by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) Sermon on How Hard It Is Being Spiritual Without You by Nadia Bolz-Weber "Of course I wasn’t thinking about God’s love much when I was away from you guys. Because as inconvenient and at times, unreliable as it might be – other people are the most common way of knowing and experiencing the love of God in Christ. And you guys are my other people. As much as experiencing the love of God in Christ though meditating alone on a mountain might sound awesome, that’s not what Jesus sent his disciples to do after he left. He told them to love each other as he loved them." 2) If Evil Has a Best Friend, It's Apathy by Jamie Wright "I've spent the last 12 months trying to get my head around the language of modern day slavery and the fact that when we are using these words - word's like sold, smuggled, traded, transported, brokered, abused, starved, beaten, broken in – we're talking about human beings. Actual human beings. The kind with names and faces and families. The kind with dreams. The kind with hearts and souls. Real live people." 3) 'Send Them Away': A Homily for the Loaves and Fish (Proper 13A) by David R. Henson "The priest, though, shrugged and offered the bread to him anyway. Now, it would have been easy for the priest to simply send Jeff away with a blessing only and not with the bread. It was technically the right thing to do. But by placing the thin wafer of Christ’s body onto Jeff’s tongue, the priest broke church law and, to some Catholics, violated the Sacrament itself." 4) I Don't Always Tell You by Rachel Held Evans "I don’t always tell you about the mornings I wake up and feel the absence of God as though it were a presence—thick and certain, remembered all over again the way you remember in the morning that someone you love has died. Or about the days when the idea that a single religion can stop the CNN crawler from reporting one more missile strike, one more downed plane, one more bombed hospital, strikes me as freshly stupid, dangerously naïve." 5) "I Used to Believe X for Reason Y..." and the Failure of Intellectual Imagination by Derek Rishmawy (Note: Read the comments) "This, as I said, is a failure of the intellectual imagination, and for reasons I’m not entirely sure of (and I’d love others to weigh in on), it’s one that seems increasingly common. I will say that I’m fairly sure it has something to do with the narcissism of human experience. The story we know best is our own and our human tendency is to shrink the world to fit our experiences. We take our personal stories, and instead of seeing them as one, particular, unique experience, we expand them out and unjustifiably universalize them." Honorable Mention Mark Driscoll and Me and Our Desperate Desire To Be "Okay" by Ben Moberg
Tweets of the (Last Two) Week(s) "I've seen a lot of Jesus billboards on this road trip. Call me crazy but I don't think he likes being hung up on display to make a point." - @primaawesome "HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, CLIMBING FROM THE BLOOD PITS, HOWLING THEIR AWAKENING TO THE VOID BETWEEN THE STARS, LISTENING TO THEIR REPLIES" - @hottestsingles "I'm just a girl, standing in front of a guy, asking him for all the money in the cash register." - @lindzeta
"You can do anything if you put your mind to it and are willing to disassociate and become a goddamn monster" - @ashfein
"Maybe I'm reading this chart wrong, but according to my weight, I'm 7'3" tall." - @Thing_finder
"I violently wiped all the fingerprint smudges on my iPad and I think I accidentally earned an online degree from the University of Phoenix" - @MeetGreg
The Best Things You Could Have Hypothetically Read Last Week
On Pop Theology Fortnight in Review On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 58 - Arts & Entertainments w/ Christopher Beha "This week on the show Ben talks with author Christopher Beha about his new novel Arts & Entertainments, his Catholic faith, and the nature of the novel of ultimate concern." On Metaphors and Summer Breaks by Lyndsey Graves "It has been ten weeks since I last attended church. I didn’t plan it this way, and there are a hundred reasons why this is a terrible state of affairs, but it is how the summer has turned out." Chaos and Fictional Theology by Ben Howard "As a writer who occasionally has opinions about Christianity I am required by divine fiat to have a definitive position on the issue of the afterlife." How The Bachelor Illuminates the Falsehoods In Our Lives by Emily Joy Allison "I get a lot of scornful, “I can’t believe YOU watch THE BACHELOR” sort of comments from my friends when they find out about my obsession. Granted, if you know me even a little, it’s a bit surprising."
