The Center for Faith and Learning

Pepperdine University this week announced that I will be the Interim Associate Director for the Center for Faith & Learning over the next academic year. The Director is in Germany this year and the Associate Director is on sabbatical.

The announcement was accompanied by a spot on the PU home page and a press release and podcast interview. I'm looking forward to the challenges and opportunities this will bring.

Sacred Doubt...

I preach at our home church once or twice a year and I greatly enjoy it. Like playing guitar, I get much more pleasure from the process than my limited skills reveal. I agreed to preach the last Sunday in August way back in March and I've been thinking about it for some time. Mostly my sermon dealt with my summer reading.

This summer I read Voltaire's Candide and Dawkins' The God Delusion and together they pushed me to think much more deeply about my faith and to wrestle more intensely with some of my intellectual doubts. After completing them both I found myself in quite a spiritual funk for several weeks. Seeking some intellectual comfort, I found Tim Keller's Reason for God. I found it encouraging and helpful for addressing many of the intellecutal and philosophical quandaries raised by Voltaire and Dawkins. The first half of RfG is a philosophical response to athiesm and the second half is a basic introduction to the theological pillars of orthodox Christianity.

Given the contours of my spiritual journey over the past eight weeks it seemed appropriate that I would talk about doubt. So, here it is...I don't know if there will be an audio version available or not. If you don't have time to read it I will summarize with this quote from Tennyson,

There is more faith in sincere doubt than in all your creeds.

Enjoy, and my God grant you mercy in your journey.

Really good "Christian" fiction...

I'm not a big fan of "Christian" fiction.  I guess that's mostly because I can't stand going into "Christian" bookstores.  It just drives me crazy to see the crass commercialization of the simple message of Jesus.  Anyhow...that's another soap box for another blog entry.

Today, I want to hawk a great book that I just finished.  Silence by Shusaku Endo.  The book was written in 1966 and it's really wonderful.  I suspect every person who has ever been drawn to missions, or who has participated in missions in some way (even a short-term missions trip) will connect with this book.  It was originally written in Japanese and it portrays the missionary journey of a Portuguese Catholic Priest to Japan in the 17th Century during a time of intense persecution. 

I don't want to give away the story, but let's just say it's a tragedy of sorts.  Albeit a very redemptive one.  It is not a feel-good, God is awesome, and give-me-some-of-that-Touchdown-Jesus! type of book.  Rather, it's a thoughtful exploration of the faith challenges inherent in suffering, missions, and loving Jesus while serving institutionalized religion.  I highly recommend it.

PS - Thanks to my favorite Republican Political Scientist for recommending this to me.

Conferencing with Friends and Evangelicals

The purpose for my recent trip to Washington was to take in the National Faculty Leadership Conference.  This is the second time I've attended this conference and DMS, SLS and I have established a nice tradition of alternating between NFLC and the Christian Scholar's Conference.  Both conference are the same weekend but NFLC is bi-annual.  So it makes sense to rotate. 

This year's conference was wonderful in many ways.  The plenary speakers were Ken Elzinga from UVA (Economics) and JP Moreland from Talbot School of Theology.  Richard Pratt of ThirdMill.org lead morning devotionals on Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday was a wonderful day at the Conference.  After a challenging sermon from Dr. Pratt, we broke into "Ministry Tracks" for a potpourri of presentations related to ministry in the academy.  I found this to be the highlight of the Conference.  I heard Ken Elzinga discuss how he uses the Lecture Method to teach classes of over 1,000 (ONE THOUSAND!) students at a time at UVA.  I couldn't believe his classes were that big.  It made me very happy to be at Pepperdine where a "large" class is 30 students. 

Next I heard James Painter give an introduction to Food Psychology 101.  It was terrific! He presented years of research that indicate portion control is the biggest factor in weight management.  Check out his web-site.  It's helpful, informative, ad-free, and filled with sound scientific research.

Finally, Robert Kaita from the Particle Physics Lab at Princeton taught a session on balancing the demands of the academy with your personal and spiritual life.  It was very encouraging.

The afternoon was separate tracks for different academic areas.  The business and economics track was attended by about 20 faculty from all over the country.  SLS, DMS & I presented our "Virtue and Commerce" course and it was very interesting.  While some within the audience were appreciative, we had one or two more conservative attendees who pushed us to make the course more openly evangelistic.  It was quite interesting to see this more fundamentalist impulse within the Evangelical community.  For some reason, I had not anticipated this type of response at NFLC.  I suppose I should have. 

One final observation...the first thing I wrote in my notes at NFLC this year was something like,

I am not an "evangelical".  I appreciate much of what they contribute to the faith, but they are not my "tribe". 

I feel a sense of belonging in the Churches of Christ.  I recognize they aren't perfect...in fact some components of the CoC drive me batty.  But they are my people.  I continue to come to terms with what that means.  But spending time within other Christian traditions helps me to better understand and appreciate my own.

