If Emergent is dead, what about Convergent?

Have the terms emerging church and emergent become so sullied and distorted they're no longer useful, Scot McKnight asks in a Sept. 24 blog at Jesus Creed?

Here's what Scot says:

"Full circle: like “fundamentalism” and “evangelicalism,” the words “emerging” and “emergent” have become a liability; it has become a term that needs ten minutes of explanation before it can be used. Many are just confused about the meaning of the term. Then two fellas wrote a book that dramatized it all, contending that they were not emerging when by all accounts they should be. Well, I said to myself, this just proves that the term no longer makes sense.

So, for the last year and a half I have spent far too much time explaining the terms “emerging” and “emergent” and I’m tired of it. I don’t need either one to describe what is going on anyway."

Scot continues by describing a new movement he's starting with Dan Kimball as missional-evangelical-evangelism for a postmodern generation.

October, coming up fast, is "Convergent month." Convergent is a term that combines Conservative Friends (Christ-centered Friends doing silent worship) with emergent Christianity. The emergent or emerging church (Emergent is actually a subset of emerging, just to make things more confusing) is a big umbrella, but it includes people yearning for a deeper, more authentic and more lived faith, for relationship and community to be near the core of the faith and for a questioning of the pat answers often supplied to faith questions. Often, but not always, emerging means not having your faith defined by your politics and, as an extension of that, reaching out across denominational lines to embrace ecumenicalism.

Martin Kelly, certainly a prominent Convergent figure, thinks I'm Convergent because of the way I've woven together my Christ-centeredness with Quakerism and the emerging church. I don't know if I'm Convergent. I do know I am a Christ-centered Quaker.

In my brushes with Convergent, I've seen in Convergents a strong yearning for a deeper and more authentic faith experience and a yearning for deeper relationship with like-minded people. I've seen an attraction to a more robust Christianity than many liberal meetings provide and an impatience with the boxes that some Quakers try to keep Quakerism in. I've seen a desire to reach out and cross denominational chasms, and to cross ecumenical chasms as well. I haven't seen the same desire to cross political chasms, but I do sense an impatience with defining Quakerism in terms of political liberalism.

Emerging, because of the questions it asks, because it is seeker sensitive and because it challenges mainline evangelicalism, has been tainted with the "New Age" label. This, I believe, is unfair, in that all of the prominent emerging pastors I know of are devout Christians.

Convergent, however, does seem to attract people who are uncertain or even universalist. It doesn't, as far as I can tell, represent a wholly Christ-centered movement within Quakerism. A truly emergent (or emerging) Convergent would hunger to bring an authentic, early church Christianity back to the core of Quakerism. It would put Jesus at the center of Quakerism and show how the testimonies radiate out of his life, teachings and divinity. It wouldn't be afraid to embrace the crazy, improbable miracle of his resurrection.

A problem--perhaps THE problem--confronting both the emerging church and Christ-centered Quakerism--is how to be inclusive towards people who don't share the core beliefs without either alienating them or watering down the faith. I've certainly struggled with this because of the people I've met who are who are wonderfully caring, compassionate, humble and spiritual people but who are offended by the persecutions, misrepresentations, heavy-handedness, narrow-mindedness and judgmentalism of some Christians.

However, I fear that Quakerism is going to go away, as I fear many mainline Protestant denominations will and most non-demoninational churches, because they've elevated being conformed to the society over the faith. I believe that, unless all of these bodies start more firmly embracing their Christian core, they will die. What will be left standing are the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. I think these churches have much to offer, but I also think the world would be poorer without Quakerism and the many varieties of Protestantism.

When the early Quakers did away with the creeds, I don't think they were doing away with BELIEF in the creeds. I believe Fox, Pennington and others completely believed in a virgin-born, resurrected Jesus who sits at the right hand of God the father in heaven and will come again to judge the living and the dead. What they didn't believe in was what they saw: people asserting they were Christians because they went to church each week and recited a creed. They wanted to take away the creed as a crutch and then confront people with their need to LIVE the faith.

