third time's the charm, right?

okay, thanks to lori and myrna for starting us off right. apologies for not having done this sooner. i've enjoyed reading thus far, even if weber's experience of the evangelical church has been vastly different from mine, in places.

before i start with my reflections, i wanted to confess that i've found myself at times getting defensive and bothered, wanting to tell the author that his experiences in the church do not represent all experiences with evangelicalism across the board. i don't think he would say that he intended that, however, and i attribute my heightened sensitivity to having a family that has been part of the evangelical tradition for all my life. when weber reacts to enlightenment-style christianity and calls for faith to be rooted in something bigger than facts - that i understand. but sometimes his writing implies that all evangelicals bow down to the 'Western ideal of the explainable,' which has not been the bulk of my experience, and which i react defensively to because my parents have both been part of the evangelical tradition (in, i think, mostly honorable and thoughtful ways) for decades.

that said . . . i understand and embrace his rejection of the notion of 'biblical data' standing in for christian faith, and i desire along with weber a system of worship that 'sets our world in order . . . puts God in his proper place and puts us in right relationship to him and everything else.' i cringe sometimes when i think of the songs that we sang in high school and college and in chapel at westmont when we sang 'in christ alone' and everyone clapped and cheered when we got to the part about 'up from the grave he rose again.' there is this expectation in evanglical circles that you encounter God through emotion and feelings and stretching out your hands during worship or closing your eyes and putting your hand over your heart, these sanctimonious and outrightly pious movements that show our connectedness is greater than anyone else's. and though i haven't been in many classrooms where the professor has tried to argue scientifically for God's existence, i would certainly resent having that argument made in the first place.

again, the author's life in the evangelical church - full of altar calls and angry pastors and fact vs. mystery - is deeply different than mine has been. while i remember a handful of discussions around God directing evolution or scientific arguments supporting the resurrection, i was never told that i had to believe in a 6,000 year-old earth or that faith was based on scientific principles. but the increased place of mystery and connection to our forbears in the episcopal church has been one of my greatest sources of pleasure over the last years . . . i love the liturgy, repeating words that have affirmed the faith for centuries, practicing in word and deed the teachings of jesus in a rich and meaningful way. i loved that about trinity and love where that overlaps with evangelicalism in the ecumenical movement.

i have a hard time with, at least in the first few chapters, the way that weber pits the rational against the mysterious, the logical against the mystical, the arguable against the uniquely felt. it makes sense to me that God would have a place in all of those areas, and that not just one could stake a claim on him. of course we can believe in the existence of jesus, and read about the historical facts that support this and the accounts of the men and women who knew him. without these, we would not know much of him. and to know him, we have to accept the deepness of the mystery of a God who is triune, who sent his son to earth and his spirit to live in us and who awaits us and redeems us every day. it isn't either-or.

mmmm. theology and coffee and a sunday morning. lovely.