Currents in Theology and Mission

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April 2015 Volume 42 Number 2

Whither Now Emergence

CURRENTS in Theology and Mission Currents in Theology and Mission Published by Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in cooperation with Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary Wartburg Theological Seminary Editors: Kathleen D. Billman, S.D. Giere, Craig L. Nessan Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and Wartburg Theological Seminary [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Assistant Editor: Ann Rezny [email protected] Copy Editor: Connie Sletto Editor of Preaching Helps: Barbara K. Lundblad Editors of Book Reviews: Ralph W. Klein (Old Testament) Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (773-256-0773) [email protected] Craig L. Nessan (history, theology, ethics and ministry) Wartburg Theological Seminary (563-589-0207) [email protected] Troy M. Troftgruben (New Testament) Wartburg Theological Seminary (563-589-0303) [email protected] Circulation Office: 773-256-0751 [email protected]

Editorial Board: Michael Aune (PLTS), James Erdman (WTS), Robert Kugler (PLTS), Kristine Stache (WTS), Vítor Westhelle (LSTC). CURRENTS IN THEOLOGY AND MISSION (ISSN: 0098-2113) is published bimonthly (every other month), February, April, June, August, October, December. Annual subscription rate: $24.00 in the U.S.A., $28.00 elsewhere. Two-year rate: $44.00 in the U.S.A., $52.00 elsewhere. Three-year rate: $60.00 in the U.S.A., $72.00 elsewhere. Many back issues are available for $5.00, postage included. Published by Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, a nonprofit organization, 1100 East 55th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60615, to which all business correspondence is to be addressed. Printed in U.S.A. CURRENTS is indexed in ATLA Religion Database, Elenchus, IZBW, NTA, OTA, Religion Index I (formerly IRPL), Religious and Theological Abstracts, and Theologische Literaturzeitung. MICROFORM AVAILABILITY: 16mm microfilm, 35mm microfilm, 105mm microfiche, and article copies are available through NA Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 998, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Unless otherwise noted scripture references are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA and used by permission. All rights reserved. Contents

Whither Now Emergence? Nathan C.P. Frambach 91 A Preface on “Whither Emergent?” Brian McLaren 94 The Depth and Breadth of Emergence Christianity: A Theological and Intrnational Perspective Tim Hartman 97 The Emerging Church Movement: A Sociological Assessment Gladys Ganiel, Gerardo Marti 105 The Emergent Church and Liberal Theology: Ships in the Night? Robert Saler 113 Credo Elaine A. Heath 119 Overture and Variations on an Unsettled Theme: Musical Insights into Emerging Christianity April Stace Vega, Timothy K. Snyder 126 Wither Now: Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death, Decay, and Nothingness Katharine Sarah Moody 134 Book Reviews 144

Preaching Helps Red and Green: Pentecost and the Season of Ordinary Time Barbara K. Lundblad 151 Pentecost Sunday — Lectionary 15/Seventh Sunday after Pentecost Heidi Neumark, John Rollefson, Peter M. Wallace 154

Currents in Theology and Mission 42:2 (April 2015) Dear Currents Subscriber: For several months the editorial team of Currents in Theology and Mission has been discussing an exciting new possibility related to the future of Currents. We have come to the decision that the time is right for Currents to become a fully online, open access journal. While this means that beginning in 2016 Currents no longer will appear as a printed journal, it also offers many advantages. The journal will become free of charge for our loyal subscribers, while at the same time opening up the contents of our established publication to a whole new world of readers across the globe. Moreover, this new mode of delivery makes the production of Currents financially sustainable in an unprecedented way. We especially thank you, our loyal readers over the years, for subscribing to Currents and ask your continued support and readership as we move to our new format in 2016. We pledge to you our continued commitment to deliver a quality theological journal in support of the ministry and mission of the church as it responds to the ever-changing signs of the times. We will continue to publish Currents in its print format through 2015, in order to give our readers ample time to be informed about how to access the journal in the future and to honor subscriptions already purchased. We gladly will accept one-year subscriptions for 2015, but urge our readers not to extend their subscriptions beyond 2015. If there is any money to be refunded, we certainly will do this upon request, even while allowing readers the opportunity to contribute any remaining amount to support the future of Currents. Beginning with the January 2015 issue, the journal will be published quarterly, in January, April, July, and October. In future issues we will provide readers ample information about how to easily access Currents in its new online format. In the meantime, we look forward to your continued readership and support as we move into the future together.

Kathleen D. Billman; S.D. Giere; Craig L. Nessan; Currents editors

From the Currents staff: While this issue ofCurrents was in production, our Assistant Editor, Ann Rezny, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The rapid progression of her illness necessitated her departure from the Currents team long before she (and we) wished. Our prayers are with Ann, who has been such a valued member of our team. Thanks to Connie Sletto and Kathryn Brewer, whose help in bringing the April issue to publication is deeply appreciated. A fund at giveforward.com has been established to help with Ann’s medical expenses. http://bit.ly/1ETnCO2 Whither Now Emergence?

In this issue of Currents a fairly diverse cadre of writers continue, extend, and amplify the conversation about emerging forms of Christianity today. In so doing these authors provide a contemporary “read” (analysis, evaluation, interpretation) of the current ecclesial landscape vis-à-vis emergence Christianity. As with all work of this nature, it is clearly perspectival. These essays are not intended to be polemical, nor to defend all things emergent or emerging, and certainly not to re-hash old, stale arguments about postwhateverism. Rather, these scholars seek to take seriously the generative conversation that has employed some variation of the words “emerge,” “emerging,” or “emergent” over the course of the past few decades, now often expressed in common parlance in much of the literature as emergence Christianity. Our intent is to probe, critique, uncover, and amplify the conceptual, theoretical, and theological underpinnings of emergence Christianity from particular disciplinary (or multi-disciplinary) perspectives. An underlying premise of this project is the Gadamerian assertion that genuine understanding proceeds best through dialogue. Our hope is that this issue of Currents respectfully and thoughtfully engages the generative conversation that has become emergence Christianity and makes a small, but nonetheless significant contribution to the continued narration and curating of what emergence Christianity is, at least in part, becoming. In spite of claims regarding the demise of emergence Christianity, and the shuttering of Emergent Village as an organization, Tim Hartman suggests that a theological investigation of this movement demonstrates the depth and breadth of emergence Christianity in the United States and, significantly, overseas. The emerging church movement may not be uniform or structured, but it is by no means dead. Emergence Christianity has moved through its deconstructive beginnings toward a more generative future with constructive theological contributions and collaborative partnerships—across formerly divisive denominational and international boundaries. Emergence Christianity is also making explicit theological contributions to the doctrines of ecclesiology and atonement while implicitly impacting other doctrines and practices. Gladys Ganiel and Gerardo Marti use sociological approaches, including participant observation and interviews in the United States, Northern Ireland, and the United Kingdom, to assess the significance of the Emerging Church Movement (ECM). They identify and suggest that the ECM is a response to the crisis of modernity, not only in religion but also across all spheres of life. Furthermore, they provide distinctive markers of the ECM as a religious orientation and argue that religious individualism, the formation of pluralist congregations, and the desire to construct a personal faith within a cooperative setting will be widely practiced elements of modern religiosity—not just in the ECM but also in traditional denominations. This essay from Gladys and Gerardo is but an appetizer; for a more thoroughgoing, empirically based, and systematic treatment of the ECM see The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emergence Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2014). The relationship between the emergent church and mainline Protestant denominations has been complicated and, more often than not, tense to the point of misunderstanding suggests Robert Saler. He identifies the role of theology as one particularly contested factor in this relationship, specifically the theological themes and methodologies favored by key representative figures on both sides. His essay argues that coming to some clarity on potential symmetries between emergent and liberal theologies will be a key factor in these ecclesial traditions’ reception of each other’s gifts in the future. The essay from Elaine Heath reflects the approach she uses in her forthcoming book titled Gospel Bearing: The Theory and Practice of Apostolic Life, which is a theo-meditative journey through the Apostles’ Creed as a framework for how we might live our baptism in a post-Christendom world. The essay here mirrors the structure and format used in each chapter of the book. Each chapter focuses on a phrase in the creed and has two parts. The first section offers a meditation on the meaning of the phrase, followed by three groups of suggested activities that help readers to engage these questions: What does it mean to pray with this phrase? How might this phrase shape deep practices of hospitality? How does this phrase call the Christian community to engage social and environmental justice? The essay included in this issue of the journal focuses on the first phrase of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe.” While there is an increasing interest in the theological and sociological significance of the Emerging Church Movement (ECM) and emerging forms of Christianity that have taken shape in recent decades, April Vega and Tim Snyder suggest here that few theologians have immersed themselves into these communities to learn first-hand from their lived theological practice. Their essay considers the musical practices of emerging churches in two ethnographic studies and theologically interprets them within the context of broader challenges in contemporary congregational life. Katherine Sarah Moody engages the work of Peter Rollins and Kester Brewin, both of whom push emerging Christianity to engage with radical theology. Her essay introduces readers to radical theology as a theological tradition that can be traced to the Hegelian notion of the death of God, and to the social or cultural imaginary that forms at the intersection of radical theology and emerging Christianity. It uses Brian R. Clack’s examination of the possibility of religion beyond illusion to present this radical emerging imaginary as a way of reconciling participants to their own death, decay, and nothingness. Finally, few people have given as much of themselves to the emerging church conversation, and had such an impact on its evolution, as Brian McLar- en. One of his significant contributions to this generative conversation was his 2004 book titled A Generous Orthodoxy (with a super descriptive but super long sub-title), and arguably no one has been more generous with the time, energy, and mentoring given to others over the years than Brian. Though all of the descriptors in the sub-title of the aforementioned book may aptly describe Brian, it is his calm thoughtfulness and depth of kindness that has left a deeper mark on the countless lives that he has touched. We are grateful that he took time to write the preface for this issue of the journal. I can’t sing for you, as did Bilbo Baggins, “softly…in a low voice…as if to himself,” a song from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, so I will simply share it in print. “But the time has come,” Bilbo Baggins announced, “I am being swept off my feet at last.”

The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with weary feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.

And so with the singer, the bard Bilbo, we—this cadre of authors and this company of readers—seek to find our way along the Road: following, pursuing, seeking, and questioning, until some larger way is joined where many paths and errands meet. So whither now, or whither then—perhaps we cannot yet say. But I am grateful for those who sing, or in this case, write toward that far ahead day.

Nathan C.P. Frambach Issue Editor A Preface on “Whither Emergent?”

Brian McLaren Author, speaker, activist, and networker among innovative Christian leaders

One of my wife’s aunts is remembered stages in the development of social/spiritual by all as a woman who knew how to tell movements. a story. If the story concerned a fender Emergent began as movements typi- bender in a New Jersey grocery store cally begin, according to Palmer, with parking lot yesterday, she might begin in people who felt divided. Whether Evan- the mountains of Sicily in the 1940s with gelical, Mainline, or Roman Catholic in a story about her grandfather who grew background, clergy and lay people alike eggplants in his garden. From there, we felt that what we were expected to say and might hear about her mother’s eggplant do publicly no longer matched with what recipe, for which she was going to buy we believed or felt inwardly. Eventually, ingredients when the accident occurred. some of us refused to live in silence with Eventually we would get to the accident this incongruence. We wrote or spoke of itself, but not before any number of fasci- our frustration, choosing to be “divided nating narrative tangents and backstories no more” (Stage 1). were thoroughly explored. Others began to emerge from the I feel the same way whenever I am shadows, saying, “I thought I was the only asked about the history of what has come one who felt this way!” “Communities of to be known as the Emergent Conversa- congruence” gathered in many venues, tion. It emerges at an intersection where in person and online (Stage 2), bring- many fascinating stories converge—stories ing unlikely allies together to think and Evangelical and Mainline, conservative speak freely and critically about a wide and liberal, moderate and radical, many range of theological, missional, liturgi- reaching back farther than one might cal, spiritual, political, and related issues. expect. These communities created safe spaces to My speculations about the future have explore questions and answers that were been especially shaped by the work of Greg unwelcome in our other places of belong- Faith Seek- Leffel and Parker Palmer. Leffel, in ing. Soon, we were speaking with a new ing Action1 explores the components of social/ hope and confidence, and through books, spiritual movements, and Palmer, in his article conferences, websites, festivals, and other “Divided No More,”2 speaks of four predictable means, we began to “go public” with an 1. Gregory P. Leffel,Faith Seeking alternative vision of how things can be Action: Mission, Social Movements, and the (Stage 3). Church in Motion (Lanham, Maryland: Next, gatekeepers of the status quo Scarecrow Press, 2007). noticed the commotion, and began to 2. Parker Palmer, “Divided No More” inflict costs or punishments on those who in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning felt newly liberated and “divided no more.” 24:2 (Mar/Apr 1992): 10–17. Many of us have been marginalized, criti-

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95 cized, sanctioned, or excommunicated. message (Characteristic 3), but more As a result, our communities of congru- dramatic and diverse means need to be em- ence have sought to provide “alternative ployed to reach critical tipping points. As rewards” (Stage 4) to sustain and expand well, although a definite movement culture the creative and safe space that has been has developed, expressed through a wide opened—new ways and means of belong- range of events such as the Mesa Gathering ing, for example. (http://mesa-friends.org), Christianity 21 Leffel adds granularity to this schema. (http://c21.thejopagroup.com), and Wild A community of congruence (also called Goose Festival (http://wildgoosefestival. a “critical community” by other scholars) org) (Characteristic 5), we lack a fully de- is not a fully born movement until it has veloped mobilization plan (Characteristic six characteristics: 4) to draw larger numbers, needed funds, 1. It understands the opportunities and and more diverse communities into that obstacles to forward movement pre- movement culture. sented by institutions and the elites I feel a mixture of patience and who manage them. urgency about these challenges. Organic growth cannot be rushed. But progress 2. It develops a message to challenge those should not be delayed. elites, a message that includes specific proposals or demands for change. 3. It develops a strategy to draw attention to its message and proposals/demands. rganic growth 4. It mobilizes people to join in this cannot be strategy. O 5. It develops a movement culture that rushed. But progress embodies the message. should not be delayed. 6. It enhances the lives of movement participants. Leffel’s components explain why I usually Internationally, a small group op- refer to the Emergent Conversation rather erating under the name Mesa has come than the Emergent Movement. Although together to try to help network the many I believe we are at Palmer’s fourth stage, and diverse “communities of congruence” I believe we do not yet manifest all six of that are springing up across the globe. The Leffel’s movement characteristics. group has enormous potential but has not In particular, although I believe par- yet secured funding. ticipants are carefully monitoring op- In the U.S., a number of these com- portunities and obstacles (Characteristic munities are coming together under the 1) and thousands of individual lives are name Convergence Network (http://www. being enhanced through participation convergenceus.org), in partnership with (Characteristic 6), I do not yet believe clear Center for Progressive Renewal (http:// proposals or demands (Characteristic 2) progressiverenewal.org). Specific initia- have been fully articulated and announced. tives are underway to help a sustainable Books, blogs, speaking engagements, and movement take shape and gain momen- other resources have begun to spread the tum: McLaren. A Preface on “Whither Emergent?”

96 • Charter for a Just and Generous Chris- culture” through music, liturgy, and tianity: a simple articulation of vision preaching. with ten implicit proposals/demands. • Common Table Collective: a new national (and potentially international) ovement- campus ministry to mobilize progressive Christians of college age. building is • 10,000 Vital Spiritual Communities: M an attempt to identify, announce, draw always more art than attention to, and support congregations that embody “a new kind of Christian- science. ity.” • Leadership Initiative: a project to in- Movement-building is always more novate in the development of new kinds art than science. And in ventures of the of Christian leaders for new kinds of Spirit, it is a mysterious art whose stories, scholarship, ministry, and mission. like those of my wife’s Sicilian aunt, are • Convergence Worship Project: a set of full of intrigue, backstory, and surprise. initiatives to strengthen “movement The Depth and Breadth of Emergence Christianity: A Theological and International Perspective

Tim Hartman Assistant Professor of Theology, Columbia Theological Seminary

The context of Emergence response to changing cultural contexts, the understandings and practices of the Christianity Christian faith continue to adapt, change, In our rapidly changing context, inven- even evolve. In this sense, Emergence tions in technology, transportation, and Christianity remains implicit and explicit communication have radically altered how among conversations about theology and we in the Western world live, relate, and ministry. Conversations about creativity think. Our understandings of ourselves, and innovation in theology and ministry our cultures, and our faiths will never can be found throughout mainline and be the same, and more importantly the evangelical congregations and denomi- scope and rate of the changes occurring nations. raise significant theological questions: On the other hand, over the last How will these changes affect Christian decade and a half, some things have theology in the twenty-first century and changed. Certainly, the words “emergent,” beyond? What are the distinctives or the “emerging,” and “emergence” went from emphases that will connect the God of the having no place in a discussion of Christian Bible, the Triune God, with the people of thought and practices (prior to the 1980s) today and tomorrow? How will theology to naming a social movement that (in the make these quantum-sized shifts? Over United States) coalesced around Emergent the last dozen or so years, many people in Village (the 2000s). After the demise of the United States considering these types Emergent Village as an organization (ap- of questions have been affiliated with so- proximately 2009), this pool of terms has called Emergence Christianity. not vanished but has found widespread After garnering tremendous attention and varied use (2010 to the present). At from 2004 to 2009, Emergence Christian- this point, emerging/emergent/emergence ity has receded from the spotlight. What are used so pervasively—in publishing, has happened to Emergence Christianity social science, theology, and, their home and where has it gone? This essay offers a discipline, the natural sciences—that theological and international perspective their usage can seem to signify next- on these questions that points to the depth to-nothing about the content they are and breath of Emergence Christianity to- describing. These descriptors have lost day. In short, Emergence Christianity has any distinctively theological meaning gone both “nowhere” and “everywhere.” about the Christian faith through over- From one perspective, Emergence use and misuse. Yet, “the Church that is Christianity has not gone anywhere. In emerging”—as Brian McLaren preferred

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98 to describe the movement—has emerged not have a method problem, but a message and continues to emerge. problem.2 Today’s ecclesial challenges are I write as somewhat of an insider re- not merely about how to do church dif- garding the Emerging Church Movement ferently, but about what are the distinctive (ECM), though not as a member of any theological questions of our day? As the inner circle. I am an ordained pastor in social and historical context has changed, the Presbyterian Church (USA) who has so must contemporary theological empha- served in a large urban congregation and as ses. Christendom-era answers ought not be a nontraditional church planter. I currently offered in response to post-Christendom serve as an assistant professor of theology (or post-modern) questions. The blank at Columbia Theological Seminary. I stares and quizzical looks on the faces of the first became interested in the themes that inquisitive have betrayed deep theological would later become labeled as emergence disconnects. The doctrines of Christian Christianity1 as I observed the disconnect theology must be re-examined for their between established churches and their relevance and relative significance today. unchurched and dechurched neighbors. Many in the ECM sense that the My initial encounter with Emergent Vil- prevailing themes in theological literature lage and many of its leaders came at the within the United States are preoccupied first Emergent Convention in 2003 in San with questions of the sixteenth century— Diego. By 2009, I was serving as the board or, at best, the mid-twentieth century— chair of both Emergent Village and a simi- and not the twenty-first. The dominant lar organization, Amahoro Africa, whose issues in today’s world, where many people mission was to connect emerging Christian do not believe in sin nor that they need to leaders in sub-saharan Africa. I share these be saved from anything, are not the Fall, personal details to demonstrate some ways the Cross, and penal substitution. Trying to in which I share with other authors who make sure you end up on the right side of a identify with emergence Christianity a centuries-long, metaphysical transaction is sense that existing theological concepts simply not compelling for someone who is and models may not be communicating not already asking those questions. A bet- to new generations, and also to indicate ter approach might begin with Creation, that I have sought to ask these questions Incarnation, and Resurrection in talking and implement responses from within to people who are already interested in the a somewhat distinctive academic and environment, community, and creativity. mainline denominational context. We rightly affirm that it is exciting and My interests are explicitly theological interesting to be part of the work that God is doing in the world. Better still, and global. Rightly understood, I take people—and I claim all people, not just Doug Pagitt’s admonition to be spot on: people of faith—are looking to understand the Christian Church in the West does their lives and this world in an integrated 1. For more on the shared charac- way (and as a result are not picking a trio teristics of emergence Christianity, see of theological doctrines to emphasize Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging over others). Many yearn for their lives Churches: Creating Christian Community In to “make sense,” or to “fit together,” and, Postmodern Cultures (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006) and Tony Jones, The 2. Doug Pagitt, Preaching Re-Imagined New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005), Frontier (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2009). 162. Hartman. The Depth and Breadth of Emergence Christianity

99 quite often, for space to contemplate the acterized “emergent thinking”—includ- mysteries in the universe. ing new forms of church communities, contemporary forms of worship including A contextual theology? participatory and contemplative elements, Authors writing from within the ECM can reassessing traditional understandings of be understood within a larger trend begin- the Bible, authority, atonement, religious ning in the late twentieth century towards pluralism, and the essence of the Christian contextual theologies.3 This valuing of life—are now featured in conferences and particular settings and contexts emphasizes consultations among mainline denomina- affinities between the ECM and Libera- tions, church-planting organizations, and seminaries across the theological spectrum. tion theology or Feminist theology and In these ways, the recession of emergence positions it against avowedly acontextual Christianity in terms of organized insti- theological systems.4 While pervasively tutions has been more than replaced by remaining a part of Christian thought the appearance of these themes in many, and ministry—more and more theology many places. is being written consciously addressing the Certainly, the categories of Emerg- context of the author and his/her audience, ing/Emergent/Emergence Christianity churches are continually seeking to adjust have lost much of their cultural cache their message and methods to attract new of the movement’s zenith between 2004 members—emergence Christianity (as an and 2010. Measured by the health and entity) seems to some to have disappeared. influence of institutions whose origins However, as I will explore below, it may launched much of the church-based be the case that emergence has actually discussion, emergence Christianity is ka- permeated deeper, beneath structures and put—ending more with a whimper than thought-patterns than ever before. As a bang (I am thinking here primarily of emergence Christianity—that arguably Emergent Village). Rumors of the demise began (at least formally) in the United of Emergent Village began in 2009, and States out of a group of formerly evangelical by 2013 the website had shut down. The white men—has permeated deeper into former domain name (emergentvillage. culture, its spread has also gone wider. com) that once described “an emerging, The topics and themes that once char- generative friendship” now links to a home décor blog featuring posts on “Choosing 3. More broadly, the ECM could be the Right Countertop…” or “Heating the placed within Stephen Bevans’ “Anthropo- Pond.” The Emergent Village facebook logical Model” in that the ECM “takes con- page (facebook.com/EmergentVillage) has text seriously; provides fresh perspectives of Christianity; [and] starts where people are,” not been updated in years. The Emergent as developed in Stephen B. Bevans, Models Village blog on Patheos’ progressive chan- of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, New nel has been reinvented as “Emerging York: Orbis Books, 2005), 61. Voices,” and is described as: “a diversity of perspectives from the emergent move- 4. For a critique of the ECM as allow- 5 ing context to have too much influence in ment & beyond.” Some have chosen to its theological reflection, see D.A. Carson, read these events as the failure of Emergent Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Village to successfully transition from a Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications (Grand Rapids, Mich.: 5. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ Zondervan, 2005). emergentvillage/ Hartman. The Depth and Breadth of Emergence Christianity

100 movement to a lasting institution, or the Breadth of emergence end of emergence more broadly. Yet, as has Christianity always been the case of ECM, emergence Christianity cannot be defined simply and Let me clarify what I mean about this is no less true of its rumored death. the breadth of emergence Christian- Emergence Christianity has always ity with a few examples. Certainly, the topic of emergence cannot be confined displayed certain shared characteristics to the church and certainly not to North or family resemblances, defying checklists America. Much of the emerging church and formal statements—whether creeds movement in the U.S. and the U.K. has or lists of best practices. A beauty of been broadly understood as a response emergence Christianity has always been its to postmodernism that presumes some form of the mantra: a new church for a new cultural moment. In 2007, Emergent Village hosted a conference featuring a beauty of dialogue with philosophers John Caputo and Richard Kearney based on Caputo’s emergence 6 A book: What Would Jesus Deconstruct? This theme appealed to many in the ECM Christianity has who had evangelical backgrounds familiar with the catchphrase, What Would Jesus always been its Do (WWJD)?, and interests in better understanding the current cultural mo- local authenticity, ment. Through questioning the ecclesial status quo and seeking to respond to the creativity, and reliance questions of the present cultural moment, ECM practitioners often view themselves on the Holy Spirit. as heirs of the Protestant Reformation and, in particular, the Anabaptists. Of course, many participants in the ECM were and are asking questions that would be quite local authenticity, creativity, and reliance foreign to their sixteenth-century Protes- on the Holy Spirit. From my perspective, tant predecessors, even if these questions Emergent Village—as just one expression are not as unique or original as some hope of emergence Christianity—resisted the that they might be. Thus, as heirs of the calcifying move from a social movement Reformation, it is not entirely surprising to an institution and thus gradually dis- that emergence Christianity has taken banded. I think of the ECM a bit like many forms. Much of the theological work ripples in a lake. Leaving aside questions in the ECM has been deconstructive and of causation, Emergent Village made a big embedded within critiques of the church splash for about a decade, and just because and existing expressions of theology and there are not more splashes, does not mean that emergence does not continue to be 6. John Caputo, What Would Jesus rippling out wider and wider while there Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodern- ism for the Church with a foreword by Brian is also ongoing activity out-of-sight, below McLaren (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker the surface. Academic, 2007). Hartman. The Depth and Breadth of Emergence Christianity

