The Little Friar

One of the more important recent works that explores the relationship of Christianity to politics is C Gavin Rowe's World Upside Down:  Reading Acts in the Greco-Roman Age .   Rowe is associate professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity (Go Devils!) and therefore commands a great deal of my own personal attention when it comes to interpretation issues.  (Though he and I are on different sides of the universalism issue, I have a great deal of respect for his work.) As someone who is concerned with the New Testament's reading of "empire", this book captivates my attention.  That's because his reading is somewhat at odds with the way in which I've learnt to read the New Testament.  According to Rowe, the consensus view among the scholars mitigates against reading the bible as an anti-Empire polemic.  Consensus views in NT scholarship don't end up being consensus views for no reason. There is something in the book of Acts that anti-Empire Christians ne...

Here are my three steps for creating a better world. Step 1:  Cosmopolitanism We need to recognize that, despite our differences, we all seek the same things in life.  We are each citizens of the world.  A global village.  As JFK said, "For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal". Step 2:  Kindness I recently read a quote from the Dali Lama that said, "My religion is kindness".  I love that sentiment. The troubling thing for me is how so few Christians view kindness as being at the heart of their religious practice.  I see this as a serious problem.  I think this is because the Christian moral vision is often too heroic.  Christians say that love -- that big and heroic vision -- is at the heart of their practice.  But as they say this they tip waiters poorly, criticize co-workers too har...

If you ask Roman catholic believers what it is that makes the church distinctive, they will probably begin speaking of the sacramental hierarchy by which the whole church is ordered and held together.  Put the same question to contemporary Protestant theologians, and they will start telling you about 'practices,' those communal behaviors by which the church marks itself out as an alternative social order.  But if you ask a Russian Orthodox believer what makes the church distinctive, she will think at once of holy lives:  when she says the word 'church,' it is not the face of the bishop that comes to mind, nor merely her own face, but the faces of the saints. Why are all the walls of Russian churches so crowded and cluttered with icons of the saints?  It is not because the Orthodox love pictures, but because they love light.  For the icons are not art works, but windows: they are the small openings through which the light of God bursts in upon the gathered ch...

From Thomas Halik 's  essay at Religion and Ethics on two ways of reading the relationship between the Crucifixion and Easter, an argument he makes in his Night of the Confessor : The Easter story can be read in two quite different ways.  Either as a drama in two acts:  in the first act a just and innocent man is sentenced to death and executed, and then, in the second act, is resurrected and accepted by God.  Or as a drama in one act in which both versions of the story take place at the same time. In the first interpretation the "Resurrection" is the happy ending, and the entire story is a typical myth or optimistic fairy tale.  I can hear a story like that and think to myself that that was more or less the way it happened (which people confuse with "faith"), or I can conclude that it didn't happen like that -- or at all (which people confuse with "lack of faith"). Nevertheless it is the second interpretation, the "parallel" one, ...

One of my professors from seminary, Stanley Hauerwas, has assessed American Christianity, and it didn't turn out so well .  He claims we're "too spiritual", that the concerns and life of the Church have become other-worldly and detached from life right here and right now.  The church rarely prays, "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven".  Rather, the prayer is, "May we get to heaven when we die". I witnessed this yet again yesterday.  So, I have to admit:  Stan is onto something here. Take, for example, the word love  in the Church these days.  Has that word been overly spiritualized? I think it has. Christians often say that they "love everyone".  Their faith compels them to extend love to every person on the planet, friend and enemy alike.  But how do Christians understand this call to love?  What does it mean to love people? As best I can tell, it means the following: To love someone is to wish that they go to heaven. ...