A Guide to Cultivating Meaningful Conversations at the Pub
You’ve heard about people gathering at the pub to talk about God and faith, and wondered, why aren’t I doing this? Now you can, thanks to this new guide by Bryan Berghoef, author of Pub Theology: Beer, Conversation, and God. Here Bryan walks through all the steps to beginning your own Pub Theology group, from choosing a location to deciding what to talk about. (You’ll have to make your own decision as to whether you prefer an IPA or a stout). And the best part of this new book: hundreds of discussion topics and questions, sorted by category–such as art, belief, death, morality, philosophy, politics, science, and world religions, to name a few–that Bryan has compiled from over five years’ worth of pub discussions.
So what are you waiting for? This is the inspiration you’ve needed, and the resources to boot, all for less than the price of a pint!
—Book description at Amazon.com
After my first book, Pub Theology, came out, I began to hear from people all over the country—some leading similar groups, others wanting to get one going. The constant request was: what do we talk about? Do you have some topics for us to get started?
I have compiled all of my topics, questions, and quotes from facilitating Pub Theology sessions for the last five years into one handy ebook, all sorted by category, as well as some tips and suggestions for best practices. And I’m making it all available for—have I said this—less than the price of a pint (or a tip to the bartender.) This is a must-have resource for anyone leading discussions at the pub!
You can carry this handy guide with you on your Kindle or smartphone and pull it out whenever you’re looking for something interesting to talk about with friends, or when prepping for facilitating a Pub Theology session (or Theology Pub, or Theology on Tap, or even Scripture and Scotch, as I heard the other day).
Quotes from Bob Dylan, Søren Kierkegaard, Mother Theresa, Mark Driscoll, Thomas Aquinas, Rob Bell, Kester Brewin, John Piper, Peter Rollins, John Calvin, the Talmud, the Buddha, Plato, Demosthenes, Immanuel Kant, Martin Buber, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Tim Keller, Richard Rohr, Jesus, the Shepherd of Hermas, Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, Walter Wink, John Frame, Elizabeth Gilbert, Oprah, C.S. Lewis, Doug Pagitt, Blaise Pascal, Ludwig Feuerbach, Leo Tolstoy, Paul Tillich, and. . . many many more questions that I’ve written or others have shared with me —all gathered here, for your pub theologizing pleasure.
I should also mention—there’s no marketing plan and no major publisher behind this, it is totally word of mouth and grassroots, so share on your Facebook page, Tweet it, pass it along to friends. If you know anyone who might benefit from this resource—let them know!
*Also, if this resource proves helpful to you, please leave a review at Amazon!
— Don’t have a Kindle? You can get a free Kindle reading app for your Mac, your PC, your tablet, iPad, phone… Or, you can convert it to Nook or other another eReader format at Calibre.
From Chad Schuitema, facilitator of Pub Theology Lafayette:
“Everything you need to start your own Pub Gatherings – except the courage! The enormous amount of questions and discussion starters have helped me not only with each week’s gathering, but have helped me come up with my own as well. A much needed resource!”
Sometimes a step back is necessary for us to move forward.
Faith vs. Belief
Every once in awhile I run across a book that keeps me up late and has me excited to wake up in the morning. Harvey Cox’s The Future of Faith is one such book.
In the first chapter he notes that contrary to earlier predictions, faith and religion are as vibrant as ever. But things are shifting. People are turning to religion more for support in their efforts to live in this world and make it better, and less to prepare for the next. “The pragmatic and experiential elements of faith as a way of life are displacing the previous emphasis on institution and beliefs.” In short, Cox claims that we are moving from an era of ‘belief’ to an era of ‘faith.’ But aren’t belief and faith the same thing, you ask? No, and understanding the difference is vital, not only for one’s own spiritual journey, but for grasping the undercurrents of the larger shifts in the world of spirituality.
An excerpt from Chapter One:
It is true that for many people “faith” and “belief” are just two words for the same thing. But they are not the same, and in order to grasp the magnitude of the religious upheaval now under way, it is important to clarify the difference. Faith is about deep-seated confidence. In everyday speech we usually apply it to people we trust or the values we treasure. It is what theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) called “ultimate concern,” a matter of what the Hebrews spoke of as the “heart.”
Belief, on the other hand, is more like opinion. We often use the term in everyday speech to express a degree of uncertainty. “I don’t really know about that,” we say, “but I believe it may be so.” Beliefs can be held lightly or with emotional intensity, but they are more propositional than existential. We can believe something to be true without it making much difference to us, but we place our faith only in something that is vital for the way we live. Of course people sometimes confuse faith with beliefs, but it will be hard to comprehend the tectonic shift in Christianity today unless we understand the distinction between the two.
