Theolog

Creative dislocation

By Richard Kauffman

Christians often practice a little-known spiritual discipline called “creative dislocation” without realizing it: we engage in creative dislocation by going on a spiritual retreat or on a mission trip into a foreign environment—the inner city or a third-world country—where the usual markers of our lives are taken from us, and we’re subject to someone else’s way of doing things. When we’re dislocated, we begin seeing in fresh ways. We look for the familiar in the unfamiliar, and we see what is familiar to us in new ways. If we’re paying attention, we see the presence of God in new ways.

Sometimes that strange and unfamiliar place is a spiritual desert where we seem to experience the absence of God more than God’s presence. One of the most haunting of scriptures is 1 Samuel 3:1: “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” I’ve known periods in my life like that.

Christians going creedless

By Jonathan Marlowe

It’s popular to dismiss the creeds as relics of an ancient past that try to limit the limitless God. At my United Methodist Annual Conference, we sang a hymn that proclaimed God is “greater than our creeds rehearse.” A speaker said, “As I get older and wiser, I find that I have less articles in my creed, but more faith in God.” Shouts of “Amen” rose from the congregation.

Besides ignoring the fact that the Apostles’ Creed is part of our baptismal liturgy and that our Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith are binding on all, this anticreedalism has other problems.

Blogging toward Sunday

By Debbie Blue
Luke 9:51-62
Sunday, July 1

The disciples are dense and forgetful. They bumble along after Jesus, barely able to keep up. At the transfiguration, this wild and dazzling moment, Peter wants to make nests: “Let’s build some booths,” he says. The following day Jesus pleads with them: “Let these words sink into you ears.” He wants them to understand that he’s going to his death, to humiliation, but in the next moment they are arguing about who is the greatest. John is offended when he encounters someone who is not with their group who is casting out demons in Jesus’ name. They seem to grasp only a shred of the uncontainable, incalculable, unruly and heartbreaking beauty of Jesus’ way.

Blogging toward Sunday

By William H. Willimon
Luke 9:51-52
Sunday, July 1

It seems strange to be reading a tough text like Luke 9:51-62 during the gentle days of early summer. Most of our congregations are in relaxed, vacation mode. And into these mellow summer days is shoved a gospel that speaks of the stark demands of discipleship. Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem, but he is no passive victim of state-sponsored violence. He is no automaton or robot trudging his way toward his fate. He has resolutely decided to go to Jerusalem. And we know what this means he is going to his death.

Those of us who live in a “culture of victimization” ought to take note.

Willow Creek pilgrimage

By Jason Byassee

Every year a batch of United Methodist ministers from North Carolina, encouraged by their superiors, makes a pilgrimage to Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago. The purpose of the trip is clear: Willow Creek is growing (20,000 attend weekly; 8000 have gone through its rigorous membership course) while the United Methodist denomination is shrinking, so these pastors need to learn from Willow how to be great big again. It strikes me as a little pitiful. Now, having just visited Willow for the first time myself, it strikes me as even more so.

Not because Willow is bad. It’s a marvel.

Lectionary fade?

By Anthony B. Robinson

Is devotion to the Common Lectionary fading? In the ‘70s and ‘80s many mainline Protestant preachers embraced the Common Ecumenical Lectionary for a variety of reasons: to combat biblical illiteracy in congregations, to make sure sermons were biblical, to witness to the unity of the church, to ensure a wider variety of scripture on the congregation's menu, and to enhance coordination with music and education programs.

But my own unscientific soundings suggest that Common Lectionary usage is not as common as it once was.

Blogging toward Sunday

Scary story
By Debbie Blue
Luke 8:26-39
Sunday, June 24

This passage has all the elements of a scary story. Jesus and the disciples get into a boat and a horrible storm comes up. The disciples scream that they are going to die, reach the shore, step out onto land—and find themselves in a graveyard where a naked demon-possessed man is wandering about. I imagine hissing and whispering and Linda Blair, but maybe I’ve seen too many movies. As a kid I used to lie in bed at night trying hard to remember exactly what my Sunday school teacher said: If I had Jesus in my heart, the demons couldn’t possess me—but what if I doubted?

Atheists: define yourselves

By Anne Robertson

If only for the sake of intellectual rigor, I wish atheists would find another name for themselves—one that provides some positive content for their worldview. If you don’t believe in God, what do you believe in? Are you a Universal Vacuumist? Cohesive Randomite? Christians should not leave their beliefs unexamined, and neither should atheists. Do atheists really believe there is nothing ultimate in the universe, or are they just reacting against one definition of the ultimate? Atheists, define yourselves.

