A Time To Reconstruct

Posted 13 days ago | 78 comments | by Amy Moffitt| Link

by Jonathan Brink

Over the last decade, many of us who have participated in what some call “the conversation” have been engaging a deconstruction process of our faith. In many ways this leaving was liberation from an old story. The traditional way of seeing the story in the Gospel just didn’t work anymore. The conversation became a place to share our fears, our stories, and our liberation.

One of the real, valid criticisms of this process is that much of the conversation was a deconstruction process. In other words, we were tearing down an old story but nothing new was offered to take its place. I get that concern. It’s easy to criticize what’s wrong with something and never offer something different. But I would also offer that the removing the old story was necessary for us to see something new.

The primary concern for me within this space was our historical understanding of the Gospel. I could no longer ignore the inherent conflicts with our traditional stories, specifically in terms of the atonement. The atonement captured my attention in the conversation because it is the linchpin in the story. It informs us of both the problem and the solution.

Why were there several atonement theories? Why did they fundamentally conflict with each other? Why had the Eastern Church settled on Ransom theory and the Western church settle on Penal Substitution? Wrestling with these theories was important because they were our framing story for the Gospel. I never stopped believing in Jesus. I just stopped believing in the story people were telling me about him.

As a western evangelical, I had reached a point where I could no longer live with what had been handed down to me. Yet the alternative (Ransom Theory) had too many problems. As I voiced my concerns I found a community willing to ask the same questions and wrestle through the possibilities. Had my Catholic friends done one better by simply calling it a mystery? So over a three-year period I simply went back to the original story. I opened myself to the possibility that another way of seeing the Gospel was already present, embedded in the text.

The one obvious piece of evidence I observed was that our historical assumptions conflicted in where they located the problem. Ransom theory assumed we were being held captive to Satan. Penal Substitution theory assumed we were being held captive to God’s justice. Both had enough evidence to suggest they were true, but enough problems to cast doubt that they were true.

At some point though, we can only deconstruct so far without falling into a sense of void. I’m just not that good at sitting with nothing, yet the more I examined the theories, the deeper the tension grew. This exploration process eventually led me to a retreat in the beautiful Lake Tahoe area. I felt compelled to spend time alone with God, wrestling with the tension that was brewing to full steam.

As I stood in my cheap motel room pouring over the evidence one more time, I felt a strange question arise in my Spirit. “Who else is in the Garden?” At that moment I happened to be standing in front of a mirror, and I caught my own reflection. “Who else is in the Garden?”

“We are,” I said out loud, and mirrors don’t lie. Had we located the problem incorrectly? Did the story present another possibility? The answer was a resounding, “Yes.”

Where the traditional theories had always pointed outward, casting the problem away from humanity, the story actually pointed the problem back at us. The key phrase in the story was, “And they realized they were naked.” Naked was always true but their judgment of it had changed. Created in the image of God, humanity held the capacity to construct a reality different from God’s. We held the capacity to judge the self in a way that was untrue. How then does God convince humanity it is good, when it has convinced itself it is not good?

This new possibility opened up an entirely new way of seeing the story. The problem wasn’t with God. The problem was in me. I need evidence to the contrary. I needed evidence that would release me from my own captive judgments. I needed someone to take my place in my own retributive form of justice, one that could only see guilt.

The cross was not God sending his Son to satisfy the demands of Satan, or to appease his own sense of justice. The cross was God lifting his arms to the world and saying, “This is how far I will go to show you that my original judgment of you was true.” For the first time the Gospel could be framed as a ferocious love. God’s justice was found in the act of mercy. It made sense in a way that seemed to redeem the Gospel. And it was so simple.

Seeing this new possibility changed everything. It informed both my sense of pain and suffering, justice and reconciliation. It gave me a sense of compassion that was overwhelming. It gave new meaning to God’s invitation to love my neighbor as myself. Salvation was no longer release from something out there, but from something within. Redemption was about me trading in my false judgment for God’s.

Seeing the new story invited me into God’s mission. We can’t participate in God’s mission unless we know what problem God is actually solving. Could the problem actually keep us from seeing what problem God was solving in the story? Could the problem literally blind us to seeing what I would call the God Imagination, a way of seeing reality from God’s perspective?

As I shared my discoveries with both my evangelical, Catholic and even atheist friends, I was surprised by the response. Most suggested I was on to something. And let me be the first to say, I don’t think I’m discovering anything new. I think the followers of Jesus got it. But over time this Way of seeing got lost. All we’re doing is simply rediscovering it again.

Jonathan Brink is a blogger and author of Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity (CreateSpace, 2010).

Real Austin: Theology on a Downtown Bus

Posted 13 days ago | 11 comments | by Amy Moffitt| Link

by Annie Bullock

Since moving to Austin just two years ago, I’ve had my share of encounters with Leslie Cochran, almost all of them on the 1L/1M bus through downtown. Leslie is a homeless transvestite and a beloved Austin institution. I saw him for the first time on my very first visit to Austin. He was standing on the curb looking bewildered in a purple mini-skirt and pumps. He crossed the street halfway, paused, and then abruptly returned to the curb he’d just left, slinging his skirt over his hips as he went, revealing a leopard print thong. Between his flamboyant fashion sense and his proclivity for public semi-nudity, he’s hard to miss if you spend any time downtown.

Leslie is a one of a kind weird guy and yet in many ways, he’s emblematic of the Austin homeless community: harmless, eccentric, and not looking for a way back into ordinary society.

Austin’s homeless community is remarkably cohesive in some ways. Leslie Cochran ran for mayor in 2000, capturing nearly 8% of the vote. Jennifer Gale, a transgendered woman who ran for a range of public offices, from mayor to city council to a place on the board of the Austin Independent School District, was another fixture in Austin politics. At her peak, she could be counted on to garner 5-8% of the total vote in a given race. Her campaign slogan modified the popular “Keep Austin Weird,” promising instead to “Keep Austin, Austin.” Both understood themselves as representatives of a legitimate community. The next logical step was to run for public office. And both were emphatically part of what some call the real Austin.

