contradictions?

Adams (Dr. James Luther Adams), finally, told us to watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. The Nazis had used "values" to launch state repression of opponents. Hitler, days after he took power in 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations. He ordered raids on places were homosexuals gathered, culminating in the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin and the permenant exile of its director, Magnus Hirschfield...Adams said that homosexuals would also be the first "sociel deviants" singled out and disempowered by the Christian Right. We would be the next.
Chris Hedges, American Fascists, p 201

By way of contrast, here's an excerpt from another book, put out a bit after Hedges' own work.

Nazi attitudes toward homosexuality are also a source of confusion. While it is true that some homosexuals were sent to concentration camps, it is also the case that the early Nazi Party and the constellation of Pan-German organizations in its orbit were rife with homosexuals. It well-known, for example, that Ernst Rohm, the head of the SA, and his coterie were homosexuals, and openly so. When jealous members of the SA tried to use this fact against im in 1931, Hitler had to remonstrate that Rohm's homosexuality was "purely in the private sphere". Some try to suggest that Rohm was murdered on the Night of the Long Knives because he was gay. But the Rohm faction posed the greatest threat to Hitler's consolidation of power because they were, in important respects, the most ardent and "revolutionary" Nazis. Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams write in The Pink Swastika that "the National Socialist revolution and the Nazi Party were animated and dominated by militaristic homosexuals, pederasts, pornographers, and sadomasochists." this is surely an overstatement. But it us nonetheless true that the artisitc and literary movements that provided oxygen for Nazism before 1933 were chockablock with homosexual liberationist tracks, clubs, and journals
Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, pp 378-379

Goldberg seems to hardly be one who is trying to single out "social deviants" here--a couple of pages later, he writes that he thinks that some form of gay marriage is probably inevitable, and he isn't so sure that would be a bad thing. Which half-echoes my own take (it may be inevitable, but let's not pretend that flouting God's laws won't have consequences).

One telling thing, I think, about these two excerpts is this. Hedges' claims are not back up with any footnotes or other support, though he does have many footnotes in the book. Goldberg, on the other hand, has a footnote and even references one of his sources in the paragraph, the book The Pink Swastika.

good for me, not for thee

Dobson's attacks on gays are relentless and brutal. He likens the proponents of gay marriage to the Nazis.
Chris Hedges, American Fascists, p 103

Irony, thy name is hypocracy.

Adams finally, told us to watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. The Nazis had used "values" to launch state repression of opponents.
p 201

He (Adams) saw in the Christian Right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities, he said that would, in teh event of prolonged social instability, catastrophe or national crisis, see American fascists, under the guise of Christianity, rise to dismantle the open society.
p 195

So, apparently it's ok of Adams (and, by extension, Hedges) to compare the Christian Right to Nazis. That's acceptable. But alleging that James Dobson compares those who want gay marriage to Nazis is, well, an example of how "relentless and brutal" Dobson's attacks are.

But one of the good things about many of Dr. Dobson's books is that they can be easy to find, particularly in libraries. A library close to me has a copy of the book Hedges' claims to find this example of a "relentless and brutal" attack. The book is called Marriage Under Fire, and Hedges' reference points to page 41. After a reading of that page, here is the only thing I can find that he may be refering to.

It was this regrettable decision that has created the present turmoil throughout the nation. It has emboldened rogue commissioners, mayors, and legislators to begin overriding laws prohibiting homosexual marriage. They have been passing out marriage licenses like candy. These minor bureaucrats now have things going their way, and they are going to strike while the iron is ot. This is why we are in the state of peril that faces our nation today. Like Adolf Hitler, who overran his European neighbors, those who favor homosexual marriage are determined to make it legal, regardless of the democratic processes that stand in their way.

Well. Ok, the name 'Adolf Hitler' is present in that paragraph. And there is a bit of "this is like that" there.

Hardly much, though, once you've seen it.

And let's look at the context, particularly "this regrettable decision". It's about the case Lawrence v Texas. To quote Dobson again from the same page...

By ruling that sodomy is a constitutionally protected "right", the highest court in the land declared, in effect, that considerations of morality and decency were irrelevant.

A reasoned take on Dobson's claims in the context may be interesting, but Hedges doesn't do that. He seems to simply latch onto the name Hitler, and so tries to spin Dobson's words to mean something they really don't seem to mean.

While, of course, going on himself about how Nazi-like he thinks the Christian Right is.

Yeah, double standard much?

sojos ups the hate rhetoric

Xenophobia 101

Yes, folks, it's come to this...xenophobia.

Unfortunately, one of the core elements shaping Americans’ views on immigration is xenophobia. Not all opposition to immigration is driven by xenophobia, but it is certainly a contributing factor. Scholars describe xenophobia — also known as nativism — as “an intense opposition to an internal minority on the grounds of its foreign (’un-American’) connections.”

Oh, boy, you know this'll be...interesting.

To some extent, the psychological element of our attitudes to immigrants is hardwired in all of us. The targets change based on the prejudices of the day, but the fear is constant. That’s why in 1855, xenophobia exploded as an anti-German riot in Louisville, Kentucky that killed at least 22; in 1871, as an anti-Chinese riot that killed at least 20 immigrants in Los Angeles; and today, as the restrictive legislation symbolized by Arizona’s SB 1070 that is directed primarily toward Mexican immigrants.

Another interesting take on xenophobia describes it as “discriminatory potential” activated and escalated by a sense of threat. Researchers note that negative views of immigrants come from “fears of diminished economic resources, rapid demographic changes, and diminished political influence.” Another researcher states that “immigrants can offer an emotional outlet for fear when both the internal and external affairs of a country are unstable.”

Sound familiar?

Yeah, and it's just an accident, I suppose, that this article comes out a few days after the last election? Sojo isn't, you know, insinuating that the Republican and Tea Party victories this past week were, well, inspired in part by what they're calling xenophobia?

But in a democracy, public opinion is vital to policy-making. It’s clear that right now the American public is more enthusiastic about border enforcement than earned legalization. In turn, border enforcement is popular among policymakers because a majority of Americans support it. While polling is often contradictory — for example, it also reveals support for some sort of legalization program — the data on immigration show a clear public preference for border enforcement.

Politicians rarely put the blame on the public. As Sen. John McCain’s adviser, Mark Salter, recently stated, “Not too many voters like to be told there’s something wrong with them.” But the nation’s attitude toward immigrants will need to shift before major reform happens.

Oh, I see--the desire to enforce the borders is xenophobic.

Yeah, sure, whatever.

The constant attempts by Sojo and their ilk to paint us who want things enforced is sad. Worse than that, it's dishonest.

