From Fred Clark's latest post on the novel Left Behind:

What really matters to [authors LaHaye and Jenkins] is whether or not Buck "truly believes" -- whether or not he is, like Rayford, passionately sincere and sincerely passionate. My Calvinist brother calls this "Great Pumpkin" spirituality -- the idea that our sincerity, rather than God's grace, is the decisive factor. I'm very much not a Calvinist, but I agree that such Great Pumpkin spirituality makes no sense. Jesus' parables are filled with characters begging for forgiveness for the most selfish and venal reasons imaginable, yet that never matters in those stories.

Rolling Stone sent a reporter undercover to an Encounter Weekend sponsored by Pastor John Hagee's Cornerstone [Mega]Church in San Antonio. Although I don't care much for the flippant 'those-wacky-christians' tone of the article, the reporter does make some interesting observations about the brainwashing aspects of his experience. Scary stuff.

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this — once you've gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

By the end of that weekend, Phil Fortenberry could have told us that John Kerry was a demon with clawed feet, and not one person would have so much as blinked. Because none of that politics stuff matters anyway, once you've gotten this far. All that matters is being full of the Lord and empty of demons. And since everything that is not of God is demonic, asking these people to be objective about anything else is just absurd. There is no "anything else." All alternative points of view are nonstarters. There is this "our thing," a sort of Cosa Nostra of the soul, and then there are the fires of Hell. And that's all.

The video is several minutes long, but it's worth it to listen to it all, trust me.

(via Gordon Atkinson, aka Real Live Preacher)

What other kind of guide is there for intelligent design?

Here's the publisher's description of the book (emphasis added):

Intelligent Design is one of the hottest issues facing parents and educators to day, but it can be hard to separate the facts from the heated rhetoric. This expert and objective guide gets to the bottom of the questions: What is Intelligent Design? Should it replace or complement traditional science? What’s all the fuss about?

• Explains the terms, the controversy, and the involvement of the American courts
• Indispensable guide for concerned educators and parents
• Written by an expert in the field

In his latest essay in The Christian Century, Gordon Atkinson explains why we need both science and mystery. As usual, Gordon expresses my sentiments more eloquently than I ever could:

Some people see the boundary between mystery and science as a battleground with barbed wire and trenches on either side. But I think that the place where our searching and empirical minds meet the mysteries of the world is the realm of worship and poetry. Before Adam and Eve, the world was chaos, like a vast unconscious mind with no boundaries and no definitions. The world itself hasn't changed, but our human perspective is continually solving mysteries and creating new ones as fast as we can.

Our love of answers has always been nicely balanced against our penchant for awe and worship. Reality is both a thing to be conquered and also something to be worshiped. This is the human way.

I wonder when it was that science and religion stopped seeing each other as ancient twins of the human mind and started seeing each other as competitors. While I and others like me slog it out in the worshiping world of mystery, brother scientist is observing, collating and solving mysteries as fast as he can. I don't want him to stop. I like the way he slays ancient gods. What I want is for us to embrace each other and walk though life together. He can solve old mysteries and I can celebrate the new ones.

Today, a coworker who has young children was explaining to a childless coworker how Build-A-Bear works. This reminded me. I'm surprised that wacko right-wing Christians haven't started a campaign against Build-A-Bear (I didn't find any such thing on the Google).

In the process of making a stuffed animal at Build-A-Bear, the child does the following:

You select a heart - a Build-A-Bear Workshop trademark. Then you warm it in the palm of your hands, make a wish, and put it inside your new furry friend. This magical moment brings your furry friend to life and creates an unforgettable memory.

Sounds an awful lot like playing God to me.

This just makes my head hurt.

Back at the first of November I received the following email from someone who is in somewhat of a position of authority with the youth and parents of my community:

Subject: Fwd: Request of CAUTION

You may already know about this, but I just learned about a kids movie coming out in December starring Nicole Kidman. I believe it's called The Golden Compass, and while it will be a watered down version, it is based on a series of children's books about killing God (it is anti-Narnia).

Please follow this link, and then pass it on. From what I understand, the hope is to get a lot of kids to see the movie - which won't seem too bad - and then get the parents to buy the books for their kids for Christmas. The quotes from the author sum it all up.

http://snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

This email really rubbed me the wrong way, so I sent this response:

We (Katie, Hannah and I) have read and enjoyed the entire trilogy.

Yes, Pullman is an atheist, and yes, the books in this trilogy contain 'anti-religious themes,' but I think the concern is way overblown. In typical fashion, Christian fearmongers are implying that this book and movie are part of some nefarious plot to undermine Christianity. Give me a break!

Hannah read the trilogy maybe two years ago, when she was 11. After she finished, we discussed with her the 'anti-religious themes' in the trilogy. She didn't see any of it. Frankly, the theological implications were WAY over her head and frankly, probably over most people's heads. Hell, I have a Ph.D. in literature and I didn't think much about it until Katie brought up the topic.

In fact, you could argue that people SHOULD read the book and see the movie as a stimulus for important discussions. A reviewer that was quoted on the snopes page you linked to wrote: "[Pullman's] fundamental objection is to ideological tyranny..."

Lord knows (so to speak) that the Christian church is constantly in danger of committing ideological tyranny and has frequently gone far across that line. Discussion and awareness of the topic is one way to ensure we don't get near it ourselves.

You are in a position of authority. People listen to your recommendations. In the future, please don't pass on such concerns based on hearsay.

It was the tone of this email that really got me: the explicit mention of well-known (apparently former) scientologist Nicole Kidman, the suggestion of conspiracy.

Well, apparently author Brandon Sanderson, who writes science fiction for young adults, received a similar email. He addressed his concerns about such censorship in a blog post. I'm glad to see that he brought many of the same points that I thought of--but of course, he expressed them much more eloquently than I.

I also agree with Brandon Sanderson on another point that he makes: if your faith is so weak that it can be influenced by a work of fiction, then you've got bigger problems than the work of fiction itself.

Fred Clark writes today about a new study of perceptions of Christianity in American culture.

Fred excerpts this paragraph from the study:

The study discovered a new image that has steadily grown in prominence over the last decade. Today, the most common perception is that present-day Christianity is "anti-homosexual." Overall, 91 percent of young non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians. One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a "bigger sin" than anything else. Moreover, they claim that the church has not helped them apply the biblical teaching on homosexuality to their friendships with gays and lesbians.

I've long maintained that the silent majority of Christians--the people in the pews, not the ones on the radio and TV--aren't really that engaged in the political and religious battle over homosexuality. I have no doubt that most Christians consider homosexual sex acts a sin (which I don't really agree with), but I've assumed that issues closer to home were of greater concern.

So, when I read the paragraph above, I immediately assumed that this perception was shaped by the bigmouths in the media who spout hatred, but who don't really represent this presumed silent majority. But then, I read on in the article about the study's report and found this:

David Kinnaman, who is a 12-year-veteran of the Barna team, pointed out some of the unexpected findings of the research. "Going into this three-year project, I assumed that people’s perceptions were generally soft, based on misinformation, and would gradually morph into more traditional views. But then, as we probed why young people had come to such conclusions, I was surprised how much their perceptions were rooted in specific stories and personal interactions with Christians and in churches. When they labeled Christians as judgmental this was not merely spiritual defensiveness. It was frequently the result of truly ‘unChristian’ experiences. We discovered that the descriptions that young people offered of Christianity were more thoughtful, nuanced, and experiential than expected."

Great. So maybe my presumed silent majority is, in fact, a minority. That's just depressing in so many ways. It also makes me think that I need to try harder to explain the tolerant and loving version of Christianity to those around me.

Today's Austin American-Statesman features several articles about emergent churches in Austin. The local congregations profiled in the articles are Vox Veniae, Mosaic, Journey IFC, and Oak Grove Abbey. It's an interesting and well written set of articles.

What struck me most, though, was that one of these congregations seems significantly different than the others. Some of the members of Vox Venaie are trying to live their faith by moving from the safe suburbs into a poorer inner-city neighborhood, so that they can "share their resources by living among people who have less." That's a big step beyond just forming a non-traditional faith community.

