We Live in a World of Buffet-Style Religion: Highlights from SENT Conference

Back in July I traveled to Detroit for the Lutheran Hour Ministries Global SENT Outreach Conference where I was invited to speak on the topic of Christian encounters with the world's religions and sundry spiritualities. 

I remember a few things from the trip: 1) I loved Detroit, its food/beer culture, its waterfront, and its people; 2) I spent the night in the airport with a guy who talked about Dungeons & Dragons at 2am in the morning (lovely); 3) it gave me an opportunity to share my "theology of religion" with a wider audience. 

*For more on religion & culture, follow @kchitwood.

The conference was organized by Lutheran Hour Ministries who shared in their conference report:

More than 1,000 people gathered on July 24-27 in Detroit, Mich. to hear speakers, musicians, and entertainment...these photos, quotes, and videos tell an abbreviated story of how God worked through the Lutheran Hour Ministries SENT Outreach Conference...

Along with Rev. Gregory Seltz, speaker of the Lutheran Hour, Rev. Dr. John Nunes of Valparaiso University, Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann of Concordia Seminary St. Louis, Rev. Dominic Rivkin of LINC Los Angeles, Jon Acuff, Jon Dansby, and others I was included in LHM's Storify highlights.

Reflecting on the feedback provided to me from conference participants and from the Storify, I want to ruminate on the major takeaways from my approach to a "theology of religion." Here goes. 

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I love this. Why? Because I stole it. Author and interfaith activist Eboo Patel gets all the credit for this one. In his book Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America Patel wrote of the need for us to flip the script in our theology from one of antagonism and conflict to one of affinity and compassion. His quote was in reference to the need for Christians to befriend Muslims. While mine referenced Hindus in this presentation the point is the same -- inspired by Christ's actions in John 4 with the Samaritan woman at the well we must endeavor to befriend the "religious other."

Indeed, we must cease thinking of the "religious other" as "other." Instead, recognizing the imago Dei -- image of God -- within each of us, we must see others as part of the same human story, unique in their formation, important in God's creation. In the words of Lesslie Newbigin, it is recognizing that "no human life can be rightly understood apart from the whole story of which each life-story is a part." This posture can lead to mutual understanding, bonds of friendship and solidarity, and common efforts toward peace. 

Of course, this can, and will, be hard. Why? 

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People often ask me what the fastest growing religion in the U.S. is. Is it Islam? Mormonism? Evangelicalism? Which "-ism" is it Ken? 

It's Me-ism. 

Due to forces of individualization, "normal nihilism," and a general belief in the supernatural and the importance of the spiritual we are all on our own spiritual journeys, mixing-and-matching our religious sentiments like patrons at a Sizzler buffet. 

Because, as Paul W. Robinson wrote, “the assumptions, attitudes, & understandings that lead to the practice of mix-and-match religion surround us" we tend to pick-and-choose what we like, and what we want, from each and every religion and/or spirituality. A little bit of Hindu meditation? Sure. Some Buddhist prayer beads? Heck yeah! Christianity's Jesus? Bring it on. Sufi poetry for meditation? Two helpings please! 

While I make light, the truth is that it is difficult to navigate the religious landscape we encounter because it is so stunningly diverse. Not only do we live in a pluralistic context outside of us, but we also wrestle with pluralist tendencies and tensions within our own spiritual journey as we choose between various spiritual perspectives, orthodoxies, heresies, and practices delivered to us on websites, podcasts, apps, sermons, and publications. 

Despite the stunning diversity, our challenge remains the same. Again, Patel wrote, "The question is how to have a vertical relationship with one’s own understanding of the divine and a horizontal relationship with the diversity of the world." We must not only ascribe to truth as we know it, but be comfortable enough with a plurality of truth-claims to hold peaceable conversations with others and together work toward the resolution of conflict and the blessing of our communities. 

Although we may struggle with our own journey and others cannot quite explain their "spiritual-but-not-religious" perspective, we must still lean into these relationships with mercy, truth, love, patience, and grace. 

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The U.S. is suffering from a case of multi-generational and multi-cultural  religious illiteracy —what Stephen Prothero calls, “religious amnesia.” The United States, in spite of its established secularism, is a thoroughly pluralistic nation with robust expressions of myriad world religions everywhere from the wheat fields of Iowa to the buckled asphalt of Los Angeles. Yet, we are simultaneously “a nation of religious illiterates” who flunk the most basic of quizzes on religion — even our own. 

To the rescue come “world religion Bible studies” that attempt to help Christians navigate their world’s stunning religious pluralism.  The problem is, most “world religion Bible studies” are terrible. 

While most of the leaders of these studies start with the intention to help their parishioners learn more about the world’s religions, the way they go about it usually leads to nominally increased religious literacy. Even worse, these studies often exacerbate pre-existing prejudices or presuppositions about studied worldviews. 

Instead of informed, generous, and balanced studies most devolve into bullhorn-style, biased, polemic, opinion-infused and horribly misinformed misadventures into religions and worldviews. 

Still, there is a need for Christians, and others, to study the world's religions -- to listen and learn, to dialogue, to work together, to dine with one another, and build bridges of understanding, friendship, and common cause. 

*To read more on how to fix "the world religion Bible study" approach, click HERE. 

These are the highlights that LHM shared. There was other feedback as well and I could spend days writing about it, but if you want to dig deeper into my "theology of religion" and the approach I advocate for Christians to take toward other religions and worldviews please take the time to read, and respond to, my recent paper, "Building Bridges: Toward Constructing a Christian Foundation for Inter-Religious Relationships in the Shift from Religious Privilege to Spiritual Plurality."

I want to thank LHM again for inviting me to come and speak. I pray that this conversation is both compassionate and constructive, building upon the church's theological foundations to construct a common path toward reconciliation and peace-making in the world today. 

*For more on religion & culture, follow @kchitwood.

Observing Advent: from contemplation to action

I was being a bad Christian on Wednesday. Texting, Tweeting, reading articles on my iPhone during an Advent service. But what began as a bored foray into digital distraction ended up becoming a pilgrimage through the heart of Advent itself. 

