Welcome to Fight Club [Christian Edition]

“Welcome to Fight Club.  If this is your first night, you have to fight…with the devil.”

Proving, yet again, that my career as satirist is over even before it started, The New York Times reports on a rather unique church which  includes the ancient apostolic techniques of a cage match and checking out each others six-pack.  Xtreme Ministries, “Where Feat, Fist, and Faith Collide,” is a ministry led by Pastor John Renken that uses mixed martial arts and combat sports to reach a younger, unchurched population.  The Times reports:

"Bringing the Word of God written on my abs!"

Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in. Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events…

“Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.”

It is unfortunate that this is oh so real for I cannot laugh as hard as if it was published on The Onion or if Der Wolf had given it to me as a joke.  Sadly, it is not a joke but something someone takes up with the utmost seriousness.  I have been an Evangelical before and I am aware of the “Rock/Paintball/Skateboard for Jesus” mentality that is seeking after every ephemeral desire to attract more people to their doors.  It is a truth which shall ring out until the end of time that some fallacies remain timeless though they cannot meet the test of time.  Marrying the spirit of the age, Christ is reduced to a philosopher, or a coach (see below), or even Hulk Hogan.

Strangest of all, with these trends to attract more people, is that the ministry can only last as long as the trend remains.  In the 1960’s there was the Folk Mass playing off of the success of Keith Green and Larry Norman, but now the only ones who attend the Folk Mass are the Boomers who refuse to believe the 60’s are over and have little consequences on the lives of everyone else.  To marry the spirit of the age is to be stuck in that age and sentenced to absurdity rather than to look for the timeless qualities which Christianity has given us.

That being said, I welcome you to Fight Club for Jesus!  We’ll be welcoming guest referee/preacher the Fight Pastor next week after a beat down of our sins.  Remember maggots, as der Wolff tells us, “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. Until you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you are made of the same decomposing matter as everything else!”

"Agnus dei, you teach us to bring the smack down, have mercy on them."

 

An Open Letter To The World

Dear World:

Knock it off.  I keep desiring to re-enter the world of political satire now that my writing has matured since my last job as a satirist.  Truly, I would love to undertake such a sacred art again.  However, you keep doing the very things that comes out of my sick and demented imagination.  There is a difference though.  I regard these ideas as comical in their absurdity and pitch them to rolling eyes and nervous laughter.  You on the other hand see them as brilliant moments in policy and put it to a vote.  How can I survive in such a world?

For example, today one of your more enlightened nations was reported to be putting the rights of animals to a vote so that they could have lawyers and be represented in court (I even provided the Times article here).  That’s right, in the same nation where you outlawed minarets and denied a people one of their basic rights of religious freedom you will grant the power of attorney to Babe so that he can take Farmer Brown or the dog to court.  How can I compete with that?  I am running out of ideas and you are denying me a job.  Oh well, I suppose I can write about Republicans being concerned about deficits after eight years of drunken spending…oh wait.

Yours,

The Catholic Coffee Drinker.

 

St. Kaldi, Pray For Us

Ok, Kaldi, the mythical goat farmer who introduced coffee to Sufi monks, is not a saint.  However, I hold him in high regard for bringing us further proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy and it is thus I have always had a fondness for the ritual and tradition of Ethiopian coffee.

Ethiopia has a rich tradition of coffee and it is from there that God delivered his bean-sized grace throughout the world.  Recently this tradition was celebrated at the Northwest African American Museum with the smells and bells to entice all the sense.  Wish I could have been there, but do please read the report from the Seattle Times.

For all other folks in the Pacific Northwest, please do get a pound of Wandering Goat and send it on my way.  Thank you kindly!

 

Suggestion for Pubs: Turn It Off.

There have been many accusations thrown around that I am indeed actually seventy-five going on twenty-five, which I can understand given my tendency to complain about the things that only the elderly seem to care about.  I suppose it’s enough for some of my more progressive friends to wish death panels would get the go-ahead already.  That being said, this recent post got me thinking about one such pet-peeve that I believe could be universal, that being a request for silence while I am eating or drinking.