 

PS - In case you can't tell from the photo above...I never could make up my mind about which team to root for...so I wore a Nats T-shirt and an O's hat. :-)

Global warming, debate, and the nature of a university

Last night I was invited to participate in a panel discussion of An Inconvenient Truth by the GSBM student group NetImpact. Along with about 70 graduate students from the business school, the law school, and School of Public Policy, we watched the movie and then discussed some of the political, commercial, regulatory, and personal implications of it.

The panel was composed of several faculty from a variety of political views and training. It was an encouraging and entertaining exchange of perspectives about what many view as an important topic of discussion. It reminded me of one of the reasons I'm so happy to be at Pepperdine. I find this is a wonderful environment for discussing important issues. As a Christian University we have the freedom to discuss the role of faith, values, and ultimate beliefs in talking about these issues. And, as a University committed to the academic pursuit of knowledge, we are not confined to narrow interpretations of what questions we should ask, how we answer them, or what topics we talk about.

Finally, I was especially happy to have the opportunity to watch the movie and engage in this discussion with Matthew present. It is great to see the wheels turning in his mind as he grows.

Oh by the way...my primary contribution to the panel? As you know, I'm not a scientist, a politician, or an economist so my insights were limited. My major point of view is that the current global structure is self-motivated to keep the current technologies in place that support their hold on power and wealth. Therefore, it is important for all global-citizens to voice their opinions about the kind of world we want to live in. Otherwise, the rich and powerful of our world will marshal their extensive resources to defend the status quo. In the words of Alcoholics Anonymous..."if you keep doing what you've been doing, you'll keep getting what you've been getting." I find it ironic that in events like this we sit around and discuss the issues and try to calculate "is the morality of this issue such that I should act, or can I just wait-and-see?" That posture assumes that "wait-and-see" is morally neutral. I argue that the status-quo is never morally neutral. It serves the interests of those currently in power. If we want to see a change in global environmental policy, we can't look to the current global leadership to achieve it.

Political Parties and People of Faith

One of the issues that has troubled me the most over the past decade is the depth of the attachment between many well-meaning Christians and Christian-themed organization (e.g., Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, NAE...) and the Republican Party. Now, I am not bothered by Christians who vote Republican, work for conservative causes, and generally act out politically based on their religious principles.

I do the same.

What bothers me is the depth of the attachment not to causes, principles, and beliefs, but to personalities and the Republican Party. IMHO, the GOP has played the Christian vote as powerful voting bloc with no intentions of delivering the level of governmental, regulatory, and legislative renewal that many of these people desire. For example, isn't it interesting that over the past six years with a Republican control over all three branches of Federal government we have not seen any of the changes that these Christian groups lobby for?

So, I am encouraged by recent events that indicate that many other Christian people are beginning to realize this as well. They are recognizing that politics is politics...and that it is not the primary work of the Kingdom of God. Here's a good article by E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post on a few recent events.

Link to E. J. Dionne Jr. - Christians Who Won't Toe the Line - washingtonpost.com

I also recommend Christian, Evangelical & Democrat? by George Hunter, and Tempting Faith by David Kuo.

Change and "progress" in the Churches of Christ

I'm a long-time CoC-er. In fact, one side of my family goes back seven-generations to a frontier "Campbell-ite preacher" in Appalachia. So, I've seen much of the good and bad about my particular religious tradition. However, this weekend two events converged in an interesting way.

First, I grew up in a pretty conservative, fundamentalist, literalist church. I don't mean those as bad words, just descriptive. An anecdotal story...my grandma regularly taught Bible class at church. One summer while she was away from home, one of the 9-year-old boys in her class was baptized. When she returned home and found out that one of the boys had been baptized she immediately resigned as teacher because it was un-scriptural for a woman to "have authority over a man."

Needless to say, things have changed a lot over the years. Now, as I approach 40 I find myself in a traditional CoC that has a different view...there is more more inclusive (if not exactly equal) participation between the genders in nearly all aspects of the corporate experience. This week, my 7-year old, un-immersed daughter was the official "greeter" at church and several other elementary school-age girls read scripture, passed communion and served in other ways because it was "Girl Scout Sunday". Wow, that's a big change in 30 years...(One, by the way, I fully support. Like many of my peers from childhood I simply could not in good conscience attend the church of my youth assuming it was unchanged in this regard).

The second (and related?) incident was that Michelle and I had a long talk today about how "friendly" or "unfriendly" our church is. As we discussed this, I couldn't help but wondering what the relationship is between being an evangelistic, outreach-oriented church and being a conservative, fundamentalist church. Many historians have noted that most mainline religions have been declining in attendance over the past 50 years while conservative, Bible-based church have continued a steady increase in size, wealth, and political influence.

I wonder what, if any, relationship these two trends have? Maybe it will all become clear to me at the Pepperdine Lectures in early May?