Culture Dove

Whose God Is It Anyway?

2012-01-14T21:45:00.003-05:00

If I were watching football now it would be the Chelsea-Sunderland match I recorded this morning and have yet to watch, not the American version featuring the clash between the hometown team and that guy who likes to pray. But that doesn't mean that I'm not part of the 70% of Americans who have heard of Tim Tebow, but I am not part of the 40% who believe that his success is due to divine intervention. Don't get me wrong, I believe that God is involved. God is involved in all of creation and the divine spark lives in every human being, but come on, don't we all know that the success or failure of athletes is way down on God's list of concerns?

I'm not against the fun of cheering for a team (including the good-natured teasing of the opposition, just ask any of my fellow Midnight Riders about my behavior at New England Revolution matches) and I have no problem making light of religion (just show up at my church some year on the Sunday after Easter and you will see that in practice on Holy Humor Sunday) BUT when I heard about Wiccans in Salem invoking gods to neutralize Tebow in today's game I saw it as wrong on many levels. First of all, there is the whole point about the divine even caring, then there is theological problem of believing that the creation and/or the creator could be cajoled to perform the will of the created. There may be fine points to spin on those topics, but more disturbing to me is the idea that we might invoke our brand of divinity to trump the god of the other.

For me to be fully true to my Christian belief in a God who loves all the world I have to believe that the other expressions of devotion to expressions of that love are genuine attempts to find what I am attempting to find. In other words, I don't need (nor do I want) to believe that others are wrong in order for me to be right. I don't believe that my God ever wants me to wish defeat for another. It is wonderful that Tim Tebow thanks God for his successes. I hope that he also thanks God for the opportunity to do what he loves for a living, win or lose. We all should find that divine spark within us and nurture its growth so that we are filled with such love for all that we can live the abundant life that God offers, win or lose.

Blest Be the Ties that Bind

2011-06-05T15:30:00.004-04:00

You never want to have a reason to have a sign like this outside your church BUT if there is a reason (like the tornado that hit our town) then your church is exactly where you want the sign.

This morning in worship, the congregation broke into applause when I told them what I told the director of emergency services earlier this week. I pointed out that the church was established before the incorporation of Brimfield because it was necessary to have a Meeting House at the center of the community. Now, nearly 275 years later, this same church called me as pastor in part because they wanted someone who would help them go out the doors and serve the community. In the nearly nine years we have ministered together, the church and I have worked to open wide those doors and use what we have to serve the community. Because of this, I was able to say that if the church had done nothing else all these years, it was at least preparing to be present at this moment.

When the decision was made to open the church to serve food and become a hub for coordinating volunteer efforts, I had no doubt that the community would respond. I've seen the divine spark fanned into a powerful fire of the human spirit plenty of times before. I knew that God was present in the people of our church and beyond, so I knew that all we had to do was open the door. The massive flow of donations and volunteers quickly confirmed my faith in the people and the God they serve.

There have been huge stories and small wonders through all of this. The strength of the covenant between people of faith has been been demonstrated in the numerous clergy who have contacted me offering help. Again, to me it is no surprise. But there have also been tales of the miraculous that are jaw-dropping, like the fact that Becky was able to celebrate her birthday today by worshiping with us before helping a family pick through the rubble of what used to be their house. I made it clear in a public proclamation that God has plans for Becky. How could I be so sure? The house that is nothing but debris today was on top of Becky's car on Wednesday. She was rushing to get home when the tornado hit dropping every tree in the area along with ripping this house off its foundation. Photographs after the fact show that the only section of roof on Becky's car not crushed down to the seats is the place where she sat behind the wheel!

The remarkable bond of community shows in the words of the woman who was in that house's basement with her family and spoke to me yesterday when I went up to offer comfort. Ellen pointed out that she does not attend our church, but appreciated what we were doing. How many times do those moments arise when you later think of the perfect response? This was one of those times for me. Fortunately, I was able to rectify that situation when Kim took the prayer shawl that we blessed in our worship today to give to Ellen. I told Kim to tell her that just because she doesn't go to our church doesn't mean that she isn't part of our church.

As important as the church's physical presence is in our community today, I have been recently considering the prospect of how to create a church without walls. One way the wall-less church was visible today was when I headed out to find Jacob. This wise young man had chosen to refrain from receiving Holy Communion until he completed confirmation, even though we welcome children to partake at Christ's table in our church. Only two weeks ago he completed confirmation, becoming a member of our church and thus giving himself permission to receive the Eucharist. Today he chose to worship Christ by finding him where he surely was; in the brokenness of the destruction at the property of one of our church members. I knew that it would not do for Jacob to forgo his opportunity for a first Communion on this particular day. So after the service, I headed out with bread and juice to find him. Along the way I got a call from my wife telling me that a reporter was at the church wanting to talk to me. I was able to say something that any pastor would be proud to say, "Tell her that she will have to wait, serving Communion is more important." When I reached Jacob I was able to know with full confidence that this kid understood the meaning of the Eucharist and joyfully shared with him one of the most memorable sacraments of my ministry.

Finally, the part of the day that brought me the most satisfying emotion was being a Skype guest at Darkwood Brew, being able to receive the very real, nearly palpable virtual embrace of the prayers and concern of people in Omaha and around the world via the Internet. Tears filled my eyes when the people of Countryside Community Church UCC said "We are praying for you, Brimfield." That prayer and the combined strength of the human spirit on display all around me are so much stronger than the EF 3 winds that rained destruction on my town. Thanks be to God.

Was Justice Done?

2011-05-02T11:29:00.000-04:00

So what is justice? Is it an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Is it a balancing of the scales? Is it the restoration of the status quo prior to the injustice? Or could it be the creation of a state of peaceful coexistence and harmony?

In theory, American justice is the rule of law where even the most heinous criminal is given rights because preserving justice is ultimately much more important than the risk that a guilty person might escape consequences. In practice, American justice sometimes looks like frontier justice where an expression like “he needed killin'” doesn't sound like the absurdity that it is. In the pantheon of villains, Osama Bin Laden is perhaps second only to Adolph Hitler. So when President Obama said about his death, “And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda's terror: Justice has been done,” I doubt that many Americans questioned it. If ever there was someone who deserved an extra-judicial execution, surely it was this evil man, right? Tragically, when the President sets himself up as judge, jury and executioner, justice is harmed, not served.

Of course, the argument can be made that this was a war and he was an enemy combatant killed on the battlefield. I'm not expert in military law, so that may be justified. Even if this action is a legitimate act of warfare, I must question its strategic value. Surely the vacuum left by the leader's absence has already been filled. In fact, hasn't the second in command been the leader for some time now anyway? How can this be more than a symbolic action in the war on terrorism at this point? One would think that from the level of euphoria seen on American streets that this war was over, but not one word has been uttered about the end of hostilities and the return of the troops. Sadly, this leads to the conclusion that hunting down and killing Bin Laden had only political motivation. Simply put, this was revenge.

And so we return to the question of whether or not justice was served. Is revenge justice? The death of the one responsible for the deaths of so many does little to balance the scale. Perhaps if I had a loved one who had died because of him I might feel differently, but I doubt it. I find no satisfaction in revenge. I can't see how returning violence for violence and hate for hate brings any comfort or peace to the avenger. Most of the people who lost family on 9/11 whom I've heard interviewed so far have commented on how it feels wrong to celebrate the death of someone, even someone as awful as Bin Laden. There is a reason that it feels wrong...it is.

As a Christian, I don't have an option for violence. If I am to be a true follower of Jesus, I need to love my enemy and pray for those who persecute me. I need to turn the other cheek. I need to return good for evil. I need to leave judgment and any vengeance that there may be to God. If that makes me a fool, so be it. I know it is not a practical way to live in the world, but that is not what is ever promised. History and personal observation confirms that violence is not defeated by violence. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, "The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

I believe that God's justice is the creation of what our Jewish brothers and sisters call shalom. Shalom is more than peace in the sense of the absence of conflict. It is harmony and balance among all beings. It is a description of what we want heaven to be. God wants to break into our lives with shalom, bringing heaven into the hell that we too often choose to inhabit. People like Bin Laden are so broken that they never open up to this grace and go about creating more hell on earth. Still, the love of God is so vast, so powerful and so persistent that regardless of the hells we find ourselves in (even of our own choosing) there is always hope.

Today I hope for more hearts to open to that love, that we may find shalom.

Holy Week Possibilities: Thursday

2011-04-21T12:49:00.002-04:00

So who exactly is this Joseph of Arimathea guy? Leaving a body on a cross for the inevitable, gruesome destruction by predators would have been the desire of the Romans, so Joseph must have had some pull to get the body of Jesus off the cross after only three hours. It makes me wonder about how he came to be a disciple of Jesus, and just what kind of follower he was. He seems to be friends with Nicodemus and perhaps they are both on the Sanhedrin. We hear about Nicodemus coming to Jesus in the night (and returning to the darkness after not being enlightened by the encounter) and are told that he was a follower from afar. I don't imagine Jesus courted friends in high places but that he certainly attracted their attention. That is what we should be doing as disciples today; doing the gospel in ways that attracts attention from the powers that be, not for the sake of the attention but in a way that can't help but be noticed.

I'm also pondering the fact that even at the time the theory that Jesus' body was stolen to fake a resurrection was considered more likely than what the followers claimed. It really is more likely that that is what happened, it really does take the suspension of rational thought to accept the story of a bodily resurrection as factual. I'm not saying that it didn't happen, but I am questioning how important it is for me to believe it. Can't I still find salvation through Christ if Jesus' body was stolen and he remained dead? I'm leaning toward answering "yes," but I'm still pondering. More on that later.

Holy Week Possibilities: Wednesday

2011-04-20T18:12:00.002-04:00

Today I return to the question about why the Sanhedrin didn't stone Jesus to throw into the mix that there were a whole lot more people around to stir up because it was Passover. Not only were there more Jews who possibly could riot but also a lot more Romans around to watch them. Matthew tells us that there was a cohort present mocking Jesus and that alone is 600 soldiers. So perhaps those other stonings and beheadings simply were "under the radar" for Pilate.

I'm also intrigued by the the trial. We know that Nicodemus was a supporter of Jesus, apparently making sure that there was a trial. Hmmm, so perhaps there was the intent simply to kill Jesus, but one powerful supporter (or possibly two, if Joseph of Arimathea had influence) was able to force at least a show trial. Maybe the Sanhedrin would have made it look like self defense, killing Jesus at Gethsemane during the arrest. That is always the way with bullies isn't it? Still, the form of trial seems to be that there was no one to defend the accused but the accused. Of course, there is a requirement that two witnesses agree so it is more than one person making a false accusation. In this case truth still loses because two people concur. Actually, they do tell the truth, don't they? They say that Jesus said that he would tear down the temple and in three days rebuild it. It is a prime example of the problem of literalism. Jesus was not talking about the actual temple, but neither was he only talking about his body using the temple as a metaphor. It seems clear that he was talking about replacing the corrupt religious practice of his day with a new path of spirituality. In many ways that is exactly what we should be seeking during this Holy Week now.

Holy Week Possibilities: Tuesday

2011-04-19T12:31:00.002-04:00

So what if we really took the parable of the Last Supper seriously? What if we realized every time we took the bread and cup that we are just like the disciples who shared that meal with Jesus? Jesus washed their feet so that they would understand service to others that involves making them clean too. Our instructions are to go out and share this good news. "You are going to hell, repent" is not exactly good news, but "God loves you and wants you to be clean and fed, both physically and spiritually...and I'm hear to help that happen," now THAT'S good news.

And we have this power because we have the Holy Spirit, the divine spark, inside us. Jesus made sure we understood that by taking bread and drink and reminding us that when we take that into us it becomes part of us. So when we decide for God and God's way, we have God inside us. So what are we waiting for? Do you expect something more powerful than God?

As this week goes on I continue to struggle with the sacrifice part of all of this. I have a friend who prepares a vegetarian Seder. I like the idea that the lamb doesn't need to be sacrificed. Is is possible that Jesus argued that point with God, i.e. no more sacrifice? Could it be that like Abraham and Moses that Jesus had the chutzpah to argue with God to change plans? It would be fitting, and it raises interesting possibilities to ponder.

Holy Week Possibilities: Monday

2011-04-18T11:59:00.002-04:00

Did Jesus run into trouble because the religion of his day was corrupt? There is no hard evidence in the Bible, but there are hints. Surely the money changers were corrupt, cheating people with unfair exchanges, or at least that is what is implied. But how did the money changers get there in the first place? The religious leaders must have allowed it. Why didn't they police the situation? I can imagine Jesus being irate not only at the money changers but at those with the power in the system who turned a blind eye, or worse. Of course, when you hit someone in the wallet then they will really pay attention, that must have been as true 2000 years ago as it is today.

I've also been wondering about the consequence of angering the authorities for Jesus. It seems that capital punishment was not limited to the Romans during this occupation since the woman caught in adultery was about to be stoned. On top of that, John the Baptist was beheaded without Roman intervention, and Saul had the authority of the Jewish leaders to kill Christians after Jesus' death. So this begs the question, "why didn't the Sanhedrin execute Jesus themselves after convicting him of blasphemy?" My answer is that they were being clever. If they could get Pilate to have him killed then if Jesus' followers rose up in violence it would be against Rome instead of them. If it ended with the followers disbanding then they get what they want anyway. But perhaps there is more at work here. It is interesting to ponder.

Holy Week Possibilities: Sunday

2011-04-17T21:53:00.002-04:00

Jesus' disciples continuously failed to grasp and/or believe what he told them. He let them know that he was going to Jerusalem in order to die, but they didn't seem to do much to stop him. What if you had been there? Would you have refused to go find the donkey like he instructed or was it more loving to help him accomplish the task he had before him? It would have been so easy to get caught up in the hoopla of the day, letting the light of celebrity reflect a little off of me. It would have been easy to convince myself that this man who could raise the dead would be safe, could take care of himself. But in those quiet moments, like at dinner when Mary annointed him with costly ointments as if he were already dead, I can imagine my heart breaking. These few in the inner circle had to have been intimate friends, how could the idea of their best friend and leader dying been anything less than earth-shattering? Knowing what lies ahead, whether through Jesus' prediction or via hindsight, heightens the drama of the week just begun.

Choosing Religion

2011-03-25T12:23:00.004-04:00

We all make choices that reflect what we have faith in. We borrow and lend in faith. We plan our futures in faith that important things will remain predictable. We have faith that 2+2 will always equal 4 and that things we drop will never go up instead of down.

And then there are more ephemeral beliefs such as faith in the basic goodness of others or that it is right to treat others as you would want to be treated. It is by no means necessary to hold religious beliefs to create a belief system consisting of faith statements whether organized or disjointed. So some of us will attempt to organize our beliefs in line with traditions that we receive, while others will attempt to create systems ex nihilo, and indeed, some will not care about order and simply live by the beliefs they find necessary.

I've gotten to the point in my life where I am much more interested in learning from others about how and why their beliefs matter than trying to convince others that my beliefs are superior. That may be surprising, coming as it does from a religious professional. I have chosen religion because I find it easier to hone my own beliefs by comparing and contrasting them to the collective wisdom of centuries of tradition. That doesn't mean that I don't believe in the evolution of belief. The gift of tradition is that I don't have to reinvent the wheel. I also don't have to take it on as a burden. Rather, it is a tool that I can use to shape the particular beliefs that will get me through my journey.

I am a theist because my personal experience requires it. I spent time trying to deny the existence of God. I found a frightening empty place within my being when I did that. I know that there is a God...and that is about the total extent of what I can say with certainty. I also admit that it is my reality, your mileage may vary. Still, given the profound nature of my own experience, I believe that this power that I name God exists apart from me and therefore is real for everyone. Unfortunately, religion has done a lot to give God a bad name, so I don't blame people for rejecting what they think they are supposed to call God. I much prefer the wisdom of the twelve-step programs that insist that recovery necessitates the belief in a higher power, whatever that means for the individual. At its best, religion is about getting us out of ourselves and into community. That is also religion at its core.

It is also clear that we are beings that rely on ritual. We all do repetitive acts that connect us with others and place us in a historical context. Whether it is blowing out candles on a birthday cake or taking a bit of bread and grape juice on a Sunday in a church, we value ritual. Different religions provide different rituals, I'm not going to suggest that some are superior to others. But again, my personal decision is to practice Christianity, not because it is the only path to truth, but because it is the one that I know best. It simply seems foolish to pursue another path when this one is so ingrained in me. That is why I feel so sorry for those who reject religion because they have been damaged by it. Theirs is a longer path because they must do so much work on their own. Where I am comfortable using religious language to describe my spirituality, they must create new language and understandably hear my language in the context of their pain.

