PZ's Podcast: Bishop Bell's Play

EPISODE 42
 

A fascinating play exists about Bishop Bell. Well, actually, the play is more about Winston Churchill. But in this play, entitled "Soldiers" and first performed in Germany in 1967, Act Three ("The Garden") stages a confrontation between Churchill and George Bell on the ethics of 'carpet bombing'. Although such a meeting never took place, "Soldiers" carries the emotional truth of the Bishop's costly public stance.

"Soldiers" was written by Rolf Hochhuth, who also wrote the controversial play "The Deputy", which was made into a movie, Amen (2003), by Costa-Gavras. The writer studied Bell's speech and letters well, and his life. The play is hard on us who have been taught differently to see the P.M. portrayed on stage as an exponent of Power Politics, and of unscrupulousness in the name of a great cause. Not only is Churchill seen as the power behind the murder from the air of countless non-combatants, mostly young mothers and their small children, and seniors; but it is also claimed that he engineered the assassination of the Polish Prime Minister, General Sikorsky. You could skip most of that, and just read act three.

Toward the end of the play, Bishop Bell is 'bested' by Churchill and ushered out of the Great Man's presence. Here is the playwright's stage direction at that point:

"BELL turns away, he is forced to, overcome by despair, and the trembling in his voice. ... -- his voice fades like that of mankind in the tumult of the massacre of history....

CHURCHILL, alone, sunk in thought, gives himself up, unobserved, to the impression BELL has made on him."

The play's last words concerning Bishop Bell are these:

CHIEF OF STAFF: Well -- did the P.M.

        silence the old demagogue?

SECRETARY (sighs, smiles) :

       If he ever got to be Archbishop of Canterbury ... !

CHIEF OF STAFF: I expect that will be taken care of.

P.S. The first English-language production of "Soldiers", which was in Toronto, was well cast:

Winston Churchill was played by John Colicos, whom we know as 'Baltar' from the original Battlestar Galactica. George Bell was played by Chris Wiggins, whom we know as 'Jack Marshak' in Friday the 13th: The Series. How did they know?

Listen here.

PZ's Podcast: Bishop Bell's Speech

EPISODE 41

If we ever needed Bishop Bell again, we need him today!

George K.A. Bell (1883-1958) was Bishop of Chichester in the Church of England during the Second World War. Bell became controversial -- highly unpopular -- because of a speech he made in the House of Lords on February 9, 1944, opposing RAF Bomber Command's 'carpet bombing' of German cities. Winston Churchill's War Cabinet regarded such bombing as the way to end the War. Bishop Bell regarded it as a war crime.

Today Bell's speech is regarded as one of the high points of Christian witness in England during the Twentieth Century. At the time, not one colleague of Bell's in the Lords supported his stand. Not one. He was also pilloried by the press -- which proves that journalism can swing with the times, 'like a pendulum do'. As one result of his speech, the Bishop received no further preferment in the Church, and was famously blocked as the most qualified candidate to succeed William Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Today's episode of 'PZ's Podcast' exposits Bishop Bell's speech. It is a wonder! Remember, although the speech is canonical today, it was universally abhorred at the time.

I wonder how George Bell would have regarded the use of un-manned drones to conduct targeted assassinations from the air. For his sake I'm glad he's dead.

Listen here.

Another Week Ends: Ugly Anthropomorphism, Shaken Manchildren, Big Love, The Church's Cognitive Dissonance, March Madness, and the MoneyQuest for Happiness

Doing my best to fill in for DZ, who is currently gearing up for next week's conference.

1) A great article from the Times this week, discussing the recent tendency of creaturely films ("Rango" etc) to capture the creature in all of us:

THERE is a special kind of appeal to stories that lead us to the far boundary of the human and allow us a glance at what is on the other side, where the wild things are. What often comes into view out there is a projection of something buried deep within. That wolf in the bed, in grandma’s clothes, embodies some threatening animal emanation of the self, sexual or otherwise, lurking in disguise in our cozy domestic enclosures. Those invaders from outer space, preying on our cities, represent our own predatory, destructive urges in monstrous, alien form. And we can’t forget the vampires, whose cold glamour places them at the busy intersection of love and death, where our longings chase their morbid shadows.

The lizards, rodents and other creepy-crawlies that populate its desert landscape are far more grotesque to behold than traditional Disney fauna, but their ugliness only adds an extra frisson to the film’s charming anthropomorphism. We might recoil and squint at first, but by the time “Rango” is over, the reptiles are as cuddly as bunnies or the fish in “Finding Nemo” or the ants in “A Bug’s Life.”...And also as human.

2) This piece entitled "Men May Be Jerks...But Women Are Insane", explores the laws and demands of gender identity in today's "manchild culture," from a woman's perspective. For a laugh, The Onion, too, has something to say (ht JS).
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Book Review: "Good News for Anxious Christians" by Phillip Cary

In the ever-shifting landscape of American Evangelicalism, it seems that many people are attempting to correct what they perceive to be failures in the system. Everyone thinks something is wrong and whatever it is, it needs to be fixed now.

Within this debate, Phillip Cary's book "Good News for Anxious Christians", provides an unique diagnostic of both ourselves and the state of modern evangelicalism. As a professor of philosophy at a leading evangelical university, Cary hears from his students how the "new Evangelical theology" has translated into the core beliefs and practices of our youth. What he finds are people who worry all the time about the inadequacy of their Christian life. His students are dogged by the never ending questions of: "Am I doing it right?" or, "What's wrong with me?". Cary suggests that this anxiety is propagated by the very beliefs modern evangelicalism. His students demonstrate the end result of all those sermons, bible studies, and mission trips. Cary seeks to both repudiate this harmful theology and articulate his own comforting alternative.

Consequently, Cary has organized his book around "ten practical things your don't have to do." This list includes such common clichés as: giving God control, finding God's will, hearing God speak, letting God work, or applying it to your life. The goal in each chapter is to release anxious Christians from that which harms and inhibits true faith and maturity while also promoting a life of true discipleship. If evangelicalism and its me-centered subjectivism has led to a paralyzing anxiety, then a steady diet of the sufficiency of Christ alone will lead to genuinely Christian faith, hope and love.

Cary writes cogently without either dense technical jargon or patronizing condescension. If I find fault with Cary's otherwise welcome book, it is that he has written a book for anxious Christians. Restricting the intended audience has sharpened the overall argument of the book, but it also has the shortcoming of addressing Evangelical Christian problems without reference to the underlying, more universal, issues. Consequently, one could quickly become lost without a familiarity with the current American Evangelical landscape.

Despite these mild criticisms, "Good News for Anxious Christians" covers many relevant themes and issues in a way that is very sympathetic to the theological vision here at Mockingbird. If you're an anxious Christian in need of relief, a burnt-out Evangelical leader who has run out of tricks, or more importantly, a former Evangelical (still practicing Christian or otherwise), then this book is written for you as a way to better understand the problems of modern Evangelicalism while offering a way to move forward. It is a needed restatement of the Christian gospel as the medicine to save us from ourselves and our misguided anxiety.

Conference Preview: Encountering the Gospel in Worship

The following preview comes to us from Alex Mejias of High Street Hymns who will be leading a breakout session Friday morning entitled "High Street Hymnody: Encountering the Gospel in Worship". For more info about the fantastic work that High Street Hymns is doing, go here. To register for the conference, here. 

“They [the righteous] praise only God’s grace, works, words and power as they are revealed to them in Christ. This is their sermon and song, their hymn of praise.”

- Martin Luther

In Colossians 3:16, Paul encourages the church to, “let the word of Christ richly dwell within you… teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” In doing so, Paul reveals power of music to shape the body of Christ in the Gospel. Paul S. Jones writes that, “musicians and preachers actually share in the ministry of the Word.” As those who are entrusted with the music of church, how are we proclaiming the Gospel and enabling spiritual formation through song? How are we not doing so?

During our time together, we’ll look at both the theological and practical side of corporate song in the Church. Drawing from the Church’s rich tradition of hymnody and liturgy, we’ll explore some possible ways of encountering the Gospel through music.

p.s. Church musicians are invited to drop in and join us for this special session, free of charge. Just be sure to email us at info@mbird.com to reserve your spot.

A Lenten Reflection on the Isenheim Altarpiece

Matthias Grunewald’s crucifixion, one of the panels of the Isenheim altarpiece, was commissioned for the church hospital of St. Anthony in Colmar France, which specialized in comforting those dying with skin diseases. Grunewald kept the background of this powerful piece of religious art intentionally dark to highlight the horrific scene: especially Christ’s smashed feet, his contorted arms, and twisted hands. The cross is bowed to demonstrate Jesus bearing the sins of the world. The most shocking part of the piece, however, is that Jesus also has a skin disease, and his loin cloth is the same as the wrappings worn by the hospital's patients. Completed in 1516, the altarpiece is a creation of such shocking intensity that many initially- and still today- find it offensive and are repulsed by it. Yet the graphic nature served masterfully to define and illustrate the Antonite brother’s powerful understanding of Christian ministry-a ministry defined by the theology of the cross. Apparently patients were brought before the piece in order to silently meditate on it as they died. Profoundly, the brothers were a quiet order, so there was no explanation given as the patient died. There was no awkward chatter and God was not piously left off the hook, “now remember, this is not God’s fault.” There was just silence.

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Oprah, Lent and the Real American Idol

I ran across an fascinating interview on Salon.com with Kathryn Lofton--Assistant professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale-- who is the author of Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon. The interview is entitled "Worshiping at the church of Oprah Winfrey."

The interview begins,  "In the past quarter-century Oprah has become shorthand for self-help: a spiritual guide, a confessor and a warm shoulder for her adoring American public. Now in the final season of her revolutionary daytime talk show, Oprah's pronouncements have become the Word to live by for a staggeringly diverse audience. In fact, you could argue she is a religious leader for an America increasingly skeptical about organized religion." Indeed. This is exactly the premise of Professor Lofton's book. Here are some excerpts from the interview: 

What was it about Oprah that made you think of her in the context of American religious history?

Within these very corporate formats of daytime television, extraordinary forms of suffering were being confessed to and described. There's a great book about Oprah by Eva Illouz, "Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery," and Illouz points out something that I dig into, and that is the strange way in which the extremity of human despair -- not merely estranged spouses, we're talking stories of people coming home and seeing that their spouse has murdered all their kids and then themselves -- are being dealt with in the same way as these topics that are seemingly shallow. Good glasses for a spring party, best new strategies for boyfriend wear. This exposure of human need at 4 p.m. on a weekday afternoon made me think, "What is this thing?" We're so accustomed now to reality programming and a whole spate of shows spun off from Oprah, but, as a scholar of a religion, I think it's one of our jobs to be cued into how people manage pain, and the idea of evil, or whether or not we live in a just world.

What is Oprah's religious background?

Oprah talks about a Baptist church that her grandmother took her to in Mississippi. She tells an anecdote about how she was a successful young churchgoer and was asked to preach in front of that audience and was a very good girl who memorized scriptural passages. Then in her adulthood, she has some criticism of male figures in the church and the dominance of male authorities and it seems that by the time we get to the '90s, it's circulating that she's no longer a member of the church but she continues to use Christian idioms in her conversational speech. She says, "Jesus lives." She'll say, "Amen." She'll occasionally sing lines from obviously Protestant hymns, but she claims now that she's no longer interested in organizational religion, and she's more interested in a personal relationship with God. Indeed, she has around her a large collection of spiritual purveyors of a wide variety: Buddhist, Hindu, Unity Church. Every flavor of the contemporary, spiritual rainbow is welcomed into her studio.

If Oprah is a preacher, what is she telling us? What is her gospel?

