Some Thoughts Brewing
Later today: Reflections on Church and Country. How mad should we be? How do we talk about this as citizens first of a different polis?
Tag Archives: Church
Democrats Are Not The Answer
I hope anyone reading here will recognize that I am not a “Democratic supporter”, unless you call casting a vote for what generally amounts to “The lesser of two evils” an endorsement. After hearing the “faith forum” on CNN, I was not encouraged. As long as that entity known as the “public square” remains as tied to so called “rules Continue Reading
Islands of Koinonia at inward/outward
Just a small tidbit from one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read, Call to Commitment By Elizabeth O’Connor We believe ourselves to be engaged this very moment in that which is the hope of the world. Our commitment is to the Lord of that redemptive community which has the task of pushing back its boundaries until it holds Continue Reading
poserorprophet: Three Angles on Slavery: Dorothy Day, Rudolph Bultmann, and Luke’s Jesus
Dan with some more excellent stuff on Paul. I think that perhaps my next set of theological reading must be on Paul (I have two books in my stack, one by Harink –which I think I will like most, and one by Crossan that has a lot of archeological and socio-political background. I anticipate that I will feel similar to Dan Continue Reading
Going With the Flow
For the past 6 weeks or so, I find myself kind of floating along with the events of life. I haven’t read much theology at all except for the blog posts that show up in my RSS subscriptions. In May, all the stress of my son finishing up high school, his getting a ridiculously unjust in-school suspension, which required that Continue Reading
Lost In America
Some really good reflections by internetmonk (Michael Spencer) re: America and the church: Perhaps the reason a song like “America the Beautiful†persists in worship among evangelicals is a simple, but deeply rooted problem: We- the church- don’t know who we are. We have lost our identity, and in the world in which we live, it is always easier to take Continue Reading
Blogosphere Blues
I’ve been noticing a sharp decline in conversation. I find myself driven to comment less. Fewer comments here. It could have a direct relationship to my lack of face to face community. My family, which often does “cookout” type stuff on such holidays, has not done so in the past 2-3 years. Pentecost has come and yet I seem blocked off from Continue Reading
In Defense of "Democracy"
With all the critique I give of the idolatry of “our democracy”, and how “America” and it’s “ideals” are elevated to deity status, I actually have some sense of confidence in “what this country CAN be”; but it has grown increasingly hard to feel confident that our “politics” is much more than lipservice to those “ideals”, and very little to Continue Reading
Taking On Our Own (Alien) Identity
David Fitch with yet another excellent post on postmodernity and the church: for me, contextualization is a modern move that must be deconstructed. For so often contextualization assumes there is a message which can be extracted from a given culture and translated into another culture’s language and cultural practice. Yet this move in itself is naive to the pitfalls of Continue Reading
Pentecost and Presidential Forums?
I must say that I am more than a bit uncomfortable with Sojourner’s billing of their June event , Pentecost 2007, with a “Presidential Forum on Faith, Values , & Poverty” featuring Clinton, Obama, and Edwards. While interesting, just a bit too closely “overlayed” onto “Pentecost 2007”, and all three are the Democratic frontrunners. Was it ever envisioned to have any Continue Reading
Letting the World Distract
As I concluded the last post, I felt that there is another word; a word of warning that we not get distracted by the world too much. In this case, it is the “politics” of all this. On the airwaves, all the stories of corruption and war are indeed disturbing, but there is still a Body of Christ, and it Continue Reading
A Loss For Words
My previous post about Olbermann’s comments was trying to articulate a “that’s good but not quite there” kind of reaction I had, very similar to the reaction I have to a lot of media people whose stuff I tend to read and to like, such as Bill Moyers, William Carroll, Frank Rich, Seymour Hersh, Ron Suskind, and Jon Stewart. Keith Continue Reading
George Weigel and Just War at Theoblogical
Darn it! My mail notification for comments is not working again! (update: well, yeah it did work. What happened was that my Outlook at work checks two of my home mail accounts and removes them from the server, so my home Outlook didn’t store it. I see the notification in my Outllook account at work under that folder into which Continue Reading
William Cavanaugh: Moral Reasoning or Just Trust the President?
William Cavanaugh on God’s Politics blog: Weigel would have the church effectively abdicate its moral judgment in matters of war to the leaders of the nation-state. It is hard to imagine what could do greater damage to both church and nation. If the church does not have an independent process of discernment to bring the gospel to bear on matters Continue Reading
Sanctioning "The Way Things Are"
Will Willimon points us to this from MLK: The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of Continue Reading