Imprecatory Psalms, Caitlyn Jenner, and the Woman Caught in Adultery

Came across this video via Daily Kos (the full hour long sermon/teaching is here.)  I don't recommend following either links.   But you may need to follow the links to understand my meaning in this post.  But if you can make sense of what I say you will avoid some unpleasantness.

The video is of a pastor preaching on prayer. He is some type of Baptist in Arizona (It's good to remember that Baptists are a diverse lot, so please don't see this pastor as representative, check out Anglobaptist and Justin Thornburgh for a very different sort).  The Daily Kos post focuses on the end of the hour long teaching, where the Pastor is finishing up talking about imprecatory prayer  of which a number of Psalms are an example, in which the psalmist prays against enemies or the wicked, praying for God to be victorious, even praying for the death of "wicked" and "enemies".  Eugene Peterson in his book on the Psalms see these prayers as Biblical examples of expressions of human emotions in the midst of conflict and or of the oppressed for oppressors.  Desire for deliverance in the face of evil and those who perpetuate it.  Peterson finds in these imprecatory prayers examples that we can be angry even to the point of desiring another's death in the face of God. However, Peterson sees these prayers as moving towards other goals, We can pray these (and there may be circumstances where the removal of the wicked an oppressor, or those who work grave injustice in the name of law and order) yet there isn't' the expectation that we should pray these sorts of prayers.  Pastor  Anderson in the last nine minutes of this sermon has a very different take. there is a should,  and not can.  The Psalms doesn't lead us to express our anger against oppression and injustice but to pray against people we see as irredeemably evil. Daily Kos picks this up not because the pastor says that we should pray for the death of serial killers and abusers of Children (which he also says) but because he targets Caitlyn Jenner as deserving his hate and prayer for her to die following  his understanding of the example of the Psalmist.

Eugene Peterson doesn't interpret wicked or enemies in a moralistic way and sees imprectotory prayer to be more revealing of our human propensity to hate than revelation of the heart of God. Steve Anderson in this sermon is the exact reverse of Peterson's interpretation, he interprets wicked and enemies both moralistically and as revealing the heart of God.  This is why he turns his words against Caitlyn Jenner she is morally repugnant and in part due to her public persona a danger to morality.  For Anderson there are just some people who are beyond the pale.  What Peterson takes as contextual (though we don't always know the context) Anderson takes as law.  In some sense it is his duty to pray against those who corrupt the youth (yes I used that deliberately). Anderson's god is the maintainer of the order as he sees it, specifically the order of sex, gender and sexuality, as well as I'd guess the political status quo, police and any authority. This god is one who supports values of love of family, country and "brotherhood", above all else.

Here we have two very different readings of imprecatory psalms and what they teach us about ourselves and God. For Peterson in these Psalms we find that we can be human before God and express our deep anger against unfairness, oppression and those who oppress and commit injustice and commit injustices against us. Even that we can pray before God for deliverance from these wicked who oppress and commit injustice, and oppress us. Yet, expression of our anger and our desire that those who are wicked should cease in there injustice and oppression if necessary through their demise, doesn't mean that is what God desires for them.  In fact, a psalm even says that God doesn't desire the death of the wicked.    Anderson, by reading examples of expressions of frustration anger even hatred before God, is turned into that we should express these things and should desire that certain wicked people should perish and go to hell (something not in view for the Psalms). For Peterson the Bible is about our relationship with God, thus the Psalms show us how to be in relationship to God even with our more negative feelings, for Anderson the Bible is all about telling us what to do and how to do it, thus prayers of deep intimate relationship with God such that we can truly bear our soul before God becomes a rule for how to ask God for things so that we can be sure we are doing it correctly.

Lastly,  Anderson rhetorically enacts the story of the woman caught in adultery.  Including his assumption that Jesus would agree with him on his desire for Caitlyn Jenner to die and to be stoned to death.  So convinced he is of his own righteous judgment of Jenner that he can't hear Jesus (whom he supposedly follows), not of Anderson's imagination, say he who is without sin cast the first stone" and "I do not condemn you, go and sin no more."  Even if Anderson were correct about Jenner's sin (which I don't think is the case), Jesus Christ stands and says  "If you can claim to be without sin pray for her death."  There's probably a great deal the Jenner has done wrong and things from which she needs to repent, even so Jesus Christ stands inviting us into repentance refusing death as the solution to sin.  And Jesus stands and tells the self -righteous like Anderson to remember their own sins before calling another person "reprobate".  Sure there are wicked people who it seems deserve to die, those who have enslaved and profited form enslavement of others, those who benefit from the economic exploitation of the poor (I in small ways am in that category).  But if Anderson would stop a minute and remember that James (which he quotes a number of times in this hour long sermon) says that true religion is the care for the outcast the vulnerable and the poor (widow and orphan), he may be less certain of his righteousness and righteous judgement.  Were Anderson to stop and actually here and know Jesus Christ the second person of the Trinity, he'd realize that he too is the wicked and reprobate participating in a system that benefits from exploitation and has yet to deal truly with its enslavement of Africans and continual oppression of African-Americans.  And that is to say that Pastor Steve Anderson whether he realizes it or not is preaching a White Gospel that was used to justify slavery and segregation and thus has little to do with the God he claims to follow.

Fit? Tellign my family's disruptive story of faith

Micah Bales Letter to Post-Evangelicals struck a chord with me, though I don't quite feel the need to address post-Evangelicals.  What I connect with is having a family and personal faith story that doesn't quite fit neatly into the categories of American Christianity.

The source of this difference as I read Bales blog post is around decisions his parents made around class, race and homosexuality.  These decisions set themselves off from both Modernist and Fundamentlist understanding of Christian faith.  My parents also made similar choices and decisions around these questions (this post will mostly deal with class and race, how my parents navigated homosexuality and human sexuality will be addressed in a separate post), though in a less dramatic fashion and with less decisive conflict, yet the choices and decisions my parents made and where they allowed themselves to go and be taken in the course of my childhood and youth, meant the faith I received had a radical tinge.

The first decision my parents made that set this other path for myself, was their decision to get married.  My mother and father met only shortly after he and his first wife had been divorced.  In the late 60's in the Christian circles my parents existed in divorce and remarriage was viewed as sin. The plain meaning of Jesus's own statements on this are quite clear. My mother tells the story of having returned home for Christmas and discussing possibly marrying my father with her mother. My grandmother was opposed to the possibility, as I recall my grandfather wasn't excited but was willing to leave it to his daughter to decide what was right.  The night before my mom was to return to Chicago my grandmother told her that if she went ahead with the relationship and married my father she would be in sin and that my grandmother could not condone the marriage to a divorced man, it was adultery (after all Jesus says so.)  My mom prepared to return to Chicago to tell my dad she would not marry him and call of their relationship.  The next morning my grandmother told my mom she had been praying the night before and God spoke to her and said that she should not oppose the marriage.  As I understand it that didn't settle it for my parents but through wrestling with Scripture their hearts and consulting Evangelical Covenant pastors whom they respected, they decided it was good for them to be married (Their struggles and the mixed ramifications of divorce and remarriage are another story and not all for me to tell.)  So began the adventure of my childhood.

As I came around and for the first two years of my life, ours was a suburban and solidly middle class life.  We went to church and were involved in a Covenant Church, my father owned his own Tool and Die business that was relatively successful, and my mother quit teaching when I was born.  My parents felt a call to something more and specifically my father felt called to return to school, and to go to seminary (feeling called to work in churches as a director of Christian Education).  My father sold his business, and they sold our house and went to a Mennonite Brethren college and seminary (Fresno Pacific College and Seminary) in California near where my grandparents had a farm, and we went and lived with my mother parents while Dad went to school full time and helped out on the farm.

As he completed his degree and began to apply for positions of Director of Christian education, few churches would consider him as a divorce, and even those who would offer an interview, the divorce stood in the way except for churches where he wasn't interested in serving.  So he returned to tool and die and manufacturing. Which lead us to France.

In France we chose to attend a international (many who were international students at the university) and multicultural congregation that was a missionary congregation lead by a Baptist missionary couple, in Bordeaux.  Our worship was in French but we worshiped not only with French but expats like ourselves from other countries, mainly African is my recollection. This, like so many of my parents choices weren't presented to us as choices. Even as I write this I have difficulty crediting anything special about this. However, because of this congregation we joined, France for me wasn't simply being acculturated in French culture (my sister and I went to French schools, and it wasn't long before my mother would sometimes overhear passer's by wonder what that American woman was doing with those French children), but in a different culture I encountered as equals those who weren't European or White.  I met and they were friends of my parents people from India Africa and the Middle East who back in the states were people to whom we sent missionaries.  In this congregation they were leaders and even from families who had been Christian for several generations, like my own family.