Still, I desire to be in community with all who seek to apply belief to living, because that should always be our aim in life. I admit that religious institutions have too often worked more to preserve their existence than to be relevant change agents for the betterment of the world. That in itself is a decent argument for atheism. But in the end, I am sure that those of us who take time to ponder how to live ethical lives can gain strength in being in conversation and community. Knowing that I can never fully describe the being I call God since God is necessarily greater than my limited ability to comprehend, I am content to say simply that God is love. Logically then, love is God. Isn't that a simple enough place for us to begin our conversation? And, yes, it is also mind-blowing when you stop to consider it.

Violent Solutions

2011-03-19T18:12:00.001-04:00

One more time our nation is attempting to end violence with violence. It is indeed horrendous what the Libyan government is doing to its own people. It is right that the world responds. If there is to be military intervention, at least there is a group in the country requesting the support and the response is coming from the UN. While this is better than the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, that will come as little comfort to the victims of this violence. At the same time as the governments of Yemen and Bahrain (with help from Saudi Arabia) are inflicting violence on their people, the world community must either explain its double standard or commit to even more violence. The tragic slippery slope of violence threatens to take us all to our doom. It is well past time to declare that "violent solution" is an oxymoron.

Coming Together for the Common Good

2008-04-16T11:39:00.003-04:00

Stories about division and conflict among religious groups are hardly news because they are all too common. So examples of diverse religious groups joining efforts are all the more important because of their rarity. The call to reduce greenhouse gas production 80% by 2050 should be old news by now, but the current support for that effort from religious groups in Massachusetts is noteworthy because of the remarkable diversity of the groups involved. From Unitarian Universalists to Quakers, from mainline Protestants to the Armenian church and beyond Christianity to Jews and Muslims, religious organizations within the state have found common ground and formed the Massachusetts Interfaith Climate Action Network , calling upon believers to take up the cause of caring for the planet with a religious zeal.

As long as one accepts the mounting scientific evidence, a strong argument for changing our behavior in relation to the environment can be built simply from consideration of self-interest, or at least the interests of our children and our children's children. Religions might add beliefs about a deity's involvement in creating the universe or an on-going concern for more than the human species on the planet, but the truly uniting element is a concern for the common good. While religion is not required to have a concern for others, those of us who are religious need to hear that message of inclusion at least as loudly as the doctrines that can lead us to exclusivity. The inclusiveness of the call from the Massachusetts Interfaith Climate Action Network is seen not just in the way that these diverse groups are coming together but also in the particular emphasis of their call.

The group's efforts include the expected elements of support for cleaner energy sources and conservation. Interestingly, they are also calling attention to an environmental issue too often neglect; the fact that poor people suffer disproportionately. Perhaps it is the addition of the religious imagination that brought this into focus. Regardless of the source, we need to heed the call to prioritize care for the poor and investment in low-income communities. In particular, we should invest in training and support for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and those coming out of the prison system, to obtain jobs in the growing green sector. It is also critical to distribute funding and resources that increase community energy self-reliance, particularly investing in community organizations in low-income communities. This sort of vision takes into account the fact that the burden of change so necessary for the future needs to be distributed not equally, but fairly. Those best able to afford the costs should bear them. This vision also finds hope that in the process of addressing a problem in one area we might also find solutions in another.

These types of efforts ought to find broad support if even just for the positive impact they have in providing hope. We should be buoyed by hope when we do the work of creating a better tomorrow. Likewise, we should rejoice in endeavors that bring us together across boundaries. In this way we create the kind of community that can build a better world well into the future.

A Lesson in Caring

2008-04-07T23:49:00.000-04:00

Central Massachusetts is a long way from Zambia, but somewhere soon in Zambia 380 care kits will arrive that were assembled at Tantasqua Regional High School this week. These kits will assist people providing care for people living with AIDS. The profound nature of of providing something as basic as anti-fungal cream was made evident to students on Friday when they heard the testimony of Princess Zulu. When she was 17, both of her parents died from AIDS. Her mother died while she was on a five-hour journey to find anti-fungal cream in hopes of alleviating a portion of her suffering and possibly extend her life. Princess Zulu, herself living with HIV, told this and other tales with a nobility that belied her suffering. Her presence held the students' attention and clearly earned their respect.

The creation of these care kits was the culmination of a year-long project begun when the summer reading list included a book about a young African woman's experience with AIDS. For young adults unlikely to be touched personally by the AIDS pandemic, this had to have been an eye-opening read. Thankfully, it also touched and opened hearts. Students led an effort that raised nearly $10,000 to help people that none of them are likely ever to meet. To the credit of the school district, they are teaching the next generation of leaders the importance of becoming world citizens. They are learning the answer to the question “who is my neighbor?” is anyone anywhere who suffers and for whom you can make a difference. Isolation, insulation and impotence in the face of massive global problems are easily created with simple and indifferent silence. We do our youth a disservice when we fail to expose them to the truth that one billion people on this planet struggle to exist on one dollar a day or less. They are better able to create a brighter future when they have hope that they can change the fact that 6000 people die every day from AIDS or that the preventable, treatable disease of malaria remains the leading cause of death for African children under the age of five. We can take comfort in the fact that these young people are looking at these problems and imagining solutions.

The students also got a quick civics lesson when a college student asked them to join in advocacy to support the reauthorization of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). If we all learned our civics lessons correctly, we should know that emails, letters and phone calls to our legislators help to make our democracy work. We can join with these future leaders today by supporting them in the effort to support this worthwhile legislation. $30 billion over five years is a small gift from us that could mean the gift of life to thousands. Caring for others is a lesson we can never learn too well.

Unity at What Cost?

2008-03-31T16:05:00.000-04:00

In his landmark speech about race, Barack Obama apparently has chosen to ignore some difficult claims raised by the sermons of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, in favor of seeking unity. He said that Dr. Wright's comments “expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view...that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America.” He also called them “ not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity.” It is one thing to disagree, but to do so with an appeal to unity is effectively to dismiss dialogue altogether.

Not surprisingly, Obama is calling for unity on the issue of race. Dr. Wright was preaching to a primarily African-American congregation who know the ugly truth about racism from their own personal experience. Unfortunately, by calling Wright's comments “racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems,” ignores the context and serves to avoid a deeper conversation about race. Obama said that Wright was wrong to claim that white racism is endemic, yet offers no argument. The simple fact that Africans came to this country in chains would seem sufficient to support Dr. Wright's position. Even Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee has said that he understands the heat in Wright's rhetoric since they are both from a generation that lived through blatant, legal racial segregation in this country. Changing laws may change behavior, but it doesn't change hearts and minds. Racism is embedded in the thinking of many, including, as Obama pointed out, his own white grandmother. Simply talking about language and attitudes and not calling it racism is a game of semantics that further pushes the discussion underground. Only a full, deep, rich discussion in the light of day will help us to move toward undoing racism. Obama has the opportunity to spark this discussion in America. Perhaps he believes that that would cost him the presidency. Sadly, that is likely true.

The second topic that seems to be off the table is America's support of Israel. Obama suggested that seeing “the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam” was an example of how Wright's view of the country is “profoundly distorted.” Suggesting that America's foreign policy in the Middle East may have contributed to the anger that led to 9/11 is by no means the same as dismissing the danger of radical Islamic ideology. Neither does holding Israel accountable for the way it treats the Palestinians mean that we must stop supporting Israel altogether. No nation, whether it is America or our allies, is exempt from ethical examination. Questioning the behavior of Israel is clearly one of those “third rails” in American politics. In fact, including this in a speech about race, when coverage of Wright's comments didn't include charges against Israel, suggests that it was politically expedient to raise the issue in this way. Unfortunately, neither of these issues is the kind that can be dismissed so quickly. We must accept that difficult and divisive issues can be addressed in respectful conversation. Let's hope we can move beyond sound bites and controversies to the necessary dialogue.

So?

2008-03-27T18:11:00.003-04:00

In an interview shown by ABC's Good Morning America this past Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed the overwhelming opinion of the American people with the response, “So?” Here is exactly what was said:

CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

If these numbers existed in Congress it would be a veto-proof majority and the war could end now. Most everyone read the election results two years ago as a referendum on the war and expected the new Congress to act. So perhaps it is understandable that the Vice President is not too concerned about public opinion since even when it is expressed through the democratic process it is still largely ignored.

In a painfully ironic twist after much media attention focused on the words of one preacher suggesting that God may not be blessing America, the 4000^th American soldier died in Iraq on Easter Sunday. For Christians, Easter is the holiest day of the year and the single word message of that day is hope. Yet, in the face of blind indifference to the will of the American people and the suffering of the soldiers, veterans and their families, it becomes increasingly difficult to be a hope-monger.

Hope for America lies not in blithely declaring “God bless America” as if invoking the Almighty is sufficient to justify any action. Hope for America lies not in some change in leadership as if some particular individual or party will save us. Hope for America lies not in trusting in our strength, whether military or economic. Hope for America lies not in believing that we can do no wrong.

Hope for America lies where it always has; squarely in the lap of the individual. For too long we have believed an American myth that endless resources and power exist for each individual to possess. We have strayed too far from the initial patriotic cry that we must all hang together or we will hang separately. If two-thirds of us truly oppose this war then we must exert our will and not simply accept the current misguided leadership. Hope for America lies in being a community committed to the common good, not a collection of self-serving individuals and bickering groups. When Christians proclaim at Easter that Christ is risen, we are at least in part declaring that Christ is present in the world in the lives of the believers. May those of us who celebrated that message of hope this past Sunday believe enough in the strength of community to manifest the Prince of Peace to a world desperately needing that presence today.

The Preacher and the Politician

2008-03-17T14:15:00.001-04:00

This week, Barack Obama has come under fire because of belief by association. Sermons by his long-time pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, have come to light that include vitriolic statements that attack the American status quo. There are two issues to consider, the beliefs and the association.

If we allow the mainstream media's appetite for controversy to set the agenda for political discussion we will continue to find the suggestion that each candidate is responsible for all the beliefs of each person making an endorsement. It is not fair to assume, or for that matter even to accuse, that since Dr. Wright has apparently praised Louis Farrakhan that Obama somehow supports Farrakhan. Likewise, Rev. John Hagee's endorsement of John McCain does not lead to the conclusion that McCain shares Haggee's disdain for Catholicism. One could argue that Obama's connection to Wright is markedly different since as his pastor, Wright has influenced Obama's faith formation for a couple of decades. Certainly there is an important relationship here that Obama has stated numerous times. But to suggest that one is showing poor judgment by remaining a member of a church where the pastor makes a few controversial statements is to sorely misunderstand this church and its denominational tradition.

For many years now Christianity in America has been portrayed as a religion of doctrinal and ideological alignment. But the experience of most churches, at least those in the Mainline Protestant tradition, and certainly within the United Church of Christ (the denomination of Obama's church), is one of a wide range of theological views where rarely does a week go by that something said from the pulpit does not meet with the disapproval of one or more members. The UCC embraces this diversity of expression as a way of seeking to know more of “our still speaking God.” Even the dialogue between those who think differently is an opportunity, as it can teach us better how to live with these tensions without forsaking community. Unfortunately, this appears to be a concept not interesting enough to the mainstream media to cover. Likewise, the media pressure around this has unfairly forced Obama to choose between an old friend and mentor and his political future.

As for the beliefs themselves, it cannot be denied that Dr. Wright has spoken some difficult truths in a manner that offends. While we may not accept that from our politicians, we should not be surprised to hear it from preachers. The ancient Hebrew prophets were a surly bunch who spoke truth to power in socially unacceptable ways. This is the model for some preachers today. No one but Dr. Wright needs to defend his views, and some of them certainly demand clarification at least. Still, preaching to a predominately Black congregation about the ugliness of the still too-present racism in America today, while uncomfortable for Whites to hear, is yet appropriate. It is patently unfair for the oppressor to insist that those who are oppressed cease all antagonistic speech directed at them. We can hope that this issue does not get reduced to an incident about individuals, but instead opens up a wider discussion of ways of undoing racism in America.

An Immoral Document

2008-03-10T11:41:00.002-04:00

In a recent interview with Ann Curry, President Bush claimed that the poor performance of the economy had more to do with building too many houses than with spending on the Iraq war. He claimed that military spending was creating jobs, ignoring the fact that home construction likewise creates jobs. His statement also showed a severe lack of moral judgment elevating work to destroy life and property over work to create a basic need for people. As the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq marks its fifth anniversary, we have become all to familiar with this sort of convoluted morality from the president. His current budget request before Congress demonstrates more of the same.

Ethics is the application of philosophy; morality is philosophy (or theology) in action. Thus, budgets are moral road maps. They prescribe how one wants to put one's thinking into action. As Jesus said, “you shall know a tree by its fruit.” So what is the fruit of the president's budget? It will mean more spending on war, less on health care and children, and less revenue collected from those most able to afford to give it.

The president is requesting an 11% increase in military spending. While some of this will be blamed on the war, just as in previous years, there will be supplemental requests for funding specifically for the war. The amount of money consumed by this war, already nearing one trillion dollars, will continue to spiral out of control. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that including the hidden costs of caring for injured soldiers and the rise in the cost of crude oil, among other factors, the true cost of this war is in the neighborhood of three trillion dollars.

Meanwhile, the necessary cuts in spending will affect the most vulnerable. The Children's Defense Fund reports that the budget would decrease funding for Medicaid, the frontline program that makes health care accessible to the nation's poorest citizens. And while the President did propose a larger five-year increase in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) than he did last year, it is still not enough even to cover all currently enrolled children, much less make program improvements or enroll any of the more than 9.4 million uninsured children in America—whose numbers have increased by over one million in the past two years.

Despite increased sacrifice required of the most vulnerable among us, the President has again called for the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to be made permanent. If that happens, The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that over the next ten years the top 1 percent of households would be beneficiaries of more than $1 trillion in tax cuts. What is the ethical defense of asking the poorest Americans to suffer while the wealthiest benefit? Adding to this injustice is the tragedy of continuing to pay the price in both money and lives for a misguided war. Mr. President, your professed beliefs should have led you to create a very different budget, one that translates those beliefs into moral action.

Let the Truth Defend Itself

2008-03-04T00:50:00.000-05:00

One of the foundational principles that allows democracy to function ethically is transparency. The current administration has already done far too much to compromise this principle in the name of national security. Now we are witnessing a pitched battle over legislation in Congress that would seem to have more to do with protecting monied special interests than the individual citizen. The Senate and the House of Representatives have each passed a bill to renew authorization for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but they differ on one critical point; immunity for possible illegalities on the part of telecommunication corporations. The Senate bill includes immunity that House rejects. FISA is good legislation that pre-dates 9/11 and establishes a rapid response judicial system for the government to get warrants for surveillance. But apparently the actions of the telecoms have violated the provision of FISA. Whistle blower Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician has testified before Congress that he participated in providing access to Internet transmissions traveling over AT&T's network, that was, in his words, “a huge, massive domestic dragnet on everybody in the United States."

In his State of the Union address, President Bush made a veiled threat of an impending threat and almost canceled is African trip all to protect immunity in the FISA bill. Why is there a need to protect the telecoms from their past actions? Indeed, what are those actions? If they violated the letter of the law in the spirit of true patriotism then why not bring the truth to light and allow the court of public opinion to pass judgment?

Why should we believe that we are being kept safe when ricin and an “anarchist manual” are found in a motel room in Las Vegas? This is exactly the sort of thing we were told the war on terrorism would protect us from, but authorities are saying there are no links to terrorism in this case. It is right that we protect our security, but at what cost?Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Essential liberty in a democracy must include the rule of law. Before the current so-called war on terrorism, our nation found ways to maintain the rule of law while still maintaining clandestine operations to provide for security. Why is is that all we have now is assurances that the government is protecting us from unseen threats and appeals to expand the scope of its power to do this work in secrecy? Where is the evidence to justify this trust? Our essential liberty is being attacked in the name of temporary safety, we must not succumb to fear. Let the truth come forth and defend itself in the name of liberty.

Audacious Hope vs. Unreasonableness

2008-03-04T00:48:00.000-05:00

Ralph Nader announced this week that once again he is running for president. The recent documentary biography about him tagged him as an unreasonable man. The description is based on a quote from George Bernard Shaw, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man." Nader is clearly the most progressive choice in the race currently. There is also no denying that he has a substantial and well documented record. But his two previous runs have had the effect of making him a political pariah since many can't get beyond blaming him for being a spoiler who took the presidency away from Al Gore. Assigning blame, whether in politics or other areas of life, is always a tricky endeavor. Too often blaming another is nothing more than an effort to reject personal responsibility.

It would certainly be healthier for our nation if the Democrats and Republicans alike were to welcome all comers in all elections and focus only on their own responsibility in winning or losing elections. Perhaps that is too much of a simplification, for surely there are systemic issues that deserve attention when one party or another manipulates processes to gain an unfair advantage. Along these lines it is the other parties that have the greatest case. Ballot access for other than the two major parties is exceptionally difficult in almost every state. Both of the major parties have a vested interest in keeping it that way. Major corporate campaign corporations are the lifeblood of presidential campaigns and they work to maintain the status quo eliminating any real threat from a third party, keeping their messages silenced.

