by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) 'Ambiguity Proposes, Preference Disposes': We Have to Choose by Fred Clark "But this quirk in translation is only possible because of the larger, pre-existing ambiguity between those exclusive and inclusive viewpoints. Ambiguity proposes, preference disposes. That ambiguity — that perennial argument — between exclusion and inclusion pervades the entirety of scripture. And preference predisposes which side of that argument we choose to endorse." 2) #HowOldWereYou: Origins of a Heartbreaking Hashtag by Karen Swallow Prior "Those days were different from today. Then, such people were referred to as 'dirty old men,' a phrase that bespoke their commonness but was unfortunately dismissive of the seriousness of their actions. I told my parents about my teacher. They told me if I needed their help in handling him to let them know. I didn’t. It ended. I don’t remember how. Fortunately, my parents had raised me to be strong and independent, and they succeeded. I see now that other girls—too many—were not so lucky." 3) Sacred Space and a Latte by Sarah Joslyn "I don’t usually offer to pray for strangers, but the words tumbled out before I knew what was happening. It sounded an awful lot like my voice as the words fell, “Maybe this is weird to you, but I’m going to be praying for you as you get ready to move.” And you know what happened next? Quiet Mama cried. She let quiet tears stream down her quiet face and she talked about loneliness and stress and a struggling ministry. She talked about surgery. And then she talked about cancer. I looked over at her Not-So-Quiet children and I hugged her. Her tiny daughter asked for a hug too. We hugged and we cried." 4) If You Feel Far Away From God, Guess Who Moved? by Addie Zierman "Maybe the silence of God is not a punishment, but an invitation to a new kind of trust. In a world that is so loud and constant, where we are talking on social media even when we’re not using our voices, always saying something, always conversing and communicating…we’ve forgotten about the layers of Silence. The richness of it. The power of it. We’ve forgotten that God has a habit of going quiet with his people." 5) Women, Infants, Children: WIC Vouchers, Whole Foods, and the Oppressed by D.L. Mayfield "Some of us have the luxury of not understanding the vulnerabilities inherent in gender and age in our world today. Some of us can choose to be unaware of government aid programs that catch the hungry children before they slip through our fingers. Some of us, myself included, can slide up and down the poverty scale as it warrants us, choosing to live simply without ever experiencing the true crush of hunger. Some of us, myself included, would rather pretend that the world is equal and just, and that right living and right thinking will lead to right outcomes." Honorable Mention The Lingering Light of Summer by Fiona Koefoed-Jespersen Holy Relics: A Box of Tissues by Martyn Wendell Jones Be Not Deceived: There's No Such Thing As A "Christian Banker" by Benjamin Corey Tweets of the Week "Don't worry Redskin fans, you can easily switch your tattoo to a George Washington head without diminishing your support for historical racism" - @sethpomeroy "Of course it's a dull match featuring teams that are strangely apathetic in spite of the high stakes. That's how an OPEC meeting works." - @tejucole (on Iran vs. Nigeria) "Ochoa is the roommate who always cleans the kitchen and buys toilet paper. The rest of the Mexican team is Derek. Fucking Derek." - @celebrityhottub Song of the Week "Hey Ya" by Obadiah Parker
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) Bad Theology Can Kill You by Zack Hunt "You may have heard the tragic news over the weekend that Pastor Jamie Coots, a snake handling pastor who starred in the reality show Snake Salvation, died after he being bitten by a snake while handling it during a recent church service. The story quickly spread in large part because of our fascination with the odd and the taboo…and you don’t get much more odd or taboo in the church world than handling snakes. And if my Facebook and Twitter feeds are any indication, the story was also an opportunity for the rest of us to show how superior and sophisticated our theology is by mocking Pastor Coots and his kind across all social media channels for the inevitable result of their redneck ignorance." 