Interview with Mac Part 2

Maugham malraux on location.

Part Two.

MM: I want to pursue this thing about the church a little further. You know I am not a Christian or religious at all, so I am curious about it from the outside. What is up with the church in Amerca?

MAC: Well that is too big a question to get into any detail. Some people would look at it through the lens of a culture war. That'd be one way to look at it...but there are probably about 30 different ways to analyze the huge, almost tectonic shifts that are constantly occurring now.

MM: So of those 30 lenses, how do you see it?

MAC: Well you know I am a big Kierkegaard fan.

MM: You read that shit?

MAC: Yeah, because I can and you can't.

MM: Settle down...don't get testy or I'll have to smack you in the nose.

MAC: Kierkegaard lived in Denmark at a time when the Church was supported by the State. It was a situation very akin to where current Christian "Dominionists" would like to see America fall. The ministers of the official Church were actually paid by the State.

Now that is not what these folks want...they want even more. They want to dictate to the State. So it's potentially worse than Denmark in Kierkegaard's day.

Kierkegaard saw the inherent insanity of this and called them out. One guy...just one little guy with a brilliant mind and a small inheritance so he could publish at will.

Kierkegaard made the distinction, and we should to, between "Christendom" and "Christianity". The latter is a living faith deeply connected to God across all denominations, both inside and outside the established "Church".

"Christendom" is the hardened shell of organized religion which reflects the political and economic ambitions of those in power.

Kierkegaard saw the two as utter antithetical.

I do too.

MM: Thanks for the post-graduate lesson in Kierkegaard.

MAC: You asked. What do you want me to say...organized religion is doo-doo? Okay. There.

MM: But you were once an ordained minister.

MAC: Thanks for bringing that up. That's one reason why I do not do interviews.

MM: So weren't you a part of the establishment?

MAC: I was very lucky. I was in a sort of renegade church. Now a days they are very mainstream, which makes me sad, but back then it was very much about loving people, serving them and also loving God. In many ways they were anti-comsumer Christianity. Kids who couldn't afford to go to camp always went anyway, the senior pastor took no salary (a whole other story) and the rock concerts we did on Saturday nights were always free (and quite expensive to put on). No, people and God really came first.

So, no I can honestly say I have never been a part of the establishment. In fact, in any church I have ever been to I am usually met with some degree of suspicion.

MM: Why?

MAC: I imagine it is because I am both fully trained as a scholar/teacher and I am unrepressed and honest, come what may.

MM: Do you regret it..all those years of training?

MAC: No, not at all. In fact few people I have ever met have been exposed to all I have. Hermeneutics, exegesis, Greek and Hebrew studies and the writing of church history across all lines: the Desert Father, Athanasius, Ireneaus, The English Puritans, Pascal, Kierkegaard and then the moderns, etc... 2,000 years of great theological writings and thought.

MM: Are you bragging?

MAC: Er, maybe...I don't get out much.
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Part three on the way...