Her gospel -- her good news -- is you. The good news is that if you take hold of your life; if you discover (as she says) your best life, anything is possible. Of course, this good news is translated not only through her exhibition of you -- you through her audience members, guests, columnists, message board commentators -- but also through the unending rehearsal of her. The good news is her revelations about her best life -- lived, she says, in service to you.

Why do you think so many people who shun religion are comfortable looking to Oprah for "spiritual guidance"?

Precisely because she says she doesn't seem typical in her authority. Because she represents -- in her race and gender and origins -- being utterly outside established power. Also, she isn't preaching to sell you something singular. She says, over and over: I am here to let you be you. My answers are mine, and they made my struggling life something fantastic to share. You're not joining a group, you're just finding your inner fabulous. This is appealing to people who associate religion with controlling authority, rigid dogma or social adherence. This is a religion for those who don't want to be religious, but want to feel revelation.

Given the ubiquity of suffering and despair, far be it from me to begrudge Oprah's audience from flocking to a place where they find a bit of tenderness and compassion, but, as Professor Lofton observes,  the deeply religious overtones of Oprah's "gospel," begs the question: what is the difference?  What is the difference between what Oprah offers through her“. . .  large collection of spiritual purveyors of a wide variety: Buddhist, Hindu, Unity Church.[where]  Every flavor of the contemporary, spiritual rainbow is welcomed into her studio.” and the Christian Gospel? 

Historically, this demographic to whom Oprah ministers--those who are seeking "[a] religion for those who don't want to be religious, but want to feel revelation"---is similar (if not identical) to the majority of the world into which the first Christian preacher came saying things like, “I am the way, the truth and the life. . . , " and "whoever would save his life will lose it. . . "

He and his followers definitely did not get IPads, but some eventually did make it to Australia. 

Conference Preview: Death and Resurrection in Church Planting. And Life.

Here at Mockingbird we pride ourselves on being Theologians of the Cross. That is to say, we believe that God works, most often and most powerfully, through weakness and defeat, rather than in strength and victory. As Paul writes, recounting God's answer to him in the midst of suffering:

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Co 12.9&10)

Theologians of the Cross take great comfort in the thought that, when they are suffering, encountering difficulties of every kind, it is not a sign of God's abandonment or displeasure, but is, in fact, a mark of His presence and work in our lives.

Of course, the problem is, none of us actually believes this, and I speak for myself first and foremost. None of us actually "delights" in our pains, as does Paul. None of us enjoys failure, or takes it as a sign of God's favor. As Gerhard Forde has written, we are inveterate Theologians of Glory, who always take success to be a mark of God's blessing and failure a sign of His curse. This is just as (perhaps more) true in the "Christian" world as it is in the "secular."

For the past two-and-a-half years, my wife and I have been planting a church in New York City. It has not been without its joys, but it has not been easy. Perhaps most difficult has been the insistence of many voices around us, both within and without, that success is a matter of finding the right "strategy" or "improving our skill set", maintaining a "positive attitude", "projecting an image of success", "creating and capitalizing on momentum" and on and on... This is Glory language, plain and simple.

At the same time, when we have listened and talked to actual church planters, we have encountered much different stories: uncertainty, fear, failure, anxiety, depression. And yet, in and through it all, God graciously, unexpectedly, miraculously at work. I have taken to saying that for every church planter there are two stories: the fundraising pitch (Glory) and what really happened, which is invariably a tale of God's grace and power in the midst of our weakness (Cross).

Of course, this is the story not just of church planting or ministry, but all of life. When we encounter difficulties (which is often!), our gut reaction is to fight them, to run away, to deny, to receive them as judgment. This is the way of the world, but it is not what Paul talks about. This session will be an opportunity for all comers to hear and tell the truth, to share stories and be encouraged. We are weak but He is strong. He is always at work, not just in our successes but also in our failures. His grace is all we have and all we need in the midst of life's up and downs.

Hope to see you there! www.mbird.com/conference

The Power and The Glory and Luke 19

I was intrigued by a recent article in The NY Times entitled, “Mexican Church Takes a Closer Look at Donors,” which looks at the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. Apparently it receives large donations from Mexican drug lords. It's convicting for several reasons, and certainly made the ash on my head yesterday feel a little bit more real.

