Category Archives: faith

A Culture of One

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I think the following commentary is very important to consider, particularly with regard to pop-post-modernist notions.
I remember a number of years ago talking to a long-time campus pastor at Kent State University. A great guy who had been interacting with students for a long time and knew the ins-and-outs of the times – the zeitgeist, if you will. He said that 10 years prior he would go on campus and sit and argue with students about Truth – good arguments with atheists and others who absolutely disagreed with his American-Evangelical system or worldview. Now, he said, he goes on campus and no one wants to talk, debate or argue, primarily because he has a hard time finding students who believe in a concept of “Truth.” They just aren’t interested.
What’s the point, when everyone has their own truth and all truths are as valid as any other one. Of course, this idea is applied in completely inconsistent ways. When we all become amateur “experts” – in our own imaginations, at least – who demand the same recognition and consideration as those who have spent a life-time learning, then where do we end up? This is the dilemma and has been for the last 50 years. “Truth” claims become already suspect, and those who assert that there are definable and even absolute “Truths” are not trusted. What then???
Here is a “note” or commentary related to culture:

A Culture of One
“In this era of exploding media technologies there is no truth except the truth you create for yourself.” That’s the assertion of Richard Edelman, the founder and CEO of one of the world’s largest public relations companies. The work of PR professionals has always caused concern from people who believe in the importance of truth-telling. But Edelman’s observation suggests that in the communications ecosystem that is the Internet, where everyone is a spinmeister, the very idea of truth becomes less and less plausible. The quote from Edelman is in a new book by journalist Andrew Keen called The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Doubleday/Currency). “Today’s media,” writes Keen, “is shattering the world into a billion personalized truths, each seemingly equally valid and worthwhile.”
Andrew Keen hasn’t always been so negative about the Internet. He almost made a fortune in the 1990s by founding Audiocafe.com, one of the first digital music sites. Keen got involved in that project because he wanted to make the world’s best music more available to more people. But the more time he spent among the digirati in Silicon Valley, and the more he heard the utopian pronouncements of its most energized leaders, the more he realized that his view of culture and theirs were at odds. He wanted to expand the audience for great music. The Web enthusiasts wanted to make money by allowing more people to distribute home-made music, no matter how unimaginative and insipid it was, and collect revenue for all of the web advertising that accompanies the narcissism-enabling websites.
Although he doesn’t use the phrase, Keen’s book is about the loss of cultural authority. He believes that the survival of the very best forms of cultural expression, in journalism, music, fiction, and other disciplines, requires a network of mediation and accreditation. Cultural institutions that nurture the production of the best cultural artifacts maintain teams of editors, critics, producers, and teachers who have advanced in their careers through years of training and evaluation within a guild or tradition. Over time, some of those institutions earn more trust and respect among their peers than do others, their expertise and ability are acknowledged through an organic process of accountability and recognition. Those cultural institutions can be corrupted and standards can become debased. But without some form of institutionalized judgment established over time in communities of expertise, without, that is, some knowledgeable person to tell you your work isn’t good enough to be published, cultural expression easily becomes mere self-expression.
When everyone can self-publish by putting up a few bucks for a website, they don’t have to face the humiliation of rejection slips. And when a critical mass of people spend more time reading self-published (and often mediocre) writing, and self-produced videos, less time is spent in the company of credentialed creativity. And that translates into declining revenue for established voices and their intermediaries. Keen is particularly helpful in calling attention to how institutions of cultural authority require economic support to continue to operate. They also require a widespread sympathy to the idea of hierarchies, an assumption that some ideas are objectively better than others, that some commentators are wiser than others, that some creative work is, well, more creative than others.
Twenty or so years ago, cultural conservatives were up in arms about higher education’s demotion of the canon of great literature. They attributed this abandonment to the anti-Western bias of campus leftists. But surely the ecosystem of ideas and sentiments encouraged by uncritical use of the Web, energized by its defining myth of the democratization of knowledge and culture, poses a much greater threat than all those tenured radicals.

