Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Waterboarding in 1902
h/t TYWKIWDBIThe caption is especially fascinating: "Chorus in background} 'Those pious Yankees can't throw stones at us anymore.'"
Tidbits on Torture
I summarized most of the news on torture in a previous post. Since this is an issue I am particularly attuned to I comb a couple dozen items a day on the subject. The frequency of reports and commentary about torture are increasing, not decreasing, which I take as a good sign that we are not going to sweep this stuff under the carpet.
One point which came up in the comments was whether torture was an effective deterrent - ie: does it discourage terrorism by frightening our enemies? On the contrary, a recent statistical study suggest that there countries which torture more also experience more terrorism (both of the domestic and transnational variety). This is consistent with other studies about the abuse of human rights and terrorism as well as capital punishment and violent crime. The lesson should be obvious: violence begets violence.
Another significant comment on the subject of torture came from Hussein Rashid who wonders why there has been such deafening silence from American Muslims on the issue. He then went on to rectify that problem by issuing a public statement on behalf of the American Muslim community (which is gathering many signatures) condemning the use of torture on the basis of Muslim beliefs.
John Winn argued for the Washington Times that there will be no prosecution because no laws have been broken, and that no American Jury would convict because the defense would just have to play video of 9/11 over and over. Scott Horton disagreed strongly, pointing out that there have been multiple homicides under the torture program by both CIA and military. Andrew Sullivan, also rightly remarked that such a defense would make a mockery of the entire justice system. Does every crime have to be worse than 9/11 to be illegal now? Is 9/11 sufficient justification for any kind of depravity? Have we really sunk so low?
And in case you think the push for prosecution is a liberal witch-hunt, remember that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the entire torture program back in '02. There are no good guys in this mess. It is just a giant disgusting debacle, and it gets worse every day that we avoid actually holding ourselves accountable.
One point which came up in the comments was whether torture was an effective deterrent - ie: does it discourage terrorism by frightening our enemies? On the contrary, a recent statistical study suggest that there countries which torture more also experience more terrorism (both of the domestic and transnational variety). This is consistent with other studies about the abuse of human rights and terrorism as well as capital punishment and violent crime. The lesson should be obvious: violence begets violence.
Another significant comment on the subject of torture came from Hussein Rashid who wonders why there has been such deafening silence from American Muslims on the issue. He then went on to rectify that problem by issuing a public statement on behalf of the American Muslim community (which is gathering many signatures) condemning the use of torture on the basis of Muslim beliefs.
John Winn argued for the Washington Times that there will be no prosecution because no laws have been broken, and that no American Jury would convict because the defense would just have to play video of 9/11 over and over. Scott Horton disagreed strongly, pointing out that there have been multiple homicides under the torture program by both CIA and military. Andrew Sullivan, also rightly remarked that such a defense would make a mockery of the entire justice system. Does every crime have to be worse than 9/11 to be illegal now? Is 9/11 sufficient justification for any kind of depravity? Have we really sunk so low?
And in case you think the push for prosecution is a liberal witch-hunt, remember that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the entire torture program back in '02. There are no good guys in this mess. It is just a giant disgusting debacle, and it gets worse every day that we avoid actually holding ourselves accountable.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Jon Stewart v. Cliff May
It is disappointing to think that there are almost no mainstream media outlets where this kind of conversation is happening in such a frank and thorough manner. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show interviews Cliff May on the issue of torture and the cameras roll while they have a great debate for quite a while. It was too long to be shown on the program, but they put the entire interview up online. How crazy is it that a comedian is the one having this conversation...
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 1
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
| ||||
Part 2
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 2 | ||||
| ||||
Part 3
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 3 | ||||
| ||||
Saturday, May 9, 2009
National Day of Prayer
National Day of Prayer was this past Thursday. As a minister, I was invited by the local chapter of the National Day of Prayer Task Force to assist in leading a public prayer service in our town. It was held in the park beside the library at city center. A modest crowd attended and 3 other ministers from different denominations were involved.The service began with a color guard, the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem. We then had prayers (interspersed with patriotic hymns) on the following subjects: Government, Military, Media, Business, Education, Church, and Family. I gave the prayers on Media and Education.
