Marginal Christianity

April 29, 2013 davidfitch Reply Within the missional conversation there is a common mantra: “God is at work already in the world, we are called to join in with what He is already doing.” I have always found this missional mantra helpful as a corrective to evangelicalism’s patterns of engaging the surrounding community. The evangelicalism of my youth saw engagement with those outside the church primarily through what we called one-on-one evangelism. Christians were sent out into the neighborhood as individuals armed with the truth. We were sent to proclaim the truth which usually meant giving a presentation of a particular gospel one on one to a lost person seeking a moment of conversion. There was little room for God’s work of restoring all things in that gospel presentation. And it always felt like the Christian carried the truth as his/her possession to those who didn’t have it. Once they received it, they would then be expected to come to our church. For many reas...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/04/on-creation-and-killing-canaanites-one-simple-hardly-worth-mentioning-but-i-feel-that-i-should-thought/ April 28, 2013 By peteenns 2 Comments In recent months, these two issues–creation and Canaanite extermination–have been among the more heat-producing that I have dealt with on this blog. Today, I want to make one simple point that concerns both of these issues, and others like it. Nothing creative or profound. Pretty standard stuff, actually, though when push comes to shove (literally) in controversial issues, it is often the first we lose sight of. Here it is: Ancient context matters—a lot. So, when the debate is about whether Christianity and evolution can co-exist, the conversation often turns immediately to the very interesting canonical, theological, and philosophical factors that arise for Christianity if evolution is true and there is no first couple. Of course, these factors are vitally important, mu...

Faith Improvised April 24, 2013 By timgombis   In Reading Revelation Responsibly , Michael Gorman brilliantly captures Revelation’s critique of civil religion that undergirds empire: Revelation is a critique of civil religion (first of all, but not only, Roman civil religion), that is, the sacralization of secular political, economic, and military power through various mythologies and practices—creeds and liturgies, we might say—and the corollary demand for allegiance to that power. Because civil religion is so closely connected with power, it often appears in extreme forms in empires and empire-like states (e.g., modern superpowers), grounded in the assumption that expansion and victory (in war or otherwise) are signs of divine blessing and protection, and in the common belief that god is on the side of the powerful.  At the same time, however, civil religion is not exclusively the property of empires and superpowers; it is also to be found in former...

COMMENTARY: Isolated in America Tom Ehrich | Apr 23, 2013 | Leave a Comment   3   1 reddit 0     0 (RNS) I wonder if social isolation — not extremist religion or Chechen roots — explains the two brothers who set off bombs during the Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding more than 170. The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was quoted as saying “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.” One emerging theory is that, he dealt with isolation in America by seeking his heritage in Chechnya and there, some think, found purpose in violence against his unwelcoming home. In feeling isolated, the alleged bomber isn’t alone. Isolation is the new normal in America. More than one in four Americans have no friends for sharing troubles, a recent study of social isolation found. Those who do have friends tend to hav...

http://www.chrismorton.info/ Some practices or habits we engage in are thin , like exercising or brushing our teeth. We do these habits toward a particular end, to be in shape and have clean teeth . Thin practices don’t touch on our identity. “It would be an odd thing, for instance, for me to think of myself first and foremost as a ‘tooth brusher.’ These practices or habits don’t touch our love or fundamental desire .” Thick practices or (liturgies) are rituals of ultimate concern , rituals that are identity-forming and telos-laden, that embed particular visions of the good life, and do so in a way that seeks to trump other ritual formations. So what kind of liturgies do the people in the congregation you serve in embody? How do they increase pe...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/04/21/angry-god-what-kind-of-person/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PatheosJesusCreed+%28Blog+-+Jesus+Creed%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher   Apr 21, 2013 @ 13:31 By scotmcknight 4 Comments From Stephen C. Webster : People who believe in an angry, punishing God are much more likely to suffer from a variety of mental illnesses, a scientific study published  in the April edition of  Journal of Religion & Health  finds. The study, conducted by Marymount Manhattan College Assistant Psychology Professor Nava Silton, used data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of US Adults to examine the links between beliefs and anxiety disorders like social dysfunction, paranoia, obsession and compulsion. To do this, Silton viewed the data through the lens of what’s called Evolutionary Threat Assessment System Theory , which posits that parts of the brain specifically evolved to...