The Little Friar

Mujerista Theology offers a comprehensive introduction to Hispanic woman's liberation theology written from the heart and convictions of experience.  Continually drawing on her Cuban roots, Isasi Diaz focuses on the life journey and struggles of Hispanic women as she develops a theology to support and empower their daily struggles for meaning.  With her own life journey always firmly connected to the grassroots experience of Hispanic women and to the struggle for liberation, Isasi-Diaz is a major spokesperson for the continuing need for liberation theology today.   With all that's in the news these days about Central American migrants seeking asylum in the US -- and fear-mongering that accompanies that news -- this is a must-read!

Comstock clearly announces his bias in the title, Gay Theology without Apology .  Comstock has absolutely no doubt about the destructive nature of homophobia, the catch-all phrase in current parlance to mean those who are opposed for whatever reason to homosexuality (I would like to see a different word developed -- the phobia part implies more than it should be implying in many cases of my experience, and leaves little room for a reasonable difference of opinion). Comstock's emphasis is on the well-being of the community and a reinterpretation of those parts of the community which do harm.  Comstock's definition of sin "is the violation of mutuality and reciprocity, typically in the form of dominance and submission" -- i.e., he sees the power-disparity between a man and woman as far more potentially sinful than a same-sex relationship would have.  Comstock freely reinterprets scripture, saying "the Bible is not a coherent rule book with a consistent, reliabl...

John Milbank's  Theology and Social Theory:  Beyond Secular Reason begins with the observation that "once there was no secular" and from there goes on to provide a sweeping account of the modernist construction of the secular and the ways in which modern theology has surrendered itself to the secular, conforming to secular standards of scientific "objectivity" and giving up any pretense to speak comprehensively. Milbank's account of the emergence of the secular positions modernist secularism in relation to Christian theology as a kind counter-theology or as a heretical offshoot of Christian theology. The secular worldview, he suggests, emerged from two sources: one "heretical" and one "pagan".  Both of these perspectives share an underlying commitment to the idea that reality is constituted by ontological conflict or chaos.  The difference between these perspectives is how they react to the inevitability of conflict. The "heretica...

John Howard Yoder's The Royal Priesthood:  Essays Ecclesiastical and Ecumenical  is perhaps one of his more difficult collections of essays.  But it's impossible to divorce Yoder's anabaptist theology from an ecumenical spirit.  Yoder here presents a strong argument of what the church of God should look like, act like, and think like.  He thoroughly demonstrates the absurdity of the Constantinian view and later Reformed view of church and state, owing much of his insight to the Anabaptists who maintained that one's citizenship is in Heaven and not of earth, nor within its governments.  Historically, he proves that when the church is independent and separate from the world's affairs, its witness is increased a hundredfold.

Letty Russell's The Church in the Round:  Feminist Interpretation of the Church  was one of the required readings back when I took my field ed as a seminary student.  In it, Russell presents a single central image for her theology of church:  The table.  She draws on the biblical images of the eschatological banquet table, of Jesus dining with tax collectors and sinners, and of the last supper.  This image of the church as a table, particularly as a round table, calls the church to be a place of equality, hospitality, and justice. That makes The Church in the Round  one of my favorite books on ecclesiology. Russell draws on three specific table concepts to ground her work:  A round table, a kitchen table, and a welcoming table.  Perhaps central to these is the image of the round table.  For Russell, the round table "is a sign of the coming unity of humanity" (p. 17).  It is a precursor to the eschatological banquet w...

Who will convince those in this position that they differ not a whit from those in shows on the stage? ...Those however who strut on the stage of life because of their imperial office take into account neither what is shortly before or shortly after, and in just the same way that bubbles expand as they are blown up, these people are roundly inflated by the loud proclamation of the herald; they plaster over themselves the shape of some other personality, switching the natural features of the face into something unsmiling and daunting, and they contrive a harsher voice, one made to resemble an animal in order to terrify the hearers. They stay no longer within the bounds of human nature, but assume divine power and authority. They believe they have sovereignty over life and death because to some of those who are judged by them they give the sentence of acquittal, while others they condemn to death. And they do not even consider who is truly the Sovereign of human life and determines b...

Gerhard Lohfink is one of those theologians more often neglected in the church than not.  His magisterial Jesus and Community is one of the best biblical statements about the nature of Jesus' own life in communion with all sorts of "others".  And Does God Need the Church?  Toward a Theology of the People of God shows how God's work throughout the world and throughout history has always involved bringing in and expanding the notion of "God's people" far beyond the exclusivity of certain segments of the faithful these days. A good start to this book would be to read the postscript, "The Church and I," in which the author presents his own life in three phases: 1934-64, from childhood until the end of his time as a parish priest, years he views as under challenged; from 1964- 86, his twenty years as a university professor, times of critique and criticism of the institutional church; and 1986 until the present, time spent in the Katholische Int...

