The Ivy Bush

Preaching the Apocalypse

2010-07-12T11:39:00.008-04:00

I am usually a lectionary preacher, but during the summers, I like to preach a series of sermons. Sometimes, I have even based the series on the lectionary itself. For example, when the lectionary takes us through the David stories, I preach a series of sermons on David, or Moses, or Joseph. In the Spring of this year, I let the congregation vote on an online poll on which subject they would like to hear a summer series of sermons. The choices were the book of Revelation, David, Moses, and the book of Genesis. The overwhelming percentage of those who voted opted for Revelation.

I had four weeks between annual conference and vacation. I am part of a clergy couple, so usually I preach every other week. My wife was gracious enough to let me preach for these four Sundays in a row. I decided that these would basically be teaching sermons- no cute stories and not too many applications. I let the congregation know what I was planning in advance, and I encouraged them to read the book of Revelation in advance, and I suggested that they read Mickey Efird's Revelation for Today as a guide. To my knowledge, no one actually bought the Efird book, but one person did buy another book that she saw at a bookstore. One man told me he tried reading Revelation on his own, but it was too confusing for him. I told him that it was confusing if you try to read it straight through without some kind of guide.

There was so much to cover in only four sermons; how could I possibly choose what to preach on? Finally, I decided to preach one introductory sermon, one sermon on the worship in Revelation, one on the reality of evil and judgment, and one sermon on the New Jerusalem. If you were going to preach four sermons on Revelation, how would you break it down? Here's a brief summary of each sermon:

In the introductory sermon, I talked about some of the characteristics of apocalyptic literature and some of the different approaches to the book of Revelation. I closed with a look at the letter to the church at Laodicea. I closed the sermon by talking about (and leading the congregation in singing) the civil rights anthem, "We shall overcome," explaining how it is based on Revelation 3:21. (see Richard Hays' book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, chapter 8 for more on this connection. More generally, Hays' chapter on Revelation has had a profound effect on how I read the Apocalypse, as had John Howard Yoder's book, The Politics of Jesus, chapter 12.)

In the second sermon, the text was Revelation 4 and 5, the scenes of heavenly worship centered around the one who sits on the throne, and on the Lamb. I reflected on how we look for a lion, but what we get is the Lamb. Here, I was influenced largely by Eugene Peterson's book, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination. I didn't think about it at the time, but in Simply Christian N. T. Wright's whole discussion of Christian worship is based on Revelation 4 and 5.

In the third sermon, I used Revelation 13 to talk about the reality of evil. This was the sermon that contained the most historical information because I went into some depth about the emperors Nero and Domitian as the ones John had in mind when he envisioned the "beast." I talked about how in Revelation, God's response to evil is appropriately wrath and judgment, which were actually signs of hope that were intended to lead us to repentance.

In the fourth sermon, I talked about the New Jerusalem, but first I cleared the air by explaining that in Revelation, there is no rapture, and that Armageddon and the Millennium were two of the kaleidoscopic images used by John to describe the Lamb's complete victory over evil. Of course, I explained that the sword of the Lamb comes from his mouth , meaning the Lamb conquers not through military swords, but simply by the power of God's word. The New Jerusalem is described in terms that recall Genesis 2 (the tree, the river, the garden, the fruit of healing). We are called to live now the way we know we will live in the New Jerusalem.

And that's how I preached the book of Revelation in only four weeks: introduction, worship, evil, and victory. How would you have done it? I would add that Marva Dawn's book, Joy in our Weakness: A gift of Hope from the Book of Revelation was very helpful for me. In the series, I included two quotes. One from George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and say why - I dream things that never were and say why not." Revelation invites us to imagine with John a new world and ask, "why not?" Revelation funds an alternative imagination from the limited imagination of Caesar. The other quote I included in the series was from Lee Camp:

We might summarize Revelation this way: in the ring of human history, there's a bleeding Lamb in one corner and a dragon in the other. "Common sense" would tell us we should place our bet on the dragon – but there's a new common sense, a new reality, in which the Lamb turns out victorious. It's the people of God, the church, who are supposed to know that secret, because the mystery has been revealed in Christ. (Mere Discipleship, second edition, p. 110).

The Gifts of the Small Church: A Review

2010-06-28T20:18:00.018-04:00

A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men. When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament.
But if not, let him nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief. Let him pray to God for understanding of his own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he may not wrong his brethren. Let him, in the consciousness of his own guilt, make intercession for his brethren. Let him do what he is committed to do, and thank God. . .

What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Ever wished that more pastors heeded the wisdom that Dietrich Bonhoeffer offered in Life Together? I sure have. As a matter of fact, I wish that I paid more attention to Bonhoeffer's warnings myself. How many of us United Methodist clergy have ever been to a district clergy meeting when we did not hear a pastor complaining about his/her congregation? It almost seems like a favorite pastime. If we do not hear other clergy grumbling about their congregations, we may hear the opposite extreme: clergy praising their congregations as if they were First Church Philippi. This can of course be merely a subtle way of bragging about ourselves. So we hear complaints about unfaithfulness or undue praise for accomplishments and growth. But what is often missing is a realistic presentation of our churches for all their gifts, graces, and foibles. That's exactly what Byassee offers us in his latest book, The Gifts of the Small Church. It's almost as if Byassee wrote this book with the above quotation from Bonhoeffer hanging over his desk.

Byassee's book is a good example of what Bonhoeffer is asking for: not a complaint about our churches, but rather a thanksgiving. I don't mean to suggest that Byassee doesn't tell the stories of how weird his local church was; he does. And they are often funny, sometimes sad, and usually provocative. Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many weird experiences Byassee had that were common to my experience as a pastor of a small church. I frequently found myself thinking, "ok, good, I'm glad I'm not the only pastor that this happened to." He doesn't hide any of the church's idiosyncrasies or down-right weirdness.

But what he does do is to tell them as a member of their community, not as an outsider. He tells the stories not from the academic distance of an impartial observer laughing at these backwards people. Rather, he tells them from the point of view of someone who is actually genuinely in love with his people. They are weird people, but they are his weird people. As such, he always describes them not only with honesty, but also with the tenderness and even admiration that only a loving pastor could possess.

Byassee will occasionally indulge in some holy laughter, but it is never cruel. It is always the kind of laughter that goes on in a loving, healthy (even if somewhat dysfunctional) family. Byassee is genuinely grateful to God for the people in his church, and the reader cannot help but be endeared to him for it.

I especially enjoyed Byassee's description of what it means to be a pastor's husband, probably because I am also one. It is understandable when pastor's wives resist the stereotypes of what it means to be the pastor's wife. There's just so much baggage that goes with that. But as Byassee points out, folks haven't figured out yet quite what to expect from us pastor's husbands, so we just get to enjoy the ride. It is so much fun!

Another aspect of this memoir that I appreciated was the theological reflection almost seamlessly woven into this tale. A few trinitarian reflections never hurt anybody, especially when they come so naturally out of pastoral experience. The overarching theological concept that kept surfacing in my mind was Incarnation. God does not wish to be known in the general or abstract, but in the particular and specific: flesh and blood. And so it is in the flesh and blood of these particular people that Byassee encounters God. And it is especially in the flesh and blood of people that we might rather avoid, too! The great advantage of a small church is that you can't be anonymous, and you can't avoid your enemies. Thus, small churches tend to be more incarnational churches than large, anonymous mega-churches. But Byassee does not blast the mega-churches either, as a mater of fact he points out that they are at their best when they adopt the Wesleyan strategy of meeting in small groups - like small churches within large churches. So don't let Byassee's informal style fool you: underneath it all, there is a theologian's mind at work.

This book reminded me somewhat of Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church, but it did not include Taylor's increasingly skeptical views of historic church teaching or her sense of alienation from the institutional church. Indeed, Byassee's pastoral experiences tended to confirm orthodox Christian teaching and root him more deeply in the Christian community. In this respect, it is more like Richard Lischer's Open Secrets: a kaleidoscopic view of different glimpses of the church, each one conveying surprising layers of grace.

Genuine, honest stories about the small local church, set within a theological narrative of Incarnation and Trinity. What more could you ask for? Maybe just a tad bit more on race, but not everyone can be Tim Tyson. Byassee allows Bishop Willimon to offer a different perspective on the small church in the afterword, but one that I think is not ultimately incompatible with Byassee's basic premise: that God's primary way of saving people is through the small church.

Number 14: Paul Ramsey

2010-06-02T22:36:00.022-04:00

We resume our discussion of the twenty most important theologians in the Methodist tradition with a review of Paul Ramsey, who checks in at number 14. Paul Ramsey (1913-1988) was born in Mendenhall, MS to Mamey McCay Ramsey and Rev. John William Ramsey (who was an ordained Methodist minister). Ramsey spent almost all of his theological career at Princeton University.

Ramsey graduated from Millsaps College in 1935. While at Millsaps, Ramsey absorbed the typical Methodist Protestant liberalism of his day and became what John Howard Yoder would later call an LPP (liberal Protestant pacifist). However, when he went to seminary at Yale, he was quickly disabused of his LPPism, thanks largely to the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr. He graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1940. He received his PhD from Yale in 1943. While a student at Yale, he studied under Reinhold Niebuhr's brother, H. Richard Niebuhr. In Ramsey's unpublished papers stored in the archives of the Duke libraries, the only notes from any of his classes were those he took while listening to H. Richard Niebuhr lecture.

Perhaps Ramsey's most influential work has been his Basic Christian Ethics. I first read this book in the fall of 1987. It was my first semester of college at Emory, and I took Religion 354: Christian Ethics. That first semester of college was very formative for me, and this book was a large part of it. The book, which was published in 1950, was foundational for many colleges, universities, and seminaries in the subject of Christian Ethics. It remained the most widely used text book in these settings for decades.

The theme of Basic Christian Ethics was the disinterested love of neighbor. Ramsey sought to provide a Christological account of what disinterested love of neighbor might mean. He would disagree with what James Gustafson would later call a theocentric ethic. He begins his book by proclaiming boldly: "The first thing to be said concerning Christian ethics is that it cannot be separated from its religious foundations." (p. 1 ). Ramsey goes on to describe two sources for Christian love: the righteousness of God and the Kingdom of God in the teachings of Jesus. The righteousness of God includes both human righteousness (mishpat) and God's tsedeq (God's unwavering covenant fidelity). He draws on Paul, Luther, and Wesley to display the love of God Christologically.

The second source of Christian love is the Kingdom of God in the teachings of Jesus. Ramsey accepted the idea from Schweitzer that Jesus was wrong about his expectation for the Kingdom of God to come in the 1st century: "few contemporary Christians accept the kind of Kingdom-expectation Jesus considered of central importance, and rightly they do not." (p. 35). (It is regretable at this point that Ramsey did not live long enough to see these views corrected by the work of N. T. Wright, namely that the eschatological urgency in the three synoptic gospels was centered on the return from exile as enacted by Jesus in his arrival in Jerusalem and subsequent death and resurrection). Ramsey then goes on to explain that Christ teachings on the disinterested love of the neighbor can be disentangled from Jesus' eschatological expectations. In the course of his argument, Ramsey asserts, "Certainly Christian ethics is a deontological ethic, not an ethic of 'the good' " (p. 116).

Ramsey is perhaps best known for his defense of just war theory. He grounds just war theory not in terms of self-defense (which is actually excluded on the basis of disinterested love), but on love of neighbor. Unfortunately, he was not able to see the Vietnam War as something that grossly violated just war theory, nor was he able to use just war theory to mount a serioius critique of the US policy of nuclear deterrence. Many years later, he changed his mind on his statements on the moral acceptability of the "bluff" (Newsweek, July 5, 1982). Ramsey did acknowledge that the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities in World War II was grossly immoral.

Ramsey developed several other interests and projects in his theological career. He provided an account of medical ethics that was basically deontological in nature (The Patient as Person). He was (along with his friend and sometimes sparring partner James Gustafson) a strong critic of Joseph Fletcher's Situation Ethics. Near the end of his life, he dedicated himself to a careful study of Jonathan Edwards, whom he identified as the greatest of all American theologians.

In the last years of his life, Paul Ramsey and Stanley Hauerwas were consultants to the United Methodist bishops as they wrote, "In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace." Hauerwas was a representative of the Christian pacifist position (which was unintelligble without christology and ecclesiology) and Ramsey represented just war theory. Hauerwas and Ramsey were good friends, although they disagreed on the ethics of war. They had worked together many years earlier at Georgetown as they studied with doctors in their attempt to forge an adequate medical ethic. Ramsey and Hauerwas had both warned the United Methodist bishops to stay away from survivalism as the motivation to address the nuclear crisis, but the bishops grounded their arguments in the very survivalism about which Hauerwas and Ramsey had warned them. Ramsey had always said, "God intends to kill us all in the end, and in the end he is going to succeed," but the bishops did not heed the warnings from their theologians. As a result, Ramsey wrote, Speak Up for Just War or Pacifism, with an epilogue by Stanley Hauerwas, in which the two authors critiqued the bishops for their survivalism.

In Speak Up for Just War or Pacifism, Ramsey widened his discussion to include more than just the morality of war. In calling for a more robust theological discourse among the people called Methodists, Ramsey called for a return to Wesley's General Rules. He found fault with Methodism's tolerance for abortion and called on Methodists to make the sacrifices necessary to offer women real alternatives to abortion. He called for the 1988 General Conference to return to traditional language and doctrine for Trinitarian and Christological confessions. He died before that 1988 General Conference was convened, but he likely would have been pleased with the outcome.

Near the end of Ramsey's life he had some sharp words for his friend James Gustafson, who had just completed his volume on Theocentric Ethics: "I feel lonely at the drawing of a theological enterprise that does not center upon the things that we had thought we had shared with you at the level of first order discourse, namely prayer, worship, liturgy, the confessions of the church, and going to the Lord's table." One could almost hear the disappointment and sadness in his voice.

Paul Ramsey's influence on the study of Christian ethics in the latter half of the 20th century was felt by all who desired to enter into serious discussion about the moral claims of the Christian life. There is still much to be learned from his work today. If modern Christian disciples are not going to be pacifist, then they ought at least to take the just war theory seriously. One of the best ways to do that is by engaging the work of Paul Ramsey. Perhaps Gustafson summarized his influence best when he wrote in Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective : "In North America Paul Ramsey has been a towering and forceful figure for almost four decades; his writing has forced persons with alternative views to come to grips with his thought, and had a deep impact on a younger generation of authors. He has been a persistent critic of moral fads, a steadfast proponent of the Christian ethic of love, and a vigorous participant in debates about public policy and medical ethics" (p. 84).

Hauerwas on the two natures of Christ

2010-05-05T19:59:00.003-04:00

"What many people find hard to understand, or at least what strikes them as unusual, is how I combine what I hope is a profound commitment to fundamental Christian convictions with a socially radical ethic. At bottom, the convictions involve the claim that Jesus is both fully God and fully human. If he is not fully both, then we Christians are clearly idolaters. A socially radical ethic follows from this theological conviction because our worship of Jesus is itself a politics through which a world is created that would not exist if Jesus were not raised from the dead. Basic to such politics is the refusal of a violence that many assume is a “given” for any responsible account of the world." - Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir, p. 136

John Wesley on how to treat Aliens

2010-04-30T12:28:00.001-04:00

Exodus 22:21 -- "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt."

John Wesley's commentary on Exodus 22:21:

A stranger must not be abused, not wronged in judgment by the magistrates, not imposed upon in contracts, nor any advantage taken of his ignorance or necessity, no, nor must he be taunted, or upbraided with his being a stranger; for all these were vexations. For ye were strangers in Egypt - And knew what it was to be vexed and oppressed there. Those that have themselves been in poverty and distress, if Providence enrich and enlarge them, ought to shew a particular tenderness towards those that are now in such circumstances as they were in formerly, now doing to them as they then wished to be done by.

Number 15: Thomas C. Oden

2010-04-23T22:53:00.017-04:00

The reversal occurred when Will Herberg, my irascible, endearing Jewish mentor and my elder colleague at Drew, held me accountable to my religious heritage. He told me straightforwardly that I would remain theologically uneducated until I had studied carefully Athansius, Ambrose, Basil, and Cyril of Alexandria. In his usual gruff voice he said, "Tom, you have not yet met the great minds of your own tradition. Just as I, after my Communist days, found it decisive to read the Talmud and the Midrashim carefully to discover who I was as a Jew, you will have to sit at the feet of the ancient Christian writers to discover who you are as a possible person of faith. Without solid textual grounding, you will become lost in supposed relevance. If you are going to deepen to become a working theologian instead of a know-it-all contemporary pundit, you had best get at it -- and until you do, you are not a theologian except in name, even if remunerated as one." I was stunned. He had nailed me. (The Rebirth of Orthodoxy, 2003, p. 87)

I think I could stop there, and you would know almost everything you needed to know about Tom Oden, the Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology and Ethics at Drew University. And how ironic that Tom Oden, the great champion of Christian orthodoxy, needed to be told this by a non-Christian. It is just one of many ironies that make the story of this Methodist theologian so interesting and compelling. Thomas C. Oden (1931-) is number 15 on my list of the most important theologians in the Methodist tradition since the Wesleys.

First of all, we need to know why the reversal was such a reversal. Oden was from the southwestern corner of Oklahoma. His parents were progressive and pious Methodists. He went to college at the University of Oklahoma and seminary at SMU before obtaining his PhD from Yale in 1960. He has described his early years as remarkably like Hillary Clinton's: a combination of Yale and socially liberal Methodism; the two of them have an amazingly high number of close mutual friends who accompanied and mentored them along that path.

Oden spent the first decade of his academic career trying to use his religion to butress socially liberal idealism. His real authorities were the familiar trio of Marx, Freud, and Nietzche. He says that he spent that time trying to read the New Testament without the premises of incarnation and resurrection-- something he confesses was very hard to do! Then things began to change for Oden beginning in the early 70's.

In addition to the splash of cold water thrown in his face by his Jewish friend, one other factor played a key role in the awakening from his dogmatic slumber. The only time I have personally heard Oden speak was when he came to Duke in 1992 to address our Theological Students' Fellowship. As he spoke to us that night, he recounted how horrified he was to realize in the early 70's what actually happened in an abortion. Of course, he had been an advocate of liberalized abortion and early feminism throughout the 60's. When he realized exactly what he had been defending in the name of choice, it shook him to the core.

Since the mid 1970's, Thomas C. Oden has been churning out book after book on the basics of Christian orthodoxy. I have a review of one of his books here. In numerous places, Oden describes orthodoxy in these terms:

Christian orthodoxy is textually defined by the apostolic testimony, as a fulfillment commentary on the Hebrew Bible. The term paleo-orthodoxy (paleo means "primitive," "ancient") is employed to make clear that we are not talking about neo-orthodoxy , a particular movement within twentieth-century Protestant theology that actually was far more attached to assumptions of modernity than is postemodern paleo-orthodoxy. Were it not for neo-orthodoxy as a popularly recognizable movement, the term paleo-orthodoxy would be an oxymoron. Paleo becomes a necessary prefix only because the term orthodoxy has been preempted and to some degree tarnished by the modern (Bultmannian-Tillichian- Niebuhrian) tradition of neo-orthodoxy.

Christian orthodoxy in its ancient (paleo) ecumenical sense is summarily defined sacramentally by the baptismal formula (in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), liturgically by the Eucharistic event, and doctrinally by the confession and its precisely remembered rule of faith as recalled in the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, and their subsequent consensual interpretations.... Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements, p. 130.

