Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

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the other end of the spectrum are those who claim to follow Jesus, yet dismiss the Bible as a slapdash amalgamation of outdated and naive writings that have little direct relevance to our lives today.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

The cycle Christians must help break

by in Christian Spirituality

Hi, guys. UC founder John Shore here.

Recently, on the Unfundamentalist Christians Facebook page, we linked to a piece I published on my blog last November called “I’m Christian, Gay, and Too Angry to Read the Bible Anymore”, wherein I advised a Christian lesbian who found herself no longer comfortable reading the Bible:
I don’t know if the homophobia and faith issues are related to each other [she wrote], but I know that I can’t read my Bible. I try sometimes, but I feel my stomach tighten and my heart heart rate increase, and I feel like a trapped animal. … I don’t know how to separate out what is God and what is my religion. And even within my religion, I don’t know how to save what is good, and let go of the stuff that is harmful. I love Jesus, but some days I’d like nothing better than to turn my back on Christianity.
Part of my answer to this good woman was:
If you’re angry with God, be angry with God. I think it’s safe to say that s/he will understand. If you are angry with God, think how angry God must be with the people who made you feel that way. … If you don’t feel safe reading the Bible, put your Bible away. I imagine you’ve had enough of the Bible in your life to last you awhile.
Back on the UC Facebook page, a commenter wrote about that post:
Bullshit. If you can’t read the Bible because you are so angry, then you are not a Christian. … If you can’t separate God from the lowbrows who are attacking you in this world, then you are not a… [Read more…] about The cycle Christians must help break

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

To Gay-Affirming Christians Who Dismiss the "Third Way"

by in LGBT

The so-called “third way” is really very helpful. It has a lot of merit.

There. I said it. You can commence my crucifixtion now.

For those who are unfamiliar with the so-called “third way,” here’s a brief explanation. As far as I can tell,[1] the “third way” is a term popularized by Ken Wilson who is the Senior Pastor at the evangelical Vineyard Church in Ann Arbor, MI. In his book A Letter to My Congregation,[2] Pastor Wilson describes his own journey to acceptance of people who are gay. Using the apostle Paul’s example of dealing with the meat-eating controversy in Romans 14-15, the good pastor advocates allowing the sinfulness of homosexuality to be a “disputable matter” in the church (i.e., a matter on which faithful Christians can disagree). By taking this approach, the Vineyard congregation has decided to accept into full membership and leadership Christians who are in (or are pursuing) gay relationships.

Several months after Wilson’s book was published, a controversy arose when Pastor Danny Cortez wrote a letter to the estimable blogger John Shore detailing how he, too, has had a change of heart about the sinfulness of gay relationships, and how the Southern Baptist church he leads has now decided to become a “third way church” and “accept the LGBT community even though they may be in a relationship.”

Unsurprisingly, Al Mohler, the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, had a conniption fit. His position is: When it comes to… [Read more…] about To Gay-Affirming Christians Who Dismiss the "Third Way"

The moment when, I, a moderate Christian, was a misunderstood Muslim

by Kristin Reed Klade in Islam

From the outside, it looked like any old interfaith dinner. Religiously moderate people of various faith traditions smiling and getting to know each other, a picturesque panel of four faith leaders smiling on a stage, ready with speeches about unity and love–the works.

That night turned out to be a bit different for me, though. This time I was experiencing it as part of the minority.

As a Lutheran seminary student from Chicago, I was attending a conference of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), learning about how emerging Jewish and Christian leaders could work to become allies with American Muslims in their fight for equality, and against hate and Islamophobia.

I got a little nervous when I read in the program that a pastor from a large evangelical church in Fort Worth (my beloved hometown) was going to address the crowd. Being from North Texas, I am well aware of typical megachurch theology, with its emphasis on evangelism and conversion. So I was unsure about how the pastor was going to come across to a room of mostly Muslims. I was certainly willing to give him a chance, though. Maybe he’s different, I thought.

