Category: Michael D


Sightings from Marty

I like it when Martin Marty’s Sightings gets me thinking and this weeks did that this morning about niche.  Some of my denomination’s seminaries are battling the idea of becoming “boutique” institutions of higher education for ministry serving a “niche” market.  The ATS, the institution that does accreditation for graduation theological seminaries, is adapting to niche seminaries because the ATS needs member institutions for its own existence.  It makes one wonder how objective it can be in granting accreditation.  I digress.  Thanks, Martin Marty, for asking me to ponder how we need each other in our niche.

Pipe Organs as a Niche Market
Martin Marty | Sightings | Feb 10, 2014

The American Organist magazine delights us each month as it serves the several thousands of us who, I am told, have to be content with inhabiting a “niche market.” After having paid respects to the pipe-organ and organist niche in the paragraphs ahead, I want to explore the place of “niches” in American religion. The concern is inspired by curiosity about what matters when we talk, as we do in Sightings, about “public religion.”

The son and brother of three teachers who played the organ in worship as part of their call and calling, and someone who haunts sanctuaries when organists are noisily practicing in the quiet of a Saturday afternoon, I have a (literally) life-long passion for the instrument. Twice the American Guild of Organists has indulged that passion by letting me pretend I knew enough about the subject to speak at plenary sessions of their annual conventions. (This year the convention is in Boston, June 23-24: www.AGOBoston2014.org)

Now: The writers of the Organist know that their constituency is aging and dwindling—as am I—but still the magazine is always full of signs of vitality. In the February issue, advertisements of organ recitalists include portraits of, on various pages, 24, 36, 12, and 9 ready-to-go artists. Needless to say, there are also many pages advertising organ-builders, with examples of their art pictured.

Two times a week we hear programs of organ music on satellite radio, an aural “niche” within a niche. Across the street and down and up the block (again, “literally”) we Martys can hear great organs, and each week we leave our own house of worship with a postlude, which propels us to face the days ahead. So much for organs. My thesis?

Used as we are talking about millions and billions, Superbowl this and Olympic-sized that, we can be tempted to speak of “religion” as one big thing, and thus something easy to dismiss if any part of it fails us, or to fasten on “mega-“ this or that, and to miss much of value.

Jews heard that they were an “elect” people, who in their elect status were to sally forth as a “light to the nations.” Christianity was a niche phenomenon within Judaism, and even now, (nominally) two-billion strong, it serves, if not best, then at least exemplarily, in hospital and hospice rooms, pre-school religious classrooms, local parishes, ventures by collegians in service projects, inner-city agencies among the poor, and, yes, at organ recitals where the religious affirmation of beauty gets realized.

That paragraph can be read wrong, which may mean that I did a bad job of elaborating on my thesis-of-the-week. It is not a celebration of smallness for its own sake or elitism of the elect or snobbery about those who do not share a particular niche. Instead, it recognizes, as we historians of religion often note, that value, beauty, and service can find expression away from the crowd. At the same time, it uses the niche of the pipe-organ world to show regard for industry and artistry in one of the niches.

So I think of the thousands of hours that go into the building and care of organs, the teaching of students, the practice-times, which seem never to stop. Somewhere else children’s choirs are learning their part in their niche, as they hope to serve people outside it. In the best theological seminary settings, teachers of homiletics keep trying to train new generations of preachers who might become bearers of prophetic words.

All of which brings me back to the organ. If I have faith and I find it weak, I am likely to let the sound of organs, which is not necessarily the choice for everyone, speak and remind me that there are other niches, other voices, and we need each other.

Resources and Additional Reading:

The American Organist Magazine, the official magazine of the American Guild of Organists. http://www.agohq.org/tao/.

Thistlethwaite, Nicholas and Geoffrey Webber, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the Organ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Blanton, Joseph Edwin. The Organ in Church Design. New York: Venture Press, 1957.
, 02/10/2014. Category: Michael D.

Evolution and Creation

Like many, my companion and I watched, well as much as we could ingest, the Nye and Ham “debate” on the topic, “Is creationism a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?”  I wonder what Nye thought he would accomplish?  Debating Ham only elevates his worldview that is founded in Christian Dominionism though I doubt that is a term Ham would use.  It was frustrating and hard to watch the “debate” as it set Christianity, including my practice of it, against science.  Rather than Nye it would have been better for a mainline biblical scholar or some other respected scholar of Christianity to listen to and then talk with Ham and an audience that was clearly in his pocket.  One person I follow on Twitter suggested that Walter Brueggemann “debate” Ham next time so that Ham’s version of Christianity is not the only “kind” broadcast as the way people who claim Christian faith think, believe, or interact with the world.  Though, Ham’s orthodox soteriology, that he presented so well in a graph near the end of his 30 minute opening, is sung, prayed, preached, celebrated at eucharist, and taught in one form or another across the Christian theological spectrum weekly, from the fundamentalist to the liberal alike.

In the end, Nye allowed Ham to broadly define science as atheism and Christians, at least his brand of Christianity, the only true possessors of truth.  For me, science and religious faith answer different questions that don’t compete.  I don’t interact with the world, observe the world, or understand how nature works through the mythology of Genesis nor the Christianity that reads Jesus back into the Old Testament. That is not the hermeneutic I bring to the bible.  Mortal beings don’t suffer death because of sin.  If you want another word or two on that statement connect with my companion, the First Testament biblical scholar, who can help you translate the texts for what they say rather than the orthodox Christian meaning assigned to them to round out a narrative about Christ Jesus.  No, that is not what the bibllical stories are meant to be or meant to do.  Maybe at one time they were meant for this, but humanity is orbiting the earth, exploring depths of the seas, curing disease, and awakening to our destructive footprint on this planet that, like others in our solar system, is going through a lifecycle.  Ham left no room for how other religions might account for creation because the bible is his history book, though he could not account for the two stories of creation, and his dominionism cannot allow for other truth or Truths.  Thinking of the bible as accurate history is like calling Jesus, “Christ.”

In the end I am much more interested how Ham’s worldview or Nye’s worldview interact with “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Me, I don’t have kids of my own, but I advocate for kids and I want them to have the very best science, math, literature, and social science education that is based on discovery and questions rather than on religious belief so they can cultivate a balanced neighborhood that spans the globe.

Here is a snippet of an interesting reflection from Tyler Francke posted at God’s Politics at Sojourners.

When “Creationists” Aren’t Really Creationists

Intentionally or not, the haphazard misuse of such a loaded word foments anti-religious sentiment and further entrenches the faith vs. science paradigm. I offer a simple alternative, one that is already used frequently by such organizations as the National Center for Science Education: “anti-evolutionist.”  Click here to read the entire post.

, 02/05/2014. Category: Culture, Michael D.
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