At the conclusion of Oden's book Requiem (1995), he lists by tradition some of his colleagues in the expanding list of paleo-orthodox writers, some of which I will highlight:

Eastern Orthodox: David Ford, John D. Zizioulas
Roman Catholic: Richard John Neuhaus, Joseph Ratzinger, and Avery Dulles
Anglican: Alister McGrath, John Milbank, Robert Webber, Lesslie Newbigin
Lutheran: George Lindbeck, Peter Berger, Robert Jenson, Carl Braaten, Wolfhart Pannenberg
Reformed: Elizabeth Achtemeier, Brevard Childs, Nicholas Wolterstorff
Baptists: Stanley Grenz, Willie Jennings, Clark Pinnock
Wesleyan: William Abraham, Roberta Bondi, Geoffrey Wainwright, Stanley Hauerwas, Will Willimon

Thomas Oden played a key role in the formation of the United Methodist doctrinal statement that came out with the 1988 Discipline. He and Dick Heitzenrater had a very public and hotly debated dispute on the doctrinal standards of American Methodism and the status of Wesley's Sermons and Notes Upon the New Testament. I encourage the reader to study Tom Langford's book, Doctrine and Theology in the United Methodist Church, for the particulars of the debate. Basically, Heitzenrater was arguing that only the 25 Articles of Religion were understood to be doctrinal standards, and Oden was arguing (along with all of Methodist tradition) that Wesley's Sermons and Notes were also doctrinal standards. During the course of this debate, Oden published his book, Doctrinal Standards in the Wesleyan Tradition (1988). This debate came to a happy conclusion at the 1988 General Conference when a compromise was settled upon: The Articles of Religion were understood to be the clearest examples of doctrinal standards and the Notes and Sermons were recognized historically as the definitive Wesleyan interpretation of these doctrinal standards. (tip: this topic will come up again later in this series....)

Despite Oden's great reversal, some points were retained that he still affirms:

-his five decade defense of women in ordained ministry
-his abiding interest in African and Asian theological traditions
-his repeated defense of interculturalism with an emphasis on the catholicity of the church
-his frequent use of existential analysis as a theologian
-his immersion in experimental psychotherapies and group processes

These are all re-affirmed in Requiem. There is also in this book an ambiguous reference to his pacifism; it was unclear to me if he still considers himself a pacifist or not. If so, it would presumably be because all of the early church fathers he has studied so carefully read the Scriptures in a way that did not allow Christian disciples to use the sword.

Jeffrey C. Pugh, in his article on Oden in A New Handbook of Christian Theologians (1996), recounts the strengths of Oden's work, but he also asks some pointed questions:

Yet the weaknesses of Oden's approach can be found within the strengths. Oden calls attention to the characteristics of the so-called postmodern situation. An emphasis on embodiment, contextuality and construals of the subject are very much in the forefront of the current quest for understanding. In the midst of the voices of modernity that argue that understanding domesticates difference, Oden's work will not have much appeal. But these perspectives cannot be ignored, and the problematics they point to cannot be looked beyond to construct a simple view of the past.... Perhaps the most important concern is whether Oden has sought recovery in a too simplistic manner. Is there a too easy juxtaposition between a corrupt present and an honored past in Oden? (p. 344)

Some will say that Oden's work lacks an ethical edge, and that is probably a fair criticism. Others will point to his work in establishing The Confessing Movement within the United Methodist Church as a weakness. Although I have sympathy for the Confessing Movement's concern to maintain Christian and Methodist orthodoxy, I am troubled by the organization's tendency to oversimplify and sometimes sensationalize what are really quite complex theological questions. For this reason, I have never been a part of the Confessing Movement, and I think that one of Oden's shortcomings has been his association with this group. This does not change my respect and appreciation for some of the key leaders of that movement, including Oden, Abraham, and Cannon -- all of whom have been a part of this series.

Perhaps one of Oden's most lasting contributions to Methodism and the wider church has been his recovery of Patristic sources and his insistence that just because the early church fathers and mothers happen to be dead, that does not mean that they should not have a vote in matters of church doctrine. Certainly, Oden's Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series will be an enduring witness for many decades to come -- not only to Oden's brilliance, not only to the collective wisdom of the early church, but most importantly to the lordship of Jesus Christ over every sphere of human life and indeed over the entirety of all creation.

That word ('inclusive') remains the key shibboleth of my hyper-liberated generation. We sought to be inclusive but managed to be so only within the strict limits of modern ideologies trapped in secular premises. In this captivity we systematically excluded most premodern wisdom. Now I experience a gracious sense of multigenerational inclusion in the communion of saints. Those saints precede and transcend modern life and will survive its death. The faithful belong to a much more inclusive communion than is even conceivable within the limits of modern ideologies.... Now I revel in the very premises I once carefully learned to set aside: the triune mystery, the preexistent Logos, the radical depth of sin passing through the generations, the risen Lord, the grace of baptism.... Rather than interpreting the texts, I found the text interpreting me..... It is the winter season for rigorous Christian teaching. Modernity is a winter season for classical Christianity. Spring will come, but only to those who have survived the winter. (quotes taken from various places in The Rebirth of Orthodoxy and Agenda for Theology).

N. T. Wright, Richard Hays, and others at Wheaton

2010-04-19T15:09:00.003-04:00

Last week, Wheaton College hosted a conference entitled: "Jesus, Paul, and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright." N. T. Wright spoke, and there were responses from scholars such as Richard Hays, Jeremy Begbie, and Marianne Meye Thompson. All of these presentations have been made available to watch or listen to on line. So treat yourself. By the way, lest anyone think that a pacifist would not be invited to speak at Wheaton, Richard Hays joins Stanley Hauerwas, D. Stephen Long, and Bill Cavanaugh in that category :)

The top twenty countdown of Methodist theologians will resume shortly, I think :)

Number 16: William R. Cannon

2010-03-26T16:58:00.006-04:00

Next in our series on "The Twenty Most Important Theologians in the Methodist Tradition since the Wesleys" is William R. Cannon (1916-1997). This is the first theologian in the series with whom I had any personal contact. I heard him speak at Emory a couple of times when I was an undergraduate student there. My father also had some classes with him when he was a professor and dean of Candler School of Theology.

William Cannon was known as a scholar, theologian, historian, educator, dean, and bishop. Born in Tennessee and raised in Georgia, Bishop Cannon attended college at the University of Georgia and went to seminary at Yale Divinity School. He also received his Ph.D. at Yale in 1942. His main interests academically were in the study of Wesleyan theology, ecumenism, history, and Scripture. He joined the faculty of Candler in 1943 and became dean in 1953. He served as dean of Candler until 1968 when he was elected a bishop.

Perhaps his most important book was The Theology of John Wesley with special reference to the doctrine of Justification (1946). The year 1946 also saw the publication of Swedish scholar Harold Lindstrom's Wesley and Sanctification. 1946 was a good year for Methodist theological studies, as these two books became the definitive works on these two doctrines, which Wesley identified as the two key doctrines of the Methodism. Although they are not as widely read in seminaries today as they were in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, they remain to this day the major reference works for these two important doctrines.

Bishop Cannon became good friends with another famous resident of Atlanta: Jimmy Carter. President Carter asked Bishop Cannon to give the prayer at his inauguration in 1977. The prayer carried a somber tone, almost penitential in its call for a return to honor and decency (the Nixon-Watergate scandal was still fresh on everyone's mind). Before a national audience he prayed, "We ask Thy forgiveness for those sins that marred our national character and impaired the effectiveness of our government in recent times. Help us as a people to confess our sins, not to blame our politicians alone for them. In their evil and wrongdoing, Thou dost hold before our face a mirror in which we see our own misdeed writ large." Several journalists commented on the sternness of his prayer. He also served as an unofficial envoy for President Carter on many occasions, traveling to the Middle East as an unofficial representative of the President to help resolve Arab-Israeli differences. As president of the World Methodist Council, Cannon presented Jimmy Carter with the World Methodist Peace Award in 1985.

Cannon was regularly elected to general conference beginning in 1948. He met every Pope from Pius XII to John Paul II, and was a Protestant Observer to Vatican II. Later, as a Bishop, he also observed the Extraordinary Synod of the Roman Catholic Church in 1985. He became friends with Pope John Paul II, who sent a statement to be read at Cannon's funeral in 1997.

As the dean of Candler, he guided the school through integration and through the "God is Dead" controversy. He defended the academic freedom of Thomas Altizer, although he also wrote a strong refutation of his ideas. As a bishop, he delivered the episcopal address in the 1984 General Conference, in which he welcomed the first female Methodist bishop, Marjorie Matthews, to the college of bishops:

The election of Marjorie Matthews is a watershed in ecclesiastical history. There is no other instance in the whole of Christendom where a major world communion has opened its episcopal ranks to a woman. By divine providence The United Methodist Church in this way has given validity to the New Testament claim: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). The revelation of God is not static. Divine disclosure does not end with the last verse in the New Testament. What happened in the first century needs the achievements of subsequent ages, including the 20th century, to provide a full account of the mighty acts of God in history. "And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without as should not be made perfect" (Hebrews 11:39-40).

Late in life, Cannon became one of the leaders in the Confessing Movement within the denomination. He always emphasized the importance of evangelism in the life of the church. He challenged what he perceived to be liberal tendencies at work in the denomination in the 1982 Congress on Evangelism:

Evangelism is essential to Christianity. Christianity is sterile and incapable of reproducing itself apart from evangelism. Indeed, without effective evangelism, Christianity would die with the present generation of Christians. The enemies of Christianity in the contemporary world have seen this more clearly than its adherents. Whereas the latter have been complacent, indeed reticent to press the claims of the gospel on others, the former have been diligent in their efforts to circumscribe Christianity and to confine the faith to those who now profess it.

Unfortunately, what the avowed enemies of Christianity see so clearly, many so-called Christians do not see at all. There are those too numerous, even among the clergy, who disavow evangelism and stigmatize it as an affront to the adherents of other religions and as an insult to free thinking, self-determining human beings. Of course, all of us recognize the pluralistic nature of our society, and the necessity for voluntarism in relationship to all religious practices. But for a Christian minister to be so zealous to protect the uncommitted from the gospel (s)he is supposed to be committed to proclaim, one cannot help but wonder whose side they are really on. Given the bland complacency and cold indifference of too many of our clergy, I might welcome just a little fanaticism. It is easier to restrain a fanatic than it is to revive a corpse.

In many places, the gospel must come as an uninvited guest, even in Western Democratic Society. Truly, this is an inhospitable age, but so was the first century in which the gospel was originally proclaimed.

I will close with this excerpt from Bishop Cannon's address to the 1984 General Conference of the United Methodist Church. In it, Cannon seems to be expressing his pacifist views:

Unless we can abolish war, the chances are there will not be any world left for us to reform. An all-out nuclear war would eradicate civilization and in all probability destroy human life itself. Proposals and plans to curtail nuclear developments, to impose a nuclear freeze, to guarantee nuclear parity between the Soviet Union and United States are no more than palliatives. They do not cure the disease. All nuclear weapons possessed by any and every nation must simultaneously be destroyed, and neutral nations that do not possess such weapons must be the agents engaged to destroy them and to guarantee that their destruction is complete.

War is malignant. And, given the disposition of governments to exercise military force unconscionably for purposes of expansion, ideological uniformity, the coercion of populations, and nationalistic prestige and power, conventional weapons are also intolerable.

Christian conscience demands total disarmament by disbanding armies, navies, and air forces over the face of the earth. The early church with one voice condemned war. The Augustinian and medieval doctrine of the Just War was a later concession by the church to secularistic society and imperial government which at the time were at least nominally Christian. When its provisions were strictly adhered to, all it did was to enable Christians to kill other Christians on a restricted scale and a bit more humanely than otherwise, but they got killed just the same. Under contemporary circumstances the doctrine of the Just War is a ridiculous anachronism. Jesus came that all might have life and have it more abundantly. We are the disciples of the
Prince of Peace. He died on the cross rather than call down legions of angels to destroy his enemies. The church's message to the world is that any nation that selfishly tries to preserve its national existence by military means alone is bound to lose it, while those nations that give themselves unselfishly to the saving of their people and humanity will by divine grace achieve an exemplary place in history and become an earthly model of the kingdom of God.

Just as important as the abolition of war are the universal respect for human rights, the freedom of persons in every nation and society, the safeguards of life, liberty, and the means of happiness to all people who inhabit the earth. The danger of enslavement is as terrifying as the threat of nuclear disaster. The inability freely to express one's thoughts, to disseminate new ideas, and to pursue the dictates of conscience are as oppressive as death itself. The domination of any portion of humanity by an oppressive, totalitarian regime is an evil which the church must resist with the same vigor and determination that it resists war.

Blackmail of one nation by another through superior military force and the suppression of the citizens of a country by its own government are comparable to a holocaust. Jesus announced his mission and therefore the mission of his church: "to preach deliverance to the captives" and "to set at liberty them that are oppressed" (Luke 4:18). "Give liberty to whom liberty is due," proclaims John Wesley, "that is to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature. Let none serve you but by his own voluntary choice. Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion."

Allan Bevere and Limited Government

2010-03-24T15:21:00.003-04:00

Allan Bevere is writing a series of posts entitled, "A Christian Case for Limited Government." His rather Hauerwasian introduction can be found here. This sounds like it should be interesting. I hope you will read this series and contribute to the discussion.

Number 17: William J. Abraham

2010-03-22T21:21:00.016-04:00

We continue our series on the twenty most important theologians in the Methodist tradition with a look at William J. ("Billy") Abraham. Born in Belfast in 1947 , Abraham studied at Queen's University, Belfast and Asbury Theological Seminary before earning a doctoral degree in philosophy from Oxford. He then went on to serve as a Methodist minister in Ireland and on the faculty at Seattle Pacific University before becoming Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1985 to 1995. In 1995 he was appointed to the Albert Cook Outler Professor of Wesley Studies at Perkins, working as a philosophical and systematic theologian. Abraham regularly accepts invitations as lecturer and preacher and is in demand throughout the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, and Australia.

Perhaps Abraham's best known work is Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology: From the Fathers to Feminism. In this work, Abraham argues that the early church understood its canon to be more than Scripture; canon, which always had a soteriological focus, also included the creeds, the bishops, the fathers, and the sacraments. These were not to be understood as criteria; they were to be understood as canon: a list of sources that were understood to be means of grace. When they came to be seen as criteria by which one could judge the validity of truth claims, serious damage was done to both the canon and the criteria. The result has been confusion in the church in the area of epistemology.

Abraham has written much in the area of evangelism, including his book, The Logic of Evangelism. Abraham defines evangelism as the church's particular activity of initiating people into the Kingdom of God for the first time. In his book, The Art of Evangelism, he argues that evangelism requires creativity and dexterity. It is not a single act or technique. It is a varied set of activities like farming or teaching. His work in the area of evangelism has been a source for thousands of seminary students who are now required to take at least one course in evangelism.

Although he now has the chair named in honor of Albert Outler, he has been critical of Outler's vision of United Methodism. Abraham acknowledges all the good that Outler did in helping modern Methodists to recover Wesley, but he sees Outler as someone who helped promote a version of liberal protestantism. Of Outler, Abraham writes: "I think that the overall outcome of the Outler strategy across 40 years can be stated simply: the Church becomes an endless seminar in search of elusive and ultimately unattainable truth — rather than the carrier of the rich and salutary faith once delivered to the saints… " Abraham has argued passionately that the Methodist emphasis on the quadrilateral has moved Methodism away from substantive theological claims and into the realm of mere methodology. The unfortunate result is that anyone who can make any argument that touches on scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, thinks they are doing faithful Methodist theology. The test of good theology has become merely technique rather than substance. Abraham has provided the evangelical segments of the UMC with the intellectual resources they have needed to challenge the Protestant Liberalism that dominated the denomination's first 20 years of existence (1968-1988).

Abraham does not attempt to hide his displeasure with Liberal protestantism. He describes himself in contrast to Protestant Liberalism:

I am an unapologetic, died-in-the wool, small l liberal, committed to the fostering of intellectual virtue and the inhibiting of intellectual vice. I have never been a big L Liberal, and I have never felt guilty that I have not been one. Indeed much of what I do and write involves a deconstruction of big L Liberal Protestantism. While Liberal Protestants did much to help the church come to terms with some critical intellectual challenges facing us in the last two centuries, they also systematically gave away vital doctrinal and spiritual treasures that have to be retrieved today. They took the wine of the gospel and turned it back into water. They also arrogantly laid claim to being especially intellectually virtuous. In fact, they made the fatal mistake of making their own material theology and practice the criterion of truth in faith and practice. They tried to corner the market on being small l liberal, dismissing their critics as ignorant, dogmatic, backward, bigoted, and the like. This is still common in some academic and ecclesial circles.

In addition to evangelism, Abraham emphasizes the importance of doctrinal renewal in the church:

Evangelism is a ministry of the church; renewal is the healing of the church. Evangelism is constituted by practices of proclamation and catechesis aimed at grounding new believers in the kingdom of God in the church. Renewal is facing head on the diseases of the church and seeking to find ways to let God cure the church and bring her to all that God intended her to be. The two need to go hand in hand today. When evangelism is done in the robust way I envisage then we find the church is often too sick or weak to do the kind of evangelism we need. In these circumstances we do what we can in evangelistic practice, seeking patiently to improve on what we currently do. But we also allow a robust vision of evangelism to drive us to renewal and the healing of the church. Thus evangelism over time fosters and depends on the renewal of the church from top to bottom.

Abraham has been instrumental in the formation of "The Confessing Movement within the Untied Methodist Church." Through this movement, thousands of lay and clergy within United Methodism have been challenged to forsake Liberal Protestantism and embrace the historic roots of orthodox Christianity and the doctrinal standards of the United Methodist Church.

Abraham has not been without his critics. He has been accused of focusing too narrowly on historic doctrine to the exclusion of continuing revelation of the Holy Spirit in the church today. In the book, United Methodism @ Risk: A Wake-Up Call (2003), Leon Howell has called into question the motives of the Confessing Movement, in which Abraham has played a major role. Howell and others decried the Confessing Movement's "rigid" interpretation of Scripture and theological tradition. In my opinion, most of these criticisms are off the mark. Abraham is right to call us back to our sources, and he has done so with a level of theological and philosophical sophistication that most Liberal Protestants have yet to acknowledge. He has also challenged evangelicals in the UMC today to abandon their anti-intellectualism and embrace the wider, catholic tradition of the church.

Abraham is important in the Methodist theological tradition because he reminds us of the importance of our doctrinal heritage at a time when it would be easy to lose sight of it. He writes:

In the end, the church cannot endure without a body of systematic and coherent doctrine. This was not the problem Wesley faced two centuries ago. His challenge was to take the doctrine the church already possessed in her canonical traditions and make it accessible to the masses of his day. Hence, he did not make doctrine a high priority in his efforts to renew the church of his day. Two hundred years later, the situation is radically reversed. We have become so doctrinally indifferent and illiterate that the church is starved of intellectual content. Indeed in many quarters the church has become internally secularized. It has no shared public discourse of its own, other than that borrowed from the secular world, to think through its pastoral care, its mission in the world, its evangelism, and its internal administration. Hence pastoral care is reduced to therapy, mission to sociopolitical action, evangelism to church growth, academic theology to amateur philosophical inquiry, and church administration to total quality management. To be sure, only a fool would claim that we cannot learn from the best secular inquiries of our day… Yet it is patently obvious that the Christian tradition has its own special way of thinking about its healing care, its mission, its evangelism, its internal structures, and the like. That special way of thinking is inescapably doctrinal… The recovery of doctrinal identity is not then some abstract exercise in constitutional archaeology; it is integral to the deep renewal of the life and work of the church in the current generation. (Waking from Doctrinal Amnesia: The Healing of Doctrine in the United Methodist Church, pp. 104-105)

Number 18: Phoebe Palmer

2010-03-16T21:38:00.006-04:00

Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874) comes in at number 18. She was an important lay evangelist who played a key role in the renewal of the Methodist understanding of Christian perfection. She read Wesley and relied on him as a source, but she actually took the doctrine in some ways that Wesley did not.

Just as John Wesley came to overshadow his brother Charles in the original Methodist movement, so Phoebe Palmer took over a movement that was started by her sibling, Sarah Lankford. In 1835, Sarah had started the Tuesday Morning Society for the Promotion of Holiness meetings in New York City. By 1837, Phoebe Palmer had assumed the leadership of the movement and was beginning to make a name for herself. Although the meetings were begun for women, by 1839 men had started to come and sit at Phoebe's feet. Among those who came to hear her speak were Methodist preachers, theologians, and bishops. As her popularity as a speaker continued to grow, she was invited to speak at churches, camp meetings, and conferences. She would speak to thousands at a time. For a woman to command this much attention in the area of religion had been unheard of; in some ways, she helped pave the way for later female theologians such as Georgia Harkness, although theologically they were quite different. In Palmer's book, The Promise of the Father (1859) she made one of the first systematic attempts to reconcile the practice of women preaching with the Scriptures. In this way, she was one of the forerunners of modern feminist theology.

