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First let’s talk about some housekeeping issues. I think it’s time that we start using Love In A Dangerous Time’s facebook page to keep our discussions going between episodes. I know that lots of you have some pretty strong reactions to, both positive and negative, to these programs. They’re dealing with some really important questions facing all people of faith, particularly Christians, in these “Dangerous Times.” It’s really important that we all participate in the conversation. So please go to www.facebook.com/LoveInDTime and speak your mind on the episodes. If you want to specifically contribute to the discussion of #Church2B conversation, please use the hashtag. In fact, use the hashtag on Twitter as well.
And now for today’s episode:
Three books are very much at the root of why I started Love In A Dangerous Time. They are all written by my guest today, Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The books are:
· The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus (2012)
and
· Spiritual Defiance: Building a Beloved Community of Resistance, which just came out a couple of months ago, in April of 2015
Robin Meyers believes that the Church – the Gospel, if you will – should make a real difference in the world. He’s impatient with models of Church community that are all about the comfort and certainty of community members. He’s fed up with insistence on a checklist of intellectual statements you must affirm to call yourself a Christian. The whole idea of “cutting a deal with God (usually by claiming to believe certain statements) in order to get your individual soul a good deal in the after-life makes him angry. Instead, he sees Church community as a place that trains people to resist anything and everything that undermines Jesus’ stance of the Sermon on the Mount.
These are all issues that loom very important in these days of Church decline. How will we (or will we?) move past this period of transition into some new and more impactful model of Church for the next 500 years? This episode is part of the sub-series, #Church2B.
For thirty years, Dr. Meyers been the pastor of Mayflower Congregational UCC Church, in Oklahoma City, which tries to follow Jesus, rather than worship Christ. He is also a tenured full professor of rhetoric in the philosophy department at Oklahoma City University. His most recent book, Spiritual Defiance (listed above) is based on his Lyman Beecher Lectures, given at Yale in 2013.
Amazon Bio:
Rev. Dr. Robin R. Meyers is a nationally known UCC pastor, professor, peace activist, and the author of seven books about progressive Christianity and American society. He has been the senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC church, Oklahoma City, for 30 years. He is also a tenured full professor of rhetoric in the philosophy department at Oklahoma City University. Dr. Meyers lectures and gives workshops on church renewal around the country, and is an award-winning commentator for NPR. His teaching and preaching offer a non-literal, non-dogmatic approach to Christianity, and his politics are neither left nor right, but rather subversive for the cause of love. He seeks to build, not a collection of “believers,” but a Beloved Community devoted to embodying peace and justice in a broken world. As a professor, he teaches the ancient canons of rhetoric, urging his students to think critically and fearlessly about the things they think they know. His method is Socratic, grounded in the belief that the truth is accessible but often obscured, and that love is life’s highest achievement. His books all revolve around questions of religion, ethics, and language–that is, around transcendence, morality, and the redemptive power of telling the truth.
The three 2013 Lyman Beecher Lectures, given by Robin Meyers at Yale in 2013, are entitled “UNDONE: Faith as Resistance to Ego, Orthodoxy, and Empire.”
On YouTube: 1 – Ego, 2 – Orthodoxy, 3 – Empire
Books by Robin Meyers (Click here and buy from Amazon while you support Love In A Dangerous Time:
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