A thesis to be developed:

The vast majority of American Protestants are functional Marcionites. The Old Testament scriptures are mostly ignored as irrelevant. The only time the OT is used is when people need to raid it to find models--Abraham, David, Ruth, etc. "Be a Ruth." "Be a David." Huge swathes of OT poetry are remaindered like mediocre books that never sold very well to begin with and are now sold for $.99 and are unbought even so.

(The only other time the OT appears to be important is when someone is hot and bothered about evolution. A few opening passages from Genesis show up then, but the rest of the creational language of the Psalms and other poetry, like the last few chapters of Isaiah, remains hidden in fog.)

The Emergent Church, for instance, has no idea of what to do with the OT. Like Marcion at the very beginning of the Church, such readers are horrified by the OT depiction of the Warrior Lord who is absolutely jealous of His wandering tribe. "Be a Job. Be patient 'n stuff." A few chapters here and there are safe, but the vast tracts of the stark desert beauty one finds layered throughout the Hebrew scriptures are just too violent, too excessive, too poetic to be of any use today.

Christopher Walken

is a bloody

genius

Even better than raccoons!

Speaking of Ed Wood, mastermind behind such brilliantly bad movies as Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda. . . .

Here is some delectably bad Christian film from days of yore.

I suppose if one had the energy one could dig out some theological/cultural significance from this sort of thing. Such as--didn't the Old Testament law have some pretty harsh things to say about false prophets?

I also wonder about people who grew up with this standard Rapture stuff. Imagine a young man ardent for the faith of his dispensationalist congregation, say eighteen or nineteen years old, watching this back in 1941. Then fastforward to the present day. This young man is now in his 80's. He's seen decades of this sort of thing, none of it coming true. What is his mental landscape like having moved from that to things like The Omega Code? How does one maintain a sense of impending doom year after year? Does one get tired, or is imagining the demise of this forlorn planet something that never grows old? The increasingly potent special effects of film simply ramps up the excitement level, boosting one's belief in the Rapture to ever higher levels? I don't know.

Do the frightening condemnations of false prophecy in the Bible ever worry these people, since these predictions fail with miserable frequency?

Man, I hate monkeys.

O Lord, deal not with us according to our sins.
Neither reward us according to our iniquities.

O God, merciful Father, who despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desires of such as are sorrowful; Mercifully assist our prayers which we make before thee in all our troubles and adversities, whensover they oppress us; and graciously hear us, that those evils which the craft and subtilty of the devil or man worketh against us, may, by thy good providence be brought to nought. . . .

A frequent internet joke consists of a picture of something funny or odd with a "you're not doing it right" caption.

I've wanted t0 put one of these up. Over the past several weeks, I've noticed several uses of a cross with purple cloth draped over it. I mean right now. Folks, you're not doing it right.

If Evangelicals/emergents are going to recapture something of the traditional iconography of the church, then they need to figure out how to do it right--unless the strategy is intentionally to get it wrong in a kind of postmodern ironic quoting of tradition:

"Yeah, I know purple drapery on the cross is used during Lent. And it ain't Lent. So? I'm being edgy. I'm co-opting archaic ecclesiastical signifiers so that I can, 1) simultaneously show that I am aware of the tradition while subverting it, and, 2) 'cause I can."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Take a breath.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

If this were my only experience of 'liturgy" then I would be a Quaker for sure.

My eyes are bleeding.

I take that back. After listening to the content of the songs and the sermon fragment, I think I'd abandon Christianity if this were my only exposure to it. Hard ass Stoicism for me:

In man's life his time is a mere instant, his existence a flux, his perception fogged, his whole bodily composition rotting, his mind a whirligig, his fortune unpredictable, his fame unclear. To put it shortly: all things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusions; life is warfare, and a visit in a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion." --Marcus Aurelius

For those of you who plan on entering the wonderland of higher education, here is a sample job description for a position teaching creative non-fiction at a state university:

English: Western Illinois University Department of English and Journalism. Assistant Professor in English with specialty in Creative Nonfiction. Begins August 2010. MFA or Ph.D. required. . . . WIU has a non-discrimination policy that includes sex, race, color, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, religion, age, marital status, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

I wonder when the following will start being added to job descriptions:

non-discriminatory policy that includes interspecies relationships, multiple partnered marriages, or consensual man-boy love.

However, if you are a conservative Christian who believes in life-long monogamous heterosexual marriage, you need not apply. And if, for some strange reason, you actually manage to get hired, be prepared to remain in isolation for most of your career.

Gender expression. That reminds me of the film Ed Wood. He liked to dress like a woman, but his romantic drives were purely heterosexual. Imagine a male literature professor who hits on the undergraduate girls but who dresses like the undergraduate girls. Someone has got to write a novel or a script about that.

