Today Lauren's thumb will be black with ash

Today is Lauren Winner’s first Ash Wednesday as an Episcopal priest, and she’ll be standing on a public street corner, imposing ashes on willing passersby. More interesting, however, than the fact that she’s doing this, is why she’s doing it.

This year, I will be joining many Episcopal priests in taking the public witness of Ash Wednesday one step further. On Wednesday, my colleague Catherine Caimano and I will put on cassocks and surplices, and go to a corner near Duke University Hospital with small containers of ashes and copies of a litany of repentance from the Book of Common Prayer. We will offer “the imposition of ashes” to people in the street.

READ THE REST: Religion News Service | Why Ash Wednesday belongs out of the church and out on the streets.

Every Wednesday during Lent, I’m going to explore an alternative to the penal substitutionary understanding of the atonement, the dominant theory of the atonement in my part of the (theological and geographical) world.

Orthodox Christians do not suffer under the long, long shadow of Augustine. Now, Augustine was arguably the most brilliant theologian of all time, but that not only means that we get the benefits of where he was right. It also means that the parts he got wrong are particularly difficult to get out from under.

In Orthodoxy, for instance, there is no doctrine of Original Sin — at least not as we Westerners were taught it. And while most of us easily reject Augustine’s argument that sin is passed biologically through the sperm of the man (which is why Jesus was immune), we still generally hold to the doctrine. That’s because Original Sin is a compelling idea, it’s an ontological argument, and it’s the hinge on which our dominant view of the atonement swings.

Orthodox Christians also by a different metaphysic than the one that saddles the Western Church. They are less concerned with the substance-essence debates of the early church. Their starting and ending point is 1 John 4:8 — “God is love.”

Father James Bernstein, an Antiochian Orthodox priest in Washington, writes,

What Is God’s Love?

The original Christian understanding of love and salvation are shockingly different from what we are often presented with in non-Orthodox Christian churches.

First of all: God is love—even before He creates; His love is not just an expression of His will towards creation, or simply an attribute, but rather God loves by nature—because of who He is. Love is intrinsic to His Unknowable Essence.

In other words, God’s love is not a characteristic of God. You know, how Westerners often say things like, “Sure, God is loving, but his love is balanced with his justice.” Or, “Without justice, love is not possible.”

These statements talk of God’s love as an attribute of God. But, for Eastern Christians, God’s very nature is love. It’s not an aspect of God’s being, it is God’s being.

Thus, the Trinity is central to the Orthodox view of the atonement, because the Trinity is an eternal, loving union of three divine persons. And it is into that union that God invites us.

Everything that God does is bent toward an invitation into that divine union. Everything. (See this YouTube video for another Orthodox priest’s take on it.)

The incarnation takes precedence in Orthodoxy — the incarnation of the Logos is the ultimate invitation into God’s love. The crucifixion is an extension of this invitational act. Again, Father Bernstein:

Orthodox incarnational theology, which is at the core of the original Gospel, teaches that God Himself, the second Person of the Trinity, became incarnate, not in order to pay a debt to the devil or to God the Father, nor to be a substitutionary offering to appease a just God, but in order to rescue us from our fallen condition and transform us, enabling us to become godlike.

So, as an alternative to the version of the atonement you were taught in your youth, consider this: The work of atonement that is accomplished on the cross is one of invitation into the eternal, loving relationship of the Trinity — ultimately, into union with God.

I’m making my way through Wolf Hall, an amazing and complex novel based in England during the reign of Henry VIII. Many of the characters — all Catholic so far — are wringing their hands in consternation over the writings of Martin Luther. Those writings are making it into the hands of some of the young theological scholars in Henry’s court, and are, of course, having an influence.

Which got me to thinking about how earth-shattering were Luther’s writings in his day. His writings were outrageous, but not in a crazy way. In a way that made complete sense to an entire swath of Christendom.

And further got me wondering if anything today could have such a profound impact on how millions of people understand God.

I don’t think so. With millions of megabytes of data being added to the internet everyday — much of it outrageous — I think that we may be beyond the outrageous, at least theologically. Also, there is no one, monolithic theological institution to be outraged, as there was in Luther’s day.

It did occur to me that some breakthrough in science could turn everything upside down, as Luther did.

What say you? Is there anything new to be said about God?

Late last week, I took some heat in the comment section of a post that I meant to be a rather lighthearted way to slide into the weekend. Some readers took that as an opportunity to let me know how much I’ve disappointed them, saying that they used to think that I was interesting, but now I’m a whiney crybaby.

