jonathan stegall

For the past few days, the country has been abuzz with talk about Rick Warren’s forum that took place at Saddleback Church, in which Barack Obama and John McCain answered some of the questions of evangelicals.

During this event, I was on a flight from San Francisco to Atlanta, and thus was able to use AirTran’s in-flight XM radio to listen to some of it. I heard most of the questions asked of Obama, and a few of them asked of McCain. Interestingly, most of the flight aside from this was spent reading Jesus for President and discussing culture, Jesus, politics, Shane Claiborne, and theology with an artist/activist sitting next to me.

I have written occasionally about my support for Senator Obama, and still maintain this though I have not written about it recently. I have noticed the rise of the Matthew 25 network, and Brian McLaren’s support for this network and for Obama. Certainly I think this is a much more balanced approach, biblically and theologically, to an attempt at following Jesus with one’s politics compared to what we have seen from conservatives. But I’m still not planning to join this kind of thing.

In this faith forum, I thought Barack Obama gave some great answers to some great questions. I especially loved his answer to the problem of evil, especially in contrast to that of McCain. Obama’s, at face value, was much more centered on justice and help for the poor and oppressed, while McCain’s was, of course, entirely centered on bin Laden and the rest of the fight against terrorism. Terrorism, of course, is an idea. It can be defined, shaped, and twisted to fit the person who is speaking against it. Darfur cannot.

In addition to this, after he had given his response to evil, Obama stressed that it is not human responsibility to get rid of evil in the world: it is God’s. This is a refreshing statement. Most of America’s politicians believe that, not only is it humanity’s responsibility to get rid of evil, it is the specific responsibility of the blood-stained righteous hands of the United States to get rid of evil. McCain, of course, believes that it is the responsibility of the United States to kill bin Laden.

Do you see the contrast in this? I had hoped that many evangelicals would see this, and it may prove that they will. A quick view of many of the responding blogs and articles, though, would suggest that they don’t. Most conservative evangelicals were entirely won over by McCain’s unelaborated reference to prayer, his unquestioned description of himself as being pro-life, offshore drilling, and going after bin Laden. Wow.

Now. I mentioned that I was reading Jesus for President on this flight. I plan to write a couple of posts about my thoughts and experiences in reading this book, but at the moment when I was listening to all this there was a single thing that stuck out to me. Note that Shane Claiborne is not endorsing a candidate. In his book, he spends a lot of time talking about the honest call of Jesus to nonviolence, and how that works itself out in the life of a believer. It is a challenging, illuminating thing that I would encourage you to take seriously.

In the presidential faith forum, Dr. Warren asked Obama what justification would lead him to take the country to war. The response was reasonably consistent with Just War theory, which of course was constructed by the fourth century church to justify its allegiance with the State. One of the statements he made was related to the idea that it is necessary for us to consider what, as Americans, we are willing to die for.

Of course, the implied answer is that we are willing to die for liberty, freedom, justice, and so on. Fairly standard talk, and the question of what we will die for is incredibly relevant to the person who seeks to follow a man who died on a torture device to offer forgiveness to his killers. But the question that no one asked, or will ask, is what we are willing to kill for.

Evangelicals tend to dismiss the peace-promoting words of Jesus in the ways that we vote, the things we expect from our country, and in our own private hypothetical situations, illustrating Dallas Willard’s statement that we may like Jesus, but we don’t believe he is very smart. My hope is that things like Jesus for President will resonate with more people, like it did with my neighbor on my flight, and that we will have to devote the energy to learning how to live like Jesus rather than learning how to justify not living like him.

Currently, I’m attending UX Week 2008 in San Francisco. Should you happen to be there, feel free to post a comment.

Anyway, as a brief update, we have this gem from Stephen Colbert, regarding the issue of human rights violations in China:

What are they thinking doing it on their own soil? Isn’t there an offshore military base they can use?

On a more serious note, I think it is incredibly important to be aware of the profundity that is in shows like The Colbert Report. When he says things like this, he is using the art of comedy to speak to us, and hopefully to evoke change.

Since the latter part of the 20th century, one of the things that has been common in all developed countries and the vast majority of developing countries is the presence of an underground culture, or subculture. This has manifested itself in any number of forms, from the hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s to the punk and Goth movements of the 1970s and 1980s to the metalheads of the 1980s and 1990s, and various others that began to develop in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Many people agree with me that these subcultures marked the beginnings of postmodernism outside of universities and other academic settings, so the significance of these movements is easily missed, even aside from the fact that they provided a unifying vein of culture from San Francisco to Warsaw. In any case, cultural changes always start on the margins of a society, and then they move toward the center. Postmodernism, or whatever term you prefer (post-postmodernism, emerging culture, postcolonialism, The Age of Interconnectivity, etc.) has proven to work the same way.

Where are they now?

You may ask what is happening to these subcultures, now that culture is transitioning. I am indebted to my friend Peter Wohler, as well as numerous conversations and observances, for the idea that they are transitioning as well.

Consider the Gothic subculture (as it really is, not as it has occasionally been portrayed). I have been, to varying degrees, part of this subculture since I was a freshman in high school, and have a great affection for it. I resonate with the music, the art, the fashion, and the thought patterns and worldview much more than any other subculture.

However, it finds itself a bit less defined than it was in the 1990s. There is significantly more crossover with other genres, and the clubs and festivals and concerts and music stores and catalogs have fewer “purist” Goths and Goth bands. As I said, I love Goth culture, but I in the last few years I have tended to find a lot more metal that I enjoy, because of the shifts that have occurred in Goth music.

Other subcultures, from punk to metal to the various reincarnations of the hippie movement, have fared similarly, blending with various other subcultures and reshaping themselves in recent years.

What about the rest of the culture?

In addition to this internal reshaping, as the culture as a whole has transitioned, it finds itself having more and more in common with subcultures. Everyone feels like they are marginalized, lonely, and misunderstood.

This transition manifests itself across culture, from art and music to business and technology. Those of us who are trying to be a part of the reshaping of the church, in its language and its theology and its culture, can see this clearly in the growth of the emerging church movement, the new monastic movement, the house church movement, and any number of other developing and converging streams.

As I’ve said before, many of these movements have their beginnings in the thoughts and dreams of the past few decades of introducing Jesus to people on the fringes of society. These thoughts and dreams are moving inward, and they are reshaping the church.

The power of this reshaping lies in the fact that the church can finally hope to detach itself from the miserable facade that is Christendom, and really be faithful to the radical nature of Jesus. It is this that makes now an exciting time to be alive, and to be a part of this transition.

If you were interested in this sort of thing, you could boil a person like me down to a list of descriptive terms. I am an evangelical, Christian, American, Caucasian male. Evangelical. Christian. American. Caucasian. Male. If you identify with any of those terms, do you ever think about the baggage attached to them? The assumptions that people make when they hear or see that you identify with these terms?

I spend a lot of time trying to make it clear that I understand the baggage attached to these terms, and that I reject it. With regard to all of these terms, it is an extremely psychologically and spiritually demanding struggle for me to show who I am, and all too often that struggle manifests itself as a fight against what I am not.

For many people who are involved with the emerging church, in all of its forms, words like “Christian” and “evangelical” are words to be used very carefully. For myself, most of the time I like the phrase “follower of Jesus.” It hopefully carries the connotation that I want something to be different, based on the fact that I use that phrase.

For people like this, it is very important that they are able, from time to time, to commune with like-minded people. I believe this is one of the reasons for the success of Emergent Village and the events that it holds, from regional events to national events. For us, one of the greatest places for this kind of community is Cornerstone, and that is among the reasons that we make such an effort to attend every year.

