O, Brother from another planet, where art thou?
D'oh.
No sooner had I hit the orange "publish" on the post below, I clicked over to Rudy Carrasco's blog to discover A.) Rudy likes U2's Pop and, B.) Andre, Rudy and others are engaged in an interesting discussion about the lack of color in the emerging church. Guess I need to get caught up on the discussion.
:: Andrew 16:27 + ::
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Brother from another planet?
Earlier this week, before heading off to preach at an MLK memorial service, Andre at Mosaic Life (a wonderful blog I've just discovered and added to the blogroll) posted a refreshing perspective on postmodernism/emerging Christianity's lily-white face:I'm growing concerned about the emerging (postmodern) church. As I am engaging and observing conversations with my brothers and sisters in christ who embrace the values of the emerging church i feel that though i am seen as a brother our worlds don't connect. it's as if i were from another planet.
in a world in which real social injustices remain, and racial diversity is on the increase, i rarely hear racial reconcilaition and poverty discussed in the conversations of much of the emerging church community.
how do the voices of people of color and people in poverty get heard in the emerging church?
the leadership of the emerging church movement is looking very much like the leadership of the church of modernity. white and male
where are the brothers and sisters of color?
Hmmm. Maybe a repost of this would be appropriate. I posted it earlier this week on TheOoze Blog and it elicited exacly one comment (and from a rather befuddled reader). But that's one comment more than the satire elicited from readers of my blog. (Props, once again, to Knightopia for the link.)
:: Andrew 16:19 + ::
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Magnatune: "a record label that has a clue"?
John Buckner, founder/owner of new record label Magnatune, explains why he created it. "The goal is to find a way to run a record label in the Internet Reality: file trading, Internet Radio, musicians' rights, the whole nine-yards." I've just tuned into Magnatune's punk/metal link. Not too shabby.
Link via Seth Godin.
:: Andrew 16:09 + ::
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Anthony's Top 100 Albums: a work in progress
I'll be keeping my eye on this project: a listing of the top 100 albums, with commentary, from a weblog called Anthony Is Right. Currently, he's up to No. 94. (Note to Richard Hall -- check No. 99 on the list.)
Link via rockcritics daily.
:: Andrew 16:04 + ::
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Your own, personal, American Jesus
There's an interesting interview over at the Boston Globe's website with Stephen Prothero, a Boston University professor and the author of the new book American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. We Americans have been quite free in shaping Jesus in our myriad images, including "a capitalist, a countercultural hippie, a tenderly feminine savior, a manly soldier for Christianity, a driver of hybrid cars, and a fan of sport utility vehicles, among other guises." This, says Prothero, is both "a good thing and a bad thing."The liberties we've taken bring religion to a lot more people. We have this wild freedom of religion -- we can have a gay Jesus and a straight Jesus, a black Jesus and a white Jesus, a Spanish-speaking Jesus and an English-speaking Jesus -- [that] allows our citizens to approach Jesus. But it also can have the effect of cheapening the prophetic side of Jesus, the ability of Jesus to call a culture to account. Religion has been the most powerful force for social and political change historically. That power of Jesus is diminished by his tendency in the United States to take his marching orders from the public. Jesus was important in the civil rights movement, in abolitionism. It's not that he can't do anything right. But it's increasingly difficult to call on his name in the service of social transformation. He seems to be worried now more about what we drive and eat than why so many black people are in prison and why poverty is so unevenly distributed across the country.
Link via Relapsed Catholic.
:: Andrew 10:42 + ::
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:: Thursday, January 22, 2004 ::
O Captain, My Captain
Another childhood hero dies. Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo, died Friday, Jan. 23, at age 76. Watching Captain K, Mr. Green Jeans, the Dancing Bear, Mr. Moose and the rest of the cast -- including the unforgettable Tom Terrific (RealMedia file) -- was a highlight of my mornings when I was a toddler. Captain Kangaroo was a safe babysitter. Mom would set me in front of the TV without worrying that I might be exposed to any objectionable content.My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still...
:: Andrew 10:03 + ::
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Best writing day EVER!
Sigh. I need one of those days. Badly.
But good for you, RealLivePreacher. A good writing day is a rare find. Especially because writers actually despise the craft. Painters love to paint, singers love to sing, and writers love to have written.
:: Andrew 16:57 + ::
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Band of bloggers?
Across the pond, Richard Hall has come up with the idea of creating a virtual music group consisting of bloggers. Count me in this band of bloggers. Now, if we could only come up with an appropriate tune.
My suggestion? Let's pen a Ramones parody and call it "Blitzkreig Blog." :)
1-2-3-4!
:: Andrew 08:32 + ::
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The kids are alright
Today's teens are more open to organized religion than many of us thought, according to a new report (PDF) from the National Study of Youth & Religion. This report confirms much of my experience as a youth pastor in recent years. Most teens I deal with -- and the majority of kids in the church I attend are from "unchurched" families -- are much more accepting of organized religion than I ever was when I was their age. I guess that's a good thing, isn't it. Isn't it? I hope so.
Thanks to Tim Bednar for the link.
:: Andrew 07:19 + ::
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Salon review: The Gnostic Bible
Add biblical scholar Marvin Meyer and poet/translator Willis Barnstone to the list of authors cashing in on the gnosticism craze. Their new book, The Gnostic Bible: Gnostic Texts of Mystical Wisdom form the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, is "a huge collection of Gnostic sacred writings," writes Donna Minkowitz in her Salon review of the book. (Subscription or free one-day pass to Salon required to read the review.) "These include not just the famous Jewish and Christian heresies from before the third century A.D. that are usually indicated by the G-word, but also medieval Manichaean, Cathar, Persian, and even Islamic and Chinese heresies that stem, in one way or another, from that original Middle Eastern manic Gnostic spark."
Minkowitz doesn't hide her joy in discovering such a collection -- "I was very excited to see all of these radical, anti-Yahweh religious texts assembled in one volume, some of them in English for the first time" -- but seems disappointed that "Barnstone and Meyer end up giving us the worst of both worlds, academia and uninformed pop culture."
"Their edition combines the sorts of things that give academic writing a bad name -- long, dry introductions to the texts, obtrusive footnotes that state the obvious -- with no effort to elucidate the really juicy and controversial points on which lay readers might like some guidance," writes Minkowitz. She adds: "I'm sad to tell you, based on this new edition, that it is heartbreakingly easy for radical, God-mocking heresies to turn into smarmy vanilla orthodoxy." Well, yeah. Any reader of The Da Vinci Code could have told her that.
:: Andrew 07:12 + ::
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:: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 ::
More proof that I should get more sleep
The latest scientific research, reported in today's issue of Nature, explains why my sleep-deprived brain doesn't function so well. The Associated Press reports:
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards said the riff in "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" came to him in his sleep, while 19th-century chemist Dmitri Mendeleev literally dreamed up the periodic table of elements. Now, for the first time, German scientists say they have proved that our sleeping brains continue working on problems that baffle us during the day, and the right answer may come more easily after eight hours of rest.
Scientists at the University of Luebeck found volunteers taking a simple math test were three times more likely than sleep-deprived participants to figure out a hidden rule for converting numbers into the right answer if they had eight hours of sleep. Full story.
:: Andrew 06:57 + ::
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What is a pastor?
Alan Creech has been asking that question over on his blog in recent days, and now ponders: What qualifies one to be a pastor? Well, there's the scriptural qualities of a pastor (or bishop), as outlined by Paul in his first letter to Timothy.
Here' from The Message, are the qualifications as outlined in 1 Tim. 3:1-7:If anyone wants to provide leadership in the church, good! But there are preconditions: A leader must be well-thought-of, committed to his wife, cool and collected, accessible, and hospitable. He must know what he's talking about, not be overfond of wine, not pushy but gentle, not thin-skinned, not money-hungry. He must handle his own affairs well, attentive to his own children and having their respect. For if someone is unable to handle his own affairs, how can he take care of God's church? He must not be a new believer, lest the position go to his head and the Devil trip him up. Outsiders must think well of him, or else the Devil will figure out a way to lure him into his trap.
