on burning sacred texts

The news in last few days has focused largely on Dove World Outreach Center's plans (DWOC; sorry, but I won't link to them here) to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001. This small and inflammatory (no pun intended) congregation has become such a topic of conversation that as of now their name generates nearly 3,400 hits on Google News. I suspect this story provides a comforting balance to the loudly debated mosque planned for Ground Zero. In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I'm against both, and largely for the same reasons.

But the question I want to raise is, How would Jesus respond to DWOC's plans to burn Islam's sacred text? More full disclosure: My answer to this question is, of course, my answer and not really "what Jesus would do." Far be it from me to claim to speak for Jesus. Now let me sit in my special Holy Spirit chair and utter the words of the Lord . . .

At the heart of the Christian gospel is the story of a God who (i) created the universe and all that inhabits it by the word of his mouth and declared his creation good, and who (ii) found himself spurned by his creation in favor of lesser lights. Paul referred to this situation in terms of "exchange": an exchange of God's incorruptible glory for the likeness of perishable beings, of the truth of God for a lie, of the praise and worship of the creator for the created (see Rom. 1.23–25).

And how did the creator God respond to this affront? Did he defend his honor by condemning the shameful? Sometimes, but not ultimately. Did he defend his righteousness by condemning the wicked? Sometimes, but not ultimately. Did he uphold the truth by destroying the liars? Sometimes, but not ultimately.

The Christian gospel insists that God took a stand for honor, righteousness, and truth not by stamping on and stamping out their opposites but by allowing wicked humanity to nail him to a dead tree and hide him in a dank grave. God identified with the shameful, the wicked, and the liars in order to transform them from within. He did not defend the abstract concepts honor, righteousness, and truth but sought to bring those concepts to fruition in the lives of the very people who made themselves enemies of God. Again, Paul speaks eloquently here: "For Christ, even while we were weak, while the time was right, died for the ungodly. . . . God made his own love for us evident, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 9.6, 8). God identified with the evil he sought to condemn in order to redeem the people who found themselves enslaved by evil's tyranny.

So how would this God respond to DWOC's plans to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday? I can't help but think this God would set copies of the Bible on fire. Not because the Bible is evil (again, Paul: "May it never be!"), and not because the Quran is worth defending. But despite all the charges the Christian gospel would level against the errors of Islam, the Christian God longs for, yearns for, even dies for the redemption of Muslims. This God doesn't incite the hatred of wicked humanity; rather, he invites wicked humanity to spend its hatred on his flesh. He condemns our wickedness in his own body. And he restores our broken relationship with him by washing us in his own blood. This God invites us to spend and expend our hatred on him so that we may witness our hatred overcome. This time John's words come to mind: "We love [God] because he first loved us" (1 John 4.19).

I think if we were to see Bibles instead of Qurans put to the flame, we would see the kingdom of God arising from the smoldering pages. Because that's how our God reigns: Not by out-persecuting his enemies but out-perservering them. His honor swallowed up our shame. His righteousness swallowed up our wickedness. His truth swallowed up our lies.

Shame on you, DWOC, for missing all of this.

a f/Father's love

On Friday, 6 August 2010, ten humanitarian workers were killed in Afghanistan by Taliban militants. One of those ten was Cheryl Beckett, whose father, Charles, is a local minister in south Knoxville and an adjunct teacher at my institution of higher education.

Charles Beckett is a friend of mine and—more than that—an example of how a man should love his daughter(s). The selfish father in me wants to keep my daughters near at hand and available for my own sense of family and fulfillment. Charles's example reminds me that I am their father, not their Father, and that true love trusts my daughters to his loving and perfect care. I pray I will one day love my daughters that much.



[The full story is available on knoxnews.com.]

Jerusalem Syndrome: is this a "turn of phrase"?

James Davila mentions an article from Emunah magazine heralding a decrease in "Jerusalem Syndrome." I think Jim's right that the fundamental problem—differentiating reality from fantasy—remains, even if this particular malady is on the decline. But I point out Israeli psychologist Gregory Katz's description of at-risk groups:

“The majority of patients that come into the psychiatric clinic with religious delusions were already suffering from psychological problems before they arrived in the holy city.” He says that those most susceptible these days are extremely religious persons who are ninety-eight percent Christian. They normally come from remote rural areas and in most cases and are traveling abroad for the first time in their lives. (emphasis added)

Ninety-eight percent Christianity, apparently, isn't enough. You need to be one hundred percent sold out to Jesus. Then you can safely visit the Holy City without fear of transmogrification into the Virgin Mary or whatever.

Terminator Jesus?

Fire and property damage are never funny. But then this story reminds me of the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, in which Elijah calls down fire from heaven.

