the parish

Disney Breathes A Sigh of Relief

Did you hear that collective sigh last week? That was Disney Corporation's relief that the financial devastation wrought on its empire by the Southern Baptist boycott was finally ending. The resolution to end the boycott said in part:

WHEREAS, The boycott has communicated effectively our displeasure concerning products and policies that violate moral righteousness and traditional family values; and

WHEREAS, For a boycott to be effective, it must be specifically targeted and of limited duration; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, June 21-22, 2005, declare a conclusion to our boycott of The Disney Company...

I just looked at Disney's financial reports since '96, the year before the boycott began. Here are the total revenues for every year since '96:

• '96     $18.739 billion
• '97     $22.473 billion
• '98     $22.976 billion
• '99     $23.402 billion
• '00     $25.402 billion
• '01     $25.256 billion
• '02     $25.360 billion
• '03     $27.061 billion
• '04     $30.752 billion

You'll notice a slight slump in '01 and '02. You'll also notice an increase the year of and immediately following the announcement of the boycott. I'm still scratching my head about that phrase in the resolution: "for a boycott to be effective..." Like they'd know.

Secrets

Have you seen this?

Politics of Jesus, Part One

This is for the Theology on Tap folks. I suspect we won't be able to discuss the entire book tomorrow night. We'll get as far as we can, but because I'm trying to be realistic, I'm only posting questions/observations from the first half of the book. These are just items I marked and they aren't mandatory conversation topics. Any suggested topics will also be accepted. If you've read the book and aren't a TonT "member," feel free to comment here as well.

1. On pgs. 4-8 Yoder presents six arguments from those who believe Jesus is not the ethical norm. We'll probably start with a discussion of whether he is or not.
2. Pg. 50 "...Jesus public career had been such as to make it quite thinkable that he would pose to the Roman Empire an apparent threat serious enough to justify his execution." This is an important point, especially in light of non-violent atonement theory.
3. Pg. 51 "The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come."
4. Pg. 53 "...his call to an ethic marked by the cross, a cross identified as the punishment of a man who threatens society by creating a new kind of community leading a radically new kind of life." We need to spend some time talking about the Church as an eschatological community.
5. Pg. 58 "The question facing Jesus was not a choice between backward-looking and forward-looking visions of liberation...or between socialist and bourgeois understandings of freedom; the issue was whether violence is justified in principle for what one considers to be a very righteous political cause."
6. For chapter three I'd like to talk about the economics of Jubilee.
7. Pg. 96 "The believer's cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of social nonconformity...it is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost." This little bit sums up much of my antipathy to evangelical and megachurch ecclesiology and soteriology.
8. Pg. 96-97 "The one temptation the man Jesus faced...as a constitutive element of his public ministry, was the temptation to exercise social responsibility, in the interest of justified revolution, through the use of available violent means...We understand Jesus only if we can empathize with this three-fold rejection: the self-evident, axiomatic, sweeping rejection of both quietism and establishment responsibility, and the difficult, constantly reopened, genuinely attractive option of the crusade."
9. Pg. 103 "...Albert Schweitzer showed us that Jesus 'as he really was' really did take himself to be an apocalyptic figure and his age to be the one just before the New Order begins." What does it mean for us that Jesus' Gospel was of the kingdom and not of individual salvation from sins? What does it mean that the kingdom has come?

That should be a good starting point. No way do we get through all of that over two beers. Not to mention the topics everyone else introduces. See you tomorrow night. Pray they have Celebrator. If you get there first and get the last Celebrator, God will be very angry with you.

Blurring the Lines

I was watching a 60 Minutes rerun on Sunday night. Halfway watching, actually. At some point in the show they ran a news update. Now, let me be really honest here. I wasn't paying enough attention to know whether it was a real update. However, I do remember that two of the stories were "real" news. I'm almost sure it was a CBS News update. Anyway, the third story was that General Motors will be extending their "employee discount" to all new car buyers through July. Huh?

Does GM own CBS? Does Viacom own GM? How is this news? Since when does CBS do press releases or straight advertising for GM? Am I hallucinating? What the hell is going on here?

Peace of Christ?

Some days I don't believe in God.

I was delivering food for the Catholic Worker House this morning. About 30 people showed up to help sack groceries for 235 families. After all the groceries are bagged, you can get a list of addresses and do deliveries. I got a list near NW 10th and Penn (you OKC folk know what that means). It's a poor, crime-ridden area that has many very senior citizens who are too poor or too infirm or too stubborn to move elsewhere.

I knocked on a door two blocks east of Penn. No answer. Rang the doorbell. No answer. Waited a few more minutes because I was sure someone was home. Finally, the curtain on the door stirred slightly and I saw a rheumy, brown eye peering through a crack. "Groceries," I said. The eye blinked. "Groceries!" I said louder. Nothing. "I'll set them on the porch," I told the eye. I put the sacks down and went to my car, assuming that whoever was inside was too afraid to open the door to a stranger. Just before I closed my car door, the front door opened and an eighty-something woman with a cane hobbled out onto the porch.

