Hacking Christianity

Is Methodism Protestant?

This seems like a ridiculous question for a United Methodist clergyperson to ask the Internets, but someone asked and my answer was insufficient for them.  I ask now because I've always considered Methodism to not really be from the Protestant branch but closer to the Anglican Church, which does not consider itself to be Protestant.

Consider:

• John Wesley lived and died an Anglican clergyperson.
• John Wesley started a revival within the Anglican church which then became the Methodist Episcopal Church.  The "Episcopal" moniker acknowledged its heritage with the Episcopal Church, the American branch of the Anglican Church. 
• The First General Conference defined the Methodist Church to be "an Episcopal Church."
• Our Liturgy is closely patterned after the Book of Common Prayer.
• Why is this important?  The Anglican Church doesn't consider itself to be Protestant! From Wikipedia:

The question often arises as to whether the Anglican Communion should be identified as a Protestant or Catholic church, or perhaps as a distinct branch of Christianity altogether. The official position of the Anglican Communion is that, like the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions, it is a full and distinct branch of the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church," created by Christ.

• Finally, David Hempton writes in his book Methodism: Empire of the Spirit that:

Although it had deep roots in the Pietist traditions that came out of the European Reformation, Methodism, it should not be forgotten, arose directly out of Anglicanism and expanded into those parts of the world where Anglicans and English speakers migrated.

page 204

Opposing considerations

• Theologically, John Wesley was influenced heavily by Arminianism, which identifies itself from the Protestant Reformation
• Through our mergers (especially with the Evangelical United Brethren and Methodist Protestant Church) we have much tradition in the Protestant Church in today's church.
• While there is great diversity in United Methodist worship, the Protestant worship style and format is predominant in the South and the Midwest.

Your turn:

Forgive me if this is stupid, but it's a question of identifying between Protestant practices and Anglican DNA.

• If the Anglican Communion considers itself a separate branch of Christianity from Protestantism, does Methodism do the same?  
• Or does Protestant polity and practice outweigh its Anglican DNA?

Addendum:

• Protestantism defined as "any non-Catholic church" is probably not helpful.  Why? From Wikipedia:

While the faiths and churches born directly or indirectly of the Protestant Reformation constitute Protestantism, in common usage, the term is often used in contradistinction to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.^[3] This usage is imprecise, however, as there are non-Roman Catholic and non-Eastern Orthodox traditions that predate the Reformation (notably Oriental Orthodoxy). The Anglican tradition, although historically influenced by the Protestant Reformation in what is called the English Reformation, differs from many Reformation principles and understands itself to be a middle path—a via media—between Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrines. Other groups, such as the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, reject traditional Protestantism as another deviation from true Christianity, while perceiving themselves to be restorationists.

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This is what you get when you ask "Is our emphasis on social justice detracting from other areas of the Gospel?"

To me, [justice and evangelism together] is the very essence of what spread within the early Church—they were caring for the poor, preaching another Kingdom and another emperor other than Caesar. It was absolutely magnetic because the faith people had placed in Rome was at an all-time low, so when they were saying, “We’ve got another Kingdom,” people were like, “Yes, we’re ready, because the world as we’ve experienced it is not working.” The beautiful thing is, people are saying the same thing now.

Shane Claiborne

The message to Christians today is very clear. Any gospel that isn’t good news to poor people simply isn’t the Gospel of Jesus Christ; any evangelism that doesn’t include social justice ignores the perfectly integrated life and message of Jesus

Jim Wallis

Represent!

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At my church this summer, we are hacking the Apostle's Creed.  Yep.

Several in the church mentioned they were interested in a series on the Apostle's Creed, because we don't use it every Sunday, and we don't know if we believe every word of it.  And when people tell their pastor they want a sermon series, you bet it will happen!

So in addition to much inspiration from The Apostle's Creed for Today by Gonzalez, I'm looking for updated versions (parodies or not) of the Apostle's Creed for inspiration.  Something like what NERDS have done to the Lord's Prayer (I know there's a LOLcats version somewhere too)

Our sysadmin, who chills in Heaven,
feared be thy name.
Thy pwnage come, thy scripts be done in /earth as it is in /heaven.
Seed us this day our daily ROMs.
Forgive us our n00b exploits as we forgive script kiddies that hax0r against us.
Reveal to us not 0 day vulns, but save us from RIAA.
For thine is the network, and the rm -rf /, and all our base are belong to you, forever and ever.
Amen.

