protest and pop music

I caught Get Up! Stand Up! The Story of Pop and Protest on PBS last night. Really fascinating stuff. It was a history of protest and music in American history. I only wish the exploration in more recent years had been more indepth. It weighed heavy on the 60's but then by the '90s the protest side of the music seemed far less effectual. The point was made that the larger issues came out as the money rolled in (for LiveAid and We Are the World) but only served to raise simple awareness. It ends with Bono and the One project and the question "What can rock stars really accomplish?" That is perhaps this generations' question as it concerns music and political awareness. The show could have ventured another half hour into that topic.

Tags: Bono, One, Get Up! Stand Up!, Documentary, Protest, Folk, Pop, Rock, politics

Blogging Bonhoeffer: Chapter Seven "Berlin 1933"

Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised Edition, 2000. pg. 257-324
Chapter Seven "Berlin 1933"

Maybe the clearest sign that Eberhard Bethge moved from the general to the particular in tone is when he began marking the months. Whereas in previous chapters he splits the sections topically, based on duties or ideas. Here, in 1933 he moves from January to September chronicling every action in the church struggle between the Nazi German Christians and what comes to be known as the Confessing Church---the church that by returning to the Scriptures and their foundations, tried to theologically remove a vicious poison from the faith.

The events of 1933 are renowned. The speed with which Hitler moved from being president to becoming Reich Fuhrer, using the insecurity of the German situation to obtain complete control. Did it happen overnight? No, but in overt and subtle ways every aspect of life gradually moved into compliance with the political. Bethge notes the immediate changes that thrust Dietrich into uncertainty:

The political turning point on 30 January 1933 would force Bonhoeffer's life onto a different course. It did not require a reorientation of his personal convictions or theology, but it became increasingly clear that academic discussion must give way to action. It was imperative to relinquish the shelter and privilege of the academic rostrum, as well as the protected "rights and duties of the ministry," if the power of weakness were to be credible. (Bethge, 258)

That "power of weakness" is key here. Here is where Bonhoeffer's theologia crucis, his important Christology lectures, demanded satisfaction. If God, as Dietrich says, is present where we encounter the other, then who but the Jew--the victim of Germany's Other-ing--shows us the true face of Christ? This thought developed throughout this period and later, but the important point is that Bonhoeffer committed himself to this task.

Up to now the young lecturer and preacher had not been involved in decisions concerning greater church issues. He had no voice, nor indeed had he desire any. Now at the age of twenty-seven, he found himself among those whose names had suddenly become prominent. (Ibid.)

First is Bonhoeffer's radio address which is cut off, then is the Berlin ecumenical meeting of the World Alliance and the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work. After the Reichstag burned, Hitler declared his emergency decrees. Then Dietrich's father was called on to psychologically analyze the young suspect, Marinus van der Lubbe. The Bonhoeffer family is thrust right into Germany's fate. The Reichstag Fire Edict was later used to close Finkenwalde. On April first came the boycott of Jewish businesses. By April 7 Aryan legislation was enacted. Bethge writes that "Bonhoeffer was among the very few who sat down and worked through its possible consequences, from both a political and an ecclesiastical standpoint." (Bethge, 272)

Yesterday I read "The Church and the Jewish Question." from No Rusty Swords, 217-225.

(Incidently, if you don't know of No Rusty Swords or the trilogy of books edited by Edwin Robertson from Bonhoeffer's Gessamelte Schriften, then I should let you know that they can still be had thirty years later for much cheaper than the authorized versions coming out! I see copies popping up on Abebooks.com and ebay from time to time. I recently got a copy of the second book, The Way to Freedom, for only $5.00! These are selections of the letters, lectures and notes from the German. If you want the papers first hand, this is the cheap way to go.)

Bethge (pg. 272-276) gives a lengthy treatment of this essay (prepared for a group of pastors who met at Gerhard Jacobi's house) but here is my own assessment:
Beginning with an approach to the state that almost seems to lower the church's gaze from the world, it soon becomes clear that Bonhoeffer has Christian action in the world very much as its' focus. He masterfully argues theologically for the Church's witness to the state, without itself becoming a political animal. Individual Christians will be political, but Bonhoeffer asks with what voice the Church itself should speak. In the case of Hitler, he reasoned that a Status Confessionis was in order. This would involve a prepared statement from an Evangelical Church Council. This wasn't to happen, and of course Bonhoeffer's struggle within the Church for its' stand concerning the jews was only beginning. Bethge says that "by August 1933 Bonhoeffer had concluded beyond all doubt that there would be no question of belonging to a church that excluded the Jews." (pg. 273)

>From May through to August, Bethge exhaustively details the Confessional Church fight to preserve independence from the State. Paster D. Friedrich von Bodelschwingh is elected national Bishop to counter the German Christians but Hitler makes Ludwig Muller his commissioner of affairs. By July 14 Muller pushed through the new German Protestant Church constitution. Bonhoeffer and Franz Hildebrandt worked hard to sway votes in the church election on July 23, though it was clear it was a losing battle. The story of their run-in with the Gestapo on pg. 295-6 is worthy of note. Word got around after that that Dietrich had been sent to a concentration camp! The office of the Young Reformation movement was invaded and leaflets were confiscated. At this time Bonhoeffer and Hans Jacobi actually drove to Gestapo headquarters to confront them! Some of their leaflets were returned.

On the day of the church elections, Bonhoeffer preached this sermon in the Trinity Church in Berlin.

Church Election Sermon
No Rusty Swords, Fontana, 1977
pg. 208-213

TEXT: Matt. 16:13-18


If it were left to us, we would rather avoid the decisions

which are now forced upon us; if it were left to us, we would

rather not allow ourselves to be caught up in this church

struggle; if it were left to us, we would rather not have to

insist upon the rightness of our cause and we would so

willingly avoid the terrible danger of exalting ourselves over

others; if it were left to us, we would retire today rather

than tomorrow into private life and leave all the struggle and

the pride to others. And yet-thank God-it has not been left to

us. Instead, in God's wisdom, everything is going exactly as we

would rather not have it go. We are called upon to make a

decision from which we cannot escape. We must be content,

wherever we are, to face the accusation of being

self-righteous, to be suspected of acting and speaking as

though we were proud and superior to others. Nothing shall be

made easy for us. We are confronted by a decision, and a

difference of opinion. 'For this reason, if we are honest with

ourselves, we will not try to disguise the true meaning of the

church election today. In the midst of the creakings and

groanings of a crumbling and tottering church structure, which

has been shaken to its very foundations, we hear in this text

the promise of the eternal church, against which the gates of

hell shall not prevail; of the church founded on a rock, Christ

has built and which he continues to build throughout all time.

