From Matthew Milliner:

Golf was a symbol of Graham’s amity with America. Indeed, Wacker claims that hundreds of photos of Graham enjoying high-profile, high-green-fee golfing events circulated in major magazines. But then, reports Wacker, something changed:

The debacle of the Nixon presidency, which Graham had strongly supported, signaled a turning point, if not consistently in practice, at least in aspiration. The sordid revelations released with the Nixon tapes saved Graham from himself. They forced him back to the drawing boards to reassess his real and perceived complicity in the smugness of that administration and by implication the smugness of his associations with other parts of the American establishment.

To borrow a phrase that Andrew Walls applies to Christianity in general, evangelicalism is “infinitely translatable.” This translatability means that evangelicalism can function as effectual resistance to racism, as an ecumenical catalyst, a platform for women in ministry, or as an endorsement machine for American politicians. Billy Graham was associated with each of these translations, and each one is duly represented among the Billy Graham collections. But one of these translations comes with a warning from Graham himself. It’s right there in his autobiography: Graham’s friendship with Nixon “muffled those inner monitors that had warned me for years to stay out of partisan politics.”

A fresh round of sordid revelations will probably not hinder some evangelicals from the dream of golfing with our current president. And should they get the opportunity, I doubt they’ll be as lucky as Graham was in the Christmas of ’67. But exile and defiance are certainly among the movement’s infinite translations as well, and the roots of this kind of evangelicalism are as deep as Daniel. Such a faith brooks no nostalgia for Billy’s clubs from Monte Carlo, and might eventually find itself in the way of the billy club instead.

Matthew J. Milliner (whose views don’t necessarily represent those of his employer) is associate professor of art history at Wheaton College.

HT: JS

By Michelle Van Loon at www.MomentsAndDays.org

and www.MichelleVanLoon.com

I’ve been blogging for more than a decade,and I’ve written often about spiritual abuse by church leaders – sharing both my own experience and referencing the struggles of others. I’m just one voice in a large crowd: there are numerous blogs, books, and worthwhile organizations telling the stories of spiritual and/or clergy sexual abuse survivors. The internet has been a tool for good in this struggle as it has facilitated connection between survivors. In a few high profile cases, the networking of survivors has been instrumental in bringing to light what has happened in the darkness.

Understandably, many who’ve experienced abuse from a church leader never return to a church. In the wake of my own traumatizing experience, I remember repeating my own version of Peter’s words from John 6:68 (“Lord, where else can I go? You have the words of eternal life.”) even as my husband and I tried to figure out how our family could ever be a part of a congregation again after all that had happened at our previous church. I still loved Jesus even though I was hurting, but it seemed at the time his big “C” Church didn’t love me back.

In the wake of the trauma, it was easier not to attend church. We relied on our Christian friends to provide us fellowship. We even attempted home churching with two other families for nearly a year. But as time went on, we realized we missed the structure and relative diversity of congregational life. It was a milepost on our continuing journey toward healing that we found we could hope most churches were not teeming with gross dysfunction or being run by adulterous leaders – and then act on that hope.

The road back to church was a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process. One telling moment came as we were moving toward making a commitment to a new congregation when an elder tasked with plugging people into the ministry of the church sensed some reticence on my part.

He said, “It sounds like you have a lot of trust issues.”

There are a few different ways in which these words can be expressed: with empathy, with concern, with motive-judging suspicion. In the case of this elder, he was functioning as a commission-only salesperson, trying to overcome possible objections in order to close the sale. His hard sell was a well-meaning but misguided attempt to enfold us in the life of the congregation.

I wanted to say, “Of course I have trust issues! If you’d been through what we’ve been through, you’d have trust issues, too.”

I simply wasn’t that quick on the draw. Instead, I stammered through a muddy statement explaining that we’d experienced some painful things in our previous unhealthy church, and we were trying to ease into congregational life. We’d been attending the church for several months, and he naturally assumed we were ready to take the next step into ministry involvement.

For what it’s worth, I still have trust issues. At this point of my life, I recognize that the caution I carry has little to do with fear of a church leader wounding me again and everything to do with the wisdom birthed from a deeply painful and faith-forming experience.

While it wasn’t helpful to have a church leader I didn’t know (and who didn’t know me) challenge me regarding my damaged trust, there were things many other leaders and fellow congregants said and did that assisted in my rehab process:

• I appreciated it when I was seen by church leaders as a person, not as a warm body to be leveraged to fill a slot on a church org chart.

• It was meaningful to me to have congregation members reach out in conversation before or after a worship service more than one time. A simple hello one week is nice; a second or third conversation with the same people helped us ease into congregational life far more than a “newcomer’s information luncheon” ever did.

• Simple, low-commitment opportunities to work alongside other church members (such as serving together at a soup kitchen or food panty) were far preferable to joining a small group. Working alongside people with a common purpose in mind was far easier than going to a stranger’s house for a two or three hour weekly meeting.

• My husband and I were grateful when a leader took the initiative to invite us out for a cup of coffee so we could get to know one another outside the four walls of the church.

While these things can make a difference for all newcomers to a church, they were essential parts of what helped us find our way back to congregational life.

If you’re an abuse survivor who has stayed in or returned to the church, what other attitudes or practices would you add to my list above?

Becky Castle Miller is the Discipleship Director at an international church in the Netherlands and writes about emotionally healthy discipleship at medium.com/wholehearted. She conveys her five kids around town on bikes and studies New Testament in the middle of the night via Northern Live.

Our words can succeed at the level of doctrinal correctness but fail at the level of pastoral care.

I’ve seen this happen over and over to survivors of sexual abuse, when church leaders, communicating about sexuality, leave victims feeling guilty for the abuse they suffered.

Picture your church. The CDC reports that 44% of the women in the United States have been victims of sexual violence and 22% of the men. When you look at your congregation, realize that a third or more of them are sexual abuse victims.

