Author: Jonathan Dodson

Lord, Save us from Your Followers

Posted on April 10, 2008

Dan Merchant, author of Lord, Save Us from Your Followers, has sought to collapse ideological division in the U.S. by wearing a jumpsuit covered with aphoristic bumper stickers and traveling the country to capture public response. He intentionally selected conflicting bumper stickers in order to stimulate discussion about these important issues—issues of love, truth, justice, compassion, right and wrong—a great idea! Merchant claims that the followers of Jesus have departed from Jesus’ essential message—“love one another.” This is true. Too often Christians are known for their fundamentalist beliefs, not their love-filled actions.

However, to affirm the truth of the disparity between Jesus’ message and Jesus’ followers is to also assume that truth exists, that it is possible to evaluate history, belief, and behavior based on rightness and wrongness. Therefore, we do well to be truthful about Jesus’ message, which also included “Love God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength.” On both accounts, loving God and loving neighbor, everyone falls short. Who consistently loves others and God? This highlights the need for Jesus’ solution to our failures in love—his substitutionary death for our failure to love and cherish the infinitely lovable.

Merchant notes that the issues can not be reduced to a bumper sticker. He agrees that people and ideas are more complex than aphorisms and that sensitive, irenic discussion over dividing issues is necessary. He is right. In fact, winsome dialogue is an expression of love, especially when we do not minimize the role of truth in discerning the best way forward in addressing global poverty, HIV/AIDS, government corruption, and so on. In the end, what we need it the Lord to save us from ourselves and to fill us with unnatural love for him and for one another.

Lord Save Us From Your Followers movie

Book and movie review

The Church, church buildings, and New Urbanism

Posted on April 9, 2008

A couple months ago I posted on new urbanism, mentioning a book by Philip Bess called Till We Have Built Jerusalem. New urbanism is “an American urban design movement that arose in the early 1980s intended to reform all aspects of real estate development and urban planning, from urban retrofits to suburban infill. New urbanist neighborhoods are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and to be walkable.” One takeaway from this movement is the notion that neighborhoods can be redesigned to promote community. Urban sprawl mitigates this kind of community feel.

New York City has picked up on these ideas in an effort to beautify and re-urbanize the city. David Taylor (same Taylor who put together the Transforming Culture conference) reviews Bess’ book in “The Good City” in Books and Culture. It’s well worth the read.

I love the ideas coming out of New Urbanism and Philip Bess’ reflections. The notion that our architecture and infrastructure betrays and shapes a certain life philosophy is very important. Cities used be places where children played and people gathered for good, social interaction. Too often, urban centers are now skyscraper gardens with little social space left for anything than after hours entertainment. What would it look like for your city, your neighborhood to cultivate a more community-sensitive setting?

Then there are the architectural implications of new urbanism for churches. Should we just build buildings based on their utility or give greater considerations to aesthetics? Do more ornate and context sensitive buildings really make a difference in the quality of church communities? What about the impact of church architecture on the unchurched? A recent survey shows that unchurched folks are more inclined to visit an aesthetically pleasing church building. Hmm. What is the way forward for the evangelical Church in America given the rise of new urbanism, the insights of Bess & Taylor, and good old common sense?