The Little Friar

Susan Strouse's The INTRAfaith Conversation:  How Do Christians Talk among Ourselves about INTERfaith Matters is an important little book that explores the importance of intra faith conversations as a path to deeper and more meaningful inter faith conversations.  Strouse writes from her personal experience as a Lutheran pastor introducing interfaith to her own congregation, sharing the stories she has collected along the way, supplemented with a depth and breadth of remarkable research. Hans Kung famously remarked that until religions make peace, the world will be at war; and that religions would not make peace until they were in dialogue.  Less well known was his conclusion:  Until religions make peace within their own traditions, they will have a very difficult time making peace with other religions.  In this context, the importance of intrafaith dialogue comes to the fore. Strouse offers a guide for how we might be more intentional about explo...

I've admired Wesleyans for a long, long time. Part of my research over the years has been traditional Wesleyan theology.  In seminary, I wrote several papers on John Wesley as a practical theologian:  Spiritual direction as a Wesleyan means of grace, Wesleyan worship as a blend of tradition and innovation, Wesleyan theology as practical divinity, and a master's thesis on Wesley's own practice of the Prayer Book as an evangelical Anglicanism (that rooted parish life in the liturgy which was the only pattern for congregational renewal). So the past few days have grieved my heart. The final day of the special General Conference of The United Methodist Church has come and gone.  Twelve hours ago, the "Traditional Plan (as modified)" passed.  Yes, it's been referred to the Judicial Council for an evaluation of its constitutionality.  What's not clear, then, is what comes next. I suspect that the two disassociation plans will become the practical avenues...

"Can't we all just get along?" That's a question someone asked me today in reference to the conclusion of The United Methodist Special General Conference on Human Sexuality.  Just mere minutes after the close of the Conference and the decision to adopt the "traditional" plan (in its modified version) as the binding decision of the General Conference. I responded that I'm pretty sure everyone at that Conference thought they were being nice. The traditionalists think they're being nice in rescuing the homosexuals from the fires of hell.  (Westboro Baptists do, too, and they were there protesting outside the Conference.)  Progressives think they're being nice in opening up the church to a new vision of following Jesus Christ who is leading them into a future that looks strangely like the larger culture in which the Church finds itself.  And centrists are being nice in trying to make sure everyone can still fit under the same tent together. ...

This tempest in the teapot has been brewing for over twenty years.  Yet it's a tempest that I observe somewhat outside the teapot, since I am an associate member to our local United Methodist congregation, and not a baptized member.  So what follows are my reactions to the kerfuffle as a somewhat-detached observer who happens to love real people in that congregation. First, some general context.  The United Methodist Church's Special General Conference on Human Sexuality has gathered in St Louis.  The denomination has come to an impasse and they're trying to carve a new path forward.  And, because The UMC is a global denomination, they're doing so through parliamentary procedures and democratic voting.  As it stands currently, The UMC believes the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, self-avowed practicing homosexuals are prohibited from becoming ordained clergy, and clergy are prohibited from presiding over same-sex u...

Criticizing informal worship (what most folks call contemporary worship that's a lot less contemporary than they think) is pretty old hat.  It's such an easy target -- and has been since I was a seminary student in the late 90s.  There's so much one can complain about:  The lack of good theology, the ever-increasing prominence of "me, myself and I", and the combination of complex musical arrangements with simplistic melody lines, or complicated melody lines with predictable arrangements, depending which side of the bed we emerge from that particular morning. But I now think that's the wrong approach.  Oh, I still think there's something dreadfully wrong about "contemporary" worship lyrics.  But I think that's only part of the problem.  There's a bigger problem, and it's not the music's fault. To analyze this problem, let's go back in time, say, 60 years.  In so many churches, you had people singing from hymn books, ac...

I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.  Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36.25-28). I was struck tonight by the phrase from all your idols I will cleanse you . To hear so many Christians talk, our hearts need cleansed from sin, not idolatry. But Ezekiel seems to say that idolatry, not sin, is the deeper issue for the human heart.  What we need to be cleansed of are false allegiances.  We need to purify our hearts from idolatry. Sin, in this view, is more a symptom than a disease.  When the heart is set on...

