On Heaven

(I'm writing on Friday, but I've timed this post to appear just as I'm preaching this sermon on Sunday. For some reason it still makes me giddy to think I can make things appear on the internet whenever I want. (I'm magic.))

When I hear the word heaven, these days I think of the lyrics to that old song “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, but it’s on my iPod so it drums its way into my head on a regular basis. It’s a turn of the century song that paints a satirical and evocative picture of paradise from the perspective of a hobo. My favorite verse goes:

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains there's a land that's fair and brightWhere the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every nightWhere the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every dayOn the birds and the bees and the cigarette treesWhere the lemonade springs where the bluebird singsIn the Big Rock Candy Mountains

The rest of the song is great too—the obviously lawless singer fantasizes about rivers of whiskey, cops with wooden legs, bulldogs with rubber teeth and an afterlife where it is no longer necessary to change one’s socks. Classic stuff.

So, I mention this little bit of silliness, and we had our initial conversation, as a roundabout way of entering into engagement with the Gospel reading today. What we had there, if you recall, were some shocking words from Jesus about the end of things, and ultimately about his vision of Heaven. In his parable about weeds and wheat fields, he communicated a message that congealed in my mind as the disturbing suggestion that “God lets evildoers live now, but in the end God’s going to be throwing these people into a fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, while God’s people rejoice!” I have to admit, if we’re going to have a discussion about the afterlife, I’d much rather deal with jokes about cigarette trees than this sort of imagery!

As you may have gathered during our conversation, our visions of heaven tend to be directed by our context—whether we’re hobos with hopes for an eternally ineffective police force or overworked Northwesterners who think that lying on a tropical beach forever would be just about perfect. What Jesus does in today’s Gospel is speak to us about heaven from the context of the sort of persecution that he knew well—metaphorically I would call it a message about heaven delivered from the Cross recorded by a set of followers who lived out their faith in the midst of those who would have them killed. As Jesus points out here, in heaven there are no more persecutors, and justice is served by a loving and righteous God.

For those of us living outside of the context of persecution, this kind of image of God is shocking. The God we talk about is generally one who loves and forgives—not one who destroys angrily.
Indeed, with a level head we can recognize that this passage’s imagery is only one part of the story. We temper it with Jesus’ commands to love our enemy, and the vision from 2^nd Corinthians, for instance, that God reconciled the world to himself in Christ, and doesn’t count our sins and faults against us. (As a theologically weighty side note, following one of my favorite Anglican theologians John Polkinghorne, I personally think this should lead us to hope for a heaven where hell is a temporary state—where justice is served and ultimately all things and people are reconciled to each other and to God.)

In any case though, the shocking imagery from this passage draws to our attention one aspect of the nature of the Kingdom of God—of the world as God would have it. That is, that the sin and evil of this world will be burnt up and purified, and that God’s people will exist in peace free from persecution. In the final analysis, God isn’t one to tolerate evil and injustice.

For a final thought, as citizens of the world pre-heaven, and as those who want to follow God’s will, the corresponding message here is a call to justice and reconciliation—we’re not to seek vengeance or take a “burn in hell” attitude towards those who do evil in this world (God will right things in the end), but we’re to be the metaphorical “sowers of good seed”, working for the vision of a world free from suffering and injustice. In this work, we will be creating for each other the sort of context this side of heaven where the first image that pops to mind when we talk about the afterlife won’t be an end to the sufferings of the present life, but hope for an experience of the continuation of the joys of this existence.

Amen

Life Canon

I've come across this idea a few times recently, and I think it's interesting: that is, that each of us have a group of books/documents/movies/etc. which we use as a foundation in our attempt to shape our lives and define our meaning. I saw that Aaron at therivermerchant had posted on his, and I thought I'd give it a go. He lays down several ground rules, the most significant of which, I think, is that these can't be sacred texts, bibles, etc.

I was suprised at how quickly these popped to mind and how undeniably canonical they are for me. Here are my top 10, submitted in no particular order for your voyeuristic pleasure:

1 and 2) Jurgen Moltmann's Crucified God and Theology of Hope (Two of a three part series which hugely informs my vision of God. Studied these for a year for my thesis.)

3) Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov (I always feel a little pretentious mentioning how much I like this book, but it hugely shapes my thinking on evil, suffering and religion. Spent my senior year of college trying to slog through it.)

4) David Sedaris' Naked (Defines the sense of humor that I want to emulate. Read it in two days on a rainy trip to Bellingham, WA.)

5) Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America (Defines the way I feel about my midwestern home. Read it almost entirely in one sitting in a cold and ugly apartment in New Zealand after buying it for a friend on her birthday.)

6) David Quammen's Song of the Dodo (Transformed the way I think about science and the natural world, and was the original seed of my environmentalism and pragmatic, pseudo-naturalist Christianity. Read it while working in a hotel in Louisville, getting mad when customers would interrupt.)

7) Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel (Finally convinced me that my fundamentalist Christian meta-narrative was scereeewwwed up. Read it primarily while waiting in line to give plasma during my senior year of college. As good a place to lose faith as any, I suppose.)

8) Mark Twain's Roughing It (Re-convinced me that being an American isn't all bad after coming home from New Zealand. Read it in a depressed period in Seattle while working in a warehouse.)