Once again, I find myself in full agreement with aethiest John Scalzi. The image below, which I stole from his site, says it all.

As I've mentioned before, Fred Clark's ongoing page-by-page commentary of the horrendously bad first Left Behind novel is always an interesting read. In this week's commentary, I found an interesting conversation in the comments. I think it's easiest just to quote the relevant comments.

First, Reverend Ref responds to a line from the novel:

Everything he had tried had failed. ... Rayford had never felt more powerless and desperate.

And this is also something that is theologically wrong. We don't convert people, that is God's job (or the Holy Spirit if you want to get technical). I tell my parishioners all the time, "All we can do is invite people; conversion is God's department." This fundagelical push to constantly figure out how many people you've saved is, for lack of a better term, whacked. It's nothing more than spiritual bullying. Our job as Christians is to proclaim the kingdom of God. We proclaim. We invite. We welcome. We talk. God converts. If the other person rejects that, it's not our problem. But that DOES NOT mean we revel in their (anticipated?) destruction.

Love God. Love your neighbor. Remember you aren't the boss.

Bugmaster resplies:

Well, what about people like myself, who don't believe that there is any "boss" at all ? You have shown us the way to salvation, and we rejected it as a fantasy. Now (assuming you're right), we will burn in Hell for all eternity / will be stuck in Limbo forever / will be separate from God for all time / won't get our 72 virgins / etc. Wouldn't you want to push your point... and push and push and push... until the atheists do convert ? It's for their own good, and you love them, right ?

Ok, this is different from typical evangelicals, who only care about themselves ("I've converted 10 people last week ! Woo !"), but still, I'm sure there are some people out there who think that way. Three of them were in my math class...

And here's Reverend Ref's reply:

If you don't believe that there is any "boss" at all, and if you reject it as fantasy, that's your call (that whole free will thing). Am I disappointed? Sure, for a variety of reasons. However, I will not push and push and push... until the atheists do convert. It may be for your own good, as you say, but so was syrup of ipecac (or so my grandmother told me). I would much rather invite you into a discussion about God and invite you to church, be turned down, and then talk about about the Mariners or Seahawks or the weather and have you remain on speaking terms with me (maybe even be considered a friend), than to push and push and push and piss you off.

At least with Option #1 there's a chance you might change your mind. That's how I operate during my bar visits. There's a whole hospitality thing going on there. Not to mention the fact that I do not believe God put me on a quota system.

And Bugmaster again:

Well, if more people thought like you, we'd have less wars (and less theocratic maniacs in charge), so your stance is quite admirable. Still, it sounds like you'd rather acquire a friend in this life, than rescue the same person's soul from an eternity of torment in the next life. Some people (i.e., zealously religious people) could interpret this as a selfish attitude.

Reverend Ref:

Um ... not quite. I'd rather remain on speaking terms with you. Whether you are or are not my friend, I really couldn't care less. However, I believe that conversion happens through conversation, which has the potential to open one up to the working of the Holy Spirit. If I push and push and push, as you said earlier, and do nothing but piss you off about me in particular and Christianity in general, then I have helped to shut the door. And that, in my book, is sinful behavior.

I don't know where a conversation will lead, but I do know that not being willing to converse, or sit down at table or any other words/actions that shuts people down will lead nowhere. Witness my own Anglican Communion and the various behaviors there about not wanting to converse with or commune with the "wrong" people. At least if we keep talking, the potential for conversion remains.

And finally, Bugmaster:

Well, your position does make sense. I don't know much about the Anglican Communion, but some Protestant varieties here in America also have such an isolationist approach. Pretty sad.

Here we have Bugmaster, a self-professed aethist, who has been reading and participating in the comments of a blog by a liberal evangelical for months or longer, and yet, after all this exposure to Fred Clark and many of his commenters, Bugmaster still thinks that their (and my) brand of Christianity is the exception, not the norm. That's a sad statement on American Christian culture.

Today, Fred Clark blogs about a growing movement in the Southern Baptist Convention to urge parents to pull their children out of public schools. One of the motivations for this movement is to remove children from the "'metastasizing spiritual, moral and intellectual pathologies of the government school system.'"

As usual, Fred does a very good job of covering the political, cultural and religious aspects of the issue. But his post reminded me of something from my own past. I grew up in the Texas Hill Country just north of San Antonio. We lived just beyond the fringes of suburban San Antonio at the time; you could live more or less in the country and still commute into San Antonio, though it was a long commute.

I can think of quite a few families who moved out of San Antonio to remove their kids from the perceived negative influences of the city's schools. But by and large, these families continued to deal with the same types of problems with their kids even in the idyllic Hill Country. In my opinion, those families chose to blame the city for their kids' problems, when in fact the problems lay with the kids and families themselves; moving to the country didn't change things. Sounds to me like some Southern Baptists might be suffering the same delusion.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between faith and spirituality. I've finally nailed down a definition that makes sense to me. Spirituality is a sense that there's something bigger, transcendent in the universe. This is religion:

Enter Sam: I got sober, I got pregnant, don't ask me how that works, it is just the way it was. And as some of you may know, there were these tiny little problems. For instance, the father was -- comment se dit -- not that enthusiastic about my having a baby, and I had no money. But I'd been going to this little church for a while by then, and when I announced during worship that I was pregnant, people cheered. All these old people, raised in fundamentalist houses in the Deep South, cheered. It was so amazing. They almost immediately saw me as the incubator who was going to bring them a new baby, to have and to hold. So they set about providing for us. They brought clothes, they brought furniture, they brought me soul-food casseroles to keep in the freezer, they brought me assurance that he was going to be a part of this family. And they began slipping me money.

Go read the whole essay. It's amazing.

This just makes my head hurt. Get the whole story from Pam's House Blend.

via Slacktivist

I frequently describe myself as a liberal or progressive Christian. Twice in the past couple of weeks, I have been asked exactly what that means. While I have some general statements, it bothered me that I didn't have a concise, easy-to understand answer. In response to this frustration, I started reading Brian D. McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy (which Rick Diamond, who I recently met, recommends on his blog.

I haven't yet gotten too far into the book, and I don't yet have an answer to my question, but I found the first chapter of the book to be an informative brief theological primer. In this chapter, Mr. McLaren describes "the seven Jesuses I have known;" he writes a short summary of the unique characteristics of seven 'branches' of Christianity. At the end of the seven characterizations, Mr. McLaren writes:

I am a Christian because I believe the real Jesus is all that these sketches reveal and more. Saying that, a question comes to mind...

Why not celebrate them all? . . . I'm recommending that we acknowledge that Christians of each tradition bring their distinctive and wonderful gifts to the table, so we can all enjoy the feast of generous orthodoxy--and spread that same feast for the whole world.

I definitely identify with this viewpoint, so I think I'm looking in the right place to help me voice my views. Stay tuned...

By the way, 'the Liberal Protestant Jesus' is one of flavors that Mr. McLaren describes. Since I identify much more with Mr. McLaren's viewpoint than this one particular flavor, I see why I've had trouble describing my own theology. I have a feeling I'll end up abandoning the word 'liberal' as soon as I find a more accurate and less charged description.

This fridge magnet, and several other equally awesome ones, apparently adorn Rick Diamond's refrigerator (photos taken by Gordon Atkinson). Seeing the magnets and visiting his church's web site, I dropped by his office and had a nice chat with him. I'm really intrigued by the approach to their faith that Rick and his fellow 'journeyers' take, and I plan to visit their worship service soon.

I caught this morning's This I believe essay by Episcopal priest Richard Rohr. In his essay, Rev. Rohr explains that his "religious belief has made [him] comfortable with ambiguity." He continues:

Whenever I think there's a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say "only" or "always," someone or something proves me wrong. My scientist friends have come up with things like "principles of uncertainty" and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of "faith"! How strange that the very word "faith" has come to mean its exact opposite.

