The Birth of an Activist by Gabriel G. Scheller

In this piece of work from Gabriel’s senior year of high school, he outlines his racial awakening and subsequent passion for racial justice and reconciliation. 

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The Birth of an Activist by Gabriel G. Scheller

Over the years I have probably read more books than the average teenager. This can partly be attributed to my four years of home schooling with a literature-based curriculum and partly an early introduction to novels by my mother. I have also seen many movies and television shows, more than is probably healthy. Because of these two factors, I was hard-pressed to think of one book or movie that has had any significant influence on my life. The movies I chose are Remember the Titans and Glory; the book is Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

I have been blessed to live as a bi-racial child in an entirely Caucasian family. I never knew my Tanzanian birth father. About a month after my first birthday, my mom married my father and he adopted me when I was five. I have never felt uncomfortable around my white family. Everyone on both my natural mother’s side and my adoptive father’s side treats me with love and respect.

My parents tried as hard as they could to make sure I never tasted the bitterness of racism or bigotry. They even moved the whole family from Point Pleasant Beach, NJ, which had hardly any diversity to Long Branch, NJ, which had everything from Hispanics to Asians. In turn, I never had to deal with discrimination because of the color of my skin. I was never denied access to any public place because I was black. I could always drink out of the same water fountain as anyone else. This was a blessing in almost every way, except that by not suffering myself, I was not as sympathetic towards the people who had suffered as I could have been. The Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement seemed so far away that I never appreciated what had been sacrificed.

It was not until eighth grade that I began to realize the things I had been taking for granted. My mom, my brother and I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s writing style was breathtaking and powerful. She made me feel the ice cold water of a woman trying to escape through a frozen river and every lash inflicted on Tom by Simon Legree. As we read, I had to breathe sighs of relief throughout the book and thank God that he did not create me to live in that time.

Later on I saw the movie and it was very disappointing, as most book-based movies are. I was the only one in AP History class who had read the book and I had everyone excited to watch it. “Wait ’til you see how bad Legree is. You’re gonna’ hate him so much.” Unfortunately the film makers could not fully visualize just how evil Simon was. They did not make his voice drip with hate or send tingles up my spine every time he entered a scene. The movie made him out to be simply an angry drunk, more pitiful than malevolent. The effect was exactly the opposite of the one I had had as a reader. Instead of hating Legree, I almost felt sorry for him.

This new found empathy with the suffering of my predecessors invigorated me. I wanted to do everything for Civil Rights! I wanted to fight the good fight! But there was not even a little inequality I could find in my town, considering the fact that minorities were the majority.

It was not until sophomore year that I saw the two movies that have had the greatest effect on me. I recall seeing posters advertising Remember the Titans and scrutinizing it harshly. How could a Disney movie about football be worth seeing? After it came out, the buzz of the critics was positive, but anyone can find a critic who likes a bad movie. I didn’t take it that seriously until I heard the kids in school raving about it. It was inspirational! It made grown men cry! I finally watched it in my US History II class when it came out on video. I was astonished by Denzel Washington’s stellar performance. This movie didn’t sugar coat anything. It showed the bigotry and skewed logic of disrespecting someone just because of their skin color.

I wanted to do something. I thought for a long time and finally decided I wanted to make a movie, a story of racism that takes place in the present. I wanted to show that it still lives, to show that even though the movers and shakers of the Civil Rights Movement made astronomical advances, we still have a ways to go. I also wanted it to be set in the North. Unfortunately other than setting, I really had nothing to go on. I thought for days, but nothing came to mind and I gradually forgot about my plans.

That spring the class watched Glory. Once again I watched as African Americans were hated for no logical reason. I watched them fight and die for the freedom that I still take for granted. I wanted others to feel the same way I did, watching these movies and reading that book. I was reminded of my screenplay. This time I was determined to come up with a plot. I tried for almost two weeks. Everything I came up with was either pitiful or reminiscent of some other movie. Three weeks had gone by and I had given up. I went to sleep depressed and discouraged. It must have been 2:30 in the morning when I woke up. I saw it all in my head: plot, camera angles, what the actors needed to look like. Everything was there. I hopped out of bed and took out a piece of paper from my desk drawer. I had to get it all down. I couldn’t forget. I crawled back into bed after almost forty-five minutes of furious scribbling and fell asleep with a smile spread across my face.

After much refining and lots of thought, my screenplay evolved into a book. I figured that it would be a lot easier for a first time author to have his book published than it would be to have a screenplay made into the major movie I wanted it to be. Plus, I had no idea how to write a screenplay. It just made more sense to write it as a book, hope it would be popular and then have it made into a movie.

The novella is coming along very slowly. I have been writing it for almost a year. Due to writer’s block and my tendency toward procrastination, I have spent much less time on it than I would have liked. In the move out here to California, some of my important notes were lost, which set me back further. I plan on bouncing back and reaching my goal before I have to leave for college, where I will probably be so sick of writing things that I’d rather have my fingers broken than do it voluntarily.

These three media pieces have influenced me for the better. I have more respect for myself and appreciation for my ethnicity. I don’t let people make ignorant comments about my being mixed the way I used to—even if it’s only in fun. I have decided to stop pretending that it doesn’t hurt. One day I hope and pray that I will have done something to make at least one person feel the same way.

[© GGS 2002, all rights reserved.]

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 Posted on June 13, 2008 by

 Art, Community, Culture, Education, Family, Gabriel Gifford Scheller, History, Leadership, Public Square, Race

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Editorial or Christian Bashing? by Gabriel G. Scheller

In Gabriel’s only semester at Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach, CA, he quickly made his prescence known. When his response to an offensive and irresponsible editorial in the school newspaper was rejected for publication, Gabe printed 100 or so flyers and handed them out to students … until he was stopped by school administrators and, if I recall correctly, instructed to collect the ones he had already distributed. His reasoning matured with age and experience, but the incubation of an activist with high ideals and the ability to articulate them is evident here. I proudly introduce Editorial or Christian Bashing? by Gabriel G. Scheller

 Birth of an Activist

I opened the paper this morning in first period. I flipped through the pages looking for something that would grab my interest. There was a headline in bold block lettering that stated simply “Evangelical Christians.” This interested me so I decided to read on. I would first off like to say that if I was to write something that put down any religion other than Christianity the way Ms. Y did, it would never make it to the final issue. R seems to have an utter resentment and hostility towards a whole group of people that she is not afraid to hide. Now, on the mistakes she made in her effort to turn our campus against my faith.

Finally I come to the part that angered me the most. Ms. Y refers to one man’s ridiculous view that “it has always been Christians and Jews on one side and Muslims on the other” and places that idea on the entire “crazy Christian group” to which I belong. This is by far one of the most unfair statements that R made. It is the equivalent of me saying that all Muslims are crazy and “absurd” because a select few flew some planes into the WTC. I would never make such a statement. I have known many Muslims and they have all proven to be extremely kind and accepting. I would not dare do anything so ignorant as to discount a whole group of people because of one man’s bad choice.

