Bandits No More

June 10, 2010

Dangerous Places

Filed under: Church & State,Consumerism,Culture,Current events,Ecclesiology,Public Schools — rheyduck @ 8:22 pm

What should we make of this story?

Apparently a school district in Indiana planned to hold its graduation ceremonies at a local church. I’m sure the church was thinking, “This is a way we can be generous and share with our community.” I’m sure the district was thinking something like, “This building seats more people than any of our venues, other than the football field, and since we can’t predict the weather, an indoor location would be perfect. Besides, the church is letting us use their space for free, so the price fits our budget.”

But as we see in the story, other people had other thoughts. One student thought ‘s/he would be “forced to submit to a religious environment that … will make me feel extremely uncomfortable and offended.”‘ A Jewish student ‘said s/he would not have attended the ceremony because s/he would “feel that the Cathedral is proselytizing its Christian beliefs … through its scriptures and symbols.”‘

Some of us might be inclined to respond, “But it’s only a church! How dangerous can a church be?” I agree with Mark Galli, the author of the piece in Christianity Today, that there is a good thing about these students being uncomfortable.

One the one hand, we need to relearn the power of our places. To do this, we’ll have to get beyond our buddy relationship with the American civil religion that sees a generic god underlying all religion and can find crosses and the Ten Commandments as mere “symbols,” and thus amenable to secular usage. While the god of civil religion is tame and fairly safe (as long as you’re an American), the real God, the Father of Jesus Christ, is dangerous. If one gets too close one just might become a believer, a follower of Jesus.

On the other hand, Christians need to recover a sense of the power of other places. As William Cavanaugh notes in his Myth of Religious Violence, the dividing line between “religions” and other socio-cultural phenomena is not as unambiguous as apologists for modern secularism would have us believe. Just as churches can be dangerous places for those who do not yet follow Jesus, temples of the other gods currently popular in our culture – Nike, Mammon, and Mars – can be dangerous for followers of Jesus.

Once we recognize the potential danger of these places, should we get engage these institutions through our court system? Bringing lawsuits has been the American way for several centuries now. I don’t think we ought to follow that strategy, however.

First, though our culture holds Nike, Mammon, Mars and their associates in high honor, it is mostly blind to the religious and devotional nature of their rites. Or to put it simply, we’d be laughed out of court. Given our Christian captivity to so many of these rites, we’d even have many of our fellow believers looking at us as if they need to call the men in white jackets to haul us away.

Second, Jesus has already declared that “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him.” We also see that in his death and resurrection he has defeated all the principalities and powers. So toward these gods and their institutions we can have the same snarky attitude Isaiah exhibits toward those who make their own gods. More profoundly, however, we are called to go to their territory and rescue those who are now enslaved to those non-gods. A major way we do that is by publicly exhibiting a different lifestyle and allegiance to another kingdom.

A final consequence that comes to mind in this context is that Christians need to become more aware that the neutral institutions of our society – I think here primarily of our “public schools” – are rarely, if ever, neutral. In some communities, especially in small towns in the Bible Belt, there is still a veneer of Christian culture associated with the schools. But in the rest of the country, and in larger school systems, the point of the educational system is not merely a neutral and universally beneficial acquisition of “facts” and “skills,” but an enculturation into a particular way of living. Some Christians who recognize this withdraw and form their own schools. Others withdraw into home schools. Both can be effective ways of providing alternative enculturation (into the Kingdom of God). Of course, both strategies can be just plain withdrawal. When Christians pursue the strategy of keeping their kids within the educational structures of the dominant culture, they need to (a) stay aware of the power of enculturation into non-Christian ways of living, and (b) provide alternative enculturation that will enable young followers of Jesus to learn Kingdom living.

May 20, 2010

I’m Not Drawing Today

Filed under: Culture,Current events,Islam,Prayer — rheyduck @ 12:46 pm

Today is “Draw Muhammad Day.” I won’t be taking part.

One response will be, “Of course you won’t. You can’t even draw a straight line with a ruler!” Well, yes, that is true. But even if I could, I wouldn’t be joining in.

Some people will be “drawing Muhammad” today to mock those who kill (or threaten to kill) people who draw Muhammad. They observe that on some occasions drawing a picture can drive crowds into murderous frenzies. Others are happy to draw the pictures simply to mock Islam. “We’re more Enlightened than you are. So there!”

