CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

Between posts, I thought I’d throw up this outstanding video which is getting spread all over the internet, or at least a really nerdy part of the internet.  Professor von Dossow teaches here at the University of Minnesota in the Classical and Near Eastern Studies department…my department.  It is in reference to the way that the U of M is spending money.  It is indicative of how many public universities are acting these days.  More proof that you don’t screw with Classicists.

I

“One early evening in winter I was walking alone through the woods toward a town which I could already see and where I wanted to find lodging.  Suddenly a big wolf came upon me and jumped at me.  I had the woolen prayer rope which had belonged to my late starets in my hands, and in my attempt to defend myself with it the prayer rope slipped out of my hands and lodged around the neck of the wolf.  The wolf jumped away from and got caught in a thorny bush with his hind legs and with the prayer rope on a branch of a dry tree.  He tried desperately to free himself but was unable to because the prayer rope was choking him.  With faith I blessed myself and went to free the wolf and especially to get my precious prayer rope, for I feared that the wolf would run away with it.  And, sure enough, the moment I approached the wolf and touched the prayer rope, he broke it and ran away without leaving a trace.  I thanked God for His help in retrieving my prayer rope and remembered my late starets.  Then I happily reached the town and stopped at an inn to ask for lodging…

The clerk [of the inn] looked at me and asked, “Were you making prostrations so earnestly that you even broke your prayer rope?”

“No, it was not I who broke it; it was a wolf,” I said.

“Really?  Do wolves pray?” asked the clerk.”

From The Way of a Pilgrim, trans. Helen Bacovcin

II

The famous Russian hermit and starets St. Seraphim of Sarov was one day visited at his hovel in the woods by an enormous bear.  As his daily rations had recently arrived, the holy man, who was known to be a fastidious observer Christian hospitality, offered half of his food to his guest, .  The next day the bear returned and St. Seraphim again shared his food.  This happened throughout the winter and on into the spring.  The bear prefered to eat at the saint’s table rather than hibernate.  Soon, it was time for Great Lent.  At that time, it was customary for the monk’s rations to be cut in half for those 40 days of fasting and repentance.  So, when the bear continued to visit, St. Seraphim began giving the bear all of his rations, leaving nothing for himself.  One day while this was going on, the Abbot visited St. Seraphim, and was astonished and frightened to discover a bear being fed and gently spoken to by the venerable old monk.  When St. Seraphim explained that he had been giving his Lenten rations to the bear all along the Abbot got angry.

“You ought not to be doing this, and during Lent of all times!” he chided.

To which St. Seraphim replied, “But, Abbot, the poor bear does not know that it is Lent.”

What is your favorite story involving saints and animals?

I’ve been wanting to reflect on blog writing for some time, especially in the wake of reading the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lost Icons: Reflections On Cultural Bereavement, and David Horstkoetter of the blog Flying Farther inspired me finally to do so.  Consider this a reply to his post.

It is impossible for me to reflect on blog writing without it simultaneously being a reflection on learning to think theologically.  The blog has now been running for two years and we’ve topped 400 posts just recently.  In these two years, especially the last one and half, I’ve just begun to read academic theology (see this post for an account of that reading).  So though the original contributers and I started right off the bat talking about various theological topics, I had (and still have) no sufficient ability even to think the thoughts ‘properly.’  I’m just an undergrad who reads theology in his spare time.

But that hasn’t stopped me from acquiring ‘opinions’ and having them strongly.  (I was just rereading some of Ben Meyer’s old posts and while reading this one was uncannily reminded of myself several times throughout.)

For better or worse, and I can think of few worse ways of learning theology than by reading it by yourself with no teachers and blogging your opinions, this is how it has been for me.

Yet there have been many surprising positives to my experience blogging and it is on account of these that although I’d like to stop for a few years, I would in the end regret it (I think).  Before proceeding to explicate these I want to relate my blogging career to something that Rowan Williams made a big point of in his book.

Learning to speak properly and ‘responsibly’ is a very large part of becoming an adult.  This learning allows one to negotiate the complex web of relations and responsibilities that accompany adult life.  And in this adult world one is expected to be able to be ‘held responsible’ for what they say.  This means that part of being a ‘youth’ is being allowed to have ‘irresponsible speech;’ speech where you can play with ideas, words and expressions, where you can be given the space to learn the rules of ‘language games’ with the sort of room needed to grow and play; a youth ought not be held ‘accountable’ for all the things they say.

Not too long ago I stated in my Twitter feed and Facebook status that I have tended to learn by expressing an opinion strongly, encountering the feedback and correction of other people, engaging in ‘argument,’ and finally by reflection, ascertaining whether or not the things that I ‘believed’ and said were in need of correction or augmentation.  On another day I proclaimed that I often read old blog posts and realize that I disagree with some of them entirely and some in part.

I am not claiming that I cannot at all be held responsible for the things I’ve said on this blog…in many ways other than the craft of theology I am an adult; nevertheless it has been the case that blogging has been an exercise in speech where I hope and somewhat expect to be given the freedom to say naïve and sometimes foolish things because with respect to such speech I am still very much a child.  It has been, in all the best senses of the term, a ‘game.’  A ‘game’ I have very much enjoyed sharing with my many and various interlocuters from whom I’ve learned a great deal.

It is in this learning that blogging has had and continues to have value for me.  Over time, both here and on other sites, I’ve picked up many friends and ‘playmates.’  Many of them are PhD students at prestigious universities and some of them are even seasoned pros.  What I have lacked in class time from professors and peers I have supplemented with all these.  Sometimes I’ve been quite afraid and intimidated because many have done me the favor of ‘taking me seriously;’ that is, even if some of the things I’ve said are crazy, they’ve taken the time to engage me without treating me like an infant.  It is my hope that they’ll still give me a couple years of ‘play time’ without expecting me to join the varsity team.

