Entries from May 2008 ↓

I had a speaking gig in Oklahoma City, so I took the opportunity to visit my family. My plane was several hours late on Wednesday, but it was a good thing since if it had come in on time I would have had to drive my rental car through a massive storm that brought flooding to the highway. Then, over the weekend, that tornado hit Picher, which is only a half hour or so from where we were, killing seven people. The tornado missed us in Vinita, as did the bad thunderstorms, but despite our clear skies a huge wind started blowing. It snapped a big maple tree, two feet in diameter, right at the ground, falling right across my sister’s driveway. Although I had forgotten what springtime in Oklahoma could mean, I did have a great visit with my parents, both siblings, and some friends I hadn’t seen since the olden days.

Happy belated Pentecost. There’s another powerfully significant holy-day that gets short shrift, especially when it falls on Mother’s Day. Did any of you learn anything about the Holy Spirit yesterday? As part of our continuing reflection on reclaiming holidays, how can we get back to the true meaning of Pentecost?

Here is a holiday that needs no reclamation, that we know how to celebrate: Just heap acclaim on mothers and pamper them totally. A reminder to all men and other children: Get a card; if you do not go out to eat, fix dinner yourself (which may score you even more points); do not go to some meeting after church; let mothers do NO WORK.

There. I’ve reminded you and, I suspect, saved many of you much grief and guilt. You can find some way of paying me back later.

The L.A. Times has a revealing story about John McCain’s faith. A sample:

McCain is most comfortable talking about his religious awakening during his 5 1/2 years in captivity, where his connection to God grew stronger and he served as “room chaplain” for a small group of prisoners.

In his early life he was influenced by his “deeply religious” father, who relied on his faith in a long struggle with alcoholism. Prayer and church became an “ingrained part” of McCain’s life at his high school, where he attended chapel every morning and on Sunday evenings, even after church, he says.

McCain says in those days, he was a self-absorbed rule-breaker who became a hard-partying naval aviator. It was not until after his plane was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967, he wrote in his memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” that he learned to “grasp” faith tightly. In solitary confinement, he prayed “more often and more fervently than I ever had as a free man.”

“I was very slow in maturing,” he said aboard his campaign plane. “I knew right from wrong; I knew the Bible; I knew the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed and the tenets of my faith. And although I neglected them, the time came that I could fall back on them as a net, as a way of salvation, literally.”

Often his faith helped him “get through another minute,” he said. At the same time, McCain said, he learned to be “careful not to ask God to do things that were temporal rather than spiritual.”

In McCain’s first talk as chaplain, he cautioned fellow prisoners not to pray for their release — reminding them of a parable in which Jesus was asked whether it was right to pay taxes. “He held up the coin and said, ‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s,’ ” McCain said, recalling his lecture. “The point of my talk was we were doing Caesar’s work when we went into combat, so we really shouldn’t ask God” for release.

That lesson guided McCain not to pray for his own personal success. “I pray to do the right thing so I won’t look back in regret or embarrassment or even shame that I betrayed my principles and my faith,” he said.

McCain began attending a Baptist church after marrying Cindy McCain in 1980 and moving to Arizona. At North Phoenix Baptist Church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, McCain was attracted to the pastor’s message “that we’re all sinners, but we can benefit from God’s grace if we recognize those sins and move forward,” he said.

Although some religious leaders contend that McCain has not said enough about how his faith influences his positions, his stance on abortion is clear. McCain is a staunch opponent. He said that his view that life begins at conception is based “to some degree” in his religious faith.

Some quirks (not praying for his own success or even release from the POW camp), some insights (”we were doing Caesar’s work”), some solid theology (sin & grace; dependence on the Creeds). At least he stands squarely against the gospel of success that plagues, the confusion of kingdoms, and the content-free theology that plagues contemporary Christianity. Maybe he associates all of that with contemporary evangelicalism, which is why he keeps his distance. Or do you think this is not an adequate confession of faith?

HT: Mark Stricherz at Get Religion.

The high court in the Presbyterian Church (USA) ruled that a pastor who performed a same-sex marriage cannot be censured, BECAUSE the church does not recognize same-sex marriage. Get a load of this reasoning:

The order issued Tuesday said, “The ceremonies that are the subject of this case were not marriages as the term is defined (by the Book of Order). These were ceremonies between women, not between a man and a woman. … It is not improper for ministers of the Word and Sacrament to perform same sex ceremonies.”

The church’s Book of Order says, “Marriage is a civil contract between a man and a woman,” and does not prohibit blessings of same-sex couples that are not determined to be marriages.

The high court said in the ruling that the lower court had erred by finding Spahr guilty “of that which by definition cannot be done. One cannot characterize same sex ceremonies as marriages for the purpose of disciplining a minister of the Word and Sacrament and at the same time declare that such ceremonies are not marriages for legal or ecclesiastical purposes.”

The church defines marriage as between a man and a woman. A minister marries two women. But the minister cannot be sanctioned because, according to church teaching, gay marriage is impossible. So the minister could not have conducted such a thing.

Thus, the teaching AGAINST gay marriage provides a mechanism for allowing it.

A Dartmouth English professor is threatening to sue her students:

[Priya] Venkatesan said the incident occurred when she was lecturing about The Death of Nature, a book by Carolyne Merchant, and the witch trials of the Renaissance. The student went on a “diatribe” about the inappropriate nature of challenging patriarchal authority, Venkatesan said. Vakatesan respected the student’s right to express this opinion, she said, but the manner in which he vocalized his views and the applause afterward were disrespectful and offensive.