I've been to several other countries. When I've done so, I've abode by their policies, whether it's for short visits or for studies or even for long-term living and missions work in Russia. I had nothing against the need to acquire a visa, and should I ever chose to actually immigrate somewhere else, I would not see any reason to try to circumvent their laws.

The desire, even demand, that our border laws be enforced is not xenophobia. I doubt any other country is more welcoming to people of other races and nationalities than the US. That people should come through proper channels, and not try to sneak in, is not unreasonable.

don't attack me as i attack you

It's sometimes funny to read some people's take on things. Take a look at this.

Those arrayed against American democracy are waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow them to shred the Constitution in the name of national security and strength.
Chris Hedges, American Fascists, pp 201-202

If I stopped right there, those of you who are conservative like me would think, sure, we all know that. One can find the echo of Rahm Emanuel saying that a crisis should not be wasted.

But...that not Hedges' claim. Oh, no, Hedges fears American Fascists among...the Christian Right.

Debate with the Christian Right is useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want to dialogue. It is a movement based on emotion and cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday school.
p 202

The radical Christian Right calls for exclusion, cruelty and intolerance in the name of God. Its members do not commit evil for evil's sake. They commit evil to make a better world...The worst suffering in human history has been carried out by those who preach such grand, utopian visions, those who seek to implant by force their narrow, particular version of goodness. This is true of all doctrines of personal salvation, from Christianity to ethnic nationalism to communism to fascism.
p 205

The attacks by this movement (Christian Right, radical Christian Right, Christian radicals, pick your name for them) on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars, scientists, those they dismiss as "nominal Christians", and those they brand with the curse of "secular humanists" are an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedoms and ultimately our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice.
p 207

That last part, which is what he ends the book on (not counted notes and index), is hilarious. Oh, no, the Christian Right can't say a thing about all those other people, but he, Hedges, and we may assume people like him, can attack people like Tim Lahaye and Creationists as much as he wants in his book, and apparently those attacks aren't "an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedoms and ultimately our democracy".

It rather boggles the mind. But then, I've found it a truism that, when the left accuses conservatives of doing something or being a certain way, it actually means that the left is doing those things and is that way. So, when Hedges, who is obviously on the left, says that to the Christian Right it doesn't matter what religious activities John Kerry and Jimmy Carter are involves in, it actually means that to him it doesn't matter what religious activities George Bush and Tim Lahaye are involved in. When he says that debate with the Christian Right is useless, it simply affirms my own personal observation that debate with left is about as useless as trying to hammer a nail into a brick wall with my forehead. And probably more painful.

oh, happy day!

Proud to be a Kentucky hillbilly!!

Go, Rand Paul!!

And, oh, such sweet words I heard this morning...former (yes, former, hahaha) Majority Leader Pelosi.

A short tenure, yet far too long.

Granted, election day wasn't all I would have hoped. People like Reid and Frank, for whatever bad reasons, still have elected positions. But as shameful as that is, there is also great reason to be happy!

Things take time, people. The damage took years to do, and it's not going to be fixed overnight, or with one election. But this could be a good step forward.

So, be happy and rejoice. This battle was a win. But don't think the war is over.

sojo's gloves come off

Stanley Hauerwas on Glenn Beck and More

What do Cornel West, Rita Nakashima Brock, Carol Rose, and Onleilove Alston have in common? They are all our recent guests on Iconocast, a podcast “exploring the anti-imperial implications of Jesus’ teachings within our modern imperial context.” Our latest guest Stanley Hauerwas covered topics like September 11, the Muslim community center at ground zero, his critiques of Mennonites, the problem with many intentional communities, racism, sexism, the national anthem being played at Goshen, Marxism, and pacifism.

Wow, shallow as depth, I see.

Stanley Hauerwas:

“[Glenn] Beck-like Christianity is idolatrous … and God will punish them. That sounds terribly harsh but, that they can claim to represent, or come close to representing Christianity, it seems to me to be a terrible judgment on the development of Christianity in America.”

“Christian language has been stolen by this kind of generalized civil religion that Beck and these people represent should be condemned.”

So, apparently, only if you've bought into the Sojo-type of Christianity (which apparently means that being in the US means you're somehow imperialistic or whatever, which given the trendy re: the current administration, may not be such a stretch), you're not Christian.

Wow, thanks, Sojo. You couldn't give me anything more than this. I've always suspected your all-inclusive holistic type of language was only a front and a farce, and now I know.

an odd argument from sojo

Why I’m Not Tired of Reading About the Tea Party

Are you tired of reading about the Tea Party? The group represents 11 percent of our population, yet it has been on the front cover of every national newspaper for months now.

I found it odd that a Sojourners' writer should feel the need to try to disparage the Tea Party based on a statistic (I don't know from where) that it "represents 11 percent of our population". To maybe play a little game Wallis himself played last year in regards to the Congressman who dared to say that the President was lying, I think I can hear this phrase as being more like it "represents (only) 11 precent of our population".

But what I find odd is that, by and large, Sojo claims to be for those they consider the least, the lowest, the minorities, the outsiders, and all that. One would think that the fact that the Tea Pary (only) represents 11 percent of our population would mean that they would qualify as one of those least and lowly who most deserve to be heard.

But then, the Tea Party is the opposition. Silly me, their minority status must be a sign that they are wrong, not that Sojo is wrong.

sojo's permissiveness

Toward the House of Levi

So I confessed instead that in our work with homeless families, Mile High Ministries has unmarried couples living in our facility. I knew this wouldn’t be particularly good news for many in this particular evangelical congregation, but I was just warming up. We also serve undocumented immigrants, knowing full well that they are in the country illegally. Not only that, but I’ve been politically active in supporting changes in America’s immigration laws, including speaking at a rally denouncing a new anti-immigrant law in Arizona. The room was now very quiet, so I encouraged everyone to exhale.

After my final story, about how much I enjoyed a birthday party for a loved one at a lesbian bar, I was confident that people would have some words for me after church was over. Sure enough, some thanked me, because they too have a relationship with an undocumented person or a loved one who is gay. Others were chagrined that I could be so wrong on the critical issues of our day, or even that I had such poor judgment as to speak of such things in an audience where children were present.

One man promised to try to get our transitional housing facility shut down, and another told me that I was preaching from the wrong version of the Bible. A careful reading of the “authorized” text, he said, would clarify that Jesus had gone to Levi’s home precisely in order to preach repentance. I wonder why Pharisees would find that so offensive?

The text this person was using was Mark 2:13-17, which tells of Jesus' meeting the tax collector Matthew and going to his house to meet others that the text calls 'publicans and sinners'. Here is Mark 2 in an interlinear version. I choose this version, because it shows that the man mention in the last paragraph was at least on the right path. I don't know if Jesus was there to preach, the passage says he only ate with them, but Jesus does say that he had come to call sinners to repentence.

