Pagitt on labels

a label is meant for insiders to know how to understand themselves that those labels are not useful for outsiders to use. Outsiders need to use independent labels and not take the lead from the insider terminology because the insider language is seeking to do something other than categorize, it seeks to include and refine. So insider language is precise in a way that outsider language is not. Imagine a person who knows little about birds seeing a parrot and just calling a bird a parrot, while the insider to bird-world says, "no, that is a Brotogeris". It is important for the insider to have an entire language that help them understand the distinctions. While these distinctions would only confine and confuse the outsider. So in the story they were suggesting that the term evangelical is an insider term and when people try to use it for political purposes it doesn't work well. So there needs to be a different term for politics. Someone suggested - "socially conservative religious people" would be better to describe the right-wing than Evangelical. Any way, that all got me thinking about the term Emergent and how it seems to me a term that was meant for outsider use has been taken as insider validation. And this is a dangerous or more dangerous than a term meant for insider use being coopted by outsiders. When a number of us suggested that use that term Emergent, sometime in early 2001 (I think), it was clearly designed to be helpful to outsiders so they could have categories beyond Generation X and Postmodern when looking at what was going on. But we never intended for it to be insider language. As insiders we have talked about being people who live the dreams of God (or any of 50 other long worded descriptions that take us beyond Christian, which in itself may be a term for the outsider more than the insider). So when outsiders, CT, Christian Century, New York Times, ABC, etc., use the term it helps them to see some distinction in churches or Christians that they would not otherwise know to recognize. And that was it. But as insiders we are trouble when we begin to use those categories to define us, or if we try to use those descriptions to set the kinds of communities we are trying to become. In other words, outsider designed categories are not meant to be prescriptive. I think this sits at the center of the blog gripping about who is emergent and what is it really. The term, coined in a phone conference call originating in my basement, is not useful as definition or prescription for insiders. We need to interact with one another as peers and family who are collectively engaging in the aspirations of God. Not people who are trying to fit into some Emergent categories. I think we would do well to use the term for outsiders who do not have a basic understanding of the conversation, but we ought never use it as a test to determine the validity of our lives or communities. One could easily be "emergent" and not a participant in the life of God. Or a full participant in the hopes of God and not at all "emergent". Being emergent is not the goal. Life in harmony with God is. But for those who are doing web searches or writing articles or deciding on what book to buy, these quick reference labels are helpful.

Yum, now some Hauerwas

I breathe something anew with these guys, first Cornell, now Stanley Hauerwas "Most North American Christians assume that they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. Let us no longer give the Bible to all children when they enter the third grade or whenever their assumed rise to Christian maturity is marked, such as eighth-grade commencements. Let us rather tell them and their parents that they are possessed by habits far too corrupt for them to be encouraged to read the Bible on their own. North American Christians are trained to believe that they are capable of reading the Bible without spiritual and moral transformation. They read the Bible not as Christians, not as a people set apart, but as democratic citizens who think their 'common sense' is sufficient for 'understanding' the Scripture. They feel no need to stand under the authority of a truthful community to be told how to read. Instead they assume that they have all the 'religious experience' necessary to know what the Bible is about. As a result the Bible inherently becomes the ideology for a politics quite different from the politics of the Church." ~ Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture

More Cornell West

To be a Christian--a follower of Jesus Christ--is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom. This is the radical love in Christian freedom and the radical freedom in Christian love that embraces Socratic questioning, prophetic witness, and tragicomic hope. If Christians do not exemplify this love and freedom, then we side with the nihilists of the Roman empire (cowardly elite Romans and subjugated Jews) who put Jesus to a humiliating death. Instead of receiving his love in freedom as a life-enhancing gift of grace, we end up believing in the idols of the empire that nailed him to cross. I do not want to be numbered among those who sold their souls for a mess of pottage--who surrendered their democratic Christian identity for a comfortable place at the table of the American empire while, like Lazarus, the least of these cried out and I was too intoxicated with worldly power and might to hear, beckon, and heed their cries. To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely--to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away. This is the kind of vision and courage required to enable the renewal of prophetic, democratic Christian identity in the age of the American empire.

i like Cornell West

"We need a spirituality of genuine Socratic questioning and caring compassion." I myself have been accused of Socratic youth ministry.

this is like so 6 years ago

For Me My God you continue to give When I continue to not My life is winning at losing but I still get the honor of a second chance I have been given endless gifts that are all connected To the ultimate gift I rip through the reminders of your love as if I deserved them Not giving any time for me to breathe a thank you And you still continue to give.You win by losing too. But you lose more than win because we reject the beautiful work.

from Chris Erdman and Alan Roxburgh blog

The Lord (not international pressure) sets the prisoners free; The Lord (not Medicare) opens the eyes of the blind; The Lord (not military liberators) lifts up those who are bowed down; The Lord (not the Moral Majority) loves the righteous; The Lord (not the CIA) watches over the strangers; The Lord (not social programs) upholds the orphan and the widow; The Lord (not George Bush) brings the way of the wicked to ruin; The Lord (not the American Empire) will reign forever. Stay alert, friends! Praise the Lord! It is praise that empowers our service on behalf of the Kingdom, against every force that would demoralize us.

A 4.3 billion dollar industry

Christian Bookstores aren't really about getting the best Christian writings in your hands. Link

McLaren on liberal label

Liberalism "My senior pastor said that you are liberal. Is that true?" Thanks for checking. "Liberal" and "conservative" represent two ways of being Christians in the modern era, and since I believe we are moving beyond the modern era, I am not very excited about either label. I'm much more excited about a convergence that is beginning to occur - bringing post-liberal and post-conservative Christians together in exciting new ways. Sometimes, for conservatives who don't understand the postmodern transition that I write about in my books, anyone who isn't conservative (which means "good" to them) is automatically considered liberal (which means "bad" to them). My guess is that this is why your senior pastor said what he did. You can assure your senior pastor that I am a committed follower of Christ, deeply rooted in the Scriptures, engaging in mission and ministry, and that I am deeply grateful for my conservative Christian heritage. You could also let himknow that I love and respect both conservatives and liberals, and I know that each group has its own problems and challenges, and I do all I can to be of help and encouragement to each. I hope this will not leave me in a "bad" category for him, or for you.

Sovereignty

I am fairly certain that God isn't too worried about His sovereignty come tomorrow's election. I am also fairly certain, regardless of the outcome, that people will come down off of their 'sides' and go back to what they were doing before this political riggamaroll. I just wish others would grasp that God hasn't changed ever, and that He is still the ruler of all the nations. I do not believe God 'annoints' presidential candidates(he probably does show up in matters of justice in our country don't get me wrong) in this country, we aren't exactly dealing with axis of evil, no matter what side one falls on. The lines have been too blurred by man in the good ole U. S. of A. I love what Pagitt rants about in his blog here: "I think each candidate for president should be asked, “Given the fact that the other guy has the potential to be president, what do you think would be the upside to that? What benefits would we see if he wins? “ If the answer is “nothing”. Then that person should be out. If the candidate does not have the wisdom to see that even those he disagrees with is right on many things, then he ought not be president. "