Like any place with roughly 20,000 yearly attendees, Cornerstone has a variety of viewpoints and worldviews represented, and this is a great thing. But the overall spirit of Cornerstone has always been one of peace, love, and grace offered by people who have been given much. This year was Cornerstone’s 25th anniversary, and one night all of the stages except the Main Stage were shut down, to encourage everyone to worship together. The event was called God of Justice: Worship with Dirty Hands, and included artists like The Glorious Unseen, the Michael Gungor Band, The Lost Dogs, and several others.

I had never heard the Michael Gungor Band before, but one of the songs they played was called “Song For My Family.” The lyrics are as follows (thanks to this blog for posting them):

Her beauty still exists. His bride is still alive. These simple words impacted me in a way that worship music rarely does at this point in my life. There are some wonderful exceptions, but they are not the rule. These words reminded me that I am a part of something. Part of a beautiful something that has endured for almost 2,000 years, through everything that Western culture and Christendom and human nature have done to it.

May his bride be what she should be.

From time to time, I recognize that God is attempting to speak to me about something. Typically, that something will appear in a lot of seemingly unrelated places, and from seemingly unrelated voices. He appears to be interested in telling me about community, as of late, and intensely so at Cornerstone.

Miroslav Volf is a Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, and is also the director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He has written a number of books, including Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation and Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. I would highly recommend any of his books. He is a native of Croatia, and is in a unique position to speak on subjects of identity, otherness, reconciliation, and so on through his various experiences in his native country.

At Cornerstone, he did a seminar on Identity & Otherness. Otherness is an important philosophical concept, by which we, and by we I mean all of us, separate others who are different from ourselves. This happens on very high levels, from the idiocy of Freedom Fries to the constant fear of attack that is cultivated in our country, and it also happens on very low levels, in my relationship with my wife and your relationship with your dog (cat, fish, sibling, etc.). Otherness is very different from honest recognition of difference, in the way that I might recognize that my wife looks very different than I do (which is wonderful), or the way that you might recognize that certain Indian foods are very spicy (which is also wonderful).

In the seminar, we looked at many of these things, from a cultural perspective (including nationalism, racisim, sexism, and so on), all the way to a spiritual, theological perspective (essentially, the ways in which Christians tend to Other those who have different beliefs and lifestyles than our own). Otherness begins with our language: we refer to the Other as “them.”

One of the most damaging ways that we as Christians do this is in the terms “lost”, or “unsaved”, or “outsiders.” We are trying to express various theological views through these terms, but in our own minds and the minds of others we make ourselves look superior. We are found, we are saved, we are insiders, and so we must be better than those who are not. In light of the grace which we have been shown, there is no room for Otherness. Everyone is on a journey, and we are all moving toward God, or away from God. Our task is to move toward God, and help others to do so (raise a glass to our friend Brad Culver for this concept).

I cannot overestimate the significance of this kind of shift in our thinking and our language, and how important this shift is in creating authentic community. When we get this, we will treat and view everyone differently: from the spouse living in our house to those our country declares to be our enemies.

As we looked at these issues with Miroslav Volf, we continued to discuss New Monasticism and creating authentic, holistic communities of faith with Brad and Peter, and it became clear to me that a theme is developing for this season of my life. I believe it will manifest itself in my marriage, in my home, in our faith community, and in my interactions with journeyers of all kinds.

When I was in high school and began getting to know Jesus, it was trendy to compare sharing one’s faith to having a cure for cancer that the world desperately needed. If only we would go out and tell people about our cure, they would come to us to receive it and be healed of their various deadly conditions. After all, what cancer patient would turn down an offer for a cure? Other popular comparisons were made to rescuers offering a lifeboat to people who were drowning, firefighters offering rescue from a burning building, and so on.

I very strongly wanted, and still very strongly want, to introduce Jesus to people that didn’t know him. I don’t remember ever using this kind of disease rhetoric when discussing faith with anyone, and I’m positive that if I did use it, it didn’t work and I would happily apologize to anyone with whom I may have used it.

