The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

 In a recent post I argued that disagreements over sex, gender, and sexuality were rooted in cultural differences, and thus inter-cultural dialogue and cultural intelligence might better resolve them.  A reader who saw my posting in Facebook disagreed. He stated that these were actually disagreements rooted in theology and the authority of scripture, not culture. Although I disagree, I think it is a respectable position in the sense that it is as internally coherent as possible.  But is his position true? Is my position true? To decide one would have to rise above both positions and place them against some transcendent measure of truth. And that is impossible.  Even the most optimistic Christian accounts of epistemology assert only that Christian language is warranted (Plantinga) and arises from a community of learning whose results over the longer term legitimate the claim that they represent genuine knowledge.(Newbiggen) It should be noted, of course, that these li...

Very early in the history of the Christian movement something both strange and necessary happens. A complex historical event, the crucifixion of a man named Jesus, becomes a simple theological event: the death God at the hands of humanity. The historicity remains. The individual characters and groups are all remembered and their actions reenacted weekly and yearly. Nobody loses his or her name.  What they all lose, all except for Jesus, is their claim to possess righteousness. Jesus, hanging on the cross, becomes the only righteous human. So even as he dies all the righteousness goes out of the human world.  Of course that isn't the end of the story, but before we get to the end of the story we need to acknowledge that none of us possesses on our own any righteousness, any goodness, whatsoever. Because this is the only way that we can avoid poisoning ourselves, our families, and our societies with self-righteousness.  And self-righteousness is a poison, one that destroys ...

Christianity is not a culture. The Body of Christ is always and only  inculturated  if it is truly a manifestation of God incarnate in Jesus. Only if we understand this can we begin to develop intelligent forms of Christian discourse built on the recognition that our differences are primarily cultural, not theological. Our debates about sex, sexuality, and gender are a good example.  Because sex, sexuality, and gender do not arise from biological processes or theological reflection . They are created by culture.  It is in the realm of sex, the distinction between male and female, that it seems most obvious that the issue is either biological or theological. As my university biology professor said, and he could never say it today without losing his job, the way you tell the difference between a man and a woman is by pulling down their genes. Ha ha. If only it was 1974 again and it was all just a matter of X's and Y's.  We now know that there is a lot more to biol...

Real diversity within the Church of Jesus Christ requires that we take part in conversations that are uncomfortable and sometimes offensive and hurtful to ourselves and others.  The reason for this is that the church is  not  a voluntary organization of like-minded people. It is, rather, the gathering of people called by Jesus Christ and not yet fully transformed by his love.  It is diverse because Jesus calls all kinds of people to himself and never asks whether they will agree with the others whom he has called. All he asks is that join their fellow disciples in following him. This truth about the authentic diversity of the church is unacceptable to many United Methodists. For decades our church has desperately sought to  manage  diversity by mandating ethnic, age, and gender representation throughout the UM structure and creating ever more finely tuned mandates of belief and practice.  But these mandates were always imposed on people who had already...