We will start with the first sentence of the first paragraph. R states that “the evangelicals are hard-core Christians who interpret the Bible word for word.” She also states towards the end that “the Bible should not be interpreted literally. If it were, where would all other religions fit in?” To start off, I think that if you live your life by a certain book, or law, why wouldn’t you take it literally? If you belong to a religion, you don’t pick and choose which parts sound nice to you. You take it for all it is, the whole thing. Imagine if we ignored certain laws and only obeyed the ones that we agreed with. “Well, I’m sorry officer. I know it is illegal to speed in a school zone with pot in my car, but I don’t really like that law. The one that prohibits murder is nice, but I shouldn’t have to follow that MIP one because I don’t like it.” If you agree to be part of a country or a religion, you also take on the responsibility of the laws laid out.

In reaction to her second statement, no one said religion had to be “PC.” I can believe what I want without worrying if it is going to offend someone. This skewed logic reminds me of a certain book written by Ray Bradbury. In this story, the government gets rid of all the books, religious or not, because anything that is written will upset at least some people. So the government burns all books so no one will be upset. I wonder if in R’s quest for people to compromise their religious convictions to make other people happy, she considered what such a mindset could lead to. It seems that Ms. Y believes that we should have tolerance for all religions, give them all equal consideration. I do not dispute that point. But R seems to have no tolerance for Christianity as she unwittingly tears it apart.

As for her statement about most of our senators and presidents being Christian, why is that even an issue? Is it even relative? I’m not positive R knows this, but almost all our founding fathers had religious beliefs. It seems that R wants our political leaders to have no religion at all. But would that be a true representation of our country? I don’t think so. Most Americans claim to be Christian. Just ask your history teacher. I am sure he would not dispute that fact. Furthermore it would be nearly impossible to find men for every political position who believed in nothing. R says it is sad that religion will always play a part in politics. I disagree. How do you think our first moral laws were established? Can you tell me why it is bad to cheat on your girlfriend? Can you tell me why it isn’t legal to have more than one wife? These things had to come from somewhere.

R seems to focus her article on Christians disliking Jews. She says that we believe Jews are going to be destroyed when the Armageddon comes. I looked in my Bible and I couldn’t find a spot where it said that. In the book of Revelation in chapter 14, John writes that 144,000 Jews will be sent to heaven during the end times. If we flip back a little to the book of Romans, it talks about how the Jews will see that the Antichrist is terrorizing the earth and they will realize that Jesus was the Messiah they have been waiting for. The Bible also states in Genesis 12:3 that God will bless those who bless the Jews and curse those who curse them. As a Christian, I worship a JEW! Jesus Christ was a Jew! I don’t know, maybe that episode of 60 Minutes slanted the truth in some way, but I think if a journalist is going to state someone else’s beliefs, she should at least do it knowing all the facts.

[© GGS 2002, all rights reserved.]

 2 Comments

 Posted on June 13, 2008 by

 1, church life, Community, Democracy, Ethics, Gabriel Gifford Scheller, Journalism, Leadership, Public Square

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Grieving a Suicide

 

Wheaton College professor John Walford gave a passionate testimony about his brushes with suicide at a recent Wheaton chapel service. There have been three recent alumni suicides in the past year, and the university is rightly concerned about a trend that reflects an alarming three-fold increase in youth suicide. 

While I commend both the university in its desire to address the issue with a strong exhortation and Dr. Walford for his transparency, the message fell short in that it lacks the expert advice that might have provided students with consolation, deeper understanding and tangible help.

Today I’d like to commend to you InterVarsity Press editor and Christianity Today columnist Al Hsu’s excellent book, Grieving a Suicide. I met Al in February at the National Pastors’ Convention and noticed this book on a display table. After Gabe’s death and before we left for the services in New Jersey, I asked him to send me a copy. It was waiting for me when we returned to California. I’m reading it for the second time and ordered 10 more copies for family and friends. (I received the shipment yesterday and will distribute the books forthwith.)

Al’s book is dedicated to his father, Terry Tsai-Yuan Hsu, an accomplished electrical engineer who took his own life after a debilitating stroke. Al brings to the topic both a survivor’s understanding and good scholarship.

The book is divided into three parts:

  • When Suicide Strikes—Shock, Turmoil, Lament, Relinquishment and Remembrance
  • The Lingering Questions—Why Did this Happen? Is Suicide the Unforgivable Sin? Where is God When it Hurts?
  • Life after Suicide—The Spirituality of Grief, The Healing Community, The Lessons of Suicide.

 

In Part I, we learn that “the grief that suicide survivors experience is described by psychologists as ‘complicated grief.’ … Those of us who experience complicated bereavement are actually grappling with two realities, grief and trauma. Grief is normal; trauma is not. The combination of circumstances is like a vicious one-two punch. We are grieving the death of a loved one, and we are reeling from the trauma of suicide. The first is difficult enough; the second may seem unbearable.”

Al categorizes the resultant turmoil as follows:

  1. Shock, disbelief and numbness–“‘The immediate response to suicide is total disbelief,’ writes a suicide survivor. ‘The act is so incomprehensible that we enter into a state where we feel unreal and disconnected.'”
  2. Distraction—“Friends of survivors may need an extra measure of patience … traumatic grief has caused an inability to focus.”
  3. Sorrow and Despair—“Survivors often fall into a state of melancholy and depression … In some ways we may unconsciously identify with the hopelessness that precipitated our loved one’s death.”
  4. Rejection and Abandonment—“Suicide feels like a total dismissal, the cruelest possible way a person could tell us that they are leaving us behind … So we feel abandoned. Our sense of self-worth is crippled. All our doubts and insecurities are magnified a hundred-fold.”
  5. Failure—“Feelings of failure may surface any time a survivor had a caretaking role … Our feelings of regret and guilt may seem overwhelming, but they eventually subside as we realize the death was not our fault.”
  6. Shame—“Beyond the combination of normal grief and traumatic grief, survivors of suicide suffer an additional insult to injury—the societal stigma that surrounds suicide.”
  7. Anger, Rage and Hatred—“We may hate our loved one for doing this to our loved one. We grieve the suicide and rage against him simultaneously.”
  8. Paralysis—“A simple phone call had triggered an anxiety-filled reaction.”
  9. Sleeplessness—“We lie awake, with our thoughts flying in all directions.”
  10. Relief–“About half of suicides are at least somewhat expected due to ongoing depression or patterns of self-destructive behavior. In our sadness, we are shocked to discover that we are glad it’s all over.”
  11. Self-destructive thoughts and feelings—“One danger of being a suicide survivor is the possibility of falling into suicidal despair.”

