I’ve undergone radio silence for the last few days, recovering from an onslaught of tryptophan…Last Friday through Tuesday I spent in San Diego at the national Society of Biblical Literature meeting. As always I found the trip delightfully engaging, stimulating and at times frustrating.
San Diego is a beautiful city (I shudder to think how amazing it is in the summer!). Our hotel was excellent and located right downtown. The convention center was a short walk away and located near a beautiful marina. We also made a quick trip to Coronado Island, which a local pastor refereed to as “Leave it to Beaver land”. The village is quaint and picturesque, which led one of my colleagues to refer to it as Stepford. I would’ve blogged some from the city, but was too cheap to spring for the $10.00 a day internet.
The annual meeting consists of a series of seminars on a veritable blizzard of topics in the fields of one of two religious organizations: the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). They are divided along disciplinary lines with the SBL consisting of papers in the fields of Old and New testaments, generally (though not exclusively) consisting of Jewish and Christian scholars. (See here for a look at some of the paper topics.) The AAR consists of everything else, a wide plethora of including other religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) and non-Biblical Studies fields (Church history, theology, etc.)
Participants at the SBL/AAR come in all different shapes and sizes. As you would expect, there are numerous Christians and non-Christians who participate representing state schools, Christian colleges, seminaries, Jewish seminaries, and churches.
Highlights:
Hearing N. T. Wright. Wright is the Anglican bishop of Durham who may be the foremost New Testament scholar of this day. I heard him give a lecture on the role of God in public discourse that was remarkable. As someone who has to deal with a multicultural context even more than we Americans do, it was impressive to hear him speak so passionately about the role of the church in public society. I think that his best line was that “tolerance is a low grade parody of agape love.” He argued that although contemporary culture holds up tolerance as the greatest goal, we need to press beyond tolerance to friendship, then phileo, then agape.
So what is the church’s role? Our role is to speak out as witnesses to society. That might entail martyrdom or other lesser stances. I think that in the evangelical community we have far too often been co-opted by power and snuggled up to governmental leaders for too long. Outstanding stuff.
I also attended several seminars but my favorite was one sponsored by the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion which looked at the thorny issue of the divine conquests narratives of Joshua (and others) in which Yahweh commands the community of faith to wipe out the enemies of God. The session focused on how to raise that particular issue with students. It was a difficult topic and some of the proposed solutions were, quite frankly, disturbing in their treatment of the biblical narrative.
Another session was on the relationship between film and theology, an important and interesting topic. I think the best speaker was S. Brent Plate from TCU who argued that film makers are engaged in creating a world just as much as religion is. He mentioned two things in particular:
trailers and movie studio logos. Trailers oftentimes open with the phrase “In a world…” (as this article notes) while the logos of movie production studios often depict the logo coming down from “heaven.”
Lastly, and most importantly is the opportunity to connect with friends, old a new. This particular trip was enlivened by my great friend Bobby who drove down from Los Angeles to immerse himself in this alien religious subculture. I also spent time with several friends with whom I studied at Baylor. One of the high points of my stay was the dinner with my doctoral studies mentor, who goes out to eat with his former students every year. It is a great opportunity to reconnect.
San Diego is a beautiful city (I shudder to think how amazing it is in the summer!). Our hotel was excellent and located right downtown. The convention center was a short walk away and located near a beautiful marina. We also made a quick trip to Coronado Island, which a local pastor refereed to as “Leave it to Beaver land”. The village is quaint and picturesque, which led one of my colleagues to refer to it as Stepford. I would’ve blogged some from the city, but was too cheap to spring for the $10.00 a day internet.
The annual meeting consists of a series of seminars on a veritable blizzard of topics in the fields of one of two religious organizations: the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). They are divided along disciplinary lines with the SBL consisting of papers in the fields of Old and New testaments, generally (though not exclusively) consisting of Jewish and Christian scholars. (See here for a look at some of the paper topics.) The AAR consists of everything else, a wide plethora of including other religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) and non-Biblical Studies fields (Church history, theology, etc.)
Participants at the SBL/AAR come in all different shapes and sizes. As you would expect, there are numerous Christians and non-Christians who participate representing state schools, Christian colleges, seminaries, Jewish seminaries, and churches.
Highlights:
Hearing N. T. Wright. Wright is the Anglican bishop of Durham who may be the foremost New Testament scholar of this day. I heard him give a lecture on the role of God in public discourse that was remarkable. As someone who has to deal with a multicultural context even more than we Americans do, it was impressive to hear him speak so passionately about the role of the church in public society. I think that his best line was that “tolerance is a low grade parody of agape love.” He argued that although contemporary culture holds up tolerance as the greatest goal, we need to press beyond tolerance to friendship, then phileo, then agape.
So what is the church’s role? Our role is to speak out as witnesses to society. That might entail martyrdom or other lesser stances. I think that in the evangelical community we have far too often been co-opted by power and snuggled up to governmental leaders for too long. Outstanding stuff.
I also attended several seminars but my favorite was one sponsored by the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion which looked at the thorny issue of the divine conquests narratives of Joshua (and others) in which Yahweh commands the community of faith to wipe out the enemies of God. The session focused on how to raise that particular issue with students. It was a difficult topic and some of the proposed solutions were, quite frankly, disturbing in their treatment of the biblical narrative.
Another session was on the relationship between film and theology, an important and interesting topic. I think the best speaker was S. Brent Plate from TCU who argued that film makers are engaged in creating a world just as much as religion is. He mentioned two things in particular:
trailers and movie studio logos. Trailers oftentimes open with the phrase “In a world…” (as this article notes) while the logos of movie production studios often depict the logo coming down from “heaven.”Lastly, and most importantly is the opportunity to connect with friends, old a new. This particular trip was enlivened by my great friend Bobby who drove down from Los Angeles to immerse himself in this alien religious subculture. I also spent time with several friends with whom I studied at Baylor. One of the high points of my stay was the dinner with my doctoral studies mentor, who goes out to eat with his former students every year. It is a great opportunity to reconnect.
With these friends we fight as much as we catch up. Each of us are passionate about our faith of course, but also with our fields. So we spend much time arguing and laughing and even some time crying. It was a marvelous, joyous time.
2 comments:
It was a good and invigorating time, with more walking than in the previous ten months combined. I learned things I had not anticipated, saw faces from around the country/world that fascinated me, and got to laugh a bunch. I think there's a couple of blog posts of my own somewhere in there, which should make you worry. Thanks for the invite, Taran.
The film and theology session sounds fascinating. The basic methodology used in at least one book is to examine cultural artifacts and trends (texts) as works and worlds of meaning. So one looks the world behind (what was going on in culture as the work was being created), the world of (what Plate is talking about), and the world in front of (how the work is received and responded to) the "text."
PS -- A friend is working on a new project on this topic that he is hoping to announce soon.
Post a Comment