Paperback Dreams
Megan and I went to a showing of Paperback Dreams: An Ode to Independent Bookstores last night at Decatur’s PushPush Theater. A panel discussion followed with the maker of the film and several owners of local independent bookstores (including: OutWrite Bookstore, Little Shop of Stories, Blue Elephant, and A Cappella Books).
The film, which will likely be showing on a public broadcasting station near you in the future, was quite good. It told the story of the plight of two independent bookstores in California and doing so brought many questions concerning local economies and independent merchants.
We’re spoiled in Decatur that when we think of going to buy something other than groceries, or going out to eat, what springs first to mind are primarily indie stores. Decatur’s just like that. But it won’t stay that way unless residents continue and improve their support.
Bookstores, especially, take a huge amount of startup money and run very close returns. One of the scenes that will stick with me from the film is the hundreds of “faithful customers” who showed up for the indie book stores closing. They were heartbroken and said things like, “I love this store, I buy all my books here.” But a survey found that under 30% of their book purchases were actually from the indie store–and these are some huge stores with enormous stocks.
The forum brought up a few interesting marketing ideas that book stores are considering, but at the end of the day this phrase sums it up: put your money where you house is.
A trailer for the movie:
Individuality and Community
It’s easy to crack on our culture, in particular, our penchant for selfish individuality. You’ll often hear phrases like, “Well, ultimately it’s not about THEM is it?” Implying it’s ultimately just about yourself. We celebrate the self in ways extreme and dangerous.
In response to our individualistic society, Christians preach and try to practice a self-giving rather than selfishness. Jesus is held up as the ultimate example of self sacrifice, and we’re told to do as he did. Of course, this extreme–total selflessness–can be really dangerous, and is ultimately unfaithful in practice. Too often, especially for women, the giving of oneself for others becomes dangerous and abusive. Lack of self-respect and self-dignity is no good either.
Enter Shirley Guthrie.
As human beings created in the image of God, we can realize our distinctive individuality only in and for the sake of community with God and other people; and we can live in true community with them only as we respect, preserve, and defend our own unique individuality and that of other people. True individuality and true community cannot be separated; each has to be understood in inseperable connection with the other… [Christian Doctrine, p. 209]
May more of us better walk this balance beam of Christian individuality and community.
image by spekulator
The voices in my head
A conversation I have with myself. Often.
Adam 1: Man, it’ll be great to get back to Decatur and buy that new car. The final choice and smart compromise of the 2009 Subaru Forester is dead brilliant.
Adam 2: “Brilliant” you say? So what if the 2009 redesign is impressive and cheaper than the 2008, buying a new car is plain silly.
Adam 1: I agree, but this may be the only time in our lives when we’re in a position to do so. We need a solid car to last us years. And the 2009 Forester is just darn good. We’re going to be a one car family. Get off my back.
Adam 2: Good…and big. Did you see that honker fill up that parking space yesterday?
Adam 1: Funny you say that, because a Honda Accord is actually 1.6 inches wider. The Forester also has a higher driving position which makes it both fun to drive and safe to see stuff. Oh, and speaking of safe, All Wheel Drive comes standard on the Forester (and all Subarus).
Adam 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. AWD. But the Civic gets gas mileage that would leave a Forester in the dust. Forester’s 20/26 mileage is pretty pidly.
Adam 1: If by “pidly” you mean “best in its class.” Owners report getting low 30s when driven smartly. And our manual transmission will definitely make that easy. Try finding a manual in a CR-V.
Adam 2: Just think of gas prices.
Adam 1: Just think of the environment. Our PZEV (Partial Zero Emissions Engine) is the cleanest engine around. It scores 9.5 out of 10 in government ratings. It puts out so few particulates that cause smog, that in Atlanta the air coming out of the tail pipe will actually be cleaner than the air around it.
Adam 2: Yeah, but it’s an “SUV.”
Adam 1: Nope, it’s a “crossover.” Or really, a hatchback if you think about it.
Adam 2: Buy a 2006 Civic for several thousand less.