The Spanish writer Migual Unamuno (1864-1936) dramatizes the radical dissimilarity of faith and belief in his short story “Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr,” in which a young man returns from the city to his native village in Spain because his mother is dying. In the presence of the local priest she clutches his hand and asks him to pray for her. The son does not answer, but as they leave the room, he tells the priest that, much as he would like to, he cannot pray for his mother because he does not believe in God. “That’s nonsense,” the priest replies. “You don’t have to believe in God to pray.”
The priest in Unamuno’s story recognized the difference between faith and belief. He knew that prayer, like faith, is more primordial than belief. He might have engaged the son who wanted to pray but did not believe in God in a theological squabble. He could have hauled out the frayed old “proofs” for the existence of God, whereupon the young man might have quoted the equally jaded arguments against the proofs. Both probably knew that such arguments go nowhere. The French writer Simone Weil (1909-43) also knew. In her Notebooks, she once scribbled a gnomic sentence: “If we love God, even though we think he doesn’t exist, he will make his existence manifest.” Weil’s words sound paradoxical, but in the course of her short and painful life—she died at thirty-four—she learned that love and faith are both more primal than beliefs.
Debates about the existence of God or the gods were raging in Plato’s time, twenty-five hundred years ago. Remarkable, they still rage on today, as a recent spate of books rehearsing the routine arguments for and against the existence of God demonstrates. By their nature these quarrels are about beliefs and can never be finally settled. But faith, which is more closely related to awe, love, and wonder, arose long before Plato, among our most primitive Homo sapiens forebears. Plato engaged in disputes about beliefs, not about faith.
Creeds are clusters of beliefs. But the history of Christianity is not a history of creeds. It is the story of a people of faith who sometimes cobbled together creeds out of beliefs. It is also the history of equally faithful people who questioned, altered, and discarded those same creeds. As with church buildings, from clapboard chapels to Gothic cathedrals, creeds are symbols by which Christians have at times sought to represent their faith. But both the doctrinal canons and the architectural constructions are means to an end. Making either the defining element warps the underlying reality of faith.
The nearly two thousand years of Christian history can be divided into three uneven periods. The first might be called the “Age of Faith.” It began with Jesus and his immediate disciples when a buoyant faith propelled the movement he initiated. During this first period of both explosive growth and brutal persecution, their sharing in the living Spirit of Christ united Christians with each other, and “faith” meant hope and assurance in the dawning of a new era of freedom, healing, and compassion that Jesus had demonstrated. To be a Christian meant to live in his Spirit, embrace his hope, and to follow him in the work that he had begun.
The second period in Christian history can be called the “Age of Belief.” Its seeds appeared within a few short decades of the birth of Christianity when church leaders began formulating orientation programs for new recruits who had not known Jesus or his disciples personally. Emphasis on belief began to grow when these primitive instruction kits thickened into catechisms, replacing faith in Jesus with tenets about him. Thus, even during that early Age of Faith the tension between faith and belief was already foreshadowed.
Then, during the closing years of the third century, something more ominous occurred. An elite class—soon to become a clerical class—began to take shape, and ecclesial specialists distilled the various teaching manuals into lists of beliefs. Still, however, these varied widely from place to place, and as the fourth century began there was still no single creed. The scattered congregations were united by a common Spirit. A wide range of different theologies thrived. The turning point came when Emperor Constantine the Great (d. 387 CE) made his adroit decision to commandeer Christianity to bolster his ambitions for the empire. He decreed that the formerly outlawed new religion of the Galilean should now be legal, but he continued to reverence the sun god Helios alongside Jesus.
Constantine also imposed a muscular leadership over the churches, appointing and dismissing bishops, paying salaries, funding buildings, and distributing largesse. He and not the pope was the real head of the church. Whatever his motives, Constantine’s policies and those of his successors crowned Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. The emperors undoubtedly hoped this strategy would shore up their crumbling dominion, from which the old gods seemed to have fled. The tactic, however, did not save the empire from collapse. But for Christianity it proved to be a disaster: its enthronement actually degraded it. From an energetic movement of faith it coagulated into a phalanx of required beliefs, thereby laying the foundation for every succeeding Christian fundamentalism for centuries to come.
The ancient corporate merger triggered a titanic makeover. The empire became “Christian,” and Christianity became imperial. Thousands of people scurried to join a church they had previously despised, but now bore the emperor’s seal of approval. Bishops assumed quasi-imperial powers and began living like imperial elites. During the ensuing “Constantinian era,” Christianity, at least its official version, froze into a system of mandatory precepts that were codified into creeds and strictly monitored by a powerful hierarchy and imperial decrees. Heresy became treason, and reason became heresy.
