undone

Research and the Internet

2012-02-06T19:34:00.000-08:00

"The problem with quotes from the internet is that you can never be certain that they are genuine. ~George Washington"

Prejudice, Science and God's Freedom

2012-01-26T12:09:00.000-08:00

Oh this is rich: A recent correlative study claims that "low IQ & conservative beliefs linked to prejudice." As reported by Live Science:

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.
"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

It's tempting to say this is low hanging fruit, but then again, it's tempting to imagine the study conducted by angular people in white lab coats gathering data to outlaw the savages who don't believe in science, too. Still, it is a nice cheap shot to levy at your more conservative friends.

While the findings make good eye candy, they distract, I think, from the real issues of inequity in American society. It's the classic case of examining the local bigot who use lots of epithets and harasses outsiders while ignoring the CEO in the boardroom who never questions why everyone around the table is a white male, why white men control a lion's share of wealth. Which is more damaging to society? Clearly both are evil, but because we cannot name the prejudice so easily of the CEO, and because we cannot blame him for a lack of personal responsibility for the issue, our American worldview lacks the tools to examine and address a greater systemic evil. There is no study about the privileged' sins of omission.

So of course I laughed and enjoyed the article, but I wonder if it is not on another level an interesting skirmish between the powers and principalities: the power of science, demonstrating its legitimacy by attacking the power of prejudice, which is something everyone already knows is basically bad. It leads you right up to the point of saying, "Look! Science can prove what morality is, " but doesn't get there. It will be interesting to see how a study like this might become a part of public policy. It basically says fundamentalism of any kind is related to stupidity, and we will have to figure out how to respond to that data.

But beyond this border skirmish there is a greater power in Christ. Christ's freedom to give himself on behalf of all peoples demonstrates something potentially different in how Christians can treat people we disagree with, people who are different, and even people we are enemies with. His freedom can be our freedom in the midst of the powers clashing. We don't have to choose either side; we must love them because Christ is our reason. Christ is the highest power.

Anyways, Jonah has spurred a lot of thought about the freedom of God for me and so it was along these lines I got to thinking about the article. What do you think?

A free Theology of Hope and other Moltmann

2011-12-09T12:05:00.000-08:00

Much to my surprise, I stumbled upon an online version of Moltmann's "A Theology of Hope," his most influential work. It is just html and looks to be the full text. (at least all the chapters, anyways).

To round it out, here is a link to his Capps lecture at the U of Virginia in 2005 on freedom and security. It's a .pdf from the U.

Lastly, for the main event, Moltmann v. Hauerwas , Andy Rowell recorded some lectures/panels in 2008 at Duke during the Recordings from Society for Pentecostal Studies and the Wesleyan Theological Society joint meeting. (cf., "Why ecumenical titles are terrible....") Andy Rowell recorded these and made them available, so pass along your thanks! I haven't listened to them yet, and they include other panelists (like Stassen - shout out to my homey from the block...) but I hope they are engaging.

Just look at that laugh! He's either genuinely joyful or plotting to take over the world.

Penn State Power

2011-11-23T12:09:00.000-08:00

What happened at Penn State is a terrible picture of our fallen humanity. It is also a graphic example of what a powers and principalities looks like in practice. Charles Pierce, Esquire contributor writing at Grantland, has a fascinating piece on the institutional nature of what happened:

It happens because institutions lie. And today, our major institutions lie because of a culture in which loyalty to "the company," and protection of "the brand" — that noxious business-school shibboleth that turns employees into brainlocked elements of sales and marketing campaigns — trumps conventional morality, traditional ethics, civil liberties, and even adherence to the rule of law. It is better to protect "the brand" than it is to protect free speech, the right to privacy, or even to protect children.
If Mike McQueary had seen a child being raped in a boardroom or a storeroom, he wouldn't have been any more likely to have stopped it, or to have called the cops, than he was as a graduate assistant football coach at Penn State. With unemployment edging toward double digits, and only about 10 percent of the workforce unionized, every American who works for a major company knows the penalty for exercising his personal freedom, or his personal morality, at the expense of "the company." Independent thought is discouraged. Independent action is usually crushed. Nobody wants to damage the brand. Your supervisor might find out, and his primary loyalty is to the company. Which is why he got promoted to be your supervisor in the first place.

...It is not a failure of our institutions so much as it is a window into what they have become — soulless, profit-driven monsters, Darwinian predators with precious little humanity left in them. Penn State is only the most recent example. Too much of this country is too big to fail.

Pierce cuts through the hand wringing about collegiate athletics and accuses us all of living in the same world, a world of monstrous organizations and systems that have a life of their own, promising success and security in return for loyalty. This demand for loyalty though must always cross God's demands on us to live. That is one way to understand idolatry, I think, because to ensure it's own life, the powers and principalities must save their own lives, not lose them, and they do so at the expense of their own people, always at the expense of the most vulnerable. Even the judge who set Sandusky’s bail remarkably low is a donor to his non-profit organization. –everywhere one would go in State College PA, this power is at work, systemically, to both preserve the brand and protect its own.

