Re; my previous post, and the posts from yesterday on this issue: comment by Chris Roberts Aug 11th, 2007 at 1:15 pm Before invoking the Confessing Church, it might be a good idea to study the “Barmen Declaration,†which was the founding document of the Confessing Church. It was mostly written by Karl Barth. There are many (not enough, but Continue Reading
This bears repeating, from a post I reacted to yesterday: From time to time in world history, the historical situation changes so that Christians – if they’re true to their faith – must respond to the particular evil manifesting itself by putting their entire lives on the line in opposition to the culture, much as Jesus did at Nazareth. Most Continue Reading
This sermon from Hilfiker seems to describe what it means to BE the Church rather than to “be activists”; or a redefinition of “activism”; a “think[ing] differently about our responses to these Powers confronting us”. I suspect I’m not alone in feeling this despair, and I think I’m beginning to understand why some of us feel it. Two years ago Continue Reading
What a great post over at inward outward, a blog offered up from The Church of the Saviour , and today it was Dr. David Hilfiker, who left his medical practice in Minnesota and moved with his wife and children to the innercity of Washington DC to establish Christ House, a ministry of the Church of the Saviour. His post Continue Reading
From an excellent paper Symposium where Hauerwas responds to two accusations of being “sectarian” , and squarely confronts the issue of how justice-qua-justice differs from justice as located in the church: the fact that I have doubts about the existence of any universal theory of justice does not mean that I think the church should avoid attempts to articulate concretely how this Continue Reading
On the matter of “speaking in a relevant sense” where relevance involves both the communicative sense and an orthodox Christian sense: My position certainly does not entail a wholesale rejection of “secular civilization,” or even of liberalism. Indeed, I think liberalism has done much good and has results from which no one would wish to back away. In particular, liberalism Continue Reading
AKMA posted today on being irked at WH Spokesman Tony Fratto’s comment: “Every day this Congress gets a little more out of control”. AKMA recalls what he learned in grade school : in the U.S.A. the three branches of government function to limit one another’s powers. Congress being “out of control†is a good thing for U.S. democracy — I Continue Reading
In my previous post, I started speaking of “relational”; I saw this as a related piece of the “catholic” emphasis; as a piece of the emotional/liturgical/ as in: This [Protestant/Enlightenment/rational] shift manifests itself in the life of the church with the Reformation, which displaced the centrality of the Eucharist (a very tactile, affective, sensual mode of worship) and put the Continue Reading
JKA Smith offers this in his reactions to Peter Rollins book How Not to Speak of God Despite the “postmodern” critiques of religion offered by Derrida, Caputo, et. al., I find that they continue to exhibit this modernist paradigm insofar as they still think that religion comes down to a matter of knowledge (or rather, not knowing). And I wonder Continue Reading
Excellent stuff on the recognition of truth and revelation …..we cannot respond by arguing that any sort of irrefutable sign, or pure event, has occurred. If the advent and the resurrection of the Son of God was open to manipulation and interpretation even during Jesus’ lifetime then we cannot claim revelation as the sort of universally binding pure event for which Continue Reading
Charlie has some links to the early Ekklesia talks (I missed hearing the audio last year….for some reason nobody posted that I could find….but it’s back this year, thanks to Mr. Pardue for sharing it with us) I’m posting a link to all three audio recordings from today here as well.Brent’s Opening Comments.mp3Afternoon Worship.mp3What Are We Doing Here.mp3 chuckp3.com: Ekklesia Continue Reading
I have found it hard, for some odd reason, to get into reading of theological things over the past several weeks. The last thing I read at much length was Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution. I have a slight suspicion that maybe that has sparked in me a deep cynicism about the usefulness or relevance of reading without much serious attempt Continue Reading
(via Geoff Holsclaw) I first read something like this in the Wittenburg Door when Mike Yaconelli was its editor. Yaconelli also called it “Christian is not an adjective” God gives us particular Verbs that transform us into particular Nouns. Now I don’t want to get too grammatical, but this is very important. Too often we think we can take this Continue Reading
Now this is something I will be looking forward to seeing/reading. I have been SOOOOOOO frustrated with what many Christians in our culture have settled for in terms of what they call “church”. The result of this symphony of low expectations is the difficulty of finding a community that takes seriously the importance (and our NEED) for accountability to one Continue Reading
I asked the question on July 4 before heading over to visit with my Mom and Dad on my Dad’s 75th birthday. Tonight, after being a couch potato all evening for about 5 hours, I am ill equipped to answer or to elaborate. My son is at work and the wife and daughter are up in Cincinnati. In the past, I Continue Reading