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This week’s episode is truly awe inspiring. In this show we feature a collection of poems that deal with the subject of creation; being inspired by it, in awe of it and participating in it.

The poems were written and narrated by the amazingly talented Pittsburgh, PA musician, Rachel Smith. Check out some of her music at blackorchidstringtrio.com

As always, we appreciate your feedback. Leave comments here on the blog or follow Matt or Jesse on twitter.

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Non iTunes users can grab the feedburner feed HERE or listen through Stitcher.

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Our guest this week is Drew Dixon, the editor-in-chief of GameChurch.com. Drew talks to us about video games, and their value within faith and culture.

Later, in the Echo Chamber, the gang discusses Jason Collins, the first NBA player to come out of the closet. Then we talk about Mark Driscoll, and his latest controversy, which involved talking about how blowjobs are biblical. Did he say anything about men performing oral sex on women? He did not. Christian is annoyed by that, and Amy thinks Mark Driscoll is physically attractive, which was news to us.

We also touch on Bitcoin, some hippy protestors outside Amy’s church office, and this leads me to ask how Amy deals with annoying people. There are some vague Recommendations, as well, though you’ve probably heard them.

Listen with the player below, or subscribe on iTunes for free HERE.

“Isn’t the whole point of Christianity salvation? Not in terms of being “saved” from “eternal fire” but in terms of being saved from bondage, shame, fear, injustice, and all the other hells around us all the time… so that we can become new beings and find our true identities to “save” this world and all of humanity with it, with God leading the way. Not with platitudes but with actual restoration?” – Ryan Miller, re-quoted by Tony Jones

This tribute comes a bit late in terms of the speed and lifespan of internet news, but I hope Dallas Willard’s death just means that the best reflection on his work and the appreciation for his contribution and what kind of person he was has only begun.

Like no one else perhaps, as a philosopher-theologian of the human spirit, Willard rescues evangelical Christians from bad soteriology.  This is partly because he is able to speak the language so well and then transform it by uncovering its lack of depth.   He and a few others did this for me a while back, and I remain very grateful.

Willard says:

“Spiritual formation is not something that may, or may not, be added to the gift of eternal life . . . It is the path one must be on if his or hers is to be an eternal kind of life” (Renovation of the Heart, p. 59).

I understand this as one of the great shortcomings of certain Protestant theologies – namely, the dualism of justification and sanctification that reduces salvation – or worse, “the gospel” – to the former.  As soon as salvation becomes something we simply get after death that must be “paid for,” I believe it loses its force.

But obviously we don’t see those like Willard going back to Medieval Catholicism either.  No, they’re much more Eastern than that. In other words, the urgency of salvation for Willard and others is transformation – and for transformation’s sake.  That is, not because of a self-interested preoccupation with avoiding punishment.[i]

For many though, I suspect this isn’t anything new, and some would even suggest it’s not enough – possibly because it still seems so focused on personal piety.  It’s ahistorical.  Salvation, whatever it is, should be more social, more political!  And Willard should be more aware of the role of gender in his diagnosis of the nature of sin, etc.

This is probably all true…

Recently I was reading Dorothee Soelle’s book The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance.  Chapter eleven opens with the following from Theodor Adorno:

“As far as possible, we ought to live as we believe we should live in a liberated world, in the form of our own existence, with all the unavoidable contradictions and conflicts that result from this. . . . Such endeavor is by necessity condemned to fail and to meet opposition, yet there is no option but to work through this opposition to the bitter end.  The most important form that this will take today is resistance.”

Soelle goes on to talk about how, unlike the European Marxist workers’ movements, the American farmworkers movement was led by a man who prepared himself carefully for every action through fasting and prayer.  Cesar Chavez, knowing poverty intimately, once fasted twenty-four days before a large and very dangerous strike.  Those who knew Chavez described him as free and happy.

As least for now and in my context, I’ve come to agree with Soelle that the term “liberation” is to some degree inadequate, and could maybe be replaced with the word “resistance.”  My conviction, following Soelle, is not just that we need mysticism and resistance.  Rather, it’s that today, mysticism, or contemplative spirituality, is a very important form of resistance.

Specifically Soelle shows how mysticism serves to resist the ego, accumulation, and violence.  She criticized the First World for its failure to learn resistance.  Despite our “knowledge,” we are powerless.  She speaks of how most of the great women and men of mystical movements for a time being indeed practiced the contemplative “way inwards,” but their aim was consistently the unity of the contemplative and the active life, of ora et labora (work and prayer).

The superordination of contemplating over acting was criticized and overcome by the likes of Eckhart and Teresa of Avila.  “To know God means to know what has to be done,” Levinas said.  The mystics only echo back, “and here’s how you know!”

I might differ with Willard in this regard: spiritual formation doesn’t have to be the starting point for transformation.  As Soelle insists, “oneness with God, beginning in action, can also discover the mystical unity that undergirds resistance” (p. 201).  Nonetheless, for those of us whose faiths weren’t born out of the fruit of resistance movements, we’d probably do well to still apply the spiritual wisdom of Dallas Willard.

Part of the thought came from  the book Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective by Craig A. Carter which revisits Niebuhr’s influential 1951 work “Christ and Culture”.

Part of it came from The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words by Deborah Tannen, and part of it was a critique of  The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas as well as Luther’s famous construct of the  ’2 Kingdoms’.

The main point of contention is that what is now called ‘culture’ is a byproduct of Christendom (part of the church) and is therefore not the same thing that Paul was writing about in the New Testament. The church and the world are not entirely alien to each other. The church is filled with people from the culture and the culture is deeply impacted (or has been) by the church.

So when we quote passages like Romans 12: 1-2 to be not conformed to the world, we have a messier delineation of those categories – precisely BECAUSE they have bled into each other so thoroughly throughout history.

Callid had a different take on the issues as a Quaker. I hope that you will listen to the episode and give us your take!

What do we do with these categories in the 21st century? Go to the homepage and use the SpeakPipe on the right hand side of the screen to leave us an MP3 message for an upcoming TNT.

Yesterday at the Loft LA I had the privilege to say 3 things (among many others) about God:

1. God is Black (from James Cone)
2. She Who Is (from Elizabeth Johnson)
3. God is a Fag ( from Bernard Brandon Scott)

It is interesting because I am none of these three things! I am not black, a women, or homosexual. It is interesting then to present these images of a God who is very much different than I am – even as we, as a community, are being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).  

It is important that we acknowledge that God is not on the side of ‘the powers’ but of those in need of liberation – that it is equally as accurate and as inaccurate to call God ‘She’ and it is to call God ‘He’ – and that according to 2 Corinthians 5:21

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

This is a topsy-turvey business.

Over the last 20 years of ministry I have noticed a somewhat unsettling trend that in order to be like God, I have had to move away from many of the natural strengths that ‘God gave me’.

•  While I love to be at center stage in the spot light with a microphone – I am fascinated with the cell group, house church, and small group model of church. As a pentecostal, I am obsessed with how the Spirit of God is at work in the People of God.

• While I am a big, hairy, muscular man – I am convinced that feminist theologian are right and that Christian history does not accurately reflect the will and mind of God for the world that God loves so much (John 3:16).

• While I am white guy – I am writing my dissertation on ‘White Privilege’ and hoping to confront some of the systemic racism that will not do as we move into the 21st Century.

So while I attempt to be more like God, I am very aware that God is not all that much like me. 

This is an important distinction. As C.S. Lewis said in his poem “A footnote to all prayers”  (it references Pheidias who was  a legendary statue maker in the ancient world):

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

When we pray, we by nature blaspheme – all of us. The reality is that language , by its nature, means that words are provisional. When the Hebrew Testament speaks of God as a ‘King’ or Martin Luther writes a hymn declaring “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” … these are analogies. They are metaphors. They are temporary place holders.

Anything that we say about God is (in the apophatic sense) both illustrative and, at the same time, not exactly all that accurate. We would do well to get used to saying :

“God is like X … and that, of course, is not exactly true.”

Philippians 2 is helpful at this point. The ‘Kenotic’ Move of Christ self-emptying and descending for the purpose of service, exhorts us to not hold onto anything too tightly (clinging/grasping) but to empty our certainty and expose all of our assumptions to that which is not natural to us. Not an easy task!

If we acknowledge, then, that all language is provisional… that it is just a accurate and as inaccurate to call God she or he… that any prayer is at some level blaspheming … and that I am called to be like God – though I know that God is not exactly like me … then I can begin a kenotic journey of recognizing God while releasing God from my pre-conceived notions.

This is the dynamic journey of faith: to recognize  the full moon and the new moon, the high tide and low tide, the Fall and the Spring, the ebb and the flow, the fall and the rise of all that I am familiar with and and all that I am ignorant about. That is what we talk about when we talk about God.

Rob Bell puts it this way:

When we talk about God, then, we’re talking about something very real and yet beyond our conventional means of analysis and description.

The Germans, interestingly enough, have a word for this: they call it grenzbegrifflich. Grenzbegrifflich describes that which is very real but is beyond analysis and description.

When I’m talking about God, I’m talking about your intuitive sense that reality at its deepest flows from the God who is grenzbegriff.

Bell, Rob (2013-03-12). What We Talk About When We Talk About God (Kindle Locations 767-772). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I would love your feedback and reflections.  

