My Favorite Authors for Christian Instruction
Honzo April 1st, 2008
- Joel Osteen
- Valentinus
- Oral Roberts
- Pat Robertson
- David Hume
- Benny Hinn
- Marcion of Sinope
Archive for the 'Culture' Category
QotD: Changing Worldviews
Dreaming of a Brave New World
jr. January 21st, 2008
from the hands and heart of a white, anglo-saxon protestant male:
Today is the day many in our nation have set aside to remember and honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream of racial equality. I often wonder how seriously we take this any more. After all, I’ve heard over the past several years countless Americans of European descent choose to speak of “reverse-racism”, bemoan Affirmative Action as outdated and unfair and of course rage against the swelling tide of illegal immigrants. This is nothing new in our country. In the immigration swells of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, “white people” were just as racist. The difference was that ‘we’ were discriminating against Italian and Irish immigrants. In fact, the rhetoric used to describe those immigrants was strikingly similar to that used of blacks and now of the current tide of immigrants. Now, however, most every American considers Irish and Italian peoples to be nothing more than another flavor of ‘white’, and even black persons are welcomed by the white majority so long as they conform to white culture.1
No, America’s racism grows out of the same old problem - we are afraid of that which is unlike us. We have not become less racist; rather, we’ve managed to incorporate more of those formerly Other races into ourselves. We demand that you look like us (as much as possible), speak like us (English only, please), believe like us (liberal, Judeo-Christian)2 and act like us (2.5 kids, nuclear family, share our values, etc.). So long as you conform to We, you may stay here, and you may thrive here. But if you do not, if you choose not to conform and instead to celebrate your distinctiveness, then you are a threat to We. You take Our jobs and You threaten to undermine Our values and Our way of life. So long as You demand that you be allowed to remain You, You will have no place among We. We will drive you out, and We will build walls to keep You out, where You belong.
And this is why Dr. King’s dream is still so far from reality. We are not yet a country where a person is judged by “the quality of his character”. We are still judged by the color of our skin, by the type of clothing we wear, by the words we speak (and the accent with which we speak them), by the god we worship (and the theologies to which we hold), and by the nation to which we pledge allegiance.
Of course most of you know that I hold no special love in my heart for America. What breaks my heart about our continuing racism this is that the Church is one of the biggest advocates of continuing racism in this country. Sunday morning continues to be ‘the most segregated hour of the week’. Many do not even see this as a problem; a leader at my church has said repeatedly when I bring up the idea of working for a more integrated congregation, “They’re more comfortable in their own churches.” Nearly every Evangelical with whom I speak about immigration thinks that a person should be required to learn English to even cross the border. And at the Crystal Cathedral’s ReThink conference this weekend, prominent Evangelical leader Chuck Colson made this statement: “Islam is a tragically regressive religion, because it has proven itself incapable of producing a great civilization.” Now, I’m going to blog about this more extensively later, but these attitudes pervade God’s Church. And we are not meant to be so.
We are to welcome the alien, the stranger among us, because we were once aliens in Egypt. We are to welcome the Other into ourselves just as they are, for so has God opened Godself to us even while we were yet sinners. We are to offer love because we first were loved. I have a dream that one day God will teach God’s people what it means to be God’s children. Or maybe I should dream instead that one day we will have eyes to see the object lessons God’s placed all around us, and ears to hear the cries of the stranger in our lands, ears that will remember our own cries, and note how similar They are to We. Not because we speak the same language or worship the same way or look the same or believe the same. But because we are all children of the same God, and we all have equal need of the same redemption.
May God give us eyes of faith to see the reality of what it means to be human today. And may God give us ears to hear the cries of God’s children who are still in bondage. And may God teach us how to love the Other as perfectly and redemptively as God has.
“It’s a long way from the shadows in my cave up to Your reality, to watch the sunlight taking over. Take me over.”
