The post John Goldingay on Lament appeared first on Fuller Studio.

Listen to part one of classroom lectures on the Psalms from John Goldingay, professor of old testament.

The post Psalms of Protest appeared first on Fuller Studio.

Listen to part two of classroom lectures on the Psalms from John Goldingay, professor of old testament.

The post Psalms of Thanksgiving appeared first on Fuller Studio.

+ Special Thanks to David Taylor, Brehm Texas, and Fourth Line Films for their vision for this project. 

“As a songwriter it’s very clear to me that Eugene Peterson is a poet as well as a scholar. He brings the musicality to God’s Word that I’m sure was always there.”

+ Bono, Grammy award-winning artist and lead singer of U2.

“Bono is singing to the very people I did this work for. I feel that we are allies in this. He is helping get me and the Message to the very people Jesus spent much of his time with.”

+ Eugene Peterson, beloved author, pastor, and writer of The Message.

+ Interested in reading the Psalms that Bono refers to in the film as they are translated in Eugene Peterson’s The Message—including the one that inspired U2’s song “40”? We asked the publisher if we might offer the first 40 Psalms, with a special introduction by Peterson, and now you can download them for free here.

+ Share your favorite quote on Twitter or Facebook:

Reading tips for the Psalms:

1. Pay attention to the whole of a psalm, not just to the parts of a psalm.

2. Read the psalms consistently, rather than occasionally and sporadically.

3. Pay attention to the internal coherence of a psalm or a section of psalms, rather than allowing them to remain fragmented parts, reflective of our immediate and self-absorbed interest.

4. Read the psalms out loud, not just silently.

5. Read and sing and pray the psalms together, not just alone.

6. Pay attention the Psalter’s “hospitable ‘I’” and its “intimate communal” sense, rather than allowing the individual expressions to devolve to individualism and the communal expressions to devolve to an impersonal communalism.

7. Immerse yourself in the metaphors that the psalmist employs, rather than remaining distant and detached from them.

8. Pay attention to the placement and role of the psalms in the biblical canon, rather than viewing them as isolated and idiosyncratic.

+ These suggestions were written by David Taylor. Read his curated list of resources on the Psalms here.

“What can I give back to God
for the blessings he’s poured out on me?
I’ll lift high the cup of salvation—a toast to God!
I’ll pray the name of God;
I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do,
and I’ll do it together with his people.”

+ Bono frequently reads Psalm 116 from Eugene Peterson’s The Message at the beginning of U2’s concerts.

+ Listen to a playlist of modern psalms curated by FULLER studio editors:

The post Bono & Eugene Peterson on THE PSALMS appeared first on Fuller Studio.

Coming soon

The post Culture Care appeared first on Fuller Studio.

“If we turn to someone in the midst of doubt and say, “God is going to get you through this,” we risk the possibility of the person feeling guilty or judged for not being able to hold onto that hope themselves. I’ll never forget when I discovered Psalm 88. It doesn’t end with professions of God’s faithfulness, but rather something like, “I’m going to die.” There are moments in life where we do not see the hopeful side, and it seems impossible to hold on to God’s goodness. We need to have space for both hope and despair in lament. For many, it might take a long time to see God in the midst of what happened. For someone in a pastoral role, the most caring thing is to hear the doubts and not try to “fix” the person or convince him or her otherwise.”

+ Cynthia Eriksson, associate professor of psychology, in her reflections on trauma and the Psalms. Read more from her essay at the Fuller Youth Institute. After the imposition of ashes during Fuller’s Seminary’s contemplative Ash Wednesday chapel service, attendees used artwork by Kathe Kollwitz (“Lament,” 1938-1940, image of bronze relief; pictured above) to reflect on lament and praise, reflection and gratitude—the same wide range of emotions found in the Psalms: “As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust” (103:13-14).

“If we were to read poems as regularly as we read advertisements and memos and newspapers, perhaps our language would be more redeemed, more useful. Eugene Peterson encourages us to use the poetry of the psalms for prayer—to enter into them, mumble them, imagine them, sense them, let our perceptions of God and good, of creation and covenant, of fraud and faith be transformed as we pray.”

+ Mark Lau Branson, Homer L. Goddard Professor of the Ministry of the Laity, in his essay on Eugene Peterson’s writing, the Psalms, and ministry. Read more here.

“Directly or indirectly, psalms have always been the backbone of Christian worship and liturgy. They have been chanted, sung, read responsively, versified, and paraphrased. They have inspired not only poems and classic hymns, but also praise choruses and Christian rock and roll. But what shall we do with the imprecations, these disturbing curses? Should we follow the lead of the lectionaries and skip them? Or should we play them up?”

+ John Thompson, professor of historical theology, from his book Reading the Bible with the Dead: What You Can Learn from the History of Exegesis that You Can’t Learn from Exegesis Alone. (pictured right)

“Every person who has walked with God for a while has experienced seasons of despair and seasons of exultation. Sometimes these seasons overlap, even in a single prayer. In agony, we cry out for God’s help. Then we remember his goodness. Then our desperation returns as we wonder why God seems so distant. Then we are encouraged by the promise of his presence. And so it goes when we live in the tension of faithful prayer. The Psalms give us permission to cry out in anguish without holding back and to rejoice in the memory of God’s faithfulness—and, sometimes, to do both more or less at once.”

+ Mark Roberts, director of the Max De Pree Center for Leadership, reflecting on Psalm 22 and the importance of lament. Read more here.

“There by the Mississippi, by the waters of Huck and Jim—there we sat down and wept when we remembered Michael Brown, and all the others. On the stop signs and lampposts, on all the parking meters—there we hung up our hearts. For there our captors taunted us, and our tormentors shoved their weapons in our guts and in our faces, telling us to keep the peace; be respectful; sing a hymn! But how could we sing here and now in what has become for us—in what has always been for us—a foreign land?”

+ from “Psalm 137 for Israel in Ferguson,” a contextual translation of the Psalm written by Richard Erickson, associate professor of New Testament for Fuller Online and Fuller Northwest.

“In terms of our worship today, we are much more comfortable with only praising God. We don’t spend a whole lot of time in church telling one another what God has done for us in the past week and rejoicing, and we don’t spend time in our churches telling God how terrible life has been in the past week and asking him to do something about it. If we want our worship—as well as our prayer—to reflect the balance of the psalms, we’ve got to bring our worship into the kind of richness and balance we find in the psalms.”

+ John Goldingay, David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament, in a classroom lecture on the Psalms. Listen to the first of his Psalms lectures below. Pictured: Dr. Goldingay lecturing on the voice of God in Scripture at the 2016 LA Theology Conference.

Our Community Reflects on the Psalms

+ Click on each image to learn about our faculty, staff, and friends. Share your favorite quote on Twitter or Facebook.

“Tera rah ess, dharti ute, Ya Rab jata javey,
Sab qoma vich, teri mukti, saf pechani jave
Barkat devay, Chehra apna, sahdey tey chamkavay,
apna rehim vakhaway”
(May your ways, on earth, oh God be known
your salvation, among all nations, proclaim to everyone
May he bless us, turn his face to us, and may he shine on us
May he show his mercy)

+ Psalm 67, translated into the Punjabi language, was sung at the School of Intercultural Studies’ 50th Anniversary celebration. Read more from Eric Sawar, a new PhD student from Pakistan, reflecting on worship and Punjabi psalms here.

+ Bill Pannell is pictured resting under a bronze plaque with a verse from the psalms: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” These plaques, burnished after decades of hanging in Fuller Pasadena’s Prayer Garden, quietly accompany students and the wider Pasadena community as they enter the garden for reflection and refuge.

Further Reading

Worship That Changes Lives: Multidisciplinary and Congregational Perspectives on Spiritual Transformation
Alexis D. Abernethy (Baker Academic, 2008)

Word Biblical Commentary: Psalm 101-150
Leslie C. Allen (Thomas Nelson, 1983)

Word Biblical Themes: Psalms
Leslie C. Allen (W Pub Group, 1987)

Psalms for Everyone, Part 1: Psalms 1-72
John Goldingay (Westminster John Knox Press, 2013)

Psalms for Everyone, Part 2: Psalms 73-150
John Goldingay (Westminster John Knox Press, 2014)

Psalms, Vol. 1: Psalms 1-41 (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms)
John Goldingay (Baker Academic, 2006)

Psalms, Vol. 2: Psalms 42-89 (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms)
John Goldingay (Baker Academic, 2007)

Psalms, Vol. 3: Psalms 90-150 (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms)
John Goldingay (Baker Academic, 2008)

Psalm’s for God’s People: A Bible Commentary for Laymen
Robert K. Johnston (Baker Pub Group, 1982)

Praying Curses: The Therapeutic and Preaching Value of the Imprecatory Psalms
Daniel Michael Nehrbass (Pickwick Publications, 2013)

+ Learn more from a curated list of additional resources on the Psalms from David Taylor, the director of Brehm Texas.

The post More on the Psalms appeared first on Fuller Studio.

During the summer of 1991, when Nina and I lived in Oakland, California, Eugene Peterson taught a class at nearby New College, and stayed in our home and entered into our own daily rhythms. These reflections, written later that summer, trace one theme from our conversations.

I read a lot. Commentaries, theology, ethics. Sociology, urban studies, ethnic studies. Biographies, science fiction, fantasy. I know I should read poetry, but. . . .

It’s not that I haven’t tried. High school and college instructors offered the required doses. I even have several volumes in my library. And I’ve read something from each one. But my brain is linear (poems aren’t), my schedule is full (with important things), my reading agenda is already booked (with prose).

Some of my friends major in other media—movies, music, television. Like me, they spend many hours with their selected sources of ideas, distraction, images, and vicarious experiences. Schedules are full; options are plentiful. The response, when I ask about poetry, is consistently, “(sigh). . .well, I do have a few books of poetry, but it’s been awhile since I read any. . . .”

Yet the lure is persistent for me (and perhaps I sense some wistful longing with some friends). Maybe I want to be cultured and insure that others know I am sophisticated enough to read poetry. Only a bit less vain is a vocational motivation. As a teacher and preacher, word-craft is important, and I know poets can teach me about words. Even more important, though, is my desire to understand Scripture. Since over sixty percent of the Bible is poetry, I know I’m missing something that God thinks is important. And Eugene Peterson tells me that the poet is a friend of those interested in spirituality. During a summer week, as he taught an evening course on the Psalms, I had an agenda. On several mornings, after grinding coffee beans, toasting the bagels, filling our mugs, and settling into chairs on the deck, I confessed my (rather vague) interest. And as the week progressed, we took hikes, talked about poetry, drank lemonade, read poetry, discussed pastoring, and talked more about poetry.

PERCEPTIONS AND TRANSITIONS

“We do not have more information after we read a poem,” Peterson writes. “We have more experience.” (RT 5) I value facts, knowledge, information. I enjoy the process of reading history or theology or social sciences while I reflect on what is helpful for me, my family, my church, my city. But poetry is different. Auden helps Peterson make his point, “a poem must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written.” (More on that later.) “Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective.” (RT 7)

I take walks in a redwood forest to gain new perspectives—or just to restore sanity. My spirit gets dulled in the midst of urban labors. Ten minutes from our Oakland home is an entrance to a regional park—thousands of acres of hills, trees, streams, paths, animals . . . and silence. Eugene, also a habitual walker, joined me. How was I to know he thought this provided an experience parallel to reading poetry? He focused on the transition we had made from asphalt to forest. “Notice that your mind didn’t quit—it shifted. We didn’t look at the redwoods and ask about board feet and what that means to society. We were just there, experiencing it. You pointed out the circular patterns of the redwoods—something I’d never noticed. Once you provided that perception, though, I saw it all over. We didn’t ask ‘what does that mean,’ rather we entered into its reality a little more.

“You make that transition from city to forest a lot, so you make it without even deciding, without intentionality. But we are not trained, we don’t have practice, in the transition from prose to poetry. You really have to intervene with yourself. You have to say, ‘Don’t look for the meaning.’ Enter the poem like we entered the forest—just be there.”

So my expectations need to shift. I always look for meaning. I want new information, new analysis, new procedures. But Peterson tells me a poet offers a new way of living, a new experience, a different set of receptors. “Poets tell us what our eyes, blurred with too much gawking, and our ears, dulled with too much chatter, miss around and within us. Poets use words to drag us into the depth of reality itself. They do it not by reporting on how life is, but by pushing-pulling us into the middle of it. Poetry grabs for the jugular. Far from being cosmetic language, it is intestinal. It is root language. Poetry doesn’t so much tell us something we never knew as bring into recognition what is latent, forgotten, overlooked, or suppressed.” (AG 11-12)

So I can’t read poetry on the run, squeezing it between the newspaper and professional journals. I need to create a space. I need to get rid of my operative expectations. I need to be conscious of transitioning. This sounds a lot like my efforts at daily prayer. In fact, Peterson links poetry and prayer, but I think he got that idea from God.

POETRY AND SPIRITUALITY

“Is it not significant that the biblical prophets and psalmists were all poets?” (CP 162) Peterson’s Answering God provides his most extensive development of this relationship between prayer and poetry. The Psalms, he writes, don’t provide new revelation. Rather they provide a response language—a collection of prayers for personal and corporate use that take us by the hand and lead us into this holy, relational language.

We need allies in this call to prayer. “The poet forces you to do something that is very important for prayer: slow down. You can’t speed read a poem. You need to shift out of your normal asphalt-driving-to-work-being-productive mentality. You need to be submissive to a reality you didn’t make. You have to read the poem three times before you start getting the hang of it. It means you aren’t in control of it. There is somebody who perceives some truth that you don’t. It’s humbling and maybe even humiliating.” That may be an appropriate place for prayer.

“We are unskilled in shifting from prose to poetry in our prayers. We want to tell God what is going on and what we want to happen. We are production-oriented and goal-oriented. In America we have this inordinate emphasis on answered prayer. Strange, really. This is not a biblical emphasis. Biblical prayers may include, ‘Answer me when I call, O God of my right.’ But after you get that out of your system you forget about it. There is little in the Bible about answered prayer. There is no preoccupation with keeping track, with working on a production schedule. The final product of prayer is not a product, it is belief. The poet trains us in that shift of perception so we are no longer as interested in production. There is a wholly different way of dealing with language and with your life.” So Peterson encourages us to pray the Psalms—enter into them, mumble them, imagine them, sense them, let our perceptions of God and good, of creation and covenant, of fraud and faith be transformed as we pray.