“Music at dinner is an insult to both the cook and the musician,” Mr. Chesterton tells us, and I know that the Inklings made it a point to find a pub which had no radio (and later avoided the TV).  While music performed by a live musician is certainly preferable, even more so in a pub, I echo Chesterton when I ask that the pub be made a refuge from the television.  Pubs were meant to be a place of conversation and a communitas which we see disappearing from the life of modern men; we let the Italians have their piazzas, and we might even join them when on a holiday in Italy, but we in the rainy and cold climates prefer the warmth of smoke, a fire, good friends, and endless pints.  Staying on the parallel of the piazza and the pub, I wonder if any one would be alright with somebody dragging a flat screen by the fountains in Piazza S. Maria in Trastevere simply to watch the Italian equivalent of “Bones” or “Survivor”.  It would be the ruining of a stage and would be seen as tasteless as a reading of A Modest Proposal in the nursery.

So it is that I beg my pub owners to give me just one hour of silence, filled only by the

McMenamins Little Red Shed

sounds of conversation and perhaps fiddler or two.  Let us be like my favorite of Pubs, McMenamins Little Red Shed, where we will have cigars and beer serenaded by the cracks of burning wood, rain on the room and laughter from each tiny corner.

Thanks for allowing me time to rant, dear reader.

 

In Honor of Doppelganger Week

The Catholic Coffee Drinker and Mr. Chesterton

 

Ralph McInerny, requiescat in pace

Just a simple post to ask for the prayers for the repose of the soul of Dr. Ralp McInerny, a writer who has had a greatimpact in my life.  I was always wanting to meet him, but it shall be delayed just a bit longer.

Fr. James V. Schall has a moving memoriam here.

 

Bloody Double Standards

Though I try to avoid particularly controversial subjects in this forum, I can’t keep quiet about the efforts of some groups to censor and remove Focus on the Family’s Super Bowl Ad featuring Tim Tebow’s mother discussing her decision to carry her son to term and raise him, against the advice of doctors.  The ad is certainly pro-life and makes an attempt to appeal to the remaining two things that most Americans hold in common: hyper-emotionalism and the love of celebrity.  Reuters reports that Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center has asked CBS to pull the commercial stating,

“We are calling on CBS to stick to their policy of not airing controversial advocacy ads … and this is clearly a controversial ad.”

CBS no longer follows this policy, by the way, and has thus made the decision to run the ad for the agreed $3.2 million during the Super Bowl.

What bothers me about Womens Media Center and other groups that engage in this sort of behavior is that there is an implicit double standard that is at the heart of why I usually stay out of this debate.  Mind you, Conservative groups engage in this type of behavior as well but this is the story that made me want to finally write something down.  Liberal and Conservative groups both pay lip service to the First Amendment and the importance of the Market Place of Ideas, but will then try to use courts, legislation, and (in this case) the market to root out any speech which merely disagrees with theirs.  Bullying and censorship have no place in a free society and all those who engage in such activities are greater enemies of liberty than any man armed with explosive underwear.

In particular I recall the many protest rallies over George W. Bush speaking at university grounds across America and the flurry of protests that seemed to follow him.  Fast forward a few years later and we see President Barack Obama speaking at Notre Dame with equal public protest and pundits on the left call for a greater understanding, openness to debate, and Notre Dame resorts to even arresting non-violent protesters.  What I am thus advocating in these examples is that debate must be open and whatever standard we choose for a debate ought to be a standard we can apply at all times.  If liberty means only hearing the thoughts which are in conformity with your own, what sort of state are we then living in?

Pardon me, my dear reader, I do believe I have ranted enough.  Please feel free to post your anger back at me.

 

I’m Not the Only One With Orthodox Envy

Wheaton College, an exceptional school that deserves its reputation as “the Harvard of Evangelicalism” has started a Center for Early Christian Studies which will offer several areas of study focusing on the first five-hundred years of Christianity.  Obviously, this is an interesting development that has caught more than a few glances from Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholic thinkers, especially in light of the firing of Joshua Hochschild whose conversion to Catholicism caused complications while he was teaching at Wheaton.

