On Not Quite Agreeing With +Will Willimon
February 28, 2010
In the most recent edition of The Christian Century (of whose blog network we are a “featured blog”), Methodist bishop Will Willimon addresses some of his previous work – most of which was done in tandem with his holiness Stanley Hauerwas – with a bit of embarrassment.
“In the student’s puerile response you hear an echo of your own pronouncement – but on undergraduate lips the thought sounds unbearably stupid. I’ve come to feel a bit that way upon rereading Resident Aliens” p22
In the article +Willimon goes on to repudiate the idea that “Christianity is a practice” because he thinks that it fails to account for the distinctives of Christian belief. He worries that the approach previously espoused by himself can run the risk of old style Christian liberalism that universalizes and unparticularizes the faith, rendering it one practice among many with a formless god.
I absolutely sympathize with the bishop’s belief that emphasizing “practice” can collapse any sense of “orthodoxy” into a moralism of “praxis.” Liberalism is pretty lame. BUT…
The idea of separating one from another is indicative of a wrong view of both “orthodoxy” and “orthopraxy.” Not too unlike the false separation of “theology” from “spirituality.”
If I might be allowed the indulgence of disagreeing with someone who will most likely forever be known as one of America’s greatest bishops, it is by our “practices” that we can come to know anything of “the qualitative difference” between God and ourselves.
On the one hand there is the practice of daily devotion and the celebration of the Mass, especially the Eucharist. These are the “practices” which shape our minds, bodies and hearts to think as the Church. Reading Scripture, praying in word and in silence, confessing our sins, praising in doxology – these in part teach us how to the know God as the Church knows God. +Willimon should fear that we will have any content to our faith without these “practices.”
And on the other hand, we put our worship into action with other “practices…” Justice, mercy, compassion etc… These too teach us of the God we worship. If we “practice” just the “devotion” and neglect the “justice,” we fail to be Christ in the world; and if we reduce the faith to moralism we malign our God revealed in Jesus Christ.
But, and here’s the kicker, it’s all “practice.”
So don’t despair of your previous work bishop Willimon, it’s still good as gold.
Towards a Teleological Theological Seminary III
February 26, 2010
A long time ago I “started” one of the likely millions of neglected blog series in which I was hoping to address theological education: It’s needs, it’s shortcomings, it’s potential and future(s). Being inspired by several posts of late I wanted to take this series up again. The possibility of re-configuring theological education is something that I take rather seriously and am passionate enough about to consider strongly participating in in my future.
A quick review:
- In one post I said that so-called “ecumenical” seminaries are overrated. If your priesthood is concerned with apostolic succession and sacramentology then it makes no sense to take the majority of your education in a Baptist school, though for “us” the “Anglican Year” is a brilliant stroke that lessens the ambiguity of ‘ecumenical’ schooling. School for your denomination and theology is what I say.
- In another, in answer to the musings (I and II) of Pastor Carol Merritt I replied that, No, we cannot afford educated clergy, but neither can we afford uneducated clergy; so we’ve got to find a way to do both.
Having laid a framework with these two statements I would like to build on it. Having said what I think about “ecumenical” seminaries, from this point forward I speak as an Episcopalian to Episcopalians but I would hope that what I write would not be relegated relevant to Episcopalians only. In fact I think that much of it could be highly relevant for most fellowships as most are facing financial setbacks and serious issues of a lack of Christian identity.
There is a place, a VERY important place, for “research” institutions in the Church, but I’m not convinced that every seminary should be such an institution, or at the very least, we should not be expecting all or even most of our seminary professors to be on the forefront of modern academic theology; writing articles for “Modern Theology” and composing exhaustive tomes of critical work. It seems to me that there is a near anti-christian pace of academic-theological anxiety: “Publish, Publish, Publish!”
For most seminaries, the training of priests should be the single most important task to which everything else is secondary.
I would greatly appreciate any and all input especially for those who have been through seminary, are in it now, are teaching for one or who are soon to attend.
The Difference Music Makes
February 25, 2010
Saw this and decided you all needed to see it, because I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s amazing how the scene takes on a different meaning when you change the soundtrack – what was surely an emotional, ecstatic situation looks like something Dante would write about. Hilarious {Sorry for the double-post, Tony – you can drop it in post order if you like, but you guys had to see this, now}
The Judgement of Pentecost(als)
February 25, 2010
I’ve been known for periodically maligning “Evangelicalism” and even “Pentecostalism” in various blog posts. But, as I feel quite strongly about a potential future in Anglican/Orthodox and Anglican/Pentecostal work, I am far from having a uniformly small opinion of Pentecostals. Indeed, I think it would be rather blind not to believe that, despite certain evil manifestations (“Health & Wealth” or various Trinitarian heresy), God has indeed given the Church a “wind” from the Spirit.