101 ministry. These theological emphases are imposed cultural narrative (in colonized consistent with the origins of the ECM lands) led to increasingly pluralistic and as a response to the state and practices of humbled perspectives about the sources Christianity in the late twentieth century of knowledge and the role of human in the U.S. and U.K. experience. Third, both the postmodern The postmodern response of the ECM and the postcolonial assert the importance in the West can be usefully compared to of human experience in theological and the flowering emergence of Christianity religious expressions. In the U.S. and the in Africa and other parts of the developing U.K., participation in Christian churches world. Postcolonial responses to the status has been decreasing while there has been quo in Christian theology and practices a dramatic numerical increase of Chris- (often imposed from the U.S. or Europe) tianity in Africa and other parts of the are in many ways responding to the same developing world. These inverse trends failings in modern Christian thought that have created a shift in the center of grav- the ECM highlights. Neither postcolonial ity of the Christian faith worldwide.9 The theology nor ECM spontaneously arose, rapid increase of Christians in sub-Saharan and both give considerable attention to Africa and other areas of the global South the role of the context and place from offers a counter-narrative to the decline which they emerged. Second, both the and recession of Christianity in the West— postmodern response in the West and the particularly among peoples of European postcolonial response in the developing descent. The church is emerging then, world criticize the yoking of culture and not in the former Christian heartlands religion. This yoking is intensified when it of the United States and Europe as early is asserted in a heavy-handed or top-down exponents of “The Christian Century” had manner. In the colonial experience, this anticipated, but in Africa, Asia, and Latin yoking and conflation of religion and America. One characteristic of this emerg- culture was expressed through a process ing trend is that there is not the need for a of civilization, Christianization, and new center to this emerging Christianity. commerce.7 The postmodern assertion Instead a polycentric understanding of of the category of experience and aver- the presence of the Christian faith in the sion to metanarratives is a reaction to a world flows from a more comfortable similar phenomenon in the West.8 The understanding of Christianity’s place in diverse responses to the previously shared religiously pluralistic societies. The role of cultural consensus (in the West) and the Christianity in society that is emerging is one in which communities of people are working for the common good through 7. For evidence of one prominent example (of many), see Fidelis Nkomazana, 9. The phrase “center of gravity” was “Livingstone’s ideas of Christianity, com- first applied to global Christianity by David merce and civilization” Pula: Botswana Jour- Barrett, “AD 2000: 350 Million Christians nal of African Studies 12:1&2 (1998): 44. in Africa,” International Review of Mission 8. For one prominent expositor of 59:233 (January 1970): 49–50. Church this position, see the work of Jean-Francois historian Andrew Walls, explored this theme Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition: A Re- more deeply in: “The Gospel as Prisoner and port on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University Liberator of Culture,” in Andew Walls, The of Minnesota Press, 1984) and The Postmod- Missionary Movement In Christian History: ern Explained (Minneapolis: University of Studies In the Transmission of Faith (Mary- Minnesota Press, 1992). knoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996). Hartman. The Depth and Breadth of Emergence Christianity

102 collaborations with those of other faiths how the crucifixion changed God. Hope- and no faith, rather than one of asserting fully, others will follow Jones’ method—a so-called Christian beliefs or principles careful, reasoned argument that frequently or values on a society. In these ways, the engages Scripture—in order to reinterpret church that is emerging in the U.S. and Christian doctrine in response to contem- overseas articulates a post-Christendom porary problems or situations. theology for increasingly globalized and Jones’ new book and Rollins’ work religiously pluralistic societies. are exceptions to most of the written work published by authors affiliated with Theological developments the ECM.12 On the whole, the emerging —present and future church movement has exhibited a theology Much of what has passed for theology of praxis—meaning that many theological in the ECM in the United States has emphases and innovations have occurred been a reaction to prevailing theological at the level of practices, not doctrines. norms and the emergent author’s personal That is to say, the work of the ECM has experiences. There is some work around primarily been ecclesiological, presenting constructive Christian theology being new forms of being the church and do- written from within the ECM broadly ing church. (This is not to say that these understood. Peter Rollins, a provocative practices do not have doctrinal implica- writer, philosopher, storyteller, and public tions. Rather, that these implications often speaker from Belfast who now lives in the remain unexplored by ECM authors.) U.S., has used philosophical and theologi- Positively, ECM authors challenge the cal approaches to write apophatic theology, lingering bias within academic theol- that is, articulating the limits of human ogy in favor of doctrines (Christology, knowledge of God, speaking of what God Theological Anthropology, Doctrine of is not, and seeking to preserve the mystery God, etc.) over practices. My claim is of the divine being.10 Quite recently, Tony that doctrine and practices are not polar Jones, formerly the National Coordinator opposites and should mutually inform of Emergent Village, has written a new one another. While academic theology book, Did God Kill Jesus?,11that offers an can (rightly) be criticized for its inability assessment of prevailing theories of the to depart the ivory tower and identify atonement from ancient to contemporary real-world implications for its carefully before offering his own understanding that specified systematic theologies, so too begins with “God is Love” and describes the ecclesiologies and de facto theologies that are articulated by those in the ECM 10. See Peter Rollins, How (Not) to can (rightly) be criticized on two counts: Speak of God (Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete First, the ECM might be criticized for Press, 2006); Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of not considering how advocating certain God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty faith practices and beliefs affects other and Satisfaction (Brentwood, Tenn.: Howard Books, 2013) and Peter Rollins, The Divine 12. Another example of the construc- Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and tive turn within the emerging conversation the Discovery of Faith (Brentwood, Tenn.: (theologically) is Brian McLaren’s latest Howard Books, 2015). book, We Make the Road by Walking: A 11. Tony Jones, Did God Kill Jesus?: Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Searching for Love in History’s Most Famous Reorientation, and Activation (New York: Execution (New York: HarperOne, 2015). Jericho Books, 2014). Hartman. The Depth and Breadth of Emergence Christianity

103 beliefs. The question here is whether any of atonement. This is an active attempt to theology—emerging or otherwise—is consider how to understand Christ’s life, consistent or seeks coherence as a virtue—a death, and resurrection. question in which many people involved In a similar vein, Nadia Bolz-Weber, in the ECM admit they are simply not all a Lutheran minister who founded and that interested. They may be interested is the pastor at the House for All Sin- in how their practices compare to others ners and Saints in Denver, Colorado, a throughout church history, but this rarely mission congregation of the Evangelical extends to how those other practices made Lutheran Church in America, wrote her sense in the midst of a different set of memoir Pastrix.14 While the memoir is very theological commitments. This is one area much ecclesiological, we must not let the in which the ECM’s justifiable attention to surface details detract from her approach practice might benefit from more sustained to theological reflection that is based in a theological reflection across doctrines. deeply honest (often irreverent) experience Second, theology in the emerging of God in Jesus Christ. Bolz-Weber has si- church, when it has been explicitly at- multaneously rejected aspects of American tempted, has been primarily about de- Christian piety while highlighting tradi- construction with lesser attention to tional elements of historic Lutheranism. alternative, constructive theological moves While not writing a systematic theology, or their implications. For many in the her understanding and reinterpretation ECM, the need to deconstruct their prior of practices (including church member- theological understandings arose from ship, the Eucharist, and preaching) have dissatisfaction with their own ecclesial numerous theological implications (for origins in conservative, often evangeli- ecclesiology, atonement, and scripture, cal, churches.13 These people rightly saw among others). that theological construction could only The approach employed by Bolz- begin through dismantling the restric- Weber and others in the ECM points to tive and authoritative theological system an ongoing emphasis within their practices that they had grown up with. (Others, and writings. There is an uncompromising including those in the ECM who were belief that religious ideas can and should raised in mainline traditions, perform less have social consequences. In fact, these theological deconstruction than institu- consequences can be used to assess the tional deconstruction.) The next move is credibility and tenability of the beliefs toward (re)constructing theological and themselves. Once again, this is conviction institutional identities. Jones’ new book is that those in the ECM often share with a hopeful and helpful example of change 14. Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The in this respect. While there is significant Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint engagement with the tradition of church (New York: Jericho Books, 2013). Two doctrine and its failings, he moves through additional books that combine practices them to construct his own understanding and spirituality from within the emerging conversation are: Mark Scandrette, Soul 13. For a sociological analysis of these Graffiti: Making a Life in the Way of Jesus origins and the later shifts, see Gerardo (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008) and Doug Marti and Gladys Ganiel, The Deconstructed Pagitt, A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope- Church: Understanding Emerging Christian- filled, Open-armed, Alive-and-well Faith for ity, (New York: Oxford University Press, the Left Out, Left Behind, and Let Down in us 2014). All (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008). Hartman. The Depth and Breadth of Emergence Christianity

104 non-Western theologians. To give but one conversation among emerging Christian example, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu of leaders, and iEmergence likewise focuses Ghana seeks to articulate an understanding on holistic community and leadership of the Holy Spirit that is neither cloistered development in indigenous and tribal within academic theology nor captured communities and connecting these com- by a message that is not “truly representa- munities in different parts of the world.17 tive of Jesus Christ and his Cross.”15 The Meanwhile, in sub-Saharan Africa, Ama- shared conviction that theology matters horo Africa connects and encourages is by no means unique to the emerging emerging Christian leaders.18 In Latin church domestically or internationally. America, La Red Del Camino and Frater- Yet, in contrast to some forms of political nidad Teológica Latinoamericana both theology that pursue the social and ethical seek to promote integral mission through consequences of theological positions, this connections between practitioners and emerging perspective is more willing to theologians in the region.19 re-think conventional doctrines in light These examples are by no means of their implications. exhaustive but give a sense of the breadth and depth of emergence Christianity Conclusion domestically and internationally. Most I want to conclude this essay with a brief promising from my perspective is the way recognition and reflection on the working that in each of these groups the emergent of the Holy Spirit within the Christian conversation has moved beyond its earliest church worldwide over the last decades. days that were easy to dismiss as mere talk Certainly, John 3:8 has been on display (complaining about existing structures or in our midst as “the pneuma (wind/spirit) theologies) to a place of promoting action blows where it chooses.” The ECM in the that bears witness to the work of God in U.S. has manifested itself in the Wild Christ through the Spirit—seeking justice, Goose festival, the TransFORM network, planting new churches, and revitalizing the Missio Alliance, the Parish Collective, existing communities. It is no surprise the CANA Initiative, and the Christian- that ECM-inspired theological writing ity21 conference, among others.16 These has also begun to move more consistently new networks are the offspring of Emer- from deconstruction to construction out gent Village—either directly or indirectly. of a desire to more clearly understand, As the energy surrounding Emergent integrate, and articulate Christian faith Village waned, these and other groups and praxis in today’s contexts. As we read were founded. Internationally, MESA in John’s gospel, we may not know how provides, in many ways, a parallel global these things can be, but we can follow the blowing of the Spirit. 15. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “Did Jesus Wear Designer Robes?” Christianity Today 53:11 (November 2009): 41. See also, J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Contemporary Pentecostal Christianity: Interpretations From an African Context (Oxford: Regnum, 2013). 17. See mesa-friends.org and iemergence.org. 16. See wildgoosefestival.org, transformnetwork.org, missioalliance.org, 18. See amahoro-africa.org. parishcollective.org, canainitiative.org, and 19. See lareddelcamino.net and ftl-al. c21.thejopagroup.com. org. The Emerging Church Movement: A Sociological Assessment

Gladys Ganiel Research Fellow (as of April 1, 2015), The Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, Queen’s University

Gerardo Marti L. Richardson King Associate Professor of Sociology, Davidson College

What we bring to the study avoid offering any systematic or coherent definitions, which contributes to frustra- of the Emerging Church tion in isolating it as a coherent group— Movement especially for sociologists who strive to define and categorize. In presenting our With so many voices, groups, and orga- own understanding of this movement, nizations participating in the Emerging we categorize Emerging Christianity as Church Movement (ECM), few are willing an orientation rather than an identity, and to “define” it,1 though authors have offered focus on the diverse practices within what various definitions.2 Emerging Christians we describe as “pluralist congregations” (often called “gatherings,” “collectives” or 1. Scot McKnight, “Five Streams of the Emerging Church,” Christianity Today, 51.2, February 2007: 35–39. e categorize 2. James Bielo, “The ‘Emerging Church’ in America: Notes on the Interac- Emerging tion of Christianities,” Religion, 39, no. 3 W (2009): 219–232; James Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals: Faith, Modernity, and the Desire Christianity as an for Authenticity (New York: New York Uni- versity Press, 2011); D.A. Carson, Becoming orientation rather than Conversant with the Emerging Church: Un- derstanding a Movement and its Implications an identity. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005); Lloyd Chia, “Emerging Faith Boundaries: “communities” by Emerging Christians Bridge-Building, Inclusion and the Emerg- themselves). This leads us to define the ing Church Movement in America” (The ECM as a creative, entrepreneurial reli- University of Missouri, dissertation, unpub- gious movement that strives to achieve lished, 2010); Gladys Ganiel, “Emerging from the Evangelical Subculture in Northern social legitimacy and spiritual vitality by Ireland: A Case Study of the Zero28 and Ikon Community,” International Journal Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelical- for the Study of the Christian Church, 6, no. ism for a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, 1 (2006): 38–48; and Robert E. Webber, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2007).

Currents in Theology and Mission 42:2 (April 2015) Ganiel, Marti. The Emerging Church Movement

106 actively disassociating from its roots in to pubs and restaurants, small informal conservative, evangelical Christianity. Our gatherings and large formal conferences, findings and rationale for terms and defini- public events like “beer and hymns” nights tions for grasping the ECM are extensively and lectures by Brian McLaren, as well as developed in The Deconstructed Church: private events like hanging out in people’s Understanding Emerging Christianity.3 homes and attending overnight dialogues Our interest is in the persons, prac- that included sleeping on couches and tices, and sociological significance of making breakfast together. We participated Emerging Christianity. Our consequent in these and other settings, saturating our- labeling and isolating of the ECM is not selves in conversation and reminiscence, intended to ignore the varied and evanes- because the ECM is a diffuse phenomenon cent strands of the movement, particularly that is not readily captured in any single when the movement values autonomy, place or person. Regardless of the (often diversity, and dissent, but to find analytic controversial) figures who write and speak ways to examine the ECM as an intriguing regularly like Rob Bell, Nadia Bolz-Weber, instance of institutional innovation. We Peter Rollins, and Tony Jones, none of do not rely on our theological convictions them “define” the ECM—yet they all are or on presumptions regarding what the manifestations of it. Christian church should be or should not Within the seeming cacophony of talk be doing. The ECM has both sympathizers4 and happenings, we find the ECM to be and critics,5 yet we assert that our interests a far-from-settled social occurrence. The lie neither in forwarding or retracting relatively small numbers of people who the ECM. Rather, we pay close attention identify as Emerging Christians, or who to observations of Emerging Christians attend recognizable emerging congregations, has led some observers to proclaim and their congregations in the United 7 States, Northern Ireland, and the United the death of the ECM. Nevertheless, Kingdom in order to understand them on the ECM’s resonance with wider trends and values of “Western” society lead us their own terms.6 In our work, we went to conclude that Emerging Christianity 3. Gerardo Marti and Gladys Ganiel, will persist, even thrive, as it continues to The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity (Oxford: Oxford ington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009); Josh Packard, University Press, 2014). The Emerging Church: Religion at the Margins (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reiner Publishers, 4. Doug Gay, Remixing the Church: 2012); and Jason Wollschleger, “Off the Towards an Emerging Ecclesiology (London: Map? Locating the Emerging Church: A SCM Press, 2011). Comparative Case Study of Congregations 5. Carson, Kevin DeYoung and Ted in the Pacific Northwest,”Review of Religious Kluck, Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Research, 54 (2012): 69–91. Who Should Be) (Chicago: Moody, 2008). 7. On the number of Emerging 6. Other recent efforts include Bielo, Christians, see Marti and Ganiel, chapters Emerging Evangelicals; Chia; Philip Harrold, 9–11. On the death of the ECM, see Scott “Deconversion in the Emerging Church,” Daniels, “The Death of the Emerging International Journal for the Study of the Church,” Pastor Scott’s Thoughts, April 10, Christian Church, 6, no. 1 (2006): 79–90; 2010, http://drtscott.typepad.com/pastor_ Cory E. Labanow, Evangelicalism and the scotts_thoughts/2010/08/the-death-of-the- Emerging Church: A Congregational Study of emerging-church.html, (accessed December a Vineyard Church (Surrey, England/Burl- 22, 2014). Ganiel, Marti. The Emerging Church Movement

107 influence the organization and values of a flexibility of mind and spirit that ques- even the most established and “traditional” tions the very validity of core beliefs. For Christians and their denominations. In the example, Peter Rollins has talked about end, sociological study of the ECM con- deliberately short-term “pop-up churches” tributes to more general understandings of as a vital form of Christianity.8 Even the ongoing relationship between modern more, Emerging Christians’ standards religion and contemporary social change, for measuring success are a challenge not helping us to better grasp how processes only to traditional Christianity, but also to of religious individualization take place sociologists of religion who have relied on and are encouraged even within religious indicators such as church attendance and communities. adherence to core doctrines as measure- ments of religious vitality. Other aspects of the crisis of moderni- The social world that ty are increased pluralism and the hyper-in- prompts the “Emerging” dividualization of the self.9 People’s greater awareness of the plurality of expressions of the ECM of not only Christianity, but also other After more than a decade of observation faiths, has made over-arching narratives and systematic research on the ECM, in which one’s own religious community we see the “deconstructed churches” of has all the right answers seem implausible. the ECM as a response to the crisis of Multiple institutional demands prompt modernity, not only in religion but also the need for understanding how religious across all spheres of life. Part of the crisis commitments fit with various, contradic- of modernity is the proliferation of in- tory domains.10 The challenge of religious stitutional demands such that people no authority (which cannot be imposed) and longer rely on singular institutions for the challenge of understanding oneself their ethics, beliefs, or values. Overall, among so many competing institutional established religious institutions have not imperatives (which cannot be avoided) adjusted well to these changes. Rather, they leads to people having to individualize cultivate broad and distant organizational forms that remove intimacy and ignore 8. See Gladys Ganiel, “The Decon- the complexity of selves who can no lon- structed Church at Peter Rollins’ Holy ger give themselves up to a monolithic Ghost Festival” (May 15, 2014), http:// religious identity. In contrast, the ECM www.gladysganiel.com/social-justice/the- responds to the lack of trust in religious deconstructed-church-at-peter-rollins-holy- ghosts-festival-in-belfast-part-i/, (accessed institutions by deliberately creating “anti- December 22, 2014). institutional” structural forms, including pub churches, experimental congrega- 9. Ulrich Beck, A God of One’s Own: Religion’s Capacity for Peace and Potential tions, and neo-monastic communities. for Violence (Cambridge: Polity Press, Unlike traditional congregations, which 2010); Peter L. Berger, The Many Altars of evaluate their progress in terms of nu- Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion merical growth, church attendance, and in the Pluralist Age (Berlin and Boston: De adherence to creeds, Emerging Christians Gruyter, 2014). shun such measures of “success.” Rather, 10. Gerardo Marti, “Religious Reflexiv- for Emerging Christians success may mean ity: Synthesizing the Effect of Novelty and the death of their existing community after Diversity on Personal Religiosity,” Sociology a certain period of time, and developing of Religion, 76, no. 1 (Forthcoming). Ganiel, Marti. The Emerging Church Movement

108 their understandings of religion. tions but also from the whole tradition of The demand for individualization the church.”14 In these ways the modern originates in changed social structures self is faced with an array of competing that affect every area of life, including secular and religious structures through religion. The lack of a single, primary which to enact its beliefs and practices. “foothold” for personal identity stimu- But even when principled action lates the peculiarly reflective nature of seems rooted in individual conviction, it modern individuals. People are constantly takes its force from being legitimated. So forced to reflect and rationalize their lives what is crucial here is that the legitima- in a quest for meaningful coherence of tion of beliefs and behaviors do not come the self. In this context, freedom and from within individuals, they come from autonomy are especially important.11 Individualism is not simply a value; it is a socially structured and morally enforced merging “institutionalized individualization.”12 The imperative for individualization does congregations not therefore indicate the receding of E structures but rather the reorientation of straddle the tension structures such that new forms of agency are created. The consequence for religion between is not abstract syncretism; rather, believers from different backgrounds discover individualization new religious freedoms, change their old religious worldviews, and develop religious and the longing for identities from a range of sources.13 One pastor we spoke with painted a picture of community more what this looks like in practice: “Early on we called it ‘liturgical eclecticism.’ We took effectively than a lot of stuff from the Book of Common Prayer, a lot of Catholic stuff. We felt free traditional religious to borrow not only from our specific tradi- institutions. 11. Gerardo Marti, Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity, and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008); Gerardo organized groups. The ECM has responded Marti, “Ego-affirming Evangelicalism: to individuals’ needs for legitimation How a Hollywood Church Appropriates by creating religious communities with Religion for Workers in the Creative Class,” loose boundaries of belonging and belief, Sociology of Religion, 71, no. 1 (2010): where pluralism is not just tolerated, but 52–75; Gerardo Marti, “The Adaptability of celebrated as a positive religious value. At Pentecostalism: The Fit between Prosperity the same time, emerging congregations Theology and Globalized Individualization encourage people to follow individualized in a Los Angeles Church,” Pneuma, 34, no. 1 (2012): 5–25. religious paths. One of our respondents put it this way: “Yes, that’s what I envision 12. Beck, 95. 13. Ibid., 140. 14. Marti and Ganiel, 109. Ganiel, Marti. The Emerging Church Movement

109 a church should be: a lot of people doing practice of “deconstruction” is a form of things that feel right to them—but doing it micro-politics in which actors establish together.”15 When religious individualiza- competitive arenas in response to pressures tion is complemented by a fierce relational for conformity.18 When they talk about ethic, it creates a type of “cooperative their previous experiences of Christianity, egoism” that sustains community life.16 especially evangelical Christianity, Emerg- Emerging congregations straddle the ten- ing Christians say they felt like they were sion between individualization and the forced to adopt a false identity, one that longing for community more effectively indicated a correct religious persona. Now, than traditional religious institutions, with they encourage each other to critique the their demands for uniformity and the beliefs and practices that have wounded sanctioning of those who do not conform. them, and refuse to insist on what beliefs and practices to maintain or adopt. The Distinctive sociological freedom people experience means they aspects of the ECM frequently describe their congregations as “not judging” and “not legalistic.” One of our sociological contributions to Another of our sociological contribu- understanding the ECM is that Emerging tions to understanding the ECM is that Christians share a religious orientation built Emerging Christians are creating innova- on a continual practice of deconstruction. tive religious structures—what we describe We deliberately chose the term “reli- as “pluralist congregations.” This does not gious orientation” rather than “religious necessarily mean that pluralist congrega- identity” as we sought to categorize the tions are diverse in terms of ethnicity or ECM. The concept of religious identity socio-economic backgrounds. Rather, has been used extensively in the sociology pluralist congregations strive to be open to of religion, but we thought it was too all and to provide an environment where rigid to capture the fluid and deliberately a range of religious practices is both ac- boundary-crossing nature of Emerging ceptable and legitimate. Many Emerging Christians—especially those who do not Christians have been immersed in multiple consciously identify with the ECM yet Christian traditions through their own share its values and practices.17 Of course, life experiences. Drawing on their varied a number of distinct religious identities experiences, Emerging Christians actively already exist within the ECM, ranging challenge the forms of religious conformity from those who explicitly identify with they encountered in their past and heartily labels such as “emerging,” “emergent,” welcome all critiques of institutionalized and “emergence,” to those who discard (or Christianity. In their quest to create Chris- are not aware of) these labels. We stress tian communities where a broad scope of deconstruction as a practice, noting with freedom in individual belief and religious Stephan Fuchs and Steven Ward that the conviction reign, they adopt a plurality of 15. Ibid., 34. beliefs and practices—some of which may 16. Ibid., 190–192. 18. Stephen Fuchs and Steven Ward, 17. See Marti and Ganiel, chapter 4, “What is Deconstruction, and Where and for fuller descriptions of the values and prac- When does it take Place? Making Facts in tices that define this religious orientation, Science, Building Cases in Law,” Ameri- including distinct ways of thinking about can Sociological Review, 59, no. 4 (1994): the nature of truth, doubt, and God. 481–500. Ganiel, Marti. The Emerging Church Movement

110 contradict each other. In short, Emerging that point of view. It also differs from the Christians embrace pluralism and value ecumenical approach to dialogue, which the exercise of religious freedom—within is focused on discovering points of com- their own congregations. monality. Participants instead describe the Some of the most important prac- process as a form of pedagogy in which tices of pluralist congregations have been people strive for mutual understanding. encouraging conversation, dialogue, and People are encouraged to share stories debate. While it has been the leaders and about their personal experiences of faith public figures of the ECM who have most with others. The open, fluid nature of the forcefully articulated the idea of “faith ECM conversation places few demands as conversation,” all participants in our upon people to believe the same things. research spoke about how important Indeed, it could be said that for many within the ECM, the purpose of conversation is to generate more questions. Emerging Christians believe they are ome of the living in a changed religious landscape in most important which foundational Christian doctrines are S no longer assumed and many traditional practices of pluralist church practices are irrelevant. Moreover, Emerging Christians see themselves as res- congregations have cuing core aspects of Christianity from the entanglement of modernity, bureaucracy, been encouraging and right-wing politics. In these ways, Emerging Christians actively deconstruct conversation, congregational life by placing into question the beliefs and practices that have dialogue, and debate. held sway among traditional Christians. Emerging Christians also see themselves as rescuing their own selves from the shal- conversation, dialogue, and storytelling are lowness, hypocrisy, and rigidity of their to their faith and how their congregations religious past. We see Emerging Christians provide a unique arena for this. The aim as themselves caught in a distinctively of Emerging Christians’ conversation is sociological dilemma: how to revitalize the not to settle on established positions or Christian “church” while simultaneously to reach a point where all can agree and avoiding what they see as the “trappings” therefore stop talking. On-going conversa- of church institutions, including robust tion is in itself a mechanism or a strategy institutions. Their redefinitions of success to maintain a plurality of identities and (or perhaps authenticity is a word they positions. For Emerging Christians, dia- would more likely use) in terms of small- logue simply means listening to others’ ness, impermanence, and open-endedness points of view or positions without trying are important strategies for revitalization. to change them. This approach to dialogue Sociologists also face a dilemma when contrasts to what Emerging Christians it comes to understanding the social or- see as evangelical dialogic practices: the ganization of the ECM. There is so much evangelical has the “right” answers and the variety among emerging congregations purpose of dialogue is to convert others to that it is difficult to generalize about their Ganiel, Marti. The Emerging Church Movement

