Not The Religious Type

The LOVE IS AN ORIENTATION Book Club Arrives!

So here it is, our long-promised first book club moment.

A little over a month ago, I invited all of you fair readers to read a book together--Andrew Marin's engaging discussion of his journey as a straight evangelical in gay settings, Love is an Orientation.  I wondered if his book might provide a way to talk about the important but often challenging topic of homosexuality in religious settings in perhaps a more-productive way than we've yet pulled off on this site.

So, our month has passed, and the time has arrived.

Let me review the ground rules.  At this point, this is indeed a book club, meaning that the comments I'm looking for are from those of you who've read Marin's book (or a hefty portion of it) and will largely be about Marin's book (rather than ad hominem comments on homosexuality and religion).  If you aren't commenting on your reading of Marin's book, but are opining on the broader subject, sadly, either I or Dan Littauer (who helps edit this site) will likely remove your comment.  For the moment, we're going to stick to the subject at hand. :) 

Now the broader subject might yet find its way here.  I mentioned that Jeff Heidkamp, one of our awesome commenters here, in a fit of naivete, suggested I write an article on something like "Centered-Set Faith and Homosexuality" for the magazine he edits, called Cutting Edge.  As I mentioned, I did that, perhaps in my own fit of naivete.  I think Jeff liked the article just fine...but it was axed by his highers-up, who wondered if it might be opening a hornet's nest that they weren't ready just yet to open.  So it's crossed my mind that I might post my article here...but that, indeed, would open up the broader subject.  So we'll save that for a little down the road.

Again, at the moment, we're a mere book club, people. 

I'll start with a few of my own opening impressions of Marin's book.  I'd read about a third of it when I proposed it to you all, so I was hoping I wouldn't change my mind on it as I continued to read.  But no problem there--I loved the book and feel like I learned a lot.  I learned a lot of ways not to talk with a gay friend.  (Don't refer to someone as a "homosexual" for instance, but as gay, lesbian or "a member of the GLBT community."  Helpful tip.)  I heard lots of stories that really struck me and seemed really central to my own sense of mission.  (I might post on that a bit later too.  Maybe it's not surprising, but I've been reflecting recently how all this stuff boils back to a long-standing passion to participate in what some folks a few centuries back might call an "awakening" or, to use more recent terminology, a revival among Western secularists.  This really does drive a lot of my choices in life, and Marin's book seems dead on target for that passion.)  I was given some, to me, really helpful theological reflections to ponder, from his recounting of Mel White's line of thought (which Marin wasn't endorsing, but which I found very helpful) to Marin's own theological grid, which was also as provocative in all the best ways as any theology I've read in awhile.

I'll stop there for my opening salvo.  What struck you as you read Marin's book (oh those of you who have read at least a good chunk of Marin's book)?

Our Common Endeavor

Have I pitched the Culture Center Summit to you?  You of all people should come to the Culture Center Summit.

By virtue of reading this blog, you’re pretty much the bulls-eye for this thing.  It’s very fun several times a week to bat around the kind of topics we do here as we meet each other in cyberspace.  That said, our ultimate dream is to fan into flame an ever-growing multitude of folks who experience and promote vibrant faith in great, secular places—throughout America and hopefully well-beyond.  This is something that’s pretty new and pretty fun…and does seem to require occasional face time, hence our heart for a yearly gathering of all of us who say “I’m in!” to this endeavor.

There will, of course, be inspiring and helpful things said—maybe even one or two by me.  We’d planned to have Chris Lowney join us last year, but his elderly mom’s bad car accident kept him from making it.  Chris wrote the favorite book I read in 2008—Heroic Leadership, a ripping good story of the development of the Jesuits as applied to leadership advice for today.  (We’ve often wondered if the Jesuits are among the best historic pictures of what we’re hoping to see happen today, for all their occasional missteps.)  He’ll plan to be here this year. 

But we’re realizing that, as important as inspiring and helpful and provocative words are, they’re really only part of the story here.  For one, they have limits.  (I’m sure every now and again as you read our friendly blog you have the fleeting thought that, as helpful and engaging as talk about stage and set theories are, clearly there’s more to life.  You quickly snap back to sanity, of course, but perhaps you carry that lingering memory…)  But a big, big part of what seems to be happening at this gathering involves who you actually end up rubbing shoulders with—and perhaps who you’ll rub shoulders with for years to come if you make this a yearly commitment.  One good friend of mine talks with excitement about the new friend she met at last year’s summit that she may someday plant a new church with.  One of my favorite congregations is looking to bring THIRTY of their top leaders to get them fully engaged with this conversation and network.  Folks from 13 states joined us last year, so you really can meet new partners from all over.

So we’re taking this network stuff much more seriously this year.  Two full afternoons will be spent with smaller groups of folks like yourself.  Casey Corum, who heads the Vineyard Music label, will be co-leading a track with Christopher Greco and David Linhart for musicians and worship leaders.  I’ll head up a pastors track.  There will be lay leader and SEEK leader and tracks.  There will be some pretty great chances to rub shoulders.

And, believe it or not, we do spend a good part of our year working behind the scenes gathering feedback and doing our best to generate resources for this endeavor.  So right at the moment I’m working like a busy beaver on one of the most-requested items.  Folks who buy into the things we talk about here have asked again and again, “Yes, but how?”  If, say, the point of view of Not the Religious Type is—for the sake of argument—fresh and helpful and a great start to all of this, how does one actually create a community (large or at Starbucks) along these lines?  Are there hidden pitfalls?  How does it look like other communities of faith, how does it look different, how do things interconnect…how does one do this?  I’ll have the first draft of a book on that subject for summit attendees. 

