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Posted by Josh de Keijzer on

Seven Ways to Overcome Religious Trauma Syndrome

Seven Ways to Overcome Religious Trauma Syndrome

Religious Trauma is a real thing. I know it. I feel it. I see it in others. And there is official recognition these days! A few years ago, I interviewed Teresa Mateus. Our Skype connection did not work so I had my computer record the squeaky voice that came through the speaker of my iPhone 4s. It worked. As I spoke to her, Teresa seemed to discuss people who have undergone serious abuse in the church. I did realize that such abuse happens in many different forms and intensities. I suppose in the back of my mind I even realized that I was affected too but I was mainly thinking about people other than myself.

Posted by Josh de Keijzer on

My Struggle With Evangelicalism: From Inerrant Word to Subjugated World

My Struggle With Evangelicalism: From Inerrant Word to Subjugated World

In my previous post, I discussed my experience in evangelicalism and focused on four things that were instrumental in pushing me out. These four were: the hunger for power, the lack of freedom to ask questions, the inability to deal with suffering an lament, and the know-it-all attitude that places evangelical thought on a pedestal. These four things describe the environment as it was and why I started to feel more and more uneasy. They eventually became objections too.

Posted by Josh de Keijzer on

Beloningscultuur bij de ING: godsdienst van de zelfverrijking

Beloningscultuur bij de ING: godsdienst van de zelfverrijking

En ja hoor, onder druk van de publieke opinie trok de ING vandaag het voorstel in om topman Hamers een opslagje van 50% mee te geven, terwijl de gewone ING werknemers, je weet wel, diegenen die na een wegbezuiniging van duizenden medewerkers zijn overgebleven, het met 1,7% moeten doen.

Terwijl iedereen vol verontwaardiging de stem verheft over de schandelijke graaizucht van de lieden aan de top van het bankwezen, hopen en verwachten de heren in de hoge torens van de macht dat de bui snel over zal waaien. Ze moeten met de tijd mee en kunnen niet bij de internationale trends achterblijven. Het is toch immers in het belang van de bank dat talent wordt vastgehouden en dat omwille van een duidelijke beleidsvoering de stabiliteit in de leiding wordt gewaarborgd, etc.

Toen echter duizenden klanten hun rekening bij de ING opzegden en op zoek gingen naar een bank die ethisch verantwoord opereert, ging de ING snel over stag: laten we maar van die bonus afzien. Heel vermakelijk: dit was een bonus om van af te zien, letterlijk en figuurlijk.

Posted by Josh de Keijzer on

Bonhoeffer Scholarship Come of Age

Bonhoeffer Scholarship Come of Age

Review of Taking Hold of the Real: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Profound Worldliness of Christianity by Barry Harvey. Cascade Books, 2015.

This Review was Published in Cultural Encounters in 2017.

“Taking Hold of the Real” by Barry Harvey is a powerful book with an important message for Christians today. More than yet another monograph on Bonhoeffer, it offers a compelling analysis of the state of our Western society and the Church’s complicity in its ills. With Bonhoeffer’s help, Harvey seeks to describe an alternative way of being in the world that patterns itself after Christ’s being with and for the world. Harvey takes up Bonhoeffer’s concept of this-worldliness (the insistence that Christian existence is to be radically worldly in a christocentric sense) within the context of a world come of age. The world come of age is yet another term Bonhoeffer coined while in prison to describe the emergence of a modern world that had thrown off religion as an unnecessary garment as it encountered a new dawn of rationality and alleged maturity. How should Christians be Christians in such a world, Bonhoeffer wondered?

Posted by Josh de Keijzer on

How Bonhoeffer Can Be an Ally for Trump Voters

How Bonhoeffer Can Be an Ally for Trump Voters

How Bonhoeffer can be an ally for Trump-voting evangelicals:
x Learning true courage
x Learning to understand the times; DB did not struggle against loss of political influence
x Learning to put one’s life danger willingly for the good
x Transformed hearts leads to serving the other in humility
x Christ as the center means following Christ: not culture war, but change/subversion from below
x Eschewing the attempt to establish God’s kingdom on earth
x Not waiting for the apocalypse but affirming embodied reality and the otherness of the other
x objectification of God

Posted by Josh de Keijzer on

Review of “Race Matters” by Cornel West

Review of “Race Matters” by Cornel West
As a foreign student in the United States my entry into the racism debate is recent. I had a psychological conversion 4 years ago when, through the experience of a black class mate, I became aware of my participation in white privilege even though I am not an American citizen. I have come to realize that the litmus test for any worldview or ethics, and especially any expression of Christian spirituality, is its stance on racism in the US and its willingness to make it the prime focus of action and reflection. Racism is not just one of the many issues the US is facing. It points to THE moral flaw of the US at its core and thus its challenge.