tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-189195472024-03-13T10:41:19.074-07:00VICTORIA_CONCORDIA_CRESCIT'Victory grows out of harmony!'
A Blog with a selection of my book reviews and other writings - for many more visit the John Mark Ministries site (http://jmm.aaa.net.au/)Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-6582606738131449292016-10-03T23:02:00.000-07:002016-10-03T23:33:58.595-07:00PHARISEES ANCIENT AND MODERN<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9pfnl" data-offset-key="627qo-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">PHARISEES ANCIENT AND MODERN [Updated October 4, 2016]</span></b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-weight: bold;">Being an itinerant (‘hit-run’) preacher has some advantages. I remember a</span><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span></span><b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Sunday evening service in a conservative church in rural Victoria, Australia. </span></b><b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">They had big black Bibles and severe expressions… And they knew their Bibles, </span></b><b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">and were proud of that. </span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">It was a smallish group, so I decided to engage them in dialogue: </span></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">‘Who knows who the Pharisees were?’ </span></i></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">They did. ‘The Pharisees got a pretty nasty press in the New Testament – particularly Matthew.’</span></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">‘Now tell me all the good things you can think of about the </span></b><b style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Pharisees.’ </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">I wrote them up on a blackboard:</span></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The Pharisees knew their Bibles; were disciplined in prayer; fasted twice a week; gave about a third of their income to their church; were moral (very moral); many had been martyred for their faith; they attended ‘church’ regularly; they were evangelical/orthodox; and evangelistic (Jesus said they’d even cross the ocean – a fearful thing for Jews – to win a convert).</span></i></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">There was a deep silence. I asked ‘Peter’ sitting at the front: ‘What’s wrong?’ He pointed to the list and said ‘That’s us!’ </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">‘Is it?” I responded. ‘Then you’ve got a problem: Jesus said these sorts of people are "children of the devil!"’</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Then we did an inductive exercise on the question: ‘What’s so wrong with this list of admirable qualities?’ Short answer: it omits what was most important for Jesus. Whenever in the Gospels he used a prefatory statement like ‘This is the greatest/most important thing of all…’ none of the above were
emphasised by him.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">So what was Jesus’ emphasis? Yes, loving God, loving others, seeking first the kingdom = obeying God the King … And, from two Gospel verses the evangelicals/orthodox have rarely noticed – Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42 – justice/love, mercy, faith.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">None of these were on the Pharisees’ list. But they’re the most important of all, according to Jesus. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Have you noticed items like justice/love don’t get into our creeds or confessions of faith or ‘doctrinal statements’ either? (I’ve written a book about that: <i>Recent Trends Among Evangelicals</i> ).</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Back to the Pharisees. Our text (Matthew 12:1-21) is about the problem of religious ‘scrupulosity’… Jesus and his disciples were walking on the Sabbath through the fields on their way to the synagogue, to church, and they were hungry. So as the law (Deuteronomy 23:25) allowed, they plucked some ears of corn to eat. The Pharisees had problems with their ‘reaping’ on the sabbath. In fact, the disciples were breaking four of the Pharisees’ 39 rules about work on the sabbath: technically they were reaping, winnowing, threshing, and preparing a meal!</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Now the modern picture of the Pharisees almost certainly
trivializes – or demonizes – their piety These were good people with good
motives. But they were ‘good people in the worst sense of the word’. More on that
later…</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Jesus’ response is to argue from two precedents (lawyers/legalists are at home there) – </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">precedents about necessity and service.</span></b></div>
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<b><b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">David and his friends were hungry, so ate the forbidden bread (though note that </span></b><b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">when King Uzziah invaded the sacred area from another motive – pride – he was </span></b></b></div>
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<b><b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">on the sabbath – killing and sacrificing animals: so Jesus is saying that if</span></b></b></div>
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<b><b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">struck with leprosy, 2 Chronicles 26:16). Then the priests did a lot of ‘work’</span></b></b></div>
<b>sabbath-work has to do with the necessities of life and duties of sacred
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">temple is here; God wants mercy to have priority over sacrifice; and ‘the Son</span></b></div>
service, it’s O.K. and the *spirit* of the fourth commandment is not violated.
Then Jesus reinforces all this with three arguments: someone greater than the
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">of man is lord of the sabbath’. Or, as the <i>New Interpreters’ Bible</i></span></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;"><i>Commentary </i>puts it (in a way that would appeal to a rabbinical way of</span></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">arguing): ‘Since the priests sacrifice according to the law on the sabbath,</span></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">sacrifice is greater than the sabbath. But mercy is greater than sacrifice… so</span></b></div>
mercy is greater than the sabbath’ (Abingdon, 1995, p.278). I like Eugene
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Peterson’s translation of this section in <i>The Message</i>: ‘There is far</span></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">more at stake than religion. If you had any idea what this Scripture meant – “I</span></b></div>
prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual” – you wouldn’t be nitpicking
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">like this.’</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Then we have the story of the man with the withered hand.
Jerome, the fourth century bishop-scholar, says some ancient Gospels tell us
his name was Caementarius – a bricklayer – and he said to Jesus: ‘Please heal
my hand so that I can earn a living by bricklaying rather than begging’. The
Pharisees challenge him: ‘Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath?’ Now there’s a
technicality behind that question, and Jewish scribes used to debate it: is it
lawful for a physician to heal on the sabbath? If the answer’s ‘yes’ how about
someone else, like a prophet? The Shammaite Pharisees did not allow praying for
the sick on the sabbath, but the followers of Hillel allowed it. Arguments,
arguments: ‘arguments by extension’ to which Jesus answers with an ‘argument by
analogy’. If the sabbath laws allow you to help a sheep, why not a person? (But
then, the Essenes wouldn’t have rescued a sheep either: gets complicated!).</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">So Jesus healed the man. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Two notes at this point: </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">#1 Jesus asked the man to stretch out his hand, to do as much as
he could. Jesus often did that in his healings. It’s the same today: we get
help any way we can, and do what we can. Jesus still heals: sometimes slowly
(always slowly in cases of sexual/emotional abuse), sometimes instantly;
sometimes with, sometimes without, the help of medicine… </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">#2 I was a co-speaker at a conference with the Dr Paul Yonggi
Cho, pastor of the largest church in the world. He said: ‘Every miracle
recorded in the New Testament, including the raising of the dead, has also
happened in Korea: we are praying for some miracles not mentioned in the Bible,
nor recorded in Christian history. Like the replacement of a limb – an arm or a
leg – that’s not there . We’re believing God for that…!’ Do what you like with
that one!</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">We ought to make a little excursus at this point. What’s the
Sabbath all about? Two things, basically: faith and rest. Faith that God will
supply our needs if we don’t have to work all the time; and rest so that our
lives will be in balance. As you know, I counsel clergy: that’s what <u><a href="http://jmm.org.au/">John Mark Ministries</a></u> is about. They’re often burned out. But when they are, it’s almost always associated with a failure to
take the idea and practice of sabbath seriously. They don’t take a day off: a
day off is any day (for pastors it’s often Thursday) when from getting up to
going to bed at night you are not preoccupied with your vocation. Isn’t it
interesting that in our leisure-oriented culture, there’s also more fatigue? A
lot of people are just plain tired. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The five-day work week is a recent innovation, but ‘leisure’ and
‘sabbath-rest’ are not the same. Gordon McDonald, in his excellent book <i>Ordering
Your Private World</i> has a chapter ‘Rest Beyond Leisure’ which I urge you to
read. He writes: ‘God was the first “rester”…Does God need to rest? Of course
not. But did God choose to rest? Yes. Why? Because God subjected creation to a
rhythm of rest and work that he revealed by observing the rhythm himself, as a
precedent for everyone else… [For us] this rest is a time of looking backward.
We gaze upon our work and ask questions like: “What does my work mean? For whom
did I do all this work? How well was my work done? Why did I do all this? What
results did I expect, and what did I receive?” To put it another way, the rest
God instituted was meant first and foremost to cause us to interpret our work,
to press meaning into it, to make sure we know to whom it is properly
dedicated’ (Highland, 1985, pp.176-7).</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The Pharisees had lost sight of the essence of the sabbath.
Alister McGrath says in his <i>NIV Bible Commentary</i>: ‘The Sabbath was
instituted to give people refreshment, rather than to add to their burdens’
(H&S, 1995, p.242). Precisely how you keep the Sabbath today will be
governed by love for God and neighbour, and the kind of work you do. If you’re
a manual worker, rest. If you’re sedentary, do something physical. Make sure
it’s ‘recreational’ for you – re-creating your body, mind, emotions and spirit.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Jesus healed… and ‘the Pharisees conspired… how to destroy him’
– destroy the One through whom we have life. (When you’re beaten by goodness,
reason and miracle, you have no other option but rage). And ‘great crowds
followed Jesus’. They knew he loved them. He taught them and healed them. While
the Pharisees were into destroying, Jesus was healing. The Scottish Baptist
preacher Matthew Henry makes a good point here: though some are unkind to us,
we must not on that account be unkind to others.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Sometimes I talk pastors who are being ‘destroyed’ by Pharisees.
They are still with us. Why? It’s all about what American social scientists
call ‘mindsets’: the mindset of the Pharisee and that of the prophet are
antithetical: they can’t get along. </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Let me explain.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The Pharisee is concerned about law: how to do right. Now
there’s nothing wrong with that as it stands. Except for one thing: you can
keep the law and in the process destroy persons. I have a friend who lectured
in law in one of our universities, before he got out of it all in disgust. He
said with some conviction: ‘The whole of our Western legal system is sick,
unjust. For one thing: if you’re rich, and can afford the cleverest advocacy,
you have a pretty good chance of not going to jail; but not if you’re poor.’
There’s something wrong with a system supposed to preserve ‘fairness’ when
double-standards operate…</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">There’s a tension between law and love. Law is to love as the
railway tracks are to the train: the tracks give direction, but all the
propulsive power is in the train. Tracks on their own may point somewhere, but
they’re cold, lifeless things. But love without law is like a train without
tracks: plenty of noise and even movement but lacking direction. Both law and
love ultimately come from God. We need God’s laws to know how to set proper
boundaries and behave appropriately: without good laws we humans will destroy
one another. Prophets, in the biblical sense, try to tie law and love into each
other. The O.T. prophets were always encouraging people to keep the law of God.
But the greatest commandment is love: love of God and of others.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The Australian Uniting Church <i>Interim Report on Sexuality</i>
looked at these two issues. It answers them very well. The question: ‘How can
homosexuals (etc.) know they’re loved by us?’ is addressed with deep
compassion. Marginalized people ought to feel they’re accepted in our churches.
But they don’t, generally, so we’re more like the Pharisees than Jesus in that
respect. (I once discussed the issue of the legalization of brothels with a
couple of women from the Prostitutes’ Collective on ABC TV. In the middle of
it, one of them turned to me and said, ‘You Christians hate us, don’t you?’ How
would you have responded?)</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">But the other question's more complex: ‘What is God’s will in
God’s word-in-Scripture about all this?’ Briefly: Jesus did not set aside God’s
law, but fulfilled it, by embodying the great law of love in himself. To the
woman caught in adultery he <i>first</i> says 'I do not condemn you.' </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">
But what about those laws in Leviticus 18 and 22? </span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Ten years ago well-known American Evangelical Tony Campolo,
interviewed on ABC radio, was asked ‘Tony, what are your views on homosexuality
and the church?’ Tony: ‘I am conservative on this issue: I believe erotic
attraction between members of the same sex is not God’s intention for us.’
‘Ah-huh, so what should the church do?’ Tony: ‘The last thing the church should
do is to be legalistically prescriptive about the behaviour of people like
homosexuals. We have to do more – much more – than simply prescribe celibacy
for other people!’ (The interviewer didn’t know where to go after that!). But
now a postscript: Tony Campolo has changed his mind about those laws. Try a
google search to discover a paradigm-shift on this question happening all over
the world. (For some of my views on LGBTI issues see the article <i><a href="http://www.jmm.org.au/articles/28630.htm" target="_blank">Homosexuality
and the Bible</a>)</i></span></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The last section of our Gospel reading takes all this further: Jesus the prophet
was fulfilling the Scriptures. As God’s chosen servant whom God loves and in
whom God delights, Jesus was a meek Messiah, not a warlike one. And he
‘proclaims justice’ (v.18), indeed ‘brings justice to victory’ (v.19). Now why
is justice so big for prophets – and for Jesus (but not for Pharisees)? Hang in
there. Fasten your seat-belts. There’s some turbulence coming as we close.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">First a word to the prophets in this congregation. ‘Prophets’?
‘Here?’ Sure. Well, who are they, and why don’t they – or the church – know who
they are? Why don’t we recognize and commission them? Why don’t we hear them
speak a special revelation of God to us? Ah, there are several answers to that.
Mainly, of course, prophets are somewhat unpredictable. I’m studying the second
half of Jeremiah at the moment to write some Scripture Union notes: here’s a
guy who tells the king and the army to surrender to the enemy, otherwise
they’ll be wiped out and/or carted off into captivity. Not the sort of message
to stiffen the resistance of your armed forces! So they tossed him into a
septic tank. Prophets disturb the comfortable; pastors comfort the disturbed.
But we don’t want to be disturbed. And so the church organizes its life – its
doctrines (like ‘prophecy isn’t needed anymore, we’ve got the Bible, and
preachers’) and its structures (by-laws and committees to cover everything) to
exclude this more spontaneous ‘word from the Lord.’ And prophets tend to major
on social justice which isn’t nice for middle-class people – more about that in
a moment.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">But you can’t get away from the high priority the early church
and the Hebrew people put on prophecy.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">What is this gift? ‘The gift of prophecy is the special ability
that God gives to certain members of the Body of Christ to receive and
communicate an immediate message from God to his people through a
divinely-anointed utterance’ (Peter Wagner, Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your
Church Grow, Regal, 1979, p.228). Prophecy isn’t just predicting the future,
though it can include prediction. Prophets aren’t always right: so they ought
to be in submission to the leadership of the church. Prophets aren’t adding a
67th book to the Bible. The canon of Scripture is closed: the prophet is simply
bringing a biblically-relevant message from God to us today, for our situation.
Are prophets sort of carried along by the Spirit? In a sense, yes. Michael
Green writes: ‘The Spirit takes over and addresses the hearers directly through
[the prophet]. That is the essence of prophecy’ (I Believe in the Holy Spirit,
Eerdmans, 1975, p.172). Do prophets tend to be political activists? Often yes –
as in the Bible. And today, therefore, such people are unlikely to be pastors
of churches – if a pastor has a prophetic gift they’d better have also an
independent income! ‘Since their message is frequently unpopular, they would
feel restrained if they were too closely tied to an institution. And many
church institutions feel uncomfortable with such prophets around too much… they
tend to shun church bureaucracies and prefer to be outside critics’ (Wagner, p.230).
Now there are varying points of view – between and among Pentecostals and
Evangelicals about the ministry of prophets, and this is as much as I want to
say about it all here. Except for this: if God gives you a special message for
your church, write it down, and give it to the leadership: and hold the
leadership accountable about praying over it, and then leave the decision about
whatever happens with it to them.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Let us go back to those two Gospel texts evangelicals (like me)
have ignored for 500 years: Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42. Jesus is inveighing
against the Pharisees, and saying that despite their religiosity they’ve missed
the point – which is justice/love, mercy and faith. Justice comes first (as
with the prophet’s message Jesus is quoting: Micah 6:8). Why? Simple: justice
is all about the right use of power; it’s about fairness; it’s about doing
right – particularly for the poor and oppressed. Social justice is all about
(it’s *only* about) treating others as being made in God’s image; human beings
with respect and dignity and infinite worth. Justice is about the most
important characteristic of human beings – their Godlikeness. Homosexuals, for
example, aren’t just individuals who parade their gayness in Mardi Gras
festivals. They’re made in the image of God. Hitler was made in the image of
God; so was Stalin; so is Pol Pot and Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein… And so are
the people in church next to you this morning. CSLewis says somewhere (The
Weight of Glory?) that if we realized who the others really were with whom we
were worshipping, we’d be tempted to fall down and worship *them*!</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">There’s probably something of the Pharisee in all of us. We take
two good gifts from God – law and truth – and create all sorts of legalisms and
dogmatisms to save us the trouble of loving people we don’t like. What is your
spiritual ‘achilles’ heel’? How does the devil get to you? One of our ‘18
questions‘ for retreatants asks: ‘For what non-altruistic motives are you in
ministry?’</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Have you noticed that in the ministry of Jesus, the message of
repentance was mainly aimed at religious people, church-folk, like us? When we
elevate law over love; rules and precedents and structures above persons; when
social justice is not at the top of our agenda; then we’ve got some repenting
to do. Pharisees are people who know the Bible and miss the point. Lord help
us!</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">~~</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">P.S. 1. The statement about ‘trivializing the Pharisees’ refers
to several problems biblical scholars have about the Pharisees in the NT in
general and Matthew in particular. See, eg. the excellent article on the
subject in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Doubleday, 1992).</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">2. And yes, I’m aware of the ‘New Perspective’ on Paul’s
possible move from the more tolerant school of Hillel (Gamaliel was a
Hillelite) to the more rigorous conservative school of Shammai when or before
he became a persecutor of the church…</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">3. See Michael Hardin’s The Jesus Driven Life (a couple of
reviews on this site) for a critique of the Pharisees’ Bible Study methods:
‘Jesus critiques their study of the Scriptures… as missing the point’ (p. 251).
‘One of the claims [of Jesus] is that his hearers “do not know God” [John
8:28-29]… astonishing because these teachers and “theologians” were people
steeped in their Scriptures…’ (255).</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">~~</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Seven Underlying Themes of Richard Rohr’s Teachings</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Fourth Theme: Everything belongs and no one needs to be
scapegoated or excluded. Evil and illusion only need to be named and exposed
truthfully, and they die in exposure to the light (Ecumenism).</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The Sin of Exclusion</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Meditation 10 of 52</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Those at the edge of any system and those excluded from any
system ironically and invariably hold the secret for the conversion and
wholeness of that very group. They always hold the feared, rejected, and denied
parts of the group’s soul. You see, therefore, why the church was meant to be
that group that constantly went to the edges, to the “least of the brothers and
sisters,” and even to the enemy. Jesus was not just a theological genius, but
he was also a psychological and sociological genius. When any church defines itself
by exclusion of anybody, it is always wrong. It is avoiding its only vocation,
which is to be the Christ. The only groups that Jesus seriously critiques are
those who include themselves and exclude others from the always-given grace of
God.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Only as the People of God receive the stranger, the sinner, and
the immigrant, those who don’t play our game our way, do we discover not only
the hidden, feared, and hated parts of our own souls, but the fullness of Jesus
himself. We need them for our own conversion.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The Church is always converted when the outcasts are re-invited
back into the temple. You see this in Jesus’ commonly sending marginalized
people that he has healed back into the village, back to their family, or back
to the temple to “show themselves to the priests.” It is not just for their
re-inclusion and acceptance, but actually for the group itself to be renewed.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Adapted from <i>Radical Grace: Daily Meditations</i>, p. 28</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">(Available through Franciscan Media)</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Footnote from a friend:</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">This reflection from Richard Rohr might be one known to you.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Perhaps I might say that you, Rowland, have exercised the
calling of an extraordinary kind of gatekeeper for the Body of Christ here in
Australia today (and maybe extending much wider than our country too). Most
gatekeepers decide who is coming in and who is going out, but in contrast, your
function has been to keep the gates open...</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Of course this kind of (subversive?!) behaviour (after the style
of Jesus, I would suggest) has drawn out of the woodwork many destructive
voices. Those who are threatened by inclusiveness wish to point out that you
are not performing the role of gatekeeper as traditionally defined. They
suggest that your activities are not legitimate, and that your open door to the
marginalised and to the questioning voices is plain and simply against the will
of God.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">This kind of reaction has been happening for a long time in your
ministry. There are many of us who would thank you from the bottom of our
hearts for your clear, empathetic and compassionate stance in the face of
opposition from Christian / evangelical ‘heavy weights’. I hope that this
insightful statement from Richard Rohr might encourage you and Jan as you are
journeying through this really difficult time.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Updated October 2011 / October 2016</span></b><span style="font-family: inherit, serif; font-size: 9.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-34597829871541597292016-05-18T03:43:00.000-07:002016-05-18T03:59:28.305-07:00HARVEY COX: THE FUTURE OF FAITH<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 14px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I have an unusual hobby: I collect generalizations. The scholars who supply them have a magisterial grasp of their subject, and can offer outrageously simple ‘global statements’ without fear of contradiction. This book is full of them.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Harvey Cox retired from the Hollis Chair of Divinity at Harvard University in October 2009 (he was the ninth person to hold this prestigious post which, established in 1727, is the oldest endowed professorship in American higher education.)<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I remember as a theological student reading his The Secular City when it was first published in 1965: and I’m not surprised it’s sold one million copies.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An ordained Baptist minister, Cox’s main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography, theology and spirituality) with a special focus on Latin American liberation theology. In 1900 90% of Christians lived either in Europe or in the US but today 60 percent live in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. Dr Cox writes: ‘Since the vast majority of people in this “new Christendom” are neither white nor well-off, their theological questions center less on the existence or nonexistence of God or the metaphysical nature of Christ than on why poverty and hunger still stalk God’s world. It is little wonder that liberation theology, the most creative theological movement of the twentieth century, did not originate in Marburg or Yale, but in the tar-paper shacks of Brazil and the slums of South Korea.’<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This readable book is a cross between autobiography and polemics. Cox takes us on a journey through three phases of the evolution of Christianity: the Age of Faith (kiboshed – my word – by Constantine), the Age of Belief and the Age of the Spirit. His sympathies are categorically with the first and last of these, and his vitriol is mostly reserved for institutional and theological fundamentalisms of all kinds. The early churches were vibrant, enthusiastic communities dedicated to ‘following’ Jesus. But in ‘The Age of Belief’ from the fourth to the twentieth centuries, faith became entangled with rituals, liturgies and creeds, orthodox theology mostly replaced personal religion, and a stifling clericalism developed.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-style: inherit;">So the gist of </span><span style="font-style: inherit;"> can be summarized thus: the church world-wide is in good shape when it jettisons at least three concomitants of ‘Constantinianism’ – institutionalism, hierarchicalism, and creedalism. These three destructive tendencies are not compatible with the church as a missional community; they destroy faith (as distinct from ‘beliefs’). Cox reckons the Pentecostals in Latin America (those influenced by the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, and liberation theology rather than Western notions of ‘prosperity theology’) point the way to a dynamic ‘Age of the Spirit’. One of the key secrets of these ecclesial communities’ social justice ministries? They make lists – lists of people in their neighbourhood who need help. And – importantly - they and the Catholic ‘base ecclesial communities’ are not imprisoned within a fundamentalism of ‘Jesus as personal savior whose mission [is] to rescue them from a sinful world…’<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying. The spiritual, communal and justice-seeking dimensions of Christianity are now its leading edge as the twenty-first century hurtles forward, and this change is taking place along with similar reformations in other world religions’ (p.212). So the healthiest Christianity emphasizes faith as a way of life (rather than the fundamentalists’ doctrinal boxes we must tick), respectful inter-faith dialogue, and ‘deeds not creeds’ (his quote from conservative pastor Rick Warren).<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘Christianity came to birth in the midst of cultural change — it is a movement born to travel – it takes on life with each succeeding cultural transition. But for this to happen again, some old wine-skins must be discarded, and the incubus of a self serving and discredited picture of Christian origins must be set aside’ (p.184). ‘We stand on the beautiful threshold of a new chapter in the Christian story – Christians on five continents are shaking off the residues of the second phase (the Age of Belief) and negotiating a bumpy transition into a fresh era for which a name has not yet been coined. I would like to call it the Age of the Spirit’ (p.8).<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For Cox, faith starts with awe, not propositions. ‘It begins with a mixture of wonder and fear all human beings feel toward the mystery that envelops us. But awe becomes faith only as it ascribes some meaning to that mystery.’ (Interesting that. As I pondered where my Christian faith began, I have to say it wasn’t awe – though that came later – but a commitment to the person and teaching of Jesus…).<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Harvey Cox would probably not categorize himself a ‘theological progressive’, but critiques that movement as he does all others. (You’ll be hard-pressed to find here any reference to Spong or Crossan: Borg, I think, is mentioned just once – or N T Wright or John Stott for that matter. And interestingly he doesn’t cite any websites in his references/ endnotes).<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here’s the best quote in the book:<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘I have often seen what damage both fundamentalist literalism and historical-critical skepticism can do to otherwise thoughtful and serious people. Take the critical specialists with a grain of salt: they are not experts in what the Bible means for today. And the fundamentalists? Their literalistic reading is a modern and questionable one.’ (p. 168)<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This readable book is a real page-turner! You can get the paperback edition post-free from the Book Depository for AUD $14-78: excellent value.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">~~<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rowland Croucher<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/" target="_blank"><span style="color: windowtext;">http://jmm.aaa.net.au</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">July 2011<br /><br />~~~~<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">More notes from an earlier version:</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">I have an unusual hobby: I collect generalizations. Those who supply them usually have a magisterial grasp of their subject, and can offer outrageously simple 'global statements' without fear of contradiction. Harvey Cox is one of those people, and this book is full of them. </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: xx-small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Harvey Cox retired from </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the Hollis Chair of Divinity at Harvard University </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">in October 2009 (he was the ninth person to hold this prestigious post which, established in 1727, is the oldest endowed professorship in American higher education.)</span></span></b></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I remember as a theological student reading his <i>The Secular City</i></span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> when it was first published in 1965: and I'm not surprised it's sold one million copies.<br /><br />An ordained Baptist minister, his main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography and spirituality) with a special focus on liberation theology in Latin America.</span></span></b></span><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></b></span><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An ordained Baptist minister, his main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography and spirituality) with a special focus on liberation theology in Latin America.</span></span></b></span><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An ordained Baptist minister, his main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography and spirituality) with a special focus on liberation theology in Latin America.</span></span></b></span><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An ordained Baptist minister, his main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography and spirituality) with a special focus on liberation theology in Latin America.</span></span></b></span><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An ordained Baptist minister, his main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography and spirituality) with a special focus on liberation theology in Latin America.</span></span></b></span><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An ordained Baptist minister, his main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography and spirituality) with a special focus on liberation theology in Latin America.</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An ordained Baptist minister, his main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography and spirituality) with a special focus on liberation theology in Latin America.</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An ordained Baptist minister, his main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography and spirituality) with a special focus on liberation theology in Latin America.</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dr Cox has been interested in religion, culture and politics throughout his career. His 1965 book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MRD6FC/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" style="color: #004b91;">The Secular City</a> sold a million copies. That book painted the church as a people of faith and action, not an institution. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061755524/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" style="color: #004b91;">The Future of Faith</a>, a 256 page essay, builds on the concept of church as a people. The church as entering a totally new era now, Dr Cox proclaims, which is the Age of the Spirit. In this exciting new time, different cultural backgrounds will add new life to the church; a prophetic vision of social justice will challenge structures of power and oppression.</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christian people of faith and action are once again on the verge of something new. Like the early church, where different languages, cultures and backgrounds co-existed in radical groups that lived Jesus' good news in different ways and under different kinds of structure, this new era will encompass many different Christian paths: liberation theology, Pentecostal and charismatic beliefs, and the cultures of the East and the sub-European South. Dr Cox reminds us that in 1900 90% of Christians lived either in Europe of in The USA but today 60 percent live in Asia, Africa, or Latin America.</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As Dr Cox puts it</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Since the vast majority of people in this "new Christendom" are neither white nor well-off, their theological questions center less on the existence or nonexistence of God or the metaphysical nature of Christ than on why poverty and hunger still stalk God's world. It is little wonder that liberation theology, the most creative theological movement of the twentieth century, did not originate in Marburg or Yale, but in the tar-paper shacks of Brazil and the slums of South Korea."</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dr Cox's newest book, like his others,<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/061871054X/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" style="color: #004b91;">When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today</a>; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006W4EL8/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" style="color: #004b91;">The feast of fools: A theological essay on festivity and fantasy (Perennial library,)</a> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">is no dry history with glances toward the future. While Dr Cox does describe past eras of Christian experience, his call is to help us see the rapidly approaching future and the moving Spirit. This new era will move us toward the fullest potential of our Earth, and, as St Paul says, we won't see this "as in a dark mirror ... but face to face." If you are interested in the synthesis of politics and history, of culture and religion, this is a book worth reading. If you are discouraged at where we human beings seem to be right now, this book is, like a good sermon, something that will lift you up.