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Adnan Mahmutovic: "Integration Under the Midnight Sun" (excerpt)
2007-07-10 21:17:00
The latest issue of The Rose & Thorn e-zine features this lyrical and heartbreaking story by Adnan Mahmutovic, from his collection Refugee. "Integra tion Under the Midnight Sun" offers a glimpse of female refugees from the Bosnian war now living in Sweden, and the varied ways they come to terms with their memories of lost loved ones. For three years I have been embalmed, but there is faint thunder under my ribs. I wear the same outfit in which I left Bosnia: a blue oversize cardigan somebody wrapped around me that night I was shoved into a bus to Sweden, a pink shirt and a white bra with laced edges underneath, a short corduroy skirt and mismatching colourful stockings like the ones of Pippi Longstocking.I bask in the midnight sun, which is colder than usual. The polar circle is gliding down to this village. I do not want to go to my one-roomer. I have nothing there but two half-withered plants called Adam and Eve, sheltered behind metal shutters, cut off from all the temptation...

Pride NYC: June 2007
2007-07-09 20:42:00
I was in NYC the last weekend of June for the Pride March, which I watched from the steps of my former church. The Church of the Ascension is on Fifth Avenue toward the end of the parade route. I was very moved to see members of the parish, in T-shirts reading "Proud Episcopal ian," spend hours passing cups of water to the marchers.  Too many heads in the way for me to get a photo of them, unfortunately.The parade seemed more family-friendly this year than the last time I attended, five or six years ago. Despite the perfect weather, few bared all. I think there were also more religious groups, especially Episcopal ones. One of the grand marshals was Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, where my parents and I used to attend High Holy Days services. If you're ever in NYC on Shabbat, check out CBST -- Rabbi Kleinbaum gives the best sermons around. (Our family is at least three stripes in the diversity flag all by oursel...
More About: Site News , June 2007

Know Your Audience (A Little Too Well)
2007-07-08 18:05:00
From yesterday's Boston Globe, word of an unusual book-signing planned in Waitsfield, Vermont: At The Tempest Book Shop, the paperback books won't be the only things without jackets Thursday.A "clothing optional" book signing event will be held by nudity author Jim C. Cunningham, with customers invited to leave their clothes at the door."The reason for this is to 'put our bodies where our mouths are,' living what we preach," Cunningham said. "The public are invited to express their solidarity with our message by also donning their birthday suits upon entering the book store."The event is scheduled for 6 p.m., which is after the shop's usual closing time. And there are rules: Everyone who plans to strip must bring a towel, and there's no gawking....Cunningham's 596-page "Nudity & Christianity" book contains no pictures. It's packed with biblical references to nudity and other citations that support his view that nudity is natural, not erotic, and that clothing -- generall...
More About: Audience , Litt , Well

