Postliberal stumbling block

Here is where I hit a speed bump with George Lindbeck:

Thus the linguistic-cultural model is part of an outlook that stresses the degree to which human experience is shaped, molded, and in a sense constituted by cultural and linguistic forms. There are numberless thoughts we cannot think, sentiments we cannot have, and realities we cannot perceive unless we learn to use the appropriate symbol systems. … to become religious involves becoming skilled in the language, the symbol system, of a given religion. To become a Christian involves learning the story of Israel and of Jesus well enough to interpret and experience oneself and one’s world in its terms. (emphasis added)

The quote above from his book The Nature of Doctrine highlights the language-liked aspects of religion.

What does postliberal or narrative theology mean for people with limited language or no language?

I don’t think this question falls any more sharply on postliberal theology than cognitive-propositional theology or experiential-expressive theology. But postliberalism is quite persuasive to a lot of people. Who does it exclude from the ranks of the religious?

More fundamentally, does being non-religious mean the same thing as non-Christian?

Book Review: A Thorn in the Flesh

Episcopal priest the Rev. Caroline J. Addington Hall has written a book that should be of interest to United Methodists embroiled in debates over human sexuality and the church. In her book, A Thorn in the Flesh: How Gay Sexuality Is Changing the Episcopal Church, she tells the recent history of the Episcopal Church from the birth of the sexual liberation movement in the 1960s to the current situation of schism and division.

The story is told in detail and with a sensitivity to the nuance and complexity of the debates and politics that play out on a national and global scale. A married lesbian, Hall is an advocate in the battles and her framing of the debate, tone, and language do not hide this. What she describes in the book is a splintering of two churches that started coming apart at the beginning of the 19th century. In her words:

In this period of reformation, the interpretation/authority of scripture has been challenged many times: the abolition of slavery as an acceptable way of life, the acceptance of divorce, the ordination of women, and now full inclusion of gay and lesbian people. This latter is perhaps the bitterest fight because it incorporates the question of gender as well as the question of marriage, and it is also the most difficult to argue because the Bible says nothing positive about homosexuality. The battle for gay inclusion of exclusion seems to mark the development of two different religions, both called Christianity, but it may have served as the final point of bifurcation for two strands that began to unravel as early as the late nineteenth century.

The book is fascinating because of its depth as it traces the story of the Episcopal Church in recent decades. It is fascinating for this United Methodist as we appear to be walking over much of the same ground.

This brief review cannot do justice to the book, but reading it did raise two other thoughts that may or may not be worthy of further discussion.

First, Hall connects the ongoing battles over sexuality in the church to the Baby Boomer (my word, not hers) generation’s coming of age in the 1960s. The left-right divide of that decade set the terms for the debate and the issues going forward. I wonder, in part, if this is why the rising Millennial generation is so weary of this conversation. It is their parents’ fight, not their own. This is my question, not Hall’s, but her book stirred the thought.

Second, Hall connects the debate over sexuality to broader questions in the church. For instance, she offers this observation about the various responses within the Anglican Communion to Islam.

In the Anglican debate, the second question about coexisting religions becomes: Is Jesus Christ the only way to God, or is it limiting God to think that he cannot also work in other ways? Archbishop Akinola, who sees Jesus as the only way, aimed to grow the Church of Nigeria as big as possible in order to vanquish Islam nonviolently — though he has never ruled out the possibility of violent response. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori, on the other hand, sees the valuable contribution of Islam and has joined in faith conversations with Muslim leaders.

I find Hall’s engagement with the broader set of issues and the broader context of Anglican Christianity most helpful. It sees issues as inter-related rather than isolated, which strikes me as more reflective of real life.

Hall does not hide her bias in the book. Conservative motives are often cast in a negative light and liberals are the heroes. She ends the book with an appendix that argues that the Bible does not really teach what traditional Christians have said it does. But the book is fascinating reading and an in-depth look at the melange of issues that the United Methodist Church has been wrestling with for 45 years. As our church becomes more “global,” the fault lines Hall describes will only deepen.

Oden on spirituality

Thomas C. Oden on the meaning of “spirituality” in his book Requiem

I intend by spirituality to point to personal life lived in union with Christ – a relationship with the incarnate and risen Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit, where his death is my death, his resurrection, my resurrection. This life expresses itself in praise of God through loving service to the neighbor. Spirituality in the New Testament sense is not a moral program, not a set of rules, not a level of ethical achievement, not a philosophy, not a rhetoric, not an idea, not a strategy, not a theory of meditation, but simply life lived in Christ.

 

90 hours prep for 1 hour talking?

My summer reading this year includes a book about making effective presentations by Nancy Duarte. I started skimming it a bit this morning just to get my bearings.