F riends of God and the Prophets:  A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints , by Elizabeth Johnson, reinvests one of the most important categories of theology -- "the communion of the saints" -- with a fresh memory and hope using deep spiritual wisdom and intellectual daring.  Known more for her landmark study She Who Is , Johnson helps us hear this God who lives in the lives of female friends of God and prophets.  "Their lives bespeak an unfinished agenda that is now in our hands; their memory is a challenge to action; their companionship points the way." Johnson admonishes believers to take on the intergenerational challenge of bringing justice and compassion to fruition in our world.  Spirit-Sophia would have us do no less. The saints really don't play that kind of role in the lives of the faithful these days.  But with them, there's a reason to hope, so long as we remember this God who does not leave us to our own selfish indivi...

Torture and Eucharist by William Cavanaugh is one of those important works that will probably be overlooked by pastors, but this account of the horrific torture and oppression of the Pinochet regime in Chile is gripping and emotional in the spirit of Elie Wiesel's Night .  Cavanaugh is focused on the Catholic Church's ecclesiology and self-perception which in the early years of the regime, was unable to respond as he believes it should have, but which later became the lone dissenting voice to this brutal military regime. The book begins with a exploration of torture as a means of social control.  Arguing that one should attempt to link the idea of torture with the idea of governance in the case of the Pinochet regime, Cavanaugh describes the practice of "disappearance" which became the hallmark of oppression in Chile.  Disappearance became the euphemistic parlance for those who had been abducted for torture.  The disappearances were sometimes simply r...

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy." My brothers and sisters, sweet is the thought of mercy, but even more so is mercy itself. It is what all men hope for, but unfortunately, not what all men deserve. For while all men wish to receive it, only a few are willing to give it. How can a man ask for himself what he refuses to give to another? If he expects to receive any mercy in heaven, he should give mercy on earth. Do we all desire to receive mercy? Let us make mercy our patroness now, and she will free us in the world to come. Yes, there is mercy in heaven, but the road to it is paved by our merciful acts on earth. As Scripture says: "Lord, your mercy is in heaven." There is, therefore, an earthly as well as heavenly mercy, that is to say, a human and a divine mercy. Human mercy has compassion on the miseries of the poor. Divine mercy grants forgiveness of sins. Whatever human mercy bestows her on earth, divine mercy will return ...

Try as I might, it's nearly impossible for me to believe that a young man in his 20s could write something like Sanctorum Communio ( the full text of the book is online here ).  I first read Bonhoeffer's dissertation as an undergrad, and I feel that I will never think of church in quite the same way again.  In fact, I feel like I've been given a view of a mountain that I know I must go back and climb again, but the overall sensation of its height is so startling that I'm not quite sure how to begin.  (Maybe, in a weird way, a kind of awed despair is the mark of all truly great books?)  They say that Barth's commentary on Romans fell on the playground of the liberal theologians like an atom bomb.  Well, Sanctorum Communio fell upon the theological playground of a young Liberal theologian like myself, and had much the same effect. Originally published in 1930, three years after it initially appeared as Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation ...

Back in college, I had to the idea to read the entirety of the Church Fathers as part of my inquiry into Christian faith.  At the time, I spotted a Penguin classic of Augustine's City of God  that was reasonably priced, so it was one of the first investments I made in the Church Fathers.  I didn't look at the page count -- it's a massive work, at well over 1000 pages of small print, and required the perseverance of a saint to get through. The way Augustine structured the work is very interesting. It actually consists of 22 "books", each of which contain around 20-30 "chapters". These chapters are quite often only a couple of pages long, and each chapter has a full sentence for its title, summarizing the main point made in the chapter. This is very helpful and it breaks working through a book of this size into manageable chunks. If Augustine was alive today, I am sure he would blog each chapter, and tweet his chapter headings. The first major part of ...

All Souls' Day isn't exactly the feast day of the Church Year that most protestants celebrate.  In fact, at its heart, the day seems to smack of all the things the Protestant Reformation detested liturgically:  Needlessly multiplying ecclesial calendrical celebrations outside what's in the Bible.  If it's not out-right ancestor worship. So, for starters, a little context. The Feast of All Saints' on November 1st and of All Souls' on November 2nd are some of the most theologically pregnant days of the Church Year, just below Easter in my estimation.  On this feast, the deaths we have grieved in the prior year are officially promoted, so to speak, into the list of names that make up our own personal litany of the saints.  It is a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere, to remember Christ's resurrection and tell the good stories of the race faithfully run and resting from labors in God, hidden, in Christ, until he comes again in final victory, and we ...