Christians need to remember those numbers when we talk about sexuality. When we speak about sex, abuse victims are listening. I don’t think that most Christian communicators set out to further damage victims, but we do. We do especially when we fail to listen to victims and when we fail to understand abuse.

In this post, I invite you to overhear a conversation with a sexual abuse victim. Paying attention to the stories of victims can help us bring necessary empathy and sensitivity into discussions of Christian sexual ethics.

I first started serving in recovery ministry with victims of abuse ten years ago. Below is a composite conversion based on many people’s stories.

+++++++

This is how it goes.

She sits, unmoving, legs crossed at the knees, arms tucked under and around her breasts. I slide the box of tissues closer to her as the tears hover at her jawline.

I say, “Thank you for trusting me with your story. I believe you.”

She tightens her lips.

I ask, “What still feels painful when you think about the abuse?”

She untucks a hand and touches her forehead. She whispers, “I’m so ashamed.”

“Where does that shame come from?”

Her eyebrows pull together. “I’m a Christian. I shouldn’t have been sexually involved. I…I didn’t want to, but…I did it.”

“Are you saying you feel responsible for those sexual interactions?”

She nods.

I ask, “What would he have done if you had said no?”

She meets my line of sight, her eyes big and suddenly dry. “What do you mean?”

“What would he have done if you had said no to sex?”

Her answer is immediate. “He would have started a fight. I couldn’t take any more violence.”

I pour her a glass of water. “You said you didn’t want to do those things. And you were afraid of what he would do if you said no. Why do you think it was your fault?”

Her tears start again. “I don’t know…I didn’t stop him.”

I get out another box of tissues. “Sexual assault is when we have a sexual encounter that we don’t want or didn’t ask for. We can be sexually coerced—pressured to be physically involved—especially when the person we are with has more sexual experience or is much older or is in a position of power over us. Does any of that sound like what you experienced?”

“Yes! I didn’t want it, but I didn’t know how to stop it without him getting angry. I froze.”

“That was his sin, not yours. Does that help you, to take the shame and responsibility off of yourself and put it on him, where it belongs?”

She sits up straighter and raises her shoulders. “Yeah, actually. I never thought of it like that before.”

I clear my throat, because talking about this is always awkward for me. “When I was abused by a babysitter when I was about 8, I never told anyone what happened, because I felt responsible, and I felt ashamed. It wasn’t until my early 20s that I understood it was abuse, and it wasn’t my fault. Perpetrators are deliberate in selecting their targets. They have a plan.”

I squint at her, trying to figure out what to say next. “Understanding we are victims can make us feel like we were helpless, like we couldn’t protect ourselves. But accepting that someone hurt us on purpose, and we didn’t cause it, and we couldn’t stop it or prevent it, that can be an important part of healing. How do you feel about calling yourself a victim?”

She shifts in her chair and considers it. “I feel…angry. But it does help take the shame away. You really think it wasn’t my fault?”

“Yes. The sin and the shame belong to the person who abused you. And I think you’re more than a victim now. I think you’re a survivor.”

She blows her nose and looks me directly in the eyes. “I like ‘survivor.’”

+++++++

The hardest part of putting together this example conversation was choosing just one answer to the question, “What would he have done if you had said no?”

“He would have slapped me.”

“He would have hurt my family.”

“He would have lied about me and told people I seduced him.”

“He would have killed my dog.”

“He would have broken my belongings.”

“He wouldn’t have let me out of the room.”

The responses are different, but the same: he would have punished her for daring to say no. So she let him do it, because her fear of his retaliation was stronger than her fear of his violation.

Too often, abuse victims hear from their churches a blanket condemnation of sexual involvement outside marriage, with no mention of manipulation and violence. This contributes to the incorrect guilt victims feel, and it can keep victims from reporting the crime of sexual assault.

As both a Bible teacher and someone who has experienced sexual abuse, I see this from two sides. A. I want to teach people in my church to embody faithfulness in their sexual choices, and B. I know the words from Christian leaders that have caused me to feel ashamed.

When we talk about sexual ethics, we must include a discussion of sexual abuse. Remember that in our church services and at our conferences, many women and men sitting there have been abused. And in some cases, so are the people who abused them.

Abusers are listening. Victims are listening. It’s not too much to mention abuse every time we talk about sex. Make it clear that forcing someone to do something sexual is wrong, whether that force is verbal, physical, or spiritual, whether the threat is explicit or implied. Make it clear that if someone was coerced into sexual activity, they did not sin.

And keep listening to victims. Hear their stories. Two brave women who have shared their experiences are Mary DeMuth and Ashley Easter.

Start to understand perpetrators and how they work. Understand what happens to victims. Learn how your words about sexual purity sound to someone who didn’t choose that sexual experience.

By Bob Allen, at Baptist News

A decade-old emphasis encouraging moderate Baptist churches to invite a woman to preach one Sunday in February has contributed to a shift in how people in the pew think about women in ministry, a longtime advocate for pulpit inclusiveness said in a newsletter promoting the Martha Stearns Marshall Month of Preaching for 2017.

Pam Durso, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry, said last year 211 churches participated in the annual emphasis launched in 2007. That’s more than double the number of 104 in 2010 and four times as many as the inaugural year.

“As a result of the advocacy and support of Baptist pastors and leaders, we are seeing a shift in our Baptist culture,” Durso said. “In the past 10 years, as we have observed the Baptist landscape, we have seen greater numbers of women find ministry positions, live out their calling, and serve in this world, and we have seen more churches open their pulpits to women and call women to serve their congregations.”

Durso, a former career Baptist church historian named executive director of the support and advocacy group in 2009, described 2015 as “a banner year” for women in ministry in the most recent State of Women in Baptist Life report introduced in June at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Greensboro, N.C.

While the proverbial “stained-glass ceiling” remains a reality for many women seeking to enter ministerial roles traditionally held by men, Durso said statistics show a slow but steady “greater openness to women ministers within the moderate-to-progressive Baptist churches, denominations and institutions.”

While most ordinations of Baptist women in the South have occurred since the 1980s, Durso, who has a Ph.D. in church history from Baylor University, says there is a forgotten heritage of women preaching alongside men in at least one of the streams of tradition that came together in the mid-19th century to form the Southern Baptist Convention.

Jesus Creed Book of the Year

Jon M. Levenson, The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

I have not yet blogged about this brilliant Jewish scholar’s book but I read it recently and it zoomed to the top of the list for this year’s award. The book zeroes in on the significance of connecting love (in the Shema) to the covenant, the covenant to ancient near eastern treaties, but even behind that treaty to family relationships — hence, love is not only the active life of living up to the covenant but also affective. Levenson is one of the masters of biblical scholarship; he’s a master of not only of the Old Testament but also of rabbinic studies so that he takes the idea of love from the origins all the way into helpful clarifications in the rabbis. Loved this book; I’m sure you will to.

My second Book of the Year is Ruth Tucker, Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife: My Story of Finding Hope after Domestic Abuse. I cannot say I loved this book; I can say it mesmerized me and pierced me about what the church needs to be doing more and more. It made me admire Ruth for finally telling her story. One cannot read Ruth’s book without being changed and challenged.  It is in other words the Worst Great Book of the Year for the Jesus Creed blog.

Church History

Enter the Bible, and in particular, the American Bible Society, and it should not take long to see in the picture to the right an open Bible in one hand and American flag in the other. A recent and exceptional book by Messiah College historian, John Fea, called The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society, tells this story through one institution — the American Bible society — but in so doing Fea demonstrates the constant intersection of Bible and nation building. I recommend this book for all churches and for all schools, colleges and universities. The impact of the ABS is of magnitudes and often enough totally unknown. Fea is an exceptional historian of the church in America. His expertise in connecting ABS to American church history is all over this book. Those who read the New Testament in Greek or the Old Testament in Hebrew or the Septuagint in Greek read from an ABS or United Bible Societies produced edition. Many of the most important tools used in Bible studies today were produced by or in cooperation with the ABS. Every major translation of the Bible today translates the Hebrew and Greek texts produced in conjunction with ABS and UBS. This alone justifies the importance of knowing the story told by Fea.

Biblical Studies

Three books battled my mind for top billing in Biblical studies, and I chose to exclude all commentaries for this category of books. But one book rose to the top because I think it shed light not only on the Bible but the first 2-3 centuries of church history, and that is Larry Hurtado’s Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World. Here we find Hurtado exploring what made the Christians distinct — not unique for they always were like their environment in so many ways — and he explores such topics as faith, identity, bookishness, and behavior (or ethics). Destroyer of the gods is simply a delight to read. My thanks too to Carey Newman at Baylor University Press for acquiring and publishing books like this.

How we read the Bible, which also entails how we connect Bible to the world and to the state (in this election year especially), ought to shape our theology more, and because he has done this well I give special mention to John Nugent, Endangered Gospel: How Fixing the World is Killing the Church. This book creates a special new shape to the Bible’s narrative while it keeps its eyes on the implications of how we read that narrative for how the church is understood. Nugent courageously keeps his eye on the centrality of the church.

This year I became aware of Vashti McKenzie’s excellent examination of the African American woman’s experience in the church, Not Without a Struggle: Leadership for African American Women in Ministry. The white evangelical woman’s struggle for a voice in the church is not the same as the African American woman’s or the Asian American woman’s or the Latin American woman’s. I don’t believe the African American church is part of American evangelicalism, and I believe that American evangelicalism is a white church movement that at times (and only at times) includes African Americans. Especially when it wants to look inclusive. But dig into the back rooms where decisions are made and where cultures are formed and you discover that, no matter how hard some white leaders try, the culture formed is a white evangelical culture.

Every year Tom Wright writes something that everyone talks about and reads, and this year it is his reframing of the doctrine of atonement into a Passover-shaped narrative. The book is The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. Many pastors and lay folks loved Wright’s Surprised by Hope and this book matches that book in connection to the troubled mind of many on how we talk about the cross. As always, a fairly easy read while Wright seeks to undo the damage of some unfortunate moves in the history of atonement theory.

One must send up a bright flag for the sudden appearance — Marilynne Robinson-like — of two new books by E.P. Sanders: both Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters and Thought as well as his Comparing Judaism and Christianity: Common Judaism, Paul, and the Inner and Outer in Ancient Religion deserve pride of place. But, too, Fortress reprinted his amazing study Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE — 66 CE. I read everything Sanders writes so these are a feast for me.

Beverly Gaventa has whetted my appetite for her forthcoming Romans commentary by putting her Earle Lectures into print in the aptly titled When in Romans. Here are three well written studies/chapters, each of which illustrates the potency of the apocalyptic Paul approach to reading Paul. I will be doing more with Beverly’s book on this blog shortly.

Jesus Studies

I am not as conversant with the constant publication of books in historical Jesus studies anymore, but I was asked to read one for review in Interpretation and I found Brant Pitre’s Jesus and the Last Supper a delightful read, but even more both a precisionist’s delight when it comes to methodological proposals as well as a theological adventure. I had a good conversation with Brant and Matthew Bates (whose Salvation by Allegiance Alone is coming out this Spring — and it is one worth ordering in advance and reading as soon as it hits the mailbox) in San Antonio, two young scholars with gobs to offer to the church and academy. I confess I have not yet read Bates’s new The Birth of the Trinity, though I will in 2017.

Commentary of the Year

It is all but impossible to blog through a commentary without it becoming a 40 part series, but all year long Marianne Meye Thompson’s exceptional New Testament Library commentary on John has been percolating on my desk waiting to be mentioned. But John: A Commentary has been the best commentary I’ve read this year. Exquisitely written, theologically sensitive, conversant with the literature without letting it get in the way, useful for the pastor, the student and the serious Bible reader — well I could go on but this is one for your shelf and you can remove two or three others if you have this one!

