ok. so, let's continue thinking-through some of the ideas found in bonhoeffer's letters and papers from prison (LPFP), by quoting a seminal passage from a letter he wrote to his friend eberhard bethge on 16, july, 1944.

[i know it may be a temptation to skip this extended quote; please don't do so.]

"and we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in a world etsi deus non daretur [as if there is not god]. and this is just what we do recognize -- before god! god himself compels us to recognize it. so our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of the situation before god. god would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. the god who is with us is the god who forsakes us (mark 15:34). the god who lets us live in the world without a working hypothesis of god, is the god before whom we stand continually. before god and with god we live without god. god lets himself be pushed out of the world on to a cross. he is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear thatchrist helps us, not by virtue of omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering ." (LPFP, page 360-361)

there is much here. the language is dense and thick, and bonhoeffer's shortened life only gives us a weak and irregular pulse on his full thought.

having said that, let's unpack some ideas that flow from this paragraph:

* people in the world come of age get along quite well without the god-hypothesis...

* the god-hypothesis basically means that god is in control of the world, that god is the answer in morals, politics, or science. bonhoeffer thinks this must be discarded by
christians because it already has been discarded in the world come of age...

* since people have chosen to push the god-hypothesis out of the world, and god has allowed this to occur, people must now take full responsibility for the world. thecavalry is
not on the way...

* christians must now see that the way to god is the way of the cross -- the way of weakness and humility...

more on these ideas to come...

Tags: bonhoeffer

Song: AUTUMN LEAVES
PERSONNEL: Cannonball Adderly (alto sax), Miles Davis (trumpet), Hank Jones (piano), Sam Jones (bass), Art Blakey (drums).

Tags: jazz music

Denominational Un-Fundamentalist Activities Committee

August 18,

Pete Seeker, Defendant

A Subcommittee of the Committee on Un-Fundamentalist Activities met at 10 a.m., in room 1703 of the Joseph McCarthy Denominational Building, Pre-Tribulation Square, Atlanta Georgia, the Honorable O’Chuck O’Sullivan (Chairman) presiding.

Committee members present: Representatives O’Sullivan, Marrick Deadletter, and Michael Coopenjoke .

Staff members present: W. Wellcris, Jr., Counsel; Gerald Wellfall and Darby Scholfield, Investigators; and James King, Sr., Chief Clerk.

[BEGIN TRANS]

MR. WELCRIS: When and where were you born, Mr. Seeker?

MR. SEEKER: I was born in New York in 1954.

MR.WELLCRIS: What is your profession or occupation?

MR. SEEKER: Well, I have worked at many things, and my main profession is a pastor of a small Baptist church in the heartland. It’s the First Baptist Church of Walden Pond

MR. WELLCRIS: Has Walden Pond been your headquarters for a considerable period of time?

MR. SEEGER: Well, I live there.

MR. WELLCRIS: The Committee has information obtained in part from the Baptist Free Thought Journal (BFTJ) indicating that, over a period of time, especially since December, you took part in a number of their anti-fundamentalist meetings. I have before me a copy of the June 20, issue of the BFTJ. In a column entitled "What's Happening," there appears this advertisement: "Tonight, hear Peter Seeker, at the Golden Harp Baptist Church housewarming." May I ask you whether or not the Golden Harp Baptist Church was a member of the Anti-Fundamentalist Party?

MR. SEEKER: Sir, I refuse to answer that question whether it was a quote from the Picayune Times or the Ladies Home Journal.

MR. WELLCRIS: I don't believe there is any more authoritative document in regard to the Anti-Fundamentalist Party than its official organ, the BFTJ.

MR. DEADLETTER: He hasn't answered the question, and he merely said he wouldn't answer whether the article appeared in the Picayune Times or some other magazine. I ask you to direct the witness to answer the question.

CHAIRMAN O’SULLIVAN: I direct you to answer the question.

MR. SEEKER: Sir, the whole line of questioning…

CHAIRMAN O’SULLIVAN: You have only been asked one question, so far.

MR. SEEKER: I will agree to answer questions about myself, but not about anyone else or any organizations. I think questions such as these are very improper questions for any Baptist to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this denominational tribunal. I would be very glad to tell you about my life if you want to hear of it.

MR. WELLCRIS: Has the witness declined to answer this specific question?

CHAIRMAN O’SULLIVAN: He said that he is not going to answer any questions about any names or things.

MR. DEADLETTER: He was directed to answer the question.

MR. WELLCRIS: OK. I’ll move on. Mr. Seeker, are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Anti-fundamentalist Party?

MR. SEEKER: Yes.

MR. WELLCRIS: Yes, what, sir?

MR. SEEKER: Yes, I am and have been.

MR. WELLCRIS: And you believe this to be an acceptable thought form and lifestyle for a Christian?

MR. SEEKER: What do mean acceptable?

MR. WELLCRIS: It is perfectly evident what I mean. Do you think, do you believe that Jesus would want you to live and anti-fundamentalist lifestyle. A liberal life. A life that condones free-thought, communists and homosexuals and pedophiles. That’s what I mean.

MR. SEEKER: Because I am an anti-fundamentalist doesn’t mean any of those things, and I seriously resent your innuendo…

MR. WELLCRIS: Would you please answer the question?

MR. SEEKER: What is the question?

MR. WELLCRIS: Is this an acceptable lifestyle for a Christian?

MR. SEEKER: I refuse to answer this kind of question.

MR. O’SULLIVAN: What did the witness say?

MR. WELLCRIS: He refuses to answer…

MR. SEEKER: I said I refuse to be slandered.

MR. O’SULLIVAN: The witness will answer.

MR. SEEKER: No sir, I will not.

MR. COOPENJOKE: Let the record show the witness is uncooperative.

MR. O’SULLIVAN: Mr. Seeker, is it your intention to cooperate with this committee or not?

MR. SEEKER: When I can, of course, but I will not put my name to the committees’ characterization of anti-fundamentalism. I am not a pedophile. I do not believe that pedophilia is an acceptable lifestyle. Neither do I…

MR. O’SULLIVAN: Move on Mr. Wellcris. Let the record show that the witness is being unresponsive.

MR. WELLCRIS: Alright, Mr Chairman. Mr. Seeker, On August 15, did you attend a secret meeting of the anti-fundamentalist party in the home of the editor of the BFTJ?

MR. SEEKER: It was not a clandestine meeting. It was merely a dinner party.

MR. WELLCRIS: And who else attended at this secret meeting?

MR. SEEKER: I was at a dinner party on August 15, yes, but who else was there is irrelevant. As I answered earlier, I will respond for my own actions, and my actions only. But I will not talk about other people.

MR. WELLCRIS: You say it wasn’t a secret meeting, but isn’t it a fact that you discussed in a secret way how you might overthrow the current leadership of the denomination? Wasn’t that the topic of discussion, sir? And wasn’t that when you boldly and seditiously explained how, to quote you, “how to stick it to the fundamentalists?”

MR. SEEKER: Mr Wellcris, it is not exactly a secret my feelings about the current denominational leadership.

MR. WELLCRIS: Then you admit your desire to overthrow the current leadership, and to secretly meeting with a group of conspirators to do so?

MR. SEEKER: As I said, my views concerning the current leadership are a matter of public record.

MR. WELLCRIS: Then I ask you again, who else took part in this assembly of rebellion?

MR. SEEKER: What rebellion?

MR. WELLCRIS: The rebellion of you who would trash our way of life. You who would toss out the inerrant Bible, and the women who would graciously submit to us, and the interpretation of the holy, King James Bible by trained, and elite and godly seminarians, and the lifestyle of abstinence. That rebellion, Mr. Seeker!

MR. SEEKER: I’ve answered that question already.

MR. WELLCRIS: Mr. Chairman, will you direct the witness to answer the question?

MR. O’SULLIVAN: Mr. Seeker, you will answer the question.

MR. COOPENLIAR: Move on Mr. Wellcris to the other material.

MR. WELLCRIS: Is it true that your daughter, while in college, one time attended a Unitarian church?

MR. SEEKER: Enough! How dare you bring my daughter into the charade…


[END TRANS]

© 2008 Mark Powell

Tags: fundamentalism

earlier this week i received a letter from a friend and the next day i responded in kind. i was pleased to do so. in fact, i used to write letters much more than i do now, but there is rarely any need for that anymore. writing an email may seem like writing a letter, but it requires much less finesse and thought.

receiving this letter reminded me of books containing letters written by famous people, several of which have had a deep influence on me. there's rainer maria rilke's letters to a young poet, christopher hitchens' letters to a young contrarian, and karl barth's, letters '61-'68.

but, by far the most influential book of letters has been letters and papers from prison, by dietrich bonhoeffer.

as biographical background: bonhoeffer was a lutheran pastor and theologian during world war two. his conscience led him to participate in the july 20, 1944 plot to assassinate adolf hitler. he was subsequently arrested for this and was hanged on april 9, 1945.

what is incredible is just how much influence he continues to wield over portions of christianity in the west, especially when we consider how his life and thought was cut short. so, what i thought i would do is lead us into an ongoing but occasional conversation with and about bonhoeffer.

i begin with the account of bonhoeffer's death as told by h. fischer-hullstrung:

"on the morning of that day between five and six o'clock the prisoners...were taken from their cells, and the verdicts of the court martial read out to them. through the half open door in one room of the huts i saw pastor bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison grab, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his god. i was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that god heard his prayer. at the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. his death ensued after a few seconds. in the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, i have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of god." (quote take from: i knew dietrich bonhoeffer, pg. 232)

Tags: bonhoeffer

alan roxburgh on 3 churches and a mall in toronto:





on msnbc yesterday:





clay shirky: institutions vs. collaboration



tom russell on david letterman

Tags: links

made at wordle


in today's rapid and radical movement of culture away from all things institutional, which includes christendom as it is expressed in the institutional church, the call is clear for us to find a new missional movement within the community of the faithful -- a new way to follow the christ. (and by "us" i mean those not on the cutting edge, but rather those locked in the remnants of christendom, sometimes called the marginalized)

the rub here is that we are either paralyzed with fear because christendom was our plausibility structure and now we are left adrift cognitively (and sociologically), or we understand the it's a new day but we grieve so deeply for christendom (read nostalgia) that we are paralyzed by confusion over the next step.

there are no easy answers here, believe me. perhaps the best we can do is to move beyond fear toward some sort of faith. (da? ya think?)

now what would this faith look like?

= it would look beyond the past

= it would be willing to put everything on the table, including both doctrine & practice

= it would be willing to act courageously, even at the risk of going out of business (this is happening anyway, so what is there to loose?)

= it would mean we would have to become part of the community that we desire to reach and not a shrinking island of benign neglect

Tags: missional

it is axiomatic for the follower of the christ to be in the world, but not of the world.

that said, the obvious follow-up is how. how can we walk that steep crevice without falling into the world -- so earthly minded we're of no heavenly good, or into religion -- so heavenly minded we're of no earthly good.

it seems clear that the danger of us being to close to the lord, so we are of no use to the gospel is quite a stretch.

what can be said, however, is that we can be so tied to the church, and by that i mean christendom's expression of it, that we cannot be seen by the world as followers of the christ, only a follower of church. and this may be the most devastating criticism of the believer.

this comes across, most of the time, as being oblivious to the needs of the world. it's not that we don't care, but we care mostly because our churches are shrinking (the incredible shrinking church). but throughout this we miss the need because we are locked into our own categories of life and our understanding of what people should be like.

said another way, those not like us are forced to conform not to the jesus-way, but to the church-way.

