Last week, I taught a week-long intensive course at Alliance Theological Seminary in Nyack, New York, and I had a wonderful time.

At one point, I reflected on the changes that I see coming in theological (and other forms of) education.  One student typed as I spoke, and he sent me this direct quote,

“I don’t believe in the trickle down theory of knowledge anymore. That is bankrupt. That is not the way the world changes anymore. That is because there are institutions involved in communicating that knowledge in a power-oriented manner. How will knowledge be communicated? Aesthetics. Imagery; symbolism and the power of symbols. Pedagogically, we realize that people learn things in all sorts of ways. Somebody learns well by didactics, aurally, kinesthetically, visually, etc.”

In fact, I spend a lot of time on this subject, but primarily in private.  That’s because I’m often trying to convince academic/professor type people to write at a more popular level — either for one of the Emergent Village lines, or, really, anywhere.  But it’s tough, because most of them have several books in the queue with Eerdmans or Westminster/John Knox, or some university publishing house.  In fact, at Princeton, the president has made it clear to faculty that they are to publish only with university presses.

That has to do with tenure and peer review, in part, but it is also based on an academic elitism that is in death throes.  The “trickle-down” theory of education says that the brightest minds teach and write at the highest levels, influencing their own guild and the graduate students, who, in turn, influence the masses.  But it takes about one example to debunk that claim.

That’s simply not the way that knowledge and influence work anymore.  And it saddens me that some of the most brilliant professors I’ve had (particularly at Princeton) are destined to retire in anonymity, even though their ideas could radically transform the church and even the faith.

Some have been critical of the publishing partnerships that Doug and I have forged for Emergent Village, but here’s the deal: Piper writes at a popular level; MacArthur writes at a popular; even the Pope writes at a popular level.  If we want our emergent theologies to compete in the world of theological ideas, then we have to write populist theology.  And, at this point, the Internet is a powerful tool, but traditional dead-tree publishing is powerful in a different way.  Academic elites bitch and moan about the Left Behind theology that is ascendent in America, but they continue to write for Oxford University Press and are thus destined to sell about a tiny fraction of the books that LaHaye/Jenkins sell.

I was corresponding with Brian Walsh about these very ideas when he sent me the lyrics of this Bruce Cockburn song.

Bruce Cockburn, “Trickle Down”
co-written with Andy Milne

from the album, You’ve Never Seen Everything [True North Records, 2003]

Picture on magazine boardroom pop star
Pinstripe prophet of peckerhead greed
You say ‘Trust me with the money — the keys to the universe’
Trickle down will give us everything we need
 
Brand new century private penitentiary
bank vault utopia padded for the few
And it’s tumours for the masses coughing for the masses
Earphones for the masses and they all serve you

       Trickle down give /em the business
       Trickle down supposed to give us the goods
       Cups held out to catch a bit of the bounty
       Trickle down everywhere trickle down blood

What used to pass for education now looks more like ignoration
Take the people’s money and slip it to the corporation
Yellow rain golden shower pesticide firepower
Summon feudal demons of sweatshop subjugation

Workfare foul air homeless beggars everywhere
Picturephone aristocrats lounge around the pool
Captains of industry smiling beneficently
Leaking hole supertanker ship of fools

       Trickle down give me the business
       Trickle down supposed to give us the goods
       Cups held out to catch a bit of the bounty
       Trickle down everywhere trickle down blood

Take over takedown big bucks shakedown
Schoolyard pusher offer anything-for-profit
First got to privatize then you get to piratize
Hooked on avarice- how do we get off it?

       Trickle down give me the business
       Trickle down supposed to give us the goods
       Cups held out to catch a bit of the bounty
       Trickle down everywhere trickle down blood

       Trickle down give me the business
       Trickle down supposed to give us the goods
       Cups held out to catch a bit of the bounty
       Trickle down everywhere trickle down blood

“Under modern conditions, where almost everyone lives in communities in which diversity has taken the place of consensus, certainty is much more difficult to come by. Relativism can be described as a world view that not only acknowledges but celebrates the absence of consensus. So-called post-modernist theorists like to speak of narratives and, in principle, every narrative is as valued as any other. The moral end result of this world view can be captured by imagining a television interview with a cannibal. “You believe that people should be cooked and eaten. I certainly don’t want to be judgmental, but the audience will be interested. Tell us more.” (Laughter.) This is not all that fictitious.