"A photo of a man holding a limp child lit up my computer screen as I clicked on the Twitter link. The boy was one of four Palestinian children playing on a beach, killed by an Israeli airstrike." Song of the (Elongated) Week "Secrets" by Mary Lambert
Peace, Ben You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to help us pay the bills, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com. You might also like:
by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) The Evil at Our Borders: Migrants, Refugees, and the Spiritual Crisis of Immigration by David R. Henson "For conservatives, it is an immigration crisis, demonstrating the failures of the U.S. immigration policy and the need for militarized borders. For liberals, it is a humanitarian crisis, demonstrating the failures of U.S. economic policy, the immediate need for aid, and the necessity of immigration reform. For me, while I agree with progressives here, it is also a profoundly spiritual crisis. It is a crisis of faith, and right now, we are not the bearers of liberty, hope, democracy, or good news. Rather, we are the bearers of evil." 2) Re-thinking Communion by Christena Cleveland "It seems that the way we do communion in many churches is too easy, too convenient, too painless, too safe, too inorganic, too separate from actual reconciliation work, and too individualistic. I’m starting to think that the way we do communion is not scandalous enough to represent the cross." 3) Hebel, Grace and the Art of Andy Goldsworthy: Part 2, Living as a Sacrament by Richard Beck "Here's what I mean. Today each of us will wander out into the world. And around us we'll find all sorts people and all sorts of situations. It's a fractal, messy, and chaotic world out there. And it's not all bad. There are beautiful things, like flowers, out there. But there is also sadness and brokenness, conflict and deadness. And what we'll try to do today (or what we should be doing today) is very similar to what Goldsworthy does. We will try, given what we find out there, to bring grace and beauty into the world." 4)Authentic Modesty: Compassion Over Shame by Saskia Wishart "Imagine if we, as women who love, started talking about how we deal with harassment from men on the street instead of slut-shaming women for drawing the harassment. My hope is that we learn to look with compassion, not lust. That we can place value, rather than casting shame. My hope is that we understand that body parts are only the start of the story, and there is so much more to be known about an individual." 5) "Why I Use Birth Control": 11 Women Speak Up by Rachel Held Evans "Opinions about the ruling aside, I’ve been stunned by some of the misinformation circulating around social media about contraception, the most unhelpful of which characterizes women who use contraception as 'entitled,' 'sluts,' 'moochers,' and 'whores.' I’ve shared my own thoughts on contraception in a post entitled 'Privilege and the Pill,' but today I wanted to yield the floor to ten women whose stories challenge these unfair caricatures. I am incredibly grateful for their bravery and honesty in stepping forward to tell the truth of their experiences. Please, listen." Honorable Mention The Saddest - and Classiest - Soccer Fan by Jason Morehead How Secrets Made Me Sick by J. Gettin' on the Mat by Diana Trautwein Tweets of the Week "An exclamation point is like a tiny little crutch for your joke." - @bazecraze
"God was dead. But the show had to go on. His doppelgänger Göd stepped in, executed the Apocalypse to rapturous applause." - @VikramParalkar
"Crossfitters are the Boy Scouts of the adult world." - @chettarcheese On Pop Theology Week in Review Because I Know You: Friendship and Tom Cruise by Charity Erickson "The other day, I went to see Edge of Tomorrow, the newest addition to Tom Cruise’s rather extensive sci-fi repertoire." Elephants in the Room: Israel, Palestine, and the Nature of Oppression by David Creech "My natural disposition is to side with those who are oppressed. I also prefer to hear people tell their own story rather than insert my opinions from the outside. Enter the Israel-Palestine conflict." Song of the Week "Lanterns" by Birds of Tokyo
Peace, Ben You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to help us pay the bills, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com. You might also like:
by Ben Howard Reads of the Week 1) Dirt is Resurrection and God is a Bad Farmer (Homily for the Parable of the Sower) by David R. Henson "That’s the scandal of this parable. God is throwing seeds around like an intoxicated fool at the bar buying another round of drinks that she can’t afford. There’s no limit to the extravagance, to the generosity and love. What kind of farmer sows seeds on the hard path? What kind of farmer plants in the thorn bushes? What kind of farmer tosses seeds among the rocks? What kind of farmer wastes so much? The kind of farmer who doesn’t believe in hopeless causes." 2)Homeless Jesusby Juan Lopez "It’s so easy to have a personal relationship with a Christ you never see. I worship this God as I sit in traffic, I’ve spent hundreds of dollars buying the right music. I’ve bought all the best inspirational books. I’ve attended many enlightening conferences. I pay my tithes faithfully and I’ve seen him bless me abundantly. At least that how I justify the extra pounds I’ve gained since I got married. Meanwhile the debt piles on and I keep pretending I’m walking with Christ." 3)The American Dream: Hobby Lobby, Pro-Life Ethics, and Me by Hannah Ettinger "But what’s more, it’s the result of a complex network of decisions and chess moves by the conservative Christian right set in play for more than 20 years. And I haven’t thoroughly read all the details in the ruling and the dissent by Ginsburg (bless her), but this is personal and I know enough to get myself into a little trouble talking about it, and I need to talk about it." 4)The Most American Way to Watch Soccer by Valerie Dunham "Only in the United States is soccer obscure. Only in the United States are we generally indifferent. And only in the United States could a group of fans turn one of the world’s most accessible games into a carefully guarded gated community. If anyone in that bar was watching the game against Germany like an American, it was the small group of people watching in the corner who thought they were unique for doing it." 5)The Treasonous Love of Jesus (A 4th of July Reflection) by Zack Hunt "But even in the real world, where we are fortunate enough to not live under a foreign conqueror, our faith has become so infused with patriotism that the notion that a person can’t serve two masters – both God and Uncle Sam – is treated like heresy. And we have become so wedded to our politics that we’re blind the countless ways our love for America comes into direct conflict with our love for Jesus." Honorable Mention For the Love of Liturgy by Bronwyn Lea The Graffiti That Made Germany Better by Andreas Kluth
"I can turn beer and wings into obesity. Your move Jesus." - @AngelaEhh "4-year-old: What’s a cubicle?
Me: It’s a place liberal arts majors go to be sad." - @XplodingUnicorn "If the bald eagle sees his shadow on the 4th of July, there's six more weeks of America." - @michaeljhudson Song of the Week "I Wanna Get Better" by Bleachers
Peace, Ben You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to help us pay the bills, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com. You might also like:
by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) The Day I Knew I, Too, Could Murderby Bronwyn Lea "It was the day I knew I could murder. The day I knew I, even I, was capable of the most terrible depravity. After years of theological lip service to the fact, it was the day I knew I was a sinner. Horrified and humbled, I sat in a cold sweat on those sun-baked steps and wondered how it was that I could call myself a Christian while longing for the death of the three men who had snaked off into the night and left my most beloved in shreds." 2) The Charism of the Charismatics: Part 6, The Heart Has a Way of Knowing by Richard Beck "Emotions make our world. And if emotions make our world then attending to the emotions is a critical, perhaps even the central, task of Christian discipleship. Discipleship is more a matter of training our emotions than of changing our minds." 3) The Ministry of Watching Sparrows Fall to the Ground by D.L. Mayfield "Is this witnessing? Is this being a witness? I don’t get to use a whit of my degree in Theology. Instead, I am burrowing deeper and deeper into the forgotten parts of our world and I am trying to keep my spirit and my eyes open. Really, when it comes down to it, I am not the famous missionary or preacher or theologian I always yearned to be. Instead, my ministry is about watching the birds. His eye is on the sparrow. I know this because he has asked me to be the witness to it, to be his eyes and ears and hands on the earth. And I am here to tell you, they are falling to the ground in droves." 4) The Best Faith Film You'll See All Year by Rachel Held Evans "While the debates rage on about whether Noah is biblical enough, Heaven is For Real true enough, and God is Not Dead profitable enough, Philomena delivers a quiet, understated, and powerful portrayal of the actual human experience, where clear-cut lines between good and evil, heroes and villains, right and wrong might be good 'story-wise' but don’t reflect the reality most people of faith actually live in." 5) Why Sarah Palin is Right About Baptism by Waterboarding - #AmericanBaptism by David Henson "But, in truth, Palin is right. Waterboarding — along with other torture and human rights abuses like drone warfare and indefinite detention — was how the United States baptized the world into its new creation — the war on terror. It was simply an American baptism instead of a Christian one. We baptized 'combatants' with waterboarding. They became new creations that raised to life through outrage and injustice new enemies and violence." Honorable Mention Classical Music Makes Me Sick and Joyful by Mary DeMuth Crossed Paths by Jamie Wright If I've Survived to Achieve It All by Kenny Pierce Tweets of the Week "sorcerers are usually not named Dan" - @jon_bois "I have mixed feelings about the sun. I like that it makes my belly warm, but I do not like that it can make my belly too warm. I am a bear." - @A_single_bear "Son, we don't play Hungry Hungry Hippos for "fun." We play it to learn how friends turn on each other in moments of desperation and scarcity" - @longwall26 Song of the Week "Algiers" by The Afghan Wigs