But if I might be so bold I’d like to say that this ‘playful irresponsibility’ is intrinsic to theology blogging and blogging probably ought never to be held to very high standards.  There is an ad hoc and unedited nature to blogging, even on some of the better sites.  While it may be the case that after an engagement we realize that something profound or challenging was said and learned, as a general rule, it seems dangerous to me to hope for peer reviewed linguistic and academic accuracy even of people capable of such art.

Additionally, blogging has greatly honed my ability to write.  My basic grammar, syntax and stylistic skills have increased since I started.

So cheers to all my internet friends and mentors…I am truly grateful for the chance I’ve had to grow up amongst such people and for all the emails, book recommendations, bibliographies and comment threads…To many more!

As a movement, as a theologically ‘centered’ or ‘coherent’ vein of Anglicanism, at least in my experience, and in the West, traditionalist Anglo-Catholicism is dead.  There are of course many Anglo-Catholics, many of whom drive the theological wheels.  I’d say in fact that the theological heavyweights in Anglicanism are in fact predominately though not exclusively ‘Anglo-Catholic.’  Long-lasting effects of Anglo-Catholicism can be felt in our revived Prayer Books; they can be seen in various liturgical performances; we like to recount the Oxford Movement and the (poorly understood and barely read) ‘Liberal Catholics’ in our histories; but if we are to take it as a continuing theological presence, and if we are to take the Oxford Movement and the Liberal Catholics as paradigms, then I personally don’t see many indicators that ACism sustains a theological vein apart from certain British movements of recent memory.

Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong.  I’ve gotten into not a few conversations about this with people who mostly disagree with me and/or disagree with how I define ‘Catholic.’  But as an example lets look at the possible move of some traditionalist AC clergy from the Church of England on account of the likely move to allow women to be bishops.

Without a ‘conscience clause’ these clergy would have to accept the sacramental and pastoral oversight of a woman if such a thing came to pass.  For these people, this would amount to an abandonment of true sacramentality; a transgressing of the apostolic office and the foundation that Christ himself laid and set out for eternity:  If you have a mitre, you must have XY chromosomes and a penis.

Let us assume for the sake of the argument that the Oxford Movement (OM) and probably even the Liberal Catholics (LCs) would disagree with both womens ordination and especially women bishops.  Current traditionalist ACs until this point have suffered their conscience on the matter of women clergy in the C of E so long as it didn’t happen in their parish.  Indeed, if a ‘conscience clause’ had not been rejected as it seems it will be, even still, so long as they themselves were able to practice their piety in good conscience, then it seems few if any would have been tempted to leave the C of E.

Enter a proposition: AC clergy (in the C of E) will not leave the church even if there are women clergy and bishops in the church so long as they are able to maintain their own practice.

That is, they can suffer a diversity on this issue in their wider fellowship, both in the C of E and in the wider Communion.

Proposition II – AC clergy are in Eucharistic (that is, the highest level of) fellowship with women clergy and bishops and parishoners ‘under’ them.

If we are to assume that a ‘true’ traditionalist AC does not ‘recognize’ the sacramental validity of women clergy, then:

Proposition III – ACs are able to abide ‘invalid’ sacraments in part of their church.

If these three propositions are true, and broadly of traditionalist ACs they are, then:

Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics are in fact high-church Congregationalists.

There are so many points, so many thoughts, on this topic that I want to say; so many things I’ve thought about, so many things I want to demonstrate.  But blogs are no place for that sort of thing; and my academic training has yet to be remotely and sufficiently established for me to be able to argue those points fully.  Nonetheless follow me:

The OM and even the LCs were very concerned with authority.  Indeed, many in the OM were not even thurible swingin’ high-churchers.  No.  Time and again when you read the Tracts for the Times, you realize that the OM was concerned to establish that the C of E sat in proper sacramental, that is episcopal continuity with the church of the apostles and that it wouldn’t have mattered if they had been allowed a thousand parishes to fill with chant and incense.  What mattered was whether or not they were practicing in the same church and with the same authority as the apostles.  Additionally, this would have had to have been true of the entire C of E, and indeed when Newman and many others deemed that it wasn’t, they left for Roman Catholicism.

Similarly Bishop Gore spent an awful lot of time defending the catholicity of the C of E.  Indeed he wrote an impressive and persuasive book on just that topic. (cf. Order and Unity)

Now, I usually situate myself within Anglo-Catholicism seeing a clear line from ABC Michael Ramsey to Rowan Williams to RadOx.  I would then consider myself a “liberal (charismatic and evangelical) catholic” though not in the way that term is generally used today.

But my point isn’t really in this essay to establish my own perfect catholicity (I’m pretty sure there isn’t such a thing) but rather to show that if traditionalist ACs have so far suffered sacramental invalidity in their church they should never have been in the C of E to begin with.  I wonder if they simply don’t get what it means to be ‘Catholics;’ whatever the case they have a long way to go before they can legitimately say that they stand in continuity with Anglo-Catholicism.

Lonesome Dan Kase

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia.

