On Jack White, Worship, and the Marketplace of Art & Spirit

Jack White is a performer – no ifs, ands, or buts about it – and yet he has the audacity to expect a relationship of mutuality from his audiences. If you’ve ever preached, given a speech, or performed on stage in any capacity then you know exactly what he’s talking about here. There is a kind of reciprocal relationship that can exist between artist and audience, giver and receiver, wherein the gift is nurtured and grown between them.

The problem, according to Jack, is that American audiences are increasingly “spoiled,” by which he seems to mean lazy or entitled. Referring to the rock concert, Jack says, “It’s supposed to be a sharing experience.” Is it just me, or is he describing something we see happening in churches too?

For my part, I would say that Americans have increasingly lost the imaginative realm of the gift as the locus of relationships. Hence, we’re less able to conceptualize our relationships as anything but marketplace exchange; a tragic loss that has crippled institutions of art and spirit as sacred spaces of human formation - largely because we’ve thoroughly saturated those realms with the metrics of the marketplace. Consequently, I tend to think that by purging gift-space of marketplace dynamics we might be able to re-appropriate the role of artists and priests as performers in an appropriate sense.

Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: art, Charlie Rose, Church, Jack White, Preaching, Reciprocity, The Gift, The White Stripes, worship

Al And Tipper Gore And The Advent of Term Marriage

One of the popular news items being reported today is that Al and Tipper Gore are divorcing after 40 years of marriage. Aside from the media obsession with people’s private lives, there are some interesting aspects to this story. If you listen carefully you’ll notice that the fundamental idea of marriage continues to be redefined by our society, particularly by the baby-boomer generation.

For example, in the sub-headline of this MSNBC article the Gore’s are quoted characterizing their divorce as a “a mutual and mutually supportive decision.” Divorce used to be an ugly and shameful thing in America, then for a time people strived to make their divorces “amicable,” and now it’s widely considered mature for you and your ex-spouse to remain friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I think moving from a culture of shame to a culture of forgiveness and reconciliation is a very good progression, but what I find most interesting is that it has set the stage for a redefinition of what a “successful” marriage is.

This morning on the Today show Matt Lauer and his guests proposed the idea that perhaps we shouldn’t consider it a “failure” that a 40-year marriage is coming to an end in divorce. After all, they were together for 40 years – an admirable feat by today’s standards!

In other words, the very purpose of marriage is being renegotiated right before our eyes by our society at large. My wife’s response to the comments on the Today Show was, “In my opinion a marriage that ends in divorce after 40 years is a bigger failure than one that ends after 5 years. It’s like quitting the race 10 steps from the finish line!” Jenell feels that way because we see marriage as a lifelong exclusive union between two people, the purpose of which is to grow in intimacy. We think growing in intimacy requires some degree of hardship, pain, and most importantly, a lifetime of commitment.

(I should add here that I firmly believe some divorces are right and good. Some people simply should not be married.)

But that is increasingly not how American society practices marriage. We largely see it as a partnership that exists for making its partners happy (I think happiness and intimacy are very different goals). Therefore, as soon as you no longer make each other happy it’s time to end the partnership. Pretty simple. The idea of remaining in unhappiness is not only seen as absurd, more often it is even being characterized as immoral (especially where children are involved). If you make each other happy for 2 or 3 or even 5 years, well, that’s pretty good. But if you made each other happy for 40 years, that’s nothing short of amazing these days!

Hence, the Gore’s had a highly successful marriage.

Term Marriage?
This progressive redefinition of marriage opens the door for some interesting possibilities, so today I’m going to make my first prediction on Pastoralia: in my children’s lifetime we will see the advent of “Term Marriage” in America. People will marry for a pre-determined period of time – say, 2 years, 5 years, and 10 years at a time – and very specifically spell out the contractual terms of that period. Those who enjoy each other for short terms will likely re-up – perhaps for a longer term, or even a lifetime term. Those who don’t make each other happy will simply part at the end of their term. This is essentially what we already have to a lesser, and legally softer extent with the current practice of co-habitation. All we need is to add some legal protection to that current arrangement and divorce will largely cease to be a failure, and simply become part of the expected transition.

