Blog of Concord

Debunking theologies of glory since, well, last November.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Is anyone really surprised, man?

I am 16% Hippie.
So Not a Hippie.
What? Am I a Republican? Why did I even bother taken this test?! I guess I’ll back to my George W. Bush fan club and tell them I just wasted 10 minutes of my life. At least I don’t stink, man.

The weird wacky world of Harry Potter fandom

If you have an hour to waste, click on some of these links and see just how seriously some take the Harry Potter books...

A before-the-release term paper on why Harry and Hermione would never get together...

The wailing and gnashing of teeth of those who hated book six...

And this...


For all our efforts in trying to explain away JKR's ridiculous plot holes and unforgivable character assassinations in HBP, it turns out that JKR really is a shallow, short-sighted, and highly irresponsible writer.


And I thought faith bloggers were weird...

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

On dealing with telemarketers

I hang up on them. Not rudely at all. I don't rant and rave or swear at them (even if I'm at home alone and no one knows I'm a pastor). But I hang up on them.

This is how I do it:

If I feel like I'd be marginally interested in the product, I say: Please send me a catalog.

If they won't, or if I'm not interested at all, I simply interrupt the caller and say: "I'm not interested. Thank you for your time."

And I hang up. No more words, no waiting for the telemarketer to agree that this conversation is over, nothing.

The reason I do it this way follows:

A polite conversation has a mutually agreed upon ending. It happens when both parties acknowledge that the conversation is ending. It must be initiated by one party, but concluded by both.

Telemarketers know this. They know that it takes two to conclude a polite conversation. They know that the callers will also share this assumption.

Therefore, their rule is: Do not let the conversation end. There will always be an answer, a question, a rejoinder, a refusal to acknowledge that you are attempting to end the conversation. Those who have been brought up to be polite will follow the rules they have learned, and will not hang up on someone.

If I know they are not playing by the rules of polite conversation, I am free to take action. I am free to terminate the conversation on my own, knowing that they will never agree that the conversation is over. I do this not because I am impolite, but because the rules are different than normal. And I do it without anger and without guilt.

I do not think I am being uncharitable. Indeed, perhaps I am being most charitable by not wasting their valuable time. And I am never verbally abusive or even surly. I often am friendly.

(click)

Thursday, July 14, 2005

The blogosphere takes notice...

...of Braaten's bombshell, and that we are less than one month from Orlando 2005.

Good stuff on Verbum Ipsum - where the question is raised "What's Spirituality Got to Do With It?" - and Versus Populum, where hopefully we are beginning to get to the real issue: what is the source and norm of our proclamation, faith, and life?

Meanwhile, Pietist writes his own open letter to the ELCA:

"Oedipus Rex came to mind. I know the reference is only a partial one. That particular tragedy is about someone who fought and killed a man whom unknown to him was his father. I wonder if Hanson will is going to be seen as the tragic figure who unknowingly presided over the poisoning of his own mother (our mother the Lutheran tradition in which we were weaned)."


We can perhaps staunch the flow. We must rebuild our educational system. We need to help the faithful clergy. We need to reassure the membership that ours is a sound church built on sound doctrine and the experiments in liberal theology have had their day.

Braaten on the State of the ELCA (Hint: he's not happy)

Dwight is back. In a big way.

He, along with others, posts an open letter from Carl Braaten to the Rev. Mark Hanson, bishop of the ELCA, on the state of the church.

...the kind of Lutheranism that I learned – from Nygren, Aulen, Bring, Pinomaa, Schlink, P. Brunner, Bonhoeffer, Pannenberg, Piepkorn, Quanbeck, Preus, and Lindbeck, not to mention the pious missionary teachers from whom I learned the Bible, the Catechism, and the Christian faith -- and taught in a Lutheran parish and seminary for many years is now marginalized to the point of near extinction. In looking for evidence that could convincingly contradict the charge that the ELCA has become just another liberal protestant denomination...there is not much there to refute the charge. As Erik Petersen said about 19th century German Protestantism, all that is left of the Reformation heritage is the aroma from an empty bottle.


"Recently in an issue of the Lutheran Magazine you expressed your hope that Lutherans could some day soon celebrate Holy Communion with Roman Catholics. My instant reaction was: it is becoming less and less likely, as the ELCA is being taken hostage by forces alien to the solid traditions Lutherans share with Roman Catholics. The confessional chasm is actually becoming wider. So much for the JDDJ! The agreement becomes meaningless when Lutheranism embarks on a trajectory that leads to rank antinomianism."



My friend Wolfhart Pannenberg has stated that a church that cannot take the Scriptures seriously is no longer a church that belongs to Jesus Christ... Does the ELCA take the Scriptures seriously? We will soon find out. Whoever passes the issue off as simply a hermeneutical squabble is not being honest – “we have our interpretation and you have yours.” Who is to judge who is right? The upshot is ecclesiastical anarchy, sometimes called pluralism. To each his own.