The Solid Rock Church, just off I-75 north of Cincinnati, OH, built a three-story tall statue of Jesus early in the previous decade. Everyone referred to this statue as "Touchdown Jesus" for reasons obvious to anyone familiar with American football.

This week that statue was struck by lightning and burned like Elijah's sacrifice. The images (available here) of the steel frame left behind after the fire destroyed the plastic foam and fiberglass reminded me of the classic Terminator. And can't we all imagine Jesus telling the Eleven just before the Ascension, "Hasta la vista, baby," or (wait for it . . .), "I'll be back."

Update: A colleague mentions this event on his blog.

We are Borg

I assume it's okay for me to post this brochure online; if this somehow violates some arcane copyright statute someone please let me know. At any rate, those of you in the East TN area might be interested in a presentation at St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church (Farragut TN) by Marcus Borg, a historical Jesus scholar and Canon Theologian at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (Portland, OR).

Borg is well known as a prominent member of the Jesus Seminar, though I've pointed out elsewhere that his work is qualitatively different than most of what has been published under their banner. He is also particularly known for persistently challenging eschatological reconstructions of the historical Jesus, though my own sense is that Borg (and others) lost that debate before it started simply because of the stark binary dichotomy that proponents of a sapiential Jesus often foist upon the ancient data.

Personally, I'm not particularly interested in Borg's prescriptions for how to be Christian in the twenty-first century. If this were a lecture series about the historical Jesus, I would be much more likely to shell out the $45.00 registration fee. For those of you with a more pastoral bent, however, the cost is less than 6.5 hours of labor at the current Federal minimum wage. Well, that's before taxes.

[HT: Daniel Overdorf]

a rather nice piece, I should think

Slate.com has a rather nice piece by—wait for it . . . —Christopher Hitchens. It isn't often that I can find myself in the descriptions of people like me (viz., conservative Christian who takes the traditional claims and teachings of the Christian church seriously enough to leave them open to question), especially when those descriptions are written by people like Hitchens.

There's still a world of disagreement; of course there is. But the tone Hitchens strikes in this essay enables, even invites conversation and debate. I can't help but think that Jesus would have enjoyed speaking with someone like Hitchens (well, Hitchens as he conducts himself in this particular Slate article). Of course, unless Hitchens brushes up on his Aramaic, they probably wouldn't have found very much to say to each other . . .

HT: Doug Chaplin

request for input

I've never read through an issue of Christianity Today, though it seems like I'm constantly seeing people refer to either the magazine or the website. My question: Do any of you subscribe to CT, and do you think it justifies the subscription price ($19.95 for 12 issues)?

Liberty is wrong

Today's InsideHigherEd.com has a story about Liberty University, which has "withdrawn recognition from its Democratic club," primarily, it sounds like, because of the Democratic Party's stance on abortion and gay marriage. [Liberty has an op-ed response to media coverage of the issue here; I didn't notice any significant discrepancy between Liberty's own account of the events and the piece from InsiderHigherEd.]

Political issues are notoriously complicated, not least moral political issues such as abortion and gay marriage. I often get the impression online and in the media that there is no basis on which a person can legitimately be opposed to gay marriage. Just the belief that marriage ought to be between one man and one woman is labelled "controversial" (for example, the seemingly endless and never-newsworthy saga of Carrie Prejean) even when serious efforts are made to balance one's commitment to traditional values with a belief that all persons deserve respect. Personally, as one with an admittedly conservative political perspective, I am no longer surprised by the vitriol and condemnation that both sides' extremities hurl at one another. But it does amaze me that hatred from one side is covered in the press and hatred from the other is largely ignored. (For example, has this received any national coverage [warning: video contains explicit language] amidst all the declarations of Prejean's affirmation of a traditional view of marriage as "controversial"?)

The political problems facing American society today aren't rooted in either political party, and neither are the solutions. I support Republican candidates more often than I do Democratic ones, but that's like saying I prefer broccoli to kale. I do, but I can't stand either. Liberty University has foolishly given support to the notion that the Republican Party is rooted in traditional Christian values and that evangelical Christians can only support Republican causes in today's political climate. That's a mistake, and traditional Christian moral visions for our society will only suffer and be corrupted and distorted by too close an alignment with either political party.

I don't think any student group—including the Democratic student group—has a right to Liberty's name or their money. And no one, as far as I can tell, is terribly upset that Liberty doesn't have a sanctioned Communist student group [I'm assuming here; if they do please let me know!]. But the prudent course, I would have thought, would have been to officially treat the Republican and Democratic student groups identically, even if faculty and administrators personally feel more closely aligned with the former. The problem, in the end, isn't the treatment of either Republican or Democratic student groups; the problem is the identification of and confusion between biblical and political agenda.

