Phyllis Tickle (Mainliners), Jack Caputo (Roman Catholic tradition) & Robert Webber (Evangelical): hosted by Brian McLaren
Brian: we’re going to be talking about how to get beyond some of the modern polarities of liberal/conservative categories. Here are the three questions each panel member was supposed to address.
Q. What does your tradition need to leave behind in order to move ahead?
Q. What does your tradition need to gain and learn from the other two?
Q. What about the other 2 traditions makes it hard for you to learn from them?
Jack Caputo:
“In my tradition, the boys just have not learned how to play with the girls yet.”
Protestants have an absolute obsession with the inerrancy/infallibility. It’s pathological – inordinate fear of the human condition, of the fact that we didn’t drop out of the heavens hard-wired with the T(t)ruth. Pathological obsession with certitude.
Popes proclaimed infallibility with no noticeable improvement.
Why do Christian evangelical colleges frown on having sex standing up?
It’s too much like dancing.
Phyllis Tickle
“As an Episcopalian, I can honestly say that some of my finest moments have been on bar-stools.”
Dedication to denominationalism is on its way out.
There is a real need to begin to realize the distinction between an observant Christian and a cultural Christian. They will have to pick that up from Judaism.
Huston Smith: Why Religion Matters in an Age of Disbelief
What is one sentence you hope Evangelicals will hear.
Webber: Rethink everything
Caputo: Understand your finitude.
Tickle: Get passionate about God.
What embarrasses you about Christians and the way we’re doing Christian faith?
Caputo: What’s most embarrassing is fundamentalism, thoughtless approach to the theological tradition we’ve inherited. Exclusivism, and the fact that there is no real religious truth outside of the Christian tradition – that is an embarrassment.
Tickle: Politics. I resent the fact that there is assumed of a uniformity of political opinion.
Webber: Embarrassed that evangelicalism has been shaped more by culture, than by Christianity.
For us to be on this journey together, we each bring treasures out of our own traditions. What is the treasure your tradition brings to us?
Caputo: The necessity to think about matters of faith and our inherited theological tradition in dialogue with philosophy, so that your faith is reflective & thoughtful, not naive or innocent. But you can reason for the faith that is in you. You don’t do scriptural theology outside of a dialogue with philosophy.
Tickle: The Book of Common Prayer; which is a way of saying the liturgy. The understanding of the place of Holy Communion, order of worship, as its been handed down.
Webber: Our passion, they are passionate about Jesus and passionate about telling others about Jesus; in addition, don’t lose that passion but we must become a more reflective community.
David Crowder Band is leading worship now. This is an interesting thing. Apparently, YS thinks if they don’t have Crowder come to do worship, no one will come to the convention. Now, it’s not that cut and dry, but an interesting thing to ask. Last night in our cohort, someone mentioned the fact that while people planning the Emergent Convention did a much better job at getting women speakers here this week, immediately after that statement, the rest of the language used for God the rest of the General Session was predominantly masculine. How does that line up? At what point do you need to take “baby steps” (aka “What About Bob?”) and at what point do we need to say, “Okay, we’re just going to take a big leap here and hope people will join us, or at least still listen to us and love us if they completely disagree. McLaren mentioned that he is aware each week that any educated female that walks into his congregation is going to be acutely aware EVERY time God is referred to using masculine pronouns; they will be JUST as aware as anyone else would be aware of using “Her” or “She” to refer to God.
Interesting.
At what point do the other “convention” aspects of the Emergent Convention (musical artists, language used from up front, etc.) need to be changing as well, since we’re doing so much talking about these issues during the seminars.