A couple of links here from the New York Times:
A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith: A really good article about Sen. Obama's relationship with the Rev. Wright. Note the date: April 30, 2007. So why did it take almost a year for this dialogue to really get going? Really, why did we have to take so long to start talking about race? And are we talking? Maybe if we had been talking all along, you know ...
Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race: Published today, a nice article about being mixed race in the Obama era. He's done for us what Tiger couldn't.
"Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person’s racial appearance.”
Also, check out this page at Union Theological Seminary (where I'll be on Friday and Saturday to attend the New Testament and Roman Empire conference) that highlights black liberation theology in light of Rev. Wright's media attention, and discusses everything you ever wanted to know about black liberation theology. I especially found the link to the Forbes magazine interview with James Cone (whose book God of the Oppressed we're about to start reading in my theology class) particularly interesting.
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Monday, March 31, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Original Sin-suality
I bought Chris Hedges' (I) Don't Believe (in) Atheists yesterday and spent most of yesterday reading through it. I also bought Bart Ehrman's God's Problem (I admit, most just to yell at him). Comments and reviews on both to come in time.
Something in the Atheists book sparked a rather interesting realization though. Hedges writes that we do not need to afraid of anyone who does or does not believe in God. We should, however, be afraid of anyone who does not believe in sin. The concept of sin, Hedges writes, is the recognition that we human beings can never be omnipotent.
Wow, I thought, and read it aloud to a friend. He looked at me rather puzzled and said, "That doesn't make any sense at all." After a few moments of debating back and forth on why that didn't make sense to him, I finally asked, "What is sin to you?"
"It's when you do something wrong."
Well no wonder. I explained where Hedges was coming from, that one of the biblical views of sin is not the act of doing something wrong, but a state of imperfect being. It wasn't small-s sin, that you list during your weekly confession, tallying up as either venial or mortal, or even take up to the altar call and swear you'll never do that again lest you make Jesus cry. We're talking about big-s Sin, the stalking monster, the disease that gets within in or is within us and in the end makes us do what we do not want to do and not do what we should do.
"Oh," he replied. "Now that makes sense."
We are both christians, mind you. You'd think that we'd have the same basic understanding of what sin is. And yet. It never ceases to amaze me to discover how often we human beings who speak the same language actually translate our words with different meanings.
And what a difference this makes! Sin as something external that you do vs. Sin as something that lives within your soul. Sin as a medium in which we live, breath, think, love, laugh and be human, vs. something that we commit.
Sin as something that we can wrestle to the ground with Jesus as our tag-team partner. Sin as the acts we commit, the vile thoughts we think, the decisions we make. And if we can do right,well so can anyone else.
Or.
Sin as the inner unconscious mystery that drives us to do the act, think the thought, make the choice, the boiling force inside us that's as fundamental to our nature as our taste in lovers that makes us choose one woman over another, without really understanding why. Something that, despite our best intentions, will usually lead us to hell if we refuse to look at it fully and claim it as our own. And which will lead us there even when we do.
That's the Sin that makes grace make sense to me, that underneath our human veneer lies a beast, and every hair on our heads is loved anyway despite this, even when and especially when we fall.
So, I ask you: What is Sin? Try not to use the words you grew up with. Try not to rely on words that are comfortable. Take your best shot. No wrong answers.
Something in the Atheists book sparked a rather interesting realization though. Hedges writes that we do not need to afraid of anyone who does or does not believe in God. We should, however, be afraid of anyone who does not believe in sin. The concept of sin, Hedges writes, is the recognition that we human beings can never be omnipotent.
Wow, I thought, and read it aloud to a friend. He looked at me rather puzzled and said, "That doesn't make any sense at all." After a few moments of debating back and forth on why that didn't make sense to him, I finally asked, "What is sin to you?"
"It's when you do something wrong."
Well no wonder. I explained where Hedges was coming from, that one of the biblical views of sin is not the act of doing something wrong, but a state of imperfect being. It wasn't small-s sin, that you list during your weekly confession, tallying up as either venial or mortal, or even take up to the altar call and swear you'll never do that again lest you make Jesus cry. We're talking about big-s Sin, the stalking monster, the disease that gets within in or is within us and in the end makes us do what we do not want to do and not do what we should do.