Of course in some ways this will be significantly more complex than traditional marriage. The terms of the contract will have to be stipulated in detail (expectations for children, finances, etc.) but we have already laid the groundwork for this with pre-nuptial agreements. There will also have to be safeguards that prevent it from simply becoming a way to legalize prostitution and female exploitation (through extremely short hour-long, day-long, and week-long “marriages” – a problem that already exists in the obscure Shia Muslim practice of Mutah).

But in other ways – ways that I think are more compatible with the values of our rapidly changing culture – Term Marriage will be much more simple; there is a lighter burden of responsibility and a more tangible and accessible horizon of success.

If that does happen, what will be the Church’s response?

Technorati Tags: Al Gore, Marriage, Tipper Gore

From Seeker Sensitive to Seeker Generating

“Seeker-sensitive” churches made a big splash in the 1990′s, lead by Willow Creek, with a great concern and care for helping people find God. This was generally accomplished by creating a worship atmosphere that was relevant to contemporary culture in order to provide a seamless transition from the secular world to the sacred world. The motto, via Donald McGavran, was “Nobody should have to cross cultures in order to find God.” Thanks to Willow Creek, and its clones, people were able to come and see God in a way that added sacred meaning to their beloved secular forms of soft-rock music and the corporate-marketing culture of success. It was church the church of Madison Avenue. Of course, during the 1990′s many of the more traditionally-minded churches and leaders vilified this approach, seeing it as a kind of “watering down” of the gospel message.

What the traditional churches and leaders didn’t realize was that seeker sensitive churches were the logical extension of the very form of Christendom they had passed down. Both traditional and seeker-sensitive churches assume that Christ is at the center of cultural and that God is to be found within the gates of the central palace (so to speak) that is the walls of the church. Hence, people must come to church to find God.

But during the early years of postmodernism the markers of Christendom were being rejected – religious heritage, religious symbolism, and Judeo-Christian socio-political norms – which resulted in a cognitive dissonance between those who might still want to “find God” and the keepers of the message who were still primarily speaking through the liturgies, music, and symbols of a rejected culture. In other words, “church” in it’s older forms no longer made sense. The emerging Church leaders – that is, the baby-boomer children of the traditionalists – still essentially wanted what the traditionalists wanted: God at the center of culture (perhaps even more so), but they realized that emerging generations were rejecting those symbols and traditions (as were they). Therefore, they created churches that stripped these symbols away. Seekers of God, then, could go to church to “find God” in a friendly and accessible culture that utilized recognizable idioms like soft-rock inspired worship music, entertainment-based media, and corporate-styled cafes.

Missional churches reject the most fundamental assumption underlying all of this; that Christ is the center of human culture and power. Eddie Gibbs has referred to this turn as “seeker generating churches.”

We are no longer in the business of welcoming “seekers,” or even stimulating the latent “seeking” tendencies in the otherwise pluralistic population, Rather, we are the seekers. We are not the custodians of the Kingdom. Rather, the Kingdom is the reign of God produced by a missionary God who is “at work to this very day” in the world around us. Therefore, our task is to go out and seek to find where God is already “at work” in the community and the world around us and, wherever we find God at work, to join God in that work.

Our task is to be seekers of the Kingdom and to generate new seekers of the Kingdom among us.

Questions:

1. To what extent has our culture in North America already rejected Christ at the center of culture? To what extent is Christ still at the center?
2. What can we do to most effectively generate seekers of the Kingdom among us?
3. To what extend should we still be prepared to receive “seekers” in the Christendom sense?

