I'm preparing to give a lecture on the emerging church at La Sierra tomorrow. I'm a guest in Drs. John Jones and Charles Teal's class, "The Experience of Religion in Three Cultures." It's a section of the course on Protestantism and I'm supposed to engage with the students around the emerging church phenomenon. I don't like being the resident expert on emerging church, mainly because I'm not an expert on it.
Anyway, in thinking about how to structure my hour tomorrow I've been catching up on blogs that I've been meaning to read and I've run across a new blog that I'm so excited about. I think two of the most creative theological and political minds in the church today have got to be the husband wife duo of Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh. Together they wrote Colossians Remixed, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Their forthcoming book is, Romans Disarmed. Better still is the fact that Walsh and Keesmaat will be the speakers for the annual Keough Lectures at Columbia Union College.
All that is set up to tell you about a new blog I discovered called Empire Remixed, where Brian and Sylvia are writing. (FYI - if you're in the Toronto area next month you really should take in Evolving Church: Amidst the Powers).
In a recent post, Brian Walsh writes thoughts that are so similar to my own in this post-election season.
I know and I appreciate that today is a day of hope. Today is a day of promises fulfilled. Today is a day that, for many Americans, begins to take away the shame and the embarrassment of the last eight years. I stood, without reservation, with everyone else in the room as Mr. Obama took the oath of office. and I put my hands together in applause.
And I appreciated the wisdom and the seriousness of Mr. Obama’s address. I heard him when he called America to humility and restraint. I appreciated his insistence that America can no longer consume more of the world’s resources than is just or fair. And he is right in saying that America has been a child and it is time to grow up.
But I worried when he said that America is ready to “lead once more.” I was deeply concerned when he said that America “will not apologize for our way of life.” And while I appreciated his statement that the issue wasn’t the size of the GDP “but the reach of our prosperity” I’m not sure that he has quite understood that American prosperity has consistently been bought at the expense of both freedom and prosperity for much of the world.
When Mr. Obama says to America’s enemies that he is confident that they will suffer defeat and yet, “we will extend the hand if you unclench your fist” I confess that I am appalled. Appalled at the lack of understanding of his so-called enemies. Fists get clenched for a reason and they will seldom open because the threat is uttered with greater intensity. The bullshit of the clenched fist can only be transformed into the open hand when the reasons for the clenching of that fist in the first place are redemptively addressed.
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