…Neither the Renaissance nor the Reformation did much to alter the underlying foundations of the Age of Belief… The Age of Belief lasted roughly fifteen hundred years, ebbing in fits and starts with the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the secularization of Europe, and the anticolonial upheavals of the twentieth century.
Still, to think of this long middle ear as a nothing but a dark age is misleading. As we have seen, throughout those fifteen centuries Christian movements and personalities continued to live by faith and according to the Spirit. Confidence in Christ was their primary orientation, and hope for his Kingdom their motivating drive. [I cut a fair bit of this and the preceding paragraph for the sake of brevity.]
Now we stand on the threshold of a new chapter in the Christian story. Despite dire forecasts of its decline, Christianity is growing faster that it ever has before, but mainly outside the West and in movements that accent spiritual experience, discipleship and hope; pay scant attention to creeds; and flourish without hierarchies. We are now witnessing the beginning of a “post-Constantinian era.” Christians on five continents are sharking off the residues of the second phase (the Age of Belief) and negotating a bumpy transition into a fresh era for which a name has not yet been coined.
—
So, can we make a distinction between ‘faith’ and ‘belief’?
The book, as best I can tell (I’m into Chapter Four), dives further into this delineation, into what got us to where we’ve been, and what might move us forward into the future.
Terrific stuff, and as I read it, it seems to make a decent amount of sense. And perhaps more pertinent, it seems to connect with what we find in the text: Jesus himself and the earliest believers, it seems, were not motivated by assent to a list of beliefs, but rather a deep-seated and profound faith that God was doing something new and his kingdom was breaking into the world in unprecedented ways.
I find that for some time perhaps I’ve been losing faith in belief, even as my faith continues to grow in new and exciting ways. It is encouraging to consider this larger movement of God’s Spirit in the world, which, despite our best efforts to constrain it, continues to “blow wherever it will.”
We had a great turnout last night at Harmony Brewing Company, in Eastown, Grand Rapids. This little brewery has been open since February, and features a cozy atmosphere, spins some good tunes (last night was Vinyl Thursday), and brews up some great offerings.
A few of us started off with Jackson’s Joy Fall Festival Ale, which was a good, if a bit sweet, oktoberfest-style ale. Others jumped in with the Hideout IPA, which was a stand-in for the usual Fiddlestix IPA. My favorite on their board is the Star Stuff Belgian Dubbel. The Black Squirrel Porter was unfortunately also tapped out.
About a dozen of us squeezed in together in the upper-level, a small, quiet space of about 10 or 12 tables. A couple familiar faces, a few Pub Theology first-timers, and some regulars made for a great discussion.
The sheet had the following topics:
1. True or False: the better you can articulate what you believe, the more spiritually mature you are.
2. How do certain [spiritual] practices open you up to new possibilities?
3. Is there a difference between the Word of God & the words of scripture?
4. Is it ever wrong to try to convert someone from one religion to another?
5. What’s the difference between Christian education and indoctrination?
6. Is a believer [ontologically] different from a nonbeliever?
Getting to the bottom of things.
We kicked off the evening on the first topic, and there was immediate push back to the notion that ‘spiritual maturity’ is linked to the ability to speak well about one’s beliefs.
Immediate counter-examples were offered: an older person who has a wisdom and maturity about him but is not a good source for systematic theology; a mother who lives in a way that bespeaks spiritual maturity (it was noted that there is more than one way to articulate things, we shouldn’t limit it to verbal articulation).
Another person thought the whole notion of ‘spiritual maturity’ was dubious. “Doesn’t that whole idea speak of having arrived? Does one ever arrive? Isn’t spiritual maturity that thing you strive for but never reach?”
We then mused about whether the church often falls into the trap of equating these two things: articulation and maturity. In my own tradition, it’s when you can say what you believe, when you can give the right answers, that we acknowledge that you have reached at least some level of spiritual achievement that you weren’t at before. Perhaps there are other means for evaluating faith — in fact I’m sure there are, and I think many of us are wanting to think more holistically about what it means to grow in one’s faith, beyond just words.
At the same time, someone noted that if you can’t at a basic level explain what you believe, perhaps you have some work to do. Fair enough.
The second topic had us discussing the various practices that lead to spiritual growth, and open one up to new possibilities, new ways of experiencing God, or living into one’s experience of God. Things like prayer, meditation, Scripture reading were mentioned, as well as getting involved in justice issues like poverty, slave trade, etc. “My faith is deepened as I seek to live among those who are marginalized in our society.”
One person noted that in his own very evangelical tradition, spiritual maturity equaled the ability to share the gospel with someone else: “How many people have you led to Christ?”
This led us naturally into topic no. 4: Is it ever wrong to convert someone to another religion?
