xiananarchist's blog

I came across this recently. Brian Greene (string theorist) presents string theory in an accessible way. I thought I'd share

NOVA: The Elegant Universe

I was asked to pick one of my questions from the "interests" conversation and flush it out a little. I thought I'd do it as a podcast. Here is the link:

A Postmodern Family Romance (click this link to listen)

The book I reference is Lynn Hunt's The Family Romance and the French Revolution.

****************************

Edited to add podcast manuscript below (minus the intro and closing)

***************************

The question I want to work with is, “How should a Christian community organize structurally given the emerging postmodern family romance?”

I have to admit up front, that in this installment I'm not going to present my answer. Instead, I want to talk a bit about what that questions means.

Don't forget to call in about 2 minutes!

(Hopefully I connect this time.)

This is the first time I've seen the changes. I like the new visuals. Unfortunately, I can't find "My CrossLeft." Is that gone for good? I hope not, since I used that to compile others blogs.

I was glancing through my library today and rediscovered an excellent book. James Newton Poling is the Professor of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Colgate Rochester Divinity School/Bexley Hall/Crozer Theological Seminary. His Deliver Us From Evil: Resisting Racial and Gender Oppression addresses the nature of evil and emphasizes the need for communities of resistance. It has been years since I've read this.  It's time to read it again with a fresh set of eyes.

Here's an excerpt:

God is a God of order, and chaos is the enemy. It’s often taught in churches. The primary referent often used is the beginning of Genesis, where God is seen as overcoming the power of chaos by stepping in and establishing boundaries. The stories are those that portray an ancient culture trying to find stability in life amidst the uncontrollable power of nature. The boundaries are divine, and the antagonist is thusly controlled. And so it is, by the ordering power of God, that the darker side of creation (namely chaos) is subject to the enlightening structure of the Word.

I’m not fond of that theology. When I look at life, I see the divine in both order and chaos. In my mind, order is the power of stability and meaning. We talk about tradition as that which anchors us. We talk about our “stories” as those things which give us our identities. There is a solidification that comes with order. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes we need a certain amount of grounding. But sometimes it’s bad. Order gone awry leads to a status quo of oppression, exclusivism, rigidity, and ultimately a form of “death.”

I took the title from S. Mark Heim's book, Salvation(s)? As Christians asking about the future of Christianity, we have to ask about the message we are presenting. And that message in traditional terms is the promise of "salvation." But what is that? If we are called to be agents of salvation, then what about other religions? Are they agents of salvation too? And if so, are they agents of the same kind of salvation we proclaim, or are they agents of their own vision of salvation? If all religions are the same, then how do we explain (away?) the differences?

Certain theologians, such as John Shelby Spong, have called for the abandonment of "anthropomorphic" (God characterized with human qualities) or "personal" understandings of God, and for a replacement of those traditional images with "non-anthropomorphic" or "non-personal" images (such as "Ground of Being"). The belief is that anthropomorphic images do not sit well with "postmoderns" (those currently in their 40s and younger). In short, they argue that personalized images of God are inconsistent and meaningless within the postmodern context. As a result, forms of supernatualism that flow from theism are out, and a form of philosophical naturalism is in. For those theologians, this need to redefine God in non-theistic terms is vital to the future of Christianity if it is to survive in a scientific age.

Yet....

Yes, as you can see by my sig, this is the question that haunts me.

In a previous blog comment, E invited the conversation. After deep reflection (about 30 sec), I thought that the best way to start this was in blog form (since that's what appears on the home page).