The R-Rated Theologian

Introduction

Chapter 1: What is R-Rated Theology?

Mark Driscoll and the Amazing Technicolor Evangelical Funhouse Mirror Sexual Worldview (Swedish Batteries Not Included)

Would Jesus Write for Christianity Today While Giving Lap Dances?

A Divine Comedy, of sorts: On Banana Peel Theology

Chapter 2: What Was It Like Growing Up Fundamentalist?

To Hell with Hell: Bye-Bye Board Game Metaphysics, Hello Fearless Christianity

Chapter 3: Fundamentalism & Hermeneutics

What the Hell is Christian Fundamentalism?

The Symbiosis of Nutjob Theology and Corporate Psychopathy

Jesus Wept, Einstein’s Regret & How a Frenchman Fueled the Hermeneutics Wars

And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: A Whale of a Tale

Chapter 4 The Bible, Rated X

The Bible, Rated X

The Bible, Rated X: Mr. Jefferson, 666 and Biblical Bosoms

The Bible, Rated X: Careful Where You Stick Your Colon

The Bible, Rated X: Stop Pointing Your Rod at Me

The Bible, Rated X: From Adam’s Snake to the Horny Beast

Chapter 5: Homosexuality, Same-Sex Marriage, & All That Jazz

If You’re Happy and You Know It: A Journey from Evangelical Homophobia to Equal Sign

What Every American Should Know about the Biblical Definitions of Marriage

A Christian Liberal Arts Education, Minus the Tampons

I Now Pronounce You: The First Wheaton Alumnus-Officiated Unofficial Alabama Gay Wedding Homily in History or: How the Same-Sex Gospel Was Proclaimed in Birmingham

Chapter 6: Evolution v. Creationism

An Open Letter and Challenge to Ken Ham, Creationist (Not So) Extraordinaire

The Coke Bottle that Fell from the Sky, Hit an Antichrist & Felled a Planet

Bill Nye vs. The Creation Museum: Tonight’s Debate for Civilization

The Science Fair at the Edge of the Universe

Cosmos Cage Match! Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. God, Nietzsche & Stephen Hawking

Chapter 7: Toward a G-Rated Reverence for Life

Progressivism vs. The Universe: A Redwood in a Thunderstorm

As-salamu alaykum, What’s up, Bro? The Many Graces of Allah

An Open Letter to Pope Francis

About the Author

"Balaam and the Angel,"

by Gustav Jaeger

(Wikimedia Commons)

Introduction

When Arik mentioned his forthcoming book, The X-Rated Theologian, the first thing I said was, Nah, at best you’re more of an R-rated theologian.

Let’s face it, the guy is middle-aged, a bit hairy (except his hairline), and you really don’t want to see him in skinny jeans. I really mean that last part. So I’m not sure that he qualifies for X-rated anything, especially theologian.  But R-rated, I’ll give him that.

Arik Bjorn is actually a bit of an R-rated theologian, because his material is the kind of thing folks might not like to share publicly. His material won’t necessarily make you feel overly dirty from reading it—though it might get your heart racing and palms sweating. (Of course, I’m just referring to the reaction of your socio-religious paradigms being challenged.)

Like I said, it might take some courage to admit to reading him if your circles of friends are politically or theologically conservative. And you might be a little sheepish about displaying a book called The X-Rated Theologian on your coffee table when having the minister over for tea. That said, these are important ideas delivered in creative ways that are both fun to read and uniquely challenging to digest.

Then there’s the writing quality itself. Arik is one of the most eloquent writers I know, which will become evident within minutes of beginning his book. Yes, you will be pushed, but if you simply enjoy the art of reading or writing, he offers a master class in phrasings, humor, and creative tangents that you won’t want to miss.

Arik’s ideas are not so extreme as to disrespect or defile the Christian tradition, but they will push you to think in a considerate and educated way. He is one of today’s true progressive leaders—pushing the envelope but not quite throwing it into the shredder. You will especially enjoy sitting with your favorite drink and enjoying the articulation of his thoughts and words.

Eric Alexander

June 2015

Author’s Note: Hmm. Skinny jeans. Excellent point, Mr. Alexander. And for that very reason—also, because I don’t want any ministers from Poughkeepsie turning purple from embarrassment, I have decided to retitle the volume The R-Rated Theologian.

Chapter 1

What is R-Rated Theology?

