Marginal Christianity

7.        “It’s the Church, Stupid!”   This is DB’s seventh word to the church in the US. Here we tend to treat the church as an optional extra to Christian living. A good thing if it helps; otherwise, dispensable. DB, on the other hand, came to see that “everything depended on the renewal of the church and the pastoral station” (personal letter, 1936, cited in Nation and Hauerwas, 2018). The “church for others” as he called it in Letters and Papers. We like to “go to the garden” alone to commune with God. As we have seen, we think people are pretty much like billiard balls. Complete and self-sufficient in themselves, they roll around the billiard table bumping into other balls and the rails. But such contacts are external and though they change the ball's direction they do not change what it is. Our relationship with God, on this view is personal, by which we mean private. Inaccessible to others unless we chose to disclose something of it to ...

Reclaiming Jesus A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis We are living through perilous and polarizing times as a nation, with a dangerous crisis of moral and political leadership at the highest levels of our government and in our churches. We believe the soul of the nation and the integrity of faith are now at stake. It is time to be followers of Jesus before anything else—nationality, political party, race, ethnicity, gender, geography—our identity in Christ precedes every other identity. We pray that our nation will see Jesus’ words in us. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). When politics undermines our theology, we must examine that politics. The church’s role is to change the world through the life and love of Jesus Christ. The government’s role is to serve the common good by protecting justice and peace, rewarding good behavior while restraining bad behavior (Romans 13). When that role is under...

(A rough draft of a chapter from my forthcoming book on Bonhoeffer) I have argued that Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement captures the DNA of God’s people in scripture and that the Submerging Church captures the form and ethos the church needs today. This image, I argue, provides a compelling icon for the church’s identity and vocation today and setting for scripture to function authoritatively as God’s Word. I want to offer here a further description of such a community, particularly in light of the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.   This is not a model and certainly not a formula for doing church today. It is rather a set of characteristics we might expect to find in all sorts of different forms and configurations where the church embraces and attempts to live out this “general campaign of sabotage” (as C. S. Lewis wonderfully put it) against the disorder of the world. 1.     A prayer movement (DB’s arcane discipline) a.   ...

    James K.A. Smith — The Harvard Ichthus      In the 1980s, North American evangelicalism experienced an almost revolutionary innovation: what later came to be known as the “megachurch.” What defined this new dialect of evangelical Christianity wasn’t really size but strategy. The philosophy of ministry and evangelism behind the megachurch movement was often described as “seeker-sensitive.” Sunday gatherings would be less focused on building up those who are already Christians; instead, gatherings would focus on being hospitable to “seekers,” those who were not yet Christians but were curious enough to consider attending an “event” that was accessible, welcoming, entertaining, and informative. But in order for the church to be that sort of place, it was going to have to feel less, well, churchy. If it was going to be “sensitive” to seekers, the church would have to remove those aspects of its practice and tradition that were alleged to be obst...

Fr. Stephen Freeman 24 Comments   In recent articles I have challenged the place of contemporary morality in the Christian life. Some have had difficulty with this, wondering how we should then think about the commandments that are directed towards our behavior. Others have suggested that my challenge is merely semantic. There are certainly semantic distinctions being made here – but the reason for them is important and goes beyond mere words. But if it is not proper to think of ourselves as “moral” beings, how should we think? How do we confess our sins if morality is not the issue?   Our culture sees morality as the rules and standards by which we guide ourselves. These rules of conduct are external and can be described and discussed. They are the rules by which we choose how to behave and by which we sometimes judge others. In this, everybody can be said to be “moral.” Atheists invariably adhere to some standard of conduct – it is just what ...

James 5:13-20 13  If any of you are suffering, they should pray. If any of you are happy, they should sing. 14  If any of you are sick, they should call for the elders of the church, and the elders should pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15  Prayer that comes from faith will heal the sick, for the Lord will restore them to health. And if they have sinned, they will be forgiven. 16  For this reason, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous person is powerful in what it can achieve. 17  Elijah was a person just like us. When he earnestly prayed that it wouldn’t rain, no rain fell for three and a half years. 18  He prayed again, God sent rain, and the earth produced its fruit. 19  My brothers and sisters, if any of you wander from the truth and someone turns back the wanderer, 20  recognize that whoever brings a sinner back from the wrong p...