Hell, yes?

Crossings Knoxville is currently in the midst of a series called "Not Beyond Reason" (see, for example, here), a series heavily influenced by Tim Keller's The Reason for God and trying to be a postmodernist approach to apologetics. Each sermon asks a question that has historically been difficult for Christianity to face squarely and which many people currently cite as one reason for not accepting the claims of the Christian faith (e.g., How can Christians claim to be the only true religion?). Each sermon also begins with a 5–7 minute prepared but unscripted conversation between two or three people that presents the question in broad strokes and seeks to demonstrate a thoughtful and tolerant approach to these difficult questions that doesn't simply abandon the traditional or biblical Christian claim.

In yesterday's sermon, which asked "How can a loving God send someone to hell?" a guy named Kevin made a great point in the opening conversation about hell and judgment and the church's behavior regarding such things. He noted that we have been too willing to take on those things that, biblically, God has reserved for himself—judgment, vengeance, etc.—while neglecting those things that God has genuinely called us to engage—service, love, outreach, etc.

I thought this was a great point. Whatever you think about hell and the difficulties it presents to Christian theology, the biblical teachings about judgment have been distorted by our [the church's] willingness to "help" God exercise judgment and our neglect of the call to transform and restore creation. In other words, hell—always a difficult subject no matter how you approach it—wouldn't be quite problem it is if Christians didn't seem so excited about the idea of peering over the edge of heaven and looking down on those suffering. Many of the problems facing the church's reputation, I think, could be addressed if we were genuinely terrified by the idea of a single person suffering judgment rather than a loving and healthy relationship with a sovereign God.

This video, which I ran across a few months ago and which we played in yesterday's services, makes a similar point, but now from the perspective of Penn Jillette, an outspoken and well reasoned atheist.

Warren Carter on Revelation

I was surprised by this discussion of Revelation (admittedly, in the context of a book on John, in a chapter on the synagogue in first-century Asia Minor, a province of the Roman Empire). Carter says:

Recent scholarship on Revelation argues, from an examination of life in imperial Asia and of the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2–3, that this text addressed not situations of persecution as previously thought, but situations of what the author regards as overaccommodation and compromise with Roman imperial society. The author challenges the overaccommodated lifestyle of the majority in the churches, urging them to discern the (demonic!) nature of the empire and to distance themselves from societal participation. In the words of 18:4, they are to "come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues" (NRSV). Revelation reveals that Rome, a "dwelling place of demons" (18:2), is already under God's judgment (Rev 6), asserts the devilish nature of Rome's empire and imperial worship (Rev 12–13), exposes its political power and economic greed (Rev 18), envisions God's supreme rule even now and in the future (Rev 4–5; 22), and anticipates Rome's imminent and final demise in the establishment of God's purposes by Jesus, the Lamb slaughtered by Rome but raised by God's power (Rev 18–22). In the meantime, the author urges the seven churches to distance themselves from imperial society. (John and Empire, 39)

Earlier this year I read through a Greek text of Revelation and began thinking I'd like to spend some time doing research at the back of the canon. As of now I haven't, so this strangest, perhaps, of NT books is well beyond my area of expertise.

Even so, I think when we read Revelation as a text about "the end of the world," this book loses the ability to say anything about our lives in the world, here and now, except indirectly and by implication. Maybe this isn't an inevitable consequence, but I think all the futuristic, apocalyptic (in the Jerry Jenkins/Tim LaHaye sense) perspectives have obscured the ways that Revelation is relevant to the twenty-first century church more broadly. I have been known to say that the main thrust of Revelation was that, in the end, Jesus wins, and you really want to be on his team. But does Revelation have more—maybe even significantly more—to say to us now?

Until Carter I had only ever heard people talk about Revelation as a text written to churches in the context of rather extreme persecution (John is, after all, exiled on Patmos!). But the idea that the church has identified itself too closely with the empire, rather than is experiencing persecution at her hands, turns at least some of that thinking on its head. Perhaps much of the apocalyptic imagery driving John's visions isn't directed at a violent empire whose machinations have hurt and endangered a growing and yet increasingly marginal Jewish movement. Perhaps that imagery, instead, is directed at a pagan empire with whom the early followers of Jesus had learned to negotiate and co-exist. Certainly I would think being able to get along is a good thing, but at what cost? Had the church then—and has the church now—given up or simply forgotten its core identity for the sake of getting along?