As I scrolled through Twitter and clicked on articles on Facebook, these are the headlines that grabbed my attention:

• Somali Militants, Al-Shabaab Kill 36 in Kenya Border Attack
• Elephant ivory poaching 'out of control'
• Wave of Protests Slam Ferguson After Grand Jury Doesn't Indict Officer
• Ebola death toll rises to 6331 as Sierra Leone overtakes Liberia cases
• As fears rise in Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims exodus grows
• The gigantic disaster of the CIA’s torture program
• 2 Hostages Killed in Yemen as US Rescue Effort Fails

With my ears and body I heard, felt, and smelled Advent. Songs of expectation, the scent of a candle lit to remember the days and contemplate the coming King, and a sermon that spoke of a hope reverberating through the echo halls of the Old Testament narrative. 

At the same time, with my fingers I scrolled through sad stories and my eyes read despairing diaries of pain, loss, oppression, disease, decay, disaster, and death. 

In what I can only take as guidance from the Holy Spirit, the two realms of thought — that which was occurring in the physical space of my church and the digital sanctuary on my phone and in my mind — converged and suddenly the season of Advent, and its attendant spiritual posture and discipline, became crystal clear to me. 

Advent is a season of celebrating the light that came into the darkness. A season of anticipating how divine life takes on death. A season of expecting love, hope, faith, and joy to win out in the face of hate, despair, fear, and apathy. It is a season that celebrates, meditates on, anticipates, and expects the movement, the action, the coming of Jesus Christ on our behalf. In these days we are invited to dwell on Jesus’ condescension to abide with us, to treasure these things in our heart along with Mary (Luke 2:19).  

Yet, in my mixed meditation straddling the border between pew and social media, I became convicted that Advent cannot only be a season of retreat into ritual. My heart began to race as I felt trapped in my chair and imprisoned in digital detainment and detachment from the real world. My heart broke as I contemplated the pain that many went through as I sat here and did…nothing. My heart burst at the seams of my rib cage with the anticipation of action, with the idea of doing something, anything, to break the bonds of the oppressed and to give voice to, or at least get out of the way for the sake of, the voiceless. 

In this moment of heart pounding meditation I became convicted that Advent must be more than a season of expectation, but one of engagement. More than a season of anticipation, but one of action. More than a season of meditation, but one of movement. More than a season of contemplation, but one of contending. 

Much akin to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Letters and Papers from Prison, who said, “There remains an experience of incomparable value…to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated — in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.” 

Looking at Twitter, I saw "history from below" in hash-tags like #CrimingWhileWhite and #ICantBreathe. But my thoughts and empathy were not enough. As Bonhoeffer continued, “mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and to action.”

Hence, I praise those pastors who put themselves in the places of protest to pray, and proclaim, peace amidst tension and violence. I cheer Kenyan Christians who shun xenophobia in favor of Christ-like compassion. I stand in humble awe of the many medical professionals, social workers, and missionaries who serve the sick and dying in West Africa. May I humbly tread in their footsteps. 

Yet, any of us who have been involved in this work of restoration know full well that complete transformation cannot, will not, come by our own power. Injustice lingers, disease is not eradicated, and conflicts persist. 

And so, we return to the sense in which Advent is a season of expectation, contemplation, and action centered around the incarnation of Christ and the consummation of all creation and the entire cosmos in his second coming. 

This then is Advent. A circular motion betwixt and between ritual retreat and acts of restoration. Between contemplation and compassionate service. Between Christ’s incarnation and his church’s sacramental presence in the community. 

In Advent, it is tradition to pray, “come Lord Jesus, come.” As I contemplate what is happening in places like Ferguson and New York City, Bhurma and Zambia, Kenya and Syria this prayer takes on on poignant purpose. Indeed, “come Lord Jesus, come.” 

Even so, simultaneously my prayer is “go Christ’s church, go.” For if we consider this season rightly, we cannot only pray — we must act. Even as action invariably leads us back to prayer because of our inadequacies, we cannot simply sit in a pew and drift into a digital duldrum. 

I invite you to join me in this circumambulation through the themes of Advent, between contemplation and action -- joining anticipation with the partial realization of the deep seeded desires of humanity for HOPE, LOVE, JOY and PEACE on Earth. 

Come Lord Jesus, quickly come.

Unpacking Tough Religious Words: An interview with authors Heather Choate Davis and Leann Luchinger

The church has a language problem. 

No, it isn’t because pastors are swearing from the pulpit. The issue here is with words that life long Christians may understand, but many in the unchurched, dechurched, or in-church-but-checked-out culture don’t. Indeed, whether it’s mystification, misunderstanding, or miscommunication, many of us struggle to communicate the good news of the Gospel in our preaching, teaching, and evangelism.

Heather Choate Davis and Leann Luchinger, in their new book Loaded Words: Freeing 12 Hard Bible Words from their Baggage, pay us all a favor by detangling religious words that are difficult for to understand. 

Unpacking words like “repent” and “religion,” the authors help restore truth where popular opinion and perception have threatened righteous reality. We might take their cue and try unloading emotion-laden and negatively charged words that our communities, friends, or family may simply not like to hear, or misunderstand when they do. 

The book is available exclusively on Amazon as an e-book or paperback. Having already spoke at congregations in Washington, the authorial pair will be speaking in the Phoenix area in February and headed to New York in the near future. Check out their website for more information on booking them for your church or organization. 

For now, let’s unpack Loaded Words a bit with an in-depth interview with Davis and Luchinger. 

• How can this book help the local church? 

Davis: With so many outside influences jockeying to define Christianity and its message—and not always thoughtfully or accurately—we’re not just talking about a knowledge gap that needs filling, but a vigorous and intentional reclaiming of original meaning. We hope that pastors will welcome the help with some of this much-needed translation work—both exegetical and cultural—of words that people both inside and outside of the church no longer know the true meaning of anymore.

Luchinger: To paraphrase from the back cover of the book “no one wants to be part of an old mean-sounding religion.” Loaded Words gives “seasoned” believers a new way to think about how to share, and even some words and concepts to use for themselves. For newer believers, Loaded Words can help them unpack some difficult concepts.

