I can’t believe I didn’t post this! It wasn’t until my brother mentioned his desire to post about it that I remembered. So I’m beating him to the punch.

I went to church on Christmas Eve morning (it always seems like such a good idea. Then once the service starts I find myself in deep regret) with the aforementioned brother. When we went out to the parking lot after, we (OK, Mark) discovered this exact tableau on the asphalt:

In case you can’t read the fine print, the text on the kazoo reads “Jesus Loves Me.” And yes, that is a yellow condom.

So I work at a university, right, and my office is near the (incredibly tiny) Muslim Students’ Association room. (The room is tiny, not the MSA.) I was in the washroom and I walked in on a woman, who was wearing hijab, with her stockinged foot propped up awkwardly against the sink. She kind of startled, and I picked a stall and went into it and by the time I was finished she had hurried out.

I felt like saying, look, it’s OK. I know you have to wash your face, hands and feet before you pray. Don’t worry about it.

Speaking of hijab, the last time the topic was on the news, they were discussing whether burqas should be outlawed in Canada. They played some listener calls and there was a student from my university who called in saying, “I don’t have a problem with burqas, there are people who wear them here at the university.” No, you idiot. There are no burqa-wearing women at our university. They wear hijab, that is, modest clothing that covers their arms, legs, and hair. Headscarves and long sleeves are NOT the same thing as a head-to-toe garment that renders a woman’s face invisible and field of vision extremely limited. JUST SAYING.

Speaking of Muslims, today is the premiere of a new sitcom here in Canada called Little Mosque on the Prairie. It’ll be on in half an hour, I guess I’ll watch.

In other news, First Church of Suburbia’s associate pastor resigned on Sunday. This allows me the momentary joy of clinging to the notion that perhaps they might hire a woman to replace him!

The worship leader at church has asked all the folks my age to come to a meeting on Saturday to talk about worship and “what meaningful times of worshipping God look like” for us.

My first reaction was, well, I don’t really worship God much these days so I shouldn’t go. But then I thought, well, one of the big reasons I don’t go to church is because of the pervasive androcentrism that make it extremely unpleasant for me to even sit through a service as a passive observer, let alone a worshipper.

So should I go and tell him that?

I’ve talked before about how throughout my young life, I found the spiritual, worshipful “feelings” elusive. I’ve also said that I’ve had far more religious experiences in a smoky club listening to a band or rapper as I have had in a service or a Bible study.

So when the beginning of July rolls around and with it the Winnipeg Folk Festival, I get pretty excited. I get excited knowing that I’ll get a taste of that intangible, ethereal zeitgeist that results when thousands of like-minded people gather in one place in a spirit of celebration. Ostensibly that is what one could/should get in church, but we all know it rarely works out that way.

Today I had probably the best festival day I’ve ever had. I actually hoisted myself out of bed (I was up late shaking booty to the Refugee All Stars of Sierra Leone) and arrived in time for the annual gospel workshop. “Workshops” are concerts at the festival where two, three or more artists/bands gather on the same stage, under the umbrella of some theme (some titles are “Old Songs, New Songs,” “Percussion Junction,” “One Fiddle to Rule Them All”). Ideally, the participants of the workshop will join in on harmonies and guitar parts of each others’ songs, sometimes jamming and creating entirely new tunes, or adding a bassline or a beat where otherwise there would be none.

“Working on a Building (Gospel Workshop)” featured American bluesmen the Holmes Brothers, local Mennonite bluegrass quartet House of Doc, and my personal favourite, Austin singer-songwriter/guitarist Ruthie Foster. Ruthie was raised singing and playing in the church in central Texas, and there really aren’t words to describe the magic she is on stage. Her voice is so massive and effortless, she really does merit comparisons to the great ladies of song (those comparisons are tossed around so often. This time I mean it). You listen to her voice and you just believe that everything is going to be OK. She’ll raise the roof even if there isn’t one, like at an outdoor festival when the only roof is the sky and so she’ll just raise that. In the workshop following the gospel one, she shared the stage with Bruce Cockburn and Richard Thompson and completely held her own. That’s how good she is.

She sang a song she wrote inspired by her mother, who, when Ruthie was in college, told her that education was fine but “you’ve got a soul to save.” She sang the song she sang at her grandmother’s funeral, two weeks ago. “It’s alright,” she said, “She’s fine. She’s here today… she’s everywhere.” And then she went on to sing a variation of Amazing Grace, about how God saw past her faults and saw her needs.

It’s stuff like that that can almost make a girl believe.