The four books that come up in this episode are:

On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good by Jim Wallis

The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words by Deborah Tannen

The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas

Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective by Craig A. Carter

 Let your voice be heard! Go to the ‘speak-pipe’ on the home page and let us know what you think about ‘the church and the world’ – we will use it on the TNT in 2 weeks.

We want to thank our sponsors this month:

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*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

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Nerd Alert: Disclaimers

Anytime a free-will person – and I am a Wesleyan – even brings up any Calvin-influenced theme, it is inevitable that real Calvin fans are going to object by saying ‘if you really understood Calvin …’.  So let me just say that I am talking about the street-level average person in the pew using diluted concepts they have inherited. 

I know that Donald Miller is not a theologian. He is however a very public voice that is comfortable utilizing theological words and ideas. 

Total depravity is a completely unhelpful concept in the 21st century. It has accumulated so much baggage and has become so convoluted in it’s common use that is entirely unclear and totally unhelpful for any meaningful contribution.

Total depravity in it’s contemporary usage – like we see with Miller’s post – is at best an a priori category that one crams data into to mold it to the form. At worst it is, to borrow from Zizek, like the person who walks into a house that has a horseshoe over the door frame and assumes that it is the horseshoe’s power that keeps the house safe.

Never mind that there are houses still standing that have no horseshoe above the door – as well as houses that had horseshoes that are no longer standing.

Total depravity is totally unhelpful as a category of analysis. 

I would like to suggest three alternatives for our everyday conversation:

1. As an initial concession, replace total depravity with ‘sufficient depravity’. Forget the debate out the totality of humanity being partially depraved or whether each human in totally depraved: the word ‘total’ as well as the concept itself belongs several centuries back in an antiquated argument about substance.
2. Move away from a substantial concern (are the we corrupted at the cellular level?) to a relational approach that asks ‘is the way that we interact and relate to each other warped and flawed?’
3. Get out of the round-and-round argument of the reformed  cul-de-sac by adopting either an emergence or evolutionary analysis of ‘competing desires’ or ‘drives’.

The advantage of this third move is that it opens up the conversation beyond the tight constraints of inherited theological categories and begins to engage biological, social, and psychological realties of our contemporary world.

• Why are we both attracted to the stability of a long-term committed relationship for stability and child-rearing as well as drawn to the adventure, variety and allure of other potential mates?
• Why do I desire stability and peace and then at other times fly off the handle and want to disturb the whole system?
• Why can I be so aggressive to some people then so defensive and protective of others?
• Why do we tell the truth when it goes against my own best interest?
• Why do I lie for a short-term gain that may endanger my own long-term health?

In the blog Miller asks:

What about the confusing middle where we both love and hate, lie and tell the truth, pursue justice but also ignore it? What does Total Depravity look like for us?

The answer to these questions is not ‘total depravity’. The answer is more along the lines of a ‘non-zero game’ of mutuality, social synergy and personal prosperity within the common good.

I would love you thoughts on the original Miller article or my suggestions here. 

Barry Taylor takes us on a whirlwind tour – and even though you can’t see the slides – the message comes through loud and clear! Warning: explicit language.  Then Tripp sits down to talk it through with him.

Peter Rollins does his magic and Bo gets to ask him some practical questions.

If you like these convos then check out the best snippets in the video curriculum developed that night titled ‘The Revelation of Darkness.’

Special thanks to our 3 sponsors for the evening: The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, Fuller Seminary and Claremont School of Theology 

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We are sooooo grateful to our sponsors, Monkish Brewing Company, & Spencer Burke at Missionsoulutions for their help in putting this together. You can get the videos HERE.

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The Resources of Fuller Theological Seminary for Pastors & the Local Church

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Find out, on this week’s episode of the CultureCast!

This is a different show than we’ve ever done. For one, we recorded outside. For two, I mostly edited the episode, which is why this show took so damn long to get out. It was a learning process.

Our guest is Christian’s grade school friend, professional hacker Mike Collins, who’s here to tell us about BitCoin, an entirely online currency that was just made up by a bunch of dudes. We also discuss a bunch of other stuff, including where progressive Christian thought is headed and if it’s at all relevant in a world where the center of Christianity is shifting toward the Eastern and Southern Hemispheres. This somehow devolved into me imagining a sci-fi scenario where there’s a statue of Christian Piatt in Tiananmen Square 140 years into the future.

Oh, and we talk about Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, which we are all fans of.

Now some people want to eschew labels all together. I get why they might want to do that but I find that not only a daunting task but a nearly impossible way to proceed through society and culture.

What I am suggesting is that labels are unavoidable and can be helpful – IF a couple of things are clarified.

Like labeling a Pilsner and a Pale Ale, it is necessary to know that you are getting a different product BECAUSE it has come through a different process and has different ingredients.

This is not a problem. An Episcopalian is different from a Nazarene and an Unitarian in pretty significant ways. No one balks at that.

Where this does become a problem is when

1. You mean the label meanly – in a pejorative way. 
2. When you don’t use the label correctly.

Both of these came up recently in an episode that is illustrative. In Fitch and Holsclaw’s new book Prodigal Christianity:

Please keep in mind – I am not trying to start-up the argument again and thus will not link to the original posts – I am trying to talk more broadly about HOW we use labels in theological conversation. 

“On the one hand, we are less than satisfied with what the “new kind of Christianity” has become. Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and others have helped us ask important questions and contributed greatly to creating a generous and compassionate Christianity, and to them we remain grateful friends. But their answers have often lacked substance on which we could live, and what goes by the name of “the emerging church” now appears to have settled into another version of mainline Christianity.”

This is a horrible couple of sentences. First, because Tony Jones rails against the mainline.  Second, because as a mainline pastor (which I am) the use of that phrase is not remotely being utilized correctly.

Mainline is an expression of church. It is both a model of organization and a historic expression.

I think that what Fitch meant by it was a liberal theology. But liberal is a constellation of loyalties – a series of commitments that form and APPROACH to theology.

Now you can see the problem. The term was meant to distance the authors FROM those other 3 (McLaren, Jones, Pagitt) AND it was used incorrectly. 

Pilsner and Pale Ale,  Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon,  these are labeled as such and that is not a problem. But something happens theologically when labels are assigned BY others instead of letting one self-identify and when those labels are not accurate.

____________

In a post-script, Tripp says in the TNT that he thinks something else is going on entirely.  He thinks that this error is really the result of trying to say something theologically when in reality is it ethics … but you don’t want to say so!

Jones is theologically orthodox. Fitch is probably left of Jones politically (due to Zizek). Tripp think that this is really only about homosexuality but that Fitch doesn’t want to say it – so he attempted to get at it theologically and thus missed his mark, causing confusion and conflict.

_______

I would love you thoughts on this issue of labels: their utility and their misuse. 

We begin with a fun new game of defining words in 30 seconds.

If you want to follow up some of the topics covered in the Throwdown, you can click on the links below:

Labels and the potential overlap of Subverting the Norm and Missio Alliance 

The difference between Progressive and Liberal also what I learned about using ‘vs.’ 

You can also sign up for this Summer’s high gravity book club  or get the new videos of Rob Bell, Barry Taylor and Peter Rollins

Thanks to all who sponsored this episode!
*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

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Something dark bubbles just beneath the surface of Hatuskgar. This week’s episode ventures into a fantastical land, a land that is haunted by great darkness, and there is only one person who can help.

This episode features original music by producer by Matt Barlow and was written and narrated by Jesse Turri.

Unfolded now has it’s own itunes feed. Please subscribe and pass the word on so we can get on the new and notables list! Thanks Deacs.

None iTunes users can grab the feedburner feed HERE.

*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

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Last week the question was raised by several Missio Alliance folks about whether Jim Wallis and Jerry Falwell are two sides of the same coin.  At first I had a hard time not finding the mere suggestion of this to be ridiculous, but then I thought it nonetheless might be a good segue into a related discussion.  If for further argument’s sake one grants that this is true, then I would submit that Gustavo Gutierrez and John Howard Yoder are two sides of the same coin as well (see the diagram below).

One concern is that “common good” language might just be repackaged utilitarianism or Christian realism, in the modern tradition of doing the greatest good for the greatest number.  I’ve benefited significantly in recent years from the work of Hauerwasian-leaning political theologians who might say this, like William Cavanaugh or Daniel Bell Jr, whose latest book, Economy of Desire, I recommend.  Here is an interview with him.

The question that always arises for folks like this seems to be something like, whose good?  On whose terms?  This question is one of the main reasons post-liberals and Anabaptists are reluctant to engage in politics in a formal, and what they would call, coercive manner.  Their epistemological issues are varying and complex, but without getting into a discussion of the limits of language, perhaps a pithy summary of this position might be that Christians should only enter into dialogue and commerce in a Christian way and for Christian reasons.  Does this preclude interreligious justice efforts or any kind of public collaboration on legislation in the public square?

In keeping with the spirit of last week’s exchanges regarding Subverting the Norm and Missio Alliance and Geoff Holsclaw’s suggestion that we talk more about differences, I’d like to try out a way of “mapping” some of those differences.  In seminary I took a class with Roger Olson (Homebrewed interview here) entitled “Christian Social Justice” at the same time that I was enrolled in Marc Ellis’ (Homebrewed interview here) seminar on Liberation Theology.  While Olson’s class framed the discussion generally in terms of different views on capitalism and the morality of violence, Ellis seemed to me to be more intent on organizing the class around the themes of justice and religious identity and building community vs. empire.  I’ve tried to include these dimensions in the following graph:

For a brief summary of my understanding of what each quadrant represents, go here.

