(Ir)religiosity

I’m on spring break this week.  I’ve decided to take a short blog sabbatical (about a week or so) so I can rest, relax and catch up on some non-required reading.  I’ve been sitting on these books for a while.  A hope to get into a few of them over the next week.

That’s the claim that Tony Jones makes in The New Christians.  I first read the book last year when it came out (read my short review here), but I’m re-reading it now for a class I’m taking on the Emergent/ing church at ANTS (Oh, and Tony is actually teaching it.  So that’s cool) and that quote really jumped out at my this time.

“The Bible is propaganda.”  Pretty provocative.  But it makes more sense when you think about it.  Tony explains further:

Propaganda has a point and a purpose.  It doesn’t claim to be objective.  It’s trying to convince someone of something.  It’s trying to get people to join a cause, join a movement.  Isn’t that exactly what the Bible is? . . .It is a living, breathing document that makes a claim on its readers’ lives.  It’s like the pamphlets surreptitiously printed by Paul Revere and his compatriots in 1776 — propaganda in that sense.  It’s God’s manifesto, Jesus’ Little Red Book.

I think Tony is right.  The bible is propaganda.  Maybe if we actually owned up to the fact that we have an agenda — of realizing God’s kingdom, of pursuing justice, promoting peace, and participating in cosmic restoration and renewal — we might be more effective in bearing witness to the hope that lies within us.

What think ye?

“Waterboarding is torture.”

– Attorney General-designate Eric Holder

I ran across this thought by Moby reading something else last night and I can’t get it out of my head.

i actually think that the teachings of christ accomodate most of the new ways in which we perceive ourselves and our world.
the problem is that although the teachings of christ accomodate this, contemporary christianity does not.
here’s more seriousness dressed up as flippancy:
christ: acknowledging quantum realities.
christiantiy: depressingly newtonian.
does that make any sense?
well, to me it does.
and to some of you it might make sense, also.

That’s rich.  And interesting.  What do you think?

There has been a recent surge in publication of various “special-interest” bibles.  For the comic book and graphic novel geeks there is the Manga Bible, for the hipsters the Bible Illuminated, and for the Methodists the Wesley Bible. Don’t fit into one of those groups?  No problem. There’s always the all-purpose People’s Bible

It just not cool anymore to have plain Jane NRSV or NIV.

The Green Bible is another of these new, hip bibles.  I have mixed feelings about it.  Now, to be sure, all of these new bibles can be useful.  Each of them takes seriously the need to speak in contemporary language with contemporary images and metaphors.  The Green Bible goes a step further, understanding the need, if we are to be faithful bearers of the good news, of taking seriously contemporary problems and providing alternatives.  Many Christian, especially younger ones, are tired of the old ways of “doing” church and “living” theology.  They wonder if their bible has anything serious to say about contemporary issues and if their God cares about what is happening in the world.  And these new bibles communicate that much more effectively than King Jimmy.

According to its website, “The Green Bible will equip and encourage people to see God’s vision for creation and help them engage in the work of healing and sustaining it.”  Which is wonderful; that is indeed part of our task — to understand and take seriously God’s dream for the entire world, the entire cosmos even, and participate in the actualization of that dream in our own peculiar way and in our own particular contexts.  That is good.  That is important  I get that. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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 »

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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Last time I briefly mentioned that in the book Tom Sine divides “the new conspirators” into four major streams: emerging, missional, mosaic, and monastic.¹  I’m interested to see what you think of his divisions and descriptions. I understand the need for identification, but personally I think there is more overlap with the different groups depending about locality and context.

The Emerging Stream

According to Sine — who cites several other notables including Gibbs & Bolger, Jonny Baker, Brian McLaren, and Andrew Jones just to name a few — the emerging stream is especially attuned to postmodern culture and is “actively seeking searching for the sacred in the profane.”²  Thus, emergents are more relational, experiential and are likely to be especially involved in or show a great appreciation to the arts and various forms of new media which are consequently integrated into their worship. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Tom Sine, The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 31-55. [↩]
2. Sine, 34. [↩]

I finished reading Tom Sine’s The New Conspirators a few weeks ago and I’ve meant to throw up a review for a while now.  Because this is such a great and important book I’ve decided to devote a post for each section and hopefully open up some conversation.   If you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend it, especially if you’re one of those emergent-y types.  It’s a shame this book hasn’t received more publicity in emergent circles.

Sine begins the book acknowledging that we are indeed living in turbulent times as far as the church as a worldwide institution is concerned.  But instead of focusing solely on the negative he writes, “For followers of Jesus, times of challenge are always times of opportunity to give new expression to God’s love for a people and a world.”¹ Read the rest of this entry »

1. Cf. Tom Sine, The New Conspirators (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 18. [↩]