The first element I found convicting, especially during the season of Lent, was the idea of "an acceptable offering and sacrifice." The article opens by pointing out that the Roman Catholic Chapel in Pachuca, Mexico has a plaque that honors its patron Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, commander of the crime syndicate called Zetas. The plaque bears a quote from Psalm 143, and there is an inference that this is all deeply wrong: “How dare they take that dirty money!” Father Coogan, a priest in the area, bluntly explains why the church has taken the drug lords’ money, “Hey, the guy who owns the factory, he’s a bastard, but we take his money, so why not take the drug money?” He captures exactly what makes the Psalm quote on this drug lord’s plaque so stunning: it brings one back down to Earth. The church has traditionally understood Psalm 143 as one of penance; the opening verses are in the form of a general confession reminding us that everyone, even the purest of givers, without God's grace and mercy, is actually - to quote Father Coogan - a bastard. On our own, we have more in common with the Zetas than we do the righteousness of God.

The story also evokes the theology of the cross powerfully. The cross reminds us that when it comes to good and evil, in an ultimate sense, we have no idea what God is actually doing. We don't see or understand the things of God. Elvira Rodriguez Lopez’s quote says it best (rubbing the Pharisee in me the wrong way), “the mysteries of God are great and that all donors should be thanked.” Amen! The cross reminds us that God works in evil things, through suffering and character flaws, even local drug lords to lead us into Christ’s arms. That we can give thanks for all things, even the Zetas, because God is responsible, and he makes the mess in order to clean it up his way, for his is The Power and the Glory (ht Graham Greene).

Possibly Insane Thoughts on Ash Wednesday (Written on the Occasion of a Sleepless Night)

A close friend of Mockingbird contributes the following reflection on the meaning of the day, and I'm sure you'll agree that it is a welcome and considerably more profound alternative to the (admittedly irresistible) irreverence with which we've treated (the "public displays of piety" which characterize) Lent in past years. A touching and personal defense of the season, and today in particular, from an exceptionally sympathetic a point of view: 

For those of us who came of age in certain fundamentalist or evangelical Protestant churches, life was a strangely disembodied affair. It is true that various sins of the flesh were railed against, but it never was in name of a truer way of actually inhabiting the world, of living joyfully within it. Instead, our bodies and the physical spaces of our existence were essentially temporary confinements, nothing but occasions for temptation, impediments to the spiritual life. Our subjugation to matter would be remedied through rapture or cataclysm – eschatology took the shape not of patient hope for the redemption of creation, which even now we groan for, but release from the grip of physicality altogether. Worship, and the religious life more generally, went ahead in spite of our bodies, with the hope of eventually transcending them altogether.

My fascination and love for Ash Wednesday only can be understood in relation to such a past, for lurking within this day’s penitential posture is a celebration of our mortal existence. It is a liturgical episode that takes our physical existence seriously. It is, perhaps surprisingly, an extraordinarily hopeful day. The superficial gloom of ashes to ashes, dust to dust, points to the paradoxical, deep truth of the Christian faith: those who lose their life will gain it. It is a day to be released from the deadliness of doing, which is to say released to live in the world.

Of course it is possible, even common, under the misguided moralism that blights most of our churches, to turn the beginning of Lent into a peculiar form of asceticism: we mortify the flesh in the name of the spirit, and deprive our bodies for the sake of religious “growth.” For Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and other liturgical Christians, a season of fasting and restraint can transmogrify into a dualism that is different in form, but not really content, from my youthful fundamentalism. The spiritual life can be pitted against our embodiment in a variety of contexts, whether “high church” or “low church,” liturgical or not. The constant allure of escapism is always at hand to turn such practices into a fearful longing to abandon the task of living patiently, generously, lovingly in a world marked by pain and sorrow. Part of us always wants to flee our bodies, and the world they move through, and Lenten observations can find their way to this place with astonishing ease.

