Among the obscure items I collect to amaze my students and annoy my colleagues is the by-now-long-useless fact that in 1869 Alexandrine Tinne was hacked to death by the Touaregs. Alexine was an incredibly rich, incredibly beautiful, incredibly brave woman who, at enormous expense, attempted to explore the White Nile and its tributaries.
Obligatory summer visits to our family requires a road trip from Pittsburgh to Nashville to Albuquerque to Denver to Milwaukee. This duty is rendered pleasant by minor league baseball games all across the country. In my secret heart I still believe if I had not gone to the seminary I might have gone to the baseball hall of fame.
Every body, or to be precise – every mind, needs three reading lists. The first will contain the essential books of your field. The second list will offer solid insights into and felicitous expressions of one's individual and community interests. The third is just plain fun to read.
MEMPHIS -- Spiritual practices -- such things as showing hospitality and forgiveness, giving and receiving, reading Scripture, praying, healing, discernment of God's will -- often are messy, full of ambiguity and even conflict.
They aren't spiritual merit badges -- do this as a sign of how good or godly you are.
They aren't private, transcendent spiritual experiences that no one else can share.
They are instead "an attempt to catch up with and respond to God's merciful and transforming presence in the world," said Amy Plantinga Pauw during the opening session of the 2005 national meeting of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians.
She said such practices "are like holding out our hand to receive the bread of life at communion," an act of faith and at the same time "a concrete acknowledgement that we are not whole, that we are not at peace, that we need healing and nourishment that we cannot provide for ourselves."
Pauw, the Henry P. Mobley professor of Doctrinal Theology at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, was speaking on "Graceful Practices." And the theme of this Covenant Network gathering, held Nov. 3-5 at Idlewild Church in Memphis, is "Disciples in Community," an exploration in part of how to be faithful in a church with so many opinions of what is right and what is sinful.
MEMPHIS -- Where do moderate evangelicals stand?
That's a question Jon Walton, a pastor from New York and co-moderator of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, slipped into his remarks when talking about one of the biggest issues facing the General Assembly next summer in Birmingham: the long-awaited report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
The Covenant Network -- a progressive group in the PC(USA) -- would love to know what moderate evangelicals think of the report, and whether they're willing to take a public stand on it. Such information would help the progressives know how solid their own footing is and what the prospects may be that the assembly will approve the task force report.
But there are other questions to ask as well -- including what Covenant Network supporters privately think of the task force report, whether there might be more support from them than seems apparent, and whether the church as a whole cares much about the positions all these special interest groups take.
Book suggestions for :
Scripture lesson: Mark 1: 1-8
Without sounding as melodramatic as Daniel did about his inner life, I recently had a dream. It went like this: We came home, opened the front door of the house, and discovered to our surprise that it was as empty as a gourd.
I do not mean just somewhat empty. When you are preparing to move and you are packing everything up you can say that it is empty when it is still half full of stuff. But this time I mean spic and span--astonishingly clean. If Hemingway had been there he would have said that it was the original clean well lighted place. It was apocalyptically bare.
Dreams are big these days. There is open season on them by both novelists and psychotherapists. Nevertheless, I am not so sure that the experts would do much with this one. It could be beyond the grasp of even that newly evolved profession, life coach/mentor. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung could have met at Seattle's Best over it, flipped for paying the bill, and left shaking their heads.
As I listened to John Bell's sermon (link) I thought I was being ushered back into the remembered richness of the Presbyterian/Reformed tradition that nourished my beginnings as a pastor, a tradition that the Outlook has maintained fearlessly over many decades. That emerging tradition was patiently replacing a spurious ecclesiology that supported social injustice. The Outlook was courageous in that enterprise, and was willing, for the gospel and the church's sake, to "be shown the door" if necessary, to speak the truth about church and society.
Ernest Trice Thompson and Aubrey Brown, the first two editors of this paper, in teaching, preaching, and writing, helped to establish in the warp and woof of the church the overturning of the noxious doctrine of the "spirituality of the church" that had become the confessional stance of the PCUS (Southern Church) when we broke away from the national body. As we formed the new denomination in 1861 at Augusta, Ga., we declared that the church's vocation was not to be concerned with the outward condition of human beings, but with their souls only -- which were destined for salvation or damnation. That "faith statement" set the church on a course separating not only charity from justice, but even of separating charity from evangelism. And it was a long, hard road on which to return to the whole gospel for the whole church, and officially to repudiate (in the 1930s) that separation.
