Tag: theological education

The Weekend Wanderer: 17 December 2022

Matt EricksonLeave a comment

“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.

CT 2023 Book Awards“Christianity Today’s 2023 Book Awards” – From the Editors at Christianity Today: “When my alarm buzzes on the morning of an especially busy day, I often respond with a strange lack of urgency. A low rumble of dread builds as I ponder all the chores, errands, or work tasks that need completing. But instead of resolving to get up and get cracking, I linger in bed, nearly paralyzed by the weight of responsibility. I know what I need to do, but for some reason I can’t summon the willpower to do it. Something similar plays out in the lives of many Christians, according to Uche Anizor, a professor at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology. They know they’re supposed to love God, study Scripture, and pursue a life of holiness, but they can’t escape the clutches of spiritual indifference. In Overcoming Apathy: Gospel Hope for Those Who Struggle to Care, Anizor appeals to lukewarm believers, not with an accusing glare or a motivational speaker’s bullhorn, but with the compassion of someone who has fought this battle himself. It’s a worthy choice for CT’s Book of the Year. Across the board, the judges who read and evaluated it commended Anizor for putting his finger on a problem that routinely flies under the radar, even as it sinks so many of God’s people into a spiritual quagmire.”

pagan Christmas Holland“The myth of ‘pagan’ Christmas: Why does the idea that this Christian festival was stolen from heathen tradition persist?” – Tom Holland at UnHerd: “In AD 932 the most powerful ruler in Britain spent Christmas on the edge of Salisbury Plain. Never before had a unitary kingdom been fashioned out of all the various realms of the Angles and the Saxons. Never before had all the other kings of the island, from the northernmost reaches of Scotland to the mountains of Wales, been compelled to acknowledge the overlordship of a single man. That December, taking the road that led through the West Saxon heartlands of his kingdom, and arriving with his court in the fortified settlement of Amesbury, Athelstan could be well satisfied with the scope of his power. Across the Channel, in the lands of the Franks, it had long been the custom of emperors to sit in state at Christmas, publicly wearing a crown. Athelstan, a king who had won for himself his own imperial dignity, was the first of his dynasty to do the same. His greatness made for a dazzling show. There was feasting, drinking, gift-giving. Sat on his throne, wearing his diadem, the King of the English bestowed largesse. On Christmas Eve he made generous grants of land. One was to an abbey, another to a lord named Alfred. Such munificence was widely seen as appropriate to the season. The radiance of the king’s hospitality blazed all the more brilliantly for the cold and darkness all around. Athelstan did not know it, but the festivities he presided over at Amesbury that Christmas of 932 had a pedigree that reached back millennia.”

34telushkinembedlavender“Desiring Silence: Ancient believers went to the desert seeking God in the stillness of open spaces” – Shira Telushkin in Plough: “And yet today, far from being unnerving, silence is usually the soundtrack of transcendent possibility, the sound we most associate with open space. Surely I am not the only one who waxes poetic about echoey galleries with soaring ceilings or abandoned warehouses shimmering with uninterrupted space. And what is more majestic than the desert at sunrise, an expanse of ocean, or walking alone along a forest path densely enclosed by trees? In all these moments it is the unexpected encounter with silence that heightens the experience. Silence is sonic vastness just as a desert is physical vastness. In cramped quarters we are hemmed in by stuff; in crowded soundscapes we are limited by noises. But what sounds count as silence, and what sounds count as noise? Is silence the rare glimpse of divine experience, or is it compatible with human presence, accessible and available if only we had the ears to hear it? This is the question Kim Haines-Eitzen investigates in Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks – And What It Can Teach Us. Inspired by her work as a scholar of early Christian monasticism, the book is structured around her journeys to capture the sounds of various deserts and remote monasteries across the world, initially to gain better insight into ‘how natural sounds impacted ancient monasticism.’ She wants to know: ‘What did ancient monks hear in their environment? And what did they learn from these sounds?’ The book quickly veers from the tightness of this early interest into a narrative reflection on silence, rooted in ancient Christian sources and the sounds of remote places, but also meditating more broadly on conceptions of wilderness in the modern world, the experience of sound-seeking, and desert community. In a neat bit of multisensory innovation, each chapter includes a QR-code link to one of her field recordings.”

NPC“State Finds ‘Substantial Evidence’ of Retaliation at Illinois Church” – Emily Belz in Christianity Today: “A 2021 firing of a female staff member from a Chicago-area church led by pastor and author Dane Ortlund was determined to have “substantial evidence” of retaliation, according to an investigation into alleged discrimination by the state of Illinois. The former director of operations at Naperville Presbyterian Church, Emily Hyland, said her termination came days after privately complaining to two elders about gender discrimination from Ortlund. At the time, she had worked at the church for eight years, and he had been senior pastor for six months. After her firing, she filed charges over gender discrimination and retaliation at the state agency. The Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) did not find evidence that the church or Ortlund discriminated against her based on her gender. Evidence shows that ‘Ortlund … never made any discriminatory remarks directly related to [Hyland’s] sex,’ the report said, nor was there evidence of discrimination that rose to the level of a ‘hostile work environment.’ But the agency found ‘substantial evidence’ that she was fired ‘in retaliation for having engaged in prior protected activity.'”

