the parish

McLaren Channels Hubmaier, et al

Chapter eight of SMoJ includes this quote:

Could the kingdom of God come with bigger weapons, sharper swords, cleverer political organizing? Could the kingdom of God be a matter of what is often called redemptive violence? Or would that methodology corrupt the kingdom of God, so it would stop being "of God" at all, and would instead become just another earthly (and perhaps in some sense demonic) principality or power?

There is much happening in this chapter. McLaren shows his deep reflection on the works of Yoder, Wink, Rene Girard, and Berkhof. In a nutshell, McLaren wonders if the kingdom must always maintain an ethic of non-violence to be the kingdom. I've argued pacifism on this blog many times, so I don't want to go into it here, but I will say that Yoder makes the strongest case for what McLaren is attempting to do here. Most arguments contra pacifism boil down to the "what if x" sort: what if someone breaks in..." You've heard many examples. In Royal Priesthood Yoder argues that pragmatic answers can't be offered in lieu of theological reflection. As my professor put it one time: the question isn't what do I do if someone breaks in; it is was Jesus a pacifist, and if so, what does that mean for us?

McLaren talks about the scandal of the message in this chapter, and he focuses on how Jesus used the message of the kingdom to confront and expose the political and religious powers in their fallenness in his day. The thing we must keep in mind is that every power, be it church or government or domestic partnerships, has the potential to become fallen, demonic to use McLaren's word. Not demonic in the sense of winged, scaly creatures, but demonic in the sense of oppressive, exploitative, and contrary to the kingdom of God. The message of the kingdom confronts the powers most directly at the point of their fallenness, that is, where they begin to rob humanity of its life, dignity and freedom. The kingdom always seems to resist coercion, violence, and oppression. How then can it use the very things it resists and still be the kingdom?

In a reflection borrowed, I think, from Girard, McLaren asks: "What if being conquered is absolutely necessary to expose the brutal violence and dark oppression of these principalities and powers, these human ideologies and counterkingdoms—so they, have been exposed, can be seen for what they are and freely rejected, making room for the new and better kingdom?" This is the function of the scapegoat of which Girard writes in The Scapegoat. In Girard's thesis the scapegoat brings warring factions together as they find a common, and usually innocent, enemy/victim. However, in a more orthodox framework, we could say that Jesus functions as a scapegoat to reveal the warring factions for what they are, fallen powers, both of which, religious and political, are corrupt to the point of oppressive violence. In this framework, the notion that God is using redemptive violence to appease Godself by the death of Jesus seems a bit nonsensical. God is not using redemptive violence; Jesus is the victim of oppressive violence for the sake of humanity, inasmuch as he reveals the fallen powers to be precisely that and then provides a way for us to freely choose a different kingdom. Within this framework the use of violence can be seen for what it is, participation in fallen powers.

Consumer Culture Conference MP3's

The sessions from the recent Christianity in a Consumer Culture conference are now available online in mp3 format. I'm afraid my session had technical issues, so it is not available. However, I highly encourage you to listen to Sondra Wheeler, Vince Miller, and Rodney Clapp. They were fantastic.

Why Say It When Someone Will Say It For Me, Part II

Hank Hill goes to the local mega.

Jon Broke My Finger

Not much blogging lately as I've been busier than a whore on dollar day. Just got back from two days of discussions about the Nazarene church and emergent theology/church. I will blog more about it later, but for now I'll have to take a couple days off as I'm pretty sure my good friend Jon broke my finger when he smashed it (intentionally, I think) in a car door. I think he was getting even with me for mentioning hookah smoking and wine at Naz HQ.

Wired Parish Recordings

We recorded the first podcasts for Wired Parish (http://www.wiredparish.com/) today. Jon Middendorf is going to be my co-host, and we started with a diagnosis of the Church using the Nicene marks: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. We got the first three done today, and we'll do apostolic next time along with Yoder's marks. I think he borrowed them from a Dutch theologian whose name eludes me (t 'Hooft?) but they are witness, fellowship, and service. We'll toss in one on free church ecclesiology to complete the first two months of podcasts. If you haven't signed up over there yet, you should. They're launching August 1.

Now that I've cleared my slate of assignments, podcasts, Disciple Now, and sundry obligations, I'll return to McLaren this week.

By the way, I apparently live in hell.

