Easter Prayer

 

Christus resurrexit! (Christ is risen!)

Vere resurrexit. (He is risen indeed.)

God of mercy and justice.  May this day be a day we remember that a Grace-ed New World has come upon us.

Amen.

Good Friday Meditation

IC XC: Jesus Christ, Ghetto’s Rose

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature’s law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet. Funny it seems, but by keeping it’s dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared. - The Rose that grew from concrete, a poem by Tupac Shakur …we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. - Paul, a 1st-century revolutionary Christian preacher Today we stand at the foot of the cross.  It is Good Friday.  Christians the world over will be remembering, reflecting on, and creatively imagining the significance of Jesus’ crucifixion.  Many Christians that inhabit different traditions of the faith will be emphasizing one of many of the images and/or symbols used to give meaning to the cross of Jesus Christ.  The cross, for many, means substitution, sacrifice, ransom, moral example, and conqueror (or victor).  Today’s brief meditation will be through the image of Christ as Victor over Sin and Death…or to bring it to the street: Jesus, Ghetto’s Rose. Tupac Shakur’s poem quote above captures the essence of this image: Christus Victor.  Pac’s poem paints for us life in the ghetto.  But it is a hopeful picture.  He paints a picture of a resilient rose that is able to break through the concrete.  The concrete represents ghetto-ization.  The long history of marginalization, joblessness, structural inequities, violence, racial self-hatred, black nihilism and despair.  It is a world not too far from the world of Jesus.  A world of Roman Imperial oppression and its tragic consequences that left many out in the cold where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Jesus hailed from Galilee.  Essentially he comes from the hood or ghetto.  His ministry is done primarily within this context, the margins of Roman Imperial power seated in Jerusalem.  Jesus’ proclamation of the coming kingdom of God would be an alternative to the Roman Imperial order.  It would be this order or false kingdom that would crucify Jesus. Just as life is often smothered and strangled to death in the ghetto. True Life was crucified by Sin and Death by way of the Roman Imperial death grip.  But as Tupac and the Gospel story remind us there is One who was victorious over the concrete of Sin and Death…Ghetto’s Rose, Jesus from Nazareth. Amen.

Thoughts on Obama and Wright

 

The blogosphere is buzzing about the relationship between Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama and pastor Jeremiah Wright.  The questions are numerous.  The main issue among some Christian bloggers has been Obama’s proximity to Wright’s version of Afro-centric Christian theology and it possibly hurting his bid for the White House.

My question: why should Wright’s version of Afro-centric Christian theology hurt Obama? why is this an issue?  

Is it because the label “afro-centric” is a qualifier? and thus far Obama (contra his political opponents) has distanced himself from the race issue.  Given our current political and racial climate in the United States I would to.

But what’s wrong with afro-centric? Especially when much of Christian theology for the past 500 year or so has been ”euro-centric”.  Of course we haven’t called it “euro-centric” Christian theology.  We’ve just called it “Christian”.  Kind of like “person” meant “white person” for many centuries. Or like “rational”, “pure”, “normal”, “clean”, “articulate”, etc. meant “white”.

Of course those who are uncomfortable with the qualifier afro-centric Christian theology or black theology would do well to understand the historical and social reasons why black folks use these qualifiers.  They only reveal their racial privilege by their ignorance of why black folks have had to do theology in this light.  

Here’s a truth about afro-centric theology that often goes missing in these discussions: it is a theology that seeks to re-affirm black humanity and resist the congenital effects of white Supremacist Christian culture.   It is an attempt to cure black folks  (and hopefully other folks) of racial self-hatred and ’apocalypse’ the pervasive genetic defect of white supremacy in North American Christianity.

Note: it is a strange irony that a theology that seeks to affirm black folk’s being made in the image of God and that seeks to resist the long history of white supremacy in North American Christianity would be considered ‘racist’.  Its the strangest of historical ironies. 

What unconscous habits would lead one to make such a charge?

My suggestion to folks uncomfortable with the qualifier “afro-centric”: read indigenous black church history.

Start here:

The Black Church in the African American Experience (Paperback)
by C. Eric Lincoln (Author), Lawrence H. Mamiya (Author)

And for something a little more palatable if you don’t like black Christian radicals:

 

Africentric Christianity: A Theological Appraisal for Ministry
by J. Deotis Roberts (Author)

I’d start here rather than rely on Sean Hannity for theological references.

