Over the last two decades, I've felt a steady pull towards the house church movement. My soul longs for its slow pace, warmth of hospitality, depth of community, and conscious removal of all the bureaucratic crap that usually dominates church life. I've quietly read books by its leading authors. Not gonna lie, there are times when I feel like Frank Viola and Neil Cole are … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Merges House Church Community with High Church Worship
Eastern Orthodoxy
Beatnik Christianity Overthrows Spiritual Authoritarianism
Britannica defines authoritarianism as the "principle of blind submission to authority." Spiritual authoritarianism demands rank and file submission to religious leaders who've ascended to positions of institutional power. It's a centralized structure that functions through a chain-of-command mentality like the military. Christian culture justifies this with nesting set of … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Overthrows Spiritual Authoritarianism
Beatnik Christianity Leans More Toward Byzantine & Celtic Theology
The theological legacy of Augustine is just awful. Dude established precedents that permanently butchered Western Christianity with his teachings on things like original sin, grace, sexuality, Mary, (androcentric) natural law, just war theory, and predestination. He's like an ancient Wayne Grudem, painstakingly trying to remove mystery and tension in order to create a tidy … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Leans More Toward Byzantine & Celtic Theology
Beatnik Christianity Harmonizes Eastern Ancestral Sin with Sacred Humanism
Western Christianity has had a troublesome guilt-shame complex ever since Augustine of Hippo. In his dualistic schema, human anthropology and God's grace are framed as being in conflict, which creates the need for a theological seesaw effect. The former must go down for the latter to go up. Humanity's sinful nature is cold, filthy, and wretched so that God's righteous grace is … [Read more...] about Beatnik Christianity Harmonizes Eastern Ancestral Sin with Sacred Humanism
Wrong from the Start: How Christian Culture Keeps Pulling Us Away from Jesus
I love Jesus but loathe most elements of Christian culture. The reason is that Christian culture usually has little to do with following Jesus and when there is a direct connection it is often in direct conflict with The Way of Jesus. The more I study it the more I become convinced it's more influenced by Screwtape than the Holy Spirit. Let's be clear. This isn't about … [Read more...] about Wrong from the Start: How Christian Culture Keeps Pulling Us Away from Jesus