This won't make me popular, but I believe the starting place for Convergent would be in an embrace of the Richmond Declaration. That is a beautiful document that weaves together the cores beliefs of ancient church Christianity with core beliefs of Quakerism--the testimonies.

But if Convergent becomes just another flavor du jour of a shallow liberal Quakerism, it will fade like any fad.

Ghandi said there's no religion without sacrifice. Religion tells us we need to go beyond our own egos. Perhaps the chief sacrifice we need to make is to wildly embrace the core teachings of Christianity, even when they press the boundaries of our intellectual understanding. My experience is that by embracing the myseries at the core of Christianity and acting as if they were true, we open ourselves to miracle.

Friendly times: meme-ing

I am one of seven people Shawna from the Mystics, Poets and Fools blogs has chosen for a meme.

Here's how she describes it:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Present an image of martial discord (as in "war," not as in "marriage") from whatever period or situation you’d like.

Seven facts about me:

1. I was going to piggyback on Shawna's "lousy housekeeper" with an amen, sister. But I was a good housekeeper when my house was on the rental market. So maybe I'd be better off to say that, most of the time, a "little" dust in the corners is not my top priority.

2. I love to read (there just may be some connection between that and the afore-mentioned dust). I read my first chapter book ever in the second grade: It was called "B is for Betsy."

3. I am not terribly fond of cold weather. But I like the look of snow. From a window.

4. Roger and I honeymooned in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In January. The average temperature was about 0 degrees. My hair froze in the outdoor hot tub.

5. I was christened and confirmed in the Lutheran church. I left Lutheranism about 12 years ago to become a Christ-centered Quaker.

6. I almost majored in art history in college, then decided to be "practical" and major in ... English. OK. (A little known fact is that I also majored in history.) In graduate school, I wrote my master's thesis on Thomas Hardy.

7. My first child was delivered by a midwife (though in a hospital); the second two being twins, the midwife practice wasn't allowed to handle the birth. However, I was probably one of the last women in the Baltimore-Washington area to find a obstetrician who would deliver a footling breech. Yes, Will, the second twin, popped out foot first and my doctor, a Pakistani woman, pulled him out by that foot. He's been fine ever since, but Roger said his little head was pointy from the birth.

The martial discord picture above is Picasso's Guernica.

My tagged people are: Roger, Bill, Peggy, Erica, Eugene, Stephen, Ted.

Convergent Quakers

This from Martin Kelly, on Convergent Quakers:

Just the last thing is that for me if our work isn't ultimately rooted in sharing the good news then it's self-indulgent. I don't want to create a little oasis or hippy compound of happy people. Friends aren't going to go to heaven in our politically-correct smugness while the rest of the world is dying off. It's all of us or none of us. If we're not actively evangelizing --liberal translation: sharing the spiritual insights and gifts we've been given--, then we are part of the problem. "Convergence" is Quaker lingo. When we say it we're turning our back to the world to talk amongst ourselves: a useful exercise occasionally but not our main work.

I believe Martin makes excellent points above, especially that we need to share the spiritual transformations and gifts we've been given. As others have said, the world is crying out for witnesses to peace, hope and compassion.

I came to the emerging church long before ever hearing of convergent, but as I understand it (and I may well have it wrong), convergents are Conservative Quakers (I read Conservative to mean Christ-centered or Christ-leaning or, at least, Christ-seeking Friends practicing unprogrammed worship) who want to become part of the emerging church conversation. Being part of that conversation means a radical willingness to put ourselves in the shoes of other people, even when that's uncomfortable, a yearning to bring opposing groups together and an active attempt to find the good in what other strands of the faith practice and believe. It also means being winsome, in other words, being people other people (outside the clique) want to be around. It means being humble and admitting we don't have all the answers and that our group--even our group!!--has made mistakes.