Adam 1: You’ll feel squished in a Civic, and add used-Civic-bore to the rest of your life and folks will begin to fall asleep talking to you.
Adam 2: Well at least they’ll talk to you–SUV owning prick.
Adam 1: Well to those free thinking folks who’ll still chat to me, I’d be happy to drive them somewhere so that they can enjoy the lovely backseat legroom. Eat that Civic lover.
Adam 2: Sinner.
Adam 1: Always, but also a redeemed sinner driving a safe, environmentally conscious, fun, outdoorsy, roomy enough vehicle with bike rack and sun roof to enjoy God’s creation.
Adam 2: I’d rather walk.
Adam 1: Well, I may pass you my bike, which I use as transportation as well. Oh, and did I say we’re going carbon neutral.
Adam 2: Weirdo Japanese-driving tree lover.
Adam 1: That’s my name, don’t wear it out.
Adam 3: So what are you guys talking about…
image by miamiamia
Series: What I learned about America by living in Scotland, I
I’m pretty swamped right now, and have lots of fantastic post ideas but no time to write. But I wanted to at least begin a series both fun and ideal for quick posting. The series is: What I learned about America by living in Scotland.
Ok, so it’s a really bad name, but at least it’s descriptive. Over my final (*tear) last six weeks in Scotland I hope to reflect on a few of learnings from people to politics to religion to dirt.
First reflection: America is big. No, really, American is BIG!
Sure, I knew America was big before staying for a year in Scotland, but more of the implications have surfaced for me this year. We drive bigger cars because we’re in them longer, we drive longer distances, we have wider roads, and we’re bigger people (aka fatter.)
Scotland can fit into the United States 127 times. Scotland can fit into Georgia twice. The population of Scotland is very similar to the population of the Atlanta metro area.
Everything is smaller here: cartons of juice, refrigerators, cars, bags of chips, cans of soup, shoe sizes, yards, houses, fairways, even blades of grass (one exception is the new Church of Scotland hymnal, but we won’t go there).
The implications of these size differences are many. Scots have a clearer understanding that they are citizens of the world, not just their country (the United Kingdom questions help this). I’d say Americans are much more showy in their patriotism, much more arrogant in their citizenship than Scots. When Scots visit other countries, Americans visit other states. This makes Americans a little more nearsighted (in the real eye doctor sense, at least).
I also feel like Americans think a little bigger sometimes. Their horizons are so distant, their country so vast, perhaps their ingenuity is piqued by the sheer amount of possibilities in a country so large.
Big generalization here, but I also feel like Americans live more secluded lives, especially in terms of our class structure. While in Scotland it’s common to have a more shady neighborhood just a few blocks from an expensive one, American neighborhoods are often so spread out they don’t ever see the other. Many Americans get in the SUVs to drive to work behind tinted windows. Scots are much more likely to walk, ride the bus, or take the train. This increases Americans’ individualism.
America, obviously, has many more regions than Scotland; it’s much more diverse geographically in many ways because it’s so much bigger. Americans then have a bit more regional identity than Scots. It’s difficult to compare this assertion, since folks from Glasgow and Edinburgh (only an hour apart) have different accents and culture. But, I would say there are more possible differences at home, and more regional identity claiming. Not totally sure about these implications, but perhaps it makes Americans more likely to tell their own story about their own place to explain to others from other places. Maybe it makes us more narrative? Ok, I’m no sociologist so will stop here before I get myself into trouble.
Cheerio.
image by Billy Alexander
Race, Religion, and Politics
Carol over at Tribal Church and I are having a conversation regarding Jeremiah Wright. My introduction to the series is in this post. My first question to Carol was:
With our current media situation, can we in America have a responsible public conversation on race, religion, and politics or are we destined to the lowest common denominator of ten-second sound-bites?
Her answer found here, follows:
I was serving a small church in Cajun Louisiana. Think The Apostle, Robert Duvall’s masterpiece from eleven years ago, and you’ll know where I was. It was literally filmed down the road from my church.