Old-Vintage-Books“Theological schools report continued drop in master of divinity degrees” – Kathryn Post at Religion News Service: “Professional degrees are gaining traction at theological schools across the U.S. and Canada, while the traditional ministerial degree, the master of divinity, is faltering, according to new data released late last month. But Chris Meinzer, senior director and chief operation officer of The Association of Theological Schools, noted that overall enrollment at ATS schools has remained stable and that the master of divinity degree isn’t dying. Instead, he said, the M.A. degree is appealing to more students. The Association of Theological Schools, an umbrella organization with over 270 member schools, reported an uptick in doctor of ministry and other professional doctoral programs designed to enhance a minister’s practical skills. Based on enrollment numbers reported by nearly 90% of schools, projected enrollment for doctoral and similar programs in 2022 was 12,300 students, a 4% increase from fall 2021 and a notable 24% increase from fall 2018, according to the ATS.  The Master of Arts degree, a two-year program that trains students for a wide range of professions, including doctoral studies, nonprofit work and lay ministry, has also seen a subtle increase of 1% since fall 2021, and 5% since fall 2018, according to fall 2022 projections. The ATS reports that enrollment in M.A. programs is now on par with enrollment in master of divinity programs for the first time in ATS history, according to fall 2022 projections. The master of divinity degree — a three-year program typically chosen by students pursuing ordination — continues to decline. The projected enrollment for fall 2022 is 28,000 master of divinity students, a 4% decrease from fall 2021 and 9% decline since fall 2018. Master of divinity programs still constitute 35% of enrollment at theological schools overall, per fall 2022 projections. That’s a significant decline from the 43% of total enrollment for master of divinity degrees a decade ago.”

122022-light-dark-worship“Should we avoid liturgical language of light and dark?: While struggling with this question as a church songwriter, I came up with six guidelines.” – Steve Thorngate at The Christian Century: “I write liturgical songs, both music and words, and a few years ago I did a project centered on the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany cycle. There were many classic themes to explore—hope, waiting, incarnation, joy, gift. There was also one in particular that I soon realized would require some careful consideration: the play of darkness and light. Many Christians would like to excise light/dark language from our liturgical texts—or at least exclude it from any new ones—and for pretty persuasive reasons. There is a long history in the church of using words like light, white, bright, and fair to connote goodness in a straightforward way and words like dark, black, shade, and dim to connote the opposite. Most instances of such usage were not written for explicitly racist purposes (though some were). Still, this language has thrived alongside racism in White-dominated church contexts. And language—especially ritual language, repeated again and again—has great power among those who speak or hear it, power not constrained by the intent of its creators. So there is a compelling case to simply avoid this whole family of descriptive language at church: it can be and has been used to bolster White supremacy, so it just isn’t worth hanging onto. Other Christians make the reasonable point that the Bible—our primary text, shared across time and tradition—should be the norm for liturgical language. And the Bible is chock-full of light/dark imagery, with much (though not all) of it presenting light as the positive side of the coin. Jesus is the light of the world, the morning star, the one who obviates the need for lamp or sunlight, the one in whom there is no darkness at all. Forgiveness for sin washes us whiter than snow. And then, over on the other side of things, there’s the power of darkness. Why should the church avoid this language the biblical writers use so freely?”

Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Benedictus,” as performed by the Choir of St. Michael at the North Gate.

The Weekend Wanderer: 22 October 2022

Matt EricksonLeave a comment

“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.

Jonathan Lee Walton“Jonathan Lee Walton named next president of Princeton Seminary” – Adelle M. Banks at The Christian Century: “Jonathan Lee Walton, an academician, preacher, and administrator who has served on the faculties of Wake Forest and Harvard divinity schools, has been named the next president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He will be the first Black president of the seminary, which was founded in 1812, and is to officially begin his new role on January 1, 2023. Walton, 49, who has been dean of Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity in North Carolina and dean of its chapel since 2019, will succeed President M. Craig Barnes, who has led Princeton’s seminary since 2013. ‘Theological education is at an inflection point,’ Walton said in a statement in the seminary’s October 14 announcement. ‘The church is changing. Society is changing. So we need clear-minded, faith-informed professionals who can speak hope, equity, and healing in all fields of human endeavor.’ Walton, whose scholarship has included evangelical Christianity, political culture, and mass media, is the author of Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism and A Lens of Love: Reading the Bible in Its World for Our World.”

fall2022“Who Do You Say that I Am?: Protecting personhood in a newly dehumanizing era.” – Anne Snyder in Comment: “Andy Crouch’s new book, The Life We’re Looking For, begins with a profound observation: ‘Recognition is the first human quest.’ We come out of the womb, each of us, searching for a gaze. If we don’t find it for some reason, or we do but then it wanders elsewhere, the foundational ingredient for developing a sense of self is compromised. Children who endure sporadic or negligent attention in their earliest days ‘may possibly survive, but they do not thrive.’ ‘You have searched me, Lord, and you know me . . .’ We clearly do not graduate out of this vulnerability. Adults, too, need to feel seen to feel human. The enduring heart of human longing is the desire to be known and loved. To be human is to be called by name, not a number. It is to be attached to another, usually multiple others, and to negotiate the evolving shape of these attachments over a lifetime. It is to be perceived as legitimate, as a full participant in a family, a community, a workplace, a country. It is to have freedom to choose between good and evil, and to be capable of hurting—or healing—another. It is to be fragile, embodied, limited, mortal. It is to seek and make meaning, to feel pain, to desire, to honour, to worship. It is to hope that we are each particular and unrepeatable, even as we are desperate to know that we are never actually alone. North Americans are undergoing a mass crisis of recognition that is chipping away at all this and numbing our natures. Fifty-four percent of Americans say that no one knows them well. The number of adults without a romantic partner has increased by a third. Sixty-one percent of young adults feel lonely almost all of the time, and over half of young mothers feel the same.”

webRNS-Youth-Mental-Health1-101922-1536x864“Study: Religion and spirituality can aid youth mental health crisis” – Kathryn Post at Religion News Service: “It’s no secret America’s youth are in crisis. Born into a tech-saturated world shaken by domestic terrorism, ecological devastation and economic instability, Gen-Zers are more likely to report mental health concerns like anxiety and depression than older generations. In many ways, the pandemic has forced mental health discourse into the limelight, prompting the U.S. surgeon general to issue an advisory last December on COVID-19’s “devastating” impact on youth mental health. A new study of 13–25-year-olds, from Springtide Research Institute, suggests spirituality could be part of the remedy — though for some young people, it also contributes to the problem. ‘I think religion … is a place to find belonging. It’s a place to connect with a higher purpose, which is a calling from God in my understanding,’ said Mark, 22, an interviewee cited in the report. ‘I think it’s also, for many people, a restriction of freedom and sort of obligation, which creates a lot of shame in people’s lives.’ In general, the report — which is based on qualitative interviews as well as fielded surveys — finds that having religious/spiritual beliefs, identities, practices and communities are all correlated with better mental wellness among youth.”

Webb“The Virtue of Noticing: Refusing numbness and recovering wonder.” – L. M. Sacasas in Comment: “Few questions, it seems, are more important for us to consider at present than this: What does it mean to be human? But it is a perennial question, asked by thoughtful people for ages and answered in diverse and conflicting ways. The stakes have always been high, and no single answer can be taken for granted. In our time the question has centred at least in part on the possibility of fundamentally transforming the human being by the application of human knowledge and power. Indeed, it is not uncommon to encounter explicit calls for a post-human future, one in which the human condition is radically altered or altogether transcended. At the same time, however, others warn of the possibility that we might descend from rather than transcend the human condition. The usual agent of change in each case, enabling either the utopian ascent or the infernal descent of humankind, is “technology.” Rather than adjudicating among these competing visions or proposing a full account of the meaning of the human, I want to focus on one seemingly neglected human capacity, which may not exclusively define the human but which certainly characterizes it: the capacity for wonder. Particularly, I want to focus on two questions: How has our technological milieu affected our capacity to experience wonder? And how, in turn, has this affected how we think about the human condition?”

Screen Shot 2022-10-20 at 3.23.53 PM“Why Bad Catholics Make Great Art” – Nick Ripatrazone in The Millions: “‘Now, you know, I’m a Catholic,’ Toni Morrison told Cornel West during a 2004 conversation at The Nation Institute. ‘We’re used to blood and gore. On the cross in the church, there’s the body, with the cuts and all the bruises.’ Though Morrison was a self-described ‘disaffected Catholic,’ she was a Catholic nonetheless: She converted when she was 12 and took Saint Anthony of Padua as her baptismal name. She found herself ‘fascinated by the rituals’ of the faith and was especially transfixed by the ornate, almost otherworldly experience of Latin Mass. But she had what she called ‘a moment of crisis’ on the occasion of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which largely abolished the liturgical use of Latin, which she saw as “the unifying and universal language of the Church.’ Morrison, who had a wry sense of humor, would later call herself a ‘lapsed Catholic’—a bad Catholic. The Nobel laureate was in good company: bad Catholics often make great art. Smells, bells, blood, guts, spectacle, and of course, bodies, bodies, bodies. Catholicism is a deeply theatrical religion based in provocative stories. The faith has inspired many gifted artists, and certainly a number of them remained devoted to their beliefs. Yet some of the best Catholic storytellers achieve their power at a distance from traditional devotion. These bad Catholics are able to draw upon a rich array of imagery, symbolism, and story—and while they might not be conventionally doctrinaire, their work is undeniably Catholic. To be clear, I don’t mean ‘bad’ in the pejorative sense, as if I am claiming that these artists are to be judged for not being dogmatically solid Catholics. (As a cradle-to-now Catholic myself, I’d love it if we did a lot less judging.) Rather, I use “bad” to capture the significant number of Catholics who are lapsed, unsatisfied, tired, checked out; the people who don’t go to Mass often (or ever), but who still make the sign of the cross to calm their nerves, or holds a special place in their heart for the Virgin Mary. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic—a dictum that is true both theologically and emotionally.”