"Oh," he replied. "Now that makes sense."
We are both christians, mind you. You'd think that we'd have the same basic understanding of what sin is. And yet. It never ceases to amaze me to discover how often we human beings who speak the same language actually translate our words with different meanings.
And what a difference this makes! Sin as something external that you do vs. Sin as something that lives within your soul. Sin as a medium in which we live, breath, think, love, laugh and be human, vs. something that we commit.
Sin as something that we can wrestle to the ground with Jesus as our tag-team partner. Sin as the acts we commit, the vile thoughts we think, the decisions we make. And if we can do right,well so can anyone else.
Or.
Sin as the inner unconscious mystery that drives us to do the act, think the thought, make the choice, the boiling force inside us that's as fundamental to our nature as our taste in lovers that makes us choose one woman over another, without really understanding why. Something that, despite our best intentions, will usually lead us to hell if we refuse to look at it fully and claim it as our own. And which will lead us there even when we do.
That's the Sin that makes grace make sense to me, that underneath our human veneer lies a beast, and every hair on our heads is loved anyway despite this, even when and especially when we fall.
So, I ask you: What is Sin? Try not to use the words you grew up with. Try not to rely on words that are comfortable. Take your best shot. No wrong answers.
Monday, March 3, 2008
We who are strong
Yesterday at church, Superpastor let fly with a smack-you-upside-the-head sermon, the challenging, prophetic kind of rhetoric that is the very reason I go to church, and especially this church. Yet again departing from the lectionary (for us UCCers, would have been John 9:1-41, the story about the blind man who gets kicked out of the synagogue) Superpastor instead picked a passage -- actually, just one verse -- to address an ethical issue that his congregation faced. Not only did he jump the lectionary, he jumped the NRSV entirely and read instead from the King James! He said he felt the older translation got at the heart of what the verse really meant over the NRSV's blander translation. Our scripture lesson yesterday was the King James Romans 15:1
Which, quite honestly, is the very essence of Paul's theology. This is Paul fighting the corrupting forces of empire with the power of community, held together by love. I've been looking for an NT verse for a tattoo in Greek, and this might be my next skin art.
Superpastor was speaking truth about a civic issue in our community, but this verse and this sermon also spoke to something person for me. You might have noticed that I've redecorated the blog a bit -- added some blogs and sites to the links on the right -- but also altered the name and my profile a tad.
This is a blog is one from my context, which is that of a biracial woman of Asian heritage. I grew up being called "half" my entire life, and when I reached adulthood I began to wonder exactly which "half" was my Asian half and which was my European one. Top or bottom? Left or right? Or is it scattered throughout my being so that when my parts become a sum, I add up to 50% Asian and 50% European? I'd love to take a DNA test, just to see if the numbers really do add up this way. But "half" sounds reductive -- I am half a person, half an identity based on who's doing the looking, because you know, I'm only half-Asian around other Europeans. And, of course, the only words available to describe my racial-ethnic identity were not polite. Ainoko and konketsu are two from my Asian side, but they both essentially mean bastard. And on my European side -- halfbreed, mutt, mongrel, and of course, being half-white doesn't keep you from being called a japchinkgookslantslope, go home, go back were you came from. Oh how we Other anyone who is Other.
So a few years ago I discovered the word hapa, a Hawaiian word that sort of means "half" but also means "mixed" but, I learned, essentially is used for anyone who is multiracial and of Asian heritage. It became really out there in the last year or so thanks to artist Kip Fulbeck's Hapa Project. All I get out of this identification is personal satisfaction of being able to name myself -- an important factor in good mental health -- because I have to explain what hapa means as much as I (still) have to go through the torturous conversations of Where Are You From No Really Where Are You Really From Oh I Thought That You Were Asian I Could Tell From Your Eyes You Look Like You're Indian Which Tribe Are You How Long Have You Been In This Country You Speak English Very Well De Donde Eres No Verdad?
