Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

Dan Wilkinson

Faith is the task of a lifetime

by in Book Reviews

I’m a Christian because of Søren Kierkegaard. The 19th-century Danish philosopher didn’t introduce me to Christianity, but he did, at a pivotal time in my life, provide the crucial encouragement that sustained my faith.

During high school I began questioning virtually every aspect of Christianity. To my youthfully inquisitive mind, so much of religious belief seemed to rest on such shaky foundations and so much of what I had been taught about Christianity seemed fraught with irreconcilable difficulties.

In my search for answers I read widely in theology, philosophy and history. But more often than not, the sources that were supposed to provide answers and reassurances only led to more frustration. Works of Christian apologetics proved to be particularly disappointing: they had an answer for everything, but their “answers” usually seemed to be little more than elaborate exercises in obfuscation and self-assurance.

It was in the writings of Kierkegaard that I eventually found a way to move past trite answers and beyond paralyzing doubt. Kierkegaard’s ruminations on truth, faith and reason still resonate me with today:
Without risk, no faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty. If I am able to apprehend God objectively, I do not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith. If I want to keep myself in faith, I must continually see to it that I hold fast the objective uncertainty, see to it that in… [Read more…] about Faith is the task of a lifetime

I'm a racist and you probably are too

by in Current Events

View image | gettyimages.com

Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Jordan Davis, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner.

Names that white America can safely ignore. Names that will be forgotten all too soon.

If you’re a white American, you don’t have to worry about the fact that black teenage boys are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than white kids of the same age. You don’t have to pay attention to the fact that more than 10 percent of black men ages 20-39 will serve time in prison or jail during a given calendar year.

You can ignore those names and statistics as you go about your life. You can retreat to an insular and self-deluded reality defined by the narrative you’re most comfortable with: that “thugs” get what’s coming to them, that blacks are far more likely to commit crimes than whites or that race isn’t a relevant issue in these tragedies.

But, whether or not you or I or any other white American admits it, race is an issue, and through our actions and inactions we all are complicit in perpetuating racism in America. The truth is that I’m a racist and you probably are too.

Whether you realize it or not, you likely harbor positive associations with whiteness. You likely associate whiteness with education, happiness, well-being, safety and honesty.

Whether you realize it or not, you likely harbor negative associations with blackness. You likely associate blackness with crime, poverty, suspicion, danger and ignorance.

This isn’t… [Read more…] about I'm a racist and you probably are too

Chiseling away: Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser's "Splitting an Order"

by in Book Reviews

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it,” says a quote attributed to Michelangelo. Translated for the task of writing poetry, it might say, “Every detail of life contains a poem, it is the task of the poet to discover it.“

This is the work of Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser: to chisel away at the stone of everyday life and discover the poetry already hiding inside. Kooser’s new collection, Splitting an Order (Copper Canyon Press, $23), does just that: Kooser’s careful observations of objects, animals, people and places reveal the beauty that exists everywhere around us.

Kooser’s credentials are imposing, but his poetry is not. His verses are soft, gentle and sometimes melancholy descriptions of the minutiae of life. These poems aren’t merely descriptive, they’re also quiet ruminations on change, longing, and the bittersweet passage of time.

The poem from which the collection draws its title is about a man sharing a roast beef sandwich with his wife: “I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half, / maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread.” But this entire collection of poems also functions as an extended invitation to split an order. Kooser carefully divides up the moments of life and asks us to partake in their restrained beauty.

… Today, on a bench
in a dark garage it’s upside down,
a miniature galvanized tub adrift
on time, and in it two survivors,
a… [Read more…] about Chiseling away: Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser's "Splitting an Order"

Mary Curran Hackett's novel provides "Proof of Angels"

by in Book Reviews

Despite its title, Mary Curran Hacket’s just released book doesn’t offer empirical evidence for the existence of supernatural beings from Heaven. Instead, her novel, Proof of Angels (William Morrow, $14.99), tells a feel-good tale of redemption and personal growth that touches on important social and spiritual issues.

Proof of Angels tells the story of Sean Magee, a Los Angeles firefighter who, after having been forced to jump from the third story of a burning house, must negotiate physical, emotional and spiritual recovery as he works to rebuild the broken pieces of his life. Through his journey of healing and self-discovery, Sean comes to understand that the true angels in life are not supernatural beings — though the novel leaves open that possibility as well — but are the people around him. For Sean, these real-life angels include his brother-in-law, the trainer of his new service dog, and his physical therapist, who all are also seeking to recover from the injuries life has dealt them. This cast of characters, through their love and sacrifices, provide Sean with “proof” of angels.

