Feetwashing and Four Square

Definitions and arguments

2011-12-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

My fellow academics will understand the joy of considering a question, picking a position, and arguing to defend it, with little concern for consistency, integrity, or what we truly believe. I invite you to consider the following question through that lens.

What political philosophy is most consistent with Brethren values?

Libertarianism? Liberalism? Neo-liberalism? Classical Republicanism?

Democracy? Post-scarcity anarchy?

Pick your definitions, pick your stance, and pick your argument.

Quotable professors

2011-11-20T17:54:00.000-08:00

Future Bethany students: take classes with Nancy Bowen. She is very good at saying quotable things:

You have to be careful about claiming to know God's will. We can't prove, however much we may want to, that God is this and not that. All we can do is ask, "What kind of community will this understanding of God create?"

(Paraphrased from memory.)

Brethren orthodoxy

2011-11-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

A little while ago (I can't seem to find date stamps on his blog), David Stiles wrote this post about Feast of Love, in which he urges COB progressives to split from the Church. I find this a little unfair, given Carl Bowman's analysis showing "gay supporters" are more likely to find staying Brethren important than "gay opposers."

What got me going as a seminary student, though, was this particular wording:

If congregations find themselves outside of the basic orthodoxy of the COB, why continue to fight?

Firstly, it seems like a big leap to name the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference's position on same-sex covenental relationships as constituting or being key to the basic orthodoxy. When someone asks you about the Church of the Brethren, what do you say? "We're Anabaptist [and here's what that means], we're a peace church, we practice simple living, and we're opposed to the homosexual lifestyle?" Does it really make it on to that list? Why this, and not our statements about depleted uranium and global climate change? What makes the 1983 human sexuality paper so basic to what it means to be Brethren? And more pointedly, Brother David, why this and not our position of women in ministry? Why must those who disagree with this Annual Conference statement leave, but not those who disagree with that one?

Secondly, and more broadly, I have a real problem with the phrase "Brethren orthodoxy." The word "orthodoxy" derives from the Greek orthos, meaning "right/true/straight" and doxa, meaning "opinion/belief," and the word means exactly what that would lead you to suspect. It seems to me the Church of the Brethren--this "no creed but the New Testament," "no force in religion" church--has no orthodoxy.

Another word, which might be more relevant to us Brethren, is "orthopraxy," which means "right action/activity." It seems more appropriate for a church whose Annual Conference has much to say about practices, but little to say about what one should think or believe. Even this monumental human sexuality paper makes no claim against those whose beliefs run contrary--it is only concerned with actions.

So I put forth that the Church of the Brethren has no orthodoxy, but does have an orthopraxy. (I ran this by one of my professors, and got a nod of agreement.)

But this orthopraxy is not found in some sort of inerrant Constitution passed down by the founders; it is found in the statements we make, modify, and strike when we meet every year for our Annual Conference. It changes constantly from what previous generations held, whether due to new information, issues our predecessors did not face, or evolution of moral thought. What our orthopraxy is next year may be very much different from what it is this year. That is simply how it's done in this church--attempts to forbid further efforts at change fly in the face of how we as church make our decisions.

One last note: Even orthopraxy, in the Church of the Brethren, is limited in scope. It isn't found so much in statements like the 1983 paper--which are, after all, merely reflections of what the majority of gathered Brethren believe--but in our polity. "You can't be in a same-sex relationship" isn't our orthopraxy; "You can't be openly gay and be a licensed minister" is. (I have previously indicated that I think "we don't agree" would be more helpful than "fifty-one percent of us think this.")

It seems to me that preaching a "Brethren orthodoxy" is a far more serious split from Brethren tradition than are evolving views on human sexuality.

Speaking of comments

2011-10-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

You may have noted that I read Dunker Journal.

One thing that has always bothered me, and many to whom I speak, is the lack of open discussion on that website. So I have started a new blog, devoted to re-posting/linking Dunker Journal entries with a space for comments.

To keep it from degenerating into what Craig Alan Myers calls "vituperative arguments," I am requiring a Google or OpenID sign-in for all comments.

Check it out.

Comment guidelines

2011-10-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

I am vehemently in favor of allowing comments on blogs. I am in favor of allowing comments on my own blogs so that they may become forums for conversation about things that matter (instead of just me shouting at the rain), and I am in favor of other people allowing comments on their blogs so I can disagree with them openly instead of just muttering angrily to myself.

However, I find I'm made uncomfortable by anonymous comments. At best they are a not-very-exciting mystery, but at worst they give me the feeling that I'm in a dark alley trying to have a conversation with a masked person. That's not the sort of situation I like to be in on a regular basis.

The following are comment guidelines for this blog, applied now and not effective retroactively:

1. All comments must be signed with some sort of legitimate identity. This can be a full name, a first name only, or a handle that is consistent and is connected to a significant online presence. This leaves room for those who don't want their names on the internets, but allows us all to feel like we're talking to real people. Commenters are encouraged to identify themselves as completely as possible.

2. Comments may not contain offensive or hateful speech, threats, or other content you wouldn't share in church. (A vibrant and frank church, that is.)

3. Comments not made in the spirit of these guidelines will be deleted without apology.

4. Interpretation of the above guidelines is the sole responsibility of the blog moderator (that's me) and all decisions are final.

I will continue to technically allow "anonymous" comments so people can comment without signing in to Blogger/Google/OpenID, so long as these guidelines are followed. If I have to, I will restrict posting to people who are signed in through one of the affiliated services.

This does not represent a change to a heavy-handed moderating style; I will continue to encourage all thought and points of view on this blog, will continue allowing authors to post at will without editorial oversight, and will only delete comments I feel I cannot allow to stand. Note that while anonymity has been an issue, hateful/offensive stuff thus far has not, so I am laying out obligatory precautions rather than reacting to something that has already happened.

Correct

2011-10-05T13:30:00.001-07:00

From www.thomasthedoubter.com. Came to my attention thanks to Josie's Facebook.

Power of suggestion

2011-08-30T19:16:00.001-07:00

At the risk of abandoning what I hope is my usually diplomatic tone, what the hell is this.

Jordan Blevins arrested while praying for economic justice

2011-07-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

Blevins and several other religious leaders were arrested at the U.S. Capitol today while publicly praying that Congress "not balance the budget on the backs of the poor."

The National Council of Churches has the full story.

Calling all young leaders!

2011-07-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

by Bekah Houff

Updated on 14 July 2011 - see below

In response to both public and private conversations I had at Annual Conference as well as Katie’s call on facebook, I thought a FWFS post about HOW we nominate young adult leaders for Annual Conference leadership would be appropriate.

The Annual Conference Office has posted easy to find links for both the nomination form and the AC evaluation (see below).

Annual Conference Nomination Form

This is the place to nominate persons for the positions listed below. You must get permission to nominate the people you write in the form. You’ll need their contact information as well. The nominee form is different from the nomination form. It is my understanding (anyone out there, correct me if I’m wrong) that the nominee form does not get submitted until someone from the Annual Conference Office contacts you to fill it out.

The following positions are receiving nominations:

Moderator-Elect

Annual Conference Secretary

Program & Arrangements Committee

On Earth Peace Board

Church of the Brethren Benefit Trust Board

Bethany Seminary Trustee -Clergy

Bethany Seminary Trustee -Colleges

Mission & Ministry Board -Area 1

Mission & Ministry Board -Area 2

Committee on Interchurch Relations

Pastoral Compensation & Benefits Advisory Board

Annual Conference Evaluation Form

So, you may think – I didn’t go to Annual Conference, I can’t fill out an evaluation! True, you may not be able to evaluate AC, but this is the form where you can submit names for leaders for future Annual Conferences. There are no required fields, so just skip whatever you don’t want to fill out.

You may suggest leaders for the following Annual Conference leadership opportunities:

Preacher

Worship Leader

Music Coordinator

Adult Choir Director

Organist

Pianist

Instrumentalists

Vocalists

Bible study leaders

Children’s choir director

Theatrical performers

There is also a spot for “other suggestions for future Annual Conferences” as well as “suggested themes for future Annual Conferences”

I hope this little run down is helpful in your participation in calling out leaders – particularly young leaders for Annual Conferences of the future. Let us consider one another’s gifts and call those we feel would serve in these positions well. Let’s continue to affirm one another’s calls and continue the work of Jesus as engaged leaders in our Church!

UPDATE:

I'll post more as they come.

There is an "Elections Procedures" document for each Annual Conference. I have the hard copy of the one for next summer, but it won't be posted to the COB AC website for another week or two (AC backlog - COB staff are working hard to get everything up ASAP!). When it is up, I'll post it here.

I also asked about deadlines:
the nomination form is due by December 1
the online AC evaluation will be closed around August 8 (that's a rough date)

Other additional information:
You don't actually have to have the permission of the person whom you are nominating - just their contact info! I got this procedure confused with what is used for nominations from the floor of Annual Conference. You can submit a nomination for anyone. Annual Conference will then contact those people and ask them to submit a nominee form - they can refuse at that point if s/he is not feeling called OR fill out the form and be considered!

Hope that helps! Keep bringing on the questions!

Scarves

2011-07-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

by Nick Miller Kauffman

I'm (still) watching Annual Conference business via webcast, where they just concluded business dealing with a query on decorum, questioning the appropriateness of rainbow and black & white scarves (the former expressing support for LGBT people, the latter supporting a literalist biblical interpretation). The query was returned, but as I watched the discussion, there were a lot of comments that mentioned both scarves in the same breath. I think it's important to distinguish between them.

I do not wear a rainbow scarf at Annual Conference (excepting one evening last year). I actually agree with the sister who compared them (and the black & white scarves) to "gang colors." I appreciate their intent and am a big fan of shows of solidarity, but I suspect their effect is more isolating than inclusive. I surely don't think they should be banned, I just don't take part in that particular demonstration.

But we shouldn't compare rainbow scarves to black & white scarves. The former are intended as a show of support for an oppressed and silenced group; they are a stand against a majority. The latter are a direct response to the former, which means they are worn in opposition to the display of solidarity with an oppressed minority. Those with a literalist biblical interpretation may themselves be a minority, but they are certainly not silenced.

In the same way, a White Student Union would be different from a Black Student Union. Flying a "straight pride" flag would be different from flying a "gay pride" flag. I am not the biggest fan in the world of rainbow scarves in our particular context, but the black & white scarves seem downright malicious. Rainbow scarves are a disenfranchised group standing up and demanding they be counted. Black & white scarves are a powerful group reminding others of their power.

The stakes of our disagreement

2011-07-03T18:13:00.000-07:00

by Nick Miller Kauffman

Every time I hear a formal discussion on the "homosexuality and same-sex covenantal relationships" stuff I find myself getting angry. I hear lots of code words, a lot of "unity of spirit" talk that falls flat on my ears, and what I perceive as a reticence to name what's really being discussed. And this anger is bothersome to me, because I like to be detached and rational. I like to pretend I can use reason to arrive at the "right" answer, and when emotions get in the way I wonder if I'm properly understanding what's going on in my mind.

The problem I have with the special response process as handled by the Church is that the Church suffers the same bias I have, which is a desire to treat things with a high degree of rationality--or rather, a twenty-first century, touchy-feely rationality that breeds such comments as "we encourage people to engage LGBT people in conversation," and talk of our "disagreement."

If we are encouraged to talk to LGBT people, it implies that they are a "they," that they aren't part of the conversation. That we are a bunch of straight people debating what to do with these other people, and though we don't agree, we can at least be high-minded and talk to them. Much as the vice president of a college might think herself a better person for stooping to talk to the blue-collar workers whose supervisors she supervises.* This is not a conversational relationship between brothers and sisters, probably because we don't want to admit that while we debate whether to condone LGBT people doing the same things as straight people, some of those people are present at the table. Awkward!

I think this is starting to get at the second example, which is the language of "disagreement." That word seems to connotate something academic, like whether one identifies more with utilitarianism or deontology, or perhaps a matter of taste, like whether one enjoys strawberries in the summer. It's easy to forget just what kind of disagreement we're talking about: namely, whether one party of this disagreement is to be treated as fully human. While recognizing that analogies can only take us so far, imagine for a second a conversation (many of which assuredly happened) between an opponent of civil rights and a person of color, in which the opponent of civil rights--a person opposed to sharing a drinking fountain, sending his children to the same school, or having to intermingle at the front of the bus--ruminates about the importance of maintaining unity despite a disagreement.

If you find yourself on the conservative side of this question, I'm sure you feel that the comparison is unfair. But that unfairness is probably born of the same repulsion that I feel at the scenario I've described, so know this: LGBTA people feel that same repulsion, that same injustice, that same exclusion, every time you talk about our disagreement. When you have a civil disagreement or a polite conversation with someone whose very nature you believe to be sin, whose call to ministry you flatly reject, and whose covenantal relationship you think should never be affirmed, you are sweeping a lot under the rug. Believe you me, the "trust" we keep being urged to have cannot exist in such a dynamic.

Sometimes, in a fight that concerns justice, you don't get to keep the peace.

I'm not trying to argue for acceptance (at this precise moment). This post isn't to try to convince people who disagree with me to change their minds. I just want you, and the Church, to understand the stakes of our disagreement.

*If this strikes you as a weird and confusing example, just skip over it. There are other things that make me angry.

Brethren ethnicity, Brethren confession, and naming abused privilege

2011-06-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

by Parker Thompson

So I got a message that there was an interesting conversation going on in the interwebs among some intellectually engaged individuals about the Church of the Brethren, culture, and confession. After reading several lengthy, engaging posts and many interesting comments, I have felt called to articulate these thoughts.

In my engagement with the conversation, I would like to introduce myself as an infiltrating outsider to the Church of the Brethren. This status, after four years of heavy, delightful engagement with the denomination at the local congregation level, at Bethany Theological Seminary, and at the national level, generally seems to be slipping away as I have become more and more acculturated and welcomed into the “community.” But if my experience and conversations are any indicator of future experience, I will probably always have a sense of being an outsider.

The first piece of the conversation, and most central, that I would like to engage is the topic of cultural Brethrenism that both Josh and Carl have been so eloquently parsing. While the dialectic between culture and theology is a favorite interest of mine, I think more specifically that the issue creeping below this entire conversation is that of Brethren ethnicity. It is the key challenge and gift of the denomination. Are you born Brethren? If you are, you are of a higher class in this crew. Deny that statement all you like in the sense of what should be, or what confessed ideal is desired, but I have experienced and witnessed this deeply embedded privilege manifest in more than one situation. It is the experienced reality in comparison to the stated/desired ideal.

It would be a sloppy reductionist approach to bifurcate the ethnic Brethrenism from the confessional Brethrenism. So instead, I embrace the muddling. The blessing of ethnic Brethrenism is that is does provide, what speculatively appears to be a strong acculturation draw for many born into ethnic Brethrenism to comprehend and take on the discipleship and confessions (what ever variation that might be).

The curse of this reality is, I think, what Josh is prodding in his questioning of the difference between “only culturally Brethren” and a “practicing Brethren” (my synthetic phrases, for the moment). A danger of the privilege of cradle Brethren is to lift the Brethren ethnic heritage and confuse it or conflate it with the religious faith confession/seekings initiated by the eight and carried on, explored, practiced, and expanded by three centuries of believers. I think the Pietist influences that launched this adventure are an important heritage to bring into conversation with conflating ethnicity with confession. The whole Pietist movement was about doing examined theology and choosing to believe in that examined theology, and then continuing to work through that ever-evolving faith with mind, body and soul (and in community depending on the root community). This challenging task is done in varying degrees by different seekers and believers, but it is the challenge set forth by our Pietistic forbearers and is a common thread in the antipedobaptism that we share with our Anabaptist brethren.

It all arises out of a double bind that all faith traditions arrive at (at least ones that believe in sex, procreational sex at least). One of the easiest ways, at times, to maintain or even grow your group’s numbers is to make a bunch of babies. The baby boom becomes an evangelical captive market. At the very least the status quo of staying in the tradition of origin has, depending on cultural context, a relatively high success rate at adding to numbers. On the flip side, this approach can be too easy for Christian formation, leaving large groups of a population with a limited set of embedded theology because it looks right and does not require a lot of work. But this lazy evangelism can, not always, but can make for lazy Christians, and in these circles lazy Brethren. Unfortunately, these lazy Brethren wander around with a sense of entitlement that they have been in since birth and therefore have a “special” sense of ownership.