In Luther's footsteps

By James Howell

My 20-year-old daughter and I were touring Martin Luther sites in Germany a couple of weeks ago. She had taken a pair of courses on the Reformation and Luther at Duke, and wanted to get the lay of the land.

So one chilly, rainy day we found ourselves on the way to the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt where Luther lived for the years before he went to Wittenburg. Happily, we bumped into a band of American tourists, retired Lutheran pastors and their spouses, all wide-eyed, all soaking in their heritage as they walked the paths they had been tutored in and had preached to others.

Deep inside the building we sat in a small chapel, unchanged since the 16th century. When their guide stopped his spiel, he said, “The acoustics in here are fantastic. Some groups like to sing. Would you like to sing something before we leave?”

There was no conferring; no one said a word. But suddenly the whole group raised their voices on the same hymn, and on key.

Hillary and abortion

By David Heim

At the June 4 presidential forum on faith and politics sponsored by Sojourners/Call to Renewal and televised on CNN, Hillary Clinton was tossed a softball question on abortion by Florida pastor Joel Hunter. In reply, she recited the litany developed by her husband, Bill: abortion should be safe, legal and rare, she said, and she emphasized, “and I mean rare.” But then she used the rest of her time to talk about how hard it is for pro-life and pro-choice groups to find common ground.

What a missed opportunity.

Blogging toward Sunday

By Debbie Blue
1 Kings 21:1-14, Luke 7:36-8:3
Sunday, June 17

When you have long hair and perfumed oil and kissing feet and a sinful woman in the same pericope, it’s hard not to think of sex. No wonder Christian commentary has for centuries assumed that this woman is a prostitute. No wonder church Fathers talk about her “fornication” and “lewdness,” calling her “the whore.” Ephrem of Syria describes her “casting from her hands the enticing bracelets of her youth. . . casting away from her body the tunic of fine linen of whoredom. . .drawing off and casting from her feet the adorned sandals of lewdness.” It’s as if he’s narrating a striptease. The idea that if a woman is a sinner she is a sexual sinner seems a little one-dimensional, maybe even the product of the male imagination.

Is tattooing an incarnational practice?

By Amy Frykholm

In the Left Behind series, people who become Christians after the Rapture receive marks on their foreheads—a kind of three-dimensional, holographic tattoo that only other Christians can see. These marks stand in contrast to the “Mark of the Beast” mark on the foreheads of those who have chosen to follow the Antichrist. I find the desire to inscribe Christians with a “mark” fascinating. In Protestantism, we have frequently reduced salvation to something intangible, unaffected by material practices. In Left Behind, a simple “mark” solves that perplexing, age-old question about who is saved and who is not. The tattoo removes all uncertainty. Whew. Problem solved. Except it’s not that simple, of course, since bad people learn how to imitate the mark and the true believers can be deceived by unbelievers and the cycle of uncertainty, even with the special mark, goes on and on.

Tim Keel’s recent article in the Century discusses Christian tattooing of another sort: Christians who mark themselves using permanent ink on their skin.

Turn or burn

By Jason Byassee

The cover had an image of flames and the headline: “What happens one minute after you die?” I wouldn’t normally pick up Billy Graham’s Decision magazine—we mainline Protestants don’t talk about hell very much. It may be one of the most distinctive differences between us and our revivalist brethren. But the flames and the question drew me in.

The Warren-Murdoch link

By John Dart

Author-minister Rick Warren says he is media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s pastor, though the relationship between the two influential newsmakers seemed rather vague and informal when the claim was published last fall. But Warren’s conservative evangelical critics, already unhappy with the Baptist pastor’s occasional independence from old-guard cultural ideology, were very purposeful in pointing out an alleged incongruity: Murdoch has pornographic channels on his satellite TV companies. They suggested that Warren should rebuke him.

It wasn’t the first controversy over Murdoch’s high-profile friendships in church circles.

Blogging toward Sunday

By Debbie Blue
1 Kings 17:8-24; Luke 7:11-17
Sunday, June 10

It’s clear that Luke’s desire is to write an “orderly account”; he has an agenda, is out to prove something, and his writing occasionally seems a bit contrived and predictable. If this story were only about Luke crossing things off his list—one, two, three, four prophesies fulfilled, or to make some point about Jesus being like Elisha but greater than Elisha because Jesus merely speaks and the dead rise—then it would be about as compelling as crossing things off a grocery list. What’s interesting, however, is that the desire for order and clarity, the intent to provide the reader with certainty and security (1:4) sometimes meshes and sometimes doesn’t mesh with the outrageous liveliness of the Gospel he’s trying to articulate. We learn Luke’s system and at the same time glimpse things that are “unsystematizable.”