August 2007 - Posts
erin & i are hitting dale hollow lake with her family this weekend. this is my vehicle for the weekend. just call me captain macleod. funny part, i've maybe driven two or three boats in my life. unless you count...
since football is coming around my college background is surging. ie. my brother is sending me all kinds of football related articles and odd items. things to check out. put together your own custom season calendars an obsessive tribute to...
Recently a letter writer told me I was both a bad citizen and a poor Christian because I had said we need to “fix the health care system in the United States.”
I thought it was obvious things aren’t working so well with the uninsured growing by two million a year. Now I read the [...]
So you don't think I've disappeared, here's a brief post to say I'm in New Jersey! This has been such an exhausting week. The people of Oneida sent me off with so many moving gestures, and the people of Franklin Lakes have already been...
i have spent a few hours this morning catching up with jonathon as we are trying to resurrect our covenant group. we met up at alektor cafe, one of our fav little stops. i have not been here in quite...
Orthodoxy, I say, or right opinion, is at best a very slender part of religion, if any part of it at all.
Works X, 327
Wesley quotes taken from The Quotable Mr. Wesley compiled and edited by W. Stephen Gunter and published by the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
There's an interesting series of posts at
Inhabitatio Dei by different bloggers on the pacifisms of their respective Christian traditions. The first three are from
Cambellite,
Reformed, and
baptist traditions. I don't have time now to develop an essay on a Wesleyan/Methodist pacifism, but I've blogged about it in various ways over the last few years. Part of my theological journey is traced
here. And
here is a great piece on a United Methodist theology of peace by Bishop Timothy Whitaker of the Florida area. It is based on John Wesley's General Rules, the first of which was "do no harm." Here is an excerpt from Bishop Whitaker's sermon on peace:
In the United Methodist Church often many of us are silent and passive about abortion. At the same time, we can be outspoken and active in our opposition to war and capital punishment. Do we not perceive how opposition to violence requires us to be as vigilant in our witness against abortion as in our witness against war as a normal political tool and our witness against executions by the state? Opposition to war, capital punishment, euthanasia and abortion is a coherent and integral witness to God’s good purposes in a world under the evil spell of violence.In other Methodist theological news,
Ken Carter recently blogged about his recent experience at the
Oxford Institute on Methodist theological studies (as did
Kevin Baker of Christian Conversations). There was a series of wonderful theological papers presented, and Kevin shares with us his favorites. One of them that caught my eye was
this one by Billy Abraham. It is entitled, "The Political Theology of President George W. Bush." At first glance, I thought it must be a joke - George W. Bush doesn't even know what theology is. Then I thought, he's actually serious! Then I realized how he was showing how paper-thin George Bush's theology is. I think the main point of the essay is that when Methodists ignore serious theological and doctrinal substance (as we have usually done over the last century, as have most main-liners) this is the result you get.
I thought it was interesting that Billy Abraham sees five different trajectories in current United Methodist political theology: "There is the aggressive anti-American pacifism of Stanley Hauerwas and his many students. There is the stolid Christian realism of Joseph Allen, Robin Lovin, and Rebecca Miles. And there is the lively, diversified liberation theology of James Cone, Rebecca Chopp, Ted Jennings, Joerge Rieger, and Harold Recinos. Beyond that is the muddled, left of center politics of
The Social Principles and
The Book of Resolutions, and there is the amorphous, middle of the road, transformationist theology of Albert Outler as updated by Bishop Scott Jones and Randy Maddox. All lay claim to this or that element in Wesley in order to make their claims within United Methodism. We can now add one more option to the raft of the alternatives available. There is the political theology of George W. Bush. I am not sure that the great architects of pluralism anticipated this dramatic outcome, but life has certainly become more interesting and more complex for United Methodists."
Note: for years now, Billy Abraham has been one of the most brilliant critics of the sloppy Methodist theology of pluralism. It seems to me he is now saying that Methodist pluralism is so awful that it has even made room for George W. Bush's political theology. One other thing: I wouldn't call Stanley Hauerwas anti-American, but that would take a long time to explain.
Earlier today, I received a message from Ken:
You don’t know me- but I read your blog occasionally. I am leading a discussion out of McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy in a small group in the morning ( yep- so I am making my way through the book again 4 years later ). I was curious if you [...]
for those of you in the nashville area, check out the fish 94 fm this evening. why? maybe something, maybe nothing. from what i know they are planning on coming to our youth podcast tonight. that's all i know. we...
it has been two years later since katrina hit land. maybe as you can see from our work down there this summer that there is still work to be done in rebuilding. the ny times has a cool little map...
greenbelt has come and gone. we might have one in the states one day, until then you might want to pick up some of the talks that happened over this years festival. some intriguing topics and fabulous thinkers.
for those that have seen this video already, this is my response for miss south carolina. girl, i feel for you. if you haven't seen it, go for it. then come check out my 30 second response. "that is a...
Mother Teresa expressed profound doubt about the existence of God throughout her adult life according to a new collection of her letters. This revelation is a source of shock and curiosity for some, and proof of the falsehood of religious faith for others. It’s the cover story in TIME this week.
Apparently Mother Teresa wrestled with [...]
apparently he doesn't. i found this exchange humorous. ... I listen to Chuck Colson on the radio and he says the emerging church is dangerous. It’s not something we should be messing around with, and the fact that you’d quote...
Do you have a life list? Earl, of television’s My Name is Earl, has a list. So does Ellen DeGeneres and Beyonce, and apparently millions of others as well. According to an article in the NY Times this morning, life lists are becoming the tool busy people are using to give order to their [...]
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