{"id":12904,"date":"2017-05-20T00:52:24","date_gmt":"2017-05-20T07:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=12904"},"modified":"2017-05-20T00:52:24","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T07:52:24","slug":"meat-and-bones-and-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/meat-and-bones-and-theology\/","title":{"rendered":"Meat and bones and theology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There is so much meat in Martin Percy\u2019s Shaping the Church: The Promise of Implicit Theology<\/em> that I cannot wait to sit down and really devour it as a full meal rather than as a buffet from which I only have the ability to eat a few bites from each section. I\u2019m not sure exactly why the metaphor of dining kept coming to me as I read this densely packed, 176-page book, but all of my notes speak of \u201cchewing on this\u201d or \u201cso much meat here\u201d and even \u201cthis is so rich.\u201d I\u2019ll leave the metaphor behind now, but I still can\u2019t help thinking of Percy\u2019s words as several courses of a fine meal, meant to help us discern how implicit theology shapes ecclesiology.<\/p>\n

One of the finer points Percy shares is that there is a difference between a church\u2019s explicit and implicit theology. The explicit theology is that which gets posted on the \u201cWhat We Believe\u201d page of a church\u2019s website, while implicit theology is not so easily defined or captured. It sort of has to be explored by all the senses. I suppose this is why it is so hard for a church to develop a website that tells anyone who searches what makes them unique. I think this is why so many of them work hard to spell out the explicit and leave the implicit to the photographs, podcasts, and music links. It is all supposed to say, \u201cThis is who we are behind the Statement of Faith of our denomination or association.\u201d I love that Percy likens it to the difference between formal and operant religion (3), or what my mentor refers to as \u201cofficial vs. boots on the ground\u201d theology.<\/p>\n

The problem is that explicit or official theology without the acknowledgement of implicit theology denies the reality of how culture influences the church and church influences the culture. In his conclusion, Percy notes, \u201cBecause the church is a body, grounded in a context and social construction of reality, it always reflects and sacralizes values that have yet to be fully processed and comprehended.\u201d (160) The church, first locally and then more widely, practices new theological insights in their implicit or unofficial religion. This is how the church absorbs culture, tests it against the official theology, and then discards it or adds it to the formal theology of the body. The infernal railing against the \u201ccorruption of culture\u201d is not only a bit silly, but it dangerously ignores the way God speaks through the world around us. Without cultural influence, followed by work done by Christians who filtered Scripture through the new lens of that influence, slavery and Patriarchy may still be our norms. It\u2019s important for us to be open to all lenses that God offers, while making sure they are not false lenses. That\u2019s why we operate in community.<\/p>\n

My husband and I are currently looking for a new church. As ministers we found ourselves needing to pull completely away from any formal body to heal wounds that would take way too much time to explain here. As we did this, we rested in the company of a few close friends who became our faith community. As a third-generation minister, however, I miss the ecclesiology, the community, and the expansiveness of a church body. I miss liturgy and music. I miss being challenged by a word and praying with a community. I do not miss, however, the way explicit theology is used to batter people on the margins or, for that matter, anyone whose theology deviates from the norm. I\u2019ve been through a lot of websites, read a whole bunch of \u201cWhat We Believe\u201d statements, and attended a wide variety of church gatherings looking for the elusive hybrid of explicit and implicit theology Percy mentions. I have always had a \u201cdeal-breaker\u201d that I would not attend a church that didn\u2019t support women in all aspects of ministry. On the other side, we desperately want to be a part of a body that fights hard for racial justice in our community. A few weeks ago we found a church that is instrumental in this fight and in education in the Portland community. I knew this church has women who lead, but does not support women as elders of the church so I was not really interested in attending after this one special week during which a wonderful leader was teaching on the church\u2019s relationship with Native Americans. I was so sure, that I skipped the service and downloaded the sermon. What I realized after listening is that maybe I need to move my fences a bit. Can I be in community with a place that engages in work that I see as crucial, even if they fall short regarding equity for women? The answer is that I\u2019m not sure yet. To return to my earlier metaphor, can I ingest that meat and ignore the bones that, as my mother says, “stick in my craw?”\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After reading Percy\u2019s book, I think I need to explore the implicit a bit more and see if I can move past the explicit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is so much meat in Martin Percy\u2019s Shaping the Church: The Promise of Implicit Theology that I cannot wait to sit down and really devour it as a full meal rather than as a buffet from which I only have the ability to eat a few bites from each section. I\u2019m not sure exactly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[973,965,963],"class_list":["post-12904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ecclesiology","tag-implicit-theology","tag-martyn-percy","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12907,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12904\/revisions\/12907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}