2) Sermon on Jesus Rolling His Eyes (and also divorce) by Nadia Bolz-Weber "I thought, how the hell is it that the church can manage to take a text meant to protect people and make sure violence is not done to them, and then use this same text to do violence to so many for so long? I don’t know what to say. I just know that it is real. And if Jesus rolled his eyes when having to re-orient his disciple’s understandings of things, I can only imagine his reaction to what has been done with his teachings about protecting people." 3) The Cost by Rachel Held Evans "It’s painful to see your beliefs mocked in the media and satirized on TV. There’s a cost to sticking with your values when they strike others as old-fashioned or strange. It hurts like hell to be the butt of jokes at your office or called a "bigot" or "extremist" on your college campus when nothing could be further from the truth. It takes guts to raise your hand and challenge the professor in a secular classroom or walk away from a compromising situation when it may mean damaging relationships that have been hard-won. And it's got to sting to be called a fundamentalist by other Christians (like me) when you're just trying to do the right thing and do it in love. It must hurt to be subjected to the rolled eyes and the know-it-all attitude we progressive-types can conjure as well as anybody." 4) This is what actual ‘religious liberty’ looks like by Fred Clark "In doing so, Wright Allen also shredded the warped notion of “religious liberty” as a defense of religious privilege now being advanced by pseudo-intellectual Christianist chauvinists. Those chauvinists — from the billionaires of Hobby Lobby, to the U.S. Catholic bishops, to the Manhattan declarers — have been trying to redefine “religious liberty” to mean a “monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments” for their particular strain of religion. It’s not enough, they say, for us to be free to marry as we like — if we are not also free to prohibit others from marrying as they like, then we are not free. It is not enough, they say, for us to be free to reject the use of contraception — if we are not also free to prohibit others from using contraception, then we are not free." 5) What Jesus Said to the Transgendered Woman by John Stonecypher "Back to Facebook Jesus… One of his awesome-est followers was a transgender woman who never failed to come to Jesus’ aide when the Pharisees came trolling. Her sexuality just hadn’t been a topic of discussion yet. But I knew it was coming. I tried to prepare myself to have an answer when the question came. Something theologically nuanced and artfully worded; I’m pretty good at that…" Honorable Mention On Preferential Options by Maria Gwyn McDowell Inhabiting Fear by Jen Luitweiler For the Moms with Wild Ones by Flower Patch Farmgirl Tweets of the Week
'Mr. Jay-Z, I hate to bother you, but I ran the numbers & came up with 107 problems.'" - @earfdae
"When God closes a door, he opens a window. Our heating bill is outrageous & six raccoons got in last night. Please God, this has to stop." - @robfee
"Dear Huffington Post, that was no where near the best goat video I've watched today. Signed, Disappointed Goat Video Watcher" - @_lxnx On Pop Theology Week in Review Come As You Are by Ben Howard "It’s meant to be inviting. And I’m sure it’s well-intentioned. For all their sins, churches are certainly well-intentioned when they invite strangers to come and join them." Bad Music Theology: "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry (feat. Juicy J) by Ben Howard "Every so often I come across a pop song so catchy that I can't stop listening to it, but with lyrics so terrible that I hate myself every time I press play. Such is the case with "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry and Juicy J." On Being Too Serious (Or, Why True Detective Sucks) by Charity Erickson "I’ll get right down to disagreeing with the general critical community at large: True Detective—which debuted on HBO in January—sucks." On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 50 - The Winter Olympics by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust "Sebastian and Ben settle in for a discussion about the Winter Olympics in Sochi."