I regretted that Braaten gave no background and did not go into some specific instances of what he considered "the drift into liberal Protestantism" meant. I therefore explicate what I think it means in the comments section of Dwight's blog.
Here is my contribution:

1. Braaten drops the name of Karl Barth a lot and refers to
"liberal Protestantism" or "Kulturprotestantismus." (Caveat: "liberal" does not mean "21st-century Democrat:" in the letter, Braaten mentions that he is against the Iraq war.) "Culture-Protestantism," obviously a put-down term rather than a school of thought, might be generically described as a Christianity that gives lip-service to creeds and confessions while in actual doctrine and practice taking its cue from the contemporary culture. Barth specifically disagreed with the experience he had with "cultural Protestant" German theologians who said that the will of God could be discerned in several places, i.e. in nation and culture. The term can also illuminate those Christians who live uncritically to the culture and are not formed by the culture of Christ. His turning point came when these theologians supported World War I on the basis that God also spoke through the will of the nation, and his defining moment came when many of that same school later supported Hitler on the grounds that Volk and nation was an instrument of God's will independent of the church's proclamation and witness. Barth was the primary author of the 1934 Barmen Declaration which famously stated that "Jesus Christ is the one Word of God that we must obey in life and death," and to posit that there were other loci of authority that we could set alongside or in opposition to Christ was heretical.

2. In the contemporary "Protestant" culture, Braaten and others see a Kulturprotestantismus which differs in its assumptions about the culture but is one with the primary assumption that Barth critiques: the idea that one can know God and God's will through other means than through Christ. In our context, this means: there is no mediator - God or Christ primarily speaks to us through our experience of self and world and the experience of those who are oppressed, whatever their experience may be. Neither the Scriptures nor the Church are truly sources of authority - at best, they become the confirmation of God granting me my own authority as authentic self-interpreter. When they contradict my view or my culture's view of reality, they may be set aside because they do not define Christ for me: rather, my own understanding and experience defines Christ for me. This may best be summed up in our day by what is now the unofficial creed of our full communion partner, the United Church of Christ: "God is still speaking," and its unofficial symbol, the comma. How does God speak? Not through Bible, Sacrament, Creed, confession, or community, but through my own imaging of who God might be and my own unique experience of reality. This necessarily leads to a plurality of truths, which in effect is a negation of truth, for the notion that there can be more than one truthful answer to a specific question is logically bankrupt.

3. How is this played out in the contemporary situation? Obviously the homosexuality question for Braaten and those like him is a key issue, for it encapsulates the revolt against Bible and Church as sources of authority and sets against them the witness of the self that "God has authentically created me this way," which is a revelation granted in an inner sense to the self and which may not be disputed by Bible or Church. But it should be noted that the acceptance of homosexuality is only one and the most visible symptom of the main assumption which is simply this: The Scriptures and the Church formed by their teaching are not the primary or sole revelation of God. God must be experienced, known, and apprehended by myself above and beyond the witness of Scripture and the Church. The Scriptures may confirm the self's apprehension of God, but they may not correct it. Moreover, they are not the "final word." They are simply "a" word to be set in dialogue with other words, and interpreted according to the disposition and beliefs of the believer. "God is still speaking."

In the academy of the ELCA, including my alma mater, Gettysburg Seminary, and from its bishops and pastors, in its social statements, denominational materials, and materials published by its publishing house, the following assertions are made, perhaps not bold-facedly, but "between the lines," for those who are enlightened and would seek to be.

a. The Trinitarian doctrine and the Incarnation are not revelation, but are primarily products of religious imagination. When they are taught as authoritative, they displace the views of other religions and of feminist and womanist "revelations" of the identity of God.

b. Because of the above, the Christian faith is not in a privileged position as regarding visions of the divine.

c. Jesus encountered the reality of God, but was not God himself. We in fact have the same capacities as Jesus.

d. The Bible is only authentically read as a document that describes how people were touched by the experience of God. A reading which would attempt to define the nature of God, describe historical occurrences, or draw conclusions for life together is a "text of terror" which excludes those who read the text differently.

e. Sin is inauthenticity to self, not disobedience to God.

f. When considering ethical questions, the primary locus or reference is the self. A decision on abortion (to take one example) is to be judged upon whether "I" am able to bear a child without undue emotional, physical, or financial hardship. The same self-referential assumption is made in the case of physician-assisted suicide, stem-cell research, divorce and remarriage, etc.

Catholicism and Orthodoxy provide obvious antidotes in their structures to the doctrine of the authority (some would say "tyranny") of the self. The irony for Lutherans is that Luther insisted that he himself had the authority to interpret the Scriptures. However, his was not the freedom to add or detract to them according to his predispositions, but to read them as they actually were. Naturally none of us free ourselves from our "baggage" so thoroughly as to interpret the Scriptures free from bias. But to interpret them in a way that the clear texts are discarded or superseded by my own bias or by another principle is to fall into error.