This sermon on Luke 4, Jesus' inaugural address in the synagogue at Nazareth, was preached at the Worship and Music Conference in Montreat, North Carolina, in the summer of 2005 by John L. Bell.
I must remember to talk slowly and clearly because you have an accent. Oh, some people don't believe that, but I can testify to that being true, particularly in this place and at this conference to which I first came over 10 years ago.
I was teaching an afternoon elective on a song from the New Testament. It was a setting of the beatitudes in St Luke. It began:
Blessed are the poor,
the kingdom of God is theirs.
I was hardly into the first line when a woman interrupted me and said, "Excuse me, but in our church we talk about -- "and then she said something which sounded like "the pooah in speerit."
So I asked her to repeat herself. And again I heard, "the pooah in speerit."
I was totally puzzled. My mind went to Exodus chapter 1 where there is mention of two Hebrew midwives one of whom is Puah, but the other is Shiphrah not Speerit. As the lady noticed my consternation, she did what my grandfather once advised when dealing with foreigners: speak more loudly. "POOAH IN SPEERIT."
And then the penny dropped, and I realised that the dear lady was saying: "poor in spirit." At first I wondered whether she was denying that our Lord blessed the poor. But then I realised that she was in fact pointing to the alternative versions of the beatitudes. In Luke, Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor," while in Matthew, he says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."
The stories we are reflecting on today, however, have no alternative. They speak of the raw physical realities with which God is involved: issues of life and death, oppression and liberation which cannot be spiritualised away.
Most high school seniors have extensive lists of requirements for potential colleges: location, cost, class sizes, major offerings. While I looked for colleges two years ago, all of those variables were important, but I seemed to have one other prerequisite: a Presbyterian heritage.
When I was asked what I was looking for in a school, I rarely started with the Presbyterian qualifier, but those interested noticed a pattern quickly enough. "Well," I'd say, "I'm looking at (different schools)." And, although each institution has a reputation for academic excellence, the unique common denominator was that of a relationship, whether active or more nominal, with one particular denomination-- my own.
My eagerness to attend a Presbyterian college may seem to have an obvious explanation. As the daughter of a Presbyterian minister (Warrensburg, Mo.), the familiarity of my home denomination's theology and practices seemed comforting as I planned to live on my own for the first time. Plus, occasional scholarship breaks for PKs didn't hurt.
In all honesty, however, there was another, more practical reason for narrowing my search to Presbyterian colleges. It simply made the list of possibilities somewhat more approachable. With hundreds of options, choosing a college seemed an overwhelming prospect, particularly since I was unsure of my career path. By saying "Presby-only," my list seemed reassuring and workable. It also seemed the perfect match for a person who proudly remembers the moment she learned to spell P-R-E-S-B-Y-T-E-R-I-A-N at the age of five.
But then the decision-making moment arrived. And I enrolled in a Baptist school.
I have read The Presbyterian Outlook since I was a student at Union Theological Seminary, and have continually been grateful for its usefulness. But I must say that when Ben Sparks was announced as its interim editor in February of 2004, the Outlook became much more fun to read.
Ben Sparks first introduced himself to me on the campus of Union Theological Seminary in the fall of 1968 or 1969. I was in my first or second year of seminary; Ben was a member of the Board of Trustees, one of the youngest trustees ever to serve on the board of Union, now Union-PSCE. Ben was living in Roanoke, serving as Urban Minister for Montgomery Presbytery staff. After college, I had spent a year working with an inner city Presbyterian congregation in Brooklyn, New York. Ben wanted to talk with me about that experience. As we visited that afternoon on the Union campus, a friendship based on mutual respect began.
Quickly, I realized that Ben had read more books than I, many more books; he kept up with journals far more than I. A member of the Iona Community in Scotland, Ben treasured participation in that worldwide ecumenical group. Those attributes, along with a keen mind, quick memory, and fun spirit made me eager to let the friendship grow.
