Hacking Christianity

Several understandings of Christianity and Christian traditions place the authority of the church and the family in the man's hands.  But what happens when men take too much authority and beat their spouses with those hands?

According to a Southern Baptist Convention professor, much of the blame is in the man's hands...but the blame is also put into women who do not accept their authority.

From EthicsDaily:

One reason that men abuse their wives is because women rebel against their husband's God-given authority, a Southern Baptist scholar said Sunday in a Texas church.

This merits a new category at hx.net...let's call it a classy.hack: blaming the victim.   It's probably a subcategory of a bad.hack.

Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said women desire to have their own way instead of submitting to their husbands because of sin.

"And husbands on their parts, because they're sinners, now respond to that threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the ways men can respond when their authority is challenged--or, more commonly, to become passive, acquiescent, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as men in their homes and in churches," Ware said from the pulpit of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas.

Violence in intimate relationships is never acceptable and is never justified.  I accept that Ware is not justifying men's actions so much as seeking out the root of the problem.  However, I don't think blaming the victims (often wives and spouses) for being too uppity is the way to go.

Thoughts?  Do battered women challenge a "God-given" authority in ways that lead men to abuse them? Or is this just classy?

I want to clarify I'm not picking on the SBC, but I am picking on public statements and theological points presented that I do not think are reflective of a helpful and empowering Christian ethic.

Read full post >>

There's a controversy airing right now: a student went up to receive communion during Mass, and instead of ingesting the elements, he took home the blessed element.

Now he's getting death threats.  And the Catholic League is up in arms.  But what might have ignited this firestorm was not a student's malicious intent, but an act of inhospitality.  Read on for more.

In the media fracas, some Catholic officials are lapsing into hyperbole:

“We don’t know 100% what Mr. Cooks motivation was,” said Susan Fani a spokesperson with the local Catholic diocese.  “However, if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.”

We just expect the University to take this seriously,” she added “To send a message to not just Mr. Cook but the whole community that this kind of really complete sacrilege will not be tolerated.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue offered the following remarks today:

“For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage—regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance—is beyond hate speech. That is why the UCF administration needs to act swiftly and decisively in seeing that justice is done. All options should be on the table, including expulsion.”

To remove the Eucharist from the community is not a Hate Crime.

• Hate Crimes are acts of aggression against a person who is representative of a group of people.  
• Hate Crimes are intended to cause terror and fear amongst ALL members of a specific group of people

What the student did was a violation of the sacred trust of communion, and a mortal sin according to Catholic doctrine.  Yes.

But a hate crime, intentionally wounding a group of people? No.

In fact, when you read the student's remarks, what caused him to remove the Eucharist in the first place?

Cook claims he planned to consume it, but first wanted to show it to a fellow student senator he brought to Mass who was curious about the Catholic faith.

I'm not up on Catholic doctrine, but while that may be a poor time to evangelize, the student seemed to have a non-malicious reason.  It doesn't excuse him, let's be clear, but puts it into perspective.  And what happened next?

"When I received the Eucharist, my intention was to bring it back to my seat to show him," Cook said. "I took about three steps from the woman distributing the Eucharist and someone grabbed the inside of my elbow and blocked the path in front of me. At that point I put it in my mouth so they'd leave me alone and I went back to my seat and I removed it from my mouth.

"A church leader was watching, confronted Cook and tried to recover the sacred bread. Cook said she crossed the line and that's why he brought it home with him.

"She came up behind me, grabbed my wrist with her right hand, with her left hand grabbed my fingers and was trying to pry them open to get the Eucharist out of my hand," Cook said, adding she wouldn't immediately take her hands off him despite several requests.

A single act of inhospitality to a student who was being disrespectful.  That's what started this whole thing. And since then the student has been a bit belligerent and outspoken against the Church, and while his behavior is not great, the response is far more harsh.