In the chapter from Part II on remembrance, Al offers this helpful advice:

“Because of the corrosive, personality-altering nature of suicidal depression, ‘by the time suicide occurs, those who kill themselves may resemble only slightly children or spouses once greatly loved and enjoyed for their company.’ The days, weeks and years following a suicide may be a time of gradually recovering the memories of our loved one, of discovering true and lasting remembrances of their life.”

The chapter I have most marked up is the Why chapter. From our first conversation at 5:00 in the morning after Gabe died, Aaron Kheriaty gently but firmly instructed us that the suicide will never make sense. And yet we try …

Al writes, “We must make a distinction between causes and triggers. Suicide might be triggered by divorce or the loss of a job, but those may not be the actual causes … Suicidal desires run much deeper, and if one event does not trigger the suicide, another might.”

Nonetheless there are some defining characteristics:

  1. Medical and biological factors—“Studies show that about two-thirds of suicides had suffered from clinical depression or had a history of chronic mental illness.”
  2. Psychological factors—“Psychiatrist Karl Menninger suggested that suicides have three interrelated and unconscious dimensions: a wish to kill (the self), due to some degree of self-hatred; a wish to die, arising out of a sense of hopelessness; and a wish to be killed, coming from a sense of guilt. …  The agony of depression is so great that the suicide musters the resolve to do away with the pain, at the expense of his or her own life.”
  3. Sociological factors—“In the last quarter-century, society has tilted toward the individual rather than the communal … The glue that holds communities and families together is disappearing … [Suicide] rates among the young, more socially alienated generations have tripled … The more socially isolated we become, the higher our risk.”

Al mentions other factors like suicide as philosophical protest, the higher tendency toward depression/suicide in those with artistic temperaments, suicide because of grief (eg. 9/11 survivors) and suicide as atonement.

He says we may be asking the why question when what we really want to know is How could they do this to me?  For him, it is helpful to realize that his father “did what he did to end his pain, not to cause pain for me.” 

Each life and death is both common and unique. Dr. Walford’s experience with the temptation toward suicide sounds familiar and yet very different from Gabe’s. He communicated it in his chapel message through the lens of spiritual battle. That is one lens. The context of Gabriel’s death reads to me like a perfect storm of contributing factors. I see his suicide through a compound lens.

Walford chose a route to suicide that allowed him the opportunity to come to his senses. Gabe did not. Is one man more spiritual than the other because of method or outcome? I think not.

In Part III of Grieving a Suicide, Al talks about life after suicide. In the chapter on the healing community, he gives good advice on the language we use to describe suicide. Instead of saying someone “committed suicide” as if the victim were a criminal, we can say they died by suicide or they took their own life.

The final chapter offers five lessons we can learn from suicide:

  1. Suicide reminds us that we live in a fallen world.
  2. Suicide teaches us that life is uncertain.
  3. Suicide reminds us of our mortality.
  4. Suicide shows us the interconnectedness of humanity. Al was surprised to discover how well regarded his father was by his peers and what a profound impact his good gifts had on them. He and his family were comforted by the outpouring of support they received. We’ve had these experiences as well.
  5. Suicide demonstrates the necessity of hope. Amen and amen.

Our family has been mercifully spared much insensitivity and ignorance in the wake of this tragedy. I can’t imagine going through this without the wise counsel of those who’ve walked the road before. Grieving a Suicide is a book I don’t ever want to recommend again because doing so would mean someone else enduring this type of senseless tragedy. And yet, a suicide occurs every 17 minutes in the United States.

If you are a pastor or lay minister, prepare yourself with knowledge before you try to minister to the grieving and confused. This book will help you do that; it includes a helpful appendix of suicide prevention/survival resources. If you are a survivor, it will be a balm to your soul.

Thanks Al!

[photo ©cas 2007: sunrise at Mustard Seed Ranch, Warner Springs, CA]

 7 Comments

 Posted on May 6, 2008 by

 1, Community, Culture, Education, Ethics, Family, Gabriel Gifford Scheller, Leadership, Medicine, Psychiatry, Psychology, Redemption, Theology, Walkin' the Talk

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Racing for Research

 

The scene above is a favorite one when I’m out walking. It will become much more familiar as I train for the Long Beach Marathon. I begin today with a moderate Run/Walk Plan. The race takes place on October 12, 2008. My goal is to raise $1000 for Neurofibromatosis (NF) research. More info and updates to come.

But first  …

Did you know that NF is more common than Cystic Fibrosis, inherited Muscular Dystrophy, Huntington’s Disease and Tay Sach’s combined? More than 100,000 Americans have NF, which is either inherited or the result of a genetic mutation. 

The gene that causes NF was identified in 1990 by Francis Collins’ team (before he was director of the National Human Genome Research Institute). Collins’ book The Language of God is being discussed in considerable depth on Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog. To date, there are five six posts archived under the Theology category.

[photo ©cas 2008, Irvine, CA]

 3 Comments

 Posted on March 24, 2008 by

 Education, Family, Leadership, Medicine, Science, Walkin' the Talk

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Friday Fun with Religion, Science and the Press

Friday, March 7, 2008

ACT I:

12:00 pm, directly after a Psychiatry & Spirituality Forum lecture to psychiatric residents at UC Irvine

(Paraphrasing)

Senior Staff Doctor: “Hello”

Christine: “Hi, I’m Christine. I’m a journalist. I’m doing a story on the Forum for xyz news outlet.

Senior Staff Doctor: “Every time I talk to a reporter, I come out sounding like an idiot. …”

Christine: “Sometimes it’s not the reporter’s fault. It’s those word counts. You have to talk in sound bites.”

Dr. Kheriaty agrees, kibitzing follows.

Senior Staff Doctor to Dr. Kheriaty: “That reporter from wxt news outlet called. She wanted to know if you are some kind of religious zealot. I told her you aren’t, but you know, you ought to have my Native American friend speak. He really helped us get through a contentious work situation.”

Dr. Kheriaty: “We try to be imperically-based and inclusive …”

ACT II:

5:45 pm, CHOC Boardroom, before NIH Embryonic Stem Cell Training Course students arrive for lecture and dinner

(paraphrasing)

Renowned Stem Cell Researcher: “Hello”

Christine: “Hello”

Renowned Stem Cell Researcher: “Are you a student?”

Christine: “No, I’m a journalist.”
Renowned Stem Cell Researcher: “A journalist? From what publication?”

Christine: “I’m pitching a story to xyz news outlet. It’s non-sectarian.”

Renowned Stem Cell Researcher: “It’s not Catholic is it?”
Christine: “No, but I’ve written from that perspective before. I’m not doing that this time. People should be able to disagree and still be respectful though, don’t you think?”

Renowned Stem Cell Researcher: “I don’t know. I’m glad I asked.”

Christine: “Why, will you say something different in your lecture because I’m here?”

Renowned Stem Cell Researcher (direct quote): “No, but the Catholics. I’ll be honest. I despise them.”

Christine: stunned silence

Renowned Stem Cell Researcher (paraphrasing): “The bishop of tzv came down to mwl saying he’s against IVF, ruining a lot of people’s happiness.”

