Bo Sanders: Public Theology

Commissioned Together as Sons and Daughters

I love the ‘great co/mission’ in Matthew 28. We humans are invited into a co/mission with God and we are commissioned. What an amazing gift and grace we have been given. We partner not only with God, following that model of Christ, but we are giving Holy Spirit power to do so! This is incredible.

In Acts 2 (calling back to the words of Joel 2) when Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh, we, as sons and daughters, speak the words of God (prophesy) for all humanity – and indeed all creation.

My former tribe (Evangelicals) are having a tough time right now. They are getting blasted from without over their extreme support for the current President. They are wrestling within over issues of race and domestic violence.

Then last week, one of their most visible leader-author-pastors, Beth Moore, released a sincere and devastating letter that has been sent to me numerous times by friends who thought I would be interested.

‘Women in ministry’ was my first and most consequential break with my former denomination. They voted to not ordain women but to instead consecrate them. I petitioned to have my ordination moved to a consecration since :
A) consecration is ‘biblical’ and ordination is not.
B) because I am convinced that we should be moving to greater levels of inclusion and empowerment … not regressing.

I read Beth Moore’s words with great concern. She is right and that it heartbreaking.

What makes the situation even more troubling for me is the contrast with my current ministry situation.

When I moved to Southern California for school, I attended a UMC school where my PhD Advisor and the Pastor at my church were both ordained women. I then got job at a UMC church where both my District Superintendent and my Bishop were ordained women.

Last year I joined the UMC again, this time in the Pacific NW, and again my new Bishop and my District Superintendent are ordained women. In fact, my church growth coach, my ordination mentor, my ordination coach, my area coordinator and my education point person are all ordained women.

Every other month I sit in a multiplying ministry workshop where more than half of my peers are ordained women.

I can’t stress how big of difference it makes being in a denomination where women are empowered and equal. In fact, every time I share my basic lesson-learned on this topic a very bizarre thing happens:

People who are previously initiated let me know that my take-aways are obvious and that these ‘lessons’ should be a bare-minimum. They are right.
People who are not in an empowering environment stare at me amazed, or get tears in their eyes, or shake their head in disbelief. Their follow-up questions are profound.

I would share some of my lessons-learned but I fear they will be distracting to my larger point.

Here is what I really want to say:

Do not settle for anything less than an environment of total acceptance, empowerment, and full ordination. The synergy is too rich for half-measures and compromises. Ministry is so valuable and so rewarding when everyone’s gifts are recognized.
Do not tolerate complementarian views of marriage even in the name of not being divisive. It is does not bear the fruit of unity and peace that you are hoping for. Just agree to disagree and move on – but do not abide that verbiage or behavior in your congregations or educational institutions (no matter how badly you need the money).

I say all of this as a flawed product of a patriarchal system. I fall short at nearly every turn. I am trying and I am learning.

My encouragement to you is simply this: you can’t imagine how much better it is when everyone’s full personhood is recognized and affirmed. It changes so many aspects of spirituality, community, planning and dreaming, networking, accountability, gifting, and so many other aspects of religious life and sacred practice.

It is perfect? No. It’s human. AND that is the beauty of it! It recognizes each person’s humanity and God’s divine purpose in and for that humanity.

If you haven’t read her letter, please go and do so. I just wanted to chime in that there is a different and better way.[1] I am grateful for my sisters-in-Christ and partner-pastors who help me see a fuller picture of God and the divine work to which we have all been called.

[1] My favorite part of Moore’s letter is, “Many churches quick to teach submission are often slow to point out that women were also among the followers of Christ (Luke 8), that the first recorded word out of His resurrected mouth was “woman” (John 20:15) and that same woman was the first evangelist. Many churches wholly devoted to teaching the household codes are slow to also point out the numerous women with whom the Apostle Paul served and for whom he possessed obvious esteem. We are fully capable of grappling with the tension the two spectrums create and we must if we’re truly devoted to the whole counsel of God’s Word.”

May 10, 2018 0

No Such Thing As Neutral Anymore

This is part 3 in Why Things Seem So Bad Right Now. [Read part 1 and part 2 here]

One obvious effect of our communities living in closer proximity and having more access to a greater number of cultures and subcultures – even if that is only only on social media -is that you can not assume anything anymore.