I think that is all I have at the moment. It seems the style around here to leave something unsaid for later, since this is more of a conversation than a more formal publication. I hope that this is received as a well-spirited offering to conversation. I have written these care and tenderness in my heart for this big messy community of the Church of the Brethren, but know that quick writings can have sharp edges. Some of this playfulness is definitely springing from my minds summer stir-craziness that is beginning (despite being very busy in the midst of a summer ministry placement). May these words find a touch of God’s grace as others wrestle with them.

Re-thinking Church: Gifts from the Ruins

2011-06-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

by Katie Shaw Thompson

My spouse, Parker Thompson, and I preached this sermon together at the opening worship of Young Adult Conference 2011 at Camp Inspiration Hills, OH. What you'll find here is the manuscript version with all the funky pause marks, punctuations, and paragraph indentations. Of course reading a sermon is never like experiencing a sermon

but this will give you the general idea if you missed YAC (which was a really really fantastic weekend!). We'd be happy to hear your comments and to chat back as we're available.

Peace,

Katie Shaw Thompson

Picture credit: "Among the Ruins." Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema. Oil on Canvas

Scripture: Isaiah 58

Along with Isaiah we thought we’d like to bring you the voice of another prophet-poet—one from the 21^st century.

George Watsky is a young Jewish slam poet from San Francisco.

His poetry is often filled with out of the box theology that unsettles you and makes you think about things differently.

Neither of us would agree with every single thing he says, in fact he often contradicts himself. Yet, I think his voice is very much worth listening to.

The poem we’d like to bring in to the conversation between us and Isaiah today is called DRUNK TEXT MESSAGE TO GOD, and although it may be a little different I hope you’ll hear it (and us) out to the end.

[At YAC Parker and I performed Watsky’s poem but you blogger types have the advantage of watching the poet himself on youtube.]

Not all of us are like George Watsky.

Not all of us think bar hopping with your church would be so cool.

In fact, some of us may not have sent a lot of drunk text messages…

And some of us would rather not admit how many we’ve sent…

But I think we can all relate on some level

to the yearning for a different kind of church.

As emerging adults many of us are redefining and re-evaluating our relationship to the church.

Some of us still go to church to please our parents.

Some of us go to church because it’s the only place other than the bar to meet people in a small town.

Some of us feel more culturally Brethren than anything else even though we don’t go to church really.

Some of us sit in the pew on Sunday and have a nice enough time, but wonder what else church could be.

Most of us sitting here today have some sort of positive experience past or present with church or else we probably wouldn’t be here.

I would even venture that most of us sitting here today know that the place of church in this culture is rapidly changing,

yet some spark of hope keeps us wondering what might be.

Both Watsky and the prophet Isaiah name this yearning.

In Isaiah we hear it in the cries of the people.

They call out to God, look we’re doing what we’re supposed to be aren’t we?

We cross fasting and humbling and worshipping off our Piety Checklist every week. // But we’re not seeing much action from you. Like, what gives God?

I think this is the situation a lot of churches find themselves in today.

Look we’re doing everything like we always did. We’ve got worship on Sunday—check. We got the love feast twice a year—check. We made the pilgrimage to Annual Conference, ate some ice cream—check.

Yet, uh, we could still use some help here with our dwindling numbers and our big fight over sex. So, uh, what gives God?

God doesn’t seem to dig checklists.

Just going through the right motions doesn’t seem to get us any credit with God.

There doesn’t seem to be any bank where we can cash in our piety points.

It’s to these kinds of problems that Isaiah proclaims his prophecy.

Isaiah writes, “such fasting will not make your voice heard on high.”

The humility that the people practice is no more impressive than the tall grass bending in the wind.

The Israelites had been carried off to Babylon by their conquering empire. A society so defined by acquisition that the people and land of Israel were standard commodities to acquire.

When the Israelites in Babylon finally catch a break a generation later and get to come home to Jerusalem, they return to a devastated city. The city and the Temple are in ruins.

Upon their return, they began to go through the old Temple motions because they thought that was what they were supposed to do.

But it turns out that they only picked up an empty shell of a tradition.

Maybe the Israelites have hung out too long in Babylon or maybe it’s just something in human nature, but it seems the prophet is calling them out on their checklist worship.

The voice of the Holy through Isaiah calls the people out on using worship as a means to an end, as a way to get ahead in the eyes of God and in the eyes of society.

The “right motions” with the wrong intentions are unacceptable to God and the people feel the lack of God’s presence.

Young adults seem particularly perceptive to the emptiness of going-through-the-motions church.

After all we’re a generation that has grown up being inundated by advertisements at an unprecedented level.

So we have particularly keen noses for anything that smacks of being false or fake.

If you’ve ever sat in church and been annoyed by a prayer request that seems more like bragging than joyful thanksgiving—

If you’ve ever swallowed hard how you’re really feeling,

and what you really need help with,

because you can’t trust the people in your church

or you think they’d be ashamed—

Then you know what we’re talking about.

You know that too often church has become a place where we bring a very sanitized version of ourselves.

The version of ourselves we bring to church doesn’t swear, drink, smoke, have sex, eat red meat, own a gun, or any number of things that might be shameful in our particular church.

The version of ourselves we bring to church ALWAYS washes our feet before love feast, brushes our teeth, recycles plastic bottles, kisses babies, humors old people, is happy to be there, troubled by nothing, ready to sing and whatever else is good and honorable in our particular church.

It’s not that we need to be an open book to everybody we know, but when our churches become so sanitized that we can’t bring our real selves to worship, we stop being church.

We stop being community.

It’s not like God doesn’t know how many cavities we have, how many people we’ve slept with, what our carbon footprint is, or what we’re really worried about.

So when we swallow our real selves in favor of a sanitized version, we are either protecting ourselves from people we can’t trust, or we are trying to get ahead by trying to be the people we think everyone else wants us to be.

That’s not individuality.

That’s conformity.

And conformity is not community.

Conformity is not church.

And when this happens,

deep down in our guts,

where God so often speaks,

we know something is broken.

In the tradition of many other prophets, Isaiah makes it a priority to tell the people what their call from God is.

It is right back into the broken down ruins of the Temple that God calls the people.

Despite the rubble—all these checklist intentions…

In fact because of the rubble that needs removed from these ruins, we are called into them. It is in these ruins that we can find the foundation that we can build on.

Like the ancient Israelites our tradition too contains something of God.

We are called to re-imagine church yes, but we don’t need to start over from scratch.

Instead we are called into the rubble to sift through our heritage for what can be built upon,

for what is useful,

for what our ancestors have left us.

From the midst of the rubble Isaiah proclaims:

loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke,

let the oppressed go free, break every yoke.

This is where so many of us in the Church of the Brethren really wake up. When it’s time to pray with our hands, backs, and feet, we’re there.

God’s call is for peace and justice, and this is a central gift, a strong piece of foundation upon which our church seeks to stand.

That kind of peace and justice work that feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and brings justice and freedom to the oppressed—that kind of work makes sense to us.

And it has an honored place in our particular heritage.

The call to this kind of holistic peace work that seeks the well-being of all creation, runs like a thread through our tradition.

It is the very life-blood of what our spiritual ancestors have handed down to us.

But service and activism in the name of peace is not enough in itself.

Isaiah’s prophecy from God does not end with passionate peace and justice work in the streets.

For this work too can be done out of an acquisition model.

You can try and put in some time and money for some more of that social credit, but that’s not the call.

It is when this work is God’s call—that makes us a peculiar people.

Scholar Stanley Hauerwas likes to say atheists can do peace work but that doesn’t make them Christian.

I (Parker) like to put my own spin on that when I say, Bono’s doing great AIDS work in Africa but that doesn’t make him my Jesus.

For as people of God we have the unique opportunity and call

to care not only for the physical well-being of our world

but also for its spiritual well-being.

And becoming a vehicle for God’s work of spiritual healing,

that work starts close to home.

You can run as far as you want from who you are and where you come from,

But until you stand and face that truth,

REAL, RADICAL, ROOT transformation cannot take place.

We need to turn all that transformative energy not just out into the furthest, darkest corners of the world.

We need to turn it on ourselves too.

We need to turn it on our own neighborhoods,

on our own churches,

and even on the darkest, grittiest corners of our own hearts.

Doing that kind of holistic work takes the help of real community that can hold you when you need held,

that will see you for who you really are,

that will forgive you your shortcomings,

that will help you forgive yourself,

that will listen with you for the calling of the Holy.

This kind of transformative work

that fills you up so you can go back out

to transform the world

is exactly the work of a strong church community.

It is the work of a church community that comes together to build each other up, not to get ahead of each other, or to tear each other apart.

It is the work of a church community that can handle real differences and real non-conformity.

Sifting through our heritage we do find an emphasis on real, strong community.

Even if we also find that it has always been plagued by the specter of a painful conformity.

While the ban and the tradition of conformity it engendered haunt us yet today, we are also a people who are deeply geared toward and concerned with creating community.

From the earliest group Bible studies of our spiritual ancestors to the intentional communities of our BVSers today, our tradition, at its best, has highly valued real community.

At its best, our tradition has always valued highly the role of each uniquely gifted individual in that community through our belief in the priesthood-of-all-believers.

At its best our tradition has empowered every member to take responsibility for their own spiritual growth, for the spiritual growth of their community, and for the healing of our world.

This is the gift of the church.

This is the gift the church has to give to itself, to us and to the world.

Although church like every other institution or organization is flawed, when we sift through that flawed rubble

we find the foundation of what we yearn for,

we find the foundation of the church of the future,

we find the foundation upon which to build the kind of real transformative community that has the potential to open the way for the healing light of God in our world and in each individual heart.

We find in this foundation the transformative energy that is the life of abundance.

Instead of the checklist mentality that tells us we must acquire to be happy, to be spiritually fulfilled and saved,

We find a foundation for a transformative church, one that can teach us to live in abundance, to delight in the glory and love of God, which we never have to earn and which never ends.

So yes, re-imagine church.

Call out the places where individual congregations and our larger church body falls short of the calling of God.

Shout it out! Do not hold back.

But also be willing to get your hands dirty by getting down into the ruins of all that is wrong with church,

sift through the rubble,

cast aside that which we no longer need,

in order to reach what is good and worthy about our tradition, in order to find the foundation upon which to build the church of the future.

THEN, when we are standing on that strong foundation,

when we have faced all the good and the bad our tradition has to offer,

when we have committed to non-conformity,

when we have committed to real, unsanitized community,

when we have been fed and watered by our heritage,

then our dreams have a real chance of becoming an exciting reality.

Then we shall take delight in God.

Then we shall live into being the body of Christ in the world.

So dream.

Dream a big dream for what the church could be and should be.

Take risks.

Risk being yourself and voicing your perspective.

Stand firm on the foundations of this tradition but look and listen for the ways God is calling us to grow, for what we can leave behind and for what we can reclaim.

With a strong foundation, the sky is the limit.

If you thinking sharing a brew,

Playing Star Foxx,

Throwing foam parties in elevators,

Taking Mondays off for religious reasons,

Climbing a Mountain together,

Screaming at the top of your lungs,

Laughing or crying with the people who will let you do either,

Will build real community

and you think God is calling you to that—

then do it, dream it, make it happen.

Because re-thinking church will take all of us

and all of our individual quirkiness

standing firm on our foundation

and dreaming into the future

to make it happen.

I believe this is the calling of our generation.

Isaiah writes, those who build upon these ancient foundations, “you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”

So dream,

risk community,

be fed by your heritage,

take delight in the calling of God,

and lead us into the church of the future.

Do you vow?

2011-05-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Young Adult Conference (it rocks, you should go) and have several potential blog posts churning around in my head. And y'all may get nag e-mails from me to get you to write as well. But since it's 1:20 AM and I'm packing for California, I'll keep this one brief.

We closed our final worship by reciting a vow. Unfortunately I can't tell you what it was, as the slip of paper seems to have removed itself from my pocket between then and now, but it definitely included the word "vow."

For me, this stirred up some dissonance with my understanding of the Brethren tradition of declining to swear oaths, such that I decided not to participate in the reading. But I'm curious to see some discussion:

What have your experiences been with the issue of swearing oaths? Do you consider refusing to do so an important part of your faith tradition, or is it something that doesn't seem to matter much?
Are there some circumstances in which swearing an oath is more acceptable than in others? Is making an oath to God OK, since it's not binding oneself to an earthly institution?
Is saying "I vow" different than saying "I swear?"

Do contribute!

(Update 5/31/11)

I found the paper. It reads as follows:

We vow to serve and follow Christ as children of God. We realize the road ahead may not be easy all the time, but we, as the future of the church, strive to hear the call, and go. We say yes to God, but realize that saying yes comes with a responsibility. As we leave this place, may we go re-thinking church by the way we live, the things we say, and the actions we portray. Christ leads and guides us, but we have a choice. Will we walk in his footsteps? Will we press on with courage and hope? Even if we're still waiting, let's enjoy the call of the journey that is before us right now as we continue the work of Christ living peacefully, simply and together!

A 21-year project

2011-03-08T07:17:00.001-08:00

Posted this brief snippet on an online course and decided to re-post here.

I've known intellectually for a long time that "God isn't a man or a woman." Pretty much everyone (or rather, everyone with whom I interact) agrees on that. They still squirm at any suggestion that they should avoid saying "he," though.

My new year's resolution for 2009 was to refer to God in the feminine for that year, to try to offset my ingrained assumption that God was masculine. I figured once I got that down I could move to gender-neutral language and mean it. By 2010, however, I still thought of God as male, no matter how consciously I used feminine pronouns. So I decided what I really needed was a 21-year-long project to offset my 21 years of referring to God in the masculine.

So, my goal is that by 2030 I will have successfully driven out my underlying assumptions about God's maleness, at which point I will move to non-gendered understandings.

-Nick Miller Kauffman

Remember the healers

2011-02-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

In the past few weeks, I've been hearing various people saying things along the lines of "It's too bad our Elgin leadership doesn't speak more prophetically regarding [name your issue]." I want to respond to that.

One Brethren "hero" many of us are familiar with is John Kline, a subject of both song and children's book. Kline is remembered for, during the American Civil War, crossing the border between North and South and providing medical assistance to both sides.

I must beg forgiveness for the violent imagery, but I think in some senses the Church of the Brethren is engaged in a sort of civil war. A culture war between the progressives and the fundamentalists, most notably between the "gay supporters" and "gay opposers," as sociologist Carl Bowman categorizes us. Many of us have strong moral and spiritual beliefs that put us on one side or the other of this proverbial Mason-Dixon Line. And thus we find ourselves called to take up arms and fight for what we believe is right.

While this struggle occurs, though, we are still a church, and a church needs its leaders. Elgin is not the headquarters of the Progressive Church of the Brethren or the Conservative Church of the Brethren; it is the headquarters of the Church of the Brethren. Our denominational leaders are responsible for leading all of us, and to do that they need to cultivate relationships with and avoid alienating people on both sides of the line. While many of us are drawn--and perhaps rightly so!--to be fierce and prophetic, we must recognize that the arrogant purism espoused in our admonishments to our leaders to be bolder comes from a position of privilege. In some roles--roles that need to be filled--such purism is simply not an option.

The sin of slavery, after all, was a massively important moral issue in the spiritual life of our nation, I daresay as big as the sin of (to some) homosexuality or (to others) exclusion. We might imagine John Kline felt the burning, holy call for freedom from the shackles of slavery--surely a cause worth fighting for!--yet we celebrate his decision to pursue a path of healing that transcended the conflict.

When you take up arms for one side or another, you give up the ability to transcend borders, to build relationships, to earn the respect that gives weight to your voice. Many of us, often myself included, stand proudly as soldiers. But we should not neglect our healers, for they, too, are doing God's work.

Carl Bowman's new blog

2010-11-12T08:04:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, Brethren sociologist, Carl D. Bowman, started blogging about the 2006 Brethren Member Profile, among other things. Check it out: Brethren Cultural Landscape

Recovering the Love Feast

2010-10-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

by Brian Gumm

The seminary careers of Paul Stutzman and myself overlapped for one year at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. He was finishing up his last year of an MAR degree while I was starting my dual degree project at the seminary and Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. So now two years later, his master's thesis work has been picked up and published by Wipf and Stock, and it has profound relevance for Brethren! Check it out...

Recovering the Love Feast: Broadening Our Eucharistic Celebrations
by Paul Fike Stutzman

The foreword is by Eleanor Kreider, who has done considerable work on worship practices at the London Mennonite Center and is now - with her husband, Alan - at the "other" (to me, I say that lovingly) Mennonite seminary, AMBS. The endorsements include a word from Bethany president, Ruthann Knechel Johansen; Brethren sociologist, Carl Bowman; and Brethren historian (and my mentor and former pastor), Jeff Bach!

Paul said it should be available directly off the Wipf and Stock website linked above, and on Amazon within a few weeks. Definitely on my list...

[Note: Cross-posted on my RT blog.]

For the irreverent among you

2010-10-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

In my non-existant free time I started a video blog companion to my personal blog, the first installment of which I used to (somewhat satirically) describe substitutionary atonement. If you're interested, here's the link to the video on YouTube.

A pastiche tribute to Art Gish

2010-10-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

by Brian Gumm

Fellow Brethren folk may be interested to see my attempt to honor the life of Art Gish over at the Restorative Theology blog: A pastiche tribute to Art Gish. I'm basically trying to honor him by channeling his social-technological critique found in Beyond the Rat Race and focus it on the digital age. Here's the closing paragraph:

From top to bottom, pledging allegiance to the digital age comes with serious implications that most people are not even remotely aware of. A consistent post-Christendom critique of this system in the tradition of Yoder and Hauerwas exposes it as a neo-Constantinian political-economic industrial complex. The poor rarely have voice in this system, as the economic and educational barriers to entry are high. Christians of means are lulled into a slumber by the flashing lights and excited voices, deaf to the despairing cries of a fallen world, deaf to even the cries of those closest to them. If what Gish states is true (and I think it is), that “(u)ncontrolled technology helped us get us into our mess and shows no sign of getting us out” (p. 118), then where to from here?

Is the Mennonite Church USA doomed? Should Brethren care?

2010-09-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

by Brian Gumm

One of my friends from seminary just made a post on Eastern Mennonite Seminary's new blog, "Work and Hope," that asks a few tough questions for the Mennonite Church USA:

Is MCUSA Doomed? (And Does it Matter?) - by Jeremy Yoder, editor

Do we know what it means to be Mennonite or Anabaptist?
Are we really committed to following Jesus?
Is MCUSA prepared to be an urban denomination?
How Serious Are We to Sharing the Gospel?
So is MCUSA doomed?

As a Brethren sojourning with Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley, I'd be interested to hear some Brethren reactions to these questions, especially from Bethany folks. What are some of the similar realities facing the Church of the Brethren? What are some that differ?

How many post-Christendom theologians...?

2010-09-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

by Brian Gumm

This here blog has been a bit too quiet. I have some Brethren-related posts in the hopper, but in the meantime here's a topic on my personal blog that some folks here might get a kick out of. What happens when you ask some Christian scholars the question:

How many post-Christendom theologians does it take to change a lightbulb?

Find out here: Post-Christendom theologians and the craft of lightbulb-changing

If you Brethren folks have something to add, please drop them in the comments after the link!

In support of Earl's sermon

2010-07-30T21:27:00.000-07:00

by Nick Miller Kauffman

Since we're talking about it, the text to Earl Fike Jr.'s sermon is here.

Ironically, before Earl Fike Jr.'s sermon, I commented to my friends that I'd sure like someone to actually say something prophetically risky from the pulpit during Annual Conference.

I have to confess a feeling of bored dread as I listened to Earl's message. At the outset, it seemed to me it was going to be a drab, slow-paced sermon.

I was in for a surprise.

Being extremely frustrated with the climate of church politics relating to LGBT issues, when I heard Earl say, "But as [Jesus] moves amongst us, we see him look into a nearby tree at a person who wants to know him and be known by him; a person whom many find unacceptable," and I made a comment to those next to me about how the exception to this would be a queer person. Because we, the Church of the Brethren, having created God in our own image, were not about to tell ourselves a parable that critiqued our treatment of queer people.

Maybe if I knew Earl Fike Jr. I would have known better. But I did not, and so I sat like a deer in the headlights while, as if deliberately proving me wrong, he went on to say:

And Jesus says, "come down, I’m going to your house for dinner today." And the response of the crowd, our crowd, is painfully familiar. "Look, he has gone to be at the home of a homosexual sinner."

I was floored. This was the prophetic sermon I was looking for. As I silently cheered (and occasionally vocally "amen"ed) he went on to deliver a scathing indictment of the Church of the Brethren's treatment of LGBT individuals.

For those who didn't hear or read the sermon, the solution Earl offered was forebearance. Let's just give each other room, he said, to disagree about this, and meanwhile accept each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

It's in no way surprising I was a fan of this sermon; Earl said pretty much exactly what I had been saying for the last few days. "I don't need conservative churches to have gay pastors or perform same-sex covenant ceremonies," I said over beer at the Churchworks Brewery. "I just need them to back off everyone else."*

Before I continue my argument, I want to address the two obvious criticisms of the sermon. The first is that it identifies homosexuals as sinners, and the second is that it does not call for the denomination to be open and affirming.

I agree that any language that call homosexuality a sin is problematic. It stems from harmful theology, it marginalizes queer people no matter how much we call for their acceptance, and it should, as a rule, be challenged. I absolutely do not identify with such language. But for the most part, it wasn't me Earl was preaching to when he said that.

The bottom line is, no sermon is going to convince fundamentalist** Christians that homosexuality is not a sin. I'm not saying minds can't be changed, but I really don't see it happening from the pulpit; if Earl had taken this approach, he might have gotten cheers from those of like mind, but in his effort to change anything he would have been shouting at the wind. His purpose was to move people to a position, and to accomplish that he had to try to speak to their theologies.

As for the criticism of what it was that Earl was calling for, this one is difficult for me. I do not want to accommodate beliefs that are harmful and oppressive for the sake of unity. In Proverbs of Ashes, Rebecca Ann Parker describes the board meeting at which it was decided her church would become open and affirming. One man said, "If we do this, some people will leave our church. We will lose our relationship with them. But if we do not, we will lose our relationship with Jesus Christ."

Yet the Church of the Brethren is not, and should not be, a top-down, disciplinarian church. We have no doctrine of infallibility for Annual Conference. I hate--absolutely hate--that a slim majority decision from over twenty years ago is interpreted as instructive in such a way that a beautifully gifted friend of mine saw her license to ministry revoked for coming out as a lesbian. I hate that a slim majority can cast my entire church in such a bad light, for though nearly half the delegates involved did not vote for the amendment, I must confess to outsiders that my church says same-sex relationships are unacceptable.

It is in light of these feelings that I say I cannot speak for others. Annual Conference statements are not law (after all, there are plenty of congregations that won't accept a female pastor), and so they frankly need not be decisive.

What should our language on same-sex relationships be? How about, "We are not of like mind, but we strive to love one another as the conversation continues." What's wrong with that? No statement will make gays and lesbians magically straight, nor will any statement make all congregations open and affirming. We cannot force agreement; why must we pretend to have it?

I'll up the ante here by illustrating just how urgently I think we need to adopt this position: the Church of the Brethren cannot survive a forced and false show of unity on this issue. If a 51 percent vote turns us overnight into an open and affirming denomination, we could well see a conservative split. I'm fairly certain I read a threat of such in BRF literature at one point. Yet if we maintain our position against same-sex relationships, we will die. The progressives in our church may not have the cohesion to effect an organized split, but they will definitely leave, and our church will lose its relevance. We will become yet another shattered has-been, for history always marches in a direction that grants rights to previously disenfranchised groups.

I believe the affirmation of same-sex relationships would be good and right, but as a reflection of where we stand as a church it would not be true. Nor is our current position an accurate representation of what we believe. What we need to do is just say, without fear, that we do not agree. I'm with Earl on this one: forebearance is a step in the right direction, and it's the step we need.

But that step needn't mark the closing of the book. We can (and will) continue our witness, not through the tyranny of the majority, but through honest and loving conversation.

*This is not actually what I said, but I think the point gets across just as well without swear words.

** Apologies if this is too loaded a word; I know both "conservatives" and "evangelicals" who are allies, so those words were out.

Ethnic diversity predictions for Brethren from 20 years ago

2010-07-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

by Brian Gumm

Late this past spring I opened my campus mailbox at Eastern Mennonite Seminary and found three VHS tapes (!!) therein contained. No note was attached with these tapes and I still have no idea who gave me these (I'm guessing a seminary professor trying to reduce office clutter). They were labeled "Brethren in Transition," the name of a conference or symposium held at Bridgewater College. The date provided was October 3-5, 1991. My audiovisual gear situation was such that I couldn't even watch these tapes, so I took them to the Learning Resources Center folks at EMU and paid them $11 to get them all converted to DVD. I was then able to weave these video resources into the syllabus for a directed study on Brethren Beliefs and Practices which I'm working through this summer.

So today, I popped in the DVD with my first assigned lecture, which was given by Donald Durnbaugh and entitled "Closing the Loop: Germantown and Philadelphia." Durnbaugh's historical look at Brethren in transition was focused through the lens of these two congregations and their lives through the late 19th and 20th centuries.

From the conclusions which Durnbaugh drew from this historical analysis, he moves to a number of implications for the Church of the Brethren at that point in history, nearly two decades ago. One such implication he describes as, essentially: "The Brethren will persist, but they will need to change." One potential area for change was ethnic diversity. He cites a Brethren pastor, Olin Mitchell (sp?), as having then-recently predicted that ethnic minorities in the Church of the Brethren, then (ca. 1991) comprising less than 1% of membership will increase to a full 50% by 2010." Mitchell's reasoning for this was based on his observation that the spiritual vitality he was seeing was happening in that less than 1% group, ethnic minorities. Durnbaugh immediately comments that he's not so sure of that prediction, but found it interesting enough to share.

Well it's 2010, so how are we doing in that department? I ask this question out of genuine curiosity. My experience in the Church of the Brethren has been limited to a rural Midwestern, vastly white backwater of the denomination (I don't say this disrespectfully). I didn't go to a Brethren college (not that there are a whole lot of Brethren at those to begin with) and I'm not attending a Brethren seminary. So I'm not trying to be flip or sarcastic by asking that question, which I'll ask again in closing, somewhat differently (and much more verbosely):

How well is the Church of the Brethren doing in terms of being a group of believers in and followers of Jesus Christ, who called into existence a kingdom not of this world, invited our participation in/hastening the coming of that kingdom, which transcends (doesn't necessarily erase) all manner of categories including ethnicity? Are we a group grasping the spiritual vitality to make such a staggering new reality more apparent in our world?

Earl's Sermon

2010-07-11T12:31:00.001-07:00

by Anna Lisa Gross

While I was thrilled to hear sexuality being preached about directly, rather than alluded to surreptitiously, from the Annual Conference pulpit, I have a few frustrations with "Measurably New."

It certainly would not be possible to preach a single sermon that could speak to all 3000+ gathered at Annual Conference. But this sermon was clearly not aimed at me. I do believe that many in the room were moved by the message, and I am glad for that. But I'm frustrated that our conversations about sexuality are always so elementary.

First of all, Earl consistently used the term "homosexuality." While this is quite reasonable for his generation, younger people are much more inclined to talk about LGBTQ or queer folks. Homosexual does not apply to all the people whose sexualities are under scrutiny in these conversations. "LGBTQ" is a much more inclusive term, particularly for those who are uncomfortable with the term "queer."

Secondly, the scriptural grounding for the sermon located LGBTQ folks as sinners (even though I don't think that's what Earl intended to preach). So often we have used the story of the woman about to be stoned for adultery (and this time Zaccheus the tax collector) to discuss sexuality. The beauty of these stories is that they call for loving, respectful, humanizing interaction with "sinners." The danger is that they frame LGBTQ folks as sinners. If we consider a sexual or gender identity to be a sin, the only way to repent is to change a core part of one's identity. Some Christians say that the sexuality itself is not a sin, but sexual acts between people of the same gender are, and therefore only celibate LGBTQ folks are acceptable. So we either ask queer people to become fundamentally new people, or to deny themselves the fullness of love, sex and intimacy. This is horrendous, and I have much more to say about it at another time.

Thirdly, the conversation continues to be one between straight people about queer people. Earl never "spoke to" LGBTQ folks in his sermon. We fall into this faulty mindset continuously in the church, telling ourselves that straight is default, and forgetting that there are queer people in the pews right now, this moment. But fewer and fewer all the time when our language does not reflect this reality. Many people in the church talk about, but not to, queer people.

Fourthly, the sermon talked about only one aspect of sexuality - homosexuality. I can't believe that we continue to have conversations about the complexities of sexuality and spirituality that are so narrow. This allows straight people in the room, regardless of their perversions or poor behavior, to never be under scrutiny. In a society in which rape, child abuse, infidelity, prostitution, harassment, lack of enjoyment in sex, shame-filled sex, and many other unhealthy sexual experiences are rampant, why do we only talk about "homosexuality?"

I do appreciate Earl's bold sermon, and realize that he will be one of the most talked about people throughout the denomination in the weeks to come. Earl as an old, male, straight, white, educated and otherwise privileged person has the capital to spend on such a sermon, and I'm glad he used it.

Polity, prophecy, and the issues we don't like to name

2010-07-11T10:22:00.000-07:00

by Nick Miller Kauffman

I've heard a few voices--usually moderate or conservative voices--saying the Church is "weary" of the "homosexual issue," or even that the matter is "settled." It certainly isn't settled: the very fact that we continue to talk about it demonstrates that. And in response to those who think we should just move on and deal with other things, I would only say that some of us do not have the privilege of being weary.

Riffing off this strong belief that this is something we need to talk about, and the special response conversations that will soon be going on across the denomination, I would like to see a few separate pieces addressing the queer rights/same-sex covenants issues in the Church of the Brethren, with special attention to responding to Monday night's sermon by Earl Fike, Jr. I'm going to write something supportive of the sermon, and I think I have someone lined up to criticize it from the "left" (i.e. saying it doesn't go far enough). I'd like to see someone critical of the sermon from the "right," and perhaps someone critical from a more moderate position (i.e. arguing that it was simply not constructive). If you'd like to write a response and aren't on the authors list, comment on this post or send a message to kauffni (at) bethanyseminary (dot) edu and I'll add you.

Whither the digital Brethren at Annual Conference?

2010-07-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

by Brian Gumm

I just noticed this on the page for Brethren Life & Thought:

Monday July 5, 9:00 - 10:00pm
Brethren Life & Thought/Bethany Theological Seminary Insight Session
Topic: When Brethren Tweet: Technology, Theology, and Community
Come and hear faculty, staff, and students discuss ways technology inpact the Brethren community and learn ways technology can enhance our witness.
See conference book for more details.

That's TODAY! Are any FWFS bloggers/followers going to that session? I was kind of bummed out that I wasn't able to go to AC this year but then I saw this and really got bummed out! There was an article on Brethren bloggers in Messenger a few months ago that I found to be a bit lacking, so would have loved this kind of session.

Also, I heard a few things were getting live-streamed/recorded at AC this year. Seems like this one would be a prime candidate.

Brethren & Mennonite attitudes toward the national anthem of the U.S.A.

2010-06-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

by Brian Gumm

First, to all those who have been following FWFS and are suddenly wondering who this "Brian Gumm" fellow is, let me do a short introduction. Doing so will not only clue you in to who I am but also help contextualize some of the comments I'll make below on the named topic. I'm a licensed minister in the Church of the Brethren, studying at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the Seminary as well as the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. I've been following FWFS for about a month now and had recently put it up on the blogroll over at my blog: Restorative Theology. About three weeks ago, Nick mentioned that he wanted some more authors for this here blog and after a nice e-mail conversation I gladly agreed to contribute my voice. Now, with the 4th of July quickly approaching, we move on to the topic at hand...the national anthem! Yay! (Or boo?)

