Smart people saying smart things

Last updated on: January 5, 2012 at 1:46 pm by Fred Clark

Smart people saying smart things 2012-01-05T13:46:07-05:00 Fred Clark

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Lilit Marcus: “Florence, The Machine, Faith, and Me (Part 1) (Part 2)”

Florence Welch’s brand of majestic tribal-pop “secular gospel,” or what Tom Ewing refers to as “Big Music” in his recent and excellent look at post-U2 stadium rock for Pitchfork, has so many parallels to evangelical worship music. Take for example the track “Spectrum” on Ceremonials, with its language of deliverance (“and we will never be afraid again”); its soaring chorus and hushed middle eight; the vernacular of “light,” “shining,” and illumination. …

Evangelical worship music is fascinating to me because it’s so expertly designed to trigger these emotions, which causes you in that setting to relate those emotions to your notion of spirituality. And it’s especially potent in Pentecostalism, which puts a premium on the Holy Spirit and thus the sensual experience of God: A semi-recent study by the University of Canterbury found that Pentecostal-Charismatic churchgoers had stronger “energetic” and “awesome” emotional reactions to a piece of religious music than a non-Pentecostal group.

This is controversial in the context of religion, for good reason, because it smacks of emotional manipulation. …

Shane Claiborne: “The Christian Industrial Complex“

I grew up in the Bible Belt. When I became a Christian, I learned I didn’t have to stop buying stuff — I just had to start buying Christian stuff. An entire world of retail spending possibilities lay before me: the Christian industrial complex. There were Christian t-shirts, bumper stickers, even Christian candy — “testa-mints” — peppermints wrapped in a Bible verse. We were taught “secular” was bad, and supplied with charts that countered popular mainstream bands with a Christian alternative. We burned our old tapes (which is what we listened to back in those days) and went to the Christian albums. We were often sadly disappointed. They just didn’t sound like Metallica. As a friend of mine quipped: “All these Christian artists say, ‘God gave me this song,’ and then you listen to it and know why God gave it away.” I later learned that Christian art doesn’t have to be a mediocre counterfeit of the original. And, I learned that Christianity is not about conforming to the world, but about being transformed by a God who is crazy about the poor, fond of toppling the powerful, and raising the lowly … and who I’m pretty sure would feel conflicted wearing a “God bless Rome” shirt or doting an “Army of One” sticker on the bumper of his SUV … I mean, hybrid. I mean donkey. Never mind.

I became convinced that the world will not know we are Christians by our bumper stickers and T-shirts, but by our love.

In light of all the exciting movements addressing world hunger and peace, many with Christians in the forefront, I really believe Christian stores should be pioneers and innovators, rather than chameleons. Selling fair-trade coffee is a good start. But we have a long way to go. I just saw an iPod shaped like a cross. Ugh. …

John Shore: “Pastor to rape victim: ‘He should have killed you. At least you’d have died a virgin.’“

I would like to ask a favor of you, pastor or priest. It will only take a second. Thank you very much for obliging me on this.

If you would, please, for just a moment, think of women.

Now, did anything negative—anything, no matter how vague or fleeting—flash across your consciousness?

If so, then please get up from your desk, or turn to your computer, or do whatever it is that you must, in order to, at this very moment, quit your job. You are no more suited to lead a flock of believers than Stephen Hawking is to be a professional boxer.

At best you are a profound and grievous embarrassment to God; at worst Satan himself got you your current position, and revels every day in the work you do.

You wouldn’t know good counsel from bad breath, okay?

You are a hairball clogging up the sink of life.

That quick twitch of negativity that shot across your consciousness when you thought of women is like a pregnant cockroach shooting under your pantry door. It can mean only one thing: you, friend, have a very real problem.

Please stop making your problem the problem of others. Quit your job. You can get another job. You can get any other job. You just can’t have one in which any person turns to you in your capacity as a representative of God. You are not a representative of God. You are a representative of everything that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself to eradicate.

You are bringing into the world, and empowering, injustice. You are contributing to the creation of victims. You are fostering the subjugation of women.

Stop doing that! Quit your job! Speak for yourself, if you must. But please cease speaking for God.

Shepherd of Hermas, ca. 100-160 CE

Ye, therefore, who are high in position, seek out the hungry as long as the tower is not yet finished; for after the tower is finished, you will wish to do good, but will find no opportunity. Give heed, therefore, ye who glory in your wealth, lest those who are needy should groan, and their groans should ascend to the Lord, and ye be shut out with all your goods beyond the gate of the tower.

Wherefore I now say to you who preside over the Church and love the first seats, “Be not like to drug-mixers. For the drug-mixers carry their drugs in boxes, but ye carry your drug and poison m your heart.”

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