Amazon brought me some goodies today, including Rob Bell’s newest book, Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality. Since starting this blog almost a year ago, nothing has generated more links traffic here (besides my participation on the PCUSA Blog and BlogRing) than my posts on Bell’s Nooma series. I’m excited to read Sex God, having just finished Bell’s very good Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith.

Also part of this Amazon shipment: Mark Labberton’s The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice (IVP), Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives (ed. Robert Webber, with contributions by Karen Ward, Doug Pagitt, Dan Kimball, John Burke, and Mark Driscoll) (Zondervan), Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch’s The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church (Harper), Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (IVP) and another Sacra Pagina commentary, this one Frank Matera’s Galatians.

Lots of good stuff to read soon…

I’m glad to read about this today:

The National Association of Evangelicals has endorsed an anti-torture statement saying the United States has crossed “boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible” in its treatment of detainees and war prisoners in the fight against terror.

Human rights violations committed in the name of preventing terrorist attacks have made the country look hypocritical to the Muslim world, the document states. Christians have an obligation rooted in Scripture to help Americans “regain our moral clarity.”

“Our military and intelligence forces have worked diligently to prevent further attacks. But such efforts must not include measures that violate our own core values,” the document says. “The United States historically has been a leader in supporting international human rights efforts, but our moral vision has blurred since 9-11.”

The statement, “An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror,” was drafted by 17 evangelical scholars, writers and activists who call themselves Evangelicals for Human Rights. The board of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group, announced late Sunday that it had endorsed the document.

…

“There is a perception out there in the Middle East that we’re willing to accept any action in order to fight this war against terrorism,” Cizik said. “We are the conservatives — let there be no mistake on that –who wholeheartedly support the war against terror, but that does not mean by any means necessary.”

…

The document says government and outside researchers have documented “acts of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” against U.S. detainees, “especially in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, in Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, in CIA black sites and at the hands of other nations.”

The authors praise the U.S. Army for last year releasing a revised field manual that bans beating, sexually humiliating and threatening prisoners, among other interrogation procedures.

But the evangelical writers criticize the Military Commissions Act, which Bush pushed through Congress last year to set up a Defense Department system for prosecuting terror suspects. The evangelicals condemned provisions of that act that allow indefinite detention for some suspects and does not always hold intelligence officials to the same standards as the military.

Quoting a wide range of sources including the Bible, Pope John Paul II, Elie Wiesel and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the authors say the federal government has a moral obligation to follow international human rights treaties that the U.S. has endorsed.

“As American Christians, we are above all motivated by a desire that our nation’s actions would be consistent with foundational Christian moral norms,” the document says. “We believe that a scrupulous commitment to human rights, among which is the right not to be tortured, is one of
these Christian moral convictions.”

The NAE says it represents 45,000 evangelical churches. However, it does not include some of the best-known conservative Christian bodies, including the Southern Baptist Convention and Focus on the Family.

Go hug an NAE member today! While you’re at it, check out the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

Much to my dismay, my reservoir of blog posts-to-read has overflowed. To be honest, I have a pile in my office of really good posts-to-read from before the turning of the new year. I’m not sure I’ll get to them; they may be either pitched or filed away. We’ll see.

But today I read a very good entry I wanted to commend and pass along: this truly wonderful exposition by Kim Frabricius entitled Twelve Propositions on Same-Sex Relationships and the Church from back in January. Here are her first three propositions:

1. Let it be said at once that the question of same-sex relationships and the church is a question of truth before it is a question of morality or discipline. Is the church’s interpretation of scripture true? Is the church’s traditional teaching true? If they are not, then they have to go, otherwise the faith of the church becomes bad faith. As Milton said, “Custom without truth is but agedness of error.” One other thing in anticipation: Jesus said that the truth will make us free (John 8:32); Flannery O’Connor added that “the truth will make you odd.” But before we say anything more, we must know what we are saying it about. In most discussions on the issue of human sexuality we talk at each rather than with each other; in fact, we talk past each other.

