The limits of Stan the Man Hauerwas

When I was in seminary, I got drunk on Stanley Hauerwas. His polemic works against Modernity, Christendom, Liberalism, Individualism, etc. - struck a chord with me, and gave me a certain set of diagnostic lenses to see "How stuff works" in our late modern world. For all that I learned from Hauerwas and will no doubt continue to learn, I am in his debt.

Yet even while I was stumbling drunk on his work, there were moments of clarity where I saw something lacking. In his hyperbolic assertion that Christianity hangs or falls on the fidelity of the Church as a concrete social/political body, understood as an alternative to "the world" - this all seemed to at least downplay or, worse, denigrate things like personal piety or spiritual formation. The self was lost in that elusive, fugitive "We/Us" of the capital-C Church.

So for all kinds of good reasons I remain generally positive on Hauerwas, but I'm also grateful for smarter folks than I doing critical engagement on his work, because it might give me better handles on where the limits of his work lie, and where I might mark out points of departure. The most recent, and what looks to be very intelligent, entry in this field is Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction
, by Nicholas M. Healy
, published by Eerdmans. And First Things has a helpful review of the book up from John Webster, tellingly entitled "Ecclesiocentrism." It's short and sweet, so give it a look if you love or hate Stan.

The Pastors Brian on baptism

For the past year my family has been worshiping at Christ United Methodist Church here in Toledo. It's the church my wife and I were married in nearly 15 years ago, and it sits just a block away from our house. It's in our neighborhood and so that's where we've gone to church.

Christ UMC is shepherded by Pastor Brian Oliver. When I first showed up last year I approached him after worship and asked, "Need any help?" What pastor doesn't need help? So Pastor Brian and I have had a great time getting to know each other over the past year and we of course have had a lot of fun playing around with the fact that we're both named "Brian." It's been great to have another seminary-educated friend/colleague right here in town. To me, he's "Pastor-Brother Brian."

I've filled the pulpit a few times for him, but this past Sunday we did something new: We team-preached on the topic of baptism in our respective traditions, Methodist and Brethren (esp. the Anabaptist part). Here's the video...

'Round and 'round it goes: The turnstiles of trinity, church, and world

Photo by Tim Green/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0

This post is part of an ongoing series on the book Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary, by Stanley Hauerwas & Romand Coles. This series is being authored by Jonathan McRay, Jonathan Swartz, & Brian Gumm. This post reflects on chapter 7, "The Pregnant Reticence of Rowan Williams" by Coles.

First off, it seems right that a bit of an update is in order. In addition to the slower pace of our posts, our e-mail chatter about this book has died down over the past month and a half, and I'm certain that has mostly to do with more "life happening" for each of us. I know Jon's been deep in studies recently, on top of his family and work commitments, all of which add up to quite a load this time of year. He was originally going to write the reflection for this chapter, but sensing his heavy load, I volunteered to take it on for him...which was two weeks ago.

And John's been busy with work, planning for some upcoming transitions, and also dusting off a few of his grad school papers and getting them posted in some cool online places:

• The Impossible Becoming Possible: Nonviolence and Democracy (Political Theology Today)
• A Sheep in Wolf's Cloting: Nonviolence and Pacifism (State of Nature)

For my part I've been juggling my work for EMU, local ministry, a writing project, and a church-planting proposal that needs to be done this week - oh and watching a lot of the show Parenthood with my wife in the evenings. So yeah, things have been a bit hectic but our reading continues and is, at least for me, still stimulating some good thoughts for my local context and work.

While it does take some wild patience to follow Coles' writing at times (and being somewhat snarky, it kind of reminds me of this) - this chapter succeeded in further convincing me that Rowan Williams is someone I should pay a lot more attention to. (Good timing since he's now giving the Gifford Lectures at University of Edinburgh over the next week.) So here are a few scattered thoughts on this chapter...

Yeoman theology

Chaucer's Yeoman

After taking the summer off, the NuDunkers are having another chat this Thursday, from 9 to 10am Central, on the topic of "Dunker Theologizing: How we do our God talk." Check out that link for posts from others and details on how you can join the conversation, live or otherwise! This post is part of our prep for that conversation...

Two dear pastors/sisters in Christ addressed the following sentences to me; the first in my mid-20s, the second in my late:

"Brian, you'd love seminary!"
"Brian, when are you going to seminary?"

