A postmodern paraphrase of Philippians 2:5-11

The Incarnation is the mad story of the undeconstructible God who did not consider undeconstructibility as something to be grasped, nor did he despise deconstructibility, but rather taking the “human, all too human form” of a servant, he humbled himself to the point of inhabiting the very deconstructible structures of human law and culture—even to [...]

Thoughts on Lent and Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, also known as “Fat Tuesday hangover day”, also known as the beginning of the season of Lent. The Gospel reading for today, from the Daily Office Lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer:
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: [...]

Christ-archy and “faithful improvisation”

I do not believe that one has to be anarchist to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
Let me say that again: I do not believe that one has to be anarchist to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
I say that lest I be accused of “theological” divisiveness over my “political” beliefs, as I have been [...]

The Bible was NOT written to you

Seen today on a church sign: “The Bible is a letter that was written to you!”
I have a serious problem with this attitude. Yes, I believe the Bible was written FOR us, and for our edification and instruction as followers of Jesus, but it was not written “to me” as a letter, meant for me [...]

A thought about anarchism and Christianity

I’ve been accused before of being “too anarchist, and not Christian enough” by some folks… and “too Christian, and not anarchist enough” by others. I’m not sure there’s much I can say to the latter, other than to reiterate that I believe the most radical act one can commit is that of dedicating one’s self [...]

Galatians 3:28 and gender equality

One thing I’ve heard on a couple of message boards lately is the statement that Galatians 3:28, which says “For there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, but you all are one in Christ Jesus”, does not in fact refer to a social equality that is expressed in the practice [...]

Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire, by N.T. Wright

article link
The good Bishop of Durham has summed up a lot of things quite concisely in one article that I spend pages and pages on this blog discussing. He goes briefly over passages from Romans and Philippians within the framework of a discussion of the term “Gospel” and Paul’s conception of Jesus as Messiah and [...]

A reflection for Advent

I didn’t write this, but I wish I had.
A young man called out to Jesus from the crowd and said, “Teacher, command the trustee of my father’s will to give me my share of the inheritance!” Jesus replied, “I am not a lawyer or a judge—why should I get involved?” Then Jesus told everyone, “Guard [...]

audio available at Cynicism and Hope site

Audio recordings of several of the sessions from the Cynicism and Hope conference are now available at the conference website, including a recording of my session, “Anarchism, Christianity, and the Prophetic Imagination“. The talk is in MP3 format and can either be downloaded or streamed from the site.
I also highly recommend listening to Ric Hudgens’ [...]

First post at Jesus Manifesto

My first post as a co-author of the Jesus Manifesto blog went live this morning. It’s a meditation on Ecclesiastes, “meaninglessness”, and the nature of empire.
There’s some really great stuff being written over there, so please go and check it out. In a couple of days I will be starting a series related to my [...]

The Qaddish and the Lord’s Prayer

The Qaddish, named from the Hebrew qadosh, “holy”, is one of the central prayers in Jewish worship. It is very old, going back to pre-Christian times. The Qaddish, in one of its shorter versions (from an ancient Jewish inscription) says:
Magnified and sanctified be his great name in the world He created according to His will. [...]

An actual conversation I had the other day

Me: (sitting at a picnic table in the sun reading Dale Brown’s Biblical Pacifism)
He: Pacifist? You’re a pacifist? At a Christian music festival? (we were at Cornerstone)
Me: Yes, for the first 300 years of the church’s existence they were very nearly universally committed to nonviolence and opposed to Christians participating in the military.
He: How can [...]

a summary of Christian anarchy

I posted this on an anarchist discussion group a short while ago, and thought it was worth sharing here.
I may be a bit of an oddball, because I actually came to my anarchist views through my religious studies.
I have written somewhat more about my views on my blog, http://propheticheretic.wordpress.com (though I’ve neglected it as of [...]

He is risen!

Christos anesti!
“Death has been swallowed up in victory!”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
——————————–
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down [...]

some thoughts on truth and religious epistemology

This is part of a discussion I’m having on a Facebook group, via the group’s wall, which only allows 1000 characters per post, so it’s not terribly well-developed, but I think it’s a decent framework for a beginning.
I have a lot of beginnings of ideas, if you hadn’t noticed.
The group is called “Post-Emerging [...]

The Liberating Image: Imago Dei in Genesis 1 by J. Richard Middleton

J. Richard Middleton’s The Liberating Image: Imago Dei in Genesis 1 is an excellent exegetical look at Genesis 1 and particularly the “Image of God” section in vv. 26-28. The book was written, I believe, for the completion of his Ph.D at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. It is divided into three parts, [...]

battle of the sexes and creation

From the first creation story, in Genesis 1:
26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the ground.”
27 [...]

another thought on Romans 13, the oppressiveness of Christianity

my original post on Romans 13
This pertains, actually, to Paul’s immediately previous statement about repaying evil with good. Could it be that Paul has in mind that the Christians, as a sect with subversively dangerous ideas to the Empire, should keep their noses so clean, as it was, that the officials could legitimately find [...]

Nieztsche, the fall, anarcho-primitivism, and human domination

[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body… will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant — not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power… ‘Exploitation’… belongs to the essence of what [...]

Paul and counterculture theology/civil disobedience

In a comment to my post on Romans 13, Tim said he wasn’t convinced that Paul actually advocated some kind of civil disobedience, so I decided to post a short analysis of two passages from his letters that I think illustrate otherwise, or at the very least make allowances for civil disobedience in a New [...]