This difference in language styles—prose and poetry—is beginning to shape not only my prayers but also my Bible study. I won’t abandon historical research, social analysis, and theological inquiry. However, I will attend to the transition required by the literature. I hope to enter the liturgical awe of Genesis one, the communal celebration of Leviticus twenty-five, the visceral proclamations of the prophets and the new kingdom rhythms of the beatitudes. In Reversed Thunder Peterson introduces us to St. John, theologian, pastor and poet: “Poetry is not the language of objective explanation but the language of imagination. It makes an image of reality in such a way as to invite our participation in it.” Prior to John’s final book we have a complete revelation. We know of salvation and the call to discipleship. So, Peterson writes,

“There is no danger that we are inadequately informed. But there is danger that through familiarity and fatigue we will not pay attention to the splendors that surround us. . . .” John wants to intensify our relationship with God. “He is not trying to get us to think more accurately or to train us into better behavior, but to get us to believe more recklessly. . . .” (RT 5-6)

I too often act as though a little more theological clarity, a few more facts about the world, and a more pointed word of motivation will provide what my students and congregation need. Maybe, rather, I can have my imagination rekindled. Then, perhaps, my word-crafting will assist us all in being drawn together and to God.

GUARDIANS OF THE LANGUAGE

I understand how words are used to destroy. I’ve seen individuals and communities devastated by lies and manipulation. Words have many roles in a society. As a professor and pastor, I am dependent on words. I believe everyone—whether administrator or parent or technician or neighbor—is dependent on and affected by our language’s use and misuse. If we were to read poems as regularly as we read advertisements and memos and newspapers, perhaps our language would be more redeemed, more useful. This is work that Peterson ascribes to poets,

“Poets are caretakers of language, the shepherds of word, keeping them from harm, exploitation, misuse. Words not only mean something, they are something, each with a sound and rhythm all its own. Poets are not primarily trying to tell us, or get us, to do something. By attending to words with playful discipline, they draw us into deeper respect both for words and for the reality they set before us.” (CP 161)

Peterson explains three stages in human language development. Language I is foundational—it begins with an infant’s noises that draw other non-sense from parents. This is primary experience. Language I reappears in the meandering words of lovers. In its maturity, Language I is the sphere of the poet.

Language II concerns the naming of things, the making of connections, and the exchange of information. Schools major in language II. Language III is for motivation. We move others with words, whether persuasion, sales, manipulation or coercion. Words have power. This is the realm of politics and advertising (CP 98-99; AG 37-40). So Peterson expanded on Language I, “If we let Language I operate at its most natural level, there are unfinished sentences, illusive phrases and lots of metaphors. We quit looking for instructions and meaning and become receptive to ambiguity. A good poet may draw you into multi-level reality—rhythm, silence and metaphor that may carry five different experiences at the same time. A metaphor is a terrible way to tell somebody something. You will probably misunderstand. The poet doesn’t care because the concern is not to tell you something but to get you involved in a cluster of words and images that radiate truth and actuality. The poet is not invested in which image you get as long as you participate in the experience. In the forest, you didn’t care whether I became more fond of redwoods or pines. Your offer was to be there, to experience it.”

Prayer is Language I. Prophecy and apocalyptic are Language I. Preaching can be Language I. Society often works to rob us all of a valuable tool. Numerous powers are at work stealing our words and changing the definitions. We are cheated out of life when words are pirated and images are cheapened: “the good life,” “making love,” “making a living,” “self-help” books on spirituality. Language does have a legitimate role with information and motivation, but dare we lose the language of intimacy and experience that the poet offers? We are already immersed in advertising and data—so we need to choose a parallel immersion in poetry if language is to be whole.

MAYBE I’M NOT TOO BUSY

I have often found myself rereading books—reentering that relationship, taking time to experience a certain companionship. Peterson says there is hope for me. “When you re-read a book, what are you doing? You know the ending, you know what is going to be said, but you like to hear the voice. That’s why I keep reading Barth. It’s kind of like surfing—the waves may behave the same, but if you catch one just right it’s a thrill. You aren’t learning anything in a didactic sense, but you are assimilating it and participating in it in a wonderful way.”

I had already found Peterson’s poetry to be accessible. (CP 63, 75, 93 101, 117, 122, 135, 147, 163-176) More recently I have been grabbed by Langston Hughes, startled by Alice Walker, delighted by G.K. Chesterton, and drawn to contemplation by T.S. Eliot and Thomas Merton. I have been drawn into Peterson’s recommendations: Luci Shaw, William Stafford, Walter Wangerin, W.H. Auden, Czeslaw Milosz. So now I make a little time and space available for poetry. Not so incidentally, I am making more time and space available for daily prayer: reading the Psalms with more senses and having less of a productivity-driven agenda with Bible reading.

Maybe pride and the drive for productivity have kept me from poetry. But I don’t need to let that continue. Most of us have a start with some “non-productive” activities—re-experiencing movies and television shows, retracing walks, re-hearing music, rereading books. Maybe rereading poems isn’t too drastic of a life change. We need, Peterson says, the “slower, unproductive ways — like taking a walk in the woods, taking our shoes off as we enter your home, grinding beans for a cup of coffee, being leisurely on Saturday mornings. We do build such rituals, and the poet just happens to be someone who specializes in this way of being. The Christian who wants to restore the dominance of the spirit and restore creativity to our lives needs all the help available. I think poets are of special value here.”

ENDNOTES
All books are by Eugene H. Peterson.
AG:  Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989).
CP:  The Contemplative Pastor (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today/Word, 1989).
RT:  Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination (San Francisco: Harper Row, 1988).

This article originally appeared as “But I’m Too Busy To Read Poetry. . . .” in Radix (Vol. 20 No. 3)
© Radix magazine 1991

The post A Conversation with Eugene Peterson about Poetry appeared first on Fuller Studio.

“If you are interested in exploring the psalms further, after having watched the conversation between Bono and Eugene Peterson, here are a few resources that might be of interest to you or to your community. I will also be posting additional material on the Brehm Texas website. A warm thanks to The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and to Cardiphonia for their help in collecting these resources.”

+ David Taylor, assistant professor of theology and culture and the director of Brehm Texas, taking a break with Eugene Peterson during the filming of their conversation with Bono. Photo: Taylor Martyn

Psalms and Prayer

Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit
Walter Brueggeman (Wipf & Stock Pub, 2007)

Reflections on the Psalms
C. S. Lewis (Mariner Books, 1964)

Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer
Eugene Peterson (Mariner Books, 1964)

Praying with the Psalms: A Year of Daily Prayers and Reflections on the Words of David
Eugene Peterson (HarperOne, 1993)

U2 and the Psalms

Psalm References in U2’s Music
“40,” “Gloria,” “Scarlet,” “Vertigo,” “Love and Peace or Else,” “All Because of You,” “Yahweh.”

The Sayings of Bono (on the Psalms)
David Taylor (Diary of an Arts Pastor, 2016)

Ancient Psalms for a State of the Art Tour
Tim Neufeld (www.ATU2.com, 2015)

Eugene Peterson: U2 Connections
Angela Pancella (www.ATU2.com)

Bono’s Prophetic Vox
Scott Calhoun (www.ATU2.com, 2006)

Fresh Translations of the Psalms

Music of the Heart: New Psalms in the Celtic Tradition
David Adam (Spck, 2004)

The Message: Psalms
Eugene Peterson (NavPress, 1994)

Psalms (Pocket Book Canon)
Introduction by Bono (Canongate Books, 1999)

Voicing God’s Psalms
Calvin Seerveld (Eerdmans, 2005)

Psalms and Worship

Psalms for All Seasons: A Complete Psalter for Worship
Martin Tel (Brazos Press 2012)

This Far by Faith: An African American Resources for Worship
(Augsburg Press, 1999)

The Anglican Chant Psalter
Alec Wyton (Church Publishing, 1987)

¡Grita de Alegría! Salmos para el año liturgico
Carlos Rosas (OCP, 2012)

Chant from the Hermitage: A Psalter
John Michael Talbot (Troubadour for the Lord Music, 1900)

The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship: A Brief Introduction and Guide to Resources
John Witvliet (Eerdmans, 2007)

Psalms and Justice

Reading the Bible with the Damned
Bob Ekblad (Westminster John Knox, 2005)

The Psalms as Christian Lament
Bruce Waltke and James Houston (Eerdmans, 2010)

The Green Psalter: Resources for an Ecological Spirituality
Arthur Walker-Jones (Fortress Press, 2009)

Psalms of Lament
Ann Weems (Westminster John Knox Press, 1999)

Psalms and Poetry

The Art of Biblical Poetry
Robert Alter (Basic Books, 2011)

The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley
T. Kimbrough Jr. (Kingswood Books, 1990)

The Great Poems of the Bible: A Reader’s Companion with New Translations
James Kugel (Free Press, 2008)

Dead Men’s Praise
Jacqueline Osherow (Grove Press, 1999)

The Psalms for Small Group Study

Psalms: Managing Our Emotions
Christianity Today (2015)

Christ in the Psalms
Patrick Henry Reardon (Conciliar Press 2000)

Psalms: A 12 Week Study
Douglas Sean O’Donnell (Crossway, 2014)

The Spirituality of the Psalms
Carroll Stuhlmueller (Liturgical Press, 2002)

Biblical and Theological Perspectives on the Psalms

Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Augsberg Fortress, 1974)

Journey Through the Psalms
Denise Dombkowski Hopkins (Chalice Press, 2002)

The Psalms: volumes 1-3
John Goldingay (Baker Academic, 2002)

The Psalms Through Three Thousand Years
William Holladay (Augsburg Fortress , 1996)

A Theological Introduction to the Book of Psalms: The Psalms as Torah
Clinton Jr. McCann (Abingdon Press, 1993)

The Psalms in Israel’s Worship
Sigmund Mowinckel (Eerdmans, 2004)

The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential
N. T. Wright (HarperOne, 2013)

The Psalms and the Visual Arts

Seeing the Psalms: A Theology of Metaphor
William Brown (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002)

Songs of Ascents
Aaron Collier (2007)

“Psalms,” The Saint John’s Bible
Donald Jackson (Illustrated Edition, 2005)

Seeing a New Song: Painting the Psalms Connection
Anneke Kaai and Eugene Peterson (Piquant Editions, 2008)

Worshiping with the Psalms Through the Church Year

Psalms for Advent
Jacob Tilton (2013)

“Psalm 126,” He will Not Cry Out, Anthology of Hymns and Spiritual Songs
Bifrost Arts Music (2013)

Holy Week Devotional through the Psalms of Ascents
Cardiphonia (2010)

Hallel Psalms Compilation
Cardiphonia (2013)

The Psalms and Contemporary Music

The Prayerbook Project
Brian Moss (2008-current)
+ Piano based contemporary renderings of the Psalms from pastor-poet

Psalms
Sandra McCracken (2015)
+ A Nashville singer-songwriter writing devotional meditations on the Psalms. A few certainly useable by congregations.

The Songs from the Psalter
Cardiphonia (2015)
+ A crowd-sourced effort by worship songwriters to provide a variety of approaches to singing the psalms in the modern church. Largely in the folk rock vein.

Psalm 1
Joel Limpic (2014)
+ Worship Pastor at Park Church in Denver, CO. Working on writing songs based in a word-for-word rendition of the ESV.

The Psalms
Robbie Seay (2014)
+ A popular contemporary worship songwriter who is exploring the psalms in word for word versions

Asaph
Loud Harp (2014)
+ Some ambient folk-pop meditations on the themes of the psalms.

From The River to the Ends of the Earth
Matt Searles (2013)
+ Original songs treating whole psalms for the contemporary church from a folk-rock idiom.

Psalms EP
The Gathering Sound Collective (2014)
+ A group of recent graduates from Kuyper College (Grand Rapids, MI) writing excellent versions of thePsalms.

Intown Psalms
Intown Music (2004).
+ A collection of largely retuned psalter texts from Matthew Curl and the musicians of Intown Presbyterian Church in Portland, OR.

Psalterium Vol. 1
Desert Springs Church (2011)
+ A church in Albuquerque, NM committed to writing and recording original versions of the Psalms.

Highways in Our Hearts
The Psalter Project (2014)
+ Ongoing project from producer Emily Moore seeking to reintroduce the Psalms into the church, with a few Indelible Grace contributors.

The Sons of Korah
+ A long term project from Australia band putting the Psalms word for word into music.

Psalms Vol. 1 Songs of the Forgotten
Garden City Project (2015)

The Psalm Project
+ A group of musicians from the Netherlands producing contemporary arrangement’s of the Psalms based on the old Genevan tunes.

Sing a Psalm
Jeremy Mayfield
+ Short responsorial songs written in a folky vein for the liturgical needs of the Anglican and Catholic traditions.

By the Streams
Jonathan Orden (2015)
+ Independent musician from the UK recording songs based in the Psalms.

Love and Fear
Worship at Pacific Crossroads Church (2014)
+ Album of contemporary worship songs inspired by the Psalms.

The post Resources for Exploring the Psalms appeared first on Fuller Studio.

Joy Moore: While we’ve come together this evening to talk about unjust legacies, and we’ve come together to talk about the difficult conversation of race, privilege, and justice, I want to remind you that we don’t come here as experts talking at you. We come together as brothers and sisters in Christ. Our gathering together is the expectation that we come knowing that if we can name sin by the power of the Holy Spirit, and we can talk honestly about who we are and where we are, that together we can make a difference in the world. That’s the task of the church.

Some people would like to say we live in a post-racial society. Well, you can’t talk about being post-racial unless you first understand why we even call ourselves “racialized” in the first place. So, a bit of our conversation tonight will be difficult to hear. And I will tell you on behalf of the panelists, if it steps in your backyard or it steps on your toes, we’re all Christian brothers and sisters here. Do not shoot the messenger. Our expectation is to learn together, to grow together, to walk together, so that when we leave this place we might be a glimpse of God’s glory by being a counter-cultural community that is multiethnic, multicultural, but most of all, claims to be unashamedly and unapologetically Christian.

Our panelists are not merely talking about this in front of you. They’re living it in their lives. So, with open hearts to the Spirit of God speaking among us, let us embrace their words that we might be transformed to transform the world.

+ What follows are key quotes from the second half of the session.

Juan Martinez: So many times, diversity is who gets to decide what’s diverse and how? Who sets the parameters for the diversity? What are the kinds of things that get to be in the conversation? They’re usually things about privilege. So, one of the problems with diversity is that at the end of the day, it’s still framed by those in charge. It’s still framed by those who have the power. They get to set the rules about what it is that we’re going to talk about when we say “diversity.”

Mark Lau Branson: The deep problem of the terminology and the frameworks around diversity and multiculturalism means that they are often a part of the problem. This is why, in our book, Juan and I use the framework of intercultural. It deconstructs the hegemony that is in the diversity and multicultural conversations.