I read that as a more eloquent statement of what I always say: for me, faith is about the journey, not the destination.

Ironically, at the end of the essay, Rev. Rohr makes an absolute statement:

People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It's the people who don't know who usually pretend that they do. People who've had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don't know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind. It is a litmus test for authentic God experience, and is -- quite sadly -- absent from much of our religious conversation today. My belief and comfort is in the depths of Mystery, which should be the very task of religion.

So, according to Re. Rohr, if you think it's about the destination, not the journey, then you just haven't had a 'genuine spiritual experience." This is where my belief differs from that of Rev. Rohr. I've thought long and hard about how a belief in God can mean such diametrically opposed things to different people. My conclusion is that there must be some reason that I can't comprehend. For me, that remains a mystery.

When the issue of evolution comes up, I always say that I think a God who can set evolution in motion is much more impressive than one who can just zap everything into existence as is.

Well, once again, Gordon Atkinson expresses my beliefs but in a much more elegant way than I ever could. Go read his new essay Your Uncle's Third Nipple.

I finally designed a replacement bumer sticker for my passé "Compassionate Liberal":

They are available for public purchase at Cafepress.com (and I didn't add any markup, so I don't make anything off of purchases).

The Episcopal Church USA has elected a woman, Katharine Jefferts Schori, as presiding bishop, sending a great big fuck-you to 'traditionalists' in the US and around the world.

In a nice essay in Time Magazine, Andrew Sullivan argues that we should not let the politicized Christian right co-opt the term 'Christian,' as their belief in the intermingling of politics and religion reflects neither the true message of Christ nor the beliefs of most Christians. Instead, he coins a new term for them--'Christianist'--defined as follows:

Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Yesterday, Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno made the following statement about 'creationism':

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.

Brother Consolmagno argued that the Christian God was a supernatural one, a belief that had led the clergy in the past to become involved in science to seek natural reasons for phenomena such as thunder and lightning, which had been previously attributed to vengeful gods. "Knowledge is dangerous, but so is ignorance. That's why science and religion need to talk to each other," he said.

"Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do."

Man, I envy the Catholics. I wish that we United Methodists had an official astronomer. I'd even be happy with an official entomologist.

(via Real Live Preacher)

I read yesterday that Bart D. Ehrman's book Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why is selling briskly. In the book, Dr. Ehrman presents some reasons why we can't just take the Bible at face value: a plethora of conflicting source documents, errors in translation, the politics of canonization, etc. Or, as the Washington Post article says, his book "casts doubt on any number of New Testament episodes that most Christians take as, well, gospel."

I haven't read the book yet, but it sounds like New Testament 101 type stuff to me. I'm really happy that Ehrman's book is presenting these ideas to people who are not familiar with the complex processes which have resulted in the book we call the Bible. Maybe I should keep a copy or two on hand to give out.

As usual, Gordon Atkinson expresses a matter of faith that I share much more eloquently than I ever could. Go read This is how it happened.

This article makes me ill. Some excerpts:

A former high-school biology teacher, Ham travels the nation training children as young as 5 to challenge science orthodoxy. He doesn't engage in the political and legal fights that have erupted over the teaching of evolution. His strategy is more subtle: He aims to give people who trust the biblical account of creation the confidence to defend their views — aggressively.

He urges students to offer creationist critiques of their textbooks, parents to take on science museum docents, professionals to raise the subject with colleagues. If Ham has done his job well, his acolytes will ask enough pointed questions — and set forth enough persuasive arguments — to shake the doctrine of Darwin.

"We're going to arm you with Christian Patriot missiles," Ham, 54, recently told the 1,200 adults gathered at Calvary Temple here in northern New Jersey. It was a Friday night, the kickoff of a heavily advertised weekend conference sponsored by Ham's ministry, Answers in Genesis.

In two 90-minute workshops for children, Ham adopted a much lighter tone, mocking scientists who think birds evolved from dinosaurs ("if that were true, I'd be worried about my Thanksgiving turkey!").

In a bit that brought the house down, Ham flashed a picture of a chimpanzee. "Did your grandfather look like this?" he demanded.

"Noooooo!" the children called.

"And did your grandmother look like that?" Ham displayed a photo of the same chimp wearing lipstick. The children erupted in giggles. "Noooooo!"

"We are not just an animal," Ham said. He had the children repeat that, their small voices rising in unison: "We are not just an animal. We are made in the image of God."

Can't we be animals and made in the image of God?

I did my graudate education in literary/cultural theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which means I was thoroughly immersed in deconstruction and post-structuralism: truth is relative, our thinking and reality are limited by language, human relations are all about power, etc. I was hit with Derrida in my first semester of grad school and the theories of Michel Foucault figured prominently in my dissertation.

Some would find it odd, then, that I became a Christian in the midst of this education, what with faith's appeal to universal truth and the institutional nature of Christianity. I find deconstruction and post-structural theories interesting, useful and basically sound, but in retrospect, I think my embrace of faith represented an ultimate rejection of those theories. If you completely embrace those theories, the end result is hopelessness: we are each stuck in our own little reality--which itself might be an illusion--unable to genuinely communicate with others.

I guess I refused to go that far. I wanted and want to believe that there is some meaning to life. I'm not even sure that it's God, but in a community of faith, I found a group of people who also want to believe that it's possible to connect with others in a meaningful way (whatever that means).

Oh, I feel great ambivalence about the institutional nature of the church. And it's damn hard to cut through all the crap that constitutes our daily lives to get to know others intimately, but at least the members of a faith community profess to believe it's possible to do so. It's that belief--that faith--that counts. And occasionally, I actually glimpse that connection.

I've forwarded the link to The Clergy Letter Project on to my pastors and other liberal Christian friends. From the project's home page:

For too long, the misperception that science and religion are inevitably in conflict has created unnecessary division and confusion, especially concerning the teaching of evolution. I wanted to let the public know that numerous clergy from most denominations have tremendous respect for evolutionary theory and have embraced it as a core component of human knowledge, fully harmonious with religious faith.

In the fall of 2004, I worked with clergy throughout Wisconsin to prepare a statement in support of teaching evolution. We were called to action by a series of anti-evolution policies passed by the school board in Grantsburg, WI. The response was overwhelming. In a few weeks, nearly 200 clergy signed the statement, which we sent to the Grantsburg school board on December 16, 2004. Additionally, groups of educators and scientists sent letters to the Grantsburg School Board and to the Superintendent of Schools protesting these policies. In response to all of this attention, as well as the efforts of others, the Grantsburg School Board retracted their policies.

The outpouring of support from clergy around the country encouraged me to make this a nationwide project. If you want to read more about it or join us in sharing this important perspective, click here. Encourage your clergy to consider signing the statement and please feel free to link to these webpages. And, while the current focus is on Christian clergy, please let me know if you are willing to write and/or host a statement from other religions.

Sincerely,

Michael Zimmerman
Dean
College of Letters and Sciences
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

As a side note, I notice that University United Methodist Church in Austin is already signed up to celebrate Evolution Sunday. Makes me wish I were still a member there.

We are a group of evangelical pastors, academics and mission executives who have been disturbed by the growing influence of Christian Zionism on the political scene in America recognizing this ideology to be a major factor in the stalled peace process in Israel / Palestine. We hope to offer an alternative biblical view, one that reflects the true nature of God as a God of compassion and justice. Christian Zionism and the dispensationalism which undergirds it distorts this.

Challenging Christian Zionism offers a lot of resources to fight the right-wing Christian theology and political agenda.

NOTE: If you don't know what Christian Zionism is, check out this article. It's a little wordy, but not too long.

From the American Civil Liberties Union web site:

When the angry phone calls and emails started arriving at the office, I knew the holiday season was upon us. A typical message shouted that we at the American Civil Liberties Union are "horrible" and "we should be ashamed of ourselves," and then concluded with an incongruous and agitated "Merry Christmas."

We get this type of correspondence a lot, mostly in reaction to a well-organized attempt by extremist groups to demonize the ACLU, crush religious diversity, and make a few bucks in the process. Sadly, this self-interested effort is being promoted in the guise of defending Christmas.