It's too early for me to say I'm convinced. But the possibility is intriguing. Consider this: In an age when the church has become very comfortable with the centers of power—whether hosting presidential debates and praying at presidential inaugurations, or sustaining massive consumer industries and spending billions in marketing, or identifying with the burgeoning environmentalist market that looks to be the next source of global wealth redistribution, or whatever—perhaps Revelation can reorient us to being faithful participants and prophetic voices in the marketplaces (commercial, political, and otherwise). Perhaps Revelation can show us again how not to legitimate this world's power structures but rather to demonstrate their pallor in the light of God's glorious power.

A. N. Wilson's reflections on Palm Sunday

On 11 April, the Mail Online ran a piece by British writer A. N. Wilson that is well worth reading (even well worth linking to three weeks late!). The essay, "A Religion of Hatred: Why We Should No Longer Be Cowed by the Chattering Classes Ruling Britain Who Sneer at Christianity" gives an inside look at not simply atheism or agnosticism but actual anti-Christian vitriol from a former anti-Christian.

Too often Christians are only too eager to find someone to be offended by or something to revile (it's amazing how thin-skinned Christians can be!). Even so, there are actually offensive and revulsive people and things out there. But too often we get so caught up defending God and defending Christianity that we forget God hasn't called us to get defensive in a fallen and ill-loving world. Rather, he's called us to be brave enough to live and love in the midst of death and hatred. We, unfortunately, have not been faithful.

And yet . . . sometimes we do get it right. Sometimes we do forget to insist on the last word and we focus on showing love to the end. And sometimes we do make a difference.

If you don't know, A. N. Wilson rejected his parents faith and, more than simply choosing not to be a Christian, has spoken and written against the Christian faith very publicly. His book, Jesus, is one of those very many that claim to rescue Jesus from the mire of the church's devotion to him and dust him off, revealing a rather hapless man who failed in this life and then was twisted into the Son of God in the next. And though we can easily (readily, even) document the distortion of the historical Jesus—the Jesus who can be known through the processes of historical critical inquiry—from confessional and pietistic perspectives, the answer, I think, is not found in distorting Jesus in the other direction.

It seems that Wilson would agree. Wilson's article is well worth reading in its entirety, but I include these brief paragraphs to whet your appetite.

My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known - not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.

The Easter story answers their questions about the spiritual aspects of humanity. It changes people's lives because it helps us understand that we, like Jesus, are born as spiritual beings.

Every inner prompting of conscience, every glimmering sense of beauty, every response we make to music, every experience we have of love - whether of physical love, sexual love, family love or the love of friends - and every experience of bereavement, reminds us of this fact about ourselves.

[HT: Ben Witherington]

Postscript: I glanced briefly at the comments to Ben Witherington's blog post and noticed that the top two comments (at the time, at least) missed the hope and . . . well, miracle of faith and instead took to defending theological views. Granted that the self-styled BW3 had to poke at those of the Reformed tradition in his post, can we knock off the bickering and, with the angels in heaven, rejoice with the one who has [re-]found his faith?!

private religion, communal religion

I've begun reviewing Warren Carter's John and Empire: Initial Explorations (T&T Clark, 2008; see also here). I'm only on p. 7, so my comments here aren't directed at the book so much as they are motived by them.

Carter begins by critiquing what he identifies as the two dominant approaches to reading John's gospel, (i) a privatized, spiritual reading, and (ii) a sectarian, communal reading. The first reading strategy is much more applicable to my own experience, especially in the churches of which I've been a part (and perhaps even of my current faith community). This isn't so much simply about how we read John but more about how we conceptualize what Christianity is—what it means to believe in Jesus, what eternal life refers to, what it was that Jesus rescued from God's wrath when he was crucified on a Roman cross and raised to life by the power of God.

In my fellowship of churches, these things are individual, private affairs, and very often only spiritual ones at that. I believe that Jesus is the Christ, meaning that my mind has given some cognitive assent to that as a proposition. And I have eternal life, meaning that some center of my consciousness—whatever or wherever that may be—will continue on forever "with God." Typically, that center of consciousness is expressly not a material entity; my soul or my spirit will go to be "with God" "in heaven."

Carter takes aim at this as a legitimate way of reading John. This way of thinking—this worldview, even—misses more of John than it gets, and so it hopelessly misunderstands the gospel. And my church, similarly, takes aim at this as a legitimate way of being a Christian. Multiple times our minister has explained it this way: There are [at least] three components of the gospel: (i) an aspect of incarnation, in which God, in Jesus, enters into and identifies with the human condition rather than peering at it from above, (ii) an aspect of atonement, in which Jesus address an ontological human problem and not simply a socio-cultural one, and (iii) an aspect of restoration, in which God's concern is for all of creation, material as well as spiritual, human as well as nonhuman. In what is inevitably a simplification of complex phenomena (but still, perhaps, helpful for understanding some things), more mainline expressions of Christianity have tended to emphasize (i) and (iii), focusing on the so-called social gospel, while more fundamentalist and/or evangelical expressions have emphasized (ii).