Technorati Tags: Donald McGavran, missional, Seeker generating, Seeker Sensitive

What (Four) Teenagers Think About Religion And Our Biggest Problems Today

As part of a grad school class I’m taking I asked four teenagers three questions about their main concerns in life and how religion or faith impacts those concerns. I thought it would be fun to ask Pastoralia readers those same questions. So first, here are the questions and the responses I received from 4 teenagers:

1. What 3 issues stress you out most?
2. What are the 3 biggest challenges facing our world?
3. Does religion/faith help you deal with these concerns better or make them more difficult? How?

Respondent #1:

1. Figuring out what my priorities are, figuring out how to discover myself, and figuring out how to maintain grades without going crazy knowing that next year is going to be tough and that I procrastinate. I also dislike how my response to having a ton of things to think about is not thinking about any of them. I’m a very relaxed and mellow person… See more though, stress doesn’t get to me too much.
2. Disregard for the environment, poverty/greed, and parochialism.
3. Religion and faith do little for me. I see and respect how faith motivates people and gives them a sense of purpose, but it would be stupid to say something like “We are God’s instruments.” That belittles free will and extraordinary individual morality. What I mean is no because putting things in the hands of some unknown might make you feel better, but it does little to help your problem. Religion does get in the way of the global warming challenge though because some people deny science and endorse the supernatural.’

Respondent #2:

1. School, Grades, finding a job
2. Global warming, america doesnt care what other people think of them, the global and national economy
3. I don’t know, i would say neither. to say that i think religion helps in MY opinion wouldn’t be how i feel but i have this guilt feeling that if i say no it doesnt it would be wrong. i think saying that religion helps … See moreis something we have been accustomed too and for the most part is accepted by society. i dont think i could say yes or no though in regards to religion/faith

Respondent #3:

1. Thinking about college, self-image, and excelling at what is important to me.
2. Realizing the worth of a human being, disreguarding race or gender. Finding more diplomatic ways to solve world issues if possible. Letting go of selfish natures to benefit those in greater need and those with less opportunities.
3. My faith helps me because it gives me hope that someday these issues might be solved or improved. it pushes me toward the direction of helping make a change.

Respondent #4:

1. Future, Family,
2. World Hunger, Religious Conflicts, Environmental damage.
3. No it does not help me, religion tends to create conflict, especially in today’s world. We don’t need religion to solve our as well as the world’s problems or challenges.

Does this tell us anything useful about the worldview of these teenagers? In your experience, to what extent are these responses typical of American teenagers? What does this mean for churches and church leaders?

And, finally, how are their responses similar or different from your own?

My brief thoughts:

• Teenagers today (or, these teenagers at least) are way smarter than we give them credit for.
• Their concerns are more or less exactly the same as mine.
• With the exception of one, there is very little connection between daily concerns and religion/faith and the connection between religion/faith and global concerns is mostly negative. I myself have a great deal of hope for how faith can impact global concerns, but quite frankly I share the disconnect between my faith and my daily stresses. If anything, being a person of faith has only increased by level of concern and responsibility.

Technorati Tags: Church, Culture, Religion, Surveys, Teenagers

Re-imagining Christendom

Recently my friend Jason Clark has been hosting a series on his blog, Deep Church, called, “Re-imagining Vineyard Values,” wherein several of us have been trying to engage with the classic ten core postures of the Vineyard Movement.

Today it was my turn to re-imagine value #6 (“Come as you are but don’t stay as you are”) and my response takes the form of a parable. Click here to read “The Parable of the Royal Invitation.”

Technorati Tags: Deep Church, Jason Clark, Parables, Vineyard Community of Churches

Bumper Sticker Theology: Coexist?

California is a rich repository of odd theological statements encapsulated in pithy sayings on the back of people’s cars. Today I saw this popular bumper sticker on a Lexus:

Underneath this peacefully enlightened plea for inter-religious civility was a license plate frame which stated:

Come over here…

So I can smack you!

Sort of changes the tenor of the sticker doesn’t it?