That message is a far cry from what the Sojo writer seems to be saying. His and his ministry seem to have no problems with allowing unmarried couple to live together in their facility, and we may assume they continue their immoral sexual activities. They also have no compunction in helping those who are breaking the law, and that it is a political statement of theirs, and that in helping them they are actively helping those people continue their illegal activities. Instead of offering help while also telling them that they need to obey the lawas of the land, they are helping them continue their illegal activities and occupation.

One can know, for example, that Jesus kept a group from stoning an adulterous woman, but in doing so He did not condone adultery. He did not condemn, but nor did He condone, and while Sojo is big in not condemning, they are not so solid in not condoning.

wallis accuses Beck of inspiring violence

MLK and the “Progressive Hunter”

I read an alarming report last night on a recent interview with Byron Williams, who was arrested after a July 18 shootout with the police. He had a car full of guns and planned to kill people at the Tides Foundation and ACLU in San Francisco. Williams said in this interview that he sees Glenn Beck as his “teacher,” and that he was agitated by the virulent things his teacher had to say about the people at Tides. While it is unfair to blame Beck for everything his audience might do, it isn’t unfair to ask Beck to make the connection that King did between the violence of the tongue and that of the fist, and to take responsibility for how he speaks about those with whom he disagrees.

On a personal level, I was reminded of that connection in a conversation with my 12-year-old son, Luke. Last summer, I shared the story of how a far-right radio station and some local churches in Wisconsin tried to get me disinvited from speaking at a Christian youth festival there. All of their attack lines were right off of Glenn Beck’s blackboard — that I was a “communist” and that listening to me would put high school students attending the festival in “spiritual peril.” Despite their confrontation and intimidation, the festival hosts stood firm with my invitation, and I traveled to Wisconsin. The evening went very well as I talked about Jesus and our commitment to the poor, the response of the kids was very positive, and many parents (even very conservative ones) thanked the festival leaders for standing up against the intense political pressure from the Far Right.

Remember an incident from a few weeks ago, where a man entered the headquarters for a cable channel, and demanded that they air more programs that were aligned with his own view of things involving the environment and population growth?

Or how about the more recent ads from an environmental group which features people who dare to disagree with them blowing up?

Or the journalist from the infamous JournoList who wrote of hoping to see conservative radio host Limbaugh die of a heart ache, and laugh at him while he died?

I usually get to listen to a few minutes of Beck's show during the day, and I've heard him several times tell his listeners to refrain from violence. And if anything, an overwhelming degree of violent and hateful rhetoric comes not from the right but from the left.

For Wallis to try to say that Beck is somehow even indirectly to blame for the actions of one man is a stretch, especially since I haven't seen him or Sojo take even indirect blame for the environmentalists who want those who disagree to die explosively. It's simply more posturing on Wallis' part, nothing more and nothing less.

And the Sojophants eat it up, call him gracious and christlike, and that he's such a nice guy. It's enough to make one ill.

God as facebook

In modernity we created one theological connection point for the entire world: "You are a sinner who will die in your sins unless you repent. You must be born again." This sounds theologically correct, but is it really the case that this is the only connection with God through the Jesus story? I think not, though I think it is a connection to Christianity and has been the dominant mode of connection in the church post-Reformation. But is not the sole means. And in postmodernity, such exclusion has little chance of connecting with the seekers and practitioners of the new religious economy. Multiplicity, a network of connections, is necessary, making room for both the sinners and the sinned against, the broken and the whole. Speaking more of the writer Gadda, Calvino says, "Whatever the starting point, the matter in hand spreads out and out, encompassing ever vaster horizons, and if it were permitted to go on further and further in every direction, it would end by embracing the entire universe."
Barry Taylor, Entertainment Theology, p 198

Is the statement he claims was created in modernity really created in modernity?

If one has read the Bible and has even a basic understanding of it, how can one say that that is a rather accurate summation? Does the Bible not say that we are all sinners, and come short of the glory of God? Does it not say that the wages of sin is death? Was not the message of Jesus and the Apostles that people needed to repent and believe the Gospel? Did not Jesus Himself say the we must be born again?

Upon what basis, then, can Taylor say that is not the sole means? How can he say that repentence and believing the Gospel is not the universal place where all must begin, the door through which all much enter? He may have a point that not all like that way, or like the door, but what does that mean? Does the fact that one doesn't like the door mean that one can try to climb in through the window? Does he give one scriptural source for his position? I've given the place where this paragraph may be found in his book, you may look for it and see for yourself--there is no scripture given in the context.

And when he starts writing about 'multiplicity' (wasn't that the name of an old Michael Keaton comedy movie, something about clones?) and 'a network of connections', does that strike you as him making God seem like Facebook, or some other social networking internet site? Have you made God your 'Facebook friend'? Have you left any comments lately on his wall?

Whatever Calvino or Gadda may have meant by that last bit Taylor quotes, I don't think there's any doubt what Taylor means by it--universalism. That only acceptable religious idea is one that would "end by embracing the entire universe". The most correct religious teachings are the one that embrace the most--the most people, the most other ideas, the most other beliefs--that that is embraced by the most--the most people, the most of the correct kinds of people, the most followers of other religions (so long as they are of the right beliefs, too), the most seekers and practitioners of what is considered the new religous economy.

If, in Taylor's view, God seems a lot like Facebook, Christianity becomes like Bill Clinton--everything must be polled and tested, to see what people want, and only then is a decision made about what to do and what to believe and what to teach. God, then, ceases to be the authority, and the power passes to the people--the correct kinds of people, of course.

waterworld as philosophy???

'Waterworld' is essentially a modern tale. The central dream is to get back to dry land, which, when finally discovered by Mariner and his newly fashioned and reconfigured family, is reminiscent of Eden. It is the return to Milton's 'Paradise Lost' rather than the discovery of new frontiers. The film represents the modernist's desire to return to the old order, achievable only in the cinematic imaginery, but still a compelling image to many. A key message in the movie is that real life and living as humans are possible only on dry land, the utopian tendency of modernity's universalizing binary oppositions. Mariner stands as a testament to the fact that life in other permutations is quite possible, somthing that is daily being explored in postsecular situations.
Barry Taylor, Entertainment Theology, p 91

First, I hope you will join me in a few chuckles, at the idea of using 'Waterworld' as a deeply philosophical metaphor. Sadly, Taylor doesn't seem to have gotten too far into the canon of works made famous (or infamous) by Mystery Science Theater 3000, so we will not get further philosophical breakdowns of such great works like how mythology meets science "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", or maybe the conflict between ancient religions and modern technology in "The Robot versus The Aztec Mummy", or the misadventures of modern people in their quest through the desert of the real and the perils of looking for a helping hand in the classic "Manos: The Hands of Fate".