But as I was reading Carter from my socio-religious perspective (briefly outlined above), I began thinking about a problem many people like me experience, in which our children, as they enter the struggle to forge and fit into their own identity, find themselves unable to identify with our faith. How is it that so many genuine, passionate Christians cannot communicate their faith in compelling, convincing ways, even to their own children?!

Could this provide part of the answer? Carter says,

The Greco-Roman world's constituting of religion as an integral part of the political and societal landscape that among other things functioned to bind people together with each other and with their gods suggests that any attempt to understand John's "good news" cannot allow our contemporary restricted notions of privatized and spiritualized religion to limit and distort the inquiry. John's inclusion of signs of material transformation and of the narrative of Jesus' crucifixion by Pilate, the Roman governor, for example, attests the Gospel's participation in the material, the physical, the somatic, the societal, and the political: John does not regard these spheres as irrelevant. (Carter 2008: 7; my emphasis)

The phrase bind[s] people together is what caught my eye. Even in our highly individualized, postmodern world we long for and go to great lengths to find bonds with other people and social (and theological) structures that transcend ourselves. In John's world, Carter argues, religion played an important function here. But in our own world, we have denied religion any place at this particular table, trying instead to find professional, social, and now especially virtual connections with others in lieu of religious ones.

It strikes me, then, that as we become whoever we become—that is, as we fight to make our own connections with other people and institutions—religion seems wholly irrelevant. Two things result. First, religion appears to have nothing to offer us as we pursue our primary needs, now not only food, shelter, and the like but rather significance, meaning, and relationship. Second, religion appears dispensable to human relationships. I can reject my parents' spirituality, or yours, without rejecting them (or you). Many people explicitly make the effort to think like this, though I would think just as many people genuinely find themselves either hurt by their children's apostasy or surprised that their parents have overreacted so strongly.

I'm not sure where this leads me, except of course to emphasize that the individual, private, spiritualized view of religion, and especially Christianity, fails more than it succeeds and probably won't do my family the good that I want for us. Conservative Christians—fundamentalist, evangelical, or whatever—can rail against scholarship as impious or irreverent if it wants, but here (viz., Carter) I think critical scholarship has something important to offer those of us who take the Bible and its claims over our lives seriously. That is, if we continue to think of Christianity primarily in terms of me and God, if we continue to shut our eyes to those [central] aspects of the gospel that bind us with one another, with creation itself, and with the Creator God who cares for every aspect of this world—spiritual, material, social, etc.—our faith will only ever by myopic, anemic, and for those people we love, irrelevant.

gone Greek (and I ate too much!)

Last night my family and I went to GreekFest 2008 at Knoxville's St. George Greek Orthodox Church. I have always enjoyed my experiences with the Greek Orthodox church; the sense of culture and history surpasses anything I ever experience in my own faith tradition. It's not just the food and the dancing; I also appreciate the challenges of perpetuating a native culture from inside American culture. In the Orthodox Church Christianity also has a heavy sense of history, of connection with something older than the Information Age. I'm uncomfortable with all the icons and general decor of the sanctuary (and its supporting theology), but there is something to be said about keeping in mind brothers and sisters in Christ from previous generations as we struggle to discern and be faithful to authentic Christianity in our own day.

On another note, a guy with a microphone making announcements and emceeing the entertainment made a comment that snagged in my brain. As he was encouraging visitors to take a tour of the church and hear the history and explanation of the Greek Orthodox faith, he called the Orthodox church "the original Christian faith." After that comment I began to wonder if the combination of emphatically Greek culture and Christian Church was, for the Orthodox, more than just an expression of Christianity but rather the expression of Christianity. In other words, the icons weren't merely images of Jesus and the saints as Christian heroes; they were images of Jesus and the saints as Greek heroes! In that ideological milieu, just as in my own faith tradition, it is all the more important that we remember that Christianity isn't a Western religion but an Asian one. Christianity is the expression of the Jewish faith that has dramatically and definitively impacted the Western world.

more abuse?

Even if Tony Alamo is innocent (something on which I cannot comment either way), the guy is creepy and clearly has an over-inflated sense of self.

UPDATE: Cnn.com reports that six girls taken from Tony Alamo's compound remain in state custody. My wife and I were once a part of the foster system, and we only hope that these girls' current environment is more conducive toward healthy physical and psychological development than was their alleged previous environment.

eating the mushrooms

Okay, so the story behind this post's title is too long to share here; suffice it to say the title raises the question: What am I willing to risk to move my faith from belief in to acting upon. As I was challenged this morning to move from belief to action, the answer to that question was clear in my head. All afternoon, except during the nap that has become a Sunday tradition that I also try to observe on other days of the week, the words have echoed in my mind. Here's my answer:

I ask God to give us the strength to enter into the suffering of those in my community so that they might share in the blessings I've been given.

