I asked my students to consider the following. Imagine we caught a radical evangelical preacher who was at the center of a plot to blow up a government building in protest of the Obama administration. The bomb is ticking and we have to get him to confess or the bomb will detonate and kill hundreds of people. Will we, in this case, torture an American citizen and a [Christian] to find the bomb?
And what if the bomb was not in a government building but in a mosque? Or an abortion clinic?
N.T. Wright on swimming the Tiber–that is, converting to Catholicism–and Protestant-Catholic relations in general:
[The Council of] Trent, and much subsequent RC theology, has had a habit of never spring-cleaning, so you just live in a house with more and more clutter building up, lots of right answers to wrong questions (e.g. transsubstantiation) which then get in the way when you want to get something actually done.
In particular, Trent gave the wrong answer, at a deep level, to the nature/grace question, which is what’s at the root of the Marian dogmas and devotions which, despite contrary claims, are in my view neither sacramental, transformational, communal nor eschatological. Nor biblical.
The best RCs I know (some of whom would strongly disagree with the last point, some would strongly agree) are great conversation partners mainly because they have found ways of pushing the accumulated clutter quietly to one side and creating space for real life. But it’s against the grain of the Tridentine system, in my view. They aren’t allowed to say that but clearly many of them think it. Joining in is just bringing more of your own clutter to an already confused and overcrowded room . . .
To say “Wow, I want that stuff [the sacraments, etc.], I’d better go to Rome” is like someone suddenly discovering (as I’m told Americans occasionally do — sorry, cheap shot) that there are other countries in the world and so getting the first big boat he finds in New York to take him there . . . when there were plenty of planes lined up and waiting at JFK. Rome is a big, splendid, dusty old ocean liner, with lots of grand cabins, and, at present, quite a fine captain and some excellent officers — but also quite a few rooms in need of repair. Yes, it may take you places, but it’s slow and you might get seasick from time to time. And the navigators have been told that they must never acknowledge when they’ve been going in the wrong direction . . .
This seems right to me. I don’t know much about Roman Catholicism, and although I do find its–well, there’s no other word for it–catholicity and its grandeur to be attractive, it’s just such a beast of a machine. Once it gets moving, sure, good luck stopping it. But what if it goes in the wrong direction? Big theological mistakes (say, the immaculate conception, transsubstantiation, priestly celibacy) take centuries, if not millennia, to correct.
I don’t support schism and I’m a huge critic of Luther and the Protestant Reformation in general. But it seems to me that one of the virtues of a “lower” ecclesiology is the increased flexibility and mobility that comes as a result. As long as you have a Catholicism with such a heavy bureaucratic system weighing it down, you’re going to have some problems: one of those being a low tolerance for dissent (a kind of doctrinal ossification), another of being perpetually about three hundred years behind the times. These kinds of machines—Wright’s cruiseliner analogy is brilliant—have tons of momentum and power, but as a result, have a hard time changing their course.
iMonk interviews Catholic philosopher Bryan Cross. I found in this paragraph a good summation of my own experience thus far:
Eventually a friend of mine suggested that I visit an Anglican church, so I did. I went by myself. It was completely different. It was quiet and reverent before the liturgy began. The liturgy itself was beautiful, rich, and meaningful. Here for the first time I found freedom from “man-talk.” There was no personality at the front of the church with a microphone, saying whatever came into his head at that moment. There was no speculative exegesis or theological argumentation which I could critically dismantle. The liturgy is God’s speech spoken back to Him by His people or by one representing them. Of course Holy Communion is the climax of the liturgy, and it too is not “man-talk.” In this sacrament God was speaking to me not through words and propositions, but through a physical action, giving Himself to me in a very intimate way. This was not something toward which I could take a critical, disengaged stance. I could only receive it humbly and gratefully. In that respect, this sacrament almost bypassed my intellect and went straight to my heart. We received Holy Communion at the front of the church, on our knees. The very form of worship communicated something altogether different from the way of taking communion I had previously known. I found God to be present there in the beauty, reverence and silence of the liturgy. In that sacredness my heart, which had been starved under a diet of mere propositions, was drawn anew toward God.
