derek webb

they will not be playing this song on your local christian radio station anytime soon, and it’s a shame. this guy is saying some very important things with his music.

has there ever been another christian artist to have a ‘clean’ and ‘explicit’ version of a cd?

support the artist and buy his album, stockholm syndrome, here. you can read about stockholm syndrome (the actual syndrome, not the cd), here. it’s pretty cool.

You say you always treat people like you like to be
I guess you love being hated for your sexuality
You love when people put words in your mouth
‘Bout what you believe, make you sound like a freak

‘Cause if you really believe what you say you believe
You wouldn’t be so damn reckless with the words you speak
Wouldn’t silently conceal when the liars speak
Denyin’ all the dyin’ of the remedy

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?
Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

If I can tell what’s in your heart by what comes out of your mouth
Then it sure looks to me like being straight is all it’s about
It looks like being hated for all the wrong things
Like chasin’ the wind while the pendulum swings

‘Cause we can talk and debate until we’re blue in the face
About the language and tradition that he’s comin’ to save
Meanwhile we sit just like we don’t give a shit
About 50,000 people who are dyin’ today

Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?
Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

finally, a seminary program for everyone!

over at southwestern baptist theological seminary, they’ve started a brand new program for women in homemaking, where women can learn how to cook, sew (“clothing construction”), and raise babies. the aim of this seminary program is to reaffirm biblical gender roles, because if they don’t, “the denomination and the nation will be destroyed.”

in related news, a program in biblical husbandry is also being put into motion. this all-men’s program will include course work in taking out trash, basic plumbing, and lawn mowing in addition to electives such as barbecuing, shooting, and auto-maintenance. weed whacking 101 is also rumored to be in the works. each man who graduates will be adequately equipped to confidently run his church and marinade his steak with the confidence befitting of a biblical manly man.

just registered

somewhere, this man is organizing a protest against this.

welcoming and affirming

there’s quite the dialogue happening on my pastor’s blog… a far cry from the mud-slinging happening on the slog. the gay conversation is always poppin’ up. i wish dan savage didn’t think quest was “bad for gays” — though we are far from perfect, to our credit, i think we’ve consistently demonstrated a desire to engage in respectful dialogue with a humble posture, ready to acknowledge that we have very much to learn about sexuality. in that respect, we are unified. but as far as opinions go on the relationship between human sexuality and sin… there may be as many opinions as there are people.

i see two ways the church has gone about relating to lgbt’s: consumption and rejection. in consumption, we try to coerce those who are different to act and think as we do. we eat ‘em like food and they become part of us — we use what we like and dump out what doesn’t jive with our dogma. this isn’t persuasion via dialogue — it’s a battlefield victory, nothing short of colonization. on the flip side is rejection, where we simply treat the other as the enemy. by evoking religious discourse, we label the other as an enemy of god himself, providing justification for the other’s oppression.

the church, i think, must bypass this consumption/rejection binary in favor of a third, more constructive way, which i think is actually demonstrated quite nicely in my pastor’s blog. the “welcoming, but not affirming” platitude is unhelpful because it’s inadequate in describing an institutional church’s relationship with lgbt members/visitors. it just falls flat, devastating people along the way. instead, i think the church must be a place where everyone’s views of sexuality can be challenged, while also affirming it as a safe place for people of all sexual orientations, thereby making the church welcoming and affirming in a way that ought to be true for everyone.

for the bible tells me so

guess what movie won best documentary at the seattle international film festival?

a little movie called for the bible tells me so.

i caught the film on the last day of the festival at a special encore screening. it’s on homosexuality and christianity, and it’s everything you might expect of a documentary in an international film festival on the subject: it sharply criticizes biblical literalism, it mocks fundies (they REALLY love slamming jimmy d), and it can be pretty hilarious. lots of gene robinson (the guy above), lots of backwards lookin’ conservative christians, and lots of liberal theologians.