Toward the end of my time at North Central University, which is located in downtown Minneapolis, MN, I began to frequent a nearby coffee shop/music venue/art space called E.P. Atelier (this wonderful place closed closed down awhile back).  It was there, that I was introduced to a young blues musician named Lonesome Dan Kase.  It was a Saturday evening, and business was slow for the coffee shop, I was the only customer.  Lonesome Dan began to sing, and stomp, and play his 1938 Gibson guitar.  It was the first time I had heard the country blues, and I was transfixed.  Later, I wrote an article about Lonesome Dan for The Northern Light (the venerable student newspaper of North Central):

The music he plays hasn’t been heard (at least by most) in 70 years.  It is captivating music, full of raw and throaty vocals, and intense finger-picking guitar work.  It’s foot-stompin’, knee-slappin’ music of a bygone era; nostalgic music that takes you back even if you’ve never been there before.  When you hear it, it makes you wish you had a name like Lonesome Dan, or Reverend Gary Davis, or Sleepy John Estes, riding from town to town on a freight train and playing the country blues on your old beat up guitar.

Back in the ’20s and ’30s the country blues was called “race music.”  Back in those days it the popular genre of African America, and you can trace the development of modern rock, blues, R & B, and rap back to those gritty voiced black singers who got their start and their sound during the Great Depression: Mississippi John Hurt, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson (Eric Clapton’s muse), Son House (Jack White’s muse), Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the Reverend Gary Davis.  The best word to describe the music of these men, and of Lonesome Dan is genuine.  One man, a guitar, sitting on stool, in a bar or a road house, (back when such places were still filled with the smoke of cheap cigarettes) singing of love and religion, place and tradition, agriculture and crime and racism.  These men lived the life they sang about, and it was not a glamorous life, either.  They did not own mansions, or drive Escalades.  They were many times homeless, and rode freight trains (Lonesome Dan ran away from home and hopped a freight train when he was eighteen…or so the legend goes).  They didn’t lip sync their concerts or use computers to edit out their mistakes and correct their voices.  The country blues is some of the most authentic music every made, and that’s why when you hear it, it makes your heart ache.  It calls you to the open road, it makes you want to pack a knapsack and head for the train yard.  It gives you nostalgia for a way of life you’ve never lived.

- – -

Nostalgia is a yearning for authenticity, for a time when things were simpler, more real; but it is often a paradoxical yearning.  These days, nostalgia has been commercialized, plasticized and outsourced.  We’re flooded with cheap Elvis clocks, and Betty Boop commemorative plates that are supposed to remind us (well, actually our parents) of a better a time, back before suburban sprawl and big box stores, back when Americans actually manufactured things.  So much for authenticity.

It is in this culture so filled with hype, with mind-controlling advertising, with disposable everythings, that the search for authenticity becomes urgent.  My generation wants authenticity so badly–almost as badly as we want the new I-phone.  And ultimately, that’s the problem, our search for authenticity always seems to get sidetracked, co-opted, packaged and sold back to us.  But, good, raw, real music keeps on calling us back to the search, to the road…even if that music gets played through ear-buds.

So long as one is drudging themselves through the process of acquiring basic linguistic skills, fantasizing about future research projects can provide the necessary motivation to continue to drudge.  I already have a running list of books and articles that I’m “going” to write and the other day I posted one of my ideas on Twitter and Facebook,

“Of Pilgrimage and Handkerchiefs: The Implicit Sacramental Ontology of Classical Pentecostalism”

Reactions hovered around amazement at my astute imagination.  But our long time reader George P Wood asked the perennial question:  “How does this move the missional ball down the Kingdom field?”

The funny thing is that I feel this has huge implications for missions and ecumenism.  I realized that it maybe was time for me to clarify a bit more why I wish to continue to engage Pentecostalism and perhaps even hint at some of my own hopes future academic work.  So here are a few of my persistent thoughts on Pentecostalism and what I hope to do about them..  I am more than aware that I might ‘accomplish’ little of this but I figure it’s more fun at least to plan big and trim as the situations require than stew in perpetual uncertainty like a fourth year sophmore who has changed majors six times.

For the sake of clarity I always attempt to differentiate between “Pentecostals” and “Charismatics” even if the difference is blurred.  Consider it heuristic.  Charismatics are those in Mainline, Catholic and other historic churches who experience(d) and promote(d) the “charismatic gifts and experiences” (thought of more narrowly as the type normally associated with “Pentecostals”) and Pentecostals are those Protestants who look to various ‘revivals’ which happened roughly a century ago for their roots.  They are also generally differentiated by idiosynchratic eschtologies.

• It seems clear based on the unique rise and spread of Pentecostals that it is a work of the Spirit.  If it is, then it is incumbent on the whole Church to ‘get on board’ with it, though with discernment.  This is really just another way of saying that the charismatic gifts of the Spirit are for the whole Church.
• So I hope to work ecumenically with Pentecostals and encourage the use of the charismatic gifts in the wider Church.
• This engagement is hindered by several things:
• Pentecostals have historically been skeptical of ecumenism.  They have been especially hostile to Catholics and Mainline Christians and have tended to feed this with an etiological narrative that sees in intellectualism and liberalism (among other things) a “fall” from the Spirit.  So the “start” of Pentecostalism is seen as Gods judgment that the rest of the Church has failed and so is better ignored and left behind than looked to as partners and teachers.  This has also borne fruit as anti-intellectualism, anti-institutionalism and anti-tradition.
• So part of what I want to do is demonstrate how under the surface of Pentecostal experience and practice there is a substantive overlap with Catholic Christian theology, experience and practice.  By doing this I can help prepare the ground for fruitful dialogue between pentecostal and other churches as well as for cooperation in mission.
• On the other hand, despite initial flowering in various charismatic renewals, other churches still often remain skeptical of pentecostalism on the grounds that it is anti-intellectual, anti-institutional and anti-traditional and just plain ‘weird.’  So by speaking the historic theological language of the Church, I hope to show how the whole Church needs to be renewed by the Charismatic work of the Spirit.
• Additionally I’d like to explore the future of anglo-catholicism and argue that only a charismatic anglo-catholicism can de-clericalize the movement and renew a focus on missions and the sacraments.
• I’d also be interested in exploring the historic three-fold ministerial order, and ‘laws of ecclesiastical polity’ in general, with reference to the charismatic gifts.
• Similarly I’d like to look into the charismatic theology of the Eastern Orthodox because I’ve often found that their theology of the Spirit connects brilliantly with Pentecostal experience.
• I’ve got a million more of these.
• Another minor premise of mine that is rather disconnected to the points I’ve already made is that Pentecostals have done us all a disservice by selling their soul to buy street cred with Evangelicals.  So even now Pentecostals need a Charismatic renewal!  Especially with respect to how they read Scripture.

