Praxis: Faith Inspires Justice and the Care of Souls

Over at Covenant, Episcopal seminarian Matthew Burdette writes on the place of theology in theological education as seminaries and seminarians push ever further towards the "practical":

A useful illustration of this dynamic is the centrality given to pastoral care, the current conception of which is a 20th-century innovation. Prior to this time, pastoral ministry was generally conceived of in moral and sacramental terms, rather than in therapeutic (and therefore medical) terms, which is currently dominant. It has become a widespread requirement for ministers of different faiths to undergo the training of Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE, usually in the context of hospital chaplaincy. One of the stretching and beneficial characteristics of CPE is that ministers work with ministers of other faiths, as well as offer pastoral care to people of other faiths. Beneficial as interfaith learning is, a question does loom over the whole process: If I can offer the same pastoral care to a patient as the imam, and if I think that pastoral care is at the center of ministry, then what is the significance of those doctrinal matters that separate me from the imam?

The question is a serious one, and my own suspicion is that there is a correlation between the pervasive focus on this model of pastoral care and the implicit Unitarianism espoused by many clergy in mainline Protestantism. The same question emerges from the focus on social justice. When a parish’s or cleric’s social vision is indistinguishable from a party platform, and when the Church’s message is said to find its telos in that social vision, one must wonder why anyone should bother with the religious baggage. Again and more pointedly: When pastoral care or social action are assumed to be the goal of theological education, then the particular matters of doctrine that are the content of the Christian faith become irrelevant and distracting; focusing on them deters from what theology or ministry is allegedly about.

...The presumption that theological education is for some practical end is perhaps also related to widespread biblical illiteracy and poor catechesis. It is difficult to prioritize teaching the Christian faith when the implicit assumption is that its content is inconsequential.

I couldn't agree with Burdette more. Just as "Intro to Worship" is about more than just what color stole to wear and the proper way to bless the assembly, so to should our classes on conflict transformation and pastoral care more than crash-courses in community organizing and family systems.

As I've said before, so many young clergy and seminarians are passionate about social justice and pastoral care but neglect any sense of theological framework. Instead, many of my colleagues -- wonderful and loving people that they are -- try to wrangle a Christian identity out of progressive social actions. In this view, the Church would function just as well without God -- perhaps even better if we get to catch up on sleep on Sunday mornings.

The Church's rediscovered passion for social justice and pastoral care -- even among younger fundamentalists! -- is commendable. Good will come of it. But this new passion is not enough if it is not based in belief in the Triune God.

The Church is called to work for justice and to care for souls, but those vocations flow out of our sacramental identity. We are the Body of Christ. Here we stand. We can do no other.

Credo: Progressives and the Need for Robust Theological Thinking

The Apostles' Creed
13th century

Eternal Functional Subordination is an odd debate, but why does it matter? Why pay attention to Fundamentalist in-fighting?

I'm tempted to say, "Because theology matters."

But why? Why does theology matter? Who cares?

Sadly, "Who cares?" seems to be the driving force behind many Progressive Christians -- even authors, seminarians, and pastors.

Or, more accurately, we have been freed to ask the questions that matter, but we have been too apathetic to think through the answers. The result is, at best, an orthodox but incomplete answer; at worst, it's heresy.

"How do we understand the inter-relationship of the Trinity?" has become "God exists in community" sans engagement with the Creeds or the debates between the Greek East and Latin West.

"How do we think about the atonement?" has become "All the theories suck, and in the end, God is love and forgives" sans any engagement with the imagery woven into Scripture or the writings of our ancestors in the faith.

"Who may partake of Holy Communion?" has become "It's mean to exclude people" sans any sacramental theology or discussion of Holy Baptism.

In its most extreme form, Progressives have adopted Bultmann's rejection of a historical Resurrection. (And, if that's the case, let's pack it in. Without the Resurrection, our faith is in vain.)

There are, among the ranks of Progressive Christianity, those trying to take us back to the early 20th century and the days of Protestant Liberalism.

Charles Taylor traces the genealogy of this move in his masterpiece A Secular Age (or, if you don't have time for a tome of that size, James K.A. Smith provides a thorough summary in How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor). In the Enlightenment, we see a shift from emphasis on the transcendent to the immanent, from things other-worldly to this-worldly. As a result, the emphasis moves from God's ability to save humanity to human ability. To quote Smith:

The result is a kind of intellectual Pelagianism: we can figure this out without assistance. Oh, God still plays a role -- as either the watchmaker who got the ball rolling, or the judge who will evaluate how well we did -- but in the long middle God plays no discernible role or function, and is uninvolved.

We are left with an emphasis on charitable action sans theology, a God who may be Alpha and Omega but is absent for the rest of the story, a God we do not need to contemplate and who doesn't care what we believe so long as we do good.

Picking up on similar themes while discussing Progressive Christianity's hesitance to think about sin and Satan, Richard Beck quotes Scot McKnight:

According to McKnight, for these "skinny jeans" Christians the kingdom of God means "good deeds done by good people (Christian or not) in the public sector for the common good." As he notes, given their focus on social justice these "skinny jeans" Christians have "turned the kingdom message of Jesus into a politically shaped message."

And sure enough, not a day goes by that I don't see seminarians posting heart-warming videos of good deeds proclaiming, "Kingdom of God is here!"

"The Kingdom of God has come near" becomes "Look at this cool non-profit" sans metanoia.

To be clear, I am not opposed to good deeds. As a Lutheran shaped by the Wesleyan tradition, I firmly believe that God's grace is at work in the world, even among those outside the Church, erupting into this world in unexpected ways. But as a Lutheran shaped by the Wesleyan tradition, I also believe that those works -- glimpses of God's grace though they may be -- are not sufficient to justify sinners.

Love and community are powerful speaking points. They are important elements of human existence and the Kingdom of God. But the very same reason these themes resonate also makes them important to define carefully. Too many Progressive Christians are unwilling to do the heavy theological lifting required to carefully define love and community.

Every human being desires love and community. It's part of the human condition. This commonality means that artists and culture makers have their own vision of human flourishing through love and community. It's why love songs and buddy adventure movies and rom-coms and dramas about human relationships (romantic and platonic) are so common.

The same can be said for charitable giving. There are a number of secular groups doing great work to alleviate human suffering across the world, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation chief among them. Countless non-profits are doing great work at the local level.

And yes, I will gladly grant that this is the Kingdom of God breaking into the world. The imago Dei didn't shatter in the Fall. Divine love is at work, even when human beings aren't aware of it.

But we must speak theologically about these things. It's not enough to look at someone feeding the hungry and say, "It's the Kingdom at work, y'all."

Such good works are like the first shoots of a crop coming up. They must be tended carefully, cultivated. For the Church, that means doing the theological heavy lifting to name the forces that defy God, to call out sin, and to name the powers and principalities for what they are. It means to speak of grace not in terms of human deeds but of God working through us.

And yes, it absolutely means feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and welcoming the refugee -- but doing so in the name of Christ. It means calling people into the Church through the Sacraments. Through our own works we might save people from the grave for a time, but by calling them into the Body of Christ by the grace of God through the waters of Baptism, they gain the assurance of salvation unto everlasting life.

Moreover, Progressive Christianity has a unique voice to contribute to the Church. Our willingness to engage with difficult questions (if we're willing to do the difficult work of seeking answers), our concern for things that happen in this life (if we're willing to care about matters transcendent), and our openness to the marginalized (if we maintain a belief in membership in the Body of Christ) can provide a powerful witness to the Kingdom of God. Affirmation of LGBT Christians, concern for the poor, and engagement with science are good; the Church should do these things. We must be aware, though, that our Fundamentalist kindred will push back against us.

Let us return to the EFS debate for a moment. Progressive Christians affirm egalitarian gender roles and the ordination of women. One of the driving forces behind EFS is precisely a rejection of these beliefs. If we want to engage our Fundamentalist friends and family, we must be well-versed in Scripture and the Tradition. We must engage with theology.

The Church is changing, especially in the US. We can no longer assume to be the norm. I for one, think this is a good thing. The Church some of its best work when it was on the outs. Justin Martyr, Iranaeus, Augustine, and Bonhoeffer wrote some of our best treatises while trying to figure out how to be the Church in the shadow of imperial oppression, the collapse of civilization, or, in Bonhoeffer's case, both.

But if we are to meet this challenge, if we are to re-discover what it means to be the Church, then we must be prepared to put forward a thought-out theology rather than a set of comforting aphorisms. If we are to continue being the Church, then it is not enough to do good deeds and think positive thoughts. To be the Church, to be the Body of Christ, to love as God loves, requires more. To be an in-breaking of the Kingdom of God means being more than Sunday morning do-gooders. I can feed the hungry and protect the environment without the Sunday morning wake up call -- and all the better, because I enjoy weekend brunch, hiking trips, and farmers' markets.  If we want to continue being the Church, we must be willing to stand before the assembly and say, "I believe...."

The Eternal Functional Subordination Debate: Why It Matters

Something strange is happening in the Fundamentalist world. For a few decades now, Wayne Grudem and a few others have been teaching that God the Son is eternally subordinate to God the Father.

The argument is as such:
Because
a) The Father begets the Son, and
b) The Son economically submits to the will of the Father
Therefore,
c) The Son is immanently (eternally) subordinate/submissive to the Father

The position is termed "eternal functional subordination," or "EFS" for short, and for a time, it was coupled with the position that the Son did not exist from eternity. Its advocates also attempt to maintain that while despite such subordination, the Son is not less than the Father.

The position becomes even more convoluted because EFS advocates then take this bewildering attempt at Trinitarian theology and try to apply it to human gender relations. It has become a long and mind-boggling way of arguing that women should submit to men while also trying to maintain that women are not inherently inferior to men.

The major disconnect is that subordination is inherently inferiority. To say that the Son is eternally subordinated to the Father is to say that the Son is immanently less than the Father. It is true that the Father takes precedence in the order of being (that is to say, the Son and Holy Spirit are begotten and precede, respectively, from the Father). This so-called "monarchy of the Father," (spelled out by the ELCA and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America in this document; cf. para. 4) though, does not relate to obedience and submission. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that somehow the Persons of the Trinity have different eternal intentions or goals that the Son must relinquish to obey the Father. Or, using the terminology of the Athanasian Creed, would be to suggest that the members of the Trinity are not co-equal in majesty and glory.

(And, while we're at it, to say that women must submit to men is to say that women are inherently inferior to men. Of course, the claim is always just under the surface of Fundamentalist complementarian writing, but they refuse to acknowledge it. The Son is eternally begotten by the Father, and is consubstantial/of one being with the Father. In a lesser way, according to Genesis 2, Eve is made after Adam from a part of Adam's body; she is made of the same stuff. In Genesis 2 -- and notably, not in Genesis 1 -- Adam takes precedence in the order of Creation, but there is no reason to believe that Eve is therefore inferior to or must be submissive to Adam. Substance matters far more than order.)

For whatever reason, this debate exploded onto the scene during the summer of 2016. I won't go into the full details of the debate (there's simply not enough time), but you can read some of the main arguments as summarized by Scot McKnight here, as well as a longer rebuttal published on "Mortification of Spin" here and a snarky post "guest written" by John Calvin. patron of so many EFS advocates, here.

Interestingly, both complementarians and egalitarians sided against the EFS advocates. This is a minority position, even within the Fundamentalist/Complemenatrian/Pseudo-Calvinist camp.

The debate spread to the Evangelical Theological Society's annual meeting, where Bruce Ware (one of the EFS advocates changed his position to admit that the Son is eternally begotten after all. (Here's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's article on the matter.)

There are a number of reasons to completely discount this position. I won't go into them in detail (again, there really isn't time -- these are debates that have already raged  and lasted for decades leading up to Nicea and later Chalcedon), but I will offer a brief summary:

1) The Creeds -- As to the position that the son is not eternally begotten (now, thankfully, cast aside), it is one of the key elements of the Nicene Creed. To confess otherwise is to venture into the Arian heresy. As to EFS, in general: the Nicene Creed confesses that Father and Son are consubstantial. There is no lesser deity in the Trinity. The Athanasian Creed spells it out further:

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal....
....And in this Trinity none is afore, or none other; none is greater, or less than another; but the whole three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal.

The Athanasian Creed goes explains that the Son is only subordinate in the Incarnation -- that is, economically. EFS, then, is right out.

2) The Trouble with the Trinity -- Discussing the Trinity is remarkably difficult. There's a reason that councils were convened and otherwise noble theologians were deemed heretics. It's easy to get on the wrong track; as when traveling a great distance, changing your bearing by a few degrees can put you off course by hundreds of miles. Turn too far in one direction, accidentally end up becoming a tritheist or a unitarian. In over-emphasizing the distinction between the Father and Son (and, let's be honest, ignoring the Holy Spirit through and through), the EFS advocates start down the shockingly short path to tritheism. If the Son is subordinate, and therefore lesser, then what we end up with is a set of three gods rather than one God who exists in trinity.

3) "God is not 'man' said in a loud voice." -- The basis for EFS is the assumption that because human sons should submit to human fathers, therefore the Son submits to the Father. Despite all of Fundamentalist rhetoric about God's holiness, that God is so much further above humanity (rhetoric that, while taken in weird directions, is at least rooted in sound theological thinking), how strange it is then that EFS advocates are attempting to take a model for human relationships and read it into the inner workings of the Holy Trinity, that blessed mystery which exists beyond human understanding.

So...why does this matter? Why spend time giving a crap about an esoteric point of theology within the Fundamentalist world? By and large, the Mainline and Progressives have ignored this debate. A few have pointed to it as an entertaining side show, but few bloggers have actually weighed in -- as though Mainline and Progressive Christians don't really care.

A few things.

First, and this one is personal: Fundamentalists, including EFS advocates, spend so much time calling progressives heretics, claiming that we are not truly Christians for our openness to the findings of modern science, for the ordination of women and an egalitarian understanding of Church and family, for a willingness to discuss, let alone affirm, the role of LGBT+ persons in the Church. And yet when Grudem, Ware, and others leaders in the Fundamentalist world accept an outright heretical opinion, Albert Mohler does mental gymnastics to explain why they are not heretics. Mohler is one of the men who led the crusade against moderates in the SBC. At SBTS, he is venerated as the patron saint of Baptist fidelity, the champion of orthodoxy, and yet he is unwilling to turn his inquisition upon his friends. Rampant hypocrisy matters, and we should be prepared to call it out while defending our position in the Church.

Second, and as importantly, orthodoxy matters. I'll write more about this in a coming post (this one has already turned out much longer than I expected), but let me offer a quick summary. Progressives have been far too quick to say that the only thing that matters is loving, but we have been unwilling to do lay theological groundwork about what Christ means when he commands us to love God, neighbor, enemy, and each other. Theology, for all of its complications, is vital to the Church. We cannot claim we are willing to ask difficult questions if we are unwilling to wrestle with how these questions might shape our theology. Otherwise, what's the point? If all we care about is a general sense of love and community -- noble goals, certainly -- but without a clear theological framework for what they look like, why not become secular humanists? It'd certainly be easier to preach on Steinbeck than Job. It'd be simpler to preach that the key to community is emotional vulnerability rather than Christ crucified and risen. This means, though, that we must be prepared to enter into debates over points of theology, to interpret Sacred Scripture and the Tradition and make arguments rather than "I feel..." statements. The EFS position is an attack on orthodoxy and women's rights
. If progressive Christians want to have a voice in the Church, we must be prepared to but forward an orthodox theology.

"I'll Recite the Creed'

Pope Francis has made waves with his emphasis on social justice, peace, and proper stewardship. He's also received a lot of pushback -- from politicians, which is to be expected, but also from theologians.

As my colleague Fr. Lee pointed out, the Church's mission for social justice is rooted in our theology.

So when Il Papa was questioned about his perceived leftism, his response was spot on:

“Maybe I have given an impression of being a little bit to the left,” the pope said. “And it if [sic] necessary, I’ll recite the creed. I am available to do that, eh.” 

A Just Liturgy

One of my classmates from Candler, Father Lee, is one of the single most impressive priests I know: well-versed in Latin and Greek, an Anglo-Catholic who also sports thick glasses, a beard and tattoos, rides a motorcycle, and celebrates the Mass in Spanish when asked. He is the future of the Church, and the Episcopal Church is lucky to have him.

As a colleague, I am blessed by his insights into contemporary culture and theology. Recently, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, current Archbishop of Canterbury, proposed a major shake-up within the Anglican Communion. This news broke from Lambeth right around the time that Senator Bernie Sanders addressed students at Liberty University's weekly convocation. A few highlights from my colleague's reflections:

Bernie knows something we can’t seem to grasp: When, not if, but when Evangelicals wake up to issues of Economic Justice, it will be a cataclysmic shift in the American political landscape. One which the Republican party, as it stands today, will not survive.

I’m not sure the Mainline will survive it either. We’ve made justice issues our sine qua non, at the expense of a comprehensive theological vision to back it up. When Evangelicals start to get on board they will do it better than we do, and no amount of liturgical Millenials will be enough to make us compelling.

And later:

I’m starting to get my hackles up anytime I hear “It doesn’t matter how you believe, only how we pray.”

No. The Creed is a claim, not just of our belief, but of the truth of the reality of the Triune God, and the Church that serves that God. The central claim that we make is that God crossed the infinite gap between Godself and us, and became like us in order to save us.

 The Church is called to strive for justice, and unfortunately, we've allowed powers and principalities to distract us from that task. The predominantly liberal side has failed to engage with that call in any sort of meaningful theological sense, instead deferring to secular ethics. And the conservative side has failed to engage with the same call period. As Fr. Lee points out, we are called to be like the God who sides with the oppressed. This identity is rooted in a distinctly theological claim.

And I look at the dismissal which concludes every Divine Service: "Go in peace. Serve the Lord." This isn't just a means of telling people that the Mass is over but rather of sending them forward as a people hoping in and proclaiming the Resurrection in thought, word, and deed. We are sent out to strive for justice. We are an apostolic Church; yes, this means we share the faith of the Apostles, but also that we participate in their sending. The very word "apostle" means "one who is sent out." We, as the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church are sent into the world to proclaim the news of a Risen Savior and to live into the new reality.

What Good Is the Goose?

The final entry in my series of reflections on the Wild Goose Festival.

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I occasionally tend towards hyprer-criticism. I realize my posts on the Wild Goose Festival might make it sound like I didn't enjoy the updated camp meetin'. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Or perhaps it sounds as if I'm tired of progressive Christianity and its insistence on social justice and hospitality. Again, that's not the case.

I came back from Hot Springs excited to shower, sleep in my bed, see my wife, and eat something not cooked outside, but also excited for the future of the Church.

I came home excited to go back to the Goose in coming years.

Why am I so critical of Wild Goose, then? Because the festival, its organizers, and its presenters can handle the criticism. More than that, they appreciate, listen to, and incorporate the criticism. There is a shared hope that the festival can and will improve.

But I have to say, the festival is in a pretty good place already.

It's a place where people live into a economic of God's abundant provision - where a group shares meals - three of them a day - with strangers and asks only for donations, trusting that they'll receive what they need to do it all again next year.

It's a place where Catholics celebrate the Mass with an open table.

It's a place where liberation of the oppressed is proclaimed.