Any help?  Thanks in advance.

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You probably thought "Hacking" and "Christianity" doesn't go together.

Well...according to the website "the Six Degrees of Wikipedia" (which finds the shortest number of pages between two terms on Wikipedia...kinda like the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" movie trivia game)...they are only two degrees apart:

Hacking Christianity

• Hacking :: United Kingdom :: Christianity:: 2 degrees

See how the game is played?

I thought I would try applying this to some friend's blogs and see where it got us. How related are our titles? Let's try it out after the jump:

33 Names of Grace (link)

• 33 :: Christianity :: Christian views of marriage :: Grace:: 3 degrees

A Future Hope (link)

• Future :: Optimism :: Hope :: 2 degrees

A Peculiar Prophet (link)

• Peculiar :: Peculiar, Missouri :: Census :: Mormon :: Prophet :: 4 degrees

Adventures in RevLand (link)

• The Adventures :: BBC Radio 1 :: April 21 :: 1619 :: Rev :: 4 degrees (did Rev, didn't have a RevLand!)
  

Beth Quick (link)

• Beth :: Semitic languages :: Hypercorrection :: Antonym :: Quick :: 4 degrees

Blake Huggins (link)

• Blake :: Blind Blake :: African American :: July 16 :: John Henrik Clarke :: Huggins :: 5 degrees

Come to the Waters (link)

• Come :: Come (U.S. band) :: New York :: Man and Nature :: Waters :: 4 degrees

Commonplace Holiness (link)

• Commonplace :: Book :: Rule of St Benedict :: Sacred (comparative religion) :: 3 degrees

Enter the Rainbow (link)

• Enter :: Enter (album) :: 1997 in music :: Gamma Ray (band) :: Rainbow :: 4 degrees

Gen-X Rising (link)

• Generation X :: Benjamin Franklin :: August 8 :: George Booth, 1st Baron Delamer :: Rising :: 4 degrees

Grace and Peace (Sonja Tobey) (link)

• Grace :: Charites :: Theogony :: Peace :: 3 degrees

Leaves From the Notebook of a Tamed Optimist (Nathan Mattox) (link)

• Leaf :: Acacia :: Tree of life :: Samuel Beckett :: Happy Days (play) :: Optimist :: 5 degrees

Locusts and Honey (John the Methodist) (link)

• Locust :: Insect :: Honey :: 2 degrees

Matthew Franks (link)

• Vintage :: French language :: Franks :: 2 degrees

MethoDave (link)

• Methodism :: John Edwards :: Larry King :: Dave :: 3 degrees

Ministry and Meteorology (link)

• Ministry :: World Wrestling Entertainment :: Television station :: Meteorology :: 3 degrees (BY FAR MY FAVORITE)
  

Only Wonder Understands (link)

• Wonder :: Television program :: Concept :: Cognitive science :: Understand :: 4 degrees

Peace-able Kin-dom (link)

• Peace :: African American :: Colin Powell :: Gulf War :: Kingdom :: 4 degrees

Religion is a Queer Thing (link)

• Religion :: Culture :: Counterculture :: Queer :: 3 degrees

Seeing Gray (link)

• Seeing :: Visual perception :: Color blindness :: Grey :: 3 degrees

The Greatest Story Ever Told (link)

• Greatest :: Greatest hits :: AC/DC :: Hungary :: Hajdú-Bihar County :: Told (village) :: 5 degrees

Thoughts from the Heart on the Left (link)

• Heart :: Cattle :: Canada :: Canadian identity :: Left :: 4 degrees

Thoughts of Resurrection (link)

• Thought :: Ephesus :: Acts of the Apostles :: Resurrection :: 3 degrees

Threads from Henry's Web (link)

• Threads :: United Kingdom :: World Wide Web :: Web :: 3 degrees

Warning: Rants May Ensue (link)

• Warning :: Year Zero (album) :: February 22 :: Miracle on Ice :: Rant :: 4 degrees

We Your People, Ours the Journey (link)

• People :: California :: Music of California :: Journey :: 3 degrees

Stages on the Way (Katie McKay) (link)

• Stage :: Theatre :: Paris :: Algiers :: Way :: 4 degrees

Whew! There are several 2-degrees there, and several five-degrees there. Anyone got a blog title that breaks the six-degree barrier?

