by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1)Seek by Andrew Johnson "But no. You didn’t come and find Me. Someone talked you down, explained it all to you. Yes, he said, we call this God’s house, he said, but it’s not like God actually is a person who lives in here, has a room here, you understand? You nodded with a head that suddenly felt weightier, so you bowed it more often, looked around in wonder less often." 2) Why Wright is Wrong About Same-Sex Marriage (Part 1) by Heath Bradley "To my mind at least, same-sex marriage is not so much a radical break with our Protestant American tradition as it is a logical extension of this trajectory and shift that can be found within it. Once you dispense, as most contemporary Christian Americans have, with the two elements that have dominated traditional understandings of marriage throughout history and across the globe, namely, patriarchy (that marriage must include a man and a woman because it is of the nature of men to rule and the nature to women to be ruled), and procreationism (that marriage is essentially about making babies and raising children) then it becomes increasingly hard to exclude two people of the same sex from this institution without special pleading or duplicity."
"The problem, obviously, is that when you apply the tiniest amount of pressure to these people, asking them what this Third Way looks like, how a church marriage policy could be crafted that way, how it would function, in real terms- the conversation gets convoluted. They meander into the abstract with zero evidence that all is right at the helm. Half the time you don’t know where it’s going. The word Nuance is said a lot. They give no answers, but they keep on saying it anyway: THIRD WAY. THIRD WAY. THIRD WAY."
3b)Follow Up: The Third Way (Station) by Benjamin Moberg "The Way Station is the transitory place every non-affirming church either will or will not enter into. That’s the reality. And some churches might emerge out of it with a reformed view of same-sex relationships and some churches might emerge with a more thought out, but nonetheless unchanged position. Every church is allowed their process, but it matters that they enter into it." 4) On Preterism, the Second Coming, and Hell by Richard Beck "What this means is that in the pages of the NT we have a mixed and matched eschatology. On the one hand you have early texts that seem to expect the Second Coming of Jesus in the lifetimes of the first century Christians, perhaps in conjunction with the destruction of Jerusalem. On the other hand you have later texts, written after AD 70, that push the Second Coming into the future in response to the delayed parousia." 5) Dance with Dirt and #WhyChurch by Mihee Kim-Kort "I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun. I am smiling the entire time. I’m laughing, talking, and making jokes. We’re cheering each other, we’re waiting for each other, we’re talking about life, marriage, and jobs, and I’m thinking why isn’t church like this more? People covered in mud and grime and nobody cares, in fact, we are encouraging it, it’s like the ultimate equalizer, one trail, all stains. The remnant of the pack has dwindled to just four of us and we are a diaspora of sorts and embodying the struggle and journey, embodying the dissonance of dirt and sunlight, struggling together, betwixt and between, broken down but finding the energy and strength in our being together, embodying Emmanuel, embodying faith, embodying hope and possibility even as we toil up this ravine, as we fight tooth and nail to climb over felled trees, as we counter and resist everything that says No way you’re going to do it even from the ones you love and the ones who don’t mean it in a terrible way, but in a passingway, really it’s okay, because uphills and obstacles and challenges are good." Honorable Mention This Forgiven Woman by Kerry Connelly How a Protestant Learned to Pray Like a Catholic (And Actually Started LIKING Prayer) by Elizabeth Esther Cough. Breathe. Cancer. Death by Shawn Smucker How to Ruin a Life by D.L. Mayfield Why I Talk About the Devil So Much: The Devil, Enchantment, and Non-Violence by Richard Beck Tweets of the Week "'Pick a number between 1 and 10,' said the nihilistic magician. 'Then multiply it by zero. Everything is fated for nothingness.'" - @VikramParalkar "a door is a wall that lacks courage and conviction" - @mallelis "Every time you try to be funny about America advancing by losing, the terrorists win." - @evanchill On Pop Theology Week in Review Why I Stopped Laughing at the Bed Intruder Song by Rebekah Mays "Many of us remember this immortal advice from Antoine Dodson, the unsuspecting star of one of the most famous YouTube videos ever. It all started in July 2010, when a man broke into the Dodson home and tried to rape Antoine’s sister Kelly." Song of the Week "Slow Motion" by PHOX