Theologically, the idea of a cancer cure is not a bad concept. Humanity is messed up, and we all know it. I believe that one of the reasons that postmodernism exists is that modernism, with all of its science and objectivity and reason and knowledge, could not stop the most technologically advanced society of the 1930s from putting people into ovens. Following this time period, people earnestly questioned their knowledge and reason, and the idea of an innate human goodness.

Also, I don’t think there is a theological issue with the idea that Jesus can help us in our messiness. Many people, Christian and not, would agree for various reasons.

My issue is with the environment into which we are expected to put that concept. In post-Christendom, we as Christians are much more likely to be viewed as a cancer that needs a cure, contributing to the horror of the world in which we live, than we are to be viewed as people that might have a way to make the world a better place.

Especially in a conversation with a new friend or acquaintance, the idea that I have a cure or vaccine for the world’s problems because I’m a Christian is going to be met with ridicule at best, and a lifelong rejection of any consideration of Jesus at worst.

Interesting news. N. T. Wright will be on The Colbert Report tomorrow night, Thursday June 19. Full episodes are available the day after the show airs.

My wife and I have not had cable since we’ve been married. For years, I’ve wished that I could have Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon without having to buy other channels that I don’t need.

Now, though, the recent addition of full episodes of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart allows us to watch all of the shows we like online.

Before you do anything with this post, visit www.zoecarnate.com and bookmark it. For several years, it has been an amazing resource for anything outside mainstream Christendom, and it continues to improve.

Now. Mike Morrell is one of the founders, and blogs at zoecarnate.wordpress.com. Currently, as part of a wide-ranging conversation that is occurring among emergent bloggers related to Pentecostals and charismatics, he is hosting a dialogue with John Crowder, a prophetic evangelist who wants to be “wasted on Jesus.” The dialogue is respectful, insightful, and is really a blessing to read.

An aside on the “wasted on Jesus” part of John’s message. I have often described experiences with the Spirit with that term, depending on who I was speaking with. I think it really is a valid, powerful metaphor for intense, life-changing encounters with the Spirit, and I never want to discount, forget, or stop desiring those encounters. Being a Post-charismatic should never negate the desire for these encounters, and I hope we who look at that term as a valid term will always make that clear.

On another note, though, I believe that one should not expect one who follows the Spirit to always exist in a “wasted” state. There are times of wilderness and darkness and suffering, and those times do not negate the presence of God even though we may be gripping with our fingernails for evidence of it. I have spent time in the wilderness, both because of the leading of the Spirit (Hosea 2:14) and because of my own laziness and stubbornness, and I have learned wisdom and patience and peace from those times (not that I am always wise, patient, or peaceful, but more so than I would be otherwise).

Pentecostals and charismatics have often struggled in leading a balanced life in the Spirit. They have often sought to live in the clouds, wasted, above the messiness and pain of real life. Non-Pentecostals and non-charismatics have often resisted intoxicating experiences with the Spirit because of this (and other, less noble reasons). Both sides have lost, and both sides have much to learn.

Like some others, I do see a link between the worldwide pentecostal movement (counting Pentecostal denominations, and charismatic churches and movements, it now numbers more than 500 million people) and the emerging church. I believe that the emerging movement, as it develops around the world alongside postmodernism in the West and postcolonialism everywhere else, has the potential to be one of the steps that the Holy Spirit takes to resolve this tension and lack of balance that exists in the church.

Recently, I’ve been reading Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change.

I have also read The Secret Message of Jesus, which is meant to be read as a companion volume. If you have not read The Secret Message of Jesus, feel encouraged to click the link and pick it up, as it is on sale for $6.99 at Amazon.

In any case, as I have been reading Everything Must Change, I have found much to be challenged by, to remember, to share with others, and to allow Jesus to shape my life by. Most of the things that he presents are at least familiar to me, if not things that I’ve thought, prayed, discussed, taught, been taught, and been convicted by. Often, though, he expresses these things in ways that I have thought but not expressed, or have forgotten, or particularly in ways that bring up new implications for my life.

