HOLY FIRE BLOG

A couple years back, theologian Scot McKnight in a CT article described the so-called emerging church as "one of the most controversial and misunderstood movements today." Then he cited writers Aaron Gibbs and Ryan Bolger who define emerging churches as "…communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures."

Even taking into account practices they describe as essential to these communities, one finds little variation from what the church—every church—should be. So where does the emerging come in? Why emerge rather than just be? It all sounds rather uppity and judgmental, like, "We’re the ‘should be’ getting away from the dregs we leave behind."

McKnight also observes lightly, "It is said that emerging Christians… drink like Southern Baptists—meaning, to adapt some words from Mark Twain, they are teetotalers when it is judicious…[but] evangelize and theologize like the Reformed—meaning they rarely evangelize, yet theologize all the time."

And this clue may help unravel the enigma that so-called emerging churches are yet today: they are closer to Mark Twain than McKnight imagines. Indeed, beyond fitting Twain‘s quip, like Twain they cannot escape the tug of the birth canal, the tie to what birthed them squalling, bawling, and bloodied into an upside down world. If they are at all the church, they cannot escape being the church. However emerged they may think themselves to be they are not really.

Let me explain.

First, Twain, too, was an emerging believer in his own ‘gospel’ who never quite made it—to the fully emergent side of his faith, I mean. He remained always tied to what he desperately wanted to run away from.

Further, Twain certainly fits McKnight‘s analogies cited above. On the one hand, while not a Baptist, he drank like one: abstaining when judicious just long enough to win the hand of his beloved Olivia ‘Livy’ Langdon. Twain affirms in a letter, "I shall do no act which…Livy might be pained to hear of—I shall seek the society of the good—I shall be a Christian…" He followed this with another note assuring Livy‘s mother he would "never taste wine or spirits upon any occasion whatsoever; I am orderly, and my conduct is above reproach in a worldly sense; and finally, I now claim that I am a Christian."

A Twain scholar sees in these two letters "a type of spiritual progression; the first indicates a desire to become a Christian, the second contains a declaration of faith…considering the yearning for faith…and his lifelong fascination with biblical themes, it seems likely that this struggle for faith was at least partially genuine."

Even so, the same scholar observes, "this flirtation with orthodoxy was short-lived…shortly after the marriage, some of the piety did disappear, and Twain did begin to slip away from whatever doctrinal orthodoxy he may have attained."

Twain wears the emergent Baptist shoes rather nicely.

On the other hand, Twain writes, "I was brought up a Presbyterian…I was sprinkled in infancy…. It affords none of the emoluments of the Regular Church – simply confers honorable rank upon the recipient and the right to be punished as a Presbyterian hereafter…"

Continue reading "Mark Twain‘s Adam: the Proto-Emergent Un-Emerged" »

Posted by paul at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You’ve heard of magic lanterns, and missional communities have been a hot topic for quite awhile. But what does one have to do with the other?

Not much, unless someone makes a deliberate connection.

Or unless Joe and Melissa Johnson of Watching Theology, found on Steve Brown, Etc., reminds us quite unintentionally that they might have quite a bit in common; and in reminding us, offer a graphic lesson in how to do church for the church that really wants to be Jesus’ church—which is, by the way, a missional community.

However, such lessons were not the intent, as far as I can tell, of Watching Theology in their review of Winter Light, a film by the noted Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007), who made a career of convinving us God was gone—away on business, as Tom Waits sings. The review was just the first thoughtful piece in an ongoing "Silence of God" series that film, theology, and philosophy buffs should check out. Even so, if you make a ripple in the pond you have to accept disturbing a leaf floating by as a consequence. And if that leaf floats a little sideways anyway…

Well, they made the ripple; this leaf has been disturbed and hopes to disturb you, the reader of this post, in turn. Indeed, I hope to disturb you with the connection between magic lanterns and missional communities.

Ingmar Bergman’s film career began with the former because it may have been missing the latter. And I am willing to bet Bergman is not the first nor the last whose career trajectory, indeed whose life path has been shaped—for good or bad—by what was not there at the beginning.

A vacuum attracts debris indiscriminately. Our mission as the church of Jesus is to be there in the place of the vacuum to deflect the debris, when possible, while always filling space-time with what really makes things go…

Continue reading "Of Magic Lanterns and Missional Communities" »

Posted by paul at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As a kid, having been weaned on a literalist Pentecostal hermeneutic applied to the KJV, I used to marvel at how people could remain unbelievers in spite of how literally, clearly, and tangibly biblical prophecy was being fulfilled before our very eyes.