Here's another from a former pastor, upon seeing some of my undergraduate work (mid-to-late 20s), a class project where I interviewed pastors and the children of pastors:

"I know you'd love studying theology."

They were all right. I loved everything about my grad school/seminary years at EMU (except the exhaustion), and I excelled at the work of academic study. Mid-way through those studies I started hearing from peers and profs alike: "You could be a teacher," "you could do a PhD." It was intoxicating music to my ears.

Yet by the time I graduated, this intoxicating music began to take on ominous undertones in my hearing, and so I shook my head to clear out the siren song of the academy and instead moved with my family to rural Iowa to see what being an organic intellectual seeking the peace of the farm town might look like. (I'm still trying to figure that out...)

There are numerous reasons for my leaving academics when I did, but the one I want to explore here is what I take to be the Dunker-inculcated attitude toward theology/theologizing/"God talk" and its place in the body of Christ. It's an attitude that could be characterized as "yeoman theology."

5 theology-rocking books

Photo by Aaron Suggs via Flickr

While the series on the Hauerwas & Coles book proceeds here on Restorative Theology with the Brothers Jonathan, I'm slipping this post in as part of an ad hoc NuDunkers "summer interlude" series. We've been too busy with summer commitments to organize any topical discussions, but Josh Brockway had the great idea for each of us to write up a list of "5 books that 'rocked my theology."

Dana just put hers up Saturday, Josh put his up today, and mine appears below. I'm looking forward to the other NuDunkers chiming in! And as always, anyone's more than free to join the conversation in the comments on any of these posts and at the NuDunkers G+ community page.

Like Dana, I share a distaste with systematic theology as a genre. My only substantive engagement with anything considered "systematic" is the three-volume series by James McClendon (which was an intentional short-circuting of the systematic genre). I found McClendon's work somewhat helpful but it doesn't make the list below. Next, this list will not strike some theology snoots as "proper theology," so what I'm listing below are books that have profoundly shaped my theological approach, rather them being straight-up works of theology. Finally, I'll be listing the books below in the order in which they appeared in my life (a narrative approach), thereby rocking my theological world.

Tracking that elusive Spirit

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8; photo by byronv2/Flickr)

This Friday the NuDunker folks are hosting our second public conversation on the topic of pneumatology, which is the fancy seminary word for "talking about the Holy Spirit." You'll be able to watch the discussion live on YouTube and participate in live conversation over Twitter with the hashtag: #nudunker. If you've never done a Twitter live chat, let me know and I'll give you some direction there.

You can RSVP on Google+ if you're in that sandbox...
NuDunker discussion: Pneumatology
Friday, Feb. 8th 10am-11am CST

That event page will carry the live YouTube feed and we'll also use it in the days leading up to the discussion to post each of our preliminary blog posts. We'll also be posting those links on Twitter and Facebook all week (though Dana and I are fasting from Facebook this month, so you'll find us on our blogs, Twitter, or e-mail). If you can't make the live event, don't worry! It will be recorded on YouTube for posterity and (better) further discussion. It's our intention with these events to use social media to engage in good theologizing for the health whole church, Brethren or otherwise.

Okay, with that bit of business out of the way, the rest of my post consists of my thoughts around the Holy Spirit and how those thoughts relate to my ministerial calling, and how that messy journey has unfolded over the years...

Theological sketchings for NuDunkers

The joys of the arbitrary Google Image search...

The first order of business in this post is to answer the question...

What the heck is "NuDunkers?" - We don't know yet, but the more appropriate question is who are NuDunkers...

Okay, wise guy, who are NuDunkers? And who's this "we?" - "Dunker," for the uninitiated, is a throwback term to the Schwarzenaru Brethren practice of full-immersion baptism, and the word used to be somewhat of a group epithet used by outsiders looking in (like the word "Anabaptist" and even "Christian" in their original contexts).

So NuDunkers are, well...new. We self-described NuDunkers are very few at this point and are in our early stages of gathering. There are currently four of us - Andrew Hamilton, Dana Cassell, Joshua Brockway, and yours truly - all inhabitants of the Schwarzenau Brethren tradition in two of its current denominational forms: Church of the Brethren and Brethren Church.

For me, connection to these three fellow Dunkers began in the Brethren blogosphere. I first made connections with Josh nearly two years ago, and he's slowly worked me into conversations with Dana and Andrew over the past year. In recent months, in addition to our blog and Facebook conversations, we have had a few e-mail conversations and hangout sessions on Google+.

So it's safe to say at this early stage that NuDunkers is also a conversation.

