There’s a great scene in Tolkien’s The Two Towers in which Pippin and Merry are losing their patience with the slow pace of the Enmoot — which is the meeting of the tree-like Ents, for those of you that aren’t fully literate in Tolkien’s work. The ents are notoriously slow in making decisions, and when the hobbits make their frustration known, Treebeard, the ent who has befriended them says:

War, yes… It affects us all. But you must understand, young hobbit. It takes a looong… time to say anything in ooold… Entish.

And we never say anything… unless it is worth taking a looong… time to say.

I’m sure there are a lot of Anglicans who feel like Merry and Pippin do every time Anglican leaders get together. It seems like it takes a long time to say anything in the Anglican communion.

The meeting of the 38 top national bishops — the primates — last week yielded a statement that seems like it’s been written in Entish.

I haven’t worked my way through with much attention to detail, but my first look elicits these thoughts …
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I’m continuing to see a lot of very productive dialogue on the TNIV. I really think that Jim Dobson thought he could stomp the TNIV out of existence by using Focus on the Family as a sledgehammer. After all, he has a huge mailing list and an equally impressive (and impressionable) listening audience. But it now seems like bloggers are starting to flex the same muscle they’ve shown on a number of issues. Am I saying the Dobson and Focus are the “mainstream media” of evangelicalism? Perhaps ….

Anyway, Tim Bednar offers these thoughts:

I just feel embracing the TNIV is something worthwhile for the emerging church. I honestly feel that the TNIV translation somehow spiritual parallels what some of us in the emerging church hope this phenomenon/movement will accomplish. I think Ben Irwin is right; the TNIV somehow fits into the same spiritual stream as the emerging church.

I am fully away of the “pitfalls” of any translation–I just prefer to error on the side that speaks best to people like me, my friends and those who currently who are NOT in conversation with many of those who are criticizing the TNIV. And anyone who is intellectually honest would say that they love certain translations because they support THEIR agenda.

Hugo Schwyzer expands on this point:

When those who love the NIV get riled up about the inclusiveness of the TNIV, they are ignoring the logs in their own eyes. Though our favorite translations often say more about our politics than our faith, it’s fairly clear that all of us — left and right alike — are guilty of attempting to use Scripture to support our own social agendas. None of us — particularly those of us who can’t read the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek — can say we “know” what Bible “really” says. It would behoove all of us to stop our “proof-texting” (quoting Scripture out of context) and stop dropping in misleading subject headings and encourage better understanding of the original languages.

It’s nice to finally here someone address the core issues of this controversey instead of just launching rhetorical grenades at each other.

Via

From time to time, I get asked to recommend books on various topics for people. Of course, when I’m asked, I always draw a blank or mangle the title or author of the book I’m trying to recommend. I’ll try to do this once in a while as I find books that I think are worth a look. So here’s a brief list of books that I highly recommend …
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Great article by Alan Creech over at Next-Wave about how he perceives the emergent phenomenon. He hits on some of the dominant themes, including the deconstruction of the institutional church, the rise of house churches, and the renewal of the liturgy. It’s not a comprehensive treatment, but it’s a nice place to start if you’re looking to get your arms around this idea.

I saw the article that Edith Blumhofer, director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, wrote in the WSJ last week. Unfortunately, it’s locked behind the paid subscriber wall now. The article was another response to TIME’s 25 Most Influential Evangelicals. It’s interesting because a friend of mine pointed out the lack of diversity in the TIME list when it came out. It overwhelmingly highlighted white men, at the expense of women and minorities. Now, some might argue that such a make-up is simply a function of the nature of evangelicalism for the past 50 years. That may be true, but the movement has reached a point that the influence of white, male evangelicals is actually in decline. In fact, most of the men on TIME’s list are nearing retirement or death, and few of them could be described as “young”. At the same time, Blumhofer points out that evangelicals are on the rise in the two-thirds world. Here’s part of her article:

But this traditional face of American evangelicalism is changing. An ever higher number of U.S. evangelicals — perhaps nearing a third of the total — are Asian, African, Latin American or Pacific Islander. While Billy Graham would probably make their list of influential people, some of Time’s others would not. The ethnic evangelicals, having arrived since 1965, have brought a surge of fervor into American denominations … The faith of these newer Americans is — like that of U.S. evangelicals generally — rooted in the Bible and personalized by experience. It may even be more expressive and literalist than what the older forms of evangelicalism have become. But the ethnic evangelicals have little time for the much-publicized conservative interest groups that mobilize white middle-class church members. Ethnic evangelicals and their offspring are more urban than suburban; they vote Democrat as well as Republican. New arrivals are as likely to care about immigration, human rights, poverty and religious freedom abroad as about same-sex marriage or Israel — though they do not speak with a unified voice. They often pour their money and energy into programs focused on their countries of origin. These newcomers already wield influence in evangelical institutions.

It’s too bad the whole thing isn’t linkable unless you’re a subscriber. If you want more, get Philip Jenkins’ The Next Christendom.

