In light of the recent ordination discussion here, I’m reposting an ordination sermon that I preached for a friend in 2005. Looking forward to your comments. Last weekend, I preached at the ordination service of a friend. I thought it was strange of her to ask me, being that I don’t really find ordination helpful anymore (I did once, and I am ordained). It’s not so much the institution itself (though I do have problems with it), but the way it’s used that I... Read more
John, Here’s the continuation of my response to your blog post and my petition asking Adam to consider withdrawing from the ordination process in the PC(USA). 5) You write, What historians know but Tony doesn’t seem to understand is that he is following precisely the path of the American Fundamentalists of the 1900s. In their zeal to create a purer, more faithful church, they ended up attacking fellow believers and crippling what should have been a golden age of spreading... Read more
I’ve got a bunch of people upset at me for encouraging my friend, Adam Walker-Cleaveland, to forsake the ordination process of the Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination. I even went so far as to post an online petition to attempt to convince Adam to drop out of the PC(USA) process and consider himself “ordained” by the Body of Christ — that is, by all of his fellow believers. Over the weekend, I’ve been inundated by emails and tweets. Some have been... Read more
“I Took It as a Sign” Someone sent a band to my house,And it started playingAt five in the morning. I took this as a signGod wanted me to sing! Then the moon joined inAnd a few of the tenor-voiced stars, And the earth offered its lovely bellyAs a drum. Before I knew it,I realizedAll human beings could be happy. If only they had a maestro like Hafez. A setting of Hafez by Daniel Ladinsky Read more
Over at Internet Monk, Michael Bell has run the latest Pew data through his Batcomputer, and it spit out a very cool graph, showing where people switch when they switch. Money quote from Michael’s analysis: Evangelicals are at best currently treading water. Their inflows have been matched by outflows, albeit coming from different sources. Much to my surprise, Evangelicals and Mainline Protestants have in fact been swapping members, I had expected much more of a move from Mainline Protestants to... Read more
My friend, Adam Walker-Cleaveland, has once again been thwarted in his attempt to be ordained as a “minister of word and sacrament” in the Presbyterian Church (USA). First it was because his presbytery in Idaho objected that he asked his best friend, who happens to be gay, to preach at his ordination service. Now it’s because his new presbytery in California says that his M.Div. degree from Princeton Theological Seminary — a PC(USA) seminary!!! — isn’t good enough. Few things... Read more
At JoPa Productions we know how important leader networks and informal blog communities are for those working on new and emerging ways of Christianity. And, we know how important face-to-face meetings are in the development of these communities. So, we would like to support you by helping you gather “your folks” together at a reduced cost or entirely free experience (for you) at Christianity21. If you lead a Network (meaning there are a group of people who you regularly meet... Read more
That’s the question that I tweeted yesterday. And then last night, before her talk, I introduced her by reading the tweets that came in. A couple people have asked me to post them, so here they are: As much as she travels at her age, she is the Energizer Bunny of the Great Emergence!!!! I’d suggest that you introduce her as a Christian who truly lives out the teachings of Jesus in her interpersonal relationships as well as a scholar... Read more
If you are reading this in an RSS reader, please click on the post. See what I had to do there? Because if you, like me, read all of your blogs in an RSS reader, then you only see the headline and the first two lines of text on this blog. And, if you’re like me, you very rarely click on the headline to read the entire post. Here at Bnet, only Scot McKnight has his entire feed syndicated. The... Read more
I’ve long admired Stanley Fish, and I’ve written about my reliance on his fantastic book of essays, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Fish is a leading postmodern literary critic and occasional commentator on politics, academia, and religion. In his NYTimes column this week, he wrote about Terry Eagleton’s new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Although a left-wing (aka, Marxist) literary critic, Eagleton has recently taken his fellow Brits... Read more
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