Returning from France my family chose to live in a house that was near the wrong part of the country, an unincorporated town called new London where many poor, White,and Latino (mostly Mexicans) lived.   Again my parents made little of this decision, and even down played it, the house was what we could afford and we new the landlord and his extended family.  I was never told to avoid certain people, and made friends with the children whom I went to school and  wholived in new London, I had them over to our place, and even brought some of my friends who didn't go to church to our Covenant church. Unfortunately , a significant minority of that congregation made it clear that those people (poor Whites) weren't welcome and were even possibly a bad influence upon me (so I learned from my parents later) but it was clear to me that my friends weren't entirely welcome and they felt it too.

When I was Twelve in the middle of the year, we moved to Los Angeles (Carson, a city neighboring on Compton, in Los Angeles county).  Again my parents gave rational for their choice as being largely economic and pragmatic, a house in a Whiter and more middle class part of L.A. county wouldn't have been as nice or as large.  I went to a large school (from a country school made up of White and Hispanic) to a school with variety of ethnicities.  I was befriended by Samoans. As White, I was in the minority.  We went the closest Covenant church that was in a Wealthy part of the South Bay, but because after we visited the church my sister and I wanted to be part of that church.  So, our church experience was majority white still, though, significantly my parents were friends with the few people of color that did attend the church.

Just before my sophomore year of high school we needed to move and we were in a better financial place, and could have moved into predominantly White parts of the South Bay, but we ended up renting a house in one of the first deliberately integrated housing developments to be built in L.A. county (by the 1980's that had been many years ago), so by my parents choice, we continued to live in racially and ethnically diverse context. When my parents were able to buy a place during my Jr year of high school they bought a house in that same neighborhood.  Our next door neighbors were African American and we got to know them fairly well, but on Sunday we'd drive to our predominantly White church and they'd drive to their African American church.  One of my best friends in in High School was Black, we didn't live near each other he rode a bus to school, I walked. We never went to each other's churches, but distance wasn't the only reason. Because of the choices my parents made, I experienced the divisions within American Christianity through being socially and economically close to people of color, but experiencing the divide on Sunday morning. My parents never questioned this, after all it was how they knew American Christianity to be. My Grandfather pastored a German congregation in Chicago, other Europeans weren't even members.  In the 1970's and 1980's the Covenant was becoming more ethically diverse, but my mother's experience wasn't of worshiping with other white people but other Swedes in the Covenant Church, but due to my parents choices this way things were was dissonant, and remains so.

Because of my parent's choices and sense of calling and following Christ, Church and Christian faith had little if anything with enclave of sameness and safety.  Thanks to their decisions and lack of fear, thanks to their faith and willingness to follow God in even the mundane and practical, I have long been with and known personally those others fear, or have kept at arms length.  I have also seen how Christians can reject and exclude, and my parents allowed me to experience the pain and helplessness surrounding that exclusion.  Thanks to their decisions and choices while White, my formative experiences weren't only of a White and privileged world.  My faith was able to form in a much more diverse and complex and multicultural environment than many a White evangelical, where the experience of the other is on mission trips. But it was all so very normal, that even to this day I have difficulty seeing just how those choices make a difference, except when I seem not to fit into the categories of White American Christianity.

Book Review: Holy Terror by Mel White

Over at Priestly Goth, I have posted a review of Mel White's, Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right tell us us to deny Gay equality.  Take a look.

Bonhoeffer a Man for Our Times?

Here I want to pick up an undeveloped thought in my previous post. Bethge's subtitle of his Bonhoeffer biography has been rolling around in my head "Theologian Christian Man for his time". It is the last phrase "man for his time" which is in contrast as it seems we wish Bonhoeffer to be a man for our time. Yet what if Bonhoeffer in some sense can only be at play in our midst if he is never ours, never easily and simply for us and our time. What if we are perhas people of his time? We perhaps belong more to Bonhoeffer than Bonhoeffer will ever belong to us.  I doubt he will ever serve our purposes: mainline, academic, evangelical, fundamentalist, post-Christian, post-modern, post-Christendom. If we allow Bethge's presentation of  Bonhoeffer as someone given up to his time it may free us to  an encounter with Bonhoeffer that allows him to be at play in our midst, and will never possessed by any of us. Can we allow Bonhoeffer to be other and still speak to us, who ever we ar? Can we be lead to Christ through Bonhoeffer's witness as a man for his time. Will we allow Bonhoeffer the place of the continually unsettling saint, who shows us an undomesticated God.

Bethge's subtitle summarizes his own sense of a progression and thread in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life. First he was a theologian, who as he developed as a theologian also became a Christian. The theologian and Christian then become a man for his time, which lead to his (early) death at the hands of the Nazis. While Bethge sees a progression, it isn't that the early Bonhoeffer the theologian wasn't a Christian or a man for his time, but as things progressed in his life he was lead upon a certain intensifying trajectory, that lead (rightly) to a flouring of things that were only in bud at an earlier period of his life. In some sense one may say that Bonhoeffer's life was one of continual conversion, where he continually sought to take up the cross of Christ anew. In a sense it is this Christocentric and cruciform understanding of the theologian Bonhoeffer that made him a Christian, and this way of being a Christian, one who answered the call to come and die, lead him to be a man for his times and his death.

Another way of saying all this is to say that Bonhoeffer was a man for his time, because he was taken up into Christ, because Bonhoeffer surrendered himself wholly up to Christ. He was a man for his time because Dietrich Bonhoeffer the theologian and Christian took up his cross and followed Christ where Christ lead. Where Christ lead was into conspiracy, prison, and execution.

This is the challenge of Bonhoeffer for us: he followed Christ and simply(not unthinkingly) and radically calls us to that same discipleship. This means though that Bonhoeffer stands apart from us and our time. Bonhoeffer's witness is then to open us up to the cruciform nature of our existence before God so that we may be people of our times, in this same radical way of taking up of the Cross and following Jesus Christ.

We who might lament the fragments of his letters and papers from prison, the unformed thoughts and theologies - "religionless Christianity"- are then called to see his life as offering which give us a whole and complete Bonhoeffer, meaning that on their own his last words are meaningless. There is only Bonhoeffer who did not survive the Nazis. There is no Theologian after for us. In that sense Bonhoeffer can not speak to us who are wishing and seeking to be freed of our agony by some solution that will save our petty Christianities, our precious fragmented identities we unthinkingly call Christians and label "church". Bonhoeffer will always be other than what we feel we need. Bonhoeffer will never speak life into our tightly held human identities we wrap in spiritual language of self-justification. He wont even breath life into our lifeless theologies and piety. He can only stand outside all our fragments and agony's that as often as not have little if anything to do with the suffering of Christ, and call us to the only identity that matters for the world. Bonhoeffer stands as one who allowed Christ to be all in all, that he could give his all to his time, and proclaim, as one who wholly belonged to Christ, Christ to the world.

Bonhoeffer can't offer us any answers to our troubled times, except in the offering of his life to Christ for the World. This is the silent proclamation of the one who is for others, Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer is for us only to the extent that we in the same way we will take up the Cross and follow Christ, and struggle and suffer as Christ Suffered. Bonhoeffer is for us only to the extent that we are for our times by being taken up into Christ. For in the end Bonhoeffer was a man for his times because he gave himself over to Christ and the Cross as being for others.

Civility Violence and Evil

Today I signed Sojourner's Peace and Civility pledge" I could agree to all the points of the pledge and so feel it is the least I could do in response to shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the six others.

Yet, what are we to do? What does such a pledge mean? For me I signed it because I know hatred and evil lurks in each and everyone of us and because to the best of my knowledge and awareness I am already living according to the pledge. It would be false of me to say that I signed it out of some sense that I had failed in recent memory to do what I have now pledged to do. Maybe I am in a minority and suddenly liberals and conservatives are realizing the small or large ways they contribute to vitriolic in our public discourse, but I doubt it.

I suppose I am not sure Jim Wallis is correct to suggest as he did in his editoiral yesterday in the Huffpost that this violent event is a moment of transformation. I am not sure that if I believed vitriolic was perfectly okay 7 days ago that this event in and of itself (as sad and tragic as it is) should cause me to change my ways. Partially I am unsure about that because I am not sure we can truly say we know the causes of this event. Second, because as much as the pledge and Jim Wallis are seeking to call for introspection, it falls short of real and deep and truly transformational self-examination.

You see I can read the pledge and feel satisfied. I agree with it wholeheartedly, I even can honestly say that I have for most of my life sought to live according to the principles that the pledge seeks to encourage. But as I read the Christian tradition it teaches us that sin and evil are far more subtle, and thus tell us that something far more disturbing than vitiolic is at the root of the violence that occurred in Arizona this past weekend.

