On the shelf: Allies for Armageddon by Victoria Clark

by Amy Frykholm

Christian Zionism has frequently surfaced recently as a politically significant system of belief. In essence, Christian Zionists are those who regard the establishment of the modern state of Israel as a sign of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. In recent years, their dispensationalist and apocalyptic rhetoric has dampened while “support for Israel” as a facet of God’s will has surged.

Insight into these complicated matters and their implications for international politics can be gained from British journalist Victoria Clark’s new book Allies for Armageddon. Clark draws from two sources: historical documents going back to 1621 and a tour of contemporary Christian Zionist America. She goes to the Holy Land with Chuck Missler, stops in Texas to visit an oilman who has given the second generation of his family to searching for oil in Israel, and sits down with Liberty University’s Dr. Timothy Ice.

Clark underplays important differences between various factions of Christian Zionism with the effect of making them more monolithic and scary than perhaps deserved. But the book is a carefully researched story about a marginal belief system that has had and continues to have extraordinary influence over several centuries. “Again and again,” she concludes, “the ideology has proved its chameleon-like ability to change with the times, to plug the gap left by ignorance of history and foreign cultures and assuage an unreasoning existential terror by answering a psychological need to be ‘in the know’ about the future, to feel in control.”

Blogging toward Sunday: Decalogue discipleship

Exodus 20:1-20

by Brent Laytham

No preacher should miss this week’s opportunity to preach on the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments just won’t go away. Though Israel misplaced the tablets of stone long ago, the Jews never forgot their decisive encounter with the living God at the foot of Mount Sinai. They heard God speak the words that were meant to forever shape their common life. But as Paul later told the church at Corinth, their story reminds us that hearing doesn’t guarantee doing—that observing the commandments is not something we do with our eyes but with our actions (see 1 Corinthians 10).

• I have a friend who preached a ten sermon series on the Decalogue this summer. His intentionality contrasts with a profound amnesia about the Ten Commandments in much Christian worship. Whereas it was once common to rehearse them as part of weekly Sunday worship, they have now all but disappeared from not only our worship, but from our consciousness. It is important to note that the original, canonical context for the commandments is worship (see Exodus 19), and that rightly practiced, these commandments ground our worship in the living God and guard our worship against every false god. A story to illustrate: a few years ago I called my denomination’s bookstore to order a book. The person who answered the phone said, “Hello, would you like to order patriotic worship bulletins or flags today?” “No, and don’t get me started,” I replied. What I should have said is “No, as a Christian I am forbidden by the Ten Commandments to worship falsely.”

• Don’t hear my suggestion that we reclaim the Decalogue as more strident calling for commandment displays in schools and courthouses, or another nostalgic rant about America declining because we’ve lost sight of the commandments. I did suggest once, tongue in cheek, that “Coveting begins with television rather than kindergarten teachers; it flourishes at the mall more than the school. Let the Ten Commandments be engraved over the entrance to Wal-Mart, let them be read aloud at next year’s Super Bowl halftime.” In fact, Israel lost sight of the commandments pretty quickly. Sure, God inscribed them on tablets of stone, but almost immediately had Moses hide them in the ark of the covenant, never to be viewed again. Israel was supposed to keep the tablets well-hidden because Israel was supposed to keep the commandments in plain sight. That is, they were to live out these commandments in such a public, visible, obvious way that the world would sit up and take notice. The appropriate display of the Decalogue is not a plaque on a wall, nor a replica out front, but the faithful people of God.

• The key for any preacher is to find the gospel in the text, and that can be tricky if the text is a list of laws that we are most prone to take as constraints or limits. After all, eight of these ten words are “no” or “don’t.”Yet in the end and on the whole they articulate God’s active, saving “yes,” the same “Yes” that takes flesh in Christ and takes form in faithful ministry (see 2 Corinthians 1:19-20).

One place I find gospel in this text is by considering how Jews number the commandments. Some Christians will be vaguely aware that Catholics and Lutherans count commandments differently from Presbyterians and Methodists; the former see the first commandment running from “no other gods” to “make no idols,” whereas the latter count “no idols” as commandment number two.