The name Phoebe Palmer is almost synonymous with the Holiness Movement in American church history. As a leader of the Holiness movement in the United States, she is revered especially among the Nazarenes. As Harold Raser notes:

"Why does the Church of the Nazarene affirm that God calls and gifts women for ministry?" It is partly because of our debt to Phoebe Palmer. The fingerprints of this remarkable woman can be found nearly everywhere in the holiness tradition. In fact we, as Nazarenes and "holiness" believers, are to a great extent the "children" of Phoebe Palmer. Perhaps as Paul said about Abraham—"those who believe are children of Abraham" (Galatians 3:7)—we might say of Phoebe Palmer—"those who love and seek after holiness are children of Phoebe."

Holiness, Phoebe Palmer believed, carries ethical implications, so she became involved in an inner city rescue mission and in societal moral concerns. After the Civil War, she was a leader in the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness and continued to be a prominent spokeswoman for entire sanctification.

Her most famous publication as The Way of Holiness (1850) in which she put forward her own unique spin on the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification. In contrast to John Wesley's deliberate, meticulous, slow way of exploring the gradual work of sanctification, Phoebe Palmer asserted:

Yes, brother, THERE IS A SHORTER WAY! O! I am sure this long waiting and struggling with the powers of darkness is not necessary. There is a shorter way. ... (speaking of herself in the third person) On arriving at this point, she was enabled to gain yet clearer insight into the simplicity of the way. And it was by this process. After having taken the Bible as the rule of life, instead of the opinions and experience of professors, she found, on taking the blessed Word more closely to the companionship of her heart, that no one declaration spoke more appealingly to her understanding than this: " Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." (1 Cor. vi. 20.) By this she perceived the duty of entire consecration in a stronger light, and as more sacredly binding, than ever before. Here she saw God as her Redeemer claiming, by virtue of the great price paid for the redemption of body, soul, and spirit, the present and entire service of all these redeemed powers.

Palmer went on to expound on what became known as her "altar theology."

It was thus, by "laying all upon this altar," she, by the most unequivocal Scripture testimony, laid herself "under the most sacred obligation to believe that the sacrifice became " holy and acceptable," and virtually the Lord's property, even by virtue of the sanctity of the altar upon which it was laid, and continued " holy and acceptable,." so long as kept inviolably upon this hallowed altar. At an early stage of her experience in the " way of holiness," the Holy Spirit powerfully opened to her understanding the following passage, as corroborative of this view of the subject: " I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."
From these important considerations she perceived that it was indeed by the Spirit's teachings she had been led to " enter into the bonds of an everlasting covenant to be wholly the Lord's," inasmuch as, by the removal of this offering from this hallowing altar, she should emand for the "living sacrifice," having purchased all, body, soul, and spirit, unto Himself.

Phoebe Palmer, the mother of the Modern Holiness movement, comes in at number 18. She Americanized and democratized Wesley's vision of sanctification, simplifying it and making more accessible to the common people. One does wonder, however, if she oversimplified it by making it immediately accessible to anyone who simply puts their life on the altar. True, John Wesley also allowed for immediate sanctification, but the whole structure of his theology (with its emphasis on the means of grace, small group accountability and continual need for repentance) gave precedence to a gradualist account of sanctification. With Palmer, sanctification took on a pneumatological focus (as opposed to Wesley's Christological focus), and it became more readily available to everyone, even those who did not submit to sustained communal disciplines. Nevertheless, Palmer's influence spread quickly, she prepared the way for later female preachers, and she reminded Christians of the importance of living a sanctified life.

Number 19: E. Stanley Jones

2010-03-11T16:47:00.009-05:00

E. Stanley Jones was born in Baltimore, Md. on January 3, 1884. He was educated in Baltimore schools and studied law at City College before graduating from Asbury College, Wilmore, Kentucky in 1906. He was on the faculty of Asbury College when he was called to missionary service in India in 1907 under the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

He began his work among the members of the very low castes and the outcasts in India. He did not attack Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, or any Indian religion. He presented the Gospel of Jesus Christ, disentangled from western systems and cultures, and their sometimes non-Christian expressions. "The way of Jesus should be—but often isn't—the way of Christianity," he said. "Western civilization is only partly Christianized."

Jones conducted great mass meetings in leading Indian cities. At one such meeting, their leader said, "We may not agree with what Dr. Jones is saying, but we can certainly all try to be like Jesus Christ." He inaugurated "round table conferences" at which Christian and non-Christian sat down as equals to share their testimonies as to how their religious experiences enabled them to live better. Thirty years before the United Nations came into being he proposed a Round Table of Nations.

Jones spoke about Jesus Christ to hundreds of thousand of people in India. Most of them did not become Christians, but some did. He helped to re-establish the Indian "Ashram" (or forest retreat) as a means of drawing men and women together for days at a time to study in depth their own spiritual natures and quest, and what the different faiths offered individuals. Later, Jones developed "Christian Ashrams" designed for people who were already Christians to reflect on their faith and practice. These "Christian Ashrams" spread to many nations and cultures.

E. Stanley Jones went to earth's trouble spots helping to promote international understanding. "Peace," he said, "is a by-product of conditions out of which peace naturally comes. If reconciliation is God's chief business, it is ours—between man and God, between man and himself, and between man and man." He was once welcomed to Japan under the banner "apostle of peace."

During Jones' long ministry in India, he became close friends with Gandhi. Gandhi once told Jones: "I do not reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It is just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ." On another occasion, Jones asked Gandhi:

"How can we make Christianity naturalized in India so that it shall no longer be a foreign thing identified with a foreign people and a foreign government, but a part of the national life of India and contributing its power to India's uplift?" He responded with great clarity:

"I would suggest first of all that all of you Christians, missionaries and all begin to live more like Jesus Christ. Second, practice your religion without adulterating or toning it down. Third emphasize love and make it your working force, for love is central in Christianity. Fourth, study the non Christian religions more sympathetically to find the good that is in them, so that you might have a more sympathetic approach to the people."

Jones offered these words of guidance to the people of India who were considering Christianity:

Jesus is the gospel. We therefore bring him to the East and West and say: Take him direct. You don't have to take our interpretation of Christ, except as you find it helpful in forming your own. Go straight to the gospels to discover Jesus anew, and if you show us a better interpretation we shall sit at your feet. The system which we have built up around Christ in the West may be useful and helpful as embodying a collective experience, but it is no integral part of the gospel. Create out of your own experience the corporate expression of that experience. Christ is universal but he uses local forms to express that universality. We expect you in India out of your rich cultural and religious past to bring to the interpretation of the universal Christ something which will greatly enrich the total expression. Especially now that Gandhi has lived and died we think you can interpret Christ in terms that are lacking in the West.

To the Christians of India, Jones said this about sharing their faith: "Don't talk about it. The rose doesn't have to propagate its perfume. It just gives it forth and people are drawn to it. Don't talk about it. Live it. And people will come to see the source of your power."

In his book, Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend, E Stanley Jones wrote:

Nonviolence was accepted out of necessity. And yet out of choice. And further: Undoubtedly an overruling Providence was using India as a paving ground for a new type of power - the power of the soul. But the Mahatma repudiated with all his might the idea that the method of truth and nonviolence was used because you are weak and cowardly. He insisted that it was the method of the strong, and only the method of the strong.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once told Eunice Jones Matthews (daughter of E. Stanley Jones) and Methodist Bishop James Matthews (son-in-law of E. Stanley Jones) that it was this passage that clinched his decision to work nonviolently for Civil Rights in the United States. King showed Bishop Matthews that in the margin of the book, he had written, "This is it!" Without this book, Martin Luther King, Jr., would still have probably reached a similar decision by some other means. But as it turned out, this book by E. Stanley Jones was, according to Martin Luther King, instrumental in shaping the missional direction of his use of nonviolence. The grandchildren of E. Stanley Jones and the grandchildren of Gandhi remain friends today.

Jones' book The Christ of the Indian Road (1925) reflected on his missionary experience in India. It sold more than one million copies world-wide. He wrote dozens of other books that were devotional in nature. In Resident Aliens, the Methodist theologians Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon quoted another saying of E. Stanley Jones: "We inoculate the world with a mild version of Christianity so that it will be immune to the real thing." (p. 90)

Jones was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his reconciliation work in Asia, Africa, and between Japan and the United States. He is the only person known to have been elected a bishop in the Methodist Church who declined the offer. He died in 1973 in his beloved India. Half of his ashes were buried in India, and half were buried in Baltimore, Md. I have included E. Stanley Jones in my list of the top 20 theologians in the Methodist tradition because of the wide-ranging impact he had on the church and its understanding of its own mission.

Number 20: Justo González

2010-03-09T23:01:00.017-05:00

I have decided to make this series about the 20 most important theologians in the Wesleyan tradition. Number twenty is the Cuban-American Methodist theologian Justo González (1937-).

Justo González attended United Seminary in Cuba, received his M.A. at Yale, and was the youngest person to be awarded a Ph.D. in historical theology at Yale. He is perhaps best known not only for his three-volume History of Christian Thought, but also his two volume The Story of Christianity. He has had considerable influence on a generation of pastors who have used his textbooks in seminary courses on historical theology. His wide-ranging knowledge of church history is accompanied by a penetrating analysis of theological trends and motifs. In passages like what follows, González has a gift for explaining how historical factors influenced theological moves. In writing about the American Methodist separation from the Church of England, González writes:

For a long time, Wesley had been convinced that in the early church, a “bishop” was the same as a “presbyter” or “elder.” This led him to the conviction that all ordained presbyters, including himself, had the power of ordination. But he refrained from employing it to avoid further alienating the leadership of the Church of England. The independence of the United States, however, posed new difficulties. During the War of Independence, most of the Anglican clergy had been loyalists, and after independence most of them had returned to England. This made it difficult – sometimes impossible—for the inhabitants of the new nation to partake of communion. The bishop of London, who supposedly still had jurisdiction over the former colonies, refused to ordain personnel for the United States. Convinced as he was that the celebration of communion was the very heart of Christian worship, Wesley deplored this situation – while he also deplored what he took to be the unwarranted rebellion of Brittan’s former colonies. Finally, in 1784, he ordained two lay preachers as presbyters for the new country, and made Anglican priest Thomas Coke their “superintendent” a word that he well knew had the same meaning as the Greek word translated as “bishop.” (The Story of Christianity, volume 2, p. 215).

Note the complexity of the situation that González highlights. It wasn’t just that Wesley was a pragmatist, ordaining whomever he wanted. It wasn’t that Wesley did not care for the traditions of the Church of England or had a low church ecclesiology. It was Wesley’s belief in the centrality of the Eucharist combined with the historical accident of the American Revolution that led to this split. It is González' mastery of history and theology that makes this insight possible. Many historians would miss the key theological problem at the heart of Wesley’s dilemma.

González taught at Candler School of Theology of Emory University in Georgia for eight years followed by eight years at United Seminary. He also served as adjunct professor of history at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia and is now retired from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also a member of the Rio Grande Conference of The United Methodist Church. His wife, Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez, is also an accomplished historian.

González has always displayed a knack for making difficult theological concepts accessible to a wider audience. His book, Heretics for Armchair Theologians, explains such heresies as Gnosticism, Marcionism, Donatism, and Pelagianism, while setting forth an orthodox understanding of Trinitarian doctrine with simplicity and grace:

In the last few decades, theologians have begun to recover a long forgotten tradition of seeing the Trinity as a model for life in community. From this perspective, what the Trinity teaches us is that true oneness and true glory – the oneness and the glory of God – does not consist in standing alone in solitary splendor. It is rather, a matter of interrelationship. God is one, God is one in a higher fashion than anything else is one, and yet God is one in community. Thus, to those who say that the doctrine of the Trinity asks us to believe in the nonsensical notion that three can be one, we may answer that, on the contrary, the Trinity is unique example of what it means truly to be one. God’s oneness is such that there is love even within the Godhead itself. God is love, not just in the sense that God loves us, but also in the sense that the inner life of the Trinity is a life of love. (p. 92)

González’ gifts for theological exploration has also been displayed for thousands of laity in the United Methodist Church as he has hosted the Christian Believer videos, in which the classical doctrines of the Christian faith have been studied and explained over the course of 30 weeks. I once taught a Christian Believer class, and I can attest to his ability to connect with a wide range of students as they connect Christian doctrine and life.

González has written a number of books from the perspective of his Hispanic culture. Two of them are Mañana : Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective and Santa Biblia : The Bible through Hispanic Eyes. Gonzalez also authored, Each In Our Own Tongue: A History of Hispanics in United Methodism. Regrettably, I am not able to comment on the specific contents of these books, but they do remind us of the ability of the Wesleyan tradition to adapt to different cultures, languages, and places.

During one of his 2007 lectures at Methodists Associated Representing the Cause of Hispanic Americans (MARCHA), González told his listeners that hope is the "future pulling us forward. We don't fear the future because we've seen the future in the person of Jesus Christ. The hope and future we see should affect our present."

He specifically mentioned the undocumented immigrant as a symbol of courage, hope and determination. "The immigrant is a man that has the courage to leave his family, home and town behind in order to cross miles and miles of desert, many times on foot, risking his life. He reaches the border and crosses, sometimes not even knowing what to do, continually living under Damocles' sword that Immigration (authorities) may get him."

He added: "Our task is to let this country know that the reviled undocumented immigrant embodies in a much profound way the values we hold dear in this country."

González encouraged his listeners to be people of hope, and to teach others to be "daring in their hope."

Why Stanley Hauerwas is still considered Methodist

2010-03-05T21:53:00.008-05:00

I have been challenged in the past by theobloggers such as Michael and Kim (of Connexions), who have made the assertion that Stanley Hauerwas is no longer a Methodist. I consider this to be an oversimplification. The fact of the matter is that Stanley Hauerwas attends an Episcopal Church -a fact that I suspect would make John Wesley happy. John Wesley was an Anglican all his life, and it doesn't stop us from calling him a Methodist. As Ken knows, I sometimes say that two of my favorite Methodist theologians are N. T. Wright and Rowan Williams. When people point out to me that they are both Anglicans, I say, "So was John Wesley." Of course, that is tongue in cheek. But there are serious reasons why Stanley Hauerwas is considered still a Methodist, and below I will provide some documentation for this claim.

First of all, there is the strong Methodist shape to his theology, rooted in a Wesleyan understanding of sanctification, dating all the way back to his dissertation at Yale. His view of Christian practices, habits, and virtues owes much to John Wesley -- as pointed out in the most recent edition of the Christian Century by his frequent co-author William Willimon. Interestingly, Willimon challenges the conventional wisdom (which he himself and Hauerwas helped make popular) that Christianity is primarily about practices, arguing instead that these practices have distracted our attention away from the living God (see the March 9, 2010 edition of the Christian Century).

Here is some documentation. In the Preface to Performing the Faith (published in 2004), Hauerwas says that he and his wife are now worshiping with the Anglicans (p. 10). This, in and of itself, is not sufficient reason to cease calling him a Methodist. I worship with Anglicans from time to time, too. I'm still a Methodist. Additionally, his wife is an ordained United Methodist minister, although she too worships with the Anglicans. Clearly, worshiping with the Anglicans does not mean one is no longer a Methodist. Remember that John Wesley always encouraged the Methodists to worship with the Anglicans.

Despite the fact that in 2004 Hauerwas publicly announced that he worshiped with Anglicans, in August of 2006, one of his graduate students (Jason Byassee) wrote an article in the Christian Century about the number of Protestants who were becoming Roman Catholic. In the article, Byassee calls Hauerwas a Methodist. This is after at least two years of Hauerwas worshiping with the Anglicans. A quote from the article reveals something significant: "While raising his son, Hauerwas found that the Methodists were good at shaping young people in faith. He also prefers loyalty to one's church of origin: "I feel like you need to stay with the people that harmed you." So in August of 2006, Hauerwas is still a Methodist.

In 2007, Bishop Scott Jones was preaching at the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas (near Kansas City). UMC Bishop Scott Jones is the brother of L. Gregory Jones, who has been dean of Duke Divinity School for 13 years. (L. Gregory Jones was also a graduate student of Hauerwas at one time). In this sermon, Bishop Scott Jones refers to a Methodist theologian by the name of Stanley Hauerwas. I think that the Jones family would be familiar with Hauerwas' ecclesial identification, and he calls Hauerwas a Methodist. So in 2007, still a Methodist.

The most recent documentation of Hauerwas' identity as a Methodist comes from his own lips. In the Feb. 12, 2009 edition of The Shreveport Times, Hauerwas is quoted as saying, "I'm a Methodist." (see the image I have uploaded with this story). I am aware that Hauerwas has also said things like,"I'm an Anglican," and I have no reason to deny this. Andy Rowell, currently a doctoral student of Hauerwas at Duke, identified Hauerwas as a Methodist on Feb. 3, 2010. Whatever his official ecclesial status is with the Anglicans (and I have no knowledge of his actually being confirmed in the Episcopal Church), this is at least enough documentation to consider Stanley Hauerwas as a major voice within the Methodist tradition, and so I have included his name as potentially one of the ten most important theologians in the Wesleyan tradition.

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: In his book of sermons, A Cross Shattered Church, (2009) Hauerwas explains, "I am a Methodist who is a communicant at the Church of the Holy Family (Episcopal)." (p. 155) In his memoir, Hannah's Child, (2010) he explains why he no longer attends the UMC where he was a member (pp. 258-259).

The Ten Most Important Theologians in the Wesleyan Tradition

2010-03-05T09:55:00.015-05:00

Michael has given me a wonderful challenge: Name, describe, and rank the ten most important theologians in the Wesleyan theological tradition (since John and Charles Wesley). I will do a series of posts on this in the coming weeks. Off the top of my head, these are the names that come to mind. First of all, I would name a few contemporaries of John and Charles Wesley: John Fletcher, Thomas Coke, and George Whitefield (the black sheep Calvinist in the Methodist family).

Now, as far as theologians SINCE the Wesleys, my list would include (in no particular order) Albert Outler, Georgia Harkness, Edwin Lewis, Borden Parker Bowne, Edgar Sheffield Brightman, Thomas Oden, John Cobb, Nathan Bangs, William Cannon, Geoffrey Wainwright, Stanley Hauerwas, E. Stanley Jones, William Willimon, Richard Allen, Richard Hays, and James Cone. That’s 16 theologians. It will require some work for me to narrow the list to ten, but those are my nominations. This could be fun. Would you have any other nominations? There are probably some obvious ones that I am missing.

UPDATE: I have now expanded the list to 20.

Hauerwas on N. T. Wright

2010-01-12T21:05:00.007-05:00

For the first time in print, I have seen Stanley Hauerwas respond to the work of N. T. Wright. N. T. Wright's forthcoming book on virtue and the Christian life is entitled, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. Those familiar with Hauerwas know that his dissertation (on sanctification in Barth, Wesley, and Calvin) was later published as Character and the Christian Life. Of course, Hauerwas has, along with Alasdair MacIntyre, led the recovery of the significance of virtue for understanding the Christian life (sanctification).

For many years, I have been wondering when Hauerwas would pick up N. T. Wright's work on the New Testament. Now I see that N. T. Wright actually picked up Hauerwas' work on virtue ethics. I will look forward to reading Wright's newest book. I heard a lecture of Wright last year in which he used Sully Sullenberger as an example of what it means to develop virtue through sustained discipline (or what Eugene Peterson might call 'a long obedience in the same direction'). I imagine that lecture will be a chapter in this book. Anyway, this is what Hauerwas said in his blurb about the new book by N. T. Wright: "Bishop Wright, with his usual wisdom and erudition, shows how an account of the virtues is not only compatible but required by the New Testament understanding of what it means to be a Christian. This important book hopefully will be read by theologian and non-theologian alike."