The other most-frequent request we’ve heard in the past year has been for SEEK DVDs.  About 80 people and congregations have taken a whack at SEEK at some level.  Some have gone very well and SEEK is now an established thing they do.  Others have said it turned out to be harder than it looked and that they think they could do it if they, say, could be a fly on the wall as a SEEK helper in a course I ran.  Given that they can’t do that, could we put together a DVD curriculum that they could lead in which I carry the talks the first or second or third go-rounds so that they can focus on the people present.  And then maybe they’d take over and do it live after that.  And could we include, say, commentary tracks with each talk that teach the nuances of how to attract people to SEEK, how to create safe and vibrant groups, how to move people forward once SEEK is done, and things like that?  So…sure.  We’ll have the start of that ready for folks at the summit.

By this point I’ll assume you’re sold, that, hey, whatever trifling obstacles have to be overcome for you to make this happen, you’ll take care of them and be there.  (I mean, in the big picture, don’t you want your life to be about these things?  So it’ll take a little work and planning—this is the sweep of your life we’re talking about here…)  So we’ll consider that done, which is awesome.  Two things come to mind.  One, just to say, the early registration deadline is Tuesday, so you’ll want to save a few bucks.  Second, I’d imagine you know people I don’t know who, frankly, should be at this thing.  They would love it and would jump right in, but first they have to hear about it and be encouraged to give it a shot.  So you’ll want to get on that. :)

I’d like to close with the Culture Center Summit cheer, but that would require writing one, and who has the time?  But I’ll certainly close with a hearty (and hopeful) “See you there!”

Battling Evil in Tehran

This is from Monday’s New York Times. 

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, ended his prayer sermon in tears on Friday, invoking the name of a disappeared Shiite prophet to suggest that his government was besieged by forces of evil out to destroy a legitimate Islamic government.

The opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, in criticizing the government, demanded the kind of justice promised by the Koran and exhorted his followers to take to their rooftops at night to cry out, “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.”

In the battle to control Iran’s streets, both the government and the opposition are deploying religious symbols and parables to portray themselves as pursing the ideal of a just Islamic state.

That struggle could prove the main fulcrum in the battle for the hearts and minds of most ordinary Iranians, because the Islamic Revolution, since its inception, has painted itself as battling evil. If the government fails the test of being just, not least by using excessive violence against its citizens, it risks letting the opposition wrap itself in the mantle of Islamic virtue.

“If either the reformists or the conservatives can make reference to Islamic values in a way that the majority of citizens understand, they will win,” said Mohsen Kadivar, a senior Iranian religious scholar teaching Islamic studies at Duke University.

Moments in the Times’ coverage of Iran’s post-election crisis have touched on this: the Islamic Revolution promises to legislate good and prohibit evil, which has made for a rocky relationship with democracy.  Can a nation actually vote good in and evil out?  Or does that need to come from on high, hence the need for a supreme leader (whom some in the opposition are now doing their best to characterize as evil). 

At the risk of gross cultural insensitivity, I wonder if this dilemma is central to the unsettling faith the Bible pitches.  “Man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart,” for instance, or Jesus’ fundamental clash with the Pharisees, whose entire focus is legislating the good and forbidding the bad.  The progression of the Bible’s argument increasingly seems to argue for a kind of relational truth trumping a focus on good/evil and it increasingly warns of dire consequences for ignoring this switch in perspective.  This, for instance, is Jesus’ warning to his followers: “In fact, the hour is coming when those who kill you will think they are offering a service to God.” Those who see God primarily as an arbiter of good and evil, to paraphrase John 16:2, will kill God’s actual disciples.  That should give us all pause.

Like most Westerners, I’m rooting like crazy for Iran’s protesters and this does seem like a seminal moment for at least what’s possible there.  But what’s possible seems truly fundamental, seems to strike at the heart of the whole enterprise of the Islamic Revolution.  And, strangely enough, in rooting for the protesters, I seem to be rooting for a kind of secularism—the kind of secularism that believes that the freedom that comes from democracy is a good thing, though it might sometimes be used for what I believe to be evil; the kind of secularism that—if I’m understanding A Secular Age right (note Brian’s review from last Monday)—faith in Jesus, strangely enough, created; the kind of secularism that frees me to say “God is good” but demands that I follow it with “but religion (as perhaps we see in Iran) is, regrettably, bad.”

Helpful Against Ninjas /Luke Stevens (Portland, ME)

Helpful Against Ninjas from Luke Stevens on Vimeo.

Certainty and Delight

Thanks to everyone who gave Grace and me suggestions about what we might explore near Bath, England.  The winners?  We spent a day in, yes, Bath itself, which couldn’t have been more fun.  (We also managed to see a Royal Shakespeare Company production of a Terrence Rattigan play, which was dynamite.)  And we hightailed it down to Devon, where we had a hiking day around Salcombe, which was also spectacular, if a little rainy.  We couldn’t have had a better time with our hosts at C3 Church—Bath and Bristol.  The whole experience was a noteworthy gift to Grace and me.

(Also, I’ve just been alerted to a pretty fun part-time job opening for those of you with a particular love for college campuses.  Dan Cho, who leads the awesome Veritas Forum, let me know that they’re looking for regional directors for the Northeast, South and West Coast regions of the U.S.  [It sounds like you don’t necessarily have to live in those regions to get the job.]  All to say, if you’d like to hear more, here’s a full job description.)

Having all this time together unfettered by the needs of 5 young children and an awesome community of faith to run, Grace and I were able to chat endlessly about endless interesting things.  And among them was the often-subtle differences between what we sometimes call here “Stage 2 faith” and “Stage 4 faith.”  (Note the button, above, for more on this.)  Grace and I learn so much in healthy examples of either setting, so the distinction was by no means that one type of faith has something to teach us and the other doesn’t.  They both, clearly, do.  So what’s the difference, really? 

We realized that one key difference boiled down to certainty.  Healthy, growing Stage 2 settings (either leaders or individual believers) often project a lot of this—they have a plan, they know what works.  Other churches or believers looking to learn from them often express inferiority.  Clearly these people know what they’re doing—why can’t we do the same things and get the same results?  Along with certainty, a key value here—or so it seemed to Grace and me—is strength. 

