Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • BBC Radio Program on Evolution and Faith

    This excellent little program includes Alister McGrath, Alexandra Wright, and Dr. Usama Hassan, along with an interview with fellow blogger Mike Beidler. It’s well worth checking out.

  • Evangelism from an Atheist Perspective

    I tend to talk a great deal about how we should approach those of other faiths. It’s something that interests me a great deal. Going way back to the early days of this blog, I find the post Witnessing without being a Pest.

    Let me note here, however, that I’m not calling on any of us, of any faith or none, to homogenize or compromise what we believe. I think it’s important to express one’s actual beliefs honestly and clearly. The trouble is, it’s often the behavior of the messenger much more than the honesty of the beliefs that often offends other people.

    Of course what I write is from a Christian perspective, and one may question whether I have a good idea how non-Christians may feel. Thus I think that three recent blog posts on the blog Caraleisa are quite useful. She has encountered Christians whose obvious goal is to convert her, and to do it as quickly as possible.

    The posts are:

    Check it out!

  • The 2009 John Webb Winter Golf Tournament

    My stepson John Webb sponsors an annual golf tournament that raises money for the child life program of Sacred Heart Hospital here in Pensacola.

    The first tournament was held in January of 2003, and the next one will be held January 31, 2009. This year, the tournament comes under the sponsorship of John’s new foundation, named the James Webb Foundation in his brother’s honor. He intends to expand the program to include year round fundraising and support for other programs for children facing life-threatening illnesses.

    If you’re in the Pensacola area, come join us. Otherwise, remember these children, or perhaps some in your area.

  • What Can We Christians be Thinking?

    There were two posts that really drew my attention while running through my Google Reader account over the last couple of days. The first was from Hannity and Colmes, with hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, via WorldNetDaily. I went and found the actual transcript:

    COLMES: What about — what does it say for all those people who do not accept Christ as their personal savior?

    WARREN: I’m saying that this is the perfect time to open their life, to give it a chance. I’d say give him a 60-day trial.

    (CROSSTALK)

    COLMES: Like the Book of the Month Club.

    WARREN: Give him a trial. See if he’ll change your life. I dare you to try trusting Jesus for 60 days. Or your money guaranteed back.

    COLMES: Really? You’re going to give me the money back?

    WARREN: Absolutely. Direct to me, Sean Hannity, FOX News Channel.

    I know lots of presentations of the gospel message, liberal, moderate, conservative, but I don’t know just how that works in with any possible description. I don’t care how you slice it, the gospel works out to a tough, long term commitment. It doesn’t necessarily make you feel better, look better, or acquire you more friends. If those things are happening in your life, be thankful. But becoming a Christian isn’t going to guarantee them.

    I could cite scripture after scripture, but I will simply cite what must be the most important example of Jesus. He certainly “tried God” for much more than 60 days, and his life deteriorated as it went. For him, God wasn’t the path to wealth and fame.

    I can only hope that Rick Warren had his tongue firmly embedded in his cheek when he made those comments, but even if he did, it is a dangerous misrepresentation of what the gospel is all about. Something about “taking up one’s cross,” which doesn’t mean a nice little gold one to hang around your neck. There is value in presenting the gospel in terms that are comprehensible in the culture, to as large an extent as possible, but when you change the message–try it for 60 days is a prominent feature of our instant gratification, materialist culture–that’s another matter.

    If this sort of thing results in ridicule, the ridicule is well-deserved.

    And speaking of ridicule, I dropped by P. Z. Myers’ blog Pharyngula, where he is, unsurprisingly, ridiculing Christians. Myers was the person who asked people to score him some Catholic communion wafers so he could desecrate them.

    Now it would be nice to point out Dr. Myers’ errors, or criticize his methods, or point out something unbalanced about his ridicule. Unfortunately, he is ridiculing this list of Christian bashers, supposedly the top ten bashers of 2008.

    Let’s see what made the list:

    #10 is a musical video. It does ridicule certain Christians, though others would be less annoyed. OK, it’s only #10. Perhaps it was a bad year for Christian bashers.

    #9 is Bill Maher gratuitously (?) attacking the Pope, in this case over the sexual abuse scandal. I’d have to say that, while Bill Maher can be over the top–he’s a comedian after all–there would be much more to complain about if the church had not covered up the scandal for years and moved abusing priests from congregation to congregation. It’s probably a little unfair that he didn’t include protestant clergy, who are not immune from such charges, though they lack a single central organization to scandalously cover up for them. They have to cover up the hard way.

    #8 I won’t repeat, but it’s a case of gratuitous bad taste. I’m doubting that any Christians were actually injured.

    #7 is the desecration of the wafer by the aforementioned P.Z. Myers. While that action was pretty tasteless, stupid, and rude, in my view, I’m pretty sure Jesus was able to handle it quite well and his followers ought to do likewise.

    #6–horror of horrors! Somebody made a movie bashing religion. Whatever will we do?

    #5–chaplains were fired, according to this report, for praying in Jesus’ name. I say “according to this report” because some such stories turn out to be quite different than reported. Chaplains praying in the public square, so to speak, on government time, need to be prepared to be asked to make their prayers generic. Personally I think that the idea of asking someone to pray, i.e. talk to God, and then telling them what to say, obnoxious at best. I think if you invite a Muslim to pray you should expect a Muslim prayer, a Hindu to pray a Hindu prayer, and a Christian to pray a Christian prayer according to his particular tradition. This one, if true, comes the closest to a mild sort of persecution–losing a government job.

    #4–Colorado law criminalizes the Bible. Interesting interpretation, that. How many Christian book store owners or Christian publishers have been arrested, and what did the courts say? Hmm. That’s what I thought.

    #3–Barack Obama defames Christianity. Say what? This is number #??!! The claim here is that Obama really isn’t a Christian, by their standards of course, and thus his claim to be a devout Christian is defamatory. Ah the pain and the agony that someone should claim to be something their not! How will the faith ever survive?

    #2–VP candidate Sarah Palin is attacked. Again, how shall Christianity possibly survive this? A charismatic Christian is made the vice-presidential candidate of a major party, and people, horror of horrors, criticize her. What did she expect? (Also refer to #3. Can Obama claim similar persecution?)

    #1, and we finally get to some actual action. If true, vandalizing property and threatening people’s lives will qualify as persecution. At the same time, I would note that unlike in some places in the world, perpetrators who can be caught will be prosecuted. Does it really qualify as persecution when you can call the police and have the perpetrators arrested? Oh, and what about all those cases where good Christians threaten the lives of those who disagree with them, such as in the Dover trial (see here)?

    What can we Christians be thinking? We expect Christianity to be easy (try it for 60 days). We expect to be prosperous, and for some reason, certainly not derived from experience, tradition, scripture, or even from any reasonable thought process, we think we shouldn’t be attacked, criticized, or ridiculed.

    Are we cry-babies and whiners, willing to dish it out, such as in attacks on gays and lesbians, but not to take it. Obviously acts of violence should be dealt with appropriately by the legal system, but otherwise, this is very simply opposition. People disagree with us. People don’t like us.

    Two things:

    1. Think about places like Orissa and Darfur
    2. Get over it!

    PS: As a bonus, they note that Senator Chuck Grassley investigated their finances! The gall of the man to expect tax exempt organizations to engage in tax exempt activities!

  • First UMC to Launch New Worship Service

    There’s a new thing coming at an old church–a worship service featuring contemporary music, embracing the arts, while also celebrating traditions of worship. It’s called ICON. Here’s the 30 second television ad:

    HT: First UMC.

  • On Being a Liberal Charismatic Believer

    I found a new blog (for me) this week via John Meunier—To Him Which is Yes. I was particularly attracted by the post John linked to, Bringing back belief.

    Jack Burden, the blogger, tells the story of how he silenced a committee meeting, doubtless an extremely useful skill under any circumstances, but the point is much more important. In discussing who they thought would make the ideal member for their church, the committee members listed a number of things, all of them good, but the suggestion that the ideal member should be a believer silenced them.

    I think this should strike committed Christians as a problem, but I don’t think that those of us who deal with mainline congregations should be surprised by it. A friend of mine once commented to me that the main attack form of liberals is intellectual ridicule, while the main attack form of conservatives is moral condemnation. I’ve since had several conservative friends point out that many liberals are quite capable of moral condemnation, and I know the reverse to be true as well. Belief often does not stand up well to intellectual ridicule.

    But there is an entire category of Christian church members who are there because they ought to have a church to go to. It’s traditional in their family or community. They want to be known as “church going people.” Now I could expend many words on the notion that “church going” people are better than other categories of people. But there are certainly communities where “church going” is a helpful attribute to have in doing business. Being a true believer? Not so much!

    These people often will, out of duty, attend church fairly regularly, participate in activities, give to the church budget and special projects and many other things. Since I have already noted that I don’t think “church going” necessarily describes a better class of people, these folks may well be doing all of the good and moral things called for by discipleship.

    The open question is this: Why do they do these things in a church?

    I’m sure there are many answers to that question. Liberals are more frequently accused of being unbelievers in church, but I’m not sure this is a liberal/conservative thing. Amongst people that I know, there are very committed believers in both the conservative and liberal camps, but there are also people who are simply checking the right boxes on their checklist in both camps. I have no idea what the proportions are outside of my own experience.

    I’m going to be teaching a Sunday School class in less than two hours (the Tifounden Class at First UMC of Pensacola). I taught this class for a few weeks last year, and I was invited for a return engagement with the specific task of discussing the subtitle of one of my books: Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic. In particular they’re interested in the combination of “liberal” and “charismatic.”

    There are so many ways I could go in discussing this. The title “liberal charismatic” was bestowed on me by someone who didn’t like me at all and was looking for a good insult. When I floated it as a subtitle for my book, quite a number of people–friends–said, “That’s you!” Even my wife said it, so it must be true! I prefer “passionate moderate” myself, but one doesn’t always get to choose one’s labels. One should note, of course, that I didn’t fight this one all that much.

    So what, exactly, is a liberal charismatic? I was playing around with many ways of describing what I would mean by liberal, and what I meant by charismatic. The person who first used the phrase to describe me meant that I didn’t accept all orthodox doctrines, and also believed that all gifts of the Spirit were to continue in the church to the end. He was particularly offended by the idea of a prayer language, which is certainly a controversial topic all around.

    But when I read Jack Burden’s post, I realized something else. The label “believer” has never bothered me. In fact, I have insisted on it. I even occasionally use “true believer” of myself. Why? I confess that, unlike some Christian apologists, I cannot prove that God exists, that Jesus rose from the dead, or that God communicates to us through scripture. I can’t even match the gentler (and better, in my view) form of apologetics that claims that the evidence is sufficient to make this the best option.

    I’ve made the leap of faith. While I am quite unadventurous physically, in the spiritual sense I looked out over the chasm as did Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, closed my eyes and put my foot down on empty space. I think my foot landed on that hidden bridge; others think they hear the echoes of my screams as I fall. Ah well, it’s my leap of faith, after all.

    I don’t mean that there is no evidence at all. It’s just that there wasn’t enough evidence to make me certain, intellectually, of the destination. At the same time my experience means that I believe in God because I experience him, in a way that differs fundamentally and completely from intellectual assent, I know that there is a God. If that means I’m less intellectually sound, then, well, I’m less intellectually sound.

    But I remain liberal in the sense that I don’t believe this means that I am somehow more right than others about the attributes about God or about a doctrinal system. It doesn’t mean I’m a better person than my friends who believe differently, or not at all. It is simply an honest statement of who I am.

    I was once asked by an agnostic if this meant that, in order to become a believer of my sort, he would have to have his own private hallucination. I told him that bar the slanted terminology (I don’t prefer “hallucination”!) that was pretty much where I was coming from.

    I’ve told the story on this blog before, but let me tell it again. When I joined my first United Methodist congregation, I was attending Bible classes at one church, and attending church at another. I had a hard time choosing. When I discussed membership with one pastor, he told me that he didn’t care what I believed. If I would enjoy their fellowship, feel free to join. What I believed didn’t matter to them. The other pastor asked me what I believed regarding Jesus and why. I joined his church. Belief is very important to me.

    So for me, the “liberal” in “liberal charismatic” means that I’m doctrinally open. I am skeptical of my own ability to know substantial amounts about God. At the same time, for reasons that have so far escaped my powers of rational explanation, I believe that when I know (1 Corinthians 13:12) I will be happy with that knowledge. I’m charismatic because I believe that God’s presence is not variable, but our awareness of it is. God is as present today as he was on the day of Pentecost. (Perhaps I should call myself pentecostal, but that would be much too confusing!)

    That’s it, not in a nutshell, but as close as I get to one–a bit over 1200 words. Is it any wonder I hear this or similar questions so frequently that I decided to write a book just so I could hand it out to those who ask?

  • Ken Miller v. Casey Luskin

    If it were a court case, Luskin would be getting the book thrown at him when penalty time came.

    If any readers of this blog don’t also read The Loom, you should. But in case some of you don’t, make sure not to miss this three part series by Dr. Ken Miller, (part 2, part 3) biologist and author of Finding Darwin’s God and Just a Theory.

    His presentation is masterful and comprehensible, a rare enough combination. We need more of this kind of writing in the creation-evolution debate. Carl Zimmer regularly produces excellent work on science that is comprehensible by outsiders, and this guest series is a special treat.