Nahum, for example—Mom used to insist—prophesied the automobile; and now here were millions of them running around: "The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings" (Nahum 2:4). Mom quoted that verse more than one time turning chariots into Chevrolets, torches into headlights, and lightning into beams of light streaming from them; all to charge up a kid’s commitment to Jesus by reminding me that we were "in the end times."

Moses, too, got into the act. There was his warning against women wearing men’s clothing; and now here they are doing it, Grandma used to lament, scowling at women in slacks or jeans. "God foresaw it would come to this—a sign of the end for sure," she preached, quoting Deuteronomy 22:5 straight from the King James: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God."

She would then declare stoutly that we were so far into the end times that she would still be alive for the Rapture—she was near 70 at the time—and would meet "Daddy" (her pet name for Grandpa who had died years before) in the air along with Jesus, and so we would not have to worry about a funeral for her.

And I knew for sure she was right because even if Leave it to Beaver’s Mrs. Clever wore a dress with heels to cook and clean, I knew our neighbor lady wore Levis not just to cook and clean but out in public watering flowers and going to grocery store, for heaven’s sake!

It happened, however, that even before Grandma died and we had a funeral in spite of end time prophecies, there came the time when I noticed a chink in my literalist armor. It was not what the Bible said but what it was silent about that made the dent. Dad rolled his own smokes and was roundly condemned in the literalist circle where we fellowshipped yet I could find nary a word in Scripture prophesying this scourge of tobacco that had come upon the earth. How could God have overlooked an item of such import to the literalists and yet made these other matters so clear?

Thinking thusly, when someone pointed out later that in the Revelation John prophesied the coming of satellites (Revelation 8:13; 14:6-9), I nodded and with a throat-clearing, "Ahem," excused my self from the conversation.

In fact, by the time Sputnik came along I was marveling at literalist prophecy in a different sort of way...

Continue reading "Of Pirates and Prophecy" »

Posted by paul at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Prophets live loud but not long," someone observed, perhaps remembering what Jesus said about people who "build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous."

"You testify against yourselves," Jesus declared acerbically, "that you are the descendents of those who murdered the prophets" (Mathew 23:29-31).

In a day of popularized religion it is hard to get one’s mind around a prophet, let alone a prophet who was "stoned…sawed in two…[or] put to death by the sword" (Hebrews 11:17). It requires even greater mental morphing to grasp that popularized religion did them in.

We mean by "popularized religion," the true faith of God made market-ready for the masses, replacing a call to conversion with an invitation to be comfortable, conviction with compatibility. We mean the religion, for example, of the biblical King Jeroboam (see 1 Kings 12 and13), sold to the people as the easy way to get to God.

"It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem," Jeroboam suggested skillfully, stroking a natural bent for ease. "So here are your gods," he offered, pioneering seeker-friendly religion by replacing Israel’s Jehovah with gods so much closer, convenient, affirming, and inclusive.

He even authenticated these new gods: "These are the gods who brought you up out of Egypt," he assured everyone, thereby laying the dubious cornerstone for all seeker-friendly religion to come (see 1 Kings 12:28).

The point is, people won’t settle for being snookered, no matter the ease and convenience: genuine makes the sale, as every guy selling Rolex watches and Cartier jewelry out of the back seat of his car knows. Perception is performance—people will buy if you can just convince them it is real; that it actually came from China matters not a wit if they can just feel it is real and that they got it for a song.

Who has time to run down pedigrees anyway? Authenticating the thing should be as easy as getting it, wearing it, and sharing it. And what better way is there to authenticate anything than having a popular, super-star hero say, "Yep! This is the real deal!" "So Jeroboam said so, and a great many people believed him. After all; he was the guy who had listened to the people when Judah’s King Rehoboam would not; he was the guy who took the complaints, wants and wishes of the people to heart when Rehoboam had not; so he was the guy near and dear to everyone’s heart, whom everyone loved: "Hail, fellow, well met!" the people shouted in acclaim, as it were; the idiom translates into "We trust you because you are that swell fellow with the great big smile who never met anyone who wasn’t a friend!"

If we can believe anyone, we can…

Continue reading "Prophets, Popularity, and Politics" »

Posted by paul at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Prologue: At the G-20 Summit just concluded, the AP reports "Obama has acknowledged that U.S. regulatory failures contributed to the crisis in the financial system, but urged a focus on solutions, saying ‘we can only meet this challenge together.’" What might this mean? In part that "‘We will begin to crack down on cowboys in global markets,’ said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd."

