Marginal Christianity

http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng13.html A transcript of a talk given in Brisbane, Australia, in August 2004. I have been asked to talk to you about Worship in a violent world. As though there has ever been any other. There hasn't. It is only because of the introduction into our midst of glimpses of a world, not yet our own, where all is peace that we are able to look at our world and refer to it as “violent”, rather than simply normal. The discovery that might is might, a frightening aberration for which we can take some responsibility, rather than right, a natural part of the order of things which just tends to run away with us, is a hugely complex insight whose consequences we haven't yet worked out. What I would like to do with you today is to stand back and ask what it is that allows Christians to use a horrid word taken from the world of violence such as “worship”; what we mean by it when we do use it; and what indeed do we do that counts as “worship”. In 121...

http://stackblog.wordpress.com/ Posted: 19 Jul 2012 01:50 AM PDT A friend writes: I have run across the following issue a lot recently: the blaming of Christianity (and belief in God generally) for all the major evil of the world. I had a conversation in Seoul with a Canadian expat who argued that Christianity is to blame for the majority of hatred and violence in the world. She was then unwilling to also have a conversation about what Christianity has contributed to education, human rights, medicine and the sciences in general. I usually respond to such people thus: “Like what? What hatred and evil are you talking about? Please describe the hatred and violence you’re decrying and show why you attribute it to Christianity rather than to, say, greed or lust or vengeance or envy or fear or something much more generic than a particular religion.” If that doesn’t slow things right down, I might then ask, “And ‘the majority of hatred and violence’ relative to what? How much do you ...