blog.sinden.org

"...that the very Jesus whom Christians laud and magnify is the same Jesus being eviscerated on the streets of the United States of America. This reality, therefore, makes it incumbent upon the people who proclaim Jesus in prose, poetry, liturgy and music to live in solidarity with the very bodies of suffering he so readily inhabits."

"A Christianity that can embrace Christ’s vulnerability is a Christianity that is not panicking about its own decline or increasing irrelevance."

Read it all. Greer, Broderick. "Unsettling Signs". Huffington Post. 31 December 2014.

Labels: Broderick Greer, Christianity, the Sign of the Cross

This marvelous little article was written by the then Reverend Shannon S. Johnston before his ordination as Bishop of Virginia. It was written for the Parish of All Saints', Tupelo, where he served as Rector, and it still lives on the parish website (source). It is a wonderful foil to those unfortunate souls who believe that Halloween should not be celebrated by Christians.

When I was a child, I loved Halloween. All of my family participated enthusiastically, decorating our house with witches, devils, black cats, and ghosts. It was innocent fun, filled with imagination and creativity. Looking back, what made Halloween so great for this child was its contrast of silliness and fright, the supernatural and the known, the permitted and the forbidden, the secretive and the public. Halloween was unique; no other occasion was anything like it.

As an adult––and as a priest––I still love Halloween.  And I do mean HALLOWEEN, not a “Fall Festival” or the like. Every year, I carve two pumpkins–one playfully smiling and the other “very scary.”  I love seeing the children’s costumes and making a big fuss over them.  How sad now that Halloween is being spoiled and even taken away from us by the absolutely outrageous ideas that it is “satanic,” pagan, or of the occult.  Such notions are poorly informed, terribly misguided, and absolutely untrue.  There are many materials circulating these days, all pretending some sort of scholarly knowledge and/or religious authority, that strive to show that Halloween is “really” celebrating the powers of darkness.  In response, I must be absolutely clear:  pretenses of authority notwithstanding, these materials are at great odds with centuries of commonly accepted theology, not to mention scholarship with proven accreditation.  The so-called “exposure” of Halloween is nothing more than a skewed, self-serving agenda from various churches that make up only a tiny minority of Christianity, indeed a minority within Protestantism.

Of course I am aware that satanists, Wiccans, and other occult groups are indeed active on October 31. It is also true that some pseudo-spiritualists and some plain ole’ nut-cases use Halloween as an excuse to act out.  NONE OF THIS CHANGES WHAT HALLOWEEN ACTUALLY IS OR WHAT IT MEANS IN THE CHURCH’S LIFE AND WITNESS.  Much of the occult association with the day arose long after the Church’s observances began in the mid 300's.  Our answer to those Christians who bristle at the celebration of Halloween is that we will not allow occultists to steal it away from God’s Church.  Moreover, several Christian observances have pre-Christian ancestry or pagan parallels (the date of Christmas, for example).  Whatever the case, the fact is that the Christian truths proclaimed on such days are not affected.

A big part of the problem here comes from the people who do not understand the Liturgical Year because their churches do not follow it. It’s hard to keep a clear perspective on something so rooted in history and tradition if you belong to a church that has no such roots, or to one that rejects as irrelevant or “suspect” the ancient practices from the earliest Christian centuries.

The bottom line is Halloween’s relationship to All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1), one of the Church’s seven “Principal Feasts.”  The celebration of any Principal Feast may begin on the evening before––thus, Christmas Eve, Twelfth Night (before Epiphany), Easter Eve (the Great Vigil), etc.  Halloween is simply the eve of All Saints’ Day, which is also a baptismal feast.  The great truth behind Halloween’s revels is that which we declare at every baptism: “YOU ARE SEALED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT IN BAPTISM AND ARE MARKED AS CHRIST’S OWN FOREVER.”

The most important thing to remember is this: Halloween is the time when Christians proclaim and celebrate the fact that Satan and the occult have no power over us and cannot disrupt our relationship with our Lord and Redeemer, as long as we live faithfully to Christ.  We show this by making fun of such pretenders, lampooning them in their face.  This is why our costumes and decorations certainly should be witches, devils, and ghosts.  In the victory of Christ, Christians are privileged to do this and we must not be timid about it!