In the wake of TIME’s list of the most influential evangelicals in America, Ted Olsen (whose path has crossed with mine in too many ways to count) at CT recounts some of the efforts to catalog the leadership of the evangelical movement in this article.

I like one of the conclusions that Ted draws:

In a sense, then, these lists are all terribly skewed. The most influential evangelical, after all, is the unsung Christian who quietly and faithfully demonstrates Jesus’ love to his neighbors and coworkers. Joe Disciple can have an influence that a million radio broadcasts and books can’t.

So after defaulting on his moral authority as the head of the Anglican communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is starting to talk tough on the rampant liberalism that is destroying the communion:

In a speech that was conciliatory and well as tough, he said the crisis, triggered by the consecration of Anglicanism’s first openly gay bishop, had caused “hurt, misunderstanding, rupture and damage”.

“Part of the cost involved in the repercussions of recent events is that it has weakened, if not destroyed, the sense that we are actually talking the same language within the Anglican Communion,” he said. “Not having a common language, a common frame of reference, has been one of the casualties of recent events and there is every indication that that is not going to get better in a hurry.”

He added: “To put it as bluntly as I can, there are no clean breaks in the Body of Christ.”

It’s one thing to talk tough, but it’s another thing to flex some muscle and make some hard decisions. The bishops in Africa and Asia are starting to take the issue into their own hands, so it may be a moot point by the time Williams gets around to it. It is heartening that N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, is weighing in on the issue, but it might be too little, too late.

I’m starting to see some level-headed thinking and writing on the topic of the TNIV. After all the rhetorical grenades that have been tossed from the anti-TNIV camp, it’s nice to finally see some thoughtful discussion. Mark Roberts has put together a series of articles on how we ought to approach the TNIV discussion.

I like some of his starting points:

1. No translation is perfect.
2. There is not a one-to-one correspondence of meaning between languages.
3. Translation is more of an art than a science.
4. Biblical scholarship is continually changing our understanding of what the original words actually meant.

If you are tired of being told what to believe by the Dobson spin machine, go read this article. It’s a great place to start this discussion.

Hat tip!

This has to be filed under “sure signs of the apocalypse” … According to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (registration req’d.), everyone’s favorite feel-good TV preacher Joel Osteen is the hot ticket in the greater Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex:

Osteen, the senior pastor of the 30,000-member interdenominational Lakewood congregation in Houston, will preach at a sold-out worship service Friday at Dallas’ American Airlines Center, which will seat more than 17,000 for the event.

The $10, face-value tickets were sold by Ticketmaster. But multiple ticket resale firms across the nation have priced some tickets on their Web sites for more than $100.

“Joel Osteen is now to the Christian religion what Michael Jordan was to the NBA,” said Gary McBride, general manager of Perfectseats.com, a Houston-based firm that is listing the tickets for the Dallas event for prices ranging from $70 to $120.

Now, I’ve watched Osteen on television, and try as I might, I can’t figure out exactly what attracts people to this guy. I know he’s preaching a very watered-down — nearly heretical — version of Christianity, but it seems so light on actual substance that I’m not sure why anyone would pay $100 to go see him.

At least a guy like Benny Hinn, who is certainly a heretic, is claiming to heal people on stage. I mean, if I’m going to shell out my hard-earned money to go see a TV preacher in person, the least I expect is to have my bad back cured.

I’m still hoping Osteen is merely a flash in the pan and will eventually fade into the background.

John Coleman has a great article over at Reason Online promoting the idea of “state-free marriage”:

It is time to privatize marriage. If the institution is really so sacred, it should lie beyond the withering hands of politicians and policy makers in Washington D.C. There should be no federal or state license that grants validity to love. There should be no state-run office that peers into our bedrooms and honeymoon suites. If the church thinks divorce and homosexuality are problematic, it should initiate the real dialogue to address these problems in-house rather than relying on state-sponsored coercion to affirm doctrinal beliefs. And if tax-codes and guardianships need some classification for couples, let’s revise civil union standards to reflect those needs.

I’ve been on this bandwagon for a while now, often putting me on the opposite side of the fence from other religious conservatives. I’m glad to hear that this idea is getting more airplay.

There has long been a distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage. Both the church and the state have their reasons for ordaining or codifying the relationship between two people. For most of American history, the involvement of the state in marriage has often piggybacked on the role of the church in marriages. I think it’s time for that practice to end.

I can think of no reason for the state to be involved in marriages whatsoever. There exists sufficient legal mechanics to provide the property, inheritance, and other rights that are now tied to a civil marriage without having to call the relationship a marriage in the eyes of the government.

