Rick Meigs at The Blind Beggar initiated a synchroblog on “What is Missional?” Busyness kept me from signing up, but I’ve enjoyed reading the answers others have posted. Though I’m not participating, I thought I’d offer the following quotation from Darrell L. Guder’s book, The Continuing Conversion of the Church regarding the good news of God’s mission in the world. Guder is something of a founding-father in contemporary missional discussions.

Through the particular encounter of God with Israel, the good news that God is loving and purposeful enters into human history and becomes knowable. Apart from such a particular history, Christianity has no universal message to proclaim. The Bible is not a collection of universal ideas cloaked in a particular culture. Universal ideas cannot be the good news that the concrete testimony of a particular people at a particular time can well be, if their witness is credible. Such universal ideas are merely the product of human imagination and creativity. Christian witness is not the interpretation of philosophy but the continuation of the event of God’s self-disclosure in human history. The historical experience of God is the surprising result of God’s initiation, God’s desire to speak and be heard. That surprise continues to define the concrete history of the world, and of the mission community within the world which is called to be the witness to God’s goodness, the “gospel of God.” God’s mission is good news because it is historical: it has been historical from the beginning and continues to be the history that defines our hope. We encounter God within that same history as God makes us part of salvation history for the sake of the world he loves. (29-30)

It certainly took me a long time, but I finally finished reading Jeffrey Stout’s political, theological, and philosophical tome, Democracy and Tradition. In the work, Stout sets out to defend a pragmatic approach to building a democratic society that takes seriously each citizen’s right to reach decisions via whatever means or commitments they deem important as well as all citizens’ responsibility to offer reasons to others for their conclusions. Democracy happens in the confluence of peoples’ beliefs and reason-giving. For Stout, democratic pragmatism is not merely a label that best describes how we interact with people who hold different ideals and beliefs than us, but it is a tradition in and of itself that deserves thought, defense, and promotion. America is in danger, he warns us, if the citizens of the United States do not take seriously the fact that we are all in this thing called democracy together. Stout, a self-labeled atheist, shows great appreciation for religions and religious people and articulately defends their right to use religious reasoning to shape their beliefs and ethics. (I reflected on some of the book earlier here.)

Stout critically engages liberal secularists like John Rawls on the one hand and the New Traditionalists within Christianity like Stanley Hauerwas and Alistair MacIntyre on the other as holding positions that do not help democracy. Though his two main interlocutors see each other as opposites, Stout points out that they actually share very similar views of what democracy actually is. His main argument against the liberal secularists is that we cannot guard the public square with rigid demands of what counts as reasonable data for democratic decision-making. The social contract theory of Rawls does not accurately describe how democracy has functioned, nor does it offer a hopeful vision for a pluralistic society in that it seeks to keep religious reasoning either out of the discussion altogether, or to be seen as weaker evidence. For those who say religion should not be involved in democratic reasoning, Stout not only says that ideal is unrealistic given the passion people have for their religions—how does one cast aside their deepest commitments that shape their ethics and values?—but he also says it is inherently undemocratic to do so. American democracy has benefited largely from religious reasoning—he cites the abolitionist sermons of the 19th century, Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, and Martin Luther King’s speeches and sermons as high points in both religious and democratic thinking in America.

As seen above, Stout agrees with many of the New Traditionalists’ critiques of the social contract theory. He thinks, however, that the New Traditionalists have bought the line that this theory encapsulates modernity, pluaralism, secularism, and democracy. The New Traditionalists see democracy as a child of modernity that emphasized the individual over and often against community. They do not see how this system can engender virtues or community and thus it can hardly be described as a tradition in a classical sense. By its nature, democracy leads us towards an atomized society, they argue. They wonder if it is in their tradition’s (i.e., Christianity’s) best interest to continue to participate in democracy given the negative affects that system has had on their community (i.e., the Church). Stout pushes back against the New Traditionalists by saying democracy, which for better or worse, is our society’s system of organization, is not made better when groups of its citizens, whether they are Christians or Black Nationalists, decide to remove themselves from it. Nor are those other traditions improved by interacting only with others in their enclave. Again, he cites the religious reasoning of Lincoln, King, and the abolitionists to show religion’s positive impact on democratic thinking.