One response to this line of thought, which is not unpersuasive, is that Lent assumes a relationship between our physical and spiritual lives. It is in its own way a season for people with bodies. It takes our bodies seriously enough to allow for a connection between what we do, eat, and drink, and what spiritual valence is possible for us. We go through our bodies, not away from them, when we make certain sacrifices. In a very basic sense, this is true. We might be able to fix our attention more clearly, or focus our attention in prayer more steadfastly, under certain conditions. Taken for not more than what they are, these practices can be a part of basically sound spiritual life. But such an observation misses the more important existential, personal element to what Ash Wednesday signifies.

The search for sanctification never is that far removed from neurotic burden. There always is something half-comical, half-tragic about the banalities of what we “give up” for Lent.
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Conference Preview: Grace for Single Moms

From Andrea Zimmerman, who, with her husband Aaron, will lead one of our breakout sessions on Friday morning at the upcoming 2011 Mockingbird Conference.

“Am I allowed to come to Christmas services at your church with my boys?”

An unwed mother with two small children asked me this question a few days before Christmas. Her church did not allow her to participate in services because she had children out of wedlock. Even though she had already visited our church twice, she couldn’t believe that we would actually allow her to participate, much less at a “special” service. She is not alone. Many unwed or divorced mothers feel this way about the church (And this is not a small group of people: 40% of children born in the US today are born to unwed mothers). Many families who have children with special needs feel the same way (95% of these families do not go to church).

For these folks, the church doors have seemed shut for so long.

What if the church were a place a teen mom could raise her child with loving, hands-on support? Or a place where a battered mom and her kids could start over with the community found in the local church? What if there was a group of people within the church to help a child with special needs and his family to thrive? What kind of theology creates the climate for such a ministry? What is the foundation--the undergirding theological perspective that guides a ministry like this?Our church asked that question. The result was Side by Side. During the Friday morning breakout session, my husband and I will share our church’s experience of founding and expanding a ministry to single mothers and to families who have children with special needs. We’ll share the stories of some of the families who have been helped. And we’ll explain our grace-infused theological foundation. And we’ll share the practical steps that have given rise to the surprisingly rapid growth of this ministry and caused other churches to catch on. We’ll also have materials available for those interested in bringing this ministry to their churches.

The conference is filling up--Register soon!

(Image: Rhonda Bowman)

Scumbags Welcome

Two thumbs up. Details here:

Another Week Ends: Grace & Cutting, Depression & Recession, David Foster Wallace, Burned-Over Generations, Greg McElroy, Supernatural, Arcade Fire

1. Continuing this past month's unexpected foray into gender-related topics (i.e. here, here, here and here), Christianity Today published a doozie of an article earlier this week on its Her.meneutics site, "The Gospel of Grace for Women Who Self-Injure". A couple lines from the conclusion (ht DB):

I’m not surprised that self-punishing behaviors occur among Christians. And this is not to blame the church. For legalism — and I would argue that this is what these behaviors are at their core — comes in guises both religious and secular. The desire to control the destiny of a few moments, if not our lives, is a fact of the human condition. But it is a fact that directly opposes the gospel of grace. 

Also female-related, from Medical News Daily (aka Captain Obvious: The Journal) is "Mean Girls and Queen Bees: Females Under Threat of Social Exclusion Respond by Excluding Others First".

2. On the male side of things, and following-up the Man-Child post, Time reports on the impact the recession appears to be having on rates of depression among men, challenging the accepted finding that the condition is more prevalent among ladies, ht TB.

3. Speaking of men and depression, it's been a big week for David Foster Wallace. The New Yorker published an excerpt of his new book The Pale King, "Backbone". To compare the published version with the version he read publicly a few years prior, go here. I also came across a terrific discussion/defense of his fiction by Rebekah Frumkin on The Common Review, entitled "Our Psychic Living Room", which includes a variation of one of our favorite quotes from the man himself via a 1996 interview (ht CR):

The sadness that [Infinite Jest] is about, and that I was going through [when I wrote it], was a real American type of sadness. I was white, upper-middle-class, obscenely well-educated, had had way more career success than I could have legitimately hoped for and was sort of adrift. A lot of my friends were the same way. Some of them were deeply into drugs, others were unbelievable workaholics. Some were going to singles bars every night. You could see it played out in 20 different ways, but it’s the same thing. . . . I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values.

