Becoming divine. It sounds like new age drivel one might hear from a spiritual guru on Oprah. But what if the Christian gospel really is about how humanity can become divine? It is so utterly different than the predominant message of the American Christian gospel: the good news that God wants to torture all of us forever unless we accept Jesus as Lord and savior which gets us a ticket to the great Disneyland in the sky. I’ve come to... Read more
Today when I went to walk at the labyrinth in Audubon Park, a man was pulling some of the bricks out and cleaning them. He had his headphones on and he was looking down. I didn’t want to startle him by walking on the labyrinth without asking permission, so I tried various different ways of getting his attention. Finally, I squatted down and waved my hand right where he was working. I was worried he would be mad, but he... Read more
I’ve been reading Emily Heath’s excellent new book Glorify: Reclaiming the Heart of Progressive Christianity. One of the things she proposes is that we replace the common question “What would Jesus do?” with “Does it glorify God?” Glory has always been an ugly word for me, since the fundamentalists use it to talk about the reason God has to torture people forever in hell or “ordain” various types of tragedy (to give “glory” to himself). Whenever I think about the word... Read more
Dear Dr. Abraham, This week, I read your essay “The Birth Pangs of United Methodism as a Unique, Global, Orthodox Denomination.” Like you, I long for a “robust orthodox and missionary version of United Methodism” rather than Garrison Keiller’s stereotype of nice, lukewarm people who do potlucks. I believe that a vital church looks like Acts 9:31: “living in the fear of the Lord and the confidence of the Holy Spirit.” I spend most of my waking hours each day... Read more
What does it mean to be orthodox? It depends on which definition of the Greek word doxa you’re using. Ortho always means straight, right, or true, but doxa has two possibilities. For Aristotle and the other pagan philosophers, doxa meant “opinion” so orthodoxy would mean “right opinion,” which is what it means today for most Protestant Christians who use the word. But there’s a different meaning. Because something strange happened when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek. The Hebrew word... Read more
I was 32 years old before I had a personal relationship with an active duty military person. I knew guys who were in ROTC in college and my uncle was Navy reserve, but other than that, my life just didn’t intersect with military culture. At Burke United Methodist Church where I first served out of seminary, the backbone of the congregation was military families. And some of my best friends today are in the military. This Memorial Day weekend, I’ve... Read more
A recent survey shows that Christians today prefer making fun of people to sharing the gospel by a large margin. Perhaps most surprisingly, a majority of respondents would rather share sarcastic articles with no spiritually edifying purpose on their Facebook page than quotes from the Bible. Professional Facebook troll Josh Gilligan explains, “I used to just tell people on the internet they were going to hell, but that got boring. Now with the help of the geniuses at Babylon Bee, I’ve... Read more
Love wins. Ever since Rob Bell wrote the book in 2011, it’s been the battle cry of progressive Christians everywhere. We make bumper stickers and memes and t-shirts. It’s such a beautiful ideological concept. It’s how we define ourselves against people on the other side. But one of the things I’ve been convicted by recently is whether I actually live and speak as though love really does win. Is love really my strategy, my agenda, and my goal? Or is... Read more
Dear Dr. Tennent, Thank you for your open letter and your follow-up post. Three years ago, I sat down to write a book, thinking it was my job to save Christianity from conservative evangelicals like you. My most popular blog post at the time talked about how Ted Cruz was the perfect embodiment of the misanthropic nihilism of evangelical theology. I was a rising star in the rapidly growing ex-evangelical blogosphere. Armed with my critical race theory and postmodern deconstruction, I... Read more
My fellow Patheos blogger Eric Smith has a provocative blog post pairing the May 29th lectionary epistle reading with all the Twitter drama from the United Methodist General Conference. The reading is Galatians 1:1-12, where Paul launches into a tirade against the Galatians. Eric makes the gutsy move of saying that Paul is like a first-century version of the proverbial know-it-all United Methodist pastor trolls on the Twitter feed: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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