The calm before the storm?

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Here’s what was going on at Grace this morning during the Farmer’s Market. Members of the Camerata String Quartet played to pitch for the upcoming Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society (if you’re in Madison, their season is not to be missed).

Here is a photo:

We’ll see what the sidewalk outside our doors looks like tomorrow.

Oh, and by the way, apparently the city of Madison does value a church as much as an empty storefront; it turns out both of the other locations where 24-hour tents are permitted are in front of vacant commercial space.

A hearty welcome to our new neighbors

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Here’s what we know now:

-Overnight tent camping areas:  They were allowed three areas where they could set up 24-hour tents:  On N. Carroll St. in front of Grace Church; in front of 14 W. Mifflin (they will try to keep to unoccupied storefront) and in front of 2 E. Mifflin St.  All tents must be attended at all times.

There are other details as well. Hopefully the disruption to us will be minimal. We shall see. I would make a comment about Grace being equivalent in the city’s understanding to an unoccupied storefront, but the third location, 2 E. Mifflin, is a multi-story office building.

I’m looking forward to meeting our new neighbors, inviting them to services, and to volunteer in their free time at our food pantry.

 

Walkerville is a go, with restrictions

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Word is coming out that the permit for Walkerville has been approved, but there are restrictions. For one thing, tents will be allowed only overnight (from 9:00 pm-7:00 am, with an earlier departure on Saturday to accommodate the Farmers’ Market). There are other restrictions related to the placement of food, medical supplies, and information. Although the permit was approved, an additional campground permit will be required.

I’m disappointed in these results–disappointed for the city, for downtown residents and businesses, and for the ministry and mission of Grace Church. We’ve been placed in a very difficult position by the organizers of the protest, who didn’t take the time or deem it necessary to discuss their plans with us or with the others who would be most affected by it. We opened our doors to the protesters repeatedly in February and March and occasionally our hospitality was abused.

Surprise, surprise! Just when things seemed to be easing up

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I posted last night about my relief that Mayor Soglin had cancelled the August Ride the Drive event. Then I woke up this morning to news about Walkerville, a proposed tent city, that, you guessed would be pitched right outside the doors of Grace Church beginning Saturday. I received emails from parishioners expressing their concern and talked to our neighbor business owners who are concerned about the impact on their livelihoods.

I made phone calls and sent emails to various elected officials and city bureaucrats. We’ll see what happens. Again, as I’ve said before; it’s not that I’m opposed to the protests. As one businessman said in frustration, “I’m a Democrat!” This is the same issue for me as it is with the marathon or Ride the Drive. Organizers of such events pay little attention to the effects of their events on those who live and work in their midst. Yes, such events may bring business, but they also create enormous inconvenience. For example, I doubt very much whether many of our elderly members will want to make their way to church through a gauntlet of protestors. I should think regular conversations about such matters would go a long way to allaying concerns and even give rise to accommodation or compromise. That the organizers of the event didn’t bother to communicate with us before I began expressing my concern is troubling indeed.

 

It’s summer in the city: No parking, no access, nobody in church

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Getting to church on Sunday was an adventure. We knew that we would not have access to the parking spaces in our alley because of the Madison Marathon. I decided to take the bus. It became clear to me after a lengthy detour through the UW hospitals and several calls to the dispatcher, that the bus driver wasn’t clear on how she would get over to the eastside of Madison. When she came to a stop, forced by the advancing marathoners, I asked to be let out. It was the corner of Marion St. and W. Johnson. I too had to deal with the marathon course, but by the time I made it to W. Washington, the vast majority of runners had passed me and I was able to pick my way through the stragglers.

Attendance was awful, about a third of what we usually get on a Sunday. Most people didn’t try to make it, and those who did arrived quite late. It was the second of three consecutive Sundays on which parts of Capitol Sq. would be closed. This coming Sunday, June 5, is “Ride the Drive.” Street closures, parades, art fairs, are all part of the price of being located on the Square, but all of that means that our worshiping community shrinks on such occasions. But as one parishioner said to me, he felt rather sheepish complaining about a few blocks’ walk to church when he thought of what Christians in previous centuries had to do to worship together, and what they suffered for the faith.

On one level, such difficulties are another sign of the peripheral role played in culture by religion. We are not consulted about street closures or asked whether we are inconvenienced. Some years and with some events, it is impossible to learn before the day of the event itself, whether or how we will be impacted.

So I received the news that Madison’s new mayor, Paul Soglin, has cancelled the second “Ride the Drive” event with mixed feelings. I’m all for getting people downtown, especially on a Sunday, and I am eager to think creatively about how we might engage people who have come for such events. But at the same time, they create enormous inconvenience for many of our members, especially the elderly, who need to park in close proximity to the church, and are in special need of the relationships and human contact that they find in church each week.

My issue is not with the events themselves, but with the organizers who do not seem interested in how those who live, work, and worship in the downtown might be affected by their events, and especially the cumulative effect on morale and quality of life of week after week filled with such activities.

 

 

The Search for the Historical Adam

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Now that the dust has settled over universal salvation, it seems Evangelicals are going to war over “the historical Adam.” Here’s Christianity Today’s cover story on the matter. It seems faculty at Calvin College are under investigation for having publicly questioned whether Adam ever existed; scholars elsewhere have lost their jobs. For those of us on the outside, the question whether Adam and Eve once lived and were the progenitors of all of humanity may seem a bit silly. The scientific evidence is clear–the human genome is virtually identical with the genome of Chimpanzees and it seems that we are descended from a community of at least several thousand hominids, not two.

But it’s not just the historical (and scientific) accuracy of Genesis at stake. If Adam never existed then Pauline theology is in trouble, and if Pauline theology goes, then what remains of the whole Reformed edifice? If Adam never existed, then humans didn’t inherit sin from him, and our shared fallenness can’t be redeemed, needn’t be redeemed by Jesus Christ

Much of the work trying to flesh out the theological implications of contemporary science for Evangelicalism is followed on the BioLogos website, founded by Francis Collins. Their take on this controversy is here:  http://biologos.org/blog/biologos-and-the-june-2011-christianity-today-cover-story/.

We might be tempted to laugh at this controversy, just as many of us laughed at the Rapture theology of Harold Camping, but there are significant implications for traditional theology and to the extent that contemporary Christian theology, and churches, like the Episcopal Church, claim continuity with the past, there are implications for us as well.

One of the reasons I am so fascinated by scientific advances in the understanding human beings, especially neuroscience, is that it challenges traditional notions of human nature-the body/soul dichotomy, for example. It is incumbent on us to develop a robust theology that remains faithful to the tradition, but also takes into account these scientific discoveries. If we can’t make our imagery and symbolism meaningful for the twenty-first century, we will no longer be able to help people orient themselves in the world and in their own lives. We will sound like we are speaking in a foreign language, describing a fantasy world.

Authenticity and post-modern Christianity–but don’t expect me to get tattoos

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Last week, I posted a link to an article that quoted Bishop Greg Rickel of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, in which he likened the church in the twenty-first century to a base camp–not an end point on a journey, but a staging area. It’s an image I like because it captures what I’ve been encountering in Madison. People come to church for all sorts of reasons; we may see them for only a single service, perhaps a year or two if we’re lucky, then they are off on the next stage of their journey. Often their temporary stay is dictated by other realities–school or job change–but often it is because of life changes. And the latter is particularly new. Wade Clark Roof and other sociologists of religion saw such trends in American religion in the 90s–people participating in organized religion for a few years and then withdrawing.

Rickel has a great deal to say in another interview about what it’s like to be bishop in post-Christian America (i.e., the Pacific Northwest) after serving parishes in the South and Southwest. He also has interesting things to say about the importance of authenticity, good holy discourse and conversation, and good music. The interview is here.

Among the things he has to say about young adults:

I sense the younger generations looking for a fun place, yes, energy, good conversation, deep reflection about serious issues, but also a place where diversity of thought is honored and where they learn the life skills to keep that greater conversation going in their lives. In the midst of all of that they know the power of mystery, and don’t necessarily want a place of answers, but more a place of reflection, meditation, silence. True engagement, instead of the veneer of much of our religion, would be the more subtle but short way of saying it.

Bishop Rickel blogs here.

If authenticity is what matters, check out this profile of Nadia Bolz-Weber.

Bolz-Weber said her church is “anti-excellence and pro-participation.”

They sing the hymns a cappella rather than rely on a choir, organist or band. They divvy up the readings. They create their own artwork.

“We don’t do anything really well,” she said, “but we do it together.”

Bolz-Weber blogs here.

The Venerable Bede 735

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Bede was one of the great figures of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. He entered the great monastery at the age of 7 and writes later that he spent the rest of his life there and “devoted myself entirely to the study of Scriptures.” He compiled Patristic commentary on scripture and provided his own interpretation of that commentary, many other works, but most importantly, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. This work is the basis for much of what we know about Christianity on the island of Britain between the arrival of Augustine in 597 and 731. His work details the conversion of the Angles and Saxons to Christianity as well as the conflict between the Christian culture imported from Rome and that which had developed independently in Ireland and Britain over the previous centuries, symbolized by the different dating of Easter. This was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 664.