Three, OK four, more commentaries get my commendation, beginning with the re-issue of my teacher’s, James D.G. Dunn’s splendid, readable and brief commentary on the Acts of the Apostles: The Acts of the Apostles. (I wrote the foreword.)

Along with Dunn, mention needs to be made of three new Story of God Bible Commentaries on the Bible. Michael Bird’s robust and path-finding-between-the-options Romans, Mark Roberts’ pastorally ready and theologically excellent Ephesians, and Tremper Longman’s judicious study Genesis.

I make no pretense of saying “these are the best books of the year” but only “these are the best books I read this year.”

Science and Faith (RJS)

For those who wonder why most scientists (including Christians) are adamant about the vast age of the earth, a group of primarily Christian scientists have crafted a book with full color pictures and essays presenting their scientific and Christian view of the canyon, The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth: Can Noah’s Flood Explain the Grand Canyon? The book is easy to read (not heavy in scientific jargon), with abundant pictures and diagrams to educate Christians about geology and the shortcomings of flood geology.

How to Read Job by John Walton and Tremper Longman III. Although technically not a “science and faith” book it does contain a nice discussion of ancient cosmology and the problems arising from natural processes such as genetic mutations in creation.  I have been leading a discussion using this as a guide – with excellent response … comments like “finally the book of Job makes sense.”

How “Thank You For Your Service” May Fall Short At Church, By Michelle Van Loon and www.MomentsAndDays.org and www.MichelleVanLoon.com

Popular speaker and author Jen Hatmaker’s recent interview with Jonathan Merritt affirming same-sex relationships led Lifeway to stop carrying her books. The uproar surrounding both this interview and Lifeway’s decision kicked off a helpful conversation in the blogosphere about, among other things, the way in which conference events have served to outsource women’s ministry from the local church.

Jesus Creed-reading women, I’d love to hear from you. Have your congregational leaders recognized and affirmed your gifts – or simply thanked you for your help with the church to-do list?

Women’s ministries in many local churches often tilt toward social events with an inspirational tagline: Christmas teas, Mother’s Day brunches, spa-themed retreats. There well may be a women’s Bible study or two serving as a backbone for these ministries, but often, these studies serve up pre-packaged materials from recognized brand-name speakers like Beth Moore, Lysa Terkurst, or Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It is telling that the women I’ve met who are leading parachurch, community-based study groups like Bible Study Fellowship or Community Bible Study migrate to these groups because they’ve found there isn’t a ready place for them to teach, lead, or study in greater depth in their local churches.

Aimee Byrd tackled the topic in this thoughtful post. And Sharon Hodde Miller offered some practical suggestions about how local church leaders might reclaim some of what they’ve ceded to conferences, video-led pre-packaged Bible studies, and parachurch ministries.

Miller’s first point toward strengthening ministry to and by women in the local church seems obvious: Leaders should affirm the gifts of women. Yet in most of the congregations I’ve attended over the last four decades, I’ve learned most leaders tended to affirm women who served in nursery, ran VBS, or taught third-graders, whether these women were actually gifted to do so or not. My leaders rarely noticed the gifts God gave me to offer to my brothers and sisters in Christ, but they did praise my willingness to get in the trenches and do the nitty-gritty of wiping up spills in the nursery or cutting out 100 lion silhouettes for a craft at our church’s VBS. While service is both a spiritual gift and a command each of us has been given by our Savior to offer ourselves sacrificially to one another, it has been extremely rare in my experience to have a leader look past the church programming to-do list and actually notice what God might be doing in my life.

As a younger believer, I got pretty good at serving. Maybe I hoped somehow that my service might make a place for me to offer the communication/teaching gifts I believed God had given me. At the time, I believed service was the only thing the church seemed to want from me, so I cut out lion silhouettes without complaint. Perhaps, I thought, I may have the spiritual gift of crafts.

One day during this period, a retired Methodist minister attending the same non-denominational congregation as my family and I did sought me out after services to offer me an unexpected word of encouragement. “I’ve been watching you,” he said. “I see in you a student’s heart and a teacher’s gifting. If you were one of my congregants, I would have found a way to send you to seminary.”

I didn’t really believe I could exercise any other gift in my local church beyond nursery duty and craft projects. Teach? Lead? Those things weren’t on my radar screen at the time, and they certainly weren’t on the radar screen of my own church leaders. When I did find my way into a seminary classroom more than a decade later, this Methodist minister was one of the first people I contacted to thank him for seeing how God was at work in my life. His words to me back then have shaped the way I hope I’ve mentored others here and now: “I’ve been watching you. I see how God has been at work in you, and what you have to offer others.”

Certainly some leaders have difficulty affirming the gifts of the women (and men!) co-laboring with them in ministry because of their own insecurity or immaturity. A few others may find their strict, unhealthy application of complementarian theology tells them they shouldn’t do much to encourage the women in their congregations who may be demonstrating leadership or teaching gifts. But in most cases, it seems that church leaders find themselves so busy with the tasks and problems of ministry that there isn’t always space for to cultivate and celebrate the gifts God has placed in their midst. But this neglect has left many women with leadership and teaching gifts searching outside of their local congregations for spaces in which these gifts can be exercised.

Follow The Leader, By Michelle Van Loon http://www.MomentsAndDays.org

I am of Paul. I am of Apollos. I am of John Piper or Jim Wallis or Jen Hatmaker or Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

It was a first century problem, and it is a twenty-first century problem. It is perhaps most pronounced in the Protestant world. Our very spiritual DNA contains a desire to divide. As we lack a single hierarchical authority structure on which we can all agree, we are tempted to form our own tribes.

Today, our Bible teachers and Christian communicators are brands™, driven as much by personality and marketability as they are by doctrine. We are far less inclined these days to be discipled by denomination, and more inclined to be fed and formed by the offerings endorsed by a Christian leader who has a platform on the conference circuit.

