Category Archives: hat tips

Pat Robertson on Marriage: It’s all about you.

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I don’t follow the happenings or statements of Pat Robertson, and I am–like so many others–very used to hearing of his random statements from time to time, becoming irritated or made uncomfortable by them and then moving on.  On the one hand, I find myself thankful again and again that Robertson isn’t “one of ours” in the sense of being an Episcopalian or even part of a magisterial Protestant tradition.  But in taking comfort in such a position I am being disingenuous to my beliefs.  One of the things that keeps me within the Episcopal Church, to which I was called by God, is my belief that–as a Baptized Christian–I share responsibility equally for what other Baptized Christians do, regardless of their denominational affiliation.  Therefore, leaving the Episcopal Church would make me no less responsible for the off the wall actions of certain Episcopalians.  But to truly put this belief into practice I have to take seriously the responsibility to weigh, judge and offer humble correction to my brothers and sisters of all stripes.

It’s with that in mind that I share the following comment with you.  Recently Pat Robertson offered his opinion on his television show that a man would be justified in divorcing his Alzheimer’s afflicted wife to marry another woman because she’s “not there anymore.”  I heard about this comment on Twitter and I don’t believe I can comment on this any more ably than Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  I particularly appreciated his turn of phrase in this paragraph, but please take the time to read his whole article.:

Pat Robertson’s cruel marriage statement is no anomaly. He and his cohorts have given us for years a prosperity gospel with more in common with an Asherah pole than a cross. They have given us a politicized Christianity that uses churches to “mobilize” voters rather than to stand prophetically outside the power structures as a witness for the gospel.

via Moore to the Point – Christ, the Church, and Pat Robertson.

Jesus Christ: Extreme Humility

I find it hard to imagine Jesus condoning the behavior Robertson approves. The icon above, “Jesus Christ, Extreme Humility,” reminds us that the Lord who offered himself and endured suffering for us, also calls us to bear our cross in this life, with love of God and love of neighbor as our guiding principles. Somewhere Robertson lost sight of that.

Catholicity and covenant: York Minster and the Anglican claim to continuity

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In the course of a recent Catholic Herald column attacking entry charges for York Minster, William Oddie indulged in ultramontane triumphalism:

I have had this problem before, getting into Anglican cathedrals built by the Catholic Church and purloined at the Reformation.

In this week’s Herald, the Dean of York Minster – the Very Rev Keith Jones – responds to Oddie and in doing so articulates a generous but appropriately robust Anglican vision of the English Church’s historic relationship with both the English people and the See of Rome:

Read it all: catholicity and covenant: York Minster and the Anglican claim to continuity.

Will Willimon: Thoughts on Children’s sermons

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I had someone approach me earlier and comment that, in the past, priests at this congregation have done children’s sermons on Christmas Eve (indeed, I was invited to give one last year, before I became priest-in-charge of the congregation).  The unspoken question was why I had not.  To be honest, I am uncertain what I think, finally, about the idea of a children’s sermon.  On the one hand, I think it demonstrates the fact that we don’t give enough credit to children while on the other, I think it short-changes the Gospel by assuming that every truth should be able to be communicated best in a way that young children will understand.

It’s an appropriate theme given the season. Children often understand more than we give them credit for, and, unfortunately many of us who preach regularly have a hard time grasping the fact that if a sermon doesn’t have anything for the children to understand, then most of the adults aren’t going to get anything out of it either–not because they’re slow or unintelligent, but mostly because we’ve failed to communicate in a clear and understandable way.

So, the jury is still out, but I find these observations by Bishop Will Willimon, former dean of Duke Chapel, now Bishop of the North Alabama conference of the UMC, to be quite convincing and in line with my experience.  One of my favorite parts of the article follows, but I encourage you to read the whole thing:

I fear that children’s sermons tend to backfire, saying to parents and children that which we do not intend to say. We wouldn’t interrupt the congregation’s worship with, “And now I would like all those of you who are over 65 to come down front while I say something sentimental and sappy to all of you old folks.” That would be ugly. So why do we single out the children saying in effect, “Boys and girls, I know that you are bored stiff by Christian worship, that you can’t get anything out of what we do when we praise God, so come down front and I’ll take a few minutes to try to make this interesting for you.”

{Read it all}

What a great quote

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Apologies to any Libertarians/Randians out there, but this is just too good:

“There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-kld’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.” – “The Value of Nothing” by Raj Pate

{HT: The Distributist Review}

Linkage: Interesting reads from around the net

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Below are just a few of the things I’ve been reading over the past few days.  Check them out:

Interesting link round up

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For those who are interested, here are some interesting things I’ve been reading over the past few days:

  • Image Magazine: Episcopentecostalianism, Bradford Winters laments the fact that there aren’t more places where one can find this combination.  “I will say that I’ve seen enough evidence of each to determine that the Holy Spirit is often needed as much to temper the ‘raving saved’ as to excite the ‘frozen chosen.’”
  • The Internet Monk deals with the question of why many evangelicals seem ill-equipped when it comes to the pastoral care of the dying: Chaplain Mike Mercer: Evangelicals And The Pastoral Care of the Dying: The IM Interview.
  • The New York Times has an interesting story about the fall of communism in the Czechoslovakia: Velvet Revolution’s Roots Remain a Fog 20 Years Later.
  • Peter Liethart reminds folks that Constantine may not have been so bad after all.
  • This American Christianity–”Bait and Switch” from the Mockingbird blog.