And there’s nothing wrong with this!  I’m always in the crowd trying to learn from this certainty.

But it seemed to us that Stage 4 settings we appreciate pretty much don’t ever play on certainty.  I never get the sense that they’ve got life or God or church figured out.  That said, it’s not that they play, say, on doubt, on the opposite of certainty.  It’s as if they’re on a different spectrum.  What seemed best to characterize these folks is that they play on delight. 

They often seem surprisingly self-reflective in ways we don’t experience with most people of faith.  They’ve gone through their crises and failures and they laugh at themselves quickly.  They seem unusually in touch.  If they’re leaders and if they’re leaders who draw people around them, the “success” they experience often seems to come from the pleasure people experience around them and around their community.  It’s as if they realize that, for all its pain and failure and tragedy, life is too short to miss the delight that’s offered us nonetheless.

I’m sure there’s much more to be said on this, but I wonder if you resonate?

Introducing new sounds in the context of cultural expectations/David Linhart

On a ministry trip from Boston to Sao Paulo last summer, I cornered several worship leaders in a local congregation with one question: Please show me the real-deal Brazilian worship music! I've grown up musically to the styles of samba and forro. I've been moved by the work of Joao Gilberto and Maria Rita. But I hadn't yet found artists crying out to God through these sounds, bringing along with them those of us who connect through these sounds at the heart level.

On my trip, it turned out that Brazilian worship often meant songs from the US translated from English to Portuguese, and the big barrier to, say, samba worship, was cultural expectations. Samba for some Brazilians means late nights at the bar, starting with sexual innuendo on the dance floor and perhaps ending in a bed that's not my own. At the same time, samba for other Brazilians and internationals alike means quintessential Brazil, but not necessarily for the sexiness. It's a sound that represents a people, a cultural identity. But if the people of samba step into the house of worship, with hearts ready to worship, do they have to check their samba in at the door and pick it up on the way out?

Stateside, we have folks like Mahalia Jackson, who was criticized by some contemporary church leaders who called her energetic gospel blues worldly. She didn't try anything more edgy than did Martin Luther, who fashioned his Protestant hymns out of pub tunes that connected with everyday Germans. I suspect, though, that both Mahalia and Martin didn't just make the music they made as an outreach strategy. They expressed themselves, poured out their hearts to Jesus, and those were the sounds that came out.

I wonder if that's a key aspect of center-set worship, an openness to the unique expressions of worship that pop up in the larger church body and through individuals in congregations. It's not so much that the Brazilian church I visited should feel it needs to force new sounds into it's repertoire, only that they could welcome and support folks who are already bringing in that vision, in a spirit of teamwork. They're happily on that tip, as the teens in the congregation become the adults in the congregation.

It strikes me that sooo much of worship is subjective and personal and unable to be translated into hard principles. When someone says, "Now THAT'S pure worship!" another person might say, with as much passion, "Now that DOES NOT help me connect with Jesus!" In a congregation, hopefully it's the PEOPLE AS A WHOLE that seal the deal on the worship experience, not just the band up front. That's to say that there is a group effect of people opening their hearts en masse that gives power to worship music, and as congregants we can often make or break that group effect by our expectations.

In some congregations, we EXPECT to hear from Jesus with a Matt Redman song, we EXPECT to feel the Spirit with a Fred Hammond song, and we open our hearts in a way that it actually happens. Not to take the mystery out of it, but part of the response is learned out of culturally established norms where we have assigned to those sounds a certain spiritual authority. Now is the time to worship, to these songs. But why not create expectations of being surprised by God in new ways? When I go out to catch a set of live music, I don't always look for songs I know-- save that for listening to a CD! Often I want to hear something new. Come Sunday morning, I also don't look to hear last month's sermon series repeated this month for the sake of familiarity.

When I hear new music, I can't always sing the words with my eyes closed. But I can open my heart, raise my hands, learn, feel, dance or maybe just stand quiet and still. I can EXPECT to meet God in a new way, and I can share with those who pour out their hearts in a different way than me. And that doesn't override the value of familiarity, only questions if we're tipped too far in that direction while trying to achieve balance. Before long, the new way might become exactly the familiar way that I pour out my heart, and why not?

NOTE: If this primer sounds interesting, and you've caught some of the centered-set worship conversation that's appeared on Dave's blog in the past, consider attending the Culture Center Summit in August! It would be a great time for worship leaders across the Vineyard (and heck, whoever else is interested) to connect over what's on your heart related to this topic. In particular, from practitioner to practitioner, I bet there would amazing tips and stories to share as well as a few original songs worth a larger audience than just your MP3 recorder. Who's in?

Transformation, Growth, and Jesus / Otto von Wachter (Philadelphia, PA)

Years ago I came across a children's book called Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus (click here to read it). It's a story of transformation.  Although this book was not religious, I can't help seeing parallels between this story and the message of Jesus.

Most people, even if they're not religious, are aware that as human beings we have something great in us, a divine spark you could say, that most of the time we only get glimpses of.  Sometimes we recognize it in others and sometimes we experience it in ourselves.  But sometimes, perhaps we forget it's even there. Like a precious stone hidden by mud or buried inside a rough rock, so the human spirit seems to be obscured by something denser and darker. We could consider this sin.  Among other things, judgment, fear, and guilt defile us and hold us back.

And most people, even if they're not religious, believe that there's the potential for more in their life.  We long for joy, for beauty, for transcendence, and to achieve great things. Somehow we know that, if God planted these desires in our hearts, it is possible.

When God created everything he did not create a static world, he commanded everything to transform and grow. We can see this in everything God created from tadpoles to trees.  A bud grows into a flower, which, when pollinated undergoes a transformation and grows into a fruit.  The fruit contains a seed, and out of this seed emerges a whole new tree. So we see growth and transformation everywhere in cycle of life.  Some things grow fast (a bamboo shoot can grow over a foot per day), and others slowly.  It takes a diamond millions of years to transform, under great heat and pressure from a black, chalky substance, into the hardest and most brilliant stone known to man.

