the parish

Ingrid Schlueter = 666 in Blogger Numerology

Bob Stevens sent me a link to a Christianity Today story about Cedarville University canceling a Shane Claiborne event due to a certain blogger's campaign to rid the world of mushy Christianity. Ingrid "My Jesus Carries an Uzi" Schlueter over at Slice of Laodicea wrote an entry decrying the caving in of the Baptist school in the face of emergent/liberal Christians and then sent links to her entry to pastors and alumni. (Is self-promotion a virtue in Ingrid's Christian framework? One would think it falls under the category of pride...) The alumni and pastors who were gullible enough to listen to anything that comes out of the mouth of that antichrist promptly called the school. The school caved and canceled the engagement.

Now, I don't care about Shane Claiborne; I'm not caught up in his Birkenstock revolution, or whatever it's called, but he seems like a nice enough guy, very sincere, trying to make Christianity work for people on the margins, etc. I am sorry that his event was canceled, but I'm more sorry that anyone listens to anything she writes. Full disclosure: an entry on Ingrid's blog was forwarded to muckety-mucks in the Nazarene Church leading to my disinvitation to professor at Southern Nazarene University 18 months ago. (No. I'm not bitter. I'm far happier teaching at a state school outside the domain of fundamentalists.) Ingrid is trying to purify the faith such that it conforms to her uber-legalistic version of what Christianity is about. She is the hypertext version of a Jack Chick tract. She will of course toss out dozens of Scriptures to back up all her points, and I'm sure she feels vindicated because Jesus called Herod a fox and Paul withstood Peter to his face and blah, blah, blah. However, she is nothing less than hateful, mean-spirited, judgmental, hypocritical, ignorant, and incredibly vain. Who in their right mind believes they have a calling to purify the faith? The ego attached to that endeavor must be huge.

Now that I'm outside the camp, so to speak, I'm unconcerned about what the Ingrids of the world say. However, I'm confused as to why anyone listens. Seriously. Haven't we seen dozens of Ingrids in our lives? Hasn't the Church listened to enough venomous apologists and heresy hunters that they have learned their lesson? Can't they recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing, to borrow from the erstwhile apostle. How is it that a lunatic antichrist sends links to her own blog, people click on it, read the pabulum that pretends to be insightful apologetics, and makes a phone call based on that entry? Are Christians so lazy that they prefer to be told what to think? Are they so dishonest they won't check out the source? Are they so ignorant of Scripture that they don't realize what she is doing has nothing to do with any sort of Biblical model of confrontation? Do they not realize that anyone who makes it a mission to identify the Laodiceans among us is someone who is desperately angry, vindictive, and so full of hubris she can't see her own hypocrisy? Pitiful. For those of you who will at some point be victimized by Ingrid, I'm genuinely sorry. The shitstorm she created for me has ended well, but there was collateral damage in relationships due to her judgments and assumptions. But for those of you who actually believe a word she writes, what the hell is wrong with you?

Not the Usual Post-Oscar Rant

I have an idea. I think we should cancel the Oscars. Forever. And no, not because it's Hollywood's chance to indulge the already inflated egos of stars, and not because I'm sick of extended ego masturbation in the form of productions, red carpet preening, political speeches, and snarky winners (Coen brothers, anyone?). I was watching two categories with real interest last night: best supporting actor and actress. Seriously, how do you pick a winner in those two categories? I saw three of the five in both categories, and I thought it was just stupid to hand a trophy to one of them and leave the other four as losers. Art shouldn't be competitive. How do you decide who was better: Javier Bardem, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Casey Affleck, Tom Wilkinson? They were brilliant. Some of the best acting I've ever seen. Why hand out a trophy when any acknowledgment of one over the others is simply arbitrary? How do you decide who was better? What are the criteria? There are years when a film or performance is so much better than the rest of the field that a trophy seems warranted, but this year? I just don't see it. What makes No Country for Old Men better than There Will Be Blood? Or Juno? What made Tilda Swinton better than Ruby Dee or Amy Ryan?

I enjoyed the show last night, especially the trimmed down format and the reserved tone (probably due to the fresh wounds of the writers' strike), but I was at a loss as to how to feel about trophies being handed out to one person in a field of outstanding performances. One exception: God bless the Academy for its choice of song of the year. And bringing Irglova back out to give her acceptance speech was one of the genuinely nice things I've seen in Oscar history. Jon Stewart, not the least cynical guy in the world, was perfect for a night when Hansard, Irglova, and Diablo Cody earned awards for the less cynical among us (and I'm not counting myself).

