Monthly Archives: April 2010

Why I don’t care about the National Day of Prayer

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Religion has been very much in the news again in recent weeks. There’s the resurgence of the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, those Christians who have started Facebook groups encouraging people to pray for the death of President Obama, and many Christians (no doubt membership in these two groups overlap) outraged over the recent court decision against the National Day of Prayer. I lived in the South for fifteen years, which writer Flannery O’Connor famously called “Christ-haunted.” Since my recent move to Madison, I’ve been reminded that all of America is religion-obsessed—and that’s true of believers, agnostics, and atheists alike.

The current controversy over the National Day of Prayer puts me in mind of an experience I had while teaching Religious Studies at Furman. Although the college’s roots were in the Southern Baptist Convention, it had broken all official ties in the early 1990s over concerns of academic freedom. Still, the student body was made up largely of conservative Christians. At that time there was a requirement of one course in Religious Studies, which most students fulfilled by taking Introduction to Biblical Studies. In one section of that course one year, one student stood out as a misfit. He had grown up in Atlanta but had no religious background whatsoever. He spoke of being hounded in high school by Christians who sought his conversion. That behavior continued in college. Some students made it a habit of holding prayer vigils outside the dorm rooms of unbelieving students.

This young man let it be known in the early weeks of the term that my classroom was one place where he felt he could air his views openly and without fear of retaliation. And he did so, often with considerable relish. Late in the semester, as we were talking about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he raised his hand as I began talking about Jesus’ words “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others.” He asked, “why is it that Christians always flaunt their religion and their prayer?” He was referring to the common custom of “See you at the pole” where Evangelical students gather around a school’s flagpole to pray. The only effect it had on him was to increase his resentment toward Christians and Christianity.

Christians often claim to be persecuted. Such an assertion in the United States is pathetic. Yes, there are many places in the world where Christians die or suffer serious consequences if they make public confession of their faith. What American Christians struggle with is not persecution but the messiness of living in a multi-cultural society. Every other religion in the United States is in the same position, and occasionally adherents of those religions struggle as well, witness the recent brouhaha over censorship of the TV program South Park.

On May 6, The National Day of Prayer, I will not be leading a prayer meeting. I will not walk across the street from my church to the Capitol and bow down in prayer in a public display of my piety. I will do what I do every day. Following Jesus’ advice in Matthew 6, “But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret…,” I will sit at my desk and pray, “Keep this nation under your care, and guide us in the way of justice and truth.”

Green Pastures and Still Waters: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

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Green Pastures and Still Waters

Easter 4, Year C

Grace Church

April 25, 2010

I’m not at all sure why, but this Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Easter, includes readings about sheep and shepherds in all three years of the lectionary cycle. The gospel reading each year for this day comes from the tenth chapter of John, which begins with Jesus’ familiar saying, “I am the good shepherd.” Each year, too, the psalm for this Sunday is Psalm 23: “The Lord is my Shepherd.” If you’re a long-time church goer, the imagery of the Good Shepherd may be so familiar to you that it has become banal, even meaningless.

This, despite the fact that unlike the cultures in which the biblical texts were written, sheep and shepherds are not the stuff of ordinary experience any more. The only time most of us encounter sheep of any variety is when it appears on our dinner plate. And who among us has ever encountered a real, live shepherd?

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The New Yorker on Rowan Williams

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There’s a major article in the current New Yorker on the Archbishop of Canterbury by Jane Kramer. It focuses on the struggles within the Church of England over the ordination of women. The Episcopal Church has ordained women to the priesthood since 1976, and the first woman ordained bishop was Barbara Harris, ordained to the episcopacy in the Diocese of Massachusetts in the late 1980s. The Church of England has been much slower. Ordination of women to the priesthood only became possible in 1994. The article focuses on the current struggle over ordination of woman as bishops. There have been ongoing attempts in the past few years to draft legislation that would make it possible for women bishops, all the while providing room for those who are opposed to it.

One of the reasons for the struggle is the very different religious landscape within the Church of England. Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical wings are strong and well-financed, and well-organized, and threaten withdrawal if they don’t get their way. In fact, many believe that the Pope’s overtures last year to welcome disaffected Anglicans was a thinly-veiled attempt to intervene in the CoE’s internal debates. Of course, things have changed dramatically since last fall, and for the time being reunion with Rome is probably less popular an option for Anglo-Catholics than ever.