To the extent that the convergent Friends have started a conversation that pulls closer people and groups who are/were at odds with each other, I believe it's doing a tremendous service for Quakers and the wider world. I think it has started good conversations and has injected civility into the Quaker discourse. Quakers, I believe, need to be talking civilly with and trying to love and see the good in Quakers in "opposing camps." Quakers, including myself, would benefit by getting out of their comfort zones. Quakers, including myself (and I already do this quite a bit, but could stand to do it more), would be enriched by talking more and listening more to the wider Christian world. I would go so far as to say that Quakers were not meant to become so unworldly as to cut themselves off from everyone else. I know some Quakers are grieved that so much ill has been done in the name of Christianity--but terrible things have been done in the name of every major religion and by every atheist group that has gained power. None of us are above it all.

At its core, the emerging conversation is two things: First, it's trying to be authentically Christian. As the early Quakers did, emerging types are getting out of the steeplehouse and meeting people where they are: in bars, in houses, in coffeeshops and at the point of their needs, be it offering a ride or mowing a lawn. This is hard and exhilirating. It's different from hanging a sign on a church or a meetinghouse and saying "come to us," an approach that has been criticized as arrogant.

Second, the emerging conversation is about replacing religious and political polarization with listening and love. As noted above, it involved the "winsome" ethos: serving others and "being a pattern" is more important than ambushing people with a formulaic set of beliefs. It means again (and Martin spoke of the movie Groundhog Day, in which a man is doomed to repeat the same day over and over until he "gets it" about what's important in life, so I'm going to repeat myself) it means a radical willingness to put ourselves in the shoes of other people, even when that's uncomfortable, a yearning to bring opposing groups together and an active attempt to find the good in what other strands of the faith practice and believe. It also means being winsome, in other words, being people other people (outside the clique) want to be around. It means being humble and admitting we don't have all the answers and that our group--even our group!!--has made mistakes.

The parallels between the emerging church and early Quakerism are obvious and often noticed. I hope the current convergent movement will grow and prosper. What do you think?

Identity?

In Tim Keller's book, The Reason for God, Keller defines "sin" as anything we put ahead of God. Keller's definition is interesting, I think, especially as many Quakers equate sin with "being bad" and reject the whole idea of it. While I think none of us like the idea of being "bad," we can't help but notice that many things in our world are quite awry.

The following about Keller's book is from the Jesus Creed site:

Identity apart from God is inherently unstable. Self worth and self identity can disappear in an instant if founded on freedom, success, parenthood, work, achievement, church leadership, the esteem of others…

Worse yet – identity apart from God is socially destructive. If our highest ultimate goal is centered in the good of our family we will tend to care less for other families. If our highest goal is the good of our nation we will tend to care less for other nations, and may “defend” ours at all costs. If our highest goal is our individual happiness we will put our economic and power interests ahead of others. If our highest goal is our religion we will despise and demonize those from other religious traditions. If our highest goal is the good of our church, if our identity is centered in our church or denomination, we will defend it by denigrating other churches and denominations.

And - think about it — if our identity is centered our class, our race, our gender — classism, racism, and sexism are the unavoidable consequences.

So racism, classism, and sexism are not matters of ignorance or lack of education. Foucault and others in our time have shown that it is far harder than we think to have a self-identity that doesn’t lead to exclusion. The real culture war is taking place inside our own disordered hearts, wracked by inordinate desires for things that control us, that lead us to feel superior and exclude those without them, and that fail to satisfy us even when we get them. (p. 169)

The problem is not “human evil” - power, domination, and violence – these are merely unavoidable consequences of the problem.

What do you think of this?

Seton Hill Worship Group meets again

I'm late in posting, but the Seton Hill Christ-centered Worship Group met again on Sunday at the Metropolitian Church near Druid Hill Ave. in Baltimore.

Ten people convened for some singing (we missed Rachel and her guitar, though Kevin-Douglas did a great job leading us with his voice alone) and silent worship.

The fruit of the Spirit emerged as a topic: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22).

Two people traveled from Northern Virginia to attend, and, as with Friends in Christ, there seems to be a hunger for this fusion of Christ worship with silent worship in the Quaker tradition.