When I was doing some community organizing, I made friends with Prophetess Perot. She asked me to preach at her revival at the House of Prayer, and I (of course) accepted.
I had no idea what was in store when I drove up to the tiny clapboard house. The building had been transported from a plantation and its walls were soaked with history. Houses of Prayer were the one place on the plantation where slaves met, without any oversight or fear of their owners.
This House of Prayer was where the Bible was read and preached, where revolutions were planned, where hope was reignited. Within those walls, in that safe place, men and women told their stories. They could cry about the beatings, they could whisper the truth about the rapes. The sanctuary was a refuge in every sense of the word.
Upon entering, I found out that the walls were now filled with posters, with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. written on them, next to the words of the biblical prophets, Elijah and Jeremiah. I read them as the heat from the room enclosed on me.
The series of services was not a revival in the sense that they were out to save anybody. It was a week to revive the pastor. All the speakers and singers were there to encourage the congregation and the prophetess in her work. The congregation was made up mostly of women, and when we talked, I found out that most of them were professional cleaners.
The deacons had starched white coats on. They lined the walls to make sure everyone was helped. I was thankful that I wore a dress, and my husband was in a suit, otherwise we would have felt quite out of place.
We began the service with singing praise choruses and spirituals. And there’s so much I could write about-how the prophetess entered twenty minutes late and was seated in a large wicker chair, how the singers were a family act who traveled about from revival to revival-but I need to get to the point, so I’ll skip all that and tell you about the deaconess who got up to pray.
She was beautiful. Thin, black, with perfect posture. I was about 27 at the time, and she was the same age. When she opened her mouth, there was some sort of power behind her words. A force I can’t explain. But, the preachers reading this know what I’m talking about. She prayed through every part of her body, that her mouth, and nose, and ears, and hands, and feet would all serve God. It was poetry. It’s a prayer form that I’ve tried to copy a hundred times since I first heard it. Except for one part. When she referred to God… at first I didn’t understand it… I couldn’t figure out what she was saying.
And then it hit me. She was saying, “Massah.”
Oh no. It can’t be. I thought. And she said it again. And again. She’s my age. She grew up in the same country that I did. She’s smart. This can’t be.
I had this gut-wrenching urge to plead with her, “You can’t do that! You cannot refer to God as your Master. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t. You are God’s daughter. You are not God’s slave.”
I recall the incident frequently in my mind. And sometimes I still wish that I had been brave enough. But I wasn’t. It was not my place to enter into that sacred house and begin telling her what to do. To tell her how to talk to God. I didn’t think myself as a descendant of slave owners, but she knew that she was a descendent of slaves.
That history was in the walls, and it was in her veins. And she would pray to God, who was her only Master, in the way that she wanted. It was not my turn to speak. It was my turn to listen, and to pray with her.
There was so much in those walls. We were sitting in a context of history that I could never understand.
And, so to answer the question, I’d say that we cannot have a responsible discussion on race in America in the media, by extrapolating sensational sound bites and listening to them over and over again. It’s not just the full context of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons that we are missing. We are missing a beautiful and complicated history, an entire tradition of people who could speak freely in their sanctuaries without the fear of censure.
I do not agree with Jeremiah Wright. I am saddened by the damage he has done to Barack Obama’s campaign. I shudder at what he has said about AIDS. I fear when he says, “God damn America.” There’s just something deep within me that worries that God will hear him. That God will honor his plea. I watch the National Press Club clips and shake my head. Rev. Wright has been flippant he should have been serious.
But I also acknowledge he’s speaking in a context that I will never understand, one that pulses in this country, and goes far beyond the context of the sermon. It is a tradition that began in those houses of prayer. In the one place where people could speak freely. Where no one could tell them what they ought to say, and how they ought to pray, and how they ought to sing, and how they ought to talk to God.
And so, it is again my place to listen. Not only to Wright’s sermons, but to the vital tradition of liberation that scares me and gives me hope.
We cannot have a responsible conversation in the media. But we can have it in our spiritual communities. And the words of Rev. Wright have stirred up that opportunity.
