THE CHARISMANGLICAN

My new friend Reed Carlson wrote a blog post over a year ago about how he had found himself in the Episcopal Church instead of the denomination of his youth, Assemblies of God. I just discovered his post Why The AG Has Left Me and would encourage you to read it.

In the post he gives three reasons why he no longer ‘fits’ in the AG. One reason he offers is the disconnect from 1500 years of church history.

"Just a flesh wound."

I want to share with you his tongue-in-cheek description of the typical Evangelical pastor’s Church history timeline:

1. Jesus
2. First Century Church described in the book of Acts
3. Catholics mess everything up for more than a millenia
4. Luther saves the day
5. Mainline Protestants mess everything up for a few centuries
6. Asuza Street saves the day

He says this is the ‘Evangelical’ timeline, but I would like to submit that this is strictly the Pentecostal stuff.

For example, in the denomination of my youth, the timeline would be:

1. Jesus
2. First Century Church described in the book of Acts
3. Catholics mess everything up for more than a millenia
4. Calvin makes it even worse
5. Mainline Protestants mess everything up for a few centuries
6. Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone save the day!

Well, it would be that for someone with some actual knowledge of the Restoration Movement (Christian Church/Church of Christ). The majority of the people that teach in and attend these churches would be horrified to discover that Campbell was a pacifist and Stone denied the divinity of Christ for nearly his entire life.

But, fortunately, they don’t know about any of that, because this is the most common Evangelical church history timeline:

1. Jesus
2. First Century Church described in the book of Acts
3. Me

It’s not that the hand is saying to the foot “I don’t need you.”

It’s more like, “What foot?”

I wrote earlier on killing abortion doctors, just war and enemy love.

Here’s a quote from Scott Roeder as he was allowed (under poor legal reasoning) to defend his murder of George Tiller in terms of self defense:

“From conception on, it is murder,” Roeder argued. “It is not man’s job to take life. It is our Heavenly Father’s.”

The jury made the right decision. And apparently the defendant would agree.

I had a dream. I just woke up from it, actually.

In my dream I was at a campground with my peers. I’m nearly 35 now, but every time I’m with my dream-peers we’re all stuck at high school age.

And my dream had the usual dream nonsense. For example, a car that drove up a ladder to put an ice chest on top of a tree.

Barack Obama was also in the dream.

Every night at campfire, Barack would be our special guest. He would share inspirational stories with us. At the end of campfire he would ask if we had any questions.

No one ever spoke up during question time. The whole tone of the thing was very genial. Even my conservative friends grumbled quietly to themselves rather than speak up. For it’s one thing to spout off about how much you dislike someone when they live in the White House. It’s quite another to sit around the campfire with that person.

On the last day of camp I had decided that at campfire I was going to speak up and say something of substance. I didn’t want to miss this opportunity.

It was when that black SUV with tinted windows was making its way to the campfire that I woke up from my dream.

You ever have that dream where you’re just about to kiss a beautiful woman and you wake up? And then you try desperately to go back to sleep hoping that the dream will take up where it left off?

Well, I’m married, so I don’t. I have the dream where Barack Obama is the special guest at campfire and I have something important to tell him at question time.

But it’s kind of the same thing. I did my best to get back to dream camp. I had this crazy feeling that if I could have spoken with Dream Barack that it would have some real world impact.

Chances that Barack will read this blog are pretty slim. About the same chances that Barack will leave Michelle for Glen Beck.

Still I thought I’d at least post what I was going to say in my dream…

…….

Sir, I voted for you and that I’m very glad you’re here. And thank you for the nail clippers with the Bible verse on it. [dream detail]

I have two questions. The first one is this:

When you accepted the Nobel Peace prize you mentioned again that your heroes are Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi. But then you spoke of your responsibilities as President in terms of ‘Christian Realism’. In other words, you defended a course of action that is predicated on violence being a more determinative reality than Christ. What do you think Dr. King or Ghandi would say about your speech?

Here is my second question:

You speak of the U.S. as if it has responsibility as the world’s lone superpower to remain firmly in first place among all the nations. Considering Jesus’ words that ‘the first will be last and the last will be first’, can you explain how a belief in U.S. superiority and dominance can exist alongside your Christian faith?

Barry Harvey brings together an enormous amount of scholarship and reading from a wide swath of Christian thought to reflect on the ‘dis-membered body of Christ’.

What kind of story is the Church in? Where are we in that story? What does it mean for us or for God’s purposes that the Church is divided (or dismembered)? Where, then, do we stand?

Harvey seeks to find an answer to these questions by tracing the Church’s journey: from early Christian apocalyptic to partnership with earthly powers (the ‘Constantinian shift’), through changes in eucharistic theology in the Middle Ages that led to the concept of the individual, to the modern and postmodern ages of where the nation-state (under the influence of democratic liberalism) mediates our public selves and where global capitalism fuels restless desire and consumption.

This book holds out a stubborn hope that transcends a very bleak world. Harvey doesn’t pull any punches about the desperate state of the pilgrim people of God (dry bones). Nevertheless his engagement with ecclesiology, hermeneutics and social theory help us to find ourselves ‘out of control’ in the true freedom that comes from holy vulnerability, and on our way to the eternal city of which we are true citizens.

I recommend this book very highly.

I’m beginning to believe that ethical practices that are enacted in a particular place and time by a particular people and that are likely to be practiced by a limited number of persons are the only ethics that can be practiced non-violently. Things like Jesus asking his Father to forgive the people who are crucifying him, or a Roman soldier pretending to be a priest so that he would die rather than the priest (St. Alban). It’s things that are held to be universally practical that seem to lead to violence, because we suppose that everybody should act the same as us.