Where is this church? Where do we find it? Where do we hear its

voice? Come all you who ask in seriousness, all you who are

abandoned and left alone, we will go back to the Holy

Scriptures, we will go and look for the church together. Those

who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Jesus went out into a deserted place with his disciples, close

to the edge of the pagan lands, and there he was alone with

them. This is the place where for the first time he promises

them the legacy of his church. Not in the midst of the people,

not at the visible peak of his popularity; but in a distant and

unfrequented spot, far from the orthodox scribes and pharisees,

far from the crowds who on Palm Sunday would cry out "Hosanna"

and on Good Friday, "Crucify him," he speaks to his disciples

of the mystery and the future of his church. He obviously

believed that this church could not be built in the first place on the scribes, the priests,

or the masses; but that only this tiny group of disciples, who

followed him, was called to this work. And clearly he did not

think that Jerusalem, the city of the Temple and the center of

the life of the people, was the right place for this, but he

goes out into the wilderness, where he could not hope that his

preaching would achieve any eternal, visible effectiveness. And

last of all he does not consider that any of the great feast

days would have been suitable time to speak of his church, but

rather he promises this church in the face of death,

immediately before he tells of his coming passion for the first

time. The church of the tiny flock, the church out in the

wilderness, the church in the face of death--something like

this must be meant.

Jesus himself puts the decisive question, for which the

disciples had been waiting: "Who do people say that the

Son of man is?" Answer: "Some say John the Baptist, others say

Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." Opinions,

nothing but opinions; one could extend this list of opinions as

much as one wanted. . . some say you are a great man, some say

you are an idealist, some say you are a religious genius, some

say you are a great champion and hero, who will lead us to

victory and greatness. Opinions, more or less serious

opinions-- but Jesus does not want to build his church on

opinions. And so he addresses himself directly to his

disciples: "But who do you say that I am?" In this inevitable

confrontation with Christ there can be no "perhaps" or "some

say," no opinions but only silence or the answer which Peter

gives now: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living: God."


Here in the midst of human opinions and views, something quite

new suddenly becomes visible. Here God's name is named, here

the eternal is pronounced, here the mystery is recognized. Here

is no longer human opinion, but precisely the opposite, here is

divine revelation and confession of faith. "Blessed are you,

Simon Bar-jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to

you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are

Peter, and on this rock I will build my church."

What is the difference between Peter and the others? Is he

of such heroic nature that he towers over the others? He is

not. Is he endowed with such unheard-of strength of character?

He is not. Is he gifted with unshakable loyalty? He is not.

Peter is nothing, nothing but a person confessing his faith, a

person who has been confronted by Christ and who has recognized

Christ, and who now confesses his faith in him, and this

confessing Peter is called the rock on which Christ will build

his church.

Peter's church--that means the church of rock, the church of the

confession of Christ. Peter's church, that does not mean a

church of opinions and views, but the church of the revelation;

not a church in which what "people say" is talked about but the

church in which Peter's confession is made anew and passed on;

the church which has no other purpose in song, prayer,

preaching, and action than to pass on its confession of faith;

the church which is always founded on rock as long as it

remains within these limits, but which turns into a house built

on sand, which is blown away by the wind, as soon as it is

foolhardy enough to think that it may depart from or even for a

moment neglect this purpose.

But Peter's church-this is not something which one can say

with untroubled pride. Peter, the confessing, believing

disciple, Peter denied his Lord on the same night as Judas

betrayed him; in that night he stood at the fire and felt

ashamed when Jesus stood before the high priest; he is the man

of little faith, the timid man who sinks into the sea; Peter is

the disciple whom Jesus threatened: "Get thee behind me Satan";

it is he who later was again and again overcome by weakness,

who again and again denied and fell, a weak, vacillating man,

given over to the whim of the moment. Peter's church, that is

the church which shares these weaknesses, the church which

itself again and again denies and falls, the unfaithful,

fainthearted, timid church which again neglects its charge and

looks to the world and its opinions. Peter's church, that is

the church of all those who are ashamed of their Lord when they

should stand firm confessing him.

But Peter is also the man of whom we read: "He went- out and

wept bitterly." Of Judas, who also denied the Lord, we read:

"He went out and hanged himself." That is the difference. Peter

went out and wept bitterly. Peter's church is not only the

church which confesses its faith, nor only the church which

denies its Lord; it is the church which can still weep. "By the

waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we

remembered Zion" (Ps. 137:1). This is the church; for what does

this weeping mean other than that one has found the way back,

than that one is on the way home, than that one has become the

prodigal son who falls to his knees weeping before his father?

Peter's church is the church with that godly sadness which

leads to joy.

It does indeed seem very uncertain ground to build on,

doesn't it? And yet it is bedrock, for this Peter, this

trembling reed, is called by God, caught "by God, held by God.

"You are Peter," we all are Peter; not the Pope, as the 'Roman

Catholics would have it; not this person or that, but all of

us, who simply live from our confession of faith in Christ, as

the timid, faithless, fainthearted, and yet who live as people

sustained by God.

But it is not we who build. He builds the church. No human

being builds the church but Christ alone. Whoever intends to

build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it;

for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing

it. We must confess-he builds. We must proclaim--he builds. We

must pray to him-that he may build. We do not know his plan.

'We cannot see whether he is building or pulling down. It may

be that the times which by human standards are times of

collapse are for him the great times of construction. It may be

that from a human point of view great times for the church are

actually times of demolition. It is a great comfort which

Christ gives to his church: you confess, preach, bear witness

to me, and I alone will build where it pleases me. Do not

meddle in what is my province. Do what is given to you to do

well and you have done enough. But do it well. Pay no heed to

views and opinions, don't ask for judgments,

don't always be calculating what will happen, don't always be

on the lookout for another refuge! Let the church remain the

church! But church, confess, confess, confess! Christ alone is

your Lord, from his grace alone can you live as you are. Christ

builds.

And the gates of hell shall not prevail against you. Death,

the greatest heir of everything that has existence, here meets

its end. Close by the precipice of the valley of death, the

church is founded, the church which confesses Christ as its

life. The church possesses eternal life just where death seeks

to take hold of it; and death seeks to take hold of it

precisely because it possesses life. The Confessing Church is

the eternal church because Christ protects it. Its eternity is

not visible in this world. It is unhindered by the world. The

waves pass right over it and sometimes it seems to be

completely covered and lost. But the victory is its because

Christ its Lord is by its side and he has overcome the world of

death. Do not ask whether you can see the victory; believe in

the victory and it is yours.

In huge capital letters our text is etched into the dome of

the great church of St. Peter's, the papal church in Rome.

Proudly this church points to its eternity, to its visible

victory over the world, across the centuries. Such splendor,

which even our Lord did not desire or bear, is denied to us.

And yet a splendor which is immeasurably greater than this

splendor in the world, is assured to us. Whether the band of

believers is great or small, low or high, weak or strong, if it

confesses Christ the victory is assured to them, in eternity.

Fear not, little flock, for it is my Father's pleasure to give

you the kingdom. Where two or three are gathered together in my

name, there am I in the midst of them. The city of God is built

on a sure foundation. Amen.


This sermon reveals a lot about Bonhoeffer's ecclesiology. The Church is home to the confession. And this is what I believe. No matter how confusing it may appear, and I have American Evangelicalism in mind, the true Church that is overlooked in our triumphant speech, the suffering Church of confession, is victorious in Christ. This Jesus may be of no real use to politicians in this election season. He doesn't fit into the usual agendas that win votes. He is too weak for Republicans or Democrats. But He is victorious in our confession.