Kathryn Tanner is another political theologian who has influenced me.  She was interviewed on Homebrewed Christianity by Philip Clayton in 2011.  Her latest research deals with what Christianity can say about the global economy in light of the hyper-financialization of international markets and the recent Great Recession.  Here is something she said a few years ago in an article in the Christian Century about Christian theological and ethical responsibility today that has really stuck with me:

Enlightenment challenges to the intellectual credibility of religious ideas can no longer be taken for granted as the starting point for theological work now that theologians facing far more pressing worries than academic respectability have gained their voices here at home and around the globe.

Theologians are now primarily called to provide, not a theoretical argument for Christianity’s plausibility, but an account of how Christianity can be part of the solution, rather than simply part of the problem, on matters of great human moment that make a life-and-death difference to people, especially the poor and the oppressed.

I interpret Tanner to be saying here that, in the context and age of globalization, the proper Christian response is one that seeks to make a difference and be good news for the world and those living in it.  The criteria for this “good”, and what makes it “common” appears to be something like life instead of death, and addressing the needs of our shared material existence and limitations despite other differences — be they religious, cultural, geopolitical, etc.  Can this be done without sacrificing Christian character and identity?  In other words, do we have to speak the same language to work toward a common ethic? Is this materiality the best “public” or “common” ground?  I tend to think so.

At AAR this past November in Chicago, I got to interact with Christine Hinze and others in the ecclesiological investiations group who have attempted to offer Christian theological and ethical critiques of and responses to the financial crisis of 2008.  In my paper I tried to argue that North American emergent church ecclesiology provides a good model for Christian resistance to the financialization of capital that is always threatening to privatize profits and socialize losses. After thinking about this more lately, I wondered if the above diagram couldn’t be transposed ecclesiologically (note the change from “government” on the left to “culture”):

Like the previous one, this graph is not sufficient to capture the diversity of ecclesial forms and perspectives in the North American landscape, as it doesn’t include many others such as Catholics, Pentecostals, the Eastern Orthodox Church and so on.  It also fails to consider the ethnic diversity of our ecclesial context.  Moreover, as we’ve seen, the labels of “emergent”, “missional”, and even “evangelical” are often more confusing than clarifying.  In light of the conversation last week though, I do think this layout can be helpful.

I.  On Tuesday Bill posted a very conciliatory case for “Why Missio Alliance and Subverting the Norm need each other.”  Bill and I were both at Subverting the Norm.  And to be honest, I do not know much about Missio Alliance.  But I’m intrigued and want to think more about this.

II.  Tony Jones advised those at StN to “be loyal to this tribe” and “put less words in scare quotes. Just answer the goddamn question.”  I’ve been thinking about that.  The catch of course is how to determine who is in the tribe.  Being part of the vituperative world that academia so often is forces you to get used to the idea that some people are brilliant comrades working toward similar goals and yet can be very difficult people.  That’s easy enough to spot and work with.  On the other hand, a difference of goals has a tendency to inflame tensions no matter how good our intentions are.  That’s easy enough to recognize, but very difficult to work around.  So how do we decide who is going toward a similar destination via different route or who has departed for a different course altogether?

III.  This far-too-simplified schema is how I tend to think of Christian theologies.  Each of these has a difficult time talking with either of the other two:

A) Confessional pastoral and lay theologies

This is the filler of many sermons, coffee house conversations, and Barnes & Noble bestseller lists.  It is not sophisticated, but it is theology “on the ground.”  You know it when you hear it.  And it absolutely has to be engaged, but it is more and more difficult to dialogue with the more you learn theology.

B) Confessional academic theologies

This is the material produced by the seminaries and universities.  Along with Biblical studies, academic theology is expansive, engaged with history, systematic, and (hopefully) philosophical.  My assumption is that every future pastor and/or theologian makes a decision at some point in their studies about whether or not they will even try to communicate the material they are learning, because more academic theologies can feel very intimidating and threatening to parishioners who are not reading theology/philosophy.  It is meant to be theology “for the church” in the roundabout way of developing coherent, esoteric systems of thought.  I put Missio Alliance here.  Again, I profess my ignorance of Missio Alliance, but my impression from those I’m in dialogue with tells me MA is a very confessionally Christian group.

C) Radical, political, and process theologies

This third category is theology in the aftermath of Altizer, Whitehead, Derrida, Schmitt, Badiou, Žižek, and of course the two living JCs.  This group often treats theology as a void that can only be accessed by the various disciplines on the periphery.  There are certainly confessional types among them (particularly within post-liberal or process types), but its also not at all uncommon to find entirely atheistic political theologies in this camp.  Subverting the Norm asked a broader question about postmodern theology, but since radical theology ended up being such an important theme,  I put Subverting the Norm mostly – but not entirely- here.

VI.  Conservatives, liberals, and radicals see very different problems as the main point to address.  The primary antagonism we select directs our energy.   Sometimes disparate theologies can work together on social issues here and there, but on a long enough timeline they are driven apart because the antagonisms they mean to address are mutually incompatible.

Forgive the caricatures, but political conservatives locate a primary antagonism along lines of moral purity or cultural/religious loyalty.  Liberals locate the primary antagonisms along some combination of class, race, and gender or whatever else liberals are upset about.  Both liberals and conservatives tend to agree on capitalism (with minor skirmishes over neo-classical or Keynesian models), and thus we get the stereotypical similarities between platforms.  Radical and/or Marxian perspectives locate the primary antagonism almost exclusively along class lines, which is why we are always complaining about capitalism.  And at Subverting the Norm, there was a definite tension between liberals who wanted to talk about how to be more inclusive and radicals who think theology (no matter how inclusive) does not matter if it doesn’t occupy politics.

So can Missio Alliance and Subverting the Norm work together?  I definitely hope so.  I haven’t even figured out if StN’s mix of radicals and liberals can work together in the long term.  But if we can be serious about exactly how confessional (or not) we expect a theology to be, and if we can isolate the antagonism(s) our theologies address, then we are at least on a path toward an answer.  And that answer has implications that are much more significant than two conferences.

First, we have our first return guest, and it’s one of our best: Jim Wallis. Christian moderated a discussion with Jim at Powell’s Books last week. I swear, Jim Wallis is incapable of saying uninteresting things. What an honor to have him back (even if I didn’t get to be there).

Obviously, it was a crazy week here in the US, so we spend the second half of the show talking about bombings and explosions and ricin. I promise, it’s not as depressing as it sounds. Namely, we wanted to talk about racial profiling when it comes to terror suspects, the shifting tectonics of how we get news in America, how to talk about tragedy with children, and how much faith is to blame in religious extremism.

Seriously, even with horribly serious subject matter, this was a really fun show to do and talk about, and we use our senses of humor to cope. We hope you enjoy.

P.S. Amy has a great poop story at the beginning.
*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

Subscribe on iTunes Here!

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For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. –Ephesians 2.8-9

For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. –James 2.26

Ah, the old faith versus works debate. Paul vs. James: cage fight! Who wins?

To be honest, it has been a while since I have given this one any thought. Once you realize that the various documents of the Scriptures were written with/regards/to/from various communities with differing problems and emphases, making them all fit together exactly isn’t so important. And yet, what if this particular “problem” shouldn’t be?

In his new book Outlaw Justice: The Messianic Politics of Paul, Ted Jennings offers a fresh reading of Romans, bringing together insights from ancient political thinkers and contemporary philosophers. In the introduction, he explains some of the choices that he had to make in translating the text.

The reading of this text that I propose here breaks with this tradition of reading Paul. The reading begins by restoring terms like “law” and “justice” to their basic political significance. So dominant has the apolitical reading of Romans become that it will be necessary to introduce a number of unfamiliar translations into this reading. In part this is neces- sary to help the reader encounter a text with fresh eyes not blinkered by the tradition. A strategy of defamiliarizing is almost always necessary to allow a fresh encounter with the text. But in this case it is even more important if the text is to be liberated from its cloying confinement in the cult like enclave of traditional religious reading. Much of this is simple substitution warranted by the text itself: Judean rather than Jewish, messiah rather than Christ, justice rather than righteousness, fidelity or loyalty rather than faith, generosity or favor rather than grace, Joshua rather than Jesus, and so on.

So next time you’re reading your Bible, try translating “faith” as fidelity. It works!

You have heard the good Dr. Robbins explain Radical Theology on the podcast.  Then his co-author philosopher Clayton Crockett chats with scientist Kevin Mequet about their energy thesis on the podcast.  Now you get a collection of the most awesome Homebrewed Christianity Deacons with blogs to chat this book up!

Bloggers on the Tour…

Bo Eberle has 1 & 2 posts on the energy proposal & a review of the book. He also posted videos of Robbins & Crockett in NYC chatting with Cornel West and Mark L. Taylor.

Joel Harrison & Matt Bernico at Flux of Thought have already blogged on digital culture & religion.

Tad DeLay is blogging on the politics of energy.  Here it is… BAM!