Technorati Tags: bumper stickers, Coexist, Culture, Peace, Theology, Violence

The Prostitution of the Gospel Through Marketing

A while back I wrote a post called 5 Arguments Against the Use of Media and Marketing in Church (I followed up with a related post about hologram pastors here). Not surprisingly I received some pretty irate feedback from other pastors. But today Eric Seiberling posted a very even-handed response disagreeing with me that is worth reading if you’re interested in this subject. I really appreciate Eric’s thoughtful response. Having said that, Eric and I definitely disagree:

Marketing and media is just another tool.  It changes the dynamics of reach, immediacy and immersion of a message, but it does not change it. The message is the message.

If tools are neutral then he’s right. We can put the gospel on a postcard and all we have to worry about is being faithful to the message. But there are two problems with that. First, tools are not neutral; hammers, televisions, and guns are all engineered for purposes and with technology which prejudice their use. At the very least tools participate in the shaping of their subject in ways that are beyond the control (and sometimes beyond the awareness) of the operator. At worst they dominate to the point of becoming the message and even transforming the operator (yes, like a ring of power!). Personally, I think the degree to which that domination occurs depends on the amount of power the tool facilitates (for example, guns prejudice their own use and shape the character of their operators more powerfully than, say, hammers). There are few tools more powerful these days than media.

But there’s a second problem beyond the prejudice of tools. If you think the gospel is a propositional message meant to lead people to an action (like the sinners prayer) then any delivery system will do – indeed, the more powerful and compelling the “call to action” the better. But the gospel is not merely information to be conveyed, it is a person who must be both proclaimed and demonstrated. And because that person is not physically available to us, the means of proclamation becomes a demonstration of his reality. Hence, there’s simply no way to proclaim the gospel of Christ without personally, locally, and relationally demonstrating him. Marketing seeks to bypass that inefficiency, and in doing so eliminates the presence of Christ from the gospel. Do we really want to personify Christ in the same way that Madison Avenue personifies, say, Oprah Winfrey or Colonel Sanders?

Is it even possible to represent Christ with postcards, television commercials, and propaganda films without irreparable misrepresentation (Ceci n’est pas une Christ? – HT: Chris Nelson)? As far as I know, there is only one ikon that embodies the image of Christ on earth – the Church – and that ikon is so obviously flawed that dressing it up in marketing lipstick just makes her look, to the rest of the world, like a cheap prostitute.

Case in point: is this really an accurate embodiment of Christ?

Or this?

Or, my personal favorite:

Each of these are real examples of church marketing products (mass-mailer postcards) from one of the largest and most successful church marketing companies in the U.S. (yes, there’s profit in this). I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that these postcards distort Christ in ways that range from mildly perplexing to blatantly idolatrous. Especially in the last two, the medium really is the message, and the message is most definitely not the gospel. Moreover, this is not just about the intent of the user or designer (although that clearly is a factor); marketing inherently tends toward expressions of leisure, affluence, and power in the same way that hammers tend toward expressions of blunt force. Otherwise they just don’t work because of the prejudice of their technology and design.

I’ll admit there are many nuances to be explored in this topic, and I do think media can be used by churches in missional and educational ways. Perhaps I’ll explore some thoughts on that in the future, but in the meantime I think my friend Bill Kinnon says it best:

What we win them with, is what we win them to. Win them with entertainment, and you’ve created customers – who expect to be continually entertained.

Picking up our crosses and following Jesus is not particularly attractive. Buying into a worldview where the last are first, and the first are last doesn’t win us any earthly popularity awards – and seems antithetical to the North American Dream.

Death to self. Becoming weak and poor. Identifying with the marginalized. Relinquishing the American Dream. Try putting that on a postcard and see who shows up.

Technorati Tags: Church, Eric Seiberling, Gospel, Jesus Christ, marketing, Media

After SVS 2010: Jon Bialecki and Jamie Wilson, Social Science Analysis of the Vineyard and a Theological Rejoinder

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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NOTE: Today is a unique profile because it involves two people – Jon, an anthropologist, and Jamie, the Vineyard pastor whose church Jon has studied for the past several years. Consequently, this profile is much longer than the others, but well worth the extra effort.