Christine (to herself): “Nice to meet you too.”

[photo ©cas 2008, CHOC North Boardroom, Orange, CA ]

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 Posted on March 8, 2008 by

 Bioethics, Journalism, Leadership, Medicine, Politics, Psychiatry, Public Square, Science

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NPC Wrap UP

 

The National Pastors Convention ended at noon yesterday. I’ve been to many conferences over the years, and I must say this was one of the most enjoyable. Beeson Divinity school professor/author/painter Calvin Miller touched on why this was true for me. In his session on Celtic Christianity, he described how different events attract different audiences. I was at home with this audience. Not only that, but the organizers were wonderful hosts to us journalists. I’m sitting right now at a dining room table covered with books, some of which the publishers would, no doubt, like me to mention. This brings me back to my first post from the convention. In it, I mentioned the fact that a session moderator had asked the audience not to blog about it. At least three others have now done so. Specifically, he asked us not to blog “provocative one-liners” and then he or someone else jokingly stated: “What happens in the Critical Concerns Courses stays in the Critical Concerns Courses.”

When I was at the Better Watchdogs Workshop back in September, we had a discussion about when groups that actively seek publicity suddenly bar the press from reporting on a public or semi-public meeting. There was not clear consensus on what to do in such situations. I said that I would comply with such a request, but vocally protest it and take it into account in future reporting, which is what I have done here. Let me add another thought: If authors and their publishers don’t want the press to report provocative one-liners, perhaps the authors should refrain from spewing them. It seems to me they do so to get a reaction. Both audiences and we in the press might also do well not to take the bait. Better to ignore declines in discourse than to advertise them.

Speaking of Calvin Miller’s session “Praying as a Creature to the Creator: Finding God in the Thin Places of the World He has Made for You,” this was the only talk I attended for personal edification. I have appreciated Miller’s writing and looked forward to hearing the sage speak in person. For the life of me, I can’t tell you what he said. Partly this was fatigue, partly it was his speaking style. He was like a whirling dervish, flinging out poems and jokes and sturdy bits of wisdom with some sense of structure, but a structure I couldn’t follow. I suspect I might be like him as a speaker, struggling to express something coherent—only I don’t like chaos. I’d also skip the fat American jokes, as any regular reader of this blog can attest. (I’m sure the attractive, ample woman beside me didn’t appreciate them either.) And I would skip the multiple reminders to buy my new book, though I think he can be forgiven since he mentioned that his previously held eschatology had fooled him into not planning for his golden years until he was in his fifties. I had already bought The Path of Celtic Prayer at any rate, and don’t regret it.

I only wish I had gone to hear Jim Wallis talk about his new book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, instead. I had heard Wallis on Thursday evening in a short interview with Efrem Smith. Even Smith was skeptical of Wallis’ protestations that he is not advocating a Religious Left to counter the Religious Right. Wallis said he is preaching spiritual revival, for without it, neither party will effect real change.

Krista Tippett‘s interview with Bishops Rucyahana and Wright was impressive. She picked up on some of the themes I spoke with Bishop Rucyahana about regarding the Anglican splintering. (Wright corrected my reference to it as a “split” in my interview with him.) I encourage anyone who cares about our world to check the Speaking of Faith website for the air date. Currently, an interview with the late John O’ Donahue is being featured. I’d never heard of O’Donahue until bloggers began reporting his death earlier this year, and then a dear Irishman who is not a churchgoer told me his “relations,” as he calls them, were friends with O’Donahue. I’ll be acquainting myself (and my friend) with him shortly.

Long after the convention site had cleared, I spent 30 minutes with N.T. Wright, bishop of Durham, England. Wright gives fully-orbed answers to interview questions and I had a lot of them to pack into a short span of time. They centered on two themes: his thoughts on the Anglican “splintering” and his thoughts on what Phyllis Tickle calls “The Great Emergence.” I’ll not share what Wright said about the Anglican situation, except to say this: He rejects the critique of Dr. Vinay Samuel in The Anglican Mainstream that his position on the Global Anglican Future Conference is essentially racist. I intend to explore this theme elsewhere.

As to his views on the emergents, he spent time with some of them at Soularize in the Bahamas last year and thinks there are some serious Christian thinkers among them. He hadn’t heard of Peter Rollins, who has been described to me as the premiere “emerging” philosopher, and was unfamiliar with Rollins’ more questionable ideas. He thinks the emerging church is a reasonable response to the modernist mega-church construct. A couple times Wright had said post-modernism “preaches the Fall” to arrogant modernism. I asked him if he didn’t think post-modernism communicates an arrogance of its own. He agreed, which may be why he is stressing “post-post modernism,” an idea he defined for Tippett. My notes are unclear on this point, but he said something about the church leading the way forward as society is fumbling about between modernism and post-modernism.

Here’s what struck me about Bishop Wright:

That he is a brilliant scholar and orator is obvious. I have now heard him talk passionately about the importance of prophetic voices several times. (I couldn’t agree more.) In this context, at the closing communion service, he gave an erudite description of courage as the culmination of countless small decisions over time that lead those who have it to make incredible sacrifices when it counts. So I asked him, “Who are our prophets?” He was a bit startled and said he had been speaking theoretically. After a minute or two, he named the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. For example, he said Williams had effectively argued against euthanasia before the House of Lords. I threw out a couple American names. He affirmed Jim Wallis, even if he disagrees with Wallis in bits.

Here’s the thing: In the preface to Wright’s new book Surprised by Hope, he confesses to potential critics that he has not really known grief. He has not known grief. Sit with that thought a moment. He talks about courage and prophecy as theory. Well articulated ideas are vital to life and society. I am grateful for them. As a journalist, I sometimes feel inadequate in the face of them, but I have been intimately acquainted with grief and have known something of courage. Such experiences change everything about how one views the world. My enthusiasm for Wright is a bit chastened by this revelation.

In the Intro to Philosophy class I attended when I was interviewing Dallas Willard, he mentioned three kinds of knowledge: reason, experience and authority. I can lay claim to the first 2/3 of the equation. As a journalist, 2/3 of a whole may be enough to find the gems amidst the bunk. There were a lot of gems at NPC.

[photos and text © cas, San Diego, CA, 2008]

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 Posted on March 1, 2008 by

 Art, Beauty, Books, Community, Culture, Education, Ethics, History, Journalism, Leadership, Philosophy, Politics, Public Square, Race, Redemption, Theology, Walkin' the Talk

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Day 2-3: NPC

I missed Dan Kimball‘s session on Tuesday. Driving down the 5 freeway, through the rugged section of coast that is Camp Pendleton, traffic stopped short—something that poses a particular challenge for someone driving a stick shift with a cup of coffee in her hand. Two border patrol cars flew past me in the left shoulder, a couple helicopters seemed to be circling, then came the ambulances. The crawl was on.