I know this is he-said, she-said at this point, but the fact of the matter is that taking the Eucharist home is not a hate crime.  Burning a Cross in someone's lawn?  Carving "lesbian" into a girl's forearm?  Those are hate crimes.  This.  No.

Thoughts?

• Is this a controversy?  
• Is this an act of radical inhospitality?  
• Is this one student's agenda taken to an extreme? 

I don't know, but I do know one thing: this is not a hate crime.  Don't water down the experience of all those who have been victims of hate crimes.  Because this is not a hate crime.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Catholic busybody objects to prof's "frackin' cracker" remark

Read full post >>

Imago Dei, or being created in God's image (Genesis 1:27), has several understandings. Here's three of them:

• We are created in the image of God in what we are, in that our physical body or the ways our minds work is like God's (Substantive)
  
• We are created in the image of God in how we are, in that our ability to relate to one another is like how God relates to us (Relational)
  
• We are created in the image of God in what we do, in that our actions on earth bear the image of God. (Functional)
  

The third one (functional) is the least familiar to people, I'm sure. But it is the subject of this post. It is when we act in Godlike ways that we are Imago Dei.

Think about ancient times when kingdoms would expand and thrive. The king or lord could not be everyplace at once, but the people needed to be reminded of his (yes, his) presence. Lacking Elvis impersonators, they would erect statues or monuments to either the king or the pagan god that the king represented. Thus, even when the king was not in town, the statues represented the royal presence. The statues were imago dei, created in the image of the town's lord.

• Why else would conquering armies destroy the monuments first thing?
• Why else would America get such a thrill out of toppling the statue of Saddam in the first week of the war in Iraq?
  

This understanding of imago dei means that humanity bears the likeness of God. We don't lug around monuments, we bear the image of God in what we do.

We are not created in the image of God, but we are created as God's image as we represent God to the world.

In other words, we represent God in what we do, not just in our essence.

And how do we best represent God? I think we have a pretty good image to imitate:

• When we love our neighbor as ourself, then we are bearing God's image.
• When we welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, then we are bearing God's image.
• When we co-create peace and justice, then we are bearing God's image.

The difficulty? It feels imperialistic. Like an army bearing their lord's image into battle, or a colonial town that needs an image of Britain, America, or Russia in their midst. But to me these difficulties do not detract from the empowering idea that

• Humanity is a co-creator with God,
  
• that we need to be a functional part of God drawing creation to perfection
• ...and that we are humbly created, like all of the world, but with the added responsibility ("dominion" Genesis 1:26) to bear God's likeness in all we do.
  

Your thoughts?

Welcome to our visitors, and thank you for commenting! You can see from our last discussion that they can be quite lively!

Caveat: The title of this post is meant to be evocative, not descriptive of my beliefs. Imago Dei certainly entails all three forms of its understanding, not just one. This post is an attempt to etch out the functional view in ways that may be appealing to those interested in Hacking Christianity.

Reference: Stephen Garner's Hacking the Divine (thoughts on which you will find much more of in coming weeks!)

Read full post >>

Part of Hacking Christianity's mission is to examine Christian symbols and find parallels to contemporary culture. To that end, consider what you can do in Cyberspace these days:

• You can create a virtual character in World of Warcraft and spend years perfecting her. This isn't your daddy's SimCity, this is a way of life and pasttime for some people.
• You can create a blog with dozens or hundreds of readers, a virtual congregation whom you have never met.
• You can have more Facebook "friends" than real friends. You can make online friends with people when the real world friends let you down. So completely can this impact your life that if someone is malicious to you, it hurts just the same as being bullied at school.
  

This poses a problem to Christianity. One of the tenets of Christianity is that Jesus is God-with-us, Emmanuel, human. How do we preach the Incarnation in a world where we can craft virtual space so easily and completely?

The Bible is of little help. The Bible was written to agrarian societies where all they had was what was real and tactful...if there were any PlayStations on the shepherd's hills, they haven't been found yet. Even hallucinogenic drugs that would create virtual experience were not common.

