Take that, Jeff Fugate

It's now going to be legal to sell alcohol by the package in Lexington on Sundays. On December 16th.

'Cause it wasn't before.

The funny thing was, the fundamentalist Baptists who showed up to argue against it are essentially prohibitionists - they want to outlaw alcohol any way they can. Their arguments seemed kind of strange when the city was considering expanding the existing alcohol sales, not cutting them off.

They said expanding Sunday hours would lead to more alcoholism, alcohol-related crashes and hungover employees who would not arrive to work on time on Mondays. It would also lessen the respect for the Lord's day, they said.

Lemme tell ya - as it stands, Sunday's the only day I'm sober - and that's gonna change real soon. See the thing is, alcohol goes bad if you don't drink it the same day you buy it.

Oh, wait. What?

Huh. Okay, so that's not true at all. You mean I could have been tanked at the last church picnic! What a terrible law.

Okay, I'm done. Back to the dissertation...

Signs

I'm at LTS today, looking to sort out how I'll describe these "anti-imperial" stories the Church must tell. As some of you will know, this Disciples of Christ seminary now houses the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky, and a sign outside indicates this.

A couple of older gentleman strolled in and asked the library desk worker if this was a Baptist seminary now. She looked like someone had stolen her lunch money, and tried to explain to them what the Baptists were doing here.

When I returned to my table, I noticed that the bust of Alexander Campbell on the windowsill was weeping.

Autumn Memories

I once got a lecture from a family member about how things would be different once I was out of school and in "the real world" and had to look after myself.

(I don't know who she thought paid my tuition bill.)

The funny thing was, at the time, I was in a wheelchair because I'd just broken my neck/back/ribs/sternum, and my mother was feeding me soup because I couldn't do it myself. Or chew very well. Or go to the bathroom myself. Or lie down. Or sleep.

And I thought to myself, "Man, I'm glad I'm not out there in the real world. Things must be pretty fucking tough out there."

I'd have been angry if it wasn't so ludicrous.

How to Shop for Churches

The other Kyle can't go with us to afternoon Mass at St. Patrick's Church because of his work schedule. In the meantime, we've been sniffing around for a service of divine worship that he might attend on Sunday mornings. There's a local, large Reformed church that I'd heard good things about (in regard to its liturgy), but when I asked a friend who attends, his first comment was that the preacher really loves to talk about homosexuality and abortion, which surprised me. That's probably not a congregation any of us is going to get excited about.

I mean, what business does a pulpiteer have talking about abortion or homosexuality of nobody in the congregation is doing or about to do those things? Why is it interesting? Why is it important? Are preachers at these large evangelical churches really pacing back and forth talking about how non-baptized people should live?

That's not to say that anybody wants to attend a mainline denomination so they can hear about the war in Iraq, either...

Okay, back to the dissertation...

Creation and Imperial Aggression

Will and Michael have commented on the Imperial Administration's expanded regulations to encourage mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

Here's a quote from Wendell Berry I came across the other day.

"Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into Heaven, it has been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economist that 'economic forces' automatically work for good and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. It has assumed with almost everybody that 'progress' is good, that it is good to be modern and up with the times. It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and defaults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation. For in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities, and nations. He is a contradictor of the fundamental miracle of life. A part of the normal practice of his power is his willingness to destroy the world. He prays, he says, and churches everywhere compliantly pray with him. But he is praying to a God whose works he is prepared at any moment to destroy. What could be more wicked than that, or more mad?"

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community, pp. 114-15

Yah...

I'm a jerk. Anyway, back to work...

Reformation?

Fr Matthews keeps telling me about this "Protestant Reformation" business. In response to some things I said last week, he wrote a post confessing that he believes in the "Reformation version of justification by faith." The thing is, I know lots of self-identified "protestant" Christians who wouldn't use the language that the good father does. Ever. Under any circumstances.

This suggests a couple of things to me.

First, just because a contemporary Christian says that they consider themselves to be heirs of the Protestant Reformation doesn't mean their words about God and the Faith have anything in common with those of the Reformers. I'll take Pete's word over any random 50 Protestant laypeople or preachers you'd like to present to me, quite frankly.

Second, I really need at some point to take seriously what I've read and heard about the Reformers seeking to return to the Bible and the Fathers. To the extent that contemporary Protestants have forgotten that last been, I suspect they've co-opted the Reformation for own uses. I'm sure it happens all the time.

I think when I get this thesis done, I'll start thinking about such things.

Don't get your hopes up, though. I'll still probably think "formalism" is a positive label...!