No, we shall just have to accept that Taylor had to use what even he called a "box-office dud", p 89, to try to convince us that we live in a water-world of postmodernism.

"A key message in the movie is that real life and living as humans are possible only on dry land". Umm, yeah, we humans are just so made for life on the water. Don't we like to swim around in water, eat fish, and all that? So, come on, dive in, leave the dry land behind!!

One could get the impression that Taylor and those like him are trying to outdo even Jesus. Jesus, after all, only compared a man building a house on sand to one building it on the rock. These are going even further, saying that not only should be build our houses on water, but that it is a much better think than to build it on the rock.

Oops, don't stay under water too long. You may drown.

Wait, Costner's character had gills!!! You can...well...you can...well...well.

Oh, that's right. It's Costner. And, it's a movie. The normal person doesn't have gills.

Oh, and there's the food, too. Yeah, we can eat fish, clams, and such things, for a while. But what about the vegans? Are they going to have to subsist simply on seaweed? And don't us normal omnivores need veggies every now and again, too?

"Mariner stands as a testament to the fact that life in other permutations is quite possible". Umm...Costner's character is fictional!!!! You know, made up, not real, likely not even possible. I know, one can find some science fiction that could be considered predictive, but I doubt that Waterworld falls in that category, especially when it comes to Costner's character and his sudden development of gills.

emergents despising Christ's return?

Ever turn on religious television? Most of Christian TV is filled with people excited at the prospect of Jesus' return and the end of the world. How can a religion be so turned around that its adherents would wish, even pray, for the end of the world? And yet this seems to be some religions' focus today--driving the world ever closer to some kind of apocalypse, be it Christian, Muslim, or some other version.
Burke and Tayler, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 125

Yeah, you silly Christians, you should be happy with this world only, then with the good things to come. And never mind such passages as "Looking for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ".

In fact, if taken in context, this "blessed hope" has a far different result than the fear-mongering speculations of Burke and Taylor.

"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope--the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good" Titus 2:11-14

So, if waiting and longing for Christ's return is "driving the world ever closer to some kind of apocalypse", it's not because waiting and longing for Christ's return is wrong, but because the world is wrong.

"For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing." II Timothy 4:6-8

Apparently, Jesus will even reward those who "have longed for his appearing" on that day of judgment. Far cry, indeed, from the this-world-only focus of Burke and Taylor.

So, don't let the emergent's rob you of the legitimate hope we can have of Christ's return. It is perfectly legitimate and reasonable to, along with the Spirit, pray "Come". "The Spirit and the bride say 'Come!' And let him who hears say 'Come!' Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life." Revelation 22:17

emergents' selective salvation

Archbishop William's book, Writing in the Dust, closes with a thought about this story and the dust Jesus wrote in: "He does not draw a line, fix an interpretation, tell the woman who she is and what her fate should be. He allows a moment, a longish moment, in which people are given time to see themselves differently precisely because he refuses to make the sense they want. When he lifts his head there is both judgment and release." The judgment is against those who want to make God, first and foremost, a judge and condemner of humanity. The release is for those bruised by life, by their own foolishness, yet who receive mercy and grace from God

This story represents a shift in God's character--or, if it makes you more comfortable, a change in our perception of God's character. Either way, if God or the perception of God had changed, the Jews could not remain unchanged. The problem was that they wanted to remain the same. This was the dilemma Jesus created among them. "We know youare a teacher who has come from God," Nicodemus says in the book of John. But the unspoken issue was that by acknowledging that Jesus came from God, the Jews either had to make him conform to and affirm their ways or had to shift their own thinking to embrace his new theology. They preferred the former, which, of course, didn't work because Jesus didn't come to conform to conventional standards of God's kingdom.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, pp 161-162

Is any of that true?

For example, was Jesus' condemnation directed at "those who want to make God, first and foremost, a judge and condemer of humanity"? Was his release directed at "those bruised by life, by their own foolishness"?

Since they seem to engage in some speculations, perhaps it gives me a bit of license to do so, too. What if, for example, the husband of the woman was among those in the crowd? Could he not be considered among those "bruised by life and (his) own foolishness", the foolishness of marrying a woman who was not faithful? If mercy was directly only at the woman, what about him?

And who did Jesus condemn in this story? Is there any condemnation at all? Can Jesus' words that the one without sin may cast the first stone be seen as him condemning them? Maybe, but it seems far from plain.

Yet if we want to look at the Gospels as a whole, then the idea of condemnation cannot be escaped. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil." John 3:16-19

This is, I think, a telling passage. God did not send Christ to condemn, but to save, but the further truth is that those who did not believe in Christ were already condemned. The judgment had been rendered--the deeds of the members of mankind, men and women, are evil, so they love the darkness.

Hardly a bright, cheery view of humanity. But there is hope--"Whoever believes in him is not condemned". Those who believe in Christ, believe in the Christ of the Scriptures and not a christ made up by men, are not condemned.

How simple, how so very simple. How very far from the physical-only salvation through works the emergents want us to buy into.

All are condemned, no matter their socio-economic status, the size of their pocket book, or whatever sad-sack story they can tell about their life. But all can believe and be saved, no matter their soci-economic status, the size of their pocket book, or whatever sad-sack story they can tell about their life. God sent Christ to save us, we who are sinners, "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us".

the emergent buffet

Spiritual bricolage is the mining of ideas and concepts about God that already exist in the world and creating a whole new vocabulary, as well as new concepts and understandings of what it means to have a spiritual life.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 143

What a perfect way to view the emergent and progressive 'religion' that people like Burke and Taylor are wanting to create--religion as buffet. Your first trip through, maybe you get a main course of materialistic atheism seasoned with a bit of something that's like Christianity but isn't (remember No-Salt?) Go over to another table and get a spoonful or two of eastern mysticism, maybe a bit of hot-and-sour new-agey gunk, and a touch of Islamic garnish on the sides just to be religiously correct. Some things in the Judaism section may be safe, though one can have such awful heartburn when it's combined with the Islamic garnish.

Oh, and for dessert--a heaping helping of marxist-socialist social-justice pudding sweetened with artificial Jesus-talk (remember Sweet-and-Low?) with chunks of all the above mixed in.

Yeah, I did use the word "chunks" intentionally.