It wasn’t all that long ago that many young male seminarians in my acquaintance were quoting and emulating Mark Driscoll’s particular style of testosterone-fueled neo-Calvinism. Women of my generation (Boomers, older X-ers) filled arenas for the Women of Faith events; the books and study materials published under their banner offered audiences a positive ‘n encouraging conservative suburban Evangelical approach.

Buying into a communicator’s brand can serve as a filter for the dizzying array of theological choices facing a well-meaning believer who is seeking to grow in his or her faith. Aligning with a particular leader offers adherents more than theology. It can also define the spiritual aspirations of those in the tribe. John MacArthur’s conferences tend to attract a more crew than Andy Stanley’s events do, for example. They’re not just buying books and conference CD’s at these events, but are carrying home with them a picture of how their lives, families, and communities can be based on the image they get at these events of both teacher and fellow adherents. I’ve known women who aspire to be the next Beth Moore or a Christine Caine clone, and try to copy their particular look, content, and style of ministry in their own context.

It rarely goes well. Certainly a word about the greater spiritual responsibility of those who teach is in order here, as well as a reminder that some of those in our congregations are being discipled from afar by high-visibility communicators with whom they have no relationship in real life. Celebrity Christian voices are an idealized mirror of who their followers want to be.

The apostle Paul told the Corinthian Church, “Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me.” (! Corinthians 4:15-16, italics mine) Paul recognized his role as disciple-maker. He also affirmed that there is a place in the spiritual growth process to attempt to copy the leader.

In her seminal 1947 essay The Lost Tools of Learning, Dorothy Sayers called this the Poll-Parrot stage:

The Poll-Parrot stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little relished. At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and appearances of things; one likes to recite the number-plates of cars; one rejoices in the chanting of rhymes and the rumble and thunder of unintelligible polysyllables; one enjoys the mere accumulation of things.

While we assign this kind of imitative learning to young children, there is a correlation in spiritual development, too. As a young believer in the 1970’s, I watched The 700 Club (don’t judge me – it’s been four decades since then!) and saw the way Pat prayed for people on the air. I wanted to be a spiritual giant like Pat, and so I approached prayer like it looked like he did. I aspired to be an exemplar of submissive trust to God, so I tried to be the sotto-voiced, modestly-dressed Elizabeth Elliot I read in books and listened to each day on the radio. Yes, at the same time as I was trying to be Pat. It was as awkward as you might imagine.

There was no one discipling me at the time, so I looked to these far-away icons to show me the way of Jesus. I was a Poll-Parrot, not yet capable of critical analysis and unsure of my own identity, gifting, and place in the Body of Christ. My two-dimensional disciplers may have fed me information about the spiritual life, but their real power was as a reflection of who I wanted to be as a follower of Jesus at the time. Moving past the Poll-Parrot stage took a long time for me, as I think it does for most of us.

If you’re in a church or gathering marked by devotion to this person’s teaching or that particular conference, or conversely, your local assembly is being influenced negatively by pressure from followers of celebrity teachers to be more like whatever model of church or faith these teachers are representing, it might be a helpful exercise to consider what it is that their adherents are looking to reproduce in their own lives. And then consider the question for yourself – what far-off teachers do you most admire, and why? Or what have you parroted in the past, and how have you grown past this stage?

This is about one of the most important books anyone who teaches or preaches the Bible should read.

We Protestants teach everyone this: You must read the Bible for yourself. Of course, we don’t want those “you”s to get too clever and start saying things that aren’t there, but there is a lot in this teaching we hold so dear. And that is why everyone who reads and teaches the Bible needs to read Mark Allan Powell’s What Do They Hear? I think this book is solid gold.

Why? Because Mark seriously asks what it is like for preachers to address an audience and know (1) that what they “hear” is not always what the preacher “said” and (2) that what Christians “read” is shaped by their “social location.” This book is HermeneuticsLite in the best and every sense of the word. Wait until you see what Mark has discovered because it reveals plenty about you and me.

Before we get too far, let me ask you this: When you have read the Parable of the Prodigal Son did you hear the part about the famine? Does it matter to how you read the Parable? Is the younger son “wicked” or “foolish”? Was he personally saved or was he drawn back to his family? How do you hear the gospel? It is not that one must make a choice between these options — it is only that we do.

What can each of us do to expand our “seeings” and our “hearings” and our “readings” of the Bible? No one should deny us the right to hear what we hear; no one should claim that hearing to be the only hearing until one has listened to all the hearings. (I’m not going pluralist here, either; I’m not suggesting “your reading is as good as my reading because mine is mine and yours is yours.”) I’m suggesting that we need to realize we have readings, that our readings are shaped by our social location, and that is desirable to hear the readings of other social locations. And, what can we do to get more readings? To hear how others are hearing?

He tells the story of his mom saying she liked one of Marks’ songs when he was in high school, listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival. Mark is an expert on music (and I’ve heard of this group but not listened to them that I know of). She heard “There’s a bathroom on the right!” when they were singing “There’s a bad moon on the rise.” The focus of the 1st chp is on this very thing: People hear things we don’t intend because they absorb what we say into their social location. And, he admits, “We want to be taken out of context — but only when that is a good thing.”

Chp 2 is delightful. Mark examines how some of his American students, how some of his Russian students, and how some of his Tanzanian students all hear the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Here’s a result:

Americans 100% of them heard the part about the son squandering his money.
Americans 6% observed that there was a famine.
Russians 34% mentioned the squandering while 84% heard the part about the famine.