Enjoy.

Strength & Weakness: An example of the former becoming the latter

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A while ago–perhaps a year or more–Dean Kevin Martin of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas visited the Diocese of Tennessee and gave a presentation about evangelism at one of our congregations.  During his presentation, Dean Kevin made several important observations that have recently been highlighted for me.

First, he noted that most people know very little about the Episcopal Church.  Indeed, most people know very little about any church.  It is often particularly hard for Episcopalians to consider the fact that the goings on in our church do not draw the attention of everyone else (except for quite a few journalists).  His argument was that most people with a negative view of The Episcopal Church, whether because of our liturgy, or culture war issues, were usually not non-Christians, but were instead Christians who had been formed in traditions hostile to the Episcopal Church in some way.  Point taken.  For non-Christians, or those who have spent a very long time away from church, the association most have with The Episcopal Church is that “it is a safe place.”  They expect that it’s somewhere they can go and worship and not be assaulted in some way, spiritually or emotionally.

This perception is a good thing.  It’s not just a good thing for those from non-Christian backgrounds, but often for those from Christian backgrounds that are more overtly vocal about the lives of individual members. This seems to be the case for Mrs. Abby Johnson the former Planned Parenthood director who has made news by resigning her job after watching a video of an abortion prompted a change in her views.  You see, Mrs. Johnson is a former Southern Baptist who found the Episcopal Church when it was made clear that her involvement in planned parenthood meant she was not welcome in Southern Baptist Churches.  The fact that Mrs. Johnson was able to feel welcome and be involved in the life of a local Episcopal Church is something that I believe we should feel proud of.

In contrast to some other traditions that have attempted to ensure that the visible church is made up of only of the pure, Anglicanism has instead seen itself as being open to all the people–to being a place where people can come and hear the Gospel and have their lives transformed.  This paradigm difference could be expressed in the contemporary world by the difference between different placement of the “three b’s”, believe-behave-belong.

Many congregations that operate out of the model of the believers church, place the order this way:

Believe

Behave

Belong

Other traditions place the order differently, as did the sub-apostolic church, which seems to have emphasized the behave, believe, belong order in many situations.

In contrast, what many people engaged in reaching out to our non-religious contemporaries are finding is that a more effective (and, I would argue, in many ways more biblical) model is this:

Belong

Believe-Behave

Ideally, this is what the Episcopal Church’s traditionally “welcoming” attitude allows to take place.  It may have been the initial response Mrs. Johnson received when she began attending the local Episcopal Church.  However, as GetReligion has noted, now that Johnson’s opinions on abortion have changed and she has become pro-life, some members of her congregation seem to be reacting negatively to her.  The details of the story are still murky, and I don’t want to draw conclusions about what is actually happening–congregational conflict, especially when the media gets involved, can be very hairy and full of miscommunication, innuendo and assumption.

However, regardless of the details of what is or isn’t happening, it is clear that Johnson no longer feels as welcome at her congregation as she did before:

Continue reading →

First Things: The Drama of Hallowmas

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I thought this was an interesting reflection on the worldview that underlies Halloween, and the importance of celebrating All Saints & All Souls days following.  I will admit to having been majorly put off by most contemporary Christian attempts to somehow “deal” with Halloween (Hell houses anyone?) that reveal nothing so much as an ignorance of our own history and deep seated fears of death:

As a friend of mine observed recently, there is something medieval about Halloween. The masks, the running around in the dark, the flicker of candles in pumpkins, the smell of leaves and cold air—all of it feels ancient, even primal, somehow. Despite the now-inevitable preponderance of media-inspired costumes, Halloween seems, in execution, far closer to a Last Judgment scene above a medieval church door, or to a mystery play, than it does to Wal-Mart. To step outside on Halloween dressed as someone—or something—other than yourself is to step into a narrative that acknowledges that the membrane between our workaday, material world and the unseen realm of spirits is far thinner and more permeable than many of us like to think.

This narrative disturbs a lot of people, as the proliferation of church-sponsored “autumn festivals” and “trunk-or-treat” parties suggests. To some of those who worry about it, Halloween is either a thoroughly secular or a thoroughly pagan observance, to be avoided by serious Christians. In the Halloween aisle at Dollar Tree, you’ll certainly be hard-pressed to find anything remotely Christian on offer, unless you count glow-in-the-dark skeletons and black plastic skulls as memento mori designed to remind you that you are not Darth Maul, but dust.