It's a place where critical self-examination is not just about individuals but about entire systems - including the featival itself.

It's a place where children, adults, and the elderly talk and think together as teach each other.

It's a place where care for creation is the norm.

It's a place where, in Christ, ALL welcome each other regardless of gender identity, sexually orientation, political affiliation, or race. All are unique but also one in Christ.

It's a place that looks a lot like what the Church should be, where we come together in all of our brokenness, in all of our healing, with all of our ideas, and listen to the Holy Spirit.

Proof in the Pudding: Wild Goose and Critical Self-Awareness

Part VI in a series of reflections on the Wild Goose Festival

- - -

"What are we doing, and how well are we doing it?"

This question should probably run through everybody's mind at some point -- constantly.

To put it in theological terms, it's Luther's first and second uses of the Law. What should society look like? (Use #1) Are we living up to that standard? (Use #2; The answer, of course, is no.)

It's this question that sends us to our knees at the beginning of every single Mass. We know that we have sinned against God and neighbor in "thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone."

Critical self-awareness is one of the great gifts to humanity. We know that we are, but we also know that we are not perfect. Whether or not someone is willing to term this lack of perfection "sin," there is no denying that we as a species and as individuals do not always behave the way we are meant to.

We are capable of seeing our own faults, and we can strive to do better.

As Frank Schaeffer fielded questions from the literal field he was addressing, someone asked about the role of Latino/a voices at Wild Goose. And it hit me: Oh. Yeah. I guess I really haven't seen or heard many Hispanic voices in this conversation. A few, to be sure, and a Native American presenter. But not many people from Global South at all.

And, come to think of it, there aren't many non-white people here as attendees. A few, but not many.

This year, Wild Goose gave a platform for many black and queer voices to address white listeners. Instead of coming with answers for the marginalized, the privileged sat and listened.

To be sure, Wild Goose is a unique place. Progressive Christians come together and listen more than they speak. They question more than they declare. These are good qualities to bring to a conversation. And in doing so, the festival is a place where people acknowledge their own faults and failings. It's a place where someone is not afraid to ask a keynote speaker if the festival itself -- much beloved by attendees -- is a little too "bobo" (bourgeois-bohemian -- think hipsters wearing their $200 consignment store pants and typing on their MacBooks while drinking PBR and living in a yet-to-be gentrified part of town).

The sad fact, though, is that Wild Goose is still mostly white, middle class people taking a long weekend to camp in the woods. A fun time, and a productive time -- I dare not suggest that thinking is bad. Nor am I so cynical as to believe that people will leave the campground behind and return to their parishes with little more than warmed hearts. But I do have to wonder what is next for many of the people I lived next to for the weekend. What will they do when they get back home? How will their parishes be changed?

I suspect that one of the great indicators of how successful Wild Goose has been is how Wild Goose will change in the future. If our four days of thought actually produce the change we want to see in the world, what voices will we invite to the Goose next year? What speakers from the developing world will be invited? What speakers will come and bring a challenging world? Voices from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and South America?

But more importantly, what will we do if these voices bring a word that challenges our middle class white theology? We've learned to charitably disagree with ourselves, but can we bring that same love and understanding when we disagree with those not like us?

Progressive Vs. Emergent

I realized while writing my post on constructing a progressive Christian identity, I used the term "progressive Christian." (And did it again while trying to summarize the original post.)

What do I mean?

Largely, I mean "emergent," but without the baggage.

If we're being honest, emergent/emergence Christianity was never what it set out to be. I recall one blogger once described the situation this way (I have to paraphrase, because I have no clue who said it on which blog): 

If you went into a mall and asked for all of the emergent Christians to report to the Starbucks, you'd end up with a bunch of fifty-year-old white men and maybe a handful of other folks. The rest of the Christians who embody what is meant by "emergent" would still be wandering around elsewhere.

The original author of that quip, writing about a decade ago, was trying to describe the Brian McLaren types. No offense to Brian, but the Millenial and Gen X Christians were too busy being emergent to actually assign ourselves a label. It's a failed title for a successful and on-going identity.

Then there's the other side of the baggage: that emergent Christians are really just closet "seeker-friendly Christians." Or, as a conservative pastor put it, emergent Christians are those who like to light a few candles while they pray. (Driscoll, I think. Sounds like the sort of dismissive language he would use.)

Anyway, when I talk about being a "progressive" Christian, I mean to describe Christians who are generally focused on social justice (though may vote either way at the polls), who are either supportive of full LGBT inclusion in the Church or open to dialog and a certain amount of charitable tension, and who are open to a variety of Scriptural interpretations.  Progressive Christians tend to value the Creeds over (though not against) denominational doctrine, and we also tend to incorporate sources of authority in addition to Scripture. They may or may not have come from conservative or fundamentalist backgrounds, they may or may not belong to a set denomination,  and they or may not support use of the liturgy -- in some form or fashion.