But what about the human spirit?  Most of the time it is so numbed by the trappings of society and constricted by sin, that its growth is severely stunted.  And as for transformation... forget it.  It won't happen under atmospheric pressure, under normal conditions.

Jesus talked of this kind of transformation when he says "you must be born again". He also says that we can't explain it, or control it ("The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going").  It  happens through a mysterious process, through the Spirit of God.  If that's true, it's a profound insight.

Most of us realize that we need something more than our own will.  We have experienced that the faster we run, the further we are from our destination.  And the harder we try, the more we grasp for happiness or meditate for transcendence, the more the experience eludes us.

We want to get back to God and yet we don't know the way.  Like a caterpillar that has lost its instinct to make a cocoon, we feel that we have lost our way on our sacred journey, the way for our spirit to soar.  Like a drooping vine branch, we feel we have been cut off from our divine roots, from the vine through which we receive divine nutrients.  Or like a cold light bulb, we feel that we have been disconnected from the source through which we receive divine energy so we can glow.  

Jesus said "I am the way" and "I am the vine" (if he was preaching today, maybe he would also say "I am the electric grid"). But most times nowadays we are told that these statements are things we need to believe in.  We study it, ponder it, and discuss it in Bible study, and then we affirm that we believe it. On the other hand, for a caterpillar making a cocoon is a very practical matter.  There's no intellectual or theoretical component about it.

Did God create butterflies so we can learn something about ourselves from them?  Are you inspired by this kind of transformation?  As followers of Jesus, how do we persuade our fellow human beings that, like their body and the caterpillar, their spirit too can grow and transform?  

A note for the non-religious: I myself am not convinced that belief in Jesus is the only way for us to transform or grow. The way I see it, even if God sent Jesus as the one and only savior, I think God probably got tired of 2000 years of people fighting over theology.  Calvin was so right about his theology that he had another man burned at the stake for it.  So maybe God got tired of all this nonsense and has opened other doors for human beings by now.  But instead of arguing about whether or not Jesus is the only way or about theology, can we learn something from Jesus?  Can we take him up on his offer when he says "take my yoke upon you and learn from me"?

Part 1: A Very Brief Review of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age/ Brian Doak (MA)

Some of the most prominent intellectuals of the past century or so have attempted to tackle the question of the “secularization” of the Western world—two names that come immediately to mind are Max Weber and Peter Berger, though there are many others. How did a world that seemed to be filled with gods and magic and religion at every level of life for all of recorded history come to be so rapidly “disenchanted,” i.e., largely emptied of religious belief and actions, in just the past few hundred (or dozen) years?  Charles Taylor, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, has taken his best shot at answering this question, and the result is a massive (874 pages!) and, for the foreseeable future, definitive account of this process. After seeing the book at a local bookstore, and then reading a comment about it the very next day here on the blog last year, I thought, what the heck, the cosmos is speaking to me, and I should read the book. I did. It was long. But it was also one of the most profound and learned pieces of scholarship I have encountered in a long time. In what follows, then, I will not review the book point by point or chapter by chapter (sighs of relief ensue…), but rather, I’ll just jot down a couple of thoughts that seem relevant to the types of people that seem to read and comment here at NTRT…

Secularization is not a story of “subtraction.” To many casual thinkers, the process toward secularization seems to be about losing things; Taylor calls this the “subtraction theory,” and he doesn’t buy it. A subtraction theorist might say: God wasn’t needed to personally move the cosmos because laws of gravity and so on do that. God didn’t create humans or animals in seven days, because evolution supposedly did that. And then they took prayer out of schools. And so on. Rather, the story Taylor tells is far more interesting, and complex; things were subtracted, to be sure, but things were also added, and there have been seismic shifts and reconfigurations at many basic cultural and historical levels. And stuff like that.

The etymology of the word “secular” is interesting and leads to a significant change in our understanding of the world on the way to secularity. What does the word “secular” mean, anyway? The English “secular” is from the Latin saeculum, which means “a century” or “age.” Thus, a “secularist” is one who lives in the saeculum, one who is embedded in ordinary time, as opposed to, say, a monastic order, or those who live in an environment that is “closer to eternity,” i.e., structured, like the church calendar, kairotically, where time is measured not by a linear movement of events, but by the significance attached to specific events. One of Taylor’s repeated points is that secularity can be traced through changes in the way specific human communities view time. So, when church officials banished activities like carnival in periods where a “rage for order” and piety was particularly prevalent, the church was banishing the kairotic significance that was attached to feasts of reversal like carnival and their place in the kairotic time system, thus disrupting the structures of “holy” or “eternal” time that kept life from being a mundane series of linear events, without any special meaning. Note: this may explain something of the modern longing, among many younger faith-seekers, to have “liturgical” elements re-integrated into a life of faith. So much more to be said on this, but see pp. 54-9, 124ff, 194-5ff, and so on if you’re interested!

