The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

Subjective experience, as part of God’s natural revelation, is equal to scripture and tradition as a source for some Christian teaching.  It is the third and quite often dismissed or forgotten realm of not only God’s self-disclosure, but of God’s disclosure of God’s will. When I was in seventh grade I had to take a quiz on the parts of the human body. I spelled the word for finger FLANGES. It was marked wrong. My brother spelled the word PHLANGIS. The teacher marked it correct. Naturally I protested. Only to be told that my brother spelled it wrong the right way and I spelled it wrong the wrong way. The teacher had a point. By beginning the word with an “F" I had actually written a completely different word. Indeed, a word that had a different meaning. Broken flanges are significantly different then broken phlanges.  In the current debates about the Bible and human sexuality I’ve frequently contended that all the arguments offered are wrong. Whether they come from traditionalists

is different from a man’s. But we theologians often confuse abstraction with insight.  I had a chance to spend an hour with the Bertha Morisot exhibit at the DMA. She was a pioneering impressionist, indeed a creator of the movement, who died far too young. Particularly when you see how she was pushing boundaries in her use of the canvas as a space. Her later works, all from the late 19th century, have a remarkably contemporary feel. More than a Monet.  But what I noticed most is how she painted women, and how in almost every case we see something in the faces that draws us toward a deep sense of interiority. These women are alive, but inside and not for show, however showily they are dressed. They are someone in themselves. Going further, I would say she allows them, grants them, or maybe just depicts a selfhood it is hard to imagine one of her male contemporaries even seeing, much less conveying so directly to the viewer. Indeed only her genius makes them accessible to us.  This is ha

Those who want to hate in pubic need to be returned to private life.  The last few days I’ve been fighting a cold. You know how it is. Take something that relieves the symptoms while your body’s natural defenses fight off the viral infection.  There was a time when I remember reading that it is better to just let your fever run high. The author of the article, who was no kind of doctor, believed that the high fever would kill viruses that were the cause of the cold.  It turns out this was kind of silly advice. For a lot of diseases it really is the symptoms that kill you or permanently hurt the body. And relieving those symptoms helps your body heal itself in many ways. Not the least of which is getting plenty of sleep. Unfortunately our body politic has come under the sway of "let the fever burn" politicians. They say they don’t like racism, but racist language is OK. They say they don’t like sexism, but sexist language is OK. They claim that they love everybody. But xenopho

Galatians 3:28 - There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Colossians 3:10 - (you) have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all. These texts, often cited in discussions over inclusion, are remarkable in what they deny those who have become followers of Christ: every form of primal social identity. They deny every form of identity into which one is born or has no choice. The first puts this in terms of binaries, with the binary of male and female going back to the creation of humanity. The latter denies the relevance of all social identities because there is a “the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.” And Christ, the creato

We humans can neither create nor define the universal. I just heard a presentation on how Bishop Cyprian, aka St. Cyprian tried to deal with the problems that emerged for 3rd century Christian communities in the wake of the Decian persecutions. In these persecutions large numbers of Christians saved their own lives by participating in the official state sacrifices.  Once the persecutions were over the question arose as to whether these Christians could return to the church, and in particular its eucharistic fellowship. And Cyprian tries to address this. Wow. He doesn’t come across very well.  First, some of arguments sound strange. He references miraculous punishments of impenitent Christians who try to participate in the Eucharist, some dying or suffering on the spot as the sacrament turns to poison. He speaks of the active work of demons in the lives of those who joined the imperial sacrifices. This isn’t the world many of us live in.  Second, his arguments are all about purity, as i

The desire for power is a curse on all it touches. Just look at the UMC.  What United Methodists have been fighting over is a mythological “Christian” marriage, a myth promulgated by early institutional Christianity in order to gain, and more recently keep control of a secular, and notably universal, form of human relationship. In reality there is no such thing as a  Christian  marriage. there are only Christians that are married.  Some key points. 1. In scripture marriage clearly predates Noah, and the command to be faithful in marriage is part of a universal covenant with all humankind. 2. Nowhere in the New Testament do we find that Christ is particularly present in some marriages as opposed to others, so as to justify a distinctive category of “Christian.”  Paul describes the marriage relationship in terms of Christ’s relationship to the church, but he never suggests that such a description applies only to those married in a church by some kind of Christian leader. Indeed the idea

I’ve been asking what we Methodist have in common. And it isn’t a movie, not even a classic. What we have in common is ironically one cause of our division: a realized eschatology. The one circumstance under which Christians cannot live in fellowship with one another is when that fellowship must fully embody the reign of God. The most unhappy and unscriptural teaching of John Wesley was that humans can go on to perfection in this life. Never mind that he is often misinterpreted. As soon as you promise that you will aim at perfection in this life you are going to want to be part of a church that is going on to perfection in this life as well. As a clergy you may tolerate some lay imperfection, after all they never made that promise, but you won’t be able to abide it in your colleagues.  Perfectionism becomes inevitable and purity always becomes the goal.  Sectarianism follows close behind. (For those interested in comparative theology it is useful to consider Islamic rationalizations fo