I can think of any number of progressive Christians who were raised in historically open and/or liberal denominations (the UCC and certain parts of the mainline), mainline denominations (the Episcopal Church, ELCA, UMC, PCUSA, CBF), and many who have left conservative and fundamentalist denominations (the LCMS, PCA, SBC). There are some who are from non-Protestant traditions (Catholics and Pentecostals -- and if I knew enough Orthodox, I'm sure I'd find some progressives there, too).

Wait, There Were Condoms at Wild Goose?

Part V in a series of reflections on Wild Goose

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So apparently I missed this (or click here for a more reasoned summary of the situation). I didn't even hear about this non-event until I had been home a week.

And I wasn't alone. Not many people mentioned the punny condom wrappers. Actually, I didn't hear anyone mention them. Not even in a "Ha ha, did you year about the Chicago Seminary handouts?" Nobody mentioned it in any of the talks I attended. None of the musicians mentioned it in the sets I heard. Nobody mentioned it during the Catholic Mass. Nobody came up to the ELCA hospitality tent and said, "Well, the UCC is giving out condoms. You have anything better than water?"

I did not hear a single reference to the "souvenirs."

And to tell the truth, I'm not especially offended by it.

Granted, the pun is not in particularly good taste, but several news articles get the story wrong -- that is, they intentionally misrepresent what happened.

Bethany Blankley (the first link in this post) writes:

At last week’s 2015 Wild Goose Festival attendees received condom packages designed with a colored image of a rainbow flame, an LGBT variation of the UCC’s logo.

As an attendee, I did not receive a condom. It was not distributed with the wristbands, at the beer tent, with the parking passes, or the festival programs. The seminary distributed them at their information booth set up at one of the festival tents. The seminary was a festival sponsor, but their actions do not represent the convictions of the Wild Goose Festival, its attendees, or its advisory board. So did any attendees receive condoms? Most likely. But it was not as wide-spread as this reporter makes it seem.

Or this:

In other words, a “Christian” seminary is likening the Second Coming of Christ to gay sex.

No, in other words, a Christian seminary is making a lame pun on the word "coming." The only thing tying this stunt to "gay" is the use of the rainbow coloration for the school's logo. Given that the UCC, with whom Chicago Theological is affiliated, is known for its open and affirming stance, it makes sense.

And, worst of all, there's this:

Only an apostate Christian and apostate church could celebrate or encourage gay sex or orgies. Only an apostate Christian and apostate church could advocate being “LGBTQ friendly.” Apostasy is inherently anti-God.

Besides the myriad problems of claiming that LGBT and ally Christians are "apostate," there is the underlying assumption that promoting safe sex is on par with promoting orgies. It is this same sort of hyperbolic mentality which leads to failed abstinence-only programs in schools. It is this same sort of vitriol that leads to victim-blaming when a person is sexually assaulted.

Distributing condoms does not mean, "Go hook up with anyone." Using birth control does not mean, "Be promiscuous." Advocating the use of prophylactics is equivalent to only one thing: believing that sex has a function outside of procreation and child-rearing.

Perhaps no source misunderstands what happened more than Rod Dreher at The American Conservative. He writes:

I apologize if this offends you. It ought to offend you. But you also ought to know what progressive Christianity finds acceptable. I would love to hear that the organizers at Wild Goose put a stop to distributing these things at the festival. But I doubt that they did.

We orthodox Christians have nothing in common with these people, and ought to get it clear in our heads who the enemies are, and what they stand for. One hardly needs to worry about the UCC; it is declining so rapidly that they will cease to exist in the next 15 to 20 years. Good riddance. Rather pay more attention to those who see no particular problem with their blasphemous radicalism, and who seek to mainstream it into the churches. Church leaders who make room for this garbage under the guise of “relevance” and “inclusiveness” are signing their own death warrant, and the rest of us should give no quarter to this contagion.

This is not about what "progressive Christianity finds acceptable." It's about a bad marketing ploy by one seminary. This is not the best we have to offer; it's the laziest.

But to deny that progressive Christians are orthodox? To flame that we are the enemies, that we stand for something other than the Gospel of our Risen Lord, to call us blasphemous, to call us a contagions? I will not and cannot stand for such vile attacks against me, against my friends, and against how we understand what Christ is calling us to in the world.

Is this promotion in bad taste? Yeah, it is. Am I a little surprised that somebody didn't have second thoughts on it? Yeah, of course.

But what does this mean, really?

I am just as offended by how certain sisters and brothers are reacting as I am by the condoms themselves.

I was at Wild Goose. The air was not filled with the moans of orgiastic hedonism. A haze of marijuana smoke did not hover over the campground. The toilets did not overflow with the vomit of drunkenness.

Instead, kids and families wandered around and played in the river. Songs of praise ascended to the Lord, as did the scent of frankincense from the Episcopal tent's thuribles. People drank a few beers and some whiskey while singing hymns. Bread was broken and wine was shared.