Jon Bialecki & Jamie Wilson: “Surprise, Return, and Futurity: Social Science Analysis of the Vineyard’s Temporal Imaginary of the Kingdom and a Theological Rejoinder”

Abstract
This paper presents a conversation that arose from an anthropological participant-observer study of Southern California Vineyards, and consists an initial secular social-science reading of limitations to the Vineyard’s capacity to imagine its own future, and then concluding with critical theological reflections on the central claim that is presented, from the point of view of a pastor who was part of the study that gave rise to this argument. Observing that the Vineyard is at a moment of anxiety over generational change, and to a degree rethinking its future as a movement, Jon Bialecki argues that it has two ready choices. Working on implicit logics of temporality and representation that can be identified in the phenomenology of the Charismatic Gifts, Bialecki claims that these modes of figuration also informs the Vineyard’s attempts to imagine future directions. The mode of picturation that results in informed by a logic of surprise that sees the Kingdom as that which is not a part of the current social order, and hence that which cannot be anticipated; this in practice limits the capacity for coalitional and institution building. Alternately, the Vineyard could make use of another modality of thinking that is dependent on a logic of return to a (possibly phantasmatic) past, but which has its own dangers. Responding to these claims, Jamie Wilson probes to what degree they are constant with the Vineyard’s articulation of Kingdom theology, whether an orientation towards surprise is supplemented by a legitimate expectation of eschatological presence of the future in contemporary grace, and how theologians (such as Moltmann and Yoder) and historical figures (such as Booth and Wilberforce) can provide ways for the Vineyards to take up the difficult task of imagining its own future as an instrument of the Kingdom.

Interview With Jon

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: I hope you will excuse me for being long-winded on this point, but my particular position as a secular anthropologist means that any discussion of my interest in this topic also necessitates folding in a discussion of my interest in the Vineyard itself as a movement. Shortly after 9-11, I became concerned about the possibilities for political engagement and mutual understanding between secular and believing Americans, and so I set aside plans for an anthropology PhD fieldwork project on Islamic modernism in Malaysia to study the Vineyard. My initial question was the nature of the relationship between two aspects of Christian practice and thought that are often treated as analytically distinct by anthropologists who study Christian populations; the areas were (on one hand) understandings regarding, and phenomenological experiences of, Neo-Charismatic/Third wave spiritual practices such as prophecy, deliverance, and healing, and (on the other hand) the economic and political imaginaries of believers. While I am still interested in this topic, I’ve since become captivated by transformations that the Vineyard, as a movement, is itself undergoing – its own internal debates and attempts to chart its future.

When SVS was announced, long-time dialogue partner and Vineyard pastor Jamie Wilson suggested that we collaborate on a project, and of course I accepted. In the last two decades, cultural anthropology has been experimenting with collaborative attempts at producing and presenting material, so there was a lot of enthusiasm on my part for this project. We ended up splitting our paper into two parts. I presented what was in part a bird’s-eye view of my dissertation project, framed as an analysis of what I feel is one of the core antinomonies in the movement today; and Jamie presented a theological re-framing and critique of my material, and a reflection on how the Vineyard, as a movement, might go forward.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: Again, as a friendly outsider, but an outsider nonetheless, I’m hesitant to discuss either the relevance or implications of what I have to suggest, though it seems to me that a tension between picturing the divine as either utterly other, or as foundational and as the known, seems to lie at the core of the early- to mid-period Vineyard, and does have some important implications.

If the Kingdom is to a degree structured in the way that charismatic experiences like ‘hearing from God’ is structured, and if one of the chief indices of hearing from God is the surprising nature of the communication, something that must be divine because it could not be seen as being a part of quotidian thought and sensory experience,  then it seems to me that the Kingdom as a social/political project also will always be something that could not be anticipated – and the organizational and political challenges that follow from collectively planning for that which cannot be anticipated seems obvious; this may be in part why there is such a vogue for spiritual formation these days. Also, this yearning for a truly different order seems to effectively preclude a large swath of possible coalition partners, in as much as most of these partners might be grounded in a politics of this world and of the known.

On the other hand, an alternative politics of ‘the known,’ which might ground itself on some paradigmatic real or imaginary past, seems to me to be potentially toxic – that is the kind of logic found in many kinds of contemporary political and religious fundamentalism, desiring to return to a fantasized previous order of things situated in some halcyon vision of the 19^th or 18^th century, or even earlier. Neither approach, though, seems like it can be entirely rejected – it is hard for me to imagine any kind of contemporary Christian movement that does not at least harken back to some kind of Christian primitivism, and in my discussion of a nostalgic fundamentalism I think I’ve already suggested the dangers inherent in that approach. In short, neither approach alone seems salutary, but creating a dialectic between the two could very well be either unstable, or simply result in a ‘bad infinity,’ an endless vacillation between two poles.

This, by the way, is a problem not limited to the Vineyard alone, though I think that there are historical reasons why this tension might be seen in particularly sharp relief in the Vineyard (think of the oppositions captured in the phrase “Empowered Evangelicals”). By coincidence this morning I attended some sessions of the “Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination” conference at Point Loma Nazarene, and the poet Kathleen Norris, one of the plenary speakers, gave a talk that could be read almost in its entirety as an attempt to work through the same series of oppositions that I see running through large segments of the Vineyard. You can even see traces of these oppositions in non-Christian formulations, such as fair-sized portions of contemporary critical theory – works that may have a genealogical link to Christian, but works that all the same certainly present themselves as predicated on an atheistic, if not agnostic, ontology.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: Again, as an outsider, and as someone who is perhaps constitutionally incapable of being practical in the first place, I’ll have to demure, though it seems to me that for those who feel that my picture here isn’t entirely a misrepresentation of the Vineyard, and does bring up concerns that have to be thought through, Jamie Wilson’s discussion might be an excellent place to begin.

Interview With Jamie

Q: How did you become interested in this topic?

A: Several years ago, Jon approached me with some questions about our church in the context of his doctoral research.   That has led to a rich friendship, some fun mental sparring, and a greatly expanded reading list for me.  We have spent years talking about God, politics, anthropology, and culture. When SVS got started, I asked Jon about doing a joint paper, and I would have been happy to respond to any of his numerous observations on the Vineyard. That being said, it was a particular pleasure to get to think together about how our understanding of the kingdom plays out in practice at a grassroots level.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard at large?

A: In the general sense, I hope that this paper can help encourage interdisciplinary critical reflection within the Vineyard.   Our theology and biblical studies will be stronger if we can engage in conversation with social science disciplines like anthropology, sociology, or history, and vice versa.  Likewise, I hope that our movement can build a robust tradition of discourse with scholars who are not Christians.

In the specific sense, the Vineyard would do well to hear Jon’s point that our culture of valuing surprise as an authentication of God’s activity could in practice deter the formation of coalitions that combat injustice.  We should note the potential eddies that develop in the current of our thoroughly eschatological understanding of the kingdom.  This is precisely the sort of observation that we are unlikely to see without outside help.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: The paper addresses Jon’s argument that the importance we place on surprise may hinder our participation in social justice coalitions. Does our understanding of the kingdom encourage us to work arm in arm with others for the sake of the common good? The road forward begins as a matter of the imagination. What does our theology enable us to image in the future?

I submit that his point is very well taken, and I proceed to suggest three resources to strengthen our ability to work in coalitions.  First, we must keep the cross at the center of our theology of the kingdom. To the extent that our theology becomes a theology of glory rather than a theology of the cross, we lose not only our historical mooring but we also compromise our capacity to imagine coalitions which undertake the hard work of suffering with the oppressed. As we understand that the gospel of the kingdom is the gospel of the suffering king, we are empowered to engage in suffering.  Second, I point to Jesus’ jubilee reference in Luke 4 as a Biblical resource.  I think we have tended to use a strong already/not yet hermeneutic with the first part of the Nazareth question but then dropped the ball on the announcement of the “year of the Lord’s favor.”  Finally, I suggest that we undertake more serious historical study of people like Booth and Wilberforce. At a popular level, it is already the case that they have been admitted to the Vineyard hall of heroes.  Now is the moment to take the next step toward more serious historical analysis.  We need to explore the ways that these leaders understood church and state relations.  We need to explore how they understood the advance of the kingdom of God in their own contexts.