Some will argue that only those with realistic chances of winning should have an opportunity to be heard anyway. The national discussion is enhanced with a wider assortment of views. Nader cites scholars who show that his campaign was able to push Gore to more progressive stands (ironically getting Gore more votes). In the end, the majority of Americans may indeed choose between a Democrat and a Republican, but the presence of others in the campaign can certainly influence the positions those two parties take.

Before Super Tuesday, Nat Fortune and Merelice, Co-Chairs of the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party wrote the following, “Why do more Americans contribute to charities than show up to vote? Obviously we care about the world around us. And we believe one person can make a difference. And we trust that what we have to offer is not too small. Otherwise, we wouldn't bother with either charities or voting.” This is the logic of being unreasonable, insisting on being heard, hoping for change. Much has been made of change during this campaign. Senator Obama's recent book was titled after a sermon he heard, “The Audacity of Hope.” Whether through unreasonable insistence or audacious hope, change only comes when those on the margins refuse to be silent. This presidential campaign will be enhanced by the inclusion of as many opinions as are offered.

Soft Power

2008-02-18T23:26:00.001-05:00

In what is being seen as a trip to establish a legacy, President Bush is currently visiting Africa. In a presidency marked by the use of hard power, this current effort is an example of soft power. After seven years, Bush can be accused of too little too late, but his reception in Africa, where his popularity is immense, would seem to speak otherwise. Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete had this to say, “I know you will leave office in about 12 months' time. Rest assured that you will be remembered for many generations to come for the good things you have done for Tanzania and the good things you have done for Africa. Your legacy will be that of saving hundreds of thousands of mothers and children's' lives.” These lives have been saved from malaria and HIV/AIDS.

The president launched a plan in 2005 to reduce malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 80 percent of malaria cases occur. The disease kills at least 1 million infants and children under five every year. Bush's five-year plan calls for $1.2 billion, so far congress has funded about a third of this program. Congress has also agreed to his plan to spend $15 billion on HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa. He is now urging congress to double that. While in Tanzania, Bush also announced a plan to distribute 5.2 million free bed nets in six months, enough to provide a net for every child between ages one and five in Tanzania. On top of this he also promised $700 to help Tanzania build up its infrastructure.

"The power to save lives comes with the moral obligation to use it," Bush said about these efforts. This relatively sudden reliance on soft power is finally a glimpse of the compassionate conservatism that he promised. Joseph S. Nye Jr., distinguished service professor at Harvard University, describes a country’s soft power as coming from three resources: “its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority).” Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state during President Bush's first term, now a colleague of Nye, makes the case for soft power this way, "You don't need to walk into a room and pronounce yourself ... in charge, everyone knows when the United States is in the room. You gain much more by not even speaking about it."

The nearly exclusive use of hard power throughout the Bush presidency has had a negative effect on the ability of the US to use soft power now. The world's only remaining super power launching a preemptive war in the opposition of world opinion is precisely the sort of thing candidate Bush warned us about in 2000 when he said, "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way, but if we're a humble nation, they'll respect us." Arrogant foreign policy is bereft of moral authority. American political values have likewise been diminished as a source of soft power due to the limitations of civil liberties since 9/11. Consumerism as a cultural export has not only not endeared America to the world, it is part of the depravity that some terrorists have named as a source of their enmity.

Humility is not something our nation can fake any more than respect can be demanded. The sort of goodwill currently being created in Africa can spread if this is the beginning of better ethical international behavior. Regardless of motivation, morality in diplomacy is both effective and welcome.

unChristian

2008-02-05T21:59:00.000-05:00

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a time of reflection on our shortcomings in preparation for Easter. Jesus taught that one should take the log out of one's own eye before removing the speck out of someone else's eye. Thus, this is an appropriate moment for the Christian church to take a long hard look at itself. If the research done recently by the Barna group is correct, the church has an urgent need to change if it is going to remain viable into the future.

This fall, the president of the Barna Group, David Kinnaman, published the findings of research on the opinions of 16-29 year-olds about the church in a book titled, “unChristian.” They found that the most common perceptions of Christianity by young non-Christians were negative, led by judgmental (87%) and hypocritical (85%). In fact, even half of the young Christians surveyed agreed that the church is judgmental and hypocritical. The churched and un-churched alike pointed to one particular issue that leads the way in shaping this opinion. The most common perception today is that Christianity is "anti-homosexual." The Barna Group web site reports, “Overall, 91% of young non-Christians and 80% of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians.” Young Christians frequently complained the church's teaching has made homosexuality a “bigger sin” than others and not equipped them to deal with their relationships with their homosexual friends.

This is an issue causing great divisiveness within the church itself. Not all Christians agree that homosexuality is a sin. A fair inference from the survey findings would be that many young Christians are questioning this teaching as well. Those who do believe that this behavior is sinful must consider whom is harmed by it. If there is no victim where is the crime? Once before, the church led a movement to outlaw a sin to improve society. The church-based Temperance movement led to Prohibition. Legislation was clearly the wrong method for helping drunkards to mend their ways. If your goal is to help others see the wrong in their behavior, publicly judging them will only move them away from your concern.

Lent is a season of fasting, typically marked by denying oneself a pleasure or giving up a negative behavior. Perhaps this is a good moment for all Christians to fast from judging others. It would be an opportunity to practice the teaching of Jesus that only those without sin are permitted to cast stones at sinners. People of all faiths and people of goodwill of no faith should be able to come together in a free society to serve and improve the common good. This lofty goal should not be derailed by a misplaced focus on judgment that detracts from the reputation of an institution well positioned to improve society, the Christian Church.

What Are the Issues?

2008-01-29T16:21:00.000-05:00

The top five TV political reporters have asked the presidential candidates 2938 questions so far. One would hope that the topics covered reflect a wide array of the issues important to the future of America. Three of those questions have been about unidentified flying objects. Given the large number of questions, a few light-hearted questions raised by a revelation about one of the candidate's experience with UFOs might be excused. But what is the excuse for the number of questions about global warming being only one more? That's right, only four questions have been asked about an issue that many would agree is one of the most important issues that will be faced by the next president.

The war in Iraq and terrorism are two high-profile issues that have rightly garnered a great deal of attention this presidential election. But even those who doubt the predictions of scientists can hardly claim that care of the environment is not a vital issue to address in the next four years, for what we do in the short term will clearly affect the long term. The issue of global poverty is another example of a sleeping giant issue. Today, every three seconds a child will die from extreme poverty - either because they don't have enough food, don't have access to clean water, or have been stricken by an entirely treatable condition like diarrhea, measles or malaria. Aside from a moral mandate to act, since it is clearly within the power of the United States to end this crisis, enlightened self-interest would lead us to end extreme poverty before it becomes the motivation from more desperate acts of terrorism.

One moral issue that the candidates have been pressed on is health care. Each of the major candidates has a plan to address the delivery of health care in this country. Unfortunately, for the most part the issue has been addressed only as it effects individual Americans' budgets. The real question of whether profit has any ethical justification in health care, or anyplace in Human Services for that matter, is not on the table. Any health care insurance company trying to make a profit must minimize paying settlements to do so. How can that delivery model benefit anyone but the stockholders? The bottom like is that the bottom line seems to be considered more vital that the preservation of life.

The media has a vested interest in tension and conflict, thus any animated emotions from candidates will steal attention away from the issues. Thankfully, there is enough information available from each of the campaigns through their local offices and the Internet that there is no reason for any voter being uninformed. Here in Massachusetts we will be part of “Super Tuesday” on February 5 when we go to the polls. While those registered in a political party can only vote in that party's primary, unenrolled voters will have the choice of taking a Republican, Democratic, or Green-Rainbow ballot. Don't give away your power by staying home. Get informed and get out and vote.

Finding Common Ground on Abortion

2008-01-21T15:35:00.000-05:00

Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the debate over the legality of abortion is arguably more divisive now than it was then. For many years now, this has been a wedge issue used to divide politicians and the electorate by requiring polar opposites, absolute agreement with no shades of gray. With its focus on the issue of legality, the abortion debate has become one of determining permissible times and methods instead of working to reduce the number of abortions, surely something that could not offend either side of the argument.

In the highly politicized rhetoric, pro-choice politicians sound disingenuous when they add “and rare” to their calls to keep abortions safe and legal. If pro-choice leaders truly desire that abortions should be rare while they remain legal, they should be eager to support legislation like that introduced by Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), a member of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a member of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus almost a year ago. That bill was designed to provide contraception education as well as support for new mothers and resources for foster care and adoption. That, and similar legislation currently are referred to committees.

Likewise, pro-life politicians rarely call for a reduction in the number of abortions instead taking an all-or-nothing approach that has the effect of allowing preventable abortions now while hoping for an end to all abortion later. Additionally, the belief that overturning Roe v. Wade will end abortion in America ignores the fact that it would return abortion to an issue fought in each state and conveniently forgets the history of back-alley and foreign abortions that happened prior to the court ruling.

A truly comprehensive pro-life stand would also take into consideration the quality of life for the newborn whose mother chose not to abort. In his book, "Our Endangered Values,” Jimmy Carter writes, "Two thirds of women who have abortions claim their primary reason is that they cannot afford a child." He cites statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and their latest report [2002], "The most prevailing common factor is poverty, with six out of ten abortions occurring among those with incomes below $28,000 per year for a family of three." A comprehensive plan to alleviate poverty would have the added benefit of reducing a significant factor contributing to the rate of abortions.

We should not allow medical, ethical and religious issues regarding such things as determining when life begins, or when a fetus is viable to distract us from the practical ways we can reduce abortions today. The vision of a day when every child is a wanted child, who has equal access to opportunity is one that both sides of this polarized debate ought to be able to embrace.

An Unhappy Anniversary

2008-01-14T16:13:00.000-05:00

This past Friday marked the sixth anniversary or the first prisoners of the war on terror being detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The peculiar arrangement of a United States military facility that is not considered US soil has created a cruel limbo for those who have been imprisoned there. They are subject to the whims of their captors without any recourse to law. None of them have been tried or even charged. In the cases where there has been any access to legal representation, they have been released.

Adding insult to injury, on the day of the anniversary, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled three Muslim British humanitarian workers and a religious pilgrim captured in Afghanistan and detained in Guantanamo Bay prison were non-persons. The implications of considering anyone legally a non-person are staggering. With no human rights, even the hope of protection is gone. The only way even to begin to suggest that this behavior is acceptable on our behalf by our government is to firmly believe that these detainees represent the true “evil-doers” and thus argue that that they deserve whatever treatment may come from those they've harmed or threaten to harm. But honoring democracy demands that the people be informed when the government acts on their behalf. In six years, when have we been told what evil the detainees are even suspected of? How can it be that a democracy can choose to treat anyone as a non-person when no public case has been made? This is the sort of behavior expected of banana republic dictators who “disappear” their opponents. This is the sort of alleged justice of vigilantism, only in this case a secretive group within our own government are the vigilantes.

This administration has shown not only a disdain for the justice system and the rule of law, but also a lack of trust in the judgment of the American people. Why must we trust that they are protecting us from unseen harm instead of exposing to the light of truth what they have done on our behalf? There are certainly good reasons for clandestine investigations that require secrecy while they are on-going, but one might expect that in the course of six years of hard work fighting terrorism that there would be multiple success stories that could now be shared to reassure the people who are being terrorized. And isn't that the point of terrorism, that we be frightened? What has this administration done to reduce fear? The practices of detaining without charges, declaring people non-persons, removing suspects to places where legal protections don't exist and there torturing them provides no comfort to the fearful. As a matter of fact, the thought that it could happen to anyone at any time increases fear while providing no measurable security beyond that which the government alleges. Additionally, the image of America in the eyes of the world is diminished. We no longer have the right to call for justice when we act so unethically. There is no justification, only excuses.

What's the Value of a Tree?

2008-01-07T21:51:00.000-05:00

On the first episode of the short-lived television series, Joan of Arcadia, Joan has an encounter with a young man whom she comes to realize is God in the flesh. She tries putting him on the spot by asking, “So how about a miracle?” In response, the young man points to a tree and simply says, “There.” “But that is just a tree,” says the unimpressed Joan. She is silenced by the reply, “You try making one.”

The simple truth sounds cliché, only God can make a tree. Don't mistake this for an argument for Intelligent Design; regardless of the origin of species, mere mortals remain incapable of creating from nothing. This helps to frame one of the glaring problems in environmental protection, the fact that a tree has no economic value left on its own. The only time a dollar amount is attached is when calculating its value once cut an processed as lumber. The value of a stand of trees, or a wetland, or a barrier island does not lie just in their potential for development, or even for recreational use. The only cost effective machines for converting carbon dioxide into oxygen are green plants. If we were to develop every square inch of land, we would also have to develop technology to produce oxygen. What would that technology cost? Calculate that and you begin to have a figure to use when considering the value of untouched natural resources. And that's just part of the value. Vegetation provides natural erosion control, wetlands purify water, and barrier islands protect the mainland from coastal storms. When gone, human efforts to provide the same services always prove to be exorbitantly expensive. This is why the time has come to stop thinking of nature as resource and start considering it as capital.

In an April 2007 report, “Valuing New Jersey’s Natural Capital: An Assessment of the Economic Value of the State’s Natural Resources,” the value of the goods and services provided by the state's natural capital is estimated at a minimum of $20 billion annually. That places the value of the state's total natural capital at $681 billion (the amount needed to be invested at 3% to produce the annual yield). The authors are confident that the estimates are conservative. These are numbers that don't normally enter into economic discussions. But there is an ethical imperative to consider the value of creation as is. As the saying goes, good planets are hard to find. We are seeing the limits of limiting our understanding of creation solely in terms of the teaching of the book of Genesis that humans are to subdue it. We need to balance that with the equally biblical teaching that all the earth belongs to God. Life is a loan, not a grant. Whether your faith is in the God of creation or the wisdom of science (or both), we all need to begin to find our place in the web of life and live accordingly.

Affluenza

2007-12-27T17:53:00.000-05:00

The holiday gift-giving season has ended and the bills are now coming due. There is no question that the American economy relies on year-end spending which has effectively commercialized any faith tradition's holy day or days that fall within this time period. Reports of numbers will tell us whether the bottom line bodes well for business or not, but there are serious burdens borne by the consumer that demand our attention. One is what economist Joel Waldfogel calls the “Deadweight Loss of Christmas.”

On National Public Radio's Marketplace, Waldfogel was quoted saying “People value things they receive as gifts about 20 percent less per dollar spent then they value items they purchase for themselves.” This deadweight loss is valued at somewhere between twelve and eighteen billion dollars this year. In effect this means that the marketing of the holiday caused Americans to hand over that much money in exchange for nothing more than the consolation of knowing that they participated in the annual spending ritual. And this only measures the difference in perceived value of gifts received, it makes no judgment on the uselessness of many of the gifts that were given.

The second burden to consider is the growing consumer debt that the holiday consumption frenzy creates. A recent Federal Reserve Bank report indicates that Americans carry over $920 billion in credit debt. Over the previous year, the number of accounts that are 30 days past due has risen by 26% and those that are 90 days overdue by 50% according to some lenders. This all adds up to an insane practice of purchasing over-valued items, many of them redundant or useless, with money we don't have and then either paying even more for them due to interest payments or creating insurmountable debt that brings an avalanche of other problems.

The only thing that keeps this cycle going is the cycle itself! Like a gerbil running on a wheel, the only way to stop the motion is to get off the wheel. This annual feast of overconsumption is surely an a disease. As we enter the flu season, it is apt that this economic disease can been called Affluenza. It is in fact a manifestation of the disease of addiction. Anyone who is living with an addiction knows the daily battles that can involve many setbacks without vigilance. The most successful way of dealing with addiction is through the wisdom of the Twelve Steps. The first step is to admit that we are powerless over the addiction – that our lives have become unmanageable. That should be plain from the numbers reported here, or the bills that you cannot pay.

The second step is coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. What power is that for you? Whether you are comfortable calling that higher power God or not, there is a spirituality required for recovery. We are a sorry and hopeless people indeed if we cannot find the spiritual path that will lead us out of the insanity of this runaway consumerism.

The Year in Religion

2007-12-27T17:50:00.000-05:00

One of the biggest religious stories of 2007 was the fact that religion itself came under attack. A number of books were written that took religion to task for the harm that is has created historically and the way that it at times impedes social progress today. Many of the accusations are well-deserved as religious fanaticism has indeed led to bloodshed and repression in some parts of the world. Ideologues will always fight not relent and religion certainly is apt to create ideologues. But then, the stubbornness of the new atheists has likewise contributed to the lack of dialog about the clash of philosophies. Public opinion seems to be moving away from the church. Recent research by the Barna group regarding the opinions of American young people about religion was published in a book with a succinct title that names that opinion, “Unchristian.” The good news is that this could be an opportunity for reform if the church can do the difficult work of listening to the outside detractors.

