...of all my demon spirits

Ok, for real this time...

2005-06-02T13:11:00.000-04:00

So I gave the 5-day deadline, I posted the "unedited" (and mostly unreadable) version on the blog, and now, finally, we're actually closing in on the real thing. And this time there's no b.s. I have to be done with this soon in that my advisor goes on sebatical at the end of the next summer term (i.e. this July), so if I mess around, I'm up the creek...the creek named shit.

After my advisor and I met and looked at the initial draft, he made some good suggestions, and I feel I've carried them out. I'll present to him on Monday, and then he'll decide if it's time to defend (and I'm all but sure he'll decide that it is). I'm not going to post another version on the blog until it's defended, however, in that I'm tired of showing everyone an incomplete picture of what I was trying to accomplish. I'll just be glad when it's over and I can think of something else. Seriously, this thing has plagued my thoughts for so long now...I haven't been able to relax in over a year.

As if this wasn't enough, another monkey-wrench got thrown into the works yesterday. Neil, the area-director for the company currently employing me (Total Wine) approached me after lunch and said he really wanted to put me in the development program for being a Wine Manager in a Total Wine store (a little different from what I do now, but more money). Sounds okay, right? Well...

Total Wine, all in all, has been a great experience. I've been treated well on most occassions, I get free stuff (LOTS of free stuff), I meet famous winemakers, etc, etc. However, there's also the unrelenting schedule (at least 50 hrs./wk), the often absurd expectations of corporate lackies who never set foot in the actual stores, and the fact that I've spent the better part of 3 years now pursuing something that isn't being a Wine Manager. I mean, I love wine, and I love working around it and helping people understand it...but in order to succeed in Total Wine, you have to play ball, and that means selling your soul so that the profit margin goes up and the Trone brothers (founders of Total Wine) can make another yacht payment. If you think that sounds like all retail operations, well, I guess it sort of is. With one exception: whether my number is 5% under or 80% over what it's supposed to be, I still get the same hourly wage. There's nothing substantial to motivate me. That may sound selfish, but we're not talking about working for the Red Cross here. We're talking about retail, and the only reason anyone gets into retail is to make money. I don't go to work everyday out of the goodness of my heart--I do it because I have bills to pay. If I had no bills, I wouldn't work.

And I guess that's what I'm getting at: I did all this school shit so that I'd be able to get a job where money wasn't a factor; where I'd be paid little or nothing and not care because I was doing something that needed to be done and that I wanted to do. I don't have aspirations to teach high school kids in Indonesia because I'm chasing money. But if I invest my life in a company like Total, then I'm pretty much sealing the deal that I'll wake up everyday thinking about how I can make the Man another dollar instead of thinking of how I can make the world a little less miserable.

I don't know. What do y'all think?

James' Thesis

2005-04-15T17:07:00.000-04:00

Yo: The following is a pasted version of my thesis. It needs to have the correct paragraph breaks and footnotes reinserted...but i'm not doing that right now. Read on if you can endure the eye strain.

Evangelical Counter-Culture: A Historical Analysis of the Emerging Church

Objective:

To explore the ways in which the evangelical “left” has assimilated elements of popular culture into their worship, fellowship, and evangelism methodologies. I will include the opinions of both proponents and adversaries of this “cool” Christianity, and when appropriate, relate my personal experiences to relevant findings. My conclusion will include my personal decision as to whether or not the Christian counter-culture is a “flash-in-the-pan,” marginal sect, or whether it is indicative of a larger, more universal shift.

Introduction

As an undergraduate student studying Art History, I was required to fulfill a minimum requirement of studio hours. Even though my plan was simply to talk about art, I suppose those who grant degrees wanted at least minimal proof of my knowing how to “do” art as well. One memorable class period centered around the infinite “values” of black and white. We were required to mix paints in order to imitate a scale of values given to us. While the exercise was rather perfunctory in nature, one remarkable observation that I made was how a relatively tiny speck of white paint can drastically alter the appearance of a rather large blob of jet black paint (and vice versa). No matter how small the one amount and how large the other, the change was always, without exception, noticeable. In fact, as our instructor later informed us, there is thought to be no absolute or “true” whites or blacks. They are really more ideas than they are true, existent colors.

Seven years later, as I reflect on what seemed to be an elementary lesson in studio painting, I realize that this concrete example possesses several abstract applications. In so many areas of day-to-day existence, we encounter ideas or theories that are taken for granted, but whose “pure” form may not actually exist. Indeed, the words of the preacher in Ecclesiastes are never truer than when applied to the world of thought[1]. As revolutionary, original, or groundbreaking as ideas may seem, there are perhaps none that are truly “new.” The preceding insight itself is hardly unique, in fact: Solomon, Heidegger, and Hegel (to name a few) echo this sentiment in some form. It certainly seems undeniable that while we humans are capable of formulating beautiful, concise, and orderly ideas about why and how things are the way they are, we struggle to find places in the world outside the mind where these thoughts are embodied without first assimilating some arbitrary cultural element.

The path we’ve here undertaken now branches in dozens of directions. We could probably never exhaust the instances of the aforementioned phenomenon. However, my focus for the next several chapters will center on the trend of cultural assimilation in the Western Protestant church, specifically in the so-called “Emerging Church,” that I first became intimately acquainted with in the mid to late 1990s. Having been raised in a family firmly entrenched in the doctrines of conservative evangelical Christianity, I have only recently begun to explore in earnest the more “liberal” sects of the Church. What I discovered (and continue to discover) is that “liberal” and “conservative” and other monikers are commonly applied with little or no accuracy. More fairly, it seems that the definitions of these monikers are as fluid and tenuous as the cultural contexts in which they are conceived. Even the most casual student of church history can skim the pages of the past several centuries and observe how the most “radical” sects of the church, once established, soon became the arbiters of conservative doctrine and orthopraxy. A German living around 450 years ago could hardly have used the statement, “I am a conservative Lutheran,” for all Lutherans were brandished radical heretics and usually excommunicated from Christendom-at-large. However, if our German friend could step forward those 450 years into contemporary American culture, he would see that an area such as the Midwest—stereotyped as having strong, conservative values—is largely Lutheran. Meanwhile, the more “liberal” Northeast Christian population has a Catholic population that is the largest of any region of the country. If our friend decided to pull up a chair and continue observing the changes in American religious climate, he would surely notice how current elements of Western pop culture are more readily assimilated (even welcomed) into Protestant Christianity than any Luther or Calvin would have ever imagined (or desired?). He would see hordes of young people flocking to stadiums rather than stately cathedrals. Likewise, he would hear the Liturgy replaced with songs that are all but indiscernible from Top 40 radio, and preachers who have shed the austerity of the parish priest in exchange for the dynamic oratory style of a stumping politician. Surely such sea changes in worship (and sometimes doctrine) could not be taking place so rapidly, when it took Christendom centuries to produce a Luther. How can we account for such exponential acceleration concerning this trend?

My view, as we’ll come to see more clearly in the following chapters, contends that any idea or set of ideas (metaphysical or otherwise) cannot operate independently, i.e., resist any influence from its immediate cultural context. As the original “blob” of intellectual paint collides and wrestles with surrounding “specks” of culture, ideas change. Moreover, I will demonstrate that these changes—both the gradual and revolutionary—are not merely anomalies in the historical record, but inevitable products of human culture and finitude. Starting with some of the earliest importers of Christianity to North America, the Puritans, we will trace the ebb and flow of “church culture” in the United States from Great Awakenings to Jesus Freaks to modern day campus worship events which draw more young people than a NCAA football game. We will likewise explore how “counter cultures” are not merely a “secular” phenomenon, but an innate acting out of human nature regardless of context. Later we’ll see how shifts towards youth-centered worship and teaching spawned a church culture revolution whose fruits are evident in the huge majority of present-day evangelical churches. While there will be some occasional discussion concerning the “good” or “bad” effects of certain shifts, I do not aim to offer a critique of the Emerging Church in America. Rather, I believe the much more interesting conversation centers around the fascinating past and hypothetical future of America’s Christian Counter-Culture.

Prelude: Surveying the Emerging Church

A concise definition of the “Emerging Church” is elusive at best. Even the movement’s most vocal proponents concede that forming a universally accepted description of their beliefs and organization has posed somewhat of a conundrum. That is, how does one form a centralized definition for a movement that is inherently decentralized? A broad analysis that seems to come closest to universal acceptance describes the Emerging Church as “a label that has been used to refer to a particular subset of Christians who are rethinking Christianity against the backdrop of Postmodernism.”[2] Emerging Church scholar Dan Kimball lists the following characteristics as a farily accurate description of most “emergent” bodies:

Highly creative approaches to worship and spiritual reflection. This can involve everything from the use of contemporary music and films through to liturgy or other more ancient customs.
A minimalist and decentralised organisational structure.
A flexible approach to theology whereby individual differences in belief and morality are accepted within reason.
A more holistic approach to the role of the church in society. This can mean anything from greater emphasis on fellowship in the structure of the group to a higher degree of emphasis on social action, community building or Christian outreach.
A desire to reanalyize the Bible against the context into which it was written, in search of a reconstructed theology that is free from Modernist baggage. [3]
Even with this neatly put together list, however, the “minmalist structure” of the Emerging Church all but prevents analyzing this newer movement in the same manner one might go about examining the much more established sects of Christianity.

The movement’s existence is nonetheless easily recognized. The latter half of the 20th century saw isolated communities of believers forming more “contemporary” churches; however, these were almost always subsets of pre-existing, traditional churches. For example, a church body who normally holds corporate worship at 11:00 A.M on Sunday may add a 8:00 service for those wishing to engage in more “contemporary” worship. These alternative meetings often employed the aforementioned “creative approaches to worship” discussed by Kimball. Likewise, in a church community where emotionalism is typically refrained from (or even frowned upon), contemporary worship often provided a more comfortable, less inhibiting context for outward expression.
While these more modern services are still readily offered at most larger Evangelical congregations in the United States, the last two decades of the 20th century saw an acceleration in the popularity of contemporary worship that led to the establishment of hundreds of self-supporting, contemporary churches. Moreover, these churches were often the most well-represented demographic in the community of so-called “megachurches.”[4] One might expect a rather homogenous age group to found in these burgeoning “alternative churches.” And indeed, most early forms of these newer communities of faith were made of up those who are most commonly stereotyped as identifying with a more postmodern worldview, i.e., members of the so-called Gereration X. However, as small, underground contemporary chuches mushroomed into mammoth, 10,000-member megachruches (cf. Willow Creek of Chicago, Illinois), all demographics—age, race, gender, class—saw an increased representation within the fledgling Emerging Church.[5]
It is uncertain if the Emerging Church will ever solidify into a single, centralized sect. What is certain, however, is the movement’s existence and enormous influence on Protestant culture over the past 25-30 years. If we are to determine whether this movement (and it’s influence) is merely an interesting anomoly in chuch history or a much more significant trend indicative of inherent traits in human religion, we must first embark on a historical examination of the American Christian culture at-large. The depth at which this writer delves into the historical record may seem tedious (even superflous) to the reader at times; however, I feel that a proper backdrop is vital if we are to form any fundamental understanding of the present social and cultural phenomenon among the Emerging Church.

Book One: A Brief Survey of American Christianity

Part One: The Puritans

Puritanism was a movement arising within the Church of England in the latter part of the 16th century that sought to purify, or reform, that church and establish a middle course between Roman Catholicism and the ideas of the Protestant reformers[6]. It had a continuous life within the church until the Stuart Restoration (1660). Puritanism reached North America with the English settlers who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620 where it remained the dominant religious force in New England throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
The term Puritanism is also used in a broader sense to refer to attitudes and values considered characteristic of the Puritans. Thus, the Separatists in the 16th century, the Quakers in the 17th century, and Nonconformists after the Restoration may be called Puritans, although they were no longer part of the established church[7]. The founders of New England, for whom immigration to America constituted withdrawal from the mother church, are also commonly called Puritans. The word puritanism has often been used as a term of abuse in a way that does scant justice to historical Puritanism—for instance, when a rigid moralism, the condemnation of innocent pleasure, or religious narrowness is stigmatized as “puritanical.” The Puritans, as we shall see, are not alone in having suffered the plight of fighting misnomers. Words such as “reformed,” “liberal,” and “fundamentalist” shall likewise find their way from their original intended definitions to contexts where they ascribe inaccurate (and often unworthy) praise or disdain.
Even within the Church of England, a precise definition of Puritanism is elusive. The leading Puritan clergyman during the reign of Elizabeth I was Thomas Cartwright, who denied he was one. Cartwright advocated a presbyterian form of church government that gave control to committees of ministers and lay members. His purpose was to free the church from the control of bishops appointed by the monarchy, which was hostile to Puritanism. Puritanism, however, cannot be identified with presbyterianism because a major segment of the movement eventually adopted congregationalism, in which there is no church hierarchy and each individual congregation is self-governing. Already the most casual observer can note the similarities between “old” Puritanism and the new brand being developed in colonial America. Whether the fledgling democracy shaped the ideas of Puritan church politics or vice versa is uncertain; nevertheless, we see an undeniable change not only in one religious sect, but in a “Christian” country’s most populous denomination. The essence of Puritanism is an intense commitment to a morality, a form of worship, and a civil society strictly conforming to God's commandments. Certain nuances (e.g. congregationalism), however, were unique products of Puritanism’s interaction with the burgeoning American Revolution.
Puritan theology is a version of Calvinism. It asserts the basic sinfulness of humankind; but it also declares that by an eternal decree God has determined that some will be saved through the righteousness of Christ despite their sins. No one can be certain in this life what his or her eternal destiny will be. Nevertheless, the experience of conversion, in which the soul is touched by the Holy Spirit, so that the inward bias of the heart is turned from sinfulness to holiness, is at least some indication that one is of the elect.
The experience of conversion was therefore central to Puritan spirituality. Much of Puritan preaching was concerned with it. This concern was evident in questions such as how conversion comes about—whether in a blinding flash as with Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, or following well-defined stages of preparation; how one can distinguish actual conversion from the counterfeit; and why not everyone will be converted. Puritan spiritual life stressed self-discipline and introspection, through which one sought to determine whether particular spiritual strivings were genuine marks of sainthood. Although full assurance might never be attained, the conviction of having been chosen by God fortified the Puritans to contend with what they regarded as wantonness in society and faithfulness in the church, and to endure the hardships involved in trying to create a Christian commonwealth in America. However, as the founding fathers sought less and less to establish a borderline theocracy, and more and more to give birth to a uniquely secular nation, the hard-line Calvinism of the Puritans would gradually cede ground to more “open” brands of Christianity.
Puritanism was not static and unchanging. At first it simply stood for further reform of worship, but soon it began to attack episcopacy—church government by bishops, as in the Church of England—as unscriptural. Again, we see the tenuous nature of where the left and right are in Protestant politics. More clearly, what is today the penultimate stereotype of dogmatism (Puritanism) was once actually the fierce opponent of the most established church in the English-speaking world. At times the difference between the Puritans and the Anglicans (members of the Church of England) seems to have been as much a matter of differing cultural values as one of differing theological opinions. For example, their Sabbatarianism (insistence on strict observance of the Sabbath) came into conflict with a defense of sports and games on Sunday by King James I. Puritanism became a political as well as a religious movement during the English Revolution (1640-1660, also called the Puritan Revolution), when Parliament rebelled against the despotism of Stuart king Charles I. This rebellion gave the Puritans a chance to demand the abolition of bishops in the Church of England. Both in England during the Commonwealth (government established by Parliament, from 1649-1660) and in 17th-century New England, Puritanism meant the direction and control of civil authority.
Nor was Puritanism a wholly cohesive movement. In the 1580s the Separatists were bitterly condemned by other Puritans. When the Westminster Assembly (1643) sought to define doctrine and polity, the differences between Presbyterians and Independents (congregationalists) were manifest. In the turbulence of the 1640s, a number of small sects appeared, emphasizing that part of Puritan doctrine that acknowledges the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul of the believer to the neglect of that part that stands for social order and authority. With the restoration of the Stuart monarchs in 1660, many Puritans accepted the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and rule by bishops; others were forced into permanent nonconformity. In one sense, therefore, Puritanism failed. Its influence has persisted, however.
When the Puritans failed in their efforts to reform the Church of England, a minority urged separatism—the establishment of separate independent congregations free of bishops. Some of these separatist groups immigrated to Holland. In 1620 one of the separatist congregations sailed for New England on the Mayflower. In New England the colonists established independent congregations, each congregation having the right to choose its own leaders and discipline its members. While church and state supported each other, neither one was allowed to interfere in the affairs of the other. This line between the two establishments during colonial times was blurry, however, as manifested in the untimely deaths of dozens of suspected “witches.” Not until the United States Constitution explicitly delegated a legal separation of Church and State could non-Christians even begin to assimilate into most American communities.
In America, Puritan moralism and its sense of an elect people in covenant with God deeply affected the national character. The Puritan belief that communities were formed by covenants produced America’s first democratic institution, the town meeting. At the town meeting every church member had the right to speak, and decisions were made by majority rule. The Puritan emphasis on simplicity of worship, its asceticism (austerity and self-denial), and its Sabbatarianism remained influential into the 20th century. The Puritan devotion to popular education, high standards of morality, and many, if not all, democratic principles had an important (to say the least) effect on American life.
In one of Western Civilization’s more ironic twists, the Puritans fled a mother country whose church had become (to them) an unwelcome imitation of the ways and means of the English monarchy (i.e. the masses being ruled by a few), only to found a “new” group of churches whose Congregationalist approach bore strong resemblances to the new democracy which emerged in 1776. The Puritans, however, were not the first (nor hardly the last) to demonstrate the inseparability of shifts in popular culture and religious trends. As an infant America looked towards a looming revolution, it would witness the Christianity so evident in its character drift towards irrelevancy—only to rebound with an intensity that reflected the sentiments and tendencies of the time.

