Theolog

Hoaxes and urban legends

By John Dart

Whenever friends or relatives forward me a fishy article, dubious factoid or heart-tugging chain letter, I recommend that they visit Snopes. It’s a resource for editors, clergy and educators who need help debunking dubious claims. Or look at Urban Legends. It has resources to refute, for example, a claim circulating in conservative Christian circles that a “hate crime” bill in Congress would punish pastors who preach sermons against homosexuality. “The proposed law would make it a crime to preach on Romans chapter 1 or 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Or even to discuss them in a Sunday school class,” says a letter dated June 14 that urges recipients to spread the alarm.

Blogging toward Sunday

By William H. Willimon
Hosea 11:1-11, Luke 12:13-21    
Sunday, August 5

     As a woman was leaving church, she whispered to her pastor, “Do you have some time for me to talk with you about a matter of concern?”
    “What’s the problem?” he asked abruptly.
    “Well, it’s personal, but I have just been offered a promotion in my company. It is very flattering, and the money would be wonderful, but it requires more travel and I’m already away from home more than I would like, and. . .”
     “Jesus doesn’t have any interest in any of that!” the pastor said, interrupting. Then he turned and began greeting other worshipers.

An earnest young man comes up to Jesus asking the Lord to help him settle an inheritance dispute between him and his brother. Jesus, who has been on a negative, judgmental jag for the past few chapters in Luke, is given an opportunity to show how caring and compassionate he really is. Time to get off the prophetic high horse and get mushy, fuzzy and pastoral.

Salvations East and West

By Amy Frykholm

My friend Mark’s ZZ Top beard hangs a bit scraggly about eight inches below his chin and makes his narrow face look even narrower. He is entering his sixth year in an Orthodox theology program at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece, which has the largest Orthodox theology faculty in the world. Mark studies with students from both Orthodox and non-Orthodox countries: Americans, Serbians, Romanians, Russians, Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians.

A life-long Protestant and son of a Baptist minister, Mark is just finishing his first decade as Orthodox. The most significant theological shift has come in his understanding of the relationship between God and man.

Christopher Hitchens Is Right

By Rodney Clapp

I have never been a fan of Christopher Hitchens. My earliest awareness of his work came with his The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Anyone who publicly attacks an aged nun to garner attention really may not have something worthwhile to say. More recently, the grandstanding pundit distinguished himself by being the most bombastic “liberal” supporter of George W. Bush’s Iraq occupation. Let’s just say that one’s time would be better spent rereading one of Hitchens’s heroes, George Orwell, than reading Hitchens himself.

Blogging toward Sunday

By William H. Willimon
Hosea 1:2-10, Luke 11:1-13
Sunday, July 29

        Jesus was praying one day when his disciples interrupted him, begging, “Teach us to pray like John taught his disciples.”
        Jesus graciously obliged them, giving them a succinct prayer. “When you pray, do it like this….”

Prayer, at least prayer in “Jesus’ name,” as Jesus practiced it, does not come naturally. Most people I know think that our prayers ought to be “heartfelt” or “sincere.” Jesus apparently could care less about such sentimental mush. He has a definite, peculiar notion of what constitutes prayer. Prayer is not whenever I spill my guts to God: prayer is when I obey Jesus and pray for the things that he teaches me to pray for and when I pray the way he prays. Prayer is bending my feelings, my desires, my thoughts and yearnings toward Jesus and what he wants me to feel, desire and think.

Metaphors for Spirit

By Debra Bendis

I’ve been reading Acts this summer with a vibrant, engaged and committed group of adults. They’re excited to read about the adventure of the early church. They identify with the intentions of the apostles and with the challenges faced by the churches in Antioch, Corinth and Lystra.

But what the group struggles most with each week is the Holy Spirit.

Blogging toward Sunday

By William H. Willimon
Amos 8:1-12, Luke 10:38-42
Sunday, July 22

The gospel gets domestic as Jesus—who is homeless, without a job, traveling from place to place, and looking for a free meal—intrudes into the home of two unmarried women.