This event made me extremely uncomfortable on a number of levels.
Gramatically the very idea of a "National Day of Prayer" is ambiguous. Is it a day for people to pray about the nation? If so, what shall we pray? Shall we pray for the nation (the more likely assumption)? Or against the nation (ie: should we take a prophetic bent)? Or is this a day for generally that the people of the nation should set aside for prayer (in which case the nation is not the subject of the prayers, but the subject of the clause)? Because this is not a country made up of exclusively Christians the purpose of the holiday is intentionally vague. People of different faiths can interpret it to mean what they want. But then what are people of no faith to do with this day (or faiths that do not pray)?
Politically, a "National Day of Prayer" is very troublesome. There is no question that there is Biblical precedent for entire nations engaging in prayer, or individuals praying on behalf of nations. But the nations depicted in the Bible are unapologetically theocratic. What on earth does such an idea mean in a secular democracy? Overt religiosity has always played a role in American political rhetoric, but it sits uneasily with our foundational governing principals. We are of two minds, politically, about the role of religion in our national identity.
Theologically, a "National Day of Prayer" is a veritable minefield. I don't think there is anything wrong with praying for the nation, per se, but it is at least flirting very closely with idolatry. Are we praying to the God of all peoples on behalf of this one people, or are we tempted to turn God into an American? What does it mean to say in the church sanctuary "thy kingdom come", and then in the park to pray "preserve this kingdom against other kingdoms"? How do we negotiate the question of allegiance when expected to place our hand over our hearts and declare our loyalty to the American flag, but we have already declared ourselves servants of the Risen Lord? What about the narrative of violence such events portray? Notice that the schedule included prayers for the military, but none for our enemies. What does this say about the theology of the event?
But the biggest trouble I had was practical, and this is what I would like to hear your thoughts about: how should we approach public situations like this?
One choice, obviously is non-participation. I seriously considered that route, believing that I would have a hard time praying with integrity in such a setting. Ultimately I chose to participate for two reasons: I want to interface more with the community outside my church, and I hoped it would be possible to gently guide the event away from idolatrous nationalism at least in the portions I would lead.
If we choose to participate a host of practical questions arise - do you join with everyone else in saying the pledge of allegiance? I did not.
Do you sing the national anthem? I did not.
Do you place your hand on your heart or show other signs of reverance for the flag? I did.
What attitude do you bring to the prayers and how do you participate in them? For example, I found I could not say Amen to the prayers for our military without silently saying a personal prayer for our enemies as well.
When leading prayers, what do you emphasize? What would you say?
Let's hear it people. How would you handle these situations?
Friday, May 8, 2009
The Gospel as Book Report
Persuant to my previous post, I've been thinking a little about the Gospel and how it is often presented - as a book report. I've realized I am not that interested in more book reports on the Bible. I don't think anyone is going to say anything new. I encourage everyone to go read the Bible and read books about the Bible, but don't confuse that with the Gospel.
The Good News is an exhausted runner returning from the front lines of the war, with the most amazing news of an unexpected victory snatched from the jaws of death itself. This runner is you. How have you been rescued? How have you been snatched from the jaws of death? What do you have to testify about? That is what is new. That is what is interesting to me.
The Bible is one of the ways I am brought together with other Christians, but I am finding that it is the people I am fascinated with, the people I love, the people I want to find out about, the people I want to interact with, more than the Bible. I want to be alive now. I only really care about atonement insofar as it has touched your life. Talking about atonement theologically is a fun and interesting passtime. Debates can be very engaging and interesting, and they're one way we sharpen our minds - but we sharpen them for a purpose which is not more arguing.
We sharpen our minds so that we can live our lives more fully. We sharpen our minds so that we can seek God more deeply.
That feeling I've had in the past, of being twisted up inside, when I've gotten dragged into another argument about theological differences - I think that feeling was coming up because I was doing the wrong thing. I was betraying what at my core I believe to be true - we are all in this together, and we are getting out of this together or not at all. There is no situation where I win and you lose - that is not the kind of game we are playing.
I know that I'm in that enthusiastic stage where I'm full of an idea, an insight, but I can't express it very well. Dammit.