May we do the theological, biblical, and historical work necessary to better position ourselves to work arm in arm with others for the sake of the common good. These three resources suggested at the end could all be put into practice at the local church level.

Jon and Jamie will be available for questions and interaction in the comments below

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Jon Bialecki is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, and has just finished a three-year posting as a visiting assistant professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. His recently completed UCSD anthropology dissertation, “The Kingdom and its Subjects,” focused on the interrelations between Charismatic religious activity, economics, and politics among Southern Californian Vineyard believers; he has also written on the anthropology and ethnography of global Christianity.

Jamie Wilson lives in San Diego with his wife Michelle and their three children. He pastors Coast Vineyard together with Michelle, and he is the Area Pastoral Care Leader for San Diego. He holds an M.A. in Biblical Studies from Fuller Seminary. Jamie is passionate about coaching fully committed risk takers to advance the kingdom of God, and his ideal dinner party would include Augustine, Conrad Grebel, John Wesley, William Wilberforce, Jurgen Moltmann, Peter Xu, several homeless people and the woman who broke the alabaster jar full of perfume and poured it on Jesus.

Technorati Tags: Anthropology, Jamie Wilson, John Bialecki, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, Vineyard Community of Churches

Colbert Makes Glen Beck Look Stupid

I shamelessly ripped this from Rick Meigs’ excellent blog Blind Beggar. You should visit his blog often, but I just had to have this here on Pastoralia. I really do think John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are the best news programs on television:

Technorati Tags: Glen Beck, Social Justice, Stephen Colbert

After SVS 2010: Naomi Forrester, Science vs Christianity, A Battle To Be Won or Lost?

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
______________________________________________

Naomi Forrester: “Science vs Christianity, A Battle To Be Won or Lost?”

Abstract
Science and religion are perceived today as two opposing sides. The truth about this division is not simple, and blame falls on both sides. The church therefore has a responsibility re-evaluate her response. This division means that now to be an evolutionist is often to be perceived as an atheist, while in many eyes to be a Christian is to reject evolution as a theory and turn instead for solace to the bible. Those who profess both faith and a keen interest in evolution are seen as oddities, and often treated as though they were pariahs. The great irony of the Intelligent Design vs Evolution debate is that it was the Protestant reformation that gave rise to many of the scientific advances and the corresponding technological leap that occurred in the early 1600’s. However, the early Protestants were able to hold both scientific thought and biblical truth in concert as they recognised both poetical and empirical truth as having equal weight, and thus were able to reconcile scientific truth with faith. Modern western society has seen the rise of empirical truth as the only acceptable truth. This has led to the church treating the bible as if it were a scientific textbook and therefore rejecting many scientific discoveries if they are incompatible with the bible. The bible was never written as a scientific truth, but as a book to lead us closer to God – as John Wilkins says “for our faith and obedience”. I believe the church must re-evaluate its attitude to science and re-engage with science, so that advances in science and the impact of these advances on society are viewed through the lens of the kingdom of God. The decision that is before us is one of attitude. We can create a pseudo-scientific worldview acceptable only to Christians that ignores the latest research, or we can accept the ‘travel of the sons of men’ in the area of Science with all its flaws and potentiality. Science and religion are not opposite sides of the argument, but complement one another. Scientists regardless of their motives are busy exploring God’s creation, both good discoveries and bad. It is our job as a church to look at the impact of those discoveries, and as a people whose aim is the Kingdom of God, in turn to impact the way that they are implicated.

