Rummage Sales

Every five hundred years, the church, whether she realizes it or not, has a rummage sale. The cultural, societal, and philosophical baggage gathered "along the way" must be re-constituted or tossed aside all together.

*Jesus came to bring Israel back to Torah-abiding, justice-executing ways.

*The important council's of the 5th centuries definitively gave the church language to understand who Jesus really was (fully God and fully human--a belief we moderns take for granted)

*The split of the Western Church (Catholicism) and the Eastern Church (Orthodox) and the Oriental Orthodoxy (Coptic, Syrian, etc.).

*Martin Luther's Reformation of Catholicism in the 16th century

*The Great Emergence of the late 20th/early 21st century (sometimes mentioned as postmodernism).

Every five hundred years, the rummage sale comes a knockin'. This is the premise of Phyllis Tickle's new book The Great Emergence. A "short epic" (thanks for that expression Jonathan), this book covers the major threads of Christianity as a social movement over the last two thousand years. Tickle masterfully weaves in and out the complexities of Christianity's spread: the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

Too many highlights to cover, so I'll mention just one facet. Towards the end of GE, Tickle attempts to describe the different branches/response of Christians in this new reality, this emerging world landscape (141-143).

• Traditionalists: "Like those who have fallen heir to Grandpa's old home place and who still like things just the way he had them, they see no need either to fight with the neighbors or to change the furniture." This group is content, fine with business as usual.
• Re-traditioning: This group has chosen to stay with their inherited group, but unlike the Traditionalists "they energetically wish to make it [the church] more fully what it originally was." These folks want to keep the house, but make major interior changes and modifications: create a new kitchen, update the plumbing, drop new floors.
• Progressives: "[W]hile wanting to maintain their position in institutional Christianity, they want also to wrestle with what they see as the foolheartedness of holding on to dogma based ideas and doctrinally restricted governance and praxis." This group will knock out some walls, extend favorite rooms, even build additions if need be.
• Hyphenateds: "[T]hey recognize theirs is the most schizophrenic of the encompassing circles . . . householders who have fallen heir to Grandpa's old home place, feel a compelling need to honor the land it sits upon and the trees that surround it, but no need to retain its structural shape. Imaginatively enough, though, while they may tear down the house, they will savage some of the material out of which it was built and incorporate those honored bricks and columns, plinths and antique doors into the new thing they are building."

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Which stream do you find yourself in?

Evangelism: Being Good VS Being Right

How to be Anti-Intellectual

There are two ways to be anti-intellectual. One is dangerous. The other is healthy.

First, the dangerous way. In this stream of anti-intellectualism, I hear people say, "Well, I hate to read. I just catch the headlines." This group (full of conservatives and liberals depending upon where you live) polarizes the conversation (or lack thereof) with words like "naive, crazy, ignorant, and stupid." I can't tell you how many times I heard people, on the right and left, use such words towards someone whose political viewpoint was different them. All those comments really do is betray the lack of wisdom of the one speaking.

This kind of anti-intellectualism (the bad kind) does not seek to understand the other side of an issue (be it political, spiritual, etc.) . . . rather, this side has it all figured out. The answers are clear-cut, even if they've never considered that there questions might be really bad questions. In this frame of mind, you listen to your favorite polarizing radio voice, read only a few periodicals printed by your stated constituency, and if, by chance, you read a book, it will not be from someone who might totally give you a different slant into the world but someone you know you can trust because, after all, they think like you do. Faces get red. Speeches get slurred. Ideas are out the window. Now, you find yourself defending things that you don't know about as much as you claim.

I reject that kind of anti-intellectualism. It stands against Jesus' disposition of entering into people's lives, asking questions, having dialog, seeing the image of God in every person one encounters. This kind of anti-intellectualism is the easy way out.

There's another kind of anti-intellectualism. This kind seeks to gain knowledge vigorously through books, news, media, conversations, experience, and dialog. These persons might be conservatives or liberals (or neither) but they surround themselves with diverse viewpoints. They are committed to learning and to the process of changing their mind, because, if you've gone twenty years (or two) without changing your mind on something you probably aren't learning. The more one learns, the more one realizes that knowledge is fleeting and that we are all ignorant save a few subjects.

This anti-intellectualism loves to say, "I might be wrong but here's what I think." It always seeks perspective, nuance, and viewpoint. One can have strong conviction and still exist in this camp. It's not easy. Our church, social, and political climates want so desperately for you to come to the dark side. The side that says everything is "black and white" . . . "clear as the nose on my face." The side that says, "If you are a Christian you will clearly vote for _______." Or, "If you are a real citizen you'd believe _________."