Part Two: The First Great Awakening

While the American Colonies were still undoubtedly Christian in their religious identity, religiosity was declining by the 1740s. The Salem Witch Trials were not too distant a memory, and with the booming growth in exports, meeting the rigid demands of Puritan doctrine was gradually being usurped by an interest in what this year’s tobacco harvest would yield.[8] As the collective American interest drifted away from religion and toward the appeals of commerce, several men determined to spark revival and reaffirm Christianity’s centrality in day-to-day life.
The Great Awakening was a watershed event in the life of the American people. Before it was over, it had swept the colonies of the Eastern seaboard, transforming the social and religious life of land. Although the name is slightly misleading--the Great Awakening was not one continuous revival, rather it was several revivals in a variety of locations--it says a great deal about the state of religion in the colonies. For the simple reality is that one cannot be awakened unless you have fallen asleep.
Neither the Anglicans who came to dominate religious life in Virginia after royal control was established over Jamestown, nor the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay, were terribly successful in putting down roots. The reality was that on the frontier, the settled parish system of England-- which was employed by Puritan and Anglican alike--proved difficult to transplant. Unlike the compact communities of the old world, the small farms and plantations of the new spread out into the wilderness, making both communication and ecclesiastical discipline difficult. Because people often lived great distances from a parish church, membership and participation suffered. In addition, on the frontier concern for theological issues faded before the concern for survival and wrestling a living from a hard and difficult land. Because the individual was largely on his own, and depended on himself for survival, authoritarian structures of any sort--be they governmental or ecclesiastical--met with great resistance. As a result, by the second and third generations, the vast majority of the population was outside the membership of the church. Up and down the Eastern Seaboard, the landscape was littered with the dry tinder of the unchurched. All that was required was a spark of revival to set the landscape afire with religious enthusiasm. And when that spark ignited, those who led the revival were so surprised by what was taking place, that they "attributed it entirely to God's inscrutable grace."[9]
The sparks of revival were struck in New England. Solomon Stoddard's sermons in Northampton, Massachusetts had led to revivals breaking out as early as 1679. And after that, periodic revivals would occur and then die out. One of the reasons they would be extinguished was the smothering influence of the Enlightenment. With the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica in the 17th century, traditional religious formulations had been under pressure. That is because implicit in the work of Newton and others was the assumption that human beings had the ability to discover the secrets of the universe and thereby exert some control over their own destiny. If human beings could in fact think the thoughts of God--if they could discover and read the blueprints whereby God had made and ordered the world--the result was a lessening of the gulf between God and man. This tended to undercut traditional Calvinism which held that the gap between the Deity and his creatures was quite large. This affirmation of human ability and reason had an extremely corrosive effect on the reigning orthodoxy which held that one's destiny was solely in God's hands. The result was a growing emphasis on man and his morality, with religion becoming more rational and less emotional.
One of those who attacked this growing rationality, and who was also one of the principle figures in the Great Awakening was Jonathan Edwards. Edwards has received bad press for his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” In that sermon he used the image of a spider dangling by a web over a hot fire to describe the human predicament. His point was that at any moment, our hold on life could break and we'd be plunged into fires of eternal damnation. But if you read his sermons, you will find that he spoke quietly, reasonably, and logically. Indeed, he was dry and even a bit boring. But he began to experience a harvest of conversions that were accompanied by exaggerated behavior. People would bark, shout, and run when they were converted.
Why did people listen to Edwards? Why did his preaching provoke such a response? For one thing, he was speaking about a matter they were vitally interested in. If I were to tell you I heard on the radio on the way over that someone had found a cure for cancer, you would want to know the details. And so it was for the Puritans who were growing deeply concerned by what they perceived to be a striking decline in piety. The youth of the second and third generation were given to mirth and frivolity and would spend the greater part of night in co-ed parties. They would go riding in wagons under layers of quilts and blankets. Edwards and others were deeply concerned about these excursions and the impact they might have on the state of their morals. And there is reason to believe that Edwards had cause to be concerned about these activities. Evidently something was taking place under these quilts because there was a striking rise in the number of children conceived out of wedlock which confirmed in the Puritan's mind that a general decline in piety was occurring. The new generation had inherited the Puritan theocracy, but had begun to forget it, and the older generation was gravely concerned about this development. They had come to this country to found a biblical commonwealth, but their vision did not seem to be shared by community's youth.
Yet another problem weighing on Puritan consciences for a long time was that of election. As they studied this issue, the question was raised as to why should anyone preach? Certainly not to elicit a decision for Christ. Such decisions had been made before the foundation of the world according to Calvinist orthodoxy. If preaching were simply for the edification of the Saints, then it was like preaching to the choir, in that you were preaching to the already converted. The result was a decline in worship attendance.
And then quite by surprise there was a tremendous outpouring of response to the preaching of Edwards. This movement of the Spirit surprised people because it produced something unexpected: people professing conversion. What Edwards said in these sermons was pure Calvinism. "You can't control salvation." But Puritans heard him say, "if you try, God will aid your salvation." Here's one example. Jonathan Edwards talked about "Pressing into the Kingdom". "It was," he said, "not a thing impossible." By that, Edwards was referred to God's power to save whomever he pleases. But what the Puritans heard was there was a chance they could achieve election. Phrases like "It is in your power to use means of grace" and "One can strive against corruption" were similarly misunderstood. Edwards wanted to make the point that salvation ultimately is in the hands of God, and that he empowers the elect to resist evil. But people heard something else. And they responded to what they viewed as an invitation to seek after salvation.
Was it Edwards’ failure to communicate, however, that led some of his listeners down paths he did not intend? While I will certainly admit to the slippery slope of speculation here, does it not seem slightly more than coincidental that these men and women who so desperately desired to rid themselves of a tyrannical monarch who was an ocean away (and whose new laws reflected his ignorance) also sought a way to have more of a hand in their eternal destination? While Edwards was (according to some) simply trying to rephrase age-old teachings, perhaps the masses were starting to suspect that their God had been made in the image of man. If the converse were actually true, then wouldn’t these seemingly inherent feelings of independence have some significance? Surely the God of the universe didn’t rule his kingdom in the same arbitrary fashion as George.
While we cannot be certain if these things played a hand in the responses of colonists to Edwards’ preaching, we can be certain of a few things regarding the Great Awakening. While men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield may have snatched the young American church from the brink of mediocrity, they certainly didn’t solidify it. The defining characteristic of the Awakening was factionism; and these factions, like their predecessors, would each incorporate cultural elements into their worship and set the stage for the next great series of American revivals.

Part Three: The Second Great Awakening
Transformations in American economics, politics and intellectual culture found their parallel in a transformation of American religion in the decades following independence, as the United States underwent a widespread flowering of religious sentiment and unprecedented expansion of church membership known as the Second Great Awakening. Definitions of the term and assessments of the causes, contours, and effects of the Awakening are in dispute, but a number of basic features are generally agreed upon. The Awakening lasted some 50 years, from the 1790s to the 1840s, and spanned the entire United States. The religious revitalization that the Awakening represented manifested itself in different ways according to the local population and church establishment, but was definitely a Protestant phenomenon. Methodist and Baptist denominations experienced a surge of membership, often at the expense of other denominations, prompting a move toward liberalization and competitiveness on the part of the Anglican, Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches[10]. The numerical success of the Methodists and Baptists lay primarily in their reliance on itinerant preachers who actively brought the message of the church to the people, converting great numbers through emotionally charged revivals. These revivals occurred on a scale and with a frequency previously unseen in the United States, and (as was often the case during the First Great Awakening) usually struck more conservative clergymen as excessive emotionalism masquerading as religion. The same sentiments are often echoed within the body of the present day Church, as more “contemorary,” experience-centered worship services are dismissed by conservative clergypersons as rampant emotionalism that will die as surely as other fads that accompany youth. With the maturation of revivalism and the evolution of a distinct revivalist methodology aimed at converting people en masse, the age of evangelicalism had arrived, with the Protestants leading the charge.
Nathan Hatch, in The Democratization of American Christianity, set out to revise the "social control interpretation" of the Second Great Awakening by exploring its role in galvanizing the nation's religious culture of insurgent populist preachers and of the tremendous numbers of common people who hearkened to their message. Hatch wrote:
...we have ignored the most dynamic and characteristic elements of Christianity during this time: the displacement from power of the religious people of ideas by those who leaned toward popular culture; the powerful centrifugal forces that drove churches apart and gave new significance to local and grass-roots endeavors; and the stark emotionalism, disorder, extremism, and crudeness that accompanied expressions of the faith fed by the passions of ordinary people. [11]
In tracing the siphoning of religious power away from the established churches and into the hands of local preachers and their flocks, Hatch posited an organic relationship between political and religious liberty. The success of the Revolution, he argues, created an atmosphere where resistance to authority and orthodoxy formed the ascendant ethos in the religious sphere as well as the secular.
The first stirrings of the Awakening occurred in the South and sparsely populated old Southwest, with its predominantly rural economy and poorly developed infrastructure and institutions, where religious organization served the critical function of providing social stability for the populace. Here the two clearly dominant groups were the Methodists and Baptists, although other active sects included the Presbyterians, the Christians and the Disciples (the last two formed by followers of Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell). The South did not produce, in Martin Marty's words, "first-rate theological minds" on the order of Jonathan Edwards, but in the decades after independence Evangelical Protestantism spread like wildfire through the region, with preachers fanning the flames at camp-meetings.[12] Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright, in his autobiography, describes a typical revival:
They would ... erect a shed, sufficiently large to protect five thousand people from wind and rain, and cover it with boards or shingles; build a large stand, seat the shed, and here they would collect together from forty to fifty miles around, sometimes further than that. Ten, twenty, and sometimes thirty ministers, of different denominations, would come together and preach night and day, four or five days together; and, indeed, I have known these camp-meetings to last three or four weeks, and great good resulted from them. I have seen more than a hundred sinners fall like dead men under one powerful sermon, and I have seen and heard more than five hundred Christians all shouting aloud the high praises of God at once; and I will venture to assert that many happy thousands were awakened and converted to God at these camp-meetings. [13]
Cartwright’s description of this early tent meeting bears striking resemblance to events such as “One Day” (organized by Louis Giglio’s “Passion” organization), where literally hundreds of thousands of young people meet for 24 hours of uninterrupted worship, usually consisting of marathon sets of vocal praise choruses. We will examine events such as these more closely in later chapters .
Precise numbers are difficult to ascertain, but Donald Mathews estimates that approximately 83 percent of Southern church members in 1792 were Evangelicals, and this percentage would climb in the decades to follow.[14]
The picture was much the same in the Midwest. Here, Protestantism achieved steady gains as evangelical methodology received greater definition under the influence of Charles Grandison Finney, who turned revivalism into a virtual science. In an 1834 lecture to his Presbyterian church in New York, entitled "What a Revival of Religion Is," Finney went further than anyone else had to date in setting out the precise methods and objectives of revivalist Evangelicalism. First, he stressed the importance of emotion:
Men are so sluggish, there are so many things to lead their minds off from religion, and to oppose the influence of the gospel, that it is necessary to raise an excitement among them, till the tide rises so high as to sweep away the opposing obstacles.[15]
While emotionalism had long been the practice of revivalists, Finney was the first major religious figure to give the technique a calculated turn. His approach was revolutionary in that it abandoned the traditional notion that only God, through miracles, could induce the intense religious fervor that characterized a revival. As Finney saw it, "[a]ll the laws of matter and mind remain in force" at a revival, which "consists entirely in the right exercise of the powers of nature" and is a "purely philosophical [scientific] result of the right use of the constituted means."[16] With the restrictive dogma and uninspiring style of Calvinism pushed aside, then, revivalists could make deep inroads into both the non-practicing population and other denominations.
In New England, these revivalist activities represented a challenge to the Anglican and Congregationalist establishments, which, gripped by a kind of siege mentality, sought to make their own churches more vital and competitive. Again, we observe a parallel with the more modern trend of more “traditional” churches striving to seem relevant through various amendments and adaptations. The traditional establishments in early 19th century New England did so in large measure by loosening several of the major theological doctrines of Calvinism, principally that of predestination.[17] Paradoxically, in their efforts to stem the Second Great Awakening's tide of Arminianism and revivalism, the New England Calvinists ended up participating in the Awakening. Together, these "New Light" Calvinists subverted the orthodox heritage of "hyper-Calvinism," and in so doing managed to save New England Calvinism from total obliteration.
Three principal architects of the new Calvinism were Yale President Timothy Dwight and two of his students, Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher and the brilliant theologian Nathaniel Taylor. In subtle ways, these men tried to revise Calvinism to appeal to a younger generation that had grown weary of the faith's rather grim doctrines. They incorporated a degree of proactive evangelism into their churches and began to organize reform societies in an effort to become more socially relevant. Theologically, their critical modifications involved free will, divine benevolence, and the preacher's role of moral suasion in bringing people to God. Beecher, in an apparent affirmation of the evangelical method, declared in his sermon "The Faith Once Delivered to the Saints" that the original Christian sect spread because of revivalism:
It was under the preaching of the word, that men were pricked in their hearts, and cried out, 'Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?' And it was by the moral transformation which attended the apostolic answer to this question, and not by the power of miracles, that the Gospel defied opposition, and spread during the first three hundred years.[18]
Like Beecher, Taylor also stressed the power of preaching in his contributions to New Light Calvinism. He undercut the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards and his modern descendants, the "neo-Edwardseans," in his efforts to reconcile Calvinism with Enlightenment ideas of free will. Where Edwards maintained that human will operates almost exclusively in the service of self-interest, Taylor held that the soul retained a longing for spiritual connection and satisfaction, and that it was the role of the spoken word to draw out and encourage this longing. Consistent with Calvinism, nonetheless, in Taylor's theological position God acted as kind of moral governor whose grace depended on the observance of his moral laws. Salvation was achievable but required both the influence of a preacher to spark one's realization of God's laws and the conscious avoidance of sin after conversion.
Across the country, then, the revivalists of the Second Great Awakening brought Evangelical Protestantism to the people and through their reorientation of Calvinist theology and practice irreversibly changed the religious landscape of the United States. However, the next several decades would witness burgeoning immigration, the stirring of Unitarian sentiments, and new intellectualism in New England that would welcome and incorporate many of the ideas brought over by the aforementioned immigrants. It was when the Second Great Awakening had attained maturity, in the late 1820s and 1830s, that an awakening of similar intensity, albeit of a strikingly different character, flowered in Boston under the name "Transcendentalism."
Part Three: A Move Towards Secularism
The emergence of the Transcendentalists as an identifiable movement took place during the late 1820s and 1830s, but the roots of their religious philosophy extended much farther back into American religious history. Transcendentalism and evangelical Protestantism followed separate evolutionary branches from American Puritanism, taking as their common ancestor the Calvinism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In exploring their respective departures from Calvinism we can begin to map out the common ground the two movements shared.
Transcendentalism cannot be properly understood outside the context of Unitarianism, the dominant religion in Boston during the early nineteenth century. Unitarianism had developed during the late eighteenth century as a branch of the liberal wing of Christianity, which had separated from Orthodox Christianity during the First Great Awakening of the 1740s. That Awakening, along with its successor, revolved around the questions of divine election and original sin, and saw a brief period of revivalism. The Liberals tended to reject both the persistent Orthodox belief in inherent depravity and the emotionalism of the revivalists; on one side stood dogma, on the other stood pernicious "enthusiasm." Again we can observe a parallel of these past phenomena in the present-day Christian church. That is, both the “small-minded” dogmatism of the ultra-orthodox and the unbridled emotionalism of the more charismatic sects seem to equally disinterest many younger, postmodern Christians.[19] The Liberals, in a kind of amalgamation of Enlightenment principles with American Christianity, began to stress the value of intellectual reason as the path to divine wisdom. The Unitarians descended as the Boston contingent of this tradition, while making their own unique theological contribution in rejecting the doctrine of divine trinity.
Unitarians placed a premium on stability, harmony, rational thought, progressive morality, classical learning, and other hallmarks of Enlightenment Christianity. Instead of the dogma of Calvinism intended to compel obedience, the Unitarians offered a philosophy stressing the importance of voluntary ethical conduct and the ability of the intellect to discern what constituted ethical conduct. Theirs was a "natural theology" in which the individual could, through empirical investigation or the exercise of reason, discover the ordered and benevolent nature of the universe and of God's laws. Divine "revelation," which took its highest form in the Bible, was an external event or process that would confirm the findings of reason. William Ellery Channing, in his landmark sermon "Unitarian Christianity" (1819) sounded the characteristic theme of optimistic rationality:
Our leading principle in interpreting Scripture is this, that the Bible is a book written for men, in the language of men, and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books.... With these views of the Bible, we feel it our bounden duty to exercise our reason upon it perpetually, to compare, to infer, to look beyond the letter to the spirit, to seek in the nature of the subject, and the aim of the writer, his true meaning; and, in general, to make use of what is known, for explaining what is difficult, and for discovering new truths.[20]
The intellectual marrow of Unitarianism had its counterbalance in a strain of sentimentalism: while the rational mind could light the way, the emotions provided the drive to translate ethical knowledge into ethical conduct. Still, the Unitarians deplored the kind of excessive emotionalism that took place at revivals, regarding it as a temporary burst of religious feeling that would soon dissipate. Since they conceived of revelation as an external favor granted by God to assure the mind of its spiritual progress, they doubted that inner "revelation" without prior conscious effort really represented a spiritual transformation.
Nonetheless, even in New England Evangelical Protestants were making many converts through their revivalist activities, especially in the 1820s and 1830s. The accelerating diversification of Boston increased the number of denominations that could compete for the loyalties of the population, even as urbanization and industrialization pushed many Bostonians in a secular direction. In an effort to become more relevant, and to instill their values of sobriety and order in a modernizing city, the Unitarians themselves adopted certain evangelical techniques. Through founding and participating in missionary and benevolent societies, they sought both to spread the Unitarian message and to bind people together in an increasingly fragmented social climate. Ezra Stiles Gannett, for example, a minister at the Federal Street Church, supplemented his regular pastoral duties with membership in the Colonization, Peace and Temperance societies, while Henry Ware Jr. helped found the Boston Philanthropic Society. Simultaneously, Unitarians tried to appeal more to the heart in their sermons, a trend reflected in the new Harvard professorship of Pastoral Theology and Pulpit Eloquence. Such Unitarian preachers as Joseph Stevens Buckminster and Edward Everett "set the model for a minister who could be literate rather than pedantic, who could quote poetry rather than eschatology, who could be a stylist and scorn controversy."[21] But they came nowhere near the emotionalism of the rural Evangelical Protestants. Unitarianism was a religion for upright, respectable, wealthy Boston citizens, not for the rough jostle of the streets or the backwoods. The liberalism Unitarians displayed in their embrace of Enlightenment philosophy was stabilized by a solid conservatism they retained in matters of social conduct and status.
The Transcendentalists felt that something was lacking in Unitarianism. Sobriety, mildness and calm rationalism failed to satisfy that side of the Transcendentalists which yearned for a more intense spiritual experience. The source of the discontent that prompted Emerson to renounce the "corpse-cold Unitarianism of Brattle Street and Harvard College" is suggested by the bland job description that Harvard issued for the new Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity. The professor's duties were to
... demonstrate the existence of a Deity or first cause, to prove and illustrate his essential attributes, both natural and moral; to evince and explain his providence and government, together with the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments; also to deduce and enforce the obligations which man is under to his Maker .... together with the most important duties of social life, resulting from the several relations which men mutually bear to each other; .... interspersing the whole with remarks, shewing the coincidence between the doctrines of revelation and the dictates of reason in these important points; and lastly, notwithstanding this coincidence, to state the absolute necessity and vast utility of a divine revelation.[22]
Perry Miller has argued persuasively that the Transcendentalists still retained in their characters certain vestiges of New England Puritanism, and that in their reaction against the "pale negations" of Unitarianism, they tapped into the grittier pietistic side of Calvinism in which New England culture had been steeped. The Calvinists, after all, conceived of their religion in part as man's quest to discover his place in the divine scheme and the possibility of spiritual regeneration, and though their view of humanity was pessimistic to a high degree, their pietism could give rise to such early, heretical expressions of inner spirituality as those of the Quakers and Anne Hutchinson. Miller saw that the Unitarians acted as crucial intermediaries between the Calvinists and the Transcendentalists by abandoning the notion of original sin and human imperfectability:
The ecstasy and the vision which Calvinists knew only in the moment of vocation, the passing of which left them agonizingly aware of depravity and sin, could become the permanent joy of those who had put aside the conception of depravity, and the moments between could be filled no longer with self-accusation but with praise and wonder.[23]
For the Transcendentalists, then, the critical realization, or conviction, was that finding God depended on neither orthodox creedalism nor the Unitarians' sensible exercise of virtue, but on one's inner striving toward spiritual communion with the divine spirit. From this wellspring of belief would flow all the rest of their religious philosophy.
Transcendentalism was not a purely native movement, however. The Transcendentalists received inspiration from overseas in the form of English and German romanticism, particularly the literature of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Goethe, and in the post-Kantian idealism of Thomas Carlyle and Victor Cousin. Under the influence of these writers (which was not a determinative influence, but rather an introduction to the cutting edge of Continental philosophy), the Transcendentalists developed their ideas of human "Reason," or what we today would call intuition. For the Transcendentalists, as for the Romantics, subjective intuition was at least as reliable a source of truth as empirical investigation, which underlay both deism and the natural theology of the Unitarians. Kant had written skeptically of the ability of scientific methods to discover the true nature of the universe; now the rebels at Harvard college (the very institution which had exposed them to such modern notions!) would turn the ammuntion against their elders. In an 1833 article in The Christian Examiner entitled simply "Coleridge," Frederic Henry Hedge, once professor of logic at Harvard and now minister in West Cambridge, explained and defended the Romantic/Kantian philosophy, positing a correspondence between internal human reality and external spiritual reality. He wrote:
The method [of Kantian philosophy] is synthetical, proceeding from a given point, the lowest that can be found in our consciousness, and deducing from that point 'the whole world of intelligences, with the whole system of their representations' .... The last step in the process, the keystone of the fabric, is the deduction of time, space, and variety, or, in other words (as time, space, and variety include the elements of all empiric knowledge), the establishing of a coincidence between the facts of ordinary experience and those which we have discovered within ourselves ...[24]
Although written in a highly intellectual style, as many of the Transcendentalist tracts were, Hedge's argument was typical of the movement's philosophical emphasis on non-rational, intuitive feeling. The role of the Continental Romantics in this regard was to provide the sort of intellectual validation we may suppose a fledgling movement of comparative youngsters would want in their rebellion against the Harvard establishment.
For Transcendentalism was entering theological realms which struck the elder generation of Unitarians as heretical apostasy or, at the very least, as ingratitude. The immediate controversy surrounded the question of miracles, or whether God communicated his existence to humanity through miracles as performed by Jesus Christ. The Transcendentalists thought, and declared, that this position alienated humanity from divinity. Emerson leveled the charge forcefully in his scandalous Divinity School Address (1838), asserting that "the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain."[25] The same year, in a bold critique of Harvard professor Andrews Norton's magnum opus The Evidence of the Genuineness of the Four Gospels , Orestes Brownson identified what he regarded as the odious implications of the Unitarian position: "there is no revelation made from God to the human soul; we can know nothing of religion but what is taught us from abroad, by an individual raised up and specially endowed with wisdom from on high to be our instructor."[26] For Brownson and the other Transcendentalists, God displayed his presence in every aspect of the natural world, not just at isolated times. In a sharp rhetorical move, Brownson proceeded to identify the spirituality of the Transcendentalists with liberty and democracy:
...truth lights her torch in the inner temple of every man's soul, whether patrician or plebian, a shepherd or a philosopher, a Croesus or a beggar. It is only on the reality of this inner light, and on the fact, that it is universal, in all men, and in every man, that you can found a democracy, which shall have a firm basis, and which shall be able to survive the storms of human passions.[27]
To Norton, such a rejection of the existence of divine miracles, and the assertion of an intuitive communion with God, amounted to a rejection of Christianity itself. In his reply to the Transcendentalists, "A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity," Norton wrote that their position "strikes at root of faith in Christianity," and he reiterated the "orthodox" Unitarian belief that inner revelation was inherently unreliable and a potential lure away from the truths of religion.
The religion of which they speak, therefore, exists merely, if it exists at all, in undefined and unintelligible feelings, having reference perhaps to certain imaginations, the result of impressions communicated in childhood, or produced by the visible signs of religious belief existing around us, or awakened by the beautiful and magnificent spectacles which nature presents.[28]
Despite its dismissive intent and tone, Norton's blast against Transcendentalism is an excellent recapitulation of their religious philosophy. The crucial difference consisted in the respect accorded to "undefined and unintelligible feelings."
The miracles controversy revealed how far removed the Harvard rebels had grown from their theological upbringing. It opened a window onto the fundamental dispute between the Transcendentalists and the Unitarians, which centered around the relationship between God, nature and humanity. The heresy of the Transcendentalists (for which the early Puritans had hanged people) was to countenance mysticism and pantheism, or the beliefs in the potential of the human mind to commune with God and in a God who is present in all of nature, rather than unequivocally distinct from it. Nevertheless, the Transcendentalists continued to think of themselves as Christians and to articulate their philosophy within a Christian theological framework, although some eventually moved past Christianity (as Emerson did in evolving his idea of an "oversoul") or abandoned organized religion altogether.
While it certainly did not act alone, the increasing gravity of the Transcendentalist movement helped to usher in the now inevitable tide of what came to be labeled “liberalism.” Younger Christians (especially in the Northeast U.S.) were becoming less interested in the letter of the Law and more enthusiastic about civil do-gooding. The growth of organization such as the Student Volunteer Movement helped solidify an ever-centralizing contingent of the American Protestant church; and the work of influential scholars such as Adolph von Harnack seemed to suggest that the best minds in American Christianity were being pulled inexorably left.[29]
Nevertheless, the staunch conservatives within the church would not stand idly by. Rather, another sect of “intellectuals” would fire back at the likes of Harnack, claiming that Jesus’ message certainly did not center around a general reconciliation of Christian culture with the modern world, but instead around a strict set of “fundamentals.” However, it would be the same emotionalism and “backwoods” Christianity decried by the Boston intellectuals that would eventually galvanize the now-marginalized Evangelicals and send them headlong into a whole new revival.
Part Four: Countering the Liberal Shift
As the United States witnessed the dawn of the 20th century, the American Protestant church faced a variety of watershed decisions. To many fearful conservatives (particularly in the South), the advancing tide of liberal sentiments seemed all but destined to overshadow their traditions by reshaping American Christianity into a deeds first/theology second brand of civil religion. And their more liberal brothers and sisters were hardly feeling complacent. With the explosive popularity of the ideas offered by Charles Darwin, the opponents of biblical literalism (and thus, in many cases, ultra-orthodox Christianity) had the intellectual community firmly entrenched on their side of the battle line. Stinging sermons such as Henry Fosdick’s Shall the Fundamentalist Win seemed to adequately dismiss the exclusionist theology of the new (self-named) Fundamentalist sect of Protestant Christianity. It would be, however, a strange synthesis of Old World theology and uniquely American emotionalism that brought stasis (and eventually reversal) to the conflict.
Despite the oft-maligned outward enthusiasm displayed during the great revival meetings of the 19th century, the majority of American in the early 20th century were not Boston intellectuals, but an amalgamation of farmers, West-bound opportunists, and impoverished immigrants searching for work in the booming mill towns of the North and Midwest.[30] That is, while the likes of Adolph von Harnack may have the consensus of the intellectual community (past and present) on his side, a significant portion of the men and women living in the industrial cities near his home couldn’t read what he published. Emotion, however, requires no ability to read or decode high-browed syllogisms. And it was a small church in Los Angeles that would set into motion a new phenomenon that not only dismissed the cold intellectualism of the Northern Christians, but renewed interest in those supernatural occurrences which (seemingly) could not be explained away.
In the Spring of 1906, William Seymour began preaching to the parishioners of the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles. Central to his message was that the gift of “tongues,” or other languages (often indiscernible), was the primary evidence of ones being “filled with the Holy Spirit.” This teaching was met with opposition by many, but an equally significant number gave credence to Seymour’s words and his meetings began to grow in size and zealous intensity. As notable as the numbers drawn by Seymour was the heterogeneous nature of his followers. An April 18, 1906 story by the Los Angeles Times noted that, “Colored people and a sprinkling of whites compose the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howlings of the worshippers who spend hours swaying forth and back in a nerve-racking attitude of prayer and supplication.”[31]
Azusa Street Mission ultimately failed to conquer the racist attitudes of its heyday, and the church splintered off into several (largely homogenous) sects. The influence, however, of the revival born at Azusa Street was felt (quite literally) worldwide. Seymour’s employment of modern means of mass communication played no small role in the exponential spread of what came to be termed “charismatic” Christianity. Seymour’s newsletter was sent to over 50,000 subscribers free-of-charge and was subscribed to by followers as far away as China. In later chapters we’ll see how successful movements (including the Emergent Church) similarly employed mass “advertisement” to spread their respective messages.
The largely emotional appeal of the charismatic movement succeeded in winning droves of converts. The Church of God in Christ (C.O.G.I.C) was born of direct association with Azusa Street, and is today the United States’ largest black Protestant denomination.[32] Emotion alone, however, would not suffice if the tide of liberalism were to be successfully stemmed. Empirical and logical proof still held sway with a large contingent of American Christians, and the more conservative sects of the church had thus far failed to produce a mind that could counter the ideas of liberal scholars with any significant degree of success. The issues were: the Social Gospel, a liberalizing and secularizing trend within Protestantism that tried to weaken the Christian message, making it a merely social and political agenda; the embrace of Darwinism, which seemed to call into question the reliability of Scripture; and the higher criticism of the Bible that originated in Germany. A loosely organized party of ultra-conservative Christians did eventually band together and organize a counterpunch to the more liberal agenda. They published a series of volumes on what they considered to be the indispensable facets of the Christian faith: the “fundamentals” of the faith.
The basic elements of Fundamentalism were formulated almost exactly a century ago at the Presbyterian theological seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, by B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge, among others. What they produced became known as Princeton theology, and it appealed to conservative Protestants who were concerned with the liberalizing trends of the Social Gospel movement, which was gaining steam at about the same time. In 1909 the brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart, whose wealth came from the oil industry, were responsible for underwriting a series of twelve volumes entitled The Fundamentals. There were 64 contributors, including scholars such as James Orr, W. J. Eerdman, H. C. G. Moule, James M. Gray, and Warfield himself, as well as Episcopalian bishops, Presbyterian ministers, Methodist evangelists, and even an Egyptologist. As Edward Dobson, an associate pastor at Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church, summarized the collaboration, "They were certainly not anti-intellectual, snake-handling, cultic, obscurantist fanatics."[33] The preface to the volumes explained their purpose: "In 1909 God moved two Christian laymen to set aside a large sum of money for issuing twelve volumes that would set forth the fundamentals of the Christian faith, and which were to be sent free of charge to ministers of the gospel, missionaries, Sunday school superintendents, and others engaged in aggressive Christian work throughout the English speaking world." Three million copies of the series were distributed. Harry Fosdick, a theological liberal, wrote an article in The Christian Century called "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" He used the title of the books to designate the people he was opposing, and the label he originated became commonly used to designate those who adhered to The Fundamentals. The fundamental doctrines identified in the series can be reduced to five: (I) the inspiration and what the writers call infallibility of Scripture, (2) the deity of Christ (including his virgin birth), (3) the substitutionary atonement of his death, (4) his literal resurrection from the dead, and (5) his literal return at the Second Coming.
While the new Fundamentalist movement moved many volumes of their hard-lined rhetoric, they still lacked the well-roundedness sought after by those who wished to be consistent in their faith without sacrificing their intellectual integrity. Ironically, the community of “higher criticism” based in Germany which many conservatives feared as a key component of the maligned liberalism they so earnestly fought would produce an unlikely savior for their cause.
While not every conservative believed that every letter of Scripture should be taken literally and not every liberal believed the Bible to be completely allegorical, the difference in opinion concerning the importance of Scripture between conservatives and liberals can’t possibly be overstated. In the eyes of conservatives, the mandates of the Bible were being sacrificed on the altar of the “social gospel” which emphasized social do-gooding and not much else. Enter Swiss theologian Karl Barth.
For Barth, modern theology with its assent to science, immanent philosophy, and general culture with its stress on feeling, was marked by indifference to the word of God and to the revelation of God in Jesus, which he thought should be the central concern of theology. In the confrontation between humanity and God, which was Barth’s fundamental concern, the word of God and God’s revelation in Jesus are the only means God has for Self-revelation; Barth argued that people must listen in an attitude of awe, trust, and obedience. For Barth, the question “Is the Bible the Word of God?” is incomplete. Barth stated that the Bible becomes the Word of God to the reader when God chooses to use the Bible as a means of revelation. Thus, the Bible isn’t necessarily inspired, but inspiring. While this new middle-ground offered by Barth still caused many conservatives to flinch, history attests that conservatives owe a Barth a huge debt for essentially “bailing out” the Bible on an intellectual level.[34] And with this bailing out, the stage was set for a new stasis in American Protestant Christianity. In generations to come conservative Christians would recognize the need for appealing to newcomers on intellectual and emotional levels. Likewise, they would adapt to culture and technology with surprising aptitude so that many churches began to resemble concert arenas rather than stately houses of worship.