Evangelical Manifesto 2

I loved what Mike Rucker had to say about the Evangelical Manifesto:

more than anything, i found myself motivated and energized by the very positive nature of the piece - that it isn’t yet another “here’s everything we’re against” rant but an effort to make the gospel again a message of good news. imagine that - the gospel being good news. American Christianity has lost this defining characteristic that once served it well.

there are a few things i question, but nothing is going to please everyone, i suppose. for instance, i’m not sure i agree with this statement: We Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally. Jesus’ message uses “action” verbs: teach them to DO as I have commanded you, LOVE God and LOVE your neighbor, by this will all men know … if you LOVE one another. any theology that defines us must have feet.

i did, however, like these words:
We are also troubled by the fact that the advance of globalization and the emergence of a global public square finds no matching vision of how we are to live freely, justly, and peacefully with our deepest differences on the global stage.

somehow we've got to figure out how we we're going to happily share the same bathroom over the next few decades in our ever-shrinking world.

I too liked the positive nature of the Manifesto. If emergent/emerging has done anything, it's brought a new tone of caring and civility to the Christian dialogue. I'm grateful for this and find it liberating. Them and us, hate and vitriol, can become prisons we get trapped in.

On the lack of a counter-ideology to globalization, I'm glad Mike lifted that passage from the Manifesto. I couldn't agree more that we need an alternative vision of how to live freely, justly and peacefully on a global stage. The "market vision" is at best incomplete. What about the abundant life we're promised: the joy, the peace, the love, the patience, the kindness of all the world's people? How do we address this so that the wealth globalization brings is not a source of misery but a tool to build a spirit-infused world?

Maseo Abe, a Buddhist and interfaith scholar, addresses this when he calls for people of different faiths to join together (not become the same, but to work together!), rather than fight, so we can together stand for an alternative set of values than that of the marketplace.

And yes, how are we going to share the same bathroom? Ideas?

The Irresistible Revolution: Wrap up

Many posts later, a summary of Claiborne's book.

Perhaps what most jumps from Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution is the way he reinvents countercultural leanings of the 1960s and the 80s and the 90s and makes them seem fresh again. Antic happenings, young people changing the world, peace, simplicity, intentional community, sharing joyously and directly with the poor ... we've seen this colorful, seemingly naive exuberance before, and yet we can't help but be touched by the sincerity of Claiborne's recycled (now there's a green and complimentary term!) vision.

Maybe the twist is the Christianity that is the backbone of his revolution. There's no sex or drugs here, and no personal liberation devoid of history or tradition. Instead, we glimpse Shane serving the destitute in Calcutta with Mother Teresa and sense his unfettered delight in passionately trying to live out a Christian witness. If evangelicals and the rest of us could just get beyond a concern with personal salvation, be it assurance of heaven after death or the personal salvational fortresses of wealth and intellect, we could all be part of building a kingdom of God world in the here and now, Claiborne says.

It's enticing to see him doing what he preaches, living it, being the change he wants the church to be. I liked the simple, direct language of the book, the stories he included, and the challenge to live a more genuinely counter-cultural life.

Evangelical Manifesto: two responses

Two interesting perspectives on the Evangelical Manifesto: Bill Samuel blogs about it in light of Quakerism at billsamuel.net/blog/?p=18#comment-12 and Scot McKnight blogs about it at the Jesus Creed.

Here's a passage from Bill's blog, but I recommend reading the whole blog entry as a snippet might distort:

The Manifesto, and here it is indeed representative of Evangelicalism, refers to sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone), the “supreme authority of the Bible,” and “the Scriptures our final rule for faith and practice.” It claims this is shown by “Jesus’ own teaching and his attitude.” This is a Manifesto, not an apology, and it doesn’t do references, so I’m not sure what they rely on for that.

I find Jesus saying in scripture that I am the way and the truth and the life. (John 14:6, NIV) This is a radical statement, and one hard for us humans to accept because we want to be able to package up truth in a neat, rational box. Jesus tells us this impulse is wrong. The people that he has such conflict with are precisely the religious leaders of his day who wanted to tie up faith in a neat little box. Relying on purely the written word of the Bible as the Truth doesn’t really quite succeed in achieving the goal of the neat little box, but the urge to make the book supreme is an attempt to move in that direction. Evangelicals also proclaim Christ is Lord, but their emphasis on the written word as the sole determiner of Truth tends to contradict that. I am not an Evangelical because, in the end, I’m not sure that Evangelicalism is really centered on Jesus Christ.

