The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

One of the most productive industries in the US is the porn industry. An oddly ironic industry dedicated to sexual satisfaction that isn’t satisfying through being exploited while exploiting others while producing ejaculations and creating nothing. Woody Allen actually offered a  prophetic send-up of that industry in the movie  Sleeper,  featuring a future that would offer humans a new machine: the “orgasmatron.” The existence of the vast non-reproductive production industry called porn will no doubt extend into the age of smart machines. It already has - moving from mere mechanisms to increasingly sophisticated forms of AI and virtual reality. It is another reminder of how the 2nd machine age will make mere production trivial at best and dehumanizing at worst. For Christians this begs us to ask the difference between mere production and true creation.   I noted in an earlier blog that it isn’t machines that make our era different from the past. It is the...

Contemporary Christianity has been long sense seduced by the machine age. And this can be seen most clearly in those settings where evangelism has become a form of production: a machine for making disciples of Jesus Christ. In this post I’m going to assert that this understanding of evangelism is not warranted by the teaching of Jesus, and represents a mis-reading of his commands to his disciples.  To see this we need to first look at the evolving relationship between Jesus and his disciples. Initially they are called to follow him. Their first (and as it happens final) vocation is to be witnesses to him; his teaching, his miracles, and his person. What they witness is this: Jesus never produces anything.  This doesn’t mean that Jesus doesn’t exercise power. He heals, he casts out demons, he changes water to wine. But even when his miracles are of abundance, such as when he feeds the 5000, they aren’t characterized as production. He feeds the five thousand. He doesn’t produce ...

There is a heresy at the heart of American Christianity: the belief that the production of disciples of Christ is what gives Christians and Christian churches their value.  In the last post I pointed out four challenges to the way in which we value our humanity posed by the 2nd Machine Age we are beginning to live in.  First , machines will increasingly take over the intellectual tasks that were markers of human distinctiveness.  W h at we believed marked us as unique will first be shared, and then we will be surpassed .  Second , machines will become moral agents, making decisions of the type heretofore limited to humans.  This will attack the assumption that human uniqueness lies in our being conscious moral agents.  Or more properly, the nature of our moral agency will change. As creators of moral agents who determine the parameters of their decision making ours will be a kind of super-morality - taking on a role more like that tradit...

Revaluing and Devaluing Humanity The post is the first in a series that will examine how rapid changes in our culture will interrogate classical Christian forms of self-understanding, and create new understandings of what it means to be human.  One part of the greatest shift in human culture since the enlightenment is the emergence of the 2nd Machine Age. Alongside the rapid degradation of the eco-systems on which human life depends, new concepts of what it means to live in time, and the reformation of scientific epistemology it will permanently change our perception of what it means to be human.  The 2nd Machine Age is already creating disruptions in the economy from which new forms of human empowerment emerging, even as it challenges traditional sources of human security and meaning. But most importantly the 2nd Machine Age will challenge current understandings of what it means to be human and offer new possibilities for self-understanding. The 2nd machin...

I once worked for a seminary whose principal was constantly re-evaluating the curriculum. He was convinced that if we could ever get the right curricular framework then we could get on with teaching and never consider it again. Maybe its because my principal was a theologian. After all, my old theological professor, Schubert Ogden, (who passed away the day before I began writing this) once remarked to our class that systematic theology often never gets past the “prolegomena;” the introduction that spells out the basic framework within which theological theory could be built. Still, he was a great believer in prolegomena. If you didn’t clearly lay out the system of systematic theology one that was “modern without remainder” could never be formed.  What is true of systematic theology is often true elsewhere in the theological world. Much more recently a member of the UM Traditionalist movement (who naturally disagreed with Mr. Ogden about a theology that was “modern without remainder...

I held off posting this until a series of postings across several facebook forums convinced me that Christians haven't really faced the challenge posed by a modern conception of human rights. The culture of traditionalist Christianity is ultimately inimical to human rights, and will always deny them to some persons. Only a revolution in understanding the work of Christ on the cross will open the door to true human equality and full human rights. In the last 70 years or so there has been a serious theological debate among American Christians about human rights. Specifically it was a debate about whether, from a Christian perspective, the assertion that humans are endowed by God with the rights guaranteed them in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. If a debate about human rights seems strange then you haven’t really wrapped you mind around how badly the enlightenment disrupted not only the Christian worldview, but that of all axial age religions. This isn’t merely a matter of science...

Glifford Geerz defined religion in this way:  (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. Geertz was an anthropologist, not a theologian, so one need not accept this as a description of Christianity. But it is a prescient observation about how Christianity works within the larger context of society and in individual human lives. When the evangelist calls a person to faith in Christ he or she is precisely hoping that the result will be a transformation creating “powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations.”  And the Church, through its study of scripture, worship, fellowship, and engagement with society is absolutely seeking to deploy a system of symbols that formulate a conception of the general order...