With our historical groundwork now laid, we can begin to examine more closely the movements and leaders who ushered in what is now termed the Emerging Church. Many (if not most) of these leaders were influenced by “Christian counter-cultures” of the past forty years. And nearly all the important figures dealt to some extent with youth-specialized ministry. Again, in each of these precursors to the Emergent Church we will observe how shifts in popular culture and church culture are inexorably tied, and how this association makes this new “emergence” of post-modern congregations a predictable phenomenon.
First let us look at some of the immediate precursors to the Emergent Church. Our study shall be far less scrutinizing than our above trek through American Church history, but is nonetheless a necessary step if we are to have a proper conceptual context for our discussion.
Book Two: Youth and the Spiritual Counter Culture of the Late 20th Century
Part One: The move towards youth specialization
Dean Borgman, in The Complete Book of Youth Ministry (p. 62), wrote that modern American youth ministry was born out of the “social evolution of modern adolescence and the view of that development taken by church and society.” By that, he meant that “adolescence” is a modern western phenomenon and youth ministry is the church’s response to this phenomenon. So how did youth ministry begin? As institutions, youth ministries originated in the 19th century. When young people began to migrate to cities during the Industrial Revolution, some Protestant leaders began to worry about the effects of urbanization on Christian young people. The YMCA and YWCA movements were the earliest answers to that worry, and the Ys quickly spawned dozens of other organizations, such as Christian Endeavor, the Epworth League, and many more.youth ministries were what historian Joseph Kett has called “purity” programs. That is, they sought to keep young people untainted by worldly influences, which meant essentially avoiding taverns, brothels, and Christians of different denominations, ethnicities, and (sometimes) genders. Most early youth ministry programs were intended to be purer ecclesiastical equivalents of armies and navies—ways to marshal and contain the energies of young people. As any contemporary youth minister could have predicted, of course, preserving purity proved difficult to accomplish with a voluntary program. Young Christians under the influence of faith simply weren’t subject to the kind of regimentation the military can impose. Believers found their ways to the worst neighborhoods in the city and somehow still remained Christians. Sometimes, out of their experiences in the cities, they even changed their traditions and broke down some of the boundaries of gender, ethnicity, and creed that were dividing other Christians. The broad sweep of youth ministry history thus conveys that the faith of young people can’t be programmed. Likewise, the reader will note that we have revisited one of the driving ideas in our discussion, i.e., that shifts in church methodology nearly always mirror some similar shift in society-at-large. Just as the seeds for the nascent civil rights movement were being planted, a similar incorporation of colors, creeds, and ethnicities was occurring within the walls of American Christianity. While the casual observer may say, “Look, here is a revolutionary shift in ideas,” the more careful student of history will see the cyclical, predictable patterns with which the church acts in regards to its immediate social/cultural context.
By the mid-20th century, several Protestant organizations specializing in youth ministry were thriving in nearly every corner of the U.S. While this helped move the church as a whole towards an ecclesiastical restructuring which created jobs for “Youth Pastors” and other similarly named positions, it likewise (intentionally or not) sparked a larger spiritual “awakening” of sorts. That is, the younger generation in America has historically been the arbiter of what is “in” in terms of popular culture. And when spirituality was incorporated into the lives and minds of a significant portion of American youth, a broader (albeit less centralized) trend was inevitable.
Part Two: Spirituality and Counter-culture
I should establish that in speaking of counter-culture I will occasionally employ “pop-culture” as a synonym. While this seems a bit contradictory, close examination reveals that within the context of young adults (18-30 years of age) the most popular things can often be those which are initially labeled as “counter culture” (cf. clothing trends, hairstyles, music, political affiliations, etc).
As the 1960s dawned and “baby-boomers” blossomed into adulthood, the suburban ideals of the older generation began to appear shallow and hypocritical among a significant portion of young people. Racial and sexual inequality along with an unjust war made the quasi-Puritanical values of suburban America sound like an insult to anyone’s intelligence. Moreover, the seemingly purely material goals these teenagers and 20-somethings were supposed to aspire to seemed to offer little in the way of reconciliation and peacemaking. Many saw the Christian church as just another cog in the “man’s” machine, and thus shed themselves of any religious association. However, an equally important percentage judged that the problem was not within the teachings of Jesus, but the shortcomings of his followers. Many of these Christian young people did leave the institution of the church, but retained the spiritual thirst and curiosity. Some found peace in a synthesis of their beliefs with the Eastern thought that was gaining popularity at an exponential rate within the Western world (thanks in no small part to the endorsement of rock groups like the Beatles). And still some sought out a way in which to maintain the “purity” of the Christian faith while also shrugging off the oppressiveness and hypocrisy of the ecclesiastical establishment.
By the late-1960's, the youth counter-culture had reached its peak. Drug use flourished,"hippies" were the center of the media's attention, and most striking of all, significant numbers of these youth were becoming Christians. Onlookers knew these young people by various names: "Jesus Freaks," "Jesus People," and "Street Christians." A large proportion of these youthful evangelists for Jesus were only a short while removed from drugs, "free love," and alienation from "straight society." They spoke of a "Jesus Revolution" and believed that the end-times were near (Enroth:12).
Most adhered to the aforementioned "fundamentals of the faith," doctrines outlining a faith of biblical inerrancy, and affirmed fundamental Christian views. On the whole, the primary focus of the Movement centered on salvation through an "experience of faith in Jesus Christ." But there were other elements that made this movement difficult for the uninitiated to grasp including the wide-spread influence of Pentecostalism, speaking in tongues, and "second blessing" baptisms. Although the "Jesus Movement" was not entirely self-conscious as a movement, they felt as though they were participants in a genuine awakening, comparing themselves to the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century.
It is difficult to trace the beginnings of the movement as the "Jesus People" were not a centralized front but, rather, many individual groups, often geographically isolated from the others. Most scholars point to the 1967 opening of the First Street Christianity locus, "The Living Room" in southern California, as the beginning of evangelical outreach to the youth counter-culture. This outreach of countercultural-oriented missionary groups spread quickly. By 1971, the National Institute of Health estimated over three thousand communal groups in the U.S., and over 800 were deemed to be part of the Jesus People Movement. By embracing the countercultural phenomena of communal living, these groups were able to capture the sentiments of "anti-establishment" while still adhering to Christian traditions.
This is the context in which the organization now known as "Jesus People USA" was born. Jon Trott, a long-time member, editor of Cornerstone magazine, and resident historian of the group traces the beginning to early 1971. Jim and Sue Palosaari, with the help of Linda Meissner -- founder of Seattle-based the "Jesus People Army" traveled to the midwest searching for a location to start a Jesus ministry. Finding Milwaukee hospitable, the couple, launched a ministry with an initial "march" through Milwaukee. From this initial effort, they gained 25 members and named themselves "Jesus People Milwaukee" (JPM). The group attracted members of the counter-culture: young persons who were on drugs, outcasts, runaways, and gays -- all people who "needed Jesus."
In October 1971, John Wiley Herrin, a southern pastor with a history of alcohol abuse and marital infidelity, visited JPM with his wife and children. The family was attracted to the communal lifestyle, dedicating "your entire life, every aspect, to following Jesus Christ," and shortly thereafter, joined the group. By November 1971, JPM numbered 100. Three months later, the group boasted a following of nearly 200 members.
By April 1972, JPM splintered off into several groups in order to evangelize in Europe. Herrin formed a small group, consisting of a "Jesus Rock" band, the "Resurrection," and thirty others to "share the gospel," dubbing themselves the Jesus People USA (JPUSA). Traveling in an old bus and a few cars throughout the summer of 1971, they became one foci of media attention -- long-haired, hippy evangelists who had set out to "evangelize the United States." In late 1971 the group left the "home base" behind in Milwaukee and traveled south to Gainsville, Florida, where musical performances were made for the college crowd at the University of Florida at Gainsville. They found little positive response in Gainsville, and felt they were also being confused with another highly publicized group, the “Children of God.” Discouraged by their lack of success, the group returned to Duluth, Minnesota in hopes of forming a permanent community. Shortly thereafter, they felt “burdened by the need of the city,” and relocated in Chicago, Illinois. Here, they found hospitable residence in the local Faith Tabernacle Church.
By 1975, JPUSA recognized their need for a permanent residence and, after much consideration, purchased a six-flat residence at 4431-33 Paulina Street. Lofts were built, and the large rooms were converted to men’s and women’s dorms, some housing as many as 20 people.
During this time, JPUSA established Cornerstone magazine, which would become a well-respected national religious publication. The group also sought more stable finances than could be provided for by charity or money pooling, and so established several small companies, focusing on home repairs, painting, roofing, and carpentry, known as the “tent-making ministries.”
In 1978, JPUSA merged with a parallel, black urban Christian communal group, settling into a former hotel found in a run-down neighborhood off Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. As the early 1980’s began, the members made attempts to become more socially involved, a dinner program was started, and homeless sheltering increased. In order to increase outreach on a larger scale, the first Cornerstone Festival, a Woodstock-type music festival, was planned for June of 1984. After witnessing the success of the festival, it was made an annual event.
Part Three: The “Birth” and Essence of the Emerging Church
I would invite the reader at this point to stop and revisit the section of this paper entitled “Prelude” so that he or she may reacquaint themselves with some of the fundamental traits of the Emerging Church already discussed herein. This sub-chapter proposes to discuss the “birth” of the Emerging movement. However, we’ve already seen how pinpointing the birth of any decentralized movement (especially the one presently discussed) is all but futile. Moreover, if we consider the aforementioned “rainforest” illustration, we see that the Emerging church views itself more as an evolving continuation of other movements. Nevertheless, for the sake of the reader who simply must have concrete historical context, we shall consider discussion of “emerging” or “emergent” churches to be contained within 1990-present Western Christian churches. Now that we have a bare-bones idea concerning the traits of the Emerging Church, and a thorough (though certainly not exhaustive) picture of the culture from which it emerged, we can begin to discuss in more detail the specific history of this contemporary Christian community.
First, the choice of the word “emerging” (or often “emergent”) should be explored. It is widely agreed upon that Christian thinker Brian McLaren first coined the term while working with a ministry called Young Leader Networks. McLaren recalls the logic behind the naming thusly:
Some time later my friend Stephen Freed called with added meaning for the name. Stephen…spends a lot of time on airplanes, and on a recent flight met an expert in forestry. His specialty was rainforest ecology, specifically emergents—small saplings that grow up in the shadow of the mature forest canopy…They seem stunted by the mature trees, but in truth they are waiting. Whenever one of the mature trees dies, the emergents…soar up and fill the gap…”[35]
The metaphor is rather transparent: the leading figures in the Emerging community choose not to see this newest manifestation of the Christian faith as a revolutionary “improvement;” but rather as something that is (more than anything else) new. It did not arise of its own accord, but was nurtured, and yes, even spawned from the various and sundry forms of life in its midst.
Of course this sunny point of view is not without opposition. Emergents have met with their share of opposition, both within and outside of the Church. Most often, the label of “pluralistic relativism” is the chosen epithet of scholars wishing to dismiss the Emerging Church movement. Ken Wilber has this to say:
It claims that all truth is culturally situated (except its own truth, which is true for all cultures); it claims there are no transcendental truths (except its own pronouncements, which transcend specific contexts); it claims that all hierarchies or value rankings are oppressive and marginalizing (except its own value rankings, which is superior to alternatives); it claimed that there are no universal truths (except its own pluralism, which is universally true for all people).[36]
Members of the Emerging Church have countered, saying that while they certainly don’t hold to such a no-holds-barred universalism, they do acknowledge that past formulations may have been limited or distorted. The emergent scholar who has probably lent the most to consolidating the “fundamentals” of the Emerging Church is the aforementioned Mr. McLaren. He has proposed what he calls a “generous orthodoxy” as a means for formulating some approximation of what it is exactly that emergents hold to. In helping others discern between relativism and the “generous orthodoxy” McLaren holds to, he offers these thoughts:
…nearly all orthodoxies of Christian history have shown a pervasive disdain for other religions of the world…A generous orthodoxy…,while never pitching its tent in the valley of relativism, nevertheless seeks to see members of other religions and non-religions not as enemies but as beloved neighbors…It seeks to remove splinters from the eyes of other religions only after removing its own planks…[37]
While the inclusiveness of its doctrine may spark disdain among the Emerging Church’s opponents, its members’ worship is still markedly Christ-centered. One will struggle to find the traditional hymnal, organ, or even (at times) church building; but the lyrics being sung, sermons preaches, and evangelism methodology taught still centers around a Christ-centered world. Nevertheless, the absence of so many of Christendom’s trappings has raised the eyebrows (and invoked the scorn) of more than one Christian writer. While it is certainly a matter of importance, this writer cannot help but chuckle at the remarkably short memory of many Christian nay-sayers. The Bible’s translation into English, the inclusion of musical instruments in worship, lay people preaching—all of these (and so many more) were at one time thought of as scandalous, and are now everyday elements of nearly every Christian community.
Louie Giglio’s “Passion” movement is, without a doubt, the quintessential manifestation of an “emerging” style of Christian worship. The mid-20th century had already witnessed popular music artists incorporating gospel elements into their music, often with commercial success. However, never had any one group or individual invested the money or time needed to produce a “Woodstock”-like event that centered around Christian worship.[38] It wasn’t until 1995, when a Texan pastor named Louie Giglio began to organize with some other youth leaders in his area that the seeds for such an event came into being. According to Giglio’s website:
On January 1, 1997, two thousand college students converged on Austin, TX, to seek God for a radical change in their lives and their world. It was during these four days that the vision for the 268 Generation was unleashed. Based on Isaiah 26:8, God was, and still is, calling out a generation of students dedicated to saying "Yes Lord," responding fully to Him and His purposes among the nations. The following year, over 5,000 students attended Passion '98 and in 1999, 11,500 students filled the Fort Worth Convention Center for four days of worship and renewal as a part of Passion '99. They came to Fort Worth from six continents to reaffirm their desire to live for His renown. Students were challenged by Bill Bright, John Piper, Louie Giglio, Gregg Matte, Voddie Baucham, Beth Moore and others as they extended the challenge to live wholeheartedly for the glory of Christ.
Thus the mammoth “Passion” movement was born. Fueled by its gigantic worship meetings, Passion includes evangelism training, weekend workshops for youth leaders, and various other resources and events which center (mostly) around reaching young adults. While Giglio doesn’t formally associate himself with any denomination, the stunning diversity which comprises his staff (ranging from ultra-reformed John Piper to several “leftist” worship leaders) certainly harkens to the inclusiveness we have already attributed to the emergent movement. And while “Passion” can’t be described as “decentralized,” (it’s a multi-million dollar empire whose publishing rights alone are worth a fortune), it has spawned countless copycat groups within innumerable sects of the Christian faith.
Overall, what Emergents are trying (in my opinion) to make clear is that they believe there is something above and beyond the current alternatives of modern fundamentalism and pluralistic relativism. This “above and beyond,” they believe, is the way of Jesus: it integrates what has gone before so that something new can emerge. It is, they believe, what is meant by the “kingdom of God,” a reality into which the Church has been emerging through the centuries which is bigger than whatever we generally mean by “Christianity” but at the same time is what “generously orthodox” Christianity is truly all about.
Conclusion:
The reader may find themselves stunned to have just read the word “conclusion” at the head of this paragraph. How, one asks, after so much discussion about the events leading up to this phenomenon of “emerging” churches have we spent so little time discussing Emergents themselves? I invite the reader to once again revisit our rainforest metaphor concerning the Emerging Church. The rainforest is full of centuries-old trees. These trees are full of history and wonderful stories. And though they are deeply rooted in the past, it is still their image which the forest most strongly bears. The nascent “tree” of the Emerging Church has only begun to tell its story. Many of its leaders and founders are not yet Senior Citizens. Moreover, because the Emerging Church (and, as previously discussed, every movement) is but a product of all that has come before, our discussion of Church history was, in fact, an analysis of the Emerging Church’s “DNA”—if the reader will allow the analogy.
And, it is because of its undeniable link to the past that the Emerging Church will likewise find itself mentioned among the watershed moments in the Christian church. Far from being a “flash-in-the-pan” anomaly of postmodern religious thought, the Emerging Church is the inevitable offspring of all the strivings, failings, successes, misapprehensions, and glorious epiphanies endured by the Christian church to date. Even if this writer’s words are insufficient to convince anyone of this reality, the testimony of history doubtless will.