9) U2's Joshua Tree (The music that defined my adolescence, and I refound the shape of my faith in it years later. Still my favorite album, and the only one that I would call canonical.)

10) Albert Schweitzer's Out of My Life and Thought (My first non-evangelical theological Canonical text, sent me on the trajectory that I'm still following. Read it in in a small apartmen in Louisville during the year after marriage when I was trying to figure out who I was post-Asbury College.)

Part Two: An Episcopal Theology of Sex, Jr.: On Pornography!

(Being a straight, white male writing from a straight, white male perspective, this post inevitably drifts towards the not-totally-accurate stereotype that men are the viewers of pornography and women the subjects. Thanks in advance for your willingness to hear what I have to say rather than getting hung up on the limitations of my perspective (though feel free to point them out). I know they're there, but it's impossible to try to appropriately address all of the perspectives in this conversation in a couple of posts.)

Ewwkay, at the end of the last post I said that I think an interesting place to begin the pornography discussion

"is with a suggestion that was made by one of the girls at my church in our annual youth group 'sex talk': that is, that pornography is actually something that can be empowering to women, and can be a celebration of the beauty of the human body".

To give you a bit of my reasoning, I'm starting here not because I'm fully comfortable with the statement, but because I'm inclined to think that there are good cultural and theological reasons to turn the Christian porno conversation on it's head, and to start with an approach that is open to affirming positives as well as negatives when it comes to this topic. For one thing, I think that if we view sexuality through the lens of sacramentality, wherein sex is viewed as something fundamentally holy and good, we're required to not be quickly dismissive of a type of sexual expression that is reportedly (though dubitably?) being practiced by 28,258 Internet users a second, and which can arguably be practiced without physical or material harm to others. We have to at least leave open the possibility that the bulk of those tens of thousands of pornography creators and viewers/second aren't morally bankrupt agents of a massive satanic conspiracy. I mean, maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Along those lines, I also think that it's necessary to hold this discussion in the sphere of reality, where pornography is recognized as a cultural norm--in the US and elsewhere--that most don't have major problems with and that probably isn't going to go away anytime soon, no matter how much we Bible-beaters rail against it. Jesus' relevant suggestion,

"But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed ADULTERY with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into HELL."

might be a good place for us to start, but it isn't a complex enough statement to address the depth of the issue.

As with almost all issues, I'm not ready to make any strong affirmations on this, but I will give you my inclinations in a loosely particular order:

1. If I had to make a blanket and summary statement on my views on pornography, it would be that there is nothing prima facie wrong with sexual imagery, and that sexual imagery can in fact be viewed in positive--even 'holy'--terms, but that the pornography industry as it exists in reality raises major problems of personal morality and social justice that have to be addressed and acted upon from a Christian perspective.

2. With a sacramental view of sexuality in mind, I think we have to--at the very least--affirm that the human factors that make the porno industry possible are positive aspects of our nature: that is, the male's desire to look at naked women (or men, or vice versa, depending on your sex and the way your door swings), and the female's (or male's) willingness to be admired and desired. Without these things, we'd all die out in a generation and frankly live much less interesting lives. Men who like nudie mags aren't perverts, and women who pose in them aren't sluts--they're just people doing what all of us do in some form or another.

With that in mind, the suggestion that some forms of pornography can be empowering to women, and that sexual imagery can represent a celebration of both beauty and sexuality is not really that far fetched. (Even if the suggestion that those things are true at a general level is questionable.) Sexuality is a part of who we are--part of God's image in us--and sexual imagery represents one form of sexual expression. The sexual acts and fantasies that accompany the production and viewing of that imagery do not have to be rejected as 'wrong' in blanket fashion, but can in some instances be seen as a healthy aspect of what it means to be human.

3. Porno does not have to equal a male's exploitation of a female in every case, because there is undoubtedly a sort of economy in all of this that can in theory represent an equal exchange: Hugh Heffner says to the beautiful young woman, I'll make you famous and give you an opportunity for advancement if you'll let me sell pictures of you in my magazine, and the beautiful young woman says to Hugh Heffner, I'll let you take pictures of me (and airbrush them) if you give me lots of money and the prospects to eventually end up acting in crappy movies and marry a rock star. (I'm not saying this is necessarily a good trade off, but it is a trade off that you can't paint as one party exploiting the other, at least in every case.)

On this track, questions of justice are the most difficult questions in relation to pornography: Does the woman get a fair trade-off in the experience? Does she dehumanize herself in the transaction? Does she really have a full say in what is done with her image and personality? What's the cultural and social cost? The biggest problem with pornography, I think, is that women do indeed get the short end of the stick in these sorts of transactions, and are generally exploited, at least to some degree.

4. Pornography is a subjective term, and our moral approach must be situational. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue is different from Playboy, which is different from 'erotic art', which is different from the porno movie and pay internet site industry, which is different from amateur internet porn, which is different from voyeuristic photos circulating without consent, which is different from child pornography. In each case, there are different issues which must be addressed, and it's unrealistic to pretend that these should be treated as one phenomenon.

5. Social relationships should play a role in pornography usage: there are different questions for the secretive male pornography viewer whose wife objects than for the female pornography viewer whose boyfriend finds that quality endearing. In both cases, these particular social questions have less to do with whether the imagery should be seen as offensive than with whether or not they are.