...

In truth, it is these website Christians who are taking the Christ out of the season. Nowhere in the Sermon on the Mount did Jesus Christ ask that we celebrate His birth with narrow-mindedness and intolerance, especially for those who are already marginalized and persecuted. Instead, the New Testament—like the Torah and the Koran and countless other sacred texts—commands us to love our neighbor, and to comfort the sick and the imprisoned.

That's what the ACLU does. We live in a country filled with people who are sick and disabled, people who are imprisoned, and people who hunger and thirst for justice. Those people come to our Indiana offices for help, at a rate of several hundred a week, usually because they have nowhere else to turn. The least of our brothers and sisters sure aren't getting any help from the Alliance Defense Fund or WorldNet Daily. So, as often as we can, ACLU secures justice for those folks who Jesus worried for the most.

As part of our justice mission, we work hard to protect the rights of free religious expression for all people, including Christians. For example, we recently defended the First Amendment rights of a Baptist minister to preach his message on public streets in southern Indiana. The ACLU intervened on behalf of a Christian valedictorian in a Michigan high school, which agreed to stop censoring religious yearbook entries, and supported the rights of Iowa students to distribute Christian literature at their school.

Happy Holidays to all!

A U.S. District Judge ruled today that the Dover, Pennsylvania school board can't force the teaching of intelligent design. That is welcome news in and of itself, but as an extra bonus, the judge's finding is very strongly worded (emphasis added):

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions. The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

You go, Judge Jones!

UPDATE: It appears that Judge Jones was appointed by George W. Bush. Clearly one of those pesky liberal activist judges. Awesome.

Gordon Atkinson recently posted to his blog If We Could Do Church, in which he tries to imagine what a Christian community would look like if it were free of most of the institutional baggage of contemporary churches.

(The comments to Gordon's post are also interesting: Gordon clarifies some of his thoughts and several commenters refer to existing Christian communities that exemplify many of the characteristics that Gordon imagines.)

I'm always ambivalent about the church as institution, but I've been feeling more negative about it than usual lately, so Gordon's post hit a nerve. I'm willing to admit that there's always going to be some administrative overhead in maintaining any group of humans (even in Gordon's conception of a church community), but I think it's a constant struggle to weigh the amount of time, money and effort we put into the institution itself vs. the amount of those resources that are absolutely necessary for the group to use the remaining resources to help others. Many churches, it seems, get more caught up in maintaining the institution itself than I think they should.

I think the key difference comes down to size. Gordon says that his conceptualized congregation would be small enogh "to meet comfortably in a living room." The larger the group of people, the more organization overhead you incur.

Another possible solution to this dilemma may lie in our Methodist circuit rider roots. In thoe circuit rider days, Methodist churches were small groups of individuals who managed themselves, and a circuit rider pastor only showed up from time to time to provide a minimal amount of professional guidance.

Yesterday, Texans approved Propsition 2. Unfortunately, that's no surprise to me. What troubles me, though, is the direct participation of Christian congregations and pastors in the political process: many congregations and pastors publicly endorsed prop 2, and the election-night gathering for supporters in the Austin area was held at Great Hills Baptist Church.

This direct endorsement of political candidates and initiatives contradicts my beliefs. I used to be a member of a United Methodist congregation that is widely recognized as one of the most liberal in Texas, with one of the most politically outspoken pastors. The pastor frequently spoke about issues that were hotly debated politically, but even in that environment it was taboo for the pastor to come out for or against candidates or specific political solutions. Instead, his task was to help his congregants decide what is right and just, but he left it up to them to decide how to act on those decisions in the realm of politics.

I prefer to think globally, but act locally. I'm always inspired by my Christian friend in Germany who was staunchly against abortion. I don't necessarily agree with her, but I'm inspired by her actions. She believed that the best way to avoid abortion is to avoid unwanted pregnancy, and that she could have a direct impact on this issue. Instead of getting involved in political debate about abortion (granted, the political situation is different in Germany than in the US), she would spend her Saturday afternoons handing out information on birth control in the main square. I remember with a chuckle her explanations of her and her husband trying out each new birth control method so that she would be able to offer experienced advice.

Yesterday, Michael Behe admitted in court that the standard scientific definition of 'theory' was too narrow to include Intelligent Design. John Scalzi makes this awesome comment about this development:

The only value to this whole thing so far is that it got Behe to admit that in order to get ID to work, you have to cheat -- you have to make words mean different things than what they mean. You know, the science community already has a word for the new, more lax definition of "theory" Behe wishes to promote: it's called a hypothesis. Should Behe manage to get his way and change the definition of "theory," what becomes of the word "hypothesis"? Is it demoted? Discarded? Given a nice gold watch for its years of service to the scientific community and then taken behind the barn to be plugged with a shotgun? And if is merely demoted, then what will become of the phrase "drunken paranoid ramblings?" That phrase has nowhere else to go.

And you read this entry because you thought I was writing my own drunken paranoid ramblings, didn't you?

Today is the Feast of St. Francis, my favorite Christian saint. The Prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; when there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand, to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

I don't usually like to link to memes that are making the rounds, but this one is just too good to pass up. The image below is a new Roman Catholic recruiting poster (click on image for larger version):

UPDATE: Best comment about this poster from a discussion board I frequenet: When people starting marketing religion like they would a movie or any other product, they shouldn't be surprised if that's how people begin to treat it.

In my occasional attempts to explain my religious experience and faith, I recently wrote:

I respect people who say that they are spiritual but not part of an organized religion. For me, however, personal spirituality is only half the picture. The other half is being in community with people who are also struggling to better themselves and who help me remember that I'm a small part of a large and complex universe.

It's times like this--the aftermath of hurricane Katrina--when I'm proudest to be a member of a faith community. Yesterday, like most United Methodist congregations in the U.S. (or even, possibly, world-wide), our congregation took a special offering for hurricane relief. Our pastor related the relief efforts of other area United Methodist congregations and how we can participate in them. And another local church, St. Mary's Baptist Church, has become the organizing point for hurricane refugees in our community. With the participation of other local congregations, we will do our best to support the refugees among us.

All of this made me realize how many people have given more of themselves because of the connectedness to others that they experience in their community of faith. And I'm proud to be a part of such connectedness and self-sacrifice.

As usual, Gordon Atkinson, a.k.a. Real Live Preacher, says it much more elegantly than I can:

While we prayed, I felt a mysterious sense of awareness. I felt that something important was going on, something beyond us and bigger than us. Something, in fact, so big that we have no need or desire to try to explain it, market it, promise it, or claim any kind of ownership of it. We were dear friends gathered in love and in the very name of God. It was a quiet episode and no record of the details exists. Our prayers were not recorded for sale in some inspirational book. No movie will ever be made about that moment in time.

And yet, this truth remains. I would do just about anything, go just about anywhere, and even sell most of my possessions for a chance to walk through life with these gentle pilgrims. I will own any label you please. Crackpot, dreamer, shoddy thinker, weak-minded. None of these matter for I have found the pearl of great price. And the transforming power of that discovery and of that joy lies at the center of my life.

The power of our shared community, which we call the Spirit of God, helps me to be faithful even when I am feeling faithless. It helps me to be trusting even when I am feeling cynical. It helps me to become like a child even when childhood seems very far away and long ago.

There is a truth here that is hard to put into words. It is a life truth, a living truth, a truth of sinew and muscle and shared history and held hands. It is a truth that is utterly beyond us and somehow within us. It is a truth that makes us feel so small and childlike that we may have slipped, unnoticed, into the very Kingdom of Heaven.

Something out there is much greater than I. I am aware of it and in awe of it. This is the beginning and the end of Wisdom.

