A Sound of Sheer Silence

Having affirmed Nicholas Kristof that there is value in the teachings of Jesus  even in the face of skepticism about the physical resurrection in Part 1, I would like to address Rev. Jones's position on the resurrection.   I should note that Rev. Jones reported yesterday  that she has been subject to online harassment as a result of her interview, which is (unfortunately) unsurprising, surely true, and totally unacceptable. I hope, and don't believe that I am, adding to this harassment with this post, but only to express why I think her answer doesn't really hang together or get to the heart of what is at stake with Christianity.  And, in particular, I don't think it can really answer the most powerful and sophisticated critiques of Christianity. But, first, let's start with what Rev. Jones said: KRISTOF Happy Easter, Reverend Jones! To start, do you think of Easter as a literal flesh-and-blood resurrection? I have problems with that. JONES When you look in...

On Sunday, Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times , continued a series of interviews he has done from time to time with Christian religious leaders and thinkers.  This time, his conversation partner was Serene Jones , the President of Union Theological Seminary in New York City.  She said a number of things in this interview, some of which I agree with and many of which I do not, but the one that got the attention was her somewhat dismissive handling of the idea of Jesus's physical resurrection on Eastern Sunday (or, more accurately, Holy Saturday evening).  When I first saw the criticism of Rev. Jones circulating on Twitter, I made the cardinal sin of online takes and fired off some Tweets without reading the article when I got home from Easter Vigil early Sunday morning.  Rev. Jones and Union have said some, in my view, kinda dumb stuff in the past that I have dragged in this space , and I assumed this was more of the same. Having now read the inter...

This question has been asked of me, and I think it is a fair one--why would anyone celebrate or remember the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth?  In my experience, when that question is asked, it is not being asked from the place of "why would anyone care about what happens to this person anyway?," as part of a broader project of skepticism about religious things generally or Christian things specifically.  Yes, sure, some people will do that in a trolling kind of way, but you can usually spot those people straight off, and those folks can thus be easily ignored.  Don't feed the trolls. But, in my experience, this question generally comes from a more sympathetic place.  Why do we come to church on a Friday year after year, and hear again and again this long, brutal account of a man being tortured and killed?  Particularly as, we believe, the story ultimately has a happy ending two days later.  Why dwell on the horror?  Good Friday services are, in my e...

I mean if Buttigieg thinks evangelicals should be supporting him instead of Trump, he fundamentally does not understand the roots of Christianity. But then he is an Episcopalian, so he might not actually understand Christianity more than superficially. — Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) April 7, 2019 Episcopalianism is to Christianity what Rice Krispies are to rice. It may have once been the later, but now it's just a hollowed out puff prone to snapping, crackling, and popping. — Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) April 8, 2019 Right-wing political commentator and self-professed evangelical Christian Erick Erickson decided to talk shit about my faith and my religious tradition over the last few days, and as such I feel entitled to respond. One can approach this response from a number of directions.  One obvious direction, and one that I saw commonly in the Twitter response to Erickson, is to interrogate this notion of "the roots of Christianity," which the Episcop...

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and offer a prediction for what the Christian landscape will look like in the year 2100. In the year 2100, there will be loose alliance of Christian bodies and churches that we can call, for purposes of these predictions, Team Blue.  Team Blue consists of somewhere between one and at most a half dozen churches that see themselves as being heirs to the Apostolic, "high church" tradition--complete with bishops, liturgy, high Eucharistic theology, etc.  These entities will have meaningful differences in theology, but will view themselves as being united as part of a broader grouping, and might very well have agreements to share clergy, resources, etc.  Also on Team Blue will be a few, maybe a dozen or two dozen, networks of "low" churches and congregations.  Some of these networks will be more robust, in the sense that are more like what we think of today as "denominations," than others.  The differences between the h...

"After all . . . I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her." - Anna Scott [played by Julia Roberts], Notting Hill 1. There is a story out there, widely believed by many folks, that goes something like this.  Once we had a society (either broader political society, church society, or both) that had a very clear set of rules about how men and women were supposed to interact.  These rules were good, because sexuality is powerful and dangerous and at least a little bit evil and shameful, and the rules worked to control those instincts in socially constructive ways.  We need clear structures, defined rules, a rather rigid superstructure to contain all of this stuff.  And, if you add in the religious dimension, this structure is ordained by God, so there is really no reason to question or even think too hard about any of it.  Yes, sure, isolated people violated these norms from time to time, but there were wise (if, perhaps, harsh) mea...

About nine months ago, I wrote a paean to Nativity Parish in Fair Haven, New Jersey , the first Catholic parish where I really had a experience of God and of faith.  The pastor of Nativity when we were there was Richard C. Brietzke.  His name is on the list released today of priests in the Diocese of Trenton who have had "credible accusations" of abuse .   According to this list, he was "removed from ministry." What is interesting is that this seems to have come as a surprise to everyone.  This article from the local paper suggests that this was not a known fact about him .  This is backed up by a glowing piece in the Diocesan paper upon his retirement , providing no indication that anything was amiss.  One wonders, though.  Brietzke was the chancellor of the Diocese of Trenton in the 00s, during the period when, or so we are told repeatedly , the Roman Catholic Church "fixed" its problems with the Dallas Charter.  And the man responsible f...