I posted a link earlier to an article discussing Amish attitudes toward technology. One of their ways of compromising is to allow gas engines to power electric devices. I wonder whether this video would give them ideas about other possibilities beyond using gas engines to power refrigeration or power tools:
It seems there are always those who contemplate the effects of new technologies (and now, social media) on our lives and our faiths.
We could begin with the Amish, who make careful, and what to outsiders seem arbitrary and irrational, decisions about technology.
Then there’s Johann Hari pleading for real books against the distractions of ebooks and the internet.
Someone asks what sort of Christians does contemporary worship create.
Jason Byassee encounters texting while teaching a Sunday School class and wonders how leaders should deal with the presence of smartphones and the like in church services or other meetings.
James Martin comments on the use of the web by Catholic organizations.
And Elizabeth Drescher identifies elements of the Digital Reformation. Based on the results of a Pew survey, she observes:
While participation in digital social networks does not cause participation in religious groups, digital social engagement parallels local religious engagement. Where these two paths intersect would seem to be a particularly fruitful locale for socio-spiritual encounter.
The property-tax exemption for religious institutions has been in the news of late. In Wisconsin, the legislature passed a measure that revoked the exemption granted to Presbyterian House at the University of Wisconsin for the student rental complex they constructed several years ago. Gov. Walker vetoed the measure. St. Francis House, the Episcopal Chaplaincy at UW is also proposing a housing development on its site, although plans there are for the project to return to the property tax rolls. From the comments on these stories, it’s clear that the property tax exemption strikes raw nerves.
Meanwhile, city officials in Palmer, Massachusetts, have asked several non-profits, from the Chamber of Commerce, to churches, to make payments to the city in lieu of taxes (this idea is not new; Harvard University has been making substantial payments to the cities of Cambridge and Boston for many years).
Matt Yglesias has posted on this issue. He argues that:
Urban land is a scarce commodity, and structures are valuable fixed assets. If you tax land and structures that are operated as homes and business, but don’t tax land and structures that are operated as churches, you end up with more land being used for churches and less being used for homes and businesses than would otherwise be the case.
This is silly. Take Grace Church for example. Grace is on the National Register of Historical Places; it is also landmarked by the city. As such, the property has no value except to members of Grace Church. If we were to abandon the property, as so many churches have been abandoned in America’s cities due to population shifts and declining attendance, the property would probably remain vacant. No other church would purchase it. The space is ill-suited for the needs of contemporary worship: there’s no parking, the space is not airconditioned, and barely handicapped accessible. No other other entity would be interested in it, either, except a themed restaurant-nightclub, perhaps.
At the same time, we provide valuable services to the city and the community: housing a homeless shelter that would be incredibly difficult to relocate, a food pantry, space for AA and other community meetings. Yglesias himself often argues about the importance of balance in urban planning, and we offer that as well, a courtyard garden that is much appreciated by local residents and tourists, a beautiful space that beckons even non-churchgoers who sense the sacred when they enter it.
I suspect that at some point in the future, the property tax exemption will be challenged, if not in Madison, the home of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, then in another part of the country. When that happens, some religious institutions will be forced to close their doors, and my guess would be that many of the endangered congregations would be located in old buildings in towns and cities that are already struggling to make ends meet, impoverishing the cultural and historical landscape of our communities.
Proper 8 Year A
June 26, 2011
On Friday, I saw Terence Malick’s “Tree of Life.” Malick is a filmmaker whose every work is mined for its meaning and significance. In almost 40 years as a director, he has completed only five films. “Tree of Life” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. It is a sprawling, beautiful, incomprehensible film that asks its viewers to ponder life’s meaning. It begins with a verse from Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?” It is the first line of God’s response to the case Job has constructed against God, a case based on Job’s righteousness, and his suffering.
The central event in the “Tree of Life” is the death at nineteen years old of one of three brothers. We assume he was killed in Viet Nam, although there is nothing other than the mid 60s dress and décor that leads to such a conclusion. But that death continues to resonate, presumably with his parents, but also with his elder brother, who recalls their childhood, and the little torments a boy inflicts on a younger brother.
Eamon Duffy on relics, occasioned by an exhibition at the British Museum.
some of the central themes of the British Museum‘s magnificent new exhibition. St Hugh’s startling behaviour reflected these themes: the universal medieval belief that relics, the fragmented bodies of the saints, were charged with holiness and power, worth journeying great distances to see; the prestige which ownership of such relics brought (the Burgundian abbey of Vézelay was a rival claimant to Mary Magdalene’s relics); ambiguity over whether the power of the relic could be tapped through its appearance – concealed in this instance by its silken cover – or by brute physical contact with its sanctified matter; the comparison between the holiness of the relics of the saints, and the holiness of the body and blood of Christ in the Mass; and finally the lengths to which some would go to secure even tiny fragments of the relic for their own church or community.
The arc of the moral universe is long,
But it bends toward justice.
-Abolitionist Theodore Parker, c. 1850’s
The NY Senate just voted in favor of gay marriage.