The George w. Bush team (2001-2009) rightfully landed a second term because we trusted Mr. Bush on the international front with the war on terrorism even if his domestic policies with regard to the finance sector came up way short. Ironically, it turns out that, as his tenure showed, domestic policies with regard to regulating the cowboys on Wall Street are so entwined with international policy that the old capitalist mantra of mere self-interest as pushed to the limit by Bush suddenly appears poor beyond recovery

"Whoopee Ti Yi Yo," the cowboy’s days are numbered—again.

Let me explain

Just days ago the Los Angeles Times profiled "a fourth-generation cowboy working in a region where being a cowboy no longer makes sense," the paper says. The cowboys in San Diego County, California, are riding off into the sunset.

In fact, there remains a mere handful of working cowboys in the entire U.S. Workers in "animal production support roles" number about 9000 all told." These include farm hands, stockyard workers, more than 3200 rodeo workers, and all working cowboys. Do the math—real working cowboys are a rare, disappearing breed.

So too, Kevin Rudd promises, the cowboys on Wall Street just might be parting with lassos, bullwhips, and spurs to take up with green eyeshades, quill pens, and double-entry accounting ledgers. They will be trading rodeo-like rollicking for detailed accountability. It may be that the cowboy economy, first labeled such by economist Kenneth Boulding back in the 1960s (See "Why Santa Took Off the Cowboy Boots," this blog), like cowboys in San Diego, just no longer makes sense.

Not all agree. For example, "Adam Smith must be rolling over in his grave," lamented Lawrence Eagleburger, a noted global free market advocate from the days of the elder George H.W. Bush. Smith is stirring, Eagleburger thinks because we are "walking very far away from capitalism."

Or, at least the sort of capitalism envisioned by Eagleburger.

Yet, Eagleburger’s one time boss, then President George H. W. Bush declared in a speech to Congress on September 11, 1990, exactly 11 years before the infamous 9/11 destruction of New York’s Trade Towers, "The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation…. Out of these troubled times a New World Order can emerge…."

For a short time back then Eagleburger was Secretary of State. But apparently he did not apprentice well under Bush I; his unbridled, unregulated free market vision just doesn’t mesh with "historic…cooperation" of the type meant by Bush.

Eagleburger contends that the "regulators…don’t want freer markets," meaning by regulators specifically France and Germany; further, that in attempting to form some sort of agreement with these "regulators," President Obama "has done us a great deal of damage." By this Eagleburger explains that the President has pushed the U.S. "left of center, in the ditch over there" because "he’s a regulator himself."

Hmm.

It may be that in Eagleburger’s mind, Obama just does not have the gall it takes to maintain U.S. presence in a world of Eagleburger-anointed, Adam Smith-oriented, free-market capitalism; Eagleburger may think that, in fact, Obama is a European-type socialist in disguise intent on leading America into socialism. Eagleburger did refer to Obama as a "charlatan." When asked to define this, Eagleburger could only mention Obama’s fund raising methods, very weak evidence to support such a charge. In fact, Obama’s fund raising seemed very free-market oriented, highly capitalistic.

So there has to be more going on here.

Continue reading "Greed, Gall, God, and Government, Part Two" »

Posted by paul at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Prologue: Obama has sought to distance himself from the Bush-era regulatory policy. He will take to the G20 an array of proposals to bring new oversight to hedge funds and other players and to give the U.S. government greater powers to deal with troubled financial firms deemed "too big to fail."

"Greed is good...?" You’ve heard that, right? Gordon Gekko‘s (Michael Douglas) stated that famously in the 1987 movie Wall Street.

But we’ve also heard it more recently, from a much more credible source. "…we have too much fear and too little greed," former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers explained, assessing the current state of the U.S. economy. Greed seems to be the driving force behind a capitalist economy—we need it to keep it going, says Summers. Apparently, many people agree—that is, until things fall apart and then suddenly it’s politically correct to say, "Greed got us into this!"

"The only real difference between Bernie Madoff and the management of AIG is that when Bernie Madoff got caught, he pleaded guilty. When AIG got caught, it asked the government for $170 billion," the Boston Herald, poignantly stated beneath the headline, "Bailout ensures AIG’s greed, gall".

Who would have thought?

So in fact it took more than greed to get us where we are. Greed just is not enough—if it takes gall, too.