Early in the book she lays out a timeline for developing a one-hour presentation that includes 30 slides.

6-20 hours: Research and collect input

1 hour: Build an audience-needs map

2 hours: Generate ideas using sticky notes

1 hour: Organize the ideas

1 hour: Have colleagues critique or collaborate about the impact ideas will have on audience

2 hours: Sketch a structure and/or story board

20-60 hours: Build the slides

3 hours: Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Total: 36-90 hours

I think I read once that Adam Hamilton spends 10-20 hours per week developing his sermons, which tend to run 30 to 40 minutes. If you take out the 20-60 hours to build PowerPoint slides from Duarte’s list, then Hamilton fits in the lower end of her time frame.

Even adjusting down for the fact that my sermons tend to run 12-17 minutes, I know that I do not cover her bases. I’m curious what thoughts and reactions other preachers have to Duarte’s ideas.

UM Beliefs: More on sin

My recent post from the new book Key United Methodist Beliefs raised a couple of questions about how the authors, William J. Abraham and David Watson, discuss the issue of sin. So, here is a follow-up that I hope does justice to their chapter in the book.

Each chapter in the book is broken down into five sections.

• A Wesleyan Faith – A presentation of John Wesley’s teaching and the roots of it in Christian tradition.
• A Living Faith – A engagement with how the particular issue might affect the way we live our faith.
• A Deeper Faith – A place to tackle tough questions or complicated issues raised by the topic of the chapter.
• Catechism – Questions and Answers with Scriptural support where possible.
• In Your Own Words – Questions designed to help the reader or small group formulate their own responses and understandings based on the chapter.

Chapter 5 “What Is Sin?” begins with the observation that John Wesley viewed all people as sinful. It then asks the obvious question: “What is sin?” The answer: “It is any violation of God’s will.”

From this definition, the chapter moves immediately to a discussion of original sin as understood by Wesley and based on the writing of Paul and interpretation of Augustine. The authors discuss original sin as a distortion of our desires and also as inherited guilt. (Wesley, to my reading, did not share this emphasis on inherited guilt, but the authors may have in mind Augustine here more than Wesley.)

They note the nature of sin as personal (which they term small scale) and social (which they term “on a grand scale”) and argue that sin is not simply something people do but is a spiritual agent. Their discussion on this topic, as much of the book, attempts to describe what many people believe without being entirely prescriptive.

The chapter moves on to discuss living faith by writing about situations in which we know what we should do but do not want to do it.

It is simply a part of the human condition that at times we will want to think, speak, and do things that God does not wish. We should expect this to happen, and when it does, God allows us to choose the right way or the wrong way to live. When we choose the wrong way, however, we should not expect to find lasting happiness. Only in God can we find lasting happiness and true fulfillment.

The rest of the “Living Faith” section of the chapter is a discussion of the last line above, including reference to Augustine’s famous observation that our heart is always restless until if finds rest in God. Our tendency to seek fulfillment in things other than God leads us to idolatry and misuse of things and people.

In the “Deeper Faith” section of the chapter, as I discussed in my earlier post, the authors explore the reasons behind the rules as an interpretation on Mark 2:27 where Jesus says the Sabbath was made for humankind.

The chapter closes with the catechism and the questions to answer. Both include focus on the person and work of Satan, which is highlighted in the “Living Faith” section of the chapter. The catechism quotes Psalm 51:5 as it discusses original sin, which highlights the idea of original guilt, which as I wrote above I do not think was an emphasis on John Wesley.

I’ll close with just a couple of general comments about the book. First, it is well done, although with a few typographical issues. It is well organized and written in a way that does not assume a seminary degree. I don’t think it would work well for a class of new Christians, but would be good for Christians who are trying to understand their faith more deeply. In many ways, the book tries to do the impossible — describe what United Methodists believe — but it does it well.

You will, however, notice some particular interests of the authors peaking through the curtains as you read. As part of what once was a theological construction project called Canonial Theism, they have particular views about Scripture and the other gifts of the Holy Spirit provided to the church to help form people in the way of Christ. So, for instance, their  chapter on Scripture is about the Bible and the creeds. In another place, the catechism over the Trinity uses Eastern Orthodox answers, which remove the filoque clause, although the authors do retain the clause in the version of the Nicene Creed reproduced from the United Methodist Hymnal.

These are minor, but to me interesting, observations. All in all, the book is well done, engaging, and certainly a useful one for any church wanting to delve more deeply into the meaning of the faith.

UM Beliefs: ‘What is Sin?’

