Category: faith

Thomas Nelson to produce eco-friendly Bibles

From the Reformergent:

As the first move by a major publisher of Bibles, Thomas Nelson, Inc. has decided to no longer mass produce synthetic bounded Bibles, but switch to a more eco-friendly alternative. Thomas Nelson also were the publishers behind McLaren’s Everything Must Change, which specifically points out that the book is printed on eco-friendly material. I have to say, good job Thomas Nelson for making the switch. So now as Americans we can start buying up the eco-friendly Bibles to add to our Bible shelf, and send away all of our synthetic ones to areas of the world where they can start polluting their environment with materials that don’t decompose.

Homebrew Christianity (episode 2)

Thought this was super interesting…

The discussion around the table turns to looking at how some various doctrines are becoming more and more attracted to emergent thoughts and ideas (approx 14:30 min into the podcast).

“In the last year I’ve had meetings with three different kinds of Presbyterians who have all said… ‘that’s really Presbyterianism. It’s really good to hear this.’ And the Methodists say, ‘that’s totally Methodist theology that you’re talking about.’ The Episcopalians say, ‘that’s Anglicanism this emergent thing…’ With the Mennonites, ‘that’s what Mennonites say.'” … “I got a call from a Greek Orthodox church who said ‘I’m coming through Minneapolis and I’ve read the Emergent Manifesto of hope and I feel like I’ve found a long last brother. Can we get together?’ There’s something about this thing that all these traditions are saying, ‘That’s us in our best days!'”

Forging another way

Not sure who said this, but I thought it was a great point brought up in the 1st episode of The Homebrewed Christianity Podcast (around 36 min in):

“The church has been deeply resistant to accept it’s own failures…”

“The people who have had privilege, in this culture particularly, are whining miserably because they’re losing. And part of what you’re teaching is that the old system is that if you disagree with me over these major doctrines than it’s not just that we disagree, there’s a flaw in your character and I can’t talk to you because you will corrupt me if I spend anytime with you. The ability to say there’s another way of talking about this. We must forge another way…”

From the show description:

This is the first of two episodes taken from a conversation between Bill Leonard, Doug Pagitt, Tim Conder, Zach Roberts, and myself. I mostly just listened in to Bill Leonard, the Dean of Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity and professor of church history, have a fascinating conversation with Doug Pagitt and Tim Conder about the Emergent movement and American religion.

UPDATE: And for those of you who aren’t iTunes fan – you can listen to the file here.

Homebrewed Christianity

My buddy Chad Crawford has started a new blog and podcast on the world wide interweb.

home brewed Christianity

“Home brewed Christianity is Christianity that’s made at home. It’s good and it’s delicious. It can be a little dark sometimes, it can be a little bitter sometimes. But that’s what we look for in our Christianity. This is not corporate Christianity. This is stuff that we make ourselves that we enjoy.”

Christianity and beer. Some might not like the combination, but I think it’s great.

I’m listening to their original/test podcast – sounds like they’re using blogtalkradio.com or something similar and one of the guys is breathing a little heavy into the phone – but I’m looking forward to seeing what Chad and his friend Tripp talk about.

Visit the podcast page on iTunes or visit Chad’s new blog, Chad talks to strangers.

Jesus for President

So last Thursday night, before going to the Dallas Arts Museum with Laurie, we stopped by the bookstore and I took the opportunity to grab “Jesus for President” off the bookshelf. I’m loving it. Seems I’m picking it up any time I have more than 5 minutes of downtime. I’m about halfway through it and it’s challenging me. Challenging my thoughts about Rome, America, empires in general and what it means to be “Holy and set apart” and it even stretches my idea of allegiance and communal living.

The book is written by Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw. Both whom I know very little about. The book is also artfully illustrated throughout by Holly and Ryan Sharp. Love it. Funny thing – my mom was skimming through the book last Friday before we went to lunch together and she thought I had already marked the entire book up. I almost told her yes – but its part of the illustrations in the book to emphasis various ideas, quotes and points. Makes reading it a lot more fun.

The book starts off with a familiar story:

You grew up in a good family; hardworking dad and a mom who was there when you needed her. They taught you and your little brother to share and showed you how to pray every night before bed. In Sunday school you learned about Jesus and sang all the songs with the rest of the kids. There was Noah and his ark, Moses and the Ten Commandments, and a little baby Jesus asleep on the hay. You learned about the blessing that was America and were grateful to live in a country led by good Christian leaders. With a hand over your heart or above your brow you pledged allegiance to God and Country, for the Lord was at work in this holy nation. But lately you are beginning to wonder if this is really how God intended things to be. And you question if God is really working through places of power. Maybe, you wonder, God had a totally different idea in mind…

Claiborne doesn’t pull any punches from the beginning:

…we’re hardly able to distinguish between what’s American and what’s Christian… Rather than placing our hope in a transnational church that embodies God’s kingdom, we assume America is God’s hope for the world, even when it doesn’t look like Christ.

In Chp 1 he offers a great definition of idolatry:

Idolatry begins when our seeing a reflection of God in something beautiful leads to our thinking that the beautiful image bearer is worthy of worship.

He explores the history of the Jews (and Christianity) and explores God’s desire for the Jews to be totally separate, to be apart, to be different from their neighbors. That’s why God is reluctant to give the Israelites a king. If they have a king, if they build a temple, if they worship idols – there’s nothing different between them and their neighbors. Even after the exile from Egypt, the Israelites begin to get nostalgic and whine about going back to Egypt where they had been beaten and enslaved.

It may take only a few days to get out of the empire, but it takes an entire lifetime to get the empire out of us.

And yet even after the Israelites have their own country, and their own kings, and they run into problem after problem, God could have said, “Nope. You wanted a king instead of me. You dug your hole, now live in it.” He could have said that, but of course, with God… Grace always triumphs over judgment.

And through Israel’s history, Claiborne continues to point to the fact that God choses the weakest, most unlikely characters to be the heroes of the liberation story.

And I love how Claiborne takes the Leviticus law and paints a picture that these are not only things to help the Israelites remain healthy and strong, they are things that completely set them apart from the empires that surround them.

…these laws were intended to create a new culture free of the unhealthy patterns and branding of the empire. If we imagine putting those laws in contemporary terms, we can see the subtle critique of culture implicit in them: “Thou shall not have in they home the electric box with the talking screen,” or, “Thou shalt not wear clothing marked with a swoosh or any other image that requires the blood of sweatshop children.” … Many of the Israelites’ laws were after all, a direct confrontation with those of the world they knew. They were ways of driving a wedge into the wheels of injustice and interrupting cycles of oppression… There were laws for welcoming strangers and illegal immigrants and practices like gleaning, which allowed the poor to take leftovers from the fields.

Sure, we Americans like to think we’re strong and we must defend our borders, but if we’re a “Christian nation” as many like to point out – shouldn’t we be set apart and living differently than those around us. Shouldn’t we be loving the stranger — even the illegal aliens?

And so it was in Chapter 1 ;-).