faithasawayoflife

connected!

i've been out of commission these past couple weeks as we've gotten serious about moving from our old home in new britain to our new home in new haven. this process has made me reflective all over again about the way home ownership is something more than ownership. we've really learned to love the homes we've lived in, thinking about our tenure as one in a link over time that extends in both cases back for the better part of a century. thinking about those who built the home, those who put up all that bamboo wallpaper, the kids now grown who ran through the halls and yard where our children now play. wow. and we add our piece to that ongoing movement. could living in a house be a metaphor for the calling to stewardship of life with the saints? someone has already said this, but i just don't know it.

yesterday my beloved isaiah turned six! here is a picture, but not from the magic school bus party. this pic is from his first day of kindergarten, along with sonja and grace. might as well introduce the whole gang whose abode i've just made the subject of reflection.

but, how i digress. we're connected to the yale center for faith and culture website, from the faith as a way of life project homepage. so, now, i'm diving in to this conversation with hopes that you join with me en:visioning christianity lived. i'll be adding thoughts, some mine, some yours, and other friends and recent reads. for now, anon, and +peace.

alan wolfe

our reflection group, who are the core of the faith as a way of life project, read alan wolfe's new book, the transformation of american religion: how we actually live our faith (free press, 2003).

on the whole, people found its premise one-sided ("in every aspect of the religious life, american faith has met american culture--and american culture has triumphed" and its tone condescending, likely because of his personal experience ("i am not, and never have been, a person of faith") and the underlying assumption of his book which comes to the forefront in the conclusion ("is democracy safe from religion").

well, i just saw in today's mail that books and culture march/april 2004 features an interview with wolfe and a review of the book. very interesting!

the interview with michael cromartie is too kind in my opinion, but gets wolfe to speak about what he cares about, meaning why he wrote the book, and what he thinks about the transformation he documents (or purports to, at least). For instance, cromartie simply raises wolfe's assertion that "conflict over doctrine is fast becoming a phenomenon of church history" without pressing hard at all. while wolfe means that people care less about the differences between, say, catholics and baptists, than they used to, he ought to attend more carefully to the ways that theological claims matter across denominations according to more traditionalist or more progressive leanings, a trend pointed to by robert wuthnow in his 1988 masterpiece the restructuring of american religion (i can't help but see the homage wolfe pays to wuthnow in his choice of title). the recent explosion of the gay marriage debate offers a case in point. here at least in part doctrine is central, and the issue is that doctrine matters differently that it did in wolfe's imaginary control group he names "old-time religion."

the review is more interesting. written by a prominent sociologist of religion, r. stephen warner, the review suggests that while wolfe's book is a helpful primer in the last couple decades of qualitative sociology of religion (wolfe uses many other published studies, always giving proper credit), he offers mainly studies that support his thesis. and, here is the hot sauce in warner's review, does not really give adequate attention to various studies that show counter evidence, e.g. evidence of the faith pressing hard on culture. warner cites the work of christian smith on the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, and andrew billingsley on the role of the black church in civil rights work . one could add the sort of tenacious inner city ministry represented by one of our own, mark gornik, told in his book to live in peace: biblical faith and the changing inner city.

so, to return to wuthnow. transformation? or restructuring? is culture always the winner? or is faith exerting varieties of influence that 'religiously unmusical' scholars have a harder time hearing?

thoughts, anyone?

christianity and violence

one of the most pressing places where the question of how we live our faith confronts challenges in the modern world is in the context of religious violence. you likely know that miroslav volf, director of the faith as a way of life project, is deeply reflective about these matters. here, in a nationally broadcast edition of speaking of faith on minnesota public radio, journalist krista tippet interviews miroslav on the topic of christianity and violence.

faith and art

i got a jog via email about posting something to highlight makoto fugimura, an artist and founder of the international arts movement and happily also part of our reflection group in the fwl project. He is a remarkable artist and i think he is doing something amazing in bringing his faith and his artistic work and his connections in the world of art together. he also lent us a couple beautiful pictures

to display in our office suite at the center. here is a shot of him hanging them up. they are titled "gladiolas blue" and "gladiolas red". more on his amazing work to come in later posts. i'm late for some famous new haven style pizza (thin crust, baked in a super hot 700 degree oven). anon, and +peace

anon 2

in my first post, i didn't yet have the cool ecto software that lets me make words automatically link to websites. so, for you lazy people out there, here are the two sites i mentioned in my first post:

our project, based at the yale center for faith and culture, is called faith as a way of life.