The culture war continued to rage with religious folks involved in both public battles and internal disputes. The Anglican fellowship in the world saw divisions over the issue of homosexuality, with some American churches leaving their local fellowship to join with like-minded churches in Africa. In an effort to maintain some unity worldwide, those who accept the ordination of homosexuals have been asked to stop the practice. Religious voices were raised on both sides of the issue of legalizing same-sex marriage with Massachusetts continuing to permit it while many states moved to explicitly restrict it. On this issue, the year did not produce any signs of promise for dialog.

On a brighter note, there seemed to be some movement this year in the area of care of the environment as a religious issue. Despite the objections of some Evangelicals, a good number of others chose to publish a letter that called for action to slow global warming. Environmental issues present an opportunity for people of all faith traditions to find some common ground for action. We have witnessed the first steps this year.

The most encouraging dialog that was begun this year was that between Muslims and Christians. If nothing is done to reverse the trend toward conflict between these two cultures over half the world's population could potentially become embroiled in violent conflict. Considering the powers involved it is no overstatement to talk about the end of the world. The dialog that has begun centers on two tenets basic to each faith, love of God and care for neighbor. As we end one year and pray for peace in the next, we should cherish this important step and work to continue the progress begun.

What Would Jesus Buy?

2007-12-20T15:28:00.000-05:00

With the craziness of consumerism reaching a fever pitch just before Christmas, it is time for the obligatory respite to complain about it. Indeed there is very little that is redeeming in the purchase of endless and unnecessary items for people who already no doubt have more than they need. Does anyone ever complain that there are just not enough trinkets to buy or trendy items to collect? Of course not, but there is plenty of complaining about not being able to please the voracious desires of family and friends who will be disappointed if they don't get the latest and greatest. Consider that complaint for a minute. Who actually thinks so little of their family and friends to accuse them of such shallow desires? That is the most pernicious element of consumerism, it leads us to actions that that run counter to what we most want to believe. We want to believe that the things that matter most are not things. We want to believe that our family and friends only need our love and care, yet we allow the demands of consumerism to believe that they just must have things as proof of our love.

So why don't we stop? Why don't we wake up and celebrate Christmas by simply doing the things that make us happy with friends and family? Why don't we give gifts to the one who is having the birthday? We could give presents to Jesus who said he would be with us in those who are sick and hungry and in prison. But we all know that our noblest intentions at this holy season will still not be realized. Perhaps consumerism is a form of demon possession. It certainly seems to have a power beyond our control. It also is a force that that is in direct opposition to the teaching of the one whose birthday we celebrate.

A documentary called, “What Would Jesus Buy” opens in theaters this week. It is filled with satirical humor and street theater presented by “Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping.” It will no doubt make many people laugh and no doubt think about the insanity of consumerism. Perhaps we need to laugh to keep us from crying. There is indeed a war on Christmas, and it isn't about not telling the story and singing the songs. It is about ignoring the story and not listening to the message. May this be the year and we all start to hear the message of love at the heart of the story. Instead of giving more things to “the person who has everything” let us bring our gifts to the manger by giving them to the least among us.

Religion and the Public Square

2007-12-10T21:11:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney's recent speech on religious freedom was very revealing. He expressed his belief in some foundational principles that are necessary to maintaining the constitutional mandate to avoid the establishment of religion while at the same time apparently betraying his own beliefs.

To his credit, Romney said “we do not insist on a single strain of religion – rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith.” He also pointed to his record of keeping his Mormonism a private faith that informed his decisions without dictating his politics. He rightly suggested that “Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.” Or at least let us hope that cynicism has not taken such a hold in the electorate that this is no longer true. He also lifted up a number of faith traditions for praise: Catholicism, Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, Lutheranism, Judaism, and even Islam. He stated his view of tolerance this way, “Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.” He pointed out that our nation has not always lived up to its high principles citing the banishments of Ann Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and Brigham Young, for their unacceptable religious convictions. Ironically, within his own speech, he too seemed to fail to “walk the talk.”

In a particularly contradictory moment Romney first suggested that "The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion,” but immediately added, “but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust.” He believes that those expressions belong in our pledge and on our currency. He also thinks that nativity scenes and menorahs belong in the public square. If this is the path to tolerance, where does it end? In the area of public display of religious faith the only manageable position is to exclude it totally. This also begs the question of how to respect those of no faith. Romney himself suggests that recent efforts to keep church and state separate have gone so far as to effectively create a new religion of secularism. This begs the question of whether an expression of secularism should be welcome in the public square.

All of us have biases that make up the belief systems that guide our actions. Some of our belief systems include a belief in God or gods, others don't. If only those who believe in a single God are capable of being good citizens then our government schools must start teaching religious practice as part of training good citizens, and those who don't share that belief cannot be first class citizens. Clearly this would be unconstitutional and unwelcome. Those of us for whom religious beliefs matter should likewise be troubled by the thought that the government might attempt to teach our beliefs. Which particular doctrines would be taught? The only acceptable position is one broad enough to accept all citizens of any faith, or of no faith. Romney is welcome to bring his faith to the public square, indeed should be praised for clearly sharing his biases. But let us hope that whomever is elected president will truly live out a commitment to represent all the people, not drawing any lines that exclude any citizen.

A Common Word

2007-12-03T16:06:00.000-05:00

One year after Pope Benedict XVI made controversial remarks regarding Islam, a group of 138 Muslim leaders representing all the various denominations and traditions of Islam have published a letter to the Christian community called “A Common Word Between You and Us” (www.acommonword.com). This group includes people with different profiles: religious authorities, scholars, intellectuals, media experts, professionals, etc... It also includes people from different schools of mainstream Islam: Sunni (from Salafis to Sufis), Shi’i (J’afari, Ziadi, Isma’ili), and Ibadi. It includes figures from Chad to Uzbekistan, from Indonesia to Mauritania and from Canada to Sudan. Many of the individual signatories guide or influence millions of Muslims and hold positions of religious, social, and political responsibility. The accumlated influence of the signatories is too significant to ignore. The content of the document is powerful in its stunning simplicity. It lifts up two doctrines arguably at the very core of both religions: love of God and love of neighbor.

Despite historical theological tensions, this group of Muslims goes to great lengths to show that the Christian devotion is to the single God of the universe whom they also worship. The second core belief that this document points out as held in common between Muslims and Christians is the concern for neighbor. It receives little space in the document, no doubt because it is is so obviously at the heart of both faiths. The well documented letter cites not just the Koran, but also the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible.

So far, the Christian response has been astoundingly positive. A response stating that the Muslim letter was both encouraging and challenging was issued by 300 Christian leaders. Among the signatories are the expected mainline denominational leaders and liberal theologians, but also signing were televangelist Robert Schuller and evangelical leaders Jim Wallis (of Sojourners magazine) and Rick Warren (author of “The Purpose Driven Life”). The pope has also responded with an offer to meet with a delegation of Muslim leaders.

There is no doubt that this is a remarkable exchange at a critical time in the history of relations between the two religions that together represent 55% of the world's population. The conversation around shared beliefs needs to replace the name-calling that is becoming too common. We in the West have to give up the idea that all Muslims are represented by the militant fringe of “Islamo-fascists.” Likewise, Muslims need to resist the urge to paint the West with the broad brush of the term “the Great Satan.” In both religions, not only those who think the worst about the other, but also those willing to take violent action toward the other need to be reduced even further than the minorities that they are currently. Both documents agree that “the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.” The military force available to nations potentially on opposite sides of a what could amount to a renewal of the Crusades along with the frightening ability of terrorism to act as a catalyst demonstrate the fact that indeed the future of humanity may rest on the ability of all of us to love whatever God we serve will all our hearts and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Ending Economic Slavery

2007-11-02T23:16:00.000-04:00

Two centuries after the British parliament passed the bill outlawing the transatlantic slave trade, one might expect that enough time had passed to eradicate slavery completely. Tragically, slavery persists in the world in greater and lesser degrees around the world today. In Nepal, families in abject poverty will sell their daughters into the sex trade in Thailand. Elsewhere the promise a job in a foreign country can turn into the nightmare of forced labor in a factory without even knowing where you have been taken. While these extreme examples are isolated, forces at work in the global economy are creating what the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches sees as the equivalent of slavery.

The recent meeting of WARC produced a statement that said in part, “We live in a scandalous world that denies God’s call to life for all. The annual income of the richest one per cent is equal to that of the poorest 57 per cent, and 24,000 people die each day from poverty and malnutrition.” This extreme income disparity can all too easily be manipulated by the unscrupulous rich to so control the lives of the desperate poor to indeed be a form of slavery. People of goodwill cannot ethically remain idle and silent while the distribution of the world's resources means luxury for a few and suffering and death for multitudes. People of faith who embrace the story of the Hebrew Exodus should also understand the consistent demand of their faith to seek economic justice. Time and again, God's chosen people are reminded not to be like the Egyptians who enslaved their ancestors through the accumulation of wealth. In the story, during the time of famine only Egypt had stores of food. As peoples came from far away to buy from Egypt they eventually had to offer all their labor for their very existence. This was what Moses led the people out of, yet they didn't learn the lesson and had to be reminded not to enslave their fellow Israelites once in the Promised Land. The practice of the Jubilee Year (Leviticus 25) involved releasing slaves, forgiving debts and returning land to those who has sold it so that the original balance of wealth and resources could be restored. The Hebrew Bible seems to understand that extreme wealth will lead to slavery.

As we in America struggle with the question of what to do with immigration, we should be careful not to ignore the influence that wealth disparity plays in luring the poor of other nations to come here to work for slave wages. Using the threat of deportation to exploit workers is exactly the sort of sin that the ancient prophets decried repeatedly. It is wrong to ignore the behavior of the oppressor and focus only on the illegal actions of the oppressed. Would it make more sense to punish the parents who sold their daughter to brothel or to work to end the sex trade? Until the day when sharing by all means scarcity for none we will need to use the rule of law to combat exploitation.

For the Birds

2007-10-26T20:00:00.000-04:00

President Bush went fishing this weekend. In his weekly radio address, he told us that fishing not only builds memories but also adds billions of dollars to the economy. While he went on to outline some initiatives regarding the environment, it is telling that he started by making an economic case for the actions. Too often in our national conversation the only way to advance a cause is to show that there is more benefit than cost. But sometimes the greater good has no dollar value.

Thankfully, the president seemed to understand that point when advancing the plan to expand the National Wildlife Refuge program. He highlighted migratory birds as a reason for increased funding. Habitat loss is a critical concern for migratory species. Economic concerns argue in favor of managing habitat for migratory waterfowl that are hunted since that is regulated by the federal government and thus and includes gathering revenue from licenses and fees. Perhaps, the president is motivated by unconditional concern for vulnerable non-game species, or by the boon to the economy offered by the burgeoning birdwatching community. We may never know, but there is hope that threatened species will benefit.

The larger question in this discussion is the ethical one, that is, how shall we find the motivation to protect the vulnerable who have no economic stake? Unconditional concern for the other, particularly those others with whom we have little or no connection is rare to find. No doubt this is why faith traditions strive to nurture this high ideal, we don't seem to come by it naturally. Enlightened self-interest where we can see that something might return to us is at least one step in this process. We need to see that there is potential value in saving all the current resources of the earth for our children and their children. Then we need to see that there is no good distinction to be made between our children and the children of other people. In fact, if we open up more fully to true unconditional concern we might discover that even seemingly insignificant birds might be worthy of our efforts.

Maybe we need to save the birds simply for the inspiration they provide. A recent Mutts comic sums it up. .. Maybe we should try to learn that lesson as well. If we could begin to free ourselves from a primary concern for gathering and protecting stuff perhaps we could find the freedom of flight into a future where generosity by all will mean scarcity for none.

One Person's Heaven

2007-10-17T17:08:00.001-04:00

Ann Coulter has once again stirred controversy with her comments. This time it was a comment that her dream of a perfect America is a place where we are all Christians happily defending America. The comments were made on CNBC's The Big Idea. When pressed by host Donny Deutsch, Coulter said that yes, she would throw out Judaism. She explained her belief that Christians are “perfected Jews” who desire that Jews be perfected because, although they will get to heaven through obedience to the law, they could be on the “fast track” if they became Christians. Deutsch, a practicing Jew, made it clear to Coulter that her glib comments had offended him personally. She seemed almost incredulous that he didn't see her point as generous not onerous.

With all due respect to Deutsch, who rightly suggests the best solution is to ignore her, there is value in examining both Coulter's behavior and thoughts. She presented an interesting theological position. Though she didn't explain it, the way she used the word perfected theologically. In the minds of the writers of the New Testament, to be made perfect meant to be completed. Indeed, traditionally Christianity views Jesus as the completion of the covenant God made with the Hebrews. In this sense, Christians can be called perfected Jews. Also, since Christians are instructed to share this good news with others, it would make sense that Coulter thought she was offering a gift not an offense. Granted, Deutsch did not receive this as good news. Coulter's insensitivity to his position and lack of regard for how her comments might be received by the general public both expose her need to behave more politely and leads to reasonable accusations of antisemitism. We may ignore Coulter's inflammatory statements, but the view she espoused and the nerve she hit cannot be ignored. Many Christians believe that their brand of Christianity is the only true path to salvation and thus would only fault Coulter, if at all, on her style but not her substance. While other Christians have come to accept that the same God whom they worship could never break the original covenant with the Jews and so respect them by not attempting to convert them.

Political correctness has arisen as a way of peacefully coexisting in a pluralistic society. Unfortunately, this type of oversensitive vigilance can also fuel bigotry by forcing it underground. Simply biting one's tongue is insufficient when the heart remains unchanged. True sensitivity to the other begins with self-examination. When religion claims an exclusive path or a corner on the truth then anything that passes for tolerance of other truth claims is little more than lip service, or at least something less than true acceptance. What if we approached truth as something we only ever partially possess, but always seek? Perhaps then we could believe as Mohandas Gandhi believed that there are many paths up the mountain of truth, so it doesn't matter that someone is on the other side of the mountain. Unfortunately, Ann Coulter's heaven would be Gandhi's hell.

Resisting Evil

2007-10-14T22:36:00.000-04:00

The recent expose in the New Times about secret endorsements of severe interrogation techniques once again forces us as Americans to consider whether torture not only has been, but quite possibly continues to be committed in our name. Clearly, the current administration has been walking a fine semantic line between so-called “enhanced” techniques and blatantly illegal torture. Does it take a trained legal mind to name as torture practices such as keeping a person in prolonged darkness or cold, or denied food, or kept naked, or slapped in the head, or strapped to a board and drenched with water to simulate drowning? Perhaps just the opposite is the case, that it takes a team of lawyers to find a way to call it something other than torture.

Whether called enhanced interrogation or torture, the practice is illogical. If an enemy believes that capture leads to torture the incentive to surrender evaporates. A torture victim with no knowledge still has the incentive to provide information and thus will provide the interrogator with bad intelligence, leading to a need for more torture. The enemy with knowledge who is willing to die for his or her cause will never provide actionable intelligence regardless of the amount of torture.

A simple moral restraint is comes by considering that our actions against others open the door to the same treatment of our soldiers when captured. One way to find exemption from Golden Rule morality is to believe that the other is somehow incapable of good. This sort of reasoning also helps to maintain the illusion that torture has never been condoned by the authority structure, but is the result of a few “bad apples.” Phillip Zimbardo exposes this myth in his book, “The Lucifer Effect.” In 1971 he discovered the power of systemic evil in his landmark Stanford Prison Experiment. In the course of a single week in a mock prison with college-aged men pre-screened to assure their mental health he created a situation where unprovoked, but also unrestrained, the guards psychologically abused the prisoners. These young men were not evil, but they committed evil acts. Zimbardo admits that his participation in the creation of this situation was likewise evil. In human rights and war crime law this is known as command responsibility. So far in the investigations of prisoner abuse no one has been charged with command responsibility. In a democracy, there is a certain command responsibility that each citizen bears once the truth is exposed.

Zimbardo's research shows that under carefully constructed circumstances that include assurances from authority figures, relative anonymity and peer pressure most people can be persuaded to perform ghastly deeds. This explains how prison guards can be recruited from the general population to execute fellow humans in concentration camps. With the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity so pervasive in American religious practice accepting the possibility that each of us individually and all of us collectively are capable of evil ought to be easy. Yet, we so easily find ways to believe that we are always agents of goodness and truth. C. S. Lewis spoke of the battle of the two dogs within each of us, one good and one evil. The dog that wins is the one we feed. We can never be totally free from terror until we learn to resist the evil which lies within.