Joe Carson has some questions for the assumptions of radical theology & will blog on energy later in the week.

Matt Ritchie, lawyer and theologian, has been blogging on the book.  Is God Dead?, What is the New Materialism?, & the Logic of the New Materialism & the Courts.

Jonathon Snyder will be blogging on digital culture.

Maria Drews shall be sharing her wisdom about the book.

Rick Quinn gave an Elton John inspired taster & drops some more goodness this week.

Scott Cowan will bring the blogger excitement to the political theology blog.

Adam Moore shall be blogging on the Art chapter this thursday.

My favorite Southern Baptist, Todd Littleton, shall bring the #awesomesauce on friday.

David Adams discusses the book in less than 1k words!

Austin Roberts drops some Cobb & gives a great Process inspired reply.

Pastor Darren examines the understanding of religion in the book from one who rocks the pulpit.

For less than 20 bucks you will get 6 videos to download and use in all sorts of creative ways.  How were we able to bring a video & audio crew to a brewery and get these videos edited up pretty so you can use them at such a low price? Our most awesome sponsors!

Check Out These Most Awesome Sponsors

We are sooooo grateful to our sponsors, Monkish Brewing Company, & Spencer Burke at Missionsoulutions for their help in putting this together.  You can get the videos HERE.

This place will turn Bo into Dr. BoDaddy

The Resources of Fuller Theological Seminary for Pastors & the Local Church

One week later someone tweeted the following quote from a talk by Scot McKnight at the Missio Alliance inaugural gathering: “a gospel of personal afterlife insurance is about my needs, not Jesus’ reign.”  Another tweet followed: “Jesus left a community, not a book or a rule.”

In his response to Caputo’s keynote talk at Subverting the Norm, Tony Jones made a number of interesting comments as well, at least one of which is the impetus for this blog post:  He said, “Be loyal to this tribe.  We have a better version of the gospel than the regnant view of the gospel in the West today.  If our version of the gospel is to stand a chance, particularly among the “nones,” then we’ve got to stick together in spite of our doctrine/theological/philosophical differences.”

My contention here is not that these quotes (Caputo’s and McKnight’s) mean the same thing – based solely on the speakers, obviously they don’t – or that the differences between these two groups are unimportant or insignificant.  I do want to suggest though that there might be a common spirit shared between the groups captured by these two quotes.  To borrow from Peter Rollins, I think those represented at each of these conferences have rejected a Christianity of certainty and satisfaction and have instead turned to pursue a faith that is more honest, broken, communal, politically conscious, non-triumphalist, and in the end, more true to the basilea theou of peace, justice and reconciliation that Jesus announced.   

Part of the common mission seems to be something like the embodiment of a counter-narrative to the dominant ideologies of our time. (I like Walter Brueggemann’s terminology of these ideologies as technological-therapeutic-consumer-militarism.)  The quality of scholarship critiquing the worship and subsuming power of global capitalism on both sides is impressive. Then there is also a common mission, I think, to call out the false-consciousness of conservative and neo-reformed evangelicalism that takes the form of nationalism (violence), bibliolatry (certitude) and/or soteriocentrism (satisfaction).  Missio Alliance leader David Fitch is especially helpful in naming these master signifiers (see my review of his book The End of Evangelicalism?).

Moreover, I think both movements clearly renounce Christendom and embrace the challenge that is religious and non-religious pluralism.  Lastly, while I’m sure there’s more to be mentioned, both conferences celebrated ethnic diversity and the empowerment of their female leaders (Cherith Fee-Nordling and Jo Saxton for Missio, and Namsoon Kang, Katharine Sarah Moody and Melinda McGarrah Sharp for STN, among others).

These are not small points of agreement.

There are definite theological differences between these two camps, as already acknowledged.  Some members of the groups won’t even be interested in this conversation.  But it does not follow that there is a clean separation on all fronts. As Brian McLaren argues in his latest book, Christ-centeredness, or the integrity of a distinctive Christian identity on the one hand, and radical hospitality on the other hand, are not mutually exclusive. Rather, it’s a tension Christians must live in, however difficult, and that’s why I’m convinced the conferences need each other.

And despite suspicions to the contrary (see Doug Pagitt’s interview of Fitch and Holsclaw about their latest book), not all Emergent types and Mainline Protestants have low christologies, just like not all Missio leaders are Hauerwasians (Roger Olson who also spoke at the conference is case-in-point) or unwilling to bless gay marriage.  It’s easy to see which side is more inclined to what – Missio to Christian identity and STN to inclusivity – but I suspect that these inclinations can be explained to some extent by each group’s respective fidelity to divergent contexts.  If Missio is committed to responding to the disillusionment with the conservative and neo-reformed attempt to reduce the gospel to “justification,” STN is addressing the broader and more political context of concern for social, eco-justice and epistemological/post-modern fragmentation. Both contexts must be attended to!

I’m frustrated by what I’ve read recently from some leaders of Missio like Fitch and Holsclaw in their published and unpublished remarks about figures like Rob Bell and other emergent folks in general.  They’ve constructed a false binary, I think, between the neo-reformed crowd and emergents, by mistakenly collapsing the latter into Mainline Protestantism.  At the same time, I can understand Fitch and Holsclaw’s frustration with the alleged theological vacuity of emergent church figures in the past decade.  

And yet I’m considering both of these frustrations, attempting to gaze toward the future with a bigger picture in mind, and venturing the observation that these frustrations are nonetheless relatively inconsequential compared to what can be held together.  Why? Because I believe these gatherings and networks exist at least in part for the sake of furthering a story and a faith that actually brings good news to the poor, the planet and the LGBT community – to use the Homebrewed slogan – but that does not forfeit its Christian distinctiveness in the process.

Can we get on board with that?  I’m genuinely curious and hopeful.

Bill is an adjunct professor of theology and ethics at the University of the Incarnate Word, a PhD candidate in philosophy of religion at Claremont Graduate University and has worked as a youth and campus minister at Baylor University and Santa Clarita United Methodist Church.  He and his wife Whitney live in Austin, TX, and you can connect with him on his blog at wawalker.com or on twitter @bwalkeriii.

Greg Horton was one of the inspirations behind starting the podcast. He had a podcast called ‘the Parish’ on the wired parish podcast network.  Back then he was an emergent Christian and has since left the building.  Throughout his journey I have loved following his blog, hearing about his undergrad religion and ethics students, and thinking through some of the serious criticisms he has leveled against the church. Plus he also does some wine reviews.  Greg is an intelligent hard a$$ and it was a real honor to get taken to task by him.  He wasn’t as rough as he was with Paul Young so I only hope next time I get the harsh treatment!

When I got back from OKC I had over 5 hours of audio from the live podcast and the follow interview with Greg.  What you hear is the 90 minutes of the fun.  Then evening was lubricated by the Mad Farmer Brewing extraordinaire Charlie who brewed up my Midnight Saison recipe – Dasein!

This Stud Sponsored the Podcast!

This episode is sponsored by Jason Micheli over at the Tamed Cynic. Go check him out and thank him for keep the show running!
*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

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It has been a crazy week to join the Homebrewed crew, and I didn’t feel like I could let it go by without at least somehow addressing some of the events of this week, especially those in Boston, a hometown of mine and the place to which I’ll be returning this summer…

Perhaps this will serve as some small measure of comfort or calm in and among all the noise…

What about you all? What is keeping you grounded and centered on God?

Our first High Gravity group will be co-hosted with Peter Rollins.  We will explore 6 articles\chapters by 6 different thinkers in the Radical Theology tradition.  We are planning to cover Heidegger, Tillich, Caputo, Ricoeur, & more.  It’s only 2o bucks so sign up fast before it sells out!  The group will be hosted at Missionsoulutions and include:

1. Private Live Video Sessions – Weekly access to the private live video sessions web conference. Each session is approximately 90 mins.
2. Lecture presented by Peter & Tripp – Each week’s session will include a lecture presented by Peter & Tripp walking through text, & Q/A w/ group members about the text.
3. PDFs of the Primary Texts – downloadable before the session.
4. Send Us Questions – A private group discussion board to continue the discussion & send us questions to cover in next session.
5. Recorded Audio – of the previous sessions so you can review or catch up.

Group Meeting Times

We will meet each week starting at 6pm pst & 9pm est.  All but the first week of July is on Thursday.

It’s only 2o bucks so sign up fast before it sells out!

After he read the final chapter, he had some questions – questions that I would love to engage but … I fly out early in the morning and will be without my computer.  SO I am turning him over the Pannenberg-man and the heir-apparent: Tripp Fuller and Austin Roberts.

Matt says:

In that final chapter of ‘Theology and the Kingdom of God’ Pannenberg really did turn up the density dial. What the flip!?

The surprise was in the move from three fairly accessible chapters to a fourth that, relative to the others, skirted impenetrability.

Of course, I’m being a little hyperbolic – but it made me work; and I’m still chewing on the “for what?”.

I like that he prioritized appearance/contingency. I guess I’m not sure about the essentialism; whether it’s the Greek form that disparages appearance or his futural version which manifests itself in the plurality of appearances. A related issue here was how confident he was about the facticity of the kingdom to come. That, to me, closes things down; and I’m sceptical enough of “revelation” to really not bite. There really had to be a future to reign in the contingency. I want to be able to say, at the very least, “God really might not have this under control. Anything could happen.”

