Gnaw On This 1.4 – Apocalyptic Fascination

Is anyone else as curious as I am about the increased level of fascination with apocalypse & global catastrophe taking place in our culture. I’m not talking about doomsday prophets and cable access kooks either. Today’s obsession extends well beyond the religious extreme.

Cable television has shows like, “Life After People,” and the, “Nostradamus Effect,” which deal with the apocalyptic realities of global catastrophe, ancient prophesies, and human extinction. This Friday, “2012″ opens in theaters with several documentaries preceding it this week on various cable channels.

“2012″ is one of several recent films that deals with apocalyptic themes. “2012″ director, Roland Emmerich, also directed “The Day After Tomorrow.” A 2004 film that dealt with apocalyptic themes related to global warming and a catastrophic global weather phenomenon. Other recent apocalypses/post-apocalypses include, “Zombieland,” (2009), “I am Legend” (2007), “War of the Worlds” (2005), and “28 Days Later,” (2002).

Apocalyptic books have been prolific lately as well. I just finished reading the New York Times Best Seller by Max Brooks entitled “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars.” A captivating post-apocalyptic collection of interviews with the survivors of a global zombie war. One need only type-in, “apocalyptic fiction,” to the search bar on Amazon to find an infinite list of titles. Many of which have surfaced in the last decade.

Let’s not forget gaming. One of the year’s most popular video games was, “Left 4 Dead.” A post-apocalyptic zombie slaughter where you and 3 others are left to fight your way through various scenarios in search of survivors and safe haven. Hands down one of my favorite games all year.

The current apocalyptic fascination is not unique to history. Its been around as long as cultures have had stories. This has all led to some questions for this blogger. In my own musings about biblical apocalypses, as well as non-biblical ones, I have formed a hunch that I want to set out there for others in this installment of “Gnaw on This.” I believe that at its base level, apocalyptic fascination is a byproduct of the very real death of cultural meta-narratives (defining story or myth). Apocalypse seems to be a symbolic, fictional, and critical way by which a culture grieves the erosion and/or total loss of its story, or key elements of that story. It even carries with it the very seeds of a new narrative’s construction, or at least the hope of a new narrative’s emergence.

I may be over thinking this – that happens a lot. I am curious what your take may be on this. Is the recent fascination with apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic stories related to the death of our “meta-narrative?” If so, what are the elements of the old narrative that are being grieved? What seeds of hope are present? Is the recent fascination with apocalypse telling us our old narratives are dead, and that its time to write new ones?

I am most curious as to the value of apocalyptic storytelling for those of us living in the ruins of the western church. Like the value of parables, could we add apocalypse to the mix? What do you think?

Bono and Rebranding America

If you haven’t read Bono’s op-ed piece in the New York Times this past Saturday, you can check it out here. In that article the lead singer of U2 discusses Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, and the importance of the Presidents’ comments about the Millennium Development Goals in his UN speech last month. This phrase in particular stood out to Bono:

“We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”

Bono addresses the perceived European projection of unrealistic hopes upon our President by confessing to it, and then offering some legitimate reasons why. He also defends such sentiments by being candid about the value of celebrity. Something he knows very well.

What struck me more than anything in this article was Bono’s argument about the global value of America as an idea. He ends his article with a rather rousing paragraph that initially evokes a measure of pride in this reader, followed by an upsurge of questions. Bono writes:

“But an America that’s tired of being the world’s policeman, and is too pinched to be the world’s philanthropist, could still be the world’s partner. And you can’t do that without being, well, loved. Here come the letters to the editor, but let me just say it: Americans are like singers — we just a little bit, kind of like to be loved. The British want to be admired; the Russians, feared; the French, envied. (The Irish, we just want to be listened to.) But the idea of America, from the very start, was supposed to be contagious enough to sweep up and enthrall the world.”

