An Interesting Experiment

What happens when you remove the American flag from a church’s place of worship?

You make some people really uneasy.  So uneasy that they’ll find which closet you hid it in and put it back "where it belongs."

I’m not an unpatriotic guy.  I appreciate the freedoms afforded us in America.  I’m thankful for those who have served our country in various capacities.

But I also have a firm conviction that I am not a true citizen of America.  Now I can hear the voices already: "If you don’t like it here in America go live somewhere else."  Well, I would move to my preferred country of residence except that I’m waiting for God’s timing to transport me there.  You see, of all the countries in this world I like America the best.  I’m just aware of another city that’s even better.  It is one who’s architect and builder is God.  There is a place where the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.  Its flag is not red, white and blue.  Or red and white.  Or black white and green.  Or red and yellow.  Catch my drift?

The kingdom of God subverts every other kingdom.  Including America.  And that’s not a popular thing to say.  After saying such a thing in a sermon I was approached afterwards by one who seemed almost ready to argue over the virtues of living in America.  I would have likely agreed with most everything that person would have said.  In fact, I did agree with everything that person did say that day.  But I was left with the distinct impression that if we had to choose between America and the church some would choose America.  The fact that we can choose both, but subordinate the church to our country says something profound about our country and where some in the church in our country are in terms of the meaning of faith.

The message of the gospel is a radical message.  The most basic confession of that faith is "Jesus is Lord."  What we need to realize is that such a statement necessarily means that Uncle Sam is not.  But do we understand that?  Are we ready and willing to make such a radical claim?

When I removed the American flag I left the Christian flag displayed.  I suspect that were I to have put the Christian flag in a closet somewhere it might still be there.

Christo-fascism?

I just recently ran across this post: The Jig is Up: American Evangelicals and Fascist Seduction by Paul Grabill, pastor of State College Assembly of God in State College, Pennsylvania.  He gives a strong challenge to consider our true allegiance as American Christians.  Check out a few salient quotes:

I’m saying it as clearly as I know how to say it. Christian patriotism
in America has crossed the line into clear idolatry. We evangelicals
are very close to apostasy, and I can tell you that many of our
brothers and sisters around the world can see it. I believe this
idolatry—not Sun Myung Moon, not the DaVinci Code, not Hillary
Clinton–is our our last-days deception. Those other things are bad,
but there’s little danger that evangelicals will be deceived by them.

It ain’t deception if it ain’t seductive.

and then this one:

It’s time for American Christians to repent (turn around). Yes,
liberals need to repent for selling out the core of the gospel, but
conservatives also need to repent of our nationalistic idolatry. Truth
will set us free, not leaders that promise us security by means of an
endless war and torture. Our rage toward the enemies of America has
blinded us. We don’t even recognize God’s Word when we hear it applied
to our times. Can it get worse than that? Jesus said, “My sheep hear my
voice.”

What’s worse, spiritually lost people in America see our hypocrisy when
we don’t. No wonder our evangelism efforts have flat-lined. How can we
convince them of the Truth of Jesus if we aren’t convinced ourselves
(i.e., “What Jesus taught doesn’t work in the ‘real’ world)?

Sadly I’ve actually heard long-time church members who would claim to be spiritually mature believers repeat that last phrase almost verbatim multiple times recently.  The church needs to wake up.

Render Unto Caesar

Well…I knew it was coming but being busy this week I hadn’t checked to see if it was up yet.  Robert Marus, a writer for ABP, is doing contributing to a six part series on religion and politics.  The first article can be found here. [And yes, I’m linking to this because he quoted little ol’ me.]  Of course, in true "guilt-by-association" fashion this will ruin me….to be quoted in ABP….along with Ben Cole.  The madness must stop.

Giving Justice Away

[If you’re looking for my thoughts on the SBC go here.]

For some reason David Fitch’s chapter on Justice in his book The Great Giveaway has been one of the most difficult for me to get through and process.  That is probably true for a number of reasons.   Justice is a much-talked-about subject these days.  It tends to get polarized into a political debate over just what justice is.  Jim Wallis’ vision of justice is obviously very different from the version promoted at the two Justice Sunday events.  And both sides can easily end up sounding very much like "Christianized" versions of the two political parties.  Add to that the entrenched nature of capitalistic ideology not only in the culture, but in the church (both left and right versions of it), and the problem becomes that much worse.

Fitch says that Biblical justice is bound up with righteousness and that Biblical righteousness is more than personal moral excellence.  At its heart Biblical righteousness is relational.  It is first of all vertically relational - God, in his own righteousness, reaches down to humanity to bring reconciliation between us rebels and himself.  The righteousness that we enter in to is then horizontally relational between us and others.  But that righteousness is lived out in community.

