We. Are. Not. Walmart. Greeters. We are not here to smile and wave and hand out shiny stickers.
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I remember how tense the classroom felt that first day. I had chosen this class to help fill out my degree program in Ethics & Society at Gordon-Conwell. I had chosen it with a great deal of apprehension, knowing how uncomfortable it might make me. Nevertheless, I believed I should take it.
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A couple of years ago, a Christian man desired to make a compelling TV series based on the Gospels. His desire, as I understand it, was to write and produce a show that Christians would want to watch: clean, wholesome, and with good story telling. Fast forward to 2020 and that show is a reality.
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Over the past few months we have all had a lot to think about. Few people alive today had experienced a global pandemic prior to this year. This is a new experience across the board…
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We never thought we would be here. More than a month has passed and our church buildings remain shuttered, the members of the Body of Christ scattered and isolated from one another. Yes, on the basis of our duty to love one another and our neighbors, it is has been justified. Yes, God has been at work in the Body, revealing our weaknesses and idols, forging us in the flames of hardship to acquire a strength heretofore unknown. Yes, this whole season has the makings of a fast, if we would but embrace that aspect.
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Every time an election rolls around, I wonder what Christian voters are expecting to receive from their preferred candidates…
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The American Church is commonly admonished to thank God for the freedoms that we enjoy as Americans, especially the freedom we enjoy…
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I have become accustomed to the indoctrination. Truly, I have.
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We’re just through the Christmas season (and our fellow Anglican and Orthodox Christians celebrate a bit longer than the rest of us do). Winter break is over for schools. Most of us are trying to get back to normal and deal with holiday debt. Congregations begin to look ahead to Easter, which comes a bit later on the calendar this year.
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In the midst of doing the research for my eventual essay, "Recollecting an Advent Christian Political Theology: A Retrieval of Advent Christian Thought on the Relationship Between Church and State”, I had the good fortune of uncovering a digitized version of I.C. Wellcome’s pamphlet, “Should Christians Fight?”.
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When studying the Advent Christian tradition, one is hard-pressed to find any self-conscious attempts at political theology. In larger treatments found in pamphlets and books, implicit political theologies might emerge in the midst of discourses on world events, the Kingdom of God, and of course pacifism, but there are very few (and by my count no) books consciously dedicated to the subject. In smaller treatments found in various Advent Christian periodicals, one does find some forthright consideration of the relation between the church and politics, but as is the case with most of the books above, it is difficult to measure the influence of these writings. The lone exception when it comes to measuring influence may be I.C. Wellcome’s popularly received pamphlet Should Christians Fight?
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Last summer, the murder of eleven Jewish people while at worship in a Pittsburgh synagogue stunned so many of us, not just because it represented an assault on religious freedom in the United States, but because it served as an ugly reminder that Antisemitism still lurks in the shadows of American life. In the last ten years, we have seen horrible Antisemitism manifested in Europe and the Middle East, but beginning with Charlottesville and the alt-right “tiki-torch” march through the campus of the University of Virginia in the summer of 2017 we were shocked to see it expressed in such hateful ways in our own country.
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As I was getting ready for commencement, I watched another ceremony that captured much of the world’s attention—the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle. Nobody does ceremonies like the British Royals. And this one mixed hundreds of years of tradition with icons of popular culture. As the ceremony progressed, cameras panned across a crowd that featured a who’s who of world famous celebrities.
But what grabbed my attention was the sermon.
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We live in a politically charged climate these days. As a pastor, it is a climate I usually try to avoid entering whenever possible. However, when politics crosses wires with the Church (typically evangelicalism) and issues of moral concern, I am compelled to share my own voice when other voices are effectively speaking for me. The case of Roy Moore is such an instance of the wires crossing.
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There is no need for me to give a lengthy account of the rampant gun violence and other massive acts of violence in America. You know about Las Vegas, Manhattan, and now Sutherland Springs. You know about the countless events that have preceded these more recent ones. It is horrific and is increasingly so as we grow ever more numb to it and it grows ever more normal to us. How tragic that our children have never known a world without all of this. Can they ever know such a world?
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