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by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust Reads of the Week 1) Upward Mobility by D.L. Mayfield "When you want to tell the whole story of your life, you find few takers. We want either communists or patriots, sell-outs or self-righteous. We are seeking either blessing or lament, despair or hope, faith or faithlessness. But I have always had everything, everything in spades. Hope and doubt and fear and faith. I accept good gifts from God and I feel angry that others don’t get the same." 2) The Origins of "Privilege" by Joshua Rothman "But what I believe is that everybody has a combination of unearned advantage and unearned disadvantage in life. Whiteness is just one of the many variables that one can look at, starting with, for example, one’s place in the birth order, or your body type, or your athletic abilities, or your relationship to written and spoken words, or your parents’ places of origin, or your parents’ relationship to education and to English, or what is projected onto your religious or ethnic background. We’re all put ahead and behind by the circumstances of our birth. We all have a combination of both. And it changes minute by minute, depending on where we are, who we’re seeing, or what we’re required to do." 3) Don't Let Jesus Trump the Bible by Nate Pyle "Everyone picks and chooses which parts of the Bible they listen to and which parts they ignore. Everyone gives some attributes of God’s character more weight than other parts of his character. We naturally develop a Christianity that challenges us in the places we are comfortable being challenged in while dismissing, sometimes self-consciously, the words of God that challenge us in the areas we should be challenged in." 4) Finding God in Exodus International by Ben Moberg "In the aftermath of the Exodus shut down, I wrote: 'I am dragging my feet toward forgiveness,' and as time has gone on, I have covered so much ground. In the freedom of Christ, I have learned grace, I have learned that I am enough, and part of this walk means making peace with those who implied I never was. And in my process, I made a radical decision. I decided to open my eyes and look for grace. And to my surprise, in the darkness, I found the face of God. This is the truth I am unearthing about him: He is always on the job. Even in the darkness." 5) Before You Get Off This Bathroom Floor by Osheta Moore "Before you get off this bathroom floor, I want to send you out with one more piece of advice. You are braver than you know, yes. You are selflessly stunning, yes it’s true. You will get through this—of that I’m sure. But one more thing you need to know: even though you don’t have a husband and even though your parents may disown you, you are not alone. When you step out into the world with your round belly and ring-less left hand, remember this: there is a God who sees us and deeply, deeply loves us." Honorable Mention In Which I Am Learning to Obey the Sadness by Sarah Bessey It's Not About Conforming to the World by Rachel Held Evans Not All Pastor's Kids Are Christian. Sorry. by Jamie Wright
This Is the Sunday School Pagaent I'd Love to See: Psalm 82 by Fred Clark Tweets of the Week "And when you gaze long into a selfie the selfie also gazes into you." - @JohnLuce "I'm Johnny Knoxville and this is Jackass *proceeds to live a sincere and selfless life*" - @mattytalks "I agree, it's hard to explain Michael Sam's situation to a child. The