Jim Wallis actually gives us the easy way out. He wants us to take responsibility, and thus wants us to correct the wrong and the environment that caused this to happen. This is an easy way out because I am not asked to identify both with victim and perpetrator, rather I am to see how I who would never succumb to the evil of this violence have inadvertently through violent language caused something I personally would never do. This sort of distancing from another human being is what I see the Christian Tradition and Scripture and Jesus calling self-righteousness. From the Christian perspective pledges and even gentle rhetoric will not uproot the evil that lurks in us and is the true source of this tragic event. The transformation we seek comes from a God who in human form suffered this very violence not from the hands of "madmen" but from legitimate peace loving authorities.

In the end I took the pledge not only because I could agree and have striven to live according to the principles of the pledge, but because I know that this evil lurks in me as it does in us all, and I follow the one who suffered this evil to rescue us all from it.

My friends this is much worse and the good news is someone has already begun to transform us and our world and liberate us from it. But we need to name it as evil, we need to name it as that which is in all of us, whether we use vitriolic or not. In the end we can't take responsibility but must surrender ourselves to the one who suffered this evil to free us from it. Only in allowing ourselves to be close to victim and perpetrator as both fully human and sharing our humanity may we find the place of finding a truly transformative word and action, whether or not we have or have not used vitriolic.

Election Day Reflections

Today Scot Mcknight on Eschatology and Politcs asked us to consider where is our hope (he limited his reflection to evangelicals, but I think it applies to all and any Christians, to the whole Body of Christ)? McKnight asserts that our hope is in God in the gospel and God's mission in the world. "God’s gospel-powered mission creates a new people, the church, where we are to see God’s mission at work. Therein lies our hope." I am mulling over this in light of assertions that America is a light set on a hill, and in light of the ways in which for American Christians the fate of our understanding of the gospel and the fate of America and the political process is often linked. On some level we as American Christians want our citizenships as people of the United States and as people of the church to coincide and exist without conflict. We want the church and the state to mutually support each other. In our present context, and that which McKnight is addressing, this desire is not only about our citizenship but our partisanship and thus a particular vission of America that must coincide with our being the church. For many being Christian and supporting or being Democrat or Republican are nearly inextricable, and the political other is beyond the pale of Christian faith. Both sides of this debate use Nazi Germany as the prime example of why Christians must stand up and oppose the other party and its policies. The other party is seen as the fascist (and/or communist) party. Each group of Christians of course focuses on differing aspects of the Nazi regime and thus is able to see in the other a lurking Nazism. For Democrats it is the Nazi treatment of all minorities not simply the Jews and the regimes persecution of homosexuals and other sexualities it deemed deviant. Also for Democrats it is the populism of the early Nazi movement and its concern for a proper German identity. For Republicans it is the way in which Nazism and fascism through the power of the State sought to infuse itself into every level of society insisting the church and family serve and promote the Nazi State and its Aryan agenda. Christians of either party insist that we must resist these tendencies by supporting one party and opposing the other. But it seems to me that this means that Christians are actively promoting what the Nazi regime attempted to do and that is create a Christianity and church that was indistinguishable from party and nation. However, we are not seeing a repeat of the rise of Hitler. More likely we are simply seeing a division in the American Christian identity that has always collapsed being a citizen of this nation and a citizen of the people of God. We are after all that city set on a hill. Well no, no we aren't that is the church!

Oddly enough to me I see this collapsing even among liberals who in their anti-Constantinian settlement and anti-Christendom stances claim to have abandoned such civil religion. And yet we have such suggestions as that put forward by Candace Chellew-Hodge on Polling place as sacrosanct. As one who has a degree in Religious Studies I can appreciate the analogy of polling place as sacred space. But as one aware that we do have and have always had a civil religion in this country and that it has tended to have a Christian veneer, the collapsing of civility and politeness of a poling place with the exhortation to Love from Saint Paul the Apostle seems to be a watering down the Gospel and the notion of Love in Paul (which by the way is for Paul always already self-sacrificial and exemplified in the Cross and leads Paul to his own death) by equating it with politeness and civility in a public setting. I'm sorry but Jesus and God are many things but politeness is not the same as God's self-sacrificial love. And However much I may like John Stewart (and I think he is hilarious, damn funny, and has bitting insightful commentary on our times) and however nice, good and useful his analogy of cars merging "you go, then I go..." , such an image is hardly a comparable image to the cross and Christian Martyrdom which should be the meaning of Love for the Christian. Two things seem to make Chellew-Hodge's conflation possible: 1) that politeness in the line at a voting booth seems worthy of commentary in our day (who knew, I didn't but I haven't voted since 2002 so haven't been to a poling place in awhile) and 2) a desire to make our civic duty as citizens of the United States coincide with our civic duty as the people of God.

As I wind down I return to our current fear that the other political party will bring us to the brink of fascism (and/or communism): For the church there is in the United States the analogous co-option of the church and Christianity by the nation and state, but it's nothing new and has little or anything to do with fascism or communism. We are currently aware of this danger on the one hand because ostensibly it is the consensus that empire and colonialism are at odds with Christian faith, and that Christendom was a huge mistake. On the other hand we aware of this because there are now two competing visions of how being both a citizen of the United States and a citizen of the people of God can coincide without conflict or betrayal of either citizenship and without needing to give priority to that of the people of God. American Christians for most if not all of our history have assumed that our allegiance to God and Christ and the Kingdom of God could be entirely coincident with being citizens of this great democracy. Few have questioned the claim that America is a "City set on a Hill". Even now, while liberal Christians may point out how America failed at that miserably, liberals haven't given up on this idea but seek to make a progressive agenda into that which will fulfill this manifest destiny of the United States. It is long overdue for Christians in America to return to Augustine's City of God, and contemplate our only true citizenship, and revive a two kingdoms theology not in its form that allows Christians to betray Gospel principles if in civil office (and may have lead to German Lutherans slow response to Hitler and Nazism) but one that heightens the tensions between these two citizenships, and makes the bold claim that we are better citizens of the nations of the world if we are only loyal to our citizenship in the people of God. Or to say it another way; We are most truly good citizens of this world when we seek to have no other identity than that of Christ, and thus see ourselves as only truly citizens of the City of God.

the Melancholy of being neither and still seeking

Tuesday evening I met up with some people I knew only from Twitter and who have various connections to the Emergent Church movement. The Anglobaptist who was there as well is the exception. It was a good and enjoyable and thought provoking evening. I also have a melancholy about the evening. I have been struggling to articulate what it was. And found myself distancing myself from the melancholy in analysis of our general situation of "emergence" but that just didn't do the encounter between us justice.

I will not, nor could I necessarily, recount our conversation and our stories that we told in brief. However, there were tensions, in each of us, and between us. We were okay with that, perhaps even reveled in them a little. The stories that were told were ones of moving away from one thing to something else, as well as discovery of faith in a more meaningful way: In these stories there were things rejected, and here is one possible source of melancholy. In these stories what had been rejected seemed to loom large behind what is now held. I know this tendency in myself and it rarely if ever serves me nor the search for God and Truth well. Mostly the melancholy comes from memories of sitting with a group of friends in L.A. from various backgrounds and churches: Roman Catholic, variously Evangelical and Charismatic and Mainline spending time in evangelical churches. I don't think the melancholy was missing those people and those conversations though I do miss them, but more that twenty two years ago when I first met this group (first calling themselves "Minds for Christ", eventually calling ourselves "The Society") we were dealing with pretty much exactly the same issues that came up in our conversation and telling of stories on Tuesday evening. Though with a difference: somehow those of the Society were more aware both of the previous history of evangelicalism which we were admittedly critiquing and we were more aware of a forms of Christianity that were not defined by either Progressive or Conservative, Modernist or Fundamentalist. Or in other words for us Christianity wasn't defined solely and primarily by the American context. The Society couldn't help but respond to the evangelical churches we were in who were threatened by young members of theirs reading Augustine, Calvin and Luther etc. for themselves, yet we were also aware of how the mainline churches even in their progressive stances that some of us were attracted to, did not by themselves serve us in our search for authentic Christian faith. We were seeking something beyond the American dualism. It was just a tad depressing to see how much that dualism continues to be something that remains a defining reality, perhaps even more so than it did 22 years ago.

So a melancholy hangs over my experience of Tuesday evening, because 22 years ago we in The Society were quite hopeful of our ability to extricate ourselves from American dualism and the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversy and split: to find oneself still there to find the vortex of that controversy to be so powerful that one can't even escape it by being part of a denomination that has tried to bridge that split for most if not all of its history and starting an Ecumenical congregation, and founding an intentional Christian community. I search for the Church, not really other disciples of Jesus wandering about, though when I find said wandering disciples it is a joy, but I'd rather those disciples be also seeking to know not in the fuzy sentimental way of the free church and believers church, but in a catholic and truly incarnational way the church. And yes I know that a rejection is looming large in my search for the Church. This is part of the Melancholy I find myself in. For 22 years I have sought to live in the tensions, resisted fleeing to Orthodoxy or Catholicism at certain points I could have thrown myself into those contexts with evangelical enthusiasm, finding "liberal' and "conservative" or now "progressive" and "conservative" as poorly fitting clothing, and frankly in my opinion neither actually about being clothed in Christ in the final analysis.