Interview with Naomi

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: I work in the field of evolutionary biology, I study the population dynamics of viruses as they go through a typical transmission cycle. As a Christian who works with evolutionary theory I spend a lot of time thinking about the interplay between faith and science. However, I really got interested in it when I started to realise that it was the people with whom I spent every day that I was finding it the hardest to talk to about faith. When I asked around I heard the standard response that they felt that Christianity was indelibly linked with the people who were creationists and trying to get intelligent design taught in schools. This seemed to put them off even thinking about investigating Christianity. The more I thought about it I realised how big a stumbling block we were putting in their way by not addressing this subject as a church. Additionally, science is a very enclosed world with its own arguments and issues and therefore part of the the problem is that science is not properly understood outside those who study it. Additionally certain areas have been hijacked for peoples agenda’s, which is nothing new, but again it distorts the view of science that should be held.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: As I said at the conference, I believe that the church firstly has to repent of its attitude to science, especially the fear of science and in many ways our hypocrisy. We are scared of science, of engaging in the debates that science throws up and yet at the same time we accept all the latest gadgets and things that science does to make our lives easier. We live in a world that refuses to deal with the hard questions and we reject any attempt to explore the universe that God created that does not fit into our Christian worldview. Don’t get me wrong I’m not advocating a hard shift anywhere. I think the important thing is to recognise that in our blindness and our fear we have alienated some people from Christianity. I’m not saying that everyone should believe in evolution, or everyone should believe in creationism, that is for each person to decide, but I am saying that for many scientists that I know, a hard sell of creationism or intelligent design is a major stumbling block. How the church reaches out to those people is probably for more intelligent people than me to decide, but I think it means surrendering the intellectual battle in order to love those people, and to choose to love them regardless of whether they accept our views or not. I’m obviously still thinking through many of these implications, but I am convinced that if the church refuses to debate the hard questions and instead withdraws behind its pseudo-scientific christianised thinking and refuses to engage with those who believe differently, then we have failed to fulfill what God is calling us to. It is scary to exist in a place where there is no hard answers to our questions, but we are called to live in the absence of fear, as God’s love casts out fear.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: I would say in fact that the church should become far more vocal about the way in which we apply science. Science has brought many many benefits to mankind. We can travel to the other side of the world, and as a citizen of the United Kingdom I appreciate that ability as it enables me to connect with family. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this ability to travel over the world at will, is becoming a liability, as it is one of the many contributions to global warming. The church should be shouting even louder than it already about this, as it is the poorest and most disenfranchised that will bear the heaviest burden from the change in global temperature. The western world will encounter some changes that is certain, but with our levels of technology and our insulation from the elements we will not experience as devastating an impact as those who live far closer to nature. We are all enamoured with the latest piece of technology, the latest gadget, and the latest mobile phone. Everyone upgrades as soon as they can, just because it is available and we can. However, if the church recognised that the mineral components, especially coltan, involved in making mobile phones are contributing to civil wars in Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we would be asking why we need the latest phone? Surely it would be more responsible as Christians to use our phones until they ran out, instead of instantly upgrading as soon as we are able to. It is this kind of subject that should be debated in every Christian community. How do we use science to build a more equitable society? How do we make sure that every person has an opportunity to have clean water, go to school and live without the threat of diseases that ravage the third world? Rather than spend our time and energy trying to maintain that science and religion are equivalent, we should be using religion to ask how to utilize the latest science to make this world a little more like the Kingdom of God. In addition to this we need to be asking how to reach the people in the scientific community, to examine our behaviour and ask how we are alienating them, and why we are doing it. I am ultimately convinced that fear is holding us back, fear of the unknown.

Naomi will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments

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Naomi Forrester lives in Galveston, Texas and is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at UTMB in Galveston. She is studying the evolutionary history of alphaviruses and the way in which viral diversity affects long-term survival of the virus. She moved to Galveston from the UK three years ago and has had some difficulty getting used to Americanisms! She is a member of the Galveston Vineyard where she leads worship and serves on the leadership team.

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