I cannot know who God has shaped me to be unless I hear your story, and unless my story is changed by your story. I cannot understand the gospel unless I am changed by the other. I can not understand the diversity of the trinity that I am in the shape of—I am in the image of the trinity—and I can’t approach at all entering into that unless I am engaged day-by day-with words and actions, with thinking and feeling with the other. This means I am profoundly impoverished unless we put aside multiculturalism and diversity and instead are engaged systemically and personally at all levels with listening and being vulnerable to the initiatives of God in the other.

Hak Joon Lee: I truly invite—me as your brother and a believer in Jesus Christ—my white brothers and sisters to my struggle, Love’s struggle, all people of color’s struggle, because the same mentality that enslaved, discriminated, and objectified African Americans, Latinos, Chinese migrants, and Native Americans is now working toward poor whites.

We think we are post-racial and multicultural, but actually are we? The colonizing power that worked about 300-400 years ago in Africa, Latin America, and other parts of the world, now is intensified through global capitalism. Now, it doesn’t discriminate whether it’s a white or black person. It’s a Satanic mentality, because you totally dehumanize and instrumentalize people created in the image of God and are using them and wasting them, for your own benefit and then you run away.

This was the call of Martin Luther King at his last stage of movement. He genuinely invited whites to join the struggle of African Americans and others so that whites also can be free and enjoy their human dignity.

I believe that’s the message of the gospel. The message of the gospel is liberating everybody and building one community without privilege.

Love Sechrest: The future, I hope, is about building coalitions among people of color and whites of good will to resist the demonic forces that divide.

My vision is of a church where a politician comes right before the election and starts promising stuff, and he doesn’t know what goodies to promise, because it’s all mixed up. Because he or she would usually make assumptions about what this audience might want based on how they look. It’s really important for us to get behind the squabbling, because the coalitions are so fragile. You can break them up in a snap.

Racism is what has helped working class people in America from forming these coalitions for centuries. It works like a charm. We’ve got to stop it.

Joy Moore: We’ve got a long way to go in this conversation. I hope that as we plan more events that you will come. Some of those events will require you to speak, to ask questions, and will require you to risk having your lives transformed. But for now, I invite you to thank our panel for sharing personally and richly on this topic.

The post Living With Unjust Legacies: Race, Justice, and Privilege appeared first on Fuller Studio.

Listen to part four of classroom lectures on the Psalms from John Goldingay, professor of old testament.

The post Psalms of Trust appeared first on Fuller Studio.

“Christians and Muslims need to understand one another. We all know that certainly since the turning of the millennium and all the events that have happened since that time, there have been many reasons that the public conversation about Christianity and Islam has garnered all kinds of attention. Some of it has been helpful, but the vast majority of it, in my view, has largely been about stereotyping and insult and even war rather than mutual understanding, peace, respect, and justice.”

+ Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Seminary, from his introduction to the FULLER dialogues, an ongoing series of conversations at Fuller Seminary. Below Labberton moderates a conversation between Muslims and Christians with Jihad Turk, president, Bayan Claremont Islamic Graduate School; Evelyne A. Reisacher, associate professor of Islamic studies and intercultural relations at Fuller; J. Dudley Woodberry, dean emeritus and senior professor of Islamic studies at Fuller; Faisal Qazi, president, Medical Network Devoted to Service; Duaa Alwan, certified speaker, Muslim Speaker Network; and Michal Meulenberg, Fuller PhD student and cofounder of Miss Understanding.

“We really have to examine our rhetoric; it’s not good enough to only be politically correct. You have to be genuine in what you’re asking and what you’re sharing and what you want to learn.”

+ Duaa Alwan, a local Muslim scholar, reflects on public issues of religion and hijabs for “FULLER dialogues: Muslims & Christians,” a conversation among Fuller faculty and students and leading Muslim scholars in Southern California. Marked by both hospitality and respect, the dialogues were part of Fuller’s historic commitment to Christlike engagement with Islam. 

“Yes, these are scary times both abroad and at home, but as peoples of faith we can not only love God with all our hearts—we can also love our neighbors and build together, on our common values and commitment to God and faith, a better society at home and around the world.”

+Jihad Turk, former Imam and president of Bayan Claremont Islamic Graduate School, from his lecture at FULLER dialogues. Listen to his lecture and Evelyne Reisacher‘s lecture here in part 1 of 2:

+Listen to panelists here in part 2 of 2:

“Sometimes if there is a tension, it seems to latch onto a theological discussion when it’s really an interpersonal problem. We were not listening carefully or understanding each other carefully enough, and it manifested itself in a theological issue that it wasn’t ultimately about.”

+Michal Meulenerg, a current PhD student, reflecting on her close friendship with a Muslim during the FULLER dialogues event. Learn more about her work with Christian-Muslim friendships here.

“These remarks are wonderful because they’ve opened a channel of communication. George Bernard Shaw said, “the single biggest problem of communication is the illusion it has taken place.” For us, it is a never ending process; the dialogue is just beginning and not concluding in any way.”

+ Faisal Qazi, a doctor and founder of MiNDS (Medical Network Devoted to Service), from the FULLER dialogues event.

+ The quotes above are all taken from the “FULLER dialogues: Muslims & Christians” event, which was held at Fuller’s Pasadena campus in April 2016.

---

More from the Fuller community

“I have lived with the Muslim community in the Parisian suburbs for decades. I have experienced the tension and interacted with conflicts in some neighborhoods; I have seen the despair and the ghettoization. I have also experienced strong and genuine relationships with Muslims who have expressed so much care and hospitality toward me that I was sometimes ashamed that Christians were not attending to them with similar generosity. To me, neighborly love is necessary to address the tough issues: the lack of justice, freedom of religion, social conflict, religious dissonance, and acts of terrorism. God chose the way of love and the way of entering into relationship with us through Christ in order to address these very same challenges. His example reveals that love is not limited to words—it should also be experienced in real relationships, with ups and downs and patient negotiations. This love is not afraid of conflicts that are naturally embedded in human relationships.”

+ from Evelyne Reisacher, associate professor of Islamic studies and intercultural relations, in her speech “Uniqueness of Christ and Muslims in Europe” at the Lausanne European leaders meeting in Switzerland, 2014. Listen to her plenary lecture at the 2015 Urbana Student Conference below. Her new book, Joyful Witness in the Muslim World, will be released this summer.

“As Christians, we are enjoined to love God and love people. Part of the love of both is sharing the gospel, drawing more people to God through Jesus Christ. Muslims are people—they are people God loves. It’s not that God will love them when they become Christians; God loves them now. We are called to do the same. How can we love them if we don’t know about them?”

+ Dudley Woodberry, dean emeritus and senior professor of Islamic studies at Fuller’s School of Intercultural Studies, reflecting on a lifetime of work with Muslim communities. Read his story from FULLER magazine here.

“The religious will fear to engage in dialogue, lest it force them to compromise, whereas the secular will shun it as a platform for the assertion of exclusion. The relativist will use dialogue to flatten out differences, whereas the absolutist will use it to demonstrate the superiority of their own views. I would like to suggest that these two opposite positions stand in fact at the end of a spectrum of potential positions and attitudes. Christian interaction with Islam need not be limited to a position of either syncretism or polemics.”

+ Martin Accad, affiliate associate professor of Islamic studies, on a “kerygmatic” approach that emphasizes empathic listening and a positive proclamation of the gospel. From the book Toward Respectful Understanding and Witness Among Muslims: Essays in Honor of J. Dudley Woodberry.

• A classical approach to Islam
  
• The lens of social sciences
• The realities of local and global ministries
  

+ These are the three pillars that support a well-rounded education in Islamic Studies according to Fuller’s scholars. Learn more about the Islamic Studies Emphasis here.

“Every Muslim is a human being—just like you and me. Every human being is created in the image of God and has the capacity to cry out to God. So we have to realize we’re on holy ground talking to Muslims, and they’re all potential members of the kingdom. . . . When you can talk about the kingdom and about Jesus and you can pray with Muslims who long to be prayed for, it gets to the matter of the heart and of human interaction with the Other and beyond the group and class mentalities which have so separated us.”

+ An adjunct professor in the School of Intercultural Studies, from the prospective student event “Islam: A Christian Perspective.”

“I think that Muslims do worship the same God as Christians, but that doesn’t mean that Muslims have the same beliefs about God as Christians. Clearly there are deep differences between us as I’ve tried to indicate, but it does mean we do our Muslim sisters and brothers a disservice if we maintain they don’t worship the same God. And it may be a means of fruitful dialogue with Muslims as well as a way for us Christians to build relationships with Muslims. After all, if we share a belief in the same God—a God we both worship—then we have a lot in common. It may be that we can use that as basis for exploring our differences towards greater understanding between us. . . . it seems to me that there is much to be gained from such a dialogue—a gain in fact that will enrich all of our lives as a consequence.”

+ Oliver Crisp, professor of systematic theology, from the prospective student event “Islam: A Christian Perspective.”

“We have a mandate to love God and to love our neighbor and care for the stranger. I think we have to continue reminding the church and educating the church through intercessory prayer and Christian activism and a lot of patience. We live in a culture that’s afraid of the stranger. And we live in a time right now where it’s ‘us versus them.’ It is at this moment that the church has to bear witness to who we are and how we’re different from the rest of the world in how we see the least of these and the marginalized.”

+ Lisseth Rojas-Flores, associate professor of marriage and family therapy, from the prospective student event “Islam: A Christian Perspective.”

+ from the “Songs for Peace Project,” a Templeton-funded initiative from Roberta King, associate professor of communication and ethnomusicology, and the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts. The project facilitated dialogues between Muslims and Christians through the use of hymnody and folk music. Learn more about the project here.

Further Reading

Peace-Building by, between, and beyond Muslims and Evangelical Christians*
Mohammed Abu-Nimer and David Augsburger (Lexington Books, 2010)

Senses of Devotion: Interfaith Aesthetics in Buddhist and Muslim Communities
William A. Dyrness (Cascade Books, 2013)

Earth, Empire and Sacred Texts: Muslims and Christians as Trustees of Creation
David Johnston (Equinox Publishing, 2013)

(un)Common Sounds: Songs of Peace and Reconciliation among Muslims and Christians
Roberta R. King and Sooi Ling Tan, eds. (Cascade Books, 2014)

Connecting with Muslims: A Guide to Communicating Effectively
Fouad Masri (IVP Books, 2014)

Joyful Witness in the Muslim World: Sharing the Gospel in Everyday Encounters
Evelyne Reisacher (Baker Academics, 2016)

Toward Respectful Understanding and Witness among Muslims: Essays in Honor of J. Dudley Woodberry
Evelyne Reisacher, ed (William Carey Library, 2015)

Christian. Muslims. Friend: Twelve Paths to Real Relationship
David Shenk (Herald Press, 2014)

Understanding Insider Movements
Harley Talman and John Jay Travis (William Carey Library, 2015)

A Textual History of Christian-Muslim Relations: Seventh-Fifteenth Centuries
Charles Tieszen (Fortress Press, 2015)

Allah: A Christian Response
Miroslav Volf (HarperOne, 2012)

Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus Road: Crucial Issues in Witness Among Muslims
J. Dudley Woodberry (Missions Advanced Research, 1989)

From Seed to Fruit: Global Trends, Fruitful Practices, and Emerging Issues among Muslims
J. Dudley Woodberry, Ed (William Carey Library, 2011)

Muslim and Christian Reflections on Peace: Divine and Human Dimensions
J. Dudley Woodberry and Osman Zümrüt (UPA, 2005)

Resources for Peacemaking in Muslim-Christian Relations: Contributions from the Conflict Transformation Project
J Dudley Woodberry and Robin Basselin (Fuller Seminary Press, 2006)

*This volume coedited by Fuller professor David Augsburger is the first published book to include the words ‘”Evangelical” and “Muslim” in the title—a sign of Fuller’s leadership in Islamic Studies.

For a deeper description of these volumes and their significance, go here.

Available Classes

Introduction to Islam
Muslim Peoples: A Sociological Approach
History of the Muslim-Christian Encounter
Current Trends in Islam
Shariah and Human Rights
The Qur’an and Theological Themes
Music, Peacebuilding, and Interfaith Dialogue
Models of Witness in Muslim Contexts 
Popular Islamic Piety
Muslim Women and Family
Qur’anic Arabic

+ learn more about Fuller’s Islamic Studies Emphasis here and the Certificate in Islamic Studies here.

The post FULLER dialogues: Muslims & Christians appeared first on Fuller Studio.

There were a lot of questions on my mind as I sat down to sip cold brew and talk with Daniel Chou [MDiv ’15], editor-in-chief of Inheritance, on the porch of the magazine’s offices. Inheritance tells stories about the ways Christian faith interacts with Asian and American cultures, and Daniel’s team examines the implications of being people of a particular place: how our respective cultures, heritages, and experiences affect how we understand God and practice our faith.

With a simple story Daniel offered an entry point into a topic that can easily veer into overly intellectual territory. Asian American cultures, he tells me, have a propensity to cultivate a culture of debt, which can then lead to a transactional understanding of grace.

“If we were doing this interview in a coffee shop or over a meal and you were also Asian, we might fight over the bill because it’s very hospitable and generous to be the one to pay,” Daniel said. “But what that actually creates is a culture of debt: If I win out and pay the bill, you will feel compelled to pay me back. To view generosity and hospitality as transactional is common in Asian cultures.”

This cultural stance can have broader implications, he went on to say. “It’s problematic when we look at grace through that kind of a lens—because we can never repay Jesus for his sacrifice on the cross, and it makes the sacrifice of Jesus unwarranted and even unwanted. It becomes dangerous and misguided when there’s a focus on repaying Jesus for what he did for us.”

Yet there can be a positive side to this tendency toward reciprocity, Daniel believes: Asian American cultures are also convicted to love God back tangibly and abundantly out of love.

“Just receiving grace is not the end of the story,” Daniel said. “Grace leads to more grace—it leads to passing grace on to others and reflecting more love for God. Cutting out the transactional view but keeping the commitment to reciprocation based on grace is important. When this happens in the Asian American community, it’s a great model for the evangelical community.”

This is just one example, Daniel says, of how our contextuality—being embedded in a particular culture that shapes how we understand the world—brings both blessing and burden. In his work at Inheritance magazine he looks closely at this dynamic, examining how contextualized theology matters in the everyday.

If there’s one thing seminary has taught me, I thought as we talked, it’s that humans are necessarily people of a particular place and, therefore, particular perceptions. We cannot escape our contexts. When those contexts give us unique ways of understanding the Christian faith and the world, they bring a rich diversity to our communal life—diversity that’s worth acknowledging and examining in all its intricacy.

What does that diversity look like in the everyday? I wondered. How do our cultural backgrounds affect our understanding of faith both positively and negatively?