Podcasts (Revised with Jay's response)

Thanks for the queries about new podcasts. Been getting emails from people I've never heard of about them. Jon has decided we're officially rockstars. I think he was assailed by a mob of goateed emergent church planters when he tried to leave his house the other day.

Wired Parish has gone through some changes of late, and Jon and I are on recording hold. Jay is free to explain what is going on in the comments, and if he does respond, I'll add it to this post. I'm not sure the casts are still available on the Christianity Today site, but if they are, there will be some newer ones there. As soon as we get the go ahead from Jefe Jay, we'll be podcasting again.

And here is his response:

I'm here! I'm here! Email forthcoming to Jason (finally). Short version for your esteemed readers - We've run into roadblocks (mainly partner/investor-related. ugh!) that have warranted a production halt for a few more weeks. We're by no means going away, and as GH hinted above, we're likely making as shift to an ad-supported (read: free) model. More news as it happens . . .

The Countdown Begins to May 18

We have Radiohead tickets! The show is May 18 in Dallas at what used to be the Smirnoff Center and is now the delightfully named superpages.com center. If Thom Yorke doesn't make a joke about that, I will be disappointed. We're going with A-fo and J-fo, and will probably make a stop at the amazing wine bar at Gaylord's Grapevine Mills location. I hate to give that family money, but a friend went to the wine bar and brought back pictures. It's incredible. And the wine list is ridiculous. Could there be a better day in Dallas? Did I mention that I have Radiohead tickets?

A Post-Christian Lexicon, Part I

I was arrested by the military police when I was six. Yes, six. My father was stationed at Yokohama Naval Air Station in Japan, and we went to school on base. The school was a white, two-story, clapboard structure, nearly indistinguishable from the barracks and admin buildings around it. With one exception. The fire escape in the back of the school led up to the principal's office. The fire escape ended at a good-sized landing, and the principal's office was visible behind some strangely out of place french doors. I'd walked by a few times and even dared the fire escape once because there was gold in the principal's office, and I wanted it. I would later learn that the eagle atop the flagpole in his office was brass, but it was always well-polished and in my six-year old imagination, it was gold. I wanted it.

I convinced two friends to help me. Basically, they were supposed to keep watch. Climbing the fire escape I had no idea how I was going to get in. I was hoping that the door would simply be unlocked. It seemed unlikely with such a great treasure immediately behind the glass, but I was hopeful. I crept up the fire escape after school one day when everyone had gone home. Once on the landing, I took a moment to look around. My friends were at the bottom of the stairs and they were waving me on. I jiggled the nob. Locked. I was thinking about what to do next when the MP's walked around the corner of the building. One of my friends took off running. The other immediately yelled, "It was his idea," and pointed at me. He started to cry.

To their credit, the MP's didn't rough us up, handcuff us, put us in the cruiser, any of that police stuff. They just called our parents. My father asked me what I thought I was doing. I told him I wanted the gold. I didn't have it in me to lie at that time, or I guess I thought it wouldn't help. He asked what I wanted for a punishment, and this is how I remember how old I was; I told him I thought I should get six swats since I was six years old. Mercifully, he stopped at three.

I told this story, which is completely true, to a friend last week. She was amazed that I was trying to burgle at six years old. I don't recall ever feeling guilty about the attempt, and unlike many shame-based memories, that one sort of disappeared for many years. My mother, good Pentecostal that she was, was mortified by my willingness to knowingly and guiltlessly break the law. It was a discussion we would have many times over the next 19 years. She always talked about sin. Sin. Sin. Sin. It will find you out. It will be revealed. It must be resisted. It lies at the door. You are a sinner. Lost in sin. Born in sin. Conceived in sin. And finally, forgiven of my sin without having to do anything about it myself.

Believing in a concept called sin is pretty easy. One only needs to observe the world to see the consequences of each of us doing our own thing. But sin as a component of identity, as part of my soul, has a different impact on maturing than the idea that sin is an action in which I engage. I spent more than forty years of my life trying to sort out what was the sin side and what was the good side. I examined my actions, motives, emotions, and desires in light of the "what is sin" question. I think it's safe to say that I'm done with the word except when it can be applied without some sort of metaphysical assumptions about judgment and the afterlife. It's a good word inasmuch as it does cut through the psychological clutter and identify an action as not permissible. But in that sense, it's not much better than "bad dog." So why not dispense with it all together?

