I think that I am perhaps putting a dog in this (political) fight because I have been depressed and disappointed with the church in my life these past couple of years to an extent unmatched in my lifetime. The fact that I have been reading the Hauerwas’ and Fitch’s and JKA Smiths has only heightened the sense of contrast between Continue Reading
I have , for the geek that I am, been almost entirely absent from the text messaging world. I have received them (and this is on the increase of late, as various companies send me notices, and I even got one from my dentist who was offering text message reminders for my appointments. I was looking up stuff on text Continue Reading
I received the email from sojomail informing me of the appearance of Jim on the Daily Show (er….sorry….A Daily Show), so I watched. I had been interested to read what , after 4 years of God’s Politics , was to be the next emphasis. What Jim said to Jon sounded somewhat the same, but perhaps I’ve heard all of this Continue Reading
It’s so sad, and depressing, and discouraging to see all the cynicism, mistrust, and prejudice in so many people, all around me, everywhere I go. So many of these people are even close to and involved in churches, and I wonder how they come to think and feel and believe and live in this way. It’s so ironic that they Continue Reading
Hauerwas in this podcast (The Craft): “Only by creating expectations in you, do I have any hope of living faithfully” This is the thought that keeps me going when I am tempted to say to myself “You have no right to criticize the church when you are unwilling to jump in and ‘endure it’ “. Ideally, I want to keep Continue Reading
Hauerwas’ lack of confidence in the political system (well founded, I believe….see this: Stanley Hauerwas on Christians and Politics at Theoblogical) is something that has, for me, crept into my sense for the church in America, not just for the ones who have sold out completely to America and its representative principalities and powers, but also for the most of Continue Reading
I was just reading something that mentioned a phrase I often heard used: “So focused on heaven that they are of no earthly good”, referring to how some spiritualities withdraw from any responsibility to suffering around them. It is a close relative, I think, to the “gnostics”, which claim to eschew physicality and maintain a strict separation between one’s physical Continue Reading
I spied this article, and the closing point about community seems to have a hint of individualism embedded in it, for all its talk of the “community”. I don’t think the author realizes it, and perhaps a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have noticed it myself, but look: A community is a living and breathing organism that changes with Continue Reading
In the chapter on “recapturing” the “first love” zeal in The God of Intimacy and Action, I am inclined to disagree with Tony Campolo again. When he talks about having the “urges” and uncontrollable desire to “tell the gospel story”, and includes an account of how a former drug addict calls it a “high without the drugs”, the “gospel story” Continue Reading
The title of this post is from another of Dan’s posts this week, which ties right in to the first (longing for the ‘God With Us’), which is tied to the hope that we have in the entering of God into our story, which is the crux of the Christmas observance. It’s not TOTALLY celebration, since this involves some amount Continue Reading
It appeals to / points out the hope in all of this: the coming together of the victims , and the joining of their resistance by people who “work for their right to be a part of a communal recovery”……. New Orleans: And, with the dispossession by corporations and public private partnerships in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Continue Reading
I read this today , and part of me (a large part) laments the absence of such views amongst God’s people. Not even the absence of "views" as such, but of any kind of serious confrontation of the forces of this neoclassicism. The way in which neoclassicism encourages and enables this very covert and deceptive contamination of the gospel by Continue Reading
Dan has been sharing with us a paper he is doing. He is contrasting Christianity with neoclassicism, our present day leading form of capitalism. Capitalism, however, is based upon the assumption of scarcity. It assumes a world where there is not enough for everybody. Consequently, rather than manifesting abundance, what capitalism produces is a profusion of commodities that functions as Continue Reading
Willimon gave a pretty clear explanation of the "cultural battle" we really face Sometimes in leaning over to speak to the modern world, I fear that we may have fallen in! When, in our sermons, we sought to use our sermons to build a bridge from the old world of the Bible to the new modern world, the traffic was Continue Reading
This is a little disturbing. So, the “game” is OK? As long as you “do it better”? Seems to cede the whole argument to the “success” game, and ignore the distinctives of the church. That’s why we refer to it as “the world”, because the church is “other” than that. Osteen is in the world. Maybe he’s even “reality Continue Reading