Less well known is the fact that Jews count “no other gods” as the second commandment. The first commandment in Jewish tradition is “I am the Lord your God.” Let’s parse the grammar of that for a moment: grammatically, commands and laws have the imperative form. But “I am your God” is not an imperative; there is no rule to keep or action to do. It is an indicative, an announcement: gospel news for a people desperate to hear it. It is a creative word that speaks into reality a new existence: I am your God and you are my people. This reorients the grammar of the Decalogue, for it means that the one who keeps the first commandment—on which all the other commandments rest—is the faithful One of Israel. The other nine commands for Jews—all imperative in form, all engaging Israel’s active response to divine initiative—simply shape a life of gratitude, a life poured out in grateful response to the gospel announcement that precedes: I am your God.

Brent Laytham is the Coordinator of The Ekklesia Project, a network of Christian friendship committed to renewing faithful discipleship and recovering the unity of Christ’s church. See their online lectionary resource.

Making connections

by Meg E Cox

When I read Amy Frykholm’s review of Char Kamper’s Connections, a high school curriculum on relationships and marriage, I got to thinking about Dr. Seuss’s Freudian tale The Cat and the Hat.

A quick review: that wild Cat is the id: the part of us that acts on basic
desires without regard for the consequences. And the Fish, shouting
helplessly from the bowl? The superego: the part that warns us away from
reckless behavior. The children, caught between the reckless Cat and the
carping Fish, have to decide how to handle themselves. For this they will
draw on what Freud called the ego, the part of us that rationally assesses
a situation and decides what to do.

When it comes to teaching youth about sexuality, some people issue dire
warnings and hold purity balls to strengthen the superego, while others
figure kids are bound to surrender to the id and merely teach them how to
avoid illness and pregnancy while they’re at it. But Char Kamper
recognizes that what youth really need is ego strengthening. She helps her
students to assess situations carefully and steer clear of reckless
id-satisfaction because that’s the wise thing to do.

One of the best things about this ego-building strategy is that it offers
more than an all-or-nothing proposition—you’re not either pure or impure,
as some Christian rhetoric would have it. I think of Kamper’s student
“Lisa,” who said she had decided to break up with her boyfriend when
Kamper’s course helped her to realize that he “only wanted one thing.”
Lisa had already gone gallivanting with the Cat and was probably out of
earshot of the Fish’s warnings, but the voice of reason called her back.
And when she came back, she seemed to feel strong and proud of herself,
not withered by shame.

Like all good teachers, Kamper offered Lisa more than a reasonable lesson
or strict instruction. She gave her a framework—in the form of probing
discussion questions—for engaging in sound reasoning for herself. And
isn’t that what we want our kids to do when they’re on their own in the
house on a long, cold, wet day?

On the shelf: Words for silence by Gregory Fruehwirth

by Debra Bendis

Words for Silence: A Year of Contemplative Meditations is a gem in the heap of popular spirituality books. Watch for an excerpt, coming soon in the Century. Still in his 30s, author Gregory Fruehwirth is a published poet, essayist and retreat leader. But it’s his life as a monk in the Order of Julian, Waukesha, Wisconsin, that gives him the authority to insist that all of us who embark on a lifelong journey to Christ will “suffer a radical dislocation of ourselves out of the familiar,” and yet, he adds, can cultivate a contemplative life that’s “about being exactly where you are.” Daily life in his own community provides the material for these meditations on the liturgical year. He includes simple breathing exercises that help us to call ourselves back to our sense of “the present moment, a place where we live closer to God.”

John Green on religion and the presidential campaign

by Amy Frykholm

Last week, I spoke with John Green, a social scientist with the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life, professor at the University of Akron and a longtime observer of the role of religion in political campaigns, about this year’s presidential election.

What trends do you observe this year?

It’s an interesting year in that we’ve had lots of discussion of faith and values, but we’ve had fairly modest changes in the voting intentions of religious voters. There is a lot of campaign still to go, and there may be some dramatic changes between now and Election Day. But right now, we don’t see much difference from previous elections.

Can Barack Obama peel off some of the evangelical vote?