 Initial thoughts…. 

Insurgency of Peace ‘occupies’ the Queen’s City (Charlotte, NC) this Friday

This week Brian Mclaren comes to my neck of the woods (Charlotte, NC) with the Everything Must Change tour.  We are expecting a good turn out.  Brian will be doing an interview with the local NPR station.  He has done an interview with the local paper here in Charlotte.  I’ve been re-reading his latest book, Everything Must Change.

   

I’m sure its causing a stir in some church circles.  A great read for anyone whose tired of status-quo Christianity with the after-life gospel and is hungry for a this-life gospel.

*shameless plug.  I get to lead a discussion on diversity and Pentecost.

Jesus and the Disambiguated

“Jesus’ message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of his people. He recognized fully that … no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit against them.” - Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited.

I love to collect hifalutin’ words.  A word I stumbled upon earlier this year and continues to haunt me I found on wikipedia: disambiguation.

In computational linguistics, word sense disambiguation(WSD) is the problem of determining in which sense a word having a number of distinct senses is used in a given sentence. For example, consider the word bass, two distinct senses of which are:

1. a type of fish
2. tones of low frequency

and the sentences:

1. I went fishing for some sea bass
2. The bass part of the song is very moving

To a human it is obvious the first sentence is using the word bass in sense 1 above, and in the second sentence it is being used in sense 2. But although this seems obvious to a human, developing algorithms to replicate this human ability is a difficult task.

I know…a bit technical .  I took a couple of double takes at this short definition to get a layman’s understanding (and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it).  To bring this word down to a street level it appears that this word means, in a basic sense, clarity.  Dis-ambiguation is a way for a system to bring clarity to a word…to give us the proper meaning and sense of a word.  It is the removal of ambiguity, the fuzziness, the cloud that often hangs around a word with multiple meanings. 

In an exercise of postmodern playfulness I want to use this word, dis-ambiguation, in the sense of being given clarity.

In a gospel-sense, dis-ambiguation, would be a prophetic function.  The prophetic, as I understand it, is about giving clarity to God’s people in order for them to be faithful to God’s covenant of shalom.  It is the removal of ambiguity of the many narratives and powers that shape our lives.  If my playfulness with the word dis-ambiguation is close to something like clarity in the sense of the prophetic then Jesus would be the ultimate dis-ambiguator. 

Jesus, the Great Dis-ambiguator, would give a message, share words, perform practices, instill prophetic habits, and give cadence to the lives of those around him in a way that would give clarity of sight:

Luke 4:17-21: “And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him (Jesus). And He opened the book, and found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.’

Jesus was a prophet.  And like all good prophets he gave people clarity about the place of their lives within the larger picture of God’s world. Jesus showed ‘what was the case’ and ‘what was hoped for’.  Jesus was good at giving clarity or removing ambiguity.  The ambiguity of the present and the hoped for future.  In short, he was the Great Dis-ambiguator.

So…in Jesus’ redemptive wake are those attached to him, the dis-ambiguated.  The dis-ambiguated are those, for whom Howard Thurman would say, that are emboldened and empowered to fight against the ’spirit of the time’ or zeitgeist.

To be dis-ambiguated by the gospel is to be gifted with clarity to see how we have been routed by the militancy of ’sin’, both systemically and personally.  

My use of “Jesus and the disambiguated” simply echoes Howard Thurman’s “Jesus and the disinherited”.  Thurman, echoing the work of (pre)post-colonialist thinker Franz Fanon’s work (e.g. Wretched of the Earth) on the effects of oppression on the oppressor/oppressed, helped lay the foundation for liberation theology in our North American context. 

As an African-american, Thurman, gave us insight into the first century Palestinian, Jesus from Nazareth as a liberator.  Thurman’s location as being tied to an oppressed community aided him in having a hermenuetical solidarity with the Jesus community in Roman-occupied Israel.  Like most of scripture and the African-american religious tradition, faith tends to be interpreted from the margins…from the bottom-up.

Bringing Fanon and Thurman into our postmodern context, where we are being made more aware of ‘all’ of ‘our’ complicity with anti-human stories and powers, we learn that disambiguation is not just about those in the margins. 

