MBCC Blog

May Book Group: Founding Faith by Steve Waldman

The MBCC Book Group
DATE: Friday, May 2, 2008, 7:00-9:00
LOCATION: The Miner's (Dog Patch)
BOOK: Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America by Steve Waldman.  Book is available at MBCC for $17.50.
FACILITATOR: Bruce

NPR Interview with Steve Waldman

In the past MBCC'ers have gathered around a meal to have some conversation about some great books.  We have touched on all sorts of topics from in the hopes to broaden our understanding and experience of faith. 

Other recent books we have read:

• Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles
• Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart Eerdman

April Book Group: Take this Bread by Sarah Miles

The MBCC Book Group
DATE: Friday,April 4, 2008, 7:00-9:00
LOCATION: TBA
BOOK: Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sarah Miles.  Book is available at MBCC.  Please make checks out to "MBCC" for $12.00 and mark "Book Group"
FACILITATOR: Bruce

This is our monthly gathering to read, share in fellowship around the discussion of a common book.  We will read a variety of books by a variety of authors, all in the hopes of growing in our understanding and experience of faith as individuals and a community.

HOSTS . . . if you are interested in hosting any of the dates please let me know.  We will just ask that you provide some liquid refreshments and we'll have others bring snacks.

From Publishers Weekly
Where is it written that literary women must move to coastal California (if they don't already live there), become Episcopalians and write conversion memoirs? Miles, like recent memoirists Diana Butler Bass, Nora Gallagher and Lindsey Crittenden, loves Jesus and detests the religious right, though she is also critical of "the sappy, Jesus-and-cookies tone of mild-mannered liberal Christianity." Mild-mannered she is not. Converted at age 46 when she impulsively walked into a church and received communion for the first time, the former war correspondent suddenly understood her life's mission: to feed the hungry. What her parish needed, she decided, was a food pantry—and within a year (and over opposition from some fellow parishioners) she had started one that offered free cereal, fruit and vegetables to hundreds of San Francisco's indigent every Friday. Not willing to turn anyone away, she raised funds and helped set up other food pantries in impoverished areas, occasionally "crossing the line from self-righteous do-gooder to crusading zealot." For Miles, Christianity "wasn't an argument I could win, or even resolve. It wasn't a thesis. It was a mystery that I was finally willing to swallow." Grittier than many religious memoirs, Miles's story is a perceptive account of one woman's wholehearted, activist faith. (Feb. 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.   --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

A few Random Blog Posts/Reviews

• Internetmonk
  Talk about your Purpose-Driven Life! Miles is converted from the most unlikely background. She finds out what a journey with Jesus is like in the company of a collection of left-edge-of-the-church Episcopalians. Her transformation from reluctant convert to innovative servant and subversive gospel grocer is way too much fun to easily put down.
• Burnside Writers Collective
  Miles does touch on how her faith and vocation affects her home life, but she keeps her personal life private. Rather, Miles deals with larger questions such as those she poses in her forward: “Why would any thinking person become a Christian? How can anyone reconcile the hateful politics of much contemporary Christianity with Jesus’ imperative to love? What are the deepest ideas of this contested religion, and what do they mean in real life?”

Book Group - Misquoting Jesus

The MBCC Book Group
DATE: March 7, 1008
LOCATION: TBA
BOOK: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart Ehrman.  Book is available at MBCC.
FACILITATOR: Bruce

In the past MBCC'ers have gathered around a meal to have some conversation about some great books.  We have touched on all sorts of topics from in the hopes to broaden our understanding and experience of faith.  The group will begin again, February of 2008 and take place monthly, the first Friday PM of each month, so mark your calendars today!

HOSTS . . . if you are interested in hosting any of the dates please let me know.  We will just ask that you provide some liquid refreshments and we'll have others bring snacks.

DATES:

• March 7
  Location: TBD
  Book: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart Ehrman 
• April 4
  Location: TBD
  Book: TBD
• May 2
  Location: TBD
  Book: TBD
• June  6
  Location: TBD
  Book: TBD

Book Group is Back!