Hauerwas is like a fine wine

His dad's name was Coffee for crying out loud!

He gets better with age. The Australian Broadcasting Company's always-excellent Religion and Ethics website has posted what I think may be Hauerwas' most succinctly argued essay which covers the broadest range of topics he's tackled over the years. It's long but oh dear is it worth the time...

The politics of the church and the humanity of God

One big point that's been a hallmark of his work is highlighting the story of modernity, including the accommodated church's complicity in modernity and its dire consequences. There's this nugget:

(David Bentley) Hart observes when Christianity passes from a culture the resulting remainder may be worse than if Christianity had never existed. Christians took the gods away and no one will ever believe them again. Christians demystified the world robbing good pagans of their reverence and hard won wisdom derived from the study of human and non-human nature. So once again Nietzsche was right that the Christians shaped a world that meant that those who would come after Christianity could not avoid nihilism.

This is paired with the critique of constantinianism, which he picked up from John Howard Yoder (and which people consistently miss when they accuse him of wanting a "theocracy"). He also spends a good bit of time talking about Barth, which helps keep his political and ethical comments theologically rooted (which sometimes gets missed in his episodic writings, and which he also gets accused of downplaying). His pacifistic, non-coercive theological understanding also finds voice in respect to topics he's tackled before:

The humanity of that God Christians believe has made it possible for a people to exist who do in fact, as Nietzsche suggested, exemplify a slave morality. It is a morality Hart describes as a "strange, impractical, altogether unworldly tenderness" expressed in the ability to see as our sisters and brothers the autistic or Down syndrome or disabled child, a child who is a perpetual perplexity for the world, a child who can cause pain and only fleetingly charm or delight; or in the derelict or broken man or woman who has wasted their life; or the homeless, the diseased, the mentally ill, criminals and reprobates... Such a morality is the matter that is the church. It is the matter that made even a church in Christendom uneasy.

Virtue, language, and narrative also get small treatment. To cut off my temptation to elaborate further, I'll simply let the snippets here speak and hope that a few people take the time to think of the huge implications for the Christian faith if Hauerwas is correct (and I continue to think he is, in large measure, correct on a good number of things).

Keeping Yoder Christian

"Love is a battlefield"

As John Howard Yoder's legacy continues to make an impact on the theological academy, his work has become somewhat of a battleground for how to read and interpret his work. One recent book, Paul Martens' The Heterodox Yoder, attempts to make the argument that Yoder's theological ethics became quite non-theological over the course of his career, or that his "politics" came at the expense of Christian particularity and theological commitments.

While I am by no means an expert on Yoder, I have relied on the guidance of one of the world's leading Yoder scholars, my theology professor at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, Mark Thiessen Nation. When Mark's not working on his forthcoming "Bonhoeffer was not in on the plot to assassinate Hitler" book, part of his time is spent offering constructive and defensive writings on Yoder's theological project and its legacy. And Mark's take on Yoder runs completely counter to where Martens goes.

Yoder never loses theology at the expense of politics because, as Branson Parler notes, "Yoder, like Augustine, sees politics as always already doxology and ethics as always already theology." Politics is theological and theology is political. This is one of the more fundamental points to Yoder's approach, which many readers of Yoder can't seem to wrap their heads around, and such a mis-reading is indicative of Enlightenment thinking of which, ironically, Martens accuses Yoder.

To faithfully #Occupy

A theodoodle for occupation

During seminary chapel worship on Tuesday, we were given a time to be reflective and write. We were supposed to write about something different than what I ended up writing about, but whatever. So here are a few theological notes and questions in relationship to the Occupy movement.

The very word "occupy" is not neutral. Occupation can have quite an oppressive connotation. The New Mexico manifestation of the movement, for instance, chose to use a different word due to "occupy's" negative connotation to indigenous Native American groups. Indeed, for indigenous peoples to this land, occupation is 300+ years of living under imposed sociopolitical orders from Europeans. Is this land really, as the song says, "made for you and me?"

So a theologically better way understand "occupy" is perhaps "inhabit," as in "to live into." So the question then becomes inhabit what? Live into where? It's important for Christians to occupy - in this sense - the body of Christ. We are its members and we seek to be healthy in that regard, to faithfully occupy the body to which we belong, and to whom we belong. In another sense, we occupy the kingdom of God as it impinges upon this world, creating it anew, slowly, agonizingly on its way to fulfillment.

