…to me, church is: people gathered together in some way, shape or form to learn & practice the ways of Jesus & pass on love, hope, mercy, justice, and healing in a broken, weird world. kathy escobar ☀
Beyond smashing images, the insurgents had other ideas that look strikingly familiar to anyone familiar with radical Islam today, with thinkers like Sayyid Qutb and Maulana Mawdudi.
The Calvinists of the 1560s sought to remodel society on the basis of theocratic Old Testament law strictly interpreted, with the role of the sovereign measured by how far he or she submitted to God’s will. Some thinkers devised a pioneering theory of tyrannicide, justifying the removal of any allegedly Christian ruler who betrayed Christ’s true church. Protestant radicals pursued a harsh policy of reading rival believers out of the faith, defining the followers of images as utterly anti-Christian, deadly enemies of God.
Far more than the events of 1517 — remember those Theses nailed to the church door? — the tumult of 1566 is the crucial moment of the European Reformation, and it set the agendas that reformers would pursue for over a century. In the English-speaking world, the heirs of 1566 were the Puritans, the radicals who dreamed of an austere New England. When Puritans seized power in England itself in the 1640s, their agents toured the country, smashing statues and windows in every parish church they could find. By the 1640s, at the height of Europe’s death struggle between Protestants and Catholics, Calvinist ideas that to us seem intolerably theocratic dominated not just the Netherlands, but also New England, Switzerland and Scotland, and were struggling for ascendancy in the whole British Isles. Religious zeal often expressed itself through witchcraft persecutions.
But that same Calvinist geography should give us pause, because that is also a map of the major centers of Enlightenment thought in the later eighteenth century, the safe havens where thinkers from more backwards lands could go to explore daring ideas. In later years, the old Calvinist societies also became bastions of secularism. New England’s Calvinism gave way to Unitarian and universalist creeds, to searching skepticism. The Netherlands’ ancient churches today are commonly secularized as museums or community centers — places where God was, but remains no longer.
LGBT Christians have a profound understanding of Judeo-Christian story of faith. We believe in the mission of Jesus, in making a way for the outcast. We get it. We understand that that no one – not the lesbian, nor the Pharisee who excludes her – is beyond the reach of grace. And, of course – despite the provocative title of this blog post – it’s not just gay Christians. It’s all of the marginalized and sidelined, the people who don’t see the world in the same stark shades of black and white that the American church prescribes. It’s everyone who tires of the hypocrisy and discrimination and selfish warring done in the name of Jesus and says, “This is our faith too, and we won’t stand by while it is hijacked. We won’t allow voices of hate to speak for us.” Our faith is tested, refined by fire. It is real and actual – not illusory – and we live by it every day. We are going to rescue the Church from the power-hungry, the self-appointed gatekeepers, the ones who exclude and hold the gospel hostage and simply don’t get it. why gays are going to save the church ☀
The early church did not seek to formulate a theory of illness; instead, it healed the sick. It did not attempt to explain how the demonic could exist in a good world made by a good God; instead, they cast out demons. They had no hypotheses about how prayer works; they simply prayed. They were not, for all that, unreflective. They refuted, where necessary, theories of illness that prevented healing (e.g., the sin theory). They suggested that the source of at least some diseases was Satan (Luke 13:16). Their attitude was not antirational or antitheological, but merely concrete. They looked, not for adequate ways to conceptualize the Kingdom, but for ways to actualize it. Walter Wink ☀
How can someone read the New Testament and think that erecting a gaudy 200 foot cross for a cost of $5,000,000 is somehow honoring Christ? Not to mention it looks just horribly tacky. The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia: Please No ☀
Indeed, Wolterstorff, citing Abraham Kuyper, says the failure of our system to care for the poor means we as Christians have an obligation to reform that system – to work for social reforms, not simply do acts of charity. Wolterstorff, a Calvinist working in the tradition of Calvin himself, as well as Kuyper, argues all human beings have sustenance rights, which are on par with three others – rights to protection, freedom and participation. But because sustenance is necessary for life, without which all other rights are meaningless, he argues sustenance is the primary right of humanity.
Rights, he argues, are morally legitimate claims on others. If my rights are being violated, society has a duty to protect them. If the sustenance rights of our poor and needy are being violated, we as a society have a duty to uphold those rights.
An article in The Atlantic by Jordan Weissmann reveals that automakers are struggling to connect their products to teens and twenty-somethings. The problem isn’t the cars, or even the economy, but driving in general. Fewer young people are getting drivers licenses. In 1998 nearly two-thirds of potential drivers age 19 or younger had a license. In 2008 it was less then half. It’s hard to believe, but trends indicate young people in the 21st century no longer view a car as the symbol of adolescent independence. As one Toyota executive noted, “Many young people care more about buying the latest smart phone or gaming console than getting their driver’s license.”
