Category Archives: random tidbits

Twenty years ago

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Twenty years ago, on October 3, 1990, Germany celebrated reunification. In some respects, it was something of an anti-climax after the drama of the previous Autumn with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But we were there for the official reunification and it was only late yesterday that I realized where I was twenty years ago and what happened.

We were far from the center of things, living in Tuebingen in Baden-Wuerttemberg, in Germany’s southwest. Tuebingen is a university town. When we arrived in September of 1990, it was already bursting at the seams as a result of the changes taking place. Students from the east were eager to study in West German universities. Housing, always a problem in a college town, was impossible.

There were no parades, no speeches, no flags on October 3, 1990. All that we saw in the center of the city was a counter demonstration–people dressed in black symbolizing mourning and if I recall correctly, they were singing or playing somber music.

I remember the hope and excitement of 1989. I also remember the disappointment as reunification actually took place. The cutbacks forced in the west to pay for reunification were already taking their toll. West Germany’s Fulbright Foundation learned just a few days before our arrival that they would have to find money for the East German scholars from the budget that had already been appropriated for us. It was also the time of build-up to the first Gulf War.

Over the course of that year, we had occasion to visit Berlin, and Wittenberg, where some of the early demonstrations took place. We saw Soviet troops pulling out of East Germany. We saw the scars left by the Berlin Wall.

From the perspective of 2010, those events seem ancient history. The euphoria, the hope, and the important role Protestant Christians played in the demonstrations that led to the collapse of the DDR, opened up a future that no one could have imagined a year or a decade before. Twenty years later, that imagined future lays beneath the rubble of problems–from the reality of the hard work of reunification that still needs to take place, to September 11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial meltdown, the global environmental crisis. I wonder if there is any way to rekindle the hope of twenty years ago.

Can Church be hip?

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Andrew Sullivan’s blog, which is one of the best–most diverse, most challenging, wrestling with the important questions–recently asked “Can Church be hip?” Here’s the wrap on the lengthy conversation, which could have mirrored the worship wars, but instead raised interesting questions and had some hilarious moments. The underlying question of “authentic” v. “wannabe” raised by author Brett McCracken has presented itself in slightly different terms throughout the History of Christianity (one example the suspicion that faith healings are faked). Some of the responses in the thread are rather suspicious.

One suspects this video is tongue-in-cheek:

But then, this is pretty priceless, too:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/09/can.html

Grace Church won’t be hip anytime soon; all we can hope for is being authentic and reaching people with our authenticity.

By the way, if you don’t know Sullivan’s blog, you should check it out. He’s provocative politically, religiously, and culturally. A gay Catholic in a lengthy relationship (now marriage), libertarian, former editor of the New Republic, supporter of Obama; he would identify himself as a Thatcherite conservative (he’s English). How’s that for some contradictions?

Weddings and Funerals

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Andrew Brown blogs about weddings and funerals, taking off from Giles Fraser’s thought for the day on the BBC on August 4 (go to the 1:48 mark). Frasier argues that weddings are all about the couple. Fraser observes that “most clergy prefer taking weddings to funerals.”

Frasier observes that weddings are supposed to be about the couple putting themselves in the hand of someone else; that’s why it’s a sacrament, but instead they become examples of self-promotion, about being “princess for a day.”

I’ve heard from some other clergy that they much prefer doing funerals to doing weddings, and I’ve often puzzled over it. In part, I suspect that sentiment derives from the level of control one has over the events. It’s much easier to stage-manage a funeral than a wedding. I also suspect that it’s about the clergy role in each. Presiding at funerals is rewarding, the congregation, the mourners need those words of comfort and hope. They need help with their grief.

Weddings, on the other hand, are rather different. Clergy are a necessary prop, part of the venue and decoration, if you will. The day is about and for others. I think it’s partly an ego thing. But I’ve also learned that weddings can be an opportunity to help people reflect on their relationship with each other and with God, and in that sense can be quite meaningful, in spite of everything else going on. But then, when I do a wedding, we do it by the prayer book, and I tell everyone, including the wedding coordinator and photographer, that I’m in control of everything that happens once the wedding party enters the nave (I tell funeral directors much the same thing. (h/t Andrew Sullivan)

Clergy Burnout

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I shared on facebook, but didn’t blog about this week’s article in the New York Times regarding clergy burnout. I didn’t comment on it in my blog, because it all seemed rather obvious and to be expected. Being the pastor of a congregation is difficult. I find it hard to set the necessary boundaries; there are few weeks when I don’t set foot on church property all seven days. But I live three blocks away, and most downtown destinations require walking past the church, so it’s easy to drop in to pick something up or check on something when I’m on my way to do something else.