I met Jennifer on the bus shortly after I came to Austin. She was wearing a worn blue sweatshirt, white polyester culottes, and a dingy visor. She carried her belongings in a plastic sack. I’m just coming from a city council meeting, she said breathlessly as she sat down. I’m Jennifer Gale. She shook my hand. I’m running for mayor. You’ll vote for me, won’t you? I thought she might be crazy but I liked her, so I smiled and said I would. As we rode, she told me about her vision for improving Austin, which sounded remarkably sane. A pair of tourists boarded the bus. They were from Oregon—Salem, not Portland, which explains their wary, wide-eyed first reaction to Jennifer. Within three blocks, they had warmed up to her as she told them a series of groan-worthy puns and jokes. Before she got off, she reminded me of my promise to vote for her and gave the tourists a restaurant recommendation. Gatti’s, she said. I go there all the time.

Six months later, I was in the car when I heard the local NPR station report that Jennifer had been found dead on the steps of First English Lutheran Church. She died of heart failure sometime during the night. It was December and they honored her by playing a recording of her singing “Silent Night” at a city council meeting. She was only 48. I burst into tears. I only met her once but she was my friend.

The homeless community isn’t a utopia by any means. There are real problems that come with living on the streets. Jennifer Gale’s death is a painful illustration. Jennifer’s heart condition was aggravated by the physical strain of sleeping outside. A 2009 attack on Leslie Cochran makes the same point. Leslie was hospitalized after he was beaten. He had warned a group of addicts about the dangers of drug abuse. The homeless suffer. Some suffer from mental illnesses. Others suffer from addiction. They all suffer the physical and mental exhaustion that characterizes life on the streets.

Waiting at a downtown bus stop recently, I encountered a man who wore long, shaggy dreadlocks, an ankle length leather coat, and a straw cowboy hat. I just got my guitar back, he shouted. Austin, I am going off! He was drunk or high and a passing cop stopped to run him off. There was a dog sitting in the passenger seat of a sports car stopped at the light. You see that dog, the hobo said as he looked me straight in the eye. That dog is treated like a person. He paused dramatically. You get it? Yeah, I said. I do. He nodded and went on his way. I didn’t do nothing, he threw over his shoulder at the hovering cop. Half a block up the street, I saw him pass a hunched man with a facial tic, shuffling and muttering his way down the street. They paused long enough to share a fist bump.

It’s not a utopia, but it is a community. And there’s a difference between a flawed community of suffering people and an issue, a problem to be solved, or a mess to be cleaned up.

Duane Severance understood this difference. He understood the lives of the homeless because he spent his days with them. Duane was at the beginning of a promising career as a chef when he started reading his bible. When he read that Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell everything he had and give it to the poor, Duane took the advice to heart. He sold what he had, sought out the most destitute folk he could find, and made them his friends. He eventually ended up in Austin, where he prayed for God to give him a corner of his own. As Duane told the story, God told him to go down to 6th and Congress—Leslie Cochran’s corner. He staked his claim there and became a part of the community: Brother Duane, pastor to the homeless. On Sundays, he preached at the Church Under the Bridge, which meets under the I-35 overpass at 7th Street. Duane eventually married but even as the married father of three, ministry on the streets of Austin was his primary occupation.

Duane didn’t set out to address homelessness. He went looking for people. In January of 2010, Duane was killed in a single car accident in Seward Junction, northwest of Austin. Mission Possible, the organization that sponsors Church Under the Bridge, held a memorial service for him that went for hours as a stream of men and women shared the many ways Brother Duane had touched their lives. His funeral was held a few days later at a local church. It was standing room only. For the second time, people were lined up to speak about how Duane had changed things for them. Love is a precious commodity in a world that treats you like something less than human.

To paraphrase Sarah Miles, author of Take This Bread: The Spiritual Autobiography of a 21st Century Christian, this is hardly what George Bush had in mind when he talked about faith based initiatives. The recent surge of public progressive religiosity prompted Glenn Beck’s ill-fated advice to his audience that they should leave their churches if their leaders talked about social justice. Critics rightly replied that the commitment to social justice is in fact biblical. Miles makes the same observation. She converted when she discovered that the radical commitment to solidarity with the poor that she had always associated with progressive values was perfectly consonant with Christianity. And from the Eucharistic table, she took an imperative to go into the world and feed the hungry.

Duane Severance lived that kind of solidarity with the poor and his impact among Austin’s homeless is a testament to the transformative power of compassion. The difference is that Duane was not a progressive—far from it, in fact. His faith was radical, though, and that’s where the real power for transformation—and the possibility of cooperation—lies. He lived among the poor as one of them because that’s what he thought God wanted from him. Like Sarah Miles, he took the gospel command to go and do likewise to heart. Both embraced a radical, kenotic faith. Both were utterly changed by it. Both were agents for change in their communities.

The last several years have seen a palpable shift in public discourses. But we should take care before we find ourselves divided into new camps, religious right and religious left in place of religious right and secular left. We have a new opportunity to seek the common good, not as a replacement for our theological commitments but as the result of them. This is an important distinction. It does not threaten my theological traditionalism to embrace the poor and to work for their elevation. On the contrary, my faith demands throwing my hand in with the outcast and the stranger, just as the faith of so many of my theologically liberal friends and colleagues demands the same thing.

What I’m suggesting isn’t easy. I’ve lost more friends over my religious and political views than I care to recall. I am too liberal for some and not liberal enough for others. It takes courage to stay when it’s uncomfortable. It takes patience to listen when you dislike what you’re hearing. It takes confidence to like people who don’t see things your way. And it takes humility to admit you might be wrong. Growth is painful. But as long as we isolate ourselves from one another, as long as we stay in churches with like-minded people, populate our social circles with our own kind, and fill our theology schools with homogeneous communities of professors and students, we lose the opportunity to mature.

To draw the conversation back to Austin, we lose the opportunity to be real. In the logic of Christian theology, Jesus was a new Adam, the new head of a human race in desperate need of restoration. Jesus restores our vision of what is possible for a human being, fully realized and fully reflecting the image of God. This image is part of every human person. It is obscured by our common captivity to sin and death, but it is there. Our work—which is the work of the Holy Spirit—is to seek what is damaged and restore it, in ourselves and others. Redemption means becoming more whole and therefore ever more fully and truly human. We become ever more real.