• My favorite chapter was “WORDS,” specifically this line: “We live in an era that is reliant on words, but our words are no longer reliable.” Unpack this for us…

Davis: We’ve essentially bankrupted the notion of a man’s word as “sacred.” Thoughtful people of all traditions recognize that this is no way to live. In the wildly popular Toltec spiritual treatise The Four Agreements, the first is “Be impeccable with your word.” Notice the choice of the word impeccable, which shares the Latin root pecco with the word sin. 

Luchinger: Semantic change/shift/drift is the more technical way to describe a word that has completely changed it’s meaning from the original definition and use. In the culture we batter words around, using, misusing, and misappropriating them because of coolness factors, or desire to have something (at least the same title) that other people have. If being “bad” is suddenly good, well then call me “bad” – or so it seems. Church words, unfortunately, seem to move in the opposite way – from good to bad. And sadly, it is the words of Christians themselves that, many times, do the most damage. These words that are meant to have a depth of meaning and emotion, offers of explanation and grace, are losing their definitions. Semantically shifting in the wrong direction. We Christians have to reclaim the Christian conversation, the Christian words, the expressions of our faith. 

• Which was your favorite chapter? Why? 

Davis: Ultimately, my favorite chapter is whichever one presents the teachings of Jesus in such a way that someone puts down the book and goes, “Ohhhhhh.” 

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Author Heather Choate Davis shares how, "[w]e are all bombarded with words/messages from culture" and some of them need unpacking and reloading. 

But, I am also fond of some of the big picture thinking put forth in the chapter on “Satan.” We use a famous scene from the movie The Devil Wears Prada to tap into the idea of “this stuff,” and how we actually need to take “this stuff” — both Jesus and His adversary— seriously. We note how ironic it is that the culture embraces psychics and tarot card readings and all forms of skull paraphernalia, but if you tell them that Satan is real they’ll just howl with laughter. I think this chapter gives people some serious food for thought about “this stuff.”

Luchinger: Given the current state of the “Church,” I think this word could be particularly helpful for two reasons: 1) those inside the church could perhaps use an attitude adjustment about what it means to be God’s gathered people. A family, filled with flawed souls, with plank-filled eyes, with pain and distress, and bad days – just like the people who share our sir names; 2) for those inside and outside the church it is a reminder that we don’t need four perfect walls to be a church. We can worship in buildings and homes, in coffee shop churches and college dorms – it is the Word and Sacraments, the body of believers, the gathering of people that make the church – not the bricks and mortar.

• Explain the way you use pop-culture references in the book…

Davis: We are all bombarded with words/messages from culture. Even if a pastor knocks it out of the park on Sunday, that brief message will likely have been drowned out in a day or two by news, work, social media, noisy children, and a thousand competing interests. The teachings of Jesus are simply not the dominant voice in the culture, but we know that He is present in all ways, in all settings, at all times through His Word and His people. To me it all comes down to the lesson of Pentecost, “that each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” If pop culture is the native language of many people today, then we who seek to connect need to speak in their native tongue. If referencing Family Guy, Game of Thrones, or Fifty Shades of Grey, helps people understand the message of grace in a new way this does not diminish the Gospel, but rather, makes good on its purpose. 

• Wittgenstein, the famous philosophic proponent of language-game theory, argued that varying types and forms of language have different rules, which in turn determine what is meaningful. Outside of a language game a proposition or word meaning is meaningless. Wittgenstein proposed that the meaning of a word depends on its content and the rules of that context. Thus, for Wittgenstein, religious language is confessional, something that someone believes or feels, rather than consisting of claims to truth. Comment on this in light of your work…

Luchinger: I would love to understand where Wittgenstein draws the line between feeling and truth. It appears, based on your description, that feelings have no bearing on truth. Thus love, for him, could not exist because it is a feeling. It reminds me a bit of Lois Lowry’s book The Giver. In this utopian society, feelings were of no use – precision in language was modeled, practiced, and expected. The Giver, the wisest man in this society, bore the burden of holding all historic memories that might cause emotion – protecting the people it would seem, from disruptive truths. Predictably, this utopian notion eventually fell apart. As the saying goes, “better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” Emotions give truth its vigor.

• What words did you consider and not include? Any that you thought of later or have been told you should have included? 

Davis: People kept saying “spiritual,” but I was always adamant that spiritual is not a loaded word. Spiritual is a softball word that we’ve come to use in the culture to mean we aren’t opposed to the idea of some sort of supernatural power, and it could be God, and yes, we would certainly want him on our side if it came to that, but we don’t believe we should define it too rigidly, and we don’t really practice or pursue it in any significant way. No one cringes when you use the word spiritual, which is why people use it. When we talked to pastors early on they all assumed we were going to write about words like “sanctification” and “justification” but those aren’t loaded words either. No one in the culture has any idea what those words are so they certainly don’t cause them any grief or confusion. 

• Give me an example of how you unload words in daily life…

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Leann Luchinger reflects that, "We Christians have to reclaim the Christian conversation, the Christian words, the expressions of our faith."

Davis: The Loaded Word that I unpack for people most often is Sin, because that’s what I did my thesis on. On Homo Incurvatus in Se—Man Turned in on Himself—as and entry point for the discussion of sin in the 21st Century. When I speak on the subject, I use my hands a lot to describe how we get when we are turned in on ourselves and how this connects to our modern day enslavements—anxiety, depression, a disordered relationship to technology, a broken sense of vocation/purpose. I can see people in the audience physically mirroring what I’m doing, and so I know the ideas are really resonating with them in a profound way. Icktank Press is actually publishing the thesis work now so it can be more readily available to people. Man Turned in on Himself: Understanding Sin in the 21st Century will be out by the first of the year. 

Luchinger: I recently spoke for a mom’s group and connected the time and care we put into teaching our children about our favorite sports teams to the time and care we need to give to their Christian faith. When our children are small, we dress them in jerseys and teach them to join us on the couch for the “big game.” We teach them about field positions, top players, strategy, who to root for and who to boo. We discuss and debate and learn and grow in sports appreciation. And as our children grow, they “own” their own version of fanaticism for the team. They root for the family team, they debate with their friends, decide which strategies and players they like best. Isn’t this how it should be with Christianity? When they are young we nurture and teach, as they grow we dialogue, debate and discuss – all so that our children can go out into the world and “own” their faith.

