Bishop Roskam and her homies

I see, the PZ Myers thing is stale, so this week's liberal hate figure is a cleric.

Speaking of the P.Z. Myers thing, I read some new information that seemed to contradict something I read here. The nail used to pierce the Host also pierced a page from the Koran, and a page from Dawkin's "The God Delusion". I seem to remember many here stating that Myers wouldn't dare desecrate the Koran. Did that get missed, Rod?

Oh, the this Bishop seems a little fruity to me. I doubt she'll be the downfall of the Episcopal Church.

I don't know, Rod; there are plenty of examples of Christian ministers trying to be hip with the younger generation, no matter how ill-advised, as an outrreach type of gig.
I just wonder how many hip hop types are "down" with Episcopalianism.

Tony: "I see, the PZ Myers thing is stale, so this week's liberal hate figure is a cleric."
-------
Tony confirms
(1) the Crunchy Con combox comment rule: The topic of a post is not its content, but Rod himself; and
(2) the Crunchy Con combox genetic defect: Crunchy Con combox commenters are congenitally unable to recognize the theme or idea of a post.

The topic is Episcopal Bishop Catherine Roskam and the Hip-Hop Eucharist, yet Tony takes his cue from the playbook list below....
Rod posts on obesity. "Er...um...Rod, you judgmental pig."
Rod posts on Obama. "Eh...duh...Rod, you racist."
Rod posts on abortion. "Umm...uhh...Rod, you misogynist hater."
Rod posts on Anglicanism. "Derr...aah...Rod, you religious bigot."
Rod posts on Congress. "Duhh...mmm...Rod, you conservative wingnut."
...and comes up with a brilliant variation:
"Err...duh...Rod, you liberal cleric hater."

Tony, we've all got faith in you buddy. We all believe that you can recognize a topic and stick to it. Take it easy guy...it's gonna be all right. Just keep repeating "The topic isn't Rod...the topic isn't Rod...the topic isn't Rod...

Silly for an aging, white Anglican bishop, sure...but in twenty years or so this will be part of the "not-your-parents'-church" Evangelical mainstream, no?

No, readingbill, Tyndale wasn't martyred so that moldy white ladies could condescend to urban youth with this ridiculous parody of scripture. Can you imagine if they'd put together a "Redneck Mass" to reach out to unchurched rural Southern folk?

The sad part is that I'm sure they were well-intentioned, and are scrupulous in sniffing out racism in the people around them, but they're so blinded by their own lily-white surroundings they don't realize how incredibly condescending and insulting nonsense like this is.

Dear Rod,

Thanks for pointing us to this fascinating bishop!

Your description was "completely and utterly ridiculous"

Readingbill's take was to compare Peterson's Message paraphrase with the Hip Hop Psalm 23.

Both, in my opinion, are correct.

To incarnate or embody Christ's love involves...

risk

looking foolish

mistakes

adventure

intrigue

controversy

grace

border crossing

mixing "oil and water"

throwing together Jew, Samaritan, Roman, Galilean, Egyptian into one sloppy family

So my questions...

*how do you discern a Spirit-led risk versus ill advised syncretism?

*how do you define biblical faithfulness (which may look like foolishness and failure) versus culturally defined success (which may be faithless)?

*how do we translate/embody Christ's love today, following our Lord's example? He talked about mustard seeds, yeast, treasures, pearls, fishing nets, weeds, seeds, wheat... the down-to-earth language of His day.

Blessed people, bless people,

Duh----sciple

Allen,

What a great imagination! Your image "a Redneck Mass to reach out to unchurched rural Southern folk" is awesome!

The image makes me wonder:

*what is faithful cross-cultural Gospel translation today?

*what if churches actually attempted such ventures?

The key is to make sure the Love is present.

Above all maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8)

I advocate going for it. Be willing to look stupid. Be willing to be misunderstood and ridiculed. With Christ's love- it's covered- genuineness will win the day.

Remember....

Graced people, grace people,

Duh------sciple

readingbill, I stand corrected. Your "ploughboy" reference is a quote attributed to Tyndale himself. I should have remembered that before I posted. I still maintain that there is a meaningful difference between wanting everyone to have access to the scriptures in their own language and insulting people by implying they're "too black" or "too poor" to understand the scriptures in their own language without re-writing them in such a silly and frivolous fashion. The ploughboy who doesn't speak Latin is one thing. The people the "hip hop mass" target speak and understand English just fine.

Allen,

I don't know particularly for whom Tyndale was translating, other than those with ears to hear the Word in English.

Since he's getting some grief, let me just say to Rod, you have the most wonderful blog on the Internet, and the most intelligent and witty commenters. And thank you for keeping comments open even for the detractors.

True story: When I first moved to the city where I now live, my wife and I put our two kids into a Presbyterian church summer camp. In many respects it was a good experience for them. But at the end of the camp, all the kids (none of them older than 7) gave a performance.

Some of the songs were cute. But for some reason, the older women leading the kids had decided some "hip hop" was needed. So here were middle-aged white women leading the kids, shouting, "God is in the house! Say what?! God is in the house! Say what?!" I looked around to see if I was allowed to laugh, and some other parents were obviously having the same reaction.