A brief explanation: My family and I live on the semi-rural campus of the college that employs me. Our house is provided and maintained by my employer (which has its problems, of course, but in the balance we are very well taken care of), so there's a whole area of life that we don't have to devote too much time or energy worrying about. Our neighbors are, without exception, faculty, staff, and students of this small private college. There isn't a single run-down, dodgy building within sight (even though there are three different trailor parks on campus). The things my neighbors worry about (and get upset about) include finishing midterm papers and preparing for exams, whether the neighbor mows his lawn with adequate frequency, whether the teenage children of my coworkers had permission when they accessed school facilities, and (this is a particularly pressing concern at the moment) whether residents observe the posted 15 mph speed limit in the residential areas of campus.

In other words, we are very sheltered.

In the midst of all of this, my greatest fears are these. First, that we will forget that outside this sheltered enclave is a real world where people have to worry about mortgages, neighbors, the cost of keeping their homes heated, dysfunctional and abusive domestic environments, and so on. My immediate world is untouched by these concerns. And while ours is a wonderful community to raise children, the fact is that many parents — single, teenage, homeless, unemployed, abused, underemployed, or whatever — cannot provide such a safe and caring environment for their children. Every day I run the risk of thinking, subconsciously if not on purpose, that these parents must not love their children as much as my wife and I love our daughter. I cannot imagine what it must be like to want to provide for your children and not be able to. This is a blessing that the vast majority of the world's population, I would imagine, have never known.

We are an explicitly and intentionally Christian community, but there is a real danger that as a Christian community we will forget that Jesus explicitly and intentionally sought out the hurting and poor around him. The paradox is striking and terrifying: Claiming to have committed to live lives faithful to him and his teachings, our day-to-day lives risk looking nothing like his. And how does that work? How do we who claim to be (or seek to be) his disciples live lives wholly unlike his?

Second, I worry that my daughter, who was seven months old when we moved here, will grow up thinking that the rest of the world is just like this little world she knows. The longer we stay here (and we have no plans to leave at the moment), the more she will think this place is "normal." What a shallow person she will be if she doesn't know that this place, rather than the city around us, is the oddity.

But I have a plan, a plan I've had in mind since my daughter was a bundle of elbows and knees poking and prodding my wife from the inside. I'm sure my plan, by itself, isn't enough to counter the pervasive secludedness of our community. But it's a beginning, a "square one" from which we can begin to take the blessings we've been given and share them with those around us. I can't give specifics here, but I'm coming to believe that now is the time to begin taking my daughter by the hand and introducing her, in measured doses at first, to the rest of the world.

But I also have a request. You don't need to live where I live to be sheltered like I'm sheltered. In fact, if you're a Western Christian, you probably know exactly what I'm wrestling with here. So, in the comments below, I invite you to answer the question, How have you poked holes in the bubble that protects you and your family from the rest of the world? What risks have you taken to keep from isolating yourself from the chaos outside?

surprised by my own bias

In this gruesome story about Anthony Hopkins, an "evangelical minister" charged with the murder of his wife and abusing his daughter, we see (once again) that "the world" (as opposed to the church) does not have a corner on sin and depravity. This story is surprisingly depraved and, in my opinion, surpasses even the recent tragedy in Knoxville. My comments on that story apply, mutatis mutandis, to this story as well.

I'm blogging about this story for a completely different reason, however, one that is unimaginably less important than what the people involved are dealing with as they learn the details of the tragedy that has launched them into the national and (I should think) international news. Specifically, I'm interested in the normally subconscious processes by which we imagine the world around us, especially when we lack certain details about that world. For me, this story raises questions about how we imagine the identity of a person who could, allegedly, abuse his daughter, murder his wife when she discovered his abuse, and hide her body for three years in a freezer while continuing to engage in ministry.

I'll be honest here, and I ask for some sympathy as I admit to things that aren't politically correct so that, perhaps, we can understand those things and think critically about how best to deal with them.  When I first read about this story in my RSS feed, the image that came to my mind was or a Robert Duvall-style preacher: a middle-aging White man of dubious moral and theological accomplishment. I'm not sure where this pre-fabricated image comes from, whether it was the description of the suspect (an evangelical preacher), the location of the crime (the American Southeast), or the nature of the crimes (incestual abuse, murder, hiding/mutilating [?] a corpse). But for some reason, I was surprised when I saw the photo of Mr. Hopkins included in CNN's report of the story (see above), and specifically that he is a Black man. I'm not exactly sure how to interpret my apparent bias; I'm not even sure who it's a bias against. (Certainly it isn't a bias against other races/racial minorities that I didn't automatically associate this crime with a Black man!) What I am sure about is that some potent social forces are at work here, and that these forces are all the more powerful for being, usually, invisible. If a White preacher had perpetrated this crime, I doubt I would have noticed the way my biases worked to portray the world in the absence of further information.

And, of course, this makes me wonder how these forces work in other areas of my everyday life. And, finally, I wonder what difference my biases make for my own interpretation of the biblical texts and my own reconstruction of early Christianity. Given the overwhelmingly likely probability that my biases are substantially different from those of ancient (Judeo-)Christians, I also have to wonder what historical and exegetical problems these biases inevitably bring to bear on my own academic and pastoral work.

Knoxville in the news

It's never a good thing when a small city like Knoxville makes the national news, unless we're talking about a UT team making the sports page. Unfortunately, it's in the former vein that the story of a shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church made headlines Sunday morning. I would like to add my own sympathies with the public outpouring of grief and support for this congregation and express a sense of grief and loss not simply for the two fatalities but for the fallen conditions that allow for such heinous and inexcusable events.

At the risk of saying too much, I would like to add two more comments. First, as a member of a conservative faith tradition that otherwise has very little in common or agreement with the Unitarian/Universalist tradition, I would like to make explicit that these differences do not in any way diminish the grief and support I feel for this congregation and its families. From my perspective it seems the U/U tradition does not take seriously things that are vitally important to me. But these things pale in comparison with the tragedy and heartbreak that any community face when dealing with such robust and salient indicators of the sin and wickedness that have plagued creation since at least the Third Chapter.

Second, still as a member of a conservative faith tradition, I condemn the motivations that have, apparently, motivated Mr. Adkisson to such depraved behavior. By a strange twist of fate, I have close connections with people who grew up with and know personally Mr. Adkisson, and in their view (by which I mean to acknowledge that this could be wrong) he did not consider himself a Christian, neither was he reacting against liberal Christianity in some ill-conceived "defense" of conservative Christianity. Though his beef was, on the face of it, with "the liberal movement" (whatever that means), I am amazed (and offended) by some comments (such as this one) that immediately associate this tragedy with "bad (= conservative) theology." As we wrestle with our faith in God and our experiences in the world, I would hope that we could allow for the very genuinely held perspectives among us that do not necessarily or inevitably lead to violence, hatred, enmity, or strife. Could we acknowledge that evil actions are evil without respect to the theological and/or ideological beliefs that legitimate those actions? And could we lay aside just for a moment our compulsive need to label people and ideologies so that, again just for a moment, we might grieve together?

UPDATE: Mark Nelson, a friend of mine, has just commented on this tragedy here. If you follow his link to the story in the Knoxville News Sentinel, you'll see exactly the kind of opportunistic political name-calling I would have thought both sides would be interested in avoiding. We can be so pathetic . . . 

BIBL 5107 Lesson 2:the alluring empire

First, a quote:

One of the most obvious but important points to be made in this course is that all of New Testament history transpired in the shadow of the Roman Empire. While many of the social and cultural elements of the New Testament period (e.g., language, religious traditions, literature) originated in the Hellenistic age, all of the New Testament personalities lived, worked, and died in a world that was under the political, military, and legal control of Rome.

This observation has been borne out in numerous ways, not least in the effects that consideration of the Roman political environment has had upon the interpretation of specific New Testament texts and traditions. (One of the first books I read in this vein was the very interesting Paul and Politics.) Throughout the pages of the NT, Rome and the power she wielded over the peoples of the Mediterranean basin provide the background — and, often enough, the foreground — for the events and ideas inscribed on the page. From Jesus' crucifixion to John's revelation and at all points in between, Rome was like the hovering chaperon whose watchful presence affected both the content and form of earliest Christian theology and history.

And Rome's presence isn't flattering. Even in Luke-Acts, which famously portrays the interaction between central Christian figures (esp. Paul) and the Roman authorities in surprisingly conciliatory hues (e.g., Acts 13, 18, 21–22, 25–28), the narrative doesn't seem to me to suggest Rome is the crown of human civilization so much as to argue that Rome isn't an impediment to the church's mission. It was, after all, Roman and Roman-sponsored power (Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas, respectively) that had Jesus crucified, even if the gospels stress the influence of the Jews and/or the Jewish authorities. I think Acts 4.23–31 captures this perspective in microcosm.

