Revenge of the Episco-Clueless

Midwest Conservative Journal ^ | 2/02/2007 | Christopher Johnson

[sionnsar]

You will have to go some to find higher-quality Episcopal arrogance than this.  Seems Trinity Episcopal Clown College Church recently had this conference:

"Apocalpyse Not” was the informal title given to a conference held last week at Trinity Church that was attended by four hundred-odd religious leaders and that took as its subject the end of the world as envisioned in the Book of Revelation. “We’re floundering on this issue,” said Professor Mark Richardson, the senior theological adviser at Trinity Institute, at a cocktail party held after the first day’s lectures. Richardson explained that Episcopalians are not much given to pondering the Apocalypse, while fundamentalist Christians do nothing but. The conference—officially titled “God’s Unfinished Future: Why It Matters Now”—was intended to explore ways to address a Christian laity easily seduced by the lurid horrors of the “Left Behind” fictional series, which imagines a contemporary Rapture, and of which more than forty-three million copies have been sold. “I don’t think I have the stomach for those books,” Richardson said.

I don't want to be uncharitable or anything but an idea that titanically stupid doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Trinity Institute's "senior theological adviser."  The Apocalypse is all the fundies think about?  Do you mean that when a fundie wakes up in the morning and sees that big light in the sky through his window, he thinks it's Jesus? 

I guess that's why fundies can't hold down jobs.  Why waste your time putting together that actuarial data for the boss when the Rapture could happen any second?  Fundies have stopped driving cars, of course.  If the Rapture happens while they're driving somewhere, their cars could hurt somebody.  And that's why all those people homeschool, you know.  So they can meet the Lord in the air as a family.

Idiot.  But at least the grub was good at the classy reception.

An appetite for smoked-salmon canapés and pinot noir was all that was required of guests at the evening’s gathering, which was held at Trinity’s rectory, a town house on Charlton Street that was built by John Jacob Astor in 1826 and was acquired by the church in 2004, for five and a half million dollars. It joins Trinity’s considerable portfolio—the church owns six million square feet of office space between Houston and Canal Streets. Above the dining-room fireplace hangs a portrait of the house’s current occupant, the Reverend Dr. Jim Cooper, by Thomas Loepp. It depicts him standing on Wall Street with the church and its environs in the background. “There are our dog and cat, and there’s my buddy Mohammed, with his hot-dog cart,” Cooper said.

Someone named Barbara Rossing thinks we need a best-selling novel with prog heroes.

In a lecture, “Prophecy, End-Times, and American Apocalypse: Reclaiming Hope for Our World,” Barbara Rossing, a New Testament scholar at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, suggested, “We need a novel whose heroes are rooted on the earth, living in sustainable communities, maybe practicing Permaculture gardening.”

Great idea, Barb.  That sucker will fly off the shelves.  But as far as the idea of trotting out a popular leftist work of art is concerned, you do know that The Book of Daniel tanked after four episodes, don't you?  Its hero was a liberal Episcopalian too.  Go figure.

Here's the deal.  I'm as conservative a Protestant Christian as exists in the world.  I haven't read any of those books and I have no intention of starting.  My sister is, at best, an indifferent Episcopalian.  She read all those books.  And she is still an indifferent Episcopalian.

When each book in the series was published, it dominated the reserve list of the library where I work.  And you know what?  For some reason, people are NOT demanding that we buy everything Hal Lindsey has ever written.  You know what's even more amazing?  This book is not in our collection. 

For Trinity Episcopal Clown College Church to put on a conference because they think that tens of millions of Americans are going to stop what they're doing and do nothing but stare at the sky simply because of something they read in a work of fiction indicates just how completely out of touch liberals and especially liberal Episcopalians are.  But I like to be constructive around here so if TECCC is going to start regularly hosting conferences based on popular works of art, here are some suggestions for the future:

Establishing an Effective Hobbit Ministry
Mission to Mordor: Reaching Out to the Uruk-Hai
Developing the Elvish Standard Version of the Bible
Christian Ministry and the Prime Directive
Ordaining Klingons - Opposing Viewpoints
AAAAUUUGGH!! - Helping Your Congregation Through Pon Far
Should Christians Pray for Emperor Palpatine? 
Leave Your Light Saber at the Door: Making Churches Safe for Jedi and Sith
Frozen Chosen - Spiritual Exercises While Frozen in Carbonite
Harry Potter and the Book of Common Prayer - Is Magic Appropriate in Rite Two?