Tuesday night reminded me that I have felt stuck for quite sometime, truly seeking to bridge and mend the divide isn't really what most American Christians are really interested in. We are interested in our journeys, which makes sense. but I have to ask to what are we all journeying? Not that The Society is some grand thing to copy, the results of our conversations is perhaps under scrutiny ambiguous at best. Several of us became and have remained atheist or agnostic. I don't think any of us returned either to the Mainline churches or evangelicalism. Some of us remained where we were, other's returned to the ethnic and orthodox churches of their families. Christianity in some general sense failed us, yet that it seems is what we are still seeking a generalized Christianity that can wear one of the coats of American dualism in a way we are comfortable with. I think I have given up on Christianity, what I am looking for is the Church, the mystical and real and tangible body of Christ. My fellow disciples of Jesus wandering about in this barren landscape we call America I invite you on that search, and have to admit that if that is not what you are looking for we probably wont walk long together.

My Melancholy is perhaps my sense that what I long for few others truly long for, what I seek few others seek. Also, from the outside it seems to be something few members of the two claimants to be the Church care much about, as they seem just as caught up in American dualism as everyone else. It seems an odd thing for an American Christian (of any stripe) to seek,yet here I am.

Is Brian McLaren arguing against a Caricature?

One of Scott McKnights criticisms of Brian McLaren's latest book is that his "Soul-sort Narrative" is a caricature and doesn't exist in any reputable form, or even more strongly only exists in the mind of Brian McLaren. Over at the Christiannonduality blog (side note I find it humorous that the tag line of the blog itself sets up a duality between Thinking/proposing and imagining/participating, a duality I find at best inaccurate and at worst false) JB posts a brief response to Mcknight's post. Oddly enough JB begins his response saying that McLaren is not in A New Kind of Christianity (ANKoC) "describing mainline Christianity". This is an interesting point to make as a response to Mcknight because McKnight himself is not speaking about "Mainline Christianity", at least not in the common use of that word, but "Evangelicalism". In the midst of this banter over the use of labels I continue to wonder what exactly is McLaren addressing. For McKnight McLaren's target is Evangelicalism and thus his complaint that essentially what McLaren critiques is a caricature. This thought I think connects up with what JB points out as Mclaren's rhetorical strategies of hyperbole and sweeping generalizations to map things out. In my view it is these rhetorical strategies that make difficult identify with any precision what sort of existing or formerly existing form of Christianity Mclaren is actually talking about as he describes the belief about its god "Theos" (BTW surely Brian knows that "theos" is the Greek word used for God in the NT right?!). Jb limits McLaren's target to Fundamentalism, which is what I have said elsewhere, but McKnight takes him to have a broader target,which is Evangelicalism beyond and inclusive of Fundamentalism.

Though based on various reviews I have read it does seem that in his broad mapping McLaren is including "Mainline Christianity" at least in its being "Western Christianity". Perhaps JB wants to say that "Mainline Christianity" has come out of and away from what McLaren critiques. But I wonder then is JB wishing to appropriate McLaren but saying the critique applies to others but not JB's Christianity? JB feels McLaren is on target but critiquing those other Christians. McKnight feels he has caricatured what he critiques and asserts that McLaren's target is Evangelicalism in particular but that McLaren's "soul-sort narrative" doesn't describe actual Evangelicalism. though he also interprets that McLaren's target includes "mainline" or at least the historic theological tradition of the mainstream of Christian faith.

My suspicion is that the difficulty here is that McLaren has a particular form of Christianity in mind (perhaps what he initially taught as he started Cedar Ridge Community Church, I don't know) but that he then blames on and identifies with broader historical antecedents. Its this later move that I think JB is talking about when he talks about McLaren as mapping a a very rough trajectory. Thus while JB praises McLaren's rhetoric I find this rhetoric the very thing that unravels his argument as he knits it together. In a sense if JB is correct here, McLaren as cartographer has whole contents in view and he is pretty good at giving the general outline of the continents with the necessary distortions to the actuality for the sake of presenting something which is three dimensional in two dimensions. However, McLaren doesn't seem to actually think of himself as a cartographer of contents giving us a "satellite view" of the continent. McLaren wants to be writing guide books to how to get around France and Paris: telling us the best places to stay, what to avoid etc. But really to get around France and Paris I don't need the satellite view. I don't need to see from above (google maps satellite is interesting but I never found it helpful as a means to know what to expect on the ground when finding my way to a new place), nor sweeping generalizations about terrain and the character of the French people. If your offering me a guide book you better know the place backwards and forwards not simply a combination of one corner of Paris and the map of all of France and the continent of Europe. My suspicion of McLaren is that he knows a particular corner of Paris really well and certain provinces of France very near Paris, and then from that wants to extrapolate from that narrow experience to the entire city of Paris and the whole of France. Perhaps as JB says this is simply what is done when trying to do what Mclaren is doing, after all we can't know experientially the whole of Christian reality, and our interpretation of the history of Christianity will be colored by how you have experienced it. However, McLaren's rhetoric crosses out the inscription of his particular experience and overwrites it with an "objective" account of the history of the "soul-sort narative.", as having an actual history through time that has been taught as official doctrine, not just something some form of contemporary Christians may believe. I know there are Christians that believe something like his "soul-sort narative." but I am with Mcknight in questioning its actual extent even while finding McKnight's assertion that it doesn't actually exist at all. So, i think I'd agree that his "soul sort-narrative" is a caricature, a caricature that some currently may be acting out.

Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler: Sermon Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Here is the manuscript of the sermon I preached this past Sunday. I had to radically change it in the preaching because I had assumed that all in attendance would have been participating in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, or in the very least know about it and what it meant. However, we had visitors who had not been involved in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and possibly weren't aware of such a thing. So, I rewrote the manuscript as I preached.
However, I feel that what I wrote needs to be heard and read. So hear it is. Love to hear any and all thoughts and reactions.
Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler: Sermon Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Evangelism, Church or to dechurch

(Editorial note: published before rereading and I was quite muddled at points, edited for clarity 8/13/2009 8:15 pm. LEK)
Last night, I went to a presentation at an Episcopal Church on Evangelism by the Episcopal priest who (along with Tripp) thought up the idea of an ecumenical congregation that became Reconciler, David Gortner. Essentially he said that evangelism is not a programmatic thing but a Spirit empowered and lead relational activity of Christians consisting in listening and conversation born out of joy and gratitude. As a spiritual director this sounded somewhat similar to spiritual direction, another spiritual director,who is also the priest of parish that held the seminary, made this observation during the discussion as well.

As a basis for his discussion of Evangelism we read the passage from Acts about Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch and the passage of Jesus with the Woman at the Well (St Photini). This is fairly standard in my experience in talking about Evangelism and I have seen these texts used to back up most approaches and methods of evangelism. It was pointed out that these stories of evangelism happen while traveling,(going out where people are) and that they are conversations in which much listening happens as well as naming the holy in the persons life or story. Lastly ordinary things, things that are at hand are used to convey meaning due to that ordinary things are already filled with meaning.

What has stuck with me the most was his he directing us to think about joy wonder and gratitude as the place out of which evangelism should take place. Commencted with this that David sees evangelism as a spiritual practice. The Spiritual practice of evangelism involves three steps:
1)Remembering joy wonder and gratitude, as those who have encountered God in Jesus Christ.
2) Speaking of this joy, wonder and Gratitude, with fellow Christians and those outside the church.
3)As we meet others and converse with them listening for the holy in their lives.

About the other half of the time dealt fear and dread that come with the idea of evangelism, the ways to address this and the state of the church and the Episcopal church in the US. I am now a bit fuzzy on this portion, in part because it was directed at an Episcopal audience and partly because it was not clear where exactly this all was going (admittedly we did not get to some role playing exrecises that might have clarified things). though, I also wonder if by addressing anxieties around evangelism and institutional barriers to evangelism lead to comparisons between the Episcopal church and other more conservative bodies that either seem better at evangelism and/or are seen as growing. This line of conversation was reinforced by David giving statistics about the decline of the number of Christians and religious.
In all this the seminar lost a bit of focus for me and seemed to be dominated by concerns of retention of members and why denominations are shrinking, and specifically what needed to be done. This was not entirely David's fault it was where people were at. I certainly understand this anxiety though where I am at with Reconciler it is more simply facing the fact that at least for the context the two passages shared since they end with the Ethiopian eunuch being Baptized and St Phontini spreading the news about Jesus in her town all in one sitting for both stories don't quite fit my context. I am involved in the sort of activity David sees as evangelism, and the case of St Photini is the most similar to my context but the conversation is something that is extended over much more than an hour conversation or even a day, more like months and maybe years.

