Dowd is a proponent of evolutionary theology, which embraces the science of evolution while maintaining faith in God as the “ultimate reality” behind the process. The article refers to the work of Thomas Berry, whom I am eager to check out. The wikipedia article refers to him as following in the footsteps of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a fascinating thinker who was proposing this sort of understanding back when evolutionary theory was only a few decades old.

I’m sure I’ll be driven back to these thinkers after I finish reading the free PDF download of Dowd’s latest book, entitled Thank God for Evolution. I get the impression this guy likes to shake people up.

from Consolation Champs

Thank God For Evolution

What The New Atheists Don’t See

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Theodore Dalrymple on the Neo-Atheists

This is interesting in light of some of the issues we discussed at our panel at SXSW Interactive this past spring. You can listen to the podcast here. I wonder if there’s a way to measure if more people are actually “attending” church online than offline. They certainly seem to be indulging their curiosity at this new site.

Of course, my fear is always that online “community’ is often just an invitation to flame others with views different than your own. The internet makes it much easier to express views you wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing to a stranger IRL, but it also makes it easier to trash someone else’s views without getting to know them first.

Must keep an eye on this GodTube thing…

from Consolation Champs

GodTube.com Growing Fast

I didn’t attend a lot of panels, or take a lot of photos or notes, so I thought I’d just give you a list of highlights and lowlights:

Highlights

• My panel was great. It was a pleasure and a privilege to meet some very sharp people who also happen to be warm and genuine about their faith. I’m really hopeful that I can be involved in something like it again next year.
• Sticking around a few days was a great idea. Although I didn’t buy a Music badge, there were heaps of free day shows. I got to see The Buzzocks(!), The Polyphonic Spree, Apples in Stereo, Peter Bjorn and John, Robyn Hitchcock with Peter Buck and Okkervil River. There was even free food and beer.
• During one of the parties during Interactive, I was chatting with my friends Kevin and Baratunde when we were joined by a personable young guy talking about films. He introduced himself as Joe and said he was acting in a film that was at the Film festival. During our 40 minute conversation, it dawned on me that we were hanging out with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, star of The Lookout. He turned out to be a great guy, smart and interesting but completely unpretentious.
• As a panelist, I got a complimentary Gold badge which allowed me to attend both Interactive and Film events. I took the opportunity to see a few films (Reign Over Me, Exiled, and Eagle Versus Shark) and this was a great break from the intensity of hanging around with smart geeks or rocking out at concerts.
• The panels and keynotes I did attend were almost all interesting and valuable.
• I focussed more on my writing about film and made a number of useful contacts. My decision to launch Toronto Screen Shots was based on attending a great panel called “Blogging About Film.”

Lowlights

• The weather in Austin this year was kind of crappy. It rained for several days, which made getting around fairly miserable.
• Hotels were expensive and filled up really early. Despite sharing with my friends Neil and Kevin, which involved spending five of my eight nights on either an air mattress or a rollaway bed, it still cost me more than US$1,000. I’m going to book my room by July or August next time.
• Almost everyone I know had some travel snafus on the way home. I wasn’t immune. I flew back Saturday from Austin to Detroit without incident, but my flight from Detroit to Toronto was cancelled for “unscheduled maintenance.” Despite the fact that it’s a one hour flight, there were no flights available until Monday or Tuesday, and the airline would only pay for one night’s accomodation. I banded together with a few other Torontonians and we took a taxi across the border to Windsor and jumped on the train. I got home about seven hours late, and it cost me more money, but there was no way I was staying two days in Detroit, especially at my own expense. Boo airlines!
• As always, the week went by far too quickly and I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time with people. There were a few people whom I’d wanted to meet for the first time, and didn’t get the chance. Ah well, I’ll be back next year!

from Consolation Champs

SXSW 2007 Wrapup

Ok, this entry is really just for those folks who are sitting in the Austin Convention Center Room 9C between 5:00 and 6:00pm Central Standard Time today. Welcome! I hope you’ll enjoy our panel “Ghost In The Machine: Spirituality On The Web.” I hope you’ll leave me a comment with some feedback on the panel. I hope we can do this again next year, and I know we’ll learn a lot. I want to thank Hussein, Rachel, Kevin and Gordon for agreeing to be the “smart guys” on the panel and am so glad to have finally met them in person.

And oh yeah, if you’re wondering about why I’m moderating a panel on spirituality, you might want to look here and maybe here.