Steve Almond on How (Not) to Write About Sex
2007-07-05 00:11:00
Fiction writer Steve Almond is a master at combining eros, comedy and tragedy in such books as The Evil B.B. Chow. Venturing for the first time into this dangerous territory myself, I found his advice in this article from the Boston Phoenix newspaper quite helpful, and entertaining to boot. Along with specifics like "never compare a woman's nipples to Frankenstein's bolts," he reminds writers that good erotica is about the ways in which sex reveals characters' personality and emotions. A humanizing dose of comedy lends realism and sets your writing apart from mere porn.Following Margaret Cho's philosophy that the best thing to do with an embarrassing moment is to broadcast it over the mass media, I'll share this incident from the writing life: Last weekend I finally forced myself to write the all-important first sex scene between my novel's pair of male lovers. My longsuffering husband comes into our studio and begins asking me a home-repair question. "Not now, ...
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J.T. Milford: "The Dream Pond"
2007-07-05 00:06:00
Sitting on the marshy bankwith maiden cane and water hyacinthsI watch a yellow leaf floatin aimless circlesof stillnessa summer-like stillnessAnd feel a sudden windthat moves ripplesacross the waternear a willowa brown-green willow And without apparent cause, it stopsAs I gaze across the pondI am overtaken by a dreamthat the marsh pond is stillwhen death is nearwith feelings of joy and lonelinessA wild sort of reveriewith cormorants, marsh marigoldand dark woodsFor a dream starthat sits on the eye of the    pond's lighthas awakened me to the    possibilityof an early nighta winter's nightThe kind of darknesswhich offers no escapeAs I am awakened by the changing lightdarkness slowly falls upon the still    marsh pondand in a sudden sweep of windthe willow surrenders its leavesdown to the eartha sad weeping earthRead my critique of J.T.'s poem "Under the Arbor" at WinningWriters.com.
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Signs of the Apocalypse: The Jews Killed Mickey Mouse!
2007-07-04 00:52:00
Today's Morning Intelligence Brief from the geopolitical news service Stratfor (subscription-only; well worth it) offered this tidbit about how Palestinian militant group Hamas is trying to establish its legitimacy as a political party: Hamas has arrested the spokesman for the Army of Islam, the group that is holding British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent Alan Johnston in Gaza, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Monday. The arrest comes exactly two weeks after Hamas publicly announced that it would free Johnston from his jihadist captors "using all means necessary."Hamas' recent actions are part of its Gaza leadership's strategy to illustrate the group's political legitimacy in the wake of its June 15 takeover in Gaza. This also explains why Hamas recently killed off the infamous Mickey Mouse look-alike character that urged Palestinian children to kill Israelis in a children's TV show aired on a Hamas-owned station. After getting serious flack for using a Western Di...
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Second Life Versus New Life
2007-07-03 16:42:00
Rich Braaksma at Relevant Magazine muses on whether anything like the Incarnation of Christ could happen in the multiplayer virtual reality game Second Life . Most of the piece is rather fluffy, but he touched my heart with the conclusion: As much as we may wish to escape our world and its harsh realities, it is this world Christ joined and engaged. We may wish for a new family, new friends, a new place to live and a body that won?t age. But God?s great mercy is that He didn?t come to save the best version of yourself that you can muster?He came for the just plain, fallen, real you. I have such trouble going through the day simply as myself, experiencing the present in all its awful contingency and overwhelming vitality. I prefer to be lost in thoughts of my novel characters, abstract arguments, the ice cream I might have after dinner -- my own version of Second Life without the cumbersome technological interface. To be exposed to my own awareness is to be exposed to God. As if ...
More About: Versus , Econ , New Life

Sydney Lea: "Ghost Pain" (excerpt)
2007-07-03 03:10:00
This poem from the Winter 2003-04 issue of Image Journal is too long to reprint here, but here is a characteristically lovely excerpt:A dear friend down south has gone; his church?s prayer chain couldn?t hold him. Not this time. People die. The stars outdoors are sharp as razors, and Orion the Hunter huge and bold above    the river? as if he could send an arrow flying right    through us here. All manner of things fly through the no-fly zone elsewhere, the homeless huddle under cardboard, all the brutal rest, and no, since you inquire, we can?t account for it. It?s Pearl Harbor Day, hours of light down to nine, to fewer. If God be for me, whom then shall I fear? Easy enough to say, the mockers might say,    from in here. I might be out there among them were the world not served, we have to believe, in there being one more safe tiny place amid the    great unsafe. Read the whole poem here, and visit Imag...
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Naeem Murr: "My Poet"
2007-07-02 17:03:00
This surreal satire of the literati's psychological foibles can be read in full at Poet ry magazine. I may be a fiction writer now, but clearly I'm still a poet by temperament. Highlights: I live with a poet. Her boyfriend before me was also a poet, and published a book called Crane, in which all the poems are about her. She looks like a crane?the bird kind. I often find her standing on one leg, leaning against our bookshelves, very still, staring into a book as if for a fish to snatch out. Crane upset her. I remember her tearing up one of the poems, shouting, "Want to publish a book: write poems about your goddamn miserable sex life!" The poem, titled "Interdiction," was about him having a real hankering for all those things in the Bible you're not allowed to eat?particularly bivalves. What this has to do with The Colonel and Mrs. Whatsit, I can't imagine. But then I've never understood poetry. You see, I'm a fiction writer. If my Poet ever appears in one of my books...