Feel free to add your own ideas.

[sionnsar]

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Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15

[xJones]

Do you mean that when a fundie wakes up in the morning and sees that big light in the sky through his window, he thinks it's Jesus?

How silly, we don't have windows in our caves.

[sionnsar]

LOL!

[AnalogReigns]

I don't mean to defend silly theological liberals, but it is a fact that the most conservative of Episcopalian/Anglicans, as well as Presbyterians have a diametrically different interpretation of the End Times as that found Left Behind or popular fundamentalist (Baptist/Bible/Pentecostal/independent) churches (which actually do spend a lot of time on their version, by the way).

Eschatology is one of the big dividing points between dispensational and classical (covenant) protestant theology, a church be evangelical or not.

Jesus is (literally) coming, and will resurrect the dead--this is what we agree with in all (real) conservative Christian circles.

[Wallace T.]

Conservative Lutherans, the conservative Reformed churches, and Wesleyan churches, such as the Nazarenes and conservative Methodists, tend to be amillenial as well in eschatology. The rising Calvinist tendency among the Southern Baptists is heavily amillenial as well. Theonomists, who are mostly conservative Presbyterians, are postmillenial.

[AnalogReigns]

Thanks for adding that. Some seem to think that if you don't think the Rapture and Great Tribulation are all on the verge of happening, one must be theologically liberal.

That kind of eschatology is only about 175 years old after all....and its founders pretty eccentric.

Jesus could come at any time, we all agree.

[xJones]

Jesus could come at any time, we all agree.

I saw a bumper sticker once that cracked me up. It read,

Jesus is coming.
Quick, everybody look busy!

From the early Church on, the second coming has been imminently expected - and even falsely predicted - so many, many times. But however long our Lord tarries, we are expected to live as though He might return tomorrow morning, and that's the really important point.

[Honorary Serb]

Barbara Rossing is an ELCA Lutheran "teaching theologian"--another ultra-liberal feminazi, of course.

I once knew her. (I knew them all!!!!)

[AnalogReigns]

That one always gives me the giggles too.

Here's one I saw, on an American Indian's truck once, had me awed by the honesty:

"Trust the Federal Government? Sure! Ask any Indian!"

[Ray'sBeth]

Let's make sure we're not confusing millenialism views with tribulation views. The "Left Behind" series espouses a pre-tribulational view. Many evangelicals believe that, while others espouse mid-trib, and post-trib. Then added to that are the various combinations of pre-mil, a-mil, and post-mil.

I remember being in a Freshman Bible class hearing about all these views and it blew my mind. I had only ever heard one view.

[NZerFromHK]

Pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib etc are all subsets of premillennialism, and I think even premillennialism itself is in a minority among the wider Christendom.

I don't see too much post-trib these days: it is either pre-trib or straight idealist amillennialism or preterist postmillennialism or amillennialism.

[Ray'sBeth]

Maybe you don't see too much post-trib these days, but I hear a lot of post-trib pre-millennialism. Frankly, I'm more of the "pan-trib" persuasion, though. It will all pan out in the end. I just need to be ready whenever it happens.

[Wallace T.]

One of the major problems in pre-trib premillenialism has been the tendency of the popularizers of this viewpoint to "date set." Some did it outright, but others, such as Hal Lindsey, were somewhat disingenuous, as they would throw in a disclaimer to the effect that he wouldn't say that Jesus would return in (say) 1982, but point to events in the Middle East and elsewhere to show that the time was near. (Of course, not all the date setters were premillenialists, for example, Harold Camping, an amillenial Calvinist who once predicted the Second Coming in 1994, but is now looking to 2011.)

In fairness, the academic dispensationalists, such as John Walvoord of Dallas Theological Seminary, distanced themselves from the predictions of the popularizers. In recent years, that seminary has become dominated by advocates of progressive dispensationalism, which is essentially a baby step back toward covenant theology.