A Few Links for the Week

I am going to be busy at a conference for most of the rest of the week, and so I wanted to post the links before I forget them. They look as if they will be good reading.

D.W. Congdon is writing on the Spirit of the Lord, and in his first post he inveighs against the Sanitised Savior of Suburbia. This Jesus, he writes:

is innocuous, non-confrontational, safe for the consumeristic spirit of Santa. He has no beef with the materialistic society of America. He has no quarrel with the economic oppression of First World countries against the Two-Thirds World. He puts up no nonviolent resistance against the political persecution of Muslims, against the military brutality in the numerous interrogation camps around the world, against the extreme poverty and disease that ravage entire continents. This Jesus is the one who blesses dualism: who only claims a person’s soul and leaves the body up to others, whether to the noncommittal social programs of the governmental or to the oppressive regimes of power which feed off of the subjugation of those lowest in society. This Jesus is the one who blesses suburban complacency, who wanders the urban streets in order to shopbut never to sit and talk and love, who always walks on the other side of the road when there is a homeless person asking for money or a man beat up and left for dead. The SSS is the god of America, and insofar as the SSS is understood as “Christian,” we indeed live in a “Christian nation.”

A bracing start to what sounds like a promising series.

I am particularly intrigued by the proposal of a Pneumatology which will be embodied, public, political, rather than simply internal and private, a matter of 'God and me'. I have been moving in the direction of this kind of account for some time, but simply haven't had the time and opportunity to follow it up in as much detail as I would like. But it seems to me that a biblically faithful pneumatology would be an 'external indwelling', encompassing the 'internal' but also decentering it. Congdon's posts are not specifically a Pneumatology, but a critique of the sort of gnostic dualism which is often found in the church and its preaching, and a constructive account of 'The Spirit of the Lord'. But I think it will be quite interesting and helpful.

Anyway, D.W.'s second post giving the impetus for the project (with the above excerpt) is here, and here is the unfolding index for the project. I hope to read it all soon.

Also, Poserorprophet has a series on Christianity and Capitalism which I hope to read soon. Having skimmed a few of them, it looks as if it will be a good theological critique of the regnant system the world has for ordering, distribution and deserving. First post here.