Will Samson

This Wink Is For You, Mark

Although I do wish I had thought of Wink Martindale first. Criminey.

The Five Books You Would Take to Prison

Almost two weeks ago I wrote about the new Bureau of Prisons policy that is removing all religious books except for a government-approved list (original story here). I could say something smarmy and passive-aggressive like, "Boy, I am so glad we elected a true religious conservative to the White House." Or possibly I could ask, "How did someone so publicly aligned with the One who spoke against fear come to be so ruled by fear?" But I will avoid those thoughts as they might cause controversy.

According to an article in this morning's NY Times, the government plans to continue with this policy, despite calls for its end from both the left and the right. But, I did learn in the article that each prisoner was allowed to keep five books for themselves.

This got me wondering: If I were imprisoned during the Bush Administration and had my religious liberties taken away in the name of fighting terror, what five books would I want with me? This is not a list of my five favorite books, just those I would want during this time of Orwellian religious political structure. Below is my list; please feel free to add your own in the comments section:

1. The Bible

2. The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

3. Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, Scott Bader-Saye

4. The Myth of a Christian Nation, Greg Boyd

5. The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder

A Response to Bill Easum's Thoughts on the Emerging Church

I read the following comments from Bill Easum, of Easum Bandy, with great interest:

“Most of my travels as a consultant have proven one thing to me: the emergent church will be part of the future, but they will be a small segment of the future. I don’t see many emergent churches reaching large numbers of people yet. I’m not sure they can, based purely on the styles mentioned in this post. Now there is nothing wrong with small churches as long as they are reproducing themselves in some way—multiple sites, planting churches. But if they remain small and intimate, I doubt if they will have any more impact on the culture than the house church has.

“The future needs both the emergent church and the mega or giga (over 10,000) church, but what we need most are churches that are reproducing themselves. So the real issue is: what are the emerging churches doing to reproduce themselves?” (emphasis mine) *

I read these thoughts with interest first because Bill Easum is quite responsible for my engagement with the various understandings of church that shape my life these days. I attended an Easum Bandy seminar in the late 1990's, just as I was beginning question many of my assumptions about the Church. I also paid attention to Easum's comments because other church leaders do as well, including those that write and speak about the future direction of the church. Easum is a thought leader in the Church, and what he says is, at the least, indicative of larger thought movements.

But Bill Easum's comments are proof of one of life's basic maxims: we only answer the questions we ask. Easum is a consultant with a client base. He is quite likely to find evidence that supports an operational model similar to that which he and his client-churches expect. Easum is not criticizing the spiritual reproduction of followers of Jesus happening in undefined "emergent" churches. He is, instead, criticizing the lack of the emergent church's captivation by the industrialization model of the Church birthed in the West and promoted heavily in America by people like Charles Finney (for a thoughtful critique of Finney's work, check out Christian Preaching: A Trinitarian Theology of Proclamation by Dr. Michael Pasquarello III). To Easum, the greatest failing of the emergent church is that it does not look like the churches he is paid to study and promote.

It should come as no surprise that the emergent form of anything does not look exactly like previous forms. But the conversations about the emergent, and, to a lesser degree, emerging, church are about more than form. They are about the impact on belief and practice that has come from the industrialization of the Church in the West.

This industrial cycle is one that Easum stands at the end of, and one that was largely driven by a scientific epistemological approach to ecclesiology. This epistemology affected the way Christians conceptualized being a follower of Jesus and greatly influenced the kind of congregations we created. Thus, theological orthodoxy became accedence to a set of propositionally constructed truths, as opposed to adherence to belief statements. And, as proof that "form follows function," a kind of methodological orthodoxy crept in as well, enabling an ongoing conversation about which model is right. Thus was born the need within the Church for firms whose sole purpose is to help churches connect with the right model and grow, with growth generally being measured in economic and consumer terms as more: more people, more buildings, more giving, more small groups, etc.

Ironically, industrialization, fostered by a Protestant spirit of capitalism, is driving globalization across the globe, leading to an increased pluralization, both of cultural and religious expressions, in America. This could be leading the Church to a time of thoughtful consideration as to what it means to claim the name "Christian" when there exists such a wide array of religious and cultural choices.

Yet this is also the kind of thoughtful reflection we may not find from those most captive to the industrial model of Church that has dominated American Protestantism in the late 20th and early 21st Century. This may be due in part to the paradigmatic adherence required of one who earns income from a particular model. Or, the lack of reflection may be as innocent as the blindness that comes from spending so much time thinking about a structure or idea in one particular way (Remember Thomas Watson's famous statement, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."). Regardless, it should surprise no one that Bill Easum see little future hope for the emergent Church.

