Vote for Obama… just don’t put your hope in him

On July 23rd the Jesus for President Book Tour will be coming through Richmond. Until then I plan on posting interesting articles, things to ponder and other conversation starters on this site.

David Fitch has an excellent article over on the site: the church and postmodern culture: conversation.

Zizek, and the danger of Obama for the American Church

Fitch ends his thoughts with some interesting questions for us to ponder.

What do you think? Is there a work of “ideological cynicism” at work in Christians supporting Obama? Is the Obama bandwagon a positive or a negative (or neutral) for the church’s role in bringing justice to the nations? Is energy by Christians spent on Obama politics misguided, too hopeful, and misdirected? Is it too easy to just say “you should be doing both, voting for Obama and working for social justice in your local church”?

J4P - A Review for Atheists

Not too far back, Zack Exely posted a review of “Jesus For President for atheists” on the Huffington Post.

You can find the review here: PART 1 & PART 2

Zack also blogs at Revolution in Jesusland…

J4P - Shane on J4P

J4P - Warming Up

Here is the audio or video of Shane Claiborne (Author of Jesus For President), Greg Boyd and Chuck Colson having a conversation about faith and politics. All three come from different places and yet, do a good job of having a respectful conversation.

Consider it a warm-up to what is ahead.

You can listen to it HERE

or

You can watch it HERE

J4P - Looking for help

Starting soon we will be starting a conversation with the book Jesus For President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. My hope is to engage with this book and what it might mean for the larger community of Richmond. So, I’m inviting a multiplicity of voices to join me in blogging through this book. That means I need your voice! I’m looking for Christians, atheists, red state, blue state and purple people who are willing to read this book and add their voice. I’m looking for people who believe that “Another world is possible” here in Richmond and in the world.

When people hear the title of this book it often comes with mixed reactions. So I’d thought we’d let the authors tell us why this book was written.

This book is a project in renewing the imagination of the church in the United States and of those who would seek to know Jesus. We are seeing more and more that the church has fallen in love with the state and that this love affair is killing the church’s imagination. The powerful benefits and temptations of running the world’s largest superpower have bent the church’s identity. Having power at its fingertips, the church often finds “guiding the course of history” a more alluring goal than following the crucified Christ. Too often the patriotic values of pride and strength triumph over the spiritual virtues of humility, gentleness, and sacrificial love. (17)

In the rest of the introduction Shane and Chris talk of the dangers of not knowing where the state ends and the church begins. To illustrate this point, they use the famous Tony Compolo quote: “Mixing the church and state is like mixing ice cream and cow manure. It may not do much to the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream.”

This raises all sorts of questions for us. Can a follower of Christ be political? What would it look like to engage in politics as a Christian? Is this what Jesus was warning us about when he said that we can’t serve two masters? Or maybe we need to redefine what it means to be political…

We hope this book will broaden the definition of political. As you’ll find in the following pages, political doesn’t refer merely to legislation, parties, and governments. So while we will insist that the Christian faith be political, we also want to redefine what political means or looks like. We hope to redefine it simply as how we relate to the world.

The book is divided up into four sections.

1. Before There Where Kings and Presidents (Hebrew Scriptures 101)
2. A New Kind of Commander-in-Chief (Jesus)
   
3. When then Empire Got Baptized (How the Unholy union began)
   
4. A Peculiar Party (Stories of Subverting the Empire)
   

We will be breaking down these sections into 24 separate posts. So if you are interested in writing a post and adding your voice to the conversation, let me know and I’ll send you the topics you can choose from. And even if you are not interested in posting your thoughts, we still invite you to read the book and join in the conversation in the comment section.

Peace,

brent

*** Posting should begin by May 26th (that should give everyone time to start reading the book).

Jesus for President - Campaign tour ‘08

Are you looking to get involved in a Presidential campaign? A campaign that you can believe in? A campaign that could benefit the city of Richmond? A campaign that is truly for revolutionary change?

This summer The Gabriel House (A Catholic Workers Hospitality house) and the Well are pleased to announce that Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw are coming to Richmond, Virginia for their Jesus for President book tour.

When: July 23rd (7:00 p.m.)

Where: Tabernacle Baptist Church (located on the corner of Grove and Meadow)

Check out the book today: Jesus For President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw

Keep checking back… in the next few days we plan on starting a conversation about this book.

American (churches) Idol

I believe the most acceptable and common form of idolatry in churches today is ministry. I believe many leaders and many churches worship ministry - that is, what we are trying to do for God.

…we often do not pursue God but instead pursue the fruitfulness that we are told accompanies God’s presence in a person or community’s life. Let me rephrase that statement: we rarely pursue God directly but instead pursue external expressions called “ministry” as a sign of God. But when we make ministry our pursuit, we make it impossible to realize that the very thing we seek. Ministry is always the by-product of something else. What? The pursuit of God.