Anglican Absolutism
2007-07-02 16:29:00
Chris at The Eternal Pursuit notes with sadness that the conservative breakaway parishes and clergy within the U.S. Episcopal Church, who seek to put themselves under the authority of foreign bishops who oppose homosexuality, are asking for more than freedom to follow their own conscience. It's an all-or-nothing strategy that would delegitimize the existing Episcopal Church in America, thus undermining two mainstays of our 400-year-old Communion: the authority of bishops and the ideal of fellowship among Christians with different views. Chris writes: There are certainly real issues that lead people of faith to disagree. Some of these issues, particularly those around human sexuality, are especially difficult. Some find the scriptures to be very clear on these issues. Some argue that the overarching message of the Bible seems in conflict with a few particular passages. On all fronts, some argue that the Bible alone is the sole authority, and others seek a me...
More About: Anglican , Absolutism

Helen Bar-Lev: "Two Zinnias"
2007-06-29 23:57:00
Two zinnias in a glazed vaseclipped by nuns' careful scissors,are the only decoration in this spartan    roomin a convent in Jerusalembut it is clean, the mattresses comfortableflagstone floors, yellow- and red-ochre,have been polished to a gleam by    passing shoesthese one hundred years, even moreWe have returned to Jerusalemafter an absence of some months ?a jittery city, it is more intolerable    than everhorns constantly honk, faces do not    smilecongestio n and pollution, agitation,congregate in its centretogether with beggars,street musicians, religious Jews, Arabsan incongruent conglomerationwhich beckons in a manner I cannot    fathomand repulses with vengeance,as though one reaction triggers    its opposite,a contradiction of emotionsthat is disturbing considering I    lived herefor so long and loved it with passion,wrote love poems i...
More About: Book Reviews , Helen , Elen

Good News for My Imaginary Friends
2007-06-29 23:29:00
Various chapters of my novel-in-progress have received honors over the past couple of months. I was waiting to announce them till I had an online publication to link to, but none yet, so here's the tally so far:"Pura siccome un angelo" was a runner-up for the Andre Dubus Award in Short Fiction sponsored by Words + Images, the literary journal of the University of Southern Maine, and appears in their beautifully illustrated 2007 issue, available here. This chapter finds my pair of gay lovers facing some bad news for their relationship."Julian's Yearbook," about one of those characters during his high school years, won an Honorable Mention in the E.M. Koeppel Short Fiction Award from Writecorner Press. It's been rumored that this story has been/will be broadcast on a radio station in the Berkshires; if I get any more info on that, I'll post the MP3."The Albatross," in which my sarcastic ten-year-old heroine gets saved and then un-saved by her evangelical&n...
More About: News , Site News , Friends , Good News , Good

Signs of the Apocalypse: Special Family Value Pack
2007-06-28 03:08:00
Two items from the Wall Street Journal made me think about how bizarrely commodified our intimate lives have become. Alexandra Alter reports ("The Baby-Name Business", June 22) on the latest service providers to capitalize on parental anxiety: consultants who, for a fee, will help you name your baby: Sociologists and name researchers say they are seeing unprecedented levels of angst among parents trying to choose names for their children. As family names and old religious standbys continue to lose favor, parents are spending more time and money on the issue and are increasingly turning to strangers for help. Some parents are checking Social Security data to make sure their choices aren't too trendy, while others are fussing over every consonant like corporate branding experts. They're also pulling ideas from books, Web sites and software programs, and in some cases, hiring professional baby-name consultants who use mathematical formulas....The chief reason for the paraly...
More About: Family , Signs , Special , Apocalypse , Value