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Welcome To Our Panel

Jesus Land: A Memoir, by Julia Scheeres

It seems that I’ve been immersing myself in stories about toxic Christianity lately. Julia Scheeres’ memoir of growing up with her adopted black brother David in a hellish “Christian” home hasn’t made me feel any better about the evangelical subculture. In fact, I am beginning to wonder if Christianity itself might be broken beyond repair. Though a harrowing read, the book is a beautiful testament to the power of hope and love (and the corrosive power of twisted faith). Scheeres and I are around the same age (and even attended the same college), and I found myself nodding in recognition of some of the trappings of Christian life in the 1980s: Keith Green, Sandi Patti, Petra, the mistrust of anything “secular”, the obsession of our youth leaders with sexual immorality and especially abortion. The difference is that I spent my teens in a safe, happy place, and Julia spent hers in a tyrannical Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. Julia and David cling to each other during this time and her descriptions of both the horrors of the school’s “Program” and her rare moments of freedom with her beloved brother are written in the immediacy of the present-tense, like a teenager’s diary. This is powerful stuff, and by the end, I was amazed at her and her brother’s resilience. With the traditional safe places of family and church twisted into abusive prisons, her relationship with David is a lifeline for both of them.

At times I was shaking my head in disbelief, but on her website, she includes supporting documents from Escuela Caribe, the reform school she was sent to by her parents after a little too much teenaged rebellion. And she links to a site for “survivors” of the school’s regime, which may bring some much-needed catharis and hopefully shut Escuela Caribe down and other places like it. Yes, incredibly, the school is still operating. I’m happy and amazed that Julia has been able to make a life for herself as a writer, and a good one. She is happily married and has just had a baby girl, and though her faith has been completely shattered, I know that her daughter will receive a far more “Christian” upbringing than she ever did. In these days when the rise of the Christian Right seems to have caught us all by surprise, it’s good to see that these dark undercurrents have been there all along.

In more happy fun religion news, next month’s Doc Soup screening will be Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Another story of religious madness in the Caribbean jungle. Can’t wait.

from Consolation Champs

Jesus Land

1. This year, for the first time ever, I’m speaking on a panel. Not seeing anything on the schedule about the subject, I proposed a panel on faith, and it was accepted. It’s entitled Ghost in the Machine: Spirituality Online and it’s scheduled for Saturday March 10 from 5:00-6:00. I’ve assembled a panel of rock stars who will say most of the intelligent things, but I’m still nervous and excited.
2. As a panelist, I received a free Gold pass this year, which means for the first time I can attend both Interactive and Film events. I’m still unclear how ticketing to film screenings works, but I’m hoping to actually see a few films this time. A few of the scheduled films recently screened at Sundance, so it might be a good chance to see some stuff that won’t make it to Toronto until at least the fall, if at all.
3. The Interactive section of the conference ends on Tuesday, but I’m not leaving Austin until Saturday morning, so I’m hoping to catch a few bands during the Music portion, and just generally hang out in one of my favourite American cities with some of my favourite Americans.

If you’re going to be there, make sure you say hello! And it’s also acceptable to buy me a Shiner. After all, I’m a crusty conference veteran now!

P.S. Make sure to check out SXSWBaby for the latest news and updates.

from Consolation Champs

7th Annual Pre-SXSW Post

• Son of Rambow
• For the Bible Tells Me So
• Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten
• King of California
• Snow Angels

The film summaries are from the much more attractive and usefully-designed Unofficially Sundance site.

from Consolation Champs

Watching Sundance from Afar

Beginning December 13, the Sundance Channel (unfortunately, unavailable here in Canada) will be airing a new 6-part series called One Punk Under God. It’s a documentary that follows Jay Bakker, the only son of former PTL Club founders Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, as he tries to deal with the pressures of pastoring his own “alternative” Revolution Church.

Jay certainly didn’t intend to enter the ministry. After his parents’ ministry collapsed in the late 1980s after charges of financial impropriety and his father’s affair, Jay abandoned the church and the faith and plunged into a lifestyle of substance abuse, punk rock, and tattoos. He’s left the drugs and alcohol behind, but the do-it-yourself ethic of punk (and more than 60 tattoos) remain at the heart of his ministry. He calls Revolution a church “for people who have given up on church” and “those who feel rejected by religion.” Part of the revolution plays out in front of the camera and involves his embrace of the gay and lesbian communities, which causes rifts with some of his original backers.

Jay is a tremendously likeable character trying to escape the lengthy shadow of his parents’ legacy, and though there are still a few moments that make me cringe, I find myself rooting for him. In the first episode (available free at the iTunes store), he revisits Heritage U.S.A., the “Christian retreat center” (theme park) founded by his parents. Now abandoned and overgrown, the site seems like a metaphor for the ministry of Jim and Tammy Faye, who, despite their obvious faults, come across as basically decent people. Jay is trying to follow Christ as authentically as possible, with the added burden of feeling somehow responsible for his parents’ many sins.