6. Pornography--and the porno industry--plays a major negative role in US culture. That is, it does play a role in the objectification and dehumanization of women from a male perspective, and it does play a role in the development of a sense of inadequacy among many girls and young women (though on this one I honestly think Teen Cosmo is a bigger problem than Playboy...). It's not the sole source of the problem, but it's a part of our social fabric that is generally in an unhealthy place.

7. Pornography would probably be less widespread (and damaging) if we could talk about sexuality in an open, non-guilt ridden, manner, and if Christian leaders would stop trying to suppress it.

8. A full discussion of this issue is impossible without female input, but most females don't want to talk to men about it. Vice versa is also true.

Part One: An Episcopal Theology of Sex Jr.: On Pornography!!

A month or so back I posted a few times on sex, or more specifically on my attempt to develop a way to think about sexuality consistently and realistically from an Episcopalian perspective. For a while now I've been wanting to write a little more on that topic, and have been thinking that the logical next step is to try to make a few Episco-theological suggestions about pornography based on the ideas I presented in the original post. In honor of my brother and his professed love of porno joining the blog, and in the interest of continuing to post on topics of prime interest for evangelical teenage boys, I've decided that it's finally time to give that a go. My hope, as always, is to try to be faithful to reality and Anglican tradition as I see them, and to avoid saying anything that will get me fired from my youth ministry job or shunned by my friends and neighbors.

This one, I must say, is extremely difficult--definitely more difficult than coming up with some spiritual suggestions about sexuality in general--because it's an attempt to address a religious belief that I sort of made up (well, not really) to reality: that is, it's an attempt to interpret pornography through the magical seer-stone glasses of a sacramental theology of sex. This attempt is also extremely difficult (and questionable) because I'm a male, and the most troubling moral aspects of pornography from a social justice-oriented Christian perspective relate to the exploitation and objectification of women. Because of the difficulty of the topic, this is going to need to be a multiple-post discussion. With that in mind, let's dive right in...

First off, let me clarify--this discussion isn't about masturbation. I'll only go so far here as to say that I generally think that that dirty deed is morally neutral (so Christians, stop your ridiculous obsessing about it). Spoiler alert for the ladies: all healthy men--even most husbands and sexually active boyfriends--do it with some degree of regularity, and it's an (almost) unavoidable bodily function. It's gross and unwholesomely fun, but so is pooping and sneezing and most everything else we try to confine to the bathroom. Giggling nerd scientists have even recently found evidence that it's good for us guys. Spoiler alert for the men: the stats show that almost all women also do it at some point in life, though not as much as you would probably like to think, and not as frequently as you do. If God doesn't want us to masturbate, then, well, he isn't very realistic. We could of course argue about masturbation all day, but I don't want to do that here, and if you're interested here's a random link to some people that do.

What I'm more concerned about is pornography--or, maybe more specifically, imagery that is created in order to produce sexual arousal. (Those might be different things, but for the sake of simplicity let's use porno as the blanket term in our present discussion.) The usual process with this sort of discussion in Christian circles is to start from the position that pornography is evil, offensive and degrading to women, and then to try to think of things to say about why God doesn't like it and neither should you. I--being ever the pragmatist and ever the diplomat--don't want to start there, because I don't know that it's really very helpful. In my scattershot research, I have come across fewer scientific statistics in relation to porno usage than I have on inter-personal sex, but I would be willing to wager that all of the religious condemnation of porno has played a relatively minor role in actual human behavior anyway.

I think a much more interesting place to begin the discussion (monologue) is with a suggestion that was made by one of the girls at my church in our annual youth group 'sex talk': that is, that pornography is actually something that can be empowering to women, and can be a celebration of the beauty of the human body (and the qualifying 'can' is important here). I cringed when she initially made this suggestion ("No!! Don't say that!! That's the patriarchal media corrupting your innocent young mind and transforming you into a tool for exploitation!!"), but I think it might be important to hear the idea out. With that in mind, I'm going to leave this topic as I go about my business over the weekend. Feel free to share your thoughts and talk amongst yourselves...

Awash in the sea of liberal culture...

Whew! It's been a busy week for us liberal do-gooders in Seattle! If you read this earlier post, you know that there's been a lot happening here. For my part, along with my regular work, I've spent the last six days helping out with the National Episcopal Healing Our Planet Earth Conference that St. Margaret's hosted, attending its accompanying events, and talking about its implications at church and youth group. In the process, I've been used as a prop in a liturgical dance about the desecration of Puget Sound, chatted with and taken communion from the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, facilitated a discussion on the environment in a bar, complained about Christians with some friends in our co-op, sung songs of praise to the earth and the sea, and tried to sell the ideas behind The Genesis Covenant to a youth group. I'm disappointed that I'm not going to be able to make it to any of the Seeds of Compassion Conference with the Dalai Lama.

I know what some of you may be thinking, I understand, and I'm a little bit ashamed that I've come to fulfill the stereotypes so comprehensively. In fact, as I was standing in front of the crowd at the liturgical dance, using my body to represent man's oppressive environmental destructiveness, I had to ask myself how I got to this point. As I dramatically opened a giant glass door so the dancer could burst forth into the open air, I realized two things. Firstly, that I like to try to not care which side of the 'liberal/conservative' divide I'm on anymore (but really do), and secondly, that I really haven't changed fundamentally since my evolution-questioning, George W. Bush voting evangelical days.