Last week, I linked to John Scalzi's lyrical and profound list Being Poor. This week, Scalzi follows up his post with this comment:

One of the more gratifying things about the aftermath of the "Being Poor" piece I wrote a week ago is how often I've been seeing it pop up on Christian-oriented Web sites, blogs and journals, followed by a sincere examination by the poster of what one ought to do about poverty, as Christians and as members of a larger community. By this I emphatically do not mean that all of a sudden these Christians are thinking about poverty seriously thanks to me, and that I should get a shiny medal or something like that. That would be a wildly stupid and arrogant assumption on my part, and while I've been known to be both wildly stupid and arrogrant, this isn't one of those times. No, I believe these Christians were already grappling with issues like poverty, and this was just one more data point for them to consider.

What's gratifying about these Christians using "Being Poor" to discuss poverty is not so much that they are talking about it but that I am seeing them discussing it, reminding me -- as I do need to be reminded from time to time -- that however much I rail against people I see as mouthing Christ's words and ideas and yet living a life apart from the ideals they claim to profess, there are as many if not more people who genuinely struggle to follow the example Jesus set and stay on the path that He walked. It's a reminder that the question "What Would Jesus Do?" is not just a snappy catchphrase on a bracelet, but also and hopefully foremost a genuine question that cuts to the core of how one should live one's life and how one should approach others.

Scalzi touches on an issue that I try to impress upon non-Christians at every opportunity: for every wacko self-avowed Christian who makes the news, or for every fish bumper sticker you see in traffic, there are millions of us Christians quietly going about the task of trying to live out the Gospel. We're far from perfect, and we frequently fail in our task, but we continue to try to carry out the New Covenant: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

We are your neighbors and coworkers--though you may not even know it, because for us, it's about trying to live the Gospel, not necessarily talking about it.

Tim Wise offers a harsh rant based on an overheard conversation: A God with Whom I am not Familiar.

You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to spend the better part of your meal--and mine, since I was too near your table to avoid hearing every word--morally scolding the people of [New Orleans], heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you attacked them--all of them, without distinction it seemed--for the behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like guns, or big screen TVs.

Go read the whole thing.

I respect people who say that they are spiritual but not part of an organized religion. For me, however, personal spirituality is only half the picture. The other half is being in community with people who are also struggling to better themselves and who help me remember that I'm a small part of a large and complex universe.

It's times like this--the aftermath of hurricane Katrina--when I'm proudest to be a member of a faith community. Yesterday, like most United Methodist congregations in the U.S. (or even, possibly, world-wide), our congregation took a special offering for hurricane relief. Our pastor related the relief efforts of other area United Methodist congregations and how we can participate in them. And another local church, St. Mary's Baptist Church, has become the organizing point for hurricane refugees in our community. With the participation of other local congregations, we will do our best to support the refugees among us.

All of this made me realize how many people have given more of themselves because of the connectedness to others that they experience in their community of faith. And I'm proud to be a part of such connectedness and self-sacrifice.

Gordon Atkinson has a blog post today about a salesman who cold-called him, trying to sell him address lists to use to solicit new members for his congregation. Gordon makes a compelling argument that his small congregation is just the right size. I see his point, and generally, I agree with him that it's wrong to equate a congregation's growth with its success, as so many churches do these days.

But I don't think that marketing should be a taboo topic for churches. Inviting people into the fold is, after all, one way of spreading the Good News. The point should be, however, that there are many ways to spread said Good News, and counting heads in worship is just one small method among many, and, in my view, a more trivial one.

Fred Clark, self-avowed liberal evangelical Christian and one of my all-around favorite bloggers, has posted about a series of 'snapshots' of experiences with creationists that he has had over the years (read posts one, two and three). In the latest one, he shares a good insight into the mind of Biblical literalists:

The most dangerous thing about fundamentalism is not that it sometimes teaches wacky ideas, like that the world is barely 6,000 years old or that dancing is sinful. The most dangerous thing is that it insists that such ideas are all inviolably necessary components of the faith. Each such idea, every aspect of their faith, is regarded as a keystone without which everything else they believe -- the existence of a loving God, the assurance of pardon, the possibility of a moral or meaningful life -- crumbles into meaninglessness.

My classmate's church taught him that their supposedly "literal" reading of Genesis 1 was the necessary complement to their "literal" reading of the rest of the Bible, which they regarded as the entire and only basis for their faith. His belief in 6-day, young-earth creationism was not merely some disputable piece of adiaphora, such as ...

Well, for such fundamentalists there is no "such as." This is why they cling to every aspect of their belief system with such desperate ferocity. Should even the smallest piece be cast into doubt, they believe, the entire structure would crumble like the walls of Jericho. If dancing is not a sin, or if the authorship of Isaiah turns out to involve more than a single person at one time, or if the moons of Jupiter present a microcosm that suggests a heliocentric solar system, then suddenly nothing is true, their "whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses."

I'll try to keep this in mind next time I'm inclined to try to persuade a literalist of the fallacy of his views on a particular topic.

Richard Dawkins' excellent article in the Times of London accurately and succinctly summarizes creationists' strategies:

Science feeds on mystery. As my colleague Matt Ridley has put it: “Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.” Science mines ignorance. Mystery — that which we don’t yet know; that which we don’t yet understand — is the mother lode that scientists seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do.

Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science. It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse, it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that creationism or “intelligent design theory” (ID) is having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well financed.

The standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature which Darwinism cannot readily explain. Darwin said: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty in order to abuse his challenge. “Bet you can’t tell me how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?” If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: “Right, then, the alternative theory; ‘intelligent design’ wins by default.”

Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the scientist’s rejoicing in uncertainty.

(Via Rafe Colburn)

I don't know if this blog entry is biographical or fiction, but it's powerful and painfully believable in any case. People can be so heartless in the name of religion. Just read this.

This is awesome:

Satanists, apocalypse watchers and heavy metal guitarists may have to adjust their demonic numerology after a recently deciphered ancient biblical text revealed that 666 is not the fabled Number of the Beast after all.

A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.

Ellen Aitken, a professor of early Christian history at McGill University, said the discovery appears to spell the end of 666 as the devil's prime number.

"This is a very nice piece to find," Dr. Aitken said. "Scholars have argued for a long time over this, and it now seems that 616 was the original number of the beast."

One of my favorite bloggers, Gordon Atkinson, has returned from a one-month blog hiatus with some nice reminiscences about children collecting the offering at his church.

His stories remind me of a recent incident with Samuel. A few minutes into the service, the younger children leave the sanctuary to attend 'Godly play' with Miss Bess for much of the service. They return later, usually during the offering.

On their way out of the sanctuary, Brother Odell, a 99-year-old former minister who worships with us, often gives each child a quarter to put into the offering plate.

One Sunday, Samuel returned from Godly play and sat down with Hannah near the choir loft where Katie and I were sitting and from where we have a good view of the entire congregation. When Samuel got to his seat, he remembered his quarter, but the offering plate had already been passed through his row.

We motioned to Samuel to get up and find one of the ushers who was standing at the ends of the rows to manage the passing of the plate.

Samuel got up and started toward one of the ushers. But he was determined to put his quarter into the collection plate himself, not just hand it to an usher. As he got closer to the usher, the usher started the plate down a row. Samuel stopped, hesitated, and then headed toward the other end of the row. By the time he got there, the usher on that end had already started the plate back down the next row.

By this time, the entire choir and many parishoners were watching the unfolding drama. Samuel hesitated again, and then started back toward his seat. Apparently, he had decided to give up. But when he turned around to go back to his seat, he saw Katie and me frantically, but (hopefully) discreetly, motioning for him to head back to an usher.

Finally, he turned around, spied an usher and ran over to him, arriving just in time to drop his quarter in the plate. His mission finally accomplished, he went back to his seat. I thought the choir was going to break into applause at that point.

