and later an audience among all races for Allen’s’ continuing indictment of slavery.
I hope that in the challenge to justice presented the church today by the pressing pastoral needs of her GLBT members is such that we will finally be able to put to rest compromise and shenanigans over this issue and will stop seeing some kind of unity in our communion and the full acceptance of GLBT people as mutually exclusive. A church that already allows relationship to shape doctrine and is able to shift perspective about everything from cosmology to anthropology in the recognition of the full humanity of black people and women do not need to split over what is purported to be doctrinal issues but seems to be revealed after all this time as prejudice of the kind condemned in scripture.
Parable
June 29, 2009
I’ve been thinking about how God addresses us obliquely or parabolically. A parable is something that is put or thrown alongside us. It is as though it comes at us on a tangent, nudging or inviting new perspective without, forcing our hand or limiting our freedom.
Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Olive Kitteridge (Random House, 2008) reveals her main character through a series of stories of a New England town. In some of these stories Olive is hardly mentioned, but all of the reveal something of her personality and circumstance, the web of relations that make up her life and shape her values. I am reminded both of Jose Ortega y Gasset’s Meditations on Quixote (Norton, 1961) in which he writes “I am myself plus my circumstance”—as good a definition of the self as I have ever encountered—and, rather obviously, the Bible in which the main character is revealed through a series of stories over time.
Peter Rollins (the same one who is a leader of the emergent church community called ‘Ikon’ –see previous entries) makes much use of parables and has published a collection of them called The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales (Paraclete, 2009). He deals more extensively with his view of scripture in The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief (Paraclete, 2008) He writes:
“Within the Bible we encounter revelation as the felt concealment of God. Rather than God being rendered manifest in revelation, this term can be seen to define a tight web of three interrelated features. First, a revelation worthy of the name involves ‘epistemological incomprehension’. In other words part of the evidence that a revelation has occurred lies in the fact that what we have encountered cannot be understood within our currently existing intellectual structures. Second there is ‘experiential bedazzlement’. Here the incoming of revelation is evidenced in a type of oversaturation in which our experience is overcome. One is overwhelmed by the incoming and short-circuited by it. Third, there is an ‘existential transformation’. When a revelation occurs, the person who is receiving it is never the same again.” (p.119-120)
Elsewhere he warns against being so caught up in the poetry and music of an opera that we fail to take account of the story that is being told. He tells the story of a great Italian General urging his men to leap out of the trenches and attack the enemy in his most commanding and sonorous voice. The general is amazed to find that no one is moving but are all commenting to one another ‘what a marvelous voice he has’. (p.139)
We might think of this as another way in which God honors our freedom, and also declines to speak with clarity form the mountaintop, but prefers parable and the revelation of character in stories over time.
I’ve been thinking about how God addresses us obliquely or parabolically. A parable is something that is put or thrown alongside us. It is as though it comes at us on a tangent, nudging or inviting new perspective without, forcing our hand or limiting our freedom.
Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Olive Kitteridge (Random House, 2008) reveals her main character through a series of stories of a New England town. In some of these stories Olive is hardly mentioned, but all of the reveal something of her personality and circumstance, the web of relations that make up her life and shape her values. I am reminded both of Jose Ortega y Gasset’s Meditations on Quixote (Norton, 1961) in which he writes “I am myself plus my circumstance”—as good a definition of the self as I have ever encountered—and, rather obviously, the Bible in which the main character is revealed through a series of stories over time.