Evangelicals were never monolithic and a minority of them always voted Democratic. Barack Obama seems to be drawing that group of voters. They tend to be younger and more progressive and to live on the East and West Coasts. The polling to date doesn’t show him going much beyond those evangelicals that have voted Democratic in the past. There are some undecided evangelicals, and there are some that say they are going to support John McCain but are very lukewarm about it. It could be that after several weeks of the campaign, Senator Obama will be able to convince some of those undecideds. There has been a big effort on the part of Democrats to reach out to evangelicals, but we just don’t see a higher level of support in the polling up to date.

What is the effect of Sarah Palin on this campaign?

We don’t have any really good systematic evidence yet, but we do have some early indications. She has created a great deal of enthusiasm among Republicans, some of whom were deeply religious and some who are less so, but who were discouraged by John McCain. After all, the Republicans face some real challenges this election. The President of their party is very unpopular. The economy is not in such good shape. We have some foreign policy problems. Sarah Palin has overcome some of that discouragement, and one group that seems particularly enthusiastic is evangelical Protestants. Sarah Palin is an evangelical by some definitions and her positions on cultural issues are positions that many evangelicals agree with.

She has attracted a lot of attention, but whether that attention will turn into votes in November, who knows? We don’t know how well she will wear. Response on the campaign trail has been very positive, but it will be interesting to see if her popularity even among Republicans maintains itself until Election Day.

I don’t think there is any doubt that the nomination of Sarah Palin changed the discussion fairly dramatically, and that doesn’t happen often in campaigns. How much impact that will have on the final outcome, we don’t know.

For more from John Green, see the October 21 issue of The Century.

Blogging toward Sunday: Fear and trembling

Philippians 2:1-13

by Kristin Swenson

It's one thing to profess; another to do. Christians put a lot of emphasis on professing—belief, repentance—but we also know that without doing, those words are just so much hot air. Still, how do you know how to be what you believe? Paul says, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” This suggests to me that Paul didn't have an easy answer. Sure, he advised looking out for the interests of others first and foremost, but how do you determine what's in the best interest of others? A church in my area recently gave away gas cards to random drivers, relieving the hurt of high gas costs. Yet gas consumption contributes to global warming, among a host of other ills. No ethical act seems simple.

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who is at work in you....” Notice that Paul doesn't say, "but [i.e., don't worry]"; rather, he says "because." In other words, God "at work in you" does not relieve the difficulty of working out your own salvation. Rather, it raises the stakes.

The pendulum of Christian confidence sometimes swings into arrogance and presumption. We pray as though God is a magical ATM machine dispensing what we ask or we assume that God has a plan and we are especially privy to it. These attitudes have nothing of fear and trembling about them. They suggest that God is an idol, fixed and static, who can be manipulated and wielded—that God is no God at all.

In some of the grimmest days of Christian history, we literally forced others to their knees and beat out of them the confession "Jesus Christ is Lord." We look down on that now, yet the sentiment remains, it seems to me, in efforts to evoke a JesusChristismylordandsavior phrase out of ourselves and others as though it is some kind of magical mantra. Is Jesus so fixed and static, or our understanding of "name" so literal that Jesus must be frozen in our imaginations as a first century guy from the Middle East? What happens to our theology when "name" is more than letters on a page or a particular pronunciation of consonants and vowels, when we take seriously the universal and timeless implications of a radically humble incarnation of the living God? I find that terrifying.

Kristin Swenson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Peter Gomes on Colbert Report

by Amy Frykholm

The speaker at last year's Century Lecture, Peter Gomes, appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report the other night to promote his new book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus.

This year's Century Lecture and Workshop will be held on September 29-30 in Chicago and features Marcus Borg and Lauren Winner. For more information go to: http://christiancentury.anglepark.com.

Palin and community organizing

by Scott M. Kershner

At the Republican National Convention, Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin singled out Barack Obama's work as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago for derision. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like being a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," Palin averred, to the obvious delight of the delegates.

Deriding people for working together to make their streets safer and cleaner, police/community relations better, schools stronger and government more effective hardly seems like a winning strategy. What is going on here? Why score political points by mocking Obama's work with these "armies of compassion," as President Bush once called religious institutions?