“An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment,” is up on the interwebs. I’ve yet to read it, but really want to since the issue—faith and politics—is right up my alley. I hope to get to it and post on it soon.

Over at Mere Mission, Todd Hiestand asks what the announcements in our church bulletins can tell us about how missional our congregations are.

Are all your announcements about things internal? While I’m a believer that discipleship and community life stuff is important for the mission of a local body, if all of the activities, programs, etc are pointed inward, this might be a good indication that the church needs to take some intentional steps outside itself.

This is a good question, in my opinion. If bulletins tell us what is happening in the life of a congregation from week to week, I think they can give us a sense of where our focus lies. This would be a challenging and life-giving experiment for many churches, I imagine.

Matt Barber sent me this GigaOM interview with director Brad Bird regarding how he engenders a creative environment. He sounds like a fascinating manager. Bird has made some of the most original and multifaceted films in the past ten years. He doesn’t receive the attention he deserves and I think that’s because his films are animated, as if that medium is somehow deficient compared to live-action movies. But Bird’s three films, The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, are testaments to his imagination and skill at inspiring people under his leadership to express their creativity. Here are a couple of their exchanges.

The Quarterly: Do angry people—malcontents, in your words—make for better innovation?

Brad Bird: Involved people make for better innovation… Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.” If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.

The Quarterly: How do you build and lead a team?

Brad Bird: I got everybody in a room. This was different from what the previous guy had done; he had reviewed the work in private, generated notes, and sent them to the person… I said, “Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together…

What would it look like in churches if we employed similar ideas? It might be chaotic, but there is certainly something beautiful in Bird’s sense of we are stronger together than as individuals.

This past Friday I watched Bill Moyers’ interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Bill Moyers Journal. I thought Moyers did a more than satisfactory job in taking an appreciative approach to this Chicago clergyman whose heated comments about the United States have become quite controversial in the past few months because he was the pastor of Senator Barak Obama for twenty years. (This video is a fair example of the coverage on Wright.) Moyers let Wright locate himself theologically and explain his positions. There were times I wished Moyers would have pushed harder, but I find it is generally easier to understand someone if you do not take an antagonistic approach. The interview gave a fuller picture of Wright and his ministry. When I watched the interview, I found myself inspired by his discussion of the community development work his church has undertaken.

Bill Moyers Journal also showed longer sections of the sermons that have been most played. Wright has taken a lot of heat for his sermon in which he proclaims, “Not God bless America; God damn America!” In the larger context, we see that Wright argues that we should not put our faith in any government, but in God. “Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change… Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate—the Roman government failed. ” The danger, Wright sees, is that in the Bible God does not favor nations who do not do God’s will. God does bring curse, condemnation, and chastisement, even to God’s promised people. Wright offers a litany of powerful empires and governments that ultimately failed and therefore calls his congregation to trust in God, not in the government. As he tells Moyers in the interview:

If you look at the damning, condemning, if you look at Deuteronomy, it talks about blessings and curses, how God doesn’t bless everything. God does not bless gang-bangers. God does not bless dope dealers. God does not bless young thugs that hit old women upside the head and snatch their purse. God does not bless that. God does not bless the killing of babies. God does not bless the killing of enemies.

As I listened to Wright, I could sense that he falls well within the tradition of Black Liberation Theology, especially the theology James H. Cone. There are things I agree with and disagree with that school of theology. While I do not follow all of that school’s conclusions, I am challenged by it and I do think it stands firmly within orthodox Christianity. I think Wright clearly articulated in the interview with Moyers that Black Liberation Theology does not say Christianity is only for African-Americans or Africans—it says that people of African heritage do not have to give up that heritage to be Christian. It challenges my views because when I have read Cone, I wonder how can I relate to this faith as a white person? Where is the Christ that can be universally accepted? Black Liberation Theology, like all Liberation Theology, accurately argues, in my opinion, that there isn’t a “universal Christ” understood apart from our backgrounds. We all come to Christ in a specific context and those contexts have inherent strengths and weaknesses.