Posted by Ken Myers on 3/13/08 at Marshill Audio

Hat-tip to Titusonenine

Today’s L’Abri

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There are a couple interesting articles in this recent issue of Christianity Today (March, 2008). One article has to do with L’Abri – a “retreat” established by Francis Schaeffer and his wife in the Alps of Switzerland. Lots of ’60’s – ’80’s young people flocked (relatively speaking) to L’Abri to debate and then sit at the feet of Schaeffer as he discussed and commented on Christian life within the West and within “Modernism.” L’Abri was a haven for those disaffected young people who had a difficult time with the common Evangelicalism and the Christian religion in general.
Schaeffer died during the 1980’s and over the years L’Abri has changed from a strongly Evangelical community within the Modernist approach to knowledge and Truth to a now Post-Modernist community that is very different from the place that Schaeffer established when he was at the helm.
I can remember back as an undergraduate in the early ’80’s dreaming of going to L’Abri. I have to admit that I still want to spend time there even as I have changed and can now feel the inner drive and throb of seeking that many a student deals with (after all, we are always students, are we not?). Frankly, I would love to have such a place here, now, and be part of such a community! It fits well within my notions of “intentional community.” The idea of being about the living of an authentic life in Christ as we strive together to not be bound by cultural convention but to understand the unplumbable depths of God’s Way.
Anyway, here is a couple paragraphs I think are insightful concerning younger folk:

[Thomas Rauchenstein, a youngish Canadian and a current L’Abri worker, commenting on Schaeffer’s presuppositions when making his arguments] “Presuppositionalism can appear to be humble, but actually it’s quite arrogant… It says, ‘You can’t critique my assumptions.’ students today have the despair of having lost that certainty.” The postmodern critique of objectivity has saturated them. “We’re at the transition point, philosophically,” said Peltier. “People talk in the language of postmodernism, but what they want from Christianity is very much modern.”
In other words, when students say they seek authenticity, what they really want it certainly, an inner knowing. Convinced that they won’t find it intellectually, many pursue that feeling of conviction through experience: in the communal life and worship at L’Abri; in the books by emerging church authors that are popular with many students, and in the charismatic worship style that – though Pentecostals have never been a significant presence – is no longer taboo here.”

I might suggest that for a significant segment of the student population, the traditional forms of worship – in the sacramental and liturgical – also enable this population to “experience” God in ways that their former/current church-culture did not provide them.

New Statistics on Church Attendance and Avoidance – Barna

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Changing demographics and attitudes necessitates changing definitions related to those to attend and avoid church.
From the Barna Research Group:
New Statistics on Church Attendance and Avoidance

New Measures
According to Barna, one way of examining people’s participation in faith communities is by exploring how they practice their corporate faith engagement. Unveiling a new measurement model, Barna identified the following five segments:
+ Unattached – people who had attended neither a conventional church nor an organic faith community (e.g., house church, simple church, intentional community) during the past year. Some of these people use religious media, but they have had no personal interaction with a regularly-convened faith community. This segment represents one out of every four adults (23%) in America. About one-third of the segment was people who have never attended a church at any time in their life.
+ Intermittents – these adults are essentially “under-churched” – i.e., people who have participated in either a conventional church or an organic faith community within the past year, but not during the past month. Such people constitute about one out of every seven adults (15%). About two-thirds of this group had attended at least one church event at some time within the past six months.
+ Homebodies – people who had not attended a conventional church during the past month, but had attended a meeting of a house church (3%).
– adults who had attended both a conventional church and a house church during the past month. Most of these people attend a conventional church as their primary church, but many are experimenting with new forms of faith community. In total, Blenders represent 3% of the adult population.
+ Conventionals – adults who had attended a conventional church (i.e., a congregational-style, local church) during the past month but had not attended a house church. Almost three out of every five adults (56%) fit this description. This participation includes attending any of a wide variety of conventional-church events, such as weekend services, mid-week services, special events, or church-based classes.
Cross-Pollinating the Church
In addition to those five segments, the Barna report revealed that there is a growing degree of ministry crossover in America. When examining the spiritual participation of adults during the past month, the Barna team discovered that more than one out of every five adults had been involved in two or more types of churches: a conventional church, a house church, a marketplace church, a real-time ministry event on the Internet, or a live ministry event in the community.
Demonstrating the complexity of measuring people’s faith commitments, the Barna study identified the nature of people’s overlapping faith practices.
+ Among adults who were churched (either conventionally or alternatively) 15% had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through a faith-oriented website within the past month. Half as many (7%) said they had such an experience through a real-time event on the Internet.
+ One out of every eight churched adults (13%) said they had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through a ministry that met in the marketplace (e.g., their workplace, athletic event, etc.) during the past month.
+ Twice as many churched people (28%) said they had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through their involvement with a special ministry event (such as a worship concert or community service activity).
+ A majority of the public claimed to have experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through some form of interaction with religious television or radio programs.
Reaching the Unattached
With the final weeks of the Easter season rapidly approaching, the Barna study also identified some of the characteristics of the Unattached that might enable conventional churches or other ministries to more adeptly connect with those people.
Compared to regular churchgoers, the Unattached are:
# more likely to feel stressed out
# less likely to be concerned about the moral condition of the nation
# much less likely to believe that they are making a positive difference in the world
# less optimistic about the future
# far less likely to believe that the Bible is totally accurate in its principles
# substantially more likely to believe that Satan and the Holy Spirit are symbolic figures, but are not real
# more likely to believe that Jesus Christ sinned while He was on earth
# much more likely to believe that the holy literature of the major faiths all teach the same principles even though they use different stories
# less likely to believe that a person can be under demonic influence
# more likely to describe their sociopolitical views as “mostly liberal” than “mostly conservative”