While mocking is better than killing, I can’t see either as an appropriate way for followers of Jesus to relate to outsiders. My primary calling is to help people become followers of Jesus. In my experience the practice of humility and respect has produced more fruit than mockery, derision, and superiority. I can’t imagine many people responding, “Your mockery has enlightened me. I think I will turn my back on Muhammad and embrace your ways.”

So what’s the alternative? Rather than simply not drawing Muhammad, how about a “Pray for Muslims Day?”

May 4, 2010

Avoiding Fame

Filed under: Culture,Spirituality,Worship — rheyduck @ 7:15 pm

Have you read the Miley Cyrus quote in the recent Christianity Today:

“My faith is very important to me. But I don’t necessarily define my faith by going to church every Sunday. Because now when I go to church, I feel like it’s a show.”

Perhaps you’re thinking something like, “Church sure has come a long way in the past generation. In the old days we’d go to church, sit quietly in our pews, listen to the organ music, stand up for the hymns, listen to a sermon, shake some hands, and then go home. Now they have stages, bands, lights and fancy electronics. It’s just a show.” That would certainly be one possible contextualization of the quote. If we want to get young folks like Miley Cyrus in our churches, so we would then reason, we need to get rid of the show, and get back to the basics. We need simple traditional worship, instead of the Show.

But in the original context (thanks to my wife for pointing this out), immediately after the quote, she adds, “There are always cameras outside.” With this addition we see that the Show she’s speaking of is not inside the church, but outside. The problem here (might be elsewhere) is not that worship has become a show, but that her fame and the way fame works in our culture ensure that there is a show wherever she goes in public. If I were the pastor of her church I would see this is a problem also: How do we engage in worship of Jesus  when someone with so much more star power, by our reckoning at least, is in our midst, someone who generates more obvious adoration?

One solution is to stop acting on the fame of the people around us. If we become hardened, apathetic or indifferent to the fame of others, we might find ourselves in a place where we can worship and adore Jesus even if Miley  Cyrus (or President Obama or any other famous people) are present.

That solution, however, won’t be much help to Miley Cyrus, at least not in the short term. Some few folks might succeed in turning from the allure of fame, but surely such a move will be a stretch for the multitudes, especially for those who enjoy it so much. The other solution would be for Miley Cyrus and others to avoid the affliction of fame on their side. Given our way of doing things, sounds pretty unlikely, doesn’t it?

When we consider the benefits of fame – the adoring crowds, the plentiful money – why would anyone want to avoid fame? I can imagine that the Christian, the follower of Jesus, might want to avoid fame so she or he would not be isolated from life in the Body of Christ. If salvation is only going to heaven when we die (or, as some put it, “Pie in the Sky, by and by), then we can get by without the Body of Christ. But when we read the New Testament, we see that life together as worshipers, followers, and lovers of Jesus, able to stand each other because we’ve been reconciled through his blood, is part of  salvation itself. Church – taken as the life of the saints lived together here and now – is part of what the bible means by salvation. Therefore, when we have a fame system, we not only hurt the church by the possible substitution of idols for Jesus, but we also keep people away – or build fences to keep ourselves away.

April 14, 2010

Reading Cavanaugh on the Invention of “Religion”

Filed under: Culture,Ecclesiology,Politics — rheyduck @ 8:23 pm

One of the books I’m working through now is William Cavanaugh’s The Myth of Religious Violence. If you’re open to a little heresy (not heresy directed toward Christianity, but toward religion-like phenomena like nationalism, capitalism, Marxism, etc.), check it out. His contention is not that it is never the case that a cultural phenomenon we’ve been trained to call “religion” (e.g., Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc.) resorts to or is complicit in violence. Rather, he is arguing that because the boundary lines between “religious” phenomena and “secular” phenomena are so arbitrary (and of recent Western vintage), they are of little use in ascribing greater tendencies toward violence in “religion” than in, say, “nationalism.”

Here’s a choice paragraph (p. 120-1):

“’The West,’ ‘modernity,’ ‘liberalism,’ and so on are not simply monolithic realities, but are ideals or projects that are always contestable. Part of the function of ideology, however, is to present these projects as based on essential realities that are simply there, part of the way things are. As we saw in Locke’s writings, the religious-secular distinction is presented as embedded in the immutable nature of things. In fact, however, this distinction was born with a new configuration of power and authority in the West and was subsequently exported to parts of the world colonized by Europeans. Within the West, religion was invented as a transhistorical and transcultural impulse embedded in the human heart, essentially distinct from the public business of government and economic life. To mix religion with public life was said to court fanaticism, sectarianism, and violence. The religious-secular divide thus facilitated the transfer in the modern era of the public loyalty of the citizen from Christendom to the emergent nation-state. Outside the West, the creation of religion and its secular twin accompanied the attempts of colonial powers and indigenous modernizing elites to marginalize certain aspects of non-Western cultures and create space for the smooth functioning of state and market interests.”

