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As part of a class last semester, I had to describe what has become known as Wesley’s Quadrilateral to a current issue facing the church.  John Wesley – founder of Methodism – would view the things going on in his time through the lens of his quadrilateral: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.  Be warned.  This is a long read, but (in my opinion) worth it…  Here is the question and my response:

The United Methodist Church holds that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.  What is your understanding of this theological position of the Church?  Demonstrate its application in at least one current issue of the Church.

As one who grew up in the UMC, I don’t have a memory of a specific time that I chose this practice of Wesley’s theology over another tradition.  Even having gone through confirmation and the variety of congregations and faith traditions visited as part of that class, I felt aware of other possibilities; but none seemed as perfect a fit for me as the UMC.  In hindsight, I think the reason has a great deal to do with the way United Methodists approach scripture and the application of scripture to the world.  In short, my comfort at the earliest stages of faith with the UMC has a great deal to do with the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral stresses scripture as the primary source for all we know about God, the life of Jesus Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit and about faith.  The way I understand this is that the scriptures contain everything that I need – and that we as a community of faith need – in order to lead a life according to God’s call, and so the difficulty lies not in where to find God’s message but how to understand God’s message.  The texts we read today come from a long line of storytellers and scribes who have painstakingly and prayerfully worked to share this message, even across social, cultural, temporal, and linguistic boundaries.  The difficulties in bringing such a message lies not in the scriptures themselves, but in our own human limitations.  In light of these limitations, what a wonder it is that God – who has given us all that we need to know through the scriptures – speaks to us even beyond those scriptures.

Through the tradition of generations of Christians, we can be in dialogue with a community across time.  As an individual, I think it is foolish and even narcissistic to think that I alone – even with the guidance of scripture – am able to discern all there is to know about God and God’s wishes for humanity.  Instead, reading from ancient and contemporary theologians and following the example of traditional practices offers a broader perspective for the Christian faith and experience.  It is important to note that part of being in dialogue is the understanding that we may not always agree with every member of our community.  Rather than seeing this as troubling, I find this to be a sign of God’s grace and God’s infinite ability to relate to humanity and to creation.  I don’t mean to say that God is different depending on individual human perception, but instead that God responds to us according to our needs and relates to us each independently and completely.

It is the nature of God’s intimate relationship with each person that makes it possible for us to experience God, and there is no shortage of written accounts of these kinds of personal experiences from the scriptures to Augustine to Wesley’s strange warming of the heart.  My own experience began – in a sense – with the understanding that I was called to ordained ministry.  This experience did more than open my mind to Christian service, and an equally important affect was that I began to become more aware of God’s movement in my own life.  As I continued forward from that time, I was able to experience more fully God’s specific presence and call on my life.  I was also able to look back to memories from before my call experience and – with newly opened eyes – could see that God had been actively present far longer than I had been paying attention.  Collectively, these experiences draw me forward to God and to what God calls me to do.

The way I find most effective to tie together these aspects of scripture, tradition, and experience is through the gift of reason.  As children of God, we have not been created to blindly love God, but to choose to love God, and I think the only way for us to come to this choice is to use reason to put together scripture with tradition and reason in a way that makes sense for us individually.  Using this gift of reason, we can assess whether our experiences fall in line with what we read in scripture; we can discern whether the traditional practices of our faith make sense in our current context and our own experience; we can examine our reading of scriptures in light of our tradition and experiences.  In this way, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral helps us to more fully experience God’s divine lure in our lives.

One way to apply the Quadrilateral to a current issue of the Church is in relation to the immigration bill recently signed into law in Arizona.  This law will require all immigrants to carry documentation and will give local law enforcement officials wide-ranging power to interrogate or even arrest anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.  While I am sensitive to the ongoing national debate about immigration in the United States, this application will focus on the specific law itself rather than the broader issue of immigration reform.

When Jesus was asked about the most important commandment – written in the canonical Gospels – he cites Leviticus 19:18, saying that we should not only love God but that we should love our neighbors in the same way that we love ourselves.  In Luke, Jesus follows with the parable of the Good Samaritan – who reason and tradition tell us would have been considered in that context to have been an immigrant and an outcast – who acts out of love and compassion.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus gives the disciples a new commandment: to love each other just as Jesus has loved them.  As I reason through these scriptures, I think the core of the Christian faith is love!  Is it possible to love our brothers and sisters in Christ if we are more concerned with their immigration status than their wellbeing?  I don’t think so.  To add to the scriptural support, the same chapter of Leviticus that Jesus quotes when he says we are to love our neighbors says, “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.  The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34, NRSV).