One big change in our culture in the past 70 years is the loss of an homogeneous majority and thus an assumed ‘normal’. When you had a homogeneous majority, there were certain expectations and assumptions that one could make. Anything different was suspected as a deviation at worst or a variation at best.

You can no longer assumed that there is a ‘normal’. This can be disorienting to those who were formerly at the ‘center’ and enjoyed the privilege of not exerting energy on navigating issues of difference.

You can no longer assume that we are all beginning with the same frameworks or that we are all working toward the same ends. This must be negotiated and mediated. It can no longer be taken for granted as a neutral starting point.

There Is No Neutral Anymore.

I have written before about how important it is to realize that truth does not materialize out of thin air – what we call truth is constructed socially (or communally if you prefer).

Even if there was such a thing as ‘universal truth’, our human access to that truth is:

partial,
provisional,
and perspectival

These confessions come with some pretty profound implications.

Meaning, then, is correspondingly understood to be:

Mediated

Located

Contested

Meaning is mediated because our understanding comes to us through inherited language, cultural behaviors, social expectations, and mental frameworks (paradigms).

Meaning is located because the same event or data may look very different or be interpreted differently be a different person in another place or time.

Meaning is contested because in a partial/perspectival understanding, no one interpretation gets a free ride or an automatic pass. Everything is up for review.

In the past, some have thought that meaning is obvious (not mediated), that it was accross-the-board the same for everyone (not located), and that the only negotiation required was at what level you wanted to conform to the truth.

This realization that meaning is contested and must be negotiated communally (or socially) can lead to disorientation and even result in agitation. However, once it is embraced, it can actually be comforting as ones expectations come into alignment with the world as it really is. Homogeneous majority is a mental fiction that had problems all along but never as pronounced as they are now.

There is no neutral (or exempt) position anymore. One does not simply get to sit back and poo-poo other’s perspective without providing an alternative. It is not sufficient to take shots at or poke holes in opinions that you disagree with. We live in the age of the cynic but it is unsatisfying personally and unhelpful to the common good.

Because our culture is so fractured … one has to make the claim or justify one’s position in the arena of ideas or the court of public discourse. Nothing gets off scot-free, no idea gets a free ride, and no position is exempt from examination.

There is no neutral anymore.

This is true in issues of economy, politics, military, ecology, morals, religion, civility, marriage, gender, sexuality, occupations and trades are just a few examples of categories that display this loss of fixed and stable assumptions.

The sooner we embrace this new way to conceptualize our participation in culture and society, the better we will be at developing new tools for navigating and practices for flourishing together.

May 9, 2018 5

Fragmented and Fractured

Yesterday was part 1 of ‘Why Things Seem So Bad’. Today in part 2 of 4, I would like to focus on how the fabric of our society is under stress and is pulling apart. Let me state this succinctly up front and then expand on it more.

We live in a time that seems very fractured and fragmented. The non-stop news cycle and social media only seem to inflame things. There are 4 ingredients to pay attention to in this analysis:

Cultural chaos
Communities in close proximity
Conflicting narratives
Remnants of previous era (past ideas without their historic setting)

In 1981 Alasdair MacIntyre published a book After Virtue that was so monumental that it is referenced (positively or negatively) by nearly everyone working on such issues. The book illustrates the futility of such debates but outlining the problem on three levels:

First is that we have no “rational way of weighing the claims of one (argument) against another”.[1]
Second, the arguments “purport to be impersonal rational arguments” that complicate “moral excellence and argument”.
Third, each disagreement has its own historical situation and “cannot be resolved, because no moral disagreements of that kind in any age, past, present, or future, can be resolved.”

This triangle limits the possibility that we have any arena in which to address moral discrepancies in our culture. As MacIntyre has pointed out earlier:

“What we posses … are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts that now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality; we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have – very largely, if not entirely – lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”[2]

A community’s character is formed by their “enacted narratives”[3] that allow the self to be formed and ones identity to emerge within the continuity (or discontinuity) of the self that is provided by a greater environment. This happens within an embedded or situated environment in which a narrative may be lived out. Our environment is so fragmented and fractured that it is producing a different and disjointed result than previous eras.

