Marginal Christianity

http://skyejethani.com/how-churches-became-cruise-ships/ Throughout the first half of the 20th Century, New York harbor bustled with ocean liners transporting thousands of people between North America and Europe every week. Great ships like the Queen Mary and Normandie were celebrated as floating palaces, but very few passengers enjoyed their luxuries. Most who sailed on them were poor immigrants and refugees relegated to 3rd class accommodations. These ships served a highly utilitarian purpose—moving passengers and cargo from point A to point B. That’s why they were called “liners.” But the glory days of the ocean liners began to fade in 1953 when a Comet roared across the Atlantic. The De Havilland Comet was the first commercial jetliner. The distance covered by an ocean liner in six days was traveled by a jetliner in six hours. Virtually overnight the vast Atlantic Ocean became “the pond.” By the 1960s the great ships were being laid up or sold for scrap. Many predicted t...

http://theotherjournal.com/churchandpomo/2014/06/22/there-is-no-such-thing-as-church-just-us-in-faithful-relation-to-each-other/ by carlraschke on Sunday, June 22, 2014 · Leave a Comment   Filed under Culture , Liturgy , Political Theology , Practical Theology , Religion , Theology As some kind of Christian most, if not all, of my life  I have always taken for granted – even if at times “taking” it also meant wanting to “leave” it – something called the church. The very title of this blog, i.e., “the church and postmodern culture”, assumes there is actually something “there” (a true Aristotelian todi ti ) when we speak of the church. The crux of all theological venturing and scriptural exegeting, therefore, rests on the strategic position, or apposition, of the thing-like something known as “church” in regard to something else – e.g., the church and the political order, the church in the world, the church against social injustice, etc.,...

The Truth About Our Libertarian Age Why the dogma of democracy doesn't always make the world better By Mark Lilla It is time, twenty-five years on, to discuss the cold war again. In the decade following the events of 1989, we spoke about little else. None of us anticipated the rapid breakup of the Soviet empire, or the equally quick return of Eastern Europe to constitutional democracy, or the shriveling of the revolutionary movements that Moscow had long supported. Faced with the unexpected, we engaged in some uncharacteristic big thinking. Is this the “end of history”? And “what’s left of the Left?” Then life moved on and our thinking became small again. Europe’s attention turned toward constructing an amorphous European Union; America’s attention turned toward political Islamism and the pipe dream of founding Arab democracies; and the world’s attention turned to Economics 101, our global Core Curriculum. And so, for these reasons and others, we...

I wrote in a facebook status earlier that two things I liked about today’s PCUSA gay marriage decisions at General Assembly are that nothing is imposed on any one and that it’s over and attention can be paid to other pressing matters.   I want to say and perhaps qualify those two statements in this blog post. I believe the decision to allow each clergy and church session to decide what their policy regarding gay marriage will be was the only decision that could be made if the denomination hoped to retain its more conservative churches.   A mandatory policy would have driven them all out. But this decision on a denominational level merely pushes the battle back in the local churches.   Every pastor and session knows the struggle and pressure of a request from grandparents to baptize their new grandchild even though the parents do not and do not intend to take the child to church even though our general polity rules such a thing out.   We shouldn’t do it but ...

Everyone knows Moses is the great deliverer of the Hebrew people.   He took on Egypt’s Pharaoh and led his people out of slavery there through the Reed Sea and on Mt. Sinai where YHWH gave him the Ten Commandments for his people. Yet not as many are perhaps aware that this august figure, the greatest in the Old Testament, himself needed deliverers.   Six of them, in fact.   And they were all women! It’s of course a commonplace that the Old Testament is primitive and retrograde in its view of women.   And in a lot of ways that commonplace is true.   But less than you might think.   There’s a surprising number of figures and stories that feature the strength and wisdom of women.   And those about Moses’ six deliverers are important examples. The Hebrews are in Egypt, having moved here to survive a famine, under the good offices of Joseph, Pharaoh’s chief administrator.   He’s long gone but the people continue to grow like nobody’s business....

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/duplicity-ideologues Andrew J. Bacevich June 4, 2014 - 3:19pm “Almost 70 years ago, a new world order was born from the rubble of World War II, built by and around the power of the United States.” Yet today, Robert Kagan laments, “that world order shows signs of cracking, and perhaps even collapsing.” Wherever he looks, Kagan sees evidence that “something is changing, and perhaps more quickly than we may imagine,” he writes in the New Republic ( “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire” ). Indeed, “the signs of the global order breaking down are all around us.” These changes “signal a transition into a different world order,” one bearing troubling similarities to the 1930s. The origins of this prospective calamity are plain to see. Don’t bother to look for material explanations. “If a breakdown in the world order that America made is occurring,” Kagan writes, “it is not because America’s power is declining.” The United States has power...