Hey Josh,
Thanks for the wired magazines, several people are reading them at the coffee house right now. I have enjoyed reading your blog and resonate a lot with what your sharing, but one thing I thought I might bring up is how often you think in terms of the nation-state. I don’t know if have ever read anything by Hauerwas or Yoder, but I think you would find a lot of resonance with their theologies. They are both concerned with how the church becomes its own polis, and in stead of seeing ourselves as Americans, but only as Christians. Sounds simple, but the idea take this idea of living and dying with Bushes/Clintons of the world (some post-liberal theologians consider the nation like the phone company, pay your bills but don’t fret it), and turns into living dying with the savior of the world. Don’t know if that makes any sense, but I enjoy reading what you’ve written, and thanks for the magazines again.

good to hear matt. i’ve got a couple of others i can send you soon too.

as far as hauerwas and yoder, i’m very familiar with hauerwas and although i haven’t read yoder’s works, i’m familiar with the premise of church as polis. i actually wrote a paper on this in school with hauerwasian theology as the backdrop.

believe it or not, i would align myself in this camp. although as fairly evident, i still think we should play a role in shaping, questioning, and subverting the “world/nation” governments.

once organized as a polis, it is then it’s job to speak back into culture to challenge, critique, and imagine new possibilities.

but to your point of the phone company. i think this is somewhat faulty. i don’t think the “give to caesar what is caesar’s” is a passive resistance at all. but rather a firm resistance to the will of caesar. it is submitting to the rule of caesar, but not at the expense of God’s rule. when those two clash, the polis should always align itself with God’s and in doing so challenge Caesar by turning the table and flipping the coin in the other direction.

in that scenario by the water, Jesus doesn’t pull a coin out of his own pocket or order his disciples to come up with it, which would be passive resistance. but rather showing his disdain for Caesar’s pointless rule(s), he tells them to pull the tax out of the mouth of a fish. reminding them and Caesar that God’s rule is higher than Caesar’s. in that he can pay the tax by pulling it out of a fish’s mouth.

so i agree about the nation-state being a faulty model. but since most of popular culture still exists within the borders and walls of the nation-state, it is the role of the christian polis to speak back into and call out. while at the same time fashioning alternatives within the polis and the nation-state that provides for those at the bottom unable to escape the tyranny and oppression of rome.

I think understand what your saying, but I think lean more towards the Bruggemann model in The Prophetic Imagination, which is that we don’t look for the rebuilding of the empire, or the helping of it, or making it better, but the dismantling of it, because then we can begin to have new life. The role of the nation is state is to get us to think it cares about the ‘common good’ but I think McGrath was right when said it was too big, and too vast to care about that, along with the fact that the nation-state has no concept of sacrifice and love. I guess the name difference is I think I am working towards the Anabaptist (or catholic) notion that we live with our only allegiance to the church, and is counter cultural enough. Let the world be the world, and let the church represent an alternative conscious to the desire of the empire.
I agree with you on the phone company thing, I didn’t mean as passive resistance, but as acknowledgment that it holds no power. The problem is with quotes like this (which is not your quote so I don’t how you meant for people to take is by posting it) is they call for the enmeshment with the narrative of the nation, rather than faithfulness to being an alternative consciousness. This goes from resistance to active involvement whereas I lead toward active dis-involvement.
I think Hauerwas says it well when talks about not having a better foreign policy. But something better–a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill. I think getting involved with nation-state begins to not take seriously subversion and is rather an attempt at reforming it.
Just thought I would put in a note that I am discussing this because its fun and important, but I am not trying to make you out to be some lost idiot. I know you have plenty of people trying to do that, but this is just a personal interest of mine.

don’t worry man. i don’t think that at all. this is actually generous engaging thought.

i would agree with most everything you’re saying. i guess the point of the quote to me is talking about how we’ve devolved into what we have today. with hyper-consumption and the like.

[...] design. What I like about Josh is that he challenges the status quo of American Christian Faith in a way that seems practical. He’s also working on some video-podcasts these videos are worth checking [...]

Josh,
Cool…you used “hauwerasian” in a post. Yoder is practically worshipped by the profs at Duke Theology, including good ole Stanley. Thought-filled post, this one.
Okay, I’m feeling pretentious….I met and talked with Hauerwas when I was at Duke visiting one time….oooh!
Okay now I feel guilty for being pretentious!