This passage reminds readers of the Israelites in Egypt and I also think of the Babylonian exile.  The people of God have been aliens in strange lands, and tradition reminds us of inhumane treatment, murder, and the unyielding injustice of those who have been under such oppression.  I think of Peter’s vision in Acts, and his experience that followed preaching to the Gentiles.  Though the early Christian leaders questioned his motives, his vision and the presence of the Holy Spirit silenced the critics.

I also think of the North American slave trade of the eighteenth century, and addressed directly by John Wesley who wrote, “If, therefore, you have any regard to justice, (to say nothing of mercy, nor the revealed law of God,) render unto all their due. Give liberty to whom liberty is due, that is, to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature… Be gentle toward all men; and see that you invariably do unto every one as you would he should do unto you.” [John Wesley, “Thoughts Upon Slavery,” http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/wesley/thoughtsuponslavery.stm, 1774.]

And finally, experience tells me that I have been invited into a community of God.  In my experience, community is not only a place for dialogue and friendship, but is a place for safety; it is a place of sanctuary.  I do not see community as a place where everyone looks or thinks or acts the same, but I do see community as a place for unity and our common connection to our creator and redeemer.  Reasoning all of these together, I see no way that this law in Arizona is a showing of love, a recognition of the immigrant as citizen, or an invitation to community.  In that light, this is a law that I cannot – as a person of faith and good conscience – support or follow.

For a long time I’ve been watching the Internet develop.  Though it will likely say more about my age than is comfortable, the reality is that I’ve been around since Netscape Navigator 1.0.  Yes, I’m serious.  My first email client was Pine.  Yes, via Telnet.  And yes, I’m still serious.

What I’m trying to say is that I’ve seen the evolution of the World Wide Web.  And what’s fantastic is that it’s not the giant corporations that always get the most traffic.  The Internet is driven from the bottom, a kind of technological grass-roots organism with life all its own.  So the question is:  who’s in charge?

Seth Godin‘s book Tribes compares our current social context in light of technology to ancient human groupings of tribes.  With the availability of information and the ease of global communication, humanity has begun to connect in this ancient way.

This isn’t to say that we’re forming one giant global tribe.  No way.  We’re forming millions of smaller tribes in much the same way as our ancestors.  For them, tribes were often formed based on location.  For us, technology has torn down the barriers of geography and given us the opportunity to connect with that [insert the latest cult classic here] fan from the other side of the globe.  So again the question is:  who’s in charge?

Again, it’s not the corporations or the politicians or the rich or the powerful – at least not in my view.  It’s the people who stand up, regardless of their location – geographically or socially.  It’s the people who manage their fear of standing out and instead choose to stand out.  It’s the people who take a bold position rather than carefully seeking out and balancing in the center.

So.  Who’s in charge?  Are you?

So yesterday I preached on Acts 11:1-18 (Peter’s vision that prompted him to preach to the Gentiles) and John 13:31-35 (Jesus gives the disciples a new commandment: to love one another). In it, I applied the idea of “love in action” to the new immigration law in Arizona.

I have to admit that I was very nervous bringing something political into a sermon. Mostly, I’m worried about alienating people. Ok, really, I’m worred about pissing someone off and making them leave the church. I’m not sure I want that kind of responsibility!! And yet, I feel strongly about talking about faith and I think God calls all persons to speak boldly, to speak the truths that we understand from God.

So how do we reconcile this? How can we do ministry boldly? How do we do it without driving people out of our congregation, without excluding voices that do not echo our own?

Or should we be less bold? Should we smooth out the rough places so that all persons feel welcome and at home?

This is a difficult challenge, and I don’t think for a second that I have the answers. And so I ask the community to participate in this dialogue. To be cliche for a moment, what would Jesus do? What would you do?

Here’s a conversation I had with three UMC clergy from the Cal-Pac Conference on the upcoming Lectionary scripture.  The verses can be read at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library.  Voices heard are Rev. Krista Givens, Rev. Molly Vetter, Rev. J. Dan Lewis, and me!  This is a ”first-attempt” episode, so if you like it please forward a link to others and comment to let us know!

For those reading this on readers that don’t support media, you can view the original post here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Here’s the video of the Nickle Creek song.  It’s groovy.

If it’s not embedded on this page, click here instead.

Here’s what I wonder – and many others have too.  Why do we call him doubting?  Weren’t all the other disciples equally questionable?  How many of them ran to the tomb to greet the risen Christ?  I’m not saying that Thomas didn’t have a crisis of faith in the moment that the teacher he’d been following for the past three years was arrested and murdered.  He clearly did.  Didn’t the rest of them have that same crisis of faith?