There was some hesitation. It was initially noted that there are certainly wrong ways to share one’s faith: the in-your-face model, the used-car-salesman-routine, the forcing-awkward-family-relationships routine. Yet some felt, if eternal things are at stake – how could it be wrong to convert someone?
Then one person at the end of the table piped up: “Absolutely. There are times it is flat out wrong to disrespect someone else’s culture and religion by trying to convert them. I have friends in Buddhist and Hindu countries and I don’t think it would be right at all to go in there and try to convert them. I plan on seeing my Muslim and Buddhist friends in heaven. But maybe that means I’m not a real Christian.”
This provocative perspective made some uncomfortable while others cheered. What do you think?
We ended the evening on topic no.3: Is there a difference between the Word of God and the words of scripture?
This took us many places, but we began by looking at the perspective that there are two books in which God speaks to us – one, the book of the Bible, the other, the book of creation. It was noted that in a recent NPR story a person from a more evangelical background noted that someone could not believe in evolution and be a Christian. “This drives me crazy! How can we not be willing to find God in the world he has made, even if that forces us to reconsider some of our [long-held] theological positions?”
We then wondered about extrabiblical books, other gospels, the apocrypha, and so on. Are these ‘God’s Word’ in any sense? How does canon come into play, and should we restrict the Holy Spirit to speaking only through what ‘made it in’? And what about other traditions that include other books? Or what about books that were left out, were those for spiritual or political reasons, or some other reason altogether? Finally we wondered, what about words in the Scriptures themselves that portray God in a less than flattering light. Are these too the “Word of God”, or are there instances in the canon where we see humanity struggling to understand God, and perhaps not always getting it right? This latter line of thinking made several mutter “Marcion” under their breath, and made plenty nervous. Others felt these were legitimate questions that we should be able to ask.
In the end, it was a great night. Good beer, new relationships, honest conversation. All agreed that the pub is a place to have these open and honest conversations, to have our thinking pushed, and to recognize that God just might be bigger than we’ve thought. (And of course we ended in plenty of time to watch the Detroit Tigers beat the Oakland A’s behind the arm of Justin Verlander!).
— Feel free to weigh in on any of the above topics in the comment section below!
The real reason ‘spiritual but not religious’ is a cop-out A guest post by Robert Kroese
Robert Kroese is the author of Mercury Falls, Mercury Rises, and many other engaging apocalyptic adventures! This post was originally published on his blog at robertkroese.com, and was a thoughtful response to Alan Miller’s post.
—
Recently I ran across a blog post with the title My Take: “I’m spiritual but not religious” is a cop-out. I read the post with interest because I’ve often thought this very thing: that claiming to be “spiritual” isn’t an answer to a question about one’s religious beliefs, but rather a way to avoid the question while sounding like one has put some thought into it.
Sadly, the post almost immediately devolves into unverifiable, baseless generalizations. For example:
Those in the spiritual-but-not-religious camp are peddling the notion that by being independent – by choosing an “individual relationship” to some concept of “higher power”, energy, oneness or something-or-other – they are in a deeper, more profound relationship than one that is coerced via a large institution like a church.
Whoa, what now? That’s a bold statement. And it doesn’t appear at the end of a chain of rigorous reasoning or citation of studies about beliefs; it’s just thrown out there, as if it’s a brute fact of reality. The author follows this up with all manner of other vague and unsupported statements, somehow managing in an 800-word blog post to attack moral relativism, a culture centered on “feelings,” and megachurches — and going on to defend “old fashioned” values and the King James Bible (which has done all right for 400 years without his support, thank you very much).
Hidden in that rhetorical avalanche are two short paragraphs that I think actually come close to dealing with the matter at hand:
The trouble is that “spiritual but not religious” offers no positive exposition or understanding or explanation of a body of belief or set of principles of any kind.
What is it, this “spiritual” identity as such? What is practiced? What is believed?
The problem, as these paragraphs indicate, isn’t that “spiritual but not religious” is a bad answer to the question “what are your religious beliefs?” (as Miller seems to argue in the rest of the post) but rather that it’s a non-answer.
Imagine a group of plane crash survivors stranded on an island, debating the best way to get off the island. Some argue that the best way is to build a signal fire. Others argue that they should try to build a raft. Still others say that trying to get off the island is a waste of time; that they should focus their efforts on basic survival. Finally one person pipes up with, “Well, I don’t agree with any of you, but I definitely think we’re on an island.”
The man isn’t wrong, but his answer doesn’t get them anywhere. It doesn’t add anything to the discussion. It’s just an acknowledgement of the predicament. And worse, it’s an answer that seems calculated to put the speaker above or outside of the arena of discussion: “Have your petty disagreements amongst yourself; meanwhile I will sit here and contemplate the ocean surrounding us.”