But the Gospel is not a book report. The Gospel is your life, the Gospel is my life, or it is nothing.
The Good News is an exhausted runner returning from the front lines of the war, with the most amazing news of an unexpected victory snatched from the jaws of death itself. This runner is you. How have you been rescued? How have you been snatched from the jaws of death? What do you have to testify about? That is what is new. That is what is interesting to me.
The Bible is one of the ways I am brought together with other Christians, but I am finding that it is the people I am fascinated with, the people I love, the people I want to find out about, the people I want to interact with, more than the Bible. I want to be alive now. I only really care about atonement insofar as it has touched your life. Talking about atonement theologically is a fun and interesting passtime. Debates can be very engaging and interesting, and they're one way we sharpen our minds - but we sharpen them for a purpose which is not more arguing.
We sharpen our minds so that we can live our lives more fully. We sharpen our minds so that we can seek God more deeply.
That feeling I've had in the past, of being twisted up inside, when I've gotten dragged into another argument about theological differences - I think that feeling was coming up because I was doing the wrong thing. I was betraying what at my core I believe to be true - we are all in this together, and we are getting out of this together or not at all. There is no situation where I win and you lose - that is not the kind of game we are playing.
I know that I'm in that enthusiastic stage where I'm full of an idea, an insight, but I can't express it very well. Dammit.
But the Gospel is not a book report. The Gospel is your life, the Gospel is my life, or it is nothing.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Pink Shirts For Justice
These two boys deserve a medal. David Shepherd and Travis Price of Cambridge, MA, took a stand against bullying at Central Kings Rural High School.After watching a fellow student get harassed and mocked and called (gasp) homosexual for showing up to school in a pink shirt, they decided they'd had enough of the bully culture at their school. They got online and spread word of a plan to have students show up en masse in pink. They bought 75 pink tank tops, and got as many people as they could to participate.
On the day, out of a student body of 830 students, about half were wearing pink. The bullies were predictably angered by the stunt, but the message had been made loud and clear.
It is a classic pacifist move - resist violence publicly and loudly (preferably in large numbers) by shaming the violent and showing them to be petty and ridiculous. Martin Luther King Jr. called it arousing the conscience. The more we make a public show of our peaceful conduct in the face of violence, the more we undermine the social acceptance of brutality.
Fearmongers and bullies in our media and government who want to persuade us that perpetual warfare and torture are the only way to keep us safe don't deserve our respect, but our ridicule. We should all show up outside the offices and homes of such individuals in pink shirts and shake our heads in benign disapproval at their childish insecurity.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Rape and Torture
Andrew Sullivan hits the nail on the head, again.
One way to look at how the Bush administration redefined torture out of existence, so that it could, er, torture human beings, is to compare their criteria for "enhanced interrogation" with those for rape. Raping someone need not leave any long-term physical scars; it certainly doesn't permanently impair any bodily organ; it has no uniquely graphic dimensions - the comic book pulling-fingernail scenarios the know-nothings in the Bush administration viewed as torture; and although it's cruel, it's hardly unusual. It happens all the time in regular prisons, although usually by other inmates as opposed to guards. It barely differs from the sexual abuse, forced nudity and psychological warfare inflicted on prisoners by Bush-Cheney in explicit terms.
Recall that smearing fake sexual blood on the faces of victims was regarded as brilliant interrogation by the Bushies in Gitmo - and its psychological effects were supposed to be heightened by Muslim sexual sensibilities. And male rape would be particularly effective in destroying male Muslim self-worth and psychological integrity. Rape almost perfectly fits, in other words, every criterion the Bush administration used to define "enhanced interrogation."
So ask yourself: if Abu Zubaydah had been raped 83 times, would we be talking about no legal consequences for his rapist - or the people who monitored and authorized the rape?
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
A Sudden Flash of Light
For the past two months, possibly more, I've been struggling with a resurgence of clinical depression. Calling it "clinical" makes it sound more 'official', doesn't it? Part of that is to ameliorate the effect of breaking taboos around talking about mental health. Particularly for a person seeking to be a pastor. Everyone knows that pastors never experience depression, right? Because they are...I don't know...special in some way.