Peter Rollins (the same one who is a leader of the emergent church community called ‘Ikon’ –see previous entries) makes much use of parables and has published a collection of them called The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales (Paraclete, 2009). He deals more extensively with his view of scripture in The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief (Paraclete, 2008) He writes:
“Within the Bible we encounter revelation as the felt concealment of God. Rather than God being rendered manifest in revelation, this term can be seen to define a tight web of three interrelated features. First, a revelation worthy of the name involves ‘epistemological incomprehension’. In other words part of the evidence that a revelation has occurred lies in the fact that what we have encountered cannot be understood within our currently existing intellectual structures. Second there is ‘experiential bedazzlement’. Here the incoming of revelation is evidenced in a type of oversaturation in which our experience is overcome. One is overwhelmed by the incoming and short-circuited by it. Third, there is an ‘existential transformation’. When a revelation occurs, the person who is receiving it is never the same again.” (p.119-120)
Elsewhere he warns against being so caught up in the poetry and music of an opera that we fail to take account of the story that is being told. He tells the story of a great Italian General urging his men to leap out of the trenches and attack the enemy in his most commanding and sonorous voice. The general is amazed to find that no one is moving but are all commenting to one another ‘what a marvelous voice he has’. (p.139)
We might think of this as another way in which God honors our freedom, and also declines to speak with clarity form the mountaintop, but prefers parable and the revelation of character in stories over time.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The Unlikely Disciple
une 17, 2009
The Unlikely Disciple is the title of a book by Kevin Roose (Grand Central, 2009) and is his account of leaving Brown University for a semester and enrolling in Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. A friend sent me this after I had read a review and decided that I was not going to bother to read it. I’m glad he sent it and that I read it. It is not a spoof or a sneer as I had supposed. Mr. Roose is clearly young and does not have much grasp of his own faith, but he enters into life at Liberty with an open mind and an open spirit, always checking his pre-judgments and wondering about how real relationships can be given his subterfuge. In the end he gets inside fundamentalist Christianity. Certainly he comes across creationism and intelligent design in the most unlikely of courses along with abhorrence of homosexuality and gay marriage, abortion and the other planks of the conservative social agenda. He is clear that students at Liberty are being thoroughly indoctrinated in a conscious and sustained way. There is little or not room for discussion or debate on these matters which are seen as essential consequences of being Christian. That said, he makes some friends, begins to enjoy the practice of regular prayer and bible study, discussing things that matter in an open ways, sharing his life, staying sober and so on. He shares stories of how pastorally flexible people can be within a system that is certain that salvation comes from giving your life to Jesus and worrying about the salvation of others above all. He went on a spring break mission trip to a Florida Beach and had to engage in ‘witnessing’ without any success. He shared in the religious life of the campus, singing in the Thomas Street Baptist Church Choir. At one point he interviewed Dr. Falwell for the campus newspaper and became a minor celebrity after Jerry Falwell died at the end of the semester.
In a free country I suppose that it must be alright for a University to establish itself as a ‘conservative boot camp’, but the sneering of the faculty and some students at anything on the ‘other side’ of their agenda and the vain attempt to make things intellectually respectable in order to achieve accreditation and the like left me feeling quite sorry for the students there who are mostly convinced that being Christian entails listening to professors who say that if every single piece of (so called) scientific evidence proved something other than intelligent design without any doubt, that the professor would still have to believe ‘the Word of God’ over the evidence because ‘the Bible does not lie’. Many of the people that Kevin Roose met are clearly people he enjoyed being around. Many of them are admirable in all kinds of ways. But the doctrine supporting this kind of faith is doing them a terrible disservice. This is the hoax behind today’s ‘mainstream’ of Christian expression in this country. We would not be considered Christian by anyone at Liberty, and they are therefore doing Christianity a terrible disservice as well.