Let me clarify that I’m not saying that the “spiritual but not religious” person is being intentionally smug or provocative, but that this is how is answer is going to be received by people who have been pulling their hair out trying to figure out a way off the island. It could be that he has already considered and rejected as wanting all possible attempts to get off the island and possesses some knowledge about the island that the other survivors aren’t privy to. But if so, then he’s doing a disservice to the other survivors by not sharing his knowledge. And if not, then he’s just wasting their time by pointing out the obvious.
The “spiritual but not religious” label points to three possibilities, as far as I can see:
1. The person has done a thorough study of the world’s religions, found them wanting, and took a different path.
2. The person is largely ignorant of religious beliefs but has been blessed with a mystical understanding that allows him or her to see the shortcomings of any “man-made” religion, and took a different path.
3. The person is largely ignorant of religious beliefs, has no real wisdom to offer, and is parroting an answer that he or she has heard various celebrities use in interviews with some success.
Without lapsing into pure cynicism, I’ll point out that (1) requires a lot of work, and (2) requires that the person be able to see a reality that is evidently hidden to most of the world’s traditional religious believers, whereas (3) requires only pure ignorance, which is in bountiful supply on this planet.
Of course, answering a question about religious beliefs by saying “I’m a Baptist,” “I’m Jewish,” or “I’m an atheist,” isn’t any more inherently difficult than saying “I’m spiritual but not religious.” In other words, there are lazy and ignorant Baptists, Jews and atheists as well as lazy and ignorant “spiritual-but-not-religious” people. Some Baptists have thought long and hard about what they believe and why. Others are just parroting answers they learned in Sunday school. But to their credit, at least they are answering the question.
Further, it seems odd to me that “spiritual but not religious” is such a common answer to the question about one’s religious beliefs. If you really want me to believe that you’ve made a deliberate choice to walk the road less traveled, then you might try giving a different answer to a question about your religious beliefs than that given by, say, Lady Gaga. Otherwise, aren’t you just a Gagaist? What’s the difference between you and every other “spiritual but not religious” person? If there is a difference, then tell me what it is. If there isn’t, then you’re just a member of another vaguely defined religion.
If you are asked about your religious and you don’t really have any religious beliefs, I suggest saying, “I don’t really have any religious beliefs.” If you have some vague belief that people have souls and that there are bad consequences to immoral behavior, say that. If you think that we’re all part of the Great Mystical Oneness, then say that. Saying that you’re “spiritual” doesn’t communicate anything. And saying that you’re “not religious” only communicates that while you may not know what the answer is, you suspect that most of the answers other people have come up with are wrong, or at least deficient.
You might have some really interesting thoughts about God, souls, sin, redemption, justice, forgiveness, love, purpose and oneness. But if you start out by saying that you’re “spiritual but not religious,” I’m going to seriously doubt it.
Note: Alan Miller is Director ofThe New York Salon and Co-Founder of London’s Old Truman Brewery. He is speaking at The Battle of Ideas at London’s Barbican in October.
By Alan Miller, guest post
The increasingly common refrain that “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” represents some of the most retrogressive aspects of contemporary society. The spiritual but not religious “movement” – an inappropriate term as that would suggest some collective, organizational aspect – highlights the implosion of belief that has struck at the heart of Western society.
It seems that just being a part of a religious institution is nowadays associated negatively, with everything from the Religious Right to child abuse, back to the Crusades and of course with terrorism today.
Those in the spiritual-but-not-religious camp are peddling the notion that by being independent – by choosing an “individual relationship” to some concept of “higher power”, energy, oneness or something-or-other – they are in a deeper, more profound relationship than one that is coerced via a large institution like a church.
That attitude fits with the message we are receiving more and more that “feeling” something somehow is more pure and perhaps, more “true” than having to fit in with the doctrine, practices, rules and observations of a formal institution that are handed down to us.
The trouble is that “spiritual but not religious” offers no positive exposition or understanding or explanation of a body of belief or set of principles of any kind.
What is it, this “spiritual” identity as such? What is practiced? What is believed?
The accusation is often leveled that such questions betray a rigidity of outlook, all a tad doctrinaire and rather old-fashioned.
But when the contemporary fashion is for an abundance of relativist “truths” and what appears to be in the ascendancy is how one “feels” and even governments aim to have a “happiness agenda,” desperate to fill a gap at the heart of civic society, then being old-fashioned may not be such a terrible accusation.
It is within the context of today’s anti-big, anti-discipline, anti-challenging climate – in combination with a therapeutic turn in which everything can be resolved through addressing my inner existential being – that the spiritual but not religious outlook has flourished.
The boom in megachurches merely reflect this sidelining of serious religious study for networking, drop-in centers and positive feelings.
Those that identify themselves, in our multi-cultural, hyphenated-American world often go for a smorgasbord of pick-and-mix choices.
A bit of Yoga here, a Zen idea there, a quote from Taoism and a Kabbalah class, a bit of Sufism and maybe some Feing Shui but not generally a reading and appreciation of The Bhagavad Gita, the Karma Sutra or the Qur’an, let alone The Old or New Testament.
So what, one may ask?
Christianity has been interwoven and seminal in Western history and culture. As Harold Bloom pointed out in his book on the King James Bible, everything from the visual arts, to Bach and our canon of literature generally would not be possible without this enormously important work.
Indeed, it was through the desire to know and read the Bible that reading became a reality for the masses – an entirely radical moment that had enormous consequences for humanity.
Moreover, the spiritual but not religious reflect the “me” generation of self-obsessed, truth-is-whatever-you-feel-it-to-be thinking, where big, historic, demanding institutions that have expectations about behavior, attitudes and observance and rules are jettisoned yet nothing positive is put in replacement.
The idea of sin has always been accompanied by the sense of what one could do to improve oneself and impact the world.
Yet the spiritual-but-not-religious outlook sees the human as one that simply wants to experience “nice things” and “feel better.” There is little of transformation here and nothing that points to any kind of project that can inspire or transform us.
At the heart of the spiritual but not religious attitude is an unwillingness to take a real position. Influenced by the contribution of modern science, there is a reluctance to advocate a literalist translation of the world.
But these people will not abandon their affiliation to the sense that there is “something out there,” so they do not go along with a rationalist and materialistic explanation of the world, in which humans are responsible to themselves and one another for their actions – and for the future.
Theirs is a world of fence-sitting, not-knowingess, but not-trying-ness either. Take a stand, I say. Which one is it? A belief in God and Scripture or a commitment to the Enlightenment ideal of human-based knowledge, reason and action? Being spiritual but not religious avoids having to think too hard about having to decide.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Alan Miller.
So, the family loaded in the van last week and headed for the hills (literally!) of North Carolina to attend the Wild Goose Festival.
What is the Wild Goose Festival? New friend Milton described it this way:
“The festival [titled after a metaphor for Celtic Christianity] is self-described as one of spirituality, justice, music, and art. People came and camped in the woods and sang and talked and ate and looked for ways to connect. To me it felt like a cross between Woodstock and church youth camp. When I looked out over the field of participants, in most any direction I saw people who didn’t look like “church folks” who were lost in wonder, love, and grace. For these four days, they got to feel understood. “Normal.” None of us was asked to do more than be ourselves and welcome one another.
And it was good.”
Someone else called it: “A Sacred and Safe Space.” I agree. We arrived in Shakori Hills with a loaded up van, drove down a dusty road under a home-made banner with a painted bird figure and the lettering for ‘Wild Goose’.
The welcome booth was a wooden shack with scenes from Where the Wild Things Are painted on it.
We set up our tent right in the center of activity – between a smaller tent venue labeled ‘Return’, and the main stage for the festival. The theme of the festival was “Exile and Return”, so speaking/music event venues were named accordingly: Shadow, Exile, Return, and so on.
We didn’t know what to expect, other than that we loved the concept, and were excited about some of the speakers and musicians slated to be there.
Let me tell you, this was a festival!
From the first talk we attended on Thursday afternoon — Tom Sine on co-living, intentional communities, and sustainability: “It is essential that we help people reimagine new ways to live. We need to discover creative, celebrative, simple ways of life that are more imaginative than the American Dream and cost less money. And we need to do it together, in community” — to the final song by Gungor, “God makes beautiful things, he makes beautiful things out of dust. God makes beautiful things, he makes beautiful things out of us,” we had an incredible time. It was a time to imagine again what God longs for us and our world.
We met people from Pittsburgh, San Francisco, New York, Texas, Atlanta, Illinois, DC, and all over the country who are hungry for a new form of faith.
We heard Phyllis Tickle review the history of the church from Constantine and the fateful Edict of Milan to today, and the impact of the birth control pill on the future of the faith. She noted that it is time to “return to the tent” — in other words, the place of the family and the home, where the stories of faith are told, shared, and lived out before the children and the next generation. We heard Jim Wallis remind us that in the Capital power is the means and power is the ends, but that God’s way is powerlessness. We heard Brian McLaren encourage us to engage those of other faiths while holding to our own with integrity (Pub Theology, anyone?). We heard Dave Andrews, a community organizer from Australia encourage us to seek centered-set communities rather than closed-set communities. He noted: “When we don’t trust the Spirit’s presence and leading, we create [unwittingly] all kinds of programs and plans and so on that actually become manipulative and oppressive.” He reminded us that wherever we are going to serve and work we have to remember that God is already there — in that people we meet already are imbued with the image of God, and the Spirit is there ahead of us. He also reminded that it is not so much we who bring Jesus, but that in fact, as we serve, we find that we are serving Jesus himself.