As an aside, there is a review of this book that Jonny Baker wrote several months ago, and it is worth reading. Jonny Baker is one of the people that is most aware of what God is doing in Western culture, and he has a brilliant mind and spirit. The post indicates that much of the thinking is already established in the U.K., although it is certainly radical in the United States. Brian McLaren has an insightful comment on the post, as well.

The strength of this book lies in the insights that it presents into what powers the world, especially America and those who are impacted by the American Empire, and in the insights that it presents into what Jesus has to say to that power. The “framing story” that Jesus offers really can and should change everything, in my life and your life and in the ways we interact with the world around us.

There are countless examples and quotations (and misquotations) floating around on the internet, and a quick search will bring up many of them. But there are a few things that have really shaken me, and inspired my imagination.

Communism, [Rene Padilla] says, specialized in distribution but failed at production. As a result, it ended up doing a great job of distributing poverty evenly. Capitalism, he says, was excellent at production but weak at distribution. As a result, it ended up rewarding the wealthy with obscene amounts of wealth while the poor suffered on in horrible degradation and indignity…

The twenty-first century began in the aftermath of the defeat of Marxism. The story of the coming century will likely be the story of whether a sustainable form of capitalism can be saved from theocapitalism [the religion-like seeking of prosperity], or whether unrestrained theocapitalism will result in such gross inequity between rich and poor that violence and counterviolence will bring civilization to a standstill, or perhaps worse.

There is an amazing amount of depth in that paragraph. and it helps introduce the “suicide machine” and its systems that this book is attempting to deconstruct. Certainly it is not an optimistic statement, but the book is constantly balancing it with statements like this:

If we believe, the decadent and self-indulgent West can be converted from overconsumers to creative stewards, from empire builders to community builders, from sex-obsessed and self-indulgent couch potatoes to people like Graciela, Luiz, and Leticia and their family - who along the way through their life, discover a magnificent vision and a sacred mission that give their lives unimagined meaning.

And this is the kind of statement that challenges everything about the way I live, and inspires my visions about the way I want to live. This is the kind of thing that makes the book a valid challenge to those of us who claim the story of Jesus.

I’m a male, Christian feminist. I have learned and taught the truth of Scripture, that before God there is no division between men and women, just as there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles. I have sought to authentically live that out, as a minister, as a husband, and as a person.

Now that I’ve gotten that statement down, I want to look at a couple of challenges that a guy who makes that statement faces.

When I was in college, one of the really trendy books for “young Christian men” was Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. I must confess: I read it once. Further confession: there were certain parts of it that I liked, and that I think spoke truth to me as a man (and, I feel that I was able to integrate certain concepts into my very different perspective). But other parts of it made me sick.

I haven’t read any of his other books, and I haven’t read his wife’s book (books?) either, so I may not be entirely informed on his views. But, a fairly large part of my memory of this book is the mental image of a man feeling alive and masculine because he was able to hike up a mountain with a gun, and kill a bear. Another fairly large part of my memory is the concept of a man being alive and masculine because he can rescue his lovely princess from dreadful dangers, because of course she wants a knight in shining armor to come galloping by and do just that.

I don’t believe guns make anyone masculine, and certainly they don’t make anyone alive. I think guns are barbaric, even when they are used against other beings that know how to use them. But against a bear? Bears may be big and look impressive, but what are they really going to do to a man from hundreds of feet away? Growl? Maybe stand up and wave their arms around, if they even see him?

Further, I don’t believe my wife needs a knight in shining armor. Certainly, she needs support. She needs to feel cherished and celebrated, and her mind sees those things manifest themselves in different ways that mine does. But rescue is a universal thing, and she’s as capable of rescuing me (and I need it just as much) as I am of rescuing her. And, of course, ultimately neither of us are entirely capable of rescuing each other anyway, and will utterly fail at marriage if we expect that from each other.