N. T. Wright on Reason and War

2009-07-21T20:50:00.004-04:00

(ht: Allan Bevere)

And here is is a post from a fine new blog called "The N. T. Wright Project." The project is being carried on by some students and a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. The post raises the point I have raised several times about the possible relation between the work of N. T. Wright and John Howard Yoder. A couple of years ago, I discussed this with Richard Hays, and he agreed with me that there is a fundamental consistency in the work of Wright and Yoder. Unfortunately, Yoder died before learning much of Wright's work, and Wright has not yet engaged Yoder, although Hays has urged him to. Needless to say, I disagree with Douglas Harink, who tries to drive a wedge between Yoder and Wright in his book, Paul and the Postliberals.

On not knowing whether or not I am progressive

2009-05-10T20:43:00.006-04:00

One of my favorite blogs is Levellers, not because I always agree with Michael, but because he usually makes me think. Although Michael has used the term "progressive" many times on his blog, I'm not sure if he has ever defined the term. Clearly, it is an important category for him. (Forgive me, Michael, if you've defined the term and I just can't remember). I think there is a problem with the way some of my Methodist friends use the term "progressive." It's almost as if "progressive" is a more determinative category than "faithful Christian." It's like they define 'progressive' on non-theological grounds first, and then try to show that Christianity can also fit into that more important category. It strikes me as backwards. It also strikes me as a horrible mistake to define the term "conservative" on non-theological grounds and then try to show that Christianity qualifies for that honorific title. I suppose I try to discern what it means to practice faithful Christian discipleship, and then later let other people worry about what labels they want to attach to it. They will sometimes call me conservative, sometimes progressive, but I don't particulary care.

In the past few weeks and months, there has been a lot of blogging about torture. I have blogged about this topic several times in the past, and I have spoken in my church about the reasons that torture cannot be reconciled with Christian belief or practice (It is a denial of the imago dei in each person, and it flatly contradicts Christ's teaching on love of enemies). Recently there have been attempts to link the issues of abortion and torture, and most of those attempted links have been poorly done. They sound like angry, immature rants. (not that I am above that!). But one exception to that observation is this blog post by my friend Ken. Ken challenges us to re-think our assumptions about torture and abortion, but Ken does it with grace and wisdom, not shrill, empty rhetoric. I don't know if Ken is being progressive or conservative, but it sure sounds faithful to me.

Marva Dawn at the College of Pastoral Leaders

2009-04-21T22:19:00.002-04:00

It is my privilege this week to be attending the College of Pastoral Leaders, sponsored by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and funded by the Lily Endowment. I am participating over the next two years in a theological cohort called "The Living Tradition," in which we will be studying Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and Barth. The five members of our cohort will be meeting several times over the next two years and have the chance to meet with a few theologians.

This week in Austin, all of the various cohorts (about 50 people) are gathering to hear lectures by (among others) Marva Dawn, whose theme for the week is keeping the Sabbath. I have been learning from Marva Dawn's books for over fifteen years, and I heard her speak at the Duke Pastors' School a few years ago. She is an excellent speaker, with the heart of a pastor and the mind of a theologian. She is probably my favorite Lutheran theologian and author.

One of the things I have always appreciated about Marva Dawn is that she calls our attention to the little details in life that we often don't think about (such as our language). Yet she shows how the little things we do and say carry great theological import. For example, she called our attention to what we might mean by such a simple sentence as, "We are going to church."

What theological assumptions go undetected in such a sentence? Why do we say, "We are going to church?" We are the church. We don't need to go to it. Church is not a building; church is a body that we already are. We go to the church building to engage in the practices of being the church, but we don't "go to church" because we are already the church. What ecclesiology goes into the assumption that we "go to church"? Our theology of baptism should render such statements unintelligible. What bad theology are we allowing to sneak in under the radar when we make such statements?

Now I will be the first to admit that I have said thing like "going to church." But I need to watch myself and my language more carefully. Do you think Marva Dawn is being too picky on this? She told us, if I am just being an old fuddy-duddy, just tell me. I think she is being a guardian of our language, and this is actually important work. When we let our language slip, our practices will soon follow.

Tomorrow, she will be talking about the principalities and powers.

Why I Love America

2009-04-19T22:08:00.002-04:00

because when we are at our best, the USA stands for justice and doing what is right

because we try to be a democracy, and as Walter Wink says, democracy is nonviolence institutionalized

because we try to be generous, when we are at our best

because even when we fall short of our ideals, there is always hope for a better tomorrow.

because we are making some progress towards racial reconciliation

because Scripture tells us to pray for the emperor (1 Timothy 2:2)

The United States is far from perfect; we have a lot of growing to do. But we have some good internal resources in our history from which to draw.

As William Sloan Coffin once said, "Love your country; just don't stop at the borders."

Faith, Reason, and Evangelism

2009-04-03T13:46:00.011-04:00

I've been talking with Marvin and Lee about the relationship between faith and reason. I've been trying to represent the view of Lesslie Newbigin, who emphasized that all reason is contingent and shaped by tradition. Marvin and Lee seemed ok with the idea of reason being contingent, but they disagreed with my assertion (from Newbigin) that the resurrection does not fit into any plausibility structure except one of which it is the cornerstone. It has also turned into a discussion about evangelism.

Shane Claiborne says that the best evangelism technique is to fascinate the world with grace. I think he means to embody the gospel in such as way as to stir up people's curiosity. Certainly arguing some theory (whether liberal or postliberal) is a dubious evangelism technique.

Marvin, I also struggle to evangelize, or lead my congregation in evangelizing. I am very happy to come together and reason with secularists or anyone else. I've done Harry Potter Bible studies with children (Camassia, hold your tongue!) and I advertised in the Salisbury Post an Advent series based on themes from traditional Christmas movies (don't tell my friend Jason Byassee)! I pray at local PTA meetings. I've had only a few secular people nibble, but no one bite.

Marvin, remember when we went to that anti-war meeting in Charlotte, and we were asked to go around the room, introduce ourselves and tell why we were there? Amidst all the diversity of people there, I said, "I'm Jonathan, and I'm here because of Jesus." It got some Amens from the Muslims who were there and even some nods of approval from the secularists who were there. I have been terribly unfaithful since that time in following up with my theology of peace, but it does strike me that to embrace the particularity of Jesus does not necessarily turn away non-Christian people.

I think Shane Claiborne is right; unless we embody the gospel in extraordinary ways, no one is going to care what theory we espouse. Which may mean that our first task is embodiment, not proclamation. Of course, it is easier to discuss theories than to embody the gospel, which is why I'm sitting at my computer right now rather than working down at Rowan Helping Ministries. I don't mean to sound anti-intellectual, philosophy and theology are important, but they can't take the place of love.

I do like the approach of N. T. Wright as seen in Simply Christian. As one Duke theologian said in his very favorable review of that book,

I'm generally wary of apologetics because it tends to portray a faith rather different from the life actually lived by Christians and often implies that one can have Jesus without church. I'm largely persuaded by Karl Barth's claim that the best apologetics is good dogmatics. Wright, however, uses his opening themes as appetizers, rather than as interrogators whose demands must be met. He allows Christianity to speak for itself rather than forcing it to address issues that have a supposedly more significant or comprehensive origin, such as "the human condition." This is stylistically impressive and disarmingly persuasive.

Thanks everyone for making me think about these matters. I would welcome any additional thoughts.

The Methodists Must Take Heed to their Doctrine

2009-03-26T14:29:00.000-04:00

'The Methodists must take heed to their doctrine, their experience, their practice, and their discipline. If they attend to their doctrines only, they will make the people antinomians; if to the experimental part of religion only, they will make them enthusiasts; if to the practical part only, they will make them Pharisees; and if they do not attend to their discipline, they will be like persons who bestow much pains in cultivating their garden, and put no fence round it, to save it from the wild boar of the forest." -- John Wesley

History and Hope

2009-01-19T10:06:00.001-05:00

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

-James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

The narrowness of heresy and the wideness of the catholic church

2009-01-06T19:38:00.004-05:00

"The media seldom acknowledge the obvious fact that the supporters of these books --writings as the Gospel of Truth of Valentinians, the recently published Gospel of Judas, and many others-- never sought to have them included in the canon or list of Christian Scripture. They did not, because they insisted that theirs was the true interpretation of events and the sole authoritative book. There was no need for a canon or list of inspired books. Theirs was it! In sharp contrast to this attitude, the incipient church - those who eventually won the debates and the struggles of the time - was willing and even eager to include in its list a variety of books that did not always agree among themselves but that generally expressed the beliefs of the church at large. Thus, the one great difference between the heretics and those who eventually came to be known as "the church" was that the latter was willing, within limits, to accommodate a variety of views, while the heretics insisted on their own - whatever that was in each particular case - as the only correct one. It was for this reason that the nascent church began to refer to itself as "catholic." The word itself means "according to the whole," or "according to all." Thus, while the Valentinians had the Gospel of Truth and some others had the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas, the 'catholic' church proclaimed the Gospel according to Matthew, and according to Mark, and according to Luke, and according to John.

This goes against the common stereotype of the church being narrow-minded in contrast with the open-minded attitude of heretics, when in fact the opposite is closer to the truth: at least in the early centuries of Christianity, it was the heretics who rejected all views but their own, and most often the church at large allowed for more latitude than did heretics."

--Justo Gonzalez and Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez
Heretics for Armchair Theologians, p. 11.

Ivy Bush Update

2008-12-18T21:05:00.004-05:00

Hi folks, all three of you who are reading this! First of all, I want to thank those of you who have prayed for my father. He is better. There were about six weeks where things were really unsettled in my family. My father has a history of trigeminal neuragia, going back 25 years. He has had several surgeries to try to help him - at Duke, Pittsburgh, Charleston, and Texas Tech -- none of which have actually helped relieve the pain. The best he has been able to do is to treat it with medication. Most of the time, the medication enables him to get by and function somewhat normally, although he has always had good days and bad days. About five years ago, he had a major flare up that shook him up pretty badly and lasted for about 6 weeks, but since that time, he has been managing with the help of medication. Well, beginning in mid October of this year and going through the end of November, he had another long, bad stretch. He was in and out of the emergency room and hospital over and over and over again. After spending a couple of weeks in the hospital at one point, he was admitted to a rehab center to regain his strength. After a couple of days there, they realized that they could not provide the care that he needed, and they sent him back to the hospital in an ambulance. But the hospital would not admit him, and my mother could not take care of him at home..... That was the scariest feeling of all - not knowing anywhere that could provide care for him. Well, that day we took him home, and the children took shifts staying with him and mother. He got better. After seeing another specialist in Charleston, (and changing medicine several times) he got bettter again. We had a pretty good Thanksgiving, and Mother and Dad even went to church last week. But there for a while, my family was feeling helpless and vulnerable and desperate. During all this chaos, I managed to perform my pastoral duties (mainly on weekends) and spend some time on and off in Greenville SC. The Lord is good, and God sustains us when we don't know where our strength is going to come from. I have prayed through this many times with families in the congregations I have served, and I felt it bubbling up within me when my own family was going through its time of trial. Well, enough of personal stuff....

I actually had stopped blogging before all this started happening. I'm not sure why. I just didn't feel the urge to blog. I think I will return to it one day, but I'm not sure when. I think that maybe I stopped blogging about the time I started facebook, and maybe I'm not coordinated enough to do both. So many events have happened in the world and the church over the last few months that I haven't blogged about. Like the election of Barack Obama, for example. I remember being in Greenville, SC the night his election was announced. I cried and cried. I'm not sure if it was because of Barack Obama being elected, or because I had just left my father in a rehab center where I suspected that they were not going to be able to take care of him. On that night, I left my mother at the rehab center with my Dad, and I headed back to their house to get some sleep. Exhausted, I collapsed in Dad's reclining chair, but I woke up in time to watch Obama's speech from Grant Park. Tears of joy, tears of pain, tears of fear. Just tears. I don't always understand myself. But I was supposed to stop talking about personal stuff..... I

I'll leave you with a thought (it won't suprise those of you who know me): the intolerance of liberals towards Rick Warren is proof that tolerance is not a coherent category.

Thoughts about the presidential election

2008-10-17T14:31:00.004-04:00

Dave Lindorff sums up my views nicely here.

And here is a good article entitled, "For Obama but against abortion."

Some Political Analysis

2008-09-12T08:41:00.002-04:00

ht: Rev J

Sarah Palin a member of Feminists for Life

2008-08-29T11:35:00.004-04:00

Readers of the Ivy Bush will know that one of the organizations I link to is Feminists for Life. (see sidebar under 'alternatives to abortion'). I was interested to see that Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for Vice President, is a member of the organization, as have been some of my favorite authors and theologians, such as Frederica Matthewes-Green and Amy Laura Hall.*

In its website and in its in-house publication, Feminists for Life describes itself as being opposed to all forms of violence, including the death penalty. I don't know if they have said anything about war, but to know that the VP nominee belongs to an organization that opposes the death penalty is a good thing.

*Frederica Matthewes-Green is no longer a member of Feminists for Life. Amy Laura Hall was a classmate of mine in college at Emory. She has an interesting story to tell about her theological development, which I have watched with interest over the years. : )

Family

2008-08-04T15:13:00.002-04:00

Here I am with my wife Angela and our two daughters, Elizabeth and Rachel. This is from a recent family vacation in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Hauerwas to vote for Obama

2008-07-11T15:01:00.006-04:00

At the risk of incurring Marvin's wrath, I'll post this link.

I think Marvin and Hauerwas are emphasizing different sides of the same coin. Hauerwas plans to vote for Obama, but he is not taking it so seriously that he believes this will usher in the kingdom. Marvin knows that an Obama presidency won't bring in the Kingdom, but he thinks it's important to vote for a president who will be more responsible. I don't think there is ultimately a conflict. Hauerwas says he wants to obey all the human laws that he can, as a service to his brothers and sisters. Hauerwas wants to love our country but not stop at the borders.

As I commented last week at Connexions, as Christians, we are called to love God and love neighbor. We can certainly love country as a means to loving neighbor, and if you want to call that patriotism, ok. Lee suggests that we use "universal" concepts like 'natural law,' but I disagree. I think Christians need to embody the Sermon on the Mount. If we do that, we will love our Muslim neighbors, Jewish neighbors, and all others. It is only being faithful to Jesus when we show love to people who are different from us.

Tom Long said recently (at the National Cathedral) that he received a phone call from a Jewish rabbi friend. What's wrong, he asked? The rabbi said, "I have a Christian problem." They met for lunch. Tom Long went to lunch thinking it was something about Mel Gibson. But the problem was that some in the synagogue had started an interfaith group with some Christians from a local church. What's the problem with that? asked Long. "The problem," the rabbi said, "Is that these Christians don't have any faith to enter into!"

He explained that the first thing the Christians said was, "don't worry, we promise not to talk any about Jesus." The rabbi objected: "you should!" The rabbi explained that there could be no genuine dialogue because the Christians there didn't know the gospel, and the Jews didn't know the Torah. Tom Long concluded, "it is only by embracing the specificity of our faith claims that we have anything worth sharing with others."

Cocktail Party Warning

2008-07-09T08:28:00.003-04:00

***COCKTAIL PARTY WARNING*** :)

Well, Marvin, now I've heard it all. Hauerwas has been accused of lots of things, but vague and mealy-mouthed aren't usually on the list.

And precisely who ARE these politically quiet students of his? Me? Jennifer? Or let's go for the big fish: William Cavanaugh? Steve Long? Dan Bell? Brent Laytham? Michael Baxter? Greg Jones? Jason Byassee? Keep in mind your favorite whipping boy, Craig Carter, is not a Hauerwas student.

And while we're at it, precisely who ARE the theologians out there who are churning out Martin Luther Kings? Has Brueggemann mentored any MLK's lately? How many MLKs has John Cobb produced? What about Max Stackhouse? George Hunsinger? When was the last time James Gustafson produced any MLKs? The last MLK we had was..... MLK! And the theological school that produced him was Boston Personalism. Is that what you are suggesting we go back to? (Actually Hauerwas argues that MLK's experience in the black church was more determinative for him than Boston Personalism, and he cites MLK and the Civil Rights movements as exemplifications of what it means to be resident aliens).

These are some of the things that the politically quiet Stanley Hauerwas has done: When Andrew Sullivan wrote the piece for Time Magazine in early 2003 arguing that invading Iraq would be morally justified, which theologian wrote the counter-argument for Time? The sectarian, Stanley Hauerwas. Which theologian has lectured at the US Air Force Academy on just war doctrine? The sectarian, Stanley Hauerwas. Who is one of the only theologians to teach not only at a seminary, but also at a major law school? The sectarian, Stanley Hauerwas. When the US Senate was having hearings on whether or not women should be allowed in combat situations, which moral philosopher did they ask to give testimony? The sectarian, Stanley Hauerwas. And why? because of something Hauerwas has said time and time again: "I'm not asking Christians to withdraw from public engagement; I'm just asking them to be there as Christians."

Lord knows, Hauerwas ain't perfect. I myself have come to some places in my thinking that are different from his. But this wholesale (or nearly wholesale) trashing of Hauerwas is over the top, if you ask me, which of course you didn't. And, lest you say, "I'm not trashing Hauerwas," ask yourself: "how many theologians have I lumped together with George W. Bush as someone who 'don't do nuance'?"

******
Now, perhaps Jennifer or Camassia would like to step in and clear up this cocktail party.

By the way, will you be at lectionary today?

N. T. Wright is the opposite of John Hagee

2008-06-26T14:13:00.016-04:00

In a recent comment, Mike says of N. T. Wright:

"Help me understand how this is much better than somebody like John Hagee. Doesn't Wright still rely heavily on superstitious beliefs that God will magically "fix" everything? I've always been intrigued by Tom Wright, but I've also had a hard time shaking his attachment to a supernatural eschatology."

Mike, your difficulty in understanding N. T. Wright is based on the fact that he challenges and subverts the very categories that you take for granted. If we want to understand him, we will have to expand our imaginations beyond the Enlightenment constraints to which they are often shackled.

In order to understand how inappropriate it is to compare N. T. Wright with John Hagee, we have to do some work on epistemology.

Let's take for starters your casual use of terms such as magically fix, supernatural, and external deity. Such descriptions only work within the thought world of the Enlightenment, which assumed that the world was somehow separate from God, and that God was a far away force external to it. I for one don't believe that God intervenes in history-- He doesn't need to intervene - he is already here! God is not some deistic God who is far removed and who occasionally crashes the party. Rather, God is with us always, acting freely according to his sovereign purposes. The best example of this is in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Now, you ask something like: "Is it a literal resurrection + renewal of creation that will be done by a theistic (or deistic) being. Or, is Wright using this as a metaphor used to describe how we humans can and should change the world by doing Christ's work. In symbolic terms, I mean we become the eyes, ears, limbs (resurrected body) of Christ."

The answer is yes. The church is called to be the body of Christ, to continue His work in the world. We can have confidence that our work is not wasted because we believe in the resurrection.

Here is an example, from his book, Surprised by Hope, of how the answer is yes.

"The image I often use in trying to explain the strange but important idea is that of a the stonemason working on part of a great cathedral. The architect already drew up the plans and passed on instructions to the team of masons as to which stones need carving in what way. The foreman distributes these tasks among the team. One shapes stones for a particular tower or turret; another carves the delicate pattern that breaks up the otherwise forbidding straight lines; another works on gargoyles or coats of arms; another is making statues of saints, martyrs, kings, or queens. They are vaguely aware that the others are getting on with their tasks, and they know, of course, that many other entire departments are busy about quite different tasks as well. When they're finished with their stones and their statues, they hand them over without necessarily knowing very much about where in the eventual building their work will find its home. They may not have seen the complete architect's drawing of the whole building with their bit identified in its proper place. They may not live either, to see the completed building with their work at last where it belongs. But they trust the architect that the work they have done in following instructions will not be wasted..... The work we do in the present, then, gains its full significance from the eventual design in which it is meant to belong. Applied to the mission of the church, this means that we must work in the present for the advance signs of that eventual state of affairs when God is 'all in all, when his kingdom has come and his will is done 'on earth as in heaven.' " (209)

At the end of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul's long discourse on resurrection, he does not say, "so sit back and wait for God to do everything." Instead he says, "Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain."

