(Ir)religiosity

I’m blatantly stealing this idea from someone else, but this was just too cool to pass up.

From Andrew Sullivan, writing on the meaning of the incarnation:

I don’t think it’s possible for a reasoning Christian to take all the contradictory facts, myths and symbols of the various Christmas narratives as literally true. In fact, one test of how serious a Christian is, to my mind, is whether she does or not.

The point [of the incarnation] was merely to be with us; and by being with us, to show us better how to be human, how better to embrace our lives by accepting the divine around us and inside us. By letting go, we become. By giving up, we gain. And we learn how to live – now, which is the only time that matters.

That, is pretty cool.

Last year I came up with a number list of all the books I read.  I’m not doing that this time mainly because I’ve read too many good books this year and trying to order them all would be too hard and unfair.  What follows is a list of most of the books I read this year.  I think it is almost exhaustive.  It was harder to remember than I anticipated.

How (Not) to Speak of God & The Fidelity of Betrayal - (5/5 Stars) I have to list both of them together because they complete each other.  They are by far the best books I read this year, forcing me to rethink my ideas about God.  I’m a huge fan of Rollins’s work now and all my future theological and philosophical reflection will be done in the aftermath of these important books

Jesus for President – (4/5 Stars) The ideas in this book are hardly new (I’m thinking here of Hauerwas, Yoder, et al) but as always, Shane Claiborne’s way of putting things very refreshing, iconoclastic, and deeply relevant.  I loved the design of the book.  The visual imagery transmitted the message in a way that mere words could not.

Jesus Wants to Save Christians – (4/5 Stars) This is Rob Bell’s third book and, in my opinion, it is his best.  I enjoyed Velvet Elvis, and I guess in a way it had to precede anything else he would write, but the themes and subject of matter of this one were very poignant.  Bell and Golden begin with Genesis and work through the scriptures tying everything together within a “new exodus” paradigm (And apparently, there is something the pattern on the book cover.  I don’t think I’m smart enough to figure it out).

The Great Emergence – (4/5 Stars) This was my first Phyllis Tickle book to read.  She is a wonderful writer, I almost wish the book had been longer.  The overall argument — that every 500 or so years the church has an identity crisis and has to reform itself and that we are living in the midst of such a crisis right now — is fascinating.  For that reason, I think this will be an important book for years to come.

The New Christians - (4/5 Stars) I’ve heard Tony Jones speak before and I follow his blog, but this was the first of his books for me to read.  It is the best history/description of the emerging/gent church to date in my opinion and it was badly in need of being written.  I will be referencing this book often when persons ask me what the emerging church is all about. Read the rest of this entry »

Today as we celebrate the divine rupture in human history over and against the narratives of consumption and rugged individualism, I find the words of the late Oscar Romero especially poignant.

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truely poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God – for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel.  God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.

(ht)

I finally got around to picking up a copy of N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope and I’m almost done.  His deconstruction of the typical concept of heaven as something “up there,” or, as I’ve said, an orgy of eternal bliss, really resonates with me.  Instead of some sort of physical place that persons are transported to after death, heaven, according to Wright, is the ultimate culmination of God’s process of restoration and recreation, a process that began with the Resurrection.  I like that.

I am a little unsure about the cosmological implications of his argument and how some of these things work practically, especially viz. his assertion of actual, physical, bodily resurrection.  He makes it clear that everything, at least in his opinion, hinges upon this.  I’m not so sure.  But that does not at all negate the usefulness of his questioning and reformulating some traditional Christians ideals.  Personally, I think the questioning and re-appropriating can be done without insisting on some of the supposition that he does.  But that’s a different post.

Like I said, the case that Wright makes boldly denounces some of the themes and elements that the Christian Right has latched onto over the last 20-30 years, things like the rapture, the second coming (though Wright plays with that a bit, rather than simply rejecting it), dispensationalism — all those sort of Left Behind Type things.  This is great and I think it needs to be done.  In many ways I’m willing to go even further than Wright does by jettisoning some of these concepts altogether. Read the rest of this entry »

(ht)

An interesting take:

[L]et us debate about sex and marriage rather than war and violence. Let us concentrate on the bedroom rather than the war room. Let us liberals get trapped — as always — on the right side of the wrong question. I write this in protest against that deviation from what fundamentally concerns the Bible, the biblical God, and Jesus, namely, that escalatory violence that by now threatens our world with destruction.