It seems every time I've turned on the TV or radio since Saturday, it's been round-the-clock hagiography of Pope John Paul II. In the midst of this unadulterated mass media worship, one of my favorite bloggers, Eliot Gelwan, remains skeptical:

"World mourns," or something similar, most of the headlines say. Of course, I'm no Catholic, and I say this with all due respects to the feelings of my Catholic and other readers who may have felt in some sense that they have lost a spiritual leader of theirs. He was certainly a very pious man and probably a very nice person. But I'm sorry, I just cannot feel all that griefstricken about the death of the Pope. His greatness, such as it was, seemed to lie in having been some mixture of captive and facilitator of the reactionary ideology of a rapacious establishment that does little good for the world, in the process facilitating third world overpopulation and poverty, the epidemic spread of AIDS and unwanted pregnancy, and generally oppressing people on the basis of their gender, their sexual preferences and their level of susceptibility to guilt. I grieve for them; their funerals are far less lavish.

John Paul's greatest papal role models were apparently a pope from the sixth century and nineteenth-century Pope Pius IX, who was disparaged by many as anti-Semitic but whom he beatified. It was during Pius' reign that the Church had promulgated the doctrine of papal infallibility, which John Paul cherished. His conservative authoritarianism has polarized both the Church and the world's view of Catholicism. He is celebrated for his inclusionism; he had to reach outside the Western world, where the Church's grip is seriously eroded. He was the 'rock star' pope, a charismatic showman who did not so much embrace as seduce. He will be remembered for peddling the Church's dogma by personal appearance, by travelling alot. You can't blame a man for that; I wish my job involved more international travel. But it is not an achievement in itself, any more than there was any inherent heroism in being the first Polish Pope. Catholic intellectualism fared poorly indeed under this pope. He is credited with contributing to the downfall of Communism, which is quite a stretch in any sense other than that he came from a former Communist country. His greatest legacy, and it is a dubious one at that, may have been to hold the line against liberation theology. To put it simply, this was a papacy in which faith was stood to oppose both justice and thoughtfulness.

Especially because over ninety percent of the cardinals electing the next pope were appointed by him, he is likely to be succeeded by another who largely fits the very same mold, ad infinitum. The Catholic Church grows quickly bankrupt in the Western World. The next Pope, if not from the developing world himself (could the Church seriously entertain the idea of a non-white yet?) must be someone appealing to the heathens in the fertile Third World waiting to be converted and exploited for the continued sustenance and survival of the Church.

How much of a sober appraisal of the impact of Catholicism and the true significance of its leader for the latter quarter of the twentieth century, the only Pope half the world's people have ever known, will we get in the orgiastic media frenzy covering his death?

I don't know the validity of many of Eliot's claims, but I appreciate that he bucks the status quo of the mindless media. As a non-Catholic Christian, Eliot's concerns remind me that while I'm sure the pope tried to do good, he did so within the constraints of a fallen humanity.

A newsbite from The Copenhagen Post:

For centuries, Danish churchgoers have received the body of Christ in the form of a small, bland communion wafer. Now, competition is on the way.

Ninety master bakers from the island of Funen have taken up the challenge to experiment with new recipes for the holy flesh, daily religious newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad reported on Thursday.

‘We have never tried anything like this before,’ Svendborg baker Gerner Pedersen said. ‘It’s very exciting. I think I will go for a baguette made out of a mixture of wheat and rye flour. That would give a good, strong taste of bread.’

Copenhagen deacon Finn Laugesen said he wished the bakers all the best. ‘But for as long as I have been responsible for the communion wafers, I’ve gone for the most neutral taste I could find,’ he said. ‘After all, the bread should symbolize the body of Jesus, and the wafer shouldn’t be getting all the attention. Just imagine if the pastor at the altar would say ‘This is the body of Jesus Christ. Would you like that with chocolate, vanilla or strawberry taste?’

Here's a news flash: how about just using real bread?

Yesterday, the Supreme Court started hearing arguments about whether it's constitutional for Texas and Kentucky to display the Ten Commandments on state grounds (Texas has a monument on the state capitol grounds). However, Fred Clark points out one issue I haven't seen elsewhere:

The Pentateuch provides three slightly different versions [of the commandments], and various traditions have adopted these lists in slightly different ways. (ReligiousTolerance.org has a nice rundown of the differences.) The display of any particular version, therefore, requires a sectarian choice.

Interesting issue.

This is great. The United Church of Christ welcomes SpongeBob: "Despite being spurned by James Dobson's Focus on the Family for being too 'tolerant' and especially for holding hands with a starfish, SpongeBob knows 'all are welcome' in the UCC."

For several years, we attended a church in Austin. We live in the 'burbs, so it was a long drive (30+ minutes) and of course, nobody in the congregation lived near us. How we ended up attending this church is a long story, and we were never terribly comfortable with the congregation, not to mention the commute, so we never joined.

About 18 months ago, we decided to find a church closer to home. We attended services at the nearest Methodist church, First Methodist in Pflugerville, and at another Methodist church in the next suburb. The service at the Pflugerville church was okay, nothing to write home about, but we liked a lot of things about the other church: the senior pastor is one of the most dynamic preachers I've ever heard, they're growing and have lots of different programs that interested us.

When it came time to make a decision, it came down to the following factors: the other church offered the things we thought we wanted in a church, but the Pflugerville church is our neighborhood church--our kids would be with the same kids at church as at school and in the neighborhood, etc.

I thought about this for a while and concluded that 'church shopping' is a bunch of bullshit because it's all about your own personal needs and desires, not about other things, of which community ranks highly.

So, we ended up joining First UMC Pflugerville, and we're really glad we did. For one thing, the issue of community has turned out to be correct. We're really glad we've deepened our roots in our local community.

Today, I just ran across an essay that I hadn't seen in a long time. I think it's related to this topic: How to Find a Church, by Gordon Atkinson

The United Church of Christ, a mainstream Christian denomination with 1.6 million members in the United States, has launched a new ad campaign to emphasize its inclusive nature. But the CBS and NBC televisions networks are declining to air the UCC's television ad (see also CNN)because they say the ad is 'too controversial.'

CBS' written response to the the UCC said in part:

Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks.

As far as I can tell (I haven't yet seen the ad, only read descriptions of it), the UCC's television ad doesn't say anything about gay and lesbian couples, only that everyone, including gays and lesbians, are welcome in their church. Yet, CBS and NBC view the ad in the context of the current civil debate over gay marriage. This is not a good sign of the direction our society is going in.

A comment on MeFi puts it much more eloquently than I did in my recent blog post:

Typical anti-Christian MeFi thread unfolding… so I’d like to remove a couple of the straw man arguments from the discussion if I can.

Leviticus 18:22 and 22:13 – cited above – are Old Testament. In the broadest terms, the Old Testament chronicles the failure of God’s chosen people to live under the Law. Anyone who wants to try to live under the strictures of Old Testament Law is faced with this command: Persons committing homosexual acts are to be executed. This is the unambiguous command of scripture.

But Christians today live under the New Covenant of Jesus. Unable to meet God’s standards, we stood in need of someone to intercede for us. Jesus played that role. His teachings were all about love. There is only one passage in the NT that is unambiguously critical of homosexual behavior, Romans 1:26-27, and it is really about the absence of love, not homosexuality per se. The Message translation brings this out clearly:

26Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn't know how to be human either--women didn't know how to be women, men didn't know how to be men. 27Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men--all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it--emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.

The Bible has no sexual ethic. It accurately describes the rules that were in place 2000+ years ago, which were the sexual mores of the time. Mores change over time. Behaviors that were commonplace then are condemned now. Prostitution, polygamy, concubines and very early marriage (for the girl, age 11-13) are just a few examples. Behaviors that were condemned then are commonplace now. Nudity (under certain conditions), birth control, masturbation, naming sexual organs (the Bible uses “foot” or “thigh” instead!), intercourse during menstruation, and yes, homosexuality were all forbidden. But the Bible does have a love ethic. Ethics don’t change over time.

Rather than focusing on how archaic laws from thousands of years ago might be prejudiced against homosexuals today, why not focus on the new message, delivered by Jesus Himself when he asked, "Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?" (Luke 12:57).