But today’s Op-Ed in the Times seemed over the top, blaming parishioners’ expectations for witty and short sermons for clergy burnout. I’m sure the author is a fine man and a good pastor, but perhaps it’s time for him to move on. The author complains about  contemporary consumeristic religion, but most of his examples of conflict with clergy are time-honored. One can find similar concerns expressed by St. John Chrysostom in the fourth century, any number of medieval preachers, or even Jean Calvin in sixteenth-century Geneva.

What seems apparent is that the author doesn’t understand that the role of pastor and indeed the pastor’s message, whether that be in preaching or in pastoral care, needs to be worked out in conversation with those among whom one ministers. It’s only by listening carefully and prayerfully, that one can discern how to minister.

Totally random post

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I’ve only lived in Madison for ten months, but I don’t know where Greyhound stops to drop off and pick up passengers. It turns out, almost nobody else does, either. Just before I arrived, the old Badger Bus station was demolished to make way for a new development. At first, Greyhound moved their drop-off to somewhere on Stoughton Road. Fine, but there was no Madison Metro bus access. People either had to walk, or take a cab.

At some point, they moved.

Today, a guy stopped by, looking for bus fare. He had been able to get from Milwaukee here, but needed more to reach his final destination. He told me that the bus driver–the bus driver mind you–didn’t know where he was supposed to drop off Madison passengers. He tried one place which obviously wasn’t correct, so he finally had to call the dispatcher in Milwaukee.

If the bus driver doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go, how is anyone else?

Does anyone in Madison care about this?

Another survey offers food for thought

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USA Today had an article about a survey of young adults produced for a conservative Christian organization. Some interesting statistics:

Even among those in the survey who “believe they will go to heaven because they have accepted Jesus Christ as savior”:

•68% did not mention faith, religion or spirituality when asked what was “really important in life.”

•50% do not attend church at least weekly.

•36% rarely or never read the Bible.

The headline is 72% of Millenials (i.e. 18-29 year olds) more ‘spiritual than religious’

Of course, for such a survey to be of real use, it should compare results across age cohorts, to see if these numbers have fallen over the decades. Other surveys have done so, and have detected a trend away from traditional religion and institutional Christianity.

Church growth gurus often recommend trying to get more relevant with worship or constructing a product that will sell in this market. But I think that may be misguided. Doing that may only change brand loyalty as it were; it won’t bring people into the store (church). I’ve noticed something interesting at Grace. When we open our doors to the public on Saturdays or during the week, all kinds of people come in. The curious, the tourists, et al. But often people come in, sit down, and stay a few minutes or longer, to pray, meditate, or simply enjoy the space. Who knows whether they will ever come back or what might have been on their minds, but for a few moments, we were there for them.

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.

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?

Pastors who doubt

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There’s a discussion in the Washington Post about doubt among the clergy. Some of the entries are interesting. I would especially recommend Martin Marty’s. On the surface, of course, it all seems obvious. How can you continue to do your job, if you no longer have faith?

And put that way, the answer does seem simple. But faith and doubt are not opposites; they can exist simultaneously, the classic prayer of Augustine, “Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief,” being a profound example.

Marty talks about obvious examples where pastors and religious leaders of Lutheran denominations no longer accept elements of the sixteenth-century confessions, that the pope is the Anti-christ, to take one case. The same is true in Anglicanism. It is still the case that clergy in the Church of England have to subscribe to the 39 Articles, but there are very few of them who could accept all thirty-nine.

Part of the issue is that the authors of the study in question understand “faith” in propositional terms; that is to say, they seem to think that to be a Christian pastor, one must accept literal scripture or literally accept the creeds. But neither scripture nor the creeds are propositional; indeed, faith itself is not propositional. It does not operate in the same way that empirical evidence does. We believe the world is round, because it can be proven to be round, in a number of ways.

Religious faith is rather different. The best way I have of understanding it is to see faith as the early church fathers did, as involving not simply assent and certainly not intellectual assent to a proposition. Rather, it involves all of one’s being, and a crucial part of faith, perhaps the crucial part, is will, or to use patristic synonyms, desire, or love.