But don't bother about the Orthodox Christianity table. It's old hat stuff. Sure, it's got all the necessary vitamins and minerals, but it's all so...unexciting. Who wants plain oatmeal with berries when you can have superultramega oats with chocolate sprinkles? How do you know your apples are natural if the proper authorities have not labeled them as organic? Do you really want your grandma's cookies, or cookies baked in all-natural cookie-stuff and filled with raisins certified to have had bugs all around them because no pesticides were used, were hand-picked by illegal immigrants who were paid a wage someone arbitrarily decided was fair, and no puppies were harmed in their making? Can your granny honestly say her cookies never harmed a puppy? I didn't think so.

Oh, sure, Orthodox Christianity was good enough for your grandparent. It helped them through a couple of world wars and severe financial depression, not to mention the other things they went through. And, yes, they're old and going to kick the bucket soon, so you really don't want to tell them that Heaven is just a myth--let them have their comforting lies, just like kids and Santa.

But you! You're young! You're different! You're special!!! You have the internet, Google, television, channel after channel of ESPN, coffeehouses on every corner! You're postreligious postchristian postright-and-wrong postmodern postmoral postcapitalism postElvis posteverything!!! You don't want plain food, you want super-foods! You want postfood foods!!

lib fun time

In short, were Jesus to to return in the flesh, he would be executed again, not by the world but by the church. Or left by the church to die in the cold, like Sheldon's character, or to be shot down in the nightmare urban violence of America's urban warfare because Christian's support right-wing extremists opposed to gun control, or excluded as an illegal immigrant.
John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, p 32

Oh, joy, a favorite fun exercise of the left, "What outrageous and ridiculous things can we accuse the church of today!". Caputo's version seems to be "How the church would mistreat Jesus!"

Can I play, too?

Were Jesus to return in the flesh today...

The liberal media would write nasty things about Him, because He wasn't an evolutionist, but rather talked about Adam and Noah as if they had been real people.

Oh, and He would be pro-Israel, even as He would say some hard things about them.

Progressive churches would deny him a place in their pulpits, because He would insist on taking biblical moral teachings seriously, and spoke strongly against their attempts to say all religions lead to God. He would insist that only belief in Himself was the way to God.

Emergents would not invite Him to their conferences, because He would tell them that attempts to rethink and reimagine Christianity are misleading and wrong.

Muslims wouldn't like Him, because He'd tell them that Mohammed was wrong.

He'd tick off the Buddhists and Hindus and Mormons, too.

The political liberals (and no doubt the materialistic religious liberals) would be less than happy with Him, because He'd tell them to not love the world, He'd speak about His Father as if He is a real being and some kind of nonperson that runs around in men's minds. Plus, He'd work miracles, which would make those liberals scurry to explain them away.

Mostly, they'd get ticked off because He just wouldn't stand with them on things like global warming, robbing the rich to give to the deadbeats, homosexual rights, the right to abortion, anti-globalism, anti-imperialism, anti-this and that. He would not follow Alinsky's rules for radicals, wouldn't join in protests against police, wouldn't come down on the side of illegal immigrants.

Oh, no doubt, he would have some things to say to conservatives, too, and not all would be complimentary. He'd probably warn them about compromise with those of similar political ideas but seriously different religious beliefs. He'd probably tell conservative Christians to stop trying to appear nice to the world. He'd likely say that there's too little difference between the progressive who blatantly abuse and mishandle His Word, and evangelicals who water it down and make the Gospel the ultimate self-help method and God a perveyor of good feelins. And I'd hate to think what He'd say to the Word of Faith crowd. He'd probably say some things about speaking the right things but not living by them.

Which side would attempt to kill Him? Oh, certainly those of other religions have killed many Christians, so there's that to consider. I think progressives and emergents would, like the Jewish religious leaders of old, be so disappointed with the real Jesus over the one they've tried to imagine and deconstruct that, in order to preserve those imagined and deconstructed Jesus', they'd have to do away with the real one.

And I think there would be conservative Judas' who would be more than willing to sell Him out.

vibes

Spirituality begins its discussion of the sacred from the desire for an integrated life. Religions often operate on a sin-redemption paradigm, which has little resonance in today's society.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p. 60

"...little resonance in today's society". Well, maybe. So?

When has man wanted to know that he is a sinner in need of redemption? Yes, it doesn't resonate in society--any society. The Pharisees in Jesus' day seemed to not mind calling other's sinners, but were not so happy when Jesus did it to them. As they write a few pages later...

Although the link between grace and sin has driven Christianity for centuries, it just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore. It repulses rather than attracts. People are becoming much less inclined to acknowledge themselves as "sinners in need of a Savior." It's not that people view themselves as perfect; it that the language they use to describe themselves has changed. "Broken", "fragmented", and "lacking wholeness"--these are some of the new ways people describe their spiritual need.
p 64

So, people don't want to think of themselves as sinners, we shouldn't deal with sin? If a person has a serious illness, are doctors not allowed to deal with that illness or call it by name if it "just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore"? If a patient has cancer, is the doctor not allowed to use the word 'cancer' because "it repulses rather than attracts"?

As the Scriptures say, Christ died for our sin. If Christ died for our sin, then our sin is a serious issue, and should not be shunted aside because it "just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore", or it "repulses rather than attracts"; indeed, it could be said that we should stress it even more strongly when among people to whom it doesn't resonate and for whom it repulses rather than attracts.

It is not our job to rethink, redesign, reimagine, rewhatever the message God has given us, especially if the message is not well-received. Trust me, if all we have to deal with are people saying it "just doesn't resonate", well, that's rather mild compared with the tortures and persecutions and martyrdoms Christians have suffered and still suffer. Some people have given the "It's not relevant and it's repulsive" in rather definite, strong, and (for the Christians) painful ways.

one thing i've been working on

My postings here have been rather infrequent for a while. There have been reasons for that. Work was busy for a while, for one thing.

Here is another reason, a bit of something I've working on.

En Passant

It's a bit of work about things that are of concern to me that I see and hear about in the church. I'm not going to say it's overly deep, it's certainly on the popular level. Much of it is non-fiction, except for some chapters about a fictional 'dream', which are my attempts at fiction and biting humor. It does deal with some emergent stuff, though is not confined to those issues.

So, it's up for anyone to read. Do so, please, and address whatever in it is of interest to you.

a correctiong, of sorts

A few posts back, I gave a quote from the book "The Heretic's Guide to Eternity" which was itself a quote attributed to one Carter Heyward. In that post, I referred to Heyward at least one time as "Mr. Heyward".

Silly me.

Carter Heyward

Isabel Carter Heyward (b. 1945 in North Carolina) is a lesbian[1] feminist theologian, teacher and priest in the Episcopalian Church - the province of the worldwide Anglican Communion in the United States.

Well, this was...enlightening.

