The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

No. He might have been called a Nazarene, Galilean or a Jew, but there was no geographical place called “Palestine” in the time of Jesus.  So why did Ilhan Omar retweet Omar Sulaiman’s tweet that “Jesus was a Palestinian.” And why did Sulaiman tweet it in the first place?  Probably because this idea has been part of contemporary Palestinian political discourse for some time. Check out Amazon for books and T-Shirts. Mitri Raheb advances the same argument in his books. The point, of course, is to strengthen the Palestinian claim to a long historic association with what is now Israel and the West Bank. Such claims in the Palestinian press go back even further, associating contemporary Palestinians with the ancient Philistines who were contemporaries of the earliest tribes of Israel.  The problem with such arguments is their futility. They will not persuade Israelis to give up the concept of Israel as an (ethnic) Jewish state. Modern Jews, without exception, are part of a thousands of year

Yesterday, as I write, a federal court overthrew a Texas state law strongly supported by the Jewish community, notably AIPAC and the AJC. The law would have forbidden anyone who wants to do business with the state of Texas from supporting the Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanctions movement targeting Israeli businesses. The bill had strong bipartisan support, meaning in Texas strong support from the Christian community.  Well not me, and I shared my concerns with Jewish leaders. From my perspective the BDS movement is unhelpful, even destructive in its broadest form. But I knew from the start that this bill was, as the court ruled, a clear violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. It was, and was intended to be, a law limiting freedom of expression by punishing any business that expressed support for boycotting, sanctioning, or divesting from businesses in Israel. Since this same legislation has been passed in many other states more court cases will follow, as indeed the pla

T he work habitually done in obedience to Christ’s commands is the character of the Church,  and hence its identity as the Body of Christ, for in this work the Church reiterates the work of Christ. Scripture, creeds, liturgies, and structures are just chalk dust on a board by comparison. I still remember back in systematic theology when John Deschner lectured on the Trinity. First there was a triangle on the chalk board. Then at each point the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit, then a whole series of correspondences of these with other aspects of the Godhead. When the whole thing was finished Schubert Ogden, co-teacher in those days at Perkins, asked, “Why is Father on top? Why not rotate the whole thing, or any of the correspondences? Indeed. It is always a problem when you try to inscribe God onto a chalkboard. Or for that matter a three dimensional space like a cathedral. The latter is both a tribute and a profound theological statement. And deeply misleading.  There may have been

I was doing a little spring cleaning and came across a Perkins School of Theology Journal from 1967! Before the formation of the United Methodist Church. And the headline was "Unity Apart from Mission is Sterile." It featured lectures by my old professor (a decade later) Richie Hogg. Of course he was right. And the lectures, which I hope to post, read 52 years later like prophecy. I won't claim to represent Dr. Hogg, but I'll explain why he was right, and why the unity forged in 1968 was and continues to be sterile.  The first and only enduring unity of the early congregations of the Christian church came through their participation in the apostolic mission given by Jesus Christ.  The early church structures, practices, liturgies, and creed’s came into being to serve that shared mission. The life of the community served to strengthen and guide members in the witness of their daily lives. Moreover in their life together they were to be an evangelistic sign of God’s Rei

The classic 20th century work,  Christ and Culture , by H. Richard Niebuhr has widely influenced Christian ways of thinking about the relationship of the Christian Church to culture. More than half a century after its publication it is useful to note that it is a  modern  work, arising from the particular kind of objectivity and self-reflectivity vis-a-vis culture that emerges with the reconceptualization of what it means to human arising from the Enlightenment.  An overview of Niebuhr’s taxonomy may be found here:  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/christ-and-culture-an-overview-of-a-christian-classic/ In the distinctly modern reconceptualization humans have a complex, self-conscious relationship to society. It both shapes them, and as they gain freedom and autonomy they gain the power to shape it. Humans become, as the liberation theologians point out, subjects of their own history. The characteristic of human societies (now extended to some animals) that most intim

Bob Dylan‘s song “you got to serve somebody“ marked his enigmatic conversion to Christianity. It became popular, and was covered by numerous other artists, because it said something we can all relate to. Schleiermacher himself couldn’t have said it better. No human can escape the web of human interdependencies. And no human can escape that sense, If only fleeting that there is something greater upon which we depend as well. The genius of the Enlightenment was to seek to make the human response to those human interdependencies, and the absolute dependency on God, entirely voluntary. Humans would no longer be in the thrall to self appointed authorities, whether civil or religious. American Methodism was a full expression of that Enlightenment ideal. It was born in a twin movement of independence by Americans from the British civil authorities and the church of England. But ultimately American Methodism could not escape from the third grand movement of its opening era; imperialism. With i