As someone who converted to Catholicism from an Evangelical-Pentecostal background largely through the writings of the Fathers, I always enjoy seeing others of my former home reading the Early Fathers and offering their analysis.  Obviously it presents challenges, but if the Faith is true then they should be welcomed.  All the same, I have often believed that real ecumenicism needs to go back to the Early Church and find the common ground to produce conversation that moves beyond the strange “let’s be nice” nonsense that comes out of most ecumenical conversations.  I raise my glass to Wheaton–though it is off campus as it is a dry campus–and hope the school enjoys its new endeavor.

Ancient Faith Radio has a very interesting look into this development here.  I’ll write more as grad school allows me more time.

UPDATE:  I completely forgot that Chris Armstrong, a fun and informative blogger and sometimes editor at Christianity today has blogged on this issue a bit too.  This is what happens when your blogging is as rare as an ecumenical council (Church-nerd joke text/).

 

My Confession of Envy

I realize that this is my thirds straight post on the Orthodox Church, but I simply can’t help but to find myself showing a little envy for the faithful of Eastern Orthodoxy.  No worries, dear reader, this is not me becoming Orthodox (though I appreciate and admire their many practices and beliefs) but I simply find myself wishing that Roman Catholics could fly under the radar like our brothers in the East (or, as they at least do so in America).  It seems that no matter what the Catholics do, they will be criticized and thrown through fire by our society, meanwhile few even are aware that the Eastern Orthodox exist.

This envy especially became apparent with the news reports of the Catholic welcoming in the Anglicans.  All kinds of nastiness is given, questions of motives, and whatever name calling the simple engage in.  However, the Eastern Orthodox Church in Moscow and Antioch had started opening their doors to an Anglican/Western Use almost a century ago and this has included bringing in entire Anglican parishes as recently as 1991.  At no time, as far as I can find, did the New York Times reserve a space for decrying that the Orthodox were poaching Anglicans and Roman Catholics, that the Orthodox were behind the times or any of that nonsense.

In general, the mass of Americas media legions want to see the Catholic church as backwards and bigoted, but I often wonder how they would feel if they encountered a traditional priest of Orthodoxy.  I remember one encounter with a Serbian Orthodox priest who, when I inquired about attending Divine Liturgy informed me, “We would love to welcome you.  However, I must tell you that you are in schism and thus we can’t offer you communion.  But please join us for coffee afterwards.”  There was no cruelness in his voice, he was merely stating a fact from his perspective and in general he and the parish were among the kindest people I’ve ever met.  However, in this time there is no way a Roman priest could say that and not have throngs of freaked out parishioners claiming that he’s bigoted, anti-ecumenical and unchristian.  In fact, how much ire would be brought about if every Roman Catholic parish published this in their bulletin?

For some people communion is merely the opportunity to share
a sense of “fellowship” with everyone present regardless of their beliefs and practices. We believe that such a practice cheapens and trivializes communion and denies the basic Biblical understanding of what communion is all about.
As St. Paul says, those who do not discern the Body and Blood of Christ partake of their own peril (I Corinthians 11:27-28). While many non-Orthodox Christians may individually hold the same or similar views as we hold, we cannot examine each person on their beliefs as they come to the altar rail, so only Orthodox Christians may receive communion.

I can imagine now that people would clamor that they had some “right” to the blessed Body and Blood of Christ, which is born as much from a misunderstanding of the Eucharist as much as it is a misunderstanding of rights.

I am happy to be Catholic, but I at times can’t help but to wonder what it would be like to have an Orthodox faith in America and no one think me backwards or bigoted.

 

Why Can’t I Be Like This Guy?

Father Stephen writes yet another post that makes his blog required daily reading for me.  Reposting an earlier post, the Orthodox priest writes:

Knowing God is not a distraction from knowing other persons, nor is knowing other persons a distraction from knowing God. But, like God, knowing other persons is not the same thing as thinking about them, much less is it objectifying them.

Knowing others is so far from being a distraction from knowing God, that it is actually essential to knowing God. We cannot say we love God, whom we have not seen, and hate our brother whom we do see, St. John tells us. We only know God to the extent that we love our enemies (1 John 4:7-8).

And this matters.

This blog does not matter – except that I may share something that makes it possible for someone to know God or someone may share something that allows themselves to be known. This matters.

Make sure to check out his blog, Glory to God For All Things, as well as his weekly podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.