The purpose of this forum is to facilitate communication and mutual support and edification among those who strive toward gender justice in Churches of Christ. If you would like to join the forum, send an e-mail (including your first and last name) from your primary address to forum@gal328.org.
In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Katie's beautiful face is in the Christian Chronicle again along with a quote (page 29) Article starts on page one and continues on page 29. :>)
Grace to you all and peace.
:::posted by Wiley on 9/28/2004 06:33:37 PM
Katie:
Thanks for spurring on this line of discussion. I must admit a bit of trepidation when I first read the quote about rebuilding "from the ground up," because I know some who would want to throw at the Christ child with the bath water. (How is that for a terrible mixing of metaphors?!?) Anyway, I think we all would agree that we must constantly be returning to the foundation, checking to see if we are in line with that, and being ready to ignore or pull down anything not square with the foundation. And I know that we probably will never agree fully on exactly what is foundation and what is merely something built on the foundation (we're human, and we like to be right). But I guess especially because I am an Old Testament guy I believe that restoring the Church in truly biblical fashion must include the Old Testament as well. Let me just give one example, which is probably obvious to all on this forum.
It seems to me that the declaration by God in Genesis 1 about creating "MAN" male and female in the image of God is something that should be foundational. This speaks to the core of who humans are. And this is not something that is lost as a result of sin, as Genesis 9:6 should make clear. What it says to me is that every single individual -- male or female -- is made in the image of God and in his likeness. Both male and female portray/ reflect/ "image" God. What is more, it ultimately takes both male and female to "image" God fully. The Bible nowhere implies that men alone -- and not women -- reflect the image of God. So, if we allow only men to have a say in worship, then we are forbidding half of the image of God to be seen there. And that is the one place where we should want to "image" God most fully.
I could go on, but I won't. I hope the choir enjoyed the sermon.
Peace,
Tim
:::posted by Tim on 9/28/2004 01:47:34 PM
"Just a quick post," I'm telling myself; "there's really not time today for more." We'll see.
Chad's idea strikes me as helpful to Jennifer's question a few posts ago about whether it's too dangerous in a "restoration" movement to talk about tearing up the foundation to start building all over again. After all, we C of C-ers believe we have torn everything else away; the NT church is the foundation, right? Can't tear that up.
Well, Chad wants to challenge Restorationists by saying, "Yeah, well, you just haven't gone back far enough yet!" If we're going to restore something, why aren't we going all the way back to Eden, back to the way God intended the world to be, back to the way Christ restored through his death and resurrection? "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation! Everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (Read 2 Corinthians 4-5 for the basis of Chad's idea, and add in some Romans 5, Christ as the "new Adam". You'll have it.)
If a Restoration Movement decided to strive toward renewal of God's intent for the whole creation, this would have implications for gender relations, of course (see Lance's essay on Genesis 1-3 on this website); and also for ecological concerns, a range of justice issues, and our very communion with the Creator. This, to me, is very exciting, and about the only kind of restoration I'm interested in anymore.
Sorry about the broken heart, friend. Hang in there. See you in Burlington in a week or so? (There's a conference of New England Churches of Christ in early October; certain New Yorkers are allowed by invitation only. [smile])
peace -- Katie
:::posted by Katie on 9/28/2004 09:28:34 AM
Well good grief. Here I am nursing a broken heart (cue the violins) and people are wondering why I'm a bit slow on the blog-draw. To add to that, Lance and I have this conversation about the blog being DAMAAR (meaning Dead After Many Attempts At Resuscitation), and then the blog springs back to life. Shows how much we know. :-)
Put simply, my reappropriation of restoration is through a redefinition of it as the restoration of creation to the goodness, truth, and beauty for which it was created (along the lines of Isaiah 58 and Romans 8). My hope is to circumvent the problems that other kinds of "restoration" have both faced and produced. For example, our forebears wanted to restore the "New Testament church" - an ideal abstraction which never really existed.
In reference to the quote about foundations, I'm going into this whole discussion with the assumption that the foundation in Christ isn't cracked (think here about Jesus' parable about the wise and foolish builders). Assuming the foundation is solid, it's the house WE built on the foundations that's in shambles (patriarchy, racism, greed). This recalls all of songs and blogs about hammers, of course. But that's it in a nutshell.
Peace,
Chad
:::posted by Chad on 9/27/2004 10:46:32 AM
I'm still waiting to hear from Chad, too. Has he ever been quiet this long before? What's happened? Your typing fingers broke or something?
Jen
:::posted by Jennifer on 9/27/2004 09:22:19 AM
It's fine with me, I guess. Meet Wiley Clarkson, "glutton for punishment," everyone!
Jen
:::posted by Jennifer on 9/27/2004 09:18:08 AM
Umm, sure. Gotta' warn you that our audio system is, ahem, not the best... Tapes are noisy and hard to make out. But I don't mind duplicating one for you, Wiley. Email me a snail mail address, okay?
That is, if Jennifer doesn't mind. I don't know exactly how this intellectual property thing works with "guest sermons".
peace -- Katie
:::posted by Katie on 9/26/2004 05:50:38 AM
Katie,
can we get copies of the tape?
:::posted by Wiley on 9/25/2004 09:41:46 PM
Thanks, Katie. It was an honor and a blessing.
