Author: Halldór Guðmundsson

Gamaliel Foundation

When I attended a course in Detroit in 2008, we meet with representatives from various groups that are trying to change the life of individuals and communities for the better. An example of that:

The mission of Gamaliel Foundation is to assist local community leaders to create, maintain and expand independent, grassroots, and powerful faith-based community organizations so that ordinary people can impact the political, social, economic, and environmental decisions that affect their lives; to provide these organizations with leadership training programs, consultation, research and analysis on social justice issues;  to be a network for mutual learning environments and working coalitions.

More about Gamaliel can be found at www.gamaliel.org.

Ordination and Authority

The ordination of women dramatically reoriented everyone’s ordinary and probably outworn assumptions about authority. If the move to ordain women signaled an undue idealism on the part of proponents, the women who joined the ranks of the clergy shouldered the task of negotiating authority within congregations. The experience of these women demonstrated that ordination did not confer upon these women the authority of office, or character that could elicit from congregants the same kind of understanding or response that they gave to a male holding the position.

Maria Erling addresses the meaning of ordination in an age of mission in an interesting article that can be found on ELCA’s website (PDF): “Ordination from the Perspective of Mission.“

Nigerian Oil

Every day at Bonny Island, oceangoing tankers line up in Cawthorne Channel like massive parade floats. Theyre each waiting to fill up with close to a million barrels of the coveted Bonny Light, drawing the oil from a nearby export terminal. Ships have been gathering at this 15-mile-long 24 kilometers barrier island since the mid-1500s, when slave trading between West Africa and the New World began.

via Nigerian Oil – National Geographic Magazine.

A few Random Thoughts about Priests, Leadership, and Church

When we use the father concept about a priest. What kind of a parent is that? Is it the one that makes his children independent but still invites them to a steak on Sundays?
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The creeds that we confess are priestly, focused on sacrifice, structure, and systematic worldview, no room for spirit, peace, or justice (innri samþykktir þjóðkirkjunnar, anyone).
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LeBron James does not run Clevaland Cavaliers. However, that does not mean that basketball is secondary on the clubs agenda (or does it?).
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Decision making through dialogue, in the presence of a strong charismatic leader has a strong bend towards monarchy.

Leiðrétting og ítarefni

Gene Robinson er nefndur tvívegis í fréttinni sem hér er tengt við. Hann er ekki kvenmaður eins og kyn sagnorðanna gefur til kynna, Gene Robinson var hins vegar fyrsti opinberlega samkynhneigði biskup Biskupakirkjunnar í BNA. Sjálfsævisaga hans In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God lýsir hótunum, glímunni við að vera kallaður til starfa fyrir Guð og tilraun hans til að virða mismunandi hugmyndir án þess að gefa eftir hver hann er.

Það sem erkibiskupinn í Kantaraborg er að glíma við er að leitast við að halda anglíkönsku/biskupakirkjunni saman. Þar er spennan fyrst og fremst á milli ört vaxandi safnaða á suðurhveli jarðar sem eru af ýmsum sögulegum ástæðum mun íhaldsamari en frjálslyndari armur kirkjunnar á norðurhveli. Þessi spenna kemur fyrst og fremst fram í umræðunni um samkynhneigð en er í raun mun dýpri og snýst meðal annars um Biblíutúlkun almennt, nýlendustefnu og valdastrúktur kirkjunnar.

Ákvörðunin sem tekin var í júlí snerist um að fresta ekki vígslu á samkynhneigðum einstaklingum sem kallaðir væru til biskupsþjónustu innan Biskupakirkjunnar í BNA, á meðan leitað væri eftir einhvers konar sátt á heimsvísu. Ákvörðun Biskupakirkjunnar í BNA að vígja Mary Glasspool er staðfesting þess að armur Biskupakirkjunnar í BNA telur ekki rétt að fresta því að gera það sem rétt er, í nafni meintrar einingar.

Upphaflega birt á halldorelias.blog.is sem viðbrögð við “Lesbía kosin biskup.”

Missional Economics: From Charity to Justice « A Living Alternative Our Missional Pilgrimage

Third, while charity speaks to the condition of the recipient of the giving, justice speaks to the hearts and lives of everyone involved.  To live justly requires that we look at why there are those who “have” and those who “have not”.  It is this commitment that is at the heart of the Anabaptist commitment to simplicity and contentment.  While justice might be somewhat “popular” in Christian circles these days, I believe it will be this dynamic that will most clearly distinguish the true willingness of our commitment.

via Missional Economics: From Charity to Justice « A Living Alternative Our Missional Pilgrimage.

