Summer Reading Thus Far

it's been a great summer of reading so far, here's what i've been up to:

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer: The vampire/teenie sensation. i'm not above reading these pop novels and i really enjoyed it. i wondered why i was able to read it in 3 days and that's because i didn't have to think about what i was reading the whole time ;-)! which was a nice change. i think it's an excellent methaphor for teenage sexual tension and abstience. you can definately feel the Mormon influence in subtle ways, but i enjoyed the recasting of what vampires are and esp. the concept of "good" vampires.

Socrates Cafe by Christopher Phillips: dude quits job so he can hang out at coffee shops and ask questions. sounds like my dream job! i'll post more on this book later because there's some questions i want to cover here... this book is a great read for the beginnning or expert philosopher even though, at times, it is poorly worded... like i should talk, i'm the poster-child for that ;-)

A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren: Is really a wonderful book. it mirrors closely to what i believe.. it's about an evangelical pastor who is thinking of quiting the ministry meeting with his daughter's high school science teacher who used to be a pastor as well. the pastor is introduced to post-modern thought by the science teacher and the conversations are full of wonderful stuff. this book is giving me a new perspective, not only on what i believe, but also on what others believe. my evangelical and more conservative/traditional brothers and sisters concerns are presented in a way i can understand. like why have the bible be inerrant and infallable? this book helps me understand that and how best to talk about theology without getting defensive.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold Kushner: in preparation for my CPE program this fall (CPE= hopital program to see where your buttons are and to come face to face with tragedy) i figured i best read this classic on why we suffer. i really enjoyed this book and learned a great new insight on the Genesis story of creation:

from pages 72-73: God is represented as saying, "Let us make Man in our image." Why the plural? Who is this "use," the "our" of which God speaks? My suggestion for understanding this sentence is to see it as connected to the sentence immediately before it, in which God creates animals... Let us fashion a creature who will be like you in some ways--needing to eat, sleep, mate-- and will be like me in other ways, rising above the animal level. You animals will contribute his physical dimension and i will breathe a soul into him.

i love this understanding because it's more biblical and literal. no apologetic nonsense of God talking to the heavenly hosts. this is closer to a biological understanding of creation, right inline with what we're finding out through Evolution. i LOVE it.

Reel Spirituality, Theology and Film in Dialogue by Robert Johnston: for my Theology and Film class which i'll post on later as well. talks about how movies are now the new means of conveying and portraying our sacred stories. i agree with this.. we've gone from sitting around the flickering fire to sitting looking at the flickering screen. there's even a whole ritual that goes along with going to the movies.. popcorn and soda is the new communion, the previews are like the call to worship, and then the main event. could movies be the new church?

i'm looking at two movies, Defiance (starring Daniel Craig) and Fight Club (starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt) for my final paper. i hope to post the movies we covered in class as well, Gran Torino, Atonement, Maria Full of Grace, Doubt and Cold Mountain. look forward to those!

coming up on my reading list: Selections from Kirkegaard, The Dangerous Act of Worship, and Domination and the Arts of Resistance. stay tuned and hope your summer is going well!

Summer Update

Hey there fellow bloggers! I know you're waiting for the next installment of Reformation:the sitcom but i'm having some trouble with the 3rd ep. and also wanted to clue you in on what i've been up to this summer.

i just finished up the Leadership NOW academy where i worked as an adult mentor. Leadership NOW creates safe space for young people to explore question of meaning and vocation. Space for struggling, thinking, exploring, learning and seeking deep faith.it is an awesome experience! check out their new website it never fails to inspire me and keep me working to become a pastor.

this week i'm taking a class at the summer academy called "Theology and Film." we cover various theological points raised by some movies.. yesterday we watched Gran Torino and talked about how it's a classically christian movie. i'll post more on this on thursday.

Eve had a great time with her grandparents as they were here to help us out when i was at the academy. i didn't get to spend too much time with them, which stinks, but Eve did and that was awesome! Eve is doing great and growing like a weed! she's so freak'n cool!

An Entertaining Theology

I absolutely LOVE Barry Taylor's "Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy." I love it so much that I'm thinking of just submitting this book when it comes to putting in my ordination papers... but i don't think that will fly with my future committee.

here are some great quotes that Barry uses to introduce his chapters that I will use to speak about this wonderful book:

"...At the very cry from the cross: the cry which confesses that God was forsaken by God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods... they will not find another god who has himself been in revolt... They will find only one religion which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist." -G.K. Chesterson: Orthodoxy

Taylor talks about a re-encoding of the message. Taking artistic license, risking and endeavoring to take new routes with stories that have so long been closed to new meanings. No longer can the theological connection point for Christianity be "You are a sinner who will die in your sins unless you repent. You must be born again." Taylor asks "Is it really the only connection with God through the Jesus story? I think not, though I think it is A connection to Christianity and has been the dominant mode of connection in the church post-Reformation." (page 198).