The other thought I came away with that connects up with something David said as an aside about evangelism bringing about conversion in us as Christians as well as the one evangelized; the sense of evangelism as spiritual practice that David is advocating actually calls for the evangelism and conversion of most Christians. Part of that conversion seems to let go of denominational identity and stop trying to make Episcopalians, Methodists, Covenanters, Baptists etc, and focus on sharing Gospel as it has been handed on for 2 millennia. This means learning to become intimately familiar with the Tradition, and not just our own denominations, and certainly going deeper than the Reformation. And now I am sounding like the various essaysists in Remembering our Future: Explorations in Deep church.

Even if the ending of the seminar with David last night lost me a little over all it has got me thinking and got the Anglobaptis ruminating as well. But I also wonder at the insistence that evangelism is not institutional, and that institutions got us to where we fear evangelism or fit it into a narrow program. Now let me say that I agree with David that evangelism can't be a program, this has been a long held belief of mine. However, even as a relational organism the church is an institution, the basis of its worship was instituted: we speak of the institution of the Eucharist by Christ (though as with most things many dispute this assertion, but I don't hold with those). Baptism was instituted as the means of entrance to the church, most denominations and the Ecumenical convergence documents still hold to this. These things are not the reasons we have difficulty with evangelism. I think we need to be more nuanced in this ubiquitous tendency to blame institution for all our problems, and think that "organic community", whatever the hell that is, would solve all our problems. Now admittedly I obviously don't think the institution of denominationalism is a good expression of the institution of the church, though churchly things may happen in denominations, they are not the church. I'd say, this is the problem not the institutional per se. When Tripp speaks of "institutional loyalty", I think he actually means denominational loyalty, though he also as a Baptist may mean congregational loyalty. But The problem isn't necessarily loyalty but a loyalty in the place of Christ and the Body of Christ. For instance demanding Loyalty to the Evangelical Covenant Church even though one knows that the Covenant church isn't the Body of Christ in its fullness. I am not sure right off hand what all is actaully wrong in denominationalism beyond the problem of loyalty, but I am quite certain it isn't the institutions of the sacraments, nor is it anything that helps us hand on the Gospel, ie Tradition. But in the end I think David Tripp and I are in agreement, this way of thinking, seeing evangelism as spiritual practice, and a Spirit lead and filled activity of listening sharing and naming first requires we evangelize ourselves and our own conversion. This itself may be a long process, especially as we Christians seem hang on to our anxiety about our loss of significance in the cultural and societal landscape, and in someway trying to find our way back to that influence. Granted it is an unfortunate reality that some (possibly looking like many) of our parishes and congregations will find themselves unsustainable. This is painful for those Christians and their pastors, and it is a threat to the continuation of some denominations. It may not be so dire but that fact that we all seem to know something is wrong and yet don't really want to ask some very fundamental questions like "is denominationalism really a good thing?", don't leave me too sanguine for the larger picture. Except in the cases where Christians are actually looking beyond survival and asking what it means to be Christian. I may disagree with many peoples answers at the moment, and tend to look to those aspects of Christian faith that can show some continuity that goes deeper than 500 years ago. What I found helpful and clear in Davids seminar was where it asked us to reflect on what it meant to be a Christian in action and relationship in the world. The rest was fascinating statistics and distractions.

Ps. I'll post more on this but on the way to my "office hours" for Reconciler having been reflection on evangelism all day and remembering my joy gratitude and wonder, and looking for holiness in the world, had three people talk to me on the way to the coffee shop. Granted I was wearing a colar as I usualy do. All three were in some form of need and a bit off, and a challenge to in relating and conversing. It leads me to an other reason why many people avoid this sort of attitude towards Christian faith it lead you into some strange places and to find oneself out of one's depth.

A quote on Church evangelism and worship.

So, I have been attempting all week to post something but what I have attempted to write was still not ready to post. Couldn't find that place between posting something that could give some idea about my thoughts on some things I ahve been reading and short essays that really need more work and may or may not work for this blog.
So instead here is a quote from the last essay in Remembering our Future: Explorations in Deep Church.

"Church is not another organization primarily committed to individual or community development. It is a community of worship who express their love and gratitude to God. Worship is not the method of evangelism it is the sacrificial offering of the community in love with their redeemer and their creator; it is the spirit-filled response to a gracious invitation." Mark Wakelin "Education, Discipleship and community formation" (pg. 224, Remembering our Future)

I think I mostly agree with this, though I may nuance things a little differently.

PS. this is an interesting collection of essays of evangelicals and charismatics, mostly British who are attempting to get at Emergent questions and critique evangelicalism and charismatic renewal from the perspective of Tradition, or what they are calling Deep Church.

Priestly Goth Preaching Chronicles XV

Saturday night was Nocturna at the Metro, for its 21st anniversary celebration. 21 years ago, Goth wasn't exactly new, Bauhaus had been broken up for four years, Sisters of Mercy had formed and split and continued on as Andrew Eldrich's baby. Dead can Dance had released their 4th album and their first album had come out in 1984. The Cure had there 7th album out. I had just met Alex who identified as Goth and Roman Catholic and through that friendship discovered my own affinity with Goth. Goth was not new but not yet old either. At the club I had an extended conversation with a friends boy friend about the lack of anything new in music and art. Ironic perhaps as we were at a club that was celebrating that Goth has been around longer than a good portion of the Goths at the club had been alive. Perhaps it was why he wanted to talk with me about it, and with someone near his own age, who also remembers a time when there wasn't Goth, and was born before there was Punk. He longs for the time when music was new, Punk and Goth bands were doing new things, inventing music that had never been played. The excitement of a new album or single, which opened up new things new worlds. He was also in Poland during the Solidarity revolution and immigrated to the states in 1989. He talked alot about the corrupting influence of consumerism that kills newness in art. Much of his critique of western capitalist democracy and its effects on creativity I could see, though I pushed a little on the need for things new, arguing for the value of the recombination and attempting to do similar things in different or paired down ways (His example was the White Stripes, which he holds with some contempt). I am not convinced that newness and originality are the only or even primary evidences of creativity, and I question both the consumerist and Avant-garde cult of the new. Yet, at one point he said something that illuminated this cult to me in away I had never seen it before: He said " that each album revealed new things to him he remembers, but now there is no meaning." The search for meaning I can understand, much more than simply the pursuit of the latest ordinal, new thing. What we didn't get into because he wanted another beer and I wanted to dance (I go to clubs to dance, after all), was why meaning is connected with newness and originality. And could something like Goth, or Punk be perpetually new without being original.

In light of that conversation the conclusion of the lectionary text from Second Corinthians yesterday rang out "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" My sense is that this newness St. Paul is talking about is very different from the newness of either the consumerist variety or that of the Avant-garde. though it seems to me that many Christians do see newness in this way, as my friends boy friend sees it, as people talk about looking for that new thing God is doing in the world. I wonder if we have simply taken over this cult of newness and applied the language of Scripture that speaks of all things becoming new.

In so doing I think we miss that what many are looking for in new things and ever new things is meaning, in the face of the banality and meaninglessness the everyday world often give us. In the passage of 2 Corinthians this exclamation about all things becoming new, is connected with being in Christ, and follows a discussion about appearances seeing things from another view than the human point of view. This newness is then is about what God has done in Jesus Christ and thus having a new point of view, from the stand point of the cross.

I preached on Sunday basically about this new and different point of view, that is beyond appearances, and what can be seen with the eye or demonstrable, observable. The Lectionary texts from Samuel being sent by God to find the Son of Jesse God had picked for the next King of Israel after the failed reign of Saul, and the parables about the farmer and the Mustard seed, pointed to an another way of seeing, a reminder that we are to seek to have God's pov, and not hold on to our human points of view. Newness spoken of in 2 Corinthians then comes from this letting go of what our human faculties and our fallen and creaturely attitudes and perspectives. The life death and resurection of Christ gives us a new perspective that is God's perspective on the world and life and reality, that turns even our concepts of newness on their head.