</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b>****</b></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Future of Faith (Hardcover)</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dr Cox is imminently qualified to take the reader from the beginnings of the history of Christianity up to the present day and he convincingly makes the case for the future of faith which will not and cannot be controlled by religious institutions. He clearly indicates that it will never be "creeds" alone which will determine the future forms of Christianity, but rather the "deeds" which Jesus exemplified as the prime elements of the kingdom. I might suggest that there is also another dimension in this equation which I would include along with this illiteration and that is "needs". The needs of the people play an important role in the changing expression of the church and it could easily be placed alongside of "creeds" and "deeds". The needs of the people who do believe, and many of them thirst for the mysteries and power of the kingdom to manifest in their personal lives. Jesus did say that "those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled". There are those who have thirsted not only for righteousness but for spiritual gifts and powers, whose prayers God has heard. Dr Cox does state this fact in other lines of thought when he refers to the "age of the spirit" and the rise of "Pentecostalism". He makes it very clear that "we need not assume that creedal Christianity is the only option" p78. Here is the crux of the matter, there are other options in the experience and expressions of the Chritian faith that have continued to break out of the molds and constraints of both hierarchical and creedal Christianity.</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In chapter three, Dr Cox uses the metaphor, "we find ourselves on a ship that has already been launched" pg 37. We are passengers among many others who are sailing in the midst of spiritual mystery,"but how we live with it differs". He deals with this fact throughout the book and tries to impress upon the reader that Christianity has never been monolithic and never will be. As long as people can think, question, and interpret for themselves truth and meaning, there will be differences in perception and changes in the expression of the gospel of the kingdom.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Dr Cox indicates that changes in the interpretation and expression of the gospel will contiune to come as Christianity moves forward into the future. He says on pg 196, "Christianity understood as a system of beliefs guarded and transmitted through a privileged religious institution by a clerical class is dying. Instead, today Christianity as a way of life, shared in a vast variety of ways by a diverse global network of fellowships is arising". The book is scholarly written and yet the author expresses a spiritual sensitivity toward the church at large. There are no overtones of harshness in the pages as he presents the things he is seeking to share. There are no attacks, simply an earnest attempt to present the facts as he sees them. After all, he is on board the same ship of Chrisitanity that many others are sailing on. Thurman L Faison, Author "To The Spiritually Inclined"</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b>****</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Harvey Cox has played a significant role in relation to ecumenism, inter-faith dialogue and the history of ideas. In many ways, this book reflects his breadth of experience and celebrates his life-long contribution. It is beautifully written and easy to read, and so it will appeal to a wide audience. It offers a timely challenge to the institutional Church, as well as a word of hope for those who are searching for meaning. His main concern is the two-fold shift from faith to belief and from dynamic Christian communities to static hierarchical structures. In this light, his reflections on the Emperor Constantine's corporate takeover of the Church in the 4th century are illuminating. Moreover, we all benefit greatly from his broad experience of world religions as well as the Church in the Global south. In short, Harvey Cox's experience is not only interesting, but it also lends weight to his heart-felt plea for faith and freedom.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b>****</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Harvey Cox' book is a page turner! It is destined to rival Augustine's Confessions as classic religious autobiography. In this readable account, Harvey Cox speaks vulnerably about the beginnings of his faith as a fundamentalist Baptist with a complete description of his baptism by immersion. He repeatedly speaks openly about his liberation from belief to a person of faith. "The Spirit cannot be restricted by doctrinal or ecclesial boundaries." He talks of his liberation from fundamentalism as a university student at Penn where during a religious retreat in southern New Jersey he discovered his belief in liberal mainline Protestant theology disagreed with the bibliolatry of more fundamentalist-evangelical students aligned with the Inter-Varisty Christian Fellowship student movement. Dr. Cox' often nostalgic personal spiritual catharsis continues by speaking of his freedom from belief to become a person of faith. Possibly many, with him, can relate to the bane of creedal formulations of historic Christianity, from which one may find freedom. I was especially struck with his account of his liberation from Gnosticism where through the use of neo-Platonic dualism he continually pitted faith against belief, as if the two were mutually exclusive. Clearly, his personal spirituality counters the both-and resolution of un-necessarily rivaling motifs. Can a person of belief simul be a person of faith? According to this autobiography, apparently not. I wondered often out loud about the church leaders who took 500 years to write the poetry of the Nicene Creed or the Apostle's Creed and how the earliest Christians might have learned "to read symbolic language symbolically" while reciting the Creed in Mass or later in other liturgical Christian forms of worship. As I continued to read this book, I was challenged by Cox' ongoing war with fundamentalism, as if this were any different from his own "fundamentalistic" critique of historic Christianity which might be stated in the following Five Fundamentals. 1. There is no such thing as Early Christianity.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">2. All Christian Creeds are flawed. 3. Belief and Faith are mutually exclusive 4. Anything Western about Christian Faith is in error. 5. Ecclesiology should be banned from Christian theology. I was furthered enamored by Dr. Cox' diatribe and spiritual concern with literalism, as I read his own book written by him using words, all of which I took literally, without a "tone-deafness to literalism." Cox' autobiography informs the reader of his inter-faith conversations with world religious leaders. I was saddened that the Pope failed to offer him lunch. I was surprised that fundamentalist pastor Rick Warren even made it into his autobiography, but then, Warren's quote "deeds, not creeds" supported his thesis. Possibly the new word Harvey Cox coins----"hascent, on page 77" is the symbolism which most appropriately assesses this book. I failed to locate this descriptor in any dictionary he identifies with the "first two and a half centuries of the Christian movement"--you see, I was reading his book literally. I took great interest in Cox' appraisal of base communities as the answer to all that's wrong with the organized church; but then, where are the base communities today while all those Pentecostal churches from the West abound and flourish, as he states? I was intrigued that whenbase communities did exist, they were not spoiled by the fundamentalism of a "Jesus as personal savior whose mission was to rescue them from a sinful world..."</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">In sum, Harvey's intellectually-challenged and poorly-researched book is more the author's nostalgic spiritual journey than it is a scholarly history of Christianity. It is, however, prophetic; for it forecasts the conclusion to historic Christian faith. If this book represents academic research [one footnote for every 3 pages], Christian faith may have no future in America, or anywhere, even in the global South. An author with integrity would have marketed it as his own personal spiritual journey. This book is an insult and an affront to any thinking theologian who still cares about scholarship and who calls herself Christian.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">****</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="vertical-align: middle;">Awe becomes faith only as it ascribes meaning to the mystery, <nobr>September 21, 2009</nobr></span></span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">By </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A35SBVEY0HQM33/ref=cm_cr_pr_pdp" style="color: #004b91;">John Philoponus "Ortho Arbiter"</a> (Nitria, Virtual Ortho America) - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A35SBVEY0HQM33/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview" style="color: #004b91;">See all my reviews</a></span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="h3color tiny" style="color: #e47911; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This review is from: </span>The Future of Faith (Hardcover)</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">"Faith starts with awe. It begins with a mixture of wonder and fear all human beings feel toward the mystery that envelops us. But awe becomes faith only as it ascribes some meaning to that mystery." Harvey Cox</span></b></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">What shape faith is taking in the 21st century?</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Recently I listened attentively to Professor Harvey Cox as he discussed The Future of the Christian Faith, while he examines the status of other world beliefs, on the PBR. Parallel to his fine book, he traced the evolutionary development of the faith through two phases, 'The Age of Faith' and 'The Age of Belief.' In his book, Cox argues that Christianity is entering an age of more experience applicable mode. One basic focus is on social justice, led by South American theologians. World's great religions are undergoing reformative evolution, which he discussed in the last chapter of his book, where he tabulates few examples in Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. Cox comments on the 'emerging church movement' and its influence on mainstream churches in America, simply as, "religious people are becoming less dogmatic and more practicing more aware of ethical issues and spiritual guidelines than in religious Dogma." He looks more optimistic than his early time of 'The secular City,' wishful that the future of faith is forward expansive, transparent, and hopeful.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The Age of the Spirit:</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The faith of the early Christians was knitted around the hope for the new kingdom of peace that Jesus preached and practiced. As their Jewish ancestors, early Christians emphasized community rather than creeds or rituals. The pre Constantine Christianity demonstrated a religious faith variety, with charity and fellowship, against an imperial Roman pagan character. "The Age of Belief," as Cox calls it, from the fourth to the twentieth century, faith became entangled with rituals, liturgies and creeds, orthodox theology replaced personal religion, which resulted in the glorification of clergy and a history of mundane Church corruption. According to Cox, following WW II, "The Age of the Spirit," began, half a century ago, and continues to shake the foundations of patriarchal corporate religion. The prophetic author, gives examples of the last gasps of the old model. He has little sympathy for this outdated conservatism, even he wrote against the remaining part of it, clinging to petrified beliefs. In the midst of fast paced globalization and facing an apparent revival of fundamentalism, Cox ponders the de-Hellenization of Christianity, the growth of the interfaith movement, the surge of Pentecostalism, and the just cause of liberation theology.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Harvey G. Cox:</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">This eminent Harvard theologian sees Christian faith as focused by Christ on the new order which he called "the kingdom of God." Cox says that it was "the heartbeat of his life, his constant concern and preoccupation," well presented by many books including The Secular City, 1965, an international bestseller. His most recent work "The Future of Faith" is released to coincide with Cox's retirement. </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Harvey Cox [...] is the recently retired Professor of Divinity emeritus at Harvard whose last book is entitled, "The Future of Faith." My good friend, Jack LaMar, who still labors in God's pastoral vineyards in Elcho, Wisconsin, was kind enough to send me Cox's latest work as a birthday present. Since you ask-you did, didn't you?-what I thought of the book, here are my thoughts.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">It's a moderate investment of one's time, covering 224 pages and written in quite understandable layman's language. It would be helpful if the reader has a little background in Christian theology and the history of the church, but even without that background it does not appreciably limit Cox's ability to communicate his message.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">That core message, as I understand it, is that Christianity began in a "faith" mode, but, then, beginning most notably in the 4th century, deteriorated into a "belief" mode and its future lies with trying to get into a "spirit" mode.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Perhaps a subtitle to the book, obviously greatly overdrawn, would be the thesis, "deeds, not creeds." That's what Christianity should be about, says Cox.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">When the Church began it overcame and burst out of the Jewish trappings in which it originated. Through the Apostle Paul, the good news of Jesus went out into the gentile world, the Greek speaking world. Cox sees the early church as a vibrant, enthusiastic group of communities dedicated to "following" Jesus. Not following "about" Jesus, but trying to devote themselves to what Jesus meant to his own community and "doing" that in the context of others. So, he talks about the early church's mission to help others, serve the poor, etc., although I think that kind of mission was mostly intended for members of the fellowship, instead of some wider community enterprise. In other words, members of the early church made sure their own people were taken care of and tended to, and probably less concerned about the needs of the rest of the city.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">It seems that Dr. Cox would see in the Letters of Paul, and other writings, both that made our Protestant accepted 27 books in the New Testament, and those that did not, e.g., the Gospel of Thomas, the letters of Clement, as less theological proposals and more pastoral. In other words "faith" was being promoted, and, where wranglings and disputes took place in the church, as they will in any community of people, the accent was on common sense resolution instead of proposed theological dogma.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Unfortunately, says Cox, the church began to lose its way when it moved from a "faith" accented community to a "belief" driven community. In other words, the church decided to codify faith by issuing statements of faith, another word for "creeds." He does not seem to think that the development of the "apostle's creed," or the Nicene Creed, or any other exclusionary statement of faith helped the church to be the church, as he sees it.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Essentially, says Cox, the church moved from a faith based organization, where it was for at best several hundred years, to a structured belief based organism. That movement got pretty well solidified in the 4th century when Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity as the official religion of the empire. Then you see the structure really develop, people jockeying for importance and power in the church, the development of the apostolic succession of bishops, read, papacy, etc.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The church has been in this latter mode for a long, long time. It has become stale, stultified, and stuffy. It has got to change. Not that Cox sees returning to some golden age of the church, but kind of. The church has to get to the mode of the "spirit." Faith was a thing of the past. Good, but in the past. Belief, with all of the creeds and individual theologies that insisted that its members had to believe a certain thing or a certain way, whether that source of authority was the pope or the bible, it was still creedal. It was still bogged down in a belief system. We have to look for our models for a spirit community for Christians both within and without.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Dr, Cox sees examples and models in the Christian liberation theology that has come out of Latin and South America, where the church "does," where it is involved with the poor and the downtrodden, where it enacts the message of Jesus, as Dr. Cox sees it.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">He looks to other religions, including the Hindus and Buddhists who do more doing and less believing, as further examples. And, he lifts up the Muslims who, as part of their faith, have a very involved commitment to be very charitable and supportive, especially monetarily, to those of their own ilk.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">As somewhat of a sidebar, Dr. Cox tells about his early religious experience as a Baptist and how he moved from faith to the belief mode. He speaks of his time and work with some Christian fundamentalist groups early on in life and of how he left them behind, but not unkindly. He understands "fundamentalism" and that it is not limited to Christianity, as Karen Armstrong has so ably pointed out in her writings. Notably, there are Christian fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists and Jewish fundamentalists. These groups have some common characteristics. Circle the wagons. Encourage people to come in, but protect those from within. Keep them in. Don't let them be corrupted by those outside the circle.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">I found it interesting that Cox does not fear the take over of Christian fundamentalism in America. Despite the fact that main line churches seem to be receding in membership and attendance, and we are seeing an increase in the bible churches, etc., Cox is so bold as to propose that fundamentalism is dying! No matter how much we try to fence ourselves off, the barriers and demarcations are less and less. Can't keep anything in and can't keep anything out. Things just seem to be melding.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">While Cox sees fundamentalism dying, he seems to extol the virtues of Pentecostalism, especially as it is represented in the Latin and South American countries where he sees it as a faith movement, a movement of the spirit where everything ostensibly is geared to the Kingdom of God, an overarching theme to Cox's understanding of the spirit community. We are working in and for the Kingdom of God, as proposed by Jesus and called by Jesus to belong to and commit to.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Anyhow, I think the book is interesting and challenging. Cox does not want to say that church, the Christian community, should be founded on "feeling," but when he talks about the Pentecostals, and how they worship and how they see mission, which he thinks is worthy of emulation, I don't know how you just give up all reason, all attempts at formulating theology. Is theology not longer an enterprise of the church, even though it has not always served the church well over the centuries, read the Inquisition and the dealing with heretics?</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">I guess what I am saying is that Dr. Cox seems to want to eschew creedal theology for what he calls the spiritual nature of people and the church. It just seems to me that as I read the letters of Paul, especially his letter to the Romans, that Paul sees it necessary for the church to understand where it came from, where it is and where it is going, and, consequently, the plan that God has not just for the church, but also the synagogue and that much larger community of the world outside those two institutions.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">But, if you have a chance, read Cox's book. He truly is a readable, presentable and understandable theologian.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">****</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">I have always wondered what the dialogue would sound like if the religious right (fundamentalists) took the time to study the history and origin of their beliefs. This is a great book and offers sanity and REALITY to the Christian faith. (Quite a refreshing change from the tired, mythological beliefs that define the fundamental Christian religion.) The Future of Faith is an excellent read on many levels. It is well written, interesting and not a boring theological thesis.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">****</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">About forty years ago, Harvard Professor Harvey Cox wrote THE SECULAR CITY.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">In autumn 2009, he retired as Hollis Professor of Divinity, first exercising</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">his right to bring a cow to graze in Harvard Yard.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">THE FUTURE OF FAITH is his latest book. In the opening of the final chapter, Cox quotes the fictional islanders of Aldous Huxley's ISLAND. They pray, "GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY FAITH, BUT DELIVER US FROM BELIEFS." Cox comments, "Huxley got this one right. In the preceding chapters I have shown how Christianity, which began as a movement of Spirit guided by faith, soon clotted into a catalog of beliefs administered by a clerical class. But now ... the process is being reversed. Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying."</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">From Einstein & Jerry Falwell to Thomas Jefferson and Huxley, in THE FUTURE OF FAITH, Cox carries us through the transformation from creeds to spiritual practice. The book has many marvelous vignettes: McGill Professor Arvind Sharma is asked if he was a "believing" or "practicing" Hindu. Sharma smiled and responded, "Well, if you live in a haunted house, does that mean you believe in ghosts?"</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Cox comments, "To some extent we all live in haunted houses. But although the houses may be in one shrinking global village, they remain separate houses."</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Cox predicts that opposition to the ordination of women and gays is a reactionary effort. "... yearning for the realization of God's reign of SHALOM, is finding its soul again. ... The future will be a future of faith." </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">****</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">So far in my 66 years of life I have avoided reading any books by Harvey Cox, such as the Secular City. I did hear him lecture once in 1965, but I wasn't listening then. For different reasons - such as my interest in the Progressive Church movement - I decided to pick up this book. This author is so clear, fairly easy to read, yet so brilliant. I am so amazed and so grateful. Harvey would probably not list himself as a progressive, but would critique that movement as he does all others. He stands alone by the sheer stature of his breth and depth of years of study and teaching. Yet he stands among us all as a friend of faith - not of "the faith", but of faith itself. Whatever that is, he will help you decide. Yes, do read this book.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">****</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">"Harvey Cox was therefore concerned not so much with 'eternal' truths as with truth for today, truth for action, and he suspected that a faith which responded primarily to ideas was more likely to be idolatrous and less likely to be redemptive than one that responded to events and experience." [...]</span></b></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Logic and discovery of faith:</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Harvey Cox, a young Harvard professor became the best-selling voice of secularism in America with his 1965 book, The Secular City. Throughout four decades since, he pursued a radical innovative interpretation of working faith. He sees the old thinking in the 'new atheism' of thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Chris. Hitchens. Henri Poincaré, one of France's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists once wrote, "It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover." The debates between faith and atheism, he says, obscure the interplay between faith and forms of knowledge that is unfolding today.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The Future of faith:</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The study of the future of faith is therefore the pursuit of the ideal, the search for God's highest and ultimate truth. It is the quest, by God's grace, to improve all things, including faith itself. Jesus did not endorse any "Faith future scenario" before him, but presented the case by asking, [And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? Luke 18:8] On this verse and Jesus following parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Harvey Cox supported his view on the recent NPR interview, mentioned by Cosmas in his precedent fine review. Jesus told this parable to those who trusted themselves, their rituals, and their dogmatic belief, positioning themselves on the extreme Pelagian position of non assisted intellectual personal salvation. Jesus prophetically saw the future of such legalistic belief, leading to the collapse of the Israeli religion instituted on the Jewish Temple of his generation. To save Israel from the coming catastrophic path he kept advocating the way of faith, that God would raise the dead nation. that is why, Jesus resurrection became for his disciples the sign that God was raising up a New House, a total restoration of Israel and humanity would follow his teaching. So, Jesus saw a renewed future, in Jeremiah 31:31 where humans could fulfill their potential of living abundantly when they were restored to God's New covenant.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Book Review:</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The renowned Harvard Divinity School Professor and author of The Secular City, The Feast of Fools, The Seduction of the Spirit, ... talks about his faith, and the religious resurgence taking place in America and abroad in his new book, The Future of Faith. He offers a new interpretation of the history and manages to extrapolate the future of religion. Rev. Cox, a Baptist Minister, ordained in 1957, has a unique take on Christianity, and while questioning the meaning of Resurrection, he celebrates Jesus life and teaching, urging us to practice an imitation of Christ, and takes his teachings to the secular world representing them to our flawed society. Today, religious people are more interested in a living faith guidelines and related spiritual practices than in Church Dogmas, leading a universal trend away from a patriarchal, hierarchical, corporate religion. As these changes gain momentum, they evoke a spontaneous graphic fundamentalist reaction, that he argues, is dying slowly out all around the globe. </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">****</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Harvey Cox is Professor of Divinity Emeritus at Harvard University. He retired from the faculty in 2009, where he has taught since 1965.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">I am fascinated by this book. It is truly the epic summary of the life's work of one of the most profound theological thinkers and teachers in the past 50+ years --- an American one at that.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">The book begins with a question: "What does the future hold for religion, and for Christianity in particular?" Cox proceeds by guiding the reader through three phases of the evolution of Christianity: The Age of Faith, The Age of Belief and the Age of the Spirit. Throughout each phase Cox provides an incredibly rich context for the points he is illuminating. This approach gives the texture of the book one that is logically presented, easy to follow --- and maintains the reader's hunger for more. I found I was unable to put it down and when I did, came back hungry for another helping.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Where does Cox end up at the conclusion? Listen to these excerpts: All signs suggest we are poised to enter a new Age of the Spirit and that the future will be a future of faith" (p.224). "Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying. The spiritual, communal and justice-seeking dimensions of Christianity are now its leading edge as the twenty-first century hurtles forward, and this change is taking place along with similar reformations in other world religions" (p.212).</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Yet, it would be inappropriate to simply leave you with the bottom-line conclusions of this epic contribution. It is the richness of the writing, the masterful, insightful weaving of history, and the sharing of attention grabbing wisdom that accompanies the reader throughout this entire book, that makes it apparent that you are in the midst of a story being shared by a very wise and leaned friend. Allow me to share a few more excerpts to illustrate this important point:</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">"People turn to religion more for support in their efforts to live in this world and make it better, and less to prepare for the next" (pp.2-3) Cox makes an important distinction between faith and beliefs throughout the book while weaving the weight of history into support his positions. According to Cox, Faith is about deep-seated confidence - vital for the way we live - it is primordial - hope and assurance that translates into the way we live our lives --- each and every day (pp.3-5). Belief, according to Cox, is more like opinion - We can believe something to be true without it making much difference to us. Creeds are clusters of beliefs. Christianity is the story of a people of faith who sometimes cobbled together creeds out of beliefs. It is also the history of equally faithful people who questioned, altered and discarded those same creeds"(pp.3-5).</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">For the author, "To be a Christian meant to live in his Spirit, embrace his hope, and to follow him in the work that he had begun" (p.5). So, where are we today? "We stand on the beautiful threshold of a new chapter in the Christian story - Christians on five continents are shaking off the residues of the second phase (the Age of Belief) and negotiating a bumpy transition into a fresh era for which a name has not yet been coined. I would like to call it the Age of the Spirit" (p.8).</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">As we "transition" into this new Age of The Spirit that Cox clearly observes (and provides ample evidence to support said observations), he provides some insights, challenges and suggestions:</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">"How the new can grow out of the old without wasting time trying to dismantle it" (p.173).</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Faith is returning to become "a primary life orientation" (p. 179) --- not intellectual assent to a box of beliefs, creeds, doctrine and dogma.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">"Christianity came to birth in the midst of a cultural change --- it is a movement born to travel - it takes on life with each succeeding cultural transition - But for this to happen again, some old wineskins must be discarded, and the incubus of a self serving and discredited picture of Christian origins must be set aside" (p.184)</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">"The fact that the most fruitful and exciting movements in Christianity today are taking place on the margins of existing ecclesial structures should not surprise anyone. Historically speaking, "schism" and "heresy" have often heralde</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">d the deepening and extension of the faith. Sometimes they are condemned, sometimes honored, and sometimes both, starting with the first and only later ending up with the second" (p.197).</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">"One clear Christian example of the both the renaissance of spirituality and the transmutation in the nature of religiousness is what is being called the emerging church" (p.218)....emphasis is mine.</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Where does Cox conclude? "A religion based on subscribing to mandatory beliefs is no longer viable" (221). "The wind of the Spirit is blowing. One indication is the upheaval that is shaking and renewing Christianity. Faith, rather than beliefs, is once again becoming its defining quality" (p.223).</span></b></span></span></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">I can live with that. Can you? Trust me --- This is a PHENOMENAL BOOK! </span></b></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">--</span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Shalom!/Salaam!/Pax!</span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Rowland Croucher</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><b><span style="color: windowtext;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></span></span></div>
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Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-54840511359581637212016-05-18T03:40:00.001-07:002016-05-18T03:40:15.517-07:00THE ABC'S OF EFFECTIVE PASTORAL LEADERSHIP<h3>
<i>The Australian weekly, The Bulletin, regularly searched</i><i>for the ‘young executive of the year’. The winners will have displayed</i><i>‘success and flair in the broad range of skills required in business</i><i>today. These include initiative, commitment, skills in managing</i><i>people, planning and financial ability, grasp of opportunity and</i><i>judgment. They will be men or women who have been exceptionally</i><i>successful in their field, achieved measurable business goals</i><i>and demonstrated outstanding performance…’</i></h3>
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<b><br />In his best-selling autobiography, Lee Iacocca asks<br />legendary football coach Vince Lombardi his formula for success.<br />‘First, teach the fundamentals; a player’s got to know the basics<br />of the game’, he said. ‘Next, you’ve got to keep him in line;<br />that’s discipline. The men have to play as a team. There’s no<br />room for prima donnas. And third: they’ve got to care for – to<br />love – each other. Each guy says to himself: ‘If I don’t block<br />that man, Paul’s going to get his legs broken. I have to do my<br />job well so he can do his’. ‘The difference between mediocrity<br />and greatness’, Lombardi said, ‘is the feeling these guys have<br />for each other. When you’ve got that sort of team spirit, you’ve<br />got a winning team.’</b></div>
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<b><br />If we found the ‘complete’ pastor what would he or<br />she be like? How does a pastoral leader put together a winning<br />team?</b></div>
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<b><br />Some pastors seem to attract large congregations<br />effortlessly, but for most it’s uphill all the way. Some have<br />got it all together in their parishes; others – no less godly,<br />gifted or hard-working – live lives of quiet desperation. Why?<br />The tough reality: pastors know that, under God, their leadership<br />is the single most vital factor in the health and growth of a<br />church. ‘The difference between a growing church and a stagnant<br />one is pastoral leadership. Gifted men build great churches and<br />average men build average churches’ (Elmer Towns). ‘The pastor<br />heads the list of factors common to growing churches in America.<br />Show me a rapidly growing church, and I will show you a dynamic<br />leader whom God is using to make it happen’ (Peter Wagner).</b></div>
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<b><br />(A caution, however: not all healthy churches are<br />large, and not all large churches are healthy… It is better<br />to talk about church health than church growth, effective rather<br />than ‘successful’ leadership).</b></div>
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<b><br />My ministry is with pastors, and I’d suggest the<br />following composite of traits and ideas I’ve noted in the most<br />effective of them. (Composite, because the perfect pastor doesn’t<br />exist!).</b></div>
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<b><br />ACCOUNTABILITY – to God and to others – is the hallmark<br />of any Christian leader. We are servants of the church (although<br />the church is not our master – Christ is). Since Watergate, leaders<br />– politicians, managers, teachers, doctors, and pastors – are<br />expected to be accountable to their ‘clients’. Authentic pastors<br />welcome this trend. ‘Six days invisible, the seventh incomprehensible’<br />won’t do anymore. Pastors have an even more awesome stewardship:<br />accountability to God. In the timeless words of Richard Baxter<br />in The Reformed Pastor:</b></div>
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<b><br />‘See that the work of saving grace be thoroughly<br />wrought in your own souls. Take heed to yourselves lest you be<br />void of that saving grace of God which you offer to others…<br />lest you perish while you call upon others to take heed of perishing.<br />Believe it, fellow-pastors, God never saved anyone for being a<br />preacher, nor because that one was an able preacher; but because<br />that preacher was justified, and sanctified, and consequently<br />faithful in the Master’s work’.</b></div>
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<b><br />Be AMBITIOUS but remember ambition’s a slippery idea:<br />Paul was ambitious (2 Corinthians 5:9; Romans 15:20; 1 Thessalonians<br />4:11-12), but so was Satan. Saints have a sublime indifference<br />to temporal success or failure. In this competitive world, our<br />business is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves.<br />‘Wanting the church to grow’ is OK, but our fallen natures warn<br />us that can be a short step from ‘wanting to build an empire’.<br />One model is redemptive – humble, serving, costly; the other is<br />violent – competitive and alienating.</b></div>