I've made opportunities to contend with this problem in my life, and I've also been offered a number of opportunities in my CPE program. I've also started on medication a few weeks ago. The reason for this was that I saw, and got a lot of feedback from other people around me, that my depression was having a lot of impact on the quality of my work and of my life.
Its been really interesting working with the inpatient and outpatient behavioral health groups at the hospital during this ongoing struggle in my own life and heart/mind. The obvious questions come up, like why am I in the position I'm in while they are labeled "patient" and in many cases they are in the hospital by court mandate.
What I've noticed in the past couple of days is that I'm feeling a bit better.
If you haven't experienced depression, I've found it hard to explain it so that I feel like its understood. It might just be one of those things. It feels like grief sometimes, except you're not grieving anything specific. But it has that crushing sensation in the chest, the sinking feeling in the stomach, the lack of energy and motivation, morbid thinking, flashes of anger - the things I associate with grief. Its also very individual. I don't want to out anyone, but I know a number of people who also struggle with depression, and we're all unique snowflakes as it were.
I've taken it as a sort of spiritual discipline, in the category of becoming more genuine and honest and direct, and in also being first in putting my neck out there when I feel strongly about something. I've been talking to my family (even the ones I don't like, or don't know that well) and friends and coworkers about what's going on with me. It has led me to reflect a lot about honesty, and I had a couple of things to share:
The experience this time, compared to the last time years ago when I went on meds for depression, has been more positive in every way - and you can perhaps imagine the irony there. I've found that either people are pretty accepting of what's going on with me because they care about me, or they aren't supportive, and that reveals to me how much they care. I have found people around me to be supportive in ways I hadn't even thought of.
I have found that this kind of sometimes-radical-seeming honesty has changed me. Its exciting and strange to find that I'm changing something about myself. I have consistently gotten feedback that I have never been more present and engaged with my colleagues and I have noticed that my interactions with patients and staff have suddenly changed in quality. I've said things I'd have hesitated to say in the past, and I trust my instincts more than I have.
Really, I trust myself more. Perhaps this is becomes I am working hard to be more honest, and an honest person is more trustworthy.
There's a lot here that is far beyond the scope of this blog post. But in feeling better, I feel like I have a little energy to do things beyond barely getting through day after day, which is how I've felt for a while now. And I suppose that this post counts as part of my spiritual practice of honesty.
What I've experienced, in theological terms, is grace. Not the sometimes-contrived grace of reading a prayer of confession from a bulletin and receiving a pre-prepared assurance of pardon, or the self-absorbed grace of silently confessing and pretending that is all that is needed. I've been forced by this practice to own up to things I realized I was doing that were damaging, and I examine my life a little differently now.
I've connected this with my love of Good Friday. Without Good Friday, the God of Easter has nothing to say to me. I have come to know God most fully through God's wounds, and my experiments in demonstrating this in my own life, by being more open about my wounds, has been like a sudden flash of light. By his stripes we are healed. Now I have a much better sense of what this means in my own life.
If this is what I was meant to learn here, then amen. Keep it coming.
But I don't think I'll drop the meds just yet.
I've made opportunities to contend with this problem in my life, and I've also been offered a number of opportunities in my CPE program. I've also started on medication a few weeks ago. The reason for this was that I saw, and got a lot of feedback from other people around me, that my depression was having a lot of impact on the quality of my work and of my life.
Its been really interesting working with the inpatient and outpatient behavioral health groups at the hospital during this ongoing struggle in my own life and heart/mind. The obvious questions come up, like why am I in the position I'm in while they are labeled "patient" and in many cases they are in the hospital by court mandate.
What I've noticed in the past couple of days is that I'm feeling a bit better.
If you haven't experienced depression, I've found it hard to explain it so that I feel like its understood. It might just be one of those things. It feels like grief sometimes, except you're not grieving anything specific. But it has that crushing sensation in the chest, the sinking feeling in the stomach, the lack of energy and motivation, morbid thinking, flashes of anger - the things I associate with grief. Its also very individual. I don't want to out anyone, but I know a number of people who also struggle with depression, and we're all unique snowflakes as it were.