Wonder of wonders, they welcome this itinerant rabbi into the inner sanctum of their home. Once again Jesus is breaking the boundaries, pushing at the limits; once again there are a few who are willing to risk welcoming and hosting this Jesus. After all, it’s invariably a discomforting experience when he pushes his way into your living room or your kitchen. When one dares to welcome Jesus as a guest, things get surprising.

Where are the baby boomers?

By Julie Clawson

Attend any informational meeting, grassroots activity or public protest and you’ll see the same sort of crowd. First there will be the hippie-looking, tattoo-sporting, fair trade-drinking, under-30 crowd. They are young and passionate and live (with multiple roommates) on the nonprofit salaries they receive for living their values.

Churches great and small

By Jason Byassee

On a recent trip to Los Angeles I visited two very different Roman Catholic parishes. One was Our Lady of the Angels, the cathedral of the archdiocese of L.A. It was completed in 2002, built almost without right angles, and looks as if its massive stones were carved right out of the desert and patterned after the Southwest’s adobe-dwelling first inhabitants. It’s marvelous and enormous—its courtyard can hold thousands. No mass is held only in English; masses are either bilingual or only in Spanish. OLA, as it is often called, has been in the news for its leadership on the immigrant sanctuary issue.

Blogging toward Sunday

By William H. Willimon
Amos 7:7-17, Luke 10:25-37
Sunday, July 15

God promises the people of Israel that he will not “pass them by.” At the same time, God sets a plumb line against Israel, using a divine standard to measure the fidelity of God’s people. A visit from God, then, is presented as judgment that shall lead to desolation and destruction.

It’s a curious image. God stops, stoops, takes time with Israel in order to judge, in order that there be accountability. Most of the time when I hear the church plead for divine visitation, it’s for the purpose of blessing. “Lord, come save us, give us, bless us” is our prayer. But Amos dares an image of a busy God who, although preoccupied with business elsewhere, finally takes time for Israel.

A welcoming congregation

By Robert Cornwall

When my congregation decided that being a place of welcome would be one of our core values, we had to figure out what this meant in practice. We had to ask if there were limits to welcome.

For generations churches have wrestled with this question, and in many ways we’ve not evolved very much. The role of women and the challenges of segregation remain with us decades after the suffrage movements and the Civil Rights movement. Now homosexuality is the issue that vexes our congregations and denominations and threatens to divide global fellowships. Many in the church would like to see this issue go away; they try to ignore it, believing it won’t affect their church. But if we run from this issue, our claims to be places of welcome become hollow and superficial—unless being a place of welcome simply means that if you’re like us, we’ll be nice to you.

For a long time I believed that homosexuality wasn’t an appropriate Christian lifestyle. Homosexuals could come to church, but if  they wanted to be part of the church then they needed to change who they were. Then my brother came out.

The internet, gay sex, and the surgeon general appointee

By Jason Byassee

Surgeon general appointees are often controversial, usually for reasons having to do with sex. Conservatives fumed as C. Everett Koop praised the virtues of the condom, and convulsed when Jocelyn Elders extolled the virtues of masturbation.

Now it’s the left that’s in a tizzy. President Bush has nominated James Holsinger, Kentucky’s former health secretary and current chancellor of the University of Kentucky’s medical center. It’s not a surprising nomination. He’s a medical doctor with some conservative credentials. He’s also a retired general in the army reserve, which should play to the crowd. Most importantly, he is on record as an opponent of gay sex.

Blogging toward Sunday

By William H. Willimon
2 Kings 5:1-14, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 
Sunday, July 8

As I read through one of the epistles, with Paul hammering an early congregation for its members’ infidelities and numerous discipleship shortcomings, I wish I had the guts to give my people the sermonic tongue-lashing they so richly deserve. Then suddenly, in mid-diatribe, Paul asserts, “Now you are the body of Christ.”

Really? This forlorn conglomeration of inept hangers-on, they are the body of Christ? It’s outrageous for Jesus Christ to so limit himself in such a lousy body. Alas, that’s the way this God works.

Let’s first agree that God can do anything, anywhere, anytime God wants. Self-sufficient omnipotence is the very essence of deity? Right?

Wrong.