In case you didn’t know, the passion and plight of the Palestinian people is an increasing interest of mine and, thus, probably of this blog as well. One of the many problems keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gridlocked is the lack of fair, balanced perspectives in the American media: how often do you hear about the conflict from a Palestinian perspective? So I was pleased to stumble across this clip of Jon Stewart’s interview with Mustafa Barghouti, a leading Palestinian politician, and Anna Baltzer, a Jewish-American writer who has spent considerable time in the Palestinian territories.
Both of these folks strike a number of good points in an 8-minute interview (and despite a fair amount of heckling). He’s right, for example, that many Palestinians (though, sadly, a decreasing number as many emigrate elsewhere) are, in fact, Christians: something that Christian Zionists like, say, John Hagee could use to keep in mind when they blindly endorse every act of Israeli aggression. But he’s also right, I hope, on the broader point that nonviolence in the tradition of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Desmond Tutu is the only viable way forward to lasting peace.
And she’s right—and I’m so thrilled she mentioned this!—that so many of Israel’s policies are completely contrary to the principles of Judaism. If Jewish fundamentalists were really, you know, fundamentalists—that is, if they adhered strictly to the letter of Torah—then the policies of Israel would look completely different than they do now. Which is why the most conservative of Jews don’t even recognize the modern state of Israel as a Jewish state. Other than the fact that the majority of its citizens are Jews, there’s nothing really Jewish about it.
These two are fresh, and the world needs to hear what they have to say. I really wish Stewart would just shut up and let these brilliant people talk. Part 2 is here. Money quote, from Barghouti:
Israel has tried for sixty years the language of power to achieve security. The only road that was not tried fully was to have peace with Palestinians. And I am sure that this is the best guarantee for security.
The church is the ultimate counter-culture. It’s been demonstrated more than adequately hundreds of times in history that if the church becomes more concerned with the manifestation of the Kingdom in society than within its own community, worship, discipleship and spiritual formation, it will become a tool of forces in practical opposition to Christ.
OK, I’ll admit it: my fling with the Anglican Church is getting pretty serious. Sure, she’s a screwed up girl: but, for starters, she’s breathtakingly gorgeous. She’s eloquent and well-read, and every time we meet I feel engaged at every level: physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. She takes energy, sure, but the results are well worth it.
End romantic metaphor.
What I’m trying to say is that I’m slowly being seduced (the metaphor really works too well) by the power of Anglican liturgy. I’ve been going steady with St. Paul’s on Lower Queen Anne for about eight months now. It was Dr. Spina, one of my professors and an Anglican priest himself, who convinced me that a church service ought to be more like a dance than a performance. Every symbol, every ritual, every movement is infused with meaning and significance and history: something I can’t say about the kinds of churches I grew up in. Every time I go I find something new to chew on: the centrality of the Eucharist, the aroma of the incense, the themes of the text for the day.
What attracts me–and this is so typical for my personality–is that every part of the service (except, unfortunately, the sermons, lately anyway) has theological import. Just a couple of examples: when I walk in the door I see something like this:
It’s not a great image, but you see how the eye is drawn to the crucifix? That’s on purpose: you can tell by the way the dome arches over it, by the light coming from above Jesus, by the lines ascending towards the crucified Lord on either side. But having the crucified Christ as the focal point of the space is more than just aesthetically pleasing: it’s making a theological statement. It’s a visible reminder of the centrality of our Lord in Christian worship, and it’s something I can learn from. And what is right beneath the crucifix? The altar: the focus of the worship space is thus on the sacrifice of Christ. It is on this altar that the body of Christ is broken and the blood of Christ spilled out.
There’s so much more to this that I could get excited about but really you should just watch the video if you’re at all curious. This Anglican church in Florida somewhere is growing really quickly, apparently because a lot of young evangelicals (like, say, yours truly) are leaving evangelicalism in search of a deeper tradition. So their church is putting on seminars to teach people the basics of how liturgy works—why they do what they do. Very cool.
This Sunday is All Saint’s Day. I have no idea what that means, but I’m really excited.
Posted by urbanfall 
Posted by urbanfall 
Posted by urbanfall 