nuances of ideal defensive roles and speed/size makeup are complex." - @harrypav On Pop Theology Week in Review Eight Shades of Crayola by Rebekah Mays "As a child, I used to spend hours coloring paper doilies. I’d click my Lion King cassette into the tape player and line my markers up, single-file." Tech Is Not Your Enemy by Christopher Hutton "My phone and I have a symbiotic relationship. It feeds me information, and in return, I keep its batteries charged." An Apology for the Post-Egyptian Ownership of Domesticated Felines by JaneAnn Kenney "The subject of domesticated felines (for the purposes of this essay, hereafter called 'cats' with wavering regularity) is suspiciously lacking in the Jewish and Christian canons." On TV Shows and Process by Ben Howard "I know I’ve been good at hiding it, but I must confess that I’ve been in mourning this week. I lost something that was very close to me, something that brought me joy and laughter, something that I regarded it as a friend for the last five years." On Abominations by Sebastian Faust "In my last podcast interview with Professor Baruch Levine on the text of Leviticus, I lamented that the prohibition on homosexuality is perhaps the text’s best-known passage within popular Christianity." Song of the Week "The Truth is a Cave" by The Oh Hello's
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by Ben Howard Reads of the Week 1) God Has A Body by Emily Maynard "One time I heard a woman take a deep breath and close her eyes and lift up her hands and pray: Father, Mother, Brother, Sister God, be with us. I cringed; my body tensed up. God couldn’t be like that. God was Jesus, was man, was male, was Father, was Lord, was King, was God. I couldn’t handle a prayer like that. To use feminine names or references for God was disrespectful, liberal, unbiblical, and wrong. It was making God in my own image to use a feminine pronoun. God wouldn’t be like that, like a woman, like me, like Emily." 2) The 5 Stages of (Faith) Loss by Addie Zierman "You start tentatively saying the word shit, and before long, you’ve worked your way up to fuck. These forbidden words seem the only language sturdy enough for your anger and pain, so you use them again and again and again. You begin to call them 'Church People,' and you take a certain amount of comfort in pointing out their faults. Petty. Judgmental. Closed-minded. Sometimes you even stoop to critiquing their clothes, their personalities, their mannerisms. You’re so angry that once you start pointing out faults you can’t stop." 3) LOL Interwebz: The Great WorldVision War, the Battle of Noah, and the Rise of Mob Justice by Luke Harrington "Because it’s not enough to disagree with people anymore, and it’s not enough to explain that disagreement clearly and sincerely. It’s not enough to encourage people to change their minds and give them good reason to do so. In the era of instantaneous responses, we are all the mob, all of the time. We have to assume the worst of each other. We have to demand blood." 4) Hymnals and the Way of Faith in the Story of the Church by Benjamin Moberg "These are the songs I once hated, but they are meeting me right now with a precision and truth I cannot explain. In the midst of my own cynicism and sensitivity and anger, in the mess of all the wrong and unkindness of the Church, these plain and poetic words arrive standing before me, unadorned and beautiful, like peace, like Jesus out on the water." 5) "God's Not Dead" and the Angry Atheist Professor: That Was Not My Experience by James Hoskins "Not once did my philosophy professors attack my faith or treat me unfairly. In fact, I found all of them to be extremely kind, patient, and generous. Several of them, including the Nietzsche expert, wrote me glowing letters of recommendation for grad school that, I’m certain, included compliments I didn’t fully deserve. I felt respected, even mentored, by them. And all of this despite the fact that they passionately disagreed with my beliefs." A Few We Missed While We Were Away Holy Saturday and Harry Potter: On Tombs, Thestrals and the Descent into Hells by David Henson Smoke Break by Shannan Martin Farewell Evangelicalism? Not So Fast by Hannah Anderson Tweets of the Week "If you drive a Nissan and its name isn't 'Liam,' you're wrong." - @Jesse_Baker "Mitch McGary can't smoke weed at college, so he's taking a six-figure job instead. I think we can all relate to that." - @en_cohen "I don't think KD is struggling. I think he accidentally transcended physical existence and has to score from the astral plane." - @runofplay On Pop Theology Week in Review Dear Theology by Lane Severson "Dear Theology, I don't know what happened. I never thought I'd be writing this letter." Go, Diego, Go (Away!) by David Creech "Go, Diego, Go! is ruining the world." The Case Against "I Believe" by Lyndsey Graves "A classmate shared an anecdote about a friend who wasn’t sure he could agree with everything in the Nicene Creed, and I felt confused." The Word is Dead; Long Live the Word by Charity Erickson "So, Richard Foster and I are fighting." Song of the Week "All Of the People" by Panama Wedding