The Politics of Fear

2007-10-03T12:36:00.000-04:00

Every year since September 11, 2001, the President has declared and Congress has voted that we continue in a state of emergency. One must wonder what threshold must be met to end this threat. As long as there is an official state of emergency, there is a legitimization of nearly any action identified as an effort in the war on terrorism. Terror alerts, with their accompanying color codes, have never been accompanied by any specific instructions for increasing safety or reducing fear. Imagine a severe storm warning issued by the National Weather Service with the only instructions being “be careful.” Naturally, that would be totally unacceptable. But that is the extent of the instructions given when the terror alert level has been elevated. All that seems to be accomplished is frightening the population. If we are destined to live in a constant state of terror, with the only relief being a lower level, then haven't the terrorists won?

Fear is a powerful way of controlling behavior. Isn't it possible that the government's fear-mongering is designed to distract and control the American populace? It is easy to claim that an unseen threat has been thwarted while continuing to instill fear of a never-ending aggression. Conspiracy theorists take things a step further and claim that terrorist attacks have been staged by our own government seeking to gain this sort of control over its people. While that extreme position requires more evidence than is available, the suggestion that fear-mongering is designed to serve the interests of big business does not seem so far fetched. Consider the fact that the President showed a great concern for the economy following the attack on 9/11 and basically instructed Americans to go to the mall. Consider also that Halliburton, Bechtel and Blackwater are getting richer by the day as long as the war in Iraq continues. Finally, consider the amount of money spent in campaigns for congressional and senatorial seats, let alone the presidency, and the fact that none of those campaigns can be successful without major corporate contributions. Fear-mongering appears to be good for the bottom line.

Not all fear is bad. Fear of fire teaches us not to touch the burner on the stove. Fear teaches us to look both ways before crossing the street. But fear without hope leads to violent means to selfish ends. In our religious traditions, prophets have often attempted to elicit fear of the consequences of continued wrong behavior. But true prophets also provide hope that changed behavior will result in better consequences. What hope is offered by those who call for violent opposition to terrorist threats? If our hope is in a stronger economy that continues to distance us from the suffering of the “Two-Thirds World” then we are relying on a sham promise of safety in wealth that will not bring true and lasting peace. True believers of all traditions should understand that power of love is greater than fear, indeed true faith drives out fear. Perhaps the first step in our recovery from the crippling effects of terror is accepting the truth of President Roosevelt's declaration that all we have to fear is fear itself.

Waging Peace

2007-10-01T22:39:00.000-04:00

The war in Iraq has to this point cost over $450 billion. By some estimates, it will cost over a trillion dollars by the time it ends. Huge numbers like these can become almost meaningless in their lack of relativity. With this in mind, the National Priorities Project created a web site, www.costofwar.com, to break down the massive expenditure into equivalencies.

One way of comprehending this large expenditure is to determine the local contribution. Using federal taxes as a guideline, the five-town Tantasqua region can be understood to have contributed nearly $39 million toward the war so far. Consider what it would have meant if that amount had been invested in education; every single student who has graduated from Tantasqua Regional High School during this time could have had four free years of education at a public university and there would have been money left over to hire a couple dozen new teachers in the school district. If the money had been spent just on hiring teachers there could be well over 100 new teachers locally.

Or consider if social services had been provided. Over 4500 children could have been given free health insurance. A year of Head Start could have been provided for over 5000 children, or there could be 348 new public housing units in our region. All of these amounts are surely much more than our region needs. Take your town budget and make your own list for construction and repair of properties and infrastructure or salaries of town employees.

In this ever-shrinking world it is unethical to think only of ourselves. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals are a plan to reduce extreme poverty by half by 2015 as well as address other dire situations such as reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS. This is a battle worth waging with an estimated cost of only $40 to $60 million a year. By using the biblical principle of tithing, America could fund this effort alone with just 10% of the Pentagon budget. If outspending the “Axis of Evil” 40 to 1 militarily is not making the world safer, perhaps it is time to take seriously the religious demand of charity and use our greatest resources, our wealth and generosity, to make a real difference in the world. If in place of waging war on terror we had decided to wage peace, America might now be engendering respect around the world instead of the fear and loathing that militarism brings. Terrorists rely on the cover provided by fearful or sympathetic populations and governments. Waging peace removes that cover by addressing the fear of want and changes sympathies by generosity instead of at the end of the barrel of a gun. Waging war creates martyrs for terrorist causes and reinforces the image of America as a dominant aggressor. Compared to the high cost of war, peace is a bargain. Isn't it about time we start at least shifting some of our vast resources and give peace a chance?

Just Say "No" to War

2007-09-18T08:01:00.000-04:00

The Collegium of Officers of the United Church of Christ have written a powerful pastoral letter against the war in Iraq and are asking others to sign the letter. Their goal is 100,000 signatures by World Communion Sunday, October 7. They call us to seek forgiveness for "the arrogant unilateralism of preemptive war." They also call us to "cast off the fear that has made us accept the way of violence and return to the way of Jesus."

The ideal of returning to the way of Jesus coupled with the letter's opening paragraph decrying the way this war was justified serve as a reminder that the acceptance of war as a necessary evil was not always a part of Christian thinking. For the first three centuries of Christianity, pacifism was the primary view of Christians. Early church leaders such as Origen and Tertullian wrote tracts on the subject. Roman soldiers who converted to Christianity were instructed not to kill! All of that changed rapidly when the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion. By his edict, Christians went from being social pariahs who could be killed for their beliefs to being the only ones who could be soldiers or political leaders. Needless to say, this had a radical impact on Christian teaching. Augustine created a compromise position, which has come to be knows as the Just War Theory, stipulating principles that had to be met in order for a war to be considered just. Just War Theory is clear that no war can be started preemptively as an act of aggression, that it cannot be used for acquisition of land, power or resources, and that civilians may never be targeted. Applied to the current war, all of these principles raise serious questions. In fact, the sickening ratio of civilian to military causalities in every battle fought today begs the question of whether modern warfare can ever be considered just.

September 21 is the United Nations International Day of Peace. This annual event focusing on peaceful resolutions to conflicts is a call for a world-wide one day cease fire. That surely will be met by accusations of naivety and impractical idealism. Indeed, the logical end result of pacifism may be that evil triumphs and innocents suffer. But pacifism doesn't mean passivity. The innocents who suffer need to be those, who like Jesus, stand up to injustice with a willingness to lay down their lives before they will take another's. Non-violent resistance to injustice is a very active expression of faith requiring the commitment of all the resources at our disposal to wage peace.

The UCC pastoral letter calls us to repentance for having "confused patriotism with self-interest." True patriotism is a love of nation that calls it to be the best that it can be. Ending this war is a patriotic act, but it will not come by wishing it to happen. Christians need to add protest to their prayers. Let's begin to believe in peace more than violence and roll up our sleeves to do the hard work. You can begin by signing the pastoral letter at http://www.ucc.org/100kforpeace/

What If Hell Didn't Really Exist?

2007-09-10T10:23:00.000-04:00

Carlton Pearson used to be involved with Oral Roberts' ministry and pastored a mega-church of 5000 people. One day he was watching news coverage of a flood and questioned God on why these poor souls should be going to hell because they weren't Christian. Our still-speaking God spoke to Pearson to assure him that that wasn't the case.

Now Pearson has written a book, "The Gospel of Inclusion." This is from his website:

Have you ever asked how a loving God could condemn most of His children to eternal torment? Bishop Carlton Pearson did, and his answer will change everything you ever thought you knew about God, eternity and God’s plan for humankind.

In The Gospel of Inclusion, Bishop Pearson courageously explores the exclusionary doctrines of mainstream religion and concludes that according to the evidence of the Bible and irrefutable logic, they cannot be true. Instead, he offers us the Gospel of Inclusion—the simple, stunning truth that everyone has already been saved by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

In this astonishing book, Pearson argues that the controlling dogmas of religion are the source of much of the world’s ills, and that we should turn our backs on proselytizing and holy wars and focus on the real Good News: that all of humanity is indeed loved by the Divine!

I look forward to reading this book and potentially welcoming Rev. Pearson as a UCC colleague since he is seeking standing in the United Church of Christ, where we believe we are called to a radical hospitality that includes all.

Preaching Up a Storm

2007-09-03T13:30:00.001-04:00

Recently, Senator Barack Obama preached up a storm of controversy preaching about a storm from a church pulpit in New Orleans. Part of the attack can be dismissed as a disingenuous double standard from Republicans who have not objected in the past when members of their party followed the campaign trail to churches on Sunday mornings. But another part of the attack was theological. Some Evangelicals objected to Obama's use of Jesus' metaphor of building a house on a rock. They insist that the only genuine understanding of the rock is to see it as Jesus himself and/or his teachings. Obama used this image to imply that the government's response to Katrina provided a foundation of sand, not rock. He told the congregation that their response following the storm of taking in those who lost homes was the true rock.

Two years ago, President Bush used a different biblical image to offer hope to the Gulf Coast. He spoke of how God once provided an ark to save people from a flood and that God never leaves anyone totally abandoned. He conveniently neglected the part of the story that the flood came as God's judgment of the people, but there was no similar outcry at that time about his incomplete use of scripture.

Faith and scripture should be employed in the service of inspiring hope. Both of these politicians did just that. Obama told the church, the Body of Christ, that by doing Christ's work they were building a foundation of rock. Bush told the suffering that God was their last refuge, their best hope. Appeals like these to Christian charity are a much better use of religious language than, for example, the divisive, even sometimes hateful, campaign to deny equal marriage rights to homosexuals.

Two years ago, standing in a deserted New Orleans addressing the people of America, Bush had the opportunity to appeal to the demands of faith to rise up and meet the need. He didn't ask us to roll up our sleeves, instead promising government assistance. Now we see that he failed to deliver on his promises. Obama has yet to be tested on this issue and may likewise fail to deliver, but at least he understands that the power of faith lies in the action that accompanies it.

Mixing religion and politics must only be done with great care. It is much too easy to fall into the self-serving justification of “God is on our side.” Religious language also has the power to become code to indicate who is in and who is out. But throwing faith out of the public square would silence the prophetic voice that speaks truth to power. As a person of faith, I am compelled not just to care about, but to work for the common good. As a religious leader, I call on all people of faith to join their voices in public debate and not just “talk the talk” but also “walk the walk.”

Grace in Texas

2007-08-30T13:30:00.000-04:00

Texas Governor Rick Perry has heard the voice of the people (and I would suggest the voice of God) and has avoided what would have been a huge injustice by commuting the sentence of Kenneth Foster from death to life imprisonment.

In what was nearly a literal "eleventh hour" reprieve, Perry granted life to Foster on the day he was scheduled to be Texas' 403 execution since 1982. Foster had been tried jointly with the man who actually pulled the trigger in this murder. Foster's only crime was driving the car. The murder was not premeditated, rather it occurred after an altercation arose. The victim was shot approximately 80 feet away from the car. Since the convicted murderer has already been executed, this would have been a miscarriage of even "an eye for an eye" justice by taking two lives for one.

You can read more about Kenneth Foster (who will obviously remain an activist while in prison) here and you can see the Governor's statement here

What's Your Score?

2007-08-29T13:19:00.000-04:00

I found this interesting site that gives you a score of your personal political view and then rates candidates against your responses. It is important to click on the question for some of them since it opens a separate page that helps to explain how the answers are scored. Here is the link

When you finish the questions you can change category (e.g. unannounced/withdrawn candidates, senators, etc.) and hit "score the quiz" again and the other lists will come up without having to take the quiz again.

You can also look at where you rank on a 4-sided array: left-liberal, libertarian, populist, right-conservative (and the middle section of moderate). There is a link that opens a page explaining the scale with a nice chart. By way of a brief explanation, a perfect hard-core liberal score would be 100% personal and 0% economic (see the site for explanation of the categories). Hard-core conservative would be the exact opposite 0% personal, 100% economic. Libertarian is 0/0 and populist is 100/100. Get the picture?

It came as no surprise to me that I was nearly "off the chart." The only thing that kept me from a perfect hard-core liberal score was my soft position on choice. I scored a 98/0. Apparently my support of "fair trade" over anti-globalization (which is also the position for "buy American") didn't affect the economic score. Granted, some of the issues are too complicated to fit neatly into this model leaving no room for nuance. For instance, I was unable to find a comfortable position on UN troops in Iraq being conflicted between my pacifist and multi-lateral views.

I was a bit surprised for by the way my views aligned with the candidates'. Kucinich topped my list with 90% agreement. I was then surprised by the second choice being Dodd at 75%. The next three in order were Clinton (73%), Obama (68%) and Edwards (63%). Of course, beyond the issues there are personal characteristics, assessment of an individual's ability to lead and inspire, integrity, believability, etc. that factor into a final decision. Not to mention that me as a registered member of the Green Party I won't be involved in choosing any of these candidates in the primaries (and I didn't have the option of testing my views against a Green, but it would clearly be equal to or greater than Kucinich).

The drop in percentage between the most conservative Democrat and the most liberal Republican was about 25% for me. On social issues, there were 4 Republicans whose match with my views was 0%, an absolute disagreement on all issues! They were Romney, Tancredo, Hunter and Gilmore. Brownback was my only 0% on the economic scale. He and Hunter were tied at 3% overall as my worst matches. I also checked my top ten best and worst matches of incumbent senators. Barbara Boxer topped my list and there were a full 8 Republican senators who got zeroes from me.

Among unannounced candidates no one would beat Kucinich, but Al Sharpton at 80% would move into second. And for today's quiz try naming the one unannounced potential candidates who would be an absolute 0 on my scale.

Questioning Your World

2007-08-28T16:45:00.000-04:00

I am now writing a weekly column called Questioning Your World in the Tantasqua Town Common. The paper is delivered free to every home in Brimfield, Brookfield, Sturbridge, Wales and Holland. If you go to their site you can read the entire paper, but it is in pdf format, so it is a big download. I'm posting all my columns here at Cross Left (you can get an early read of tomorrow's column there today).

The Skeptic's Way

2007-08-18T01:23:00.000-04:00

There has been a rise in what is being called "the new atheism." Two leaders in this movement (if that indeed is what it is) are Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. While some Christians decry this trend, I contend that we have brought it on ourselves. Far too much of religious practice is superstition or faith claims that assault reason. Let's take a look at each of these.

Superstitious religious practices are those that claim a quid pro quo relationship with the divine. This may be seen in practices like burying a St. Joseph statue in the yard of a house you want to sell or simply showing up in church on Christmas and Easter to "cover your bases." Whether it is charismatic theology demanding the gift of tongues or health and wealth "name-it-and-claim-it" theology, we are practicing sorcery when we claim to so manipulate God. This creates a god who is either petty or weak. It is definitely creating gods in our own images and thus the atheists can easily dismiss this type of religion.

Fundamentalists of various stripes make truth claims that don't hold up to reason. The obvious current example is creationism (even disguised as intelligent design). This is a religious tenet when presented as young earth thinking or simply a philosophy when it doesn't rely on Biblical assertions. In either case it is not bad science, it is simply not science. That's ok as long as it doesn't pretend to be science, but sadly it does. Since the atheists are touting reason and the scientific method there is no room for discussion here.

Perhaps the greatest fuel for the fire of the current tendency to reject God is the way that so many religious folks claim exclusivity based on what they perceive to be ultimate reality revealed through a very particular tradition. These sorts of claims are not limited to fundamentalists. In Christianity, it is not only the Evangelicals and Orthodox believers who make this claim, but most of mainline Protestantism and nearly all of Catholicism claims that Jesus is the sole provider of salvation. Consider how this appears to the objective viewer. This claim of exclusivity has been at the heart of all the religious bloodshed throughout history. This is the reason that churches and individual believers have been able to act in ways completely counter to the teachings of the traditions they teach. This is handing the loaded gun to our detractors while it is still smoking from shooting ourselves in the foot!

So what would I say to the new atheists? Glad you asked ;-) My first challenge to them would be to prove what they claim, i.e. that there is no God. I'll concede that I cannot prove the existence of God, that is something that I take on faith for very personal reasons. But, there is also no proof that God doesn't exist and so that can only leave us all with some form of agnosticism, which literally means a lack of knowledge. I don't know that God exists, but I choose to believe that God does. The atheists likewise don't know, but they choose to believe that God doesn't exist. In either case we are agnostics with biases, some of us toward God and others away.

My next statement to the atheists would be to assure them that I also don't believe in the god they don't believe in. My journey of faith has taken me away from that place where I accepted that ultimate and objective truth had been handed down to me through the Bible. I now realize that that belief was simply a choice to believe what others taught. I now choose to believe that the Bible is a human document that charts our striving toward God, not God's vehicle to dictate doctrine to us. It is in this journeying, seeking, not knowing, but choosing to believe that I think I may share some common ground with the new atheists.