111 structure or form. The purposes of gather- The future of the ECM and ings are not to “convert” or “lead” people to God through established recipes but the future of Christianity to create open opportunities to see, hear, On the surface the ECM may appear to be and respond to God. More importantly, a free-wheeling heterodoxy reacting to the the ECM legitimizes individualized/ established institutions of contemporary questioning/ambiguous approaches to Christianity. But on closer investigation religious convictions, and that seems to Emerging Christianity can be under- have unique challenges for crafting “reli- stood as a peculiarly “modern” religious gious” organizations (multiple forms and orientation played out in a distinctive options) and unique challenges for creating societal context. The practices of the ECM cohesive communities (conversation, au- legitimate, and help to create innovative, thenticity, tolerance). What holds almost “pluralist congregations” that straddle the all these congregations together is their tensions between individualization and openness and commitment to diversity, community. Yet despite their effective- and this translates into their willingness ness in helping people to critique existing to incorporate a range of practices. These expressions of Christianity and to resist “pluralist congregations” promote indi- religious institutionalization, emerging vidualism while at the same time provid- congregations remain a minority in all ing a basis for community around shared parts of the West, even in the U.S. where experiences and relationships. Emerging they are most prominent. Ultimately, the congregations strike a contradictory bal- influence of the ECM may be better judged ance as they create religious communities not by the conventional measures of the in which the autonomy of the individual is sociology of religion—such as growth, held as a core value in the very midst of an identification, attendance, and adher- often-stated emphasis on relationship and ence to particular beliefs—but by how community. Because being an Emerging Emerging Christians influence the values Christian is a form of personal religiosity and behaviors of Christians outside the that is expected to be intentionally (rather movement, drawing others into this dis- than customarily) enacted, this type of tinct religious orientation while remaining religious self cannot avoid being strategic within traditional Christian institutions. in its activities, which are selected and This dynamic of influence from enacted according to individual choice. emerging to traditional congregations is In short, the ECM does not exist as a most obvious in the “Fresh Expressions” free-standing religious form; rather, all the movement, which we consider the most values and practices of Emerging Chris- prominent example of the ECM in the tians exist within an overarching religious U.K. Fresh Expressions congregations orientation that deconstructs traditional are typically linked with already existing expressions of Christianity and strives to Anglican or Methodist congregations and keep conversation flowing. Crucially, this command various degrees of autonomy religious orientation is not confined to the from these traditional denominations. pluralist congregations of the ECM but can In the U.S., two nationally prominent be found among Christians in traditional emerging congregations—Church of the denominations as well. Apostles in Seattle and House for All Sin- ners and Saints in Denver—are affiliated with the Episcopal Church/Evangelical Ganiel, Marti. The Emerging Church Movement

112 Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and of clergy in mainline denominations the ELCA, respectively. In such contexts, identified as “Emergent.”19 This ranged there is more likely to be significant cross- from 1 percent of Southern Baptists to fertilization of ideas and practices between 14 percent of Disciples of Christ. Given emerging and traditional congregations. that many Emerging/Emergent Christians Given the way that Emerging Christians’ choose not to use the term, these figures religious orientation resonates with the may even under-represent their presence individualized yet pluralist West, it seems among clergy. unlikely that traditional congregations will The ECM is constantly shifting and remain unaffected by Emerging Christians’ current terminology may get lost in the innovations. Of course, this dynamic may currents of change. Nevertheless our goal also work in the other direction, with has been to describe a type of religious Emerging Christians—while ever eager orientation that is not only recognizable to deconstruct tradition—potentially across persons and formats transnationally, softening their critiques of traditional but more importantly will become more expressions of Christianity. pervasive in all religious environments. There is also evidence that the in- As one Emerging Christian told us, his fluence of the ECM within traditional congregation is an “open space where denominations is more widespread than individuals get to work out whatever they has been supposed. In our own qualitative need. Individuals are coming together.”20 research, we came across multiple examples Overall, our evidence suggests that patterns of pastors and leaders within traditional of religious individualism, the formation of denominations who sympathized with pluralist congregations, and the desire to the ECM but did not want to be publicly construct a personal faith within a coop- “outed” for fear of recrimination or loss of erative setting will be a diffuse and widely employment. We also observed multiple practiced element of modern religiosity. examples of congregations in traditional denominations, which exhibit high degrees of internal diversity and have adopted some 19. Ryan P. Burge and Paul Djupe, emerging-like practices, such as Fitzroy “Truly Inclusive or Uniformly Liberal: An Presbyterian in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Analysis of the Politics of the Emerging Further, in the U.S., Ryan Burge and Paul Church,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Djupe’s quantitative study found that a Religion, 53, no. 3 (2014): 636–651. surprisingly (even to us) high 7 percent 20. Marti and Ganiel, 195. The Emergent Church and Liberal Theology: Ships in the Night?

Robert Saler Executive Director, Center for Pastoral Excellence Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, Indiana

Exploring the divide: Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl and Adolph von Harnack) to the genesis sources and definitions and regnancy of mainline Protestantism in the United States: “In essence, it [liberal What accounts for the theological theology] is the idea that Christian theol- divide between emergence and ogy can be genuinely Christian without liberal Protestant theology? being based upon external authority;” later, Here it is helpful to define the terms in play. he specifies that “the liberal tradition of For the purposes of this essay, I will define theology that flowed out of the Enlight- both “liberal Protestant” and “emergence” enment established the methods and laid theology in the West in relationship to the enduring conceptual foundations of the legacy of the Enlightenment; while modern critical theological scholarship the matrix of Enlightenment and post- by appealing to the authority of critical 2 Enlightenment legacies would certainly rationality and religious experience.” not be the only field within which to To the extent that the Enlightenment examine both strands,1 I hope to justify and its aftermath was largely a question of this choice by showing how it illuminates the relationship of religious epistemology both the coherence and the divergence to authority, liberal theology flourished of the two. in mainline Protestant contexts that es- In his magisterial and definitive three- chewed the presence of an ecclesiastical volume history The Making of American magisterium, embraced insights from Liberal Theology, Gary Dorrien offers a the natural sciences and philosophy, and simple but helpful definition of what is tracked with the Enlightenment/Roman- meant by the tradition of “liberal” theology tic prioritization of individual rationality that extends from its origins in the im- by elevating individual religious experi- mediate aftermath of the Enlightenment ence to a place of honor largely foreign (embodied by such familiar figures as to medieval and Reformation contexts. It is essential, therefore, to insist at 1. Indeed, part of the value of Phyllis this point that the modifier “liberal” in Tickle’s recent definitive surveyEmergence this context is not related to currently Christianity: What it is, Where it is Going, popular distinctions between “liberal” vs. and Why it Matters (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2012) is its contextualization of emer- 2. Gary Dorrien, The Making of gence theology and practice within a broad, American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progres- indeed global, historical, and geographical sive Religion, 1805-1900 (Louisville: WJK, stream. 2001), xiii–xvi.

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114 “conservative” strands in, say, party poli- its modern and early post-modern phases; tics; rather, it refers to a specific historical thus, in emergent settings, one is as likely trajectory that configured the relationship to see engagement between Gregory of between external authority and individual Nyssa and the contemporary theorist experience in such a way as to condition Slavoj Žižek as with Kant, Schleiermacher, the theological tradition that followed in or Sallie McFague. This common move its wake according to certain key identi- of pairing postmodern with premodern fiers. sources in order to move past perceived Broadly speaking, we may name these conundrums in modernity (which paral- identifying characteristics of liberal theol- lels the liturgical blending of ancient rites ogy as 1) rejection of an identified ecclesial and cutting-edge technology) is amplified magisterium (e.g., popes or councils) as in emergent circles by the prominence having final authority over theological of thinkers who, following such earlier production; 2) denial of scriptural iner- provocateurs as Thomas Altizer, describe rancy/infallibility (both in its nascent their theological projects as “radical,” most forms within Protestant orthodoxy of notably John Caputo and Peter Rollins. the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries The impression that this language and later in its evangelical/fundamental- gives is that the theology of the emergent ist configurations); 3) willingness to have church represents a genuinely new phe- theological beliefs and church doctrines nomenon on the theological scene, one modified according to new insights from that creatively rereads the premodern other disciplines, particularly science; 4) sources largely disdained by the Enlight- characterization of doubt as a theological enment and much subsequent Protestant virtue rather than a deficiency in piety; theology through the lens of postmodern 5) prioritization of individual experience thinkers that, despite their diverse method- over established ecclesial doctrine; and 6) ologies, all hold in common the contention a tendency to regard the desired “outcome” that Enlightenment-based modernity in of Christian piety in ethical/political terms the West has shown itself to be deficient rather than in terms of overly otherworldly/ at best and destructive at worst. And the supernatural depictions of salvation (e.g., thoroughgoing freedom of this theology “going to heaven when you die”). My claim from both its “orthodox” (in the negative, is that, while liberal theology is and has magisterially enforced sense) and En- always been a variegated phenomenon, lightenment roots merits the appellation all of its various strands participate in a “radical” by those who practice it—both greater or lesser degree in all six of the in terms of theological production and in aforementioned characteristics. the sort of communities formed by those Meanwhile, “emergence theology” is a drawn to emergence theology. far more slippery term to define; however, On the other hand, when one frankly it, too, can be illumined by considering assesses what the constructive upshot of its relationship to the Enlightenment. this radical theology might be, including On the one hand, the sources favored the virtues espoused—invocation of the by emergent church theology (much like importance of mystery, the compatibility those of the still-vital bane of Protestant of faith with doubt, appreciative but non- liberalism, the so-called “Radical Ortho- literal scriptural hermeneutics, and ethical doxy” movement) tend to pre- and post- mandates toward non-colonizing respect date the canon that has shaped theology in for the “Other” in a given situation—then Saler. The Emergent Church and Liberal Theology: Ships in the Night?

115 it is difficult to escape the impression that church theology, true to form, has thrived the terminus point for much emergent in recent years). Jeremy Ridenour, blogger theology is virtually identical to many with the influential humanities blog “An iterations of the classical liberal theological und fur Sich,” recently wrote the following tradition: namely, theologically informed in response to a series of blog posts on the progressive ethics and politics.3 Put dif- emergent-heavy theological conference ferently, when one asks what is “after” “Subverting the Norm”: orthodoxy in its various iterations, the In reality, what is being offered here is answer seems to be progressivism in its radical theology-lite. In this genealogy political sense. Toward the end of his life, of this new tradition of radical theol- the “father of deconstruction” Jacques Der- ogy-lite we are really getting a liberal rida had to specify that “justice” in its most theology that is in denial about its roots. robust (even messianic) sense was the one Not that there’s anything wrong with undeconstructible reality that undergirds liberal theology. There’s a lot of good all other instances of deconstruction to the ideas in the history of liberal theology. extent that they are ethical;4 similarly, when It is my contention that the reason why one works her way through Peter Rollins’ many emergent do not simply accept marvelously poetic and deconstructively that they are liberal theologians is daring texts, one is left with the sense that that they have bought into evangelical the “where to from here?” question is best propaganda regarding liberal theology. answered in terms of the forms of justice Due to the fact that many people who and openness towards the Other made are part of the emergent-radical camp possible by the embrace of doubt (as well are disaffected evangelicals, they simply as new formations of community that cannot accept liberal theology and might embody this openness).5 the mainline church. As a result, new But if this is at all true, then it ulti- words were made up that attempt to mately is hard to see much daylight be- outdo liberal theology (see progressive, tween it and the goals of liberal Protestant radical, incarnational, or emergent). theology. This point occasionally inspired Notice that “liberal” is always a dirty polemics, particularly within the theologi- word in these circles. Liberal theology cal blogosphere (where much emergent is always the convenient straw man that is created to make the new “third 3. For a discussion that encapsulates way” appear categorically distinct from this tension almost perfectly, cf. John D. Caputo, “On Not Settling for an Abridged its conservative and liberal brethren. I Edition of Postmodernism: Radical Herme- find the caricature of liberal theology neutics as Radical Theology” in Reexamining that is operative in the discourse at Deconstruction and Determinate Religion: Homebrewed Christianity [a popular Toward a Religion with Religion, J. Aaron online blog also associated with emergence Simmons and Stephen Minister, eds. (Pitts- theology] unacceptable. In many ways, burgh: Duquesne University Press, 2012), liberal theology is consonant with the esp. 322ff. radical theology-lite values laid out 4. Cf. Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion, here: pluralism, humility, belief with Gil Anidjar, ed. (New York: Routledge, doubt, an appreciation of symbolic 2001), esp. 230ff. language and political.6 5. This is, on my reading, especially the case with Rollins’ book Insurrection (New 6. Jeremy Ridenour, “Radical York: Howard, 2011). Theology Lite,” http://itself.wordpress. Saler. The Emergent Church and Liberal Theology: Ships in the Night?

116 Ridenour’s point is that emergence others have pointed out, a large number theology in its “radical” guise can’t have of authors and movements associated with its cake and eat it too vis-à-vis Protestant emergence theology (e.g., Brian McLaren, liberalism: emergence Christianity can- Peter Rollins, Jay Bakker, Frank Schaeffer, not lift up the salutary nature of doubt, Tony Jones, Nadia Bolz-Weber, etc.) come instability of doctrinal formulations, and from evangelical and/or fundamental- approval of progressive politics in a man- ist backgrounds in which debates over ner consonant with the liberal Protestant scriptural inerrancy, evolution, and vari- theological tradition while still employing ous culture war matters that are—frankly polemics against liberal Protestantism (or speaking—largely foreign to most liberal/ even silence as to its commonalities) as a mainline Protestant contexts were the point of identity. theological problems at hand. Identity is More charitably, we can say that the always formed to a great extent both by relative lack of commerce and dialogue between liberal Protestant and emergence theology represents a missed opportunity e can ask: for both camps. The constructive task moving forward, then, would be to think how can through how the trajectories of the two W streams might benefit from more dialogue both the liberal and mutual enhancement/correction. The remainder of this essay will be a small Protestant tradition contribution to this project. Receiving gifts … and emergence It is common among ecumenical theolo- Christianity … better gians to speak of the goal of ecumenics as facilitating “gift exchange” among receive each other’s diverse Christian traditions such that a given tradition is empowered to receive theological gifts? the “gifts” offered by a different tradition. With that in mind, we can ask: how can both the liberal Protestant tradition (to the elements of the past against which one the extent that it remains, for the most sets herself and by the values of the past part, the dominant theological model that one carries forward (wittingly or not) within mainline U.S. Protestantism) and into the future; in the case of emergence emergence Christianity (as it is embod- theology, we can notice that part of the ied within the church and para-church disconnect between emergence and liberal communities and institutions chronicled Protestant theologies is that the latter tends by Tickle and others) better receive each to spar with Protestant fundamentalism other’s theological gifts? as a foreign entity, while the former spars Here I would argue that a clue to with it as an intimate formative influence. moving forward comes from being atten- However, this background of emer- tive to each tradition’s past. As Tickle and gence Christianity gives it two significant advantages compared to much liberal com/2013/07/25/radical-theology-lite/, Protestant mainline theology and prac- accessed December 7, 2014. tice. First, emergence Christianity retains Saler. The Emergent Church and Liberal Theology: Ships in the Night?

117 commerce and dialogue with evangelical of liberal Protestant theology leveled by organs (e.g., such publishing houses as Barth and Bonhoeffer: when Christianity Intervarsity Press, vital seminaries such as becomes ethics, then “ethics” can easily Fuller and Regent, etc.) with which liberal be co-opted into simple bourgeois “good Protestantism tends to have fewer inroads. citizenship” that is insufficiently robust Second, and more controversially, I would to be countercultural when “citizenship” assert that it is largely correct to say (along itself becomes co-opted into tyranny and with such self-aware emergence authors as injustice. Tickle and Rollins) that deconstructive All of which is to say that, in a time emergence Christianity retains a deep and when mainline Protestantism might pious love for Scripture and its various profitably look to a number of evangelical premodern hermeneutical horizons (in- streams (especially those who increasingly terpreted, in Tickle and McLaren’s choice combine full commitment to evangelical phrase, “actually and not factually,” which principles of piety but yet have moved we may notice is ironically a variation on beyond focus on “culture wars” in order the Niebuhrian formulation “taking Scrip- to apply biblical principles to areas such ture seriously but not literally” so beloved as global poverty and climate change8) for by liberal Protestants) that is inherited sources of revitalization, the fact that there from evangelicalism and carried forward is such coherence between the ethical vi- into emergence communities. sions of emergence and liberal Protestant Meanwhile, for those familiar with streams at their best (however unacknowl- now-standard twentieth-century narra- edged such convergence might be) makes tives—stemming largely from Karl Barth the prospect of deeper engagement with and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s rejection of the emergence trends of clear benefit to those liberal theology taught to them by their still self-consciously operating within esteemed teachers in Germany—of the liberal Protestant streams. failure of liberal Protestant theology to But is the reverse true? Of what ward off the corruption brought on by benefit is greater engagement with liberal cultural decay and fascism (e.g., the rise of Protestant theology to emergence theology, the Third Reich),7 the retention of greater including in its “radical” visions? seriousness regarding scriptural herme- Here I would argue that the oppor- neutics and Christian formation (e.g., in tunity present for emergence theology is “neo-monastic” currents of emergence to participate in what I anticipate will be practice) might indeed be regarded as an a substantial rethinking of the aforemen- important corrective. The criticism that tioned narrative of liberal theology’s weak- Ridenour correctly associates with such ness in the face of collapsed Christendom, emergence organs as Homebrewed Chris- a rethinking that is already taking place. tianity, that liberal Protestantism tends in For instance, in her recent text Theology practice to favor ethics to the point that and the End of Doctrine, Christine Helmer mainline Protestant churches become convincingly shows that Schleiermacher something akin to “the Democratic party (the “father” of liberal Protestant theology at prayer,” corresponds to the criticism and still its most chastised representative among proponents of the Barthian nar- 7. Cf. Paul R. Hinlicky, Before Auschwitz: What Christian Theology Must 8. Cf. Brian Steensland and Philip Goff Learn from the Rise of Nazism (Eugene, Ore.: eds., The New Evangelical Social Engagement Cascade, 2013). (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Saler. The Emergent Church and Liberal Theology: Ships in the Night?

118 rative concerning liberal theology’s fate) Moreover, as one of liberal Protestantism’s was a far more nuanced and rich thinker of unwitting offspring, emergence theology how biblical piety leads to vital Christian will be in a prime position to give fresh as- community than he has been credited sessment to its strength and weaknesses— as being.9 While it may historically be PROVIDED that emergence theologians the case that a series of contingencies come to regard such a task as worthwhile. and internal weaknesses led to liberal Convincing these theologians that the Protestantism in both Europe and the effort will indeed be worth it has been one United States to cast its lot with strands of my goals in this essay. As xenophobic, of Christendom that ultimately proved anti-science forms of Christianity continue deficient, the animating critical spirit to receive a disproportionate amount of behind liberal Protestant theology also press in the United States and Europe, continues to empower theologians to en- strands of Christian practice that stand gage in precisely the sort of deconstructive for the gains made by theology after the acts towards justice that “radical” theology Enlightenment (however ambiguous and commends. For instance, what is Paul Til- in need of further modifications such gains lich’s formulation of “Catholic substance/ might be) need to be, if not in unity, at Protestant principle” if not precisely a least in each other’s critical awareness so formula for periodic deconstruction in that the gifts of each may strengthen all. the name of vital piety and justice? And in times when anti-science attitudes are Conclusion threatening the welfare of billions of the At this point, we may say that liberal Prot- world’s poorest, as well as the planet itself, estant theology and emergence theology openness to the insights of science becomes have largely passed each other as two ships less about simple intellectual respectability in the night. The interaction has occasion- and more about following Christ’s call to ally been marked by curiosity, occasionally care for the neighbor in need. by polemic, but often by simple silence. In short, liberal Protestantism and However, given the ultimate coherence its wake is due for a reevaluation, and between each strand’s vision of what it such evaluation will likely uncover that means to live in the sort of vital Christian these thinkers are greater than the straw community that will allow the horizon of man purgatory into which they have been one’s piety to be shaped by the needs of confined by dominant twentieth and early that which is Other, and the salutary role twenty-first century trends—which will of that doubt and openness to deconstruc- course be to the good of the whole church. tion can play in that task, the time has come for a deeper theological dialogue between the two camps. Those within 9. Cf. Helmer, Theology and the End of each stream, as well as others standing in Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014). For a similar account of Schlei- respectful distance from them (Christian ermacher’s sense of the place of doctrine in and non-Christian alike), stand to benefit vibrant community, cf. Robert Saler, (Min- and learn from this engagement “to come” neapolis: Fortress, 2014), esp. chapter 2. in the future. Credo

Elaine A. Heath McCreless Professor of Evangelism, Perkins School of Theology Southern Methodist University

I began thinking about this book on yearning to believe in the face of darkness, December 16, 2012, the third Sunday of to trust God in the presence of the raised Advent, the third day after the mass shoot- fist of death. During Advent we remember ing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the words of John the Evangelist, “The light New Town, Connecticut. While the sun shines in the darkness and the darkness rose that Lord’s Day the small community cannot overwhelm it.”1 We say it even as awakened again to the incomprehensible the light slips away. slaughter of the innocents. It had been Advent is the liturgical season in three days since a masked gunman entered which Christians say against all odds, “I the school and murdered twenty first- believe.” graders and six teachers and then took his I believe own life. Adam Lanza used weapons owned I believe. I choose to rest the weight by his mother, a gun enthusiast who was of my brief existence upon the bedrock also a teacher. She was the first person he of a God who is Mystery, yet who is killed. On the third day there was no stone made known through creation, through rolled away from a tomb, no coming back Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, through to life of those children and their teachers, scripture, through every act of love. But or for Adam or his mother. Resurrection coming home to Christian belief has not was spoken of in the funerals of many. But been easy for me. the children along with their teachers and I grew up in a family fractured by killer were all really and truly dead. violence, addictions, abuse, and neglect. How does one pray in the face of such We often lived in poverty, not the “we were horror? How does one believe? poor but didn’t know it because we had Where is God? What kind of god each other and everyone else was poor too” is God, if there even is a God? For how kind, but the kind that is caused by addic- could a God worthy of trust permit such tions with attendant chaos. My siblings and evil? These are the questions such an event I are all survivors of years of trauma. We calls forth. all left home while we were still children. To add to the pathos the massacre In a slow movement of redemption that happened during Advent. This is the season only God could orchestrate, in time all in the church year when Christians name of us came to faith, my parents last of all. the suffocating darkness, the oppressive They were in their late sixties. I crossed systems and powers and principalities that the threshold to Jesus when I was sixteen. are hell-bent on destruction. Everywhere Because of the aftereffects of trauma I we turn, death seems to swallow life. Ad- had my own long years of Advent, waiting vent is the liturgical season that ritualizes for the Light to fully baptize the post- our desperation in the night. How long, traumatic stress, wondering how long until O Lord, ‘till the light comes? Advent is the 1. John 1:5.