Since I've been attending seminary, I've been opening up to new ways of looking at the world, and one of them is postcolonial criticism. Postcolonial criticism is, to put it not so simply, the voices of those who have been oppressed under colonialism, who have had their identities decided by people who don't know them, Others. Postcolonialism is the speaking to former colonial powers and current imperial powers by people who have traditionally been ignored, silenced, rubbed out. It calls to the carpet those who have privilege of any kind, and turns on its head the notions of who matters. It's the recognition that there are more ways of looking at the world that the one that we've been given. It's a fairly new field, academically speaking, but then it'd have to be, since colonialism's not yet in its death throes and empire is still a factor.
As you can guess, I'm quite enamored with this field.
There are moments when I read these works and collapse in relief because my context as a woman of color finally has a place to be heard. And there are moments when I burn in shame because my context as a woman of privilege hears and understands the human price of that privilege.
So the other night I was reading entries from Mixed Race America, a blog on race issues in America that I've added to my blogroll, and I came across a link to an essay by Wei Ming Dariotis, a scholar who had embraced and championed the world of the hapa, or mixed, individual, and had even proposed a field of study she called Hapa Studies. In fact, it was her Web site with its examination of the need for Hapa Studies that put me over to embracing the word for my own self identity. However, in this essay, she was giving up her identification with the word. Native Hawaiians who were hapas had been miffed for years that us mainlander mixed-race, non-Hawaiians had taken up the word as our own. I didn't know, or rather, I knew but thought it was a small, disgruntled group, much like the people who say that Barack Obama can't be black just because he says so, who want to jealously guard the racial barriers of self-identification.
Dariotis, however, came at the argument from a postcolonial angle.
I am a woman of color. I am a woman of privilege. I choose to exist in tension between these two poles, and never fully claim one or the other, so that I never forget either. Even when I do, and oh how I do.
The heart of the gospel is this, that we live in community, bounded by love for one another and the love of God. To live in community is to be aware of the needs of others and to fulfill theirs before we fulfill our own. This means we give up privilege, we give up power, we give up comfort. We wear new markers of identity over our old ones, not excising them but adding to them and enriching them, so that we become new people under God's heavenly rule, in which there is no hunger or poverty, where there is no oppression that we live under or we live out. We do not live there yet, but we can see it, and we live like it's already happened in order to taste some of its blessings.
So I give up hapa. Admittedly, now I'm stuck for a word, because mixed is OK, multiracial/biracial is OK, but for me it lacks the power of hapa. So I've cheated a bit, gone with (h)apa, which for me will stand for (half) Asian Pacific Islander American, which is still my context and what I study (postcolonial and APA hermeneutics and theologies). But I can't say I'm wild about that either. But like the man said, we can't always get what we want. I'll keep it for now, and I'll keep my theological ears open for a more accurate title.
We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
Which, quite honestly, is the very essence of Paul's theology. This is Paul fighting the corrupting forces of empire with the power of community, held together by love. I've been looking for an NT verse for a tattoo in Greek, and this might be my next skin art.
Superpastor was speaking truth about a civic issue in our community, but this verse and this sermon also spoke to something person for me. You might have noticed that I've redecorated the blog a bit -- added some blogs and sites to the links on the right -- but also altered the name and my profile a tad.
This is a blog is one from my context, which is that of a biracial woman of Asian heritage. I grew up being called "half" my entire life, and when I reached adulthood I began to wonder exactly which "half" was my Asian half and which was my European one. Top or bottom? Left or right? Or is it scattered throughout my being so that when my parts become a sum, I add up to 50% Asian and 50% European? I'd love to take a DNA test, just to see if the numbers really do add up this way. But "half" sounds reductive -- I am half a person, half an identity based on who's doing the looking, because you know, I'm only half-Asian around other Europeans. And, of course, the only words available to describe my racial-ethnic identity were not polite. Ainoko and konketsu are two from my Asian side, but they both essentially mean bastard. And on my European side -- halfbreed, mutt, mongrel, and of course, being half-white doesn't keep you from being called a japchinkgookslantslope, go home, go back were you came from. Oh how we Other anyone who is Other.