I believe the premier Quaker apologist, Robert Barclay, put this question of authority well in his Apology for the True Christian Divinity. He states that the scriptures do contain revelations of God to the saints, but notes that, “because they are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners.” Barclay notes “that the Spirit is that Guide by which the saints are led into all Truth” and goes on to make this key argument:
If by the Spirit we can only come to the true knowledge of God; if by the Spirit we are to be led into all Truth, and so be taught of all things; then the Spirit, and not the Scriptures, is the foundation and ground of all Truth and knowledge, and the primary rule of faith and manners

I find Barclay’s arguments convincing. (See also Friends (Quakers) and the Bible.)

Scot McKnight weighs in at the Jesus Creed with the following:

Two recently published items illustrate the “evangelical” problem — David Wells’ grumpy summary screed of his four volumes that, for over a decade, have attempted to reveal how superficial evangelicalism is and the generously-spirited Evangelical Manifesto. What is happening? Let me explain it this way:


There are too many today who want to usurp control over evangelicalism by demanding uniformity in theology. Evangelicalism never has been and never will be uniform in theology. Three groups today threaten to destroy the fabric of historic American evangelicalism:

The Religious Right, which seems to think all evangelicals have the same political views;
The Neo-Reformed, who think Calvinism is the only faithful form of evangelicalism; and
The Political Progressives, who like the Religious Right think the faithful form of evangelicalism will be politically progressive.

Let me offer a peace offering into this unfortunate turn of events. I believe the threat of complete disintegration is far more serious than many today seem to realize.

Evangelicalism has always been ecumenical for the sake of the gospel.

Evangelicalism has always dropped theological distinctives (confessional level statements of faith) for the sake of the gospel.

Evangelicalism’s approach has always been more like George Whitefield than Jonathan Edwards.

Now a few words of explanation:

Evangelicalism is essentially “gospel ecumenism” instead of “theological conformity.” Evangelicals unite around the gospel but tolerate all kinds of diversity theologically. Thus, from the time I’ve been around this theological issue — and I began reading this stuff in the 70s and have not stopped — evangelicalism has agreed to agree on the basics — the gospel — but has been willing to let theological confessions be what they are: church confessions for local congregations. Instead of haggling over theological confessions, evangelicals have agreed to agree on the gospel.

It is essentially “cooperative” rather than “confessional.” Yes, evangelicals — as Bebbington and Noll have made so abundantly clear (see M. Noll’s The Rise of Evangelicalism and Bebbington’s The Dominance of Evangelicalism) — there are four hubs of thinking in the center of evangelicalism: the Bible, the cross, conversion, and active Christian living.

What alarms me is that some of those today most concerned with taking over evangelicalism, namely the Neo-Reformed and the Southern Baptists, seem to have forgotten the last fifty years of evangelical history: Many in the Reformed camp didn’t think and still don’t think evangelicalism is their kettle of fish. Thus, Hart’s book is a good example of this (see his Deconstructing Evangelicalism). And the SBC was at best a distant “member” of the early rise of the neo-evangelical movement shaped by Billy Graham, Wheaton, and the likes of Harold Ockenga, Carl Henry, Harold Lindsell and others.

To be sure, a robust Reformed faith or a clear commitment to the SBC way of life were more than welcome, as long as the cooperative spirit of a commitment to an ecumenical gospel was what guided the participation. Today many seem to have forgotten this.

Hence, I love what I’m reading now in An Evangelical Manifesto.