The show is extremely compelling to me personally. As someone who has had a rocky relationship with the (admittedly milder Canadian version of) evangelical subculture, this speaks to me deeply about wanting to keep Christ while ditching so much of what passes for organized religion today. Sure, the appeal of Jay Bakker’s church to younger people might appear trendy and shallow. But it might just be an expression of the sort of unconditional love that the gospel is all about.

Unfortunately, the screener DVD I was sent only contained the first four episodes, and by some horrible twist of fate, episode 2 was repeated twice while episode 3 was missing entirely. So, until I can download these for myself, I’ll just have to assume that the rest of the series is as interesting as the first hour.

Good article about Jay Bakker from Radar Magazine

One from the New Yorker and another from New York magazine.

P.S. Make sure you click the Heritage U.S.A. link. There are some really great photos of what the park looks like now, and no matter how you might feel about Christian theme parks, there is something sort of sad in these pictures.

P.P.S. How annoying that the Apple Store in Canada doesn’t have the free episode, and any attempt to set up an account at the U.S. Apple Store fails because my credit card has a billing address in Canada. I can’t even download free stuff. Bad Apple!!

from Consolation Champs

One Punk Under God

I haven’t mentioned Geez yet, have I? Editor Will Braun (a former editor of Adbusters) is doing some cool stuff out there in Winnipeg, and I want people to know.

In a recent article for Rabble.ca, he talks about fighting the rising influence of the Religious Right (yes, even here in “liberal” Canada) by focussing on Jesus’ message of forgiveness and reconciliation.

“Perhaps religion, at its seldom-seen best, should allow society to imagine the unimaginable — like responding to evil with goodness and forgiving murders. Maybe the power of such actions can do more for our world than the super-power of religio-political might.”

Geez is a new magazine that’s hard to pin down, in a good way. It’s written from a Christian perspective, but so far, it’s tended to focus mostly on issues of sustainable living, simplicity, environmental and economic issues. I’ve subscribed and look forward to seeing where it takes me.

from Consolation Champs

Geez Louise

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Jesus Camp Interview

About 200 other people have made panel proposals, too. Which is where you come in. Check out the handy-dandy Panel Picker and nominate the ten best ideas. It’s ok if you don’t think mine is one of them. But if you’re intrigued, and are going to be there (hey, even if you’re not going to be there), do me a favour and throw me a vote. My proposal is under the “Community” and “Miscellaneous” categories, and is entitled “Ghost in the Machine: Spirituality Online.”

Your input on the panel is welcome as well.

from Consolation Champs

Pick Me!

My favourite quote from the page: “If soccer is your source of happiness, then your life can go up and down.”

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Who Has God On Their Side?

Powells has a very interesting interview with him on their site.

from Consolation Champs

God Laughs and Plays

As part of a regular series, the school hosted a question and answer session with the band before the show, which you can listen to as an MP3 file. This unique approach allowed not only the audience to get to know the band, but the band to understand a little bit about the people for whom they were performing. What a great idea.

Also, it’s nice to see that I’m not the only person who raves about the feelings of transcendence that the band’s live performances inspire.

P.S. More love for Calvin: the Director of Student Activities, Kate Bowman Johnson, keeps a wonderully-titled blog called Evangelical Expatriate. And former student Ben Reed blogs thoughtfully and often hilariously about the evangelical subculture over at Christian Retail.

from Consolation Champs

Calvin College Hosts Sigur Rós

While I applaud this effort, it does seem a bit strange to bring people together over a competitive sporting activity. For years, I’ve had the idea of bringing some of my fundamentalist Christian friends together with some gay friends (my smart-ass title for the events: Fags and Fundies), but at least over a meal, people have time to talk and there are no winners or losers.

Still, I suppose anything that can bring two groups of misunderstood and misunderstanding people together is a good thing.

P.S. The funniest thing in the Beliefnet story was the organizer’s assurance that gay Muslims can choose either team!

from Consolation Champs

Gays Versus Muslims

International illegality, the deliberate repudiation of international law, and torture, gratuitously employed in defiance of the moral intuitions of ordinary people, all show that the Bush Administration has chosen to place itself outside the moral community of modern Western democratic civilization. This is not an unwarranted or outrageous judgment; it logically follows from the evidence. It seems a strange choice to have been made by an American government that more than any other in history identifies itself with righteousness and with Christianity.

In that respect, if one is to invoke religious judgments, I would cite André Malraux’s remarks to the novelist Georges Bernanos, who had returned to France from wartime exile and asked what judgment Malraux made on Europe in 1945. Malraux replied, “With the camps, Satan has visibly reappeared over the world.”

