It has been an interesting to week to have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other to borrow from a famous quotation from Karl Barth. The Rev. Patrick Conroy found that speaking truth to power, even in an opening prayer can present risks and he resigned his position as House Chaplain without having to be let down through an opening in the wall.

How do we talk about stories from the time of Jesus in twenty-first century America? In my New Testament class, we’ve been talking about pseudepigraphy; texts attributed to an author by members of the authors community. As an example, several of Paul’s letters are considered by many scholars to be pseudepigraphic. I posed the question of how this is different from fanfic today. In a class discussion forum, I wrote:

Looking at pseudepigraphy through a twenty first century lens, it seems to be a fancy word very similar to fan fiction today. I'd encourage people to read The Promise and Potential of Fan Fiction as you think about pseudepigraphy.

Perhaps our worship services are really weekly fanfic conventions. ChristCon?

Expanding on the idea, imagine a gathering where fans of a particular literary opus met weekly. They would start their gatherings with a person walking in carrying a replica of a device used to torture and murder the hero of the literary opus. Some participants might even wear small pieces of jewelry in the shape of the torture device. People would read sections of the literary opus. A keynote presenter might get up and expound on some of these sections. Later, they would re-enact a significant scene from the literary opus.

This week we also read about an attack in Toronto where the Toronto suspect apparently posted about an 'incel rebellion.'.

A friend of mine just posted about this on Facebook. He asked to what extent people who identify as Men’s Rights Activists (MRA) or ‘involuntarily celibate’ (incel) are privileged men who have not developed necessary social skills, perhaps because they are neurodiverse or other similar reasons.

What jumped out at me in the CNN article was a quote from an incel website, this "enters the realm of having no possibility of finding a partner, either to get validation, love, or acceptance from".

To me this gets to the core of Christianity and key issues American Christendom faces. Whatever your thoughts on substitutional atonement are, the cross is the ultimate offer of validation, love and acceptance. Yet so much of American Christendom fails to show that love to those that are different, that are other, whether the otherness comes in the form of neurological differences, differences of race, gender, ethnicity, orientation, class, or anything else that is used to try and separate ourselves and those around us from the love which is in Jesus Christ.

Yes, if we want an authentic ChristCon, we need to sit down and eat with incels and everyone else who feels ostracized from society. We need to accept and validate every person as a beloved creature of God, even if they do things we find morally reprehensible or a simply different or other than ourselves.

The final topic I want to talk about from this week is implicit bias and racial reconciliation. However, that is a long post in and of itself, so come back later for that post.