Proof of Angels is a novel about appreciating the people in our lives, about the importance of friendship and about our need for one another in the midst of hardship. Much of Christianity (and religion as a whole) focuses on supernatural escapism and the distant hope of a future Heaven. While still recognizing the importance of religious spirituality, Proof of… [Read more…] about Mary Curran Hackett's novel provides "Proof of Angels"

Reading the Bible like a cowboy riding an ostrich into the sunset

by in Book Reviews

Christians have an equivocal relationship with the Bible.

Some view the Bible as the absolute, authoritative, inerrant, infallible Word of God, but yet often fail to read it. New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman recounts that the majority of his students believe that the Bible is “the inspired Word of God,” yet far more of them have read the entire Harry Potter series than have read the entire Bible. He concludes that “my students have a much higher reverence for the Bible than knowledge about it.”

At the other end of the spectrum are those who claim to follow Jesus, yet dismiss the Bible as a slapdash amalgamation of outdated and naive writings that have little direct relevance to our lives today. For them, there may be some inspiration to be found in a few of Jesus’ sayings, but modern life is best lived not in light of Scripture, but at a good distance from it.

For many Christians, the best approach to the Bible is to simply avoid it: it’s too confusing, too long and far too messy. It’s been, they feel, the source of too much pain and suffering. It harbors memories of bad sermons and abusive childhoods. It’s been used — and continues to be used — to support the marginalization of countless people based solely on their race, gender or sexuality.

For many Christians, reading the Bible — the very same Bible that has served as the central text of the Christian faith for thousands of years — is a task reserved for fundy wackos or ivory-tower scholars.

The just released… [Read more…] about Reading the Bible like a cowboy riding an ostrich into the sunset

Finding "The Lost Way" of Early Christianity

by in Book Reviews

One of the first assignments in my New Testament class at Wheaton College[1] involved photocopying portions of Matthew, Mark and Luke and then highlighting in various colors the verses that each shared with the others—green for passages that appeared in all three, blue for passages that appeared only in Matthew and Luke, red for passages that appeared only in a single Gospel, and so on.

When completed, the rainbow of highlighting revealed an interesting conundrum: what exactly is the relationship between these texts? Which Gospel came first? Which borrowed from the others? And, most intriguingly, what earlier sources might all of the canonical Gospels be drawing upon?

The most widely accepted answer to this last question—known as the synoptic problem—is the so-called Two-Source Hypothesis, which posits that Mark was written first, and that Matthew and Luke then both used Mark to develop their narratives. The hypothesis further asserts that, in addition to Mark, the later Gospels also drew upon a collection of Jesus’ sayings that scholars refer to as Q.

Q is an entirely hypothetical text, derived from the shared material in Matthew and Luke that is absent from Mark. We don’t have any extant manuscripts of Q, nor do we have any direct references to it in the New Testament or in other early Christian writings. But the preponderance of textual evidence supports its existence, and scholars have devoted enormous effort to reconstructing the text that Q likely… [Read more…] about Finding "The Lost Way" of Early Christianity

Abundant and impossible to fill: "Copia," a book of poems by Erika Meitner

by in Book Reviews

In her new collection of poetry, Copia (BOA Editions Ltd., $16), Erika Meitner writes about urban and suburban life, consumption and excess, desire and disappointment, and perhaps mostly about loss and hope.

Meitner’s poetry traverses the nature of existence in a world that is both decaying and blossoming, in which the seemingly mundane provides passage to truth. For Meitner, relationships, language, faith, buildings, objects and life itself are simultaneously transitory and expansive, diminishing and abundant. Her poems gently explores these tensions, skillfully connecting the past with the present, and the concrete with the spiritual.

Meitner’s poems are deeply grounded in the physical world–for her, everyday objects are sources of revelation:
Objects around us are emitting light, transgressing,
repositories—
tropes, backdrops, ruination, lairs.

from “Litany of Our Radical Engagement with the Material World”
It’s in the flotsam and jetsam of existence that Meitner finds meaning and connection:
And the detritus the July heat let loose:
gnawed Bic pen caps, a glowing Duncan Hines yo-yo

tangled in dead 9-volt connectors and envelopes
whose lips sealed shut from humidity that swelled

the windows into their frames. If you had scrawled
something on the inside of my wrist back then

it might have been a Venn diagram: your contented breath,
six glove-box necessities, the muffled places detritus would take us.

