U2- theology - another book

Another addition to the collection of works reading U2 theologically.

This one is entitled We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2 by Greg Garrett (WJK, 2009)

Hopefully I will get time soon to do some analysis of the volumes I've listed and add some useful blog sites.

Christoph Blumhardt

Christoph blumhardt

It is really difficult to find information about Christoph Blumhardt yet a read of the collection of essays Action In Waiting is really rewarding.

His writings can be found as free dowloadable e books on the Plough Publishing web site, see the link Christoph Blumhardt.

He had a substantial influence on Karl Barth who observed that Blumhardt ...  can do something which most of us cannot do: represent God’s cause in the world yet not wage war on the world, love the world and yet be completely faithful to God, suffer with the world and speak a frank word about its need while simultaneously going beyond this to speak the redemptive word about the help it awaits.

Blumhardt, particularly in his understanding and account of the kingdom of God does not easily fit into our narrow theological categories as the following account of his life makes clear:

Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842-1919) was born at Möttlingen in 1842,. As his father had done before him, he took university training pointing toward a Reformed pastorate. However, he became disillusioned with the church and theology and so decided simply to return home to Bad Boll and act as a helper working with his father at the retreat and healing centre there.

In time, the younger Blumhardt became quite renowned as a mass evangelist and faith healer. But after a very successful “crusade” in Berlin in 1888, he drastically cut back both activities, saying,
"I do not want to suggest that it is of little importance for God to heal the sick; actually, it now is happening more and more often—although very much in quiet. However, things should not be promoted as though God’s kingdom consists in the healing of sick people. To be cleansed is more important than to be healed. It is more important to have a heart for God’s cause, not to be chained to the world but be able to move for the kingdom of God."  

Blumhardt’s interest gradually took what could be called “a turn to the world,” namely, a focus upon the great socioeconomic issues of the day. Under the impetus of this concern Blumhardt chose, in a public and conspicuous way, to cast his lot with Democratic Socialism, the much maligned workers’ movement that then was fighting tooth and nail for the right of the working class. Although it brought upon his head the wrath of both the civil and ecclesiastical establishments, he addressed protest rallies, ran for office on the party slate, and was elected to a six-year term in the Württemberg legislature. He was asked to resign his ministerial status in the church. Blumhardt began as a very active and energetic legislator, but as time passed he greatly curtailed this activity and bluntly declined to stand for a second term of office. Clearly, the pattern was of a piece with his earlier retreat from mass evangelism and faith healing.

Blumhardt’s disillusionment with Democratic Socialism—i.e., with the party politics, not with the movement’s purposes and ideals—and the even greater disillusionment which came toward the close of his life with the dark years of World War I—these brought him to a final position expressed in the dialectical motto: Wait and Hasten. His understanding was that the call of the Christian is still for him to give himself completely to the cause of the kingdom. To do everything in his power to help the world toward that goal. Yet, at the same time, a Christian must remain calm and patient, unperturbed even if his efforts show no signs of success, willing to wait for the Lord to bring the kingdom at his own pace and in his own way. And, according to Blumhardt, far from being inactivity, this sort of waiting is itself a very strong and creative action in the very hastening of the kingdom.


Biographical Notes 
Excerpted from the introduction to Thy Kingdom Come: A Blumhardt Reader by Vernard Eller

Second sunday in Advent

Luke 3:1-2  the Gospel reading for the second Sunday in Advent is the the sort of gospel passage you always hoped not to have to read aloud. All those hard-to-pronounce names, like Ituraea and Lysanias. And what does it matter who was tetrarch of Abilene anyway?

Well the difficulty with dismissing this specific locating by Luke of God's activity, in its relation to the political power structure, is that the Gospel story is not just some vague, disembodied spirituality or generic brand religion. It is specific, located in a particular geography, history and configuration of political power.


So it matters.  It matters, especially if you're someone who cares about power and authority,  and how it is exercised. God for the record seems to have been and remain deeply interested in such matters.

Let's try it again. In the second term of George Bush Jr as American emperor, Tony Blair being his loyal ally in the invasion of Iraq, and John Howard of Australia being a member of the coalition of the Willing, and Pope John II was Bishop of Rome, the Word of God appeared in a slum in Baghad. Or something like that.

You get the picture. It was a scandal. This Word overlooked the ruling powers, both secular and religious, and went straight to the edges of acceptability—to the wilderness. The lesson is, if you want to understand the reign of God, look in unexpected places. Go to the margins, to those who we regard as enemies, or at least outsiders.

And watch out for this Word. It is disturbing, discomforting and dislocating. It has the power to level the hills and fill in the valleys. It is like "a refiner's fire" and "a fuller's soap," according to Malachi. It will purify us by the torch and rub us clean until it hurts.