I arrived in time for lunch, an hour or so before my interview with Kimball, or so I thought. Wandering over to the food court at the outdoor mall adjacent to the hotel, I saw a former colleague who I really didn’t want to see. I did what any upstanding Christian would do. I avoided him at all costs and had lunch with a nice Presbyterian pastor on the far side of the food court. The pastor’s son just became a Baptist. We’re all a-mingling now, aren’t we?

As I was lingering in conversation, Leslie Speyers, a gracious publicist from Zondervan, was looking for me because I was supposed to be, not lunching with a Presbyterian, but interviewing Kimball. Fortunately, the snafu worked to his benefit and we got together later in the afternoon. I took the extra time to dig a little deeper into his book, They Like Jesus, but Not the Church. As I was reading, I was wondering what could possibly be controversial about this guy. He calls himself a fundamentalist I believe (I gave the book away so I can’t double-check right now), and appropriately defines the term. I’m realizing more and more that sometimes new labels are stuck on incremental changes in that which is normative.

Dan is a pastor rather than a pontificator. I’ve heard some pontification this week; not much, but a bit of it. He is a man in the trenches, and seems like he can’t be bothered with the controversies that distract others. Problem is, the distractors find him. He mentioned a random encounter with a local “brother” who told him he and his church are praying for Dan’s ministry to fail. Sigh.

After my interview with Dan, I caught the tail end of a workshop called “Redefining Power: Finding Our Place in a Global Church.” Very interesting discussion about how to make cross-cultural partnerships healthier and more effective. An African named D. Zac Niringiye wasted no time telling us Americans to repent of our greed. He thinks it is very difficult to be an American and a Christian, and said a lot of so-called partnerships are really sponsorships in which both parties manipulate each other. The solution is confession of sin.

Novel idea.

Niringiye wasn’t ranting against American imperialism, just speaking the truth in love to an American audience. A Philippine speaker named Athena Gorospe likewise advised US missionaries to repent of their manifest destiny paradigm, which she says communicates the message that the Anglo-Saxon race is superior.

Essentially, I heard that we Americans need to get off our high horse and humbly partner with the global church. At the end of the session, the moderator, Mark Labberton, especially thanked a Zondervan vice president, saying that without his support the session would not have happened. What does that tell you?

One speaker I especially wanted to hear was Rwandan bishop John Rucyahana. I have done so twice now and interviewed him yesterday. I wanted to know what the suffering church has to teach us; what critique it offers. Rucyahana gave a rousing sermon and personal testimony Tuesday night. He talked about wrestling with the why questions of the Rwandan genocide when he was living in a Ugandan refugee camp. God, Why did you let this happen? Why do I have no nation? etc.

His ministry in Uganda was so effective that the government there granted him and his family citizenship. It was immediately afterwards that God called him to go back to Rwanda and help heal his nation. He fairly exploded in praise talking about it Tuesday night, shouting, “Jesus is there!” In both sessions I attended, he told remarkable stories of reconciliation. Repentance and forgiveness are the soil in which it grows. He noted reconciliation is not “magic,” but an ongoing process with people in different stages of repentance, forgiveness, unrepetentance and unforgiveness.

As an example of the ongoing process, he talked about when a person who has been wronged avoids their offender, turning away when they see the person in the street. I thought back to my former colleague who, like a number of us, had quit his job at my former church in disgust, but then went back to work there for pragmatic reasons. When he did, I told him he was no longer a “safe” person with whom I could have a casual relationship (which is true). And now the reconciler was telling me I’m wrong to avoid him.

In our interview, I had pressed the bishop a bit by applying his principles to the Anglican split. He didn’t see it the same way, saying one can love and pray for the other side to repent, but that one cannot be reconciled to heresy. Hmmm. Maybe I’m off the hook … but only if orthopraxy matters as much as orthodoxy.

Next, I caught a couple minutes of Shane Claiborne talking about his new book Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals. How could any casual observer not like this guy? My newlywed years were spent in the Philadelphia suburbs, so I have an especially soft heart toward his work there.

I snuck out of the session to see a screening of Ben Stein’s new documentary Expelled about the evolution/intelligent design debate. One would have thought it was put out by conservative evangelicals. Stein interviews premiere players in the debate, and poignantly reveals a motivating force. He is a Jew and takes viewers to a German extermination camp for the infirm. Listening to the “museum” guide’s perspective on what the Nazis did there was chilling, both for him and, one would hope, for viewers.

Zondervan hosted a lovely media reception at dusk. I was schmoozing with a senior executive of the company and didn’t even know it until he formally introduced himself to us. He recommended a movie called Once that Dave Zimmerman mentions in his latest post. (Dave, by the way, is at the New Conspirators conference promoting the book of the same name that he edited, and I assisted on.) I also had a nice chat with a producer and online editor for Krista Tippett’s NPR show, Speaking of Faith, and was gratified to know that Tippett had made similar interview choices to my own. This afternoon she will do a broadcast interview with Bishop Rucyahana and N.T. Wright, with whom I will meet tomorrow afternoon to close out the convention.

Today, I’m getting a late start down to San Diego. This afternoon, I have a meeting with an editor about a book idea. This evening Jim Wallis speaks. (There’s a disturbing must-read article about the disposal of 9/11 victims’ remains in the February issue of his magazine, Sojourners.) I may stay overnight with friends again tonight, but this time will have to refrain from staying up into the wee hours of the morning talking. I’m running on E. Empty that is.

Others are blogging the convention. Some of them are indexed here.

Correction: The speaker on evening 4 was N.T. Wright, not Jim Wallis. Wallis was interviewed before Wright spoke.

Correction #2: I checked Dan Kimball’s book; in it he says he sometimes “jokingly” refers to himself as a fundamentalist. He actually described himself to me as a mainstream evangelical. I agree.

 4 Comments

 Posted on February 28, 2008 by

 Democracy, Education, Leadership, Public Square, Race, Redemption, Theology, Walkin' the Talk

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Day 1: NPC

Day 1 of the National Pastors Convention was delightful, both because the volunteers manning the information both were so kind and helpful throughout the day, and also because my interview with prolific author Phyllis Tickle was so much fun. We talked mostly about her upcoming book, The Great Emergence. I’ll detail our conversation in a separate post.

Scot McKnight and Phyllis were together when I arrived for the interview and Scot greeted me so warmly, I felt like we were old friends—which we are in the warp speed of cyber-space. Scot and Phyllis were part of a panel discussion last night along with Andy Crouch and Tony Jones called “Emerging Critical Issues Facing the Church: Religious Pluralism, the Role of Scripture, Homosexuality and Political Involvement.” Only half the topics were covered: the Bible and political involvement; the other two will be addressed this morning. The discussion on the role of Scripture was interesting; the other one less so. I confess I went mostly to hear Andy Crouch interact with the other authors. He was a favorite columnist of mine for CT and I suspected his would be a voice with which I would agree. I really can’t say much about this session because in a funny bit of irony for the emerging crowd, we were asked not to blog about it. I’ll keep my opinion to myself on this one.