“I was horrified,” Venkatesan said. “My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line. … I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression.”

Venkatesan contacted [Thomas Cormen, chair of Dartmouth’s writing program] about the event, she said, but claims she received no support from him. She canceled class because the incident caused her “intellectual and emotional distress,” she said. This event, which occurred on Feb. 1, would likely be included in a list of grievances relating to a potential lawsuit, she said.

The Quakers are finding a new strategy for church growth: Merge with paganism! From “Pagans find a sometimes uneasy home among Quakers”, referring to “a small but growing movement of Quakers who also identify as pagan — a trend that may or may not exist in other Christian traditions, but certainly not in such an organized, public fashion”:

Across the board, the number of Quakers is dwindling, to roughly 100,000 in the U.S. But if Quakerism continues to catch on among the estimated half million pagans in the U.S., those who embrace both traditions predict that could reverse the Quakers’ downward trend. Still, some Quakers worry about losing their own traditions through the process of accepting new ones.

In the last decade, this dual faith has sprung up around the country, including Quaker-pagan gatherings, seminars, an extensive presence on the Internet, and even explicitly Quaker-pagan congregations. There may be only several hundred Quaker pagans, but among American Quakers, their presence can be distinctly felt.

“It seems that now, in most liberal meetings at least, you can always find a few members that identify as pagan,” says Stasa Morgan-Appel of Ann Arbor, Mich., who has facilitated a Quaker pagan interest group since 2002.

Quakers — officially the Religious Society of Friends — are divided into four main branches, three of which are explicitly Christian. Pagans have been generally joining the liberal fourth branch, the Friends General Conference, which counts 30,000 members in North America, including Morgan-Appel.

Barack Obama took North Carolina, and Hillary Clinton took Indiana. It looks like the Democratic nominee is going to be up to the superdelegates. And why not? That’s what they are there for.

The question they all must be asking is, who would be the strongest candidate against John McCain? Pretend that you are a superdelegate whose main interest is winning. Who do you think would be the most formidable candidate? (Both Republicans and Democrats can play this game.)

P.S.: Actually, Obama won enough delegates in Indiana to make him almost impossible to overtake. IF Hillary withdraws today (and I’ll be on a plane most of the day so unable to update), the question still remains. How formidable a candidate will Obama be against John McCain? Or, put another way, does McCain have a chance?

Burma cyclone death toll could hit 63,000 .

To help, click here.

Syesha is certainly the most improved of all the singers, developing from inauspicious beginnings into a fine singer and performer. The two Davids, though, are in a class by themselves. I have been favoring Cook, but I’m thinking Archuleta was even better last night.

What I want to comment on is Jason Castro. Look, you can’t be like Bob Marley just by having dreadlocks! You’ve got to have. . .well. . .soul. Not just external packaging. That would help also if you are going to sing a Bob Dylan song, that and remembering the words.

If Jason doesn’t get voted off tonight, whether because of some sympathy vote or because of the “vote the worst” crowd or because teeny-boppers think he is cute, I’m going to have to seriously re-evaluate my faith in democracy.

UPDATE: He DID get voted off. The world has been made safe for democracy. I will now eagerly await the people’s decision about the presidency.

It always saddens me to see old church buildings that have been turned into restaurants, bars, concert halls, museums, or condos. See The Cultural Conversion Of Cast-Off Churches.

On “Kitchen Nightmares,” Gordon Ramsey, that chef I have been hyping who slaps failing restaurants and cooks into shape, took on an eatery that had once been a church. He, at least, for all his bleeped-out language, was strangely respectful of the once-sacred space. He used the confessionals to make the errant cooks confess their sins against their vocations (Q: “What was the worst thing you’ve ever done in the kitchen?” A: “I dropped a piece of meat on the floor and just put it back on the plate.”) After he forced the owner to clean the filthy kitchen and buy some decent equipment, he brought in local clergymen to pray and to bless the kitchen.

To be sure, new church buildings are often designed to look like shopping malls, corporate offices, or convention centers. I see no problem with using them for the purposes that their appearance suggests anyway. (But is there a problem even there?) The old buildings getting abandoned tend to have the sacred built into them: they typically follow a cruciform floor plan (expressing that worshippers gather in the Cross), are adorned with built-in Christian symbols that cannot be removed (shapes evoking the Trinity, Crosses everywhere, lines sweeping upward to evoke a sense of transcendence), the tripartite structure of the Hebrew Temple (a gathering place for all; a holy place for worship; the holy-of-holies area that is the altar). So turning all of that–or ignoring all of that–to turn the building into a night club just seems, literally, a profanation.

Wouldn’t it better to just tear these buildings down than to turn what was once “sacred space” towards “profane” uses? Or is this a wrong distinction? Do these new uses for a church building instead bring the sacred into the secular, turn everything sacred, and demonstrate God’s reign over all of life?

According to the polity of the United Methodist Church, there is no separate denomination for each country, nor a hierarchical transnational organization. Rather, Methodist congregations from around the world are on an equal footing. Their representatives get together every four years for a General Conference to decide on policies for all Methodists. In the General Conference currently going on in Fort Worth, a coalition of AFRICAN Methodists with American conservatives is thwarting efforts from the normally-liberal Methodists to take their church even further to the left.

See Methodists Struggle To Reflect Diversity. Once again, the Africans are the ones upholding Christian orthodoxy against the churches that once sent them missionaries.

Also, what do you think of the Methodist polity? Could that be a model for an international synod of, say, Lutheran churches?

HT: Graham Walker