At first blush I agree with this, and even like the way it makes me feel. I too would like an America that is more love and less, well, obnoxious. As I let his comments sink in, however, the first question that comes to mind is, “What is the idea of America?” The trouble for me in Bono’s last sentence above is that it assumes there is a foundational idea of America. As an American, I struggle to get at something like that.

Our traditional history gives us some clues about an idea of America: a pilgrim land for those seeking freedom; a place of manifest destiny, rugged individualism, and ingenuity; and a participatory democracy. Recent history has its share of clues as well: a land of consumptive waste-makers; a community of distrust, cynicism, and abdication; and a greedy capitalist state. It would seem to me that the idea of America often depends on the time and circumstances within a given period of history.

However, that would be too deterministic for my liking as well. Almost as bad as saying, “Here is the idea of America right here, plain as day.” History can teach, but it doesn’t have to control. What’s more, history is made up of our interpretations of the past, and what we selectively remember in the process of telling it. Finding the one idea of America there is tricky, if not altogether impossible.

As I see it, the idea of America we each have is one that we have chosen. From that choice comes fruit. This is how I can read a comment like Bono’s and not be afraid of yet another western hegemonic imposition of our way of life on the rest of the world. The very problem he sees the Obama administration addressing.

The value to the rest of the world is not the idea of America per se, but rather America’s relationship to her understandings of that idea. If the idea of America is something we claim to possess definitively, we will protect it at all costs, and replicate it without respect to dissent. If the idea of America is something we all glimpse in our own way, but remains more than what we can contain, then the possibility of welcoming new understandings of that idea, or expanding that idea are there. When those possibilities are present, protection and replication can give way to hospitality and sharing. That would lead to the love Bono and other global eyes are looking for.

Baptimergent Book Update

Things are moving along swimmingly at Smyth & Helwys. The official title of our book is: “Baptimergent: Baptist Stories from the Emergent Frontier.”

The similarities in title to Tony Jones’ book “The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier,” are intentional. These are tradition-specific dispatches if you will. Stories that are a smattering of a larger multitude of creative, imaginative voices out there among Baptists today.

The irony in the title is that the publisher and I joked about the word “baptimergent” being cumbersome and downright ugly. The fact that it made the title is a lesson of its own. This is a cumbersome and ugly plight — this thing we call emergence. Then again, so is any birthing process.

The book is set for publication in March 2010. I am in the process of getting endorsements, and Tim Conder is wrapping up the Afterward. Tony Jones has already gotten his endorsement in. I hope the book will get yours once it hits the shelves. I’ll have more updates coming soon.

Teaser: Tripp Fuller and I also have some plans underway to do a podcast series with all the chapter writers on Homebrewed Christianity. I’ll be sharing those names and bios later on once the content gets finalized for publication.

Stay tuned!

Gnaw on this 1.3 – Fundamentalism

Frank Shaeffer laid a pretty harsh smack-down on the fundamentalist sub-culture within evangelical Christianity. For this installment of “Gnaw on this,” I want to know what you think.

Is the ideology and spirit of fundamentalist Christianity as dangerous as Shaeffer proposes? He seems to assume a progression that could lead to their actualizing the very “armageddon” they believe in. Do you think that’s possible? Has fundamentalist Christianity moved from “crazy uncle” status, to “armed & dangerous?”

Baptists & Priesthood

I was asked recently to write an article for the Alliance of Baptists, “Connections,” newsletter on the Baptist value of priesthood. They have given me permission to re-run here as well. As we celebrate 400 years as a tradition, conversations about our Baptist identity are both important, and crucial. Give this a read and share your comments.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” - 1 Peter 2:9

In a recent interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” while discussing how he began his latest book, writer E. L. Doctorow exclaimed, “first lines are crucial…they give you the voice. They are the acorn from which the oak grows. You can find the entire book in that first line.” If we were to take that approach in looking at the story of Baptists we would see that our first line represents a voice of dissent. The Baptist acorn is one of dissent, and it has remained a significant identification embodied by the oak tree that has steadily grown for the last four hundred years.