In chapter 9 of After Virtue, MacIntyre goes after the relatively unintelligible vocabulary in our modern situation that is nothing more than a series of remnants and fractured remainders from past systems and moral frameworks.

“A key part of my thesis has been that modern moral utterance and practice can only be understood as a series of fragmented survivals from an older past and that the insoluble problems which they have generated for modern moral theorists will remain insoluble until this is well understood.”[4]

Traditions are inherited and do not come to us in a vacuum but contain an element of their given nature. Antiquated notions cannot simply be reclaimed and integrated without a serious examination of the structures from which they arise and the cultures that gave birth to them if we do not desire to reinstall, reinforce, and re-instantiate the forms that gave rise to them. While the desire to return to some familiar pursuit of character formation may be comforting in a fragmented present chaotic era, serious critique is needed to question both the telos of desired outcomes and the source of projects adopted or reclaimed.[5]

In his prologue to the 3^rd edition of After Virtue, written on the 25^th anniversary of publication, MacIntyre (sounding like Dewey) says that it is within “acts of imagination and questioning”[6] that members or a group would be able to navigate the difficulties of a situation or decision where there is disagreement with another group.

Since there are no “neutral standards” available by which to judge the adequacies of any claim to truth, a rational agent may be able to determine a course of action and bring about a resolution where there is no clear standard by which to evaluate the superiority of one tradition over another.

Navigating in this arena is a dangerous enterprise. An awareness of our cultural chaos is vital. Hauerwas points out that we live in a ‘precarious’ moment:

“Life in a world of moral fragments is always on the edge of violence, since there are no means to ensure that moral arguments in itself cans resolve our moral conflicts.”[7]

He goes on to say that it is little wonder we “hunger for absolutes in such a world” [8] that robs us of sense of self or security that we have. The individual as a rational agent, the unencumbered self, and free actor are all illusions outside of a radically situated history and story of formation and participation.

He goes on to say “our problem is that we live amid fragments of past moralities each, with good reason. Competing for our loyalty.” [9] We are, however, not simply post-modern islanders participating in and existing within an isolated inheritance. We are more like floating communities tied together by threads from our respective pasts and under constant exposure to new investigations by foreign expeditions.

Our era of inter-national, multi-cultural global connectivity has resulted in a multiplicity where no tradition or community exists in the kind of isolation that allows for stability and continuity. It is within this context that our formation of virtuous agents must conceive of frameworks and incubate embodied practices. That is no easy task.

Tomorrow we will address one implication of today’s post: that there is no ‘neutral’ position that can be assumed anymore.

[1] Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 8.

[2] Ibid., 2.

[3] MacIntyre, After Virtue, 202.

[4] MacIntyre, After Virtue, 105.

[5] I would argue that the nature of Christianity is incarnational – so the past is not the sole determining factor for our present or future expression.

[6] MacIntyre, “After Virtue,” xiii.

[7] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (SCM Press, 2003), 5.

[8] Ibid., 6.

[9] Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, 4.

May 8, 2018 7

Why Things Seem So Bad (part 1)

This week I want to offer a 4-part series that addresses some issues behind the current state of affairs.

Why So Much Conflict and Crisis?
Fragmented and Fractured Society
There Is No Neutral Anymore.
Everyone For Themselves

People are concerned about what they see happening right now. There are geographic divisions that seem increasingly pronounced. There are generational, political, and racial division that are inflamed at troubling levels. The news cycle, social media, and institutional corruption (banks, schools, churches, government, hospitals, Hollywood, Washington, etc.) provide a constant string of crisis and controversy.

Things seem to have escalated quite a bit in the past couple of years. Some people will say ‘every generation thinks things are chaotic and out of control’ and there is some evidence of that. However, we live in a unique era when there are the some distinct factors causing an intensification that is notable.

Change is a constant, we know that. Change at this rate, is not. We live in a time of exponential (not just incremental) change. It is no wonder that this environment breeds so much conflict and chaos.

One of the things that I would like to explore is the way that following 3 factors come together in a troubling way:

Consumerism
Globalization
Pluralism

The connection between those three might not seem clear initially, but it is the way that they come together in the 21^st century that is relevant for our conversation.

