Marginal Christianity

In her article “ Why Can’t We All Just Be Individuals?: Countering the Discourse of Individualism in Anti-racist Education ” ( https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5fm4h8wm ) Robin DiAngelo lists the major dynamics of individualism: - denies the significance of race and the advantages of being white. -hides the accumulation of wealth over generations. -denies social and historical context. -prevents a macro analysis of the institutional and structural dimensions of social life. -denies collective socialization and the power of dominant culture (media, education, religion, etc.) to shape our perspectives and ideology. -functions as neo-colorblindness and reproduces the myth of meritocracy. -is only culturally available to the dominant group (as is meritocracy). -makes collective action difficult. “Am I my siblings’ keeper?” is the way the Bible poses this question for us. God’s answer is an unconditional “Yes.” White Americans are “taught” formally in many cases but al...

DEC. 3, 2014   Photo Credit Bratislav Milenkovic   T. M. Luhrmann                 AMERICANS and Europeans stand out from the rest of the world for our sense of ourselves as individuals. We like to think of ourselves as unique, autonomous, self-motivated, self-made. As the anthropologist Clifford Geertz observed, this is a peculiar idea.   People in the rest of the world are more likely to understand themselves as interwoven with other people — as interdependent, not independent. In such social worlds, your goal is to fit in and adjust yourself to others, not to stand out. People imagine themselves as part of a larger whole — threads in a web, not lone horsemen on the frontier. In America, we say that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. In Japan, people say that the nail that stands up gets hammered ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-age-of-individualism.html?smid=fb-share MARCH 15, 2014   IN the future, it seems, there will be only one “ism” — Individualism — and its rule will never end. As for religion, it shall decline; as for marriage, it shall be postponed; as for ideologies, they shall be rejected; as for patriotism, it shall be abandoned; as for strangers, they shall be distrusted. Only pot, selfies and Facebook will abide — and the greatest of these will probably be Facebook.   That’s the implication, at least, of what the polling industry keeps telling us about the rising American generation , the so-called millennials. ( Full disclosure : I am not quite one of them, having entered the world in the penultimate year of Generation X.) A new Pew survey , the latest dispatch from the land of young adulthood, describes a generation that’s socially liberal on issues like immigration and marijuana and same-sex marriage, proudly i...

http://danwhitejr.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-will-missional-survive-future.html I'm a total Sci-Fi fanatic. Most of the sci-fi-post-apocalyptic movies or books that come out get me all jazzed up. I'm fascinated with the concept of how humanity survives when the existing structures previously depended upon on are no longer dependable. In some ways this is how I lean into "being the church".  How can the western body of Christ survive the impending collapse?   How will the mission of the church survive the future?   Missional Individual ism   Cultivating a missional perspective is one of the most important recalibrations that a church can make for the future. I am greatly encouraged by this move, but I’ve observed that when a church “goes missional” often they make a fundamental misstep that I believe fracture s the longevity of missional momentum.  Innocently many churches begin to preach, teach and stir up their congregants to live missio...

Initial Thoughts on Mike Breen’s Proposal to Change the Missional Conversation (http://weare3dm.com/mikebreen/we-are-3dm/why-the-missional-conversation-must-change/?utm_content=buffer79af7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer) Mike Breen’s blog “Why the Missional Conversation Must Change” puts into more popular form the core of John Flett’s scholarly analysis God as Witness . He argues that “Missio Dei” needs to become “Missio Trinitatis” to confront the strong individualism of western culture.   This individualism, claims Breen, has reduced the conception of Missio Dei to an individualized “God” which in turn results in producing individual missional Christians who are confused and ill-prepared to be witnesses in the world.   So, Breen says, we must recover the triunty of the one God, God as community, and allow this understanding and experience of God to define our sense of mission and transform us as a missional people. Flet...

http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/bible-not-into-you?fb_action_ids=4553012458701&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map={%224553012458701%22%3A289552497841943}&action_type_map={%224553012458701%22%3A%22og.likes%22}&action_ref_map=[] So some friends recently pointed me to the Personal Promise Bible , in which you can personalize the biblical text to include you name in over 7,000 places. Some examples provided on the Web site:  2 Peter 1:4 – “By which He has granted to Joe His precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these Joe may become a partaker of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust.” Isaiah 53:4-6 “Surely He has borne Rachel's sickness, and carried her suffering; yet we considered Him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for Rachel's transgressions. He was crushed for Rachel's iniquit...