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<b><br />Some pastors are Type A people – goal-oriented, busy,<br />extroverted, church-builders. Others are Type B – quiet, supportive.<br />If both exist on a team, be clear about leadership roles, spiritual<br />gifts and ministry expectations, or there’ll be trouble.</b></div>
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<b><br />Effective pastors are BIG persons. They take genuine<br />joy in the ministry-successes of others; so they won’t be threatened<br />by the giftedness of talented colleagues. They welcome feedback,<br />instituting formal and informal channels to get it. They aren’t<br />conformists; they’re prepared to take risks, even to fail occasionally.<br />They’re teachable – attending conferences, traveling to learn<br />from others, getting ideas through reading. Although they know<br />their ministry-priorities will not satisfy the expectations of<br />all in their congregation, everyone is loved anyhow. Their egos<br />don’t have to be fed by parading success stories. They relate<br />caringly to old and young, to the up-and-out and the down-and-out,<br />to leaders and to the broken. They have cool heads and warm hearts,<br />and don’t develop ‘messiah complexes’. And they are bigger than<br />their own denomination; they’re loyal, but don’t have a ‘my-group-right-or-wrong’<br />attitude. They believe God gives insights and skills, by his Spirit,<br />to Christians and mission groups who also acknowledge Jesus as<br />‘Saviour, Lord, and God according to the Scriptures’.</b></div>
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<b><br />‘Left-handed dictionaries’ poke fun at COMMITTEES.<br />(A committee is a group that takes minutes and wastes hours …<br />the unfit selected by the unwilling to do the unnecessary… where<br />the loneliness of thought is replaced by the togetherness of nothingness…).<br />Most church committees are too large, too numerous, poorly structured<br />and/or poorly managed. They constipate the church-as-organization<br />and become sluggish, cumbersome, tedious, and indecisive. Who<br />wants to serve on a committee whose work is alien, distasteful,<br />time-consuming, irrelevant or incomprehensible – or if one doubts<br />that all the work will change anything? One management expert<br />says: ‘Most people clearly prefer the pursuit of happiness to<br />the happiness of pursuit. Only about a third of committee-members<br />perform with little prodding, another third are moderately effective<br />with some needling, the other third are no good at all and not<br />worth the time to chase them up… Remember causes don’t need<br />workers so much as they need informed and dedicated advocates’.</b></div>
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<b><br />If church-leaders spend more time in committees than<br />in spiritual growth groups, that’s a sign of the church’s ill-health.<br />I meet Baptist deacons who never pray with anyone, Anglican church-wardens<br />who never study the Bible, Uniting Church elders who don’t know<br />how to lead someone to personal faith in Christ. That’s just not<br />good enough.</b></div>
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<b><br />COMMUNITY. You won’t survive as a pastor on your<br />own. Find a prayer-partner, soul friend, sharing group, or, better,<br />spiritual director. Research says pastors are lonely: they are<br />the least likely to have a close friend.</b></div>
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<b><br />In our preaching, should we be CULTURE-affirming<br />or -denying or -confronting? Yes, yes and yes: it depends. Will<br />Herberg (Protestant, Catholic, Jew) says Americans look mainly<br />for one thing in their religion – security: social acceptance<br />(mainline churches), or eternal security (the fundamentalists).<br />Both produce ‘civic religion’, a ‘cult of culture’ validating<br />culture and society without bringing them under judgement. ‘Love<br />your neighbour’ sermons make love voluntary, having little to<br />do with justice. Most churches espouse political neutrality, which<br />is opting for the status quo.</b></div>
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<b><br />Good managers DELEGATE ruthlessly. Pastor-teachers,<br />says Paul, equip others for ministry (Ephesians 4:12). So if the<br />pastor isn’t training, training, training, he or she is likely<br />to be doing things other could do, and thus denying them a ministry.<br />Don’t buy a dog and bark yourself! Run ‘How to Help Your Friend’<br />counseling courses. Coach elders and lay visitors ‘on the job’,<br />taking them to hospitals and home visits. Leading worship services<br />and preaching should be shared by those with competence (and only<br />those). Delegation and training are the keys to breaking through<br />the 200/300 barrier. Peter Wagner talks about insecure pastors<br />who need to know everybody, including kids’ (and even pets’) names.<br />They don’t have a growth/delegation mentality. Being a ‘rancher’<br />isn’t opting out of pastoral care, it’s equipping under-shepherds.<br />The church’s small groups should be the main focus of pastoral<br />support, with elders/small group leaders as the first ‘port-of-call’.</b></div>
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<b><br />But delegation isn’t abdication. John Claypool says<br />‘What often happens in life (is that) persons are given a difficult<br />job and then, instead of struggling with them and helping them<br />find their way, the group sits back and lets them struggle alone<br />until at last they ‘hang themselves’.</b></div>
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<b><br />An opposite – and common – complaint is that pastors<br />give jobs then meddle themselves (delegation minus training).</b></div>
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<b><br />Delegation + training + mentoring = DISCIPLING. ‘Go<br />and make disciples’ is still Jesus’ mandate to his followers.<br />How? The way he did it. Every pastor should be encouraged to find<br />his ‘three, twelve and seventy’. The pastors’ task is to spend<br />half their time with God, half with people and the rest in administration!<br />And half the people-time should be invested in leaders. This is<br />hard work, and tests a pastor’s authentic spirituality, so it’s<br />easier to opt out and succumb to the less rigorous task of oiling<br />church machinery.</b></div>
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<b><br />We are models: we can’t escape that. Pastors who<br />model a thankful spirit generally see it reproduced in the congregation.<br />So we mustn’t complain too much: after 3 or 4 years we have imprinted<br />our example onto those people. Indeed Bonhoefer (Life Together)<br />says pastors should never complain about their people – not even<br />to God!</b></div>
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<b><br />ENCOURAGEMENT. Good pastors have a certain naivete<br />about them. They see the best in others (‘all his geese are swans’<br />it was said of one great pastor). They take time to congratulate<br />those who have helped, and build on people’s strengths rather<br />than reacting to their ‘rough edges’. Praise is not flattery:<br />sincere encouragement builds confidence; insincere flattery inflates<br />one’s ego. Praise never hurt anyone; silence or destructive criticism<br />are killers! Encouragement draws the best out of people. Like<br />Jesus, always be gentle with the wounded, and – only if you have<br />earned the right – occasionally be tough with the lazy or those<br />whose potential may be realized more by rebuke than a soft word.<br />Helpful criticism should always – or nearly always – leave the<br />person feeling he/she has been helped. Goethe said ‘If you treat<br />someone as they are they will stay as they are. If you treat them<br />as if they were what they ought to be, and could be, they will<br />become a bigger and better people’. (Aren’t you glad the prodigal<br />met his father before his elder brother?). James Stewart quotes<br />this legend: God decided to reduce the weapons in the devil’s<br />armoury to one. Satan could choose which ‘fiery dart’ he would<br />keep. He chose the power of discouragement. ‘If only I can persuade<br />Christians to be thoroughly discouraged’, he reasoned, ‘they will<br />make no further effort and I shall be enthroned in their lives’.</b></div>
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<b><br />An 80-year-old saint in Canada wrote me a note:</b></div>
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<b><br />If he earns your praise bestow it; If you like him<br />let him know it; Let words of true encouragement be said. Do not<br />wait till life is over and he’s underneath the clover; For he<br />cannot read his tomb-stone when he’s dead.</b></div>
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<b><br />Suspect theology but wise psychology.</b></div>
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<b><br />The most explicit New Testament reference to EXCELLENCE<br />(‘choose what is best’, Philippians 1:9-11) suggests that it issues<br />from a loving heart rather than an optimistic ego. This cuts across<br />a lot of modern self-improvement/positive thinking ideas. ‘Pastor,<br />you can be a winner’ presumes there’ll be some losers, and that<br />can be a pagan idea.</b></div>
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<b><br />Life is a leaf of paper white Whereon each one of<br />us may write His word or two, and then comes night. Greatly begin!<br />though thou hast time But for a line, be that sublime… Not failure,<br />but low aim is crime.</b></div>
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<b><br />James Lowell</b></div>
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<b><br />The books In Search of Excellence (Peters & Waterman)<br />and A Passion for Excellence (Peters & Austin) point out that<br />it was ‘pretty difficult for management to mess up an American<br />corporation in the 25 years following World War II’. Now that’s<br />all changed (as it has in the church). A passion for excellence<br />‘means thinking big and starting small: excellence happens when<br />high purpose and intense pragmatism meet’. It involves three dynamics:<br />superior service to customers, constant innovation, and the consistent<br />rewarding of creativity of everyone in the organisation. There<br />are many constraints in churches encouraging mediocrity: let’s<br />resist them all, for God’s sake.</b></div>
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<b><br />Pastors of growing congregations are FACILITATORS.<br />There are three ways of looking at church-people – scenery (‘good<br />number out this morning’), machinery (the way they relate functionally)<br />and as complex, unique individuals. Good pastors are gifted ‘networkers’,<br />devising dozens of ways for people (particularly newcomers) to<br />relate to each other. Here’s one idea: invite four or five families<br />(mix them sensitively) to the manse/rectory for Sunday lunch once<br />a month. Get each one to bring a casserole or dessert (enough<br />to feed two families), and, if you need most of Sunday afternoon<br />to prepare for evening preaching, they won’t mind your suggesting<br />a cut-off time. Another idea: get every family to fill in a care-card<br />each Sunday, with feedback/prayer requests on the back. This is<br />more than an attendance slip: it helps us keep in touch with each<br />other responsibly.</b></div>
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<b><br />GROWTH means many things: people coming to faith<br />in Christ, growing in Christian maturity, being incorporated into<br />the church, involvement in ministry in the church and in the world.<br />All this is ‘church growth’. (Have you heard of ‘Little Bo Peep’<br />churches? They lost their sheep and don’t know where to find them!)<br />But remember,</b></div>
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<b><br />All growth is trouble! If comfort is your need better<br />to sleep, curled around yourself forever shelled with indifference,<br />like an unsown seed, like a smooth stone that cannot bleed or<br />put forth leaves or know what the great have known!</b></div>
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<b><br />(R.H. Grenville)</b></div>
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<b><br />GOAL-SETTING is crucial. Goals should always be specific,<br />attainable, measurable. Many Western churches balk at setting<br />numerical membership-goals. That’s OK: find others (50% in cell<br />groups by 19??; contact every home in the neighborhood in the<br />next two years; research unmet community needs before December).<br />Set goals for health and growth should result.</b></div>
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<b><br />A church leader’s HOME LIFE is an important example<br />to others (Titus 1:6,7). ‘Workaholics’ are not good models for<br />new Christians. It is possible for a busy pastor to spend 3-4<br />nights a week at home in quality time with his or her family (you<br />have to learn to work smarter rather than harder). After all,<br />ministry begins inside our front door. And how do you answer this<br />complaint, from a 14-year-old pastor’s son: ‘The church-people<br />can interrupt our family time or meal-times whenever they want,<br />but we’re not allowed to interrupt you when you’re with a church-person.<br />So church must be more important to you than our family!’</b></div>
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<b><br />Living in HOPE isn’t the same as being an optimist.<br />Optimism can actually be shallow and faithless, whereas hope is<br />humble and trustful, whatever the circumstances. Hope in God assures<br />us that he will be with us, in our agonies and ecstasies, as he<br />was with his people in the past. So we major on our resources<br />in Christ not the difficulties.</b></div>
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<b><br />INNOVATION. Effective pastors are creative initiators.<br />Earlier in my ministry I’d complain about the paucity of ideas/programs/ministries<br />emanating from others. There was a good and bad side to that.<br />I genuinely tried to encourage others to dream dreams and actualize<br />visions. But sometimes it was a rationalization for my ‘opting<br />out’. As a leader I had to learn that if I didn’t ‘make it happen’<br />I couldn’t expect anyone else to. The pastor, David Watson used<br />to say, is the ‘cork in the bottle’: that’s where the problem<br />usually lies. In business they talk about ‘in-basket time management’<br />– ‘let’s take each week/year as it comes’. That’s not good enough.<br />Effective pastors believe there’s a better way. There’s a holy<br />restlessness about them. They don’t throw out certain traditions<br />because they’re old, but because they’re irrelevant. They get<br />excited in brainstorming sessions, encouraging ideas – even the<br />craziest ones – to flow freely.</b></div>
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<b><br />We pastors must never forget that JESUS CHRIST is<br />the head of the church, not us. The church isn’t a social club<br />with the pastor as president. Sometimes clergy talk about ‘my’<br />church, ‘my’ people, ‘my’ leaders: such language may be patronizing,<br />however well-intentioned.</b></div>
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<b><br />Pastors of dynamic churches KEEP AT IT. Longer pastorates<br />are needed to build churches. But not every pastor is suited to<br />the longer haul: some may have a healing or inspirational shorter-term<br />ministry. However, in general, I believe pastors ought to begin<br />every ministry with the idea ‘I’m going to serve here for life’,<br />and not view each pastorate as a stepping-stone to a ‘nicer’ one.<br />As husband and wife, so pastor and parish take each other ‘for<br />better or worse’.</b></div>
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<b><br />LEADERSHIP is ‘getting things done with and through<br />others who want to do them!’ The pastor is a ‘leader of leaders’.<br />The buck ends with us. The feckless Jim Hacker, MP, of ‘Yes, Minister’<br />put it succinctly: ‘The people have spoken. I am their leader.<br />I must follow them’. Leadership is God’s gift to the church –<br />every church – but is expressed variously. In tribal societies<br />the consensus of the people is embodied in the decrees of the<br />chief. Monarchical episcopates arise in times of persecution,<br />but sometimes stifle lay-people’s initiatives in democratic societies.<br />Christian Brethren may have no formal ‘pastoral leaders’, but<br />there’ll always be an informal system. Congregational models maximize<br />lay ownership of the church’s goals, but increase potential for<br />‘little despots’ and schisms.</b></div>
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<b><br />Autocratic leaders assume people won’t do anything<br />unless told to, discourage innovation, believe they know best,<br />are often inflexible and insensitive, tend to use the group for<br />their already-decided ends. Bureaucratic leaders believe the right<br />parliamentary procedures will produce organizational rules and<br />regulations to order behaviour without working too hard at enhancing<br />human relationships. Paternalistic leaders identify almost completely<br />with the group; there’s the danger of hero-worship or the development<br />of a personality cult; when the leader goes the group is helpless.<br />Laissez-faire leadership leaves things alone: minimum direction,<br />maximum individual freedom, non-directive maintenance of existing<br />structures are the hallmarks here.</b></div>
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<b><br />Effective leaders understand themselves, their co-leaders,<br />their group, and the social milieu. They accurately assesses the<br />climate and readiness for growth, know the gifts, limitations<br />and responsibilities of their co-leaders, and act appropriately<br />in the light of all these perceptions. They allows subordinates<br />to take initiatives, or facilitate group-freedom as appropriate.</b></div>
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<b><br />MOTIVATION is getting people to do what you want<br />them to do because they want to do it! The leader/motivator must<br />understand the group’s needs (eg. for dependence or independence,<br />love and ‘belongingness’, self-esteem and self-actualization),<br />abilities (eg. knowledge, experience and skill, readiness to assume<br />responsibility, tolerance of ambiguity), and perceptions (eg.<br />interest in the idea, understanding of goals, expectations etc.).<br />McGregor’s well-known ‘theory X’ leaders assume people don’t want<br />to work, they dislike responsibility, and must be coerced into<br />effort; theory Y suggests that people will work hard, accept responsibility,<br />and be loyal to the organization’s goals if they are ‘handled<br />right’. So when a pastor complains ‘the blighters won’t work’<br />that pastor is making a judgment about his or her own leadership.</b></div>
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<b><br />MISSION. In his seminal book Christianity Rediscovered<br />Vincent Donovan talks about the ‘choke law’: once a church is<br />established, pastoral and administrative work tends to choke out<br />continuing evangelization. The ‘static and paralyzing idea’ of<br />the mission compound replaces real mission. He quotes Hoekendijk:<br />‘The idea of church without mission is an absurdity’. A church<br />vestry minuted its solution to a declining membership: appoint<br />two committees, to organise fetes and socials. ‘Remember Jack?<br />He used to run the hamburger stall. What’s happened to him? A<br />fete would bring him back to church…’ Can you pick the fallacy<br />here? There’s another choke law operative in some churches: the<br />legitimate desire to evangelize chokes out other aspects of mission,<br />such as deeds of compassion and works of justice.</b></div>
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<b><br />In every dynamic, healthy church the MUSIC is done<br />well, and the musicians are clearly under the authority of the<br />pastors. Anglican Canon Michael Green says, ‘As soon as renewal<br />hits your church, sack your organist!’ There’s an old saying:<br />‘When the devil wants to enter a church he usually comes through<br />the choir vestry!’ Why? Music is the easiest church activity enjoyed<br />for its own sake. A bad choir views the congregation as audience.<br />A spirit-led choir worships, and leads the people of God into<br />the presence of God.</b></div>
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<b><br />NAMES. In a brotherhood – and sisterhood – let us<br />be known by Christian names, rather than titles or offices. So,<br />pastors, take ‘Rev’. off the front and degrees off the back of<br />your name: you don’t need status that way (unless it’s helpful<br />in civic contexts). Here’s a good word from the diary of Brother<br />Roger of Taize: ‘In the life of the church the shepherd, the one<br />who is at the heart of the living cell which a community is, has<br />only one charge, to be the servant of communion. [The shepherd]<br />is there to keep alive what otherwise would dislocate and scatter…<br />I have never wanted to be called ‘prior’ of our community. I am<br />their brother. For the same reason, I refused the Legion of Honour.<br />Why? Because today it is impossible for those holding positions<br />of responsibility in the church to add honorific titles to their<br />service of God’.</b></div>
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<b><br />Pastors are NURTURERS, not primarily performing tasks<br />but growing people. We nurture by example and by exhortation (in<br />that order, I Peter 5:3; I Timothy 4:11,12; Titus 2:7).</b></div>
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<b><br />ORGANIZING, says Norman Blaikie (The Plight of the<br />Australian Clergy) ranks ‘seventh in importance, third in terms<br />of time spent, seventh in satisfaction, and fifth in terms of<br />effectiveness’ of eight key pastoral roles. (Eighth in both importance<br />and time: social reformer!). Organizing, he says, is the role<br />that causes clergy the greatest frustration. Astute pastors are<br />constantly looking for administrators: is someone about to retire<br />who could help – even without cost to the church?</b></div>
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<b><br />PRAYER, preaching and planning are three key clergy<br />roles. When Moses’ father-in-law told him he was killing himself,<br />he suggested three priorities: teaching the Lord’s statutes, intercession,<br />and appointing co-judges. Jesus, too, was a teacher, a person<br />of prayer, and delegated ministry very early to his disciples.<br />After a social welfare foulup, the apostles appointed special<br />helpers so they could be devoted to prayer and the ministry of<br />the Word. These remain the top three priorities for spiritual<br />leaders. In Spirituality for Ministry, Urban T. Holmes says prayer<br />is to spirituality as eating is to hunger. Prayer, he says, is<br />more than a ‘wish-list’. The deepest prayer involves contemplation<br />(‘knowing ourselves in order that we might know God so that we<br />might know ourselves’) and ‘coinherence’ (bearing in God’s presence<br />the pain of those we serve). Henri Nouwen in Reaching Out wrote,<br />‘Without the Bible, without silent time and without someone to<br />direct us, finding our way to God is very hard and practically<br />impossible’. Most clergy confess to reading the Bible for sermon-ideas<br />or clarification of dogma rather than ‘praying the Bible’.</b></div>
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<b><br />Good PREACHING – by itself – will not grow a church<br />anymore, but bad preaching will certainly empty it! The era of<br />preaching is by no means over – I believe it never will be. In<br />a better-educated church a declamatory style ought to give way<br />to what John Claypool (The Preaching Event) calls ‘confessional’<br />preaching. Good preaching is evangelical (people won’t follow<br />an uncertain sound) and the best method, I believe, is expository.<br />However, as Alfred North Whitehead perceptively stated, ‘religions<br />commit suicide when they find their inspiration in their dogmas’.<br />Christianity is essentially relational, so preaching must ‘relate’<br />too. Some clergy seem to believe they ‘supply religion’ to people<br />in their homilies. A once-a-week sermon is a very thin diet for<br />a growing Christian: many people ‘attend Church’ regularly but<br />can’t say what God is doing in their lives. There ought to be<br />bookstalls, audio- book- and video-libraries, printed sermon outlines,<br />study-guides, etc., to supplement the spoken word. And you can<br />pick a preacher who isn’t doing careful study and reflection in<br />the first three minutes. Our people deserve better. An hour in<br />the study for each minute in the pulpit was Fosdick’s suggestion!</b></div>
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<b><br />Good leaders are good PLANNERS. If we fail to plan<br />we plan to fail: to make no plans is a plan in itself. Planning<br />‘clothes our dreams’. Good planners know their goal, think backwards<br />by writing down the steps needed to accomplish that goal, working<br />out the time, money, and effort needed to complete each step,<br />scheduling dates when each step takes place.</b></div>
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<b><br />Pastors ought to be well QUALIFIED for their calling.<br />What does this mean? Academic qualifications are important (Moses<br />and Paul were both highly educated), particularly if our church-people<br />are getting a better education these days. However, spiritual<br />and moral attributes dominate the lists in the pastoral epistles<br />(I Timothy 3:1-3, Titus 1:5-9, 2:1-15). Truly great pastors are<br />stretching themselves theologically; they do short courses in<br />the social and management sciences; they’re reading widely in<br />many secular fields. But above all they are striving for righteousness,<br />godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness, running their<br />best in the race of faith (1 Timothy 6:11,12).</b></div>
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<b><br />RELAX! All the great leaders in Scripture spent a<br />disproportionate amount of their lives in deserts. ‘Stress’ (in<br />physics) is the impacting of outside forces on a body distorting<br />it. Psychologically, it results from trying to do too much, living<br />in the fast lane. ‘Burnout’ results from a combination of idealism<br />+ helping others sacrifically + vulnerability to excessive demands<br />– fatigue and frustration. It’s ‘compassion fatigue’. You’re not<br />meant to work harder than your Creator: take a day off each week<br />religiously. Develop hobbies. I met a pastor who goes skydiving<br />(‘you don’t think about anything else doing that!’), another makes<br />stained glass objects, another joined the Country Fire Authority<br />(‘putting out other kinds of fires!’), another restores old furniture.<br />Others read a novel, play golf, go to a movie. Take a sabbatical<br />after six or seven years, and insist your leaders ‘rest’ after<br />six years in office (write that into your constitution). Every<br />day ‘waste time with God’ as Sheila Cassidy suggests (Prayer for<br />Pilgrims). You spend time helping clients, parishioners; you give<br />time to those whom you love. Someone said: ‘We tend to worship<br />our work, to work at our play, and to play at our worship…’</b></div>
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<b><br />Church STRUCTURE should reflect priorities. If worship<br />(all we do, gathered and scattered, to the praise of our God)<br />community (enhancing, Christianly, the lives of others), formation<br />(the process by which the Spirit of God applies the Word of God<br />to the heart and mind of the child of God so that he/she might<br />become like the Son of God) and mission (everything we do in the<br />world – evangelism, acts of mercy and justice) are the only purposes<br />of the church (and they are), then most of our time should be<br />devoted to these. Finance, administration, music, buildings, special<br />interest groups, and constitutions are means to those ends. The<br />degree to which church organizations devote time and energy to<br />means rather than ends is the degree to which that church is dying!<br />That is, most committee-time should be spent discovering ways<br />to enhance worship, fellowship, formation and mission, not merely<br />turning the wheels of the church-as-organization.</b></div>
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<b><br />SINCERITY, n., freedom from pretence or deceit; honesty;<br />genuineness. When leading worship, the pastor, too, genuinely<br />worships (doesn’t shuffle papers, peer over the hymn book to check<br />who’s not there etc.). Prayers are from the heart, whether read<br />or extempore. Pastors love evangelism, and don’t merely issue<br />exhortations about it. (Recent surveys among evangelical pastors<br />tell us they believe evangelism is very important, but they don’t<br />see themselves as taking primary responsibility for it!). Every<br />letter, phone call, visit, committee meeting is an opportunity<br />for the sincere pastor to move people a little further into the<br />Kingdom.</b></div>
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<b><br />THEOLOGY. Ordination for ministry (for every Christian)<br />is a gift from God: given, I believe at baptism. The whole church<br />is pastoral, priestly, prophetic. Ordination for pastoral/priestly/prophetic<br />leadership, is a special gift to the church. Theologies of ministry<br />and ordination vary, but * it’s a ministry of the Word, so pastor-teachers<br />will daily soak their minds and hearts in Scripture; * the preached<br />Word is Christ’s Word, more than mere human words.</b></div>
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<b><br />Managing TIME and volunteers are clergy’s two key<br />hassles. James Stewart (Heralds of God) writes: ‘Beware the professional<br />busy-ness which is slackness in disguise. The trouble is we may<br />even succeed in deceiving ourselves. Our diary is crowded. Meetings,<br />discussions, interviews, committees, throng the hectic page. We<br />are driven here, there, everywhere by the whirling machinery of<br />good works. We become all things to all people. Laziness? The<br />word, we protest, is not in our vocabulary. In all this unending<br />tyranny of routine the central things are sacrificed or carried<br />through inadequately…’</b></div>
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<b><br />UNDERSTANDING people and groups (psychology and social<br />psychology) can be learned, to some extent. More and more pastors<br />are buying cheap ‘remainders’ to keep abreast of insights into<br />these fields. One example: in any group committed to an ideology<br />(eg. every church), people will range across a spectrum from radicals,<br />through progressives, conservatives, to traditionalists. Radicals<br />want to change everything, progressives many things, conservatives<br />some things, traditionalists nothing. Radicals are angry (concerned<br />for justice as impersonal structures rip off the poor); traditionalists<br />are fearful (with a great emotional investment in the status quo,<br />so ‘law and order’ is their catchcry). Prophets (eg. Jesus with<br />the pharisees) are always radical, priests are traditionalist,<br />passing on a tradition (cf. Jesus’ teaching about the law). Incidentally,<br />if pastors are perceived to be too prophetic or traditionalist,<br />they’re in for trouble with people at the other end! Pastors as<br />change-agents will note that change cannot be commended by people<br />two removes away. For example, conservatives don’t listen to radicals,<br />but may be persuaded by a progressive.</b></div>
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<b><br />Pastors of dynamic churches are VISIONARY: they ‘envision’<br />a certain shape for their church. I heard an effective leader<br />tell a pastors’ conference: ‘Figure out what the big idea is and<br />give your life to it!’ Expect great things from God; attempt great<br />things for God (Carey). These pastors are dreaming dreams about<br />all sorts of outreach ministries. Knowing that ‘80% is full’,<br />they’re weighing options: shall we extend (both buildings and<br />parking), relocate, multiply Sunday services, plant a daughter-church?<br />(They have an option to buy all the properties surrounding the<br />church’s). They’re constantly inventing theoretical structures<br />for their church’s government: how can we operate with more people-ownership<br />of our goals, but with fewer people-hours in administration?</b></div>
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<b><br />Pastors differ as to whether VISITATION is a bane<br />or blessing. We can all learn to visit from love of sheep rather<br />than from the tyranny of obligation (I visit you, so you come<br />to my church). Tom Allen (The Face of My Parish) says: ‘Unless<br />our visitation is truly pastoral it is irrelevant. There is little<br />virtue in seeing every member of our congregation once a year<br />if our visit is spent in amiable conversation. It may raise us<br />in the esteem of our people. But assuredly it is distracting us<br />from the work of God’.</b></div>
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<b><br />The management of VOLUNTEERS is the subject of burgeoning<br />literature. Volunteers serve without financial remuneration. They<br />are committed to a cause, desire to meet a challenge, wish to<br />contribute to the well-being of others, have some spare time,<br />and enjoy the gratification of a job well done. The theory that<br />if you give someone a job so they’ll become active in the church<br />generally isn’t true. The best way to select volunteers is not<br />‘from the floor’, but through the careful work of a nominating<br />committee. One expert says ‘You don’t elect the best people, you<br />pick them’. And you don’t put people on committees simply to fill<br />a quota or membership requirement. Volunteers need to feel they’re<br />both doing something useful, and participating in an opportunity<br />for self-growth. They need recognition and appreciation, training,<br />involvement in the planning and setting of goals, development<br />of team-spirit, delegation of responsibilities, and evaluative<br />procedures.</b></div>
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<b><br />We pastors need special WISDOM (Ephesians 1:17, James<br />1:5) for living a good and humble life (James 3:13), and for counseling<br />and instructing others (Colossians 3:16). More conflicts would<br />see ‘win-win resolutions’ if we were wiser. Pastors, don’t move<br />too far or fast until you’ve developed trust. Don’t share your<br />dreams, visions and goals too early: those attracted to the church<br />by a previous pastor’s aspirations will misinterpret your enthusiasm.<br />Public anger or rebuke by a pastor is usually counter-productive.<br />Even secular psychologies are now counseling self-control rather<br />than ‘letting it all hang out’. Listen to feeling-tones, hidden<br />agendas, and past hurts when people react irrationally: as an<br />authority-figure, you’ll sometimes be ‘dumped on’ (counselors<br />call it ‘transference’).</b></div>
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<b><br />WORSHIP – the individual and the gathered community<br />serving the Lord – is the essence of all we do. To what extent<br />would you describe your ‘worship services’ as celebration? Sometimes<br />they’re more like funerals than wedding-feasts! How often are<br />we ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’ before our God?</b></div>
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<b><br />Healthy pastors and churches promote XENOPHILIA (love<br />of other or unlike persons) and don’t suffer from XANTHISM (a<br />disease which yellows the skin)! You draw the implications!</b></div>
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<b><br />YOURSELF. Pastoral ministry sometimes attracts maladjusted<br />persons – the narcissist (others’ admiration and dependence feeds<br />their self-image); the ‘over-generous’ (kind and reassuring, but<br />whose chronic anxiety is alleviated by being oversympathetic,<br />overprotective, too willing to give to others – particularly ‘clinging<br />vine’ types); the autocratic (power-oriented, needing docile followers<br />giving obedience, respect and maybe flattery). Pastors are the<br />last professionals to visit members of the opposite sex alone<br />in their homes, so these three groups are ripe for seduction.</b></div>
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<b><br />Pastor, you’re not perfect, you’re not always a hero<br />or a mature sophisticate! Watch your self (Acts 20:28, I Timothy<br />4:16). ‘Gold, glory, girls’ are three of the ‘fiery darts’ the<br />devil aims at under- (or over-) developed egos.</b></div>
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<b><br />Do you and your spouse plan regular communication-times?<br />One method: Set aside an hour; pray, then write feelings down<br />for 10 minutes; exchange papers, and go off alone to read each<br />other’s; after 15 minutes, discuss. Four rules: (1) don’t defend<br />behaviour the other finds objectionable; (2) don’t attack verbally;<br />(3) don’t argue about the factuality of what the other has said;<br />(4) if there are heated statements, don’t react heatedly: repeat<br />back the essence of what the other has said to try to understand<br />it.</b></div>
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<b><br />It’s fine to be ZEALOUS says Paul (Galatians 4:18)<br />‘so long as the purpose is good’. Spending the one short life<br />you’re given caring for people in churches is a good purpose,<br />it’s hard, glorious work, and the rewards are out of this world!</b></div>
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<b><br /><i>Therefore to thee it was given </i></b></div>
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<b><i>Many to save with thyself; </i></b></div>
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<b><i>And at the end of thy day, </i></b></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.6em;"><i>O faithful shepherd! to come</i></b></div>
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<b><i>Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.</i></b></div>
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<br /><span style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold;">– Matthew Arnold, </span><i><b>Rugby Chapel</b></i><span style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold;">.</span></div>
Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-61781179362077769712016-05-18T02:19:00.001-07:002016-05-18T02:19:06.712-07:00<div style="line-height: 16.0pt;">
<strong><u><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">JOHN CLAYPOOL: a tribute<o:p></o:p></span></u></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Here’s a miscellany of stuff about the best
(in my view) English-language ‘writing preacher’ / ‘preaching writer’ in the
latter half of the 20th Century.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Unfortunately he’s not well known outside
progressive mainline circles in the U.S. (conversely W E Sangster isn’t
well-known in the U.S.). Pity.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">~~~</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">JOHN CLAYPOOL</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Once a month, while pastoring a busy church in
the 1970s/1980s, I'd receive John Claypool's printed sermons in the mail.
