Once we shift into Ikon’s typical stomping ground, however, Rollins expounds on the nature of God as not being something or someone we can understand  so much as something or someone we can experience, and as such:

DOOR: Moving on to that whole putting-theory-into-practice thingie, how do Ikon’s services put into practice your belief that the truth in Christianity is not described but experiential?

ROLLINS: In a sense I would not even want to say that the truth of Christianity is experiential in so much as the truth of Christianity is life and life is not experienced. Rather life is what allows us to experience. Just as one does not see sight but it is sight that enables one to see. In other words I don’t think we experience the truth of Christianity but the truth of Christianity is hinted at in the renewed way we experience everything else. In this way the truth of faith is not one thing among other things but rather is that which brings us into new relationship with all things. The way we explore this within Ikon is by attempting to create a gathering in which Christianity is not fundamentally about an understanding or experience but rather a way of being and interacting in the world.

DOOR: Why do you have your services in a bar?

ROLLINS: Whenever Ikon started meeting in bar, it was the least important place. I liked this bar and I asked the bartender if I could do it. As time went on, I almost reversed completely. You hear talk about different types of space, intimate space between a couple, personal space, social space, and public space. Church often feels like intimate space between you and God. So we’re exploring doing this in social space where secular and social begin to get blurred. We’re tying to inhabit that social space and live out our fractured lives in public. I don’t know many groups who are experimenting with this.

DOOR: Most of the US religious leaders who act out in public tend to get arrested.

DOOR: When we’re having services in a bar, you get people smoking blow, heckling, things like that. It’s really scary. But it also created this wonderful dynamic. Some people who could never go near a church find they can go into this bar and explore their faith. After a year or two of going to Ikon, they could go to a church again. Our most committed regulars are workers at the bar. If we ever have elders at Ikon they’ll be bar staff. Our bartender is in prison at the moment, but he could put the fear of God in anybody that heckled us. At first he never engaged with us, he was suspicious of who we were. One day we brought some Catholic workers in and at that moment his attitude changed. There was a moment when we had a member of Ikon go to light a cigarette. He stopped and offered to light her cigarette. That was a real breakthrough moment when he crossed over and he joined us.

Elders = bar staff. I love it.

More here.

Ironically, the emphasis today on marriage and family values has contributed to the loss of community. Isolated and without adequate social support, families are forced to rely on their own resources. The day to day stress on families has increased significantly as both parents are pressured to work more hours than their parents. Children hardly get to be children these days, passed as they are from one activity to the next, one parent to the next. The pressures and tensions are just too much for individual households to bear and literally pits family members against each other.

So beware of political candidates who claim to support family values, it actually demonstrates a lack of vision, an inability to imagine a better basis for our society.

Marriage cannot serve as the foundation of any society. Like Atlas trying to shoulder the weight of the world, marriage is crumbling under a burden it cannot possibly bear. Attempts to artificially reinforce it as the basis of society only make it a rigid and oppressive structure. And worse, insisting on this false foundation deprives us of the firmer ground we so desperately need.

Does this mean we shouldn’t get married? No, but marriage needs to be grounded in the larger context of a human community founded on compassion rather than oppression. If we remember to view marriage as a fragile relationship rather than an institution, we are much more likely to honor the humanity of the people involved.

The emphasis is mine, because it hits very close to home on a couple of points. Many gen-x-ers don’t trust institutions, and that includes both marriage and the church. Maybe that’s why the church of beer, as I call it, is what it is. Hanging out with friends over tea/coffee or a couple of pints and allowing conversation to flow freely may seem anarchic or subversive as a way of practicing faith in community to some folks. But for others, it’s freeing. Similarly, as DFH and I wrestle with what it means to be married, his distrust of the institution is clear even though I plead for us to approach it as a way of personally affirming our lifelong commitment to one another.

Anyhow, No Outcasts is a nifty blog, with a liberal dose of illustrations for those of us that think words are just the things that come between the pictures. You can check out the essay — and find the rest of the blog, which seems to be updated monthly — here.

On the Cafe today, I picked up a church-of-beer story that’s a little bit backwards, as a decommissioned church is being eyed as a possible site for a brewpub.

It bears noting that such a place, in my mind, would be the perfect gathering place for getting the church-of-beer practitioners more comfortable inside a church, as the whole premise of my little idea is to get spiritual people who like to socialize over a couple of pints engaged in talking about faith in a small gathering place. Sure, it’s a little backwards to drink the bread (beer) and eat the wine (fruit), but this is all about turning convention on its head to draw people in.

OMG, this book is flipping hilarious. Not sure I’ll convince my
activist christian friends of the humor, but this man deserves a
medal.

Featuring such hits as…
“Biblical Mass Murder and the Sanctity of Life”
“A Red State Hallucination on the Road to Damascus”
“Divorce and the Conservative Christian Blowhard”

Rafe, sign this man up for the Wild Turkey Party as your spiritual counselor.

It's lovely Christmas inside, wet and miserable outside.

A squirrel just went up and pillaged the birdfeeder. No other word for it. Seed flying everywhere, birds tweetering from other branches because they couldn't come near the feeder.

The ducks just sat around clucking and laughing about the whole thing.

Word on the street is that Dahlak had an L&I violation last week and it may not be open. is on the case and will let us know by tomorrow afternoon.

Happy ho-ho, and to my friends who celebrate Christmas, may you share in the blessings and grace of the season as our new year unfolds.

And let there be peace on earth.

And party party!

Every time you use “Christian” interchangeably with “conservative
fundamentalist Christians,” you risk getting a sermon from me. We're
not all like that, and if you think those conservative fundamentalist
Christians are annoying to YOU…….

kthx.

-the very socially progressive helcat

I just read the word “youngster” and had to read it twice, because I could have sworn it said “yuengster.”