When I asked Daniel why he is so concerned with diversity and contextualization, he drew on his understanding of the eschaton described by John in Revelation—an image in which multitudes of nations will worship God. It will not be a raceless group, Daniel pointed out, but a diverse set of distinctive bodies. Inheritance magazine tries to tease out how that future reality shapes the present, addressing questions similar to those that were on my mind: how does that vision of so many different people worshipping together affect how we understand ourselves and interact with each other today? How does praying “let your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven” affect today and how we understand ourselves?

Despite that vision in Scripture, Daniel tells me his first task is always convincing others that cultural diversity is important. While many churches acknowledge diversity, his view is that most “multicultural” churches are, in fact, monocultural. “Even though everyone looks different, they end up emphasizing white evangelicalism,” he claims. “They’re preaching a gospel that says diversity doesn’t matter.”

Yet true multiculturalism, Daniel is quick to point out, even transcends ethnicity.

“I’ve encouraged pastors at immigrant churches to think about themselves as multicultural,” he said. “They’ve asked me, ‘What do you mean? We’re all Korean’—or Taiwanese, or Chinese, or whatever their ethnicity happens to be. But, I’ve said to them, the fact that some of you were born there, some of you immigrated here at a young age, some of you were born here, some of you had kids: that’s four different cultures. And that’s not factoring in some being from the East Coast and some from the West Coast. Even if you have one common ethnicity, you’re multicultural! And you need to think about how to celebrate that.”

While Daniel was first introduced to diversity in Christian circles growing up in a Taiwanese congregation in Maryland, Fuller was pivotal in shaping his posture toward diversity. Daniel approached seminary with no intention of pastoral ministry. He was exploring options—even thinking about bumming on the beach until he ran out of money—when six different people, from different circles in his life, asked him what he thought about going to seminary. That drumbeat of input from others led Daniel to consider whether, for him, seminary was what Hugh De Pree Professor of Leadership Development Scott Cormode later described as “the next faithful step”—simply doing what you think God is telling you to do next. He decided it was.

Fuller provided a space for self-examination and learning—a place where he could take his learning and interpret it in light of his own experience as an Asian American for his generation.

“Whenever I took classes,” he said, “mentors like Daniel Lee and Ken Fong encouraged me to ask, ‘How does my Asian Americanness affect this? How does this apply to how we care for Asian Americans? How does a theology of communion, for example, fit in with Asian American communities?’ In seminary, we’re not necessarily told what to believe or what to take in, but we’re exposed to these ideas in a way that causes us to deeply reflect on ourselves.”

Seminary, he tells me, is less about absorbing information and more about getting tools with which to perceive and engage a changing world. It’s about being able to posture ourselves in distinct ways—and one of those ways is seeing the beauty in the diverse vision of Revelation as it breaks into the present.

“I’ve learned to recognize our differences, and that somehow unearths a more beautiful understanding of God than if we only had one perspective or viewpoint,” he said. “That’s a beautiful posture.”

Now he shares that posture with others, disseminating the things he’s learned about God and culture at Fuller through his leadership role at Inheritance, a position he took on during his last two years at Fuller.

“Being Asian American, being able to see other things that certain people haven’t been able to see, is why my team and I do all of this,” Daniel said. “If we own our culture and if we own our ethnicity and if we really understand that there’s an intentionality in how God created us, then we have to make the most of it. Asking: What is the beauty in that diversity? What does it ultimately lead to?”

It ultimately leads to the vision in John—where a great multitude from every nation, from all tribes and peoples, are gathered as a beautiful picture of distinct bodies worshipping.

The post The Blessing and Burden appeared first on Fuller Studio.

“We must see every person as someone who lives each moment in relationship with God. We need to see the religious connection if we want to recognize the essence of human sacredness. The concrete person, beautiful or ugly, productive or idle, smart or stupid, is the one God made, whom God loves, whose life is in God’s hands, and for whom his Son died on the cross. This is the person who walks humbly on the earth as the image and likeness of the Creator who made him.”

+ Lewis B. Smedes, [1921–2002], professor of theology and ethics at Fuller for 25 years, considers how the image of God should inspire our actions in his book Mere Morality: What God Expects from Ordinary People. Master’s student Sarah Morcos (pictured above) drinks from an Arabic tea set belonging to Associate Professor of Islamic Studies Evelyne Reisacher. Cultures around the world share tea as a simple acknowledgement of the“essence of human sacredness” in our neighbors.

“For too long we’ve become complicit in having monocultural, one-language congregations. If the church means to only gather with people like me, then it’s not church. It’s called a social club, and we’re not perpetuating the gospel—we’re perpetuating walls. Our ecclesiology needs to be about building bridges. What does it mean to worship? What does it mean to extend hospitality? We have to answer these questions if we’re going to break down the walls within the church.”

+ Student Jennifer A. Guerra Aldana reflects on barriers to diversity on an event panel from “A Bridge to a New America: A Conversation on Race, Faith, and Justice.”

“Could it be that we are missing out on the 21st century transfiguration of Jesus because we are too comfortable with the Jesus of our failed imaginations? Like the disciples, we are weighed down with sleep. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., could it be that what weighs us down in our sleep is that we are too hypnotized from carrying the burdens of racism, materialism, capitalistic exploitation, and the over-militarizing of this world? But when you and I know what’s keeping us asleep, we can begin to make different choices. If we are asleep, we may miss seeing Jesus.”

+ Rev. Michael McBride, pastor of The Way Christian Center in West Berkeley, California, speaks in All-Seminary Chapel on the Incarnation and systemic racism. Hear his FULLER forum lecture below:

“How do we move from a segregated church to a beloved community? How do we overcome our racial geography? It won’t happen by accident. We’re not hearing each other’s stories, and we’re not believing each other’s stories. We can have these conversations, but being afraid to have them prevents us from that healing. There is no reconciliation without racial justice, and I think the best place to have these conversations is in the Body of Christ.”

+ Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, speaks at Fuller event “A Bridge to a New America: A Conversation on Race, Faith, and Justice.”

“When you actually encounter people of other faiths rather than talk about encountering people of other faiths, a lot of the usual debates begin to drop away. It’s easy to demonize other groups without actually encountering those groups. As soon as you start encountering them, the caricatures are shattered and we find they’re humans with the same sorts of issues as us. Often they have pertinent questions to ask us of our faith that challenge us—it’s not just a one way street. Far too often we are isolated in our religious silos, and it’s important to actually talk to people who hold these other views.”

+ Oliver Crisp, professor of systematic theology, from “Islam: A Christian Perspective,” a series of short lectures created as a Fuller classroom experience for prospective students.

“One of the most profound marks of justice is the naming of the truth about the victim, the injustice, the perpetrator, the law, the consequences. Of course, discerning the right names about such things can be difficult. But more often the only real difficulty is the lack of will and resources to do so. Power is one the side of the misnamers. . . . Justice renames the forgotten as the remembered, the widow as the loved, and the oppressed as the treasured. Naming gives life misnaming has taken away. . . . When we truly name one another, we are reflecting the God we worship.”

+ Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, tracing the relationship between justice and language in his book The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor.

“The problem among the rulers of Jesus’ people is their tendency to maintain authority through token acts of justice and law observance which conceal the widespread injustice in which they are complicit, thus neglecting the justice of love that the Law enjoins. They are so addicted to those patterns of injustice and to the influence and resources they gain from them that they find themselves seeking to destroy the One who is exposing them—the One who is calling people with compelling power to obey the Torah by loving God and loving their neighbors. . . . This matter of token justice that sacrifices neighbors and others is a serious problem. It’s a serious problem for us.”

+ Tommy Givens, assistant professor of New Testament, preaching in All-Seminary chapel on the question, “Who is my neighbor?” He contrasted Christ’s teaching with a “malnourished moral consensus” that can perpetuate unaddressed economic injustice. Listen to his whole sermon here.

“We have a mandate to love God and to love our neighbor and care for the stranger. I think we have to continue reminding the church and educating the church through intercessory prayer and Christian activism and a lot of patience. We live in a culture that’s afraid of the stranger, and we live in a time right now where it’s ‘us versus them.’ It is at this moment that the church has to bear witness to who we are and how we’re different from the rest of the world in how we see the least of these and the marginalized.”

+ Lisseth Rojas-Flores, associate professor of marital and family therapy, applying her research on trauma to the recent refugee crises around the world at “Islam: A Christian Perspective,” a series of short lectures created as a Fuller classroom experience for prospective students.

“One of the American myths is that we’re all individuals and we all make it on our own, and that’s why it’s so hard to even have a conversation on privilege because we can’t even acknowledge that as a group, as a socioeconomic class, as people that have certain common characteristics, some benefit and some do not. . . . I want us to think about privilege as the thing that we have but don’t think about and a thing that frames reality.”

+ Juan Martínez, vice president for diversity and international ministries, reflecting on systemic privilege from “Living With Unjust Legacies: Race, Justice, and Privilege”

“Sitting at the feet of others outside our own context and finding out how they engage issues like racism or income inequality or refugees is truly transformational. It takes courage to step out in faith to build new kinds of relationships with our neighbors, but it always broadens our vision.”

+ Jennifer Ackerman, director for Micah Groups. Micah Groups, an initiative through the Brehm Center’s Ogilvie Institute of Preaching, are ethnically diverse communities that foster courageous conversations about engaging worship, preaching, and justice.

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

—Micah 6:8

“In the denomination I’m part of, I sometimes feel separated from the larger body of Christ. We miss that beauty in diversity. Being in a community like Micah Groups help us connect across denominational, gender, and racial lines. So we really do have a sense of togetherness. And even when we argue, it’s a family argument—we still love each other because we’re brothers and sisters.”—Jason Thomas, New Orleans, LA

“They’ll know we are Christians by our love, as the old song goes. I work in a very homogenous, white, upper-middle-class context, so being in dialogue with people from different backgrounds is a witness to both my congregation and our surrounding community.”—Kate Spelman, Chicago, IL

“Sometimes you need these outside voices, having this broader view of your own reality that you get mired in every day, and they really bring a word of wisdom— whether as an individual or as a community speaking into my life as a pastor.”—Tim Yee, Los Angeles, CA

“When we come together with a posture of openness, we can learn to trust one another. We share not only our life stories, but also really difficult questions about justice or how we live or showing kindness to one another. These questions are fleshed out in real life as we continue to grapple with how to live out what we discuss.”—Bruce Main, Camden, NJ

+ Christ’s command to love our neighbor can seem ineffective in the face of the social issues of a globalized society, but together we can participate in Christ’s body both through and beyond our local contexts. The people quoted above love their neighbors through Micah Groups, an initiative of the Ogilvie Institute of Preaching. These ethnically and denominationally diverse communities of 10–12 ministry leaders meet regularly to be formed together into the neighborly love envisioned in Micah 6:8. Learn more here.

Further Reading

The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor: Seeing Others Through the Eyes of Jesus
Mark Labberton (IVP Press, 2010)

The Great World House: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Global Ethics
Hak Joon Lee (Pilgrim Press 2011)

Mere Morality: What God Expects From Ordinary People
Lewis Smedes (Eerdmans, 1989)

Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace
Glen Stassen (John Knox Press, 1992)

America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America
Jim Wallis (Brazos Press, 2016)

Resources for Peacemaking in Muslim-Christian Relations: Contributions from the Conflict Transformation Project
J. Dudley Woodberry and Robin Basselin, eds. (Fuller Seminary Press 2006)

Available Classes

Advocacy for Social Justice with Karin Finkler
Music, Peacebuilding, and Interfaith Dialogue with Roberta King
Evangelism, Justice, and Emerging Generations with Chap Clark
Human Rights and the Old Testament with Kyong-Jin Lee
Christian Ethics with Hak Joon Lee
Christian Engagement with People Other Faiths with Diane Obenchain

+ This content is curated from ongoing conversations taking place throughout the Fuller community.

The post Who Is My Neighbor? appeared first on Fuller Studio.

AdobeRBG:

AdobesRBG:

AdobeRBG:

AdobesRBG:

The post TEST POST (PHOTO COLORS) appeared first on Fuller Studio.

What follows in this theology section is a continuance of ongoing conversations around racial reconciliation. This is not new to Fuller any more than it is resolved. We have gathered voices from our community and our friends on this long and sometimes treacherous road: voices that have been heard before but not often enough; new voices of change, of instruction, and of surprising hope; voices of pain. Fuller Forum⁺ guest theologian Walter Brueggemann says that “pain brought to speech turns to energy, and pain not brought to speech turns to violence.” We have seen the truth of this proven too often, too recently, with heartbreak. We choose energy and not violence.

Fuller Associate Professor of New Testament Love Sechrest moderated a recent event called “Do Black Lives Really Matter?”⁺ She urged, “Everyone has pain. We have to start by bearing it. We should not leap too quickly to the idea of reconciliation,” as if all that is required is a willingness to hug it out. Sechrest made the convicting observation that evangelicalism is ground zero for racial segregation in the American church, and that Fuller bears the responsibility of leadership in addressing this injustice. “Us—right here—this is the belly of the beast,” she told a rapt audience in her closing comments. “I am not about guilt. I am about building allies. We need your work, we need your labor, we need your tears, we need your hugs. Come on board.” Her challenge ended the evening and reframed our work ahead.

Brueggemann believes the groans and cries of Hebrews enslaved by Egypt “summoned God into their narrative.” As we put our own pain to speech, the incarnation of God is the transcendent energy that we evoke. God’s love for the world, born into our story, is our only hope for a victory as radical as racial reconciliation. William E. Pannell and Joy J. Moore, guest partners for this section, represent Fuller’s institutional will to continue on this road together—inadequate as we all are to the journey. We humbly give speech to our pain and energy to our convictions as allies in this ongoing work at Fuller and the wider world it exists to equip.

+  Quotes from the “Do Black Lives Really Matter?” panel—sponsored by the ASC Diversity Committee and the Black Seminarians Council—and from the Fuller Forum are scattered throughout this section. The Fuller Forum is available in its entirety here.

RECONCILIANDONO LA RAZA

Lo que sigue en esta sección de teología es una continuación persistente de las conversaciones sobre la reconciliación racial. Esto no es nuevo para Fuller, así como aun no está resuelta. Hemos reunido las voces de nuestra comunidad y nuestras amistades en este largo y a veces incierto camino: voces que se han escuchado antes pero no con la frecuencia suficiente; nuevas voces del cambio, de instrucción y de una esperanza sorprendente; voces de dolor. El invitado especial del Foro de Fuller, el teólogo Walter Brueggemann, dice que “el dolor transmitido por la voz se convierte en energía, y el dolor sin ser transmitido por la voz se convierte en violencia.” Hemos visto esta verdad demostrada con demasiada frecuencia, y últimamente, con angustia. Elegimos energía y no violencia.