The MBCC Book Group Returns, February 2008.
DATE: February 2008
LOCATION: TBA
BOOK: We will get to the Promised Land: Martin Luther King's Communal-Political Spirituality by H.J. Lee.  Book will be available before Christmas at MBCC for $17.
FACILITATOR: Bruce

In the past MBCC'ers have gathered around a meal to have some conversation about some great books.  We have touched on all sorts of topics from in the hopes to broaden our understanding and experience of faith.  The group will begin again, February of 2008 and take place monthly, the first Friday PM of each month, so mark your calendars today!

HOSTS . . . if you are interested in hosting any of the dates please let me know.  We will just ask that you provide some liquid refreshments and we'll have others bring snacks.

DATES:

• February 1
  Location: TBD
  Book: We will get to the Promised Land
• March 7
  Location: TBD
  Book: TBD
• April 4
  Location: TBD
  Book: TBD
• May 2
  Location: TBD
  Book: TBD
• June  6
  Location: TBD
  Book: TBD

Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, (2005)

Much of our knowledge about the Bible and many of our modern editions of the text draw(s?) heavily on the practice of ‘textual criticism’ – a technique of analyzing texts developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Misquoting Jesus is an introduction to the techniques of textual criticism, their origins, and some of the possible implications for our understanding of the Bible. It is divided roughly into two parts – first, a history of / introduction to textual criticism and the New Testament and second, an application of textual-critical tools to selected inconsistencies between surviving manuscripts of the New Testament. In homage to the author (who does not shy away from controversy, stating that he thinks the Bible is not the inspired, literal word of God and that the text we have was both accidentally and deliberately changed over the years), I would like to come right out and say that I believe the following:

If you are a Christian, you must read the Bible.
If you ever read or plan to read the Bible you cannot responsibly do so without:
(1) an understanding of how we got the Bible we currently have
(2) thinking (seriously) about the implications of that knowledge for your faith

Ehrman’s book provides a reasonable introduction to (1), and makes an argument about (2) that will not be acceptable to everyone. The book provides a number of examples that justify these as important. One example is the treatment of Mark 16:9-20 (see pages 65-8 of Misquoting Jesus). Read Mark 15 and 16. If (as Ehrman argues and other scholars seem to agree) the story as first written ended at Mark 16:8 (verses 9 to 20 are a later addition), what an amazing change in the original meaning of the gospel!

One of the most important arguments implicit (actually explicit but I’ve forgotten the page #) in the book is that each gospel must be read on its own, as though each was written by a different person (because they were). According to Ehrman, one of the likely sources of deliberate (if well-meaning) changes to the text of the Gospels as they now exist was the desire of scribes to ‘harmonize’ the texts, to iron out small inconsistencies between the four writers. According to Misquoting Jesus, trying to combine the gospels by simple addition into one Über-Gospel that tells the full and complete story of Jesus’s life is a mistake because it erases and effaces significant differences between the perspectives on Christ brought by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Ehrman’s work has not gone without comment – check the internet if you don’t believe me. The heart of the controversy sparked by Misquoting Jesus can be boiled down, I think, to an issue of authority. What is the Bible? What can/can’t we do with it? Ehrman makes a good case that we cannot treat the Bible as a univocal, unequivocal, absolute determinant for proper/improper belief/behavior. This reasoning may be troubling (or not), but I consider myself persuaded (perhaps pre-persuaded – I am not the best devil’s advocate you could find on this book).

No matter how much one reads the Bible, studies, and prays, I don’t believe that one can ever be certain that the answers arrived at are the right ones, only that they are the best ones available at the moment. [If you’ve seen Jesus camp, this is part of why I found the brief moment with the young girl trying to evangelize the old men in lawn chairs so hilarious.] The impossibility of certainty is partly due to the nature of humanity and the limits of our minds (or the inherent twistedness of human reason on account of the Fall, if you’re Augustine). Another important factor, it seems to me, is the limit of the source material we have to work with.