It would be easy to name the churches that Ben Sparks has served, list the baptisms, recall the weddings, remember the funerals, appreciate his faithful service to presbyteries and synods, as well as to the church as a whole. Ben is without a doubt hitting his stride.
But that would be the easy part. There is no difficulty in adding the numbers and citing the impressive facts. What is far more important is the distinctive character of the service that he has given to all of these. And there is still more. It is the special quality of life that both he and Annette contribute to all of these activities that make the essential difference.
In some respects it was a natural thing for Ben to become involved with The Presbyterian Outlook. Second Church had not only been the closest neighbor to the Outlook but also its supportive landlord for many years. And as the senior pastor there, Ben had assumed the responsibility of being a special friend and guardian of the publication.
Thomas W. Currie Jr. died at Charlton Methodist Hospital in Dallas, Texas on November 7. A memorial service was held at North Park Church of Dallas on November 10 with the Rev. Stephen W. Plunkett officiating.
Born in Austin, Texas, he was educated in the public schools there as well as the Choate School in Wallingford, Conn. He was a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and subsequently received a B.D. from Union Theological Seminary of New York and degrees from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (M.Th.) and Union Theological Seminary of Virginia (Th.D.).
The scientists in my family have devoted considerable time and effort to educating me in the rudiments of modern physics. For example, "Einstein's Theory of Relativity" is widely mentioned but some of us do not know exactly what to make of it. I rather assumed that Einstein had somehow demonstrated to the satisfaction of the scientific community that everything in the physical world is in relation to everything else in the physical world, which theologians have understood for a long time.
Advent 2 - on Isaiah 40:1--11 and Matthew 28:16--20 "My way," at least Sinatra sings Or "by the way," as Jesus' last..
When I was a little boy we played cowboys and Indians happily unaware of the political incorrectness of our behavior. By today's standards we were not properly trained in inclusiveness. Instead, we learned that aggressively incompatible lifestyles could not go on at the same time and place. For example, Indians hunted over the territory and cowboys grazed on it.
ATLANTA -- Kwame Bediako, a pastor and theological educator from Ghana, called it "a shift in the center of gravity of Christianity," a seismic lurch from north to south.
It means this:
· Asia, Africa and Latin America are producing many new Christians -- Christians who have their own understandings of faith and religious diversity and much to teach those who live in the north.
· More Christians from those countries are moving to the U.S., knocking on the doors of churches here, bringing with them their own cultures and experiences of God. Some see the secularized north as the next Christian mission field.
· And more people from other faiths are moving north as well -- meaning that even Americans who don't leave home will be much more likely to encounter Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others, and will live out their faith in contexts in which Christianity can't be assumed as the norm.
At a global mission conference in Atlanta, Presbyterians -- most of them from North America, many struggling to figure out what the new configurations will look like -- considered some of the new realities.
Editor's Note: In the October 31 issue of The Presbyterian Outlook, Nelle McCorkle Bordeaux, a member of the Presbyterian College Commission, wrote a guest viewpoint on her concerns about the commission final report. The leadership team of the commission now responds to her concerns.
As the leaders of the team that guided the work of the Presbyterian College Commission to explore what it means to be a liberal arts college in covenant with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), we wish to respond to the recent "Guest viewpoint" of Rev. Nelle Bordeaux.
We are deeply disappointed that a member of the Commission has so significantly misrepresented the recommendations of the Commission and the intent of the college's Board of Trustees in regard to the criteria for faculty membership at Presbyterian College. The Commission did not recommend that the faculty of Presbyterian College 'no longer need to be Christian,' but just the opposite. In the 'Findings' regarding 'Faculty Membership' we state, 'We agree that the expectation should be that 'faculty will be members of a Christian church...'' We do then go on to say that, while we "support the initiative of the Board of Trustees to make a limited number of specific exceptions to the requirement of membership in a Christian church,' we 'encourage the Board to state more clearly and concisely its intention to have a faculty of committed Christian scholars with appropriate exceptions being made for outstanding scholars of other faith traditions who would enrich the life and mission of the college.'
