I heard while traveling today to the Subverting the Norm III conference that René Girard passed away. I had been told by Michael Hardin, who is close to the family, that he had been ill for some time. Continue reading “René Girard (1923-2015)”
Author: Christopher Rodkey
Methodists, Family Life, and Contraception: A History (by Ashley Boggan)
As some of you might know, I have been for several years a copy editor for the journal Methodist History. This peer-reviewed journal regularly has articles on the history of global missions, various aspects of the Wesley families, stories of defunct colleges, and interesting stories about preachers in the Methodist tradition, broadly defined. A few years ago I published an article in the journal on the Methodist Bishop’s declaration of Altizer’s theology as heresy. In the new issue, I was very much impressed with Ashley Boggan’s article, “A God-Sent Movement: Methodism, Contraception, and the Protection of the Methodist Family, 1870-1968,” a link to the article is below. In particular I appreciated the fresh approach to the history of sexuality being told here within the context of the history of Methodism, particularly in the post-Civil War period, especially in light of the national press that the United Methodist Church has received in the past two years about its teachings on homosexuality. I asked Ms. Boggan if she would like to write a guest post for AUFS to introduce her research to a wider and different audience. Ashley Boggan is a third-year Ph.D. candidate at Drew, with a focus on American religious history, and is working as an intern with the United Methodist denomination’s Human Sexuality Task Force. The following is her introduction to the article.
Methodists, Family Life, and Contraception: A History
When one discusses the United Methodist Church and its position regarding human sexuality what most likely comes to mind is the denomination’s current impasse regarding homosexuality. For over forty years now, the UMC has upheld its position in the Book of Disciple which states that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” However, by looking at a larger notion of human sexuality, one that moves beyond the homosexual/heterosexual binary, academics, clergy, and lay persons can learn what historical events and reasonings, both secular and theological, led to particular stances on human sexuality, why denominations still uphold these stances (or why some have changed their stances), and why many Americans hold certain (and often differing) ideologies of family life and constructions of human sexuality. Continue reading “Methodists, Family Life, and Contraception: A History (by Ashley Boggan)”
Subverting the Norm 3: Call for Papers and Conference Announcement
The Subverting the Norm conference series is unique in bringing theologians, philosophers, and religious studies scholars together with religious practitioners to encourage collaborative conversations about how continental philosophy can both inspire radical theologies within the academy and energize contemporary Christian discourse and practice. The third Subverting the Norm conference will specifically examine this intersection of theology, philosophy and lived religion in the light of contemporary political questions, both theoretical and practical. In particular, we hope to bring to the fore issues of race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity – issues that have too often been eclipsed or marginalized in postmodern, political and postsecular theological discourse and church practice.
We would like to invite proposals for 1) individual papers, 2) panels of papers or workshop sessions, and 3) performance/art pieces (including transformance art/worship events, poetry/prose readings, art exhibitions, etc.) related to the conference theme. We are especially interested in presenters who can bridge the gap between the academy and the church, and whose presentations are accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike. Preference will be given to presentations that connect not only with the academic community but with church audiences as well.
About Subverting the Norm III
Keynote speakers include Catherine Keller, J. Kameron Carter, John D. Caputo, Sarah Morice Brubaker, Sandhya Jha, Namsoon Kang, Peter Rollins, and more TBA
Continue reading “Subverting the Norm 3: Call for Papers and Conference Announcement”
Strangest and weirdest stories in the Bible?
As I am finishing up my second lectionary preaching book, tentatively titled The World is Crucifixion and under contract, for the first time in my preaching ministry I am going completely off-lectionary for a series on the strangest or weirdest stories in the Bible, beginning the last Sunday in Christmastide to the final Sunday of Epiphany, which is traditionally Transfiguration Sunday. The final “strange story” will be the transfiguration.
Obviously, what I think are weird stories from the Bible might be different from what others think. Here’s a list I’ve assembled from some internet searching about what people think are strange stories in the Bible: Continue reading “Strangest and weirdest stories in the Bible?”
Interview with D. G. Leahy
AUFS reader, Aimee Quesada, passed along this link with a great interview with the late D. G. Leahy. Here it is.
Altizer on Leahy: “Apocalypticism and Modern Thinking”
Thomas Altizer asked me to pass along a few things in honor of D. G. Leahy. The first is an article, “Apocalypticism and Modern Thinking,” originally published in the Journal for Christian Theological Research 2.2 (1992), par. 1-27.