This morning I’ll be attending the second half of Dan Kimball’s talk on why young people love Jesus, but not the church. I have an interview scheduled with Dan this afternoon … an interview that was confirmed only yesterday.

I’m going to give myself away here as a newbie Anglican by saying that other than Kimball, the authors with whom I’ve requested interviews are all prominent Anglicans.

Well, that’s all I have time for this morning, except to say that spring is blooming here in SoCal. The bursts of color lining the highway mid-winter are one of the things that sells a person on this place … and then, after living here a while, you realize that more foliage will eventually mean more brush to burn when the winter rains are long gone. I’m sure I could find a metaphor in there, but I’ll pass on it. The blooms are beautiful while they last. The dry brush is too in its own way.

 7 Comments

 Posted on February 26, 2008 by

 Blogging, Education, Leadership, Theology

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National Pastors Convention

 

I’ll be trekking back and forth to San Diego again in a little over a week for the National Pastors Convention. On my schedule, in addition to plenty of inviting seminars, are two parties, a couple of confirmed interviews with influential authors, a couple more possible interviews and one kinda/sorta meeting. If you will be attending and would like to meet up, email me at exploring.intersections@yahoo.com. If you can’t be there, but would like to, you can stop back here after it’s all over for my reportage.

 [The above photo, © cas 2007 and titled Emerging San Diego, has been viewed  2,216 times on flickr.com. Who’d a thunk it?]

 1 Comment

 Posted on February 15, 2008 by

 Community, Leadership

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God in Public?

[Fuzzy San Diego, cas 2007]  

Earlier this year, the spiritual advisor to the Queen of England spoke at a fundraiser for my church’s legal defense. It was my introduction to life as an Anglican in Newport Beach. The fundraiser was held at the yacht club. Jeff and I were seated with some senior citizens, a couple of whom were downing Scotch while singing along with the worship band. A priest wearing ornate red robes stood out amidst the crowd. “Who is that?” we asked. The spiritual advisor to the queen. Ohhh.

The queen’s guy had nothing on N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, in terms of crowd-hushing presence. Wright wasn’t wearing robes, but when he walked to the podium at AAR, people seemed to anticipate something profound. I’m not sure he said anything profound, but he resonated with me, partly because I’m neither a “fluffy” postmodernist nor a linear-thinking modernist, and partly, I think, because I’m from New Jersey and we like our Scotch neat. (That’s metaphor; I don’t drink Scotch.)

The Bishop said the idea of God in Public is a topic society should have been addressing for a long time. (Haven’t we been arguing about this in the United States for a couple hundred years?) In the split world of the Enlightenment, even William Wilberforce committed a faux pas by employing a biblically-based political critique in his abolitionist rhetoric. 

Wright said belief in the Bible and in the bodily resurrection of Christ are both fading, but that the rise in fundamentalism is alarming. Once again I heard that the secularist/fundamentalist dance is two opposing modernist narratives that are “running out of steam.” He described the dance as a “stunning example of missing the point.”

(Here he noted, with what sounded like disapproval, that the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature have split under criticism that their relationship was evidence of religious bias in the Academy.)

The Enlightenment dream ultimately “eats its own tail,” in Wright’s view. Reason inevitably descends into spin, which degenerates further into emotivism.

Wisdom takes a different track.

He suggested that much of evangelicalism is based on the Epistles rather than the Gospels and said this mirrors a larger problem of not knowing what the Gospels are for. He believes they provide the basis for the idea of God in Public. In the Gospels, God is reclaiming the world as his own in and through Jesus. They demonstrate what the world looks like with God running the show.

Wright said both Hitchens and Nietzsche work from the perspective of “God as tyrant,” but the coming of God into the world is the confrontation of alientating and dehumanizing tryants.

He suggested an integrated reading of the Gospels and mentioned both Luke 4 and the Sermon on the Mount. He stood the Gospels up against all comers, saying the kingdom Jesus brought was emphatically for this world, defeating both tyranny and chaos, Modernism and “fluffy” postmodernism. He said that the Gospel narrative read this way “resists deconstructionist power games.” It is, instead, the impetus for renewal and the final coming together of heaven and earth.

This is where he called the religious right a “clumsy attempt” at trying to bring God back into public life “without understanding why or how this makes sense.” (He had earlier stated that in England there is no religious right, only a religious left. He seemed to favor neither one.) He then said something about launching a “political hermaneutic of suspicion.” The Gospels, in contrast, are the story of God’s public kingdom project that summons the whole world to repentance and faith.

He quoted Psalm 2, and said the creator God reigns through order, not chaos. He mentioned Jim Wallis’ new book, but said we need a more firmly grounded Creationist order. Even corrupt order is better than chaos, in Wright’s view. He mentioned John 19, I Corinthians 2, and Colossians 2 as a biblical basis for this position. He affirmed the legitimacy of confronting corrupt leaders, saying the rulers of this age inevitably twist God-ordained authority into the satanic possibility of tryanny. However, the cross offers a paradoxical victory. It is tyranny confronted and overthrown (Romans 13).

God is a god of order, even if He has, inevitably, to judge that order.

In the New Testament, Jesus is already Lord of heaven and earth. The Spirit was given so the world would be called to account. The reign of the Spirit is demonstrated in works of justice, mercy, beauty, and through relationship.

He said we must collaborate without compromise and critique without dualism. He denounced our present “glorification of democracy,” which, in his view, stems from Enlightenment dualism. Holding governments to account demands, however, that the church is called to account as well. He suggested that we welcome both prophetic witness and reform within our communities.

Wright said, “In all kinds of ways, we are moving toward post-postmodernism.” He failed to defend this statement.

As to modernism and postmodernism, he dismissed one as boring and trivial and the other as dangerous and dehumanizing. You decide which is which. He didn’t say. I can conjure arguments either way, despite the obvious implication.

The Bishop of Durham concluded by saying we must take seriously the biblical witness to God in public, and develop a wise exegesis for the common good, while rejecting the shrill certainties of fundamentalism and the necessary nihilism of the postmodern reaction.

This is why I liked him. He sounded like a realist.

 6 Comments

 Posted on November 25, 2007 by

 Community, Culture, Leadership, Philosophy, Public Square, Redemption, Walkin' the Talk

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The Covenant with Black America

 

My notes from talk show host Tavis Smiley‘s speech are short, which isn’t surprising. He only spoke for about 10 minutes and did so reluctantly. He even joked about praying that God would let the cup pass from him, but said that when his friend Cornel West called, he couldn’t refuse him.

This session was not an academic one. It was more like a gospel pep rally. There were standing ovations for each of the panelists, pats on the back across the podium and a series of inspiring soundbites.