But my thoughts are less historical here and more theological. I wonder, given the pervasive and pervasively negative presence of Rome in and behind the pages of the New Testament, what are we to make of the United States of America? In many ways this country was founded with thoughts of the New Rome dancing in the Founders' heads (e.g., the Senate; the [bald] eagle as our national symbol; a republican system of government; etc.). And certainly Rome made positive (rather than simply negative) contributions to human history and civilization. I should also say that my questions about American power and the policies according to which it wields that power aren't motivated by any desire to be like some other country, whether European or two-thirds world or whatever. Without necessarily throwing America under the bus, is there room for confessing Christians to think critically about American power and how American expressions of Christianity relate to, perpetuate, and challenge that power?

Answers here are undoubtedly complex, variegated, and at times probably contradictory. Many of the books currently being marketed by publishers of biblical and religious scholarship are in some way engaged in pursuing this question, as are many of the [biblio]blogs listed here and elsewhere. But my first inklings are that, inasmuch as judgment against Rome and Roman power are evident in the pages of New Testament texts, we American Christians — and Western Christians in general — should engage ourselves in asking whether our own participation in the exercise of power will be similarly judged before God.

Brian in the news

The BBC reports that the mayor of Aberystwyth, Sue Jones-Davies — who played Judith Iscariot in Monty Python's The Life of Brian — is trying to overturn a 30-year ban on the movie in her western Welsh town. I came across this story because of the discussion at the end of Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show today. Like every caller into today's program[me], I have to say I'm a bit surprised that a ban on a movie can still exist today; it seems the ban was simply forgotten at some point in the last three decades.

As I listened to the story, and as I read Ben Myers's review of Kotsko's book on Žižek and theology — specifically, that "a certain humourlessness could be said to dominate the entire Christian tradition" — I remembered Kathy Griffin's "offensive remarks" at the Emmy Awards show last year.

In the cases of The Life of Brian and Kathy Griffin, I think the church's "humourlessness" has become acute and manifested severe symptoms. It seems to me that we Christians have a hard time distinguishing between attacks on Jesus and attacks on Christians and/or the Church, though this distinction is vitally important. When Brian pleads with his followers, "Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me, you don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!" only to have have them agree in unision, "Yes! We're all individuals!" the satire and irony aren't making a theological point (or aren't necessarily doing so) so much as a cultural one. When Kathy Griffin accepts an Emmy and says, "A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now," we should recognize the shot taken not against Jesus or even the Church but against celebrities who thank Jesus for their award in a, frankly, meaningless gesture.

The actual insult against the Church, I think, comes from the Church itself. How often do we here someone complain, whether rightly or wrongly, something like, "It is a sure bet that if Griffin had said, 'Suck it, Muhammad,' there would have been a very different reaction," (Bill Donohue, president, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights)? For the sake of argument let's accept Donohue's point. Does this legitimate a similar Christian response? Instead, it seems to me that Christians can't complain about violent protests against cartoons depicting Mohammed in a Danish newspaper and mobilize protests against offensive or uncomfortable images of Jesus and the Church in the wider world. We either speak out in support of Islamic offense at unfavorable depictions of what they hold sacred or we accept similar offenses against Christian institutions and beliefs.

Isaac Hayes's hypocrisy was obvious to everyone when the voice of Chef left the cast of South Park complaining that the show's portrayal of Scientology was offensive. Can't we see that our own hypocrisy is similarly obvious? Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians that the Church, as Christ's body, is made of various and sundry parts — a foot here, an eye there. I'd like to ask, Where are the Church's shoulders, and could they please be broadened to handle a little bit of satire and critique without being offended at every perceived slight?! To those Christians who disagree here, I would point out that Jesus himself was remembered as having predicted this very situation. "If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me first" (John 15.18). We should at least take solace that we can locate ourselves in the biblical narrative with such little effort and stop complaining about what little discomfort Western Christians may be subjected to in the public marketplace!

Something seems off here

This article pulls me in multiple directions. On one hand, I think Paul had something to say about brethren suing brethren. On the other hand, I would think any legal action Mr Lincoln takes against the church is a tacit acknowledgement (which is called for, in my opinion) that God was not behind his somewhat abrupt trip to the ground floor. On yet another hand (try not to do the math), the idea that other worshipers, who are similarly "asking God to have 'a real experience' while praying," should have been watching out for the consequences of Mr Lincoln's own such seeking strikes me as irresponsible. And, if I had a hand left, it would want to ask if Mr Lincoln had since decided that "a real experience" with $2.5M would suffice in the absence of theophany. I can't say I have very many sympathies for the charismatic interests of some of my sisters and brothers in the Lord (having come out of a charismatic background myself), but — in the absence of any other information — I would hope the court would support the church in this instance.