:: Andrew 09:17 + ::
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:: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 ::
Andrew Sullivan on the SOTU speech
I was too busy watching my befuddling Missouri Tigers drop back to .500 in an overtime loss to the Texas Longhorns last night to bother watching President Bush's State of the Union Address. I figured it'd be more of the same, anyway. (Kind of like watching my pathetic Missouri Tigers.) So I must rely on secondhand analysis from the pundits of blogdom to shape my views. So far, in my brief web-surfing this morning, Andrew Sullivan's summary seems on the money (this, again, coming from someone who didn't bother to watch):
Bill Clinton's State of the Union addresses were often derided as laundry lists of new proposals without any larger, unifying theme. But last night George W. Bush seemed to do him one better (or, rather, worse): A laundry list of past achievements. The tax cuts, No Child Left Behind, the Patriot Act--all of these could reasonably be described as notches in the president's belt. But they're not much as an agenda for the future. Even the speech's high point--the president's aggressive defense of the war against Saddam and the war on terror--was extraordinarily backward-looking. It's not exactly the best strategy for kicking off an election year.
Sullivan goes on to applaud Bush's defense of the war, but notes that Bush offered little vision for the future. "[W]hat of the future? How do we deal with Iran or Syria or Pakistan or North Korea? Barely a squeak. What are our plans with regard to the hand-over of power in Iraq? Nothing but bland assurances that everything will be okay. A State of the Union shouldn't be an answer to every criticism. It should surely be a guidepost to what lies ahead. But almost all of the president's agenda was micromanaging the tax code or demanding the retention of initiatives already passed."
Also, in his separate blog entry about the SOTU, Sullivan provides a nice summary of the Democratic response (which I also didn't watch):AND THEN ... : I watched Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle. Good grief. What whining weenies. Back to Bush.
:: Andrew 07:57 + ::
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Listen to the Get Up Kids' upcoming album -- online, for free
The Get Up Kids are a pop-punk band that have been tagged with the unfortunate "emo" label. Their forthcoming album, Guilt Show, charged with biblical and Christian themes ("Martyr Me," "The Dark Night of the Soul"), will be released March 2. But why wait? You can listen to the whole thing now via streaming audio. So take a listen. Tell me what you think.
And while you're thinking, let me tell you what I think. I think it's great that labels like Vagrant and so many others are offering entire albums online. I think it's a smart business move. So bully for Vagrant.
(Link via punknews.org.)
:: Andrew 18:38 + ::
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The Skinny on the mohawk
Andrew Jones's musings on the mohawk haircut (or the "mohican," as the Brits called it in the early days of punk) reminded me of Jon Savage's description of the hair style in his excellent but Sex Pistols-centric history of the early days of punk, England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. While Andrew rightly points out that "The mohawk is no longer offensive or radical" and that it is "Just another cool haircut," a historical perspective might help us understand just why the mohawk is so cool. As Savage writes in England's Dreaming:The mohican has had a long journey from its native American beginnings. Indian stories by authors like Karl May, Buffalo Bill and Edward Sylvester Ellis were already a staple of boys' literature by the last quater of the nineteenth century, around the time that the last homelands were disappearing in the US. In these action tales, Indians were the underdog: vicious, exotic and savage -- the perfect role model for teenage malcontents and all those who felt put upon. Indian trappings became popular among delinquents in 1890s London, 1900s Paris and 1930s Berlin, and of these, the mohical was the ultimate. It still is.
As Travis Bickle boils over with rage in Martin Scorsese's 1976 Taxi Driver, his transition into a killing machine is symbolised by a brutal mohican: an idea that was not lost on the emerging punk movement -- which shared much of the film's incandescent disgust. The shape of a strip of freshly shorn scalp, the mohical means war, pure and simple. There is a famous Robert Capa photograph of US paratroopers in Northern France, March 1945, with their hair cut 'mohawk style for luck and esprit de corps' for their next day's jump over the Rhine into Germany. Clearly, like any potent symbol, this can work in several ways.
For the record: I never had a mohawk haircut. My head is weirdly shaped, due to a lumpy birthmark on the back left portion of my head. My head looks better with hair than without. And even if I thought I would look good in a mohawk, I doubt I'd wear one. Or a mullet, for that matter.