2. I take it that homosexuality – and certainly the homosexuality I am talking about – is a given, not a chosen (a “life-style choice”); a disposition recognised, not adopted; a condition as “normal” as left-handedness – or heterosexuality (whether by nature or nurture is a moot but morally irrelevant point). I also assume an understanding of human sexuality that is not over-genitalised, where friendship, intimacy, and joy are as important as libido, and where sexual acts themselves are symbolic as well as somatic. Needless to say, the “Yuk” factor deployed in some polemics has no place in rational discussion, while the language of “disease” and “cure” is ignorant and repugnant. Fundamentally, homosexuality is about who you are, not what you do, let alone what you get up to in bed. This is a descriptive point. There is also a normative point: I am talking about relationships that are responsible, loving, and faithful, not promiscuous, exploitative, or episodic.

3. What about the Bible? This is the Protestant question. “The Bible says,” however, is a hopelessly inadequate and irresponsible answer. Nevertheless, we must certainly examine specific texts – and then (I submit) accept that they are universally condemnatory of homosexual practice. Arguments from silence – “Look at the relationship between David and Jonathan,” or, “Observe that Jesus did not condemn the centurion’s relationship with his servant” – are a sign of exegetical desperation. No, the Bible’s blanket Nein must simply be acknowledged. But Nein to what? For here is a fundamental hermeneutical axiom: “If Biblical texts on any social or moral topic are to be understood as God’s word for us today, two conditions at least must be satisfied. There must be a resemblance between the ancient and modern social situation or institution or practice or attitude sufficient for us to be able to say
that in some sense the text is talking about the same thing that we recognise today. And we must be able to demonstrate an underlying principle at work in the text which is consonant with biblical faith taken as a whole, and not contradicted by any subsequent experience or understanding” (Walter Houston).

I’d demur a bit about this last point, because the next several go on to show how, for most of the scant references cited, the Biblical material isn’t in fact saying a Nein to “homosexual practice” for various reasons. Kim’s point is that there are Neins being said, but to different things, really.

Nevertheless, this is a great read. Check it out. [...Ed Note: If you've got time, check out the comments too...]

Also, tangentially, I just worked through the Strategy Report adopted by the New Wineskins Association of Churches. I’ve got some comments that I might put into an upcoming post. I am trying to distance myself from the initial reaction to having my position repeatedly called unfaithful to the bible and then reading the authors of the report decry the arrogance of their interlocutors.  How does one react to that? How does one attempt to maintain a charitable and grace-offering relationship with fellow clergy and elders who willingly distort the theological convictions and views of others? Anyway, I’d encourage everyone to read that strategy report, remembering that it is also a rhetorical document.

I have a place in my heart for pastors and churches who are torn by their conscience to remain in our connectional body. There is likely a way to process their schism as faithfully as possible on both sides. (And yes, it is a schism). My greatest concern is with pastoral pensions and medical care…

On the other hand, I’m deeply wounded and ashamed by the tact many of them are taking in their argumentation; they ought be more honest with the true differences on both sides and what that means for the church. And I think that the language used here is simply inaccurate:

• such as with the case of the word ‘coersion’ that comes up with regard to our property trust clause in our Consitution which both defines our connectional system (we’re not congregationalist, nor truly hierarchical) and which defies the history of churches that voluntarily assented to the current constitution and its trust clause when we merged as a denomination in 1983;
• so too the purported arguments about the PUP as “changing” what is in fact a reaffirmation of historical Presbyterian practice (local examination with higher-governing oversight, acknowledging that the scruple issue muddies the waters);
• so too the language that the Trinity Report is “unscriptural” when it is in fact rooted in biblical hermeneutics and full of biblical citation, an exercise (not universally successful) of lifting up the biblical resources for thinking about the trinity while upholding the classical trinitarian formula “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

And there are others; those are just the ones heavy on my mind.

Why mention all this here? Well, this group, among others, argues that there is “clear teaching of scripture” on the homosexuality issue, among other things. This has been the recent trope, since most of them adopt Robert Gagnon’s argument that this is in fact clear cut. But Fabricus is more on point.