Theology - the Nature of God
Author of a number of books and numerous articles, Carter Heyward's most distinctive theological idea is that it is open to each of us to incarnate God (that is, to embody God's power), and that we do so most fully when we seek to relate genuinely to others in what she calls relationality. When we do this, we are said to be 'godding', a verb Heyward herself coined.[4] God is defined in her work as 'our power in mutual relation'.[5] Alluding to mainstream Christian views of God, Heyward has stated 'I am not much of a theist'.[6] For her, 'the shape of God is justice',[7] so human activity can, as theologian Lucy Tatman has observed, be divine activity whenever it is just and loving. In her book Saving Jesus From Those Who Are Right, Heyward asserts that 'the love we make... is God's own love'.[8] In Heyward’s work, God is therefore not a personal figure, but instead the ground of being, seen for example in compassionate action, which is 'the movement of God in and through the heights and depths of all that is'.[9]

[edit] Theology - Jesus in Carter Heyward's thought
Again in contrast to the more traditional Christian focus (on Jesus Christ as God incarnated as a redeemer), Heyward believes that 'God was indeed in Jesus just as God is in us - as our Sacred, Sensual Power, deeply infusing our flesh, root of our embodied yearning to reach out to one another'.[10] This power works to change despair, fear and apathy to hope, courage and what Heyward terms 'justice-love'.[10] But God's Spirit is not contained 'solely in one human life or religion or historical event or moment'.[11] God was Jesus' relational power for 'forging right (mutual) relation, in which Jesus himself and those around him were empowered to be more fully who they were called to be'.[12] Insisting on the God-incarnating power of all, Heyward observes that 'the human act of love, befriending, making justice is our act of making God incarnate in the world'.[13] Interestingly, in her recent work she suggests that even the non-human creation may incarnate God, commenting that 'there are more faces of Jesus on earth, throughout history and all of nature, than we can begin even to imagine'.[14]. Not unrelated to this perception, Heyward founded the Free Rein Center for Therapeutic Horseback Riding and Education at Brevard, North Carolina, where she is an instructor[15]

Well, no wonder the Oozers quote her so favorably. And no wonder she wants people to belief it's ok to read the Bible in such different ways than those people long ago. She certainly does.

don't tell me what i don't wanna hear!!

Spirituality begins its discussion of the sacred from the desire for an integrated life. Religions often operate on a sin-redemption paradigm, which has little resonance in today's society.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p. 60

"...little resonance in today's society". Well, maybe. So?

When has man wanted to know that he is a sinner in need of redemption? Yes, it doesn't resonate in society--any society. The Pharisees in Jesus' day seemed to not mind calling other's sinners, but were not so happy when Jesus did it to them. As the Heretic's Guide writers write a few pages later...

Although the link between grace and sin has driven Christianity for centuries, it just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore. It repulses rather than attracts. People are becoming much less inclined to acknowledge themselves as "sinners in need of a Savior." It's not that people view themselves as perfect; it that the language they use to describe themselves has changed. "Broken", "fragmented", and "lacking wholeness"--these are some of the new ways people describe their spiritual need.
p 64

So, because people don't want to think of themselves as sinners, we should do away with sin? If a person has a serious illness, are doctors not allowed to deal with that illness or call it by name if it "just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore"? If a patient has cancer, is the doctor not allowed to use the word 'cancer' because "it repulses rather than attracts"?

As the Scriptures say, Christ died for our sin. If Christ died for our sin, then our sin is a serious issue, and should not be shunted aside because it "just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore", or it "repulses rather than attracts"; indeed, it could be said that we should stress it even more strongly when among people to whom it doesn't resonate and for whom it repulses rather than attracts.

It is not our job to rethink, redesign, reimagine, rewhatever the message God has given us, especially if the message is not well-received. Trust me, if all we have to deal with are people saying it "just doesn't resonate", well, that's rather mild compared with the tortures and persecutions and martyrdoms Christians have suffered and still suffer. Some people have given the "It's not relevant and it's repulsive" in rather definite, strong, and (for the Christians) painful ways.

what are you doing in another universe now?

Spirituality operates on a new cosmology that sees a "multiverse" rather than the universe. It attempts to redefine the practice and experienc of faith in a post-Newtonisn world. As Marshall McLuhan said, "The phrase 'God is dead' applies aptly, correctly, validly to the Newtonian universe which is dead. The ground rule of that universe, upon which so much of our Western world is built, has dissolved." Religion operates on premodern views of the owrld. Ever since man took pictures of the earth from the moon, our understanding about cosmology and the nature of being has evolved into a postmetaphysical understanding of life.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p. 60

If you read that, and are thinking "What does any of that mean?", join the club.

A few months ago, some big progressive type had a shindig about "Theology After Googles". I think I wrote a bit about some things he wrote about it. Pretty much, we are to think that, after the advent of the internet search engine Google (sorry, MSN and Yahoo and all you other search engines), we have to redefine and rethink and redo and rethis and rethat all things theology.

This is hardly new. Some took the true horrors and evil of the Nazi death camps and extermination chambers to tried to formulate a theology after Auschwitz, and some of them concluded that God is dead, though without consulting God, I would suppose. Burke and Taylor are trying to say that the lunar landing or the first photos from orbit somehow necessitates a need to rethink and all that in theology.

Sometimes, it seems like every new invention or big event has some people saying we need to rethink God because of it. Why? What does Google have that trumpts God? Why does even an ugly event like the killings in the Nazi camps mean we have to rethink God? Is this all not just ways so shifting blame and responsibility?

It strikes me that the ancients were made of much heartier stuff. Jeremiah walks among that ruins of Jerusalem, and cries out to God. Daniel gets carried off to a foreign country, and sticks true to his God and the true beliefs in Him. Nehemiah actually believes those old words of God concerning the return of His people from exile and so acts on them. Jesus actually tells the disciples that Jerusalem will be destroyed and the Temple torn down, and they don't try to redefine Him and rethink His words and try to explain away what He told them.

There are true contradictions that should be avoided. But there are also seemingly contradictions that are not really contradiction, but rather, like colors, enhance the overall picture. Gideon can say "The Lord is peace" and believe that that same God can tell him to raise an army and kill the people who have conquered them, and he can see no contradiction in those things. And there isn't a contradiction.

Emergents and progressives seem unable to comprehend that. McLaren posits that God in the Old Testament is at times "unchristlike", a blasphemy if I've read one. His god is a small, weak thing, a creature made in McLaren's own image, not the great, grand, at times frightening God we see throughout the Bible.

