Marginal Christianity

In Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus. Icarus and his father attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. Icarus' father warns him first of complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog his wings or the sun's heat melt them. Icarus ignored his father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun; when the wax in his wings melted he tumbled out of the sky and fell into the sea where he drowned. Interestingly, the part about complacency is usually left out and the myth told solely about the dangers of hubris. I take this as a parable about Christian and ecclesial existence. Though the gospel calls us to fly neither to high or too low, but still to fly, most of the time most of the church has taught us to fly too low or to stay on the ground which is where the too low flyers end up anyway. Avoiding hubris, ...

                                                                                   Branson Parler July 18, 2018                                                                                                                ...

For those who claim God has raised Trump up to be America’s ruler at this time even though he does not (despite his protestations to the contrary) evidence anything like a Christian approach to dealing with people or policy. I mean just how gullible are we, folks? Yet still the claim is made that in spite of that God tapped this man to lead America back to its former greatness. Kind of lack Cyrus, the Persian king God chose to facilitate the people’s return to the land after the exile. However, there are several crucial differences that to my mind invalidate this claim. 1.        God chose Cyrus for one specific purpose: to allow Israel to return to the land. 2.        He was not chosen to make Israel great again. 3.        Israel was not to follow his policies and practices in her life as God’s people. 4.        Cyrus, in spite of being chosen by God f...

The Hedgehog Review : Vol. 20 No. 2 (Summer 2018) James McWilliams The Hedgehog Review: Summer 2018 (Volume 20 | Issue 2) S omeday, when we—or our descendants—have enough distance from the present to contemplate who knows what this country will have endured, the presidential election of 2016 will evoke three words: basket of deplorables . This ill-conceived phrase, delivered by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at a Manhattan fundraiser two months before Election Day, was the rhetorical flashpoint of a broader takedown: You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?… The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. 1 Those comments marked the moment when an apparently new white identity—though in fact an amalgam of new and older white identities—was ingloriously named. Within h...

by Mervyn Nicholson Red  Tory , that is.  The famous author and religious writer, C. S. Lewis, is revered by right-wing conservatives as a saint, their trophy intellectual, but ironically, he was not “conservative,” not in their way.  He was not  right wing.  He was a “Red Tory”, a political type unfamiliar in the U.S.  Almost everything he says about capitalism is negative.  Given his rather liberal views on divorce, birth control, and homosexuality, he was not a recognizable “social conservative”.  Above all, he rejected right-wing political and economic ideology.  In Mere Christianity , Lewis bluntly states that “a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist.” OK, Lewis was certifiably conservative in terms of religion. But not exactly.  He was a middle-of-the-road Anglican—he was not  “conservative” in the current sense meaning “Evangelical” or fundamentalist—treating the Bible as “literal” or as magi...

By David Brooks Opinion Columnist The never-Trumpers are having an interesting debate over the question, Is it time to leave the Republican Party? George Will and Steve Schmidt say yes: The Trumpian rot is all the way down. Bill Kristol says not so fast: Once Donald Trump falls, the party could be brought back to health, and the fight has to be within the party as well as without it. My instinct is that we can clarify this debate by returning to first principles. Everybody in the conversation is conservative. Where do conservative loyalties lie? How can we serve those loyalties in these circumstances? Conservatism, as Roger Scruton reminds us, was founded during the 18th-century Enlightenment. In France, Britain and the American colonies, Enlightenment thinkers were throwing off monarchic power and seeking to build an order based on reason and consent of the governed. Society is best seen as a social contract, these Enlightenment thinkers said. Free individuals get toge...

After the peculiar yet affirming moments at the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary, the younger woman bursts out in a song that continues to reverberate through the corridors of time. Her song echoes the song and life situation of another mother of a prominent Jewish leader: the prophet Samuel (1 Sam). Here are some of the echoes: - in both events, it is the sons who are central to the respective biblical books (Samuel and Luke), and the mothers play dramatic ad vital roles. -a common feature is that the roles of both women are centered on their motherhood (especially in the case of Mary, whose divine maternity is foundation for her spiritual maternity and her other titles), and not directly the salvation of a people, as with Esther or Deborah. -both glorify God with hymns of praise which bear great similarity to each other (see chart below). It’s not impossible that Mary had Hannah’s song in the back of her mind as she sang her hymn of praise to God. Mary’s song of prais...