God

My 200th post is to thank my International Readers!

According to WordPress, this is my 200th post. Of course that is a somewhat arbitrary number since I started on an I-web blog for 2 years, then moved to Blogger for 2 years and have only recently moved to WordPress.

WordPress is constantly making upgrades and I just wanted to tell you about my favorite feature at WordPress. Recently they have added a map on the dashboard that tells you where your readers are coming from. I love maps anyway but this is my new favorite map!

So far today I have had visitors from Canada, Russia, Italy, Sudan and Denmark. I find that so encouraging! I have had the pleasure of visiting 17 countries in my travels and I love talking with people from around the world. When I found out that folks from all these countries were coming to help me navigate between the everyday and theology – I was ecstatic!

Just this week I have had visitors from Nigeria, United Kingdom, Canada, Republic of Korea, India, Spain, Australia, Portugal, Turkey, Mongolia, Italy, Indonesia, Russian Federation, Mexico, Egypt, Sweden, Denmark, Sudan, Hong Kong, Brazil, Estonia, Cambodia, United Arab Emirates, Latvia, Austria, France, Germany, and Norway. I find this absolutely astounding.

I always knew that there was some level of international readership but this new dashboard feature has really opened my eyes to just how wide a conversation like this (emerging-Bible-church-theology) can reach in our internet culture. I am so excited to post with this new knowledge and expand the scope even more.

I am honored to be a part of the bigger conversation and look forward to comparing notes with you all over the next 200 posts. – Bo Sanders


53 in the past month:


Canada
United Kingdom
Republic of Korea
Germany
Australia
Sweden
Denmark
Brazil
Philippines
India
Greece
Italy
Saudi Arabia
Malaysia
Indonesia
Bulgaria
Spain
Macedonia
Turkey
Egypt
United Arab Emirates
Mongolia
Algeria
Mexico
Portugal
Russian Federation
Thailand
Malta
South Africa
Hong Kong
United Republic of Tanzania
Netherlands
France
Sudan
Cambodia
Latvia
Austria
Estonia
Norway
Sri Lanka
Colombia
Japan
Poland
Serbia
Romania
Bangladesh
Moldova
New Zealand
Viet Nam
Iceland
Taiwan
Yemen
Finland

April 10, 2012 1

Opting Out of the Argument Culture (follow up to 4 > 2)

Last week I put out a fun challenge for Good Friday: repent of either-or thinking. It got a great response and a reader asked how one might pursue a conversation differently.

After a decade of trial and error, these are the three things (appropriately) I have found most helpful in breaking down the inherited dualisms: diagrams, vocabulary, and intentional complexification.

Diagrams: I am a believer in the power of shapes. I heard Len Sweet talk one time about how the two scientists that finally solved the riddle of DNA actually had all the necessary proteins and elements figured out for quite a while … but could not break the code. It wasn’t until they had that now famous shape – the double helix – that they were able to put the puzzle together.
I tell people

“You can have all the right content and be forcing it into the wrong shape.”

My use of the Venn last week to create 5 categories out of 2 would be an example of this. But it comes from a deep conviction that even when given 2 categories, there has to be more to the story – so look for a third. (The book Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen is excellent on this point).

Draw the person’s spectrum and then bend it (as I did here) for them. Take their two options and put it in a matrix (like the Urgent/Important matrix below). Just become convinced that there is too much data for it to be crammed into a pre-made little mold – it just won’t fit. You end up discarding too much data once your little tins are filled.

Vocabulary: When people are too familiar, too entrenched, and too comfortable, you may have to change the terms of the debate in order to unseat the status quo.

In the never ending Calvinist v Arminian debate that Calvinist love, I will teach them that Arminius was a Calvinist, but just ‘not calvin enough’ and then, in reaction, the Synod of Dort went more calvin than Calvin to come up with T.U.L.I.P. So when Calvinist portray all free-will theologies as Arminian, that is like an American saying that all non-republicans are democrats: its just not true. They are basically just two sides of the same coin … but certainly not representative of the whole array of options. If they want to read an actual Arminian they should check out Roger Olson and his book Against Calvinism. Once you know what a real Arminian looks like, you will stop mistaking everyone who is not Calvinist for one!

Intentional Complexification: Since dualism is destructive and deceptive, resolve to never let two contradictory-adversarial positions stand as the only options. Search far and wide, at all costs find a third option. Become inquisitive, Become imaginative. Who doesn’t see it this way?