Osteen Again

As an employee of a normal, "secular" bookstore that keeps a well-stocked religion section, and tries to carry the books that will sell, I understand a little bit of profit motive. One wants to stay in business. But I have a harder time understanding the pure profit motives of so-called "Christian" businesses, which are supposed by their very nature to keep a few doctrinal and moral standards.

Christian Book Distributors is actively promoting Joel Osteen's new book. If you really want to read a nice self-help book that isn't Christian, but really will help you in your Christian life, I can show you a few titles. Pick up Byron Katie's Loving What Is, or something. But for the love of God, the Christian one, don't by Osteen's book. And don't buy from CBD.

I pick up their sale items sometimes. Now I won't. Go read as Michael Spencer rips them up.

Oh, and as you'll see, a LifeWay employee informs us that their stores don't carry Osteen's book. I had wondered, but not gotten around to calling or visiting. This heartens me - truly a boon to ecumenical relations...

Thesis

If 21st century Christians in the West were to take the prayers and practices of the ancient Church as their model, their first response to the government's War on Terror rhetoric would be, "How can I die well?" rather than, "How can I live the safest life possible?"

Osteen

Joel Osteen's book has just been released on paperback. I'm going to deal with it like I did the popularity (among aging liberal 60-somethings who were raised in fundamentalist churches where they were told that God hates short pants) of John Shelby Spong's Jesus for the Non-Religious: displayed books on Christianity all around it. Heh.

While we're on the topic, Christianity Today had a worthwhile article on the prosperity gospel in Africa a couple of months back, "Gospel Riches."

Joel Osteen is not a Christian teacher. He might be a Christian man, but he does not teach Christianity. If you'd like a brief explanation and critique of the prosperity gospel, I direct you to this post by the Internet Monk, as well as his criticism of Joel Osteen himself.

Thinking About "Salvation"

Michael Spencer riffs on a post from the White Horse Inn considering whether evangelical Protestants really believe in justification by faith. If you want to find out the truth, apparently, just ask them what happens to Christians who die with unconfessed sin.

I could tell these stories all day. If you ever take a group of evangelicals who have heard the gospel for years and ask them to explain it to you as if you’d never heard it, get ready for a real wake-up call. If you apply a question like the WHI folks did- “What if you die with unconfessed sin?”- you’ll hear a cafeteria of works, merit, synergism, cooperation with God, credit for good intentions, God waving the standards, points for sincerity and so on.

What will really shock you is how seldom Jesus is ever mentioned. I hear testimony after testimony from people who have grown up under Baptist preaching- preaching that I know is about Jesus a good bit of the time- and they speak of God in terms most any Mormon, Jew or Muslim would not find particularly offensive. The person and work of Jesus is like wallpaper. We know it’s there and we don’t have to talk about it.

The big question is this: Why are evangelicals so ignorant of the basic, fundamental concepts of their own gospel of salvation? How is that so many of them sound like they’ve been catechized in a pre-Vatican II Catholic setting?

He then offers a list of reasons why many evangelical Christians have no idea what justification by faith is and means, and I think he's right.

It makes me wonder - do I believe in justification by faith? I can only guess what some of my readers think, and others make it more clear, but I think I do. I happen to believe that participation in the fellowship and the sacramental practice of the Christian Church is absolutely necessary for our ongoing healing and sanctification/transformation on this side of death, but I believe that justification comes by trust in Jesus. But I wonder, do the other things I believe undercut that?

I believe that unbaptised persons are not-yet-Christians, regardless of who or what they trust. I do believe baptised babies are going to be alright if they die. Baptising babies kind of makes sense to me.

I also believe that apostasy is possible - not the idea that someone can be a complete moral failure and God will damn them for it, but rather that choosing over against God is in itself a choosing of the things that destroy our humanity and degrade us to the point of "damnation."

Hm. I'll think of more later. What do you think?

Oooh, snap.

People have been asking me whether I am a liberal or a conservative ... my stock answer is that these are two denominations of a religion to which I do not belong - besides, when one is anti-consumer capitalism, anti-communism, anti-nationalism, anti-abortion, anti-war and all of these because one is convinced that Jesus Christ is Lord of all creation, fully human and fully divine and that the self-giving love of the Trinity is a more truthful model for human beings than the laws of supply and demand or even democracy, one isn't invited to too many parties thrown by either liberals or conservatives.

- Father Rhodes, in a comment below.

Amen, amen, amen.

Anglican Imagination: Liturgy and Worship

Lester: "I don't get tired of kissing my wife, and I don't get tired of the liturgy."