[1]
[2] Wikipedia, 2004
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6] The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2004.

[7] Ibid
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11] Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, p. 222.
[12] From the foreword to Donald Mathews, Religion in the Old South, p. x.
[13] William McLoughlin, The American Evangelicals, p. 47.
[14] Mathews, Religion in the Old South, p. 47.
[15] McLoughlin, The American Evangelicals, p. 87.
[16] Ibid, p. 90
[17] As William McLoughlin put it, the Calvinists had to "concede that God was benevolent and not wrathful, merciful not stern, reasonable not mysterious ... that man was active not passive in his salvation, that grace was not arbitrarily or capriciously dispensed like the royal prerogative of a sovereign but offered freely to all men as the gift of a loving Father to his children" (The American Evangelicals, p. 4).

[18] Ibid, p. 82
[19] A Generous Orthodoxy
[20] Channing,
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
[28]
[29] Harnack, What is Christianity? (1900)
[30]
[31] Frank Bartleman, Azusa Street (South Plainfield, N.J.: Bridge Publishing, 1980), xviii.
[32]
[33]
[34]
[35]
[36] A Theory of Everything (Boston: Shambala, 2001), p.37
[37]
[38] The reader will recall the discussion of the “Cornerstone” music festival as resembling Woodstock. However, Cornerstone was (and still is) more centered around performance rather than corporate worship.

Every five years or so...

2005-03-21T15:41:00.000-05:00

Do you ever have one of those moments where you read an old journal entry, or hear an old favorite song, and you're reminded of how that problems that plagued you 2, 5, or 10 years ago are the same things tripping you up now?

Yeah, me too.

"Every five years or so I look back on my life and I have a good laugh."

"The next time I fall, I'm gonna have to recall, it isn't love...it's only something new."

Both of those lines are from Indigo Girls songs, and both caused me to pause today and just laugh at how my life since adolescence has been like a spiral-shaped obstacle course. Every time I fancy myself as having grown up, I realize that the problems of 10 years ago are still here, they're just more complicated now.

I know this is vague. I guess I kind of want it that way. While there are specific things in my life that have illicited this post, it's more of the general cycle of fuck-ups that cause the deepest reflection.

Sometimes, I think I actually enjoy feeling bad. Not in the weird, unhealthy way. Actually, I'm not sure in what "way" I'm talking about. But sometimes, when you just get so comprehensively immersed in despondency, it's almost like being drunk. You know? It's like people like Elliot Smith who wrote such ridiculously beautiful music: how many of his songs are just unrelentingly sad? And you can tell he wasn't just bullshiting...he was really feeling like that.

I guess that's one of the silver linings in all of this: so many "negative" (that's not the best word choice, but it works alright here) human emotions can fuel some of the most beautiful human creativity. I think I mentioned this in a previous entry about Debussy, and how so many songs are described as being "beautiful" and "sad" at the same time. Or how paintings like Raft of the Medussa are at once horrifying and beautiful. Maybe all of our emotions and collective human expereinces are inexorably woven together at some point, and that's why we can create pietas for decoration or somehow feel good after reading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." I don't know. I'm probably just full of shit.

"Pictures of Me"

by:

Elliot Smith

start, stop and start

stupid acting smart

flirting with the flicks

you say it's just for kicks

you'll be the victim of your own dirty tricks

you got yourself to tease and displease

doors swinging wide

you walked in to hide

looking at your feet

failure's complete

saw you and me on the coin-op tv

frozen in fear every time we appear

I'm not surprised at all and really, why should I be

see nothing wrong, see nothing wrong

so sick and tired of all these pictures of me

completely wrong, totally wrong

go walking by

here comes another guy

jailer who sells

personal hells

who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees

everybody's dying just to get the disease

I'm not surprised at all and really, why should I be

see nothing wrong, see nothing wrong

so sick and tired of all these pictures of me

completely wrong, totally wrong

I'm not surprised at all and really, why should I be

see nothing wrong, see nothing wrong

so sick and tired of all these pictures of me

oh everybody's dying just to get the disease

everybody's dying just to get the disease

De Profundis

2005-03-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

So in case you haven't guessed, the thesis deadline got pushed back (again), and I'm still mired down in the sticky, opaque muck that is my utterly disorganized life.

I mean, I'll still finish with time to spare, but sometimes I wonder why I can't just sit down and get it done. I never (never) had trouble getting papers done in college. After chewing on this quandry for a while, I think I've deduced at least one reason:

There's probably a more eloquent way to say this, but I've just lost interest. I'm not as sure about things I was really sure about when I started grad. school, and I'm not even sure that my choice of a career path is what I really want to do. Thus, the thesis has kind of gone from something that I was really excited about and interested in to a burden that I keep delaying.

I mean, I'm still pretty sure that I want to teach...and the idea of doing it somewhere that isn't the States is still appealling. But as the last several months have progressed, I keep finding more and more reasons to stick around. Honestly, the biggest thing motivating me to finish my school work right now is the fact that I've sunk several thousand dollars into getting the letters M.A. behind my name, and I'd feel like a putz the rest of my life if I just bailed.

Just today I got an email from Bill Webb, the headmaster of a school in Indonesia that I've been corresponding with for some time now. He was asking if I was still interested in being a part of their '05-'06 team, and I said yes. Because I am interested, I'm just not sure. So I'm going to fill out the paperwork to apply, and then we'll see where stuff goes. If I did it, I'd have to leave the States by August, so I'd either just miss or just catch the arrival of my first niece. I'm not exactly on the fast-track to starting a family over here, so I've been eager for my sister to start having kids so that I can be that uncle that everyone loves because he lets you do anything and is always giving you stuff that your parents won't buy you.

And if I were really honest, I'd admit that leaving the country for a job where I don't know anyone doesn't exactly get me stoked. Sure, new places are exciting, and I love Indonesia and being able to surf or waterfall-hike whenever I want. But the idea of doing it alone isn't as appealling as it used to be.

I laugh sometimes when I think about the jame$ everyone knew in undergrad. I was often overheard saying, "Man, you know what I think?* I think that until you can honestly look God in the face--so to speak--and say 'You're all I need', then you're not even ready for a realtionship." It's funny how clear-cut the world is when you're 19 and in a completely sheltered religious school, and how completely impossible it is to decipher when you're older.

*yes, I did actually talk like this

But then as soon as I'm done laughing at myself, I usually get despondent, because I realize that my attitude towards women and dating in college precipitated my missing out on some really great opportunities with some incredible women. It's always easier to abstain than to constantly second-guess whether or not this girl's "the one" (whatever the f*ck "the one" means) or whether God wants you in a relationship or if you even want to be in a relationship and you're not just doing this to not be lonely. If there's such a thing as "emotional laziness," then that's what I had for 4 years of college and most of my early 20s. I.E., you're so scared of being hurt or being wrong or somehow not choosing the perfect situation that you're just socially paralyzed.

Man, how did I get on that? Oh yeah, uncertainty...

Anyway, this is getting long-winded, and I'm pretty much just saying the same thing over and over. I guess I just wanted to offer a little background on my relative silence the last couple of months, and why no one has glimpsed my finished thesis. I was partly inspired to pen this when on my way to school today my iPod played "Evaporated" by Ben Folds Five and I realized that this song is the most accurate artisitc depiction of my life to date. Here it is if you're not familiar. Peace.

Evaporated
Ben Folds Five(Whatever & Ever Amen)

What I've kept with me
And what I've thrown away
And where the hell I've ended up
On this glary random day
Were the things I really cared about
Just left along the way
For being too pent up and proud
Woke up way too late
Feeling hung over and old
And the sun was shining bright
And I walked barefoot down the road
Started thinking about my old man
It seems that all men
Wanna get into a car and go
Anywhere
Here I stand--sad & free
I can't cry
and I can't see
What I've done
God...What have I done
So don't you know I'm numb, man
No I don't feel a thing at all
Cause its all smiles & business
these days that I am indifferent to the laws
I've faith that there's a soul whose leading me around
I wonder if she knows which way I stand
...I poured my heart out
I poured my heart out
it evaporated...see?
Blind man on a canyon's edge of a Panoramic scene
Or maybe I'm a kite that's flying high & random
Dangling a string
Or slumped over in a vacant room
Head on a stranger's knee
I'm sure back home they think I've lost my mind.

T - 5 days

2005-01-26T17:41:00.000-05:00

After well over a year of writing (and not writing, and researching, and goofing off), the mammoth burden that is my Master's thesis is coming to a close. I have formally announced this coming Tuesday as the "due" date to my advisor. Really, I think if I'd had an actual "due" date from the get-go I'd have finished a lot faster. I'm not good without structure, i.e., I have little if any self-discipline.

It's coming in at just over 100 pages, so it's easily the longest thing I've ever written. The final product will likely roll off the presses some time this coming weekend, so watch this blog closely, since I'll probably post it here before I print out any physical copies.

Now on to comprehensives!!!

Tyranny and W

2005-01-22T01:38:00.000-05:00

The following post also appears in likearadio's community blog, "born again liberal"...

Hey y'all. Jame$ here:

I realize this isn't a political blog per se; however, since it does have to do with faith, and since faith has to do with every aspect of our lives, I feel that these thoughts are appropriate in this venue.

I read a little bit of what W had to say in his second inaugural address. I've made it plain to most people I know that I'm not much of a Bush fan, but I'm far from a Michael Moore crony, so I guess I fall somewhere in the middle off all the political hub-bub of the past several months. One thing I do unequivocally condemn in the whole mess in Iraq. In fact, I pretty much don't support armed conflict in general.

So when George told me in his speech today that our main goal is to rid the world of tyranny, I was a little confused. If he means that it's a good and noble thing to work towards a world where no one is oppressed because of who they are or what they believe or how much (or little) they have, then yes, I agree with him. Nevertheless, I can't help but notice that while we're "spreading democracy" into Iraq, we're also still buddy-buddy with Saudia Arabia. Can anyone point out a better example of a bass-akwards, theocratic, un-democratic tyranny than Saudia Arabia? What 21st century nation chops off people's heads with a sword in public?

If you're a Christian, then chances are you give some credence to the Bible. Even if you're like me and believe that a large part of the Old Testament is allegorical, you still believe that the lessons the Bible teaches are true. And last I checked, one of the big lessons goes something like this: "Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God (Micah 6)" And man, do I ever fail in those aspects every day. Please don't hear me saying that I'm living the exemplary Christain life, and that W should look to me for guidance. But holy crap, how can this man look at himself in the mirror everyday, knowing that in the same speech he insisted that we (as Americans) look towards the Almighty for guidance, while also suggesting that our current path of staying thick-as-theives with the most archaic government in the world is part of how we are to defeat "tyranny?"

As the richest nation in the world, we have so many resources that can do so much good. And in the wake of a tragedy like what just went down in SE Asia, we can see how there is never a lack for spreading those resources. And yet, while we did send around $350 million to the grief-stricken areas in Asia, we are spending countless billions fighting for an unjust cause that no one really understands. On top of that, we are spending more on finding WMDs (that never existed) than we are on protecting our own citizens from the f'ng flu.

Sorry, I get carried away sometimes.

I guess what I'm saying is this: If W wants to spread the good news of 1.) Jesus Christ and 2.) Western Democracy at the same time, then maybe instead of daring anyone to defy us under the threat of invasion, we should look at all the hurt and destruction that exists prior to 9/11 and say, "Wow, we have so much...we can certainly spare a little to ease the suffering in _____ "

Maybe that's just me, but I have a much easier time seeing Jesus feeding a Sumatran who just lost his house in a flood than I have seeing him firing a laser-guided missle into a house full of kids.

So that could've gone better...

2005-01-11T13:28:00.000-05:00

It looked to be a promising Tuesday: 1st day of school (I love school), and my only class is this required language class that should be a breeze. Also, I only have to work 3 hrs. tonight, so I'll have time to catch up with my best friend who has been in Texas for 2 weeks.

However, while I'm eating lunch, my tooth hits something hard and proceeds to break in freaking half! Yeah. It sucked. I have this weird genetic condition where I have really weak enamel, but supposedly I had that taken care of about 5 years ago when my dentist put some sort of sealant on my teeth. Oh well. Might want to rethink the effectiveness of that method.

As much as I fancy myself to be largely detached from superficial concerns, I am--deep down--a pretty vain person. And it's not like I'm working with much. I mean, I have a positive self-image, but I know GQ's not going to be beating down the door anytime soon. So when one of my 2 front teeth (oh yeah, it wasn't a molar or anything...it was right up front) is now half gone...well, I'll be keeping my talking to a minimum today in class.

So now I'll be skipping work tonight to go down to my dentist in Sumter (my hometown) and get this crap fixed. Needless to say I don't have the money to pay for it, so ma' and pa' will once again be bailing me out. For someone who has a deep-seated guilt complex as it is, things like this don't help.