I read this in the LA Times:

“Clergy and lay leaders, meeting in Riverside for their annual convention, chose the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, 55, who has been in a committed relationship with another woman since 1988, from a field of six candidates.” (italics mine)

Apparently Bishop Glasspool selected her partner in 1988 from a field of six candidates!

Jolynne was the only candidate I could find. And I was fortunate she even wanted the job.

(Photo: Gerald Martineau - The Washington Post)

Matthew Hoh, a former Marine Corps Captain, has become the first U.S. official to resign over the Afghan War. You can read his resignation HERE.

Many people, myself included, were hoping that President Obama would bring United States troops home. The fulfillment of this campaign promise is nowhere in sight. Why is that?

The reason is this: America can’t lose.

The U.S. has only one metanarrative: the triumph of liberal democracy. ESPECIALLY over religious strife. American-style democracy has saved us from the religious wars of the Middle Ages (the narrative says) and removed particular religion from the public sphere (the State). As Michael Novak says…the shrine has been swept clean. The problem is that what is now universal is not any religious narrative but the triumph of liberal democracy over all particular religious narratives. The empty shrine has BECOME god. He has appropriated the words ‘Freedom’ and ‘Liberty’ as his name. Jefferson and the other founding Fathers (Fathers? A religious form of leadership!) knew that Liberty requires ongoing bloodshed.

As demostrated at Hamburger Hill, we don’t have the categories to stop sacrificing until America is victorious and the deaths of our soldiers mean what they are supposed to mean. The moment our armed forces decide NOT to continue sacrificing their own lives and the lives of others, that moment they commit sacrilege against our heroes; how can we possibly make sense of the sacrifices we have already made if the heroes aren’t victorious? Or worse…if our heroes aren’t heroes at all, but victims?

“They will not have died in vain” is a central tenet of American civil religion. The only way to ensure that they didn’t die in vain is to continue sacrificing. To admit defeat is to change the status of our war dead from heroes to victims. And, as 9-11 and United Flight 93 amply demonstrate, the civil religion does NOT allow Americans to die as victims, EVEN if they’re civilians and not military.

Worse, to stop sacrificing also changes the status of THEIR war dead from enemy combatants and collateral damage to victims. This erases the necessary distinction between us and them. We are the chosen ones. We are the keepers of Freedom and Liberty. We are Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History.’

So, any move to end the war by peaceful means is a slap in the face of the American blood-thirsty gods.

The only solution is a religious one: we have to repent. Whatever allegiance we have pledged to the flag and to the republic for which it stands belongs to the god who would rather suffer violence than cause it. We have to decide that all the sacrifice necessary for peace and freedom was shed two millenia ago. We have to align ourselves with saints and martyrs; with holy victims rather than victorious heroes.

Until the eagle is deposed and the Lamb enthroned, the sacrifices will continue.

(The content of this post is heavily indebted to William Cavanaugh and Stanley Hauerwas)

“She’s a politician and they’re not to be trusted.” –Obi-Wan Kenobi

A cynical line. Funny, too. But I’m tired of cynicism. I’m tired of hearing the idea that nobody in government can be trusted, or that this or that party will ALWAYS act a certain way.

The doctrine of Creation: God made the world good; now it is in a state of fallen rebellion.

The world isn’t bad. It’s fallen. Yes you should be wary of politicians, but if we automatically assume they’re not to be trusted then we lose the will to think clearly and speak truthfully. Politics, like any other field of human endeavor, is broken. The cure isn’t cynicism; the cure is Truth.

That’s why I’m grateful to the Ann Lamotts of this world. She’s willing to hold people to their promises, without irony. Against her friends, no less. (Proverb: The wounds of a friend are to be trusted.)

That’s also why I can’t stand the rhetoric of those who constantly speak of the evils of government…typically with less regard for truth than for book sales.

I consider myself an anarcho-pacifist. This is not because of cynicism regarding government (well, sometimes…but not when I’m at my best). This is because I believe that the way we arrange ourselves socially should be less violent and more personalist. We should prefer the weak over the strong. We should be careful what kind of borders we erect between us and the ‘other’.

But while I may have a certain amount of distrust towards democratic liberalism, and a huge amount of distrust towards ‘free market’ ideology, that doesn’t release me from Jesus’ command to love my neighbor. As long as I live in a liberal democracy and participate in a free market economy, I have an obligation to speak the truth to power and to help my country live up to its better promises.

Nevertheless, there is an ever-flowing stream of bad-mouthing coming from certain political conservatives in the U.S. that reeks of a lack of willingness to embrace the other, an over-willingness to exclude through labeling, and a sincere hope that those who disagree with their ideology fail miserably.

Sure, compared to what I believe to be a robust Christian politics, Obama’s ‘Hope’ is thin gruel. In fact, optimism is NOT hope. Optimism, because it is not based on truth, leads to cynicism and despair just as much as anything.

By all means, let’s be people of truth instead of an empty hope. That requires that we hold our leaders accountable, friend or foe. But it also means that we always hope, always trust, always persevere.

I can’t find that sort of persistent hope outside of Christ. That’s why it’s important for me to have the qualifier Christian anarcho-pacifist. I’m convinced more than ever that he is the only hope for this broken world.

But because what often passes for Christianity in U.S.America is so truncated and idolatrous, I can’t afford to have illusions that this message will win the day anytime soon.

In the meantime, what does the church do?

She has to be faithful to the crucified rather than the empire.

Every time.