Song of the Week "When I Write My Master's Thesis" by John K. Samson
Grace and Peace, Ben and Sebastian 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) If Men Got the Titus 2 Treatment... by Rachel Held Evans "It has come to my attention that we are facing a crisis of biblical masculinity in the Church today. An increasing number of men are neglecting the roles God clearly outlined for them in Scripture (Genesis 3:19, 1 Thessalonians 5:26, 1 Timothy 2:8) in favor of blatant cultural capitulation. I’d like to focus on three biblical principles that many modern men, out of total disregard for Scripture, continue to ignore: sweating, kissing, and hand-raising." 2) No Offense: Hating Black History Month by Maria Dixon "For many in the American Church, yes even the Progressive Church, race and blackness are topics and people that are to be objectified. What I mean by this is that the Church is more than happy to make African Americans the objects of their outreach; their philanthropy; or even their programmatic initiatives but rarely if ever their fully actualized discursive partners capable of self-governing thoughts. Well-intentioned saviors, swoop in often without asking, offer diagnosis and remedy, and then leave frustrated when questions are asked or critique offered." 3) Everyone Stop What You're Doing and Listen to Panti Bliss by Fred Clark "Panti takes the stage after what appears to have been a somber play about impoverished coal miners in 1913 — because this is in Ireland, where if you’re ever going to step onto a stage the odds are that it will be soon after a somber play about impoverished coal miners in 1913. She then offers a charming, funny, heartfelt and sometimes heart-breaking speech about oppression and how it becomes internalized and about what it means to be a person like her living in a place like that." 4) Sochi Cadillac Ad Encourages Worship at the Altar of Work and Stuff by Jonathan Merritt "In my faith tradition—evangelical Christianity—I’m struck by an absence of preaching, teaching, and talking about these kinds of Biblical ideas. Perhaps it is because materialism has become a respectable sin or maybe it is because we need the wealthy to bankroll our massive ministry budgets and mammoth church building projects." 5) Sermon On That Special Class of Salty, Light-Bearing People to Whom Jesus Preaches by Nadia Bolz-Weber "These people, the wretched ones left behind in the last verses of chapter 4, they follow Jesus, in a way that the least, the last, the lost and the lonely have followed him ever since, and to them he gives a blessing. The poor, those who mourn and are meek. Jesus gives them a blessing. You are blessed. He says, And then right after that, he says that they are salt and light." Honorable Mention How to Be Loved Today by Shannan Martin Keep The Earth Below My Feet by Kelli Woodford A Closet Comes Undone by Ben Moberg Tweets of the Week "On behalf of my wife and I, we'd like to apologize to everyone for the Nicholas Sparks movie we just watched. We are truly sorry." - @ScottAEmery "How much can't could a white girl can't even if a white girl literally could not even." - @aguywithnolife "When the phrase "a penny for your thoughts" was first coined you could buy a horse for a penny. Today our thoughts are worth almost nothing." - @MooseAllain On Pop Theology Week in Review A Theology of Legos by Jim Kast-Keat "Growing up, there was one Christmas present I could always guess with a single shake: Legos." Failure, The Only Option by Rebekah Mays "As a writer, I often wish there was some magic pill I could take that would instantly transform me into Flannery O’Connor." A Different Olympics by Ben Howard "I’ve been watching a different Olympics than you." On Love by Lane Severson "As a Christian, I find it very difficult to say anything about love that is both true to experience and true to my religious convictions." The Value In All Sorts Of Loves by Emily Maynard "If you’ve walked into any store that sells things recently, you may have noticed that love is in the air." Song of the Week "Stop" by Matchbox Twenty
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) The Bible Was 'Clear'... by Rachel Held Evans "But these quotes should serve as a humbling reminder that rhetorical claims to the Bible’s clarity on a subject do not automatically make it so. One need not discount the inspiration and authority of Scripture to hold one’s interpretations of Scripture with an open hand." 2) What Are Biblical Values? by Zack Hunt "In our attempt to discern what biblical values are, we need to begin by keeping in mind that if we are able to establish biblical values, that does not necessarily establish that they are good values. In other words, just because the Bible says it, doesn’t actually make it good." 3) Moving Downward, In Spite of the Safety Net by Annie "Maybe these examples are extreme, but they just begin to describe how I sometimes I feel like I am just playing dress-up. I put on a costume and play the part of friend to the poor, friend to the sick, and friend to the orphan, but remain so far above them (much to my dismay) that it seems a laughable feat to really