(Ir)religiosity

About six months ago, Emergent Village asked anyone and everyone who cared about the future of the organization to participate in a survey.  The purpose was to discern what direction the organization should take in the future.  There where four possible scenarios (you can read the descriptions in full as well as the entire letter of the board of directors here).

1. In 2011, having fulfilled its mission, Emergent Village has ceased operations.
2. In 2011, Emergent Village functions as a provocateur/prophet on the ecclesial landscape by linking and convening thought leaders and organizing a significant two-part event each year.
3. In 2011, Emergent Village has decentralized into many emergent neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods are local or regional cohorts which organize and present monthly meetings, events, websites, etc.
4. In 2011, Emergent Village has grown into a vibrant network. It supports and convenes cohort leaders and denominational network leaders, maintains publishing partnerships, and is a key partner in producing an annual national Christian faith, art, and social justice festival.

The clear winner among those surveyed where the last and second options, with the last being the winner.  Earlier today, EV posted a letter stating the direction of the organization over the next several years.

[W]e need to continue, but not institutionalize. We need to promote self-organizing neighborhoods yet maintain a kind of “village green” or commons for their to be cross-pollination and interaction among these different neighborhoods. We need to provide safe space for newcomers to the conversation and space for new ideas and provocative challenge to be shared as well. The question for us has been how to integrate these inherent tensions, insights, and agreements in a coherent plan.

The “coherent plan” consists of four main points that will be pursued (again, the expanded version can be read here).

1. To streamline, decentralize, and reduce expenses by discontinuing the role of National Coordinator.
2. To re-emphasize the importance of the website in creating space and supporting the network.
3. To decentralize by depending on friends of emergent—individuals, non-profits, and for-profits—to continue to seize new opportunities.
4. To reconfigure the board in 2009.

I am happy and impressed with this decision.  In the past I have been worried have institutionalization, centralization and homogenization, which, in my view undercuts the beauty of the network.  The statement from EV clearly asserts that his in not the intention.  Rather, the mission is to create intentional, organic space in which persons can interact and “cross-pollinate” (I love that image) while remaining faithful to the context space created in their particular locales.  It seems to me that this is the best and most effective way to participate in Missio dei not as another institutional monolith among many, but as an organic, grassroots, network allowing local freedom of expression and diversity.

I would encourage everyone to read the entire statement here.

What do you think?

By now I’m sure most everyone has at least heard of Focus on the Family chairperson Dr. James Dobson‘s so-called “Letter from 2012.” You can read the entire diatribe here. To be honest I haven’t read it all — based on what I know of Dobson and his think tank, I consider it to be a colossal waste of time.

I won’t take the time to critque it or add my comment (there are some good ones worth reading here and here).

Being the good Web2.0 junkie that I am, I created a Wordle cloud from the text of the letter.  It is below.  Pretty revealing I think.

Click for larger view

This is interesting to me.

I was messing around with Google Trends ( I love these sorts of things.  Check out Facebook Lexicon and Twist sometime.) the other day and discovered some interesting trends/correlations when I aggregated a graph of the terms “religion” and “economy” within the United States.

Here is a record of the last 12 months.

And here is a record of the last 30 days.

Even more interesting, here is a record since January of 2004.

Finally, here is a global record since January of 2004.

Clearly, there is a trend here and perhaps even a correlation. Now, I know this isn’t the best of surveying people and gaining information.  I know it is skewed and probably inaccurate to an extent.  But it is interesting nonetheless.  I don’t know what to make of it.  What do you think?

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I was reading parts of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt‘s Empire this morning and I ran across a really interesting section in which they are quoting Marx and Engels (Don’t run away!  I’m not trying to make Communists out of anyone!).

“The bourgeoisie,” Marx and Engels write, “compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates the world after its own image.”

This is interesting because I place a great amount of importance upon the Imago dei in my theology.  Moreover, I interpret the concept as a broad sort of foundational etiological myth from which our common humanity is derived and by which we pursue justice, reconciliation, and all those other warm fuzzy words.

So that being said, I wonder what it means to radically assert the veracity of the Imago dei presently in the midst of our failing economic system.  Clearly we have misplaced our trust and relied upon a system of exploitation and greed.  To assert that we are indeed created in the image of God is to say that we derive are meaning from God as we participate in the divine life.  It seems to me that we have betrayed that trust opting instead to derive our meaning from the unrestrained free market, participating in the life of consumption.

We have thus traded the Imago dei (the image of God) for the much more destructive Imago comburo (the image of consumption) that is indicative of our current economic crisis.

Perhaps a radical reordering of priorities should be in order.

A United Nations report reveals that economic disparity in the United States is exploding, especially in major cities.

From Democracy Now!:

A new United Nations report has revealed major US cities, including New York, Washington, Atlanta and New Orleans, have levels of economic inequality that rival cities in Africa.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

The United States has the highest inequality and poverty rates in the OECD after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000.

In the United States, the richest 10 percent earn an average of $93,000 — the highest level in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development avergages. The poorest 10 percent earn an average of $5,800 — about 20 percent lower than the OECD average.

Oh, and last year we spent $628 billion in defense and $315 billion in private military contracts.  Good to know that my tax dollars are being put to good use.

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Straight from North Vernon, Indiana.  [Ht. Zack]

All the more reason for me to like Apple:

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

[Ht. Dave]

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To create good participants in the current system:

Schools should be focusing on [the capacity to communicate effectively or to cooperatively solve problems], as well as ethical reasoning. Wall Street’s meltdown, linked to shady lending practices, reveals the moral bankruptcy of huge segments of the market. Yet political leaders now urge our children to quietly fill-in bubble tests, seeking only to become productive cogs in a broken wheel.

I’ve been thinking about pedagogy this past week and the downfalls of various methods of teaching and testing.  It reminds me of a Paulo Freire quote I ran across a while back.  I cannot for the life of me remember where it came from.

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

That is inspiring however it is at the same time discouraging to see institutions and educators who continue to foster the present system(s).

Another guy who wanted to spread the wealth around:

Contemporary application of Wesley’s advice would suggest that the U.S. Congress should reduce taxes on the poor and middle class, add taxes to luxury items, eliminate taxes upon necessities, introduce laws that govern the use of natural resources, and take steps to reduce the $10 trillion national debt—a debt that has increased by 71.9 percent over the last eight years.

Interestingly, it seems that most Methodists today have completely reversed John Wesley’s “Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can,” statement into a much more destructive axiom: make all you can, invest all you can, consume all you can.