Invariably the rest of the morning was spent devouring them. He was - still is
– the best 'writing preacher' I've ever read. If there is one spot on this
planet where I'd choose to spend a six-month study-sabbatical, it would be in a
quiet room at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, reading
their collection of his sermons.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">John Claypool didn't fit easily into the
conservative milieu of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was regarded with
some suspicion as one of those 'Moderates' or 'Cooperatives' who inhabited the
cutting edge of theological enquiry and socio-political issues - especially
racism.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">John Claypool was ordained to the Baptist
ministry in 1953 and pastored five Southern Baptist churches – in Kentucky,
Tennessee, Texas, and Mississippi. Tiring eventually of the hard-line fundamentalism
of his denomination, he left, and was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1986,
ministering as Rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham, Alabama,
for nearly fourteen years. He retired from full-time parish ministry in 2000
and then served as Professor of Preaching at McAfee School of Theology, Mercer
University in Atlanta, Georgia.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Why 'writing preacher'? I've met John
Claypool, and heard him preach. His preaching-style was thoughtful, and his
vocal presentation a bit 'dreamy'. But his words and ideas-about-ideas, if you
hung in there, were often mind-blowing.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">But John Claypool was not simply an
intellectual. His brilliant book</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></b></span><em><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Preaching Event</span></b></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></b></span><strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">(the 1979 Lyman Beecher Lectures
at Yale Divinity School) discusses the what, why, how and when of preaching.
The preacher, he says, is a reconciler, who seeks to re-establish trust at the
deepest level. We are 'gift-givers': too often preaching can fulfil our own
needs for love and status. We are witnesses: making available our own
grapplings with woundedness to help others in their pain and grief.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Claypool approves of P. T. Forsyth's
distinction in his 1907 Beecher Lectures, between 'oratory' and Christian
preaching. The orator's goal is to “[get] people to do certain things to
motivate individuals and arouse them to act in a certain way. However the goal
of the Christian preacher is very different - it's to facilitate a spirit of
openness, trust, at-one-ment between the creature and Creator. How was/is this
trust broken? Through human beings' suspicions about God's love for them. How
is it restored? Ultimately, as John Killinger once expressed it: 'Jesus was
God's answer to the problem of a bad reputation.” And, Claypool adds, the
miracle of the Easter event is central here. Easter is all about “the patience
and mercy of a God who would still have hope for the kind of creatures who had
treated his only begotten Son that way. Three days after human beings killed
him in cold blood, the word was out, not only that he was alive again, but that
he was saying ‘Let's keep on keeping on. Let's get back to the task of
dispelling suspicion and reconciling the world back to the Father’.”</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Christian preacher thus has an awesome
task to perform. It's not simply about moving people around at the level of
behavior, but participating in "the miracle of primal
reconciliation".</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">His magnificent conclusion: “Why do we preach?
Not to get something for ourselves, out of need-love, but to give something of
ourselves in gift-love. How do we do it? By making available as witnesses what
we have learned from our own woundedness for the woundedness of others. When do
we do this? At times and in ways that are appropriate to another's growing as a
farmer nurtures a crop. To do this is to participate in the extension of the
gospel into our own time. Could anything be a higher human joy? I think not!
Let us go, then, under the mercy, with the great story, and in abundant hope.”</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">~~~</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">In a memorable interview with Claypool
conducted by</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></b></span><em><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The
Wittenburg Door</span></b></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></b></span><strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">magazine
(April/May 1978) he revealed the core issues which made him the person he
turned out to be. His spiritual awakening happened in College when he read C S
Lewis, and with a “real flash of insight saw that Jesus was the clue to
ultimate reality”.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Why did he enter pastoral ministry? Among
other reasons, to ‘earn the blessing of his mother'. When this realization hit
him later, he developed a 'confessional' preaching style - which, he would tell
students in his seminary classes, can be a subtle form of exhibitionism if
you're not careful.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">He had a close friendship with Martin Luther
King Jr. (a 'first-rate thinker') and was active in the civil rights movement.
Once he was in a coffee shop with Dr. King, and a journalist took a picture of
the two of them. When that photo appeared in</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></b></span><em><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">the Louisville Courier</span></b></em><strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">, he and
his family received hate calls and mail, crosses were burned in their front
yard, and his children were threatened. When he championed the idea that a
Nigerian seminary student ('that our missionaries had converted') should be
permitted to attend their church "a lot of people left and the money
dropped off".</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Another significant event was his surprising
resignation - after only 5 years – from a church of 5,000 and 11 staff,
to go to a much smaller pastorate. Why would a gifted preacher step down the
rungs of the 'success ladder' and do such a thing? Simple: he was tired, and
for him "fatigue became a moral category". He was challenged by Gail
Sheehy's book</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></b></span><em><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Passages</span></b></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></b></span><strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">about the dangers in mid-life of
over-investment in work and under-investment in relationships. Conducting
hundreds of funerals of people he didn't know (and hoping he pronounced the
names right) became wearing. “A major mistake,” he confessed later, was that “I
didn't call in the community. I acted in isolation: there were surely many
options in any situation that address the panicky fear of a tired person”. So
he negotiated a paid month off before starting in his new pastoral role, to
study at Yale Divinity School. Slowly he was re-invigorated, and learned that
“God is the God of fertilizer: God can take dung and bring things of beauty out
of it”.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">John Claypool's most 'wounding' event was the
death of their little eight-year-old girl, Laura Lue,</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></b></span><strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">from acute leukemia. She
lived only eighteen months and ten days after that first shocking news was
given to her parents.</span></strong><em><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Tracks of a Fellow Struggler</span></b></em><strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">, his
first and probably his best-known book, comprises sermons he preached during
that time, together with a final chapter 'Learning to Handle Grief', preached
three and a half years later. It's the book I've shared with many parishioners
who've had to journey 'into the valley of the shadow of death' with a loved
one.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">He often told this story about his way of
handling grief:</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">"We did not have a washing machine during
World War II and gas was rationed. It was going to be a real challenge. At
about that time one of my father's younger business associates was suddenly
drafted into the service. My father offered to let them store their furniture
in our basement while he had to be away. Well it so happened that they had an
old grey Bendix washing machine. And as they were moving in, my father
suggested that maybe they would let us use their machine in lieu of our giving
them some storage space.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">"The next question became, who is going
to become the wash person in the family?</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">"In that mysterious way that families
assign roles, I became the wash person at the grand old age of eleven! For the
next four years, I had a ritual every Tuesday and every Friday. I would come
home from school, gather up the wash, take it down into the basement, fill the
old Bendix with water, put in the clothes, add some soap, and then watch as the
plunger would make all kinds of configurations of suds. It had a hand roller to
wring the washed clothes out and I can remember as a child trying to stick my
finger between those rollers to see how far I could go without it cutting off
circulation. In other words, I became affectionately bonded to that old
mechanism in those four years.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">"When the war was over my father's friend
came back. One day when I was at school, a truck came to our basement, took out
all of their things, including the washing machine, and nobody had told me. It
was a Tuesday. I came home and gathered up the clothes, went down in the
basement, and to this day I can remember my sense of horror as I saw that empty
space where the old Bendix had been. I put down the clothes and rushed back
upstairs and announced loudly, 'We have been robbed! Somebody stole our washing
machine!'</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">"My mother, who was not only a musician
but also a wise human being, sat me down and said, 'John, you've obviously
forgotten how that machine got to be in our basement. It never did belong to
us. That we ever got to use it was incredibly good fortune.' And then she said,
'If something is a possession and it's taken away, you have a right to be
angry. But if something is a gift and it's taken, you use that moment to give
thanks that it was ever given at all.'</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">"That was the memory that resurfaced for
me the night Laura Lou died. [That little girl] was in my life the way the old
Bendix washing machine was in our basement and I heard the voice of my mother
say, 'If it is a gift and it's taken, you use that occasion to give thanks that
it was ever given at all.' And that memory helped me to decide that night to
take the road of gratitude out of the valley of sorrow. The Twenty-third Psalm
speaks of walking through the valley of the shadow of grief. I would suggest to
you that the road of gratitude is the best way I know not to get bogged down in
our grief but to make our way through it.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.0pt;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">"Life is gift, birth is windfall, and
all, all is grace. And I give you the gift that was given to me and I pray that
somehow the sense of life as gift will enable you to make a brave and hopeful
journey, not just into the valley of the shadow of bereavement, but through
that valley to the light on the other side. May your journey be a brave one.
Amen.”</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">~~</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">John Claypool wrote eleven books, and in 2008
a new collection of his sermons on the twelve disciples, entitled</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></b></span><em><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The First to Follow</span></b></em><strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">, edited
by his widow Ann Wilkinson Claypool, was published.</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.0pt;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">He died on September 3, 2005 aged 74. In a
eulogy Kirby Godsey, President of Mercer University, said, "John Claypool
touched our souls. Amidst our wounds and our triumphs, his voice became for us
the voice of God – a special measure of grace and with unfettered gentleness.
John’s presence in our lives and our histories is more than mere death can ever
take away. He will continue to walk among us, giving light to our steps, wisdom
for our hearts, and hope to our souls. John Claypool’s life and presence and
teaching were profound and enduring gifts to the entire Mercer University
community.”</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">~~</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.0pt;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Many of John Claypool's sermons are available
online, including a few on our John Mark Ministries website (jmm.org.au). I
have borrowed some ideas from his notable homily on Ananias and Sapphira and
adapted them here: </span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.0pt;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">http://www.jmm.org.au/articles/2400.htm . (<u>Note</u>: 19/5/2016: At present this article - with hundreds of others - has gone missing from the John Mark Ministries website. Mystery.</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.0pt;">
<strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Rowland Croucher</span></strong><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-65900098379936770402011-10-09T02:45:00.000-07:002011-10-09T02:45:05.686-07:00Adele Gonzales, Life is Hard but God is Good (Orbis, 2011)<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 22px; line-height: 25px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"> Here’s a brilliant, ‘progressive Catholic’ attempt to ‘present the best theodicy possible.’ Adele Gonzales knows about suffering – via losing her beloved father unexpectedly when she was 14; soon afterwards she was shipped to Florida from Cuba without any English language skills; and she’s suffered emotionally, spiritually, physically (rheumatoid arthritis) - and ecclesiastically in a conservative Catholic church - </span><span style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;">in many ways…</span><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Her vocation includes leading seminars and doing personal spiritual direction with other sufferers. Early in her career, when confronted in a meeting at which she was speaking on all this with a question about God, evil and suffering, her instinctive response was ‘Shit happens!’. Fortunately a wise bishop who was present mollified the shock-and-awe in the place by agreeing with her!<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Back to losing her father: because he was a Mason she was told he went to hell: fortunately a wise and caring priest convinced her otherwise, via the story of the Prodigal’s father…<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Why 9/11? Well, don’t forget ‘we Americans experienced on our own soil the terror, despair, and powerlessness other nations live with every day’. And Hurricane Katrina? ‘The entire world saw firsthand the poverty and misery of the black community… [and witnessed] city leaders blaming state leaders who in turn blamed the federal government’. <span> </span>How does one make sense of the Haitian earthquake? God’s vindictiveness over their voodoo superstitions? No. Haitians – 80% of whom are Catholic – believe God is good, even though life is hard: <i>La vie est dure, mais Dieu est bon.</i><o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><i><br />
</i></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Who is this God?<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am in the air you breathe;<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am in the wind you ride;<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am in the song you sing;<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am in the tears you cry.<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am living water; <o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am dance and song;<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am pain and sorrow; <o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am fire and love.<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am the one living God:<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I am the fountain of life;<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>I have come to bring you peace;<o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You are unique and you are mine…<br />
</span></i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
How does God best do that? By becoming incarnate in Jesus and suffering with us and for us. (Versus the traditional nonsense about God being ‘impassible’ – not able to experience suffering). <o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>But yes, evil is always the greatest obstacle to believing and trusting in God. As theologian Hans Kung wrote: suffering or evil is the ‘acid test’ for every religion. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Christians have tried to theologize it all via the Augustinian notion of original sin. But Sister Gonzales would prefer to say that though evil and suffering are real, as Anne Frank writes in her diary while hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam: ‘Everyone has inside of them a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love!’<o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span>·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Structures and institutions? ‘Sometimes I sense darkness in the room, and have to leave immediately…’ Their crimes against the common good go beyond the accumulation of the sins of their members… (Example: those who manage the institutions of the church and its finances are mostly removed from the Church’s pastoral life). <o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span>·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hell? It’s not so much about fire and heat as about the absence of God.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span>·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A great contemporary evil? ‘Noise’: ‘I don’t blame Apple, or Sony, or any other corporation for the noise, but I think the evil of greed lurking in the background has a lot to do with it.’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span>·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">War? As Pope John Paul II said: ‘War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity’. But we didn’t listen, and invaded Iraq anyway… <o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span>·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Unforgiveness (to an angry divorced woman): <span> </span>‘This jerk made your life miserable for ten years and now you’re giving him fifteen more free of charge so that he can continue to ruin your life?’ Result: an instant ‘aha’ experience and the woman decided to get counseling. Forgiveness takes place in 5 different contexts – Accepting God’s forgiveness, forgiving ourselves, asking to be forgiven, forgiving God, forgiving others (people, communities, institutions)…<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Gonzales’ conclusions: <o:p></o:p></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span>·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">‘It may sound crazy, but I believe that without the energies of love, pain, anger, and many others, creation would be less than it was meant to be. Growth and development involve change, and change is always painful and frustrating. [So let us] put our energies… into positive actions that could lead to healing, rather than in wasting them in hatred, anger, and revenge.’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span>·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">‘I know I am a better person because of… evil. My father’s sudden death, our exile from our country of birth, my mother’s blindness, my little cousin’s leukemia, the struggles to finish graduate school, my many illnesses since I was young… are experiences which have made me the person I am today. I believe that the greatest good that has come out of these “evils” is the ability to empathize with someone else’s pain and to walk in their shoes, to be a woman of hope, to enjoy and share a great sense of humor, and to believe without any doubt in the goodness of God and of the universe…’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span>·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yes there’s mystery here: and by definition a mystery is unknowable. But as an eastern spiritual master put it, wisely: ‘Pain is part of living, but suffering is optional’. Francis of Assisi endured a lot of physical, emotional and spiritual pain, but he was joyful. William O’Malley: ‘The sufferings of Christ did not cease when Jesus died. Christ still suffers when we suffer, and – we trust – our suffering is redemptive just as his sufferings were redemptive’<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span>·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Finally, Richard Rohr: ‘If you do not transform your pain, you will surely transmit it to those around you and even to the next generation’. <br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Rowland Croucher<br />
September 2011<br />
jmm.aaa.net.au</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-61407599470731476652011-08-18T17:13:00.000-07:002011-08-23T00:13:38.517-07:00The Gist of Richard Rohr, Falling Upward<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"></span></b><br />
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<b>Richard Rohr, <em>Falling Upward</em>, Jossey-Bass, 2011</b><br />
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<b><em>Falling Upward</em> is, in my view, his ‘best yet’ – with more quotable quotes than any of his previous writings.</b><br />
<br />
<b>Here I’ll simply list a pot-pourri of his most memorable sayings, in three sections:</b><br />
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<ul><li><b>The first half of life</b></li>
<li><b>The second half of life, and</b></li>
<li><b>The age-old principles for moving from one mode of doing life to the other...</b></li>
</ul><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>1. THE FIRST HALF OF LIFE</b><br />
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<b>Cultures before the postmodern era valued law, tradition, custom, authority, boundaries and a clear morality... (a lever, with a place to stand – Archimedes). These gave us the necessary security, continuity, predictability, impulse control and ego structure we need before the chaos of real life shows up. Healthily conservative people tend to grow up more naturally and more happily than those who receive only free-form, ‘build it yourself’ worldviews. Law and tradition are necessary in any spiritual system both to reveal and to limit our basic egocentricity, and to make at least some community, family, and marriage possible.</b><br />
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<b>Cesar Milan, the ‘dog whisperer’ says dogs are happier when they live within very clear limits and boundaries.</b><br />
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<b>The Iroquois Nation asked ‘What would be good for the next seven generations?’</b><br />
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<b>... Climbing the ladder of ‘success’: building a tower of self-importance – a personal ‘salvation project’ (Thomas Merton).</b><br />
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<b>In one sense, as Jesus said, unless we become like a little child, we will not enter the Kingdom of God (Mt 18:3). He says this in response to the egotistic and ambitious question of the apostles, who were asking him ‘Who is the greatest?’</b><br />
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<b>There’s the danger of staying on the same path – even if it’s going nowhere. This is the tragic path of many elderly people who have not become actual elders, probably because they were never eldered or mentored themselves.</b><br />
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<b>Those who whine about parents and authority for too long invariably remain or become narcissists... And unfortunately some stay narcissistic until old age – they never grow up... and it saddens me when old folks are still full of themselves and their absolute opinions about everything... [So] do not waste a moment of time lamenting poor parenting.</b><br />
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<b>The first journey is always about externals, formulas, superficial emotions, flags and badges, correct rituals, Bible quotes, and special clothing, all of which largely substitute for actual spirituality (Mt 23:13-32). But being preoccupied with titles, perks, and religious externals... law, ritual and priestcraft... becomes a compulsive substitute of actual divine encounter or honest relationship. This does not bode well for the future of any church or society.</b><br />
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<b>Unfortunately, most Christians are not well trained at holding opposites for very long, or living with what could be very creative tension. First naivete is the earnest and dangerous innocence we sometimes admire in young zealots, but it is also the reason we should not elect them or follow them as leaders</b><br />
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<b>Notice how no American president can fully admit that his war or his policies were wrong – ever. Popes and clergy have not been known for apologizing.</b><br />
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<b>Almost all groups and institutions are first-half-of-life structures. Don’t expect or demand from groups what they usually cannot give. Doing so will make you needlessly angry and reactionary. They must and will be concerned with identity, boundaries, self-maintenance, self-perpetuation and self-congratulation. That is their nature and purpose. And the religious groups formed in the name of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed mostly define themselves by exclusion and ‘againstness’ because throughout history they have been asking first-half-of-life questions. (Remember that the first half of life defines itself by ‘no’ and the second half of life by ‘yes’). Nothing is going to change in history as long as most people are merely dualistic, either-or thinkers. </b><br />
<a data-mce-href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/rohr.jpg" href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/rohr.jpg"><b><img alt="" class="alignright size-full wp-image-27834" data-mce-src="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/rohr.jpg" height="260" src="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/rohr.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; float: right;" title="rohr" width="194" /></b></a><br />
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<b>2. THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE</b><br />
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<b>We discover the ladder of success is leaning against the wrong wall.</b><br />
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<b>Falling upward is a secret of the soul not known by talking or proving but by risking.</b><br />
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<b>Finding home and returning there...</b><br />
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<b>We must let our ego-structure go and move beyond it.</b><br />
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<b>Jesus the Jew criticizes his own religion the most, but never leaves it.</b><br />
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<b>Pope John XXIII’s motto: ‘In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things, charity’.</b><br />
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<b>Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the dark and light side of things.</b><br />
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<b>The death of the false self is often the birth of the soul.</b><br />
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<b>Jesus and the Jewish prophets were fully at home with the tragic sense of life. Life, as the biblical tradition makes clear, is both loss and renewal, death and resurrection, chaos and healing at the same time; life seems to be a collision of opposites... Where you stumble and fall, there you find pure gold (Jung). First there is the fall, and then there is the recovery from the fall – and <em>both</em> are the mercy of God (Lady Julian).</b><br />
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<b>You will and must ‘lose’ at something. This is the only way Life-Fate-God-Grace-Mystery can get you to change, let go of your egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey. I wish I could say this was not true, but it is darn near absolute in the spiritual literature of the world. Three of the parables of Jesus are about losing something, searching for it anew with some effort, finding it, and in each case throwing a big party afterwards.</b><br />
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<b>There will always be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand... Many depressed people are [those] who have never taken any risks, never moved outside their comfort zone, never faced necessary suffering, and so their unconscious knows they have never lived – or loved!</b><br />
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<b>Your True Self is who you objectively are from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God, ‘the face you had before you were born,’ as the Zen masters say.</b><br />
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<b>Beyond rational and critical thinking, we need to be called again. This can lead to the discovery of a ‘second naivete,’ which is a return to the joy of our first naivete, but now totally new. Inclusive, and mature thinking (Paul Ricoeur)</b><br />
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<b>Our mature years are characterized by a kind of bright sadness and a sober happiness, if that makes any sense.</b><br />
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<b>By the second half of life, you have learned... that most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image... Think of the cold Grand Inquisitor in <em>The Brothers Karamazov</em>, or the monk who tries to eliminate all humor in <em>The Name of the Rose,</em> or the frowning Koran burners of Florida. Holier-than-thou people usually end up holier than nobody... The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. </b><br />
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<b>First we fall, and then we recover from the fall, and both reveal the mercy of God (Dame Julian).</b><br />
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<b>Great people come to serve, not to be served. It is the twelfth and final and necessary step of the inspired Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Until and unless you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level. By the second half of life you learn to tell the difference between who you really are and how others can mirror that or not. This will keep you from taking either insults or praise too seriously. In the second half of life people have less power to infatuate you, to control you or hurt you.</b><br />
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<b>Mature spirituality has invariably insisted on soul friends, gurus, confessors, mentors, masters, and spiritual directors for individuals, and prophets and truth-tellers for groups and institutions. </b><br />
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<b>3. THE BEST WISDOM GOVERNING THE TRANSITION</b><br />
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<b>The second law of thermodynamics: everything winds down unless some outside force winds it back up.</b><br />
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<b>God hides holiness where only the humble and earnest will find it.</b><br />
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<b>The human ego prefers just about anything to falling or changing or dying.</b><br />
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<b>It is not love but death that makes the world go round (Ernest Becker).</b><br />