In the abortion debate you must take away the entrenched or given labels that people assume are the only options. Pro-Life is usually just about one stage of life (unborn) and is less concerned about the life of the mother after her child’s birth, the education of the child 5 years after birth, our country’s foreign policy and being pro-life in an age of perpetual war, and the ever increasing rates of incarceration, death penalty, etc. To be pro-life you also have to be pro-health care, for education, against militarism, anti-death penalty and should probably do something about hand guns and assault rifles ( I’m not talking about your deer rifle Mr. NRA, that is not what is being used to kill people in these shootings).

If you don’t care about the health of the mother, the education of the child, the life of soldiers, and the life of inmates then you are not pro-life: you are just anti-abortion.

When I see the conversation being set up in an us v. them scenario, I will just boycott by saying “until a women has control over her own womb and she can walk away from a pregnancy like the fella can, we can not even have this conversation. It’s impossible.” I just won’t concede the terms and allow the conversation to be set up like that. It is a false binary and it never leads anywhere except ‘both’ sides (as if there is only 2) feeling justified in their own self-virtue.

So those are my 3 suggestions. I would love to hear what things you have found help us get out of the either/or rut and change the parameters conversation!

April 10, 2012 4

the Death of the Liberals is killing us

In chapter 1 of his book Death of Liberal Class, Chris Hedges sketches both the height of the Liberal era in the 19th century and its cataclysmic implosion with the arrival of World War in the 20th. The disillusionment of human evil, aggression, and suffering deflated the optimism of innate human goodness and inevitable progress that Liberalism is founded upon.
To understand the profound impact of Liberalism’s demise, it helps to make sure one understands the difference between Classical Liberalism and it’s contemporary milquetoast descent that slinks around in straw-man form on our 24 hours news cycle.
Hedges explains (pp. 6-7) “Classical liberalism was formulated largely as a response to the dissolution of feudalism and church authoritarianism. … (It) has, the philosopher John Gray writes, four principle features, or perspectives, which give it a recognizable identity. It is :

individualist, in that it asserts the moral primacy of the person against any collectivity;
egalitarian, in that it confers on all human beings the same basic moral status;
universalist, affirming the moral unity of the species;
and meliorist, in that it asserts the openended improvability, by use of critical reason, of human life

Both John Cobb (Mainline) and Clayton Crockett (Radical Political Theology) use very similar formulations in their recent Homebrewed podcasts. Cobb, by focusing on the demise of the Mainline and Crockett, by focusing on the Evangelical and Religious Right, articulate the monumental shift in the religious-political landscape in the past century.
The Mainline denominations are in a collapse narrative and it makes perfect sense why when one examines both the way liberal thought partnered with power in the 20th Century and the way that conducted itself (largely) within the shifting landscape of post-war realities at home and globalization abroad.

“In a traditional democracy, the liberal class functions as a safety valve. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. It offers hope for change and proposes gradual steps toward greater equality. It endows the state and the mechanisms of power with virtue. It also serves as an attack dog that discredits radical social movements, making the liberal class a useful component within the power elite. But the assault by the corporate state on the democratic state has claimed the liberal class as one of its victims…
The inability of the liberal class to acknowledge that corporations have wrested power from the hands of citizens, that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty have become irrelevant, and that the phrase consent of the governed is meaningless, has left it speaking and acting in ways that no longer correspond to reality. It has lent its voice to hollow acts of political theater, and the pretense that democratic debate and choice continue to exist.” (pp. 9-10)

We talked yesterday about the fictitious nature of the supposed Left-Right spectrum. For those of us who participate in christ centered communities and organizations, what does this mean? While incomplete, here is my little experiment to come up with a game-plan for a start.

We stop using the label ‘Liberal’ generically for anything that is not Conservative… especially to be dismissive. Liberal is a very specific ethical framework and it takes quite a commitment to liberal. It is not a default position.
We disavow the left-right , conservative-liberal split as farcical. It doesn’t exist. Obama is a Centrist Democrat. Romney is a Centrist Republican. Any idea that Obama is a radical is ridiculous.* We repent of lazy language & thought.
We wake up as the church that the role the Liberals used to play in the system does not function. There is no moderating or buffering presence to bring a corrective to the system. Thus, participating in the system as-it-now-exists will not fix the system. The corporate hold over every aspect of our political system is pervasive.
We step up as the church in the revelation that government is not going to fulfill the expectation to

bring good news to the poor (Economy)
restore sight to the blind (Medical)
release to the captive (Legal)
lift up the broken hearted (Compassion)