Christians welcomed in those hurt by the Church and those who may never come to share in our baptismal identity, and we discussed what it meant to strive for justice and walk humbly with our God. We examined the problem of violence, racism, and sexism. We wept and laughed together. We considered what it means to seek reconciliation among the Church and among the nations.

So please, for the love of God, let's not focus on one poorly thought out publicity stunt. Let's not concede the day to scandal over "pelvic issues." Let's rejoice that a place like Wild Goose exists, and that it is a brief in-breaking of the Kingdom of God in the Appalachians.

Hallelujah: An Encore

Part IV in my series of reflections on Wild Goose

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Is it possible to copy a piece of culture while still creatively engaging it? Absolutely. If not, what need would we have for covers?

What would we do without Hendrix's versions of the "Star-Spangled Banner" or "All Along the Watchtower"?

Imagine a life without Johnny Cash's rendition of "Hurt".

After all, there are times when covers better convey a song's emotion than the original.

Gungor, a band recently criticised for their willingness to question conservative biblical interpretation, was called back on to stage at the end of their set for an encore. They picked a song which beautifully captures the pathos of many Goose attendees: Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", though their version followed more closely with the Jeff Buckley cover:

This ballad of troubled love told through religious symbolism captures the impassioned anguish and loss felt by so many progressive Christians who have left the conservative side of the Church. Strained and broken friendships and family relationship, the crisis of faith which so frequent precedes the move, the questions of what might have been, the tension, and the freedom.

Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

 And at the end, all you can do is whisper, "Hallelujah."

Call Off Your Ghost: The Need to Build Our Own Identity

Part III in my series of reflections on the Wild Goose Festival
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Back in my high school days, I only listened to "Christian" music, and I had a Christian-themed parody shirt for every day of the week. I firmly believed that the faithful copycats of the Christian rock industry were every bit as good as the acts they were imitating. Why listen to bands that cuss when there are Christian bands playing nearly-identical songs?

Two caveats: 1) I'm mostly tone-deaf and so any difference in ability was largely lost on me. 2) I'm eternally thankful for bands like Thrice and mewithoutYou who were out there making interesting and thought-provoking music which explored the deeper implications of the Christian faith without sacrificing artistic integrity in the name of mimicking successful mainstream bands.

Like many people who don't go on to be youth pastors, I eventually grew out of that stage. I went to college and realized that maybe Christians actually can engage with the larger cultures around us while contributing to the arts and music without resorting to large-scale pseudo-plagiarism. And maybe, just maybe, Christians could listen to Blink 182 without "backsliding."

I sat in my "Religion and Literature" class with a practicing Catholic professor, and we devoured the works of Toni Morrison, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Oliver, and many more besides. We discussed the intersection of baptismal and Middle Passage imagery at the beginning of Tar Baby. We debated the importance of food to religious identity and memory in Mirriam's Kitchen. We read about a Baptist-Buddhist and discussed what, exactly, that meant in Dreaming Me.

That class came to define my undergraduate, and the lessons it proved have followed me through the past five years of academic work. Throughout seminary, I became more engaged in the conversation between theology and art, especially insofar as it applies to the liturgy.

Oh how joyous! To find a place of genuine cultural engagement without resulting to imitation. To find a place where faith and creativity met.

This brings me to Wild Goose. How do you describe a weekend-long festival of music, art, and lectures?

"Oh, it's like the Christian Bonnaroo."
"It's like adult Vacation Bible School."
"It's kind of like a merger of church camp meets Woodstock for progressive Christians."

These descriptors, in their own right, did not bother me -- and they still don't, really. Wild Goose is sui generis within American culture. Sure, it's an attempt to replicate the Greenbelt Festival in the UK, but there isn't really a place like it in the US.

What does bother me though, is the way that we -- progressive Christians -- talk about ourselves.

For many of us, we have a background within conservative evangelical culture. Many of us were raised within fundamentalist households and parishes (I hasten to add that I am not in that number). And so, when we try to explain where we are now, the first words out of our mouths usually have to do with where we've been. It makes sense; our identity is bound up in our history. Who we are now depends on who we've been in the past.

Unfortunately, the conversation tends to remain anchored in the past in very unhealthy ways.

One of the biggest complaints progressives have about conservative evangelicals is the evangelical's tendency to define themselves as normative and turn any opposition into the "Other." It's "us" -- the normal, good, God-fearing Christians -- versus "them" -- the atheistic communists, the pagans, and the sodomites. We complain about how conservative evangelicals reduce relationships with their opponents to an "I/it" relationship rather than an "I/Thou" relationship. (Five minutes on Fox News or the comments on a conservative blog will convince you that this is fairly accurate.)

But here's the big confession: we do the same thing. One presenter at Wild Goose, in a presentation of  St. Francis of Assisi and the life of the Church, smugly commented, "Conservatives are great at history. They dominate the field. We need to get better at writing history." One speaker, the son of a prominent conservative theologian, lamented about the presidency of an "EVANGELICAL FOOL!" (emphasis and tone are all his) and about this speaker's days as a harsh, patriarchal Calvinist.