Thomas Merton on the Perils of Overachieving
2007-06-27 21:59:00
This apt quotation from the great contemplative writer Thom as Merton comes to me by way of Bishop Gordon Scruton's editorial in the June issue of Pastoral Staff, the newsletter of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts: There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist, fighting for peace by nonviolent means, most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone, is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes their work for peace. It destroys their own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of their work because it kills the inner wisdom which makes their work fruitful.
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Elisha Porat: "An Early Call"
2007-06-21 18:46:00
      to Aharon AmirYes, he recalled also a day of enlightenment: the imagined skeleton of his future life suddenly cleaved and he saw the innards of his life, the innards of his    years, the innards of the innards of himself in a sort    of mirror. Walking in green citrus groves whistling himself a tune, crying secretly,remembering words, packing them into    his notebook: collect, compile, convey, repeat. Seeing his days growing short and his nights    becoming petrified. And from afar, from the hill, a sudden sorrow pulls him: that time ran out and he did not finish and did not understand and already    he is called. Read more work by Israeli poet Elisha Porat at Magnapoets.
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Poems and Songs by Judith Goldhaber
2007-06-21 01:39:00
The sonnet comes as naturally as ordinary speech to poet Judith Goldhaber. I've enjoyed her versified retellings of classic fables in the book Sonnets from Aesop, illustrated with charming Chagall-like paintings by her husband Gerson. This YouTube video shows the Oakland Symphony Chorus performing "The Power of Light" from the musical "Falling Through a Hole in the Air: The Incredible Journey of Stephen Hawking" (book and lyrics by Judith Goldhaber, music by Carl Pennypacker). Judith is the lady with dazzling red hair who is standing behind the famous physicist. Here are the lyrics:The Power of Lighti.To touch the heart of a star,To feel the ground of being in the boundless,The edge of space,The edge of time,The edge of eternity...CHORUS:Feel the power of lightFeel the depth of the night,Long is the journey to our distant home,Worlds spin ?round us but we?re still alone,Darkness, silence, and the end so far,Who will speak to us and tell us where we are?And then....
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God's Wrath, Christ's Peace, and the Culture Wars
2007-06-18 21:36:00
Catholic theologian James Alison's essay "Wrath and the gay question: on not being afraid, and its ecclesial shape" is not only the best explanation of the Atonement I've seen in a long while, but also represents (to my mind) a more helpful direction for gay-affirming Christians than merely hunting for proof-texts that support our position and explaining away those that don't. Alison contends that human societies constantly seek self-definition by scapegoating outsiders. When Christ, the only completely innocent person, voluntarily assumed the scapegoat role, he exposed the sinfulness of that entire system. Never again could we in good faith believe that spiritual purity depended on exclusion. If community must be founded on sacrifice, Christ was the sacrificial victim and the entire human race became a single community, united by our responsibility for his death and by his equal love for us all. Yet Alison also finds fault with the liberal "many fla...
More About: Peace , Culture , Bible , Wars , Culture War

Would Jesus Discriminate?
2007-06-18 21:00:00
The website "Would Jesu s Disc riminate?" offers a provocative new take on some familiar Bible stories. Using textual and historical analysis of the original Greek text, the authors claim that certain New Testament episodes are really about gay characters, such as the eunuch baptized by Philip in the book of Acts. I'm cautiously enthusiastic about this project. I'd like to believe that there are positive stories about gay people and relationships in the Bible, but there are two things that make me hesitate. First, I don't have the scholarly background to know how plausible these readings are. Second, it would be a shame if we went overboard and read a sexual component into all stories of intimate friendship (e.g. David and Jonathan), as our pop-Freudian suspicious culture is wont to do. Anyhow, click the billboards on their site and let me know what you think.

Philip Nikolayev: "Ideers"
2007-06-18 20:29:00
Bash'um hard with a hunk o' lard, cowboy,when they come 'ere to seduce our sons and daughters,the only sons and daughters we have,with their damn ideers. They think ideersare worth somethin' like a Bushel O'Porkper each. Trahahahaha. They eschew the feelin's of patriotism, peals of chivalry'n' private property like. So what does we careto preserve them as a subspecies? Bein' ourselvesof solid as rock good local stock 'n' rooted in these very hills that we cultivate,bein' so local that the mind races overaeons of banjo-tinklin' memory of rootslike echoes in the prairied valley, beingprecisely that kinda stock, honest blue grass treadin',we're buyin' none of that Uruguay political correctness.None, I be tellin' ya m's'ladies!We automatic'lyput that subspecies under suspicion, zitwere.The shmuck (pardon me, Sir, me umbilical vernacular) hadta be tryin' tospray us around wi' hi' curlture. He said he be a-dribblin' learnin' into our headswi' like critical thinki...
More About: Book Reviews , Hili , Niko

Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment Defeated in Massachusetts
2007-06-14 20:05:00
This just in from Stanley Rosenberg, our state senator for Northampton:"Knowing of your interest regarding the proposed Marriage Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution, I am writing to provide an update on the Constitutional Convention held today, June 14th 2007. "I am pleased to report that at this the 18th Constitutional Convention meeting on the question of same-sex marriage, the members present and voting defeated the proposed amendment by a vote of 151-45. This means that the amendment will not advance to the November 2008 ballot. "This is a significant victory for the civil rights of the gay and lesbian community. When the debate began 18 Conventions ago, there were only a couple dozen people in the Legislature that believed that Civil Unions or Same-Sex Marriages should be allowed. Over the years, as a result of the public debate and deep reflection, that number grew to 151. This is truly a reflection of the shifting views not only of the Legislators but also of their co...
More About: Site News , Gay Marriage