The church can do these things! We have deferred to the political system for too long. We have outsourced our responsibility to society but now live with the remains of the bloated carcass Christendom. With the death of the liberal class resistance to corporate rule and unchecked consumerism is impotent. The Citizen’s United ruling is just one step on long trail … but we know where it leads.
There are churches in every community and there may be no greater existing potential than us! ** I know it sounds dreamy, but in the rest of this series I want to flesh it out. By the end, it might not seem as far-fetched as it does right now.
– Bo Sanders

*Wall Street campaign funding, legalizing assassination, and Guantanamo Bay are your first 3 hints.
** The danger of course is that we keep voting based on two issues while turning a blind eye to corporate rule, environmental deregulation, and perpetual war.

This post is the beginning of a new series and was co-posted on Homebrewed Christianity.

March 23, 2012 0

Two Trolls and a Bridge (part 2 of 3)

In part one I mentioned that there are two trolls that guard the bridge to a new way. I named them as Colonial Christianity and Environmental Dualism. Of the many issues facing us, let me tell why I recognized those two.

In 1421 Chinese ships landed on the Pacific coast of what we know as North America. Last year in Postcolonial class, my prof asked us a series of questions that began with “Why didn’t they stay and colonize? What was different from what especially the Spanish would do a century later? ”

I spent the semester, as we read Said, de las Casas, and all those who follow them looking for a common theme that could provide a interpretive key. I kept noticing that there was secondary mechanism behind the machine of Colonial power.

Throughout history there have been Empires and that, by definition, comes with a conquest narrative. Even in our own Bible we see that group like Assyria, the Babylonians Greeks, and Romans swept through Israel. Israel itself had the Canaanite conquest narrative. Not to mention that China was an empire that conquered and subjugated the areas and nations around them. There is nothing new about either empire or conquest.

But this is not that. There is something else going on in the Colonial era that led the British, French, Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish to expand and extend that impulse to an exponential degree. It is so inflamed and exaggerated that some explanation must be provided as to difference that we see in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries.

Technology is insufficient as an explanation. Guns and horses certainly explain some of atrocities we see with the Conquistadores but that is merely wood for the framework. There was a fuel that made it so flammable and destructive. What fueled the Colonial drive was a specific brand of Christianity.

I think that needs to be pointed out. It must be acknowledged for two reasons:

It is still with us
its unquestioned giveness allows it to remain in power but in a far more sinister way – in secret assumption.

Colonial Christianity remains – not just as a residue – but as an unquestioned operating system and that is both an ongoing danger to our planet’s existence (war, environment, economy, etc) but also to the very integrity of the Gospel message that it purports to contain.

Nipples and Bellybuttons

One of the most powerful things that the Western mind inherited comes from the thought of Renee Descartes – it is a Cartesian dualism between the mind and the physical body. On the surface it does not look so danderous – but it morphs and attches itself to other really valuable things. One mutant offspring begins to distinguish between humans and everything else. This fits great into Colonial Christianity. The result is that we think we are exceptional.

Humans are mammals – notice the presence of nipples and bellybuttons – while many Christians recognize the similarities they refused to acknowledge that humans are mammals (and then are confused by our sexual desires and habits).

This exceptional dualism shows up in all sorts of places! In the study of religion, even if we acknowledge that other religions grew UP from communities and are expressions of their various locations … Christianity is held to be an exception to that. It came DOWN from Heaven and would be the same truth regardless of its historical embeddedness in the Ancient Near East.

Exceptionalism is an ongoing mentality today. It affects so many areas. [by the way, Randy Woodley wrote a great piece on political exceptionalism here]

In my opinion – beside the possible exception of modern war – there is no area where exceptional thinking is more deadly than the environment. From dust we came – as humans we are made up and sustained by what comes from the soil, the water, and the air.

We must repent of of this exceptional dualism and confess that while we are unique on the earth – we are not exceptions to it and in fact we are integral parts of it and completely dependent upon it.

When you put these two monsters of Colonial Christianity and Environmental Dualism together, you may be able to see why I think that they are the Trolls blocking the bridge to a new way.