• How did working together as co-authors make this book better? What were some of the challenges? 

Davis: The strength in the book is absolutely rooted in the partnership and the hundreds of hours of conversations we’ve had about these words, orthodox theology, and the challenges of translation/communication. We aimed to put forth positions that were “clean” theologically, but also “clean” of connection to any particular political/social agenda. We both feel that this type of “noise” has been highly detrimental to the faith. 

Luchinger: Heather and I both have our specialties – or gifting – in the area of research and writing. We like to explain it this way: “Heather is the Poet, Leann is the Farmer.” I like to dig, and uncover, and mine for the original context and meaning of the words. The research drives me. Once I was satisfied that I had a strong sense of a word, or at least a good notion of how thoughtful theologians were unpacking the meaning, I would send my research to Heather and we would dialogue about threads and directions. Sometimes when things got sticky, or I thought we’d lost our way, I would go back to research a bit more to see if I could find just the right theological explanation or phrase to help us out. It is interesting, every time we really got stuck or disagreed about direction, the chapters seemed to get better.

The Church's language problem

The church has a language problem.

No, it isn’t because pastors are swearing from the pulpit. The issue here is with words that lifelong Christians may understand, but many in the unchurched, dechurched or in-church-but-checked-out culture don’t.

Take for example a recent exchange on Twitter between Pope Francis and an atheist.

Pope Francis: Advent is a journey towards Bethlehem. May we let ourselves be drawn by the light of the God made man. 

Atheist: Ummm…I read this like 5 times. What in the world does it mean?!?! #Religion is #awkward. 

*Read the rest of the post on "the three ways the church can better communicate with culture." 

From Transaction to Transfiguration

If you're involved in ministry, in a professional or lay sense, this post is for you. 

In it, I take you from supermarkets to your inner spiritual life to illustrate the ways in which we can move from a ministry defined by cold exchange to deep change, both for us and those we come in contact with. 

So read on, contemplate, connect and begin on a "trajectory of transfiguration."

*Read the post at FiveTwo.com 

Five Steps for a Friendly Christian Encounter with Other Religions

You have your Hindu coworker, your Mormon neighbor, and your agnostic nephew. There is a new mosque in town, a Sikh gurudwara in your strip mall, and a Christian Science reading room just around the corner. If you’re honest, it freaks you out.

What is a faithful Christian posture amidst such plurality? Do we engage in aggressive apologetics or pugnacious polemics? Do we protest the building of the mosque or drop tracts at the temple? Are we supposed to retreat into our sanctuaries and, like an ostrich, stick our head in the sands? No, none of this will do.

What I propose is a friendly encounter, a hospitable engagement, with our pluralistic neighbors. Below is a five-step approach for you and your congregation to consider...

*View the post HERE at LCEF's Leader-to-Leader blog

Can Christians celebrate Diwali?

The lights are hung, the candles lit, the feast prepared, the New Year is almost here, families gather and the children wait to hear the dramatic re-telling of stories from the ancient past. No, it is not Christmas, nor is it Hanukkah or Kwanzaa; steeped in mythical tales, religious devotion, and socio-cultural importance it is the Hindu festival of Diwali, celebrated in India and throughout its diaspora spread across the world.

*For more on religion & culture, follow @kchitwood.

Diwali is celebrated by several religious groups including Sikhs, Jains and even some Buddhists, but its roots are thoroughly Hindu. For Sikhs it is a commemoration of “the day of freedom” when one of their revered gurus, Guru Har Gobind Ji was released from imprisonment. Jains celebrate Diwali to mark Mahavira’s moksha (enlightenment) -- the last of the tirthankara (enlightened ones). For Hindus the festival is the beginning of a New Year, a time for prosperity and new ventures, a celebration of the brother-sister relationship and the prevalence of truth over falsehood and light overcoming the darkness.

This meaning for the five-day festival is derived from several Hindu accounts. However, it centers around the account of the victory of Lord Krishna over the demon Narkasura. Other gods and goddesses, including the goddess of wealth (Lakshmi), are worshipped during Diwali, but above all it is a celebration of the victory of life, light and lightheartedness over nefarious 'Narkasuran' forces. 

With a South Asian population of about 3 million, there are significant Diwali celebrations going on throughout the U.S. this week. Local Hindu and Jain temples and Sikh gurudwaras will host Diwali celebrations featuring hundreds of lights and lanterns, Indian curries and festive music played on harmoniums (keyboard), tablas (drum) and tambours (a stringed instrument). For many Asian Indians living in the diaspora, Diwali is not only religious, but steeped in socio-cultural significance and celebrations of South Asian identity.

With this in mind Pramod Aghamkar, Executive Director of Satsang Ministries, started celebrating "Christian Diwalis" a few yeas ago in Dayton, Ohio. The Christian Diwali in Dayton is an effort on his part to immerse himself in native Asian-Indian culture and add the concepts and ideologies of the Christian worldview.

“The festival of Diwali provides the necessary framework, structure and organic occasion to proclaim Christ as the light of the world” said Aghamkar. “It gives stepping stones, clues and redemptive analogies for cross-cultural witness.”

Drawing inspiration from those Christians who redeemed pagan festivals and symbols to make Easter (eggs, new life) and Christmas (the evergreen tree bedecked with lights) what they are today, Aghamkar hopes to redeem the symbols and practices of Diwali for the sake of Christian witness. For him Diwali “is a native tool that still remains undeveloped by Indian Christians.” To tap into this potential, Aghamkar hosts a Christian Diwali in South Asian family settings each year and now encourages other Indian Christian leaders to do the same in other cities.

One city where Indian Christian leaders are not so receptive to this idea is Houston.

Asked about the possibility of Christian Diwali celebrations in Houston, a South Asian pastor from The Woodlands demurred, “it is a major Hindu festival, Christ is not part of the celebration.”

“Whenever possible I seek the Scriptures for knowledge and direction” said the pastor. “I am not sure there is any place in the Scriptures where it talks about redeeming a heathen idea.”

Another Houston man, Vidyasagar Garnepudi, feels the tension and the temptation to celebrate a "Christian Diwali." He said, "every Indian child's dream is to participate in Diwali, it's a victory over darkness, a festival of lights, it's firing off the firecrackers."

*Read a personal account of the meaning of Diwali

Despite the desire to participate in the celebration, he lamented that "as Christians we should not celebrate Diwali. However, we do rejoice with our neighbor as India is a secular nation."  

Aghamkar hears and understands these objections, but believes the practice of  Christian Diwali is still a viable custom. “Non-Hindu accounts show Diwali to be a flexible, multi-faceted festival” he said, “the form of celebration is not intrinsically Hindu, Jain or Sikh….though the principles are ‘non-Christian,’ they are not ‘un-Christian.’”

He also cautions that while the music, lights, food and stories may be similar between Hindu and Christian celebrations, the traditional Hindu gods and Sikh and Jain teachers are not lauded, but instead it is Christ who is the hero of the story who dispels the darkness and brings light and life. “It is not shifting from radical rejection to wholesale acceptance” said Aghamkar, but it is a way for “the Indian community to experience Jesus in a native way.”

Some scholars of South Asian religion and Hindu traditions I spoke with offered some perspective as they debated the saliency of a "Christian Diwali." One offered, "it's one thing for a Christian to come to a temple and celebrate the ritual, taking away the nitty-gritty of the myth, just as a general celebration of victory of good over evil...it's another to use a Hindu tradition to advance Christianity." The same individual asked, "how would a Christian react if Easter was used to further Hindu ideas and motives?"

Another participant in the academic dialogue offered that since, in India, Christianity is a minority religion, "this might be an expression of having to find their way in a world that is primarily Hindu."

Perhaps even still, this is part of a wider dialogue on the secular and/or religious nature of Diwali and whether or not Diwali is losing its religious significance in favor of more secular or purely culturally mechanic communal practices and personal rituals. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK? CAN CHRISTIANS “REDEEM” DIWALI? SHOULD THE HOLIDAY BE LEFT FOR HINDUS, SIKHS AND JAINS TO CELEBRATE? WHAT ARE YOUR DIWALI TRADITIONS?

*For more on religion & culture, follow @kchitwood.

Applying the Golden Circle to your Ministry

What if great organizations succeed by first attending to WHY they exist, then HOW they go about their mission, and then finally, WHAT they do to accomplish that mission? What if your product didn't matter as much the purpose and process behind it? It may sound like common sense, but what if you took this idea and applied it to the church? Does your ministry's music style matter? What about your website? Is the product the point or does something deeper draw people to dive in?

*Follow @Kchitwood on Twitter

In this post, I talk about Simon Sinek's "Golden Circle" proposal and how it explains that Apple Computers succeeds not because it produces the best tech product, but because it inspires consumers to buy into their story, their meta-narrative, their “why.” So goes the story with the Wright brothers who had zero funding and zip notoriety. Their competitor was the affluent newsmaker Samuel Langley. The Wright brothers beat Langley to be first in flight not because of what they had or how they did it, but because they had the belief, the creed, of the promise of flight.

How does this apply to your ministry? Click here to read more at FiveTwo.com

Why "world religion Bible studies" are awful

The U.S. is suffering from a case of multi-generational and multi-cultural  religious illiteracy —what Stephen Prothero calls, “religious amnesia.” The United States, in spite of its established secularism, is a thoroughly pluralistic nation with robust expressions of myriad world religions everywhere from the wheat fields of Iowa to the buckled asphalt of Los Angeles. Yet, we are simultaneously “a nation of religious illiterates” who flunk the most basic of quizzes on religion — even our own. It seems, “[m]ost Americans remain far more committed to respecting other religions than learning about them.” 

To the rescue come "world religion Bible studies" that attempt to help Christians navigate their world's stunning religious pluralism.  The problem is, most "world religion Bible studies" are terrible. 

While most of the leaders of these studies start with the intention to help their parishioners learn more about the world's religions, the way they go about it usually leads to nominally increased religious literacy. Even worse, these studies often exacerbate pre-existing prejudices or presuppositions about studied worldviews. 

Granted, not all world religion studies are horrible, but many I've been to, or heard of (and, admittedly, some of the ones I've taught), were dreadful. While I confess that I'm a culprit of creating crappy curriculums for a "world religion Bible study" or two, I humbly suggest that I have learned the error of my ways (mostly) and want to propose some strategies to remedy the oversights of well-meaning pastors and educators.

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

So, below are THREE REASONS WHY WORLD RELIGION BIBLE STUDIES SUCK and a few accompanying action points to make them better:   

1) Unschooled teachers 

The number one issue with the vast majority of these studies is those who are teaching don't know much about the world's religions in the first place. Furthermore, they are not in the least bit trained in how to properly engage in religious studies, which is a topic altogether distinct from the task of theology.

While teaching can be a wonderful way to learn, we should not feign being an expert when we really have not spent the time to gain expertise in one religion other than ours, let alone multiple world religions. And do not, for a moment, think that because you read one book, watched a movie, or visited a temple that this makes you an expert on Buddhism, Islam, Scientology, etc.

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This is the cover of a book I wrote on "twenty major world religions" in New Zealand. It isn't the best, but what was great about it was that I submitted every chapter to a practitioner of that respective belief system. They corrected much of what I got wrong and provided deep insight into how to (re)present religion. 

Admittedly, several pastors confessed to me that they do not know much about the world's religions, but decide to teach on them anyways because, "my parishioners are asking me to." Granted, you, as a pastor or teacher, are in a tough place when people ask you to lead a study in an area you feel you know little about. I feel for you. But then there are other pastors who took one class on world religions, watched one documentary, or read one book and decide, "My people need to know this!" and like a crusader gallivanting off to slay the pagan hordes they announce a study to equip their congregants for the spiritual battle at hand. #Facepalm. Maybe you are the former, maybe you're the latter. Either way, you aren't an expert — I implore you to stop acting like one. 