Truth is, I still want to talk to people who are deeply committed to this concept, and very few things will make a Christian blanch faster than me saying I don't believe in sin. I mean I don't believe we're all hopeless sinners who needed God to kill Jesus so that his blood could be applied (whatever the hell that means) to our sins. I don't mean that all actions are without conceptual, ethical categories: good and evil, right and wrong, constructive and destructive, redemptive and victimizing, etc. But again, sin is as good a word there as offense, transgression, mistake (sometimes), screw up, bad choice, etc. The idea within theism is that sin is an offense against God. Without rehashing the whole of Christian theology, let me make an observation: God doesn't seem to care. No one is getting killed like Ananias and Sapphira anymore. The ground isn't opening up to swallow families who offend God. The selectivity with which certain sects of Christians define what is sin and what isn't defies any attempt to produce a consistent rubric.

So, I think people are mostly fine. Mostly. We do engage in behavior that is destructive of others and disrespectful of the law sometimes. The idea that we're born with a sin nature is destructive to the ability of people to become ethically mature members of a community. I am fine like I am, but there are certain things I shouldn't do, not because God is offended, but because it makes it harder to live with and around others.

I think it's time to say that sin is any action directed against anyone that does not promote peace, reconciliation, and mutual understanding, or an action that overtly victimizes, exploits or dehumanizes another. It's time to talk about what sin is within the context of human relationships, and leave all the God talk out. I can say that anything offends God, and if there is no way to prove it, and there isn't, and if I have enough religious or political or financial clout, I can get people to go along thereby othering hordes of people: gays, lesbians, unmarried couples who are sexually active, people in other religions or sects within my religion, political opponents, etc. Defining sin in ways that benefit one particular group at the expense of another becomes the means whereby sifting is carried out, and as long as people are allowed to speak for God in terms of what sin is, we're no closer to actually getting along. As soon as we can define what sin is in terms of relationships between individuals, races, countries, families, enemies, and neighbors, I think we'll be one step closer to this kingdom of heaven stuff.

Is that Grammy as in Grandma?

What the hell was up with the Grammys last night? I missed the first 45 minutes watching a movie, but got to see the rest of it. I understand it was the 50th anniversary, but is it really necessary to trot out near-corpses who can no longer perform to authenticate how important the music industry is? Have we finally reached a point where each genre needs their own awards show, much like the CMA's? Does anyone really want to see an 81-year old Andy Williams being led around by attractive women as if they are orderlies at the retirement village, or a 70-something Keely Smith ask "aren't we supposed to introduce them?" after the introductions just occurred, or an arthritic Tina Turner looking like she's being tasered just to see if the White Stripes can steal the alternative music Grammy from the much more deserving Arcade Fire? Do we have to endure Kanye thinking his dead mama is important enough to hold up the proceedings? And the pairings! Kid Rock with Keely Smith. Why not just stab me in the eyes and ears with forks instead? And how 'bout the legitimately talented John Legend being relegated to back-up for the hot but near talentless Fergie? And someone tell me if Alicia Keys was trying to look like an oompa-loompa. Was there a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme introduction earlier in the show that I missed? Let's not forget the seemingly endless gospel show, made more tedious by the gratingly up-beat Israel telling the crowd to "wave your hands like this" and then "now sing 'Praise Him.'" Did this just turn into a worship service? And are you really trying to get the crowd of mostly pagans to do an impromptu hallel for the Big Guy? And someone please tell Bruce Springsteen that he actually died five years ago, but before you do, tell John Fogerty that if he has one more surgery on his face, his skin will officially become translucent. And poor Aretha. Honey, are they paying you in trips to the buffet these days? She's got so much fat around her neck now that her vocal chords are incapable of producing anything but a keening warble.

To be fair, Amy Winehouse was awesome, and good for her. I was happy just to see Wilco mentioned. Feist did a very good job, but someone needs to tell these people that she's not really a new artist. Do you have to have a major label release to qualify as "new artist?" I'm not convinced that Kanye isn't just fucking with us. Every time someone made a dig at him (Ludacris, Vince Gill), he took it with good humor. That seems to say he's less of an egomaniac than he appears to be, but he's smart enough and talented enough to fool us all, so who knows. That's it for fair. Pretty much everything else sucked. Perhaps the worst Grammys I've ever seen. Thank God the writers' strike is almost over. Nelly Furtado let slip how dependent these people are on the writers when she said, "We'll be sure that she (Amy Winehouse) gets her Grammy." Uh, thanks, Nelly. I always thought that they had to be present to win...