Love Sechrest, profesora asociada de Nuevo Testamento en Fuller, moderó un evento reciente llamado “¿Las Vidas Negras Realmente Tienen Importancia?” Ella instó, “Toda persona tiene dolor. Tenemos que empezar llevándolo. No deberíamos apresurarnos en brincar directamente a la idea de la reconciliación,” como si todo lo que se requiere es la voluntad de abrazarnos y que con eso fuera suficiente. Sechrest hizo la observación convincente de que el evangelicalismo es la zona central de la segregación racial en la iglesia estadounidense, y que Fuller tiene la responsabilidad de liderazgo para abordar tal injusticia. “Nosotros y Nosotras—aquí en este lugar—este es el vientre de la bestia,” dijo Love Sechrest en su comentario de cierre a un público extático. “No estoy interesada en la culpa. Quiero formar alianzas. Necesitamos su esfuerzo, necesitamos su labor, necesitamos sus lágrimas, necesitamos sus abrazos. Vengan a bordo.” Su desafío terminó la noche y reformuló el trabajo que nos queda por delante.

Brueggemann cree que los gemidos y los gritos del pueblo Hebreo esclavizado por Egipto “convocó a Dios en su propia narrativa.” A medida que otorguemos voz a nuestro dolor, la encarnación de Dios es la energía trascendente que evocamos. El amor de Dios por el mundo, nacido en nuestra historia, es la única esperanza de victoria radical para una radical reconciliación racial. William E. Pannell y Joy J. Moore, colaboradores por invitación para esta sección, representan la voluntad institucional de Fuller para continuar en este camino en unidad— a pesar de que seamos insuficientes en este caminar. Humildemente damos voz a nuestro dolor y energía a nuestras convicciones en alianza a este continuo trabajo en Fuller y la comunidad global, la cual existe para equipar.

인종간의 화해하기

이번 호 신학란에서는 계속 진행 중인 인종 간 화해에 관한 대화가 이어집니다. 풀러가 이에 관한 대화를 계속해 온 것처럼, 이 주제는 우리에게 그리 새로운 것이 아닙니다. 인종 간 화해라는 멀고도 때로는 위험한 여정에 동참하고 있는 우리 공동체와 동료들로부터 우리는 다양한 견해들을 모았습니다. 전에도 듣긴 했지만, 충분히 자주 듣지는 못했던 목소리들 말입니다. 그것은 변화를 위한 새로운 소리이고, 우리를 안내하는 소리이며, 놀라운 소망의 소리입니다. 때로는 고통의 소리이기도 합니다. 풀러 포럼의 강연자였던 월터 부르그만(Walter Brueggemann)은 “말로 표출된 고통은 에너지로 전환되고, 그렇지 못한 고통은 폭력으로 변한다.”고 말합니다. 안타깝게도 이것이 사실임을 빈번하게, 그리고 최근까지 목격하고 있습니다. 우리는 폭력 대신에 에너지를 선택합니다.

풀러의 러브 시크레스트(Love Sechrest) 신약학 교수는 최근에 열렸던 행사인 “흑인의 삶이 정말 중요합니까?”의 진행을 맡았습니다. 시크레스트(Love Sechrest) 교수는 이렇게 강력히 권고했습니다. “우리는 모두 고통을 겪습니다. 이 사실을 받아들이는 것부터 시작해야 합니다. 마치 우리에게 포용하려는 의지만 있으면 모든 것이 해결 되는 것처럼, 너무 성급하게 화해를 이야기해서는 안 됩니다.” 시크레스트(Sechrest) 교수는 복음주의가 미국교회에서 인종 분리를 자행한 장본인이며, 풀러는 이런 불의를 공론화하는 일에 지도력을 발휘할 책임이 있다고 비평했습니다. 그녀는 폐회사에서 고무된 청중을 향해 “우리—바로 여기 있는—우리들의 책임입니다.”라고 말했습니다. “저는 여러분을 책망하려는 것이 아닙니다. 여러분들의 동참을 촉구하고 있는 것입니다. 우리는 여러분의 헌신과 노력, 눈물, 그리고 격려가 필요합니다. 함께 일합시다!” 이러한 그녀의 강력한 도전으로 행사는 마무리됐고, 우리 앞에 놓인 과제를 다시 정의하게 했습니다.

부르그만(Brueggemann)은 이집트에서 포로생활을 하던 히브리 백성들의 신음과 울부짖음이 마침내 “하나님을 불러 그들의 이야기 속으로 오시도록 했다”고 믿습니다. 고통을 말로 표출시킬 때, 하나님의 현현인 초월적 에너지를 불러일으킵니다. 이 세상을 위한 하나님의 사랑은 우리의 이야기가 되었으며, 인종 간 화해와 같은 급진적인 승리를 이끌어낼 수 있는 우리의 유일한 소망인 것입니다. 풀러는 인종 간 화해를 위해 미흡하나마 계속 협력해 나갈 것이며, 이를 위해 윌리엄 패넬(William E. Pannell)과 죠이 무어(Joy J. Moore)가 신학란의 객원 필진으로 동참했습니다. 우리는 인종 간 화해를 위한 사역에 헌신하는 동역자로서 겸손히 우리의 고통을 말로 표출시키고, 우리의 확신에 힘을 불어넣을 것입니다. 이것이 더 넓은 세상을 섬기기 위해 풀러가 존재하는 이유입니다.

+  This painting will be recognized by decades of students, alumni, and faculty familiar with the hallway outside the Geneva Room on the second floor of Payton Hall at Fuller’s Pasadena campus. Faintly cubist in style and palette, the brightly colored portrait seems to depict Christ outside racial boundaries. The Savior’s features, illuminated by a shaft of light from above, are multifaceted and multiethnic—an apt mirror of those to whom he offers the communion of his incarnational sacrifice. It is not a surprising statement to find adorning the walls at Fuller for so many years (with its dated frame and liner), art with a history few remember, but a story current as ever. (If you have information regarding this painting, please send a message to editor@fuller.edu.)

The post Reconciling Race appeared first on Fuller Studio.

Leila’s Distress
Recently a Muslim friend, whom I will call Leila, told me bluntly, “I was born in the wrong century.” When I asked why, she said: “Would you feel welcome in the world when there is so much negative talk about Islam and Muslims, and people are so afraid of you? I don’t know where to turn in order to feel that it is okay to be a Muslim and treated like the rest of the world.” I could see deep pain in her eyes as she was talking to me.

Until recently, Leila had a good life in France. She and her husband have excellent jobs as doctors. Their children attend reputable schools and have promising careers. Although she was born into a devoted Muslim family who migrated to France, Leila rarely practices her faith and did not disapprove when her children decided to adopt a nonreligious lifestyle. Nevertheless, Leila’s heart is broken when she hears how Muslims are often portrayed as terrorists and Islam considered a threat to civilization. If Leila were the only person with such views, I would not be worried, thinking that she is perhaps too sensitive. But I meet more and more practicing and non-practicing Muslims with similar feelings. If this trend grows, we will see more and more fear, distrust, and hate, which will only escalate existing intractable conflicts.

Indeed, countries that welcomed Muslims in the past are now more reluctant to do so. Muslims who have been living peacefully in those countries for years feel increasingly threatened. Likewise, Christians are increasingly afraid of Muslims, especially since the rise of terrorist attacks, beheadings, and other types of aggressions perpetrated by some in the name of Islam. As Christians, we are standing at a crossroads. We can participate in the current polarization between Muslims and non-Muslims, leading potentially to even greater conflicts than the ones we witness today in Syria and parts of Africa. Or we can join people of good will, like the three Christian scholars of Islam I will describe this article, who invite us to adopt missional practices of hospitality toward Muslims.

At the outset of this article I want to reaffirm that welcoming Muslims does not mean that I water down my faith. I like sharing the gospel with Muslims in the joyful spirit of the resurrection of Christ.  In preparation for my talk at the North American InterVarsity Conference in December 2015, I reflected much on this question. I proposed that Christian witness among Muslims today should include “Welcome, Wisdom, and Wonder.”¹ I will focus here on “welcome,” because this attitude addresses the first assertion that I heard from Leila: “I do not feel welcomed!”

Muslim-Christian Relations in Times of Terror
Leila admits that today’s tensions are not new. Throughout history, there have been peaceful times but also countless wars and conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, including Christians.²  The reasons have been manifold, but often interpreted as theological. Christians and Muslims, who both claim Abraham and Moses³ as their ancestors, disagree on their descriptions of God, salvation, and other key doctrines. But there have been other reasons behind these conflicts, such as the disparity of resources that sometimes exists between religious communities, or claims over territory. Early Muslim empires, for example, conquered land from the Christian Byzantine Empire. Later, during the Crusades and toward the end of the Ottoman Empire, Christians fought to regain control over some of these territories. Today, there are examples of all these types of conflicts. They are often called “religious” because Muslims and Christians, whose worldviews are God-centered, include religious language and ideas to support their actions, but they are often loosely linked with theological controversies and have more to do with economic, political, or social issues.

Thankfully, however, interfaith relations have also included harmonious times throughout history, and even today many contemporary societies have developed models of peaceful interfaith coexistence.⁴ Freedom of religion is included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In France, Leila has the choice to practice her faith or not. Evangelicals are increasingly engaging in interfaith dialogue without losing their passion for sharing the gospel with Muslims.⁵  On the Muslim side, the recent Marrakesh Declaration is an important step in protecting the rights of religious minorities in predominantly Muslim majority communities.⁶ All these examples show that religious pluralism has become the norm in many societies that host different religious communities, although there is still progress to be made—such as, for example, encouraging Muslim societies to provide more protection for Muslim-born followers of Christ, since apostasy is still considered a crime in many Muslim societies.

Why is Leila so distressed, if there is greater freedom of religion? Her anguish is generated by daily global news reports of conflicts involving ISIS, Boko Haram, and other radical Islamic groups. These have drastically altered the dynamics of Muslim-Christian relations. I mentioned earlier that, traditionally, Muslims do not remove God from the public sphere; ISIS moves the rhetoric further. Its entire discourse is saturated with Qur’anic and Hadith passages to justify horrific acts made in the name of Islam, although their war is primarily about territory and influence rather than theology.⁷ Most Muslims today contest the way ISIS misuses those sacred passages to justify violence, beheadings, and bombings.⁸ Nevertheless, gradually in the minds of non-Muslims, ISIS becomes the symbol of the “real Islam” and all Muslims become terrorists in waiting! This is what saddens Leila: She is the first to critique the way ISIS uses Qur’anic texts to kill innocent people and does not believe that they represent the majority of Muslims.

There are two reactions Christians can adopt in the face of terrorism. Either they can turn their backs on Muslims out of fear and mistrust (which is legitimate when one faces a real terrorist), or they can seize the opportunity given by this new context of terror to understand Muslims better in general, and to engage with them in the name of Christ. This means that Christians have to ask honest questions: Do I truly know Muslims before I pass judgment? Am I aware of the diversity that exists within Islam? Do I know the theological debates taking place within Islam? Am I ready to address difficult issues such as, for example, recent abuses toward women in Cologne, Germany, allegedly committed by members of Muslim communities?⁹ Christians and Muslims may be neighbors living next to each other, but that does not mean they deeply know each other. One can live next to a neighbor for a lifetime without truly knowing him or her. Why is it important to get closer to Muslims? Because without a strong bond, humans cannot withstand the kinds of turbulent times we face today. Those who had Muslim friends before the ISIS crisis have reacted very differently than those who did not. These bonds formed with Muslims prior to the conflict affirm that Muslims can be trusted and are not all terrorists in disguise.

Could our current global situation thus offer an opportunity instead of a challenge in Muslim-Christian relations? I see it as an opportunity, and would like to to share some of the ways we can engage with Muslims in a time like this. The way forward is not to live in a place where we retreat from each other. Our times require opening up and conducting a genuine dialogue, not just theological but also societal, looking at how Muslims and Christians can live together on this planet in respectful ways that do not compromise their beliefs. In order to help us practice this kind of hospitality, I share three examples of Christians who decided to turn toward Muslims instead of away from them in times of terror and war. In their presence, Leila would certainly feel welcomed.

Sacred Hospitality
Hospitality was a key concept for Louis Massignon, an eminent French Catholic Islamicist of the 20th century.  Before learning it from the Bible, he personally experienced the lavish hospitality of a Muslim family, who rescued him when he was in captivity in Baghdad, Iraq, in the early 1900s, accused of being a spy in a time of intense conflict between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East. Their extravagant Muslim hospitality was inspired by the desert culture and by precepts from the Qur’an and the Hadith.¹⁰ Massignon was deeply moved by this and, later in his life, “sacred hospitality” became a major theme of his engagement with Muslims. He based his reflections on the study of Abraham and the three hosts (Genesis 18:1–10). In Abraham’s time, as in Muhammad’s time in Arabia, there were no institutions and no hotels; hospitality was the responsibility of individuals and families. It was considered a sacred virtue, since the survival of strangers in unfamiliar and hostile places depended solely on the protection of generous hosts. The Genesis passage depicts Abraham sitting at the entrance to his tent on a very hot day. He offered three wayfarers standing nearby water, tree shade, and food as refreshment. Without anticipating it, Abraham ended up hosting messengers of God.

Massignon developed this theme of hospitality to stimulate Christians to engage with Muslims. To Massignon, sacred hospitality was shaped by the example of God who is “at once Guest, Host, and Home”¹¹—reflections that inspired many Islamicists to use this model of engagement with Muslims.¹² He practiced this model of hospitality not just in times of peace but also during the French-Algerian war in the 1960s, showing that sacred hospitality is also relevant when there are risks involved, as enacted by the Muslim family who rescued him in Iraq. This led Massignon to very practical actions, such as helping peaceful Algerian demonstrators who were arrested in the streets of Paris on October 17, 1961, by trying to “recover bodies [of those] discarded in the River Seine to provide proper Islamic burials. His efforts elicited physical attacks at speaking engagements and criticism by embarrassed friends and family.”¹³ Massignon’s love for the Algerians in times of war deeply touched the heart of Leila when I told her that story.

Inverted Perspective
Miroslav Volf, professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, provides a second model for hospitality in times of terror. As a Croatian Protestant he experienced firsthand the conflict between Muslims and Christians in the Balkans.¹⁴ He has also wrestled with the question of reconciliation after 9/11.¹⁵ In a chapter on “Living with the ‘Other,’” Volf explains what he means by “inverted perspective.”¹⁶ He writes, “if we consider other people like ‘other’, namely ‘not so good in some regard as I am myself,’ then, I am also an ‘other’ to this person.” That is certainly what Leila is feeling. Once she was ‘the other’ in a negative way to French people, the French became ‘the other’ to her and she felt a deep disconnect. How would she not feel undesirably “other” when the daily news reports horrific acts coming from people who claim they are Muslims, or when a Google search for images of Muslims essentially reveals horrific faces, or when the fear of Muslims becomes a motto to win elections? Psychologists know that negative memories are easier to remember than happy ones.¹⁷ Who remembers the news of a happy Muslim family versus the bombing of a school by Muslims?