After all, the state is only really involved in marriage in the first place because of the economic and legal opportunities marriage creates. You can’t blame the state. There’s something to be said for collecting taxes and maintaining legal order. But it’s obvious the state could really care less about the qualitative health of anyone’s marriage. There are no real disincentives practiced by the government to discourage divorve. In fact, divorce has gotten easier and easier to achieve in recent years. Similarly, the bar is pretty low to apply for a marriage license. As far the government is concerned, marriage is only slightly more consequential than receiving a driver’s license and is much less difficult to formalize than buying a house.

On the other hand, marriage is a big deal to the church or at least it should be. After all, maintaining healthy marriages and presumbaly growing families is one of the chief methods of transmitting religious faith. Churches of all denominations place tremendous emphasis on encouraging marriage as a social practice and sustaining those relationships. The motivation is much less extrinsic than the motivation of the state.

My conclusion is that we must de-regulate marriage. States should be allowed to design legislation recognizing civil unions between any number of people, regardless of their gender or relationship to one another. These unions would provide for all the property, inheritance, and other rights now assoicated with marriage. But it will not be called marriage. At the same time, marriage should be left to churches. It should be their task to ordain any marriages that they see fit. It should also be their task to nurture and sustain these marriages, and if they see fit, they should grant divorces. The bar should be set high for those couples seeking to enter into a marriage relationship within the church. Divorce must be a last resort. But this should be the decision of the church.

Now, married couples would most certainly seek to codify their spiritual relationship by entering into a civil union, recognized by the government. However, it’s very likely that plenty of people who will enter into civil unions with one another will have no interest in “getting married”. That seems pretty obvious from all the debate over gay marriage.

I’m sure this proposal will stir up plenty of disagreement among my fellow religious conservatives, but I think if they are being honest with themselves, they will be forced to admit that the only way to truly preserve the sanctity of marriage is to take the state out of the equation and restore the authority of the church.

My favorite evangelical Democrat Jim Wallis recently talked to CT. He covered a lot of ground in terms of the relationship of people of faith to the Democratic and Republican parties.

In particular, Wallis had some revealing things to say about abortion:

… we ought to work on really doing something about teenage pregnancy. That ought to be a real point of common ground. An awful lot of teenage pregnancies could be avoided. Second, adoption reform is crucial. And I’ve been supportive of Wade Horn and his efforts in HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services] to work on adoption reform and foster care. In fact, I’ve been at those meetings and Wade and I have talked a lot about it. Third, I think supporting low-income women economically always reduces the abortion rate. You saw the piece by [Fuller Theological Seminary professor] Glen Stassen before the election. That’s a real issue, too.

If the Democrats want to win back some of those red states, this kind of talk will go a long way. But I’m not so sure how serious they will take people like Jim Wallis.

The key to the abortion issue really is one of preventing crisis pregnancies. There are plenty of ways to do that. The Democrats have shown little interest in any of them. Their solution has been to throw money into sex education programs and getting free contraceptives into the hands of teenagers. The problem with that solution is that it often has the opposite effect. I’d imagine that very few of the teens who become pregnant either didn’t have access to contraceptives or didn’t have some kind of sex education. The real question is whether pregnant teens would be having sex at all if they didn’t have free contraceptives and sex education. It may seem like a silly question, but it’s something worth looking into.

Democrats look at abstinence as being completely ineffective and worthless. Such a position ought to offend Christians on the left and the right. If Democrats reallly want to win on the abortion issue in those red states, embrace abstinence, embrace adoption, embrace parental notification, and embrace limits on late-term abortions. If you make all of these part of your message, then the issue of overturning Roe v. Wade becomes almost moot. If the abortion rate is decreased without the Supreme Court or Congress touching Roe, then I think you’ve trumped the conservatives.

At the same time, I think the issue of economic support for low-income mothers is another smart idea. Giving poor women some financial incentive to keep their babies instead of getting an abortion make a lot of sense. Call it LifeFare instead of Welfare, and you blow the Republicans out of the water.

These are the types of strategic ideas that Democrats should begin embracing if they really want to make progress with values voters. Jim Wallis is a great voice to have in that cause.

Michael Spencer is spearheading an effort to expose Joel Osteen for the phony that he really is.

I couldn’t agree with Spencer more. Osteen is one of the worst examples of how evangelicals often turn a blind eye to heresy. Just because Osteen packs the pews and sells a bunch of books, doesn’t mean that he’s orthodox or should be supported.

I stumbled onto Osteen about a year ago when I was channel-surfing. At first, I simply filed him away as another televangelist nutjob, like Benny Hinn, the Crouches, and others. But upon watching and listening further, it’s apparent that this guy isn’t just on the fringe of Christianity. In fact, he’s preaching an entirely new faith. It’s new age positive thinking, more pagan than Christian.

You will never hear Osteen preach about Jesus. In fact, Osteen will spend an entire half hour preaching on how God wants to great things in your life, without ever using scripture.

It’s going to be hard to shut this guy down beause he has a lot of money behind him. He’s buying time on cable networks and pushing his books and tapes. He’s appearing in the mainstream press, promoting his false brand of Christianity.

It’s sad that so many people are falling for this guy’s message.