I would guess that most people hit the point where they realize that they really shouldn't care which 'camp' they fall into--religiously, politically, or otherwise. We should just do, think and vote what we believe to be right, regardless of the 'movement' that we might happen to be a part of. In reality--among the young at least, but I suspect across generations--we secretly fret about what our neighbors think of us, and try to project a specific, commonly recognized image. While there might be some variety of images to latch on to, unless we're crazy we seem to always align ourselves with a particular, identifiable camp--even if we don't fully agree with the stereotypes--and privately define ourselves according to camp rules. I've always wanted to be seen as a good person (and to actually be one), so as a youth I latched on to evangelical Christianity in the attempt to do so. As an adult, that camp caused me too much cognitive dissonance, so I joined a new one in Anglican/liberal/emerging Christianity. While at heart my reasons for camp-attendance have been personal and individually determined, despite what I think I'm defining myself according to communal expectations. Hence, this week I didn't protest as much as I might have previously when asked to be used as a prop in a liturgical dance about the environment, and worked hard to see the good in what we were doing as we sang hymns to the earth in a Christian conference despite the pantheistic overtones.

(On a related sidebar which you might find interesting (but probably not as interesting as I do), along with wanting to be seen as (and be) a good person, I also don't want to be seen as mainstream (although I actually generally am). That's why as I post another blog about me (but also about you), I'm fretting about the fact that I'll just be seen as another self-obsessed 20-something blogger. But, as we all know, you're self-obsessed too, reading blogs in part to figure out which camp you want to align yourself with in order to define yourself as slightly distinctive, hip, and probably good.)

The good news is that all of our self-obsessions and camp-building are really just side-notes in the larger picture: group dynamics that affect the decisions that we make as communities, but not really what it's all about. That's why it's back to the grindstone, trying to do, think and vote in the right way, regardless of cultural alignments. And that's why now I'm going to take a timed shower in the attempt to continue cutting back on my resource usage, and then go to lunch with a deacon to try to promote ministry to people with AIDS in our community before I write a sermon on God's love for all people.

bell hooks, inequality, illness, and so forth.

Hi everybody. Along with international travel, whining about church, and gallivanting with teenagers, I've been occupying my time lately reading books by bell hooks, a black feminist sociologist and educator who I've been put on to by a couple of friends. She talks a lot about oppression, racism, poverty, patriarchy, classism, political action, art, education, and the struggle for equality, so in many ways she's the consummate liberal. Actually, wait, maybe I am the consummate liberal, because I'm a white, moving-towards-upper-middle-class patriarchal racist classist lazy male who likes to tell people that I read books by people like bell hooks. In any case, by happy, blog-producing coincidence, this morning the Seattle Times ran a short opinion piece by Jerry Large that points to a major reason that I, a well-off white male, am so intrigued by the ideas of people like bell hooks who argue and work for class equality. In essence, the research suggests that when material equality exists in a culture, and resources are distributed evenly (through whatever means), everyone benefits, not just those on the bottom.

Large's point, in short, is:

We know poverty can affect diet, living conditions, access to medical care.

But inequality puts stress on people at every level. Poor people suffer most, but so do wealthy people in societies where there are large gaps between rich and poor. High-income white Americans have higher rates of diabetes, cancer and hypertension than poor people in England, according to a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association two years ago. (Read the whole article here)

In essence, rich folks trying to "protect their money" by voting against upper-class or big business tax increases (and consequently improved social programming) are shooting themselves in the collective foot. Even if they do end up with greater material wealth, their overall health and quality of life decreases with the increase in resource and social disparity. This sense was palpable in the air for us in (more equitably organized) New Zealand, and Angel's studies in Nursing and Public Health have been pointing our thoughts in that direction for a few years. (In fact, Angel's favorite professor Steven Bezruchka was Large's source for the article.) We both see a healthcare system with equal access for all as one necessary battle in the struggle for a healthy and just society, but the point here is bigger. In fact, material and social equality--or at least relative equality--would be beneficial for all of us, and would play a significant role in improving physical, mental, and social health across our society. To put a bit of a spin on MLK's well-known quote, poverty and oppression anywhere are a sociologically measurable threat to wealth and happiness everywhere. So, bell hooks, even though I might be a part of your problems, I'm listening to you because I think your ideas will help me out in the long run.

There is a PBS Documentary series on this topic airing now called "Unnatural Causes ... Is Inequality Making Us Sick". (Info online here) Feel free to argue with me, but you should really watch the series, which should provide a lot more fuel for Large's and Bezruchka's position. I'm hoping that they post the whole series online in the near future.

The impossibility of hope?

The human mind comes to truth about complex situations by organizing disparate data into a cohesive unit. When you realize the key to the interpretation of all of this complex data, there's frequently a moment of clarity: an "Ah Ha Moment" when it all clicks (Einstein talked about this when he came up with the theory of relativity, and I could almost feel it happening when I was working on my thesis). Sometimes the click signals a revelation of truth, and sometimes the click is overruled at a later date by new data.

Today, I had one such moment that I hope you can overrule, ironically when I was in conversation with some of the most compassionate people I know, at Multifaith Works.