Currents in Theology and Mission 42:2 (April 2015) Heath. Credo

120 there would be peace. My journey into because women were inherently seductive shalom has been glacially slow at times, and men were incapable of self-control. largely because of theology. There was the The subtext of that message was that my doctrine of a wrathful Heavenly Father personal history as a survivor of violence who tortures in fire those who don’t love was inevitable because I am female. To him. “What kind of god would torture?” I be female, even a little girl, was to cause secretly wondered. That god was a monster. such things to happen. To be female was Trusting that god was not possible. With to be responsible for sexual sin, which that god, hyper-vigilance would be an meant being female was steeped in sexual ongoing necessity. You never knew when shame. I learned all of this long before I God’s rage would start. You would have could describe any of it with theological to be very, very careful not to make God precision. angry. You would never be sure exactly In time I began to name the problems what might tip him off. If there was an with the super-sexed worldview of the eternal hell, I privately thought, it would church. I wondered why the religious be better there than with the capricious authorities didn’t realize they were denying the words of St. Paul to Timothy, to treat torture god. At least in hell you would 2 know what to expect. women as sisters and mothers, which I thought these things while faith- in a healthy family means an intimate fully going to church and raising my cross-gender sharing of life that is not children. These thoughts were the seeds sexualized. I wondered how the reality of my vocation. In time I would become of gay and lesbian people’s sexuality fit a theologian, but first there were years of into the mandate against cross-gender questions I could not ask. friendships. But of course they too were sexualized and consigned to hell, period, No one told me early on that there no discussion allowed. Sexual “others” are many metaphors for atonement in the did not count just as women’s voices did New Testament, each of them limited, not count. In time I came to see the links each speaking to a particular situation, between patriarchy and every other kind none of them sufficient on their own. of systemic evil. I wondered if I could be No one said, “That ugly view of God is a Christian and reject patriarchy. called Penal Substitutionary Atonement, There were many, many sermons and you do not have to believe it to be a about men being spiritual heads of the follower of Jesus. Just look at Jesus to see house even if they are hateful, childish, what kind of god, God is.” The torture god and narcissistic, and women having to was just there, a thing everyone assumed. submit to those husbands’ violence. I So I lurked around the edges of Christian saw gifted women treated as second-class doctrine, peeking in the windows, wonder- citizens in the church, their voices, power ing if anyone else could see what I saw. and personhood disrespected and stifled There was the sexism, too. It took while men who were far less competent years before I could name how the oppres- were elevated to top positions of leader- sion of women goes hand in hand with a ship. It took decades for me to fully realize god who uses threats to get his way. The that patriarchal interpretations of scripture sexualization of women in the church was were only interpretations. They were not pervasive. I was told that women and men the word of God. There were much better, could not be friends because the relationship would always become sexual. This was 2. 1 Timothy 5:2. Heath. Credo

121 more Jesus-like ways to read the Bible and virus in the church—Jesus taps me on the to be a community of faith. shoulder, turns me around and points to There was also the matter of “justifi- the cross. He points to the lepers, the sick, able” hatred and discrimination against the unclean, the pack of unlikely friends people who are not like us that stems with whom he launched the newborn from patriarchy. This was the implicit or church. “Well?” he asks, waiting. explicit demonizing and stigmatizing of You did not choose me, I chose people who don’t accept our religion or you are different racially, economically, sexu- How much of choosing to believe (or ally, or in some other way that challenges “be-love” as Diana Butler Bass puts it)4 is our tidy system of who’s in and who’s out, in fact a rational choice? Doesn’t be-loving even though the heart of the gospel is that first choose us? “You did not choose me. I God loves God’s enemies. The central fact chose you,” Jesus says to his disciples, who is that Jesus came to show us that this is struggle constantly with fear and pride and the kind of God, God is—the one who not knowing.5 We are like them, resisting reaches out in love to enemies, who over- the clear words of God being spoken to us comes fear and hate with love. The God just as they were spoken to Jesus, “You are of the third way.3 You may wonder how I managed to stay in the church at all in light of these problems. I did it for two reasons. First elovedness, not because of individuals along the way who death, not guilt in the words of Oswald Chambers “bore B a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ.” I experienced the love of God in them. or shame or evil, is They were people of compassion, hope, prayer, and courage. Their lives bore no the central fact of our resemblance to the theology that troubled me so. The second thing was, I could not existence. stop reading the gospels. Jesus was irresist- ible to me. He was nothing like the torture my beloved, in you I am well pleased.”6 god. He did not sexualize women. He We are against such love, fight it, explain respected outsiders. He was non-violent. it away, and attach rules and regulations Jesus was not impressed with status and for its reception. We create hierarchies of often warned against wealth. He welcomed worthiness that exclude all but a chosen people everyone else loved to hate. He was few, and we want to be among the few “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” even as we know that cannot be right. Jesus, the one who shows us what kind of Belovedness, not death, not guilt God, God is. The Jesus of the gospels follows me or shame or evil, is the central fact of around and every time I think I can’t take 4. Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After it any more—the sex-mammon-power Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (New York: 3. Walter Wink, The Powers that Be: Harper Collins, 2012), 118. Theology for a New Milennium (New York: Galilee, an imprint of Doubleday, 1998), 5. John 15:16. 98–111. 6. Mark 1:11. Heath. Credo

122 our existence. We are chosen. We are do you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste? beloved. To believe is to open ourselves Become aware of the quality of light, to this central fact—our chosenness, our weather, air movement, humidity, and belovedness—and to respond to it in kind temperature. Notice colors and sounds. with choosing and loving in return. Belief Pay attention to the multitude of stories is about love. It is beyond intellect or will, that are in process for each living thing though in time these habituate to love. you encounter. You may wish to sit for a To believe is to climb the mountain while, walk, bicycle, kayak, wade, float, of unanswerable questions, to climb with or use some other quiet means in order all the equipment we can carry, with ropes to immerse yourself in the environment. and cleats and carabiner clips so that we As you bring this experience to closure, don’t fall into the abyss. We do not real- open your arms, palms up and arms wide, ize in our fearful search for certitude that as a symbol of welcome to what is there. God is there, too, in the abyss. That love Breathe deeply. Allow gratitude to shape will catch us there. To say yes to being your awareness. Say “yes” or “amen” to the beloved is to let go of all the props, take “isness” of creation. off the gear, undress. It is to stand at the edge naked, and leap out into the sky, to merge, to fly, to fall into the endless keep he journey to of God. To do this is to both be-love and be beloved. belief is unique Reaching for the light that already T shines upon us, welcoming the joy that for each of us. already enfolds us, opening our hearts to the love that already encircles us, responding to the God who made us—to do these Prayer 2: Using a large sheet of paper things is to believe. and markers, colored pencils or other materials, create a map of your life from Prayer with “I believe” as far back as you can remember. You may The journey to belief is unique for each use a metaphor of a road map or a river, of us. The following prayer activities are or some other symbolic expression that exercises that can open our hearts to receive indicates movement or a journey. Draw the love of God that is already there for us. or symbolically represent times in your life These prayer experiences could be engaged that were spiritually formative. These could sequentially over a period of several days, be joyous, difficult, hopeful, grievous, or or in a retreat, over several sessions with a any other kind of situation. After you group, or gradually over a period of several have completed your life map, reflect on weeks, as you are ready to practice them. the experiences that brought you to be the Prayer 1: Go outdoors into a green person you are today. Welcome the whole space. This can be your back yard, a story with all its ups and downs, all the garden, a local park, a beach, a forest, a joys and sorrows, successes and failures, meadow, lake, river, or any other natural as a sacred journey. Allow gratitude to fill setting where there are plants, trees, birds, your heart as you say “yes” and “amen” to squirrels, fish, insects, or other non-human the “isness” of your own story. living things. Open yourself to all the Prayer 3: Using a pen and paper, sensory input that surrounds you. What reflect on significant moments through Heath. Credo

123 your life when you were profoundly aware Allow your attention to be drawn to vari- of being loved. Make a list of these mo- ous stories and events. As you read each ments. Begin with most recent experiences story or notification, pause at the end and work your way backward to as early and recall the prayers you prayed about as you can remember. When your list is creation and your own story. Recall your finished, fold it and put it in an envelope. own belovedness. Using a colored marker, On the front and center of the envelope encircle the persons, events, or situations write your own name. In the upper left that capture your attention. The encircling corner of the envelope where the return represents your awareness of the people or address goes, write God’s name. Hold event. As you draw the circles extend the the envelope against your heart. Allow love that has been given to you, to those gratitude to fill you for all the moments of whose stories are in the paper. Honor on belovedness that have been given to you. behalf of the individuals, events, or situ- Say “yes” or “amen” to your belovedness. ations, God’s compassion and God’s care Welcome the love of God that has been for them. Open your heart to solidarity given to you in each of those moments. with those who long for the healing and reconciliation of brokenness in stories Practicing hospitality with that you read about in the paper. Fold the “I believe” paper up and hold it close to your heart. Release the people, events, and situations The following practices of hospitality flow into God’s keeping. Ask God to show you organically from the practices of prayer 7 if there is an appropriate way that you can recommended above. Even if you do not tangibly offer compassionate presence do precisely what is recommended below, to people who are in one or more of the these options can help you think about stories in the paper. both giving and receiving hospitable space Practice 2: Every year millions of to others in ways that mediate the non- people are displaced by war, famine, and coercive, non-violent, non-manipulative, political upheaval. Often they have expe- self-giving love of God. Often when we rienced horrific violence. They are forced reach out to give hospitality to others we to flee to refugee camps where they await a find ourselves also recipients of hospitality time when they can either safely go home as we become aware of the gift that the or immigrate to another country. Often other person is in our own life. refugees wait for years before they can Practice 1: Buy a local newspaper for leave the camps. Find out whether there your community. Prepare your favorite are refugees in or near your location. You beverage and find a quiet place to drink can easily gather this information from your beverage while you read the paper. the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).8 As you visit 7. Some excellent books to read on the the UNHCR website open your heart subject of deep hospitality in the Christian and mind to the need for hospitality that tradition include Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the refugees face. Learn about the process of Spiritual Life (New York: Image, 1986), and immigration and resettlement, and what Christine Pohl, Making Room: Recovering kinds of support are helpful. Bring the Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand refugees who are nearest you into your Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999); and Letty Russell, Just Hospitality (Louisville: Westminster/ 8. http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/ John Knox, 2010). vtx/home. Heath. Credo

124 prayer. Visualize divine love enfolding mental health care and easy access to them, and then imagine yourself as the assault weapons. The systemic nature of face of a loving God welcoming them to the problem is further apparent in the your community. Choose some action that seeming inability of Congress to pass laws reaches beyond yourself to offer tangible that protect citizens from mass shootings. support to a refugee or refugee family. To Practices of justice include both individual find out what kinds of supportive actions and communal actions to resist injustice, are most helpful check with International and to support a just and peaceful world Rescue Committee.9 Catholic Charities and resist systemic injustice. also offers refugee resettlement services Practice 1: Return to the paper you in many states. Both of these agencies used for the first exercise in hospitality. offer training for individuals who wish to Notice one of the stories you marked that volunteer to companion refugees during has to do with systemic injustice. Return resettlement. to the prayer you experienced for that situation. Invite God to show you next Practicing justice with steps you can take to resist the unjust “I believe” system represented in that story and to Practices of justice from an “I believe” promote justice in that system. Engage in perspective have to do with cooperating further research so that you have necessary with God’s mission of making all things information in order to take responsible new. Engaging in issues of justice often action. For example if the news story has to do with systems rather than isolated that drew your attention had to do with events of harm. For example I began this inadequate resources for a public school, essay remembering the Sandy Hook mas- find out what kinds of legislation may be pending that could help or further harm that school system so that you can vote in ngaging in a way that is just. Contact the principal of the school to find out what kinds of issues of justice volunteer opportunities exist that you E could join to help bring about greater often has to do with justice for that school system. If none of the stories you circled had systems rather than to do with systemic injustice, or you no longer have the paper you used in that isolated events of exercise, choose one of the following options: harm. Practice 2: Using the Internet, find out what kind of resources are available in sacre. The injustice committed against your community to assist individuals who the children and teachers who died was are experiencing domestic violence. Find larger than Adam Lanza’s choices and ac- out about shelters, educational programs tions. The tragedy at Sandy Hook points offered by shelters or agencies to prevent to bigger systemic issues of injustice in dating violence, and find out which area our nation having to do with insufficient churches participate in these programs. (Often the director or another staff person 9. http://www.rescue.org. of a shelter is willing to be interviewed by Heath. Credo

125 people who are interested in supporting this type of eco-justice in your region. the mission of the shelter.) Contact one Do at least one thing to resist injustice of the shelters or agencies and ask what and promote justice in the area of eco- kind of help they need to change state justice that you have chosen. laws or systems within institutions so that greater protection is available for victims of domestic violence. In other words, gather Conclusion the information you need in order to make In this essay we began with the struggle to an informed decision to act justly to resist have faith in a world filled with injustice. domestic violence. We looked at the damaging effect poor theology has on many people’s ability to believe because violent, hating images of elieving is a God are all too familiar for survivors of fluid process. … violence. Then we explored the meaning B of “I believe” as a process of receiving for The good news is that ourselves and then passing on to others, God’s love. In the final section we turned God believes in us. to three spiritual practices—prayer, hospitality, and justice—that can express “I Practice 3: Ecological justice is simul- believe” not just with words, but action. To taneously easier and more difficult to act believe is to love, trust, and act. Believing upon than social justice, because in general is a fluid process. Some days we are more the earth, water, air, and animals do not have voices or political power to represent faithful than others. The good news is that themselves in the face of injustice. At the God believes in us. For this reason we can same time, to work for ecological justice lean into the journey without fear. As the is also to impact social justice because en- great Christian mystic and theologian, vironmental destruction always has social Julian of Norwich saw in her vision of consequences that are borne by people, the hazelnut, which represented all that especially disadvantaged communities. God has made: Choose one area of ecological justice such as keeping water clean and accessible. Us- In this little thing I saw three prop- ing the Internet, do some research to find erties. The first is that God made it; out what the major threats are to protecting the second is that God loves it; the water and keeping it clean in your state. third is that God preserves it. But Find out who suffers the most in your state what did I see in it? It is that God because of lack of access to clean water. is the Creator and the protector and Find out how to resist systems of injustice 10 that privilege those who pollute water. For the lover. example learn about mountain top coal 10. Julian of Norwich, Showings, Clas- removal in West Virginia or fracking in sics of Western Spirituality Series, Translated Texas, and what concerned citizens are and with an Introduction by Edmund doing to resist this form of injustice. Find Colledge and James Walsh (New York: Pau- out what steps you can take to help with list Press, 1978), 183. Overture and Variations on an Unsettled Theme: Musical Insights into Emerging Christianity

April Stace Vega Marymount University & The John Leland Center for Theological Studies

Timothy K. Snyder Boston University & Wartburg Theological Seminary

Overture ing religious identities and commitments in today’s diverse social life. With this we In their ground-breaking study, The most certainly agree. Joining in the chorus Deconstructed Church: Understanding of scholarly voices looking to Emerging Emerging Christianity, sociologists Gerardo Christianity with hope, this paper takes Marti and Gladys Ganiel characterize as its focus the underdeveloped insights this movement as “an institutionalizing of congregational practices of music. By structure, made up of a package of beliefs, exploring the musical insights of emerging practices and identities which are continu- churches, we argue academic theologians ally deconstructed and reframed by the ought to pay closer attention to congre- religious institutional entrepreneurs who gational practice. However, before we can 1 drive the movement”(emphasis original). proceed, it is important to understand Sociologically, they suggest this movement what kind of cultural moment we live in is “one of the most important reframings and how such a “culture” shapes social and of religion within Western Christianity ecclesial practice. in the last two decades.”2 Theologically, it seems the jury is still out.3 Nonethe- The theme: unsettled lives less, there is little doubt that one of the Ann Swidler, in a seminal article in sociol- reasons these two sociologists make this ogy, writes about the relationship between claim is because they see in Emerging culture and action.4 Against the prevailing Christianity new possibilities for navigat- social theories, which inadequately capture the causal role of culture in social action 1. Gerardo Marti and Gladys Ganiel, (or practice), Swidler suggests we need The Deconstructed Church: Understanding two different models for understanding Emerging Christianity (New York: Oxford how culture explains action. In settled University Press, 2014), 8. lives, times in which people know how 2. Ibid., 5. to act, “culture is intimately integrated 3. See Tim Hartman, “The Depth and Breadth of Emergence Christianity: A Theo- 4. Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: logical and International Perspective” in this Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociologi- issue of Currents in Theology and Mission. cal Review 51:2 (1986): 273–286.

Currents in Theology and Mission 42:2 (April 2015) Vega, Snyder. Overture and Variations on an Unsettled Theme

127 with action; it is here that we are most Western classical orchestra.7 Peter Sachon, tempted to see values as organizing and from the Institute for Music Leadership anchoring patterns of action; and here at the Eastman School of Music, suggests it is most difficult to disentangle what is that American orchestras must embrace uniquely ‘cultural,’ since culture and struc- cross-genre performances in order to tural circumstances seem to reinforce each appeal to millenials’ artistic sensibilities.8 other.”5 Here, one might think of European Music critic and Julliard professor Gregory religious life before the disestablishment Sandow touts the need for classical musi- of state churches or American mainline cians to perform in venues other than Protestant religious life during its comfort- concert halls, such as clubs and bars, in able period of growth and cultural security order to embed the music into everyday in the 1950s. However, Swidler goes on life.9 Music educator Gerald Klickstein to suggest that in unsettled lives, culture’s from the Peabody Institute has argued role in sustaining traditional or assumed for changes to be made in the education patterns of social practice—what Swidler of classical musicians; in particular, the often calls “strategies of action”—takes need to move away from a model that on a new role: that of constructing new prizes the “virtuoso.”10 Instead, he sug- ways of life.6 In settled lives, culture can be gests, performance should be a “normal” thought of as inherited, assumed tradition part of life. Similar to Marti and Ganiel’s or a common sense. These cultural forms notions of a “deconstructed church,” Sa- may shape action in indirect ways, but chon, Sandow and Klickstein’s narratives the overall effect is that of continuity in style, and in organization form. During unsettled cultural periods, new highly co- 7. Vivien Schweitzer, “Survival Strate- herent cultural narratives emerge to make a gies for Orchestras,” The New York Times more direct impact on action and therefore (May 25, 2011). http://www.nytimes. produce new strategies of action. Few will com/2011/05/29/arts/music/survival-strate- wonder whether today we live in settled or gies-for-orchestras.html?pagewanted=all&_ unsettled lives. Western religious culture r=0 [accessed December 11, 2014.] is in the midst of an extended unsettling 8. Peter Sachon, “Millenial America,” and arguments abound concerning its Polyphonic.Org: The Orchestra Musician future. With this framework in mind, Forum Blog, entry posted April 8, 2014, we might say that Emerging Christian- http://www.polyphonic.org/2014/04/08/ ity embodies a new theological narrative millennial-america/ [accessed December 10, 2014]. about what it means to be Christian in this time and place. 9. Gregory Sandow, “Useful, Fun, These are also unsettled times in Important Book,” Sandow: Gregory Sandow Western classical musical culture. In light on the Future of Classical Music Blog, entry posted December 1, 2014, http://www.arts- of the bankruptcies and failures of several journal.com/sandow/2014/12/useful-fun- major orchestras in the past decade, several important-book.html [accessed December prominent classical performers and educa- 10, 2014]. tors have issued calls to “re-imagine” the 10. Gerald Klickstein, “Learning the Art of Performance,” The Musician’s Way Blog, entry posted October 5, 2014, http:// musiciansway.com/blog/2014/10/learning- 5. Swidler, 278. the-art-of-performance/ [accessed December 6. Ibid. 10, 2014]. Vega, Snyder. Overture and Variations on an Unsettled Theme

128 call for a deconstructed orchestra.11 seven stand out in regard to the musical Mainline churches in America face practices of emerging congregations: first, similar struggles as classical orchestras: a that postmodern music challenges barriers shrinking and aging “audience” (congre- between “high” and “low” styles; second, gations), a perceived inability to relate to that it considers music not as autono- younger generations, internal struggles mous but as relevant to cultural, social, over appropriate models for training and political contexts; third, it considers professionals (ministers), and a sense that technology not only as a way to preserve their “product” is no longer deemed valu- and transmit music but also as deeply im- able by the larger society. Just as internal plicated in the production and essence of critiques from some scholars implicitly music; fourth, it embraces contradictions; express that the American orchestra must fifth, it distrusts binary oppositions; sixth, come to terms with its dis-establishment in it encompasses pluralism and eclecticism; American culture and must seek out a new and seventh, it locates meaning and even place among the “everyday” of American structure in listeners, more than in scores, society if it is to survive, the emerging performances, or composers.12 Heather church seeks its place in a spirit of do- Josselyn-Cranson rightly identifies this it-yourself religion and, to borrow Brian last characteristic as being the most im- McLaren’s language, among the “rest of us.” portant to consider when studying musical In the following two sections, we explore practices of congregations, as it cautions key insights from our own fieldwork in us against looking for unity where there emerging congregations. In doing so, we is none.13 We can only look for a shared hope to give “voice” to the embodied nar- approach to and understanding of musical ratives of their congregational practices of practices in emerging congregations; there music. will likely be no shared musical corpus. This list of defining “postmodern” Movement One: Music as characteristics also suggests that the Process musical practices of emerging church Among the sixteen markers of postmodern congregations must be understood in music identified by Jonathan Kramer, terms of larger cultural shifts, both musical and ecclesiological. The strategies of 11. It is important to note that Sachon, the “postmodern”orchestra—embracing Sandow, and Klickstein are hardly margin eclecticism, breaking down the barrier voices in the conversation about the future between the performers and the audi- of the American orchestra. They hail from ence, and the use of visual technology, for historic and elite institutions; they occupy example—mirror the strategies employed not the margins but rather the very center. Perhaps what is most startling is the call for by emerging church congregations. How- new forms of music education beyond the virtuosos. While much has been said about 12. Jonathan Kramer, “The Nature the future of theological education, many and Origins of Musical Postmodernism,” in theologians continue to depend on ideal- Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought Judy ized notions of virtuoso religious or clerical Lochhead and Joseph Auner, eds. (New practice. For example, see Bonnie Miller- York: Routledge, 2002), 17. McLemore, “The Clerical and The Academic 13. Heather Josselyn-Cranson, “Local Paradigm” in Christian Theology in Practice: and Authentic: Music in Emerging Congre- Discovering a Discipline (Eerdmans, 2012), gations,” Worship 83 (September 1, 2009): especially 174–182. 418. Vega, Snyder. Overture and Variations on an Unsettled Theme

129 ever, while the goal for orchestras is often sionalism or a targeted demographic style described in terms of developing viable approach. I think we argue about music business models, in emerging churches, too much to the point that it does become goals are described in terms of ethics and too much. I wish we could just come in values. and pass out tambourines and shakers and In my (Vega) study of music leaders hand drums and choose music that day and pastors in five emerging congrega- and ask who wants to sing a song, but the church tradition of experience and history is not there for most people. So it takes a lot of intentionality to move that and hile the goal change that...You can worship with us one for orchestras Sunday and be playing guitar the next. W Many interviewees also expressed the desire to utilize different musical is often described in styles in order to express the “full human experience,” a term which often implicitly terms of developing referred to a variety of cultures but more explicitly referred to the full range of emo- viable business tion a person of faith might experience. One volunteer music leader in a smaller models, in emerging congregation explained how his congregation used music to express doubt: churches, goals are Our mission is really to broaden the definition of worship, so we use a lot described in terms of of secular music. We’re really interested in songs about doubt, and they help us ethics and values. accomplish that goal better than praise songs. We want people on any phase of a tions in the Washington, D.C., area, one journey to be able to find themselves here. over-arching theme emerged: explicit The Western classical music tradition concern for the social/ relational aspects has historically found primary meaning of music-making over and against the in the collection of performed, organized concern for producing an excellent musi- sounds that comprise a musical perfor- cal “product.”14 Congregational musical mance. However, emerging congrega- practices were often explained in terms of tions locate the meaning of music less in resisting and/or offering an alternative to the finished “product” than in the social more hierarchical modes of musical pro- processes involved in writing, choosing, duction in established American churches. selecting, and performing the music. In One pastor described it as follows: short, they embrace music-as-process over If we’re going to support participation music-as-product. If, as Christopher Small and inclusion and diversity, it means that suggests, musical practices “model, or we are giving up to a large extent a profes- stand as metaphor for, ideal relationships... between person and person, between in- 14. Interviews and site visits were dividual and society, between humanity conducted over the course of three years and the natural world and even perhaps in eight congregations in the Washington, the supernatural world,” then the ideal D.C., suburbs. Vega, Snyder. Overture and Variations on an Unsettled Theme

130 relationships in these congregations are care. Through the large archway into the egalitarian, inclusive, non-hierarchical, foyer I was met by Michael, a clean-cut and expressive of a full range of human man in his early forties. Michael was emotion.15 By embracing a postmodern dressed in one of the conservative black musical stance, emerging congregations suits he wore weekly as a funeral direc- also make profound ecclesiological state- tor. While all participants who played ments. significant roles in the Funeral Remem- brances were encouraged to put their own creativity into their characters, it Movement Two: was Michael’s choice to explicitly play Performance out a version of himself that struck me The embodied narratives we seek to draw most. It was altogether unclear if one attention to appear in both process and could say Michael was indeed “acting” performance. Here, I (Snyder) discussion at all. Others crafted themselves into Luke’s lovers and friends who now sat in my own ethnographic research of House a side chapel telling improvised stories of Mercy, an emerging congregation with of times shared with Luke while they origins in the American Baptist Church waited for the funeral to begin. but now affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. These ob- The funeral service began with mu- servations took place within the context of sical arrangements from albums released by Hank Williams as Luke, the Drifter. an ethnographic research project and were We were given lyric sheets and invited complimented by an additional two years to sing along. And so we did. The music of community participation. To comple- of the Funeral Remembrances matched ment the process-oriented approach above, the music of House of Mercy, one of I focus below on participant observations the oldest emerging congregations in of a theatric performance hosted by the the United States. Their Americana- congregation. This performance was part folk music is “canonized” in their own theatre and part ritual as the congregation homegrown hymnal: Songs of Mercy: played host to the Funeral Remembrances A Hymnal of Country Gospel and Great of Luke, the Drifter — the alter ego of American Hymns.16 The hymnal itself is Hank Williams Jr. dedicated to Johnny and June Cash; it From the Fieldnotes: November 2012 contains selections from Willie Nelson, the Louvin Brothers, and Hank Wil- I arrived at the Bradshaw Funeral liams as well original hymns by two home on a cold evening in October and of the congregation’s founders. The immediately realized that I had not music at House of Mercy brings one come to simply witness a theatric-ritual back to an era long gone, a time when performance. I had not even made it American mainline religion flourished. into the door before I was invited to This is not to say that the music sought be a part of it. I gave a young man our some kind of nostalgic return, but rather tickets for admission and then at the a critical-reflective embrace, which doorman’s invitation signed the guest makes room for authenticity and irony. book for Luke, offering kind words of 16. Songs of Mercy: A Hymnal of 15. Christopher Small, Musicking: Country Gospel and Great American Hymns, The Meanings of Performing and Listening compiled by C. P. Larson (St. Paul, Minn.: (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, House of Mercy and Sister Black Press, 1998), 13. 2003). Vega, Snyder. Overture and Variations on an Unsettled Theme