– Switchfoot, “Home”
- Consider sitcoms such as the Cosbys, Family Matters and Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, in which the family structure, economic status and weekly problems mirrored that of white suburban America much moreso than they reflected (primarily urban) black culture] [↩]
- Not, of course, political liberalism, but true philosophic liberalism, which sees religion primarily as a private, individual concern rather than as a corporate reality/worldview. [↩]
- Culture , Love , Othering , Race
- Comments(6)
Columbia MO Events
Honzo January 9th, 2008
I know most of our authors and readers live outside the Columbia, MO area, but I wanna highlight some interesting public forums coming up in the next few weeks.
Greg Boyd at Woodcrest - January 12, 6:30 PM
Join us this week for author and guest speaker Greg Boyd “Helter Skelter to Hyper Disciple.” For those of you who are still trying to put the logical pieces together regarding the reliability of the claims of Christ, Greg will be sharing more of his personal journey through unbelief and the hurdles he had to overcome intellectually in coming to faith in Christ.
Tom Schreiner is visiting Columbia in a few weeks to engage in series of talks and debates on the person and work of Jesus. Friday there is a debate with a Unitarian Minister and guest from the local Mosque. Saturday there is an informal Q and A with him at the Cherry Street Artisan. The weekend concludes with two lectures, one on the person of Jesus at the Tiger Ballroom and one on the work of Jesus at Theology at The Forge and Vine.
This is more of a religious studies lecture about the Christian community than a lecture coming out of the Christian community, but that does not mean it is not worth listening to. He will be addressing his latest book, America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity.
Globalization, defined as the flow of people, goods, information, and other resources across national boundaries, is not new, but has increased dramatically in volume and density in the past twenty years. The United States is one of the most powerfully and extensively involved countries in the global political economy. Are American churches part of the story? Is their influence in other countries spreading as a result of globalization? Are they shaping Americans’ attitudes toward hunger and poverty, foreign aid, and military involvement? Although the effects of globalization on the domestic configuration of American Christianity has been considered at great length, hardly any attention has been given to these questions about the wider role of American Christianity outside of the United States.
Creating a Universe of Certainty, or, If You Remove Reason, You Remove Doubt
jr. December 29th, 2007
Here is a visual tour of the Answers in Genesis’ Creation Museum in Kentucky. I went with my dear friends Tom and Mike in August 2007. I’ll walk you through our experience exhibit by exhibit with my commentary.
Arrival
We reached the Museum in a caravan of three vehicles. Mike and I were heading on to St. Louis from there, and Tom had to return to Wilmore. I was driving a U-Haul
I was forced to park our U-Haul behind the Museum… can you guess why?
We entered the Museum and purchased our tickets - only $17 if you sign up for their email list! While I was in line, I overheard a family (the right proper nuclear family ™ - mom, dad and 3 boys) announce to the ticket-seller that this was their third visit to the Museum (open since Memorial Day 2007) and that they were seriously considering buying lifetime passes (a mere $1,000 per person, presumably adjusted for inflation). Once inside, we milled about looking at various odd displays before venturing into the bookstore.
Inside the bookstore, we found this on top of a tall bookshelf:
On the way out of the bookstore, we saw this:
Now, you can’t really tell, but it’s a bust of St. George slaying a dragon (maybe the bookshelf dino’s sister or something?). Above it is inscribed a text from the St. George legend (myth?).
We left the bookstore (to return afterwards). On our way into the Tour of Biblical History, we passed an animatronic cave-girl feeding a carrot to a squirrel while anamatronic velociraptors drank from a nearby stream:
And so, on that note, we began our journey.
Entering the Tour de Exhibits
Immediately upon entering into the Museum Proper, we were faced with a series of displays that forced the singular question upon which the Museum’s entire theology rests: Do you trust in Human Reason or God’s Word?
The choice is clear… we must follow either human reason and God’s word. But what’s the worst that could happen if we don’t choose God’s word? So glad you asked! Walk this way!
