Owner: Rude Armchair Theology URL:http://www.rudetheology.com/ Join Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2006 20:10:01 -0500 Rating:1 Site Description: Just a personal web journal, usually on theological topics. It's "rude" in three senses: "crude" in that I have little formal theological training; "offensive" in that the things I write unintentionally tick folks off sometimes, and "rough" in the form of Site statistics:Click here
Silly postmodern drivel 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Google tells me that a search for "terminator matrix invisibles zen art motorcycle maintenance" yields no hits. Must correct that. The Terminator films, the Matrix films, the Invisibles comic book series, and the novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance have an awful lot to do with each other, thematically. Something about the rationalistic, mechanistic, binary, good/bad black/white true/false establishment mindset of our culture and how all good lil' Messiahs must fight against it. Or some such rot. Read more:Silly
Great post from Scot McKnight 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Elizabeth was asking (in the comments to a recent post) for some high-quality Christian theology. I recommended some books, but lo, this morning my RSS reader fed me this great post from Scot McKnight on salvation vs. discipleship. Good stuff, in my opinion. It's short, too. Bite-sized.I will get around to blogging about my Minnesota experience, I promise, but you go away for six days and you come back BUSY! (Or I do, anyway.) Read more:Great
The Kingdom and Power 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Really good stuff from Grace on "The Kingdom
and Power". You should check it out.
Come and grow 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So yesterday, I get an e-mail from A. Bowie Snodgrass, Web Content Editor of the Office of Communication of the Episcopal Church, saying that my blog was, at some point within the last year, one of the top 25 referring domains to the "Come and Grow" evangelism campaign of the national church. Frankly, that's a little scary. I love dearly each and every one of you readers of this humble blog, but one thing you aren't is numerous.Anyway, Bowie wanted to know if I'd be willing to mention/link to a new survey regarding the future of the Episcopal Church's online evangelism, which is available on the Episcopal Church homepage until Friday, April 7. So, sure thing, sez I. The survey is interesting, and Bowie says that folks who aren't part of the Episcopal Church are especially welcome to fill it out. I myself will need to put some thought into my answers.So, give it a look, and if you feel inspired to do so, fill out the survey. The church, I think, could sure use your help. Dan
Helping the Lamb Center help Fairfax's homeless folks 1970-01-01 00:59:59 My friend Marco has set up a blog for the Lamb Center
which will be updated with their current needs:http://lambcenter.blogspot.com/Also, if you click on "deliveries calendar" in the right-hand links area, you can get to a calendar showing who's bringing what when to the Lamb Center. If you want to sign up to being stuff (sandwiches, etc.) on a particular day, leave a comment, and Marco will update the actual calendar post shortly.Marco also created a Yahoo! Groups e-mail list for discussing the Lamb Center's needs and how to help meet them:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lambcenterIf you'd like to subscribe to the that forum, just send a blank e-mail to:lambcenter-subscribe@yahoogroups.comYou can choose to get a daily digest, so you get no more than one e-mail per day.If you live in the area, please consider helping, and please pass this info onto folks
in your churches, friends, etc. With the new restrictions it's now living with (including being completely dependent on us to bri Read more:homeless
, Helping
, Fairfax
Marcus Borg: The Last Week 1970-01-01 00:59:59 In the tradition of "the other Mike's"* fine series on Miroslav Volf's teachings at the Emergent Theological Conversation (#1, #2, #3, #4), I thought I'd blog some of my notes from Marcus
Borg's engaging lecture at the National Cathedral last week, entitled "The Last Week". The lecture shares a title and subject with a book recently published by Borg and John Dominic Crossan, about the last week of the life of Jesus, with an emphasis on the account in the Gospel of Mark. If you'd like to actually watch the talk (highly recommended!), you can check it out here.*(I know, I know: He's Mike; I'm the other Mike.) ;-)Notes on The Last Week, a Lecture by Marcus Borg at the National Cathedral, Tuesday, 14 March, 2006With few churchgoers able to attend Good Friday services any more, many churches have replaced the traditional Palm Sunday liturgy with one for "Passion Sunday" - essentially, the Good Friday liturgy moved five days earlier. Why? Otherwise, many would go from Palm Sund
The Continuing Conversion of the Church (3) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Chapter three of CCotC is entitled "Mission as Witness". In it, Darrell Guder argues that the essential character of the mission of the followers of Jesus is to be his witnesses. To begin to explain what this means, I think I need to quote the first paragraph of this chapter in full.What makes the gospel truly good news is the fact that the Jesus events are the outcome of God's loving decision to heal the broken creation. We have described this as God's mission. To demonstrate divine love, God brought about salvation for all creation in the death of Jesus on the cross. That joyful message is now to be made known to all the world. That is how God's mission now continues. The center or core of the missio Dei is evangelization: the communication of the gospel. Carrying the good news across all borders and into all the world is an essential part of the kingdom message which Jesus brought and embodied. Jesus Christ intended the mission of the apostolic faith community as the ne Read more:Church
, Conversion
Pillar of fire 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So last night, I was praying night prayer, or Compline, in my bedroom. (The link is to some short Celtic Complines from the Northumbria Community in England, but I also pray using various versions of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer as well as other prayer books, especially Celtic ones). This is an on-again, off-again habit I've had which I recently resumed following advice from my Discipleship Group leader, Carl. It's been a good thing in my life, so thanks, Carl.Anyway, it was late at night, and Tina was already asleep, and I lit a stick of incense and a candle (as is my habit) and started to pray Compline. I want to talk a little more about the candle. I had one of those little glass candle holders that's made for a votive candle and is about the size of a small juice glass. It's green. I didn't have any votive candles, so what I put in it was what they call a "tea light", which is one of those little, short, round candles in a little metal cup, about the same diamete Read more:Pillar
Missional vs. Intentional: Smackdown! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So I've been blogging a lot about this "Missional
Church" idea. Go back two posts for a fairly concise definition of what this is. Innovation in this space is being done by folks like the Gospel and Our Culture Network, Church Innovations, Missional Leadership Institute, and Luther Seminary. Most of those folks come from a mainline Protestant background: Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Mennonites, etc. However, I've discovered something interesting by creating a Google Alert on the word "missional": the idea, or at least the terminology, is catching on like wildfire among conservative, evangelical, even fundamentalist churches and church systems. (I'm not talking about emerging churches--they also tend to be thoroughly missional, at least in theory, but they aren't the big Google Alert generators.)I haven't done a lot of research into their use of the term, but I wonder (idly and ignorantly) whether all of those conservative churches are thoroughly grounded in the deep theol Read more:Intentional
, Smackdown
And Eleanor too 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I think I stated earlier in this blog that George W. Bush is an Episcopalian. Turns out I was mistaken. George H. W. is an Episcopalian; George W. is a Methodist. I'm actually somewhat relieved. I have a certain amount of respect for Bush the Elder. Not complete respect, but some. But the Methodists can have Little Shrub. :-) FDR was an Episcopalian. :-D Read more:Eleanor
Done. 1970-01-01 00:59:59 OK, I'm done tagging (aka "labeling") old posts, so those of you who subscribe to this blog's feed in a feed reader can quit cursing me. :-)
Rethinking dualities 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Upon reflection, I'm a little concerned by some of the lines I drew in my last post.I implied (as I perhaps have in the past) that liberal mainliners tend not to have a sense of outward-directed mission in the world. But that's not exactly true; many liberal mainliners have a strong sense of this, but it tends to be limited in concept to work for social justice, peace, ecological stewardship, etc., not proclamation of the good news of Jesus' saving work.I may have implied that conservative evangelicals do tend to have a well-developed sense of mission. I think that, as broad generalizations go, this is true, but to make another such sweeping statement, I think their concept of this mission is often also limited: it includes only proclamation of Jesus' saving work, and that only on an individual basis (saving individual souls from hell). It tends to ignore the world-transforming scope of Jesus' message of the inbreaking Kingdom of God, and the implications for Christian concern for
Opening doors? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Well, there's lots going on in my ministry life right now. I hesitate to write too much about it here, because much is in flux and I don't want to prejudge outcomes. In the last post I shared some of my thoughts regarding my church's renewed focus on evangelism. Another Big Deal in my life is that my rector, Fr. Rick, is interested in working (with a small team that's beginning to form, including me) on what we hesitate to call an "alternative worship service", but which will be along the lines of Emerging Church gatherings: Experiential, Participatory, Image-based, and Connective. I'm really unspeakably excited about this. I'll reprint here a paragraph I recently e-mailed to a friend that speaks to my passion for both of these new efforts:"The single thing that I am most excited and passionate about right now is seeking and trying out answers to the following question: How can we make the faith of Jesus Christ relevant to emerging generations, who are often postmoder
A stake in the sand 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Ignore my idle speculations about theodicy. My friend Mike knows what he's talking about. Please go to his blog for wisdom from real life. And while you're there, say a prayer for him and his family. God, please love and comfort them.
Theodicy and grace 1970-01-01 00:59:59 One of the classic problems in theology (and faith in general) has the technical name "theodicy". In a nutshell, here's the problem: if God is so flippin' good and so flippin' powerful, why is there so much innocent suffering? Human free will may partially explain it, but what about the terrible disasters of the year past? The tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes don't have anything to do with human free will, unless you subscribe to the somewhat crackpot idea that Adam and Eve's sin (aka "The Fall") screwed up the natural world too. Well, just because it occurred to me, I throw out an equally crackpot idea: what if the creation, the natural world, also has something like free will?I'm not suggesting that nature is sentient, just that perhaps God is, generally speaking, as hands-off with nature as God is with our own human free will. That is, God is no more likely to prevent Hurricane Katrina than God is to possess the mind of a murderer and force him not to kill. Maybe e
That's me! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Great quote from an Anglican bishop in Georgia (USA):"I guess I am sort of an orthodox evangelical catholic liberal traditionalist. Perhaps you are also."Yes! That's me! It's so simple. :-)
Oh. My. God. 1970-01-01 00:59:59 This site is sooooo funny, I think I am seriously going to plotz. The blog. The Cavalcade of Bad Nativities. The Holy Week kitsch. WTFWJD? I am so ROTFL I'm in serious danger of losing my supper.Thanks to Helen for the pointer."...and they brought him gold, frankincense, and snausages." Ha ha ha ha ha ha ulp....
Embracing the new Blogger 1970-01-01 00:59:59 OK, I've officially embraced the new version of Blogger
. I've tagged all my posts, upgraded my template to take advantage of the nifty new widgets and the new customization user interface (losing and re-creating most of my previous customizations in the process), and did a little extra tinkering to boot. Not much has changed for you, the reader, except a little of the look and feel. (Not all for the better; I had to make some compromises in order to not lose the kewl new stuff.) The "Blog archives" nav on the left is way better than the old one, and the brand-new "Labels" section (also on the left) is there, in case you dig tags/labels as a way to access categorized information.If you see anything that's really ugly/broken - or you just have any general feedback - let me know. Muchos gracias! Read more:Embracing
Wrestling with the Bible study again 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Here's Numbers 15:32-36. I'll give you the version from The Message, so you know it's a more "generous" translation:32-35 Once, during those wilderness years of the People of Israel, a man was caught gathering wood on the Sabbath. The ones who caught him hauled him before Moses and Aaron and the entire congregation. They put him in custody until it became clear what to do with him. Then God spoke to Moses: "Give the man the death penalty. Yes, kill him, the whole community hurling stones at him outside the camp." 36 So the whole community took him outside the camp and threw stones at him, an execution commanded by God and given through Moses. So here's the thing. The God I know didn't do this. The God I know in Jesus, the God who was Jesus as described in the Gospels (read Matthew 12, among many other examples) didn't do this. Or, God is crazy. The Trinity is nothing more than a schizoid personality disorder. Or, maybe, God did a lot of growing up in a few hundred years.Or
My PersonalDNA: double-X chromosome 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Fine, Israel. I'll post my ratza-fratzin' PersonalDNA results on my blog. Now the whole world can know that I'm only 2% masculine. :-PBenevolent Idealist Read more:double
Healing 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Tomorrow, in our Sunday morning worship service, my Christian community is going to pray together for healing. Divine, supernatural healing of 100% real ailments, physical or otherwise. If you've been following the history of our church at all over the past year or so, you might realize what an incredibly audacious thing this is for us, in this community, to do. Can we really believe in the power of God to heal? If God has that power, why the F**K does God withhold that power? Does God's healing depend on our belief? If not, then on what does it depend?If you think of it, pray for us. Read more:Healing
Hey! Watch Oprah tomorrow! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Emmanuel Chan, a friend of my good friend Israel, is going to be on Oprahtomorrow
. He and his wife Veronica (a former Sudanese "lost boy" and "lost girl") have an amazing story of loss, pain, separation, triumph, and (most of all) love, and it's still ongoing. Check it out!
Anglican Primates issue communique to Episcopal Church 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So, the Primates (that means "Archbishops who lead national churches" - keep the ape jokes to yourselves, you unwashed non-Anglican
philistines) of the Anglican Communion have issue
d a communique which, among other things, lays out the way forward if the US Episcopal Church
is to maintain its standing as a full member of the Communion. You can read all about it here.As you may know, I'm a fairly outspoken supporter of gay rights, including within the church. I think the Biblical case for the sinfulness of homosexuality is insufficient to justify treating gay Christians, including those in committed gay sexual relationships, any different than straight Christians, including blessing unions and opening up leadership positions. I don't think it's a sin, but even if it is - you show me a straight Christian who's free of unrepented sin, and I'll show you a big, fat liar. And although the weight of Christian tradition on this topic troubles me, I am convinced that that tradition is
Suffering and God 1970-01-01 00:59:59 My cousin Cathy's husband John is in the hospital today (as he has been for several weeks now), having his right leg amputated. It's the latest blow in a horrific battle with flesh-eating bacteria. I posted the following note about it to two e-mail lists of my dear faith/church friends:Sad news on my cousin JohnHe's going to lose his leg:http://getwelljohn.blog.com/1554625/Cathy's my first cousin, but I never really knew her and John. Now, in the context of this incredibly hard circumstance, I'm learning that they're people of amazing strength, courage, love, faith, and determination. They'll get through this, and be a strong and active family again, but - so hard. Asleep on the job *again*, God? :-( (That's a link to Cathy's blog about their ordeal, if you want to read more about it.)Tina read my message, and said, sadly, "But that's not God's job." And she's right, of course. It's not. God doesn't prevent us from suffering. God didn't prevent His own sufferin Read more:Suffering
Patience 2007-03-07 19:02:00 Well, praise God, incompetent hack though S/He may be.The "HOPE" I mentioned in the update to my last post seems to be proving well-founded. My cousin John stood up yesterday, for the first time in a month. On both legs. He's not going to have full use of his right leg - not without a lot of PT and further surgery - but it's looking like he's almost certain not to lose it entirely. And his white blood cell count is almost down to normal, so I think maybe the Beast is finally giving up. So praise God!In a comment on my last post, I said,I seem to be getting one of those "tiny message storms" that I tend to interpret as a message from God. Does that ever happen to you? When, like, in the course of a day, two or three friends, my morning Bible study guide, and one or two other things I read all seem to say the same thing, coincidentally? This time, it's, "Remember that you are dust. Patience. Wait on God. God's time is not your time."So, OK, I hear You. I'm trying. But the fact
Trying again! 2007-04-05 19:32:00 Here's a terrible picture of the house on which, as of this morning, we have a ratified contract! Yay! E-mail me if you want to check out the full listing, but it's in Herndon. Inspection is on Monday, and if that doesn't scare us away, we close on 27 April! The seller needs to live there for a few weeks after settlement, so we'll be moving the last week or two in May. We're actually a lot more hopeful and excited about this one than we were about the one that we backed out of in January.:-D !!!
MONDO-formidable! 2007-04-05 15:06:00 OK, I admit that this is not a very profound way to get back in the saddle after a month of blog fasting. (The correspondence with Lent is purely coincidental - except maybe I don't believe in coincidence.) However, this has gotta be said:BUFFYSEASONEIGHTINCOMICS!!!BUFFYSEASONEIGHTINCOMICS!!!BUFFYSEASONEIGHTINCOMICS!!!BUFFYSEASONEIGHTINCOMICS!!!YAAAYYYY!!!! OMG!!! YAYYY!!! SQUEEE!!! YAAYY!!! :-DSecond issue came out this week. It is SOOOOOO good! Only Joss Whedon could write such ridiculous dialogue for such beloved characters and totally, thoroughly, unquestionably pull it off. And the FX budget is unlimited! :-DWith the Easter season of new Life and renewal only three dark days away, this is one little early gift of resurrection I'm thoroughly thankful for.
He is risen! He is risen indeed! 2007-04-08 22:56:00 In liturgical churches (like, say, Anglican ones), it's common practice to avoid the use of "Hallelujah" (Praise the Lord!), at least liturgically, during Lent. I'm not sure if I followed that practice myself this year or not, but it's probably safe to say that God didn't receive an overflowing of Hallelujahs from me this Lenten season.Well, Lent is over.Hallelujah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!Praise our amazing God for the amazing, unanticipated, impossible yet real reversal of Resurrection! Praise God for this day - the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!Another "liturgical church" thing is that Easter isn't just a day - it's a season. The 50 days from now until Pentecost is Easter Season. So let's keep on living in joyous celebration of Resurrection through this season - and beyond. Maybe it's cliche, but we're Easter people. He is risen. He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
You are now reading the blog of a homeowner 2007-04-28 00:24:00 Great googly moogly! :-D Settlement was extremely smooth and amicable. All is well, though we don't get to move in until the seller's kids get her moved down to GA in mid-to-late May. She's a really sweet elder lady. She and everybody we've worked with has been a complete pleasure! E-mail me (or call me) if you want to know more, and especially if you live in the NoVA/DC area and would like a recommendation of an OUTSTANDING realtor and/or mortgage broker. Read more:homeowner
Invisible Children: Displace Me 2007-04-26 01:44:00 I don't have a lot of space in my life right now to personally be a big part of this event, but I figure I can at least help spread the word.---Please follow the below directions to help us spread the word about the Washington DC Displace Me event to identify with and protest the suffering of 1.5 million people in displacement camps in Uganda. Please see http://www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceMe/ for more information.1) Please go here: http://www.invisiblechildren-dc.com.2) Please copy the HTML and video code onto your personal or organizational web sites to help bring relief to 1.5 million displaced people.3) Please sign up for and attend the April 28, 2007 Displace Me event in solidarity with our brothers and sisters suffering in displacement camps in Uganda. To sign up, please go here: http://www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceMe4) Please distribute this email and the HTML code to every web site and media outlet you have access to. Let's stop this suffering!INVISIBLE CHILDREN DIS Read more:Children
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