A Sound of Sheer Silence

Rev. Jordan Haynie Ware's twitter feed directed my attention to  this excellent article , written by Jem Bloomfield.  Mr. Bloomfield is a British academic, and he makes three points that I think are critical in thinking and talking about the interaction between Christianity, the broader "secular" culture, and in particular the younger slice of that culture.  But it also interacts in a way with people who are searching for some sort of "third way" on the contested issues of sexuality, most recently in the form of Fr. Jim Martin's book Building a Bridge , which was based on a talk he gave last fall and which I talked about here . Before turning to the article, it's worthwhile to get the "whatabout"-ist objections out the way (some of which can be seen in the comments section of the post).  Yes, "secular culture" is not a monolithic entity, and neither are Millennials/young people.  There are quite a number of young people who are very...

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel. (Exodus 32:1-6). I have a theory...

I found this poem this morning, in the Twitter feed of Rev. Jordan Haynie Ware, an Episcopal priest in the diocese of Fort Worth, Texas (who, as an aside, wrote a really cool book, The Ultimate Quest , which explains the Liturgy and theology of the Episcopal Church in terms of Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons , which could not possibly be more in my wheel-house).  The poem is by Dave Barnhart, a United Methodist Church pastor in Birmingham, Alabama . The poem has haunted me all day--I can't get it out of my mind.  It says in the clearest possible way the things I was trying to say in my post from last week about how things have changed .  Rev. Barnhart zeroes in on something that I think many of us haven't really had the courage to say, but we need to say in these days--as he says in the poem "I have seen your christ, and he is my antichrist."  There is a fear, a reasonable fear, of becoming every bit as judgmental and narrow and performatively-apocalyptic as t...

I hope the Holy Spirit descends on you like fire. I hope it for all of us. Come, Lord Jesus. — Preston Yancey (@prestonyancey) May 4, 2017 Something has changed in the last six months.  Can you feel it?  Because I can. See, here's how it worked prior to the coming of Trump.  There were people that called themselves progressive Christians, who voted for more or less progressive parties in political elections (which, in the United States, means the Democratic Party).  They often shook their heads at some of their co-religionists, at some of the political and social positions they took, and tried to do what they could to limit or mitigate the damage they saw those positions causing.  But, at the end of the day, these progressive Christian folks believed in a "big tent," and in the slow and steady approach to getting their co-religionist to come around. Then you had the conservatives.  Often, perhaps regularly, they would say that the progressive Chr...

After going through five previous ideas ( "Experiental Priority, " "Contextual Theology," "Rejecting the Salvation Industrial Complex," "Franciscan Hermaneutics," and "Christ versus Empire" ) we come to the last one, "Christian Realism."  "Christian Realism" is, to the best of my knowledge, a term that I made up.  But it reflects an idea that is fundamental, if often unspoken, to the way you approach everything you might encounter when talking about religion, and in particular the way that theology interacts with the rest of the world (which, basically, is everything).  In its simplest terms, makes the claim that the physical world is (1) intelligible; (2) real [as opposed to the product of our imaginations]; and (3) ultimately the creation of God.  The theological touchstone for Christian Realism is a well-known quote by the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas--"all that is true, by whomsoever it has be...

Christianity came into existence in a very specific historical context--in the midst of a people who were part of the Roman Empire.  Rome in the early 30s A.D. was not at the absolute peak of its power (that would come about one hundred years later), but Rome was certainly in its ascendancy, and it was the most powerful empire in the history of the Mediterranean region up to that point.  Like all empires before and since, Roman power ultimately was grounded in overwhelming military might--its legions were everywhere, its naval power made the Mediterranean a "Roman lake."  But it wasn't just military power--Rome was also the masters of what we would now call "soft power," in the form of political power and influence, cultural power, economic power.  These forms of power were interrelated and mutually reinforcing--economic power facilitated and funded military power, while military power kept the peace that prevented economic disruptions; the power of Rome made it...

The Rule and life of these brothers is this: namely, to live in obedience and chastity, and without property, and to follow the doctrine and footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ, who says: "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me." And: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me;" in like manner: "If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple."  "And everyone that hath left father or mother, brothers or sisters, or wife, or children or lands, for My sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting." --First Rule of the Friars Minor, Paragraph 1 (~1212 A.D.) To outside observers, the notion that Christianity should have a focus on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ would...

On the recent post on contextual theology , reader "Carl" left a good comment that I started to address as a response comment, but it began to get very long so I decided to split it off into a separate short post.  Carl's concern, in the main, was that embracing the idea of contextual theology leaves you in a position where you have no basis for ruling out bad or destructive theologies, since everything has contextual value. My first response is to say that affirming the contextual reality of theological positions and systems doesn't mean that there is no content to the theological systems that you have.  Theology may come from a place, but the place that it comes from is not the sum and substance of the theology.  Black theology and feminist theology make very specific and concrete claims about the nature of Christian truth that go far beyond "African-Americans and women have a place in theological discourse and in the church."  Even in the narrow world o...

I am going to vary up the order a little bit, since we find ourselves in Holy Week, making this topic especially relevant.  And, I am going to approach this topic from something of a round-about direction. In the March 30th episode of the Inglorious Pasterds  podcast, Michael, Brad, and Matt had a long and excellent conversation about "manliness" and the overwrought and toxic versions of manliness that is endemic in both our secular culture and in much of our Christian religious culture.  It is an outstanding conversation that covers a wide range of issues--parenting, Trump, psychology, gender roles--and I would highly encourage everyone to check it out. At one point in the conversation, the guys were talking about listening to another dude complain that his wife wasn't having sex with him as much as this guy would have liked.  "I don't get it," the no-sex dude recounted, "I do these things for her, and she still won't put out."  "Mayb...