Earlier this year there was a flap in the Mennonite world (in the U.S. at least) when Goshen College decided to start playing the national anthem of the United States at sporting events. This led to all sorts of interesting media coverage, the most humorous (to me) being a blog post entitled: The Mennonites no longer hate America (from which the picture to the right was linked...no idea where that author got it from). There was almost an audible gasp on the campus here at Eastern Mennonite, and people all over the campus were registering, mostly, their discontent in various social arenas both temporal and digital. Facebook groups shot up both in favor of and against the decision, and I could watch as my Mennonite friends on Facebook fell into one of those two lines. The president of EMU even updated his statement on the matter and re-communicated it to the entire university community. This came in advance of EMU hosting a few NCAA Div-II basketball tournament games on campus, wherein the playing of the national anthem is an NCAA requirement. Even in the seminary classroom, in a believers church class this past spring this issue made for some stimulating discussion.

Meanwhile, in my Church of the Brethren circles, something entirely different was going on in respect to the national anthem. In my home district, the Northern Plains, my pastor's daughter has been singing the national anthem at sporting and civic events of all sorts for years now. From here in Virginia, I just got an e-mail from a recent Brethren EMS alum whose wife is competing in a national anthem singing contest, the winner of which would win money for their resident public school district. Quite a marked contrast from these two Christian movements that have historically shared much in common.

I need to offer a few provisos here. First, my personal stake in this is rife with ambivalence. I not only grew up singing the national anthem and not thinking twice to theologically question it, I also sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in high school all-state choir competitions...and it was my favorite song! Just the other day, I found myself quickly humming harmony to a recording of the anthem I heard while out and about in Harrisonburg. On the other hand, from my two years spent in a Mennonite institution of higher learning reading folks like John Howard Yoder, I've learned to have a healthy dose of theological and political skepticism about these exercises in national allegiance, celebration, and pride, not to mention their state-violence-legitimating undertones (sometimes not so "under").

My next proviso is linked to my being Brethren in a Mennonite institution of higher learning. My experience with Mennonites has been almost entirely academic (and only one school for two years) while my more-extensive Church of the Brethren experience has been almost entirely congregational. And not only congregational but limited to my home district, which represents only a small percentage of the denominational whole! (I vividly remember my schock at National Youth Conference in 1994 when the busses from Pennsylvania pulled up..and pulled up again...and kept pulling up, with a relative sea of youth pouring out of them.)

I'm assuming a mostly 1) Brethren and 2) academic audience here, so if that's safe let me ask the audience: Was the Goshen College thing on the radar? (Nice military analogy, right?) What was your Brethren upbringing like in relation to things like the national anthem?

Book reviews, atonement, and lots of crying

2010-06-18T20:51:00.000-07:00

By Nick Miller Kauffman

I just finished reading Proverbs of Ashes for a book review, and I cried a lot. Like, every twelve pages. Not full-on sobbing, but brief, six-second bouts of tears. I suspect this is not an unheard of phenomenon when reading this particular book.

The book, whose full title is Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for what Saves Us, by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, started as a desire to offer a feminist critique of Christian theories of the atonement. That probably would have been a valuable but boring book. Instead, they found their project transforming into something story-based and essentially autobiographical. The critique is there, but it is incased in heart-wrenching stories of rape, shattered relationships, identity crises, and family secrets.

Where I probably differ from everyone else who cries while reading this book is I didn't cry at the tragedy. I was sad to read that Parker felt cornered into aborting a child whose presence initially evoked joy out of a desire to save her marriage, but I didn't cry. Stories of rape and abuse leave me feeling confused and sickened, but I don't cry.

I didn't cry when Shadow fell into the pit near the end of Homeward Bound. No, I'm the guy who cried when he finally came limping over the horizon, then ran to Peter's embrace. I tear up when the music cuts in during Andrew Shepherd's speech at the end of The American President. I cried, over and over, when Parker and Brock offered or quoted words that were magical in their profundity or astonishing in their healing. Like when Brock, on her way out of the City of a Thousand Buddhas, emptied the jar of dirt that she had claimed years earlier from the front yard of the man who raped her when she was five:

"The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas could take care of one more hungry ghost. Every day the monks put food in the garden to help all the ghosts bound in misery and pain find their way home. I happily turned the job of taking care of Frank over to them and brushed the dirt off my hands" (Parker, Proverbs of Ashes, 209).

"One more hungry ghost" is one of those points at which I cried. Now that you all think I'm strange, on to the theology.

I was intrigued to learn that neither Brock nor Parker--both Christians--participates in communion. It's not hard to understand why, though, as they reject not just specific theories of the atonement, but the atonement itself.

Substitutionary atonement is problematic because it presents a God abusive towards his child and bloodthirsty in his demand for justice:

"The belief that the great Jehovah was offended with his creatures to that degree, that nothing but the death of Christ, or the endless misery of mankind, could appease his anger, is an idea that has done more injury to the Christian religion than the writings of all its opposers, for many centuries. The error has been fatal to the life and spirit of the religion of Christ in our world; all those principles which are to be dreaded by men have been believed to exist in God" (Hosea Ballou, Treatise on the Atonement, qtd. in Parker, Proverbs of Ashes, 30).

Further, with its identification of disobedience as the root human sin, the message here can be for victims of abuse to obey their abusers. "A God who punishes disobedience will teach us to obey and endure when it would be holy to protest and righteous to refuse to cooperate" (Parker 21).

In the same chapter, Parker launches similar indictments against social gospel, the crucified people of God, moral influence, liberation theology, spiritualist, and crucified God theories of the atonement. I was going to try to summarize them all, but I fear I'll lose everyone's attention and many of them are kind of similar anyway.

Ultimately, the message is that we should not make a horrific act of violence into something good, in any way, because to do so celebrates the violence. Instead we must be free to grieve the death of Jesus as something bad. Brock and Parker also argue that we can never be separated from God's love, and thus there is no need for atonement.

What saves us is truth, defense of the abused, and opposition of injustice. These life-affirming qualities are where promise lies.

Things I want for this blog

2010-06-15T19:58:00.001-07:00

1. Authors! Authors! Authors authors authors authors authors! I'm SURE you--yes, YOU--have something to write. Do it! Not why I started this post, but it had to be included.

2. I want a cool banner. Preferably something involving feetwashing and foursquare. I know there are wonderfully talented photographers/photo-editors out there.

3. I want this site to have its own look. My general lack of talent has left me limited to the default Blogspot themes. If anyone thinks they can spice things up I'll be happy to bring on, say, an "artistic administrator."

How seminary is ruining church

2010-06-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

After putting such a shocker post title I should start out by saying this isn't an indictment of theological education in any way. I'm just talking about how studying Bible and theology is affecting my experience of worship.

"Cognitive dissonance" would be a top contender for seminary phrase of the year, if such a distinction existed. It's certainly one of theology instructor Malinda Berry's favorites. For me, it's one of those buzzword phrases that I use with a frequency not warranted by my level of understanding of what it actually means--you know, kind of like "exegesis."

Until now, that is. According to Wikipedia, "cognitive dissonance" is "an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously." Basically, theologically, it happens when we experience something contrary to our own truths.

I have a confession: I used to like praise music. Actually, I used to love praise music. It's why I learned to play the guitar. Which I played in the praise band for Intercollegiate Ministries (ICM) at Manchester College.

Most praise music is now ruined for me, because I can't just sing and enjoy it. No, now that I eat, sleep and breathe theology, I must deconstruct the theological claims present in the lyrics. And I have to say, they do not nourish my theological intellect. Most often it's just a lack of the song actually saying much, though there is the occasional bit of questionable theology. Plus, at seminary I've become used to a lot of inclusive language type stuff (we're all "autumn wind" and "breath of giving" and such), and I get really distracted by songs that are loaded with "father" this and "lord" that. In one way or another, though, I'm constantly finding myself evaluating the theology of our music.

The other distraction is that I now know too much. This past weekend I was at a wedding in which both the pastor and the person reading the scripture identified Paul as the author of Colossians. Now, while the authorship of Colossians is cautiously called "disputed," my understanding and belief is that it was written pseudonymously by one of Paul's later followers, not by Paul.

I squirmed in my seat.

I then picked up the pew Bible from in front of me and turned to the introduction to Colossians. My Bible is a HarperCollins NRSV Study Bible and is chalk full of critique. I sort of forgot that there were non-critical Bibles, and that pew Bibles were likely to fall into this category. So I was surprised when I saw the introduction to Colossians uncritically discussing the circumstances under which Paul wrote it.

Okay, I told myself. Maybe Colossians can be a gray area. But what about the pastorals? Scholarly consensus pretty much rejects Pauline authorship of the pastorals.

I turned to First Timothy. Again, the introduction talked unquestionably about Paul as the author. I felt some cognitive dissonance rumbling in me.

Why, though? My personal faith favors speaking of things that may not be literally true, as if they are true. I find it unlikely that Mary was a virgin, or even that Jesus turned water into wine. Yet I have no problem telling these stories.

I think, for me, telling scripture is a statement of faith. It is a story, and the truth it bears is inherent. But when we talk about who wrote the letters that make up that scripture, we get into history and fact. And it bothers me that we fudge over this in worship. I do understand that for some--many--Pauline authorship, too, is a matter of faith, but I have to say that just isn't how I see it. In fact, for me, talking critically about the Bible makes it all the richer and more valuable to me.

There has been some resistance, in our tradition, to theological higher education. And I can understand the frustration of feeling like some priestly class (i.e. those with seminary education) is telling everyone else how to do church. This is, after all, a Church that recognizes the priesthood of all believers. Yet my solution wouldn't be to do away with seminary; it would be to open up the kind of discussion we have here to everyone. Bring it more into our worship. I was talking to a friend last weekend who noted that a year of seminary would be valuable to anyone who is the least bit interested in theology.

Rabbi Louis Finkelstein said, "When we pray, we talk to God. When we study, God talks to us." As I get deeper into theological study, I certainly find it to be where I can hear God. And I won't go so far as to claim it's for everyone, but I would like to see more connection between those doing scholarship and those doing church.

Of course, then everyone would be distracted by having to evaluate the theology of our songs. But I guess that's the price you pay.

-Nick Miller Kauffman

Anabaptist Fierce

2010-04-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

...is what I'm trying to learn how to be at seminary right now.

In preparing for this friday's Voices of a People's History of Christianity joint worship service at Bethany and ESR (Earlham School of Religion), our professor Dawn Ottoni Wilhem gave some of us in her worship course feedback on our readings. We were preparing a service in which we would perform (in the best sense of the word) readings from Christoph Blumhardt, Meister Eckhart, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mary Ann Tolbert, who were/are all notoriously controversial prophets of their times.

The worship service, planned by my husband Parker, was inspired by our admiration for the late Howard Zinn's project, Voices of a People's History of the United States, in which Zinn gathers together some of the great actors of our time to enact and embody the words of many great prophets from US History.

Dawn was exhorting one of us to drop the normally cheery disposition it is culturally acceptable to operate in and switch to a more serious and provocative tone.

"Don't be Anabaptist nice," she said. "Be Anabaptist fierce."

That's it! I thought. What a perfect term for what I've been trying to embody this semester! Maybe Dawn didn't invent the term and maybe lots of cradle Brethren and Mennonites will tell me they've heard it from birth--which seems to happen to me pretty often as a convert--but I'm still impressed.

It seems to me that while the shift from Anabaptist nice to Anabaptist fierce may appear small, it takes a lot of work and makes a lot of difference.

For me, this semester it has meant working hard to be more and more honest about who I am and what I am thinking and feeling, which might sort of sound innocuous--but try doing it! I will tell you it is no easy task to unlearn 25 years worth of habits of closeting my thoughts and feelings and of only letting squeeze out a thin, filtered version of myself, in favor of becoming a more honest and open me.

More than once this semester telling the truth about my feelings or thoughts especially when it comes to sexuality, sexism and our bodies, has alarmed and offended my classmates, some of whom have even approached me in private to try to shame me into shutting up.

But thanks to the support of great friends and mentors in this community and the great witness of our Anabaptist-Pietist heritage, I am not shutting up. I am trying to pick up where my adopted ancestors and mentors left off and trying to learn the fierceness required to stand strong on who I am and what I know.

How can we live and experience fully God's presence in this world if we don't develop the fierceness it takes to be authentic? And I don't mean being offensive for the sake of being offensive, but genuinely authentic.

I've been quoting Bob Hunter a lot lately, and I hope he doesn't mind if I do it again, but he planted a very helpful and related seed in me at Bethany's Presidential Forum. In our small (and I do mean small) group discussion on racism at the forum, we were discussing why many Evangelical Christian associations would have lots more people of color than our very pale, liberal-leaning forum did. Bob cited a weak (or rather antithetical) version of non-violent theory he often hears from seminarians as symptomatic of the problem. Concerning Jesus' Sermon on the Mount commandment to "love your enemies" these seminarians want to claim that we have no enemies, which as Bob cited is not really nonviolent theory at all.

Only someone at the top of the food chain, with all kinds of privilege, could claim that we have no enemies. People of color (and other oppressed peoples), who in this country are faced with messages every day that often demarcate them as the enemy to "American" culture, know the point of that old labor song "which side are you on?"

And a kind of "peace church people" who want to pretend those demarcations are not there and that no matter what someone believes they are not working in opposition to us, will always seem frighteningly and dangerously out of touch with reality.

To be clear, to stand up for and on your convictions does not mean you have to be unchanging, uncaring and infallibly correct. It means you have to have the fierceness to say what you mean and mean what you say.

It doesn't mean we can't be in community if we disagree--in fact it means we've got to learn to love each other across enemy lines!

But community is not real if we're all pretending to be Anabaptist nice when we really disagree with each other vehemently. That's not community. That's a lie. Now there's a careful balance to loving each other while speaking truth, but we'll never get good at it if we don't first try on some Anabaptist fierce.

I know it was those peace church people who tried this fierceness on that drew me to fall in love with Stone Church and the Church of the Brethren to begin with.

So, when I stood up to perform a reading from Mary Ann Tolbert in Friday's chapel service, in which I would talk about sex, sexuality, and then call, with Mary, for the church, "all of us straight and gay, to come out of the closet about our bodies," I was a little nervous because I knew that there were quite a few in the community (and probably some in that room) whose bodies scare them and who just plainly disagree.

But, I wasn't nearly as nervous as I would have been at the beginning of the semester, when I was still trying to hide behind a mask of nicety. I could take solace in the knowledge that for us to be truly the community of believers God calls us to be, we need to be honest about where we are and what we believe.

And that disagreement is not something to sweep under the rug, but rather a great opportunity for growth, if we can find the courage to be Anabaptist fierce.

-Katie Shaw Thompson

What does it mean to be Brethren? Demonations, movements, and identities

2010-04-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

Last weekend saw a who's who of Brethren (and Quakers and Mennonites) descend on Richmond for Bethany's Presidential Forum, "When Strangers are Angels." I didn't participate much in the conference due to a fat work schedule and a thin wallet, but I did make it to a panel session of Brethren, Mennonites and Quakers discussing what it is that makes us Brethren, Mennonite, or Quaker: how do we know who is in and who is out? And what do these identities mean to us?

In some ways, these questions are becoming more critical in the face of declining church membership, budget cuts, and what I would argue is the rise of post-Christianity (can I say that?).

I'll drop the incriminating details at the expense of making this paragraph vague and uninteresting, but in a recent worship service, someone did something that came across as overly enthusiastic and, frankly, a bit lame. A former professor of mine leaned over to me and said, "Our church is dying, Nick."

Maybe I'm too young to be wringing my hands and fretting about the future of our church, but that's what I'm doing. In my own short lifetime I've seen a visible drop in membership in my home congregation. I've seen district and regional events draw smaller and smaller crowds, or even get scrapped altogether. I've seen our denomination cut program after program that gives us relevance outside our own little community. And all that has made me wonder, what's going to happen to the Church of the Brethren?

Scott Holland, one of my professors here, doesn't like the word denomination. He prefers movement. Within Christianity, there are Brethren and Quaker movements, each bringing their own interpretations and contributions to the broader context, and interacting with each other to weave a bigger story.