After the July 23 election defeat Bonhoeffer left for London. His visit there presented the opportunity to take a pastorate, but he wasn't sure this was the right thing to do. In August came the Bethel Confession. Much is written about this work and it remains one of the most important Church confessions in modern history. Bonhoeffer felt very spent around this time. He felt alone and helpless toward what the church in Berlin had become. This surely influenced his decision for the pastorate in London, though it was only to last nine months, with much of that time traveling back and forth to Germany.

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Germany, Eberhard Bethge, Berlin, Confessing Church, No Rusty Swords, election, Nazi, Hitler, victory, weakness, Bethel Confession, Trinity Church

Israeli/Palestinian peacemaking: protecting olive crops at harvest

The Times 
October 09, 2006
Rabbi leads defence of Palestinian olive groves
From Ian MacKinnon in Huwara, West Bank

The olives are stunted, the trees in poor condition. At the top of a ladder, stripping fruit from high branches, the Palestinian farmer Omar Karni is in his element, working his way up a dusty olive grove that has been in his family for generations. For the first time in four years, the family has been able to harvest the crop. Last time Mr Karni tried, radical Jewish settlers set fire to the tinder-dry land and beat him as he fled.  “I’m so happy to be here,” he said, stretching to reach a branch in the relentless sun. “This is my land and if I can’t come here to farm it I feel incomplete. I must do this to keep the land in my family.”

Mr Karni, 58, a Muslim, can go about his business without threat largely because of a rabbi who has co-ordinated with the Israeli Army and police to be on the spot to provide protection. Rabbi Arik Ascherman peers through binoculars towards the Har Berakha settlement near Nablus, in the West Bank, for signs of trouble. Heavily armed Israeli police patrol through the trees and an army Humvee squats across the dirt track to deter unwanted visitors.  Rabbi Ascherman, co-director of Rabbis for Human Rights, will spend the six-week olive season rising at dawn with other volunteers to put his life on the line to protect Palestinian farmers from armed Jewish settlers.

Without the Jewish cleric, the farmers would be fired upon or beaten, their harvest stolen and ancient trees — some dating from Roman times — felled with chainsaws.  “This whole issue of trying to prevent the olive harvest is the ongoing struggle to get Palestinians off the land,” the rabbi said. “But if we Jews are to survive in this land we must restore hope by being here to break down the stereotypes the Palestinians have of Israelis. This is the best single thing I can do to protect my two children.”  The rabbi and his fellow volunteers — some Israeli, some foreign — will help to harvest and to police groves in 30 West Bank villages that sit cheek-by-jowl with Jewish settlements and have become flashpoints.  Last year attacks rose sharply at harvest-time, with feelings running high over Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip. Thousands of olive trees were cut down, others damaged, crops stolen, and several Palestinian farmers suffered serious injury at the hands of settler mobs.

Gamilah Biso, an Arabic-speaking Jewish volunteer who was brought up in Damascus, realises that her presence and that of her colleagues is vital to ensure that the olives can be harvested from the West Bank’s ten million trees to produce the 36,000 tonnes of olive oil. That accounts for one fifth of Palestinian agriculture. “If we weren’t here the farmer and his family just wouldn’t be able to come,” Ms Biso said, deftly stripping the green olives from the branches. “It would be too easy for the settlers to shoot them.”  Victory in a two-year court case brought by the rabbis and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel may help to ease tensions. It has guaranteed the farmers access to their land and obliged the army to protect that right.
The Army recently drove away settlers who had come to steal the olives from Mr Karni’s land — yet subsequently barred the family from their 12-acre grove because they had arrived before the agreed schedule. Mr Karni’s early appearance was driven by the desperation of current Palestinian circumstances. The harvest now offers a vital economic lifeline.  “We came to raise money for the Ramadan celebrations,” he said. “No one has any stable work these days. So the harvest has become very, very important to survive. We await the harvest like we await the rain.”

Tags: Rabbi, Olive crops, harvest, Gamilah Biso, Arab, Jew, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Peacekeeping, non-violence

Another look at the "Desperate Kind of Faithful" story

Luke 7: 36-50; Matt 26:6-13; Mark 14: 3-9; John 12:2-11
I'm looking again at the quote below the title of my blog, "A Desperate Kind of Faithful".
By way of explanation, I have in truth done the hermeneutically unthinkable and have combined two stories into one narrative, mixing and matching characters to form an idea. There are two foot anointing stories in the gospels. One at the pharisee Simon's party (Lk 7:36-50) and the other at the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany.
I said, "This humiliating, messy, desperate attempt at kindness is my kind of story. It illustrates the only kind of faith that fits me." And as I think about it I realize it actually fits someone who I often think about quite negatively. The truth of the matter is that I'm more often the Pharisee Simon or (the money man Judas in ) in this story. I complain about the finances. I'm perturbed about someone who interrupts things, gets in Jesus way, spends lavishly on feet that will get dirty again, and makes a scene. I'd like to think I'm the woman, but I fear I'm often Simon. I judge in an instant actions which I can hardly interpret because I'm not a part of the intimate action, and I, unlike Jesus, know neither the motives nor the semblance involved. This person I'm thinking about is more active with their loving action than with their words. He trips over his tongue, the words come out all wrong, he sounds angry, misguided, repellent. But in action he is the quickest to clean up a spill. He wants to know just where to help and how. He works behind the scenes doing many things I know nothing about. I only truly know my brothers and sisters here in community through Jesus Christ.
I'm not telling who this person is I'm thinking about. Its not you so don't ask.

Tags: Luke 7: 36-50; Matt 26:6-13; Mark 14: 3-9; John 12:2-11; anointing, Jesus, feet, devotional, community

Another Pentecostal documentary, a new study, and more religion and politics

Three things that are interrelated. Last night I saw the 2001 movie documentary "Hell House."
It may still be airing on the Sundance channel and in reruns of This American Life. Michael and I set it up in the dining room here and many other young folks came in and out. A young lady sat on my left who had never before been exposed to a Pentecostal worship service. You may remember that I recently review Jesus Camp.

The Hell House experience is similar to Jesus Camp, but provocative in different ways. Jesus Camp is a much more politically prescient and provocative experience. The subjects of Jesus Camp are harder to watch than Hell House because they are little children. With Hell House, an AoG church attracts thousands of people into a Halloween experience that's really all about sin, culture, and a final invitation for conversion. In Jesus Camp we follow a number of families around in their subculture and then watch their Christian camp experience. Its interesting that I feel like more action is going on in Jesus Camp even though its much more internalized. Hell House is a church reaching out, Jesus Camp is really the day to day (albeit intense) workings of a church subculture among its own kids.

In other news, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has just released a 10 country 233 page survey of Pentecostalism. Bible Belt Blogger calls it "Everything you wanted to know about Pentecostalism." I just have to say that you can read up all you want on Pentecostals and still miss the fact that it is a uniquely lived experience. From the outside looking in, it could appear downright Shamanistic. Having spent a good deal of time in Assembly of God churches I would warn that that appearance is severly misleading. AoG services can be just as boring, maybe more than elsewhere at times.