I've taken it as a sort of spiritual discipline, in the category of becoming more genuine and honest and direct, and in also being first in putting my neck out there when I feel strongly about something. I've been talking to my family (even the ones I don't like, or don't know that well) and friends and coworkers about what's going on with me. It has led me to reflect a lot about honesty, and I had a couple of things to share:
The experience this time, compared to the last time years ago when I went on meds for depression, has been more positive in every way - and you can perhaps imagine the irony there. I've found that either people are pretty accepting of what's going on with me because they care about me, or they aren't supportive, and that reveals to me how much they care. I have found people around me to be supportive in ways I hadn't even thought of.
I have found that this kind of sometimes-radical-seeming honesty has changed me. Its exciting and strange to find that I'm changing something about myself. I have consistently gotten feedback that I have never been more present and engaged with my colleagues and I have noticed that my interactions with patients and staff have suddenly changed in quality. I've said things I'd have hesitated to say in the past, and I trust my instincts more than I have.
Really, I trust myself more. Perhaps this is becomes I am working hard to be more honest, and an honest person is more trustworthy.
There's a lot here that is far beyond the scope of this blog post. But in feeling better, I feel like I have a little energy to do things beyond barely getting through day after day, which is how I've felt for a while now. And I suppose that this post counts as part of my spiritual practice of honesty.
What I've experienced, in theological terms, is grace. Not the sometimes-contrived grace of reading a prayer of confession from a bulletin and receiving a pre-prepared assurance of pardon, or the self-absorbed grace of silently confessing and pretending that is all that is needed. I've been forced by this practice to own up to things I realized I was doing that were damaging, and I examine my life a little differently now.
I've connected this with my love of Good Friday. Without Good Friday, the God of Easter has nothing to say to me. I have come to know God most fully through God's wounds, and my experiments in demonstrating this in my own life, by being more open about my wounds, has been like a sudden flash of light. By his stripes we are healed. Now I have a much better sense of what this means in my own life.
If this is what I was meant to learn here, then amen. Keep it coming.
But I don't think I'll drop the meds just yet.
Get Rich Biblically
This kind of stuff turns my stomach.There will always be snake-oil salesman, but when the marketing (read: lying) is pulled from scripture and wrapped in the trappings of Christianity I take personal offense. I spend my life trying to persuade people (including myself) that the meaning of human existence is giving ourselves away in order to be truly found - and then someone like Dave Ramsey comes along and tells my parishioner that God wants them to hoard.
Blessed are the poor, Mr. Ramsey.
Indeed, since you're so concerned about what the Bible says about money, let's take a look.
Against our notion of private property contrast this: The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. (Lev 25:23)
Read that whole chapter about Jubilee which is a regular redistribution of wealth that would pretty much kill our credit economy.
The book of proverbs which you quoted as if it were supportive of your money-management scheme has this to say: He who trusts in riches will wither. (Prov. 11:28)
Jesus is the harshest critic of all. He said, "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon." (Luke 16:13) Mammon means wealth in Aramaic.
"Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20)
"Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation" (Luke 6:24)
"Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again" (Luke 6:30)
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth" for "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matt. 6:19, 21)
The Bible frequently counsels an inner attitude of detachment from wealth, "If riches increase, set not your heart on them." (Ps. 62:10)
But Jesus goes much further instructing the rich young ruler to sell everything he owns (Matt. 19:16-22), and when the man can't he says, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matt 19:24)
"Take heed," Jesus says, "and beware of all covetousness; for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions... Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail." (Luke 12:15,33)
Between those two verses Jesus tells the story of a rich farmer who hoards a good crop. By our standards he is savvy - Jesus calls him a fool. (Luke 12:16-21)
Pastoral advice about money abounds in the epistles as well.
Paul says, "Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction." (1 Tim. 6:9)
"Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, 'I will never fail you nor forsake you'" (Heb. 13:5)
Greed is idolatry. It is as bad as adultery and thievery. It is the source of violence; "You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war." (James 4:1-2)
I'll stop here. As I've been admonished before, anyone can use a concordance. It will do no more good to continue piling up quotes.