Americans have as much opportunity, or more, as any other citizens on the planet. Our GDP per capita consistently ranks as top five in the world. We're as educated as anyone in the world. We're a democratic country, where decisions are made freely by the population, and our leaders are chosen directly by the people. Yet, 45 million people go without health insurance. The leaders we choose let children live in squalor. We're happy to let veterans live on the street without support. In every other industrialized country, people do better than we do.

The problem isn't an inadequacy of resources or freedoms. Ultimately, the way it shakes out, the problem is that we care at least a little bit less about other people than they do in other developed countries, and a little bit more about ourselves.

Personal Blurtings on Religion and Authority in America

In thinking about the Mars Hill and St. Mark's controversies, and in dealing through my own issues in discernment for ordination to the priesthood, I've been thinking a bit about authority in religion over the last few days.

America's a funny place, particularly when it comes to religion. We're fiercely independent in principle--we don't like the gubment telling us what to do, and we think everybody deserves the opportunity to do what they want. Then, when it comes to religion, we turn over all of our spiritual (and often personal and financial) independence to these figures with nothing more than a shiny suit and a B.A. from Middle Nowhere Holy Spirit Bible University to legitimate their authority. And with predictable results, in many cases.

Why are we so bad at questioning religious leadership, when challenging authority seems to come as such second nature here? I think I'll cook up a few crackpot theories, mostly based on personal experience:

One guess is that most of us need authority ultimately, whether we like it or not, and religious leaders are essentially filling a power vacuum. In the US we don't trust government or other community leaders, but we need to trust someone to lead us. (Otherwise, we'll be the ones who are responsible for our own actions, and no one wants that). Religious leaders are happy to oblige, with claims to ultimate truth, and the handy ability to utilize all of the benefits of power, while transferring the responsibility for their decisions on to God or the Bible. B/C they're effective at meeting some of our social, emotional and spiritual needs, we transfer a deep level of trust to them. In short, we like having someone around to tell us what to do, and our leaders like having people who they can tell what to do. That's not exactly how I have experienced my present situation in the Episcopal Church, b/c it's not exactly how the power structure works, but I would say that it accurately described the way I functioned religiously growing up.

Another (contradictory) guess? We do question religious leadership, but don't let that deter us from our commitment to the church. We tend to think, in general, that we know better than our ministers, but we're happy to keep them around to keep things running. Occasionally they'll say something helpful, and we're happy to pat them on the back for that. If they screw something up seriously, we can get rid of them without too much trouble. We go to church because it's a good show and a good experience, or we have friends there or gain something important from it--not primarily because we agree with the leader. That helps to explain our other inexplicable religious tendency--to sit through long, boring and irrelevant sermons week in and week out. It also, I think, crudely describes the way I think about religious leadership now, in my more callous moments.

In my case, I also tend to spiritualize my submission to authorities--priests, and bishops and the lot: submission teaches you humility, which helps you to be a better person, etc. Ultimately, though, I think a lot of my personal submission is pragmatic: I have to submit to authorities if I want to be a part of this organization--even though I may have serious disagreements with them. That recognition, in itself, is a bit scary to me, because it stinks of a personal willingness to sell out. I'm not sure how deep that tendency is, or how important the issues that I'm "selling out" on are. I'm also not sure that it's such a bad tendency--sometimes it's a good thing to trust leadership who's been there done that. Still, it makes me feel a little dirty to recognize that I'm willing to tow the party line for reasons other than that I agree with the party line.

Religion and Reality

So, I've been mulling over in my mind lately the question of how connected religion is with reality, in the wake of the Mars Hill Dialogue, and also my reading of Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven", which is about a fundamentalist Mormon who murders a few people under supposed direction from God. (You should read that, especially if this post interests you. It's a fascinating case study on religion in general and Mormonism in particular. I've become a bit of a Krakauer Acolyte).

You hear people argue a lot that religion isn't "rational". In my own Western experience anyway, I'd tend to disagree with that. While there are some folks who aren't terribly concerned with whether or not their belief is reasonable, I think for most people the perceived rationality of a religious system is just as important as it's efficacy in providing them with good feelings and a happy life. A religion is, in part, a lens through which we view the world, and if it doesn't make sense in the world we live in, it'll be discarded or altered. Theologians and scribes have, of course, spent thousands of years hammering out the rational structure of our various religious traditions.

What critics are suggesting when they say religion isn't "rational", I think, is that it isn't actually connected with reality. Those are in some ways two different things. What you find in systematic theological studies is that research tends to happen, broadly, in two camps: some work to hash out the internal coherence of a religious system (for example, "How does Jesus' death affect the salvation of humanity?) and others work to hash out the coherence between a religious system and our experienced reality (for example, "how can you reconcile belief in creation with scientific observations about nature?"). Some completely rational religious people, I think, can be sucked in by the "internal coherence" thing, satisfying themselves with the way a religion's doctrines lock together, and virtually ignoring the question of whether their religious system corresponds with experience outside of the system. The guy in "Under the Banner of Heaven" fell into that trap, and so do the young earth creationists.

Most people don't do that though, I'd say. Rather, religion that lasts tends to be internally coherent, AND to correspond with popular perceptions of the nature of reality. That's why religion changes over time with culture, albeit slowly. We've stopped viewing the world as flat, so we no longer (literally) believe that God exists in a realm beyond the sky.