1. It welcomes a universality to the presence of evangelicals throughout the world (p. 2).
2. It believes the word “evangelical” is worth saving (2-3).
3. It embraces a world setting where co-existence is paramount (3).
4. It defines “evangelical” by “gospel” (4) and theologically (4).
5. There is some humility to this statement: “We do not claim that the Evangelical principle … is unique to us” (5). We illustrate our own doctrine of sin (6).
6. There is a healthy balance of theology and praxis in this document.
7. It affirms classical christology, salvation, Holy Spirit, Scripture, discipleship and evangelism and social action, return of Christ, and also discipleship for all. [Could be more Trinitarian and have a deeper ecclesiology.]
8. Evangelicalism here is defined as larger than, deeper than, and older than Protestantism (10).
9. It bemoans failures among evangelicals (11ff).

I could go on … this is historic evangelicalism. It’s the kind I embrace.

I'm glad the Manifesto is sparking dialogue. What do you think?

Claiborne: Final chapter: Get crazy to make sense

In the final chapter of The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne quotes Catholic Worker movement cofounder Peter Maurin: "If we are crazy, then it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy." Then Claiborne tells Nietzsche's story of the madman who is mocked by his fellow townsmen for seeking God. The madman decides God is dead and says "'We have killed him, you and I.'" The madman sees a world growing colder and darker without God and likens churches to tombs.

Claiborne remembers a sermon he once preached, "a clever little talk about how the world is filled with the walking dead, people who breathe air but who are not truly alive. I compared the deadness to vampires and said that vampires can't stand light. They can not stand the cross." He sees the sermon as a little silly now, but still with a hint of truth ...

Claiborne finds hope everywhere that "ordinary radicals" all around him are quietly building a new world. He also makes a plea for these radicals to stay part of the traditional Christian church or at least traditional Christianity: "So we mustn't allow ourselves to detach from the church in self-righteous cynicism. That's too easy and too empty. To those communities who have severed themselves from the established church, please build a bridge, for the church needs your prophetic voice. We can do more together than we can do alone." He also quotes Augustine: "'The church is a whore, but she's my mother.'"

Claiborne makes several good points. I would agree that the kingdom is being built all about us, under our noses, in ways that are invisible unless you have eyes to see. One of the joys of a transformed heart is the ability to discern the work. It reminds me of Harry Potter: suddenly you can perceive a hidden world right next to the prosaic muggles world you've been living in: you see platform 9 3/4s and Diagonal Alley, hidden, to use the cliche, in plain sight. And it becomes less about you as an individual saving the world or doing something grand and more about becoming part of something bigger than yourself. I'm reminded of an interview with N.T. Wright that I recently read. Wright says it's a mistake to think of God as "out there" in outer space, somewhere so far away that you'd need to take a spaceship to reach it. That makes God remote, he said, and not part of our reality. Instead, we need to recognize that God is all around us, in the air we breath, but separated from us by invisible (and yet penetrable) walls.

I think liberal Quakers could take heed of Claiborne's warning that it can be self-destructive to remove one's group from the Christian world, flawed as the church might be. I also agree with Claiborne that, perhaps unwittingly, the secular world will do everything it can to paint participation in this alternative world as crazy. And I wonder what it takes to "tip" us into taking the small steps that get us into that other world. I know the pat answer is "grace," but what, concretely, gets us where we need to be?

Claiborne: to activism, add love, mustard seeds

In chapter 11 of The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne urges political activists to temper their actions with a sense of humor and add a strong dose of love. It's not enough to help other people through supporting causes: you need to love the people you are helping. Ideally, you get to know the people you are helping. Likewise, don't feel superior to those who are less active; instead, laugh at yourself and try to spread some joy.

He writes on an old theme: fair wages for college campus employees, such as janitors. In his case, he and his friends got to know a janitor and his family trying to live on $6 a hour. They were able to introduce this man to the president of Eastern University, part of a process that led to the university paying a living wage and benefits to its workers.

In chapter 12, Shane expands on the argument that small is better and small is kingdom. We find God in the little people, express God's love through small actions and see God in the everyday. It's not growing church numbers and budgets that builds the kingdom of God, it's growing strong relationships.

"We have a God who values the little offering of a couple of coins from a widow over the megacharity of millionaires."

"The pervasive myth is that as we grow larger, we can do more good. But there is little evidence that this is ever realized."

He condemns churches that build big complexes while people are hungry and homeless, saying God prefers a tent. Small is beautiful.