I thought about replacing gall with another word, but it seemed chauvinistic, given that it starts with "b" and has nothing to do with ladies’ lingerie. And if you cannot figure that out, you just don’t need to know.

But speaking of gall, it took a lot of it to get us into the economic mess we are in right now, a la AIG, GM, Chrysler, etc. Now, by gall I do mean big brass b— ah, lots of gall that assumes self-entitlement. No one without a huge reservoir of gall equating with a gigantic ego would ever taken the stupid risks (AIG), or have ignored obvious prudent steps (GM, Chrysler), and thereby put us in the economic mess we—all of us— now own as a nation.

In short it took great big brass ones to put the entire economy of a nation in the hole by putting other people’s money at risk, all to enhance one’s already ostentatious profits; or as in the case of GM, to assume that any corporation is such an icon of the economy, such a cherished institution that one can dawdle about keeping up with the competition because, well, because we’re GM.

"We want to continue the vital role we've played for Americans for the past 100 years," GM CEO Rick Waggoner stated to Congress months back as he held his hand out for a bailout after he had tooled into DC in a $55 million dollar corporate jet. If AIG is too big to fail, we are too vital. We are GM, doggone it!

Of course, the other side of this economic mess is that some people think God set this whole thing in motion as the original capitalist....

Continue reading "Greed, Gall, God, and Government, Part One" »

Posted by paul at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

It‘s true; Santa‘s absconded. He‘s gone. (See, "Why Santa Took Off the Cowboy Boots", previous post, this blog).

Execs at GM and Chrysler realized this sometime around midnight Sunday (March 29,2009) when they expected to hear him shinnying down the chimney with another $22 billion in his sack.

Instead, GM‘s CEO Rick Waggoner‘s walking papers bounced down the chimney like a lump of very hard coal, caromed off the grate, and slid into the stocking Waggoner had left hanging by the chimney with care. Waggoner is now looking for work.

Chrsyler‘s CEO Robert Nardelli seems to have squeaked by with nothing more than a empty stocking (relatively speaking; Chrysler actually got another $6 billion and 30 days to shape up and complete a merger with Italy‘s Fiat or they‘ll be shipping out for sure in a forced bankruptcy. UPDATE: Chrysler reported reaching a deal with Fiat on Monday within hours after Washington issued the ultimatum).

Who would have thought? Just a few months back it seemed Washington was Detroit‘s Santa Claus for sure; but in fact I think we got it right in the previous post: Santa‘s no match for the USA‘s free wheeling cowboy economy.

So with what is left of his reputation in hand, word was he may have run for part‘s unknown. Who wouldn‘t be concerned with getting away before every boy and girl in the world came to think that everyday was Christmas; and that Wiis and X-Boxes now belonged in Cracker Jacks boxes because big fat bank accounts making video games seem like trinkets were the new Christmas goody to be handed out; and these had nothing to do with being good; in fact, the badder you were—with other people‘s money, anyway—the more Christmas cash you could get in January, June, or July, or any other month of the year? But now…?

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus; he is just not spending much time right here right now. Last seen landing in Amsterdam, we can‘t be sure the Dutch let him stay. Worried about ING asking for more money, the Dutch didn‘t want to get too close to the fat jolly fellow until his stained reputation as a front for Wall Street with an office in Washington could be rehabilitated.

Continue reading "Really—why did Santa leave?" »

Posted by paul at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Multiple choice quiz: why did Santa sleigh into Amsterdam this week without cowboy boots anywhere in sight?

Because:

• the boots weren‘t his; they didn‘t fit, and his feet hurt;
• they are an affront to reindeer décor;
• the Dutch have taken a dislike to all things cowboy;
• Santa is just plain tired so he went to work for ING (Internationale Nederlanden Groep) on loan from AIG (American International Group);
• all of the above; or, none of the above.

Clue: headlines that didn’t make it into the Dutch daily newspaper De Volkskrant on Monday, to wit, "Santa Claus Conscience Corrals Cowboy Economy?" The paper did report that "ING Chief Executive Officer Jan Hommen said he had made a ‘moral appeal’ to the top 1,200 employees to return their variable bonuses earned last year."

Shades of AIG! Santa has defected to the EU (European Union) for sure! But folk in Brussels are not polkaing for joy just yet—they are sniffing around for the cowboy boots.

The fallout from U.S. taxpayers‘ outrage over bonuses paid to the AIG execs who led the giant insurer into near-default has reverberated globally and shaken the Dutch Finance Ministry to is core. So the Ministry has made a "moral appeal" for the return of "300 million euros (about 409 million U.S. dollars) in bonuses [paid] to about 40,000 staff members last year." These bonuses were paid AIG style even though ING "posted a net loss of 729 million euros (about 996 million dollars) for 2008 and has planned 7,000 job cuts."

