the sexual identity debate

For the most part I have kept quiet on the whole gay marriage and sexual identity debate raging in the Church. Much of the reason for my silence has been, as with many topics, the innane level of dialogue on the subject. Decidedly "pro-gay" spokespersons tend to leave no room for anyone claiming that they left the gay lifestyle. To leave the gay lifestyle, for some, is to be a liar. Well, I have too many friends who have left it to believe that. Anyway, Halden Doerge has posted Eight Theses on Sexual Identity and Christian Ethics. I think he's right on target, with an honest approach to speaking theologically for the Church on sexual identity.

Tags: homosexuality, identity, theology, pro-gay, marriage, same sex, heterosexuality, debate, Church

choice and the future

It used to be that we had a lot less choice in our faith. Nowadays we live in a glut of choices. Questions themselves are "invitations" to "deeper truths." But discipleship, cross-bearing, and repentance are not simple rational decisions. They take commitment. If we are unwilling to see ourselves as part of a grand and deeply flawed human attempt at acceptable and sociable form of the Western one quarter world religion then we are not ready to learn and move on. The Pats and Orals of our world may shame us, but they should also teach us about Christianity gone completely acceptable and functional.

Tags: choice, faith, discipleship, cross-bearing, repentance, decisions, shame, acceptability, function

Don't look away this is our history

A story was related to me about a caucasian man with liberal sympathies who prided himself in his appreciation for all that the Civil Rights movement did to change his more redneck kind. He happened into an African American bookstore in downtown Chicago and meandered around poking through books. As he headed to leave he was taken by a large photo of a public hanging. He gasped and staggered loud enough to attract the attention of the shop owner. As he quickly turned to bolt for the door the African American man stopped him and said in a kindly way,

"Don't look away. This is history. This is Our history."

We could assume that the shop owner had no right to share this lesson. That this man was part of the solution. That he didn't need that reminder of his history. Why should this man who is not racist be confronted with a racist past not his own? Because he is an American. Because he is white. Because he is Christian. These three things make inherent claims to nobility and social responsibility. Whether that's true or not is not at issue here. If he wants to be any of these he must not lower his gaze from their shared history, which forms his identity.

I use this story to get at what I'm trying to do with all these "acceptability" posts. The dark sides of our religious story are as important as the inspiring biographies. When was the last time you read a history of an Evangelical or Pentecostal figure that wasn't just a hagiography?

Tags: Racism, public hanging, history, acceptability

Not so rough, but not necessarily right

Evangelicals and Pentecostals, now in the Mainstream, are not as rough around the edges as their fathers. They've moved their window dressing up nine floors. They're not quite so fundamentalist, so dogmatic, so doctrinaire, so old. As I look back at the battles my father fought with an eye toward my own future, I can't honestly say I'm happy to see all the errors he fought go, if it means my generation swings to new extremes.

Maybe the Hell Houses and fire baptizers are finally ignored as irrelevant, but will the prospects of no hell and closet tongues leave us any better off? Maybe we're laughing at the old, but averting our gaze from the new silly hubris. What good are theology and doctrine if they don't serve to empower the Church into being for others?

Tags: Evangelicals, Pentecostals, mainstream, theology, doctrine, hubris

Acceptance and social dissonance

Jesus’ preference for the poor is a source of social dissonance. Miraculous healings, exorcisms, and social intercourse with a Samaritan woman known for her many failed relationships were all unacceptable activities that put his larger public relations in jeopardy. Further, he didn’t use key opportunities to his advantage. After one miracle the people were ready to make him king by force, but he refused and left them. One suspects that Pat and Oral could easily teach Jesus a thing or two about successful teaching, leadership, and evangelism.

A Christian faith that prefers the weak, the marginalized, the unsightly and unsound is an unacceptable faith in this day and age. Any faith whose talk is not carefully guarded and edited with an eye toward contributions is just “irresponsible.”

Tags: acceptance, social dissonance, Jesus Christ, Christian faith, poverty, theologia crucis

Five Acceptable Heresies infecting Evangelicals and Pentecostals today

Five Acceptable Heresies* Infecting Evangelicals and Pentecostals today

1. Sin is the cause of illness and poverty. It is never God’s will that Christians ever be poor. Furthermore, Christians should embody the latest and finest the world has to offer because they represent the Good King who always blesses His Children.
2. Nations are endowed by God with the unquestionable right to exact authority over persons. This right is likened to God’s salvation power. The State’s power is more important than the church’s power as it regards human civil freedom.
3. Christians should embody the ideal Nationalist citizen. When an Evangelical leads the government, Christians have a unique opportunity and responsibility to spread Christianity.
4. Christians should be pioneers in using every available new means of technology for the dissemination of their way of being Christian. There need be no consensus on what a Christian is, the Bible speaks for itself. There need be no question of whether the technique itself raises new issues for living. Use it and God will take care of the rest.
5. As long as Wars are fought in behalf of a nation, the Christians in that nation should be important arbiters of the goodness of that War. Their theology of war should center on the Sovereign State’s authority and on assurance from that State that it has exhausted every other available means.