That’s enough for the day. May all who read this have a grace-filled Lenten season…

On the heels of my last post, I see that Neil has found out that there is a liberty Bible (CEV), complete with a bold American flag and the Statue of Liberty on its cover. Its ghastly.

After we have just finished our sermon series on Church and State, I found two bits of news that just came out fascinating. Both relate to the Christian Right and how their internal thinking works to either align them closely to the Republican party or to buck a strong affiliation.

The first was a New York Times article (“Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock“) about a pastor of a Minnesota megachurch who, after eschewing a close connection between the church and republican politics, lost a fifth of his 5000 member congregation.

More on the continuation side…

From the times article:

Mr. Boyd said he had cleared his sermons with the church’s board, but his words left some in his congregation stunned. Some said that he was disrespecting President Bush and the military, that he was soft on abortion or telling them not to vote.

“When we joined years ago, Greg was a conservative speaker,” said William Berggren, a lawyer who joined the church with his wife six years ago. “But we totally disagreed with him on this. You can’t be a Christian and ignore actions that you feel are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue. If the church were awake when abortion was passed in the 70’s, it wouldn’t have happened. But the church was asleep.”

Mr. Boyd, 49, who preaches in blue jeans and rumpled plaid shirts, leads a church that occupies a squat block-long building that was once a home improvement chain store.

…

Mr. Boyd said he never intended his sermons to be taken as merely a critique of the Republican Party or the religious right. He refuses to share his party affiliation, or whether he has one, for that reason. He said there were Christians on both the left and the right who had turned politics and patriotism into “idolatry.”

He said he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus singing “God Bless America” and a video of fighter jets flying over a hill silhouetted with crosses.

“I thought to myself, ‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with the cross?’ ” he said in an interview.

Patriotic displays are still a mainstay in some evangelical churches. Across town from Mr. Boyd’s church, the sanctuary of North Heights Lutheran Church was draped in bunting on the Sunday before the Fourth of July this year for a “freedom celebration.” Military veterans and flag twirlers paraded into the sanctuary, an enormous American flag rose slowly behind the stage, and a Marine major who had served in Afghanistan preached that the military was spending “your hard-earned money” on good causes.

In his six sermons, Mr. Boyd laid out a broad argument that the role of Christians was not to seek “power over” others — by controlling governments, passing legislation or fighting wars. Christians should instead seek to have “power under” others — “winning people’s hearts” by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boyd said.

“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said. “America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.

“I am sorry to tell you,” he continued, “that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.”

Mr. Boyd lambasted the “hypocrisy and pettiness” of Christians who focus on “sexual issues” like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived
violations of their rights to display their faith in public.

…

Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at Woodland Hills, said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school.

“They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is supporting the Republican way,’ ” she said. “It was some of my best volunteers.” (Emphasis Added)

I think there is an important role for faithful believers to play in the public civil discourse, but it can only be a humble way and must try to resist hegemonic impulses. I wrote about that a few weeks ago. And it is never faithful to confuse fidelity to Christ with fidelity to a political party, or to nation. We’re called to honor our nation, and reserve our faith for God alone.

The second was a Christianity Today interview (“How Then Shall we Politick?”) with former Bush chief-speech-writer Mike Gerson. Here are a couple of excerpts:

What challenges do you see for evangelicals who want to broaden the movement’s social agenda? It’s probably a long-term mistake for evangelicals to be too closely associated with any ideology or political party. The Christian teaching on social justice stands in judgment of every party and every movement. It has to be an authentic and independent witness….

Where specifically do you think the Religious Right has gone off track? Some of it is what I would call baptizing policy recommendations, as if there were a Christian view on tax policy or missile defense. These are questions of prudence and judgment on which reasonable people disagree.

I find it refreshing to see some clear public discourse about this over amongst my brothers and sisters on the right, in part because I remember wanting to see more of this from the religious left when the democrats were in charge of things several years ago.