Gotta feel sorry for the band on stage while the fun is going on so noisily. It seems as if part of the problem, though, is that the music is the wrong type for the beachball aerobics. A liturgical collision. Soft rock confronts adolescent you-better-make-me-have-fun Christianity. With the right band up there, I'm sure everyone would be rockin' for Christ.

What can the band do? Tell everyone to shut up?

I wonder how many of the people involved in this are thinking, "I'd really like to be a Quaker right now."

In ten years what will these people be thinking about worship?

Random Friday Thoughts

Yes, it will be interesting to see what happens to Orthodoxy in the next few decades. One of the problems beleaguering the Orthodox Church has been its various ethnic insularities, both in Eastern Europe and in America. Only the Antiochian Orthodox people seem to have done well in America in terms of bringing in ethnic outsiders. The Greek Orthodox Church, for instance, has done a terrible job of making converts. It has been more interested in maintaining its Greek heritage than growing (I know, I know, there are non-Greek converts in America. But nothing like there could be if the GOA really got serious about evangelism).

One interesting thing about this culturally is that the version of Christianity exploding in the world is of the Pentecostal or Charismatic variety. It isn't Orthodoxy. It's impossible not to be deeply impressed by Heidi Baker, a marvelously bright and happy person who apparently performs miracles as easily as taking out the trash.Yet she seems as far from Orthodoxy as is possible while still remaining in the orbit of basic Christian belief.

Both Orthodoxy and Pentecostalism embrace the power of the Holy Spirit as a present day power capable of creating healers and wonder workers. Reformed types might have an awful lot of brains, and their philosophy as embodied in thinkers like Alvin Plantinga or Calvin Seerveld is second to none. But their powerhouse theorizing about Christianity and culture remains a minority influence in the big picture.

What is the future of Christianity in the West and in the world? If one goes only by the numbers, in terms of who is growing versus who is dwindling or only maintaining, then the future belongs to the Roman Catholics and the Pentecostals. What will that mean culturally? Will these forms of Christianity sponsor democracy outside the West? Assist in developing science? Produce novels and sculpture? Will Third World Catholicism and Pentecostalism eventually build in Africa the cultural foundations needed for constitutional government and freedom of speech, for ending tribal animosity?

Can Orthodoxy do these things? Do any of these things really matter in the long run? But if they don't, if "holy, holy, holy," according to Heidi, is all that matters, then why are we given the gifts of music, literature, painting, thinking? Don't these matter as well?

In Africa, which form of Christianity will most successfully convert Muslims in the next few decades?

I sincerely hope this is true.

The Hadron Collider has been off-line for nearly a year. When it first broke, we were told it would be fixed by this past spring, yet it still sounds like a clothes dryer with rocks tumbling in it. Well, not really, but I'd like to think that's what it sounds like when they crank it up.

The God particle (Higgs boson--I love saying that) turns out to be, perhaps, a God-hated particle that spontaneously travels back in time to ensure its own destruction. Man, they gotta make a movie out of that.

Personally, my daughter and I are convined that it's racoons who are causing all the mayhem, 'cause they got thumbs, unlike nearly any other animal. Monkeys don't count. Racoons sneak in and pull wires loose, sabotaging the giant underground metal donut, making it sound like a clothes dryer with rocks in it. At least that's what we like to imagine.

If the racoon theory isn't true, then I hope the time vortex thingy is true.

One of the most fascinating movies I have ever watched is this simple home-grown movie about two guys who accidentally invent a time machine in their garage.

I think it's funny that some Evangelicals like to read and quote from Hans Kung.

Kung is a liberal Catholic priest whom some orthodox Catholics would like to kick out of the Church. Not only that, his fame has come and gone quite a while ago, and now he's little read compared to his status as a rebel in the 1970's and '80's when he was the in thing among progressive Catholics.

A little behind the relevance curve, there, folks.

Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor,
Lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.
Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnum misericordiam tuam

Many Christians from Protestant or Catholic backrgrounds have felt the summons of Orthodoxy. Some Crichton students have entered the Orthodox Church, having fallen in love with Orthodoxy's liturgy and practices.

Here is a dilemma for becoming Orthodox, though: if you are an academic or are in the process of becoming one, and you embrace Orthodoxy as the fullest, oldest, truest expression of the Christian faith and you want to teach as an Orthodox Christian, where can you go?

Ironically, you have to go to a Catholic University or a secular university, or you can work for a Protestant higher education organization. There's nothing wrong with any of these situations. It's just that an Orthodox academic has no Orthodox colleges or universities to work for except, so far as I know, one small college.

Personally, I'd like to see more Orthodox colleges around the U.S., even if they remain tiny.