*By “acceptable” heresies I mean, for the most part, practical heresy. These are meant to illustrate how our talk of Jesus doesn’t match our practice of His Kingdom ways.

Tags: acceptable heresies, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Jesus Christ, politics, State, Authority

On listening to preaching

Kim Fabricius (male expat New Yorker in the UK) has a great post titled "9.5 Theses on Listening to Preaching." He weaves theological concepts throughout in a very inviting way. I would venture to say most untheological folk won't get most of them. I only got one because of Bonhoeffer, theologia crucis. Wish I'd seen this before I'd posted my "looking for a church and finding a family." But then if I had answers before I had questions I'd never think to ask right?

Warm Memories of Dr. Vernon Purdy

An old friend passed away on December 5th. Dr. Vernon Purdy had a profound impact on my life and I will miss him. I found his obituary here in the archives of the Springfield News-Leader. Please pray for his family, particularly his wife Naomi and his daughter Carissa and son Caleb. He was only 48 years old. The obituary did not mention a cause of death. I learned so much about the horizons of faith from Dr. Purdy. His kindness, friendship, and encouragement demonstrated a true walk of faith to me. Vernon Purdy joins the cloud of witnesses across time. Thanks Old Friend.

Tags: Dr. Vernon Purdy, Obituary, faith

Journey through Bonhoeffer to Barth

Let me now break from Bethge to describe my own introduction to Karl Barth through Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I am and forever will be a defacto theological dilettante because I arrive at interest the hard way. It took a severe jolt for me to get through Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship. It was in 1995 incidently on a sixteen hour bus ride to the old Tibetan town of Chamdo. I was with a missionary group of Filipinos and we were sternly told not to draw attention to the fact that we were Christians. It was so cool to be reading subversive material! But it was the explosive content of that material that really hooked me. Believing had consequences. This will get me killed! This excited my skinny twenty one year old self.

Shortly after Martha and I joined JPUSA in 1996 I bought A Testament to Freedom. I'll never forget reading Bonhoeffer's reflections on God's proximity in the face of evil while sitting at the hospital bedside of my eighteen month old son who had just had a near fatal fall and was in all but a body cast. From A Testament to Freedom I first read about Bonhoeffer's connection to Karl Barth.

The name stayed in my memory but not enough to make me really read him. But one day down at the Harold Washington Library in downtown Chicago I came upon Bernard Ramm's After Fundamentalism: The Future of Evangelical Theology. Ramm connected the dots for me between what I knew was wrong with so much American Evangelical preaching and the obvious burdens of modern life. Ramm's book was the end of my journey to Karl Barth. (The book is all about Karl Barth in an attempt to deal with 80's Evangelical theology.) At first I randomly checked out various Barth titles from the library, beginning with Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. Then I had to own Dogmatics in Outline. But the book that blew the ceiling off my theological world was Karl Barth's sixth edition of The Epistle to the Romans. (My review is here.)

I used to say that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was my only real interest in theology. Now I don't know who is more important, Dietrich or Karl. They are very different people. Their theologies, in as much as they interact, are very different approaches. But both seek to serve the Church, which in this age is a novel concept. I still have not read through and neither do I own Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics (unless Golwitzer's selection counts). It is more important to me to get through Bonhoeffer's writings first. I said to myself years ago that I could spend my whole life with just the writings of these two men and die happy, but that hasn't proven true. If anything they have immersed me in their world of the early twentieth century. I've been coaxed in kicking and screaming. I still as yet can't bring myself to read Hegel or Schliermacher. I still haven't really cracked Georges Bernanos's The Diary of a Country Priest, a favorite of Bonhoeffer's.

Tags: Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theology, Bernard Ramm, Church Dogmatics

"A little exercise for young theologians" by Helmut Thielicke

A little exercise for young theologians by Helmut Thielicke
Introduction by Martin E. Marty
Eerdmans, 1962, 1998.
Translated by Charles L. Taylor

As Michael and I were packing up for the festival this year we were down in our Wilson multi-function room and stumbled upon this tiny book by Helmut Thielicke. I don't know where it came from. Michael hadn't remembered placing it in the crate where he found it. I was aware of Helmut Thielicke, the German theologian and contemporary of Karl Barth, but I hadn't read much by him. The edge of the little book is sadly mildewed but the inside is well loved by the previous anonymous reader. At only forty-one pages, something this size is usually called an article not a book. Upon engaging these little pages seriously I got hooked. Lights flashed and bells rung. In simple, modest language Thielicke observes the sickness that strikes every student of theology. It is an explanation, a warning, and a bridge between lay folk, pastors, and anyone who uses theological language. His analogies are humorous but dead on.