What we forget is that Thomas is the only disciple to assign divinity to Christ.  When he finally saw Jesus for himself, he said:  “My lord and my God!”  Nobody else calls Jesus God.  Nobody.

So did he doubt?  Sure.  And did he come to understand more clearly?  Totally…

I’ve had some ongoing dialogue with an atheist (I’ve also heard the phrase non-theist) friend of mine.  Yesterday he posted on my Facebook page a Daily Beast article quoting Orange County Pastor Wiley Drake who appears to be calling for the deaths of Congress members – and perhaps others – who support health care reform in the United States.

My own views on reform are clear in a post here, and so I wish to be clear that my point with this point is not to reiterate what I’ve already shared.  Instead, I wish to dialogue on dialogue!  I want to highlight this ongoing conversation, because I understand the perception of Christians today and I think the perception must change.

So the link to the article was posted with the comment from my friend: so, um, yeah…

My thoughts:  Wow. Sounds like a real wacko!! [Edit: 'Wacko is, as you know, a technical term.]  This is one of the many who give the Christianity that I affirm a bad name…

At this point, my friend pushed back: But that passage is in the bible, he is simply stating the intent of gods plan as detailed in that book. Are you implying that there are somethings about gods words that can be incorrect? The passage is pretty clear, I don’t think there is alot to interpet there. Is he wacko or is he following true to the un-erroring word of god better than your cult?

That’s when I suddenly had a lot to say.  So I share the following text hoping to further this conversation.  I invite conversation here, knowing that there are many different perspectives.  I differ from Drake in many ways, and one of those is the claim that I am right and everyone else is wrong.  So here are my thoughts, and I look forward to yours:

So, I don’t have much with me right now in terms of study resources. I’m shooting from the hip here. So let’s see what we come up with.

Many of the Psalms were written by King David, but I don’t know whether Psalm 149 (the Psalm Drake quotes) is a Davidic Psalm. It kinda sounds like it, so I’ll roll with that assumption.

So with that in mind the entire sentence in that part of the Psalm (verses 6-9) is, “Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with fetters and their nobles with chains of iron, to execute on them the judgment decreed. This is glory for all his faithful ones.” And to be honest, I’m not sure what it has to do with the healthcare bill. To me it looks like he took something out of context. Again, that’s what many people do that give the Christianity I prefer (or choose) a bad name…. See More

So I argue that the the passage isn’t clear. With that said, let’s continue with the assumption that this is a Psalm written by David. The same David who sent a guy to the front lines of a battle to die ’cause he wanted the guy’s wife. Not always a stand-up character, and something that indicates that he was clearly influenced by the world around him. And what was appropriate in his world? Violence and war, especially for a king.

Even if I took that text to mean what Drake says it means (which I don’t), I would choose instead to look at some of Jesus’ sayings and would put more weight there. Jesus (whether or not you believe in his divinity) had some profound ideas about serving the people around you regardless of their social station. He encouraged hanging out with the social undesirables, the sick, the poor, women and children (who were second-class during that time period), the disabled. And in my mind, passing healthcare reform fits right into that message.

With that in mind, do I claim that the bible is the complete inerrant word of God? Nope. There are contradictions in the bible itself, so how could that be? I do say that there are profound ideas, and I do believe that that the bible was inspired by God; and it was written by the hands of men who were influenced and pressured by the social norms. Then it was translated by people who had their own interpretations!

And finally… Cult? Come on… The faith I affirm is an idea, and it’s an idea that works for me. It’s an idea I share sometimes, but – as I hope you know by now – it’s not one that I say is the end-all-be-all Truth-with-a-capital-T. Is it true for me? Yup. Does that mean it has to be true for everybody? I don’t think so.

And those ideas may get me labeled a heretic. And have, honestly. And to that I say, bring it on!

Here are the lyrics from the sending song I wrote for the close of Theology After Google. I am humbled to have been part of such an event, and am grateful for the presenters, leaders, and those whose paths intersected with mine.  Here are the lyrics:

Praise God who has created
Praise God in unity
We pray for each other
We pray in community

May we go into creation
Created new; transformed through you
May we go to do a new thing
Blessed by you, creating too…

I’m a little disturbed at how excited I am about the Theology After Google conference that started tonight – ok, last night ’cause this is an early morning post.  The opening session was loaded with prophetic voices including Philip Clayton, John Franke, Monica Coleman, Adam Walker Cleaveland, Callid Keefe-Perry, and Spencer Burke.

