(Ir)religiosity

Jeremy Bouma liveblogged the Poets, Prophets, and Preachers conference that took place in Grand Rapids over the last several days.

I was reading over his coverage of Tuesday’s events was immediately struck by this line from the Pete Rollins session (I don’t know if he is paraphrasing or if it is a direct quote):

The question is not is Christianity true, but what does it mean when it claims to be true.

The traditional assumption, of course, is that Christianity claims to be true in the same way that biology might claim to be true (at least that is what seems to have been discussed at the conference).  This is part of my beef with calling theology a “science.” It reduces meaning to the realm of empiricism and rationalism.  Theology is reduced to a fleeting pursuit of objectivity, which often claims to posses The Univocal Understanding of how the world works.  But what if it’s not so much about the world itself and how it works but rather how one should be in the world and how the community should embody an alternative to the world’s dominant narrative (of violence, domination, etc)?

That’s one way of approaching it.  But of course it’s not the only one.

However we might choose to answer it, I think framing the question in this way gets us a little closer to where we need to be.

How might you answer that question?  What does Christianity, or any religion for that matter, mean when it claims to be true?

Social media is changing things.  You could even say social media is changing everything and it would probably be true.  I’m about halfway through Tom Friedman’s book The World is Flat right now.  Though it was originally published only three years ago, it’s already becoming a little dated as far as the half-life of web 2.0 related things these days goes — which demonstrates perfectly exactly how things are changing.

Friedman’s overall thesis is that the world is becoming increasingly “flat” as we continue to explore what appears to be the endless limits of the information age.  Anyone who has access to a computer can search for and locate just about anything they want which undermines our traditional, hierarchical systems of transmitting information.  Things are becoming more and more open and less restricted.

I ran across this site yesterday (via Andrew Sullivan)  that illustrates this point perfectly.  It is basically a simple mash-up of Google Maps and the all the Prop 8 donors.  So you can actually see where in California, or the United States, individuals or groups that contributed to the pro-Prop 8 effort.  But that’s not all.  You can actually see their names and the exact amount they gave.

This presents all sorts of new possibilities (or problems depending on how you see it).  Now, to be fair, all this information can be accessed elsewhere and has been made public by the state of California; donors were presumably aware of this when then gave.  EightMaps simply makes it all more visual and accessible.

This is fascinating.  We normally think of “donating” to something as primarily a private action.  That isn’t really true, but that’s how we think about it.

This portrayal undermines that assumption.  It makes things very public.  I’m sure many people don’t like that.  But I don’t think it’s such a bad idea.

I wonder how, if at all,  our private actions might change if we assumed that everything was public. That’s not a false assumption by the way.  Our so-called private decision to “donate” to a certain cause may have very public consequences for someone else.

Just ask the gay population in California.

What would happen if we were actually walking advertisements for the causes/ballot measures/you-fill-in-the-blank that we fervently supported in private?

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• Map of Prop 8 Donors

“[W]e lack the courage for the truth…[it] will make us stronger just so long as it doesn’t kill us first.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Maybe hypocrisy isn’t the best word. But on a certain level I think it fits. If anything it’s a catchy, provocative title that will hopefully catch the attention of some readers.

Recently I was speaking to a — I don’t want to say hostile — less than friendly crowd on pretty controversial topic in a “church setting.” I was presenting some research I had done (which wasn’t outside mainstream scholarship at all) and was arguing what I believed to be a position of truth and one that in my view remained deeply faithful not only to the Way of Jesus but to the Hebrew prophetic tradition.

I knew in advance that this was going to be tough gig and I decided that I would do the best I could to remain prophetic, speaking what I believed to be the truth, while retaining some sense of a pastoral spirit and meeting people where they are. So I toned down some of the material a bit and tried to walk the line the best I could. I didn’t want to completely alienate or turn anyone off, but at the same time I wanted to challenge them, which meant a certain degree of uncomfortability. Read the rest of this entry »