Fundamentalists respond to the same situation of certainty-scarcity by seeking to regain absolute certainty about every aspect of their world view. No doubt is permitted. Whoever disagrees is an enemy to be converted, shunned or, in the extreme case, removed. The last two centuries of history have made it very clear that there are secular as well as religious fundamentalisms. Both relativism and fundamentalism threaten the basic moral order without which no society, least of all a liberal democracy, can exist: relativism because it makes morality a capricious game, fundamentalism because it balkanizes society into mutually hostile camps that cannot communicate with each other,” - Peter Berger, in a dialogue on Relativism and Fundamentalism: Is There A Middle Ground?

I think he wrongly equates postmodern theory with radical relativism.  But, I should know, that’s a common misperception.

HT: Andrew Sullivan

Previously:

Webisode 3

Webisode 2

Webisode 1

Because I’m going back in time and becoming a 1908 revivalist in a month, I’ve been growing out my beard.  

Facial hair was all the rage in 1908.  Now the question is, which style to choose?  (We must all remember that Julie holds veto power.)  Personally, I’m leaning toward the Franz Joseph.

…on the Personality Map?

First Base: Norm continues his interaction with Pete Rollins’s new book at Christians in Context.  Pete’s also commenting in response.

Second Base: Darren King interviewed me for Precipice Magazine.

Third Base: David Fitch takes on Mark Driscoll.

Home Plate: Steve Knight has a Mega-Post on Evangelicalism at EV.

Here’s another portion of my book that didn’t make it into the final version.  Remember, it’s rough and unedited, but it is a story that’s dear to my heart.

I’m a volunteer police chaplain, and when my pager starts buzzing, Julie gives me a knowing glance. Most likely, I’ll be gone for the next several hours, leaving her alone with the kids.

Last December, the tell-tale vibration happened at about 9:30 p.m., just two days before Christmas. I called into the police dispatcher, and she told me, “We’ve got a DOA.”

“What more can you tell me?” I asked, after she gave me the address.

“Well, he was big. Really big. They couldn’t get him out to the ambulance.”

“Oh. Okay. Which officers are there?” I asked.

“Everyone’s there.”

I arrived around 10 p.m., just as the paramedics were leaving the scene. Several cops were still there, and they ushered me into the house. Jerry, the deceased, was in his mid-fifties, and he was, indeed, large. So large, in fact, that he hadn’t been able to get out of bed for two years.

I walked into his bedroom. The first thing I noticed, of course, was Jerry’s corpse on the floor. As I looked around, I took in other details: the muted television flickering on the far wall, newspapers and magazines strewn everywhere, and medical devices (syringes, prescription bottles, bed pans) scattered about. But most noteworthy were the shelves. Floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall were homemade shelves, and they were all holding food. Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Hormel Chili. Fritos. Food was everywhere.

So was the smell. The smell was overwhelming. It wasn’t just the smell of death—this odor had preceded the event of that evening.

In the middle of the room was a bed, the center of Jerry’s life for the last two years. “He hit the floor hard,” one of the officers told me. They had to get Jerry on a hard surface to administer chest compressions, so a couple of the cops had gotten on the bed and pushed him to the floor. A trail of shit on the top sheet marked Jerry’s path from bed to floor.

“He was dead when we got here,” one officer said, “But we tried to bring him back. I remember him from years ago,” he continued, “We used to break up huge parties that he had here in the 80s.”

“He’s got five roommates,” another cop told me, “And a wife. But she doesn’t speak much English.

“Oh yeah, she’s got two kids, too. They don’t speak any English.”

This was getting stranger by the moment.

I walked downstairs and introduced myself to a couple of Jerry’s roommates. Men in their 50s, they were both dressed in sweatpants and sweatshirts. The other three roommates walked in. They, too, were in sweats. I asked if they’d introduce me to Jerry’s wife, and they took me down another flight of stairs. Jana was sitting on a couch, crying. She might have been 30. Her two sons, aged 5 and 3, were running around and climbing on her lap, seemingly oblivious to her grief. All three of them were from Thailand.