So, Adam, let me ask you, what are the theological implications of Wright’s words?
Thanks for the fantastic post, Carol. I’ll think on these things, and post right back at you.
Wright Back and Forth
So Carol over at Tribal Church and I have both been thinking about blogging and Jeremiah Wright, but stymied over the best blogging approach. Now that the furor had died down a bit, we’ve agreed to have a bit of a blogging back and forth, asking each other probing questions and reflecting with our brilliant wit – ok, well at least the first part. I’ll give my overall impression of Wright, and then the questions.
In many ways, Wright speaks out of a theological perspective that speaks to me. Jesus delivered people from oppression. He did not lead folks to financial prosperity, nor to easy answers, nor to cuddle up to corrupt systems. Jeremiah Wright gets this, so my initial thoughts on the controversy were that Wright was being slammed unfairly by the media in a slow news week.
Did you notice how seldom the media refers to him as “The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright?” Did you notice how one sermon was taken out of context without regard for the rest of Wright’s ministry? Did you notice how his service in the US Marines is seldom mentioned? These complexities make it easier for the media to portray Wright stereotypically rather than with complexity. The stereotype was one with which many Americans have great difficulty: un-educated rabble-rousing preacher, anti-American, angry black man.
Anyone who knows anything about Wright’s church knows this stereotype is a sad indictment of religious, racial, and political dialog in America.
So when Wright went public a few weeks ago, initially I was cautiously optimistic that he would transcend these stereotypes and heighten the level of conversation. I watched Bill Moyers interview, and thought this might be the case. I watched the Detroit NAACP speech, and got a bit worried. I watched the National Press Corps presentation – especially the Q and A – and knew the moral high ground was lost, as was any salvageable credibility, forever.
So here’s my first question to Carol:
With our current media situation, can we in America have a responsible public conversation on race, religion, and politics or are we destined to the lowest common denominator of ten-second sound-bites?
image by mishahu
If you have six minutes, Moyers’ sermonizing below is just first-rate.
Book Review: "The New Christians" by Tony Jones
I won a free copy of Tony Jones’ fancy new book, “The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier” a few weeks ago from Adam, and since Jones’ publicist sent the free copy all the way to Scotland, I figured it deserves a nice long post. (Actually, I won it in a contest at pomomusings, so many thanks to Adam and his blog that gets so many more hits than mine.)
I’ll begin with what has been noted by most reviewers: if you want to read one book on the emergent church, The New Christians is by far the best value for your time and money. No doubt about it: TNC is worth reading.
I most appreciated the description in the early chapters explaining how the emergent church movement developed. Quick summary: some top-notch post-modern evangelical types became uncomfortable with the direction the evangelical leadership was heading and happened upon a church movement that dovetailed with the post-modernism they lived and breathed, and the connectivity and community provided by the internet (you could also say the Holy Spirit helped out, but Jones does take a more academic approach).
Though I’ve been quite aware of emergent the past few years, I didn’t know the full story behind the beginning and was fascinated–probably my favorite part of the book. I knew emergent had evangelical roots, but I didn’t know that some of their first brainstorming sessions were funded by evangelical groups, who, later by the way, pulled the money quick.
Jones’ goes on to describe the ethos, theology, and practicality of the movement in the remaining chapters. He keeps things very approachable for non-churchy folk, or for church folk who are not familiar with discussions of post-modernity. Interlacing the entire work with stories of people touched by emergent, and with “dispatches from the trenches” meant to describe particular characteristics of the emergent church, Jones covers a lot of ground in his 220 pages. You can tell he’s a pastor, in that he’s a good communicator and addresses his intended audience well.
Before I get to my critique, here’s some of the dispatches:
Dispatch 1: Emergents find little importance in the differences between various flavors of Christianity. Instead, they practice a generous orthodoxy that appreciates the contributions of all Christian movements.
Dispatch 6: Emergents see God’s activity in all aspects of culture and reject the sacred-secular divide.
Dispatch 8: Emergents find the biblical call to community more compelling than the democratic call to individual rights. The challenge lies in being faithful to both ideals.