A couple commenters seemed to complain that I am classified in the Evangelical Portal at Patheos. I asked to be categorized there — as well as in the Progressive Portal — and these commenters insinuated that I did so only to increase my traffic. I can state, for the record, that being included in the Evangelical Portal has not increased my traffic.

(I can also state plainly that, despite what those commenters say, I have just as many grievances against mainline/progressive Christianity as I do against evangelicalism.)

Timothy Dalrymple is the editor of the Evangelical Portal at Patheos, and he’s got an intriguing post up about blogging controversies. He interviews some others from his camp, and he quotes the traffic from some bloggers in his stable whom you and I can both guess the identities of. Tim ends — as is an evangelical’s wont — with a list of prescriptions. I’m not much of one for lists of prescriptions, but I think Tim’s are pretty good.

But I also have some other thoughts about his post, and about blogging controversies:

Controversy brings traffic. There’s simply no doubt about that, and I think my friend Rachel Held Evans is being a tad bit disingenuous in her post about this. True, I’ve grown my traffic by posting regularly — twice per weekday, and once or twice on the weekend. But when I blog about Mark Driscoll or Rob Bell or gay marriage, my traffic doubles. I can spend an hour writing a thoughtful, theological post and it will get one-tenth the traffic of a one paragraph rant about John Piper with a link.

Referrals bring traffic. My biggest traffic on a single post came in my thoughts on Rob Bell, because it was linked to by Christianity Today (thanks, CT. Love ya!). I’ve never been linked to by Andrew Sullivan or The Huffington Post or any huge site. Tim has and Rachel has, and there are big traffic spikes as a result.

Conversation brings traffic. Scot McKnight has built his traffic as a result of regularity, yes. And he occasionally wades into controversies, but usually only after some time has passed. What it’s clear that Scot does is read every comment. Scot is very active in his comment section and, as a result, has developed a very committed (and large) community of readers — readers who go back many times per day to read the latest comments by Scot and others.

Ambulance-chasing is tiring. Even as I watched Rachel get hundreds of comments about the Piper-masculinity-mess and Matthew Paul Turner rack it up on the Driscoll-excommunication-fiasco, I decided to sit both of those out. I felt myself getting tired of controversy-after-controversy. I couldn’t keep up, and I didn’t know that I had anything interesting or new to add to the conversation controversy. I will, of course, jump into the hot waters in the future, but I needed to take a couple off.

Finally this: Tim’s post takes numerous swipes and Brian McLaren, calling him “no longer clearly Christian” and “terribly misleading theologically.” Tim is way off the mark here, and I have to wonder if he’s even read the book to which he’s referring.

Rick Santorum, an ardent Catholic, made headlines over the weekend for saying that President Obama practices “a different theology” that is “not a theology based on the Bible.”

Theologies develop, and I have no trouble with that. But Santorum obviously does, so let’s take a look at some things that are not “based on the Bible”:

• The Immaculate Conception
• The perpetual virginity of Mary
• Praying to saints
• A celibate priesthood
• Transubstantiation
• The papacy
• Twelve sacraments that bestow grace

Again, this isn’t about my quibbles with these. This is about setting up a standard that Santorum’s own church can’t meet.

And Santorum’s Sunday backtrack about radical environmentalists was laughable.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we get honesty when these candidates talk off-script?

Scientology is having a hard time in France, that bastion of open-minded
liberté:

A FRENCH appeals court has upheld fraud charges and a €600,000 fine against the Church of Scientology for cajoling followers into paying large sums for bogus personality tests and cures.

Rejecting the church’s appeal against a 2009 ruling, the court said two French branches of the US-based organisation were guilty of “organised fraud” and gave four of its leaders suspended jail sentences of up to two years.

A French parliamentary committee described Scientology in 1995 as a “dangerous cult”, not a religion, and individual Scientologists had been prosecuted before, but this case marked the first time the organisation as a whole was convicted.

via Court upholds Scientology fraud ruling in France – The Irish Times – Fri, Feb 03, 2012.

The Economist reports on the slowly shifting sands of GLBT rights in Islam:

Gay life in the open in Muslim-majority countries is rare, but the closet is spacious. Countries with fierce laws, such as Saudi Arabia, also have flourishing gay scenes at all levels of society. Syria’s otherwise fearsome police rarely arrest gays. Sibkeh park in Damascus is a tree-filled children’s playground during the day. By night it is known for the young men who linger on its benches or walls. Wealthy Afghans buy bachabazi, (dancing boys) as catamites.

READ THE REST Islam and homosexuality: Straight but narrow | The Economist.

