Tweet

More from @BrianZahnd

Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

2 Sep

We're expecting some turbulence. The seatbelt sign has been illuminated.

DBH on Christianity in America:

No nation in the wake of Christendom’s decline has done more to confuse the story that Christians should tell with the kind of stories sinful human beings long to tell. 1/6

In the American imagination our national history is one of a chosen people fleeing the wickedness that is in the world so as to become a holy nation set apart, called to recreate humankind in a new and Edenic condition. 2/6

And somehow, then, with a buffoonish crudity almost unprecedented in terrestrial history—or, perhaps, an unfeigned naïveté positively touching in its earnestness, depending on how one looks at it—a good number of American Christians find it possible to believe that... 3/6

Read 6 tweets

Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

13 Aug

I long ago left behind a literal reading of the Bible. But now, at least to a certain extent, I find myself leaving behind an analytical historical-critical reading of the Bible as well. 1/6

So today if I’m reading the Bible in the morning as part of my daily spiritual exercises and I read about the walls of Jericho falling down I don’t muse upon the fact that archeological evidence does not support this. 2/6

I know this fact, but now that I know it, I can set it aside and allow the inspired storyteller to tell the story. Because, although I know what biblical archaeology says about this story, I also know that there are walls that need to fall... 3/6

Read 6 tweets

Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

24 Jan

There are real challenges to sustaining a vibrant Christian faith over the course of a lifetime. I fully understand the need to rethink and to adjust course in our faith journey. I’ve had my own experience with this. (1/6)

In midlife I discovered that the Christianity I knew was too weak and too thin, too compromised with consumerism and too accommodating to Americanism. To sustain a vibrant Christian faith I had to find a Christianity worthy of the Christ whose name it bears. (2/6)

The good news is that such a Christianity exists. It’s always existed — though rarely, if ever, is it the dominant expression of Christianity. Sometimes we have to go on a theological journey to find a faith that can endure for a lifetime. (3/6)

Read 6 tweets

Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

23 Jan

From today's writing:

Modern Parisians walking with shoulder-shrugging indifference past Notre-Dame day after day could be an apt metaphor for the state of Christianity in a secular age. (1/6)

But as night fell on April 15, 2019, the people of Paris gathered in front of the still burning cathedral and held a candlelight vigil for Our Lady. There was no cheering; no one gloated; no one said, “good-riddance;” no one tweeted, “empty the pews and burn it all down.” (2/6)

Instead, television cameras showed thousands of grief-stricken faces lit by the flames, some singing hymns, others just weeping as they watched their beloved cathedral burn. I suspect many Parisians didn’t know how beloved their cathedral was until they saw it in flames. (3/6)

Read 6 tweets

Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

16 Jan

From today's work on "What Can We Do When Everything Is On Fire?":

“Whenever deconstruction finds a nutshell — a secure axiom or pithy maxim — the very idea is to disturb this tranquility. Indeed, that is a good rule of thumb in deconstruction..." (1/4)

"...That is what deconstruction is all about, it’s very meaning and mission, if it has any. One might even say that cracking nutshells is what deconstruction is. In a nutshell." -John Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: Conversations with Jacques Derrida, p. 32 (2/4)

For Derrida, a text can be endlessly deconstructed. And though Derrida does help alert us to the possibility of hidden motives that may lurk in a text (often having to do with bids for power), do we really want to spend our whole life endlessly cracking nutshells? (3/4)

Read 4 tweets

Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

3 Dec 19

Advent is for waiting. As we tell the story of redemption through the church calendar we begin our telling of the sacred story, not with doing, not with celebrating, but with waiting — waiting for God to act.

With the loss of a strong sense of the Christian calendar we have conflated Advent and Christmas into a single “holiday season.” But the truth is that Advent is quite different from Christmas as it carries its strong theme of prophetic lament.

The world has gone wrong, justice lies fallen in the streets, and it seems that God is nowhere to be found. That’s when the lamentation of waiting arises in our soul: “O Lord, how long?” From Isaiah to Malachi there is a consistent theme of waiting in lament for God to act.

Read 11 tweets

Share this page!

Brian Zahnd

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @BrianZahnd

Brian Zahnd

Brian Zahnd

Brian Zahnd

Brian Zahnd

Brian Zahnd

Brian Zahnd

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Like this author's thread?