We heard great music from local artists as well as Over the Rhine, David Crowder, Gungor, Vince Anderson — Joey and the boys danced and played as the music filtered over us.
We wandered around and got to chat with Pete Rollins, Mark Scandrette, Phyllis Tickle, Lisa Sharon-Harper from Sojourners. Had coffee with Brian McLaren and we mused together about our new adventure in Washington DC. It really was as Frank Schaeffer noted in his own recap, Wild Goose Our Answer to Hate, in the Huffington Post:
“The names of the speakers added up to a “draw” along with the big name musical performers. But the heart of the festival wasn’t in the events but in the conversations.
For me the highlight of the festival was the fact that there was no wall of separation between us speakers and performers and everyone there. I spent 4 days talking with lots of people from all over America and other places too, about ideas but also about very personal subjects. I met Ramona who was the cook at the Indian food stand and found she is ill and has no health insurance and I was able to connect her with a friend who knew a friend at the WG fest locally to help her get the full checkup she needs. I could do that because the festival was full of the sort of people who help, love and care so for once there was someone to call.”
The list of great things we experienced is hard for me to completely recall, there were so many things:
» Watched the first public reading of Pete Rollins’ new play before it shows in New York.
Drinking beer and discussing theology » Wild Goose Beer Tent
» Talked with Milton, a local UCC pastor who is teaching people about the importance of meal and eating together, and how all breaking of bread in some way embodies and reflects the meal we gather around as sacrament.
Was it all perfect? No. It was hot! There were ticks. There were a couple of long nights getting the kids to bed. Some sessions didn’t connect like I had hoped. But in all, it did not disappoint.
Those concerns were minor as we heartily sang hymns while sipping pints of local microbrew during a “Beer and Hymns” session, voices rising with verve (out of tune) with the accompaniment of a tattooed keyboardist.
I met Sean, the owner of Fullsteam Brewery in Durham, NC, after a session entitled: “The Theology of Beer,” which noted the importance of creation, place and celebration in a community, and how a good brewery can be at the heart of community life. I shared our own experiences at Right Brain and he thought that was pretty cool.
The kids attended sessions where they made play-doh, created crafts, played games, and learned fun new songs: “I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor—and I don’t like it very much!”
We fell asleep each night, with our tent a stone’s throw from the main stage, to late night concerts and the sounds of celebration and conversation, music and singing.
In all, it was a total blast, and we imagined—as we joined the parade the final day, singing with faces painted, “When the Saints Go Marching In”—that when the Kingdom comes in its fullness, we’ve already had a taste.
More endorsements on my upcoming book, Pub Theology, in addition to those on the back cover.
“Some of the best theological conversations happen over a beer at the pub. Bryan Berghoef captures something of the relaxed and relational dynamic that makes these discussions so pleasurable, while at the same time wrestling with serious theological questions. So pull up a chair, order your favorite drink, and settle in with this delightful and stimulating book. Invite a friend as well—the conversation’s just getting started.”
—John R. Franke, author of Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth
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“This is a book about God’s freedom and ours! Bryan Berghoef invites us to pull up a chair and dares us to converse about what matters. No fear! This engrossing and transformative story about how to live an open Christian life will save, stir, and strengthen the faith of many.”
—Samir Selmanovic, author of It’s Really All About God: How Islam, Atheism, and Judaism Made Me a Better Christian
And from the back cover:
“Pub Theology is a wonderful, whimsical, and wise story about what happens when a pastor with more questions than answers goes to the pub instead of church.”
—John Suk, author of Not Sure: A Pastor’s Journey from Faith to Doubt and former editor of The Banner
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“Bryan Berghoef has given us the most complete presentation to date of what pub theology is, why it exists, and what it contributes to the lives and faiths of an increasing number of Christians. With his conversationally written and accessible reportage, he has also created something close to a manual for those who want to initiate a pub theology circle or simply find and join one.”
—Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why
Just found out the price will be $18 paperback and $9.99 Kindle version. Should be available for order in either version by the end of the week at latest (UPDATE: It’s up! Order today!). (There will be a discount on the paperback if you order directly from the publisher).
Will have a flyer available to show around at the Wild Goose Festival this weekend as well.
Order one today for yourself, and maybe one for a friend!
Recently Andrew Sullivan noted that “Christianity is in crisis” and encouraged readers to simply follow Jesus and leave church, institution, and organized religion behind. Forget the church. Follow Jesus.