I see Palin's dismissal of community organizing as being about race, class and geography. Organizing is largely an urban phenomenon, pursued in places where larger percentages of people are poor, black and brown. When Sarah Palin derides the work that these people do, she’s naming her constituency as: not those people. Everyone got the point.

Words like Palin's zero in on the cultural divide between urban centers and suburban/rural areas, between the coasts and middle America. They offer a sense of identity and solidarity by identifying the opponent as a perceived cultural opposite.

How strange that mocking Obama for holding prayerful meetings in church fellowship halls would be an effective way to do this—especially when we’re told that Palin's conservative Christianity is an important part of her political identity. It was an unlikely attack and yet, in American electoral politics, cultural divisions and identities have enormous symbolic power. With just a few words, they can be exploited for partisan advantage and political theater.

Scott M. Kershner is a pastor and community organizer at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church and School in Brooklyn, NY.

On the shelf: Education's End by Anthony T. Kronman

by David Heim

Anthony T. Kronman remembers spending his college days pondering the great questions of life: What is worth doing? What is the good life? What should I care about? He also remembers taking a philosophy class in which these questions were actually discussed. In Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, Kronman laments the way contemporary university life avoids such questions.

A chief source of the problem is the great prestige given to the scientific ideal of research. According to that ideal, if a question can’t be answered with empirical evidence, it isn’t worth asking. Kronman regrets that humanities departments, the logical place for asking religious and philosophical questions, have themselves adopted the research ideal. They are good at accumulating knowledge, but have no interest in developing wisdom.

Kronman's still more controversial claim is that the ethos of multiculturalism has further undermined teaching in the humanities. If there are countless race- or culture-based approaches to life, all of which must be respected, then there is not much sense discussing which one might be the best. Kronman captures here the way the multiculturalist curriculum, for all its commendable aspects, can foster cynicism and indifference.

Kronman’s diagnosis is a lot stronger than his prescription. He recommends a form of secular humanism that would keep the Great Questions alive in the classroom without succumbing to religious fundamentalism. Based on his own diagnosis, one could make a good case that only a deep religious (nonfundamentalist) vision of learning can keep education from being merely utilitarian or consumerist.

Public prayer

by Debra Bendis

Mark Silk consistently offers sharp insights into the interaction of faith and politics at his blog, Spiritual Politics. In a recent post, he picks up on a detour in Rev. Joel Hunter’s Democratic National Convention benediction, in which he attempted to customize a Christian prayer so that people of “all faiths” could “participate."

At the end of the prayer, here’s what Hunter said:

Now I interrupt this prayer for a closing instruction. I want to personalize this. I want this to be a participatory prayer. And so therefore, because we are in a country that is still welcoming all faiths, I would like all of us to close this prayer in the way your faith tradition would close your prayer.

So on the count of three, I want all of you to end this prayer, your prayer, the way you usually end prayer. You ready? One, two, three.

In Jesus' name, Amen.
Let's go change the world for good.

Silk says, “Like the good evangelical he is, Hunter got to pray in the name of Jesus without conveying the idea that everyone in the crowd was with the program.”

Here’s what seems to me to be the larger question: Is such a prayer truly participatory? Can we honor the tradition of prayer in public forums without abandoning Christianity? Or, alternatively, can we offer Christian prayer in public forums without being obnoxious?

Blogging toward Sunday: Toward a somersaulting spirit

Matthew 20:1-16

by Kristin Swenson

I got a delightful report from a colleague's gregarious seven-year-old the other evening about summer church school. When the little girl asked what my favorite Bible story is, I hemmed and hawed. She quickly confessed that hers was Ruth and then dashed outside to demonstrate the back walkover. In the meantime, my colleague confided, "I admit there are some parts of Jesus' teachings that don't seem fair. I understand that they tell about God's grace and forgiveness and all, but frankly, I don't like them."

This parable in Matthew is one of them: field hands who work different hours are paid the same thing. The Prodigal Son parable is another: the irresponsible son gets a big party with fanfare while the conscientious and hard-working son is left asking, "What am I, chopped liver?" It's unsettling for those of us who have tried to do the right thing, to be self-sufficient and make contributions to our families and communities. We understand the bit about the generosity of God's grace and forgiveness. We don't pretend to be flawless or exceptional. But what about accountability and justice? Don't these stories send a message that you can do whatever you please, do as little as you like (or nothing at all), and God will still reward you in the end?