Why aren’t the mainstream media talking this way?

from Consolation Champs

Harper’s On Torture

Patrick Henry College is a Christian college where 85% of the students come from homeschooled environments. It was founded explicitly to produce conservative politicians and other public office holders.

Discussion on Metafilter

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Harvard for the Home-Schooled

I’m not really old enough to remember it, but the “Jesus People” movement was a full-blown phenomenon in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s. Centred mostly in northern California, hippies began getting into Jesus and these “Jesus Freaks” turned the established church on its ear. One of the most influential figures in this period was a young man with the unlikely name of Lonnie Frisbee. Lonnie’s ministry was influential in the foundation of two of evangelicalism’s biggest denominations. And yet, his name has disappeared from most accounts of the movement. Why? Because Lonnie was gay.

David di Sabatino has made a documentary film about Lonnie and it will be shown here in Toronto later this month as part of the Reel Heart Film Festival. I’m very interested in seeing it, but I do find one thing interesting. The director, who is an evangelical, talks about Lonnie’s homosexuality as a “struggle with sexual sin” and points to Lonnie as an example of a flawed prophet. Sadly, Lonnie died from AIDS in 1993, but I wonder what would have been the outcome if Lonnie had been able to embrace his sexuality and be accepted in the evangelical movement for what he was, without feeling like he had to live two separate lives.

Film critic Peter Chattaway conducted a lengthy interview with director di Sabatino back in April and the director says that Lonnie was raped as an eight-year-old child and that this might explain his fragmented identity, but I always find it funny that Christian people always need some “explanation” for someone’s sexuality. It’s more likely his fragmented identity was a result of not being able to tell people close to him about his homosexuality for fear of being denounced.

That being said, the film sounds like it genuinely tries to understand a complex individual, and I hope I’ll get to see it. It doesn’t hurt a bit that there are lots of Larry Norman songs in the soundtrack.

Note: Music was a huge factor in the Jesus People movement. Here’s a great site with lots of history on “Jesus Music”.

from Consolation Champs

Who Was Lonnie Frisbee?

This story by Michael Valpy in the Globe and Mail worries me. (Go and read it now, because I think the Globe will make it part of a paid archive in a week. That’s why I posted the above picture). The same-sex marriage issue is coming to a head in Canada and we’re seeing the same sort of opposition from Canada’s admittedly less-aggressive Religious Right. One of the strangest sights I’ve seen recently was a demonstration against same-sex marriage featuring Sikhs, Muslims, and Christians. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all get together to work for something positive instead of just reacting to something that we’re afraid of?

I do a lot of head-shaking and eye-rolling when I read articles like this one, but the truth is that I’m a bit frightened. Every day I feel further and further away from a subculture that once nurtured me. I’m not sure how much I’ve changed, but I know that the evangelical culture has changed a lot in the past 25 years. It seems to me that a sort of rigidity has set in. (I’m tempted to say ‘rigor mortis’). Despite the claims of huge growth among evangelicals, I’m deeply disturbed that it hasn’t made a whit of difference in the world. Poverty, war, oppression. It’s the same old story. A recent book by Ron Sider called The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience explored this area and discovered that evangelicals have the same rates of divorce, the same levels of materialism, the same struggles with racism. It’s more disturbing because we preach so loudly about other people’s “sins”. Jesus said that before we can remove the speck from our brother’s eye, we need to remove the plank from our own eye. That’s always made me smile, but it’s so true.

P.S. I realize the irony that I’m ranting about the “sins” of the Religious Right, so I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not perfect either. But wouldn’t it be great if we could actually talk to each other rationally instead of shouting at each other? For a nice balance to the Globe and Mail story, here’s a story from the Sunday Star about a reporter who went across Canada asking regular people their opinions on same-sex marriage. As always, regular people can surprise you. (Same 7-day archive policy applies, so read it now)

from Consolation Champs

Under Attack

In an interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Reverend White talks about his continuing work to fight against the bigotry and hatred perpetrated by “Christians” against gays and lesbians. White is the founder of Soulforce, an activist group based upon the civil disobedience tactics of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Soulforce is behind the Dear Dr. Dobson site I wrote about a few months ago.