The problem for religious folks, I think, is that they often can't seem to keep up with the overall growth of knowledge, and in fact sometimes seek to impede or deny that growth where it calls their fundamental belief into question. That's why Christians tend to identify as "conservative", and we still have young earth creationists and people who hold a magical worldview, protecting scriptures and beliefs from the prying eyes of history and science. In America, the dominant Evangelical Protestant stream of American Christianity has been extraordinarily successful in resisting the growth of knowledge where it conflicts with the doctrines of religion, and now is a system of belief that's generally internally coherent, but is in many places seriously out of touch with modern (and undeniably true) understandings about reality. Things are changing somewhat though, which helps to explain the success of Rob Bell at the other Mars Hill Church, who is my new favorite Evangelical and the anti-Mark Driscoll in a lot of ways. It's definitely possible to have a system of belief which is Christian, and which corresponds with history, science, and psychology and the other social sciences, but it will look much different than American Evangelical Protestantism.

Those who are fortunate enough to be Anglicans are somewhat ahead of the curve on these things, though we're generally so averse to proselytization that most people don't know it. Scripture, Tradition and Reason (not necessarily in that order) are the pillars of our faith, and that has generally played out to mean that the mind, reason and learning are allowed to constantly re-evaluate our belief system. You hear that there aren't many great Anglican theologians, but I think the truth is that we don't express our theology in the same terms--we don't seek to systematize as much as we seek to formulate and re-formulate. That's why we're frequently out front on theological issues, and often condemned as heretics by those who are more locked in to traditional beliefs. I've developed a lot of faith in the Anglican way of doing things, and am worried that the Communion as a whole might be drifting away from reason with the rest of the world.

The follow-up question is whether religion is a good thing, or whether it would be better to do away with it. That one is tougher, and the American example tends to argue for the latter solution. But then, the American example also tends to suggest that we should do away with government, television, business and Twinkies. Thankfully, you don't have to base your whole view of reality on the American example.

This is a new year.

I always like New Years and today--even though I'm still tired and recovering from last night--I'm in a generally hopeful mood about 2008. A big part of that is owing to the fact that it's an election year--not that any of the presidential candidates inspire a great deal of hope, but there's at least some potential to take some positive steps forward. Angel should also be finishing up the hardest part of her education by summer, which means that although the next few months are going to suck, this time next year shouldn't be quite as pressure filled for her or I. I should also finally almost be finishing up the slog of the pre-seminary discernment process by this time next year, so I'll soon have a better grasp on what my future's going to look like. I'm staying in the same jobs, so things should be relatively stable on the career front and I should start to develop some level of routine (at least until that's all thrown into upheaval again next year).

On a political front, I'm still looking forward with mixed emotions. Positively, the US seems to be waking up a bit to the hole that we've dug for ourselves in relation to the natural environment, our oil dependence, our healthcare system, our international relationships, the war (I currently have two brothers-in-law in Iraq, by the way), the problems of global poverty, and so forth. The thing is though that we're becoming more aware because the problems seem to be becoming more acute. Should we expect to look forward to anything like stability? It seems like it makes more sense to prepare for significant upheaval. The thing is, I really have begun to feel that the basic ideas are there which could potentially (within 10-20 years) stabilize our world-wide environmental crisis, our oil dependence situation, the American (and global) healthcare crisis, and eliminate the worst aspects of global poverty. The problem is that there seems to be little hope that we'll actually put the plans in place. Time will tell, but in my lifetime the US and much of the rest of the world has been amazingly consistent in avoiding doing the things that make practical long-term sense.

Wikipedia is right again. Conservapedia? You be the Judge.

I'm continually amazed at Wikipedia's ability to get things right. Their article on the Emerging Church is great, in my estimation, and sums up concisely the themes of what I see as the mainstream of the Emerging Christian movement. I love it, and I think it does a decent job of summarizing the distinction between this movement and classical liberalism or evangelicalism.

The article ends with a quote that basically calls all us emergent post-modern types chicken:

"Faced with such opposition and the pressure it brings, postmodernism is a form of intellectual pacifism that, at the end of the day, recommends backgammon while the barbarians are at the gate. It is the easy, cowardly way out that removes the pressure to engage alternative conceptual schemes, to be different, to risk ridicule, to take a stand outside the gate. But it is precisely as disciples of Christ, even more, as officers in his army, that the pacifist way out is simply not an option. However comforting it may be, postmodernism is the cure that kills the patient, the military strategy that concedes defeat before the first shot is fired, the ideology that undermines its own claim to allegiance. And it is an immoral, coward’s way out that is not worthy of a movement born out of the martyrs’ blood." -- J. P Moreland

I hear your criticism, J.P., and I understand your concern. The question is though, what if the basic tenets of postmodernism are correct?

On that note, for a thoroughly un-postmodern perspective on just about everything, visit Conservapedia. So Conservative, I can hardly believe it's real!

Featured quotes:

From the article on global warming: "As we learn more about climate, the "settled" conclusions of global warming alarmists, appear more and more ridiculous."

From the article on Jesus Christ: "Jesus Christ is the only Son of God who, in the fullness of time, was sent by God the Father to be the propitiation for our sins and to ransom us from death."