One of the closing bands, by the name of Gungor, performed to a packed main stage. All in all, I liked this band. I really did. But they performed their satirical hit "God is Not a White Man." At the line, "God is not a Republican," the crowd cheered. Fair enough, but this song left me wondering: is this symptomatic of progressive Christianity as a whole? Is this really all that we can say about who we are? It reminded me of the bumper sticker which proclaims, "God is Not a Republican," followed (in much smaller print) by an after thought: "...or a Democrat." (This, of course, is the tame version; others leave off the after thought.)

What is wrong with us? Why must we continuously define ourselves against others? Why do we insist on building an identity by what we are not?

The Church must be built upon or relationship to God and to our neighbors rather than on our relationship to our intellectual opponents. Some might say, "Aren't our intellectual opponents also our neighbors?" To them, I say, yes. Exactly. Let's start treating them as neighbors.

Now certainly our relationship with God informs our relationship to our opponents, and we must be prepared to engage those with whom we disagree. But it is a relationship of love, not enmity.

I firmly believe that we will not make progress until we stop defining ourselves over and against conservatives and secular culture, and until we give up any pretense of being "cool" by copying other cultures. (Sorry, we shouldn't have a "Christian" Bonnaroo or Burning Man.) We must -- MUST -- be holy fools who engage with culture rather than poseurs who mimic that which we don't understand.

Our identity can neither be apophatic nor stolen from somebody else. Our theology cannot be based on negation and claims of what God is not, what the Church is not, and who we are not. We MUST construct an identity based around God's self-revelation.

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The post title is taken from Doomtree collaborator Dessa's song by the same name:

If you're not listening to any of the Doomtree artists, you should be.

A Word from Our Author: My Identity

In many ways, I break the mold of typical progressive Christians. As such, I find it hard to write about the culture from an insider's perspective. Whereas many of my sisters and brothers were brought up in fundamentalist households, I was not. As such, I realize I should probably explain a bit of who I am so that readers might better understand the perspective I bring to my writing:

My parents are United Methodist, and my father is an ordained Elder in Full Connection. This means several things: I am a preacher's kid, and I was raised in a tradition which was open to the ordination of women, biblical criticism, and sources of authority outside of the Bible. My parents keep books by Neil DeGrasse-Tyson and Carl Sagan next to biblical commentaries. My parents encouraged my sister and I to take an interest in the sciences and the arts, and we were encouraged to read as much as we could. I've never been told that I was not allowed to read a certain book. Unlike many people my age, I was allowed to watch The Simpsons growing up.

My father is a military chaplain, which also means a few things. When I was growing up, we moved around a lot, and I was exposed to diversity, both on and off base. I've lived in Germany, visited South Korea, and lived in the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South.

Being a chaplain's kid also means that I grew up attending military "general Protestant" chapel services rather than UMC parishes. Military chapels are, in general, more "conservative" then my family, and while I grew up accepting evolution and believing women could be called into the ministry, many of my friends from youth group did not share these convictions. (It was a confusing and lonely time.) The diverse mix of "general" Protestantism has also led to some denominational dysphoria, and it took me several years to find a home within the Church.

Like many young Christians who grew up in the US during the first decade of the 21st century, I grew up believing that being a Christian meant being a patriotic Republican -- not for anything my parents said, but from what I heard being preached by youth pastors, at Christian music festivals, on Christian radio, and from my peers. I started watching Fox News and even the occasional episode of the 700 Club, and thus I found myself in a feedback loop.

Oddly enough, I my eventual exodus from evangelical culture to a now-defunct web forum run by the Assemblies of God. There, I began interacting with high school aged Christians from across the country and from across the theological spectrum. A few Pentecostals and an Anabaptist demonstrated that Christians could think critically and charitably about the role of government in providing for the needs of the poor, and they reminded me that this is part of the missio Dei. Throughout my senior year of high school, I started to reevaluate my hardline Republican stance -- before I ever reached a ballot box.

When I entered college, I enrolled in religion courses. Many people ask me what it was like to study religion at a state school, and I hope that it was no different from studying at a private school. My professors were almost all members of one faith community or another, and they were overwhelmingly Christian (though tended to be from liturgical traditions). At school, and through seminary, I was pushed again -- this time to resolve the tension between academic criticism of the text and the use of Scripture by the faith tradition. (Thankfully, coming from a UMC household, this struggle was not as severe as it could have been.)

And so, when I look back on my youth in the Church, I do have scars, but the they do not run as deep as some of my friends' wounds. Being a middle class white male (hetero- and cis-), my voice has never been seriously oppressed. I have never been the victim of any form of abuse. I have never feared Hell -- well, aside from the year or so when I was reading the Left Behind series. I came to the Church's progressive wing very gently, and I try to keep that in mind when I write about my sisters and brothers still healing from years of pain and anger.