Decisions by prevailing church structures throughout the years have had unintended and seemingly unpredictable consequences toward creating the secular world in which we now live. One of my favorite examples adduced by Taylor toward this end has to do with the issue of indulgences. One simplistic view is to say, “Ah, medieval Catholics got greedy, introduced indulgences, went way too far with it, and thus corrupted the church, and this led to secularization.” On the contrary, Taylor suggests that the excesses of the medieval church were actually a response to a popular demand for things like indulgences and so on, connected as they were to death and time in purgatory, in an era when people increasingly feared death. Recall that the 14th cen. was kind of a bad time, to put it lightly. You know, the whole Black Death thing. At any rate, Protestantism played an important role in the secularization story also, but there is too much to be said on this. Let’s move along…

Our secular age is intricately bound up with the rise of many bedrock aspects of our “social imaginary,” i.e., the deep-deep background that provides the possibility for all of our thinking and existence in the time in which we live. Any attempt to reverse this secularity, then, would by extension entail an upheaval beyond what many of us would imagine. In other words, if one wants to turn back the clock on secularity, one might have to do things like a) find a way to banish all modes of media communication that have created a shared “public space” over the past 200 years, b) reverse the governmental idea of a “social contract” and its concomitant assumptions about the nature of humans and their needs in public discourse, c) banish our current economic system and its connection with our governmental ideals, d) reinstitute a radically hierarchical social structure, with a king at its head and with definitive classes/castes that cannot be transgressed, and so on. The explanations for how and why each of these factors contributed to secularism is too complicated to spell out here,but I suppose most of us could imagine how the aforementioned institutions and so on undermined the idea of a hierarchical universe with an all-controlling God at its head. Of course, a world-wide nuclear holocaust or Black-Death like plague could turn back the clock, and leave us all living as characters in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (except that everyone seems like an atheist in McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic vision!? Well, maybe not. I tend to think such a catastrophe would produce the exact opposite effect—what do you think?).

Thus, a point not directly argued by Taylor, but which can be solidly inferred from the story Taylor tells in his book, is that the secular world in which we now live in Europe and America is irreversible, at least under the present circumstances. Thus, attempts at “fighting the culture,” “winning the culture war,” “taking back America for Jesus,” and so on and so forth are not only futile but counterproductive and wrongheaded church strategy. They’re not wrongheaded because they’re futile (I’m an idealist, I guess?), but rather, they’re wrongheaded because they fail to fundamentally reckon with the reality and complexity of our epoch. At any rate, the briefest perusal of Taylor’s work will leave you with the profound impression that secularization is more complicated than most of us typically imagine; hence, any spirituality or teaching meant for the secular age that fails to deal with this complexity is in deep, deep trouble. Preaching to the choir, I know. It is either incredibly naïve—or, at worst, even duplicitous!—to think that one can “fight secularism” without a parallel commitment to fighting everything that has made secularism the mode of thinking in our age. And, clearly, we want a representative government; we like the social contract; many readers here probably thrive off of the capitalist economic system; we crave our media and our public spaces for free expressions (Dave Schmelzer makes a somewhat related point in the chapter of his book, entitled “Why I’d Rather Live in Paris than Tehran”). Thus, our faith must paradoxically be a kind of secular faith.

To superficially jump to the end of the book, sort of: secularization is not about people losing all religious feelings and longings; rather, it is about a proliferation of options. Thus, humans are left grasping and choosing among so many things, like a weary shopper trying to pick out a brand of paper towels, and no particular idea or religion has the power or persuasiveness to claim hegemony over the world system. Toward this end, note President Obama’s Notre Dame commencement speech, where he asserted that “no one person, or religion, or nation can meet these challenges alone [i.e., the challenges of terrorism and global warming, etc.].” This seems true, and yet for some, such a statement would seem to pose a threat to certain forms of faith (including Christianity), which tend to present themselves, at least traditionally, as the singular answer to all of the world's problems. In a limited sense, of course, few would claim that only one faith has the power to solve a gamut of political problems; but certainly the implication here is also that no one faith can solve all of the world’s faith problems as well, an implication brought about by the proliferation of options. One could come to that conclusion, at least. At any rate, despite all of the trappings and impossibilities of our secular age, the modern order—which, despite its well-worn appearance, is quite a recent visitor on the world historical stage—still incites a lot of resistance, and has created many new problems, like…

Ah, and there are so many other things, but I see this little review getting out of hand and longer by the minute, and I’ve been caught up in the earlier material—which is so rich in its historical importance—so I’ll just stop here. Maybe I can try a “part two” later. If anyone out there has read this book, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Indeed, if anyone has not read the book, but any of Taylor’s ideas resonate with you, I’d love to hear you thoughts as well.

P.S. More comprehensive and professional reviews can be found here and here and here.

Your Time to Shine!

As I mentioned earlier this week, I'll be in England for the week.  On some previous occasions like this, I've been diligent and prepared posts in advance.  This is not one of those times.

However this is no doubt entirely good news, as a hefty percentage of helpful and arresting content on this blog wasn't created by me in the first place, but by you.  (Witness Vince's "Centered-Set Communication..." post this week.) 

All to say, how awesome and provocative this week on the ol' blog will prove to be will boil down to you all.  (And, if I might point out, I've solicited guest posts from several of you which I know you're planning to write...take this as that prod you need.)  Send your guest posts to Dan Littauer, who manages this blog, at dan@notreligious.org. He will get back to you if he feels it needs a little more polishing up, or he'll happily put it up complete with his own inimitable brand of graphic enhancement.  (I haven't yet asked him where he came up with the "jogging/ yogging" graphic from Monday.)

So, this is your time to shine!  I can't wait to get back late next week and catch up on the dynamic happenings here!  Or...perhaps it will look more like the small Western town just before the climactic gunfight in High Noon, absolutely unpopulated, tumbleweeds blowing across deserted streets. 

 

Make me proud!  Scenario #1 rather than scenario #2!  (Which means that you kind of have to get on it now.  If all the guest posts come in late next week, that will defeat the purpose...  Although, don't get me wrong, I still want them.)

Centered-Set Communication in a Globalized World / Vince Brackett (Chicago, IL)

I spent this past weekend at a conference focusing on Christian-Muslim conversations hosted by my home church.  We got to hear from some really fantastic people whose names are quite big in the realm of cross-cultural service in the Muslim world.  I was struck by the paradigm that one of them shared  with us about communication in a globalized world called “3-D.”  Though it was developed with the Muslim World in mind, the model is applicable in any context and I think it has a heck of a lot to say about centered-set living in Secular America. 