But in yet another sense, we are ourselves occupied. The body is the temple of God's Spirit, both individually and corporately. We are not our own and the good that is done through us is the work of God in us. And to the extent that we perpetuate sin in this world, we are occupied by something else not of God.

Finally, occupation in a faithful sense is always embodied in time and place, and always in community. It is therefore conflictual and contingent, but therein lies the opportunity for faithfulness to be made real and shine forth a glimpse of the occupation of shalom to come. This nonviolent occupation is far beyond protest, far beyond ressentiment that (rightly so, to a point) pervades the Occupy movement underway in the U.S.

"Dear beautiful, sexual Jesus..."

"...all wrapped in swaddling..."

There is a (very) tiny bit of theological wisdom in this scene from the movie, "Talladega Nights," in which Will Ferrell's character - Ricky Bobby - is saying grace at the dinner table and addresses his prayer to "baby Jesus." The tiny bit of wisdom is this: It reminds us that the Lord of all creation which Christians worship and follow did indeed become a living, breathing, thinking, feeling human being.

That's where the theology lesson ends with the scene, though there is some hilariously uncomfortable cultural commentary on individualism and consumerism in the scene which I'll leave to you. (By the way, thanks to my friend and former fellow seminarian, pastor Josh K., for mentioning this scene today.)

What I want to try and wrestle with in this post (*sigh*, it's a long one) is the interrelation between beauty, sexuality, and the incarnation of Jesus, the son of God. (Hence the title of this post.) It's coming out of a seminary class I had this morning at EMS, "Human Sexuality," team taught by dynamic husband and wife duo, Mark and Mary Thiessen Nation. The book we're reading for class is the very recent Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to Our Faith by Matthew Lee Anderson, a young (younger than me!) evangelical who is a prolific blogger at Mere Orthodoxy. So whatever wisdom creeps into this post is a gift from God through them and my classmates, just past our second week in this wonderful and terribly important class.

(The World Together blog at the Mennonite Weekly Review later re-posted this in edited form: Why do we hunger for beauty?)

Building Peoplehood and Peace

Footwashing: Peacebuilding disguised as worship practice;
Photo from the last day of class

Sometimes God can and will work through the seemingly incidental or mundane aspects in the academic endeavors of higher education, such as the sequencing of classes. This was the case for me this summer in the months leading up to our trip to Ethiopia for my teaching practicum. One of my two wonderful summer courses was "Biblical Foundations of Peace and Justice," which I briefly alluded to back in June. The last paper assigned for this class was due on July 11th, my first day of teaching. Thankfully my professor, Mark Thiessen Nation, granted me an extension until the beginning of August, just after the conclusion of my class.

Writing this paper not only provided the occasion for me to reflect theologically on my first teaching experience but it also represents my deepest academic integration of theology and peacebuilding thus far. In it, I take a narrative approach, essentially telling the intellectual story of the class. I wrote most of the paper the weekend before the third and final week of class and finished it up the day after we got back to the States, August 1st. So I was in the thick of things as it was being written.

An old Brethren take on Love winning

Pastor Rob Bell
(photo by feyip, CC lic.)

Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins, has caused quite a stir in the U.S. Christian blogo/tweetosphere for the past few weeks, the stink getting so bad that even mainstream media has taken note and sales for the book have already been wildly successful (as of this moment it's #5 on all of Amazon). When the uproar over whether or not Bell is now preaching age-old heresy of universalism started, I immediately thought of an old Brethren teaching of "universal restoration," which sometimes got labeled (usually pejoratively) "universalism."

Last summer when I was working on my Brethren studies, I read quite a bit out of The Complete Writings of Alexander Mack. Mack was the first Brethren leader in central Germany in the early 18th century. He had a Reformed upbringing and was later influenced by Radical Pietism and a warm engagement with the Anabaptist-Mennonites around them. The movement that started out of that eventually resulted in the stream that I now stand in 300 years later, the Church of the Brethren.

Mack's belief in "universal restoration" held that hell is real, but punishment would not continue for all time, ultimately all are restored to God's love, but there was a sense of levels and those who went through hell "would never attain the high state of bliss possible to those who chose to follow Christ in life" (4).