The entire article is worth a read.

Tangent and Discouragement

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I’m on a gay tangent, it seems. Perhaps because I am feeling the loss of relationship, and for a Christian living in New York City thinking about relationships, well, perhaps I should take up the Apostle Paul’s admonition to “remain as I am…” I don’t know.
After istening to the good pastor’s rant about “Sodomites” and how real men “pisseth against the wall”, see below, and then having listened to a Christian radio interview on 2/25/08 conducted by Dr. Larry Bates of the Info Radio Network between Peterson Toscano ( “a theatrical, performance, artist, a very queer and quirky Quaker, and an ex-gay survivor”) and a pastor from Central Church that hosted the “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference put on by Focus-on-the-Family, after listening to all that it is easy to get discouraged.
It’s just easy to be discouraged by the inability (and at this point I really do think it is more than simply an unwillingness, although for some it is intentional unwillingness) of people to comprehend a life of a gay person that isn’t anything other than the horrendous sex-crazed, drug addicted, disease inflicted, and hedonistic stereotypes Religious Right political groups and pastors and anti-gay activists unrelentingly present to the world. It is easy to become discouraged by the willingness of people who claim to be Christians and who knowingly deceive and scapegoat and castigate a whole class of people because they want power and money. These religious political groups have co-opted ex-gay ministry that I know originally had well meaning and caring people who were trying to help homosexuals (even if their theology and methodology was and still is screwed-up). It is discouraging when listening to Peterson who is still very much a Christian (even more so than when he was an ex-gay for 17 years, married to a woman, and with everything tried to be a former homosexual), and who defies all the stereotypes, yet they are not willing to question their own presuppositions – they will believe he is demon possessed and thoroughly deceived by Satan rather than consider the possibility that their understanding just might be wrong. These are the people and groups that are so influential within the Republican Party right now.
What this does to the psyche of young people who struggle mightily with their faith and orientation. It is easy living in New York City (or many other urban areas) to forget what it is still like in most of the rest of the country. As a Christian and as someone who went to seminary in one of the centers of urban, gay America, from whence the stereotypes come and are very real, I can’t help by feel a strong desire to minister to these lost souls, but to insist that every gay person (particularly Christian gay person) must be the poster-boy for the crystal-meth induced, sex-addicted, emotionally screwed-up “homosexual lifestyle” is just plain wrong. Just plain wrong. They can see an obvious exception to their stereotypic belief, yet they will not see, will not consider, will not believe anything other than the stereotype.
How do Christian gay people survive in this kind of climate – and what I mean by Christian gay people are those who desire to live within God’s ways even if to their own detriment, dying to self, and not seeking to appease their conscious by justifying what is not within God’s desire for all people regardless of orientation (and yes, I know that is a loaded statement that opens a can of worms of controversy). That sounds too much like what the anti-gay people say about homosexuality, period. Yet, God does call us to an ethic, a moral life, to be holy – but the standard is the same regardless of orientation and not bound up in culturally determined and nationalistic definitions.
It’s just discouraging. Meeting with the God of all things in the quiet of Evening Prayer has certainly been a balm to my soul.