Pannenberg doesn’t seem to want to say that.

I am about to turn off my computer for more than a week – so Tripp and Austin and anyone else who wants to will have to respond

Feel free to jump in if you have a thought! 

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But there’s so much more! We welcome Tony Jones, one of the founders of the Emergent Christianity movement, to the show. He and Christian recently attended the Subverting the Norm Conference, and Tony stirred things up by subverting the norm of what people were talking about at Subverting the Norm. (He made some critical observations is what I’m trying to say.) If you’re into the soap opera of theologian interpersonal relationships, you’ll enjoy this interview.

Toward the end, we talk a bit about the death of Margaret Thatcher and the tragic suicide of Matthew Warren, Rick Warren’s son. Mainly, we’re just pretty pissed that anyone would celebrate the deaths of another human being. Then we say goodbye to Brennan Manning in maybe a not so appropriate way. I blame the Piatts.

It begins with Barry Taylor and the Band then moves on to 4 toasts offered in honor of the 4 faces on our Mt. Rushmore style Radical Theology poster for the event. Hegel, Tillich, Derrida and Caputo are toasted by Kirsten Gerdes, Tripp Fuller, Jack Caputo and Peter Rollins.

Tony Jones sat in for Bo Sanders in ‘the Practical Seat’  and you will be able to hear how wild things got as the evening progressed.  There was also a contest between Tripp’s two new brews: the Caputo Decon-structor Ale and the John Cobb #Faniac Ale.

If Radical Theology is something that interests you, make sure to sign up for the Summer Reading-Video Conference with Tripp and Pete called “High Gravity”.

Leave us some feedback about this episode by using the little microphone on the front page in the ‘Speak Pipe’.

This episode features a fairytale that takes the listener into a land that is unlike any other. In this land mice live the same way as humans! They have jobs, drive cars and raise families. But not all is well in this happy little haven, as you will surely find out.

This episode of Unfolded was produced by Matt Barlow and was written/narrated by Jesse Turri. It is inspired by John 5:1-8. We hope you enjoy it. And, as always, leave us a comment and tell us what you think!

*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

Subscribe on iTunes Here!

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He is famous for his The Image of Fish blog and one of the ring-leaders of the Theopoetics working group at AAR.

Bo and Callid take a tour of Quaker history, the theological Anabaptist landscape, what the deal is with “Communal Discernment,” and whether or not Rob Bell is doing something bad by not having it.
They also wax poetic about why Practical Theology is the discipline that both he and Bo find a home in with the Academy.

You can hear Callid’s earlier appearance on the podcast from last year’s Wild Goose East Festival.

More stuff from Callid about Friends is over at the Jewels of Quakerism Project.

My cleaned up tweets are posted as bullet-points with a clarifying thought following. 

• You would want to immediately address message and medium. It’s not just a repacking of the same old material.

What we are experiencing in a genuinely different expression of the good news. I watch lots of video clips of hip – fashionable – edgy young preachers who are still on an elevated stage using the exact same forms as the past 100 years … only they have added video clips and hair gel.

That is not what we are talking about. That is just lipstick on pig  not that I really believe that old-school preaching is a pig, I just love that phrase.

•  #EmergentPreaching would involve scripture, culture, media, dialogue, experience & impartation to start.

The ‘problem’ with emergent thought is that it is neither reductive nor is it reproducible. It is environment specific (contextual) and organic. It interacts with its surroundings and emerges from its participants. It is a different animal from day 1.

• I have given a LOT of thought to Emergent Preaching since my dad is a homiletics Prof. & I helped start The Loft LA recently.

One of our biggest glitches is that our ‘gatherings’ don’t translate to podcasts or video very well. We planned on being media savvy but the ‘sermon’ is broken up into conversation starters, dialogue, small groups, feedback and presentation. It’s kind of messy and we are still trying to figure out how to ‘capture’ it authentically. I think that we are going to start just throwing it out there unedited for members who missed that week in case they want to catch up.

• the task of Emergent Preaching would deal with issues of power, voice, dialogue, participation, action, justice & cultural stuff.

This is where the medium must be addressed along with the message. HOW we do something is as important as WHAT we do.

Proclamation is a vital part of the Christian tradition. We don’t want to lose that! We address the form as well.

Why is there one person talking anyway? How is that person chosen? With what authority do they speak? These are essential questions to ask.

• Assumptions of culture, the gospel, power, structures, and orthopraxy are vital to address in thinking about.

We are always attempting to do at least two things (this is true for every area of life). Side note: this is why saying that sex is only for procreation is ludicrous.  So it is incumbent upon us to concern ourself with present cultural realities as well as desired outcomes – because we preach an incarnational gospel that must be in-bodied (embodied) to survive.

• One would have to pull back the curtain & examine the scaffolding (assumptions) that hold the entire project up.

This is the tough job of deconstructing a constructive theology. There is no easy way around it.

• It would be part Liberation, Feminism, Walter Wink, masters of suspicion, biblical scholarship & philosophy.

There is just no sense in even attempting to do proclamation in the 21st century under the auspices of emergence without this. Emergent Preaching would need to be well-informed and undeniably self-aware at some level. This seems unavoidable.

• But it would also have to be rooted in history, hermeneutics, scripture and praxis. Those are my thoughts on Emergence Preaching. 

In the end, we preach the christian gospel and not some form of god-ness or spirit-uality. We are the church after all. Accounting for history, hermeneutics, scripture and praxis is tall order. But what is the other option?

I would love to hear your thoughts on my little list and see if you had any additions. 

You can also tweet me & and Stuart Harrell - use the hash-tag #EmergentPreaching

Should we stop saying that God sent Jesus to die?

My answer is yes. We should stop saying that God sent Jesus to die, because that implies that God’s intention prior to Jesus’s birth was to send Him to die, and that would be mean. A loving God doesn’t do mean things.

 But… if you accept the premise that God knows everything that’s knowable, and the future isn’t knowable (because it hasn’t happened yet), then God couldn’t have known for sure that Jesus would be crucified.

It doesn’t take a Divine Mind to figure out that a person doing and thinking the things that Jesus did and said in first century Palestine was going to get crucified. I think that explains Jesus’s predictions of his own death found in the gospels. But just because you can predict something is likely to happen doesn’t make it your will or your desire.

I’ve got teenagers. I know teenagers are going to do things that are going to have painful results. That doesn’t mean that it’s my will as a parent that they do those things and experience those painful results, but it’s highly predictable.

So the Father sends the Son into a dangerous situation, the worst case scenario happens, and Jesus ends up getting crucified. God sees this and says, “I can use this for something good. In fact, since this evil thing happened to my Son, I’m going to use this to do literally The Best Thing Ever and defeat death and redeem the world.”

That’s just what God does. “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) As the Messiah, Jesus had the ultimate calling and therefore God used His death to achieve the ultimate purpose, the redemption of the world.

It wasn’t merely the disciples that ascribed meaning to Jesus’s death after the fact, it was God. Your blog post makes it sound like the disciples were making stuff up and attributing meaning to something that wasn’t really there. The meaning was there because God put it there. The disciples were engaged in the discovery of that meaning, and we continue that process of discovery today.

Thoughts? 
Questions? 
Concerns? 
Comments? 

Tripp and I loved that THAT cross had a surplus of meaning from God – the disciples only brought it out and proclaimed it.

What do you think?

one of the stars of the Easter Call-In Challenge TNT has sent us his thoughts from the northern forest of British Colombia, Canada. 

Did God send Jesus to die on a cross? Did God send Jesus to die for our sins?

 My reaction is to say no. God sent Jesus to save us.

And I want to say that there was a possibility, even way back in biblical times, that Israel, responding in human freedom, could have realized just who this Messiah was and got behind and between and caught up in the kin-dom, such that all nations would have been drawn to that light, that human flourishing and the kin-dom be proclaimed to the ends of the earth without there being a cross in the story.

I want to say that even with the Sanhedrin being all caught up in shoring up their hierarchy and religiosity, then  Pilate and Herod could have responded, in human freedom, to the invitation of God in their ears at that moment, to the invitation of God standing right in front of them, and set Jesus free, not only set him free but got behind and between and caught up in the kin-dom and taken it to the ends off the earth in a different way, also without there being a cross in the story.

Jesus could have lived to a ripe old age, teaching thousands of brew-babies brought to him from miles around, sitting on a swing hanging from a tree to fulfill the prophecy. And after he died in his sleep, God still could have raised him from the grave and the lesson of new life could have been learned, and the giving of the Spirit could all have happened without a cross.

If none of that was a real possibility on Christmas morning, then something is wrong in how I understand our human freedom to say yes to Sophia’s divine wisdom whispered in each and every ear. I know we live in a world where the cross did happen. Thank God that cross is not the end of the story. Maybe if we spent less time focused on Jesus having to die for us, we could open ourselves to being able to live into that kin-dom that is always coming near, so near that it is among us even now.

Thoughts?
Questions?
Concerns?
Comments? 

Tripp and I called it a ‘hat-trick’ and a ‘home-run’. What do you think?

What’s up deacons! The next episode of the Unfolded podcast will be dropping this Sunday, April 14, but until then we wanted to give you a taste of what is headed your way–check it out!