Maybe Jesus is saying: go outside and do back walkovers. Throw yourself into what you love or simply what you do. Let God sort out the rest. It's not your problem, and that's a gift unto itself. And if you should happen to find yourself on the wanting end of what's deserved, God's loving hand extended is gift indeed.

But even more radical than this message of God's generosity, perhaps, is a quiet, secondary message of these parables, as understated as their responsible characters. Namely, we who are trying and doing and being as well as we can, already have it all at our fingertips. All the time. Our rightful wages (in the language of today's parable) are an absolute certainty. Our inheritance (in the language of the Prodigal Son) is ever before us, for the asking and for the taking, any time, anyhow. Is it possible that by looking at what others get, we are blind to what we have? In critically contemplating God's grace for others, we stub our toes on the grace that is ever before us. What exuberant lives are ours! Right now and evermore. Cartwheels and somersaults, the cup runneth over.

Kristin Swenson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The needy church

by Tom Johnson

A few Sundays ago, I came back to visit a church that had been home for us for several years. We recently moved a couple hundred miles away, but I was in the area for a meeting on a Sunday a.m. I had not been in the sanctuary five minutes before our half-time pastor welcomed me warmly and asked if I would fill in as lay reader. The lector had not shown up.

As I quickly read over the lectionary lessons—in case they contained 14 unpronounceable names or a tightly reasoned Pauline argument (they did: Romans 11)—I spotted a friend going over the service music at the electric piano at the back of the tiny sanctuary. She was not the regular pianist, who was sick. The pastor had also asked her to fill in few minutes earlier.

Everything that is done in this church is done by volunteers—from organizing Sunday school to counting the offering to cleaning the church. The need to “jump in” to cover this or that is constant.

In the community to which we just moved, the church we attend is bigger and it has more resources of every kind—at least five paid (full or part-time) people on the church staff, four or five ordained ministers in the congregation, a raft of retired professors, several trained musicians, multiple choirs, a building campaign, people with advanced degrees teaching multiple adult ed courses (even in the summer), a high quality website, a weekly colorful email to all the members and programs for children of all ages. It is competent and excellent in every way.

But we’re not needed, not like at the other church. I’m sure that we’ll find a role to play and add our professional training to the skill bank of the congregation. We know that this non-needy church can (and does) do a lot of good in a community. But the contrast is stark. We’re stunned as we drive home. We don’t cry, but we grieve.

Tom Johnson lives on Whidbey Island, WA.

On the shelf: Shift by Jennifer Bradbury

by Richard A. Kauffman

Summer's over, and I finally found the perfect beach read. Christopher Collins and his best friend Win Coggans, two teenage boys from West Virginia, set off on their bikes after high school graduation, with Seattle as their ultimate destination in this last fling before going off to college. When they get near the West Coast, however, they become separated. After looking for Win, Chris heads home and takes off for college.

After setting up the mystery of the lost cyclist, the chapters of Shift alternate between narrating the bike tour and reporting on attempts to find out what happened to Win. There are funny moments: the boys get “caught” camping on the grounds of a Pentecostal church and are invited to eat at a church potluck and attend the revival meeting afterwards. One boy goes forward during the altar call, but the conversion doesn’t seem to take.

Shift is a coming-of-age novel. It also is about what happens to childhood friendships as individuals go their separate ways and live out different lives. It’s about cherishing childhood bonds, while also letting go and moving on.

This is Jennifer Bradbury’s first novel. She knows what she’s talking about when she when it comes to cross-country biking: she and her husband spent two months on their honeymoon biking from Charleston, S.C. to Los Angeles. She’s a high school teacher, and her target audience for Shift is actually high schoolers.

I read Shift because I too aspire to riding a bike across the country some day. Other adults will enjoy this as a quick, fun, mysterious read.