Too often even our attempts at community within the church are poor shadows of what a Biblical community practicing righteousness is about.  As an example, many of our benevolent works are done outside the faith community.  They are done down on the street corner.  They are given in a check or gift card or sack of canned food to a stranger who never enters into (and is never invited to enter in to) the faith community.  Don’t misunderstand me (or Fitch) to be saying that no one ever shares the gospel with that person.  Maybe we do.  But do we invite that person to enter into our community as one of us even if for the moment they say "no" to the gospel?  Do they become anything more to us than a name on a roster of "Those We’ve Recently Helped?"

But perhaps Fitch’s most radical sounding thoughts center around what it means to practice justice within the faith community itself.  I made a similar point in a Sunday School class this past week.  It seemed to be the natural outflow of the new Christian community in the book of Acts for the disciples to so view their possessions as gifts from God that it was not unusual that one might be led to sell personal property to meet the needs of someone in the community of faith.  How many times in modern religious life - outside of freakish cults or the radical lifestyle of the Amish - have you ever heard of someone taking out a second mortgage on their house to help out a brother or sister in Christ who has become overwhelmed with medical expenses?  How many have sold real property for a similar purpose?

We simply never hear about those sort of things because we either view them as far too radical or we begin to fear that such a proposal sounds too much like socialism.  That, and in America and the west we have a long, entrenched history of valuing individual property rights very, very highly (the original version of the Constitution set out to guarantee everyone the right to life, liberty and property).  We might sacrifice a little disposable income, if we believe we have it to spare.  But we don’t go so far as to sell something off of value to help a brother or sister pay for a surgical procedure.  But Biblical justice might very well do just that.

It isn’t necessarily a matter of living communally - with a communal purse (bank account), though for some it might very well be that.  But it is a view of ourselves not as owners, but as stewards of what we have been given.  God owns it.  If he calls us to use it for the sake of another, do we have the freedom - not the political freedom, but the inner freedom, the spiritual freedom - to release it to another for their good?  It also isn’t about everyone having the same amount of stuff - or even making sure that the poor have more stuff.  We do need to make sure that the needs of the poor are being met.  But to teach a poor man that what he needs most is financial wealth may only be enslaving him to the same greed that our culture at large is enslaved to.  Justice teaches us all to live with dignity before God in this world no matter the amount of our possessions.  And that’s hard to digest.

Competing Interests…Or What Is A Baptist?

My posts last week on worship have gotten me thinking about just what I am/we are as Baptists.  In some ways we aren’t even sure ourselves.  William Estep defended the idea that Baptists arose from the Anabaptists.  In a recent article in the Southwestern News Malcolm Yarnell writes about Baptists and Anabaptists synonymously.  Leon McBeth, on the other hand, argued that Baptists came out of the English Separatist movement.  James Leo Garrett and Glenn Hinson took opposing sides in the same book on whether or not Baptists are evangelicals.  I grew up being taught that Baptists are not Protestants.  Of course, we weren’t Catholics, either.

There is an historical distinction between the Reformers and the Radical Reformers who not only rejected the Roman church, but Luther, Calvin and Zwingli as well.  We do see similarities with modern Baptists in that the Anabaptists generally believed in the baptism of confessing believers only and a congregational form of church government.  But there are many dissimilarities as well.  For instance, the Anabaptists generally believed in a simple lifestyle, radical non-violence (pacifism), an absolute belief in the sanctity of life (not just anti-abortion, but also against capital punishment), communal living and the sharing of goods - things we see more in the direct descendants of the Anabaptists - the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers and Church of the Brethren.  Little, if any, of that is descriptive of present-day Baptists and even the most staunchly independent of Baptist churches would reject nearly everything from the Anabaptists except for their polity and baptismal beliefs.

In addition, very early on the Baptists in England sought to identify with mainstream Protestantism as can most clearly be seen in one of the earliest and most widely used and known confessions of faith among Baptists, the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith which borrows extensively from the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of 1646.  In fact, growing up it was common to hear that "all the good Baptists use the Presbyterian commentaries."

So I’m experiencing a bit of a personal dilemma that I don’t yet know how to reconcile.  Unlike most of the Baptists that I see today I would identify with most of those things the Anabaptists believe(d) yet which we have rejected.  You won’t find Richard Land coming to me for advice on how to formulate a "just war" position.  Some might argue that just war theory is based upon Biblical principles, but you’ll generally have a difficult time convincing me of that - though I wouldn’t rule out the necessity of war in any and every case, though certainly most.  I tend to be against capital punishment, though there may be exceedingly rare instances when it is justified and/or necessary - but only when the facts are crystal clear.  I believe in a simple lifestyle, not that I always have.  I’ve been burned by a lesser degree of opulence, perhaps, and have learned some lessons from it.  I admire communal living and wish our family participated in more of it.