Dispatch 11: Emergents believe that awareness of our relative position–to God, to one another, and to history–breeds biblical humility, not relativistic apathy.
Dispatch 16: Emergents believe that church should function more like an open-source network and less like a hierarchy.
Dispatch 18: Emergents firmly hold that God’s Spirit–not their own efforts–is responsible for the good in the world. The human task is to cooperate with God in what God is already doing.
Dispatch 19: Emergents downplay–or downright reject–the difference between clergy and laity.
Jones pops these dispatches in throughout the work, and they work well as talking points or pointed descriptors of emergent.
Critique:
Here’s my main critique, and where I think Jones could have done a bit more. Because of the context of emergent’s emerging–namely, the mainly American Evangelical church movement–Jones seems to focus on distinguishing emergent from evangelical Christianity, he discusses conversations and battles between emergent and evangelicalism with little discussion of emergent and mainline denominations.
Sure, mainline talk sometimes comes up–e.g. at the end of the book, Jones describes his visits to four emergent churches, one of them being Church of the Apostles in Seattle which has Lutheran and Episcopal connections.
But what I kept yearning for–and writing in the margins, again and again–is the acknowledgment and analysis of the fact that basically every single dispatch describing the emergent church applies to my liberal mainline fairly traditional church founded in 1832. Ok, Jones can’t speak to my particular context of Old First Church Tallahassee. And sure, not every dispatch fits perfectly–not many people on the congregational care committee would describe it as “open-source” or “wiki” (though it certainly has many of the characteristics)–but I felt like Jones was leaning his writing too much in the direction of evangelicals to the detriment of mainline conversation.
This problem jumps out at you in the public relations write-up that came with my copy. The PR person says TNC explores emergent, and that “It’s a total re-examination of the gospel that has resulted in a mash-up of old and new, of theory and practice, and of mainline, evangelical, and increasingly, Roman Catholic Christians.” Come again: “total re-examination of the gospel”? Say what? If almost every member of my mainline congregation would affirm every dispatch from the trenches–or further–if almost every member of my mainline congregation could read a re-worded dispatch and think it was written about my congregation, then the “total re-examination” description is lacking something.
Emergent is not quite a “total re-examination of the gospel,” it’s a re-examination of the gospel out of one flavor of Christianity, and it has taken on many characteristics of other flavors of Christianity.
I don’t want to be too hard on Jones. He’s a great guy, a fine theologian, a strong blogger, a twin cities man, and has written a fantastic book. But I feel like he skews too much towards the evangelical conversation to the detriment of a deeper and a bit more complicated conversation with both the evangelical and mainline.
Here’s a few other ponderings the book brought up:
- The emergent community tends to be pretty darn young, as Jones notes. Why? What happens in twenty years? And why aren’t emergent churches which thrive in diversity seeking to broaden the conversation to older generations?
- I loved Jones’ description of the problem of fideism of the right (Piper) and the left (Borg) and the call for dialogue and faith in between. [p. 154-5]
- Jones’ format is really well done–it’s in six chapters, but has several threads that run through and color each chapter, as well as the dispatches mixed-in. He makes a linear and logical progression from page 1 to 220, but there’s helpful and non-disrupting stops along the way that add depth and breadth to the work. Either his editor or Jones did very well.
- Love what a member of Jacob’s Well says of his community, “I like it when Tim says, ‘People experience God emotionally, intellectually, relationally, and aesthetically,’ and this church aims to make every one of those experiences available to people.”
- My final question relates to my main critique above. It’s a bit contextual, but here it is: Is St. John’s Lutheran Church in Atlanta emergent? It’s a bit older than most emergent, but it’s fairly hip. It’s all about emergent’s inclusivism, call for community, problems with hiearchy (tends to happen when the denomination says your pastor isn’t your pastor), worship is innovative and free, and it’s all about the dispatches. Can a church be emergent without knowing it, or trying to be. Does emergent have to stem from this evangelical break-up, or can it include an even broader community?
Thoughts?
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