Monthly Archives: July 2012

A face of homelessness in 21st century America

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A lengthy article in Rolling Stone about formerly middle-class people now living out of their vehicles in Santa Barbara, in part thanks to an innovative program allowing overnight parking in church (and other) parking lots. One went from owning a nursery that grossed nearly $300,000/yr and now can’t find work as a sales person in a nursery:

The Great Recession cost 8 million Americans their jobs. Three years after the economy technically entered recovery, there are positions available for fewer than one out of every three job seekers. In this labor market, formerly middle-class workers like Curtis and Concita Cates and Janis Adkins and Sean Kennan cannot reliably secure even entry-level full-time work, and many will never again find jobs as lucrative and stable as those they lost. Long-term unemployment tarnishes résumés and erodes basic skills, making it harder for workers to regain high-paying jobs, and the average length of unemployment is currently at a 60-year high. Many formerly middle-class people will never be middle-class again. Self­identities derived from five or 10 or 40 years of middle-class options and expectations will capsize.

 

Why bother with General Convention anyway? The future of denominational identity

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A couple of blog posts to help put GC 2012 in context.

First from David Lose: Five reasons denominations are passé.

3) Inordinate amounts of funding are spent on maintaining denominational structures and bureaucracies, money that could be spent on mission. Even though every denomination I know has in recent years cut way back on spending, eliminated various divisions or boards, or extended the times between major assemblies or conventions, denominations are still expending vast sums of money to prop up dated denominational bureaucracies. Would it not make sense to conserve resources by efficiently combining structures? Are seven or eight struggling denominational publishing houses better than one robust one? Where there are three beleaguered denominational seminaries in a single region, might not one healthy pan-denominational school suffice? (And we haven’t even started on congregations!) Think of what might happen if the savings were channeled to funding creative media campaigns that didn’t extol the virtues of one denomination but taught the Christian faith.

His other reasons include denominational identity is confusing, even meaningless in a post-Christian world; differences among denominations are relatively minor; and often denominational identity depends more on ethnic and cultural loyalties over theological conviction.

He concludes:

Bottom line: while I love my denominational heritage and am all for a robust theological identity and spirited theological conversation, I’d give up denominational identity and structure in a heartbeat if it meant a more unified, comprehensible, and compelling witness to the Gospel. How do we move in this direction? To tell you the truth, I haven’t the foggiest idea. (I know that I don’t think non-denominational churches are the answer, as they’ve essentially become denominations minus any sense of organization.) Do I even think it’s possible, given how much we have invested in our denominations and the good work they still accomplish? Again, you’ve got me. But I do know it’s time to raise these questions and initiate a conversation about mutual collaboration and mission that runs far beyond anything our parents or grandparents would have dreamed possible.

There’s a great deal to ponder here, although I wonder if there aren’t significant incarnational aspects of theology, liturgy, and polity that are expressed via the traditional denominations, aspects that can be lost if one adopts “generic” Christianity. People respond to and experience God differently and the denominations may be in part an adaptive response to those very real differences.

Meanwhile, Laura Everett ponders the disappearance of denominational identity on facebook:

A scan of my peers on Facebook turns up more personalization; I invite you to do the same. Many of my clergy friends are not using their singular denominational labels instead preferring labels like: “Christian Unitarian Universalist Witchy Trancescendentalist Jungian” (a UUA pastor), “Open Minded Evangelical Protestant Christian” (an Evangelical Covenant Church pastor), “Critical Thinking Faith, with a dose of common sense realism” (a dually ordained American and National Baptist minister), “Cake or Death?” (an Episcopal priest), and my favorite “Don’t make me jump a pew” (a United Methodist pastor).

Everett is Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches and wonders about the implications of shifting denominational identity for the ecumenical movement.

Whatever her concerns, I think Lose is right to locate a central problem for the future in bloated denominational structures and organization. There is news today that a group of bishops has proposed a resolution to reduce TEC’s asking from the dioceses from 19% to 15%. That’s the percentage of diocesan budgets that is supposed to go to the Episcopal Church. That’s the amount of money that can’t be spent on local projects, on outreach in local communities, congregational development, church planting, Christian formation.

But Lose points to something else, as well. The energy we spend on denominational matters is energy taken away from local efforts, including local ecumenical efforts. One of the questions I’ve asked repeatedly is how Madison’s downtown churches can work together effectively on issues that matter to us and to the city. We don’t work at all together, or very little, and often efforts to come together are thwarted by the realities of life, by busy schedules and the like.

Power made perfect in weakness–lectionary reflections for Proper 9, Year B

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This week’s readings are here.

I’ve not had much to say about the presence of selections from II Corinthians in the lectionary these past few weeks. With Paul, it’s always a question whether or not to talk about him. His writing is complex, the context and background equally so. It’s a judgment call. Does one lay out all the  background in order to make a pithy statement or comment on a verse?