Liberation Theologies make the grand claim that God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible are radically and exclusively for the oppressed. While one may argue against the claim that Bible is exclusively for the oppressed, Wright articulately argued that the Bible was written by oppressed peoples. The Bible was written by Israel and the Church. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Selucids, Greeks, and Romans did not write the Bible. Israel and the Church wrote the Bible in the midst of and in response to invasion, captivity, diaspora, and simply dwelling in the midst of foreign superpowers. How does this fact challenge our reading of the texts, especially when America is the superpower?

That the media does not understand the nuance of Black Liberation Theology does not surprise me—I’m not sure I understand it completely either. As Wright says, he has different responsibilities as a pastor than Obama does as a politician. Some have jumped on Wright’s response to Moyers’ question regarding Obama distinguishing himself from Wright in his Philadelphia speech on race. Wright said to Moyers, “And so here at a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician. I continue to be a pastor who speaks to the people of God about the things of God.” Larry Mantle said today on Airtalk that he found Wright’s answer dismissive and tantamount to claiming that Obama made his speech solely for political purposes. And though Obama agrees with Mantle’s assessment, I didn’t hear Wright’s statement saying that Obama’s speech was merely “political posturing.” I think Wright made the point that as a politician, one needs to unite as many people as possible to move forward as a nation. A pastor, on the other hand, is more concerned with engendering faithfulness to God than with negotiating all the allegiances and values people bring to the public square. Don Frederick writes in his blog on latimes.com concerning Wright’s press conference at the National Press Club yesterday,

Wright told his audience: “As I said to Barack Obama, if you get elected, Nov. 5 I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.”...

As political analyst David Gergen summed up on CNN: “I’m sure Rev. Wright has many virtues. Loyalty to his former parishioner is not one of them.”

Wright may not help Obama get elected, but we must ask, is that his job? Would we be more comfortable if Wright went easier on America with an Obama presidency, or would we immediately call Wright a hypocrite? It seems the media has not paid attention to where Wright says his allegiance lies. Wright has clearly argued his allegiance is with God first, not with any government, or with any politician, even if that politician is a friend and former parishioner. He views his role as one that speaks truth to power. Wright seems to be getting most in trouble because he has not seen America’s sins as merely slip-ups in an otherwise beneficent history. He questions whether those sins actually are isolated incidents or are they more reflective of our character and he wonders if our nation has ever repented from them. These are fair questions, in my opinion, and require thoughtful discussion. (Actually Wright gets most in trouble because of his association with Obama. Wright has engaged in this rhetoric for decades but the national spotlight was never on him before.)

While I do not agree with many of Wright’s political conclusions or historical statements, I think he is an interesting case that Christians need to consider. Namely, he views his allegiance first to God and Christ, over and sometimes against his responsibilities as a citizen of the United States. Wright espouses a faith far from a civil religion that either compartmentalizes church and state or that uses religion to baptize the government. To what extent can the Christian make claims on America and vice versa?

My good friend Eddy has a funny list of “Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained For Ministry.” It made me laugh. Here are a few items:

7. Man was created before woman, obviously as a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment rather than the crowning achievement of creation.
6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. Their conduct at football and basketball games demonstrates this.
5. Some men are handsome, and this will distract women worshipers.

The Envision 08 Conference: The Gospel, Politics, and the Future. Featured speakers include, among others, Brenda Salter-McNeil, Miroslav Volf, Jim Wallis, and John Perkins. Alas, I’m on the West coast and out of vacation time. Anyone going let me know how it is. Sigh.

Yesterday, we celebrated the Lord’s Supper in our worship service. Todd Johnson, a member of our congregation and professor of theology, worship, and the arts at Fuller Theological Seminary, preached about the meaning of Communion using the story of the resurrected Jesus meeting the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24.13-35). He reminded us that the Eucharist is not only a memorial of Jesus’ death, but also a celebration of the Resurrection and he challenged us to see it as such. When I walked into the sanctuary and saw the table prepared for the Eucharist, I had a sense that there would be something special in that day’s receiving the bread and drink. Todd’s sermon spoke deeply and definitively about having the eyes to see the reality in front of us that Jesus is risen, something which has been hard for me since Dad’s death.