So a few years ago I discovered the word hapa, a Hawaiian word that sort of means "half" but also means "mixed" but, I learned, essentially is used for anyone who is multiracial and of Asian heritage. It became really out there in the last year or so thanks to artist Kip Fulbeck's Hapa Project. All I get out of this identification is personal satisfaction of being able to name myself -- an important factor in good mental health -- because I have to explain what hapa means as much as I (still) have to go through the torturous conversations of Where Are You From No Really Where Are You Really From Oh I Thought That You Were Asian I Could Tell From Your Eyes You Look Like You're Indian Which Tribe Are You How Long Have You Been In This Country You Speak English Very Well De Donde Eres No Verdad?
Since I've been attending seminary, I've been opening up to new ways of looking at the world, and one of them is postcolonial criticism. Postcolonial criticism is, to put it not so simply, the voices of those who have been oppressed under colonialism, who have had their identities decided by people who don't know them, Others. Postcolonialism is the speaking to former colonial powers and current imperial powers by people who have traditionally been ignored, silenced, rubbed out. It calls to the carpet those who have privilege of any kind, and turns on its head the notions of who matters. It's the recognition that there are more ways of looking at the world that the one that we've been given. It's a fairly new field, academically speaking, but then it'd have to be, since colonialism's not yet in its death throes and empire is still a factor.
As you can guess, I'm quite enamored with this field.
There are moments when I read these works and collapse in relief because my context as a woman of color finally has a place to be heard. And there are moments when I burn in shame because my context as a woman of privilege hears and understands the human price of that privilege.
So the other night I was reading entries from Mixed Race America, a blog on race issues in America that I've added to my blogroll, and I came across a link to an essay by Wei Ming Dariotis, a scholar who had embraced and championed the world of the hapa, or mixed, individual, and had even proposed a field of study she called Hapa Studies. In fact, it was her Web site with its examination of the need for Hapa Studies that put me over to embracing the word for my own self identity. However, in this essay, she was giving up her identification with the word. Native Hawaiians who were hapas had been miffed for years that us mainlander mixed-race, non-Hawaiians had taken up the word as our own. I didn't know, or rather, I knew but thought it was a small, disgruntled group, much like the people who say that Barack Obama can't be black just because he says so, who want to jealously guard the racial barriers of self-identification.
Dariotis, however, came at the argument from a postcolonial angle.
I have to admit, this upset me quite a bit, and Dariotis mentions in her article the reactions of people who, like her, like me, love the word and have come to use it as a way to self-identify. I am something, it is this word that sums up all my parts without giving emphasis to one or another. Can't we all just share it? I asked. For heaven's sake, I'm not a colonizer, I'm not a power, why do I have to be the one to suffer, to compromise, when it wasn't me who did those oppressive deeds? I'm with you now! I want to keep this word that is my identity!Increasingly, many Native Hawaiian people object not only to the way the word has been changed in its grammatical usage, but also to how it is applied to anyone of mixed Asian and or Pacific Islander heritage, when it implies Native Hawaiian mixed heritage. This is not merely a question of trying to hold on to word that like many words encountered in the English language has been adopted, assimilated, or appropriated. This is a question of power. Who has the power or right to use language? Native Hawaiians, in addition to all of the other ways that their sovereignty has been abrogated, lost for many years the right to their own language through oppressive English-language education.
Given this history and given the contemporary social and political reality (and realty) of Hawaiian, the appropriation of this one word has significance deeper than many Asian Americans are willing to recognize. To have this symbolic word used by Asians, particularly by Japanese Americans, as though it is their own, seems to symbolically mirror the way Native Hawaiian land was first taken by European Americans, and is now owned by Japanese and Japanese Americans and other Asian American ethnic groups that numerically and economically dominate Native Hawaiians in their own land.
In Foregrounding Native Nationalisms: A Critique of Antinationalist Sentiment in Asian American Studies, Candice Fujikane argues that Asian Americans are "settlers" in Hawaii, and therefore "support American colonialism" even while trying to fight racism and discrimination in a "colonial context". She defines the term "settler" in opposition to "native," and argues that Asian Americans "refuse to see themselves as the beneficiaries of [the US] colonial system." Although Fujikane does not specifically mention the use of the word hapa by Asian Americans, her argument is certainly in line with the critique that Asian Americans have wrongfully appropriated the term in a way that disenfranchises Native Hawaiians from their culture.
We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
I am a woman of color. I am a woman of privilege. I choose to exist in tension between these two poles, and never fully claim one or the other, so that I never forget either. Even when I do, and oh how I do.
The heart of the gospel is this, that we live in community, bounded by love for one another and the love of God. To live in community is to be aware of the needs of others and to fulfill theirs before we fulfill our own. This means we give up privilege, we give up power, we give up comfort. We wear new markers of identity over our old ones, not excising them but adding to them and enriching them, so that we become new people under God's heavenly rule, in which there is no hunger or poverty, where there is no oppression that we live under or we live out. We do not live there yet, but we can see it, and we live like it's already happened in order to taste some of its blessings.
So I give up hapa. Admittedly, now I'm stuck for a word, because mixed is OK, multiracial/biracial is OK, but for me it lacks the power of hapa. So I've cheated a bit, gone with (h)apa, which for me will stand for (half) Asian Pacific Islander American, which is still my context and what I study (postcolonial and APA hermeneutics and theologies). But I can't say I'm wild about that either. But like the man said, we can't always get what we want. I'll keep it for now, and I'll keep my theological ears open for a more accurate title.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Music break
My theology professor played this before class the other day, right before we spent the 3-hour class period watching the documentary Race: The Power of Illusion, as a way to prep for the contextual theologies we'll be reading in the second half of the course. Race, class, gender, sexual identity and social location matter in how we talk about God, about human beings, about the entire world. As all theology is contextual (yes, even the classic, Old-Theology views we moderns inherited from the Greeks by way of medieval Europe) it's important to know our own contexts as well as the context of others. It seems kind of daunting and too diverse-for-unity sometimes, that everyone has their own lens through which to peer, darkly, at matters divine, but I think that's just a case of looking at the hole instead of the entire donut. Our contexts may differ, but we are all humans, and we all are under grace, which is the unconditional love of God which frees us to love and welcome others.
Anyway, I heard this song yesterday while I was at the bookstore, skipping church in favor of academic catch-up, and I thought I'd share it and its message, which is a pretty good one. Enjoy!
Anyway, I heard this song yesterday while I was at the bookstore, skipping church in favor of academic catch-up, and I thought I'd share it and its message, which is a pretty good one. Enjoy!
Sheryl Crow, "Out of Our Heads"
If you feel you wanna fight me
There’s a chain around your mind
When something is holding you tightly
What is real is so hard to find
Losing babies to genocide
Oh where’s the meaning in that plight
Can’t you see that we’ve really bought into
Every word they proclaimed and every lie, oh
If we could only get out of our heads, out of our heads
And into our hearts
If we could only get out of our heads, out of our heads
And into our hearts
Someone’s feeding on your anger
Someone’s been whispering in your ear
You’ve seen his face before
You’ve been played before
These aren’t the words you need to hear
Through the dawn of darkness blindly
You have blood upon your hands
All the world will treat you kindly
But only the heart can understand, oh understand
If we could only get out of our heads, out of our heads
And into our hearts
Children of Abraham lay down your fears, swallow your
tears and look to your heart
If we could only get out of our heads, out of our heads
And into our hearts
Children of Abraham lay down your fears, swallow your
tears and look to your heart
Every man is his own prophet
Oh every prophet just a man
I say all the women stand up, say yes to themselves
Teach your children best you can
Let every man bow to the best in himself
We’re not killing any more
We’re the wisest ones, everybody listen
‘Cause you can’t fight this feeling any more, oh anymore
If we could only get out of our heads, out of our heads
And into our hearts
Children of Abraham lay down your fears, swallow your
tears and look to your heart
If we could only get out of our heads, out of our heads
And into our hearts
Children of Abraham lay down your fears, swallow your
tears and look to your heart
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Survey says
From BeliefNet:
Survey: 'Unchurched' Americans say Church is 'Full of Hypocrites'
OK, no great shocker there. Maybe a "Wait, if you're not there, how do you know?" query. Although I was "unchurched" for 15 years for that very reason. That, and a preference for sleeping in after working until 1 a.m. on Saturday nights. Yes, working, not partying.
But then we hit this graf:
... and we go "Huh?" If your religious tradition doesn't actually have a church, can you really be unchurched? Could perhaps they choose a better word for non-Christians so they don't actually fulfill the unchurched view of Christians being 'judgmental and hypocritical'? Un-templed? Non-churched? Simply lapsed? Nonpracticing?
Sometimes I "attend" UCC services in Second Life, but I haven't in about a month, so if I keep that up will my avatar be virtually unchurched in five months?
I'm soaking up some of my Intro to Theology texts before school begins at the end of the month, and they stress that the importance of Christian life is found in community, so being "churched" does seem to be a fairly important deal. However, I think I've accomplished the same deep fellowship at the bar over cheese fries and coin $2.50 pitchers, and I wonder where the "church" part comes in. A modern take, if you will, on the meal in Emmaus, as there's a starchy main course and plenty of realization that the stranger in front of you might be the gal with the answers. So was I in church when I was unchurched?
What, then, is church? Church is never the building, as pretty as we make them, and it cannot be just the 11-to-noon-on-Sundays hour, which is still a fairly segregated hour. Do we take church with us or do we leave it behind to be picked up later? Is it the declaration of your religious affiliation that is church? The friends you make and family you create who share that burning need to orient themselves and the world to a new vision of how things really are or should be? Or is it just the world, as imperfect as it is, and all the lives you touch as you go through, trying to love a lot and harm as little as you can?
Are there walls, or just places where the light leaks in? Is it divided by time, or can the words on a page written millenia ago that let a reader commune with an author be one of the bridges that transcend the clock?
So I guess my original question is, is being "unchurched" a relavant state or just a judgment call?
Survey: 'Unchurched' Americans say Church is 'Full of Hypocrites'
OK, no great shocker there. Maybe a "Wait, if you're not there, how do you know?" query. Although I was "unchurched" for 15 years for that very reason. That, and a preference for sleeping in after working until 1 a.m. on Saturday nights. Yes, working, not partying.
But then we hit this graf:
Researchers, affiliated with the Southern Baptists' LifeWay Christian Resources, defined "unchurched" as Christians who haven't attended church in six months as well as non-Christians such as Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.
... and we go "Huh?" If your religious tradition doesn't actually have a church, can you really be unchurched? Could perhaps they choose a better word for non-Christians so they don't actually fulfill the unchurched view of Christians being 'judgmental and hypocritical'? Un-templed? Non-churched? Simply lapsed? Nonpracticing?
Sometimes I "attend" UCC services in Second Life, but I haven't in about a month, so if I keep that up will my avatar be virtually unchurched in five months?
I'm soaking up some of my Intro to Theology texts before school begins at the end of the month, and they stress that the importance of Christian life is found in community, so being "churched" does seem to be a fairly important deal. However, I think I've accomplished the same deep fellowship at the bar over cheese fries and coin $2.50 pitchers, and I wonder where the "church" part comes in. A modern take, if you will, on the meal in Emmaus, as there's a starchy main course and plenty of realization that the stranger in front of you might be the gal with the answers. So was I in church when I was unchurched?
What, then, is church? Church is never the building, as pretty as we make them, and it cannot be just the 11-to-noon-on-Sundays hour, which is still a fairly segregated hour. Do we take church with us or do we leave it behind to be picked up later? Is it the declaration of your religious affiliation that is church? The friends you make and family you create who share that burning need to orient themselves and the world to a new vision of how things really are or should be? Or is it just the world, as imperfect as it is, and all the lives you touch as you go through, trying to love a lot and harm as little as you can?
Are there walls, or just places where the light leaks in? Is it divided by time, or can the words on a page written millenia ago that let a reader commune with an author be one of the bridges that transcend the clock?
So I guess my original question is, is being "unchurched" a relavant state or just a judgment call?
Thursday, December 27, 2007
The definition of "Christian"
One of the sites I regularly check in on is ReligiousTolerance.org, a thoughtful, ecumenical clearinghouse about world religion. The group that maintains the site is based in Canada, is made up of lay people of various faith traditions, and as inclusive as you could ever get. Although you can find whatever information you're seeking on religion, from abortion debates to Christmas wars, you'll also find a plethora of musings, ramblings and essays, mostly reader-donated, on almost every topic, on all sides of the political/religious spectrum.