live in solidarity with them." 4) Dreams Not Drones #MLKDay2014 by H00DIE_R "We should stop looking at how Martin Luther King Jr. changed the world; let us ponder what changes he fought for, and how this world has remained stubbornly the same. What we should do, on this day, and maybe every day, is look at the values he embodied, and the places where he placed his body." 5) Religious Meteorology Needs More Rigorous Science by Fred Clark "Let’s stop wasting money on weather satellites and meteorological studies and put that funding to good use. Form a joint commission of top religious scholars and top property reinsurance actuaries and set them to work at the task of identifying the specific kinds of sin that produce specific kinds of severe weather events." Honorable Mention Social Media as Sacrament: A Thought For Rachel by Richard Beck #Instagrown: In an Age of Instantaneous Everything, What Happens to Adolescent Yearning? by Amanda Wortham Of Embarrassing Prayers and Naked Talks with God by Natalie Trust Tweets of the Week "Every time someone lets you merge in front of them, and you don't wave, the terrorists win." - @Jesse_Baker "Before you rush to judge Justin Bieber, take a minute to laugh very hard." - @TheTweetOfGod
"I was born in the wrong decade, I should have been born in the dystopian future." - @7amkickoff On Pop Theology Week in Review On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 47 - Genesis w/ Robert Alter "This week on the podcast we're starting a new series on the Bible. Once every month Sebastian Faust will be interviewing a different prominent thinker and scholar on a different book of the Bible." Looking for the Kingdom Coming Down: The Alternative Reality of the Poet-Prophet "I was driving full-speed on an empty desert freeway, tumbling words & melodies over & backwards in my head and over my tongue like so many gathered crystals." Chaos and Conspiracy Theories "4% of your fellow citizens believe the United States government is run by 'lizard people.'" Facial Hair & Christian Resentment "We were a group of seventh-graders on the bus, making our way to the first basketball game of the season. “I think facial hair is gross; it’s so itchy,” I said with a look of disgust." Song of the Week "Dirty Floors" by Andy Suzuki
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) I Was An NFL Player Until I Was Fired By Two Cowards and a Bigot by Chris Kluwe "Hello. My name is Chris Kluwe, and for eight years I was the punter for the Minnesota Vikings. In May 2013, the Vikings released me from the team. At the time, quite a few people asked me if I thought it was because of my recent activism for same-sex marriage rights, and I was very careful in how I answered the question. My answer, verbatim, was always, 'I honestly don't know, because I'm not in those meetings with the coaches and administrative people.'" 2) Power of Naming by Carol Howard Merritt "I am not depression. I am not foremost a depressed person. But I can feel my body responding with certain lethargy in particular situations. It’s as if the air has gotten thicker and I retreat within myself. When things become particularly difficult, I imagine myself a victim in my own life’s drama. Yet, when I focus on the “situational” rather than the “depression,” I know that it’s a season that will pass. There are many aspects to who I am, not just depression." 3) Missionary Kids, Downward Mobility, and My Friend Sarah by Briana Meade "This is everything that getting to know someone who is different than you should be. It is the initial terrifying jump into the unknown of possibly offending someone. It is the unwieldy silences between difficult vocabulary words in other languages. It is the complexity of relationship when individualism and village mentalities clash and bang. When the noise that goes up shatters into the loud dissonance of the family-frameworks and culture we have come from." 4) Prophetic Criticism by Kelley Nikondeha "I want my criticism to move us toward freedom. I want my criticism to build His Kingdom of justice. Then my critique will be in the prophetic tradition, engaged in shaping an alternative community rooted in the God who is free, who delivers us from oppression and is at work doing new things in the world." 5) Time For the 'Let the Churches Handle It' Crowd to Fish or Get Off the Pot: 1.3 Million Unemployed Lose Their Lifeline by Fred Clark "This is a catastrophe. It’s a catastrophe for those 1.3 million people and their families, who will now be unable to pay for food and shelter. It’s a catastrophe for every American business, because they just lost 1.3 million potential customers. And it’s a catastrophe for society as a whole, because here are more than a million people who could be doing stuff and making stuff, but we’re leaving all of that stuff undone and unmade because we couldn’t manage to figure out how to pay them to do it." Honorable Mention What Does Hope Look Like? by Bethany Olsen In 2014, I Resolve to Fail More by Elizabeth Esther Alternatives to Becoming an Armadillo by Carol Howard Merritt Tweets of the Week
"New Year’s Eve is like being in line for a wooden rollercoaster ride.