One of the most interesting things I read in the interview was that Reverend White and his partner Gary Nixon have actually been attending his old friend Jerry Falwell’s church in Lynchburg, Virginia for the past two years and whenever Falwell says anything derogatory about homosexuals, they stand in silent protest. I wonder if anyone talks to them at the church socials.

from Consolation Champs

Soulforce Founder Fights Back

Interesting to note that the music is by Paul Neufeld, the Juno-winning musical genius who also played at our wedding, and that the project is being partially produced by Imago, which is run by my old prof and friend John Franklin. I just found out about this today, and it’s short notice, but I’m going to try my best to be there.

from Consolation Champs

Blue Like Jazz Live

Last week, I had the privilege of going out for dinner with two of my companions from those heady days. At one time in the late 1980s, we had all shared an apartment together. One is now director of an inner-city mission organization who recently survived a serious accident. While surfing in Hawaii, he was hit by a large wave and suffered a spinal injury. He was paralyzed and almost drowned, but has made remarkable progress and now is almost back to normal physically. Spiritually and mentally, this experience has changed him dramatically. He’s reaching out to his friends much more. He’s slowed down his workaholic habits. He’s savouring all the good things in his life. I don’t see this friend that often. The last time I saw him was at his 40th birthday last October, about a month before his accident.

The other friend is someone I still see quite a lot. He’s had a very different journey. Almost fifteen years ago, he sent me a letter from Ottawa, where he was living at the time. “I’m gay,” he told me. I was the first person who knew, and it fell to me to tell the rest of our highly-conservative friends. Over the years, he’s become estranged from Christianity to the point where he declares himself an atheist. And yet he’s still one of my closest friends. He will turn 40 this summer, just as I turned 40 in February. So, we’re all mellowing with age and thinking of what is important to us.

One of the things we talked about was church. And I got to thinking that one of the reasons I didn’t feel very enthusiastic about joining another church is that so many churches want you to join every activity they have going, and to focus your entire life, social and otherwise, around their program. I began to think that perhaps I already have a kind of church, a community of people whom I care about and who care for me. Many of them aren’t Christians, or are disillusioned “ex”-Christians, but isn’t that kind of irrelevant? Instead of trying to surround myself with people whom I’m supposed to be like, I’ve already surrounded myself with the people I am like.

And so instead of hurrying to commit to a new group of strangers who probably don’t need me, I’m rededicating myself to the people in my life with whom I don’t spend nearly enough time. It’s important to live out the love that I claim is so central to my faith. And we’ll see where it goes from there.

from Consolation Champs

Why I’m Not At Church Today

(6/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Cross and Bones

The Education of Shelby Knox (USA, 2005, Directors: Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, 76 minutes): This film follows the life of 15-year-old Shelby Knox, a teen living in conservative Lubbock, Texas. Though from a conservative Christian Republican family, Shelby is a feisty and compassionate campaigner for sex education in the public school system, feeling that their “abstinence-only” policy is ignoring the obvious, including higher than average rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The film follows her over a period of three years, as she begins to question the easy answers offered by her church, her school, and her community. She works with a city-funded group, the Lubbock Youth Commission, but when local politicians force the group to tone down its activism, she quits and begins working with a group of gay teens to help them start a Gay Straight Alliance group at school. Despite the fact that Shelby herself has pledged to remain a virgin until marriage, she recognizes that not everyone in her community wants (or in the case of the gay students, is able) to make the same choice. This film is a balanced and compassionate look at one young woman’s political and spiritual awakening. In light of the currently raging culture wars, it’s a must-see for people on all sides of these issues.

(10/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Education of Shelby Knox

Despite the tone of condescension and vitriol in Lewis Lapham’s editorial, the articles themselves are, on the whole, clear-eyed. The few exceptions are of the standard “look at the religious freak show” variety and even I find that less offensive than I used to.

Most disturbing is the growing trend toward triumphalism in the fundamentalist churches since Bush’s reelection, as well as the corporatization of the church. Under the guise of diversity, many of the megachurches are actually enforcing monolithic thinking on a whole range of issues, many of them political.

Here’s a telling quote from Chris Hedges’ article, on the National Religious Broadcasters’ convention:

I used to think of the Christian Right as a sort of crazy uncle. You know, still part of the family, but somebody to be a little embarrassed by. But I’m no longer thinking that way. I don’t recognize these people as family at all any more. I wonder how I ever could have.

If it weren’t for progressive Christian voices like those of Jim Wallis (God’s Politics), Brian McLaren (A Generous Orthodoxy) and Anne Lamott (Plan B), I’m not sure where I’d be these days.

from Consolation Champs

Harper’s May 2005

And of course there’s my other favourite “family” website, PFLAG.

NOTE: I’m posting these links as a resource for anyone who might be interested in this perspective. I’m not interested in engaging in an argument about whether homosexuality is a “sin” or not. I’ve disabled comments on this entry for that reason. Sorry…

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Dear Dr. Dobson

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More Ludicrosity

Which caused me to want to write about something that happens to me sometimes. Not very often, but often enough to keep me on the “glass half-full” team. More than many things, this is why I am a Christian. Well, it’s why I’m a theist. The Christian stuff comes from somewhere else, possibly. What am I talking about?