Tomorrow I will attempt to articulate what waits on the other side of the bridge. The simple fact is that we can’t go back. We can’t undo Colonization. We aren’t going back to family farms. We can’t refreeze the polar ice caps or re-create the Glaciers in Glacier National Park. As they say ‘we shall not pass this way again’. But I think that there is a different way of being in the world that holds hope for us.

originally posted at the Ethnic Space blog

March 21, 2012 1

God as She-He-They

Originally posted at Homebrewed Christianity as “She Who is Not”

Earlier this week I had a post about language and God talk that incorporated C.S. Lewis’ poem “A Footnote on All Prayers”. Part of what came out of that was an exchange with J.W. about pronouns, the Bible, and Inspiration. I wanted to transfer some of that over here (I have edited it for clarity) in order to open up the conversation to more people.

J.W.: So, what does your god look like? And how is that look any different from Piper’s or Driscoll’s?

Me:
Thanks for asking! Actually there is quite a substantial difference. Let me point out just a couple of things to start:
A) I don’t believe that language about God is univocal (as I have said). SO we begin in humility understanding that all our words, metaphors and concepts are OUR best attempt.
B) I believe that langue (since it is not univocal) functions relationally. When Jesus uses ‘Father’ language, he is talking about the WAY in which relates to a father. Not that God’s ontological being is Father in an exacting and representative way. It is an expressive use of language. That is the nature of language.
C) The way that Scripture is expressed is historic. I believe that the Bible is Inspired by Holy Spirit. That means that Holy Spirit was at work in the authors and ultimately in those who collected and validated the canon. (I confess this by faith). Those authors were historically situated and particularly located. They expressed their thoughts in their best language in their best frameworks. We see that historical locatedness and account for it when we engage their writings.
D) Whether you call it ‘original sin’ (I don’t) or ‘human nature’ or (my favorite) relational brokeness and conflicting biological impulses … humans have a problem. We are not 100% whole. Something is wrong (we don’t even do the good we WANT to do). That means that in every epoch and era there are things in place that are not perfect. Those show up in scripture – since it is a snap shot of its environment. The Bible is fully human (and I believe fully divine in a Process sense) but it is not ABSENT of humanity. It is full of humanity.
So If you take just those 4 things in contrast to Piper and Driscoll, then my God talk is:

in Humility not certainty or pushy
Relational not static or exacting
Historical not trans-historic
Human not un-human

Does that help? SO that is my starting point. From there I diverge wildly from the other two.

J.W.
Well, first of all, thanks for a response.
Second, no offense, but you use an awful lot of words to not say too much. Or, to say the same thing over and over while denying that you are saying one thing, yet actually affirming another. Since I don’t have any real idea what you believe Piper and Driscoll believe, I still don’t know that you are painting a different god or not.
You start out saying that all expressions of God are only a best attempt, but then you claim to believe the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So, which is it? Our best attempt, or Holy Spirit inspired? See the problem there. It’s either one or the other, can’t be both.
Certainly the Bible is written situationally. God could have inspired men to write it so it only made sense at one point in the entire course of time, or He could have inspired it so that it meant the same thing from beginning to end, from the beginning of time to the end of time. And written so that ordinary people could figure it out with a little help from His Holy Spirit. Which is what I believe. You seem to believe that only post-modern thought with a lot of help from certain philosophers can figure out this whole humility, relation, human thing. Sorry, way too many creeks have flowed over their banks throughout history for me to believe that only recently have we been smart enough to figure this whole mess out.
God (Holy Spirit) inspired the whole Bible. He could have very easily caused His writers to use words that wouldn’t mean anything to their (at the time, current) readers, but would only matter eons later. IF that is what He intended.
Again, you haven’t showed me anything but dichotomies, and nothing of substance that disproves anything Piper et al believe-which I still don’t know what you believe they believe.

Me:
1) I did use a lot of words, but it was to say quite a bit. Unfortunately it was not what you were looking for so you think I didn’t say much. I assure you that I say quite enough in my 300 words to get in a lot of trouble in many circles!
2) You are 100% wrong that “It’s either one or the other, can’t be both.” Inspiration is not the OVERriding of human intent – it is the filling UP and expanding of human intent. Inspiration does not make something inhuman. You are thinking of something else not inspiration. Then you accuse me of dichotomies? Weird. I am talking about a participatory-relational model that transcends either/or thinking. You must be confused.
3) Here is an example of the difference (which you apparently were not able to pick up on): It is equally a valid to call god She as it is to call god He. Because in the end, god is neither. Those are pronouns that stand in for their antecedent but which do not entirely explain god or contain god’s ontological reality. God did not give Christianity a masculine feel. We did. God is God that is beyond our biological categorizations and anatomical classification. God is not defined by those – we simply conceptualize God and these terms and portray those conceptions in our language.
This is the nature of language. It is symbolic – analogical – and metaphorical. That does not mean that we are not saying anything when we talk about God. We are. It does not mean that there is no inspiration. There is. Those are not mutually exclusive.
To quote Elizabeth Johnson in She Who Is :

Words about God are cultural creatures, intwined with the mores and adventures of the faith community that uses them. As cultures shift, so too does the specificity of God-talk.

