Marginal Christianity

Even in the face of the ultimate human failing, we must be responsive to suffering and attuned to joy By Phil Klay DECEMBER 4, 2017 When I was a kid, I had a comic book called  The Big Book of Martyrs,  part of a series by Factoid Books that included such titles as  The Big Book of Thugs, The Big Book of Losers,  and  The Big Book of Weirdos.  Inside the martyr book were comic-book depictions of various saints and their horrible, horrible deaths—great stuff if you’re an 11-year-old boy. I know that Catholics like myself are trying for a more modern, nicer church these days, with less of the fire and brimstone and more of the let-the-children-come-unto-me, but I can’t help thinking that if  Game of Thrones  can be a smash hit, then the Catholic Church might make progress in the 10- to 14-year-old demographic by leaning more heavily on the decidedly R-rated tales from  The Big Book of Martyrs . I enjoyed these stories immensely, bu...

The Church Can Help But is Not Essential to My Growth No!           No! has to said loud and clear to this diminishment and denial of the church’s necessity for Christian growth. The church is vital and essential for Christian growth. The early church leader Tertullian knew this and went so far as to call the church “our mother.” She is the womb in which Christians grow to maturity. That’s the short answer to this “If You Think . . .” statement. However, a good deal more needs to be said filling out this response. What is the Church ? It’s an understatement to say we need a fresh image that captures what church is about that has been lost or obscured and rendered in an idiom that recaptures the sharp edge of its calling. In America, I contend, that image is the church as God's “Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement” (SCRM). After Genesis 3 the nature and shape of God's people has been a community sent by God to subvert the a...

In Uncategorized on November 17, 2015 at 12:43 pm Today in Sydney the Daily Telegraph reported that the ‘merciless’ response promised by President Francois Hollande of France had begun with revenge bombings of cities in Syria. There should be no doubt that non-combatants will suffer in these attacks. I write this with a profound sense of anxiety and personal misgiving. But I feel like I cannot not write when, as I’ll explain below, it looks to some observers as if  the church I love has publicly merged its identity with that of Western capitalist democracy. Almost overnight, we have shucked off the theological practice of over a 1000 years.* At its best, the church has kept a clear distinction between itself and the state; suddenly, we have begun using words like solidarity and phrases ‘standing with Paris’. And I think that somewhere in our Spirit-led rush to the kind of compassion that has marked the church through the ages, we have forgotten that to be pastora...

Will the U.S. accept responsibility for the humanitarian consequences of Washington-manufactured wars? By Philip Giraldi • September 11, 2015       Procyk Radek / Shutterstock.com On April 29th, 2008 I had a Saul on the Road to Damascus moment. I had flipped open the Washington Post and there, on the front page, was a color photo of a two year old Iraqi boy named Ali Hussein being pulled from the rubble of a house that had been destroyed by American missiles. The little boy was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and had on his feet flip-flops. His head was hanging back at an angle that told the viewer immediately that he was dead. Four days later on May 3rd a letter by a Dunn Loring Virginia woman named Valerie Murphy was printed by the Post . Murphy complained that the Iraqi child victim photo should not have been run in the paper because it would “stir up...

"The Church is In Post-Christian Exile – But Should We Really Respond Like It's a War?” is the title of Karina Kreminski's article on Missio Alliance today. She's responding to another piece on the church entering Phase Two of our exile and how we should respond. And her responses are wise and to the point. It's not her responses, though, that I want to say a few words about. It's the imagery in her title, “But Should We Really Respond Like It's a War?” I want to say a vigorous and unrepentant “Yes” to that image! First, though, a clarification or two. I do NOT have in mind actual military conflict or the use of weapons in any fashion. I'm a pacifist and I believe the church should be too. Nor do I mean the strident, angry, mean-spirited culture war type of warfare. Both of these types of conflict are antithetical to participation in God's mission in the world. Yet . . . we are in a war! A war whose decisive and climactic battle has alread...

Once again, I belatedly return to my series on the late Peter Craigie on the problem of war in the Old Testament. The first part was an introduction to Cragie's work on this subject from his book, The Problem of War in the Old Testament . The second part of my series dealt with the first of three problems to be addressed-- the problem of God's character in these narratives. Quotes from Craigie's book will be presented in italics. My own comments are in parentheses in standard block type. Today's post highlights the second difficulty-- the problem of revelation (pp. 97-100).. Craigie begins the discussion: A part of the problem of revelation has already been examined... God revealed himself to his chosen people through warfare.. But a further problem remains; granted that much of ancient history is characterized by warfare, why is it that so much of the literature of war has been included in the canonical books of the Old Testament as a revealed book , the contents...