His pitch is that increased globalization has fundamentally changed the nature of the world’s communication and this poses a challenge to those in ministry in the Muslim World (or Secular America, or anywhere).
Pre-globalization can be represented by a model of three separate, isolated circles:  Muslim, Christian, and Secular.  In the pre-globalized world, one ministering in the Muslim World can communicate something different about himself in each of the three contexts of his life—a “missionary” in his Christian context, a “worker” in his Muslim context, and a “peacemaker” in his Secular context—and everybody is happy.

However, a globalized world can be represented by a model of the same three circles no longer separate but overlapping like a Venn Diagram.   “In this [globalized] world—whenever we describe who we are, what we do, and why we do it—our words are likely to reach beyond our primary audience and enter the global marketplace of ideas.”  With the perceived “culture wars” and the poor connotations of words like “missionary”, our communication may offend some in a global audience even though it makes our primary audience happy.

This so-called 3-D approach to communication addresses the challenges of globalization by steering the focus away from fringe issues or terms or identifications that may help with our communication in one specific context and toward what he calls core message, core mandate, and core identity that are accessible regardless of context.  In the globalized world model, these are represented by the space shared by all three circles.

For those in ministry to the Muslim World, a core message, mandate, and identity allows for honest and productive communication in all three of the major contexts in their lives—Muslim, Christian, and Secular—because the understandings and worldviews of each have been considered.  And for us in ministry in multi-cultural, post-Christian, American culture-centers, the case can be the same with a consideration of the major contexts in our lives (which, to me, seems like the real kicker since I’d say there are at least 5 or 6 major contexts I have to consider where I am in Chicago).

I think the 3-D approach to communication can teach us a lot about centered-set living.  In our society that conceives of relationship as conversation, but that also is perhaps the epitome globalization with media saturation and Google and YouTube where every published or publicly spoken word is watched and re-watched and critiqued, thoughtful communication that focuses on essentials rather than peripherals is so important.

Powerful Incentive to Resume Jogging...and a Favor or Two

An advance warning that this post is remarkably chatty and newsy and not the usual Deep Content, so feel free to skip to our regularly scheduled Deep Content, such as it is, tomorrow.  For the intrepid few who will read on, herewith the chatty, newsy stuff.

So the 700 Club mini-feature on me (I'm not sure what to call a 5 minute video...and evidently there was an additional 5 minutes of chat about it afterward) did air Friday.  Here's the link.  It's a brief take on my conversion story and seems perfectly fair to me.  They got a young man to play me ramming crosses...and, man, does the present-day me look a little jowly compared to the faux-19-year-old me.  I'm telling you--they filmed me from an unflattering angle!  It's the camera angle!  But I have gotten some good jogging in since Friday, so this is clearly all part of God's plan.

 

Grace and I head to Bath, England on Thursday for what could be a very encouraging trip.  I got a kind invitation to speak at a large church's "Weekend Away" for their members.  I try to bring a kid with me when I travel to speak, and I'd planned that for this trip as well.  But Grace's hangdog expression as she reminisced about two really wonderful trips to Britain that we took before we had kids made me wonder if maybe she could make it work, despite our kids still having a bit more school before summer hits.  We'll take three-ish days there after the Weekend Away.  We were trying to add up how many days we've had together sans kids since our first child was born twelve and a half years ago.  The total--a whopping 3 days.  So we'll lap the field with this, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

But, apart from that little window into my upcoming week, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts for me.  On the one hand, the church (Christian City Church Bath and Bristol) kindly invited me to speak on "whatever was on my heart."  Earlier on, the pastor (the awesome Andrew de Thierry) had mentioned interest in having me speak about having grown a church in a secular setting, as they are in process of doing.   No doubt I'll touch on stage theory and bounded/centered set (note the short videos on these topics in the multimedia button, above). I'll probably talk about various approaches to connecting with God, as that seems like a fundamentally centered-set thing.  And I'm kicking around talking about the hero's journey (sadly only explored in my book, not yet on this blog) and how that can motivate us towards bold endeavors on God's behalf.  Yet I'm worried that the English cultural context might be different enough than I've experienced here that I'll be tone deaf. 

So, the favor.  For those of you familiar both with this material and with England (Bath in particular), do you have any advice about things I should especially focus on or avoid?  Any sense of the needs for people trying to follow Jesus in that context?

And a mini-second favor.  Grace and I have enjoyed traveling to interesting places that perhaps aren't large metropolises, but are pretty places with the occasional interesting thing to drop by.  For those of you familiar with Bath and the surrounding area, any thoughts on where we should travel for our three days of travel time?

Jesus Is An Amalgamation? / Adam Reynolds

I had this funny encounter over the past week.  I have a gym membership at MIT, one of the great secular universities here in the Boston area.  Last Thursday afternoon, as I was entering the gym, I managed to accidentally set down a book that I had with me.  The book is called Organic Church (it's worth a read if you're someone who thinks about church planting).

When I was leaving the gym, I realized I didn't have the book anymore so I retraced my steps to try and find it.  When that didn't work, I tried the lost and found.  Happily, they had my book and I went home relieved.  A couple of days later, as I was reading the book, I noticed that someone had written a little note on the title page.

 

It read: "Jesus is an an amalgamation of previously existing mythical archetypes"

Interesting!  I found myself intrigued--partly by the statement itself, but mostly by the fact that the note's author had clearly thought about this subject in some depth (though the note appears to have been written in a hurry) and cared enough about it to communicate his thoughts to me.  But then I found myself frustrated.  This clearly had the potential makings for a good discussion, but my new pen pal was anonymous and I had know way of replying to him/her.

But then I found myself contemplating a somewhat whimsical idea.  I decided, "what the heck? It's worth a try."  So yesterday I put up a couple of the following posters in the vicinity where I lost the book.