I think this idea of movement might be key to the future of our identity as Brethren. I hate to say it, but the Church of the Brethren may not be able to survive as the institution of programs and missions that we've known it to be. It's just a financial reality. But when we have so long defined ourselves by the presence of a visible church, what will happen to our identity as Brethren when that visible church folds?

Institutionally, I can see us moving in a direction of increased interdependence with other groups--maybe the Mennonites or the Quakers--in a way not unlike the interdependence between Bethany Theological Seminary and the Earlham School of Religion. Maybe the net will be even broader. Or maybe we'll just find ourself, one day, without a church to belong to. In any of these circumstances, how will we continue to be Brethren?

The radical pietist tradition from which the Brethren emerged did not see the need to have a visible church, and we may be forced to learn something from that. I, for one, am unwilling to give up being Brethren, whatever being Brethren may mean. Even if my membership is in the United Brethren/Mennonite Church (or something like that), I'll still be very clear in saying: I am Brethren.

-Nick Miller Kauffman

Theories on life, the universe, and everything

2010-04-12T17:32:00.001-07:00

(Re-posted from my personal blog)

I'm actually not at all a fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide "trilogy." But it is a good phrase.

I just saw this blog post passing along a brief lesson in life from Kurt Vonnegut.

I used to--and, to some extent, still do--seek the sort of life that would make a good movie. Walking home from high school on a rainy night, after staying late to work on newspaper layout, I'd think how good my surroundings would be for some melodramatic montage, and I'd imagine the minor-key piano music and whining vocals that would accompany such a scene.

We all do this. (By "we all," I mean "most of us, I think.") We expect life to reflect entertainment. After all, entertainment reflects life, right? But entertainment reflects only the dramatic (and, at its best, the profound) in life. It's a skewed look that uses semi-realistic people, relationships, events and themes to create unrealistic patterns and meanings. We see this, and we expect our life to weave itself into natural plot lines; we expect people to exhibit the consistency and predictability of a well-developed character.

But people are not consistent, and life has meaning and story only through interpretation. Out of this cognitive dissonance, we create the drama we expect to see.

Vonnegut: "[B]ecause we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs. So people pretend there is drama where there is none."

The blog author continues: "That's why people invent fights. That's why we're drawn to sports. That's why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal. We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale."

An Advent Sermon: Preparing the Way

2009-12-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

I really enjoy the seasons of Advent and Lent… They provide a time for the church to reconnoiter in the betwixt and the between… They are also periods of time where the prophetic word is heard in many ways, shapes, and forms throughout the catholic church (FYI: little “c” catholic = universal church)… Here is a sermon preached by Stephen Hershberger on December 6, 2009 at Hollidaysburg Church of the Brethren (my mother is the pastor)…

The texts used for the sermon are Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 1:68-79

Preparing the Way:

Thanksgiving is over, and now we find ourselves barreling toward Christmas. There are just too many things to do and not enough time to do it in. We all have our lists. I mean we have to get our houses ready for guests. We need to go shopping to get all the presents that we couldn’t find on Black Friday, we have to go to the Grocery store to get everything we need for Christmas dinner. There are wreaths to hang, Christmas trees to decorate, lights to put up. Not to mention cookies to bake, ice, and decorate. Christmas cards to write, letters to send. The list goes on and on. We get so wrapped up in our preparations for Christmas… that we too often forget to really prepare for Christmas!

This season of Advent that we are in is a time of preparation to those who take the season seriously, especially when you consider the biblical texts associated with Advent.The sense of this preparation with which many Christians approach these first four weeks in the church’s liturgical year consists of the joyful anticipation of the events of the Bethlehem manger.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” is perhaps as apt a text as any to summarize our advent readiness. “Joy to the world” is as appropriate a hymn as any. Love and Joy thus become the watchwords of the season.

While there is no denying that these qualities are an important and persistent theme throughout the season of Advent, it is easy to overlook another theme that is important throughout Advent.

Hear these words from the prophet Malachi:

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap

He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

Not exactly the cheery advent passage one would expect. However, as one commentary puts it, Advent is a season of “anticipation, even apprehension, over the coming of Christ the Judge, the One who will set straight all the world’s wrongs, presiding in glory and in justice over a sinful humankind.”

In other words, Advent is the season of preparation not only for the first coming of Christ, but also for the second.

Consider our texts for today.

Malachi begins on a note of great good news: the messenger of Yahweh, the God of Israel, is about to appear. God’s messenger is coming.

God’s messenger is of the “messenger of the covenant,” coming to the community of faith, for it is the community of faith, it is we, who holds the Covenant with God. But these “glad tidings” are short-lived and are quickly transformed into a mood of apprehension.

The messenger may be a news bringer, but the news isn’t necessarily the “Glad Tidings” for which we were wishing. Quite the opposite, the news that this messenger is bringing is a word of judgment. The justice of God, which this messenger represents, is so thorough, is so determined that it is unlikely that anyone could endure it untouched.

The messenger of the covenant, as Yahweh’s agent, will consume human impurities in the same manner in which a metallurgist’s fire consumes the dross, and in the same way that a strong detergent eliminates contaminants.

We, as the people of God will be reshaped into the image that God intends for us.

I know what you are thinking, “It’s almost Christmas, and it’s supposed to be a happy time, and this seems like a lot of doom and gloom… What happened to the ‘Sweet little Jesus boy’ of that old spiritual that we love so much?”

We’ll get there eventually, maybe not quite this Sunday, but Advent is four Sundays long and we are only on the second…we need to be stuck in the betwixt and between… because let’s face it, that’s where we all usually find ourselves.

The Gospel text today brings us forward. It shows us how the message of Malachi is still current for Christians today. Luke reinterprets the words of the prophets, appointing John as the “prophet of the Most High; for he will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.”

The story of John the Baptist really matters to us because it is encompassed by the larger story of God’s continuing compassion toward humankind. John becomes a model for the church and its members. Therefore, as members of the church following John’s example, our identity and individuality lie not in an isolated set-apartness of a closed off community, but by our role as players in the divine drama of the salvation of the world.

This text from Luke brings us into the history of salvation. Throughout this passage, there are numerous allusions and echoes of Old Testament passages that undergird what is explicitly declared in this text—that God is continuing to fulfill promises and to honor oaths that had been made long ago.

The story of God’s salvation didn’t begin and end with John the Baptist and Jesus, but began with Abraham, later involving King David and the prophets, and it still continues to involve all of us.

Thus, Christmas first and foremost becomes a celebration of the faithfulness of God, a reminder that the people of God have not been abandoned, that the commitments that have been made and frequently need to be renewed have not slipped God’s mind.

The RSV translation of Luke 1:68 puts it rather nicely in saying that God “has visited and redeemed his people.”

God is always coming, always available to God’s people, and always working for restoration. But, receiving God’s coming takes preparation and so God sends a messenger to do this work, to prepare God’s people for God’s coming.

If we look at the continuing story, that began in the Old Testament continues throughout the New Testament and moves through our lives, we realize some changes need to be made.

Let us say, God continues to visit and redeem his people. And it continues to be our calling as members of the church to be messengers of the One who comes.

The challenge in these passages is for us to embrace the work of preparation for ourselves – opening ourselves to God’s restoring, cleansing and disturbing work, and making our hearts ready for us to be messengers of God’s restorative justice and mercy to the world.

In a world where measurement happens on a quarterly basis, where the most important thing is to keep the status quo, where the mark of excellence is making the most money as possible with as little effort as possible, effective preparation is often sacrificed on the altar of expediency and immediacy.

We are all too eager to declare our current recession as “over” without taking the time to make the necessary changes to correct the flaws in our systems. The same applies to climate change science, addressing poverty, AIDS and conflict, be it international, racial, relational, you name it.

The prophetic message of Advent is that we need to reflect on our brokenness as revealed in times like these, and prepare ourselves to go forward and do the necessary, lasting work of true restoration.

Consider this: how much of time of every day do we spend in reaction?

There is so much pain and injustice caused simply because we react to changing circumstances in fear, anger, self-protection or simply impatience.

However, if we can develop a prepared heart, we can more easily slow down, reflect and then act with wisdom and grace. Preparation – particularly of the heart – is restorative.

It’s a proactive stance that frees us from ourselves and our destructive or unhelpful patterns of behavior and moves us into a life that more easily considers, serves and brings restoration to others.

It is only after we are freed from the old ways, that we can truly be messengers of God, sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, letting God shine through our words and our deeds.

That is our calling as the body of Christ. Let us seize the opportunity that Advent provides for us, to reflect, renew, and restore not only ourselves but the world in which we live.

That is the model that has been set before us by Malachi, John the Baptist, Jesus, and all the saints that have come before us. That is our calling at the church.

Therefore, “let us go forth by the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

POSTED BY: STEPHEN HERSHBERGER

as we forgive our debtors

2009-12-01T18:05:00.000-08:00

Our Father, who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy Name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

As we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

and the power, and the glory,

forever.

Every once in a while, for lack of some other prayer or meditation, I recite the Lord's Prayer slowly and repetitively, contemplating each line and its implications. As I get into it, I realize it's complicated enough that I probably shouldn't be working on anything else until I've lived up to those sixty-four words.

The "debts and debtors" section has always intrigued me. As a Brethren, that's how I learned the prayer, and it's how it rolls off the tongue. But now and then I stop to wonder: why debts and debtors? Sure, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" sounds weird and archaic (though what is "who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name" supposed to be?), but "forgive us our sins" makes some sense. Why choose something that seems to imply a monetary situation, when we simple living Brethren are supposed to be more concerned with the spiritual context?

But as a conflict unfolded recently between myself and another Brethren with whom I'd entered into a contractual arrangement, the full weight of those words became clear to me. Leave it to God to reveal best at those times we'd most like to be kept in the dark.

Forgiving a trespass--or a sin--is simple. No matter how hurtful the incident, it is almost immediately in the past. And though I'm quick to anger, I'm equally quick to calm. I know there is no undoing what has been done, and to indulge in negative feelings, while darkly satisfying, is ultimately self-defeating.

A debt, however, is much more difficult to forgive. A debt is not a one-time trespass; it is a trespass that, on its own, will continue as long as the debt exists. Feeling I was owed a debt, I was torn between conflicting desires for conciliation and restitution. After all, even if could afford to let it go, wouldn't forgiving the debt mean I was allowing myself to be a doormat? How can we give up our cloaks to those who sue for our coats without inviting our neighbors to take advantage of us? (To further complicate matters, the other party believed with equal conviction that it was I who owed him a debt.)

I struggle similarly with wrongs for which I never receive an apology. I guess that's another form of debt; I usually find it easy to grant forgiveness when someone apologizes to me, but the thought of doing so when the other party has acknowledged no wrong makes me sick to my stomach. I obsess over whether they even know they've wronged me. I wonder what will keep them from repeating the same behavior.

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." The uncomfortable thing about the Message, and part of the reason we need preachers, is that it's most important when it's not easy. Jesus says, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them" (Luke 6:32). I can easily hear him saying, "If you forgive those who apologize, what credit is that to you?" The way of Jesus means looking past our pride, even when it means surrendering justice for the sake of grace. It means letting go of the need to make sure someone else "learns a lesson." It means forgiving our debtors, not just those who trespass against us once.

Ultimately, I gave up on my claim of debt. I can't really claim it was out of a conviction to forgive--it was mostly guilt and exhaustion--but maybe these thoughts played a small part. It will, at least, help me in my continuing struggle to truly forgive.

Maybe someone from Sallie Mae will read this and agree. But if not, I hope I have at least provided some food for thought.

-Nick Miller Kauffman
(My dad thought Stephen's post was written by me, so I suggest we use big obvious signatures like this.)

Are we for or against?

2009-10-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

As I sit at work, and contemplate what I would rather be doing with my life, I recalled an email reminding me that I offered to be an author for a blog... As I thought further, I considered sharing a recent sermon written for the Eversole Church of the Brethen in New Lebanon, OH on September 27, 2009.

Doing pulpit supply around the area, I have found that there is one message that keeps coming to the center of my sermons, which since I usually use the Lectionary to help me choose texts, it is rather interesting that I keep getting these Gospel texts that shares the including nature of Jesus' ministry.

This sermon is not the most bold which I have written or preached, but in many occasions, it is best to have a progressive sermon written in a more conservative dialect, so that it may be heard by a larger audience.

With that said...
"For or Against?" Preached at Eversole COB on 9.27.2009 Text: Mark 9:38-50

In today’s gospel, we hear an intriguing story. Jesus’ disciples try to stop a man who had been casting out demons in the name of Jesus. The disciples had become extremely upset because this “perpetrator” wasn’t one of them. He hadn’t been handpicked by Jesus. He hadn’t spent any time with Jesus, learning his ways. He hadn’t walked with Jesus, talked with Jesus. In the eyes of the disciples, he was not part of Jesus’ inner circle, and he was acting differently from what they considered to be the norm.

As soon as John brought this matter to Jesus’ attention, Jesus turned the tables on his closest followers and rebuked their blind, unbending exclusiveness. Jesus told them "Don't stop him. No one can use my name to do something good and powerful, and in the next breath cut me down.” And tellingly, Jesus concluded, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Jesus made it clear. He and his disciples were not a little clique, working in a corner of life, fenced off from others. They weren’t going to be an exclusive club where you have to dress, act, behave in a certain way to be included. Jesus’ worldview made him well aware that God’s actions are not limited to the forms with which his disciples were familiar.

How often are we like the disciples in this story? How often do we fall into the trap of our own blind and unbending exclusiveness, our arrogant assumptions that God’s action among us is somehow limited to forms with which we are most comfortable and most familiar? How often do we limit ourselves to believe that God only works in and through those persons who dress and act like we do?

The message that Jesus taught his disciples that day is the same message that we need to hear today. We, as brothers and sisters in Christ, can’t fence themselves off from others who have different ways of following Jesus and finding God. The one who is not against us is for us. The one who is not against Jesus is on the side of Christ.

In this, Jesus gives us a model for a broader worldview. There is an issue of tolerance. Doesn’t Jesus’ message to the disciples help us stop short when we fall into the all too common trap of thinking in terms of “us” and “them” – seeing life only from the perspective of our own groups?

Intolerance of the other is certainly an attitude that Jesus tried to overturn throughout the Gospel. Possibly, he realized that the disciples considered the man casting out demons as a threat to their inner-circle status. He was an outsider, so they tried to stop him. Jesus rejected this by making it clear that only in a more narrow sense can one be an outsider.

What was true for the disciples has been true throughout history. Humans have been building walls and fences to separate themselves from those who are different from us.

Even within the Church the stories of the past schisms and divisions are innumerable. Throughout the history of the church, people of similar minds have gathered together to draw lines in the sand, creating new congregations and denominations that do not challenge our personal beliefs and leanings. We move away from the other group afraid that somehow they will contaminate us. And living out the tendencies of the same human nature, we still act this way in our time, don’t we?
Standing against this, Jesus’ words remind us that Christianity is not the preserve of a privileged few. He reminds us that no one seeking to do the God’s work is an outsider. He reminds us to welcome all people who are willing to join the journey, following Jesus.

Time and again, Jesus’ words remind us to be including – not excluding.
Repeatedly, Jesus’ words rebuke us when we turn against people simply because they are different.

Again and again the life Jesus lived and the way he taught his first disciples remind us of the scandal of our divisions.

Jesus helps us work against the subtle temptation to think that “because I know I am right, anyone who disagrees with me must be wrong.”

Jesus is telling the disciples, as well as all of us to: “Look for the commonalities that connect us, not the divisions that divide us. Recognize that there are many among us who we see everyday who think and act differently that ourselves, but we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that that makes them against us.”

He warns us against simplistic solutions to complex problems. He causes us to see that truth is always bigger than any one person’s, or any one group’s grasp of it. Jesus cautions us against inflexibility of thought or deed. He helps us embrace a variety of actions and viewpoints. He helps us re-learn what is so easy to forget: that diversity is not only good, but it is absolutely essential for the health of the Body of Christ.

And how are we to go about opening ourselves to those who are different from us, who hold different values, who have customs and beliefs with which we disagree or at least don’t understand?

I have found, there is no better way to learn about those with whom we disagree, or don’t understand, than to be in dialogue with those people.