[Read more…] about Abundant and impossible to fill: "Copia," a book of poems by Erika Meitner

"Queers in the Kingdom" shares the stories of LGBT students at Wheaton College

by in LGBT, Movie Reviews

Wheaton College is the flagship institution of evangelical Christian higher education. Consistently ranked as one of the best colleges in the United States, Wheaton prides itself as being “a rigorous academic community that takes seriously the life of the mind.”

But Wheaton also holds the ignominious distinction of being regularly ranked near the top of the list of the most LGBT unfriendly schools — a ranking confirmed by the troubling letter entitled “Being Gay at Wheaton: A Summary of my 9 months out of the closet” that went viral when we published it in February of this year. (See Something needs to change here.)

Wheaton’s antipathy towards homosexuality is embodied in their Community Covenant, which states:
followers of Jesus Christ will … uphold chastity among the unmarried and the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman.
and goes on to say:
Scripture condemns … sexual immorality, such as … homosexual behavior and all other sexual relations outside the bounds of marriage between a man and woman.
Despite these proscriptions, there are LGBT students at Wheaton College, and Markie Hancock’s new documentary film Queers in the Kingdom casts a much needed light on the stories of Wheaton’s LGBT alumni. These men and women courageously bare their souls for the camera, describing their struggles with faith, identity, exclusion, and fear. Their stories are often bleak, but are also full of hope. Each person made it through the challenges… [Read more…] about "Queers in the Kingdom" shares the stories of LGBT students at Wheaton College

Al Mohler Fit the Battle of Jericho and Inerrancy Came Tumblin' Down

by in Fundamentalism

The hallmark of modern Christian fundamentalism is an unwavering adherence to the notion of Biblical inerrancy. In its most extreme forms, belief in the inerrancy of the Bible stifles inquiry, perpetuates ignorance and glorifies dogmatism.

A prime example of the head-in-the-sand attitude that inerrancy engenders can be found in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler’s contribution to Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy (Zondervan).

Contributors to the book were asked to deal with several biblical texts that seemingly stand at odds with inerrancy. One of those texts is Joshua 6, about which the editors write:

We chose Joshua 6, since current archaeological and historiographical evidence calls into question the details of the text’s account … we wanted to see how Joshua 6 could still function as Scripture without being factually correct.

Joshua 6 contains the famous story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho: “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumblin’ down.” The problem this passages poses to inerrancy is summarized by Douglas King and Amy-Jill Levine in The Meaning of The Bible (HarperOne):

Archaeologists have long tested the evidence for the sweeping military campaign portrayed in the book of Joshua, and their results are not encouraging for a Late Bronze Age setting, sometime after Ramesses II during the 13th century BCE. The famed battle of Jericho cannot have happened, as no city and no walls existed at that time.… [Read more…] about Al Mohler Fit the Battle of Jericho and Inerrancy Came Tumblin' Down

Prostitutes, Virgins and Mothers: Questioning Teachings About Biblical Women

by in Book Reviews

In Prostitutes, Virgins and Mothers: Questioning Teachings About Biblical Women (Personhood Press, $16.95), Dr. Paula Trimble-Familetti sets out to do nothing less than overturn six thousand years of patriarchy, misogyny, and marginalization of women within Judaism and Christianity.

Does she succeed? Of course not: no single book can undo what has become so ingrained in our culture and religion. But she does add a powerful voice to the on-going fight for gender equality within the church, providing an accessible, thorough and Christocentric presentation of feminist theology.

Dr. Trimble-Familetti’s book tackles the issue head-on by re-telling, re-contextualizing, and re-interpreting the stories of virtually every woman in the Bible. Her calling to tell these stories is a passionate one:

I am fed up with traditional interpretations of Scripture. I believe there are different ways to interpret the Scriptures, interpretations from the perspective of a twenty-first century woman, a perspective vastly different from that of a first-, second- or any other -century man. I write this book because my God, my Creator, in whose image and likeness I am created, has called me to write it.

Trimble-Familetti crafts first-person narratives that wrestle with the issues and challenges faced by women in the Bible. Though the accounts are necessarily speculative, she nevertheless strives to retain fidelity to the text as we have received it as well as the socio-historical context in… [Read more…] about Prostitutes, Virgins and Mothers: Questioning Teachings About Biblical Women