Christian Wiman on Illness, Love, and Rediscovering Faith
2007-06-14 19:52:00
This beautiful essay from Christian Wiman, editor of the venerable journal Poetry, describes how falling in love and diagnosis with a fatal illness revitalized both his poetry and his faith. Wiman writes: If I look back on the things I have written in the past two decades, it?s clear to me not only how thoroughly the forms and language of Christianity have shaped my imagination, but also how deep and persistent my existential anxiety has been. I don?t know whether this is all attributable to the century into which I was born, some genetic glitch, or a late reverberation of the Fall of Man. What I do know is that I have not been at ease in this world. Poetry, for me, has always been bound up with this unease, fueled by contingency toward forms that will transcend it, as involved with silence as it is with sound. I don?t have much sympathy for the Arnoldian notion of poetry replacing religion. It seems not simply quaint but dangerous to make that assumption, even implicitly, perh...
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"Lonely Tier" and "Flash" by Conway
2007-06-14 19:45:00
Here are some new poems by "Conway," a prisoner at a supermax facility in central California who's serving 25-to-life under the state's three-strikes law for receiving stolen goods. In his May 2 letter, he writes that he was recently relocated to a new cell block whose yard has a much-appreciated view of the outside world:"I have moved to another place and the cages we get to go to for yard for four hours two or sometimes three times a week, are in perfect view of the entrance road to this facility, so we get to see cars trucks and motorcycles drive in and out and there are these trees along the outside perimeter that are shedding these seeds when the wind blows, thousands of little paper flowers searching for a home to grow roots, a very nice change of scenery from being behind the wall for so long. I saw a woman ride by the other day on a bicycle and wrote a poem about her, not sure if you would approve though, kind of racy :)"Lone ly Tier Each night I sleep on this ston...
More About: Flash , Lash , Lonely

Reminder: Massachusetts Vote on Gay Marriage June 14
2007-06-11 19:48:00
Just a reminder to readers of this blog who live in Massachusetts and support gay marriage: The state legislature will vote this Thursday, June 14, on whether to place a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the November 2008 ballot. Now is the time to call or email your state senator and representative, and if you live near Boston, join the MassEquality demonstrations at the Statehouse. This vote has important ramifications beyond the gay community. Allowing majority rule to restrict the civil rights of a minority is contrary to the spirit of the Bill of Rights. It's cheap and easy for people with nothing at stake to cast a symbolic vote that disproportionately burdens a few. What authorizes us, the straight majority, to wield this power? As Christians, can we really say it's our duty to collude with Caesar to correct what some of us consider the sinfulness of another's private life? Gay people are not going to form straight families...
More About: Site News , Marriage , Gay Marriage

Bishop Schori Interviewed by Bill Moyers
2007-06-09 15:35:00
The PBS program Bill Moyers Journal yesterday interviewed Bish op Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA and the first woman to lead a national Anglican church. Schori is an interesting figure. As the interview shows, her background as an oceanographer gives her an appreciation of the diversity of God's creation. Science also shapes her historical awareness that tradition and expert opinion always evolve in response to new data, and that somehow the enterprise (be it science or religion) can continue through change without losing legitimacy. Moyers' leading questions got on my nerves; he persisted in framing the issues as us-versus-them, seeming not to hear Schori's primary emphasis on reconciliation, coexistence and patience. The transcript and video are both available on the site, along with background material on the conflict over homosexuality in the church. I may be asking too much from television, but I wish the cultur...
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Abandoned by Liberalism
2007-06-06 17:38:00
Today's post from Hugo Schwyzer perfectly describes both the ethical strengths and the one great spiritual weakness of liberal mainline churches. I'd only add that the needs he describes are in no way limited to teens. The church in question is All Saints Pasadena in California. This flagship church of American Anglican liberalism is very, very good at encouraging individual exploration. We are very good at raising awareness of suffering in the broader world. We are very, very good at teaching young people how to ask the right theological questions. We are very, very good at instilling suspicion of any person or institution who cllaims to have The One True Answer. We are, most of the time, pretty good at loving kids ?where they?re at? instead of where we think they should be.But we liberal Episcopalians are often not so good at helping kids to come to certainties. Too often, when a young person in pain asks ?where is God when I need Him??, the institutional response is to say ?Ah,...
More About: Liberalism , Libera , Done , Abandon , Abandoned

