For instance it is hard to advance a truthful theology of suffering when we are the ones forcing others to suffer. In our country where some Christians say they are being persecuted if a salesperson says “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” we often lack even the most basic point of reference for understanding how people from different cultural settings who’ve lived through oppression and grief approach their faith.

For example theologian Chung Hyun Kyung comments on the influence on Asian women’s theology of Western colonizers telling them God is love while beating, staving, and raping them. This experience and twisted message affects how they view God and what questions they ask of God. She writes that their challenging of God on his silence during their oppression cannot help but shape their theology. They ask of God, “Where were you when we were hungry? Where were you when we called your name as our bodies were raped, mutilated, and disfigured by our husbands, policemen, and the soldiers of colonizing countries? Have you heard our cries? Have you seen our bodies dragged like dead dogs and abandoned in the trash dumb?” (Struggle to be the Sun Again, p22).

Questions must be asked as theology is done in such postcolonial contexts in attempts to differentiate the message of the colonizers and the message of Jesus. For instance, when oppressed people are told that a good Christian is quiet, subservient, and accepts suffering and poverty by the very colonizers who live in luxury and benefit from the service and poverty of the people, some serious theological reconsideration is in order. A theology that is only ever applied to women or oppressed peoples in order to keep them subservient is highly suspect. Truth and worship are far more important than such self-serving twistings of God’s word. But it takes hearing from these voices from the margins and wrestling with the same questions they wrestle with in order for the church as a whole to move towards a healthy and truthful theology.

But to do so requires humility. It not only requires some of us to give up our positions of power and privilege while admitting that we do not have the corner on Christianity, it may also require repentance and reconciliation. It requires admitting that our privilege came at the expense of others – that the poverty in the world today has its roots in forceful conquest of land, the outright theft of natural resources, and the enslavement of peoples around the world. It requires admitting that the life we now enjoy has its historical roots and present reality in the blood, sweat, and tears of others. It is only after we repent of these sins that we can be open to embracing a fuller theology which we can only learn by listening to the voices of others – often the very others we must ask forgiveness of.

Being open to hearing and believing these truths is difficult. It is far easier to mock the theologies of others and call them heretical than to humble ourselves and repent in the name of truth. But it is vital for the health of the community that is the universal body of Christ. The eye cannot say to the hand that I have no need of you – or that I am more important or more connected to God than you. We must embrace our whole body, even the parts we have abused or neglected. To truly be the body of Christ we must listen to the voices of the oppressed and the colonized – for we can never be whole without them.

But I want to say how much I appreciated Matter '09. It was put on by Shechem Ministries and was billed as a creative theology conference. In essence it brought the arts and theology together through a variety of mediums. As conferences go, it was a very small conference and had some serious kinks in the planning/implementation side of things, but I hope those don't stand in the way of this becoming a regular gathering. There really is so little being done in the church that explores how art and theology and church life and faith all work together. We need safe spaces where we can explore those sorts of questions, and the Matter conference is the perfect opportunity to make that happen.

This year at the conference we got to approach the issues and learn from a variety of different styles. Throughout the conference there were presentations/workshops from a variety of voices. Some of these were strictly academic, others were talks on the practical intersection of art and faith, and others were artistic sessions like poetry readings or short drama. I was privileged to lead a session on how our mental images of God affect if our response to Eucharist turns us inward to a personalized faith or outward to a service orientated faith. Then there were three main sessions where an academic and an artist engaged the theme verses of the conference while in dialogue with each other. So a painter and a biblical scholar, a filmmaker and a philosopher, and a musician and a textual critic explored together how to interpret and reflect on scripture. Then we also got to hear multiple times from Pete Rollins, who explored with us creative liturgy and pushed us to reflect on lived faith that is in the world but not of it. He, as always, was brilliant and challenged us to remove the facades of our faith. It was cerebral, and emotional, and worshipful all at the same time.

I was grateful to be a part of this event, and thankful to those who put in the work to make it happen. I truly hope it does evolve and survive so that we can continue to see these diverse disciplines interacting and deliberately learning from each other.

I think one of the poignant soundbites from the Moltmann conversation came during the rapid fire round. Tony Jones would throw out a name and Moltmann would give a one sentence response. While this of course brought out some moments of praise (“Pope John Paul II – “He was a good pope” and Miroslav Volf – “dear friend, gifted theologian'), it also brought a few criticisms (Augustine – “ask his wife” and Pelagius – “he is the saint of American Christians”). I found his reply to what he thought about Hauerwas to be significant – “The New Testament speaks not about a peaceable kingdom, but a peace-making kingdom.”

Moltmann is very insistent on the need to have an active faith. Apathy is the enemy of faith, and can lead one to passivity. But if we are serving Christ and truly looking towards the hope of the Kingdom, we will be actively engaged in the faith. A peaceable kingdom is not one of action, there must be deliberate attempts made to established the hope-filled world that Jesus calls us to.

In a later session, Moltmann then expanded on what he meant by that idea of a peace-making kingdom. He likes the future idea of a peaceable kingdom where swords will instead be plowshares, but he also reminds that peace-making is what does the actual work of transformation. He said, – we need communities that anticipate this peaceable kingdom, and communities that work for peacemaking in this world. A double strategy so that peacemakers do not become too violent themselves without this ideal vision or people end up not preventing any war by living in their own peace. He captures the dangers of both the peaceable and the peace-makers, the former can be so afraid of conflict that they are frozen in inaction and the latter so committed to a goal that they adopt the tactics of the violent to achieve their ends.