A basic underlying premise of all this is that Pentecostals are right in certain things and can enhance and be part of a larger renewing work of the Spirit who is reconciling all things to Christ, but in many things she is young and wrong and needs the whole Church to teach her.

This entry will be posted at my personal blog, Cognitive Dissonance, as well, because it is there that I have been archiving a chronicle of sorts for both my journey into Anglicanism and my subsequent discernment into the clergy.  It will also constitute a heretofore personally despised mish-mashy style of personal reflection, theological inquiry, and sardonic social commentary that is commonly known by its official nom de plume, Practical Theology.

To begin, I probably ought to offer a little background.  As a Pentecostal, the Eucharist (communion) had always been a point of tension for me.  First, doctrinally speaking, I was always puzzled by the Evangelical proclivity for the term “ordinance” – especially in light of the strong sacramental disposition of their favorite reformers like Martin Luther.  Clearly, I appreciate the distinction much of the Protestant church makes in identifying Baptism and the Eucharist as the principle sacraments.  It is a distinction the Anglicans make as well.  However, its hard to deny that the term “ordinance” is designed to differentiate between a simple act of obedience to a command instituted by Christ and the sacramental assertion that the same were instituted as a means for receiving grace.  In a doctrinal sense, the disconnect is simple.  If we practice these “ordinances,” but they have no efficacy (i.e. baptism is just a post-salvation act of obedience, and communion is just commemorative; neither has the power to change you), then why bother with them at all?  Indeed, that was the tone that nearly every Evangelical church I attended took – some churches couldn’t be bothered to have communion more than four times a year.  It was as if they were compelled by a tradition to which they felt no connection, many times falling into that dead, religious repetition of meaningless ceremonies.  The irony being, of course, that this is the same accusation I heard leveled against the high church liturgy and sacramentalism my entire life.

Second, the doctrinal position of most Evangelical churches (let’s not forget that there are very strong and respectable Evangelical movements within sacramentalism) creates an anemic theology.  The Sacraments provide an indelible theological connection to the ontological reality of Christ among His people.  The Eucharist, especially, provides the framework for understanding how the Church functions as Christ (‘s body) in the world, and how Christ can yet be distinct within the Church as Lord.  The sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist also provide a point of contact for modern believers with the death and resurrection of Jesus – it is our participation also in the kerygma of the Church.  Through the practice and proclamation of such we not only participate in Christ, becoming Christ to the world and experiencing Christ’s presence in our own lives, but we engage for the briefest of moments in the glory of Christ’s coming kingdom.  I don’t know perhaps this isn’t Pentecostalism’s fault.  In fact, I rather feel like the focus on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit with evidence of tongues placed the apparatus of faith within me to receive the sacraments so readily.  It was like Pentecostalism programmed me to be in a sacramental church.  Maybe I was just a piss poor Pentecostal?  Nonetheless, my experience with Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism drove me to ask (sometimes divisive) questions about the purpose and nature of the Church.  Questions, incidentally, that I have come to believe are answered primarily (perhaps exclusively) in the work of the Holy Spirit through the Sacraments.  In fact, this is a link to a page where you can hear a sermon to this effect by the Very Reverend F. Michael Perko, PhD.  Hit the drop down menu and listen to the June 6, 2010 sermon – it’s only 11 minutes long (honestly, the 11 minute sermon is better than this entire post – you’re welcome).

Third, by way of personal experience, I always felt that communion was lacking in the Evangelical churches that I visited.  It would certainly be nice if I could drum up the corroboration of friends that remember these conversations, but many times I would leave a communion service complaining there just had to be more to it than juice, crackers, and a few verses from 1 Corinthians.  Many times, I found myself excited for communion, and those rare moments that God would “speak to me” invariably came during communion services.  So, I went looking for more explanation than was handed down by the likes of Grudem, Horton, and Fee.  That was when some of the trouble started.  In short, and hopefully without sounding bitter, allow me simply to say that my questions (in Bible College) were ignored, side-stepped, dismissed, or received with general irritation.  This, of course, only led me to believe I was on to something – and I was.

This was necessary information, I think, in order for you to understand my account of last Sunday.  Last Sunday I was blessed with my first opportunity to serve as a chalice bearer during one of our services.  I’ll spare you the dramatic retelling of the events of the morning (though, in an inter-personal setting I believe them to be quite powerful) in favor of listing the things about the experience that have impacted me.

