Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

The Evangelical Sanhedrin: Weighed and Found Wanting by Ron Dart

The National Association of Evangelicals was formed in 1942, and built into the mandate of such an Association was a distinct way of understanding what it meant to be an evangelical and Christian.

Such an organizational vision (and those who defended it) formed what can be called the Evangelical Sanhedrin. Those who dared to differ with such a vision were not granted a seat with the elders of the tribe. Needless to say, the meaning of ‘evangelical’ has varied since 1942 (as it did before 1942), but there are tendencies that are still held with utmost tenacity. The Sanhedrin, like threatened yaks, will circle round one another if their agenda is questioned. But, does the evangelical Sanhedrin adequately, faithfully or comprehensively reflect the fullness of the Great Christian Tradition?

North American OPF Conference 2012

Acceptance is the Answer -- A Clarion Meditation

1. Start with meditating on this statement: "It is what it is."

This statement originates with Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518, where he says,

“19. That per­son does not deserve to be called a the­olo­gian who looks upon the invis­i­ble things of God as though they were clearly per­cep­ti­ble in those things which have actu­ally hap­pened [Rom. 1:20].

“20. He deserves to be called a the­olo­gian, how­ever, who com­pre­hends the vis­i­ble and man­i­fest things of God seen through suf­fer­ing and the cross.

“21. A the­olo­gian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A the­olo­gian of the cross calls the thing what it actu­ally is … [or in some translations, 'says that a thing is what it is.']

2. Pray the serenity prayer. Here is the full original version:

The Full Original Copy of the Serenity Prayer
by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

God give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

3. Read a this chapter from the AA Big Book:

Acceptance was the Answer:

Online here: http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_theystoppedintime16.pdf

4. Further reading: Byron Katie, 'Loving What Is.'

Mary and Martha -- In Solitary Confinement -- by Neaners

This is the first of several reflections Neaners had on the story of Mary and Martha in the gospel of Luke. From his context, he reads the familiar story not as the old tension between action vs. contemplation, busyness vs. prayer, but competition vs. unity at Jesus' feet. 

May these prison letters bless you and continue to bring us together.

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You know that story in the Bible where two girls are hiding Jesus (I think it’s Jesus), but one is cooking y cleaning while the other one is sitting down listening to him? Then the other one gets upset y tells Jesus something like to tell the other girl to help her or algo. I can’t find it in the Bible. I hope you know which one I’m talking about. But that to me is kinda what you say about not getting too busy making clear divisions between different ministries, getting them all divided, making more of the names than the mission. What do you think?

 In that one story it reminds me of a lot of things. The one sister is trying so hard to impress Jesus or whoever by cooking y cleanin’. People try so hard to out-do one another.  I wanna be like the other girl who sits there and is listening to Jesus, not caring about anything else but him and his clecha [training, teaching].

That’s how I wanna be. I don’t give a fuck if I’m wearing a Gang-Out Tshirt or a Tierra Nueva Tshirt or a GodSide Tshirt [different ministry projects who I’ve helped connect him with] or a blank white Tshirt. I’ll wear them all, it doesn’t matter. I’m gonna do what I gotta do to get other homies the real help they need and follow what Jesus is saying. 

You feel me homie?

 

Jesus is Lord and death is not -- Brad Jersak

A friend recently asked to respond to the following statement:

Through the resurrection, Jesus conquered and disempowered death, but he also reclaimed death as a natural blessing to the rhythm of life and shows us that it is possible to befriend it. When we live inside the resurrection even death is reclaimed as friend.

As I pondered this proposal throughout the Passion Week and especially on Easter Sunday, this flood of thoughts came up for considertion and meditation:

I have the same reservations about calling death a friend. But I think it's worth taking a scalpel to this statement for a bit to see where we might explore the way Christ's work changed not only our relationship to death, but changed the nature of death itself. So I want to ask first, how is this not true, and then, how is this true, and finally, how we might approach dying and death afresh in the aftermath of the Resurrection.

So first, and easiest, how or why is this statement not true? The most obvious point is that Paul calls death an enemy, and in fact, the last enemy to be destroyed, which is to say, it will remain an enemy until the final day. 

Resurrection Here and Now by Brian Zahnds

Resurrection Here and Now

Resurrection Here and Now

An Easter Monday Meditation

On that first Easter morning God’s new world began. The old world is still with us, still dying, but the new world is here too; the age to come has already begun!

Or as G.K. Chesterton put it…

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of a gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

But what of it? Or as Francis Schaeffer might put the question, how should we then live?

Dateline Bethlehem: Christ at the Checkpoint Pt 3 -- by Brad Jersak

"The risk is that the Holy Land is becoming a 'spiritual Disneyland.'"—Fouad Twal, Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem

Like millions of others throughout the centuries—Jewish, Muslim and Christian—I saw my trip to the Holy Land as a spiritual pilgrimage. Many who go hope that by visiting key sites and religious shrines of biblical events they will have a profound encounter with the God of their faith. Christians of all traditions line up for hours to kiss the spots where Jesus was born, died and buried. They pay to be baptized in the Jordan. They sing, pray, and walk in procession carrying crosses along the Via Dolorosa. Some experience a touch of the divine as they kneel in devotion in sacred space, tears rolling down their cheeks. Others wait in vain for their magical moment, deeply disappointed by the hollow plastic carrot they've chased halfway across the globe to this 'spiritual Disneyland.'