So I wanted to make mention of a few things that Pentecostals have to teach us, keeping in mind that I attempt to use “Pentecostal” in such a way as to describe Pentecostalism understood through historical churches rather than as anybody who expresses Charismatic gifts. Always remember that Charismatic Christians of various denominations from Catholics to Anglicans are growing along with Pentecostals (which leads me to believe that Charismatization need not accompany bad eschatology, but I digress)
- I am not an Evangelist, or at least I’d make a poor one and I’ve always been uncomfortable with it. But churches that grow are churches that evangelize and/or send missionaries. With the globalization of Christianity it is to be preferred that evangelism be done by the local church rather than by us Westerners, but the huge priority of Mission (almost never connected to lame trendy words like “Missional”) in Pentecostalism is a judgement on those Churches who feel no need to evangelize, or worse, find such a thing intolerable or unnecessary.
- Pentecostals were post-critical before it was cool or justified epistemologically. It forces us to attend to the Texts instead of “spiritualizing” bits of the NT which grate against rationalist nerves.
- Pentecostals aren’t afraid to go all Amos 5 on our liturgical asses
- Prayers for healing and manifestations of the “charismatic” gifts are something that all churches should practice (don’t choke the Holy Spirit)
- Pentecostals don’t neglect “the laity”
- Pentecostals have played a significant role in reminding us that God is Trinity – “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver or Life, who proceeds from the Father (and the …?), with the Father and the Son s/he is worshipped and glorified.”
- Pentecostals are unafraid of not just “helping the poor” but “being the poor.” Go into inner cities and who’s doing a most of the work with “minorities” and immigrants? There is a sort of slight embarrassment for me in being in what is often thought of as the white religion of the bourgeoisie in America.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that Pentecostalism has a LOT to learn from the church Catholic and historic. One hopes that as a movement it will be incorporated into the historic bodies, but that’s another list. Until then…Go Pentecostals!
A Word from George
February 24, 2010
Containeth All Things Necessary to Salvation
February 23, 2010
Growing up, my house had probably more than a dozen Bibles in it. There were teen study bibles, children’s picture book bibles, women’s devotional bibles and any number of translations and packagings. The Bible, for me, was supposed to be neither a particularly ancient nor a particularly distant document, but a current, thrilling, best seller complete with pictures and info boxes to keep me up-to-date. The prolific rise of the “customized” Bible has conditioned the modern, western Christian to read Scripture individually as a personal book.
While many Christians, including myself, have found this process edifying, I think we forget that this is not how most Christians in history—nor most Christians alive today—experience Scripture. Bibles were foreign documents for most of history, often written in a language other than the common tongue. For most of Christian history, it was likely that less than half of those people in Church even knew how to read. With this distance came a degree of “otherness” completely lost on us today.
Of course, one of the great successes of the Reformation was making Scripture accessible to the people and this is not a change I would quickly undo. But I must admit it also changed the way Christians experienced the Bible, from a communal to an individual activity. No longer was the primary window into Scripture listening to the stories and letters surrounded by family and friends but sitting alone in a library, studying the minutiae of the written word. Rising literacy and the printing press only made this kind of armchair biblical scholarship more prevalent. While I refuse to condemn this wonderful innovation in Christian History, I cannot deny it’s unintended effect of localizing and individualizing the Scriptural experience.
EDIT 2/24/10: Commenter George P. Wood alerted me to a worthwhile quote I want to include here:
Most North American Christians assume they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. Let us no longer give the Bible to every child when they enter the third grade or whenever their assumed rise to Christian maturity is marked… Let us rather tell them and their parents that they are possessed by habits far too corrupt for them to be encouraged to read the Bible on their own.
-Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture
The Last Rainbow — An Apocalyptic
February 22, 2010
NOTE: It’s Lent, people; it’s supposed to be depressing.
No one remembers
When the last rainbow appeared.
Was it after that last oil spill?
The one that finally did the ocean in?
Was it after the last mountain was leveled?
Or when the last hill was slit open?
When the last of the mineral wealth was stolen?
Was it after the last forest was paved over?
After the last marsh was converted to overflow parking?
Or was it just before that delicate, unknown moment
When the scales were tipped ever so slightly,
And the air became so pregnant with poison
That that very last persistent little bird
Could not lift her petrol-slick wings in flight?
When did we break that age-old treaty
Between God and all humankind–
When God promised not to destroy the earth?
When did we take it upon ourselves
To do that which God would not do?
The last rainbow happened decades ago.
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
