Does the Trinity Prove Anything about Gender? Not Much
April 19, 2008
Amid all the arguments among Christians regarding the roles of men and women in home, church, and society, one of the most prominent nowadays is the argument from the Trinity, namely, that the way the persons of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) relate and are related to each other tells us something important about how men and women are related and ought to relate to each other.
And no wonder some argue this way. What a trump card! “Our view of gender is rooted in the very nature of God!”
The first troubling thing to notice here, however, is that this argument is deployed by both complementarians/patriarchalists and egalitarians/feminists.
Empty Tomb or Empty Gesture?
March 24, 2008
One of Canada’s leading newspapers, the Toronto Globe and Mail, reported this past Easter weekend on a local church who decided not to sing, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, Alleluia,” but “Glorious Hope Is Risen Today.” As the reporter, veteran Michael Valpy, probed to find out in just what that hope consisted, if not Christ the Lord, he was told by the pastor, Gretta Vosper, that her church had no room for miracles. Just moralism.
No “Big God-ism,” as Valpy reported her putting it: “No petitionary prayers…. No miracles-performing magic Jesus given birth by a virgin and coming back to life. No references to salvation, Christianity’s teaching of the final victory over death through belief in Jesus’s death as an atonement for sin and the omnipotent love of God. For that matter, no omnipotent God, or god.”
Alternative Bishops among Anglicans? One’s Already Here
March 7, 2008
I normally stay away from commenting on the convulsions of the Anglican Communion, whether here in the Diocese of New Westminster, whose bishop is a heretic and schismatic (by the standard definitions of those terms), or in the Anglican Church of Canada, which tolerates such behaviour, or in the Anglican Communion worldwide, which is wracked by controversy over the legitimacy of homosexuality (ostensibly) and a lot of other things, such as heresy, schism, power politics, racism, and more (fundamentally).
I have belonged to Anglican congregations in Winnipeg and Vancouver, and have lots of contacts in Anglican churches in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., but I am not a confirmed Anglican and am not currently a member of an Anglican congregation, so I rarely speak up about what are “family problems” in someone else’s “tribe.”
Speaking of “tribe,” however, I was moved to headshaking a year ago by the appointment of Mark MacDonald, already an Anglican bishop, to the newly-created post of National Indigenous Bishop in Canada. According to the Anglican Journal, Bishop MacDonald has “pastoral oversight over all of Canada’s indigenous Anglicans no matter where they live.”
Evangelical Elites Avoiding Church?
February 24, 2008
Much has been written about Michael Lindsay’s recently published study on evangelical elites in America, summarized here in a USA Today article. Among his findings: evangelical elites, by which he means those evangelicals who have attained positions of influence in culturally significant institutions, from business to politics to mass media, don’t go to church nearly as often as what he calls “populist” evangelicals.
Instead, he says, they belong to home study groups, to friendship circles, and (here’s where things get a bit sinister) to invitation-only fellowships of similarly powerful Christians.
There’s lots to dislike about this picture. It’s one thing to be elite: some people are much more successful in certain things than the rest of us, such as gaining power in mainstream institutions. It’s another thing to be elitist: to think of oneself more highly than one ought to think, to keep out the rabble and to keep oneself to fellow “right-thinking” people.
Some also think it’s bad to see all this power, talent, drive, and, yes, money being kept out of local congregations and diverted/devoted instead to parachurch organizations.
And some think that these high and mighty folks could do with a good dose of reality, with having to roll up their sleeves in an ordinary church among ordinary people and learn some common sense wisdom from common folk.
That’s one side of it, if a pretty slanted side. But then, as Lindsay himself points out, there’s another dimension to this issue: evangelical elites can’t find churches worth going to.
Church Bulletin Classics
February 17, 2008
You’ve likely seen lists such as this one before. But this is a pretty good one, and I’ve been awfully serious of late, so let’s lighten things up a bit as we find out more about our churches than perhaps we want to…
The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
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The sermon this morning: “Jesus Walks on the Water.” The sermon tonight: “Searching for Jesus.”
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Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8 PM in the recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King.
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Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.
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The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been canceled due to a conflict.
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Don’t let worry kill you off - let the Church help.
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Miss Charlene Mason sang “I will not pass this way again,” giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
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Entering Advent: Repentance and Forgiveness (I)
November 24, 2007
As Christians enter the season of Advent—the time of the church year when we undertake an examination of our lives and repent of our sins to prepare for the celebration of the first coming (“advent”) of Jesus—we do well to consider the themes of repentance and forgiveness. There is a lot of confusion around these terms, and a lot of pain around them as well, perhaps especially as Christmastime brings to mind hurtful events and relationships in one’s life. Let’s see if we can bring a little Christmas light to bear on the subject.
Repentance and forgiveness are at the heart of the Christian faith and two of the key words in the Christian vocabulary.