I didn't really think there was much chance that the note writer would notice my poster, much less respond, but in less than 12 hours I got a response.  Here's some selected excerpts from the email:

First of all I just want to apologize for my childish act of defacing your book. I did it to show off for a couple people that were egging me on, and I feel like a total ass because of it. I would love to pay for your book if you would give me the chance...

I would love to talk to you about the subject of early christnianty, gnosticism, and jesus/osiris dionysis/bacchus/ adonis/attis/mithras/pythagoras etc (although I am not religious or spiritual in any way). Apart from little bits of research on early christianity most of the information I have found on this subject is found in "The Jesus Mysteries" by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. Freke and Gandy have personal affiliations with new agey gnosticism/paganism, so you obviously have to take what they say with a grain of salt. Of course their citations do not suffer from their vested interests and are quite interesting. The overarching hypothesis is that the figure now known as Jesus may or may not have existed, but the supernatural stories attributed to him are most likely a patchwork of existing stories, many of which center around a god-man who is the son of god who dies/suffers to save others and rises from the dead 3 days later to ascend to heaven. My two favorites are the story of the Pythagoras fish which early christians wore as an esoteric symbol of christianity and of the magi who are simply followers of Zoroaster a monotheistic prophet that

preached 1000 years before jesus. They visit the baby jesus to lend the legitimacy of their monotheistic religion to this infant religion. Its a subject I like discussing, to the point of compulsion(as evidenced by my childish defacement of your hardcover book). So again I apologize profusely for my immature and stupid act. I hope that in the spirit of the individual concerned in our subject matter you can forgive me once I recompense you. But "The Jesus Mysteries" is a must read if you are interested in early christianity like I am.

Sorry again.

Sincerely,
-The compulsive pedant who defaced your book

Wow!  It seems my suspicion was correct and this person's brief comment reflected something deeply meaningful to them.  I've already written back to suggest getting together for a conversation.  In thinking about what that conversation might look like I immediately felt that I would really love the input of my stage-four, centered-set-thinking cohorts. 

As implied in the poster (an reiterated in my email to the person), I'm approaching the conversation primarily wanting to listen and ask questions, but I thought it might be helpful to have some thoughts about this subject going in.  I certainly don't want to be showing up with an agenda to argue or even "convince."  And I suppose this is the type of conversation that can easily drift towards apologetics, but I was wondering, if in the spirit of the conversations on this blog, there could be a more stage fourish, centered set approach to the discussion.  What do you think?

Elmore Leonard Knows Everything

I just finished Elmore Leonard’s latest breezy crime novel, Road Dogs.  It’s widely praised as his comeback book.  (He’s 83 and still cranks out a strong-selling book or two a year, so it’s not clear he needs a comeback.)  And it’s a kick—proudly inconsequential, engaging throughout.

But what most caught my eye was something he’s done well for decades—his use of point of view.  He uses, if I’ve got my point of view terminology straight, third person limited with endless confidence.  In other words, he tells his story from everyone’s point of view.  He’ll start with his hero (Jack Foley, the hero of his previous Out of Sight, who seems suspiciously like George Clooney in this edition), but he moves around as the mood (frequently) strikes him.  Now we’re in the mind of his villain!  Now we’re in the mind of the patsy who’s being used!  Now we’re in the mind of the immigrant punk who’s in over his head!  And so on.

Sure, some of them will unfortunately have to take a few bullets in the chest before we’re done.  The occasional character we’ve just gotten to know might take a fall from the roof of a parking garage.  C’est la vie.  But they all have their point of view, their world, their reasons.

I thought about Elmore Leonard’s godlike gift as I read this article this week about Sara Jane Moore, just released from prison more than 30 years after she tried to assassinate Gerald Ford.

NEW YORK—The woman who fired a gun at President Gerald Ford in 1975 and spent the next 32 years in prison said in an interview Thursday that she believed the country would change only through a violent revolution.

Sara Jane Moore told NBC's "Today" that she now realizes that her actions, stemming from her involvement in radical politics, were "wrong ... a serious error."

In Sept. 22, 1975, Moore, then around 45, fired on Ford as he waved to a crowd in San Francisco. A man near her knocked the pistol out of her hand and the shot went astray. It was the second failed attempt on Ford's life in less than three weeks.

Moore was sentenced to life in prison but released on parole in December 2007. She has lived in an undisclosed location since then.

It was during the long years in prison, she said, that "gradually I began to realize that I had let myself be used. ... I definitely think that it was wrong. I think I was misled. I think I was mistaken. I think I made a serious error."

Moore, who had been loosely associated with leftist groups in California, said she "wasn't prepared" for the things she learned about the extent of poverty and other problems.

"It was a time that people don't remember. You know, we had a war ... the Vietnam War, you became -- I became -- immersed in it," Moore said Thursday.

"We were saying the country needed to change. The only way it was going to change was a violent revolution. I genuinely thought that (shooting Ford) might trigger that new revolution in this country."

She said she now knows she was hearing only one side of the story. "We thought San Francisco was the world, and it wasn't."

It was the last paragraph that got me.  “She said she now knows she was only hearing one side of the story.  ‘We thought San Francisco was the world, and it wasn’t.”

Elmore Leonard dazzles, to a great degree, through not making that mistake.  His most-disreputable characters still get their say, with sympathy.  And then… c’est la vie. 

And people are still reading him, all these years later. 

It seems to me this has something to say about the kind of faith we talk about here.  What think you?

How Faith Creates Problems / Dan Littauer

Recently I’ve been reading a book that I think exemplifies centered-set thinking in action. It’s called Doing the Truth in Love by Fr. Michael J. Himes, a professor of theology at Boston College. In it, Fr. Himes says:

“To be human is to be endlessly caught in a web of decisions among partial goods. It involves choosing between shades of grey, seldom if ever between absolute black and white. It means taking the risk of discerning the good and acting upon it insofar as you can see the good, knowing that you never see it with perfect clarity.” (60).