The Persistence of Disbelief

Psychology Today has a great piece about ministers who have lost their faith and continue in the job. The article points out that everyone interviewed for the story said that they reached a point where they simply stopped believing, a point where it just didn't make sense anymore. Since leaving the faith and pulpit myself, people who don't know me ask why I'm not doing it anymore. They also assume something must have happened. It's usually phrased like this: So, were you treated badly by Christians? Uh, yeah. I was in ministry of one sort or another for 12 of the past 15 years. Of course I was treated badly. And I acted badly. And while doing things I wasn't supposed to do, I still believed. If people's treatment of me was the decisive factor in my growing disillusionment, I'd have stopped believing in 1996.

I just stopped believing. It stopped adding up. I couldn't do the mental calculations anymore. I don't want to do the whole 'Til We Have Faces thing, thanks. This antipathy to Christianity has lately been directed outward from Christianity to encompass other forms of belief. The hot, erstwhile mystic, hairdresser wife is reading a book called Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's all the rage amongst "spiritualists" lately—that group of eccentric middle-aged women who need Paxil worse than they need a book about how to be spiritual. Last night I walked into the bedroom while she was reading a portion about kundalini and chakras. I lit up. I spared her most of my diatribe, but I did mention that belief in kundalini serpent energy and energy absorbing portals in the human body verged on idiotic. She doesn't believe the stuff, by the way, but she's irritated that I'm not more accepting. My response: some things are just stupid and it doesn't hurt to point that out.

One of her spiritualist friends tried to give me a Neale Donald Walsh book to read—he wrote Conversations with God. (The title alone put me off that one.) As kindly as possible, I informed her that I don't read religious books anymore. She responded with the classic "why I should be on Paxil" line: "It's not a religious book; it's about spirituality. I don't like religion either. I think it's poisonous." I only had the energy to say, "It's all religion to me." Why get into a discussion about why her current favorite Elmer Gantry stand-in is full of shit? I find myself in the odd position of evaluating all claims to spiritual knowledge as standing or falling on the same principles. Crazy, I know. That means all expressions of faith have equal validity in my mind, but they are also equally vacuous in my mind. I've never been here before. The air is good. I can see farther. Breathe easier. Sleep better. And I'm at least fifty percent less pissed off than I ever was when I was a Christian.

Not a Stranger in an Apparently not so Strange Land

My apologies to Robert Heinlein.

Before last night's super duper schmooper Tuesday I would have told you Oklahoma is the last place on earth anyone who leans moderate to liberal would ever want to live. In the last several general elections, the state has been as easy for the Republican candidate for President as the sorority girl on roofies. We've rolled over like a puppy to have our bellies scratched. Oklahoma has about two million registered voters, and for as long as anyone can remember the Democrats have outnumbered the Republicans by a factor of 3 to 2 or 5 to 4. Sometimes the margin has been bigger, never smaller. Somehow though, the idea of Democrat here has meant a Democrat who would look like a Republican in any state north, east, or west of here. Things may have changed last night.

The state of Oklahoma, on the Democratic side, chose Hillary Clinton. I know most of you non-Oklahomans don't understand the weight of those words. Take whatever hatred you've seen directed toward the Clintons and magnify it by a factor of ten, and you'll get close to how most Oklahomans have felt about the Clintons for a long time. This state is roughly 25% Baptist. One in four, folks. Think about that. Add to it the almost equal number of Church of Christ, Methodist, and Pentecostal/Charismatics, and you have a state that is roughly one half evangelical. Based on my experience here just living and working, the number of people who claim an affiliation with one of those groups is actually higher, but it's possible that people who feel like I do tend to be silent when church and religion are the subject of discussion. Still, imagine living somewhere where every other person you encounter is an evangelical, and not the Jim Wallis type evangelical. Nope. The type who says to me, and this actually happened just yesterday morning: The Nobel Committee gave Al Gore the Peace Prize for being an idiot. Ah, the sweet smell of intelligent analysis...

Anyway, I would have preferred to live in a state where Obama gets the nod, but I'll settle for what's implied by Hillary winning the Democratic nod and Huckabee not winning the Republican nod. The Baptist minister did not win in Oklahoma. He didn't lose by much, but he lost. I told the hot, Obama-loving hairdresser wife last night that I finally feel like I'm living somewhere that may not be as bad as I thought. If a quarter million of my fellow Okies can vote for Hillary or Obama, I may be okay here in the long run. If a moderate Republican, in the sense of social issues, can beat the Carmenesque (let's get God back in America) Baptist preacher in a solidly conservative state, this may mean that things they are a changin'. I'm more upbeat about Oklahoma than I have been in a long time.

