The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

In the modern era public funding is a poison that destroys religion, even as it makes religion toxic to society at large.  So let’s review how recent Supreme Court decisions related to religion and pubic funding will play out over the long term.  The first amendment of the US Constitution does not mention whether  “The free exercise of religion“ is public or private. For the last 70 years or so the Supreme Court has assumed that the founding fathers meant the  private  exercise of religion was to be free, and that the public exercise of religion could not receive any public support. That is probably what the founding fathers meant.  “No law respecting an establishment of religion,” has also been understood by previous courts to mean that providing any public funding, or a public venue, for religious use was “an establishment of religion” and thus forbidden. The current Supreme Court has taken a much different attitude toward the meaning of the first amendme...

" Artificial intelligence might never develop consciousness, sentience, morality or a soul. But even if it doesn’t, you can bet people will say it did anyway." In my last post I suggested that the  possibility of artificial intelligence  is changing the way we think about what it means to be human. In the first article below the authors argue that the tendency to anthropomorphize, long observed as a human characteristic, is now being applied to claimed AIs. Which in my view only underscores the possibility that AI will transform human self-understanding. Just imagine how our anthropomorphizing of animals, and even eco-systems has changed our understanding of what it means to be human in relation to nature. Many Christians now see vegetarianism as a moral obligation because they understand themselves as part of a continuum with animals rather than distinctly different and hierarchically superior to them. What happens when this is true of AI as well?   https://www.washingto...

Artificial intelligence is already changing our human self-understanding, and thus inevitably changes our understanding of what it means to claim that Jesus is God incarnate who redeems our humanity on the Cross.  AI is not merely an ethical problem. Its advent marks a sea-change in human consciousness of what it means to be human as great as any in human history. Christians, bearers of the claim that Jesus is God Incarnate, must account for and address this change in human consciousness or their central claim, their message, and their mission will continue to slide into irrelevance.  This week I had the opportunity to spend considerable time driving in a Tesla, with its remarkable AI semi-self driving capability. The Tesla quickly came up against its limits when there was highway construction. But it was also baffled by small hills that appeared to present an obstacle ahead when a human driver could clearly see it was just rapidly rising road.  The Tesla AI strategy for ...

Are we embracing tradition? Or just being nostalgic for a tradition that was never ours to begin with?  When I was growing up my family attended WASPish UM churches that were pre-liturgical renewal. Talk about social distancing! We all sat a respectable distance from one another. We stood sometimes, and sat sometimes. We never kneeled. The pastor consecrated the elements at an altar against the wall of the chancel, flanked by the choir. Communion was little crackers and little cups of grace juice to which we helped ourselves on command from the pastor. We sang the Agnus Dei. We didn't touch, either each other or the pastor.  That was our Methodist tradition, as it had been for a very long time.  Was that community invalid? The sacraments substandard? True, we could see each other mediated only by clear air. But only if we looked around and weren't blind. Do the blind have no true communion because they cannot see other faces?  Before we make demands on the worshippin...

Ἐγὼ γὰρ παρέλαβον ἀπὸ τοῦ κυρίου, ὃ καὶ παρέδωκα ὑμῖν,  (I Corinthians 11:23)  Παρέδωκα γὰρ ὑμῖν ἐν πρώτοις, ὃ καὶ παρέλαβον, . . . (I Corinthians 15:3) I'll be honest, I could be very happy in a very traditional church. I still remember weeping when, after more than 9 years abroad, I heard "For all the Saints" sung with the huge congregation, massed choir, and rich pipe organ at First Church. This was my tradition. These were my people. After years of worshipping daily and weekly in other languages, in rented rooms, in re-worked theaters, I was home. The rest had been exciting, challenging, bracing, and growth inducing. But it wasn't home.  That was 1991. I went back to Asia and then Europe before returning to the US again in 2004. And I realized that no click of the red slippers or intercontinental flight was going to take me back to that home now. First Church was still there of course. Ranks of clergy in impressive robes and stoles, the massed choir, the organ, th...