The new atheists are skeptics, testing hypotheses by employing the scientific method. If something doesn't stand the scrutiny of skeptical thought then it must be rejected and replaced with something that does. Frankly, I can embrace this methodology for my spiritual pilgrimage. I don't have a need for answers. I realize that ultimate truth is something that my finite mind is not capable of grasping completely. So instead I choose to look for truth in the present moment, appropriating it to where I am at this point, not trying to lay claim to the totality of the picture. So I am not afraid to ask tough questions, if God can't handle my questions, then God isn't God! My faith journey thus resembles a scientific inquiry. I form a hypothesis, such as God is love, and then I test it. In the course of this questioning I discover evidence to support the hypothesis and incorporate what I learn to deepen my faith, thus guiding me to further questioning.

Truth be told, I'm pretty certain that most religious people are this sort of seeker most of the time. It's just that we have bought the methodology of the catechism and subject ourselves to the tyranny of answers instead of the liberation of questions. We find it easier to retreat to dogma and fight to maintain integrity and purity of orthodox declarations. This is what fires up the rationalists to debunk what they see as destructive religion. And in this case they are right.

The problem I have with the atheists is that they don't have room in their thinking for something that can't be proven but might still be worth believing. I choose to believe that God exists because that is how I make meaning and learn to live a life that values the other. Atheists find other ways to do the same thing. I think there is something important to be learned from each other if we can stop sniping at each other long enough to listen.

A Sign of Hope

2007-07-21T18:03:00.000-04:00

A pro-life Democrat, Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, and a pro-choice Democrat, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, have co-sponsored legislation designed to reduce abortions that is moving ahead in the House of Representatives. This is so much more encouraging than the typical polarizing rhetoric that keeps the two sides each on the high ground sniping at each other.

This is from Rep. Ryan's web site:

February 16, 2007: Ryan and DeLauro Reintroduce Bill to Reduce Abortions

26 Democrats Join Effort to Prevent Unintended Pregnancies, Support Pregnant Women, and Assist New Parents.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - . Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), a member of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a member of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus announced today that they have reintroduced common ground legislation to reduce the number of abortions in America. The Reducing the Need for Abortions and Supporting Parents Act (HR 1074) would create programs to prevent teen pregnancy, expand Medicaid eligibility for family planning services, combat sexual assault and expand adoption programs.

You can read the entire press release here

How amazing are these two quotes? First Rep. Delauro:

“By funding this initiative, we are offering policy solutions that promote life and support parents beyond the birth of their new child. We are affirming the need to prevent unintended pregnancies and to help women with the economic pressures that may lead them to choosing an abortion,” said DeLauro. “And of all the important goals this initiative can help us reach, perhaps the most important is that it helps move us all forward on this issue – beyond the question of the legality of abortion and toward actually reducing the need for abortion and providing critical investments for families.”

And now Rep. Ryan:

“It is our moral obligation to address those issues with which all sides agree. Whether you are pro-life like me or pro-choice like my friend Congresswoman DeLauro, the common ground we must build upon is our serious desire to reduce the rate of abortions,” said Congressman Tim Ryan. “This package accomplishes that goal by increasing or creating funding streams for programs that have been shown to reduce both unintended pregnancies and abortions. I also want to thank Chairman Obey for his longstanding leadership on this important issue and his willingness to work with myself and Congresswoman DeLauro.”

You can read the full press release at Rep. DeLauro's site here

And the good news is that this passed the House as part of other funding this week. This is the sort of culture war dovishness that this blog exists to support!

And finally, though some may write it off as nothing more than saying the right thing on the campaign trail, watch this video of Hilary Clinton's response to a question about abortions (at the recent forum hosted by Sojourners) and see if you don't find some small comfort in her use of the words "common ground."

And a Child Shall Lead Them!

2007-07-13T08:49:00.001-04:00

Well, I may have settled on my candidate for President early in this election cycle. Susie Flynn seems like a perfect candidate for America today. She is straightforward and simple in her message, any nation that can find money to wage a war can find money to provide health insurance to all its children! Let the corporations commence to whine (along with the politicians they have purchased), I'll take the truth of simple logic.

Here are the facts (provided by the Children's Defense Fund:

More than nine million children in the United States—one in nine—have no health insurance coverage.
Every 46 seconds, another baby is born uninsured.
It costs less to provide health insurance coverage to children than to any other group of people.
The majority of uninsured children live in two-parent households and almost 90 percent live in families where at least one parent works.
Increases in private health insurance costs are dramatically outpacing increases in wages.
Ensuring that children have timely, affordable access to health care is a smart economic move. For instance, enrolling uninsured children in health coverage significantly reduces hospitalizations for preventable illnesses.
Uninsured children are more than five times as likely as insured children to have gone more than two years without a doctor visit.
What the United States spends on health care per person is more than twice the average spent in industrialized countries, yet we rank near the bottom among those nations in infant mortality rates.
Existing health care programs for low-income children vary widely, with different standards for eligibility, cost sharing, and benefits in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Americans over 65 have access to health coverage under the Medicare program regardless of income, but children have no such guarantee, leaving millions of needy children without timely access to critical health and mental health services.

Oh, but Susie isn't old enough to run for President you say? Where does it say that? In the constitution that also guarantees the right of habeas corpus to all? Which is more important, that when a person is held by the government that he or she is charged with a crime and given a fair trial by a jury of peers, or that the president be at least 35 years old? Susie, and all the children, get my vote.

And this is just a start. Our health care delivery system is and will remain immoral as long as profit enters into it. It is time for a change...vote Susie!

More God, Less Name-calling

2007-06-27T16:27:00.000-04:00

While on dinner break at the UCC General Synod yesterday I happened to see Ann Coulter on Hardball with Chris Matthews. During the questions from the crowd, an Obama supporter asked her how she can call this church-going man "godless." You can see the question and answer here (at the end of the segment). She somewhat dodges the question by discounting Trinity Church UCC in Chicago (Barack's church) by stating the pastor supports Qaddafi and says that we deserved 9/11. Actually, she says that the church is sort of crazy. I've yet to find a reference for making that assertion. And even if (a big if) that might have some validity, it remains a smokescreen to the issue of Obama's faith practice. Indeed, the young man is right to call her on her ability to call a fellow believer "godless" (as one could infer from her book about liberalism, even if she hasn't said so directly...indeed, here was her opportunity to set the record straight if she didn't intend the slur).

And it seems like she is incapable of stopping herself from mud-slinging. Prior to her appearance on Hardball, she was on the June 25 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, where she said, "I do think anyone named B. Hussein Obama should avoid using 'hijack' and 'religion' in the same sentence." She was apparently referring to Obama's remark in Saturday's speech to the UCC General Synod that "somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked."

When this passes for informed public discourse on the issues of the day then we should not be surprised that we are so polarized. Ms. Coulter has a habit of saying nasty things about people. For that Chuck Currie, on his blog, calls her a sinner. Indeed she is (as are we all), but she is surely not godless. Neither is she the "worst person in the world" as Keith Olberman called her.

There is certainly room for differences of opinion in America, as surely as there is the same room with Christianity. Why must some among us so consistently claim that this is not so? Name-calling quickly shuts down any chance of dialogue. I'll concede that it is difficult to accept that a person whose beliefs are radically different from mine might still be part of the same family of faith with me, but I try always to be willing to start with that assumption until proven otherwise. In this way we can sometimes find acceptable common ground solutions to move us forward. Cutting the other off at the knees only creates a shortcut to a guaranteed impasse...and should lead me to my knees in confession. I pray that Ann Coulter will do just that. How about instead of more "godless" name-calling, seek more God, less name-calling?

Last Day of General Synod

2007-06-26T19:13:00.001-04:00

Today was a day busy with business at Synod. Much of today's time was spent taking action on resolutions. The first two resolutions addressed both concerned the resolution passed at General Synod two years ago in Atlanta supporting equal marriage rights for all. According to the standing rules for this gathering, resolutions of witness such as these require a 2/3 majority vote. So, even though it might appear that the Synod was weak-willed on these resolutions by voting “no action,” there are two important points to make. First of all, the votes were overwhelming (as they needed to be) and the reason given by the committee for taking “no action” in lieu of simply voting to defeat the resolutions was that this was one way of recognizing the divisive nature of this issue within our denomination. I must agree that since the committee (representing 10% of the delegates) reported that the opinion of the committee members was nearly unanimous in opposition, it would do little good to bring about a vote that might re-open wounds and end in no change of position. This is a good model of the church at work.

Another moving moment occurred when actress Lynn Redgrave shared the story of her struggle with breast cancer, accompanied by a powerful collection of photos taken by her daughter. At the heart of her tale was the fact that she had not been a regular church-goer, but after her mastectomy she heard that there was a female minister at a church in her town, so she went because she thought a woman might be more understanding. On her first Sunday there she heard words that were familiar and prayers for others who were likewise suffering and it put her suffering in perspective, and as she put it, she “lost her innocence.” It was stirring and assuring to hear someone speaking of finding care and comfort in the local church. This is where “the rubber hits the road” in church growth.

In the afternoon, a pastor of a church who three weeks ago took a vote considering leaving the UCC spoke to the body telling us that he encouraged his church to remain in the denomination because as he put it, “they need us for theological diversity.” He told us that a later speaker said, “sure, they need us but they don't want us.” He then assured us that his experience at General Synod has been one of extravagant welcome and thus supported the resolution on Reaffirming Our Commitment to Observing Covenant (or something like that...it was renamed from Reaffirming Our Faith to Retain Our Churches). It was nearly unanimously passed, certainly reaffirming our commitment to seek unity in diversity.

A resolution stating concern about the nation's immigration policies was passed after a small amount of debate. A resolution calling for a study of the issue of the legalization of physician aid in dying was passed on a split vote (2/3 was required) after some amendments and much debate. A resolution calling for solidarity with the persecuted in the Philippines, where disappearances and death squads are serious problems, was passed after a minor debate about language. The final resolution was in opposition to the use of depleted uranium in weapons and passed easily.

Typical of church business, a large amount of time was devoted to an issue involving a simple issue of the allocation of money. On a close vote, the body decided to allocate money from the Strengthen the Church offering to support the Still Speaking Initiative. The beauty of the process was shown in the fact that after the vote count was announced, the moderator's request that there be no applause was honored and a prayer was offered instead.

While there is a tad bit of business left that will push the beginning of evening worship back some, all that remains is closing worship in which we will be challenged and anointed to service.

Monday at General Synod

2007-06-25T19:18:00.000-04:00

This afternoon in the plenary session of the General Synod, a resolution calling on us as churches of the UCC to address global warming was nearly unanimously passed. An interesting (at least to this vegetarian) was an effort to insert a call to encourage a movement toward a plant-based diet since, according to the one making the suggestion, animal agricultural efforts contribute 18% of greenhouse gases world-wide. The amendment was out of order for parliamentary reasons, so the will of the body was never determined.

During her candidate's speech , Edith Guffey (Associate General Minister) mentioned something that struck a chord with me. She pointed out that most members of the UCC don't know who the denominational officers are. This came home to me yesterday when one church member asked about who the people were that we pray for during our communion prayers and another, who attended the worship at Synod yesterday, said, “So THAT is John Thomas.” So whether you've met them or not, our leaders are busy serving the church and I can assure you that they appreciate our prayers.

Marian Wright Edelman, director of the Children's Defense Fund, continued the practice of delivering exceptionally inspirational keynote addresses at General Synod. She delivered an impassioned plea to work to make sure that Congress provide health care coverage for 9 million uninsured children in America. She pointed out that Congress voted to go to war in Iraq without first coming up with the money to so, and isn't providing health care to children more important? She ended with a prayer that included “Dear God, let us not confuse what is perfectly legal with what is right and just in your eyes. Amen.”

Ken Medema, an extremely talented musician, was charged with responding in song. He improvised a beautiful song incorporating words from the person who introduced her, “sometimes you have to stand up when you just want to sit down.” So he sang to Marian that we would all stand up and not sit down until the job is done. While he was singing, one by one people in the audience stood up. By the end of the song we were all standing, many wiping tears away. Marian was among the tearful as she ran back onto the stage to embrace Ken in thanks.

Filled with the inspiration of that moment I left the building to join in a march around the block in protest of the war. As I turned one corner I encountered our Associate Conference Minister, Peter Wells, standing on a wall staring down the marchers. He shouted “what do you want for your children?” Indeed, we all want peace.

General Synod

2007-06-24T00:02:00.000-04:00

Busy days are in order because the United Church of Christ is celebrating its 50th birthday at its annual meeting in Hartford and I've been attending. Today was day 2 of 5.

Today's buzz was all about Senator Obama. Unfortunately, like Barack's own pastor, I had to miss his speech since I was elsewhere officiating a wedding. It was very lovely and through the wonders of the Internet I don't have to miss the speech...and neither do you. You can view it here or you can read the text here

The part of the day that I did attend that was incredibly inspiring was the address by Bill Moyers. In addition to his credentials as a first-rate journalist with impeccable integrity, he also has earned a Masters of Divinity and that showed in his talk this morning. He reminded us that Jesus saw the corruption in the temple and "threw the rascals out." He called on us to do the same with the corrupt leaders in our goverment for the sake of preserving democracy. You can read more about his talk by following the link in the UCC headlines section that has been newly added to our church web site at www.brimfieldfcc.org.

I also attended a stimulating talk about on-line social networking and the implications for the way our youth are learning to socialize. It is a little hard to unpack that in this email, but I am very interested in this topic and will try to involve our youth more in this area. One interesting development is that there is now a UCC church under construction in Second Life. If that means nothing to you, don't fret, but if you already know about Second Life, check out the island of Xenia and look for Sophianne Rhode.

Tonight the birthday party for the denomination included a tribute to the inventor of the laser, who is a member of a UCC congregation. He spoke to us about the compatibility and similarity of religion and science. We also got to see a flashy demonstration of his invention. Here is some video:

I need to do a lot of digesting and review my notes to be able to post some responses. Tomorrow is a time for a huge worship service, I can't wait!

Read a daily digest of the activities at General Synod here and check out the headlines section of that page for more stories.

It Takes Two to Gospel

2007-03-31T21:44:00.000-04:00

Therefore, sisters and brothers, since the blood of Jesus makes us confident to enter the holy place by the new and living path opened for us through the veil--that is to say, the body of Jesus--and since we have the supreme high priest presiding over the house of God, let us enter it filled with faith and with sincerity in our hearts, our hearts sprinkled and cleared from any trace of bad conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us keep firm in the hope we profess, because the One who made the promise is faithful. - Hebrews 10:19-25

In a recent meditation by Martin Copenhaver, he wrote:

In other religions one’s encounter with God can be an individual matter.

Not so with Christianity. God created Christian community for the same reason that God created Eve: it is not right that we should be alone.

He wisely observed that the writer of Hebrews used plural pronouns. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that most of the instructions in the New Testament epistles are given to the group of believers, not individual believers. Beyond that, when the instructions are given to individuals they are generally about how to relate to others. Ours is a relational faith.

I also believe that our best faith practices are from internal to external. I think that we need always to be seekers; seeking better to know and be known by God. It is in self-awareness that we can come to spiritual growth. And that growth will necessarily make us stand out in the world, which is why we need to be in the company of like-minded seekers. Collectively we can make an impact on changing the world, saving it if you will.

When our faith practices are dictated by externally imposed directives they are weak against outside challenges. For instance, if a literal interpretation of scripture argues against the earth circling the sun (i.e. God made the sun stop moving in the sky for Joshua and the Hebrews) then Copernican theory becomes a challenge to true faith. On the other hand, if faith practices move the opposite direction, then when external forces push upon it internal faith finds a way to respond without a need to dominate the other. The strength found via internal spiritual practice can never be taken from the practitioner.

The risk inherent in internal spirituality is that it can be groundless, wandering in the ways of unchecked egoism. Thus I come back to my original point, we can't walk this path alone. Internal spirituality should drive us to find our place in the body of Christ, realizing that each of us is incomplete on our own. Ultimately, as someone once observed, it takes two to gospel.

Armed and Dangerous

2007-02-23T22:02:00.000-05:00

Many people are surprised to learn that Tai Chi is a martial art form.The gentle, wave-like motion of the gestures doesn’t appear aggressive.Indeed, they are not aggressive in the manner to which we are accustomed.We typically think of fighters as trying to find an opening to attack.Tai Chi is more of a defensive style.A Tai Chi master would be unlikely the one to begin a fight.Tai Chi is about protection of one’s space, maintaining balance throughout every gesture, and utilizing the power that comes from having all the parts of your body working together in a concerted effort to focus the force of the movement.

Unfortunately, many people today are unsurprised to hear Christianity described in terms of warfare.Much of the most vocal and celebrated portion of American Christendom focuses on alleged attacks from the secular world.There is an aggressiveness about much of this that I find troubling.I don’t think that we are called to be milquetoast Christians, we have a responsibility to spread the gospel, and it is a troubling message at times.The good news of the Bible is good only insofar as you find yourself in need of salvation.We all are sinners and thus require salvation, but the accompanying message of repentance requires behavioral change.The gospel message accomplishes H. L. Mencken’s maxim for journalists: it comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. So in the culture wars, I hope that we are messengers with an offensive message, not offensive messengers.