On some level I think we often think that by seeking the new thing that we are preaching the Gospel which claims that God did a new thing. Yet, we miss that it isn't newness as the next thing, as originality that is part of the message of the Gospel, but of being brought into the perspective of God, which then shows even our own ways of seeing newness, to be empty without depth, unable to get to the heart of who we are and of the world. In Christ is the very meaning many seek. Yet, how to communicate it when so many of us are as caught up in the fleeting meaning of having to constantly peruse the next thing. the newness offered in the Gospel and in union with Christ is about vitality that can only come from the source of life, not that of originality. It is newness from a non-human point of view, one that is beyond appearances and our expectations.

inter-religious exchange

Today the Edgewater Community Religious Association(ECRA), that in the past year I have become more and more actively part of was invited to as part of our monthly meeting to come out the the new Ismaili Center (Jamat Khana) in Glenview. We were given a tour of the facility, and given of the ways in which the architecture that joins a prayer hall, with gathering space, and education wing for Saturday religious education. It is a quite beautiful, and the holistic approach to faith and life as expressed in the building and in their education and training of their children in their faith/religion/spirituality is all very impressive. Slightly intimidating, especially when one realizes that there is no one who is paid to keep things going, everything from spiritual leaders to the teachers of the Saturday "Sunday Schools"(as our tour guide called them on the tour, who was a volunteer). Such commitment and dedication certainly is commendable and impressive. I could see my fellow Christian pastors nod their heads as we all kind of had the thought that it takes a lot of work to get volunteers for much less intensive activities: volunteer teachers that would spend every Saturday teaching in a religious school is simply astounding.

The whole building that includes offices, classrooms a meeting hall and prayer hall, all form a unified whole, each flowing easily and seamlessly together so that one is always aware that one is in a religious space. This particular by the repetition of heptagons and Charbahg which is symbolic to Ismailis (and at least we were told other Muslims as well. I found these geometric designs very compelling and their were panels of fabric patched together to make heptagonal designs, and the designs in the floor and fountain as a charbahg and then concentric heptagons in the ceiling resonated similarly to me as Icons. Of course geometric shapes are the underlying structure of icons.

Tangential Sermon thoughts: Hermeneutics, Faith and Politics

An acquaintance and colleague of mine sent out a reflection on the lectionary texts for this coming Sunday, specifically Genesis 17 and Romans 4:13-25. These passages are about Abraham and the promise of God, and faith. My colleague in this e-mail says that given the entire story of Abraham he must disagree with Paul, claiming that Paul's account of Abraham's faith as hoping against hope and not wavering in faith contradicts the story of Abraham found in Genesis. I assume in interpreting Paul that he knew the Scriptures, and I agree that in this knowing well the Scriptures he also takes what some may consider questionable hermeneutical moves. However, I do not think that Paul is ignoring all the failings of Abraham nor ignoring the way the story seems to indicate he doubted or attempted to make good on God's promise on his own terms. I think Paul challenges our notion of faith, and the righteousness that comes from faith. Clearly faith did not make Abraham perfect in all he did. In fact I think Abraham's failings are part of what lead Paul to make the grandiose statements about Abraham here. The perfection of the Law isn't in these story's. It seems tome that if we see Paul's statements as contradicting the story of Genesis is to have faith become a work that perfects us and makes us righteous. However, if we take Paul's account of Abraham and the Genesis stories with all Abraham's foibles and false starts, what we see is someone who is consistently open to God, and to submitting to the will of God. Abraham in the midst of all the mistakes is still the object of God's faithfulness. God is faithful through Abraham in these stories. Faith is not something without doubts or failings but something one has in the midst of human messiness, which is another way of saying that faith is not a work. The faith of Abraham that is accounted righteousness then is not perfection but an attitude of the person, a disposition towards God that is open to God's faithfulness, regardless of the mistakes one makes or the doubts one has. If Paul's account of Abraham means that Abraham was perfect or never doubted then it seems to me that faith is a work and would then be under the Law. This contradicts Paul's very point that faith is not under the law, this is freedom and the good news of faith in Jesus Christ. Rather what is being lifted up by Paul is the persistent and enduring faith of Abraham which bears out in the whole of his life even if at any one point we may judge Abraham lacking in faith and/or righteousness or perfection, but that's the point isn't it?

We also seem unable to see the persistence and the continuity of enduring faith of the Church when confronted with the failings of Christians and the hierarchy of the the church or of historical Christian societies and cultures. I am currently reading a collection of essays by archbishop Anastasios (Yannoulatos), Facing the World: Orthodox Christian Essay on Global Concerns. The first two essays deal with issues of justice one from the perspective of the Global Community and the other in terms of human rights. Anastasios in these essays is defending the resources in Orthodox Christian theology and faith for helping bring about a just Global human community and for the defense of human rights. In mounting this defense he admits the ways in which Christians, the hierarchy of the church, and Christian states and politicians have failed to fully live up to the ideals he presents as being the faith of the catholic and orthodox church. This is a very different attitude than I hear from many Christians who also see the the Gospel as a source for working for justice and human rights. Many Christians whether emergent, or mainline or liberal, or progressive I hear speak this way usually look at the failures as a means to show that we need to be suspicious of how the faith has been handed down to us. There are reasons for this certainly in the US, given that Fundamentalists have long claimed to be those who represent the true Christian faith and in recent memory (this was not always the case) conservative evangelicals and Fundamentalists have either allied themselves with forces that perpetuate injustice and work against human rights or even themselves, in certain cases, actively seek to undermine certain goals of human rights. It seems to me that we have simply accepted that these voices represent true Christianity and the faith as it is passed down. Rather than being suspicious of the Faith passed down to us we should be suspicious of the sectarian claims of representing the true whole. For Anastasios, while it is regrettable that Christians do not always live up to the goal, the witness of the Saints and other faithful Christians should be the place of our emphasis not on the place of the failures to live out the Gospel. On the other Hand, Anastasios also is pessimistic of the ability of humanity to achieve a just global community and a consistent defense of human rights on our own efforts of law and international declarations. He has a (I believe healthy and true) skepticism about human ability in terms of resolving the worlds issues politically and of the State being able to live out these things consistently. In this sense he has the reverse attitude of many people I know who are deeply skeptical about the church and Christians (with good reason I will admit) but who are much less skeptical about human ability through politics and the State. Anastasios witnesses to a faith in God who, through Jesus Christ and his followers who remain faithful to Christ, can transform the world (but whose hope ultimately lies not in the achievement of Christians but the work of God in Christ). While many Christians I know seem to have more faith in human beings and politics to make things right. And so we have to go out and do, do, do, and become righteous by working for Justice and human rights in part because the Church has failed. I don't find this latter position to be one of much faith, but of a certain desperation and a result of a failure of faith. Anastasios in faith says yes there were Christian emperors and they did not follow the ideals of the Gospel, but at the same time there were faithful Christians who like St. Chrysostom (and there were many others throughout history, known and unknown) who criticized and continually lifted up the truth of the Gospel and its respect of the dignity and freedom of all persons and its call for justice, but also in the evaluation that humanity is sinful and incapable on its own of doing justice and living out its life within the true an holy divine community. I find Anastasios' position one full of faith and lacking entirely in self-righteousness.

Election night 2008

As I write this Obama is seen as the probable winner of the election. He has held a lead in the polls for the past several weeks. Also, as I write Two states are being counted with 50% of the votes counted, Vermont and Kentucky. Obama is being projected as the winner in Vermont and McCain is being projected the winner in Kentucky. No surprises there.

I did not vote. This is the second presidential election in which I have not voted. It is not an easy or comfortable position for me to take. The 2000 election I voted for the Green Party where I could and Democrat otherwise. I was disturbed that Democrats and other leftists and liberals and supposed radicals here in Chicago blamed me and those of us on the "left" who voted for the Green Party for Bush's win in 2000. I lost all respect for any Democrat or leftist who held such a position since clearly this meant they were simply committed to the two party system, something hardly required by the Constitution. I remember being at various events after that election some art openings and other things and being told without hesitation that I threw my vote away voting green. Hmm, voting my conscience and voting for the person and party I felt was the best choice was throwing my vote away. That in itself did not lead me to decide to no longer vote but the pressure I felt before from Democrats and liberals to not vote Green and the disdain for my willingness to vote for a "third" party candidate after the election certainly caused me to question the political environment of our so called democracy. What the 2000 election lead me to do was to re-visit critiques of the growth of the Office of the presidency at the expense of the powers of congress that several of my professors of history at Long Beach State traced and argued was a betrayal of the separation of powers, and an abdication by congress of its responsibility as a legislative body.

Then came 9/11 and I think the response of the entire US government and that so few Democrats were willing to resist a heavily Statist response to the terrorist attacks caused me to further question the viability of our system. I was also in the final stages of preparing for being a pastor. How was I to speak truth as I understood it from the Gospel into a ever more politically polarized environment and one in which Christians were pitted against Christians, the growing voice of the Religious Left vs. the very strong voice of the Religious Right? It seemed to me that what this situation required in the face of hopes pined or lost based on who is president and the reality that the Presidency was growing in the extent of its power not shrinking was something beyond engagement with that polarized system. Also, given that it wasn't the power of the presidency per se that seemed to bother most people I encounter and continue to encounter and talk politics with but how that power is used: I felt a critique of a strong president to whom we look to as our protector in someway someone we can look to and feel good about ourselves, someone who will solve whatever problems we believe are uppermost, was needed. As I have questioned and saught to critique these things I have begun to question the dominance of the Federal Government as a good thing. Not to say that there isn't any good that has come from said dominance just that more and more I see Christians hoping in the power and action of the State.