And there was the dialogue you’d expect about how to talk about faith in a 21st century tech-laden world. There was the obligatory Jeff Jarvis reference – we are talking about theology after Google!  We acknowledged that “Christians are slow, but we live in a world that’s fast,” and that “theology is not something you consume, but something you produce” (from Clayton).  We even discussed “theosis: the process of becoming God – not becoming Christ but being Christ-like” (Keefe-Perry).

Really amazing stuff.  Truly.  And I’m excited for the rest of the conference.

I wonder though.  Will we take this and do something?  And I don’t mean will we participate in this conference that is – in my opinion – on the leading edge of theology and sociology, and then go back home to tweet and blog to our hearts content.  If we’re here, most of us are doing that already.

I wonder if we will take this and build from it something new.  I wonder if we will be transformed by the ideas of our peers and use the energy of our own transformation to do a new thing.

So, will you?  If you’re at TAG10 in Claremont or if you’re streaming, will you take this challenge?  Will you be transformed and do something more than you’re already doing?

I dare you…

The more I think about it, the more I think sex divides us more than it brings us together.  How’s that for counter-intuitive?!

And yet it seems to be all we can talk about.  Or more accurately, it’s all we can think about as long as we don’t talk about it except that we can accuse other people of thinking about it or doing it wrong.  Just don’t broadcast it.  During the Super Bowl.  Ever.  Unless it’s a commercial and they paid for it.

Why don’t we talk about sex?  Because we’re very busy hiding it between the thin pages of our bibles.  That way it’s safely hidden from view.  It’s safely hidden in the most scandalous, raucous, kinky, sex-laden book I’ve ever read.

But don’t read those parts.  Those parts make us uncomfortable.

And it’s getting into the uncomfortable parts of faith that Brian McLaren does in his new book, A New Kind of Christianity.  McLaren dives directly and fearlessly into the sex question, spending a great deal of time discussing what is clearly a public hatred of non-heterosexual attraction and behavior.  And he cleverly steers us away from closed-minded rhetoric into thoughtful, scripturally-supported territory.

The reality is, homosexuality has become more of a buzz-word these days, used most often to generate fear and hate.  Residents of California have heard all too often that gay marriage will ruin marriage for everyone, although I’ve yet to hear how exactly that would work.  Conservative Christians will quote from any of 6 passages to condemn homosexuality – although Justin Cannon has written a compelling argument to all of these.  Go Justin.

McLaren correctly recognizes that non-heterosexuality is not the only part of the sex question in relation to faith.  Sadly, we don’t seem to be doing any better even when we avoid that sticky homosexuality thing.  McLaren reminds us of these chilling realities:

• Social anonymity makes secret-sex easy.
• Easy drive-by birth control (as long as you can afford it, and many can) makes us forget that sex can lead to pregnancy.
• The technology of the condom and of medicine make us forget that sex can lead to STIs.
• The average marriage age is going up while the average age to hit puberty is going down.  That’s a growing gap of time for extra-marrital sex.
• Porn is easy to find online.
• Commercial media is all about sex and sex appeal.  Yes, even during the Super Bowl.
• Poverty and unemployment leave people with very little to do.  And if you don’t have much to do, doesn’t sex sound good?  Even though you can’t afford birth control.  Nor do you have the $$ to support children who will then grow up in poverty & repeat the cycle.

But don’t talk about sex.  That’s for private conversations.  That should be talked about at home.  That way it’s safe.  And in the words of Dr. Phil, how’s that going for ya?

I don’t think it’s the gay Christian who’s damned (or the gay pagan, for that matter).

If there’s any place at all to talk about sex, shouldn’t it be in our churches? Doesn’t it sound better to talk about sex in the context of God and spirituality?  Doesn’t it sound better to teach appropriate love and compassion rather than hatred and divisiveness?

Because when I read my Bible, that’s what I find.  Yes, there’s scandal.  But that’s not all.

I just got home after attending the Clayton v. Dennett debate over at CGU.  I’m still processing, and will likely want to watch the debate again.  If you missed it or need to watch it again, the place to do so is here:

Here are a few thoughts I’d wish to share, and then I’d invite dialogue.  In other words, please comment!  And for those who read this blog on Facebook, please follow the link at the bottom to view the original post and comment there.  Thanks.

Before beginning, I recognize that this post is long.  It’s very long.  So let me summarize here my basic observations:

1. Persons of faith need to do a better job (following the example of science) of openly criticizing extremists who say and do things counter to the majority of a faith tradition.
2. Theology must take place in public.
3. The most interesting people in the world – regardless of their ideas about faith – are those who are open and available to ideas and conversation from outside their norm.
4. All humans must risk being wrong if they want the possibility of being right.