Man can make whatever technological advances they want. They still haven't surprised or surpassed God. If anything, man's tech advances have only made us worse. The person who could at one time have only killed a few people with bare hands or knives can now kill scores with guns, or even thousands with something as seemingly innocent as airplanes, not to mention nuclear weapons. Lies which would have not even been heard about in another country a few hundred years ago can reach the other side of the world in seconds now.

pomo reading shenanigans

Every generation, on the basis of its own social and cultural history, tradition, education, and experiences, reads the Bible in ways that our ancestors would not recognize. This is because we always read the text of our own lives in relation to the biblical texts," Carter Heyward observes.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 108.

Every generation reads the Bible in ways people before us would not recognize? Oh, really? And what proof can this Mr. Heyward offer for that claim?

Perhaps he bases it on things in the writings of the early church fathers? Irenaeus? Justin Martyr? Or is his way of reading them, let alone the Bible, so different that he can't even read them correctly?

And why just the Bible? Do people read Plato and Aristotle that same way? Or other Greek writers, poets and playwrites and philosophers? Can we not even understand Homer in any correct way?

Now, I've read a small bit of a few of the early church fathers. Not much, I admit, but a bit. I know, for example, that Justin Martyr had an eschatology that was rather a lot like what he today call Futurism, meaning that there would be a time when an Antichrist would rise and rule before the physical return of Christ. Though, as well, he thought that the church had taken the place of Israel, which I have a few problems with, but as with other Christian writers like Chesterton and Lewis whom I have found informative, I reserve the right to disagree as well as agree.

But I don't think the read the Bible in some kind of way that was so different from my own that it would not by recognizable to each other. Granting areas of disagreement, if the problems of language could be bridged, I think we could mostly understand each other.

On the other hand, I've recently had some encounters with those who could be said to read the Bible in ways that a Justin or an Irenaeus would likely not have understood, though maybe Irenaeus, in his studies of the Gnostics, would have been familiar with similar things.

The encounter began when I responded on an internet board to someone writing the he or she didn't believe that Christ died for our sins. I responded by posting several New Testament scriptures showing that Christ did indeed die for our sins. I was then told that this wasn't good enough because they weren't from the Gospels, that I was quoting Paul and John and not Jesus. And when I responded that I was quoting the Word of God, I was then told that if I was going to quote the Word of God I should quote Jesus, because of John calling Him the Word in that Gospel, that Paul and the other epistles-writers were struggling to understand Jesus' death and resurrection and what it meant to them (putting into question the concept of divine inspiration in the epistles), and that we can't even say that Bible is really the Scriptures.

And, to go to another though rather related source, even the words and teachings of Jesus are not enough. "...I could live with the idea that Paul condemned what we today have constituted as 'homosexuality' and that if anyone ever asked Jesus about it (and if they did we have no record of it) he would have said the same thing as Paul...In my view, even if there is a dominant view against homosexuality in the Scriptures and tradition...I would argue that on this point the Greeks were right and the dominant tradition among the Jews and Christian is wrong...Indeed, by invoking the spirit of a certain Jesus, I would argue for a counterfactual conditional: were Jesus alive to day and familiar with the pros cna cons of the contemporary argument, his centeredness on love would have brought him down onthe side of the rights of what we today call the 'homosexual' difference..." (Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, pp 108-109). In other words, Jesus' own acceptance of and agreement with the laws against homosexuality is not enough if one can spin (I mean, deconstruct) things to the benefit of one's agenda. Even granting that the Bible never condones homosexuality means that we today must do so, in the minds of those who would call good what is evil. And apparently showing what the Scriptures say about the blood of Christ is not an "intelligent argument", whatever that means.

And there are others, too. I would wonder if Irenaeus would feel forgotten, because after he put a 1000 year kabash on Gnosticism through his works, it's back and people want to make such Gnostic gospels as authoritative as the biblical Gospels (or maybe take the authority of the biblical Gospels down to the level of the heretical Gnostics).

So, maybe Heyward has a point. Though if his point, and that of the Heretic's Guide authors, is that one way of reading the Bible (or, more accurately, interpreting it) is as good as the other, well, even they don't think that's true. If anything, Burke and Taylor and other emergents and progressives use themselves as the starting point for reading the Bible--they are the ones that judge and even condemn the Bible, not the Bible that judges us and both condemns us and tell us of God has provided us salvation. They even have the gall of judge and condemn God, as McLaren does in "A New Kind of Christianity" when he says that there are times in the Old Testament when God is "Unchristlike".

I really can't imagine a Justin or an Irenaeus thinking the God in the Hebrew scriptures was unlike Christ. When that happens, I think McLaren's views of God and of Christ are seriously, even fatally, skewed.

motes and beams

Spirituality focuses on authenticity and honesty. Religion tends to emphasize perfection and holiness. In fact, so great is the pressure to be progressing that people often lie to each other and even themselves about their religious experience and where they really are in their lives.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 60

This is one criticism they have that has a bit of validity. What I question is how much "authenticity and honesty" is in their spirituality.

For one thing, we have to question what is meant by "authenticity and honesty". Perhaps it involves many things, but one sure thing it seems to involve is that one can admit to practicing what was once considered bad and sinful behavior (homosexuality, worshiping other gods, wanting other people's property through 'social justice', breaking the laws for rather lame reasons) is not only something they can now admit to, but also things that these people will support them in doing.

Now, on the other hand, if you disagree with these people who practice "authenticity and honesty", well, you may find that your own "authenticity and honesty" is somewhat less welcomed.

Perhaps there is pressure in churches to appear more spiritual than one really is, I'll not deny that. But I don't think that the church is alone in that fault, but that emergents are as prone to it as any other. The truth is, the 'emergent conversation' is not so welcoming of dissenting voices as they would like to pretend. One need only ask Mark Driscoll how welcoming they were of him when he started questioning them.

materialism as spirituality

Spirituality is material (meaing of this world) and tries to connect the world of the divine with the world of the human. Religion, on the other hand, is external and generally focused on "otherworldly" experiences. It often has very little to say about the sacredness of all creation here and now.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 60

There are certain things that people say that can only be taken seriously if we realize they have their tongue firmly planted in one of their cheeks. For example, something like "red is the new black" is a nonsense statement unless we realize the context, and realize that it's said with a touch of humor and what the speaker may consider wit.

So, when these two make the statement "spirituality is material", while we may assume they are trying for wit, we still have to assume that somehow they are being serious. Spirituality is the new materialism, up is the new down, opera is the new punk, and jars of urine is the new art.

And why do I think that, at the very least, they have things backwards? What does it even mean, really, to "connect the world of the divine with the world of the human"?