He provides vivid portraits of many of the important figures of Anglo-Saxon history, and of many of the leaders of Christianity in that time, both men and women.

At the end of a brief autobiographical summary that concludes the Ecclesiastical History, Bede prays:

I pray you, noble Jesu, that as You have graciously granted me joyfully to imbibe the words of Your knowledge, so You will also of Your bounty grant me to come at length to Yourself, the Fount of all wisdom, and to dwell in Your presence for ever. (from the Penguin edition)

War and Violence–Random Connections thanks to the Internet

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A couple of days ago, Andrew Sullivan posted this as his “quote for the day:”

Most other creatures engage in violence, and some insects and animals with elaborate social structures reflect those systems in their modes of fighting and aggression. But humans are unique in their creation of an institution of war that is designed to organize violence, define its purposes, declare its onset, ratify its conclusion and establish its rules. War, like literature, is a distinctively human product,” – Drew Gilpin Faust (pdf), from the annual Jefferson Lecture in DC.

Further down in my Google Reader feed was this from The Guardian (written by D. H. Lawrence in 1914).


Rapture, continued

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As is fairly common among those whose predictions of the end of the world don’t come true, Harold Camping now says the Apocalypse will arrive on October 21.

I’ve been somewhat bemused, and also perplexed by the coverage of this event in the press. Perhaps part of it is due to the sheer audacity of the marketing campaign. So audacious, in fact, that other religious leaders have taken note of it and used it to chide denominational efforts at advertising.

But I think that’s missing the point. As someone who spent a good bit of time researching apocalyptic movements in Christian history, and even teaching a course on “The Millennium” back in 1999, what strikes me about all of this is how very different Camping’s predictions and his movement, if that’s what it is, has played out in this new media and internet age.

In the first place, most apocalyptic movements have relied on the sheer charisma of the founder and leader. That doesn’t seem to be the case, here. Instead, what seems to have drawn wider attention is the marketing savvy and the ability to make significant media buys. The second thing of note is that much of the publicity was driven, not by true believers, but by those who were pursuing a story. And for most of them, the take was hardly sincere.

The same was true on the internet and facebook. What struck me was the sheer quantity of material making fun of the true believers. It was generated and quickly distributed, and yes, I participated in that distribution as well. Some of those who produced and distributed the ridicule were secularists; others, like me, were Christians of one variety or another. Most of us had been scarred in some way over the years by apocalyptic beliefs and our ridicule was an attempt to demonstrate that such beliefs no longer held power over us. In fact, I was reminded by the B. Kliban cartoon with the caption, “The callous sophisticates laughed at Judy’s tiny head.”

There were also those who tried to put Camping’s predictions, and those who followed him into perspective, and when the rapture didn’t come, they reached backed to Leon Festinger.

The stories about the disappointed followers of Camping were poignant. And yes, to read about someone who spent $140,000 to publicize it is depressing. The tendency is to discount such beliefs as crazy, and decry the media preoccupation with them. But it seems to me there is something more. And Paul Roberts may have his finger on it:

I am left with the conclusion that unless Protestants are able to come up with some kind of global system of validation – or, its converse, dissociation – then the widespread image of Christianity they are going to have to work with in their mission will be a random collection of absurd and less-than-absurd beliefs about what “Christianity” actually is about. Even if one Christian is able to make a coherent argument commending their faith to another person (either by teaching or practice), who is to say if that really is what Christianity is, or whether it’s about – say – a rapture which didn’t happen on 21st May 2011 at 6pm local time.

What bothers me is precisely that. A single person, who by virtue of his access to media, is able to generate a media frenzy, in some respects shapes the popular understanding of Christianity. Most thinking Christians, find such ideas silly, and respond with humor and derision, often using material produced by “cultured despisers” of religion.

My reading of apocalyptic movements in history leads me to conclude that most adherents were sincere and devout. They weren’t necessarily being misled or duped, as stories on the day after want to imply. Whatever complex of motives led them to accept the notion that the world was going to come to an end, whether in 1535 or 1842, or on May 21, 2011, blaming it on a charlatan leader might give them an excuse, but didn’t answer the fundamental question. And to claim that all of them are crazy lets all of us off the hook.

In the end, it is a small story. Unlike previous examples in the History of Christianity–the Anabaptist Kingdom of Muenster, or even David Koresh–this prediction did very little harm. It’s not even clear how many people were taken in by Camping’s predictions. True, there was considerable money involved, but compared to other Televangelists, $100 million is small potatoes.