Nonetheless, I feel for you. The problem is that we pastors and teachers are expected to be weekly experts on a wide variety of topics. Every Sunday a pastor is meant to churn out a sermon wherein he/she expounds on a relevant topic from a deep knowledge of the biblical text. People listen to the pastor as if he/she is an authority on the given topic (marriage, parenting, politics, etc.). While most pastors (certainly not all) are adept at interpreting Scripture, they are not mavens in every field. It's unfair to expect them to be an expert on everything — especially religions they were not trained in. Too often we pressure them to act as if they are. Likewise, teachers and educators are expected to cover a broad range of topics week-in and week-out, even if their knowledge on some of these topics is exhausted within the confines of the text they use to teach. This problem becomes paramount in teaching on world religions.

With untrained teachers and unqualified pastors diving head first into a study where they are presumed to be specialists, but are effectively faking even basic facility, what most world religion Bible studies become are cesspools of collective religious ignorance not classrooms prepped for increased religious literacy. 

Sometimes, in an effort to sidestep an educator's insufficiency for the task, an ex-member testimony is favored. Oh Lord have mercy, this is even worse. Certainly, ex-members have a voice to bring to the table and their perspective is a valuable one to appreciate in our study of religion. But it is only one voice and an extremely biased one at that. Ex-members are ex-members for a reason. While they may not "have an axe to grind" they will most definitely present a prejudiced perspective on a religion they now eschew. 

Imagine this -- an atheist meet-up group wants to learn more about Christianity. To do so, they bring in a former evangelical who no longer believes in God to talk about their former faith. Would you, as a Christian, say that the atheists in that group necessarily got a fair picture of Christianity? Would you want them to perhaps balance out their learning with some supplementary teaching or a current member's testimony? If not, you should. Relying on ex-member testimonies or teaching is a sure way to get a skewed impression of a world religion.

So, how do we fix this? Three ways:  

The fix: Get an education. Take a class, keep reading, enroll in a master's program. Become the expert you are pretending to be. Even a few classes on one religion will equip you to better teach that topic. However, do not think that taking one intro class on world religions or reading one book is enough. Dive deep into one religion before you endeavor to teach it. Enjoy that process? Keep going deeper or expand your knowledge to include other religions. Repeat as necessary.

The fix: Study in the presence, or even under, the "religious other." While I do not like the fertile terrain for prejudice that "othering" a people group creates, the reality is that most Christians feel that Muslims and Mormons, Jews, Jains, and Jedis are "the religious other." They feel uncomfortable talking about these other faiths in the presence of "the other" (cue creepy sci-fi music here). So, they round up the wagons, close the parish hall doors, and "study" them from the safety of their own sanctuaries. As an educator, your task is to bust those doors down and make the learning environment an uncomfortable one. Bring in a Muslim to team-teach on Islam, invite an atheist to present their non-religious ways, visit a local mosque, temple, or place of worship to engage in experiential education, make your study public, or at the very least ask a Buddhist to sit in on your teaching to call you out or offer further food for thought. Yeah, it will be awkward, unsettling, and a bit "weird," but that's a good thing. In that environment learning is probably going to take place on all sides. 

The fix: Bring in the experts. f all else fails, ask the experts. Bring in a local professor or your denomination's resident religious scholar, anthropologist, or sociologist. As mentioned before, bring in a Buddhist monk to share their practice, an imam to elucidate their beliefs, etc. Shameless plug: invite me to come and speak. While I can't speak to EVERY religion with expertise, I can at least point you in the right direction or start you off with the right tools/perspective. 

2) The category of "world religions" is problematic anyways

Even if a pastor/teacher is schooled in the ways of the world's religions, what is a "world religion?" Most studies pick out a few heavy hitters among the sundry spiritualities that are held and practiced around the globe. There are some usual suspects that pop up in almost every world religion study. Here's an example from the table of contents of a self-titled "world religion Bible study" curriculum: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, Bahai Faith, Spirit Religions, Atheism, New Age Movement, and others. This is a generous list. Another "world religion" study I saw recently (at a Lutheran church) sought to teach the following: Catholicism, Islam, Anglicanism, Pentecostalism, Buddhism.... Yikes. 

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This was a fun study that we did at a local brewery in Houston, Texas. While I taught this one solo, I had people who were Christian, agnostic, atheist, "spiritual, but not religious," Confucian, and Buddhist come to the study. They called me out when I needed it. And then we had a beer together, so it was all cool. 

The issue here is that these lists, and most other scopes and sequences of world religions studies make three mistakes: 1) ignore religions and spiritualities on the periphery (e.g. Sikhism, Yoruba, Juche, etc.); 2) lump together multiple world views and practiced spiritualities into general categories that obfuscate more than they educate ("Spirit religions" covers a wide, diverse, range of religions/spiritualities ranging from indigenous religion to hybrid spiritualities, New Age and "others" is necessarily ambiguous, and "Islam" and "Hinduism" obscure realities that exist in the margins); 3) make divisions where they need not do so (is a "world religions" class the proper place to present the differences between Catholics and Lutherans?). 

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

These categories, meant to help simplify the study or book (however well-meaning they are) betray a dangerous unsophistication when it comes to apperceiving and appreciating the wild diversity of religious beliefs and spiritual practice around the world. 

The fix: Teach the tools. For years, the archetypal format of religious studies tended to place different religious traditions, typically those deemed to be “the world’s ‘great’ religions,” in their respective silos and investigate them each according to some prescribed rubric based on the author’s own definition of religion. This pedagogical approach tended to dissociate individual traditions from the study of religion as a whole and, even, from the students themselves. Since, as authors George D. Chryssides and Ron Geaves noted, students “rarely come to study religion because they wish to be neutral social scientists or simply to describe religious belief and practice more accurately,” this method bequeaths a superficial knowledge of religion at best and exacerbated stereotypes of the spiritual at its worst. Hence, I suggest an initial approach that involves considering what it means, and looks like, to study religion from a disciplined, self-reflective, point of view rather than a theological one. In lieu of teaching the religions themselves, teach how to study religion in the first place. Teach how to ask questions, be a participant-observer, etc. The rules that apply to training apply here too. If you don't feel comfortable as a religious student, bring someone in who is. 