Music: Donny McClurkin with Richard Smallwood, “Total Praise,” from Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs

The Weekend Wanderer: 12 September 2020

Matt EricksonLeave a comment

“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like.

Alan Jacobs Bread“Hate the Sin, Not the Book: Reading works from the past can offer perspective” – In this excerpt from his latest book, Alan Jacobs invites us to engage with writing from earlier times and with differing perspectives to help us gain sanity in our lives. Building off of two earlier books, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction and How to Think: A Guide for the Perplexed, Jacobs offers this latest book, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind, as a complementary work for our divided and confused time. In the midst of cancel culture’s dominance in the present moment, Jacobs brings wisdom for a reasoned understanding of why hearing voices unlike ours who we may not always agree with is more valuable than we know.

Kayla Stoecklein“I Was a Pastor’s Wife. Suicide Made Me a Pastor’s Widow.” – When Pastor Andrew Stoecklein took his own life in August 2018, it shocked many people and, unfortunately, became one more in a sad series of similar events. Stoecklein’s wife, Kayla, reflects on her life in the wake of her husband’s death. “Life as I knew it changed forever and I was handed a brand-new life as a widow and single mom to our three young boys. All of a sudden ours was the sad story on the internet. I watched as images of my life and pictures of my family made headlines all around the world. We were thrust into the spotlight in an instant. While the world was watching, leaning in, listening close, I chose to speak.” If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please talk with someone you know about this or reach out for help to the suicide prevention lifeline (1-800-273-8255). 

Lecrare Restoration“Why Lecrae’s ‘Restoration’ Should Still Be On Repeat” – From Cameron Friend at The Witness: “This album feels like a memoir as Lecrae is publicly inviting us to participate with him in his restoration while encouraging us to take our own honest plunge. While this project might not speak to the social inequities in the way we might expect, it still has its relevance amid the mental health trauma that Americans have been experiencing during the year 2020. ‘Restoration’ is a collaborative project that speaks to his personal journey towards the restoration he so desperately needed after losing hope, wrestling with his faith, and rediscovering himself as an artist.”

Mark Galli RC“Mark Galli, former Christianity Today editor and Trump critic, to be confirmed a Catholic” – This was not a headline that I expected to read, but it was not entirely surprising to me either. I find it unfortunate that Mark Galli has become chiefly known for his controversial editorial about President Trump since his writing work is much broader and meaningful than that. However, his decision to move beyond Anglicanism to “cross the Tiber” this year has precedent in evangelicalism, from the relatively recent conversion of Francis Beckwith (former President of the Evangelical Theological Society) or the likes of Thomas Howard (renowned evangelical author and brother to Elisabeth Elliot). About his conversion, Galli says, “I want to submit myself to something bigger than myself.”

God-Angel-Heaven-Concept-1536x1152“Unconscious Learning Underlies Belief in God – Stronger Beliefs in People Who Can Unconsciously Predict Complex Patterns” – “Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists at Georgetown University. Their research, reported in the journal, Nature Communications, is the first to use implicit pattern learning to investigate religious belief. The study spanned two very different cultural and religious groups, one in the U.S. and one in Afghanistan.”

Rowan Williams“Rowan Williams: Theological Education Is for Everyone” – Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, wants everyone to know that theological education is for all of us. In this interview with Benjamin Wayman, Williams says, “theological education is learning more about the world that faith creates, or the world that faith trains you to inhabit….any Christian beginning to reflect on herself or himself within the body of Christ is in that act doing theology: making Christian sense of their lives. So we shouldn’t be at all surprised if people in all parts of the body of Christ show an appetite for doing this and learning about it.” Perhaps now as much as ever we as Christians need to make Christian sense of our lives and the world around us. So let’s continue to grow theologically!

Music: Lecrae (featuring John Legend), “Drown,” from Restoration.

[I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within the articles linked from this page, but I have read them myself in order to make me think more deeply.]