131 Authenticity through hymns such as als, Rev. Russell was inspired to create a Tommy Dorsey’s “Take My Hand” and space in which others might contemplate Albert Brumley’s “Just A Closer Walk to death, but without the high stakes involved Thee”—their theological content not at when one must confront death directly. all in tension with that of the congrega- The event provided “vital means whereby tion more generally. Irony as in when people reimagine and reconfigure received the congregation sings hymns which do ideas of where they stand in space and time not fit with the community’s embodied and thereby recover a sense of their own theological disposition: Lewis Jones’ capacity to know and act on the world “Power in the Blood” and Ira Louvin’s in which they now find themselves.”18 “The Great Atomic Power.” With this The Funeral Remembrances played with theological diversity liturgically performed, House of Mercy’s hymnody is death in its imaginative invocation of the like a chorus of contestation, a musical subjunctive, with a world as if it could be: midrash of argumentation never fully a world in which congregations provided resolved of its tensions. That night at the alternatives to the cultural narrative which Funeral Remembrances, we sang loud seem to deny death; a world in which even and faithfully in that musical tradition. drunks and womanizers had crowds at their funerals; a world in which we were honest Williams had crafted his alter ego with ourselves about our very complicated Luke the Drifter to account for the darker and pluralistic selves. The imagination of side of himself. Through moralistic recita- the Funeral Remembrances would not tions, the folk singer narrated his life as a have been possible without the multi-vocal womanizer, a drunk, and a bastard. The and ironic folk music of House of Mercy. choice to conduct the Funeral Remem- The music itself provided an accessible and brances for an alter ego, made evident embodied theological repertoire — both the vicarious nature of the ritual-play. It in terms of form (midrashic contestation) was, in the words of the Rev. Russell, an and content (a theological anthropology). attempt to do a funeral, “but with out so much at stake.”17 Finale We opened this paper with a brief excerpt from Brian D. McLaren’s provocative sug- A Subjunctive Practice gestion that in the postmodern world, we Rev. Russell’s inspiration for the Funeral may need a full range of artist-theologians Remembrances came from his experience to guide us; more scholarly books and lec- as chaplain at the Bradshaw Funeral tures likely will not yield new the new prac- Home. There, he presided over funerals tices or ecclesial forms needed to discover for Jane and John Does, the deceased who what it means to be the church today. The had little if anyone left around them to call implications for scholarly contributions family and friends. Inspired by the nuanced such as this one are certainly not lost on narratives which emerged in those funer- us. Rather, as both theologians and musicians, we see significant historical parallels 17. Chris Roberts, “‘Luke, the Drifter’ between our current unsettled cultural Shows How to Remember Troubled Lives,” moment and the disruptive theological Minnesota Public Radio News (October 13, 2011). http://www.mprnews.org/ 18. Michael D. Jackson, “On Birth, story/2011/10/13/luke-the-drifter [Accessed Death and Rebirth,” in Excursions (Dur- December 30, 2014]. See audio clip. ham: Duke University Press, 2007), 211. Vega, Snyder. Overture and Variations on an Unsettled Theme

132 turns of the Protestant Reformation.19 kind of language than that of academic Lutheran theologian, Vítor Westhelle, theology. It is a form of what Kathryn has written persuasively on Martin Luther’s Tanner has called “everyday theology,” transgressive use of language.20 While here and in both process and performance is not the place to rehearse the full breadth it is much more difficult to limit to the of Westhelle’s argument, three central domain of professionals, academics and features of his thesis certainly bear men- other authorized virtuosos.22 tion. First, Westhelle rightly reminds us Second, Westhelle goes on to argue of the relationship between language and that Luther strategically turns to the language of the carnival to transgress the very boundaries these power arrangements are t’s not just the meant to protect. “With his language,” he argues, “Luther brought the carnival church that is to academia, to the pulpit, to the square, I breaking down the disciplined frontiers unsettled, the church’s in which these utterances were allowed.”23 For Luther, theology itself was in need of theology is unsettled a transgression, it needed new strategies of action to move the church beyond its and new strategies unsettled juncture. It’s not just the church that is unsettled, the church’s theology is must emerge. unsettled and new strategies must emerge. Finally, according to Westhelle, Lu- ther’s turn to the vernacular both in his power when he writes, “The encoded or own theological reflections and, of course, canonical official language of hegemonic in translating the Bible into German is institutions is not only an instrument not primarily about making the Bible or a for the communication of power, but it theological tradition understandable. But is itself the exercise of power that works rather, “articulating the people’s imagery in by depriving other voices legitimacy.”21 biblical language”(emphasis added)24 It is While medieval theology suffered from about giving voice to that which everyday its entrapment in scholasticism, modern people of faith already know. Quoting theology is trapped within a seemingly Luther himself who wrote that, “Chris- endless number of academic disciplines tian theology does not start at the top, in and specializations. But music is a different the highest altitudes,…but there at the bottom, in the deepest profundity.”25 Of 19. Vega is a classically trained harpist course, expressions of this profundity have and Snyder is a classically trained trombon- been frequently discussed in contemporary ist. Both perform regularly with diverse ensembles. Luther scholarship including Luther’s use 20. Vítor Westhelle, “Communication 22. See Kathryn Tanner, Theories of and the Transgression of Language in Martin Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Fortress Luther” in The Pastoral Luther: Essays on Press, 1997), 66. Martin Luther’s Practical Theology,Timothy J. Wengert, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 23. Ibid., 77. 2009), 59–84. 24. Ibid., 81. 21. Ibid., 66. 25. Ibid., 80. Vega, Snyder. Overture and Variations on an Unsettled Theme

133 of woodcut pamphlets and his prolific ef- promising, we would like to emphasize forts to create new hymnody. Both forms not the particularity of its novel forms of 26 represent turns to everyday theology. In practice, but rather the embodied narra- our study of emerging congregations we tives that come with them. Put differently, see great hope for theological reflection on their embodied practices and narratives. if Swidler is correct (and we think she is), While here we are narrowly focused on congregational practices of music, perhaps what is most needed is for theologians to embrace new patterns of theological n our study research such as ethnography and new emerging forms which see such fieldwork of emerging 27 I as in and of itself a spiritual practice. For those who embrace such a turn, many congregations we other congregational practices remain ripe for further research. As Westhelle points see great hope for out, Luther’s use of language was an exercise in the transgression of disciplined theological reflection boundaries. If McLaren is right that in our postmodern condition we may need on their embodied to turn to artistic brothers and sisters, we will certainly find that we academic practices and theologians may need to find new strategies of action for transgressing our own narratives. disciplined boundaries. In conclusion, let us turn once more to then new strategies of action in unsettled our earlier claim that Emerging Christian- cultural periods such as ours will only be ity embodies a new theological narrative possible with the emergence of new, co- about what it means to be Christian in this herent narratives. Emerging Christianity time and place. While we find the recent represents a new embodied story about scholarly interest in Emerging Christianity the future of American Christianity: a 26. See Philip Ruge-Jones, “Luther’s future rooted in do-it-yourself religion, in Theology of the Cross in Pamphlet Form” everyday stories of actual people struggling in Cross in Tensions: Luther’s Theology of the Cross as Theologico-social Critique (Eugene, to believe and act in faith, and in ways of Ore.: Wifp and Stock, 2008) and Robin A. being which provide alternative readings of Leaver, “Luther on Music,” in The Pastor the world as it is and should be. Whether it Luther: Essays on Martin Luther’s Practical be new patterns of worship or new rituals Theology, Timothy J. Wengert, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). for facing the existential questions of life 27. For example, see Christian B. Scha- and death, emerging congregations offer ren and Eileen Campbell-Reed, “Ethnog- new narratives and new practices. In the raphy on Holy Ground: How Qualitative unsettled lives of congregations, this is Interviewing is Practical Theological Work,” International Journal of Practical Theology most certainly good news. 17:2 232–259. Wither Now: Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death, Decay, and Nothingness

Katharine Sarah Moody Independent Scholar

Introduction religion and religious studies. It is from this vantage point, therefore, and with this spe- The emerging church is best approached cific emerging church imaginary in mind, not as a single ecclesiological model but that I approach the question, “Whither as a discursive milieu that is shared by a now emergence?”I take Peter Rollins and loose, transnational association of indi- Kester Brewin to be the primary catalysts 1 viduals and collectives. Within a specific for this imaginary.3 They engage with the discursive milieu, not only spoken and work of several radical theologians in their written communication but any expressive own ambitious theological projects, which act or practice shapes what theorists call are more radical both in their critique of social or cultural imaginaries, which “prime existing Christianity and in their proposals [participants] to approach the world in a for emerging Christianity than those of certain way, to value certain things, to aim other emerging church figures. Rollins and for certain goals, to pursue certain dreams, Brewin therefore remain on the margins to work together on certain projects.”2 of a marginal expression of contemporary While a number of different imaginar- Christianity. But the significance of these ies are discernible within the emerging two figures depends not on the number church milieu, I’m especially interested of emerging church participants who ex- in the imaginary that forms at the points plicitly enthuse about their work. It stems where emerging Christianity intersects rather from how the imaginary that can with radical theology. As my research be traced to them is provoking emerg- centers on the new discursive practices of ing Christianity to a fuller engagement this radical emerging imaginary, I work at with radical theology. They push for an the intersection of theology, philosophy of engagement with contemporary thought, and especially continental philosophy of 1. See further Katharine Sarah Moody, religion and radical theology, beyond the “‘I Hate Your Church; What I Want is My kinds of cursory references to postmodern Kingdom’: Emerging Spiritualities in the UK thought that are made by others in this Emerging Church Milieu,” The Expository Times 121/10 (2010): 495–503. 3. See further Katharine Sarah Moody, 2. James K.A. Smith, Desiring the King- Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity: dom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Forma- Deconstruction, Materialism and Religious Prac- tion (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, tices (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, forthcoming 2009), 25. 2015).

Currents in Theology and Mission 42:2 (April 2015) Moody. Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death. Decay, and Nothingness

135 milieu. Rollins, for example, has disclosed need for wholeness and certainty.”5 As an that he hopes to influence the direction incendiary theological project, Rollins of the emerging church conversation and claims that his is not a work of constructive has revealed in particular that he aims to theology. Pyrotheology’s (deconstructive) transform the contemporary church into practice of setting inherited beliefs and a death-of-God collective.4 practices alight can certainly be undertaken Contributors to this special issue on in relation to a number of different (con- emerging Christianity have been asked to structive) theological traditions. But his consider toward what end or purpose the own theological discourse exhibits several emerging church might be maturing. To features that distinguish it as a distinct that end, this article introduces readers (constructive) project within what I am to a specific imaginary that constitutes broadly referring to as radical theology. emerging Christian subjectivity in rela- Brewin has also increasingly turned to radical theology in order to explore how tion to the death and decay of God and a turn might be made away from an ob- that seeks the creation of transformative session with transcendence and from the collective practices that can reconcile divine, the political and the technological participants to their own death, decay, as demanding and dehumanising super- and nothingness. This is the good news natural super-powers toward a restoration that this emerging imaginary offers wider of humanity through sacrificial love and emerging Christianity. a celebration of material life.6 I use the phrase radical theology Radical theology to signal a variety of loosely associated For Rollins, Christianity as it actually contemporary theologies that trace their exists in the West today functions as a heritage back to the work of Hegel. While fantasy hiding the conditional nature of the notion of the death of God is frequently the systems of belief that we construct associated with Nietzsche, it was given to cover the material realities of life as what Gavin Hyman calls “prior philo- constituted by alienation and separation, sophical expression” by Hegel, for whom loss, lack, and negativity, which are the philosophical truths about the historical psychoanalytic themes that Rollins often movement of Absolute Spirit are meta- re-casts in the religious language of sin. phorically represented in the Christian 7 Rollins’ theological project—which he religion. In a form of death to God’s self refers to as a pyrotheology—sets fire to “the at the Incarnation, God the Father moves layers of belief we put over reality to protect out of his transcendent remoteness to live ourselves from reality” in order to “ignite 5. “Theory,” pyrotheology.com. a sense of greater depth in life beyond the 6. See in particular Kester Brewin, After 4. Peter Rollins, “Church in the Pres- Magic: Moves Beyond Super-Nature From Bat- ent Tense Video 2,” www.youtube.com/ man to Shakespeare (self-published, 2013). watch?v=eBFVFwh-YqQ. Rollins’ comments Brewin’s current writing project characterizes about the transformation of the existing the human quest for physical, intellectual, and churches into death-of-God collectives were spiritual altitude through technology, drugs, made during a panel session on his work at and religion as a quest for the transcendence the fourth Postmodernism, Culture, and Re- that would overcome death. ligion conference, held at Syracuse University 7. Gavin Hyman, A Short History of in April 2011. Atheism (London: I.B. Taurus, 2010), 157. Moody. Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death. Decay, and Nothingness

136 immanently in the world as God the Son able to achieve metaphysical knowledge of and, in Christ’s death at the Crucifixion, God. We are not God. We are doubtful, God the Son is resurrected as God the Holy and confess our fallibility and finitude. We Ghost, the Body of Christ, the Community are tolerant of other worldviews; ours is of Believers, in a dialectical reconciliation a generous orthodoxy. We can make stra- of transcendence and immanence. Rec- tegic use of atheistic critiques of religion onciliation in Hegelian dialectics is not insofar as they enable us to discover the always interpreted by radical theologians as God beyond religious idolatry and a faith a higher synthesis, but it’s at least possible beyond religious ideology. But, ultimately, to agree with Mark C. Taylor that radical we are able to keep our faith safe from the theology is not “a novel departure from the full force of these criticisms, since atheism Western religious tradition” but represents too must be humbled.10 instead “a reworking of Hegel’s most basic 8 Hegel also takes the world as the insights” about divinity and death. horizon of thought and knowledge, but In tracing radical theologies’ roots to he locates religion within the world and the Hegelian death of God in this way, I proceeds to then think God in space and am also making use of a distinction drawn time as well. He can therefore be seen as by John D. Caputo between a form of proposing the possibility of a form of theol- postmodern theology that descends from ogy beyond classical two-worlds theology Hegel and a form of postmodern theology (this world and the next), which ultimately that descends from Kant.9 Kant famously sought to establish the limits of knowledge represses the material—even if radical theologians like Caputo also see in much of in order to make room for faith. Kantian 11 postmodern theology incorporates the Hegel’s own work just more metaphysics. critique of modernist rationality only to 10. See, for example, the Kantian post- the extent that it is treated as an exercise modern theology of Merold Westphal. For in epistemological humility. We believe as example, the stated goal of Westphal’s Suspicion a matter of faith, not of knowledge. We and Faith is to engage with atheist critiques of are not under the pretension that we are religion to enable readers to discover a God beyond the idol “God” and to find a richer form 8. Mark C. Taylor, Disfiguring: Art, of their existing faith beyond instrumental reli- Architecture, Religion (Chicago: University of gion. See Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith: Chicago Press, 1992), 155. The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism (New York: 9. See especially John D. Caputo, “On Fordham University Press, 2007[1998]), 13. Not Settling for an Abridged Edition of Post- Rollins’ own work runs the risk of being read modernism: Radical Hermeneutics as Radical as a Kantian rather than Hegelian postmodern Theology” in J. Aaron Simmons and Stephen theology, especially when his later, more radical, Minister, eds, Reexamining Deconstruction and theology is read through the lens of his earlier Determinate Religion: Toward a Religion with negative theology. See Moody, Radical Theology Religion (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University and Emerging Christianity. Press, 2012), 271–353; and “Two Types of 11. See John D. Caputo, “The Perversity Continental Philosophy of Religion,” in of the Absolute, the Perverse Core of Hegel, The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps and the Possibility of Radical Theology,” in (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), Slavoj Žižek, Clayton Crockett and Creston 87–116. I also make use of this distinction in Davis, eds, Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Post-Secular Theology and the Church: Truth, Politics and Dialectic (New York: Columbia Tradition, Transformation? (forthcoming with University Press, 2011), 48. For an introduc- Wipf & Stock). tion to Caputo’s radical theology, see Moody, Moody. Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death. Decay, and Nothingness

137 For Thomas J.J. Altizer, for example, tak- as illusionary those beliefs that circulate ing Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death around the compensatory “nucleus of a lov- of God seriously as “the collapse of any ing God, an afterlife of bliss, and a cosmic meaning or reality lying beyond the newly moral order” found in modern, western, discovered radical immanence of modern monotheistic religions like Christianity.14 man, an immanence dissolving even the But a reductionist understanding of reli- memory or the shadow of transcendence,” gion prevented him from considering its means refusing Hegel’s final reconciliation materialist as well as escapist dimensions. between transcendence and immanence Marx, too—who said that religion is not in favour of a thoroughly immanentist or only an expression of, but also a protest atheist gospel.12 Radical theology is a form against, real distress and suffering and yet of theological rethinking in the light of the never returned to this theme of religion as death of God that is therefore first of all protest—had a similarly restricted view of a radical “unthinking of every established religion: it is “static and uniform, violating theological ground.”13 While the death of the original basis of the materialist critique God is understood in different ways by dif- of religion that begins with Hegel’s locating ferent radical theologians, when I say that of religion within history.”15 Radicalising God is dead I do not mean that a specific the materialist critique of religion by re- idolatrous conceptualisation of God has turning it to its Hegelian roots, in which been revealed as such. Nor do I mean that religions are treated as imaginative figures a distant God beyond space and time once and through which theology becomes lived but has now died in order to enter an analysis of what is going on in these into the world through the unfolding of figures, radical theologians think religion human history. I mean that God does otherwise. not and never did exist as a metaphysical Following this trajectory of radical or supernatural entity. Something else is death-of-God theologies, Rollins and going on in the word “God”—something Brewin also suggest that stripping ourselves other than propositional representation. of the illusionary and escapist dimensions Kantian postmodern theology is a way of Christianity can radicalize our under- of keeping God and our belief in God standing of this religion and enable us safe through the death of only a certain to glimpse its revolutionary materialist concept of God, but in Hegelian radical potential, which I shall depict by turning theologies nothing, not even God, is safe. to philosopher Brian R. Clack’s recent Radical theologies are rooted in the examination of the possibility of religion materialist critiques of religion proposed beyond illusion. For Freud, religion is by figures like Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche, nothing more than a palliative. We find but radical theologians deploy this critique it necessary to employ certain consolatory not in order to dispose of religion but 14. Brian R. Clack, Love, Drugs, Art, to discover its potential. Freud classified Religion: The Pains and Consolations of Existence (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014), 84. Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity. 15. Jeffrey W. Robbins, “Necessity as 12. See Thomas J.J. Altizer,The Gospel of Virtue: On Religious Materialism from Feuer- Christian Atheism (London: Collins, 1967), 22. bach to Žižek,” in Clayton Crockett, B. Keith 13. Thomas J.J. Altizer, The Call to Radi- Putt, and Jeffrey W. Robbins, eds,The Future cal Theology (Albany: State University of New of Continental Philosophy of Religion (Bloom- York Press, 2012), 1. ington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 235. Moody. Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death. Decay, and Nothingness

138 cultural measures to endure life—princi- In the rest of this article, I will frame the pally, intoxication, enjoyment of art, sexual radicality of the emerging imaginary that love, and religious belief. Religion is one can be discerned within their work as its of several “auxiliary structures” needed potential to reconcile us to the death of to support and strengthen the precarious God through performatively staging the edifice of our existence.16 It relieves the decay of God and priming participants to symptoms of “common unhappiness” accept their own death, decay, and ultimate without curing this condition.17 But Clack nothingness. highlights that, while palliation in the face of human suffering, insignificance, and Death death is necessary, there are both escapist I want to begin my argument about the and realist dimensions to the palliatives significance of this emerging imaginary by that Freud identifies, including religion. suggesting that the religious move is not According to Clack, the ameliorative that of recognising humanity’s impotence in function of belief in a benevolent God or the face of the temporal and spatial vastness Providence, an afterlife, and a moral order of the universe, as one might expect, but is dependent upon the absolute truth of that of insisting on the delusional fantasy these claims, which is unsustainable in of humanity’s importance. This means that the face of the material realities of the the truly materialist rather than escapist world. Religion cannot survive, therefore, and therefore irreligious move is to hold when it is exposed as nothing more than to humanity’s insignificance, to refuse to a palliative. Or, rather, religions with these abdicate responsibility to a heavenly realm consoling features cannot survive in their and to direct energy instead to the trans- current form, for Clack also wants to suggest formation of life on earth. What Julian that Freud’s “overly restrictive conception Barnes refers to as “the sin of height” and of religion stops him from seeing other, what Brewin further characterises as “our non-compensatory possibilities in reli- fascination with transcending our limited gious ideas and practices”—possibilities finitude” translates into a quest for altitude that take religion as palliation in realist through technology, pharmacology and rather than illusionary directions. Clack theology: “The hope of flight is the hope therefore poses the key question, “what of overcoming death.”19 But, for Rollins might be left once religion has been shorn and Brewin, Christianity can refuse to take 18 of all escapist characteristics?” This is also flight; it has the potential to reconcile us a question posed by Rollins and Brewin. to our finitude. Rollins has stressed the importance of 16. See Sigmund Freud, “Civilization what might be called sublimation this re- and Its Discontents,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund gard. Using Kierkegaard’s characterisation Freud vol. 21 (London: Vintage, 2001), 75; of poets as those whose lips are fashioned and Theodor Fontane,Effi Briest (London: Penguin, 2000), 212. 19. Julian Barnes, Levels of Life (cited in Kester Brewin, “On High: LSD, The 17. See Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer, Space Race and The Human Quest for “Studies on Hysteria,” in The Standard Edition Altitude” https://medium.com/@kester- of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund brewin/on-high-e67f11488d65) and Kester Freud vol. 2 (London: Vintage, 2001), 351. Brewin, “Work in Progress: On High” (April 18. Clack, Love, Drugs, Art, Religion, 10, 2014) http://www.vaux.net/work-in- 171 and 146. progress-on-high/. Moody. Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death. Decay, and Nothingness

139 as to transform terrifying cries of anguish thirty as part of Rollins’ Idolatry of God and suffering into beautiful, blissful music, retreat in April 2013, while the second was Rollins suggests that poetic, artistic or presented at Cheltenham Race Course to a musical works offer us the opportunity much larger audience as part of Greenbelt for emotional catharsis, such that we are Christian arts and justice festival in August neither overwhelmed by our own suffer- that same year.23 In Belfast, we sat on chairs ing nor repress it and thereby disavow arranged in rows with an aisle down the our full humanity. He proposes that the center, facing a black coffin decorated with public expressive acts of the churches can dead flowers behind which the opening and should function in a similar manner, sequence of Lars von Trier’s (2011) film creating ritualistic spaces in which we can “Melancholia” depicted the total destruc- form a relation with “the anxiety brought tion of Earth; in Cheltenham, we sat on about by the sense of death” without that the floor surrounded by softly flickering anxiety crushing us.20 Simon Critchley ex- images of the Sacred Heart, not of Our plains further that the work of sublimation Lady Mary but of Our Lord Elvis, and is a “creative artistic activity that produces faced a small plastic toilet. In the barge, beauty” and that the function of beauty a mirror inside the coffin reflected back is “to realize the human being’s relation to us our own image and we filled out our to death.” Art reconciles us to death not own death certificates; at Greenbelt, we by adequately representing death but by wrote down what we hoped our legacies providing us with “an aesthetic screen” that would be, only to have them mocked and traces the excess of death with respect to dumped into the toy toilet. representation in such a way as to allow The difference between the two per- us to have a relation to death’s outline, formances of “The End” can perhaps be contours or profile without such a relation traced to the reactions of the audience at overwhelming and destroying us.21 that first Belfast event, which were two- Two “transformance art” gatherings fold: either participants felt that the piece staged by Ikon, the Belfast-based collective revolved around ideas, images, and themes founded by Rollins in 2001, illustrate the about endings, mortality, and death that difference that sublimation can make.22 were overfamiliar, quickly drawing intel- Both titled “The End,” the first was held lectual assent but thereby failing to impact inside a large industrial barge in Belfast and on an emotional, existential, or embodied was performed with an audience of about level; or participants over-identified with these very same ideas, images, and themes, 20. Peter Rollins, Insurrection: To Believe is thereby finding themselves confronted Human; To Doubt, Divine (New York: Howard too acutely. The Belfast performance had Books, 2011), 179. See Søren Kierkegaard, too adequately represented death, failing Either/Or, Alastair Hannay, trans. (London: to create an aesthetic screen. In the end, Penguin, 1992), 43. “The End” was either insufficiently artful 21. Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demand- or insufficiently protective. When Ikon ing: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance performed “The End” again later that (London: Verso, 2008[2007]), 72–74. year, they took a very different approach 22. The term “transformance art” has been to their theme, seeking to enable a ritu- adopted by Rollins, Brewin, Ikon, and others to describe experiments in performance art that 23. Fuller descriptions and analyses of seek to provide a space for radical subjective these performances are given in Moody, Radical transformation to take place. Theology and Emerging Christianity. Moody. Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death. Decay, and Nothingness

140 alistic confrontation with death through a distinction between death and decay to juxtaposing serious and comic, even ab- suggest that it is perhaps not the nothing- surdist, elements. “Instead of death being ness of death that many of us fear but the a tragedy,” Rollins reflected afterward, “it nothingness that is signalled by decay. The was a comedy.”24 Like poets, artists, and decaying body is feared because “it is no musicians, comedians can also facilitate an longer fit for transport or use elsewhere.” encounter with “the pain of being human” The recently deceased or preserved dead without overwhelming their audience.25 body appears as though it might remain Like any art, humour, too, can become at least functional in another world, but “a practice of minimal sublimation,” the decaying dead body is in the process of enabling us to approach our relation to returning to this world. It thereby “tells us death without being overwhelmed by it.26 something about our place in the material cycle of things: we are not elevated … we Decay were dust, and will be dust again.”27 We During Ikon’s Belfast performance of “The are finite beings. One day we will be dead End,” the coffin was thrown down onto the and gone. But, especially through our quest for transcendence, we tend to disavow the ground, breaking open and spewing forth knowledge that death means a return to a cloud of dust that we slowly began to this world rather than a flight to another. breathe in. During the silence that followed We know that we cannot escape death, this act, we each tried to resist the tickle at and yet in our everyday lives, material the back of our throats, none of us wanting actions, and social interactions we turn to be the first person to cough. Perhaps to technology, pharmacology, art, sex, or we didn’t want each other to know that religion to help us achieve distance from this part of the event was having a bodily this knowledge, enabling us to persist effect on us for more profound reasons than in activities that thereby maintain the mere social embarrassment. Brewin draws ideological illusion that escape is possible 24. Peter Rollins, in “Interview with and structural change in the here and now Kester Brewin and Peter Rollins,” Greenbelt therefore unnecessary. Arts Festival, 26 August 2013. This interview Slavoj Žižek has detailed how belief will form the basis of a book chapter, Katharine has become displaced away from inner Sarah Moody, “The Betrayal of the Magic Trick conviction to just such an externalised and the Death and Decay of Church: A Con- site of material activity, “embodied in versation with Kester Brewin and Peter Rollins” my practices, rituals, interactions.”28 The (working title), which will feature in a collection of conference proceedings from Subverting 27. Kester Brewin, “‘Now I Am Become the Norm II: Can Postmodern Theology Live in Death:’ Theology of Decay – Rituals (1)” the Churches? (Drury University, Springfield, (December 7, 2011) http://www.kesterbrewin. Missouri) April 5–6, 2013, edited by Katharine com/2011/12/07/now-i-am-become-death- Sarah Moody and Phil Snider (forthcoming theology-of-decay-rituals-1/ with The Davies Group Publishers). 28. Slavoj Žižek, “Dialectical Clarity 25. Peter Rollins, “The Contemporary versus the Misty Conceit of Paradox,” in Slavoj Church is a Crack House” (March 1, 2012) Žižek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of http://peterrollins.net/?p=3578 Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? Creston Davis, ed. 26. Critchley, Infinitely Demanding, 11. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009), 297. See See further Simon Critchley, On Humour also Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: (London: Routledge, 2002). The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge, Moody. Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death. Decay, and Nothingness