To call God She is just as accurate and as inaccurate as calling God ‘he’.

February 28, 2012 0

Language, God Talk, and Prayer

I never struggle to believe in God. I believe in the deep core of my being. I have faith in my bones. I breath this stuff. I am filled with Holy Spirit and that gives purpose to my day and direction to my life. I never doubt the reality of the Christian faith … until I listen to a conservative like John Piper or Marc Driscoll talk. Then, it is all too apparent to me that we are (at least partially) projecting our greatest hopes and dreams onto the screen of the heavens. We are outsourcing our fears and evils onto a cosmic bad guy called the devil. We have created a galactic father figure in the sky (paging Dr. Freud).

It is so clear when Piper talks that it makes me want to retreat into the post-liberal work of George Lindbeck!

Xenophanes is famed to have said:

“If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen would draw them to look like oxen, and each would make the gods bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.”

It gets boiled down to “If horses had gods – they would look like horses.”

Most days I can stave that off. I can avoid the haunting suspicion and nagging doubt … but what Piper does is create a God in his own image – there is no other way to say it – it is idolatry.

So what? you may ask. Why even bother with it? Because, I believe that there really is a God.

C.S. Lewis wrote a poem one time called “a footnote to all prayers” (it references Pheidias who was a legendary statue maker in the ancient world)

Footnote to All Prayers
He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

This is why we must acknowledge what it is we are doing when we pray, when we preach, and when we practice. We are doing the best we can with words, symbols, sounds and images. But if those images are solidified and codified past their point of original artistry, mysticism and metaphor – then it becomes something deadly to the soul and dangerous to the one seeking the real and living God revealed in Christ.

February 21, 2012 6

Clarifying the Quad

a quick follow up to the post from last week
– both of which were also posted at Homebrewed

I wanted to thank everyone who gave feedback on the Four Locations of Theology in the 21st century post from earlier this week. I appreciate the comments here, on facebook, and the emails. It has given me a lot to think about and I wanted to clarify three themes that have emerged.

Three clarifications:

Reason seems to be the suspicious quadrant. Every time I bring up quadrilateral, more than half of the conversation will be centered on reason. This week was no exception. Reason draws the most concern – which is funny to me because tradition is the one that I find most suspect.

Here is the thing I would want to clarify: the other 3 themes of Scripture, Tradition and Experience all have reason woven into them. Those who wrote the scriptures, those who established the tradition and even our won experience are all saturated with reason. It is inescapable. The scriptures did not fall from the sky! They passed through the author’s minds and were processed with reason. Same with tradition. The creeds were not divined in some sort of supernatural ceremony. The were constructed and reasoned. Our experiences are interpreted utilizing our filters, frameworks and lenses.

It seems important then to clarify that those three are not independent of reason but are dynamically intertwined with it. It would be useless to take out reason (as some have suggested) because it interlinked and inescapable.

It may be that the quad needs something else. Some suggested replacing one of the 4 elements with an alternative. My favorite idea came from my friend Raphael who said

“I suggest we add a fifth source for the practice of theology in the 21st century: Imagination!”

Admittedly, it would no longer be a quad! but I think that the tradeoff is that you would get adventure and zest incorporated and not just a static, conserving, or historical product.

There are no guarantees. Even if we could all agree to utilize the quad for the theological endeavor, there is no guarantee that we would all come up with some thing or come out with the same conclusions. This seems to be a major concern – that we can not ensure the outcome of such an endeavor.

I am surprised at the conserving nature of such mentalities! People are ok to ‘go on the journey’ as long as we predictably end up basically where we started.
Think all you want. Explore new thoughts and incorporate science … just don’t stray too far from the foundations of antiquity! Integrate new realities and account for ongoing historical developments … just make sure that you end up with the same thing we started with.

