Tripp Hudgins is a doctoral student in liturgical studies and ethnomusicology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA., and is Director of Admissions at American Baptist Seminary of The West. You can read more of his writings on his longtime blog, "Conjectural Navel Gazing; Jesus in Lint Form" at AngloBaptist.org. Follow Tripp on Twitter @AngloBaptist.

Posts By This Author

Losing the Mainline Mojo?

by Tripp Hudgins 07-16-2012
Church building photo, Kevin Eng / Shutterstock.com

Church building photo, Kevin Eng / Shutterstock.com

Is the Mainline Liberal Church in decline? Numerically, sure. Absolutely. But what this means, I cannot say. Many have tried to make sense of it. In the wake of recent editorials, some theologians and others have offered up their thoughts. I surmised it might be helpful to collect one or two of the links here on the outside chance that you missed them. 

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved - Ross Douthat offers some sharp critiques of the tradition. Once the bastion of the Social Gospel movement, the liberal mainline is not all "social" and very little "Gospel." 

"But if conservative Christianity has often been compromised, liberal Christianity has simply collapsed. Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance. Within the Catholic Church, too, the most progressive-minded religious orders have often failed to generate the vocations necessary to sustain themselves."

There have been a couple of good direct responses to Douthat's OpEd piece. 

In Praise of Episcopalians

by Tripp Hudgins 07-14-2012

The most amazing thing happened this week.

Maybe you missed it.

The Episcopal Church held their General Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. They gathered. They prayed. They sang. I'm told there were a few sermons, too! And you know they offered the Eucharist. They can't do anything without someone bringing bread, wine, and a blessing. God love 'em.

This week they voted, too. They held up in their bicameral way of doing things and worked out some key issues. Among the issues at hand were whether or not to sell their offices in New York City and to find ways of investing their income in the future of the denomination. They did both. If you followed them on Twitter (Many did. #GC77 trended right up there!), then you know that there was hope and joy in their rooms. This is not why they made the news, of course. They made the news when they voted to formally allow for same-sex blessings within their communion.

The Hometown Blues

by Tripp Hudgins 07-09-2012

"If you tell a lie, it will be all over the country in a day or two. But if you tell the truth, it will take ten years to get there." ~ Eddie "Son" House

And the truth is what Jesus offered the people of his hometown in this tale from Mark's Gospel. Jesus offered his prophetic witness of truth-telling. He held up a mirror and showed them who they were. He held up a mirror and said to them, "The Kingdom of God is with you."

They were enraged that one of their own would do such a thing.
He was utterly astonished that the people who had raised him were incapable of facing their own truth.

He also knew that if they could not face the realities of their own complicated lives they would not be able to embrace the healing and forgiveness that God offered.

Jesus had the blues. He had the hometown blues.

So, rejected, he fled his hometown.

Then he sent his apostles out into the world proclaiming peace, healing the sick and the lame, and prepared to face the same rejection. People don't like to be reminded of the complications of real life. None of us like the feeling of being judged when the mirror is held up before us.

Life in Translation

by Tripp Hudgins 06-28-2012
The author (center middle sans corduroy Sunday suit) circa 1980. Photo courtesy

The author (center front, sans corduroy Sunday suit) with Hudgins family members circa 1976. Photo courtesy of Tripp Hudgins.

I have been thinking about the church of my youth. I have been remembering, if you will, as a guy who has read too much Updike (I'll never forgive him for the Rabbit books) might remember his youth.

There is a melding of nostalgia for what was as well as what might have been. It's a mess, to be honest, a kind of lie that draws me in no matter how often I tell myself it is a lie. Sometimes these lies of memory are the heart's truth.
 

Christianity As Impurity Cult, or It's Okay to Leave

by Tripp Hudgins 05-14-2012
Host and chalice image, robodread / Shutterstock.com

Host and chalice image, robodread / Shutterstock.com

The Church is not a purity cult. We try to turn our institutions into purity cultus of behavior or belief all the time. We're really good at it. We've fought wars over our theologies wrapped in nationalism. We've crusaded from west to east all in the name of the purity of the Church. "Ex filio" was a war cry a thousand years ago.