Volf invites us to understand the “reciprocity involved in the relation of otherness” so that we also better understand what others think of us. After the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, I recalled the people who came through my apartment in Paris during my many years of ministry among Muslims there. Hundreds of young second-generation North Africans attended our Bible studies. Some were extremely distressed by that feeling of derogatory “otherness.” Several became followers of Jesus, while others remained Muslim or became faithless. I wonder if the feeling of “otherness” is not one of the feelings that ISIS plays on to attract some into perpetrating the horrific terrorist acts committed in Paris. Could we, as Christians, practice inverted perspective to help others not choose this way but instead feel deeply connected to the country in which they live?

Volf tells us that inverted perspective invites us to “see others through their own eyes.” This to me involves listening and even more: the other must feel that you have truly heard him or her. In conversations with Leila this would mean hearing not just the positive things she has to say about non-Muslims, but also the pain she feels and her feelings of rejection, without automatically reacting in defensiveness. Volf’s “inverted perspective” also invites us to “see ourselves through the eyes of others.” Do we ask Muslims how they see us? Of course, they may not express these feelings right away, but instead of systematically rejecting their critiques, can we take time to listen to their grievances as we hope they will listen to ours?

What I like about Volf’s approach is that he does not ask people to avoid the tough questions; rather, he knows that they need a safe place for holding those conversations. He calls this “embrace.”¹⁸ Without a safe and welcoming context, communication will not succeed. Unfortunately, in our current times Muslims and Christians often start with arguing before listening to each other. I read Volf’s book many years ago but picked it up again recently because I believe it is so relevant for today’s context. “Embrace” is a form of hospitality. It does not ignore challenges. It welcomes hospitality rules that provide safety not for one but all communities involved, protects the human rights of all individuals, looks at all the consequences (short- and long-term) of welcoming new communities, and pays special attention to the poor and the needy. This hospitality is practiced with the mind of Christ.¹⁹

The Gospel of Reconciliation
In an article on the gospel of reconciliation within the wrath of nations, missiologist David W. Shenk discusses peacemaking in a conflict-ridden context in Indonesia between Muslim and Christian communities.²⁰ He explains how a Christian pastor leading a reconciliation movement in Indonesia paid a visit to a Muslim leader. Shenk writes, “The commander greeted him gruffly: ‘You are a Christian and an infidel, and therefore I can kill you!’ Unfazed, the pastor returned again and again to the commander’s center to drink tea and converse.”²¹ Later the pastor invited this leader to help in the post-tsunami reconstruction work of Banda Aceh. As these two leaders, Muslim and Christian, worked together, shared the same room, and ate together, they became friends. Shenk concludes this article by saying, “One evening around the evening meal, the commander began to weep. He said, ‘When I think of what we have done to you, and how you reciprocate with love, my heart has melted within me!’ He confided to the pastor, ‘I have discovered that you Christians are good infidels.’”²²

I report this story to remind us that in times of war and terror, there have been Christians who God has used as peacemakers and witnesses of the gospel of reconciliation. I will never forget the example of the seven Cistercian monks of the Abbey of Tibhirine in Algeria, who were murdered in 1996 because they wanted to stay with their Algerian friends during a brutal civil war in which terrorism claimed the lives of over 200,000 Algerian civilians. Hospitality and welcome can pose aggravated risks in wartime. I would not recommend to anyone that he or she stay in a context of terror to be a witness, but some choose to do so because they feel God’s calling to share the struggles of innocent populations who cannot flee war.

The devastating consequence of terrorism, beyond of course the killing of innocent people, is that it destroys the practice of hospitality. We are afraid to invite the “other” or to be guests of the “other.” We need to acknowledge this challenge in order to be wise in our practice of hospitality. Welcome is concerned about safety. In any culture where hospitality is valued, there are rules to make the practice of hospitality sustainable long term. Furthermore, hospitality must sometimes be practiced from a position of weakness and not of power. The Cistercian monks of Tibhirine made the choice to be weak and to become guests of those who suffered and were in danger. Not everyone will be led to experience hospitality in such dangerous contexts, but the lessons of hospitality from a position of weakness are an integral part of mission.²³ Our greatest model is Jesus, who lived in times of interfaith and interethnic conflict. He was both a host and a guest of those who were despised. He entered the house of Zacchaeus and accepted water from a Samaritan woman. They were considered foreign, heretic, immoral by people in their local community. Jesus welcomed them not as a host but as a guest, just as he would certainly become a guest to Leila and ask for her hospitality. And just as he became a guest in the lives of all of us who now call him Lord.

Conclusion
Many have this question on their minds: Should Christians support a temporary moratorium on hospitality during times of terrorism? I hope my article shows that they should not. Hospitality and welcome are Christian practices, as they are for Muslims. Let’s be hospitable in the name of Christ, without ignoring the unique challenges that times of terror bring. Let’s design practices that are not based on emotional responses only, but that shape a long-term future in which religious communities can peacefully live together because they know and respect each other deeply. I hope that the three models provided here will be useful resources for those who want to exercise this kind of interfaith hospitality. Although my article starts with the painful feelings of Leila, I trust that she will meet more and more people who will understand and practice sacred hospitality, act out of an inverted perspective, and live out the gospel of reconciliation.

ENDNOTES
1. “Welcome, Wisdom, and Wonder,” presentation at InterVarsity’s Urbana youth mission conference, December 29, 2015, available at https://vimeo.com/150282939 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNd0auxPdis.
2. In his book, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations (Edinburgh University Press, 2000), Hugh Goddard, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh, retraces major events characterizing the encounter between Christians and Muslims throughout history with its ups and downs.
3. See, for example, Qur’an 3:84, which reads, “We believe in God, and that which has been sent down on us, and sent down on Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and the Tribes, and in that which was given to Moses and Jesus, and the Prophets, of their Lord; we make no division between any of them, and to Him we surrender” (Arberry’s translation).
4. See Goddard, History of Christian-Muslim Relations.
5. See, for example, Mohammed Abu-Nimer and David Augsburger, eds., Peace-Building by, between, and beyond Muslims and Evangelical Christians (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009); or the Fall 2015 issue of Evangelical Interfaith Dialogue, ed. Cory Willson and Matthew Krabill, Fuller Theological Seminary, at http://cms.fuller.edu/EIFD/issues/Fall_2015/Fall_2015.aspx.
6. Marrakesh Declaration, January 2016, available at http://www.marrakeshdeclaration.org. Read J. Dudley Woodberry’s comments on this declaration at http://fuller.edu/Blogs/Global-Reflections/Posts/A-Christian-Response-to-a-Muslim-Declaration-of-Rights-for-Religious-Minorities/.
7. Read the analyses of several Christian missiologists regarding ISIS and other radical groups on the following websites: https://imeslebanon.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/how-isis-should-shape-our-view-of-the-church-and-its-mission-globally/; https://imeslebanon.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/beating-back-isis/; https://www.lausanne.org/content/lga/2015-03/the-challenge-of-radical-islam.
8. See, for example, Asma Afsaruddin, “Twenty-First Century Islam: A Lived, Dynamic, and Nurturing Religion,” in The Future of Religion: Traditions in Transition, ed. Kathleen Mulhern (Englewood, CO: Patheos Press, 2012), Kindle ed. loc. 2941-2992; also see the Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of ISIS, which at this date includes signatures of 126 Muslim leaders challenging Al-Baghdadi’s interpretations of the Qur’an and Hadith, at http://www.lettertobaghdadi.com.
9. Melissa Eddy, “Reports of Attacks on Women in Germany Heighten Tension Over Migrants,” New York Times Online, January 5, 2016, at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/world/europe/coordinated-attacks-on-women-in-cologne-were-unprecedented-germany-says.html?_r=0.
10. See the Qur’anic story of Abraham who lavishly welcomes the guests who announce to him the birth of a son (Qur’an 51:24-28); see also the following hadith from Sahih Bukhari (book 1, chapter 19, hadith 75) at http://sunnah.com/muslim/1/80: “He who believes in Allah and the Last Day should either utter good words or better keep silence; and he who believes in Allah and the Last Day should treat his neighbor with kindness and he who believes in Allah and the Last Day should show hospitality to his guest.”
11. Louis Massignon, L’Hospitalité Sacrée [Sacred Hospitality] (Paris: Nouvelle Cité, 1987), 121.
12. Silas Webster Allard, “In the Shade of the Oaks of Mamre: Hospitality as a Framework for Political Engagement between Christians and Muslims,” Political Theology, August 1, 2012.
13. Gordon Oyer, “Louis Massignon and the Seeds of Thomas Merton’s ‘Monastic Protest,’” at http://gordonoyer.weebly.com/uploads/2/7/4/8/27486123/oyer_84-96-1.pdf.
14. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996).
15. Miroslav Volf, “To Embrace the Enemy: Is Reconciliation Possible in the Wake of Such Evil?” Christianity Today, September 2001, at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/septemberweb-only/9-17-53.0.html.
16. J. Dudley Woodberry, Osman Zümrüt, and Mustafa Köylü, “Living with the ‘Other,’” in Muslim and Christian Reflections on Peace: Divine and Human Dimensions (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005), 3–22.
17. Elizabeth A. Kensinger, “Negative Emotion Enhance Memory Accuracy: Behavioral and Neuroimaging Evidence,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 16, no. 4 (2007): 213–218.
18. For the concept of “embrace,” see Volf, Exclusion & Embrace.
19. Philippians 2:5–16.
20. David W. Shenk, “The Gospel of Reconciliation Within the Wrath of Nations,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 32, no. 1 (2008): 3–9.
21. Ibid., 3.
22. Ibid.
23. See, for example, the article by Swiss missiologist Tobias Brandner, “Hosts and Guests: Hospitality as an Emerging Paradigm in Mission,” International Review of Mission 102, no. 1 (April 2013): 94-102.

The post A Moratorium on Hospitality? appeared first on Fuller Studio.

“Our ability as leaders in whatever form—whether that’s inside or outside the church or anything else in between—will be affected in part by how we see, and how we see is going to be affected by what shapes our capacity to perceive. Our perceptions are shaped by all kinds of things, and among the things our perception is shaped by is the influence of the arts. Culture Care meshes profoundly with everything else in the life of this seminary, and I don’t think Fuller—I don’t think the church and the world—can actually fulfill its mission without the elements of what culture care brings to the conversation.”

+ Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Seminary, reflecting with Brehm Center Director Mako Fujimura on the role of the arts in Christian ministry and theological education.

“One of the hardest things for a Christian artist is to feel boxed in by language, and because of that they feel like they only have a limited palette that they can experiment with, a limited canvas that they can paint with, or a limited language to speak with. Beauty transcends a lot of the walls that we create with our language.”

+ David Gungor, worship leader and founder of The Brilliance, reflecting on the language of Christian worship

“In Indian culture and Nepalese culture, it’s an act of respect and honor to give food to your guests, and they were sharing food out of love and respect despite the fact of not having anything. All they had were ramen noodles, and yet we shared a meal together. . . .That’s why I was there: to not only take pictures but to experience the love and kindness people have.”

+ Abhishek Scariya is the director of First Day Creative and a professional filmmaker and documentary photographer working in and around Bangalore, India, and is a friend of the Brehm Center at Fuller Seminary.

“If indeed God is reconciling all things to himself, he’s not only talking about the evangelical mandate in reconciling all humans to himself, but also all of nature and all of the cosmos. For some reason in the church especially, we seem to separate those two things. My role as an artist is to point to what’s already pointing. I join St. Augustine who said, ‘Everything in creation points to the Creator.’”

+ Berenice Rarig is an international installation and performance artist, founding director of FUZE, and a friend of the Brehm Center at Fuller Seminary.

“While pastoral training and learned skills should be encouraged, at times all the learning in the world is not the pastoral need of the moment. Often the need is to love and care for those precious people in the best way you can, knowing that God loved them and gave his life for them. How could I not love them as well—sheep though they may be? It has been such a privilege to not only be a musical leader, but a pastoral leader as well.”

+ Edwin Willmington, Fuller’s Composer-in-Residence and director of the Fred Bock Institute of Music, from an essay on musical leadership. He is pictured moderating a panel at a 2016 conference on Culture Care—an event he planned in conjunction with Mako Fujimura. Hear a sample of his compositions here.

“Beyond mere survival, beyond job function, bureaucratic specialization, or social roles, is a wide scope of human concern and responsibility. We are all given gifts for which we all must care. Just as we’re learning the importance of taking care of our environment to leave the earth healthy for future generations, so we must all care for culture so future generations can thrive.”

+ Mako Fujimura, visual artist and director of the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts, from his book Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for our Common Life. We’re happy to offer a free download of the first chapter of Mako’s book Culture Care here, and you can learn more about culture care and our worship, theology, and the arts curriculum here.

+ Fuller Seminary’s Composer-In-Residence Edwin Willmington, Professor of Worship, Theology, and the Arts Todd Johnson, David Gungor, and Fuller Seminary’s Chief Creative Lauralee Farrer discuss creativity, liturgy, and sacred time.

+ Mako Fujimura, The Brilliance songwriter and leader David Gungor, and Diane White-Clayton discuss creativity, artistic expression, and beauty.

+ The Brehm Center’s Artist-in-Residence Linnea Spransy reflects on creativity, the role of chaos and limitations in her artistic process, and prayer.

“We need artists to speak truth into the world. We need prophetic, fresh voices. We need provocation and a mirror held up before us to see our true selves. And more than anything, in the darkness and the tragedy that so many are faced with, we need beauty.”

+ Nate Risdon, program director for the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts. Read more here.

“What does it mean to do something from and for love? The word ‘amateur’ comes from the old French, meaning ‘lover of.’ Schooled or unschooled, paid or unpaid, the ‘lover-of’ is not driven by money or credential. You will hear artists say that they cannot turn away from their work because they cease to be themselves without it. There is one thing that explains the potency behind such an urge to create—it’s because the amateur is fueled by love.”

+ Lauralee Farrer, Fuller’s chief creative and editor-in-chief of FULLER magazine, reflecting on the role of both love and stable work in the life of the artist. Read more here.

“I borrow from Last Judgment pictures to depict figures attempting to rise, or aid others, or cringe in fear, sometimes all at the same time. The figures in these current installations are in a state of struggle. As they attempt to elevate themselves and focus on things above, they end up pushing others down. The ambiguity of which figure is dominating, or helping, or suppressing the other probes the complexity of what it means to act justly and how best intentions can detrimentally affect others.”

+ Brian Fee is a painter and educator who recently moved to California after living in New York City for close to 30 years. He currently resides in Pasadena with his wife, Maria Fee (PhD student).