So the best biblical metaphors are real, tactile: gathering manna like dew, lost sheep, raising people from the dead, unbinding Lazarus, touching cloaks, the rugged wood of a cross. In a society where that was the real deal, this was powerful. In our society where we can make our own reality, how is the Incarnation relevant?

I don't have an answer yet...that's why this is a pondering. My first steps may be towards the imminence of God's presence, where you can't log off from God's love, where you can never unplug and step away. But that is not Incarnational directed at Christ, that's a statement about God.

Perhaps a better step would be to compare the life of Jesus with the actual crafting of characters in WoW, of a blogging conversation, of immersing in the rhythms of a twittered life. The story of Jesus is unfinished, still in process. Christ is ALIVE, not dead, but alive forevermore. Because of his eternal life, Christ invites you to be a part of Christ's life. Because Christ's life involves transformation, you can be involved in the crafting of Creation.

No one wants a level 99 Orc, or a finished blog, or a Facebook account that "has enough friends." There is an invitation to an unfinished project, and perhaps that's how virtual never-completed crafting of worlds can be linked to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Thoughts? I'm really struggling with this this morning after I found a new "hacking Jesus" conversation partner. I'd like to invite you to the conversation.

Read full post >>

Image via WikipediaSorry for my non-Methodist readers, but it is Annual Conference time and that means United Methodist posts aplenty.

Annual Conferences are like the three bears: they either have too many clergy or too few. The 'just right' bear is off taking a nap somewhere, I think.

Indeed, in some annual conferences with too many clergy, there's a vicious circle of clergy appointments and ordination. Walk with me through this:

1. IF the Book of Discipline requires all provisional and ordained clergy to have full-time appointments.
2. BUT there are less and less full-time appointments to which to appoint provisional and ordained clergy.
3. THEN the Board of Ordained ministry will not commission candidates for ministry until a full-time appointment opens up for them.

The rationale is solid: if the BOM cannot offer a full-time appointment, and if they bring in more candidates, then the system of appointments will suffer. Also, if they cannot offer a full-time appointment by ordination time, then they are in violation of the Discipline. Makes perfect sense from a maintaining-the-system perspective.

While this takes care of the system of ordination, it leads to several injustices to the candidates for ministry. Some real-life examples:

• One candidate was approved for commissioning, but due to the lack of appointments, he was not commissioned. Two years later he finally got to be commissioned, but during that time he developed a medical condition which required surgery. One month before he would finally be under the clergy health care...he was required to pay for the surgery out of his own pocket.
• One candidate was up for commissioning, but to be commissioned he would have to leave his vibrant, passionate half-time appointment for a different full-time appointment altogether...there were no other half-time appointments available in the area. Thus, the candidate forwent commissioning in order to keep his passionate ministry.
• Transferred clergy or clergy on cross-conference appointments are not required to be given full-time appointments.
  

Truth be told: there are local pastors who are in full-time appointments while candidates for ministry wait in the wings. Is that wrong? Not as a whole: they are gifted pastors in their churches, and if there is viable ministry, then continue to do good works! But even if they are gifted pastors, does that mean a seminary-educated candidate for ministry would be any less appropriate?

From a systems perspective, I find this troubling. If our theology of ordination includes consideration for the system of ordination above the individual calls to ministry, then there's something wrong. If we are caretaking the system of ordination more than we are affirming the call to ministry God has placed on individual people....then is that really what ordination is?

Now, full disclosure: I'm not on the ordained ministry leadership, and I'm not privy to those conversations. But I think that when we are keeping candidates for ministry out of the clergy pool we are essentially putting systems above people. And that troubles me.

Perhaps there are ways to commission candidates for ministry and maintain the tense balance between clergy and churches? To me, there is a simple answer to this...but no one will like it.

