Marginal Christianity

The statements in red are my reflections on the relevance of Barmen for the American situation today. 8.10 - 1. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me." (John 14.6). "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. . . . I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he will be saved." (John 10:1, 9.) 8.11 Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. 8.12 We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation. We reject the false doctrine that the President, the nation with its needs and pretensions, or the religion that sanctifies ...

The American Church was birthed on dualisms which allowed it to morph into a noxious hybrid. This strange creature drained the gospel out of the church’s message and whittled its ministry down to production of good Americans. That gig is over now. The church has been fired as chaplain and Jesus has been demoted to background cheerleader. These dualisms trade on some version of the division between the “spiritual” and the physical, material, or worldly. The church has valorized the former and downplayed or even denigrate the latter. Western culture opted to prioritize the physical, material, and worldly, often in reaction to an effete and powerless church tied to the “spiritual” stuff. We are familiar with them: sacred or secular, church or world, evangelism or justice, Jesus - human or divine, heaven or earth. This dualism ironically made possible the conditions for the church in this country to become that hybrid, the Christendom church, the chaplain of the Good Ship America...

Joseph Hartropp 23 June 2017 | 12:13 PM American theologian and ethicist Professor Stanley Hauerwas has hit out at Donald Trump and offered a stark challenge to the contemporary Church. 'Donald Trump is an idiot who wants you to be in his reality show', Hauerwas said. 'The challenge is not to let him dominate your life.' The man Time Magazine once named as 'America's best theologian' was critical of Trump, but said that the president may remind the Church what it truly stands for. He was speaking this week at lectures for both the think tank Theos , and St Mellitus College , in London. He said: 'Trump may not be good for America but he may be pretty good for the Church. 'Trump forces Christians to be a people of justice rather than looking for the state to give justice.' Read more at https://www.christiantoday.com/article/trump.wants.you.to.be.in.his.reality.show.us.theologian.stanley.hauerwas.challenges.the.church/110162.htm...

by ROBERT P. JONES May 2, 2017 After the British writer G. K. Chesterton visited the United States for the first time, he remarked that America was “a nation with the soul of a church.” Mr. Chesterton wasn’t referring to the nation’s religiosity but to its formation around a set of core political beliefs enshrined in founding “sacred texts,” like the Declaration of Independence. He noted that the United States, unlike European countries, did not rely on ethnic kinship, cultural character or a “national type” for a shared identity. The profoundness of the American experiment, he argued, was that it aspired to create “a home out of vagabonds and a nation out of exiles” united by voluntary assent to commonly held political beliefs. But recent survey data provides troubling evidence that a shared sense of national identity is unraveling, with two mutually exclusive narratives emerging along party lines. At the heart of this divide are opposing reactions ...

by Alan Jacobs 3 . 20 . 17 Surely there has never been a richer and more deeply faithful model of Christian faith and practice than that offered by the leaders of the Church in Roman Cappadocia in the fourth and fifth centuries. Think of Basil the Great, exhorting the rich of Caesarea to “empty their barns” to feed the poor, building hospitals for the sick, upholding Trinitarian orthodoxy against the Arians, teaching young Christians the right uses of pagan literature. And Basil was only one among many great ones, even in his own neighborhood: His sister Macrina, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, his friend Gregory of Nazianzus, were all titans of faith and charity, and built a thoroughgoing Christian culture the likes of which the Church has rarely if ever seen. In 1974, when the great bishop-theologian Lesslie Newbigin retired from his decades of labor in the Church of South India, he and his wife decided to make their way back to their native England by whatever kind...

Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option is all the rage these days. And rightly so. Rod articulates an important perspective as the North American Church continues to try to find its bearings as the reality of the death of Christendom sinks very more deeply into our ecclesial psyche. I have a proposal to throw in the ring too. I call it the "Submerging Church." The following very brief statement will give you an idea of the direction in which I'm thinking. Submerging Church LEE WYATT Though we live (or have lived) in the age of the Emerging/Emergent Church, I have a different proposal for a new vision of church. I call it the  Submerging  Church! Am I serious, you ask? Read on and see what you think. The Submerging Church, as I see it, is  radically  subversive,  relentlessly incarnational, and ruthlessly hospitable.  It dives deeply into everyday life, sharing it with others, while at the same time questioning and critiquing ...

The right are giddy and the left in despair because the former now has the upper hand in running the US. Christians of all strips share either the giddiness or the despair. The church, however, while seeking and supporting what public goods it can, has no brief for running the US or any other country either directly or as partisans of a particular political vision. We are those who model a wholly different way, the way of the cross. That is the only "throne" from which we "ru ... le." Just like our master Jesus Christ. We are not called to make a difference in this world (though we will if we follow our proper mandate) but rather demonstrate a different world that has broken in to our fallen reality, follow a new king announcing a new creation that is humanity's destiny. Kingdoms and empires come and go. So will America. It, as Tony Campolo cleverly observed, may be the best Babylon the world has ever seen, but it's still a Babylon. America's pretention...