The church in America needs to get better at identifying and fighting against the powers if are going to follow Jesus into his kingdom. How? A confidence to blow the whistle knowing we lose jobs and face shame, because our future is safe with Him? A willingness to yield our own privilege to protect the vulnerable? What role does prayer hold in such a terrible world?

I appreciate Pierce calling out “branding”. Take note church. The most insidious powers are the religious ones, because they look to our untrained eyes like God’s will.

*picture and quote taken from Grantland.

repost: Bibledex, bible book movies

2011-10-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

Ben Meyers at Faith&theology posted the following a day or so ago. It seems like a great resource, so you might want to check them out. Just please don't watch them to fact check me during the sermon. Wait until after......

Ben wrote,

Here's a great resource. Video journalist Brady Haran has collaborated with the theology department at Nottingham University to produce a short video on every book of the Bible. The videos feature various personalities from the Nottingham department – including Anthony Thiselton, John Milbank, Conor Cunningham, Alison Milbank, Philip Goodchild, and Karen Kilby. As well as covering every book of the Bible, there's a series of videos on individual verses and geographical locations.

The same guy has done two other video projects like this: one on sixty physics symbols, and one on the whole periodic table. It's great stuff."

on Purgatory

2011-09-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

"'Lord, rebuke me not in Your indignation, nor correct me in Your anger' [Psalm 38:1]...In this life may You cleanse me and make me such that I have no need of the corrective fire, which is for those who are saved, but as if by fire...for it is said: 'He shall be saved, but as if by fire' [1 Cor 3:15]. And because it is said that he shall be saved, little is thought of that fire. Yet plainly, though we be saved by fire, that fire will be more severe than anything a man can suffer in this life." (Augustine, Exposition of the Psalms, 37:3)

Purgatory is a great idea. You might not feel the need for indulgences, but at some level I think purgatory appeals to us as a place to finally burn away all the dross, grind out all the flaws, work out all the kinks. It is the hammer of forgiveness; the tool by which grace can be allowed. Like a mother scolding her children as she to takes their muddy shoes off, purgatory explains how sin soaked people can stand in the presence of a holy God: we can’t, and must wash up first. One does not simply walk into Mordor, after all.

Something of the idea seems to have been around from the beginning of the church. From the prayers for the dead scrawled over early catacombs to Origen’s contemplation of a purging fire, there has been talk of an in-between place to drive the sin out of us before we see God. Augustine looks to have been very fond of it as well. The reformers, of course, would have nothing to do with it since, in addition to all the tension with church authority, it seemed to diminish the atoning work of Christ. Calvin wrote that the doctrine of purgatory is “..a blasphemy against Christ.” (Institutes, III, 5) Shouldn’t the cross be enough?

But, to this Baptist, the doctrine makes a kind of sense. It answers the questions flying around about my obvious faults; "when will the sin get burned out of him?" How do you work out the evil and fallen nature? A holy acid bath seems totally necessary to strip the corrosion from our frames. What I take issue with most in the doctrine of purgatory is its timing. I believe purgatory actually happens before death, and the name of purgatory in Baptist circles is “community.”

Community – that vague network of daily relationships- is the place where all our evil is exposed and worked out. In the midst of our connection to other people, our multifaceted issues emerge to be scraped away and the result, hopefully, is that we Christians are made fresh, true, with eyes that can see God because we have become holy as He is holy. In this way community prepares us to see God; wipes the mud from our feet. How else will the sin in our lives be pressed out and driven away?

If there is a flaw in this view of purgatory, it is that we can choose to ignore it. While it’s not possible to avoid the suffering of improvement completely, we do try to hide from it. We ignore it and deny that is really happening or necessary. We blame and judge instead of confess and forgive. We lead when we should listen. And maybe this is the worst part; instead of working through conflicts we leave. We bounce from group to group looking for a collection of people in which we can fit in easily, never really loving anyone different than we are, never learning to love the least.

Few of us ever make it into the purgatory of community. We miss our chance to persist and be refined, choosing instead to fool ourselves we’re making progress with books and seminars. We don’t buy indulgences, we buy Christian media hoping to escape our stay in the fire. Our real brokenness , the kind Christ can heal and salve, is not often brought to the surface and improved. (Who could bear it?) In truth, the agony of a classic doctrine of purgatory is more appealing because we do not have to choose it. It requires nothing of us other than dying…which we were going to do anyways. Deciding to honestly be present to the people around us is the hardest thing of all.

James Cone and Karl Barth. derp.