And the poet and novelist i mentioned is marly youmans.

¿esta bien?

space matters

yesterday, i was walking in downtown new haven on my way back from staples. i passed by christ church and its open doors beckoned me in. as i opened the door to the sanctuary, i at once saw a cavernous space and smelled the soft memory of anglo-catholic episcopal worship: incense. and i recalled something thomas merton once said in new seeds of contemplation: "let there always be quiet, dark churches in which [people] can take refuge. places where they can kneel in silence. houses of god, filled with [god's] silent presence. there, even when they do not know how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easily. let there be a place somewhere where you can breathe naturally, quietly, and not have to take your breath in continuous short gasps. a place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship the father in secret. there can be no contemplation where there is no secret."

in the formation of lives of faith, space matters. because somehow, if we are to bend our lives toward discipleship, toward following the way of the cross through all of our life, then we need moments where we find ourselves confronted with another, with a divine overwhelming as david ford puts it. that was for me the gift of christ church yesterday. may your lenten journey yield such moments of silent, of overwhelming.

volf

anon--it means back soon. and so it is. an interesting proposal from miroslav about the role of faith today in relation to pastoral formation and leadership.

"Why are pastors, along with communities of faith, increasingly ineffective in their central task? The reasons are many. This proposal highlights those related to how Christian faith is understood and practiced. The difficulty starts with theological education. Theology, like all academic disciplines, participates in the movement of sub-disciplinary differentiation and increased specialization. This is an indispensable condition of fundamental theological research. In the process, however, the overarching subject of theology and its internal unity is lost, first on teachers of theology and then, by extension, on many students. After their first experiences in churches, many young pastors are no longer certain that the long years of theological study were useful. The narrowed disciplines and highly specialized theological interests of their former professors do not sufficiently overlap with the life realities of their parishioners. Three or more years of study have granted them a sophisticated but questionably useful tool.

To help themselves out of the predicament, many pastors revert to simplistic forms of faith familiar to them from the years prior to their theological education. They turn to uncritical, even naïve, approaches to sacred texts and theological concepts. These, however, soon prove woefully insufficient for the complexities of life and are intellectually implausible. Others opt for an easy relevance by adopting vague religiosity and interlacing it with various secular languages (e.g., from psychology or social critique). The value of these languages is indisputable, but their relation to the language of faith is often tenuous at best. The result of these two alternative ways of coping with the difficulty of connecting faith with life is, in Michael Welker’s apt description, a self-banalization of faith in the first case and self-secularization in the second. Either of these options deprives pastors of the ability to formulate a compelling faith-based vision of life capable of shaping persons, communities, and cultures."

I'm particularly interested in the ways the emerging church responds to this--say, Tony Jones (who is in our reflection pool) or Doug Pagitt -see http://pagitt.typepad.com/ and check out his new book called reimagining spiritual formation) or Karen Ward --see http://deepdirt.blogspot.com. I think they are doing it, but i don't know where they got it.

anon

this is the first of what will be an ongoing blogersation, especially with and among my fellow travelers involved in the faith as a way of life project (www.yale.edu/faith/initiatives/fwl.html). we're a bunch of fools for christ, convened by miroslav volf, and meeting twice a year in new haven to see if we can figure out how to make our faith really matter in our lives, in our faith communities, and in the slices of culture we swim through.

i'm going to post often and encourage lively responses critical and constructive. thus, i've titled this first post anon, my favorite learning for today. i was echating back and forth this morning with marly youmans, one of the members of our reflection pool (we call it the 'national working group'). marly signs all her emails anon and i thought: "what is that?" so i asked her, and herewith is her response. btw, check out her powerful prose and poetry at http://www.marlyyoumans.com.

"Anon . . . Well, it's a rather old-fashioned word but my habitual sign-off. It means "soon" or "at a later (but not too much later) time." In older works, as in Shakespeare, it often means something even more immediate like "I'm coming in an instant" or "yes, in just a minute." It's a farewell that's not an end, and I guess I like it for that friendly reason. It's surprising how many people have commented on it. I've even noticed a few people anon-ing me in return. Perhaps it will come back into common use!
And so, anon-- Marly"