From the article on the theory of evolution: "biblical creationists can point out examples where the scientific community was in error and the Bible was clearly correct. For example, until the 1970s the scientific consensus on how lions killed their prey was in error and the Bible turned out to be right in this matter. Also, for centuries the scientific community believed that snakes could not hear and the 1988 edition of The New Encyclopedia Britannica stated the snakes could not hear but that was mistaken and the Bible was correct in this matter. In addition, 19th century European naturalists were wrong concerning a matter regarding ant behavior and the Bible was correct."

Thank you Blaire for awakening me to this fount of knowledge.

The End of Poverty?

I've been reading Jeffrey Sachs's "The End of Poverty", which is really a pretty hopeful book suggesting that we really could make things better in the world if we'd get off of our self-serving defeatest butts. It's kind of a boring read for me, because it's all economics, but he's a real pragmatist with enough experience helping the developing world overcome the worst poverty that you tend to believe what he says. Whether it will happen or not is a big question, and the major weakness of the book is that there isn't enough discussion of how environmental issues might play in to undermine the situation further.

That said, I'm feeling pretty hopeful lately about the possible collapse of society in the wake of peak oil, global warming, nuclear war, and neo-conservatism. After watching the way Cuba reacted to their peak oil crisis, my guess is that, over the next several hundred years, rich societies will gradually decline (with some war) back into basic agrarian states, and that poor societies will gradually ascend towards sustainability. In many ways, it's globalization and colonization that have created the worst aspects of the world's poverty, as well as the best aspects of the world's wealth, and once we don't have the fuel to sustain those trends societies will shrink back towards the center. I'm just hoping nobody presses the big red button before then, because nuclear fallout would make farming, hunting and gathering much harder.

Do what the celebrities tell you.

Christmas in the Dark

In Dunedin, NZ, Christmas was almost on the longest day of the year--sunlight until 10 PM, Barbeque's on the beach, and that sort of thing. Here in Seattle, it's 3:28 PM, and the sun is already out of sight. It really brings a different sort of flavor to the whole event.

I have to admit that the Christmas season in the antipodes seemed to make more sense. Why do we have our most joy-filled religious celebration at the most dismal time of the year? Advent here is dark, cold and dreary. There it was sunny, (relatively) dry and warm. I'll take a Sunny Christmas over a White Christmas any day. Liturgically, it's great, and practically it's a lot better for parties. I will admit that hot apple cider and the big Christmas ham don't go down as well after a day on the beach though.

That said, I'm really looking forward to Christmas again this year, as I usually do, and I think I've turned a corner in that this is the first year when Seattle's winter weather hasn't noticably driven me crazy yet.

On a different note, am I the only one who thinks this is a little creepy?

In the Spirit of the Season (that is, deep, deep shame for my national and religious identity): Jesus is my Favorite Stocking Stuffer!

1. Fishermen: Not ironically humorous at all, with these toys your children learn that Jesus is capable of just about anything, including humiliating himself in public (like their youth pastor) in order to score a convert!

2. God Jesus: With this toy, children in the '80s learned the important theological truth that God is a lot like a magic 8 ball! Hey nerd! Don't pray to God about getting that girl, God's just going to say "NO"! And watch out for the swinging cross!

3. Jesus Talks! Jesus Talks with Me! (Toy show me the way because the Devil trying to break me down!): Now at Target!

4. Traditional Church Puppet Fun with Flannel Jesus!

5. This isn't funny. These toys seem to be making a joke of Jesus! Something tells me that Jesus is going to lay the smack down with his skateboard when he meets "Answer Me Jesus" in heaven!

6. This is more like it! Finally, a seeker-sensitive Jesus to inspire and lead us! Brought to you by the cultural movement that inspired a whole industry! Praise buddy!

7. (Third Item Down): The original disturbing Jesus toy from Catholic Supply!

I'm a Cuban Revolutionary

So, I've seen several films in the last few months on Cuba, both of which I'd heartily recommend picking up from your local library. It seems that they've figured out how to live post-oil, farming almost entirely organically and essentially building a self-sufficient island nation. They've also figured out how to organize a successful national healthcare system on a shoestring, maintaining a level of health that's greater than in the United States by all of the most common indicators. Island folks, it seems, have a natural understanding of the limitation of resources (we found the same thing in New Zealand) and put more intelligent energy into building sustainable societies than we tend to here in the bountiful mainland U.S. of A. There's a lot we could learn, if we didn't hate those dirty commies so much for letting the Russians point missiles at us back in the day, and for having a president with too much power (though we seem to be getting used to that concept here in Bush's Amuracuh). The good news is that as citizens of the Greatest Nation in the World, we don't need to learn nothin from nobuddy.

The "gradual moral decline of toys"

Thank the Lord that our children can finally play with a high quality plastic talking Jesus rather than those slutty Bratz dolls.

Here

Feeling Unsettled

I've been reading some unsettling books lately: "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer and "Shopping for God: How Christianity Moved From In Your Heart to In Your Face" (or something like that) by James Twitchell (or something like that). They're completely different, but have congealed in my mind to make me feel like running off into the woods somewhere.

Most people seem to know about "Into the Wild". If not, here's a synopsis.

Chris McCandless was a bit of a loony, but I always seem to admire people who don't do what they're supposed to, and he actually did run off into the woods against all proper etiquette. Really I'm probably not the type of person who would want to do that, because I get sick of camping after about a week. However, I do identify with the instinct to drop out of mainstream society with all of its irrational expectations. I think that instinct would be more likely to manifest itself in me in just dropping any ambition I've got, moving around and doing odd jobs for a living--moving from Bottletown to Bottletown. I'm sure I'll never do that, but maybe if I hit my head or something, and it puts me over the edge... In the meantime, I'll try to direct my counter-cultural instincts towards something a little more productive and sustainable (and acceptable to my wife).