Here in the US our civil religion is very closely tied to our Christianity for all but a few baptist (“small ‘b’ baptist,” as James Wm. McClendon, Jr. would say.) sects and groups we usually consider way beyond the pale like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Which kind of religion results in more deaths each year? Which inflicts more violence around the world?

March 11, 2010

Bumper Sticker “Thinking”

Filed under: Culture,Politics — rheyduck @ 2:39 pm

While it is easy to rouse emotions with a bumper sticker, it is more difficult to express intelligent thought.

Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Last Time We Mixed Politics and Religion People Got Burned at the Stake.” I’m guessing that the author had the Salem witch trials in mind (or did it go back farther, to the fires of Smithfield?). Evidently this person is either a time traveler or has in some other way missed the past few centuries.

Convictions about the nature of god (or a god) and what that god (or those gods) desire have motivated many people to public action in the years since Smithfield and Salem. People who take themselves to be operating on the basis of religious convictions have expressed those convictions in public ways regarding abolition, civil rights, fair wages, health care, abortion, peace and education – just to name a few areas.

John Locke’s original formulation of religious tolerance was based on the conviction that the state dealt with the external world of here and now, while religion dealt with the internal world and our eternity. Such a nice, clean division of labor! We see Locke mirrored in the strand of American thinking that insists that religious believers are free to believe anything they want, as long as they keep it in private. Some religions might work just fine as purely private internal affairs. Christianity doesn’t, however.

Can we tolerate the mixing of religion and politics? I don’t see how there is a way around it as long as their are political and religious people. There’s also a pretty good chance we’ll see plenty of ways of letting religious convictions be expressed in public that we find repulsive, even evil. (Of course religious convictions don’t have any corner on the market of being associated with unpleasantness.) But we also don’t have to look very hard to find expressions that we find commendable.

October 15, 2009

Ancient-Future

Filed under: Culture,Ecclesiology — rheyduck @ 8:26 pm

I sure have heard the adjectival phrase “Ancient-Future” thrown around a lot these past few years. As one who sees value in recovery of historic Christian doctrine, I can see “ancient” as embodying a willingness to be associated with the apostolic and patristic church. Within modernity, not surprisingly, the ancient was associated with the “out of date,” the “passe,” the “primitive,” as opposed to the “up to date,” “with-it,” “thoroughly rational” modern. “Ancient” brought to mind the dark ages, the opposite of this age of light.

Matched with my desire to recover historic doctrine is a desire to reach people so we have a church in the future. When it comes to theology, most folks would label me a “conservative.” But when it comes to methodology, to how we do things in the church, I’m pretty much a radical. Well, at least in what I’d like to do. I see so much of the way we’ve always done things, though some might call these methods ancient, ancient in this case means only a couple of generations old (for a quick illustration of how recent this form of ancient is, consider the dates of the hymns people in your church consider the “old timey songs”).

In my own congregation – and we’re doing better than some in our denomination – about 40% of our active and committed people are aged 70 or above. Chances are those same folks won’t be as active and committed in ten years. When you consider this with two other current facts, (a) we’re not reaching the younger generations well enough, and (b) I’m doing lots of funerals, we’re going to be in trouble in the near future. I really want the church to have a future.

So you’d think I’d be part of the pro-Ancient-Future demographic, right? Maybe. My first thought on hearing this however, is that it’s a way of saying “anything but now.” Let’s escape into the past or into the future – anything but now.  However much we admire the past and seek to learn from it, however much we yearn for a happy and healthy future, we’re here now. Now – the current time – is the bridge (and it can be a mighty short bridge, considering what you mean by ancient) between ancient and future.

But maybe that’s all they mean. Maybe they’re just trying to say the same thing I’ve just said. Maybe we are on the same page after all. We’ll see.

February 26, 2009

Discipleship Goals #2

Filed under: Culture,Five Practices,Ministry,Spirituality,Uncategorized,Worship — rheyduck @ 4:01 pm

It’s easy to center the act of disciple making on what we do with individuals. But if all we do in our disciple making is work with individuals, we’re missing both the model of Jesus and what we see in the rest of the New Testament. There we discover not only an enterprise dedicated to producing certain kinds of people, but also one dedicated to producing a people, a particular kind of community.

