Jack White and the new horizons of marriage

We interrupt this blogging hiatus to bring you…celebrity gossip.

Not long ago I predicted the coming of “term marriage.” Well, it looks like that possibility might actually be sprouting in the rich soil of popular American celebrity life.

Divorce among celebrities, of course, is nothing new. It has long been a popular American spectator sport. What’s new is the happy, even jovial celebrity divorce. This, I propose, is not only novel, it is the harbinger of a genuinely new cultural institution just beyond the horizon: term marriage.

Exhibit A: Psychologist Judith Sills’ commentary on the “failure” of Al and Tipper Gore’s 40 year marriage. Who says this is a failure? asked Sills, when they clearly had many beautiful years? That is, after all, far more successful than most marriages in the United States. Why not celebrate what they had for so long rather than condemn its ending?

Exhibit B: Yesterday it was reported that Jack White and his wife Karen Elson have invited their friends and family to a “divorce party.” Yes, it’s time for Jack and Karen to end their marriage, but this is no somber affair. After all, they enjoyed 6 successful years together. Their divorce simply marks a transition to a renegotiated friendship.

Commenter Dr. Jane Greer loves Jack and Karen’s approach, remarking,

“All I can say is good for them. Throwing this party is an important way to remember and hold on to the good times in their marriage, celebrating the way they were, but no longer are.”

I believe these are merely the leading edge indicators of a steadily rising tide that harkens the emergence of a new kind of marital contract being negotiated right before our eyes by the icons of national secular mores. Celebrities are the priests of our culture and they set a prophetic tone for what is good and right in our society. I don’t mean that as a judgment; it’s simply a fact.

You may disagree but I think this is a big deal. In fact, I would argue it’s a far bigger cultural shift than gay marriage, because the latter is simply an extension of essentially traditional conservative family ideals into the realm of homosexuality. This may be very uncomfortable for people unaccustomed to same sex relationships, but it isn’t really an innovation of the marriage covenant itself.

The real innovation will be the legal removal, in part or by degrees, of the contractual restraints of fidelity and perpetuity that are intended to incubate intimacy between two formerly distinct people. Practically speaking, this is what we already see with the culturally-curious-yet-familiar practice of “open marriage” (which is hardly new) as well as the still culturally shunned (and yet even more ancient) practices of polygamous and polyamory marriages.

(For the record, I think term marriage will be the bridge that connects us to the utterly free practice of virtually any form of institutionalized relationship between consenting adults of any number, any gender, and for nearly any period of time).

These new forms marriage contracts would be, on the positive side, contracts of greater freedom and peace (albeit in a very limited sense of those words)…and that is precisely why cultural commentators like Judish Sills and Jane Greer gush over these enlightened celebrity splits – because they appear to be far better alternatives to the cliché of anger and abuse that divorce has come to represent over the past 40 years. And frankly, I think they’re right. Some people should terminate their marriages and peaceful departures are far better than violent ones.

But in my view, and perhaps ironically, these new marriages will require contracts of significant individual vulnerability and isolation in order to achieve the kind of peace and freedom our society values most. Personally, I don’t think the trade-off is worth it. Better still to find a mate with whom you can spend a lifetime learning to love – a task which requires a large enough space with high enough walls to overcome the unhappiness, conflict and boredom that, at times, will inevitably arise between any two people on any journey of significance.

But then, I still believe in a genuine two-shall-become-one-flesh kind of human intimacy (call me old-fashioned). Still, whatever you may think of innovative marriages, I remain convinced they are coming in institutional form sooner rather than later.

For better or for worse.

Technorati Tags: Divorce, Jack White, Marriage, News, Term Marriage

Church Told to Stop Feeding Hispanics

In an astonishing decision, a local zoning hearing has determined that a Phoenix church can no longer serve a weekly pancake breakfast to Hispanics.

Retired Arizona Supreme Court justice Bobb Crockeran, serving as a hearing officer, ruled Monday that feeding the Hispanics at a place of worship can be banned by city ordinance. The decision affects all Phoenix churches with underlying residential zoning.

Over the summer, city officials maintained that the church violated Phoenix zoning code by feeding the Hispanics on its property, a use that can only occur in commercial or industrial zones. City officials said the decision is effective immediately.