Hamlet called it the "undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns".  Others refer to it as "meeting your Maker" -- something, curiously, the Church has even exploited for its own fearful ends.  I've spent my adult life surrounded by it. Death. And where most of us either joke about it -- did you hear the one about the guy who was dying that called his local politician and lawyer in just so he could die like Jesus? -- or obsess over it, I still pray to be delivered "from dying suddenly or unprepared" (in the words of the Great Litany).  I believe in Jesus and his resurrection from the dead, so it's rather difficult for me to slip into the cultural attitude of practical atheism.  Where "eternal life" is morphed into nothing more than "unending life".  We live in a culture of youth and beauty, with the chemicals and the cosmetic surgery to keep us artificially young and beautiful (actually, more like grotes...

I'm not a big fan of interpretations of Luke that water down its radicalism.  I was saved because one boring night, I read Luke and took verses like these.  Here, finally, I met a Jesus whom I had never met in sermons or Sunday schools, a Jesus I could no longer ignore.  Fortunately I was unaware of the widespread homiletical tradition of qualifying and explaining away passages that threaten the suburban social status quo , so I was left with the alternatives Jesus meant his audiences to face:  Take it or leave it.  Either take me seriously, or go away.  Either enter the kingdom, or don't.  Just don't waste my time. What texts am I talking about? Well, for starters, Luke 14.26:  " If any one comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even himself, he cannot be my disciple".  Recently, I heard a preacher insist that "hate" here (Greek, miseo ) is really just "lesser...

In a letter to his friend Eberhard Bethge (included in Letters and Papers from Prison ) Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked why he is instinctively drawn more to religionless people than to the religious -- an affinity he feels in his language, in the naming of God before these two groups of people.  He doesn't, in the letter, answer his own question, but rather describes the differences:  When he is among the religionless the name of God emerges easily in his speech, but among the religious the name tastes plastic, feels forced, and induces in him a sense of dishonesty.  What Bonhoeffer described is something I feel everyday. I wish I knew exactly why Bonhoeffer thought the difference existed between the two.  Maybe then I'd have a better sense of why it is I feel that difference so deeply in my own soul.  But as it is, the difference I sense runs something like this ... The secular world is not, in fact, my family -- not in the most intimate sense.  Nevertheless,...

Deep is that river, and it silent flows, full is that flower, and passionate its song, which, when sung over time, lasts all life long, though it never fully captures what each lover knows. That joy is never lived wholly alone. That love is grace and pain, admixed in sacramental ways. Even as bread and wine become some much more than their parts. In you, my dear, I have become known, and in you love has grown this whole life long. A poem for Kendra, 9 February, 2019

As we come to February, my mind wanders again to the prayer of Tobit found in Tobit 8 : God of our ancestors, you are worthy of praise. May your name be honored forever and ever by all your creatures in heaven and on earth. You created Adam and gave him his wife Eve to be his helper and support. They became the parents of the whole human race. You said, "It is not good for man to live alone. I will make a suitable helper for him." Lord, I have chosen Sarah because it is right, not because I lusted for her. Please be merciful to us and grant that we may grow old together. Then they both said Amen! and went to bed for the night. It follows the marriage ceremony between Tobit and Sarah.  And it's one of the most beautiful prayers for couples. Sadly, though, precisely because it's in the Apocrypha, so few folks are familiar with the story or with the prayer.

I know, I know.  I've heard some say it's old fashioned.  I know that there are some priests who don't do it, but I still do. I wear the collar ... and I wear a lot of black.  I could order some of those "designer" clergy stripes that fit more snugly and are colored with pin strips or eye-catching fabric textures.  But, I don't.  I have, in the past, sometimes been more modern and worn blue, grey,or even white -- I'm told those make me more "Father Approachable".  But I don't wear them often enough to make them regular fare.  (In fact, I don't currently own any other colors besides black.)  I still wear the traditional black shirt and collar.  I don't, however, wear a sportscoat or suit very often, not unless it's Christmas or Easter or the I'm preaching without other vestments.  It's not unheard of that I'd wear a sweater over the shirt in cold weather. Still if I'm on the job, you'll likely see me in a black ...