I did enjoy how Jeff's degrees went through the WWE, Tony involved cattle, Jim traveled through Hungary and AC/DC, and Katie went through Colin Powell. Very entertaining journeys, there!

Try it yourself! Enjoy the game...post your degrees below!

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In Seminary, we were challenged to be able to give the Gospel in 1 minute. This was called the "Elevator Gospel" because it was the length of a very long elevator ride when you knew you had a captive audience. I thought it was tough!

Now, over on Brian Baute's blog, he saw a writing contest from copyblogger and turned it into a challenge: can you put the Gospel of Jesus Christ (as you understand it) into 140 characters?

Why 140 characters? It's called micro-blogging, popularized by Twitter, where short messages are able to be broadcast to people via mobile phones texting or other web applications.

Anywho, the challenge is set: Can you put the Good News of Jesus Christ into 140 characters?

Try it! Here's mine:

Being saved is not about what happens when we die, but what begins when we realize God always loves us and wants us to transform the world. (Jeremy)

Some other examples:

The world, once whole, then broken. Jesus came, suffered, died, lives. Yahweh’s creation restored. Spirit alive in us, in spite of us. Life! (Brian)

Was happy with taking the bad with the good. Jesus showed me the good could be great and the bad could be gone forever (Mark)

Christianity is not about what you do, but what God has already done (Paul)

God’s perfect. We’re not. God punished Jesus, the perfect Man, in our place, on the cross. Believe this, turn from sin, and live forever (David)

We seek revenge, but God knows only reconciliation has the power to end pain and transform the world. That's why God became human in Christ. (Jeremy...yes, I had two)

Post yours in the comments, and start following me on Twitter!

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It's friday, my weekend is REALLY busy, so what am I doing? I'm blogging about video games, like most pastors do. Right?

Anyway, MSNBC has the top 5 hardest video game levels. Check it out. Dude, they only got one right in my opinion: Mike Tyson's punchout. The rest? Lame. The hardest games ever made can be found on the original Nintendo, not new pansy ones with glitzy graphics.

For a nerdy moment (though if you are of my generation, you grew up with these games), here's my top five hardest levels in video games. I was a Nintendo junkie, so deal with it.

5) Super Mario Sunshine, Tower Minigame (Gamecube)

• There's quite a few levels in Sunshine that were very difficult! I'm thinking mostly of the minigame where you have to jump from floating spinning block to disintegrating block, like the one on top of the tower (where you rocket all the way up to it, not the one on top of town hall). I only played this in the past year, so it is on my mind.

4) Street Fighter, Fight against Sagat (Super Nintendo)

• In StreetFighter for the Super Nintendo, you would hit the boss characters at random times, and each character got harder the later in the round you got. If I was playing and hadn't hit Sagat yet, then I knew I was gonna be taken out. Sagat would take some hits, but was always able to come out of his fireballs in time to tiger uppercut me. Always tough, and always satisfying to win.

3) Super Mario World, Tubular (Super Nintendo)

• There are no words. You just had to have perfect timing. Beyond that...nope, no words.
  

2) Ghosts and Goblins (Nintendo)

• The entire game is one dang level! No continues, and it was REALLY TOUGH! EXCLAMATION POINT AND SHOUTING! Also, whenever your character jumped, you could not change direction or anything in midair (though for a guy in a suit of armor to jump, I guess that's realistic). But, seriously, I broke many controllers playing this game, before becoming a pastor made me calm and serene.
  

1) Battletoads, Speedbike Level (Nintendo).

• ALL TIME HARDEST LEVEL. Couple that with limited continues and that it is so late in the game, I rarely beat it. But by then since my lives were so low, I never beat the game. It's my one failure as a Nintendo power player. Yes, it still hurts. Sigh.
• Seriously, check out this quote from Wikipedia: "Battletoads for the NES has a reputation as being virtually impossible to finish, even among hardcore gamers." Dang right!
• Close second is the clinger-winger stage where you are being chased by the glowing orb thingy.

What was the hardest level from a video game for you? And don't say Tetris! :-)

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Went to add a "digg" button to my arsenal of web pandering, and realized something odd: there is no religion/spirituality section on Digg.com, the popular link-sharing website. Politics and news, certainly, but no religion/spirituality. I even searched the offbeat section to no avail.