The image of God is present in every human being, no matter how addicted, unruly, or unwashed, no matter how unlike us. As I board the 1L/1M every day, I look for the image of God in the people around me. I acknowledge them. I treat them with dignity. I look for signs of life. Above all, I am not afraid to hope in their redemption. In the possibility of their redemption, I see the possibility of my own. And I pray with anyone who will pray with me: Keep Austin real, make Austin human.

Annie Bullock recently received her PhD in Religion from Emory University, with a specialization in the religions of the Roman Empire in postcolonial perspective. She is an adjunct instructor at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX, where she teaches both church history and New Testament.

Unstudying God: Finding God in the Barren Land

Posted 13 days ago | 77 comments | by Amy Moffitt| Link

by George Elerick

Theology is the study of God… more specifically of any deity. It is a place where we come and try to understand God, where we attempt to bring our scalpels and scientifically assess if God makes sense to us. We bring our history, environments, fears and dreams all to this one place to find the God that exists beyond God. We are affected by all of our past, present and future when we step into the realm of studying God.

Studying God presupposes that God desires us to deconstruct Him. That somehow God wants to be found. In our studying, deep down where the subconscious lies, we want to save God from those around us. Theology has evolved into a practice where we get to be the demi-gods of development. Theology has deformed itself into something that deforms its followers irreparably into people who desire to only make sense of a being beyond our senses. What we have come to understand about God has been formed by thousands of years of interpretations. We tend to align ourselves alongside these interpretations and deem them as theology.

Theology is the practice and study of God as share above, but our discoveries are the fruit of that study. Fruit can rot, get old and die. We need new fruit, at the risk of leaving some of the old fruit behind. There were thousands of years of scholars, linguists, historians, anthropologists and archaeologists who came together to piece together information about Jesus, God, Torah and the New Testament. A lot of our theology is fruit of their labor. A lot of what we know about God derives from their discoveries. But what about the undiscovered country? What about what lies beyond all those fields of study? What about the gaps in between those studies? Is God there, stripped bare of all that we have to offer him? Can God still be found in the barren land?

We need a change.

We need to race like madmen and strip off all of our clothes …those things we’ve made ourselves to hide behind… and find God in the barren wilderness, in the barren place where the death of theology is nothing more than a whisper in our history books. Where God is shouting louder than all the things we have come to call home. The barren land is a place where we come to find healing, to find the shalom we all crave from the storms of our mind. The barren land is a place where we come to deny God to find Him. The barren land is a place where the broken become more broken to find that it’s truly finished. The barren land is the place we all come and lie in the tomb waiting for our rescue.

The place where theology and no-theology meet is the place where God resides.

God resides in the gap.

The barren land calls us to lay down our books, our paradigms, our presuppositions, along with our fear of the unknown and find that God lives in the gaps between them all. The barren land is stripped of all study, for God lies beyond it. The barren land is a place that calls to us out from the darkness into the light. The barren land is stripped of all light. It is a secluded place where God digs through his treasures like an old man rifling through his collection of knick-knacks. He calls like John the Baptist in the wilderness. It’s in the barren land where his must be done.

The barren land is a place where we might leave our answers behind and find a God who is ready for the taking. Rather than theology, we need to chase God in the wilderness of our ambiguity. Rather than worldviews, we need to find God in the place where He resides, outside of our worldviews… outside of our religious divisions and denominational trappings… outside of our spiritual enquiry. When we give them all up, when we are ready to divorce ourselves from all we think we need to grasp the Divine, God will be present in the gaps. We come into the barren land as participator rather than observer.

It is possible to enter the barren land without anything but is a personal journey each must take, as we all have our own theological baggage to leave behind. The barren land is a place of divorce and confusion, a place where only God can breathe. God is in the place where we are learning to believe and un-believe in Him. The barren land is a place that calls the dry and weary soul to maintain its dryness and embrace its weariness and see the God who has been with them in the Garden all this time. The barren land is devoid of historical contingencies, creeds, bibles and truth. God quietly resides in the gap between them.

George Elerick is an author, blogger, speaker and founder of Chairs for Dialogue, an interfaith initiative that unites people from different faith traditions, no faith traditions, and different lifestyle backgrounds to work together to find relevant, creative, and practical ways to respond to global issues such as poverty, sex trafficking, debt, war, intolerance, and injustice.

Where the Edges Meet: What Emergents Can Learn from the New Mystics

Posted 50 days ago | 13 comments | by Amy Moffitt| Link

by Dave T. Brown

”...The fingers and the thumb have a certain separateness. They have grown out of, and belong to, something larger than any one of them alone…the palm of the hand. The same pulse in the wrist brings the life blood to each of them. ...The basic truth which unites [different churches] is far bigger and more important than the things which separate them, and love for Christ pulses through them all and gives life, power and unity to them all.”—Leslie Weatherhead

I grew up speaking in tongues, getting slain in the spirit, and witnessing healings and exorcisms. As disciples of the Charismatic movement, my parents frequently held prayer meetings in our home, and such events became particularly intense when their evangelist, missionary, and prophet friends came to town. Those were interesting times to say the least, especially when I was placed in the “hot seat” for deliverance or healing.

To some, this type of spirituality is all fine and dandy, while to others it has the stench of a cult. Regardless, leaving theology and eccentricities aside, one of the things I appreciate about my Charismatic upbringing is the deep desire to get beyond dry intellectual debate to experience the divine, instead of just talking about it. And while I think back and cringe at some of my memories, I also have affection for some of the things I experienced. So I wasn’t surprised when, about a year ago, I stumbled on some YouTube videos of a group known as the New Mystics.

The New Mystics is a rapidly growing segment on the fringe of the Charismatic movement. It’s characterized by its emphasis on ecstatic experiences of God. Considered leaders of the movement, speaker John Crowder, who CurrentTV called “the YouTube Prophet,” and musician Ben Dunn often get “whacked up” in the “drunken glory” of God and stumble around mumbling like they’re flat-out wasted. They have raves during which hundreds of people, young and old alike, don whimsical attire and gather to trance out with trippy worship music and stumble and crawl around just like they’re completely fried. I’ve also seen them pray for people who then apparently get healed, like one man did in what they call the “pee pee miracle.”