I mentioned Bruce Cockburn, who is well-known for being a “secular” Christian artist. I ranted and whined last week about Christian music, and Bruce indeed is one of those rare artists who manages to be Christian and also good. He sang “All the Diamonds” today, and… well, it was just really beautiful. Go read the lyrics if you’re not familiar. He also did “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” which was also beautiful.

I’m not sure what my point is here. Maybe to say that I can understand why so many people are so attached to the church, because there are so many qualities of church in a festival like this: the fellowship, the transcendence of music (which I have come to believe is inherent to music itself, in some sort of magical, unknowable way, and not at all unique to Christian musicians, as a former choir director of mine actually claimed), the knowledge that you can go to this one place and be rewarded for your efforts with this amazing feeling.

Or maybe that inspiration can be found in many places. That one woman’s voice can be a salve, just as a few lines of poetry in the Old Testament can be. That dancing in the sun is what we should have been doing all along.

technorati tags: folk, music, bruce+cockburn, ruthie+foster, christianity, religion, church

Democracy Now! had a segment this morning featuring Michelle Goldberg who has just written a book called Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. It looks like her book is about all the typical dominionism stuff, but I thought she had some very interesting observations in the interview. She talked about the way the megachurch phenomenon interacts with the suburban/exurban phenomenon, and how brand new, non-urban areas have no built-in social infrastructure (central coffee shops, community organizations) like older urban environments do, and how megachurches nicely fill that void (with gyms, after-school programs, and often coffee shops as well!). When the megachurch becomes the foundation of the community, it provides the ideal environment to foster the kinds of nationalism and dominionism we’ve seen take hold of the United States.

What brings this all to the headlines is, of course, the Memphis church who has erected a copy of the Statue of Liberty who hoists a wooden cross instead of a torch.

You can listen to or watch today’s Democracy Now! at their website; there are various download/streaming options.

So I think I’m gonna quit church again. This week really managed to rub me the wrong way. Does the worship leader have to announce that “One thing we all have in common is that we believe Jesus is _______” (fill in the blanks). Look, I know evangelicals have a distaste for all things pomo, but can’t we at least acknowledge that everyone in the service might not accept the same doctrinal points? Forget disagreements between Christians, because individual churches do tend to be communities of like-minded people as an obvious result. But aren’t you alienating any of those precious “seekers” who might be in the crowd, let alone semi-re-lapsed Christians like me?

To quote Gob Bluth (I’ve been on an Arrested Development bender lately), come on!

Then the sermon was all about how people who are believing in Jesus are going to heaven and those who don’t are going to hell. Yawn. Actually, it might have been more interesting but I got thirsty in the first five minutes of the sermon and had to take a water break, then I got sidetracked in the lobby by various things like two-month-old babies named Tobias (coincidence? I think not!).

I’d like to take this opportunity to shout out to Eddie(F) at Edge of Faith who, after much deliberation and study, is leaving the Christian faith for good. Now he gets to enjoy the patronizing remarks of still-Christians who comment that this is all part of his “journey.” In my experience, there is nothing more obnoxious than that, because the implication in the word “journey” is that journeys are OK as long as you end up with Jesus in the end. Stephen Colbert put it well last week at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner:

“And though I am a committed Christian, I believe everyone has the right to their own religion - be you Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim, I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.”

It’s funny because it’s terrifying because it’s true.

technorati tags: stephen colbert, christianity, religion, politics, church, jesus

Last weekend I visited the United States of America for the first time in many years. I visited the fine metropolis of Minneapolis/St. Paul (current home of everyone’s hero, Tony Jones. I briefly considered undertaking a Celebrity Pastor Stalking mission, but abandoned the project in its planning stages as in the end I’m far to lazy and not nearly Emergent enough). The Twin Cities are quite nice, and I say that without irony — I enjoyed looking at many pretty, old houses, lovingly restored and/or maintained.

I stayed with a friend who attends a Lutheran church which, during the summer, holds drive-in services. I personally enjoy outdoor services, but something about the drive-in concept rankles me. Maybe it’s the idea of staying neatly insulated within one’s vehicle (gas-guzzling SUV or not) that seems to run counter to the idea of corporate worship. Or maybe it’s the aftertaste of church-as-product/entertainment that the drive-in concept imparts.

During my visit, I indulged in a visit to the Mall of America. (OK, actually two, but one time was just to eat at Famous Dave’s, to sample the barbecque which my brother adores enough to make biannual trips to Fargo.) I was born in Edmonton, so I thought I knew a few things about giant temples of consumerism, but I was wrong. Canadians cannot and never will be able to do consumerism the way Americans can. We’re just not as willing to get our glitz on the way they do south of the border. We’re satisfied with weird bronze whales and deadly dolphin tanks. West Ed, once the largest mall in the world, is completely quaint when compared to the gleaming, carpeted halls of the MOA, glass and silver shined to a blinding glare (by legal or illegal immigrants? Only the night staff can tell!).