New Documentary

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Here is a new documentary about “Love in Action,” an ex-gay ministry, and their now discontinued program called “Refuge.” Refuge was a residential program for gay-teenagers. Parents were able to force their gay-children into the Refuge program to undergo re-orientation (or attempts at it). This documentary is about “Zach,” the gay teen whose parents forced him into the program after finding out he was gay. This incident garnered worldwide attention.
Listen as his father gives some of his reasons for putting Zach in the program. Full of emotion, he said he wanted his son to see the “destructive lifestyle” that he would live and he wanted to give his son “some options that society doesn’t give him today.” Listen as he says, “knowing your son by the age of 30 statistics say will either have AIDS or be dead…” He obviously loves his son, but the ex-gay and anti-gay Religious Right movement has so misinformed (lied to) conservative Christians (and attempts to within the general public) about homosexuality and gay people in general that this man truly believes that his dear son will be dead or dying of AIDS by the time Zach is 30. The emotional trauma these parents have to go through, not to mention what Zach had to suffer through, is tragic. It is this way because of the lies spread by certain strategic organizations and self-proclaimed Christians.

I have a good number of friends and acquaintances that have gone through ex-gay programs. A good friend of mine went through Love in Action.
I’m going to stand on a soap-boy for a moment. I become furious with the lying, hypocritical, power-hungry, anti-gay Religious Right organizations like Focus-on-the-Family and the American Family Association for their willful lying about gay people in this country. Listen to the preacher in the YouTube video in my next blog entry. He may be extreme, but this is the result of what the politicized Religious Right spreads around in order to gain more power and money. The leadership of these organizations are not stupid. They know what they are doing. They know that they are spreading lies and misinformation and bearing false witness against a whole group of people and fear mongering and scapegoating in an attempt to cover over their own profound failures. The end justifies the means in their minds and to hell with integrity and the Gospel. There are many messed-up, hedonistic, and lost gay people that desperately need help and need to be reigned in – just like a bunch of straight people. This is not the whole population, not even the majority of either orientation.

“A Path-Breaking Survey”

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There is a new study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It is part of the Religious Landscape of the United States Project. The survey pool was 35,000 people – a huge undertaking. I think this will be a very important and significant image of American faith and will reveal the dynamic picture of spirituality/Christianity in this country. The results will be significant, too, in our politicized and polarized “conversation” (some might say war) between different expressions of the Christian faith in the U.S. and of who and what are (will be) the defining characteristics of Christian faith in the U.S.
I was somewhat surprised by the age distribution across the primary Christian groupings. Members of Mainline Protestants, within which the Episcopal Church is located (why or why?), are not nearly as old as I imagined and American-Evangelicalism membership is not nearly as young. The distribution is statistically the same and consistent across age bands.
Mainline Protestants, despite all the talk, talk, talk of inclusion and diversity, have the most lopsided distribution according to race – 91% “White (non-Hispanic)”. I’m frankly surprised by this… well not really, not really at all! Members of “Mainline Protestant Churches” are more segregated than all other Christian-faith groupings and just as segregated as the “Historically Black Protestant Churches” that have a 92% distribution of “Black (non-Hispanic)”. The Orthodox are the next most segregated Christian group and comes in at 87% White and Jews are 95% White, but both of those make sense.
Now, income distribution – Hindus and Jews are the most wealthy! Hindus? Go figure, but in some ways that makes sense, too. I was surprised that Evangelicals and Mainliners income distributions are almost the same. Once again, Jews and Hindus are the most educated.
And get this, there is an equal percentage of Evangelicals to Mainliners who report “Living with a Partner” when asked about their marital status – 5% for both (Catholics – 7%). I don’t know whether “partner” is defined exclusively as same-sex or not. AND, there is a 1% lead among Evangelicals (13%) over Mainliners (12%) who report being divorced. Catholics come in at 10%.
Finally, I was shocked, let me say it again – shocked, at the responses to the following item: “How many children at home…” With all the talk of family values among the Religious Right, I would have assumed lots of kids among American-Evangelicals and because of the traditional teachings, among Roman Catholics, too – but the vast majority of all faith-groups have no children at home: 65% of Evangelicals, 71% of Mainliners, and 61% of Roman Catholics have no children. I don’t think that represents issues of age (empty nesters, etc.). Hum….
Here is the main-page for the Survey where you will find the statistics.
Here is a LA Times article on the Survey endeavor
Update: Here is a good American-Evangelical response to the project/survey results from Christianity Today online.
Here is a video overview from the Pew Forum study:

Hat-tip to Titusonenine

Youth Myths, con’t: Inclusion

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My post below, Youth Myths, was cross-posted to my Facebook profile as a “Note,” yesterday. Mark Robbin Collins posted a comment on Facebook, and I attempted to respond. Below is what I wrote down to answer his questions though all my disjointed and chaotic thoughts.
His comment:

Bob,
This is an interesting series of comments. As a parishioner at Ascension during your summer internship, and as an ordinand, I’m interested in this discussion. I think liturgy is about the beauty of holiness, and should inspire awe and glory. But I wonder if the attraction to more historical forms of worship represents an exclusive, rather than inclusive impulse. Are your youth about creating a place where esoteric rites appeal to a finite group of the liturgically pure? Or are they about celebrating the mystery and majesty of God in a way that is inclusive, and accessible to those who may not have their tastes? Don’t get me wrong, I’m bells and smells for the most part. But I think the most important people to the church are those *outside* of it — that’s where our mission calls us, and that’s whose needs we should be discerning and seeking to meet. And don’t forget, some of those 79 & EOW rites are closer to early Christianity than are some of those 1928 and 1662 ones!

Mark – First, a bit of standing on a soap-box. I have found in my 27 years of being in academe and then in this Church that there is all kinds of talk about “inclusion,” but what has been meant by that term is “inclusion (acceptance) of those who agree with us.” My experience, which has always been on the more “liberal” side of things, is that the “inclusionists” are only really pseudo-liberals, because too many of them virulently excluded “conservatives” and those who don’t line up behind their definitions and expectations of “inclusion.” These terms (inclusion or exclusion) are meaningless to me.
Jesus makes a way for anyone and everyone, but not on our terms. He is very patient and long suffering with us as we seek – always wooing, but never compromising on the means and ways of the call. He offers life, forgiveness, restoration, salvation, peace – but the requirement is that we give up ourselves and our ideologies, etc. That is the crux. As individuals and in common, we give up ourselves and are converted and in so doing we actually find our true selves – individually and collectively. This isn’t accomplished by our words, our theories or theologies or ideologies or our peculiarities of perspective, but is accomplished by the Holy Spirit doing the work within us. Acceptance of all kinds of not very socially popular people has occurred at St. Paul’s over its history – they have found a place in this parish.
Jesus wasn’t an “inclusionist,” mind you. He was about people, no matter who or what they were. The rich young ruler, once he said he couldn’t give up all his possessions to follow Jesus, was not included. Jesus didn’t say to him as he walked off, “Oh, heck, that’s ok, come and follow me anyway.” It wasn’t Jesus that told him go away, but Jesus set the criteria under which he was to follow Him and left it up to the guy, but never compromised His own standard. He certainly didn’t include the religious establishment – unless they were willing to follow Him. Jesus was a respecter of people and their decisions.
That’s what we do – direct people to God through Jesus by the enabling of the Holy Spirit and say that it is He that they should follow. We respect their intelligence and their decisions, but we don’t compromise the standards that this Church has set through the Creeds, Canons, and Book of Common Prayer. It is the people’s decision, after all, and there are people from every perspective and place in the journey in the parish – from those who doubt mightily and those who would rather get rid of a good chunk of “those other people” to those mighty women of God who can pray the mountain to move, and it does.
What we present is the liturgy, the Creeds, the Holy Scriptures, the Sacraments, and the traditions of the Church that over the centuries have proven to touch people’s lives in ways that draw them to God – the tried, not the trendy (although with younger people, it seems the ancient is becoming the trendy). We aren’t everything for everyone and we don’t try to be. We trust the liturgy, Scripture, sacraments, and the Creeds to do their stuff as God works through them.
Early on, I heard St. Paul’s described as a “non-fussy, Rite I, Anglo-Catholic” parish. The “non-fussy” refers to the fact that the liturgy is not a show, but a lived piety. It is what resonates with the parishioners. I asked the rector early on why they still used Rite I and he said, “Because it is the more modern liturgy.” As I mentioned in the original post, it seems that younger generations, generally, seem to be drawn to Rite I language, and then even to traditional architecture, tried liturgical expression, the ancient and the mystery.
This is too long, I know, and not all that well thought out, but it gets at the gist of my perceptions of the what and the why of St. Paul’s. It is Jesus that draws all women and men, so it is Jesus that we present. After that, He can do whatever He decides in the hearts and minds of the people.