I have a confession to make: I love talking to dead people. I'm fairly well certain part of this is because I celebrated a birthday yesterday -- on All Hallows' Eve.  There's a humility in celebrating a birthday on that day. This is why today is one of the most spiritual days in the Church's calendar to me. Just beneath the Easter Triduum -- Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday -- sits the "November triduum" of All Hallows' Eve, All Saints', All Souls'. I love talking to dead people. Some years ago, as part of my ordination process, I was asked to pick three important spiritual writers who shaped me. I responded: "Julian of Norwich, Augustine and Dietrich Bonhoeffer". "Can't you pick someone living?", the interviewer asked. "I went to Duke Divinity. They are still living", I said. He looked at me oddly but carried on. I love talking to dead people. Which explains why I'm fascinated to visit ce...

A friend of mine asked me today:  "What is your choice of denominational affiliation and why did you choose it?" Here's my response: I became an Episcopalian in college. Initially, I was drawn to the church for its sacra-mentality -- the complete immersion in an experience of God’s grace that was life-long and thoroughly incarnational. When I began exploring whether to be confirmed in the church, I interviewed the bishop a number of times. One of his most significant comments to me was, "We are a catholic church in love with freedom".  It's hard to pin down our sprawling Anglican identity to a few words, but the bishop's concise phrase comes close. Yes, we are deeply grounded in things ancient and universal, but we also have a propensity to explore fresh expressions and new perspectives, with no overriding authority to tell us no. When my seminary dean handed me my diploma, he did not warn me never to rock the boat as a priest of the chur...

Darla Weaver's Gathering of Sisters:  A Year with My Old Order Mennonite Family is at once heart-warming and challenging. It's a poignant peek into the daily life of Mennonite from one who would return, again and again, to that weekly gathering of "sisters".  On warm days, the children play and fish and build houses of hay in the barn.  In the winter, everyone stays close to the woodstove, with puzzles and games and crocheting.  No matter the weather, the Tuesday get-togethers of this Old Order Mennonite family keep them grounded and centered in their love for God and for each other, even when raising an occasional loving but knowing eyebrow at each other. The rest of the week is full of laundry, and errands, and work that never ends. But Tuesday is about being sisters, daughters, and mothers. Hear straight from Amish and Mennonite people themselves as they write about their daily lives and deeply rooted faith in the Plainspoken series from Herald Pre...

Ryan Kuja's From the Inside Out:  Reimagining Mission, Recreating the World is a passionately critical exploration of much of the accepted wisdom about Christian mission. It's a powerful criticism that shouldn't be overlooked. First, Kuja does a masterful job of providing a concise analysis of colonialistic missions.  In the first three chapters, Kuja explores how history and theology have intertwined to create problematic missional endeavors.  While it is not groundbreaking or new, it's a highly readable and compact survey which should be helpful to readers who are beginning to ask questions about evangelism and missions. Secondly, I found Kuja's exploration of psychology and mission particularly important.  Kuja admits to being a broken person, and he wants readers to recognize their own brokenness.  Part of the issue with the way we do missions, the author contends, is that we in the West use it as a way of correcting issues within our own e...

Andrew Lawler's The Secret Token:  Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke is an exquisitely depressing to read.  It's depressing to see that -- after all this time -- the tensions between popular and academic history remain so abrasive and dismissive.  Conspiracy historians abound and tend to dismiss academic ones.  Academic ones merely roll their eyes at genuine amateur historians (who perform their craft out of the sheer love of history!).  Here, a historian that should be able to bring these groups together merely reduces himself to an argument ad populum , even as he utilizes the work of academic historians.  And all within the pages of a major New York publishing house's massive production! Lawler came to his interest in Roanoke the same way so many in the outer reaches of historiography come to their obsessive interests:  Childhood.   Lawler grew up in the area and attended the annual performance of the p...

Order of the Sacred Earth:  An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action is a clarion call:   We must preserve the planet's vital beauty and resources.  To convey love for and commitment to our planet and all life upon it, the book was organized by spiritual theologian and activist Matthew Fox, wilderness and meditation guide Skylar Wilson, and writer and publicist Jennifer Berit Listug.  The anthology serves as the titular Order's group treatise, with its unified vow of "I promise to be the best lover and defender of Mother Earth that I can be". Citing how many religions, governments, and social theories have become more divisive than unifying, Order of the Sacred Earth proposes a return to the collective consciousness that we are of one human race and part of a majestic world.  Turning away from the earth and its natural cycles will only harm humanity, it says, and conservation should not just be regarded as a prudent ecological movement b...

David N Moore's Making America Great Again: Making America Great Again: Fairy Tale? Horror Story? Dream Come True? -- A Challenge to the Christian Community is a powerful conversation starter, in a cultural climate where conversations are a dying art. Here, readers will find a compelling prophetic voice from within and to the Christian community,  to better understand the plight of poor, disadvantaged and frustrated Americans. Moore's personal reflections are poignant!  This is a must read for those that truly want to better understand the forces that divide our society.  All too often, we institute changes without understanding the underlying problems.  Rev. Moore offers better understanding of social dynamics that should be a catalyst for Christ-inspired change. I have to admit that I started the book with a little trepidation.  I was expecting a book that would echo so much of an already overwhelmed echo-chamber of one or another variety in Am...