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<b>Never forget ‘the way of the wound’ (‘when I am weak then I am strong’ –Paul) is the first step to spiritual growth (Francis, Therese of Lisieux, AA). There is <em>always</em> a wounding, and the great epiphany is that the wound becomes the secret key, even ‘sacred’, a wound that changes one dramatically, which, by the way, is the precise meaning of the wounds of Jesus! [In classical mythology] the hero or heroine finds <em>eros </em>or life energy, and it is more than enough to undo <em>thanatos</em>, the energy of death.</b><br />
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<b>The opposite of rational is not irrational but trans-rational – bigger than the human mind can process (eg. love, death, suffering, God, infinity). ‘People are so afraid of being considered pre-rational that they avoid and deny the very possibility of the trans-rational. Others substitute mere pre-rational emotions for authentic religious experience, which is always trans-rational’ (Ken Wilber)</b><br />
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<b>It’s often when the ego is most deconstructed that we can hear things anew and begin some honest reconstruction.</b><br />
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<b>One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning (Jung).</b><br />
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<b>We need to construct strong wineskins for new wine.</b><br />
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<b>Your shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see. The more you have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, the more shadow work you will need to do... Neither our persona nor our shadow is evil in itself; they just allow us to do evil and not know it. I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then I must watch my reaction to it.</b><br />
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<b>The saint is precisely one who has no ‘I’ to protect or project. His or her ‘I’ is in conscious union with the ‘I AM’ of God.</b><br />
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<b>Democracy is not the best form of government, just the safest (Plato, Jefferson). But a truly wise monarch might be better at getting things done (‘no hate letters please’).</b><br />
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<b>You can’t step more than one level beyond your own consciousness. So those ideas/people much higher/deeper will invariably appear wrong.</b><br />
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<b>Religious people tend to love the past rather than the future or the present.</b><br />
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<b>Prophets don’t care whether you’re ready to hear their message. They say it because it has to be said and is true.</b><br />
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<b>In the ‘muddled middle’ “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” (W B Yeats).</b><br />
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<b>Both God’s conditional love and also God’s unconditional love are found in the same Scriptures, like Deuteronomy and John’s Gospel. The only real biblical promise is that<em>unconditional love will have the last word. </em>Jesus is never upset with sinners (check it out!); he is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners! Organized religion has not been known for its inclusiveness or for being very comfortable with diversity.</b><br />
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<b>The only consistent pattern I can find is that all the books of the Bible seem to agree that <em>somehow God is with us and we are not alone.</em></b><br />
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<b>‘Infantile grandiosity’ (Dr Robert Moore)... recurring Greek <em>hubris.</em> Some even appear to make it to the ‘top’, but there is usually little recognition of the many shoulders they stood on to move there, the many gratuitous circumstances that made it possible for them to arrive there, and sometimes the necks they have stood on to stay there. They ‘gained the whole but lost their soul’ as Jesus put it.</b><br />
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<b>There are finally only two subjects in all of literature and poetry: love and death.</b><br />
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<b>If you accept a punitive notion of God, who punishes or even eternally tortures those who do not love him, then you have an absurd universe where most people on this earth end up being more loving than God.... Jesus touched and healed anybody who asked for it; there were no prerequisites for his healings. Check it out yourself. Why would Jesus’ love be so unconditional while he was in this world, and suddenly become so conditional after death?</b><br />
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<b>The classic spiritual journey always begins elitist and ends egalitarian (Ken Wilber). The ego clearly prefers an economy of merit, where we can divide the world into winners and losers, to any economy of grace, where merit or worthiness loses all meaning.</b><br />
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<b>Either God is for everybody and the divine DNA is somehow in all of creation, or this God is not God by any common definition, or even much of a god at all.</b><br />
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<em><b>Disclosure: I’ve read 8-10 of Richard Rohr’s books, been listening to him on cassette tapes then CDs and at conferences for nearly 30 years, attended his week-long retreat for men in Arizona, lunched with him on the day John Paul II was buried, and entertained him as a friend in our home.</b></em><br />
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<b>Rowland Croucher</b><br />
<br />
<b>August 2011</b><br />
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</strong></div></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"> </span></div></div>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-24401277346372254212011-07-25T01:30:00.000-07:002011-07-26T00:20:16.421-07:00Bishop Gene Robinson: In the Eye of the Storm (2008)<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Bishop Gene Robinson is perhaps the third best-known Episcopal/Anglican bishop around the world (after the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Desmond Tutu): all because he’s been – reluctantly – the ‘Martin Luther’ of a new reformation in the church, advocating equality for glbt people. </span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinj1QbiA01P6HkJOPZj657_5wKfbpS1k7hkDWdSRIldYCDtE7ug8CY2P7_XJL9l50-UpPRXORufiWXtfjxUPSZTlR9a3O_xEk-GHxuq3nFMKBH2bD4p0SzfsTazEsn0Tnv0jTXSg/s1600/180px-Gene_Robinson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinj1QbiA01P6HkJOPZj657_5wKfbpS1k7hkDWdSRIldYCDtE7ug8CY2P7_XJL9l50-UpPRXORufiWXtfjxUPSZTlR9a3O_xEk-GHxuq3nFMKBH2bD4p0SzfsTazEsn0Tnv0jTXSg/s1600/180px-Gene_Robinson.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="mso-cellspacing: 0cm; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; width: 100.0%;"><tbody>
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</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Wikipedia tells us that ‘the existence of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual" target="_blank" title="Homosexual">homosexual</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop" target="_blank" title="Bishop">bishops</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic" target="_blank" title="Roman Catholic">Roman Catholic</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican" target="_blank" title="Anglican">Anglican</a>, and other traditions is a matter of historical record, though never, until recently, considered licit by any of the main Christian denominations. Homosexual activity was engaged in secretly. When it was made public, official response ranged from inaction to expulsion from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Orders" target="_blank" title="Holy Orders">Holy Orders</a>. As far back as the eleventh century, Ralph, Archbishop of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tours" target="_blank" title="Tours">Tours</a> had his lover installed as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Orl%C3%A9ans" target="_blank" title="Bishop of Orléans">Bishop of Orléans</a>, yet neither <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope" target="_blank" title="Pope">Pope</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_II" target="_blank" title="Urban II">Urban II</a>, nor his successor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschal_II" target="_blank" title="Paschal II">Paschal II</a> took action to depose either man.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="mso-cellspacing: 0cm; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; width: 100.0%;"><tbody>
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<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"> <td style="padding: 9.0pt 9.0pt 9.0pt 9.0pt;"><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The article continues: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">It is in contemporary Anglicanism that the issue of homosexuality and its relationship to people in the episcopate has been confronted openly. Indeed, the only large mainstream church to ever consecrate an openly gay bishop who was not celibate has been the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episcopal_Church_in_the_United_States_of_America" target="_blank" title="Episcopal Church in the United States of America">Episcopal Church in the United States of America</a>, a member of the Anglican Communion, which <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consecration" target="_blank" title="Consecration">consecrated</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Robinson" target="_blank" title="Gene Robinson">Gene Robinson</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese" target="_blank" title="Diocese">diocesan</a> bishop of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episcopal_Diocese_of_New_Hampshire" target="_blank" title="Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire">Diocese of New Hampshire</a> in 2003. [1]<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">More from Wikipedia, on Vicki Gene Robinson (born May 29, 1947): ‘[He] went public with his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_identity" target="_blank" title="Sexual identity">sexual identity</a> and divorced in the 1980s. Robinson was elected bishop by the New Hampshire diocese on June 7, 2003, at St. Paul's Church in Concord. Wearing a bullet-proof vest he was consecrated on November 2, 2003 ([and] Retired <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa" target="_blank" title="South Africa"><span style="text-decoration: none;">South African</span></a> Archbishop <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu" target="_blank" title="Desmond Tutu"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Desmond Tutu</span></a> stated that he did not see what "all the fuss" was about’) [2]</span></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">In the Eye of the Storm</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> Gene Robinson’s passionate (but graciously expressed) thesis is that ‘the planets seem to be aligned today’ for the full civil rights of glbt people - a struggle similar to those of the civil rights and feminist movements. He asserts that the way we think about sexual orientation today was unknown in biblical times. He supports sexual abstinence outside of committed relationships, and theologically would be regarded as a ‘moderate conservative’. His God is a God of radical inclusion, who wants to lift up all the oppressed, including women, minorities and the poor. <o:p></o:p></span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">In the Eye of the Storm</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> is a book of Robinson’s favorite homilies, spiced here and there with a few autobiographical details - like his childhood </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">in a poor, uneducated, and deeply Christian family in rural Kentucky where his parents were tenant farmers; his first marriage by which he had two children; his treatment for alcohol dependence (there’s only one sentence about that); and his twenty-year commitment to partner Mark Andrews – about whom we learn almost nothing.</span></b></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">He comes across as a sensitive, warm and forgiving man – traits not always practised by many of his critics – who is utterly committed to the prophetic call to ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God’ (not – as the Prayer Book wrongly states – to ‘love justice [and] to do mercy…’) [3] <o:p></o:p></span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Gay issues are essentially about social justice, and he views acceptance of lgbt people as inevitable. <o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Here are some bits I marked:<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; line-height: 115%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">‘Some estimate that between 40 and 60 percent of Roman Catholic priests are gay’ (18) [4]<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; line-height: 115%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">‘We’ve seen more promiscuity among gay men, not because both men are gay, but because both men are men. Studies of lesbian women show little or no interest in promiscuity’ (41)<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></b></div><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLaHS5TJ8BFz_VrxSugkHHuoXfize3E6mWGhTaHRpzDbqdO0d3WT2XgGcrXzzCi-bLAXOzqNzTjm6EYrX9NEEdecNyOT-FuYFy27qat0htmJeydXQRNqlzbtorOo70WHKID7OUgw/s1600/Robinson+Eye+of+the+Storm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLaHS5TJ8BFz_VrxSugkHHuoXfize3E6mWGhTaHRpzDbqdO0d3WT2XgGcrXzzCi-bLAXOzqNzTjm6EYrX9NEEdecNyOT-FuYFy27qat0htmJeydXQRNqlzbtorOo70WHKID7OUgw/s200/Robinson+Eye+of+the+Storm.jpg" width="133" /></a><br />
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; line-height: 115%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">‘Literally hundreds of rights and protections afforded heterosexual couples at the utterance of “I do” are not available to us. The kinds of protections that became instantly available to Britney Spears – who, on a lark, decided one night in Las Vegas to get married – are not available to Mark and me despite twenty years of love and fidelity’ (48)<o:p></o:p></span></b></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; line-height: 115%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">‘[A Canadian bishop is] being lambasted around the world for blessing the union of two same-gender loving people. He and his people may be wondering why, if we can bless fox hunts and fishing fleets, we cannot bless two people who pledge to love one another in a faithful, monogamous, life-long-intentioned union and who seek the church’s blessing on that holy endeavor’ (98)<o:p></o:p></span></b></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; line-height: 115%;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">‘To many, asking gay folk to return to church is like asking an abused wife to return to her abusive husband’ (99)<o:p></o:p></span></b></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Gene Robinson knows that he will ‘never again be in a “small room.” Because of the high level of media attention, followed by the close scrutiny of those who oppose me, I'm never in a trusting, safe environment where I can let my guard down. Someone is always watching and will use anything I say against me’ (46).<o:p></o:p></span></b></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">I want to echo the heartfelt words from Desmond Tutu’s Foreword: ‘May I wholly inadequately apologize to my sisters and brothers who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered for the cruelty and injustice that you have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of us, your fellow Anglicans; I am sorry. Forgive us for all the pain we have caused you and which we continue to inflict on you. Gene Robinson is a wonderful human being, and I am proud to belong to the same church as he.’ <br />
<br />
[1] Wikipedia article ‘Gay Bishops’<br />
[2] Wikipedia ‘Vicki Gene Robinson’<o:p></o:p></span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[3] p. 125<o:p></o:p></span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[4] Elizabeth Stuart, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chosen: Gay Catholic Priests Tell Their Stories</i>, 1993<o:p></o:p></span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
Shalom!/Salaam!/Pax!<br />
<br />
Rowland Croucher<o:p></o:p></span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/" target="_blank">http://jmm.aaa.net.au</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">July 2011<o:p></o:p></span></b></b></div></div></div></td> </tr>
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</div>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-55990239686658648152011-07-22T02:41:00.000-07:002011-07-22T02:41:38.152-07:00Harvey Cox, The Future of Faith (2009)<h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I have an unusual hobby: I collect generalizations. The scholars who supply them have a magisterial grasp of their subject, and can offer outrageously simple ‘global statements’ without fear of contradiction. This book is full of them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Harvey Cox retired from the Hollis Chair of Divinity at Harvard University in October 2009 (he was the ninth person to hold this prestigious post which, established in 1727, is the oldest endowed professorship in American higher education.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I remember as a theological student reading his The Secular City when it was first published in 1965: and I’m not surprised it’s sold one million copies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">An ordained Baptist minister, Cox’s main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography, theology and spirituality) with a special focus on Latin American liberation theology. In 1900 90% of Christians lived either in Europe or in the US but today 60 percent live in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. Dr Cox writes: ‘Since the vast majority of people in this “new Christendom” are neither white nor well-off, their theological questions center less on the existence or nonexistence of God or the metaphysical nature of Christ than on why poverty and hunger still stalk God’s world. It is little wonder that liberation theology, the most creative theological movement of the twentieth century, did not originate in Marburg or Yale, but in the tar-paper shacks of Brazil and the slums of South Korea.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This readable book is a cross between autobiography and polemics. Cox takes us on a journey through three phases of the evolution of Christianity: the Age of Faith (kiboshed – my word – by Constantine), the Age of Belief and the Age of the Spirit. His sympathies are categorically with the first and last of these, and his vitriol is mostly reserved for institutional and theological fundamentalisms of all kinds. The early churches were vibrant, enthusiastic communities dedicated to ‘following’ Jesus. But in ‘The Age of Belief’ from the fourth to the twentieth centuries, faith became entangled with rituals, liturgies and creeds, orthodox theology mostly replaced personal religion, and a stifling clericalism developed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiWqTt_C1Cky1GbgKDkY9gvxYTo7N7TC4qlZXoVXijT6nTWPuSKwaSlOC4I4wIcQD6UOXnQ67WbiuMqXGuQN8hyQNikO5ekSRoXC_Fn7TDfPUkJWtuY0Ao3NkzFJABco9mUtL7BQ/s1600/future+of+faith" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiWqTt_C1Cky1GbgKDkY9gvxYTo7N7TC4qlZXoVXijT6nTWPuSKwaSlOC4I4wIcQD6UOXnQ67WbiuMqXGuQN8hyQNikO5ekSRoXC_Fn7TDfPUkJWtuY0Ao3NkzFJABco9mUtL7BQ/s1600/future+of+faith" /></a></div><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So the gist of The Future of Faith can be summarized thus: the church world-wide is in good shape when it jettisons at least three concomitants of ‘Constantinianism’ – institutionalism, hierarchicalism, and creedalism. These three destructive tendencies are not compatible with the church as a missional community; they destroy faith (as distinct from ‘beliefs’). Cox reckons the Pentecostals in Latin America (those influenced by the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, and liberation theology rather than Western notions of ‘prosperity theology’) point the way to a dynamic ‘Age of the Spirit’. One of the key secrets of these ecclesial communities’ social justice ministries? They make lists – lists of people in their neighbourhood who need help. And – importantly - they and the Catholic ‘base ecclesial communities’ are not imprisoned within a fundamentalism of ‘Jesus as personal savior whose mission [is] to rescue them from a sinful world…’<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying. The spiritual, communal and justice-seeking dimensions of Christianity are now its leading edge as the twenty-first century hurtles forward, and this change is taking place along with similar reformations in other world religions’ (p.212). So the healthiest Christianity emphasizes faith as a way of life (rather than the fundamentalists’ doctrinal boxes we must tick), respectful inter-faith dialogue, and ‘deeds not creeds’ (his quote from conservative pastor Rick Warren).<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Christianity came to birth in the midst of cultural change — it is a movement born to travel – it takes on life with each succeeding cultural transition. But for this to happen again, some old wine-skins must be discarded, and the incubus of a self serving and discredited picture of Christian origins must be set aside’ (p.184). ‘We stand on the beautiful threshold of a new chapter in the Christian story – Christians on five continents are shaking off the residues of the second phase (the Age of Belief) and negotiating a bumpy transition into a fresh era for which a name has not yet been coined. I would like to call it the Age of the Spirit’ (p.8).<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For Cox, faith starts with awe, not propositions. ‘It begins with a mixture of wonder and fear all human beings feel toward the mystery that envelops us. But awe becomes faith only as it ascribes some meaning to that mystery.’ (Interesting that. As I pondered where my Christian faith began, I have to say it wasn’t awe – though that came later – but a commitment to the person and teaching of Jesus…).<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Harvey Cox would probably not categorize himself a ‘theological progressive’, but critiques that movement as he does all others. (You’ll be hard-pressed to find here any reference to Spong or Crossan: Borg, I think, is mentioned just once – or N T Wright or John Stott for that matter. And interestingly he doesn’t cite any websites in his references/ endnotes).<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Here’s the best quote in the book:<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘I have often seen what damage both fundamentalist literalism and historical-critical skepticism can do to otherwise thoughtful and serious people. Take the critical specialists with a grain of salt: they are not experts in what the Bible means for today. And the fundamentalists? Their literalistic reading is a modern and questionable one.’ (p. 168)<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This readable book is a real page-turner! You can get the paperback edition post-free from the Book Depository for AUD $14-78: excellent value.<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">~~<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Rowland Croucher<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/" target="_blank"><span style="color: windowtext;">http://jmm.aaa.net.au</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">July 2011<o:p></o:p></span></span></h1><h1><span style="color: windowtext;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></h1>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-79692154158051780222011-07-11T03:55:00.000-07:002011-07-11T03:55:50.633-07:00Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso (1937)<div align="center" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 25px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 25px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 25px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 25px;"><img border="1" height="734" src="http://www.inminds.com/picasso-weeping-woman-1937.jpg" width="601" /></div><blockquote style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 25px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 25px;"><blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a study of how much pain can be communicated by a human face. It has the features of a specific person, Dora Maar, whom Picasso described as "always weeping". She was in fact his close collaborator in the time of his life when he was most involved with politics.</span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 25px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 25px;"><blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let your eyes wander over the sharp surface and you are led by the jagged black lines to the picture's centre, her mouth and chin, where the flesh seems to have been peeled away by corrosive tears to reveal hard white bone. The handkerchief she stuffs in her mouth is like a shard of glass. Her eyes are black apertures. When you are inside this picture you are inside pain; it hits you like a punch in the stomach.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Picasso's insistence that we imagine ourselves into the excoriated face of this woman, into her dark eyes, was part of his response to seeing newspaper photographs of the Luftwaffe's bombing of Guernica on behalf of Franco in the Spanish civil war on April 26, 1937. This painting came at the end of the series of paintings, prints and drawings that Picasso made in protest. It has very personal, Spanish sources. In May 1937 Picasso's mother wrote to him from Barcelona that smoke from the burning city during the fighting made her eyes water. The Mater Dolorosa, the weeping Virgin, is a traditional image in Spanish art, often represented in lurid baroque sculptures with glass tears, like the very solid one that flows towards this woman's right ear. Picasso's father, an artist, made one for the family home.</span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 25px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 25px;"><blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This painting takes such associations and chews them to pulp. It is about the violence that we feel when we look at it, about translating the rawest human emotion into paint. Its origins lie in the tortured figures of Picasso's Guernica (1937), whose suffering is calculated to convey you beyond the photographs of the bombing to sense momentarily what it was to be there. In Guernica there is a screaming woman holding her dead baby, her tongue a dagger pointing at heaven. The baby's face is a cartoon of death. Picasso followed Guernica with his series of Weeping Woman paintings in which the woman's mourning continues, without end. She cries and cries. In different versions the Weeping Woman's face is crushed to an abject lump, twisted out of recognition. </span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 25px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 25px;"><blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Extract from an article by Jonathan Jones, May 13, 2000, The Guardian</i></span></blockquote></blockquote> <a href="http://www.inminds.com/weeping-woman-picasso-1937.html">http://www.inminds.com/weeping-woman-picasso-1937.html</a>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-22200145632281600002011-06-20T22:32:00.000-07:002011-06-20T23:10:49.204-07:00Love is an Orientation (Andrew Marin, IVP, 2009)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCPQ4LhkIQEd2_9XPojAUEJu1SehXyr8iPI24y7ab1dss_U-QlATjsE2xYRCvM-u4MNyTThABvwcVBedRl51haZUWqzBPv2SoOoIANIBdRr3S2dIAji_oHcN2cQdO7HRuoliKLfg/s1600/andrew+marin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCPQ4LhkIQEd2_9XPojAUEJu1SehXyr8iPI24y7ab1dss_U-QlATjsE2xYRCvM-u4MNyTThABvwcVBedRl51haZUWqzBPv2SoOoIANIBdRr3S2dIAji_oHcN2cQdO7HRuoliKLfg/s200/andrew+marin.jpg" width="133" /></a><br />
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<b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Here's a unique book by a unusual young man - a 'straight, white, conservative, evangelical male' with a belief in 'the Bible as the inerrant word of God' - who addressed a large conference of not-necessarily-Christian Gays/Lesbians and received a standing ovation!<br />
<br />
I've never heard of anyone with his general theological stance who's done that and had a reception like that. The common mantra for his kind of Christian is 'love<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"> </span>the sinner hate the sin' - something he doesn't use (mostly because those people don't generate love as Jesus did, so Andrew suspects there's something wrong with that approach).<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-j5enGcjgLx04DN3EJBXB6Ko5qOVj8OREHyBwfkQpK-KJQEhLIQxwHP14ocTfP_-ld3XI66fttmdSl9tpBpAfSQJwEnGKtWoW_vfb9oMgC1883g7L0PRIprs4bHwbfS10si9DQ/s1600/love+is+an+orientation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-j5enGcjgLx04DN3EJBXB6Ko5qOVj8OREHyBwfkQpK-KJQEhLIQxwHP14ocTfP_-ld3XI66fttmdSl9tpBpAfSQJwEnGKtWoW_vfb9oMgC1883g7L0PRIprs4bHwbfS10si9DQ/s200/love+is+an+orientation.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
<br />
What's his secret? Simple, really: do what Jesus did, immerse oneself in the culture of the marginalized, and honour them as human beings also made in the image of God. Don't preach at them. Don't offer the Pharisee-talk ('Change... and you'll be acceptable around here': for Jesus it was the other way around - acceptance *preceded* repentance). Listen to their stories (and as he found, the question about whether a gay lifestyle is a freely-chosen one answers itself in the vast majority of cases). Share their pain (especially when they've prayed to be changed from a same-sex attraction, and wakened 'every morning not having that prayer answered... wondering whether there really is a God, or [being convinced] that [one] is condemned to hell because of attractions [one] can't figure out'). </span></b><br />
<div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Also - and this is important - don't get bogged down arguing about the 'clobber texts' from Leviticus, Romans and 1 Corinthians. Again do what Jesus did: in the Gospels he was asked 'closed-ended' questions 25 times but only directly answered three or four of them (pp. 179 ff.). So leave the hermeneutical questions to biblical scholars, and the aetiology of gender-</span></b><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">orientation</span></b><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> to the scientists, and start loving/accepting the marginalized.</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">'They'll know we are Christians, not by our proof-texting, but by our </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">love</span></span></span></b></span><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">' writes his mate Shane Claiborne in a commendation on the first page. </span></b></div></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgQDhzbpgxfme_Y-MqdJGTx5po9aJ7IUy0zspcxhkyf2dy4e7Vy8QNmNGqS9pJfqvasflAFotv-k_Jx9c8XjgL-IPnW8jG_DEDqcOZiKvlua7UW0t4p71KeiOpyR5UvxgLnuXdZA/s1600/love+overcomes+hate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgQDhzbpgxfme_Y-MqdJGTx5po9aJ7IUy0zspcxhkyf2dy4e7Vy8QNmNGqS9pJfqvasflAFotv-k_Jx9c8XjgL-IPnW8jG_DEDqcOZiKvlua7UW0t4p71KeiOpyR5UvxgLnuXdZA/s1600/love+overcomes+hate.jpg" /></a><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Now, Andrew's theological approach isn't quite mine. Except for Thomas Merton (quoted, I think, twice) all of his 'respected theologians and Bible scholars' are fundamentalists or conservative evangelicals (my terms - people like John MacArthur, et. al).<br />
<br />