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by Ben Howard Reads of the Week 1) Church in the Canyon by Esther Emery "I catch a glimpse sometimes, a little nod and a reassurance that this is, in fact, exactly how it works. We are supposed to do this: to rub up against one another, even in our differences. Sometimes this work is long and slow like sand on the beach. Sometimes it’s all crushed up and wild like a storm. We bump against each other and we strike each other, and it wears away the stone to show the flesh beneath." 2) In Which I Admit That I Didn't Like Paul by Sarah Bessey "But as I worked my way through the passages of Scripture that I used to hate, I began to see Paul more clearly, to understand Scripture even better. I began to see his wisdom, his subversion, his heart. When I looked at his full ministry – how he praised and esteemed women in leadership in the Church, how he turned household codes within a patriarchal society on their head, how he used feminine metaphors, how he subverted the systems, how he passionately defended equality – the verses that used to clobber me began to embrace me." 3) When World Vision Drops Me by Benjamin Moberg "Though I understand that World Vision essentially had a gun to its head after evangelical leaders incited a mass backlash of dropped funds, it doesn’t make what they did right. Their reversal hurts more than anything I read from the evangelicals ranting. It was the kiss of Judas. And in the end, this was simply wrong and ungodly and deeply defeating." 4) Burnout by Hannah Ettinger "Fuck everything, is all I can manage to say, half the time. I hear these stories and I hear the shame and the fear and the massive amounts of cultivated codependency for the sake of crowd control, and that’s all I’ve got. Fuck everything. Here we go again." 5) Hearts of Flesh by Rachel Held Evans "Fundamentalism erases people. It erases their joy, their compassion, their instincts, their curiosity, their passion, their selves. And then it celebrates this ghosting, this nulling and numbing, as a glorious “dying to the self,” just like Jesus demanded." Honorable Mention When Christian Women Cheat or Kinda Want To by Grace Biskie I Don't Know If I'm a Christian Anymore by Micah Murray Holy Relics: The Offering Plate by Martyn Jones Tweets of the Week "Tweeting funny jokes on twitter dot come sure is a nice distraction from the imminent march of death." - @ashfein "Growing up I never had a father figure. I was a kid. Why would I have the body of a father as a kid? I'm not even male." - @mrsjohngoodman
"Things took a dark turn at the Kids Choice Awards when the kids voted to declare martial law." - @CelebrityHotTub On Pop Theology Week in Review On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 54 - Leviticus, An Interview w/ Baruch Levine "This week on the show, Sebastian continues his exploration of the Biblical texts with the book of Leviticus." The Meaning in the Music by Hannah Ettinger "I grew up listening to four musicians. Stephen Curtis Chapman, Out of the Grey, John Michael Talbot and Bob Bennett." A Series of Outright Lies About Millennials by Ben Howard and Sebastian Faust "With the fundamental ethos of the internet in mind, we bring you A Series of Outright Lies About Millennials.Opening Line." Song of the Week "Blue Moon" by Beck
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by Ben Howard Reads of the Week 1)The Box Under the Tree That You're Allowed to Open by Kenny Pierce "You never knew me, really. And I never knew you. We were hidden boxes wrapped tightly, in gold and ribbon, never to be touched or unwrapped." 2) Kanye West, Evangelist of the 21st Century by Erin S. Rodenbiker "Kanye’s depiction of Jesus may seem, at first, like farce or mockery—a caricature with the aims of postmodern indulgence or a racialized political statement. But, while iconoclasm and activism may be present, they do not dominate."