I decided that if I would be perceived as siding with one of the two current parties or even of having a stake in our electoral process that my criticism of our system would be caught up in the vicissitudes of the system and tied too closely to the success of what ever party or politician happened to be closest to my values and interpretation of the Gospel. So, I decided that withdrawal as protest and discipline was the best way for me to acknowledge my allegiance to Christ and the Gospel and that I put no hope in politicians, Governments or the powers of this world. I do not mean that this should be all Christians response to our situation. In part because my position also is due to a rejection of any sense that there is a singular correct Christian politics in our attempts to live out the Gospel in the world. However, I do feel that Christians in the US seem to put a great deal of their hope into the American political system and the its State, hope that I find to be nearly idolatrous at times, both on the right and the left. If I had to choose a candidate I have to admit that on issues that are uppermost in my consciousness Obama is the closest to my values. However, it is also clear that Obama is not interested in lessening the powers of the Presidency simply readjusting how those powers will be used. In terms of Iraq and the "war on Terror" as I see it he is simply wishing to reinstate Teddy Roosevelt's idea of foreign policy and the continuation of the US and the Police of the World, of "Talk softly and carry a big stick". I am not saying that there isn't a valid realist pragmatism to this position, we are still currently (though for how long we will see) the Power in the world, I just don't see voting for either version of having our military might spread through out the world. I do not vote because I think that there in every time and place there should be Christians willing to step outside the systems of the world and firmly proclaim their citizenship in the Kingdom of God, and thus point out that when it comes down to it, there will always be tension between the ideals of the Gospel and the realities of any political system we create. To put too great a stake in any human system to hope in it or any politician no matter how close that politician may come to those ideals. And in this particular election of the president, McCain seems very far from most of the ideals of the gospel that I think should be brought to bear on our situation, and while Obama's platform is at points very congenial to my sensibilities and beliefs, I find the tone of hope and change problematic. I also find that it difficult to accept that people are willing to place so much hope in this one man. It indicates to me that we on some level as Americans want a great leader to lead us into a promised land. And that as a pastor and Christian just sounds too messianic for my tastes. And let me be clear the Christians who support McCain and Palin are equally guilty in this. Our system of Government and our society would benefit from some radical withdrawal by a select group of Christians who will say that we simply wont put any stake in what will at best be approximations of of the truth and of what is our true hope.

As I finish up here CNN is projecting that Obama has 177 Electoral votes to Mc Cain having 49. The only surprise in these projections for me is that Pennsylvania is being projected as being won by Obama, though only 5 precincts are currently reporting. Though that is the case for most of the states. It will be interesting how the numbers play out in the end.

Notes at the End of a Day

Discovered a better way to get to my temp position today, which involves riding the bus from a stop before the end of the line. And I noticed something riding both ways that the cross streets are announced in Evanston but not once the bus crosses into Wilmette. What the...? This is strange phenomenon. I suppose once a bus rider is in the north shore they simply know where they are without need for pesky announcements about the stop that is coming up.

As I got on the bus to come home, three Gothlings got of the bus and it is the first time I have gotten the double and triple take from other Goths. Yes to you Gothlings I encountered in Wilmette, there are Goths not only over 20 but over 30. No you were not mistaken you saw an "old" Goth, and in Wilmette. Perhaps, if you truely like the aesthetic of Goth and its music genres you might remember this and not think in your 20's as you try to be old that Goth is just a phase. Oh and BTW I am also a pastor.

I have yet to experience anything as deadening to faith and spirituality in my self then looking at catalogs of religious paraphernalia and talking to the sales persons of such paraphernalia. For some reason I am having visions of whips, overturned tables and coins bouncing of cobblestone flashing through my head..... But I can't quite figure out why.

Can anyone explain to me why Christians in this country seem to think government and the State especially that of the United States of America somehow has escaped the fate of all other principalities powers and authorities and is not subject to the fall but somehow is already fully subjected to Christ and therefore I should be a good American and trust one or both of the two versions of how this principality and power should act in the world. I have this vision of this very appealing but kind of creepy guy offering this other kind of nondiscript guy all the nations of the world flashing through my head.... why might that be?

Goth/Punk, Christianity, and Community Organizing

(A note to my readers, in this post you will find references to things that if one is not familiar with Goth, or Philosophy or Theology one may find what I say difficult to follow. unformtunately for the sake of space and the lack of footnotes in this forum I simply do not have the space or time to explain and elucidate. Hopefully though, the general idea I am attempting to get at will be accesable. LEK).
At the back of my mind in the past few days since the O.N.E. convention has been attempting to puzzle through if the O.N.E. convention rubbed me the wrong way because of my Goth/Punk sensibilities, or because of philosophy or because of my faith, or some interesting combination of these. I will attempt to tease all this.

First I think it is worthy to note that my take on Goth has always been on the anarchistic edge. Certainly there is an edginess to Goth, that is it exists on the edge of society. The aesthetic is eclectic. The music not easily nailed down. In fact it can be (and I have tried a few times to do so on this blog) difficult to say what exactly Goth is. In fact the illusory aspect of Goth is part of its appeal. To me a good Goth scene includes a wide variety of styles and attitudes that have a basic ground of black, and some sense of the illusions human communities create to impose unity and uniformity upon the world. I think such a summary shows that the O.N.E. convention in many ways is simply at odds with a Goth sensibility. I could then just chalk my divergence from O.N.E. in terms of a sub-culture that may find community organizing distasteful but little of a place to critique what i experienced. In my mind that is kind of where I was at when I finished writing my last post. But then Charity and Tripp seemed to see points where Christian faith and my understanding of the faith might connected up with my discomfort.

My take on Goth is certainly influenced by my Christian faith. But on this particular issue I think it is my understanding of Church and having an identity and allegiance to Jesus Christ that reinforces the goth discomfort into a possible critique of O.N.E. My understanding of the Church, the body of Christ, is that it is the what makes true community possible in our current circumstances (note the nuance here, I do not say the only place of true community). I do not have any hope in humanity or in the ability of humans to create true community on some grand scale. My hope for true community is in the work of God in Jesus Christ and the Church, but not in techniques and grand narratives of organizing through common understandings of power and its distribution.

Here is where things get further entangled with another strand, the philosophical critiques of totalitarian and monolithic narratives. Ah, yes did you know Derrida could be Goth! Or that Levinas, might fit in quite nicely right along side Nietzsche in a Goth club. I know absurd. Or even that Heidegger might also be right there, bobbing his head to Sisters of Mercy. I make note of this because my having come into the goth subculture was as much finding philosophical resonances as it was an aesthetic experience, or was an aesthetic experience because it was and is also a philosophical one. Now those of you who know me well may not be surprised by this. Now because of Marilyn Manson, I think if a philosopher is associated with some semblance of Goth it is Nietzsche. Though it should be recalled that Marilyn Manson is controversially goth: Plenty of Goths I know wish he would just go away. The point is that within Goth there is a destruction, a deconstruction and a putting together of the pieces an activity that denies some grand theme we must all come together around. This is why when people unwittingly try to find some singular summation of Goth as pagan, or Satanic (most ridiculous), or atheistic, misses that Goth doesn't commit you to a particular narrative, that as such ones meta-narrative is free for the choosing, there is no Goth meta-narrative. Thus in some places a goth scene can be elitist and no longer influenced by Punk and anarchistic tendencies. And my interpretation of Andrew Eldrich's rejection of the goth scene as a whole is that he has found the Goth scene to not fit what seems to me to be an anarchistic world view. So, there is also in my experience of O.N.E. this suspicion of grand narratives and of enthusiasm of a unity that downplays possible dissent within a particular unity. I was not supposed to ask questions about O.N.E. but accept simply its goodness and necessity(at least the methods used do not encourage in me to us my rational and critical faculties, but to abandon them for an enthusiastic experience of unity).

So, if it is not obvious there is within goth a resistance to a sense of some overarching unity, a distaste for reduction, a valuing of the unique, and the remainder, what always remains outside our attempts to organize and categorize. I suppose also a kind of apolitical anarchist approach to the world. An attitude that certainly is more at home among the philosophical worlds of Deleuze and Derrida than a Hegel, and probably friends with later Heidegger and Wittgenstein (less so with their initial impulses to explain everything). So, it is then perhaps not surprising that a Goth also with these particular philosophical influences, would find the efficient use of community organizing philosophy and principles a bit off putting and resist the blatant attempts to draw one into the enthusiasm for the unity of the "community".