For the next two hours, I sat with Jana and the guys and listened to stories of Jerry. He’d been married twice before; his first wife divorced him, and his second wife died of breast cancer. His mother and father had both died within a year of his wife. He was a traveling salesman, accumulating over three million miles on Northwest Airlines. “You know those snack boxes you see in some offices?” one roommate asked me, “You know, the ones where you drop money in the box on the honor system?”

I nodded.

“Well, Jerry was the leading salesman of those in the country. One year, he won so many sales awards that he flew to Hawaii twelve times in twelve months.”

“Back when Jerry could travel,” another one of the guys told me, “He’d only be around for a couple of days a month. He’d be on the road almost all the time.”

Jerry had met Jana a couple years ago, back when he could still travel, on a trip to Bangkok. They’d been married just a year ago—a justice of the peace came to the house, and they got married in Jerry’s bed.

Jerry was a non-observant Jew. “I never talk with Jerry religion,” Jana said.

The middle-aged roommates were all divorced. They had various odd jobs and a couple of them had lived with Jerry for twenty-plus years. Jerry’s place had become a flop house of sorts for these guys who were down on their luck. But the funny thing was, they didn’t see much of Jerry. In fact, I got the impression that a couple of them hadn’t been in Jerry’s room to see him in a long, long time.

I asked how Jerry had gotten so big that he couldn’t walk. They told me that he’d always been big, but then he fell and broke his kneecap three or four years ago. “The doctor wouldn’t operate, due to Jerry’s size,” one roommate told me, “It was really unfair. I mean, how’s he supposed to get better if they won’t operate? Then his knee got infected, and he was in the hospital and rehab for almost a year. When he finally came home, he just never got out of bed again.”

At the scene, I experienced a range of emotions, from morbid curiosity (I’ve seen guys like this on Jerry Springer!) to deep sorrow. This was, quite bluntly, the most pathetic scene I’ve encountered in a decade as a police chaplain. And I mean pathetic in the sense that the scene dripped with human pathos: a 500-pound man had eaten himself to death, surrounded by five ne’er-do-well roommates, a Thai wife and her two sons. The lot of them lived in near squalor, surrounded by a stench that was causing veteran cops to dry-heave.

And if that’s not enough, just a block away sits the biggest church in our town. Every Sunday morning and Sunday evening, good Christian folk park in front of Jerry’s house, since there was no room for them in the parking lots. Jerry was dying within arm’s reach of the most powerful church in the community.

Oh, and there was one more element. From 11 p.m. until midnight, the TV in Jerry’s room, which no one had thought to turn off, was showing a familiar face. Larry King was hosting a perfunctory pre-Christmas show, and his guest was Joel Osteen. Over Jerry’s dead body and his shit-smeared sheets, I kept seeing Joel’s unremitting smile and reading captions at the bottom of the screen: “Osteen Has the Biggest Church in America.” “Pastor Osteen Says You Can Have It All.” “Joel Preaches Before 30,000 Every Week.”

Like I said, both irony and pathos were palpable.

Back downstairs, I sat with Jana and the guys, helping them to make decisions regarding Jerry’s burial. Then, out of the blue, Jana started crying again, and, through her tears, sobbed, “Jerry no too fat for me. Jerry no too fat for me.”

Suddenly, in the midst of pathos, a glimmer of light dawned for me. Jana hadn’t come over from Thailand to be Jerry’s concubine—I can’t imagine that their marriage was ever consummated. No, instead, he worked like crazy to help her emigrate to the U.S. And then, according to the guys, he had to work even harder to get her sons over. In return, she got to scrub out his bed pans, to care for his bedsores, to wipe him. Did she do it for the citizenship? That wasn’t the tale of her tears. What they said was that Jana loved Jerry. Albeit, not in a way that I understand, but there’s lots of love in the world that I don’t understand. Jerry was not too fat for Jana.

And the same went for the guys. They all expressed real affection for Jerry. It’s as if Jerry collected people who were at the margins of society, the orphans and the widows of the 21^st century, and gave them a place to live. Even as he was slowly committing suicide.

We often look for the best that God has to offer in the sparkliest places. Like in the 1,000 seat sanctuary down the road from Jerry’s house. Or in the uncommonly bright smile of Joel Osteen.

But instead, the real beauty often resides with the marginalized, the ostracized, the outcast. That’s where Jesus dwells: in Jana’s love for Jerry; in Jerry’s hospitality for the his misfit roommates.