Well, it happened most recently last weekend. I’d spend Friday night “holiday” partying with the GTABloggers, talking and laughing and drinking into the wee hours with a group of people I’ve grown to love. But it didn’t happen there.

On Saturday morning, I reluctantly woke about five hours after I’d crashed into bed, to accompany Brooke downtown. She was running in the Santa Shuffle, a 5K race to support the Salvation Army. I was being a good husband, showing my support for my closest friend and life partner. But it didn’t happen there, either.

It happened after she’d raced away from the starting line. I had about half an hour to wait for her to finish, and I went back inside, into the warmth of a nearly empty food court, where I sat with my coffee and listened to my iPod.

Sometimes I think music is like prayer. It’s a language to express things that can’t possibly be expressed any other way. Words and music blend together to speak about something much much bigger than any of our individual lives. I’ve noticed a certain earnestness and emotional vulnerability coming back into the kinds of music I listen to lately. Irony and cynicism are being stripped away and it’s now ok to be hopeful again. I call this the music of crazy optimism. It’s one of humanity’s most enduring traits. Hope. Longing. And it always speaks to me. Basic truths I try not to forget: life is so so good. And we’re all connected somehow.

I was listening to Modest Mouse‘s Good News for People Who Love Bad News (actually, the title has a sort of double meaning, I guess) and something about these lyrics from “Float On” just made me a bit weepy.

I backed my car into a cop car the other day
well he just drove off, sometimes life’s ok
I ran my mouth off a bit too much, oh what did I say?
well you just laughed it off, it was all ok
and we’ll all float on ok, and we’ll all float on ok, and we’ll all float on ok, and we’ll all float on anyway.

I’m not really expressing it well, am I? Well, that’s why we have music, I guess. Go and listen to some that you love.

from Consolation Champs

Write About It!

— Flannery O’Connor

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Good Quote

I’ve signed this petition from the excellent Sojourners magazine folks. Even though I can’t vote, my life (and the lives of millions of people around the world, especially in Iraq) are affected by this November’s election.

If you’re a person of faith, have a look. Ah, go on, even if you’re not…

from Consolation Champs

God Is Not A Republican. Or a Democrat.

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Society vs. Community

“You were too busy steering the conversation toward the Lord,
to hear the voice of the Spirit saying shut the fuck up.”

I’ve spent the last few weeks/months/years trying to listen instead of speak about these things. It’s very hard not to become completely discouraged. Silly but telling example: Last night, I watched the first episode of the new series of reality show The Amazing Race. One couple, noted by their onscreen graphic as “Models/Dating”, also made a big deal of declaring they were “committed Christians” and the guy is making an ass of himself already, talking about “trusting the Lord” with their decisions. Buddy, you’re on a GAME SHOW! His whole attitude reminds me of a quote that’s on my “Faith” page:

“I’ve often wondered if being a Christian was something we could, or should, claim for ourselves; that if being a Christian meant incarnating the love of Christ in my own life, then maybe it would be best to let others tell me how well, or how badly, I’m doing”

—Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk

I’m almost afraid to watch the rest of the series…

And, oh yeah, this, too.

from Consolation Champs

I [heart] Pedro

(via dashhouse)

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Faith and Film

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What’s So Good About It?

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“Heaven Insurance”

However…I just received an email letting me know that they are alive and kicking. Thank all of you who linked or sent cash. I hope you’ll someday be able to see what you’ve helped to keep alive.

They’re not out of the woods yet. You may still contribute financially and they need volunteers as well. But the news looks a lot better than it did a month ago.

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The New Brookstone

A less egregious example I discovered lately is a web design firm run by Christian people who have put together a marketing presentation aimed at churches. In it, they actually say that since porn sites are so appealing and ubiquitous that your church web site needs to be really compelling to compete. Huh? Am I the only one that sees a disconnect here?

from Consolation Champs

Jesus Spam

Another issue that I have with the film (and of course I’m aware that I haven’t yet seen it) is its focus on just the most gruesome aspects of Christ’s incarnation. From the reviews I’ve seen, even the Resurrection is given little screen time. Instead, it’s a bloody, violent depiction of the last twelve hours of Christ’s life. I’m aware that people will tell me that it is necessary to see what Christ suffered for us. On the other hand, I’m also aware that violence sells movie tickets. And that a suffering Christ is, perversely, more “macho” than the one who heals the sick and tells us to love our enemies. When I was a teenager, every Easter our youth group would gather and our youth pastor would read us an account of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Part of me was rightfully humbled, but another part of me always felt like I was being manipulated. I think I feel the same about the premise of this film. The Catholicism of Mel Gibson is of an old and conservative bent, and guilt has always been one of its tools. Something about that just makes me squirm.

