A couple weeks ago I wrote about my dislike of the "Holiday Tree". Since then I've seen lots of people upset with the use of "X-mas" instead of "Christmas." I'm OK with the X. In fact I use the abbreviation all the time. I couldn't stand the abbreviation at all until I went to seminary. In the middle of class one day a proffesor abbreviated "Christian" as "Xian" and suddenly it all made sense to me. So if you don't know the origin of "X-mas", here it is:
The Greek word for Christ is Christos. If you were to write the word out it would look something like "Xpristos" (I don't know how to do Greek letters on an English keyboard, so this just approximate). The Greek r looks like an English p and the Greek "ch" looks like an English x. So X can simply be an abbreviation for Christ. Xian is Christian and Xmas is Christmas. So Merry Xmas and a happy new year!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Initial Thoughts on a Special Session of General Conference
The big news yesterday is that the General Council on Finance and Administration is asking the Council of Bishops for a special session of General Conference. I could be persuaded otherwise, but at the moment this seems like an expensive waste at best and a colossal mistake for the future of the denomination at worst. Fortunately, I don't think a special session is actually likely to be called.
The biggest problem is the timing. The called session would discuss two issues: pension plans in the United States and recommendations from the Call to Action Task Force of the Council of Bishops. The Task Force is scheduled to make their recomendations in the fall of 2010. Unless the timeframe for their work is moved up, that means a special session could take place no earlier than the spring of 2011, roughly 12 months before General Conference is already scheduled to meet. Additionally, meeting that soon after the proposals from the task force are announced would minimize the amount of time for conversation and debate. For some matters a few months is plenty of time, but the scope of this task force is tremendous. There are only two tasks - reconsidering guaranteed appointments for elders and restrucuring the church (including the frequency and size of General Conference and the number, kind, and size of general boards and agencies) - but those are two of the biggest tasks we face as a denomination.
Changing guarateed appointments will generate tremendous debate. Personally, I've gone back and forth a dozen times on whether this would be good or not. The reccomendation to change the church strucuture is even more important. This is the kind of decision that we have to get right. We don't get a second chance. It definitely needs to happen. Anybody who has been to General Conference knows that it is broken. The world has changed so much since the formation of the UMC that all of our strucutres need to be reconsidered and reformed. But it must be done carefully and it must be done correctly. It is not a decision that can be rushed.
My opinion is not as informed about pensions. The Conference I am in is not struggling at all in meeting pension obligations. Perhaps we need a special session just to deal with this. If we do, I hope that the question will be broadened to include pensions of clergy from countries outside the United States. I am sure that many of them would feel fortunate to have the pension funding crisis that some of our conferences have. A partially funded pension is much more than most of them get.
The biggest problem is the timing. The called session would discuss two issues: pension plans in the United States and recommendations from the Call to Action Task Force of the Council of Bishops. The Task Force is scheduled to make their recomendations in the fall of 2010. Unless the timeframe for their work is moved up, that means a special session could take place no earlier than the spring of 2011, roughly 12 months before General Conference is already scheduled to meet. Additionally, meeting that soon after the proposals from the task force are announced would minimize the amount of time for conversation and debate. For some matters a few months is plenty of time, but the scope of this task force is tremendous. There are only two tasks - reconsidering guaranteed appointments for elders and restrucuring the church (including the frequency and size of General Conference and the number, kind, and size of general boards and agencies) - but those are two of the biggest tasks we face as a denomination.
Changing guarateed appointments will generate tremendous debate. Personally, I've gone back and forth a dozen times on whether this would be good or not. The reccomendation to change the church strucuture is even more important. This is the kind of decision that we have to get right. We don't get a second chance. It definitely needs to happen. Anybody who has been to General Conference knows that it is broken. The world has changed so much since the formation of the UMC that all of our strucutres need to be reconsidered and reformed. But it must be done carefully and it must be done correctly. It is not a decision that can be rushed.
My opinion is not as informed about pensions. The Conference I am in is not struggling at all in meeting pension obligations. Perhaps we need a special session just to deal with this. If we do, I hope that the question will be broadened to include pensions of clergy from countries outside the United States. I am sure that many of them would feel fortunate to have the pension funding crisis that some of our conferences have. A partially funded pension is much more than most of them get.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
A new era for Christmas?
