Category: DOC Thoughts
Segregated by . . .
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr is said to have observed that the most segregated hour of a Christian America is Sunday morning. He was working to shame white clergy and community leaders by appealing to their identity as practicing Christians and with a morality that has welcomed the stranger in their midst. His Letter from a Birmingham Jail, is the best example of King’s prophetic witness to a Christianity too comfortable with its segregation. But, that is part of the Christian narrative. A majority of Christians agree on the object of faith, some version a confession of faith, “Jesus is the Christ. The son of the living God and I accept him as my personal savior.” Oddly, Jesus always pointed to God rather than himself as the object of faith. But, Christians disagree on what Jesus’ example means for what I call “how to be gospel” for each generation, for the outcast, in war zones, for the refugee, through governing, and for the “blessed” in every culture. It is hear where Christians struggle with one another and with “culture” to be gospel.
Back on October 19, Martin Marty’s, Sightings, observed in the opening paragraph:
Cynics, but not only cynics, like to observe, not always inaccurately, that Christians are never happy unless they are fighting—each other. Certainly, their scriptures have notes of militancy. Most of these signal fighting—evils at a distance or evils within the self.
There are good people on each side of the argument, it’s probably ok to characterize it as a “fight,” within Christianity about what a faithful response is: for immigrants that entered the country legally and illegally; the change in the law that allow same-sex couples to marry; acceptable levels of destruction to the environment and workers in the advance of capitalism, energy, and consumerism. These seem the popular topics of the day.
Christians Fighting Christians
Martin Marty | October 19, 2015It is not the business of bystanders in Sightings to say how these conflicts will finally be resolved or to predict whether they can be moderated “globally.” It is on our agenda to observe “religion-in-public-life,” a safe place from which to observe that there seems to be “no place to hide” from this century’s conflict-of-choice in the global church.
Identify and Own a Hermeneutic
My companion is a biblical scholar teaching at a progressive, mainline seminary. She’s been listening to our denomination talk about the non-essentials and the essentials of faith since we entered seminary back in the late 1980’s. The conversations have been, at times, charitable in tone. As a scholar of the First Testament and professor, she asks tough questions with grace and balance about Christendom’s use of the bible. Hat tip to Dr. Toni Craven and Dr. William Baird for passing that along to Lisa, to me, and others that studies with them and witnessed their example at Brite Divinity School.
I don’t remember what we had talked about or what might have been on TV, but one evening I noticed her typing away, and she turned out this piece published at Dmergent.
A Little Consistency Please
Oct 23, 2015In an effort to be candid, I will share my hermeneutic for reading biblical texts. As a follower of the way of Jesus, I value and recognize the two “greatest commandments” that at least 2 gospels (Matt 22:36-40 & Mark 12:28-34) attribute to Jesus: “Love God with all you are” (Deut 6:5) & “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). Every text in the bible must be evaluated with these questions: does it teach me to love God with all that I am and does it teach me to love my neighbor as myself. If the answer is “no,” then I must delve deeply in research to seek an answer as to why this text might be in the bible. If the answer is “yes,” then I must also delve deeply into the exegesis of the passage, so that I do not just bend it to approve of what I do and what I value.