In this interview with The Center for Public Christianity, theologian Stanley Hauerwas grounds his discussion of the value of humanity not in a “general anthropology,” or even in our being made in God’s image, but firstly in the fact that God became one of us in Christ.
[HT: Brian LePort]
Hope everyone is having a splendid weekend!
The blog might be in a state of disarray for the remainder of the afternoon, my apologies for any confusion.
I’ve realized that, over time, my blog and I have slowly begun to diverge in certain ways – which makes writing a bit more difficult.
I began writing during a time in my journey that was characterized deconstruction and academic pursuits, and while those terms could certainly still apply to my journey today, they take a rather different form now.
These days I’m in the process of reconstruction more than deconstruction, and my context has changed from academia to the world of books.
So, I still want to write about faith, story, theology, Christian life – many of the things I’ve been writing about for some time now – but I’m trying to rethink my blogging “platform” to better fit the way I’d like to go about that.
Grace and peace,
Mason
Each morning, as I sip my coffee and open the Scriptures, I turn to Common Prayer. This ordered liturgy has been a deeply formational practice for me, but it strikes me that such prayer, such liturgy and reflection, is meant to be done in community. So for the next few weeks I am going to share a quote from my daily reading with this community, and see where the conversation leads.
Grace and peace.
“Help us to remember that all of humanity is invited to feast at your table, especially those we would name as enemies”
Sometimes I think that American politics is simply a mechanism for finding one hundred different ways to promise the same thing.
Yes, there are differences between the various candidates for president, and the two main parties, but lately it has seemed to me that those differences are greatly exaggerated.
Points of dissimilarity, such as their stance on defining marriage or who gets which tax cuts, are pushed to the front to obscure the fact that they are all just offering us variations on the same narrative.
Almost every candidate, and the party platforms of both Republicans and Democrats, promise us year after year that they will grow the economy and secure America’s “special place in the world,” which is of course a not-so-subtle reference to our continued military superiority.
And this sounds right to us because we have convinced ourselves that our narrative, nationally and personally, is defined by consumption and war – what Walter Brueggemann calls “therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism” in The Practice of Prophetic Imagination
Consumerism and militarism have come to play such an essential and interconnected role in the American story that Wendell Berry can justifiably refer to them in terms of impersonal forces, The War and The Economy, in his novel Jayber Crow
“The War and The Economy were seeming more and more to be independent operations. The War, I thought, was just the single Hell that is always astir in the world…And the nations were always preparing funds of weapons and machines and people to be used up whenever The War did break out in full force, which meant that sooner or later it would … Also, it seemed that The War and The Economy were more and more closely related…The War was good for the Economy.”
We’ve decided that economic advancement at any and all costs, and America’s military superiority over any and all rivals, are worthwhile goals that somehow increase our peace, strengthen our communities, and advance the common good.
But instead we have unending wars and a whole “security” industry in our airports and public spaces, disintegrating communities from urban centers to the rural farmlands, and the shrinking of the “greater good” to nothing more than our collective ability to consume more year after year.
People are made for more than this, war and consumption may be parts of the human experience but they are not the most important parts. Such a view reduces our humanity, ignoring our souls, our loves, our neighborhoods, our environment, our art, our virtues and vices, our story.
As Gospel people shouldn’t we be offering a political vision of what it means that Jesus-is-Lord that is more than just a baptism of Right or Left wing promises of economic growth and national security?
If you are passionate about the art of writing, and I know many of you are, I want to point you towards Tell Better Stories.
Tell Better Stories is a new blog about writing, marketing, and publishing, by my friend Andrew. Andrew and I work together, and I can tell you from experience that he knows his craft, and has a deep passion for helping authors share their stories.
Here’s an excerpt from the post Four Ways to Promote Your Book (Without Sounding Like a Salesman)
“I heard a well-published, best-selling author speak at a conference today. (I hesitate to use his name because I haven’t asked for permission.) I watched him give a talk that is the gist of his new major trade book. During his talk he referenced his new book numerous times and none of them sounded pushy, “salesman-y,” or insincere - it was amazing!
I bring this up because I know this is not an easy thing to do. So many writers I’ve met glaze over when I start talking to them about self-promotion. The words feel dirty: “self-promotion.” As if we were talking about an egotistical running back that wants to brag about how many touchdowns he scored in the last big game. But that’s really not the case.
Marketing doesn’t have to be egotistical. Marketing doesn’t have to feel “dirty.” Marketing, like most things, is most effective when you do what you do best and tell a story. Here’s how he did it:”
You can read the rest here.
Grace and peace.
Last night I shut off my computer after the stay of execution for Troy Davis, thinking there would be days or weeks for the state to reconsider. When I woke I found that wasn’t the case.
Honestly I don’t have that much to say this morning, except this.
When the leaders of one party champion the death penalty (even loudly cheering for it at debates), are in large part pro-war, and frequently advocate cutting back on care for the poor and uninsured, while leaders of the other party mourn these injustices all while ignoring the horrors of the thousands of abortions performed each year, then our nation does not have a political party with any right whatsoever to call itself “Pro-Life.”
As Davis said before his execution, “May God have mercy on our souls.”
_______________
For further reading:
Eugene Cho with “Who Would Jesus Execute?”
David Henson “The State Killed Two Men Last Night” (HT: Kurt Willems)
The Atlantic “The Death of Troy Davis“
Daniel Kirk on Evangelicals and “Redeeming Grace”
N.T. Wright with “American Christians and the Death Penalty.”