Another odd thing about the Vineyarders, at least as described by Luhrmann, is that they seem to perform no social service. Unlike other serious evangelical groups, which are making headway as missionaries in Africa, there appears to be very little spreading of the faith, or even just of well-being—schools, hostels, soup kitchens—on the part of the congregations Luhrmann joined. Maybe she left out their charitable projects on the ground that her book, as its title tells us, is about the Vineyarders’ relationship with God. But I don’t think so, because now and then she comments dryly on their self-concern. Her fellow-congregant Hannah, she says, got mad at God, “not because he allowed genocide in Darfur, but because little things happened in her life that she did not like: ‘I was upset with him for making me a dorm counselor.’ ” Vineyarders may implore God to help fellow-members of their church, but otherwise, in Luhrmann’s account, pretty much everything seems to be about themselves. T. M. Luhrmann’s Experience with Evangelical Christians ☀
I contend that one of the best ways to understand what we’re doing is to study ourselves as an ideology . Ideology has been called “false consciousness” because it can keep us doing the same behaviors over and over again while covering over the contradictions that would make us question what we’re doing . By studying ideology, we can help people see the contradic- tions . When it becomes apparent we are saying one thing while doing something quite the opposite, the emptiness in our way of life is revealed . We end up manufacturing justifications and even enemies to keep the church going . Contradictions appear . Lies get revealed . Our ideology loses its credibility and it goes into a crisis .
There are reasons to suspect that this is what is happening among us as the church in North America . For instance, sadly, over the past twenty years we have become known more in North America for our duplicity, judgmentalism and dispassion than the gospel . Whether it is because of “the evangelical right” and the various New York Times bestseller “hate books” written toward it, or the megachurch pastors that get caught in sex scan- dals, evangelical Christians are now a people who are best known for our fighting against gay people, fighting against those who don’t believe in absolute truth (read as “those who don’t believe like we do”) or the liberal political agenda . We are living in contradiction to the gospel . Whatever is to blame, our way of life as evangelicals has failed to make the gospel compelling in the society we find ourselves in . We’re looking very much like an ideology that is losing its credibility and is in crisis . This process of ideologization does not happen overnight . It kind of sneaks up on us . What started out as a gathering of people around something very real gets compromised over time . There are new situations that challenge the status quo . Perhaps there is a grasping for power that seeps in and wants to use the gathering . Change is needed . Yet, over time, instead of changing our behavior, we develop reasons to keep things going . Our beliefs, together with the way we practice them, become an ideology that effectively works to keep the majority comfortable and certain people in power . Soon we lose touch with the reality that brought us together in the first place .
Is this what has happened to North American Christians?
When an ideology is in crisis, its leaders get defensive . We find enemies to rally people against in an effort to keep the sys- tem going . Unfortunately, the church in North America is now defined more by what we are against than who we are or what we are for . This kind of ideology happens all the time in our churches . We notice it when someone says “Oh that church is the Bible-preaching church—they believe in the Bible,” implying the others don’t . Or “We’re the church that believes in community .” The others somehow don’t . “That church? They’re the gay church and that one is the church that is anti-gay . We’re the church that plants gardens and loves the environment,” and “Oh, by the way you’re the church of the SUVs .” On and on it goes as our churches get identified by what we are against . We get caught up in perverse enjoyments like “I am glad we’re not them!” or “See, I told you we were right!” In the process we get distracted from the fact that things haven’t really changed at all, that our lives are caught up in gamesmanship, not the work of God’s salvation in our own lives and his work (missio Dei) to save the world . This cycle of ideologization works against the church . It is short-lived and it breeds an antagonistic relation to the world . In the process we become a hostile people incapable of being the church of Jesus Christ in mission
Think of a hospital. The patients are dying like flies. The methods are altered in one way and another. It’s no use. What does it come from? It comes from the building, the whole building is full of poison. That the patients are registered as dead, one of this disease, and that one of another, is not true; for they are all dead from the poison that is in the building. So it is in the religious sphere. That the religious situation is lamentable, that religiously men are in a pitiable state, nothing is more certain. So one man thinks that it would help if we got a new hymnal, another a new altar-book, another a musical service, etc., etc. In vain—for it comes from…the building… Let it collapse, this lumber room, get rid of it, shut all these shops and booths… And let us again serve God in simplicity, instead of treating him as a fool in magnificent buildings. Soren Kierkegaard ☀
How did Jesus market the church? By telling people that if they follow Him they would be persecuted and hated. By demanding that they leave all to follow Him. By appealing to the outcasts, the lepers, the tax collectors and the poor and alienating the rich and powerful. Not exactly a solid marketing strategy. How to market the church? ☀
…if I as a pastor want to help both believers and inquirers to relate science and faith coherently, I must read the works of scientists, exegetes, philosophers, and theologians and then interpret them for my people. Someone might counter that this is too great a burden to put on pastors, that instead they should simply refer their laypeople to the works of scholars. But if pastors are not ‘up to the job’ of distilling and understanding the writings of scholars in various disciplines, how will our laypeople do it? This is one of the things that parishioners want from their pastors. We are to be a bridge between the world of scholarship and the world of the street and the pew. I’m aware of what a burden this is. I don’t know that there has ever been a culture in which the job of the pastor has been more challenging. Nevertheless, I believe this is our calling. Tim Keller ☀
- it helped me find my own spiritual identity;
- it provided me with a few life-long friends;
- it taught me that genuine community is possible;
- it proved that authenticity is the best way to live;
- it revealed to me the pervasiveness of the principalities and powers;
- it accidentally taught me to be independent;
- it let me practice merging my freedom with my responsibilities;
- it let me experience the Mystery that layers our mundane existence;
- it connected me with the very rich roots of a great theological tradition;
- it gives me something to passionately write and cartoon about, connecting me with people all over the world about something vital and interesting.
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