David Van Biema writes about this aspect perceptively in the March 1 issue of Time:

I welcome the film as a starting point. The fact that people are actually discussing Christ’s death again around the water coolers is great. But I don’t think we all have to march in step in our views of the film. One thing that isn’t really addressed in the film is the whole purpose and place of the Crucifixion in the Christian faith, and so I hope that the hype around the film encourages people to delve into that a little bit.

Note: I’m hoping that I don’t need to turn off comments on this entry. While I like discussion, I’m not intending this entry to be the basis of a flame war. My own discussions of my faith take place with my friends and so I won’t be engaging in much of that here. Please keep it civil and I’ll be as hands-off as possible. Thanks for your understanding.

from Consolation Champs

The Passion Over “The Passion”

Brooke and I attended a very important meeting this past Sunday afternoon. It was regarding the future of one of our very favourite cultural institutions in this city. For the past 15 years, Brookstone Theatre has been fulfilling its mandate “to radically re-connect theatre and spirit.” Brookstone is a small but passionate theatre company that has received many positive reviews and Dora Award nominations (the Canadian equivalent of Broadway’s Tony Awards). They receive a small amount of government funding, but since their mandate is broadly Christian, they don’t receive the same amount of public funds as other theatre companies of their size. Among churches and the Christian community, Brookstone often gets overlooked or simply challenges people’s ideas of what “Christian theatre” should be a little too much. They exist, like many innovators, between two worlds.

The thing that has always threatened to happen is happening now. Brookstone is in danger of falling through the cracks. If they are unable to raise $30,000 by the end of January, Brookstone will simply cease to exist. This would leave an empty hole in the soul of our city. Nobody else is doing what Brookstone tries, and succeeds at, bringing issues of spirituality into the realm of professional theatre. There is not one performance I have attended in the past ten years that has not moved me and caused me to think.

The theatre is not losing money. Each season they have been profitable. But over the years, the lack of a professional business manager has led to mounting debts that have simply been lost in the shuffle. Donations given will go toward the debt as well as to funding a “transition” season with a lower budget. Brookstone’s board of directors, a dedicated group of volunteers, are also searching for a fulltime business manager who will start putting things in order. The feeling among Brookstone’s supporters at the meeting was that we simply cannot allow Brookstone to disappear.

Donations in ANY amount are welcome and needed. There are several ways to donate. Cheques can be made out to “Brookstone Performing Arts” and mailed to: Brookstone Performing Arts, 188 Lowther Ave., Toronto, ON, M5R 1E8. If you prefer to give via credit card, you can give online through CanadaHelps.org.

Please consider this an investment in the future. If you’ve ever been to a Brookstone show, you’ll want to ensure their survival. And if you haven’t, this may be the only way to make sure that you’ll be able to in the future. I’m not totally comfortable writing to ask you for your money, and I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. But I think it’s absolutely critical. And whether you can give or not, please consider linking this.

CanadaHelps Donation Page
Brookstone Theatre

from Consolation Champs

Urgent!!! And Sorry For All The Exclamation Points!!!

I experienced this firsthand about ten years ago at a friend’s wedding. This fairly conservative Christian couple had hired a DJ and later in the evening I noticed the mother of one of the bridesmaids sitting with a wistful look in her eye. Almost tearfully, she told me how glad she was that people were dancing. It was painful for her to realize that she herself had been denied the chance to express herself in this way. It seems silly, but for several generations of people of faith, it was deadly serious.

Bravo to Wheaton for pulling their head out of the sand. Now somebody’s got to teach those kids to dance!

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Why Johnny Can’t Dance

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I’m Unable To Even Form An Opinion

Though it’s not really a vacation, I’m hoping that in the process of teaching and serving the needs of the church there, I’ll gain some insight into another culture and learn about the history of a fascinating part of the world. However…

While doing some research on hotels and restaurants in Krakow, where we’ll be spending a day or two, I found that Poland has its own equivalent of Hooters. Behold Rooster! The web site assures me “Thanks to such reachness of menu everyone will find something suitable for oneselves.” Hmm. I wonder if the Rooster girls need ESL lessons.

from Consolation Champs

How I’m Spending My Summer Vocation

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Christians In The Movies

A strange Good Friday service today, with a chilling announcement that due to SARS, the clergy wouldn’t be shaking hands anymore with the congregation, as well as a reassurance that the elements for our Communion service “have been prepared with the utmost care.”