After the sermon, we recited the Apostles’ Creed, in which we proclaim with the whole Church,

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. AMEN.

Given my struggles of faith recently, especially in seeing Jesus as victorious over death, I saw my participation in this creed as an historical statement. In an interview with Krista Tippet on Speaking of Faith, theologian and Yale Divinity School professor Jaroslav Pelikan had this to say about the use of the creeds:

My faith life, like that of every one else, fluctuates. There are ups and downs and hot spots and cold spots, and boredom and ennui and all the rest can be there. And so I’m not asked on a Sunday morning, “As of 9:20, what do you believe?” And then you sit down with a three-by-five index card saying, “Now let’s see. What do I believe today?” No, that’s not what they’re asking me. They’re asking me, “Are you a member of a community which now, for a millennium and a half, has said, ‘We believe in one God’?”

I was in tears saying, “I believe… in the resurrection of the body,” not because I could say it with deep conviction or power, but because I said it as a hope against hope. I said it not as a statement that in this situation, in my grief, I believe in the resurrection of the body. No, I said it remembering my twenty-three years as a member of the Church, which has proclaimed the resurrection of the body for two thousand years. I believe in the resurrection. This was not a confession out of my strength, but out of my weakness. If there was any strength in my proclamation, it came from the Holy Spirit, who invigorates those who hold to this central part of the Christian faith.

In the fullness of my awareness of death’s reality, I walked into the line in the aisle to tear off a piece of sourdough and dip it in a cup full of grape juice. This was my act of allegiance to the Kingdom of God even though I can barely see it right now. Eating that shred of bread and bit of juice was my protest against death in spite of its overwhelming presence in my life. I chewed weakly, praying for hope and choosing belief in Jesus’ victory when so much of the immediate evidence seems to say otherwise. I don’t know where this experience will lead me, but I do know I want another bite, another drink.

A couple of days ago I had my birthday. I’m grateful for the cards, phone calls, e-mails, comments on my blog, and messages on Facebook. Carey made me a wonderful dinner and we had a great time talking before she went to work. Timbo then came over, took me out for ice cream, and we watched The Boxer (I’m on a bit of a Daniel Day-Lewis kick since There Will Be Blood). While I felt loved, I couldn’t shake the cloud of sadness that hung over me all day and continues to stay. This was my first birthday since my father’s death. When my mom called me in the morning, I missed hearing his voice. Their tradition was to call us early in the morning, usually getting us out of bed, and singing “Happy Birthday” before we knew what hit us. When I read the card Mom sent with a beautiful and humbling note, it hurt to not see his signature. I wish I could express how deeply I miss the man who gave me life. Lately I have felt numb, furious, or an ache that draws my attention elsewhere. The thing I want the most is for Dad to be alive and this wish tears me apart for two reasons. The simple reality of his death can incapacitate me at times. But the fact that what I want most is an impossibility, a baseless wish in this life, hurts as well. I can’t make myself stop wishing he was here and honestly, I don’t want that ability, no matter how much pain I feel.

Currently the Church celebrates the season of Easter, the period of the year that we most intently focuses on Jesus’ victory over sin and death. If I am honest, it is really hard to see that victory and hard to believe right now that God’s kingdom has won, is winning, and will win. My eyes aren’t attuned to see the Resurrection; death is far easier to notice. Death’s disgusting stench creeps into nearly any room I sit. In the past couple of weeks I thought that every Christian at their baptism should be given a piece of the empty tomb as a tangible reminder of Jesus’ victory. Instead, I’m left with the fact that Mom doesn’t have of a chunk of the stone that was rolled away—she has Dad’s ashes sitting on the nightstand next to her bed.

Please pray for me, friends. Pray that Christ would make his resurrection known to me, that I would have the faith to believe that death doesn’t have the final word. Pray that the beatitude that those who mourn are blessed because they will be comforted would be true. It’s hard for me to pray lately.