First, I was really anxious for weeks leading up to the date I was to serve.  I spent a lot of time reflecting on this anxiety, and realized that the Lord was using it to tease out some issue in my heart.  Most people who know me personally, would describe me in one fashion or another (some of them in colorful turns of phrase) to be a perfectionist.  My origins are less than illustrious, and I had really developed a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” kind of demeanor.  In short, my anxiety over serving was really anxiety over appearances.  I want desperately to do things right, and often this desire stems from a need to impress people.  So, half an hour before service, I sat in the vesting room admiring a beautiful stained glass memorial and wrestling with my personal desire to be thought well of and the Church’s need for me to be a humble, unassuming servant for the morning.  Of course, I did things wrong – and, of course, nobody thought less of me for them.  Chalice bearing was a milestone in helping me let go of my pride, though.  Indeed, I feel my lay ministry (and hopefully, in the future, my sacerdotal ministry) during the liturgy promises to be the most grounding experience of my Christian walk.

Second, I experienced a general elation about my participation in everything the Eucharist means.  My heart was full, and I was on the verge of tears many times as I went through the service and contemplated how blessed (and proud in the good way) I was to be able to participate in God’s ministry of grace to his people.  In fact, my heart was full of these emotions when the procession passed my family and my children jumped up and down smiling, saying “that’s my daddy.”  The joy of being able to share in their experience was nearly too much to take – God was allowing me to be a vessel of service in their personal experiences with him.  Perhaps most importantly, that moment has brought much clarification to my role as spiritual leader in the home (something in which, I must tell you, I have never felt lacking).

Feel free to comment, to share your experiences, or to ask questions.  I am blessed by all the ways the community of Christ comes together in my life, not least of which are the people who invest in this blogging community.

The third and final of Ward’s books dealing with the contemporary City is The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens.  This book was released in The Church and Postmodern Culture Series put out by Baker Academic and edited by James K. A. Smith.  I reviewed Smith’s contribution and am soon to review also John Caputo’s.

In it, Ward returns again to an interpretive description of contemporary urban cultural imaginaries, this time spending his time on the ‘Postdemocratic condition,’ ‘Globalization,’ especially economic globalization and ‘Postsecularity,’ the new visibility of religion in the West.  These topics constitute the first part of the book under the heading “The World.”  The second part focuses on “The Church” and examines the struggle for the ‘soul of the City;’ lays out a metaphysics of the ‘Body;’ and finishes with ‘The politics of election and of Following,’ all with reference to an eschatology which introduces this second part.

Perhaps it is the intended audience, perhaps it is the experience of extended reflection (nearly 10 years having passed since Cities of God), whatever the cause, this book reads much easier than Cities even though it deals with many of the same topics.  The arguments are tighter, the descriptions less obscure (no ‘angelologies’ this time) and because it is perhaps a bit less ambitious there is not the same feeling of new and many ‘rabbit holes’ opening up by unanswered questions.

If I could do it over again, I would read this book before I read Cities of God; it seems to me that doing this would better prepare one to understand in advance a bit more of the purposes contained in it.  In fact, returning to Cities for discussions of Desire and various Bodies was very fruitful for me.  The two books do indeed compliment each other and combined are filled with rich description that could potentially spark the imagination of pastors and ministering lay-people in cities, especially with new ideas about how to do evangelism and outreach.

The book is also important because of the creative ways that Ward utilizes Scripture.  His training as philologist and literary critic plays a large role in his exegesis.

Also, for a nearly exhaustive review of the book, check out the multi-part review by one of our readers Josh Rowley (scroll down and on the right you’ll see links for it).  Also see these posts on the Church and Pomo site, here, here and here

***          ON THE WHOLE SERIES          ***

There are a few criticisms of this book trilogy that I want to note:

• Considering the special attention Bodies receive in these works, and especially the valuation of embodiment and concerns with gender, I find it rather odd that when the time came in Cities to paint a picture of a Christian anthropology, Ward utilized and modified Barth to create a theological account of the body which explicitly marginalized the hard realities of biology.  Not, mind you, that some ‘scientific’ or ‘natural’ description of biological functions suffices to provide a foundation for a theology of the body by itself, but by abstracting an anthropology by means of a “theological” description with no recourse to bodies as we have them, Ward strangely seems to me to ignore physical bodies and so embodiment.
• I understand that much of gender and sexuality is culturally produced and so alternative Christian descriptions can reinscribe bodies with a more Christological center; and I understand that Ward is attempting to argue in favor of gay marriage; but if bodies matter, as Ward emphatically says they do, then there cannot be a fully appropriate theology of the body that ignores the limitations of bodies.
• This ties into my next point:  There is, of course, only so much one person and one project can do…and it is a classic mistake to criticize a work for not doing what it never set out to do; nevertheless, as Ward knows, how one goes about a project, which topics receive attention and which don’t, what strategies are utilized in creating a work; all of these can at least indicate what an author felt was more and less important.  And so it seems to me to be an oversight that Ward did not incorporate ecology into this project.
• I cannot theorize why Ward made this choice but it only further indicates that the inseparable connection between urban centers and their rural food (and so LIFE) sources is completely disappearing in the critical reflection on our common life.  In reality, rural life is progressively disintegrating as more and more artificial and impersonal machines and systems are used to manufacture our food.
• In fact, as Anthony Paul Smith has noted, serious Christian reflection on ecology is barely done at all.
• A working theory of mine is that the collapse of a nutura pura, and concerns with weaknesses ‘natural theology’ as it has been practiced in Christian scholasticism has led to a fear of serious reflection on nature because it is assumed that all such descriptions are too culturally relative to yield the desired fruit.
• A Christian ecology could greatly enhance Ward’s work.  The unbreakable reciprocal relationship between urban and rural, because fewer and fewer of us (including myself!) have any direct connection to not only our food but even the people who produce it, needs to be critically thought about.