You were expecting maybe just an innocent baby, that when surrounded by kitsch decorations, could be enthusiastically promoted by advertising agencies to underpin a consumption oriented economy?



(With grateful acknowledgements to Joyce Hollyday at sojonet for the original idea)

Vatican on climate Change

In the light of the last two weeks of shenanigans inside and outside the Australian Parliament on responding, or not, to global warming, the following extract from the Vatican makes sobering reading. Catholic politicians should take note. the reference to the impact on those who are the poorest and te most marginal on the globe again is an issue that Christians of whatever tradition should be making their voice heard on.


Vatican’s Address to U.N. on Climate Change

The scientific evidence for global warming and for humanity’s role in the increase of greenhouse gasses becomes ever more unimpeachable, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings are going to suggest; and such activity has a profound relevance, not just for the environment, but in ethical, economic, social and political terms as well. The consequences of climate change are being felt not only in the environment, but in the entire socioeconomic system and, as seen in the findings of numerous reports already available, they will impact first and foremost the poorest and weakest who, even if they are among the least responsible for global warming, are the most vulnerable because they have limited resources or live in areas at greater risk. We need only think of the small island developing states as one example among many. Many of the most vulnerable societies, already facing energy problems, rely upon agriculture — the very sector most likely to suffer from climatic shifts.

The southern emergence of the Christian future

Evidence for Philip Jenkins focus on the southern emergence of Christianity and its impact on the future of world affairs can pop up in the strangest places. the following is a striking example.

At the recent Mennonite World Conference in Paraguay, the new MWC President Danisa Ndlovu, bishop of the Brethren in Christ church in Zimbabwe, embraced Ishmael Noko from Zimbabwe, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, after Noko spoke of the Lutherans' plans to ask forgiveness of Lutheran persecution of anabaptists in the 16th century.

Advent: Hope for the long haul

Hope is on of the key themes of Advent, a season that makes little sense to many in a consumer oriented post Christendom culture.

Hope is not a wishful emotion that things will get better. Hope requires the discipline of facing reality over the long haul and shaping our lives in ways that are appropriate to sustain that hope. The discipline for example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer committing himself to building community, encouraging those who sought to enter into marriage and build families in the midst of war while committing himself to action to overthrow the Nazi Regime, or the discipline of a Dorothy Day whose discipleship was marked by "a long obedience" of building community, practising hospitality and resisting violence.

Robert Coles, a child psychiatrist and no mean theologian in his own way, who wrote books on both Bonhoeffer and Day, comments on the discipline required for a lived out hope that is focused on the life of Jesus:
   
Faith has to do with time, with moral anticipation. We are the creatures who look forward, struggle with time's constraints and possibilities. We are the creatures who wonder: what next, and why, and what to do, and whither—again, our time-bound selves demonstrating moral inquiry.

The psalmist pleads for God's instruction. The prophet foresees days of righteous glory, a welcome change indeed from the iniquity he has noticed so scrupulously and condemned with all his might and considerable eloquence. The disciple recalls Jesus himself telling of the future—its promise, but its mystery, too; and the disciple links the future to the present, as do the Old Testament teachers, who know that to wait is to watch—oneself as well as the skies for their signs. Finally, the itinerant early convert yearns for that great, blessed day, a reunion with God, and as his predecessors did, connects that future with the continuing present of our collective lives: how shall we live if we are to meet God and his judgment?

...what really matters is not the beauty and cogency of a particular moment (a poem, for instance, a sermon, yet another book...) but the way we bear ourselves over the long haul of things.

Christianity is the story of simple people following in their naked blindness an itinerant rabbi, scorned and soon enough killed. Christianity offers rural homilies and peasant parables, and not especially elegant riddles. Christianity offers hope all right, but lots of fear and worry, and certainly no solace for the high and mighty. Christianity offers the birth of a child—God become human; the extended test of time which a given life, his life, offered people long ago.
Sojourners Advent resources

U2 - theology

I have been meaning for quite a while to compile some resources on theological responses to U2.


This is meant to be a first stage of a literature review and perhaps an article at a later date. So here we go. There are a number of different approaches that have been taken to this issue:

Biographical
Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 by Steve Stockman (New edition, Relevant Books, 2005)

Sermons on U2 lyrics
Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue edited by Raewynne J Whitely & Beth Maynard
(Cowley Publications, 2003)

Theological reflections inspired by U2

Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall by Stephen Catanzarite (Continuum, 2007)

Theological Readings of U2 
Religious Nuts and Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective by Robert Vagacs (Cascade Books, 2005)

One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God by Christian Scharen (Brazos Press, 2006)

We Get to Carry Each Other: The Gospel According to U2 by Greg Garrett (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009)

Blogs
Beth Maynard U2 Sermons Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog. It started with a book. We're still watching it happen.

 Occasio - U2 Theology sermons category