This approach means no pre-packaged dogmas, doctrines, or resting on old answers. Nor is it throwing out all the dogmas, doctrines or old answers. It is a wide net that Taylor is casting... or actually, asking others to cast. It is a multi-disciplinary approach to life that seeks to encapsulate and make room for people "at the foot of the cross... even atheists." It is keeping Christus Victor right alongside all the other forms of atonement and inventing new ones or not having atonement at all! All of these are possibilities depending on context.

"Poetry will reach a superior dignity, it will become in the end what it was in the beginning---- the teacher of humanity." Friedrich Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology

Taylor constantly uses pop culture to talk about his spiritual outlook. He is quite wise to point out the difference between the movies Stigmata and the Exorcist. He then uses movies and art and poetry to classify 4 movements and expressions of spirituality in the world: 1. Zen Culture 2. The Next Enlightenment 3. Retrolution and 4. Resistant Communities. here are some brief descriptions:

Zen Culture: a "westernized Asian Thought" is being seen through the growing popularity of Anime, ancient wisdom, and use of imagery in movies. Think THE MATRIX here, where it is a blend of Christianity, Gnostic, and Mystic western thought mixed with Tao, Buddhist, Zen, and Kung-Fu eastern notions. Much like the music that's produced by Washington D.C.'s own Thievery Corporation:



Next Enlightenment: Rational Mystics Taylor terms them. Books like The Celestine Prophecy and the Golden Compass are about finding ways to connect to the divine and trusting one's self to do that without the traditional support structures of formalized religion. This approach is all about the WHOLE PROCESS of things and emphasizes community, relationality, and level playing field... there is a "serious concern for their inner lives with a strong penchant for social activism, including a commitment to a sustainable future." but Taylor notes that it's equally important to see their dislikes and those are "social inequality, intolerance, and the Religious Right." U2 would be the biggest band in the strain, but then you get Springsteen, Saves the Day, and the Flobots here as well. Here's one of my fave songs by Switchfoot:



Retrolution: Postmodern Gothic, a blend of ancient and modern.. like what we find in The Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, and Donnie Darko. These stories "explore the old and a little under the surface deal with the new; past literary forms and present concerns exist side by side." The is also an element of mystery and shock value and no guarantee for happy endings. Think spirituality ala Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. can't count the amount of social and religious imagery found in my fave Manson video (not to mention the cheerleader like chant within it, i LOVE this song!):




Resistant Communities: the religious right, street preachers, and the like. Jerry Falwell style, that is directly engaged and obsessed with "the other". This community has a desire which is commoditized and the motivating factor is fear. The Left Behind Series would be an example here. Of course my bias is showing here... not Taylors.. because i'm rather sick of these communities and i deal with them all the time. they want to rest of "old answers" yet ignore that the answers they're coming up with are new permutations of old things... there is many positive aspects to these communities, it's not all bad.. and there's even some good music coming out of it... well it's been awhile, but here's what I remember being "cool" when i listened to "Christian Music":



I highly recommend this book! I'm all about it! I feel that it perfectly articulates many of the crazy thoughts zooming around in my head. I hope you'll check it out!

The Times They Are A Change'n

I've spoken at times about postmodernism and how i fancy myself as part of this group. I'm reading a book right now that is really touching on some great themes and lays out our current context quite nicely. The book is Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy by Barry Taylor.



Taylor is concerned with three interwoven ideas: (1) the implosion of modernity and the rise of the postmodern/postsecular, (2) the spiritual condition of popular culture that signifies a return to God, and (3) a vision for Christianity in this current milieu and for the future.

We have largely been living in a world where Christianity hasn't wielded the power it once did, churches are in decline, more and more people are biblically and theologically illiterate, and the rise of "Secularism" have been cried about by many-a theologian (both conservative and liberal). Taylor, on the other hand, sees this as a good thing! it's like the chinese saying "With great challenge comes great opportunity."

