Category Archives: Religion in America

Will American values and the US constitution prevail?

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President Obama spoke out against the opposition to the Cordoba House last night.

Andrew Sullivan points to a comment by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston:

“During the interview she also asked me about the plan to build a mosque in New York, very close to Ground Zero. I told her it is a sign of the value we have for freedom in this country, and for religious freedom in particular. We certainly do not want to support groups that promote terrorism, but there are many American citizens who are Muslim, and they have a right to practice their faith. Having a mosque near the site of the attack can be a very important symbol of how much we value religious freedom in this country.

I compared the situation to a historical situation in Ireland: During the Easter Revolution the Irish were very careful to protect the rights of the Protestants in the Free State. They did not take back their cathedral or close their churches. Instead, they wanted people to see they believed in freedom of religion.”

Even Fox News seems to be on board.

Update on clergy burnout

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I’m on vacation, so it shouldn’t be an issue. On the other hand, we’re moving, so it’s not much of a vacation. But the materials on clergy burnout I posted earlier continue to reverberate in the blogosphere. There have been a couple of interesting essays. One appeared on Huffington Post written by Anne Dilenschneider. She argues:

When examined more deeply, it turns out that the current emphasis on clergy effectiveness is due to a change in the role of pastors that occurred in the 1920s concomitant with the development of the assembly line and the adoption of the production efficiency methodology of Taylorism in corporate America. At that time, as Richard Niebuhr observed, clergy became “pastoral directors” who focused on the administrative tasks of managing and maintaining churches for the benefit of the denomination. And, as retired United Methodist bishop Richard Wilke has noted, by the 1960s, pastors were being evaluated on their “competency, acquired skills, and professional status.”

To put it succinctly, the pastorate went from being cura animarum (care of souls) to management. Now, I suppose there may be some truth in that argument. Still, what immediately comes to mind are those early modern parish priests and pastors, across Europe, who were in constant conflict with their parishes over finances, responsibilities and duties, and who wrote repeatedly about parishioners who wanted only to be baptized, married, and buried. Talk about burnout–especially when there was no possibility of advancement, and when the arm of the state tried to see to it that you forced attendance at services and catechism classes.

Carol Howard Merritt has a much more nuanced take on the issue. Pointing out that 50% of clergy leave the ministry after their first few years, she highlights all of the stresses on pastors, including expectations, finances, poor preparation, and for mainline denominations, the phenomenon of ongoing decline in membership.

I will be attending a CREDO conference this fall, which is a program of the Episcopal Church’s Church Pension Fund, to help clergy assess their physical, spiritual, and vocational well-being. Herb Gunn of CREDO offered this response to the article and op-ed in the Times:

This research points to an interesting conclusion—that differs slightly from the research Vitello noted. The only major lifestyle factor for which Episcopal clergy are at greater risk than the larger population is stress. Yet remarkably, work-related stress, which frequently leads the general population to employment dissatisfaction, job loss, or job change, exists alongside notably lower turnover intent for Episcopal clergy. Compared to the general population, Episcopal clergy report significant levels of well-being, self-efficacy, and finding meaning in one’s work.

You can read his letter here.

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.

Religious Intolerance and Bigotry in contemporary America

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I’ve been following with horror the media and right-wing frenzy over the so-called “Ground-Zero Mosque.” It’s not at Ground Zero, it’s almost a half-mile away and all those people, from Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin to the Anti-Defamation League who are opposed to its construction seem also to be opposed to the First Amendment of the Constitution, that protects freedom of religion.

We’ve seen this sort of thing before. In the California town where opponents of a mosque were urged to bring their dogs to the rally (“because Muslims hate dogs”) this year, ten years ago, there was opposition to construction by the Latter Day Saints. They’ve run into difficulty over plans to build temples in many communities over the last couple of decades. Other religious groups struggle even more.

When we lived in South Carolina, Corrie and I were involved in Harvard’s Pluralism Project, which seeks to document the presence of religious communities in the US. As part of that work, we got to know Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, and learned about their difficulties in Spartanburg and Greenville in establishing places of worship. We also, very occasionally, tried to help some of these groups negotiate with their neighbors when tensions arose.

Besides the Capitol itself, Grace Church is probably the most recognizable landmark in Capitol Square, and its presence there bespeaks an earlier time when Christian churches were at the heart of American culture and power. That’s not the case any longer. It’s often tempting for Christians to view themselves as a persecuted minority, but I rather doubt that anywhere in the US the sort of outrage that has arisen over the construction of an Islamic community center and mosque would be generated by any church’s building project. And whatever slights we might receive in the press or wider culture, are nothing like the vitriol that Muslims have received from wide swaths of American culture in the past couple of months, actually since 9-11.

There are a number of sites that are following the various controversies that include news of a Florida church that plans a Quran burning on September 11. Among the best is Religion Dispatches. There are also several essays worth reading. One is by Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic. It’s available here. Mayor Bloomberg’s remarks are here.

The Pluralism Project has tracked incidents of religious intolerance and intimidation for a number of years. They also archive examples of inter-religious cooperation. That website is here.

Proper 9 Year C

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July 4, 2010

I’ve never really been a big fan of the 4th of July. I’m not that patriotic in the first place–maybe it’s because I graduated from high school in 1976 and we had to wear red white and blue graduation gowns. Over the years I’ve come to think that the primary purpose of the 4th of July is to provide sales for fireworks vendors. I’ll be curious to hear what it sounds like tonight. In fact, growing up, the main reason I looked forward to Independence Day was that it was a day off of working for my dad building and renovating houses, and on my summer calendar on which each day of work was marked off, it meant I had made it through one full month and only had two more months to go.