Peace, Ben You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to help us pay the bills, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com. You might also like:
by Ben Howard Reads of the Week 1)A Big Heart Open to God by Antonio Spadoro, S.J. "The setting is simple, austere. The workspace occupied by the desk is small. I am impressed not only by the simplicity of the furniture, but also by the objects in the room. There are only a few. These include an icon of St. Francis, a statue of Our Lady of Luján, patron saint of Argentina, a crucifix and a statue of St. Joseph sleeping. The spirituality of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not made of “harmonized energies,” as he would call them, but of human faces: Christ, St. Francis, St. Joseph and Mary." 2)My DTR (Define the Relationship) with World Vision by Jamie Wright "I don't feel like you showed me the real you, World Vision. When I got on a plane, I thought I was going to see three different communities in three stages of development. I thought you would show me how your work saves lives and creates sustainable agriculture, and how you equip underprivileged Guatemalans, ultimately, to live apart from you. I thought I was going to fall in love." 3) Three Strikes Against White Evangelical Theology by Fred Clark "And if segregation was wrong, then the defense of segregation was wrong and the defenders of segregation were wrong. And the theology that was enlisted to defend segregation was wrong just as that same theology was wrong when it was used in the same way to defend slavery a century before. 'Biblical literalism and an intense focus on individual salvation' was a theological mistake that has been conclusively repudiated by history. Twice." 4) Binge and Purge: Praying to the Porcelain God by Mihee Kim-Kort "As time went on binging and purging was my coping mechanism for…life. For everything. It became a way to stifle my emotions and stuff them inside me. When I finally went to talk to someone about it she helped me see that I was praying to the wrong god." 5) The Facts Don't Matter. Only Love Does by David Henson "So often, we want to lead with the facts when we should be instead leading with our love for the other person. Because, in individual contexts, what’s important isn’t our rightness but our relationships." 6)Beauty Pagaents & Bible Stories by Kathy Khang "I’m still writing about the racist comments that may have disappeared in the constant flow of tweets, FB statuses and 24-7 news outlets because the Miss America pageant, as outdated, bizarre and sexist as it seems, the idea is as old as time. It’s as irrelevant and sexist as it relevant and sexist, which is to say I have no idea how God might redeem the Miss America pageant, but it’s not beyond God to do such a crazy thing." 7)"Lord, I Am Not Worthy That You Should Enter Under My Roof..." by Morgan Guyton "It’s a completely different thing to say generically that God is everywhere and loves everybody and to have the personal experience of God entering under your roof despite your unworthiness. The first is a farcical platitude; the second is the most authentic solid ground that a person can possibly stand on." 8)Christ is Always Colored. Contextualizing Christ as the Other by Jacobus de Keijzer "When Christ is contextualized as the other, when the center contextualizes Christ as the marginalized, something stirs within us. All of a sudden, the Lord of the universe is not necessarily on our side. He is no longer in the center; our center. All of a sudden this Lord invites us to get to know the margin; his margin." 9) A Secularist's Affirming Take on Evangelicals by Christian Piatt "I want to encourage progressive non-evangelicals, especially those with a simplistic and negative view of evangelicals—which used to be my view—to complicate and update their understanding of these people. A new time is setting in, and the lines of conflict and division are shifting. There is great potential for us to work with these new evangelicals for the common good." 10) She Yelled and Called Me Names by Susan Basham "She didn’t buy it. She continued with the name calling without taking a breath. I won’t write them down here, but the main mantra shared initials with the number one social networking site. Then something really strange happened."