Do people see you as armed and dangerous? Are you grounded in the traditions and teachings of the faith? Can you deliver words of challenge and words of hope that come from the scripture? It is not necessary to memorize verses to deliver the good/offensive word. It is, however, necessary to know the word of God internally. If you arm yourself with the spiritual practices of prayer, scripture reading and worship you will be prepared to be dangerous for God when the opportunity comes to share the gospel.

In fact, if you truly internalize your spiritual discipline it will become something akin to a martial art. You will be in control of the power it gives you. You will realize that the power is actually external to you and flows through you. We speak of the Holy Spirit in a similar way that martial art masters speak of chi, the life force. If you have studied a martial art perhaps you have already made this connection. The greatest martial artists are those who control themselves, not needing to prove anything by fighting. If only we could similarly master the spiritual power available to us. Perhaps then we could work with all members of the human family to change the world for the better instead of choosing sides and battling in a culture war.

I'm Not Listening!

2007-02-13T23:10:00.000-05:00

There is no doubt that words are vitally important. Even though the media's obsession with the minute detail of individual words plays a major role in making the presidential campaign season feel even longer than it already painfully is. Already we have the press raptors soaring around Hillary waiting for her to slip and actually admit that her senate vote to initiate the Iraq war may have been wrong. Obama is learning quickly about the tricky nature of trying to support troops in a war he opposes (a lesson I learned with less significant consequence in this post on Think Worm).

Now the congress is in the midst of debating a 97-word non-binding resolution about the Iraq war. Even with it's brevity, pains were taken to express support for the work of the soldiers before calling for an end of that effort. I think that the resolution is a bit like having one's cake and eating it too, but at least it is an opportunity for every single representative to have his or her "hour in the shower" or at least five minutes at the microphone. With the obsession over words and the minutia of meaning, one would think that all the politicians would at least feign interest in hearing what comes of this debate. I wish that they were leading up to a vote on something that had some teeth, but I still think that the words at least tell us something about where the debate stands and where it might go. In other words, for better or for worse it is a start.

That is why I'm so disturbed and perturbed by the president's comments about this debate. He said

"I've got a lot to do, I'm not sure exactly what hours they'll be debating, but I've got a pretty full day tomorrow. I mean, it's not as if the world stops when the Congress does their duty."
"I already know what the debate is. I hear a lot of opinions, and a lot of people don't believe we can succeed in Iraq and therefore, I presume, want to get out."

Mr. President, an important part of your job is listening. The work of democracy fails when voices are ignored. Your not listening will not silence the voices, but your more than dismissive, indeed it is condescending, attitude forces the political debate to get more agitated, the volume must be increased. The virtue of patience I can applaud, but this seems a lot closer to stubbornness.

Non-binding resolutions may seem to be worth less than the paper they are written on, but they are at least a record of opinion. With any grace, it can also be the beginning of meaningful political dialogue that will lead to change. So Mr. President, please take your fingers out of your ears...

UPDATE
Here are the words of Obama, first from the speech:

"We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged -- and to which we now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted."

And then the follow-up explanation:

"I was actually upset with myself. Their sacrifices are never wasted; that was sort of a slip of the tongue as I was speaking. The sacrifices they have made are unbelievable. What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership."

In Obama's words I think I hear what he intends to say and I, for one, don't hear an insult of the troops. If anything, I hear him grieving for the senseless loss of life, compounded by the dedication, loyalty and patriotism of those who died. We can choose to pick apart words to spin for meaning that we want to hear (or more likely just use against the speaker), or we can listen with open minds and try to find where we might be close in thought and where the clear distinctions are.

On a side note, I found these quotes on the blog Engaging Your World. If Pastor Tom still allowed comments on his blog, I would have commented on his flippant, broad-brushed categorization of liberals by using the term "kool-aid drinkers." On top of that, the dangerous logic that the commander-in-chief cannot be questioned during a time of war deserves comment as well. I very well may post on the subject next. You might want to read it for yourself.

What if....?

2007-02-03T23:39:00.000-05:00

(Not the usual fare, but a whimsical meandering through things that matter to me, click the links if you need to have things explained)

What if that last pass by Brady hadn't been intercepted?

What if the Wicked Pishahs had better scouting for the Super Bowl of Birding?

What if Major League Soccer put sponsors on the front of their jerseys?

What if we were so manipulated by our government to be fearful that a guerrilla advertising campaign caused a major panic?

What if the president spun the facts about thwarting terrorist plots (real ones, not guerrilla advertisers) to justify the continuation of the "war on terror"?

What if we gave in to fear and continued to throw obscene amounts of money and unconscionable numbers of human lives at a problem that previously was attacked with intelligence and police action instead of violence and military action?

BUT what if we tried to defeat terrorism by not being controlled by fear?

AND what if we stopped creating martyrs who serve to inspire more terrorists?

AND what if we started to change our behavior that motivated the terrorists in the first place?

AND what if we placed more faith in God than in governments and guns?

What if...?

Feeling Superior

2007-01-22T21:32:00.000-05:00

I just ordered A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren and I expect that when I read it I will find that I agree with some of what he says and disagree with other parts. Why would it be otherwise? The only person on earth with whom I agree 100% is me! But since I don't live alone on this planet I need to find ways to get along with others. I know that some of the readers of this blog will be inclined to dismiss McLaren out of hand because he is part of the Emergent Church. Oops, there I go making mistake number one...assuming. So maybe none of you have a problem with the Emergent Church. And maybe if you do, you have something to share of value. No, wait, it's not maybe, it's definitely. Dialogue is the key and it starts in a simple belief; I (and my group) are not superior to anyone else (or anyone else's group).

What's all this have to do with McLaren? It is the topic of a really wonderful blog entry posted here. I'm moved to try even harder to be a better neighbor, how about you?

The Power of ONE

2007-01-14T07:10:00.000-05:00

This morning I'm preaching on Isaiah 58. I'm doing a series on chapters 58 through 62 featuring the metaphors about light. It is a powerful read if you think about America today receiving the prophet's warning.

Today we will hear the words:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

And if we heed the message, then what?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

There is good news in "right worship" (the literal meaning of orthodox). I believe there is also hope in individual action. The promise of "your light" breaking forth is not plural in the Hebrew, the promise is that your personal light will shine. Jesus would remind us not to put it under a bushel!

I'm moved by the wisdom of the ONE Campaign. Check it out here They are putting forth a belief in the power of ONE. Here is a part of the pledge they encourage each of us to take:

We believe we can beat AIDS, starvation and extreme poverty.

We recognize ONE billion people live on less than ONE dollar a day.

We commit ourselves - one person, one voice, one vote at a time - to a make better, safer world for all.

The power of ONE is the power of ONE person who believes that all the people of the world are ONE and that together as ONE we can build a better tomorrow. In this philosophy I hear the wisdom of the theology I proclaim that we are all ONE body with many parts, living our lives to the glory of the ONE God.

Human Sacrifice

2007-01-10T22:32:00.000-05:00

Sadly, the commander-in-chief tonight called for more blood to be spilled on Iraqi soil in what he considers the defining ideological struggle of our time. He wants to fight fire with fire. He wants an eye for an eye. There is no doubt that he is on a crusade. He knows in his gut that crusaders can never retreat for there is no option other than completely conquering the enemy in order to suppress that ideology. He feels he is valiant in preserving freedom, protecting his tribe and spreading his unquestioned ideology.

What I heard in his speech tonight is that the bloody times that lie ahead are necessary and inevitable. I heard that innocents abroad will pay the price for domestic tranquility. I heard that this Christian president trusts only the power of the sword and not the power of the word, trusts only the power of human might, not the power of an almighty God of love. He shot across the bows of Syria and Iran, surely the place where the armies will march next if they can ever extract themselves from the violent quagmire of Iraq.

Mr. Bush, as your father would say, read my lips: violence only begets violence. If you insist on surging American power throughout the world at the end of a rifle you will increase the hostility toward our people. And those who suffer and then choose vengeance will have a legitimate claim for an American pound of flesh in the ideological battle of vengeance. And that, sir, is the problem with your version of this defining ideological battle, you have chosen to oppose the ideology of terrorism using their own weapons. If you want the author of freedom to empower you, then choose freedom as your tool. Offer to the world's hurting people succor from the great storehouse of American goodwill. Offer to the world the balm of humanitarian relief. Offer to the world the one gift that you can issue with the stroke of a pen, the end of hostilities.

Am I suggesting that we cut and run? Absolutely! Warfare has no winners, everyone loses. Even tonight you told us that we won't see victories like our fathers and grandfathers saw. Let us today accept the reality that things have gone horribly wrong in this conflict and more of the same will only bring more horrible wrongness. Moloch has drunk too deeply already of the human sacrifice you have authorized. I pray there is a way to stop the tremendous mistake you have called for tonight.

Damascus Road

2007-01-07T23:27:00.000-05:00

President Bush has said that he intends to address his plans for the war in Iraq this coming week. It appears to be a poorly kept secret that the "new way" will involve sending 20,000 troops in what is being called a surge (meaning that it will only be temporary). Apparently some of these troops will come from those currently serving in Afghanistan, further destabilizing that volatile situation.

If all of this proves to be true it will be a sad state of affairs as the most powerful nation on the planet escalates a war in a place that has suffered greatly and poses no threat while increasing the chances of a hostile force, the Taliban, returning to power. I pray that this will not be the case.

Being a person of faith and an optimist by nature I see one glimmer of hope. Before Paul became an apostle of Christ, he was Saul, dedicated persecutor of Christ's followers. He had a sudden change, in a literal flash, on the road to Damascus. I know that George W. Bush is capable of a similar 180 degree turn because he has done that at least once in his lifetime. That critical moment for him was the time he decided that he was powerless over his addiction and turned his life around with the help of God. The thousands of American dead and the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead are victims of our nation's addiction to warfare. As Commander-in-chief, President Bush has the responsibility and authority to take the first step by admitting the mistake and making the new way in Iraq the way out of Iraq. It is a vulnerable, risky step, but a necessary one. It is also a valiant act of faith. May we all trust God enough to be our strength that we no longer need to trust in our weapons, remembering that the first step requires that we trust in a Higher Power to return us to sanity.

Evangelical Zeal

2007-01-06T22:12:00.000-05:00

One surprising result of engaging in dialogue in the culture wars has been my shift in how I express my passion. In the past, I would regularly enter into a debate prepared to shout down the opposition. If not that extreme, at least I would not consider the other side to have anything worth offering. There is nothing so unusual about that, since that is the predominant model of debate in society today.

But I started this blog with the express intent of trying to change that for me and hoped that it might be an example for others. This process has forced me to find ways to express my passion without putting others down. Sometimes that is not so easy. At the end of the day I want the world to know where I stand and I want to say it in a way that is persuasive. I'm not naive enough to believe that everyone will agree with everything I say, but I do hope that at least some of what I preach will influence others.

One of the recent areas of dialogue has been around the area of absolute truth. I must say that I don't like some of what attends to preaching absolute truth since it can draw clear lines that exclude and if one of those absolutes is that God is love then how does exclusion fit with that? But the passion of spreading good news of truth that is bigger than us is a gift that Evangelicals have recently given me. Granted, the message I have passion for is markedly different that the one they preach, but I'm glad to name the common ground.

On Christmas Eve I felt the urge to touch hearts and squeeze guts just a little. This was the result. It was good to share a message with zeal, something I can thank those with whom I disagree for reminding me of.

Mystery

2006-12-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

I shouldn't be surprised to find agreement with a Franciscan priest, since St. Francis has long inspired me. Nor should I be surprised that an appeal to faith in mystery would express quite well something that I also believe.

NPR has been airing weekly essays in a series called This I Believe. Today's was another gem. It was called Utterly Humbled by Mystery by Richard Rohr. You can read the entire transcript and/or listen to the essay here I was struck by this quote, "We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.” Think about that for a minute; the contrast between the certitude of resolution (even about theological issues) and the nature of faith.

Father Rohr ends his essays with this profound paragraph:

People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It's the people who don't know who usually pretend that they do. People who've had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don't know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind. It is a litmus test for authentic God experience, and is -- quite sadly -- absent from much of our religious conversation today. My belief and comfort is in the depths of Mystery, which should be the very task of religion.

Musicians, storytellers, and artists of all types understand the value of mystery, it is their stock-in-trade. I also believe that the best preachers know this as well. As we try to prepare ourselves once again to peer into the lowly, dirty, cold and smelly stable to see if there really is a baby in that manger, may we all value mystery.

ADDENDUM: I discovered that Father Rohr is a Red Letter Christian when I visited Jim Wallis' God's Politics blog. Yet more reason to explain the kinship I felt with him. I also checked out his organization, Center for Action and Contemplation, a place I will definitely visit when I get to Albuquerque. Here is a wonderful prayer I found on their web site:

A Prayer for Prophets

“I will send them prophets,” the Wisdom of God says, “but you will kill them and afterwards build monuments to them.”

—Jesus according to Luke 11:49 (alternate translations)

God of the Great Gaze,

We humans prefer satisfying un-truth

To the Truth that is usually unsatisfying.

Truth is always too big for us,

And we are so small and afraid.

So you send us prophets and truth speakers

To open our eyes and ears to Your Big Picture.

Show us how to hear them, how to support them,

And how to interpret their wisdom.

Help us to trust that Your prophetic voice

May also be communicated through our words and actions.

May we practice a spirit of discernment

And a stance of humility,

So that Your Truth be spoken, not our own.

We ask this in the name of Jesus the Prophet,

Whom we also killed and will always kill

In the name of our little truths.

We desire to share in Your Great Gaze.

Amen.

A Leg (or four) to Stand On

2006-12-10T22:05:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post I alluded to the Wesleyan quadrilateral as a way to help grasp my understanding of scripture. The four sources Wesley cited for coming to theological conclusions were: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience. I have to admit that I have not been Wesleyan in my theological development, rather that Wesley's quadrilateral has been a tool to help organize my theological thinking more or less "after the fact" (although I'm obviously never done developing my thinking).

After my radical break from a belief in scriptural inerrancy, I had to reintegrate the Bible into my beliefs. I realized that the most important check on my behavior, even when I believed in inerrancy, was the community of faith. By committing myself to walk with fellow Christians as they also struggle to find meaning and apply that to their daily lives that I am more likely to grow spiritually than if I were to lock myself in a room with my Bible. The application of Biblical truth to contemporary situations best happens in a group, not as individuals. If we are to take the Biblical image of the church as the Body of Christ seriously, then we must value all the input of all the members. Why should I expect to be the only person receiving God's revealed truth in scripture? Of course that is absurd. So the covenant community provides a check to any interpretation errors I may make influenced as my thinking will always be by my ego.

So when I learned that experience, both personal and communal, was a piece of the Wesleyan quadrilateral I felt an immediate resonance. I also resonated with the obvious inclusion of reason as a source. Our rational minds are wonderful gifts from God. I cannot imagine that God would expect us to use reason to improve our conditions in every area except in theology. Why should logic be excluded from the realm of the spiritual? In my personal experience, I recognize that the more I learn, the more I realize that I have yet to learn. The more I contemplate reality, the more I appreciate that it is filled with mystery. Reason and faith are not mutually exclusive. Indeed they each mutually enhance the other. But that is likely a topic for another post.

Finally, tradition is used to establish authority by every theological camp that I can think of. Even in the narrow confines of Fundamentalism there is the appeal to "the fundamentals." While the list of things considered to be fundamental is drawn from an interpretation of the Bible, it is not like there is a list to be found in a particular chapter and verse in scripture. No, that list comes as a result of reason being used to interpret the Bible and then passed along by tradition within the communal experience of the church.

The four legs of Wesley's quadrilateral are always at play in the lives of Christians who choose to affiliate with others gathered in churches. The differences between individuals and groups tends to be based on how much weight is placed on each leg. I doubt that any of us distribute the weight equally (certainly not all the time). For me, I'm biased toward the experience leg, specifically on the communal side. I don't throw out the Bible in this process, I just take the time to examine it with a variety of lenses.

Another Dove in the Flock

2006-12-06T00:11:00.000-05:00

I read this blog post from a kindred spirit over at God's Politics. You know this really might be a movement!

Jim Wallis Speaks on Heartland w/ John Kasich

2006-12-05T22:24:00.001-05:00

Nice exposure for Wallis, with the "typical banter" (as Wallis put it). What I want to know is why Kasich thinks that preachers should stay out of politics. Are some voices more legitimate than others? He seems to draw an interesting, somewhat arbitrary line where religion may speak to issues and where it can't.

Homeless Evangelicals

2006-11-29T13:21:00.000-05:00

Here is a story that seems to have been flying under the radar in the blogosphere but really touches on issues raised here at the Culture Dove corner of that world. It seems that the Rev. Dr. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church in Longwood, Florida was elected to head the Christian Coalition, but has since stepped down before taking office. The reason is that he wanted to expand the agenda of that organization. He wanted to address environmental and poverty issues, stating that "These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about." Apparently the board of the Christian Coalition disagreed. Hunter went on to say, "To tell you the truth, I feel like there are literally millions of evangelical Christians that don't have a home right now." Here is the Associated Press story from the Gainsville Sun.