2011-09-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

How can I integrate Barth and social justice? Is it worth trying? I really don’t know. But when Cone writes that “The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God's own condition,” I want to say that this implies to me that before God assumes blackness, he is free to choose it. And in this thought I hear Barth. Is that fair? Can we say that without freedom then, the freedom of God to be God, justice is impossible? (A Black Theology of Liberation, p. 63)

I should probably let it go, but I feel nourished by both.

Wishtoyo, a poem

2011-08-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

Wishtoyo

I do not like pictures of the beach
with gelatin waters rolling

back to the horizon,
or a stout heart lighthouse
presiding over the churn.

Where is the split timber?
The wrecked ones on the rocks?
There is no kelp wilting on those shores,
no crabs sprinting sidelong from gulls.
It’s just unfettered open;
a banner of amnesia.

I can dream sometimes of islands on a piss plate
where I am king and the sun
shines on all my best ideas,
but I remember the light hissing out each day
under murdered clouds.

Underneath that black tarp
secret fishes shuttle back and forth
stealing away meaning from words and thoughts;
every feeling that tries to form.

There is nothing under the sea.

I will show you the sea.
The sea behind the sea.
(There, I said it!)
We might live there, even,
misplaced and wandering as
wavecrash explosions salt us

with fire.

There among the dead things that wash up
the surviving laugh in gray damp.
They smile back at the roar and crush
and feel heat and grit and skin under sweatshirts.

They play and leave for hot coffee
to push salt from their noses.
They call out names to one another,
pulling away from the surf, back from the sea,

back from the twisting line where nothing starts
and everything ends

and someone else takes pictures for a dollar.

licensed under creative commons, some rights reserved.

On Technical Writing

2011-08-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.
-Charles Bukowski

In other news, pardon the dust : I am trying to figure out how to move the blog over to my own server; well, have been for the summer. Need to create separate pages for things like the media resources. Thanks for the patience.

A Christian Nation

2011-08-06T00:44:00.000-07:00

It seems to me we should fear becoming a Christian nation. Never mind that to be so would mean we were a nation fundamentally more concerned with the rest of world than our internal affairs; to be a Christian nation would mean we would ultimately be faced with the task of regulating Jesus. The idea that somehow American evangelicals have got Jesus and government figured out is absurd, and seems to be just the kind of mistake that protestant Europe made warring with Catholicism, that Catholicism made warring with the Eastern church, and that Constantine drew from in his own wars. It is the same idea abutting the Sanhedrin as they convicted Jesus and the same idea even Peter burned with as he struck Malchus. Believing it best represents God’s will, every Christian government is ultimately doomed to sacrifice Jesus once again.

Friday's lament: poem for a miscarriage

2011-07-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

On Thursday

They told us you were gone;

left weeks prior.

An awkward chrome arm

with halide lights

reached out

and snipped a hole in the sky.

Despite this hole overhead,

I believe your day is bright.

It’s good weather: you know it all.

We poke at hope with a stick.

Here the sun is obscured.

We are hot and it is dark.

Mom sweats blood. So much blood.

It pools at her feet, black and still.

Had time allowed,

we could have changed our plans.

Now I’m suspicious of plans,

wary of the sun,

wondering if the hole tracks us,

with heavy, measured steps.

-selah

Race and The Holy Trinity?

2011-06-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

Life has me on two tracks right now; preparing for our Fall efforts to address race & culture and more immediately preparing for our series about the Holy Spirit. Yesterday, after reading T.F. Torrance, it occurred to me that our inability to understand and discuss race looks similar to our difficulty in understanding the Holy Trinity. In both cases the existence of united difference is what boggles the mind. Now there's a whole world of ontological difference between one god/three persons and humanity as united diversity, but it's interesting to think that appreciating the Trinity might be a theological window for thinking about race*. God as love is simpler and the commands to love our neighbor as ourselves more direct, but I wonder how to go about unpacking "God is love" in a trinitarian fashion that would yield fruit as we consider race. I like it more than a simple appeal to the mountain all nations come to to worship God in Revelation because it seems more intertwined, more enmeshed, more shall we say.... perichoretic?

If you have any insights, pass 'em along!

*race as ethnicity/culture/nations, not American biological "race"

Power is exercised on flesh

2011-05-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of Easter (wow…it has been a while) I preached a Palm Sunday Sermon about life under the powers and principalities. I hoped to demonstrate how the powers were on display during Holy Week as Rome and religious authorities exercised their dominion over Christ’s human body, but my thesis was that “The powers”, abstract as they might seem, are always felt in the flesh. Christ’s body was the intersection, not just of God and man, but of the powers, too, for in his body he bore the wounds, feeling the real tear of Rome’s talons.

So I’m probably late to the party, but it seems obvious now that the powers are always felt, in some way, in our flesh. Just as God is incarnated, and faith is embodied, so too do the powers and principalities act on our flesh. A great deal of their power rests on their hiddenness today, but when people decide not to abide by the rules, these powers rear their ugly, violent selves. So I’ve been wondering how I experience the powers at work on my own body, how our church experiences the powers and principalities trying to exercise dominion in our particular flesh.

