RoboPreacher

Right now I am physically in an in-between place. My summer with the Metro Lutheran has come to an end, and now I am in respite at my folk’s place for a few days until I start my journey west to begin my year-long internship. The back drop for this post is three different news articles. The first is one I wrote for the Metro Lutheran concerning women’s ordination, the second is an article about inclusive language in contemporary, North American, mainline churches (how’s that for a string of adjectives!), and the last is a fantastic article about the men and women in North America today. Briefly, a few words (well, adjectives) about myself: male, white, and lower-middle-class. Also, in-between places. You will have to forgive my lack of citations, I do not have access to my books, they are in transit. The question of gender is one that is of particular interest to me. One, I was not raised by my biological father, yet I did, and do, have many wonderful, loving male ...

This week I am finishing up on my story about women’s ordination. It’s been such a great experience. I’ve spoken with pastors about stewardship, gifts, theology, hope and sorrows. It’s humbling. At the end of this process I am emerging with a renewed sense about the importance of diverse perspectives and characteristics leading within the church. While this affirmation has to do with rights, it has a lot more to do with a promise; a promise of God’s presence and the promise of the goodness of God’s creation. Keeping those from ministry who bring new, unique and important gifts ultimately stunts the growth of the church. The growth I am talking about isn’t a growth in numbers, institutional strength, political prowess, social relevance or the like. Instead this growth is a promise to be part of God’s mission in the world . Once this story is published I will link it, and I am very excited to do so. Until then I have to sit on my hands and let the story go through the ed...

This post on the Trinity is intrinsically related to ecology (only if readers reject platonic dualisms which separate humans from nature). This post, however, broadens the dialogue a little. "The Liberating power of God the World's future begins in divine relatedness that is coming to articulation in the doctrine of the Trinity ." God: "The ineffable God cannot tolerate human oppression and suffering and thus leave (so to speak) the realm of ineffability to become one force among others working toward redemption and reconciliation." Jesus : "God enters the struggle as a concrete identity, Jesus the Son. As a concrete identity the Son can be distinguished conceptually from the ineffable source out of which the Son derived. This give the ineffable an identity it would not otherwise have had, namely a face or persona of the Father ( sic )." Holy Spirit: "In addition, the Spirit of conviction working within us is the identifiable divine persona that o...

I hope you all had a blessed Easter. As we patiently journeyed through Lent I mentioned I was excited to talk about some other dimensions of the Trinity. With that in mind, I would like to discuss how our image Trinity affects our ecological attitude. Given, that lately I've been focusing on Moltmann, I will begin our thoughts with a quote by him ( which, this time I do not apologize for my reliance upon him ). Rather than laying out the argument about Christianity's history of an abusive relationship with the earth, I will build off the assumption that we all agree about this history. If, however, any readers are curious about the history, I commend Lynn White's wonderful essay, The Historical Root of Our Ecological Crisis . Anyway, how are Christians to begin living into a new attitude? Moltmann suggests something quite easy and historical: "We need only return to the original wisdom of our own religious tradition and rediscover what was repressed by the absolutist a...