“I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (salvation AS Pentecost)

To prepare for Pentecost, I’ve been reading Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong’s The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh. Yong argues for a “pneumatological soteriology” (Spirit-centered account of salvation) that “would be in contrast to soteriologies that tend to bifurcate the work of Christ and of the Spirit… articulated by Protestant scholasticism… [in which] Christ provides salvation objectively (e.g., in justification) and the Spirit accomplishes salvation subjectively (e.g., in sanctification)” (82). In the prophecy from Joel that Peter quotes on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, God makes an incredible promise: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.” What if this statement is taken as the centerpiece of God’s salvation of humanity and the world? What if the salvation made possible through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ finds its full expression in the perpetual Pentecost poured out by the Holy Spirit?

Christian man-feminism: allies and misogynists

Recently I’ve found myself called into conversation with the new evangelical feminist movement that has blown up in the last few years. I consider myself an ally, a “man-feminist” if you will. I also consider myself a misogynist, or someone who sins uniquely against women because of things about my manhood. My own particular form of misogyny often manifests itself as my need to be recognized as the hero of Christian feminists everywhere, the anti-Driscoll (Give me my gold star for pointing out all the flaws of other men I already define myself against anyway!). So I wanted to consider what it means to be an ally who is still a misogynist and also to try to translate terms and build bridges for Christian men who burst blood vessels in their foreheads when they hear words like misogyny.

Why I clash with the gatekeepers

I often clash with the gatekeepers of Christian orthodoxy. I’m sure that I get under their skin too. To me, they look like the Pharisees Jesus talks about in Matthew 23:13: “Woe to you [who]… shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying.” I wonder what Bible verse they would apply to the caricature of me that they see on their laptop screen. In any case, I thought I would try to express where I’m coming from, to the degree that I’m coming from somewhere and not just being a sinfully impulsive loose cannon. Everything that I’m trying to do (as opposed to the things I do impulsively) is shaped by my understanding of Christian evangelism as Paul lays it out in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23.

Liberated from hate: my brother Ryan’s testimony

I pray a lot for the college kids from our church. In addition to the concern that they will fall away from the faith, I worry about whether they will fall in with the wrong crowd of Christians. Every year, aggressively friendly campus fellowship groups storm the dorms to meet the kids who signed their clipboards at the activity fair. And many times, the result is four years of beautiful friendship and spiritual growth. But it can go very wrong as my brother Ryan Kuramitsu shares in his testimony about a Christian group whose zeal for God’s hate is a textbook case of what I’m calling the theology of the total depravity of everyone else.I asked permission to share the following excerpt, but please visit his site to read the original post and offer encouragement. (Note: I am aware there’s more than one side to every story, the same Christian organization is not the same on different campuses, etc.)

Breathing kingdom on airplanes and elsewhere

In the wake of the amazing Missio Alliance conference, I wanted to continue to wrestle with the question of how we talk to strangers about Jesus on airplanes and other places. This reflection was started by Rachel Held Evans’ post on the topic a few days ago to which I responded with a comparison of Rachel’s reflections with street evangelist guru Ray Comfort of Way of the Master. A reader cried foul because it seemed like I was making a mischievous, unstated argument that was “set up,” which was a fair critique since I didn’t share my own commentary. This morning during church, I asked God how should we talk to strangers about Jesus. And the answer that came into my brain was this: assume that they’re angels and breathe the kingdom with them.

Five D’s of Emergent Christian Mansplanation

Yesterday I talked about Christian mansplainers who operate according to 18th century principles of epistemology. You might call them “objective” Christian mansplainers. But there’s a different category of Christian mansplainers that are actually more exasperating than the first kind. They prefer late 20th century French philosophers to 18th century field preachers. They are superior to you because they’re better at irony. This species is called mansplainer emergenticus. I am an expert in their nature because I live with one; I see him every morning in the mirror. So here are the five D’s of emergent Christian mansplainmanship: dialogue, deconstruction, disingenuous use of the word “we,” difficulty with labels, and dialectic.

Five C’s of Christian Mansplanation

I witnessed a conversation on facebook last night where one of these young, restless, well informed Christian guys was being a mansplaining stereotype of himself. There is a particular form of Christian thought that causes people (usually men because of how we’re wired but occasionally women) to think they’re experts in the faith after maybe a couple of years of serious Bible study. Their expertise then gives them the duty to “mansplain” Christianity, e.g. do things like ask patronizing, predictable rhetorical questions of complete strangers in social media in order to help them become experts in Christianity too. This morning while taking a bath, I thought of five C’s that characterize Christian mansplanation: clarity, conclusiveness, conformity, commodity, and control.

Blog Resurrected: Help Me Make Some Choices!

It was really good to take a break for Lent. I did a lot of reading, and I even read some fiction (!) by Reynolds Price and Joyce Carroll Oates. I wanted to share some ideas I have for series that I might run on the blog in the next few months and get your feedback on what you want me to write about. I’d like to be a little bit less haphazard with my topics. I’m also going to try to keep my posts shorter (ideally <1000 words) for the sake of my sanity. So please help me decide which of the following series to pursue.

Surprised by mercy: my train-wreck conversion story

I was invited to share an occasion when I was surprised by mercy. It was August 2002. I had just rushed my ex-girlfriend to the emergency room because she slit her wrists in a bathtub. I was a severely depressed, chain-smoking mess. And I discovered the gospel of mercy that I proclaim today when I opened Henri Nouwen’s book Life of the Beloved in a small group gathering where everyone other than me was a lesbian. I only remember Tanya and Pat by name, but if that group of lesbians had not been spiritual mothers who embraced and nurtured me in a time of crisis, I would not be a pastor today. I realize that talking about this will probably cause my Board of Ordained Ministry to have some questions for me, but God has commanded me to testify about the train wreck experience by which I discovered the true gospel. Because it was only in the fellowship of the despised that I could learn mercy the way God wanted me to understand it.

Sex-trafficking, colonialism, and miscommunication

I found a direct application that fleshes out a little better what I stumbled through writing last night about critique and dismissal. The latest hot blogosphere topic was triggered by an interview on the Patheos Religion Now blog with Christian ethics professor Yvonne Zimmerman in which she claims that there are colonial dimensions to the anti-trafficking movement. Unsurprisingly, this presented the blogosphere with some low-hanging feminist/academic fruit to be swatted first by Timothy Dalrymple and John Mark Reynolds on Philosophical Fragments and then examined in a more measured way by my friend Derek Rishmawy at Christ and Pop Culture. I’m interested in looking at how this exchange illustrates the interaction and sometimes conflation of critique and dismissal in blogosphere conversation. When critique and dismissal are conflated, then nothing can be criticized about any aspect of the implementation of a noble enough cause, which has some clear potential danger.