It’s always a sensitive issue about whether, or how much, to focus on the national celebration in our worship; but it’s even more curious when Sunday falls on the 4th as it does today. In fact, there’s a temptation to conflate Christianity with patriotism. I’m sure it happens here in Wisconsin, too, but churches in the South would advertise their patriotic celebrations on the Sundays closest to Memorial Day and July 4, promising visits from armed forces color guards, patriotic music, and the like. There was one Baptist Church in Greenville that lined its property from one end to another with a display of American flags.

We won’t have any of that, you can be sure, as long as I’m at Grace, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the traditional rituals of barbecue and fireworks. I certainly will later today. But that’s for then. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with giving thanks to God for all of the blessings bestowed on our nation over the centuries, for the freedoms we enjoy and for the lives we live. But that’s only part of the story. As Christians, we need also to acknowledge that God’s favor is not unique to our country. Moreover, while I’m no fan of the Freedom from Religion folk, I agree wholeheartedly with the ad I saw on the side of a bus this week. It was a quotation from President John Adams (who was a Unitarian, not a Christian, by the way). It said something to the effect that the US was not founded as a Christian nation.

This morning, let’s keep our focus on the scriptures that were put before us. I hope that as you listened to the first lesson, the story of Elisha and Naaman, you were intrigued by the way in which this story deals with questions of nationalism and religious identity—questions that come to the forefront on today’s national holiday.

Aram and Israel were neighbors. Occasionally they cooperated with each other to repel common threats; often, though, they quarreled with one another. The story suggests that Israel was weaker than Aram. The story plays off of ancient near-eastern assumptions about the relationship between religion and the state. Even at this stage in Israel’s history, few people believed that their God, Yahweh, was the ruler of the universe. Instead, their God was their God, while other peoples worshiped other gods. Religion, nationalism, and ethnic identity were all bound together. So Naaman’s arrival in Israel constituted a foreign-policy crisis, evidenced by the terrified response of Israel’s king.

Still, Elisha is able to extricate the king from the quandary by offering to heal Naaman. Naaman comes to him, but instead of doing what prophets do, namely make a big show of their power, Elisha simply instructed Naaman to wash in the Jordan. Naaman’s response is typical of a patriot—aren’t our rivers better than yours? It’s only after further persuasion from his Israelite slave girl that he accedes to Elisha’s commands, washes and is cleansed.

Although the reading this morning ends there, the story doesn’t. Naaman returns to Elisha and proclaims his faith in Israel’s and Elisha’s God: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” He wants to give Elisha a reward, but when Elisha refuses, asks that he might take two wagonfuls of earth from Israel so he can worship God on the holy land of Israel. He also asks pardon in advance for having to worship the gods of Aram with the king of Aram.

The mention of taking dirt to Aram underscores the connection in the ancient near East between the land and the gods. But it’s not just the biblical tradition in which that connection is made. Other religions do the same. Most of the world’s religions have a profound sense that there is some sacred ground. It’s no accident Israel is called the Holy Land by many Christians. It’s also no accident that Muslims, throughout the world, pray in the direction of Mecca, and have as a life goal making the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Even Hinduism has something similar. There’s a story about one of the leading princes of India who was invited to attend Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee, celebrating her 60 years as queen. He came, but he had to bring with him his yacht, on which was brought enough soil from India that he would not have to risk impurity by walking on English soil.

This tendency is not just, perhaps not primarily religious, although as a former scholar of religion, it galls me to say that. There is something deeply human about our connection with the land, be it the land of our ancestors, our family property, our nation. We imbue it with sacred significance. We ourselves are rooted to that land, rooted in the land, even if we have never owned a piece of it ourselves.

How very different is the attitude expressed in the gospel today. As we have already seen this summer, Jesus has set his face to go to Jerusalem. He and his disciples are on the way, on the road, from Galilee to meet their uncertain fate in the capital city. There is a sense of urgency in that mission, in that journey, and in today’s gospel, we see Jesus extend that sense of urgency from himself to his disciples.

In fact, this is one of those scriptural passages over which scholars have had sharp disagreements over the years. Many think that this commissioning of the seventy cannot be traced back to Jesus himself, but rather reflects concerns and strategies of early Christians in the first generations of the faith. There are strong parallels in early Christian literature to the exact instructions Jesus gives his disciples here and they reflect many of the concerns in early Christianity about the lifestyle and support of itinerant missionaries

The instructions Jesus gives are quite austere. He stresses the danger and urgency of the mission: “See, I am sending you like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals and greet no one on the road.”  The seventy are to accept the hospitality of towns and people who receive them, but they are also to dramatically reject those towns that reject them; symbolizing that rejection by shaking the dust from their sandals.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, isn’t. Naaman, who wants to take some earth from Israel with him when he goes home, so he can worship the God of Israel, and the seventy who are instructed to rid their sandals of earth from those villages that reject them. Both are natural human tendencies and we can imagine ourselves, perhaps, doing something quite similar; in the one case holding on to something that has deep emotional ties for us, in the other, dramatically symbolizing our break with relationships or places that no longer nourish us.

But there’s something else to which we should attend and in a way this leads us back to where we began, reflecting on our national celebration. The sending of the seventy is not just a story about Jesus commissioning the disciples, although it is that. It says something about the way we, as his disciples in the contemporary world, should live. We tend to imagine that what Jesus had to say was meant only for those who walked with him, even the twelve. But for Jesus, for Luke, for the early church, all of those who followed Jesus were his disciples. All were called to make that journey and that idea continues to challenge us to look ahead, not back, to act with urgency. As humans, our very natural tendency is to stay in our comfort zones, to make a life that is safe and secure for ourselves and our families. But Jesus calls us to move out into the world, to take the message of the good news of the kingdom of God into the world, to travel with no purse, no bag, or sandals.

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.”