It’s a somewhat sympathetic portrait of Williams, who is a theological giant and a deeply spiritual man, caught by the tides of history, both within his national church and in the Anglican Communion. Kramer quotes historians like Diarmaid MacCullogh to put his historical position in some context and the concluding paragraph sums it all up:

It may be that Williams’s ideas have changed, but in all likelihood it is simply that his job has changed. The women urging him on now are really trying to remind him that, however broad his concern and compassion necessarily are, he is also the Primate of a Western country where women priests—as well as a good number of openly gay priests—have played an impressive role in revitalizing Christian practice and, one would have to say, the Christian imagination. When he talks to them about restraint and patience—about the fullness of time and the “positive side to Anglican diffuseness and slowness of decision-making” and his own anguish “trying to counsel patience to people who are suffering more than you are”—they say, as many of them did to me: The fullness of time is fine, but it’s God’s time. We are living now.

Of course, the conflicts in Anglicanism over homosexuality also play a role in the conflict within the Church of England, although the contours of the battleground are somewhat different. And what happens in the Episcopal Church also looms large. It’s pretty clear one of Williams’ main goals, perhaps his highest priority, is to keep the conversation going, to prevent the final act of schism that would mean the formation of new denominations. Whether that’s possible isn’t at all clear.  One sign of the intractability of the positions is a quotation in the article from a leader of the Anglo-Catholic wing, who referred to our presiding bishop as a laywoman.

Kramer compares Williams to President Obama at one point, saying that both rely on reason to bring people together. The obvious inference is that Williams, like Obama, may have to give up finally on accommodating the various sides and push through the necessary changes. I don’t think that’s an apt analogy. I suspect the better clue to Williams’ self-understanding is the observation he makes about conflict within Christianity in the fourth century. Williams is a historian and can contextualize his current situation. But historians also can occasionally be burdened by the power of history and the weight of tradition.

Before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, Williams explored disestablishment of the Church of England, which would have been a clean break with the past. It might be time to consider it again.

Elaine Pagels on the cultural impact of the book of Revelation

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A somewhat disappointing talk by Pagels tonight. I was interested to hear her stress the importance of Judaism as a context for John and Revelation, specifically the Jewish Wars. It’s obvious on one level, of course, with the stress in the book on Jerusalem’s destruction but she seemed to suggest that the author’s Judaism was in some way more important for making sense of the visions than his belief that Jesus Christ was the Messiah.

I think you can do that only if you separate out the letters to the seven churches from the visions. For if the same audience is implied then the most important context is the relationship between Christianity and the empire, not Judaism and the empire. I’m still convinced that the book’s overall message is not only to stand firm in the face of persecution, but to force readers to come to see Rome in the same light as the author does, as the great enemy of God.

That’s one of the points of apocalyptic literature like Revelation–to help the reader see the world in a new way, where there is no gray area, just black and white and as the angel said to the church of Laodicea:

“I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. 16So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:15-16

April 21: St. Anselm of Canterbury

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Today is the commemoration of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1109. Anselm was a native of Italy who traveled throughout Europe as a young man in search of learning. He lived before the rise of universities, just when Europeans were beginning to discover logic and the philosophy of Aristotle. In Anselm’s day, most learning took place in cathedral schools or in monasteries, and was very much dependent on the gifts and scholarship of particular teachers. He found his way to Normandy and the monastery of Bec, where Lanfranc was the leading teacher. Lanfranc was called into service by his secular lords who had recently conquered England, and became the Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm would succeed him both in Bec and Canterbury.

Anselm is primarily remembered for two major works and ideas. The first is what has come to be known as the ontological argument for the existence of God (the phrase God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”) and for the Satisfaction Theory of Atonement, articulated in Cur Deus Homo.

Centuries of theology and philosophy have extracted from Anselm’s writing and spirituality the elements of both of these arguments, and in so doing have robbed it of its spiritual depth and power. What you experience when you actually read the Proslogion is not an argument for the existence of God–that’s dealt with in a few sentences–but rather an extended meditation, prayer really, on Anselm’s relationship with and experience of God. He begins with a famous paragraph:

Come now, insignificant man, fly for a moment from your affairs, escape for a little while from the tumult of your thoughts. Put aside now your weighty cares and leave your wearisome toils. Abandon yourself for a little to God and rest for a little in him. Enter into the inner chamber of your soul, shut out everything save God and what can be of help in your quest for Him and having locked the door seek Him out.”