Tags: discipleship

stand getz and the oscar peterson trio

here's friday's gift

this is a great album.

the song: I Want To Be Happy, rocks

Tags: jazz, music

so, let's continue thinking about god's grace.

the idea that the almighty cares about what happens here on this little blue sphere is actually quite an awesome proposition, and one not easily defended in today's context. (go here and here and here)

on the face of it, it seems incredible that god would give this place a second thought. so often (most often), as a race, we are petty and selfish and full of only ourselves and our wants. we hate and kill and murder and make war.

of course, there is much that goes with this world that shows itself as good and positive and even beautiful, but as we have said elsewhere, ultimately we must view our world through the background music of a minor key, even a dirge.

but, it is also important to take note that, even as badly we behave, god has a stake in how things turn out. this, too, is difficult to prove as well.

what weighs heavily against this understanding of the world is the view that god is sovereign and in complete control of all things. this view of god is quite indefensible within the context of the world-wide slaughter of the innocents that occurred in the last century.

it seems to me that the only defensible view of god today is a god that comes to us not as sovereign, but instead a god who has chosen weakness and loss and sacrifice.

i'll never forget reading the story of William Sloane Coffin, whose son, Alex, was tragically killed in and car accident. when confronted with the normal religious well-meaning mantra, about god's will, he catigorically rejected this assessment and simply said, "when alex died god's heart was the first to break." (go here)

i can go with this thought -- not something i'm asking anyone else follow -- because this describes a god who stands beside us and not one who hovers above us.

no doubt the clearest and most profound example of this god beside us is found in the incarnation. this coming "close" is the unique story in human history. this god chose weakness and brokenness and sorrow and sacrifice to make known his presence. and this god even allowed his experience of humanness to go all the way to death. some welcome to our world, huh?

here, the god comes close and shares the dirge; he participates in the world with its minor chords and the bittersweet poignancy of humanity's existence.

in the end, this is the only kind of god we can actually hear and understand. anything else is theo-bable.

Tags: theology

ok. so i am one who believes in grace, god's grace, i mean. i believe and teach that god is open to any and all.

i didn't always believe this way. sadly, i once lived the life of a calvinist, but i found i wasn't a very good one.

i could almost get the hang of this election to salvation idea, but i struggled with the election to damnation; i struggled with the smugness i felt in my surety that i was part of the elect; i struggled with my willingness to let entire populations of people be damed; i struggled with the idea that jesus didn't die for everyone; i struggled with the fact that one woman i knew whose entire family was burned in a fire, and who became a raving crack addict because of it, would not be included because her life was hell now, and because she didn't quite measure up to god, and therefore the cross was not for her; i struggled because i felt left out of god's plan -- after all -- he really didn't need me, everything like prayer and proclaiming the good news was already settled; most of all i struggled with the idea that god is the author of everything, every thought, ever event, including monstrous human evil like auschwitz.

[i'm well aware that the calvinist has answers for all of the above, but as i say, i've seen their wares up close, and i'm not buying ]

GIFT
anyway, the upshot of this is that i left the calvinist camp, and decided to quit camping altogether. i decided that i would try to learn how to love others and just leave it at that. i decided that i would try, as best i could, to make sense of the good news, both to myself and others, and let god do the body count.

so, i've been at the jesus-way since 1962, and i must confess that i fail at this task of loving others most of the time; i'm not a very good pastor or christian. i want to be, and i'm diligent at my attempts, but as i say, most of the time it's just a no go.

this probably means that i left calvinism because of anyone i knew, i needed god's grace most of all, but i wasn't sure i was elected!

DEMAND
and yet, in the midst of this idea of the gift of grace for all, there is also the demand of the gospel -- that of following the ways of the christ. and this weighs heavy, and is quite dense.

said another way, with the gift of grace also comes the demand of discipleship. "broad is the way that leads to destruction," saidjesus, "and many are on that road." he also said: "narrow is the way to life, and few there be that find it."

to me this is a mighty & powerful contradiction.

i think this means if you were to have walked up to st. paul and asked (using old time lingo), "paul, are you saved?" paul would have answered, "yes." but if you were to ask that same question to the writer of the hebrews, or st. james' letter, they would say, "i dunno, i'm not there yet."

Tags: grace

i want to continue our discussion of the great evangelical crack-up by thinking through one of the comments i received about part one.

big spoon wrote:
"...our best witness is to tell our story, what Jesus and God have (has?) done for us, in a personal and meaningful way. And it matters how we live, because it brings us the most blessings and shows people that there is something different going on in our lives. I just don't think you can start at a better place than that."

i agree with this idea. the possibility of us individually telling our story is perhaps the only way for the gospel to be incarnate or embodied, or earthed in any meaningful way today in the west. however, will we? or will we just talk about it? and if we merely give lip service to the gospel, is it because we do not trust the gospel? or is it because we instinctively feel the intense pressure of hypermodernity and post-christianity?

said another way, are we afraid?

notice, i did not say ashamed. i said afraid. afraid that the gospel will only work in this place that explains the miraculous and the origins of the universe. [this actually goes with yesterday's post] this is the pressure crushing us, and it is powerful.

part of what we feel, i think, is the loss of the plausibility structure that christendom gave us. [for more on this from me go here] as i've said in a earlier post, christendom's death in the west is driving the contraction or marginalization of christianity toward reformation (or extinction?).

this, then actually fits closely with how you end your post:

big spoon wrote:
"Finally, if the era of denominational Christianity is coming to an end, that is a concept I could wrap my arms around and celebrate. If we could all drop our labels and separate traditions and simply focus on the basic truths of what it means to be a Christian, what a step in the right direction that would be."

i agree that denominational christianity has run it's course and that the institutions and structures (the institutional church) is dead. what will arise in the west to replace it remains to be seen, but, even though i'm "not a prophet or the son of a prophet," i predict that your grandchildren will grow up in church that is very, very different from yours and mine.

Tags: christendom

while on vacation my woman and i saw the new woody allen film:
vicky cristina barcelona.

IMDB offers the following synopsis of the film:

two girlfriends on a summer holiday in spain become enamored with the same painter, unaware that his ex-wife, with whom he has a tempestuous relationship, is about to re-enter the picture.

the reviews tell us that this is the funniest film from woody in years, and it is funny, in a disturbing sort of way. i have always thought that most of his comedic films are attempts at whistling past the grave yard. common themes here include the desire and struggle to make art and the impossibility of finding love in the modern world. it is this second point that i wish to develop in more detail.

while watching the film i became increasingly uneasy. no relationship in the film really worked. people desired love, but just couldn't quite make love last or work, or grow. so, while there were genuinely funny moments, there was this shroud of longing and groping as well. in fact, it felt like the world as it really is: full of hope and promise (barcelona was beautiful), but marred and finally silent and cold. i left the film saddened at the dilemma of the loss of meaning brought on by the modern world's loss of a moral center.

this is also presented in his film crimes and misdemeanors, where the impossibility of a search for God in the modern world by modern people is relentlessly presented. this is a very serious film.

[for an interesting discussion of this go here]

perhaps allen's definitive statement of this world view is his film, september. now, this is not one of his most revered films, but i remember viewing it and being haunted by an exchange between a physicist named llyod (jack warden) and a would-be writer named peter (sam waterson):

Peter: You feel so sure of that when you look out on a clear night like tonight and see all those millions of stars? That none of it matters?

Lloyd: I think it’s just as beautiful as you do, and vaguely evocative of some deep truth that always just keeps slipping away, but then my professional perspective overcomes me, a less wishful, more penetrating view of it, and I understand it for what it truly is: haphazard, morally neutral and unimaginably violent.

Peter: Look, we shouldn’t have this conversation. I have to sleep alone tonight.

[for an excellent full discussion of this go here]

i can remember reading an interview with allen long ago where he described, with seriousness, the dilemma of modern people. he talked about the struggle to make a work of art that would last, but that you know you will not last and that ultimately mankind will not last, so that someday no one will be here to enjoy the sunset, and that unless we somehow answer this question existentially or religiously we will never find meaning.

we can be saddened at the decadence of a world view that does not offer hope for even love.

Tags: existentialism