My Home Altar

The Home Altar or Icon Corner is a venerable tradition in Christianity.  The Eastern Orthodox claim it dates from the 1st century (which of their practices, doesn’t?).  Personally, I find that having a space set aside for prayer and devotion to be useful for my own discipline; even so, getting myself to consistently use it is always an inner struggle.  I’ve decided to show all of you this holy place to inspire and challenge you to make a space of your own in which to pray, and meditate on the mysteries and goodness of God.

Per tradition my Icon Corner faces East (toward Jerusalem).  Here’s a list of items from top to bottom:

1. Icon of Resurrection of Christ, or the Harrowing of Hell (which is it?  Nerd fight.)  It is traditional to have an Icon of Christ above all others to signify Christ’s Lordship above all others.  See picture below for detail.

2. An Icon of Christ Pantocrator, handwritten on Mt. Athos (according to the little plaque on the back), which came to me in a thrift store–those pagans had it lying in a junk bin with baseball gloves and crayons, priced at  $.99!

3. A Crucifix from Kenya, which reminds me to pray for my sisters and brothers on the African continent.  Besides an Icon of Christ, a crucifix is probably the next most essential item for an Icon Corner.

4. A palm leaf tied into a cross from Palm Sunday 2010 (tucked behind the crucifix).  Hopefully, I’ll remember to burn it on Shrove Tuesday 2011.

5. An Icon of the Wedding at Cana, handwritten by an Orthodox iconographer from Minnesota, and given to my wife and I as a wedding present by the illustrious Dr. J. Davenport.  See detail in picture below.

6. An Icon of Christ the Word creating the heavenly beings, and an Icon of Christ the Word creating the fish of the sea and the birds of the air.  Along with the Resurrection Icon above, these were gifted to me by my brother-in-law and fellow contributor, Mr. Shawn Wamsley M.A., M.Div. (or do they go the other way around?  Nerd fight.)

7. A votive candle and censer.  Both were from thrift stores.  I have not used the censer.  I keep meaning to order some frankincense, but have yet to do so.  A perpetually burning oil lamp is traditional in Eastern Orthodox Icon Corners.  I’m a little nervous about starting a fire with one, personally.

8. I almost forgot the ordo kalendar on the wall level (more or less) with the crucifix, which shows all Episcopal fasts, feasts and saints days.

9. Back down on the blue table is my Book of Common Prayer/ Bible.

10. A set of Anglican prayer beads and a (barely visible) Jerusalem Cross pendant.

11. The table features a storage drawer for matches and stuff and shelf below filled with books of a (mostly) devotional or liturgical nature.  It was also a gift from a dear friend who was getting rid of it.

There may be some who are not aware of something that has just happened on the internet. To my mind, it seems to be a moment signaling a potentially significant shift in the way internet theology is done: Nathan R. Kerr, Ry O. Siggelkow, and Halden Doerge recently composed a set of theses concerning what they feel are some troubling tendencies in contemporary theology to ‘prioritize’ the Church, presumably ‘over’ the ‘Gospel’ though this doesn’t quite come out explicitly…at least it hasn’t yet.

There have of course been internet blog symposiums and substantive engagement that has happened on the internet before. This is why I hesitate to say that this was itself a paradigm shifting kind of thing; nonetheless it seems to have generated a massive amount of fury and energy the likes I’ve yet to see in these kind of internet self-published theological debate. And it makes sense when theological journals can run over $150 bucks annually for a personal subscription, that the easy use, free cost and infinite availability of blogs can be, maybe, potentially, a viable site of exciting theological engagement.

People write controversial stuff on the internet all the time, but these theses went a step further by publishing simultaneously on The Other Journal, an online theological journal run by the Mars Hill Graduate School and one of the greatest things to happen to theological publishing since the advent of the internet. This meant at the very least that the Theses writers did not intend for their work to be merely a blog piece, however academic and engaging it was. *update* Over some confusion by readers the piece, which was never intended to be an edited academic piece, has been moved to the blog section of The Other Journal.

And so readers took it more seriously than a blog entry leading to nearly 250 comments, most of which were substantive as well as full fledged engagement from several other blogs. (The Other Journal, An Und Fur Sich – here, here and here, Church and Pomo – here and here, The Fire and the Rose…there may be others I don’t know about, if so please link in the comments)

The extreme posititions represented by the theses even garnered some charges of herterodoxy and the dialogue went too far in many cases, as most such blog comments are prone to do.

Thankfully I refrained, for once in my frickin life, from also saying things that I would regret later. I already have too many of those kinds of comments floating around the internet, plus I know one of the writers and enjoy having coffee with him. Indeed most of the concerns I have with the theses were addressed by more thoughtful and competent writers than me so I was not going to say anything.

But a recent comment struck me as so incredibly erroneous that I could no longer not at least enter the fray even though the conversation has settled down. I offer this in the spirit of gentleness and grace, in friendship and as a fellow brother in Christ. Nonetheless I doubt that my own concerns will sound so gentle in the phrasing so I can only ask that if Ry, Halden and Nate take the time to read them they will interpret me with the same generosity that I gave them on their site even if it’s the first time I’ve acted in such a way

If you’ve not read the theses, nor all the comments, nor the other blog posts as I have, some of this might not make sense. I apologize in advance to these readers.

My own points will themselves be ‘theses,’ that is, they will not be systematic expostitions, rather they are concise and at-this-point-unargued notes made in order to contribute to the discerning work of the Spirit through the Church.