But this is more than a selective list of proof-texts. This is a dominant, even overwhelming, theme in scripture that is exactly the opposite of what Mr. Ramsey says. He says on his site that money is mentioned in scripture over 800 times, but never bothers to let his readers know that nearly every single time it is in a negative light. It's demonic.
Don't listen to me, though. I'm depressing. Go listen to Dave Ramsey. He can tell you how you can get rich biblically.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Mission-al
Darrell Guder came to speak at the meeting of the Presbytery of Plains and Peaks yesterday evening. He was the principal editor of the book "Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America" which spawned the missional church movement a little more than a decade ago. He is an engaging speaker. This is my summary of what he said with some comments and questions of my own inserted.
According to Darrell Guder, for 1700 years the Church has been doing systematic theology, especially ecclesiology without so much as one word about mission. He doesn't mean that the Church wasn't ever doing mission, but if you think about it - where is the paragraph about mission in any of our creeds or confessions? The first use of the word mission in our Book of Confessions came in 1903 when a paragraph was added to the Westminster Confession - and the idea wasn't really fleshed out until 1967. Think about the major historic theologians - Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin... where are their writings on mission?
To explain this Guder refers to the popular narrative of Christendom which basically goes like this: for the first 2-300 years Christianity was a minority movement about the apostolic project of founding witnessing communities to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then, around the time of Constantine and following, Christianity became "established" as the official religion. Once institutionalized the radical nature of the movement was subverted and Christianity basically went on its merry way, wedded to the State, for 1700 years until the rise of secular atheism "dis-established" the Church in Europe and America.
That is over-simplistic, but you get the idea. Theology for so long wasn't concerned with mission because mission is what you did "out there". Over here, we were living inside Christendom. We were the already evangelized. The movement had succeeded and was thus finished.
For Guder, and those advocating what they call "Missional Theology" (though the word missional is now just another over-used buzz word), the Church exists as God's community of witnesses in a particular location. The Church exists by mission, as a flame exists by burning - so goes the popular quote. It isn't that we "go" anywhere in order to do "mission". It is that we are either engaged in God's mission all the time or we are not being the Church.
I agree with Guder's basic premises, though I think he is exaggerating the extent to which the Church ignored mission. Vatican II said "The pilgrim church is missionary by her very nature," and I don't think they believed they were saying something new, but merely what was understood all along. That is, even if mission wasn't mentioned in those specific terms I think the Church understood itself to be about doing God's work in the world. It is definitely true, though, that the radical aspects of the movement were compromised by growing institutional security - thus our heightened institutional insecurity now is an opportunity to recapture our radical roots.
But one thing Guder said last night struck me as incongruent. He said that the Bible is God's instrument for creating witnessing communities. I think I tentatively disagree.
First of all, in the early Church the instrument used for creating witnessing communities were the apostles. Paul clearly sees himself as such an instrument. True, he used scripture and (if you credit him with writing 2 Timothy) even said "all scripture is useful," but it was nevertheless him who was using it. Scripture was a tool, but he was the instrument.
Secondly, "the Bible" is different from "scripture". "The Bible" refers to the canon. The canon is a relic of the institutional Church. It comes about as a key part of the process of the Church being established as the official religion of the empire. "Scripture" on the other hand refers to holy writings believed to express the intentions of God.
Doesn't it seem contradictory to suggest that we ought to be recapturing the missionary spirit of the early Church, but then claim the primary instrument for doing so is the central pillar of Christendom?
According to Darrell Guder, for 1700 years the Church has been doing systematic theology, especially ecclesiology without so much as one word about mission. He doesn't mean that the Church wasn't ever doing mission, but if you think about it - where is the paragraph about mission in any of our creeds or confessions? The first use of the word mission in our Book of Confessions came in 1903 when a paragraph was added to the Westminster Confession - and the idea wasn't really fleshed out until 1967. Think about the major historic theologians - Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin... where are their writings on mission?
To explain this Guder refers to the popular narrative of Christendom which basically goes like this: for the first 2-300 years Christianity was a minority movement about the apostolic project of founding witnessing communities to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then, around the time of Constantine and following, Christianity became "established" as the official religion. Once institutionalized the radical nature of the movement was subverted and Christianity basically went on its merry way, wedded to the State, for 1700 years until the rise of secular atheism "dis-established" the Church in Europe and America.