Rachel Held Evans is right. Evangelicalism may very well be losing a generation and by extension, we all are. But then some of us have been losing parts of generations for a long time. Some of the Boomers walked never to return. More of Gen X did the same. Now the enormous generation of Millennials is having its say. Many are voting with their feet. They are tired of the culture wars. They are tired of the purity fights. Many people from various generations are. They are all voting with their feet. The same thing is happening in Catholicism though some are choosing to stay. If it weren't for the influx of Catholic immigrants to the US, we'd see the same statistical free fall in Catholicism that the mainline is experiencing.

Mom, Mick Jagger and Me

by Tripp Hudgins 05-10-2012
Tripp Hudgins and his mom, Debby, laughing. Photo courtesy of the author.

Tripp Hudgins and his mom, Debby Hudgins, laughing. Photo courtesy of the author.

“Talk to me about your mother.”

Such ominous words.

But talk to you about her, I will. And it's not gonna be pretty.

You see, my mother isn't perfect. Her love may be perfect, but she's not and like everyone else on the planet she has hurt the ones she loves the most in the very act of trying to love them.

It's Mother's Day this Sunday and we'll honor our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, spouses, grandmothers and, and, and...We'll honor women and men who have mothered us. And we should.

It's not easy work and Lord knows that Freud has helped us pathologize motherhood. In turn we have idolized motherhood and mothers. Neither approach works. Not really. So I would like to propose a via media for Mother's Day.

Every Sunday as I'm driving to the church I serve I call my mother to check in. She lives by herself and I worry. I'm her son. I can't help myself.

Losing My Religion and Other Interesting News

by Tripp Hudgins 05-08-2012
Church candles, Hitdelight / Shutterstock.com

Church candles, Hitdelight / Shutterstock.com

This is a response to some of the NPR coverage on pastors who are losing their religion. It's a heartbreaking series. I say that not because people are losing their faith, changing their minds about religion. I'm heartbroken because I'm not hearing about any Christian tradition other than American Fundamentalism. That's Christianity according to mass media and, apparently, according to the men and women who have stepped away from the Church. They believe so strongly in the arguments of Fundamentalism that they cannot imagine another form of Christianity. They cannot imagine another God. They believe that Fundamentalism is the only theology out there. They believe in One God, the Fundamentalist God. So, in breaking with that rhetoric, they have to break with the whole Church.

We who believe something other than American Fundamentalism have failed these people. We have failed again and again to successfully offer the alternatives to Fundamentalism. Instead, we sit in our beautiful neo-gothic buildings or in our hip-coffee shops or under the dome of the Pantokrator and wonder why people do not know us. It's simply crap. If all there were in Christianity was American Fundamentalism, I would be an atheist, too. Perhaps the Fundamentalists have won after all.

Tearing Down the Thin Veil: 20 Years After the Rodney King Riots

by Tripp Hudgins 04-27-2012
HAL GARB/AFP/Getty Images

A rioter breaks a glass door of the Criminal Courts building, downtown Los Angeles, 29 April 1992. HAL GARB/AFP/Getty Images

This weekend, if you can believe it, marks the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots that followed the verdict in the Rodney King trial that acquitted four police officers of any wrong doing. Maybe some of us are old enough to remember the beating that King took as he was being arrested.

Maybe some of us are old enough to remember the violence that followed. Fifty people died in the riots.

Why do we bother to honor such memories? Why do we hold them up? St. John of the Cross, the Carmelite mystic, writes of a temporal veil that separates us from God. It's an unavoidable separation, he said, that every creature encounters.

We live in time. God does not. He also said, however, that by grace that veil can be torn, time and memory collapsing in upon one another and we are no longer separate from God.

Alphege, Alms, and Easter Anthems

by Tripp Hudgins 04-19-2012
Earth Day illustration, kabby/Shutterstock.com

Earth Day illustration, kabby/Shutterstock.com

In City Journal, Pascal Bruckner has written an interesting essay critiquing "secular elites" and their (our?) predilection for an apocalyptic vision without redemption. He calls it the apocalyptic daze, a love for the cataclysmic and states that it's shaping our politics. Interesting stuff to read as Earth Day approaches. He writes: 

My point is not to minimize the dangers that we face. Rather, it is to understand why apocalyptic fear has gripped so many of our leaders, scientists, and intellectuals, who insist on reasoning and arguing as though they were following the scripts of mediocre Hollywood disaster movies.