In order to judge for yourself what is right, you need to have a firm ethical foundation. The Bible offers one that has stood the test of time for 2000 years. It is an ethos of love, and truly adopting it means living it to the standards set by Jesus. How you live it is up to you, but at least in part it surely means rejecting any mores – including sexual mores - that violate your own integrity and that of others, and striving to meet the standard of “love thy neighbor as thyself” as exemplified by Jesus. Some Christians are going to oppose homosexuality on that basis, others will not. It is, however, sad to see it politicized by both Christians and non-Christians. Christians, at least, should approach the issue from the perspective of love.

The Bible could be a valuable tool for homosexuals who seek to dialogue with conservatives or fundamentalists or evangelists on modern day issues of sexual mores and politics. Meaningful dialogue is easiest when parties approach a topic from a shared perspective, and when the perspective is "love" that's even easier. You should read the Bible. It's a good book.

I've always maintained that Christians who believe gay sex is a sin shouldn't be casting homosexuals out of their churches; on the contrary, they should be welcoming them in and praying that the transforming love of God will help them to see the error of their ways. (that's not my view, but at least it would be scripturally consistent, in my opinion).

When Fred Phelps' gang* showed up at an evangelical church in Oklahoma to protest because the church had a publicly acknowledged gay member (a young member of their congregation had been profiled in a Washington Post article about the struggles faced by homosexuals in the Bible belt), the congregation came together to defend one of their own--even though most members of the congregation felt that homosexuality is sinful. And in the process, it sounds like some of the congregation members even came to question that belief. It's a powerful story about community.

* I'm not going to dignify the Phelps Klan with a link. If you don't know who they are, suffice it to say they're about the most hate-filled folks you'll ever hear about.

I read this July 2004 inteview with author and evangelical Christian Tony Campolo a while back, but ran across it again today. Awesome viewpoint! An excerpt:

We ought to get out of the judging business. We should leave it up to God to determine who belongs in one arena or another when it comes to eternity. What we are obligated to do is to tell people about Jesus and that’s what I do. I try to do it every day of my life.

I don’t know of any other way of salvation, excerpt through Jesus Christ. Now, if you were going to ask me, "Are only Christians going to get to heaven?" I can’t answer that question, because I can only speak from the Christian perspective, from my own convictions and from my own experience. I do not claim to be able to read the mind of God and when evangelicals make these statements, I have some very serious concerns.

For instance, they say unless a person accepts Jesus as his personal savior or her personal savior, that person is doomed forever to live apart from God. Well, what about the many, many children every year who die in infancy or the many children who die almost in childbirth and what about people who are suffering from intellectual disabilities? Is there not some grace from God towards such people? Are evangelical brothers and sisters of mine really suggesting that these people will burn in hell forever?

And I would have to say what about all the people in the Old Testament days? They didn’t have a chance to accept Jesus.

I don’t know how far the grace of God does expand and I’m sure that what the 25th chapter of Matthew says is correct--that there will be a lot of surprises on Judgment Day as to who receives eternal life and who doesn’t. But in the book I try to make the case that we have to stop our exclusivistic, judgmental mentality. Let us preach Christ, let us be faithful to proclaiming the Gospel, but let’s leave judgment in the hands of God.

This Astronomy Picture of the Day is accompanied by this text:

Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of the fuzzy blobs in the above picture is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through the foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy. It takes light roughly 300 million years to get here from this region of the Universe, so we see this cluster as it existed before the age of the dinosaurs.

Just a small reminder of humanity's insignificance in the grand scheme of things.

I've been a liberal Christian for many years now, and I have several very close gay Christian friends, so it should be obvious where I stand on the issue of the status of gays and lesbians in the church. I've thought about, prayed about and studied this problem off and on for a long time. But lately, I've been thinking about how to communicate my beliefs and thought processes to others succintly. I have boiled it down as follows:

Question: Does the Bible condemn 'homosexuality'?

Answer: No. 'Homosexuality' as we currently define it it a modern, and very broad, concept, that includes many aspects: emotional intimacy, sexual acts, etc.

Question: Does the Bible condemn emotional intimacy between people of the same sex?

Answer: Absolutely not. It is my belief that if you put aside sex acts, there is no difference between close emotional friendships of many different types: siblings, close friendships, spouses, etc. For instance, my mother, my mother-in-law, and my aunt have lived together for several years. Their emotional relationship shows many of the same characteristics as a married couple.

Question: Does the Bible condemn same-sex sex acts?

Answer: For lesbians, no; nobody seems to claim that the Bible says anything about lesbian sex acts. As for male/male sex acts, my answer is possibly.

NOTE: This question is the one most people focus on: After reading a lot of exegesis of the passages in question, essays on the authority of the passages, etc., I'm willing to say that it's possible the Old and New Testaments condemn male-male sex acts.

Question: Does any of the above matter in any case?

Answer: Not one bit, for two reasons.

First, the people who want to exclude gays from church base their opinion on the fact that they believe gays are unrepentant sinners (by their logic, gays continue to willingly participate in acts these people consider sinful; see the previous question). But if we go down that path, then we have to take a hard look at other types of unrepentant sinners whom we welcome in church. Jesus condemned divorce pretty unequivocally and harshly, yet we allow divorced persons into our communities of faith. Hell, I consider myself a pretty unrepentant sinner in regard Jesus' directives to care for the poor and needy. I have good intentions, but when it comes right down to it, I'm pretty reluctant to give up any of my relatively cushy lifestyle for the well-being of others.

More importantly, though, I believe Jesus came to tell us to quit looking at the trees, and see the forest instead, worry about the spirit of the law, not the letter:

He said to him, ‘ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ (Matthew 22:37-39)

As long as you struggle to live your life faithfully as you understand it, and in communion with others, that's the big picture.

A friend and former co-worker of mine, who is not a church-goer, sent me an email today, saying she had reluctantly attended church (an evangelical mega-church) this past Sunday to witness the baptism of a coworker's children. Her opinion of the service: "And actually, if it hadn't been for all the god stuff, I would have enjoyed it."

Eliot Gelwan, one of my favorite bloggers, offers a nice contemplation of the Jewish new year. The equivalent time on the Christian calendar is usually Lent.

Since sundown last night, it has been year 5765 of the Jewish calendar. In Jewish tradition, that means 5765 years since the creation of the universe. Maybe this is inaccurate, but it emphasizes what order of magnitude we should place on each of our years anyway. It has always made sense to me to celebrate two new year's days each year, one when the cyclical dimming of the days turns to the promise of renewal of the natural world at the winter solstice; and the other more aligned with the cycle of human activity, when the fallow time of late summer transitions into the renewed activity of the autumn, whether we are talking about the annual cycle of agricultural activity, of the school year or the world of commerce and the fiscal year.

The two types of new year's celebrations also have a somewhat different emphasis. It has always seemed to me that the ritual of the Pagan New Year we celebrate in the winter, attuning oneself to the natural order of things, stands to invoke good fortune for the year to come. The Jewish New Year is more about setting oneself straight with manmade standards of right living, opening as it does the ten days of awe culminating in the Day of Atonement.

It is said that the life unexamined is the life unlived. This is a time to use in reflection on the year just past, in order to live the next fully. How much time was wasted? Were your days filled with life or dull routine? Was love expressed or left unsaid? Was there real companionship with those around you or a growing apart and a taking for granted? Were the kind deeds done or postponed? the gibes unleashed or the tongue held? Have you worked for peace and social justice as much as you could have? Did you acquire only things, or insights and knowledge as well? Have you freely asked for and granted forgiveness ? Did you deceive others? yourself?

Finding oneself wanting, as I do, in some or all of these regards helps in considering the uses to which one will put the year to come. What I do with my next year is important, because I will pay for it with a year of my life, and I hope I do not regret the price.

So, to all my readers Jewish and otherwise, a happy new year. I pray for assistance being kind to my fellow creatures and working for peace. I ask your forgiveness if I have wronged any of you reading this, and I absolve anyone of you who has wronged or offended me.

Last Friday, Terry Gross (I think Terry Gross is a horrible interviewer, but she does get good guests) interviewed Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who has worked for nearly 20 years to help gang members in Los Angeles find jobs and integrate into society. The man is a saint many times over, but what stopped me in my tracks was when he talked about his recent struggles with leukemia.