I was reminded of all of this as I was watching a video called Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage. Apparently, it is a series of six (or so) videos, and I’ve seen two of them.

First video

The first one was decent. It discussed the metaphor of a man’s brain as being full of boxes that are, by default, separate. So, there is a wife box, a kid box, a work box, a car box, a recreation box, and so on. Each box stays as separate from the other boxes as possible. Then, there is the metaphor of a woman’s brain as being like interconnected wiring. Everything touches everything else, and so everything affects everything else. An argument my wife has with her boss may pop up while she’s watching a movie, while an argument I have with my boss may never pop up outside of work.

This is not a new metaphor. I learned it in counseling classes in college, from people who’s wisdom I respect, and I do see evidence that it is at least partly true. I don’t entirely disagree with it (as long as its implications are not blown out of proportion, which they often are). However, it does bring up a strange question. Is this a Western issue? Typically, Eastern worldviews (this includes Jewish thought, which is very important to those of us who seek to understand Scripture that was predominantly written by Jews) are very holistic. Spirituality is not separate from the rest of life. Eastern thought, for example, does not have the saying, “I’d do ______ if only I weren’t in church,” because it recognizes that one’s interactions with Jesus are not confined to a single location for a few hours a week.

So, does this metaphor break down outside of Western society? Are Eastern men as non-compartmentalized as Western women? If so, why? How? What can I do to become less compartmentalized? If Western women do not have compartmentalized minds, how do they have an equally compartmentalized worldview (the above quote is given by women just as often as it is by men)? If Eastern men do have compartmentalized minds, how do they manage to have a holistic worldview? What can I do to get a more holistic worldview?

Second video

Now, I also saw a second video. This second session went into the oft-repeated idea that men essentially want to be action heroes, and women essentially want to be in wonderful relationships. Men want to beat up the bad guys, and (direct quote) “go back for the girl.” Women want to be in relationships, and for men to (direct quote) “go back for the girl.”

Aside from the obvious exceptions to both of those rules, (I hate action movies, unless they have intelligent thought, and don’t care to beat up anyone or anything, and my wife loves to make fun of chick flicks) the statement that the guy needs to go back for the girl has a direct implication that she is behind him. That makes me entirely sick, and in the context where it was used it reeked of chauvinism. It brought up the image of a man doing _____ while his wife sits at home, taking care of his kids (which was used as an example) until he comes back to sit down and talk to her until he goes back out to do whatever it is that he does.

The (most) frustrating part of the message presented in this video is that it takes legitimate differences between men and women (the fact that they do not think the same way), and uses them to impose limitations and illegitimate gender roles (because they don’t think the same way, certain limitations are seen as necessary) on the people who listen to it. It’s not the kind of message that says, “everything that can go wrong in a marriage can be fixed if the woman just does what the man wants.” It at least has progressed beyond that, as it regularly talks about mutual give and take between the partners in a marriage. I think there is good information mentioned in the message, and if this post weren’t already so long I might go into some of it. But the good information in part two, at least, seemed to be subpoints to a main point that is essentially oppressive.

The struggle that makes this post worth writing is this: being a male feminist who wants to continually improve his marriage is a difficult thing. I enjoy going to marital counseling with my wife. Whether or not I think there is room to grow, of course there always is. I enjoy resources that teach me to grow as a husband. In order to get anything out of some resources, I have to filter what I’m seeing or hearing through my own perspective because the perspective of the given resource (in the case of Wild at Heart, or this video) may be entirely antithetical to my own.

Other things

For what it’s worth, there are some great resources that can speak to a desire for equality.

• Are Men Really Human? (written by a male feminist)
• Christians for Biblical Equality (always a great presence at Cornerstone Festival)
• Christian Feminism blog
• Women in the Bible - Christian Thinktank

Thoughts? I may look further into what it actually means to be a male feminist if there is interest, but for the sake of this post I wanted to look at an issue that repeatedly arises in trying to improve one’s marriage.