But what of Christian faith and the Church? I felt asked to give my allegiance to this O.N.E. and all its campaigns and programs. Also, rhetorically I was encouraged to affirm the goodness of America and its values. As a Christian I think national identity is at best problematic and at worst idolatrous. So, appeal to America and the American dream does not go down well for this Christian. My understanding of the affirmation and proclamation of "Jesus is Lord" is that at most all other allegiances I may have are secondary and derivative of this one allegiance to Jesus Christ. What I interpreted as a demanded allegiance was the implicit expected affirmation of everything O.N.E. does, its philosophy and practice. Of course this impression comes from the enthusiasm of a rally, and is perhaps meant to be simply be momentary. But there is in my mind the grasping for power in this activity and thus a view of power as a limited resource, that must be grasped, divided up and distributed. Rather than power as that which comes from an unlimited source and can flow to all in the correct circumstances. In other words at odds with a belief that true power is a gift of life from God, and is not what humans control, manipulate and create. In our system and most human systems of governance and organizing, power is created controlled and manipulated by humans alone. As a Christian I see a different conception of power that calls members of Christs body, the church, to critique and even disengage from the systems of human power and proclaim a system of power that flows only from God, and was established and proclaimed by Jesus Christ, what Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

According to the above conception, all powers not submitted to God and Jesus Christ all systems that continue to assume that in some way we humans control power, either are not to be followed or the Christian is to know that at critical points membership in this divine reordering of the world will conflict with merely human systems of power and its distribution and organization. Thus, a Christian may end up looking like an anarchist refusing to take part in the schemes of attempting to unify large and disparate groups of people, for the sake of the proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord. At times as well a Christian may find that one is called into these systems to share in their efforts which are compatible with the reality of the Kingdom of God. I generally find myself in the place of resistance to all these alternatives to the Kingdom of God even the ones with similar goals to the reality of God's Kingdom. This stance is not uninfluenced by certain philosophers and the sub-culture I belong to, but also, I am drawn to these philosophies and the Goth sub-culture because of the truly radical nature of Christian commitment and the critique of purely human understandings of power as a human possession rather than as a gift from God, to be used according to the logic of love and communion with that which is truly and completely Other.

So, What I found odd or discomforting about the O.N.E. Convention was not that it failed to put into practice good community organizing principles or was a poor example of bringing power to marginalized and minority groups, but because it was effective so effective that it, hit against my distrust of such grand efforts, and my sense of Christian commitment, which in the world of politics, and human organizations leads me to a more anarchist stance. So, I suppose I should applaud O.N.E. and say sorry but my commitments keep me on the borders of your project and actions. This Goth, postmodernist possibly anarchist Christians is simply uninterested in your grand scheme and grand narrative,though very interested in your attempts at resisting the dominant systems of power at work in our society. Perhaps another instance where I find myself in a place of dislocation and refusing an identity.

Goth Pastor attends O.N.E Convention

The title of this is an expression of my own feelings of dissonance with the O.N.E. convention and that I also felt that last night I was a pastor in Goth disguise (I did not wear any clericals).

The Organization of the Northeast (O.N.E.) as I had mentioned yesterday had its convention last night. It's centerpiece was a community developed plan for one of the local High schools (Senn High School) that was more or less ignored by the Alderman.The Alderman was invited to the convention and did not show up, so the convention was concluded at the Alderman's house.

I am consistently conflicted around these sorts of activist community organizing groups and meetings and actions. Most of what the various organizations that O.N.E. supports or who make up O.N.E. seem to be doing good a necessary work. Also, it does appear that O.N.E. effectively reflects the ethnic diversity of the Uptown, Edgewater and Roger's Park neighborhoods. However, The convention was weird, to me first in that we were divided up into the member organizations to which we supposedly belonged, so I sat with Immanuel, since neither Reconciler nor Holy Trinity are member organizations of O.N.E. This gave to me a sense that I was in the midst of various cooperating factions/groups of various stripes who at times were able to come together and work towards agreed upon goals, but not as the rhetoric of the evening would have me believe "a diverse but unified voice." The presence of politicians was understandable but odd, and their brief "Relational" speeches just left me with political rhetoric, that probably reflects their action in the state and US. congress but to call their remarks and "relational conversation or meeting" was absurd. both because of they simply spoke their propaganda and because there was not time for relating to such a large crowd except to disseminate the appropriate propaganda for the group gathered. Equally odd was the presence of clergy on the stage opposite the politicians. Odd because I really doubt their were many religious people there who came but were unaffiliated with a congregation. I could be wrong but if some large segment of O.N.E. are religious then O.N.E. probably does not reflect the reality of its communities, which would be odd for a community organization. Lastly I was put off by the vague but expected identity of unity that the convention subtly and not so subtly nagged at me to embrace so as to join in the joy of this group of diverse groups. lastly being bussed to the place of the prayer vigil was just a little too organized for my comfort, I did not want to submit in that way to this group. I walked by myself to the prayer vigil. In the end I resisted I think the group mythos and mythology the convention created, in part because I think it is a fable a nice story but not as true as the organizers want it to be.

Of course that experience says as much about me as O.N.E. I am suspicious of groups and taking on the mentality of a group even one I may agree with knowing that there will be points at which I will disagree. I found myself wondering whether or not all the good that the various groups and O.N.E. were doing was done based on the best idea s or philosophies. The part of me that is fairly conflicted about our economic and political system wonders if it is a good thing encouraging people to better themselves and live according to that system. Not that I begrudge anyone the chance to enjoy the benefits I have from the system, but it is a little ironic to me that at least some of the participants desire to or have in some ways opted out or would if they could. I also, am uncomfortable with the grand narratives and there were numerous alluded to including the one of the US as "America". Yes, the mythology of our Nation State loomed mightily in the back ground, a mythology I ceased to believe in before I entered college. My experiences and observations have only increased my suspicion of it.

I would have been comfortable with the convention and my participation in it, if O.N.E. simply saw itself as a place of meeting of diverse groups and people for temporary but on going common goals, and not a place of unification or unity. If "land of opportunity" mythos was not also trumpeted, and rather it saw itself as a movement of continued resistance against the forces of any society that attempt to accumulate power and wealth (though, I understand this as an alternative mythos and may even be uncomfortable with a group that would trumpet it). Then the presence of clergy who are willing to stand up would make more sense to me, but the prayer vigil would not. Rather diverse responses including a prayer vigil for whom prayer is meaningful act while others would choose to respond in ways that would be meaningful to them.

Oh and in the end this all may simply mean I have anarchist tendencies. It maybe that where I connect with our culture is not in these reform movements and groups but in the Goth/Punk resistance against(or apathy) and disillusionment with both mainstream and reform minded groups and mythologies.

Community Collaboration and Dialog

This afternoon, I took part in an online dialog as part of the formation of a statement for the Envision Conference in Princeton this June. The organizers used an online collaboration software Synamin. As you signed into the site you were assigned a group, once the group was formed went through a series of questions. At each stage of the collaboration you had to pick which answers of statements reflected best the work of the group and then you either were asked to expand on or edit your choice. there were three sets of questions each group worked through: What core values ground your faith? What is happening today that violate those values?What are the most important issues Christians must work together to address. it was an interesting process. At moments frustrating. The odd thing for me was that it was entirely anonymous, I wasn't even sure how many people I was collaborating and in dialog with. Also, the beginning question seemed and still seems backwards to me, But I was able to in the process turn that question on its head. What I found cool about the process was that you could select and edit work that you had not submitted. So that you could in some sense insist on just saying what you wanted to say, since you were to select what best represented the group's work you could see very quickly how the thoughts of the participants were influencing each other and how one's initial ideas or statements began to be incorporated in other statements. I became frustrated with the direction of my group in part because they seemed to remain very abstract and vague in their articulation and did not take my rout of trying to have some concrete examples in some of our answers. The collaborative aspect of the program was cool, but since one could not ask questions of the other participants or get clarification of their terms etc. it did not feel much like a dialog. Though, adding an element of discussion could get messy and more time consuming. As it was it took about two hours.
In a few moments I am taking part in a quite different and much more low tech conversation. I am going to the organizing conference of the Organization of the Northwest and North side Chicago Community activist organization. I am not sure what to expect. Pastor Monte of Immanuel Lutheran has been part of the organization for awhile. I think the main piece for tonights meeting is a plan for one of the local high schools, but I am told other things are on the agenda as well. Should all be very interesting.

Two Completed Icons

I have completed two icons recently, both were commissioned, Both are small intended for a private icon corner. Thought I'd share images of them for you all.


The other icon is a version of the Deisis, which is found in an iconostasis and represents at least the Virgin Mary and St John the Forerunner (The Bapitst) in prayer before Jesus Christ enthrouned it is often expanded in iconostasis to include archangels and other Saints also in the posture of prayer and intercession before Christ.