Again, Mike says:

"Now he wants us to buy into literal resurrection of all the decayed human bodies that ever lived. Keep in mind that most of the molecules that made up the bodies of those people have long been fossilized or consumed by other life forms. How exactly could that work? It seems Wright, like his American fundamentalist counterparts, fell victim to the same inability to recognize a metaphor or literary allegory. Get a grip. "

Here is Wright's response:

"Tertullian gives a brusque answer. It's God's business, he says; he's the creator, so he can and will sort it out. Origen, faced with similar questions, replies more subtly. Our bodies, he points out, are in any case in a state of flux. It isn't just that hair and fingernails grow and are cut off; our entire physical substance is slowly changing. What we today call atoms and molecules pass through us, leaving us with continuity of form but transience of matter (C.S. Lewis summarizing this argument, offers an illustration: I am in that respect, he says, like a curve in a waterfall). This argument is repeated by Thomas Aquinas a millennium after Origen and nearly a millennium before Lewis. It's a good argument: as we now know, we change our entire physical kit, every atom and molecule, over a period of seven years or so. I am physically a totally different person now from the person I was ten years ago. And yet I am still me. thus it really doesn't matter whether we get the identical molecules back or not, though some continuity is perfectly possible." (157 of Surprised by Hope)

Perhaps Mike is familiar with the work of John Polkinghorne. For 25 years, Polkinghorne was a theoretical physicist working on theories of elementary particles and played a significant role in the discovery of the quark. From 1968 to 1979 he was Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, and then he decided to become a priest and a theologian in the Church of England. N. T. Wright favorably quotes Polkinghorne's analogy for resurrection: God will download our software onto his hardware until the time when he gives us new hardware to run the software again. (163)

N. T. Wright is the opposite of John Hagee. Hagee thinks the goal of the Christian life is to be raptured away from this terrible planet, so that we can live a disembodied life in heaven. (So it doesn't much matter what happens in or to this world). Wright (who doesn't believe in the Rapture) believes that the goal of the Christian life is to bear witness to the marriage of heaven and earth, the new creation that started with the resurrection of Jesus and continues now when we love in his name, and will be brought some day to its glorious fulfillment when this world is renewed, we will all be resurrected to share in glory, because the Earth that God made is indeed a good world after all. For this we pray each time we join together in the Lord's Prayer, and for this we live in hope of the resurrection, knowing that in the Lord, our labor is not in vain.

And Tom Wright is very familiar with how the Book of Revelation critiques the Empire. It also subverts the empires of our day. See his essay on Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire. Also see his essay on God and Caesar. (John Hagee is about as pro-empire as you can get).

Archbishop Rowan Williams was pleased to present the Ramsey Prize in 2005 to N. T. Wright for his book The Resurrection of the Son of God. Mike, in order to understand my point of view even better, you might want to check out the critique that Rowan Williams made of John Shelby Spong. He explains in even more depth about the misleading dualism that would have us come up with ideas like 'external deity.'

N. T. Wright on Art and Mission

2008-06-25T17:26:00.003-04:00

hat tip: Emergent Village

Not of One Mind

2008-06-01T22:04:00.004-04:00

The recent United Methodist General Conference retained language that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” The vote was relatively close, and of course, there were faithful, intelligent people on both sides. A legislative committee had proposed replacing the “incompatibility clause” with non-judgmental language declaring that the United Methodist Church is not of one mind on this issue. Such a proposal would seem to be self-evidently true. Of course the UMC is not of one mind on this issue. Why not just acknowledge that and move on?

Part of me would like very much simply to acknowledge this and move on. But then I wonder how consistently we would apply this principle. For example, the UMC has a clear statement in our Social Principles opposing capital punishment. I am glad that we take this prophetic stand. Yet, should we apply our principle of non-judgmentalism to this area? I for one would be deeply disappointed if as a church we simply said, “United Methodists are not of one mind with respect to capital punishment,” and left it at that.

Perhaps an even better example is how the church responds to war. The recent General Conference passed legislation that makes our Social Principles even more opposed to war than they have been in the past. As a pacifist, I celebrate this. But I also know that the UMC is not of one mind with respect to war. Should we simply say that “United Methodists are not of one mind” with respect to war and leave it at that?

Moreover, despite the fact that we take a clear stand against war, we also say that soldiers fighting in wars need the ministry of the church, and should have the support and respect of the church. Is this consistent? Can we “love the sinner and hate the sin” with respect to war? Advocates of change in our homosexuality statement claim that we cannot really love homosexuals if we condemn homosexual activity. If this is true, is it also the case that we cannot really love soldiers if we condemn the wars that they fight in? I have had veterans tell me that I cannot really support the troops if I think the war is unjust. What do you think? Are they right?

It would be refreshing for United Methodists and other Christians to find different ways of exploring the vexing question of homosexuality. Both sides are sensing the need to approach the subject differently. Perhaps considering homosexuality in light of our teachings on war would provide a new perspective that would lift us out of the pattern of the game we play every four years at general conference.

If the UMC were to change our social principles' statement about homosexuality to a statement that simply acknowledges that we have differences, would we go through all the controversial statements in the Social Princples and change them to say simply that we have honest differences? If not, why not? Why is homosexuality the only issue where we should simply confess that we are not of one mind ? Why not all the others? What's the difference? And please don't tell me that the war and capital punishment are public, whereas sex is private. If we buy into that private/public split, we have sold the soul of the church to the Enlightenment.

Over One thousand hits in one day

2008-05-26T10:53:00.006-04:00

The graph at left represents the number of visits to this blog during the last 30 days. On a normal day, The Ivy Bush gets about 100 visitors, most of these arrive here via google searches. As far as I can tell, there are about eight of you out there who visit The Ivy Bush on a regular basis. There are about twenty of you out there who visit here once very blue moon. And there are some of you who come here sporadically because I am part of the Methoblog aggegator. Occasionally, even a member of my church will visit here, but they usually hear enough from me on Sunday mornings! :)

For the past couple of years, The Ivy Bush has had an unusually high number of visitors during the month of May, and I know exactly why. The visitors are googling "Memorial Day Sermon." As you can see on the graph, on the day before the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, the number of visitors goes to something like 1200. All these preachers looking for a Memorial Day sermon! Incredible! And they waited until Saturday to do it, too! I suspect that most of them are looking for something nice and patriotic to say on the Sunday before Memorial Day. Most of them are probably shocked to read something so truthful as what Marvin preached three years ago on Memorial Day weekend.

A Quote

2008-05-19T15:39:00.007-04:00

"We start with Jesus, as we saw him earlier, at the head of a movement through which, he believed, the long-awaited kingdom was dawning. He regarded his own work not simply as pointing forward to this kingdom, but also as actually inaugurating it: his actions make sense only if he believed that through them the kingdom was in some sense present, not simply future. Yet, these two cannot be played off against each other. The strange presence of the kingdom during Jesus' lifetime points forward to a crisis event through which it will come in a fuller reality. Bar-Kochba, like other would be messiahs, aimed to defeat the Romans and rebuild the temple. Jesus was bound by a similar vocation.

But what weapons could he use to fight such a battle? As we saw, he denounced the use of military action, and he advocated the deeper revolution of loving one's enemies, taking up one's cross, losing one's life in order to gain it. This, it gradually appears, was not simply a way of life he urged on his followers, an "ethic" to be implemented at any time and place where people felt bold enough to do so. It was, more sharply, an agenda and vocation to which he knew himself called, and one that he announced as the way of being God's true Israel. It was his own fresh construal of the law and prophets, the controversial way by which, he proposed, Israel's God would make Israel at last what it had always been called to be, the light of the nations. Like other Jewish would-be leaders and messiahs before and since, Jesus believed himself called to go ahead of the people and fight the battle on their behalf. Like David taking on Goliath, he would face the enemy of God's people alone, choosing the strange weapons that matched his own vision."

-- John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Je

oops. wait a minute. I mean...

-- N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus, p. 96.

Dance of the Trinity

2008-05-18T14:51:00.005-04:00

an excerpt from today's sermon:

The theologians in the early church tried to describe this wonderful reality that we call Trinity. If any of you have ever been to a Greek wedding, you may have seen their distinctive way of dancing. There is a Greek Orthodox Church in Charlotte, and possibly some of you have been to a Greek festival. There is a particular term in Greek that they used to describe a dance. It's called perichoresis. There are not two dancers, but at least three. They start to go in circles, weaving in and out in this very beautiful pattern of motion. They start to go faster and faster and faster, all the while staying in perfect rhythm and in sync with each other. Eventually, they are dancing so quickly (yet so effortlessly) that as you look at them, it just becomes a blur. Their individual identities are part of a larger dance.

The early church fathers and mothers looked at that dance (perichoresis) and said, "That's what the Trinity is like." It's a harmonious set of relationship in which there is mutual giving and receiving. This relationship is called love, and it's what the Trinity is all about. The perichoresis is the dance of love.

But it's not like much of the dancing we see so often. Have you watched Dancing with the Stars lately? In ballroom dancing, there are only two people involved. When only two people are involved, there is a certain exclusivity to their dance. No one else is invited to be a part. They are so intent on each other that there is no room for anyone else.

But the dance of Trinity is not like that. The dance of the Trinity is more like square dancing. We have some square dancers here in our congregation. When one is square dancing, one is dancing not with just one person, but with the whole group. That's more like the dance of the Trinity.

When I was in 5th grade, our music teacher (Mrs. Parlor) was determined to teach us how to square dance. She asked us for volunteers. I breathed a sigh of relief because some of the kids volunteered, which meant I could sit on the sidelines and be a spectator. But as they began square dancing, they looked like they were having so much fun, that more and more kids started to get involved. Not me. I remained frozen in my chair. Finally, I was the only kid still sitting down. All of a sudden, someone (I don't know who) grabbed my arm and pulled me out of my seat. Before I knew what was happening, I was in the middle of the square, dosey-doing with the rest of them. And after a few minutes, I started to enjoy it too.

That's what salvation is: when God jerks us out of our complacency and makes us part of his dance: perichoresis. Thank you, Mrs. Parlor, for giving this reluctant music student his first lesson about the Trinity, this invitation to share in God's life.

What about you? When was the last time God jerked you up and made you part of something so wonderful that you could never have asked for it on your own?

Proud to be a whacked Evangelical

2008-05-16T22:05:00.005-04:00

I always suspected that Marvin thought I was whacked, and now I finally know! But you know, since I refuse to surrender the term to the Mark Driscolls of the world, I'll proudly take my stand with other whacked evangelicals like Miroslav Volf, Ron Sider, Adam Hamilton, Alvin Plantinga, Jim Wallis, David Gushee and others who signed the recent Evangelical Manifesto.

And just in case there were any questions about the fact that I am one of those whacked evangelicals, I will post this youtube video of Keith Green, just to remove all doubt:

Meme Combo

2008-05-14T20:39:00.006-04:00

I've been double-tagged by Marvin:

Movie Meme

1. One movie that made you laugh
The gods must be crazy!

2. One movie that made you cry
Brian's Song

3. One movie you loved when you were a child
The Empire Strikes Back

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once
The Princess Bride

5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it
Shrek

6. One movie you hated
The DaVinci Code

7. One movie that scared you
Poltergeist

8. One movie that bored you
The Polar Express

9. One movie that made you happy
Forrest Gump

10. One movie that made you miserable
Dead Poets Society

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see
?

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with
Betty Sizemore, played by Renée Zellweger in Nurse Betty

13. The last movie you saw
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

14. The next movie you hope to see
Prince Caspian

Book Meme

1. One book that changed your life:
The Peaceable Kingdom by Stanley Hauerwas

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
Simply Christian by N. T. Wright

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
The United Methodist Hymnal

4. One book that made you laugh:
Walking Across Egypt, by Clyde Edgerton

5. One book that made you cry:
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by John Krakauer

6. One book that you wish had been written:
Reflections on my Eight Years in the White House, by Jimmy Carter

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
anything by John Shelby Spong (unlike Marvin, I am a firm believer in censorship and book-burning)

8. One book you’re currently reading:
Holy Abortion? A Theological Critique of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, by Michael J. Gorman

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, by Miroslav Volf

Consider yourself double-tagged: Kevin, Carol, Rev J, Donna, Dan Trabue

More on Methodism and War

2008-05-03T09:26:00.002-04:00

I wrote in a previous post that the 2008 General Conference strengthened the Social Principles' stand against war. In celebration, I am posting this clip of some of John Wesley's thoughts on war. It should be noted that Wesley was not a pacifist, but as you can see from the clip below, he didn't look too favorably on war, to say the least. This clip comes from his sermon, Original Sin. (Yes, Wesley believed in that too!)

ht: Gavin

Renewal or Ruin?

2008-05-02T14:55:00.008-04:00

Below, you will find a video entitled, "Renewal or Ruin?" produced by Steven D. Martin to inform people about the nature and mission of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). The video presents some good information, but it is also not free of bias. I believe that the truth of the matter is that the IRD is not as sinister as this video would lead us to believe, AND that the General Boards and Agencies of the United Methodist Church are not as corrupt as the IRD would have us believe.

The IRD is wrong to demonize Jim Winkler, who is an honest Christian man with whom I have shared in some good discussions. Jim is a person of Christian faith who is seeking to live out his faith and to lead the church in its social witness. The same is true of Neal Christie, another GBCS staff person whom the IRD has vilified. Jim Winkler and Neal Christie are sincere Christians who do a good job in representing the United Methodist Church on social issues. I have some differences with Jim and Neal on some of the work they do, but that has not diminished my respect for them or my appreciation of them.

That said, I believe that this video mirrors some of the IRD's tactics and games of demonization. Is it really the case that the IRD is motivated primarily by political goals? Could it not be possible that they actually have some genuine theological problems with the general agencies' work for the support of abortion rights and acceptance of homosexual activity?

I must say that I agree with what Bishop Kenneth Carder said on this video. The IRD's fundraising letters do seem manipulative, as if they were trying to create an unnecessary sense of crisis in the church, as if they were preying on our fears.

However, I do not appreciate the anti-Catholicism implicit in this video. The IRD was started by Ed Robb, a faithful, evangelical United Methodist who also worked with Albert Outler to start a Foundation for Theological Education. This fund has made it possible for some of the brightest and best United Methodist scholars in the world to pursue their studies as John Wesley fellows. John Wesley Fellows have included D. Stephen Long, Amy Laura Hall, Richard Hays, Ben Witherington, Dan Bell, Greg Jones, Bp. Scott Jones and many other OUTSTANDING United Methodist scholars. To portray an organization founded by Ed Robb as if it began as a sinister Catholic right-wing organization is misleading.

It is also true that Richard John Neuhaus played a significant part in the founding of the IRD. What this video neglects to mention is that Richard John Neuhaus was active in the Civil Rights Movement and was a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. Although Neuhaus has unfortunately aligned himself too much in recent years with the Republican party, it is unfair to paint him as a right-wing manipulator. By the way, when Neuhaus wrote the founding document for the IRD, he was a Lutheran, not a Roman Catholic.

The "Renewal" of the UMC would be more likely if the IRD recognized that there are many good things that the general agencies do, and if the General Agencies would acknowledge that the IRD's criticisms are sometimes on target. The "ruin" of the UMC will be more likely if these two groups continue to tear each other apart as if there were no middle ground between the two.

"Renewal or Ruin?" from Steven D. Martin on Vimeo.

UMC Strengthens Stand Against War

2008-05-02T07:25:00.005-04:00

The 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist Church has strengthened its stand against war in its Social Principles, according to this petition, which passed as ammended.

Until the 1996 Discipline, the Social Principles has simply said that "war is incompatible with teachings and example of Christ," plain and simple. However, in 2000, Mark Tooley of the IRD along with his liberal friend Philip Wogaman, managed to weaken this statement, making it instead say that war is rejected as the "usual" instrument of foreign policiy. In 2004, the "usual" was dropped by the legislative committee, but another statement was added, "to be employed only as a last resort in prevention of such evils as genocide, brutal suppression of human rights, and unprovoked national aggression." This latest statement (also submitted by J. Philip Wogaman) was understood by some as a basic outline of just war thinking, a move some interpreted to be a shift away from pacifism to just war doctrine.

Well, now in 2008, the 'just war' statement has been deleted! We have returned to the earlier statement, which simply calls war "incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ," period. The new statement also adds, "As disciples of Christ, we are called to love our enemies reject the use of violence, seek justice, and serve as reconcilers of conflict. " This makes it an even stronger rejection of war. And if that is not enough, just to make sure there are absolutely no misunderstandings, the legislative committee added, "We oppose unilateral first / preemptive strike actions and strategies on the part of any government." The motion was adopted 834-33 in the pleneary session, an almost unheard of level of agreement.

The new statement on war in the Social Principles has been made explicit here by our friends at the Methodist Federation for Social Action. (Thank you, MFSA, for your good work in this regard). The new statment now reads:

We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ. We therefore reject war as an instrument of national foreign policy. We oppose unilateral first / preemptive strike actions and strategies on the part of any government. As disciples of Christ, we are called to love our enemies, reject the use of violence, seek justice, and serve as reconcilers of conflict. We insist that the first moral duty of all nations is to work together to resolve by peaceful means every dispute that arises between or among them. We advocate the extension and strengthening of international treaties and institutions that provide a framework within the rule of law for responding to aggression, terrorism, and genocide. We believe that human values outweigh military claims as governments determine their priorities; that the militarization of society must be challenged and stopped; that the manufacture, sale, and deployment of armaments must be reduced and controlled; and that the production, possession, or use of nuclear weapons be condemned. Consequently, we endorse general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

Historical and Doctrinal Footnote:

The United Methodist Church, in its highest level of doctrinal standards, has always maintained that "war and bloodshed are contrary to the gospel and spirit of Christ." (Article XVI of the Confession of Faith). This has always been the teaching of the United Methodist Church. It is protected by the second restrictive rule (see Paragraph 18, Article II of Section III found on page 27 of the 2004 Discipline), meaning it has not changed, and it cannot be "changed, altered, or revoked" (without an ammendment to the Constitution, which would require a 3/4 majority of the aggregate number of delegates voting from each of the annual conferences present at the General Conference. see pp. 38-39). I am aware that Wesley's Sermons and Notes are also listed as doctrinal standards, but according to the late Dr. Thomas Langford, they function in different ways than the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith. Dr. Langford saw this as a compromise worked out by the Wesleyan scholars Dr. Thomas Oden and Dr. Richard Heitzenrater before the 1988 General Conference -- see Doctrine and Theology in the United Methodist Church, edited by Thomas Langford, p. 180. Anyway, the 2004 Discipline states that "Within the Wesleyan tradition, then as now, the Sermons and Notes furnished models of doctrinal exposition." (p. 54). The fact that the Restrictive Rules specifically cite the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith, but they do not explicitly mention the Sermons and Notes means that the Articles and Confession are the highest levels of doctrine and the Sermons and Notes are 'models of doctrinal exposition.'

Typically United Methodist

2008-04-29T23:02:00.005-04:00

It's 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time. We just had a motion at GC to limit the speches to two minutes each so that time could be saved. Now remember that we did this in order to save time. But by the time we had dealt with this motion, all of its substitutes, and amendments, and substitute amendments, we had spent 15 minutes -- in order to save time. Pictured here is Bishop Scott Jones who was presiding at the time, but there was nothing he could do about it.

A New Hymnal

2008-04-29T00:00:00.004-04:00

The General Conference just passed plans for the development of a new United Methodist Hymnal. A commission will be formed that will report back to the 2012 General Conference. Here is a picture of Andy Langford speaking in favor of this motion. Some people spoke against the motion because by the time a new hymal is formed, it will already be outdated. Opponents also suggested that most new, contemporary churches would be using projectors and screens, not hymnals. Andy acknowledged the emerging technology and how it is changing the way we worship, but he still argued that a new hymnal was needed. The motion passed with 57% of the delegates voting in favor of it.