Got this in the in-box this week:

So I ask you, dear readers, what should be my response?

Short answer: I asked.

Longer answer:

In November, I started thinking about Christmas. Not what I would get, or what I would give. Instead, I was listening to all of the reports about iPads and Kindles that were going to be sold over the holidays. Combine that with millions of dollars given on Amazon gift cards, and I thought: There are going to be a lot of ebooks sold in the two weeks after Christmas!

So I composed an email and sent it to every publisher with whom I’ve had a book in the past. I asked them if they’d be willing to drop the price of my ebooks in to $.99 for one week, starting on Christmas. All but one did, but it took some coaxing. As a result, we (Doug Pagitt and I) sold a bunch of books.

Here are my tips, based on this experience:

Don’t worry about the money. When you’re ebook is being sold for $.99, you make $.35. That’s if it’s self-published. If it’s published by a traditional publishing house, you probably make $.01 or $.02. So, promotions like this are not about making money. It’s about getting your book in people’s hands getting your ebook on people’s Kindles.

Be nice to your publisher(s). I haven’t written a book for Zondervan or NavPress in years — the fact is, neither would likely publish something by me today — but I’ve stayed in cordial contact with them. I hear lots of authors complain about their publishers — about the lack of marketing they’ve gotten, about this and that — but that’s a bad strategy. Even if you move to a new publisher, your former publishers will keep selling your book as long as it’s in print. It doesn’t do you any good to burn bridges. Be nice.

Partner with someone. By teaming with another author (Doug) on this, I gave even more incentive for the publishers — more books for them to discount, and double the social media platform. Doug and I partner on about 50% of our worklives, and I cannot overstate the power of this. If you’re going at everything alone in your life, consider teaming up with someone with whom you have an affinity and with whom your platform already overlaps.

Build your platform. I used a carrot, not a stick, when I approached these publishers. I told them exactly how big our email list is, how large our platforms are on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, blog, radio show, YouTube, etc. Doug and I have been very deliberate about building our email list and our social media platforms since 2007. By 2011, we were able to leverage these with our publishing partners.

Focus on backlist. It’s doubtful that a publisher will drop the price of a recent release to $.99, especially one that’s selling well. But books on their backlist don’t sell many copies per year, and they don’t get much attention. Say a book is listed for the Kindle at $8, and the publisher is selling ten copies per month. If they drop the price to $1 for a week-long promotion and sell 200 copies, they’ve just made more in a week than they usually do in a month. And, most importantly, if it’s an ebook it hasn’t cost them anything, no paper, no ink; it was edited and marketed years ago; every dollar they make on your ebook is gravy.

Explain Amazon. Remind publishers that when someone buys one of your books for $.99, Amazon gets smarter about that consumer. Chances are, Amazon is going to start recommending other books by that publisher — full-price books — to that reader. Sales are sticky on Amazon, so even a $.99-sale that nets only pennies for the publisher will develop a connection between that reader’s Amazon account and that publisher’s other titles.

Push it. It’s always tricky using social media platforms to promote yourself — it can be a violation of people’s trust, particularly if you do it too much. The benefit of a week-long promotion is that everyone knows it will end soon, making them more likely to forgive you and not report you as a spammer.

Track sales. Embed your Amazon Associates code in every link so that you get numbers on the books sold. Plus, that’s a couple extra cents per sale!

Report back. Get back to the publishers after the promotion; thank them, and let them know some rough numbers about how many books sold (at least through your Associates account, which is all you can really track).

As I said to the publishers in my initial query to them, the days when authors left the marketing and sales of books to publishers and bookstores is long gone. These days, we’ve got to work together. And, in fact, competing publishers even need to partner on occasion. Looking back on our sales promotion, I deem it a great success.

And, thanks to all of you who picked up a Pagitt or Jones ebook!

Rachel Swan has some advice:

Q: Say I have a youth group member who has “come out” and decided to tell me: what are some things I should do and should not do?

A: Love them. Like any other kid, love them. Help them love themselves, know they are loved, protect them from harm and danger. Give them resources to care for their bodies and souls. Tell them they are beautiful and loved by God. Give them opportunities to see what God is calling them to do with the gifts they have been given. In short, treat them like any other kid. Because the fact is, they are just another child of God. Whole, beautiful and loved.

I just don’t view being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender as being an “other” – any different than a kid who is left handed or has red hair and freckles. Its just another gift in my eyes. The sooner we can set aside our differences in Christ, we can focus on what binds us together in Christ; love. The kind that passes all understanding, comprehension or reason.

via questions and answers: come out come out « The Sweet Bi and Bi.