When we move toward another person and at least attempt to open ourselves into dialogue, we are acknowledging that person or persons, saying that though I may not agree with you, I respect you enough to try to understand your point of view and your theology. And as an added bonus in the process of trying to learn from you, I may also teach you something about myself as well.

I am a huge advocate for education. And I believe educating ourselves is a good and important thing; however, learning from a book and continuing to disconnect ourselves is one thing, yet we can learn and help others learn so much more efficiently when we are in dialog with those with whom we disagree or don’t understand.

Through truthful dialogue we can come into a better understanding with one another, we find the commonalities, and learn to walk hand in hand with our newly found brothers and sisters. Be they Conservative, Liberal, Gay, Straight, Black, White, Brethren, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Assembly of God, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindi, Mexican, Lebanese, Israeli, Palestinian, Iraqi, Korean, etc. The names and groups are endless.

Today’s gospel reinforces a belief that what we need in the church is less “either/or” and more “both/and.”

Those who follow the steps of Jesus, who open themselves to the movement of the Spirit in the other, and who look for God and God’s action in every aspect of life, are able to look past the differences in personal ideologies and denominational doctrines to see that we are all God’s children.

The story of today’s gospel is about the disciples’ attempt to draw a circle around Jesus and themselves – shutting out the one who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name.

Perhaps a concise, powerful poem by Edwin Markham can help us remember that Jesus ordered the disciples not to exclude that man and to recall that those who are not against us are for us. In his poem “Outwitted,” he writes:

“He drew a circle that shut me out –
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.”

Next time we are tempted to separate ourselves from those with whom we disagree, let us open ourselves to the possibilities of God’s love for all.

God Bless!

(by Stephen Hershberger)

I SERRV-ed My Time, Now Here's My Reflection

2009-09-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

As Fair Trade Month [October] approaches, I thought I’d take the time to reflect on my summer experience. I am a student at Manchester College and participated in a summer service project called Pathways. I was placed at SERRV in Madison, Wisconsin as a marketing intern. I was going to be living on my own in a big city where I knew no one. Little did I know how much I would actually appreciate this experience later.

Just a little history behind SERRV, for those of you who are not aware. SERRV was started in 1949 by members of the Church of the Brethren as a way to help refugees in Europe after the war. People bought products in Europe then brought them back to America and sold them in a little gift shop in New Windsor, Maryland. The store grew in popularity, and SERRV was started! SERRV remained under the church until about 10 years ago, when it split off into its own entity. Okay, so there’s more to the story, but that’s a long story cut real, real short. SERRV is a fair trade non-profit, and for those of you who are not aware of what fair trade is, it’s a way to support artisans and farmers around the world by creating a fair wage. That’s also a very short definition.

Growing up, I was aware of SERRV. My grandmother would have me look at the catalog and tell her if there was anything I would like to have from it. I always thought the products were so beautiful, even though I didn’t know the full story behind where the products were made. It wasn’t until later that I realized that SERRV was religiously founded and I fully understood the concept of fair trade. There’s just something so rewarding when buying a fair trade product; each piece of jewelry, every basket, all musical instruments are different. They are like snowflakes, none are identical and that’s something you won’t find in the mass produced crafts. Not only are the products beautiful and unique, it also helps people that you have never met. Part of the enjoyment that I find in buying SERRV products is the knowledge that I am helping someone with my need for a new wallet or craving for some chocolate. The service aspect of fair trade is important to me.

I grew up in the Church of the Brethren. I was always taught to consider others around you, including folks you didn’t know. I think that ideal has an important play in why members of the denomination decided to start the International Gift Shop back in 1949. Service has always played a part in various projects supported by members of the Church of the Brethren. Dan West founded Heifer International to help feed the poor, volunteers spend their time cleaning up and building homes through Brethren Disaster Ministries, and many service projects throughout WWII and through today’s youth and young adults at conferences.

After interning at SERRV for a summer, I find myself immensely proud in the work these people do, and I am a proud member of the denomination that founded SERRV. I like to live the line “show Christ’s love through your actions,” and that is what these people are doing and what a consumer does when they purchase a fair trade product. So the next time you buy a Divine chocolate bar, even when you don’t really need one, smile and take pride in the fact that you just helped someone attend school, buy clothes or simply, live.

As a young adult in the church today and also in the world, I try my best to get the word of fair trade out there. I’m currently studying in Northern Ireland for the semester through BCA. I see fair trade everywhere! I was told this summer by my boss that Europe has caught the fair trade bug, and I just wonder why America hasn’t. The products are so beautiful, amazing, tasty and unique. So go ahead, buy that Divine chocolate bar; the people of Ghana greatly appreciate it.

SERRV has a facebook page. Become a fan today!

Hi, my name is Julia Largent. I'm a junior at Manchester College double majoring in Peace Studies and Communication Studies. I'm a member of the Church of the Brethren. =]

Confessions of a seminarian

2009-09-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

You might think, being at Bethany Theological Seminary, that I would feel more inspired to think about, and then write about, things relevant to this blog. I can't say that's proven to be false; I probably have at least four ideas a day that interest me enough to write about them. The problem is my ADHD (and generally spaceyness) are so bad that I forget them within minutes. Yet tonight, though none of my past ideas have come jumping back into my head, I feel strangely motivated to write. Possibly because the alternative is actually doing an assigned reading.

In the absence of having anything leaping to the front of my mind for reflection or commentary, I will reflect on my experience as a student at Bethany.

Most of you who know about this blog probably also know about Bethany, but, just in case, it's the Church of the Brethren seminary located in Richmond, Indiana, on the campus of Earlham College (a Quaker school).

I came to seminary almost expecting to hate it. One might question the wisdom of taking a path that is expected to be unpleasant, but I really didn't feel like getting a job, and no other schools seemed to stand out. Besides, the people at Bethany put up with my waiting until July to tell them I'd be starting school here in August.

One might also wonder why someone who was interested enough in Brethrenism and spirituality to start a blog on it expected to hate seminary. I'll say firmly that I have no intention of being a pastor, and I half-expected a seminary, at which most of the students are pursuing their Master of Divinity, to be too ministerial, and frankly too Christian for me.

But I love it here. After just a month, passing judgment may seem premature, but I know when I love a place. The classes I'm in for my M.A. are taught from a sufficiently academic lens that I don't feel like a... whatever I am... in a pastor's academy, but like a student at a school. And while I am surrounded predominantly by MDiv students, I have experienced that environment as enriching rather than limiting. There is an underlying sense of spirituality and religious belonging, as evidenced by our twice-weekly worship services and opening classes with a moment of silence, but I find that to be fulfilling in a way that I can't imagine more secular graduate school would be.

Far be it from me to be a recruiter. I'm too averse to thinking I know what will be good for someone else. But I would certainly recommend young Brethren folks interested in ministry, theology, or even peace studies (like me) at least give Bethany a second glance. You could, like me, startledly find yourself an amazing home where you are supported, challenged, taught, and embraced.

Also, Elizabeth Keller just preached one of the best messages I've ever heard, and if you want to hang out with her, this is the place to be.

Feetwashing and Protest

2009-09-09T07:37:00.001-07:00

I thought I posted this days ago, but it turns out I posted it to the wrong blog.

This past summer, while working for a nonprofit called Pace e Bene, I had the opportunity to converse with Father Louie Vitale, a Catholic priest and social activist who started the organization twenty years ago. He was talking about a vigil he'd attended at a military base in the southwest many years earlier, and the religious elements that were made elements of the action.

The protesters divided into two groups, one of which crossed onto the military base to be arrested and one which stayed behind to be a continuing witness. From just outside the line that marked the beginning of government property, a group of Episcopalians gave communion to their friends who had chosen to cross over. But what Father Louie said was the thing that most struck him was a group of Brethren, who set a bench across the line and knealt to wash the feet of those who were about to be arrested. That image has been a powerful memory to him even to this day, twenty or thirty years later.

It wasn't until after he told that story that he remembered I was Brethren. How glad I am to see our quiet witness making such lasting impressions.

Some logistical stuff

2009-08-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

I should have thought of this a long time ago. FWFS now has a Facebook Page where you can be a fan and see updates from the site, as well as a Twitter that will (if I rigged it right) keep you up to date on new posts.

The "latest comments" widget on the right seems not to be updating; I have no idea why, but I'll smack it a couple times and see if that fixes it.

Finally, I'm begging you young people (say, 17-35ish) to join in writing this blog with me. Please contact me--nmkauffman (at) gmail (dot) com--if you want to pitch in. I'm warning you, if you don't, I'm going to build an army of seminary bloggers!

Are we distracted?

2009-07-30T20:59:00.000-07:00

I wasn't at Annual Conference this year, but I understand there was a lot of talk going on about human sexuality, and that many people raised concerns that we're spending too much time on the issue. After thirty years of debate on this, could it be time to just put it to rest? Shouldn't we be turning to more important things?

I've heard this argument before from many people, including some of my favorite Brethren. And while I've never made the argument myself, I do find it enticing at times. Shouldn't we be dedicating our resources to feeding the world's hungry instead of fighting incessantly over such a controversial issue?

No.

I can't help but think of the Civil Rights Movement. It was controversial, to be sure, and it stirred up a lot of stuff that people didn't particularly want to be stirred up. They told Martin Luther King, Jr., "Just be patient," and he replied, "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability." Fifty years later, with the gift of hindsight, few of us would support the idea that there were more important things for all those people to be doing--that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference should have been directing its energy to other, more widely supported issues. They were humans, being treated as less than humans, and they could not be expected to accept that and join their oppressors in other work.

When we find ourselves confronting injustice, there is nothing more important than working against it. Right now, thousands of beautiful men and women in the Church of the Brethren are being told that there is something wrong with them; that their lifestyle is sinful; even that they cannot minister to their brothers and sisters. We cannot ask them to silently bow their heads and pretend it doesn't hurt--and if we continue to ask it, we will find our numbers ever thinning as these individuals find it too painful to remain in the Church they love.

To ignore this oppression and go about our business in the world is a disservice to them, and it is damaging to our own spirits: we cannot heal the world while we ourselves are so wounded. We must remove the plank from our eye before we can see the speck of sawdust in our brother's.

It is the nature of those who are oppressed to fight the oppression, and the duty of their allies to join them. This is not a waste of time.

Learning to Fly

2009-05-03T15:13:00.001-07:00

Preached 5/3/09 at the Wabash (Ind.) Church of the Brethren.

There is a show on TV called Smallville that tells the story of Clark Kent before he dons the cape of Superman, beginning with his life as a high-school-aged farm boy and running through the start of his career at the Daily Planet—with, of course, new villains to face off with every week. Young Clark comes loaded with super powers: faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He can melt steel with his heat vision and see through concrete with his x-ray vision. One power, however, is conspicuously absent from his repertoire: he can't fly.

We all know Superman is supposed to be able to fly. It's in all the comic books and movies. It's in the little kids' cartoon videos and the 1990's show Lois and Clark, which I used to watch with my dad. But as of Season 8 of Smallville, while he is finally working as a mild-mannered reporter and has even picked up a habit of super-speed changes in a phone booth, Clark still can't fly. He just hasn't learned how yet.

Even though he's from the planet Krypton and all of us, as far as I know, are from Earth, we can actually find ourselves understanding Clark Kent pretty well—at least on this issue. The Bible is full of stories of Jesus making people see, or walk, or even rise from the dead, but he's not the only one doing it: his disciples, in his name, can perform those same miracles. Peter says to the crippled beggar, “Well, I don't have any money, but...” and BAM. The man can walk.

Now, we know where Superman's power comes from. Well, I know. Earth's yellow sun acts as a supercharger for his Kryptonian physiology, turning the ordinary alien into the Man of Steel. But how the heck was Peter able to make a crippled man walk just by telling him to? “It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth!” he proclaims to the rulers. But we're Christians, too. We're followers of that same Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I hear stories like this and I always have to ask, where's my power?

When I was little I used to pray to God to give me super powers. “I'll use them for good.... mostly!” I would plead. “Honest!” It's possible my continuing lack of magical abilities has something to do with the purity of my intentions. What I really wanted was to be able to snap my fingers and create a pet Tyrannosaur—who, yes, might eat that jerk Brandon Thomas, but only if he really refused to reform—or maybe make Lindsay Jones like me just a little bit. God probably saw right through my do-gooder charade and put a nice big DECLINED stamp on my application for omnipotence.

But it's not for lack of good intentions that we don't go around miraculously curing people. Surely we mean well. I'm over Brandon Thomas and Lindsay Jones, but I'd still like to be able to do more to help people in need, and I still can't. Now, to be fair, I've never actually tried this. I mean, I've tried to use the Force to get a disc out of the DVD player so I wouldn't have to get off the couch, and unless you count reaching your arm out with a concentrated look on your face until somebody gives in and does a task for you, it generally hasn't yielded great results. But have I ever looked at someone unable to walk and said, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk?” No. But I still don't think it would work, and I've left well enough alone for fear of looking like a grandstanding moron or, worse, of discrediting Jesus.

So there's one popular explanation: a lack of faith. We can't do anything truly miraculous because we don't truly believe that we can. After all, Jesus tells us that if we do not doubt, we can tell a mountain to throw itself into the sea, and it will comply. We haven't done a whole lot of moving of mountains, either, unless you count mountaintop removal for coal mining (and that's really, really bad). So is the problem that we doubt? Do we not really believe what we profess to believe? Is our faith so small that we're crippled? Why can't we do what the Bible says we can do?? These are the kinds of questions we don't ask because afraid of the answers, because they are just too uncomfortable, but if we're going to take our faith seriously it's time to ask!

For what it's worth, I don't think it's a lack of faith that keeps us from these miracles. I think even if I really believed and really tried, I would remain unable to do it. After all, others have believed and fallen short. Last year an eleven-year-old in Wisconsin died of perfectly treatable diabetes because her parents, rather than take her to a doctor, tried to heal her with prayer. You don't risk your child's life for something you don't believe, yet for all their faith, they weren't able to unlock a miracle.

Saint Francis of Assisi offered one more suggestion for why we can no longer do what we read the early Christians did: money. Peter tells the beggar, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you.” Francis claimed that it's an either-or scenario. You can have money for the beggar, or you can have miracles for the beggar, but you cannot have both. When we—that is to say, the Church—became an established power with wealth and status those disciples couldn't have dreamed of, we lost the power of the healing word. Perhaps those powers were born out of need, and we no longer have them because we no longer need them.

I'm going to go ahead and confess that, true to my usual form, I wrote this sermon this morning. But I was thinking about it earlier, and I caught my campus pastor after chapel on Wednesday and told him (with some panic) I was going to ask this really hard question and I needed to offer some kind of answer. “Well,” he said, “you could talk about the miracle of modern medicine...” and so I tuned him out. It sounded like a cop-out, a way of dodging the question with a wholly unsatisfactory answer. But after he told me that bit about Saint Francis, I kind of changed my mind.

We do have this miraculous modern medicine. We are able to prevent or cure many ailments that, two thousand years ago, would have left a person blind, or crippled, or dead. Maybe we don't go around performing flashy miracles, but let's look at this as utilitarians for a second: modern medicine cures more people in a day, by sheer volume and pervasiveness, than Peter and John could have in their whole lifetimes, even if they did nothing else. Medically speaking, unless swine flu wipes us all out, our civilization is in great shape!

And we have the resource that, root of all evil though it may be, can do the greatest good: money. Most of the suffering in the world is not because we—that's we as in all of us together—lack power. It's not the inevitable that's killing us. The four most common childhood illnesses are diarrhea, acute respiratory illness, malaria and measles, all of which are both preventable and treatable. Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or to have disabilities. As I talk to you now, 963 million people across the world are hungry. And today alone, that hunger will kill 16 thousand children—some from starvation, but most as opportunistic diseases move in on their weakened bodies.

Working in Indianapolis last summer, I had the opportunity to talk with a crazy ex-drug addict who lives voluntarily in poverty, speaks truth to power, and literally does whatever is in his power to provide help to the people of his inner-city neighborhood. Exactly the sort of person Jesus would have working for him. He told me one of the most profound things I have ever heard about poverty: “People—economists--go around talking about the solution to poverty like it's this insanely complicated, elusive holy grail that's very, very difficult. It's not. The solution to poverty is easy. It's money. And the only complicated thing is figuring out how to get money from the people who have it to the people who need it.”