Anselm moves quickly from logical argument to direct address of God, language that explores his own experience of God, and seeks to deepen that experience.

I’ve been in lengthy conversation with someone about the doctrine of atonement recently, a conversation that has focused on the mechanics of the doctrine. When extracted from Anselm’s spiritual life, the doctrine he expresses is cold and bloodthirsty. Yet it’s important to remember that he articulated that idea as an attempt to make sense of his experience, a religious life that was expressed in deep prayer and devotion. Anselm’s prayers are especially beautiful, and he marks an important change in his devotion to the Virgin Mary.

I’m also struck as I read him by his dependence on Augustine. There are times in the Proslogion, for example where it seems he is doing nothing more than paraphrasing Augustine.

Stirring reads from two Catholics

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The first is the open letter written by Hans Kung, published in the Irish Times. Kung is the German theologian who was a colleague of Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict XVI) at Tubingen University in the ’60s. They were the two youngest theologians at the Vatican II council. He writes with passion, intellect, and pleads with the bishops to take action. The full letter is here.

The other is an essay written anonymously, published in Commonweal in response to the controversy after a Catholic School in Boulder, Colorado refused admission to the children of a gay couple. The author tells us a great deal about herself, her spiritual journey, and the open and affirming Catholicism she has experienced throughout her life, and continues to experience, as her sons attend a Catholic School and were welcomed by the priest.

It’s difficult to watch what’s going in the Catholic Church today. As a historian, I’m constantly mindful of the need to take the long view, but as a pastor, it’s heart-breaking to watch the pain and suffering that so many Catholics are undergoing.

Let’s go fishing: A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter

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Let’s Go Fishing

Easter 3, Year C

Grace Church

April 18, 2010

Easter season is such a joyous time. Everything around us proclaims the reality of new life, new life in Christ and new life in the world. It’s not just Easter. Yesterday Madison was a whirl of activity—everything from the opening of the Summer Farmer’s Market on the Square, to the Wisconsin Film Festival, to yes, the Spring Football game at UW. Flowers and trees are in bloom, and we’ve had some temperatures that are more summer-like than typical April.

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Lourdes

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I saw the 2009 film Lourdes this evening as part of the Wisconsin Film Festival.  Written and directed by the Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner, it takes the viewer inside the pilgrimage to Lourdes, where more than a million people seek healing each year. The film is shot with empathy toward the pilgrims and sensitivity to the theological questions that arise for people seeking healing. Hausner is interested in these questions, and has a variety of characters asking them overtly, and with her camera asks them implicitly. Surprisingly, the church and the clergy come off fairly well. The priest who has to answer everyone’s questions, seems uncomfortable with facile answers, yet tries to find ways of helping the pilgrims understand their plight.

The lead character is Christine, played by Sylvie Testud. She suffers from multiple sclerosis and has come to Lourdes because such pilgrimages are the only way for her to get out of her house. She admits to preferring the cultural offerings of Rome to what Lourdes can provide. Testud is marvelous as the suffering woman who wants to have a “normal” life as she confesses to the priest.

One rarely sees in film images of people taking care of others in such intimate ways. Christine is tended by a volunteer, a young woman who says she’s doing this because she wants to find meaning. She dresses Christine, spoon feeds her, and pushes her wheelchair, but she also goes off and has fun with the young male attendants.One of the lingering, unspoken questions concerns the motives of all of those who take care of the pilgrims.

As I watched, I was reminded of Robert Orsi’s discussion of the Catholic cult of suffering that emerged in the mid-twentieth century (in Between Heaven and Earth) and indeed one of the characters mouths platitudes to the invalids about their role as model sufferers. There are also almost continuous shots of religious gift shops, but they serve as a backdrop to the action; there’s no attempt, explicit or implicit, to comment on the commercialism.

Suffering and the quest for miracles can bring out the worst in religion, and in movies. It’s easy either to give an easy answer to the difficult questions of why suffering happens, and why one person receives a “miracle” while others don’t. The quest for healing also attracts all matter of charlatans.

The movie asks great questions and ends in ambiguity. If you’re in Madison, there’s another showing tomorrow night; otherwise, add it to your Netflix queue.

