erosophy: the rub of theology

I am far too skeptical and cynical to claim to have any real understanding of what the Spirit is. Yet the Spirit continues to touch me. Or, I guess the better phrase is rub. See today, I ran across the blog of another companion, Shannon.

She writes about the the rub of theology in an amazingly beautiful and incarnational way. Shannon quotes Ludwig Feuerbach in her entry, which is ironic because a copy of his major work is on my desk.

I don't know really know Shannon at all, but we do come from the same tribe. As a friend remarked to me earlier in the week: Todd and I went to college together, just at different times. So too did Shannon and I attend college together, just at different times.

I am convinced that there is something great about the small college in Iowa that we both attended. Insights and wisdom that are lost too much in the institutional church and the outside world.

I believe there are Independence Saints and Lamoni Saints and I have always been a Lamoni Saint. I'm a small town guy, who loves the opportunity to make a difference where I am at.

While in seminary, I was assigned to read Sharon Welch's Feminist Ethic of Risk: Communities of Solidarity and Resistance. I told the professor that Welch too was a Graceland graduate and a former RLDS. My professor said, oh, you must see things in her work that we can't.

I honestly replied that I found no significant connections between Welch's writings and her RLDS heritage. Yet I'm older (and I hope wiser) now and I think Welch does offer a vision of the community that will build Zion. What is significant about her journey is that like many members of the RLDS tribe, she had to leave the community to find the alternative wisdom to move her forward on her journey.

Welch found Sophia in the stories of African-American women struggling for liberation and freedom. By gleaning wisdom from these 19th Century freedom fighters, she was able to articulate a "feminist ethic of risk."

What happens when a tribe decides they want to be like all the other nations? When they seek to downplay their distinctiveness and become another denomination? I think the Community of Christ is caught between two worlds and seems unwilling or too fearful to embrace its calling.

We are a church more concerned with risk management than with an ethic of risk. I believe that as along as we accept the hierarchical systems of powers as the norm, we never will be able to truly live out the call to be a prophetic people or be a tribe known for taking risks.