Always remember too that members inside are as capable of self-criticism as the most vitriolic outside scoffer. A church worship scene from Hell House last night brought back memories of the style of preaching that smacks more of a pep rally than sermon. But I also remember the opposition to this style among professors in my AoG college. I learned well the lesson in my Pnuematology course: "The Holy Spirit's work always points to Christ. Anything other than that is really not Him." I remember that professor asking and really listening to our different youth group "horror" stories. Illicit use of the Holy Spirit's name for personal ego or monetary gain. One woman with tears recounted how she sought in vain the gift of Tongues and was made to feel sinful and unspiritual for not having recieved it in a certain time-frame. My professor expressed his sorrow and assured her that was not AoG teaching but hurtful error.

Finally, Walter Russell Mead's article God's Country? in Foreign Affairs is worthy of attention. He seems very interested in what Evangelicals can contribute to foreign policy. He writes:

"Evangelicals are likely to focus more on U.S. exceptionalism than liberals would like, and they are likely to care more about the morality of U.S. foreign policy than most realists prefer. But evangelical power is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and those concerned about U.S. foreign policy would do well to reach out."

Well this will make somebody happy. It would be very difficult for me to sit at a table with Richard Land with an open ear toward most anything he has to say on foreign policy or the environment. I went over all this with Ron Sider last year.

Tags: Hell House, Documentary, Jesus Camp, Pentecostalism, Foreign Policy, Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs, Evangelicals, Ron Sider

Life under Military Occupation

I finally have the first video from my 2003 journey to Israel and Palestine uploaded on military occupation. Dr. Elias Rishmawi of Beit Sahour is a wonderful resource. There's more to come from this interview.

Tags: Dr. Elias Rishmawi, Palestine, Military Occupation

Eberhard Bethge on American fundamentalism

For those who like straight lines, Halden Doerge has blogged a scene from John deGruchy's Daring, Trusting, Spirit where the Bethges visit Jerry Falwell's church. The experience reminded Eberhard Bethge of Germany in 1933.

Tags: Eberhard Bethge, John deGruchy, Jerry Falwell, Germany 1933

Jesus Camp

I saw the movie "Jesus Camp" on Friday night. In it the camp director, Becky Fischer, mentions some websites that describe Palestinians training their children as terrorists. Her Christian Zionist sympathies are in rare form. The film is a provocative experience. Watching it was reliving a lot of really bad spiritual experiences from my own youth. From the website I noticed that it was screened in Springfield Missouri (aka. "Jesus Land"). That's intense. I would not agree with Ted Haggard who said the film was hateful. (Of course he's agin it. He's in it!) I would say that it is incendiary, but no more so than GodStuff on the Daily Show. Charismatic Evangelicals should have the experience of viewing themselves through the eyes of their critics, especially when their "B.S. button" is apparently broken. We need the reminder that we have no special patent on the words "Thus saith the Lord" and that indeed we fall under the usual judgment every time we presume to speak for God.

The hullabaloo on youtube over kids praying to GWB is a misinterpretation. That particular scene in the film is provocative, but it's also clear when you see the whole clip that the kids are not praying to Bush. They are pronouncing a blessing on him and praying for him. But the trailer edit is quick enough to give a wrong impression. Even so the use of the Christian flag, the US flag, and the words spoken are enough that I'd consider it blasphemous. Another scene that I found worse in a way was when the kids are given ceramic cups with the word "government" on them and told to smash them in the name of the Lord. Somehow that's not anarchist, but prophetic in nature. But I'm sure the whole thing is not meant to be analyzed in great detail. We're supposed to be in the Spirit and not use our brains.

Therein lies the true escape hatch for all that goes on in the Jesus Camp services. These are ecstatic spiritual moments which the viewer must share in order to rightly interpret. The scenes are shocking because we're not in the "Spirit." Unbelievers have no right to judge. I can see and feel the reasoning in this. When I'm speaking in tongues I don't care to have a camera on me. I wouldn't care to have a camera follow my seven year old daughter around. When Rachael is speaking about dead churches or people who don't know Jesus you have to take it at face value. This is a child speaking of her experience, of things she's been told, of the way she percieves life. At age seven your world is pretty small. Things are very simple and that's ok.
On the other hand, when a mom says "There are two kinds of people in the world, those who love Jesus and those who don't" I can honestly say this woman is willfully choosing a small world that, though said to be out of love for Jesus, is blissfully ignorant of His work in the world. When she teaches her son to be ignorant of evolution and American history she is doing him a dis-service.

These are the kind of hard issues in the film. See it if you can. Rich Tatum, former webmaster for the General Council of the Assemblies of God, has a review of Jesus Camp up on the Christianity Today website. I think he's being very hopeful about a mainstream Pentecostal position, but unless things have changed a whooooole lot in Springfield since I lived there--the AoG is still very anti-left.

Tags: Jesus Camp movie, George W. Bush, Ted Haggard, God Stuff, Evangelicalism, Charismatics, Becky Fischer

Blogging Bonhoeffer, some preliminary thoughts to Chapter Seven

Some preliminary thoughts to Chapter Seven of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge:

1. Do not cast Dietrich Bonhoeffer vs. Adolph Hitler. They are not hero and antihero. I say this because almost every reference to Bonhoeffer that I've seen this year does this to one degree or another, such as this youtube video. I don't mean these folks aren't well-intentioned. It's just a stupidly easy characterization that takes us from our vantage point in history to theirs and back again without any real struggle!
2. 1933 is not the beginning of Bonhoeffer's true significance. To begin here is to lose real sight of him.
3. Hitler's rise to power, and the situation in Germany before him have local significance long before their universal significance.
4. We cannot judge history beginning with the Allied victory in 1945. I come to chapter seven with very mixed feelings because of my country's appeal for the War on Terror framed on a revisionist history of WWII. American Christians, like Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson view Bonhoeffer as a model Christian with a simple eye toward his opposition to Adolph Hitler. I don't see FoF or Colson with any real interest in Bonhoeffer's theology up to this point. Bonhoeffer from this vantage point is our vicarious hero in the ideological war against evil. We're on Dietrich/Jesus' side against the Hitler/Devil side. How convenient. This really ticks me off. To really enter Dietrich Bonhoeffer's world is to enter a losing situation, where pacifists and gypsies, gays and bible thumpers all suffer the same execution by hanging or firing squad. To try to score points for Jesus after the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust is blasphemous.
5. When Hitler rose to power on January 30, 1933 the Bonhoeffer family knew they were at war long before the start of World War. (Bethge, p. 257) This brings up an important question regarding what it means to be a State. If the citizens of a country are at war with their own leadership, how are they it's citizens? And who will protect them? Before Hitler Germany had been attempting democracy since 1918. To really understand Bonhoeffer it is paramount to gain a working knowledge of Germany's frustrated government after WWI. I have Germany Tried Democracy: A Political History of the Reich from 1918 to 1933 by S. William Halperin. For a simpler reference there's Wikipedia's entry for the Weimar Republic.

I am bemused and saddened by the way I hear Hitlerizations being bandied about in the news. I've heard President Bush referred to as a Hitler more times than I can count. I also hear Hitler characterized as a Christian. My hope is that these folks will take a serious look at the Church Struggle in it's right context and really learn from history. Here in America we have our own crisis situation. References to fascism, as much as we would like to resonate with them, really don't get us further in our own struggle. The worst part of our crisis is that we don't feel it much at all. We are kept numb by so many things. Conversations are masterfully twisted into mute points. Victory and safety from the "right" side of history has the effect of stripping our need for God or the suffering servant Jesus Christ.