Last night KWTV-9 (our local CBS affiliate which also has a partnership with the worst newspaper in America, the Daily Oklahoman) ran a looooonnnngggg segment on Lifechurch.tv's new internet campus during the ten o'clock news. (Yes, in OK that passes for news.) The piece pretended to be real journalism by asking tough questions like, "Can a person really go to church by logging onto their computer?" No one asked, "What does it do to the identity of the church to so fragment the Body of Christ that individuals can 'log-on' to church and never be troubled by other messy folk?" Of course, the standard Jesus answer to everything was that people are gonna get saved. I would consider it a favor if someone would purge that word from the evangelical lexicon until someone else actually establishes what it means. After this puff piece on innovative evangelism (yes, that's bile in the back of my throat...), I was ill-prepared for tonight.

KFOR-4 (our local NBC affiliate which has a partnership with Beelzebub, apparently) ran a story on a Tulsa pastor and RTD's on the ten o'clock news. RTD's? What are those, you ask. Well, they are religiously transmitted diseases. Things like "affluenza": the belief that blessing entails a Jaguar or Cadillac. The piece went on forever and finished with Linda "I'll whore myself for Jesus anyday" Cavanaugh telling us to log onto the KFOR web site to take a test to determine if we have any RTD's.

I have a few, Linda. EAS: evangelical aversion syndrome; emajitis: an affiliction brought on by exposure to evangelism masquerading as journalism; and finally, PLJCBSIDHTLIOOMD (hard to pronounce I know): please, Lord Jesus, come back so I don't have to live in Oklahoma one more day.

Translatability, Part One?

I swear I'll get back to McLaren...

I like Bob because Bob is honest. He asks good questions because he tries to understand things from different angles. He's a good man. So, here is what Bob said about the last post:

How would you get the attention of church outsiders whose primary language is consumerism without being transformed into a consumer church?

That's a great question, and it goes to the heart of what is unfortunately called evangelism. Dino has asked a similar question before. How do you go about translating the Gospel without compromising it or without buying into a different language game (if you haven't read this blog for a while or Wittgenstein, that will make no sense to you...sorry)? More to the point for this entry, how effective is advertising in reaching people who aren't already inclined to believe the Gospel?

Here's what I think. If you ask a non-believer about church advertising, they are likely to answer in one of three ways:

1. They simply don't care.
2. They like or dislike the ad but still don't care.
3. They dislike the whole idea of church and hate that you're advertising, as it shows a fundamental misunderstanding about the way language works.

In the previous entry I critiqued an ad that a local megachurch ran in a weekly journal. To be fair I'd like to offer a critique of another ad, this one by a church that aspires to be the local mega. (So much so that they use the local mega pastor's dvd sermons in their college group.) I received a slick, two-color ad in the mail a few weeks ago. On the front was a black and white photo of an old woman with an old, black phone handset held to her ear. You remember the old phones that were all black with a twisty cord and a rotary dial? Some of you don't, but you can see one at a museum in your city. The tagline on the ad said, "Shock your mama!" On the reverse the message continued with, "Don't go to church on Sunday." The ad was for this church's new Saturday night service.

You realize if you're an adbuster type that this ad is completely ineffective at reaching non-churched people. It is an ad written by insiders for insiders. Why? Because if you've never been a church-goer, and if you're a child of a parent who is not a church-goer, then your mama is not gonna be shocked by you not going to church on Sunday. Indeed, she'd be more shocked if you called to report that you had attended church.

This leads to two observations: a great deal of church advertising is directed at Christians, and advertising is pretty ineffective for non-Christians. Are these fair conclusions? Think about it like this: if you're trying to sell a church, aren't you assuming that the recipient or target already believes church is a good idea? I've never seen an ad that addresses the idea that church is a good idea; usually it addresses the benefits of church x over against church y where church y is assumed to be an unspecified, irrelevant and/or boring church. Second, I'm pretty sure that non-Christians have to have some receptivity to the Gospel to be open to being sold on a church. I know dozens of Christians who think church is a terrible idea, and why are we naive enough to think non-Christians will find it more appealing than people who already believe Jesus is God?

In short, and I realize I haven't made all the connections, advertising is possibly the second worst vehicle for spreading the Gospel (right behind tracts or street evangelism). Advertising is a particular kind of language game that assumes the target is semi-receptive or it creates an experience whereby a positive idea of the commodity is fostered within the target thereby making them semi-receptive. Neither of these is particulary effective when the target is a non-Christian and the commodity is the Gospel. Translatability depends upon a different kind of language game, but I'm sleepy and that will have to wait.