Tags: Helmut Thielicke, theology, humor, Karl Barth

My beloved prof's website

Well, I'm going to take a risk and tell you who that beloved prof is who was so ambivalent about Bonhoeffer. I do this because I still appreciate his work for the Kingdom of God. Dale Brueggeman served as theology professor at Central Bible College where I attended. He began work for the Division of Foreign Missions for the Assemblies of God in 1994 and is now involved in Eurasia Education Services. Maybe he will have forgotten all of the aforementioned conversations and me in particular. Nevertheless his mission work goes on and I'm grateful for it. I also recall in that same semester that I took Philosophy, Theology 1 and 2 at the same time. So as one prof discussed whether God existed another took it on faith. As Dale assured us of God's judgment, my soteriology prof leaned on God's desire that all be saved. Talk about a ride! I remember hearing from Dale one morning that hell was God's intention and from Vernon later the same day that it was not God's desire. When I interjected in Vernon's class a point from Dale's, Vernon grabbed my desk spun me in front of the class and began erratically pointing a finger in my face to make his point. There were wounds licked and tears shed in my dark corner of the library that evening. But I got better. Vernon apologized later. Lesson from all this: don't play a Westminster doctorate and a Fuller doctorate off each other on the judgment of God. At least not in the middle of the lesson in front of the class.

Tags: Pentecostalism, Dale Brueggeman, theology, missions, Eurasia Education Services

Agent of Grace movie discrepancy

While reading in Bethge's biography of Bonhoeffer I've come across what I'll call a discrepancy in the movie documentary "Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace." I know a lot of people are being introduced to Bonhoeffer for the first time through this film and I do love the film. I have one beef at this point. It describes Bonhoeffer's time in London as an escape of sorts from the church struggle in Germany. The problem is more in what is not said than what is said. He spends eighteen months in London and then comes home and finds things have changed. I'd say that was misleading. The exact words come at 41:51 into the film if you want to check.
"Bonhoeffer removed himself from the crisis by accepting a position with a German church in London England." After this come John DeGruchy's words:
"When Bonhoeffer comes back 18 months later, after he'd gone to London, and becomes involved in the church struggle again, in the first instance it's a struggle around the question of the church's freedom to preach the gospel. Not around the Jewish question. But then gradually Bonhoeffer recognizes that the real question is not the freedom of the church to preach the gospel, the real issue is the freedom of the church to actually stand by the victims."

From what I'm reading in chapter eight (which I have not blogged to yet, sorry) London is a big part of the church struggle. Those expatriot churches outside of Germany are a threat to the Nazi regime early on because of their connection with foreigners. For this reason the Bishop must tread carefully. Bonhoeffer plays this for all its worth. Bethge points out that though this is Bonhoeffer's first pastorate, because he travels every other week back to Berlin and is so involved in bringing word back and forth from inside and out of Germany, he can't settle down into normal pastoral duties. He never fully experiences the peace he intended.

As for DeGruchy's comments, I'll have to come back to this later when I've read the next chapter.

Tags: John DeGruchy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Agent of Grace, Eberhard Bethge, Movie Review, Discrepency

Selfhood and Destiny

Wolfhart Pannenberg "What is Man?", Fortress, 1970. pg. 55-56

Insofar as the direction of a man's life is toward God,

community with God is already actualized in this movement. To

that extent, the destiny of man already becomes effective and

becomes a reality for us in this life. This pre­supposes that

we remain in this movement and do not stop along the way.

The fact is, however, that men repeatedly interrupt their

course through the world toward God. They establish

them­selves in the world and, at least temporarily, forget

their quest for God. This is temporary, because it lies in the

nature of the question that it cannot be forgotten

indefinitely. Men do not forget God simply because they are

lazy. This forgetfulness has a deeper root, namely, man's

egocentricity. Left to their own initiative, men by no means

live in a constant movement beyond themselves in an open­ness

to the world. Rather, as they actually are, men strive to

assert themselves and to prevail. Each person seeks to attain

all the riches of life for himself. It is common for the

clever person to exercise moderation as a means to this end.

A person seeks to establish himself through his achievements,

and he basks in whatever recognition others accord him.

Whatever task a man might take on becomes a matter of his

concern by the very fact that he puts his hand to that task.

The more he spends himself in its service, the more he

establishes his own self along with accomplishing the task.

This is the source of the ambiguity of all human behavior.

Each person experiences time and space only in reference to

himself. Each person is the center of his world. Therefore,

the here and now is different for each person.

It is clear that such egocentricity does not stand in an

obvious harmony with man's openness to the world. On the

contrary, there is an inherent tendency in the ego to adhere

to one's own purposes, conceptions, and customs. Thus a

man not only has a tendency to break out into the open, but he

also has a tendency toward a certain self-enclosement.

However, even where a person breaks through into the open, the

ego is always involved in it. The person who thinks he can

move beyond his self only lives in a dream world. Wherever he

might move, he brings. his self with him.

A person does not escape his self either through diversion or

through asceticism. To be sure, that is not even worth

striving for. The wish to escape one's self is only a short

circuit in the whole enterprise. Aversion to one's self is

ingratitude. A person can overcome his self centeredness not

by throwing away his ego, but by incorporating it into a

larger totality of life. This actually happens, however, a

person actually transcends his egocentricity in this sense,

only at the boundary of actual human existence (that may

happen just by learning to be content). For it is just at that

boundary that what existed up to that point is abandoned. What

exists, however, is at all times and at all places an ego.

Even if it has just been abandoned, it is immediately there

again in the new situation. All human life is carried out in

the tension between self.

Tags: Theology, love, "Is it in a man to love?", Wolfhart Pannenberg, Community, quotes