This episode is fairytale entitled, Do you want to be free?

Subscribe on iTunes Here!

The deacons have responded to the challenge!

That is exactly what we were hoping for when we cooked up a little obstacle course around issue of crucifixion and resurrection. The callers navigate the obstacles with ease and in doing so get to show off some their best theological moves!

In this hour we hear from folks all the way from the forests of northern British Columbia, to the island of Jersey. In fact, we got calls from Africa, Asia, Australia and Eastern Europe.

Here is a hand-selected sample to showcase a variety of approaches.

We want to thank everyone who called in and all of those that made donations to help support the podcast!

You can read the link to the original challenge here if you need to get up to speed.

In the Echo Chamber, we talk primarily about Game of Thrones but also about 20 other shows that we’re into including (but not limited to) Amish Mafia, Downton Abbey, Billy On The Street, Homeland, Shameless, Duck Dynasty and Justified. Between the three of us, we watch far too much TV.

Later, Christian recommends More or Less: Choosing a Lifestyle of Excessive Generosity by Jeff Shinaberger, which is about simplifying life and reorienting our consumptive life. Then Amy calls out Christian for his “agro-driving”, and I was torn because I’m prone to road rage, but Christian DID tailgate a student driver. Then Amy convinces me to convert to their church because their sermons are only 10 minutes long, which is probably as close to heaven as you can get in church. Also, we talk about our favorite albums, Beatles and otherwise.

Thanks for humoring us. Back with guests next week!

You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake. She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country — Kamala Harris is here. (Applause.) It’s true. Come on. (Laughter.) And she is a great friend and has just been a great supporter for many, many years. [via The Los Angeles Times]

A remark like that is never going to go over well. It was just one sentence but we could talk for days about it!

I know that I am an odd bird in that I often see the silver lining in things that other people think are really bad – like taking the Lord’s name in vain. I like that people do it. It means that the name of God still carries some gravity. No one is cursing Thor when they smash their thumb with a hammer. No one is blaspheming Zeus when they get cut off in traffic. Anyway …

I was happy to see the outrage and level of outcry over the President’s remarks. I love when stuff like this happens outside the walls of the church and I think to myself “Ok, it’s not just us that are sensitive, reactive and protest-ant. Good, I was starting to worry”.

You have to forgive me. I come from a very muscular – testosterone – ‘Wild at Heart’ brand of Christianity. In the last decade I have migrated to a progressive – critical theory – ‘She Who Is’ brand of faith.

The thing that has been most difficult for me is to figure out what to do with the body. 

As a contextual theologian and an Ancient-Future practitioner, I am deeply concerned with issues of incarnation and embodiment of the gospel. Our faith can not be merely intellectual, super-natural or institutional. Our faith must embodied, or in-bodied and lived-out. 

I have figured out, through 6 years of blogging, how to talk with conservative, evangelical, and charismatic Christians about almost everything  related to faith and practice in ways that they can hear. The issues of sexuality remain the most illusive.

The problem seems to relate to a giant pot-hole in the road to understanding that is so treacherous it almost doesn’t leave enough room to move without careening into the pit of ‘natural design’.

What complicates matter all the more is that there is a serious ditch on the other side of the road – one that was dug by Augustine’s legacy  (I hate Augustine’s influence on church history) regarding the badness of the body, a specifically sexuality.

Here then is the issue: If I am talking about somebody and I’m listing all of that they bring to the table in areas of smarts, relationship, experience, and capacity … am I to act like they don’t have a flesh container? It asks me to act like they have no body.

Yes. That is what we want you to do.  Jonathan Chait at New York explains:

For those who don’t see the problem here, the degree to which women are judged by their appearance remains an important hurdle to gender equality in the workforce. Women have a hard time being judged purely on their merits. Discussing their appearance in the context of evaluating their job performance makes it worse. It’s not a compliment. And for a president who has become a cultural model for many of his supporters in so many other ways, the example he’s setting here is disgraceful. [New York]

Even while I write this I can hear my more conservative Christian brothers saying “That is ridiculous! This is the sissy-fication of our culture.”  To which I can only reply,”Yes. It is the leveling of a historically unequal playing field.” 

I get why culturally, we don’t want the President even acknowledging her flesh container at all. We don’t want pastors commenting on congregant’s looks. I get it.

But as thinking christians, is anyone else worried about the implications for this kind of willful charade? Do we think that President Obama doesn’t see her? Are we under the impression that he doesn’t notice her beauty? Do we think that she, in her private moments, doesn’t want to be found attractive? Do we think that she doesn’t invest time and energy in her looks?

“It doesn’t matter! Just don’t say it. Not ever ever ever.”  And I get that. What I am asking about is the ramifications for the embodied practices of the life of faith. What we have learned from church history  (and reality TV)- from fundamentalist pastor’s daughters to celibate priests – is that repression of desires in one place (public) is bound to cause pressure which bubbles up some place else (private).

We have to break the ‘old boys network’ mentality. I get that. I am worried about the secondary effect of perpetuating a deadly dualism between body and mind/soul.

I clearly need help thinking this through. Anyone want to chime in on this? 

I was on an Australian radio show the day of his election – they liked the angle that I had taken on my blog focusing on the Southern hemisphere. [I will put the 4 minute clip at the bottom of this post] I was on after the Australian Ambassador from Argentina.

Some of my co-workers are Catholic and Pope Francis’ dealing provide us with every-other-day content for our coffee-pot conversations. Even my wife, who is generally not that interested in such things, is into it.

She asked me, on a recent road trip after several news stories, why I thought people were so into Francis.  I have three thoughts and would love to hear other’s thoughts.

• There are still 1.6 Billion Catholics worldwide. That is 1/6 of everyone on the planet. Who is their leader matters a lot.

I know that not every Catholic listens to the Pope and that the Pope does not influence every thing … but it is still a big deal.

• Between the elaborate displays of the Vatican and the global sex-abuse scandal – both of which are hard to figure out from reading the gospels – the Catholic church has been having a rough time of it in the court of public opinion.

Francis’ style is not just a breath of fresh air – it is substantially different. What he did on Maundy Thursday was not just a ‘break with tradition’, as reports kept repeating, but was significant. Washing & kissing prisoner’s feet instead of priest’s is not window dressing

•  Protestants seems to be fascinated with Pope-drama like Americans are fascinated with Royals. I don’t really get either.

It’s like we are enamored with the figure-head of the thing we left so long ago. I chalk it up to some sort of fetish thing for regal gowns, bejeweled crowns and antiquated (and sometimes secret) ceremonies.

There is one problem though. Protestants seem to want the Pope to be more protestant.

Almost all of the critique or concern I heard about him is something that would be more emblematic of protestant values or approaches. He is following the church’s traditional stance on (just to name 4):

1. Contraception
2. Celibacy
3. Women in ministry
4. Homosexuality

I want to holler at people when they are disappointed in this

“Of course he is – otherwise he wouldn’t have been elected Pope”.

It feels to me like somebody saying “I like the new Miss USA … I just wish she was built like a Linebacker in football.”   Well … I hate to break it to you but that’s not going to happen. In fact, people who are built to play linebackers don’t make it to the Miss USA pageant. That is just not what the judges are looking for.

What I wish we would instead focus on is his economic dealings, immigration issues (he is the son of immigrants) and out-reach to non-Europeans. I continue to claim that just those 3 will make this a game-changer.

I would love to hear your thoughts. 

The other day I ‘eavesdropped’  on a really interesting exchange that was telling – in just 3 tweets.

Rob Davis ?@iamstillrob asks:

 no offense, just an honest question: how has @greg_boyd been lumped into the “emergent” stream by so many people?

Jason Coker ?@Jason_A_Coker helpfully explains:

 Only among those for whom “Emergent” = “Dangerous Theology” : )

Greg Boyd, the man in question, jumps in to answer for himself:

@Jason_A_Coker @iamstillrob I’m a critical realist & soft foundationalist & I find the extreme Epistemological relativists to be incoherent.

This is fantastic stuff. 3 things jump out at me:

1) While many emergent folks look to Boyd as a conversation partner, that is not the same as him being in the emergent camp. Boyd’s books The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church and Myth of a Christian Religion are wonderful (and you can give them to people as gifts). He is an Open Theist and has recently transitioned to Anabaptist identification. He is an interesting character no doubt … but he is not emergent.

He preaches like an old-time revivalist and will often go for 40 minutes. He stands on a stage in front of a packed auditorium and monologues in an elevated volume as if he forgot he was wearing a microphone. This guy is old school.

Which leads to my second point.

2) If Coker is right and emergent is used by some as a synonym for ‘dangerous’ it would explain why so many of the concerns/critiques of emergent-ish stuff fails to land with any meaningful connection. They don’t know what emergent is. That is so obvious that I may have missed it. Just last week I wrote:

I get challenged in nearly every place that I go about this term ‘emergent’. Now, to be fair, most people have never looked into the scientific theory of emergence - to them it is a brand like Baptist, or Catholic or Pentecostal. It could be called “Shock-zone Psycha-jazz” Church and mean just about as much to them.

All the same, the challenge often sounds like this:

“I hear 10 different definitions of the emergent church. It seems to mean on thing to this group and a different thing in this area.”