Where this struck pay dirt for me was how tired we all are. The fatigue we feel at the end of the week – the drudgery kind that makes you want to turn on the TV and go to bed instead of going to a Bible study or church on Sunday, this is the power of capitalism at work in our bodies. So we live our lives according to the rules of wallstreet and church is an extracurricular activity. Wall Street and the job market and the banks and the rent determine what is extracurricular, not our faith. Work is good, but the kind of work available, if at all, demands more than we can give and still live in genuine human relationships to others sometimes. Stringfellow teaches me that this power of industry is really the power of death at work. Sometimes when the alarm goes off, I agree.

But others have it much worse, and the human body is afflicted by the powers in many ways; some we choose, some thrust on us. The death and violence manifests particularly in the treatment of women and minorities in the US. These are the bodies the powers at work in our world deal with violently; a witness not listened to enough by those in power. Of course not. The more I think about how total the forces that make the world go 'round are, the more I feel the need for someone to save me.

Somehow, I feel that this month has been good to contemplate our discussion of the Holy Spirit coming up. I'm beginning to try digest how the Holy Spirit is the only truly real alternative to the powers that run our world – living by faith is the only genuine alternative to the powers triumphing in our bodies. Furthermore, I hope to sketch out a theology that can take seriously and materially the Holy Spirit’s power and work in us today beyond a static idea of “salvation.” In some sense, Christians claim exorcism where the powers are excercised, but what does that mean in the grit of life? As usual, I feel under prepared with too little time, but I’m hoping that the Spirit moves regardless. :)

Truth, a quote

2011-04-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

"Truth gathers no adjectives"

-Max DePree, Leading Without Power

The Politics of Redemption: Winning!

2011-04-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Adam Kotsko and An und für sich for the generous giveaway of The Politics of Redemption. I'm looking forward to reading about the "social logic of redemption" he puts forth, divested of the usual metaphysical trappings and allusive language. Please give it a look. To whet your appetite, here's a link to some review and discourse about it already.

Barth the Evangelical & Justice.

2011-04-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

“That they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven,” that they may be a commentary on the proclamation of God’s help, is , of course, freely promised, but cannot be its set intention. Like prayer, praise and confession, especially in cases like Francis of Assisi and Bodelshwingh, it has always been spontaneous, unpremeditated and in the final and best sense unpractical talk about God. Then and in this way the light has shone out.

This was surely overlooked in H. Bar’s work, Weniger Predigt!, 1930, in which it is recommended that to-day we should not make preaching so much as service in moral and social reform our mode of proclamation.
If the social work of the Church as such were to try to be proclamation, it could only become propaganda, and not very worthy propaganda at that. Genuine Christian love must always start back at the thought of pretending to be a proclamation of the love of Christ with its only too human action. (CD I.3.I)

At first glance in the citation above, Barth sounds very much like tevangelical denouncements of social justice today, as if he is devaluing its importance for God’s work in the world. I’m not entirely sure what to think about Barth’s position, and I have a long way to go. On the one hand, it seems to divorce human efforts to relieve suffering from God’s initiative in the world, as if all justice is simply human efforts, futile, and biding time until the end. At least here, justice is not a vehicle for divine revelation.

On the other hand, it redeems social justice from being a calculated advertisement; just the kind of stuff we see today in Christian media and church campaigns. It also insulates the proclamation of God from being evaluated by the efficacy of our attempts to be just. It seems to me like this could have profound political implications too, forbidding social organization from identifying with the Word of God, -no form of governing can lay claim to divine fiat.

The discussion really hinges on Barth’s understanding of Word of God not as words about God, but rather the human words God inhabits with his Word. Clearly, given the Barmen Declaration, Barth was a proponent of social engagement. It is probably more correct to see the passage above as a rejection of liberal theology and a equating of God’s Word with only social justice. Still, I can’t help but wonder if it’s overstated and possible that social justice as human activity can be seized and used by God as proclamation in his freedom without equating all attempts at justice with proclamation.

So what do you think? Am I on the right track, understanding Barth accurately or have a missed a broader context? Barth is that he is so gamey in his writing, I might find in a couple of chapters that he meant the exact opposite. At least it’s a joy to finally quote Barth from my own copy of Church Dogmatics!

The Next Evangelicalism: second thoughts

2011-04-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

In our church partnership class, we cover a lot of ground in 10 weeks, from epistemology to American Baptist polity. We spend one week on justice and one on race, and in preparation of race I have returned to The Next Evangelicalism and assigned the chapter 3, on racism for our class. Re-reading the book led me to think about my earlier review of it.