In a place where you can buy anything from designer jeans to designer hot sauce and Lego a la carte, it’s no surprise then, that you can also consume yourself some religion, before you consume some coconut shrimp at Bubba Gump’s.

NB: I’m sure we have mall churches here in Canada, too. But they’re probably not this… pretty.

technorati tags: tony jones, travel, church, minneapolis, minnesota, america

Steve and Josh are back from a hiatus for a second season of Stupid Church People and you have no idea how glad that makes me.

I was very excited for a few months when I discovered all these progressive blogs and started reading feminist theology in earnest. It was great, for a few months, learning new things and new perspectives. But now I’m afraid I’m right back where I started. I’ve read enough to know that feminism and Christianity aren’t mutually exclusive, and I’ve read enough to know that there are people who are finding new and interesting ways to practice and live faith in the modern world. But it still remains that Christianity is really difficult. It’s difficult to believe all the stuff you’re supposed to believe, and no amount of navel-gazing or study is going to change that.

At least, that’s how I feel right now.

Because when you think about it, Christianity is a really ridiculous thing, involving strange stories about fish and incidents of grotesque violence. You read the Gospels and you wonder, did Jesus even want anyone to understand his parables? Did he understand the parables, or was he just making it up? (I know I’m creeping over the heretic/blasphemer line here, but I don’t care anymore.)

There’s no way the Bible is completely “true,” so how is a person supposed to base her life on the teachings, stories, and traditions contained within it?

Look, I know I’m not the first person to go on about these things and people might even say that “wrestling” with these questions is the foundation of faith. I’m not pretending to be original, here. I just personally find it frustrating that I’m still wrestling. This might be a personal failing — a distaste for the incomplete, a latent strain of perfectionism that demands that the dots be connected and the pieces arranged so I can relax. Having a chronic illness has dulled these tendencies in my general life (I don’t have the extra energy to spare being all anal about stuff) but maybe hasn’t bled into my spiritual life. Not that I like to draw a distinction between the different kinds of “lives.” It’s all one life, to me.

I went to Church Pomo again on Sunday and it turns out a woman I know from childhood attends there and has in fact been involved since the very beginning of that church. She and I attended the same school for two years: grade one and grade nine. Grade nine was spent at a private Christian school, you can use your imagination about how that went. Also I almost choked to death in her back yard when I was six, but my mom gave me the Heimlich Maneuver and I survived.

THANK GOD.

technorati tags: stupid church people, church, christianity, religion

I haven’t felt like blogging lately. I just don’t know what to say. I’m tired of dealing with all this religion stuff. I’m tired of thinking, reading, pondering, contemplating, obsessing about it.

It’s been my experience with regard to religion that as soon as you find answers to one question, six more questions come up, none so easily answerable. At some point you want to stop thinking and start living.

I guess I’m back to the same place I’ve always been — wondering why it’s so easy for some people, and not for me. I’ve been writing about my growing frustration with FCoS (First Church of Suburbia). Before Christmas, the senior pastor approached me in the lobby after a seasonal concert and I mentioned I was reading a lot of feminist theology and he asked me how I felt about FCoS’ services, as a feminist. I told him I’d give him a call, make an appointment to talk about these things, but I never did.

For me it’s a matter of resource allocation. I have a chronic illness, and I have to be very careful about how I spend the hours in my day, how I use the limited energy reserves I have. I have to make time and energy for work, friends, and creativity, and lately I’ve been feeling like FCoS isn’t worth my energy. Harsh, I know, but if I were a normal, healthy person, I would just suck it up and go to services and bible studies. But lately, I’ve been thinking, do I really want to spend Sunday at FCoS, or do I want to spend my religious energy on, say, Church Pomo downtown? My mother has been encouraging my brother and me to talk with church leadership about our thoughts and perspectives. We’re hesitant, even though I know that our senior pastor is a thoughtful man who is open to new ideas and interested in engaging them. Is it just laziness on our part that we think, oh, they won’t listen to us anyway? We know from experience that often when you present Christians with a critique of their doctrine/practice, they often get defensive, and no real dialogue happens once the walls go up. But it’s not fair to assume that will happen. We should give them the benefit of the doubt.