That is over-simplistic, but you get the idea. Theology for so long wasn't concerned with mission because mission is what you did "out there". Over here, we were living inside Christendom. We were the already evangelized. The movement had succeeded and was thus finished.
For Guder, and those advocating what they call "Missional Theology" (though the word missional is now just another over-used buzz word), the Church exists as God's community of witnesses in a particular location. The Church exists by mission, as a flame exists by burning - so goes the popular quote. It isn't that we "go" anywhere in order to do "mission". It is that we are either engaged in God's mission all the time or we are not being the Church.
I agree with Guder's basic premises, though I think he is exaggerating the extent to which the Church ignored mission. Vatican II said "The pilgrim church is missionary by her very nature," and I don't think they believed they were saying something new, but merely what was understood all along. That is, even if mission wasn't mentioned in those specific terms I think the Church understood itself to be about doing God's work in the world. It is definitely true, though, that the radical aspects of the movement were compromised by growing institutional security - thus our heightened institutional insecurity now is an opportunity to recapture our radical roots.
But one thing Guder said last night struck me as incongruent. He said that the Bible is God's instrument for creating witnessing communities. I think I tentatively disagree.
First of all, in the early Church the instrument used for creating witnessing communities were the apostles. Paul clearly sees himself as such an instrument. True, he used scripture and (if you credit him with writing 2 Timothy) even said "all scripture is useful," but it was nevertheless him who was using it. Scripture was a tool, but he was the instrument.
Secondly, "the Bible" is different from "scripture". "The Bible" refers to the canon. The canon is a relic of the institutional Church. It comes about as a key part of the process of the Church being established as the official religion of the empire. "Scripture" on the other hand refers to holy writings believed to express the intentions of God.
Doesn't it seem contradictory to suggest that we ought to be recapturing the missionary spirit of the early Church, but then claim the primary instrument for doing so is the central pillar of Christendom?
Friday, May 1, 2009
Not a Sin: Gay Culture
I am not gay, so I cannot speak for the "gay community" if there is such a thing. I know, and I hope my readers do too, that there is a diversity of lifestyles and attitudes among LGBT people, just as in heterosexuals - so it is dubious whether there really is such a thing as "gay culture." My comments here are limited and provisional in nature, but I see no reason why we should treat the subject as taboo.When we say "gay culture" we usually mean the most visible element or social expression of homosexual identity typified by Gay Pride parades, or events like the Folsom Street Fair. These events are flamboyant affairs with lots of costumes, cross-dressing and overt eroticism. Outrageous appearances, and behavior are normal in this context. If you don't like leather and chains and lots of nudity you won't like this scene.
Gay culture also has its own vocabulary: "bear", "twink", "top", "bottom" etc... There are very specific labels for each role in the community relating to appearance, sexual tastes, and attitude.
Many people find this stuff offensive. Conservatives point at a picture of a scantily clad transvestite on a float at a parade as more evidence that homosexuality is sinful, but there are a number of reasons to reject that idea:
- At base it is an aesthetic judgment. So, some people find it scandalous. So what? That is personal taste. What, exactly, is wrong with a little leather?
- The key word in the phrase gay culture is culture. Even if there is behavior you find distasteful or immoral it is not central to being homosexual. One does not have to be effeminate to be a gay man, or butch to be a lesbian.
- Not all homosexuals participate in the popular variety of gay culture described here. The behavior of some cannot be attributed to all.
In fact, it's not surprising that gay culture is shocking to mainstream sensibilities. It is a subculture, like being "punk" or "goth", which exists in large part as an ongoing critique of the mainstream. It is SUPPOSED to offend you. It is part of creating a sense of community among those who get the rough end of the status quo stick. The slang, the dress code, the wild behavior - it is designed to create identity, by affirming membership in a social group.
Really, given the options out there, I think gay culture is pretty positive. Rather than a constant expression of rage (punk), or depression (goth), it is a merry farce lampooning the mainstream. It relieves the stress of being an outcast community with humor instead of resentment.
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