Countdown Day 18
Greetings from the West Bank - I just got word that a video about NKoC is available here. along with a related blog post here. Here's today's quote:
Now the god of this Greco-Roman version of the biblical story bears a strange similarity in many ways to Zeus (Jupiter for the Romans), but we will name him Theos. The Greco-Roman god Theos, I suggest, is a far different deity from the Jewish Elohim of Genesis 1, or LORD (referring to the unspeakable name of the Creator) of Genesis 2 and 12, not to mention the Abba to whom Jesus prayed…. (42)
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (available February 9, 2010)
"A new reformation is taking place in Christianity. Brian McLaren is one of its leading voices and A New Kind of Christianity is a roadmap for this reformation. This is a very important book." (Adam Hamilton, author of Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White and Senior Pastor, The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection.)
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The view from Bethlehem
A highlight of our time yesterday was hearing Rev Mitri Raheb share five observations about this part of the world. He said ...
1. There are too many peace talkers and there are too few peace workers.
2. There is too much politics and too little care for people on the ground.
3. There is too much religion and not enough true spirituality.
4. There is too much humanitarian aid and not enough economic development.
5. There is too much pess-optimism (swinging from optimism about the next big project to despair when it doesn't work) and not enough steady hope in action.
It's a great privilege to be among the Palestinian people here in the city where Jesus was born.
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Guest Blog by Greg Barrett: Day 1 from Bethlehem
From Greg Barrett, photo by Shane Claiborne:
Right or wrong, this is what I took away from Day 1 in troubled Bethlehem:
Palestinian Muslims and Christians are way weary of talking about a justice that never materializes. They tolerate us North American Christian pilgrims because we help buoy a difficult economy, but Palestinians do not bank on Tourist Christians for peace or significant change. They don’t take us seriously. Why should they? They are tired of us and our elected officials who look the other way while an oppressed people is bullied, robbed and mocked. For too long the Tourist Christian has come to Bethlehem to see the birthplace of Christ and to trace the first steps of His life, but we’ve failed to follow His teachings.
Seeing the infamous Wall built by Israel to imprison the Palestinians, I was reminded of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals. In it, Alinsky writes about “the rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends.” First among them is the belief that a person’s concern with the ethics of a social action correspond to one’s distance from the consequences of action or inaction.
Alinsky quotes seventeenth-century French philosopher La Rochefoucauld, who concluded, “We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.”
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Countdown Day 19
There are two ways to read the Bible, frontwards and backwards…. If we locate Jesus primarily in light of the story that has unfolded since his time on earth, we will understand him in one way. But if we see him emerging from within a story that had been unfolding through his ancestors, and if we primarily locate him in that story, we might understand him in a very different way. (36-37)
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (available February 9, 2010)
"A New Kind of Christianity is a stellar accomplishment, a combination of hard tack fact and unfettered hope, an overview in delightful narrative of the long way of our coming to this time and of the multiform ways of our arriving. In every way, a dispatch from the front." (-Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence )
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Greetings from Bethlehem
We just arrived in Bethlehem with our wonderful group of pilgrims. Folks are getting acquainted and in a few minutes, our journey begins. We'll be meeting and learning from peacemakers - some of whom are Muslim, some Christian, some Jewish - and through them and one another we'll seek to better understand what's happened, what's happening, and what can happen in this important corner of God's world.
A few links ...
Bill Dahl's review of my upcoming book ... here
And Bill's take on the emerging church in NextWave here.
Richard Rohr, Phyllis Tickle, Stephanie Sellers, myself, and others offer additional reflections in the current issue of Radical Grace, which you can download here.
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