Hippster Christian set says Meh to both conventions 5 September, 2008
Posted by Zack in Minnesota.2 comments
Here’s a representative example from Josh Brown of the disengagement and skepticism that many young hippster Christians are feeling toward both parties’ conventions. Many were tempted to get caught up in Obama’s “hope,” but they largely stayed strong. Perhaps some have been tempted during the RNC by the symbols and rhetoric they were raised on. If so, they haven’t been admitting it.
For pure entertainment value I watched the DNC 2 weeks ago and was reminded of a Michael Jackson European tour in the late 80s with people crying and trampling each other to touch the cloak of his garment. It was sad and yet almost understandable to see people so desperate for change that they worked themselves up into an emotional frenzy over a person and a process that by himself can do more lasting change than the previous rich grey heads that have sat in the Oval Office.
For pure sleeping aid, I have watched the RNC the last 2 nights to lull myself to sleep with a bunch of the rich grey heads waking up from their sleep every 5 minutes when a speaker says the word terrorism. It has seriously lacked any energy or “heart” at all. That is until Rudy G – every conservatives whipping boy during the primary until he became a cult hero as the keynote – took the stage. All the rich white people who were driving their SUVs and flying their coach, first class, and chartered planes to the convention started chanting “DRILL BABY DRILL” for close to 5 minutes. It was the loudest they got in 2 days. I’m pretty sure I saw a few people salivate and/or piss their pants.
I’m not sure which convention was more full of fluff. The rock star status that Obama got at the DNC or the Cracker Barrell crowd that fell asleep out of sheer boredome at the RNC.
Oh Come and Rescue Us From This Madness.
“The Hauerwasian Mafia” 1 May, 2008
Posted by Zack in Minnesota, stanley hauerwas, Tony Jones.4 comments
Tim Keel (who was good enough not to get upset at me for grossly oversimplifying his point of view a couple posts ago) sent me this link, that has a lot to say regarding my current topic.
Here, Tony Jones locates the roots of the clean hands syndrome that plagues Christian radicals these days in a “Hauerwasian Mafia” of theologians that has grown up over the last half century.
So the question becomes, what relationship should a follower of Jesus have with public life? Should Christians be involved with politics?
The HM advocates an ecclesiological solution: the church should be a counter-polis, a self-enclosed system that can serve as a model to secular systems (governments, corporations, etc.). In reading the HM literature, you’ll run across many references to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, especially the part about being a “city on a hill.” The church, the HM claims, is just such a city, shining the light of its moral rectitude for all the degenerate world to see and emulate. And you’ll find HM book titles like, Resident Aliens and A Peculiar People, promulgating this tendency, a tendency that has been dissed by critics as “sectarianism” and “Christian enclave theory.”
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Instead of watering down their distinctives to the point of meaninglessness, the church should close ranks and develop an internal coherency that would serve as an example to the world.
“Zizek, Obama and the Emerging Church” 24 February, 2008
Posted by Zack in Minnesota.3 comments
You know something interesting is going on when Mennonite pastors are writing posts with titles like “Zizek, Obama and the Emerging Church“.
Check out the post and discussion around it — it’s a good early example of the dilemma that Obama is presenting to the Revolutionary Christian community: Get involved and help a good man do good? Or be enticed by just one more worldly politician with a conversion story and compassionate rhetoric (just like George W Bush)?