His is not a critique of the science of environmentalism but one of the rhetoric of the politics surrounding it.

The Impossibility of Being Known

by Tripp Hudgins 04-17-2012
Eye photo, Greg Soybelman/Shutterstock.com

Eye photo, Greg Soybelman/Shutterstock.com

I've been navel gazing again and wondering how we come to know ourselves. I wonder what that right balance is between our inner-barometer of self-knowing and that external one that people reflect back to us. "Ubuntu," (I am because of who we are) or all the various "I am..." statements: "I think therefore I am" (Descartes) or "I am what I am and that's all that I am" (Popeye)...What statements might we add to this list? Bishop Desmond Tutu expands the notion of Ubuntu thusly: 

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

I'm trying to wrap my mind about how we construct the self. Judith Butler, Catherine Bell (ritualization) and others inhabit my mind lately. Ritual, tradition, story, identity... the list goes on and on ...

Holy Monday

by Tripp Hudgins 04-09-2012
He is Risen, Genotar/Shutterstock.com

He is Risen, Genotar/Shutterstock.com

Yesterday the Lord Awoke. 

You see, God had been sleeping. Entombed again. How long, O Lord, must we sing this song of You Entombed? We bury you again and again. We crucify you again and again. Then, when you show us (again and again) that death cannot contain you, we run away. We're afraid.  We cannot imagine a world in which Death has no sting. We cannot imagine a world in which Death does not hold the last word and our ability to deal in Death doesn't empower us. 

Good Friday: This is Insane.

by Tripp Hudgins 04-07-2012
Straw man/Son of man. Photo by Cathleen Falsani.

Straw man/Son of man. Photo by Cathleen Falsani.

Good Friday. Is this something we can understand? What makes it so "good?"

Sure, we have theologies about this moment in history. We have systematic notions about why who and what. We tell the story every year. Some traditions reenact the tale more than once a year. If you attend a church from one of the "liturgical" traditions, you here the story told during the Eucharist every Sunday. "Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again." It's the Paschal Mystery told again and again.  I also know some baptist preachers who tell the story of the Passion of Christ every Sunday. It is the Gospel, after all. This story, the Passion, is The Gospel for many of us Christian preachers. And to not share the Passion is to not share The Gospel. If their sermons don't end with the proclamation of the sarcifice of Jesus, well, then it just isn't Church.

I'm still sharing that e-unspoken part of my faith again. This is not new. Nor is it unintegrated with the rest of my Christian spirituality. It's actually essential to it. So, in the spirit of clarity, I'm sharing this stuff with you.

I have no idea what Jesus meant by giving himself over like this. We read the scripture last night at the Maundy Thursday service at First Baptist. "Not my will but your's." Lord, have mercy. Someone asked the question as someone does every year, "Why would God want Jesus to die? If it's God's will...Why would God will this to happen?" I have some practiced answers. This year I offered them as I usually do. 

"First, let me tell you what the tradition says..." I give a theological gloss and watch their eyes glaze over. Right. Of course. This isn't an answer any more than a stump speech is an indication of what will actually happen if one of these people in the news are elected to public office. So, I move on.

How ... How Did I Get Here?

by Tripp Hudgins 03-28-2012
Opened church door, Benjamin Haas, Shutterstock.com

Opened church door, Benjamin Haas, Shutterstock.com

Perhaps you have read Rachel Held Evans' post titled, "15 Reasons I Left Church." With over 800 comments, it has clearly struck a chord with some people. Similarly, Christian Piatt's post on God's Politics, Four Reasons Why I Came Back To Church, has been making the rounds on Facebook. Well, I posted it, at least. They are both about the authors' experiences of being a young adult in relationship with institutional Christianity. It's a difficult topic to write about ... there are trends, of course, but in general the journey is so particular that one cannot really generalize. I think both authors do a good job simply offering up their testimonies, affording the readers an opportunity to make whatever connections we find.

So, in the spirit of connecting the dots, I offer this song and a wee bit of testimony.