Yet I reject the radical congregationalism of the Anabaptists (as most of my Baptist brethren do) and believe, instead, that there are those who are called to fulfill specific functions of leadership within the church.  Elders, even [gasp!].  There is a lot of the Reformation theology that I admire and personally believe.  I’ve somewhat advocated the use of liturgical practices which is a radical departure from my free church tradition where it is evidence of dependence upon the Spirit to be spontaneous ….well ….ok …..so Baptists aren’t really any more spontaneous than the typical Catholic.  We like to think were at least open to the possibility of someone else being spontaneous.  As long as it is also somewhere else. 

And I’m not big into separatism.  I think that in separatism we lose our connection to the church of history (meaning history beyond 1950 - or even 1689).  We suffer from an unrootedness with the work of the Spirit in the church for about 1500 or 1600 of the 2000 years of church history.  Yes, much of that history has been a mess.  So has much of the last 400-500 years.  Heck, the last year in Southern Baptist life hasn’t been all that admirable.  I also think accountability is a good thing.  We talk about our "independent autonomous" churches which simply means that no one has the right to tell us we can’t be heretics if we want.  If we had greater levels of mutual accountability perhaps we wouldn’t be tolerating these notions of Baptists telling Mormons that they have more in common than a Baptist and a liberal Christian [HT: Kevin/Susan Stilley].

So it seems as if I’m about as confused about my own religious identity as Baptists have been throughout their existence.  Which I suppose just means that I’m a good Baptist.

[Image via Wikipedia]

Divest for Darfur

Our world is experiencing a modern-day tragedy that is largely underreported.  The problem is that Sudan doesn’t have anything we want or need.  Thus, when two million people are displaced from their homes, hundreds of thousands are murdered, hundreds of thousands more are beaten and raped and those poor souls have to compete with the chaos that is Iraq, they go largely unnoticed.  Well, I’ve noticed.  And I hope you have, too.  We can do something.  Will we do something?

Have you heard of divestment?  It’s one of the key tactics that was successfully used to end apartheid in South Africa and it can help end the violence in Darfur, too. 

To "divest" means to withdraw investments from companies who are supporting the genocide in Darfur by doing business with the government of Sudan.   

Join me in fighting the genocide by urging Fidelity and other investment institutions to divest their holdings from any and all companies doing business with the government of Sudan. 

Click this link to sign the Divest for Darfur petition now and help cut off financial support for the government-sponsored violence in Darfur!

Diplomacy is crucial, but economic pressure may prove an even more powerful way to force Sudan to cooperate with international efforts to end the genocide.

Sudan has been very responsive to economic pressure in the past so we have reason to hope that they will pay heed to the divestment efforts.

Please do not stand by while the violence continues - you can make a difference.

Click here to add your name to the Divest for Darfur petition to Fidelity now.

Thank you for your help.

——————————————–

The Save Darfur Coalition is an alliance of over 180 faith-based, advocacy and humanitarian organizations whose mission is to raise public awareness about the ongoing genocide in Darfur and to mobilize a unified response to the atrocities that threaten the lives of more than two million people in the Darfur region.  To learn more, please visit http://www.SaveDarfur.org

Your Killing Me

I want to give a follow-up to yesterday’s post.  I spent much of the afternoon yesterday reading the articles that the BP story linked to which can be found at the Evangelical Outpost blog.  On the whole they offer some very good perspectives.  I would rank two of them as very good and another as outstanding.

Outstanding
Darrell Cole, Assistant Professor of Religion at Drew University

"To torture someone, or to countenance your government torturing
someone, is to admit that you fear death more than you fear displeasing
God and it is to admit that you love something more than you love God.
To torture someone is to betray a disordered love for something that
can never be a proper ultimate good. Not even our society or our own
lives, as much as we love them, are that good."

Very Good
Robert Vischer, Associate Professor at the University of St. Thomas school of Law in Minneapolis

"Self-preservation is not the ultimate value underlying Christian
ethics, and recognition of that fact must underlie any attempt to
articulate a Christian response to torture. The specter of terrorists
holding information that could save thousands of lives does not alter
or eviscerate the Gospel’s call to transform our world through an
abiding and uncompromising ethic of love. Foremost in any framework
purporting to implement this ethic is a prohibition against using our
fellow humans instrumentally, as a convenient means to our chosen ends,
no matter how noble."