Nevertheless, chin up. I have, in the last several days, made a lot of progress towards the completion of the thesis, finally asked that girl from my old job out, and won an unprecedented two straight games of poker against my regular partners. Maybe I'm a bad Christian, and God's trying to get my attention by wrecking my smile. Yeah. That's GOT to be it.

Backwater: a rant

2005-01-06T22:45:00.000-05:00

Unless you've been in hibernation for the last few weeks, you know that the other side of the world has recently been beset by crushing catastrophe, incomparable to most any human tragedy in recent memory. I have dear friends living/working in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Thailand--so this "act of God" hit especially close to home for me. I feel silly saying that since I'm writing this from a large, warm house where I have plenty of food and clean water. Nevertheless, I find myself in bewildered awe in terms of how to come to grips with 1.) the fact that something like this happened, and 2.) how to react.

The news is aflurry with stories of Western do-gooders who are emptying their pockets in an attempt to do what they can to ease the suffering. And good for them. I am not writing this in an attempt to nay-say any of the charity that has been displayed by many 1st world countries.

I mentioned that I have good friends in Indonesia. Some of you know that I spent a bit of time there back in 2000, and that I plan on eventually returning. Most of my friends are in Western Papua (1000s of miles away from the epicenter, so they didn't feel a thing), but some are in Java, and a few are on Sumatra, where all the major shit went down. One of the friends who lives in Western Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) wrote me something that went like this: "The region of Acheh has been resistant to the Gospel for a long time...maybe this will ease the rigidity of their staunchness." I love my friend dearly, but...

Are you fucking serious ?

Before anyone starts quoting Genesis 1-11 or citing Old Testament prophets, let me establish that 1.) Yes, I do believe God punishes evil, but 2.) I believe much of the Old Testament is to be taken allegorically, and that it's up to God (not us) to arbitrate good and evil.

No matter what kind of Christian you consider youself (no matter what kind of person you consider yourself), there is no defintion of Christianity that even suggests that the correct reaction to the tragedy in SE Asia is anything but blind, selfless compassion and charity. Even if you firmly believe that the residents of Acech "got what was coming to them" because they are mostly Muslims, keep it to yourself. It's been several years now since I graduated from Bible College, but if I recall correctly, Jesus didn't tell a story about a Samaritan who passed a half-dead Jew on the road and said, "Well, you had it coming, Jew." Seems to me that the Samritan went out of his way to not only see that that the Jew got to safety, but was completly cared for and comfortable in his recovery. Not once does the issue of religion come up in that story. In fact, Jesus makes the character of the "bad" religion the hero.

Whether it's Billy Graham or Mother Teresa or Jerry Falwell, there is not one person--much less one Christian--on this planet who is justified in even hinting that the horrible demise of over 160,000 people (who weren't even close to being all Muslim, I might add) is somehow God's retributive justice in action. May any person who has done so feel the deep, painful shame that is all theirs. I would rather have the friendship of a just Muslim than that of a shallow, self-righteous "Christian" any day.

There are many other citations I could make as to why such horrible implications are inherently false. However, I feel as though the majority of the people who read this will agree with what I've said so far, so I'm going to save myself a few blood pressure points and cut this short.

Love your neighbour. The rest is details.

the worst year of my life

2004-12-19T01:44:00.000-05:00

I recently posted on the Orchard concerning the various misadventures I've negotiated in the mast 11.75 months or so. After an abbreviated run-down of this year's happenings, I concluded that 2004 was/is the single worst year of my short 26 years on this lump of clay. I alluded to a couple of things on there--the Korea trip and losing a server job--as particulary bad, so I guess I'll give some minimal background before I continue...

Korea:

Around April 2004 (or so), I discovered what seemed to be an really great path towards 1.) getting ESL training, 2.) travelling for cheap, and 3.) making some scratch for my student loans. So, I took a job with SWATON (an ESL franchise in Korea), and on May 1st I was on a plane. I got there, and found out that pretty much every page of the contract I'd signed had changed...every page but the one I signed. I was given no training, no clear idea of what my pay would be, and no real communication regarding the specifics of my job. Things went from bad to worse, and eventually I just decided that I wasn't under any obligation to be miserable for these people. So, I left. Thing is, I left without telling anyone, and technically I broke civil contract (even though they had already violated every aspect of said contract). Thus, I just barely made it out of Seoul before my name was on an arrest warrant. I could never go back to South Korea again, and I found myself back home, with no job, no housing, and no prospects...

...yeah, it sucked.

Server thing:

The server thing is a few months later, when the best (yes, literally the best) restaraunt in Columbia called me (my best friend's wife manages there) and offered me a job. I jumped at it, quit my server job I had at the time, went and loved life for about 3 weeks, and then was let go with no warning whatsoever. I have never been fired--ever. I cannot verbally express how like a freaking Mack truck hitting me in the face this termination was to me. Once again, I am having to work for dad to pay the bills...paying rent for a house in Columbia, but living w/ my parents in Sumter...

...yeah, this too sucked.

It was a few days after the firing occurred that I started this blog. I really didn't even like the idea of a blog at all. It seemed (and still seems, really) like a rather vain exercise. But I've been a vain person for a while, so why not embrace it, eh?

** side note: a shiny nickel goes to anyone who can tell me where my blog title comes from...WITHOUT using Google. **

So, all that to say that upon reflection, I've considered this to be a pretty awful year in just about every respect. And then the other day...

...I was speaking with a corporate tool (we'll call him "Bob"...not his real name) who comes and visits our store (I sell wine) every now and then. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he was once a good guy, but an M.B.A pretty much makes a person unlikable for me. It's not that the MBA makes you stupid...it's just that an MBA gets you hired into positions that you have no business being in w/o actual *experience* at what you're dealing with (call me crazy). Anyhoo, Bob was on one of his canned lectures about how much we suck and how much his way of doing things rules (you laugh, but I swear that's what it comes out as), when at one point he said, "There's nothing worse than looking for "x" (it doesn't really matter what "x" is...you'll get it), and not finding...well, I guess there are some things worse." And then jame$ (being the diplomatic person I am) just starts laughing and says, "Yeah, I suppose things like AIDS, famine, and poverty kinda rank up there as well." I stopped and realized that I'd just been a total smart-ass to a guy who can fire me for any reason he wants. I waited, and he just laughed with me, and we kinda had an awkward parting.

But you know, it got me thinking. Even if this is the "worst" year of my life somehow, is it really bad in comparison with what my life could be?

Go ahead. Click to another page. If you've guessed that this is going to be another sermon on how we Americans have it made and how 90% of the world lives in unthinkable poverty, then yes, you're right. But seriously, how can we lose perspective so easily. I suppose we're emotional beings, and so we're apt to abandon pure reason/logic at some point in weighing out how bad things really are. When I lose a job or get snubbed by a girl or get cut off in traffic, it seems bad, and maybe it's unreasonable for me to expect myself (and everyone else) to stop and thank God that I'm not in Zambia with a life expectancy and 33 yrs. and dozens of friends dead from AIDS. But what's worse is that I've actually lived with brothers and sisters who dig through trash cans for every meal. I've spent nights in slums that would make most Westerners crap their pants if they even saw a picture of it. I've seen first-hand all these horrible things that God's children (aka humanity-at-large) endure just to see another day of life filled with the same hardships, and yet I still manage to make my life seem like it's hard or something.

I think if I die tommorow (though hopefully I won't) with $60,000 in school debt, a job that pays me barely more than what I made at age 19, and no woman to share my life with, then I've still had a damn good run at it. That kind of realization can be dangerous in that it can lead to an overall apathy/complacency about living. However, I think it motivates me to live more selflessly. To try and make this a better place to live for the majority of the world...regardless of whether or not my life seems shitty. All that Jesus stuff I studied in college just seems to make more sense in that framework.

If you're looking for a sentimental wrap-up, sorry. This year was still hard...and certain things are still being dealt with. However, I can say confidently that while this may have been my worst year, this is far from the worst life a person could ask for.

Taft, Sideways, et cetera

2004-12-14T01:54:00.000-05:00

hey

It's been about a month-long silence here in the blog, so I figured I'd make a go at a rapid-fire update of sorts.

I spent this past weekend in the chilly confines of the Midwest. Whatever discomfort the climate induced, however, was more than offset by the mind-melting display that was OtR's Taft show. It was my first show with K+L, and I couldn't imagine a better way to lose my OtR virginity.

The show was only half the fun. I was excited to meet people, but I had no idea how much fun I'd have with them. One of the definitive highlights involved me riding in the passenger seat of my car while three beloved Apples rode in the back (my friend Craig was driving). I randomly selected songs from my iPod (my iPod plays through my car radio) to play, and nearly every one was a consensus favorite, which thus led to impromptu in-car karaoke. The sheer glory of it all nearly caused a massive wreck. This, however, was a mere precursor to the unimaginable ecstasy that awaited us at Jaimi's Karaoke. I have never been with a group of people who knew how to pick karaoke songs better than Apples. I honestly couldn't have written a better set-list myself, and I have the spiritual gift of karaoke (it's in Galatians 8...or something). I wished I could've made it to brunch, but I rarely karaoke without imbibing my share of what the good earth has brought forth (isn't that a nice way to say "get hammered"?...just makes you sound so much more sophisticated...or full of shit...one of the two), and so I found myself with a righteous headache and not a big appetite. Plus, my boy Craig has managed to get himself one of these "wives" that everyone is talking about, and apparently she doesn't like it when I borrow Craig for more than 48 hrs. at a time.

So after driving all day Sunday, I decided to lay low today and actually get more than a 3-hr. stretch of sleep (ah, the drawbacks of roadtrips). I ran into my best friend Chuck while I was having dinner with mom, and he suggested we go catch Sideways since it was in theatres, and artsy movies rarely last more than 15 minutes in Columbia theatres. Man, was that ever the right call. I won't give any spoilers, but suffice it to say that this flick does one of the best jobs I've seen (recently) of portraying all the bullshit we wade through to occassionally run across one or two pearls of beauty--and how we manage to F even that up. Really bleak at times, but soooooo worth $6.

Overall, it's been one of the best weekends in a long, long time for this long lanky redhead. About the only buzzkill was seeing my AOL homepage this evening and looking at a throng of Californians cheering the sealed fate of Scott Peterson. My good friends know that I'm anti-capital punishment to the bone, so they weren't surprised when I didn't approve. But even if I was gung-ho about jamming syringes of sodium penathol into people's arms, I don't think I'd display public glee at someone's being damned. What he did was wrong; there's no question. And it deserves harsh punishment. But he is someone's son, someone's brother, someone's loved one. I don't believe in the literal doctrine of Karma, but I likewise don't believe in arrogantly cheering the condemnation of a guilty man simply because I have managed to keep my personal wrongdoings within the confines of social acceptability. We're all imperfect. We're all fucked up in one way or the other, and there's not a damn one of us who can be afforded the right to gleefully parade the news of a death sentence about as though our favorite team had just won the World Series. Shame on every single person who cheered. You too are guilty.

Ok, enough of that.

Perhaps the happiest news I've recieved since I last wrote is the fact that on August 10th, 2005 (or thereabouts) I will become Uncle James. Yes! My lil' sister has finally concieved (they'd been trying for a while), and I can't wait to have a niece/nephew to spoil. It's so great to have all the pleasure of spoiling a kid rotten, while having none of the responsbility. If it's a girl, she'll be Mary-Emma Lenore West (Lenore is my sis's middle name, she just likes mary-emma). If it's a boy, he'll be Canon Williams West (Canon is my maternal g-ma's maiden name, Williams is Meredith's mo-in-law's maiden name). I asked lil' sister why she didn't take our mom's maiden name (Stone) since it was a more common first name nowadays. She said that she'd heard me mention that I wanted my first son to have the name Stone, so she thought she'd leave it for me. I nearly shed a tear. At nearly 26 yrs. of age, and with no viable prospects, my baby sister still believes in me.

...stranger things have happened.

this beautiful mess

2004-11-16T01:20:00.000-05:00

I spent last Friday night with a good friend.

Tom Conlon, possibly the most under-appreciated singer/songwriter on the planet, was in town and I was able to scrape together the time and money to see him. Over the last couple of years, Tom has gone from being just another musician to being somewhat of a friend. I had the freak luck to become roommates with one of his old friends from back in the day, and stuff just sort of happened from there. It's so cool to be able to have drinks with him after the show and actually talk about the events that inspired some of my favorite songs. I also think I just enjoy hearing Tom say things like, "Dude, that bitch broke my heart." :)

Anyhoo, in between songs Tom typically drops a little knowledge on you by offering insight into broken hearts, the thoughts of God, the virtues of dog ownership, etc. Friday night, he was finishing up a song that completed a string of 3 or 4 really, really sad songs. This isn't surprising as "bitter love songs" (as Tom calls them) have been his bag for a while. Tom jokingly said that he needed to lighten things up and play some "party tunes"...he then paused and stated that he really didn't have any party tunes, but he did have more bitter love songs that were at least a faster tempo. So he played "Birds Fly." But before he did, he sort of backtracked and reflected on how he had indeed recorded an album comprised almost exclusively of bitter laments on his latest album. While there's not anything necessarily wrong with these songs, said Tom, there is something to be said for only hearing one side of a broken heart story. Yes, it's true that some relationships leave us beaten up and broken...

...and here's where Tom dropped the aforementioned knowledge on our sorry asses. He said he'd realized that all of us--yes, all of us--come into every relationship (lover, spouse, sibling, child, parent) a broken mess of a person. You could think you've found the most perfect person ever, and before you even go up and introduce yourself, you need to realize that this vision of perfection is carrying around just as much emotional wreckage as you and I. They've been hurt, betrayed, lied to. And it's probable that they've hurt, betrayed, and lied to others. And when you "fall" for someone, you're falling for all the (pardon me) bullshit as well. Yes you're embracing their zest for life, but you're also embracing their wounds from an abusive parent. Yes you're embracing their compassion for the needy, but you're also embracing their neuroses. Yes you can't even begin to describe their beauty, but you'll have an equal task in trying to wrap your mind around their inability to trust. And on and on and on...

And I suppose most of us don't really need to be told these things. To any emotionally healthy individual, they seem somewhat obvious. But I can't help but notice that many (if not most) of my peers get blindsided at some point in a new relationship. Everything's fine and then--BAM!--you find out her last boyfriend used to hit her. Or you find out she carves on herself when she feels guilty or embarassed. Or you find out all that money she's borrowed wasn't for rent. And then where are you? It's like Kierkegaard said all those years ago, most men don't want to fall in love with a woman, they want the idea of a woman. Even though they know they themselves could never live up to half the idealistic standards they've set for others, they live as though this perfect prototype of a mate exists.

And I do it too. I don't want to sound all self-righteous here. But I'd like to think I've made some progress. And I'd like to think that if tommorow I find "her" (though "her" existence is seeming less and less likely)* that I wouldn't say "I love you, despite your flaws," but simply "I love you."

Yeah, it's schmaltzy. Sue me.

*shameless self-pity

Upsets, Hindsight, and Coming Full Circle.

2004-11-01T01:04:00.000-05:00

An unexpectedly momentous weekend. I typically haven't used this blog as a journal. I only write when I think of something interesting...probably because my life has been so insanely boring to me lately, that I can't imagine subjecting anyone else to the excrutiating minutia it encompasses.

I swore to myself that I wasn't going to sit on the couch for 12 hours Saturday and watch college football (again). I only get this hooked when there are a ridiculous amount of good games on, and that doesn't happen that often. But this season...man, it's ludicrous. This past Saturday, my Clemson Tigers hosted N.C. State for a game I thought they'd surely lose. Surprise, surprise: we played as though we had skills surpassing that of a fourth grade girl (something not seen often enough this season) and won a very good game. To make this even sweeter, the Shamecocks got thumped by Tennessee. What could possibly make this better, you ask? How about BOTH of the top 2 ACC teams (FSU and Miami) taking it on the chin from schools who were not only underdogs, not only unranked, but had LOSING records!! It was especially sweet to see Miami go down, in that they are typically one of the most arrogant teams in the land. Hey W, you want an axis of evil? Try visiting your bro's state of Florida: Gators, Seminoles, Hurricanes...there's your axis! <----- w/ apologies to jaem...i'm sure FSU is a great school...but God I freaking hate the Seminoles :)

Moving on, I was playing poker with some friends here at the house on Saturday night, when the phone rang. They asked for Andrew (aka dre-bro), and I said I didn't think he was in. Just then the voice cut in and said, "Is this James?" "Yes," I said. "Do you not recognize my voice?!" asked the anonymous caller. "No...uhh..." The caller then said, "Imagine you're on a suspension bridge in Indonesia about to jump off..." "JOSH!" I screamed. It was my old buddy/roomie/partner in crime Josh Kegg. Josh and I knew each other since I arrived in CIU in '98. We were acquaintances, but didn't get to know each other really well (and I mean reeeeeally well) until we spent the Spring of '00 in the jungles of Indonesia. I won't lie. Josh and I didn't "hit it off" as buddies. Saying we're like oil and water is the understatment of the millenium. I could list a bunch of silly stuff, but suffice it to say, we were/are different, and that caused some friction. And of couse, when you have a rough 4 months with someone, what's the first thing you do when you get back to the States? Well move in with them, of course. I guess we both thought that maybe it was just Indo that made our tempers flare. Wrong. We didn't do much better as roommates. The funny thing was, neither of us ever thought of the other as a bad person or anything, we just weren't made to live in close proximity. And sure enough, after we graduated and left the house, we were back to being way better friends.

Now, there's a loooong story that I won't get into (aw hell, who am I kidding...I'm gonna get into it) about how Josh and a girl named Natalie met in Indonesia. They knew each other before the 3 of us left, and it was common knowledge that Josh kinda had a thing for her. It was equally common knowledge that Natalie would rather cuddle a scorpion underneath a smallpox-blanket than even think of dating Josh. Long story short: we get to Indo, Josh pursues, Natalie rejects, Josh pursues harder (of course), Natalie rejects harder, Josh "gives up." The semester ended, and we all left for the States to go to our respective internships/jobs/couches. Wonder of wonders, Josh has landed an internship at the same church Natalie has worked at for years. Oh, and guess what? Natalie's parents have offered to put-up one of the interns. Guess who got selected? Yup.

This horrifies Natalie. You have to understand, Natalie is the most gentle person on earth. One time, she confronted me for saying something I shouldn't have said in an arguement. And she was completely justified. And I told her, "You are completly justified." She still came to me 15 minutes later and apologized. So if you heard any of the stories about how Nat was reacting to Josh's attempts to win her over, you would've thought Beelzebub himself had taken up residence in her soul.

But then something happened.

All of a sudden I'm getting emails about how Josh "really isn't that bad." And about how he "has a great heart for kids." I asked Natalie is she was softening, and she insisted that no, she was merely trying make the best of things. So, of course, when we all came back for our senior year, who was seriously dating? Yup. By December the wedding was planned. By February the ring was on her finger. By the next November they were married.

It all sounded romantic and goofy and storybook. But we (their mutual friends) knew that this wasn't a storybook and that Natalie wasn't a person to do an about-face so quickly. We also knew that Natalie's father held HUGE sway in her life and that he had been gung-ho about Josh from day one. Hmmmm...it seemed there was something rotten in Columbia. So we tried to find ways of insinuating (gently...ohhh..ever so gently) that maybe things were moving kinda fast. Nat's girlfriends even told her straright up that they thought she was making a big mistake. After a while, it went from doing things gently to doing them desperately, and some friendships were destroyed. It sounds awful that people were trying to break up a wedding...but you had to be there, I guess. It just didn't seem right. So wedding day rolls around, and I still have my apprehensions, but I figure they're both my friends, they've made this decision, and I'm at least going to show that I love them enough to show up for the wedding (the wedding that was a 13-freaking-hour drive away...a whooole other story). I can't explain it, but while I was at the wedding, I just had this innate sense that told me, "this is right." I couldn't explain it, but all of a sudden I understood that, for whatever reason, these two cats were stone-cold in love with each other. I went up to Josh that day and personally apologized for all that I'd done to try and convince the two of them that maybe this wasn't right. He was very gracious, and we are still friends.