4. By way of self-promotion, Modern Reformation just published "Compassion, Creativity and Connecting with a Burned-Over Generation" by yours truly, which outlines some of the thinking behind Mockingbird, in case you were curious. I'm proud to say I was able to sneak Axl Rose, Michael Jackson, Whit Stillman, Oscar Wilde, Stuart Murdoch, and David Foster Wallace into the party. UPDATE: Mod Ref has been kind enough to unlock the article, so it's now available in its entirety on their site, for free! For more Reformation goodness, be sure to check out their considerably more tricked-out sister site, The White Horse Inn, and then head over to New Reformation Press to hear Rod Rosenbladt's stunning new must-hear sermon "Christianity in Five Verses." It's raining Reformation!
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Ideas or the Human Heart?

From a BBC news flash yesterday:

Pope Benedict has rejected the idea of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus Christ's death, in a new book to be published next week.

Tackling an issue that has led to centuries of persecution, the Pope argues there is no basis in scripture for the Jewish people to be blamed.

It’s a good thing for the Pope to say this, of course. But the BBC article (read it here) is misleading in that it repeatedly gives the casual reader the impression that this idea is the result of groundbreaking exegetical research. That’s of course always going to be the bias of a “news” organization (News Flash! Stunning pronouncement changes 2000 years of Christian teaching!). To say “Pope reaffirms again what many Christians from many communions have said for many centuries” -- that’s not quite as sexy of a headline.

More importantly, however, beneath the BBC article lies a worldview: which is that human nature is not in itself a huge mess of evil passions (“If you, being evil…”), but instead tries to explain human evil on bad “ideas.” Centuries of terrible anti-Semitism must be traceable, the BBC and most people think, to some bad idea early in Christian thought. If only we had had Pope Benedict around in the first few centuries, he could have given us the right “idea” and then we could have been saved all those years of pogroms, and Inquisitions, and death camps! A more accurate reading of human history, however, is the Christian aphorism from the late 1500s: What the heart desires, the will chooses and the mind justifies. People would have always have found some reason to commit terrible acts against a vulnerable people; anyone who remembers bullies in the schoolyard knows this intuitively. The BBC thinks that an idea comes first, the free human reason chooses it, and then one’s heart is based on the idea. Thomas Cranmer and others knew better.

Graham Schuyler and Churches for the Sake of Others

The convergence of two of our favorite things: Friday Night Lights... and Graham Schuyler:

Mockingbird Interviews Mark Galli (Slight Return)

Last year, many of us at Mockingbird discovered the writings of Mark Galli, Senior Managing Editor of Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of Evangelicalism (started in 1956 by none other than Billy Graham). Galli's grasp of the Gospel—God’s grace in Jesus Christ to broken human beings, including Christians who can't get it together—was as deeply refreshing as it was (almost) unique in the wider world of Evangelical Christianity. We were so intrigued that we sought him out for an interview. Needless to say, it turned out to be a fascinating conversation, looking at the current landscape of Evangelicalism, the radical nature of the Gospel, and the pattern of the Christian life. We were so impressed, in fact, that we invited him to be the keynote speaker at the upcoming 2011 Mockingbird Conference in New York City (3/31-4/2). In anticipation of the event, we've reposted the interview below in its entirety. If you've read it before, it's very much worth a second look - if you haven't, well, today's your lucky day:[CONTINUE READING]

NYC Conference Update: Talk Titles

We are very excited to announce the official, appetite-whetting titles of the talks at our upcoming conference in New York City:

Thursday March 31st

7:00pm "Jesus Shot My Dog: Fear, Control and the End of the Law" - Jady Koch

Friday April 1st

9:15am "The Religious Culture of Control" - Mark Galli

2:30pm "The Liberating Grace of Chaos" - Mark Galli

Saturday April 2nd

9:30am "Grace in the Midst of Mere Religion" - Mark Galli

11:00am "What We Talk About When We Talk About Freedom: The Discontented Self and the Love of God" - David Zahl

The full schedule is up on the conference site, as are a host of other details. It's starting to fill up - Register Today!