• I cannot abide the meta-critique of “Religion” vs “Gospel.” I find it to be as crude as Luther’s own Law vs Grace dichotomy and it utterly flattens out any hope of Scriptures multi-valent testimony to Christ from being heard in it’s proper complexity. It is an artificial uber-construct that, rather than being formed by Scripture’s own plenitudinous testimony to Christ’s significance, takes too much authority from Karl Barth and is used to impose a theoretical structure as ultimate judge over the Spirit’s showing-forth of Christ who has “spoken through the prophets” in more than a single form.
• This is why if followed through, this kind of theology does not seem to me capable of attending to the Old Testament scriptures in any consistent Christological sense.
• For instance the missional narrative of “exile” is by no means the only Scriptural way to speak about the Church in the world and it even misses that “Exile” in Scripture is punishment for apostacy and that the apostolic sending of the Paraclete in the Church is not judgement but joy. The properly Isaiahonic “Good News” is about return from exile, not it’s extension.
• The dissolving of any difference between Church and World (Thesis 3) is actually to voice the total non-existence of the Church at all.
• By so dissolving the Church, any “site” for the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit seems also to slip by
• This may in fact explain the paltry attention payed to the Spirit in the theses and this lack of serious reflection on the Spirit helps to make clear some other inherent weaknesses in the theses
• For instance, by calling worship “a perpetual factory of idols,” and “the site of our deepest estrangement” and even to go so far in another comment as to say that any and all forms of worship are inherently idolatrous fails to account for the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the baptized for the ministry and building up of the Church. Paul encourages the exercise of these gifts and exhorts us to praise God by the composing of hymns and spiritual songs.
• The reason that worship is a site for reconciliation and not estrangement is because the Spirit proceeds through the Church back to the godhead and Herself sings the siren beautiful infinite song of worship. This is why the etymology of the word “liturgy” is such a pointless thing to bring up. Liturgy as the Church knows it is where the Spirit worships through the Church by word, sacrament and the exercise of her unique gifts.
• This is of course not to say that any and all acts of worship are purely of the Spirit…we are still ever being perfected, but it is exactly in worship that we are continually perfected.
• The lack of attention to the Spirit also explains why the ad hoc and obligatory mention of the Sacraments make absolutely no sense. Or at least they make perfect Zwingilian sense. How could they make any other sense when it is “Jesus Christ alone [who] is constituitive of the church’s sacramental existence.” In worship we are included in the very life of the eternal and Holy Trinity; not the Word alone.
• Also lacking is any substantive interaction with theology that is older than 100 years minus a passing nod to Aquinas in solidarity with Barth. Inasmuch as Christ has never been in want of a witness to His Holy Gospel this is an unfortunate fact about the theses. To name but an obvious example, where is any mention of the work of John of Damascus on holy Icons? Indeed what of the entire clash between iconodoules and iconoclasts? Is the testimony to Christ in the past of such little worth as to be ignored in favor of those whom are blind to the weaknesses of our own age?
• As to the most minor of my complaints…Most of the Apocalyptic vocabulary is somewhat masculine and almost violent.

And this brings us back full circle. This is a very Protestant and modern and some might say even, given it’s anti-“ecclesiastical” polemic, reactionary document. (I seem to remember a certain theses writer writing against “reactionary ecclesiology”) This is something that not even the many pious phrases uttered can fully conceal. It would be my hope that the naivety of saying that “we ONLY testify to the Gospel” can be politely passed over into more ‘epistemologically humble’ phraseology.

There is of course much to commend in these theses and I level no charges against their authors other than those I wrote here. Thank you Ry, Halden and Nate for taking the time to witness to the reconciliation of Jesus Christ and for sharing it with us.

See part I here.  Also, I hope to make all of these into a PDF at the end so you should be able to download it.

I hope I did not seem to be too sure of myself when I said that Ward ‘saw weaknesses’ in Cities of God, as if somehow I am a fit enough mind to make such a judgement.  This conclusion becomes clear in the second book in Ward’s Cities Trilogy, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice.

Whereas I found Cities to be unsystematic and somewhat obscure, this book was a beacon of rigorous and focused thinking.  This must be in part because he asks three questions in this book and focuses exclusively on them:

“From What Place Does Theology Speak?”

“How Do Cultures Change?” and

“What Is The Relationship Between Religious Practices and Cultural Transformation?”

To examine the first question, Ward (who is no novice with respect to the theology of Barth) examines the relationship between Barth’s theology and his biographical context.  How do various and specific pressures on Barth work themselves out in his theology?  The answer, unsurprisingly, is that Barth’s work was profoundly shaped by the various situations and motivations that worked on him and directed his mind.  This is might be a controversial thing to say for those Barthinians who really think Barth explicated a “pure dogmatics of the Word,” but there is simply no “pure” anything so they’ll just have to get over it.

In examining how cultures change, Ward draws often on the work of Paul Ricoeur, as he does in his third section, to yield some sweet fruit.  This second chapter pays particular attention to the cultural structures and poetics that affect our praxis.  Within this he draws out how to understand the thinking “subject,” argues for “standpoint epistemology” and much besides.  He corrects the passive and impotent subject of Foucault and shows how intentionality and imagination enable people not to be content with being merely acted upon yet also how we don’t come up with ideas ex nihilo but draw and pro-ject from available resources.

The third chapter more clearly examines cultural change with reference to the practices of small groups with particular attention to Christian practice.  In order to do this Ward explains Benedict Anderson’s understanding of relationships as “imaginary” and moves on to talk about “authority” and “rhetoric” and even how the public sphere is created.