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fortress Press, Eberhard Bethge, Adolph Hitler, Focus on the Family, Chuck Colson, Weimar Republic, youtube

ipod playlist "New Hymns"

I don't pretend to be 'into' hymnology but I do have to say, the stuff Johnny Cash released for his recordings with Rick Rubin and from his "Personal File" selection that was found in the House of Cash vault, together make for an expanded definition of hymnody. Here's a playlist I put together for my ipod. A lot of these are story songs, but they all take vulnerability on the part of singer and an assurance about God or the Beloved, hidden or known. These songs have a spiritual effect on me, both in the words and in the way they are sung. There are a few other artists besides Cash sprinkled in here too.

"New Hymns" Playlist

A Half Mile a Day    4:25    Johnny Cash   
Bird on a wire    4:04    Johnny Cash  
Bird on a wire (live with orchestra)    5:13    Johnny Cash  
Christian Soldier    3:05    Shaver   
Down There By the Train    5:34    Johnny Cash   
Down there by the train    5:49    Johnny Cash                
Further On Up the Road    3:25    Johnny Cash
God's Gonna Cut You Down    2:38    Johnny Cash  
Help Me    2:51    Johnny Cash   
Hurt    3:38    Johnny Cash   
I'm in Love    2:22    Shaver   
I Came to Believe    3:44    Johnny Cash   
I Can't Even Walk Without You Holding My Hand    3:54    Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives   
In My Life    2:57    Johnny Cash 
Is That You    4:52    Buddy Miller   
Jesus Christ is Still the King    2:40    Billy Joe Shaver 
Like a Soldier    2:50    Johnny Cash  
Lord, Lord, Lord    2:20    Johnny Cash   
Love's been Good to Me    3:18    Johnny Cash   
My Children Walk in Truth    2:50    Johnny Cash  
No Earthly Good    1:51    Johnny Cash  
No earthly good    2:43    Johnny Cash   
Paradise    3:03    Johnny Cash 
Redemption    3:03    Johnny Cash  
Spiritual    5:07    Johnny Cash   
Thank You    3:46    Kris Kristofferson 
That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)    2:35    Johnny Cash  
The Beast In Me    2:45    Johnny Cash  
The House is Falling Down    2:51    Johnny Cash
The Kneeling Drunkard's Plea    2:32    Johnny Cash   
The Man Who Couldn't Cry    5:01    Johnny Cash   
The Way Worn Traveler    2:03    Johnny Cash  
There's A Higher Power    3:53    Buddy Miller   
There's A Mother Always Waiting At Home    4:21    Johnny Cash   
Try and Try Again    3:38    Billy Joe Shaver               
Unchained    2:51    Johnny Cash  
What Is Man    2:24    Johnny Cash 
What On Earth (Will You do for heaven's sake)    2:44    Johnny Cash
When I Stop Dreaming    3:11    Johnny Cash   
Why Me Lord    2:20    Johnny Cash   
You Can't Beat Jesus Christ    3:46    Shaver   

odd trophy/knick knack shelf

Here is my odd trophy shelf. It's full of things that I like to look at but that have no real useful purpose. The little Ford model cars on the left are pencil sharpeners. The story that goes with these is that as a boy my grandfather from Texas gave me one with the condition that I not break it and always take care of it. So here it is. Somewhere I came upon another one just like it. In my grandpa's dining room in Texas is a showroom full of little cars and knick knacks. I didn't understand the reasoning as a kid, to give me a toy that wasn't for play. But now I have lots of little knick knacks that I appreciate. Beside the cars are five pipes. They are: a Missouri Mierschaum (Corn cob), three different pipes from India, and a real Mierschaum from Egypt (thanks Jen!). I don't smoke and never have but somehow one pipe led to another until I have five. The big cross in back was made out of a block of wood from a sheet metal pallet that I made back in 1998(?). The other small cross is from a little cross making shop in Beit Sahour Palestine. The image over the speaker is of John the Baptist pointing to Christ. The same painting that hung over Karl Barth's desk.

On the smoking thing, I remember that dad once sat me down and promised me a hundred dollars if I could make it through high school without taking up smoking. I think we both forgot about that wager. I remember that conversation happening because I used to sneak through the desk in the office and play with the cigarettes that were taken from the women at the homeless shelter where we lived. I never actually lit one up, but I was curious. Another time I remember walking back from the circus at the Checker Dome with some families from the shelter. We were walking along and one of the moms held out her hand with a pack of cigarettes in it to tap it. I snuck up and grabbed it out of her hand and threw it over the fence next to us. We were friends and I thought it would be a fun joke. She was quite upset, but instead of tearing into me she made her son climb this ten foot chain length fence and get her cigarettes. I learned a valuable lesson from that. Other people's property is their property! Cigarettes cost money that as a kid I couldn't afford to pay. My stupid little intervention was nothing short of theft. Friendship and play is no excuse for invasion of personal space.

Tags: Checker Dome, cigarettes, homelessness, shelter life, personal space, friendship

Surmisals and pontifications

I really want to have something to say about Terri Gross's Fresh Air on Christian Zionism and Lauren Sandler's Salon article on the Mar's Hill Church. I could tell you my sundry opinions but at the end of the day it's really all too disjointed. My final thoughts are that the subjects discussed are important to me but that they haven't provoked anything so new as to warrant a discussion. Terri Gross deserves kudos for raising public attention, but can't really get us past the outrage to unpack who John Hagee is. The show leaves us with "dangerous kook." Similarly, Lauren Sandler raises the important issue of a missional congregation appealing to young people but being decidedly anti-egalitarian. All we're left with though is that Lauren herself has an axe to grind and can't create multi-dimensional characterizations. With both stories, sadly these journalists can't get past the "make them bleed" angle. Terri Gross is so gifted at colorful, multidimensional interviews, but she doesn't quite know what to do with John Hagee's blend of horse sense and Armaggedon. Her question "Do you really take the Bible literally?" Isn't so much for Hagee as for herself. Lauren Sandler falls in the trap of needing her subjects to be one dimensional so that she can hammer home her point: Fear the new brand of young literalist traditionalists! They're so hip, and so dangerous!

But yes I agree: Christian Zionism bad. Egalitarianism good. On the other hand, am I afraid of the evangelical plot to christianize land, air and sea? That would be hard since I am one. I'm not one of "them" but I do love Jesus. There. I've just succumbed to a very assanine description of myself. Truth is I can't love Jesus on any terms other than His. Thankfully that's not set by any particular social/political agenda. What a tar baby this has become.