  January 26, 2015 by Peter Enns Leave a Comment Word is making its way around the blogosphere that Fox News is doubling as a theological think tank. I don’t like picking on Fox News when they talk religion of any sort, including Christianity. It’s too easy and it gets boring. But I can’t help myself here. According to the Fox News website , Michael Moore–who really hates this movie, I mean really, really hates it–tweeted about how inconsistent this movie is for Christian faith–hardly a sign of Moore’s Paul-like blinding light conversion, but more a dig. Fox News took the bait. Correspondent Todd Starnes, after telling us twice that he’s “no theologian,” nevertheless makes a rather hefty theological claim in response to Moore: Jesus would be saying “well done thou good and faithful servant” to snipers plucking off Muslims, thus sending them to hell where they belong. I think Starnes is mistaking Jesus for…well…not Jesus. Jesus had plenty ...

    It’s Hard to Believe in Jesus Brian Zahnd The cross is shock therapy for a world addicted to solving its problems through violence. The cross shocks us into the devastating realization that our system of violence murdered God! The things hidden from the foundation of the world have now been revealed. The cross shames our ancient foundation of violence. The cross strips naked the principalities and powers. The cross tears down the façade of glory that we use to hide the bodies of slain victims. In the light of the cross, we are to realize that if what we have built on Cain’s foundation is capable of murdering the Son of God, then whole edifice needs to come down. In the light of the cross, our war anthems lose their luster. But this throws us into a crisis. What other alternatives are there? How else are we to arrange the world? The alternative is what Jesus is offering us when he told us that the kingdom of God is at hand. God’s way of arranging t...

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/11/12/what-washington-refuses-to-admit/ Nov 12 2014 @ 8:24pm Let me put this as baldly as I can. The US fought two long, brutal wars in its response to the atrocity of September 11, 2001. We lost both of them – revealing the biggest military machine in the history of the planet as essentially useless in advancing American objectives through war and occupation. Attempts to quash Islamist extremism through democracy were complete failures. The Taliban still has enormous sway in Afghanistan and the only way to prevent the entire Potemkin democracy from imploding is a permanent US troop presence. In Iraq, we are now confronting the very same Sunni insurgency the invasion created in 2003 – just even more murderous. The Jihadism there has only become more extreme under a democratic veneer. And in all this, the U.S. didn’t just lose the wars; it lost the moral high-ground as well. The president himself unleashed brutal torture across all theaters ...

06 Aug, 2014 Adam Borneman 3 Comments PT Through History                                  Current crises across the Middle East and other war-torn locations demand careful consideration of war, just war theory, and other tenets of military interventionism. The Christian theologian faces a particularly daunting task in this respect because the eschatological principles of God’s kingdom appear contrary to what might be a faithful Christian ethic in the penultimate present. The famed 20th century theologian, Karl Barth, whose views were formed in the crucible of World War II, wrestles with this tension. While never writing extensively or expl...

What Makes America So Prone to Intervention? A conversation with Stanley Hauerwas, pacifist theologian, on Syria and why "humanitarianism" is a red herring. Noah Berlatsky Sep 5 2013, 2:54 PM ET 1 in Share More A crew checks and secures weapons on a US F-15 fighter aircraft at Aviano NATO base in 1993, when the U.S. was enforcing a no-fly zone over Bosnia.(Luciano Mellace/Reuters) Stanley Hauerwas, professor emeritus of theological ethics at Duke University , has thought a great deal about America's relationship with war. Probably the most influential pacifist theologian in the U.S. today, he has a lot to say about why the country can't seem to keep out of interventionist conflicts. As we contemplate another in the long list of U.S. military interventions, I talked to him about his theories and why he is skeptical of the various arguments for a strike on Syri...

(http://www.nationofchange.org/new-obama-doctrine-six-point-plan-global-war-1339687838) It looked like a scene out of a Hollywood movie.  In the inky darkness, men in full combat gear, armed with automatic weapons and wearing night-vision goggles, grabbed hold of a thick, woven cable hanging from a MH-47 Chinook helicopter.  Then, in a flash, each “fast-roped” down onto a ship below.  Afterward, “Mike,” a Navy SEAL who would not give his last name, bragged to an Army public affairs sergeant that, when they were on their game, the SEALs could put 15 men on a ship this way in 30 seconds or less. Once on the aft deck, the special ops troops broke into squads and methodically searched the ship as it bobbed in Jinhae Harbor, South Korea.  Below deck and on the bridge, the commandos located several men and trained their weapons on them, but nobody fired a shot.  It was, after all, a training exercise. All of those ship-searchers were SEALs, but not a...