This notion of levels of bliss helped hedge against laziness, I suppose, but Mack still cautioned: "(I)t is much better to practice this simple truth that one should try to become worthy in the time of grace to escape the wrath of God and the torments of hell, rather than deliberate how or when it would be possible to escape from it again... Even though this is true, it should not be preached as a gospel to the godless" (98-9, emphasis mine).  It's worth noting that recent sociological research done by Brethren scholar, Carl Bowman, has shown this early Brethren belief to have been almost completely abandoned. Anecdotally, though, there are a few young [thx, Paula!] Brethren who probably think this is worth taking seriously...

Restorative or transformative theology?

Howard Zehr

For the past few years I've had the joy of assisting Howard Zehr in the administration of his restorative justice blog. As I mentioned in my very first post back in October 2009, the name of this blog - Restorative Theology - takes its cue from the field that Howard helped shape over 30 years ago, a field in which I've studied and done a small amount of work. So in addition to simply helping administer, I also look at Howard's blog as a conversation partner to this one.

Howard's posts tend to be be reflective inquiries into the state of restorative justice as it's presently understood and practiced. Perhaps the primary concern in his work at this stage of his career is helping practitioners in various arenas keep true to what he sees as the values and principles of restorative justice. He's just put up an interesting post with the following query:

Restorative or transformative justice?

Read on for some of the ways in which I think a theological conversation shifts the concerns underlying such a question. I'll also make a case for restorative, transformative, and theopolitical Christian practices...

Hinduism 101

Suraya Sadeed
photo by Jon Styer

[Note: The fifth and final post in the "Religions 101" series comes from Suraya Sadeed, who wrote our post on Islam. All four of us had to read this is a chapter from Prothero's God Is Not One, so this summary is much shorter than the others. As a closing editorial note, I'm very grateful to my fellow classmates in my small group, for allowing me to make public our "insider-only" reflections on this book. Thanks!  -bg]

Hinduism started from Indus Valley as early as 2500 to 1500 B.C.E., a civilization that may have stretched from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea.    It is the third largest religion in the world with over 900 million followers.  Hindus practice  their religion in various forms, but they all believe in Brahman as the supreme force.  According to Hindu scriptures, humans are trapped in the cycle of endless death and reincarnation “samsara” and their ultimate goal is to liberate “moksha” themselves from the cycle of death and rebirth.

Hindus believe that Shiva is the creator, maintainer, and destroyer of life and everything is a constant interaction between male and female, light and dark, and hot and cold. Hinduism is a way of life that includes family, politics, art, society, and health.  The practice of yoga (literally, "discipline") is a well-known aspect of Hinduism.

Hindus belief that karma (the law of cause and effect by which each individual creates his own destiny by his/her thoughts, words and deeds) determines who that person is going to be in the next life.  Hindus are divided into four socioeconomic groups based on their occupations:  Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (nobles & warriors), Vaishyas (commoners) and Sudras (servants).   Veda (knowledge) is Hindus’ holy book.  There are four main denominations in Hinduism: Saivism, Shaktism, Vaishnavism and Smartism.

Yoruba 101

Daryl Snider

[Note: Our fourth post in the "Religions 101" series comes from Daryl Snider. Daryl has lived in both Haiti and Brazil, where he has seen Yoruba-influenced traditions first-hand. Of reading this chapter of Prothero's book, God Is Not One, Daryl said, "I wish I had read [this chapter] 20 years ago, before I went to Haiti!" While studying at the CJP, Daryl has been blogging at singbiosis, which explores "music in peacebuilding as an agent of healing, storytelling, awareness and reconciliation." Because Daryl is not an adherent to any Yoruba tradition, he does more direct quoting of Prothero in this post, and less freestyling as an insider. He was the adventurous one. :) -bg]

Prothero asked his students to invent their own religions. One, called "Consectationism," has at its goal "to find and follow your own purpose, or 'Lex.' And its ethic is simplicity personified: pursue your own Lex, and don't hinder anyone else from pursuing theirs." This is "surprisingly close the heart of the religion of the Yoruba people," in which each of us has forgotten our destiny.

[Read on for more of Daryl's summarization of Prothero's chapter on Yoruba...]

Judaism 101

Barbie Fischer

[Note: Part three of our series - "Religions 101" - comes from Barbie Fischer. In addition to being in my small group for class, Barbie is the Development Coordinator for Global Impact, an NGO whose mission is "to assure help for the world’s most vulnerable people." Barbie is a Jewish Christian, which means she has ethnic and religious Jewish heritage in her family but is now a practicing Christian. Her Christian tradition stems from the Stone-Campbell/Restorationist movement of the 19th century. As I've stated in previous posts, this series is based on our group reading Stephen Prothero's God In Not One for class. -bg]


Story and Law
Judaism is a narrative religion focused a lot on memory. However, Judaism is not just story, but story and law. “Those who forget the law eventually forget to tell the story.” “To be a Jew is to tell and retell a story and to wrestle with its key symbols: the character of God, the people of Israel, and the vexed relationship between the two. It is a story of slavery and freedom, of exile and return.