I saw Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life this afternoon. I can’t remember the last time I was moved so much by a film. It is cinema that demands our attention and the attention of our mind and heart as well as our ears and eyes. There isn’t much plot; it’s more an evocation of 1950s childhood, with all of its nostalgia from carefree play and boys flirting with disaster, alongside the pain–the drowning death of friend in a pool, a stern, bordering on abusive father, the realities of racism.
Interspersed with that story is another one, beginning with the film’s epigraph from Job 38–the beginning of God’s answer to Job’s carefully laid out case against God–“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” and a voice-over from the ethereal Jessica Chastain (who plays the mother in the family with three rambunctious boys), highlighting the difference between nature and grace. Malick asks the question of the meaning of existence and suffering, and answers it with a spectacular depiction of creation that ends with the birth of one of those boys in Waco, and his father grasping his newborn son’s tiny foot.
We encounter one of those sons now middle-aged himself, living in antiseptic, modern apartments and working in office towers. Perhaps the sequences of childhood are a flashback, or an unconsciously selected memory of the past. We hear the boy wishing his father’s death. We also hear him lash out at his father, “How do you expect me to be good, when you aren’t good?”
There’s a heaven sequence and it seems to take place on a beach (Contact, anyone?) and there are some overwrought or odd sequences, but overall, at the end of the film I felt I had encountered something profound, or at least someone grasping beyond themselves and their craft, seeking to make sense of the world, for himself and for us.
As the credits rolled, a piano played Arthur Sullivan’s tune to the ancient Christian Easter hymn, “Welcome Happy Morning.” The English translation of the first verse reads:
“Welcome, happy morning!” age to age shall say:
“Hell today is vanquished, Heav’n is won today!”
Lo! the dead is living, God forevermore!
Him, their true Creator, all His works adore!
Others worth reading on the film:
James Martin, SJ on America Magazine’s In All Things blog: http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?entry_id=4282
Also from America:John Anderson’s review.
Geoffrey O’Brien in the New York Review of Books:
And Roger Ebert’s review.
But while I would not rush to read a verbal summation by Malick of his philosophical views, I would burn with irresistible curiosity to see the film of any text he might care to adapt, whether it were Spinoza’s Ethics or the phone book. He does his thinking by means of cinema in its full range of possibilities, and that is at any time a rare spectacle.
This story, by Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist is gripping and should be read by everyone. He came to the US from the Philippines on a fake passport as a twelve-year old; discovered his status when he tried to get a driver’s license at age 16. He’s been living a double life ever since. He’s also gay, and came out as gay long before he came out as illegal; but being gay, the easiest avenue to legal status, marriage, wasn’t a possibility. Jose’s website is here: http://defineamerican.com/
Here’s the take from the right–David Foster.
Here’s pushback on Foster’s arguments.
On the question whether Vargas will be deported.
And a whiny blogpost from one of his employers. Pathetic.
The Southern Baptist Convention published a statement about illegal immigration last week. It’s received considerable criticism. Here’s a reasonable op-ed piece in support.
Giles Fraser, who is Canon Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London has some interesting things to say about the nature of community when 85% of those in attendance at services are visitors from around the world. We certainly have nothing like that percentage of visitors on a Sunday, but I continue to be surprised by how many we do have. Certainly most Sundays it’s probably over 10% and a goodly number of those are out-of-town visitors. Another substantial segment are people who attend from time to time, with no real interest in joining.Just in the last month, we’ve had visitors from Burkina Faso, Uganda, and Germany, as well as several people who grew up at Grace and left Madison decades ago. We’ve also had people who have attended once on a whim or a quest, and have returned Sunday by Sunday, week after week.
Even at our midweek service, where average attendance is less than 10, we’ll often have a visitor or two. More likely than not, that visitor is a young adult. Sometimes they will attend regularly for a few weeks or months, and we’ll never see them again. Others will drop in semi-regularly.
I wonder about these attendance patterns. I’m familiar with the church shopper, and will occasionally ask a visitor point-blank whether that’s what they’re doing, not to put them on the spot, but to put them at ease. People come to services for all sorts of reasons, often with no intention of making a deeper commitment to our parish. Sometimes they are checking us out; more often, I suspect, they are simply reaching out to fill a momentary need. All this runs against everything that I know about congregational development, and all of my past experience as a churchgoer, scholar, and priest. We are constantly told that the goal is to get visitors fully involved and hooked in. I’m no longer convinced that should be our primary goal. Rather, we should take seriously the implications of one of those mottoes that some churches like to use “You are welcome, wherever you are on your spiritual journey.” Our hospitality should extend as deeply to someone we may never see again, as it would to a young family we are hoping to attract into active membership.
Such attendance patterns put even more pressure on my commitment to excellence in worship and preaching. If we’ve only got one chance to reach them, we’d better pull out all of the stops (quite literally). But of course one never knows how the Spirit works. Even if things aren’t perfect, it’s quite possible that visitors and regular attenders alike are spiritually nourished.
Preaching Grace on the Square 