Eastern commentaries on the parable focus on the son’s being enamored with luxury and splendor, that the boy wasted his money living luxuriously, that he pursued a life of entertainment and amusement, and that he was trouble-free. Western commentaries say he wasted his money on sexual misconduct, he went the whole route in sinful indulgence, he wasted his money on wine,women and song, and he went abroad to live a sinful life. Westerners see the point in reform; Russians see it in recovery. Americans see moral waste; Russians see opulence.
His Tanzanian students saw a major issue in the lack of help that the foreigners gave (the help they did not give) to the “immigrant” and they saw the father’s house as the kingdom where the young man was taken care of. The parable contrasts the far country and the father’s house; it contrasts a kingdom with a non-kingdom society.

Mark Powell’s book assumes a significant distinction between clergy and laity and, if you are in a reasonably traditional church, the assumption is a good one. Most importantly, Mark asks this question: How do clergy read a text when compared to how laity read the same text? The answer boggles.

Here’s the text. You read it. Then we’ll have a conversation.

1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2 saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” thais, unwashed. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.*) 5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ‘unclean’ hands?” 6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.7 They worship me in vain;their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ 8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”

Question: When you read this text, with which character did you empathize? With Jesus? With the disciples? With the Pharisees? With “other”?

Here’s the result of Mark’s own study; get ready to be shocked. 50 clergy; 50 laity.

Empathy Choice (first number: Clergy; second number: Laity). Thus, 40 clergy identified with Jesus; 0 laity did.

1. Jesus 40 0
2. Disciples 0 24
3. Pharisees 4 18
4. Other 6 8

Which is a nice way of saying that by and large, from this sample (and all nuances aside), clergy empathize with Jesus and laity do not; clergy do not empathize with disciples but laity do; clergy do not empathize with Pharisees but laity do.

Mark makes suggestions for pastors when preaching:

1. Cast the Scriptures: “cast” means as in a play. Preachers can play the roles of each character in their own reading of the Scriptures and notice the differences.
2. In preaching you might choose to identify with one character or another.
3. Allow for multiple responses to the text.

What is your response to this? I’ll be honest: I’m disappointed preachers don’t identify with being a disciple more; I’m concerned laity don’t empathize with the character of Jesus. What I’m shocked by is the absolute difference.

Mark Allan Powell’s book, What Do They Hear?, opens up for pastors and laity the differences between how they read the Bible and what they hear when they read it — especially when they are not together. Chp 4 concerns “meaning” and “effect.” This chp presents a very important difference in reading the Bible between clergy and laity.

First, many see “meaning” as “message” and focus on the theological, propositional content. Others see “meaning” as “effect” — what the text does to the person or how it “affects” them.

He had readers look at Luke 3:3-17, Luke’s description of John Baptist’s ministry and message. He asked clergy and laity to answer this question: “what does this story mean?” Here are some conclusions:

1. Clergy consider authorial intent (they say “Luke’s intention”), historical situations, the synthetic message, and find relevance in contextual analogies.
2. Laity consider reader response (affect/effect), contemporary and personal significance, meaning is impact, and relevance is found in unmediated application.

I found this interesting, and I find it interesting because (1) I teach students and laity how to read the Bible and (2) I’ve struggled with the transition of trying to get students and laity to learn how to “objectify” the text so they are speaking about “Luke’s intention.” Now the question arises — sure, that is a struggle. Is that the necessary struggle in order to acquire the skill of learning to read the Bible? Are we sufficiently aware of how “untrained readers of the Bible” read the Bible? Do we too easily skip over the reader response stuff to get to the history, to the analogous, to the original intent?

We begin, acknowledging as I always could do Kris’ constant sending me of possible links for Meanderings, with Naomi Krueger:

Bragging about or joking about degrading women is serious business. Words are never “just words.” They are rooted in violent, deep-seated beliefs about women’s worth. Words shape the way we think. The way we think shapes the way we act. And the more acceptable, the more laughable, violence toward women becomes, the less safe women become. You’ve heard the statistics:

One in five women in the United States have been sexually assaulted while attending college. 4.5 million people are trapped in sexual exploitation globally. Nearly all women experience sexual harassment in one form or another repeatedly over their lifetimes.

Do words really have the power to incite that level of abuse?

James, the brother of Jesus, sure seemed to think so. James 3 is a stern reminder of the power of the tongue and has so much relevance to this conversation about “locker room talk.” Crack open your Bible, or click here, and take a look at the whole chapter. If you don’t read the whole thing, at least read these two excerpts:

^“When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”

“With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?  My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.”

Men, when insults or lewd jokes toward women come out of your mouth, you reveal a dark, sinful piece of your soul. It’s equally damning to say nothing when you hear other men make degrading comments about women.

And now to Andrew Joseph:

Wu’s outreach to faith groups comes as advances in genetics are forcing scientists to grapple with the power of their newly discovered technology. The issue driving much of the ethical debate these days is genome-editing, which has become much simpler and more efficient with a tool called CRISPR.

Religious leaders and bioethicists have debated genome editing for decades, but it’s largely been a theoretical consideration. CRISPR makes once-theoretical notions — say, editing the genomes of embryos — a very real possibility. (Those changes are called “germline” edits and would be passed on to future generations.) It’s a revolution that’s being driven by scientists like Wu’s husband, famed geneticist and her Harvard Medical School colleague George Church.

“That is scary stuff, but this is what’s happening with the technology. It is moving forward,” said Tshaka Cunningham, a scientist at the Department of Veterans Affairs, who attended the session here and who said that people stand to take advantage of genetic advances. The black churches could help spread that awareness, he said.

As with scientists and secular bioethicists, religious communities have shown varying degrees of comfort with the notion of genome-editing.

Procedures aimed at curing disease are generally in line with certain religious tenets, even if those procedures require sophisticated technology; the Vatican saidin 2002 that “germ line genetic engineering with a therapeutic goal in man would in itself be acceptable” if it could be done safely and without leading to the loss of embryos.

But genome-editing could, at least in theory, be used to do much more — not just to treat conditions but to “enhance” human beings, as bioethicists put it.