The disambiguated can be everyone.  ”All” of us are occupied territory of some sort.  ”All” of us are like Legion the demoniac Jesus encounters in the gospel story.  “We” are all Legion for ‘many’ things plague us and oppress us.

The dis-ambiguated is not limited to those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.  We are  all oppressor and oppressed.  Jesus disambiguates us with the message of salvation…the proclamation of God’s redemptive order, the kingdom of God. 

Emerging Profession: Resisting Maintenance of the Spectacle (3)

Under the weather for the past few days.  Thanks to everyone who commented on this topic.

How’s the spectacle maintained? and what difference does it make.  Since this whole thing is a conversation, not a dissertation, my thoughts will be fluid.  In other words, no footnotes.

The spectacle of the CEO-pastor is maintained by constant deference to American Business culture and the legality of non-profit corporations.  

We are inundated with conferences on ’steps’ and ‘principles’ of leadership and management.  The culture of North American churches is steeped in the language of corporatism.  This is the air we breath.  My contention is not that we live in this world.  I am more concerned with the spectacle of the CEO-pastor as a possible un-just social relation that simply mirrors the social, political, economic inequities in our society. Where pastors hide under the ‘legality’ or ‘law’ of the CEO.  As we learn from the deconstructionist ‘law’ oftentimes hides deeper structural injustices.  Or as the apostle Paul once taught us: not the letter of the law but the spirit of the law.  The law, it seems, oftentimes follows behind justice.  I see the temptation of being swallowed up by narratives of competition, success, and acquisition that are counter the fruits of the Spirit.  I am reminded some years ago when two large popular churches based in Atlanta had students in competition for ’souls’ on their respective campuses.  They saw themselves as part of competing camps or corporations striving to get the best part of the ’soul’ market.  Episodes like this are just an expression of the larger issue being discussed.      

So…while many pastors point us to the legality of their positions as CEO-pastors there is a greater issue involved than the legality of their positions.   The social, political, and economic relation of their positions to their churches and their larger communities.

I do not believe it is enough to point to the ‘legality’ of your ‘right’ to claim yourself a CEO.  You must do the hard work of deconstruction and repentance.  The hard work to see if your embracing of leadership philosophies from American Business culture are anti-thetical to the upside down kingdom of God. 

Is your CEO-leadership style in harmony with the covenantal demands of God’s justice-making convenant?  Solidarity with the oppressed, mercy, justice, love, shalom, vulnerability, reconciliation, charity, grace, etc.. 

Or do you maintain the spectacle of the CEO by hiding behind a mountain of leadership books, conferences, and Constitutional laws?  

My Hymnal

Been listening to Nina Simone lately.  Tempestuous, prophetic, and blue.

An Emerging Profession: Resisting the maintenance of Spectacle (Part II)

 

Continuing the conversation. 

What do I mean by spectacle?

A thought from philosopher Guy Debord from his book Society of the Spectacle:

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

If you can recall we began this discussion with the example of popular pastor Bishop Eddie Long and his defense of his lifestyle: I am a CEO of a large non-profit multi-national corporation.  Therefore ‘my accumulation of large slices of the pie is justified…I’m a CEO!’.  The image of CEO gives credence, for Bishop Long and many others, to their accumulation of mass amounts of wealth.  The mechanism of the non-profit is the machinery of accumulation.  Calling his community a multi-national corporation makes it easier for his church to be the machinery of wealth accumulation. 

Makes sense really.  I mean could he get these images from the subversive witness of the Christian New Testament?  When church leaders in the New Testament accumulated wealth and resources to themselves what happened to it?

Acts 4:32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. 34 There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.

Good Evangelical Protestant that I am I cannot help but hold the witness of Scripture as the norm by which I weigh things like this.  This habit of accumulation of wealth for distribution to those in the margins  is a consistent practice of early Church leadership.  There is no amassing of the community’s resources for the apostles personal coffers.  Why is that?  It could be that the guiding image and metaphor of leadership put down by Jesus is quite different than prominent leadership images today (e.g. CEO, set-man).  Jesus used the language of bond-servant and servant as the guiding metaphor and image of community leadership:

Luke 22:24 Now an eager contention arose among them [as to] which of them was considered and reputed to be the greatest.

