About & Links
What is the Vision of Scribblative Agincourting?
The two words themselves — scribblative and agincourting — come from different places in James Joyce’s impossible but poetically-fun work, Finnegans Wake. They just sounded like they captured much of what we talk about here.
The Scribblative Agincourting blog is a attempt to provide brief comment on issues and current readings that play into a distinctive Christian political and economic vision. We’re conservative presbyterians who see much of political conservativism still stuck in pagan categories. Scribblative Agincourting focuses on sources to help folks like us rethink basic, rather compromised assumptions about mercy, violence, war, imperialism, poverty, and the free market.
We focus on political, cultural, and economic topics that currently help or hinder the international Church’s efforts to incarnate the mercy of Christ worldwide. We aim to show how mercy as the key mark of the Church should reprioritize our vision of life and culture. The commentary on this blog tends to fall within the following theological values:
1. Centrality of the Church:Within the long tradition of the Christian West and East, we acknowledge the centrality of the work of the Church, universal, in embodying the life of Jesus here and now and providing a City on a Hill of faith, hope, and love to entice and welcome all nations to the glory of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No other institution (not the family or state or multinational corporation) has the promise of the Spirit to fulfill this mission to the world. We write happily within the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, but we appreciate the gifts and contributions and oftentimes superior work of those Christians outside our tradition, who often put our tradition to shame in terms of the life of mercy. They provoke us to jealousy (say Oscar Romero), and we want to catch up.
2. Jubilee Ethics: God reveals Himself in history primarily as a wealthy noble rescuing the oppressed, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, a giver of life. He called on His people to hold property loosely (contrary to modern capitalism) and to give and share their wealthy happily (not via nation-state coercions). Jesus came and proclaimed this calling, and the early Church delighted to love one another in this way. In contrast to socialisms and capitalisms, the Church needs to develop an ecclesial or diaconal economy, without State support or interference (that is, a kind of free market anti-capitalism). The Gospel is a Jubilee.
3. Anti-Statism: Given that the Church does not overcome by violence or carnal weapons, She naturally clashes with the way the State solves problems. The State solves problems by the mechanisms of violence, coercion, threats, monopoly. The State may have a transitional place, but the international Church’s goal should be to provide a better way to live, to be a replacement for the state by peaceful means, to incarnate Christ on earth. He ovecomes by nobility and grace and mercy, not the sword. Conservative Christians, our own tradition, have too often compromised with pagan conservatism on these sorts of points (see also the “Biblical Theses on Violence”).
The three current contributors to this blog are Doug Jones, Rusty Olps, and Brendan O’Donnell.
Doug Jones is an associate pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho, senior editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine, editorial director of Canon Press, and a fellow of philosophy at New St. Andrews College (see links below). He serves as pastoral overseer of Sabbath House. He’s married to Paula, and they have five children. (email: dougjones [at] canonpress [dot] org)
Rusty Olps is the administrative overseer of Sabbath House. He is a student at Greyfriars’ Hall and teaches at Logos School. He’s married to Melodie, and they have two urchins.
Brendan O’Donnell is a deacon candidate at Trinity Reformed Church, Moscow, Idaho and their official liaison to Sabbath House. He helps manage Bucer’s, a coffee shop hangout in Moscow, and he’s married to Sharon, and they have a pixie, wonderfully named Flannery.
Links — Christ Church Ministries and Related Works:
Collegiate Reformed Fellowship
Blog and Mablog: Pastor Doug Wilson’s Blog
Fat Souls: Associate Pastor Mike Lawyer’s Blog
Trinity Reformed Church, Moscow, Idaho
Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches
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Email Comments to Doug Jones here: dougjones [at] canonpress [dot] org
