Category: Excerpts

Excerpt #36: worship as politics

Sometimes our worship practice is criticized as being too passive, all sitting and listening and not enough action. But we need to recover a sense of how some of the most important work we do is sitting and listening to Scripture, taking time to sit and listen to a sermon, to be fed. In simply withdrawing from what the world considers its important business, in taking time to do nothing but worship in a world at war, in celebrating an order of worship in a world of chaos, Christians are making a most political statement. In takes courage to take time to worship God in a world where we are constantly told that it is up to us to do right, or right won’t be done.

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, The Truth About God, page 62

As Christians, we must never lose sight of the fact that what we do on Sundays is just as important as that which we do Monday through Saturday. I think the criticism Hauerwas and Willimon describe here is real, and that too many churches who are social justice-minded have internalized that criticism. Worship is not an intrusion into, or distraction from, the work of justice and mercy we are called to. It is, in fact, the very act that does that calling to us! How can we know the kind of world God wishes for us if we do not take time to pray, to praise, to read Scripture, and most of all, to be in community with one another?

Ultimately, this is why I ended up back in the church a little over a decade ago, after rejecting religion quite decisively during my time during and just after college. I never lost my passion for the work of justice in the world, but I found I had no moral foundation undergirding it that also infused that justice with compassion, with hope, or with a dose of perspective. I needed worship, even if I wouldn’t have termed it that way at the time, or for a long time even after I began the faith journey to where I am today. My moral and ethical commitments are not in spite of my desire to worship, nor are they driving my religious feeling. No, those commitments are borne out of the act of worshipping week in and week out. That is why the church is so important, and will never go away: people need more than policy papers and disenchanted justice.

Excerpt #35: Being a Swiftie is not politics

The deeper issue is simply that none of this can provoke material change, which is the purpose of politics. Where your morals leave your head and enter the physical world is precisely where politics begins. It’s not about the feasibility of your beliefs. There are plenty of things that we want that we will never get, politically; I’m an open borders guy and will never live to see that as policy, for example. But support for open borders entails an endorsement of an actual material change in the world that could theoretical come to pass. Support for Taylor Swift as a political symbol could one day achieve… what, exactly? Making an immensely rich and influential woman richer and more influential? Doesn’t seem like left-wing progress to me. The only way the average person might engage in this pro-Swift movement is with their attention and their dollars, neither of which Swift has been lacking for. If the idea is merely that Swifts fans will vote against Donald Trump and his MAGA movement because of all of this, well, I’m skeptical that will happen and would be a little disturbed if it did. It’s much more likely that, as with championing The Wire in a way that draws more attention to yourself than to the show, all of this is just symbolic politics designed to demonstrate that you’re The Right Kind of Person. Which wouldn’t rankle me so much except for the fact that this increasingly seems to be the only form of politics we have, the politics of pure assortment, divided not by morals or ideas or acts but by types of people.

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/perhaps-liking-or-not-liking-taylor

Excerpt #34: dumpster fires

Eschatologically speaking, I care very little about the fate of America. Which is why I’ve never understood Christian nationalism, its theological illiteracy, the panic and anger that exposes its spiritual immaturity, and its deep and abiding paganism and idolatry. No matter who wins or loses the coming election my deep reservoir of peace will not change. I have no real expectation that America should be anything other than a dumpster fire. All nations are. History is, as Tolkien said, a long defeat. 

And here’s the wonderful thing: Christians know how to live through dumpster fires! The church has done this over and over again, as nation after nation has come unwound. We’re experts in this work.

https://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2024/01/psalm-31.html