I visited yesterday and an essay caught my eye: People who disagree with our definition of "Christian." An excerpt from the site:
Coupled with the fact that I just read a chapter in one of my theology books for the upcoming semester (Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes by Serena Jones and Paul Lakeland, editors) about Church, this essay made me ponder how "church" and "Christian" are defined, and whether we can actually have a unifying definition. Certainly, in the denomination to which I currently belong, there is no hard and fast definition for either, no dogma, no doctrine. Our pastor, during the last collection drive, gave a rather stirring sermon about how he considered our church to be a "Micah 6" church, i.e. 6:8 -- "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God." Like a mobius strip, the action informs the faith that informs the action that informs the faith and so on. It's all very blurry and unformed, but then it's better that way, lest we forget any part of that prophetic trifecta. In any case, there are people in the congregation who believe in the classical themes of salvation and individual grace, and there are heathens like me who are there for the wine shots. No, seriously, there are heathens like me who would prefer to put the classical theologies on hold for the time being until all the harm they've created are righted. So what unites us as church? What makes us Christian?
ReligiousTolerance.org defines Christian thusly:
We define "Christian" as including any individual or group who devoutly, thoughtfully, seriously, and prayerfully regards themselves to be Christian.
and I would have to say, I can go along with that. As a hapa (and if you don't know what that term means, go here. See, you learned something!) I'm all about self-identification, especially when other people are trying to decide your identity for you. Even though I often teeter on the brink of declaring that Jesus was a nice mythic figure, someone akin to "that guy," you know, the one that everyone seems to know but no one has ever met (Jesus as Ferris Bueller? "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Jesus cast out demons at 31 Flavors last night.") In the end, historical Jesus studies and what they can and can't prove (which is a lot) aside, what makes me a Christian isn't my belief in Jesus or Christ or Jesus Christ, but my trust and faith in both the gospel that he preached and the legacy of that gospel that was left behind after his death. That essentially boils down to love of God and love of neighbor. So yea, I guess I would devoutly, thoughtfully, seriously and prayerfully consider myself a Christian. Your defintion may differ, and that's perfectly OK. Just try to use your own words when you come up with your definition.
As for what makes up Church, I'll leave you with the definition I came up with for my theological reflection from my BorderLinks trip, when in October, me and eight other seminarians went to the Méxican-U.S. border to learn about immigration:
I visited yesterday and an essay caught my eye: People who disagree with our definition of "Christian." An excerpt from the site:
Common negative comments we have received about our definition of Christian:
 | You have no academic qualifications to make definitions: Ours is a multi-faith group consisting of an Agnostic, Atheist, Christian, Wiccan and Zen Buddhist. None have a theological degree or diploma from a Bible college. We consider this an asset, because such an education would bias us in favor of one wing of Christianity, and against other wings. We look upon ourselves as reporters, not theologians. We feel that we have done a competent job in collecting a broad range of definitions created by others. |
| Why not use the Bible's definition of "Christian?" The Bible is not clear on what a Christian is. Its text is ambiguous. If it were clear, then there would be a single, universally accepted definition in use among all Christian denominations. We have collected over 40 conflicting definitions. |
| Why not use God's definition of "Christian?" We could have the theists in our group attempt to pray to God to determine his definition. But we conducted a pilot study on assessing the will of God through prayer and found that it seems to be hopeless. Again, if people could assess the will of God through prayer, then there would be a single universally accepted definition of "Christian" among all Christian denominations. If prayer worked in this way, there would have been no schisms in Christendom over theology. |
| Your definition is wrong because it includes denomination XXXXX which is not Christian: This is one of the most common types of Emails that we receive, where "XXXXX" is most commonly Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah's Witnesses, United Church, and Progressive Christianity. The problem here is that if you went to a member of one of these groups, you would probably find that they regard themselves as Christians -- perhaps the only true Christians. They might well regard the letter writer as a non-Christian, sub-Christian. or quasi-Christian. |
| If you are getting lots of Emails about your definition of "Christian" perhaps you are wrong: As we indicated above, we have over 40 definitions of "Christian" in this section. They are all different. There is no right definition. So one can expect that no matter what definition we choose, most of our site visitors will disagree with it. |