Jews do function as an ethnicity of sorts bound together not so much by shared beliefs as by a shared community. Not all Jews believe in God as some claim Judaism merely by birth right, while others it is both by birth and belief in God, and a commitment to studying the Torah.

[Read on after the break for more on Judaism from Barbie...]

Islam 101

Suraya Sadeed
photo by Jon Styer

[Note: This second post in a "Religions 101" series appears courtesy of my gracious classmate, Suraya Sadeed, founder and executive director of Help the Afghan Children (HTAC). Suraya is an Afghan-American currently studying with me at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Read more about her work from the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of Peacebuilder Magazine: Building Schools: Spreading Hope to 120,000 Afghan Children. This series of posts is inspired by our collective reading of Stephen Prothero's book, God Is Not One, so you'll find references to this sprinkled throughout. -bg]

Islam was founded by Prophet Mohammad in Arabia around AD 610.  Islam means submission to God “Allah” in Arabic.  It is a strictly monotheistic religion and the sacred scripture of Islam is the Quran (recitation).  The religious obligations of all Muslims are summed up in the Five Pillars of Islam.  The center pillar is called “Shahadah” (to believe without suspicion):  “I testify that there is no god but God, and Mohammad is the Messenger of God." Other four pillars of Islam include:

• Praying five times a day,
• Fasting for one month (Ramadan –the ninth month of the lunar calendar, observed by Muslims)
• Giving at least 2.5% of their wealth to the poor
• And, once in a lifetime, going on pilgrimage “Al-Hajj” to Mecca, the holiest city of Muslims, with the exception of poverty or physical incapacity.

[Read on after the break for more on Islam from my friend, Suraya...]

Christianity 101

For a class assignment done in small groups, I've recently been reading bits and pieces of God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World - and Why Their Differences Matter by Stephen Prothero, a religious studies professor at Boston University. The book has a long title, but the subtitle is important. It's a clue as to why I actually like this book.  Prothero, a former Christian, does a fine job of synthesizing broad theological topics and history in his accounting of Christianity, past and present. I was skeptical going into this book, but after reading his approach in the introduction and then this chapter on Christianity, Prothero is definitely somebody I could hang with. He has shaken off the myths of the Enlightenment with its fool’s quest for unbiased objectivity and rational knowing, opting instead to get into the languages and thought worlds of ancient and ever-shifting religions. Here's my favorite quote from the introduction:

"The Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century popularized the ideal of religious tolerance, and we are doubtless better for it. But the idea of religious unity is wishful thinking nonetheless, and it has not made the world a safer place. In fact, this naive theological groupthink - call it Godthink - has made the world more dangerous by blinding us to the clashes of religions that threaten us worldwide... The ideal of religious tolerance has morphed into the straightjacket of religious agreement." (3-4)

The assignment has been interesting because in my small group for this class there are two North American men, one of whom is an Anabaptist-derived Christian (me), one North American, Jewish Christian woman from a Stone-Campbell/Restorationist background, and an Afghan-American woman. Very interesting conversations cropping up around our reading of this book and thankfully we're taking Prothero's lead and actually paying attention to the differences. So read on after the break for my quick review of Prothero's account of Christianity and a few distillations of what makes the Christian faith tick.

[Note: Part one of a "Religions 101" series. Also, check out reflections on the book by my classmate, Nathan: God Is Not One??]

On Brethren beliefs and practices

Last summer I embarked on a long, intense directed study at EMS on Brethren beliefs and practices with Jeff Bach, who is the director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, a school affiliated with the Church of the Brethren, the tradition which raised me and in which I'm currently a licensed minister. The study was marked with personal trials for both Jeff and I and ended up lasting quite a bit longer than both of us had intended. But through the personal and academic trials came tremendous learning of my tradition, and I wouldn't trade the experience of the directed study for anything.

So after the break you'll find the long (28 pg.) paper that came out of this class which explores four theological topics with respect to the Brethren:

• Christology
• Ecclesiology (both a critique and a constructive argument)
• (Non-)Sacramental theology
• Nonconformity to the world