In their book Key United Methodist Beliefs William J. Abraham and David Watson take a look at the question “What is Sin?” They discuss John Wesley’s definition of sin and the Western Christian tradition. They look at how we might live out these beliefs, and then they frame the issue in terms of why it matters. In this last section, they argue that God’s rules exist to foster human flourishing:

Rules are certainly important, but they are important because they lead us into a deeper relationship with God. Take a commonplace example like smoking. Christians are right to say that smoking is not consistent with Christian life, but why? Because cigarette smoke offends God? Of course not. Rather, the reason is that God wishes us to care for our bodies and to use our bodies in ways that honor the fact that they are gifts from God. … We humans are not made simply to obey rules. Rather God leads us to establish particular rules and guidelines for living within our communities so that we can flourish as God wishes.

From this section of the book, I take the following interpretative rule: We should be able to explain sin in terms of how following God’s rules sustains and supports the flourishing of people and communities.

That is an appealing interpretative rule, but I wonder if it might prove too malleable in our hands. We are pretty good at coming up with reasons to explain why we should do what we want to do, regardless of rules.

Perhaps this is why we need the community of faith and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Merton on American and English religion

I spend a lot of time inside the hermetic seal of Methodism, which can be good and bad.

In part to break up the bad parts of that, I picked up a copy of Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain this week and started reading it. The other part of my reason for picking it up is that I have heard so many people speak and write so highly of Merton that I thought it would be good to see what they saw.

I’m only through the first two chapters so far. Merton is about to enter Oakham school in England in a chapter enticingly titled “The Harrowing of Hell.” Sounds like high school as I remember it.

Reading the book as a Protestant, my ears are tuned to comments he makes about non-Catholics.

Here is his take on his grandparents’ religion:

My grandparents were like most other Americans. They were Protestants, but you could never find out precisely what kind of Protestants they were. I, their own grandson, was never able to ascertain. They put money in the little envelopes that came to them from Zion church, but they never went near the place itself. And they also contributed to the Salvation Army and a lot of other things: so you could not tell what they were by the places which they helped support. Of course, they had sent my uncle in his boyhood to the choir school of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on the rock above Harlem, which was then a peaceful bourgeois neighborhood. And they sent John Paul there too, in due course. Indeed, there was even some talk of sending me there. Yet that did not make them Episcopalians. It was not the religion that they patronized, but the school and the atmosphere. In practice, Bonnemaman [Merton's grandmother] used to read the little black books of Mary Baker Eddy, and I suppose that was the closest she got to religion.

On the whole, the general attitude around that house was the more or less inarticulate assumption that all religions were more or less praiseworthy on purely natural or social grounds. In any decent suburb of a big city you would expect to run across some kind of a church, once in a while. It was part of the scenery, like the High School and the Y.M.C.A. and the big whale-back roof and water-tank of the movie theater.

And here is his description of the Church of England:

Prayer is attractive enough when it is considered in a context of good food, and sunny joyous country churches, and the green English countryside. And, as a matter of fact, the Church of England means all this. It is a class religion, the cult of a special society and group, not even of a whole nation, but of the ruling minority in a nation. That is the principal basis for its rather strong coherence up to now. There is certainly not much doctrinal unity, much less a mystical bond between people many of whom have even ceased to believe in the grace of the Sacraments. The thing that holds them together is the powerful attraction of their own social tradition, and the stubborn tenacity with which they cling to certain social standards and customs, more or less for their own sake. The Church of England depends for its existence almost entirely on the solidarity and conservatism of the English ruling class. Its strength is not in anything supernatural, but in the strong social and racial instincts which bind the members of this caste together; and the English cling to their church the way they cling to their King and to their old schools: because of a big, vague, sweet complex of subjective dispositions regarding the English countryside, old castles and cottages, games of cricket in the long summer afternoons, tea-parties on the Thames, croquet, roast-beef, pipe-smoking, the Christmas panto, Punch and the London Times and all those other things the mere thought of which produces a kind of a warm and inexpressible ache in the English heart.

The key to innovation in the UMC

Why does the United Methodist Church seem to be so resistant to change?

Lots of people have theories and answers. I was re-readng a book that has been on my shelf for 15 years. It got me thinking about this again. It has to do with the conditions that promote and inhibit creativity.

Psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi argues that real creativity — the kind that makes lasting change in the world — is the result of a system with three components: a domain of knowledge, a field of gatekeepers, and personal factors in individuals.

Let me briefly explain each factor before explaining how this theory helps me to understand why we seem stuck even as voice after voice screams out for creativity and innovation.

Peterson: The eternal and the local

You’ll be seeing me writing more about Eugene Peterson over the next several months. Although he is not a United Methodist (no one is perfect), he has been a formative writer for me as I attempt to understand what it means to be a pastor. So, I am revisiting some of  his works on that pastoral vocation.

Today, a quote from Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work:

It is the unique property of pastoral work to combine two aspects of ministry: one, to represent the eternal word of God; and, two, to do it among the idiosyncrasies of the local and the personal (the actual place where the pastor lives; the named people with whom he or she lives). If either aspect is slighted, good pastoral work fails to take place.

As a bi-vocational part-time pastor, these lines sting. I do not live where my churches are located. I do not live among the people there. I am at a distance. For Peterson, like Wendell Berry, place and rootedness are essential elements of good work. But the way our system is structured, such rootedness is very hard to achieve.

Indeed, our originating plan argued against it. John Wesley thought long tenure in single locations was harmful to effective ministry because no individual pastor had all the gifts needed for every person in a place. Moving preachers meant the various needs of the people were met even if it also meant that some needs were always going unmet.

In the 21st century American context, it appears that the primary result of long-tenures is the creation of congregations that reflect the strengths of the pastor. Those who find that pastor irksome or unsatisfactory move on to another place. Those who find connection to God through the ministry of that pastor — or the church structures that pastor has created — stay around. Over time, the church becomes an icon of the lead pastor.

Peterson would probably argue that a grounding in the Word puts a check on such developments, but I would be surprised to learn that his own church did not bear very deep marks of Peterson’s style and personality.

Perhaps this cannot be avoided and should not be avoided. It may be part of the incarnation. God’s Spirit works through human forms, even human personality. Thanks be to God there is more than one form out there. Perhaps this is a reminder to be thankful rather than critical of those forms that do not suit each of us so well.

Guest blog: Untamed faith in English class

My daughter, JillAnn, asked if she could borrow a post on my blog to share something on her heart. I was only too happy to hand over the space.

---

First off, thank you to my dad for letting me steal some of his blog space. I’m John’s daughter and a junior at a small, southern liberal arts college. You may remember me by my alias, Christian Girl at College, under which I blogged my freshman year. I guess the blogging bug never goes away because when my academic and faith lives crashed together this week, my first instinct was to write. I had to riddle something out: what do you do when you’re obligated to overlook your Christian convictions?

In college, I’ve been exposed to different people and challenged by new ideas, which is exactly why I chose a liberal arts school in the first place. I fancy myself open-minded. So no one was more surprised than me at the email I wrote to my English professor last night.

A little background: I’m taking a class this semester that studies modernist British fiction. One of the required texts is Crash by JG Ballard, which you may know from the movie adaptation with Holly Hunter. The novel centers on car crash fetishists, and includes graphic depictions of sex and violence. I know that many people, including my professor, consider it a profound work of art. I don’t want to get into a debate over aesthetics, but to me, this book is degrading, desensitizing, and pornographic.

I believe whole-heartedly that God doesn’t want me to read this book. Let me be clear here: I am anti-censorship and never in a million years would I tell someone else that they can’t read a novel. I also don’t think sex is evil or wrong. It’s just that, in my opinion, Crash crossed the line. I felt emotionally and mentally violated just reading it. “Hear no evil, see no evil,” remember?

I had no idea what to do, how to respond. I am required by the course to read a book that I simply cannot read. I froze. I wasn’t prepared for my ideals and my aspirations to clash. I’ve never heard about this conflict in a sermon or a Bible study. Maybe that’s one more sign that the church has become too enmeshed with its surrounding culture. After all, if we agree on everything, there’s nothing to fight about. But Christ calls us to more complicated, more important living.

In my head, I know that. I know that we’re called to sacrifice anything and everything for Christ and this was hardly facing a lion in the arena, but how am I supposed to tell my professor that? I don’t want to play a “religion card.” I don’t want to fail the class and ruin my future!

It got me to thinking about way bigger theological thing-a-ma-jigs than one novel in one college class. We live in a secular world and a secular country – sorry, televangelists. And if we are living our faith as untamed as Christ calls us to live it, there will be times when our faith does not jive with the demands of that world. Sure, we’re supposed to be working for the kingdom to come, but in the moment? I mean, it’s just a little thing; I can let it slide this one time; I don’t want to make a scene.

Except that Jesus never let an opportunity slip by to transform his world. What if it would’ve caused too much trouble to talk to the woman at the well? What if the stakes were too high to save the adulteress? Radical change is the very foundation of the Christian life. That doesn’t always mean toppling oppressive regimes or exposing Foxconn or eradicating racism. Sometimes it’s the everyday choices about what TV shows you watch or who you eat with at lunch.

The end of my story is that the prof replied graciously, saying that he understood my concerns. It was my choice if I read Crash or if I attended class – though, thinking about it now, he didn’t say I wouldn’t be penalized. I split the difference; I didn’t read it, but I sat in class today and tried my best. Probably not the best solution. I guess we learn by doing.

Has your faith ever made trouble for you? How do you handle it when you’re called to disrupt the order?