And while I have to say that I view much of their stuff as freakish, what interests me the most about the people in this movement is their determination to experience God with wild abandon. These new Jesus freaks just don’t care what people think because, as they might say, they are tired of dry religion and seek to experience God without the chains of religious decorum.

They travel the world to bring a message of freedom from oppressive religion and a hope for a new way, and encourage Christians to lighten up. There’s a New Mystics-related festival in the UK called Sloshfest, put on by a group called Emerge Wales (led by a drunk monk and a Doug Pagitt look-alike). During the 2010 Sloshfest rave, the crowd sang a rowdy, pirate-style chorus with anti-imperialist lyrics that caught my ear:

It’s over, it’s over, it’s over…The Empire is over!
But it’s growing, it’s growing, it’s growing…The Kingdom is growing!

And that’s when I realized some of the common ground that Emergent has with the New Mystics, Charismania, and other nontraditional Christian religious movements: For one, we’re all often described by others as being fringe movements. And sometimes, including Emergent, we’re called cults as groups and heretics as individuals. But besides this, and more importantly, many of us within these movements seek an end to imperialistic domination of Christianity. We seek freedom from dogmatic tyranny. And I think it would be helpful (ecumenically at least) for Emergents to appreciate the common ground we have with other movements that have started on the edge of the establishment. Not just for historical interest or nostalgia, but to share stories and really learn some things from each other.

For instance, as I said, I admire the New Mystics’ determination to experience God’s power with wild abandon, to get beyond the tired, ivory-tower discussions about Church past and future, to open their eyes to the Kingdom that is here and now, and to get out and do something. I sometimes feel the Emergent movement seems stuck in a cycle of cerebral discussion. Sharing stories of experiences is what conversation is all about, and sometimes I feel like what we call a “conversation” is more like an intellectual debate that’s open mainly to the scholarly. Although movements need discussion and debate to strengthen their core, others involved can’t survive only on the orations of talking-head representatives.

Of course, I’m certainly not suggesting that we can best prove our connection with God by acting like we’re drunk all the time, nor am I suggesting that we can’t find heart-felt meaning in theological discussion. But I know that I have often felt more comfortable swapping big words like “eschatological” and “ekklesia” when I could have been swapping personal stories. Like how I’ve felt detached from the larger Church because, as an agnostic Christian, I don’t have any idea what I believe anymore but I still seek to experience God’s power in a very real way. Or instead of discussing the finer points of how Jung’s collective unconscious applies to atonement theory, I could have shared how I sometimes still find contentment when praying in tongues. I could have held hands in public, prayed with, and cried with my friend who was feeling lonely, instead of distancing myself from an unhip situation by casually helping him psychoanalyze himself. I could have thrown back my head and wailed or at least pumped my fists because of the joy I felt when singing a song about grace, but instead my hands found more comfort in the restriction of my pockets.

None of us on the fringes want to be held down by spiritual tyranny. That’s why we’ve voluntarily exiled ourselves to the desert of edge-pushing spirituality. And that was one of the things that attracted people like my parents to the Charismatic movement. They wanted more than establishment-friendly religion. And while Charismania has frequently (and often rightly) been criticized as all emotion and no substance, I think it’s unwise to adhere to the opposite extreme of all head and no heart. More specifically, I think we all could handle a little more emotion in our spiritual regimen. It’s okay to cry or laugh in church. It’s okay to express our passion with boisterous antics…or weepy, knees-on-floor reverence.

It’s okay to come out from behind the mask of objective distance. Because sometimes life sucks and we need to share the burden with somebody. And sometimes God has worked a miracle and we need to shout it from the rooftops. Sometimes we’re pissed off and it does more harm to hold it in. And sometimes we’ve experienced a hit of holy joy and freedom that we can’t explain, and we should share these things because that’s what community is for.

I don’t want this precious movement of the emerging church to end up as just another dry, debate-filled clique that gradually becomes the empire it set out to avoid. But I have enormous hope that that will never be the case. Because we are all part of a bigger story that will continue to evolve. Even as we sometimes try to distance ourselves from the label, we on the fringes are still an integral part of the larger Christian movement that’s been rolling on for millennia, and it always will be bigger than any one empire that tries to lay claim to it.

In context with the quote I put at the beginning of my rant, Leslie Weatherhead also wrote that “Christianity must have a marvelous inherent power, or the churches would have killed it long ago.” And although I no longer know exactly what my theology is concerning that “inherent power,” I choose to believe that it is indeed marvelous. It’s also wild, untamable, and often unexplainable, and I think it would be good for us to set it free.

Dave Brown is a writer living in Austin, TX. He blogs at TheAgnosticPentecostal.com.

Everything I Need to Know about the Emergent Conversation, I Learned from My Father

Posted 50 days ago | 5 comments | by Amy Moffitt| Link

by Laura Baker

And he’s gonna be maaaad when he finds out.

My father is a republican, federal-government-employed electrical engineer who has been married to my mother for over forty years. He is also an elder in the Presbyterian Church of America.

I, on the other hand, am a politically independent, feminist, divorced single mom with a Ph.D. in literature (my focus was on African-American and working-class stories).

It will not surprise my dad that I’m involved with emergent circles. But it may surprise him that he led me straight to them.

You see, I love post-modern culture, and the language it gives to multiplicity of meanings in life and art. My motto is from Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” But my father is an Enlightenment Man. He is a rational, linear thinker who believes in empirical data, black and white, true and false, good and evil. To put it nicely, he thinks post-modern thinking is absurd (which, of course, it literally is). To be not-so-nice, he thinks it’s touchy-feely hooey.

When I say that my dad led me to the emerging church, I’m not saying it in any kind of hippie, he-taught-me-to-love-and-value-all-opinions kind of way. He didn’t. Not intentionally anyway.

In fact, there’s very little in the public arena that my dad and I can agree on. We used to spend evening after evening, arguing across the dinner table. My brother (smarter than both of us) would usually moderate, with a general leaning in my father’s direction. And my sweet mother would often leave the room with a nervous stomach, thinking the family was coming apart. But those evenings are absolutely what led to my ability to make a pointed argument in a flash, and thus any success I had in academics.