I’ve now successfully sat on this book long enough, having read but not reviewed it, that another book on a similar subject has come to my attention. For another take on how we got the Bible we have (this one rejecting form criticism in favor of cognitive psychology / memory studies / the study of oral traditions) you might look at Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.  I haven't read it, so I can't vouch for it, but it looked interesting.

Unconditional Forgiveness?

I’ve been reflecting and thinking a lot about what Bruce had to say on Sunday and I wanted to raise a question or thought around this idea of forgiveness, especially unconditional forgiveness. In this season on Lent I’ve been contemplating a lot about the saving work of Jesus Christ and what it means to me and how I understand what happened in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus both in the context of society and personally.

In light of that, I’ve just recently finished a book called Proverbs of Ashes  that shook me to the core. It is about what we as the church may be telling people about how to live out their lives. The book focuses on how the use of the Christian theory of atonement can perpetuate the cycle of violence in relationships. The classic view of atonement is critiqued by these two women’s experience with violence and abuse. So my question is, does the idea of “unconditional forgiveness” tell people (especially women) to forgive without change in action (by the other) to stay in an abusive relationships?

Do we get too caught up in trying to tell people that God wants to have a relationship with them "how they are now" that it leads us to do damage? I believe that we have to be extremely careful when we talk about unconditional forgiveness especially when we are doing it within the Christian framework. I appreciated Bruce talking about how forgiveness is reconciling relationships and I agree that Sin should be talked about in terms of broken relationships not moral miss-steps or laundry lists of bad deeds. I agree that we should do our best to reconcile relationships with one another regardless of the horrific atrocities that we can impose on one another as human beings. But how do you tell someone who is being dominated by another human being that forgiveness should be unconditional? 

How does “unconditional forgiveness” display itself in scripture? Is Jesus unconditional in his forgiveness? Is God? Looking first back through scripture I’ve come to understand that God acts in covenants with humanity, the covenant with Noah, with Moses, and even Jesus talks about the “new covenant.” If God is a covenantal God does that make God conditional instead of unconditional? Covenant means a solemn contract, oath, or bond. So what does it mean for us to understand God as having conditional oaths with Israel in the times of the Hebrew Scriptures? And how does that affect our view to offer unconditional forgiveness? What might be our role in a two-sided covenantal agreement?

I agree with Bruce who used some great passages (Matthew 26: 14-30, 47-55, 69-75) to talk about denial and forgiveness from Christ. Based on what I read in the Gospel accounts I think that Christ shows us someone who acts with unconditional forgiveness. He is someone who is more interested in the healing and creating right relationships than swearing them to uphold an oath (or even doctrine?). 

But this all brings me back around to Rebecca Parker and Rita Brock in Proverbs of Ashes and their experience that being told to forgive unconditionally just drives people to stay in abusive relationships. How can we talk about this Christian unconditional forgiveness without telling people to stay in abusive broken relationships?

On Finally Feminist

The meeting to discuss Finally Feminist by John G. Stackhouse, Jr. was canceled, so I decided to rant about it here instead because it really annoyed me.  When I picked up the book, I was a little surprised that we were going to read an argument on feminism by a man. However, remembering the adage about not judging a book by its cover, I dove in with an open mind. 

Stackhouse’s main argument draws a parallel between the Bible’s attitude toward slavery and its treatment of patriarchy.  In summary, he states that the Bible regulated the treatment of slaves without actively condemning the practice of slavery itself.  However, we as a society have moved into an enlightened understanding that slavery is wrong.  Similarly, the Bible regulated women’s place in marriage and society without condemning patriarchy and sexism.  However, we are now moving into an era where society has an enlightened understanding that patriarchy is wrong.