Youth Myths

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I can remember a revealing event at a parish close to New York University that is involved in outreach to NYU students. I did a summer internship at Church of the Ascension and was sitting with the rector, a great guy, one afternoon. The rector made an observation after a student made this comment, “We like Rite I language.” The rector said, “They actually like that stuff. I just don’t get it.”
I don’t see any of this as negative, but as a needed corrective in the excesses of the last generation (that still holds the reigns of power in the Church). There is a desire to get to that which has survived centuries and not that which is just trendy (and trendy for the past 30 years).
Here are some comments by “young people”:

The Topmost Apple: The Last Straw (a self-described rant). Here is a paragraph:

And could the liberal “liturgists” who are at present overrunning the Episcopal Church take a seat in the back for awhile, please? Could they maybe say Evening Prayer silently (it’s in the front of the book), or maybe read a little theology or something and report back to us in, say, 20 years or so? And could they possibly say something – oh, I don’t know – interesting at that point, about – let me just get crazy here – faith, or something? Endlessly harping on “liturgy,” it seems clear, has become the latest way to avoid having to deal with reality and with the real issues. In the meantime, you can hardly find a parish anywhere at which the Daily Office is prayed on a regular basis – including at so-called “orthodox” parishes. And could we really at some point stop the dumbing-down of everything? Here’s an example: several of these “liberal” oldsters seemed genuinely offended by the fact that there are a number of inscriptions of Latin phrases in various locations in the nave and sanctuary – Latin being an old and very dead (and therefore obviously useless if not downright oppressive) language. (One of these inscriptions I love in particular is on the pulpit: “Et lux in tenebris lucet.”) Typically, one of the 30-somethings mentioned the inscriptions and found them “mysterious – but in a good way, like something I might find out about someday.” Gosh. Imagine that. While the “liberals” disgustedly plot and scheme to tear down this inscription and all the others (and anything else they decide they don’t like), the yoof – whom we desperately need to reach! – actually seem to find them interesting and appealing. Gee.

And another comment from Snow and Roses. Heres a few paragraphs:

One of my biggest pet peeves has turned into rather a joke, unfortunately one that seems to happen over and over again. There I will be, sitting on a worship committee, or in a planning meeting, or a Christian Ed group. I will often be the only person under 40 in the room. Invariably the topic will turn to attracting young people, or making the service more “accessible” for 30 somethings.
What this means to all those well meaning, but ultimately condescending, brothers and sisters is replacing the hymnal with Christian “pop,” chucking the organ for canned stuff, and getting rid of any hint of liturgy. After all, folks my age are too hip for that shit. Right? Wrong. And here is the second frustration I share with so many other young Anglicans. No one will believe us when we tell them that we like or even love the liturgy. That we enjoy all those stuffy old hymns (that they aren’t stuffy at all!) That we would really honestly like a bit of incense now and then, and sanctus bells would just be lovely, and could we please not do away with all the lovely hangings and go to those horrible polyester “modern art” things?
We Anglicans have a problem, and its not just Episcopalians which is why I’ll stick with the broader moniker. We’re embarrassed by ourselves. At some point we got it into our heads that our liturgy and tradition are something to be ashamed of. That they are “out of touch,” and not attractive. I have some theories as to why this is. The first and most obvious being our country’s strong protestant leanings that look with a jaundiced eye on anything that smacks of “Rome.” Another is plain self-loathing. We simply don’t love ourselves, not truly and authentically. But I think the most authentic is this: it is easier to try to find superficial things to change than to address the real issues that keep 30 somethings out of the church.
Because you know what, the folks who don’t want liturgy have lots and lots of other options. But there are many of us “young people” who long deep in our souls for the unassailable mystery of God to which all that ancient liturgy points. We’ve had hundreds of years to get it right. To live and grow with it, and we love that. Our lives are fractured, fast paced, and often anchor-less; the deep ancient liturgy and traditions of the church offer us a contrast of stability. (I know I can walk into any Episcopal church in the country and find a service and music I know by heart, and in my life I need that assurance.) We want to be a tied to the past, we want to be tied through tradition to generations who came before us.
But we’re smart, and we can smell a sham a mile away. We’ve learned to be cynical, careful, and judging. We look for authenticity and depth. And there, dear ones, is where the church falls down: around all those who come because it was expected when they were growing up, those who come out of habit, and those who come out of fear. We walk into a church and we can smell those things, and nothing will keep us in such a place.