3) Just Be Kind by Gregory Stevens "But once again, after all those many pages and hours of reading, the message I can relate through big-fancy words and theoretical concepts boils down to one thing: Be kind." 4)Advent is for the Magnificat by Benjamin Moberg "They sang Mary’s song, the Magnificat, loud and painfully, and the government felt at its’ throat. They plastered her words on posters on street corners and in office windows, and the despots drew back like a tiger, thrashed forward, slammed a fist, banned the song from being sung outright." 5) Jesus Really is the Reason by Nate Pyle "Christmas changes when you begin to see it through the eyes of a child. All the wonder and magic is resurrected when a child eyes widen at the sight of a lit tree. Their ability to easily believe and accept the mystery of God incarnate moves us to, not only want to accept it with the same ease, but begin to as we recount the story." Honorable Mention Here's The Thing About That Bakery That Won't Serve a Gay Couple... by Zack Hunt Can a Jesus Feminist Wear High Heels?: Evolutionary and Incarnational Reflections on the Male Gaze by Richard Beck A Herod of My Own Making: An Advent Reflection by Natalie Trust Tweets of the Week "Can't wait for the director's cut of the Hobbit trilogy, which will show us Bilbo's life in real time, from birth until death." - Peter Suderman (@petersuderman) "NSA snooped on online fantasy gamers is one way to put it. NSA paid a
bunch of people to play online fantasy games is another way to put it." - Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller)
"Unrelated: I just discovered that if you sing 'I Will Survive' to
yourself in a robot voice, it takes on a new, more threatening meaning." - Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson) On Pop Theology Week in Review Jesus Looks Like Me: A Story of Narcissism and Imagination by Ben Howard "For a few months during my sophomore year in college I went to a stereotypical evangelical megachurch complete with pseudo-hipster praise band, husband and wife “teaching” pastors, and a vaguely spiritual abstract noun in place of a church name or affiliation." Nostalgia: The Christmas Addiction by Charity Erickson "When I was in my early teens, I spent many December evenings lying on the floor with my head beneath our fake Christmas tree, looking up through the papery-plastic branches at the colored lights we’d woven through the ever-ever-evergreen." Christmas Magic, Miracles, and Doctor Who by Ben Howard "I don’t believe in miracles. As a matter of faith I confess to believing in a few, the virgin birth, the resurrection, even the occasional healing, but they aren’t the cornerstones of my faith." The World Needs More Unironic Glitter Glue (Or, I Can't Help Loving Christmas) by Lyndsey Graves "I can’t help loving Christmas. Sometimes I think it’s not very cool to love Christmas." Your Favorite Movie Needs More Pandas by Lane Severson "What would make every movie from Citizen Kane to China Town better? Pandas." Song of the Week "Young Fathers" by Typhoon
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by Ben Howard Reads of the Week 1) These Hallowed Grounds: Our Story by Benjamin Moberg "My brother and dad are with me and if you look at us, you might think that this has been a breeze. Don’t let the winks and nods fool you, our laughs are a long time coming. Take a walk down our memories of the last two years to a late night in October and you’d see how deep we were. You’d hear me choking out my secret, her heart breaking in half, and several, painful minutes in which she cannot breathe." 2) Vigilante by John Blase "I don’t know why but the Lord would say to me/boy, look and see and I looked and saw the bones beneath/their suits, boast and swagger barbwire spines" 3) A Sermon on Faith, Doubt, and Mustard Seed Necklaces by Nadia Bolz-Weber "I think we sometime mistakenly think having faith is like being the little engine who could – I think I can I think I can…and if we just muster up enough – a tiny mustard size amount of faith we can do anything – we can trust God when things are bad and never struggle or doubt and we can even uproot bushes into a watery grave if for some reason we think that’s what is called for." 4) Lament by Saskia Wishart "Maybe it is time we learn to say less, and enter in more. To walk beside those who are stricken by loss. Maybe it is time to allow all the sadness and frustration at the world to bubble up and spill over the edge of the pages, finding their way into silence." 