That rings true for me. If I’m understanding the centered-set model, we don’t have “the Truth” but instead, are trying to uncover the truth as we draw closer to the center. Since no one else shares our exact set of experiences, background, genetic makeup, etc. that means each one of us is coming from a unique direction. And the interesting thing about this is that we can only see the center from our point of view (and at a distance), which also means that is the vantage point from which we see everything else. It is only from the center, that we can look outward in all directions, and see everything as it truly it is. Until then, we are forced to make decisions without knowing the answers. The irony of life is that we are forced to live in it before we know how.

I think that’s why centered-set dialogues are so crucial. Through dialogue and relationship, the other person allows us to see the world and God from a different vantage point. And the more we do this, the more we begin to see the world fully as it truly is, and we find ourselves drawing ever closer to the center. And that’s why art is crucial also. Art takes us outside of our reality and gives us a new perspective. Art allows us to live outside of ourselves (if even for a brief moment), so that when we enter back into our reality, we can live it better.

And here’s the interesting thing that Fr. Himes points out. When you throw God and faith into the mix, rather than becoming easier, life becomes more complicated. He writes,

One of the besetting problems of the church is the assumption that, somehow or other, faith leads to clear and simple answers. In my experience, faith seldom provides answers—but it does raise questions.

If, for example, you are confronted by a terrible tragedy—let us say, the death of a young spouse and parent from cancer—and you believe that we live in an essentially haphazard universe, then the death may be very sad, but it presents no great problem for one’s fundamental attitudes toward life. But if you are confronted by that death and also try to maintain that the universe is in the hands of an all-good, all-wise and all-powerful God, then you have a problem. Faith is not the resolution of that problem; faith is what makes it a problem. There would be no difficulty if you were not a believer. Faith is what makes the tragedy into a real dilemma.

I suspect that we believers have to be more and more willing to share with one another and with others who are not believers… the immense difficulty of trying to be authentically human in our world in our time… (Doing the Truth in Love, 61)

And that’s where I’m at. I’m 25 years old and certainly do not have all the answers. In fact, what I find is I know less now then I used to. And I definitely agree with Fr. Himes: “Faith is not the resolution of that problem; faith is what makes it a problem.”

The less I know, the more dependent I become on God and others. I think that’s why the key to this life might be relationships. I think that’s why we give and receive each other. How could we possibly live and see life as it truly is without God and others?  Maybe that’s what we’re up to on this blog.

You Didn't Shirk the "Solemn Assignment!"

Thanks everyone, Dave T. perhaps especially, for taking me at my word and interacting over the back and forth we found ourselves in after the "Putting Second Things First" post of last week.  I really appreciate the energy and thoughtfulness you all put into it.  (For those of you who missed this, you can find all of it in the post and the comments below.)

I think my response would be that Dave and I, strangely enough, seem to live in utterly different worlds, despite talking to lots of similar people.  (Often these folks would fit the "overeducated" category.)

To Dave, if I'm understanding him, having thoughtful and confident perspectives on any range of issues gives him credibility and interesting things to talk about with the secular folks around him.  His concern is that my focus on Jesus would be distancing and sort of strange to these folks, maybe even simplistic.

My experience has been just the reverse in talking now with hundreds of folks, over many weeks in most cases, as they consider secularism and faith.  Any insistence I ever have about talking about "issues" is regarded as an irritant, but talking with them about faith has been eagerly received. 

Arguments of any stripe are usually regarded with weariness by the folks I talk with, especially if they're educated.  So much of their lives is spent arguing, and their defenses instantly go up when arguing something seems important to me.  Whatever argument I propose just encourages them to find and shoot down the holes they spot in it, and they're sick of that--not that they won't dutifully and reflexively do it anyway.  If I can prove I've thought about an issue more than they have, I may get a "touche," but I won't get a continued relationship.  And I leave asking myself why my opinion on...pick one...Guantanamo, abortion. gay marriage, political perspectives...was so important to me that I squandered actually talking about heart issues that actually mean something to my conversation partner.

Instead, if such subjects come up and I say, "Wow.  I'm interested in hearing your perspective on x issue.  Tell me more," things go very differently.  Because they'll tell me their perspective, and I'll say something like, "That's totally interesting."  (Which is always is.)  "Here's what I think about when I hear what you're saying.  Am I understanding you?"  And they'll say whatever they say.  And I'll find myself affirming the value that's important to them in whatever position they take because, again, they're thoughtful people and they aren't advocating for evil, whatever their position on anything.

And invariably at that point they'll ask me what I think about whatever.  And, rather than feeling any particular need to refute them on anything, I'll find myself talking about how whatever issue we're talking about helps me or others experience more or less of God.  Because, in point of fact, that is what I most care about in life, as they'll have understood by that point of the conversation.

And, because these are always awesome, gracious people, they'll ask me more about that and usually extend the conversation by throwing in their perspectives on the spiritual stakes of our conversation. 

Sometimes this happens in the context of a SEEK course (we have info on that, above), and so I know I'll be seeing these folks in a week and we'll continue our conversation.  In that structured setting, again, I've seen at this point hundreds of those conversations go phenomenally well, where skeptical people find themselves experiencing a living faith.  And I consistently hear back that that the open, engaged, not-especially-argumentative conversations we had were a major part of what went well for them.

In general, non-SEEK settings, I find this approach sets me up for another, in-depth conversation the next time I see my conversation partner.

I think that's the spirit of where I was coming from in my "Putting Second Things First" post.  I can't remember one of those conversations where I've wished I'd contended more strongly for whatever my opinion was on whatever the hot-button topic of conversation was. Because, in my case at least, I've really never cared if I converted my conversation partner to my point of view on any of them.  I've found I had more interest in the person themselves than I did in them holding my opinion.

That said, I'm hearing loud and clear from Dave that this hasn't been his experience, that he's found that an intelligent and forceful presentation of his views has done great things in his relationships.  So, again, it seems we've just lived in different worlds.