Well when you give us feedback we listen . . . our podcast with Frank Viola, author of Pagan Christianity, is now live. You can subscribe to the podcast over on The Nick & Josh Podcast site.
I know Bob Hyatt, Joe Thorn, Daryl Dash, and Bill Kinnon have all pushed back with some concerns and criticisms for Frank’s Pagan Christianity. And Kingdom Grace has been hosting an open-ended discussion on her site. Consequently, the blogosphere has been humming with people sharing their reflection on Pagan Christianity.
Nick and I did our best to incorporate as many of the concerns and questions being raised during our conversation with Frank. And in my estimation, Frank responded to the criticisms graciously and respectfully. After listening to him share his side of things, I think some of the criticisms might be caricaturing Frank and Pagan Christianity in the same way that they are asserting that he’s caricaturing Christianity and church history.
To be fair, I haven’t yet read the book (free copy Frank?) and was only able to engage with it via Bob Hyatt’s blog and Frank’s website where he responds to the criticisms. Add to that the fact that The Nick & Josh Podcast is notorious for throwing nice fat pitches at our guests as opposed to throwing those nasty sliders, and you have a recipe for a pretty straight forward 30 minute conversation. My only complaint was that 30 minutes wasn’t near enough time for us to ask the questions we wanted to ask and for Frank to develop his thoughts and responses to those questions.
On the bright side, I’m planning on traveling down to St. Petersburg to the A Sustainable Faith un-conference where I hope to probe (non-alien) Frank some more about the criticisms and how he reconciles the practices of the church with it’s contextual, local, and specific place.
Anyway . . . I think it’s a great podcast (I’m biased) and I think Frank is a gentleman who is as bold as he is inquisitive.
Again, if you want to check out the podcast you can do so here. Nick also has a reviw up on his site.
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5 Comments
Very interesting podcast – you asked great questions, Josh.
I haven’t read the book either, but I’ve seen quotes which seem designed to shock/outrage people – I don’t think Frank fully owned that in the podcast.
A lot of what he was saying seems obvious to me i.e. the clergy/laity divide is not a wonderful thing. This has become even more obvious to me as I’ve seen how unqualified clergy are to do a lot of the things they end up doing. Like, counseling even though their people skills are often seriously lacking (and no wonder, since as best I know, the training pastors receive does not include a focus on improving their people skills).
When he said Christians have the instinct to have fellowship because of the Holy Spirit, that’s the sort of statement I’m highly skeptical about, since lots of people like getting together. It’s not just an attribute of people who according to his definition ‘have the Holy Spirit’. And some people who he would say have the Holy Spirit aren’t into community as much as others. It seems to me that this is somewhat individual and personality-driven and I see no correlation between desire to get together with like-minded others and ‘having the Holy Spirit’. It’s statements like that which led me to think either Christians are all wrong about who has the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit doesn’t even exist.
Anyway, back to the podcast…
I’m all for thoughtful critique of traditional church. I agree with Frank that it would be great if Christians would engage in more of this, then make whatever radical changes are warranted by the results.
Thanks for the podcast. I thought you and Nick did a great job of steering the conversation and asking engaging questions.
grace. i added your link to the blog post. i wasn’t aware of your site. but thanks for the kind words.
helen. as always great points. i really appreciate your perspective towards emergent and our podcast being one of those evil atheists and all.
I like it – it helps me be a well-informed evil atheist!
thanks for the good work
can i get a free copy of your
“pagan christian”?
i am from uganga
God bless you
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[...] it. I should probably not mention anything and continue to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, which I have previously done here and on at least 4 prominent blogs (in the comments section) that took issue with Frank’s [...]