141 identification of this as the real site of Emerging collectives should not form, belief exposes how we still believe that it is therefore, around the death of faith in possible to escape death, despite conscious God. After all, this is the crisis that has disbelief. We know that we will die, but already happened, back in the nineteenth we don’t want to know that we know. As century when, as Nietzsche observed, belief the actual site of belief, our practices reveal in God became unbelievable. But as this that we believe we can overcome this fate, crisis has been repressed, emerging collec- despite our conscious disbelief that this is tives should form instead around practices possible. We resisted the cough because this that encourage reconciliation to the decay bodily reaction might let the knowledge of faith in this dead God.30 Many within that we are nothing but dust percolate the existing churches may affirm doubt into our bodies and embodied practices, and disbelief intellectually, but belief in thus confronting us with the reality that God remains disavowed, externalised we will die, decay, and return to dust. onto church structures that therefore We didn’t want to ingest this knowledge disclose nothing of what Nietzsche called into our bodies, because we didn’t want “the divine decomposition,” the stench to believe it. In his most recent book, of which would make the death of God Rollins references Brewin’s work on death fully (materially as well as intellectually) and decay to say that decay “confronts us comprehensible.31 Believing that God is more fully with the reality of the death” dead as an inner conviction but lacking and to suggest that emerging Christianity the material practices that enable us to can expose “the decay of that which we dispel a displaced belief in God leaves us probably already know is dead” but which living under the shadow of a dead but not we repress.29 While we might intellectually decaying God, the reality of whose non- affirm our mortality, the Žižekian insight existence is thereby not fully confronted. into the relationship between belief and But Christianity has the potential to material practice raises the question of provide “communal ritual which moves whether the individual and communal in post mortem to bring about healthy religious practices in which we engage decay,”32 through which those gathered express instead our lingering belief in the can confront both cognitively and ma- possibility of an escape. What is required terially the death and decay of God and are material church practices that, rather their religious beliefs and identities can than offering an escape from the realities of be broken down to fund more life and life, instead make manifest the move from an intensification of life. death to decay and to more life. This move is crucial to material 30. See Kester Brewin, “‘Now I Am Be- processes; death only becomes part of come Death’: Theology of Decay – Rituals (2)” the cycle of life if it is followed by decay. (December 8, 2011) http://www.kesterbrewin. com/2011/12/08/death_decay_rituals_2/ Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), 7. For an introduction 31. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay to Žižek’s radical theology, see Moody, Radical Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes Theology and Emerging Christianity. and an Appendix of Songs, Josefine Nauckhoff 29. See Peter Rollins, The Divine Magi- trans., Bernard Williams ed. (Cambridge: cian: The Disappearance of Religion and the Cambridge University Press, 2003[2001]), Discovery of Faith (London: Howard Books, §125 118–119). 2015). I’m grateful to Rollins for providing 32. Brewin, “‘Now I Am Become Death’ me with the unpublished manuscript. (1).” Moody. Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death. Decay, and Nothingness

142 Nothingness knowledge that life is but “a passing feature of the universe.”40 Life is terminal, and will Such practices would expose the way in end in entropic dissipation. We are specks which we are “a pure void utterly bereft of the protection that transcendence guarantees.”33 In a piece of prose from “The End,” we are reminded that “in our fragility all we can be sure of is that one day, ife is terminal, any day now, everything we hold precious will be gone. One day we will be gone. and will end in 34 L Nothing will remain.” In the final mo- entropic dissipation. ments of “The End” as it was performed at Greenbelt, we are also invited to blindfold ourselves: “God made everything out of of stardust in the process of returning to nothing, but the nothing was there first. stardust. We are insignificant, unimport- Before the beginning nobody said ‘let there ant, impotent and impermanent. We be darkness’ because it was already there. are nothing. But such a nihilism is not … Cover your eyes.”35 We’re invited to without value. The value of our being- join hands with each other, because this nothing-ness is what Caputo calls our is what we have, “a community of decay” being-for-nothing-ness. Meister Eckhart that “comes with no instructions.”36 With said that life lives without a reason why, our blindfolds on, we’re told to “Take each because it lives for itself.41 Life is not for other’s hand and leave. This is the end. All anything. It is for nothing. Why does life you have is each other.”37 In the end, lack- live? Because it lives. And it lives for itself, ing any transcendent guarantee after the not because of something other than or death and decay of God, whether religious external to life itself. For Caputo, “Life is or not, we “make it up in the darkness,” undermined from the moment it is sub- we “make it up in the night,” we make it jected to the economy of a ‘why’ beyond up together, because all we have is each life.”42 Life is its own reason why. It is for other.38 There is nothing else, no escape, no nothing, for no “something else” other God, no one “to save us, save ourselves.”39 than or transcendent to life. It is for noth- There can be no evasion of “the hard ing but itself. It is for nothing else than hypothesis” of contemporary scientific more life—meaning not more life and no death, or more life in another world after 33. Robbins, “Necessity as Virtue,” death, but more life here and now, before 238. death, and not just more life for me, but 34. Chris Fry, “The Community of for others, which might mean giving my Decay,” Ikon: The End (Greenbelt), August life for theirs. And not more life at the 25, 2013. 35. Pádraig Ó Tuama, “Cover Your 40. Ibid., 223. Eyes,” Ikon: The End (Greenbelt), August 25, 41. See Meister Eckhart, The Complete 2013. Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, trans. and ed. 36. Fry, “The Community of Decay.” Maurice O’C Walshe (New York: Crossroad, 2009), 10 (cited by Caputo in The Insistence 37. Ó Tuama, “Cover Your Eyes.” of God, 226). 38. Fry, “The Community of Decay.” 42. Caputo, The Insistence of God, 39. Caputo, The Insistence of God, 143. 240–241. Moody. Emerging Christianity as Reconciliation to Death. Decay, and Nothingness

143 expense of the quality of life, but more life Whither now emergence? To what end do as the intensification of life, as “the most Rollins and Brewin push emerging Chris- intense life possible.”43 tianity? Caputo suggests that an irreligious If holding to our insignificance is “‘religion’ without religion”46 can already an irreligious move, then religion in this be found within the historical religions account of life as being-and-being-for- like Christianity, haunting them with the nothing must be a strange, irreligious possibility of their materialist potential— religion. It must be an ir/religion, a re- though this possibility is often repressed ligion that is for nothing but life, rather through the escapism of existing religious than religion as religion-for-something, practices. But I have turned to the work of religion as religion-for-something-else, Rollins and Brewin in order to also illus- transcending life, another life in another trate some of the new forms of irreligious world. It would be an irreligious religion discourse and communal ritual that are that understood itself to be but one of the emerging from western Christianity and figurative presentations of the states and that build on this materialist or realist events that intensify life. Religion provides potential in order to prime participants to narratives and images of the “limit states” move beyond the escapism of conventional of everyday life: life, death, birth, old age, Christianity. The emerging imaginary that marriage, children, sickness, health, joy, can be identified in their work—and that is sorrow, hope, disappointment, love, hate, exemplified in Ikon’s performance of “The goodness, evil, poverty, and excess.44 What End” in particular—is a concrete example is going on in these figures of religion is of how innovative irreligious practices an affirmation of life as being-and-being- might reconcile us to our real material for-nothing-ness. Life for nothing more conditions of death, decay, being-nothing, than the intensification of life. Life is and being-for-nothing. The radical mar- terminal and palliation is necessary, but gins of the emerging church conversation religion is to be a real consolation and not push participants to approach the material an escape. It should return us to the earth, realities of life as constituted by death, not enable us to fly off to heaven. Religion decay and nothingness; to value such a as an affirmation of life beyond illusion nihilism as our being-for-nothing-else- reconciles us to our nothingness, without but-the-intensification-of-life; and to work the escapism of two-worlds metaphysics, together to form creative communities of thereby providing more than illusionary the things that are not, of the nobodies and consolation. Religion can enable us to the nothings. It aims to nullify the things acknowledge “our fundamental nothing- that are, the things that repress or seek to ness” and “reconcile us to our nullity.”45 escape from their nothingness—including the existing churches. This emerging Conclusion imaginary therefore encourages Christian- ity itself to wither and wilt, to decline, die, 43. See Jacques Derrida, Learning to and decay, to become nothing as it teaches Live Finally: The Last Interview (Basingstoke: that Christ became nothing, precisely in Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), especially 26 and 51–52. order to fund new forms of life. 44. See Caputo, The Insistence of God, 244. 46. Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, 45. Clack, Love, Drugs, Art, Religion, David Wills, trans. (Chicago: University of 163 and 168. Chicago Press, 1995), 49. Book Reviews

144 mately grounded in the teaching office of the Book Reviews church; Tyndale and Schleiermacher appeal to church as “a diffusely spatialized event” that especially values creative theological authorship. Each of these trajectories persist into our present theological context. Saler Between Magisterium and Marketplace: provides recent instances of “polist ecclesiolo- A Constructive Account of Theology and gists” in the work of Reinhard Huetter, Carl Church. By Robert C. Saler. Minneapolis: Braaten, and Paul Griffiths, among others, Fortress Press, 2014. ISBN: 978-1-4514- whereas Joseph Sittler, G.C. Spivak (inter- 8283-6. ix and 260 pages. Paper. $49.00. preted theologically in light of Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans), and Vitor Westhelle The new Fortress “emerging scholars” series (Saler’s Doktorvater) represent ecclesiology as provides readers an encounter with cutting- event. edge scholarship by a new generation of Saler concludes that the proliferation of theologians. This engaging book does not theological viewpoints in the present may be disappoint, as it ranges widely among au- less a matter of “the pernicious influence of thors, sources, and neighboring disciplines the marketplace but rather of the diffusively in exploring foundational issues related to spatialized character of the churches—that is, the social location of theological discourse in the sites of redemptive truth telling—that in- the modern and contemporary worlds. The spire and norm acts of authorship” (228). In argument is informed by contemporary lit- other words, Saler locates his own theologi- erary theory and its claim that authorship is cal project in line with those who understand inherently a transaction with political force that “the church event” (Westhelle) “takes making appeal to “authority.” For theology, place in a whole host of areas well outside of after the onset of modernity, the question is the boundaries that we have come to expect starkly posed: to which public is theological (and erect)” (238). discourse directed, church or the intellectual This book contributes significantly to marketplace? Are theologians finally servants foundational reflection upon the nature of of the dogmatic formulations of a theological theology in relation to two animated por- tradition or are they improvisers plying their traits of what it means to be church in the trade in the market of competing ideas? [One postmodern world. One wonders, however, might here interject a question about how in whether here we remain captured by binary modernity the “public” of theology shifted categories that continue to undo genuine from church to academy, an option not much ecumenical appreciation and mutual appro- developed in this inquiry.] priation. A generation ago Paul Tillich noted The heart of the argument traces these that the character of the church necessitates two trajectories historically. The magisterial both catholic substance and protestant prin- trajectory as preserved in Roman Catholic ciple. One without the other results in a defi- theology is exemplified in a stream running cit that impoverishes the whole. If today the from Thomas More through John Henry Roman Catholic Church is suffering from Newman to present representatives; the alter- an imposed deficit by disallowing the vital- native trajectory is illustrated as flowing from ity of a reformatory principle, the Protestant William Tyndale through Friedrich Schleier- churches continue to suffer from a polemi- macher to other contemporary theologians. cal fragmentation that cries out for consensus These particular figures are juxtaposed in a about what constitutes the catholic substance detailed and contextualized analysis. More of church. The WCC’s Baptism, Eucharist, in relation to Tyndale and Newman in rela- Ministry process initiated a methodology by tion to Schleiermacher, as contrasting au- which Protestant communions, including thorial paradigms, each of which appeal to the Lutheran, might begin to expand their distinctive sources of authority. More and definition of church beyond reducing it to a Newman represent a “polis ecclesiology” ulti- Book Reviews

145 moment, call that moment “word” or call it findings and the current state of the conversa- “sacrament,” by attending to the substance of tion before an annotated (alphabetical rather the “assembly.” This book begs the question than chronological) bibliography closes the of the criteria by which one might recognize book. the breadth of the church even as it occurs This thin volume is a superb introduc- as “event.” How might we construe anew the tion and reference for anyone who desires to marks of the church beyond this impasse? study Mary and the ample historic reflections Saler’s insightful and generative arguments upon her. The authors give just enough in- assist us all the more to comprehend what ails troductory material to orient the reader to the church in our time on the way toward the times and figures without being pedantic. catalyzing the emergence of a future church They also provide ample bibliographic infor- beyond either/or categories. mation so that the reader can easily access primary sources. Their tone is both honest Craig L. Nessan (theological disagreements remain between Wartburg Theological Seminary them) yet gracious. May this book inspire Dubuque, Iowa even more ongoing conversation about the Mother of our God. The Blessed Virgin Mary. By Tim Perry and Amy L. Peeler Daniel Kendall, SJ. Grand Rapids: Eerdma- Wheaton College ns, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-8028-2733-3. vi and 118 pages. Paper. $18.00. Mary matters. So argue the authors of this The Entangled Trinity: Quantum Physics volume in the Guides to Theology series. and Theology. By Ernest L. Simmons. Min- Written by one Protestant (Perry) and one neapolis: Fortress Press, 2014. ISBN: 978- Catholic (Kendall) theologian, this brief sur- 0-8006-9786-0. ix and 205 pages. Cloth. vey of Marian writings aims at all students of $24.00. theology, whatever their wing of the church. Christian theology always seeks new faithful In the introductory essay the authors ways to articulate the revelation of the living disclose their motivation. If Christians learn God, and to describe how they experience about Mary, they will discover both what God in relationship with the larger world. In they all share (commitment to Christ and the twenty-first century, one of the most con- theological heritage) and what divides them structive sources for this type of language and (theological developments and devotional imagery is science, but many Christians have practices). The authors have no pretense that very little scientific knowledge, and indeed, they will be able to reunite the church, but are sometimes suspicious about the overarch- they are hopeful that such a text will make ing relationship between science and religion the Christian “other” more understandable. in general. In The Entangled Trinity, Simmons The authors prepare their readers to provides an accessible entry for Christians look for three recurring themes: Christology, into the science/religion dialogue, and a com- ecclesiology, and devotion. Beginning with pelling example of how fruitful such dialogue mentions of Mary in the New Testament (in- can be for Christian thought. cluding an exegetical treatment of the thorny Simmons states the basic question be- issue of perpetual virginity), the authors then hind his work as follows: “What can the cur- present major figures whose works concern rent scientific understanding of the natural Mary from throughout the history of the world contribute to our reflection in a Tri- church. The Church Fathers (pre and post- une fashion on the relationship of God and Nicene), the Medieval/Reformation thinkers, the world?” (1) As you might imagine, the and modern contributors (Catholic, Protes- answer is, “quite a bit”—and in what fol- tant, and Orthodox) each receive a chapter. lows, Simmons leads the reader through a Both Kendall and Perry summarize their well-explained, well-illustrated argument Book Reviews

146 that supports his central thesis: the model of conflict, identifies different kinds of conflict, “perichoretic (entangled) Trinitarian panen- and assesses their functions. Eilberg briefly theism” has value for both understanding introduces the spiritual practices of opening and appreciating “the Christian experience of the heart, seeing the other, and sacred listen- pluralistic monotheism” (165). ing as essential in the work of reconciliation. The book is not nearly as intimidating In the second chapter, Eilberg draws from as the subtitle might suggest. It is organized her interfaith engagement and offers ways to into three parts, each of which builds on the forge friendships across religious boundaries. previous. The first part, “Foundational Con- Recognizing the differences of opinion—her- cepts,” offers some basic theological insights meneutical and political—within the Jewish that ground Christian thinking about God. community, Eilberg, in the third chapter, The second part, “Trinitarian Devel- suggests ways to deal with the difference and opment,” leads the reader through a quick heal polarization. The fourth chapter dis- tour of Trinitarian thinking, beginning with cusses the work of reconciliation within the Scripture and ending in the current context. context of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Eilberg Both of these parts are very helpful for begin- recounts her engagement with Palestinian ning students, and stand as a quick refresher and Israeli Jewish peacemakers and the way for more advanced students. The chapters she herself has been healed from mistrust and are clear, short, and conclude with a set of fear. In the final chapter, Eilberg introduces key terms, as well as some helpful discussion nine “soul-traits”—kindness, compassion, questions. generosity, self-awareness, humility, curios- The crux of the book comes in part three, ity, equanimity, strength, and prayer—of a “Science and the Trinity.” This is where Sim- peace-builder and suggests ways to cultivate mons demonstrates his facility in using key them. Weaving in her experiences in spiritual concepts from quantum physics to describe direction, interfaith engagement, and biblical the work of the triune God and the nature interpretation, Eilberg invites us to follow the of the relationality between the three divine Holy One, who is gracious, compassionate, persons. Certainly, this is the most technical patient, kind, empowering, and forgiving. part of the book, but Simmons manages to Three threads connect all five chapters: make even the most difficult scientific theo- 1) Eilberg begins each chapter by sharing her ries understandable and interesting. experiences in peacemaking; 2) She faithfully Kristin Johnston Largen interprets the sacred texts, using her skills in Interim Dean and Associate Professor the original language and familiarity with mi- Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg drash; 3) She offers practical suggestions on Gettysburg, Pa. how to make a real or perceived enemy your friend. Eilberg draws from the wisdom of From Enemy to Friend: Jewish Wisdom and non-Jewish traditions and invites the reader to learn from Jewish wisdom. Adorned with the Pursuit of Peace. By Rabbi Amy Eilberg. grace and courage, this book is a valuable re- Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2014. ISBN: 978- 1-6269-8061-7. xvii and 278 pages. Paper- source to peacemakers in all faith communi- back. $25.00. ties. This book is an invitation to faith communities and individuals of all faiths to obey James Taneti the biblical call to seek peace and pursue it. Campbell University Reconciliation is not the job of professional Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Art- diplomats alone; peace is possible only when ists and Reformation Priests Created Our those in the grassroots build it. Sharing Jew- World. By Thomas Cahill. New York: Dou- ish wisdom on peace and conflict, Rabbi Amy bleday, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-3854-9557-8. xxi Eilberg gently challenges us to pursue peace. and 341 pages. Cloth. $29.95. The first chapter examines the nature of Book Reviews

147 Thomas Cahill is the bestselling author of “a Tudor Stalin” (230), and describes New How the Irish Saved Civilization. That book England Puritans as “super-Calvinists” (268) became the first in a series called the Hinges instead of being but one branch of a much of History, in which Cahill gives lessons in wider Reformed tradition. western civilization for the masses. At least Even bigger problems arise, however, in this sixth volume of the series, however, when the historical record is misrepresented Cahill does not prove himself to be a reliable outright. Since this reviewer has a back- guide. The history presented inHeretics and ground in Reformation history, here are a few Heroes is anecdotal, sensationalistic and not examples concerning Luther. Against much well referenced. Readers should look else- available evidence to the contrary, Cahill as- where for reliable popular histories of the pe- serts that Luther was somehow “less attracted riod. Nevertheless, Cahill’s status as a bestsell- to the three synoptic gospels” than to the ing author warrants a serious review. Psalms (171). He believes that Luther’s re- The book begins with the premise that form came from a “subjectively framed theo- the devastations of the plague in the 1300s logical challenge” (262), whereas from the led to a change in human behavior. Although outset Luther called for an open council to the plague did change European society in debate his ideas critically and objectively. He many well-documented ways, Cahill dramat- states that Luther “never shepherded a con- ically overstates his case. “Soon enough, there gregation,” though Luther was an ordained would be no going back to the supernal gen- priest with a call to preach, lead worship, tleness of Francis, the light-filled philosophi- and hear confessions in the Wittenberg City cal explorations of Aquinas, the grave vision Church from 1514 onward (267). Cahill also of Dante, or the sweet playfulness of Giotto” calls Luther’s inclusion of the word “alone” in (21). Why make such overstatements? Be- his translation of Romans 3:28 a “purposive cause they push Cahill’s loose and indefen- mistranslation” (224), an objection raised sible thesis that the net result of the bubonic already in the 1520s by Luther’s opponent plague, the Renaissance, and the Reformation Jerome Emser which the reformer explicitly was a new era exalting the individual ego. defended in his tract On Translating: An Open Can it really be proven that Francis, Aquinas, Letter (LW 35:187–198). On this point, Ca- Dante, and Giotto and their contemporaries hill perhaps inadvertently reveals the weak- were gentler, less cynical, and less egocentric ness of his sources. Here he seems to have than anyone who came afterward? This thesis leaned upon History of the Christian Church does not withstand scrutiny, even if Cahill as- by Philip Schaff, who died in 1893. While serts it as an “undeniable trend” (188). Schaff remains greatly admired as a church Skepticism about Cahill’s premise proves historian, his work is hardly the best contem- well-founded when it comes to his presenta- porary research available (though it is easily tion of the religious history of the period. accessible online and is cited authoritatively For one thing, simple facts are often missed: in the Wikipedia entry on “Luther’s Transla- Lutherans observe Reformation Day on Oc- tion of the Bible”). tober 31 (not Reformation Sunday, as Cahill In conclusion, it is understandable that states on page 30); Heidelberg is southwest someone writing for a popular audience of Wittenberg, not southeast (166); and King would want to present salacious descriptions Ferdinand of Austria was not Holy Roman of history. Nevertheless, at a certain point Emperor in 1528 (265). Every book con- an author’s basic credibility is at stake when tains minor errors and these are benign. In accountability to the historical record is ob- this case, though, they are symptomatic of a scured by fanciful storytelling. general carelessness with the historical record, as when Cahill asserts that medieval concili- Martin Lohrmann arism “presaged” modern western democ- Wartburg Theological Seminary racy (168), judges Henry VIII to have been Dubuque, Iowa Book Reviews

148 John’s greater interest is the significance of the incarnate Logos. Drew J. Strait explores Jesus Is Lord—Caesar Is Not: Evaluating what some believe is the most pro-Roman Empire in New Testament Studies. Edited writings of the New Testament, the book by Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica. of Acts. Eyeing various passages, he argues Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic. ISBN: that while it is not the predominant aim of 978-0-8308-3991-9. 224 pages. Paper. Acts, the book nonetheless displays a subtle $22.00. criticism of Caesar throughout. Michael F. Bird discusses Paul’s letter to the Romans, a This book entails ten essays by various au- writing in which Neil Elliott sees “Paul’s at- thors, focused on readings of the New Tes- tempt to counteract the effects of imperial tament from the perspective of empire criti- ideology within the Roman congregation.” cism. As the title implies, the New Testament Bird concludes (only somewhat convincing- claim that “Jesus is Lord” is an affront to the ly) that Romans is not a political manifesto imperial cult. But to what degree that is the but pastoral theology within the first-century central aim of the New Testament is the more context of the social-political realities of the precise question entertained by these essays. Roman Mediterranean. Examining the book The first two essays (by David Nystrom of Philippians (esp. 1:27; 2:5–11; 3:20–21), and Judith A. Diehl) are overviews of the top- Lynn H. Cohick rightly concludes that “both ic, whereas other essays deal with more spe- the historical context and the letter itself dis- cific parts of the New Testament. Each chap- suade us from thinking that Paul was making ter has its own bibliography. Nystrom briefly a coded anti-imperial argument in Philippi- describes the history and the development of ans” (178). Paul was neither an imperialist the imperial cult, originating mostly in the nor an anti-imperialist, but was concerned provinces and not in Rome itself. Diehl de- most of all about relations among Christ- scribes the anti-imperial rhetoric in the New followers. Allan R. Bevere considers Colos- Testament especially in view of the economic sians and Philemon in view of Brian Walsh divisions between the rich aristocracy and and Sylvia Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed: the lower classes. Providing historical data Subverting the Empire, suggesting finally that on Rome and the Jewish revolt, she discusses “while empire can be read into both letters the ideas about the empire in Roman 13, He- and both letters have implications for empire, brews, and Revelation, calling Romans 13:1– anti-imperial sentiments cannot be directly 7 the “pinnacle of perplexing rhetoric” (56) drawn out of either Colossians or Philemon.” and Revelation the “most uncompromising In the final essay, Dwight D. Sheets observes attack on the Roman Empire, and on Chris- that Revelation is filled with a variety of anti- tian collusion with the empire” (75). Joel Roman themes, as would be expected from a Willitts argues that Matthew’s primary pur- letter written to cities with historic ties to the pose was not empire criticism (a la Warren imperial cult. Carter) but to show that Jesus is the answer In the conclusion, the editors state the to Israel’s unfulfilled story. Dean Pinter pro- following: “if all one sees is the Roman Em- poses that although Luke does not make any pire while reading the New Testament, then direct comments against the empire, the third everything becomes empire criticism” (211). gospel presents Jesus’ lordship as categori- In contrast, they suggest that Jesus fights cally different from and superior to Caesar’s. primarily against the kingdom of Satan, not Jesus is Lord of all primarily with reference the Roman Empire. In my estimation, their to the social inequalities intertwined with judgment is correct: anti-imperialism is not demonic powers, demoting Caesar’s lord- the main concern of the writers of the New ship to a subordinate role. Christopher W. Testament, which itself is a helpful caution Skinner discusses anti-imperial readings of against undue exaggeration. the fourth gospel, but rightly concludes that Book Reviews