Taylor sees that the western culture has largely taken the modernist pill, thinking everything can be rationalized and explained. Max Weber wrote about the "disenchantment of the world" saying that magic and mystery had been driven from the world by the dominance of bueraucracy. These are "Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart, this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved."

however, with the popularity of Harry Potter, Fight Club, The Celestine Prophecy, The Sixth Sense, Donnie Darko, and (my fav.) THE MATRIX shows that these have become the primary means of continuing the study of one's spiritual interested in the age of the democratization of the spirit. The Church has been left behind and the culture is fashioning its own form of spirituality and God-talk that Christianity must take seriously.

Rather than being cool, Christianity must be relevant, something i've been scream'n for a while on this blog. The main ways in which it can be so will be through an identity shift, a new typology for missional theology, and a new encoding of the Christian message, all of are in desperate need of imagination. The instillation of creativity from the pew and a higher rate of participation and congregational input.

Taylor writes, “The shift in times demands a new reiteration of the message, one that is a pertinent and timely iteration of the timeless Christ story for our cultural context.” Thankfully this iteration can come from both inside and outside the church as he asserts that “theology is no longer a specialized field to be left to those deemed qualified.” There is much encouragement for artists and lovers of art to get involved.


I'm totally into this book. Esp. how the new religious permutations "will lead to the emergence and advance of post-Newtonian chaotic-observer aware science." He also cites this Radiohead video as a metaphor for the reenchantment of the West, and i think this dude is right on!



LET'S GET CREATIVE AND CRAZY! LET'S GET RE-ENCHANTED WITH THE WORLD! WOOT!

Truth and Fact?

a recent discussion as well as some coincidental readings (some of which come from Barry Taylor's Entertainment Theology) have caused me to think about the nature and relationship of "truth" and "fact." many would argue that these and synonyms meaning the same thing. i don't think they are.

in his work Social and Cultural Dynamics, Pitirim A. Sorokin (founder of Dept. of Sociology at Harvard) developed a complex theory of cultural change that have important implications for this discussion. Sorokin is Russian and his life was largely marked by upheaval brought about by the communist revolution. the traditional "folk" truth was uprooted by the "objective, cold-reasoning of the state."

He states that there is a marked difference between how truth is dealt with between west and east. Russia has both verisons in conflict. there is the cultural conflict of the Sensate and the Ideational.

The Sensate mode is one in which material values dominate. Its focus is on mattters of efficiency and bureacracy. The Ideational is the opposite. Rather than being predominantly sensorially focused, it is more artistically inclined, understanding reality as super sensory. The Greek civilization, for instance, would fall into the ideational mode, given its focus on beauty, transcendent truth, and philosophy. the Roman Empire would by contrast be squarely Sensate, given it's commitment to dominance and its gift of organization and construction.

so in Roman language, descriptions would be based in the "hard facts" because engineers need exact figures to build aqueducts and forts and such. Greek language, there is more metaphor, allegory, and a tendency to exagreate to drive points home.

take a Western, Sensate mode of describe'n a BBQ: "i had a big party, 15 people showed up, there were 5 cars in my 3 car-capacity driveway, we cooked 3 full chickens and emptied 4 quarts of mashed potatoes, and it took 45 minutes to do the dishes which normally takes 15.” this is a western “Just the Facts Please” way of telling the story.

now consider an Eastern, Ideational way of conveying the same event: “i had HUGE party.. there had to have been 100 people there, cars were lined up and down the block, we ate a whole flock of chickens and ate enough mash potatoes that Idaho is now having to replant, and i used every dish in the house which took like 3 days to clean!” this way is loose with the “facts” but i’d argue you’d remember this story longer.

so we have the western "factual" model which would best be summed up by Thomas Aquinas' quote "Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus ("Truth is the equation [or adequation] of thing and intellect").

then we have the eastern "metaphoric" model, best articulated by Michael Lynch in a series of articles and in his 2009 book Truth as One and Many argues that we should see truth as a functional property capable of being multiply manifested in distinct properties like correspondence or coherence. truth then is culturally understood to convey "another meaning than the facts or story presented."

another way to put it is through my advertising background. as a marketer, i studied demographics and found that it's a fact that the American Family is white, has 3.6 members, 2.4 pets, lives in the suburbs, has 2.4 vehicles, and has an median income of 50 to $75,000." (information from Hey Whipple Squeeze This) these are the facts but it doesn't hold the truth of the American family and one wouldn't be able to find this factual family no matter how long you searched for it.

so what i'm saying is that the modernist notions of reality are coming to an end. the east is meeting west and "Poetry will reach a superior dignity, it will become in the end what it was in the beginning-- the teacher of humanity." -Friedrich Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology.