Posts

Showing posts from October 21, 2007

Safety and Stability?

from An Emergent Manifesto of Hope edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, from Pagitt's intro to Part 2: Communities of Hope: "...as religious people we often have a strange relationship with the new. Often there is a greater level of mistrust of the new in religious circles than in many other disciplines. I have a theory on this. I think that for many people religion is meant to conserve, to keep, to protect. Religion is often at its finest when it serves to anchor people in the midst of turbulent change-to be a safe harbor in the midst of a storm of change. Many of us assume that our religion ought to provide certainty in uncertain times, safety when it is not clear where trust can be found. God is the only unchanging reality in a sea of change, so for religion to be engaged with the new can seem to undermine its very purpose. While immovablity can be a fine role for religion, it may not serve the story of God's action in the world very well. It seems to me that