I think he does have a point.  But — I can see this line of thought leading us to ignore the problem altogether.  And we don’t need that.  We have enough religious people using the bible and religion in general as a weapon to deny persons their civil rights; we need more religious people actively challenging that position.  And yes, maybe even more religious people to say enough with the bible for a while.

To be fair, I don’t think that is what Crossan is suggesting.  He is simply trying to demonstrate how absurd it is that we are even having the argument over same-sex marriage and gay rights at all.  And like I said, that is a valid observation.  But I think we have to be careful that we don’t ignore those that are being marginalized in the meantime by sweeping the problem under the rug.  It should be faced head on.  Those that use religion as a wedge to separate “us” from “them” aren’t afraid to do that.  It’s time that those of us who believe in the “we,” of which all the great religions of the world bear witness, saddle up as well.

What do you think?

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Page2RSS is just about the coolest thing since sliced bread.  Every once in a while when I am surfing the depths of the interwebs I come across a cool site/blog that I’d like to add to my feed reader only to discover that the site has no feed!  Seriously, who doesn’t support RSS these days?!  Normally, I’d shed a tear, stick the url in my bookmarks and hope that RSS would be added later.

Now that I’ve discovered Page2RSS I can generate a feed specifically for the site or page of interest.  Then I can add that feed to my reader and I’m good to go.

For example, one of my favorite webcomic sites is SinFest.net.  The don’t have a feed so I pasted the url into Page2RSS and…bingo, there’s the feed.  I did the same thing for Chris Hedge’s columns over at TruthDig (you should check out his latest, pretty good stuff).  They don’t support feeds for different columnists’ posts so I made one especially for the pieces I want to be sure and catch.  It makes thing so much easier.

Check it out!

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I don’t know what to make of Burger King’s latest ad campaign.  It’s abductive, that’s for sure.  But I can’t help but find it at least a bit arrogant and maybe even culturally imperialistic.  Here’s one of the original commercial that aired a few weeks ago.

It sure got my attention when I first saw it.  Another ad with basically the same format wonders if other “Whopper Virgins,” this time Transylvanian farmers, will chose, as have Americans, the Whopper over the Big Mac.  Even more interesting  is the mini-documentary that Burger King has released on its new “Whopper Virgins” website.

They tried pretty hard to make it seems pure and innocent there toward the end, but I’m not convinced.  The way the whole thing has been marketed, starting with the name — Whopper Virgins, conjuring up sexual imagery that unnecessarily marginalizes those it is applied to  — seems to suggest that these people are just another means to the larger end of promoting Burger King around the globe and raking in more cash that will ultimately be bequeathed to the new transnational empire of consumer capitalism.  And I don’t for a second think that benefits the Transylvanian farmer or the Thai peasant.  It just uses and abuses them — making them the punchline for yet another cutthroat marketing scheme.  Sure, it’s ingenious, but it’s also, in my opinion, immoral.

Maybe I’m way off base here, but I just think that the resources used to fund, manage, and implement this project could be put to much better use in way that doesn’t orientalize or exoticize persons in other cultures.  We don’t need more people in service to American hegemony, transnational corporations, or global consumer capitalism; we need more people to actually take the time to learn about other cultures and communities and intentionally look for creative ways to help local economies.

What do you think?  Does this cross the line, or is just another harmless ad campaign?

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This is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.

This is Peter Rollins at his best.  I love it:

In the ethic of Empire one looks out for ones friends (inside the circle) and punishes ones enemies (outside the circle). It is an ethic that looks out for those who look out for us and loves those who love us. It is an ethic of economy (where we mutually give to one another). It would appear however that Christ ruptures this by giving preference to the one outside our systems (the alien, the enemy, the exile) over and above those privileged within our systems. This counter-ethic shows how the Christ trajectory is one that pushes outside the circle to those beyond its borders. Privileging those on the outside over those on the inside and offering a radical, impossible hospitality.

In this way, every time we draw a circle of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ who we love and who we hate the Christ-action involves pushing away from those who are ‘in’ and identifying with and helping the outsiders, the scapegoat, the stranger, the monstrous other. If the Empire ethic is an ethic that seeks to draw people into the circle of exchange the Christ ethic privileges the exception. Always pushing out to those who are excluded, who live beyond the fortified boundary.

By refusing to expand ourselves and our theology we limit our capacity to create space for The Other, constructing self-imposed boudaries that menace that which unites us.  We simply draw our circle too small.  Or, maybe the real problem is that we insist on drawing a circle in the first place.

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