Marginal Christianity

by Michael Frost | May 9, 2017 | Homepage | 0 comments There has been a plethora of books in recent years about how Christians can change the world. Many of them urge us to engage society, mobilize our forces and win the culture wars. But let’s face it — whenever the church tries to rule the world it never goes well for us. Indeed, most of the criticisms leveled at the church by its detractors relate to the church’s abuse of temporal power. It’s nice to imagine the church as an ancient remedy that brings healing and repair to a diseased system, but increasingly, people have spoken of the church more in terms of a virus than a tonic. Journalist Christopher Hitchens wasn’t one to pull punches. In his 2007 book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything , he said, “Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought ...

By Jeffrey Salkin 10-09-2015 Print Photo via Emka74 / Shutterstock.com Just imagine: John Lennon would have turned 75 on Friday (Oct. 9). I use the word “imagine” for a reason. According to Rolling Stone magazine, his song with that name was the third most important popular song in history (the first being “Like A Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan, and the second being “(I Can’t Get No Satisfaction".  . . - See more at: https://sojo.net/articles/why-john-lennons-imagine-actually-not-great-song#sthash.DlyDuJ6S.dpuf

Geoff Holsclaw blogged today on “The Forgotten Lesson of Bonhoeffer, and the American Church.” ( http://geoffreyholsclaw.net/the-forgotten-lesson-of-bonhoeffer-and-the-american-church/?utm_content=buffere09ef&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer ) He fears that in the rising tide of acclaim and acceptance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in American Christianity we are perhaps forgetting that more than an inspirational story Bonhoeffer’s is a cautionary tale.   And the moral of that tale is “ not that we should all strive to be more like (Bonhoeffer) , but that we should strive to be a church that wouldn’t need him!”   Further, Holsclaw writes:   “ So I’m worried that everyone interested in Bonhoeffer might not be learning the real lesson: that we in America might be the type of church that, in a time of crisis, will capitulate to preserving the American Dream rather than living as a Kingdom Reality .” He’s exactly right, of course....

  http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/07/difference-between-fellow-travelers-and-friends.html Barbara J. Elliott     As someone who had libertarianism poured into my morning milk as a child, I am in some ways still “in recovery.” However, I have lived a long time the American conservative movement, as it grew from obscurity into an intellectual movement, then into a national political triumph, and then as it squandered much of the intellectual capital in the political realm, at the same time as most of the conservative institutions have focused their energy primarily on politics. The breadth and depth of conservative thought has been simplified from a symphony to a one-note samba.   We need to have the differentiation of thought to recognize that there are different realms within which we live: the personal realm with family and friends; our community of faith; our professional realm; the economic realm; the local civic realm; and the p...

  http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2012/10/conservatism-and-therapeutic-society.html Gregory Wolfe   Conservatives active in the business of influencing public policy have been giving increasing attention in recent years to the idea that politics is ultimately an epiphenomenon of culture. What these activists have recognized is that political mobilization and efficiently produced position papers by themselves will not effect lasting change in the way we are governed. The force of a policy proposal will be strengthened in proportion to the extent that it is consonant with the larger representation of our communal aspirations—that representation being what we understand as “culture.” However, the crisis of the West in the modern age has involved the very dissolution of those binding and shared elements that define a culture.   Under the pressures of democratization, egalitarianism, and technological innovation, the religious and mythic roots of culture ...

BY  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? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe both. 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 conditions of that life we share. Since this community lives from its center, the risen Jesus Christ, its boundaries are porous and permeable with arms outstretched to everyone who encounters it. Here are  some characteristics  of the Submerging Church: §   first, it is  hard to find  because it is small and spread throughout the community; §   second, it is  difficult to join ...

T he church has among its number some tribes who can only be called “despisers of culture.”   The irony here is that these self-professed despisers of culture are among those most captive to it.   That’s what this open letter is about. How does one become a “Christian” despiser of culture?   First, you see the “world” only as a system of evil organized to tempt and trap believers from living godly lives.   And the world of material creation as dispensable fodder for the destructive apocalyptic horsemen. Ironically, the more you reject and shun the reality and “values” of the “world,” the more you open yourself to being shaped and conformed to it!   You can’t escape it, you see.   God never meant you to.   Remember Jesus’ parable about the wheat and the tares?   We mix together till God himself comes to do what only he can do:   separate and judge which is which. God means us to engage the struggle with the spiritual powers that a...

http://alutheransayswhat.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/invisible-paths-and-standing-in-the-gap/ March 8, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized — bweier001 @ 5:02 am Tags: culture change , God's mission , Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , mainline Protestant churches , transitions I don ’t think I would be offering anyone new information if I said to you, “we are in transition .” Now you might ask me where specifically we are in transition but I am afraid I would just respond to you with a shrug and say, “everywhere.” Because it’s true. We are in transition in our educational systems , we are in transition in our governmental systems, we are in transition in our communication systems, we are in transition in our churches, we are in transition in our homes. We are in transition. We are currently standing in the gap of where we were and where we are going. We can see the black abyss underneath our feet and it’s as frightening as all hell. Not only are we standing in the gap bu...