Category: Theological Rant
From Religion Dispatches
Here is a good article interview that touches on what the Church is and is not doing in our culture. A few paragraphs reposted here. Click the title to read more.
Money, Technology, and the Silence of Churches: A Conversation with Susan Thistlethwaite
by Candace Chellew-Hodge | July 25, 2012 | Religion DispatchesHow do we occupy the Bible?
There are several steps to take. First, read the book, the whole Bible. I quote studies that show if you actually read the Bible outside of the church it turns you liberal. Also, get a New Revised Standard version. There is a conservative Bible project that is cutting out passages considered too liberal, so get a whole Bible.The thing about human nature is you don’t think your way out of temptation. That’s the value of the recent decade, where we’ve realized that these systemic problems need systemic solutions; they need structures and regulations. We learned that lesson in the Great Depression and put Glass-Steagall into effect. But we believed it couldn’t happen today, so the act was repealed. The drive from the Reagan years of anti-government individualism is going to be the death of the economy. Everything that the Great Depression taught us has gone away, and it’s not just in the financial sector, it’s the labor sector as well, in the attack on unions. No CEO is going to give up their money; you have to have labor solidarity in order to adjust that.
These are theological problems: what the internet does is put it on steroids.
The key to internet-driven culture is having people become more savvy, recognizing how this stuff is coming at them at 90 miles per hour. I also advocate public activism; I do what I preach. Every week I write a theological piece for the Washington Post on topics like JP Morgan Chase, which is really about hubris. I point out that this is sin. It’s not the gay people sinning, it’s these people over here who are sinning. In this way, I take back sin for what it really is.
Whose Brand of Christian Witness?
For a while now I’ve argued that the Christianity proclaimed by the Church has more to do with the Apostle Paul and Constantine than it does with Jesus of Nazareth. Paul’s organizing of “the Way” broke from his Jewish heritage and was secularized Gentile communities. Constantine legitimized Christianity as a system of domination, blessed its further organization, and the thinking that became the orthodoxy of “substitutionary atonement.” Is there no other way to understand Jesus of Nazareth? Is there no other reason that he is an important teacher or leader in his time and ours?
Ross Douthat recently wrote an article in the New York Times, “Can Liberal Christianity be Saved?” He is arguing that conservative Christian theology is superior to liberal Christian theology or the social gospel movement. I’ve read several good responses to his thoughts, convictions, and read of attendance numbers. This piece by Bryon Williams on the Huffington Post is the best I’ve read so far, but of course it confirms what I’ve thought and believed for a long time. A few paragraphs. Click the article title to read more.
Constantine Christianity or the Teachings of Jesus?
by Bryon Willimas | The Blog | Huffington Post | 07/24/2012
Early Christianity was a rebellious underground movement until Roman Emperor Constantine made it his religious practice in A.D. 312. Constantine’s conversion was based on what he viewed as a victorious sign from God prior to going into battle. His successor, Theodosius I, made it the official religion of Rome in A.D. 380. These events did more for the spread of Christianity than any proselytizing efforts conducted by the Apostle Paul.
We should disabuse ourselves of the notion that there was at one time a liberal theology that served as the dominant ethos for the church as a whole. From the ministry of Jesus into the present day, liberal theology has found itself on the outskirts against a conservative theology that offered the perceived security of predictability.
But strident claims of vaunted superiority of the theology we embrace ultimately serves to obfuscate what’s really at the core of those beliefs. Is it a Roman Emperor whose faith is based on war and domination that we subscribe or that of a Mediterranean peasant from Nazareth who places the radical notion of inconvenient love at the core of his movement?