For a church, the book is very helpful. It engages people from a gerneral evangelical background and confronts them with different truth, and for that I am grateful. I still believe the book resides too comfortably within an evangelical worldview, but I wonder if I have been overthinking it- perhaps it is perfectly written to stir up the average protestant church goer in the US? In addressing specific issues instead of the overarching viewpoint, there may be a greater wisdom than fighting abstract battles over ideology that would instantly alienate most folk. As it is, I am using it as a helpful overview of the racial landscape of American churches that, mercifully includes Asian American folk. (I used to use Divided by Fatih, but it is exclusively black-white.)

Does it concede too much in the end? I can't imagine any of my classes thinking so as it is really bracing for them. It also makes me wonder whether or not I miss the point in worrying too much about epistemologies and not enough about addressing the immediate issues in front of me. So thanks, professor Rah.
(I'd say kam sa ham ni da but my church would bag on me for trying too hard :) )

Curiouser and curiouser!

2011-03-31T21:37:00.000-07:00

My day was so odd I thought I should mention it. I was changing the oil in the station wagon today, when an Elvis impersonator with studded jeans and a Batman shirt rode up to me on his bike.

"Is that yours?" he said pointing to the wagon.
"Yes," I replied.
"They're awesome. You know you have to replace the heater core on these things before they explode inside."
"Yeah," I said pointing to a box on the cement," I've actually got one right here."

Some more car talk ensued, and then:

"I'm an Elvis impersonator," he informed.
"So I gather," I said smiling.
"What do you do?"
"Me? I'm a pastor."
"A man of God! Alright! I go to [forgot name] Church nearby. I'm good friends with the pastors there."
"That's great," I affirmed, glad there was room in the church for one more Elvis.

He pulled out his cellphone and showed me a picture a friend painted. "This is what she saw as she was astral projecting. Do you know who it is?"
"Uh, looks like God I guess," I said. (By the way, if this vision is correct, God is Santa Claus' hippie cousin.)
"Yeah man, it does. It's the end times, the last battle. Angels of light vs. angels of darkness. You know about the nephilim, right? The angels slept with people and made them. They build the pyramids. But I guess you're an angel of light man. That's great."

Relieved, I could only reply, "I hope so."

"Me, I'm an old soul. I seen a lot. The Antichrist, he's got blue eyes bro." I suspect that he was referring to himself as an old soul metaphysically, not metaphorically, but his line about the blue eyes really caught me. When he said it, I felt like I knew more about apocalyptic writing, about the Revelation of John, than a lot of the commentaries I've read. No, I don't think we're in the end times in quite the same way he does, but these things he said mean something to him. The blue eyes mean something to him; they say something about the things he's had to battle in life to hold on to his dignity.

"Well, I gotta go, but I'll come by and show you my station wagon, man. When are you around?"
"'Varies," I said, unsure of how specific I should detail my comings and goings. "But if you see me say hi."

He was an affectingly friendly fellow, charismatic and warm. He told me that he was "pretty outside the box," but it didn't really matter. Maybe things are stranger in California, but at least it keeps you from believing you've got it all figured out. Today, while working on my station wagon, Elvis and I discussed the end times.

Marrying Family

2011-03-31T00:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it's back to the sea to marry my brother and his fiancée.
Please pray all goes well. I want it to be meaningful and warm.

I was going to start with:

Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethew today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam. And wove, twue wove, wiww fowwow you fowevah and evah… So tweasuwe youw wove

But I'm not sure if anyone would get it (did you?).*

My best line so far - "If there are 2 kinds of people in the world who need to just be quiet, -it's pastors and attorneys." (Hope he's not reading this....!) I also thought about Hauerwas' "We always marry the wrong person" but I think it would take a long time to orient everyone on that one. Won't be scripture heavy either. I'm hoping to make a good impression by "getting it" for them. Speaking of Jesus appropriately here is the challenge. Hopefully the Holy Spirit will not prompt me to any crazy sermons or naked prophecies the day of. In the meantime I'll take tasteful jokes in the comments, ribald ones by email.

*princess bride

Love Holtz

2011-03-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

The headline on MSN is just perfect: Pastor doubts hell, loses job.

...of course he did. Evangelical doctrine is bigger than God, isn't it? After posting in favor of Rob Bell's new book on Facebook, pastor Chad Holtz got canned. I like seeing the article on MSN, since I think it is the kind of public reality check Christians need once in a while. Or maybe I'm just a Christian pub.-hound.

My favorite line of the piece was this:

For many traditional Christians, though, Bell's new book sounds a lot like the old theological position of universalism — a heresy for many churches, teaching that everyone, regardless of religious belief, will ultimately be saved by God.

It is a beautiful example of assumptive speech, assuming a kind of dominant cultural viewpoint that doesn't make sense on inspection.. First, it equates evangelicals as "many traditional Christians", though later commenting that the debate is ancient. What do they mean by "traditional" then? It explains universalism as a a heresy for many churches, but doesn't define many churches. Do they mean individual churches, denominations or individual people? Given Mohler & Piper's comments in the article, I suspect many traditional churches = baptists, *sigh.* For that matter, the author might have defined heresy, but no.

