Keepin' Religion Real

(What an interesting time to be teaching about World Religions! The observations and comments I offer in this post were put together before the events of the last few days).

As I prepare to teach a course on World Religions for the first time, one thing I frequently meet up with is the attempt to sidestep or gloss over those parts of the Qur’an that deny the legitimacy of Judaism and Christianity, and that express divine judgment against everything but Islam.

As a Christian, I might not start out with Jesus’ words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except by me.” Maybe I would. I probably wouldn’t start with Paul’s assertion that when Christ returns, the Lord “will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.”

But the fact is, even after our analyses, interpretations, and “yes, but”s, those passages invariably draw lines. Better yet, they identify lines that were drawn by Christ himself. If the Christian gospel is true, then those lines are decisive.

Again, those wouldn’t be the statements I’d start out with in talking about Jesus and his kingdom, or in teaching a unit on “Christianity” in a World Religions course. But neither would I try to hide them. And why would I try? What they say explicitly is something the New Testament says implicitly many times. And why would I want to? C. S. Lewis wrote to the effect that there’s a “Great Divorce” between heaven and hell, between what’s true and what isn’t. The New Testament says that the dividing line is Jesus. As a Christian, as a teacher, would I do someone a favor by pretending it was some other way?

Judging from the politically-correct versions of Islam being foisted onto the American public, though, one would get the impression that no straight-thinking Muslim ever thought the Qur’an had anything bad to say about non-Muslims and their differing beliefs.

Exhibit A: I have a packet of material titled, “Teaching Islam and the Arab World.” Its author evidently hopes that no one will ever read sections of the Qur’an other than the ones the author quotes. Here’s how he works. He quotes from the Qur’an 2:136 as follows:

“Say: We believe in Allah and that which is revealed to us, and in what was revealed to Abraham, Ishma’il, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes, to Moses and Jesus and the other prophets from the Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and to Allah we have surrendered ourselves.”

Then the author comments: “Thus, in Islam, the prophets are seen as spiritual brothers to one another. Some commonly known figures who are considered prophets in Islam include Noah, Jonah, Abraham, Ishmail, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus.”

Sweet, isn’t it? And true enough. But why doesn’t the author quote the statement that prompts the Muslim to “Say” what he says? In the Qur’an, here’s what immediately precedes the “Say” section quoted above:

“They say: ‘Accept the Jewish or Christian faith and you will be rightly guided.’ Say: ‘By no means! We believe in the faith of Abraham, the upright one. He was no idolater’.”

The way the passage is cropped and quoted in the study packet seems to be motivated by a desire to avoid the very point of the text: Christianity and Judaism are not along side of Islam. They are superceded by Islam. My question is, Why not just acknowledge that that’s what the Qur’an says?

In our study of Islam this semester, I won’t attempt to portray Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as some sort of happy trinity of Abrahamic religions. Why? Because it ain’t so.

Writing Tests

If you want to get an education, try putting together a test.  One of my projects this week is to complete writing the pretests for the following courses:  

1.  World Religions
2.  Introduction to the Old Testament
3.  Life of Paul
4.  Introduction to the New Testament

Each test will be made up of 12-20 multiple-choice questions over the broad, basic knowledge that students should certainly have acquired by the end of the course of study.  (Wow, that sounds so professorial).  I want to get an idea of the knowledge level that students are starting out with.  

Of course, I’m starting with the final tests from last semester.  But in many cases, the information is too detailed and/or advanced for a pretest I think

In writing these tests, I’m learning once again how hard it is to come up with good, even test questions.  Any suggestions?  Ideas?  An already-produced test? (with answer key, please)

On a related note, sometimes I wonder about the place of tests in the learning process.  It seems that everything has to be quantified anymore.  And the value assigned to testing has gone up in recent years.  So, we’re stuck with tests, I suppose.  Hey, maybe I should make them write tests; I said it was learning process.

When I was a student at Freed-Hardeman, Clyde (that’s “Doc”) Woods sometimes told about an old rabbi who taught at Hebrew Union College, but who detested giving tests. (I get the impression that yeshivas don’t use written tests like we do).  The rabbi would register his rejection of testing as follows:  “Vy should I ask you vat-choo know?  I know vat-choo know!”

Reflections on the Rally

Ever since last Saturday’s Klan rally and my own participation in the anti-Klan protest, two passages of Scripture have been swirling around in my mind:

The first part of Psalm 97:10 says, “Let those who love the Lord hate evil.” I wonder, what does it look like when people who love God embrace the other side of that?