I spent 30 years in school studying fiction. My dad won’t read stories because “they aren’t true.” But still, when he talks about Civil War history, he spins a most amazing yarn. I’m telling you, don’t ever pass up the opportunity to walk a Gettysburg battlefield with him. Before long, you’ll be seeing the ghosts of those young but duty-bound boys hurtling towards their certain deaths.

I love Nietzsche, Gadamer, Foucault, and Derrida. My dad loves Luther and his Bible, and he reads them both regularly. He thinks my conversations about perspective and narrative-subjectivity are “psycho-babble.” But he finds Luther much more palatable than John Calvin, not to mention a lot more fun. My dad is quick with a laugh, and he doesn’t (always) take himself too seriously.

My dad is right in calling me a “bleeding heart”; the stereotype fits me at least a little bit, causing my father endless sighs and eye-rolling. Talk to him about politics and you’ll get a powerful earful. On most hot-button issues, I usually walk away thinking, Man, my dad’s a hardass. But he’s also a lifelong volunteer, serving the Boy Scouts for over thirty years. My entire childhood was filled with an endless line of smelly, rumpled, pre-pubescent boys heading down my basement stairs for Green Bar meetings. And, according to my mother, Dad still gets late-night calls from old scouts needing anything from a few bucks to a letter of reference, and sometimes just an ear and some fatherly advice.

My dad sounds tough, but is deeply kind. He quips that he doesn’t care how you feel, only what you think; but he will do more for a stranger than anyone I’ve ever seen. And his apologies are epic—if he feels he’s hurt me, he will absolutely address it and take full responsibility.

No, he won’t read a novel, but he can tell endless stories about when I was little and when he was little and when his mom was little, and even when Confederate General Robert E. Lee was little.

Maybe my dad is why the endless contradictions in the Bible don’t bother me much—they are beautiful and complicated and irritating and transforming. Like my dad. Even though neither always makes perfect sense.

My dad’s gonna hate reading this but it’s completely true: he gave me almost every post-modern leaning I have. He helped me form ideas which I’m pretty sure would bar me from membership in his own PCA church. And he is why I will continue to dedicate much of my time and energy to stories. He is also why I will refuse to debate when the only point is to humiliate my opponent. My father would argue tooth and nail against any emergent-ish theology, but he lives the love and tolerance and integrity and community that I value so much in emergent circles. I’m emergent, and it’s all his fault.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Laura Baker is a freelance writer living in Charlottesville, VA.

Jesus the Christ – The Way, The Truth, The Life

Posted 50 days ago | 11 comments | by Amy Moffitt| Link

by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola

The body of Christ is at a crossroads right now. The two common alternatives are to move either to the left or the right. It’s our observation, however, that we are living in a unique time, when people are frozen as they look in either of those directions. When they look to the left, they decide that they cannot venture there. When they look to the right, they feel the same. Whether they realize it or not, people are looking for a fresh alternative—a third way.

The crossroads today, we believe, is one of moving forward or backward. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is that third way—and the only way—that we can forge a secure path into the future. If the church does not reorient and become Christological at its core, any steps taken will be backwards. (Christ is the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form, as Paul said in Colossians.)

It used to be that people had a problem seeing the human in Christ. That sidelined any need to talk about “incarnation.” Now it seems that more people have trouble seeing the divine in Christ. This sidelines the need for any “Christology.” And beyond both, the reality and experience of an indwelling Lord has been almost lost to the Christian faith.

The Lord Jesus Christ is far beyond what most of us could ever dream or imagine. His greatness, His beauty, and His splendor are unknown to many Christians today. This is why a fresh look at Him—a fresh Christology—is so vital. We believe that if people will catch hold of a vision of Christ’s reality, power, supremacy and greatness, they will find the confidence needed to face an uncertain future.

The pursuit of Jesus Christ . . . in reality . . . is an alternative path that is neither left nor right, but forward. It will lead us to exploration rather than fortification.

It is our conviction that we can only cut a path to such future exploration when we take Christ as our All, our “North Star” or “Southern Cross.” The holy Scriptures serve as our road map, or compass, pointing us toward the person of Jesus in all of His riches and depths.

Christians have made the gospel about so many things—things other than Christ. But Jesus Christ is the gravitational pull that brings everything together and gives it meaning. Without Him, all things lose their value. They are but detached pieces floating
around in space. That includes your life. It is all too possible to emphasize a spiritual truth, value, virtue, or gift, yet miss Christ, who is Himself the embodiment and incarnation of all of these things.

What is Christianity? It is Christ. Nothing more. Nothing less. Christianity is not an ideology or a philosophy. Neither is it a new type of morality, social ethic, or worldview. Christianity is the “good news” that beauty, truth, and goodness are found in a person. And true humanity and community are founded on and experienced by connection to that person.

This global, Google world needs a meta-narrative more than ever, and the Jesus Story is the interpreting system of all other systems.

In this hour, the testimony that we feel God has called us to bear revolves around the primacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Specifically, we need to decide how we are going to answer one question: “Who do you say that I am?”

Every revival and restoration in the church has been a rediscovery of some aspect of Christ in the process of answering this critical question. Jesus Himself said that when He is lifted up, He will draw all people to Himself. But because we don’t trust Jesus to do what He says He will do, or believe that He is who He says He is, or have not caught a glimpse of His infinite glory, we sit at drawing boards and draw up programs and methods and draft strategies that we hope might bring people to Christ. But Jesus could not have been clearer: the only begotten Son of God is the draw.

Our mission is simply to lift Him up in a context that our culture can understand and appreciate. Whenever this happens, the rest will take care of itself.

Leonard Sweet is an author and preacher, who is currently serving as the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School. Frank Viola is an author and speaker. Their new book Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ was recently published by Thomas Nelson.

A Response to "The Promise of Despair"

Posted 113 days ago | 2 comments | by Amy Moffitt| Link

by Jake Bouma

It should be stated up front that I am a book junkie. I read books like it’s my second job – mostly non-fiction with a predilection towards theology and philosophy. In all of my recent reading, however, I have yet to come across a book that has burrowed itself as deeply into my psyche as The Promise of Despair by Dr. Andrew Root. Within weeks of finishing the book, I found myself in several situations where its theological themes greatly informed my thought processes and conversational trajectories.