Re-thinking pro-life

by David Heim

Frank Schaeffer is a famously volatile, disillusioned former evangelical, who was prominent in the emergence of the pro-life movement. I doubt he commands much a of a following, but it is still interesting to read that he no longer regards the Republican Party as the pro-life party and that he sees Barack Obama providing a more “holistic” approach to the issue of abortion—which matters if the goal is “to reduce the number of abortions rather than just ‘win’ political games.”

Says Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer and author of For God—How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back: “The effort to reduce abortions will be more possible in the Obama era than in a continuation of the hardhearted Bush presidency with McCain. This is all about tone and moral leadership, not law.”

Blogging toward Sunday: Keep going

Exodus 14:19-31, Romans 14:1-12, Matthew18:21-35

by Kristin Swenson

Sometimes liberation is not enough. When the Hebrew people finally escaped Egypt, they might have shaken off their shackles, so to speak, but they still weren't done. Pharaoh and his army came barreling after them. So they had to keep going as hard and fast they could, and their faith had to keep going too.

Well, Moses stood on the Red Sea shore;
and smote the water with a two by four.
Pharaoh's army got drown-ded.
O Mary, don't you weep.

Bruce Springsteen's Seeger Sessions introduced me to this beautiful old spiritual. And thanks to the wonders of YouTube, you can listen to it here.

The Hebrew word for the sea has rich connotations: it can mean either the Reed Sea or the Sea of the End, the end of slavery, oppression and humiliation, and the start of something new. When the Hebrew people fled to the edge of the sea, they ran into the threshold between then and now, the end of human bondage and the beginning of a new relationship with God. And they panicked and despaired (Ex. 14:10-12). Sometimes liberation is not enough.

Moses assured them, in admirably pastoral fashion, that God would rescue them. "You only have to keep still,” says Moses. But God interjects, "Why are you complaining to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward!" After liberation, keep going. As the kids in my neighborhood might say, “God don't truck with no slack-asses.” (It’s a rough neighborhood.) God countered Moses' advice for the people to relax and let God take care of things with a sharp "No! Pick your liberated self up and keep going.” You'll notice that God leads the people. God does not carry them. God doesn't part the waters, but requires Moses to lift up his staff and reach out his hand to divide the sea. God doesn't vaporize the army but tells Moses again to stretch out his hand so that the waters would return to drown Pharaoh's men.

How many times must you forgive? Forgive and forgive again (Matt. 18:21-25). How many times must you refrain from judging? Again and again (Rom. 14:1-12). There's a Zen saying that before enlightenment, one must chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After liberation, keep going.

Kristin Swenson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The problem with leadership

by Scott M. Kershner

The presidential forum at Saddleback Church, billed as a "Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion,” made me realize that the concept of leadership has become a cultural preoccupation. "Leadership" is everywhere. My denominational website asks: "Do you wish to become a professional leader in this church?" I receive mailings almost weekly offering to improve my leadership skills—usually with a seminar or book or DVD. Clergy conferences have become "leadership summits." Megachurch pastor Bill Hybels hosts one that is “designed to be a can't-miss gathering for leaders serious about developing their leadership gift. . . .Each session delivers practical learning. . .to stretch your leadership bandwidth." Why the preoccupation with leadership?

I have a guess. Many traditional institutions and their hierarchies no longer hold sway in our society. Leadership is seldom granted a person by tradition, but is more often earned or merited. Sign up now (before your competitors do!) for the leadership summit. Anyone can be a leader if they develop his or her skills. But what does our intoxication with the concept of leadership hide from us? Is this an adequate way of thinking about Christian ministry?

Leadership language accompanies market-driven paradigms that value success above all else. In the secular realm, success means increasing profit and shareholder value.

What does success mean in the context of the church? Consider the countless churches with grace-filled ministries which, because of economic realities, totter on the edge of financial viability. Do they simply lack a leader with the proper "bandwidth?" What does it mean to be a leader amid death and loss and decline? When I hear Bruce Springsteen sing, "I know what it's like to fail, baby, with the whole world lookin' on," I feel that character has perhaps known enough of loss and grace to make a very good pastor. Are those qualities of soul Springsteen sings about taken into account in current discourse about leadership?

Scott M. Kershner is a pastor St. Stephen's Lutheran Church and School in Brooklyn, NY.