149 Wilhelm C. Linss correct the drive to economic excess through Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago the mechanisms of political democracy, so our awakening to the present crisis can lead to an urgently needed corrective in our time. Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess Economic democracy would be char- and the Fate of the Common Good. By T. acterized by attention to limits on growth, Carlos Anderson. Austin: Blue Ocotillo Pub- sustainability, coexistence, cooperation, and lishing, 2014. ISBN: 978-0-9915-3281-0. commitment to the common good: “Yet the xix and 257 pages. Paper. $14.95. two grandest virtues of the American experience, democracy and egalitarianism, have How did we as a society arrive at our cur- shown themselves to be undeterred by previ- rent state of extreme wealth disparity? T. Car- ous eras of excess. That didn’t happen natu- los Anderson, pastor of St.John’s/San Juan rally; it happened because democracy and Lutheran Church in Austin, Texas, presents egalitarianism—mutually dependent enti- with measured judgment his findings based ties—had the support of the people” (229). on extensive historical research and astute One only prays that the author’s imagination cultural analysis. While the predicament in for an emergent new populism and his signif- which the U.S. finds itself is an acute in- icant contribution to summoning its revival stance, there are precedents for this dilemma has reckoned accurately with the overall de- in “the gilded age” when Rockefeller, Carn- cline in the strength of political democracy in egie, and Morgan ruled the economic sphere. this era of globalized capitalism. Anderson’s The juxtaposition between the 1890s and vision is our best hope for the future and I 1920s with the present era is very effective for hope he is right. granting us needed perspective to see the patterns of our present plutocracy and extreme Craig L. Nessan wealth disparity with more objective vision. Wartburg Theological Seminary The author frames recent economic trends and scandals in religious terms. Our true American religion, “the pursuit of hap- Mark: Fortress Biblical Preaching Com- piness,” has been reduced to monetary mea- mentaries. By David Schnassa Jacobsen. sures: commerce, materialism, and consum- Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014. ISBN: 978- erism. The author’s matter of fact exposé of 0-8006-9923-9, xvii & 233 pages. Paper. these phenomena serves to disarm the reader. $22.00. At the same time an alarm sounds that warns us of the destructive consequences of the Preachers using the Revised Common Lec- game in which we are all caught up. At every tionary (RCL) may find a valuable compan- step of the argument, we are instructed on ion in Jacobsen’s new commentary on the the historical precedents that led us to this Gospel of Mark. The clarity of language and juncture and confronted by contemporary attention to detail allow readers to access cur- evidence as we race over the cliff of excess, rent scholarship on Mark with relative ease. whether the measures be advertising, health Jacobsen’s concise introduction gives care, or athletics. readers a helpful lay of the land in terms of Anderson proposes a return to the value past and present interpretive choices, even as of egalitarianism and practice of economic Jacobsen also stakes a particular claim about democracy as the way of deliverance from the nature of Mark as a text. Namely, Jacob- the regressive and even violent inequality un- sen considers Mark an apocalyptic narrative der which we suffer. The reader is provided that points to the person of Christ and the incredible detail and documentation of our Kingdom of God as the content of the good current economic, cultural, and religious cri- news, all intended to inspire readers into lives sis. The author expresses confidence that as in of discipleship that follow Jesus into that previous eras the pendulum finally shifted to Kingdom life. Book Reviews

150 As he considers Mark’s content, Jacob- and summary of “how neuroscience supports sen offers introductions to each pericope that teaching.” help to clarify issues with the text as well as Where this book takes off in new and situate those verses within the larger Markan extremely helpful directions is in its focus narrative. Particularly helpful for preachers, on seminary education, and in its fifth and Jacobsen then considers every lection from eighth chapters: Holly Inglis’ “Tips for Sticky within the RCL in depth. He even offers fresh Learning” and Kathy Dawson’s “Reimagining perspective for those verses that appear across Course Design: A Case Study.” The focus on multiple readings (cf. Mark 1:4–8; Mark seminary education is a nice plus. For once, 1:9–11). teachers of religion don’t have to adapt gen- At times throughout the commentary, eral educational theory to the theological set- Jacobsen beckons the reader back to the in- ting. Conversely, everything in this volume is troduction for explanation of certain themes adaptable to non-seminary settings. But it is common to Mark, such as the apocalyptic na- those fifth and eighth chapters I particularly ture of the text or Mark’s use of intercalation want to commend. As a Christian educa- as an interpretive lens. Readers might benefit tion teacher I have long resisted requests to from a brief explanation within the commen- focus on teaching techniques and methods. tary itself, so that we might not have to flip I deflect such requests by pointing to Parker pages to recall that intercalation points to the Palmer’s assertions that teacher identity and way Mark presents certain stories as mutually integrity, community and contextual spe- interpretive tools. Yet, this relatively minor cifics, and focus on the “transcendent third difficulty ought not dissuade readers from thing,” the subject, make it impossible to engaging Jacobsen’s work. find an effective, one-size-fits-all technique In fact, as preachers and congrega- for successful teaching. I have pointed people tions embark upon the homiletical journey to Karen Tye’s Basics of Christian Education through Year B, Jacobsen offers a timely or Christine Blair’s The Art of Teaching the commentary that can positively shape the Bible or Israel Galindo’s The Craft of Chris- church’s preaching throughout this year. tian Teaching to expose people to the range of factors involved in the art or craft of teaching. Andrew Tucker, pastor These fine texts have all helped, but people Christ Lutheran Church still come back with the “Tell me how to Radford, Va. teach!” lament. These two Sticky Learning chapters [five and eight] provide 35 pages of specific tips, examples, hints, and plans that Sticky Learning: How Neuroscience Sup- go a long way to answering the teacher’s la- ports Teaching That’s Remembered. By ment while still honoring the many specifics Holly J. Inglis with Kathy L. Dawson and of context, culture, learning styles, and neu- Rodger Y. Nishioka. Minneapolis: Fortress rological movement. I, for one, will rethink Press, 2014. ISBN: 978-1-4514-8878-4. vi and redo much of my teaching because of this and 115 pages. Paper. $24.00. ISBN: 978-1- book and these chapters. 4514-8965-1. E-book. $23.99. One final commendation: Inglis and her colleagues enhance their print text with Neuroscience is all the rage now, and under- QR codes that provide entre to helpful online standably it is being applied to reading, learn- enhancements. This not only pushes print ing and teaching, and all aspects of education boundaries but honors the brain’s capacity to good effect. This book enters this field with and need to learn in a multi-modal manner. all the appropriate expositions: chapters on the nature of learning, how memory works, Christine Wenderoth and a helpful review of the basics of neurosci- The JKM Library of the Lutheran School of ence, how the learning brain works. As such, Theology at Chicago and Sticky Learning is an excellent introduction McCormick Theological Seminary Preaching Helps

Pentecost Sunday — Lectionary 15/Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Red and Green: Pentecost and the Season of Ordinary Time This issue of “Preaching Helps” takes us from Pentecost Sunday on May 24 to Lec- tionary 15 in the middle of July, from a festival day to an ordinary day with a very ordinary name. How can Ordinary Time be shaped by the fire and mighty wind of Pentecost? In his book Something Is About to Happen, Tom Long recalls his days teaching confirmation. He was teaching a small class of three teenage girls. “Do any of you know what Pentecost is about?” he asked them. They all looked completely blank as though they had never heard the word (and perhaps they hadn’t). Pastor Long told them about that wondrous day when the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus’ followers. There was the sound of a mighty wind that shook the windows and something that looked like tongues of fire. When the wind died down, they began to speak in languages they’d never learned in school. That was Pentecost and what a day it was! Two of the girls nodded as though it sounded vaguely familiar. But the third girl said, “I think our family must have missed that Sunday.” Pastor Long was surprised not so much at her naiveté, but at her sense of wonder that this had really happened in her church. In many ways we’re not prepared for Pentecost. We spend the four weeks of Advent preparing for Jesus’ birth at Christmas. We spend forty days in Lent preparing for Holy Week and the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. But Pentecost comes and goes quickly, often falling on Memorial Day weekend as it does this year. I often wish we could linger a bit longer after the day of Pentecost to explore the meaning of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our individual and communal lives. If we hear people say, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” perhaps we haven’t preached enough about the Spirit in our congregations. This issue of “Preaching Helps” will focus as usual on the lectionary texts, but if you want to linger a bit longer on the Holy Spirit, you might consider stepping outside the lectionary to preach a sermon series such as the one outlined below. If it’s too late to change your plans for Pentecost and Ordinary Time, perhaps you might linger longer with the Spirit next year. (Feel free to skip this outline and go directly to information about the writers for this issue.) One Possible Sermon Series on the Holy Spirit

Pentecost Sunday: The Spirit Poured Out Even Now

Ezekiel 37:1–14 Acts 2:1–21 John 20:19–23 or 7:37–39 The reality of the Spirit’s anointing in these latter days: women and men, young and old, all classes (including slaves) Preaching Helps

152 Trinity Sunday: The Spirit Connecting Us to God Genesis 2:4b–7 Romans 8:12–17 John 3:1–8 The Spirit as God’s connection with us: breath into lifeless clay, God’s Spirit speaking with our spirit; the Spirit blowing where it chooses

Pentecost 2: The Spirit Blowing throughout Creation Genesis 1:1–5 Romans 8:18–25 John 1:1–14 The Spirit moving over the deep in creation; the whole creation groaning in labor pains; logos/Sophia with God in creation and made flesh in Jesus

Pentecost 3: The Spirit Sighing with Us (when we have no words) Psalm 139:1–12 Romans 8:26–30 John 4:19–26 The Spirit with us wherever we go, sighing with us when we have no words for our prayers, true worship where Spirit is present (not this mountain or that)

Pentecost 4: The Spirit Assuring Us of Christ’s Presence Isaiah 42:1–9 Romans 8:31–39 John 14:18–27 The Spirit is upon God’s servant; nothing shall separate us from the love of God; Jesus promised: I will not leave you orphaned.

Pentecost 5: The Spirit Building Up Community Isaiah 40:28–31 1 Corinthians 12:12–31 John 13:1–17, 34–35 Promise of God’s presence when we are weary; spiritual gifts for the building up of community (including the gift of tongues); servanthood and love for one another

Pentecost 6: The Spirit Calling Forth Justice Isaiah 61:1–4 1 John 4:7–21 Luke 4:16–21 Isaiah 61 is the text Jesus read in Nazareth: the Spirit anoints the prophet and Jesus to bring good news to the poor and release to the captives. What is the Spirit anointing us for in this time and place? Preaching Helps

153 Now, back to the lectionary readings for Year B, starting with the fires of Pentecost Sunday. As we move from Pentecost and Holy Trinity to the season of Ordinary Time, we welcome three writers in this issue, two who are writing here for the first time and another who has graced these pages before.

Heidi Neumark is pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Manhattan and executive director of Trinity Place Shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth and young adults. Her previous experiences in congregational and community ministry shaped her first book, Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx. Her new book will be released by Abingdon Press in October: Hidden Inheritance: Family Secrets, Memory and Faith. That book is about her recent discovery of Jewish roots and her grandfather’s death in a concentration camp. You are also invited to read more of Heidi’s wonderful insights on her blog at hneumark.com.

John Rollefson has been a frequent contributor to “Preaching Helps.” An ELCA pastor, John served urban and campus ministries in San Francisco, Milwaukee, Ann Arbor and Los Angeles. He also served interims in Solvang and London. He is retired with his wife, Ruth, in San Luis Obispo, California, where he is a member of Mt. Carmel Lutheran Church.

Peter M. Wallace is the executive producer and host of Day1, the weekly ecumenical radio program airing on over 200 stations and online at Day1.org. An Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Atlanta, Georgia, he is the author of nine books, including The Passionate Jesus: What We Can Learn from Jesus about Love, Fear, Grief, Joy and Living Authentically (SkyLight Paths).

As we move into the days of summer, I pray God’s blessing upon you and the people to whom you preach. May the fire of Pentecost light our way through the long season of Ordinary Time. May God’s Spirit breathe with our spirit to awaken and encourage us when we can’t think of anything to say. Thanks for your partnership in preaching God’s good news.

Barbara K. Lundblad Editor, Preaching Helps Preaching Helps

154 Pentecost Sunday and dry bones in the lives of those present, May 24, 2015 in the surrounding community, nation, and world: the exile of the reality we ex- Ezekiel 37:1–14 [or Acts 2:1–21] pected and the reality we are facing, the Psalm 104:24–34, 35b exile of a young person’s rejection because Acts 2:1–21 [or Romans 8:22–27] of their sexual orientation, the dry bones John 15:26–27; 16:4b–15 of foreclosed houses and shuttered busi- nesses, of forsaken urban neighborhoods, Pentecost is a festive day and many of villages emptied by ISIS. The preacher churches take extra care in adorning will have no trouble coming up with places worship spaces accordingly. Often, the near and far where it feels impossible to congregation is encouraged to wear red imagine how such dry, fractured bones if at all possible. There is red fabric and might live. often, bright images of flames and doves. When Ezekiel speaks a prophetic To enter the worship space is to sense that word to the bones, the first sign of new life something special and exciting is afoot. is “a noise, a rattling, and the bones came The opening of the first reading from together, bone to its bone.” Can crying Ezekiel could not present a more jolting babies and noisy children be a rattling of contrast. The hearers will suddenly be bones in the church as new life emerges? taken out of the colorful scene and led What about stress between different to a very different place—the stark valley groups using the church? Can some of of death, strewn with dry bones—hu- the conflict that may arise from differing man bones. If anything, it seems more traditions, expectations, and opinions like Good Friday than Pentecost. This actually be a sign of rattling bones? Are juxtaposition may turn out to be just some things that rattle us actually a work what is needed. There will surely be a few of the Spirit? In his book, New Seeds of people present whose inner reality feels Contemplation, Thomas Merton writes: more like the valley of dry bones than the “As long as we are on earth, the love that upbeat décor and mood around them. If unites us will bring us suffering by our the Spirit of Pentecost cannot touch them very contact with one another, because or the many death valleys around us, then this love is a resetting of a Body of broken it’s just a fun day and nothing more. bones. Even saints cannot live with saints Beginning with the Ezekiel reading without some anguish, without some can be a way to meet struggling people pain at the differences that come between right where they are. God sets Ezekiel them.” down in the valley and shows him the A congregation might consider how bones. When God asks Ezekiel, “Can a broken body of bones is being reset in these bones live?” Ezekiel turns the ques- their context. What new connections can tion back at God who provides the way be made between groups divided by age, forward. We might want to explore the race, or language? What new linkages exile Ezekiel’s people found themselves in might be forged between the congregation that led them to the kind of despair that and community or between one congrega- says, “Our bones are dried up, and our tion and another? This would be a way hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” of seeing what bone-rattling connections Then the preacher can consider the exile the Spirit might work through us beyond Preaching Helps

155 Pentecost Sunday. visions to share. One could point out In Ezekiel 37, it is the breath—the the diversity of the gathered congrega- Ruah of God—that allows the bones to tion, whatever that may be, as a sign of live and to stand. The vast multitude the Spirit’s work in our midst. We might that stood on their feet can direct us to ask: Whose voices are missing? Whose a moment in the Acts story: “But Peter, dreams are we not seeing as we envision standing with the eleven, raised his voice our future? One church I served embarked and addressed them.” Peter wasn’t exactly on a Time to Listen to the Community a dry bone, but Peter sank beneath the campaign—going out to have conversa- waves and failed and fell many a time. tions with people who were not part of Now the Spirit has lifted Peter to his the church, inviting them to share their feet and he stands and bears witness. A hopes and dreams for the community. connection can be drawn to Easter where Another church I served created a dream “Jesus himself stood among [his disciples] room where people of all ages could write and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” or draw their dreams for the church and The one laid in a tomb, now stands. The neighborhood. Spirit of the risen Christ lifts Peter to his One poem that I find particularly il- feet as the bones were lifted to their feet. lustrative for Pentecost is “Mending Wall” The preacher may wish to take up by Robert Frost. The winter “frost” and the theme of bearing witness. This theme ice have created gaps in the stone wall. He relates to the Pentecost gospel when the and his neighbor go out to fix it because Advocate comes and sends the disciples as the neighbor says, “good fences make to testify. When have we seen people good neighbors.” Frost begins to wonder standing up and bearing witness in un- if this axiom is true. Do good fences make expected ways? The preacher could begin good neighbors? It is the rationale for the close to home with people who have been wall on the border between our nation brought down by their own failure or by and Mexico and the security fence built forces they have no control over, people by the state of Israel. Frost counters his who nonetheless stand up to serve meals, neighbor’s words: tend the sick, teach children. As I write, Spring is the mischief in me, and clergy are standing before dozens of boxes I wonder with thousands of signatures asking that Kelly Gissendaner, a woman on death row, If I could put a notion in his head not be killed. One might recall a photo Why do they make good neighbors? showing Muslim men standing in front Isn’t it of a Catholic church in Egypt, protecting Where there are cows? But here there its congregants while they attend mass. are no cows. Sometimes we stand up by lying down Before I built a wall, I’d ask to know as many have done in the Black Lives What I was walling in or walling out Matter movement. Preaching might focus on the radi- And to whom I was likely to give cally inclusive nature of Pentecost seen offense. in the diversity of languages and Peter’s Something there is that doesn’t love citation from the prophet Joel: people of a wall. differing ages, social positions and gender That wants it down… receive the same Spirit and have unique Preaching Helps

156 Robert Frost wrote of his own identi- But Isaiah does not give us a picture of ty as wall-breaking frost, but he could have God. Out of the smoky haze, one of the been speaking of our identity as children seraphs carries a hot coal and touches of God, born of the Holy Spirit, sealed Isaiah’s lips as a sign of God’s searing by the Holy Spirit, filled with the Holy mercy. Isaiah has been branded now as Spirit. The Spirit makes spring mischief God’s messenger, but he has a chance to in us and through us, pushing boulders decide if he will accept the call and he aside, splitting through hardened hearts does: “Here am I; send me.” and minds with hope and healing, undo- This provides an opening for those ing projects and plans created to wall some who want to preach about vocation. The in and others out, making connections text makes clear that Isaiah’s call to serve in a world of neighbors. God—and our own—is not based on his adequacy or worthiness. It might be a time Heidi Neumark to lift up the Lutheran understanding of the priesthood of all believers, of vocation outside of “church work.” For those Holy Trinity who might want to consider “the hem of May 31, 2015 God’s robe,” Pastor Michael Coffey has Isaiah 6:1–8 written a wonderful poem on this text Psalm 29 titled “God’s Bathrobe.” The poem can Romans 8:12–17 be found at Pastor Coffey’s blog: http:// John 3:1–17 mccoffey.blogspot.com/2012/05/gods- bathrobe.html. The readings for Holy Trinity Sunday go a The Romans reading helps us detect long way in relieving the preacher of any the relational action of the Trinity. The pressure to explain the mystery of the Trin- Spirit moves in our spirits to help us ity. No more sermons about the Trinity as know we are children of God and heirs with Christ. We cannot suffer apart from a chemical compound H20—ice, liquid, and steam—which turns God the creator Jesus. Jesus cannot triumph apart from us. into a block of ice. Or God as a piece of This supports a sermon on the Trinity as a fruit (skin, flesh, and seed) or whatever way of communicating God’s nature as a other metaphor we might produce. non-hierarchical community of equality Isaiah is worshipping in the temple and mutuality that is not closed into itself when he is stunned with a vision of God but wide open, inviting, and life-giving. that leaves him speechless. He can only What does this say about us, created in tell us about the hem of God’s robe and God’s image? About our churches? About the commotion of wings all around. He other communities? tells us about the singing of the winged This reading is a good choice if it is a creatures, a song that rocks the house. He Sunday when baptisms will take place. If tells us about the smoking incense that anointing oil is practiced, one might men- blurs his outer vision and stings in his eyes, tion that it was once used to anoint kings, yet illumines his sense of unworthiness priests, and prophets, an elite group, but and inadequacy. Isaiah describes all of this now the oil glistens on the foreheads of in words that we echo in our own houses all who come to the font, equally chosen, of worship as we sing “Holy, Holy, Holy.” equally beloved, and coheirs with Christ. Preaching Helps

157 The story of Nicodemus is a story Nicodemus. He is still confused because for seekers. Nicodemus is introduced as Jesus doesn’t provide a set of rules but a a Pharisee. He would have been a smart, relationship of ongoing trust and love. educated, well-positioned leader and yet This is a wonderful story for those who something is missing. He longs to under- struggle with their own questions and may stand more about God and about his own worry that such questions are unwelcome path for life. We are told that Nicodemus in church. This text itself has often been came to talk with Jesus at night. Some used to dismiss questions. It includes one assume that Nicodemus came at night of the most famous verses in the Bible, because he didn’t want others to see him John 3:16, a favorite slogan of religious with Jesus, to appear to be straying into fundamentalists, often reduced at sports unapproved places. That might be true, events where fans just hold up the numbers but it is also true that for Jewish men like John 3:16. Nicodemus, studying the Torah at night For God so loved the world….The was considered to be especially valuable verse goes on to say that all who believe in because at night you can focus intently God’s Son will be saved. God did so love without the distractions of the day. Or the world and still loves the world but no maybe Nicodemus just thought that night true love can be reduced to a placard. How was the best time to catch Jesus alone and strange it is that this very text has been used get his full attention. perhaps more than any other, to close the “Rabbi,” he says, “we know that you door on our questions. It’s strange because are a teacher who has come from God. For Jesus welcomes Nicodemus’ questions no one can do these signs that you do apart without condemnation. from the presence of God.” Nicodemus As pastors, we hear many questions begins with what he knows and leaves for which we have no answers. We might unspoken all that he does not know and want to name some of those questions or longs to know. Jesus answered, “Truly I list some of the many questions in the tell you no one can see the kingdom of Bible: “Why do you hide yourself in times God without being born from above.” of trouble?” “Why do the wicked prosper?” Nicodemus has two questions. “How “Why is my soul downcast?” can anyone be born after having grown Few of these questions get direct old? Can one enter a second time into the answers. Rainer Maria Rilke’s words in mother’s womb and be born?” response to the questions of the young Although these are rather comical poet may help: questions, Jesus doesn’t make fun of Nico- …I would like to beg you dear Sir, as demus. He tries to help him see in a new well as I can, to have patience with way: “The wind blows where it chooses, everything unresolved in your heart and you hear the sound of it, but you do …Don’t search for the answers, which not know where it comes from or where could not be given to you now, because it goes. So it is with everyone who is born you would not be able to live them. And of the Spirit.” Being born again is not a the point is to live everything. Live the formula or a creed. It is life lived open to questions now. Perhaps then, someday mystery, being receptive to the movement far in the future, you will gradually, of the Spirit. without even noticing it, live your way “But how can these things be?” asks into the answer. Preaching Helps

158 How can our life in community help is not, as we human types might assume, us to live with questions that may be un- “Where is God?” (the religious question). answerable for now? When Nicodemus But the Bible’s initial query is God’s to leaves his conversation with Jesus, there is make of the human ones created out of the no sign that anything is resolved for him. adamah and now hiding in the Garden: But we meet him later in John’s gospel, “Where are you?” Religion, it turns out, on two occasions. When Jesus is arrested is God’s quest for us, not ours for God. and the disciples have all run away into It’s a wonderfully told tale, this story the shadows, Nicodemus steps out into of our originating disobedience to God’s the light and speaks on Jesus’ behalf. He word. It’s not so much a “fall” into sin that is takes a courageous risk for the sake of being described as a leap into humankind’s justice and truth. And then again, after innate craving to become the creator of Jesus has been crucified, a man named its own destiny, to disavow creature-hood, Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate and by knowing good and evil like God. As asks for Jesus’ body in order to bury it. Bonhoeffer once put it, the pious promise “Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus “you will become like God,” a seemingly by night, also came, bringing a mixture of good thing, is essentially the serpent’s myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred “religious trick” that would cut out God pounds. They took the body of Jesus and the “middleman” and God’s mediating wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths.” word as the means of our enlightenment All those fragrant spices—a hundred as to how to live morally (See Creation and pounds—carried by Nicodemus to bury Fall, [New York: Macmillan, 1971]). It’s Jesus. Nicodemus found a way to live with not so much that we are inherently evil as his questions, to risk truth and stand up there is something basically screwy about for justice, and to bear the weight of love. us mortals. There is something that we In this way, Nicodemus was born again. inherently know is not quite right with our ability to both know and do the good. Heidi Neumark Something about us “misses the mark” as the Greek word for sin, hamartia, signifies. For an alternate reading that savors Lectionary 10/Second Sunday the humor and anthropomorphic take after Pentecost on the Creator in the story, see the Yale June 7, 2015 literary critic, Harold Bloom’s The Book of J (New York: Vintage, 1990), 181 ff. Genesis 3:8–15 He has fun theorizing that the author of Psalm 130 the Yahwist narrative must have been a 2 Corinthians 4:13–5:1 woman, perhaps in Solomon’s court, so Mark 3:20–35 light, playful, and contrarian is her take on the creation story and its aftermath. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Bloom considers today’s text not at all a Lord, who could stand? “moral tale” but a wry “children’s story Psalm 130:3 that ends unhappily.” “When we were children,” he summarizes the essence of Engaging the Texts the story, “we were terribly punished for The first question we encounter in the Bible being children.” Preaching Helps