    25 But Jesus said to them, The kings of the Gentiles are deified by them and exercise lordship [ruling as emperor-gods] over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors and well-doers.

    26 But this is not to be so with you; on the contrary, let him who is the greatest among you become like the youngest, and him who is the chief and leader like one who serves.

    27 For who is the greater, the one who reclines at table (the master), or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am in your midst as One Who serves.

Jesus taught the apostles that they were not to lead like the benefactors or patrons of their communities.  What were the benefactors/patrons? Insights from the political-economy of ancient Rome-dominated Israel give us insight:

Roman warlords, emperors, and other patricians became obscenely wealthy.  Not only did they bring boundless booty back from their conquests, they also built up vast personal empires of wealth from the practices of imperialism that made them wealthy and powerful while impoverishing and ruining the Roman citizen-soldiers. (p.24)

From Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder - Richard Horsley

Jesus de-mystified and de-constructed an image that upheld a social arrangement that maintained an imbalance of power in the community.  He uses the image of the Patron or Benefactor as his foil or example.  These were positions at the top of the political economy of Jesus’ day.

If Jesus were walking with us today (I know he is in his Body in asmuch we are faithful the gospel of the kingdom) which image of rulership would he use to de-mystify and uncover unjust arrangements of power?  From the world of politics it would be Congresspersons, Judges, Presidents, and Prime Ministers.  From the world of economics it would be Shareholders, CEOs, etc.  From the world of religion it would be popes, bishops, apostles, etc.  Jesus, I imagine, would demistify and uncover these images and metaphors to show us that behind these images there can and oftentimes is an unjust arrangement of power.

What I find amazing is the mountains of data put out by various groups that keep up with CEO salaries compared to the average worker in a corporation.

What has this to do with spectacle?  Recall that Debord told us that a spectacle is a social relation that wants to appear as a collection of images.  Oftentimes in church we want to use the spectacle of the CEO as an acceptable metaphor or image of leadership in the Body. 

But how is this image or spectacle of the CEO maintained?  If the image or metaphor of pastor-as-CEO is really a social relation what kind of relation do we oftentimes find in our communities when this image is bought wholesale?  And how is it maintained?

Tomorrow.

An Emerging Profession: Resisting the maintenance of Spectacle

I received an email some days ago asking me to contribute to a great conversation about church leadership in 21st-century North America.  This conversation is being facilitated by Drew Ditzel.  He’s studying @ Columbia Theological Seminary.  As a part of his studies he’s investigating leadership and the emerging church.  There will be seven emerging  church bloggers that will be contributing to this conversation.  I look forward to chatting with folks on this very important issue.  

As one who comes from the world of black Pentecostalism and the Word of Faith/Charismatic storefront the image of pastor as CEO is gaining wide currency.  An example of this would be popular pastor Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, GA just outside of Atlanta.  He, along with many other prominent ministers, have been under fire recently for affluent lifestyles that are largely supported from the coffers/finances of their non-profit ministries.  I’m not here to debate the ethics of Long’s particular case.  I’m interested in something he said in a recent interview regarding his affluent lifestyle being largely supported by his church.  It appears Congress has gotten into the mix by interrogating and investigating the finances of prominent ministers.  Bishop Long will be one of many preachers that will be under Congress’ scrutiny.

In defense of his affluence Bishop Long says, “ ”We’re not just a church, we’re an international corporation.”  Long proclaims with confidence that he is a CEO of a multi-national non-profit ministry.  And like any other CEO of a large corporation he should be well compensated.  His use of the image of CEO and corporation I find to be interesting.  I have respect for Long’s ministry.  I refuse to join the cacophony of voices throwing broad and sweeping condemnations towards his ministry.  Anybody that has truly done ministry knows that ministry can be a complex reality.  A mixed bag of good and bad. 

The use of CEO/coporation to describe the pastor and church seems to be the controlling metaphors or images by which the community and its leadership is seen.  The pastor is CEO and members of the community are corporate workers and donors.  The non-profit ministry itself being a corporation just like any other corporation.  In the book Missional Church, edited by Darrell Guder, the image of pastor as CEO running a multinational corporation is put within in a larger historical context.