“Why should artists move toward integrating their art experiences with theology? One reason is to combat the current approach to theology as solely an intellectual exercise. Knowledge also comes by way of embodiment—tacit information is just as valuable as the theoretical. Furthermore, while it is easier to love in theory, it is not the approach Christians should take. Love makes itself known through the material and through our interactions with the world. This is why when art and our daily encounters with the world enter into conversation with theology, far-away God-concepts suddenly draw near.”

+ Maria Fee (PhD student), adjunct professor and assistant for Brehm Center’s Institute of Art and Architecture, in a reflection for Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA). Read more and see examples of her work here.

“Alluding to the imposing cultural intersections and expansive thinking of Paul of Tarsus in the first century, Tenacious Convergence is an installation that embodies several significant junctures that have had timeless impact on the spread and survival of Christianity. Martyred for his unwavering beliefs, Paul’s intellect and spiritual tenacity birthed Christian theology and converged on the ultimate symbol of reconciliation.”

+ As a young seminarian, it was his artistic response to a theology class that inspired Roger Feldman to leave Fuller and pursue ministry as an artist. Over 40 years later, it is an artistic response to a conference on Paul featuring N. T. Wright that brought him back. A site-specific sculpture without right angles or straight lines, Tenacious Convergence is Feldman’s way of exploring in architectural form the unstable context of the first-century church to whom Paul wrote. Watch more from the Fuller Forum here.

“This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.”

+ The hymn “This is My Father’s World” is both a call to care for God’s creation and a reminder to cultivate culture with the same prayerful attention. Pictured below: The Brilliance performing at a 2016 conference at Fuller on the subject of culture care.

Further Reading

The Earth Is God’s: A Theology of American Culture
William Dyrness (Wipf & Stock, 2004)

Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue
William Dyrness (Baker Academic, 2001)

Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering
Mako Fujimura (IVP Press, 2016)

Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for our Common Life
Mako Fujimura (International Arts Movement and the Fujimura Institute, 2015)

Refractions: Further Thoughts on Art and Faith
Mako Fujimura (NavPress, 2009)

On Becoming Generative: An Introduction to Culture Care
Mako Fujimura (International Arts Movement and the Fujimura Institute, 2013)

Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue
Robert Johnston (Baker Academic, 2006)

Available Classes

Capstone Course – Maria Fee
Dante’s Comedy – William Dyrness
Theology in Song – Roberta King
Theology and Culture – Barry Taylor
Theology and Film – Rob Johnston, Catherine Barsotti, and Kutter Callaway
Theology and Literature – Rob Johnston
Theology and Popular Music – Barry Taylor
Touchstone Course – Todd Johnson, Kutter Callaway
World Religions in Art and Symbol – Evelyn Reisacher
Theology, Worship, and the Arts – William Dyrness

Learn more about the Brehm Center’s next Culture Care Summit, “Creating Beauty in Exile,” coming February 2017 and including speakers Philip Yancey, Dianne Collard, and American Book Award-winner Shann Ray

The post Culture Care appeared first on Fuller Studio.

When Nathan Graeser [MDiv ’12] and his buddies joined the Indiana National Guard straight out of high school, they didn’t think there was much of a chance they’d see combat. National Guard troops hadn’t been called since World War II. After a year of training, Nate enrolled as an undergraduate at Indiana University.

His second day of college was September 11, 2001.

Nate and his unit went on alert after the terrorist attacks that became known simply as “9/11,” ready to be deployed at any time—but for months on end, they weren’t. As freshman year turned to sophomore year, Nate decided to sign up for officer training and encouraged his best friend, Brett, to do the same. “Nah,” Brett replied: “I think I’ll get out of the military altogether.”

He didn’t get out in time. Two weeks later, their unit got the call. All were deployed to Afghanistan—except for those in officer training. Nate stayed in Indiana and said goodbye to his friends.

Brett didn’t come back. A few months before his slated release, he was killed by a landmine. The news rocked Nate’s world. “It was devastating. I lost my best bud,” he says. Almost as devastating was what he saw in his other friends who did make it back.

“They were absolute wrecks,” he says. “These guys had just been in combat for a year—but they got off the plane back home and there was no one to help them with that transition. Wives left them. They started getting DUIs. I was meeting with them, having coffee after coffee, listening and doing all I could to help, but it was like trying to stop a flood. I remember thinking, why am I the only one doing this?”

What you’re doing, Nate’s friends told him, is what chaplains do. This, along with a vivid call that came to him in a dream, convinced Nate to pursue chaplaincy and, as preparation, study at Fuller. Completing his MDiv in 2012, he became a chaplain soon after for the California Army National Guard 1-144 Field Artillery Battalion.

It wasn’t long, however, before Nate realized he needed more equipping. “One of my first days as a chaplain I saw a guy who was suicidal,” he remembers, “and I thought: ‘I don’t have the full skill set to deal with this.’ At Fuller I’d built a theological framework and understanding of suffering—I knew how to be present, to listen, to pray—but felt like I needed more tools to concretely apply what I’d learned in seminary.” He found those tools in a new military social work program at USC, which he completed over the following year. “Fuller was the ‘why,’ and USC was the ‘how,’” he says, explaining that the two programs complemented each other and prepared him to help veterans in a more fully orbed way.

Bringing together that seminary and social work training, Nate today lives, as he puts it, “in two worlds.” He dons his military uniform monthly to serve as chaplain to the 450 soldiers in his National Guard unit. The rest of the time he dons a suit jacket for his civilian job: as Community Program Administrator for USC’s Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans and Military Families, where he works to catalyze support for veterans across the Los Angeles area.

Unifying those seemingly diverse worlds is Nate’s fierce conviction that every struggling veteran needs the support of a community. Far from the one-man counseling center he was to his veteran friends back in Indiana, Nate now pours his heart into rallying and equipping others to come together and do what he couldn’t do alone.

MORAL INJURY AND THE COMMUNALIZATION OF GRIEF

In the course of his studies at USC, Nate came across the concept of “moral injury,” coined by psychiatrist and author Jonathan Shay, to describe the deep wounds that result when one has been involved in actions that violate his or her own moral code. The discovery was an “aha” moment for Nate: “It gave me language to describe what I had been seeing and talking about for a long time as both a chaplain and a social worker.

“You can treat the symptoms of PTSD clinically and medically, but moral injury encompasses the soul wounds that linger,” he says. “Soldiers need to accept and forgive themselves, and that’s a long, hard process.” Nate sees moral injury as a holistic way of understanding the suffering veterans carry—and sees the community, especially the faith community, as having a responsibility to help address it.

“When people are pulled from their community and sent to war, the community should help own the suffering they bring back with them,” he says. “That kind of pain is not meant to be borne alone. Veterans can’t make sense of it alone. They need others to come alongside them, to listen to their stories, to help hold their pain so they can deal with it.”

Shay calls this the “communalization of grief,” and one way to reinforce it, says Nate, is through ritual. One particularly meaningful one Nate leads is what he calls “the Warrior Circle” [more details below], in which both veterans and civilians gather to consider the impact of soldiers leaving for war and then returning to their communities, marking one another with ash to signify the internal and external wounds of battle all are called to bear together.

“You can agree or disagree with whether war is justified,” Nate says, “but either way there is a duty to heal, especially among the faith community. To me this is a form of peacemaking. How can you make peace without dealing with the thing that’s the antithesis of peace—war—and the wounds that result from it?”

BECOMING THE BEST PASSERS WE CAN BE

Nate’s work is broad as well as deep: encouraging communities not only to understand and share in veterans’ invisible burdens, but also to reach out with more visible forms of practical support—a primary focus of his day job at USC. In that world he oversees the Los Angeles Veterans Collaborative, a network of more than 250 organizations and stakeholders seeking together to identify and resolve the needs of local veterans.

Gathering monthly in downtown Los Angeles, those stakeholders include anyone who wants to come with an idea or service that might help veterans. At a recent meeting, the opening announcements revealed just how diverse those voices can be. Some offered traditional forms of help—employment, housing, legal aid—but others were more inventive: culinary arts classes, dance and music workshops for families, a compassion fatigue group. “We have 20 to 30 new people coming every month,” says Nate. “My goal is to build social capital around vets’ needs. Every time you see a responsive, effective program, there’s an engaged community behind it.”

Working groups that focus on different areas of interest foster brainstorming and pilot programs. One outcome is Text2Vet, a 24-hour service where veterans can connect, via text, with a peer veteran navigator who links them to the resources they need. Another is expanding a Meals on Wheels outreach so that, when volunteers deliver food to vets, they also conduct a wellness check—seeing how the vet is doing, monitoring medications, referring to other services.

It’s the “referring to other services” that’s fundamental to Nate. “We can support veterans much more holistically when we make those connections,” he says, finding an analogy in pro basketball point guard John Stockton. “The guy made NBA records for the most assists. He helped his teammates shine because he was such a great passer. We all need to be the best passers we can be.”

Nate brings this approach to his chaplaincy work as well. “Only about 20 percent of what I do there is what people think of as classic chaplaincy: praying with the soldiers, holding services and Bible studies. Mostly it’s soldiers coming to me with employment, family, life issues—and whenever I can, I connect them to someone in the community who can help them take the next step they need to take. We don’t separate our everyday lives from our spiritual lives.”

KEEPING THE LONG VIEW

As he does the work of helping to make Los Angeles a kinder place to its veterans, Nate looks to two Fuller professors who were particularly formative. The late ethics professor Glen Stassen modeled an approach that didn’t shy away from seemingly intractable challenges. “He tried to take on the world,” Nate recalls. “He was always asking hard questions—about homosexuality, about war. He showed us that we can actually bite off really complex issues, get at the root problems, talk about ways to solve them.” Pastoral counseling professor David Augsburger helped Nate grasp the deeply permeating influence of family and community systems: “None of us makes decisions completely objectively; others’ choices affect us tremendously. We’re interconnected, each a piece of a larger system.”

Though he didn’t yet know, while he was at Fuller, the extent of the work he’d be doing today, Nate says seminary helped shape him for it. “My experience at Fuller cemented in me the desire and willingness to take on the grand challenges that require a long-haul approach,” he says. “The easy problems have been solved. It’s the hard ones that are left. We have to know we won’t fix this today or even tomorrow, but with thoughtful, loving action over time, we can see real change.”

THE WARRIOR CIRCLE

Thoughtful rituals can help communities better understand and share in the moral injury—soul wounds—many veterans bear. Nate Graeser developed the Warrior Circle ceremony, briefly described below, as one such ritual he often leads in faith community contexts.

Those who have served in the military form a circle, with civilians forming a circle around them—signifying that servicemembers begin within a community that knows them. The servicemembers are then asked to walk away, passing between the civilians to go beyond the large circle, symbolizing their deployment. The civilians can no longer see them or connect with them.

Once outside the circle, an appointed “chief” marks the forehead of each servicemember twice with ash. The first stripe signifies the visible sacrifices and wounds of battle: the physical disabilities and health challenges many veterans carry back from war. The second stripe symbolizes the invisible wounds they take on: birthdays, anniversaries, and other special moments they’ve missed back home; relationship losses; moral and psychological injuries.

Veterans then move back inside the circle, signifying the end of their deployment. Civilians are called to notice how they must step aside to let the veterans back in, and to notice how they now look different, marked with ash. The veterans then, in turn, mark each civilian with one stripe as well—for the invisible wounds they are called to bear along with their veterans.

Finally, all are called to notice that they are back in the formation in which they began, yet there is a difference. Every individual shows the marks of battle. Some may carry more stripes, but all share in the sacrifices and burden of war.

The post More Than One Can Bear appeared first on Fuller Studio.

“Even as we never allow either ourselves or others to approach the heart apart from a humble, loving acceptance of the mystery of the heart, so we must approach others with an equal sense of mystery and with equal humility and love. If this rule is cordially obeyed, vengeance and intolerance will yield to patience and understanding, for love takes in the sanctity of another life and wishes for it nothing but good.”

+ Edward Carnell, Fuller’s second president, in his 1955 inauguration address. Pictured above are ashes from the Ash Wednesday service at Fuller’s All-Seminary Chapel—a service that begins the 40–day period of Lent when Christians everywhere remember their frailty and humble themselves before God.

“What if we rewarded a demonstrated ability to think well: to detect our own informational blind spots, generate and evaluate various viewpoints, and recognize what sorts of conclusions one can and cannot safely draw from evidence? . . . Intellectual progress is made when we find the weaknesses and strengths in each others’ positions and think of ourselves as part of a greater collaboration towards the pursuit of truth and insight, where ideas are not regarded as our possessions or a means for self-promotion.”

+ Thrive Professor of Developmental Science Justin Barrett, in an article on intellectual humility. Dr. Barrett directed the Thrive Center’s “Science of Intellectual Humility” project. Watch more lectures here.

“If I’m not relating to you in a way that threatens me, that makes me vulnerable, I can’t actually connect with you. Genuine involvement requires some degree of honest expression of the self. You’ve got to be there; you can’t pretend while you’re there and still really engage. You have to be present to the other person as a person yourself in order to see the other.”

+ Vasudevi Reddy (above), a Hindu scholar from University of Portsmouth, argued that humility is a necessary foundation for intellectual inquiry at the “Science of Intellectual Humility” conference—an event hosted by Fuller’s Thrive Center as part of a Templeton-funded research project. Watch more lectures here.

“Humility involves a recognition of a set of relationships—the relational character not just of our thinking but of our entire existence within a world of things and between that world and God. . . . The properly ordered self is characterized by gratitude but also by patience, by an awareness that there are many things that can contribute to my realization of myself that I cannot change, and I simply must await happening. Theologically, this properly ordered self recognizes that he or she is specifically contingent upon the person of Jesus Christ.”

+ Grant Macaskill, from the University of St. Andrews, lectured at the “Science of Intellectual Humility” conference on the gospels as a model for a distinctly Christian approach to intellectual humility. Watch his lecture here.

Practices of Humility

HUMILITY AND PREACHING

“Our humility is the fertile ground that draws the supernatural power of God to us. It is this power that we access when we preach, and it is revealed through our weakness. . . . When we humble ourselves as preachers we come to the end of our human power and ability to persuade others. It is at this humble intersection where God exchanges our weakness for his strength—our human power for supernatural power.”

+ After neglecting to mention a people group during her lecture at Urbana 2000, Brenda Salter McNeil [MDiv ’84] decided later to publicly apologize to the thousands in attendance. This humble act had a profound impact on all in attendance and caused Dr. McNeil to reflect years later on the power of weakness in preaching. Read her whole reflection here.