The aspect of discipleship I’m looking at in this post, worship, is a characteristic predicated of both individuals and congregations. While we moderns tend to think any Christian practice works just fine practiced by individuals, worship seems to be normally practiced in community. While practiced in community, however, the individuals do have particular responsibilities. The characteristics of disciples in worship that I list below are mixed. Some are characteristics of the individual maturing in Christ, some are characteristics of the community maturing in Christ.

  1. Disciples sing with understanding. Singing with understanding requires education. Disciples will need at least a minimal education in the culture’s ways of doing music. Of course, when worshiping with large numbers, those of us who are more obtuse in this area can be drowned out by others. Disciples will also need to learn to attend to the words of the hymns we sing. Some of the language originates in another culture or time and will seem foreign. It will take work to understand, but that work is worthwhile.
  2. Disciples sing with enthusiasm. Consider this line from my seminary fight song: “My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed thee.” If you understand the meaning of those words and have had the basic Christian experience of forgiveness in Christ, I don’t see how you could sing with less than enthusiasm, much less stand by doing nothing. Is it that people don’t understand these words? Or is it that they haven’t had the experience? (See part 1)
  3. Disciples experience the presence of God. Corporate worship, while a social gathering, is more than a social gathering. It’s a time to meet God. Part of dicipleship is growing in our sensitivity to the presence of God.
  4. The church is characterized by Spirit filled & led worship. Worship is not just disciples doing their own thing – even if that thing is spiritual. True Christian worship is worship “in spirit and in truth.” We respond to the Spirit through the Spirit’s work in us.
  5. Disciples seek to have a worship service where the presence of God is so obvious that pre-Christians in attendance are impacted and led to ask questions. I sure wish I could make this happen. I can’t make this happen. But I do want these things to happen whenever we gather. First, I want our life together to be such that people who are not yet followers of Jesus show up. Second, I want those folks to be able to sense more than just a bunch of Christians doing Christian things. I want them to sense God. Third, I want them to respond to God. Fourth, and this shades into a future post, I want the disciples present to be equipped and ready to answer their questions and point people to Jesus.
  6. Disciples value a diversity of worship opportunities to enable us to reach the people of our area. Worship is primarily about God. God’s glory and honor are the first consideration. That said, I don’t see the New Testament perspective on worship stifling innovation and cultural adaptation in worship. God made us creative people. As our creative dimension is progressively made over into the image of Jesus, I want that creativity to be put to use in worship. While worship is primarily about God, it is also public worship. We are open to outsiders. In fact, in most of our American churches, Sunday morning worship is the primary place preChristians encounter disciples as disciples. I want the community of disciples to be open to expressing its worship in cultural forms that are close enough to our host community that they can make some sense of what we’re doing – even if it is only enough sense to be offended by the message of the cross.
  7. Disciples want to see lives transformed through the Spirit’s action in our worship services. My life has been transformed in the context of worship. When we open ourselves to the work of the Spirit in worship, we give the Spirit freedom to reach into our lives and do the work of pruning, cleansing, healing, and setting free. We need that – more than we need to know that we exactly followed the bulletin or perfectly performed our assigned role.

February 17, 2009

A Difference

Filed under: Clash of Civilizations,Culture,Islam — rheyduck @ 7:11 pm

One of the books I’m reading now is John Stackhouse’s Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. He quotes David Martin as saying,

“If I wanted to dramatize it I would point out that Mohammed was a warrior and a family man whereas Jesus was neither. Again notice that Islam sanctifies a holy city and is about territory whereas primitive Christianity is not. Indeed, for the early Christians Jerusalem was abandoned to desolation. The connection which underpins these differences is the link between the blood tie as realized in the family and land, possessions and violence. Christianity rejects the social logic embodied in genealogy, biological reproduction, and land, and attempts to set up spiritual and non-violent brotherhoods and sisterhoods outside that powerful nexus.”

Stackhouse recognizes that, as Martin says, this is a dramatized account. While Jesus clearly relativized family connections (in terms of biological kinship), the concern for biological family was edging its way back into Christianity fairly early. We can also see, unfortunately, that the history of Christians, once they got into power, made the faith look like something concerned with territory.

For me, the strength of this way of differentiating Christianity and Islam is that there is material internal to the Christian tradition, and in particular, material identified with Jesus himself, that allows us to critique and relativize the common human propensity to center on biological kinship, value the holding of territory, and using violence to make sure things turn out well. For you who are scholars of Islam: What resources are available within Islam to relativize these attitudes?