Threaten the World with Resurrection

2008-04-24T16:12:00.008-04:00

That was a line from this speaker (Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher) at 2008 General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. I don't know much about Bishop Christopher, but I sure liked that line. It reminds me of Wendell Berry's line about practicing resurrection, only better:

Other Photos from General Conference (these are pictures I took while watching G.C. online and using the "print screen" key):

Here's Kim Ingram to the left:

And here's Denny White:

Why God does not intervene in history

2008-04-18T16:56:00.003-04:00

Because He is already there! He doesn't NEED to intervene. To ask the question, "Does God intervene in history?" presupposes that God is a distant God who may occasionally consider intervening during some rare moments. But that is not the God of Christian Scripture and tradition. So, there can be no good answer to the question, "Does God intervene in history?" because the question is so badly framed. It's sort of like asking Barack Obama, "why don't you wear an American flag lapel pin?"

It strikes me that there were several occasions in which Jesus did not answer the question put to him, at least using the terms provided by the questioner. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? Whose wife will she be in the resurrection? Should we worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem? Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel? Can we sit at your left and your right when you come in glory?

test

2008-04-15T16:41:00.000-04:00

N. T. Wright, Ben Witherington, and Maxie Dunnam

2008-04-12T12:18:00.005-04:00

This is a great interview with N. T. Wright, Ben Witherington, and Maxie Dunnam. One of the things they discuss is the Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, the first of which has been made into a movie. N. T. Wright suggests that the god Pullman wants to undermine is not necessarily the God of Christianity. He wants to take Pullman as a challenge; Pullman has developed a mythology to support his world view, and Christians should take it as a challnge to develop an even better fictional mythology. Ben Witherington was more cautious about the series, especially since it seems to be aimed at children who have not yet had time to develop their spiritual, biblical, and theological roots.

Maxie Dunnam, who preached a revival at my church when I was in high school in Sumter, SC, (I remember having dinner with him and my father one evening) asked him about Simply Christian. They talk about some of the ways Simply Christian is similar to and different from C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Dunnam also asks some questions about the Anglican Communion.

Ben Witherington talked about the book of Romans, and the history of interpretation from Augustine, (and even before Augustine), Luther, and Calvin. Witherington asks John Piper's critique of Wright, which is off the mark. Wright explains that the gospel is the announcement that Jesus is Lord (not Caesar!)

Polygamy

2008-04-09T22:54:00.006-04:00

The system of polygamy is a sick, sick system, having been passed down from one generation to the next ever since the days of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith. It just turns my stomach.

On Larry King Live tonight, King interviewed several people who had fled polygamists cults. They all rightly decried the patriarchy, oppression, abuse, and humiliation that are polygamy. But then, Larry interviewed someone who described herself as an adult who consented to live in a polygamous marriage. Her name was "Valerie." It was her choice, she said, so since we believe in freedom of the individual, they ought to be left alone. Her lifestye ought to be decriminalized, she said. Her marriage works very well, she said, and they are all very happy.

One reporter who has covered numerous polygamous cults, Mike Watkiss of KTVK-TV in Phoenix, said he agreed with Valerie. He said he objected to the people like Warren Jeffs and Dale Evans Barlow because they ABUSE women and children. But he had no objection to polygamy per se, since consenting adults choose to do it. And besides, these consenting adults seem perfectly happy, so who's to judge?

This is infuriating. This is an outrage. Where are our feminists? They ought to go after this with everything they've got. This again shows that the Enlightenment myth of autonomy is a dangerous lie, a way for the powerful to continue to victimize the weak. Good for the state of Texas, taking action to arrest these polygamists. Sure, the polygamists believed what they were doing was right and they saw no harm in it, but they still should be arrested. This is another example of how the state cannot be religiously neutral, nor should it try to be, in cases like this. There just ain't no such thing as the private/public split. And if you try to keep them split, you wind up with this disgusting thing at the ranch in El Dorado, Texas.

And by the way, good for the US federal government, which would not grant Utah statehood until the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS banned this sick practice in 1890. In 1890, the US federal government said, "the heck with the private/public split, your church needs to clean up its act."

UPDATE: Valerie's husband chimes in here. Also, see this article about "the lost boys of polygamy." And, last but not least, I bought the book Kevin recommened, and I have begun reading it.

Ol' Roy

2008-04-09T22:03:00.003-04:00

May this picture be forever etched in the minds of Tar Heel fans everywhere. Cameron Crazies, the next time UNC comes to Cameron, they need to be greeted with three thousand of these posters.

Randy Cooper, candidate for the episcopacy

2008-04-05T08:37:00.008-04:00

Kevin has posted some insightful thoughts from Randy Cooper concerning Barack Obama and his former pastor. Randy Cooper is a candidate for the episcopacy in the United Methodist Church. If you want to know more about his candidacy, check out his website here. Randy has given me permission to upload this video to youtube and make it available here. Randy's words reflect much prayer, wisdom, and courage. I believe it is a tremendous sign of hope for the United Methodist Church that someone of Randy's theological integrity is being considered for the office of bishop. (I am not saying that there are no other worthy candidates out there.)

The Symbolic Role of Water in the Bourne Trilogy

2008-04-03T16:42:00.018-04:00

SPOILER ALERT !!!

The Bourne trilogy begins and ends in the water. Does it mean life or death? Or is it like our baptism, both life and death?

As the trilogy opens, we see the motionless body of Jason Bourne floating in the Mediterranean Sea, where he is rescued and revived by the crew of a fishing boat. Jason has no memories of how he got to where he is, or even who he is, but it soon becomes clear that he has the skills of a CIA-trained assassin. Jason came out of the water alive, but the memory of his life (and therefore the source of his identity) has been drowned in the waters of the Mediterranean. He sets off on a journey to discover who he really is, and what follows is the story of the gradual revelation of his memory and identity.

On his journey, he meets several friends and foes, but the symbolism of water keeps bubbling up. Indeed, each time he looks into a sink of running water, it triggers a flashback of some memory from his past, some clue to his identity. His closest friend and lover, Marie, is killed in the second movie, and Jason leaves her body floating in the water of a river. The same water he narrowly escaped in the first movie now claims the life of the only one he had been able to love. Once again, Jason emerges from the water still alive, but the most important part of his life has been taken from him, drowned in the water.

In the third movie, we finally come to understand the back-story of who Jason Bourne is. His real name had been David Webb, but the CIA had water-tortured him into giving up his true identity in order to become an assassin. The water, we now realize, was how David Webb died, and how Jason Bourne was ‘born.’ David Webb had originally refused to participate in the CIA’s assassination program, but after days of sleep deprivation and waterboarding, he gave in.

The story of his conversion from David Webb to Jason Bourne illustrates many of the insights of William Cavanaugh’s Torture and Eucharist. Torture is not just a means to inflict pain and suffering; it is also a means to control the political and social imagination. It is the means by which the powerful tell the oppressed their story and impose a different identity. Through water torture, David Webb had been isolated from any community so that his identify could be more easily manipulated by those who would tell him a different story about himself. At one point, a CIA operative told Jason: “you’re a killer Jason; it’s who you are.”

The CIA had used waterboarding to lower David Webb’s moral defenses, but the final step of his conversion was even more dramatic. He had to shoot an unarmed prisoner. He had to totally give up his morals, identity, and history in order to carry out this execution. When he murders the hooded prisoner, his torturer tells him, “You are no longer David Webb. You are Jason Bourne.” By committing this act of violence, David Webb had gained a new identity and a new purpose.

At the close of the third movie, he makes the painful trip back to the hospital where he had been tortured into giving up his identity, and he tells his original torturer: “I am no longer Jason Bourne.” He then has the chance to kill his torturer, but he decides not to, thereby showing that he is David Webb again. Even as killing had been his first act as Jason Bourne, so now refusing to kill was his first act in being David Webb again. Having reclaimed his true identity by remembering his life’s story (and renouncing the spiritual forces of wickedness?), he flees from those who would try to kill him. As he jumps off a skyscraper to avoid gunfire, it is unclear whether he has been hit or not. But one thing is clear: he lands in the water of the East River, where his motionless body again floats, as it did when our story began. Will he emerge from the water again, leaving behind one life and embracing a new life and identity? One hopes that any remnants of Jason Bourne drown in the East River, and only David Webb comes out the other side. Perhaps a fourth movie will tell us.

Baptism anyone?

Iraq, continued

2008-03-31T15:53:00.011-04:00

Following up on a recent conversation....

So, John. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that PBS made the whole thing up. Suppose that William Kristol, who was Dan Quayle’s chief of staff and who attended White House Senior Staff meetings, made the whole thing up. Suppose all those reporters and others interviewed by Frontline made up the story about Wolfowitz and company wanting to invade Iraq, ever since the presidency of George H. W. Bush. Suppose Barton Gellman of the Washington Post never saw the document he claims was leaked to him and to the New York Times. Suppose Richard Perle was lying to Frontline, as was Kenneth Pollack, former National Security Council Staff and CIA Iraq Analyst. Suppose Elaine Sciolino of the New York Times lied to Frontline, as did Evan Thomas, the assistant managing editor of Newsweek.

Suppose that this article (written by Barton Gellman and shown by Frontline) never appeared in the Washington Post:

And suppose Frontline forged this document (featured in its television special), and ascribed it to Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz:

Suppose all of that, John. THEN, what theological support would you give to your view that a random Arab country should be chosen so that the %#$* could be bombed out of it?

Sojourn to Cambodia

2008-03-31T14:58:00.003-04:00

I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago, but my friend Shelly recently led a group of students from Brevard College on a mission trip to Cambodia. You can read about their amazing adventures here. I hope they will soon post some pictures on their blog!

Iraq

2008-03-24T21:35:00.005-04:00

The US death toll in Iraq has now reached 4000. Last week marked the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. At certain points, it is good for us to review how we got to where we are now. The story begins with 9/11 (well, you could trace it back further than that, but that's where we'll start for now). Cheney and Rumsfeld had a plan to invade Iraq ever since the first Gulf War, but they knew it was too crazy to have any popular support. So they put their plans on hold..... until the rise of George W. Bush. When W took the White House, they dusted their plans off, but they still knew it would lack popular support..... until 9/11. 9/11 was a terrible tragedy that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others used for their own ends. They used the fear and rage stirred up by 9/11 to win support for invading Iraq. It was almost like we needed some country to invade, and Iraq was..... there. The sentiment I am talking about was once expressed by John the Methodist in comments like this:

"At the time of the invasion of Iraq, I, too, thought that Iraq had stockpiles of WMDs. But my primary reason for supporting the invasion was then and still is now, different.

America had a terrible image problem in the Islamic world. We were/are seen as debauched, rich, fat, and most importantly -- cowardly. Beruit, Khobar, Mogadishu, the Cole all indicated one fact: make Americans bleed and they'll run like sissies. Bin Laden explicitly said this, repeatedly, and referred to us as a 'paper tiger' that would fold in and collapse on itself after 9/11.

No great power can afford the appearance of cowardice. In order to deter future attacks against our nation, it was essential to chose a random Arab country and bomb the *&$# out of it. Why? Because America will only be safe when the world thinks of us as powerful, brave, war-loving, and a little bit crazy.

Then we will be safe."

The problems with this sentiment are numerous. For starters, it is not a theological, or moral, or even political argument. I'm not sure if it is an argument at all. Perhaps one could say that this is Reinhold Niebuhr's realism run amuck. It certainly has nothing to do with the noble tradition of just war; it seems to fit more closely into the logic of the crusade. The great irony is that the only moral thing about this sentiment, the desire for safety, has backfired. We are now less safe, not more safe, because of the invasion of Iraq.

But that's where we have gotten to. We are now in a crusade with seemingly no end in sight, at least if John McCain is elected president. It seems we are on a treadmill and don't know how to get off. It is like original sin; we do not choose to sin. Rather, sin chooses us, and binds us and makes us its slaves. We work for sin. Our slavery is all the more real because we do not even know how to imagine a world without it. Now I am not saying that it will be easy to get out of Iraq. It will be difficult, costly, and probably bloody. Many people will die; both Americans and Iraqis. But many people are already dying, both Americans and Iraqis. Delaying the inevitable is not the answer.

What is the church's role in all of this? The most important time for prophetic denouncements was in 2003. Now it's 2008. What to do now? Our primary task is to be a contrast society that forms the virtues of peace, hope, and love in community. At a secondary level, we can encourage our elected officials to end this war as soon as reasonably possible, we can give comfort to all those who mourn, we can repent of our own acquiescence in the face of war, and we can help people learn the harsh lessons of history.

Mild-mannered Duke Div student is actually... Speedo Guy!

2008-03-22T09:26:00.007-04:00

"And if anyone takes your coat, give to him your cloak as well."
-- Matthew 5:40.

Perhaps this Duke Divinity student was inspired by the work of Walter Wink, who suggested that this verse of Scripture is talking about using one's nakedness to shame one's oppressors nonviolently:

Obama on his pastor

2008-03-18T08:48:00.000-04:00

In Response to Marvin on Fundamentalism

2008-03-17T21:59:00.005-04:00

Marvin offers a critique of Craig Carter. I started to comment, but then realized I was going way too long. Here is what I wrote:

You know, for some reason, whenever I hear the word, "fundamentalism," I always think of William Jennings Bryan. Maybe because of the movie, Inherit the Wind, (which by the way never even pretended to be historically accurate). Maybe I'm wrong to consider William Jennings Bryan as the representative of fundamentalism, but I do.

And when I think of William Jennings Bryan, the stereotype of fundamentalism as intellectual isolationism doesn't make sense. He ran for president three times, was a pacifist, served as Secretary of State, advocated for women's suffrage, supported public education for all including African-Americans, and was basically a progressive populist. As for the Scopes Monkey trial, this is proof that he was not willing to be intellectually isolated. If William Jennings Bryan would have been isolated intellectually, there never would have been a trial. We have a Scopes monkey trial because William Jennings Bryan refused to isolate himself intellectually. But here's a guy who is willing to go public with his understanding of the gospel. Now, his vision of Christianity seems backwards and weird to us in many ways, and I would never want to go back to it, but I can't help but admire someone who is willing to go public with his Christianity, despite being constantly told to keep his religion private.

In our day, the modern archetype of fundamentalism has been Jerry Falwell. We could make a long list of the problems with Jerry Fallwell, but isolationism is not one of them. (Frankly, I wish he had isolated himself a little more; I say that tongue in cheek). His problem was not isolationism, but a paper-thin Christology which made room for nationalistic idolatry.

I think the Manichaen attitude towards history is closer to the heart of fundamentalism.

On the other hand, I have this theory that we are all fundamentalists of something; that is, we all have some sort of starting point that we more or less take for granted and rarely question. For me, I guess I would say I am a fundamentalist of cultural-linguistic post-liberalism. For me the most annoying form of fundamentalism is the Protestant liberal fundamentalism of someone like John Shelby Spong.

A close second would be Jerry Falwell. I think the problem with Falwell was that he was intellectually self-deceived. He thought he was just being a fundamentalist of the Bible, when in actuality, he was a fundamentalist of Victorian ideals, and nationalistic idolatry, covered over with a thin veneer of Scriptural proof-texts. Falwell brought his beliefs into dialogue with other sources of knowledge; it's just that his beliefs weren't particularly Christian, and so the dialogue wasn't particularly fruitful.

All this leads me to Craig Carter. Marvin, you have said that he is a fundamentalist of Patristic thought. Perhaps he is; and we could certainly offer a critique of Patristic fundamentalism - not because it is methodologically flawed fundamentalism, but because the content of some strands of Patristic thought was wrong (epistemologically, I would say that based on a christological reading of the New Testament). But that leads me to the question, Marvin, of what sort of fundamentalist are you? Certainly, you don't consider yourself above the fray, right?

By the way, Craig Carter has not really been influenced by Hauerwas, but by Yoder. One of the main differences between Hauerwas and Yoder is that while Hauerwas frequently engages in gross hyperbole, Yoder never did. And Yoder never gathered around Hauerwas; it was the other way around.

Marvin, you say that no one ever read the Exodus or Galatians 3:28 a certain way until the dawn of the Enlightenment. I will grant you that. I will also grant that liberalism played a role in abolition and the Civil Rights movement. But I think you over-estimate liberalism and underestimate Scripture. It is telling that for all of Thomas Jefferson's liberal ideas of freedom, it did not stop him from owning slaves. Yet John Wesley and William Wilberforce, who were his contemporaries, managed to mount a pretty strong offensive against the slave trade in England. Why? maybe because they were grounded first of all in Scripture, and they didn't go through it with a razor blade to cut out its christology.

Incidentally, Hauerwas has said that the ordination of women is one very positive thing in the contemporary church for which we can give partial credit to the Enlightenment.

And one more thing Marvin: thanks for lunch today! :)

Was Jesus a Democrat or a Republican?

2008-03-07T21:56:00.002-05:00

Here's a good response:

This is of course an impossible question, like 'If the sun were to rise in the west, would it be green or blue?' In other words, by agreeing to the terms of the question you make it impossible to give an answer based on anything other than highly distorted speculation.

Jesus didn't run for anything. He acted as if he were a different kind of ruler altogether, with a 'kingdom' that didn't originate from the present world (otherwise, he said, his servants would fight to rescue him) but instead was meant FOR this present world, to transform and heal it. The present way we do politics and government is, alas, part of the problem, and he would have challenged it (its huge cost, its pretense of participation which is shamelessly manipulated by the media, its cult of personality, its ignoring, all too often, of the actual needs of the poor, etc. etc.) just as he challenged the power structures of his day.

The real question is, what sort of a cross would today's system be intent on using to kill him?

--the Bishop of Durham

ht: Allan R. Bevere

Rowan Williams on the Creeds

2008-03-07T15:44:00.003-05:00

My favorite part of this interview: "We have an advantage; we have seen the face of God in Jesus Christ."

ht: Inhabitatio Dei

Blue Devils Escape RBC Center - by the skin of their teeth

2008-03-01T14:33:00.011-05:00

Congratulations to Coach K on his 800th win. And congratulations to N. C. State for a remarkable effort. State outplayed Duke for most of the game, but Duke pulled it out of the hat in the last few minutes, thanks to some really clutch free throws by DeMarcus Nelson, and some gutsy three pointers by Greg Paulus and Jon Scheyer. There are no moral victories, which is unfortunate for State, because they really showed heart in this game. This is one reason N. C. State is my 2nd favorite ACC basketball team. Don't give up State! Keep playing hard and the wins will come!

Richard Hays at Junaluska Peace Conference, 1

2008-02-26T07:40:00.001-05:00

United Methodists Do Not Torture

2008-02-23T08:39:00.011-05:00

Hey, we United Methodists can finally agree on something! Sign the pledge here. Send George W. Bush the message: United Methodists do not torture. And here's an even better idea: let's exercise Christian formation and discipline in our local churches so that it would never get this far.

So, there are limits to pluralism after all. Here, we have been congratulating ourselves on how open-minded and tolerant we are for the past four decades. We don't care what you believe or what you do, so long as you are sincere. Well, at last, that line of thinking has come to its limits, having been exposed as a lie. There really is a conviction that we share: we don't torture. Yes, I know, that's setting the bar pretty low, but at least we have discovered there is a bar.

My suggestion is that we replace all of our "open minds, open hearts, open doors" slogans and commercials, which are completely devoid of any theological content whatsoever, and instead start using, "United Methodists Do Not Torture." It may not be much, but it may at least start an interesting conversation. It could even turn out to be for United Methodists what "don't eat pork" meant for Malcolm X. Just a little subversive practice we have that makes us different, thereby serving as a catalyst for conversations that help us form a distinct theological identity: "United Methodists do not torture."

N. T. Wright speaks up for Rowan Williams, warns of American Empire

2008-02-19T17:02:00.000-05:00

Imagine that!

2008-02-12T04:43:00.000-05:00

This just in. Wow, this is really big news. Apparently, there are some evangelicals who care about poverty and the environment, and they may actually vote Democrat! Gaawwwleee!