Ours is not a fearful faith, cowering from the prospect of falling unawares into Satan’s grasp.  In God’s grace and your faithfulness, you ARE Christ’s own forever.  Nothing supersedes that fact.  Halloween is therefore one of the boldest Christian witnesses, precisely because of its highly public, graphic, and lampooning nature.  Personally, I suspect that those who cannot embrace this are living a fear-driven and even insecure faith.  If so, they have bigger problems than the highjinks of Halloween.

In Christ,
Shannon+

Labels: All Saints' Day, Baptism, Christianity, Halloween, Shannon Johnston

First from the Episcopal Café: "Say no to Christian seders"

Then in today's New York Times: "The Obama Seder"

Labels: Christianity, food, Obama

One of the joys of being an organist is exposure to a lot of different varieties of Christianity. One of the problems with being an organist is exposure to these different varieties.

Without fail, the sermons at these services were saturated with such racism, xenophobia, and general ignorance it was scarcely believable for me. Growing up on the east coast you hear stories of the religious right, and are aware of its existence, but you rarely actually encounter anybody who adheres to this philosophy and it seems like more of an abstract annoyance than a grim reality. I find it heart-wrenchingly depressing to be forced to listen to someone pervert and twist God's word to espouse messages of hate, intolerance, and frankly, abject stupidity. Given some of things these people said over the past few months, I really have to wonder what kind of education is going on in [Lutheran Church Missouri Synod] seminaries these days. These pastors had at best a questionable grasp of scripture, a very rudimentary understanding of Christianity, and absolutely know knowledge (or interest) in any kind of historical or biblical scholarship.

Wherein I discuss my extrication from an extremely frustrating job, and ridicule San Fransisco fans from David's Blog.

Labels: Christianity, Mo' Synod

Common usage also applies the term to devoutly religious people, particularly Christians; however, it is also used to describe devout members of any religious persuasion, and perhaps its particular application to Christianity is a combination of the fact that Christians are the majority religion in the Americas and Europe where the term is commonly used, and the fact that Christians describe themselves as a "flock" and Christ as a "shepherd."

from Wikipedia's "Sheeple"

Previously: Christians - sheeple as culturally persecuted

Labels: Advertising, cars, Christianity, web

It doesn't bother me so much that a new online videogame advertising the Toyota Scion xD is violent, but I am offended that it seems to be blatantly anti-Christian.

The innocuous sheep-faced humanoids of the game are "sheeple". And who are we supposed to believe the sheeple are?

Know that the Lord is God. It is he that made us, and we are his;* we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Psalm 100:3

Yes, Toyota. When we're not busy drawing fish in the sand, we Judeo-Christians like to think of ourselves as sheep.

We are, in fact, his people and the sheep of his pasture. Sheep-people, if you will.

The advertisement I was forced to endure in the movie theater (because no, I wasn't going to walk out before Harry Potter 5 started) featured a "little deviant" wearing the disemboweled carcass of a "sheeple" in the spirit of Jesus' remarks in Matthew 7:15

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves."

The sheep in the advertisement and the game itself are defenseless. They are the "harassed and helpless" sheep without a shepherd that the author of Matthew describes in 9:36. (The ones we sing about "harvesting" to the tune ORA LABORA.

Jesus also uses the sheep as a metaphor for the children, "the greatest in the kingdom of heaven":

What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?

Matthew 18:12

The sheep in the game also bleed green. [NEED BIBLICAL REFERENCE FOR THIS!!!]

And, finally, there's the infamous "Sermon on Mt. Sheep":

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

John 10:1-18

More to the point: Toyota's advertisement refers to sheeple murder as "evolution". The implied message that Toyota wants it's car buyers to inhabit is "Gray-painting Christians are cramping our style. This car will show them who's boss. I'll be a little demon! Try to stop me now!"

To help them with their new worldview, Toyota offers a fictional guidebook. The ads feature a tattered tome with the title "Book of Deviants" in goldleaf gothic script.

I take all of this to mean that I read this to be somewhat anti-Christian, and I don't think I'm too far off base here. I suspect this is what the marketing campaign is after.

Tapping a cultural undercurrent of Christian antagonism to sell cars is pretty . Especially when the kind of car they are selling is an eco-friendly compact (32/38 mpg), which is exactly the kind of car a progressive Christian might be interested in.

Labels: Advertising, cars, Christianity, web

In consumer Christianity, however, church leaders function as religious baristas, supplying spiritual goods for people to choose from based on their preferences. Our concern becomes not whether people are growing, but whether they are satisfied. An unhappy member, like an unhappy customer, will find satisfaction elsewhere.

Labels: Christianity