The holy fire

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Thomas Lynch has a fascinating article on cremation in a recent Christian Century. He’s a funeral director who has written eloquently on death, burial, and his occupation. He begins this article with observations about changing American attitudes toward cremation, and the impact of those attitudes on our funerary rituals. He uses Thomas G. Long’s Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral. Both lament the relative absence of concrete experiences of the mourners with cremation. We have all attended burial services, but few of us have witnessed a cremation. He writes about contemporary “memorial services:”

If not made to disappear entirely, the presence of the dead at such services is minimized, inurned, denatured, virtualized, made manageable and unrecognizable by cremation.

He continues:

The issue is not cremation or burial but rather the gospel, the sacred text of death and resurrection, suffering and salvation, redemption and grace–the mystery that a Chrisitan funeral ought to call us to behold, the mystery of life’s difficult journey and the faithful pilgrim’s triumphant homegoing. The memorial service, by avoiding the embodied dead, the shovel and shoulder work, the divisions of labor and difficult journey to the grave or pyre, too often replaces theology with therapy, conviction with convenience, the full-throated assurances of faith with a sort of memorial karaoke where ‘everyone gets to share a memory.’

Now, I’ve never witnessed a cremation, but then what Lynch says about burials is not quite accurate, either. In my experience, burials are hardly visible to the mourners. In fact, it seems that most cemeteries are reluctant to let us see the open grace, instead covering it with astroturf.

The liturgy instructs priests to cast dirt on the coffin. In the antiseptic funeral, an experienced funeral director will supply me with a tiny vial of what looks to be mason’s sand. There is no connection with the body, or with what Lynch calls “the spade and shoulder work.”

Contrast that with the cremations in which I’ve participated. At St. James, we dug a hole, we carried the ashes and poured them; often they sifted through our fingers. I’ve found those ashes much more real, more embodied, than the artificially made-up faces of loved ones in open caskets.

I will agree with Lynch that more work needs to be done. There are problems with the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer as it moves from the burial service to the graveside, and especially in dealing with the reality that a burial may take place at a very different time and in a very different place than the memorial service. Families struggle mightily to make those services meaningful and to find meaningful ways to say goodbye to the mortal remains of their loved ones.

Lynch seems to think that we ought to develop some rituals related to cremation and fire. Perhaps. He doesn’t realize the ritual power and sacred meaning in the ashes themselves. He seems to assume the memorial service takes place without either body or ashes present and that the norm is for it to occur before cremation. In my experience, the ashes are almost always present. And I’ve been struck repeatedly by the ways in which loved ones deal with the presence of those ashes, the care and awe that they show.

The full text of Lynch’s article is here.

Glory Days

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I returned to my hometown this week for the first time in over a year and only the second time since 2003. As I was making the final hundred miles on the Indiana Tollroad and the Ohio Turnpike, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA was playing on my ipod. It struck me as I listened that that album came out the last summer I spent any substantial time in Archbold–1984.

As I drove, and then on my return journey when I took a more “scenic” route, the landscape seemed full of decrepit barns and houses. Small town streets were lined with houses that had for-sale signs in front of them. There were empty factories everywhere. It was ironic listening to Springsteen sing in the ’80s about an industrial America that had seen better “glory” days, home towns that had fallen on hard times, futures that looked bleak. He wasn’t prophesying by any means, but it seems that the economic development that took place in the twenty-five years since that album was nothing more than pretty facades and empty bubbles.

I’m neither an economist nor a political scientist, but I do fancy myself something of an amateur sociologist. During my stay in Ohio, I spent time with aging relatives, aunts and uncles, most of whom are concerned first and foremost with their health. But occasionally conversation shifts to other topics, to the economy and to the fact that jobs that are gone will never be back.

I’m struck by the parallels with the South where I lived for sixteen years. In both Tennessee and South Carolina, the textile industry hemorrhaged jobs in the ’90s and after 2000. Those jobs will never come back and the economy of the upstate of South Carolina seemed dependent on coaxing new industry to relocate by bribing with tax breaks and infrastructure improvements, and attracting retirees with promises of low taxes. It seemed like a race to the bottom.

In some ways, the towns of the Midwest are looking more and more like the small towns of the south, full of empty storefronts, dollar stores, and despair. I remember remarking once that the lovely County Courthouse Square in Winchester, TN seemed to be lined with bail bondsmen and pool halls.

When politicians and the media talk about “Main Street” is that what they have in mind?