Somebody, please give the media a clue.

Lake Junaluska Peace Conference

2008-02-01T20:56:00.000-05:00

Here is my interview with Jim Winkler, the general secretary of the Board of Church and Society:

And here is my interview with John Lomperis of the IRD (Institute on Religion and Democracy).

My friend Rev. Sherri Barnes speaks with me here about the Peace Conference. Sherri is pastor of Bethel UMC in Salisbury, NC

Linkage

2008-01-22T07:47:00.000-05:00

Marvin is in the midst of a wonderful series of posts on the question of Karl Barth and the problem of war, obviously with help from Yoder.

I have an MLK post up on Theolog, and Michael has a more informative one up at Levellers.

Update: Marvin has the best post yet on MLK.

I just feel like singing

2007-12-12T19:37:00.000-05:00

O for a thousand tongues to sing
my great Redeemer's praise,
the glories of my God and King,
the triumphs of his grace!

My gracious Master and my God,
assist me to proclaim,
to spread through all the earth abroad
the honors of thy name.

Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
that bids our sorrows cease;
'tis music in the sinner's ears,
'tis life, and health, and peace.

He breaks the power of canceled sin,
he sets the prisoner free;
his blood can make the foulest clean;
his blood availed for me.

He speaks, and listening to his voice,
new life the dead receive;
the mournful, broken hearts rejoice,
the humble poor believe.

Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb,
your loosened tongues employ;
ye blind, behold your savior come,
and leap, ye lame, for joy.

In Christ, your head, you then shall know,
shall feel your sins forgiven;
anticipate your heaven below,
and own that love is heaven.

So what if they do think I'm an idiot, God and my wife keep me going

2007-12-12T08:38:00.000-05:00

That's what Rowan Williams said recently in an interview conducted by three teenagers. In this delightfully human portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he shares that he has his doubts, he stops working at 6:00 so he can watch the Simpsons, his teenage daughter thinks that he is every kind of idiot, and that he embarrasses his children when he shows up at one of their activities. I can relate to all of this.

One of the teenagers described the interview this way: “I was expecting just words. What he gave me was meaning, an understanding of who I was and where I was at, cloaked in kindness.” I just have to love Rowan Williams.

“There are two things that keep me going, though, and my family are one of them. Having support and love from those closest to me is hugely important. God is my other source of strength. He’s always there for me, even if He thinks I’m an idiot too."

I am currently reading Tokens of Trust, which is basically his commentary on the Creeds, and it is just beautiful.

My Two Cents on the Romney Speech

2007-12-08T20:40:00.000-05:00

Everyone seems to be talking about the Romney "Faith in America" speech of Dec. 6, 2007. It is distressing to see the level of confusion in our public discourse about religious matters, even from such respectable journalistic sources as the New York Times.

In this New York Times editorial, the editors of the Times begin their superficial attempt at religious journalism with this unsophisticated statement: "Mitt Romney obviously felt he had no choice but to give a speech yesterday on his Mormon faith." Of course, Mitt Romney did no such thing. The speech was not about his Mormon faith. He only mentioned the word "Mormon" one time. It was not in any way about his Mormon faith. The speech was about the American faith in Civil Religion. A speech about Romney's Mormon faith would have been much more interesting.

Perhaps even more confusing was this editorial's statement that, "Mr. Romney filled his speech with the first myth — that the nation’s founders, rather than seeking to protect all faiths, sought to imbue the United States with Christian orthodoxy." The founding fathers certainly did not seek to imbue the US with Christian orthodoxy; that much the Times is correct about. But the times misread Romney's speech. He wasn't saying that the founding fathers tried to imbue the US with Christian orthodoxy; he was saying that the founding fathers tried to imbue the US with civil religion and deism. And he was right about that. The thing is, this is not a fact to be celebrated by orthodox Christians. The worst thing about the Times editorial is that it seems to equate Christian orthodoxy with American civil religion, a mistake even Romney didn't make (he couldn't because as a Mormon, he does not know how to speak of Christian orthodoxy).

The irony of this situation (lost to the religiously innocent editors of the Times) is that here we have a Mormon openly committing blasphemy -- and doing so in order to please evangelicals. The blasphemy of which I speak is when Romney said, "When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God." So much for baptism? I would not blame this blasphemy on his Mormonism, because many evangelicals would feel equally at home with it.

I said earlier that the speech would have been more interesting if it would have been about his Mormon faith. I actually believe that if he were a better Mormon, he would not have made the mistake I mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Romney is trying to compare his speech to that of JFK, but the fact remains that if JFK had been a better Roman Catholic, he would not have made the speech he made either.

Why can't we have a politician who says, "my most important commitment is to Jesus Christ and to the Church, and my oath as president is second to that prior commitment." As one of my friends once said, the key question for Joe Liebermann when he ran for VP was not whether being a Jew would keep him from being a good VP, but whether being VP would keep him from being a faithful Jew. Same kind of thing could be said for JFK.

I confess that I am ambivalent about the possibility of having a Mormon president. The reason I would not vote for Mitt Romney is that he is a Republican, and I don't trust his foreign policy. His Mormonism is really irrelevant for me. But what if Harry Reid were running for President? I like him a lot because he is a pro-life Democrat. But frankly, I do not want to reinforce the public perception that Mormonism is just another Christian denomination, when clearly it is not. For Presbyterians and United Methodists, Mormon baptism is not a valid form of Christian baptism. And that says it all. Even before the 1996 General Conference when that became the official policy of the UMC, I had already corresponded with Geoffrey Wainwright on that matter, and we were agreed. Would I be willing to suspend my theological differences with Mormons to vote for Harry Reid for president? Could I do so without endorsing the private/public split of the Enlightenment, which is anathema for me and directly opposed to all of my theological instincts as witnessed to on this blog for the last four years? I'm not sure. This much I can say: I would vote for Harry Reid over Bush, Cheney, or Giuliani.

Walter Brueggemann at Emergent

2007-11-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

From a 2004 Emergent gathering, the Emergent village has posted the text from Brueggemann's 19 theses on the meaning of the universe (my terminology). You can also download the podcasts of these lectures, or watch the videos from google video. Excellent theologocial reflections. Definitely worth a few hours of reflection.

Liberal Protestantism leads to atheism, but so does conservative Protestantism

2007-11-14T22:40:00.000-05:00

Over at Theolog, Phil Blackwell wrote a post reminding us that narrow-minded fundamentalists don't speak for all Christians, that Christians can also be on the progressive side of history, etc., etc., etc. You know the drill. Sure, atheists are right to point to some corruptions of Christianity, but Christians can do all sorts of good things too. Peace, justice, blah, blah, blah. The idea seemed to me to be that Christianity is legitimate because it encourages individuals to do lots of good things. He already let the atheists determine the playing field; he gave in to their epistemology; he let them set the terms for the debate. For him and for the atheists, Christianity is to be judged on the basis of whether it does more good things or bad things (as if what counted for the 'good' were self-evident to all reasonable people.)

I tried to question what I understood that argument to be. I asked, "is that all Christianity is good for? sending people into the world to do good things? what about ecclesiology?" Well, no one responded to my comment.

But later, someone did thank Phil. Basically Bill Lenters says, "Phil is right; Christianity is about doing good things, so I don't bother going to church anymore." Of course, Bill Lenters is exactly right in reaching those conclusions if he starts out with those assumptions. Liberal Protestantism does indeed provide the theological rationale for us to ignore the church and become practical atheists. I think Bill Lenters understands liberal protestantism better than Phil Blackwell.

By the way, I think conservative Protestantism leads to atheism, too. Because conservative Protestantism is just another name for liberal protestantism. For conservative Protestanats, Christianity is legitimate because it encourages individuals to be patriotic, support the family, be good capitalists, etc...

Neither conservatives nor liberals have any use for ecclesiology, and that's why Marvin is so right about the importance of the creed and a hierarchical authority structure for the church.

Shameless Self-Promotion

2007-11-03T20:23:00.000-04:00

Theolog has one of my blog posts up; and someone from the United Methodist Reporter called me and interviewed me for a story here.

Cross or Tenure?

2007-10-19T08:20:00.000-04:00

Tom Long writes about Marcus Borg's book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time :

I have had to recognize that many thoughtful people express deep gratitude for this important book. They are relieved to find, at last, a Jesus freed from his churchly spin doctors and Sunday school bodyguards, a Jesus who is plausible, credible and reasonable. Too reasonable, I'd say. Borg weaves a strange post-Enlightenment filter from strands of overly positivist history, a vaguely Newtonian worldview and filaments of leftover Lutheran piety. The Jesus who manages to squeeze through this narrow mesh may be an inspiring figure - a dreamily compassionate spiritual sage -- but even the touchy Romans probably wouldn't have wasted a cross on him. More likely, they would have given him tenure.

Tom Long, p. 40 of The Christian Century, October 16, 2007

Jonathan is ok

2007-10-18T10:56:00.000-04:00

Thanks to those who have expressed concern about me recently. I have just been through a time of seemingly never-ending pastoral care/crisis situations in my congregation over the past few months, and it has sapped much of my energy for blogging and other things. I have been advised by Dr. Marvin to take good care of myself, and to do something fun - and I plan to go to my 20 year high school reunion this Friday night!!! Yea! I'm also gonna take a vacation Sunday in November!!! In the meantime, I am really getting a lot of joy from spending time with friends and family - and to top it all off, the South Carolina Gamecocks are having a terrific football season under the leadership of the Ol' Ball Coach (see sidebar under Sports), and we are ranked 6th in the BCS poll!!!

Lake Junaluska Peace Conference

2007-10-11T13:04:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't blogged in a long time; I don't know why. Actually, I do, but I don't want to get into it right now.

Anyway, I did want to call anyone's attention to the Lake Junaluska Peace Conference, scheduled for Jan. 31-Feb. 2, 2008. I would encourage any United Methodist interested in peace-making to attend. Actually, any Christian who can make it would benefit from it, and anyone may register. The speakers include Dr. Richard Hays, Bishop Kenneth Carder, and Bishop Peter Storey of Duke, and also Dean Jan Love of Candler School of Theology at Emory University. The event is sponsored by Duke Divinity School, Candler School of Theology, Gammon Theological Seminary, and Asbury Theological Seminary, as well as the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the UMC and the College of Bishops of the SE Jurisdicion, and the General Board of Church and Society. I plan to attend, although I may have to leave early on Saturday morning Feb. 2.

Attending these kinds of events is good, but local action is just as important, if not more so. Still, it is good to see United Methodists organizing themselves for peace. I didn't see Methodists United for Peace with Justice or the Methodist Federation for Social Action listed as sponsors, but I would think they would be supportive of this. I would also bet that the IRD will be there to make their usual police report! :)

Methodist Theology

2007-08-29T21:43:00.000-04:00

There's an interesting series of posts at Inhabitatio Dei by different bloggers on the pacifisms of their respective Christian traditions. The first three are from Cambellite, Reformed, and baptist traditions. I don't have time now to develop an essay on a Wesleyan/Methodist pacifism, but I've blogged about it in various ways over the last few years. Part of my theological journey is traced here. And here is a great piece on a United Methodist theology of peace by Bishop Timothy Whitaker of the Florida area. It is based on John Wesley's General Rules, the first of which was "do no harm." Here is an excerpt from Bishop Whitaker's sermon on peace:

In the United Methodist Church often many of us are silent and passive about abortion. At the same time, we can be outspoken and active in our opposition to war and capital punishment. Do we not perceive how opposition to violence requires us to be as vigilant in our witness against abortion as in our witness against war as a normal political tool and our witness against executions by the state? Opposition to war, capital punishment, euthanasia and abortion is a coherent and integral witness to God’s good purposes in a world under the evil spell of violence.

In other Methodist theological news, Ken Carter recently blogged about his recent experience at the Oxford Institute on Methodist theological studies (as did Kevin Baker of Christian Conversations). There was a series of wonderful theological papers presented, and Kevin shares with us his favorites. One of them that caught my eye was this one by Billy Abraham. It is entitled, "The Political Theology of President George W. Bush." At first glance, I thought it must be a joke - George W. Bush doesn't even know what theology is. Then I thought, he's actually serious! Then I realized how he was showing how paper-thin George Bush's theology is. I think the main point of the essay is that when Methodists ignore serious theological and doctrinal substance (as we have usually done over the last century, as have most main-liners) this is the result you get.

I thought it was interesting that Billy Abraham sees five different trajectories in current United Methodist political theology: "There is the aggressive anti-American pacifism of Stanley Hauerwas and his many students. There is the stolid Christian realism of Joseph Allen, Robin Lovin, and Rebecca Miles. And there is the lively, diversified liberation theology of James Cone, Rebecca Chopp, Ted Jennings, Joerge Rieger, and Harold Recinos. Beyond that is the muddled, left of center politics of The Social Principles and The Book of Resolutions, and there is the amorphous, middle of the road, transformationist theology of Albert Outler as updated by Bishop Scott Jones and Randy Maddox. All lay claim to this or that element in Wesley in order to make their claims within United Methodism. We can now add one more option to the raft of the alternatives available. There is the political theology of George W. Bush. I am not sure that the great architects of pluralism anticipated this dramatic outcome, but life has certainly become more interesting and more complex for United Methodists."

Note: for years now, Billy Abraham has been one of the most brilliant critics of the sloppy Methodist theology of pluralism. It seems to me he is now saying that Methodist pluralism is so awful that it has even made room for George W. Bush's political theology. One other thing: I wouldn't call Stanley Hauerwas anti-American, but that would take a long time to explain.

Revolting

2007-08-13T10:01:00.000-04:00

In this article, one of the factors to which the high rate of executions in the state of Texas is attributed is the relatively high number of evangelical Christians in the state. As an evangelical, I find this evangelical support for capital punishment revolting, embarrassing, disgusting, and blasphemous. It represents a terrible misreading of Scripture and a denial of the nonviolent nature of God as revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. The way that evangelical advocates of capital punishment understand individual responsibility in this article also strikes me as Pelagian and self-righteous. I have stated that "evangelical" is a label I want to hold on to, but articles like this make it very hard to do so. Is there a point at which I would finally give up on the term evangelical? This article makes me ponder that question anew.

Magic, Technology, and Hiroshima

2007-08-06T16:20:00.000-04:00

Harry Potter’s Magic less dangerous than ours

(Reblogged)

I am perplexed with the opposition that many conservative Christians are still expressings to the wildly popular Harry Potter books merely because they contain some magical elements.

One source of my confusion is that almost all classics of children's literature contain some magic. Another is that many evangelical Christian leaders have expressed support for the book, including Chuck Colson. But some conservative Christians haven't bothered to listen to Colson or other Christian leaders. They simply assumed that since the Harry Potter books contain magical elements, and since the Bible condemns witchcraft, that the books are to be avoided at all costs.

However, Colson has rightly noted that the magic in the Harry Potter books is not occultic in nature, but merely mechanical. As is the case with the characters in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter and his friends do not make contact with supernatural dark forces as they practice magic. They use magic in much the same way we use technology. See Alan Jacobs article "Harry Potter's Magic," in the January 2000 edition of First things for more on this insight.

Jacobs' article helped me come to a rather stunning conclusion. Our 21st-century technology is much more "magical" than Harry Potter's magic. Think about it: What would someone from 100 years ago say if he saw the way our children use technology? In our world of cell phones, text messaging, faxes, email, Internet and AIM, a person from the 19th century would be absolutely horrified by the ease with which our children maneuver in the world of technology. It would seem to such a person nothing short of magic.

Indeed, Harry Potter's ability to fly a broom would seem like nothing compared to our ability to hop on a Concorde jet and fly across the Atlantic with 200 other people in only three hours. Talking instantaneously with someone on the other side of the world would seem much more magical to such a person than some owls carrying pieces of parchment.

For that matter, the magical wands that Harry and his friends employ can do very little compared to the fascinating piece of magic that we have come to take for granted and call the "personal computer." A person from the 1800's would be terrified by the spectacular things done by a magical "mouse," which my children have already learned to master. Even something so simple as a remote control color TV would seem much more magical than a simple crystal ball.

When it comes down to it, our technology is much more frightening than anything J.K. Rowling could ever imagine. For goodness sake, a man who turns into a werewolf when he sees the full moon is nothing compared to a man who can actually fly to the moon and walk around on it.

But there is an even deeper insight that no one has commented on except for Jacobs. We have assumed that our technology is harmless but that Harry Potter's magic is dangerous! How strange! Our imaginary friend from the 1800s would not miss such an irony. For we have done more "dark magic" with our technology in the 20th century than the evil Lord Voldermort ever conceived of. Voldermort could cast some pretty nasty spells, but we with our technology have concocted some potions so wicked that even the Dark Lord himself would blush with shame.

We have come to call these evil curses "nuclear weapons," and we have used them to kill tens of thousands of innocent people in the twinkling of an eye. "He who must not be named" never performed a curse so sinister. There is one major difference, however, between the magic of Harry Potter's world and the magic of our modern technology. Harry Potter's magic (even the dark magic of Lord Voldermort) is mere fantasy. Our dark magic is real. It is all too real.

So if people want to warn others of the dangers of magic, they do not need to turn to the fictional world of Harry Potter to do so. They need only look at our own technological world in all of its harsh reality.

Vindicated!

2007-07-23T12:40:00.000-04:00

Well, Camassia, I hate to say "I told you so," but, you know.... here, here, here and here. I won't play the spoiler and give away all the details, like I once did to Marvin! : ) I'm not completely vindicated; in some ways I am not, but I think my basic premise was vindicated. Thanks for indulging me as I engage in a bit of foolishness! : )

Church Newsletter Article: The Many Seasons of Communion

2007-07-06T09:36:00.000-04:00

The Many Seasons of Communion
Jonathan’s Journals

As a pastor, one of the things that I take great comfort in is that, although I can mess up a sermon, I cannot mess up Holy Communion. Christ has promised to be with us in this holy meal, and nothing I can do or say can keep Christ from fulfilling His promise. Every time we participate in Holy Communion, it is an encounter with God (even if we aren’t always paying close attention).

Although Christ is always present at the Table, it is interesting to see how the shades and emphasis of meaning in this meal can vary according to circumstances, whether it be my own personal life situation, the church’s condition, or the season in the church year. For example, sometimes my situation in life is such that I need the sacrament to give me comfort in a time of grief. What a grace! At other times, the sacrament challenges me to move out of complacency. Also a work of grace! Sometimes, the sacrament just gives me the grace to keep plugging away, staying on the road with Jesus. At other times, it is the reassurance I need to know that Christ is with me. Occasionally, the Holy Spirit even uses this time to convict me of my sin, and show me ways that I need to change or deepen my level of commitment! And of course, this meal is always an offer of forgiveness and a promise of new life.

The emphasis and shades in meaning also change with the seasons of the church year. For example, during Lent, we focus on Jesus’ pilgrimage toward suffering and death. The meal that we remember from the gospels is the Last Supper, immediately before Jesus’ death. We therefore experience Holy Communion as somewhat of a memorial meal. During this penitential season of Lent, it is appropriate to kneel as we receive communion, as a sign of our humility, repentance, and sorrow for our sins. This is one dimension of Holy Communion, experienced not only during Lent, but also in the other penitential season of the church year: Advent. (Just as Lent is preparation for Easter, so Advent is preparation for Christmas. Some of you have noticed that I wear my black robe during these two seasons!)

We experience Holy Communion with a different emphasis during the season of Easter. In Easter, we emphasize the sacrament not as a memorial meal, but as a victory celebration, the first fruits of God’s new creation. The focus is not on Jesus’ death, but on his resurrection. The somber moods of Lent are replaced with the festive celebrations of Easter. During the season of Easter, we emphasize that this meal is an encounter with the living Lord. It is appropriate to receive the sacrament during the season of Easter standing, as a sign of joy and delight. The emphasis is not so much on remembering the past, but on experiencing our Living Lord in the here and now. If the Last Supper is the meal we remember during Lent, the road to Emmaus meal becomes our focus during Easter: when the risen Christ surprises his disciples and overwhelms them with joy.