The church argued that it is within it’s constitutional rights to serve people’s needs on its property according to its religious beliefs. But the Crockeran disagreed:

In a 19-page opinion, Crockeran said the city can restrict where Hispanics can be fed and that zoning regulations apply to everyone equally. Additionally, he said that trumping land-use regulations is not a constitutional right.

The controversy over the weekly pancake worship service arose last spring after neighbors complained about an increase of Hispanics sleeping and loitering in alleys, incidents of burglary, aggressive panhandling, vandalism, public intoxication, prostitution and public urination. Parents of preschool students on the church campus complained that their children encountered Hispanics in school hallways.

North-central Phoenix resident Stephen Tozier said he’s pleased with Crockeran’s decision.

“This decision is more about protecting a residential area than anything else,” he said. “The nice part is the church can support the Hispanics elsewhere [...] but we can’t move the residential neighborhood.”

Peter Barres, a Phoenix neighborhood activist who spoke at last month’s zoning-adjustment hearing, said churches must be mindful that zoning rules and restrictions apply to everyone.

“It’s not a Hispanic issue, per se, it’s the fact that you need to have some control, and that’s what the zoning ordinance provides,” he said. “It’s not a problem with Hispanic people in wealthy neighborhoods. That would be a matter of prejudice. This issue would be setting churches up to avoid zoning ordinances.”

Oops, there must be something wrong with my keyboard! Everywhere it says “Hispanics” it’s supposed to say “poor and homeless.” My bad (okay, I changed the names too). The whole news story is here.

Actually, the issues are exactly the same.

These are the very same fear-based arguments that have always been made to rationalize the prejudicial dehumanization of hated groups of people, be they of a different color, a different nationality, or a different socio-economic group. Whether it was mid-century Jim Crow laws, modern immigration vitriol, anti-gay hatred, or intolerance of the poor, marginalized and hated people are always unjustly characterized as disgusting criminals and the laws that promote discrimination are always whitewashed in the benign language of “community concern.” Notice, too, how a local ordinance that actually promotes the dehumanization of an entire group of people is characterized as as protecting equality.

The dehumanization of any person never produces equality, never truly protects anyone, and is never in the best interests of a community. It’s time to stop treating certain people like a sub-species. This is what the gospel is for.

Technorati Tags: charity, Equality, Gospel, homeless, mission, News, poor, poverty

Church Told to Stop Feeding the Poor

UPDATE: Today the AZcetnral.com news site picked up this story. Some of the quotes in the article are priceless.

_________________________

Crossroads United Methodist Church in Phoenix feeds the hungry, but today they were told they can no longer continue this practice because in doing so they constitute a “charity dining hall” and, as such, are breaking local ordinance.

Even though this hateful decision has been masked in a facade of local code issues, Rev Escobedo-Frank rightly identifies at the root issue:

“Or, are we just discriminating against people who are poor and who don’t have homes, because we don’t like what we feel when we see them? The real issue, is not that there are hungry people out there, or that we serve food in church, the real issue is that we are afraid. Afraid to reach out a helping hand; afraid to see what the economy could do to us; afraid to face our worst fears…”

Afraid indeed.

Last year I wrote over at Twoshirts.org about the case of a Detroit teenager accused of murdering a homeless man: Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Church, homeless, Hungry, Jesus, Matthew, News, poor, twoshirts.org

Steve Jobs Beats Porn & Poverty

While the Great Recession continue to confound and grind away at the hopes and dreams of Americans everywhere, even the most escapist industry on the planet has proven to be hard hit by the economic squeeze: that’s right, according to The Economist, the porn industry is “scraping by.”

Most of the industry consists of small private production companies whose numbers are secret, but Mark Kernes, an editor at Adult Video News, a trade magazine, estimates that the American industry had some $6 billion in revenues in 2007, before the recession, mostly in DVD sales and rentals and some in internet subscriptions. Diane Duke, the director of the Free Speech Coalition, the adult industry’s trade group, thinks that revenues have fallen 30-50% during the past year. “One producer told me his revenue was down 80%,” she says.

Meanwhile, Apple Inc. reported today their largest single quarter profit ever at $1.6 billion amid revenues of over $7 billion. Altogether this means that in 2009 – right smack in the midst of one of the greatest economic crises in American history – people will have spent roughly 36 billion dollars on Apple computer products and porn alone (I guess now I know why my MacBook is called a “Pro”).

To put all that into perspective, consider this:

• To finally provide clean water for every person on the planet would cost only $10 billion per year for 10 years.
• The elimination of starvation and malnutrition on the planet would cost only $19 billion per year for 10 years.
• The elimination of illiteracy on the planet would cost only $2 billion per year for 20 years.

You could validly dispute the specifics of these figures but the basic point remains true: something is seriously wrong with our priorities.

Technorati Tags: charity, development, illiteracy, News, porn, poverty

Undergroundvineyard.org is now Jasoncoker.net

As I briefly mentioned in my previous post, things are changing somewhat with our budding little faith community. As it becomes more solidified certain things have become clearer – one of which is that we won’t be using the name “Vineyard.” Since the undergroundvineyard was functionally just a collection of my thoughts anyway, I’ve moved it to this new domain, jasoncoker.net.

This space will now officially function as my personal blog “Pastoralia,” where I’ll continue to write about Christianity and culture. The faith community formerly known as underground_vineyard will be resurfacing on the interwebs in the near future with a different name and a different format.

Please make note of the change in any bookmarks and links.

Technorati Tags: News, website

Film Festival, and other busyness…

For those of you who poke in here now and then my apologies for the lack of blogging lately. I’ve been pretty busy with lots of changes:

• The Micah Film Festival is THIS weekend. I’m basically freaking out. But for those of you who don’t have plans this weekend let me suggest you come out to Oceanside to see three of the best, award-winning documentary films from the past year. You might be surprised to see God at work in secular film…
• If Micah goes fairly well I’m thinking of turning it into a non-profit and running a festival every year. I think there’s a need for an organization that helps people explore the intersection of God and culture through art.  Actually, my plans are much bigger than that, but then, my plans are always bigger than reality seems to allow.
• I’m working from home again – which is a good thing. The company I work for, Nobis Interactive, has split into three separate divisions and I’ve been given the leadership reins of “Nobis Aid,” the division that focuses on interactive media solutions for non-profit, faith-based, and social enterprise organizations. It’s basically the perfect job for me. I get to run web-based projects for amazing organizations doing very good work in the world – and I get to do it from home, keeping my own schedule and making a little time for my other projects (and I get to work on my Macs again!). So, if you know of any mission-based organizations in need of good web design, development, and marketing solutions send them my way.
• This also has freed me up to do more of the author interviews I did earlier this year at Christianaudio.com. I really love doing them, so I’m looking to connect with more authors in the coming weeks. If you haven’t listened to them, you can check it out by clicking here.
• Things are…shifting somehow with the Sunday night fellowship group. I don’t know exactly how to explain it but suffice it to say I think it’s becoming more concrete. People are moving from just having fun together to really sharing their fears, frustrations, and hopes. I suspect we’ll be committing to each other in a more intentional way in the coming weeks. That’s a very good thing.
• Speaking of the Sunday group, Jenell and I found a perfect space here in Oceanside for the community center. It’s a 5,000 square foot storefront just down the street from our house on Coast Highway. Two days after discovering it Jenell ran into the owner and he’s desperate to lease it at a killer rate. Now if we only had about 7k a month…
• All of this leads me to the obvious: it looks like we really are becoming an odd kind of church – even though we don’t look much like a one (and hopefully never will). Still, in a few weeks Jenell and I will heading to a conference with other planters where we’ll get to listen, brainstorm, and focus on what God has called us to. Consequently, I think there will be some changes here at the undergroundvineyard soon. Too many people around here know about that name and are starting to call us that – which was inevitable I suppose, but I don’t like it. Too negative, too pretentious.
• Jenell and I have been invited to visit a friend’s church in Las Vegas this month and speak to their leadership team about being incarnation/missional, etc. It’s funny, because he’s way ahead of the curve in my opinion, so it seems odd that we’ll be the one’s speaking when what we really need to be doing is listening to them (maybe I’ll figure out a way to make that happen!). If you’re interested, his name is Barry Diamond, and he basically blew up his church 4 months ago and transformed it into a decentralized, simple church model. They even gave up their building. Check them out here: http://www.lvlv.org/
• Next Monday Jenell and I will have been married for 18 years. Just saying…we rock.
• Next Sunday my 16 year old daughter Savannah will be flying to Ohio for 2 weeks to see her friends. I’m really going to miss her. She’s becoming a genuine friend to us.
• I have the best idea ever for an iPhone app. Seriously. If I had like – I don’t know – 100k in capital I think I could conquer the iPhone world with this idea.
• I’m seriously thinking of starting work on a book about how gift economics can radically re-orient our posture toward others, toward the world, and even toward God. But would anyone be interested in reading a book like that?
• Which brings me to Twoshirts.org. It’s steady but not really gaining ground. People join everyday and give things away everyday. That’s cool. But traffic has remained at exactly the same level virtually all year (about 110 visits a day) and the site itself is a year and a half old. It’s time for a change. I think we’ve shown that the core idea is viable, but if we want to reach more people and catalyze a genuine network of generosity we need to seriously rethink the architecture of the site, and possibly change the organizational structure as well. It could be a non-profit, but I’ve often thought it should be a low-profit social venture that seeks to reinvests financial proceeds into the community (both real and virtual). But what kind of product or service can Twoshirts offer that would fit the ethos of a mutual-helps giveaway site? I need help thinking this through.