| "Christian" means something; your definition doesn't mean anything: The term means a lot of different things to different people. There is no universally accepted definition. There is probably no definition that the majority of people who consider themselves to be Christians would accept. |
| You are arrogant to suggest that your definition is authoritative: We do not consider that our definition is authoritative. We merely consider it to be one of many available definitions -- the one that we chose for our web site. |
Coupled with the fact that I just read a chapter in one of my theology books for the upcoming semester (Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes by Serena Jones and Paul Lakeland, editors) about Church, this essay made me ponder how "church" and "Christian" are defined, and whether we can actually have a unifying definition. Certainly, in the denomination to which I currently belong, there is no hard and fast definition for either, no dogma, no doctrine. Our pastor, during the last collection drive, gave a rather stirring sermon about how he considered our church to be a "Micah 6" church, i.e. 6:8 -- "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God." Like a mobius strip, the action informs the faith that informs the action that informs the faith and so on. It's all very blurry and unformed, but then it's better that way, lest we forget any part of that prophetic trifecta. In any case, there are people in the congregation who believe in the classical themes of salvation and individual grace, and there are heathens like me who are there for the wine shots. No, seriously, there are heathens like me who would prefer to put the classical theologies on hold for the time being until all the harm they've created are righted. So what unites us as church? What makes us Christian?
ReligiousTolerance.org defines Christian thusly:
We define "Christian" as including any individual or group who devoutly, thoughtfully, seriously, and prayerfully regards themselves to be Christian.
and I would have to say, I can go along with that. As a hapa (and if you don't know what that term means, go here. See, you learned something!) I'm all about self-identification, especially when other people are trying to decide your identity for you. Even though I often teeter on the brink of declaring that Jesus was a nice mythic figure, someone akin to "that guy," you know, the one that everyone seems to know but no one has ever met (Jesus as Ferris Bueller? "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Jesus cast out demons at 31 Flavors last night.") In the end, historical Jesus studies and what they can and can't prove (which is a lot) aside, what makes me a Christian isn't my belief in Jesus or Christ or Jesus Christ, but my trust and faith in both the gospel that he preached and the legacy of that gospel that was left behind after his death. That essentially boils down to love of God and love of neighbor. So yea, I guess I would devoutly, thoughtfully, seriously and prayerfully consider myself a Christian. Your defintion may differ, and that's perfectly OK. Just try to use your own words when you come up with your definition.
As for what makes up Church, I'll leave you with the definition I came up with for my theological reflection from my BorderLinks trip, when in October, me and eight other seminarians went to the Méxican-U.S. border to learn about immigration:
Everyone we met on the border, from migrants to those in solidarity with them, had compassion for someone else as they crossed boundaries. They suffer with one another and trust in that act to enact a vision of a new life, or a new “kin-dom.” And in their acts, Jesus is there.
These groups doing the work that is inspired by the message of, the blessing by and trust in Jesus are the church, regardless of denomination, creed or belief. The church cannot be limited by walls or denominational ties any more than God or Christ can be limited by labels. To be church is to be inspired by compassion and lovingkindness to move away from structures of power and privilege, and into the heart of those who cry for justice. Churches must humble themselves to cross boundaries, especially the ones separating them from other groups who work for the good of others. Above all, it must follow the message and example of both Jesus and the apostle Paul, who preached the good news of radical inclusiveness to all who had once been excluded or cast away. It must be guided by the love in which it may trust as it comes to new understandings of itself and the world around it.
The church is a powerful force in the world, and the only one, I believe, that is able to walk across borders in order to effect changes that will bring about peace for everyone. What denomination or shape that church takes is not nearly as important as the relationship between everyone within it, on all sides of the ever-changing, ever-crossed borders. The work we saw being done in Tucson and México was done between different peoples of varying faith traditions –– and no faith tradition at all. To follow the words of Jesus in Matt 25:40, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me,” does not require a structure or even a dogma, but only open hearts and willing hands. A church that is willing to sacrifice as much as women or men risking their lives in the desert or their dignities in cities where they are a stranger is one that can follow Jesus’ call.
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