One weekday afternoon I was sitting across from Kathy, an incredibly helpful volunteer and parent of one of the students in my ministry. Our lunch meeting agenda was to discuss some details of an upcoming fundraiser, but I had recently received some rather despairing news about Kathy’s family situation. Kathy’s husband, I was told, had been sober for years but had just recently returned to the drink that nearly tore their family apart years ago. Now that her son was old enough to realize something is off with his father, Kathy wanted to provide him with an emotional outlet should he need it. After finishing both our meal and the agenda, I asked her how her and her son were holding up. Throughout the next forty-five minutes, I learned how Kathy’s marital life was on the brink of collapse – it wasn’t a matter of if, but when, she told me. She talked about how she’s very good at projecting a carefree, everything’s-under-control façade, but that underneath it she’s a mess. She was broken, weak.

As I listened to Kathy, I found myself with a peculiar urge to talk about Martin Luther’s theologia crucis, or “theology of the cross,” which is one of the foundations upon which Root builds the arguments in his book. My usual instinct is to reach down into my deep pocket of pseudo-comforting platitudes and hand them out, one after another. “It’s always darkest before the dawn,” I would say, or, “God makes all things work together for good.” Or better yet, “I’ll be praying for you.” But there was no way I could say any of that after reading The Promise of Despair. To both my and Kathy’s surprise, I started talking about how in Christ, God is found in the broken places, the places of despair. He is made known next to nothingness and death. I talked about how during this extremely traumatic life experience, although she wonders why God has abandoned her, this is precisely the moment he is closest to her. “This really, really sucks,” I said. “But our God is right there with you, suckiness and all.”

Had I not read and internalized the theological insights in Root’s book, I suspect our conversation would have been very different. It would have been less real, less beautiful. A few weeks later she thanked me via email for the conversation: “I go back to our conversation in my head quite a bit,” she said.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Root wants to know what it would look like if the whole church were built upon this promise of despair. How would the church come to embody despair? And would we really want it to? Before these questions can be answered, Root nimbly walks us through four symbolic “deaths” which are manifesting themselves in late modernity: The deaths of meaning, authority, belonging, and identity. This first half of the book is engaging and illuminating to be sure, but its merely a primer to get one ready for the main thrust of the book: building the life of the church from communities of death and despair.

There has been no shortage of books in the last half decade about how to “do church” differently – either more or less postmodern, liturgical, relevant, ancient-future, whatever. Major structural changes are called for. Conferences are organized. Clergy are encouraged to be bold for the sake of the church. In fact, in a bold move, Root claims outright that this book sides with the opponents of the emerging church, claiming the movement hasn’t pushed far enough. But what of those of us who are not in positions of sufficient authority to make significant structural or programmatic changes in our local contexts? What about those of us who are simply content with changing lives, willing to leave the business of changing the church to others? Root wants to answer what the entire church would look like if it took the shape of the cross, but I fear that in doing so he unwittingly forces a major demographic to connect the dots between the book and their ministries.

To be fair, The Promise of Despair is at its core a work of theology and ecclesiology. It never claims to have a five-step process for ministry transformation, and to Andy’s credit, he has set up The Despair Project to demonstrate what a cross-shaped church might look like. But what about the woman who volunteers to lead Bible study? How could the promise of despair manifest itself in her ministry? What about the associate pastor who, among other duties, oversees Christian Education and preaches once a month? How might the theologically-curious accountant who volunteers as an usher put some flesh and blood on Root’s theology?

Therein lies the rub: Such a penetrating work demands to be fleshed out in our ministries. As part of Abingdon Press’ Living Theology series, I simply wonder if the scales are balanced between living and theology in this book – there’s plenty of the latter, but I want the former just as much.

For now, I’m more than content that The Promise of Despair has generated subtle but significant changes in my thinking and, by extension, my ministry. Between the covers of this book is a call to recover a crucial component of Luther’s breakthrough: God brings life and possibility out of death and impossibility. I believe it’s a call we, within and without the church, desperately need to heed. If you’re in any way invested in the future of the church, reading Andrew Root’s The Promise of Despair should be a top priority.

Jake Bouma is the Director of Youth Ministries at St. Mark Lutheran Church in West Des Moines, IA. He blogs at JakeBouma.com and tweets at twitter.com/jakebouma.

To read the unfolding conversation and Andrew Root’s response to Jake Bouma, check out the Spring/Summer edition of GENERATE Magazine, coming out in May!

Latin-American Emergence

Posted 113 days ago | 4 comments | by Amy Moffitt| Link

How do we in Latin-America and the Caribbean want to shape the church emerging?

An interview with Anyul Rivas and Natanael Disla
by Gustavo Frederico

This interview was originally published at Renovatio Cafe (site in Portuguese) and the following English translation is also available here.

Gustavo Frederico: Natanael, how would you characterize the emerging movement in Latin America?

Natanael Disla: We can’t say that there is an “emerging movement” in Latin America, at least as people know it in the United States currently. Changes in theology have been proposed for decades in Latin America and the Caribbean, but these did not resonate deeply within the churches and faith communities.

Gustavo: What would be some of these changes and their causes?

Natanael: 1. The human being as subject of theology. Theology has been seen as “the study of God”, without taking into account human beings as the producers of this theology, much less the vital historical and cultural contexts that determined this theology. We can see a preoccupation in Latin America and the Caribbean with the subject of placing the human being as the subject of theology. The historical baggage of Latin America and the Caribbean also adds to the complexity of the issue.

2. Action and social justice as the cyclical climax of theology-making. The entrenchment of evangelical churches in the region and their dependency on the missionary societies that founded them to carry on the mission and provide pastoral care failed to take into account the true needs of the communities, which has led people to question structural sources of these needs.

3. The inclusion of excluded individualities. There are suggestions not only that the church must be “the voice of the voiceless”, but that these voices “come to the forefront” without distinctions of any kind.

I won’t try to be exhaustive, but I believe that these three points give us a general view of some of the theological changes that have been proposed.

Gustavo: I would like to come back to some aspects of these 3 points, but now I ask Anyul: what do you understand by “emerging movement” in general?