The Unlikely Disciple is the title of a book by Kevin Roose (Grand Central, 2009) and is his account of leaving Brown University for a semester and enrolling in Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. A friend sent me this after I had read a review and decided that I was not going to bother to read it. I’m glad he sent it and that I read it. It is not a spoof or a sneer as I had supposed. Mr. Roose is clearly young and does not have much grasp of his own faith, but he enters into life at Liberty with an open mind and an open spirit, always checking his pre-judgments and wondering about how real relationships can be given his subterfuge. In the end he gets inside fundamentalist Christianity. Certainly he comes across creationism and intelligent design in the most unlikely of courses along with abhorrence of homosexuality and gay marriage, abortion and the other planks of the conservative social agenda. He is clear that students at Liberty are being thoroughly indoctrinated in a conscious and sustained way. There is little or not room for discussion or debate on these matters which are seen as essential consequences of being Christian. That said, he makes some friends, begins to enjoy the practice of regular prayer and bible study, discussing things that matter in an open ways, sharing his life, staying sober and so on. He shares stories of how pastorally flexible people can be within a system that is certain that salvation comes from giving your life to Jesus and worrying about the salvation of others above all. He went on a spring break mission trip to a Florida Beach and had to engage in ‘witnessing’ without any success. He shared in the religious life of the campus, singing in the Thomas Street Baptist Church Choir. At one point he interviewed Dr. Falwell for the campus newspaper and became a minor celebrity after Jerry Falwell died at the end of the semester.
In a free country I suppose that it must be alright for a University to establish itself as a ‘conservative boot camp’, but the sneering of the faculty and some students at anything on the ‘other side’ of their agenda and the vain attempt to make things intellectually respectable in order to achieve accreditation and the like left me feeling quite sorry for the students there who are mostly convinced that being Christian entails listening to professors who say that if every single piece of (so called) scientific evidence proved something other than intelligent design without any doubt, that the professor would still have to believe ‘the Word of God’ over the evidence because ‘the Bible does not lie’. Many of the people that Kevin Roose met are clearly people he enjoyed being around. Many of them are admirable in all kinds of ways. But the doctrine supporting this kind of faith is doing them a terrible disservice. This is the hoax behind today’s ‘mainstream’ of Christian expression in this country. We would not be considered Christian by anyone at Liberty, and they are therefore doing Christianity a terrible disservice as well.
More on Ikon
June 17, 2009
Peter Rollins of Ikon (See entry for June 1, 2009) has written a number of books. In How (Not) To Speak of God (Paraclete, 2006) he argues for theology and spirituality that has more in common with the Christian Mystics than much of the debate argument today. He is seeking to articulate a post-modern Christianity and then suggest ways in which that thinking might affect the design of worship. While his descriptions of worship (or Ikon events) don’t do much for me personally, I like what he is trying to accomplish. If I was to translate his thinking about such things as ‘a/theology as icon’ and ‘inhabiting the god-shaped hole’ into my own language it would come out sounding as though relationship is much more important than doctrine or even institutional forms of the faith. He says such things as “being a Christian always involves becoming a Christian” (p.6) He is going deep into what is known as the ‘apophatic’ tradition and wants to say that this theology transcends conservative/liberal approaches and includes and incorporates clear belief alongside doubt and disbelief in a journey of faith. I am not convinced that he would not be labeled a ‘liberal’ buy conservatives in spite of his protestations because he is not subscribing to control, right doctrine, either/or thinking, a sure and certain sense of salvation over against condemnation and the like. He is more interested in right believing than right belief.
I find what he has to say very congenial and think that he is expressing most of what I believe the faith to be about, albeit in a fresh way for me. I will read more of what he has written.
Peter Rollins of Ikon (See entry for June 1, 2009) has written a number of books. In How (Not) To Speak of God (Paraclete, 2006) he argues for theology and spirituality that has more in common with the Christian Mystics than much of the debate argument today. He is seeking to articulate a post-modern Christianity and then suggest ways in which that thinking might affect the design of worship. While his descriptions of worship (or Ikon events) don’t do much for me personally, I like what he is trying to accomplish. If I was to translate his thinking about such things as ‘a/theology as icon’ and ‘inhabiting the god-shaped hole’ into my own language it would come out sounding as though relationship is much more important than doctrine or even institutional forms of the faith. He says such things as “being a Christian always involves becoming a Christian” (p.6) He is going deep into what is known as the ‘apophatic’ tradition and wants to say that this theology transcends conservative/liberal approaches and includes and incorporates clear belief alongside doubt and disbelief in a journey of faith. I am not convinced that he would not be labeled a ‘liberal’ buy conservatives in spite of his protestations because he is not subscribing to control, right doctrine, either/or thinking, a sure and certain sense of salvation over against condemnation and the like. He is more interested in right believing than right belief.