“Apocalypticism and Modern Thinking”
Thomas J. J. Altizer
1. While the power of apocalypticism in our history is now acknowledged, we have little sense of its power or even meaning in thinking itself, and this despite the fact that so many of our primal modern thinkers, such as Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, have manifestly been apocalyptic thinkers. Indeed, the very advent of modernity can be understood to be an apocalyptic event, an advent ushering in a wholly new world as the consequence of the ending of an old world. Nowhere was such a new world more fully present than in thinking itself, a truly new thinking not only embodied in a new science and a new philosophy, but in a new reflexivity or introspection in the interiority of self-consciousness. This is the new interiority which is so fully embodied in the uniquely Shakespearean soliloquy, but it is likewise embodied in that uniquely Cartesian internal and radical doubt which inaugurates modern philosophy. Cartesian philosophy could establish itself only by ending scholastic philosophy, and with that ending a new philosophy was truly born, and one implicitly if not explicitly claiming for itself a radically new world. That world can be understood as a new apocalyptic world, one which becomes manifestly apocalyptic in the French Revolution and German Idealism, and then one realizing truly universal expressions in Marxism and in that uniquely modern or postmodern nihilism which was so decisively inaugurated by Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God.
2. Yet a truly modern subject or “I” is a doubled or self-alienated center of consciousness, and is so in a uniquely Cartesian internal and radical doubt, one never decisively present in previous cognitive or philosophical thinking, although its ground had been established by Augustine’s philosophical discovery of the subject of consciousness. Even as Augustinian thinking had been deeply reborn in the late Middle Ages, thence becoming a deep ground not only of the Reformation but also of Cartesian thinking, this new modern subject which is now established and real is an interiorly divided subject, and so much so that its internal ground is a truly dichotomous ground. Nothing else is so deeply Augustinian in modern thinking and in the modern consciousness itself, and if Augustine discovered the subject of consciousness by way of his renewal of Paul, it was Paul who discovered the profoundly internal divisions and dichotomies of consciousness and self-consciousness. This is the Paul who is so deeply renewed in the dawning of modernity, but also the Paul who was the creator of Christian theology, a theology which if only in Paul is a purely and consistently apocalyptic theology, and Paul’s realization of the ultimate polarity or dichotomy of consciousness is an apocalyptic realization, one reflecting an apocalyptic dichotomy between old aeon and new aeon, or flesh (sarx) and Spirit (pneuma). Continue reading “Altizer on Leahy: “Apocalypticism and Modern Thinking””
RIP, D. G. Leahy (1937-2014)
Word is circulating that radical theologian D. G. Leahy passed away yesterday. He is probably best known to AUFS readers as someone whose thought has been enormously influential on Thomas Altizer, just as Altizer’s writings deeply influenced Leahy.
His dense books include Novitas Mundi, Foundation, and Faith & Philosophy. He continued to write after these works, including two recent books Beyond Sovereignty and The Cube Unlike All Others. His website was updated with new material as recently as March, 2014. (His website used to have a great essay on gender, which seems to have been taken down, and may be part of one of the new books.) He founded the New York Philosophy Corporation, where he taught courses. Continue reading “RIP, D. G. Leahy (1937-2014)”
“Living Theology: The Eucharist in Question” event details (5/16/14)
The UCC Theological Summit (“Dallastown II”) will convene on Friday, May 16, 2014 at 8:30 AM at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, 205 W. Main St., Dallastown, PA. The event will feature guest facilitation from Dr. Victor Taylor of York College of Pennsylvania and a session via internet with Carl Raschke of the University of Denver–two names with whom most readers of this blog will be familiar.
Although the focus of the event will be on practices and theology of the United Church of Christ, registration is open to anyone.
The papers scheduled for the day are: Continue reading ““Living Theology: The Eucharist in Question” event details (5/16/14)”
Photos from the Holy Land
Some of you may know that I recently took a pilgrimage to the Holy Land through the generosity of the charitable work of the Grand Commandery of Knights Templar of the United States. Hermit Commandery of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, of which I am a member, nominated me to go on an all-expenses-paid trip with 36 other clergy from across the country in February. One of the charitable aims of the masonic order of Knights Templar, which is part of the York Rite family of orders of Freemasonry, sends clergy who have never been to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage as part of its mission and investment in Christian ministry in the United States. I am going through the hundreds of photos I have taken, and I am getting ready to give my first public presentation of my photographs, and will be doing several more over the course of the year; and I’d lake to share a few with you.
Too Good To Be True released 2/28
My first book of sermons, Too Good to Be True, is now published by Christian Alternative and is available through Amazon and good bookstores like Hearts & Minds Books. The book features a foreword by Peter Rollins and an afterword by Thomas Altizer, and the opening essay, “Pentecosting: Preaching the Death of God,” is an edited and expanded form of my presentations at last year’s Subverting the Norm 2 and AAR/North American Paul Tillich Society conferences.
The sermons loosely follow the lectionary; a few sermons that have been previewed here at AUFS; and two were published separately in Knights Templar Magazine last year.
If you’re interested, the ebook sells for less than $5, so I hope you will find it to be a good value.
All in all, this is a book that wouldn’t have been possible without my association with this blog, without a larger platform for preaching, so thank you to Adam and Brad for supporting me here. I am grateful to Pete and Tom for their support of the project, and to Bruce Epperly, Clayton Crockett, and Phil Snider for writing endorsements for the book. And thanks to Christian Alternative, especially Trevor Greenfield, for supporting the project. Continue reading “Too Good To Be True released 2/28”
An und für sich 