The reality is, the “older folks” are perplexed and running scared because their efforts to remake the church in their image is being repudiated by the “younger folks,” and those “older folks” just don’t get it.

The IRD and Talk To Action

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While I know that everyone with a thorn-in-their-craw tend to be a bit biased, here is a website/blog I just discoverd called Talk to Action: Reclaiming Citizenship, History, and Faith. There is a whole lot of stuff on the website about the IRD (Institute on Religion and Democracy).
I remember reading about the IRD years ago in a Christianity Today article entitled, “Turning the Mainline Around.” The IRD not only works in Washington to return American back to its ideas of a Christian and biblical government, it realizes that one of the primary ways of doing just that is through religions institutions. Within the IRD, there are five mainline denominational “communities” that work to, “…give flesh to the IRD’s mission of working to reform churches’ social witness, in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings, thereby contributing to the renewal of democratic society at home and abroad…” The IRD works with the “reformers” within the Episcopal Church and the four other mainline denominations. Look at what has happened to the Southern Baptist Convention over the last 30 years to see the desired outcome of the IRD with regard to the other mainline denominations.
So, anyway, the website that I came across has a section entitled, “The Shadow-War: the battle for mainstream faith.” The purposes, it seems, is to report on what is happening with the IRD as they fight to “reform” what they perceive as the heretical mainline denominations.
Well, I just thought it interesting. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I know that the published goals of the IRD suggest a leaning towards doing whatever they can to achieve their goals – either bring mainline denominations into line with their own “right” social, political, and theological beliefs or to see that those denominations are so discredited that they will not be able to stand in the way of the IRD achieving their goals in the social and political spheres.