The other book was about the commodification of religion, as the title suggests, and that one made me feel dirty, dirty, dirty. I don't really even know what to say about it, other than it pointed out all of the reasons that the American religious environment makes me want to move to Canada. The Church growth movement makes me feel queasy, and the corporate model of doing church has reaffirmed my conviction that you shouldn't leave even well-intentioned human beings to their own devices. The good news is that, from a marketing and economic standpoint, the author determined the Episcopal Church to be completely inept, and therefore doomed. For some reason I take comfort in that.

So, I'm going to head off to eat locusts and shout prophecy from the wilderness.

More on Agnostic Christianity

As the title says, I'd like to say a bit more on yesterday's post.

Tied to the fact that "Agnostic Christian" is a little bit too "baiting" (as Wes pointed out), the title probably carries a bit too much baggage--even if I think it expresses relatively neatly how I generally view my faith. "Agnostic" has taken on a static modernist meaning--a sort of "I don't know and I don't care" attitude for the disinterested, or a belief that we can't know in any sense (which is what I think Kyle might have been hinting towards). Unfortunately, from my perspective, the same could be said about the term "Christian", which has come to be identified strongly with a specific set of beliefs--or maybe more accurately, "Christian faith" has come to suggest primarily "Christian belief" to many (which Kyle was definitely pointing out).

Agnosticism, as I'm drawn to it (and as it is sometimes used by others), isn't an admission of defeat, or a conviction of ignorance, but a position of openness to being wrong and a conviction that we probably are, to some extent. It's an admission that we aren't "there", and I think a natural quality of the intellectually humble individual. I'm skeptical about the possibility for certainty on almost all religious issues, though I do think we can piece together scripture, tradition, reason and experience to the extent that we come to some meaningful, if tentative, conclusions. The tentative part is important though.

Christianity, as I still adhere to it, has a relatively weak emphasis on "belief", and a strong emphasis on practice. That's not to say that belief isn't important, but just that it isn't all about belief (and I'd argue that belief sometimes isn't even necessary, as long as one is committed to walking the path, immersing oneself in the stream, or however you want to phrase it). That's classical Anglicanism, it seems to me--and classical Catholicism as it is generally practiced. It's also a more communal than individual expression of faith, because it is in essence an identification with a tradition and a willingness to participate in a community, though sometimes your ideas might not match up with the community's. It's a being "carried along" by the group. In Anglican worship, the affirmation of faith is an affirmation of the Nicene Creed, which is in itself both succinct and malleable enough to work for a whole community (though not all would agree with that statement). For me, that's been an important antidote to the evangelical protestantism of my youth, which was essentially a religion defined by belief and experience, and which promoted a belief system which fell like a house of cards once I admitted that the Bible wasn't a modernist/scientific rule-book for life. (This probably tells you as much as you need to know about me, and why I even bother to talk about these sorts of issues. What normal, undamaged individual writes blogs about religious epistemology?! I'm a reactionary. I can change, if I have to.)

And for a final devotional thought, I'd like to close with a bit of absolute truth I came across tonight from Mark Twain, my favorite religious skeptic: "Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of".

Agnostic Christians?

What the hey! I've worked hard today, why not one more blog while I sit and wait to start making dinner for my wife.

So, a question that's been bugging me is this: Is it possible to be an Agnostic Christian? I ask this because I've considered claiming that title for myself, though I probably won't, because doing so would inevitably be seen as an attempt to grab attention, or be misunderstood.

Stated another way, the question is simply whether Christianity should be seen primarily as a set of beliefs, or whether it is something else. For Anglicans, historically "Christian unity" has been defined by something other than belief--that is, common prayer, or liturgy--but the question is whether "Christian" might mean the same thing--that is, participation in certain rituals, commitment to a certain lifestyle, recognition of communion with others, etc. Is it possible to be a Christian simply by being committed to following the lifestyle of Christ (which very few people actually do)? Is it possible to be a Christian and simply not know what you believe? Or does faith have to be defined in rationalistic and dogmatic terms? For me, those are some of the key questions for a faith that tries to move past modernism (and not insignificant for someone who is currently working in ministry). These are also the questions that are determining, I think, the real conflict in the Anglican communion. (Though it is true that traditionally both "liberals" and "conservatives" tend to define faith in dogmatic terms--they just disagree on what dogma should be, and where it should come from).

Personally, it isn't the case that I don't believe in a lot of the teachings of historical Christianity, it's just that 1. I really don't know and 2. I really don't think you can know, if you're honest. So, isn't it logical to stop emphasizing belief so much, and start emphasizing practice and formation, as through traditional Christian disciplines? Can we exist on a continuum? Am I just asking these questions because I'm a middle child existing in a conflicted church who's sick of all the bickering?

The fun thing, in our polycultural world, is that there really isn't ultimately an answer to that question that will satisfy everyone. And so the arguing continues...

A Couple of Lamentations from Christian America.

Posted in the Spirit of the season in which we supposedly celebrate the coming of a man who proclaimed good news for the poor and set the captives free.