And I'll add here that that isn't complicated because of some complex economic structure. The economy is not an actor of its own; it's merely a reflection of the priorities of the people. Getting money from the people who have it to the people who need it is complicated because the people who have money are not particularly interested in getting it to the people who need money.

And so I must now admonish myself for insisting this question of miracle cures was so important in the first place. How dare we lament our lack of power when we refuse to use what power we have? As it turns out, we have all the power we need. Poverty, hunger, and most of the diseases that are killing us are treatable, even curable, without super powers. These woes would be relegated to the history books if we weren't so interested in living lives of luxury and fighting wars. You don't even want to know all the things we could do with the trillion dollars the Iraq War has cost us, but I'll just say that paving the entire interstate system with gold is only the most wasteful option.

My mom hates it when I preach like this. She accuses me of being depressing. “Can't you find something nicer to talk about?” she asks. And she's not wrong. It's true that we cannot afford to to spend our time saying nice things that will make us like each other, ignoring the tragedy of the world and pretending that there's nothing we can do. But neither can we afford to be constantly down on ourselves, beating ourselves into despair. We have seen solutions born out of despair—suicide bombings, for example—and they're not the sorts of answers we're looking for.

So here's the good news: we have the power. The power to heal with a word we have not, but silver and gold we have plenty. We have the power to feed and clothe everyone. We have the power to send the world's children to school. We have the power to heal. We can do all this as surely as Clark Kent can fly, even if we haven't quite figured out how.

And just like Clark is already using some of his powers, we really are doing a lot. International aid organizations like Heifer International and the Global Food Crisis Fund, though often underfunded, work hard to lessen the blows of poverty. Organizations like the New Community Project focus on learning so that we may understand the nature of the problems we face and craft healthy, sustainable solutions. And if any of those sound familiar, it's because all three were started by Brethren. I'll plug one more: Kiva, k-i-v-a, allows people like you and me to be micro-lenders, lending as little as $25 so that someone in need can start a business.

So there's a start. There's plenty to celebrate, but we can't get complacent because there is a lot of work to do. It seems daunting. It might even seem impossible, but remember this: we have the power to heal. That power is within us. It's just a matter of learning to fly.

Proving God

2009-03-29T11:42:00.001-07:00

Some of you may be familiar with philosophers' attempts to prove God's existence. The simplest is put forth by Descartes, who in doubting reality, realized the only thing he could be sure of was that he doubted. Here's my paraphrase:

I doubt, therefore I think.
I think, therefore I exist.
I doubt, therefore I am imperfect.
I am imperfect, therefore imperfection exists.
Imperfection exists, therefore perfection exists.
God, by definition, is perfection, therefore God exists.
God is perfect, therefore God is good.
God is good, therefore God would not deceive us.
God would not deceive us, therefore the world and my experiences in it are real.

This proof actually shares the same fatal flaw as the other God proof I've heard:

Something can exist either in thought or in reality.
I can think of God, therefore God exists in thought.
It is more powerful to exist in reality than in thought.
God is, by definition, the most powerful, therefore God exists in reality.

The flaw, of course, is that we are asked to accept that because something is conceptualized, it must exist in accordance to its intrinsic characteristics. Yet if I believe that God is, by definition, a delicious jelly donut sitting on my desk, there is still no jelly donut on my desk. Those of us not well schooled in metaphysics may not be able to articulate exactly why we know these proofs are bogus, but we do know it.

(Note: I am not a philosopher, so if you're outraged at how much I screwed up my summary of these ideas, I apologize.)

However, in some of my musings this year, I have come across my own conditional proof that God exists. Conditional in that it does not prove God, but makes God a necessary derivative of another belief. Here it is:

If we have free will, God exists.

Maybe some of you are nodding your heads and saying "good point," or shaking your heads and saying "nope." You have probably already jumped ahead through everything else I'm about to say. If, however, you're going "huh?" then you can benefit from reading my explanation.

It started in Mexico. I have no real explanation for why it started in Mexico, except perhaps that I (like Descartes, it would seem) had a lot of free time on my hands. It was then that I began doubting free will.

It seems, scientifically, that to believe in free will, you must at some point stop your understanding of physical science. Scientifically speaking, our brains are very complex systems of electrical signals and chemical reactions that form what we experience as thought. Like everything in nature, these systems react to stimuli in the environment, chug through some insanely complex equations, and churn out an answer. It's conceptually no different from the reaction you get when you mix baking soda and vinegar, or when you charge a battery, or when you plant a seed. There are variables (how much vinegar you used, how long the battery is charging, nutrients in the soil, and so forth) that, depending on the complexity and our ability to measure them, we may or may not be aware of. But if we were to know all of these variables, we could predict the outcome. Chaos theory says that we cannot--that the universe is far too complex for us to predict outcomes like that. But if we were omniscient about the present, we would be able to predict the future.

Are you buying this? Let me ask you something: if you flip a coin, what are the chances that it will land heads? Fifty percent? Fifty-one percent? Say you flip a coin and it lands on heads. Given the exact physical circumstances of that toss--air currents in the room, your pulse, everything--what were the odds that it was going to be heads? I claim 100%. If you built a time machine, went back in time, and observed that coin toss again without changing anything (forget Heisenberg for a second), it would land on heads. Every time.

Apply the same concept to a choice. What will I eat for breakfast? Cereal or eggs? I think I'm choosing, but I'm actually just running an equation in my brain based on my hunger, how long it's been since I last ate eggs, how much time I have before I have to be in class, and so forth. I may choose to make eggs. If I go back in time and watch that play out again, I will once again choose to make eggs, because that was the outcome of that equation (note: for this reason I don't believe in alternate realities--at least not according to the "we create one with every choice" theory).

The end result is predetermination. Given the exact same circumstances, we will make the exact same choices, just like the same math equation will always yield the same result (and don't give me any plus-or-minus crap or start talking about the number i).

There's a whole concept in philosophy that assumes all this, and goes on to explain our experiences and sense of self: epiphenominalism. "In the Philosophy of Mind, a dualist theory of mind-body interaction which maintains all mental events are causally dependent upon physical events (i.e., brain states). According to this theory brain events cause mental events, but not vice versa" (Maricopa). Essentially, our experience of making a choice is actually a side-effect of our body making that choice. It's an illusion, unintended by the brain--a "ghost in the machine."

You may disagree, but I think all of this makes perfect sense.

So where does free will come in to play? Do we have free will? I believe I make choices all the time. I believe I have free will. Maybe I'm just suffering from the delusion of mental existence, but maybe I'm right, and there actually is free will. But here's the thing:

To the best of my scientific and philosophical understanding, free will is impossible. Therefore, free will can only exist by divine miracle.

Divine miracle means God.

Listening to God

2009-02-13T10:59:00.002-08:00

I'm preaching on the theme of listening to God next Sunday. Does anyone have any reflections or meditations on this theme?

Sensitive matters

2009-01-18T20:11:00.001-08:00

"Nic, I have to talk to you about a sensitive matter," Natasha said, looking at me with the eyes that are most often followed with a pleading (and misguided) "you're going to hate me forever!"

The reaction to this sort of prelude is not voluntary. My heartbeat quickens, I feel lightheaded, and my stomach twists up into that anticipatory feeling that only happens when I know something horrible is about to happen or I'm about to finally overcome some previously insurmountable challenge (usually in a video game).

"It's about your blog," she said. "I told my mom about it, and she said, 'Natasha, that's not right. It's feetwashing.'"

Jeanine had then hurried to dig up an old book as proof, but I trust this step was unnecessary. She is the archivist at Manchester College. There is no doubting that she, not I, is correct.

However, I feel that I am not alone in my ignorance. Maybe I'm just mishearing things, but isn't "footwashing" a common use? Like a less horrific "nucular?" Please comment and set me straight.

On another note, a Wikipedia entry is titled "Four Square" (two words), while Google asks "Did you mean foursquare?" (one word). "Four-Square" appears to be used solely in this blog title.

Please contact me if you are interested in being a contributor to this blog. Also, given the current sparsity of posts, I advise using an RSS reader to be informed of updates.

Who do you kill for a living?

2008-09-26T13:31:00.001-07:00

The call for other authors on this blog is getting more urgent, since I'm taking 16 hours of class and working up to 25 hours a week and acting in a play.

Discuss: Is it wrong for a Brethren person to work in a liquor store, selling cigarettes, alcohol and (worst of all) lottery tickets?

Love your enemies: an activist's stance

2008-08-26T22:49:00.001-07:00

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[h] and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies[i] and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” - Matthew 5:43-48

Often only a small snippet of that is quoted, which is fine, because it makes the same point as the whole passage. I’m just really partial to the whole thing.

In March of 2007, I attended a protest against the Iraq war organized by Valpo students in Indianapolis. Frankly, I found the whole thing appalling. I find that I often do not identify with the more vocal components of the anti-war movement, because sometimes it feels they’ve taken the issue of the war and turned it into a war right here at home. Those who oppose the war are our allies, and those who support it - and those who perpetrate it - are our enemies.

At this particular protest, a representative of the womens’ advocacy group Code Pink stood up and told what I can only call lies about our president. Maybe she believed them, but I didn’t - if George Bush were stumbling through the White House in drunken fits and and calling his wife “the C-word” in front of the White House Press Corps, we’d know about it. The media certainly has no bias against sensationalism.

But what really got to me was a war veteran and current professor (of communications, I think) who was sort of MC’ing the event. At one point, he started off on a rant about how he’s against the idea of impeaching President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, because it lets them off the hook. “I don’t want them impeached,” he bellowed, “I want them prosecuted! I want them to spend the rest of their natural lives in a jail cell!” The fact that impeachment does, in fact, mean prosecution (and not removal from office, as he seemed to believe) aside, I was struck by the tone of anger and vengeance that was seeping into this protest.

I did not act; I watched myself act. I saw myself turn from where I’d been standing, with my back to the protest, holding a sign with the name of an Indiana native who’d been killed so that it was visible to traffic passing through the circle. I saw myself walk to an open area in front of the angry man, drop to my knees, and pray.

Your peace, your love, your forgiveness, your mercy….

I posted this reflection on the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog some time ago about my arrest at an anti-war demonstration last year. Recently, the blog administrator e-mailed me to alert me to a comment he’d deleted, due to name-calling and profanity. It essentially lauded me for my actions and had some harsh things to say about the arresting officers, and about police in general.

First, I want to say that the police officers who collected us from the federal building and drove us to central booking were the absolute epitome of civility. The one who drove James and me even expressed some support for our position, though coupled with doubts about our chosen method of expression, and they removed our handcuffs before procedure really permitted it because they could see that we were not a threat. I have no complaint whatsoever against these officers, and would object to any harsh words spoken against them.

I cannot provide the same level of praise for the U.S. Marshals or the Sheriff’s deputy in the court house, but I will say this: All of them did their jobs. They may not have been warm and fuzzy towards us, but I feel that, had they been, it would be the exception. As a former Resident Assistant, I understand a little of the need for detached formality and established dominance when dealing with a “deviant,” and that’s what we were. Nobody can be expected to walk that line perfectly, and while that might leave us some complaint against the power differentials set up by the law enforcement system, I don’t feel that we should cast officers of the law as our enemies or slur them with personal attacks for what, most of the time, really just amounted to being professional.

But the officers’ actions here aren’t really relevant to my point. If this story is made to be about the injustice, perceived or real, of my arrest, then the true point of my action is lost. If the punchline becomes a jumble of harsh feelings towards the police, then the real crime goes uncorrected. My battle is not against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, or against Richard Lugar and the United States Marshals. My battle is against the evil of violence that can take hold in every human heart, including my own. If I cast people as my enemies, then I have allowed that evil to take hold of me, warping my cause into a point of division and hate.

“Love your enemies” wasn’t just aimed at the masterminds behind the Iraq war: it applies to those of us who oppose it, too. “End the war” isn’t the ethic, it’s the realization of it - and that ethic is love. Our actions must be rooted in love or we will lose sight of our goals and be dragged down into the same quagmire of opposition and retribution that we profess to oppose, and even a total political victory will come at the cost of a moral defeat. I do not believe that the end justifies the means: our actions must reflect the spirit of the world we wish to see, or that world will dance forever outside of our grasp.

Coming home

2008-07-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

Since I asked Nadine to introduce herself, I should do the same.

Hello, I'm Nick. I'm a fourth-year student at Manchester College, majoring in Peace Studies with an emphasis in Community and Social Relations. I've been pretty involved in Church of the Brethren stuff for the last six years or so, from local youth group stuff to the National Youth Cabinet. I also wrote for Messenger last summer.

I started this blog for young Brethren/Anabaptist/whatever people to talk about life through the lens of our faith. So far, most our posts have been largely issue-based, but that doesn't mean that the blog is limited to that format. I encourage authors to, as they like, write about personal experiences that they want to share with this community as well. (Actually, at this point, I just encourage authors. Sign on.)

I think I mentioned this before, but I just got back (four weeks ago today) from a year spent living and studying in Mexico. You might imagine (or know) that this brings all sorts of crazy experiences for me as I try to sort out who I am and where I call home.

One thing I missed in Mexico was Church. I attended a total of two services during my entire year there (one Catholic, one Jehova's Witness). And that's not for some shortage of churches in Mexico... it was a combination of classic college student laziness (I rarely attend Sunday services in Manchester), a different environment (no Wednesday chapels like at school) and a lack of belonging - both in terms of a familiar community and a familiar language.

A couple of weeks ago, I made it to a Taizé service at a Lutheran church in Indianapolis a couple of miles from the house I'm living in this summer. It was like coming home... the church was beautiful and the service was amazing. I love a sunlit, stone sanctuary, because the rays coming in from the high windows feel like God smiling in on me.

That's all. No point, no deep thought. Just an experience.

If You Believe...

2008-07-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes we learn new songs at Annual Conferences and other large denominational and regional events? And how sometimes we love them so much we can't keep ourselves from singing them?

Once upon a time, like 2001 Annual Conference in Baltimore perhaps, the Church of the Brethren learned the song "If You Believe and I Believe" from Zimbabwe. The song served as the country's national anthem during it's struggle for independence, declared in 1965 but not formally recognized until 1980.

It is a simple, beautiful song, with a fantastic message:

If you believe and I believe and we together pray
The Holy Spirit must come down and set God's people free,
And set God's people free,
And set God's people free;
The Holy Spirit must come down and set God's people free.

Although the song made it into the 2008 conference booklet, I don't know if we sang it. Strange though this seems to some of my friends, I didn't sit in on every business session.

As many of you may know from recent news reports, Zimbabwe had been an Africa success story (it still has the highest literacy rate on the continent) and Harare, the capitol, was site of the WCC's 8th General Assembly in 1998. Now the country is in the midst of a drought, weighted down by inflation, subject to an embargo, projecting the world's lowest life expectancy, and living through a time where its elections look more like a selection.

If we did indeed sing "If You Believe and I Believe" at Annual Conference, I hope we sang it as a prayer for Zimbabwe. If we didn't, I hope you and your congregation will do so in the future and keep the country's people in your prayers for the foreseeable future.

Gen X & Y-ing Out?

2008-07-07T15:33:00.000-07:00

Greetings friends, sisters and brothers!

Nick asked for additional authors and I decided to answer the call. I come from the "quality-over-quantity" school of thought, so look for at least one post each month from me.

To give you a really brief personal intro at Nick's request (more to come soon, I promise): My name is Nadine, I'm 30, I live in Philadelphia and I've been blogging for a few years on various topics. (Hey, Nick, how 'bout putting short bios in the column?)

And, now, for the post:

Over my lunch break at work, I save about 15 minutes for scanning a few favorites on the Interwebs. Recently, I saw this article by Marty Cauley on the Albany Institute's blog and my jaw practically hit the desk. (Please read it! The link will open in a separate tab or window for you. It makes it easy to get back to this post when you're done.)

There, in black and white, is what seems to be a line-in to my brain.

Over the years as a member of the Church of the Brethren, there have been several occasions on which I've - seemingly - been asked to be the voice of all the young adults/youth the congregation has "trouble" attracting. I don't ask to be that voice and I don't pretend to speak for others. After all, I actually was at church and committed to being there on a regular basis.