According to the immediate context, hating evil includes some sort of outward expression. As the verse goes on, the command is accompanied by this assurance: “for he guards the lives of his faithful ones, and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.” Clearly then, godly anger isn’t some tricky blend of two emotions, anger and reverence. The passage obviously implies that because of their hatred of evil, the “faithful ones” eventually say or do something that consequently and necessarily incites the wicked.

I went to Saturday’s rally mainly because as a Christian I didn’t want the Ku Klux Klan, a group with a reputation for murderous racism, to stand at the front of City Hall and spew their ugly rhetoric without some sort of repudiation. By the way, I reject the opinion piece in today’s Amarillo Globe-News that suggests that if protesters had only stayed away from the rally, the Klan would have had an audience of maybe two or three clueless teenagers. The on-line edition includes photos of grown men standing with the crowd, wearing Confederate head scarves, and proudly returning to the KKK their Nazi salute! At one point Saturday afternoon, it dawned on me why we couldn’t build the cheer, “Go away, KKK!” At least some of those around us were Klan sympathizers. The protest was significant.

I’ve also been meditating on James 1:19-21: “My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you.”

Last Saturday, I relearned something about anger. Like the child who grows up, breaks free from and overwhelms the good parent, anger quickly outgrows even righteous indignation and begins to act on its own.

Many people in the protest group wanted to do more than simply make noise and drown out the words of the Klan. At certain points during the rally it became necessary for lines of policemen, dressed in riot gear, to approach the crowd and keep things from escalating. The animosity was infectious and at times I felt like a shark that had caught the scent of blood.

Just after arriving at City Hall, I asked a black man standing nearby me what he thought and how he felt about what we were witnessing. He talked about how he was surprised that we still had visible expressions of the Klan. Then he said, “But one thing’s for sure: only God can straighten this out.”

We Went to the KKK Rally

Last Saturday morning, my two teenagers and I talked things over and decided to go and protest at the Ku Klux Klan rally that afternoon. I’ll write about some of our experiences and reflections later today or first thing tomorrow, plus maybe a photo or two.

The Sunday edition of the Amarillo paper included two front-page stories and a reflection piece on the KKK rally at City Hall, and the alternative rally, which was held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Park in another part of the city. To access the stories and photos, you may have to register at the Globe-News website. For some reason, the linkage from this site isn't woking so well, so you might have to take the long way around to the website, www.amarillo.com

Another Plan for the Klan

According to a front-page story in today’s Amarillo Globe-News, a group called Go Away KKK! is planning to be downtown tomorrow “to counter the Ku Klux Klan’s rally by drowning out its speakers with noise.” A KKK group from San Angelo, Texas has been issued a permit to demonstrate on the steps of Amarillo’s City Hall from 3-5 p.m. this Saturday.

Milissa Milam, a spokesperson for Go Away KKK! noted the Klan’s reputation for all kinds of violence and racism, and is calling for residents of Amarillo to show up at the Klan rally with “pots, pans, drums, guitars, whistles, air horns, radios—anything that makes noise.”

A Go Away KKK! poster that accompanies the story in the paper claims that at a recent KKK rally in Austin, TX “protesters got the Klan to leave in just 20 minutes by overwhelming them with noise!”

Today’s editorial in the Globe-News frequently quotes Martin Luther King Jr. and continues the paper’s endorsement of the “Community Unity Day Celebration,” planned by the local NAACP and scheduled for 3-5 p.m. at the MLK Park in Amarillo, far from City Hall.

As I mentioned in a post two weeks ago, other local voices have suggested that people here should completely ignore the Klan’s rally and go on as usual. At least one local pastor has planned a church prayer service to coincide with the rally.

By the way, I have no idea of the source of the photo in this post. But as I was looking through images on the Web, this one fascinated me. I can't get it to post any larger (without serious blurring); the white in the background is a Klansman. The face of a child, the competing principles, life lessons learned early . . . This one’s worth well more than a thousand words.

So, if you lived in Amarillo, Texas, where would you be tomorrow afternoon? Why? I’ll keep you posted.

The Legacy of Burton Coffman

This month’s issue of The Christian Chronicle came in the mail just the other day.  I think I mentioned that “the Chronicle” is on a short list of periodicals I’m sure to read.