When Terry asked him about his diagnosis and chemo treatments, Father Boyle said as they heard about his diagnosis, the men he had helped over the years came to him one by one to offer him assistance and to console him. But almost invariably, Father Boyle recounted, the men would break down and cry their eyes out--out of concern and love for him. He took that as an opportunity to minister to them--to allow them to express feelings that they normally have a hard time with, to console them.

He was suffering from a life-threatening disease, had a large community of supporters willing to help him in any way possible, and what is he concerned about? The others, not himself. That is truly an example of "WWJD?"

Later in the interview, Terry asked Father Boyle how it felt to be faced with his own mortality. He said something to the effect, "Death just isn't high on my list of concerns." Interestingly, he didn't mention feeling consoled by the promise of eternal life, as one might expect of a Jesuit priest. He is simply so engrossed in helping others in the here and now that he can't be bothered by such worries. Again, a shining example of selflessness.

In fact, now that I think about it, I don't recall Father Boyle directly referencing Christian theology at all in his interview. He just explained his work--how he walks the walk. He's an incredibly inspiring model of the Christian life.

This is hysterical:

The Catholic Church has been a little down on its luck recently... That's why I think they should found What Would Atkins Do, Incorporated.

Here's how it works. The church opens a series of bakeries across the nation, selling all varieties of grain products: bread, muffins, pasta, you name it. Each outlet also employs a deacon, who sanctifies everything before its shipped to locals stores. It would be sort of like the kosher food deal, but, you know, Christier.

And voila: moneymaker! The 96% of the American population currently on the Atkins diet could enjoy all those baked goods they've had to forego, without having to worry about meddlesome carbs. Thanks to the (literal!) miracle of transubstantiation, those WWAD cinnamon rolls and bagels will turn into the (literal!) body of Christ after consumption, thereby converting a carbohydrate-laden doughnut into a the relatively carb-free hunk of Messiah. Dieters get to eat bread again and stave off eternal damnation, all at the same time -- it's win-win!

This is great:

Jesus Credit Card Raises a Few Eyebrows
Wednesday, August 04, 2004, 4:20:26 PM

By KCRG-TV9 News Reporter Craig Brown - from the Iowa City Newsroom

The Bible has told Christians for ages not to worship both God and money.but now maybe you can. A new credit card featuring the Calvary's three empty crosses begs the question: What's in God's wallet?

"Of course our regular customers are thrilled because they can earn points and give gift certificates for our stores," says Cedar Rapids Family Christian Store Manager Patty Stone.

Family Christian Stores nationwide are offering the new Mastercard with an image some Christians say their master wouldn't approve being on a charge card. Stone says she's heard a few comments both positive and negative from her customers.

"There are some people who say that they don't think it's right for us to issue credit cards to go into debt. And our stand on it is we're not encouraging people to go into debt because we sell a lot of books that encourage them that if they use a credit card, to pay it off monthly."

Store Customer Rusty Parenteau believes all of our money came from God to begin with. "I think it's a great idea, it's a great witnessing tool." "In God We Trust" is already printed on all American currency, and many people have Christian symbols on their checks.

Stone says her store has offered the cards for a year and-a-half. She says so far the sales are slow, but the rewards are priceless.

UPDATE: I found an image of the card on Family Christian Stores' web site:

There's a mini-golf and batting cages business in Pflugerville that closed a couple of years ago, and its property has been sitting vacant for a couple of years. I noticed a sign a while back announcing that the property was going to be auctioned off soon.

Well, imagine my surprise when I drove past yesterday and saw a new sign out front: it's now a church.

In the course of explaining why he doesn't understand the Trinity, Mike Todd makes this analogy:

Those of you who are parents may relate to this: think about the way you explain complex issues to your young children. You do your best to get the point across, but you do it in terms they can grasp. In the end you leave out a whole lot of details that you know will only confuse, and your explanation sometimes only vaguely resembles the reality of the situation.

I wonder how often God does that with us.

That kind of puts me in my place.

I've been moved recently by some blog entries by others about faith. One of them is "The Death of Evangelism" by fellow Pflugervillean and acquaintance of mine Matthew Sturges. In the essay, Matt ponders that term that scares so many mainstream Christians. Matt writes:

By "evangelism," of course, I'm referring to the practice of spreading the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus. Already you're cringing even reading the words, perhaps? Don't feel bad--it's a natural reaction. I'll explain why in a moment. What's important to note if you're not up on your New Testament is that in three of the four Gospels, Jesus clearly gives a command to his disciples to baptize people and spread his teachings to all the nations of the world. A lot of Christians hate that part. Most of the people I know that consider themselves believers wouldn't evangelize someone if their life depended on it, and certainly wouldn't have the audacity to go up to some Buddhist and tell him that he was barrelling down the offramp to perdition.

. . .

So what's the alternative? . . . The best answer I have, and I am not alone in this sentiment, is that Christians must evangelize by example. If I behave as I think a Christian ought, then my actions and my demeanor will be those of love and peace and acceptance. When people see that I am imbued with these qualities, they may ask me why. Or if they know a little bit about me and they see that I'm neither a strident moralist or an intense maniac, and that the people I know are also not that way, they might wonder if maybe religion isn't necessarily a bad thing after all. "I mean," they'll say, "look at Matt over there. He believes in God, and he's not a total tool. He's not brainwashed. He appears to be free from moral absolutism. And he really seems pretty happy. Hmm. Maybe there's something to this after all."

In other words, Walk the Walk. Go read Matt's entire essay; it's very well written and insightful.

In her blog at The Village Gate, blogger "Renee in Ohio" writes about George W. Bush's statements that God told him to act in regard to Iraq:

One thing I have noticed about the stories in the Bible about God talking to people and giving them a mission of some sort, is that they are usually reluctant at first. Moses is told that he will lead the people, and he tries to beg out of it--"You don't want me. I'd be no good at that sort of thing. I've got this stutter, you know."

Jonah, as my kids recently learned in the Veggie Tales movie, was told "Go to Ninevah." Johah says, "Gotcha!" and promptly sets sail--in the opposite direction.

Whether these stories literally happened, or are an allegorical expression of the faith experience of a people, what stands out to me is the fact that God is often seen commissioning people to do things they find difficult. Challenging. Scary. Seemingly impossible, or at least implausible.

God seems pretty unlikely to say, "Attack Iraq, kill thousands of people, get oil contracts for your rich friends." I don't think Bush needed any higher power to tell him to do that. But apparently he needs to invoke a higher power to justify it.

Renee also offers a quote from Susan B. Anthony that I hadn't heard before: "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

Bingo!

The issue of whether Christian young'uns should be sharing music via P2P has made a lot of news lately, even a Salon (premium) article.

The Gospel Music Association (granted, not an unbiased party) recently released a study that concluded:

...born again Christian teens are not much different than are non-born again teens in terms of holding an anti-piracy moral position. Just 10% of Christian teens believe that copying CDs for friends and unauthorized music downloading are morally wrong, compared to 6% of non-born agains.

I find the attitudes that sharing music isn't wrong interesting, and this is an interesting angle.

I certainly think that the recording industry is pursuing the wrong strategy by fighting music sharing tooth and nail. And it's ultimately a doomed strategy. I think they'd be much smarter to embrace technology and find ways to make money from it, instead of desperately hanging on to the existing system.

But, regardless of whether the current laws are fair, the law is the law. It's currently illegal to share music, and I struggle with that.

I'm not saying I've never downloaded music. (I have, in fact, but I found it too much trouble). Also, I don't think music sharing is any different from software piracy, and as a software developer, I can see who's harmed by software piracy.

So, I struggle with the issue of following the law, regardless of my perception of its fairness. No answers, but I understand the public dialog.

If I were very articulate about my faith, this is pretty much how I would sum up my view on faith. Or, in bumper-sticker form: it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

I really like this shirt (available here):