Experimental Theology: Aliens at Roswell, NM

Richard Beck blogs today about Experimental Theology: Aliens at Roswell, NM. He describes a family trip to New Mexico, but includes a gem from a group called Alien Resistance:

Question:
Does invoking the name of JESUS CHRIST to stop an Abduction experience work for everyone that uses it?

Answer:
No it does not. It is not a magic word. For those who have accepted JESUS CHRIST as their LORD and Master and have made a personal relationship with him it does work.

Well, that's reassuring for some. The Alien Resistance web site is fascinating: I try not to link to some kinds of things, but Google will find it for you quickly enough.

Beck observes that this is but an example of how a community/culture makes truth for themselves. We all know of examples: some are more extreme than others.

What bothers me, of course, is that it's hard to see this kind of stuff from the inside. We inhabit such communities of belief in all kinds of spheres: but most particularly in our church contexts. How do you know when you are creating a reality for yourself which diverges from the normality experienced by the rest of humanity? Or, come to that, loses touch with the evidence available. It may not matter. But Christians tend to the point of view that they have a better grasp of truth - God's truth - than most. And if it ain't necessarily so, well, we have a problem.

Review: Love is an Orientation

Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community

Andrew Marin




Andrew Marin may be my namesake by all but one letter, but he has had a rather different life. He's a rather remarkable fellow, and has written a very thoughtful book. I was alerted to the book by Andrew Goddard's review, and refer you there for a lengthy and helpful review.

Marin recounts how, as a young adult, three of his closest friends came out to him as gay in the space of a month or so. He is, in one sense, a mainstream/conservative Evangelical, and describes his own reactions of confusion, revulsion, and much else besides. But his considered response wasn't to flee, but to demonstrate his real friendship by immersing himself - a decidedly straight person - in gay culture. There he found many things that surprised him - and many people desperately seeking connection, lasting relationship, acceptance.

So he has devoted his life to loving and serving that community. He's made his home in Chicago's Boystown district ["the first officially recognized gay village in the United States" - Wikipedia], and established a distinctively Evangelical ministry there.

Well, the approach is distinctively Evangelical, and yet no matter how long you wait, the book doesn't "take sides". You will look in vain for condemnation of GLBT people - as he prefers to have it - and equally fail to find a denouncement of those whose theology places them in tune with what is euphemistically called "traditional teaching on morality". If there is criticism - and most of that is tangential or implied - it is of those who fail to love, fail to care, fail to support, of those who assume they know what it is like to be different.

And there is the play on words of the title: Love is an orientation. He's not making an argument about sexual orientation, but about Christ-like love and the way it affects the whole of life: how it transforms, rescues, renews a whole range of broken and hurting people.

There are probably sub-texts in the book if you go looking for them: if you bring prejudices you may find them challenged; you may find them reinforced (it depends on whether you want them challenged or not). My hunch - which he does nothing to confirm or deny, as far as I can see - is that Marin remains in his heart more conservative than, say, Tony Jones: but that isn't the point. Perhaps it's hard to build a constructive dialogue without taking some intermediate steps. It's a good book, and an important book. It has much to say to conservative Evangelicals, no matter how hard-line (or not) they might see themselves. It's a confronting book, and will, I think, challenge the preconceptions of the majority of its readers. I heartily recommend it.

burning

Book burning seldom ends well, it seems to me.

A North Carolina Church plans to burn modern bible translations on Halloween - only the KJV is inspired it seems, and that is, moreover, both inerrant and infalible, at least for the English-speaking world. They're going to burn books by other authors, too. The words of well-known heretics like Billy Graham and Rick Warren will be surrendered to the flames (barbeque to follow). And even, it seems, Mark Driskol (sic) comes under a firey sentence. Aw, c'mon: Confessions of a Reformission Rev wasn't that bad.

signs and ...

I feel as if I need to say more about belief ... but meanwhile, the Telegraph has a long-running collection of amusing signs. This week they have a special religous collection. Enjoy.

belief

Peter Rollins writes some pretty challenging stuff: challenging to understand, and then more, too.

His recent post One day I hope to believe in God… is no exception. He reports that a BBC interviewer asked whether he believed in God, and his response is/was to deconstruct the question. The deconstruction is challenging to follow, for those of us not well-versed in philosophical linguistics (and a goodly proportion of the blog commenters are all at sea, it seems).

And I'm torn: on the one hand, I have much sympathy with the approach: 'I believe in God' is a hugely nuanced statement, and not one against which I simply want to put a tick. I believe in a great many things. And the extent to which those beliefs has an effect varies hugely.

But on the other hand, this feels like splitting hairs: Bill Clinton attempted to make an argument based on a question about what the meaning of 'is' is: and everyone laughed. Most people imagine they understand what 'Do you believe in God?' means: and would expect it to allow a yes/no answer. Is it arrogant, elitist, or gnostic, to suggest otherwise? Is doing so a sign of great insight, or a sign of philosophical study having disappeared up its own rear end?

cognitive dissonance

2 Timothy 3:16,17 TNIV

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people a may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Judges 21:20-23

So they instructed the Benjamites, saying, “Go and hide in the vineyards and watch. When the young women of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, then rush from the vineyards and each of you seize a wife from the young women of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin. When their fathers or brothers complain to us, we will say to them, ‘Do us a kindness by helping them, because we did not get wives for them during the war, and you are innocent, since you did not give your daughters to them.’ ”
So that is what the Benjamites did. While the young women were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and settled in them.

The Condomization of the Church

Fulcrum is a curious confection. It arose, as I recall, when Anglicans were at their most bitterly divisive over the proposed episcopal ordination of Jeffrey John. It's not the home of the most strident conservative evangelical Anglicans; but its evangelical-ness is quite strong. There is some thoughtful and rigorous thinking there - typified by writings of Andrew Goddard: his review of Andrew Marin's, Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community is by turns careful, sensitive, and wise. I probably agree with Andrew (Goddard) less than when we were both students, but his contributions are excellent.

I reproduced the title of a recent article as my title here. It's not a term you expect to find in an Evangelical journal, especially not with the article complaining at some length about a phenomeon the author calls "floaters". The thesis of the article, I think, is that people are not committed any more, like they once were. Just as condoms promote apparently consequence-free sex, so consumerism has infected our perception of the norms of doing church, leading to a self-centred attitude to church as a mere supplier of religious services.

The thing is, despite the arresting title, that doesn't seem a very startling or striking conclusion. Isn't this the whole "Generation X" story? It's a problem if you are running an institution. He says it's a problem because it denies the gospel:

Our condomized culture has learned to think of its relationships and commitments to core values as disposable. Of course, it’s impossible to reconcile such a value system with the demands of the gospel. So, while I appreciate my friend’s worry about the Church’s ability to satisfy the demands of the floating generation, I am confident that the solution does not consist of the Church adapting to the culture in areas where it is the culture itself that is sick.

Rather, the vocation of the Church is to be that alternative community that embodies Christ in its common life, even when that life may seem archaic, exclusive, and unloving to the world.

I can't help thinking that he just has a mind-set-mismatch. Despite having an exceptionally conventional career path (two plus years on the other side of the world notwithstanding), and being typically a stable and static individual, the GenX thing speaks to me: life just isn't so fixed any more. Things are different. People are different. This is both good and bad: but hand-wringing and saying we wish people would behave a little more like they used to, really isn't going to get us anywhere.

The jury still seems to be out (and probably will be for the rest of my life) on how big a sea-change we are seeing in the western church right now: if we overlook the argument that no decent English word should have more than four syllables, who's to say whether or not condomization is a good thing - or maybe we have just to look at a bigger picture.