The secular commercialization of Halloween bothers people far less than do its roots in the pagan Celtic festival of Samhain, which the Romans, after the conquest of Britain, eventually conflated with their own Feralia, a feast honoring the dead. When, in the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV instituted the feast of All Saints, to fall on the first of November, the eve of that solemnity coincided with the date of the ancient festival. The addition of the feast of All Souls in the eleventh century completed the three-day Hallowmas, dedicated to the memory of the Christian martyrs and honoring all the faithful departed.

{Read it all}

Update: There’s also a good post up at the Mockingbird Blog relating to Halloween, and responses to it:

What has interested me about Halloween is its intersection with culture, and especially Christianity. Growing up in the church, I’ve seen churches attempt to do all kinds of things with Halloween, from ignoring it completely to throwing elaborate competing “Harvest Festivals.” My favorite Christian/Halloween story comes out of Eden Christian Academy of Pittsburgh, PA (slogan: Pretending People are Perfect since 1983). A dear friend worked as a teacher there, and experienced this first-hand. Presented with the problem of what to do about Halloween one year, the faculty went back and forth: Use it as a teaching moment to communicate about the occult? Embrace what has become a harmless evening of candy-getting rather than a celebration of pagan ritual? Of course not. So afraid were they of dealing with the Halloween “problem,” they did the least productive thing they could have: They cancelled school.

{Read it all}

Sins of the… cousin?

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The Last Judgment

.The Last Judgement.

  1. Let them vanish like water that runs off; *
    let them wither like trodden grass.
  2. Let them be like the snail that melts away, *
    like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
  3. Before they bear fruit, let them be cut down like a brier; *
    like thorns and thistles let them be swept away.
  4. The righteous will be glad when they see the vengeance; *
    they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.

    5. (Psalm 58:7-10)

Yesterday I came across an article in The Age, an Australian Newspaper (HT: Touchstone) about the fact that some folks believe they’ve found 39 living relatives of Adolf Hitler. The majority of these relatives live in Austria while three live in the United States under assumed names (for obvious reasons). Those who live in the US are decedents of Hitler’s uncle, and they fled Germany as refugees from the Nazis.

I bring this up because it is a natural human reaction to want all memory of those who do evil wiped from the face of the earth. Consider the selection above from Psalm 58–obviously such sentiments aren’t new. That impulse, though, can itself be evil. Something that stood out to me in the article from The Age was this bit from the closing section:

”The American relatives have agreed not to have children to extinguish the saga of Hitler and stop living in fear, but have promised to publish a book before they die,”

If these cousins of Hitler don’t want to have children, that’s their business, but from the phrasing of the article it seems that they’re motivated more than a little by a sense of guilt. And for what? Guilt by genetic association? Isn’t that exactly what the Allies fought against? The way the article makes it seem, the family was under pressure not to continue the line, they “agreed not to have children to extinguish the saga of Hitler.” I have news for anyone that thinks such a decision will extinguish the saga of Hitler: it ain’t gonna happen, and it’s absurd and foolish to the extreme to believe it would. What Hitler did, he did because of his own sin–a sin that, by the way is not restricted to a specific genetic line–after all, Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin weren’t relatives of Adolf, but they certainly have more in common with him than do two of his cousins who live as gardeners and one as a psychologist in the United states.

A Cross Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching

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A friend recently mentioned Stanley Hauerwas’ new sermon collection, A Cross Shattered Church to me.  I was taking a look at it tonight, trying to decide if I wanted to order it for myself when I came across this section, which sort of serves to whet the appetite.  What do you think?  It’s next in line for my library shelves I think…

An American evangelical philosopher once asked me if I did not think that hell is best conceived as being hated by God.  I responded by saying that is surely wrong.  If I know I am hated by God, I at least know I exist.  Hell is to be abandonded by God.  Dante surely had it right that at its lowest depths hell is where we are frozen in ice in a manner that those so condemned are unable to see anyone else.

Robert Jenson puts it this way:

What makes death the Lord’s enemy, and fearful for us, is that it separates lovers.  Were my death simply my affair, the old maxim might hold, that since my death will never be part of my experience, I have no need to fear it.  But death will take my loves from me and me from them, and that is the final objective horror, for it decrees emptiness of all human worth, constituted as it is by love.  Having no more being woul dbe no evil were being not mutual.

But being is mutual, because mutuality is the very character of God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The Father desires friendship with the Son through the agency of the Holy Spirit.  Which means speculation about dying and death that is not governed by Jesus’ cross and resurrection only tempts us to narcissistic fantacies.  What we know is that the crucified Jesus has been raised, making possible our hope that death cannot defeat God’s love for us.  We were created for God’s enjoyment and through the Son’s obedience even to death he has reclaimed us so that we may regard our deaths not as an end but as a beginning.  In short God does not give us explantions that can make our dying something less than death.  He does not give us an explanation; he gives us his Son.

Check it out:

A Cross Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching