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Anne Rice Renouncing Christianity?

July 31, 2010 in Church, Culture with 5 Comments

The interwebs have been all a tizzy over the past day or so, as Anne Rice declared on Facebook that she was renouncing Christianity. For the sake of Christ.

My take on it: chill out, people.

First, it seems that she is couching some things provocatively (and it’s working, people are provoked). Given how she has couched things on her Facebook page, it is clear that she is not giving up on her faith in Christ. It’s clear that she’s not suddenly disbelieving the resurrection of Jesus or the value of his death. This is not a renunciation of her Christian faith. She is wrestling with how to follow Jesus when the world of Jesus’ followers seems so often incongruous with the kind of community that should be bearing Jesus’ name.

Second, it does seem that she may be distancing herself from all or most Christian community in this effort. I do see that as a mistake. Jesus came to save persons by joining them to a people which is his body on earth. So for all its imperfections, the “church” is a crucial part of life following Christ.

I, of course, resonate with the struggle against the establishment. But I have to keep coming back to the notion that I can’t simultaneously love Jesus and profess hatred of his wife. That relationship isn’t going to last very long.

Do I think Anne Rice is renouncing The Faith? No. Clearly not.

Do I think she has some important points she’s drawing attention to? Yes. Certainly.

Do I think she is taking the right course? I’m not sure what, exactly, she’s done, so it’s hard to say. It looks like she could do better by exercising some patience; or, by exercising her impatience as a prophet from within.

Local Church, Local Bank

July 20, 2010 in Church with 4 Comments

File this post in the: “Daniel doesn’t have a point” folder.

Once upon a time I attended a church whose senior pastor liked to underscore the importance of moving one’s church membership to a local body of believers. Joining a local church was important. Just like when you move to a new city you get yourself an account with the local bank, so also you need to be affiliated with a local church. The local branch is where you do your business. So went his argument.

When I was in middle school, my dad (a Navy officer) was stationed in Rota, Spain. I opened a bank account with Navy Federal Credit Union. That’s been my bank ever since.

I haven’t had a local branch of my bank since I was fourteen.

But I never had the heart to tell my pastor.

“Anglican Unity Movement Splits”

July 3, 2010 in Church with 14 Comments

So read the provocative headline over a one-paragraph news story in Christianity today. “Unity” movement “splits”.

Sigh.

I have a number of friends in Anglican Mission churches. I know that a number of the particular churches are doing great work. And, I know that a number of the congregations suffered for years under bishops that, for example, wouldn’t confirm their children or ordain orthodox clergy.

But from the get-go I have been disappointed that, in the process of dealing with these difficulties and ultimately leaving the Episcopal Church, there has been no indication that these churches share the typical Anglican concern for unity. It disappointed me that several large Episcopal churches that would not leave when AMiA formed waited a few years and then formed their own splinter group.

Unity has not been part of the DNA of the North American Anglican movement since its inception.

I had hope when the Anglican Church in North America was formed (just last year?!) that this element of our Christian vocation might begin to be part of American Anglicanism’s story. But it’s not to be. The Anglican Mission has left ACNA, a group that, according to the article, “it helped found last fall.”

Unity as a distinctive of Anglicanism: Requiescat In Pace.

Update: There’s a bit more detailed and nuanced version of the story on Anglicans United.

Unity and Diversity

June 11, 2010 in Church with 10 Comments

A couple of things around the blogsphere have prodded some thinking about unity and diversity in the church. These came up at the same time as someone sent me an e-mail responding to the “unity of the church” section in my Romans book. His questions included these:

How, practically, are you supposed to get a charismatic, a Baptist, a Catholic, and a Lutheran together in one service? I’m not throwing up my hands, I’m just saying the problem is deep. Or is it permissible to function more according to preference in local congregations as long as there is demonstrable unity in service among churches?

This is a sticky wicket, to be sure, but here are a few of my thoughts:

(1) If the New Testament is our canon, then we have to take serious stock of the fact that the “rule” of Christian faith and practice is inherently diverse (i.e., McGrath is right). To go no further, take full stock of the different stories of Jesus that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each tell–and that, likely, with some of them having access to one or two others. This shows us not only that we often come to the Bible with expectations about history that cause our readings to cut against the biblical grain, but that we come with an expectation of a type of unified message that the NT doesn’t exactly embody.

(2) Despite the theological diversity, there is a cosmic reality that all who are disciples of Christ participate in the one world-wide family of God which is the new humanity.

(3) The binding together of conviction 2 with reality 1 means that the kind of unity we strive for should not be one of theological conformity but of rich participation in a common life of worshiping God and serving the world and one another.

One of the most clarifying moves in NT scholarship of the past 30 years is to open our eyes to the fact that Ephesians was right: Paul’s Gospel of one new humanity in the dead and risen Christ means that even the God-given Law is no basis for separation among the people of God. How much less all the theological positions we’ve endlessly generated on far less authority?

So no, I don’t think it’s enough merely to serve together. I don’t think it’s enough merely to appeal to an invisible church that we’d run from if we saw it with our naked eyes.

I think that real church unity is only to be had when people with deeply different theologies and ethnicities and… and… sit in the same room on Sunday mornings worshiping God together.

I know that’s idealistic. I know that’s asking too much. But I believe in the God who gives life to the dead, so sometimes that’s how I roll.

Women and Pornography

April 22, 2010 in Church with 0 Comments

There was an important one-page article in Christianity Today about a woman who has started a ministry to women who struggle with porn addiction.

The ministry’s website is Dirty Girl Ministries.

We all know that pornography is a huge problem among men. It may come as a surprise to many that it’s not just a guy thing. Also, I hope it’s encouraging to women that there are other women who are struggling with the issue and that this resource is available to you.

Doctrine Good–As Is Art

March 12, 2010 in Church with 7 Comments

Since my doctrinophobia propelled me over the past couple of days to engage somewhat critically with the latest issue of Christianity Today (which critical engagement I take, generally, to be a good thing), let me not fail to celebrate the other side of the story.

There’s a marvelous, short article by Lauren Winner called “Art for God’s Sake.” She is drawing attention to the work of Greg Wolfe who has been a driving force in the growing appreciation evangelicals have for the spiritual value of art.

Winner suggests, “The most important thing [Wolfe] does is call our attention to the present moment and tell us: Look here” (43). In this, she sees him as imitating his own assessment of T. S. Eliot: “in Eliot we find someone who says, Look at what the broken edge of our fragmentation gestures toward: the wholeness off in the distance” (43).

The nuanced appreciation of faith beyond blatant articulation is one of the things that artists need to continually contribute to the church. Winner speaks of a writing program Wolfe directs. It is not intended “to produce ‘Christian writing’ but to give people a space to work out writing and spirituality together” (42).

From a Protestant point of view, it seems paradoxical that the Roman Catholic church has been able to promote such a rich artistic sensibility while holding onto the kind of doctrine that, in Protestant circles, has squelched artistic impulses. Protestantism has too long a history of finding art too incapable of speaking truly.

Why this disparity? Perhaps it is because of the way Catholic ecclesiology plays itself out in icon and sacrament? Perhaps it’s because doctrinal statements have been one piece of the church in which unity is found rather than the means by which unity and ecclesiology are sought?

A Well-Storied Lent

February 21, 2010 in Church with 6 Comments

Ok, so last Wednesday I went all grumpy on the idea of Lent, suggesting that it might be getting the Christian story wrong. The back-story on that one is that I have wrestled on and off with the power of rediscovery of church tradition to be a divisive force in the church. The same dynamic I witness with people who get all excited about a particular kind of theology (especially Reformed, but not exclusively) I see working at times in my friends who discover liturgy and church calendar (often through Anglican or Episcopal churches).

But far be it from me to only advocate for one side of an argument, especially when I can come back four days later and offer the other with a good conscience. So I will.

It has struck me over the past several days that Lent has the potential to open our eyes to the fundamental narrative dynamic of the Christian life, namely, its cross-shaped character.

Last year I was teaching my course on Acts-Revelation. I told the class that in the summer I’d be teaching “The Cross in the New Testament,” and they asked, “How is that different from this class?!” That’s when I knew I’d done well.

For a people and nation glutted on excess, power, comfort, and glory, Lent can be a salutary reentry into the cruciform narrative of Christianity. We follow Jesus. And to follow Jesus means to walk the way of the cross.

I still have a beef: that churches would make things all dreary and stop saying “Hallelujah” and all that during these 46 days. In the spirit of those who break their fast on Sunday, I’d suggest that the church itself needs to observe such non-observance as well.

Why? Because the great surprise of the gospel narrative is that we sing “Hallelujah” not in spite of the cross but because of it. We sing hallelujah both because the Lamb has been slain and because we conquer with him through our blood and the word of our testimony.

So yes, be sober. Yes, sacrifice. Yes, exercise renewed discipline. But let’s not forget that these are the reasons to praise as much as (or more than) they are the things that need to be overcome in order to join the heavenly chorus.