One final personal word: the homosexuality debate is often seen as a debate about certain kind of people: who is in, who is out. I would posit that Braaten and those like him might say that it is about where God speaks: in the self or in the Scriptures (which are also "means of grace" with the Sacraments). When we listen, which we are exhorted to do, do we listen together to the teachings of the Scriptures and the witness of the tradition, or do we listen to the voices of our aspirations and desires, which Lutherans have traditionally believed are "curved in upon themselves" and do not tend to seek the will of God but rather to substitute their own wills? I do not wish to give glib answers to those who struggle with homosexuality or with the issues surrounding it. I am against bumpersticker theology in all its forms. But I hope it has become clear, at least, why this issue is the lightning rod for those who are concerned that the moral and religious discernment of the self has displaced the Scriptures as the "inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of our proclamation, faith, and life." (ELCA Constitution 2.04)

Monday, July 11, 2005

The late Shelby Foote on Book TV

I've been watching this off and on for the past few days. Foote died earlier this month.

Great stuff, especially when he talks about other writers and how he writes.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Book Report

Title: The American Religion
Author: Harold Bloom (Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, The Book of J)
Written: 1991

The author sez: The true American religion is not Christianity but is a variation of Gnosticism, and this is American religion's peculiar genius. Seen among other places in the Cane Ridge revivals of 1801, Transcendentalism, New Age, and African-American religion, the most unique permutations of the American Religion are Mormonism and Southern Baptism. The true American originals were Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, and E.W. Mullins, Southern Baptist and articulator of the concept of "soul competency," which says that the soul is competent, without any mediation, to deal with God on a one-to-one basis.

Quotable:
What is the American Religion?

"Freedom, in the context of the American Religion, means being alone with God or with Jesus, the American God or the American Christ. In social reality, this translates as solitude, at least in the inmost sense. The soul stands apart, and something deeper than the soul, the Real Me or self or spark, thus is made free to be utterly alone with a God who is also quite separate and solitary, that is, a free God or God of freedom. What makes it possible for the self and God to commune so freely is that the self already is of God..." (p. 15)


What's behind Mormonism?

"Mormonism is a wonderful strong misprision, or creative misreading, of the early history of the Jews. So strong was this act of reading that it broke thorough all the orthodoxies - Protestant, Catholic, Judaic - and fopund its way back to elements that Smith rightly intuited had been censored out of the stories of the archaic Jewish religion. Smith's radical sense of theomorphic patriarchs and anthropomorphic gods is an authentic return to J, or the Yahwist, the Bible's first author." (p. 84)


On Jimmy Swaggart, of whom Bloom considers himself "a fan":

"Visiting a prostitute was [Jimmy] Swaggart's equivalent of the Holy Ghost cultist passing a lighted blowtorch over hands or face. We are in the pattern that Gershom scholem, meditating upon such Kabbalistic figures as Nathan of Gaza and Jacob Frank, named "Redemption through Sin." Swaggart's genius was to convert his falling forward on his face, as it were, into being slain in the Spirit, thus falling back into the arms of the congregation, his television viewers." (p. 179)


And here Bloom visits California, and puts a self-proclaimed religious geniusin his place:

"The Californian God differs in that he is a kind of public orange grove, where you can pick as and when you want, particularly since he is an orange grove within. His perpetual and universal immanence makes it difficult for a newager to distinguish between God and any experience whatsoever, but then why should such a distinctinon occur to a California Orphic? Matthew Fox, ostensibly a Catholic priest, has formulated a curious doctrine of 'panentheism' to avoid this collapse into pantheism, but Fox is one of my defeats. Several attempts on my part to read through The Coming of the Cosmic Christ have failed, as no prose I have ever encountered can match Fox's in a blissful vacuity, where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea." (p. 186)


On the Baptist experience (and "In the Garden" is alluded to several times):

"The Baptist experience of knowing Jesus, in a solitary and renewable encounter, takes priority over public worship, doctrine, or acts of charity. And since what can know Jesus, in some way already is akin to Jesus, then the saved Baptist participates now in the Resurrection and the Life...If one's undying spirit accepts the love of Jesus, walks with the resurrected Jesus, knows what it is to love Jesus in reurn, alone with jesus in the only permanent and perfect communion that ever will be, then tehre can be no churchly authority over one. As for the authority of Scripture, even it must yield to the direct encounter with the resurrected Jesus." (pages 205-206)


My response: A wonderfully illuminating book. Now I know why we Lutherans hate "In the Garden" so much. Makes me appreciate the catholicity of our Lutheranism that much more. Does our Presiding Bishop understand that this is why Lutheranism cannot compete, on a large scale, in the American religious marketplace? The spiritual experience that most Americans seek, and which the Baptists and Mormons excel at, does not come easily to Lutheranism, if at all, and we have an innate distrust of the same. (Although, Chip, look at Africa - lots of Lutherans in Africa!)

The most disquieting part of this book is how much Bloom sympathizes with those he describes, like Smith, Swaggart, etc. He sees them as heroes of the religious imagination, authors like the ones he describes. What I think he fails to see is how hurtful the Gnostic-like religions can be, trampling on the poor, the uneducated, those who are unable to make the high standards of knowledge or achievement these faiths demand.