Now.  The debate in more detail.

The first half had to do with pretty detailed philosophy.  It’s like they were testing the waters.  It was almost an intellectual foreplay – to be especially blunt about it.  Clayton and Dennett seemed to be getting a feel for each other’s styles and approaches.  And maybe – thinking of this like a poker game – looking for tells, for vulnerabilities.

And then we got into the dialogue on religion.  I was only a little surprised to hear how much agreement there was between Clayton and Dennett.  I got the sense that Dennett has the biggest problem with those theists who say that their ideas are the only Truths and that anything else is wrong (or anathema or worthy of hellfire & damnation).  That is not, however, the position that Clayton presented.  I would argue in fact that a great number of Christians – counting myself in that number – would say that we are open to the multitude of ways that the Ultimate may be expressed.

Returning to the conversation about extremists in faith communities, the following exchange took place (my transcription isn’t perfect, so bear with me):

Dennett: In every religious tradition there is unpresentable radicalism, fanaticism and it’s everybody’s problem.  And moreover, it should be the particular problem of the people in the same religion…

The irony is, every person who goes out and does good works for whatever their religion is, is providing protective coloration for the bad people in the same faith.  The Mafia would be so clever if they would go out and build a lot of hospitals and things like that because then they would not be so obviously bad guys.

Every time a benign religious group does good works, they cannot help but give succor and cover to the malignant versions of the same religion.

Moderator: How is that different from science?  Isn’t there a lot of bad that gets done in the name of science?

Dennett:  Fortunately the scientific community is forthright in its criticism and its rooting out of that.  I do not see the liberal Christians going out and naming names and calling out the radical fundamentalist christians and saying “you are a disgrace to christianity” which is what the scientists say to the bad scientists.

Clayton argued that many Christians do just that, and it got me thinking.  I think progressive Christians need to do more of that!  I think progressive Christians have more work to do in becoming more vocal, more outspoken.  I think Christians must be bold, not only in calling out those whose voices are out of touch with Christian teachings, but also bold in talking openly and plainly about our theology.

Christians must no longer be relegated to the category of people who believe what they’re told.  We must challenge and explore, we must theorize and evaluate, and we must be relentlessly open to new ideas and new ways to express those ideas.  Science continually reports exponential advancement.  So where are the news articles of new advancements in religion?  This is not to say that progress is left undone; but where is that progress to be seen?

If the progression of religion is to be left in the academic institution, then it is to be left behind.  The forum for progress is in the open – just as in science – to be reviewed and picked over, and to be boldly and constructively criticized.  Let theology be released and renewed in the open.

Clayton and Dennett found common ground discussing what kind of persons they find interesting:

Clayton:  The biggest danger it seems to me is to say that all humans know we know with certainty, and the areas which are speculative or difficult to figure out – the hardest philosophical issues – leave us with no idea how to proceed.  I guess I would argue it belongs somehow to the nature of what it is to be a human person to grapple with those questions that stretch our reason into areas where we go as far as we possibly can go.

Dennett:  I agree completely with that.

It seems that the persons they found most interesting were those who weren’t dogmatic, who don’t claim artificial certainty, and who don’t claim to know the unknowable.  Instead, interesting people are those who are open to the new and the now, whether or not they ascribe to any particular faith.

As the dialogue came to a close, Clayton and Dennett began to discuss their differing views of “ultimate reality.”  Clayton paraphrased both their views saying that Dennett sees the universe as the only ultimate and cannot see what could possibly be beyond that; anything beyond is meaningless.  Clayton says that the universe is a product of – or is contained within – an ultimate reality which is broader and deeper.

Then Dennett asked what I thought was the most important question – and one that I argue we should all ask ourselves.  He asked, “If you changed your mind about that – about what’s ultimate – what difference would it make?  What would the world look like to you then?”

Here is the key to the openness that I think is paramount to the continuing dialogue among theists and non-theists, and also among differing faith traditions.  What if we had to face being wrong?  What if we woke up one morning and found out that everything that we held to be “True” with that capital-T was false?  Can we even imagine that possibility?

And I submit that we must imagine that possibility.  It is not until we face the possibility that we are wrong that we can have the faith that we are right – whether our convictions are theistic or non-theistic.  We must be able to admit that we could be wrong in order to be in fruitful dialogue with one another and to collectively come to greater understanding.  Anything less is inadequate and – I would argue – counter-productive.

And so, open to the possibility that I could be wrong, I invite comments and thoughts, criticisms and opportunities for growth.  Let the conversation continue.