A Sound of Sheer Silence

Phyllis Tickle (who passed away in September--God rest her soul) wrote a book called The Great Emergence   about the future of Protestantism.  I have problems with significant parts of her thesis in that book, but she does a good job of framing the basic Protestant project.  In its most elementary form, the Protestant Reformation was a challenge to the authority of the Papacy, and by extension the ordained priesthood, to define and articulate the Christian faith and the structure of the Christian church.  We don't need these institutional mediators, said the Protestant Reformers, because we can figure out what the Christian faith is about and how to organize the church by consulting directly with the Bible.  Said another way, the Protestant Reformation replaced a person (or people) who serves as a clearly defined leader and spokesperson (and is thus exclusive and controlled) with a book which is in principle accessible to everyone. Implicit within this move is...

People who grow up in the United States, such as myself, have a very difficult time wrapping their heads around the idea of an established church.  Every November, we get together to eat turkey ostensibly in remembrance of folks who fled England to get away from the grasp of the established church.  People who agree on nothing about the meaning of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution agree that it means that the government cannot establish a church as the official church of the country.  The basic story we get is that an established church is bad because it puts the power of the state behind efforts of that particular church to enforce orthodoxy, leading to religious wars and conflict.  In addition, an established church is bad for that church, because the church will be "captured" and subject to the agenda of the state, compromising its freedom and witness.  And, certainly, there is support for both of those theses in the history of the established Chur...

The last Friday Fun series went pretty well--I enjoyed it at least.  So, for this series, I am going to try the impossible and come up with a list of my top ten Springsteen songs.  The impossibility of the task is demonstrated by the fact that I couldn't keep to ten and had to add these two honorable mentions.  I am also not going to include two songs I have already talked about, "Reason to Believe" and "Land of Hope and Dreams."   I don't want to rehash what I said previously, which is why I am not including them in this list, but they are both certainly among my ten favorite Springsteen songs, and "Land of Hope and Dreams" is either #1 or at a minimum #2. As far as the song clips go, I am going to go exclusively with live concert footage, because that it is the only way to fully appreciate the Springsteen experience.  I've seen him twice (once in DC in 2012 and once in Columbus in 2014, which is the source of a number of the clips I am goi...

I had a conversation the other day that really made me think.  A friend of mine and I were talking about politics in general, and we some how got onto the topic of LGBT rights.  In a very casual way, she asked me "so, why exactly do religious conservatives have a problem with gay rights?"  After probing around a little bit, it dawned on me that many folks who engage with religious issues on the internet assume that everyone understands (at least on some level) the theological stakes, but that assumption is often very wrong.  Many people have no idea what the arguments for and against LGBT rights are, other than that lots of religious people are again' em, as they say. In that light, I figured it was worth while to try to set out some of the big questions that I see on this issue.  In doing so, I make no claims to breaking any new ground or advancing innovative ideas or solutions.  Instead, I am going to try to present the questions as honestly as possible...

I've talked before about the idea of "Christian Realism."  The premise here is that Christianity, properly understood, describes the world as it actually is.  As a result, if there is some empirical claim made on behalf of Christianity, and that claim proves to be wrong, then our understanding of Christianity is flawed.  The solution is not to reject Christianity, nor to put our fingers in our ears and pretend that we don't hear the fact that is inconsistent with our empirical claim; the solution is to go back to the drawing board and rethink our empirical presuppositions.  After all, as Aquinas said,“[a]ll that is true, by whomsoever it has been said, has its origin in the Spirit.” Christian Realism is a real problem with regard to Catholicism and sexual issues.   A good example of the problem can be seen in this piece by Lisa Duffy.  Here's the key quote: When sex is experienced outside of marriage, there is no freedom or innocence; it’s all about re...

#1: "One" by U2 (off of Achtung, Baby (1991) The first album I ever owned was The Joshua Tree , on cassette tape.  I pulled out my CD collection the other day and realized I own ten U2 albums, which includes a couple of greatest hits collections.  That's partially a function of U2's enormous longevity, and partially a function of how much I like U2.  Even after the bad albums and weird marketing moves and Bono overexposure, I always come back to U2.  It's pretty much my musical first love. Upon (extensive) reflection, I think Achtung, Baby  is their best work.   The Joshua Tree (1987) begins with three songs ("Where the Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I Am Looking For," and "With or Without You") that even non-U2 fans know and instantly recognize, and has a deeply underrated deep-cut ("In God's Country").  It is a tremendous album, and it made U2 immortals. That was followed by the album...

Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away... When I came home last night at three, The man was waiting there for me But when I looked around the hall, I couldn't see him there at all! Go away, go away, don't you come back any more! Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... Last night I saw upon the stair, A little man who wasn't there, He wasn't there again today Oh, how I wish he'd go away... --  "Antigonish" by Hughes Mearns (1899). 1.   There is a bit of conventional wisdom that says that the legacy of a leader lasts twice as long as the time the leader was in power.  In other words, George W. Bush was President of the United States for eight years, but the effects of his presidency will last for sixteen years after he left office in 2008, through to 2024.  And that seems about right--we are certainly in the middle of working through all ...

#2: "Drive" by R.E.M. (off of Automatic for the People (1992)) #2: "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" by R.E.M. (off of Monster  (1994)) I've talked about R.E.M. before , and there is much more than could be said.  What is perhaps the most notable thing about 90s R.E.M. is that they were probably the most popular band of the decade, without producing particularly accessible music.  They released five albums in the 90s-- Out of Time (1991), Automatic for the People (1992), Monster (1994), New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996), and Up (1998).  All five of these albums were enormous hits--the "disappointing" New Adventures in Hi-Fi  "only" peaked at #2 on the U.S. Billboard charts.   New Adventures in Hi-Fi  has to be one of the grimmest and most inscrutable albums to ever reach number #2 on the charts--nothing on it is remotely radio friendly, and all of it is depressing.  Nevertheless, it sold almost a million copies in the United State...

If you have followed the discussion about the Synod on the Family, or any discussion about sexual morality in Christianity, surely you have heard some reference to the "hard sayings" of Jesus.  These discussions go something like this--someone will make a point about how difficult or impractical this or that traditional bit of sexual morality is to actually and fairly implement and live, and someone will respond "well, sure, these are hard sayings of Jesus, but Jesus is calling us to do the hard thing."  The implication, of course, is that the person who is expressing concerns about the stance at issue is looking to take the easy way out, to avoid the challenge of Gospel living.  It is a way to take the moral high ground. No doubt, there are many hard sayings of Jesus, and many hard sayings throughout the Scriptures.  Here is another one--"You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt." (Exodus 22:21, as well a...

#3: Lucky Man by the Verve (off of Urban Hymns (1997)) The Verve is a criminally underrated band.  Everything Coldplay has done, the Verve did first and better.  They were experimenting with weird sounds and trippy music when Radiohead was writing straight forward rock songs like "Creep."  They are more interesting than Oasis, and I like Oasis. They are not well known because their career was rather short, done in by stereotypical band problems--interpersonal conflicts, drugs, financial disputes.   Urban Hymns , their best album, was also their last significant album.  In a sense, though, it is not tremendously surprising, as their music certainly conveys that they were dealing with some stuff. The song of theirs that you have heard is "Bittersweet Symphony."  It got them into trouble because it sampled an orchestral version of "The Last Time" by the Rolling Stones, resulting in all the royalties going to the Stones.  It is also famous for th...

In retrospect, I was primed to go Full Girardian long before I actually encountered Girard's work.  Back during my time with the Dominicans, I read the book that I believe is the greatest novel ever written-- The Brothers Karamazov  by Feodor Dostoevsky.  Dostoevsky is one of the handful of authors (alongside Shakespeare, Cervantes, Proust, and Steindahl) that Girard used as the basis for developing his initial theories on memetic desire, back when it was basically a literary construct.  Loving Dostoevsky put me halfway home to appreciating Girard. Reading Dostoevsky is always, for me, an interesting experience--it's not enjoyable in the normal sense (though, it's not un-enjoyable, either) so much as it is revealing.  The sense I get when reading Dostoevsky is that he is telling you the truth about the way things are, even when you can't exactly isolate the precise content of the truth he is communicating.  The first time I read the novel, my basic reacti...

Over the weekend, it occurred to me that there is an additional level to the discussion of the need for a theology of relationships in connection with divorce , and that is a recognition that relationships can and do actually end, notwithstanding philosophical commitments to the contrary. Here's what I mean.  Look again closely at Matthew 19:3-9: Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning “made them male and female”, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. ’ They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?’ He said to them, ‘It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you...

I have been continuing to think about Ross Douthat's column from Sunday .  One of the things that strikes me about Douthat on this subject is that he seems to really, really find the current status quo position regarding divorce and remarried couples sensible and correct, in a way that seems genuine and heartfelt.  That is of course his right to do so, but it highlighted for me the degree to which I am not similarly persuaded.  It has taken me a while to work through why I am not satisfied with the current position, but I think I have found the heart of the problem. First, let's set out the text that we are all arguing about--Matthew 19:3-9: Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning “made them male and female”, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two...