Some recent posts/articles that I enjoyed:

Bill Kauffman uses a review of a rather unsatisfying book to talk about the slow and agonizing death of rural America.

Think the recession’s over?  Not by a long shot.

Lastly, John Mark Hicks on Alexander Campbell’s continuing fascination with demonology.  A recent post deals with an address delivered by Campbell on a trip to Nashville in 1841.

As you all know from some of the discussions in the past regarding polity in non-institutional congregations, I’m not a big fan of the “men’s business meeting.”  I’ve known of churches that have existed for decades without elders, living under the business meeting arrangement for decades.

All that to say that I ran across this passage from James W. Adams’ Words Fitly Spoken (Bowling Green, KY: Truth Foundation, 1988), pages 20-21, and thought it worth sharing:

At various times through the years, a considerable number of brethren have sought to circumvent the oversight of New Testament elders, bishops, or pastors of local congregations of the Lord’s disciples.  Inasmuch as there must be a directing element in all group activity, such brethren have been forced to conceive and set up some form of government for the discharge of “local church” business.  Due to the onus that is associated with congregational rule by a majority vote of the total membership, they ordinarily seek to avoid that arrangement.  In most cases, they have instituted instead the rule of the congregation by a majority vote of a “business meeting” composed of the adult, male members of the congregation.  In so doing, they have literally “met themselves coming back.”  Instead of getting rid of their problems, they have increased and compounded them.

When authority over congregational affairs is vested in the voice of the majority of a “business meeting,” an opportunity is created for any capable, personable, designing individual with a Diotrephes complex (3 John 9) to dominate a congregation.  Through psychological influence and pressure (and sometimes not so psychological), he can exercise political control by bloc-voting his satellites in the business meeting while maintaining a public image of self-effacing humility.

The whole article, titled “Hung on His Own Gallows,” goes into somewhat more detail.

What are your thoughts?  Why do we allow the patently extra-scriptural business meeting arrangement to stand?

I’m back for the moment.

Recent discussion on the Stone-Campbell e-mail listserv has pointed me to John Hardin’s recently completed Auburn Ph.D. dissertation on B.C. Goodpasture, directed by the estimable Ed Harrell.  The dissertation, titled Common Cause: B.C. Goodpasture, the Gospel Advocate, and Churches of Christ in the Twentieth Century, was completed earlier this year and looks to be a good analysis (as good as any) of the power dynamics at work in the Churches of Christ in the middle of the twentieth century and the ways in which that power was used to marginalize and neutralize dissent.  I’m only a little ways in, so I don’t have extensive comments just yet.  Hopefully time will allow that in the next couple of weeks.

Second, I’m a little late to this, but Kyle Colvett does a nice job analyzing anti-Catholic sentiment in the history of Churches of Christ.

Lastly, Fr. Tobias gets so many things right here.

From Slate.com, the Dan Brown plot generator.

This is for all of you who — come on, admit it! — really didn’t care for The Da Vinci Code.

I’ve not posted here much lately.  Classes started this week so I’m not sure just how much time I’ll have.

Aside from that, here’s an update:

My wife and I celebrated our eighth anniversary earlier this week.  I am fortunate to be married to such a woman.  On the subject of marriage, go read this.  Fr. Tobias is at his best — I think — on this very topic.

Classes began this week, as mentioned above.  I’m signed up for Old Testament Theology and the cryptically titled “Personhood, Ministry and Discipleship.”  We’ll see.

I am reading David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions.  It’s a fantastic book, really.  Hart and Terry Eagleton have done some of the best work in taking on the militant ‘New Atheists.’

I’ve found a Greek reading partner.  After three years in Nashville, I’ve got someone who is willing to sit down weekly and read Greek with me — bringing back the super dorky days of grad school!  We began last week with Luke’s birth narrative (chaps. 1-3) and are making good progress so far.

Follow my book page — which I do keep updated — for an idea of what I’m up to during my long blogging silences.

See you soon.

From Adrian Plass’ Bacon Sandwiches and Salvation, comes this:

King James Version: form in which the Bible was originally written in seventeenth-century English. Later translated into Hebrew and Greek for some obscure reason and then translated back again into those ridiculous modern English versions.

[HT: Scot McKnight]

Do you ever wonder what an outsiders’ impression of your congregation is?  Here’s a not too pretty description of an atheist’s visit to an Australian mega-church, complete with “awesome” music and effects.  I wonder if they led worship barefoot?

(HT: Internet Monk)

For today:

Jim Kunstler links to R. Crumb’s “A Short History of America.” Here’s more on Crumb, including a few hypothetical additional panels to bring the story down to 2009.

The Wall Street Journal on Roman ruins in Lebanon.

A friend of mine blogging on the problem of authority in Stone-Campbell/Restorationist thought.  The comment thread is huge.

Hope everyone is well.  I’m beginning a study of Daniel soon in preparation for a Sunday morning class on the same.  You’ll hear more about it soon.

I really haven’t had the urge to blog lately.  School starts in a about a month, so I’m hoping to get some substantive posts in between now and then.

See you next week!

From the New York Times, the implosion of the Episcopal Church.

Some analysis via Rod Dreher.

Obviously, I’m not an Episcopalian and have no dog in this fight, but it’s hard not to feel some sadness in this.