-Tim Keel Intuitive Leadership (219-220)

Reading in South Korea

I took 9 books with me, but only read 3 1/2. I know, I know… I’ll do better next time.

Open Secrets

Thanks to Matthew Freeman for the recommendation. The Open Secret was a great read of Lischer’s “memoir of faith and discovery.” One of my favorite quotes from the book takes place when Lischer (the pastor) first arrives at his new church and has a get together with some of the older men in the community.

Finally, at what I am tempted to call a lull in the conversation, Bertie fixed me with his cagey blue eyes and asked offhandedly, “Pastor, will you have a beer?”

Everyone looked at me, and with only an extra second’s hesitation - just enough to make it an unnatural response - I said, “Sure.”

Bertie went to a refrigerator filled with Budweisers. He selected exactly one bottle, opened it, and brought it too me. The seven old men watched me intently as I drank it. “You’re not having one?” I asked.

“Naw,” Bertie replied in a tone that seemed to ask, “What kind of man would drink a beer at two in the afternoon?” His eyes almost smiled as he said it.

The point of the exercise? The new pastor is either one of the boys or a moral slacker. I left knowing I had been tested, but unsure of my grade.

Anarchy and Christianity

The question I am posing is the more difficult because fixed opinions have long since been reached on both sides and have never been subjected to the least examination. It is taken for granted that anarchists are hostile to all religions (and Christianity is classified as such). It is also taken for granted that devout Christians abhor anarchy as a source of disorder and a negation of established authority. It is these simplistic and uncontested beliefs that I propose to challenge. But it might be useful to say where I am coming from… I am a Christian, not by descent but by conversion.

A provocative book that is worth reading if you are willing to be stretched.

The Wounded Healer

A book I have read a couple times before, but keeps me coming back with quotes like this…

A Christian community is therefore a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions for a new vision. Mutual confession then becomes a mutual deepening of hope, and sharing weakness becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength.

Intuitive Leadership

I’m not finished yet, but it has been really close to what I’ve experienced in planting the Well. I’ll write a review of it when I done.

South Korea in pictures…

I’m back from my South Korean adventure, so I thought i’d share some of the fun through pictures…

I was with Ryan when he bought his car… he was a nervous wreck just thinking of the commitment to that car he was making! But, not with Helen! Ryan was calm, cool and collected the whole time leading up to the wedding. He made an excellent choice.

Before the big day we climbed a mountain to get a view of Seoul.

every street was filled with an orgy of lights and signs!

Ryan’s parents: Scott and Linda…

…and Helen’s family, made me feel like part of the family, by including me in all the week’s celebrations!

and what wedding isn’t complete without a smoking wedding cake?

Ryan and Helen had an amazing group of friends there to support them! A “wicked” time was had by all!

Leaving Church

Things have been quiet here at Hope Like Mad because I’ve been in more of a reflective place with lots of questions running through my head. At times I feel like there is just clutter that fills my mind, and if i try to articulate any of the thoughts that I think i do have, they just come out flat… with no life in them.

Like the story of the paralyzed man whose friends carried him when he could do nothing for himself, who let him down through the roof where Jesus was teaching to find healing. I found some words that helped articulate what I could not and to found healing in them.

In Barbara Brown Taylor’s book Leaving Church she writes of her exprience after leaving the church after years of finding her identity there.

I had never read scriptures more carefully in my life, which caused scales to fall from my eyes. Over and over, I discovered how the traditional interpretations of a passage had so determined my reading of it that it was hard for me to see what was actually on the page…

If none of this had ever come to my attention before, one reason was because I had never had so much time to read before, but another reason was because Mother Church had little interest in the things that were interesting me. Her job was to take care of her family. Why should she get into discussions that might cause them to lose confidence in her? Why encourage them to raise questions for which she had no answers? Even more important, why waste valuable time time rehashing things that had been settled centuries ago when there was so much to do around the house right now? I understood her reasons, I really did. I was just looking for some way to stay related to her that did not require me to stay a child.

Because I had left the house, I found less and less to talk about with people who were still happily engaged inside. At clergy gatherings I felt like a single woman listening to dedicated parents discuss day care and home remedies for colic. When I spoke of things that I found fascinating, the resounding silence told me how far I was from the center of the map and how much my distance sounded like disloyalty. Church people who could tell I was in the wilderness were kind enough to invite me back inside the house, but even when I went to visit I did not want to stay. I did not know how to behave anymore. I could no longer speak the lines that I had been given to say. I wanted to go back outside.

If my time in the wilderness taught me anything, it is that faith in God has both a center and an edge and that each is necessary for the soul’s health. If I developed a complaint during my time in the wilderness, it was that Mother Church lavished so much more attention on those at the center than on those at the edge.