I have wanted this essay to be more readily available than it is, so am reposting Benjamin’s theses here. The story of why we even have them is rather remarkable, they were given to Hannah Arendt just days before Benjamin attempted to flee across the Swiss Alps in order to avoid interment by the Nazis, then died tragically at the border, suitcases of his writings left behind and recovered by by Georges Battailes, who realizes a copy of the manuscript... Read more
In most cases, the church is wasting precious time and capital attempting to redevelop dying institutions. This applies at every level, from the redevelopment work in local congregations, all the way up to denominations attempting to re-define themselves. If an institution is in decline, it’s in decline. It’s going to die, and no amount of study and work on “future directions” or “LIFTing” the church is going to do a shred of good. In fact, trying to reverse things is... Read more
Perhaps as a Gen Xer I am too influenced by the twisted rise and flourishing of the “Christian Right” in the 80s. During my most formative years, guys like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson had a prominent voice, heading up loud and organized communities carrying significant cultural clout, and voting as a bloc. By the time I got to college, and was in the process of disentangling myself from the morass of Christian conservatism and its creepy interest in moral... Read more
Faith communities frequently and inadvertently make life together more difficult for some kinds of people than others. Lately I’ve started to wonder if this is particularly true for introverts. Introverts are not against being in groups. Many introverts do this well. But to do it, they have to put their game face on. Where they really derive energy is elsewhere, certainly not among, or especially in front of, a large group of acquaintances. Church for introverts doesn’t mean solitary religious... Read more
Here’s why. Only Gen Xers are jaded enough to look at what is going on with the massive burn-out of the Boomers and the weirdness/Noneness of the Millenials–not to mention the absolute morbidity of the Gen Yers–and yet remain able, with their unique blend of creativity and irony, and their ability to sustain and reinvent, to create and be the future. Gen Xers are our future. This is just about right. When you look at our roads and infrastructure, our/my... Read more
Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age By Bruce Rogers-Vaughn. Palgrave Macmillan, 256 pp. “We live in a utopia: it just isn’t ours,” writes China Miéville, one of the great imaginative critics of contemporary capitalism. Neoliberal economics is working wonderfully for the wealthiest 1%. As Oxfam reports, 82% of all the world’s wealth went to the richest 1% in 2017. But it simply isn’t for the majority of people. Theologian and psychotherapist Bruce Rogers-Vaughn agrees. He wonders why (according to... Read more
I wonder if the reconciliation paradigm for race relations in the United States is a faulty approach and plays into many of the white racist biases of our culture. Because the experience of various races in the United States is incommensurable, a paradigm based on parallelism of experience simply perpetuates the power dynamics intrinsic to racism as embodied in contemporary North American culture. A couple of recent books have especially convinced me of this. The first was James Cone’s The... Read more
Sometimes all I really want to do as a pastor is tell people how much I love Jesus. But because people have heard folks exclaim their love for Jesus quite often, it may be less than clear what I mean. So, this Sunday in worship, I plan to use the sermon to simply share why I unabashedly love Jesus. We’re going to be working from Matthew 11, one of the more enigmatic passages in the gospels. So allow me, if... Read more
He just appears at the river ready for baptism. Not solitary or lonely. Rather, a true individual, in headline role, top billing, a dramatis personæ that will then include, underneath, John the Baptist, the disciples, and a wide cast of characters (even the Father and the Holy Spirit). “The voice of one crying in the wilderness.” The Jordan River flows south out of the Sea of Galilee, cuts through a deep valley in Israel, and ends in the Dead Sea.... Read more
Yesterday I was chatting with a parishioner during a hospital visit and, wanting to shift focus for a time from health to something outside the walls of the institution, he asked, “What’s on your mind lately for social justice advocacy?” I told him I was having trouble focusing. I had made a list of my key advocacy priorities, and the list was so long (immigrants, health care, Citizens United, criminal justice reform, safety net, etc) I didn’t know where to... Read more
Clint Schnekloth
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