You wait forever for the fun part but only end up with a headache." - @emilyvolman "'College Football' was a better name than 'Under-compensated teenagers
giving each other brain damage for people's entertainment' - @johnthorntonjr "I found a brick in the woods. I do not know how it got there, and I do not know what to do with it. I am a bear." - @A_single_bear On Pop Theology Week in Review Fly From Heaven (If He's All You Say) by Sebastian Faust "The song "Fly From Heaven" from Toad the Wet Sprocket’s album Dulcinea is 20 years old now, which means, here at On Pop Theology, it’s just about ripe for us to discuss it as though it’s a contemporary piece, trending even now through the charts." Christian Celebrity and the Already, But Not Yet by Ben Howard "A few weeks ago I wrote a post entitled 'Christianity Needs Celebrities.' The central thesis was that cultural change is mediated through celebrity personas. Moreover, the structure and history of Christianity is celebrity-based and, as a result, Christianity not only needs celebrities, but needs to work to foster better celebrity representations." Song of the Week "Heavy Metal Drummer" by Wilco
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) The White Noise of War by Jeremy Bowman "It’s too quiet to sleep in my warm bed at night without the white noise of the gunfire in the background. I pace the hall in the middle of the night. The overwhelming guilt keeps me awake. I feel it for everything, for leaving the war, for abandoned my people. But mostly for surviving. “WHY ME?” you ask God a hundred times. You never get an answer." 2) No, The Book of Jonah Cannot Be Read As History by Fred Clark "That’s satire, kids. It’s pretty much the textbook example and definition of satire. It couldn’t be any more obvious about it if the author of Jonah had named the character Mr. Backwards-and-Upside-down, son of Don’t Be Like This Guy." 3) This Is My Brain On Hugs by Jamie Wright "It's not terrible because hugging is terrible, it's terrible because MY hugging is terrible. It's like my brain and my arms belong to two different people and my mouth is caught in the middle of their bickering. My hugs are, like, schizophrenic." 4) Room for Hope by Robin Dance "I remember the night my father died. I was sitting alone in our playroom, mindlessly watching tv while the rest of my house was asleep. My phone buzzed later than people know better to call, and as soon as I heard my sister’s voice, I knew." 5)So Great a Cloud of Witnesses by Antonia Terrazas "It’s the time of the Church year–the end of Ordinary Time–when we are not sure if we are supposed to say alleluia in the liturgy. We’ve lost the excitement of saying it again in Easter, when it’s a given, and it kind of tapers off liturgically. In the prayer book where the word is in brackets, you can feel the hesitancy in our throats." Honorable Mention Virtual Fig Leaves by Nate Pyle My Complicated Relationship With Sports by Alan Noble In Which Slavery Exists Because of Me by Danielle Vermeer On Pop Theology Week in Review On Entitlement by Lyndsey Graves "It is true that entitlements become dependencies. It is especially true for the most vulnerable people." An NBA Preview for Theologians: Part 2 - The Western Conference by Ben Howard "Today we continue with part two of the On Pop Theology NBA Preview for Theologians by covering the teams in the Western Conference." On Sharing The Things I Love by Ben Howard "Last night I got to do one of those things that everyone loves to do. I introduced my friends to something I like." Song of the Week "Comfort Eagle" by Cake
