Existential Punk

SEX-CRAZED: America's Christian Subculture

i have my first published piece at The Ooze. Check it out and join the conversation! Here's a teaser:

Why does the Evangelical community seem so preoccupied with pointing out what they perceive to be the sins of others?  Why this commitment to the role of morality police, lambasting everyone with their narrow interpretations of Scripture?  It seems their selective view of holiness is far more important than how we actually treat our fellow human beings.  Maybe if we worked harder on our own lives, focused on how we are treating others, a more holistic holiness could finally exude from our lives.

Sadly, this is my thesis: Evangelicals are nothing less than sex-crazed.

READ THE REST HERE!

Publisher's Weekly Review Of Pete Rollins' Upcoming Book

 Pete Rollins' newest book, "The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Impossible Tales", will be released this April by Paraclete Press. Publisher's Weekly recently reviewed "The Orthodox Heretic" in it's Religion section under Nonfiction Reviews.

The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Impossible Tales Peter Rollins. Paraclete, $19.99 (164p) ISBN 978-1-55725-634-8

Don't be fooled by the slender spine of this unusual book. Rollins, the Irish philosopher/po-mo theologian who has previously published How (Not) to Speak of God and The Fidelity of Betrayal, upends some of Christians' most cherished platitudes about God in his newest outing. He cautions readers that the book is not to be read quickly, for acquiring information, but to be savored slowly for possible transformation. Mostly, the book lives up to this billing. Rollins recasts some of the most familiar parables of and stories about Jesus, sometimes subversively—as when he proposes a version of feeding the 5,000 that shows Jesus and his disciples pigging out on meager resources while the multitudes look on, starving. His point? That Christians are the body of Christ, and when we oppress the poor and hoard scarce resources, we are saying that represents the kind of God we serve. Although not all of the parables work equally well—some could use further illumination—Rollins is a tremendously talented writer and thinker whose challenges to Christianity-as-usual should be well-received by the emergent church crowd, if not beyond. (Apr. 1)

Ted Haggard's Conflict

Even though i do not always agree with Andrew Sullivan, i still love his writing and perspective. He often challenges me, which is a good thing, even if i don’t rightly admit it! Today i found a beautiful commentary by him on the Ted Haggard saga and really resonated with what he said. i experienced a lot of what Sullivan communicates and my prayer is that we will lift our brother in Christ, Ted, and his family up in prayer. Let’s not treat him in kind as to how his church and others have treated him. i think Ted is in major denial about his sexuality and really conflicted in reconciling his faith and his sexuality. i think many of us can identify with him on that alone.

Ray Boltz’s ex-wife, Carol, is an ardent supporter of our community and maybe one day can reach out to Haggard’s wife. She blogs at My heart goes out . . . and has come full circle in her journey as a once married woman whose husband came out.Ray Boltz was once a very successful Contemporary Christian singer back in the 1990’s. i have corresponded with Carol via email and she is a lovely woman!

Here is Andrew Sullivan’s thoughts:

“I watched the whole thing. I feel for Haggard - because he is trapped between who he is and his internalized belief that God cannot love him for who he is. But God can love him for being gay. And does love him for being gay. This is hard, I know. Accepting God’s unconditional love for me was the hardest part of keeping hold of my Christian faith. My childhood and adolescence were difficult to the point of agony, an agony my own church told me was my just desert. But I saw in my own life and those of countless others that the suppression of these core emotions and the denial of their resolution in love always always leads to personal distortion and compulsion and loss of perspective. Forcing gay people into molds they do not fit helps no one. It robs them of dignity and self-worth and the capacity for healthy relationships. It wrecks family, twists Christianity, violates humanity. It must end.

Haggard’s betrayal, his lies, his compulsions, his deceits are the excruciating function of this human dead end. What we have to do as Christians is open up this always-closing door, to find a way past the abstractions and neuroses of fundamentalism to a more honest and more human acceptance of gay people as God-like. Gay people, like all people, need love. We need family. And yet we are uniquely and cruelly denied these things. And no love and no family can be genuinely based on the deceit or self-hatred that are the alternatives.

That is why I am so insistent on marriage. It alone heals this deep wound and brings gay men and women into the human family where they can finally be allowed to flourish for who they are, rather than to become the contorted, distorted shapes the rest of the world is comfortable with. Anything else actually sustains the wound, because it imprints the indignity and perpetuates the pain.”

An Evangelical's Apology

To the LGBTQ Community,

I know I don't speak for all evangelicals when I write this, but I hope I speak for more than you might think, as I offer this sincere apology on behalf of myself and my community.

I'm sorry for not speaking up when people taunted you and made obscene jokes about you in school and at work.

I'm sorry that I have tolerated stereotypes and generalities.

I'm sorry that I did not protest when my church put signs in its yard in support of anti-gay legislation.

I'm sorry that I did not stand with you when my town's leaders passed a resolution to try and ban you from living in our community.

I'm sorry that evangelicals have made church an unsafe place for you, that we have stigmatized that which we do not understand, that we have inadvertently forced so many young people to keep secrets about their sexuality, and that we have made the Christian subculture the worst one in which to come out.

I'm sorry for our hypocrisy. I'm sorry that we say gay marriage is the biggest threat to the sanctity of an institution we ourselves do not honor half of the time. I'm sorry that we've spent millions of dollars trying to restrict your civil liberties when that money could have been used for better things. I'm sorry that we don't focus on our own families first.

I'm sorry that we leave you with no good options. I'm sorry for criticizing you for being promiscuous, but then denying you the opportunity to form committed, monogamous relationships. I'm sorry that we act like celibacy would be easy, as if you do not desire companionship and intimacy as much as we do.

I'm sorry that we talk about you more than we listen to you. I'm sorry that we form opinions about things we don't understand. I'm sorry that we think we can write a prescription to make you just like us.

I'm sorry that we treat your sexuality as a disease and that we offer dangerous "cures," like encouraging you to marry someone of the opposite sex. I'm sorry that these tactics often result in nothing but shame and secrets and more broken families.

I'm sorry that we have used the Bible as a weapon.

I'm sorry that we have used religion to shame.

I'm sorry that we have assumed we speak for God.

Most of all, I am sorry that we haven't been Jesus to you. Jesus, who associated with the marginalized of his society—women, Samaritans, tax collectors, and prostitutes—Jesus, who forgave when others wanted to stone, who gave freely when others wanted to charge, who welcomed when others wanted to shun. I'm sorry that we call ourselves Christians, or "little Christs," when we look nothing like our Lord.

I know that this letter does not excuse me from the mistakes of my past, and I know it does not represent the position of many in my community. But I hope you see it as at least one hand reaching out. I am hopeful that there will be more, and that one day we will worship together in spirit and in truth without hate or shame.

May God bless you all richly.

- Rachel

Rachel Held Evans lives in Dayton, Tennessee (where public officially really did try to ban gays and lesbians from living in the community, although the measure was eventually overturned after public outcry). Rachel blogs at www.rachelheldevans.com.

'Mohammed Made Me An Atheist'

i have looked into other religions before but have always come back to Christianity, though i no longer hold onto dogmatic beliefs and interpretations. Sometimes i consider myself, in the term Pete Rollins uses, an A/theist in that i no longer hold my beliefs so tightly that i think i have all the answers figured out. Faith is what it is, which means belief in G-D takes faith in something not seen or felt in this life. i deeply resonate with what Rollins says about A/theism, in his book, 'How (Not) To Speak Of God':

'Not only is Christianity atheistic insomuch as it rejects ideas of God which stand opposed to those found in its own tradition (the early Christians were called atheists because of their rejection of those deities worshipped by the Romans), but also there is a sense in which Christianity is atheistic because it rejects its own understanding of God. For a Christian who does not simultaneously reject the idea of God that he or she affirms implicitly claims that the one he or she worships can be held within his or her systems of belief.

This does not mean that Christianity teaches us to reject our religious beliefs but rather reminds us that we must engage in a process of 'de-naming' God every time we name God, acknowledging that God's name  is above every name that we could ever ascribe . . .This process (of naming God) reminds us that God transcends all earthly names and, as such, escapes our attempts at absolute understanding. God is nominated and then de-nominated, reminding us  that our understanding of the term 'Father' is profoundly affected by our background.

In opposition to the fundamentalist, wh can be defined as one who believes what they believe, the Christian can be said to operate with an a/theistic discourse , which makes claims about God, while simultaneously acknowledging that these claims are provisional, uncertain and insufficient. This a/theistic approach is one that understands how our questioning of God is never really a questioning of God but only a means of questioning our understanding of God. It is a discourse not unlike that of the original cynics, who, in opposition to the common caricature, were deeply moral individuals who questioned truth as presented by society precisely because of their deep love of truth. An a'theistic faith thus acknowledges the importance of both theism and atheism in faith.

This approach does not stand above faith, nor does it undermine it; rather this a/theistic approach is born from, and subservient to, faith. it allows us to maintain an unflinching belief in God 9as one believes in a person one trusts) while maintaining humility when attempting to describe what exactly God is. This is summed up powerfully by Augustine when he wrote, "What do I love when I love my God?" - a phrase that captures a profound passion for God amidst doubt and unknowing. By exploring how fidelity to God requires an acknowledgement of the provisional nature of our beliefs, "a/theism" was designed to offer us a greater appreciation of God's greatness, a renewed openness to learning from other people's understanding of God and a deeper commitment to a faith that is enhanced, rather than enslaved, by a particular Christian tradition.' (pp. 97-98)

HT Andrew Sullivan for this riveting article from Douglas Murray, a former Anglican from England.

'Douglas Murray says that he stopped being an Anglican after analysing Muslim texts and deciding that no book — of any religion — could claim infallibility'

'Many people hold on to belief as an unquestioned part of their make-up. They never have to confront the source of their belief, and as long as nothing actively pushes them into addressing it, they keep it as something which rarely does much harm and might actually do some good. I have been an Anglican since birth — and not just a cultural Anglican but at times (rarest of things) a real, worshipping, believing Anglican. Like a lot of believers, I knew that there were parts of my belief that wouldn’t stand up to analysis. But that was fine. I didn’t need to analyse them. I only lost faith when I was forced to . . .

Some years ago I started studying Islam. It didn’t take long to recognise the problems of that religion’s texts — the repetitions, contradictions and absurdities. Unlike Christianity, scholarship on these problems in Islam has barely begun. But they are manifest for anyone to see. For a holy book which in its opening lines boasts ‘that is the book, wherein is no doubt’, plenty of doubt emerges. Not least in recognising demonstrable plagiarisms from the Torah and the Christian Bible. If God spoke through an archangel to one illiterate tradesman in 7th-century Arabia, then — just for starters — why was he stealing material? Or was he just repeating himself?

Gradually, scepticism of the claims made by one religion was joined by scepticism of all such claims. Incredulity that anybody thought an archangel dictated a book to Mohammed produced a strange contradiction. I found myself still clinging to belief in Christianity. I was trying to believe — though rarely arguing — ‘Well, your guy didn’t hear voices: but I know a man who did.’ This last, shortest and sharpest, phase pulled down the whole thing. In the end Mohammed made me an atheist.'

Your thoughts?

Christ and Christianity From Moby's Perspective

HT Blake Huggins for Moby's very insightful thoughts on Christ and Christianity:

i actually think that the teachings of christ accomodate most of the new ways in which we perceive ourselves and our world.
the problem is that although the teachings of christ accomodate this, contemporary christianity does not.
here’s more seriousness dressed up as flippancy:
christ: acknowledging quantum realities.
christiantiy: depressingly newtonian.
does that make any sense?
well, to me it does.
and to some of you it might make sense, also.

Moby always blows me away. What are your thoughts?