Home, Sweet Home

by Tripp Hudgins 03-19-2012
(Mandolin image by greggsphoto/ Shutterstock.com)

(Mandolin image by greggsphoto/ Shutterstock.com)

I'm on the flight home now.

"Home."

It's a curious idea, really. Home.

As children we might make a game of it. You know, like when you play tag with your friends and you create a safe place where you can't be tagged. Even when we play games it's important to have a place to be safe...a "home."

When we played this game as children, however, we had another rule. You could not stay at home forever. You had to venture out. Sometimes the rule would be that you could stay home for 30 seconds and no more.

Home.

It's safe. You can't be tagged there.

But you can't stay forever, either.

Tripp Hudgins' First Thoughts: The Beloved of God

by Tripp Hudgins 02-13-2012
"Aslan Speaks." Photo by Cathleen Falsani for Sojourners.

"Aslan Speaks." Photo by Cathleen Falsani for Sojourners.

"I have found great beauty in religion and religion has shown me great beauty in myself and in the world," Tripp says, as he reflects on the 11 years since he's had a drink. "I'm still not sure I know what being beloved means. Somehow we forget that we are beloved....Today is the 11th anniversary of the day I was told who I was. It's a good day."

Tripp Hudgins' First Thoughts: Treasuring Sustainable Gratitude

by Tripp Hudgins 01-30-2012

Krumbine posited a question, a quandary about how we go on "when the honeymoon is over." How do we sustain love? What do we treasure and how do we sustain the affection and even the excitement? This morning's First Thoughts is about Gratitude. As usual, your video responses and comments are needed to flesh this thing out. I'm only starting a conversation.

Watch Tripp hash it out inside the blog ...

Tripp Hudgins' First Thoughts: SOPA and the Wisdom of Creative Freedom

by Tripp Hudgins 01-19-2012
SOPA protest illustration from Unvirtuous Abbey via Facebook

SOPA protest illustration from Unvirtuous Abbey via Facebook www.facebook.com/unvirtuous-abbey

"Wisdom wants to be free. As a Christian, I believe there is actually some theology to this....Wisdom is a woman and she stands at the gates of the city and she cries out to the people, 'Be free. Be free to love and be free to share.'...What if we understood creativity to be wisdom?"

Watch Tripp's v-log on SOPA, creativity, freedom and wisdom inside the blog...

Tripp Hudgins' First Thoughts: Public Displays of Tebow

by Tripp Hudgins 01-17-2012
"Tebowing" shirt via Spreadshirt (http://bit.ly/ylgDCd)

"Tebowing" (http://bit.ly/ylgDCd)

I know it's late.

I know you are done with the guy and the Broncos' season is over.

Still, I have a question for you.

Cee Lo, Tebow and American Fundamentalisms

by Tripp Hudgins 01-10-2012
Imagine. Image via http://www.wylio.com/credits/Flickr/2512334908

The Strawberry Fields "Imagine" memorial in NYC's Central Park. Image via Wylio http://www.wylio.com/credits/Flickr/2512334908

Cee Lo Green got himself in some pop-culture hot water on New Years Eve when he changed the lyrics to John Lennon's "Imagine." You would think he was changing the Bible or something, but no, it was much worse. He changed the lyrics to a John Lennon song. "No religions" became "all religions" and all hell broke loose....

Suffice it to say that people were put out. They defended Lennon's unchangeable artistic canon. Green's supporters suggested that all art can be reinterpreted...even John Lennon's. Personally, I didn't find it offensive at all. Instead, I thought it was a thoughtful (if momentary) update to the iconic pop song. Given the religious strife in the world, expressing a love for humanity through all the world's religion was generous and very appropriate for a New Year celebration.

Alas, no. We're beset by fundamentalisms of all kinds (Lennonists?) and on all sides in this nation of ours. We're sufficiently afraid of religiosity that we've turned anti-religiosity into a religion and musicians become gods and their three minute songs become scripture...unchangeable holy writ.

We're afraid and that fear strips us of our compassion.

Tripp Hudgins' First Thoughts: Today, I Wear Green.

by Tripp Hudgins 12-05-2011

Jim Henson spent his life, like Mr. Rogers (a Presbyterian minister), trying to say to us and our children, "Hey, you're special and you're good." How is this a bad thing?