I’ve seen the dangers of those that think the best route to peace is to do nothing, who believe that even words create too much conflict. And I’ve also seen the beautiful examples of peace-makers actively taking a stand for what is good and right without fear of their own safety or intention to harm oppressors. The women of the Niger River Delta who stood up to Chevron to protest the destruction of their homes, or the women of Liberia who peacefully ended a bloody civil war (as depicted in Pray the Devil Back to Hell) demonstrated this active peacemaking. And Moltman himself felt the tension as well, after he was released from the WW2 POW camp he vowed to never again take up arms in a military, but he also vowed that if given the chance to kill an evil dictator like Hitler he would take it. It’s complicated, but it’s also a good reminder that peace has little to do with passive pacifism, and everything to do with actively seeking justice and peace.

One of the things I appreciated most in the conversations with Moltmann, was his insistence on returning to the simplicity of the gospel. Often he was asked a question on some controversial issue in the American church, and he simply scoffed at how we make such a big deal over it. His thought is that God is God and the gospel is the gospel – how we keep trying to manipulate and add things to it seemed preposterous or even heretical. Take for example his response to two such hot topic issues much discussed lately in America – gender language for God and homosexuality.

Moltmann was asked about the difficulty in “coming up with pronouns that are appropriately intimate and personal for God and yet don’t anthropomorphize God with a gender.” His response was that God is neither he nor she nor it – God is God. We should not use God’s divinity to justify the domination of men over women. The image we have of the trinity is not one of hierarchy or domination, but of unity. This unity can be reflected in our church communities – being in community the image of the communal identity of love. I found his view of allowing God to be God to be refreshing. Too often God is used for that very purpose of domination that subverts and destroys community. Sometime we get so wrapped up in the complexities of our own opinions that we paint elaborate portraits of God in our own personal images.  Moltmann proposes instead a simplicity that doesn’t fall into idolatry by reducing God to gender, and yet remains intimately connected to God through the use of multi-gendered pronouns for God.

Same thing with homosexuality. When the schismatic nature of sexuality in the American church was brought up, Moltmann replied that the whole discussion isn’t a problem in Germany. He said they have never had a struggle about this in the churches and in between the churches, because the church is about the gospel and not about sex. Christians believe in the justification of human beings by faith alone, not by faith and homosexuality. That, according to Moltmann, is adding heresy. I find this tendency, especially in the American church, to add things to the gospel to be disturbing. I’ve recently been told that I obviously am not a true Christian if I, say, read gender neutral Bible translations, do yoga, refuse to spank my kids, or become a vegetarian. As farcical as it sounds to turn the gospel into “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and continue to eat meat and you will be saved,” it is unfortunately representative of a growing trend in the church these days. When prominent church leaders regularly question the salvation of those who don’t follow the teachings of Calvin, the warped idolatry in the church is apparent.

So, I loved that Moltmann simply scoffed at America’s adolescent stupidity and encouraged us to get back to the gospel. Let God be God. Let the gospel be the gospel. Of course, opinions and theologies will always affect our faith, but sometimes we just need a good reminder to get over ourselves and stop manipulating God for our own ends.

At one point Moltmann, spoke about the two crosses of Christianity – the real cross at Golgotha and Constantine’s dream cross (a discussion I assume he develops further in his book, The Crucified God). The cross that appeared to Constantine in his vision was the cross of empire and violence. It was used to conquer, oppress, and destroy opposition. His cross is one of power and domination, not of response and reconciliation. But it is Constantine's cross, and not the cross of Golgotha, that the church has most readily accepted through the ages. Moltmann mentioned that it was the precursor of the Iron Cross and Victoria’s Cross – crosses that spoke not of the sacrifice of Jesus, but of empire and political maneuvering. We place that cross on flags to demonstrate the forced acceptance of a political interpretation of Christ. Accepting Christ and his cross has become about accepting the empire’s official version thereof.

Moltmann suggested instead that we need to go back to the origins of our faith to find a new future for Christianity in the world outside of imperialism. We have so confused the cross of Constantine with the real cross of Christ that we fail to understand and honor what the cross truly means. We honor our idea of a powerful, vindictive cross instead of a suffering cross. Unless we break from this idolatry, the probleofm  the Church causing pain in this world will continue.

I found the image fascinating. When the cross becomes our shield and sword instead of a symbol of hope, our faith becomes about struggle with the Other instead of love of the Other. Instead of acknowledging that through Christ’s suffering, all can be reconciled, we desire to forcibly make others think as we do. But conversion through coercion is not a reflection of hope and love, but of fear. If we cannot let the other be who they are and encounter the cross on their own terms, then we have forsaken the cross in favor of empire (be that a political or ideological empire). I fully agree that we need to return to the real cross, but I also do wonder what the future would look like apart from this need to use the cross to justify our disrespectful and inhumane treatment of others. A cross that embraced the suffering of others and helped them develop hope from that suffering instead of causing that very suffering is a vastly different sort of cross; and a church that shunned the cross of empire in favor of Jesus himself would be a very different church.