Painting of Adam and Eve inside Abreha

and Atsbeha Church, Ethiopia,

credit Bernard Gagnon

(Wikimedia Commons)

Mark Driscoll and the Amazing Technicolor Evangelical Funhouse Mirror Sexual Worldview (Swedish Batteries Not Included)

Perhaps the recent tsunami wave of Mark Driscoll Penis House headlines has finally subsided to the point where one can write on the subject of the American Christian sexual worldview for a reason other than to gain an easy 10,000 views—and perhaps with a little substance in mind.

Once Discroll’s distasteful and theologically unsound thoughts on human genitalia started splashing across the Interweb, Christian rags like Huff Post Religion madly circled them with the feeding frenzy fervor of a Time and Jezebel.

It seems hard to deny that Christian editors smelled ad revenue and social media likes and shares when they saw an opportunity to slap the word penis across the screens of the sanctified from coast to coast.

It’s an old game in Evangelical Our Town. Every once in a while, the repressed sexual tension gets to be too much. When an opportunity arises, the floodgates burst open—whereupon everyone is permitted a Tourette-like release of naughty words, for a time.

This happened when I was at Wheaton College in the 1990s. During the Great Undergraduate Revival, students stood before peers and hallowed administrators and confessed all manner of illicit behavior without fear of reprisal. I think someone even said boobies.

I had planned to sit at my desk this week and finish a contemplative essay about a possible vocational call I think I’ve been hearing. My essay draft contains quotes from Emerson’s On Friendship. In it (mine and Emerson’s), there isn’t a single reference to male genitalia nor a single occurrence of the word vagina. I’m so out of touch. As is the great transcendentalist.

By the way, vagina comes from the Latin for sheath. You can’t blame that on a disgraced pastor. (Vāgīna is also the etymological source for vanilla. Let’s all snicker. Who knows why, but it seems inappropriate. Besides, angels blush whenever they hear that word. Vagina. Tee-hee-hee.)

Before I get any further, let me note that I feel blessed. Somehow—miraculously—I was shielded from knowledge of Mark Driscoll’s ministry all these years. Honestly, when Driscoll Penis House-Gate broke, a friend of mine was shocked to hear me say, Who’s Mark Driscoll?

Then again, maybe I’m lying. Perhaps I’m so entrenched within the Acts 29 Network that under my breath I’m muttering, The first rule of Midrash Forum is: ‘You do not talk about Midrash Forum.’

…

I should be thinking about Ralph Waldo Emerson and my unfinished vocational essay, yet instead I’ve spent all week thinking about Mark Driscoll’s penis. Or at least his view of his own penis. And his view of my penis. And I suppose his view of your penis, too—if you have one.

American Christians—or maybe just Americans generally—either think about penises too much or not enough. Or perhaps both. I can’t decide.

Or maybe it’s just that when we do think about penises, we tend to act like an 11 year old with his shoes half-untied, picking his nose, and we feel the need to follow up this thought with a fart joke.

In a certain light, sex, sex parts, sexual interplay, and human reproduction at large (and not so large) is funny. And Absurd. And serious. As well as everything in-between.

But here’s one thing that sex isn’t: a permanently distorted fun house mirror.

And that is how, as a recovering fundamentalist, I picture the Evangelical sexual worldview. Distorted. To quote myself:

I was reared in an ultraconservative Christian environment that made Queen Victoria look like Lady Gaga.  I was forbidden from dating all throughout high school, and the Birds & Bees conversation with the man who reared me went something like this:  ’Those feelings in your penis should be reserved for marriage.  And all the Greek philosophers were fags, so you’ll never attend college if you want anything to do with this family.’

Unfortunately, tens of thousands of other young men who grew up Evangelical (I’m low-balling that estimate) suffered similar conversations and mentoring.

An immature urogenital worldview wasn’t just thrust upon us as horny teenagers. Many of us were taught as children to call our reproductive organs pee-pees or tee-wees or any of a dozen other ridiculous baby-talk labels.

God didn’t make tinklers. God made penises and vaginas.

What does any of this have to do with Penis House-Gate?

Well, where do you think a former Top 25 Most Influential Pastor learned to think so immaturely about human sexuality?

Mark Driscoll is the product of an immature sexual worldview. Not its inventor.