I like going to Church Pomo, where communion isn’t served in little plastic cups, there’s artwork on the wall, and sermons are preached from the lectionary. But I’ve seen enough church-hoppers in action to know that leaving a church when you have problems with it isn’t necessarily the most helpful solution. FCoS is led by upper-middle-class, baby-boomer management types. It’s a little intimidating for twenty-something kids like my brother and me to approach these people and say, hey, we think things have to change.

technorati tags: church, christianity, religion

Readers of this blog may remember me talking about how I’ve been surprised at how progressive I find my family to be when I actually talk to them about things religious instead of assuming. So now I don’t get surprised when I find us agreeing on theological or ecclesiological points. But I have recently learned some very unexpected information regarding the way the wind’s blowing in the church I currently attend.

We’ll call it First Church of Surburbia (FCoS), because it is indeed nestled in a a suburban housing development, the kind where planners saw little need for sidewalks and plenty of need for stucco. It’s no mega-church — it’s around the 400-mark in terms of size. My dad used to be pastor there, for many many years, before he left for health reasons (no bad blood, in other words). I’ve also written in this blog about how it was actually a good church in which to grow up — a functional organization filled with many kind, caring people.

The church building itself was built in the late ’80s, and is accordingly utilitarian. Not a massive thing, but since the early/mid-’90s, the attendance numbers have required two services every Sunday morning. There is also a dearth of Sunday school rooms, as one thing that Suburbia has plenty of (besides big-box stores) is children. There’s no youth room. There’s actually a youth stairwell. Seriously, when I was in high school, the niche underneath a stairwell was furnished with the old couches from the nursery and the old mailboxes from the lobby upstairs, splashed with a few coats of decorative sponge painting and christened (ha) the youth corner. Not that I’m saying youth rooms are Very Important or anything, but if you grew up in a church with a foosball table and all that fancy shit, well — I’m just saying. You were one of the priveleged. (YOUTH STAIRWELL.)

I think many of you will know where I’m going with this, and indeed where a church would be going with this. Not enough space? TIME FOR A NEW BUILDING!

As of now, FCoS has purchased a sizable plot of land and indeed selected an architect. I figured this meant that the church’s movement down the path towards a bright, shiny, massive new building was certain and unstoppable. I figured this would be one more reason why I would eventually end up leaving the church for good, because if I’m going to practice Christianity I’m not going to be practicing the kind that builds massive new church buildings so that there are enough Sunday school rooms to teach third-graders the actions to the song “Ten Men Went to Spy on Canaan.”

Turns out I’m hopelessly out of touch with the internal politics of the church. According to my sources, there is a sizable contingent of folks within the church who are jumping off the building bandwagon. Or if not jumping off, passing notes up to the driver making suggestions. And these folks are some of the leader-types (and, it should be noted, the younger, under-40 types. But also some of the over-40s, too).

They’re questioning the financial wisdom of erecting (ha) an edifice that fits with the old models of church organization, examining the real value of having a space where every single member of the church can meet, and maybe even looking at other ways of using space and schedules.

Well slap the dog and spit in the fire. I had no idea.

Apparently quite a few folks have been reading The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church and it’s shaking things up. I don’t know anything about this book, but it seems that it’s got a hard-hitting message about the future of the church that the baby boomers are taking to heart. They may have a little trouble chewing it at first, but they’re trying. The fact that it’s oh-so-shocking to them probably means it would garner a big “Yeah, and?” from me and a good number of you reading this, but everyone has to start somewhere.
So now I’m thinking, woah, wouldn’t it be great if, at FCoS, there were a Sunday afternoon service that were done in a less structured, more creative style?

It’s interesting that I find all this out now. This past weekend I indulged in something of a fit of pique over FCoS and took a sabbatical from my normal religious activities there. I went to a church that meets in a space downtown, right across from the anarchist bookstore and coffeehouse my friends and I frequent. (And in the same neighbourhood as the art galleries, movie theatres, pub, and record store my friends and I frequent. So basically this church has done a bang-on job of reaching me.) They meet at 4:30 on Sunday afternoons, and it was amazing how natural it felt to go to church at that time of day (though I admit that could be because I’m a lazybones who makes her own work schedule and likes to go out at night and as a result has a bad habit of sleeping ’til noon).

I’d launch into a recap of my experience at this decidedly pomo church, but I think this entry has gotten long enough and you all probably are ready to move on to the next blog on your feed reader.

Basically, I just wanted to share my delight with you. Perhaps there’s hope for the churches of Suburbia yet! FCoS is hardly post-congregational (™ CraigBob) but they’re not trapped in the 19th century, either, and that’s pretty heartening.

technorati tags: post-modern church, church, christianity, religion, congregations, suburbia, reggie mcneal