is that you?

Carson Reed has a nice post on the recent decision by the United Church of Christ to affirm same-sex marriages. My wife had a similar experience to his: one of her uncles, a devout Baptist who has only the vaguest knowledge of our religious affiliation, thought that we belonged to the UCC and called in shocked amazement that we belonged to such a group. She cleared up his confusion with a simple, "No, that's not us."

Historically speaking, though, the matter is not quite so simple. There is a connection, albeit a very distant one. As most people familiar with the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement know, Barton Stone and John T. Johnson (representing Alexander Campbell) met in Lexington, Kentucky, on 1 January 1832, and with a handshake brought together Stone's "Christians" and Campbell's "Reformers" in unity. In actuality, the process was much more gradual, but that's another post.

Anyway, not all of Stone's followers went along with the merger, considering their disagreements with the teachings of Alexander Campbell to be too severe to set aside. Geographically, these Stoneite churches were located in Ohio and into New England. As the UCC website puts it:

"The majority of Stone's followers did not join Campbell and instead reaffirmed their ties with the original Christian Connection founded by [James] O'Kelley, [Abner] Jones and [Elias] Smith."

After a period of decline in the late 19th century brought on by sectionalism and other matters, in 1931 the remnants of the Christian Connection joined with the Congregational Churches. In 1957, the group then known as the "Congregational Christian Churches" became one of the founding organizations of the UCC.

So, there you have it. Churches of Christ have distant (yea, very distant) cousins in the UCC.

update

It's been a hectic last few days.

We are in the process of moving. Thus you will notice that my profile location has changed. The official moving date is Monday, the 25th, but much tearful :-) boxing up of books has taken place already. We spent the day yesterday in Newnan, taking measurements of our new apartment and getting shameless new cell phones.

Last night, back at home, we went to the release party for the new Harry Potter at our local Borders. We hadn't reserved a copy beforehand, but with the help of some highly-caffeinated beverages, we managed to score a copy of the new book around 2 a.m.

I've been hungry for some good fiction for a while, so while we waited, I became engrossed in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (go here for a plot summary). The book is by Susanna Clarke and has been called a sort of "Harry Potter for adults." Imagine Jane Austen and Charles Dickens meet J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis' Narnia series (she lists all of these as especial influences). Anyway, I couldn't put it down and ended up walking out with my own copy.

Lastly, check out this post from Michael Spencer's Internet Monk. It gets to the heart of small church ministry and his own experience is eerily similar to the experience that the minister at our congregation has gone through for almost 4 years now. Christians, take good care of those who proclaim the good news to you!

Stone-Campbell Dialogue

After a lengthy official silence, the Stone-Campbell Dialogue has released the results of another official meeting -- this time in Dallas, June 5th and 6th. It appears that the envisioned Communion Celebration for 2009 may just come off after all.

Does anyone have any more information than this press release gives us?

UPDATE: Here's a fuller story from DisciplesWorld magazine.

"new" Sappho

This is a bit late, but Sauvage Noble has a nice post (including text) of the newly discovered Sappho poem (no. 58).

On another scholarly note, Serendipity (scroll down a bit) gives a nice German mnemonic (Eselsbrücke) for the UNUS NAUTA adjective group in Latin. Just wait till I sing this one to my 8th graders!

books!

So, I've been "tagged." Here goes:

1. How many books have I owned?

I have about 730 (partly in boxes -- we're moving) at our apartment. I have at least another 700-800 -- probably more like 1000 -- in storage at my grandparents' house.

2. What was the last book you bought?

Philip Yancey's The Bible Jesus Read. I've been reading through chunks of the OT in the mornings along with Yancey's thoughts.

3. What was the last book you read?

I'm almost done with Philip Jenkins' The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. I picked this up from the library -- I'd love to own a copy, though. It's a very timely work.

Also, I'm almost done with a collection of Wendell Berry essays entitled Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community. I was in Crawfordville, Georgia, (the home of Alexander Stephens) last week with a friend of mine. We were taken by the fact that the town itself it completely dead -- deserted except for the county courthouse. This is something that I noticed more this week as we drove through essentially dead towns in south Alabama. How do towns that were active and thriving 50-75 years ago die? Is it Wal-Mart? Decline of an agricultural economy built around small farmers? Berry writes about the problem in a useful way and suggests some possible solutions.

Finally, Peter Brown's The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. Brown essentially created Late Antique studies through his work during the 1960s and 1970s. Everything he has written is worth reading -- not just for classicists and scholars of Early Christianity, but also for general readers. The Body and Society is no different.
Read it to get a clear sense of Christian ideas about the body and sexual mores that have persisted to our own times: e.g. the development of the celibate priesthood and Christian squeamishness about sex.

4. What are FIVE books that have meant a lot to you?

Aside from the Bible and in no particular order:

1. I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. I first read this in high school and find myself constantly going back to it.

2. Reviving the Ancient Faith.

3. The Tennessee (in two volumes). I could have listed other books here, but this one ignited an enduring interest in local/state history and helped me to appreciate who I am as an 11th generation Tennessean.

4. Herodotus' The Histories. In college, I participated in an afternoon reading group with my Greek professor in which we read all of Herodotus in translation. More than anything this first set me down my current career path.

5. I could have easily filled this list with works on cofC history and theology, but that would hardly have been completely representative. So, in closing (and to cheat a bit), I'll list anything by Leonard Allen (The Worldly Church, The Cruciform Church, Things Unseen, Participating in God's Life, Discovering Our Roots).

5. Tag five people who haven't played yet.

Five?? How about three?

Curious Incidents
Mark Horner
Theosebes

I'm back

So...we were in south Alabama all week. Little news from the outside world for the first few days, certainly no internet access (the in-laws had somehow managed to fry their computer).

You go out of town for a week and everything happens. We spent twelve hours on the road yesterday fleeing Hurricane Dennis -- which looks set to hit the Alabama/Florida Gulf Coast directly where we were spending the past couple of days.

Of course there were other things -- Live8, the G-8 meetings and -- above all -- the London bombings. Our last two days on the coast were spent with my brother-in-law and his wife and our new niece. Most of that time was spent on the couch absorbing the 24-hour news cycle via CNN. The news shifted endlessly back and forth between hurricane coverage and events in London. The strange thing, though, was that none of it seemed real -- the news anchors are so glib, so perfectly coiffed, so inane as they spew the meaningless words that keep them on the air constantly, so "I'm American, foreign events don't matter to me." Isn't it ironic that technology that touts its ability to shrink distance and create a global village creates such a distance of empathy and emotion?

More later...