I find what he has to say very congenial and think that he is expressing most of what I believe the faith to be about, albeit in a fresh way for me. I will read more of what he has written.
Gay Marriage one more time
June 17, 2009
Jonathan Chait is the current author of the TRB column in The New Republic. In the June 17, 20090 issue he takes on “Carrie Prejean and other anti-gay marriage intellectuals”. He is referring to the former Miss California’s contention that “marriage should be between a man and a woman”. After pointing out that this contention is not an argument, he asks why this might be true. It is certainly the basis on which many religious opponents claim exemption from civil rights laws such as we are seeing in England at the moment around whether religious bodies can discriminate in matters of employment, adoption and the like. (http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=76558) It is also causing some challenges for Episcopalians in states in which gay marriage is legal because our canons define marriage as between a man and a woman (“That both parties understand that Holy Matrimony is a physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman, entered into within the community of faith, by mutual consent of heart, mind, and will, and with intent that it be lifelong.”)
Chait addresses a number of things that are sometimes said in support of this proclamation are that someone gets harmed if we allow gay marriage or that the link between child rearing and marriage would be weakened if marriage was extended to GLBT people. He points out, among other things, that all such arguments are exclusively about how heterosexual people would be affected by an extension of marriage rights, including the difficulty expressed by one person that it will be harder to persuade black men of the obligation to marry the mother of their children. (That masterpiece from one Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/) He suggests that the statement of belief ( and presumably desire) that the term ‘marriage’ should be reserved for one man and one woman is “a body of opinion held largely by people who either don’t know why they oppose gay marriage or don’t feel comfortable explicating their case.” Later he says that the belief is “an expression of unease rather than principle” and goes on: “As people face up to the fact that opposing gay marriage means disregarding the happiness of the people most directly (or even solely) affected by it, most of us come around. Good ideas don’t always defeat bad ideas, but they usually, over time, defeat non-ideas.”
I think he has reached the heart of the matter on this one and would be interested in your thoughts.
Jonathan Chait is the current author of the TRB column in The New Republic. In the June 17, 20090 issue he takes on “Carrie Prejean and other anti-gay marriage intellectuals”. He is referring to the former Miss California’s contention that “marriage should be between a man and a woman”. After pointing out that this contention is not an argument, he asks why this might be true. It is certainly the basis on which many religious opponents claim exemption from civil rights laws such as we are seeing in England at the moment around whether religious bodies can discriminate in matters of employment, adoption and the like. (http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=76558) It is also causing some challenges for Episcopalians in states in which gay marriage is legal because our canons define marriage as between a man and a woman (“That both parties understand that Holy Matrimony is a physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman, entered into within the community of faith, by mutual consent of heart, mind, and will, and with intent that it be lifelong.”)
Chait addresses a number of things that are sometimes said in support of this proclamation are that someone gets harmed if we allow gay marriage or that the link between child rearing and marriage would be weakened if marriage was extended to GLBT people. He points out, among other things, that all such arguments are exclusively about how heterosexual people would be affected by an extension of marriage rights, including the difficulty expressed by one person that it will be harder to persuade black men of the obligation to marry the mother of their children. (That masterpiece from one Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/) He suggests that the statement of belief ( and presumably desire) that the term ‘marriage’ should be reserved for one man and one woman is “a body of opinion held largely by people who either don’t know why they oppose gay marriage or don’t feel comfortable explicating their case.” Later he says that the belief is “an expression of unease rather than principle” and goes on: “As people face up to the fact that opposing gay marriage means disregarding the happiness of the people most directly (or even solely) affected by it, most of us come around. Good ideas don’t always defeat bad ideas, but they usually, over time, defeat non-ideas.”
I think he has reached the heart of the matter on this one and would be interested in your thoughts.
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