{"id":102194,"date":"2023-10-06T16:03:04","date_gmt":"2023-10-06T22:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=102194"},"modified":"2023-10-06T16:03:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T22:03:04","slug":"resident-aliens-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/10\/resident-aliens-2.html","title":{"rendered":"“Resident Aliens”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"BY<\/a>
\u201cEmma Smith\u201d prepares to meet with \u201cBrigham Young\u201d for a scene in the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s forthcoming movie \u201cSix Days in August.\u201d \u00a0Here\u2019s a reassuring note for those who might be concerned: \u00a0The vehicle and the movie-making equipment will not actually appear in the film itself.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A new article went up at noon today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation. \u00a0It is the Introduction to Volume 58 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u201cSignals of Transcendence,\u201d\u201d<\/a> written by . . . \u00a0 well, by one Daniel C. Peterson<\/a><\/p>\n

Abstract: <\/strong>Hints of a different and better world \u2014 sometimes dimly remembered, often intuited, and commonly hoped for \u2014 and of a glorious, mighty power behind the world in which we currently live, are all around us. They are not so powerful that they cannot be missed or even ignored, but they have been and remain present for those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel. As he always does, God has not left us without witnesses but he does not seek to compel. He loves us, but he also respects our agency.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Former friends Emma Smith and Brigham Young attempting to reconcile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for a news break:<\/p>\n

The Third Reich comes to the United Kingdom?<\/p>\n

\u201cBritish Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: \u2018A Man Is a Man and a Woman Is a Woman\u2019\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPerspective: Common sense returns to the U.K. Will the U.S. be next? \u00a0As elections loom, boldness is on display in the United Kingdom\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

But this is encouraging and good to hear: \u00a0\u201cVarious faith groups support The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> in Huntsman tithing appeal:\u00a0\u201cThe Supreme Court has consistently refused to allow courts to hide theological elephants in secular mouseholes,\u201d 10 religions say in friend-of-the-court brief\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

And here are two quite different but remarkably interesting bits of science news:<\/p>\n

\u201cScientists say they\u2019ve confirmed evidence that humans arrived in the Americas far earlier than previously thought\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cUnprecedented discovery seems to defy fundamental astronomical theories\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

I frankly admit to an exceptional enjoyment of disruptive scientific developments. \u00a0There is so very, very much that we don\u2019t yet know!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Settng<\/a>
Setting up the scene for a discussion, with Emma Smith, of the Smith family\u2019s personal finances and their entanglement with the finances of the Church in 1844. \u00a0Please be aware that these photographs do not come from the actual movie cameras. \u00a0They come from an entirely separate device. \u00a0I hope, but am not especially hopeful, that this will help some of the less astute but most hypercritical readers of my blog to grasp the fact that what is seen in these images \u2014 e.g., in this one, the director speaking to the actors in the distance on the right hand side of the image and the members of the crew standing on the left \u2014 will not actually be seen in the final film. \u00a0And this isn\u2019t unusual: \u00a0It\u2019s how movies WORK. \u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I greatly admire the approach and the thesis advanced by the Protestant theologians and ethicists Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon in their modern classic Resident Aliens<\/em> (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2014). \u00a0Here are a few passages from the early pages of the book:<\/span><\/p>\n

As in Kierkegaard\u2019s Denmark, North America is a place where people have absorbed just enough Christianity to inoculate them against the contagion by the real thing. \u00a0We believe that the church can be a major means of conversion, detoxification, and inculcation of the practices required to be a Christian in a world that thinks it already is. \u00a0(4)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The image that evokes this adventure for us is . . . found in Philippians 3:20 \u2014 \u201cour commonwealth is in heaven.\u201d \u00a0Moffat more vividly translates this politeuma<\/em> as \u201cWe are a colony of heaven.\u201d \u00a0The Jews in Dispersion were well acquainted with what it meant to live as strangers in a strange land, aliens trying to stake out a living on someone else\u2019s turf. \u00a0Jewish Christians had already learned in their day-to-day life in the synagogue, how important it was for resident aliens to gather to name the name, to tell the story, to sing Zion\u2019s songs in a land that didn\u2019t know Zion\u2019s God.<\/span><\/p>\n

A colony is a beachhead, an outpost, an island of one culture in the middle of another, a place where the values of home are reiterated and passed on to the young, a place where the distinctive language and life-style of the resident aliens are lovingly nurtured and reinforced.<\/span><\/p>\n

We believe that the designations of the church as a colony and Christians as resident aliens are not too strong for the modern American church \u2014 indeed, we believe it is the nature of the church, at any time and in any situation, to be a colony. . . .<\/p>\n

The church is a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another. \u00a0In baptism our citizenship is transferred from one dominion to another, and we become, in whatever culture we find ourselves, resident aliens. \u00a0(11-12)<\/span><\/p>\n

The demise of the Constantinian world view, the gradual decline of the notion that the church needs some sort of surrounding \u201cChristian\u201d culture to prop it up and mold its young, is not a death to lament. \u00a0It is an opportunity to celebrate. \u00a0The decline of the old, Constantinian synthesis between the church and the world means that we American Christians are at last free to be faithful in a way that makes being a Christian today an exciting adventure. \u00a0(18)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
I think that this approach, this point of view, is entirely appropriate for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. \u00a0Moreover, it is one that comes quite naturally to us, if we think about it.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

The theologians\u2019 motif of das wandernde Gottesvolk<\/em>, \u201cthe wandering people of God,\u201d obviously fits the biblical Israel led by Moses in the desert. \u00a0That is, after all, the historical inspiration for the phrase. \u00a0But it\u2019s a little bit difficult to make it fit John Calvin\u2019s Geneva or the Lutheran state churches in Northern Europe prior to the onset of modern secularism, let alone the post-Theodosian caesaropapism of Constantinople and the eastern Roman Empire or the hybrid ecclesiastical-political society of Western Europe in the high Middle Ages up through the early years of post-Reformation and post-Tridentine Catholicism.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it fits the Latter-day Saints, who reached what is now their Great Basin stronghold as the \u201cCamp of Israel\u201d under the leadership of an \u201cAmerican Moses\u201d and who are, everywhere else, members of a minority in cultures that are often uncongenial and unsupportive and virtually never altogether friendly or admiring.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 A new article went up at noon today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation. \u00a0It is the Introduction to Volume 58 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: \u201c\u201cSignals of Transcendence,\u201d\u201d written by . . . \u00a0 well, by one Daniel C. Peterson Abstract: Hints of a different and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":102197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[870,36686,61,36680,401,36683],"class_list":["post-102194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christianity","tag-hauerwas","tag-natural-theology","tag-resident-aliens","tag-theism","tag-willimon"],"yoast_head":"\n"Resident Aliens"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    A new article went up at noon today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation. \u00a0It is the Introduction to Volume 58 of Interpreter: A\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/10\/resident-aliens-2.html\" 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