I’m sure there’s more, but it’s late. I’ll be back next week with more posts and the changes I alluded to earlier. Take care all.

Technorati Tags: Micah Film Fest, News, twoshirts.org, update, work

Unbecoming Buzz Agents For Christ

Back in the day, businesses could count on word-of-mouth as the most powerful form of organic marketing. By doing a genuinely good job, or offering the best quality products, people enthusiastically recommended them to each other. Relationships of trust are natural networks of growth. Roland Allen understood that well.

But the Web 2.0 world (World 2.0?) has spawned new forms of friendship, and new opportunities for word-of-mouth marketing that big businesses are capitalizing on. The infectious power of facebook and Twitter is their instant ability to connect people across traditional barriers, but that very power and success is being capitalized on (annoyingly) in order to increase the sales noise in the midst of those very connections. Connections of grace and reciprocity are corrupted into connections of self-interest and quid-pro-quo. Even more unusually, some people are being enlisted as volunteers – in the thousands – to serve corporate clients by literally creating a “buzz” about products, one person at a time. In return for their willingness to talk to friends and strangers about the products, these “buzz agents” receive products for free.

NPR did a great story on this a while back, and in it there’s a key moment where one particular “buzz agent” talks about wearing a new brand of perfume and then “cozying up” to people throughout her day with the hopes that someone would remark on the scent, thereby creating a “natural” opening for a conversation about the product.

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Church, consumer church, marketing, missio dei, mission, News, NPR

Nobody Wants To Go To Church Anymore

Here’s an interesting post by Christian radio host Brant Hanson on the subject of Church attendance. Apparently, Brant says, nobody wants to go to church anymore.

Well I know I don’t want to go to church anymore, and I’M supposed to be a church-planter. As I said in the comments, since I stopped going to church I’m a better husband, a better father, a better worker, and generally an all-around better follower of Christ.

Technorati Tags: Church, marketing, News

Jason Evans on Christian "Rights"

On the heels of the recent home bible study controversy in San Diego, Jason Evans of the Ecclesia Collective in San Diego (of which our very own Doug Humphreys is a board member!) has posted some excellent and thought provoking comments about Christian “rights” and the separation of Church and State. Definitely worth the read.

Link: http://a51t15.blogspot.com/2009/05/convenient-separation.html

Technorati Tags: Advocacy, Church and State, Jason Evans, News, Rights, San Diego

San Diego Country tries to shut down bible study

Sean Campbell sent this to me tonight. From the 10News website:

“A local pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a San Diego County official, who then threatened them with escalating fines if they continued to hold Bible studies in their home, 10News reported.

Attorney Dean Broyles of The Western Center For Law & Policy was shocked with what happened to the pastor and his wife.

Broyles said, “The county asked, ‘Do you have a regular meeting in your home?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you say amen?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you pray?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you say praise the Lord?’ ‘Yes.’”

Check out the video by clicking here.

Technorati Tags: News, San Diego