"And the contagion of God's love is spreading across the land like a little mustard plant, growing smaller and smaller until it takes over the world."

It's hard to argue with putting people ahead of programs and infusing our social and political actions with love and joy. None of these are new ideas; all of them are good ideas.

However, is all diminution good? We see a move toward a smaller, but more pure and orthodox Roman Catholic church: Is this a way of sweeping issues under the carpet? Often I have heard people in shrinking mainline denominations speak of getting rid of the dead wood or not regretting when the people who don't think like them leave. I do believe that God works and exists in the crevices, under the radar and among the humblest people. But sometimes I fear that groups use the rhetoric of smallness to justify an unwillingness to make needed changes or to exclude people that Jesus would gladly invite to his table. When does embracing the small become an excuse for exclusion or unresponsiveness and when is it evidence of God's kingdom at work? How do we discern?

On Atheists

Below is a recent exchange from The Jesus Creed Blog, edited slightly to remove cryptic references. What do you think of it? Does every spiritual community need an atheist to keep it honest?

“I feel a closeness and kinship to anyone who struggles to know God.”

Right with you there.

And I feel a similar kinship with devout atheists and anyone actively seeking to discredit spirituality, for I see the work of the Spirit in them - they just don’t know it yet.

But the in-between stuff, the comfort zones - that’s not interesting to me. Spirit is fluid and disruptive.

In his Letters from Prison, Bonhoeffer shared something of great importance,

“I often ask myself why a ‘Christian instinct’ often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, but which I don’t in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, “in brotherhood.” While I’m often reluctant to mention God by name to religious people – because that name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I feel myself to be slightly dishonest (it’s particularly bad when others start to talk in religious jargon; I then dry up almost completely and feel awkward and uncomfortable) – to people with no religion I can on occasion mention him by name quite calmly and as a matter of course…”

Another personal hero, A.W. Tozer, said something that seems equally appropriate to this conversation,

“if someone can talk you into being a Christian, someone better can talk you out of it.”

Comment by John L — May 10, 2008 @ 10:27 am
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John L, that’s one of my favorite passages in LPP by DB. I, too, feel tremendous kinship with atheists, agnostics and those who “seek to discredit” spirituality. I used to say that every spiritual community needs an atheist to keep it honest.


Comment by Julie — May 10, 2008 @ 10:52 am
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Julie: I have come over the past year or so to just accept the mystery and uncertainty and try to avoid absolutisms. Not because there are no absolutes or truth but because I’ll never have any sort of certain grasp of it. And may not be meant to. It does not mean I don’t believe or have a sense of what I must do to live it out. Since I am indeed no expert on scripture, it was kind of a relief to know others that are had some similar thoughts. And JC and EW has supplied me with just that…knowledgable folks who don’t shame me for asking and wrestling around with questions such as the one that started this thread.

I read this two days ago. It was written by Evelyn Underhill: “Perfect clearness in religion often really means just shallowness, for, being what we are, we cannot expect to get eternal life into sharp focus.” And in the next paragraph: “It is also true there are moments in life of communion when the soul DOESN’T wish to see, to fully comprehend….It is not in our comprehension, but in God’s will, that our peace abides.”

I think I am rediscovering the peace she is talking about. Only this time, it feels as though it has dug in so much deeper, like a dandelion root, penetrating further into my soul.


Comment by Nancy — May 10, 2008 @ 11:49 am

The dialogue above challenges me to see the seeker in the atheist, agnostic and non-theist, and to love that person. I am often moved by the generosity of the Jesus Creed blog community.

Claiborne: demonic suburbs?

In the Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne continues to argue for seeing the entire human family as our family, without national borders or genetic borders. To me, this is the true Christian universalism: not accepting everyone's religion as the "same," but serving others regardless of their faith or ethnicity.

Shane goes to Iraq and witnesses the war first hand. When he comes back, a woman criticizes him for being "careless" with his life and putting his mother through terrible anxiety. She goes on to say that Jesus himself would scold Shane for this.

