gathering in light

I enjoy reading David Fitch’s blog regularly, and today he’s posted a great response to Tony Jones’ thoughts from last week on the Hauerwas Mafia. The post is an unpublished chapter from his recent book, The New Christians. His post is worth the read, it’s entertaining and provocative, especially for those of us who have our assigned seats in the Yoder/Hauerwas school. There are also some good and thoughtful comments made by gathering in light readers that help to draw out more of the implied points that Jones brings up (see Andy and Dan). Fitch does a good job of summarizing the points and then adding why he thinks it’s such a good idea that the emerging church take seriously this Yoder/Hauerwas school. He makes three points: [Read more]

If you ever get the chance to sit in on a silent Quaker meeting, take the opportunity. It’s not the kind of experience you’ll get just anywhere. Yes, it’s intense. Yes, it’s likely to be extremely difficult to “center down” and focus for an hour, but it’d still be a great exercise in listening. When I see conversations geared to listening, I automatically think of the Quaker tradition. What better group of people to turn to for advice about how to listen? When Quakers meet for worship they reserve a time during the service for complete silence; this silence is a commitment as a community to allowing God space in our worship. But it is rarely ever a “silent worship.” Rather, in worship Quakers listen for the Holy Spirit to move them to action. That is, if the Spirt of God moves you to share/preach/sing, then listening to God involves acting on what was heard. In this way, the practice of silence for Quakers only begins with listening, but true silence always leads to an action. [Read more]

In the spirit of creativity and utilizing the web to foster fan-based participation, Radiohead has launched the website Radioheadremix.com and are inviting everyone to remix their latest single “Nude.” They’ve split the song up into five separate tracks and have made each available for sale so that you can remix the song however you’d like. I was a little surprised and disappointed to see that they are selling the tracks, but otherwise I think it’s a pretty cool thing they’re doing. Despite the name of the band the number one remix right now is really good and worth listening too. Let me know if any of you decide to go ahead and make your own remix, I’d like to check it out and vote for it. [Read more]

I’ve been really enjoying Peter Rollins blog lately and was struck by his recent post Did Jesus Speak Hoplandic? In the post he discusses Levinas’ theory about the act of saying something vs. the content of what was said. In it the question, “did Jesus speak Hoplandic” gets at the his point that “Jesus was someone who was always challenging us at the level of the said (taking what we thought was self evident and turning it upside down) so as to expose the nature of religious language as a mode of saying.” In other words, is our preoccupation for getting what is said down correctly disrupting our connection with who we are actually talking to (or about)? As Rollins says, Maybe Jesus was asking us to speak like children where what is most important is the actual connection that is made, not that that which is said. He makes this point, in a way I appreciated, by stating: [Read more]

Since I recently posted on Caputo’s “What Would Jesus Deconstruct?” I thought it would be helpful to point out this article a friend emailed me by one of my favorite contemporary theologians, James K. Smith.

Smith, sounding a lot like Žižek (especially in chapter 2 ofThe Puppet and the Dwarf), argues that “orthodoxy” is in fact the most radical stance of all when he says: [Read more]

Ok, so I’m late to the game, yes, I just watched Newsies for the first time. Emily still can’t believe I just now saw it. All I can say is that in my home growing up, with four other brothers, musicals weren’t really something we willfully chose to watch (but it was my loss!).

I’m glad I watched the movie for a number of reasons. Watching it as an adult really opened up some interesting aspects to the film. First I was surprised that Disney put out such a subversive film, I mean the whole movie is about organizing unions, child labor issues and corporate greed. It’s about a bunch of filthy-mouthed street kids who are homeless and uneducated yet organize after having the cost of their papers go up. Granted, the movie is based off a true story about a bunch of Newsies in the late 19th century who went on strike against Joe Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, and so it has roots in history, it still stands out as a rather provocative tale, especially for Disney.

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Carrying on from my last post I thought I’d point out a few more aspects to John (Jack) Caputo’s book I do like and then say something about what I don’t like. If you’re interest in getting into the discussion on deconstruction, and what it has to do with the church, especially in its more Catholic and Emerging forms (Caputo is a Catholic) this really is a great book to read. It’s helpful not just in how this applies to church, but also in his very succinct and easily understandable explanations of some pretty hard-to-get-at ideas.

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Last week I did a lecture in class on John Caputo’s most recent book,What Would Jesus Deconstruct? I have mixed feelings about the book (more on this later) but I think in either case he makes some very helpful comments. The class I am currently a TA for is Mission in Contemporary Culture. In it we basically look at the world of cultural studies and how it (or if) it can be used in the church and in theology. Caputo’s book is a great example of deconstruction (I’ll hesitantly call a method used in culture studies) meeting the church.

Caputo takes as his starting point Charles Sheldon’s classic late nineteenth century text In His Steps (where we get the famed question WWJD?) and looks at the interruption of the homeless man entering the worship service and breaking down as an example of deconstruction. That is, during a worship service, is the is the unexpected and uninvited that transforms, the exact opposite of what was ‘programmed’ or planned for worship.

The man says,

I’m not an ordinary tramp, though I don’t know of any teaching of Jesus that makes one kind of a tramp less worth saving than another. Do you?…It seems to me there’s an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn’t exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don’t understand. But what would Jesus do?

Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, 20-21

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