So, I figured someone else musta done something about this, wrote a "Christian Digg website" and I found three versions of basically the same thing:

• GospelShout looks the best themed, but the picks are few and far between. The blog hasn't been updated in a year, either!
• Blogs4God looks very similar, but has less new posts and more votes for them. The latest comment was 36 days ago.
• FaithTag is ugly and covered with ads and the news are ads too. Hey, I just write what the Holy Spirit told me to say, and she said it was ugly.

More after the break...

Two other pages of note from my googloogling:

• Minor Prophets Homepage, has a digg-like section on what looks to be bible passages. Not much here either.
• Semi-Definitive list of Web2.0 Christian apps, is really old and out of date. But it's one of the first google results!

So, near as I can tell, there is no dedicated Christian Digg system. If Christians read a story or...ahem, read an amazing blog post, they don't have a captive audience to send it to.

It seems like if all three of the above apps would join together, there would be enough synergy to really make it work. As it is, they are all irrelevant because they are in their own camps. I don't know who came first, but really, this is pretty sad.

Is there some fantabulous Christian Digg website out there? Am I missing something? Or is this another case of Christians who disassociate and then ghettoize themselves from their "competitors" instead of working together to solve a common need?

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Here's a quiz I just took, found it on John's weblog via the methoblogosphere. The paragraph below is THEIR words, not mine.

What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this. Emergent/Postmodern 79% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 68% Classical Liberal 68% Roman Catholic 54% Neo orthodox 50% Modern Liberal 46% Charismatic/Pentecostal 32% Reformed Evangelical 25% Fundamentalist 4%

My top three must have a Celebrity Deathmatch in my head most nights.

What's your theological worldview?

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I'm on facebook, and you get those all those ridiculous surveys, right? The ones where you answer some simplistic questions and find out all sorts of critical life-lessons about yourself. Like...

• Are you an Introvert or an Extrovert?
  
• Which Lord of the Rings character are you?
• Which Bible character are you?
• What 80s song are you?
  

A Survey I'd like to write is this one:

Which Kingdom of God are you?

1. What is the nature of God? (a) Violent (b) Non-violent?
2. What is the nature of Jesus’ message? (a) Exclusive (b) Inclusive
3. What is faith? (a) Literal belief (b) Trust in God
4. What is deliverance? (a) Salvation from hell (b) Liberation from injustice

There are three evaluations from this. Choose one or the other and read on for more...

If you chose (a) for three or more, Congratulations! You have...

• A THEOLOGY OF EMPIRE shaped by the Roman Empire's notion of "Peace through Victory." When Jesus returns, only those with the right beliefs will be saved, and when Jesus claims victory over the devil, then there will be peace.

If you chose (b) for three or more, Congratulations! You have...

• A THEOLOGY OF KINGDOM shaped by Paul and Jesus' notions of "Peace through Justice" where the kingdom is found in the continuing struggle for compassion and justice. When all live in harmonious relationships, then there will be peace.
  

If you have equal parts (a) and (b), Congratulations! You have...

• THE THEOLOGIES IN THE BIBLE, as both of the above theologies are prevalent and strands can be traced throughout the entire bible.
  

Very simplistic, but that's the nature of such polls. Of course there is middle mucky ground between the (a)s and (b)s, but to break it down so simplistically helps define the drastically different stories and pursuits by the people of God found in the bible and in contemporary society.

What hacks do is draw the connecting points between two divergent points of view. If they can exist simultaneously in the bible, then they can exist peacefully in contemporary theologies as well. And that's what we're doing here at HX.net: finding those connecting points to better bridge the divide between people with very different notions of what the Kingdom of God looks like...and especially who is in it!

Indulgences to John Dominic Crossan and his work on theologies of Empire and Gaia Rising for the idea.

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Well, today's blog launch day with my trusted and honest-feedback people. That's you!

Can you offer me some feedback on these areas:

Layout

How does it look?
Does everything look pretty in your browser?

Really, Jeremy? Hacking Christianity??

Did you read the "why hacking christianity" page?
Did it make sense?
What would make it more make sense?

Vote on the poll at the right hand side, all the way down!

Feedback welcome!

Any feedback is helpful! (Private feedback, if you so desire, is welcome via email or facebook too!)

Thanks! You all are amazing!

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