Daily RSS feeds

I have these links in my Firefox browser toolbox. They might reflect the ebb and flow, the back and forth, the jar and yank nature of my thinking. I don't always read them in detail. I pick and choose. If I'm missing something crucial let me know.
First Born Son-Omar
The Ekklesia Project - Home
The Revealer, a daily review of religion and the press
Bible Belt Blogger
Cold Desert
Sub Ratione Dei
Faith and Theology
Healing Iraq
Weblog - Christianity Today Magazine

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Only one moment of Moody Bible Institute's Radio station today was enough to reveal that the name of Jesus is being slandered more than ever before in America. The National Association of Evangelicals took out a full page ad in Christianity Today this month warning that Evangelicals may soon be on the "endangered species list." But then I saw this wonderfully candid comment from the NAE's president, Ted Haggard:

"We're church people. We always use fear and guilt to motivate people," Haggard told Bible Belt Blogger, punctuating the quip with hearty laughter.

You won't hear lines like that on WMBI any day soon. I wonder how much longer fear and suspicion will work to motivate Evangelicals. I can't help but think its just a mimicking of cultural signifiers. We're in a War on Terror. Be Afraid. We're in a War for Culture. Be Afraid.

There are better things to lose sleep over.

Tags: culture wars, WMBI, National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard

New CSPress Blog

As you can probably tell, I've been playing with BetaBlogger's new features and picked this time to start a new blog for Cornerstone Press Chicago! I've been toying with the idea of a publishing blog for some time. So there you go.

Tags: Cornerstone Press Chicago, Blogs, BetaBlogger

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

Blogging Bethge's Bonhoeffer Chapter 6 Lecturer and Pastor 1931-1932

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised Edition by Eberhard Bethge, Fortress Press, 2000.

Chapter 6 Lecturer and Pastor 1931-1932

p. 173-256

Two quotes begin the chapter and set the tone. They involve a fear of disappointing, of getting things right with the state of German public life as such.

How is one to preach such things to these people? Who still believes them? The invisibility destroys us. . . . This absurd, perpetual state of being thrown back upon the invisible God--no one can stand it any longer. (Bethge, 173.)

Bethge writes:

“Bonhoeffer’s return to Germany in 1931 represented a break in his development that was certainly sharper than the momentous political and ecclesiastical upheaval that followed two years later. The second major phase of his career began now, not in 1933. The period of learning and roaming had come to an end. He now began to teach on a faculty whose theology he did not share, and to preach in a church whose self-confidence he regarded as unfounded. More aware than before, he now became part of a society that was moving toward political, social, and economic chaos.” (173)

At age 25 he now worked in three different fields, the academic as a lecturer at Berlin University, the pastoral as a student chaplain teaching catechism, a youth club for the unemployed in Charlottenburg and, in ecumenics, as a youth secretary for the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches and the Ecumenical Council for Practical Christianity (Life and Work). These two groups were seeds of what would later be the World Council of Churches.

In the late summer of 1931Bonhoeffer does a reconnaissance mission to explore these three fields before him. Isn't that just like him? Always the need to know and be in control!

Bethge again:

Bonhoeffer indeed found it difficult to subordinate himself to those who did not meaure up to his exacting standards. . . . He had an instinctive fear of being surprised by circumstances beyond his control without first having sassured himself of an alternative. it was very difficult for him simply to "believe"; indeed, he would have described such "belief" as laziness.

On July 10 in Bonn, through his friend Erwin Sutz, Bonhoeffer finally fulfilled the longing he'd held from his student days to meet Karl Barth. Karl, at 45, is twenty years older than Dietrich at this point. Bonhoeffer wrote to Sutz:
"I have, I think, seldom regretted anything in my theological past so much as the fact that I did not go to him sooner." (Bethge, 186.) The relationship between these two men is of such importance that Bethge takes ten pages to describe it! That's typical of Bethge's writing. He often breaks into the narrative with long theological summaries. But few are as important to me as these ten pages. Bethge explains that while the two hit it off Barth never really got to know where Bonhoeffer was coming from theologically until it was too late. So where Bonhoeffer saw Barth's advice and respected him highly, he also knew they could never truly be on the same page. Barth hadn't read Sanctorum Communio or Act and Being and so knew nothing of Bonhoeffer's theologia relationis or the Lutheran emphasis on the theologia crucis.
Bethge lists four stages to their relationship in which he demonstrates how each were moving in different directions personally.

"In direct contrast to Barth, Bonhoeffer concentrated on the terrifying proximity of an actively intervening God to preserve the majesty of God from being cheapened in the pulpit, and sought to proclaim him in the concreteness of grace-filled commandment." (Bethge, 182)

Catechism (186-189)
Dietrich and Franz Hildrebrandt worked together on a Lutheran catechism from July to September 1931. Bethge notes that Bonhoeffer worked on two, one in 1931 and one in 1936. He says neither were "simple or convincing as a learning tool." Not as interested in teaching as "attempting to put into words what the Lutheran faith says today. Questions and answers are designed for concentrated reading." Hildebrandt came upon Luther's Statement of Faith and this is what their catechism was based on. I wish I could post here the entire 1931 catechism from No Rusty Swords as it is hard to come by.

Cambridge (189-202)
Bethge calls this the "most momentous of the three events."
"His interest in the ecumenical movement was at first incidental, but it took such a hold on him that it became an integral part of his being. He was soon furiously involved in the internal battles about its orientation, and he defended it enthusiastically in public. The emerging world of the Protestant ecumenical movement became a vital part of his theology, his role in the church struggle, and ultimately his political commitment."

Bethge points out that unlike in Britain, it was the academics and not church officials who first advocated ecumenical involvement. With this kind of representation to the outside, profs didn't really represent the church, but as civil servants, were in lock step with the Reich. Bonhoeffer was significant because he represented a youthful academic emphasis on the role of the church, and later as a pastor in London he used his ecumenical influence to sway the expatriate churches in London against the home German churches. But that's not for a few chapters. I'm getting ahead.

Transition from theologian to Christian (202-206)
Much has been made of Dietrich's transition. I've heard it described here in the US emphasized as a conversion. Stephen Haynes (The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon) points out that Evangelical Americans have cast Bonhoeffer in their image using this transition is a touchstone. This comment from Bethge might be a cold slap for them:

"Bonhoeffer never mentioned the biographical background of this thought to his students. They learned nothing about a conscious moment of a turning point. He had always been repulsed by the pietist' deliberately told stories of their conversions. But this did not mean that he avoided making decisions whose time had come and that held the seeds of the future, including a new responsibility for the world in the final years." (Bethge, 206)

Clifford Green in Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality spends ten pages (p. 140-147) on what this Transition most likely meant to Bonhoeffer personally as it relates to his theological development. Green locates "the soteriological problem of the powerful ego" as a central theme throughout Bonhoeffer's early theology. And this issue of the powerful ego is worked out of Dietrich's own personal struggles.
Green writes:

"I have already demonstrated the striking connection between the soteriological problem of the powerful ego in Bonhoeffer's theology and his autobiographical memoirs and correspondence. Without suggesting for a moment that personal concerns were the only factors influencing the shape and direction of his theology, this connection is quite apparent. In Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer portrays human beings created in communities of mutual love, freedom, and responsibility for on another. To be human is to be essentally social, in its interpersonal and corporate aspects. This essential sociality is turned against itself by individual and collective egotism. Self-seeking, egocentricity, the dominant will, using the other as a means to the ends of the self-these destroy the primal community. The sinful person is now alone, a "solitary lord and creator" in the solidarity of egocentric individualism. Since being human is essentially being a person in sociality, the crisis of the self and the crisis of sociality is one and the same. From this loss of true humanity in sociality people are delivered by Christ. Christ is the reality of the new humanity, personally present in the social community of the church; by his Spirit of love people are freed from the isolation of their individual egocentricity and domination of others, and bonded together in a new social community characterized by "active being for one another." Both the individual person and human community are, in the church, in the process of being made over and renewed." (Green, pg. 149)