The reporter does make a point to inform us that the "no hell" posts were really the boiling point for his other posts:

Church members had also been unhappy with Internet posts about subjects like gay marriage and the mix of religion and patriotism, Holtz said, and the hell post was probably the last straw. Holtz and his family plan to move back to Tennessee, where he'll start a job and maybe plant a church.

So there you have it: the internet can cost you a job, what with all its pixelated theology and blogging. What is sad to me is that there's no report of any church discussion, no debate, no coming together, as if perhaps the Biblical injunction to seek a unity of mind were as important to the church as a particular interpretation of hell. I don't know, maybe Hotlz was a total dolt with low character, but I want to cheer for him simply for pushing back against the tyranny of the Christian status quo, and I suspect that as a former soldier concerned about church patriotism, he just might be on to something...

Perhaps this will be my last post on Love Wins, I don't know. These posts are faddish, but I like to trot them out and take a look at current events, if only so we can talk more about them at church. I'm not concerned about the universalism debate as I am the evangelical stranglehold on power. Providentially, I have the privilege of working somewhere where old beliefs are challenged and we're not trying to be evangelical. The whole situation is an opportunity to reflect on the "Evangelical Gaze" and how tied its "truth" is to the power of democratic capitalism - the "system". :) It doesn't exist, but it is always monitoring and if you express contrary opinions the judgement of the masses is wielded against you structurally; you get financially and socially cutoff. If you disagree, you get annihilated.* (Or at least sell more books?) You've got to give it to John Piper - the man knows how to influence in the media.
Apparently, his Tweet after Rob Bell's book dropped was;

"Farewell,

Rob Bell"

In the meantime, watch what you post, I guess.
(I'm screwed)

* bonus points to anyone spotting the lyric

Love Wins 2

2011-03-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

The always readable D.W. Congdon has engaged Mark Galli's critique (Christianity Today) of Rob Bell's new book in trenchant fashion. I appreciate the way he situates the discussion and sees the issues. You can find the analysis in (so far) 3 brief posts;
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
I am reminded how Ray Anderson would opine in class that sin isn't the biggest problem humanity faces, but death. Do yourself a favor and read Congdon's posts!

(part 4 added, 4/17)
(part 5 added 4/18)

Love Wins: Blogging Doesn't

2011-03-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

I have not read Love Wins. In fact, I know very little about Rob Bell, and probably shouldn't write about him but hey; it's a blog. The 2 people reading this can feel free to excoriate me. I’ve been inundated with links to articles about the book and though I like the title, I am already tired of the "buzz" so I'll ignore it for now and mention some of my observations about all the critiques that have come my way:

They are primarily exegetical

The articles I’ve read so far assume some exegetical starting points that are the very thing Bell seems to dispute, at least implicitly, but they don't engage the interpretive differences. Of course I don’t know if Bell examines the differences, either, but the reviews generally ignore this discussion and just quote verses. It's funny because people have noted he is "selective" with the scripture he uses, but with their equally limited exegesis, they commit the same error they accuse Bell of sometimes. They appeal to a common mode of exegesis that isn't shared by Bell and assume a generally evangelical hermeneutic as a starting point. But what worldview will be more obvious to Bell’s readers?

The arguments don't engage much theologically

Look, I just restated #1! There isn't much theological engagement with his book. The critiques I've read are just as predictable as Bell's point: "bad exegesis on Bell's part leads to bad (read non-reform) theology." The offended theology is an assumed reform evangelicalism. That's also a reflection of the articles I've seen. I'd love to see some different takes: send 'em in!

Interesting side note: while covenantal theology is a particular theology, its popular discussion progresses largely on exegetical grounds without really discussing its hermeneutic. At least in these discussions.

Bell isn't open

I've read now in a couple of places comments that Bell's book leaves no room for engagement or acceptance of the other side: it's polarizing. These comments come from critiques that point out where Bell is wrong without commenting on where he's right. log.eye.speck. Sadly, it just confirms Bell's point in many ways and continues the standoff. We need more "rethinking-the-meaning-of-evangelism-in-a-post-colonial-world" articles in the mainstream Christian media, not "you are wrong because you don’t fit into my world exegesis." heh.

Fear works

The critics rarely examine the idea that we need threats and consequences. Of course we need a fiery furnace. We just assume it is necessary for our behavior. Is it? Does psychological research have a positive role to play in our interpretive assumptions? Don't call this selling out to liberalism - that's too easy. There are real questions to examine about what assumptions the original authors held we should accept and not. File under "Is slavery/polygamy/food law biblical". I’d like to see a more thorough consideration of fear motivation in theology.

