Everyone, the new edition of our quarterly journal is online and waiting to be read by you!

This month we meander through ancient practices, culture, poetry, theology, and memoir. One of the most exciting aspects of starting a new journal is that we have the opportunity to experiment with how what we publish meets our objective of providing an intersection between "liturgy, Christianity, theology, and culture." The highlight of this issue is our interview with Brian McLaren on his new book Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices. This interview is a great example of the intersection between personal spirituality and the big questions of today's world we hope The Everyday Journal will continue to offer in the issues (and years) to come.

The hyperlinked table of contents follows below: ... more

Everyday Liturgy: When I started this blog a year and a half ago I did it in part to begin to explore ways to expand my relationship with God.  I had recently graduated from a Bible college and wanted to build on the foundation in Scriptures I had been given.  The evangelical answers, quiet time and prayer cards, no longer seemed capable of leading me further in my spiritual journey.  Bible-software, inductive study, and individual petitions no longer seemed adequate.  What role do you see "Ancient Practices" having in our technological, individualistic world?

Brian McLaren: Thom, I think you've really diagnosed a key dimension of the problem: individualism. I think our spiritual lives languish in a "Jesus and me" isolation chamber, but they become robust and deep when we realize that God calls me into an "us for all of us" way of life. To echo Paul's amazing words in Ephesians 3, I come to know the love of God "with all the saints." Knowledge in this sense is a knowing with - knowing God with people of different periods of history, different cultures, different denominations, and so on. So the ancient practices draw us into a wider, deeper way of knowing God that includes but also transcends my individual experience.

EL: One of the biggest challengers and provokers in my life has been an Eastern Orthodox friend.  Through his entrance into the Eastern Orthodox church a whole new world of spiritual practice has been opened up to him, and I have been able to see glimpses of how he is being shaped in community with God and others.  What role does community play in spiritual practice?

BM: Like your friend, I have been enriched by Eastern Orthodox practices and values. In the book I use an example - limited and flawed, admittedly - to schools of cooking. There are certain flavors that Italian cooking specializes in - and very different ones in Thai or Mexican or Indian cooking. So various spiritual traditions maintain various rich flavors of the spiritual life ... we might even say that different traditions nourish in different ways. When we enter a community, we can learn their way, discover the "ingredients" they specialize in, and be nourished by what they uniquely offer.  This becomes quite dynamic in our time, I think, because we're realizing that if you want to be nourished in evangelism, Evangelicals have a lot to offer, and if you want to be nourished in sacramentalism, you need to go to the Orthodox or Catholics or Anglicans. If you want to be nourished in peacemaking, the Mennonites carry on that tradition in a special way, and if you want to be nourished in deep Biblical study, the Presbyterians excel. I believe the time has come for us to share our treasures and specialties with one another and not try to keep our "flavor" as proprietary. We can have a big banquet and each bring our specialties to share.

More after the break...!

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I had a heart to heart with my prayer life this weekend after reading Bradley Nasif's essay The Poverty of Love (part of the Christian Vision Project). As an Eastern Orthodox theologian at an evangelical institution, Nasif is able to communicate the nuances and particulars of the Orthodox faith in the evangelical language I am more accustomed to reading, thinking, and writing.

Nasif makes the crucial point that:

When practiced in humility, ascetic rigor results in greater love. The monks fasted because they were hungry to love God more; they prayed because they wanted closer communion with God and neighbor; they contemplated so they could better fix their gaze on their divine spouse; they practiced silence because they wanted to hear God so they could speak and act more wisely to the people around them. The end goal of every spiritual practice employed by the monks was love.

I found the Evangelical Manifesto to be one of the most hopeful documents to come out in the last few years. It gives me hope that, along with the committee that wrote A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future, the leaders of Evangelicalism are wresting control away from those that seek political, religious, and economic power over the largest demographic of American Christendom.

The good points:

• ---A move toward post-conservative/post-liberal theology as the consensus of evangelicals
• ---A dismissal of power
• ---A stubborn refusal to submit to the "discourse"
• ---A holistic socio-political outlook that denies pandering from political parties and interest groups
• ---A long and generously repentant section of confessions (I think that Evangelical churches should read these confessions from the pulpit and confess these sins together)
• ---A tone that seeks to establish Evangelicals as the definers and leaders of Evangelicalism, wresting control away from the Religious Right and paving the way for Evangelicalism to take hold of the evangelical conversation again
• ---A call to civility

The bad points: ... more

The buzz in evangelicalism today, thanks to the work of Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, Brian McLaren and others, has bee social justice. The Evangelical Manifesto, released yesterday, says this:

We must follow the model of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, engaging the global giants of conflict, racism, corruption, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, and spiritual emptiness, by promoting reconciliation, encouraging ethical servant leadership, assisting the poor, caring for the sick, and educating the next generation.

I finishing up my last paper of the semester, writing about the Italian movie L'Eclisse (The Eclipse) and how the paranoia of the closing montage is fed by the present (for the 1960s) fear that people could destroy the whole world.

Since the world began it was God's to destroy, apocalypse meant that God would be bringing the world to an end for a purpose: judgment, the kingdom, joy, a feast, no more crying, eternity, etc. There are lots of perspectives on the end of the world, but the big picture is that it means God is doing something new or in full---bringing the world to rights as N.T. Wright describes it. ... more

Ever heard of Fair Trade? It is a solution to try to bring equity back into the Prosperity System.  The economic world that a devilish mixture of capitalism, greed, technology, and fancy finances has created is out of whack.  The rich get richer off the poor who get poorer.  We need several modern day Robin Hoods, such as Fair Trade, to rise up and return the Prosperity System to a sustainable level.

Where, O where did the hymnals go?  The once constant bastion of the pew, the loyal book that would meet you wherever you happened to be worshiping on a given Sunday, has left the building.  When I was a teenager and hymnals began to collect dust as overhead projectors took over I welcomed it as an opportunity to get with the times.  Computers were taking over the world, and I had heard of AOL and the Internet---the world seemed like it was ready to ditch the book and go electronic.

Over the past couple of weeks some crazy stuff has been happening in my life that has caused a fog to roll over my brain.  I haven't been able to write without assistance from movies, books, or events to provide perspective and direction to my thought. 

When life gets rough this "thinking malaise" happens to me.  I can write about communities after watching some movies, but I just cannot sit and think about community---too much other stuff on my mind.  Or too little.

When life gets rough everything starts blending together and I enter this "spiritual comatose" when I cannot be silent but cannot really think either.  It's like my brain keeps yawning and hitting the snooze button. ... more

Fellow PBU alumnus Evan Curry has started his own blog: My Names Are Promise & Peace.  Any blog that's first two posts are on babies being born followed by a discussion of assault rifles deserves a mention for curiousity's sake alone. ... more