5.     That brings us to the Holy Spirit, the most elusive yet important member of the trinity for us in North America. The Spirit has been called the “shy” member of the Godhead because his task is to keep our attention focused on Jesus and animate Jesus’ life in us. He is elusive in himself and in particular for us westerners, “can do” pragmatists, who prefer control and predictability. For the Spirit fundamentally means “out of control.” We know this from various expressions of the Charismatic/Pentecostal movement. But even more importantly from the book of Acts where the Spirit instructs, guides, and countermands human plans and purposes. The church here desperately needs to recover the kind of relationship to the Spirit the early church had. a.     That relationship is best described, I think, by Buzz Lightyear of “Toy Store” fame describing flying to Woody as “controlled falling.” b.     The Spirit is animate, intimate char...

1.      Voting is the least significant act of citizenship. 2.      If voting is your only form of active citizenship, you are likely a poser. (Voting alone does not make you an active citizen any more than church attendance makes one a Christian) 3.      Only if voting is a symbol of actual involvement in seeking the well-being of your community are you an active citizen. 4.      Only if voting is a sacrament of your life broken and poured out for the world is it a Christian act. 5.      Only if voting is a sign of your solidarity with the last and the least and reflects their needs and interests is it in line with the Gospel. 6.      Only if voting is bathed in prayer and reflection with a community of faith is it an act of God’s love for the world.  

“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” – Campus Crusade’s Four Spiritual Laws “I’m a bastard, you’re a bastard but God loves us anyway” – Will Campbell, rouge Baptist preacher “Here’s the Gospel: You’re more sinful than you ever dared believe; you’re more loved than you ever dared hope” – Tim Keller, PCA pastor “You are accepted – Paul Tillich, liberal theologian These four statements reflect in their own ways and parlance the default American version of “the Gospel” across the theological spectrum. “The Gospel is not a religious message to inform mankind of their divinity or to tell them how they may become divine. The Gospel proclaims a God utterly distinct from men” – Karl Barth Barth contests this default version of “the Gospel.” Rather, it is something about God in distinction from us. “The time is fulfilled and the reign of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” -   Jesus ( Mk. 1:14-15 ) “Paul, a servant of Jesus Chri...

God is not a Republican, God is not a Democrat and God does not believe in American Exceptionalism Tony Fratto, George W. Bush’s former Deputy Press Secretary, made a salient observation when tweeting about the DNC: He felt like he was “watching Democrats talk about America the way Republican candidates used to talk about America.” If the RNC featured conservative faith mobilized for the xenophobic hate spewing from Donald Trump, the DNC displayed an incredible amount of religious and secular faith justifying the militarism, imperialism, neoliberalism and American Exceptionalism of the Democratic Party. Once the hallmark of the Religious Right, a liberal version of these values have found a comfortable home in the centrist coalition being formed by the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee, Secretary Hillary Clinton . Democrats rebutted Trump’s slogan “Make American Great” with the affirmation that “America is already great.” As the DNC featured speaker afte...

Well, it finally emerged at the end of Trump’s acceptance speech last night. Running around and through his whole campaign, it now came out in the open. His “Make America Great Again” slogan bared its teeth. “Freedom, Independence, and Strength” Trump intoned is the trinity underwriting this program. There’s nothing in this, really. Freedom is the master value that energizes all things America. Independence is our characteristic way of doing thing. And strength is power by which we get things done. What Trump’s foregrounding of this American trinity does is place the onus on those evangelical Christians and leaders to explain their support for such a trinity. They owe the rest of the Christian community a theological accounting of their advocacy for this way of “doing” politics and life. The master value of freedom has devolved over the last several centuries to a pale, diminished shadow of its former self. Now it merely asserts the “right” to be unconstrained by extern...

-"Black Lives Matter" doesn't mean white lives do not. That's never in question in America so it seldom needs to be said. -Beyond the question of personal culpability and responsibility no one "caused" the shootings of the last few days. Racism did. It holds all of us, whether we personally hold racist views or not. It's an "us"-problem not a "them"-problem. -It's one of those "principalities and powers" thingies Paul talks about that should have functioned to keep and make h ... uman life human but rebelled against God and has distorted life in racist ways. But Christ has defeated these powers and in himself created a zone of freedom called the church which should display the new life we were created for. -politics, law, et. al will not solve racism (though their contributions will be important at various points). Only a demonstration of freedom from it in Christ will demonstrate its reality to the world. And...

Jun 25, 2016 I used to wonder how large percentages of nations—including many Christian leaders—could support political leaders who advocate racism, misogyny, torture, hate, division, conflict, and authoritarianism . . . But, recently, we’ve seen the rise of political figures (all over the world) appealing to xenophobia and nationalism (and even Christendom). We’ve seen the magnetism of this message, in various parts of the globe, and the acquiescence of Christian leaders. I don’t want to name any particular politician here. In fact, I can think of many contemporary politicians who are appealing to these toxic cultural and social phenomena, all over the globe. The contemporary social conditions are ripe for a certain kind of politics and politician (as we’re seeing in many parts of the world at the moment). Those conditions support racism, misogyny, torture, hate, and authoritarianism. The church needs to address its complicity in these things, and cultivate a distinct ...