What Jesus is she talking about? Shane wonders. This becomes a launching point for discussing Christianity as a dangerous faith, not a safe faith. We're asked to take risks, and those risks can include dying or making our families uncomfortable.

He talks about safety as a possibly demonic force: "the suburbs are the home of the more subtle demonic forces -- numbness, complacency, comfort--and it is these things that can eat away at our souls."

Is that true?

Shane Claiborne: Comfort becomes Uncomfortable

In Chapter 4 of The Irresistible Revolution, Shane returns from India to work and study at Wheaton and Willow Creek Church. He experiences culture shock as he makes an abrupt transition from lepers and the dying to wealthy white Americans. In this chapter, he "longs" for more contact between the rich and the poor, and for each to see the face of Christ in the other. He believes more interaction between rich and poor will end poverty.

Certainly many groups, such as the Church of the Savior, have organized, in part, around putting rich and poor together. Claiborne yearns for the peaceable kingdom, a yearning that permeates the Bible.

One "comfort" he discusses is Willow Creek's refusal to hang crosses because crosses are not "seeker sensitive" or comfortable to people who may have been wounded by earlier church experiences.

He writes: "I fear that when we remove the cross, we remove the central symbol of the nonviolence and grace of our Lover. If we remove the cross, we are in danger of promoting a very cheap grace. Perhaps it should make us uncomfortable." In light of the Quakers' shedding of earthly symbols, what do you think of Claiborne's comments?

Shane Claiborne and St. Edwards

I think I understand why churches as institutions evict homeless people who have set up housekeeping in their abandoned buildings. The churches run along the same principles as secular institutions, as businesses, so to speak, and the people in charge adhere to business principles, albeit in some cases reluctantly. So churches want to protect their material assets. They don't want a property hurt and moreover, they don't want to be liable for a person being injured on their property and then suing the denomination for a lot of money, They also don't want to be associated with scandal.

All the same, there's something supremely ironic about a church evicting the homeless, when one of the church's main missions is to care for the poor.

When Shane and his friends discovered that the Catholic church was about to evict a group of homeless women and children from St. Edwards, an abandoned church in a poor area of Philadelphia, they jumped into action, alongside the women. They visited daily with the women, stood in unity with the women to prevent their eviction and drew attention to their plight. The irony of a church evicting the homeless was not lost on them.

In the end, the group of women and helpers developed a sense of community that transcended a building, and the women and children eventually all found housing. Shane felt reinvigorated and reborn. He felt that God was on the side of these women.

"The body of Christ was alive, no longer trapped in stained glass windows or books of systemic theology. The body of Christ was literal, living, hungry, thirsting, bleeding."

One thing that interests me -- and Shane is not the first to bring this up -- is the concept that churches are not meant to be buildings. Certainly, the early Quakers believed that the church is the body of believers. Further, God's first home among the early Jews was in a tent. Some scholars contend that Solomon was never meant to build a physical temple in Jerusalem. When David--and later Solomon--received the message from God to build his house, God was talking not about a physical home but a spiritual community devoted to him with all its heart, mind and soul. Centuries and centuries later, Francis of Assisi got a similar call from God, so clear and powerful that he couldn't ignore it: Repair my church. Francis initially thought God meant a particular church at San Damiano. He took money from his wealthy father and restored the church. Only gradually did he realize that God's command was much larger, more difficult and more metaphysical: God wanted him not to repair a physical building but the repair the broken spirit of a body of believers.

What do you think? Should the church build churches? Or are they a diversion?

O come all ye faithful

Because my list of articles seems to have disappeared, I'll note that my story on the emerging church appeared in the April 2 edition of the Baltimore City Paper. It's called "O come all ye faithful." Two annual real estate roundup articles I wrote for the Washington Post--one on Howard County's and one on Frederick County's housing markets, appeared in the Post's Sunday, March 30, real estate section.

Missional churches

I found a link to this good blog entry on the Jesus Creed site:

spearszacharias.bravejournal.com/entry/25840/

This describes the emerging church in a nutshell. And reminds me of the early Quakers ... Why don't Quakers do this more?