Anyul Rivas: In general, I would say that the emerging movement is a heterogeneous movement of Christians dialoguing with the world and postmodern society; it is the intent to see the gospel from postmodernity and not postmodernity from the closed and modern gospel.

Gustavo: What would be some of the characteristics of postmodernity in Latin America?

Anyul: I believe that first of all it would be characterized by criticism of the presuppositions of the Age of Enlightenment. In the Enlightenment view, science was a synonym of truth and “rationality” was imposed as a universal parameter. This stands in contrast to the postmodern emphasis on the values of the individual and his/her experience as [the] base of the interpretation of the real.

Gustavo: Yes. I also think that there is increasing skepticism of the meta-narratives/big utopian ideas like “capitalism” or “socialism”. An interesting part of your answer, Anyul, is the hermeneutical interpretation, “it is the intent to see the gospel from postmodernity and not postmodernity from the closed and modern gospel”. Do we read the gospel or does the gospel read us?

Anyul: Reading the Gospel is a bilateral experience, but for years we believed that it was a unilateral experience of God toward us.

Gustavo: The numbers of evangelical churches – especially the Pentecostals – keep rising in Latin America. Do we need an emerging movement, Natanael?

Natanael: More than needing an “emerging movement”, which would come as yet another imported ecclesiological model, we need to rethink from our own contexts about ways of being church that address the needs of our people.

Anyul: I agree with Natanael, if we are to take anything from the “emergent movement” from North America it is its disposition to dialogue and the conversation with its surroundings that develops. I welcome the initiative of the interdenominational/inter-religious dialogue and the non-adherence to confessional doctrines specific to the American emerging movement, but in Latin America that looks like a bitter pill to swallow…

Natanael: Yes, but the theologies present in Latin America and the Caribbean have been saying this for decades.

Gustavo: “Emerging movement” or “emerging church” seem like “temporal” terms to describe a natural and organic process of change in North America. That is why I ask if there are differences between the characteristics of postmodernity in Latin America, the Caribbean and North America.

Natanael: In my opinion postmodernity cannot be clearly defined in Latin America and the Caribbean. In this context, it is better to speak of post-colonialism, understood as the process that this region, Africa and certain zones of Asia are undergoing in order to “become independent for the second time”. We received a whole baggage of thought external to our reality, euro-centric, which saw reason as the most supreme entity of humanity, inherent to it, but external. Now the native, contextual and experiential identities of the peoples of our regions are being recovered.

I differ from Anyul’s analysis in this sense:

1. A criticism of the presuppositions of the Age of Enlightenment. Here we would have to speak about reunion with the forms of thought originating from seeing the individual as [a] being united with the Earth, as [a] living being.

2. Interpretation of the real. Here we would have to speak about the human being as integral part of the myth.

3. Unbelief in the meta-narratives. It doesn’t seem to me that this is happening with our people. These worldviews survive and are an inheritance of a late modernism that started to take root since the wars for independence of the 19th century.

Gustavo: Does it not seem to you that the fall of the Berlin wall, the crises of the left, the end of the cold war, and now the economic and environmental crises have contributed to a general ‘unbelief in meta-narratives’?

Natanael: Absolutely, yes, but it is an uphill struggle to overcome the dichotomies of faith/reason and faith/science [present] in our peoples, held hostage by the institutionalization still present in the socialism of the 21st century… and in the other political systems present.

Gustavo: Anyul, you mention a criticism of rationalism, and I can see that in emergents in North America. In Latin America we know some of the problems with the lack of reason in the churches and in theology (abuse of power, manipulation, faith with no comprehension, etc). Do you think that the “criticism of rationalism” of emergents applies to Latin America?

Anyul: Rationalism is one of the causes of denominationalism that is part of the church in Latin America, and so, yes, the criticism of this rationalism is a form of overcoming this segmentation, therefore I think that its application is valid.

Gustavo: To me it seems that the North American criticism of rationalism originates from the presupposition of the literal reading of the Bible. It still seems to me that they hold an unbelief in technology and in economic models.

Anyul: I agree. And in this presupposition of reading the Scriptures literally, each one interprets his/her vision of the Scriptures as the only true one and tries to impose it onto the other, whose rejection becomes the endless creation of denominations. I believe that it would be a great achievement to emphasise orthopraxis instead of adherence to closed doctrinal systems.

Gustavo: Natanael, one of the proposals of the emerging conversation is that they are against dualities such as “sacred and profane”. Can you see theological tendencies in Latin America that promote this concept?

Natanael: Yes, in the Liberation Theologies (TLs) they have been promoting these concepts, but in the original TL the theme of corporeity was not addressed, except when it started to dialogue with the feminist studies of the 80s, when feminist theology in Latin America timidly started to take form. I would like to highlight the concept of corporeity here, since it proposes the defragmentation of the dichotomy sacred/profane, in which the body has been understood as source of sin by religion. The body, therefore, needs a medium that links itself to divinity, and here is where religion comes in. The concept of body in Latin America and the Caribbean has not progressed much outside of academia because because of the enslaving paradigms still present in society.

Gustavo: What about Integral Mission? What does it say regarding the division between sacred and profane?

Natanael: Integral Mission has not addressed this subject because it came from a conservative desire in its theology… it has not been preoccupied with rethinking from within the theological postulations it inherited.

Gustavo: But TL speaks of “liberation from theology”. It seems to be an interesting distinction. As if in TL there were a form of deconstruction that does not exist in Integral Mission.

Natanael: TL differs substantially from Integral Mission (MI). MI is not the “protestant version” of TL.

Gustavo: Anyul, you spoke about the problems of denominationalism in Latin America. The emergent conversation in North America seems to have a notion (at least a discourse) of otherness similar to that present in Integral Mission and Liberation Theology. Maybe we could speak of people with interest in ecumenism in North America (Samir Selmanovic for example). Since the Protestant Reformation there have been lots of protestant denominations. What course could the denominations take in Latin America?

Anyul: Phylis Tickle has an interesting theory, she says that the denominations that do not engage with the emerging conversation are condemned to the decrease of its membership and later extinction, but I don’t believe this concept applies across the board… not even in North America. What I see is that there is a certain tendency in the denominations to strengthen their structures and to centralize even more. The “apostolic movements” are a recent example of that, which in my understanding are simply another effort to centralize the protestant church even more.