A Significant Blog Post From 2008

Andrew Tatusko started following me on Twitter. i checked out his blog and enjoyed it. So i began following him on Twitter. He seems to be a really kind and cool guy and we share the same illness, Lyme Disease. So, when i found a post he had written at Queer Messages, my respect grew even more for this great guy! His vulnerability in sharing his journey and how he came to his conclusions make a poignant story. This is beautiful and gives me hope for people, even Rick Warren! i certainly could relate to what he said his sister went through with finding healing and peace! Thanks, Andrew!

"Why I Am Gay Friendly"

I hated gay people.

This was a sentiment often covered up by statements like, “I am being compassionate for their eternal status with God”, or “Hate the sin, love the sinner”, or “God did not create us to have sex with people of the same gender”. I was a harbinger of repentance, of purity, and of chastity for those who had succumbed to the whims of desire, a fallen culture, and the poor misguided choice of the psychologically needy to seek out someone of the same gender to fulfill their dark sexual desire. I had a very clear and indubitable assumption that a “practicing” homosexual could not receive Christ and those who believed they had, were deceiving themselves. After all did not John say, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”?

But these were statements to absolve me of my own guilt. The truth is that I hated gay people because they were a disease to the world and the the Church. Gay people were pedophiles, sexual addicts, and the source of the AIDS epidemic - something God must have brought upon us to make us aware…of them.

Then my sister came out and everything began to change.

As with many in my position, there was a clear period of mourning. At first it was because my unconditional love for her was in clear conflict with what I believed to be the Truth of the Bible and what God had clearly revealed to humanity regarding our behavior, and how we ought to respond to the act of salvation that Christ performed. Her lifestyle did not fit within my picture, and I had to find a way to resolve the conflict.

It took me a while to reach the point where I could even say that I still loved her, but I did not love her lifestyle and could never affirm it. Homosexuality to me was no better than an addiction. Sure addiction is a disease and no one chooses to be addicted to anything. But a choice has to be made at some point to engage in behaviors that lead to addiction. And addiction comes as a result of a lot of environmental variables that make it more likely. However, it is this very connection between addiction and homosexuality that caused me to doubt my idea of what homosexuality was for me at the time.

You see, my sister was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. My family is loaded with people who have self-medicated in order to compensate for chemical imbalances and too much stress probably as a result of mild OCD issues and clinical anxiety. I literally watched her walk the path of self-destruction and pain as an addict. What I did not know is that her own struggles with her sexuality were participating in her sense of pain and not helping her situation at all.

Her recovery from addiction was accompanied by her coming out. Learning that these two events were irreducibly related was not easy and was very hard for me to visualize. Her own psychological well-being depended in large part on her reconciliation of her sexuality with her identity. Rather than her coming out being a sign of self-destruction, it was a sign of healing - evidence that she was OK with the world. I could either reject that evidence even though it was obvious and clear, or accept that evidence as valid and change my picture of Truth. The latter would allow me to love my sister unconditionally, the former would constrict my love for her with self-imposed conditions.

I had to reconcile my understanding of unconditional love with the conditions that lead to my sister’s own healing process from years of pain and addiction. So the question slowly moved from How can I love her and hate her sin?, to How can I love her for who she is? And it was this question that forced me to accept and radically change my world-view to see that homosexuality is not a sin, but a gift.

If God truly is love, and if my sister could find love, is not God an active participant in that love too? If my sister could receive Christ, truly and only after coming out, does that not suggest that homosexuality is not an aberration of nature, but as integral to the fabric of our world as heterosexuality? See, the evidence that the love of God can be released in the context of homosexual love, or what I now prefer to call gender-neutral love, forced me to change my ideals just as the clear evidence that evolution is real and the universe is 13.5 billion years in the making forced me to change my ideas of what Genesis really must mean.

After 10 years of struggling with the question, my sister is now entering her candidacy to be a minister of Word and Sacrament in the Episcopal Church. She asked my wife and I to participate in her exchange of vows with her partner as witnesses. My wife and I are the only ones in either family to have been there for that ceremony in Toronto. Her sexuality has been a witness to the redemptive power of God’s love, not the myth of a God who will punish persons who have sexual orientations other than heterosexual.

Not to affirm the presence of God in her relationship, is to deny the very existence of God for if God is love, God is with them and creating them to be better servants of the Kingdom now, that it may become fulfilled in our midst.

__ __ __ About The Author:

Drew Tatusko is an academic administrator and instructor at Mount Aloysius College in Cresson, PA. He has an M.Div. (1999) and a Th.M (2000) from Princeton Theological Seminary. He lives with his wife, two sons, two dogs, two cats, and the occasional foster dog in Duncansville, PA. He graduated from Westminster College (PA) with a B.A. in religion (1996). He is completing his Ph.D. in Higher Education from Seton Hall University and posts frequently to his blog Notes From Off-Center. He is currently an elder at his church, an affiliate with the PC(USA).

Anti-Social Behaviour Order

Becky Garrison turned me onto this cute and hilarious blog from the UK called The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus. Watch out as you might find that you pee yourself from laughing so hard! This is what the author/illustrator says:

"i make my living out of the things i did in the margins of my school books.

i thought i’d use this space to show work that no one would be daft enough to pay for!
hope you enjoy!
jon

btw. for the non british among you… an ‘asbo’ is an ‘anti-social behaviour order’… the courts here award them to people who are deemed to be constant trouble in their neighbourhoods… presumably according to their neighbours!"

 

 

'Christianity As The End Of Religion'

i was visiting my friend's, Pete Rollins, blog tonight and found a link from another commenter to Richard Beck's blog, Experimental Theology, where he writes a thoughtful post on Rollins' "Fidelity Of Betrayal: Towards A Church Beyond Belief". Here are some things that i found to be provocative:

"In Fidelity Rollins takes up what I consider to be the most provocative theme from his earlier book How (Not). Specifically, it considers this question: Might the most faithful act of being a Christian be the renunciation of Christianity?

Let's examine, in turn, a weaker and stronger version of this question.

One way to approach this question is to do the following. Christianity, as a brand, is so historically, politically, morally, intellectually and culturally compromised that to be an effective witness for the faith one has to publicly and strenuously distance oneself from Christianity. Many Christians appear to be making this move. As a consequence, you see a lot of Christians criticizing and hammering Christianity as hard as secular critics do. Thus, we see Christians side with authors such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens over against Christianity.

I call this the "weaker" response as what is being rejected here is the Christian brand. Christianity itself isn't rejected as a religion, just its corrupted manifestations.

I'm more interested in a stronger response to Rollins's question. What if being a Christian means no longer being religious? What if conversion to Christianity means stepping out of religion? What if Christianity is the end of religion?"

AND

 

"As Bonhoeffer also wrote from prison, the church (and the Christian) can only be the church if it exists for others. The church doesn't exist for itself over against the other religions. The Christian church exists to serve the Other, even the other religions. The Christian is the Servant of the World. To "convert" to "Christianity" is to step into this mission. To adopt a non-religious posture and to exist for the sake of the world."

_________________________________________________________________________________

i see 'religion' as being man-made and not all that G-D intended. What do you think? Check out the entire post here.

Xtreme Christianity!

Ok, like i just read something REALLY, REALLY scary on Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish about Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Southern California. i have NEVER been a huge fan of Warren and his Purpose Driven Theology.

Wednesday night he appeared on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes where it is revealed he backs the assassination of foreign leaders. This is along the lines of Pat Robertson aka P. Ro. Remember Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. This is NOT the kind of Christianity i adhere to, and in my opinion, is very dangerous. Talk about a slippery slope. This IS insane and not the kind of interpretation of the Bible i would understand God advocating.

Here is part of their conversation:

Last night, on Fox News, Sean Hannity insisted that United States needs to "take out" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Warren said he agreed. Hannity asked, "Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?" Warren responded, "Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped.... In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers."

Sullivan comments saying,

"Some insist that Warren is a centrist, moderate type. He is, in fact, a very hard-core Christianist integrated firmly into the GOP. As such, he sees government as a divine institution authorized to punish evil and promote good - as fundamentalist Christians view those things."

Read more on this problematic story at The Washington Monthly.