Perhaps clergy missionaries can be made of candidates. If annual conferences with too few clergy would contact conferences with too many clergy, then they can offer to take commissioned clergy into their conferences for a while on cross-conference appointments. While they may run the risk of staying when they get there, it would ensure that candidates' ministries are affirmed. I realize the hardship this would be on families for a drastic change in venue, and try to balance that against keeping candidates out of the clergy pool.

Full disclosure: I'm on a cross-conference appointment. By constantly maintaining relationships between two conferences, I'm seeing a lot of United Methodism and drastically different ways of ministry. By seeing how two different conferences deal with ordination, one with too many clergy and one with too few, I think better use and beefing-up of the cross-conference appointments may be a good approach.

Perhaps it can be a precursor to a blend between connectional and congregational systems: churches that want a minister so badly they will accept a cross-conference appointment can put out a "call" for a minister that other conferences can fill.

....let's stop there (number one critique of HX: my posts are too long!). What do you think?

• What balance should there be between maintaining systems of ordination and affirming the call of individuals?
• What do you think about the cross-conference appointments idea?
  
• What other methods can ordained ministry leadership try rather than being the stop-gap for new clergy?

Thanks for reading, and welcome to our visitors!

Read full post >>

Bringing diverse leaders together for Whiteboard showed me something about the church landscape in America: There's such a huge chasm in ministry between those who advocate the holiness of God and those who advocate the grace of God.

Hmm, holiness and grace camps? What do mean by this?

This sparked a memory...I remembered in my "read later" bookmarks this earlier entry on Missio Dei: the two camps of church. Jonathan is writing a bit out of John Eldredge's book Walking with God. Eldredge's take is that there are two basic camps out of which churches operate.

(1) The righteousness camp (Arment's language is "holiness" camp)

• “The first is the the holiness or “righteous” crowd. They are the folks holding up the standard, preaching a message of moral purity. The results have been…mixed. Some morality, and a great deal of guilt and shame.”

(2) The grace camp

• “Their message is that we can’t hope to satisfy a holy God, but we are forgiven. We are under grace. And praise the living God, we are under grace. But what about holiness? What about deep personal change?”

I'm not sure I'm with this dichotomy when we start defining the terms. Holiness is defined as righteous living. Righteousness as opposed to grace? Grace has nothing to do with works! Grace is the unearned love of God. For Methodists, grace is never earned. Prevenient grace gives us God's love before we are aware of it, Justifying grace is given when we commit our lives to Christ, and Sanctifying grace gives us strength as we seek righteousness, not because we earn it.

As you can see above, grace already includes righteous living in the Wesleyan theological system. But the critical difference between the "grace" camp and the "righteousness" camp is that we act in righteous ways in response to God's grace, not to earn God's grace.

Rather than seek to redeem the grace camp and etch out this subtext, Jonathon (Missio Dei) posits a third way as as he concludes his write-up:

[A]s John points out, neither is wholistic. He points to a third way found in whole restoration that embraces grace but seeks wholeness. This is for me true spirituality, a grace that seeks restoration found in surrendering to His Spirit.

I'd love to read more! In the meantime, I would have to read more about Eldredge's book. Because the thing is, Ben from the first quote tries to find a third way too...and I'm not sure I'm with him:

If we truly understood the Gospel, we'd look at the cross and see the perfect collision of grace and holiness. The righteous wrath of God satisfied by his unconditional grace.

Count me out of "third ways" that are hipper versions of satisfaction atonement.

Thoughts?

• Is there a dichotomy between grace and righteous crowds who value one or the other?
• Can grace better include righteousness in ways that a "third way" cannot hope to balance?
  

Thanks for your thoughts, and welcome to HX.net!

Read full post >>

A recent blog post on the LifeWay Christian Stores blog claims that the biggest problem in the Christian Church is that pastors commit pastoral malpractice.

Not medical malpractice, but pastoral malpractice. What is that? Sexual misconduct? Stealing money from church coffers? Naaah.