159 A canny insight of Walter Bruegge- specific: “He has Beelzebul, and by the mann just might curb our own religious ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” ambitions as we anticipate preaching Frankly, Jesus’ responses, as Mark on such a rich and well-known story. tells it, may not be any more convinc- Think of the serpent, he suggests, as the ing to contemporary hearers than to his creation’s first theologian who convinces original audience. Their conclusion could humankind to trade obedience to God’s be ours: “He has an unclean spirit”—or word for theology about God. As such it at least “unclear.” His babbling about is a story that insinuates the warning that Satan casting out Satan and a kingdom “theological talk which seeks to analyze divided against itself, about the need to and objectify matters of faithfulness is tie up a strong man before plundering his dangerous enterprise.” Today’s story from house and then, finally, his words about the Book of Beginnings further shows blaspheming against the Holy Spirit as how “anxiety comes from doubting God’s the only unforgivable sin—over which providence, from rejecting his care and the church has been scratching its head seeking to secure our own well-being.” ever since—all this ought to give us more The serpent seduces humankind into than pause. believing there are securities apart from But then the finale, with Jesus’ moth- the reality of God, and so “failure to trust er and brothers (and some manuscripts say God with our lives” proves to be “death” sisters too) coming and asking for him. (Genesis [Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982], And his chilling rebuff about who are my 47–48, 54–55). mother and brothers but those who do the will of God! There is no need to tie this Pastoral Reflections all up in one neat bundle or even try to If our Genesis story is about humankind’s suggest why Mark is bothering to include eternal hiding from God in its seemingly this troubling episode from Jesus’ early religious quest for God, today’s quizzical ministry. Suffice it to suggest that there Gospel story has something of a “Where’s are unclear boundaries between mental Waldo?” quality to it in which Jesus’ own illness and mental health, then and now, family plays a leading role. “What’s going especially where things religious come into on with our boy Jesus?” seems to be the play. Could it be that even Jesus could family’s concern as they fear he is being have his moments when his words and harassed by these crowds that are throng- behavior could be variously interpreted, ing before his very door, to the point that even by those who knew him and loved “they could not even eat.” Things were him best? And maybe—just maybe—the evidently getting out of control, and his only prescription for our human malady family—including mother, who here first diagnosed in Genesis is to do the “will makes her initial entrance into Mark’s of God” by heeding God’s word while not telling of the gospel—is about to make succumbing to the allures of our native what we would call “an intervention” with religiosity? Jesus. For the people were saying, “He’s “So we do not lose heart,” is Paul’s gone out of his mind,” whereas the learned way of putting it. Soli deo gloria! scribes who had come down from Jeru- salem—the certified smart people—had John Rollefson a diagnosis both more sophisticated and Preaching Helps

160 Lectionary 11/Third Sunday are essential to how the truth of the gospel after Pentecost grasps us. Of course I’m not recommend- ing that you lecture your congregation June 14, 2015 on the niceties of religious language, but help folks to see how Jesus leads the Ezekiel 17:22–24 way in helping us be encountered by the Psalm 92:1–4, 12–15 non-literal indirection of the gospel of 2 Corinthians 5:6–10, (11–13), 14–17 the kingdom of God—both, of course, Mark 4:26–34 being metaphors themselves drawn from everyday life. (See, for example, Colin It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing Gunton’s brilliant The Actuality of Atone- praises to your name, O Most High; ment: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and to declare your steadfast love in the morning, the Christian Tradition [New York: T & and your faithfulness by night…. T Clark, 1988]). Psalm 92:1–2 My suspicion is that at least a part of the accusation we encountered last week of Engaging the Texts Jesus being out of his right mind may well The chorus of a song titled “The Parables” have taken rise from his habitual parable- goes like this: telling mode of teaching which avoided Story teller, yes, he was the story- answering direct questions and instead telling kind; resorted to the inventive telling of odd He painted pictures in their mind, tales, many without an obvious point or It was the way he let them see moral, which nonetheless pointed to the How things were really s’posed to be. eccentric reality of what God’s kingdom is like. Today we find Jesus using one It was only last week that we, for the first of his favorite images that will recur in time in Mark’s gospel, were introduced many of his stories, that of the seed and to Jesus as a “story-telling” man, one then, more particularly, the mustard seed, who not only healed, exorcized, and common enough agricultural allusions proclaimed the kingdom of God but did even to Jerusalem religious grandees in so “in parables” as today’s text puts it. In attendance. The mustard seed, among fact, it is one of the most characteristic the smallest of seeds, becomes the great- things about Jesus so that Mark goes so est of shrubs when grown, sufficiently far as to claim “he did not speak to them large that “the birds of the air can make except in parables” (v. 34). nests in its shade” (v. 32). One of my This would be a good Sunday to most vivid memories as a young boy is give your congregation a little taste of pulling mustard plants (yellow weeds) “parabolic” preaching which can go a out of the oats field of my friend Bobby’s long way toward loosening the grip of father’s field, and indeed, upsetting the literalistic biblical interpretation that so raucous birds who had nested in them. afflicts many American congregations. This is what parables do: they activate your Start with a simple Greek word study that imagination and memory and invite you shows how “parabole” means to “throw to make connections with God’s “really something out alongside” of something real,” rooting the kingdom of God in your else, and how metaphor and story-telling earthly realities. Preaching Helps

161 Pastoral Reflections promised to bring to fruition. The church Today’s text from Ezekiel perhaps was in is God’s “mustard seed conspiracy,” as Jesus’ mind as he threw out the image of someone has described it. I remember the mustard seed to his audience. For here once seeing a banner in a prison chapel the prophet is speaking of God’s action as that posed the troubling question in nicely a transplanting of a sprig becomes, in time, confronting metaphorical language: “If a noble cedar under which “every kind you were charged with being a Christian of bird will live …and nest” (v. 23). This would there be enough evidence to convict image immediately sets my mind reeling you?” off to the beautiful Navajo woven tree- John Rollefson of-life rugs I’ve seen, to the beautiful and delicate Egyptian parchment-like tree, Lectionary 12/Fourth Sunday branches filled with all kinds of birds, a after Pentecost piece of artwork given me as a gift on the occasion of their baptisms by Arash, Tani June 21, 2015 and Bamdad originally from Tehran. Or think, too, of other scriptural trees from Job 38:1–11 Eden to John’s Revelation. This is the way Psalm 107:1–3, 23–32 our minds work, free associating God’s 2 Corinthians 6:1–13 kingdom from a suggestive image. This is Mark 4:35–41 dangerous territory, of course, for who can control where an image will take you—or Engaging the Texts the kingdom of God, for that matter? Finally, after thirty-seven chapters, God The kingdom of God that Jesus steps in “out of the whirlwind” (38:1) evokes in our minds is an alternative to answer Job. Through most of those reality that is subversive, elusive, and un- thirty-seven chapters Job has asked why derwhelming to our normal ways of being. me, and his companions have repeatedly I can’t help but think of Woody Allen’s answered, because it’s your fault. It’s a movie, “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” where frustrating read. But then in chapter 38, the Jeff Daniels character strides right amid some of the most striking imagery in out of the movie on the cinema screen scripture, it becomes all the more frustrat- to sit next to the Mia Farrow character ing—because God never really answers who is so entranced with the film and the Job’s question. Bottom line: God invites Daniels character. The rest of the film is Job to live in humble trust (see 42:3b). a story of the confrontation and conflict “Who is this that darkens counsel of these two realities. Farrow’s character by words without knowledge?” (38:2). It is sums it all up as she enthuses to a friend, hard not to take that personally, because, “I’ve just met the most marvelous man. let’s be honest, we so often don’t really Of course he’s fictional. But you can’t know what we are talking about either have everything!” yet rarely acknowledge that. With Job, We Christians, of course, believe let’s listen to God and reset the way we that the kingdom of God is the “really approach life. The questions God poses to real,” the already-in-our-midst, though Job seem like taunts—“surely you know!” hidden reality pulling us into God’s good (38:5). Yet they morph into a glorious future that Jesus evoked, embodied, and description of the creative power of God. Preaching Helps

162 God answers Job “out of the whirlwind” sea—just as God did in the psalm. “Why and uses stormy metaphors to describe are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” divine power. God, it becomes clear, is far (4:40). His taunt echoes God’s questions beyond our understanding. So rather than to Job. Like Job, the disciples are put in producing “words without knowledge” their place. Once again God’s message, like Job and his notorious friends, let us through Jesus and these other texts, is instead open ourselves to humble trust evident: Rather than fearfully railing in God no matter our circumstances. against the storms of life, we’re invited to In contrast to Job’s knowledge-less turn to God in humble trust and respond words, the psalmist exhorts, “Let the to life with openhearted love. redeemed of the LORD say so” (107:2). Rather than spilling empty words, let us Pastoral Reflections share stories of redemption at the hand As you prepare this week’s sermon, be- of the same God who, in language that ware: A storm will break out—in your parallels Job, both commands and raises congregation, in your community, in “the stormy wind” (107:25) and makes the world. Whether it’s a literal storm the storm “be still” (107:29). God brings or other natural disaster or some sort quiet and takes us to our desired haven. of societal brouhaha, outbreak, tragedy, In that place we can speak words of praise or brawl, you and your people will face and gratitude and share our stories of God some sort of storm. You will hear and working amid the storms of our lives. perhaps ask many questions about it, This requires words—not empty words, possibly including why me? If you watch but words brimming with humble, loving cable news, you will be inundated with a trust. great deal of “words without knowledge” Paul encourages the Corinthians to (Job 38:2). Pundits will offer their advice acknowledge that God hears and helps like Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu. in the midst of all sorts of difficulties, Many souls will feel abandoned like Job. trials, and storms, and then to respond You can guide your listeners through these with “purity, knowledge [there’s that texts to reveal a better way. word again], patience, kindness, holiness One event that should still be current of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech is the exile of NBC News anchorman [note that, too], and the power of God” Brian Williams. Within days of the rev- (6:6–7). Paul says he has been frank with elation that he had been uttering a great them, adding “our heart is wide open to number of “words without knowledge” re- you…. Open wide your hearts also” (6:11, garding his experiences in the Iraq war and 13). Our words are important. May they elsewhere, he seemingly lost everything convey humble trust and encourage open in a Job-like fashion, including his posi- hearts. tion as one of America’s top newspersons Tempestuous angst pervades these (at least for a six-month sentence). His texts, and in Mark we encounter yet journalistic reputation and very integrity another windstorm coming after a busy have been shattered. The cause seemed so time of teaching the crowds. But notice harmless and insignificant, and one may Jesus’ reaction amid this tempest: He is feel sympathy for him because certainly so trusting of God’s loving care that he he experienced a traumatic event in the can sleep peacefully. Once roused by his war-torn desert. While Williams assumed anxious disciples he brings peace to the responsibility and seemed remorseful and Preaching Helps

163 repentant, you have to wonder if he isn’t harsh vicissitudes are faced, at least for a crying out, “Why me?” time. God’s weeping, waiting people are Certainly there is more than one encouraged to hope that the Lord will Job-like figure in your congregation who not reject them forever. Despite the grief can identify with this shocking, stormy that can come by the hand of Providence, loss of everything they hold dear. Let us God will have compassion. seek to lovingly convey that the God who These encouragements are seconded “shut in the sea with doors when it burst in Psalm 30: While God’s anger may out from the womb” (Job 38:8), the God flash, his favor lasts forever. “Weeping who “commanded and raised the stormy may linger for the night, but joy comes wind…. [and] made the storm be still” with the morning” (30:5). The psalm- (Ps 107:25, 29), the God who “woke up ist’s heartfelt, honest prayer is answered: and rebuked the wind, and said to the mourning begets dancing; sackcloth is sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’” (Mark 4:39), is the replaced by a garment of joy (30:11). same God to whom we yield in humble God’s faithfulness moves the psalmist trust, the same God to whom we respond from silence to praise. Both these texts as Paul did, who despite his hardships was that address waiting, weeping, and hoping empowered to serve in “purity, knowledge, can find ears and hearts that long to hear patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, their promise in the midst of authentic genuine love, truthful speech…” (2 Cor need. 6:6–7). What is the most truthful speech The gospel, a Russian nesting doll in the midst of a storm or in its aftermath? of healing accounts one within the other, “Let the redeemed of the LORD say so” echoes this theme of waiting, weeping, (Ps 107:2). hoping. Both individuals seeking heal- Peter M. Wallace ing—Jairus the synagogue leader for his daughter and the unnamed woman— Lectionary 13/Fifth Sunday have no doubt been waiting, weeping, and hoping for divine intervention. In after Pentecost both cases, Jesus proves worthy of the June 28, 2015 hope entrusted in him. First Jairus approaches Jesus, falling Lamentations 3:22–33 at his feet to beg for help. Jairus expresses Psalm 30 faith in the healing power of Jesus and 2 Corinthians 8:7–15 asks directly that Jesus “come and lay Mark 5:21–43 your hands on her” (5:23). Jesus goes with him surrounded by a large crowd, Engaging the Texts among which is the woman who had The Lamentations text belies its name been suffering from hemorrhages for with beloved phrases about God’s stead- twelve years. Despite the expensive work fast covenant love (chesed in the plural, of many physicians, she has only grown indicating loving acts) and mercies that worse. But she trusts in Jesus: “If I but never end but are “new every morning” touch his clothes, I will be made well” (3:23). Faithfulness and hope pervade (5:28). Her healing is immediate, as is these verses, and the word “good” echoes Jesus’ realization that power has gone three times. But reality sets in as life’s out from him (5:30). When he asks Preaching Helps

164 who touched him, the disciples react as end, God’s faithfulness is great, therefore though he’s crazy—he’s smothered by we must believe. Even in the silence, people. Seeing his response, the woman even under the yoke, even throughout approaches in fear and falls down before the excruciating night, we must wait, him—as Jairus had—and tells him her weep, and hope. story. Jesus says her faith has made her Sometimes our perception of our well. While this happens, friends of Jairus problems is flawed; in the gospel, the come with word that his daughter is dead, people wept and wailed over the dead but Jesus counters, “Do not fear, only be- child only to be corrected by Jesus. God lieve” (5:36). In the midst of the waiting, is able to change circumstances in a mo- weeping, and hoping there is no room for ment, but that moment can come after fear, only trust. At Jairus’ house people days, weeks, years of waiting in silent pain. weep and wail, but Jesus declares, “The That moment will come, as it did with child is not dead but sleeping” (5:39). when Jesus commanded, “Little girl, get The wailing turns to derisive laughter, up.” Then we realize that Jesus is speaking and then, as Jesus bids the girl to get to us, whoever we are. Frederick Buechner up, to utter amazement. Jairus and the points to this moment as enormously woman took Jesus seriously; now these moving: mourners must too. You who believe, and you who sometimes believe and sometimes don’t Pastoral Reflections believe much of anything, and you who I remember a friend lashing out at me after would give almost anything to believe if I offered what I thought were encouraging only you could. You happy ones and you words for his difficult situation. Some- who can hardly remember what it was times in pastoral encounters involving like once to be happy. You who know illness, accidents, or death, those hurting where you’re going and how to get there may criticize well-meaning companions and you who much of the time aren’t for offering mere platitudes—“God is sure you’re getting anywhere. “Get up,” good to those who wait for God,” “This [Jesus] says, all of you—all of you!—and won’t last forever,” “Joy comes in the the power that is in him is the power to morning,” or even “Do not fear, only give life not just to the dead like the child, believe.” If those sentiments are offered but to those who are only partly alive, without empathic listening and mean- which is to say to people like you and me ingful action behind them, no wonder who much of the time live with our lives they are not taken seriously. Yet these are closed to the wild beauty and miracle of expressions from our texts today. We can things, including the wild beauty and either believe them or not. But look what miracle of every day we live and even of happens when we do take them seriously. ourselves.” (Frederick Buechner, “Jairus’ In the midst of any crisis it can be difficult Daughter,” http://frederickbuechner. to believe in a hopeful dawn, particularly com/content/weekly-sermon-illustra- when the crisis has endured for years. tion-jairus%E2%80%99s-daughter) Nevertheless, it is the preacher’s task to God can give us the power to get up offer the hope of God while offering a even while we are waiting and weeping, bigger picture: God’s steadfast love never while we are bleeding yet believing. For ceases, God’s mercies never come to an we hope in the steadfast love of God Preaching Helps

165 whose mercies are new every morning. prophetic calling which others will also encounter. Ezekiel begins by describing Peter M. Wallace how “a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet (v. 2). The prophetic sum- Lectionary 14/Sixth Sunday mons is one that comes from outside of oneself—it is not self-initiated—and, in after Pentecost fact, is often resisted by the recipient (see July 5, 2015 Jeremiah!). It comes as a calling, Ezekiel goes on to describe, that is a “sending” Ezekiel 2:1–5 to the people of Israel with a “Thus says Psalm 123 the Lord God” (vss. 3 and 4). These are 2 Corinthians 12:2–10 words the word-bearing prophet cannot Mark 6:1–13 expect will be welcomed but will likely be both resisted and rejected by God’s Our soul has had more than its fill of the “rebellious,” “impudent,” and “stubborn” scorn of those who are at ease, people. And yet, “whether they hear or re- of the contempt of the proud. fuse to hear,” the prophet is assured, “they Psalm 123:4 shall know that there has been a prophet among them” (v. 5). In other words the Engaging the Texts success of the prophet’s mission is not July is the month of prophets as we hear whether the word of the Lord is heeded today in our Hebrew scripture reading but whether it is spoken faithfully. This is from Ezekiel, next week from Amos, a word the church of every age needs to and then from Jeremiah and Elisha in hear. As the prophet of the Exile would succeeding weeks. It is a good, extended declare on God’s behalf so memorably, opportunity to reflect on the role of the so shall my word be that goes out from prophet in ancient Israel, and I recom- my mouth; mend taking some time to renew your it shall not return to me empty, but it familiarity with the prophetic tradition shall accomplish using time-tested resources like Abraham that which I purpose, and succeed in J. Heschel’s The Prophets: An Introduction the thing for which (New York: Harper and Row, 1962) or Martin Buber’s The Prophetic Faith (New I sent it (Isa 55:11) York: Harper and Row, 1949) as well as the work of more contemporary scholars. Pastoral Reflections For Christian preachers, of course, Today’s gospel from Mark 6 tells the story this provides the opportunity for us to see of Jesus’ return to his hometown, better both Jesus and John the Baptizer within known from Luke 4 as Jesus’ inaugural the tradition of Israel’s prophets of old sermon. Here, too, he astounds the crowd and to consider how God continues to of homies with his teaching. These home send us prophets in our own day. town folks can’t help but wonder where Today’s reading from Ezekiel is a good this local “carpenter, the son of Mary” place to start since we hear the story of with all his brothers and sisters present Ezekiel’s own initial call from God while right here with them, got this wisdom limning some of the difficulties of the and power. “And they took offense at Preaching Helps

166 him,” Mark says, meaning literally in war with itself (e.g., see Ronald C. White Greek, they found him a scandalon or Jr.’s, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech). Reading the stumbling block. same Bible and praying to the same God But what really scandalized his home- as both sides did, Lincoln admitted, only town folks was Jesus’ flippant throwing confused the matter. Yet, he promised, in their face the old proverb, “Prophets “The Almighty has his purposes” and are not without honor, except in their “the judgments of the Lord are true and hometown, and among their own kin, righteous altogether.” and in their own house (v. 4).” Here we Do you feel called to utter a prophetic find Jesus both, in effect, assuming the word from God directed into the midst of prophetic mantle and flaunting it in the the messiness of our contemporary world? face of his old friends and family who Gird yourself and pluck up your courage, assumed they knew him so well. And so, as William Sloane Coffin once warned us “amazed at their unbelief” Jesus shook off more timid word-bearers in his prophet- the dust of his feet against them where sounding adage, “Hell is truth seen too he “could do no deed of power” anyway late” (Credo, [Louisville: Westminster, (except the curing of a few sick people), 2004], 53). Take courage from the as- and bid his disciples to go out and do surance Paul testified to having received likewise—which they did with some from God through his own “thorn in the success. flesh” that “my grace is sufficient for you, I often wonder how the early church for power is made perfect in weakness” and its gospel writers found the courage (v. 9). And then wait for the fireworks! to describe Jesus the great teacher and John Rollefson prophet so honestly as one who failed to convince so many of the truth of his Lectionary 15/Seventh Sunday teaching—including, often enough, his own disciples. At the very least those of after Pentecost us who have had our difficult moments July 12, 2015 in confirmation instruction and stabs at prophetic preaching here might find some Amos 7:7–15 consolation. Faithfulness to the prophetic Psalm 85:8–13 word rather than success in creating a Ephesians 1:3–14 positive response is clearly God’s criterion. Mark 6:14–29 This being the Fourth of July weekend provides the context to be reminded that Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; true prophets always speak God’s word righteousness and peace will kiss each other. into the midst of the messy politics of their Psalm 85:10 day. Try reminding folks, for example, of the famous words of Abraham Lincoln’s Engaging the Texts “Second Inaugural Address” spoken just A vision given Amos, an eighth-century weeks before his own assassination on prophet, was that of God standing beside Good Friday, 1865, where he invoked a wall, plumb line in hand. This provided God’s mysterious will as a prophetic word a vivid picture of God’s own sense of that alone could cast perspective on the righteousness (also known as “justice” or way ahead for an America that was still at simple “straightness/rightness”) by which Preaching Helps

167 Israel’s actions were to be measured and villain we expect in light of his “Great” rectified. The history of God’s chosen father’s notorious cruelty exhibited in the people was one rife with acts of “crook- slaughter of the Bethlehem innocents as edness,” that is, behaviors, decisions, and well as numerous others, as the historian actions that had “fallen out of plumb” Josephus catalogues his atrocities. Rather with God’s expectations. Prophets of the it is his former sister-in-law (whom he had ilk of Amos, (an alien farm worker with married illicitly) who carried a grudge no prophetic pedigree), found wielding against John’s wielding of God’s plumb God’s plumb line an onerous, unreward- line against her marital shenanigans. And ing task. It meant incurring the accusa- so she successfully connives to have her tion of Israel’s religious establishment daughter so enthrall Antipas with her wiles that he was at the heart of a conspiracy as a dancer that an otherwise reluctant against the very king of Israel. Amaziah, king promises to grant her anything she a priest of the king’s sanctuary in Bethel, might request. John’s head on a platter spoke more truthfully than he knew, like turns out to be her mother’s first choice. countless spokespeople for establishment And so, through this lurid tale, we learn religion after him (including a certain high the story of John’s grisly death which priest by the name of Caiphas), when he Mark concludes in an artful manner, proclaimed of Amos, “the land is not able eerily prefiguring the story of yet another to bear all his words” (v. 10). politically motivated death soon to follow Today’s gospel reading tells the story in his gospel narrative: “they came and in flashback style of an Amos-come-lately took his body, and laid it in a tomb” (v. of more than 800 years later who also 29). dared to wield God’s plumb line against those in power and was made to suffer Pastoral Reflections for it. Some, it seems, were beginning to The real prophetic conspiracy of which think of Jesus of Nazareth as a kind of Amos, John, and Jesus, were a part, John the Baptizer redivivus, for the same (“conspiracy” literally meaning “breathing “powers” were detected as being “at work together”) is of God’s inspiration (“breath- in him” as if he were a latter-day Elijah ing into”). The writer of Ephesians goes or another of the “prophets of old” (vss. so far as to call it a “mystery,” God’s 14–15). For conventional religionists of “plan for the fullness of time” (vss. 9–10) the day, prophets were believed to be a which subverts any and all establishment phenomenon of the past—and the farther religion that assumes there can be such a in the past the better! King Herod led thing as a “king’s sanctuary” or a “temple the way in jumping to the conclusion of the kingdom” (Amos 7:9). Instead the on hearing reports of Jesus that it could “mystery” and “plan” God “has made only mean, “John, whom I beheaded, has known to us” is “set forth in Christ” as been raised” (v. 16). God’s intention to “gather up all things Mark uses Herod’s remark as a segue in him, things in heaven and on earth.” to narrate the details of a story both so sexy The Greek word anakephalaiosastai is not and gory that it has provided titillation only a mouthful to pronounce but, as not only to generations of Sunday school Dan Erlander has enthused in his book children but even has inspired the likes of Manna and Mercy: A Brief History of God’s Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. Herod Unfolding Promise to Mend the Entire Cre- (also called “Antipas”) here is not quite the ation (1992, 77), it is an immensely rich Preaching Helps

168 word that means not only “to gather up” grace is to be found in the universe. as translated in the NRSV but also God’s But in our human foolishness and uniting and bringing together the whole shor-sightedness we imagine divine creation. God’s “mending of the cosmos” grace to be finite…. But the moment was Krister Stendahl’s favorite way of comes when our eyes are opened, and putting it—God’s tikkun, in Hebrew. we see and realize that grace is infinite. “In him we have redemption through his Grace, my friends, demands nothing blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, from us but that we shall await it with according to the riches of his grace that confidence and acknowledge it in he lavished on us” (v. 7) is Ephesians’ gratitude…. Grace takes us all to its way of describing this “oikonomian” of bosom and proclaims general amnesty. God—God’s “economy” of salvation. See! That which we have chosen is given Few have put it better than the us, and that which we have refused Danish writer Karen Blixen, known is, also and at the same time, granted best by her pen name of Isak Dinesen. us. Ay that which we have rejected In the climactic scene of her short story, is poured upon us abundantly. For “Babette’s Feast,” she put these words into mercy and truth have met together and the mouth of one of her characters who righteousness and bliss have kissed one is making a kind of banquet feast taking another” (Anecdotes of Destiny, [New York: Vintage, 1985], 60-61). today’s psalmody as his text: Mankind, my friends, is frail and fool- John Rollefson ish. We have all of us been told that

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