Interestingly, Andrew has chosen the fundamentalists' arch-enemy Brian McLaren to write the Foreword - which Brian does with what is now his famous parable (expanded in his recent book <i>A New Kind of Christianity</i>) about 'sincere well-intentioned religious people who believe in their religion so fervently they would die for it but also would kill for it - literally or metaphorically...' Brian McLaren urges us to hang in there until the last page, and not 'check-list' Andrew's approach or opinions against our own preconceived ideas... That's excellent wisdom for a book and a topic like this...</span></b></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Here are some summary-statements; and others which 'gave me pause':</span></b></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'Unless you have been sexually attracted to someone of the same sex you can never fully grasp, as a heterosexual Christian, what that means'...</span><span style="font-size: 14px;"> 'From my experience, the GLBT community's default system is to <i>never take anything</i> Christians say as genuine' (33) </span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'The Christian community has only ever known one way to handle same-sex sexual behavior: take a stand and keep a distance' (37)</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'In general, Christians' default belief system is that [same-sex attraction] is environmental... I know many Christians who enjoy playing psychologist - talking to GLBT people to figure out if they had an absentee dad or a domineering mom... or experienced some kind of sexual abuse in their youth... Research suggests that on average only 7 to 15 percent of the GLBT community was sexually abused in their youth' (39, 42) </span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'Among gays and lesbians " </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">love</span></span></span></b></span><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> the sinner, hate the sin" is the most disdained phrase in the Christian vocabulary' (46)... [As Christians we have] 'an opportunity to change the culture by... offering hope and compassion to a people who have been burdened with a thick dose of stigma and shame in all aspects of their life' (53)</span></b></div></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'Even as recently as 2002 there were still fourteen states [in the U.S.] that upheld the sodomy law, and in Idaho, one could land a lifetime sentence in jail for engaging in gay sexual behaviors' (55)</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'The word <i>homosexual</i> is offensive to someone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. So instead use words like <i>gay</i>, <i>lesbian</i>, <i>GLBT</i>, <i>gay and lesbian community</i>' (60) </span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'Gay Christians believe that the passages in the Bible that condemn same-sex relationships are not referencing long-term, committed monogamous relationships. Rather, [they're] talking about inhospitality, heterosexual rape, pagan ritual sex and orgies, and pederasty (men having sex with boys)' (73)</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'Currently in many circles both gay and straight, scientific and religious, there has been a more common acceptance of homosexuality's etiology as a combination of biological, environmental and social factors that all contribute to gay</span></b><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> orientation</span></b><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">' (75-6)</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
* 'Gay Christians have started to change the mainstream's mindset that GLBT people crave random sex, are STD-laced, and have alcohol and drug problems' (76)</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'There is no wrong way to humbly listen and learn! ... I... trust in the faithfulness of my loving Father to fill in the gaps that I can never understand'... I promise that God loves his children enough that he will always tell them what... is best for their life' (78-9, 86)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* '80% of the GLBT community want nothing to do with [ex-gay ministries]' (99); according to the ground-breaking book <i>unChristian</i>, [among] 16-29-year-olds the three most common perceptions of present-day Christians are that they are anti-gay (91%), judgmental (87%) and hypocritical (85%)' (100)</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'A great open-ended question is, "What's it like to be you?"' (163). 'I don't care if gays and lesbians are or aren't born that way... Here is a good question: "How do you think your genetic make-up relates to God's desire to be called your Father?"' (182)</span></b></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">* 'I know some people who say that they once had same-sex sexual attraction but are now attracted exclusively to people of the opposite sex, and in fact are married and have kids and are living a happy life. Just the same I know people who have tried and tried and tried, and have not been able to "change their sexual orientation," and therefore have stopped trying and are actively involved in the GLBT community: all these people from both life experiences are telling the truth as they perceive it, and each falls somewhere different on the spectrum of change' (184)<br />
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* Marin's conclusion: 'We're not called to posit theories that support our assumptions. We're not called to speculate about genetics or development experiences or spiritual oppression in faceless groups of other people. We're called to build bridges informed by the Scriptures and empowered by the Spirit. We're called to let God be the judge of his creation. We're called to let the Holy Spirit whisper truth into each person's heart. And we're called to show </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">love </span></span></span></b></span><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">unconditionally, tangibly, measurably' (187)</span></b></div></div><div style="font-size: 14px;"><b><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></b></div><div><b>If Andrew Marin read more mainline theologians, he would appreciate quotes like this one, from Walter Brueggemann's <i>The Prophetic Imagination</i>:</b></div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div><b>'Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is <i>moved to compassion</i>. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural, but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness...</b></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSyt2TDxCYD-qcqUlPOC9AQhfUN_qfQwbJ3IANnSv1hS4_11hHLY9nScaI61wBmo7xabvRfcSktVJ2PcbuC7h9BCKUqMwfQ7d8Xt-1Em7jL6wIonsJdF6yi2iVYlbdkwI3KxDsnA/s1600/rainbow+parade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="77" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSyt2TDxCYD-qcqUlPOC9AQhfUN_qfQwbJ3IANnSv1hS4_11hHLY9nScaI61wBmo7xabvRfcSktVJ2PcbuC7h9BCKUqMwfQ7d8Xt-1Em7jL6wIonsJdF6yi2iVYlbdkwI3KxDsnA/s200/rainbow+parade.jpg" width="200" /></a><b><br />
'Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion. The norms of law (social control) are never accommodated to persons, but persons are accommodated to the norms. Otherwise the norms will collapse and with them the whole power arrangement. Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context.'<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Shalom!/Salaam!/Pax!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Rowland Croucher </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank">http://jmm.aaa.net.au</a></span></b><br />
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<div style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b>June 10, 2011</b></div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"></span></span></b><br />
<div style="font-size: 14px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN-YzGgm06Tw0glMU6_CoX4CSxgMmpPg0wnab0ORHIsCzubDi05E0mpK1SJg8sFrp41Yu7adaUTB_z_8UtB9WzzkJvYJLc_Uq4geUNOqkJ_TuwzyMjUifW1VsOgyILrfhUxGY6eQ/s1600/cartoon+homophobia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN-YzGgm06Tw0glMU6_CoX4CSxgMmpPg0wnab0ORHIsCzubDi05E0mpK1SJg8sFrp41Yu7adaUTB_z_8UtB9WzzkJvYJLc_Uq4geUNOqkJ_TuwzyMjUifW1VsOgyILrfhUxGY6eQ/s400/cartoon+homophobia.jpg" width="387" /></a></div></div>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-11661017905178819302010-11-05T13:29:00.000-07:002010-11-05T13:40:52.859-07:00Jonathan Franzen, Freedom: A Novel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6iINdGNi8Y9FwS_pTEOEw_rFX7IrNT-FYVrR8vtb9gk9PjElMbRnlTdmYa9kkBXLhG5s-o2aAW_EVr-vqOkek5ek3KLhLArxhp579xZhn7pKLTO5ZWyZIZuxbgZUcxkEYtVsCVg/s1600/franzen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6iINdGNi8Y9FwS_pTEOEw_rFX7IrNT-FYVrR8vtb9gk9PjElMbRnlTdmYa9kkBXLhG5s-o2aAW_EVr-vqOkek5ek3KLhLArxhp579xZhn7pKLTO5ZWyZIZuxbgZUcxkEYtVsCVg/s1600/franzen.jpg" /></a></div><b>Nearly a decade after publishing his prize-winning novel The Corrections, Franzen has done it again. Freedom is currently (November 2010) the most-discussed contemporary work of English-language fiction in the U.S. and Australia and who knows where else.</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Freedom is the complicated story of an unfree, deteriorating middle-class Minnesotan family (parents Walter and Patty Berglund, children, lovers, assorted relatives, neighbours, friends, shysters and enemies) who battle all their lives with unresolved family-of-origin issues. Walter's main agenda - as also with his Swedish male ancestors - is to avoid facing the threatening realities of deeply-buried emotions. Patty's emotional life is dominated by the pain of her parents' preoccupation with high-flying professional and political agendas, a date-rape incident, and of course relating to her one-dimensional husband.</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Nearly a decade after publishing his prize-winning novel The Corrections, Franzen has done it again. Freedom is currently (November 2010) the most-discussed contemporary work of English-language fiction in the U.S. and Australia and who knows where else.</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Freedom is the complicated story of an unfree, deteriorating middle-class Minnesotan family (parents Walter and Patty Berglund, children, lovers, assorted relatives, neighbours, friends, shysters and enemies) who battle all their lives with unresolved family-of-origin issues. Walter's main agenda - as also with his Swedish male ancestors - is to avoid facing the threatening realities of deeply-buried emotions. Patty's emotional life is dominated by the pain of her parents' preoccupation with high-flying professional and political agendas, a date-rape incident, and of course relating to her one-dimensional husband.</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Walter and Patty are university graduates. He's a naive, nice, corporate lawyer/do-gooder, who resigns from 3M and moves into nature conservation, working for a minerals magnate who wants to turn some of his ill-earned millions into saving a small woodland bird, the Cerulean warbler. You might judge (if you're naive) that this is triple-bottom-line stuff, but there's only one outcome that magnate is interested in...</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>Franzen's main offering is a many-layered analysis of the Berglunds’ marriage. He tells the story partly via the device of Patty's journaling for her therapist - which, oddly, is composed in the third person.</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>The Berglunds are, at the beginning, NQR (not quite right) caricatures, nonentities who are nevertheless redeemed at the end. (I won't spoil it by disclosing the story-line). The main message: nonentities are people too. If they're willing to be humble and vulnerable and name their demons, they (and their families/marriage) can be saved.</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>So there's really a collision of 'freedoms' here. Every prodigal is free to flee to the far country (New York etc.) to escape family-of-origin realities, but there, in the loneliness of various pig-pens, each comes to realize that there's no place like home, if only they could figure out how to reconstruct home from the debris of past hurts.</b><br />
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<b>Sample: 'He'd needed an extra brother to love and hate and compete with. And the eternal tormenting question for Walter... was whether Richard was the little brother or the big brother, the f***up or the hero, the beloved damaged friend or the dangerous rival' (131). (Note: they're my ***'s. You'd better cope with the four-letter words here or you'll get distracted...).</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>(Client: tell me how all this generally resonates with your story).</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>Sex is a major theme. Mostly problematical sex. Like here: 'Walter was what he was, and he wanted what he was to be what Patty wanted. He wanted things to be mutual! ... Eventually after years of resisting, she managed to get him to stop trying altogether. And felt terribly guilty but also *angry* and *annoyed* to be made to feel like such a failure... Sex seemed to be a diversion for young people with nothing better to do' (140-1).</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>There's also spectacular sex, sex within intersecting love-triangles, feral sex, half-hearted sex, depersonalized sex, phone sex, date-rape, promiscuous American College sex, and lots of other kinds of sex you didn't think you needed to know about. (Speaking of which: do you know any other author who's described in somewhat graphic detail how someone retrieved a wedding ring they'd swallowed?).</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>On the sub-themes of endangered bird-species, and overpopulation, I noted these:</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>* 'Too many damn people on the planet. It's especially clear when we went to South America. Yes, per capita consumption is rising. Yes, the Chinese are illegally vacuuming up resources down there. But the real problem is population pressure. Six kids per family versus one point five. People are desperate to feed the children that the pope in his infinite wisdom makes them have, and so they trash the environment' (219).</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>* 'The low-end estimate of songbirds daily murdered by cats in the United States [is] one million, ie. 365,000,000 per year (and this... [is] a conservative estimate and did not include the starvation of the murdered birds' chicks' (545). Back on page 222: 'Every year in the U.S. one *billion* songbirds are murdered by domestic and feral cats... but no one gives a s*** because they love their own individual kitty cat'.</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>* 'Walter had never liked cats. They seemed to him to be the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat-owners stroke their lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He'd never seen anything in a cat's face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest; you only had to tease one with a mouse-toy to see where its true heart lay' (548).</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>The central metaphor - until you get to the denouement at the end - is not freedom but duplicity. It's Franzen's long sermon on the topic 'How Should We Then Live?' Someone on Amazon.com wrote: 'The apocalpyse, when it comes, clears the way for a postlude, set in Minnesota, that is as haunting as anything in recent American fiction. Visiting her daughter’s university, Patty observes a stone engraved with the words, “USE WELL THY FREEDOM”. The warning is there throughout. With its all-encompassing world, its flawed heroes and its redemptive ending, “Freedom” has the sweep of a modern “Paradise Lost”.'</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>Well, you get the idea. Professional reviewers and book clubbers (the 'chattering classes') will like it (there are glowing reviews in the NYT, Time, the Economist, etc.) but the comments by ordinary folks at Amazon.com - innocents who are prepared to say the emperor has no clothes - often only give it one or two stars out of five. Franzen has too many contrived conversations and improbable happenings (like a 19-year-old arms dealer traveling to Poland and Paraguay to make procurement purchases of spare parts for broken-down military trucks in Iraq).</b><br />
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<b>I had three '!!!' moments: Walter's 'Welcome to the middle-class' speech (to which I responded, aloud, 'yoo-hoo!); a beautifully lyrical paragraph (485) on the wonders of bird migration; and a moving set of reconciliations towards the end (when I cried).</b><br />
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<b>A little warning or two: for me this novel started slowly, but 'took off' about half-way through. Franzen could have reduced the number of characters by a third (to help folks with a 73-year-old brain to remember who's who). And he's verbose - maybe he'd have said more in 30 percent fewer pages. He writes brilliantly, of course (but not as fluently as John Updike), offering a lot of detail about this and that which had me skimming paragraphs.</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>If you enjoyed this you should also read Garrison Keillor (funnier), Tolstoy (who's in a league of his own) and John Updike (a better wordsmith).</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>Rowland Croucher</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>November 2010</b><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7TtROuGZqZpsn2ll-EhSvyi9JKna7Zpilk5qA_uT4jIOhruWSaRrnNeYkLE5WnifzkIttiggROg-FY0vcqHwCf3ZacTeGav1XC7UvH0GQmgdiIX4qec7Wy-6xqGuJXJFO0bwyJA/s1600/freedom+bondage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7TtROuGZqZpsn2ll-EhSvyi9JKna7Zpilk5qA_uT4jIOhruWSaRrnNeYkLE5WnifzkIttiggROg-FY0vcqHwCf3ZacTeGav1XC7UvH0GQmgdiIX4qec7Wy-6xqGuJXJFO0bwyJA/s320/freedom+bondage.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-57909326524233403742010-07-15T17:26:00.000-07:002010-07-15T17:26:55.150-07:00Understanding the Bible: Three Helpful Volumes<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>These three books have different target-audiences. Philip Fogarty SJ 'Navigating the Gospels: John' aims to help the Catholic faithful get to grips with the essence of the purpose and teachings of the Fourth Gospel. Dean Drayton's 'Which Gospel? Three New Testament Perspectives' is an excellent summary of the NT's understanding(s) of what 'Good News' really means. And 'The Children's Bible: New Revised Standard Version' is aimed at young people.</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>1. Philip Fogarty SJ, 'Navigating the Gospels: John' is written by an Irish Jesuit, a former headmaster, whose aim is to reinforce the essential belief-system of Catholics against the unhelpful emphases of liberal theologians on the one hand and Protestant fundamentalists on the other. To the liberals he affirms Jesus was God; to the fundamentalists Jesus was truly human. </b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Although he's done his homework in terms of the way the fourth gospel was put together (we learn a little about the sitz im leben of the Johannine community in 80-110 AD, especially their need to be encouraged in the basics of the Christian faith after being driven from the Jewish synagogues); and how this gospel was written and later redacted etc. there are hardly any references to the findings of biblical scholars. This book is a simple paraphrase of the stories and 'signs' in John, with a final chapter quoting the Second Vatican Council's statement on what it means for the Bible to be the inspired Word of God. A good, readable introduction especially helpful for Catholics who are beginning their quest to seriously understand this important New Testament gospel.</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>2. Dean Drayton is a well-known scholar-missiologist in Australian Uniting Church circles. This book - Which Gospel? Three New Testament Perspectives' - gives a helpful overview of various understandings of the notion of 'The Gospel' throughout Christian history, and suggests that all of them were lacking something important when put side-by-side with key New Testament emphases. Essentially, the Gospel is 'the Gospel of God' - it's God's initiative - not just a temporal/eternal palliative for individuals' needs for forgiveness, happiness etc. Again, although Dr. Drayton has read the scholars and is familiar with the findings of modern literary-historical criticism, very little of this is cited in this volume, which is aimed to help study-groups of thoughtful laypeople (with excellent prompts for personal and group reflection at the end of each chapter).</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Here are some gems I marked to provoke thought:</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>* Bidden or unbidden, God is present</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>* Hebrews and Luke shun the term 'the gospel'</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>* The early church focussed its message on the resurrection of the crucified Jesus rather than his message of the Kingdom of God</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>* Isaac Watts' hymn 'When I survey' (c. 1707) is one of the first to use the personal pronoun</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>* Wesley was the last English-speaking mass-evangelist to have had a University education. (Others, notably Dwight D. (sic) Moody and Billy Graham weren't in that league)</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>* Liberal and Fundamentalist alike are rationalists</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>* The biblical God is not a 'democratic' God of choice, but a God of power</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>* The key understandings of the Gospel should arise from our 'aboriginal' (Drayton uses that generic adjective four or five times in this little book) documents, the texts of the New Testament.</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Again, readable, thoughtful, useful for church adult study groups...</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>3. Children's Bible (New Revised Standard Version, Abingdon). </b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Here's a colourful edition of the most popular version of the Bible in use in mainline Christian churches, targeted especially for young people. The colourful illustrations would appeal mostly to four-to-eight year olds; the helps (glossary, maps, summary-paragraphs throughout etc.) to eight-to-14+ year olds, and the paragraph titles (Colloquy ! etc.) to 14-plus year olds. You choose the age at which you give this to your child/ren. As Evangelical churches and Sunday Schools still mostly use the NIV translation, this one might have to sit on the shelf at home for further study. </b><br />
<br />
<b>Rowland Croucher</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>http://jmm.aaa.net.au/</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>July 2010</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<br />
<b><br />
</b>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-8812989433061206532010-04-26T20:07:00.000-07:002010-11-05T14:12:54.837-07:00CHRISTIANS HAVE A BIBLICAL MANDATE: BE POLITICAL<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 21px;"></span><br />
<h2 class="post_cat" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(218, 218, 218); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: #999999; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; font-style: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.8em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.2em; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><cufon alt="Apologetics" class="cufon cufon-canvas" style="display: inline-block !important; font-size: 1px !important; height: 10px; line-height: 1px !important; position: relative !important; text-indent: 0px !important; vertical-align: middle !important; width: 87px;"><cufontext style="display: inline-block !important; height: 0px !important; overflow-x: hidden !important; overflow-y: hidden !important; text-indent: -10000in !important; width: 0px !important;"></cufontext></cufon></h2><h2 class="post_name entry-title" id="post-1768" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: both; color: #567356; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 2.3em; font-style: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.04em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><cufon alt="Christians " class="cufon cufon-canvas" style="display: inline-block !important; font-size: 1px !important; height: 30px; line-height: 1px !important; position: relative !important; text-indent: 0px !important; vertical-align: middle !important; width: 141px;"><canvas height="29" style="height: 29px; left: -1px; position: relative !important; top: 3px; width: 167px;" width="167"></canvas><cufontext style="display: inline-block !important; height: 0px !important; overflow-x: hidden !important; overflow-y: hidden !important; text-indent: -10000in !important; width: 0px !important;"></cufontext></cufon><cufon alt="Have " class="cufon cufon-canvas" style="display: inline-block !important; font-size: 1px !important; height: 30px; line-height: 1px !important; position: relative !important; text-indent: 0px !important; vertical-align: middle !important; width: 74px;"><canvas height="29" style="height: 29px; left: -1px; position: relative !important; top: 3px; width: 100px;" width="100"></canvas><cufontext style="display: inline-block !important; height: 0px !important; overflow-x: hidden !important; overflow-y: hidden !important; text-indent: -10000in !important; width: 0px !important;"></cufontext></cufon><cufon alt="A " class="cufon cufon-canvas" style="display: inline-block !important; font-size: 1px !important; height: 30px; line-height: 1px !important; position: relative !important; text-indent: 0px !important; vertical-align: middle !important; width: 28px;"><canvas height="29" style="height: 29px; left: -1px; position: relative !important; top: 3px; width: 54px;" width="54"></canvas><cufontext style="display: inline-block !important; height: 0px !important; overflow-x: hidden !important; overflow-y: hidden !important; text-indent: -10000in !important; width: 0px !important;"></cufontext></cufon><cufon alt="Biblical " class="cufon cufon-canvas" style="display: inline-block !important; font-size: 1px !important; height: 30px; line-height: 1px !important; position: relative !important; text-indent: 0px !important; vertical-align: middle !important; width: 105px;"><canvas height="29" style="height: 29px; left: -1px; position: relative !important; top: 3px; width: 130px;" width="130"></canvas><cufontext style="display: inline-block !important; height: 0px !important; overflow-x: hidden !important; overflow-y: hidden !important; text-indent: -10000in !important; width: 0px !important;"></cufontext></cufon><cufon alt="Mandate: " class="cufon cufon-canvas" style="display: inline-block !important; font-size: 1px !important; height: 30px; line-height: 1px !important; position: relative !important; text-indent: 0px !important; vertical-align: middle !important; width: 129px;"><canvas height="29" style="height: 29px; left: -1px; position: relative !important; top: 3px; width: 155px;" width="155"></canvas><cufontext style="display: inline-block !important; height: 0px !important; overflow-x: hidden !important; overflow-y: hidden !important; text-indent: -10000in !important; width: 0px !important;"></cufontext></cufon><cufon alt="Be " class="cufon cufon-canvas" style="display: inline-block !important; font-size: 1px !important; height: 30px; line-height: 1px !important; position: relative !important; text-indent: 0px !important; vertical-align: middle !important; width: 41px;"><canvas height="29" style="height: 29px; left: -1px; position: relative !important; top: 3px; width: 67px;" width="67"></canvas><cufontext style="display: inline-block !important; height: 0px !important; overflow-x: hidden !important; overflow-y: hidden !important; text-indent: -10000in !important; width: 0px !important;"></cufontext></cufon><cufon alt="Political" class="cufon cufon-canvas" style="display: inline-block !important; font-size: 1px !important; height: 30px; line-height: 1px !important; position: relative !important; text-indent: 0px !important; vertical-align: middle !important; width: 103px;"><canvas height="29" style="height: 29px; left: -1px; position: relative !important; top: 3px; width: 128px;" width="128"></canvas><cufontext style="display: inline-block !important; height: 0px !important; overflow-x: hidden !important; overflow-y: hidden !important; text-indent: -10000in !important; width: 0px !important;"></cufontext></cufon></h2><div class="post_meta" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.8em; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.4em; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0.3em; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; text-transform: none;"><b>Published in The Age (Melbourne), Opinion, September 4, 2003</b></span></div><div class="post_text entry-content" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.9em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>by Rowan Forster and Rowland Croucher</b></span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>The comments by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer about clergy ‘rushing for cheap headlines’ by getting involved in political statements, and the subsequent debate got us thinking…</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Barney Zwartz, in his article on meddlesome priests (The Age, Opinion, 2/9), notes that the Judeo-Christian faith is not only about personal piety, but also social justice. Interfering clerics and prophets have, for 3000 years, been the bane of those who benefit from an unjust political system.</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Take for instance that troublesome Baptist minister, Martin Luther King. He really should have kept his nose out of political issues, and kept his dream to himself. The duly elected Governors of Alabama and Mississippi were doing just fine until he came along. Why is religion getting mixed up with human rights?</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Then there were those interfering archbishops, like Desmond Tutu in South Africa and Janani Luwum in Idi Amin’s Uganda. They should have left their political leaders alone, to govern as they saw fit. Same goes for Cardinal Jaime Sin in the Philippines under the enlightened rule of Ferdinand Marcos, and church leaders who opposed Pol Pot in Cambodia.</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>And what about Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador? If only he’d kept his mouth shut, he might still be alive. As for the likes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller in Nazi Germany, they should have stayed inside church cloisters instead of blundering into political activism.</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Closer to home, meddlesome clerics like Tim Costello and Ray Cleary shouldn’t be shooting off their mouths about gambling and other social issues. Don’t they realise gambling addicts have a democratic right to sacrifice their homes and families and commit suicide if they want to, without interference from religious do-gooders?</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>And it’s not just clerics, either. Look at all those religiously minded laymen and women who have meddled in matters that don’t concern them. Like William Wilberforce dragging his Christian faith into the slavery issue, or the Earl of Shaftesbury interfering in the politics of child labor and other forms of exploitation. Or William and Catherine Booth meddling in issues of social and economic inequality, and founding the Salvation Army.</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Then there’s Elizabeth Fry interfering in the field of prison reform; Florence Nightingale who founded the modern nursing movement; Cicely Saunders who founded the modern hospice movement; Henri Dunant who founded the Red Cross; and other meddlesome religious zealots who founded Alcoholics Anonymous, Amnesty International, Habitat for Humanity, Opportunity International, World Vision, TEAR Fund, and a host of other enterprises that can be traced back to a religious motivation.</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Is a world without religious interference what we really need? The resultant welfare bill would send all governments flat broke. Expediency would be more likely to triumph over conscience, and brute force over moral persuasion. There’d be less of a check on the excesses of genocidal tyrants, murderous despots and ruthless pragmatists.</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>New Testament Christians, as Karl Barth pointed out, faced the dilemma of relating to Nero’s Rome, which in Romans 13 is a divinely-ordained institution to be obeyed, but in Revelation 13 is ‘the beast from the abyss’. When governments invoke order at the expense of freedom, tyranny usually results. But, yes, freedom without order is anarchy. The Christian social philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr used to say ‘There is no peace without power, and no justice with power.’ So a Christian has two responsibilities: to support legitimate law and order, but also to promote social justice.</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Christians with a social conscience – whether clergy or not – have a biblical mandate to get involved in political debate. Pericles put it well: ‘We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics minds his own business. We say he has no business here at all.’</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/1768.htm">http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/1768.htm</a></b></div></div>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-55474714947131346362010-04-15T18:59:00.000-07:002010-04-15T18:59:00.483-07:00MARK DURIE: THE THIRD CHOICE<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmXuYBEtNNyxwSrkEcJ55AEDc41te38hemvJhksJAnq1Nj8Da75S3H_Nx0IhgQLbV2_kgI_pIE2l3g3-15DyogSyHOCOy7mHMsSIe5_N_D6H6HSW3W9b4AIMixhzIDlKmEKhscLw/s1600/third+choice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmXuYBEtNNyxwSrkEcJ55AEDc41te38hemvJhksJAnq1Nj8Da75S3H_Nx0IhgQLbV2_kgI_pIE2l3g3-15DyogSyHOCOy7mHMsSIe5_N_D6H6HSW3W9b4AIMixhzIDlKmEKhscLw/s320/third+choice.jpg" /></a><b>Mark Durie, The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom (2010)<br />