Why give?

First, worshipers want to know how their contributions make a difference. Congregational leaders should highlight the specific ways that worshipers financial gifts are changing lives in the congregation and the community. The emphasis should be on ministry rather than on supporting programs.

via Leading Ideas: A Resource for Church Leaders.

About half of American worshipers regularly give 5% or more of their net income to their congregation. However, this statistic obsures important differences by denomination and faith group. Two out of three worshipers in conservative Protestant churches give at this level. Only half (52%) of mainline Protestant worshipers give at the 5%-or-more level. Worshipers in Catholic parishes are the least likely to regularly give 5% or more (only 36% do). An astounding 44% of conservative Protestant worshipers give 10% or more to their local church.

via Ten reasons why we give

The Change

Status of Þjóðkirkjan is changing from being “protector of peace (pax Romana)” to “sustainer of inequality”. It seems clear that the thousand y-old idea of “one sidur” is becoming impossible to enforce, and it is inevitable that new rituals and new ways of gathering will come to being. However, the society still has to find alternative ways to ritualize their moments of significance (with or without Þjóðkirkjan).

What’s the problem?

It is not that the church’s theological absolutes are no longer trusted, but that the old modes in which those absolutes have been articulated are increasingly suspect and dysfunctional. That is because our old modes are increasingly regarded as patriarchal, hierarchic, authoritarian, and monlogic.

In some sense I like this thought from Brueggemann from his article Preaching as Reimagination. The problems are two. The church has great issues with separating between theological absolutes and the proper practices it has, and secondly I think theological absolutes are under more public scrutiny than often before.

Others do who have no hope*

But we do not want you to be uninformed, dear siblings, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

One must wonder whom Paul refers to “others do who have no hope.” I think it is hardly possible to claim that all outside the realm of the Christian world are without hope. At least if the hope is related to an afterlife. One way to deal with the hopeless others is trying to explain that hope means something more specific or something different than hope, however I am not going there.

The other way to make sense of this is if “the others” is not an attempt by Paul to refer to everyone outside the circle of Christians. If that is the case we are left to figure out who they are this specific group of “the others” in verse 13. We can assume that they were a group known to the Congregation in Thessaloniki. I think Abraham J. Malherbe is on to something in his commentary, when he refers to De Witt, and claims that the others without hope are possibly Epicureans (Malherbe 283).

I would consider this especially intriguing in light of another reference to that group earlier in the fourth chapter where Paul seems to take their philosophy at a face value. If we accept that “the others who do not have hope” are in fact Epicureans, Paul seems to be making the argument that we should behave like them in our daily life, but when it comes to dying and grieving, we part company.
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Bibliography: Malherbe, Abraham J. The Letters to the Thessalonians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 2000.

* This note is from an exegetical paper on I. Thess. 4.13-18

Kröfur í þrotabú íslensku bankanna

12.053 kröfum var lýst í bú gamla Landsbankans upp á 6.459 milljarða króna. Heildarforgangskröfur námu 2.857 milljörðum króna. Búist er við að um 90 prósent fáist upp í forgangskröfur, sem að mestu eru vegna Icesave-innlánsreikninganna í Bretlandi og Hollandi. Ekkert fæst upp í almennar kröfur.

Þá var 8.685 kröfum lýst í þrotabú Glitnis upp á 3.436 milljarða króna. Áætlað er að kröfuhafar fái á bilinu 20 til 23 prósent upp í kröfur, eða á milli 690 til 860 milljarða króna.

Heildarfjárhæð lýstra krafna í Kaupþing nam 7.316 milljörðum króna miðað við gengi Seðlabanka Íslands þann 22. apríl 2009. Heildarfjárhæð lýstra krafna er hærri en skuldir samkvæmt efnahagsreikningi miðað við 30. júní sl. Skýringar á að heildarfjárhæð lýstra krafna er hærri en skuldir má rekja til oflýstra krafna vegna innstæðna sem Kaupþing hefur þegar greitt, tví- og þrílýsinga vegna ýmissa innstæðna og skuldabréfaútgáfu bankans og krafna sem falla utan efnahaggsreiknings, s.s. skaðabótakrafna og ábyrgðarkrafna. Auk þess væri ítrustu kröfum jafnan lýst. Samanlögð fjárhæð vegna framangreindra atriða næmi a.m.k. 2.900 milljörðum króna.