The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

Introducing a New Publication from Our Research Director!

 

The “Sons of God” as a Polemic against Royal Immortality:
A Philological and Literary Comparison of Genesis 6:1–4 and the Epic of Kirta

by Darren M. Slade

Have you ever wondered what Genesis 6:1–4 is all about with its weird and cryptic description of “sons of God” taking the “daughters of men” as wives? And who in the world are the Nephilim!?!

The Research Director of the FaithX Project, Darren Slade, has just published a new article in Evangelical Journal exploring a never-before-seen theory about the literary and philological parallels between Genesis 6 and the ancient Ugaritic Epic of Kirta.

The purpose of the article is to identify the function of the “sons of God” in the literary and socio-historical context of Genesis 6:1–4.  The article first presents presuppositions to the research, as well as the importance of Ugaritic literature in biblical studies. The investigation then presents a comparative study with the Ugaritic Epic of Kirta and a potential new theory regarding the Genesis pericope. It concludes by suggesting that literary parallels may reveal the Epic of Kirta as a close paradigm for understanding the function of the Genesis passage, concluding that the specific sin of the “sons of God” may not have been unsanctioned marriages, adultery, polygamy, or rape. Rather, the biblical account could act as a polemic against the belief that divine kings obtained immortality through marriage and reproduction, which exacerbated Yahweh’s decision to eradicate humanity and to demonstrate the finiteness of these so-called ancient god-kings.

Check out the article for free by clicking here.

FaithX Site Suffers Malware Attack… and a few of you can help

 

Late last week FaithX.net suffered a malware attack. The malware in question had an innocuous name – I mean “Hello Dolly” sounds harmless, right? Indeed, we didn’t realize it was an attack when we first discovered the program on our Plugins page. But it did one heck of a lot of damage – before we identified and removed it, about a third of our files we gone and the menu structure was scrambled.

Some of the files were old and unused. Some were simple and easily recreated. But one page in particular was a real loss…

 

Our “Testimonials Page”

Every link to our Testimonials page instead took us to the dreaded “404 Page Not Found” page. Better than the “white blog screen of death,” I suppose. But still quite a blow.

We’ve been able to find many of the lost testimonials in the sender’s original emails (so glad I’m so bad at deleting old emails). And we’ve restored many others from memory. But others are seemingly nowhere to be found.

 

So here’s how a select few of you can help…

If you are one of those people who provided us with a testimonial for MapDash for Faith Communities, our Missional Journey consulting program, or one of our consultants – Mary Frances, Steve Matthews, or me – and could send it to us again or recreate it, we would be forever grateful.

If you are not one of those people, but have been using MapDash or worked with one of us, or even had a demo and were impressed, and are willing to write a sentence or two about it, that also would make us very happy.

If you fall into either of those groups, and you want to help, just jot a few thoughtful words in an email and address it to ken@faithx.net, and you can be one of…

The Few, the Proud, the Testimonializers

Free Range Priests, Free Agent Pastors, and Other Emerging Ministry Models

By Jim Papile – Retired Episcopal Priest/Church Starter, and Free-Agent Priest

From time to time, we like invite a different voice to the FaithXperimental blog.
Today’s guest blogger is the Rev. Jim Papile (a classmate of Ken’s from Virginia Theological Seminary).

 

Although I’m not a real big fan of announcements in the middle of the service, as a freelance supply priest I am aware of what my responsibilities are, and what they are not. I serve two small congregations, one Sunday at a small exurb parish of about 30 congregants per Sunday, and the other an urban parish with about the same numbers. I preside at the Eucharist on alternate Sundays. On the Sundays I am not present, the congregations either hire other supply priests or have licensed lay members read Morning Prayer and preach.

On this particular Sunday, I was heartened to hear of all the projects the congregation was involved in within their community. Time, talent, money—there were more things than much larger parishes I had served got involved in. I took a few moments at the end of the announcements to let them know how impressed I was with all they were doing in the community, and how lovingly they visited and tended to the sick and the shut-ins of their community.

After the service, a member of the church’s vestry thanked me for my words and explained how they were able to do the work they did because they did NOT have a full time priest. “We have not had a rector since 2014,” she told me, ”and without having to pay salary, pension, and health care, we have around forty thousand a year to do ministry, and we get different priests, withdifferent preaching and liturgical styles. We love it!”

[Read more…]

FaithXperimental Spotlight: The New Story Festival – March 29-31, 2019

From time to time FaithXperimental features stories about faith communities engaging their communities in innovative and experimental ways.

Today’s FaithXperimental Spotlight features the New Story Festival being held on March 29-31 in Austin, Texas. The New Story Festival is a new annual gathering for community, creativity, and the common good: a bold experiment for a better world, embodying imagination, spirituality, social action, and playful connection – defined above all by the practice of love.

The FaithX Project will be an organizational sponsor of the event, and Ken Howard has been invited to submit several proposals for presentations at the festival. FaithX and our newly launched and independently-governed SHERM Journal (Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry) are festival sponsors. And because FaithX is a partner organization, those who register through the FaithX portal get a $20 discount.

As the Festival website says, the world runs on stories – the narratives that fuel the ways we live in this world and relate to one another. Our stories can liberate or oppress, encourage reconciliation or further separation, inspire new life or even bring death. But when we become conscious of our stories, we can begin to change them. Believing that “the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better,” the New Story Festival seeks to lead us into a better story – one that encourages growth and liberation, healing and harmony; a story where the downtrodden are uplifted and everyone is included. [Read more…]

Our Newest Ad for MapDash and Strategic Missional Consulting

We are happy to highlight for you our latest combined ad for Datastory’s MapDash for Faith Communities and FaithX’s Strategic Missional Consulting.

We hope to see it featured soon in Net Results Magazine, North America’s most enduring and most trusted evangelism and church growth magazine. It is a wonderful resource, not only for church planters and church redevelopers, but for anyone seeking to be more effective in missional work. One of senior associate consultants, Mary Frances, was recently asked to be a senior writer for the magazine. If you haven’t already subscribed, we encourage you to check it out.

Click Here for a PDF Copy of the Ad

Subscribe