A thoughtful response to the challenge posed by Easum might be this: What hope does the emergent and emerging church hold for the institutional church? This reversal of the question may be a good corrective for those who claim a kind of radical faith but are just as captive to form. Another question might be: What does it mean to truly think of God and the rule of God on this earth as emergent, i.e., phenomenal, unpredictable and unable to be aggregated into a single scientific explanation?

(By way of footnote, a larger conversation needs to take place within the emergent church regarding structure and sustainability. The models of financial viability available to those operating within the existing structural Church are not available to those seeking the emergent work of God's kingdom. Please feel free to share thoughts on this in the comments or email me, as I will presenting on this topic at the upcoming CCDA conference in St. Louis)

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* The Easum quote was originally in the comments section of this post, and was later requoted on the Emergent Village blog here

Doug Pagitt, The Yoga Pastor

My good friend Doug Pagitt was recently on Headline News, answering the question, "Should a Christian do yoga?" Here is the video:

New Series of Mountaintop Removal From VBS.TV

VBS.TV has created a create new series of videos on mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Below is the first of five. (One warning - these are not all content friendly for kids)

We Pray for Peace

Today is September 11th. This day we mourn the loss of over 3,000 lives, as well as the loss of a national innocence.

May the God of Peace rule in your heart this day. And may the model of Christ, the one who said, "if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also," serve as a guide for your actions.

Last year, on the 5th anniversary of the attacks, I wrote four posts on my recollections of September 11th. If you are interested, they are linked to below:

• 9/11 Recollections and Reflections: Part One - The Event
• 9/11 Recollections and Reflections: Part Two - Getting Home
• 9/11 Recollections and Reflections: Part Three - The Days That Followed
• 9/11 Recollections and Reflections: Part Four - How Should We Then Live?

Barth, the Terrorist Incitor

I always knew Karl Barth was a little radical. But should Barth be banned from prison libraries because he might incite violence or encourage the recruitment of terrorists?

According to an article in this morning's NY Times, this is precisely what our tax dollars are being spent on - the systematic purging of all religious books but those that meet the approval of anonymous reviewers for each of the major faiths. Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the cut. Robert Schuller did not.

This is a bizarre event, one for which the term "Orwellian" is not a stretch. It seems ample evidence of the fact that fear is a dangerous motivator, and not one we can control once we have allowed it to control us. When we permit our government to follow extreme anti-Christian tactics in one area, such as torture in Abu Ghraib, it should not surprise us that we have unleashed forces that will come back to haunt the Church. This now includes the removal of training material to strengthen the faith and knowledge of Christian converts in prison who want to turn their life around.

So, I will close with some words from the apparently non-terrorist-recruiting German Lutheran pastor who, quite ironically, attempted to incite the overthrow of his own government:

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Kathy Mattea on Mountaintop Removal

Country music star Kathy Mattea has recently gotten engaged with the issue of mountaintop removal and coal mining. She has made it a major push, putting out an album in the spring dedicated to coal and the people that mine it.

Click here to listen to her interview on this issue for Living on Earth.

The Problem With "Organic"

One of the biggest problems with organic food is that, frankly, there is little about it which could be said to be organic, with the exception of the word and some USDA approval stamp on the side. For more reading on this, check out the following article from the Dallas Morning News:

Is organic food the real deal?

Baker Publishing and the Green Press Initiative

Baker Publishing is our publisher for Justice in the Burbs . I always knew I liked working with them - this morning I discovered one more reason to feel good about our decision to be involved with this publisher.

Baker is the only evangelical publisher to be part of the Green Press Initiative, whose stated mission is to "work with publishers, industry stakeholders and authors to create paper-use transformations that will conserve natural resources and preserve endangered forests." Initiatives like Green Press are, it seems to me, low hanging fruit with regard to living justly. It requires a small amount of work on the part of the publisher to be involved. And, using recycled paper means less trees are destroyed, less toxic chemicals are dumped into our rivers and streams, and vital ecosystems are preserved. It is also, most importantly, a way to create safer jobs.

Please reward Baker with your business. They are home to the Baker Books line, as well as Baker Academic, Brazos, Bethany, Revell and Chosen. So, you have a lot of choices for titles that are printed in ways that manage creation well.

If you are interested in a book from an evangelical publisher not part of this initiative, perhaps this is a good time to ask them why not. All of the evangelical publishers, including Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, have websites with "Contact Us" forms that you could use to encourage them to join this great initiative.

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Since posting this in the morning, I have heard from 1) a friend who is a Zondervan author who shared with me Harper Collins' (i.e., Zondervan's owner) green workspace initiative, and 2) from a friend at Abingdon's who told me of their use of recycled paper for the new Emergent line. Thanks!