University (207-221)
Bonhoeffer spent two years as a lecturer at Berlin University. Not only did he continue his teaching about Christ located in an anologia relationis (I don't want to lose you here, this latin refers to how we encounter Christ in the boundary situation that faces us in every human relationship) but the "Bonhoeffer Circle" that formed among his students is an example in itself of Bonhoeffer's theological praxis. He did not care about dogmatics without engagement. Christ is God's answer to human estrangement. So as early as 1932 Bethge describes the rudiments of community taking place between Dietrich and his students:

"In 1932 they lugged potatoes, flour, and veg­etables on a wheelbarrow to the Stettin train station so that they could spend the weekend together in the country, first at the Prebelow youth hostel and then in a cabin in Biesenthal. They talked theology, made hesitant attempts at spiritual exercises, went for long walks, and listened to Bonhoeffer's collection of Negro spirituals. It was the first time they had spoken about things like forming fellowship, committing themselves to organized spiritual life, and the possibilities of serving in social settlement work. But there was still a long way to go before any of this was put into practice, and everything was on a free and informal basis. Bonhoeffer did not force anything. These were the hesitant beginnings of what later took shape in Finkenwalde and in Bonhoeffer's Life Together." (Bethge, 208)

I must say that one of my favorite photos of Bonhoeffer graces the cover of Green's book. He sits surrounded by his students in 1932 and there is this beautiful mix of men and women, smiling, one playing a flute. The photo describes the beauty of the theology itself! Not cold ideology, not austere irrelevant facts, but persons----in relation!

Bethge spends ten pages describing Bonhoeffer's university lectures. Because this blog is already no doubt the longest I've ever written, I won't take the time to describe them here. Bethge says Dietrich found "delivering monologues a burden" and that "preferring student groups and seminars. . . . the further he advanced into the unknown, the more he longed for dialogue and criticism." This indicates a certain definite style and makes it all the more interesting that his lectures from this period are lost. Did Bonhoeffer himself so little value them that he did not care that they were lost? We are left with the Christology lectures from 1933 and Creation and Fall---which he gave his students permission to publish. Quite honestly I did not find Bethge's account of the lectures here terribly inviting.

So I turned to Green to immerse myself in the lectures for this blog. Granted it's mainly Christology and Creation and Fall as they relate the earlier theological works, but Green makes the valuable point that there is a stream, a definite progression and continuity in Bonhoeffer's theology (that is sociality) that anyone really wanting to know Bonhoeffer rightly must follow. I'm not going to take you into Green's text here (pgs. 105-246) because of the length(!) but I will offer one criticism. Green focuses on Bonhoeffer up to 1933 but then offers a critical evaluation of Discipleship as a major theological extension of the early theology. He completely ignores Life Together and moves into Ethics and the Prison writings. Granted, there is lack of theological attention to how Letters and Papers and Ethics relate to Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being. But to ignore Life Together is perilous! I guess we can't have everything. For an example of how Finkenwalde (and thus Life Together) is a realization and progression of Bonhoeffer's theological development I must direct you to Craig Slane's book Bonhoeffer As Martyr (pgs. 207-250).

The Church (221-238)
Bonhoeffer was ordained in the German State Lutheran Church on November 15, 1931 in the Matthew Church near Potsdam Place. He couldn't choose his own pastorate. He was assigned a chaplaincy to the students of a technical college in Charlottenburg. This effort didn't prove very fruitful. He was also assigned a confirmation class in Wedding, a Berlin district. Now things get a bit more light hearted and fun. Bethge says:

The class was out of control; the minister responsible was at the end of his tether, and in fact died several weeks later. Bonhoeffer wrote Sutz that they had "quite literally harassed [him] to death."

Bonhoeffer's success with this group of kids is really cool. It reveals a gentle patience and strength to his personality. He also began a youth club in Charlottenburg which flourished only for a brief while and then to seek a ministry in the "overcrowded slums of east Berlin" (Bethge, 231). His desire for a church there didn't work out though as his application was denied in favor of someone else. He didn't give up and found another position in the same district. Then he found out that Aryan clause would soon be applied to that church, which would have betrayed his solidarity with Jewish Christians.

During this time Bethge says that Bonhoeffer "did not join the public on the question of ethnic nationality in the church." "He was concerned with building small groups; he was not interested in publicity or journalism."(p. 233) Instead, in 1932, he got involved with some guys who would become Martin Niemoller's Pastors' Emergency League.

Bethge spends four pages on Bonhoeffer's preaching. (234-238) I assume that he was basically an itinerant during this time, filling in as a guest for different pastors. I get the sense that Bonhoeffer believed in preaching and in the power of the sermon more than most other agencies of the Church. He locates the sermon as a sacrament of the Word, though I admit I don't fully understand this. Clyde Fant has a book called Bonhoeffer: Worldly Preaching (Thomas Nelson, 1975), which is one of the first books I ever read on Bonhoeffer. It is taken up with lectures from the Finkenwalde era.

Ecumenism (238-255)
I must admit that this final section (of this chapter) on Bonhoeffer's ecumenical was the hardest of any sections to get through. I found terribly boring! Painfully boring! But before you call me a ninny let me just say that I have very little personal connection to the work of the World Council of Churches. I'm beginning to educate myself on it, largely through the work of Lesslie Newbigen. But in the circles in which I was raised, we were ecumenical but also kept anything that smacked of universalism at arms length. So my family had no direct connection to the WCC that I know of. Reading about all these seed organizations for the WCC, with their very formal and political ways of doing everything I had to fight to stay interested!

However, Bonhoeffer's involvement here provided a much needed education and placement for his relations with Bishop Bell in the coming years. In chapter eight it all becomes clear with Bonhoeffer's pastorate in London and his full engagement in the Church Struggle.

Well that's a weak way to end this chapter, I know. I only wish I had more to say about each of these sections. I hope you get a sense of how important this two year period is and how difficult it is to unpack. In the true spirit of Bonhoeffer's sociality, I really want to hear from anyone plodding through this period. Comments please!

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, Eberhard Bethge, Discipleship, Biography, Clifford Green, Craig Slane

Bill W. describing community in the 12 Steps

To see community through my eyes you must understand a loving community of recovering addicts.
Bill W. put it this way in the Big Book:

"An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature. Our struggles with them are variously strenuous, comic, and tragic. One poor chap committed suicide in my home. He could not, or would not, see our way of life. There is, however, a vast amount of fun about it all. I suppose some would be shocked at our seeming worldliness and levity. But just underneath there is deadly earnestness. Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish. Most of us feel we need look no further for Utopia. We have it with us right here and now. Each day my friend's simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men."
Alcoholics Anonymous, Third Edition, pg. 16, 1976.