Mark Liederbach, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

"One can’t help in the final analysis recall the words of Caiaphas as he
argued that crucifying Jesus was the only way to save the way of life
the Pharisees had come to love and cherish: "It is expedient for you
that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation
should not perish." Caiaphas was right in the sense that his prediction
did prove to be of great value for the many, but this does not justify
the ethic under which he functioned. One would need to be perfectly
omniscient in order to have proportionalism or utilitarianism be the
guiding moral principle. For those of us who are not omniscient,
commands and principles must lead the way and shape how a utilitarian
calculus is employed. Certainly one could foresee that if employed
Krauthammer’s Caiaphas ethic may indeed provide the results he argues
for–but at what price? The argument may sound good, but we must be
careful lest we forget that this "Caiaphas ethic" is far more dangerous
than it appears. Indeed, it can even be used to justify the murder of
God."

These are well worth your time as together we consider a Christian response to torture.

Dumbfounded

I….uh….well….I’m just not sure what to say.  I guess this article is nearly a month old (which tells you how much attention I pay to Baptist Press), but I don’t get it. [HT: The Man of Intestinal Steel]  A Southern Baptist ethics professor at Southeastern Seminary has not only made the ethical argument for torture, but considers the position against torture as set out by Evangelicals For Human Rights to be a diatribe which "threatens to undermine Christian moral witness in contemporary culture
by dividing evangelicals into renouncers and justifiers of nebulous
torture."

Well.  Slap me and call me Nancy.  I just never thought I’d live to see the evangelical argument painting those opposed to torture as being a "threat to the Christian moral witness in contemporary culture."

You can happily put me into the "renouncers of nebulous torture" group.  Something tells me that Western culture can survive without tactics like waterboarding.  And if it can’t, then it is probably not worth saving.

The article states, "Substituting passion for reason, the document causes readers to be
either morally confused or moved to join a crusade unrelated to facts,
Heimbach said. Instead of pontificating against torture, he said, the
drafters would have served the public well to define at what point
coercion crosses from moral to immoral."

Uh…let’s see.  Dear Jesus, at what point did your scourging cross the line?  Which slap across the face, which hair pulled from your beard was justified in the name of the Roman Empire and which one went a little too far?

I know.  I know.  It isn’t fair to compare the Passion of the Son of God with enemies of the United States.  They are not Messiahs, after all.  They are, however, human beings.  Professor Heimbach’s primary concern seems to be that "torture" is not adequately defined.  Well.  Professor H. apparently missed this.  Besides, is the word "torture" really that difficult to define?  Is someone out there calling dirty looks, or yelling at someone torture?  It reminds me of the comment someone has made about porn.  I don’t know how to to properly define it, but I know it when I see it.  But if the good Professor has a good definition ready for us I’m hopeful that we might all benefit from it.

This is just……disturbing to me.

Jesus Is Not A Republican

I remember first hearing of Tony Campolo when I was in college.  I knew he was Baptist - though tragically not of the "Southern" variety - and that he was outspoken.  Back in those days the fundamentalist takeover changing of the guard in the SBC was not fully completed and Campolo had not been entirely relegated to Southern Baptist purgatory at that time….some thought he had something to say worth hearing.  I think they even sold one or two of his books in the OBU bookstore.  I’m sure they’ve long repented of that sin.

I know that his position on homosexuality has become hard for evangelicals to swallow, and who could blame them, but that shouldn’t undermine everything else that he has to say.  Sadly for too many it does.  But I like his "Red Letter Christian" movement.  I know that the list of supporters is littered with popular whipping boys Jim Wallis and Brian McLaren, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to what is being said.  Whether we will or not is another story.  I was really surprised to see Campolo listed among a Who’s Who in the Religious Left.  When I think of the religious left I think of people like Robert Funk, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong, not Tony Campolo.  But hey.  That’s me.

Take a listen to this interview with Campolo.  I promise you won’t begin to doubt your faith or question the Divinity of Jesus or anything.

HT: Paradigms Lost

McLaren’s Advice To Obama

I’m sure those two names, perhaps especially together as they are, will bring out the shrill voices of some.  So, if that weren’t enough, let me add the name Jim Wallis to the mix so that the words that follow can be entirely discounted.

OK.  Now that we’ve settled that, let me point you to a blog post that Brian McLaren has written to Barak Obama.  If you are one of those people who believes that you just might learn something from someone who doesn’t think exactly like you then you might want to take a look.  If you’re not one of those people then you can get back to whatever it was you were doing.  Check it out here.

One thing I would add, and sort-of wish that McLaren had done, is that I would hope that what he writes in this post would be read by every Presidential candidate.  If they all followed it, now that would be refreshing.

Next Page »