Stephen Burnhope's Atonement and the New Perspective:  The God of Israel, Covenant, and the Cross is an excellent example of the difference historical context makes to biblical studies and then, further, to theological dogmatics.  What sort of doctrine of atonement, Burnhope asks, might emerge from a reading of the New Testament that presupposes a fundamental continuity between Jewish and Christian thought rather than a sharp disjunction between Law and grace?  What would a reformed Reformed dogmatics look like?  Burnhope takes on the shortcomings of dogmatics reading categories back into the text, and instead advocates for a reformed dogmatics that takes the Bible from within its own historical context seriously.  Chapter 2 offers one best surveys of recent "new perspectives" on the relation of early Christianity to first-century Judaism that I've ever read.  Burnhope reviews the old Lutheran perspective on Paul, the intensification of the denig...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born 113 years ago -- February 4, 1906 -- in Poland.  His brief life (he was executed April 9, 1945 in Germany) has had a dramatic impact on my own life. It was Dietrich, after all, who took a promising, budding theologian and made a Christian.  As a young student, I discovered Dietrich's Cost of Discipleship almost by accident.  I had a tradition of reading a book a day from the college library.  My goal had been to read my way through the 220s (back when universities still used the Dewey System!), and Cost of Discipleship had been misplaced on the shelf.  I grabbed it, checked it out, and read it voraciously in one sitting. And God grabbed me. Since that time, Dietrich has been one of my most consistent conversation friends.  If there's a question I have about this or that thing in the world, I apply Dietrich's logic.  Doubtless classmates at school grew tired of that logic.  "What does confessing 'Jesus is Lord' ...

My first encounter with the horror of the Shoah, the "holocaust", of European Jews came in the face of Mira Kimmelman.  Kimmelman spoke to our high school sophomore English class about her experiences at Auschwitz in 1944 and Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945.  A story later recounted in her autobiography , it was a story that brought me to the real questions of the Shoah:  The so-called 614th commandment is true -- "Jews are forbidden to give Hitler posthumous victories".  What are Christians, then, to say about the Shoah itself and about German evils during the Holocaust?  It would be easy, I'm sure, to trivialize those evils.  I've seen and heard far too many do just that in the years since first hearing Kimmelman's story.  But the question that hit me in 1989 is the question that remains with me today:  Is it possible to comprehend the horror and then pray?  That's a question that was honed for me when I first read Arthur Cohen's...

If you've been paying attention the last two weeks, an ongoing controversy erupted Saturday, January 19, and is still unfolding in one of the many seemingly endless iterations such controversies generate today through social media, op-eds, and the like.  Last week, in Alan Jacobs' newsletter, he wrote this: On Tuesday morning, January 22, I read a David Brooks column about a confrontation that happened on the National Mall during the March for Life.  Until I read that column I had heard nothing about this incident because I do not have a Facebook account, have deleted my Twitter account, don't watch TV news, and read the news about once a week. If all goes well, I won't hear anything more about the story.  I recommend this set of practices to you all. This put me in mind of a resolution I had back in 2000, based upon reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and the phenomenon of the "low information action ratio" (LIAR phenomenon). ...

Edward Welch's Small Book for the Anxious Heart is the ideal spiritual guide for those who with fear, worry or anxiety.  Welch (a licensed Christian psychologist who has written extensively on depression, fear and addictions) has given us 50 devotionals to help meditate and apply God's Word as spiritual tools in your battle towards peace.  The devotionals are insightful and are both practical and biblical in nature. Perhaps the most useful part of the book are the "Response" questions, that come at the end of the devotionals.  They help you to process the information you glean from each day so that you can apply it to your life.  If you really want to apply the material, treat yourself to a journal and work through the devotional in this way! This book is small enough to take with you wherever you go so that you can read and refer to it anytime that you need it! ______________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange...

Häftling *:  I have learnt that I am Häftling .  My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die. The operation was slightly painful and extraordinarily rapid:  they placed us all in a row, and one by one, according to the alphabetical order of our names, we filed past a skilful official, armed with a sort of pointed tool with a very short needle It seems that this is the real, true initiation: only by 'showing one's number' can one get bread and soup.  Several days passed, and not a few cuffs and punches, before we became used to showing our number promptly enough not to disorder the daily operation of food distribution ... -- Primo Levi, If This is a Man (Abacus edition, 1987), pp. 33-34. ______________________ * German for "prisoner".