To my Christian friends out there, I hope you have a meaningful and transformative season of Lent. Peace.

Go Jesus! Go Patriots?

Reading in the paper yesterday about the NFL's ongoing squabble with churches over the size of television that may be used at a Super Bowl party. As I recall, it can't be larger than 50 inches. Churches have been breaking this rule since the idea of getting people saved at halftime reared its ugly head. I used to side with the churches on this one: seriously, NFL, doesn't this seem like penis measuring to you? And who enforces this rule? Is there a Church Scrutiny Office, and are its employees issued tape measures or one of the super cool laser measuring devices? Anyway, it just seemed silly and a bit bizarre to care what size television was at the party, until I read about the church that was charging admission. The pastor said it was to cover the cost of snacks...

Before I go any further, you probably should know that anytime I see a stupid commercial or stupid church idea or stupid name for a company or church, I try to imagine myself in the meeting where the final decision was made: like the time the Methodist church here in town named their "contemporary" service The Flow. Obviously no women in the room for that meeting. So, I invite you to put yourself in two meetings. The first is the staff meeting wherein the church decided to charge admission to a Super Bowl party.

"Pastor Bob, we're expecting about 300 people for the party."

"That's great! How many unchurched do you suppose we'll have?"

"We've asked everyone to invite a friend who doesn't go to church." (And of course, people always do that...)

"Excellent. What are we feeding them?"

"We've decided on a menu of chips, salsa, taquitos, Li'l Smokies, and soda."

"Wow! What's that gonna cost us?"

"We figure close to $400."

"That's too much. We just bought the high definition projectors and big screens for the emergent service. We don't have any budget left for outreach."

"Well, I suppose we could charge for entry...just to offset the costs."

"People ought to pay for their own food. It's biblical. Let's do it."

Never mind that the Salvation Army gives the shit away before making someone endure a Gospel pitch. They're thinking they need to give free food to get someone to sit through shitty sermons. Not First Cracker Church though. Hell no. People will pay for chips and salsa and barbecued Li'l Smokies. If you're offering them heaven, why wouldn't they pony up a few bucks for food they wouldn't pay for at a restaurant, and which many Mexican food restaurants give for free as part of the meal? Eternal bliss versus $5 for chips and salsa. Not even a contest. If they go to their favorite sports bar or just have a party at their own houses, they get beer, wine, liquor, food they actually want to pay for, freedom to watch the commercials at halftime, and no tedious sermons about how Jesus died for your sins so you should get saved before the second half kicks off.

In the midst of this article was an interview with a gentleman who describes himself as an "event evangelist." Apparently church work has become so specialized that they now need consultants to explain how to properly orchestrate Super Bowl parties and Christmas pageants to ensure the most SPDS (souls per dollar spent). So, let's go to one more meeting...

"Pastor Bob, I've looked at your demographics and your location, and based on those factors, I think you should spend more on the Super Bowl party and less on the Easter pageant...by a factor of 2.6 to 1."

"Thanks, Rudy. That's awesome. What do you mean?"

"It means you should spend $2600 on your Super Bowl party and only $1000 on your Easter pageant. That will give you the highest roi in regard to spds."

"Well, sheets and bathrobes aren't expensive, and Jesus is nearly naked on the cross, so I guess we could cut back on the wailing women and the styrofoam tomb. That would give us the extra we need to really ensure the success of the Super Bowl party. When do you think we should do the sermon?"

"Usually halftime is the best time. No one would pay attention during the game itself, so you'll need to plan your sermon in three parts. During the halftime show, which no one watches, you will have three commercial breaks..."

"So I have to do it during the commercials?"

"No. People want to see the commercials. You do something like man's problem, God's solution, your decision during the halftime show, taking a break from talking during the commercials. People like monkeys, sir, and they're gonna want to see the monkeys. If you structure your three-part sermon correctly, you'll do the altar call when the kicker is putting the ball on the tee. That sort of time pressure will create added stress to the unsaved person. You know, I gotta make this decision before the kick-off kind of thing."

"We've decided to charge people for entry this year. Do you think that's okay?"

"Of course. It's all about perceived value. Give 'em something for free, and they won't appreciate it."

"But isn't salvation free?"

"Not for Jesus, sir, and we aren't better than him, are we?"

"I see your point."