My general practice is to receive Communion kneeling during penitential seasons like Lent and Advent, and standing during festive seasons like Easter and Christmas. During the “in between times” (like the long season of Pentecost in which we now find ourselves) we generally alternate between standing and kneeling. These are not hard and fast rules, just different ways we can experience the fullness of the sacrament of Holy Communion throughout the church year.

The good news is that whatever the season, whatever the method, whatever the state of mind we are in, the grace of Jesus Christ is always there for us in this holy meal, ministering to us through the Holy Spirit whatever we may need to continue as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, and sanctifying the church as the body of Christ, given for the life of the world.

Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, continues

2007-07-03T19:38:00.000-04:00

Here is a draft paper to expand and extend the movement.

I confess

2007-07-03T07:04:00.000-04:00

There is an "I confess" meme going around, and here is my little contribution:

I confess that I used to idolize Hauerwas, but I now disagree with him on several points.

I confess I came to Yoder via Hauerwas.

I confess that I really like what the Emergent Movement is about, even though I cannot define the term “Emergent Movement.” I really like such emergent pastors as Brian McLarren, Greg Boyd, and Rob Bell.

I confess that I listen to theological and homiletical podcasts on my ipod.

I confess that the content of my sermons was better when I used to do manuscripts, but I am now willing to sacrifice some of my content for the sake of preaching my sermons without notes.

I confess that I love Harry Potter, and I used to do Harry Potter Bible studies with the children in my church.

I confess that I think the term “inclusivism” is over-used in the church today.

I confess that Marva Dawn is the only female theologian in my top 5 list: Hauerwas, Brueggemann, N. T. Wright, and Lindbeck are the others. These are my top 5 living theologians, or else Yoder would be in there.

I confess that I don’t like the term “Methodist quadrilateral.”

I confess that I am not comfortable with the Methodist IRD because it is beholden to the Republican party, particularly when it comes to supporting war. And they are just obsessed with homosexuality.

I confess I might join the MFSA if they didn’t advocate something called “reproductive choice.” Note: I am grateful to MFSA for providing some Methodist representation to the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq. Update: thanks to Michael who reminded me to spell out Methodist Federation for Social Action.

I confess that I am horrified by the mainline church’s acceptance of (or silence about) abortion.

I confess that without the resurrection, Christianity is meaningless, and that John Spong should resign as a bishop and as a priest.

I confess that I like Rick Warren, even though I disagree with him on many things.

I confess that I have little patience for those who do not accept the ordination of women (my wife is a pastor, too!)

I confess that I am deeply suspicious of the theological assumptions implicit in the church growth movement, in many forms of ‘contemporary worship,’ and in many church marketing campaigns, including the United Methodist “open hearts, open minds, open doors.”

I confess that I have never read any better theological or scriptural analysis of homosexuality than what has been written by Richard Hays.

I confess that I am an evangelical, pacifist, Wesleyan, sacramental, sanctificationist.

I confess that I am not very interested in liberation theology, although I know I should be.

I confess that at different times in my life I have thought about becoming a Roman Catholic, an Episcopalian, or a Mennonite.

I confess that I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone: Jews and Gentiles. Saying that Jesus didn’t come for Jews is just plain silly, and acknowledging that does not make me a supercessionist.

I confess that there have been many days when I wished I had some other job besides being a pastor.

I confess that I believe the words, “Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer” are inadequate substitutes for Trinitarian language.

I confess that the doctrine of the Trinity is where the church stands or falls (to borrow a phrase from Geoffrey Wainwright).

I confess that there are many other things I could confess, but if you’ve read all the way down to this point, you deserve a break.

More Wesley Quotes

2007-06-27T19:47:00.000-04:00

It has been frequently observed, that very few were clear in their judgment both with regard to justification and sanctification. Many who have spoken and written admirably well concerning justification, had no clear conception, nay, were totally ignorant, of the doctrine of sanctification. Who has wrote more ably than Martin Luther on justification by faith alone? And who was more ignorant of the doctrine of sanctification, or more confused in his conceptions of it? In order to be thoroughly convinced of this, of his total ignorance with regard to sanctification, there needs no more than to read over, without prejudice, his celebrated comment on the Epistle to the Galatians. On the other hand, how many writers of the Romish Church (as Francis Sales and Juan de Castaniza, in particular) have wrote strongly and scripturally on sanctification, who, nevertheless, were entirely unacquainted with the nature of justification! ... But it has pleased God to give the Methodists a full and clear knowledge of each, and the wide difference between them.

-John Wesley Sermon 107, "On God's Vineyard"

Floating on a Cloud of Creedlessness

2007-06-25T20:48:00.000-04:00

Over at Theolog, they have posted a short piece I wrote. They edited it some. Below you will find the piece as I originally wrote it:

Floating on a Cloud of Creedlessness

God is “greater than our creeds rehearse.” So sang the chorus at our recent United Methodist Annual Conference. “As I get older and wiser, I find that I have less articles in my creed, but more faith in God,” said another speaker, to several shouts of “Amen” from the congregation. It seems popular now to kick the creeds, those relics of an ancient past that try to limit the limitless God. A United Methodist annual conference is sure to hear several people say, “well, after all, we have never been a creedal church.”

Besides ignoring the fact that the Apostles’ Creed is part of our baptismal liturgy and that our Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith are binding on all, this anti-creedalism has other problems associated with it. Take for example the statement, “God is greater than our creeds rehearse.” Such statements beg the question of what we mean by “greater.” Without any creedal context, we are at a loss to say what ‘greater’ means, except perhaps to say that it means more and more abstract, less and less concrete. (An odd claim for people of the incarnation to make). Such a vague theology would not have been sufficient to sustain the Confessing Church in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, and I doubt it would be sufficient to sustain any resistance to the totalitarian powers of today, whether they be manifest in the church growth movement, or idolatrous nationalism.

Putting aside the creeds in order to affirm God’s greatness leaves us at a loss to understand greatness as anything but more and more detached, free from any concrete specifications. Where are people standing when they make such statements? On an island of theological neutrality, a cloud of creedlessness? No, my guess is that they are firmly rooted in protestant liberalism, seemingly unaware of how that creed is shaping their anti-creedalism.

The irony is that I do believe God is greater than all our creeds. But that is itself a creedal statement. The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds teach us that God is the great “creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.” Paradoxically, once we have trivialized the creeds, we have also robbed ourselves of the very means to proclaim a truly grand and glorious God, leaving us instead with the vague god of inclusivism and tolerance, a god that cannot save.

Sojourners hosts discussion with presidential candidates

2007-06-04T19:51:00.000-04:00

Some quick notes on the CNN special "Faith Politics" organized by Jim Wallis and Sojourners.

I was disappointed that the first questions Soledad O'brien asked were about the conflict of evolution with a literal 6 day creation account. Really Soledad, couldn't you think of something more interesting to open with? Then, her next question (also for John Edwards) was about homosexuality. I was thinking, "Really Soledad, can't you think of anything to ask about besides these sensationalistic questions?"

Fortunately, Soledad had to yield the microphone to Jim Wallis. He asked John Edwards about poverty, and I could see that Edwards was relieved to be asked finally about something significant for him. Unfortunately, he spent most of his answer talking about how much this meant to him over the years, but not too much time talking about concrete steps he would take as president. At least the question was raised, and that's a good thing. Soledad did finally ask Edwards an interesting question, "what is the biggest sin you have committed?" and I was hoping he would say, "voting for the war in Iraq," but he missed his chance. Instead he just said something about how he sinned all the time. Interesting observation: Edwards mentioned two separate times that he was raised in a Southern Baptist Church, but he never mentioned that he is now active in the United Methodist Church. Curious.

Barak Obama leaves the impression of being very intelligent, but he does ramble on forever. Even before Soledad interrupted him, I was thinking, "you are just rambling, Barak!" He did responde nicely to Soledad's question, "does God choose sides in a war?" by citing the famous Lincoln quote. But he was just so long-winded! (Perhaps the people in my church say the same thing about me as they are leaving church on Sunday mornings?)

Soledad told Hillary that she had never said much about her religious faith, which is not true. Note to Soledad: just because you spent five minutes on google does not mean you have done your research. Hillary Clinton once spoke very eloquently, movingly, and powerfully about her religious faith to the General Conference of the United Methodist Church! She talked about her Confirmation Class, her Sunday School, her MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) and how her youth pastor helped her link her faith to the civil rights movement. But only one reference to the MYF got mentioned tonight. She said she came from a tradition that is very cautious about wearing one's faith on one's sleeve. To me that was a cop-out. I think she missed a chance to really connect with religious persons. But later on, she came back to it when she talked about prayer, and partially redeemed herself.

All in all, not much substance to tonight's conversation on CNN, but it was good to see faith and politics being discussed by Democrats in a nationally televised forum. Thank you Sojourners!

Evangelical

2007-06-04T18:21:00.000-04:00

Over at Faith and Theology, D. W. Congdon does a guest post about his conversion from being evangelical to post-evangelical. In my opinion, what he describes is not a conversion from one thing to another, but rather a broadening and deepening of what it means to be evangelical in the first place.

Everyone has to decide what terms they want to fight for and what terms they are willing to surrender to others. I have never wanted to surrender the term "evangelical" to fundamentalists or political coservatives. As I explained in this post, I intend never to stop calling myself an evangelical. Every year, I have to fill out a form for my district superintendent, and it always asks the pastor to describe him/herself theologically. "Evangelical pacifist" is always what I put.

Jim Wallis is one who continues to describe himself as an evangelical. He did so at the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, and I was glad to see that he recently visited Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. For those non-Methodist readers, Asbury seminary has the reputation of being the most evangelical and the most conservative of Methodist seminaries (although it is not actually one of the 13 official United Methodist seminaries). Wallis told those gathered at Asbury, "I hear that you are a premiere conservative evangelical school." He went on to challenge them by saying, "I want to know if you are really evangelical, or just a bunch of conservatives." I think this way of contrasting evangelical and conservative gets it just right. (Curious that the IRD reported on this story, but the United Methodist News Service did not.)

Craig Carter introduces his blog The Politics of the Cross by saying that not all labels are bad, and a label he wears proudly is "evangelical."

In his preface to The Peaceable Kingdom, Stanley Hauerwas credited much of his thought to his background as an evangelical Methodist. I've only had about one tenth of one percent of the number of thoughts that my teacher Stanley Hauerwas has had, but like him, I can attribute many of them to being raised as an evangelical Methodist. My understanding of what it means to be evangelical has grown over the years, but I always find myself coming home to it.

Blogger Responds to Plea for Help

2007-05-31T18:37:00.000-04:00

A real person from Blogger actually responded to my call for help when I contacted them, and they actually fixed the problem explained in the post below. Wow! Thanks, Blogger!

Blogger Help Needed

2007-05-31T12:31:00.000-04:00

Help !!! I was trying to delete the weird comments left by "alex" below, and I think I accidentally deleted myself as an administrator of this blog. Marvin has not been able to help me. As it stands now, I can post new material, but I cannot change my settings, template, sidebar, and all the other bells and whistles. Does anybody have any ideas of what to do? When I log in, and try to change settings, it just takes me to a place that has something about emailing blog posts, and that's all. HELP !!!!

Aldersgate

2007-05-24T17:05:00.000-04:00

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

--John Wesley's Journal, May 24, 1738

Memorial Day Sermon - Reblogged

2007-05-23T17:10:00.001-04:00

The Ivy Bush has had hundreds of hits from people googling "Memorial Day sermon." Here is the sermon Marvin Lindsay preached two years ago at John Calvin Presbyterian Church here in Salisbury. The questions Marvin raised then about the war in Iraq still haven't been answered. Though some people questioned Marvin's wisdom at the time, his words now seem eerily prophetic.

Favorite Wesley Quotes

2007-05-17T22:56:00.000-04:00

Dan Trabue has been a guest blogger over at Locust and Honey for the last couple of weeks. Fortunately, the Baptists no longer have control of things over at L & H. (I can't believe John turned his blog over to a couple of Baptists!)

: )

Before Dan gave up the controls at L & H, he asked for some of our favorite John Wesley quotes, so I will provide some:

“God loves you; therefore love and obey him. Christ died for you; therefore die to sin. Christ is risen; therefore rise in the image of God. Christ liveth evermore; therefore, live to God, till you live with him in glory. So we preached; and so you believed. This is the scriptural way, the Methodist way, the true way. God grant we may never turn therefrom, to the right hand or the left!” (from his letter On Preaching Christ, 1751)

Polkinghorne at Theolog

2007-05-10T17:25:00.000-04:00

I wrote a short piece on John Polkinghorne for The Christian Century's blog, Theolog.

Checking in

2007-05-08T07:18:00.000-04:00

Sorry I've been so inactive in my blogging lately. I did want to check in briefly and tell you that I found this debate interesting. It is between the atheist Christopher Hitchens and the Rev. Al Sharpton. I'm so glad that it wasn't between Hitchens and Jerry Falwell! Al Sharpton's account of belief in God is not without some problems, but at least he is not Jerry Falwell.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the debate came when Sharpton accused Hitchens of being a man of great faith. (Hitchens is apparently a supporter of the war in Iraq). Sharpton said that anyone who still believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had more faith than any religious person he knew! I love it when it's the atheists who are framed as supporters of war, and believers in God who are opposers of war.

Alumni News

2007-04-19T21:58:00.000-04:00

Ivy Bush alumnus Marvin is too modest to post this on his blog, but he was on the front page of today's Salisbury Post. His church had a service of healing to remember victims of the shootings at Virginia Tech. It was a good article, and I'm so glad to see a good article about a mainline church in our newspaper. Marvin has posted the transcript of his homily over at Avdat.

Which Methoblogger are You?

2007-04-19T21:48:00.000-04:00

You scored as Keith McIlwain. You are Keith McIlwain!

You abhor all violence, except the savagery of the gridiron.

Lorna Koskela

58%

Keith McIlwain

58%

Art Ruch

50%

Gavin Richardson

33%

Allan Bevere

33%

Abi Carlisle-Wilke

25%

Jonathon Norman

25%

John the Methodist

17%

Theresa Coleman

Which Methoblogger Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

Va Tech

2007-04-18T07:18:00.000-04:00

As one commenter observes, my friend Ken "always knows the right words to say." Here are some of Ken's thoughts from his blog, Bear Witness to the Love of God in this World:

Of course, there is the event---the shootings, coming surely from an irrational motive. There is next the media frenzy, tragedy communicated for corporate profit through emotional manipulation. There is the search for a narrative that hooks the culture: in this case, who is to blame? The head of security? The school president? And there are later the lingering questions: Why do some perish and others survive? And what could possibly have been the motive?

I find myself limiting my consumption of television coverage of the event to no more than a few minutes a day. I appreciate President Bush's presence in Blacksburg, and his comments, which I heard on radio. If you read this blog, you will know that I am not a fan of President Bush, but he really is at his best when he expresses compassion. Had he functioned in this way after Katrina, life would be very different in our country. I have convictions about the manufacture of the weapons that were used in this incident, but now is not the time for this debate (again, the scary thing here is that I agree with President Bush). That time will come later.

There's no doubt that this was a terribly painful tragedy, especially for the families, students, and faculty at Virginia Tech. There is something, however, bothersome about all the media coverage, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Ken hints at this. I think it has something to do with the assumption that our lives are so boring that we need a tragic story like this to stir our emotions. That last sentence makes no sense, I know, but think about it, and maybe you can find a better way for me to express that thought.

I have not watched much tv coverage of the event, but whenever I do, I keep thinking, "yes, but they go through something like this every day in Iraq," but I know now's not the time to make that argument either. Now's the time to mourn, to remember, to offer any encouragement we can to the members of the Va. Tech community.

Off to Florida, in search of warmer weather

2007-04-08T13:16:00.000-04:00

The Lord is Risen!

The Lord is Risen indeed!

*********

We're off to Florida this week for Spring Break.

Have a great Fifty Days!

MFSA in WNCC of UMC

2007-04-05T07:15:00.000-04:00

Note: this is for anyone who might be a delegate to Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the UMC this summer. I am not a member of the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA), but I support much of their work, and I do go to some of their meetings, especially when they have an interesting speaker. The speaker for this year's luncheon meeting will be Tom Sanders. He is going to speak about the war in Iraq. The MFSA Luncheon will be at 12:30pm on Thursday, June 7 at Lambuth Inn-- The International Room. The cost of the lunch is $8 with box lunches. Please send RSVP’s to Shelly Webb @ webbsf@brevard.edu . Below is a bio for Tom Sanders:

Tom Sanders grew up in Asheville and holds an AB in History from Duke University (summa cum laude) and a PhD in Religious Studies from Columbia University. He was graduate assistant to the noted theologian and political thinker, Reinhold Niebuhr. For 9 years he taught Religious Studies at Brown University where he became a tenured Associate Professor and did extensive research and writing on religious change in Latin America.
In 1968 he changed fields completely, becoming Associate for Latin America of Universities Field Staff International, a group of specialists on developing countries sponsored by a consortium of American universities. In this position for 20 years he wrote in-depth articles on Latin American countries, especially Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile, and visited annually the supporting universities, lecturing and giving short courses. After 1988 he taught Political Science and International Studies at Connecticut, Tulsa, and Earlham. He has authored or co-authored 5 books and over 160 articles.
In 1992 he retired in Asheville. Aware that the Muslim world was poorly understood by Americans, he dedicated much of his time to studying the politics, economics, ethnicity and other characteristics of predominantly Muslim countries. He has visited many of these countries, Turkey at least 10 times, and taught himself Turkish. He has also studied Arabic twice in Cairo.
He has taught in the College for Seniors, UNCA, for 12 years. He is a frequent teacher and speaker in Western North Carolina on Islam, the Middle East, and the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Taxing the Church

2007-04-04T14:42:00.000-04:00

Sooo, according to this article from United Methodist News Service, the attorney for the United Methodist Church is warning churches to stay out of politics. Our primary mission, he says, is to make disciples for Jesus Christ, not get involved in politics. Churches can take stands on appropriate issues, just so long as they remain an “insubstantial part of their ministries.” Hmmm. Good thing William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day didn’t have lawyers like this.

Never mind that conservative churches have been doing this for years, and the IRS only noticed it when liberal churches in California started to get in on the act. I am not defending liberal or conservative churches when they endorse a particular candidate. Endorsing a particular candidate is just plain foolish, no matter what way you slice it, because you never know what a particular candidate will do in the future. But telling churches to stay out of politics? That betrays an impoverished understanding of the church AND politics.
John Howard Yoder reminded us that the ministry and community of Jesus Christ is itself a politics. The gospel radically redefines what we mean by “politics,” since the community and kingdom inaugurated by Jesus now set the standard for the ‘polis’ called church. When folks tell the church to stay out of politics, it usually means they have bought into the Enlightenment’s assumption that faith is private (it has to do with what we do in our hearts with God) and politics are public (having to do with the social networks in which all people share). The resurrection of Christ bursts the boundaries of categories like private and public, leaving them behind like the burial clothes that once bound him.

It’s bad enough when Caesar tells the church “stick to saving souls; leave the public work to me.” But when the church starts telling itself that, we risk losing something more important than our tax-exempt status. What will it profit us to gain the whole world of tax exemption, if we lose our soul? I fear that if we stay out of politics in order to keep the IRS happy, we are trading in our inheritance for a mess of porridge. There are worse things than losing our tax-exempt status. Accepting Caesar’s account of our social reality would be one of them. The ecclesiologies and epistemologies that go along with such accounts will produce churches that unfortunately rob themselves of the very resources they need to serve the world. I am certainly not asking the IRS to take away the church’s tax-exempt status, but neither do I want us to keep that status at the cost of losing our theological bearings.

Here’s a related question: do our lawyers tell us what our mission is allowed to be? Or do our bishops and theologians articulate our mission -- and then ask our lawyers to help us work out the details of carrying out that task? I know plenty of wonderful Christian lawyers. They make great servants of the church, and are often great Christian lay leaders. But it is their theological and spiritual vision that helps shape the church’s mission, not their legal expertise. Their legal expertise (which is often quite important) enters the conversation only after we have together sought out our vision of what it means to be church.