:: Andrew 10:12 + ::
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:: Monday, January 19, 2004 ::
I've got this song (audio/video links) in my head...
...and it won't go away.
Thank you, alt/rock radio and VH1. You've got me hooked on Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl" -- even though I've only heard it/seen the video a handful of times.
What is it about this little garage-rock ditty? The thumping bass line intro? The Keith Richards-like guitar? The White Stripesesque vocals? The song seems to tie in elements of some great '60s-era rock -- the Stones, of course, but also the Kinks. I'm not the only one hooked. Even Acoustic Cafe played an unplugged version of the song in a recent show.
:: Andrew 08:57 + ::
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Youth culture and growing up
Enlightening essay about youth culture's influence on the broader culture and society, put in a historical -- and biblical -- context. A must-read for any youth pastor. Thanks to Gideon Strauss for the link.
Some excerpts:
We live in a culture where most of life is lived with peers. Age segregation is so much a part of the fabric of life, even in the church, that we take it for granted and think it's normal. In fact, it is a very recent historical phenomenon, and what began as age segregation, has for many, become age alienation.
When all ages rubbed shoulders together throughout the day, it was assumed that the young would quite naturally and unselfconsciously grow up into maturity through observing and relating to adults in many casual settings. Now we obsess about the importance of "role models" for our children and formalize mentoring programs because modeling no longer happens naturally in the course of day-to-day living.
And, to put it in some context for church culture:
Proverbs 20:29 says, "The glory of youths is their strength..." Clearly, the Bible does not share our culture's view that young people are intrinsically weak, unstable, and incapacitated by raging hormones and the temptations of the shopping mall.
Paul assumes that young people are capable of turning from the destructive desires of youth and pursuing "justice, integrity, love and peace together with all who worship the Lord in singleness of mind" (2 Tim 2:22).
John wrote that the young people had conquered the evil one, were strong and full of the Word of God. (1 John 2:14). They were having a significant impact in the cosmic battle in the unseen world. This is heroism of the highest order.
The unfortunate drawback to the essay is its conclusion, which reinforces the Cassie Bernall myth that emerged from the Columbine tragedy. Otherwise, a fine piece and well worth the time it takes to read it.
:: Andrew 11:46 + ::
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Sins ain't what they used to be
In modern culture, are the seven deadly sins still taboo? Jonathan Aitken of The Mirror reflects on the seven big ones. Link via ChristianityToday's weblog.
:: Andrew 10:40 + ::
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Holy Weblog! is back
And that makes me very, very happy.
:: Andrew 10:06 + ::
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Emerging church is in da house!
Satire from The Holy Observer:WESTCHESTER, NY – "Crazy white people," are the words Curtis Glover used to sum up his experience at Spirit Depot, a church touting itself as 'a postmodern expression of Jesus apprentices' in Westchester, New York. Glover, along with his wife Verna and sons Travis and Chandler, visited the church while on vacation from Chesapeake, Virginia.
"We should have gone back to the B & B the second we saw the way those people were dressed," said Glover. "They looked ready to slam dance at one of those Linkin Bizkit concerts."
Link via Steve Knight.
:: Andrew 10:01 + ::
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The Political Endorsement Rap Song
Still not sure which Democratic candidate to back? Take a cue from the celebrities. Click here and scroll down to "The Political Endorsement Rap Song" to hear who your favorite stars are backing.
Bonus, from the RS blog: thank your lucky four stars, Wesley Clark: you've got Madonna's endorsement.
:: Andrew 08:09 + ::
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U2's Bono honored by King Center
Bono was in Atlanta over the weekend to pick up an honor from the King Center as the center celebrated the 75th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth. While there, Bono urged activists to apply MLK's concept of nonviolent activism to the issue of AIDS in Africa, to pressure governments and corporations in the developed world to help "the poorest of the poor." Link via U2 Sermons.
In 1984, U2 released The Unforgettable Fire, which includes two sings in tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.: the hit single "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "MLK".
:: Andrew 08:04 + ::
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Simon Dawes, 