Jordon Cooper points us to these conversations between Dr. Martin Assad, Academic Dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary and Dr. David Gushee in Christianity Today: Another Point of View: Evangelical Blindness on Lebanon, We Risk Not Just Suffering, But Annihilation, and ‘Who is My Neighbor‘ in the Lebanon-Israel Conflict? Very interesting reading…

This is an interesting podcast at Decently and In Order, particularly the discussion about how much energy is expended at Presbytery on maintaining orthodxy instead of outreach,  mission, shared service, along with how these discussion are shaped in the media, etc.

When the “traditional” presbyterians talk about why the church is broken, maybe all the energy expended on trying to enforce their narrow idea of theological purity is the reason? Just a thought….

One of the many listserves I subscribe to is Sightings, from the Martin Marty center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. capably run by managing editor Jeremy Biles. (Free subscription info for those interested is available on-line.)

In my inbox today was this interesting piece by Dr. Marty himself about protestant complancency. I was going to provide excerpts, but I think the full piece is interesting enough to warrant posting about it.

Here’s how it starts. More below the fold…

Sightings  4/3/06

Robinson and Mainline Protestantism
– Martin E. Marty

“A liberal,” poet Robert Frost wrote, “is a man” — or a woman — “too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”  My corollary observation: “Mainline Protestants are too complacent to make a defense or counterattack when chided or derided.”  Catholics and Jews have their ready-to-go defense leagues and anti-defamation units. Evangelicals — who currently own the executive, legislative, and perhaps soon the judicial branches of government; the religious airwaves; and much of publishing — are organizing for a new “everyone tromps on us, let’s fight back” campaign. But for decades now it has been fashionable to sneer at or stomp on mainline Protestants, who, for a variety of reasons, just take it.


Then, from within their camp, along comes a layperson worth listening to — someone who, for a change, offers perspective and wise counsel.

She is Marilynne Robinson, as fine a novelist as we now have (last year she won the Pulitzer and many other literary awards), and whose bully pulpit is the Spring issue of the Phi Beta Kappa journal The American Scholar.  Her piece is called “Onward, Christian Liberals: Faith is not about piety or personal salvation, but about helping those in need.”  Usually soft-spoken, here she is roused to criticize “not only so-called fundamentalists but, more particularly … the mainline churches, which have fairly assiduously culled out all traces of the depth and learnedness that were for so long among their greatest contributions to American life.”  Among them there is currently “a powerful tendency to make belief itself small, whether narrow and bitter or feckless and bland.”  She will get away with that sentence because many “mainliners” recognize enough truth in it to make them wince.


In the case she presents, she is more biblical than the biblicists, more fundamental than the fundamentalists, more evangelical than the evangelicals.  Delving deeply into scriptures and evidencing her learning in theology and ethics, she does not look down on personal piety and holiness.  She simply links them with prophetic and gospel-based calls to ethical response.  Robinson traces the lines from older, better Great Awakenings to the current capitalism-obsessed awakenings that lead people to avert their gaze from the poor.  Maybe she misfires here and there and overstates the case at times — but probably not.


“What has personal holiness” — which she’s for, by the way — “to do with politics and economics?  Everything, from the liberal Protestant point of view.”  A seal on her orthodoxy, in case anyone wants to check, is the quotation she takes from Calvin: “We ought to embrace the whole human race without exception in a single feeling of love; here there is no distinction between barbarian and Greek, worthy and unworthy, friend and enemy, since all should be contemplated in God, not in themselves.  When we turn aside from such contemplation, it is no wonder we become entangled in many errors.”  Robinson’s summary: “This is John Calvin, describing in two sentences a mystical/ethical engagement with the world that fuses truth and love and opens experience on a light so bright it expunges every mean distinction.  There is no doctrine here, no setting of conditions, no drawing of lines.  On the contrary, what he describes is a posture of grace, generosity, liberality.”

Here I am, remembering Lent and “sighting” John Calvin, as quoted in a secular journal.