The problem is that the difference is in the eye of the beholder. Would editing a genome to protect people from HIV be considered a treatment? Should scientists eliminate Down syndrome or genetic causes of blindness? Those conditions are viewed by some as disabilities but by others as traits that should in their own ways be respected and embraced. …

“I do believe that humans are in a special way individuals and a species with a special relationship to God,” National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told BuzzFeed in July. “And that requires a great deal of humility about whether we are possessed of enough love and intelligence and wisdom to start manipulating our own species.” (Collins has said he would possibly be open to germline editing if it was limited to eliminating disease, but for now, the NIH does not fund research that involves editing embryos’ DNA).

Not everyone shares those concerns. Ronald Cole-Turner, a theologian and ethicist at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, dismissed the “playing God” argument as one used by people who do not understand theology but are wary of germline editing.

“Christian theologians just don’t sit around and think that way,” Cole-Turner said. “I just don’t think it’s a legitimate argument that Christian theology shares this worry about ‘playing God.’”

Cole-Turner also said the idea that the human genome retains a sacredness apart from the rest of God’s creations didn’t square with him. In his view, it’s not “like God had put up a huge ‘No trespassing’ sign right on the edge of the chromosome.”

“The entire creation is a gracious gift in which human beings are called on to exercise a certain level of responsibility,” he said. “But there’s not a privileged zone.”

Thoughts? Is genetic editing any different than drugs taken to eat diseases?

Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz:

Arne Duncan has been spending time recently at Cook County Jail. The former U.S. education secretary goes to talk to “the shooters,” he said, to get their input on how to curb the city’s soaring gun violence.

The fundamental answer, Duncan says, is jobs.

“Every time I’m with them I’m telling them, ‘Here’s my grand bargain: We’re going to employ you, we’re going to give you a chance to work and make a legal wage, but you have to stop shooting, you have to walk away from that,'” Duncan said. “‘So what is that price point? What does that take?’ And the consensus is about $12 to $13 an hour. It’s peanuts.”

Finding jobs for the young Chicagoans most likely to get mixed up in the city’s violence is Duncan’s priority as managing partner with the Emerson Collective, a philanthropic organization established by Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, that funds a variety of social justice initiatives.

Since announcing the launch of the local initiative in March, Duncan has assembled a nine-person team that includes a former gang leader who helps recruit young men who might otherwise be on the streets.

The former Chicago Public Schools chief, who spent seven years as President Barack Obama’s education secretary before stepping down last December, views the heartbreaking violence in his hometown as interwoven with another heartbreaking statistic: that nearly half of 20- to 24-year-old black men in Chicago are neither working nor in school.

“Our strong hypothesis is that the police can’t solve this,” Duncan said.

Chris Ballard, of SI.com:

This began something of a theme: Brandon Crawford uncharacteristically one-hopped a routine throw to first, allowing Baez to advance to third. Baez in turn caught a one-hop throw from Cubs catcher David Ross and applied a yoga-pose tag to Denard Span at second—reaching around in front of Span and, in one motion, catching the ball and tagging him. (Sidenote: anyone who says watching baseball is boring should watch Baez play defense.)

It got more improbable, and weird: Pence inexplicably not scoring on a near-home run by Crawford. Dexter Fowler getting thrown out by Pence while advancing to second on a Cubs single. Matt Moore driving in a run, bringing the number of RBI by pitchers in the series to seven. And Ross, the ancient catcher, accounting for both Cubs RBI prior to the ninth inning.

That’s the postseason, though. Heroes are where you find them. Luck and fate are interchangeable. To the hundreds of Cubs fans on hand at AT&T Park on Thursday night, how it happened is irrelevant. Their team is on to the NLCS for the second straight year, to face the winner of the Dodgers-Nationals series, led by a brash young core and a deep, dominant pitching staff.

So there the fans were last night, cheering and chanting in a mass above the Cubs dugout, refusing to go home. Finally, at 10:07 p.m. PT, exactly an hour after Chapman’s last pitch, the AT&T stadium staff cut the lights on the Cubs fan, leaving them to head to the exits, smiling and hugging, their celebration equal parts glee and relief.

Tom Verducci, and here’s the momentous impact of coaching:

Cubs manager Joe Maddon then pulled his 95-RBI shortstop Addison Russell for Chris Coghlan, a .188 hitter. Rather than have Romo pitch to Coghlan, Bochy rolled the reliever dice again and called for lefty Will Smith. Bad move: Maddon countered with Willson Contreras. Bochy passed on having a .195 hitter against righthanders (Coghlan) face his closer (Romo), and instead wound up with a .311 hitter against lefthanders (Contreras) matched up with a guy who had one career save and who is not accustomed to such spots (Smith). Huge advantage, Maddon.

A cup of tea, and it took how long? [HT: CHG]

Erin Beresini on Faith and Fitness:

Still, in the U.S. organized religion has largely focused on developing followers’ minds and spirits, leaving the body to team sports and athletic clubs. Now that’s changing. American churches are getting into the workout biz, and the effort is blowing up. The American Council on Exercise named faith-based fitness one of the top trends of 2016. There’s a magazine dedicated entirely to the cause (Faith & Fitness) and a website that helps churches set up their own exercise ministries (ChurchFitness.com). Last year, Health Fitness Revolution, a nonprofit best known for producing health-related listicles, ranked top 50 fitness-minded American megachurches (number one:Lakewood Church in Houston)—and that only covered congregations with more than 2,000 people attending weekly services.

Make no mistake: in an era of declining church membership, one of the main reasons faith-based gyms exist is to draw people to the gospel, whether they’re parishioners or not. “We want people to come,” says First Baptist fitness minister Dave Bundrick. It’s the exact opposite M.O. of big-box gyms that base their business models on peoplenot showing up. Church fitness centers do charge fees, but they measure their success not in dollars but in what Bundrick calls ministry opportunities—interactions in which there’s a chance to “positively impact a person’s perception of our ministry, church, and ultimately, our God.”

