Hopewit

"Over my head, I hear music in the air . . ." You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (Psalm 23:5&6) A church whose website I viewed recently characterizes itself something like this: “We are sinners saved by grace.” In his recent publication, Anabaptist Essentials: Ten signs of a Unique Christian Faith , Palmer Becker writes about his father: My father, whose first language was German, understood Christianity as Nachfolge Christi , which means, “following Jesus.” When it came to baptism, he was perplexed by the question, “Are you saved?” His answer was, “I am a follower of Jesus.” He was baptized upon that confession of faith. (p. 36) I’m curious about how any one of us would answer when pressed to provide a single sentence, key characterization of our...

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” This coming Sunday, I have the job of leading an adult study class on Biblical interpretation through an Anabaptist lens. In short, when early radical reformers took exception to the prevailing interpretations of the gospel, they underwent startling, life-changing rebirth which so deeply affected them that they became dangerous beyond tolerating to the established order, a threat urgent enough to motivate both state and church to consider and carry out their brutal genocide.      The idea that both lay people and priests could—thanks to Gutenberg and the printing press—read for themselves every word of the canon and by a natural progression, make judgments about what it meant, was anathema to t...

It's no secret to anyone, surely . Institutions in droves are struggling, and failing to survive. Some have simply shut up shop; continuing simply no longer feasible.  Coming soon to a tree near you Many of us grew up in the age of the family farm, for instance. Mom and pop, kids and animals institutions that nostalgia paints a rosy pink. A Conservative politician recently chided the government for introducing legislation that would prevent “sprinkling,” incorporating a farm or business and spreading the income around to family members in order to decrease tax liability. She said it would kill the family farm. I'm sorry, but you can't kill an entity that's already dead! Seems we've generally walked blindfolded toward one or the other precipice; embedded in human nature is an underlying assumption that tomorrow will be much like today. And so an historic school's demise seems sudden when the signs of its coming have certainly been there all along. ...