5) It's Okay Not to Have an Answer by Sarah Markley "If I’m honest, I have trouble making a big deal out of things that don’t affect the work of the Kingdom today. If I’m honest, and I try to always be, I have trouble seeing how things like billions versus thousands affect my relationship with Jesus and how arguments about things like that should change anything about my desire to see grace and love abound in the world." 6) A Tale of Two Tables by Heather Goodman "Well, anyway, that was one restaurant – two tables. But I have found that it is easy to smile and greet someone during worship. It’s easy to lay hands on them and pray – to even see their broken hearts and call them out and notice that they are lonely people – heck, to share ‘prophetically’ with them that they are lonely and that God wants to heal them of this – but then, when it comes time to go out to eat together, we all too often leave them sitting at their own table again." 7) The God of No Compromise and the Government Shutdown by Morgan Guyton "A cross whose purpose is to uphold God’s uncompromising intolerance for imperfection creates a God in the image of Keyser Soze or Darth Vader, because it defines God’s goodness not according to any sort of benevolence towards humanity, but as His demand for nothing less than perfect conformity to His will." 8) The First Reading by Leigh Kramer "I flattened the paper and took a deep breath. I could do this. But I didn’t recognize my voice. Thick with emotion, wobbly. I read the verses and my voice cracked thinking of a day when death will be destroyed. When there will be no more tears or family vigils in ICU rooms. No more heartbreaking decisions, no more missing loved ones. No more learning to do life alone. No more sorrow." 9) Blurring the Lines by Trudy "Actually, one of the most difficult things about living here—far worse than power outages and diarrhea—has been the way I am forced to learn about myself. It was easy back in the States to think of myself as a kind, compassionate person. I was generous. I was hospitable—so I thought. Or so maybe I am? But it certainly doesn’t feel like it now, when I’m not just faced with poverty but immersed in it. I’ve learned the limits of my compassion—those rough edges of tiredness and impatience where I just no longer have anything left to give to my fellow human beings and where I so easily recede into selfishness and survival." 10)The Gospel According to Karaoke by Richard Beck "Karaoke, according to Mark, is a practice of vulnerability and community. You take a risk when you get up in front of strangers to sing a song. And yet, the quality of your singing doesn't matter. What matters is jumping in and taking a risk. Being exposed and vulnerable is what is welcomed. That's what gets you the embrace, just getting up there and participating. Being an exposed and vulnerable human being." Honorable Mention To Be Inconvenienced by Kristin Potler In the Nail-Painting, Gin-Drinking, Continuous Healing of Being Together by Elora Ramirez "Jesus (Still) Hates Religion": An Interview with YouTube Sensation Jefferson Bethke by Jonathan Merritt Tweets of the Week "What if *actual* Rhinos joined the GOP?" - Alan Noble (@TheAlanNoble) "I keep trying to sell out but no one is offering me any money. :(" - Emily Maynard (@emelina) "That part of the Bible when God is like, "I only care about the heart,
not your face." But then David walks in with his pretty eyes...whatever God, you're not fooling anyone." - Caitlin Kellogg (@cait_kellogg) On Pop Theology Week in Review Einstein: A Tale of Cats and Eschatology by JaneAnn Kenney "Now, I’m not one of those Left Behind sort of eschatology nuts, although not having read the books or watched any movies (are those movies out yet, Nic Cage?), I don’t suppose I can say for certain." On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 43 - Wine, Sunsets, and a Plethora of Tables by Ben Howard "Every week at On Pop Theology, we read a lot of blog posts to put together our 'Best of the Week' post." The Gospel of Orange is the New Black by Rebekah Mays "I recently finished watching the first season of the new Netflix series Orange is the New Black." The Disparate Worlds of Warring Minds: The Epistemology of a Government Shutdown by Ben Howard "My first thoughts last Monday, the first day of our government shutdown, were about the show The Newsroom." Matriculation Day by Lyndsey Graves
"I’ve been repeatedly exhorted to come to chapel in order to hear my name called." Song of the Week "Fly From Heaven" by Toad the Wet Sprocket