But I feel this article clearly states three of the key points I fumblingly tried to articulate in my teens and twenties. (For the record, I strongly identify with Marty's third, fourth and fifth points, though I also like what he wrote in the first two.) The jewel is this quote:

They see it as hypocritical when the church states how important their presence is but develops program for them but not with them...

I can't tell you how many times I asked this when I was growing up! I'd leave church camp or NYC all geared up to contribute, feeling so empowered, only to get home and be told what was fun and meaningful.

So, seeing from the poll that most of you are in the Gen X, Gen Y and Millenial age groups, what do you think of Marty's article? Does it touch on any themes you notice as areas for improvement in the life of the church when it comes to young adults/youth? Are there other points you'd highlight that were missed?

Blessings in Christ,
Nadine

P.S.: Favorite semi-related quote
From Gruntled Center blog

"Several years ago, when some well-meaning but ineffectual Boomer was gassing on about our good intentions in church, I turned to Mrs. G. and asked (quietly), 'Can't we just pay the Xers to take over now?'"

Concerning post frequency

2008-06-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

I've been posting like crazy so far to try to generate interesting material, discussion, and readership. I am (unfortunately) not a full-time blogger, and won't be able to sustain this trend. That's either a threat or an assurance, depending on how you feel about this flood of writing from me.

I would still like to have someone else writing.

Comments

2008-06-26T13:49:00.000-07:00

It just came to my attention that until now, you had to log in to comment. I have changed that setting, so those of you without Google or OpenID accounts can now go back and make all the comments you wanted to but couldn't.

A Goole account is still required to be added as an author.

Church attendance through the ages

2008-06-26T12:34:00.001-07:00

Okay, this is a deceptive post title, since "through the ages" usually references something historic.

This blog has existed for somewhere in the neighbourhood of 36 hours, and it's already way more successful than my other websites. I got 41 votes on the first poll, "How often do you attend worship," and that prompted me to write about just that.

For the first big chunk of my life, church attendance was mandatory. It was simply what you did on Sunday mornings, and no amount of complaining would get you out of it (there was an eventual compromise on dress code, resulting in my now-ingrained idea that T-shirts and jeans are appropriate church wear). As I got into my later years of high school, it became more of an optional thing for a couple of reasons: first, I was older and my parents were giving me more freedom, and second, I think church attendance in my family as a whole was starting to decline. I still went, now out of choice, and I thought I'd keep going to church once I was in college.

I had it all planned out. I'd go to the Eel River Community Church of the Brethren, since I knew Dan, the pastor. There was even a van to take me from the college and, better, a senior who worshipped there and was willing to drive me.

I went once.

It became just too easy to sleep in on Sunday mornings. Church was too early, ERCCOB was too far away, and I assumed I wouldn't like the North Manchester church because it was too big. Of course, there's another option for worship when you're at Manchester College: chapel!

I went to chapel maybe once or twice my entire first semester of college. Somewhere in the middle of that year, though, Jim, the campus pastor, asked me to do something for chapel. I don't remember what - a reading, a skit, a prayer - but I think his secret motive was to trick me into attendance. It worked, and I've scarcely missed a Wednesday since.

I also later discovered that I am in love with the North Manchester Church of the Brethren.

I still usually miss Sunday mornings, so my poll answer on average as a college student would be that I attend worship once a week. However, I had to vote "almost never," since in Mexico I've been to church twice: once to mass in Cuernavaca (who can say no to a mariache band in a cathedral?), and once to the Good Friday service at my host family's congregation of Jehova's Witnesses.

Thinking about this the other day, I started to wonder about how church attendance changes once we leave our families, go to college, and then leave college. (This also got me curious about the age distribution of this blog's fledgling readership, which is why I added the new poll. Scroll down for the old one.)

I wish I could post data that cross-references these two variables - age and attendance - but for now, please comment with your own stories and observations on the matter.

The evangelizers

2008-06-25T13:51:00.001-07:00

Where I come from, Jehova's Witnesses are people you hear about in anecdotes, but never really actually encounter. "Just tell them you're already saved," my mom jokes.

Living in Mexico with a family of them has been an interesting experience, which can be both interesting and frustrating. In general, they are soft-spoken and willing to listen (not just my family, but the other JW's I've encountered here), and their literature can be impressive in its thoroughness and scientific backing. On the other hand, sometimes I feel like they're trying to gently point me towards their obvious truth, with questions like "do you know about the end times?" or publications that seem to have all of the answers.

From time to time, my host mother mentions that two English-speaking brothers from the church stopped by trying to "give me the good news," but I was away. I am intensely uncomfortable being evangelized to, and I've always been pretty happy that they missed me. "Score one for Team Brethren," I say with a smile, winking upwards.

Perhaps God did not find this amusing. At any rate, this morning they finally caught me. I have to say, their English was astounding, especially if they learned it just to spread the Word. And aside from one awkward moment when they asked me "what I thought of" the Good Friday service I went to at their church (did my host family fail to tell them that I'm already a churchgoer?), it was not a lamentable interruption to my noon breakfast. They'd heard that I was going to be working with incarcerated youth this summer and gave me a handy book about issues youth face, all with a Biblical foundation. I dodged any direct theological talk - while I have many good things to say about Jehova's Witnesses, I find that my family and the literature they give me tends to imply that they have all the answers. I don't always feel it's worth it to tell people with that attitude that I don't agree with them about some given issue, so I tend to keep quiet here.

The book they gave me definitely points to the "right answers." Sometimes it has obvious interpretations of the Bible, but other times it seems to take some larger, though usually common, leaps without providing any sort of argument for these assumptions. At one point, it seemed they couldn't actually find any Bible verse on a particular issue so they went so far as to put in a bracket quote that changed an ambiguous verse into a clear one (I won't provide specific examples, because I'm not trying to talk about these issues at this point).

I won't be using the book this summer - the nonprofit I'm working for is not religious, and my job is to keep kids, Christian or not, out of jail. But this story does bring up some thoughts about evangelism and "right answers."

When a consultant told my church congregation recently that we need a minister of evangelism, someone asked him if he was aware that we would find no such thing in the Church of the Brethren (I'm not up to date on the matter, but I think we hired/are hiring someone from outside the COB). And it's true, many of the Brethren I know get antsy at the idea of evangelism (though I would interject that there are also very strong evangelical strains in the Church - just not so much in Goshen, IN). We focus intensely on service and throw around that old Alexander Mack quote, "they will know us by the manner of our living" (I love that). But I think - and I say think because I'm a far cry from a historian - we're distorting Church history a bit when we use that quote in relation to evangelism.

My understanding is that that quote is in response to the decision of the "brethren" not to take a name, not in defense of a non-evangelical stanse. In fact, from what I read in the introduction to my copy of the 300th anniversary devotion book, it seems like the early Brethren were actually quite evangelial, gaining members even from Mennonite communities (correct me if I have this wrong).

But history aside, what's the right attitude here? My problem with evangelism is that it implies that we're right and other people are wrong. It seems presumptuous to assume that we (as Brethren or as Christians), and no one else, know God's mind. Could people of other religions have discovered the real truth, or (as I prefer to believe), a different truth than ours that is still a perfectly valid understanding of an infinite and undefineable God?

Still, maybe the Brethren do have something to offer. I have met, at college and here in Mexico, plenty of people who have been completely turned off to Christianity, yet are impressed and refreshed by the things I have to say about my faith and about the Church of the Brethren. One friend, Jon, a devout atheist, actually told me "Nick, I've always been pretty against this whole Christianity stuff, but from what you've told me I think the Brethren have some stuff I can really respect and get behind."

Cool.

I've yet to bring any converts into our fold (as far as I know), but I feel like I'm on the right track: telling people who we are and learning about who they are, then finding common ground in how we can do God's work here on earth. And I get to express all this enthusiasm I have for the Church of the Brethren while I'm at it!

Of course, Brethren - and Christians - are all over the map with this stuff, and I still haven't figured out exactly how evangelical is too evangelical - or not evangelical enough. Where do you fall on the question of evangelism? I look forward to reading your comments.

PS - Still looking for more authors. Volunteer or you'll just have to keep reading what I think!

What is idolatry?

2008-06-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

Image from www.myconfinedspace.com

It won't come as much surprise to those who know me that I've essentially read everything written about the current U.S. presidential election since before all the candidates had even declared their intentions to run. And I knew Barack Obama - he won a special place in my heart with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Yet due to my bias (25 points if you guess my original candidate), it wasn't until the night of the Iowa caucuses that I really got a taste of the Democratic nominee-to-be.

That night will be a memory that sticks vividly with me throughout my life. I remember clear as day watching Barack Obama give his victory speech and feeling my stomach flip like it does when I'm about to ask someone out, or am on the verge of beating the next level in a videogame. I turned to Elizabeth, my election-viewing companion, and said out loud, "That's our next president."

Barack Obama isn't just running a campaign for president: he's leading a movement. If you don't believe me, ask an analyst.

I'm a peace studies major at Manchester College, as well as a student of anthropology at la Universidad Veracruzana. We are no stranger to heroes. I can't go to campus without seeing someone wearing a shirt depicting Che Guevarra, whose face can strike courage and purpose into the heart of any hippie. And now, finally, my generation has its hero. I've worked in politics for sixteen years, starting with helping in yard sign making efforts at the age of four, and I've gotten pretty into it - that tends to happen when your dad's job is on the line. But Obama is my generation's Bobby Kennedy. He is inspiring, with a populist message of hope and change that leaves our eyes tearing just like when Shadow limped home at the end of Homeward Bound (well, I cried). His image appears on T-shirts and phone poles. Obama is our hero.

But wait a second... are we maybe getting carried away? Is Che such a hero? He was an armed revolutionary, which certainly seems out of keeping with my Brethren pacifism. He accomplished some admirable things, and there's nothing wrong with recognizing that. Likewise, Barack Obama is not my beliefs embodied in a U.S. politician. I disagree with him on issues of great moral consequence, like the use of military force as a foreign policy tool and the legality of gay marriage. And while his overarching message is one I can definitely get on board with - a call to unity among people who do disagree about morality and policy, to work together towards solutions - maybe people are taking this hero thing just a little too far. Could it be bordering on idolatry?

When I think of the word "idolatry," I usually think of someone worshipping a golden calf thousands of years ago. A "false" god, represented by a physical object, and essentially not something to be concerned with in the Christian church today.

But I think, intellectually, we have to accept a broader idea of idolatry. I remember many years ago in Sunday School we talked about how some people worship money instead of God - and that's a very real concern that is very relevant to probably almost everyone that reads this. Yet do we have to stop with the inanimate? Perhaps idolatry should be understood as putting our faith and hope into the earthly instead of in God.

Barack Obama is a man. He is fallible. He is as capable of leading us into a disastrous war, robbing us of our civil liberties and alienating the rest of the world as our current president (if not as likely). And the more power you have, the easier it is to make bad decisions. So should we really be putting him up on this pedestal, trumpeting him as some sort of prophet? In fact, isn’t it dangerous for us to put so much faith in one man?

Hope doesn't belong to one campaign or party, and our faith should be put in God rather than in a human being. We are all flawed, and while it is necessary for us to trust one another and work together, we should be careful about idolizing someone. Biblical implications aside, such hero-worship can blind us to the downside of a candidate - or, indeed, any leader.

As for voting... well, that's a whole different mess.

Anyway, I just thought it would be interesting to explore this (I still love the man). Any comments?

Get up and Dance

2008-06-24T13:33:00.000-07:00

This was my message when I led chapel at the COB General Offices during my internship with Messenger, Summer 2007. It's not really analytical, but I had to post something.

“Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with tambourine and dancing, praise him with the strings and flute, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals.” - Psalm 150:3-5

“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.” - Dave Barry, Fourteen things that took me 50 years to learn, item six.

Dancing is a subject of some humor in the Church of the Brethren. I’m dubious about the accuracy of this – and part of me is afraid to ask – but rumor has it that back in the day, Bridgewater College used a 100 point system for disciplinary procedures: policy violations would earn you points, and once you reached 100 you were kicked out. Sources say that getting caught engaging in “premarital relations” was worth 99 points: getting caught dancing was an even hundred.

But Brethren jokes aside, Dave Barry – and the author of Psalm 150 – have an important message for us. God didn’t give us such beauty and creativity and passion and intensity so we could stay seated and keep our talents – or just our enthusiasm – to ourselves. Church is not a middle school dance where the boys and the girls clump together on opposite sides of the room and look awkwardly at each other. Church is a party where we can all dance our hearts out and never worry about looking stupid.

Temptations to treat our faith coolly follow us all our lives. Youth are pressured to be “too cool” to talk about Jesus. Adults who have been raised in the church can be just too used to our faith to get excited about it. And we all know what it’s like to be too busy to be excited about anything except the end of the day. The English department office at my high school has a clock permanently fixed on 5:00 with a sign underneath that reads, “It’s 5 PM somewhere.”

Brothers and sisters, life is better than that! God is too good not to praise. Our work here as Christians is too important not to give it our all. When we hold back due to our fear – of failure, of incompetence, of being overwhelmed, of putting ourselves out there, of looking stupid, of getting turned down by Ashley Brandau when we ask her to dance – we are robbing the world of our gifts and ourselves of the joy of living.

Look around. We're doing amazing things. We're feeding the hungry. We're clothing the naked. We're visiting the sick and imprisoned. We're reaching out our hands to Jesus and no, it’s not enough and it never will be, but it’s something. And that is something to celebrate. God is good, and God is doing good work, and that is all the reason we need to praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, with the harp and lyre, with tambourine and strings and flute and cymbals and yes, even dancing.

Now, go to any dance with me and you’ll find me standing quietly in the corner, explaining to anyone who tries to drag me out onto the floor that I’m Brethren and dancing is sinful. But when it comes to our passion for life, our love for Jesus Christ and our commitment to a better world, we have too much to offer to keep it to ourselves. Like Ken Medema's song from NYC 2006 says, “There’s lots of room out on the dancing floor. There’s no delaying anymore.”

An introduction

2008-06-24T13:02:00.001-07:00

I should probably start this blog off by explaining exactly what this blog is going to be. And to explain what this blog is going to be, I should explain who this blog is to be about: youth and young adults in the Church of the Brethren. What I want to do is examine the relevant issues we face in the world today, from religion and morality to news and politics, all through the lens of Brethren and youth identity.

This blog does not need to be exclusively Brethren. In fact, I'd say "exclusively Brethren" is probably an oxymoron. Don't flee if you aren't a member of or don't identify with our church; there might be something for you here, as many of these themes are universal, both within our generation (I'm 21) and beyond. However, I feel the need to ground these themes in a shared identity, which for me is going to be Brethren.

I also want to put out a call for other authors. While I see the value of coherency and consistency of thought, I do want to imply that I am the voice of Brethren youth. I don't want to wind up with a forum of several dozen writers (see young.anabaptistradicals.org), but I very much want some other people who are willing to contribute to this blog (anyone is, of course, both welcome and encouraged to comment). If you like thinking about religion, politics, life and Brethrenness, and feel you can contribute thoughtful posts with some reasonable regularity (nothing crazy, just one every week or two), please contact me at nmkauffman (at) spartans (dot) manchester (dot) edu and I'll look into adding you to the authors list. Note that you'll need a gmail account and the ability to use blogspot's interface (it isn't hard :-).

One more thing: I do not want this to turn into a political forum or a hotspot for debate. Yes, controversial issues tend to be among the most relevant, and I want to address them. But this is a site for examination, not arguing. There can be a fine line, but some general guidelines (off the top of my head) could be:

For posting: Pretend you're giving a sermon. Use open and accepting language. Be affirming of the humanity and the Christ in all your readers. But also remember that you don't have to write some big long thing: anything we can share in is good (e.g. - famous quotes from Walt Wiltschek ;-).

For commenting: See above. Be respectful of the thought and searching that went into the post. Try to ask questions rather than provide "answers." Look for common ground. Be challenging, but only in a way as to open up more ideas and thoughts, rather than in a way that discourages or closes them off.

I'm sitting on a few articles that I'll try to throw up sometime in the next couple of days. In the meantime, if you happen to stumble upon this site and want to do some writing, let me know.

-Nick Miller Kauffman