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Critiquing Islam, some can be so "truthful" they come across as bigoted (one Christian politician wants "no more Muslim immigrants"); others are so "politically correct" they can be guilty of appeasement. Mark Durie, in this well-researched book, works hard to "speak the truth in love". An expert on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Dr Durie has published several books and many articles on Christian-Muslim relations.<br />
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Throughout Islamic history, conquered peoples could convert to Islam, die by the sword, or accept "dhimmi" (inferior) status and pay tribute under sharia law. A benign explanation of dhimmitude (like Wikipedia's) emphasizes "protection", "guarantee of minority peoples' rights" etc. Mark isn't so sure. Rather, these subjects – Christians, Jews and others - are often denied basic rights and personhood. Consider, for example, the two million lives lost - many of them Christians - in the Sudanese jihad; in Egypt or Turkey it's difficult (and in Saudi Arabia impossible) for Christians to get permission to build churches. Many other examples are cited.<br />
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Durie 'tells it like it is'. Example 1: Why do Muslims - one in twenty of Denmark's population - comprise the majority of the country's convicted rapists? 2. "Even in non-Muslim societies some Muslims can be aggressive and confrontational in pressing for their rights, and yet take offense when non-Muslims insist on theirs". 3. "The Muslim world has not to this day apologized to non-Muslims for jihad and dhimmitude. Muslims have not confronted their bitter past". 4. "The precedents for violence in Muhammad's life have absolutely no parallels in the life of Christ".<br />
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But what about the Old Testament? And the sometimes bloody history of Christianity - forced conversions, Crusades etc? I'd also have wished for more insights from Muslims living in Western countries (like the mysterious U.S.-based Turkish educator Fethullah Gulen, who asserts that "Terrorists are as bad as atheists, and both will go to hell”).<br />
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A fascinating chapter links historic Islamic psychology to episodes of rejection in Muhammad's life.<br />
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It's a great read: and I learned a lot from chasing many of the excellent footnotes on the Web.<br />
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Rowland Croucher<br />
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John Mark Ministries<br />
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More: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/keyword/i-12.htm<br />
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Mark's response:<br />
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I have written elsewhere a comparison of violence in the Bible and the Quran, including the Old Testament, but Christian violence was not the subject of this book. The book is also not intended to be a comparison of Christianity and Islam. It would have grossly distorted its presentation to have gone in that direction. One of the problems of the current culture of political correctness and self-inculpation is that one is not allowed to analyse Islam without criticizing Christianity at the same time. Self-inculpation becomes a knee-jerk response. This is debilitating and illogical. Let us give Islam the respect it deserves, and treat it on its own terms. Christian crimes throw no insight on the problem of understanding the dhimma - they are quite irrelevant. <br />
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Yes, I could have dealt with the mythology of the crusades as an act of aggression against peaceful Muslims, and referred readers to e.g. Robert Spencer on this. However I already had material like this, e.g. in reference to the Andalusian 'golden age' mythology, and did not really wish to rehash the already widely-available material on the history of Islamic jihad.<br />
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In fairness, I did acknowledge the origins of some fo the dhimma laws in the Christian Byzantine legal treatment of the Jews. (I used that comparison with Jesus to help people understand Muhammad, not to try to make an comprehensive comparison of Christianity with Islam). <br />
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Fethullah Gulen is by no means a moderate, but a master of <i>taqiyya</i>. He is widely understood to be driving the Islamization of Turkey. I will send you a few articles. There are liberals in the Muslim world, and you are correct, I did not engage with their proposals. This is because of irrelevance. They tend to overlook or downplay the issue of dhimmitude and have little relevant to say about it. In some cases they just lie, for example Tantawi (recently deceased) has a commentary on 9:29 in which he claims past Muslim scholars have shown that dhimmis enjoy equal rights with Muslims. The scholars he cites actually say exactly the opposite. I could have used Tantawi - a 'moderate' of sorts, despite his anti-semitism - as an example of deception and denial, but I already had plenty of that.<br />
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In all fairness, I did cite some Muslims who are concerned about the treatment of non-Muslims and have been willing to speak up about it. I have written elsewhere on the issue of "reforming" Islam and the difficulty of achieving this. However the lived reality of non-Muslims under sharia law today shows a trend towards sharia implementation, not liberalization. There is no global liberal Islamic movement comparable, say, to Reform Judaism, only isolated individuals, whose voice is marginal and very existence is threatened.<br />
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Mark Durie<br />
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</b>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-16952083116239510922009-09-24T19:14:00.000-07:002009-09-24T19:22:49.508-07:00SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5HX6CowRBfHII8nhabA1Uaw-yuwzVKSPYpEiZyJO5BWRsLsciLVFTIiAEWT5cqtjP6buWv15jhBRWKDQofQbR1tmO1Z7uvj58UPfFsjbnox9E6VvrsGZFBYon3Rxh9AkRHk8TMg/s1600-h/Spiritual+Intelligence.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 70px; height: 109px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5HX6CowRBfHII8nhabA1Uaw-yuwzVKSPYpEiZyJO5BWRsLsciLVFTIiAEWT5cqtjP6buWv15jhBRWKDQofQbR1tmO1Z7uvj58UPfFsjbnox9E6VvrsGZFBYon3Rxh9AkRHk8TMg/s400/Spiritual+Intelligence.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385224648558075906" /></a><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Spiritual Intelligence: A New Way of Being</span>, Brian Draper, Lion, 2009.<br /><br />We know about rational intelligence (remember those IQ tests at school?). And emotional intelligence (you’ve read Daniel Goleman’s best-seller <span style="font-style:italic;">Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ</span>). So if our cognitive and affective behaviors can be measured in terms of performance, someone had to come up with an equivalent for the dimension of the spirit. And this happened quite recently, apparently, when in the year 2000 Oxford academic, philosopher and spiritual writer Danah Zohar coined the phrase ‘spiritual intelligence’. ‘She suggested that it forms the central part of our intelligence, the part in which our values and beliefs are nurtured and in which we can work towards our full potential as created beings’ (p. 12).<br /><br />Brian Draper, British freelance writer, seminar-leader, contributor to BBC Radio 4’s thought for the day etc. says spiritual intelligence is figuring out who we were created to be in the first place – the ‘unique you’. (Parker Palmer teaches similarly in the United States). It’s about listening to the child’s voice within us, and to the riches buried in our traditions – ‘riches that help us to make those soulful reconnections that many of us, deep down, yearn to make – with the world around us, with each other, with our selves, and with the higher power often called God’. It’s really all about common (or uncommon?) sense. Or a ‘spiritual’ person’s equivalent of ‘smelling the roses’.<br /><br />The standard contemplative wisdom is here: listening to our breathing, eliminating invasive noise (eg. by trying a week without TV), and being still. One of Draper’s favorite questions is the Gen X writer Douglas Coupland’s: What do we do when the power fails? It’s not about conquests but connecting with our reality. As Marcel Proust wrote, ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes’. It’s about ‘seeing the world from up here’ as Robin Williams’ character Mr. Keating tells the boys when he climbs on to his desk in Dead Poets Society.<br /><br />Spirituality is about the tension between contemplation (being) and action (doing). It’s about what you’re not (a consumer of this world) versus what you are (in communication with the world). Take some time to write your obituary. Our ego attaches itself to things around us, or the desired perceptions of others. So in this uncertain world, as Eckhart Tolle reminds us (Draper probably quotes Tolle more than any other wise person) ‘you can assume that virtually everyone you meet or know lives in a state of fear. .. Most become conscious of it only when it takes on one of its most acute forms’.<br /><br />You get the idea… This is the book to read before Tolle’s The Power of Now. It connects us with ancient wisdom (though I reckon Draper could have used more biblical material: conservatives might accuse him – and they’d be wrong - of being ‘New Age-ish’). And he could have tapped more into the traditional wisdom of the church, which has been wrestling with all this for 2000 years under the rubric of ‘Spiritual Theology’ (he quotes Augustine, but I don’t think Meister Eckhart gets a mention, though, surprisingly for a Brit, American Franciscan Richard Rohr does, fairly frequently).<br /><br />Near the end is a quote from D H Lawrence: ‘I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections./ And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill, / I am ill because of wounds to the soul’. Yes!<br /><br />Get it for your family-member or friend who’s not yet had their mid-life crisis and is still moving too fast across the face of the earth trying to prove their worth by out-performing others. (You know the best description of a mid-life crisis? It’s realizing you’ve reached the top of the ladder, but it’s leaning against the wrong wall). And read it slowly – digest a couple of pages a day for a couple of months. Write ‘ouch!’ occasionally in the margins (as I did), and it could even be life-changing.<br /><br />Rowland Croucher<br /><br />August 2009<br /><br />Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher<br /><br />http://jmm.aaa.net.au/<br /><br />Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-70157274290502350812009-09-01T18:20:00.000-07:002009-09-01T18:23:10.557-07:00EXPLORING ECCLESIOLOGY<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHmUMgC3EIOviDNvn8oN30wgr9moRf2uTJQ8EAfprA1WAXZrymgaMwlaDAYU64zesi3W2Bdt7z2Ti_iKnsg_1iim245WedRU8CCYGdYtS_MoCTA_5DpalvGZzawLn2qUgYcpOXIA/s1600-h/EXPLORING+ECCLESIOLOGY.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 100px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHmUMgC3EIOviDNvn8oN30wgr9moRf2uTJQ8EAfprA1WAXZrymgaMwlaDAYU64zesi3W2Bdt7z2Ti_iKnsg_1iim245WedRU8CCYGdYtS_MoCTA_5DpalvGZzawLn2qUgYcpOXIA/s400/EXPLORING+ECCLESIOLOGY.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376674385994428546" /></a><span style="font-weight:bold;">Review: 'Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical <br />Introduction' (Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger, 2009).<br /><br />Here's a good textbook for a basic course in 'Ecclesiology 101' (or what <br />used to be called 'Church, Ministry and Sacraments' back in my seminary <br />days). Though written 'densely' in text-book fashion (a few good <br />stories, lots of Bible texts, with some useful quotes and endnotes) it <br />would also comprise an excellent study-guide for church leaders.<br /><br />The Recommended Reading List features authors like Donald Bloesch, Tony <br />Campolo, Mark Noll, D. Elton Trueblood, and Robert Webber: for those in <br />the know, they're more (progressive) evangelical than 'mainline' (eg. <br />the Alban Institute isn't, I think, mentioned) or ecumenical (eg. <br />published statements from 20th century Conciliar conferences don't <br />feature either). But there's a good balance between history ('the church <br />did not begin with us') and postmodern concepts (eg. the way many/most <br />churches are imprisoned within their secular cultures).<br /><br />It strongly critiques conservative evangelical churches' addictions to <br />individualism (individual persons, families, churches - and note the <br />words of their 'praise choruses') and consumerism (there's more movement <br />of 'consumers' between churches and even across denominations than ever <br />before). And since the 'Scopes Monkey Trial' in the U.S. conservative <br />Christians have had a tendency to operate outside of the public square - <br />except for the two 'Focus on the Family' issues of abortion and gay <br />marriage - and marry their eschatology with 'left behind' Dispensationalism.<br /><br />A summary of the authors' theological approach: the church is a <br />trinitarian community, constituted through its communion with the Triune <br />God: and the likeness between God and humanity is fundamentally <br />relational; eschatologically understood: the church is 'the instrument <br />of the coming kingdom' which involves the redemption not only of the <br />church but of the whole creation; missionally driven: not simply having <br />'missions' as one emphasis-among-many; varied in terms of ecclesial/ <br />authority models; and ideally 'community' in Henri Nouwen's sense: <br />'community is the place where the person you least want to live with <br />always lives'.<br /><br />As I said, it's more 'Evangelical' than 'Ecumenical'. Only <br />Fundamentalist/Evangelical 'scholars' use the Bible as a 'flat text'. <br />For example, it's mostly poor scholarship to quote ecclesial concepts <br />from Paul's early letters and 'the pastoral epistles' in the same <br />sentence without noting the progression in thinking between these <br />contexts. And only conservatives keenly anticipate 'the marriage supper <br />of the Lamb' (mentioned probably a dozen times).<br /><br />But on the other hand there's a fairly strong social concern/justice <br />message throughout the book. Item: Archbishop Oscar Romero got into <br />trouble with the rich and powerful because he refused to baptize their <br />babies in segregated services - away from the poor - or separate rich <br />and poor at communion. A nearby comment: A church in the U.S. decided to <br />focus on outreach to the wealthy, 'cos you get more 'bang for your buck' <br />that way.<br /><br />And there's both praise and criticism of the Emerging Church movement: <br />hanging out at Starbucks is not the same as kneeling together at the <br />communion rail; a latte is not an adequate substitute for bread and wine.<br /><br />I wrote 'Yes!' to these statements:<br /><br />* [Modern] Churches [mostly] focus on being vendors of religious goods <br />and service providers to expectant consumers... doing what it takes to <br />make sure their fellowships survive in the religious free market, where <br />only the fittest survive (p. 43)<br /><br />* It is typical among Evangelicals... for worship... to be a 'warm-up' <br />for the main event, which is the preaching of the scriptures (p.106) <br />[which, I noted, is a very limited understanding of the concept of <br />'worship']<br /><br />* The one category of prayer that has not been as widely retained, <br />especially among American evangelical churches, is that of confession <br />(p. 109)<br /><br />That's enough. This book emphasises corporate as well as individual <br />faith. It has a more 'holistic' approach than most books in its genre. <br />Although the authors are evangelicals they've done their best - with <br />mixed success - to incorporate insights from Roman Catholic, Orthodox, <br />and progressive Protestant traditions and thinking.<br /><br />Rowland Croucher<br /><br />September 2009<br /></span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-4985820499575741932009-08-29T05:16:00.000-07:002009-08-29T05:17:11.183-07:00RELIGION AND VIOLENCE<span style="font-weight:bold;">29 August 2009<br /><br />I attended a seminar today where Professor Camilleri (Professor of International Relations, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia) spoke on Religion and Violence. Here are some of the notes I took (I hope they represent what he said: they certainly are what I heard; he speaks very quietly, and was without a microphone). <br /><br />* There have been 138-145 wars in the post-war period (ie. since 1945)<br /><br />* There were over 1m deaths in the Korean and Vietnam wars, 800,000 in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands in Algeria<br /><br />* The two 'world wars' were mainly between 'Christian' nations (main exception - Japan)<br /><br />* In the last 10 years there were very few 'civil wars' unrelated to external influences<br /><br />* Religion has increased its presence on the world stage. Note, for example the Vatican's key role in the demise of the Iron Curtain, the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church, the conflict in Northern Ireland (hopefully now behind us), the resurgence of Hinduism in India, and of course, the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism <br /><br />* Islam is back with a vengeance in Europe: More people in Europe worship on Fridays than on Sundays. Remember that the centre of Islam, population-wise, is not in the Middle East, but in S E Asia (Indonesia with the highest Muslim population in the world, followed by India)<br /><br />* The sacred texts of all of the major religious traditions emphasize the sacredness of life, the dignity of human beings, the importance of 'the sacred', treating others as you wish to be treated, strong notions of justice etc. <br /><br />* At their core all the conflicts with a 'religious' flavour actually have socio-cultural-political causes (including Northern Ireland)<br /><br />* So the key questions are:<br /><br />1. Is there anything about a particular religious faith-tradition which *leads* to violence?<br /><br />2. Are there 'believers' acting contrary to their tradition?<br /><br />3. Most important: what have the leaders of any particular religion done to *promote peace*? How many have said 'We have done a grievous wrong here'? What have they done to address the structural issues behind the war/s? For example: In Sri Lanka 80,000 lives have been lost in the 30-year war with the Tamils. What have Buddhists, Christians, Hindus done to end the conflict? (It is 'in pause' militarily at the moment, certainly not over yet). It is unusual for religious communities around the world to hold political leaders to account. The Pope opposed the Iraq war, but American Catholic bishops were mostly silent... <br /><br />* Unfortunately the tendency is for religions to adopt a 'bunker' mentality, instinctively reinforcing the solidarity of their group<br /><br />* We now have two means (nuclear weapons and climate change) to destroy our planet: just 10% of the world's nuclear bombs would destroy the earth 20 times over, and the mathematical probability of terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons in the 11 (?) countries which currently possess them is very much greater (actually probably inevitable) than if only 2 or 3 countries possessed them. That would spell the end of the 'just war' doctrine. We must collectively sort this out or collectively perish<br /><br />* In general, for the first three centuries of its existence the Christian Church opposed force under any/all circumstances <br /><br />* The Americans pre-emptively invaded Iraq for the same reason Japan bombed Pearl Harbour - *because they could*<br /><br />* Those in power making political decisions generally don't take kindly to others (like religious leaders or ethicists) telling them what ought to happen.<br /><br />Note: see an article here on the last point: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/1768.htm <br /><br />Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher<br />http://jmm.aaa.net.au/<br />Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/<br /><br /> </span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-72677602490907700382009-08-25T17:20:00.000-07:002009-08-30T03:30:58.654-07:00CHRISTIANS & HOMOSEXUALITY<span style="font-weight:bold;">A few brief notes on <span style="font-style:italic;">BEYOND STEREOTYPES: CHRISTIANS & HOMOSEXUALITY</span> (The Evangelical Alliance Working Group on Human Sexuality), Australian Evangelical Alliance, 2009, 108 pages. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">My thesis</span>: Evangelicals who believe in ‘the supreme authority of the Scriptures’ have come a long way in terms of freedom for slaves, equality for women, and grace for the divorced, and are now on a similar journey as they relate to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people…<br /><br />Interviewer (to Evangelical Church Leader): Remember when, just a couple of generations ago, we used to fight about Christians not dancing, not drinking alcohol, not remarrying after divorce, not working on Sabbath/Sunday, not giving leadership roles to women etc.? What’s the current situation?<br /><br />Evangelical Church Leader: Wow, yes, times have changed haven’t they? Significant paradigm shifts have occurred in all these areas – and others. Now we allow divorced people to be leaders, even pastors; now many Christians drink alcohol – hopefully in moderation; these days we can cope with whatever people do on Sundays (they can even enjoy themselves!); and yes, we have women in leadership at every level in our denomination. (And once we could make an excellent case from the Bible against these positions). <br /><br />I: OK let’s talk about sex. In your evangelical tradition, what’s prohibited?<br /><br />ECL: That’s simple, really: no sex before marriage, no adultery after marriage, no sex between people of the same gender.<br /><br />I: So fornication, adultery, homosexual sex are out. Which is worse of these three areas of sinfulness? <br /><br />ECL: They’re all equally sinful.<br /><br />I: Are they? Has your denomination had a task-force on homosexuality?<br /><br />ECL: Yes, every denomination has.<br /><br />I: On adultery? <br /><br />ECL: No, we leave discipline in that area to local churches, unless pastors are involved, and they’re disciplined according to best-practice protocols…<br /><br />I: Fornication?<br /><br />ECL: Our pastors preach against it, and do pre-marriage counseling in this area, and that’s about it.<br /><br />I: Do you know the incidence of church members (especially young people) who marry in your churches who’ve had sexual intercourse before their wedding-day?<br /><br />ECL: No, but I guess it would be a majority… <br /><br />I: Not only is it a majority, but according to surveys among pastors who really know their people, it’s somewhere between 70-90% in mainline evangelical churches in Western countries. Now, if all three areas of ‘sexual sinfulness’ are to attract attention/discipline, wouldn’t you think that area would too? <br /><br />ECL: Sure, when you put it like that.<br /><br />I: But it doesn’t eh? Why is that? <br /><br />ECL: I frankly don’t know.<br /><br />I: I’ll tell you. The rationale is not theological but personal – they’re our children! The problem is not what we believe, but what the Chinese call ‘face’! <br /><br />I for one call that gross hypocrisy: no wonder thoughtful people despise churches for such ‘selective indignation’. [1]<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg19qoL46ba4Kyfb99fhXjx7IadPv6k4kfJLYBjGN7RVkl3r39UBU3KGxydffay3wjB5X4rsPpSv0XpvalwTD-FT0lWVTs_syoraWSHNllKngSnC_qFIyJZVBETdz9sSH1FtQ9z2A/s1600-h/gaycartoon300300.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg19qoL46ba4Kyfb99fhXjx7IadPv6k4kfJLYBjGN7RVkl3r39UBU3KGxydffay3wjB5X4rsPpSv0XpvalwTD-FT0lWVTs_syoraWSHNllKngSnC_qFIyJZVBETdz9sSH1FtQ9z2A/s400/gaycartoon300300.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375702149756156322" /></a><br /><br />In my work as a counselor-of-clergy (and others) over the past 25 years, theological and pastoral issues surrounding the complexities of this subject have come up hundreds of times. It’s currently the # 1 issue-of-contention in churches around the world. Here are just two very common cries-from-the-heart I hear regularly: <br /><br />• ‘Rowland, I want to be faithful to the Scriptures, but when I counsel homosexuals pastorally my “proof-texting” approach isn’t working. When asked what my position is I’ve used the old mantra about ‘hating the sin and loving the sinner’ but the response is always ‘But then why don’t I *feel* loved by people who say that?’<br /><br />• Or: ‘I’m nineteen, and have been sent to you by my pastor and parents. My father is an elder in the church I’ve attended all my life. Last month I finally ‘came out’ and told my family I’m gay. I think I’ve always been that way, I didn’t choose to be erotically attracted to other guys, but women just don’t turn me on at all. I’m a committed Christian and want to be faithful to God’s Word, but this whole thing is tearing me apart. I’ve recently heard of two young people like me who’ve committed suicide because they couldn’t cope with the negative responses they got when they came out… What am I to do?’<br /><br />‘Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives; and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals. How am I to fit together my religious past with my spiritual present?’ (Philip Yancey [2])<br /><br />I can relate to that. Theologically, I’m evangelical in roughly the same way Bishop N T Wright is: ‘I believe in the authority of Scripture. I believe in the appropriate sub-authority of tradition – respecting the wisdom of the church as it has wrestled with issues. But I also believe passionately in the importance of reason… ‘ [3] . <br /><br />(An important little digression. A woman parishioner was married to a diagnosed psychopath, who beat her and her children, sometimes to the point of their being hospitalized. I talked with them both, and he denied it all. Eventually, she said ‘I can’t stay: I can cope but I don’t want to bring up my children in this fearful violent home.’ I agreed with her, and eventually she divorced her husband. By the way, he had a gun, and threatened to shoot me. Question: on what grounds did I have the authority to encourage her? The Bible? Not on its own: there’s no ‘exception clause’ in terms of divorce for domestic violence, only for adultery. Tradition? No: the church has been predominantly patriarchal. Reason? Well, yes, but sanctified by grace. I did what I believe Jesus would have done. The majority of Christians – even conservative Christians these days – agree with that approach in this sort of situation. Keep this analogy in mind as we discuss this other great paradigm-shift).<br /><br />Re homosexuality, Wright goes on to say: ‘The more I’ve been on the edge of the debates the more I’m aware of the complexity of the issues…’ which is why, he says, he hasn’t (yet) published anything substantive on the subject. [4] I’m also not ready to write a major piece on this topic, so my approach here will have a tentative flavour about it. <br /><br />However, when I read the Australian Evangelical Alliance’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Beyond Stereotypes</span> I realize that I’m on the progressive end of the evangelical spectrum. I was for some years a member of the Council of the Victorian Evangelical Alliance, and was invited in the 1980s to be Australian national director for the EA. I know most of the people on this working group - a couple are close/good friends. They have done a good job - over three years - to produce this 108-page study-guide which, as far as it goes, is thorough, readable and irenic. <br /><br />‘Evangelical’ clergy/pastors/scholars can *very roughly* be categorized four ways. Judgmental <span style="font-style:italic;">fundamentalists</span> tell me ‘I preach the Word. I don’t compromise. It’s then up to individuals to respond or not: that’s their choice.’ (Crazies in this group – like the Westboro Baptist Church people – hold up placards at gays’ funerals proclaiming ‘God hates fags’). <span style="font-style:italic;">Conservative Evangelicals</span>: ‘Scripture is clear: even though a homosexual’s orientation might not be *chosen*, their only life-choice is to be celibate.’ <span style="font-style:italic;">Progressive Evangelicals</span> tend to identify with Tony Campolo’s well-known advice (paraphrased): ‘Even if our approach is to affirm the authority of Scripture, we must do more than simply exhort these people to be celibate.’ More <span style="font-style:italic;">radical Evangelicals</span>: ‘The Bible has to be interpreted in its socio-cultural context. The same-sex liaisons behind the biblical prohibitions related either to exploitative sex or sexual rites in pagan religious contexts. A homosexual ‘orientation’ as such wasn’t known back then…’ [5]<br /> <br />Now that’s all dangerously simplistic of course. The nuances within each approach can’t be confined to one generalizing paragraph. And note I’m not talking about people like Bishop Spong who are certainly not ‘Evangelical’ in the sense I’m using the term. <br /><br />Three of the ‘working-group’ which produced <span style="font-style:italic;">Beyond Stereotypes</span> were clergy, three laypersons; five men, one woman. None were (of course?) practising homosexuals, though one of them – Debra Hirsch – confessed to having lived for a while as a lesbian. <br /><br />On the first page of the Preface, the authors deplore ‘simply arguing about texts’ and express a ‘deep concern that the church was often handling the issue in a judgmental or unloving [way]’. But they also deplore a ‘cavalier’ approach to ‘the truth’ (p.v). This grace/truth tension pervades the whole book. Many times we come across something like this: ‘We acknowledge that homosexual people have been needlessly hurt and made to feel that God’s love is withheld from them. This is a great wrong…’ (p.5). <br /><br />Their conclusions are standard ‘conservative evangelical’. Like:<br /><br />• ‘Genetic determinism for sexual orientation is unlikely’ (p.29). (My note: yes, scientists haven’t found a ‘gay gene’ but they haven’t found a heterosexual gene either). <br /><br />• ‘There is no research that proves that upbringing or early development is responsible for the direction of sexual orientation in adults’ (p.32). (Though I have found Elizabeth Moberly’s notion that homosexuality is a reparative drive, an attempt to repair a lack of affection from significant others of the same sex useful in some – but not all – counselling situations). <br /><br />• Then we confront the explosive question ‘Can sexual orientation change?’ Spitzer’s 2003 study of ‘aversive therapy’ with 200 subjects leads our working-group to conclude that yes, ‘if there is a will for change, change is possible – though not necessarily easy and not necessarily complete.’ (One of the important questions we face here, of course, is the longer-term effectiveness of such ‘therapy’. I for one am pessimistic, having listened to stories of people who submitted to ‘aversive therapy’ in the 1980s and 90s. Spitzer is very critical of the way conservative groups use his research[6]). <br /><br />• The section dealing with the biblical material begins, commendably, with an affirmation that all – whether gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gendered or straight - are made in God’s image and are deeply loved by God… But Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 cannot be simply dismissed as a matter of ‘pre-modern ignorance’ (p. 38). Although ceremonial, sacrificial, food, hygiene etc. laws have been superseded by ‘the coming of Jesus and the inauguration of a new age’ (p.38), what of the ‘moral law’ and behavior described as an ‘abomination’? Well, Jesus inaugurated ‘a time of grace… [to the adulterous woman] he offers both forgiveness and a call for repentance’ (p.40). <br /><br />• Jesus ‘took people back to first principles and reaffirmed the divine plan of male-female complementarity…’ (pp.41,42). (It’s interesting that Jesus’ comment about eunuchs ‘born that way’ - Matthew 19:12 - isn’t, I think, mentioned). <br /><br />• ‘Paul’ (1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10) ‘was not homophobic. Same-sex sexual activity is listed along with a range of [other sins] – adultery, theft, greed, drunkenness, slander… Christians have been wrong to single out homosexual sin for special condemnation’ (p.43). Romans 1:26-7 ‘refers to homosexuality… not pederasty (homosexual relationship to children)…’. Paul calls homosexual activity ‘unnatural’.