Immanence v. transcendence

There's an immanence vs. transcendence undercard in what I’ve read. 'Lot of talk about disobedience being an affront to God as the primary issue;, not so much sin against people being an affront to God. Are the two equal? Is the difference discernible? The positions read like Ps.51 battling Matthew 25.

I don't know what Bell thinks, nor, to be honest, do I care too much: I'm still stuck in CD I. 5 for the time being. So far most of the posts and essays I've read about Bell's new book were largely predictable given the subject. There isn't a whole lot of actual engagement, just repainting of the dividing lines. But even if Bell himself is guilty of this, it would be nice to see more consideration of the subject in a positive light instead of simple denials. Maybe that's too nice in the face of damned heresy. Huzzah to the blogosphere though for continuing the conversation. On a related note, I end up close to where Barth landed, if only because I lack the insight to figure this one out. I am certainly not a universalist, but I hope and expect God's grace to be much bigger than I imagine.

*Postscript.

I minister in an Asian American church. I have had people come up to me and explain that they are the first generation of Christian in their family, and ask if God would really send the previous 3000 years of their family to hell because they never heard about Jesus. Would he simply send millions to hell because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, not of their choosing? It is a real question, one we must be sensitive to as we emerge from the easy privilege of western European Christianity.

----And no, I’m not emergent :P

Thank You Mujeristas

2011-03-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

“ Mujeristas understand that our task is to gather our peple’s hopes and expectations about justice and peace. Because Christianity, in particular the Latin American enculturation of Roman Catholicism, is an intrinsic part of Hispanic culture, mujeristas believe that in Latinas, though not exclusively so, God chooses once again to lay claim to the divine image and likeness made visible from the very beginning in women. Mujeristas are called to bring to birth new women and new men – Hispanics willing to work for the good of our people (the “common good”) knowing that such work requires the denunciation of all destructive sense of self-abnegation.” Mujerista Theology, p.62

Isasi-Diaz’ description of a mujerista faith takes the incarnation of Christ so much more seriously than the abstract theologizing we toss around in church. It amazes me how the specific, real, particular and focused nature of the theological question she poses opens up a universal possibility of Christ, of community and acceptance to all peoples, men and women. There is an important counterintuitive lesson in here: If your theological outlook begins by considering how God interacts with specific people in real social locations with real enfleshed problems instead of abstract generalizations about “mankind” and various cultures, it makes Christ a real person, grasps him as located flesh, and makes Christ-like acceptance and empathy of all people perhaps easier.

I would like to be able to demonstrate this more, teach it better in church and the classroom; live it of course. Carter’s book, Race examines the effect abstraction has had in European theology considering the ontological issues at play. It is profound but I’m not personally able to preach on it well for a Sunday service. So far, I am using Justo Gonzalez’ quote:

“…every valid theology must acknowledge its particularity and its connection with the struggles and the vested interests in which it is involved. A theology that refuses to do this and that leaps to facile claims of universal validity will have no place in the post reformation church of the twenty-first century.” Manana, p. 52

It makes me wonder if we might describe the early 20^th century theological developments of Barth and his ilk as simply rediscovering whiteness in some sense; the scandal of particularity. It certainly took us a long time. And to God’s glory and Isasi-Diaz’s credit; the mujeristas were there waiting for us.

Inerrancy & BioPolitics: Our bodies are the texts

2011-03-04T14:35:00.000-08:00

Two great discussions have me thinking today. Arni at I Think I Believe directed me to a fantastic post at Political Jesus: "Inerrancy As White Evangelical Folklore." Its a great exposition of the particular power claims at work behind the dominant evangelical insistence of inerrancy. Citing Katie Cannon:

“The doctrine of infallibility reinforced and was reinforced by the need for social legitimization of slavery. Thus racial slavery was accepted as a necessary fulfillment of the curse of Ham. This had the effect of placing the truthfulness of God’s self-revelation on the same level as Black slavery and White supremacy.”

But what really cut me was the line, "See, the gimmick of plenary inspiration is that it takes the bodies of the prophets, priests, and apostles, and hides them from our view, but Christ’s body was exposed and made public for the known world to see (Colossians 2:15)." In short notice the author demonstrates the "cannon within the cannon" of the evangelical world. What a fantastic way of explaining the error of inerrancy and the solidarity of Christ with humanity!

Also this week, at Women in Theology, a site I really enjoy, Katie works within a similar hermeneutic as she reconsiders some of Pope Benedict's teaching on sexuality and shows how Benedict's own teaching about sexuality and homosexuality subverts itself :

At first, God thought that Adam’s solitude would not be an impediment to Adam’s flourishing, and God therefore thought that Adam’s relationships to God and non-human creation would be enough to make him happy. Through time, it was clear that Adam’s needs were not being met. Rather than telling Adam the Edenic equivalent of “bear the cross,” God created something new, Eve, and with her, inter-human relationality of all kinds—friendship, kinship, and both homosexual and heterosexual relationality. As Benedict shows, sex did not exist in the mind of God before God created Adam; rather, sex was a Divine innovation ordered towards the fulfillment of human needs.