3) Straw man studies

Now, if untrained leaders and unrefined categories are bad, this problem is the Satan-of-world-religion-studies incarnate. 

I get what the leader of these studies is trying to do: help their flock better understand other religions so that they can witness to their neighbor, coworker, family member, or friend. Typically, the end game of these studies is to help the Christian better evangelize someone of another faith. 

Putting the issues of hegemony, colonialism, and arrogance involved in discussions of Christian mission and evangelism aside for a moment, such an approach in a world religion Bible study is bad for the simple reason that in the rush to get to "what's wrong with this religion" that we usually end up skipping over "what this religion is" in the first place. 

We either misapprehend, or misrepresent, world religions by presenting a "straw man" form of the faith  (a hollow, or sham, version of the worldview that is easily defeated in an artificial argument without "the other" present) or do so by seeking first to pinpoint error rather than attempting first to understand. 

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This shot is from an event called, "Interview with an atheist," in which I invited two local, prominent, non-believers to share their story in front of a Christian audience. We then had a Q&A session that was uncomfortable, challenging, and wonderful in every way. It was not a debate. It was not a "bash the atheist/Christian" fest. It was a charitable dialogue, and everyone walked away changed. 

Sabine MacCormack in her book Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Colonial Peru shared how missionaries in colonial Peru set out to comprehend Incan religion as it was practiced in both in the centers of power (i.e. Cusco) and in the rural Andes. In their accounts, they made two fatal mistakes: 1) by setting out with the primary purpose of extirpating (destroying) these beliefs and practices and 2) interpreting these religions through their own spiritual lenses. These approaches meant that the missionaries completely misinterpreted the religion as it was presented to them. They misconstrued myths, received a false impression about beliefs, and misread rituals.  All the while, the Andean beliefs and practices survived and even thrived, whether under the guise of Catholicism or out in the open, and often with greater emphasis than before. Setting out to eradicate the religion of the Andes, the missionaries misunderstood it completely. Too often, world religion Bible studies do the same. 

The fix: Study in the presence, or even with, the "religious other." Again, there is nothing better for our mutual learning and understanding than having a Muslim present when you teach on Islam. Give permission for them to correct you where they think you are wrong. Maybe you're not and they just don't like the way you put it. But, maybe you are. Have the guts to have a practitioner of the faith you are studying call you out. Assume insiders are the experts, you would expect the same from someone studying Christianity. Your study will be MUCH BETTER because of it. 

The fix: Seek understanding and relationship. The primary goal of your study should be understanding and bridge building, not apologetics or polemic. Before you call the heresy police, hear me out. While we often see our friendships with people of other faith as a means to an end, I am proposing that we see the relationships as ends unto themselves. Part of God's grand plan is a restoring of what was lost in our fall from grace. Part of Christ's redemptive work is to bring together that which was torn asunder. Understanding other religions, and building relationships with "the religious other," is part and parcel to the resurrective, restorative, and recreative kingdom of Jesus -- to bring unity and fellowship where there was disharmony and division. This does not mean forsaking witness, but it does mean not orsaking friendship for the sake of witness. Witness to the worldview, sure. Share your faith, certainly. But the friendship must endure, the understanding must be the primary goal, and the first step in evangelizing needs to be shutting our mouths, and opening our ears, to listen and learn.

*Was this post helpful? Hurtful? Have a suggestion? Want to accuse me of heresy or worse? This blog is meant to be a provocation toward deeper understanding. It's a beginning. There will certainly be revisions in my own thought -- additions, subtractions, and perhaps a crumpling of the entire project and a total re-write before we can, together, build a “strong, benevolent Christianity” (a la Brian McLaren) that can successfully engage other religions, spiritualities, and worldviews in a context defined by religious pluralism. So, please share your thoughts with me below or via e-mail. 

*For more on religion and culture, follow @kchitwood

Ten Novels Every U.S. Christian Should Read

People are into books right now. That's #Awesome. There is, in the wake of the #IceBucketChallenge, a "list your top ten most influential/favorite books" #bookchallenge floating around social media (e.g. Facebook) right now. There are blogs, like Justin Taylor's "Between Two Worlds" at The Gospel Coalition, that are running a series on "novels every Christian should consider reading." As a bibliophile, I'm all for it. O masses, read on!

“The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

— Dr. Seuss

So, mixing Justin Taylor's "novels every Christian should consider reading" with the "top ten influential books" list I put forward my, "Top Ten List of Novels that every U.S. (and, to be honest, specifically white, middle class) Christian Should Read." 

Why this list? 

Our top ten lists and choices of novels often reinforce our own philosophies and voices. This isn't horrible per se, but when we only we read what we like or what confirms our biases we are never challenged to think beyond our current worldview. That can be dangerous. One of my favorite aspects of the top ten lists people are posting on Facebook is that many of the novels they list came from their high school or college reading lists. There's a reason for this, someone told you to read this book because they thought it might challenge you.  At its best, literature cracks us open, challenges us, and provokes us to discover and be confronted by strange new worlds or by deconstructing comfortable, familiar ones.

Therefore, This list is predominated by what some call "subaltern" voices, or "the little voices of history." These voices are post-colonial and come from often marginalized authors or, at the least, are written from their perspective. Basically, this list  presents pieces of fiction that should shake up and disturb comfortable, middle-class, suburban, caucasian, Christians...not to mention many others. We need this if we wish to continue to interact with the new power centers of Christianity in the "the Global South" (Africa, Asia, and Latin America). We have to face that we are not the hegemonic power we once were and deconstruct our neocolonial thought patterns, ministry actions, academic exercises, methodologies, and mission emphases -- no matter how well intentioned. These novels will help us to see from this perspective, albeit limitedly. They are meant to humble us. 