I was "playing" Farmville last week on Facebook (if you haven't experienced it, I'm not sure you really play Farmville. I'm also not really sure why I spend any time with it except that it's the only place where you can grow a great harvest of fresh strawberries in only 4 hours). When I logged on I found that I had been given a "holiday tree." Apparently a holiday tree is like a Christmas tree except it's politically correct. I don't know what makes a Christmas tree politically incorrect. The holiday has been tamed enough (see a great blog on this subject here) that a Christmas tree seems pretty inoffensive. It made me think about
I'm not going to pull out my Christian history books to look up all the details, but I think it's pretty well known that before December 25th was chosen as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus it was a pagan holiday. The story goes that Christians knew the day would always be a feast day for most people so they coopted it and made it a great Christian holiday. This makes great sense as a public relations move and fits right in with the Imperial Christianity era that begins with Constantine in the 4th century. December 25 rolls around and Christians have a great opportunity to witness to their faith with a celebration at the same time that others are celebrating for a different reason.
Fast forward 1600 years or so and we see the exact reverse happening. Very few humanists and atheists suggest that we eliminate Christmas as a holiday. Instead, they are trying to redefine it. December 25th is to engrained in our minds and our common experience as a celebration for it to simply go away. Instead, it is being changed by the dominant culture into a non-religious, non-threatening holiday. Christmas will remain, but devoid of any of it's Christian meaning in the same way that the pagan celebration day remained a celebration day but devoid of its original meaning.
It seems to me that as Christians we have a couple choices. One option is to actively resist this movement. Vocally tell people to leave Christmas alone and keep it a Christian holiday. In a country that values separation of church and state this might mean there are no school "holiday" parties, much less Christmas parties. Maybe there's not even a "winter" or "Christmas" break. Instead of opposing what we perceive as radical atheists trying to take God out of the schools and government, we might support those decisions so that we can leave God in the holidays that we cherish. Perhaps we should be cheering the ACLU and others on - yes, the Nativity scenes do have religious meaning. Yes, the Christmas tree does represent a relgious holiday.
A second option is to let them have it. Surrender Christmas to the non-Christians. There's at least as much evidence for a summer or fall date of Jesus' birth than a winter date. Why not pick another date for the celebration? Or perhaps as many early Christians did we should reemphasize Epiphany
So we face a new era for the holiday celebrated on December 25: First was the pagan celebration, then the Christian celebration of Christmas, and now something else - either a reinvigorated Christian celebration or a completely vapid secular celebration. I think we have some choice in what this new era will be like.
I'm not going to pull out my Christian history books to look up all the details, but I think it's pretty well known that before December 25th was chosen as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus it was a pagan holiday. The story goes that Christians knew the day would always be a feast day for most people so they coopted it and made it a great Christian holiday. This makes great sense as a public relations move and fits right in with the Imperial Christianity era that begins with Constantine in the 4th century. December 25 rolls around and Christians have a great opportunity to witness to their faith with a celebration at the same time that others are celebrating for a different reason.
Fast forward 1600 years or so and we see the exact reverse happening. Very few humanists and atheists suggest that we eliminate Christmas as a holiday. Instead, they are trying to redefine it. December 25th is to engrained in our minds and our common experience as a celebration for it to simply go away. Instead, it is being changed by the dominant culture into a non-religious, non-threatening holiday. Christmas will remain, but devoid of any of it's Christian meaning in the same way that the pagan celebration day remained a celebration day but devoid of its original meaning.
It seems to me that as Christians we have a couple choices. One option is to actively resist this movement. Vocally tell people to leave Christmas alone and keep it a Christian holiday. In a country that values separation of church and state this might mean there are no school "holiday" parties, much less Christmas parties. Maybe there's not even a "winter" or "Christmas" break. Instead of opposing what we perceive as radical atheists trying to take God out of the schools and government, we might support those decisions so that we can leave God in the holidays that we cherish. Perhaps we should be cheering the ACLU and others on - yes, the Nativity scenes do have religious meaning. Yes, the Christmas tree does represent a relgious holiday.
A second option is to let them have it. Surrender Christmas to the non-Christians. There's at least as much evidence for a summer or fall date of Jesus' birth than a winter date. Why not pick another date for the celebration? Or perhaps as many early Christians did we should reemphasize Epiphany
So we face a new era for the holiday celebrated on December 25: First was the pagan celebration, then the Christian celebration of Christmas, and now something else - either a reinvigorated Christian celebration or a completely vapid secular celebration. I think we have some choice in what this new era will be like.
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