I heard a statement in a recent sermon that didn’t sit well with me. It was anecdotal and was not really pertinent to the message, but I have a habit of cuing into to the peripheral comments that get sprinkled in with the exegesis and application. It went something like this:

“I have the right kind of fear every time I enter the pulpit to speak on God’s behalf every Sunday.”

This was a “needle-getting-yanked-across-a-record” sort of statement to me. Maybe I’m just a silly pomo relativist who has no regard for the preacherly office. However, as a clergy person, I would never presume to speak for God. Something I believe Paul would agree with when he told the Corinthian church that we only know, and can only speak (prophesy) in part. (1Cor. 13:9) Church history tells us that the prototype for preaching was one of availability. Whoever was not working that day would go listen to the teaching of an apostle, or student of an apostle, and then bring the message back to the house church. Quite different from what it has become.

I realize that I have emerged within a tradition that holds the preaching office in highest regard within its liturgical structure. Something I am openly critical of. Perhaps having the benefit of looking back over decades where preachers have presumed to speak for God informs my discomfort more than anything. Its a sure-fire way to build a cult of personality.

My question for today’s episode of “Gnaw on this” is this:

Is the sermon the event in the liturgy wherein the preacher speaks on God’s behalf to the church? Why or why not?

You can probably tell where I come down on this. I’ll give further rationale in the comment section along with you.

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?

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.

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!

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?”

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.

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.

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?

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?

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?