Yes, it’s easy, even delightful (if you can biblically justify Schadenfreude) to castigate a failed leader with misogynistic tendencies—especially one who seemed to set himself up as the Chuck Palahniuk of Evangelicalism. But someone needs to start redirecting the dialogue of the Mars Hills Debacle. Driscoll merely stood in front of that distorted funhouse mirror.

The mirror is still there. And millions of us remain standing in front of it.

Let’s face it. Whether we are creationists or evolutionists, experiencing a public depiction of Adam and Eve in their birthday suits still makes many of us uncomfortable. Even worse is a naked baby Jesus—or, blasphemy of blasphemies, a naked Jesus on the cross.

And I’m going to go on record as saying that there is ZERO chance that the producers who brought us Noah are ever going to bless us with a silver screen version of the life and times of Onan. (I didn’t see Noah, but I’m guessing Noah’s Genesis 9 drunken, naked rage was also glossed over.)

Also, when was the last time you saw Ezekiel 23:20 placed upon a Sunday School flannelgraph: "There [Oholibah] lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkey and whose emission [זִרְמַת, zirmah] was like that of horses."

Almost across the board, English biblical translators have chosen emission or issue to describe what we all know Ezekiel meant—and what one daring biblical commentary describes as a gushing of sperm.

Now hold on just a second. Ezekiel and William Wallace II (Driscoll’s penis-homey alter ego) are both pretty X-rated. Why should we give Ezekiel a free pass yet climb all over Driscoll?

Well, for one, Ezekiel’s intended audience was comfortable with an explicit animal reproductive metaphor. I mean, to anyone familiar with horse breeding, the Ezekiel passage comes rather alive.

Driscoll’s remarks—such as God created you and it is His penis—just come off as remarkably idiotic. Is it God’s earlobe and kneecap, too, and will He be wanting those parts back at the end of my terrestrial sojourn? Does He have special plans for my coccyx? Frankly, it’s only ever been a pain in the ass to me.

(Uh-oh. Shit, now I said ass. And shit. As I once heard Tony Campolo say—and I’m paraphrasing—Don’t get all bent out of shape about words like ‘shit’ if you don’t give one about all the children starving in the world today.)

Anyway, my point is that American Christians need to reevaluate their sexual worldview. And not just their sexual worldview. American Christians tend to get all bent out of shape about human waste-related anatomy too—as if Beelzebub were somehow responsible for the functions of the urethra and anus. (God is not Queen Victoria.)

…

What Driscoll said was childish. He’s paid quite the price for it, and rightfully so.

But Christianity Today, in my opinion, has acted equally immaturely with its recent theologically-puerile article about whether Jesus would ever hang out in a strip club.

Yet what was the consequence to its editorial staff? (By the way, here’s my shot-across-the-bow response to CT.)

And that’s all I’m going to say for now. I’m not presenting an Aquinas tome on the subject. I’m just suggesting that we not allow the lexical floodgates to close this time. Let’s keep them open. The words penis and vagina shouldn’t be permanently hidden under bushels, as it were.

The human body and all its functions are natural phenomena. They are no less natural than all the stars and planets—including Uranus.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

But let’s not wait several more years for some other theological bozo to come along to make it okay again to put naughty words in print. If you’ve got a good reason to say penis or ejaculation or poop, just say the word without feeling the need to justify it with a biblical reference. The Trinity won’t strike you dead.

After all, Jesus had a penis and an anus too.

Patheos, September 2014

Would Jesus Write

for Christianity Today

While Giving Lap Dances?

Brace yourselves, those of an Evangelical disposition.

I am a graduate of Wheaton College, and I have been to a strip club.

And it wasn’t even because I read Christianity Today’s article Would Jesus Hang Out in a Strip Club? and was overcome with spiritual delusions of grandeur about extending the Gospel, as it were, to writhing, bare-breasted women.

I just went, well, because of the prospect of seeing beautiful naked women.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. After I had smoked a cigarette in the Christianity Today parking lot in Carol Stream, Illinois, and made out with a Wheaton College art student. Consensually.  And then we danced. And played a couple rounds of craps.

Scout’s honor.

Sorry, I know this is going to require a lot of justification.

Not about going to a strip club. But about attending Wheaton College. After all, they’ve got quite the anti-LGBTQ reputation—not to mention the institution’s public opposition to Obamacare. There are other reasons. Wheaton also seems to have a knack