So, when he calls the other night, I was super-stoked to see him (and Nat, and their *2* kids...holy crap, my friends have multiple offspring) and see what was going on. We met tonight around 7:00, and talked for a couple of hours before the kids had to be put to bed. It's amazing: our goals are so similar. I want to teach, they want to teach. I want to go to Indo, they want to go back to Indo. We certainly still have our differences: both Josh and Nat are way more conservative (theologically and politically) than I am, and our missiologies are probably pretty different as well. But as I sat there and talked with them, I wondered how I could have ever doubted that they belonged together. And I wondered how I couldn't see in the past that for all the things that make me and Josh different, we are similar in so many more fundamental, more important ways.

And I guess I just learned that age-old, cliche, underappreciated lesson about hindsight. And you know what else? I learned that when things come "full circle," it's often not an accident. And I don't think it's as much of a circle as it is a spiral ("full spiral" just isn't catchy, I guess). It's like we start off with this really limited scope of reality, and as we journey through life, we get to places that seem really far away from what we originally knew. Nevertheless, where we started is still the "center" of things. It still anchors us (for better or worse) to our roots. I realized while I was talking with Josh and Nat that while I've undergone some huge, fundamental changes since leaving CIU, my heart still beats for the same things as most of my brothers and sisters from that school. And like a circle/spiral, there's no end in sight. Our spiral can get huge and encompass all kinds of knowledge and experience, heartache and loss, euphoria and hope...but there will always be more. It's not as though our lives are this linear progression, where we move on from some things, forsaking them forever. It's not as though those past things become obsolete. On the contrary, they are our reference point. They help us see where we've been and where we're going. Man, this is some deep sh*t.

And after talks with Josh and Nat, conversations with dre-bro, and debates in the Orchard, I've realized that maybe my aspirations are beginning to reflect another curve in the spiral. I started my adult years wanting to be a missionary. It moved to MK teaching, and lately I've entertained careers as diverse as restaraunteur and writer. But I've realized that I didn't want to be a missionary on a whim. I'd thought about it since I was a kid. Literally. I grew up in a church that set aside a full 50% of it's budget for foreign missions. I was talking with famous missionary folk before I had any idea what a famous person was. That doesn't change the fact that I think a lot differently about God now, but what remains the same is that all I've ever been meant to do is go somewhere that's not-here and be a messenger of Good News. That may still be MK teaching, but it may be distributing relief with Bread for the World, or lobbying with Amnesty Int'l. The more and more I research Christian relief agencies, the more and more I see that they are getting way more accomplished than punks like me who sit stateside and bitch about how everything sucks.

That's a lot to chew on, so I'm gonna bit y'all adieu for now. This has been a productive Sunday to say the least.

A Generous Orthodoxy

2004-10-25T15:27:00.000-04:00

Salutations.

My roommate dre-bro recently came home with a book (his mom's a librarian, so he's always getting all sorts of cool books) that he thought I'd enjoy given my current research/writing on the Emergent Church.

It's entitled A Generous Orthodoxy and is authored by one Brian McLaren. Brian has written as much as anyone about the phenomenon now known by scholars as the Emergent Church, and he has managed to stir some controversey here and there while doing it. This book, as far as I can tell (I'm only about 150 pgs. in), presents Brian's personal Christian identity while also trying to formulate some new ideas about what we Christians call "Orthodox."

I didn't expect to hate it, but I certainly didn't think I'd be tearing through it as fast as I have. The most personally interesting aspect of the book has been how Brian's spiritual journey has paralleled mine in some almost eerie ways. In one section, the author details how he "progressed" through different Christian communities, going from Fundamentalist, to conservative Protestant, to Charismatic, to Anglican, to Catholic, etc. I won't go into great detail here, but the reasons he lists for his various transitions are (at times) a mirror image for why I left x or joined y.

I think some people will read this book and absolutely hate it, because (sadly) some of us in this big house we call Christianity confuse tradition for orthodoxy and confuse orthodoxy for revelation--so that when someone comes and rocks the boat, the easiest thing to do is start throwing around words like "heretic" until the problem goes away.

I also love how an author who is often tongue-in-cheek and humurous is dead honest about his cynicism. I think it's refreshing to read someone who recognizes that cynicism isn't always a bad thing. As an end, yes, it's ultimately not healthy; but it can certainly be a means to positive change. Look how sarcastic many of the Old Testament prophets are--hell, Jeremiah is downright fatalistic. (read the last chapter of Lamentations)

This was published by Zondervan (which surprised me), so it is probably at your local public/university library. Even if you are the most ardent atheist in the world, I think McLaren has some things to say about Christianity that anyone who has had any sort of contact with it can appreciate. If you want to see some discussion on it, there's actually an entire blog here on blogspot dedicated to discussion on the book (agenerousorthodoxy.blogspot.com)

A Foretaste of Glory Divine, or, The Preface of My Thesis

2004-10-15T23:55:00.000-04:00

Hey y'all

Many of you may know that I am a grad student at the University of South Carolina. I'm taking the "scenic route" and squeezing a 2 year program into about 3 1/2. I've been done with classes for a while, and I started writing my thesis this past May. I hit some pretty serious writer's block, however, and it wasn't until tonight that I just had a brain explosion and found myself (finally) with some clear direction on how to tackle this beast. I was aiming at finishing by year's end, and that (now) seems like a very realistic goal. I still need to conduct 2 or 3 interviews, but the rest of the material is there, ready to be written. I cranked out about 5,000 words from 8:30 to midnight tonight, so that is a very encouraging pace.

Anyhoo, for those of you who are nice enough to feign interest in such endeavors, I thought I'd clue everyone in on what the project looks like. The title of my thesis (tentatively) is Evangelical Counterculture: the assimilation of American popular culture with Protestant Christianity. <---- catchy, huh? The project started out as me wanting to go deep inside the whole "Passion" worship movement started by Louis Gigglio. As I started researching however, I my interests became so much broader, and so I widened the scope. "Passion" still factors in pretty heavily, but I think the approach I've chosen paints a much clearer (and more interesting) picture. Basically, I am examining how shifts in culture-at-large tend to coincide with "reformation" in the Church--and more specifically, the Evangelical church in America. My thesis will go into much greater detail, but one example would be how when colonists were looking to shed political rule from a monarch and form a federal democracy, they were likewise forming churches that eliminated bishops and practiced congregational rule. Later, we'd see "flower children" coincide with "Jesus freaks", etc, etc. The how's and why's of all these "coincidences" are (obviously) given much more attention in the thesis itself.

Tonight I reworked the introduction. I kind of like how it turned out, and I think on the fundamental level, I'm gonna keep it. Various superficial adjustments are, however, inevitable (I'm totally OCD about my writing). Take a gander.

Introduction:
As an undergraduate student studying Art History, I was required to fulfill a minimum requirement of studio hours. Even though my plan was simply to talk about art, I suppose those who grant degrees wanted at least minimal proof of my knowing how to “do” art as well. One memorable class period centered around the infinite “values” of black and white. We were required to mix paints in order to imitate a scale of values given to us. While the exercise was rather perfunctory in nature, one remarkable observation that I made was how a relatively tiny speck of white paint can drastically alter the appearance of a rather large blob of jet black paint (and vice versa). No matter how small the one amount and how large the other, the change was always, without exception, noticeable. In fact, as our instructor later informed us, there is thought to be no absolute or “true” whites or blacks. They are really more ideas than they are true, existent colors.

Seven years later, as I reflect on what seemed to be an elementary lesson in studio painting, I realize that this concrete example possesses several abstract applications. In so many areas of day-to-day existence, we encounter ideas or theories that are taken for granted, but whose “pure” form may not actually exist. Indeed, the words of the preacher in Ecclesiastes are never truer than when applied to the world of thought. As revolutionary, original, or groundbreaking as ideas may seem, there are perhaps none that are truly “new.” The preceding insight itself is hardly unique, in fact: Solomon, Heidegger, and Hegel (to name a few) echo this sentiment in some form. It certainly seems undeniable that while we humans are capable of formulating beautiful, concise, and orderly ideas about why and how things are the way they are, we struggle to find places in the world outside the mind where these thoughts are embodied without first assimilating some arbitrary cultural element.

The path we’ve here undertaken now branches in dozens of directions. We could probably never exhaust the instances of the aforementioned phenomenon. However, my focus for the next several chapters will center on the trend of cultural assimilation in the Western Protestant church that I first became intimately acquainted with in the mid to late 1990s. Having been raised in a family firmly entrenched in the doctrines of conservative evangelical Christianity, I have only recently begun to explore in earnest the more “liberal” sects of the Church. What I discovered (and continue to discover) is that “liberal” and “conservative” and other monikers are commonly applied with little or no accuracy. More fairly, it seems that the definitions of these monikers are as fluid and tenuous as the cultural contexts in which they are conceived. Even the most casual student of church history can skim the pages of the past several centuries and observe how the most “radical” sects of the church, once established, soon became the arbiters of conservative doctrine and orthopraxy. A German living around 500 years ago could hardly have used the statement, “I am a conservative Lutheran,” for all Lutherans were brandished radical heretics and usually excommunicated from Christendom-at-large. However, if our German friend could step forward those 500 years into contemporary American culture, he would see that an area such as the Midwest—stereotyped as having strong, conservative values—is largely Lutheran. Meanwhile, the more “liberal” Northeast Christian population has a Catholic population that is the largest of any region of the country. If our friend decided to pull up a chair and continue observing the changes in American religious climate, he would surely notice how current elements of Western pop culture are more readily assimilated (even welcomed) into Protestant Christianity than any Luther or Calvin would have ever imagined (or desired?). He would see hordes of young people flocking to stadiums rather than stately cathedrals. Likewise, he would hear the Liturgy replaced with songs that are all but indiscernible from Top 40 radio, and preachers who have shed the austerity of the parish priest in exchange for the dynamic oratory style of a stumping politician. Surely such sea changes in worship (and sometimes doctrine) could not be taking place so rapidly, when it took Christendom centuries to produce a Luther. How can we account for such exponential acceleration concerning this trend?
My view, as we’ll come to see more clearly in the following chapters, contends that any idea or set of ideas (metaphysical or otherwise) cannot operate independently, i.e., resisting any influence from its immediate cultural context. As the original “blob” of intellectual paint collides and wrestles with surrounding “specks” of culture, ideas change. Moreover, I will demonstrate that these changes—both the gradual and revolutionary—are not merely anomalies in the historical record, but inevitable products of human culture and finitude. Starting with some of the earliest importers of Christianity to North America, the Puritans, we will trace the ebb and flow of “church culture” in the United States from Great Awakenings to Jesus Freaks to modern day campus worship events which draw more young people than a NCAA football game. We’ll likewise explore how “counter cultures” are not merely a “secular” phenomenon, but an innate acting out of human nature regardless of context. Later we’ll see how shifts towards youth-centered worship and teaching spawned a church culture revolution whose fruits are evident in the huge majority of present-day evangelical churches. While there will be some occasional discussion concerning the “good” or “bad” effects of certain shifts, I do not aim to offer a critique of the Protestant culture in America. Rather, I believe the much more interesting conversation centers around the fascinating past and hypothetical future of America’s Christian Counter-Culture.

Best Friends: 2.0

2004-10-12T16:50:00.000-04:00

Chuck and I found our way over to the East Room two nights ago. It's been our "regular" bar (we have lots of spots we frequent, however) for the better part of 2 years now, and it's totally got that Cheers-everybody-knows-your-name vibe...mostly because everyone does know our name. We've become as much of a fixture there as the always-broken jukebox and inexplicable Green Bay Packers neon sign.

Typically, an outing to the East Room consists of about 3 or 4 drinks and 4-6 games of darts (I usually win :) ). I called this meeting, however, to address some of the issues I touched on in my "Best Friends" post from several days ago. I talked to some friends who are more on the periphery of the "situation" than I, and the general consensus seemed to be that while there's always something to be said for minding your own business, best friends can't be totally passive in any situation. Before I even brought anything up, Chuck mentioned to me that he and Melissa were "on a break" where they had agreed not to hang out for a week. I don't know what happens at the end of the week, but we'll deal with that later. He once again asked what I thought about things, and so (in my most diplomatic, verbose overtones) I let him know. I essentially said what I've said here previously, and instead of storming out of the room and giving me the finger, he nodded his head and said he appreciated me saying what I thought. And that was it. He didn't go on to ask for specific relationship directions or anything like that. He just listened to what I said, processed it, and we moved on.

While there's still the discomfort of not knowing exactly how all of this will end, it's definitely nice to have that off of my chest, and to have Chuck react positively.

"Heartbreak at the Cabin" or "How Clemson Football Leads to Apostasy"

2004-10-07T23:09:00.000-04:00

My dad runs a deli, and the guy who actually owns that deli is long-time family friend Bill. Bill is not short on cash, and a couple of years ago he built a "cabin" (read: a 2BR, 3BTH, 3000sq. ft. lake house with 4 T.V.'s and P.A.-surround-sound) near a lake in Sumter just to have a place to come and watch football with his buddies. His house is big enough, but he has a wife and 2 daughters (13 and 8), so Thursday Night Football Parties aren't that easy to accomodate en la casa.

I haven't been out to The Cabin in about 18 mos., but tonight Clemson was playing, so I figured I'd go hang out with a bunch of guys who are twice my age, drink beer, and curse at the television.

Here's the thing: I almost didn't go. There are precious few things I love more in life than Clemson football. But this year my Tigers were supposed to be incredible...and we are: incredibly freaking bad. We were playing #9 UVA tonight, and we were supposed to get destroyed. I was almost pulling for UVA to jump out early and just clobber us in the first half, so that I never mustered any hope for the game. Alas, Clemson actually jumped out to an early lead and went in trailing by only 3 pts. at the half. I knew what was next. Clemson would hang around, make it interesting, and then break my heart. It always happens that way.

I used to complain to my friend Melissa that certain friends of ours were idiots for staying with their boyfriend/girlfriends who treated them like sh*t. I just couldn't understand what would continually draw someone back to a relationship where you knew for all the pleasure you might glean, you would glean twice as much punishment and abuse. Well, I think I understand now. For the latter half of my short life, the Clemson Tigers have played like they meant it, only to choke in the most crucial moments. I don't even understand why I get so wrapped up in it. I'm not a Clemson grad. In fact, I attend USC, Clemson's arch-rival. But since I've been old enough to understand what football is, I've been a Clemson fan to the bone. I'm sure there are other sports that exist in NCAA competition, but none of them matter much to me (well...outside of Duke basketball). I come to each new football season with the expectation that my Tigers are going to show the world what they are really made of. And every season, my fragile heart is ripped from my chest and brutally stomped on by the teams of the A.C.C.

I still had fun at the cabin. Dad bought my beer, so I can't complain about free supper, free beer, and watching football. But dang, I wish we could just show up for one big game.

Emotional Promiscuity and Best Friends

2004-10-05T17:06:00.000-04:00

I realized today that, outside of Dre-bro, not one of my best friends know that I keep a blog. I suppose I keep it a secret in that (in the past) I regularly volunteered my opinion on the stereotypical person who belongs to 1,000 different internet groups. But then I joined the Orchard, and my internet activity went up about 20-fold. And then I realized that not all those internet-junkies are sci-fi-watching, comic-book collecting, Dungeons and Dragons playing weirdos (and I use the word in the most compassionate sense possible ;) ). And I often find myself sharing parts of me in this blog that I rarely (if ever) share with best friends. In fact, just about every post on here contains something in that vein.

Perhaps that's part of the allure of having a blog: the idea that you can be naked in front of all these strangers, but it's somehow okay--or at least more okay than it would be in a "real" conversation. You see this phenomenon elsewhere: girls will walk half-naked down a beach crowded with strangers, but will scream if a male friend sees them half-dressed. Artisits will deny friends and family access to their true feelings, but will belt out shockingly personal songs to roomfuls of unfamiliar faces. Maybe this is what Karin is singing about when she says "I'm a slut with a mission." There is something exillirhating (sp?) about making oneself vulnerable before an anonymous audience. Many performers have made the parallel of musicianship and the oldest profession. In either case, you're granting unfamiliar people access to a place where (typically) only those on intimate levels of acquaintance are permitted.

All that rambling to say this: It's nice to have a place to articulate the frustrations often caused by those closest to us without them having to hear it. It seems that more often than not, when I decide to "be honest" with a friend about an issue between us, I discover (mid-conversation) that I need to time to refine and hone my thoughts so as to make the confrontation something productive for each of us. And I suppose that's what this is...although I don't deny that I just want to vent sometimes.

I hesitate to employ the moniker of "best friend," in that on any given day, there are dozens of people who could fit the description. I haven't spoken with my friend Jason in 9 months, but I would still say that he is a best friend. However, if anyone fits the stereotypical idea of what a "best friend" is, for the better part of two years, that person in my life has been Chuck. We've worked together, we've gone on spur-of-the-moment trips to Europe together, and (of course) we've drank together...a LOT. I would take a bullet for Chuck with no second thoughts, but that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes want to shoot him myself. You see, I have the not-so-unique situation of having known Chuck and his girlfriend (Melissa) before they ever got together. During that time, Melissa also became my very good friend. Now usually when three platonic friends become one platonic friend + one couple, things break down, the one platonic guy gets nauseous around the couple, and (barring a break-up) the 3 friendships are just never quite the same. However, with Chuck, Mel, and myself, it never changed. Seriously. We hang out in the same capacities as we always have. As a result, I am often (but not always) privy to a lot of what goes down on the front of Chuck and Mel's sometimes tumultuous relationship. I have always maintained a position of objective listener, sometimes objective arbitrator, but never partisan arbitrator or advocate. I simply love them each to much to ever take sides...even if I have clear feelings about who's "right or wrong" in a certain dispute.

Then Mike happened.

It seems as though Mike and Melissa ended a long-term relationship about 6 mos. before Melissa met Chuck. This was back when Melissa lived in Wisconsin, so the 1,000 miles made it a little easier for Melissa to move on. Mike, however, did not move on and continues to phone Melissa "just to chat" on a rather frequent basis. This pattern of calling was unknown to Chuck until about 8 months ago. For all his wonderful strengths, Chuck possesses the obligatory male flaws--with *insecurity* nudging towards the top of this list. Chuck asked why this calling was going on. Melissa said she and Mike were still friends. Seems harmless, yes? Well, not to Chuck...especially not when Melissa answered Chuck's question of "Do you think he's trying to get back together with you?" with a "yes" answer. Chuck thought Melissa should call Mike and say that it wasn't cool to call ever again, and after a series of tempestuous debates, she did.

Or so we thought.

A few weeks ago, Chuck discovers that Mike is still calling, and that Melissa is doing nothing to stem the tide of the calls. Now, I hesitate to say this because of the nature of their relationship, but I know Melissa just about as well as Chuck does...and I know that if Melissa wanted Mike back, she would dump Chuck and take Mike. She's not a player. But while Chuck may be cognizant of this fact, his insecurity overrides any logical decisions. Chuck and Mel are now back in the land of constantly debating over whether they should be together...even though Chuck is whipped and couldn't let her go to save his life. And it's not that Melissa is the "whipping" type. In fact, she's the polar opposite. Chuck just likes playing the part of doting, puppy-eyed boyfriend who can't even go to the bathroom without Melissa's permission.

Some other seemingly random, but nevertheless pertinent facts: Melissa is working her way through undergrad (she's 26 and has taken the scenic route, even though's she's brilliant) and has a clear series of goals for her life. Chuck "finished" undergrad with me in 2001, but had 6 hrs. left before he got his degree. He has YET to complete the six measly hours and get his B.S. He occassionally balks at finishing, and has even gone and talked to an academic advisior at a local tech school...but he gets distracted by work and never does anything. He talks of "goals" he has, but nothing he does in life reflects any dedication to anything but 1.) maintaining the same waiter job and 2.) doing just enough to make things work with Melissa.

Now, where do I come in in all this?

Chuck and I still hang out sans Melissa on occassion, and when we do, the conversation eventually comes around to some problem between him and Melissa. But it's not just conversation; Chuck never fails to ask "So James, what should I do?" in these situations.