Interfaith forum

by Amy Frykholm

Interfaith friendship—it sounds nice, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t come without controversy. The crucial questions in interfaith dialogue, whether personal or institutional, are often about boundaries. Are interfaith friends welcome in the inner sanctum of your faith? What are the implications of their inclusion? Or exclusion?

I’ve invited Seattle’s Three Amigos to join us here on Theolog to discuss the boundaries of interfaith relationships. In the article that I wrote for the Century on their work, I told the story of Pastor Don Mackenzie including Sufi teacher Jamal Rahman and Rabbi Ted Falcon in a communion service at his UCC church. Rahman and Falcon both served and received communion. That moment seemed especially interesting to me. While some Christian churches practice communion as an “open” ritual, many others do not. Do we water down one of the central practices of our faith by inviting those outside the Christian faith to participate? Or do we add layers of richness by not drawing the boundary so tightly around “us” as opposed to “them”?

I'm not your reverend!

by Bob Cornwall

I’m as mad as Hades, and I’m not going to take it anymore! What am I mad about? I get all worked up about the way people use the word “reverend,” as in “Barack Obama’s reverend, Jeremiah Wright.” The Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright might be Barack Obama’s former pastor or former minister or maybe even his former spiritual advisor, but he’s nobody’s reverend. The word “reverend” is an adjective and not a noun. It means “deserving of reverence,” granted in itself arguable. It is traditionally used as a title or form of address when speaking of clergy.

I might be making too much of this misuse of a word, but it really sticks in my craw. I’m not a grammar nut, but when I hear Anderson Cooper or Charlie Gibson talk about “so and so’s reverend “ I wonder – how do we get them to correct this? Would they use “honorable” as a synonym for a judge, as in “the defendant stood before the honorable and pled her case”?

I must also confess my own ambivalence about the word itself. When it comes to revering people, I’m not sure I’m a candidate. I may be a pastor, a minister or even a member of the clergy, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m nobody’s reverend!

Bob Cornwall is pastor of Central Woodward Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Troy, Michigan, editor of Sharing the Practice (Academy of Parish Clergy) and a blogger.

Blogging toward Sunday: Shaping heaven

Exodus 12:1-14; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

by Kristin Swenson

Like it or not, our lives inevitably intersect with the lives of others. Sometimes these intersections are happy ones, with people who support and sustain us and whose full humanity and potential we likewise respect and encourage. But some are full-on crashes with all the hurt and destruction of a vehicular collision.

These three aspects of the lectionary texts seem related: God didn't simply "spirit" the people out of their awful circumstances in Egypt; Jesus adds an explanatory coda about how human decisions shape the quality of heaven; Paul harps not only on love but also on behaving respectably. Each of these suggests that our relationship to God is inseparable from our dealings with others.

In the case of the Passover, God was unquestionably the author of the people's liberation, but, oh, the detailed instructions they were to follow! What difference would it make if you had rice and beans instead of lamb, or if you overlooked the messy bit about spreading blood on the doorposts or if you packed up the leftovers for the next day's lunch? Somehow following these precise instructions meant serving the God of freedom. You could call it a reflection of love. God liberated the people from human bondage in order that they might bind themselves in a different way to God.

The terms of their relationship to God, hammered out on Mt. Sinai, are finally about how to love God with the whole self and how to love one's neighbor. Both simple, and not so simple. Just look at all the details involved. And most of those are quite particular for a context very different from our own. If we are to take love of God and neighbor seriously, we still have to work out the countless permutations of what such love means and how best to execute it in the very real, imperfect situations of our individual lives.

Jesus and Paul agree that it requires careful consideration and judgment on our parts. In other words, as people of God, we have great responsibility to determine, in the day to day of our lives, how to love. Simply being nice isn't going to cut it. Real love in a down and dirty world requires informed deliberation and sometimes tough choices. Jesus' remark about "whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven" brings to mind less a geographical place than a state of being. How we love or fail to love affects our relationships both to others and to God. Maybe, as Jesus suggests, in our dealings with others, we are not only learning to love, but we are also constantly shaping heaven.

Kristin Swenson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.