TEN NOVELS EVERY U.S. CHRISTIAN SHOULD READ:

1. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison -- This is the story of a young, naïve African-American man in the U.S. South who explores his own black identity and racism through experiences in college, with the Communist Party, through riots, and under the streets of Harlem. There, in darkness and solitude he finally begins to understand himself -- his invisibility, and his identity.  Why read it? Invisible Man challenges us to consider marginal, invisible, voices and confronts us to consider stereotypes, racism, and subjugating and radicalizing social forces in the U.S. No surprise, I read it in a high school literature class. Thanks Mrs. Kelly. 

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2. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck -- Told in traditional Chinese narrative style and written by the daughter of missionaries, this story amplifies traditional family life in a Chinese village before World War I. It follows the fortunes and pitfalls of a rural farmer and the slave of an opium-soaked merchant household who eventually come to own all they worked hard for. Why read it? This book has it all, exploring women's rights, family dynamics, class conflict, spiritual struggle, moral dilemmas, simplicity versus complexity and the pressures of the modern world. 

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3. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver -- The Price family, missionaries from Georgia, head to the jungle of Africa to convert the masses. Only, it isn't that easy. Confronted with culture shock, mosquitos, snakes, political upheavals, malaria, and their own metaphysical conundrums and shocking family dynamics the experience breaks them apart -- physically, mentally, and spiritually. Why read it? If I taught a course on world missions, this book would be required. Themes of forgiveness, cultural hegemony, culture shock, colonialism, racism, and more are all packed into this little bundle of heart-wrenching reading. You won't like this book, but you will most certainly love it.  

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4. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis -- A dystopian novel that wraps up Lewis' "Space Trilogy," That Hideous Strength features the battle between a sinister pseudo-scientific institute, the N.I.C.E., that plans to take over the world and is backed by demonic forces. Why read it? Ok, so this isn't a subaltern novel and it features Roman, Christian, and British philosophy and tropes, BUT it's still worth a read as it challenges our 21st-century's emphasis on scientific salvation, the divorcing of body and soul, and our tendency to permit Normal Nihilism in everyday life. 

5. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad -- Heart of Darkness follows one man's hellish journey into the interior of Africa where he encounters corruption, brutality, hate, violence, and colonial hegemony at its most capitalistic and manipulative worst. Why read it? While this book should be read hand-in-hand with a transcript of Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa," (or, for that matter, his tomic novel Things Fall Apart) the story still stands alone as a Gordian expedition into what constitutes the forced binary between 'barbarian' and 'civilized,' attitudes on colonialism, and imperial racism. Plus, the character of Katz is super mysterious. 

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6. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo -- Oh sweet cream, this book is so good. It is a coming-of-age story of Darling, a Zimbabwean girl, who navigates her fragile and shifting world first as a ten year old in her home country and later as a teenager in the Midwest of the U.S. Why read it? Exploring themes of family, immigration, and cultural memory this book captures,  "the uneasiness that accompanies a newcomer’s arrival in America, [and] illuminate[s] how the reinvention of the self in a new place confronts the protective memory of the way things were back home." (NYTimes' Uzodinma Iweala)

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7. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie -- Mixing magic and mundane realism, Rushdie invites the reader into India during the period of transition from British colonialism to Indian independence in order to open us up to how Western ideals have shaped, for good and ill, modern India. Why read it? This is quintessential post-colonial lit.. Using Hindu gods and magical realism, Rushdie speaks to the creative and destructive forces at work in the world and which seep into the unequal power relations between imperial forces and colonial minions, between East and West, and how this world is still shaped by centuries of colonial dominion. 

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8. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut -- John, who goes by Jonah, is researching a book on what elite Americans were doing the day the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima on the island of San Lorenzo -- a quaint little dictatorship in the Caribbean. Unbeknownst to him as he sets off, this research will lead him to meet a fated group of people, come across the religion of Bokononism, and, unfortunately usher in the end of the world. Why read it? Because it's Kurt F***in' Vonnegut, that's why. Ever since I read "Harrison Bergeron" and that changed my life (thanks again, Mrs. Kelly), I can't get enough of this curse-laden, dystopic, short-story, satirical mad man. But this book in particular really gets me. It's a novella about human stupidity and its many manifestations in the realms of politics, sexuality, cultural elitism, capitalism, and religion. If you read it and don't like it, that probably means you understood it. 

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9. The Bone People by Keri Hulme -- Technically a story about love, but also one about a woman locked away in a tower (go figure) the plot follows Kerewin Holmes, who is half Māori, half European (Pākehā), and her love interest and his son. Why read it? My best suggestion is to get drunk on New Zealand literature. Seriously, that place is stock-full of scintillating novels, poetry, and philosophy. Plus, their indigenous debates (between Māori and Pākehā) are some of the most robust, and constructive, in the world. Specifically, this book paints a picture of reconciliation between indigenous and Eurocentric powers that not only critiques colonial hegemony, but offers a pathway for both Māori and Pākehā to work together to achieve healing and unity for the future. 

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10. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez -- Another magical realist novel, this is the saga of seven generations of the Buendía family in Macondo in Latin America. There are massacres, marriages, major corporations, misfortunes, and migrations. It's the story of Latin American history centering around one family and one city.  Why read it? It's dense, convoluted, and puzzling prose. Did I sell you yet? Every sentence, comma, and page turn mean something in this book. So it's not only an exercise in how to read a book, but it also initiates the reader into the soul, passion, and dashed dreams of many Latin Americans who fear that colonialism and corruption have fated them to a repeated history of could-have-been glory, lost love, and decay. 

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*Honorable Mention: Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell -- The first story in the Wallander detective series, the plot follows the bleak, cold, investigation of a bloody murder of two farmers in the countryside. The only clue to the brutal crime? The attackers may be 'foreign.' When this leaks out, racial hatred is unleashed. Why read it? A) It's entertaining. B) It's going to make you question whether you're a racist or not...and you probably are. But, as one of the characters says, what really counts, "is what you do with [your racism]." 

This is my list. I could add more, I could change it up. For now, this is what it is. What would you add? What is your list? What are your thoughts? Share with me on the blog, via Facebook, or on Twitter with the hashtag #BookChallenge.