Lord, sometimes I feel like I'm always preparing to live but never living. Other times I feel I'm poorly prepared, so don't..
Scripture lesson: Mark 13
With all due respect to Holy Scripture, this is some great Advent sermon fodder. There is Isaiah 64's cry to come down; Psalm 81's plea to come to save us, and the thrice reiterated restore us," and, I Corinthians 1's invitation to patiently wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But when it comes to interpreting Mark 13's imperatives to stay alert and keep awake from a Reformed theological perspective, we who live after the publication of some 62 million copies of The Left Behind series (not to mention some two-thousand Advents, more or less), have our work cut out for us. The mild-mannered Christianity Today once referred to LaHaye and Jenkins' series as a multi-"volume post-rapture, dispensational soap opera." But this stuff--page-turning intrigue and hair-raising climaxes notwithstanding--is not harmless entertainment. It's theology.
Some years ago John Burgess wrote an essay for The Christian Century in which he described the drain on the ordinary life of the PC(USA) by coalitions with "reform" agendas for the denomination. To whichever coalition or covenant group you belonged, the dedication and resources with which you once strengthened the church for mission, service, and witness, now went into lobbies that were hungry for power, for theological dominance, or for political control. Burgess' article was written in the '90s. Has anyone calculated the hundreds of thousands of dollars which, since then, have been contributed to the Covenant Network, the Presbyterian Coalition, PFR, and the Confessing Church movement, and the like -- in staff salaries, speakers' fees, and travel for conferences, phone bills, office equipment, and the like? If those sums of money were prudently managed and spent, they might eliminate AIDS in a medium-sized African nation.
Editor's Note: This challenge to Reformed churches is included in a report to representatives in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) by its president, Clifton Kirkpatrick. It references the 2004 WARC meeting in Accra, Ghana, at which Kirkpatrick was elected president.
The Book of Proverbs in the King James Version has a wonderful phrase, "Where there is not vision, the people perish." The most important thing we will do at this meeting is set a vision, purpose, and priorities for the Alliance and begin to shape our life around them. What we need to recapture the hearts of our churches is a compelling vision, purpose, and program so that the message of Accra can renew our churches and through them our world.
The core callings that we are proposing for your consideration for WARC are:
· To covenant for justice in the economy and the earth.
· To search for spiritual renewal and renewal of Reformed worship.
· To foster communion within the Reformed family and unity within the church ecumenical.
· To interpret and re-interpret the Reformed tradition and theology for contemporary witness.
· To foster mission in unity, mission renewal and mission empowerment.
· To build churches that are truly inclusive of all the people of God.
· To enable Reformed churches to witness for justice and peace.
... We believe these core callings are not only the basis on which we should organize the Alliance but also are the core callings that should be at the heart of every Reformed Church so that WARC becomes a corporate expression of our shared values and our common movement to transform the world to the purposes of God.
by Barbara R. Rossing. Basic Books, 2004. ISBN 0-8133-4314-3. Pb, 222 pp. $15.00
When the Left Behind series (by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins) began to come out in 1995, many of us wondered "Who would read such stuff?" Now after twelve volumes and a thirteenth, The Rising, which serves as a prequel, we know the answer. A lot more people read them than we would have guessed--enough to keep the books on the best-seller list year after year. They include a sizable percentage of every congregation I know of. The disturbing thing is that while those reading the books know they are fiction, many are nevertheless convinced that what they present is indeed the "biblical view" of God's plan and purpose for the world. We who read Scripture quite differently cannot allow such an assumption to go unchallenged. The use of the Bible and the underlying theology found in the Left Behind series is in many ways antithetical to what many of us are convinced is a more faithful reading of Scripture.
In The Rapture Exposed, Barbara Rossing offers a clear, engaging, and theologically insightful critique of the use of Scripture in the Left Behind series and the dispensationalist theology that lies behind the story line. Rossing, who teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, has written extensively on the Revelation to John and Christian eschatology. She skillfully exposes the theological fiction on which the whole concept of the Rapture is based, the ethic of despair and escapism it fosters, and the extreme political agenda espoused by its main proponents.
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