That is a fair question. But a better way to approach the topic might be to cut “emergent church” out of the sentence and paste “farming” in it’s place. How would you answer this question:

“I hear 10 different definitions of ‘farming’. It seems to mean on thing to this group and a different thing in this area.”

Not that hard right? Different soil, different climate, different water sources, different seeds mean that farming in one region can look entirely different from it does in another.

3) Boyd comes in with a “soft foundationalist vs. extreme Epistemological relativists” contrast. (Coker challenged this but got no reply). This is so telling! I wanted to say ,”oh… I see: one is ‘soft’ and other is ‘extreme’!”

That is the funny part about people trying to put Boyd in the emergent camp. Look, I really really like Greg Boyd. I think he is a fascinating person with tons of integrity and I respect him the world. But he is not emergent – by his own admission.

This is a guy who takes the time to explain that Angels needed training in the early centuries of the cosmos. Here is part of his defense of Ralph Winter’s gap theory of history to explain why there is no geological or paleontological evidence of a worldwide flood:

… God commissioned angelic beings to oversee aspects of nature and the production of life, similar to the way God later commissioned humans to have a domain of authority over nature and animals. These angels, he speculates, were “in training,” which in part perhaps explains why life evolved so slowly (from our human perspective). (Read Ps. 82 if you think angels are exempt from needing training).

I thank Rob Davis for asking such good questions and I really appreciate Boyd’s personal reply.
I just keep shaking my head at both the idea of cramming Boyd into the emergent mold and Boyd’s presumptuous response.
I thought it might be interesting to talk about here. 

Get smart and check Ted’s Homebrewed Unfiltered video!

*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

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Later, we talk about the worth in changing one’s profile picture to an equal sign, and the History Channel’s take on The Bible. Toward the end, we discuss Christian’s latest endeavor, a Bible study blog series that’s actually entertaining!

There is something about Easter  that haunts me.

Our conceptions of God are so powerful and how they impact our life is so fascinating. I wrote a sermon about this several years ago while in the Ukraine: I call this aspect of God  ’Jehovah Babushka’. I got it while watching an Ukrainian grandma (babushka) knead dough.
It’s like God is always punching into the dough our life - to break the crust of the outside and expose the raw stuff on the inside. Always turning us inside out to expose that which is  in need of the air in order to develop and mash that which is crusty into softness again.

The story of Jesus does this too. He welcomes in those who had been on the outside or stuck on the periphery.
He pushes out those who assumed they were center.
He brought low the arrogant and the prideful.
He lifted up the lowly and the downtrodden.

He said it’s not about sacrifice or even law anymore.
He broke the crust of the old system to expose the loving heart of god to the world.
He turned the raw goo of the disciples out to the world as his public representatives on earth.
The spirit of god crashed in at Pentecost to turn upside down the priesthood.
Now we are all ministers.
The priesthood has been turned inside out and upside down.

God calls us to season of loneliness to expose our need of people. God uses tough encounters with people to show us something about ourselves and hopefully smash our conception of God – exposing the immature and underdeveloped while breaking in through the stale and crusty images we have allowed to become cliché.

Our idolatry of God is pressed out so our true identity can be pressed in.

With Jesus there is no longer a female-male divide. There is not slave – only free. Jews and Gentiles are both connected to God.
Jesus smashed those old crusty categories.
The faithfulness of Jesus (pistis christou) mashes our certainty that we are saved by having faith in Jesus and exposes the raw reality that we are called to participate in the faithfulness of Jesus and that is what brings salvation to the world.

Jesu Babushka kneads all the gas out of the dough – presses all the air pockets so that the finished product is fine and consistent.
All of this, of course, is only in preparation for the chemistry (yeast and rising) transformation to kick in and the eventual baking (heat) of the oven.

Who said faith was going to be easy? Or did you think Easter was all jelly beans and pretty dresses?

]]> http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/04/01/jesu-babushka-the-day-after-easter/feed/ 7 http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/04/01/jesu-babushka-the-day-after-easter/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jesu-babushka-the-day-after-easter http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HomebrewedChristianity/~3/pbBPV9RmQCg/ http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/03/30/unfolded-episode-1-my-time-has-not-yet-come/#comments Sun, 31 Mar 2013 03:34:37 +0000 Jesse Turri http://homebrewedchristianity.com/?p=10297

Easter Day–An empty tomb and brand new podcast in your ear. The latest addition to the Homebrewed family of podcasts has come to be. Unwrap your ear buds, push play, sit back and get ready to be Unfolded!

Unfolded: Stories that reveal…is a podcast that attempts to reveal great meaning without, necessarily, committing the error of defining it. You’ll find that this show–created by Matthew Barlow and Jesse Turri–is quite different from the other fantastic podcasts on the HBC network. Every other week, Unfolded will feature original written content from one of the crew members which will be supported by astonishing sound design.

You essentially just have to listen to understand.

This week’s premier episode features a short story that takes place in a supermarket located in a small rural town, where eating chitlins and possum is the norm. Some mighty weird things start to happen in this market and there is a LOT of wine involved.

This episode was written and narrated by Jesse Turri. Inspired by John chapter 2, verses 1-11.

*** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!***

Subscribe on iTunes Here!

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]]> http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/03/30/unfolded-episode-1-my-time-has-not-yet-come/feed/ 36 0:16:40 Easter Day–An empty tomb and brand new podcast in your ear. The latest addition to the Homebrewed family of podcasts has come to be. Unwrap your ear buds, push play, sit back and get ready to be Unfolded! Unfolded: Stories that reveal…i[...] Easter Day–An empty tomb and brand new podcast in your ear. The latest addition to the Homebrewed family of podcasts has come to be. Unwrap your ear buds, push play, sit back and get ready to be Unfolded! Unfolded: Stories that reveal…is a podcast that attempts to reveal great meaning without, necessarily, committing the error of defining it. You’ll find that this show–created by Matthew Barlow and Jesse Turri–is quite different from the other fantastic podcasts on the HBC network. Every other week, Unfolded will feature original written content from one of the crew members which will be supported by astonishing sound design. You essentially just have to listen to understand. This week’s premier episode features a short story that takes place in a supermarket located in a small rural town, where eating chitlins and possum is the norm. Some mighty weird things start to happen in this market and there is a LOT of wine involved. This episode was written and narrated by Jesse Turri. Inspired by John chapter 2, verses 1-11. *** If you enjoy all the Homebrewed Christianity Podcasts then consider sending us a donation via paypal. We got bandwidth to buy & audiological goodness to dispense. We will also get a percentage of your Amazon purchase through this link OR you can send us a few and get us a pint!*** Subscribe on iTunes Here! Subscribe on iTunes! Subscribe on iTunes Here! latest, podcast, Unfolded Tripp & Bo no no http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/03/30/unfolded-episode-1-my-time-has-not-yet-come/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unfolded-episode-1-my-time-has-not-yet-come http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HomebrewedChristianity/~3/hY7MysqHP9g/ http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/03/30/tiger-woods-nike-and-the-easter-narrative-when-winning-means-nothing/#comments Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:30:47 +0000 Deacon Case http://homebrewedchristianity.com/?p=10284  

Jesus Stripped of clothes. Photo of station at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal in Atlanta, GA.

 

I’ve been a fan of Tiger Woods for a long time. As a youngster, I aspired to golf like him, and as an adult, I’ve spent hours watching nervously as his putts rolled in – or past – the hole. However, this week, Holy Week, Nike’s self-effacing advert for Tiger has gone one fairway too far.

The controversial Nike ad heralding that “Winning takes care of everything” is making the circuit trans-media. Radio shock-jocks love it, Today Show professionals are confused by it, and those who have ever felt the sting of marital infidelity once again feel enraged by the audacity of shamelessness exhibited by the world’s number one golfer and brand.

Tiger’s indiscretions are not the issue. My concern is what this narrative, this “winning is all that matters” attitude, means in light of this week – the most important week in the life of the Christian calendar.

From Palm Sunday until Easter, many mainline churches in America will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 19 services compared to their usual 4 or 5. This Holy Week, more than all other weeks, winning has nothing to do with who we as Christians claim to be in the world. Rather, if anything is to take care of everything, it is the deep and ancient practice of walking the Way of the Cross – a way that is marked not by what one is able to accomplish or win, but a way that is marked by how we are able to discover and live fully into deep oneness with God in the world.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of Christian triumphalists who will herald that the Nike ad is right on point with the message of Easter Sunday. Many will suggest that the Christian belief in resurrection is a winning, a taking care of everything. Yet what these Christians and Nike mistake in common is what Tiger and those who take the Way of the Cross seriously know best: the road to winning is filled with more self-learning, falling, failing, judgment, support from others, death, and personal inner growth than could ever be imagined. In a sense, victory is nothing if in the process you lose your self.

The Gospel of Luke remembers Jesus of Nazareth as having asked, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his very self?” The radical thing about the Christian narrative of Easter is that Jesus won through losing; he proved that life comes not from conquering first, but from loss.

Tiger Woods has been down this road before. He is again the #1 golfer in the world. But by my read, Nike does a disservice to Tiger and the journey he has been on when they ignore the brutal human and spiritual course he has walked to get back to glory.