Indeed, they are
• at the heart of the Gospel—we are called to repent and God promises to forgive our sins;
• at the heart of Christian prayer: “and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” (Luke 11:4) ; and
• at the heart of Christian conduct toward our neighbours.
Yet sometimes Jesus says such odd things about forgiveness: “Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, `I repent,’ you must forgive” (Luke 17:3-4).
Notice that in this short passage we encounter multiple sins and multiple forgivenesses. Forgiveness may be necessary toward the same person over and over again.
Notice also that repentance seems to be required. But it isn’t.
“Red-Letter Christians”: A Bad Idea with a Bad Name, Alas
October 22, 2007
Being a “red-letter Christian” sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University, activist, pundit, and provocateur, tells us that he wants to obey the very words of Jesus, those words that in previous generations of Bible publishing were printed in red.
His comrade Jim Wallis of the Sojourners Fellowship, also known as an activist, pundit, and provocateur, shares this self-designation and thinks that such an approach to Christian discipleship will transcend the division of American political culture between the left and right, Democrat and Republican.
So isn’t being a red-letter Christian (RLC) a good thing?
Well, first, let’s agree that Christians should try to follow Jesus. No problem there. But the trouble with the RLC concept begins immediately afterward.
Jesus, I’m NOT in Love with You
September 16, 2007
One of the blights upon the hymnological landscape today is the continued presence of what we can fairly call the “love song to Jesus” genre. It’s been around as long as there has been Christian pop music–and even earlier, depending on what you make of sentimental gospel songs in the nineteenth century, eighteenth-century revivalist hymns, and especially a lot of the mystical poetry-cum-lyrics of certain medieval saints.
Today our congregation was asked to sing, “Jesus, I’m in love with you”–a line that shows up, in one permutation or another, in several songs that occur frequently in our worship leaders’ rotation.
Well, I didn’t sing it. It’s wrong, and I try not to sing wrong lyrics.
A Bad Appeal for a Good Cause
August 17, 2007
Churches sometimes succumb to the temptation to appeal to our less-worthy motives in order to get us to do what we ought. In our age of individualistic, therapeutic, consumeristic selfishness–not that every age isn’t selfish, but this is the kind of selfishness that afflicts us most–churches often present the various needs they have for volunteers in terms of “opportunities.”
So each Sunday morning we hear of “opportunities” in youth work, or the soup kitchen, or the Sunday School, or an Alpha program. And each Sunday morning we then ask ourselves, if only for a moment’s consideration, “Do I want to do that? Will this be good for me? Is it indeed a valuable opportunity? No? Then forget it.”
Yes, Christian service is always a valuable opportunity for me: to use my spiritual gifts, to develop a serving spirit, to enjoy the company of fellow Christians, and so on. But Christian service is supposed to be also about honouring God and loving my neighbour. It’s about an obligation to meet others’ needs, not just benefit myself with one happy opportunity after another.
Pope Benedict XVI continues to make things as clear as he can for his own church and for everyone else. So now we have another document from his pen, following on the “Dominus Iesus” document of 2000, that makes sure we all know that there is only One True Church. And a predictable uproar has followed.
But I think we kinda already knew Rome thought that, no?
Christianity Today magazine recently published a troubling article about a group of churches in the United States associated with Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California.
What was troubling was that an old, old pattern among evangelical leaders has emerged yet again. Entrepreneurial, charismatic leaders, such as Calvary Chapel’s Chuck Smith, strike out on their own in innovations that result in considerable blessing to many. Calvary Chapel was the home, most famously, of many of the “Jesus music” rock bands of the 70s and 80s and was a key centre for the “Jesus People.”
But such freewheeling personalities are prone to want to do it all themselves and to keep doing it themselves. And they typically fail to realize that the “go it alone” approach that made sense in the “pioneering” phase can devolve into sheer dictatorial egomania in the “settler” phase.
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Church Membership: Who Counts? Who Cares?
May 20, 2007
The Washington Post reports on how “soft” numbers are for church membership in the United States–an old story among us sociologists and historians, but an important story nonetheless. The numbers are generally inflated, as many denominations and congregations don’t drop people from the rolls unless they are explicitly asked to do so–and who bothers to do that once they have drifted away from church? They’re also inflated because in at least some regions of the United States it is still “expected” that you belong to a church, so you say so when a pollster asks.
Ironies and paradoxes abound. Here’s one. The Roman Catholic Church, known for making one or two demands on its members, nonetheless keeps on its rolls anyone baptized in its churches unless they ask to be removed. But so do the Mormons and the Southern Baptists, who also are known for expecting members to toe a certain line of doctrine and practice. And even if they were the only three denominations to practice this weird kind of inclusivity (and they’re not), they’re so big that they alone would account for a huge statistical problem.