The kids did their best to shout along, pumping their hands in the air, but looking utterly perplexed. And that includes the minorities for whom this was no doubt intended for the sake of "inclusiveness" and "diversity."

Actually, treebeard, that particular verse doesn't prove the point well. The King James translation of "the valley of the shadow of death" isn't very close to the Hebrew, which more accurately reads "in the darkest valley". They were being poetic. I prefer their version, but their clear did change the text by analogizing the words.

JPL,

Actually, the UCC has a high-church strain based on the 19th century Mercersburg Theology of John W. Nevin and Philip Schaff that comes through its German Reformed side.

A recent Nevin biographer refers to him as a "high-church Calvinist."

JPL: Actually, treebeard, that particular verse doesn't prove the point well. The King James translation of "the valley of the shadow of death" isn't very close to the Hebrew, which more accurately reads "in the darkest valley". They were being poetic. I prefer their version, but their clear did change the text by analogizing the words.

You may be right about the literal translation but the King James follows both the Septuagint and the Vulgate:

ἐὰν γὰρ καὶ πορευθῶ ἐν μέσῳ σκιᾶς θανάτου (even if I walk amid the shadow of death)
sed et si ambulavero in valle mortis (but even if I walk in the valley of death)

Death is clearly a component; both the LXX and Jerome used the original Hebrew. If "valley" is in the Hebrew, the LXX apparently omitted it for some reason. Jerome is often slavishly literal to the NT koine, so I'd be surprised he would not render the Hebrew literally as well.

Roland, there is apparently some debate over the meaning of the Hebrew phrase, which is doubtless where the issue arises. Some translate a specfic word, which I have no idea how to reproduce here in Hebrew, as "shadow of death". Others, feeling the vowels are being handles incorrectly, feel it means "dense darkness". More recently, scholars think it might be some kind of superlative, hence "through the darkest valley."

It's worth noting that none of these make any grand change to the meaning of the text, and seem to matter only to pedants like us.

Most of the newer translations I've come across translate this word as "a very dark valley" or "the darkest valley." The KJV rendering is certainly prettier, and I don't see that it changes or alters the meaning of the passage at all, and as Roland points out, "death" shows up in the Septuagint and Vulgate. Might "a valley as dark as death" be accurate?

The Rt. Rev. Roskum is a wonderful woman, someone we New Yorkers are proud to have as our bishop. She has class and she has a sense of humor.

I'd rather have a bishop who does rap than a bishop that hides child rapists in our parishes any day.

???

Who is this Rod you all keep talking about? ;-)

Anyhow, i suspect the cleric would trouble me in many ways, given the snark she flang at Lambeth yesterday (or today, i lose track of the time change), but i have to admit i like:

I fall back in the Lord's crib
For the rest of my life

Word, dat.

there is apparently some debate over the meaning of the Hebrew phrase, which is doubtless where the issue arises.

This is pretty off topic, but I've noticed that most Protestants (and nonbelievers with Protestant backgrounds) regard "the Hebrew" as definitive. Why is this, exactly?

The Greek Septuagint predates the Hebrew Masoretic text by centuries. At the time of Christ, the "fullness of time" there was no Masoretic text. We don't really know what the Hebrew looked like then, and there were probably multiple variants in circulation. But we do know that Jews at the time of Christ considered the Septuagint a faithful rendition of Scripture, so why should modern Christians defer to a post-Christian rabbinical Hebrew text?

It's true what they say: there are two institutions on earth totally and permanently beyond parody. Italy's government and the Church of England.

One of the great things about being Orthodox is that I will never, ever, ever have to suffer through the patronizing nonsense of the Hip Hop liturgy, nor the abomination of Liturgical Dance. Quoting the great Robert A Heinlein: "If people have to go to church, can't they at least be dignified about it?" The character through whom Heinlein was speaking, Jubal Harshaw in "Stranger In A Strange Land", was commenting on The Church Of The New Revelation, a cross between a revival meeting and the Vegas strip that echoes weirdly with both seeker-friendly megachurches and the pitiable attempts of bourgeois Mainline clerics to be hip and edgy. Give it up. If the Incarnation isn't edgy enough, the gangsta version won't attract anybody for longer than it takes to satisfy curiosity.
And Tony, "Liberal hate figure"? Come on. If mocking the mockable is hatred, somebody should pull the plug on "The Simpsons". Grow some spine, man!

Give it a rest, Daniel. You rarely pass up a chance to take a shot at the people who fill up those megachurches, as evidenced by your snark about middle class values on a thread two days ago. Now you pat them on the back for being so popular. Make up your mind, will you? Come on by my parish, Church of the Annunciation in Milwaukie, Oregon, and tell me if we're practically empty. Then you can visit St. George in Portland, and then you can visit St. John the Baptist in Beaverton. And while you're at it, you can catch up on your back issues of "Christianity Today" and enjoy the hand-wringing there about the fading star of the American megachurch. Orthodoxy has its issues. Believe me, I know them better than you do. But we will not dilute the content of the Faith once given nor produce a weekly variety show in a futile attempt to win a popularity contest in this fallen world. Nor, I note, will the German Shepherd of your own communion, and I imagine that drives you nuts.