January 14, 2009

Cafeteria Religion

Filed under: Consumerism,Culture,Market,Spirituality — rheyduck @ 5:41 pm

Barna has come out with another survey, showing that Americans are more prone than ever to just make up their own religion. Ed Stetzer also comments on it. Here’s my preliminary thoughts.

Our culture has divided so much between “liberal” and “conservative” political options. Sometimes we miss the reality that both of these (as they currently exist) are variants on the broader liberal tradition flowing out of the Enlightenment. The emphasis in the Enlightenment – and in our political system is on individual freedom. The folks we call “liberals” and those we call “conservatives” are agree that maximizing personal freedom is what we ought to do, they simply differ on their areas of emphasis.

Given the centrality of personal freedom, a Christianity that tries to claim or enforce particular limits on what counts as “true religion,” or even simply “Christianity” is usually incomprehensible at best, seen as evil at worst.

In this context there is a temptation to seek out a kind of Jesus-following that has no necessary connection to institutions. But I don’t see such a disembodied Christianity as the real thing- or even possible. Surely our institutions and institutionalizing practices have not served us well, but If we go to the opposite extreme, we’re simple giving in to the modern commitment to individualism, albeit occasionally with a Christian veneer.

We’ve known at least since Habits of the Heart that cafeteria style religion (Bellah’s Sheila-ism) is common in America. The latest stats just show its increasing dominance.

November 12, 2008

Getting What We Wanted?

Filed under: Consumerism,Culture,Economics — rheyduck @ 7:59 pm

Some of us have been preaching against consumerism for ages – some vehemently and constantly, some merely occasionally. Looking at the current US economy it appears that maybe someone was listening.

What’s wrong with consumerism?

  • When we’re captivated by consumerism, we think having stuff – and constantly having more stuff will make us happy and give us a good life. As followers of Jesus, we reject the idea that things – whatever they be – can bring us salvation. That’s Jesus’ role in our lives. Consumerism, therefore, is a form of idolatry.
  • Our consumerist lifestyle has been driven by debt. Millions of Americans are drowning in credit card, mortgage and other forms of debt. They have to work longer hours, extra jobs, just to stay even. But staying even isn’t enough. We need more! Sure doesn’t look like the happy life to me.

What’s happening now?

  • People have stopped buying as much. Some have stopped buying because they’ve maxed out their debt – they can’t get any more credit. Some have stopped because they have no cash. Others have stopped because they see a greater need to save for the future given the economic crisis.
  • As the population ages, large numbers of people are deciding to downsize. In terms of housing, they want less house to maintain. In terms of stuff, they’ve have seen that possessions aren’t worth as much as they may have seemed at first.

These conditions combine to lead to a drop in demand. If less stuff is wanted, there is less demand for people to produce that stuff, leading to a decrease in jobs. An end to consumerism doesn’t just mean that people throw away their idols. People involved in the economy of idols lose their jobs. That’s a factor we preachers against consumerism haven’t always taken into account. While consumerism has been idolatrous for many, it has also been a source of livelihood for others.

I think of the problems the early Christians created in Ephesus. As more people became followers of Jesus, they not only rejected the idols they had previously honored, they also stopped buying new ones. Demetrius and his fellow idol-makers felt the pinch. They framed it, however, not as a loss for themselves, but as a lack of respect for the great goddess Diana. If Demetrius had become a Christian, how might he have handled things differently? If he listened carefully to Paul, he probably wouldn’t have continued making statues of Diana, excusing his participation in idolatry with something like, “Personally, I’m against idol worship, but hey! I need to make a living. I need to put food on the table, pay my mortgage, and take care of my kids, don’t I? To me it’s just a hunk of silver. To them, it’s a tool for their religion. Who am I to judge?”

I don’t know what the best answer for Demetrius – or for producers today – if the turn away from consumerism lasts for a substantial amount of time. Here are a few thoughts as I start thinking about it.

  • The economy will re-tool to reflect a changed perception of what people truly need.
  • Perhaps we’ll learn how to shift from a consumption economy based on “gimme, gimme, gimme” to a gift/grace based economy based on, “What do you need? How can I/we bless you?”
  • I’m concerned that the powerful of our society will “hog the lifeboats” and the weak will be left to drown. The powerful are in a place to profit from government bailouts, either in terms of direct funding, indirect siphoning through corruption, or through maintenance of personal freedom while those at the bottom are reduced to serfdom, either of the government or of government-favored corporations.

What do the rest of you see as options?

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