The Consequences of Following Human Reason
We next enter into an exhibit that displays the consequences of choosing Human Reason. First, a twisted hallway painted all black with news clippings pasted all over the walls. What news, you ask?
Yes, this was the “the gays are going to clone themselves” wall (abortion wall not pictured). Apparently the only possible outcome of using your brain is that you become gay, then clone babies and kill them before they reach term. Clearly, brothers and sisters, human reason is evil and bad. How are we to stand before the terror of their cultural onslaught? Fortunately, we were then able to see some heroes who preserved God’s Word for us so that we could have good and true guidance that in no way requires us to think:
According to the next display, the Jews are evil because the added Oral Tradition to God’s Word. Jesus (who, I guess wasn’t a Jew and didn’t use Oral Tradition) tried to tell them how silly they were, so they killed him. And then the Catholics came along and messed up Jesus’ teachings by adding a bunch of silly Church Traditions to it. So, last but not least, we are presented with the man who, according to the placard in front of him, saved us from the Jews and Catholics. Ladies and Gentlemen: Martin Luther himself!
Now that we’ve rescued the Bible from all those who doubt, what does God’s Word say about how we got here? Stay tuned for the next installment of pictures guaranteed to be more outrageous than the first!
All the Hub-Bub over the Golden Compass
Honzo December 29th, 2007
A little while ago a friend of mine asked me why Christians are always attempting to rally against films and other media that threaten their worldview. He said that he just did not understand what the hub-bub was all about; i) Christians are by far the majority in the US, ii)these pieces of media often are not direct threats, and iii) the actual impact of these media are quite small. However, to listen to some of the claims in Christian social circles and media it seems as through Chicken Little is running around pointing at the sky.
My friend asked me this over lunch, so I tried to give the best improv answer as I could. Here are the main points:
- Cultural Hegemony Since Christians have the dominate cultural position, anything that critiques or offers alternatives is seen as a threat to their hegemony and must be reacted against.
- Shining City on a Hill Through out American history, Christians have been eager to see America as the New Israel, God’s replacement chosen land for the replacement of Israel.
- Israel as a Template of US History Given that the US is the new Israel, people in the US should be weary of making the same mistakes that Israel did in the First Testament. If We start to allow ungodly elements into our culture, God will send punishments upon the US, just as She did to Israel.
- Sinner, Keep Thy Thoughts Pure Certain Christians see any media that deviates from the “biblical” worldview as a sort of pollution. The more and more pollution one takes in, the more polluted the person becomes and the greater the chance that the person will die from it.
- Persecution Syndrome Despite the fact that the US is a nation of Christians and that Christianity is the implicit national religion, Christians often see themselves as a minority stakeholder in US culture, one that is always being picked on by Secularism.
I am not trying to evaluate these ideas (I can, I have strong views on the acceptance or rejections of each one) just want to get a feel for how the Christians that get worked up over the latest threat. Do you all think these apply, or am I off base? Are there any that I am missing?
12 things to remember this Christmas
E. I. Sanchez December 23rd, 2007
- December 25th is not Jesus’ birthday
- January 6th is also not Jesus’ birthday
- The Bible doesn’t tell us how many magi/wisemen visited Jesus
- Christmas was created to cancel out the pagan holiday - Saturnilia
- 125 AD, is the first recorded mention of a celebration of Jesus’ birth and it comes from a note from, Telesphorus, the 2nd bishop of Rome declaring that church services should be held to memorialize the nativity of Jesus (Collins, 12)
- 320 AD is the year when Pope Julius I chose December 25th as the official day to celebrate Jesus’ birthday (Ibid, 13)
- 325 AD is when Constantine made December 25th the official day for Christmas (ib., 13)
- Clement Carke’s A visit from St. Nicholas (1822 AD), also known as, The Night Before Christmas, and Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol (1843 AD) gave us our modern day Christmas celebration (ib., 100).
- Writing “Xmas” instead of Christmas is orthodox.
- The virgin birth is true.
