Inappropriate Conversations

I'm probably less sure now than I was 7 years ago about whether the Sunday School hour in most Christian churches is the best type of small group. It was the type I was most familiar with then. Now, I'd say the main requirement isn't location or time of meeting, but the ability to speak very freely about a challenging range of topics. Today, that range would include double-standards and miscarriages of justice from the halls of Congress to local district attorneys offices. Any small group that cannot handle conversations like that fails to achieve its mission. And any notion that conversations like that have no place within the church fundamentally misrepresents what "church" should be.

In the process of considering whether the message, or a worship service itself, was fundamentally different inside a sanctuary or some other form of cathedral versus a more ordinary room, my family ended up encountering a church that didn't have a building at all. No sanctuary. No roof over their heads at all, so to speak. And that's where we ended up, too. 

TalkBack episodes in podcast form exist largely due to Spotify. That's also among the places the new Harmony Springs Gives Voice podcast can be found.

Whether racism is more prevalent and toxic within, rather than outside, the church?

Robert P. Jones of PRRI

Preview for White Savior: Racism in the American Church

A significant number of Americans, most from the political and religious right, still owe Barack Obama an apology. 
When you understand the persecution a group thinks they will suffer, whether based on rational conclusions or not, it provides great insight into what they would do if given ultimate and absolute power. We are wise to be wary. The people who predicted Obama would "round up" both Christians and guns might just pose a similar dire threat to their perceived political enemies. We haven't done a sufficient job of denouncing false prophecies in recent years, and now we must deal with the consequences.

http://www.inappropriateconversations.org/e/191-false-political-prophecies/

Consider this the background material for the previous Inappropriate Conversations (#IC #231). Things have not improved in the past five years, and an argument can be made that the standards for law enforcement have gotten worse. I say this with as much sadness as anger, although I'm sure the anger cuts through. It's painful enough to bring even a mildly empathetic person to his knees, at a time in American where that gesture is inexplicably controversial.

http://www.inappropriateconversations.org/e/157-letting-justice-roll/

More than five years ago, Inappropriate Conversations #157 was released as an unedited nearly two-hour rant about that state of law enforcement and race relations in America at the end of 2014. Clearly, things have not improved. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves for not taking these issues more seriously. It is, after all, clearly a matter a life and death.

Different Drummer: Dave Chappelle

More than a dozen years ago, it wasn't unusual for Christian leaders to provide political advice to one another that sounded like this: "Don’t equate the biblical kingdom of God with any human political party or nation" (Andrew Jackson). Many were already violating guidelines like this, but the trespasses would only multiply during the Obama administration. Recent years have been even worse. I have yet to hear a sufficient denunciation of this misbehavior from the same Christian leaders who published original guidelines like this one. Truly, it's a "Get behind me, Satan" moment, reflecting not God's concerns at all (Matthew 16:23). Yet, for the most part, the Church remains silent.

http://www.inappropriateconversations.org/e/82-pandering-from-a-political-pulpit/