Closest thing we have to "foodies" on campus.

As part of its ongoing, invaluable service to the University, our daily newspaper ran an opinion column today that included the following assertion about campus dining: "The problem with West Campus, however, is that there is no internal logic to the dining options. This is another instance of our culture fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of human freedom." Translation: I just learned about the Enlightenment in my Philosophy class, and now I know how to run a university!

The real startling thing about human freedom is that at fifty thousand dollars a year, he felt free to spend his time publishing an observation like that.

E Street vs. Main Street?

A bit of a dust-up going on over in Jungleland: Columbia Records produced a Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band "Greatest Hits" album that is being sold exclusively at Wal-Mart. Naturally, some fans have questioned the move, given the apparent differences of opinion between Bruce and Wal-Mart on issues such as manufacturing and labor. In fact, it seems like Wal-Mart fits the bill for the anonymous evil force in a lot of Bruce's songs, especially on an album like Darkness on the Edge of Town. Come to think of it, where does Wal-Mart usually build? Not in the center of town, but...

I looked at the track listing, and frankly it looks like they let Wal-Mart pick the songs, too. Rosalita, Born to Run, Thunder Road, Badlands, Born in the USA - those are probably essential. The Rising and Lonesome Day are pretty good, too, though it's questionable whether they both belong on a twelve-track Greatest Hits collection. I was pleasantly surprised to see Darkness on the Edge of Town (the song), because it is one of my favorites and was left off the 1995 Greatest Hits album. But Glory Days and Dancing in the Dark aren't even in the top five on the album they were released on (Born in the U.S.A.), and I like to pretend that Hungry Heart never existed.

They might as well have put Secret Garden on there, just to top it off. It's kind of a lowest common-denominator approach, which I guess is how mass-marketing works, and that's the business Wal-Mart and Columbia are in. To an extent, so is Springsteen; who are we kidding? I can be okay with that. For what it's worth, Springsteen called the deal a 'mistake' in a recent interview.

If it were up to me, and I had to choose a 12-song album, here it is (and I hope you can appreciate how difficult this is, and how long it took me):

1. Spirit in the Night
2. Racing in the Street
3. Darkness on the Edge of Town
4. Backstreets
5. Thunder Road
6. The River
7. Atlantic City
8. Highway Patrolman
9. I'm on Fire
10. This Hard Land
11. Youngstown
12. The Rising

I left off two biggies: Born to Run, and Badlands. They're really two of my favorite songs. I guess this list is more of an effort to pick the greatest songs, without picking all the songs that have been on his other compilations, and without feeling obligated to put something that he released between 1985 and 1995. We all have slumps. It's important to be able to acknowledge them, and move on.

Pigeonholing

-Excerpt from UMC's Inventory of Religious Activities and Interests form for ministry candidates

I found myself wishing for an 'other' category, a free-response box, anything other than a mandatory, choose-one pulldown menu. Which got me to thinking, what would I actually write if given the opportunity? I'm not sure I have a canned "theological position". Maybe I would just write the Shema or something.

In case you're wondering, I put "conservative," because I think the Bible is binding, Church authority and hierarchy is valid, and the Creed is true. I might've put radical, but the pulldown menu made it look like radical just means "super-liberal".

Oy.

Updike

I've only encountered John Updike on the pages of the New Yorker, having never actually read one of his books. But I have enjoyed reading some of the reflections on his life and work since he died on Tuesday. I thought this exploration of his theology was well worth reading.

Love this.

Lincoln Memorial, January 18, 2009.

Bono's gonna be there, just have him say the prayer.

You probably recall the uproar from the gay rights community over Barack Obama's inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. In a transparent move, Obama has now also invited Gene Robinson to give the invocation at his January 18 inaugural celebration concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Robinson, who promises "not to be especially Christian in my prayer", will kick off one of the most impressive entertainment events in recent memory. From the Inauguration Committee's press release:

Musical performers scheduled for the event include Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Bono, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Renee Fleming, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, Heather Headley, John Legend, Jennifer Nettles, John Mellencamp, Usher Raymond IV, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, will.i.am, and Stevie Wonder. Among those reading historical passages will be Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah and Denzel Washington. The Rt. Reverend V. Gene Robinson will give the invocation. Rob Mathes will be the music director and arranger for the backing band, which will support all of the artists. Additional performers will be announced as they are confirmed.

Nobody believes in hell anymore.

In recent weeks, the topic of universalism has come up with enough frequency to jar me out of my erstwhile glazed ham-induced haze of Christmas cheer. Though there may be a technical distinction that I'm missing, I assume Christian universalism to mean the belief that through/in Christ, all people are saved and will go to heaven; if there is a hell at all, it is empty.

A couple years ago, a good friend told me that he'd come to believe that hell is not real, but rather has been fabricated in literature and in church tradition. For my money, I tend not to dwell on the afterlife very much, because it is so thoroughly unknowable. That being said, I had (and have) a difficult time conceiving of the purpose of church or the life of faith if we are not judged for our actions and rewarded accordingly. On top of that, I'm inherently rather conservative when it comes to the church, and I viewed universalism as a jarring departure from orthodox theology.

This summer, someone gave me a copy of If Grace is True, by James Mulholland and Philip Gulley. This 2003 book is subtitled "Why God Will Save Every Person." Pretty straightforward, pretty bold. I have only read the introduction and the first two chapters, so I can't really engage with the text. When I find the time to finish it, I will, because I'm interested to see how the authors make their case. It looks like it will dive into Scripture, but it regards Scripture and church tradition as derivative of particular people's particular experiences with God; what we need to do is begin "trusting our experience with God." And while the church told these authors that God condemns people to hell, they have experienced a God who is loving.

