A Matrimonial Friday Five

As found at RGBP

1) Will you be watching? If so, is this your first royal wedding? I had better things to be doing at 2 in the morning. (although in hindsight I may as well have gotten up at 4:15 instead of tosssing and turning for the next 45 minutes or so).  But 30 years ago I remember getting up at o-dark-o-clock to watch Charles and Diana.

2) The bride has chosen as her wedding cake a fruitcake. Where do you stand on this pastry? It is regrettable she did not choose real food.

3) The dress code for royal weddings has not seen the same sad decline as that for most other weddings. If you could design your own royal wedding hat, what color would it be and what special decoration would it feature? Being male my hat choices would be rather limited would they not?  BUt there is the temptation to have something in a rainbow of colours with a giant plume--or even better mulitple plumes--floating on behind....

4)  Any chance the Archbishop of Canterbury is using a Sustainable Sermon (tip of the mitre to the Vicar of Hogsmeade)? What would you tell the couple were you offering the homily? Generally my wedding message is about the hard work of building a relationship and the power of love in the bumps and twists and hiccups of life.  ANd I seriously doubt the Archbishop did the Sustainable thing. Although I almost always do for a wedding.

5) Believe it or not, kathrynzj is getting up early mostly to see the wedding dress. By the time this post is up, the world will have seen it. Did you like it?  I haven't seen it yet....

Book 7 of 2011 -- The Future of Faith

In this book Cox covers some of the same territory as Phyllis Tickle does in The Great Emergence (see entry below) but does it far better in my opinion.

Cox suggests, as have others, that Christianity is entering a new age, the Age of the Spirit.  However, where some use this in a Trinitarian way (following on from the Age of God and the Age of Jesus) Cox sees it as a time when the focus on creeds and othodoxy will give way to a renewed focus on faith.  Cox's paradigm starts with the early church in an AGe of Faith which gives way by the time of Constantine to an Age of Belief.  Cox also suggests that this development was a huge negative.  Cox is suggesting that Christianity is not about creeds or believing the right propositions but is about faith as trust or confidence.  (note that Marcus Borg also highlights the importance of this definition of faith within the Emergent church in The Heart of Christianity)

I liked this book.  I liked how Cox makes his arguement.  I am not as convinced that the North American church is as far along in the change as he seems to suggest but I see it as a real way forward.  ANd I found, as I so often do in books in this topic area, that he was decribing where I feel at home.  But of course as a person whose theology has always been far more pneumocentric than theo- or christocentric it only makes sense that I would feel at home in an Age of the Spirit.

I encourage the reading of this book.

Christ Has Risen!

He is Risen Indeed!

Death is defeated, God's YES has beaten the world's NO!

Happy Easter!