This Easter Sunday, at the end of Lent and Holy Week, Christians have the same chance as Tiger Woods did on Monday at Bay Hill: we are invited to celebrate our proverbial return to Eastertide, to winning. Yet, we who walk in the Way must not buy the lie the Nike advertisement suggests, but find truth in the opposite: winning takes care of nothing! New life, even God, is found not on the road filled with personal accolades, but on the journey of self-discovery that leads through pain.

Joshua Case in Oratory of the Holy Family, Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church, Atlanta, GA

Joshua Case is an Episcopal blogger, curator, and public theologian. Joshua currently works at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta. When not curating things religious and technological, Joshua works as a professional golf instructor.

Follow Joshua on Twitter

]]> http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/03/30/tiger-woods-nike-and-the-easter-narrative-when-winning-means-nothing/feed/ 0 http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/03/30/tiger-woods-nike-and-the-easter-narrative-when-winning-means-nothing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tiger-woods-nike-and-the-easter-narrative-when-winning-means-nothing http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HomebrewedChristianity/~3/wtiE_CXz3bc/ http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/03/29/heretics-guide-to-the-bible-official-launch/#comments Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:04:28 +0000 Deacon Piatt http://homebrewedchristianity.com/?p=10278

Click the banner to check out Heretic’s Guide to the Bible

Whether you’re a seasoned preacher or a Bible newbie, taking on scripture can be tougher than gnawing through week-old bagels (dontcha hate when you get those poppy seeds stuck in your teeth??). If I’m being honest with you, it freaks me out a little bit too, but I also think it’s an important thing to try.

There are tons of reasons we don’t pick up our Bibles. The stories are boring. They don’t make sense. They seem to lack relevance for my life, here and now. What’s the use, anyway? I’m never going to know these texts as well as conservatives, and if they find out I’m doing a “Bible study,” they might start spouting verses at me.

Then what???

Then you smile, take three steps back and run like hell.

Seriously, we’re not here to “arm you with the word of the Lord.” I’m not going to drill you with verses until you have them memorized. But regardless of what you believe or don’t believe (or maybe you’re not sure), there’s no question that the Bible is the most important, influential historical and cultural document ever written down. So it kinda makes sense we’d know a little something about it, right?

The good news is we’re not going to start at the beginning and just read the whole thing like it’s one big book. It wasn’t written that way, so why read it that way. Actually, lots of smart folks have gone though these scriptures before us and organized them in a way that helps connect them together. So each week, we’ll have three or four digestible sections of text, and generally there will be something tying them together if we do a little bit of detective work.

For you theology nerds, we’re following the Revised Common Lectionary, as this seems to be the most commonly used liturgical calendar among my peers. And for those of you who just zoned out after reading words like “lectionary” and “liturgical,” don’t worry. We’re not going to beat you down with Bible-speak here.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the introduction video I produced above to give you a sense of what each weekly study will look like. In addition, I’m inviting some other God Nerds to contribute some “bonus content” from time to time. These will comes from what’s called “Year D” lectionary studies. Basically, the Lectionary divides the Bible up into three year-long trips through the text, so that in that time, you cover most of the Bible. But there’s some that gets left out, and a couple of folks have created a Year D study to dig into some of those parts of the Bible most of us never hear about in church or anywhere else.

Got a question? See something we could be doing better? Let me know, because this is your community as much as it is mine. I’m the facilitator, but it’s my goal for all of us to learn from each other. Most important, I want this to be a fun experience. If you miss a week or two, don’t stress. Just jump right back in when you can. There will be archives of old studies if you want to play catch-up, but more important than being able to brag to your Jesus-freak friends that you’ve gone through the whole Bible is just setting some time aside to learn some new things, consider some new ideas and to dust off some of those old questions you’ve been carrying around for so long about God, Jesus, the Bible and this faith we call Christianity.

Click to check out the new Heretic’s Guide to the Bible Blog HERE

We will pick a selection of calls and posts to interact with on next Monday’s TNT – the day after Easter.  

Here are the step-by-step instructions:

1. Read the challenge post below
2. Think about a response
3. Write up your thoughts
4. Use the speak pipe on the front page to send us an MP3 message

Here is the challenge: 

Suppose I was to say: 

We need to stop saying “God sent Jesus to die on the cross”.  The only place the New Testament even talks about God sending Jesus is in John 3:17 – Jesus was sent into the world, not to condemn it but to save it.

The danger of saying any more than John 3:17 says itself is that it distorts our image of God and our understanding of the mission of Jesus.

What really happened is that Jesus died an unjust death. He was nailed to a cross by the Romans – as many threats to political peace and social stability were.

In the years after that weekend’s traumatic/amazing events, Jesus’ followers came to ascribe bigger and cosmic meaning to his death and their experience of his resurrection.

Believers, in those first few centuries, retro-fitted divine intention and design into Jesus’ death.

This comes down to us through the centuries and gets distilled as “God sent Jesus to die for our sins” or ,even worse, “Jesus came to die for our sins”

No – Jesus came for many reasons. He was then assassinated by an unjust regime in cahoots with a corrupt religious system.

God vindicated this injustice with the event we now call Easter. That signals God’s solidarity with those who suffer and are persecuted under unjust systems and structures.

The death of Jesus was seemingly as senseless as any victim of the powers. 

It was only afterward that Jesus’ followers retroactively ascribed this kind of meaning and divine intention on his death.  Doing so is:

1. poetics at its best – and very appropriate.
2. problematic at many levels including metaphysics, nature of time, and child abuse (to name just 3)

The selecting of narrative elements to illustrate a thread is a common way to give meaning and direction to a story. We do it at weddings all the time. We have this couple standing at the altar and we trace narrative threads back to show how they were ‘destined’ to be together or even ‘made’ for each other.

It’s a nice way to talk and it is poetic and beautiful. I am fine with doing it – both for a couple’s wedding and for Jesus’ death – as long we understand that this is what we are doing.

When I say that a couple was meant to bump into each other at the party/parking lot/ dating site … I am trying to ascribe an extra level of meaning or significance to their relationship.

When we say that “God sent Jesus to die for our sins” we are doing the same thing. It is our way of attempting to ascribe an extra-ordinary level of meaning or significance to his life and influence.

What would you say to that?

I look forward to your SpeakPipe calls!

This was recorded last year and placed in the cellar to age. What you are about to enjoy is some vintage goodness!

Kirk is the author of Jesus have I love but Paul? and he blogs at Storied Theology. 

This is his third  visit to the podcast - and he talked with us at Wild Goose West. 

WARNING: if you are going to call in a response to the Easter Call-In Challenge, do so before listening Kirk!

Blogging is a fascinating way to interact with people over an issue or topic.

Once in while a blog will unexpectedly come back to life after months of lying dormant. It usually happens when A) somebody references it month later B) when the topic hits the news again. The dying embers leap back to life in flame! 

This week my old post on and Evangelical approach to same-sex marriage has fired back up – for obvious reasons. I’m not going to link there because I just can’t wade into the 195 comments without getting lost.  I did, however, want to report about a most interesting exchange that came out of it.

Someone who disagreed with my saying that ‘homosexual’ as we currently understand and conceive of the term, never existed until the 19th century. Some people keep wanting to argue about sexual acts and missing that there are broader issues of orientation and identity that were not addressed in Greco-Roman culture or the greek language of the New Testament.

One such person – let’s call him TM – engaged the issue this way: 

For example, the statement “The Bible (the inspired written word of God) is not talking about homosexuality. It didn’t exist.” seems somewhat confusing, even if we only focused on the Roman era of indulgences of the First Century. Are you suggesting that homosexuality didn’t exist in this era… simply because they may have called it something else?

This is along the lines of your attempt to make a point about television – in one sense, it didn’t exist; and yet in another, it did – as plays/theater. Are you suggesting that simply because the presentation was different that there weren’t actors and actresses who presented drama, comedy, tragedy and more to a mass audience? Are you really going to argue that because a word didn’t exist that means the concept didn’t exist?

Do you see the how the analogy works? This is really important to see because those who sincerely believe that they are being faithful to the scriptures are often mashing contemporary experiences into ancient writings in a way that is … how should I say this?
Let’s try it a different way: when your faith is constructed in such a way that you need your sacred text to speak to every area of your life – then you will, by necessity, fit your modern data into the provided molds.

My response to TM included 3 points of departure:

“TV is indeed different from ancient theatre.

1) One can sit alone in a house and watch TV, absent of the social connection and crowd interaction.

2) One can also change the channel when it gets boring. You can not do that at the theatre.

3) Plays also so do not have commercials which deeply influence us.

In those three ways I would say that one can not simply say “TV and theatre are the same” as you have.

You are comfortable mashing modern categories onto the ancient & calling them the same. This willingness to mash is why you are frustrated that the Bible isn’t talking about what we are talking about.  TV is a different medium than ancient theatre – I hope that you can see that.”

It seems like a great example of the where the ‘two’ sides are missing each other in this debate.

It reminds me a great deal of the ongoing issues of conservatives ‘starting in the middle’ that I am perpetually having to point out.

That is where Ray Comfort takes the highly refined and cultivated modern banana and reads meaning, design, and intention back into it by the ‘creator’ – even going as far as it’s fit to the human hand, its easy pull tab opening, and its built-in disposal wrapping.

Maybe it would be easier for us to talk about TV & theatre in a categorical way before we wade into the elevated hostilities of the same-sex debate.