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Posts from the “Theology” Category

What Theocademy is really about

Posted on March 10th, 2012

Today, at a conference I was preaching and teaching at, I met a couple of folks who mentioned the ideas I was floating this past week about rethinking seminary. One of them said they were mulling over the first call for submissions over at Theocademy. I said that I hoped they would be submitting a video lesson, and the response was interesting: “Absolutely, but when I think about answering the question ‘What is Theology?’ all I can think about is what I read in Shirley Guthrie’s Christian Doctrine. So…” Whether I’m right or not, what I heard in that response was, “I’m happy and excited to participate, but I’m not sure I have anything earth shatteringly new to say.” Let’s be clear: That’s perfectly…

Categories: Education, Theology

Tagged: religion, shirley guthrie, theology, what is theology

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What I don’t want the future of Christianity to look like

Posted on February 23rd, 2012

Sometimes we first need to identify what we do not want in order to articulate what we do. -Christopher Butler, “Future Daydream”, Print, February 2012, 66.1 When you think about the future of the church, what is it that you think of? I know it’s a difficult image to conjure, given that we’re in a time of so much upheaval in the life of faith, but surely you’ve thought about it. Perhaps you can just glimpse some nascent truths you hope flower into something larger. Perhaps you’ve been able to articulate something quite robust in a particular area. However, my guess is that you are like the rest of us and you fall back on a very tried and true notion of many an…

Categories: Church, Leadership, Spirituality, Theology

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A Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan walk into a bar…

Posted on February 17th, 2012

A few years ago, I was fortunate to hear a lecture by New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine. Aside from being brilliant, the unique gift that Levine brings to the world of biblical scholarship is that she is (in her words), a “Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches in a predominantly Protestant divinity school in the buckle of the Bible Belt.” Plus, she’s hilarious. During the lecture I was able to attend, she offered an understanding of the Parable of the Good Samaritan that I had never heard. Her take was that Jesus was playing on a common motif for stories of the day by using the particular characters of ” a priest… levite… Samaritan…” Levine offers that this motif functioned as a hook in the same way that…

Categories: Theology

Tagged: evangelical, fred phelps, fundamentalism, good samaritan, postmodern, westboro baptist church, worldviews

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The Threat of Literalism

Posted on February 15th, 2012

A colleague of mine, Ken Kovacs, reminds us of the dangers of “literalism”: Literalism is the belief, the philosophy, the attitude that truth can only be found in exactness and certainty.  Literalism is an obsession (and it is an obsession) with what is actual, literal, with the “letter of the law,” with the need to nail down (sometimes, literally) what is true and not true and then defending that “truth” at all costs.  It’s a way of being and believing that seeks to maintain a tight “hold” on reality.   It’s a way of being that is suspicious (maybe paranoid) of anything that smacks of analogy or metaphor, of anything that leaves open the possibility of multiple meanings, of plurality, because for the literalist, for example, there…

Categories: Philosophy, Theology

Tagged: literalism

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Two amazing responses to Theology as Art

Posted on February 15th, 2012

This week I have been honored to be the Guest Director of Ecclesio, an online magazine/conversation from my friend Cynthia Holder Rich. Throughout the year, Ecclesio begins a conversation on topic and asks two people to officially respond. My contribution was to ask two stellar theologians to reflect with me on an adaptation of my ebook Theology Is Art. One of the responses comes from Mihee Kim-Kort, who takes the idea of theology as a primarily symbolic art form one amazing step further with “Pneumatological God-Talk: The Poetry of Theology.” From her article: Theology is not meant to be experienced in the ivory white tower or in the stratosphere of religious experience because it is not only about God, it is about God and…

Categories: Theology

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