Consumerism is so assumed that it often goes unnamed. It is as if we are on automatic pilot. Buying things has become second nature. I know people who claim to be Christians who can go a whole day (or days) without praying but can’t go a day without making a purchase. Capitalism is the real religion of the West. [1]

Consumerism makes us individuals – or is it that individualism makes us consumers? … either way, we have exposed the root of the problem. Speaking a language, participating in an economy, procreating and raising the next generation, and nearly every other human activity is a communal enterprise that requires cooperation and mutuality. Individualism is a mental fiction we have been sold that fails us at nearly every turn.

Globalization has brought our communities into closer proximity than ever before. We have never had this much access to or contact with one-an-other. It almost doesn’t matter where you live anymore, you have access to goods from all over the world. In fact, you do business with, go to school with, and stand in line with people from all over the world. You may all have different religions, worldviews, or notions of community and belonging. We live in age of radical connection and proximity …. but maybe not overlap. And therein lies the problem for our concern this week.

Pluralism is then a relevant factor that completes our trio. As individuals whose communities are in great proximity to each other, we have to develop an approach to one-an-other.[2] Some of us feel like we have does this well. Which is why it is so baffling why it cause some of our fellow citizens so much agitation and even anger. ‘Difference doesn’t need to lead to division’ we say, and if attitude or acceptance was the only issue we might be right. The problem is that the first two ingredients to trio are the wood and gasoline that make our current environment so flammable. Attitude (or our approach) is just the spark that makes that situation combustible.

Here is the most important thing to understanding our current culture:

Our society is a set of fragments – leftover remainders – of previous expression that may not be compatible with other or newer expressions.

Again – our society is a set of fragments, leftover remainders, of previous expressions that may not be compatible with other or newer expressions. More on this tomorrow. The examples of this phenomenon are endless once you know what you are looking at. Think about religion, Christian denominations, theories of educations, economics, politics, nationality and race, pre-1975 military, for-profit prisons, policing strategies, parenting styles, marriage equality, even grammar and texting language.

Here is a picture that I want to utilize for this 4-part series. It is a piece by my neighbor Jeff and it really speaks to me.

Our circles (communities) have diversity and differentiation within them. Those circles are in close proximity to each other and are even connected … but without overlapping. They are not integrated. They do not bleed into each other. They are distinct from one-an-other.

What makes this proximity profound is that the newer circles are smaller and bolder but are foregrounded on other circles that are faded but still present. Those larger circles are older and not as pronounced but influential. They haunt the work. They are ghosts and shadows to the primary feature. They are echoes of the past who still exert their voice. Their influence has faded but their effect still remains. The current configuration and focus wouldn’t make sense without them.

Tomorrow we talk about the nature of these remaining fragments and how people who think about such things differ on the subject.

_____________________________

[1] There are so many great books on this, including For The Common Good by Daly and Cobb and What Money Can’t Buy by Sandel. I would also recommend the non-academic book The Suburban Christian by Hsu.

[2] I find this way of writing it helpful. It may seem clumsy at first but it will bear fruit later in the series.

May 7, 2018 7

Prolepsis and Future God

This 5 minute video presents 3 ideas that come together in a powerful way.

Here is my most adventurous and experimental theology.

Christ as Prolepsis
God as Future
Process of each moment

Please let me know what you think and how I can tighten up the concepts (as I will be presenting this to a live audience soon)

May 4, 2018 4

Christianism: 5 Steps

Yesterday’s post on Christianism is Frankenstein Christianity is here as a 6 min video

Step 1: Formalize
Step 2: Hierarchy/Authority
Step 3: Military Power/ Violence
Step 4: In/Out Boundary
Step 5: Membership not based on faithfulness/fidelity

You now have an ‘Ism’. This “floating signifier” is untethered from its anchor teaching and model.

May 3, 2018 1

Bible: Best and Worst

My friend Erika Spaet made this eye-opening video about the B-I-B-L-E.

I laughed. I cringed. I was challenged. It is a wonderful 6 minute video.

I hope that you find it as helpful and inspiring as I did.

Word of God from Erika Spaet on Vimeo.

May 2, 2018 0

Christianism is Frankenstein Christianity

With the news of Paul Ryan’s ouster of the House Chaplin [link], I have found myself referencing Christianism: Dangers of Frankenstein Christianity from 2 years ago.

I have lots of new readers and a whole new congregation since then so I decided to re-post it. It goes well with Being A Different Way In The World – you can listen to it here [link].

When Sarah Palin said that water-boarding was how we baptized terrorist, it was a turning point for my understanding of faith and the role it plays in our culture. I don’t know if I was more offended because of my hatred of torture (or ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’) or my love of baptism and what it represents as a central expression of the faith. Baptism is how we who believe demonstrate that we accept the death-to-self and enter into the life-of-Christ.

I had been asking this question ever since Rumsfeld/Cheney put Bible verses on the covers of their Iraq war briefings to President Bush. That is how I learned about things like ‘master signifiers’, which are symbols such as ‘Christianity’ that have become detached from the meaning that they were originally anchored to. They are un-tethered from the history that originally gave them meaning.

Christianism is disconnected from the faith and tradition that gave it birth. When you see or hear something under the banner of ‘Christian’ that does not seem to reflect the example of Jesus or the teaching of Christ … you may have wandered into the wilderness of Christianism. It uses all the same words that you know … but in foreign and contradictory ways.

Christianism is several degrees removed from the teaching and example of Jesus. It begins in the formation/formalizing of those things (one degree) – then it takes on an authoritarian/hierarchical structure (two degrees) – then, and this is the big one, it is married to power (government/military) so now we are three degrees from the origin. This new orientation becomes solidified/codified as a thing that has its own identity: “Christian” becomes a category by which you can know who is in and who is out – the saved and the lost (fourth degree). This is where bad things done by ‘good people’ can be justified as being beneficial to ‘the cause’ or ‘our side’.

The final stage is when ‘Christian’ is an identity that helps to distinguish us (in-group) from others, NOT depending on ones obedience to the central tenants, following the teachings of the founders, or even knowledge of the distinctions that signify identity to the group. At this point the signifier ‘Christian’ is no longer anchored to anything that it was originally grounded in and no longer connected to the very thing that gave it life and health. ‘Christian’ becomes a floating signifier and is un-tethered from its proverbial mooring (fifth degree).

We are watching a ‘historical drift’. This is how Sarah Palin can say that water-boarding is how we baptize terrorist. This one statement has it all! We are the in-group. We do this to people with unilateral/coercive power. It is then connected to sacred/holy acts. And finally, we assume that we are doing God’s work when we do things that are opposite/counter to the example of what we say is the incarnation/revelation of our very God.

When something is this far (5 degrees) away from its original intent, folks can start to ask, “how is this connected to that?” The generous/gracious response is ‘loosely’. The concerned response is ‘they are not connected’. The critical response is ‘it is counter to the origin’.

When you add an ‘ism’ to anything it is in danger of becoming a Frankenstein creature that takes on a monstrous life of its own. Examples of this in the U.S. context involve:

Democrat-ism: When it is no longer about the democracy but has become about beating the ‘other side’.
Republican-ism: When it is no longer about the republic but had been reduced to gun ownership and ‘states rights’.
Methodism: When members of Methodist churches can no longer tell you what the ‘methods’ are.
Evangelicalism: When those who identify as such cannot tell you what the evangelion is or cannot articulate the ‘good news’ of Jesus’ message. [more here]
Pentecostalism: When the gift of tongues is no longer about proclamation to those who speak in foreign languages but is about an ‘unknown’ prayer language that edifies the speaker.

These have all become master signifiers that identify an in/out boundary but which no longer re-present the original meaning they once stood for. Our world is full of markers/groups/identities/labels that are so far from what they originally meant that they are not longer tied (tethered) to the thing that used to anchor them.

My concern is that ‘Christian’ no longer signifies one who follows Christ and has instead become an ‘ism’ that designates an us/them distinction that has nothing to do with the teachings or model of Jesus. I get why people are being inventive and using ‘Christ-follower’ or attempting to follow ‘the way of Jesus’. Cynics will mock all they want, but if these innovative monikers are an attempt to protest or defy the ‘ism’ of the dominant expression … I say we ask more questions instead of making snarky and dismissive comments.

They might be onto something.

Interesting uses of Christianism started appearing between 2003-2005

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianism

http://tcpc.blogs.com/better/2005/05/christianity_or.html

May 2, 2018 3