We spent some time last meeting talking about the question I posed a couple posts ago: should we expect to be able to bring people, especially entrenched fundamentalists in our churches, along with us for this conversation? While most of us would like to believe that we can have an open discussion and a redemptive friendship with these folks, they tend to be the ones who insist we're not "in" despite our best efforts to be generously orthodox. I think the best we can hope for many times is the situation kaleo has: a church who makes room for us even if they don't always understand or agree with us.
We talked about the liturgies in the second section of Rollins's book as well. We'd like to do some locally-written liturgies in our churches that use some of Rollins's method, especially his ability to weave ambiguity into the issues so that caricaturing controversial issues by presenting opposite poles (i.e., gay versus straight, republican versus democrat, etc.) is not possible within the context of the liturgical service. That being said, we asked what the issues were for Oklahoma City. The answers: conservative politics and Christianity sleeping together; gender roles, especially women in leadership; homosexuality (what will the church do?); religiosity that comes from being raised in and around church but never committing to follow Jesus in any meaningful way beyond "I believe Jesus died for my sins..."
Next meeting will be the third Thursday of November to avoid conflict with Thanksgiving. At that meeting we'll talk about what the liturgies might look like.
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4 comments:
Sorry I missed that one but it's a hell of a commute for me...
The title of this post is a little off. The scariest thing I've seen is not the old people. (They generally realize, sometimes subconsiously, that they're witnessing a change and that it's "normal") but the people MY age (around 25-ish) and younger who are WORSE than the old Fundies when it comes to holding on to paradigms and polemics. I've got a few friends who are starting to ask questions, but are so steeped in "the way it's supposed to be done" that anything outside of that is not visible, or offensive to them. (e.g. the subtitle of the blog "the parish" -theology and beer- wound them up pretty tight)
this is not to say that they are stupid, they are very inteligently questioning, but ONLY within the paradigm they are comfortable with... Ok I'll stop I'm venting. Any ideas on how to break paradigms? I've literally been working on a few for a year or so now...
use airsoft or paintball... then there is a real pain to reflect on. Also airsoft looks more like a real weapon, so the psych impact will be more real.
Greg -- you raise the question about including fundies. I doubt they would feel comfortable in the cohort discussions (or at the discussion site!). It might be good to try to stretch a few of them, though -- the church has an educational ministry, too. But, is that the direction of the cohort? Is it the education of the church? Or is it (will it be) witness to the unchurched and/or "sick-of-churched"? I'm all for inclusivity, but it's impossible to include those who don't want to be included or who have already excluded us (I think).
I suspect the blog software is excluding me, or has at least started down that path. The "Word Verification" to log in and post this comment is "leowoos." It's calling me names. (I'm a "Leo" -- how did it know?)
An earlier post I made, Open Season on Pete, mentions a a group discussing Peter Rollins book. I bring it back up here because they are discuss the "Queer" liturgy currently. You can link to the site from Open Season.
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