Page 3 of the latest issue includes an article about Burton Coffman, a “minister, teacher and prolific writer” among the Churches of Christ, who died on June 30 at the age of 101.

I never met Coffman.  But for many years now, I’ve heard of him and his work, especially his building up of flagship congregations in Manhattan and Washington, D.C.

Then, I came to this:  “In 1952, he initiated an effort to increase the number of U.S Air Force chaplains with Church of Christ backgrounds.  At that point only one Air Force chaplain was affiliated with the Church of Christ.”

The paragraph absolutely jumped off the page because my parents were baptized in the late 1950s by a U.S. Air Force chaplain, Mac Bartee, who also served as a preacher in the Church of Christ.  I can only imagine that Bartee might have been one of those chaplains brought into the Air Force as a result of Coffman’s initiative.

Can anyone out there confirm that hunch?  Does anyone else know something of the life and service and whereabouts of Bartee?

Dear Lord, thank you for the life of our brother Burton.  For your name’s sake, please continue to bless the legacy of his dedicated service to you and your people.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Then I heard a voice from heaven say, "Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on."   "Yes," says the Spirit, "they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them."  --Revelation 14:13

The Emergent Church and Blogs, 2

In the second half of her essay on the Emergent Church (EC), Eileen Lindner takes up the question of the EC’s relationship to the (1) megachurch and (2) seeker-friendly movements that grew up during the 1990s.

She says that the relationships are variously interpreted as “a reaction to, a continuation of, or the interior church version” of the two earlier attempts to bring Christian faith and contemporary culture together. On the negative side, the EC has been criticized by some for its distance from propositional theology and its apparent flirtation with religious syncretism.

When it comes to the place of blogging, Lindner points out that since the EC often portrays itself as an ongoing “conversation,” it’s no mystery why blogs have been so important. “Shaped by today’s media and more at home with blogs than books, the EC is nothing if not collaborative and dialogical,” she says.

Finally, the author deals with the question that a lot of people have asked: Will the EC “become an enduring topographical feature of the American religious landscape or prove to be a transitory place of Christianity’s long trajectory”? In other words, is this more flash in the pan or wave of the future? “Our guess,” she writes, “is the emergent church, in all its dimensions, is a harbinger of things to come in 21st century Christianity.”

One last quote from Lindner: “Given the low cost, the limitless ways religious experience can be articulated, we might expect blogging to remain a persistent feature of the religious landscape, one to be rediscovered by new generations of seekers and believers, who will preserve a religious voice on the Internet so long as questions remain about faith, and people ponder the ultimate questions of life.”

The following are the two blog sites listed by the author; sites that convey "the range of religiously-oriented blogs":

www.englishbibles.blogspot.com

www.bibchr.blogspot.com

The Emergent Church and Blogs, 1

For many years now, the annual issue of The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches has included a section on “Trends & Developments.”

The 2006 edition contains an essay by Eileen W. Lindner on “Postmodern Christianity: Emergent Church and Blogs” (pp. 15-20). The EC and the religious section of the blogosphere are grouped together because, as the author says, they are “two interconnected phenomena of a new century.”

Regarding the Emergent Church, Lindner says that this “many-faceted expression of Christian faith” typically thinks and speaks of itself as a “conversation,” rather than a “movement.” Nevertheless, she thinks that the word “movement” certainly describes what the EC has become.

But what exactly is the conversation or movement about? Fueled by a distinctively postmodern outlook, says Lindner, the EC “centers around deconstructing inherited faith and practice and reconstructing a Christianity” that is apparently focused on four points or ideas (and here I both quote and rephrase a little):

1. Christocentrism -- following closely and emulating the person and ministry of Jesus.

2. Narrative theology – according to which truth is found in story, not in propositional statements or traditional doctrinal standards.

3. Missiological focus -- which challenges existing forms of church life and discipleship, emphasizing service to a broken world.

4. Responsive worship forms – the place of worship is central to the EC drawing from apostolic as well as contemporary sources to forge a diverse worship through experimentation.

So much for what they’re about, who is the emerging church? Prominent people, says the author, tend to come from “evangelical protestant backgrounds with an age cohort largely in their 20s and 30s.” Lindner points to the Wikipedia entry for Emergent Church which provides a list of “Pioneers in the Emerging Church Movement”:

• Brian McLaren, founder of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington, D.C.