[Editor's note: the writer has chosen to give up his Lenten discipline of not observing Lent--but only on Sundays when we all break our fasts in honor of the resurrection of Jesus.]

Church Government?

February 20, 2010 in Church with 3 Comments

I was telling someone today that our house church doesn’t really have a pastor, per se, and it got me to thinking that maybe we’re something like and anarcho-syndicalist commune:

Why Not Rather Be Wronged?

February 19, 2010 in Church with 11 Comments

I heard another one of the stories yesterday. A church in a property dispute. Yes, the resolution was one in which there was some reconciliation at the end, it was story of the surprising power of God showing up in an unexpected place.

But the story was still there. A congregation shut down from above. A building confiscated in the courts. Mounds of money spent on litigation. Oh yeah–and (sarcasm alert) all this happened so as to put the gospel on display for the Christian people of San Francisco who clearly don’t need a beautiful witness since they flock to church in droves every Sunday.

Court.

Court was the last straw in my decision not to join a church affiliated with a mainline denomination when we moved out to San Francisco 18 months ago.

I was having a conversation with a woman who wanted to appeal a decision of the local Presbytery. Fair enough. I get that.

And so she got together a cadre of like-minded wealthy churches who were going to help spring for the $100,000+ in legal bills the fight would cost.

Ok, I don’t get that anymore. And maybe I shouldn’t have gotten it in the first place.

I’ve been blogging this week about Sam Wells’ Improvisation, a book full of hope that a people deeply entrenched in their drama will be able to improvise faithfully in their ecclesial settings. The problem is, we can’t even play the story right when we’ve got the script right in front of us.

In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul chides the Corinthians for taking each other to court. The beginning of the chapter outlines a series of ways in which such action undermines the narrative of the gospel: the saints will participate in the final judgment, can’t we then judge matters of this world without taking it before the secular courts? we’re going to judge angels, how about matters of this life?

Actually, says Paul, how to deal with the lawsuits is secondary: it’s already a defeat for you that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? (1 Cor 6:7).

But no the story of the American dream is too powerful for our denominations. I have a right to stuff. Even if I didn’t put any money into it, it’s mine. Even if I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, it’s mine and I’ll take it.

I confess, that for all my delight in narrative theology, and resonance with Wells’ narrativally derived improvisational ethics, I often find it difficult to believe that much of it is true–because the church so rarely becomes a living witness to the story it claims as its own.

Story Fields and the Death of Emergent

February 12, 2010 in Church with 11 Comments

Ever since Andrew Jones (a.k.a. Tall Skinny Kiwi) prophesied that 2010 would be the year in which the Emergent Church was declared dead, the internets have been swirling with hearty “Amen”s, “Thanks be to God”s, “What on earth are you talking about?!”s, and “God, I hope not”s.

It seems to me that one of the most sane lines of response has been given by the likes of Danielle Shroyer, and others, who have argued that Emergent isn’t dying, but taking on a new, positive posture in which it’s redefining itself in some manner other than reaction against the status quo.

I recently stumbled upon a website that talks about “Story Fields“: stories that frame our experience and shape our decisions. Much of what these folks are doing for non-Christian policy making is what I’m advocating for in theology: the telling of compelling alternative narratives that create new ways of perceiving the world and our actions within it.

At this site, Tom Atlee talks about how alternative stories get generated and then mature. Talking through the process of change, he charts sources of power and what it takes to give a new story staying power:

  1. “I believe that every emerging culture or movement for social transformation gains its power, above all, through a compelling story field of its own. However, as mentioned above, insofar as the alternative story field is created against the dominant story field, it tends to lend power to the field it is resisting.”
  2. “I believe that compelling, viable alternatives must grow naturally from an inner logic of their own. They can’t be sustained by oppositional energy alone… If… they arise from a truly positive vision, they stand in contrast to but not primarily in opposition to the status quo. Thus they do little to empower that status quo, while at the same time inviting those who are ready for change, into the new story field.”
  3. “The question that remains for any movement is how to translate its positive visions into positive story fields capable of shaping a new culture.”

It seems to me that one likely scenario for Emergent/Emerging/Emergence is that it is reconfiguring its story from opposition to developing its own inner logic.  I don’t necessarily expect Emergent to be around forever. But I do anticipate that the story of reaction will develop, in some quarters, into a positively articulated vision of the kingdom of God. Because of its less antagonistic and oppositional character and its genuine newness, as a story framing the lives of various communities, many will no longer recognize this as Emergent, and maybe that’s for the best.

Even if it’s wrong.

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