Marginal Christianity

PROPOSITION 8 Every Empire Falls Every empire rises and falls. Their pride and overreach eventually undoes them. “if (a) we recognize that Jesus explicitly rejected the so-called satanic imperialist shape for his kingdom, if (b) we recognize that the long history of the Christian church precedes the US empire, and if (c) we recognize that the Christian church shall extend well beyond the life cycle of the United States (for this is the very promise made to Peter by Jesus), then (d) we become free to be both judge and critic and contributor and citizen, knowing that the existence of the US empire is not our ultimate historical concern.” (Kindle Loc.1393-1399) “. . . to be authentically conservative in a Christian sense is to make nonpartisan critiques of empire, with equal opportunity criticism of the imperialism of either right or left. It is neither naive nor idealistic nor the province of the haters to critique fetishes with military might, nationalism, and American exception...

Every parent wants their kids to be happy above all else, right? I’m not so sure. I want my kids to be holy, be sure of their identity and vocation, and, then, if possible in world such as ours, happy. Happiness, at least as we account it, seems a distant and doubtful possibility in our fallen world. By happiness we usually hope our children will have secure and reasonably trouble-free lives, make some contribution to their world, that their kids will be healthy, high-achievers, good students, and get into a good college. That they marry and bear healthy children who are likewise happy, and on it goes. For a Christian, though, I’m not sure how much of that really matters. Biblically, though the language of “happiness” is sometimes used (Psa.1), it is always a consequence of holiness. And holiness means a single-minded, whole-hearted commitment to God embodied in a way of life that like God’s is oriented to the healing and health of his broken world. Further, we should hope for them...

“. . . [Nietzsche] had the good manners to despise Christianity, in large part, for what it actually was--above all, for its devotion to an ethics of compassion--rather than allow himself the soothing, self-righteous fantasy that Christianity’s history had been nothing but an interminable pageant of violence, tyranny, and sexual neurosis. He may have hated many Christians for their hypocrisy, but he hated Christianity itself principally on account of its enfeebling solicitude for the weak, the outcast, the infirm, and the diseased; and, because he was conscious of the historical contingency of all cultural values, he never deluded himself that humanity could do away with Christian faith while simply retaining Christian morality in some diluted form, such as liberal social conscience or innate human sympathy.” ―  David Bentley Hart,  Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies

JULY 27, 2020 BY  FREDERICK SCHMIDT For a long time, sin and guilt were really unpopular subjects in American life. Until recently, if they figured in the American psyche at all, it was the toxic projection of antiquated religious ideas, and its best antidote was good therapy.  Only on a rare occasion did it feature in public conversations.  The experience of Tiger Woods comes to mind.  People weighed in on his personal trials, declared him guilty and recommended that he seek absolution in a public confession-come-conversation with Oprah Winfrey. Sin and guilt were so unpopular, in fact, that one book asked,  Whatever Became of Sin? [1]    And more than once over the years, I have had seminarians tell me that I am the only professor who has ever mentioned it.  That’s extraordinary, when you think about it, since sin and the burden of guilt have been at the heart of the Christian faith for centuries.  Whether one thinks of the church’s h...

PROPOSITION 7 How Christian Values, and the Bible, Corrupt Christianity When we lose the overarching Christian narrative, Christian witness is corrupted. The Bible is a metanarrative, a “big picture” claim about human history, from top to bottom. The Bible must be an interpretive conversation between ancient and contemporary cultural contexts otherwise claims about biblical authority are reduced to a crude literalism. And the damage is considerable. Hear Augustine: Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvat...

The nutty conspiracy theories filling the airwaves and cyberspace these days though wrong in so any ways about so many things are right about one thing. And it’s a thing we desperately need to hear in this country. What is that one thing? C S. Lewis tells us better than I can: “ Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. ” [1] Christianity is the great conspiracy that runs the world! Through all the ages and in all the spaces of this world followers of the risen Jesus have been engaged, as Lewis put it, “in a great campaign of sabotage” against God’s Enemy. And it’s not just Christianity. The Jews were God’s first agents of what John Howard Yoder called “t...

From a new book I'm working on. Ch.1: Bible Reading is Not for Sissies “A strange new world within the Bible” [1] Missing the Point? Most us have been taught to treat the Bible as an aid for living well, better, in our world, to making our world better for others, for knowing and worshiping God truly. We believe God wants to make a difference in our lives, and, after that, heaven. That’s what the whole business of religion, faith, Christianity, Jesus, cross, resurrection, in short, the whole apparatus of Christian faith is all about. This has been the agenda of Christian religion in the West for quite some time. Its forms and emphases have changed. Some forms have debated whether other forms were genuinely Christian or not. Wars have been fought over and with the aid of this religion. And it’s all been about this world - being better, making it better, and pleasing God in doing so. And it’s all been a giant exercise in missing the point! Whether it’s been conservative and...

“In today's America both the US gov't and the church are failed institutions. Christians are at turning point. Typically, protestants (mainline and evangelical) work for a better (truer) democracy as the solution to the ills of USA, while (Neo) Anabaptists work for a better (truer) church as the promise of the way God will work. The former see the church as a side show to US government in God's work for justice, while the latter see the US government as the sideshow, and the church as God's sign of the future. And so which shall we choose to place our focus for the future of God's work of transformation, and which will remain a sideshow (support structure)? ” Fitch FB 7.25.20

PROPOSITION 6 The United States Was Not, Is Not, and Will Not Be a Christian Nation The article excerpted below, by historian Kristin Du Mez, nice sums up Camp’s first six propositions. Os Guinness, Eric Metaxas, and Their Dangerous Myths of American History On June 1, President Trump cleared peaceful protestors with tear gas and rubber bullets in order to pose with a bible by a church. This act spoke directly to his base, which includes a large number of white evangelical Christians, and it validated false Christian histories of America that many of them accept. For too many people today, America can be great only if it is Christian, and it can be Christian only if it was founded by evangelical figures on the basis of biblical principles.   This view of a biblical nation is widespread and seems to be rising, partly in reaction to protests and undertakings like  The 1619 Project . Not long before Donald Trump’s awkward pose, for example, the prominent evangelical Os ...