World Peace and Interfaith Dialogue -

So what are the prospects for interfaith dialogue?

I was taken yesterday by the recent post by Media Matters for America on '"Most Outrageous Right Wing Comments of 2006." This was published recently on alternet - I share a couple of comments made about American Muslims.

For example: CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck to Representative-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn.: "OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. … With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, 'Let's cut and run.' And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.' " [11/14/06]

Or then consider Right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel on Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.: "So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian … is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father's heritage, a man we want as president when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?" [12/18/06]

So can the religious community address this bigotry?

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and host of the daily Christian radio show The Albert Mohler Program: "Well, I would have to say as a Christian that I believe any belief system, any world view, whether it's Zen Buddhism or Hinduism or dialectical materialism for that matter, Marxism, that keeps persons captive and keeps them from coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, yes, is a demonstration of satanic power." [3/17/06]

So we wonder why interfaith dialogue dialogue is so difficult. As Homer simpson would say, "Duh!"

James Lawson Returns to Nashville

The invitation to James Lawson to serve as Visiting Professor this fall at Vanderbilt is for that venerable institution a courageous act of repentance and a sign of hope that life can and does change. Lawson was dismissed from the Divinity School for his civil rights organizing activites with Fisk students more than 30 years ago.

One could wish that the late Langdon Gilkey had lived to see this day. Reflecting on his experience as a faculty member in Nashville during those "heady" times, Dr. Gilkey often told the story of how he and several other Divinity School faculty tendered their resignations unless Lawson was reinstated. The Chancellor was not moved. However, when several members of the faculty at the Medical School offered the same challenge, the administration began to reconsider, although Lawson had by that time had moved on to Boston.

In his inimicable way, Gilkey noted that, in the South, a great university could survive without a divinity school, but not a medical school!

On a personal note, it humbled me to recently learn that one of those activist Med school faculty members was my late Uncle, Dr. Victor Najjar. I think he would also had been very pleased to learn of Vandy's turn-a-round.

Visit PBS story "This Far By Faith"

Thou shall not bear false witness...

Apparently all those evangelical pundits who make such a big deal of insisting that the Ten Commandments be placed in the public square are more concerned with displaying them rather than obeying them. Of course, they simply ignore the fact that in the Jewish tradition - the tradition to whom this construct belongs - there are more than 600 commandments.

Recently, noted psychologist Carol Gilligan pointed our how James Dobson grossly misrepresented her research to claim that she had found that children are better off with a married mother and father rather than same-sex parents.

Apparently lying is okay if it is in service of the religious right's ideological agenda!

Metaphorical Log jam

In the Pacific northwest, loggers float their product down from the high forests on the rivers that run through the countryside. On occasion, there is a big log jam and everything stops. Clearing the flow requires teasing out each individual log much like a game of "pick-up sticks." The formative task in theology can by seen in much the same way - in our congregations, we often have spiritual log jams on our corporate river of consciousness. Images collide and pile on top of each other - metaphors are often mixed leading to the repetition of words and pictures whose meaning has been lost - to open up the spirituality freighted by our religious meatphiors, we have to tease each one out separately - see the differences, the contradictions, the sheer wonder of our religious language - and then maybe the spirit can flow!

Theology #1

Recently, it has been helpful to me to understand a theologian's work to be taking place at two different but clearly interconnected levels. There is the normative level, where theological statements are tested against the general consensus of viability and there is the formative level where theological statements are tested overagainst the religious foundations of the greater tradition in which one is writing. Most helpful resources at the normative level for me have come from the tradition of process theology and writers such as John B. Cobb, Jr. Metaphorical theological analysis has been most promising for my work at the formative level. In particular for me, Sallie McFague's work has best defined this task. While I have studied process theology for years, I always feel that I am just a beginner. However, just the presence of a theological model that allows me with some integrity to talk of a God acting in the midst of the world give me permission to work at the formative level!

Second Naivete

Dr. Paul Ricour died recently. While he was associated with the University of Chicago and remained in that community as emeritus professor until his death, I was active at that venerable institution. Unfortunately, the closest I ever got to him was to read portions of his many books. I wish that I had at least met him. His most useful insight for me had to do with what he called "second naivete" a consciousness that was only possible on the other side of the application (to borrow his more famous expression) of the “hermeneutics of suspicion.”

“Second Naivete” implies that religious practice (and its associated supporting "formative theology") must finally move beyond the step of demythologizing required by the sense of distance that one inevitably experiences at the first encounter with our religious tradition and its basic images. It is a return back to metaphorical language, but this time the metaphors are imbued with spiritual depth.

I am constantly struck at the sort of mumbo-jumbo that passes for religious discourse in our religious communities. This sort of discourse is unfortunately often manipulated by very narrow ideological perspecives. For a community to genuinely appropriate its tradition with second naivete, a long journey requiring extreme honesty about its most sacred images and texts must be taken. We need a whole new generation of guides for these trips.

Now the truth comes out!

I haven't seen Mel Gibson's latest lovefest with violence, Apocalypto, but I have seen the trailers and I have read the reviews. It becomes clear the Mel's movie, the Passion of the Christ, was in fact just one more in a series of films contemplating violence and testing the audience's stomach for such lurid display. Jesus was just one more in a long line of new action heroes!

Religious Gibberish #1

Sometimes an interfaith encounter can reveal more about one's own tradition than it reveals about the other. Recently, I made visit to a local Hindu temple and had the chance to participate in another's "puja." Such encounters are alway enlightening. (he-he!) One of the first things that one notices is that the ceremonies are conducted in Sanskrit, an ancient language that only the priests know. To most adherents, it is gibberish - I suppose it is the gestures that count. But sitting in a local congregation, I am struck at how similar is the mix of un-demythologized tangled metaphors that are used both in our ritual life, our creeds, and holy conversation - most of which is the repeating of pious language that in familiar but generally not understood.

A chance for a new conversation!

Welcome to my new "Blogspot." You are invited to participate in a new conversation about being a "new church in a new world in a new time." I will try to post blog comments on a regular basis - I welcome your comments, critiques or what-ever!

Grace and Peace