In this essay, Katie demonstrates that the Pope's own hermeneutic to justify a rejection of homosexual identity actually allows for a strong case to be made for it. In doing so, she is able to enter into his authoritative hermeneutic and expose that it, too, is one local hermeneutic amongst many. Highly worth the read, even if you disagree. (Which really, shouldn't that always be the case?)

Together, these articles demonstrate how even our objective claims to seek the one truth in the text, "God's only truth," are inherently biased. The essays demonstrate the biopower at work in the evangelical world and their truth claims. -they help point out the water we swim in. Both expose in easily graspable ways how specific, local and subjective the popularly held "absolute truth" of our Christian airwaves really is. I would like to think more deeply about the relation of the evangelical world and bio-politics, but I'm not sure where to look. I need to finish Carter's Race: A Theological Account, because it seems he does just this. Any recommendations are appreciated!.

Fiasco: a book review

2011-03-02T14:14:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, I was given a wonderful book by Stanislaw Lem, Fiasco, a work of science fiction by an author I quite admire. Fiasco is a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it. You needn’t be a sci-fi fan (but who isn’t?) to enjoy it and you may have heard of Lem’s more famous work, Solaris.

In Fiasco, a pilot is resurrected under the careful ministrations of an unimaginably powerful computer. In the years since his death, the universe had remained silent, no alien life forms noticed. The leading minds conclude that the window of time in which two developing intelligences can actually converse is very small, relying as it does on some shared experience to base discourse on. As the computer explains to the nameless pilot; ““A paradox arose: the greater the number of theories astrophysics had at its disposal, the more difficult it became to prove the authenticity of an intentional signal.” Confident in their calculations, Earth predicts when an equal life form will appear and sets out across space and time to intercept it and make contact. So this is the basic premise of the book, a theme in much of Lem’s writing; real communication is impossible with something truly different.

As the envoy draws near to the new planet, they discover a world different than their hopes and predictions, a planet that attacks them without provocation. In the absence of direct peer to peer communication, they are left to interpret the attacks and figure out their meaning, and between the lines, there’s a fair bit of commentary on the Cold War. Faced with this impossibility, the characters pick at the fabric of what meaning is. Except, of course, for the resurrected pilot, a kind of Tiresias figure who can accept there are things foreign to him, things he cannot know.

There are a lot of interesting themes in Fiasco, and Lem has provided me with a new favorite description of natural theology:

…Intelligent Beings proceeded to activities that made it increasingly clear to them that whatever had called them into existence gave them only one sure thing: their mortality. Indeed, they owed their very existence to mortality, for without it the billion-year alterations of emerging and dying species never would have taken place. They were spawned by the pit, by the deaths of the Archezoic, the Paleozoic , the successive geological periods, and along with their Intelligence received the guarantee of their own demise. Soon, some twenty centuries after this diagnosis, they came to know the parental ways of Nature: the treacherous and wasteful technology of self-realizing processes used by Her to permit future forms of life to appear. (p. 90)

It’s fantastic. The book presents a compelling picture of the limits of our own understanding through powerful questions about meaning in the closed system of Nature.

For me, reading Fiasco was like reading Barth’s commentary on Romans the first time: It is an overwhelming work of “No!” There is no redemption in Fiasco, no light at the end of the tunnel – far from it -but he has described the one side of life, the judged side of life, God’s “No” so excellently; the closed system of nature, the irrationality of it all, and the way language fails us both in communicating and in hemming us in. I do not know Lem's religious beliefs, not that it matters, but I find it fascinating that it is the resurrected one who is able to accept that there are things beyond him, even though he cannot recount his own death. The pilot is not a messianic figure, but a character with a sense of his own limits. There is an obligatory priest who is also a symbol of religious acceptance of the unknown in the face of certain scientism. A physicist explains the priests position:

"It is possible to construct, out of mathematics, worlds outside the Universe regardless of whether or not they exist. And then of course, one can always abandon mathematics and its world to venture with one’s faith into the world-to-come. People of the ilk o Father Arago occupy themselves with this. The difference between us and them is the difference between the possibility that certain things will come to pass and the hope that certain things will come to pass. My field deals with what is possible, accessible; his, with what is only hoped for , which becomes accessible, face to face, only after death. What Did you learn when you died? What did you see?"
-"Nothing."
"Therein lies the differentia specifica between science and faith."

And that’s the genius of the book: Lem has a deeper understanding of what “possible” really means than many of the popular futurists that make the magazine stands. To that end, I found a deep sympathy with his point. Of course the writing is good, too and I heartily recommend the book. If you’ve never read science fiction from Eastern Europe, you should know that it tends to be philosophical with less emphasis on hand lasers and tentacle aliens, but that's a good thing. Fiasco is a book that teaches us about ourselves.