Some more pertinent facts: 1.) Chuck has been in 3 long-term (i.e. more than one year) relationships. 2.) James has been in (drumroll)...NONE! The longest was three months.

So when does my advice become of any worth? Anything I offer is purely hypothetical. I know: I'm his best friend...of course he wants my opinion. And I understand that. But he often asks questions in a tone which insinuates that his decision hinges on what I say. Just last night, he completely changed the track of our conversation and said, "So do you think I'm with the wrong girl?" Sorry, but I'm not taking that responsibility on my shoulders for anyone. Can you ever appeal to an objective source in situations like these? Obviously you can in certain extreme (e.g. he's beating me) situations, but there's no rule book or template for deducing black-and-white determinations regarding whether a relationship is over or not. I have, to date, managed to skirt each of these situations with answers like "Listen to your heart, Chuck" or "These are things only you can decide"...all said in a slightly witty tone.

But do I actually have an opinion?

Well...yes.

Again, this is coming from someone who's never spent more than 90 days in a serious relationship, so take it for what it's worth. But while the ins and outs of something as emotionally complex as a relationship are never "simple," the dynamics of this particular decision facing Chuck are (in my opinion) pretty simple. Here are the facts: 1.) Mike is someone very important in Melissa's past and there's no way to change that, 2.) Melissa has said, point blank, that she wants to be with Chuck and not Mike, 3.) Melissa has clear-cut goals concerning her future, 4.) Chuck balks at any question concerning his future or marriage. Given these facts, if I am Chuck, I either decide that while I don't like how Mike calls a lot, I am going to A.) Trust my girl and learn to deal with this or B.) Realize I can't deal with it and jet. Now facts #3 and #4 in this paragraph have to do with some more personal feelings on the matter. My decision I just gave is mostly based on my logical brain trying to find an easy way out--but the human part of me wants to just scream at Chuck and ask him how the F he can ask Melissa to change so many little details about her life to accomodate his being comfortable in the relationship when he is doing *NOTHING* to indicate that he is thinking about their future together. Furthermore, why is Chuck constantly demanding that Melissa call Mike? Pardon my crude bluntness, but why can't Chuck find his freakin' gonads and just confront the guy himself? If some guy were calling my girl and I wanted him to stop, I think I'd probably have a talk with him. I'm not talking (necessarily) about a "stop calling or I'll kick your ass" phone call...but at least talk to the guy.

And you know, I know deep down that Chuck knows most (if not all) of what I just ranted. I also know that I have as many (if not more) flaws and eccentricities as my best friend, and that somewhere someone is ranting about some maddening, illogical tendency of mine. But it's really been harsh on our friendship (all three of us) lately. No matter what we're doing, there's always a queer vibe in the room whose resonance is a damning indictment on all of us. An indictment that screams "Get this resolved!". Maybe I am responsible in some way. Maybe I should lend my advice to the situation. But I can't get past the fact that the biggest decision to be made here is not mine to make.

Mornings with Claude and Theories on Beauty

2004-09-30T12:11:00.000-04:00

While narrowing down my musical tastes to definitive "favorites" seems to pose an impossible challenge regardless of genre, etc., there is one musical niche where I'm dead-set on who's #1. I simply could not imagine loving any classical composer more than Claude DeBussy, nor could I imagine a more mind-warpingly (is that a word?) stunning piece than the third movement of his String Quartet #1 in G minor. The first time I heard this I was in a car, and it very nearly caused a horrific accident. If you've never heard it, then stop what you're doing, beg, borrow, steal--do whatever necessary to find this so that you too can witness first-hand your little world becoming a slightly more beautiful place.

I was listening to the aforementioned piece this morning, and I was struck all over again by the almost palpable, epic sadness of the music. And yet it is arguably the most beautiful song (any genre) I've yet to hear in these short 25.5 years. Upon a morning's-worth of simmering over these thoughts, I realized that there are countless instances in art (and life?) where sadness and beauty coincide. Sometimes they seem all but inseparable. Take, for example, the painting "Raft of the Medusa." If you've seen it (and especially if you've had the privilege of seeing it first hand...trust me, there's a huge difference) you know that the scene depicted can hardly be justly described with such a small word as "sad." It's almost terrifying. From the vain displays of courage on the bow of the raft, all the way down to the dead and dying people who seem one swell away from merging with the merciless sea. But try to look away. It's beyond difficult. No matter when you visit this painting, you will find a hodgepodge of persons staring blankly at the horrible scene. But this staring isn't akin to the rubbernecking one witnesses at the site of a train wreck or some such other catastrophe. It's nothing less than beauty taking helpless captives. Amidst all the abysmal terror in the painting, there is undeniable beauty. Why? Would any of us say that the death of any person is/was a "beautiful" thing? Probably not. But this graphic, melodramatic portrayal of dead, dying, and soon-to-be dying persons somehow garners the distinction of beautiful.

And even if we wax in the vernacular and take a peek into popular music past and present, we find that the "sad" songs are the ones most often described as beautiful. Maybe for something to warrant a description such as "beautiful" is has to transcend a basic aesthetic pleasure. At the risk or corniness, this something has to "touch us." It has to defy comparison to the point where all we can say is "that is beautiful."

I don't have a neat, concise conclusion to wrap this up. And I almost don't want an answer. It's one of those mysteries that seems to inspire us no matter how incomprehensible it is. Does that make sense? It's like if tommorow someone found the actual, physical bounds of the universe. While we humans would still spend our lives occupying an unimaginably small fraction of existence, the universe would nevertheless have become a much less interesting place to be. If we found the limits, then we know there's a definite possibility that we could know everything. I'm not saying this would existinguish the awe we feel when we gaze at a brilliant, clear winter sky...but it certainly would diminish it. And in the same vein, who wants to break down and formulate something as eternally inspiring as beauty into some cold, logical air-tight syllogism?

The Show

2004-09-23T23:28:00.000-04:00

Went to the show last night, and I actually brought a camera this time. It truly was a killer set. I have not had that much fun at a Jump show in a loooooong time. Don't get me wrong, I've loved every show I've ever been to. But you know how some are just "special?" Well, last night, not only did I get right up on the stage, not only did I pick a spot that ended up being dead-square in front of Jay, but Jay actually heard my request, looked down at me, said "we'll do it for the encore", and really did it. One of my favorite Jump songs, "Afterlife," hasn't been performed at a show I've attended in at least 2 years. I was unbelievable stoked. And they just killed when they played it. They've reworked the song a bit, and it did nothing but make it more freaking awesome. Incidentally, the band opening for Jump right now, Rubyhorse, is the best opener they've had in years. Definitely check out this tour. For $10 you get two bands that I'd pay $20 apiece to see.

Enjoy the eye-candy...

2004-09-23T23:25:00.001-04:00

art nerds

2004-09-23T23:25:00.000-04:00

matt

2004-09-23T23:24:00.001-04:00

jon

2004-09-23T23:24:00.000-04:00

jay

2004-09-23T23:23:00.000-04:00

2004-09-23T23:21:00.000-04:00

ward (cello) evan(drums) jon(bass) matt(accordion) jay(guitar) james(redhead)

2004-09-23T23:19:00.000-04:00

jay (left) yours truly (right)

The Unsung Virtues of TRL

2004-09-22T16:56:00.000-04:00

I'm going to see Jump play tonight at Headliners, and I may go catch the show in Augusta in a few days. It's amazing: after 7+ years of going to Jump shows, I still get the pre-show jitters that most people only seem to get before a really "big" show. I mean, they (the band) even "know" me well enough by now to say "hey" whenever they see me before/after the show. But when I go to talk to them, it sounds like, "So...uh...hey, you guys were AWESOME!" I guess my fascination with musicians sometimes trascends the bounds of gender we looked at in my last post :)

Jump may never get to be super-famous, and that would be fine with me. I like that they are accessible and unpretentious. They don't have 200-pg. Riders that demand chilled Pellegrino be on hand at all times, and they're not too cool to sit and have a drink with the fans afterwards.

But I have to admit, there's a part of me that just wants them to explode. I want to see their faces on Rolling Stone and hear their music on FM Radio and--can you believe it?--I'd love to see them conquer MTV's TRL. Now why oh why, you ask, would I want the most under-rated, artistically creative band in the known universe being mentioned in the same breath with Brittney and Hoobastank (my God...is there really a band called Hoobastank) ? My answer: what better way to hit the enemy where he lives than use his own medium of publicity against him? I'm one of those people who love the fact that Maroon 5 are on VH1. I was down with M5 before they got all huge, and let me tell you, they are one of the most put-together, talented, down-to-earth bands out there. Their live show is mind-blowing. I saw them live not knowing beforehand who they were, and I was a hard-core skeptic. But I was converted with a quickness. And if Jump was able to break through with a radio-friendly single that got a lot of people listening, then I say "great." If you have to use a pop song to get people interested in the many layers of fascinating awesome-ness that is Jump, then I'm as Machiavellian as the next guy.

I'm just sick of reading glowing reviews of bands who--while they may be good--simply don't hold a candle to acts like Jump, Over The Rhine, and all those other little bands struggling to get gigs outside their little local markets. Jump has the worst curse of helping to launch bands who go on to be famous while leaving Jump in the dust. Bands who used to open for Jump include: Guster, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Train, Marvelous 3 (defunct), etc. Hell, this past April, I went to see the Columbia show that Jump did to launch their then-new CD. The opening band was The Features, and there were maybe 20 people their to see the opener. Two weeks later, I turn on MTV2, and there are The Features, all up in their own video produced by their Major Label record company.

Like I said, there's the part of jame$ who wants Jump to remain the South's best kept secret...but I just can't get over the tragedy that most of the world will never hear one of the most beautiful voices ever to grace the world of recorded music.

Damn.

Sirens

2004-09-21T20:46:00.000-04:00

I am the first to admit that I am not the most dedicated student of the Classics. But if I recall correctly, many of the ancient heroes were plagued by these feminine spirits who (often out at sea) sang such beautiful songs as to make it impossible for one to do anything but be lulled into certain death by the irresistable melody. Maybe the Sirens deserve their bad rep; but the Arminian in me can't help but cut them some slack :)

Nevertheless, I cannot but be fascinated by the incomprehensible sexual energy that musicians command. We all know the stereotypical scenes from the '80: hair metal bands, scantily-clad blondes, dressing rooms with lots of coke, etc. But it goes deeper than that. I am a male who is perfectly secure in his heterosexuality. But I cannot deny that more than any other group of women on this planet, female musicians simply ruin me. I can think a girl modestly attractive; but if said girl were to pick up a guitar and play proficiently--even if I hate the song--I would be done.

I was thinking about this the other night while watching a friend's Norah Jones DVD. I listened when Norah talked, and I've read interviews of her's before, and I honestly don't think we'd have that much in common. I mean, she's pretty and all, but there are certainly prettier women. And I'm sure she's every bit a nice person, but when she speaks there's nothing personally compelling for me. But oh sweet jesus when she starts to play and sing...

And then two nights ago, my two best friends and I were at Columbia's Greek Fest (aka the coolest festival Columbia has ever known). We were talking and drinking, and then the P.A. announced that it was time for the cultural dance performance. We turned our attention to the place where the dancers were gathering. And as soon as it started, it was as if everything around me disappeared. That sounds so corny, but it's the only way I know to describe it. Were the dances being performed by pretty girls? Yes. But I swear with every fiber of my being, there was nothing sexual in terms of my fascination with these dancers. Maybe it was just the pure, unadulterated enjoyment of life being illustrated. You know, not having to find an excuse to celebrate the sheer immensity of joy that fills every second of existence if you simply look for it. Maybe this is what Zorba knew and his boss couldn't figure out. Is that a bit melodramatic?

I don't even know where I'm going with this. I have no answer/resolution to offer. I almost hesitate to go to shows anymore where I know I'm just going to fall in love with the performer. I shit you not: I did not go to an Allison Krauss concert last year simply because I knew I'd be obsessed for at least a month or two with thoughts of Allison. Then again, I've been in "love" with her for some time now :) But even my best friend Michelle, who has been my best friend for almost 7 years, and whom I could never think of as anything but a lil' sister...when she plays a show...well, you can probably fill in the blanks.

Maybe it's all this that has precipitated my unusually high activity in the Orchard. Over The Rhine is great, but there are at least two bands (Jump, Indigo Girls) who hold "favorite band" priority over them. But if you see Karin sing live, and if you think--even for a moment--that she has looked at you and sung to you...it's enough to make you a junkie for life.

I think one thing I'd really love is to meet someone with whom I could write music. I've been a musician for a lil' over a decade now, and I can't imagine many other more profound ways to bond with a person than to co-create art. Sex if fine (well...a little more than just "fine" :) ), but (forgive, again, the corniness) art is eternal. No one can ever go and write the exact same song, or paint the exact same picture, or compose the exact same sonnet. You have something that is always and inexorably yours. In some ways, it sort of eternally links the two of you.

But even with all the preceding melodramatic attempts at explanations, I will still turn to mush the next time I go to an open-mic night, and a pretty young siren steps up and lures me thence...

Big shoes.

2004-09-16T13:31:00.000-04:00

For the last week, I've been driving to Sumter everyday at around 8:00 A.M. My father's business has but one "manager"--him--and with the pain accompanying very recent back surgery, dad isn't in any shape to work.

Typically, there is a senior employee who knows the ropes well enough to keep things running smoothly in a situation like this. However, in the last month the store's lost most of the workers fitting that description, and what's left...well, let's just say dad doesn't want them attempting any "skilled" labor.

So that's where I come in: the newly unemployed, eldest son. Before I lost my last job, my parents were wondering if I could get down to Sumter once in a while to help; but now that I'm without a job, it was pretty much assumed that I'd step in for a couple of weeks in a full-time capacity. I've worked here before (it's a deli, by the way), so I know the drill. And I don't even do any messy work now--just the books, and the occassional delivery.

But there's something weird/surreal about all of it. I mean, part of me still maintains that subconscious dichotomy that says, "this is what I do, this is what dad does." You know? And since I've started filling in, I've found that I can do the job as good (or sometimes better). Maybe this only affects sons, but the day you find out you're "better" than your dad at something, it just transforms the way you see the world-at-large. In some ways, you don't feel as safe. I mean, before there was always dad who knew about something you didn't know about, or could do something you couldn't do. Now, there's you...and if you fuck things up, there's an indifferent, ruthless world to eat you alive the second you tip your hand.

I wrote a term paper many moons ago as a Junior in college. It was for a Psychology class called "the dynamics of marriage and family." It was a required course for my major, and it was generally considered to be an automatic "A" for students who possessed a minimun academic capacity (read: can you tie your shoes?). My paper dealt with the changing relationship dynamics between a father and son and the son becomes a man. I was interested in how relationships change when a household changes from having one man and one boy to having two men. It was my contention that much of the strife experienced between fathers and sons during the adolescent years stems from our culture's lack of any real defintion of manhood. The son wants his maturity (physical, mental, and otherwise) to be acknowledged, while the father insists the son remember his role within the father's household.

Now I wonder, is there another phase? Do we sons reach a phase where we want there to be that clear dilineation once more between father/son, boy/man, etc.?

When my father came home from the hospital yesterday, he looked better, but he still couldn't move much. He's been told not to lift anything heavier than 1 lb., and he moves about like an old man. And I suppose he is getting to that stage. And with his weakened condition, he has become more passive. Employees exploit his patience, my mother bosses him around more...it's like his masculinity was taken out along with those bone spurs. Every night when I finish at work, I call my dad and tell him how things went, and what I did. I know I did everything right--I just still feel as though acknowledge him as "boss" or something.

I've watched each of my parents deal with their parents growing old. My mother does everything for her mom now (everything that the retirement home doesn't do, that is), and my father is in the midst of trying to convince his parents that they simply can't live on their own anymore. I know it all has to happen, it's just a lot of reality to swallow at once. Someone in The Orchard authored a thread on "heros" and their apparent scarcity in our culture. People reflected on the disillusion caused when a hero is exposed as just another person with frailities an shortcomings. And I suppose there's a little of that in my situation: I embrace all the scary, new things that come with independence/adulthood. But part of me wants a mom or dad to run to for answers. I know I'm not alone here...and I know that this sentiment is part of why there are many 35-yr-olds living with their parents :)

I guess I just miss my dad.

Late Summer Reading

2004-09-13T01:03:00.000-04:00

As this summer draws to a close, I find myself with more time than usual on hand to dedicate towards reading projects. I decided a while back that I'd love to take one summer and just devote the whole thing to biographies. I didn't get as far as I'd hoped; nevertheless, I thought I'd share a few selections that have moved/challenged/shocked/helped/changed me in the past little while...

My Life by Bill Clinton

-- Yes, it's cliche. I basically bought this book because 1.) I thought it would be well-remembered by History, and so I thought I'd at least read it, and 2.) Because I have a $300 credit at the USC bookstore, and so even if the book was terrible, I wasn't out any money.

Enjoyable aspects include Bill's knack for storytelling. His choice of anecdotes is interesting, and it really is hard not to like him once you're about 100 or so pages in. Alas, I had to trudge through the second half of the book, however. It, as I feared, reared it's ugly head as propoganda about mid-way through.

A Long Way From Tipperary by John Dominic Crossan

Dr. Crossan is an ex-Irish monk who has become widely recognized as a top authority on the historical life of Christ. He's no stranger to controversy, and every book of his seems to stir up some fuss in the various branches of Christendom. This book, however, is a departure from his normal theological endeavors. He sets down to record his life from his earliest childhood memories, stopping intermittedly to reflect on how certain experiences shaped him and his dynamic faith. I am a long-time admirer of Dr. Crossan, so I'm a bit biased; however, this is easily one of the most fluidly written bios I've picked up in a while.

Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford

Milford is most famous for her award-winning account of Zelda Fitzgerald's life, published sometime in the '70s. In Savage Beauty, she undertakes the task again--only this time focusing on a slightly less-crazy subject: Ms. Edna St. Vincent Millay. I was giddy with excitement when I came across this, in that Millay is easily my favorite female poet, and one of my top 3 poets period. I was even more surprised that I found it in one of our Society's most dismal, hopeless cultural wastelands, Barnes and Noble's.

Milford is painstaking in her attempt to piece together a woman who was all-at-once a figurehead for women's liberation and a lightning bolt of self-destructive indulgence. It is impossible not to fall in love with Millay as you read Milford's account. I was reminded of the Indigo Girls' song "Virginia Woolfe" which recounts how Emily fell for Virginia after reading her diaries. Millay's genius and her priceless contribution to the American oeuvre are vastly under-appreciated. Milford does a marvelous job in reacquainting us with such a beautiful person.

Discovering God Through Prayer by Madame Guyon

My one departure from biographies, this is the English translation of some collected writings by the famed 18th century French mystic, Madam Guyon. The translation isn't the best, but Guyon has so much to teach the 21st century Christian. I remember when I was but a wee lad of 20 years and was introduced to some of the more famous Christian mystics. I felt all at once elated and impoverished. Elated because an entirely new way of understanding me+God had been given to me; impoverished because I could not believe I had lived so long without any knowledge of these spiritual giants.

If you're not familiar with the writings of mystics, then you may get frustrated at first. It will seem repetitive and didactic. But press on. The experiences and insights of Madame Guyon are timeless. I find new wisdom each time I read them. If you enjoy her, you may also want to try and read the journals of St. John of the Cross. A-mazing.

holy city

2004-09-08T16:39:00.000-04:00

I was perusing the thoughts of some fellow Apples regarding Over The Rhine's personal theology. Some words reminded me of the times in my life where I was fortunate enough to approach "ecstasy." More often than not, these instances have involved elements from both sides of the divine curtain. To borrow from my friend Tom Conlon, "... tonight the sacred and earthy are gonna have to meet...the divine's gonna get some dirt underneath his fingernails." I don't really like the term "universalist" (for many reasons that I won't presently explore), but I do believe that every square inch of this existence is breathing with the divine. I don't see boundaries--imaginary or otherwise--separating the sacred and the profane. While we Christians owe a huge cultural debt to our Jewish brothers and sisters, there is one way in which I see Jesus making a significant break with his own tradition. In Moses' time, God was clearly transcendant--that was that. There were places he abided and places he was not to be found. There were tents you could go into and there were places were the penalty for treading was instant incineration and a one-way ticket to Sheol. Jesus, however, (in a wonderful paradox...we just can't seem to escape Kierkegaard) gave up his omnipresence (if you believe in his Deity, that is) so that he could never go more than 200 miles away from his birthplace. And yet, he was more accessible than Yahweh ever was. You could touch him, hear him, smell him. If you hit him, he bled. If you grieved him, he cried...real tears. And this man who died at 33 and never left Palestine changed the world. He is (no matter what religion you are) the most important person to ever live. This may sound crazy, but I honestly don't believe that it would have had nearly the same effect had God just peeled back the clouds and said, "Hey, it's really me up here! Get it together!" A generation would pass, and people would begin to doubt the story. And people doubt the story now. But would you go to your gruesome death for a man you knew was just a Zionist lunatic? At least 11 prominent men did--and all of them knew him personally.