In fact, the Dutch losses seem like chump change, mere "walking around money," less than a billion U.S. dollars compared to AIG‘s hundreds of billions in losses (when you combine losses from credit default swaps with the larger losses from AIG‘s Investments division ).

And maybe this is why Santa defected, sans the cowboy boots.

Let me explain.

Back in 1879 one fellow famously opted for Santa being an essential part of America culture, writing that "Yes, there is a Santa Claus;" he is one ray of that "eternal light with which childhood fills the world." That settled the issue for most Americans until AIG came along. For many Americans AIG extinguished that "eternal light." Now it seems, Santa is trying to defect to the Dutch.

It is just easier for Santa to appeal to the higher sensibilities of the wishful thinking he symbolizes in a culture where a paltry billion dollars seems worth quibbling about. Why go on beating his head against the cowboy culture of Wall Street? The Street had not a qualm about rolling the dice with credit default swaps that placed, not a mere billion, but hundreds of billions of dollars of other people‘s money at risk.

Did I say they lost the roll? They shot craps in a way that no one in the history of Monte Carlo, Las Vegas, or the back alley ever has.

So after more than a century of trying to be hopeful and influence the cowboy culture of Wall Street with peace, joy, and love, even a wishful thinker like Santa is for sure tired. Feet hurt, Santa? You bet!

Continue reading "Why Santa Took Off the Cowboy Boots" »

Posted by paul at 07:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The national uproar over a near quarter billion dollars in bonuses ($220 million total in a couple of installments reported by AP on Wednesday, March 18) paid to executives of failed AIG (American International Group) intensifies daily at this writing. The latest—and perhaps the most succinct—expression of outrage comes from a mid-western Senator who suggests the AIG execs commit hara-kiri, ritual suicide known in Japan as the ultimate apology for failure.

While Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley did not refer directly to hara-kiri, he clearly meant the taking of one’s own life as a matter of honor originating in the era of the Japanese Samurai. In fact, Hideaki Noguchi, vice-president of H.S. Securities in Japan was the last Japanese exec to even come close to traditional hara-kiri. He committed suicide by slitting his wrists missing his belly—the hara-kiri sweet spot—by at least a few inches; and he did the deed on the Isle of Okinawa in a capsule hotel at a Japanese resort missing by about 1000 miles the Tokyo Stock Exchange where the fruits of his failure were mostly felt. That occurred in 2006. More recently, in 2007 a Japanese Minister of Agriculture hung himself in the face of criticism about misused funds. There is no evidence that anyone suffered much from his misdeeds.

So AIG execs—what about it?

Plenty of people have suffered from your misdeeds—unless of course you can show to the public you missed work that day the credit default swaps were handed out?

Oh yeah, and before you grab that sword we should note that Senator Grassley clarified his comments. He doesn’t really think you should do the hara-kiri number. He‘s after an apology sincere enough to make a difference in how we all look at you: pretty much with the evil eye right now.

Should we feel differently?

Continue reading "The Curious Case of the Conscience Gone Missing" »

Posted by paul at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Growing up without a TV in the countryside of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley meant spending many a warm summer evening outside running, playing, exploring, and swimming in the warm muddy waters of the Rio Grande.

It also meant dodging the bats and teasing my sisters about getting bats caught in their hairdos. But a bat caught in a hairdo is more fable than fact. Truth is a bat will eat half its weight in bugs in a single night of darting about doing its best to avoid hairdos!

Factually, they fly, eat bugs, and hang upside down – oh yes, and they poop.

But hanging upside down is what bats do best; and they do so because they can’t stand right side up….

Continue reading "Not on a Blind Bat’s Bet…" »

Posted by paul at 03:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We remember the 1929 Rose Bowl for a Berkeley Bear’s linebacker named Roy Riegels. Riegels ran a Georgia Tech fumble 60 yards to the one yard line – but the wrong one. Running the wrong way, he set up a 2 point safety that gave the game to Georgia.

Football junkies remember him as “Wrong Way Riegels.” But more people mistakenly refer to him as “Wrong Way Corrigan.” Why can't they get a guy's name right?

Does it matter? What’s in a name, anyway?

Well, you do have the case of "Wrong Way Beulah..."

Continue reading "Wrong Way Beulah?" »

Posted by paul at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)