A Sound of Sheer Silence

I know a guy who would consider himself an evangelical Christian.  At the end of the day, he is a good guy.  While conservative, he's not a flame-thrower. But, here's the thing about this guy, this evangelical Christian.  He lives his life on the basis of the principle that the goal of this life is to make as much money as one possibly can.  He has said so on numerous occasions, in both private and quasi-public settings.  Sure, he cares about his family and about his religion, but the primary,day-to-day objective of his life is maximizing his personal wealth.  He spends a great deal of time thinking and strategizing about how to make the most money in his current situation. More specifically, he recognizes that the best way to make money is to put yourself in the same environment as other people that have money and/or are in a position to make money come your way.  So, he makes a point of being around those people, openly sucking up to them and try...

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...

Professor David Gushee, who I have mentioned before in this space, wrote a column recently entitled "On LGBT Equality, Middle Ground is Disappearing."   Yesterday, he penned a follow-up column , in which he attempted (apparently unsuccessfully, though not from lack of trying) to clarify what he was getting at in the first column.  These columns, the reactions to them, and especially the reaction from Rod Dreher , bring into focus what I think is the state of play for Christianity in 2016 in North America.  We would do well to acknowledge where we are and where we are probably going in the near term. To begin, Gushee asserts in the second column that his first column was an attempt to provide a descriptive framework for the state of the United States in 2016 with regard to LGBT issues.  In other words, let us put aside for now whether you think this state is good or bad , and let's talk about what is .  Gushee's picture of what is has four primary components. ...

I continue to maintain that Melinda Selmys is the most interesting voice coming from the conservative Catholic end of the pool (notwithstanding that many on that side think that she is Not a True Conservative).  What I like about her is her willingness to push on some of the neuralgic points of Catholic philosophy and theology, moving beyond the "happy talk" style of many on that end.  In doing so, she often points out questions and problems that I had not seen before or thought about in any depth.  Often I do not agree with her conclusions, but her formulation of the problem is usually very helpful. Over the holiday weekend here in the U.S., she produced a pair of articles that are examples of why she is an interesting voice.  Her first post, entitled "10 Reasons Why Homosexuality Is Not a Natural Law Issue,"  is actually mis-titled.  Her argument is not that traditional Catholic natural law has nothing to say about homosexuality, but that what it does ...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. On his way home from Armenia, Pope Francis gave one of his now-customary impromptu press conferences, with a now-customary set of bombshells.  Maybe the most amazing statement was what Pope Francis said about Martin Luther, which was essentially "his heart was in the right place, and after all the late medieval Catholic Church really was a cesspool, but he went a little too far in the end."  But the statement that got the most play--and which is the focus of this post--is his comments about LGBT people.  Francis was asked about comments made by Cardinal Reinhardt Marx of Munich that Church should apologize to LGBT people  for its behavior toward them, and he basically endorsed Marx's position: "[Gay people] should not be discriminated against. They should be respected, accompanied pastorally. I think that the Church not only should apologise … to a gay person whom it offended but it must also apologise to the...

1.  No one will mistake Ohio for Colorado or the Alps, but neither is it the same as the seemingly endless table-like flatness of the center of North America.  No, the most accurate description of Ohio is that it rolls, almost like a wave in the ocean that has been stopped in time.  And nowhere can this be seen better than taking Interstate 71, the highway that bisects the state on a diagonal from the northeast to the Southwest, connecting the three biggest cities of Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati.  If you drive on I-71, especially the part between Cleveland and Columbus, it almost feels like you are riding on a rollercoaster than has been stretched out, as you roll along the modest but noticeable undulations. I took that trip this weekend, back and forth to Cleveland under a picture-postcard worthy summer sky.  With the rolling terrain and low-lying whispy clouds, I had a sense of being firmly rooted in place, comfortably situated between earth and sky. ...

Last night, reports surfaced that the shooter in Orlando had patronized the club several times prior to the shooting, and had an account on at least one dating app for gay men .  Some suggested that this represented a long-running "scouting" operation, where the shooter wanted to get intelligence prior to committing his massacre.  However, if the reports are true, I think it is far, far more likely that the shooter was gay or bisexual, deep in the closet, and deeply conflicted about his sexual orientation. It is becoming almost an iron law of history--the most vocally and demonstrably anti-gay zealots often turn out to be closeted gay men who channel their confusion and fear into lashing out against those who are willing to accept who they are.  We have example after example, from George Alan Rekers , to Larry Craig , to Ted Haggard , to dozens more.  We are coming to the point where when we hear some public figure foam at the mouth about the "gay agenda," we can ...

1.  There is nobility in compromise.  Two groups of people with different ideas, finding a way to bridge their differences, or at least find a way to co-exist within their differences--that is something that a healthy society, on whatever scale, needs in order to function.  We need more people willing to do the hard and at times humbling work of compromise, and I think most people in the United States believe we have far too few of these people.  Everything seems to be polarized unnecessarily, and people call out for those willing to roll up their sleeves and find that magical middle ground.  And rightfully so. But, here's the thing.  Compromise and mediation is good until it is not.  There are times, times we might call the times of testing, when the time for finding the middle ground comes to an end.  In those times, attempts at compromise are pointless, and even counter-productive, as compromise often becomes a cover to justify failing to sta...

One of the things that has become increasingly clear to me over the last year or so is that not everyone believes in the same God.  In saying that, I don't mean that Christians have a different understanding of God from Hindus or Buddhists or Wiccans, though that is certainly true as well.  What I mean is that two people who use the same words to refer to God, and even subscribe to the same formal definitions of God, can have a radically different and mutually exclusive subjective picture of who God is.  And that subjective picture of who God is is just as important, and perhaps more important, than the formal definitions that we have been handed down to us via our theological heritage. This is the main point of David Gushee's piece from the other day .   There are people who insist on a God that they must fear, a God that is out to get them "for their own good" in some inscrutable manner.  They disdain those who challenge that picture as soft, cowardly, not w...

The great Bill Lindsey brought to my attention a piece from yesterday by David Gushee.  Gushee is a professor of moral theology and comes from an evangelical background.   Two years ago he wrote a book called Changing Our Mind , where he discussed his change of position on LGBT questions.  I have not read that book, but I have read other things he has written and have been very impressed. His piece from yesterday really struck a chord with me.   In the piece, Gushee gives a name to something that many people have sensed without necessarily being able (or willing) to vocalize--Christianity is coming apart: It is not just that many Christians fail to live up to the clear demands of Christian discipleship. It’s that we can’t even agree on what those demands are. We all say we believe in Jesus, but what we make of that belief is so irreconcilably different that I am not sure that we are in any meaningful way members of the same religious community. Certainly, disa...

We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all That you can't trust freedom When it's not in your hands When everybody's fightin' For their promised land -- Civil War , Guns N' Roses It always starts with something small.  On July 30, 1419, a rock thrown from a window by some person unknown to history led to the Hussite wars, a terribly bloody conflict in central Europe that set the stage for the Protestant Reformation.  The seeds of the American Revolution began when the British government decided, not to raise taxes on the American colonies (that came later), but to actually collect  taxes on sugar and molasses that had been on the books for a long time but had never been enforced. The reason, I think, that it always starts with something small is tied up in the power of marginal changes.  The mind-bogglingly complex system that is human culture works because of a nested series of equilibria.  These equilibria can be stable for a long time, but ...