 

The argument itself is reasonable, and isn’t even original.  The real reason the booked bugged me was its tone.  Stackhouse bends over backwards in order to validate the opinions of Christians who still espouse such practices as declaring that a wife must submit to her husband, or those churches who prevent women from preaching based on pronouncements by the apostle Paul.  For example, he describes the holders of such views as “Complementarian,” rather than sexist.  It's difficult for me to take his message seriously amidst the pandering.  

 

          I’m not going into detail about the inconsistencies that appeared in later arguments dealing with polygamy and homosexuality.  But I will comment on Stackhouse’s caveat to the book’s main argument, which is:  The cause of feminism must be subordinate to the cause of saving souls.  On the surface, I can’t argue with that.  However, I worry that this could be used as a ready excuse for maintaining the status quo in cases where patriarchy is flourishing.  Also, I wonder if a sexist environment is really a place for cultivating loving, Christ-like relations.

 

          If you are afraid of feminism, this might be a good first book for you.  If this is the best “feminist” writing that can be found in Christian circles, then it’s evidently an impoverished area of scholarship.

Book Group: Finally Feminist by John Stackhouse

Date: Friday, February 23
Time: 6:00-9:00 w/Dinner
Location: Bruce and Robin's
Book: Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender 
Author: John Stackhouse
Contact/RSVP: Pastor Bruce
Please join us for another evening of conversation about life and faith. There are six copies of the book available at MBCC for $11.50.

Book Description:

Discussions about gender continue in many Christian denominations. With good people and solid arguments on each side of the divide, there seems to be little hope for a synthesis or even constructive dialogue.

In Finally Feminist, John Stackhouse proposes a way forward by affirming both the patriarchal and the feminist (or complementarian and egalitarian) reading of Scripture. He argues that these emphases exist side by side in the Bible. He then provides biblical, theological, and practical arguments for his own understanding: Equality is the biblical ideal, but patriarchy is allowed and regulated by a God who has larger kingdom purposes in mind. Stackhouse then tests his understanding by exposing it to the objections of other theories and concludes with two appendixes that tease out some practical implications.

Thought provoking and distinctive in its clarity and honesty, Finally Feminist will be a useful text for college and seminary courses, for pastors and church leaders, and for anyone interested in deepening their understanding of the role of women in the church and in society.

Book Group: Margin by Richard Swenson

Date: Friday, January 26
Time: 6:00-9:00 w/Dinner
Location: Bruce and Robin's
Book: Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives
Author: Richard A. Swenson
Contact/RSVP: Pastor Bruce
Please join us for another evening of conversation about life and faith. There are six copies of the book available at MBCC for $11.50.

Book Description:
RX: FROM THE DESK OF RICHARD A. SWENSON, M.D. Overload is not having time to finish the book you're reading on stress. Margin is having time to read it twice. Overload is fatigue. Margin is energy. Overload is red ink. Margin is black ink. Overload is hurry. Margin is calm. Overload is anxiety. Margin is security. Overload is the disease of the 90's. Margin is the cure.

As a medical practitioner, Dr. Richard Swenson sees a steady stream of exhausted, hurting people coming into his office. A majority of them are suffering from an uncontrolled societal epidemic: living without margin.

Margin is the space that once existed between ourselves and our limits. It's something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations.

As a society, we've forgotten what margin is. In the push for progress, margin has been devoured. So we feel distressed in ill-defined ways. We are besieged by anxiety, stress, and fatigue. Our relationships suffer. We have unexplained aches and pains. The flood of daily events seems beyond our control. We're overloaded.

In Margin, Dr. Swenson provides a prescription against the danger of overloaded lives. Focusing on margin in four key areas-emotional energy, physical energy, time, and finances-he offers an overall picture of health that employs contentment, simplicity, balance, and rest.

If you yearn for relief from the pain and pressure of overload, take a lifelong dose of Margin under the care of a specialist. The benefits of good health, financial stability, fulfilling relationships, and availability for God's purposes will follow you all your days.