Resolving Realities: GLBT Christians, Love, and Law Versus Grace
2007-06-04 00:35:00
David at Resolving Realities makes one of the more thorough arguments I've seen for why same-sex love is compatible with Biblical authority. I particularly appreciate how he goes beyond reinterpretation of specific verses to lay out a theory of Christian sexual morality. As the comments thread demonstrates, he wisely refrains from claiming that his is the only plausible reading of the text, merely that the pro-gay reading is one reasonable interpretation and therefore should not be a litmus test for whether you take the Bible seriously (as it has become in the Anglican Church's present schism). Some highlights (boldface emphasis mine): It is stunning to me that some Christians are willing to site Levitical mandates as a source of morality. If one desires to give Old Testament law, there is simply no way around justifying the commands, for we see even our Lord declaring, contra the Mosaic code, that ?nothing that goes into a man can make him unclean?. Both Christ and his apost...
More About: Love , Grace , Versus

Prison Poetry by Shrong Clemons
2007-06-03 17:35:00
The PBS documentary series NOW ran an episode this week about an innovative program in the Sheridan Correctional Center of Illinois that aims to reduce recidivism by combining therapy, education and follow-up counseling for released convicts. In this video clip, former drug dealer and gang member Shrong Clemons, who became a model prisoner during his 20-month stay at Sheridan, performs three of his poems. Watch the whole episode here.
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In Memoriam: Sarah Hannah
2007-06-02 16:43:00
Yesterday's Tupelo Press newsletter brought the tragic news that one of their talented authors, Sarah Hanna h , had taken her own life. An award-winning poet and literature professor at Emerson College, Sarah was the author of two collections, Longing Distance and Inflorescence, both from Tupelo. The press will hold a memorial service and tribute reading for her at Poets House in New York City in September. Meanwhile, flowers and expressions of sympathy may be sent to her family at the following address: Nathan and Harriet Goldstein, 17 Metropolitan Avenue, Ashland, MA 01721. The following poem is reprinted by permission from Longing Distance:The Colors Are Off This SeasonI don't want any more of this mumble?Orange fireside hues,Fading sun, autumnal tumble,Stricken, inimitable?Rose.I want Pink, unthinking, true.Foam pink, cream and coddle, Miniskirt, Lolita, pompom, tutu,Milkshake. Pink without the mottleOr the dying fall. Pink adored, a thrallSo pale it's practically white.A ...
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"Stream of Thought" and Other Poems by "Conway"
2007-05-31 20:28:00
"Conway", a prisoner at a supermax facility in central California who's serving 25-to-life under the state's three-strikes law for receiving stolen goods, has sent me some new poems that I share below. Writing materials are often scarce for him, so he composed these on the back of an official memo listing the rules for the Administrative Segregation unit (as I understand it, a variety of solitary confinement). Excerpts from that document are in italics below.Stream of Thought Take a step back, through the open doorSlide a pace forward on this polished flooranalyze the truth, judgments always doineffectually, mendaciously for me and you.Which shadow that falls, which court has set asideCensured from my youth, where folly used to ridespringing out of the deepest roots revealedbrought forth by the lies that truth concealed.Is it candles on an altar, or sacrificial breador some speculated monologue of what was saidwould thee that I banished a tenacious thoughtstagnating in the streams ...
More About: Poems

John Stackhouse on Rethinking Christian Missions
2007-05-30 20:52:00
In the latest issue of Books & Culture, theology professor John Stackhouse, Jr. (Regent College, Vancouver) lays out a more inclusive vision of Christian missionary work: one that respects the spiritual riches as well as the limitations of all religious traditions (including our own), and that saves not only individual souls but their bodies, their communities and their environment. It was hard to choose excerpts from this essay because every paragraph seemed essential and worth quoting. Here are some highlights, but go read the whole thing while access is still free: Christians typically have believed that those who have not heard the name of Jesus are simply lost and destined for hell. Much of the energy of the great 19th-century missionary movement among Westerners, and much of the impetus of missions work around the world to this day, has come from the horror of a Niagara of souls pouring into a lost eternity for want of an evangelist.We also need to acknowledge, howeve...
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