Here’s what I wrote down:  

Smiley described lying in a hospital for 10 days as a 12 year old, not knowing whether he would live or die after a severe beating by his father. It was during this time that he discovered a hero in Martin Luther King Jr. He grew up in a Pentacostal church and said he has been trying to be like Jesus his entire life. He’s still trying to be like Jesus.

Smiley said he believed everyone in the room wants the same thing as Americans, and that is to live in a nation that is as good as its promise. He believes God has given each of us gifts to match some communal need and that using our gifts in service to others is a condition of citizenship.

Smiley based his speech on three points from Walter Rauschenbusch’s pivotal book, Christianity and the Social Crisis. This classic influenced both Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gahndi. It has been updated and expanded for its hundreth anniversary. (Along with Cone’s book and Oden’s, this one is on my reading list.)

Quoting Rauschenbusch, Smiley said a nation as good as its promise will include these elements:

  1. Justice for all
  2. Service to others
  3. Love that liberates

He said it takes courage to hope that such a society is possible, and denounced those who would celebrate men like King and Gandhi, while dismissing their methodology. Love is non-existent in today’s public discourse, according to Smiley, but he still believes it is the most powerful force in the world. He said it is this power that will transform the world, in contrast to the love of power. Then he dissed George W. Bush.

He borrowed some quotes from West, something he said he does often, so I don’t know which of this next series are his and which originate with West.

  1. You can’t lead folk if you don’t love and you can’t save if you don’t serve.
  2. If you call yourself a leader and nobody is following, you’re just out for a walk. 
  3.  What is the depth of your love for those you lead? What is your quality of service to them?

Next Smiley reminded the audience that everyone is worthy to receive love just because. He believes the promise of our nation and our public policy are currently “nowhere in sinc.” As a member of the media, he tries to interview those whose voices don’t ordinarily get heard and asks questions others don’t ask. Imagine that.

He quoted West again:

Justice is what love looks like in public. Then he mentioned King, saying, Cowardice asks: Is it safe? (Courage obviously asks a different set of questions, although I don’t recall him saying what they are.)

That was it for Smiley.

The incoming president of AAR spoke briefly as did an academic from Princeton, but neither said anything noteworthy. Everyone seemed to defer to West, whose rhetorical gifts would intimidate most public speakers. It’s not so much what he says that impresses, but how he says it. He’s a rap/poet/preacherman. Is it fire in the belly or performance art? I don’t know. Maybe a bit of both. He has presence, knows it and uses it masterfully in service to his cause. 

West’s verbal gymnastics were delivered with such ferocity that it was nearly impossible to record. I caught one bit of truth: He said a person can’t talk about justice without learning how to die.  This isn’t just “PC chitchat,” but giving it up and turning it lose—to quote James Brown. It’s about loving folk and hating unfair treatment. It’s about “unsettling the numbness” and taking power back from the elite, which Smiley had earlier said only operates with the deference of the people.

Loving and dying lead to justice. That’s all I got. I think it’s enough. Who takes notes on a pep rally anyway?

 3 Comments

 Posted on November 23, 2007 by

 Community, Culture, Leadership, Public Square, Redemption, Walkin' the Talk

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Emerging/Emergent San Diego

Emerging San Diegoemerging san diego

[ San Diego, CA, 2007]

Some readers of this blog post are waiting for me to pronounce judgment on emerging/emergent after listening to one two-and-a-half hour panel discussion. So let me get this out of the way: I came away from the AAR session on this subject identifying myself as emerging, if not emergent, but also as someone who might even be willing to add that little “Friend of Emergent Village” logo to my blog. I can use all the friends I can get, can’t you?

This was a great opportunity for me because the subject of emergent comes up so frequently in conversations. My uncle is writing a book denouncing emergent (do we need another?), which he talks to my father about, which my father talks to me about. My Calvary Chapel friends ask me about it. Just yesterday I heard that a musician who has co-written a book on Emerging Worship has been canceled from at least one big Calvary Chapel event because of his book. I find myself defending something I don’t thoroughly understand, simply because I am so well acquainted with the thinking that reflexively denouonces it. The irony here, of course, is that some of the denouncers were, in fact, a previous generation’s emergers.

Scot McKnight, Tony Jones, and Diana Butler Bass did a great job of clearing the fog. Jones will be posting a podcast of the session on Emergent Village. Listening to the session yourself is obviously the best way to evaluate it. In the meantime, I will do my best to summarize what I heard. I must confess, however, that my notes on this session weren’t as good as I had thought.

The discussion began with introductions:

Jones said that Leadership Network discovered Bill Hybels and Rick Warren in the mid-1980s. Their ministries resonated with Boomers who were coming back to church, but that the GenXers were leaving church and not coming back. When his band of peers was trying to determine how to reach out to the this group in the late 1990s, there was an immediate rift in the group. Half wanted to make the gospel relavent, while the other half was reconsidering the gospel in America altogether. This half was interested in epistemology rather than relevance, and founded emergent.

At only 10 years old, Jones said there is still a lot of immaturity in emergent, and that there have been mistakes. He also credited the internet as a factor in its growth. As an example, he mentioned having given a paper at a theology conference (was it at Wheaton?), which was excluded from the official conference book because it was “off message.” He posted the paper on the internet and it was downloaded 2500 times. (I’ve had a similar, if less fruitful, experience.)

Jones described himself as a “gadfly.” He spends half his time as coordinator of Emergent Village, is a doctoral fellow at Princeton Theological Seminary, travels prodigiously and is a volunteer police chaplain and a cub scout leader. (I hope a good husband too; I don’t recall him mentioning that.)

Butler Bass came to emergent by a different path. She said she knew, and broke, all the rules of the evangelical subculture, having graduated from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA, and later having been fired from an evangelical institution of higher eduction. In 2000, she received a Lilly Foundation grant to study examples of vitality in mainline churches, one of which she attends. I believe she said she shared a publisher with Brian McLaren, and was told by her editor that she and McLaren should meet because they were “writing the same book.” I’m not sure which of his books this was, but they met and talked for 4+ hours and, indeed, found parallels in their work.

She mentioned reaching back to the past in order to move forward, and defined emerging as a larger reworking of things—a set of patterns of cultural change—that transcends religious groups and even religions. There is emerging Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, etc.

She asked: What is it emerging from and what is it emerging toward?

Scot McKnight first encountered Brian McLaren when McLaren spoke at the institution where McKnight was teaching. He thought McLaren was “thoroughly boring and uninteresting.” But then, a magazine editor suggested to him that he might enjoy blogging (Mark, was that you?). Nothing much happened until he blogged about the book gallies of a D.A. Carson work that he said picked on one dimension of emergent. Jesus Creed took off, much to Scot’s dismay. He said he started following emergent because of the blog and woke up one day to discover that he was a part of a movement with which he doesn’t always agree. Even so, they welcomed him with open arms, which he thought was pretty cool.

After the introductions, a discussion ensued that was intermittently about faddishness vs. substance.