"Utopia and peace on earth and good will to men" smack so trite and pollyanish, but not if you know addicts! They are all or nothing people and they must throw themselves headfirst into the kingdom or not find it at all! Thank God that he meets us at our greatest point of need.

Tags: Community, 12 Steps, Bill W.

11,448

In his book Daring, Trusting Spirit John deGruchy reveals the larger context of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's participation in the resistance against Adolph Hitler:

The losses of the Bonhoeffer family were symbolic of a far more widespread loss that was most evident to the immediate survivors of the resistance. In the months that followed the failed coup of July 1944, the Nazis executed 11,448 people suspected of being involved in various resistance groups. These were people from all walks of life - the churches, the Communist and socialist parties, the civil service, the military - who had been engaged in some kind of activity to overthrow the Nazi regime and to create a foundation for what would follow. The Nazi regime, even in its death throes, had managed to eradicate its most articulate and thoughtful opponents. (Daring, Trusting Spirit: Bonhoeffer's Friend Eberhard Bethge, John deGruchy, Fortress Press, 2006)

Keep that number in mind, 11, 448, the next time you are tempted to say "but" when referring to Bonhoeffer's Christian witness. I have heard so many sloppy arguments for why Bonhoeffer's life was wasted by the Resistance. Here are 11,448 more "wasted" lives. I recently had a gem of a book given to me titled Dying We Live: The final messages and records of some Germans who defied Hitler, Edited by Hellmut Gollwitzer, Fontana, 1960. On the other side, Dietrich Bonhoeffer would not have regarded his own decision as prescriptive in every case, shoot, most cases. Neither did he care that his name be honored or understood. He knew that he would be forever misunderstood as one more German around during the Holocaust--"numbered with the transgressors". He did not mind the stain on his name because the name of Christ was stained and he didn't mind the shame of that association.

I'd like to blog through Dying We Live at some point. Also, I picked up a review galley of What About Hitler? Wrestling with Jesus's Call to Nonviolence in an Evil World, by Robert Brimlow, Brazos, 2006 at the Ekklesia Gathering this year. I'll try to cover it when I get to the imprisonment in my Bethge blogging.

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, resistance, Hitler

the morning after the chatter of 9/11

.25 miles to the former blood alley to take my four year old girl to school.
corner one: I am solicited for money for food.
corner two: I catch sight of a newspaper headline that reads
"US in a Struggle for Civilization"
corner three: Broadway and Wilson. Nothing.
corner four: a bike rider strangely warns us all of "the coming pigeon
shit." He yells out "don't slip there." How kind.
corner five: Right turn down Clifton. The Former blood alley. On my
left is a broken bottle, shards up in the street. No time to pick it up,
I reason. No trash can in sight. Outside her school sit, stand, recline
four persons I see every day. Clients, "housing guests" who live in the
shelter that doubles as my daughter's school. They smoke and chat. I
smile and wish them a good morning. They smile back and return regards
between puffs.
Down the corridor and to the back. Left and past a broken
elevator into the beautiful sanctuary of PreK. I play a little with my
girl and we kiss. She is at home so I leave.
Back into the street. I will be human, I say to myself.
Here more smiles and good mornings.
Back at the sight of the broken glass, an unmarked (though clearly
marked with antennas and plates) police car parks over that broken
glass, though not over the shard yet.
I lean into his open window where he sits with his bullet proof
vest as full as a flotation device and his communication devices all
around, safe from Uptown, Former blood alley Uptown.
"Be careful. There's broken glass there." I point. "Just so you know."
He says thanks.
With that I'm gone. Around the corner. Back the way I came. Satisfied
with myself that I've been human to all.

I cross the intersection where nothing happened, Corner three. A mom
scuffles across the street, hurrying her young son, feeling herself
about to be crushed by a large looking truck, maybe a v10 engine. She
yells with all her might to express her existence. "I'm crossing
here!!!!" She cusses at him miserably in defense and doesn't stop until
she is across the street. She needs more muscle, she feels. Just a mom.
A damn mom in the way of his big engine. She will be heard.

I think of my country's struggle for civilization. My civilization
here--Uptown--resembles for me the same as my country's enemy. (No,
reword that. No, how?)

Here I walk commenting on all I see. As though I'm so important. My
defense against the powers. Up the street, walking my way, is a young
pretty thing that I usually can't bear to gaze upon. I must seem so rude
looking away. I look straight in her eyes and wish a good morning. There
I did it. For this morning I'm not an animal. I am civilized.

God save us all in Uptown. In our weakened place of Abandoned Empire. We
are not the pride of US civilization, but. . . . and I can only speak
for myself, there is a God greater than us all. Sometimes our surrender
to His will makes us truly human.

Tags: Uptown, Blood Alley, 9/11, "US in a Struggle for Civilization"

excuses

Junk that lays around that I can't bear to part with, that I'm downright proud of. Every time I clean and reorganize these little things are somehow hardly ever thrown away. They have an indelible mark on my psyche.


slips of paper
-notes to self
-signs made of sayings
-notes for my wallet
-book marks
-receipts
-electronic gadget manuals
-review sheets
-old book catalogs
-old pictures my wife can't stand to have around (I once had a six inch beard that caused my wife's skin to crawl but she couldn't bring herself to admit that for a long time. Now she can't stand the pictures.)

handbags
-small backpacks
-free book bags
-a gas mask bag from WWII

broken gadgets
knik knaks
shards of broken glass and shelf from a Christian's house that was bombed out in Beit Sahour
a 1960s fishing reel that bequeathed from dad
old coins that belonged to dad
crosses

door knobs: cuz I may need them some day.

The previous occupant of my office has gadgets like that too. Old ropes and pulley systems. Old animal traps. A cow horn. Old flags.


I'd like to say that these things help me establish my sense of "place" where ever I go. But I'll leave it up to my sister Jen to say with any certainty. She did her MA thesis on "Place." Whaddya think Jen? Are these things indicative of the human yearning for home?

Tags: Place, home, memory

First Day of School part 2

Coloring her dress red. This is a portrait I did of her. I drew the ears way to big. She slept on her neck wrong the night before and woke up screaming in pain. Bummer of a way to start of the first day. But she made it through. :)

First Day of School

Alathea's very first day of Pre-K.

dominionism or Vitamin L?

This scares me, but so does this. Makes me think of Matt. 11:12, (NASB)
"the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force."
Exposition on the fly.

Dusty books

For just over one week I have shuffled, handled, cataloged and surveyed hundreds of used books. It started when I heard about http://cash4books.net on Craig's List. Over the last week I have run hundreds of book ISBNs in search of a treasured few that would yield some money. A local bookstore was pitching it's overstock and some friends and I rescued a cart load of books from a sure demise on a very rainy day. On Friday I noticed that the books on an entire line of shelves at my office were getting damaged from moisture and outside debris. So today, with a friend's help, I took down that whole line of shelves and books repositioned them. My office now has a very different feel to it. Less light in certain places and more in others.
Speaking of old books, if you go to http://books.google.com there are now many free books to download. I typed in these search terms: Zwingli, Luther, Colonization, Thomas Cranmer, International Relations, and League of Nations. Got some great old books in .pdf format. You have to look for ones that say "full view" and then on the right "download."

Tags: google books, free, Cash 4 Books