We also watched Wit (2001) last night, which is about a fiercely intelligent (but emotionally chilly) professor of literature who is dying from ovarian cancer. Emma Thompson, who also co-wrote the screenplay, gives a heart-wrenching performance, and there is a strong current of Christian faith throughout the film, making it oddly appropriate for our Easter. Her character had made the study of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets her life work, but it took her a long time to understand this:

Much crying ensued in our household at the inevitable conclusion, but it was cathartic. I was choked up the same way today when we were singing, both the above hymn as well as my perennial favourite, “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross.”

from Consolation Champs

Good Friday

We spent the afternoon at a play with our friends Philip and Ian. Swollen Tongues was a completely over-the-top Restoration-style comedy of cross-dressing, poetic competition, and Sapphic love. Oh, and it’s all in rhyming couplets. It was quite hilarious, since some of the rhymes are deliberately bad, and the actors delivered them as broad farce.

As it turns out, we’re having some of the same problems with our new Mac as we had with the old one. Since we transferred so many of our old files, we’ve obviously copied something corrupt. So now, I’m busily copying everything to CD-R before I have to restore the whole machine. There’s probably no way to figure out which file(s) are bad, but if anyone has a clue, could you share it?

from Consolation Champs

Cops and Church

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An Apology of Sorts

• Daniel Amos are still making music today. Not the name of a person, but a group, DA were one of the most influential bands from this period. Able to span genres effortlessly (they began as a country band and became celebrated as an alternative band!), they produced three albums (The “Alarma” Chronicles) that still hold up today. Satirizing everything, these songs still move me because they are honest, humble, and always looking for truth, which makes a pretty good creed to live by. Good songs: Faces to the Window, Through the Speakers.
• Larry Norman was one of the original “Jesus freaks” from the 60s, although he made most of his music in the 70s. Hippy music like his was still alive in the church in the 80s, along with other discredited 70s pastimes like roller-skating, but I always liked the combination of apocalypse and hope in his songs. Good songs: Six-Sixty-Six (covered recently by Frank Black), I Love You.
• Andrae Crouch is a man who combined traditional Gospel music with funk and R&B and made it appeal to both white and black listeners. If it weren’t for Andrae, I might not be listening to Prince and Stevie Wonder today. Good songs: All the Way, Finally.

The whole “Contemporary Christian Music” thing is a bit silly to me, but despite that, these musicians were trying to do much more than just entertain Christians. Their music helps me remember who I was, who I am, and who I want to become.

from Consolation Champs

Jesus Music

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BeliefNet Files For Bankruptcy

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
Hark! all the tribes Hosanna cry;
O Savior meek, pursue Thy road
With palms and scattered garments strowed.

Ride on, ride on, in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die!
O Christ! Thy triumph now begin
Over captive death and conquered sin.

“Ride On, Ride On in Majesty” (words by H.H. Milman, 1820)

Today is Palm Sunday, a strange day in the Christian calendar. Matthew 21:1-11 tells the story of how Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey, and people welcomed him like a king, shouting “Hosanna” and pulling down branches from the palm trees to lay beneath the donkey’s feet. It seems incredible that some of these same people would be screaming for his blood within a few days. Even if you’re not someone who believes or is even familiar with the Christian message, this is a powerful reminder of the duality of humankind. We’re capable of incredible good, and also of unspeakable evil. The hymn I’ve quoted above moves me, just for the solemnity and determination hinted at in the line “In lowly pomp ride on to die.”
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Thanks for your indulgence.

from Consolation Champs

In Lowly Pomp, Ride On To Die

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A Quiet Anniversary

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Give Joy To Those Who Are Afraid

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T-Shirts for Church

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CyberChurch

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Crusading Granny?

Very cool. He graduated from in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I also attended (for teacher training). Note to self: say Hi at SXSW.

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“What I Believe” -

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Sanitizing Private Ryan

“[E]verywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever.”

Then she talks about being in the church where she would go just to sing and she’d always leave before the sermon, because she didn’t want to hear any sermons about Jesus, but this one day, she gets caught up in the last hymn before the sermon, and so she stays, but:

“I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, “Fuck it: I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.” So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.”

I may have just discovered my new favourite author…

from Consolation Champs

You Can Come In

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New U2 CD

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Opening of the Evangelical Mind

By the way, I really like Vanity Fair. Beneath the celebrity cover, there are always four or five well-researched and well-written pieces, and they’re not afraid to take risks like running the above photos. Even the celebrity pieces are usually less superficial than most.

from Consolation Champs

The Presence of Evil