What do I mean by pastoral malpractice? I mean ministers who stand and preach a gospel other than God’s rightful need for punitive justice against our sin and His wrath being appeased by pouring out upon Christ judgment intended for us.

Ouch. Read on to see that malpractice is nowhere near as dangerous as malpraxis, or failing to reflect on what you preach.

Pastoral Malpractice

As both Henry and Will comment, pastoral malpractice is essentially preaching any atonement theology other than penal substitutionary atonement. If we water down what happened on the cross, then we are committing pastoral malpractice and leading our flock astray.

Will goes on to emphasize the love of God as opposed to penal substitutionary atonement

Never mind that this God of wrath is hard to reconcile with John’s view that “God is love,” and that “perfect love casts out fear” (and if there was ever a God to fear, it is the one described above). Never mind all that and so much more besides. If you don’t preach what Rainer says you must preach, you are guilty of treason and pastoral malpractice.

I'm also most struck by Henry's comment here:

A commenter on the Lifeway post cheers on Mr. Rainer, and comments on how people are tired of a “watered down gospel.”
What I’m wondering is this: Why is it OK to water down God’s love, but it’s somehow “treasonous” to water down his wrath?

Amen to these insightful comments on the theological issue at play, and the ridiculousness of narrowing the grievous sin of pastors to not preaching a particular atonement theory.

Pastoral Malpraxis

However, I would claim there is a bigger issue here. Malpractice is defined as failing to act when you have a duty to act. It's not about getting something wrong! Malpractice is professional negligence that causes harm to someone.

I don't think it is negligent to fail to preach substitutionary atonement. Given our diversity of Christian thought, you can preach alternative atonement theologies and still be within the realm of Christian thought.

In my opinion, the bigger sin is neglecting to study the effects of your preaching or actions.

This is the essence of pastoral malpraxis, or failing to reflect on what you preach.

There are some preachers who get one message, have crafted that one message, and are unable to deviate from it. They walk the walk and talk the talk consistently. Their Christian practice is impeccable. However, at what point do they reflect on their ministry and remove their personalities from it to see its effects on people?

It is precisely the act of reflecting on practice that makes it become praxis.

Liberation theologians Gutierrez and Sobrino define Christian praxis as "a combination of reflection and action that realizes the historicity of human persons." Gutierrez further defines praxis in this way:

The understanding of faith appears as the understanding not of the simple affirmation--almost memorization--of truths, but of a commitment, an overall attitude, a particular posture in life (A Theology of Liberation, 6).

To be pastors, we have a responsibility to ensure the whole of our Christian life is in line with the ideals of God. That includes the effects of our sermons and actions on people and ministries. We are called to constant refinement and accountability, and failing to reflect on our deeply personal sermons can lead to unnoticed hurt in people's lives. For instance:

• If I preach Jesus gave his body to be broken, then am I hurting those battered women who willingly give their bodies to be broken so their families can stay together?
  
• If I preach that if you just pray to Jesus, your prayers will be answered (Mark 11:24), then am I giving false hope to people?
• If I preach that God wants you to be rich (3 John 2 and the prayer of Jabez), then am I siding the church with consumerism and empire rather than the kingdom of God?

It is precisely the act of reflection and action that Christian praxis is built on. And thus any follower of Christ, regardless of their atonement theology or ordination status, who does not reflect on their practice of their faith is committing malpraxis.

This isn't some sort of teleological ethics that focuses on the effects and end results of ministry. It is praxis in the pure sense, of considering Christian ministry by reflecting and acting and reflecting again in a constant circle of refinement to make us holier representatives of Christ to all we meet.

What do you think?

• Is failing to reflect on your message and life's message (malpraxis) more dangerous than preaching a watered-down gospel to the masses (malpractice)?
• In what ways can we better encourage those cult-of-personality churches to better reflect on the praxis of their ministries in ways that remove egos from the picture?
  

Thanks for reading, and I hope you will post your thoughts!

Read full post >>