Many sympathize with this impulse, as noted in my most recent post.
What, after all, do institutions have to offer us other than a slow process, outdated organization, and mired traditionalism?
Diana Butler Bass, despite her critiques of the institutional church, notes that perhaps things are not as dire as Sullivan imagines.
Three deceptively simple questions are at the heart of a spiritually vibrant Christianity–questions of believing, behaving, and belonging.
Religion always entails the “3B’s” of believing, behaving, and belonging. Over the centuries, Christianity has engaged the 3B’s in different ways, with different interrogators and emphases. For the last 300 years or so, the questions were asked as follows:
1) What do I believe? (What does my church say I should think about God?)
2) How should I behave? (What are the rules my church asks me to follow?)
3) Who am I? (What does it mean to be a faithful church member?)
But the questions have changed. Contemporary people care less about what to believe than how they might believe; less about rules for behavior than in what they should do with their lives; and less about church membership than in whose company they find themselves. The questions have become:
1) How do I believe? (How do I understand faith that seems to conflict with science and pluralism?)
2) What should I do? (How do my actions make a difference in the world?)
3) Whose am I? (How do my relationships shape my self-understanding?)
The foci of religion have not changed–believing, behaving, and belonging still matter. But the ways in which people engage each area have undergone a revolution.
As Sullivan rightly points out, political partisanship has exacerbated the crisis of Christianity. But the crisis is much deeper than politics. Much of institutional Christianity is mired in the concerns of the past, still asking what, how, and who when a new set of issues of how, what, and whose are challenging conventional conceptions of faith. The old faith formulations were externally based, questions that could be answered by appealing to a book, authority, creed, or code. The new spiritual longings are internally derived, questions of engagement, authenticity, meaning, and relationship. The old questions required submission and obedience; the new questions require the transformation of our souls.
Far too many churches are answering questions that few people are asking. This has left millions adrift, seeking answers to questions that religious institutions have largely failed to grasp.
But this may be changing. Around the edges of organized religion, the exile Christians have heard the questions and are trying to reform, reimagine, and reformulate their churches and traditions. They are birthing a heart-centered Christianity that is both spiritual and religious. They meet in homes, at coffeehouses, in bars–even in some congregations. They are lay and clergy, wise elders and idealistic hipsters. Some teach in colleges and seminaries. They even hold denominational positions. Not a few have been elected as bishops. The questions are rising from the grassroots up–and, in some cases, the questions are reaching a transformational tipping point.
The crisis is real. Like Andrew Sullivan, I feel its sad and frustrating urgency. But I also know the hope of possibility, for every crisis bears the promise of something new. Endings are also beginnings. Indeed, without death, resurrection is impossible. Imaginative, passionate, faith-filled people are enacting a new-old faith with Jesus and are working to change wearied churches. It is the season of resurrection, and resurrections always surprise.
I would like to share her hope, and that is one of the reasons I continue to work within a denominational context – there are many voices encouraging us to live into this new era of faith and searching, to authentically understand, experience, and embody our faith.
Sullivan notes that Christianity is failing — and failing fast.
Sullivan wonders what–if anything–might come next. He identifies a saint–Francis–as a model for renewal based on “humility, service, and sanctity.” But he also likes a philosopher–Thomas Jefferson–as one who charted a reasonable and moral Christian path. Weaving together spirituality and reason, Sullivan holds out for a resurrected Christianity.
However, he does not know how this might happen: “I have no concrete idea how Christianity will wrestle free of its current crisis.” He intuits that a new Christianity must arise, “not from the head or the gut, but from the soul.” That faith will come through a “new questioning,” by addressing concerns that initiate “radical spiritual change.” But his questions remain somewhat vague, and his answers vaguer.
So is the church finished? Will the new Christianity be free of institutional baggage?
Butler Bass isn’t so sure:
What Sullivan apparently does not know is that some Christians, from pews, pulpits, and classrooms are asking the right questions–and are working toward a spiritually renewed and intellectually credible Christianity. These new questioners make up what I call America’s “exile” faith communities–the creative but often ignored Christians found in liberal mainline churches, emergent evangelical gatherings, and progressive Catholic circles. With growing awareness over the last two decades, they have been engaging this crisis, listening to the grassroots questions of American religious life, and constructing new patterns and practices of faith.
That is my experience as well, particularly reinforced after a recent church planting conference at Solomon’s Porch where I encountered Lutherans, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians and many, many others living out their faith in new denominational communities. New life is springing out of the old, yet much work remains.
I asked this question in my last post, and ask it again: what about you? What constitutes living, breathing, authentic spirituality? What role does church or institution play in that? Does it get in the way? Is it irrelevant? Does it have a place?