I choose to be anti-intellectual. Not in the sense that I have it figured out and know I am hoping others will come to see my point of view. Rather, I want to be the kind of anti-intellectual who reads everything from Plato to Hitchens but also realizes that the greatest wisdom in life often comes from the janitor at the seminary or the teacher's aide at the elementary school (or the carpenter from Nazareth).

A note to Christians. When you become the first kind of anti-intellectual (the bad kind) you confirm what most of America already thinks about Christianity. That we are naive, narrow-minded, incapable of wrestling with life's big questions. This does not mean we bow to the gods of pluralism and tolerance. Rather, it means we seek "truth knowing that we alone do not possess the ability to know truth absolutely." For the sake of the world (and your marriage), pursue wisdom vigorously, but don't ever think you've arrived. The tide of history will go out, and you'll be left on the shore holding life's great equalizer: hind-sight.

Say What?

I'm studying with ministers from various different Christian backgrounds. Methodist. Pres. Community Church. AME. Baptist. Lutheran. Episcopal. Pentecostal. Church of Christ.

I'm now in my second year of studies at Columbia Seminary. My focus is the relationship of postmodern culture and Christianity. Inevitably, I'm always asked this question. "Which church do you belong to? Because I thought you said 'Church of Christ' . . . but there's no way you are Church of Christ!?"

I always respond, "No. You heard me right. I'm in the Churches of Christ."

Later, I'll write about why my friends say this. After that, I'll talk about why I'm still a part of Churches of Christ (and why I think [some] Churches of Christ have a chance to navigate the waters of postmodern culture).

Church

All semester, in my Culture and Evangelism class at RC, we've been talking about what it means/looks like to be the church in a post-modern culture. We read Blue Like Jazz, A New Kind of Christian, Father Joe, The Shaping of Things to Come, and The Shack. We also read the Bible for those of you a bit nervous from this reading list. We listened to each other's stories. We dreamed. We laughed. We got upset. We imagined. We pondered.

Today, their final exam consisted of only one essay question: what does it mean to be the church in a post-modern culture? It's one of the most important questions many churches ask . . . it's one of the most tragic questions some churches fail to ask.

I'm curious . . . readers in the blogosphere . . . what practices do you think are extremely important for churches to participate in as they travel on the journey?

TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN IT USED TO BE

One of the big (if not biggest) debates happening in philosophical/religious circles is the nature of truth. There are all kinds of complex words one could throw in at this point . . . but that only caters to a select few. Suffice to say, the discussion of truth is paramount . . . especially if a church is serious about entering into culture (where people are currently "at") to offer a word of grace, forgiveness and hope (Paul called this "the ministry of reconciliation").

Let me use a baseball analogy here to illustrate how different people perceive truth. I did not come up with this, it's pretty common.

The first umpire says, "I call balls and I call strikes." Let's call this the naive objectivist viewpoint. This view is as arrogant as the next, though most in this camp would not admit this the case. The naive objectivist believes that truth is universal (for all times and places), transcending "particularities." For instance, for many years, sophisticated culture believed that the universe revolved around the earth (how convenient!) . . . now we know better for the earth, in fact, revolves around the sun.

The second umpire says, "It's not a ball until I call it a ball. It's not a strike until I say it's a strike." This is the arrogant subjectivist perspective. In this view, truth is always relative, contextual to my own understanding and/or experience. This understanding of epistemology (how we know what we know, or how we arrive at what we know) is suspicious of overarching stories (sometimes called metanarratives) which make absolute claims about reality. Why? Because for too long, these overarching stories have been used (e.g. science, religion) to silence minority voices, kill innocent people, inflict pain upon people who would not "convert" to a particular system.

The third umpire says, "I call it like I see it. If I think it's a strike, that's what I'll call." I like this view because it offers a third way. It rises above the first umpire because it admits that I make truth claims out of my own experience. I cannot NOT be me. It critiques the second umpire because it ultimately wants to make some kind of conviction about reality and life; some kind of moral structure to one's life.

One wise thinker is often quoted (at least by me) for his summary of this entire discussion. "I believe in absolute truth (also known in Christianity as God) but not in my ability to understand God absolutely."

If you think the previous is "bunk" at least this might provide you a framework for understanding how many in North America approach religion and values. How people arrive at "truth" means everything for how Christians do evangelism, church, gospel, faith, and community.

More on that to come.