This book was concise, tightly and well argued, and made for exciting possibilities in how to think about many topics from doctrinal change to the situatedness of all discourses.  I would recommend it to any Barthinian and to anyone doing or thinking about theology or any academic practice for that matter; not only because it complexifies the “assured results of modern scholarship” and also of any “pure dogmatics” but also, it’s just a tintilating read.

This last semester, in order to fulfill some of my Liberal Arts requirements, I took a sociology class on “Cities and Social Change.”  A large part of the class is dedicated to a substantive final paper.  As I look for chances to combine my schooling with my theological interests, not formally studying theology at this time, I decided to write my paper on the work of Church of England theologian Graham Ward; more specifically his three volume work on Cities.  These three are Cities of God, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, and The Politics of Discipleship.

I drew on several other sources as well including the two volumes that he edited and which I reviewed on this blog, The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader and The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology.  Especially useful was the introduction to The Postmodern God which engages with a theology of cyberspace.  Additionally I read through portions of Christ and Culture and Theology and Contemporary Critical Theory.

It was my original intention to compose a roughly 30 page systematic summary of his cities work but found out (later than I should have liked) that the paper was to be much shorter so I had to completely redo it.  In the end I focused specifically on the “Disappearance of the Body in the Postmodern City and the Theological Difference.”  Even here I had only space and time to interact mostly with Cities of God, though I also took a fair amount from Discipleship and skipped nearly entirely over Cultural Transformation.  I certainly learned a lot about paper writing as I tried to make this my first “real” academic paper.  I think I did pretty poorly to be honest.

But what I can do is give a couple notes about approaching Ward and a bit about those books which I was able to work through.  We’ll start with his Cities ‘Trilogy.’

Cities of God is a work in the (in)famous Radical Orthodoxy Series published on Routledge.  It is divided in three parts.  In part one Ward gives genealogies of both “The Modern City – Cities of Eternal Aspiration,” and “The Postmodern City – Cities of Eternal Desire.”  In them he traces the fragmentation and social atomism of the body and, if you tie in a future chapter (as I think he should have) – “Communities of Desire” – with this part it ends up making what is to me a persuasive case for Ward’s reading of both cities.

In part two Ward proceeds to outline an “Analogical Worldview” which he thinks that Christian theology can offer.  This analogical worldview heals atomism and fragmentation by a sketch of how we are made whole in the Body of Christ.  It is here that he also outlines a theological account of the body, drawing in surprising ways on Karl Barth, and a Christian picture of desire.

In Part three, by examining several contemporary ‘angelologies,’ Ward reframes his previous discussion with reference to “Theology and the Practices of Contemporary Living.”

I was surprised to have mixed feelings about this book.  I came into it quite sympathetic but I felt at the end as if he opened up more problems and unexplored rabbit holes than he did provide what seemed to me to be sufficient answers.  He didn’t maintain a coherent argument throughout; for instance at least one chapter had already been released as an independent essay.  Ward was his strongest when he was describing the cultural maladies that beset us in our contemporary urban context.

If one was to approach Ward’s work on cities I would first direct them to The Politics of Discipleship where he plays on many of the same themes as Cities but has obviously spent more time reflecting on weaknesses inherent in this book.  I will give a few more critiques after the next two books in the series.

Today, as I sat contemplating the possibility of (more) war in the Middle East, I realized something: I don’t pray nearly enough for peace.  Sure the deacon recites this prayer every Sunday:

“Guide the people of this land, and of all nations, in the ways of justice and peace; that we may honor one another and serve the common good…Lord, in your mercy”

To which I heartily reply: “Hear our prayer.”  But that is by and large the extent of my prayer life concerning peace.  What’s more, I’ve never fasted for peace. 

It occurred to me that there are thousands–maybe tens of thousands–of Christians out there who don’t believe that peace is possible or even beneficial, who believe that America’s wars are blessed by God, who believe that violence toward Muslims, gays and other perceived enemies is just fine, and who pray and fast on a regular basis.    There are National Days of Prayer when God has to listen to (among better things) idolatrous, nationalistic prayers about how He needs to bless America and Israel and destroy China, Iran, and North Korea, and how the Holy Spirit needs to touch Obama’s heart and make him repeal the healthcare bill, and resign, and get ”born again.” 

But, when do I (we) pray that God fulfills the prophesy given in Isaiah 2:1-5?  When do I (we) pray that God changes the hearts of human-beings–myself included–who harbor violence and hatred in their hearts toward fellow human-beings? 

I may be an E-whisk-i-palian, and I even voted for George W. Obama (in answer to the billboard: “How can I miss George W. Bush, when we have one of his clones running the country right now!”) but, I still believe that God intervenes in human history.  Don’t get me wrong, I also believe that we are God’s hands and feet, living Icons of Christ and representatives of His coming Kingdom.  Right action must accompany prayer, but it is all too often the prayer part that gets left out in my life.

So, I propose that those of us in our little blog community who a) believe in peace and non-violence, and b) believe that God answers prayer start to assign some action to our beliefs.  Maybe I’m the only one of you guys who isn’t, in which case, I need your guidance.

Shall we set aside one day a week to fast and pray for peace?

Shall we plan a week of fasting and prayer this summer? 

How do you guys pray and fast for peace?  I hope some of my peacenik friends will chime in here…

*PICTURE NOTE: I was looking for a cheesy prayer picture.  I think I did pretty well.  Gotta love lightning emanating from folded hands, accompanied by a dove and and open Bible.  All that’s missing is an American flag and a M-16.