He started off by recognizing the Christian obligation to love and protect our Muslim neighbors, and furthermore to be in relationship with them, to know them on a deeper level. But as he went on I began to grow uncomfortable. He spoke about the importance of being “real” with each other in interfaith dialogue. He praised his Muslim friend for being… [Read more…] about The moment when, I, a moderate Christian, was a misunderstood Muslim

Cutting Through the (You Know What) on the LGBT Issue

by Chuck Queen in LGBT

Until the church can come to a place of full inclusion (acceptance and affirmation) of our LGBT sisters and brothers, the church will continue to fail miserably at fulfilling Jesus’ mandate to love God and neighbor and being the body of Christ in the world. I honestly admit my personal daily failure to fulfill this mandate and to incarnate the love of Christ; I would never point to my own life as an example of what loving my neighbor as myself should look like. However, I also would not appeal to scripture to justify my failure to love, as opponents of full inclusion routinely do.

All the wrangling we do over a handful of biblical texts that condemn some form of same-sex behavior is necessary and we will continue to discuss and debate what the biblical writers’ intentions may have been; it’s what biblical interpreters do. But in terms of our practical discipleship to Jesus who made everything turn on our human capacity to love, all our exegetical endeavors to figure out what the authors/faith communities intended in these texts are largely irrelevant. With regard to our daily discipleship to Christ and in view of God’s judgment (which I believe restorative and redemptive, not punitive or retributive) all that matters is how well we love.

And anything short of full inclusion is a failure to love.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the handful of texts known as the “clobber passages” (Lev. 18:22/20:13; 1 Cor. 6:9; Rom. 1:26-27, and 1 Tim. 1:10),… [Read more…] about Cutting Through the (You Know What) on the LGBT Issue

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

Some Classic Lessons from a Film Classic

by Chuck Queen in Fundamentalism, Movie Reviews

The Shawshank Redemption came out 20 years ago today and remains at the top of my all-time great movies list. It is punctuated with great lines and saturated with rich spiritual symbolism.

The warden, Samuel Norton, functions as an icon of toxic Christianity. The warden presents himself as a socially respectable, church-going, Bible-quoting Christian. It becomes clear, however, from the moment he appears in the story that his Christianity is in name only. His faith has holes in it larger than the one Andy Dufresne chiseled through his cell wall.

When Andy and the other new prisoners are first introduced to the warden and prison life, the warden’s self-righteousness dominates the scene. When one of the prisoners asks, “When do we eat?” the warden has him beaten. Holding out a Bible he says, “Trust in the Lord, but your ass is mine.”

Contrast the scene above with the one in Luke 4 where Jesus, in the synagogue at Nazareth, applies Isaiah 61 to his mission:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
In one scene, the warden enters Andy’s cell and lays hold of his Bible. Andy and the warden engage in Bible ping pong quoting Scripture. The warden does not open the Bible, which is a good thing since hidden inside is the rock hammer Andy uses to tunnel through his… [Read more…] about Some Classic Lessons from a Film Classic

"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

Be Who You Are and Help the Church Be the Church

by Chuck Queen in Christian Issues, LGBT

Vickie Beeching, the widely acclaimed Christian songwriter and performer who recently came out as gay, is a superb example of how LGBT Christians can help the church be the church. The path forward, however, will not be without setbacks, obstacles, and many twists and turns.

Brian McLaren recently attended a forum on global human rights for LGBT persons where he recommended finding ways to help religious leaders move incrementally along a spectrum with four spaces:
Zone 1: Promote violence against and stigmatization of gay people in the name of God and religion.

Zone 2: Oppose violence but uphold stigmatization of gay people in the name of God and religion.

Zone 3: Oppose violence and seek to reduce stigmatization of gay people in the name of God and religion.

Zone4: Oppose violence and replace stigmatization with equality in the name of God and religion.
Blogger Fred Clark (Slacktivist) has noted that these zones do not reflect “a good, better, best spectrum” but “a spectrum that runs from monstrous to awful to slightly less than awful to adequate.” He summarizes the stages as:
1. Violent exclusion
2. Exclusion
3. Semi-reluctant exclusion
4. Inclusion
Inclusion is the only “adequate” position for the church that wants to model the inclusive love and compassion of her Lord. There is much, however, that impedes movement toward inclusion.

For example, three professors of biblical counseling in Southern Baptist seminaries recently gave advice to families… [Read more…] about Be Who You Are and Help the Church Be the Church