Me: "Ooh, I see. Liturgical revision is like adultery. I agree."

I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to say that, but still...

Earrings

When I don't have time to write, I just tell you to visit Michael Spencer? What's that about? But it's an occasion for a little rant and I wonder what the rest of you might think about it.

At the end of his Internet Monk Radio Podcast #66, Spencer starts criticising the propensity of many folks to fail to see that the Bible is about Jesus. He's recently spoken with someone who was bemoaning the fact that a couple of "great Christian young men" in his family had gotten their ears pierced. the iMonk says,

How long do you have to be around the Bible and church and sermons and prayer meetings before it finally gets through to you that Jesus isn't concerned with that kind of rule keeping? ...

There's no way you can read the gospels and [see] Jesus nagging people about getting tattoos and getting piercings and playing cards and going to the movies, you just don't see that... That whole trip, of the Bible as a set of rules, a set of principles and it's really important that we conform our lives to all these principles, and Christ isn't at the center, that's a dead end.

Which leads us to my rant.

Even coming from northeastern Kentucky, I am continually shocked to learn about how much religious people care about the way other folks dress. Is it possible for me to say with charity, that anyone who's going to be interested in my ears cannot possibly have anything interesting to say about Christ?

My thought is that if someone has been formed as the kind of person for whom wearing earrings or not is a key gospel or lifestyle choice, they really cannot have a good grip on what a gospel lifestyle is.

And of course, I have four earrings. I'm not sure if anybody I know under the age of 50 ever notices, but I know it seems to infuriate anybody over 60. And frankly, I enjoy that, but it's certainly not why I wear them...

Anglican Catechesis: Tradition

We were thinking and talking about the popular notion of "scripture alone"* in one's faith and practice last night, and I've been working through various ways to properly express the problem. Just say that Friend X and I are members of the local Baptist congregation, and we're hanging out and studying the Bible (we're good members of the local Baptist congregation, thank you very much). Suppose that Friend X says to me, "you know, I've been reading Acts and 1 Corinthians here, and I really think that it's proper and right that our church services include periods of public prayer and prophecy by lay people, and as long as it's done decently and in order with appropriate interpretation, some of that prophecy and prayer will be spoken in unknown tongues." We'll have a nice chat about whether the norm in the Corinthian church was glossolalia or xenoglossy (essentially, whether the unknown tongues were human or non-human languages), and then by the end of it, I say to Friend X, "No, gifts like that passed away with the apostolic generation."

(You know that he and I would never really have this conversation, right?)

Here's the problem: Friend X and I have each offered a particular reading of Scripture. It doesn't make any sense to talk about one being "more scriptural" than the other, because we're both two people who worship with the same community, read the same scriptures, pray together, and bring that formation and our broader account of the Bible into our reading. We're each trying to make the most sense out of the biggest part of Scripture as well as we can, and we're good enough friends to assume good faith of one another. As "scripture only," evangelical protestants, we would be unable to appeal to any authority to adjudicate between these positions. There is no authority to declare either reading in or out, because there is not authority that can set boundaries on the reading of Scripture.

The Scripture itself does not tell me whether this disagreement is over core issues, or adiphora - is it something about which we can agree to disagree? The congregation cannot both engage in public prophecy in the manner of 1 Corinthians, and not do this. What authority can say to us, you must stay together as friends and fellow bible readers, or that you must walk apart?

Each one of us is holding onto a particular reading of scripture - an interpretive tradition.

In one sense, tradition is (as Tom Wright says) the history of the Church's Bible reading. It's a very long and quite diverse history, with people running around every which way. When we look for a Tradition (note the capitalization), we're asking the question, "In the long history of the Christian Church, which readings of Scripture have seemed to the broadest parts of the Church to be most faithful to the entire Biblical narrative, and most conducive to the growth in holiness and Christlikeness of the Church's members? In the broadest consensus of holy men and women in the Body of Christ through time and space, which readings of Scripture have been disastrous for the Christian life, and which have been a boon?

If appealing to the "Bible alone" were practically sufficient, we would not need to divide over diverse readings of scripture.

*I didn't use the popular Reformed phrase sola scriptura because I don't have any Calvin or Luther to hand, and it's not the Official Reformation Christian Doctrines® I'm disputing - we can go around all day about What the Reformers Really Meant (as if it matters) and never get back 'round to what real people in real churches really do to the Bible and to each other, and the entire discussion would bore me so badly, I would lose the will to exercise bladder control.