With this week’s reading, we are at a central moment in Paul’s self-presentation and his autobiography. The larger context is a deep conflict with the Corinthian community, so deep that Paul writes what he calls “a letter of tears” (some scholars think this passage is part of that letter). His authority has been challenged; he has been attacked personally, and has both wounded others and himself been wounded in the conflict.

The reading for next Sunday is part of his defense. He begins with a description of his own ecstatic religious experience (a vision of or journey to heaven? While there he receives a divine revelation. So he could boast of this to others, but he chooses not to. Indeed, to prevent him from becoming to full of himself (remember this is Paul!), he speaks of a “thorn in the flesh” that troubled him. Three times, he prayed that he would be delivered of this thing, but instead of being healed or freed, Jesus Christ responded to him, “my grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

There has been endless, and largely fruitless, speculation on what Paul meant by thorn in the flesh. All sorts of possible explanations, from a wife to epilepsy, have been proposed. Whatever it was, it was a physical weakness, illness, or malady, that caused Paul problems. It also helped him understand the heart of the gospel: “Power made perfect in weakness.”

For Paul, the apparent weakness of Jesus Christ dying on the cross (a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles) is a demonstration of God’s power–power made perfect in weakness. This central paradox is also the heart of Paul’s theology and challenges every effort to make faith in Jesus Christ a road to success in life. In becoming human, Jesus Christ emptied himself, took on frail, human flesh, becoming like us (Philippians 2). That becomes, in Philippians, an opportunity for our own imitation of Jesus Christ. It was a lesson Paul learned from Christ through his “thorn in the flesh.” It is a message he has passed on to us.

It is also a reminder that whatever spiritual height or high we may attain, the truth of our faith is revealed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, in his suffering and death, in the frailty of our own bodies, and in the frailty of the Body of Christ in which we share with our fellow Christians.

Politics, Partisanship, and Christianity

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Jonathan Merritt reflects on 33 years of the organized Christian Right in an essay on The Atlantic. He asks, “What have we learned?” His response:

First, partisan religion is killing American Christianity. The American church is declining by nearly every data point. Christians are exerting less influence over the culture than even a few years ago, organized religion no longer garners the respect of the masses, and two in three young non-Christians claim they perceive the Christian church as “too political.” Church attendance is declining, and the percentage of Americans claiming no religious affiliation is rising.

Second, we learned that partisan Christianity cannot effectively change our culture. When the religious right formed, conservative Christians were energized around restricting abortion and same-sex marriage, reducing the size of government, and protecting religious freedom. More than a quarter-century later, these same debates innervate the movement. Little progress has been made despite their best efforts, and an increasing number of individuals now recognize the religious right strategy has largely been a failure. The irony of this turn of events is that Christians above all others know that true change must occur in hearts — not just the halls of power.

An interview with Sociologist of Religion Robert Wuthnow, who has recently published Red State Religion:

One way to think about that is that religion and politics is often described by academics and journalists as a kind of knee-jerk reaction: that people are driven by ideology so much that they lose sight of their own self-interest. What seems to be happening in Kansas (and I guess in a lot of places right now in the 2012 election) is that yes, ideology influences people but it doesn’t totally drive their politics or their religion. They are thinking locally: what’s good for us, for our family, how can we make our life better, those sorts of things. In some ways that may involve moral issues; in other ways it may involve economic issues. It may matter a lot in terms of who they vote for, or it may not matter much at all. And that’s what we see in the history of religion and politics in Kansas.

He seems to confirm what Kathy Cramer Walsh has discovered in Wisconsin:

But Walsh, a lifelong Wisconsin resident whose parents were public school teachers, says she first ran up against the public/private divide when visiting a community in northwestern Wisconsin during the spring of 2008.

She says that a group of loggers, most of whom were self-employed, believed that while schoolteachers may work hard during the year, they have cushy positions. Among the perks: great benefits, health care, summers off and an annual salary of about $50,000 a year. “Nobody in this town makes anywhere near $50,000,” says Walsh, paraphrasing comments she heard. “At the lumber mill, they’re making $20,000 and losing their fingers!”

Walsh says when she probes further, asking why people see a public employee/private employee divide and not a rich/poor divide, she gets stares of disbelief.

It seems to come down to what is tangible and what can be controlled. Private-sector workers, many of whom are struggling, perceive that a large portion of their taxes are going to pay for the salaries of public workers. A cut to public-employee wages and benefits would, at least in theory, mean lower taxes.

But these same people don’t see themselves as having any control over the salaries and benefit packages of CEOs in the private sector, says Walsh. Moreover, they don’t really see anything wrong with top executives making big bucks.