McKnight, who described himself as a linear-thinking modernist, compared emergents to a blue parakeet that invaded the turf of his backyard sparrows. The sparrows were thrown into a frenzy by its presence. McKnight said the emergents are asking questions the traditional church doesn’t want to hear. He also identified emerging as a phenomenon, and emergent as a dimension of it.

These are the questions McKnight hears emergents asking:

  1. What kind of truth can be found in Scripture?
  2. If evolution isn’t true, why did God make the world to look like it is? (He said the younger generation doesn’t care about Creation Science.)
  3. If Paul says we are new creatures in Christ, why are there so many old creatures in the church? (He talked here about church scandal fatigue.)
  4. Is everyone who hasn’t heard the gospel really going to hell? (He said this question isn’t going away.)
  5. The fifth question is about a moral critique of the Bible. eg. Why is Jeptha heroized in Hebrews 11?
  6. The sixth had to do with what he called “social location”—a chastened epistemology that doesn’t seek a universal theology, but is sensitive to cultural context.

McKnight thinks, as do I, that the church should be a safe place for asking questions rather than a place that locks them out. He later coined the term “ironic faith” to describe the generation of students he encounters. Because their environment does not allow for questions, they live with ambiguity, ambivalence, and, consequently, anger. He said genuine conversation lets kids explore answers.

Butler Bass responded that there was not one question on McKnight’s list that she wasn’t asking in the 1970s. She’s asking different questions now. For example, she told the story of visiting the Seattle church where Rev. Ann Holmes Redding has embraced a dual Christian/Muslim identity. Butler Bass was there for what sounded like a beautiful baptism service on the same weekend that she spoke at an emergent event. She compared these experiences and concluded that orthopraxy centers both groups. Both are interested in transformation re. people, institutions, and cultures. With transformation comes tension. The Seattle church is wrestling with the implications of Holmes Reddings’ choice and the questions it raises about identity, meaning and spiritual practice. 

There followed a debate between Jones and Butler Bass of an event at the National Cathedral at which Marcus Borg reportedly said that if he had to bet his last dollar or his life as to whether or not the tomb of Christ was empty, he would have to say that either the tomb was empty or there was no tomb. Jones derided this statement, saying it is no stretch for him to believe that God can defy the laws of physics. Butler Bass took exception to his characterization of what Borg had said, stating that Jones and others had missed the essential sentence, in which Borg affirmed his faith.

Jones said he thought Borg and John Piper are guilty of the same sin (my language, not his), which is wanting an airtight Christianity. They come at it differently, but both expressions are functions of the Modern enterprise. He said emergents have no interest in either expression; they are comfortable with paradox, uncomfortable with liberal answers and unwilling to say that the Bible is not inspired.

Both parties cited studies that found that the numerical ascendancy of evangelical churches over mainline churches is actually a function of birthrate rather than supposed weaknesses in liberal theology. Evangelicals have more kids. [But if those kids are leaving church in droves, what does this portend for the future? That answer came in the Q&A: By 2050, someone stated, 125,000,000 Christians worldwide will no longer be connected with a church.]

Jones launched into a denunciation of bureaucracy, which rightly bothered Butler Bass. They bantered about this a bit. In the midst of the banter, Jones made this statement: “The problem isn’t with gay bishops, but with having bishops.”

Here, in my opinion, is where the immaturity shows up, esp. because he later said all kinds of people are asking to join emergent. Who decides? Him, a board? Is it arbitrary or bureaucratic? In the Q&A, a sharp young female Episcopal priest from the Diocese of Los Angeles asked him how emergents deal with issues of accountability and the protection of children from sexual abuse. I recall that his answer to this question was both disappointing and naive. All I have in my notes is that he said his church has procedures for dealing with such things, and added something about trusting the “other” to be open to talking about their sin. I’d love to hear something more substantive on this topic.

It was in the context of the conversation about faddishness vs. substance that the Theology of the Couch came up. Jones said that what appears to be faddish within emergent is often reflective of theological reasoning, eg. why Solomon’s Porch has couches rather than pews. It has to do with wanting to foster interaction between congregants. I’m embarrassed to say my notes are sparser on this point than I had thought. I recall something about what we do with our bodies being important, and the way pews orient people in the worship experience. Jones said it is much easier to innovate than to reform existing communities. When making decisions about what to purchase for a sanctuary, for example, why not think theologically and innovatively about it?

Personally, I have never had difficulty engaging a neighbor in the pew, but my home church, which is Baptist, arranges the  sanctuary chairs into a u-shape that surrounds the Communion table for its Thanksgiving eve service. There is music and preaching, followed by testimony and corporate communion around the table. Facing one another in worship and sharing our stories like this is one of my favorite events, so I get the thinking behind the couches at Solomon’s Porch. How we orient ourselves in church has meaning. It says something that these leaders care about this. More importantly, the example highlights the importance of being gracious and giving our fellow pilgrims the benefit of the doubt as they  thoughtfully live out their faith and calling.

My notes on this section conclude with an excellent point made by Jones. He said that theology has always been a conversation. He talked about contextualization (an idea that N.T. Wright, unfortunately, derided in his lecture), and said the gospel has always been fully incarnated in a cultural context, which is true.

Next came the Q&A:

Becky Garrison from the Wittenberg Door was in attendance, and mentioned Tall Skinny Kiwi as a chronicler of what is going on with emergent. Most readers probably already knew this; I only knew that the blog is popular.

In response to a question that I didn’t write down, Jones said that emergents are not trying to convert other Christians to their way of thinking, but that for a lot of people, emergent is their last shot at organized Christianity.

He talked about sharing a meal with Tony Campolo at which Campolo had advised him to resist the pressure to emerge into something because that’s when Jones will start “working for the man.” Campolo advised him to keep pushing the boundaries for as long as he can.

Now, this statement gets at what I grapple with re. emergent. I’ve lived organic innovation 30 years down the road, and have been flattened by what organic can morph into when it, in fact, becomes institutionalized, while simultaneously denouncing bureaucracy. 

I think Campolo sounds a wise warning. Ten years of deconstructing a philosophical framework that has dominated Christian thought for a couple hundred years is not a long time. They could keep on questioning indefinitely, although I suspect such an endeavor would eventually wear most people out. However, it seems to me—as both a writer and book editor acquainted with the tensions between markets, thinkers, and publishers—that the emergents are already “answering to the man” to some degree, at least the ones who are published authors, conference organizers, speakers, etc. Do they have their own t-shirts yet?

So, while I gladly embrace the idea of an emerging faith, I think emergent’s day will, like so many others, pass, and its leaders will have to figure out what it means to hold a moment in their hands that was unique to their time. I, for one, am grateful for the emergent contribution and for the rigorous critique of it. The conversation assures me that our faith is both vital and dynamic.

[© cas 2007, all rights reserved.]

 13 Comments

 Posted on November 21, 2007 by

 Community, Culture, Leadership, Philosophy, Public Square, Walkin' the Talk

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