Gustavo: Natanael, I can see the 3 changes as subjects in the Christianity of Liberation (new expression in Brazil for Liberation Theology 2.0). Is it realistic to see the 3 characteristics – the human being as subject of theology, an emphasis on action and social justice and the inclusion of excluded – in Latin-American and Caribbean evangelicals in the future?

Natanael: At some time it should happen, but definitely the concept of church as we know it now has to be deconstructed. Church and temple are still synonyms, and it is sadly certain that the Word of God – which also sadly has been hijacked into a “Pope of paper” – is present in the homily in the temple. It is what follows from the setting of the prevailing thought.

Gustavo: Apparently, European and North-American emergents have recovered the omnipresence of God with their criticism of the division between sacred and profane, which is a pure exercise of deconstruction. How much rupture with current denominations would be necessary in order to have a praxis of the daily, of the people, of the Earth, of inclusion of the excluded and of social justice?

Natanael: I believe that denominationalism must go through another way of understanding and dialoguing with the many forms of thought, of being and of making church. It is not a matter of rupture with current denominations, it is not a matter of creating new institutions, not even of merging with others, it is a matter of letting ourselves be provoked by the Other; of embarking onto a new trip and of rediscovering [ourselves] as organic beings.

Anyul: I believe that a rupture is not necessary, although perhaps the transition for more conservative denominations will be more difficult. I heard of Methodist churches in Colombia with projects of Latin-Americanization of the church under the initiative of Elsa Tamez, and their ideas align with the three proposals mentioned above. As Natanael said, it is a matter of implementing an exercise of otherness.

Gustavo: When I think of a praxis of the daily, of the people, of the Earth, of inclusion of the excluded and of social justice, it seems that the church is automatically positioning itself “on the left” from a political perspective. This must sound a bit uncomfortable, for example, for some people from Venezuela or Paraguay or Bolivia who do not share a “socialist political position”. Is it possible to imagine an emerging Latin-American movement that includes tendencies that are not “of the left”? Or in other words, how to speak about a praxis of the daily, of the people, of the Earth, of inclusion, etc, and [still] hold a plurality of political positions?

Natanael: This is a difficult subject. First of all, even though there may not be a direct correlation of people with various political positions and conceptions of the importance of contextualization of faith, it is still certain that the prevailing systems of oppression are being backed by the same authorities and political institutions that benefit from those systems. This inevitably leads to those who benefit from the structural inequities and those who do not taking sides in political matters. When it comes to making radical changes in the communities of the same faith, we come to a crossroads at some point where these two sides are at odds. It seemed to be a “zugzwang” at times from which we cannot detach. Secondly, we would have to ask ourselves how to rethink politics from faith. The reflections on political participation of Protestants in Integral Mission only limited itself to endorsing the influential positions of the government of the day to rethink doing politics from a faith perspective… but “doing-politics” from the ground up wasn’t emphasized and here is where I would like to stop and emphasise that macro-politics must yield to micro-politics. This includes the deconstruction of the State as the governing and regulatory institution of the people, state institutions as fragmentary organizations of this superpower and churches as guardians of the “moral and good manners”.

Gustavo: I understand. Amen! Anyul, would you like to add anything?

Anyul: In Venezuela it is exactly this the problem that we have when opening up the discussion on TL or when promoting the communal reading of the Bible for example, because they always presuppose it to be associated with the Marxist discourse. It has been very difficult to overcome these barriers and until now there is no compelling and inclusive proposal.

Gustavo: One interesting characteristic of the emergent movement is the “leadership of the body” that flattens hierarchies. Perhaps that would be a tool for the deconstruction of social institutions. Flattening hierarchies a priori would not hold a political position.

In Brazil we see new “emerging” communities that follow a more alternative line, with tattoos, hard rock and a very informal language. This line would not be very different than the “neo-reformers’ such as Driscoll. One of the ideas would be that the application of the gospel changes and is contextualized with culture but the essence of the gospel doesn’t change. Is it true that the essence of the gospel doesn’t change, and only the form of transmission of the gospel changes?

Anyul: I believe that it is inevitable that the gospel changes, especially on the distinct contexts of life and meaning of the gospel. The ‘good news’ is changed by the culture that shares it and that which receives it. For example, the expressions “salvation” and “liberation” have assumed very distinct connotations over the years in distinct cultures, and if the gospel is to be relevant, it must tackle these concepts and take its meaning from there. The gospel preached today is not the same good news as was preached at the times of Jesus.

Natanael: The essence of the gospel, whatever that is or is understood by it, always comes back to how the human being is understood in a utopian [way]. This concept changes over epochs, vital contexts, cultures and groups of people. This utopia is summarized in the human being as love, “Deus caritas est”. The “way of transmission” of this gospel is understood as “method”, which is nothing but the construction of techniques from pre-drawn paradigms. These very “forms of transmission”, as conceptually understood, are disassociated from the word as primary organic being of the discourse. Language, in this sense, already has a determined construction and a whole set of forms that yield to the foundation of paradigms that rule societies, so that the forms of transmission of this gospel are nothing but the diverse aesthetic methods that are based on the theological paradigms of the meta-narratives.

Natanael Disla holds a Licenciate in Business Administration from the Pedro Henríquez Ureña National University and is studying for the Bachelor in Theological Sciences in the Baptist Seminary of Dominican Republic. He is a member of the Latin American Theological Fraternity (LATF) and Coordinator of the Dominican Republic LATF cohort. Natanael ives in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Gustavo Frederico is a Canadian-Brazilian currently living in Brasília, Brazil. He earned his Masters in Computer Science by the University of Ottawa, Canada. Liberation Theology and reading are some of his interests. He is the founder of Conversa Sem Nome | Conversación Sin Nombre. He is married to Louise and is the father of Christina and Lucas

Anyul Rivas holds a Licenciate in Computer Science from Universidad Nacional Experimental Simón Rodriguez and is a student of Theology in the Evangelical Seminary of Caracas, Venezuela. He is also the host of an small emergent community (house church). He lives in Los Teques, Venezuela.