- Jesus is the reason for the season
- Love one another and they will know we’re his disciples
If you know other historical facts, leave us a comment.
Resources
Stand To Reason Podcast. Greg Koukl. The Origins of Christmas. December 9 2007.
Collins, Ace. Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas
Christian Discourse and Subverting the Rhetoric of the Empire
tom December 22nd, 2007
When I first began reading feminist theology, Schusseler-Fiorenza and Welch drew my attention to how language, particularly patriarchal language, shapes not only abstract theological concepts, but also the everyday, practical matters of the Christian life. Among other things, we assume male dominance in the masculine pronouns we use for God, even though we classically maintain God is neither He nor She, but Spirit.
Though I could continue to criticize the church’s use of vocabulary in the oppression of certain peoples, the ecclesiastical rhetoric I want to appraise presently is the church’s employment of the vocabulary of the Empire – particularly its economic verbage.
I often hear Christians refer to “investing” in either non-believers or people whom they are mentoring in the faith. The language of investment is procured, obviously, from the economic world referring to putting money to use in order to gain a potentially profitable return. That is, one invests in order to gain a return.
But is the return what Christian friendship is really about? It is supposed to be what I can gain from my time and effort spilled into another person? When we “invest” in a non-Christian, what we often mean is that we spend time with them in order to make them Christian! When we “invest” in a disciple, we mean we spend time with them in order to elicit the return of sanctification!
But is the return at the heart of Christianity? Is my primary agenda in befriending a non-Christian that they might buy into my product? Does this language not dehumanize and objectify our “investment”? Does this language not communicate that this whole Christianity thing is about what I can profit, or God can yield? Being friends with people outside the Christian faith is not about investment, it is about being genuine friends! Genuine friendship, for sure, involves demonstrating God’s love to the other. But this demonstration of love is not artificial and contrived; it is not about reciprocation or return. Consider my friendship with JR.
I would never say of JR that I am “investing” in him. That would entail certain things which are not inherent in sincere friendship. It would imply that I deem him spiritually below me or that he needs me in his life to be spiritually fruitful. It also implies that my agenda is to correct his spiritual imperfections, and because of my investment, I expect that he will provide a certain return. In the end, the language of investment doesn’t appear to be a natural part of genuine friendship.
But, in the end, this is not even the most dangerous aspect of investment rhetoric.
For me, the most dangerous part of the church’s employment of economic language is that we have taken the language of America’s dominant deity (economics, consumerism, materialism), and leaving it unchanged and unchallenged, we have taken it into our communities like a long lost brother. But as long as the economic rhetoric involved in America’s one true religion is warmly accepted by the church, we will never be able to counter the influence of capitalism, consumerism, materialism, or just plain-ole Mammon in our lives.
Now from where I sit, it appears we have two options. First, the church can completely rid itself of economic language. We can completely drop the language like a deflated stock. No more language of investment or any other kind of rhetoric that smacks of capitalism.
The second option, and one that requires a bit more creativity, is to continue to use economic language, but subvert it by investing it with distinctly Christian meaning. This option falls in line a bit more with what we see in the New Testament. The Gk. word we translate “fellowship” often referred to partnership in business agendas in the first century. Also, and more obvious, the word we translate “redeem” means to “buy back.” It too is an overtly economic word.
I like this second option the best, but there are two difficulties with it.
First, are we creative enough, or even powerful enough, to change the way Christian people generally employ economic rhetoric? Like Wal-Mart in a small town, economic language dominates our American landscape. Completely subverting it and changing it is a nearly impossible task. We may try, but in the end, our use of language is merely a text which is interpreted and misinterpreted by our hearers. Just because I invest economic rhetoric with new meaning doesn’t mean my hearers will observe that investment.
Second, when the New Testament writers reinvested economic language with Christian meaning, they were not using the language of the dominant deity of the Roman Empire. So, even assuming our hearers will understand our new meaning, might we be safer in simply abandoning the language altogether?