Random and vague thoughts

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Rambling and vague thoughts:
My late systematic theology professor back in Ohio commented on the beginnings of the process of forming a systematic-theological perspective. He said that most people who actually produce a systematic theology (very few!) default the beginning of their system to the point of faith that seems most important to them. My professor, a Lutheran theologian, for example, began his system with the Ascension. So, since that class I’ve thought about where I would begin my system (of course, I am completely unqualified to do any thing vaguely resembling systematic work!!!).
1. My system, I think, would need to begin with “Free-Will.” I’m obviously not a Calvinist (low or high). For me, I cannot get around believing that we have true potential for independent choice. Lots of things hinder and impinge upon our realization of the potential for making honest/real choices, but I have to believe that we have it. Without the ability to make free choices – the ability to choose contrary to what was chosen – then to me we are all simply automatons. What’s the point? I don’t think being made in the image of God results in a completely determined life without recourse.
I’m a synergist, and thus not a monergist. Chalk it up to my Arminian upbringing.
My understanding of the ideas of “free-will” for Calvinists is that God has already instilled in us our desires. So, when we act we act “freely” because we act according to our desire. Yet, our desire is determined for us already by God even before Creation. I don’t think that results is “free-will.” To have true “free-will,” I think it a necessity to be able to choose contrary to what might be or has already been chosen.
If I go to an ice-cream parlor and I am confronted with 31 flavors of ice-cream, a Calvinist might claim that I freely choose chocolate from all the other flavors. The first visit, I choose chocolate because I desire it. The other flavors are there to “choose” from, but I “freely” choose chocolate because I love it so much. My second visit, well, I choose chocolate because I desire it and love it so. The third visit, well, I choose chocolate, of course. God determined that I love chocolate ice-cream and while I “freely” choose it, it is determined so that I can choose no other.
An Arminian might describe such a situation thusly: I go to an ice-cream parlor and am confronted with 31 flavors. In my God-given make up, I just love chocolate ice-cream and desire it. My first visit, I look at all the flavors and choose chocolate. My second visit, I choose chocolate, but then “decide” to change my mind and get strawberry instead (or Jamoca Almond Fudge!). My third trip, I choose chocolate. I have the ability to choose something other than what my desire dictates. I understand that a Calvinist might suggest that God already predetermined that I would choose strawberry that second time, but I just don’t buy this seemingly determinist explanation of “free-will.”
2. Well, I think about what it means to be made in the image of God. There are lots of people throughout the ages who have postulated all manor of explanations of what that might mean. To me at this point, being made in the very “image” of God connotes “attributes” of God. For me, this suggests the ability to Create and the ability to “Decide” freely between honest choices. To be made in the image of God is to have true potentiality for Free-Will decision making and to Create (obviously not ex-nihilo). In these two aspects, I think we can find poignantly God’s image in us. All of this has been corrupted by our free-will decisions to choose contrary to our own well-being and the continued suffering of the consequences of our wrong/bad decisions.
I’m not convinced that the whole episode of the Garden and Adam and Eve’s eating from the Tree of Good and Evil is as we commonly assume. I’m sure there is a heresy somewhere in these thoughts of mine, but they are what they are at the moment. In giving us honest free-will, we have to have honest choices – to do or not to do, between opposing things. The eating of the fruit of the Tree was not the downfall. There had to be true choice. We had to “exercise” that choice to realize that aspect of being made in the “image” of God.
God knew already that we could choose contrary to our own wellbeing. God risked being rejected by and rebelled against by His creation (Open-Theism?). I’m sure he well realized that in giving us that ability that humanity would choose to walk in ways contrary to our wellbeing and against God’s desire for us. That we would sin. That we would estrange ourselves from God and His ways.
The downfall occurred in our rejection of the wisdom of God and thinking that we knew better what to do – we were seduced into thinking that we knew what was best for us. We rejected God, and we bear the consequences to this day. We are no longer innocent, by a long shot.
Yet, because we are created in the image of God, God allows us to continue exercise our ability to freely choose between good and evil, right and wrong, what is good and healthy for us individually and collectively and what is not good and healthy – between killing and forgiving, between gluttony and caring for the hungry. God allows us to choose whether we will take up what is right for us: “To love mercy, to do justly, and to walk humbly with our God,” or not.
To me, this gets at the heart of the problem of Theodicy. Yes, God could well stop all this evil, but in so doing He would work contrary to His creative intent for humanity – that we would bear His image. We would be left as automatons. I get frustrated by those who fight against Christianity by using the issued of evil in the world – “if there really was a God and if this God was really good, then why does this God allow all this evil and killing and destruction? I can’t believe in a God like that.” Well, if God ended all that kind of stuff arbitrarily and unilaterally, then we would no longer have free-will. What would be better, truly?
Would most of the people who raise the problem of theodicy as the reason why they refuse to or can’t believe be willing to forfeit their free-will (whether realized or only in potentiality) to end the suffering caused by the wrong decisions of fellow human beings? Would they be willing to have their lives “determined” for them by God? I don’t think so. They might wish the way things worked in the world or in us were different all together, but what is the actual end result of the demand that a truly good God, if one existed, would not allow evil or harm or destruction to exist at all?
I realize that this is very complex stuff, but we could stop human suffering caused by famine, war, etc., if we wanted to. We could mitigate the suffering caused by natural disaster. We don’t want to badly enough. We chose that which is not the good, the beautiful. We choose to be selfish. We choose sin. This is why we are in need to atonement, a savior, forgiveness, and why we needed a way to be made for reconciliation with God, one another, and all of Creation. I think it really is up to us, and I do believe that those who do not know God have the ability to what is right – feed the poor, forgive, do no harm. That doesn’t mean they earn their way in the afterlife. It simply means that on this planet, those without knowledge of God still bear the image of God and because of this they can choose to do what is right, even if doing what is right does not result in salvation. I’m not a Pelagian or a semi-Pelagian. It is only by the first work of God through the Holy Spirit that we are able to understand our need for God’s salvation and can we realize right relationship with God.
Just random, incomplete thoughts. I think I need to start with the honest ability to made choices between even contrary things. This, I think, is part of the “image” of God within us – to freely choose.