<br /><br />• In terms of the law of the land, our authors affirm that Christians of all people should encourage fairness – whatever our opinion of same-sex unions, divorce, the protection of children etc.<br /><br />• ‘We affirm that monogamous heterosexual marriage is the only form of partnership approved by God for full sexual relations today… Erotic homosexual relationships are sinful’ (p.56). It may not be possible to determine with certainty the ‘causes’ of a person’s sexual orientation, so we should avoid condemning those with a homosexual orientation. On the other hand we face ‘the reality that many aspects of…human physical and social life need to be redeemed’. So we must avoid blanket ‘condemnation and also commendation’. (p.57). <br /><br />The book concludes with two appendices: Deb Hirsch’s ‘conservative-to-progressive’ and Bill Lawton’s ‘radical’ approach to these key questions. <br /><br />I commend the working group for doing the hard work of facing the tough issues, and providing excellent discussion questions. <br /> <br />+++<br /><br />Now for some of my main concerns (I’ll write more on these and other issues when I’ve done further research/reflection on them. Meanwhile see [7]):<br /><br />1. <span style="font-style:italic;">Hermeneutics</span>: 1-1. Suffering vs. Proof-texting. In the Gospels Jesus uses ‘the Bible’ to counter the temptations of the Devil and the criticisms of the ‘Bible people’ – the religious leaders. Jesus’ teaching about the poor and marginalized is done via example (partying with them) and parables. Why? Theologian Jurgen Moltmann has given us one of the best rationales for a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ about proof-texting on matters of social justice: ‘In Christian theology suffering must precede thinking… Christian theology becomes relevant when it accepts solidarity with present suffering.’ [8] Why? Because it’s possible (probable?) that one can know the Bible but miss the point. I hear a very different hermeneutic from those who work with AIDs patients than from over-educated, white, heterosexual predominantly male elites. (The authors of Beyond Stereotypes belong to this group. There is little indication – except for Deb Hirsch and the out-of-sync Bill Lawton – that they had immersed themselves in the ‘gay scene’ to hear the stories of these often marginalized people. I would have recommended also that a couple of GenX’ers with their ‘why the fuss about all this?’ approach should have been invited on to the panel). <br /><br />1-2. More specifically, the two common contexts in the ancient world addressed by the same-sex prohibitions – cultic sex, and exploitative sex, for example with slaves – are, according to the majority of non-conservative commentators, the background to the prohibitions against same-sex liaisons. The life-long exclusive/faithful commitment of two persons of the same sex was extremely uncommon in the ancient world (except occasionally among aristocratic elites).<br /><br />1-3. The radical re-orientation of the early Christians towards Levitical prohibitions – eg. the story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts - surely addresses not only forbidden foods etc. , but everything else in the Holiness Code as well. See Keith Dyer’s article [5] for an excellent discussion of this important point. <br /><br />2. <span style="font-style:italic;">Aetiology</span>: (a) Most theological and social conservatives believe a homosexual orientation is somehow caused by one’s own choices or factors in the person’s environment; (b) most scientific researchers believe homosexuality has an ‘in-utero’ origin. Most of the twin studies seem to favour the latter view. See [9] for a useful summary of the pros and cons. I reckon the jury’s still out on this one (but the gays and lesbians I talk to overwhelmingly believe they were born that way). <br /><br />3. Should churches discriminate against homosexuals in terms of <span style="font-style:italic;">ministry leadership</span> etc.? Only if people who are guilty of ‘sins of the spirit’ – greed, hypocrisy, slander etc. - are treated the same way!<br /><br />4. As a pastor/pastoral counsellor, whom should I <span style="font-style:italic;">'bless'</span>? Only one category of persons actually – those made in God’s image. I tend not to bless institutions (they’re inherently degenerative, as sociologist Robert Merton used to say). I hear all sorts of crazy confessions, every week. But I can’t think of anyone I’m not prepared to bless. I reckon Jesus today would still do that with people on the margins: and no one is more marginalized – indeed traumatized - than ‘GLBT’ people who have been rejected by their biological and/or church families. <br /><br />5. How can I, a heterosexual (currently ‘coming out’ as an ex-Pharisee), who’s been very happily married for 50 years tell anyone they have to accept their lonely/celibate existence due mostly to factors utterly beyond their control? (The priest and the Levite in Jesus’ parable would certainly have had their conservative theology all sorted out… but the wounded wayfarer is still bleeding on the Jericho Road… )<br /><br />6. <span style="font-style:italic;">Finally</span>, how should we behave towards one another during paradigm shifts? With great humility, love and tolerance. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Conclusion</span>: The Lord has yet more light and truth – and grace – to be discovered in his holy Word. Let us be patient with our conservative friends as they catch up with ‘what the Spirit is saying to the churches’ about relating with grace to our GLBT brothers and sisters…<br /><br />*****<br /><br />[1] <span style="font-style:italic;">Note</span>: you’re wondering who did the research on that 70-90% figure? I did, with hundreds of pastors at dozens of pastors’ conferences.<br /><br />[2] Philip Yancey, <span style="font-style:italic;">Soul Survivor</span>, 2001, p.5<br /><br />[3] <span style="font-style:italic;">YouTube</span> video – http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/22687.htm<br />But I – Rowland - would add – ‘and also personal, empathetic experience – of God and others’… I reckon we won’t get anywhere in debates on this subject, without this dimension. <br /><br />[4] <span style="font-style:italic;">Ibid</span>.<br /><br />[5] See this excellent article by evangelical New Testament scholar Dr. Keith Dyer - http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/20763.htm<br /><br />[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwE6_dLweYo<br /><br />[7] See these articles for the pros and cons of the issues: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/keyword/h-9.htm et. seq. <br /><br />[8] See e.g. <span style="font-style:italic;">Hope and Planning</span> (1971), <span style="font-style:italic;">A Theology of Hope</span> (1964 )<br /><br />[9] http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_caus3.htm<br /><br /><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au">Rowland Croucher</a><br />http://jmm.aaa.net.au<br /><br />August 2009<br /></span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-75597603625634440072009-08-06T17:05:00.000-07:002009-08-06T17:08:16.263-07:00JOY IN DISGUISE: Meeting Jesus in the Dark Times<span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />JOY IN DISGUISE: Meeting Jesus in the Dark Times <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhei9imljPYxr4mb6ON46Va1ksk9iH0cOZxO_MwFl7QaiQIrZi8a1hFlszzaJlBrGEe9bz8Vrt8D-CFwE-_aWRZDB7RdKPvzrS_2BvGNEY64_LOnJLOPQHvqbKxpOk6UZBN4PA0hg/s1600-h/joy+in+disguise.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhei9imljPYxr4mb6ON46Va1ksk9iH0cOZxO_MwFl7QaiQIrZi8a1hFlszzaJlBrGEe9bz8Vrt8D-CFwE-_aWRZDB7RdKPvzrS_2BvGNEY64_LOnJLOPQHvqbKxpOk6UZBN4PA0hg/s400/joy+in+disguise.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367006712977402354" /></a>by Edward S. Little (Morehouse Publishing, 2009).<br /><br />‘I lived for a year on a street graced by the presence of three churches. The first, next door to my apartment complex, was the True Love Church. Just down the block stood the Greater True Love Church. A bit farther on was the Reformed Greater True Love Church. It didn’t take much imagination for me to conjure up the scenarios: church fight, division, another fight, another split, and on and on and on.’ Conflict, writes Bishop Little, ‘is always a complex reality that includes multiple elements and many layers. I have a theory that conflict issues from three sources: principle, personality and power’.<br /><br />I enjoyed this book: it’s an easy read, down-to-earth, and full of pastoral wisdom. Indeed, Episcopal wisdom. I finished it in one day, secretly desiring that I had a pastor like Edward Little. The Bishop of Northern Indiana is humble (he doesn’t brag about pastoral successes, but writes honestly about his ministerial stuff-ups), irenic (he’s a ‘loving brother and friend’ of practising homosexual Bishop Gene Robinson even though he voted against him, and is an interesting raconteur (especially about movies).<br /><br />I have only three small reservations… It’s difficult to write or preach with a paragraph-by-paragraph/expository approach and be interesting. Our bishop is conservative, and fellow-evangelicals in my experience want so much to ground their preaching-authority in the biblical text that they often commit the cardinal sin for preachers of being uninteresting. ‘People do not come to church wanting to know what happened to the Amalekites’ says the old quote, or the Greek word for this or that. Second, the title and sub-title were probably chosen to sell the book rather than faithfully describe its contents. Sure, we are helped by traveling with Paul during his hard times, but the title may promise more counseling/pastoral help ‘in the dark times’ than the book delivers. Paul, for many moderns, lived in another world – in all senses. And occasionally there’s a bit of editorial slackness (it’s koinonia not kononia).<br /><br />But the book is an excellent resource for preachers, if you aren’t bound too tightly to the lectionary and want to earth a month’s sermons in Philippians. And good for a month’s devotions too.<br /><br />Rowland Croucher<br /><br />August 2009<br /><br />http://jmm.aaa.net.au/<br /><br /></span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-39453073071139550382009-07-30T21:54:00.000-07:002009-07-30T21:57:19.054-07:00THE JESUS I KNOW<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGGzbrOm-lM_bQzCeEVGmN74dV8EmdOmkKdlrcJbg7gTjKfZBUl_tl74Sri3KR-sEo2KCPP8BEiZ_nUErKdT75ozbC4EotFuAVGbv5MMJWnoxUR0s0l97H3JMGOVWw1k5BudoVyA/s1600-h/Jesus+I+know.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 87px; height: 137px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGGzbrOm-lM_bQzCeEVGmN74dV8EmdOmkKdlrcJbg7gTjKfZBUl_tl74Sri3KR-sEo2KCPP8BEiZ_nUErKdT75ozbC4EotFuAVGbv5MMJWnoxUR0s0l97H3JMGOVWw1k5BudoVyA/s400/Jesus+I+know.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364483730322478738" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ed. Adam Harbinson, The Columba Press, 2009<br /><br />Here’s an interesting pot-pourri of ‘testimonies’ written by a disparate group of people – a few Catholic priests, three or four ManUnited fans, well-known raconteur Adrian Plass, a singer/songwriter who sources the story of the woman taken in adultery in Matthew’s gospel (instead of John’s), a couple of journalists and CEO’s, a victim of sexual abuse, a troubadour, someone who was grateful Jesus heard her soundless screams in the night, a follower of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (believed by his followers to be the Messiah), one or two professional theologians, etc. But all, I think, English, Welsh or Irish. <br /><br />The chapter by Adrian Plass is a classic. As a boy he heard a preacher talk about Jesus on the cross: ‘In the eyes of the man beside him [the dying thief] saw an invitation to be loved and wanted… Jesus’ eyes were saying “I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care what you are. I don’t care what others say about you. I don’t even care what you think of yourself. You’re coming with me. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right…” The preacher’s words seemed to be meant especially for me… a puzzled little boy who had wanted so much to stop his mummy and daddy arguing so that they would be happy…’ <br /><br />Another wrote: ‘The Jesus I know… caught Martin Luther King in his arms on a balcony in Memphis and sat behind Rosa Parks on a bus in Montgomery Alabama… [he] somehow manages to laugh, cry and dance and joke with every expression of human emotion.’<br /><br />These people come from all walks of life, and they’re honest. One laments his undisciplined praying; another wants just ten minutes with Jesus to ask him about death, suffering, injustice and natural disasters. Another is profoundly challenged by the anonymous poem ‘Risk’: ‘To live is to risk rejection/ To live is to risk dying/ To hope is to risk despair/ To try is to risk failure/ One of the greatest dangers in life is to risk nothing.’ <br /><br />An anonymous writer attacks a large church for spending a million pounds on its building: ‘One million pounds would pay the salaries of 2000 pastors in South Sudan for ten years! One million pounds would feed, clothe and educate 1000 children in Uganda, Ethiopia or Zimbabwe for five years!’ <br /><br />A ‘freelance theologian’ tells us that ‘If God has set eternity in the hearts of human beings, then Jesus Christ sets humanity in eternity’. <br /><br />The Jesus many of these people know is not a cardboard Christ or a pale Galilean, but someone who causes trouble, but, as one reminds us, ‘we in the West have designed our lives to avoid trouble at all costs.’ For everyone here Jesus is real, but he’s not static. ‘He is not a proposition to be mastered, but a person to be known,’ writes one of them. ‘He is to be related to rather than reasoned about… He prefers to be found in a community rather than a creed.’ <br /><br />J B Phillips wrote about ‘Christ our contemporary.’ Here’s a good montage of how that actually works in various people’s lives. He is many things to many different people. You won’t relate to everyone’s experience here. And you might quibble about this and that (for example, I don’t think it was C S Lewis who coined the saying about ‘simplicity on the other side of complexity’). And if you want to get to know these contributors better, half of them have set up personal websites. <br /><br />Rowland Croucher<br />jmm.aaa.net.au<br />July 2009<br /></span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-56638543735490939562009-06-05T02:30:00.000-07:002009-06-05T02:34:34.039-07:00LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-JWOMzwkqDed3KopI2d169-KtiDz6uPq8mmtHGVGpP83GjNjDsQpU9PQ9nRceUU4OvK7r4yFiHbZ1O4IbtDNmmUsaCuzftmV76lIBeAe81Br4RzYOOpP0BuJdTVoZRGkWci-jAQ/s1600-h/PARKER+PALMER.jpeg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 98px; height: 116px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-JWOMzwkqDed3KopI2d169-KtiDz6uPq8mmtHGVGpP83GjNjDsQpU9PQ9nRceUU4OvK7r4yFiHbZ1O4IbtDNmmUsaCuzftmV76lIBeAe81Br4RzYOOpP0BuJdTVoZRGkWci-jAQ/s400/PARKER+PALMER.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343774199212063618" /></a><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Parker J Palmer, <span style="font-style:italic;">Let Your Life Speak </span>(2000).<br /><br />Here's a very readable short book, written with an elegant simplicity, and transparent honesty, about 'being who you are' rather than 'being what others want you to be'. It's a modern commentary on the adage 'To thine own self be true... And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any[one].'<br /><br />At the beginning (p2) Parker states his purpose: 'Seeking a path more purposeful than accumulating wealth, holding power, winning at competition, or securing a career, I had started to understand that it is indeed possible to live a life other than one's own'. From our first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take all our clues about living from the people and powers around us.<br /><br />How is it possible to listen to your 'self' without being selfish? Parker notes that the deepest vocational question is not 'What ought I to do with my life?' It is more elemental and demanding: 'Who am I? What is my nature?' He quotes Frederick Buechner, who defines vocation as 'the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need.'<br /><br />Here's something I said an audible 'Yes!' to (he was telling my story as well as his own!): 'Teaching, I [came] to understand, is my native way of being in the world. I am white, middle-class and male - not exactly a leading candidate for communal life. People like me are raised to live autonomously, not interdependently. I had been trained to compete and win, and I had developed a taste for the prizes.'<br /><br />Parker (and I, too) serve education from outside institutions - 'where [he writes] my pathology is less likely to be triggered - rather than from the inside, where I waste energy on anger instead of investing it in hope... ' Parker says he has a 'tendency to get so conflicted with the way people use power in institutions... I spend more time being angry at them than I spend on my real work.' He writes about pathological bosses or corporate culture getting rid of people whose propensity for truth-telling threatens the status quo. (I uttered an audible 'Yes!' again).<br /><br />Another quotable quote: 'The social systems in which people try to survive often try to force them to live in a way untrue to who they are. If you are poor, you are supposed to accept, with gratitude, half a loaf or less; if you are black, you are supposed to suffer racism without protest; if you are gay, you are supposed to pretend that you are not. It is tempting to mask one's truth in situations of this sort - because the system threatens punishment if one does not.' No punishment anyone might inflict on us, says Palmer, could possibly be worse than the punishment we inflict upon ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment.<br /><br />And here's a good word for pastors and other people-helpers: 'One of the "oughts" I had absorbed: "Of course you need to be loved. Everyone does. And I love you." It took me a long time to understand that although everyone needs to be loved, I cannot be the source of that gift to everyone who asks me for it... If we are to live our lives fully and well, we must learn to embrace the opposites, to live in a creative tension between our limits and our potentials.'<br /><br />Back to the question about 'self': Thomas Merton makes an important distinction between the 'true self', and the 'ego self' that wants to inflate us (or deflate us, another form of self-distortion). The true self has been 'planted in us by the God who made us in God's image - the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be.'<br /><br />Parker Palmer's journey towards truth-telling was enhanced by two other journeys - through failure/rejection (when he lost a job, not because he was bad at it, but, as he discovered later, his heart would never be in it) - and, later, dark clinical depression.<br /><br />His writing style reminds me of my key-mentor-preacher's - John Claypool - who also had a gift of uttering profound truths in simple, direct language.<br /><br />One of the highlights in this book is Parker Palmer's description of the discernment exercise he did with some wise Quaker friends at a crucial juncture in his life. I can think of a couple of intersections in my vocational history where I might have chosen another route if I'd had access to this sort of group-wisdom. (Would I have left a terrific church in Melbourne, Victoria, and gone to Canada? Probably not: though God was in that painful time across the Pacific [1]).<br /><br />One question gives me pause: how many human beings throughout history have the privilege of submitting their lives to so many options/choices?<br /><br />Some of the thoughts I've highlighted include:<br /><br />* Burnout is a state of emptiness - trying to give what I do not possess.<br /><br />* We are led to truth by our weaknesses as well as our strengths.<br /><br />* The distortion of the true self comes from living from the outside in, rather than from the inside out.<br /><br />[1] http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/17347.htm<br /><br /><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/">Rowland Croucher</a><br /><br />June 5, 2009<br /></span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-74831259059016115042009-05-19T15:16:00.000-07:002009-05-19T15:19:11.762-07:00MAKING LIFE DECISIONS<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL-xG07koG7X4e4tPDhHtMeuN121OauZQchOYbMDJpJv56wUl2P_2HJkDPTGXf-R_ZzQFQoVxeTfKjvJFrccvFMxYek7OVZio83DyCKhTamL8b_8s8JT2_Q3DlQcXPcBIJ6UFoZg/s1600-h/discernment.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 210px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL-xG07koG7X4e4tPDhHtMeuN121OauZQchOYbMDJpJv56wUl2P_2HJkDPTGXf-R_ZzQFQoVxeTfKjvJFrccvFMxYek7OVZio83DyCKhTamL8b_8s8JT2_Q3DlQcXPcBIJ6UFoZg/s400/discernment.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5337662760656078514" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"> AN EXCELLENT MANUAL ON DISCERNMENT<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Making Life Decisions: (Journey in Discernment)</span> by Geoff Pound (2009).<br /><br />Good books about discernment - or 'guidance' as our forefathers preferred to call it - are not common. Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak has a beautiful illustration of the Quaker model of group discernment, and Marva Dawn's Joy in Divine Wisdom is a collection of 'group wisdom' from many cultures on this important topic.<br /><br />Geoff Pound's approach is to combine the personal and group quests for discernment, spread over forty days plus perhaps seven group sessions.<br /><br />Each day's discipline begins with an 'Approach' where we centre down and 'focus our lives before God.' Then there's a Scripture, a time for silence (that's a challenge for mind-busy Evangelicals and noisy charismatics!), a Reflection, suggestion for journaling, selecting a 'souvenir' (something to keep in mind for further reflection), a time for prayer, and finally a commission: something practical to take away on our journey.<br /><br />In terms of the group meetings, the excellent suggestion of making this exercise a church-wide one is good. (I found when a practising pastor this sort of coordinated activity gives folks something other than a sporting event to talk about 'after church'!).<br /><br />People like me make judgments about whether an author is worth reading by looking at her/his endnotes. Geoff combines the best of a broad range of Christian traditions, though his approach is predominantly what I would call 'progressive evangelical.' Someone who finds John Claypool, Thomas Merton, Sam Keen, the Book of Common Prayer, Richard Foster, Richard Rohr, Karl Barth, and Frederick Buechner - among many others - worth quoting, plus a lot of Bible, is my kind of mentor!<br /><br />Geoff now lives not far from a middle eastern desert. He's lucky. All the biblical leaders spent significant chunks of their lives in deserts. Finding a desert in cities and suburbs (i.e. where you can't hear a phone or door-bell) is a great challenge.<br /><br />I would highly commend this book to individuals and church-groups who want to 'go deeper' into the quest for discernment. I've begun a forty day journey-with-coffee each morning with the help of this manual.<br /><br />Google Amazon.com or AbeBooks to locate a copy.<br /><br /><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au">Rowland Croucher</a></span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-26508726763243504852009-05-08T17:49:00.000-07:002009-05-08T20:05:48.480-07:00'They Told Me I Had To Write This' (Kim Miller)<span style="font-weight:bold;">Parker Palmer, in his brilliant little book <span style="font-style:italic;">Let Your Life Speak</span>, bemoans the fact that many/most of us live lives 'other than one's own'. We allow what happens to us - especially the wounds inflicted deliberately or unintentionally by others or by circumstance - to rob us of our true/free self. As a result, no punishment anyone might inflict on us can be worse than what we inflict upon ourselves: we thus 'conspire in our own diminishment'.<br /><br />Kim Miller's latest book, <span style="font-style:italic;">'They Told Me I Had to Write This'</span> (Ford Street Publishing, 2009) is a brilliant narrative-commentary on Parker Palmer's wisdom, written as a teenage boy's conversations with himself via letters to his grandmother - about school, friends, fights, teenage romance, sexual abuse, relating uncomfortably to a single-parent father (whose wife, the boy's mother, died as she was giving birth to him: that's a key to just-about-everything-else...).<br /><br />And how does one deal with all these painful loose ends? Tim Miller's wise suggestion: through the help of skilled and caring significant others who help us face our demons, do a thorough job of 'reality-checking', and facilitate reconciliation with the important people in our lives.<br /><br />This is a book I planned to skim, but I got hooked, and read every word. It's a terrific read. But for whom? I'd give it to intelligent teenagers and their parents/teachers - indeed anyone who wants a glimpse into the lives and vocabularies (heard of ODB - 'oppositional deficit behaviour'?) of contemporary adolescents. There's a couple of counselling verbatims between teenagers and a school-teacher and priest that are worth the price of the whole book. Thanks Kim!<br /><br /><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au">Rowland Croucher</a><br />May 2009 </span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-16803091897220231042009-02-23T20:37:00.000-08:002009-02-23T20:41:57.680-08:00TWO RESOURCES FOR LENT<span style="font-weight:bold;">1. <span style="font-style:italic;">Is This the End? Drama and Puppet Plays for the Easter Season </span>by Paul Clark (The Hive, 2008). <br /><br />Making children's time in church services interesting/funny can be a challenge. (Back in seminary, theologs irreverently called it the 'Brats' Chat'). <br /><br />Here we have some very creative ideas to get the Easter message across to young people. They include a 'Shrek' donkey telling the Palm Sunday story. It's rated 'comedy' and it's very funny - 7 minutes of it, if your congregation can cope with some humour. Palm Sunday is the setting for a political rally - with placards etc. The 'sideways look' at communion will be also challenging for people who don't smile much (with its party food - a packet of chips, bottle of coke, basketball etc.).<br /><br />The Easter weekend has four more serious offerings - 'Is this the End?', 'The Body Snatchers', 'Inspector Clueless Investigates Easter', and 'Emmaus'.<br /><br />Brings back memories of skits we used to do at Beach Missions. Very entertaining.<br /><br />****<br /><br />2. <span style="font-style:italic;">Not a Tame Lion: A Lent course based on the writings of C. S. Lewis</span>, by Hilary Brand (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008). <br /><br />C. S. Lewis has done more than almost any other writer to make Christianity believable for better-than-averagely-educated moderns. But what of those for whom he's just too complicated or dense?<br /><br />Here'a book of very thoughtful group studies for anyone, well-read or not. It has everything: scriptures, getting to know you ideas, film clips, 'brainstorming' prompts, quotes from the great man, discussion and reflection material, meditations and prayers, etc. etc. (It's so practical, that in the Leaders' Notes section there's a tip about how to manage DVDs: if there are two clips, 'the best time to change over to the second clip is during the first "reflect and share" session')!<br /><br />Hilary Brand uses excerpts from three films: The Chronicles of Narnia's The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, and Shadowlands (the Attenborough cinema version). C. S. Lewis's Aslan was not a tame lion; and the Christ of the Gospels 'is not always a comfortable Saviour', so this Lenten course is sometimes confrontational, especially in the discussions of Lewis's hard views on suffering and hell (which softened after his wife died). <br /><br />Excellent for groups. But also - and this is not the primary purpose of this book - it's the best introduction to C. S. Lewis for folks who've never read him that I've ever seen. <br /><br />Here are some of the famous quotes Hilary gets us mulling over:<br /><br />'Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home'. 'There are two equal and opposite errors... One is to disbelieve in [devils'] existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them'. 'The Christian faith is what it is and was what it was long before I was born and whether I like it or not'. 'All the great religions were first preached and long practised in a world without chloroform.' 'Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.' 'Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible'. <br /><br />Those of us who've had a fairly thorough theological education can easily be handicapped by all that when reading a 'layperson' like C. S. Lewis. Yes, we can argue with some of his 'complicated simplicities'. But if we allow the child in us to be astonished at his insights and wordsmithing we too can still be 'surprised by joy' as he was. <br /><br />I wish I'd had a resource like Hilary's when I was pastor of a congregation. <br /> <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au">Rowland Croucher</a></span><br /><br />February 2009. <br /><br />See <a href="http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/keyword/l-5.htm">here</a> for more on C. S. Lewis</span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919547.post-65745104555784266602009-01-18T00:16:00.000-08:002009-01-18T00:19:55.457-08:00UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE<span style="font-weight:bold;">Review: <span style="font-style:italic;">The Gospel of Grace: Tools for Building a Positive Understanding of the Bible</span> (Mark Wickstrom, 2008)<br /><br />How about this (a humorist writing to a Fundamentalist Christian): 'I've heard you say you take the whole Bible at its word. Please help me understand the following: Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own a Canadian?'<br /><br />Most modern Christians would not take this text literally. But why does one verse demand a literal interpretation and another verse does not?<br /><br />Dr Wickstrom, a progressive Lutheran, helps address these problems by using the analogy of a building:<br /><br />[1] 'The gospel of grace is the inerrant and divinely inspired framework that holds the Bible together' [p. 14]. And God's mercy is shown to people throughout the whole biblical drama.<br /><br />[2] 'Timeless truths' are the internal walls: here 'literalists' and 'selectivists' mostly agree: All are sinners, God invites us to pray, God wants us to love our neighbour etc. However, they may also disagree: literalists might hold a particular view of baptism, or the role of women in leadership, or even the value of snake-handling to increase their faith. Selectivists would rather emphasize timeless truths (eg. 'in Christ there is neither male nor female') rather than apply literally ancient ideas to modern church-life.<br /><br />[3] Then there are 'cultural norms' (the analogy being the colors of paint with which we decorate our house): like all decorations, these 'cultural norms' are changeable. For example, the Roman Catholic church in medieval times believed in 'limbo' (where unbaptized infants go after death) but this was revised in 2006. Strict Pentecostals believe everyone should speak in tongues (even real foreign languages as in Acts 2); most Christians are flexible on that one.<br /><br />[4] The fourth category: personal opinions - like those of Job's comforters or the philosopher in Ecclesiastes, or Paul's opinions about marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. Most Christians believe these opinions might be valued, but are not authoritative for us today.<br /><br />[5] Then there are 'random, unusual texts' about whose meaning no-one can be certain. Who are the 'Nephilim' in Genesis 6 who married the daughters of human beings? Then, in Acts 5, the sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira: 'Is there any message about grace to be gleaned from this story? I don't see it' writes Wickstrom. (See http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/2400.htm for my attempt to understand this dramatic event). Later, Paul was 'caught up to the third heaven'. Meaning what? No one can be sure.<br /><br />Summary: Which texts will we categorize as a timeless truth or a non-binding cultural norm or personal opinion? We must each decide, but on the basis of some wise hermeneutical principles which Wickstrom unpacks in the last half of this little volume. His discussion of homosexuality (pp. 87 ff.) is particularly helpful.<br /><br />Here's a book, with exercises for individual and group study, written by a pastor for his thoughtful parishioners. I'd recommend it for that purpose, rather than as a textbook for scholars (there's no reference I could find to household names like Crossan or Marcus Borg, for example).<br /><br />Rowland Croucher<br />http://jmm.aaa.net.au<br />January 2009<br /><br /></span>Rowland Croucherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13473460918145751334noreply@blogger.com0