So, that’s as far as my thoughts have taken me on this topic thus far. I’m looking for some help getting past this roadblock. What do you think? The bottom line is that Jesus did not heal people for his own glory, and he even healed some who never even thanked him or his Father. It doesn’t seem like his investment in people was only about what he or his religion can get out of it. What about just showing people the love of God for its own sake?
A Hitchens made of Straw
Honzo December 18th, 2007
A little while ago, I posted a short bit about Hitchens’ reply to a speech that Romney, a presidential candidate who happens to be Mormon, had given. Wuzzdem had made a nice little parody of Hitchens’ reply that tickled me a bit. During the course of writing that post, I claimed that Hitchens’ had strawman’ed Romney.
Gringo contested this claim in a comment on the post, asking me to clarify how exactly how Hitchen’s strawman’ed Romney.
Notice what Hitchens’ complaint was in the bit that I quoted;1 it is the claim that God choose to reveal itself to the world via “few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater.” By doing so, he is claiming how God should be acting. It is one thing to claim divine revelation, i.e. that something has revealed how it acts; it is another to claim that you know, based on reason, that something must act a certain way. Hitchens is casting onto god, as a proof of its existence, the requirements that it act as Hitchens himself would act, i.e. choose another way to reveal itself to the world than how Christians and Mormons claim it has. This is a classic anthropomorphism, the attachment of human qualities onto non-human entities.
Hitchens’ anthropomorphism is especially ironic because Hitchens and the new atheists often criticize the “religionists”** for anthropomorphizing god. Yet, here Hitchens is doing so and uses this to discredit tenets of Romney’s faith. The question is not whether people of faith anthropomorphize god, but that Hitchens himself will only accept a god that is like him.
Having established that Hitchens is anthropomorphizing god,2 is there a strawman in his comment? I think that there is. His sarcastic attack on the claims of Romney’s faith (and the claims at hand overlap with mine here) is based on how Hitchens’ anthropomorphism, not on Romney’s claim of a revealed God. In order to avoid a strawman, Hitchens must argue from the claims that Romney’s faith makes when he is critiquing his system of thought. That is to say, one must consider the whole of a worldview, not just take potshots here and there. Romney’s faith, and mine, describe a revealed God that consistently chooses those that are powerless, those that are oppressed, to be recipients of His revelation. Therefore, it would come as no surprise to anyone that actually listens to the claims of Mormonism that God would reveal himself to “few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater.”
Because Hitchens argues against the validity of Romney’s faith on the basis of Hitchens’ idea of what god must be like instead of how instead of actually using Romney’s claims of what God is like, he argues about his opponent’s position without actually using his opponent’s position - classic strawman.
- I am only concerning myself here and in the previous post with the bit that I quoted. Neither here nor in the original post did I claim to do a complete treatment of his reply; it was just something that came to me as I was relying the post from Wuzzdem. However, I do think that this comment is indicative of most of Hitchens’ attacks of Christianity. To put it as Stephen Prothero said, “What Hitchens gets wrong is religion itself.” [↩]
- Notice that any group given an “-ist” on the end, when the group does not designate itself as such, clearly demonstrates that those receiving the suffix are silly, stupid, and generally unworthy of respect. [↩]
Christians and the Other
Honzo December 16th, 2007
Question of the day (this time with an answer):
How do we, as Christians, conceptualize the Other?
How should we treat these people, both to their face and within our communities while they are not present? They think that they know how to best relate to that which is “wholly Other” - whether it be God, gods, the numinous, whatever you want to call it(s). We think we know how to as well. What do we do with such an impasse? Shall we let loose upon them the canon and be done with it? Do we assume all roads generate the same journey?
A good friend of mine and fellow author here at Theology for the Masses, JR Madill, navigated these very issues a few weeks ago in a talk on Christianity and Pluralism. Now, I don’t want to give away what he had to say, but I do want to say that I found his reply to be quite good and worthy of your consideration.