  • Willful, Crusading Ignorance

    I took the title of this post from one of the speakers in the video embedded below. I’ve followed this IUPUI case for some time, mostly via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, but also through the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

    This case is particularly egregious, but political correctness, or the idea that people have the right not to be offended often manifests itself in much less obvious ways. Frequently the label “politically correct” is used as a weapon against simple courtesy, but at the other end, it’s used to suppress freedom of expression, or in this case, simple reading.

    I think this deserves the maximum publicity, and the university officials who either carried it out or turned a blind eye to it deserve the maximum ridicule.

  • Christian Carnival #257 Posted

    . . . at Ancient Hebrew Poetry.  It’s short–I wonder if there’s some sort of holiday around this time of year!–but still has some interesting posts.  Hopefully more people will submit their best work for the next one.  It’s painless, and it gets you links!

  • The Difficulty of Appropriate Public Prayer

    MSNBC.com reports that there is a bit of a kerfuffle over whether Rick Warren will use the name of Jesus in his prayer at Barack Obama’s inauguration. At the same time we have a group of atheist and humanist groups suing to prevent any prayer at all at this public event.

    I confess to mixed emotions about the public prayer, largely because I think that the event reflects not only the public, but also the person who has been elected to that office, and Barack Obama is a believer. I could quite easily regard the prayer as relating more to him as a person than as something that is intended to reflect the country as a whole. While I may have mixed emotions, I would suspect that the lawsuit is doomed to failure, except in producing publicity, because we still have military chaplains and prayers to open the houses of congress, and the courts have shown no inclination to stop them.

    But I have more problem with a public prayer as a Christian than I do as a political matter, something that has only been stirred up and sharpened by discussions with a friend of mine who is a pastor and who gets invited to pray at public events. There are two major points involved. First, for most trinitarian Christians, prayer in the name of Jesus (or in a trinitarian formula in some cases) is the way to pray–it is prayer. Second, just what is it that we expect a pastoral prayer at a public event to accomplish? As my friend has pointed out to me, and I agree, the public bodies over which prayer is offered are not going to actually seek God’s guidance and blessing as a group. They’re going to go right on doing whatever they were going to do anyhow. And it’s difficult to expect a public body that is diverse in beliefs to do so.

    So in that case the public prayer becomes, in many ways, an act of idolatry. It is a pretense at worship, but not the reality. A critical part of the Lord’s prayer is “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Show me the public body here in the United States that intends to behave in that particular way. And with acute awareness of my atheist and other non-Christian friends, that is not a prayer that can be prayed collectively by a public body, expected to act in a secular way to govern a diverse body of people.

    Were I an elected individual, I could individually pray that God guide me, even though I must express my viewpoint in non-religious terms in public debate. And note here that I can only express my viewpoint in non-religious terms if it is honestly supportable in non-religious terms. That means that I can pray the Lord’s prayer for myself, but that collectively prayed, it becomes an outright lie. Any prayer prayed in the name of Jesus is similarly supposed to be “under the authority of” as well as “in the name of” and thus, in my view, becomes idolatrous if prayed corporately on behalf of those who do not consent.

    Given that there will be prayer at the inaugural event, I think the explosion of hostility over the selection of Rick Warren to offer that prayer is at best overdone. President-elect Obama, in my view, thinks he’s secure in his liberal credentials and wishes to reach out to a block of voters. That’s the political view. Thinking of it as a Christian I am much less comfortable, not because I don’t think Rick Warren can pray for, with, and on behalf of Barack Obama, but because I think it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible for him to pray on behalf of the inaugural crowd and certainly on behalf of the nation as a whole.

    I understand pastoral prayers in congregations to be collective, that is that the pastor prays both for and on behalf of the people. Those who are more theologically and liturgically oriented than I am may argue this. I don’t see how this can be transplanted to the public square.

    Yet we do so constantly in this country. I’m not sure where my conscience would lead me if I were a pastor. My friend doesn’t want to pray at public events (not in church), a position with which I sympathize. The only compromise position I can see is praying in public, but seeing this as praying solely on one’s own behalf, and for the gathered audience. Trouble is, unlike pastoral prayer in which I believe all participate, I think this sounds a great deal like a violation of the principle expressed in Matthew 6:1-6. The prayer becomes a public show, or perhaps a political show.

    I like interfaith dialogue, but I like interfaith prayer much less. I prefer the idea that in interfaith dialogue all sides maintain their distinctives honestly and openly, yet celebrate the diversity. In my view too much interfaith dialogue involves homogenization and blandness rather than actual celebration of diversity, combined with robust but respectful discussion and debate.

    Readers are free to see this as a modification or even a partial repudiation of my view expressed here, where I considered the invitation solely from the political point of view.