• Doug Pagitt, founding pastor of Solomon’s Porch, Minneapolis


• Dan Kimball, founder of the Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, CA


• John O’Keefe, founder of http://www.ginkworld.net/


• Spencer Burke, former pastor, founder of http://theooze.com/


• Leonard Sweet, the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University


• Mark Driscoll, founder of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA


• Mark Pearson, founder of Cityside in Aukland, New Zealand


• Karen Ward, founder and pastor of Church of the Apostles in Seattle, WA

McLaren is singled out for his books which have “lent the Emerging Church much of its historic self-understanding and its spirit of both vigor and humility.

More about this beginning next week. But to this point, I’m curious to hear what you think of Lindner’s analysis. What might you add or change?

Also, although I’ve gotten a feel (by reading blogs) for how the Churches of Christ are interacting with and participating in the EC, I’d like to hear from people who have lived among and/or studied the conservative heirs of Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell. In what ways does the EC movement dovetail with and/or correct our Restorationist tradition?

Ready . . . Set . . .

New classes will begin here at Amarillo College on Monday, August 21st. It doesn’t seem possible, but by this time next month the fall semester will be underway. I can hardly wait.

Already, a total of nearly 50 students have pre-registered for the five courses we’ll offer through Amarillo Bible Chair. I’m hoping that once fall registration begins, the number of students will double.

In addition to offering academic courses, the plan is to restart Kappa Chi, our Christian student organization. A handful of students have said they want to be a part of the club. I really think that by promoting Kappa Chi, we’ll be successful in attracting new members.

You can find out more about Amarillo Bible Chair here.

Forthcoming Article . . . with Photos!

A few months ago, I finished up an article about the life of Paul after the close of the Book of Acts. It’s titled, “The Last Letters: Exploring the History Behind 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.”

I called it that because the three letters named in the subtitle have Paul referring to all sorts of travels and activities that simply don’t fit into his biography according to Acts. For what it’s worth, I take the classic position that Paul covered a lot of territory following what we know of his life from Acts, that he experienced a second Roman imprisonment in the year 64, and was sometime later executed.

Last week I got an email from Neil Anderson, the editor of the Gospel Advocate magazine. He said article is scheduled to appear in next month’s issue.

It’s always neat when your written work sees the light of printed day. But I’m especially looking forward to the appearance of this article mainly because of two photos I sent along with it.

I got one of the photos at the American Numismatic Society in Manhattan. It’s a picture of two Neronian coins. I sent it along with the article because, at it explains, Nero was the Emperor who, in the 60s, carried out an infamous persecution against Christians. And it’s likely that that would have been the occasion when Paul would have been arrested once again, brought back to Rome, and finally martyred.

I guess I’ll never forget the day I got the photo. Very few people I knew would have wanted to go to the American Numismatic Society; nor would they have gotten why I wanted to go. So it turned out to be a solo trip.

ANS is located on Broadway several miles north of the bustling section of town (up around 157th St.). It’s not one of the touristy sections of the city.

After I finally got there and was buzzed in, I looked around at the exhibits and spent some time in their library. I met one of the curators. As we talked, I told him about my interest in coins that might open a window on the biblical world (ala the influence of Dr. Richard Oster mentioned in a previous post).

There were very few people there that day. The man I was talking with wasn’t particularly busy. Eventually, he led me back to one of those places where I couldn’t have gone without him and pulled open a shallow metal drawer. It was completely full of nothing but Neronian coins, all of them heads up. It was one of those moments I’ll never forget. And I could only imagine what was in the dozen or so other drawers in the same cabinet.

“Could I get a photo of one or two of those?” I asked.

“Sure.” he said. “Which ones?”

Do you remember the scene when, as a kid, you went to the dentist and on the way out got to pick a goody from the treasure box? That was me.

I pointed to a couple of the coins, being careful not to touch them. He took them out, gently laid them on a felt pad and snapped the picture.

The other photo I sent along with the article is of a fragment known as Papyrus 32. Containing sections of Paul’s letter to Titus, P 32 dates to about the year 200 and represents the oldest witness to the text of that letter. It’s housed in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, England.

The acquisition of that photo also has a story that includes these beautifully-crafted letters from England, full of prim and mannered language. The international correspondence took months, mainly because I didn’t want to sound like a complete idiot, and wound up polishing every letter for a long time before I sent it.