Academics see another explanation for the trend. “It’s a response to the social and cultural problems of the age we’re in,” says Nick J. Watson, senior lecturer in sports, culture, and religion at York St. John University in the UK, whose research focuses on the role of the church in public health. That’s a nice way of saying we’re fat. In August, he is gathering some of the world’s top Christian academics to meet with politicians, clergy, and athletes at the inaugural Global Congress on Sports and Christianity. The event’s goal is to encourage collaboration and improve public health through multidisciplinary research on effective interventions.

[HT: LNMM]

Tobin Grant gets after Wayne Grudem for what he claims to have not known or known.

David Swartz:

Beyond the effects on evangelicals’ souls, it has devastating effects on their Christian witness. In their study of contemporary religion, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam and Notre Dame political scientist David Campbell write that the extraordinary rise of people who affiliate with no religion is due in part to their rejection of its entanglement with politics. Today 20 percent of the population says they have no faith. Putnam and Campbell write, “A growing number of Americans, especially young people, have come to disavow religion. For many, their aversion to religion is rooted in unease with the association between religion and conservative politics. If religion equals Republican, then they have decided that religion is not for them.”

What a terrible irony for evangelicals, a group of religious believers presumably committed to evangelism.

By Mallory Wyckoff (DMin, MTS). She lives in Nashville, TN with her husband Tim and daughter Olive. Mallory spent 5 years working with young women who have survived various forms of sexual trauma, and now teaches Bible and theology courses at Lipscomb University. Mallory also serves as a spiritual director in Nashville. Her fundamental convictions are that human dignity is the answer to every question, and that never again will there be a band as brilliant as NSYNC. Connect with her at mallorywyckoff.com.

I am a woman.

I am a woman who preaches.

Though we are not many, one of the greatest gifts of knowing other women called to preach is when we are able to sit together, share a meal or a drink, and talk about the complex and difficult realities of being a woman in a world/field/church wherein men have ruled for centuries.

When I’m alone, it’s too easy to question the anger that surfaces when men consistently cut me off or (consciously or otherwise) insist their voices have a louder hearing. When it’s just me in the room, I too quickly reject the painful emotions of not feeling heard or seen, or I suppress the frustration of having to jump through yet another hoop in order to secure a seat at the table. But when I’m with my sisters, when I’m surrounded by other women whose reality mirrors mine, I am free. I can shed the felt-need to hold it together or represent all women or not show too much emotion, and I can simply feel all that I feel and name all that I experience and find it/myself validated.

There is nothing like it.

The reason I desperately need community with fellow women preachers is because they see through a similar lens. They encounter similar experiences. They hear what I hear, and none of us has to convince the other that any of it is real. This is not the case outside such a circle. As a woman who preaches, I hear and see and experience life in a particular way. I notice and observe certain realities—both subtle and over—that others simply don’t. This is not a critique; it is simply true.

We are called “speakers” instead of “preachers.” Our “sermons” are sometimes labeled “lessons” or “presentations.” We are allowed to speak, but only if a man remains on the platform with us. We’re asked to sit as we teach in order to show deference to male authority. We are given the title “coordinator” when men performing the same tasks are referred to as “pastor.” We are allowed to teach on certain topics but not others, irrespective of our training and education.

And on, and on, and on.

The intent here is neither to drum up sympathy for myself nor to lay blame at the feet of others. My sole intent is to say that I experience reality in a particular way because of who I am (i.e. a woman preacher), a reality largely missed or ignored by others who do not claim this identifier. But for those of us who spend countless hours pouring into a sermon, only for it to be called a “lesson,” for those of us who have spent years of our lives studying and earning degrees in preparation for ministry only to find our presence must still be validated by male authority, you damn well better believe we notice.

We cannot help but notice.

It affects us.

It shapes how we think and feel about ourselves. And quietly but powerfully, it ensures that unjust power structures and church practices are able to remain in tact all the while pretending to be more equitable.

And ultimately, here is my point: just because you do not see or hear or experience something does not mean it doesn’t exist. Because I have known this to be so undeniably true for me, I have become convinced it is true for my black and brown brothers and sisters who claim experiences that I have not had. They decry a reality that is not readily visible to me in my white-skinned existence. The stories they tell are not the stories I tell. And far too easily, I can dismiss them because it does not comport with my own reality. I can reject their cries as an attempt to stir up discord and disrupt order, and entirely miss the fact that what I perceive as order is in fact utter chaos for those who live it in different skin.

I know what it feels like to champion gender justice in religious communities, only to encounter those who claim our cause as seeking to divide our churches, those who insist we are making a big issue out of what is not, those who witness our anger and hurt and passion and label it dangerous, disruptive.

And because I know what this feels like, I will continue to insist that we open our ears to hear what our black and brown brothers and sisters are saying. I will insist that when they describe their interactions with persons in authority, or lament the subtle ways they are dismissed and marginalized, or articulate the realities of embodied existence as persons of color in a world that claims to be post-racial but is in fact anything but, I will insist that we listen. I will insist that we stop talking, that we reject the felt-need to counter their story or share our own opinion, and just listen. I want so desperately to have a posture of humility, to place myself as a listener at the table where others share their stories, because I so desperately need others to do that for me and for the women with whom I am called to preach.

And when we do finally listen and seek to understand, when we stop outright rejecting another’s claim because it does not immediately mirror our own experience, when we ask questions instead of demanding our opinion be heard, we begin to discover a reality that was true all the while but escaped us entirely until we had eyes to see it.

This is true for gender justice, and it is true for racial justice.

I am a woman. I am a woman called to preach. And while at times my sermon might be labeled something else or my power attempted to be restrained by men in authority, I will use all of my energy and my abilities and my voice to speak what is true, to peel back the curtain and cast light on reality, to pursue God’s intended shalom in every corner of this world—for women, for black and brown bodies, for the kingdom of God.