“The nature of leadership is thus transformed into the management of an organization shaped to meet the spiritual needs of consumers and maximize market penetration for numerical growth. Schools of management now replace medical and law schools as the professional model shaping seminary leadership training.”(p. 19

One of the things embraced within the postmodern is the realization that we do theology from some place.  Our place is within the political economy of democratic liberal capitalism.  We live in a Market culture where just about all human interaction is seen through the lens of commerce and exchange.  The language of the multi-national corporation guides the understanding and structure of many in Christ’s body.  This is not necessarily a judgment but an observation that Market culture dictates our understanding of church leadership and the mission of the church in God’s world.  Pastor is CEO.  Church is multi-national corporation.  For the most part this reality seems to be a very practical thing given the world in which we live.  But there is a danger, I believe, in uncritically embracing these images of controlling and directing our understanding of leadership and community. 

I believe leadership in the emerging church will not uncritically accept these metaphors and images of leadership and community.  Largely because uncritically embracing Market language and image into the church’s mission can easily make it difficult to see one’s complicity with the negative pathologies of Free Market fundamentalism.  I would hope that leadership in the emerging church would be able to deconstruct the bad habits of free market fundamentalism by at least being able to resist habits, beliefs, and practices that make it difficult to see one’s complicity with structures of injustice.  As Jacques Derrida once taught us: deconstruction is justice.  In deconstruction, leadership is able to be honest about the finite nature of humans building these institutions and communities.  The very real human tendency to create structures/communities/institutions that maintain injustice among neighbors.  That they are just as easy to get caught up in practices and beliefs that make if difficult to discern one’s complicity with injustice. 

One such habit that needs to be resisted is the ‘maintenance of spectacle’.  I can see emerging church leaders positioned by theological humility, focus on peace-making, reconciliation, and forgiveness as a way to resist the maintenance of spectacle in their respective congregation.  What is spectacle?

Tomorrow.

Going Back Home

Recently I sat on a panel at University of North Carolina @ Charlotte organized by Muslim Students.  It was a delightful and inspiring conversation between folks from different religious/faith traditions.  I sat on a panel of folks representing Jewish, Bahai’, Muslim, and myself, the lone Christian.  In my introduction I had to speak about my location as a Christian.  I had to fess’up and say that I do not represent the Christian faith as a whole.  In preparation for my introductory comments I had to come clean with where I come from as a Christian.  Which prove to be a soul-searching task.  Which is this: black Pentecostal/Charismatic, Evangelical, prophetic Black church, mystical, with drops of postmodern forms of post-evangelicalism on the edges. 

Yes I know.  Those are big words.  But what does that mean?  It means that I still believe in the manifestations of the Spirit, the inspiration of Scripture, the saving work of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, the immediacy of the Spirit, the consistent practice of being suspicious of the dominant culture’s interpretation of the Christian faith (forgive me…but too much blood lies in its wake).

After that conversation with Muslims and others of different faiths I realized that something has been calling me back home.  Calling me back to my pentecostal/charismatic roots.  Not my fundamentalist  roots (I was once a die-hard fan of the Neo-Conservatism of Pat Robertson and Hard-line Reformed theology of Rousas John Rushdoony….if you never heard those names before I suggest you read up on these folks..their pens and word influence many Christians today) but an understanding that the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Justice.  That God has poured out the Spirit to create a community of folks that give faithful expression of God’s creative and redemptive intention for humanity and the creation. 

In short: Everyday there is a growing desire to have one foot in old time Pentecost (one thinks of Apostle Seymour to Bishop Mason, Church of God in Christ, to Prophetess Juanita Bynum) and one foot in a fledgling form of Christianity that is beginning to question how deeply tied to Western Imperialism is North American Christianity.  What some are calling the emerging church movement.  Anyways…I’ve been doing some reflecting on scripture and the traditions.  And for some odd reason I see myself going back home to the black Pentecostal-Evangelical tradition with a few major differences shaping my beliefs and practices.  More of a black Pentecostal (c)atholic faith that seeks the immediacy of the Spirit while also hoping and looking for crooked places to be made straight, high places made low, and an outpouring of Jesus-Justice on God’s green earth.  I feel more and more compelled to go back home.  Ultimately, what is home?  It is the bossom of the Father.