Homecoming or Going-Away Party? Questioning the Rapture through the lens of homelessness

This is the sermon I gave at Patchwork Central’s Sunday evening worship on July 26, 2009. Of course, these texts are not the only ones pertinent to discussion of the so-called “end times,” but 1 Thessalonians in particular is of major importance since it is the text most-often used to discuss “what the Rapture will [...]

The Cross and the lynching tree: Good Friday reflection

In God of the Oppressed, one of the most important theological works of the 20th century, James Cone compares the cross of Christ to the lynching tree. When slavery existed lynching was not common because slaves were considered valuable property, but after the end of slavery whites used lynching as a method of asserting dominance. [...]

Romans 13:4 and irony

Romans 13 is often invoked (usually somewhat unthinkingly) as an objection to my ideas about Christian political engagement. The argument goes, as best as I can reproduce it here very simply, that Paul says we should submit to authority, the government is here for our own good, and we owe them certain things by virtue [...]

A brief musing on Paul

We now can say from studies in all related fields, including epigraphy and archaeology, that the cult of Caesar the divine ruler was not merely one among other religious choices available to denizens of the ancient Roman empire. Instead, we should see it as largely the glue that held the empire together on multiple levels [...]

Empire Remixed: To Hell With Romans 13

I’ve added the Empire Remixed site to my blogroll under the “Christarchy” category. Check it out, there is a lot of good stuff there. Empire Remixed is a project that had its birth in the “Wine Before Breakfast” gatherings in Brian Walsh’s office at the University of Toronto. I’ve written a bit about Walsh and [...]

Cornerstone seminar

The Cornerstone seminar went really well. The title of my session was “Sacred Anarchy: The Image of God and Political (Dis)Order”. I focused on Wink’s formulation of the Myth of Redemptive Violence, focused on Genesis as subversive to the Myth, and then took a trip through modern political philosophy to demonstrate how the modern state [...]

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 [...]

Subverting the rhetoric of American empire

Brandon Rhodes has written an EXCELLENT article at Jesus Manifesto called “Severing the Rhetorical Roots of the Empire“. In it he lists some quotes, inviting followers of Jesus to creatively rewrite them to displace idolatry and blasphemy with subversive truth, just as Paul and other early Christian authors rhetorically usurped Caesar’s place of privilege and [...]

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 [...]

another thought on Romans 13, the oppressiveness of Christianity

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can view this article here: http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2006/10/03/another-thought-on-romans-13-the-oppressiveness-of-christianity/\

Love of money and corporations

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can find this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2006/08/30/love-of-money-and-corporations/

Paul and counterculture theology/civil disobedience

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can find this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2006/08/26/paul-and-counterculture-theology-civil-disobedience/

a brief case for a different framework of understanding on Romans 13

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can find this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2006/08/24/a-brief-case-for-a-different-framework-of-understanding-on-romans-13/

USAmerican self-determination ideals and contradiction

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can find this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2006/08/23/usamerican-self-determination-ideals-and-contradiction/