Jen
:::posted by Jennifer on 9/23/2004 08:56:31 PM
Chad, if you're out there, do you have a little time to blog about how you have reappropriated the idea of "restoration" in "restoration movement"? Jen's second paragraph leads me to think of that, and since it's your idea, you should go for it.
By the way, I am honored to announce that Jennifer Thweatt-Bates preached her inaugural sermon at the West Islip Church of Christ last Sunday, 9/19/04. Lance and I were out of town and the congregation enjoys giving the gifted women of our fellowship the rare opportunity to utilize their gifts without a second glance concerning their gender. Way to go, Jen. I've heard nothing but good about the sermon, and when I listened to the tape, I just... knew. Nicely done. God is good.
peace -- Katie
:::posted by Katie on 9/23/2004 08:28:43 PM
I was there, and yes, it did seem very natural...I found myself wondering for a split second how long Laura could hold her before her arm got tired, but then it just seemed like a natural part of beginning our worship together. (Those "mommy muscles" are no joke, apparently!) And it seemed no less natural for Sophia to go to Joe once he was able to take her, which was also a lovely part of the whole thing.
I really like the criticism of supporting wars as a matter of course, since I think that is a huge issue that tends to get buried. But that is a little tangential to our discussion here, so that's all I want to say about that--that it needs discernment, rather than de facto acceptance. The really interesting quote, I think, for this forum is the house & foundation analogy. That's a pretty bold statement. Foundations are often sacred, and sacrosanct. Especially in a tradition which is built on the idea of restoration, a return to original foundations... Does this strike anyone else as perhaps a dangerous analogy in that sense? Perhaps just a bit too provocative? Or am I being a little hypersensitive?
Thanks starting the ball rolling, Julie!
Jen
:::posted by Jennifer on 9/23/2004 05:47:24 PM
Hi my old friends, I have been on a journey that continues. I am in Abilene, Texas and we are beginning to get settled. Long story...and if any of you have time some day I will tell you the whole story and some of it is very funny.
Joe, loved the image of Laura beginning worship with Sophia on her hip. I think that probably felt very natural to all who were there. My husband used to lead worship at camp with one infant son on his back in one of those baby backpacks and our other toddler son in his arms. It just seemed that was the way to do it.
I have been reading a book that is about 10 years old and I am loving it. It is The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd. I want to start some discussion from some excerpts from this book...if you haven't read it...you should and I don't like to say should very often.
"I tried to picture a culture where the valuing was equal. In my wilder moments I imagined a society that paid child care workers, teachers, homeless advocates, poets and bird-watchers as much as it paid professional football players, generals, and corporate CEOs. I tried to imagine a church where it mattered less what your beliefs and practices were and more how relationships were nurtured and healed. I tried to imagine a church that did not support its country's war as a matter of patriotic course and instead stood against the devastation and suffering they caused in people's lives."
"I am talking about a consciousness of liberating action in which we work to change the patriarchal structures that deny women dignity, value and power. Feminist theologian Carter Heyward suggests we consider the analogy of a house. If there's a structural problem, we don't fix it by changing the wallpaper. She says we must dig deeply into the foundation, discovering the problem, and reconstruct the house. In other words, we must transform the house from the ground up."
I will post more in a few days from this book....just some things to discuss. Tons more where this came from.
I have missed our community.
grace, Julie
:::posted by julie on 9/23/2004 03:21:43 PM
Joe,
What an interesting experience. It's that type of experience that bring "Christian family" into a much fuller view in more ways than one. Thanks for telling us about it. Did the church by anychance have a video tape running of the service?
Everyone:
For those who are interested in reading Floyd E. Rose's book, An Idea Whose Time Has Come, I have just finished a morning's worth of work converting the book into an Adobe pdf file which is now accessible from my web site page http://www.clarksons.org/spirit_leads.htm . Floyd has graciously allowed me to post the entire book to my web site to make it available free of charge to any one who wants to read it. The file is rather large (a little under 4MB) so it will take a little while to download on a dialup connection. I will also have it available in HTML as soon as I can but HTML takes a lot more work that converting something to pdf. I would suggest that once you have it downloaded, you do a save the file to your document folder so you don't have to go through a long download each time. If you wish to purchase the printed version, OR just make a donation to Save Our Children, Inc, (which is how you will make the check out to purchase a copy!), the info is available through my web site. he gives all profits to Save Our Children, Inc.
grace to you and peace.
:::posted by Wiley on 9/02/2004 02:05:33 PM
Laura, my wife, has recently had several opportunities to lead worship at Manhattan Church of Christ. This past Sunday was a crazy day for us as she was leading worship and I was preaching. We were at a loss as to how we would juggle our 17 month old daughter, Sophia. Before the first service started, I got caught in a conversation I couldn't get out of. The next thing I knew I heard Laura and the praise team begin the service. I finally broke from the conversation out in the lobby and walked in as Laura was reading a scripture for the welcome...with Sophia on her hip. Laura finished the welcome, walked down the steps and handed me Sophia. It was a very real moment in what often becomes a staged, produced event. Laura receieved this e-mail from someone that was in church that day:
"I just wanted to say how impressed I was with you on Sunday. Sophia on your hip and microphone in your hand, remaining very cool and focused, you certainly embodied a very modern woman. That may have been a first, at least in the churches of Christ."
:::posted by jch on 9/01/2004 03:09:24 PM
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