The magazine editor also told me he’d be sending several extra copies of the magazine. The GA is a print-only journal. If you’re not a subscriber and would like to have a copy of the August issue, email me your physical address and I’ll be glad to send you one.

Preaching, Great and "Dreadful"

Last night, as I sat on my front porch reading, there were a few times when I laughed out loud. My wife, also with a book and sitting nearby, wanted to know what was so funny. I told her.

I was reading selections from the published diaries of Deitrich Bonhoeffer, the German Protestant theologian who was martyred by the Nazis during the last days of the Third Reich.

Bonhoeffer spent a few weeks during the summer of 1939 in the United States, most of it in Manhattan. And he visited a lot of churches, sometimes two on one Sunday. He’d attend one church in the morning. Then, he’d go to evening services somewhere else.

One morning, he attended the illustrious Riverside Church. I don’t know if Harry Emerson Fosdick was preaching there at the time. Anyway, Bonhoeffer’s response to the sermon included the word “Dreadful.” I laughed at that point because sometimes that’s exactly what we think. But how often do we say or write it?

Not only that, Bonhoeffer mentions some of the things that put him off about the sermon. Too much interest in easy, simple application. Too much psychology, not enough theology. Forced interpretation, all designed to make things turn out the way we want them to, something that he rightly identifies as “idolatry.”

That evening, Bonhoeffer attended a much more conservative Presbyterian church where the preaching was evidently much more straightforward, robust, unabashed, what’s the right word? It had the effect of lifting his spirits, restoring some of his confidence in American theology and church life.

Reading that made me wonder about preaching, about the things that differentiate the good from the “dreadful” sermons. What do you think?

What is it that bugs you about some of the preaching you’ve heard? What characterizes the great preaching you’ve heard?

More from Philip Jenkins

In 2002, Philip Jenkins published The Next Christendom, an eye-opening description of the explosive growth of various expressions of Christianity in the global south. One of the central questions raised by that book has been sized up by Yale missions scholar Lamin Sanneh: “Whose reading—whose Christianity—is normal now? And whose will be in 50 years?” The world is changing. Rapidly. Someone has said you’ll know the shift in Christendom has occurred when African scholars begin writing about “North American Theologies.”

Now Jenkins has a new book. It’s slated to come out in September under the title, The New Face of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford University Press). To get a feel for what this one will be about, take a look at his article in the Christian Century magazine (July 11, 2006, pp. 22-27), “Liberating Word: The power of the Bible in the Global South.” A couple of quotes from the article:

“Gatherings of the worldwide Anglican Communion have been contentious events in recent years. On one occasion, two bishops were participating in a Bible study, one from Africa, the other from the U.S. As the hours went by, tempers frayed as the African expressed his confidence in the clear words of scripture, while the American stressed the need to interpret the Bible in the light of modern scholarship and contemporary mores. Eventually the African bishop asked in exasperation, “If you don’t believe the scripture, why did you bring it to us in the first place?”

“Traditionalist themes are important for African and Asian Christians. These include a much greater respect for the authority of scripture, especially in matters of morality; a willingness to accept the Bible as an inspired text and a tendency to literalistic readings; a special interest in supernatural elements of scripture, such as miracles, visions, and healings; a belief in the continuing power of prophecy; and a veneration for the Old Testament, which is often considered as authoritative as the New.”

From what Jenkins has written so far, I’ve come to two conclusions, which dovetail with some of my own convictions:

1. Simply from a pragmatic standpoint, this is not the time for the Churches of Christ to continue an evolution (at least on some fronts) into a American mainline protestant (i.e., theologically-liberal ) denomination. A life-long member of this family, I know a lot of its problems and failings. At the same time, I love this heritage not in spite of what it is, but because of what it is. And I truly believe that its traditional Biblicist voice is worth hearing.

2. It is past time for the Churches of Christ to reject much of our traditional position regarding the Old Testament. Fifteen years ago, when Richard Oster forced me to rethink our borderline-Marcionite (rejection) stance on the first 78% of the Christian Canon, the exercise was for me mostly academic. It was a question I could turn over in my mind and talk about. I had no idea that even then, and before, the erroneous conclusions of the past could have such an impact on mission. To put it bluntly, the global South is simply not going for the notion that what Christians call the Old Testament has little if any real continuing authority. Nor should they. How did we miss the truth that when Paul says “All Scripture is inspired” and is therefore, “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness” he was referring to the Old Testament?