HUMILITY AND KNOWLEDGE

HUMILITY AND MINISTRY

“La humildad es un idioma que se aprende paso a paso. Demanda esfuerzo y práctica constante y, como todo idioma, si no lo practicas, se te olvida. Tantas veces hemos permitido que nuestro corazón se llene de otras cosas, menos de humildad. Un ministerio ‘sazonado’ con humildad siempre tendrá un buen sabor. Mi desafío diario es seguir aprendiendo a ser humilde y hablar el idioma de la humildad, de manera que pueda expresar mi amor a Dios y a los demás.”

(“Humility is a language acquired step by step. It requires effort and consistent practice because, like any other language, it can be lost if it isn’t practiced. We often allow our hearts to be filled with things other than humility. A ministry seasoned with humility will always retain its good flavor. My daily challenge is to continue learning how to be humble and how to speak the language of humility, so that I may express my love for God and others.”)

+ Carlos Cevallos, student, reflecting on humility and the Integrated Studies course on vocation—also know as the Touchstone course. Read more from him and many other students on the Touchstone Blog.

HUMILITY AND PRIVILEGE

HUMILITY AND DEVELOPMENT

“We need a balanced humility that affirms the worth and gifts that God has given us and also claims the weaknesses and sin that work to undermine our Christian life. We need a humility that allows us to set aside all we know, save our knowledge of Christ, so that in our weakness the poor may find strength (1 Cor 2:1–3). We must understand ourselves as stewards, stewards of the gifts God has given us, stewards of our relationship with the poor, stewards of the resources we bring to the community and that the community already has.”

+ Bryant Myers, professor of transformational development in the School of Intercultural Studies, in his book Walking with the Poor

HUMILITY AND FILM

“One of the greatest things a film does is put us in a place where we are almost forced into practicing attentiveness—and of course, attentiveness is linked to humility. If I sit and listen to someone else for two hours, and if I really listen, then I cannot help but be humbled. My sense of self is smashed. I am not the subject here, anymore; I am the receiver.”

+ Film critic Alissa Wilkinson, in an article reflecting on approaches to watching film—commissioned by Brehm Center’s Reel Spirituality film institute.

HUMILITY AND RACE

“When you don’t cultivate what it means to be humble in the context of the sociological imagination, then your humility is only going to be humility that translates to people who come from your background. All of our understanding of humility and how that connects to leadership is contextual. If we’re coming from a higher place of power in society, our attempts to be humble can get lost in translation in some really interesting ways.”

+ Fuller Forum lecturer Christena Cleveland, critiquing racial blind spots to the idea of servant leadership, in a conversation with Tod Bolsinger, vice president for vocation and formation. Watch more from their conversation here.

HUMILITY AND INTERFAITH CONNECTION

“If other religions truly do have some relation with God, then we must be open to receiving what God might have wrought among them. Just as Israel was awaiting the coming of the Messiah, so too are we now awaiting Christ’s return. As we live in this penultimate time we must be humble in our claims to certainty. The postponement of certainty, our humility before the work of God in other religions, elevates
the legitimacy of the religious other so that we might also be their guests and receive their blessings.”

+ Alexander Massad, in an essay on the differences between hospitality and humility for Fuller’s Evangelical Interfaith Dialogue Journal.

HUMILITY AND RELATIONSHIPS

+ (Below) Organized in the style of Jewish midrash, the image below gathers commentary on Philippians 2:3-11 (NRSV) from essays written in honor of Mark Labberton’s presidential inauguration. Read more interpretations of humility and the ”mind of Christ” here.

+ Pictured left is the “Yoke of Service,” a presidential stole given to Mark Labberton during his inauguration. Designed by Fuller alumna Olga Lah, the stole’s seven crosses in three flowing lines represent the Spirit moving over places and cultures, and the blue color signifies the living water that flows around the world via the Fuller community. Inside the stole is an inscription from John 13:34: “Love one another, as I have loved you.” When Dr. Labberton wears it this verse lies over his heart, reminding him that he is deeply loved and that God calls him to serve out of a love for others. Learn more about the presidential symbols of office here.

Available Classes

Practices of Christian Community with Mark Lau Branson (and other faculty)
Spiritual Formation and the Twelve Steps with Dale Ryan and Steve Yamaguchi
Spiritual Traditions and Practices with Richard Peace

The post Humility appeared first on Fuller Studio.

A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINE POHL

Christine Pohl’s writings on hospitality have influenced my own thinking and practices about life as a Christian living in community. Dr. Pohl generously shared her insights on the topic of hospitality in a thoughtful and inspiring conversation from which the following article was taken. —Miyoung Yoon Hammer

MIYOUNG YOON HAMMER: I would like to explore what it means to restore hospitality as it was intended to be practiced. With that in mind, I’m wondering if you could begin by talking about the origins of hospitality.

CHRISTINE POHL: I don’t think we can state definitively what the origin of hospitality is, because it’s a very ancient practice valued by most ancient cultures. Perhaps we could say that its origin is in human vulnerability, sociality, and longings for community. As a stranger a person is often vulnerable, and when they’re traveling, they’re very dependent on the kindness of other strangers, other people whose community they’re trying to enter. So I suspect that hospitality began as a form of mutual aid. Before there were hotels and restaurants and inns, everyone, whether they had resources or not, was dependent on the kindness of strangers when they were traveling. Everybody was, in a sense, vulnerable.

As a practice, hospitality was really important to human well-being. Oftentimes cultures associated it with their gods or with some understanding of the divine: that protection and provision for strangers was linked in some way to concerns about divine things.

I think the other early component to hospitality was almost always eating together. That’s a profound form of mutual recognition and respect for human relationships which, again, has its origins in human sociality—in being made for a community.

MYH: An assumption I have is that when we have to start teaching something explicitly that was once an organic part of our lives, it means there’s been a shift away from how things once were. Does our having to give instruction about hospitality and what it means to be hospitable suggest that it is something that has been lost and needs to be recovered?

CP: A practice like hospitality has to be talked about and taught in some ways, or “caught” at least, for the next generation to pick it up. It’s true that one of the reasons that we need more explicit teaching today about the history and practice of hospitality is because in many ways it has gotten lost, at least in US culture. People stopped telling the stories about it. What’s interesting historically is the number of stories woven through various traditions about the practice of hospitality: the surprise in who the guest turns out to be, or who the host is, or in the blessing associated with it. When people stopped talking about it, or took it for granted, or became too busy for it, the whole practice began to change. You can make an argument that many of the pieces of the practice of hospitality have endured historically but that it has stopped being a coherent whole—that we’ve lost the sense of the practice being located in a larger narrative.

MYH: A couple of words you have used to describe hospitality are mutuality and vulnerability, and that vulnerability necessitates hospitality. Perhaps, at least in Western American culture, while mutuality may be valued, vulnerability really isn’t.

CP: That’s true. We can protect ourselves from vulnerability if we’re middle class and have resources. We’re not nearly as dependent on the kindness of strangers as we used to be except in emergencies, when we again see hospitality played out in more traditional ways. People do want to show hospitality and not only in emergency situations—but the reality is that most of us today don’t depend on strangers if we’re traveling; we have hotel rooms and restaurants for that.

MYH: You’ve visited with a number of different faith communities and engaged in conversations about hospitality. In your book Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition you wrote, “Sustained hospitality requires a light hold on material possessions and a commitment to a simplified lifestyle.” Can you comment about this connection between holding lightly to material possessions and having a deeper sense of hospitality?

CP: Hospitality by definition involves welcoming people into a space that’s lived in— and some possessions are certainly helpful for people to be comfortable. But there is a certain irony in the reality that the more possessions one has, the more one can feel the need to protect and care for those possessions and thus be less willing to risk welcoming strangers into their context. That’s not always true, but it’s often the case.

What was notable among the faith communities I visited was the choice to live pretty simply. That can make it more comfortable oftentimes for the strangers who are being welcomed. Neither they nor the hosts have to worry about anyone harming possessions. People still care about their possessions, which is why I talk about a lighter hold rather than no possessions at all. It’s a complicated relationship: possessions usually make things more comfortable, but too many can actually make welcoming others uncomfortable and even unworkable as hosts become more protective.

MYH: Would you say that hospitality is a cultural tradition or a spiritual tradition, or is it both?

CP: It’s definitely both. Hospitality is practiced in every culture. Different cultures emphasize or treasure different aspects of hospitality, but almost all practice it one way or another.

It is interesting, however, how often hospitality is connected in some way to blessing and to God. Hospitality is certainly foundational in the Christian tradition, but it is decidedly also spiritual in its connection to mystery—to the presence of God or angels— so it’s very much a spiritual tradition that is often linked to blessing. In the stories involving hospitality in the Old Testament, blessing is very frequently present. Strangers turn out to be angels, or guests bring good news, or they offer the promise of a longed-for child. Ultimately hospitality is very much both a cultural and a spiritual practice.

MYH: When it comes to hospitality, we more often think about what the host is giving. But you’re talking about what the stranger has to offer.

CP: It goes both ways, and that’s part of the mystery and the wonder of it. In the Christian tradition, hospitality is connected to Jesus being both guest and host to us. Something that stood out to me in talking with practitioners of hospitality—and resonated with my own experience of welcoming refugees and people who are homeless—was that we so often go into these interactions thinking that we’re the one who is providing the benefit, the help, the care our guest needs. In fact, it is the guest who brings the blessing. My life has been changed through these kinds of interactions. You do really have a sense that you’re standing on holy ground when you’re interacting with strangers. It can be quite a remarkable thing.

Today hospitality is generally understood more as a duty to welcome others, but that differs from the early Christian understanding, which was a much richer one. The tradition of hospitality in those times was so powerful because there was an assumption that there would be blessings for everyone, both host and guest. Not that it wasn’t also difficult or risky at times, because it was. But the expectation that God would be present was very strong in the earlier centuries.

MYH: How did we lose hospitality as a core part of our tradition? While very much alive and explicit in some Christian communities, as a tradition it seems to have been lost in the greater church community. What story do you tell about that loss?

CP: It is a complicated story with cultural, political, and socioeconomic components to it. Hospitality, as a robust practice, has often been associated with an earlier period when social and economic arrangements were different. My work has focused on tracing a very Western understanding of hospitality—starting in my own context and then looking back historically. The story would be traced out a little differently for other cultures around the world.

In the West around the modern period, hospitality stopped being, in a sense, as useful as it had previously been. It wasn’t seen as a particularly helpful way to meet the needs of people anymore, especially as there were more and more needy individuals disconnected from communities. It also increasingly was misused as a way of reinforcing power and privilege. By the time we got to the Reformation, the reformers were more hesitant to see the value of hospitality in the church. We still recognize it of course, and Calvin is particularly eloquent about the importance of hospitality toward refugees. But older trajectories of hospitality—crossing social boundaries, building community, offering respect to people different from yourself—got lost. One of the stories I tell in my book is about John Wesley in the 18th century, who for the most part recovered the activities and practices associated with hospitality but didn’t ever call it hospitality, because by that time, the word “hospitality” was associated with a very different set of commitments and activities.

MYH: If not hospitality, what did he call it?

CP: He didn’t call it anything; he just did it. He even talked about how these acts were recovering ancient traditions, but he talked about it in terms of having small groups in homes or making a place for strangers, even forming a “stranger’s friend society.” All of the practices were there—for example, church leaders sharing meals with widows and orphans—but without the vocabulary of hospitality, and if you don’t use the vocabulary, it’s harder to connect it with the ancient tradition. So it’s a bit of a complicated story. The tradition endured more visibly in the Catholic church, particularly through the Catholic Worker Movement, which was connected to a Benedictine monasticism that never really lost its connection to historic hospitality.

MYH: Why is it important to restore hospitality as a Christian tradition?

CP: It’s fundamental to our identity and our lifestyle as Christians. It’s what makes us distinctive, because Jesus called us to a particular kind of hospitality that welcomes those who often, on the face of it, don’t seem to have as much to offer. When Jesus says in Matthew 25 that in welcoming the stranger or the needy person we might be welcoming him, and when he says in Luke 14 that when we give dinner parties, to invite not friends and family but the poor and the lame, he’s talking about inviting people who are usually excluded and seeing them as an important part of our lives and our communities. That’s a distinctive understanding of hospitality. Along with that is the possibility of blessing: that we might be welcoming Jesus, and that clearly God is our host.

Christian hospitality flows out of a life of gratitude. We’ve been welcomed into fellowship with God, and that welcome came at a huge cost. The connections between gratitude and hospitality, between God’s welcome and our welcome, feed and undergird the Christian life. Losing track of hospitality means we have lost a very beautiful and life-giving practice—often difficult, but beautiful and life-giving.

MYH: Would you say that hospitality ought to look different when it is lived out by Christians as opposed to non-Christians?

CP: I think it ought to look distinctive because of Jesus’ identification with the least of these. In the historical Christian tradition there was significant teaching that we shouldn’t use hospitality instrumentally, to gain advantage. It shouldn’t be what the early writers called “ambitious hospitality.” We should give it as a response to the welcome that we have received—and to that extent, it is a distinctive kind of hospitality. We should be willing and interested in truly making room, especially for people who don’t usually have a place.

MYH: Concerning the broader social landscape, you have written about the power of recognizing and acknowledging others, and the role of hospitality in respecting the dignity and equal worth of every person and transcending social differences. As we consider the power of recognizing, how are Christians called to live out hospitality in the face of challenging and important social issues such as immigration, same-sex marriage, and racism?

CP: The first move on the part of a Christian should be in the direction of welcome. It’s not the only move, but hospitality as a tradition challenges us. It’s a helpful framework for thinking about some of these issues. It also functions as a warning because Christians haven’t always done very well on these things.

For me, hospitality means our impulse is going to be to love as God loves, to welcome as God welcomes. This posture, of course, doesn’t address all of the issues that come up with the challenges we’re facing today. Hospitality is complex and not the only practice that Christians have to take seriously, but hospitality helps us think about the power of dynamics, the recognition issues, the guesthost relations.

There is, though, a tension between welcoming strangers and maintaining identity and community—a tension that’s never fully resolved. It is actually traceable right back to covenantal understandings of faithfulness. Hospitality, at least, helps us name some of the challenges we face and reminds us that when people’s basic well-being is at stake, our call is to make room, to offer welcome.

Some see hospitality as the full answer to these challenging issues, but I don’t believe that hospitality alone can be our response. Other practices such as fidelity and truthfulness are critical as well, and sometimes they interact in a complex way with hospitality. Most significant of all, to me, is gratitude: hospitality becomes grudging and distorted if it does not flow from a life of gratitude. Committing to a tradition of hospitality grounded in gratitude, it seems to me, would take us a long way down the road toward faithfully responding to God’s love—as we recognize the value in every human being and come together with respect, integrity, and truth.

The post Restoring Hospitality: A Blessing for Visitor and Host appeared first on Fuller Studio.