"Thank you," she called after me.

"Would you like some help with that, ma'am?"

"I think I can drag it in the house," she said.

I got out of my car and moved toward the porch. "Those bags are very heavy. Please let me help you."

"Okay," she said. I stepped up onto the porch. "I'm just afraid to open the door now. Yesterday a man tried to force his way into my house. My grandson wasn't here and I was so frightened. I'm scared all the time. Too many drugs. The police are always busting drug houses on this street. People selling drugs...there go two there." She pointed at a Latino couple moving down the street with a shopping cart.

I stepped back onto the porch and under my breath prayed for the peace of Christ on her home and life. "God bless you," she said. "Bless you too, ma'am."

I went back to my car and left, driving north to my relatively safe neighborhood, wondering what the peace of Christ means to people who are so frail that they can't defend themselves from predators, who distrust Latinos and Blacks and Whites because they look different, who are afraid of every knock on the door, and who hear gunfire, violence, and the repercussions of economic and racial oppression outside their doors every night. What does peace of Christ mean to them? What does the kingdom of God coming to NW 10th and Penn look like? For her, I hope it means that she'll be safe in her home tonight and tomorrow night...Right now, I'm trying to believe in God. Pray for her if you pray.

Plessy vs. Ferguson Redux

From the recent Southern Baptist Convention slate of resolutions:

"RESOLVED, That we call upon all future presidents to nominate strict constructionist judges who will interpret rather than make law; and be it further..."

Okay. So what you're saying is you want the Plessy vs. Ferguson justices and not the Brown vs. Board of Education justices? Just checking. Would someone please tell the SBC that their racist roots are showing, and by the way, Rushdoony is dead.

Wherefore Art Thou, Irony?

Heard about our local hydra-headed megachurch's annual day at the amusement park? They print tee shirts, take a band, invite the church, and invite the church to invite friends. It's named after a huge concert you may have heard about. It happened in upstate NY in the 60's. Yeah, that one. The mud, the sex, the Hell's Angels. The climax of the day at this Stock is baptism. You heard me—baptism.

For the paltry sum of $11 you can join your community in celebrating the most significant spiritual event in the new believer's life. The initiation into the kingdom of God, an event that the entire community should celebrate, an event that marks the beginning of a life of kingdom living, can now be attended for only $44 for a family of four. Now, before you think that's too much to spend to celebrate your new brothers' and sisters' initiation into the community of God, remember, you get to ride the rides too.

That's correct. Not only do they charge admission to baptism, the initiates are free to play on the rides as soon as their baptism is done, maybe even before. I can't think of a more appropriate symbol of this particular church's commitment to the kingdom of God than an amusement park. I've been working on a new thesis this year: I'm convinced that conservatives of the political and religious stripe are immune to irony. This is one more bit of evidence in favor of my thesis.

Oh, and you get a tie-dyed tee shirt too.

Tattoos, a Cartoon, and a Cross-Country Blogger

Finally got my tattoo finished! It looks excellent. Those of you who have seen it before today will not believe the transformation. And if you live locally and are looking for a tattoo artist, holler at me and I'll give you a name and number of a very good one right here in OKC. (Not that I would condone violating a health code ordinance...)

Thanks to Charlie for a very sane moment in an otherwise insane week.

Also, Zossima will be whizzing through OKC on his way to CO today. We'll be sampling the goods at Tapwerks about 3:00 p.m. If you're a praying person, pray that they have Celebrator.

Barna and I agree! What the hell?!

An interesting analysis of Barna's State of the Church 2005 is here. Regular readers and commenters here won't be shocked by any of Barna's conclusions. Much of what we've been saying and many of the things for which we've been castigated by the more Pollyanna-ish evangelicals who wander by are confirmed by Barna's study.

Run Like Hell!

Bruce Prescott told me a year ago that Exodus Mandate would not give up on getting the Southern Baptist kids out of public schools. The SBC has their national convention next week, and the school issue will come up again. I'm pretty sure Bruce is right on this one. There will be two school-related issues, I believe. One will be the agenda of Exodus Mandate. The other will be the investigation of public schools for a homosexual agenda. Al Mohler addresses the agenda of Exodus Mandate here. To his credit, SBC president Bobby Welch has said pulling Christian kids out of public schools is a terrible idea. Now he thinks that it's a bad idea because public schools are a mission field, but at least he doesn't want to hunker in the bunker 'til Jesus comes back like Mohler and Exodus Mandate.

The other issue is just silly. One of the SBC pastors, and I wish I could give him credit, had the courage to speak up and say that seven resolutions directly or indirectly related to homosexuality in the past ten years was more than enough. There should be plenty of bloggable material coming out of the convention next week. Additionally, I will be going to Falls Creek on Wednesday with a Baptist youth group. It's my first trip to Falls Creek during the "come to Jesus" rallies, so I assume there will be bloggable material there too. For those of you outside OK, Falls Creek is a generations old tradition around here. Baptist kids go every summer to get saved, get drunk, get laid, get pregnant, and get disillusioned. I can't wait.