One of the most significant ways in which Baptists exercised dissent from the status quo religious structures of 17^th century England, was to listen again to texts like the one quoted above. To listen and reinterpret it on the margins of the established, state-sanctioned, orthodoxy of the church of England. The conclusion they came to was that the priestly hierarchies of the Church of England were not the sole arbiters of God’s revelation and will. This was one of several liberated acts of biblical interpretation that led to the need for the first Baptist’s to escape to Amsterdam. The location where the first congregation was formed.

The Baptist value of priesthood has certainly evolved. It originated among Baptists, I believe, as a desire to both embody an authentic expression of faith, and a prophetic protest to the church. In its simplest form, the doctrine of priesthood serves to liberate every person unto the possibilities of living as God’s priest on earth. However, as priesthood became contextualized by modernity’s individualistic foundations, and the ensuing project of “civilization” it paradoxically became captive, and captivating. The fruits of which can be dialed up in one’s imagination when you read and hear statements like “chosen people,” “holy nation,” and “God’s special possession.” These, and phrases like them, have been invoked by white European and American political leaders and preachers for much of the last several centuries. While they may have brought comfort to the hearers in “western” lands, such phrases spoke with an oppressive voice of conquest and occupation among regions of the world like South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

The Baptist value of priesthood has not ceased to evolve. A new context for interpreting priesthood has been emerging for the last 50 years or so. A context that is now defined more by pluralism rather than individualism. While its still too early to tell, there are some Baptists who are heading back out to listen again to the texts on the margins of both Christendom, and established Baptist orthodoxies. Unsatisfied with the status quo interpretations of modern Baptists, both liberal and conservative, emerging Baptists are reimagining priesthood, and for many of the same reasons our fore fathers and mothers did.

In honor of the “first line” in the Baptist story, some are dissenting from interpretations of priesthood that have limited the possibility of it only to those who are like “us” and not like “them.” Often, priesthood is found better embodied outside the church in organizations, communities, and persons who may or may not even be Baptist or even Christian. Some are also dissenting from the notion that priesthood somehow gives one the authority to make others in one’s own image. For some priesthood is less about making copies and more about naming where God is present in diverse and unique ways.

While Baptists enjoy waving the banner of priesthood, the joke that frequently gets whispered is that we honor it in theory and not in practice. By practice, some would argue that Baptists truly honor “preacher-hood.” Its the holy grail of church leadership and still the main emphasis of our institutional formation for ministry. Some Baptists are dissenting from this interpretation of priesthood as well. Priesthood can be exercised anywhere by anyone, and often those most free to practice it are not numbered among Baptist clergy.

I am fascinated and hopeful about the possibilities for priesthood. My concern is that those possibilities can only work when we are free to live into the future because we are not captive to our past. For many emerging Baptists like myself, there is a mountain of disappointments that cast a heavy shadow over our personal histories within the Baptist church. If we are to be liberated by, and unto, new possibilities of priesthood, we will first need to forgive and come to terms with our respective pasts. The measure of which will be evidenced in two forms: in our ability to infrequently speak of that past without contempt or condescending judgment, and in our newly formed habit of frequently articulating a future.

Baptist Freedoms Podcasts

For those of you who use the “Formations” curriculum published by Smyth & Helwys, you will see that this month’s unit focuses on Baptist Freedoms and the history of Baptist dissent.

To those fed up with organized religion, the words “baptist” and “freedom” might sound oxymoronic.

Historically, as a tradition that emerged amidst separatism and dissent, we realize that reconnecting with that spirit is one of the most important things we can do. Could the spirit of dissent be the very thing that allows us to emerge today?

I am running a series of podcast on my church’s website. I want to invite anyone interested to listen, but especially those of you teaching or participating in conversations on Sunday mornings related to the “Formations” curriculum. You can listen, think, and join the conversation on Baptist Freedoms here.

