The Hyphen In Between

In memory of Ron Bostian (November 28, 1946 - March 14, 2017)

Today we mourn the death, but more importantly, celebrate the life, of my Dad Ron Bostian. He was 70 years old, stubborn as hell, easy to talk to, and fun loving to the end. It was from him I got my announcer's voice, my cocksure sense of self confidence, my ability to make a joke during any circumstance (no matter how inappropriate), my physical frame, and my stunning good looks. Did I mention he was sarcastic too? I inherited that as well. 

Popcorn

I went to go see Logan 
Tonight
After my dad died
Today
It was a movie he would have enjoyed
It was a perfect movie to celebrate his life
A perfect movie to mourn his death
Alone in the theater
The smell of popcorn
Assaulting my nostrils 
As I walked through the doors
Flashbacks
To childhood matinees
Side by side
The warmth of dad next to me
Buttery fingers
Digging in the popcorn bucket
Together
Or the late night treats
Way past my bedtime
With content rated for eyes older than I 
But he still wanted to take me
Star Wars
Indiana Jones
Terminator
Aliens
We keep saying "I'll be back"
Until that one day we won't
Until that one day it really is
Game over man
Game over. 

It's Fundamental

A rap song designed to teach the early history of Christian Theology. Originally written in 2010.

Explaining Anglicans: A Guidebook for Exploring a Tradition-rich, Christ-centered, Spirit-filled, Balanced Faith.

This is a short booklet (or a long essay, depending on how you look at it) written from 2005-2010 designed to introduce you the history of the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. This history is messy yet magnificent, wacky yet wonderful, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, and sometimes holy. But it is always a love Story about how a particular God has reached out to a peculiar people to knit them into His plan of salvation for the whole world. As such, this is my take on the Story. It isn't objective. It is often biased. But I hope I have used the facts accurately to give anyone who reads this a short overview of an immensely complex and winding history. As such I know there will be things I have left out, and judgments I make, that others will find unfair. For that I am sorry, and I offer a bibliography at the end for anyone who wishes to read a more "reputable" version of the Story I am re-telling.

This book is intended to be used for seekers, or those going through confirmation, in the Anglican or Episcopal Church. It is specifically made for those who may be looking at the Episcopal Church from another Church background, especially from non-liturgical Protestant Churches. I make no claim that this book is a comprehensive history or theology of Anglicanism, it is merely a short introduction. This book is designed for group studies in confirmation class, used with older teens and adults. If you are doing confirmation with young teenagers or below, this book is probably not for you.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: How the liturgy shaped the worldview of early Christians

A 2004 paper written for the History of Christian Doctrine, exploring the extent to which ancient liturgies both express early Christian theology, and also were instrumental in shaping the worldview of early Christians. This paper looks at extant Christian liturgical materials used around the ancient world up to circa 400 CE as evidence of early Christian belief and theological formation.

1. Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: The role of liturgy in worldview formation

How are the words that we pray and say and sing in worship connected to what we believe?  How did the worship of early Christians shape their beliefs and actions?  The ancient Latin tagline "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi" (literally: the law of prayer is the law of belief) has a lot to say about this.  This maxim, first popularized by Prosper of Aquitaine between 435 and 442 (Wainwright, 224-225), tells us that how and what we pray shapes how we believe and hence, how we live.  The converse is true as well.  What we believe will eventually be reflected in our prayers, our worship, and our lifestyle.  This means that our worldview, what it means to think and believe as a Christian, is somehow implicit in our liturgy and prayer life.  That is true now, it was true for Prosper, and it was true for the early Church as well.  What it means to be distinctively Christian, and believe as a Christian, should be available to everyone in our worship, at least in theory.

Chasing Falsifiability down the Rabbit Hole to Transcendence

In my Philosophy of Religion class the other day, a student brought up Karl Popper’s principle of “falsifiability” as a criteria for whether a knowledge claim is valid. The way that my student put it: A claim that is empirically sensible is thus falsifiable (it can be refuted by empirical observation), and thus counts as real knowledge. But knowledge claims that are not empirically falsifiable— such as claims about God, ethical value, aesthetic value— do not count as the same kind of knowledge. Perhaps they are a lesser, derivative kind of knowledge. But they are not the kind of absolutely true knowledge one would want to build their world view upon, because they cannot be empirically falsified. And thus, while God, might be an optional or extra belief added onto a scientific worldview, God could never be essential to a worldview, or even a necessary explanatory hypothesis for the nature of Reality, because the idea of God cannot be falsified scientifically.