At least Drew Marshall does.  I was on his radio show last week.  Listen HERE.

Dear Tony,

I’m currently reading through your book “The New Christians.” It is my first real introduction to the emerging movement from the perspective of an emergent.

Wow! It’s great!

A little of my background. I’m a Presbyterian raised lad, taught the ways of Calvin and co. My father is a Prezzy pastor a straight down the line conservative, though with a twist. I’ve completed an undergrad degree in philosophy and since changed to the Vineyard Church.

I’ll get straight to the point: what you’ve written about has put into words a lot of the stuff I’ve been thinking about over the past few years. So I guess I owe you a thanks.

Being the philosophy undergrad and all, I wanted to share with you an argument that I think buttresses your hermeneutic of humility (which I whole-heartedly agree with, having once been an arrogant young know-it-all type).

First, to your reasoning. You state in your book (I’m too lazy to reference it ) that many people in the theological landscape have changed their minds about theological issues such as slavery, so how, really, can we know that what we think about now is, in fact, God’s super-truth. True truth.  This is, I think, a powerful argument. Here’s mine.

I don’t think we even have to reference changes in theological beliefs over time to prove your point. I think we can simply look at the vast plethora of differing interpretations that exists now and stand in awe of the complexity of theology.

I compiled a list of “views” books, you know, like those Zondervan books that have four views on blah blah blah. My argument for a hermeneutic of humility would be:

If there are so many views argued so well, by godly, intelligent men, who all think they have the correct interpretation, doesn’t that imply a humility of sorts? And boy, do these guys argue well for their views! How the bleep, then, can one claim so dogmatically and with such over-arching certainty, that their view is the one!  Here’s my list:

As of 19 Jan, 2006

Zondervan

http://www.zondervan.com/books/search.asp?Criteria=counterpoints

Who Runs the Church? 4 Views on Church Government

How Jewish Is Christianity? 2 Views on the Messianic Movement

Remarriage after Divorce in Today’s Church. 3 Views

Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? 4 Views

Evaluating the Church Growth Movement. 5 Views

Exploring the Worship Spectrum. 6 Views

Five Views on Apologetics.

Five Views on Law and Gospel.

Five Views on Sanctification.

Four Views on Eternal Security.

Four Views on Hell.

Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World.

Four Views on the Book of Revelation.

Show Them No Mercy. 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide

Three Views on Creation and Evolution.

Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism.

Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond.

Three Views on the Rapture.

Two Views on Women in Ministry

Sub Total: 19 topics, 77 views (Incl. extra views by different publishers on same topics, below)

IVP

Four Views: Psychology and Christianity

* (4V Zondervan) Two Views Of Hell

In Search Of The Soul: Four Views Of The Mind-Body Problem

Four Views: God and Time

Four Views: Meaning Of The Millennium, The

Four Views: Science and Christianity

* (3V Zondervan) Four Views: Divorce And Remarriage

* (2V Zondervan) Four Views: Women In Ministry

Four Views: Divine Foreknowledge

Sub Total: 25 topics, 101 views

Kregel

Three Views On The Origins Of The Synoptic Gospels (Kregel)

Sub Total:  26 topics, 104 views

Thomas Nelson

* (4V Zondervan) Four Views: Revelation

Youth Specialities

Four Views Of Youth Ministry And The Church

Sub Total: 27 topics, 108 views

Paternoster Press

* (See IVP above) Four Views: Divine Foreknowledge

* (See IVP above) Four Views: God and Time

Broadman and Holman

* (4V Zondervan) Perspectives On Church Government: Five Views Of Church Polity

Perspectives On Spirit Baptism: Five Views

Sub Total: 28 topics, 113 views

Brazos Press

Christianity And The Postmodern Turn: Six Views

Sub Total: 29 topics, 119 views

That’s an incredible 119 views on just 29 topics! What’s a layman like me to do? Throw some dice, choose a view, and loudly proclaim it as the only interpretation, and my detractors be damned to hell?  I think you get my gist.

Anyway, I’m still trying to digest all the new thoughts in the emergent stuff, but I’ve already come to a few of your conclusions, even before I knew that emergent views existed.

Thanks for your book,

Jonathan

Previously:

Webisode 1

Webisode 2