I have not overstated this hesitancy and resistance. But the reality is that there are no guarantees. You may start out an Evangelical and end up being an Emergent type working in a Mainline church with Process theology as your main conversation partner! (for instance)

In summary:

You can’t get rid of reason, it is already present in the other three. Scripture, Tradition and Experience are inextricably laced with it.
The quad may need a little something extra. The 21st century may require some zest, adventure and imagination
There are no guarantees. While we want to honor the historical expression and provide continuity with the trajectory … it might look a little different and think a little different than it did in the 3rd or 17th century.

Thanks for all your feedback, thoughts, and concerns. I appreciate the conversation.

February 7, 2012 1

Job, the Gospel and Tebow

I love the controversy that surrounded Tim Tebow – I just hate what his fan do with his success. It is irresponsible and un-Biblical.

I have said before that I respect Tim and that he does not think God helps the Broncos win football games.

Why I love Tim: He works incredibly hard, has an amazing energy, lives out his faith, and serves orphans. This guy is incredible!

Why I hate his success: If you are in the NFL, you are gifted. Every player is extraordinarily talented … and I think that those talents come for God. I would prefer if we said that every player was blessed by God – some acknowledge it and some are quite vocal about.

The assertion that God blesses one player more than another is where I run into the problem: that God is picking and choosing this person over that one – and interfering in this moment but not that one is a view of God that is irresponsible and indefensible.
I will go as far as to say that it is somewhere between superstition and missing the entire point of Jesus’ life and message. This certainly is not a Christian view of God.

Last week, my partner at Homebrewed – Tripp had a blog posted by Rachel Held Evans where he said that God was not omnipotent and that the future is not determined. In the TNT podcast that followed that, Tripp and I talk about the line of reasoning that some people took in not only their objection to Tripp’s note but came to the defense of an omnipotent conception of God . Some people just came out and said “the book of Job shows that God is omnipotent”. This is a terrifying sentence to hear from a Christian.

There are three things about Job that need to be clear:

It is not a newspaper report. It is a dramatic presentation (broken into distinct acts).

That God rewards those who do right and love God and punishes those who disobey and turn away from God … is exactly what the book of Job is written against. That is against the narrative of Job’s life story at the beginning and against what God says at the end.

Christians believe that Jesus lived a perfect life – and was brutally murdered. I see that as the Death of Job’s God. That old concept of God died on the Cross.

So the Bible Continue reading “Job, the Gospel and Tebow” →

January 20, 2012 3

White, Extremely Male and Incredibly Homophobic

I originally posted this at Homebrewed Christianity but wanted to move it over here to keep the conversation going.

The news is wild these days! Its almost as if there is a cultural shift underway!
Let me just highlight 4 news stories from the past weeks:

1) The Pope: Gay marriage threatens humanity’s future

2) Pastor Joel Osteen to Oprah: Homosexuality Is Sin — But Gay People Will Get Into Heaven

3) Rick Santorum: A Straight Dad In Prison Is Better Than Two Gay Dads Who Aren’t

4) Pastor Mark Driscoll’s book on Marriage hits the shelves

It is interesting that all four of these stories have come to my attention within a week. What most people will focus on is whether there is a Bible verse to back up what they are saying or not.

What needs to be stated before we get there is two-fold:

All four are white males. Somebody may ask “are you implying that their gender or race somehow diminishes their right to speak with authority?” and I would answer “No – I just think that it is worth pointing it out in case later we wanted to examine how people come to power and in what ways authority is constructed, bestowed, or recognized.”

When you have the leader of all the world’s catholics, a guy who is renowned for not speaking up about anything or coming down on anyone, a presidential candidate, and one of the most influential evangelical pastors in America saying the same thing… one of a couple of things has to cross your mind.

Either:
a) they are all sticking up for the truth or
b) they are all sticking up for an antiquated perspective of the past

The reason that this issue has grabbed my attention is that many are calling it “The Last Taboo”. Continue reading “White, Extremely Male and Incredibly Homophobic” →

January 20, 2012 2

Bo Sanders: Public Theology

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My 200th post is to thank my International Readers!

Opting Out of the Argument Culture (follow up to 4 > 2)

the Death of the Liberals is killing us

Two Trolls and a Bridge (part 2 of 3)

God as She-He-They

Language, God Talk, and Prayer

Clarifying the Quad

Job, the Gospel and Tebow

White, Extremely Male and Incredibly Homophobic

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