theophiliacs

On account of our being linked by two excellent sites recently, Clavi Non De Fixi and Covenant, our traffic has gone up significantly.  So also has the traffic into our archives.  Considering the large assortment of writers and positions we have had since the blog’s inception I thought, in order to clear up any confusion, I would compose a very brief intro to the blog.

“The Theophiliacs” started as a casual group of mostly disgruntled students from North Central University in Minneapolis.  At first we gathered at an historic Twin Cities saloon to smoke our barely seasoned Briar pipes and sip the local libations.

This initial group consisted of an assortment of people but those who would go on to start this blog were Daniel Shoemake, Jeremy Girhenah, Reed Carlson and Tony Hunt.  All of us had been raised mostly Assemblies of God and both Reed and Tony are sons of A/G pastors.

Even at this early stage we had begun to grow into our respective theological horizons, even if still as infants.  Jeremy had increasingly become agnostic in regards to whether or not we can know anything about god or whether god was identifiably like the one he had long believed in.  He became an advocate for radical religous pluralism and is still hoping to study Islam and other faiths.  Ironically he is still the only original member to be attending an Assemblies of God church!

Daniel was becoming more ‘progressive.’ He is active in The Episcopal Church and Integrity.  He hopes to study at the famous Tubingen school in Germany and to possibly pursue ordination in The Episcopal Church.

But back to the narrative.

Eventually the group shrunk and moved to Tony’s house for fires, beers, and more smoking  in the backyard.  We found that we enjoyed more ‘focused’ conversations and in time Tony “presented” a paper for discussion (be merciful, it was like my first such paper).  It was this that sparked interest in the idea of a blog where we could propose various topics, each write on it and play off each others ideas.

Our initial energies focused around religous authority, pluralism, homosexuality and how to speak of God.  In the meantime we picked up a couple readers and added Anthony D. Jacques as a contributer. (Some of his posts will have the Name-as-Image thing we do and others will simply have “Anthony” at the bottom.  All of Tony Hunt’s should say “adhunt” at the bottom and/or have an “Anthony Dale Hunt” image at the head of the post.) He too had been raised Pentecostal.  He is a gifted writer and was incredibly vulnerable with his spiritual struggles and journey, especially as it related to his suffering through Lukemia.  Anthony quickly came to be unable to maintain interest in writing about the things we were writing about and so he started his own blog. (unfortunately both him and his blog have been hounded and harrased by fundamentalists and his blog has become largely inactive, though he has begun a new one dedicated mostly to his creative writing where our site is sadly absent from mention)

But, having discussed to the point of exhaustion certain themes, and with more school, more children, the buying of houses and the beginning of grad school, the core group of Theophiliacs in MN has lost it’s ability to meet regularly and to discuss with focus.  Reed, Dan, Jeremy and Tony still get together but it is more casual and ad hoc.

And so the blog began to shift.  Anthony, Jeremy and Dan in turn opted out of active composition for the blog, thus the wide theological diversity and “lively” disagreement has largely been left behind.

But we received a new direction and fresh breath from a place very much the opposite of Minnesota, New Mexico.

James Stambaugh and Shawn Wamsely had been long time readers and Reed and I began to pester them to become contributers.  James too had attended North Central University and was a writer for the school paper which is how Reed knew him.  Shawn is James’ brother-in-law and is, as the “About Us” page indicates, is the “old man” of the group.  He is also the most thoroughly educated and has the luxury of being able to post old Master’s-level papers as multi-part blog posts.

Both of them had become Episcopalian as well and so our new energies often play around with Anglican history, theology, liturgy and news.  That is absolutely not our sole focus – I’m due for another Beer post soon – but it has given us a sort of “center.”  Four pentecostals turned Anglicans largely representing the “Center,” some a bit left, some a bit right; all determined to not become a bitching and exclusionary site.  From here you can pick it up by reading our “About Us” page.  It seems the future of the blog is anything but certain!