Review of Dennis Gruending's 'Pulpit and Politics' -- by Ron Dart

Review of Dennis Gruending, Pulpit and Politics: Competing Religious Ideologies in Canadian Public Life, 2011. By Ron Dart.

I have taught Ideology and Politics for many years, and the dominant ideology that has often shaped how politics and ideology is taught at university is secularism. Such an approach to the teaching of ideology and politics tends to either ignore or marginalize religion. There has been a decided turn by some in the last few years (text books are catching up with such a reality) to both recognize the importance of religion and politics and how ideology, religion and politics inform one another. Pulpit and Politics: Competing Religious Ideologies in Canadian Public Life takes plough to hard soul in this emerging area of research and reflection within the Canadian context. Needless to say, there has been plenty of work done in this area in the USA.

Review of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s "Justice, rights and wrongs" by Henk Smidstra

Book Review by Henk Smidstra on Nicholas Wolterstorff’s book, Justice: rights and wrongs, Princeton University Press. 2008

I found this book by Nicholas Wolterstorff truly relevant in its discussion of the topic of discussion: justice, justice as inherent rights; it was at the same time difficult to read, often abstract and philosophical. The author writes the book to give clarity to this theory of justice, moved by memories of unresolved pain and suffering of injustice that he has seen on many victims’ faces as he worked on international human rights projects.  Wolterstorff is a well published author and professor of Philosophy of a Reformed tradition of thought (Reformed epistemology) that I embrace; this of course added motivation for my delving into this book.  Wolterstorff wishes, not to argue from certitudes, but to encourage dialogic pluralism on this vital topic of justice central to Scripture, and central to human experience. Wolterstorff explains: “My speaking up for the wronged of the world takes the form of this book, of doing what I can to undermine those frameworks of conviction that prevent us from acknowledging that the other [human being] comes before us bearing a claim on us, and offering an alternative framework, one that opens us up to such acknowledgment (p. IX).  Wolterstorff’s book is thus an elaboration of his framework for justice which he names, justice as inherent rights, and he wishes to “undermine” confidence in a popular understanding of justice as right order.  Wolterstorff will put his emphasis for the grounding of his theory of justice on the inherent value of human beings; and right order theorists place primary grounding on a “matrix…. of divine, natural, and human laws or objective obligations  for the ordering justice of political community” (p.29). The issue of grounding is in focus throughout the book.

To Mend the World by Brian Zahnd

To Mend the World
by Brian Zahnd

November 9, 1938 resides in the catalog of human crimes as Kristallnacht—The Night of Broken Glass. On that dreadful night when Nazi storm troopers smashed, ransacked, burned, and destroyed Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses throughout Germany, Emil Fackenheim was among the thirty thousand Jewish men arrested and taken to concentration camps. Through an improbable twist of fate the twenty-two year old Fackenheim managed to escape the Sachenhausen concentration camp and was eventually able to get out of Nazi Germany. Following the war he made his way to Canada where he became a prominent Jewish philosopher and Reform rabbi. In 1982 Fackenheim wrote To Mend the World, an influential book on post Holocaust Jewish thought. The title comes from the Jewish theological concept of tikkun olam—“repairing the world.” Tikkun olam is the idea that though the world is broken, it is not beyond repair—that it’s God’s intention to work through humanity in order to repair his creation.

Honduras Update: Contending for life in a climate of death -- by Bob Ekblad

When Gracie and I moved to Honduras in July 1982 the country was considered the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.  Wars raged in the region and death-squad violence created a climate of terror.  Over the last 30 years we’ve witnessed the power of God’s love at work in individuals and communities, bringing visible relief through increased production, water projects, improved health, reconciliation between enemies, discovery of the good news in Scripture and healing.  Right now the “not yet” of Jesus’ Kingdom has been in my face as violence increases in a climate of near anarchy.  I have been accompanying one of my closest friends, Angel David, from a distance by phone as he’s walked through terrors and deep sadness in this seemingly interminable valley of the shadow of death.   
 
The last six weeks in Honduras have been some of the darkest after a prison fire in our department capital Comayagua on February 15 burnt over 400 inmates to death.  The next day Tierra Nueva’s past president Paco and his wife Gloria buried their 33-year-old son Edwin who suddenly fell sick after a flare up of aplastic anemia that had been in remission for 13 years.  Back in 1999 Tierra Nueva had organized a big fund-raiser to pay for medical treatment and prayer campaign, which brought this disease into remission... until last month. 
 
In the midst of all this pain it has become once again clear that God’s preferred way of coming close to human suffering is a mediated way—through human beings who themselves come close: Jesus, me, you—Christ’s body, the church.