Then, I was listening to a December episode of This American Life entitled "Heretics". It tells the story of Rev. Carlton Pearson, a prominent Pentecostal megachurch leader in Tulsa who lost most of his church, his friends, and his prestige when he began to consider the doctrine of hell, and found it incompatible with the God he knew and loved. His turning point, he says, came when he was watching televised coverage of the Rwandan genocide, and God told him that even though they did not know Christ (actually, Rwanda is overwhelmingly Christian), they would not go to hell: God would not condemn those who suffer on earth to suffer also in the afterlife.

So, the prevalence of Christian universalism in America has kind of crept up on me. It came into sharp relief with two Pew Forum surveys in 2008. It turns out that 52 percent of American Christians believe at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to heaven. To be clear, this is not universalism per se: they are just saying that they believe a "good" Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu, might show up in heaven. A New York Times opinion piece gave a decent overview of the later, more specific study. Over half of white mainliners and white Catholics (plus more than a quarter of white evangelicals) even believe that people with no religious faith can get into heaven. There are even hints in this theological direction in William P. Young's wildly popular The Shack. 

The reason I'm suspicious about this trend is that we shouldn't draw conclusions about what God must do based on who we think God is. In other words, we know God to be purely good and unfailingly loving. We know that in Jesus's incarnation and atoning sacrifice, redemption has been realized for both Jew and Gentile. We know that the magnitude of God's grace exceeds the magnitude of our rejection of God. But none of that leads necessarily to the conclusion that God wills for all to be saved, or that God needs all of us to be saved in order for God to be complete, or happy, or something like that. On the balance, I think the Bible discourages us from making that kind of leap.

The real challenge for our faith is to imagine that some people, and possibly we ourselves, will go to hell, and yet to maintain the confession that God is good, and just, and righteous, and loving.

To reiterate, I take this kind of stuff pretty lightly. We can't even say that we see through a glass darkly on this one. And I know, a lot of what we believe about hell today comes not from the early church, but from men like Milton, Dante, and Jonathan Edwards. Furthermore, some people I really respect, including Karl Barth and Sam Wells, could (arguably) be described as "hopeful universalists". But even they would acknowledge: when we talk about the afterlife, we're engaging in extreme speculation. It will always be a mystery, and I'm pretty glad for that.

Ho-ho-holy night!

Good news for last-minute shoppers. While Googling "the greatest gift of all" in order to find some good foils to use in my 12/28 sermon, I came across this wonderful figurine, portraying "a respectful and reverent Santa" approaching Jesus in the manger. Take a moment to read the full product description on this website; pretty much every sentence has something funny in it. ("I've never seen [Santa] this handsome"; Santa "secretly longs to hold the precious baby"; the figurine "will remind us of the true meaning of the love and warmth we share during the Christmas season".)

Things Rod Blagojevich would never do.

This is pretty cool. In the interest of transparency (and announced a day before the FBI arrested Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich), the Obama transition team is going to post all the memos it receives from outside groups trying to influence the incoming administration's agenda.

The opposite of this would be the way Blagojevich has apparently executed his office. Take a look at the indictment (PDF). It's 76 pages, but you can pretty much open up to any one and be shocked. There's this gem, in which he uses the F-word to express just how monetarily valuable he believes a Senate seat is. At the bottom of page 74 is this surprising paragraph:

In addition, in the course of the conversations over the last month, ROD BLAGOJEVICH has spent significant time weighing the option of appointing himself to the open Senate seat, and has expressed a variety of reasons for doing so, including frustration at being “stuck” as governor, a belief that he will be able to obtain greater resources if he is indicted as a sitting Senator as opposed to a sitting governor, and a desire to remake his image in consideration of a possible run for President in 2016, avoid impeachment by the Illinois legislature, make corporate contacts that would be of value to him after leaving public office, facilitate his wife’s employment as a lobbyist, and assist in generating speaking fees should he decide to leave public office.

Huh? 

Blagojevich was defiant in a press conference yesterday. Makes you think that he really didn't have any idea this would happen today. "If anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it," he said. I guess the guys in the flower van across the street got a good laugh about that one.

Back again

It has been two weeks since my last post, which is unsurprising since those two weeks have spanned a round trip to NJ (hours and hours in the car), Thanksgiving (hours and hours watching football and basketball), and final exams (hours and hours reading and writing). All that is behind me now, with the exception of my Christian Theology final, which is Thursday. We already have the exam questions. Chew on this one:

In the early stages of the course we spoke of contextual theology as being an attempt to address two large problems of Christian theology in the West -- its narrowness as a white, male, European/Euro-American enterprise and its complicity in oppression. However, new problems arise through contextual theology; namely, (1) theology continues to be understood as disembodied knowledge that may be dropped into various cultures, and (2) theology has no ability to transform identity. In effect, Christian theology becomes simply the religious expression of various cultures. We’ve gone out of the way to say in this course that the problems of contextual theologies, the benefits of such theologies notwithstanding, must be located within the broader ways in which Christian theology in the West has operated. In other words, rather than seeing contextual theologies and the broader problems of Western theology as two discreet sets of problems, what must be understood is that contextual theologies are children of Christian theology as it has come to be practiced in the West. They are, in the main, in architectural and infrastructural continuity -- not discontinuity -- with Christian theology as it has come to be practiced as an essentially white, male, European/Euro-American enterprise. With this as your backdrop, how might considering the starting point of theology in our identity as Gentiles who overheard the gospel of Jesus Christ to Israel offer a corrective to both the two large problems of Christian theology and the newer problems of contextual theology?

In other blog news, I looked back and realized that my previous post was the 100th post at With the Grain. Hope you're enjoying it.