George Eliot on Exhortation and Helplessness

Also from "Janet's Repentance" in Scenes of Clerical Life. Janet Dempster, in a moment of absolute despair, suddenly remembers the minister, Mr. Tryan. She gets the inspiration that maybe he can help her:

"No! She suddenly thought -- and the thought was like an electric shock -- there was one spot in her memory which seemed to promise her an untried spring, where the waters might be sweet.  That short meeting with Mr. Tryan had come back upon her -- his voice, his words, his look, which told her that he knew sorrow.  ... that look of his came back on her with a vividness greater than it had had for her in reality; surely he knew more of the secrets of sorrow than other men; perhaps he had some message of comfort, different from the feeble words she had been used to hear from others.  She was tired, she was sick of that barren exhortation -- Do right, and keep a clear conscience, and God will reward you, and your troubles will be easier to bear.  She wanted strength to do right -- she wanted something to rely on besides her own resolutions; for was not the path behind her all strewn with broken resolutions?  How could she trust in new ones?  She had often heard Mr. Tryan laughed at for being fond of great sinners. She began to see a new meaning in those words; he would perhaps understand her helplessness..." ( p. 252)

PZ's Podcast: "Mr." Priest and The King's Speech (Cosmo Lang)

EPISODES 33&34

You can usually tell when things aren't going well for an institution, when professional titles become inflated. Great academics in this country used often to be called by the title 'Mr.' rather than 'Professor' or 'Doctor'. Or take the United States Navy. Then, too, in the Episcopal Church and the Church of England, ministers were always called 'Mr.'. That is, until recently. As with other things, no one believes you when you point this out. It is simply inconceivable to the great majority of church folk that the rector of their parish should have been known as 'Mr.' Smith. 'Mr.' is heard today as if it were a devaluation of the office somehow, or a less religious form of address. But back then, in those distant days before the 1979 Prayer Book, the title 'Mr.' was normative, just as the word 'minister' was normative, rather than 'priest' -- not just for the Eisenhower era but for the 400 years up to the Eisenhower era. 'Mr.' Smith for the parson was a democratization of the clergy, a welcome expression of Jesus' own repeated injunction, 'Call no man father'.

In Episode 33 of PZ's Podcast, the story is just told, the story of titles for clergy in England and America. Novels are the chief evidence, from Fielding through Forster. It's always 'Mr.' -- right up through the era of "Mad Men". I know this, because I was there.

Why is this footnote to history important? It is important because it tells us something interesting: When churches go on the defensive in relation to the outside world, titles become inflated in relation to their inside world. First, I was 'Mr.' Zahl. Then I became, against my will (but there was nothing I could ever do about it) 'Father' Zahl. Then -- O frabjous Day! Calloo! Callay! -- I became 'Father Paul'. Paging Bing Crosby, which was the only way I could reconcile myself to this. Funny thing, the higher the title, the lower one's rep in the community. The more dirty looks I got, out on the avenue, the more fixated 'my people' became on my title.

Episode 34 (to be posted on Thursday) is inspired by "The King's Speech", but sadly, not by the wonderful teacher who helps a future king, but rather by the film's portrayal of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang. Cosmo Lang's famous 'teaching moment' in December 1936, by which he sought to use the abdication of King Edward VIII to 'recall' the nation to religion, not only backfired, but caused the whole Church of England to be regarded as judgmental and pharisaical. The Archbishop, acted superciliously but accurately by Derek Jacobi, played right into the hands of a culture that desires to see the Church identified with Law, in the negative sense, and Free Thought identified with emancipation. This podcast tries to understand why Christians have such a hard time expressing the very Grace we've been given, ironically packaging it in terms of its opposite.

Listen here.