christianity

sacrament

Sacrament or Ordinance? (Part 1)

Recently, Karen Bullock, professor Christian heritage and director of the Ph.D. program at the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute, commented on Baptists celebrating their 400 year anniversary by saying, “…several theologians across the past half century have advocated that Baptists reconsider both the terms and meaning of sacramental acts…Some of this thinking re-engages the sacramental notions of churchly acts and ordinances…”

Over the past few years, I have been actively involved in reading confessions and writings of early Baptists who saw a theological strengthening in the acts of baptism and communion. Normally, to contemporary Baptists, the word “ordinance” is used over “sacrament.” This was done to avoid the Catholic understanding of “sacrament” and to avoid any hint of works related faith. However, over the next few weeks and months, I will present scholarly and lay research on the case for strengthening sacramental language among Baptists.

Indeed, the word sacrament was used among Baptists in the 16th and 17th centuries. However, “ordinance” stuck in favor of Zwingli’s view of baptism and communion. Even modern British Baptists use the word “sacrament” when they speak of baptism and communion.

I found this little bit of encouraging research that opted to spiritually understand what happens at communion. The 1689 London Confession of Baptist Faith, states:

outreach

In Front of the Church

Video blog thoughts…

Pentecost 3C

trinity

Once Upon A Time…

…there was a woman who set out to discover the meaning of life. First, she read everything she could get her hands on–history, philosophy, psychology, religion. While she became a very smart person, nothing she read gave her the answer she was looking for. She found other smart people and asked them about the meaning of life, but while their discussions were long and lively, no two of them agreed on the same thing and still she had no answer.

Finally, she put all her belongings in storage and set off in search of the meaning of life. She went to South America. She went to India. Everywhere she went, people told her they did not know the meaning of life, but they had heard of a man who did, only they were not sure where he lived. She asked about him in every country on earth until finally, deep in the Himalayas, someone told her how to reach his house–a tiny little hut perched on the side of a mountain just below the tree line.

She climbed and climbed to reach his front door. When she finally got there, with knuckles so cold they hardly worked, she knocked.

christians

Is Western Christianity Suffering From Spiritual Amnesia?

This is part of a post by Diana Butler Bass, “Is Western Christianity Suffering From Spiritual Amnesia?”

In the 1990s, I taught history and theology at an evangelical college, a place where the students were serious young Christians. One day, lecturing on the medieval church and the Crusades, I explained how in 1095 Pope Urban II launched a holy war against Muslims. Most of the students took notes. One young woman, looking very worried by the idea of Christians starting a war, shot up her hand. “Professor,” she began, clearly wanting to blame Roman Catholics for the affair, “what did the Protestants say about this?”

“Well,” I answered slowly, “there were no Protestants in 1095.” I did not have the heart to tell her that Protestantism would not exist until more than four hundred years later.

Puzzled, she blurted out, “But where were they?”

The best quote of the article:

At the present juncture of history, Western Christianity is suffering from a bad case of spiritual amnesia. Even those who claim to be devout or conservative often know little about the history of their faith traditions.

So true. Especially for Baptists. We think we are the only church to exist since the time of Christ. I bet you 20% of Baptists think John the Baptist was the first Baptist!

Bass continues:

Our loss of memory began more than two centuries ago, at the high tide of the Enlightenment. As modern society developed, the condition of broken memory — being disconnected from the past — became more widespread. Indeed, in the words of one French Catholic thinker, the primary spiritual dilemma of contemporary religion is the “loss and reconstruction” of memory.

via Is Western Christianity Suffering From Spiritual Amnesia? – Diana Butler Bass – God’s Politics Blog.

spirituality

So you want to be spiritual? Try this:

With so many Americans calling themselves “spiritual” rather than religious, many in the Christian community have asked, “How can we make Christianity more spiritual?” That is a laughable question because Christianity is inherently spiritual. Prayer, baptism, worship, singing, communion, fellowship, reading scripture, and the list can go on. Sure, Christianity does not have rocks, stones, and other “new age” objects or artifacts, but there is a steady diet of spiritual things in Christianity.

For hundreds of years mystic, monastic, and ascetic Christians have sought to have a deeper connection with God. St. John of the Cross, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, and Thomas Merton are a few names that Christians may have heard before. Sometimes their stories are bizarre, but often many mystics simply wanted a prayerful spiritual life.

Some Christians may run the other way when they hear the word “mystical”, but believe it or not every time we pray we are being mystical. When we pray, we are praying to a transcendent God to ask or praise him for supernatural works. When we Christians use the word “mystical” we are talking about the spiritual life and we do not have to speak in tongues to be spiritual either.

One the most transformational components of the spiritual life is reading scripture. However, many find the Bible boring and need a guide when reading. One the most spiritual things we can do when we read scripture is to participate in lectio divina. What the heck is that?

Jesus

Americans Feel Connected to Jesus

With the “fall of Christianity” threatening to end the faith as we know it (yeah right), The Barna Group conducted a study of 1,002 U.S. adults, discovered:

Two out of every three adults (67%) claimed to have a “personal relationship” with Jesus that is currently active and that influences their life.
While a majority of most demographic segments said they had such an active and personal relationship with Jesus, some segments were more likely than others to claim such a connection.
Women (72%) were more likely than men (62%) to do so.
Protestants were more likely than Catholics to cite such a relationship (82% versus 72%).
People who describe themselves as mostly conservative on social and political matters were far more likely than those who see themselves as liberal on such issues to connect with Jesus (79% compared to 48%).
And one of the most instructive findings was that the younger a person was, the less likely they were to claim to have an active and influential bond with Jesus. Specifically, while 72% of adults 65 or older and 70% of Boomers (i.e., ages 46 to 64) had such a relationship in place, 65% of Busters (i.e., ages 27 to 45) and only 52% of Mosaics (ages 18 to 26) did, as well.
A large majority of Americans (59%) also believes that Jesus gets personal in their lives, going so far as to feel their pain and share in their suffering.

via The Barna Group – Americans Feel Connected to Jesus.

faith

Doubts, Faith, & Belief

The Barna Group, an evangelical research organization has yielded some surprising findings about America’s Christian and spiritual beliefs:

Half of all adults firmly believe that the Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches. That proportion includes the four-fifths of born again adults (79%) who concur.

Just one-quarter of adults (27%) are convinced that Satan is a real force. Even a minority of born again adults (40%) adopt that perspective.

Similarly, only one-quarter of adults (28%) believe that it is impossible for someone to earn their way into Heaven through good behavior. Not quite half of all born again Christians (47%) strongly reject the notion of earning salvation through their deeds.

A minority of American adults (40%) are persuaded that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life while He was on earth. Slightly less than two-thirds of the born again segment (62%) strongly believes that He was sinless.

Seven out of ten adults (70%) say that God is the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe who still rules it today. That includes the 93% of born again adults who hold that conviction.

If the majority of Americans claim to be Christian, then this study brings to light about the faith of most Christians in America. In our Gospel text for this Sunday, we will examine the faith in the disciples who saw Jesus.

We find our disciples, who are living in fear of the Jews coming to finish off Jesus’ followers, living in a house on a Sunday. The doors are locked and as they are living in a cowardly state Jesus appears in the house.

blog, twitter

"Twitter Storms" & Haikus Attack Glenn Beck

If a tree falls during a “twitter storm” and no one is around, does it make a sound?

That is what I asked myself when I stumbled upon this morning’s Washington Post “On Faith” section that caught my attention: Protests on Twitter against Glenn Beck. That’s right, cyberspace protesting using Twitter: a Twitter storm. Apparently, this is the first such known protest on Twitter.

You may remember Glenn Beck pleading his listeners to flee their churches if their priest or pastor preached “social justice” because those are code words for “socialism.” You can read my blog post about this at my Times Union Newspaper blog here and here.

These protests consist of “twitter storming” or “tweet storming” Beck. Apparently, a “tweetstorm” occurs when users on Twitter inundate a user’s account with thousands of messages, mentions, and replies that use the user’s @ username. The very interesting and funny website Haik U Glenn Beck has thousands of haikus that speak to our “inner zen” of poetry. The idea is to use these haikus to send to Beck’s twitter account — one a minute till they run out.

Some of the haikus that stuck out on the website are:

Holy Week

What is so good about Good Friday?

Good Friday? How about Bad Friday, Black Friday, or Depressing Friday? If this is the day in which we remember Jesus suffering, bleeding, and dying on the cross, what is so good about it? The movie, The Passion of the Christ, in many ways, change the way we feel about Christ suffering. The graphic and bloody movie was a stirring portray of Jesus’ last hours. For some, Good Friday induces feelings of guilt, depression, and even remorse. Christians, on this day, truly feel a sense of sadness.

On this day of sadness, we wonder: Where did we get the term “Good Friday? There is no clear answer, but the word “good” and “God” mixed together in the English speaking world. For instance, the surname “Goodspeed” derives from “Godspeed”, which comes from the expression “God speed (with you)” The expression, “good bye” came from the phase, “God be with ye (you). Despite the origins of the phases, we don’t really feel “good” on Good Friday.

No matter what the origins of the phase comes from we cannot escape our feelings. Are we meant to feel guilty and depressed on Good Friday? We don’t feel “good” about Christ suffering. Are we meant to feel the pressure to be grateful of Jesus’ torment?

Christianity Today recently published an article that gives a good take on this day. John Witvliet explains why we should not punish ourselves:

Saint Patrick

The Top 3 Myths of Saint Patrick’s Day

On March 17th everyone is Irish! We wear green, drink green beer and shamrock shakes for Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick has become a beloved figure in the Western Hemisphere, but where did Saint Patrick come from? What did he do to become so beloved?

Believe it or not, Saint Patrick is not a canonized saint by the Catholic Church. Patrick was deemed a “saint” before the official canonization process was formed. Check out the list of officially canonized saints here. Yes, Patrick was responsible for missionary journeys in Ireland, but there is also a lot of misinformation about Patrick:

MYTH #1 Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland.

Snakes seem to embody everything evil. We get a lot of distrust of snakes from the book of Genesis because Satan is represented as a serpent. In addition, snakes are elusive, deadly, and just plain scary.

The Patrick snake myth is dispelled:

Ireland, after all, is surrounded by icy ocean waters—much too cold to allow snakes to migrate from Britain or anywhere else. But since snakes often represent evil in literature, “when Patrick drives the snakes out of Ireland, it is symbolically saying he drove the old, evil, pagan ways out of Ireland [and] brought in a new age…

Myth #2 Saint Patrick was Irish

Continue Reading…

Culture

The Theology of Lost

For the last few years, I have been a fan of LOST. I have watched ABC’s hit show with much excitement and also frustration. Unanswered questions and confusing story lines are the main focus of my frustration. Now that the show is in its final season, I have come to see the show not just as entertainment but also an exercise in story telling, debates in modern moral dilemmas, and reflection upon theological undertones.

Still, the show has been able to hold my attention by using cliff hangers that seem to stick closer to me than Juliet’s puppy love for Sawyer. In addition, J. Abrams and his crew are clever to used the internet and a gorilla marketing campaign to promote the show.

Clearly there are religious elements. The themes of good and evil have been present since Jack walked through the airport in episode one. The concept of “The Others” is almost cultist. Remote communal living, clear rules, secrets, protocol, and unquestionable allegiance to a leader lend to the mystique of the show. Theologically, the show is rich with symbolism. There are obvious religious references, but there are quiet ones as well.

I’m not the first to make the this connection. Several bloggers and ministers have commented on the theology connection. Here are my top 5 fascinating theological figures or themes in LOST:

Ash Wednesday

A Baptist Who Celebrates Ash Wednesday?

Huh? A Baptist who celebrates Ash Wednesday? That’s like an American celebrating Boxing Day. The two just don’t go together.

Despite the misnomer, Baptists do celebrate Ash Wednesday and Lent, especially this Baptist. Two of the classic Baptist distinctives is local autonomy and soul liberty. Each Baptist church has the freedom to worship however the church sees fit. Since we Baptists do not have a book of worship or order, like other denominations, Baptists are free to worship as they feel led. This, of course, does not happen in a vacuum. I have always believed that Baptists must be led by scripture, reason, tradition, and experience (the Wesleyan Quadrilateral) with scripture being the final authority.

Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent. The goal of Ash Wednesday is to reflect upon our humanness, our need for forgiveness, and our connection to Christ’s last days. These themes are symbolized by the imposition of ashes on the forehead, with the words, “You are dust and to dust you shall return…” during the worship service. In the Old Testament, ashes were a sign of penitence and mourning. Job was known for placing ashes upon his head to mourn the loss of his family.

Sure, Catholics do it, but that does not mean that we become Catholic if we receive ashes. We are merely participating in the greater historical liturgical practices of Christians. There is nothing magical about the ashes. You are not any more holy for participating in Ash Wednesday, but it is just another way to experience the presence of God in our lives in a symbolic way.

But, where did this act of worship and repentance on Ash Wednesday come from? Christianity Today provides some insight:

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