As part of the Patheos Book Club on Brennan Manning’s new book, All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir, I interviewed Jay Bakker on Skype. Jay considers Brennan one of his inspirations, and it shows in the interview:
Jay Bakker Thought that God Hated Him
August 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Jay is one of my favorite persons in the world. He was on the Joy Behar show this week, guest-hosted by Don Lemmon. Here’s a clip (in which Don disconcertingly looks into the camera a few times):
On Being a (Not Quite Good Enough) GLBT Ally
July 15, 2011 By 23 Comments
In the last week, a couple of writers have taken to the interwebs to proclaim that my support of GLBT persons is, well, sub-par. At Religion Dispatches, Elizabeth Drescher takes offense to the closing salvo in my post, “Homoerotic Churches,” in which I imply that some evangelicals’ taste for the man-on-man grappling in mixed martial arts may mask their own longings. Drescher writes,
Jones has apparently missed the homoeroticism of the quarterback snap in football and the rampant ass-slapping across all sports, gender notwithstanding. In any case, the gays-are-rubber-Mark-Driscoll-is-glue approach to confronting Driscoll’s thug-like homophobia is hardly the same as a clear condemnation. And, I might add, while I personally find MMA, boxing, and wrestling in all its forms distasteful, I’m sure there’s little pastoral grace for either LBGTQ or straight kids who do enjoy these sports in highlighting them as ironically effeminate—even for the sake of pointing out that Mark Driscoll is a jerk. Even the Apostle Paul, disciplinarian of the Early Church, attempted to model the practice of admonishment for bad behavior without resorting to shaming. Just sayin’…
There have been several comments along those same lines regarding my original post. Was it a cheap shot for me to write, “we preach most fervently against the very sin that we are struggling with“? Maybe. But there were also many commenters who agreed with that sentiment.
While I believe that there’s ample evidence to make a claim like that, it was not meant to be universal. Someone who preaches against a sin is not necessarily under the sway of that very sin. Nor, of course, do I consider it an insult to imply that some conservative evangelical leaders may be harboring various sexual predilections. In fact, I, like Dan Savage, would encourage them to honestly confront those.
The Wild Goose Festival: The Talks
June 28, 2011 By 16 Comments
This is another in a series of reports on Wild Goose, which happened last weekend.
In general, I thought that the quality of talks at the Goose was incredibly high. Like, as high as the old Emergent/YS Conventions and Christianity21, which to this point have been the events of our tribe that have had the best quality and quantity of talks and discussions.
I was a speaker host, so I spent much of Friday and Saturday running around, introducing speakers, and hearing bits and pieces of talks. I missed some that I really wanted to hear. But I caught some that I hadn’t expected to. Here’s what I saw and heard in talks: [Read more...]
The Wild Goose Festival: Gratitudes
June 27, 2011 By 4 Comments
This week, I’m going to be posting on different aspects of the Wild Goose Festival, which was, from my perpective, an overwhelmingly successful gathering. Truly, I cannot imagine that it could have gone much better than it did, and I’m proud to have been a volunteer at the first Goose.
I’ve got lots to say, so I’ll address different aspects of the festival, like the music, the talks, sexuality, and even some of my friendly suggestions to make the festival better next year.
But to begin, I want to post my thanksgivings:
Eat Your Heart Out, Jay Bakker — Minneapolis Is Hipper
May 16, 2011 By 5 Comments
Minneapolis is the hippest place in America, outpacing Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NYC. So says Buzzfeed: The Most Hipster State In The US: Pics, Videos, Links, News.
HT: Connie Waters
What Jim Wallis Might Be Missing
May 10, 2011 By 62 Comments
So, it seems that Jim Wallis* has gotten into a bit of a kerfuffle for rejecting a magazine ad from Believe Out Loud, a pan-denominational campaign to increase the number of congregations that are welcoming** to LGBT folks. The best rundown of the controversy with all the important links can be found at Religion Dispatches.
As RD posted and others have made clear, Wallis has avoided addressing LGBT issues for years. And that’s because Wallis knows, as he states in his apologia, that LGBT issues in the church constitute a “wedge issue.”
But more to the point, affirmation of gays in any way in the church in America these days is a shibboleth, as I have written previously. That is, if you affirm that homosexual persons who are in any way sexually active can have a role of leadership in the church or should be afforded to right to marry and awarded all of the privileges accorded thereto, then you are, de facto, kicked out of evangelicalism. Suddenly, 60% of the Christian market in America is, for all intents and purposes, closed to you. No more fundraising therein, and no more book sales thereto.
Jim Wallis knows this. Jay Bakker and I and other straight allies of GLBT persons know this first-hand. Rich Cizik knows this. And any number of other Christian leaders on the scene today have watched the examples of those of us who publicly ally ourselves with GLBT issues in the church, and it has scared them off from publicly stating what they privately believe, which is that gays should be included in the church.
To those who pastor churches, I understand your hesitation to speak publicly in affirmation of gay ordination and gay marriage. You have congregations to pastor, and you may feel that your commitment to the unity of the flock trumps your personal convictions on a particular and controversial matter. But to Jim Wallis, I have this to say:
Help Me Defeat Peter Rollins and Jay Bakker
April 27, 2011 By 2 Comments
Countdown to the Wild Goose Festival
I’m going to the Wild Goose Festival. I’m excited about. Yeah, yeah, the talks will be good, and so will the music. There will be great art, experiences of spirituality, and discussions about biblical justice. But this week, I’m most interested in defeating Jay Bakker and Peter Rollins. Each of us has been given a discount code, and the one of us that has the most registrants using our code will get Gareth Higgins’s goose, seen in the photo below.
So, register this week, and use the code tjones; you’ll save ten bucks, and you’ll help me defeat the powers of darkness.
Register for the Wild Goose Festival
[Read more...]
The Resurrection Is REAL
April 25, 2011 By 10 Comments
Peter Rollins and Tony Jones (photo by Courtney Perry)
That’s what Peter Rollins and I talked about last night at Revolution NYC, Jay Bakker’s church in Brooklyn. In fact, Pete, Jay, and I had a rolling conversation about the meaning of crucifixion and resurrection throughout the weekend that we spent together, debating the differences between saying,
The resurrection really happened
and
The resurrection is real.
It was a fascinating dialogue, and it culminated with our time together at Revolution. You can listen to the sermon below:
Help Us Name the Album
April 25, 2011 By 20 Comments
Peter Rollins, Jay Bakker and I spent the weekend at Pete’s studio in Connecticut cutting an album. Then we went to Brooklyn, where Courtney Perry shot the album cover. There’s a bit of a contest on Facebook where people are trying to name our album:
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