Gnaw on this 1.2 – Paid Clergy?

Wendell Berry’s essay, “God and Country,” in his collection entitled “What are People For,” has to be one of the most profound for me as a clergy person. Its painful, convicting, and crisis-of-conscious forming. It also prompts me to imagine an alternative way.

His basic premise in the essay (which you should read for yourself) exclaims that Christianity as it is practiced in the west is predisposed to ecological conflict because of the way it has, “made peace with ‘the economy.’”

He writes:

“The organized church comes immediately under a compulsion to think of itself, and identify itself to the world, not as an institution synonymous with its truth and its membership, but as a hodgepodge of funds, properties, projects, and offices, all urgently requiring economic support.”

“Like any other public institution so organize, the organized church is dependent upon, ‘the economy.’”

As he levels his critique, Berry places his finger on how the tool of disembodied spiritualization actually maintains this economic alliance. He writes:

“No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to ’spiritual’ subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history’s most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.”

Berry’s indictment is shared by many participants in emergence Christianity. The atonement was not only for individual human souls, but for all things. As long as its for individual human souls only, bodies, ecosystems, plants, and animals become accessories or distractions.

Berry then goes on to critique two “manifestations” that maintain the organized church’s alliance with the economy. For this post, I’ll focus on one, which is the first one he addresses in the essay. He writes:

“The first is the phrase ‘full-time Christian service,’ which the churches of my experience have used exclusively to refer to the ministry, thereby at once making of the devoted life a religious specialty or career and removing the possibility of devotion from other callings”

“The churches in this way excerpt sanctity from the human economy and its work just as Cartesian science has excerpted it from the material creation. And its easy to see the interdependence of these two desecrations: the desecration of nature would have been impossible without the desecration of work, and vice versa.”

Emergents have been picking at this scab for a while. I’ve had conversations about this and other conflicts related to being a professional Christian. Berry’s critique deals with the devaluation of work for the general public by the spiritual and financial valuation of full time ministry. There are other problems created by a paid clergy structure as well; from the silencing of prophetic proclamation, to the creation of congregational codependency upon staff.

What do you think? Should the structures that maintain a class of professional ministers be dismantled or evacuated? Can they be redeemed?

Gnaw on this 1.1

Roger Williams

Baptist history is full of characters, charlatans, radicals, and activists. Here at Baptimergent, we’d love to know who your favorite Baptist historical personalities are. It may be someone through whom you trace your Baptists roots. It may be an entertaining character from our collective past who epitomizes Baptist craziness. Whoever it is, we’d love for you to share it.

Who are your favorite historical Baptist personalities?

Gnaw on This 1.0

As a practitioner and facilitator of spiritual formation I live with, and relish questions. I’ve decided to attempt a series here at baptimergent where I simply share questions that I have been chewing on myself. Who knows? You may be asking the same thing. Feel free to share you responses in the comment section.

Question: Shouldn’t the church be the most creative, life-giving community on the planet? Why then are so many churches communities of pathological fear, insecurity, & resentment?

Cohorts of Emergence: Moving Beyond Recovery

I’ve been carrying this blog as an internal dialog for a while, and a recent conversation with a colleague has inspired me to share it here.

My good buddy Tripp Fuller, of Homebrewed Christianity fame, and I started the Triad Emergent Cohort (Greensboro/Winston-Salem, NC) several years ago. It was a great venue for what was a largely new and burgeoning conversation about emerging trends in theology and church practice.

It was also a venue for recovery – mostly recovering Baptists – who were suffering an identity crisis along with vocational uncertainty. As a participant, I credit this cohort with keeping me sane during a time of vocational upheaval.

Recently the emergent cohort phenomenon as a whole has itself suffered a bit of an identity crisis. I have since moved to Raleigh, NC — that at one time had the first emergent cohort in this region. It had disbanded by the time I got here last November. While Tim Conder and I have discussed a revival of the group, life, work, books, and such have slowed any progress.

I have no idea what my former cohort has been up to, if anything.

Like any “movement,” (motion is inherent in the word) emergent is evolving. The cohort model was an effective piece of structure that helped many people find a home. A home that gave them the space to ask questions, cross boundaries, heal, rant, and so on. Yet, as the movement has evolved, so to must its structures. Yes, Emergent has structure. There’s nothing wrong with it either, and we shouldn’t fear it. What we should fear is idolizing those structures. (soap box)

Call me silly, but I still think local groups of committed people are the engine for any movement, and I believe that is still the case for emergent. However, these groups need a purpose beyond therapy and conceptualization, and they need a communications network and all the possibilities that come with it. These sorts of groups are also transient, and perhaps that is the very way they remain organic.

Where do we start? Think local and start talking to people. As I have listened and read my context, I have recognized some things. (Results may vary!)

1. Many established clergy know that they have to feed the machine or starve. This doesn’t preclude them from living out of their own emergence. What does prohibit them is lack of opportunity to do so. Cohorts could create opportunities for clergy to practice emergence. Notice I said practice rather than discuss. This will go a long way in keeping current creative clergy persons engaged in the church. Traditional churches are largely closed-off to creativity. Any reimagining of practices, structures, or processes can create panic in many churches.  Clergy suffocate in such conditions. Cohorts could be a venue for exercising creativity in the liturgy (artistic multi-sensory worship off church premises on a week night), formational programs (pub groups, etc.), and in missional engagement (community garden for local soup kitchen or farmers market).

2. We have a back-up (in our moderate/liberal Baptist system anyway) wherein young theologically trained clergy are jobless. This is ironic since our leaders talk about being “concerned” about the lack of young leadership in the church. The truth is there is a generation and a half worth of creative hexagonal pegs, and everything out there is a 50’s model square hole. Add to that the fact that the only positions still deemed acceptable to newly trained creatives are youth and associate ones; where they are patronized to death for being naive starry-eyed little youngsters; and kept a safe distance away from the reigns of power. (soap box) Cohorts could create opportunities for young clergy to freely exercise their creativity and be taken seriously. (see above) They would be able to network with other clergy, and with people from the community.

3. Mainline university ministries are in rapid decline as denominational structures continue to come up short on giving, and cut their personnel costs. There are little to no emerging theological voices on the local campuses. While InterVarsity has, at times uncomfortably, been engaged in Emergent, it too has wrestled with just how much it is willing to emerge. The dominant voices on campus are the para-church fundamentalists. While they have the right to be there, we know that they do not speak for all of us. Cohorts could engage clergy, Div. schoolers, and anyone else in campus-related ministry projects. A cohort could develop a volunteer network of people to operate a campus ministry that over time might be viable enough to sustain itself financially.

I am not sure what your context is in need of. Are you asking?

I get it. We’re busy. We’ve got churches to lead and families to feed. I feel those pressures constantly. However, these things I’ve listed above trouble me deeply. I also believe that we cannot deny our place in history as stepping stones along the way to a new threshold. One we’ll likely not see.

Cohorts can still be a useful structure within the present emergence. I believe their purpose in the movement has evolved from recovery to action. In some ways they can be laboratories for reimagined forms of ministry, worship and practice to take place. They can be spaces where clergy stay alive and fresh, and where young leaders spread their wings. They can be this and so much more.

This is slanted pretty heavy toward clergy and church leaders because of who I am, and the conversational contexts that have informed this post. One great reality about emergent cohorts is the potential for anyone to participate. These are not closed communities, though they can be when they’re one-dimensional evangelical recovery groups. Organizing them around projects & practices will go a long way in opening them up to broader participation.

I’d love to hear thoughts from other folks about cohorts. What would be effective in your location? What would keep you alive and engaged in the greater emergence happening within western Christianity?