In a more recent story in the New York Times, Hunter, author of Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won’t Fly With Most Conservative Christians, asserts that many evangelical leaders hewed to narrow moral issues because they were “deathly afraid of being labeled a liberal by other Christians, the media, talk radio.” This rift has already caused a split in the states of Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, and Iowa.

I take no joy in seeing "the opposition" splinter. Just the opposite, I am saddened that a move toward some common ground has faltered. There is plenty of room for Christians to find agreement on social issues. Together we could make more progress than by wasting energy bickering over just the issues that divide. It is sadly ironic to consider some Christian looking to find a home during the season when we remember the story of Mary and Joseph struggling to find a place for Jesus to be born. May we all seek to offer Christ a home in our own lives by honoring those things that would concern him if he were to walk the mean streets of America today.

A Map for the Way

2006-11-26T23:14:00.000-05:00

So, what can be done with this complicated human creation, the Bible? Is it inspired? Is it the word of God? I would say “yes” and “yes.” Is it the only way that God has communicated with humanity, or ever will? To these I say “no” and “no.” How do I know these things? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else, we only have our beliefs. Even those who say that the Bible is the only true, complete record of God’s instructions to the human race that is free from any and all errors in relation to any and all doctrines necessary for salvation, only do so out of a belief that that is true. I can’t put that amount of faith into a human creation. The facts that the books of the Bible were written by dozens of people over centuries; that a good portion of the earlier books were first passed on through oral tradition; that original texts are not extant; and that different groups of believers believe that different texts belong and others don’t all lead me to the conclusion that the Bible can’t live up to the extremely high expectations of those who claim it is inerrant. On top of that, there is the circular reasoning of arguing that the scripture is inerrant because it says it is. I could say that this blog is the word of God, filled with true doctrine that is free from error. If someone were to post a comment pointing out reasons not to believe that, all I would need to do is point to the fact that the blog itself stated that it was inerrant to prove the inerrancy of the blog. Doesn’t make too much sense does it?

On the other hand, the fact that the Bible even exists today as an intact, generally agreed upon text considered holy by a vast number of people is reason to believe that it is one of the greatest efforts in all of human history to attempt to speak about the relationship between the human and the divine. This is a grand story telling marvelous truths. Read as a whole, the Bible speaks of a divine plan in which God shows exceptional love to some rather unlovely sorts (i.e. people just like you and me). It also clearly shows that this God chooses underdogs and consistently makes a preferential option for the poor (you can hardly turn a page without reading about caring for the widow, orphan and/or sojourner). Some of the stories are riveting and awe-inspiring; what greater liberation story is there than the Exodus? It is in the details where things fall apart; not so much because of the details themselves but because of our tendency to nit-pick and lord over one another.

Jews have always had a wonderful tradition of struggling with the holy texts. They interpret and re-interpret and listen to each other’s sides, living with the differences in interpretation (this is the Talmudic tradition). Christians have not typically followed suit. We have a long tradition of excommunication (and even executing) heretics. But when we read the Gospels, we see Jesus move away from the law as restrictive, replacing it with the grace to live life abundantly. He calls for the giving of the full measure of our lives. If we are serious in our discipleship, following Jesus as revealed in the scriptures, then we won’t have much time at all for finding specks in the eyes of our brothers and sisters since we will have to pay to much attention to being lumberjacks getting the logs out of our own eyes.

The Bible may be only a human creation, but it is the creation of humans just like you and me, who longed to know God and to be godly in their living. It is a book that I can relate to. It is a book that inspires me to be better than I can imagine being on my own. It is also complicated enough that I am forced to use my God-given rational mind to understand it. It is also challenging enough that I know that I need to be among the gathered faithful to live out the life it calls me to. To follow Jesus is to follow “the way.” I need the Bible as the map, my mind to make choices, the wisdom of those who have gone this way before, and the company of fellow travelers to share the burden of the journey. All the pieces are necessary and the most important one is the one that is missing at the time.

The B-I-B-L-E

2006-11-23T21:59:00.000-05:00

My theological journey has taken me from solid Calvinism and complete Evangelicalism including a belief in the inerrancy of scripture to someplace left of center influenced by Liberation Theology and the Social Gospel. The journey pivots on my relationship to the Bible. I suppose that nearly all Christians define themselves (knowingly or unwittingly) by their relationship to this collection of writings. The Bible is also clearly one of the most critical documents in the current culture wars, so I think it behooves me at the outset of this blog to attempt an explanation of my understanding of this vital document.

I have realized that a sometimes intractable obstacle to right-left dialogue is the often intransigence of the right on their understanding of scripture. I don't want to debate the issue of inerrancy as much as I want to explain my own position and how I got to it. My intent is to demonstrate that many of us who reject the principle of inerrancy still hold the Bible in high regard and use it as a guide for living. The implication for the culture wars is that there may be a number of valid Christian positions in the public square. I don't want to shout down the voices to the right of me, I just want my voice to be heard and validated as genuinely Christian.

Let me start with my reason for rejecting inerrancy. I had found myself "jumping through hoops" in sorting the cultural influences out of scripture (you know, things like seeing Paul not so much as a sexist but a product of his time) when I finally came up against something I couldn't find anyway to excuse within the confines of a belief in the divine authorship of scripture: cherem. For those of you not knowledgeable in Hebrew, that is the word used to describe the style of warfare used in the conquest of the Promised Land. Simply put, the principle is if you win victory over an enemy by your own power you are entitled to the booty (e.g. the land, the cattle, the gold, the people...) BUT if you are outnumbered or out-gunned and you pray to your god for victory and receive it then the booty belongs to the deity. The way that the god claims the spoil was typically through burnt sacrifice. I describe this generically since it was the prevalent form of warfare on all sides during that time. But that means that we read of a number of massacres (at least a half-dozen) in the Bible that are directly ordered by God. There is even a verse that I mercifully can never seem to re-locate that says that YHWH was pleased by the aroma of the burnt human offering.

Now I could have responded by saying "that was then, this is now" but that would fly in the face of the equally biblical principle that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow (actually, there is a good evidence in the biblical story that God does change, but that is clearly not part of Evangelical theology). I found myself faced with a choice between obedience to a bloodthirsty god, a slippery slope of a potentially ever-changing god, or an acceptance of the Bible as a human document in which the victors write the history. I chose the last position as the most viable way to retain the reality of the personal relationship I had with God. That left me with the danger of "throwing out the baby with the bath water." It also meant that I could now read the Bible as our human attempt to understand what we can never fully understand instead of as God attempting to explain the inexplicable to mere mortals. The change in perspective is liberating, frustrating, exciting and frightening all rolled into one.

The good news is that I'm not alone in this journey. Many, many Christians today (as well as in the past) take this approach. In my next blog entry I'll address the way that other elements strengthen my faith and mold my theology. If you want a preview, consider the Wesleyan quadrilateral.

Voting Our Principles

2006-11-14T01:04:00.000-05:00

Here is a fascinating observation from Tom Perriello of Senior Advisor and Co-Founder of the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good.

One of the things people are saying that I think is incorrect is that the Democrats won this election by running a bunch of conservatives and by running a bunch of moderates. If you actually look at who it was that was swinging in this vote, it was actually that there was massive turnout of a lot of people who were motivated by some of the deepest principles of progressive thinking, even in the red states.
What you had was, for example, people like Ted Strickland and Sherrod Brown essentially ran as what one person called “ethical populists.” You had people who were not running to the middle, but actually running to their principles. And what we found with religious voters is that they care much more about right and wrong than about right and left, which means that you can have some centrist candidates who do well, but you can also have some very progressive candidates that, by sticking to their values, they actually gain more than they would by running to the middle. Tim Cain won as governor in Virginia last year, which is my home state, by opposing the death penalty in a pro-death penalty state, because people cared a lot more about him standing for his principles than they cared about the issue.
So, I think when you look at the groups that really helped swing this vote, we’ve got to be -- the Democrats should be very wary of understanding who delivered this. So when they set the agenda for Congress, issues like the minimum wage, issues like healthcare and a new direction for Iraq are going to be key, if they want to lock in and sustain some of the victories they saw this year.

- from Democracy Now on Friday 11/10

No Monopoly on Morality

2006-11-10T01:26:00.000-05:00

I heard a report that polling indicated that 47% of those who voted last Tuesday were self-described moderates (sorry I can't cite the reference with a link but it certainly sounds reasonable). Assuming that is correct, I believe that the important issue in this, or any recent election, is "the vast middle." Clinton was elected because a group of Democrats formed the Democratic Leadership Council and intentionally targeted the center. This frustrated liberals, politically it worked. Clinton remained true to his centrist "leanings" (I suppose that is an oxymoron) and won reelection. Bush and the neocons seemed to have visited the center to get elected and then moved back to the right. They had the war to campaign on for reelection. With the war no longer a selling point it would appear that Rove's mojo has run out.

While we have been shown maps of red states and blue states indicating a divided electorate, I think all the recent elections point to a very balanced electorate. So many elections have been very close so the "swing" voters make the difference. This election it seems that a lot of them swung blue. That is, assuming that one can draw such conclusions. The number of issues influencing voters and the personal characteristics of candidates make deconstructing the mind of the voter nigh impossible if you ask me.

Still, I think that these are days in which we would be wise to listen to one another. If we only view issues through the lens of polarization (would that be a polarized lens? :-) ) then we will miss the point that all of us, left, right and middle, as well as religious and secular, are making ethical decisions when we vote. Jim Wallis (whose father died suddenly this week, please remember him in your prayers if you are so inclined) has said "religion has no monopoly on morality." As a theological conservative with a liberal social agenda, he is in a prime position to speak to the current political climate. He is doing just that at God's Politics Blog

One interesting statistic about Christianity in America is that liberal Christians outnumber Evangelicals, although you wouldn't know it from the influence of the "talking heads" in the media. Here is a report from the United Church News:

A Pew Research Center poll, released on Aug. 24, shows 32 percent of Americans think of themselves as “liberal or progressive Christians,” while 24 percent self-identify as evangelical Christians.
Yet, when asked to identify religious-political leanings, only 7 percent said they were part of the “religious left,” compared to 11 percent who identified as being part of the “religious right.”
Evangelicals remain more cohesive, pollsters said, because members “share core religious beliefs as well as crystalized and consistently conservative political attitudes.”

The amount of influence for any group often has more to do with agitation than with the actual size of the group. Too often there is more heat than light. Fear has also too often been the quickest way to victory. Democracy is a tricky business, there is no distinction between winning with 50% plus one and winning on a unanimous vote. All of us would be happier to have those with whom we agree have all the power, but in this country we typically only have two candidates from whom to choose, so our vote often requires compromise...or choosing the "lesser evil." Unless we were to change our representative democracy to a parliamentary system, we won't have all voices heard. This will mean that voters who choose (as I do) third parties to represent their principles will be told they are wasting their votes.

Is it possible to find common ground instead of just accepting compromises? I would hope so. What I'm suggesting is taking divisive issues and work on whatever it is that all sides can agree on. A prime example is the abortion issue. Pro-choice groups don't call for an increase in abortions and Pro-life politicians have not been able to reduce abortions or to get them outlawed. In the midst of the deadlock over this wedge issue, much could be done to change the conditions that lead to abortions. Providing financial, psychological and other types of support to pregnant women and single mothers would be a good start. Making adoption easier would be another. Aren't these issues that both sides could support?

Owning Up

2006-11-10T00:28:00.000-05:00

Before too many news cycles carry away the buzz about recent controversies (no doubt replacing them with new ones) I want to comment on two recent apologies, those of John Kerry and Ted Haggard.

Politics and the culture war will always bring the bright light of public scrutiny, and at times integrity takes a back seat to image. This was seen in Kerry's reluctance to apologize one week and then Haggard's initial apparent lies to cover up his indiscretions the following week. In the end, each man apologized publicly. While I don't want to compare the actions for which they apologized, I am interested in the nature of the two apologies themselves. You can read the full text of Kerry's apology here and the Haggard apology here.

Kerry's apology was brief. He seemed to say enough, but he qualified the apology somewhat. While he did say that he apologized to any who were offended, that followed his saying that he was sorry to be misunderstood. His were carefully crafted words, leaving open the question about the depth of his sincerity.

Thus was not the case with Haggard's apology. He didn't go into detail about his behavior, so the apology left open the question about what he was sorry for. But while he was not clear in his admission, his mea culpa was lengthy enough to leave no doubt about the depth of his sincerity.

The vivid differences between these two men's words says something about the state of public confession and contrition today. I can't help but sense the fingerprint of Kerry's handlers on his statement, but sense a real sorrow over his behavior in Haggard's.

It strikes me that the more sincerely one says "I'm sorry," the more likely the public will forgive and perhaps ultimately forget. Personally, even though Haggard's behavior was clearly far more heinous than Kerry's poorly chosen words, I feel sadness for Haggard and yet have some suspicion of Kerry. What is odd for me is that in general I agree far more with positions espoused by Kerry than those of Haggard. In all out culture warfare, I would be expected to be with those who defend Kerry and attack Haggard. But I refuse to succumb to knee-jerk judgment. But that doesn't mean that I don't feel empathy for the pain Haggard is obviously suffering at the moment. And I guess that is the problem I have with Kerry at the moment; he just doesn't seem to be genuinely concerned about the pain he caused.

And that is my concern regarding this episode in the culture wars. I want to see more people, whether Christian Right, secular fundamentalist, or anything in between, owning up to their behavior and the ways their behaviors impact others. Is it really so hard to achieve that level of maturity in the public square? Sure, there can be dire consequences to one's image and thus influence by admitting one's mistakes. But do we no longer believe that confession is good for the soul? Or could it be that we no longer really value the souls of those who dare to be public leaders?

Color me purple

2006-11-03T18:00:00.000-05:00

While I'd be considered "blue" in the red state/blue state definitions (truth be told I'm not even blue since I'm a member of the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party)I love the concept of Purple Churches as explained by Diana Butler Bass.

Into the Fray

2006-11-03T13:21:00.000-05:00

I've been reading with great delight David Plotz's Blogging the Bible at Slate.com. I've been motivated to enter the Fray, the readers' discussion boards.

Too much of that discussion ends up being offended Christians resorting to proselytizing and raging atheists calling Bible believers stupid. Actually, it isn't a large portion of the discussion, but any bit of that is too much for my tastes.

In a discussion about actual warfare (i.e. not simply the culture wars) I posted the following:

I have always been more interested in common ground than winning the high ground. I agree that too much war is either religiously motivated or at least religion is used to serve politically or economically motivated warmongering. If we could learn to get along as people of faith, war may indeed cease to be.

I remember about 20 years ago when a group suggested that a modest proposal for peace would be for the Christians of the world to agree not to kill each other. That would be a good start, but, of course, we need to see the truths taught by other faith traditions as well and extend that peace effort.

What btD calls cynicism, I might consider open-mindedness - at least in relation to my own search for truth. Once a religious practitioner (and I am one) accepts that he/she may not have a corner on the truth a wonderful world of other truth stories (myths in the best sense as Joseph Campbell would remind us) opens up to instruct the seeker. What I continually find is how the truth in other stories points to the same truth taught in my own tradition. Often, I find that what I see in another myth is simply less obvious in my own paradigm.

Once I took Campbell seriously and decided to avoid "getting stuck in the metaphor" I was able to engage in these kind of enlightening discussions.

I'm sorry for this being out of context, but it is an example of what I am striving to accomplish with this blog. You can read the thread that my response started here.

Getting Started

2006-11-03T13:06:00.000-05:00

It has now been six weeks since I created the template for this blog. As you can see, I have been very tentative in stepping into these waters.

The reason for my caution is that I want to stay in the tension of the middle of the current culture wars. All around the blogosphere I see fierce dichotomy. It is difficult to offer an opinion without be characterized as belonging to the opposite camp. In the culture wars the dichotomies are regligious/secular, conservative/liberal, Christian/atheist. I find myself on the continuum, not either end. I'm a liberal Christian. I have passionate beliefs about social justice that come out of my faith. I also respect the intellect that I believe God has placed in humans, so I think that science is not at odds with religion. I hold that since America is a representative democracy that I have a duty to add my voice to the public forum and a right to be heard and proportionately represented (albeit within a system where the winner takes all).

While I always want my side to prevail, I also value the system that can make that happen. Dirty tricks and "working the system" may be effective ways of advancing a cause, but they also work to destoy the system that makes it all possible. I want this blog to be a place for culture war pacifists; a place where there is a cease fire in place regarding name-calling, finger-pointing and partisanship-for-the-sake-of-partisanship.

I may not always be able to live up to my own standards, but at least that is my intent.