I wonder, where on Earth do you get the impression that the number of Orthodox faithful are lessening in number? I myself am a convert, and I know plenty of people who converted to the Orthodox faith who were disgusted by the almost obsessive liberalizing and "modernizing" of the liturgy in the Episcopal/Mainline Protestant churches.

The OCA has reported the same 1M members for almost 15 years. People who follow the self-reported numbers of members question how the OCA could remain so consistently at the same number for so long, except for small variations.

While there are clearly converts to the Orthodox church, there is also evidence that even more Orthodox have completely quit attending Greek and Russian Orthodox churches but are still kept on the rolls. The Orthodox I know--cradle Orthodox--voice a lot of concern about the number of cradle Orthodox who are abandoning the church and how the church is becoming a smaller, convert church.

What bothers me more is this condescension towards Pentecostal and Seeker-friendly churchs . . . you know, the ones that are actually growing and bringing lots of new people to Christ. Yes, they lack the bells and smells. But they are achieving something--bringing people to Christ and attracting the unchurched--that the bells and smells liturgical churches don't. They are able to be highly relevant to the lives people are living. To be dismissive and condescending because they aren't chanting and wearing vestments is insulting.

Two translation comments:

First, it's incorrect to suppose that Jesus couldn't have used Greek puns, or that His preaching was exclusively in Aramaic. Greek was the lingua franca of the time, and necessary to anyone who had to function in commerce or outside his home village. Even the Romans used Greek rather than Latin.

It's perfectly possible that the Greek gospels contain direct quotes, untranslated.

Second, IIRC it was St. Jerome who insisted on the Masoretic Text, and that the other books of the Septuagint not be used to establish doctrine. His argument was that this would aid in debates with Jews, since the Jews of his time no longer recognized the Septuagint as authoritative Holy Scripture.

St. Jerome's reasoning (though not about debates with Jews) is specifically cited in the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church, in regard to the so-called Deuterocanonical Books. Some of the Reformers went a little overboard in that respect...

And a Bishop Roskam comment: ISTM that efforts such as the hip-hop translation of Scripture are pretty silly unless they come from within the culture itself (see for example the Gospel Gangstas and their successors). My teenage kids, who like rap music, see through this in a minute and prefer the traditional liturgies partly because they're more honest: it's about worshiping God, not being hip.

I made an effort to "do" Catholicism. The priest supervising my spiritual formation seemed to encourage a faith that was more childish than childlike, so, like many others, I then tried the Episcopal Church.

But I left it forever two years ago Pentecost. As the priest, last year elevated to bishop, consecrated the host, the same-sex couple seated directly in front of me opened buttons and zippers and caressed each other, intimate parts quite visible. I left the service, and when I made an appointment to see the vicar later to express my concerns, I was told in no uncertain terms that if I could not dialog (that is, if I could not allow for the possibility that homosexual sex in front of the entire congregation was equivalent to the Eucharist, as it might well be in some wiccan traditions), I had no place in that parish or the Episcopal church as a whole. I decided that was OK by me.

So give me Psalm 23 in ebonics any day, if the Right Reverend at least insists zippers stay zipped.

Rich: And I submit rapping is far more innocuous than the child molestations that apparently occur rather frequently at your local Catholic parish...

Another esthete of the subtlest discernement. Another brilliant "rap or rape" dichotomist. Would that the Fathers, the Apostles, and Christ Himself had been gifted with such trenchant insight.

But how can one deny the cacophony and solecisms of ghetto doggerel to a "church" that sacramentalizes buggery? All homoerotic acts are disordered; they are in fact rape, the result of aberrant concupiscence arising in a morally diseased will. Such a will can no more give free consent than the cannibal's next victim can consent to the evening's entrée.

Both the Orthodox and Roman Catholics condemn the molestation of children; is it not a mere matter of time before the buggery-boosting Episcopalians sacramentalize pederasty, most probably with a new liturgy to follow first "communion."? On what basis can such a step be denounced? The Fathers? Their obsolete writings are hurtful. Burn them. The Apostles? Their preaching reflects a vanished culture. Martyr them again. Christ Himself? His very existence may be a myth. Crucify him again.

Rod, your obsession with the split in the Anglican church comes off as schadenfraude

Rod is more than capable of defending himself, but your charge of schadenfrede he has in the past specifically refuted. Is it schadenfreude to be astonished at the headlong rush to ruination of a church whose hierarchs gambol gaily about the bathhouse of Belial? I suspect that Rowan Williams may find his way to the narthex of either Rome or Constantinople, Spong and Shori to the very apse of Hell.

I'm willing to wager the parishoners of First Baptist of X have far more in common culturally, intellectually, even doctrinally with Bishop Spong than with these African Bishops.

Spong has doctrine? Of the non-Chalcedonian variety, I would venture. Perhaps: bugger unto others as thou wouldst be buggered unto?

There is so much work to be done in the world, and here we are, like children, splitting hairs over words.

Children do not split hairs. Sanctimonious adults do.