I didn't really expect to say all that, I just kind of went with it. I mentioned Tom Conlon earlier, but one songwriter who, for me, really captures the beautifully meaningful synthesis of the sacred and profane is Jay Clifford. Here are some words from his song "Holy City." Note: this is without a doubt one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music ever recorded...but you can't begin to appreciate it without hearing it...so go here: www.ezchiefrecords.com

Never as lonely as when you're around
That distant ringing, an empty sound
Of a broken bell tower's drafty shutters
The peeling paint in the Church Street ghetto
I ran through the rain of that time I forgot
The streetlights misting on foggy carts
Through the wind that falls from the skies to the bells
Through the streets ringing late. Only time will tell
If you are as lonely as I when I see your face
Our lonely "hello" and our empty embrace
An intimate moment for your sadness and my shivers
To signal hello across tears turned to rivers

A prayer for the lovers beneath the stars and the moon
The palm trees and the bay breeze of a graveyard's croon
A lament for the eyes full of gaze and swoon
Taken by the charm of the holy city

Never as lonely as when you're around
I see your face all over this town
And the steeples that point with an accusing finger
To the skies where the scent of loss tends to linger
To the color of brick that blushed in your arms
To the sleepy serenade of a Sunday school song
All of these things, but the bells most of all
Remind me that memories of you are easy to recall

A prayer for the lovers beneath the stars and the moon The palm trees and the bay breeze of a graveyard's croon A lament for the eyes full of gaze and swoon Taken by the charm of the holy city

the remnant

2004-09-07T19:41:00.000-04:00

jaem wonders if my aforementioned gripes with Christendom-at-large necessarily stem from a desire to "be right."

Yeah, a big part of me does think that a lot of these "horrible things" are being perpetrated in the name of pride, i.e., "being right." You could probably trace it to some other sub-causes as well. However, Christianity is still the world's largest religion; and though it's not like it was in Inquisition times, the leaders of the biggest sects of Xianity still feel the need to reassert that our "dominance" comes part and parcel with our right-ness. I mean, the Catholic Church refused Communion to John Kerry. Wasn't the worthiness to recieve the Eucharist supposed to be determined by God? Isn't that why Paul calls for self-examination? All I remember Jesus saying is "Do this in remembrance of me." There was no "...and here are the rules for what you can and can't believe in when you do it."

I second your enthusiasm for working with young people. Although it has netted me a huge amount of debt, an endless string of part-time jobs, and the inconsolable frustration of my parents, I'm still chasing being a teacher. I get distraced here and there, but it always comes back to (as you said) having a "clean slate" of sorts to work with. A lot of my friends/colleagues ask me why I'm aiming for a career in secondary ed. and not higher ed. Probably the biggest reason lies in the fact that *almost none* of the great minds in my area of specialization bother with younger minds. But with whom do you have a more open, receptive audience? By the time you're teaching 400-level undergrad courses, your students are so jaded and cynical that they're not looking to be taught, but to de-code what your agenda is and thus expose you as another component of "the system."

I was sharing in the Orchard the other night, and I stated that I had pretty much given up on the political system here in the USA. And that is true. However, as many gripes as I have with my faith community (Xianity), I have never given up on it. You can travel to where the Church is the most dead, the most corrupted, the most watered-down...and you will still (without fail) find at least one or two people who know the deal. People who live selflessly, give sacrificially, people who love people like Jesus loves them. And that is why I maintain faith that there is something supernatural going on with Jesus' followers. It's not like every other religion.

the (un)usual suspects

2004-09-06T04:39:00.000-04:00

Tucked away in the shady recesses of Columbia's downtown, there exists a smallish Irish pub that I, by all accounts, spend far too much time in. Delaney's, however, has been very good to me in these last four or five years, and I so I find it futile to attempt any sort of abstinence.

I am not, by any stretch, the only regular. And so, when I make my bi-weekly (or so) stop to grab a bite or just drink and chat, I am almost always greeted by another familiar face who has likewise decided that productivity is for suckers. One of these faces is Sean.

Sean is openly gay and, apparently, thought that I was as well. Unlike many people in my neck of the woods (read: the South), I am not easily offended at being mistaken for gay. In fact, it happens a lot. I mean hell, when do you find someone who shops at Express, loves Harry Connick Jr, is a fantastic cook (if i do say so myself), and is also straight? Anyway, I suppose someone eventually told Sean before I had to, because the flirting subsided. However, we remained friends and are never at a loss for subjects which spark lively conversation. The other night was no exception.

Sean is fond of Martinis--sometimes a little overly fond. Saturday night I stopped in at around 8:00 because I hadn't had supper yet and I felt like seeing a familiar face or two. Sean usually shows up a little before happy hour (5:00) and usually leaves shortly after (7ish). However, Sean was in full swing when I arrived and showed no signs of being ready to leave. I sat caddy-cornered to him at the bar and didn't bother to say "hello" as he was in the middle of what looked to be a typically Sean-esque debate. There was another gentleman to my left, and after about 10 minutes of silence, he asked me about something that was happening on the television. I honestly don't remember what--I think it had something to do with the presidential race. In any event, the gentleman, Brad, was expressing his overall apathy towards current affairs in general and how all he was trying to do was "get his" and not hurt anyone along the way. I sort of nodded and grunted to show that I was listening, but mostly I was concentrating on eating (I was really hungry). I interjected a couple of comments out of courtesy so that Brad wouldn't think I was trying to ignore him. Just then, I noticed Sean eavesdropping on us. I didn't think much of it, but I did notice that his face kept contorting every so often after one of us finished a sentence. Brad paid his tab and left, and I went back to my supper. Sean spoke up and asked if he could slide over and chat with me. "Sure," I said, "how have you been?"

Skipping the obligatory "Oh fine, how are you?" portion of the conversation, Sean went straight-away to the tear-James-a-new-one portion. Evidently, I had morbidly offended Sean and sullied my own name when I failed to protest vehemently at the horrible things the now-absent Brad had said. "What did he say?" I asked. "What do you MEAN?!" querried Sean, appalled at my ignorance. " 'I'm just trying to get mine' " quoted Sean, "And you agreed?" "I didn't agree" I started, but Sean was intent on laying into me, so I sat back, ordered another beer, and waited for the inevitable.

You see, Sean knows that I'm a Christian. He also knows that I'm pretty liberal in both my Christian practices and beliefs. Although Sean ascribes to no religion, he was simply floored that someone with my "convictions" didn't set someone like Brad straight. "Sean, not to sound flippant, but I really just wanted to eat, not argue. Moreover, I don't really go in for the 'in-your-face' brand of politiking," I said. He seemed to understand somewhat. Nevertheless, he persisted. "But isn't that what y'all do?" he asked. "Who is 'y'all'?" I responded. "You know, Christians."

Hmmm. This is tricky. Pretty much any response here is going to net me a debate, and I really don't want to be here all night mulling over sociopolitical religous ethics with a half-drunk Ph.D candidate. I tried to construct the most neutral semblance of the truth possible:

-- I don't think it's my place as a Christian to be some sort of ethical enforcer. I think it's more my job to be compassionate to people and try my best to love them like Jesus loves them.

-- But your teachings say...

--Whoa, whoa...don't lump all of us into one group. I approach my faith from a very personal standpoint. I appreciate community within my Faith, but it's not the end-all. My religion's teachings are important, but some of them are flawed, and I don't go writing off entire groups of people simply because some of my brothers and sisters find what they do to be wrong or offensive.

I could see where this was going. As I said, Sean is gay. And as most of us know, there's been more than a little friction between the gay community and Western Christendom. Sean was trying to corner me, and he wasn't going to let me leave until I said, A.) I think gays are sinners or B.) The church is wrong. I kept rephrasing what I'd already said to him, and eventually he seemed to accept that my position was valid. But he wasn't done. He finally got to the root of all this: his personal trauma with being raised Catholic and being rejected by his Church and family when they found out what (or rather who) he is. I looked around and noticed that we had drawn some onlookers as the vodka had rather impaired Sean's volume control. Nevertheless, I sat and listened as if we were the only two in the room. Sean mentioned how angry he was on 9/11, and how he hopes Osama is found and killed, but how he also hopes that while we're hunting down a radical religious sect, that we'll just "finish the job" and wipe out the Christians as well. I flinched initially, but I realized that these weren't so much words from Sean's heart and they were from the eight martinis coarsing through his blood.

But is that what we, the Christian church, have become: an oppressive oligarchy hiding behind a vale of antiquated religiosity? Are we so hated as to garner hatred no less intense than that reserved for the Taliban and al Qaeda? To some, these dumbfounded queries may seem naive; however, I suppose I am still amazed to see how the core of Christianity has been all but obliterated within the heart of Evangelicalism. Many of the people I call brother and sister won't even look at me because I take a drink, or say "fuck" on occasssion, or watch the wrong movies, listen to the wrong music, etc. ,etc. Nevertheless, I can't help but wonder who is further from how Jesus wanted people to live. If we are to trust our own records of his teachings, he was so bent on being inclusive that it often appeared as if he himself had suspended the "rules" of his own religion. He ate with "unclean" people, mingled with Samaritans, "worked" on the Sabbath, healed people without first requiring that they convert to his religion, etc. Where do we find Jesus saying "exclude them" or "ostracize them" or "persecute them" ? What happened to "blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy"?

I have spent nearly my entire life trying to find the tenuous balance between having integrity in my faith and not being blind to my own finitude and fallability. I do not shirk from the label of Christian because (while I do believe that most/all major world religions contain truth) I honestly believe that if people take the teachings of Jesus to heart, the world will change. I don't think Jesus wanted a few people to be clued in to when "the end" was so that we could scurry off into our little religous enclaves and wait it out until the Apocalypse. I will always believe that Jesus believed that if people simply lived the way they were intended to live that the changes wrought by this would in themselves be apocalyptic.

And yet, those of us who are fortunate enough to have stumbled upon this man's teachings are the ones who the rest of the world find the least helpful. We exclude, oppress, extort, and sometimes even kill--not so we can bring a message of love, but so that we can "prove" who is right.

Pardon me, but fuck that.

There are not enough words to explain the sheer absurdity of wasting one's life to prove who is right or wrong about issues that can never be ultimately proven or disproven. You don't need to know exactly what the Bible teaches about homosexuality in order to love somebody. You don't need to know whether or not Jesus was really born of a virgin to know that starving people need food. You don't need to know if Paul really wrote all those letters or not to know that oppressed people need an advocate. There are faithful ones, but I can hardly see how Jesus could look at his church and not deem it a comprehensive failure. I literally thank God that s/he has not just parted the clouds and let the world know himself how massively we've fucked things up.

a complicated path towards simplicity...

2004-09-02T02:44:00.000-04:00

There seems to be an early theme in this blog whereby most of my inspiration stems from watching favorite movies. I have no insight to offer concerning this phenomenon...it's just an observation.

Every time I watch Y Tu Mama Tambien I am reminded of my time in Indonesia, aka, the happiest time of my life. To the objective observer, Indonesia seems a longshot (at best) to make my list of favorite places in the world. While I was there I contracted malaria, nearly died, watched a friend fall from a cliff and nearly die (broke his neck), lost 25 lbs. I didn't need to lose, was caught in the middle of a violent secessionist movement, and (towards the beginning) nearly went insane (literally) from homesickness. However, never have I been blessed with a simple, uncomplicated existence like I was when I was there. No TVs, cell phones, PCs, PDAs...in short, no annoying unnecessary frills that clog up our daily lives here in the States to the point where we become completely engrossed in meaningless minutia.

** For those dying to point it out, yes I do see the irony in talking about my longing for simplicity in a blog **

I don't deny that there are parts of me that greatly enjoy all the 1st-world "extras" afforded to us rich-white-folk. I mean hell, I just finished working for a place where we had actual arguments over which Riesling suited that night's beurre blanc the best. And you know, there's a place for that. If there's a God, I fully believe that he wants us to enjoy all the crap that he put here. Nevertheless, never am I more at peace than when I have the least "stuff." When I was in Indonesia, I could literally carry all my earthly possessions on my back. When I'm here, I have to organize a small task-force everytime I move just so I can figure out whose house is going to temporarily store all my junk.

And so, since I left in May 2000, I have been planning on how to get back to Indonesia. Get back to the place where I can own three shirts and two pairs of pants and that's okay because the weather never changes. Get back to the place where I don't have to buy $80 worth of groceries at a time because there are about 7 harvests/year and I can always get things fresh. Get back to the place where I can sit and talk with my neighbors at length about most anything and not feel rushed because no one is rushing off to meetings or juggling cell phone calls because people are more concerned with living life and not attaining some impossible, materialistic ideal.

Here's the catch. To get back to this haven of simplicity, I have to jump over more hurdles and negotiate more red tape than is required to become a Navy SEAL. First there's teacher certification, 'cuz stuff might be cheap, but it ain't free, and I need a job. Then there's debt restructuring. Any non-trust-fund-baby person who has finished college does not require an explanation for this. Then there's deciding where to go, etc, etc, etc. It seems as though returning to the uncomplicated life I so desparately miss will be one of the (if not the) most complicated ventures in my life to date.

But I'm not complaining...because here (amidst all the b.s.) is the great part: most people spend their lives trying to figure out what they want...I was lucky enough to stumble bass-ackwards into it at the age of 20. I may have to scrape to get back, but when I'm 45, sitting on a white beach on the north shore of Irian Jaya and I get a letter from a friend who is still working 60 hrs./wk just so he can be a Jr. VP in some bank...well, I'll see all these present "complications" as little more than bumps in the proverbial road back to sweet, sweet simplicity.

darts, Newcastle, and revelation.

2004-09-01T02:49:00.000-04:00

So I managed to drag my sorry arse out of the house tonight, and accompanied my two best friends down to the East Room, aka, the seediest little white-trash bar in Columbia. One of the great things about a bar like this: you're not overwhelmed by the typical en masse display of the college-kid mating dance. When people in Irmo get off work and want a place to come and drink w/o worrying about who they have to impress, they can come to East Room. Also, Chuck, Melissa, and I all enjoy throwing darts...and the East Room crew sometimes hooks us up and lets us do so on the house.

I've enjoyed quite a long win streak against Mel and Chuck, but tonight we were playing against another group who happened to be there, and I wasn't really on my game. I still won 2 out of 3, but I wasn't really thinking about the darts. I was mostly thinking about (you guessed it) how I managed to get screwed out of the greatest job of my life. And as I thought about (granted, this was after 2 quick Newcastles), I finally came to that point I've been waiting to come to. To paraphrase our Great National Leader, I "turned the corner." I sort of said to myself, "It still sucks that I got let go, and it sucks even more that I got let go in this particular fashion; however, how many absurd things befall every human being on this planet everyday? Just chalk it up to that and look for something else." I was finally able to come to grips with the reality of my termination and thus have a peace about it that enabled me to start thinking about making positive steps to put it all behind me.

It is pathetically inadequate to say that I have great friends. Chuck and Mel have been like surrogate parents to me during the really bad times. They do so much without ever being asked, and they never complain. My (now ex-) boss quit on me with no prior warning...but if anyone has ever had real, viable reasons for giving up on me it's my friends. Nevertheless, they have been more faithful than anyone. I could never express my gratitude with the sad little time afforded me in this life. Thanks guys.

I was watching Full Frontal tonight, and there are a couple of scenes contained therein in which people lose their jobs. David Hyde Pierce's character takes his being let go particularly hard. However, he eventually comes to the conclusion that some people simply aren't going to like him. In fact, maybe some of us will experience lives in which most people don't like us or the way we do things. But you can never base your worth on others' jugement. Intrinsic value is just that: intrinsic. No one person can reverse that. I certainly don't think that all of us don't have room to improve. But none of us can ever feel worthless simply because someone doesn't understand (or doesn't feel like finding out) exactly where our worth lies.

the least complicated

2004-08-31T12:49:00.000-04:00

In the immediate aftermath of losing my job (which was likely the most hurtful betrayal I've ever experienced), I find myself in the grips of depression and the rut(s) that accompanies it: insomnia, lack of any sort of motivation...an overall sedentary existence.

The most frustrating part lies in the fact that I know "this isn't the end" and "you'll find something better" and I "shouldn't let this get the best of me." I know all the cliche pick-me-ups before my friends ever utter them. And (for the most part) I believe them...so why can't I think about anything else? In the last four days, any pleasant thought has been immediately followed by a reminder that I was unfairly stripped of a job that I loved by someone who couldn't even be honest with me when he did said stripping. It's like when you lose your wallet, and for a few days you actually expect to get it back. You can't wrap your mind around the fact that the money/wallet/etc. is gone. Well, for whatever reason(s), I can't seem to move out of the surreal stage of utter shock that I was thrust into upon the news of my release.

I'm not even sure where I'm going with this by committing it to writing. I suppose that often my writing things out aids my mental "digestion" of them. So perhaps this will spark some sort of mental/emotional overhaul and get me off my ass. I've told friends before that losing this job was a lot less like being fired (though I wouldn't know, I'd never been fired before) and a lot more like being dumped (something I definitely have experienced). But it was like one of those break-ups where you totally don't see it coming. One person's planning a wedding while the other is looking to get away clean (my apologies to Tom Conlon). I was looking to spend years with this restaraunt, while one of the owners was looking for a way to can me from my first day there.

It all reminds me of an old Indigo Girls song, "Least Complicated." :

So I just sit up in this house and resist
and not be seen until I cease to exist:
a kind of conscientious objection,
a kind of dodging the draft.
And boy and girl are holding hands on the street,
and I don't want to, but I think...you just wait.
It's more than just eye to eye:
I learned the things I could never apply.

...what makes me think I could start clean-slated? The hardest to learn was the least complicated.

And as I reflect on situations where I was floored with depression because of some seemingly unforgivably betrayal, I see (without a doubt) that I've always recovered, always bounced back, and yes, always flourished. I suppose I'm still a little gun-shy at this stage in the game...worried that if I go right back out there, I 'll just find another owner/manager who wants to fire me out of spite. And there's the relationship parallel again: not wanting to get hurt, and thus swearing off the ladies. I never have figured out how to do the relationship part well; however, I do keep at it, with mindless faithfulness. So I guess in the spirit of consistency (if nothing else) I should grab the proverbial boot-straps and (to quote a rather less elegant proverb) get my shit together.

From the dark recesses of the South...

2004-08-31T03:53:00.000-04:00

...comes a relatively normal person. In fact, he's probably so normal that a blog seems like a rather silly idea.

However, I like to write. I'm not always good at it, but if someone's willing to give me some free space on which to post my thoughts and indulge my vanity, then I won't argue.

In case you cared...

-- James
-- South Carolina
-- eternal grad. student
-- server/bartender
-- 25 yrs. of age.

I recently underwent some rather traumatic life changes...and if I don't keep myself occupied during these times, I tend towards insanity. My friends, responsible adults that they are, have courageously shouldered the various and sundry burdens that accompany most people's 20's: jobs, marriages, kids, mortgages. Thus, my incoherent ramblings aren't afforded the time they once were. And so you, oh impersonal cyberspace, willingly or not, are my ear to bend, shoulder to cry on, and limited consolation.

I occassionally have thoughts that don't tend so much towards the self-centered-introspective-ramblings...and as soon as some that seem interesting enough come my way, I'll be sure to share them with y'all. Until then, go gently.