A note on Year D's Old Testament and alternative gospel lections

I think a reply to Steve Thorngate may be in order where the Old Testament selections in Year D are concerned. By conceding that a greater degree of subjectivity may well be involved in making these selections, I simply meant that this is an inevitable result of having to work from a much broader field of possibilities as we find in the larger testament. I did not mean to suggest these were purely subjective selections. Readers should not overlook the textual evidence of literary and thematic connections between Old and New Testament passages that I have identified and enumerated in Chapter 4.

Perhaps I should also add that, in suggesting a fresh body of gospel texts, other than the familiar and well used narratives, for the high holy days, I am not suggesting the preacher neglect the story, but that these alternative texts can lend a new revelatory angle on the familiar story that, owing to the occasion, is (for many people) already in mind. 

Year D featured in The Christian Century

Check out this substantial piece by Steve Thorngate over at The Christian Century on lectionary expansion proposals. He gives a good bit of space to Year D, the Narrative Lectionary, and the African American Lectionary. It's a major article that took a good bit of time and labor to pull together. I'm grateful to Steve for the write up (despite some of the finer points on which we may disagree).

UPDATE: I was sorry to see Steve's piece made no mention of David Ackerman's book, my review of which can be found here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: But now I see David's book is mentioned along with a number of related sources in the bibliography, "A Wealth of Lectionaries," that Steve attached to his article.

A revealing study of the Protestant mainline

Anyone who wants to understand how the ecclesial earthworks have shifted over the last hundred-plus years needs to read my colleague Elesha J. Coffman's new study of The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (Oxford University Press).

Meanwhile, her recent article over at The Huffington Post is a good entrée to her important and revealing work.

Dubuque Seminary leads the way among mainline seminaries in online theological education

So, in case you missed any mention of the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS) in the latest issue of The Christian Century — an issue devoted to online theological education — well, so did a lot of people. UDTS is only the leading mainline seminary when it comes to theological education. Has been for several years now. Kind of a glaring oversight, wouldn't you say, CC?

Thanks to Steve Thorngate ...

blogger at The Christian Century, for his kind expression of interest, and his question regarding possible implementation schedules for Year D. The short answer is that I have addressed this in Appendix C of Year D: A Quadrennial Supplement ... . The longer answer is that, while the book bears the subtitle Quadrennial, in fact the alternating option he suggests that retains the three-year "waltz" is one I have included there. The thing to bear in mind if going with a three-year alternating option is that a lot depends on when you begin. For instance, I had a post up a while back (since deleted) that presupposed (as I recall) an Advent 2010 start, since that would have followed on Year C and inserted D in lieu of Year A; thus: DBC / ADC / ABD / ABC. As it turns out, with the publication schedule for the book being Spring 2012, the first opportunity for integration based on the print source(s) would be this coming Advent, which assumes inserting D in lieu of C. Of course, there are a number of ad hoc or local options, too. But if anyone is especially worried about the cost to liturgical unity, I do think the musical/cross-rhythmic analogies (pp. 13-14) are very interesting, esp. when one considers what things might "sound like" from on high, as it were.

Thanks again, Steve, for the plug. I hope you like the book.