Finally, there is, of course, the stereotypical and baseless slam against the church. It is too "otherworldly", too focused on life after death. Never mind all the hospitals and charites the church has been a part of, all the centers of learning the church has helped to found, all the causes it has supported that have made societies better. Never mind, as Chesterton points out in "The Everlasting Man", that the one thing that kept Europe from becoming like Asia was the church.

Which, of course, also includes the immeasurable good of telling people their sins can be forgiven through repentence and faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ.

Were Burke and Taylor to honestly look at history, they couldn't offer enough thanks to the church, or the God for the Church, for all the good Christians have done. But they won't, they have their own agenda to push, and the true church and the Gospel it preaches is simply in the way.

un-Taylor-ing Chesterton

This is Christ for this age but also a Christ for all ages. Images of Jesus are historical and contextual, as are recitations of the gospel. Things are added and subtracted; there are differences in focues and emphasis. My opening quote from Chesterton is of help here. Chesterton wrote at a time when atheism was a sigificant and growing alternative to faith. The rise of scientific-rationalism, including new theories such as Darwin's evolutionary model, were undermining the already embattled Christian faith that Chesterton held. The gift Chesterton offers is the power of a new perspective. Rather than address issues of sin, salvation, and redemption, he appeals directly to the "atheistic" potential in the Jesus story, the singular moment in the Passion where a conversatio about atheism and God is a viable one. This is what I mean when I say that we must once again encode the message of Jesus.

In the present situation it seems that some are willing to change, rearrange, and rethink form, but there is little attention to changeof content in the presentation of the Christian message in teh postsecular. My sense is that it is the message, the very content, that which we present as being representative of Christian faith that is the one thing that needs to be revisited and re-encoded...But in some sense, as long as Christianity remains a vapor trail fo modern and premodern concepts about how the relation between the human and teh divine is achieved, Christian thinking will not contribute much to the matters at hand....The message needs to speak to our time, not times past. Chesterton made room for atheists at the foot of the cross, not by denying other realities of the story, but by isolating the very point of connection by which the potential for engagement might be effected.

Barry Taylor, Entertainment Theology, pp 209-210

And his quote of Chesterton's.

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the very cry from the cross: the cry which confesses the God has forsaken God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a gof from all the gods of the world...they will not find another god who has himself been in revolt...They will find...only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.
from Orthodoxy

As someone who has read a bit of Chesterton, and learned more than a bit from him, I rather immediately smelled (in a metaphorical sense) that something was wrong here. I recognized that quote, though it took me a bit to find in the text file of Orthodoxy that I have (courtesy of the Gutenberg Project), but I finally did. One note--since I am using a text file for the reference, I can't give you a page number, but I can say that the quote is in chapter VIII called The Romance of Orthodoxy.

Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case of the common modern attempts to diminish or to explain away the divinity of Christ. The thing may be true or not; that I shall deal with before I end. But if the divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point--and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

A couple of times in that paragraph, Chesterton admits that he is dealing with a difficult subject, and one time admits to thinking that he what he's writing may be taken wrong. I think Taylor is taking him wrong, whether by accident or not, I'll not venture to say my suspicions, except that some of his claims show a staggering ignorance of the book.

When, for example, Taylor says "Rather than address issues of sin, salvation, and redemption...", making it sound like Chesterton does no such thing, he only leads me to believe that he has never read Orthodoxy. If he had, he would likely have read things like this.

But I think this book may well start where our argument started-- in the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin--a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.
Chapter II

And concerning the idea that Christianity needs to keep up with the times, well, consider these.

An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century. If a man believes in unalterable natural law, he cannot believe in any miracle in any age. If a man believes in a will behind law, he can believe in any miracle in any age. Suppose, for the sake of argument, we are concerned with a case of thaumaturgic healing. A materialist of the twelfth century could not believe it any more than a materialist of the twentieth century. But a Christian Scientist of the twentieth century can believe it as much as a Christian of the twelfth century. It is simply a matter of a man's theory of things. Therefore in dealing with any historical answer, the point is not whether it was given in our time, but whether it was given in answer to our question. And the more I thought about when and how Christianity had come into the world, the more I felt that it had actually come to answer this question.
Chapter V

I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the effect that such and such a creed cannot be believed in our age. Of course, anything can be believed in any age. But, oddly enough, there really is a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed more fixedly in a complex society than in a simple one. If a man finds Christianity true in Birmingham, he has actually clearer reasons for faith than if he had found it true in Mercia. For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less it can be a coincidence. If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian, it might be an accident. But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy of Christianity. The complication of our modern world proves the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems of the ages of faith. It was in Notting Hill and Battersea that I began to see that Christianity was true. This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it.
Chapter VI

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom--that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.
Chapter VI

I could go on; indeed, I consider much of Chesterton's writings to have in some sense refuted much of the egotistical nonsense of postmodernism long before posmodernism was born. I think I'll leave it for now, though, with this last quote.

Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and full of a cruel apathy. It is rational to attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin.

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all."

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own: and already Mr. H.G.Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called "Doubts of the Instrument." In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first.
Chapter III (aptly named The Suicide of Thought)

If, as Taylor claims, Chesterton was trying to make "... room for atheists at the foot of the cross", he was not doing so in order that the atheist should remain an atheist; rather, Orthodoxy was to a large degree an account of his own move from atheism to Christianity, and he spends quite a few of his very long paragraphs showing the contradictions of the things atheists say against Christianity. He certainly wasn't interested in pretending that the atheist could remain an atheist and be a Christian, which seems to be quite the fashion today.

keeping you informed

Simply because it's good to know these things...

It's been...what, several days, maybe over a week...since we started hearing about the New Black Panther leader who went on about how he "hate(s) every iota of a cr...." and how black people need to "kill some cr...." and some of "their babies".

And Sojourners, being of course the non-violent, anti-hate, anti-(white)-racism people that they are, have so far on their badly-names God's Politics blog, as of this yesterday (I'm writing this around noon, so who knows what may be put up later today) have posted...

Absolutely nothing about it.

And I looked about at all entries for this month, July. Not even on their Friday entries of basically links to things they deem interesting, is it mentioned.

Now, if they could find one even loosely affiliated person at a Tea Party who would go on about how white people need to "kill n..." or "kill the babies of ch....", then you can bet every dollar or other currency you have that they'd be trumpeting that all day every day for weeks--just recall how they went on about the white policeman last year who arrested the black professor when he thought the man was breaking and entering.

But a black person who is a part of a hate group like the New Black Panthers? Wouldn't want that to interfere with their self-righteous diatribes about our fictional oil addiction, or how Tupac Shakur was someone to listen to for theology, or that when Latino youths kill white boys it leads to acts of vengence taking place "before I could get my pants on."

But a black man telling black people to kill white people and their babies? Nary a peep, as of yet.