Category Archives: Uncategorized

Evidence that supportive religious denominations have a positive effect on gay youth

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The Wisconsin State Journal reports on a study conducted by Dr. Maurice Gattis of UW Madison that shows gay youth involved in gay-affirming religious communities have fewer “depressive symptoms” from discrimination than other gay youth:

pecifically, gay college students in the study who were affiliated with gay-affirming religious denominations suffered fewer “depressive symptoms” related to discrimination than their gay counterparts who are secular or who were affiliated with denominations opposed to same-sex marriage.

Remarkably, this was true for all groups; that is to say, gays in “gay-affirming” denominations scored better on the survey than did secular gays.

For the Episcopal Church, one caveat: for the purposes of this study “gay-affirming” was defined by the denomination’s stand on same-sex marriage.

The latest on the “spiritual but not religious”

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Mark Oppenheimer in today’s New York times:

At the very least, we might conclude that “spiritual but not religious” isn’t necessarily vague or wishy-washy. It’s not nothing, although it may risk being everything.

Little new here, although Oppenheimer uses Courtney Bender’s and Linda Mercadante’s work to stress that the “nones” (as they’re often called) can be both communal in orientation and theologically sophisticated.

Rowan Williams on reading and interpreting scripture

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Things get difficult if you hold that the Bible is only a human product; but they also get difficult when the Bible is treated only as a set of timeless instructions from God, irrespective of the actual process by which the texts arose. The Bible needs to be read, prayerfully and discerningly, in the company of as many other believers as possible, so that we can learn some wisdom from each other as to what exactly God does want to tell us. Hearing the truth in Scripture means expecting the Holy Spirit to be at work both in the text and in the community that reads it.

From an interview with Jonathan Merritt. More here

How Housing First works in Boston: providing permanent housing for the chronically homeless

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A story on the transformation at Pine Street Inn, Boston’s largest provider of shelter for the homeless. Under the leadership of Executive Director Lyndia Downie, Pine Street now manages more beds in homes than in shelters:

What Downie saw years ago was buried in a trove of data she scoured: 5 percent of the homeless population took up more than half of the beds at Pine Street on any given night.

The truth is that most people who come through Pine Street are there because of a temporary crisis.

They often just need a place to stay for a few days. But Downie began to imagine what would happen if Pine Street focused on that 5 percent — the people who live on the street for months or years.

Few people thought her idea would work. These street people didn’t want help.

Not true. A year after moving into a Pine Street home — where they also receive counseling — 96 percent of the chronically homeless are still there.

Conversations about marriage

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Marriage is highly contested in our culture in the twenty-first century. We fight about marriage equality and worry about changing marriage patterns. With a divorce rate around 45%, increasing rates of couples living together, and close connections between poverty and children born to unwed mothers, the challenges presented by changing marriage patterns have important social consequences. Some of the dramatic changes in marriage practice in the last half century include:

  • In 1960, 2/3 of all adults in their twenties were married; in 2008, only 26% were
  • 65% of all couples live together before getting married
  • marriage is much more common among college-educated and economically stable people than among the less-educated and less-affluent
  • 90% of young adults think they need to be completely financially independent before marriage

All data from material provided by the Task Force on Marriage. More info here.

In the Episcopal Church, our General Convention 2012 called for a Task Force to study the theology of marriage. As part of its work, it has invited dioceses, parishes, and interested individuals to engage in conversations about marriage. We will be holding such a conversation on July 31 at St. Luke’s here in Madison.

The impetus for the task force came in part from the discussion about same-sex blessings and the trial rite that uses language of blessing, stops short of calling it marriage, yet is being used in many places where gay marriage is legal.

The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is the product of its age and shows some signs of its historical context. With the use of two different rites in the church, and the oft-repeated statement made that the trial rite would be appropriate for use with heterosexual couples, there is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding marriage in the church.

For myself, one of the most important issues around marriage is my role as officiant. I am increasingly uncomfortable serving as an agent of the state and as an enabler of the marriage-industrial complex. What might an Episcopal rite, theology, and practice of marriage look like if neither of those factors were involved? It seems to me that the marriage rite is increasingly “divorced” from the practice of marriage. As a church we’re not very successful at doing “all in our power to uphold these two persons in their marriage” as we promise during the rite, and we’re even less successful in help couples who are struggling with their relationships.

A recent study explores the relationship between religious involvement and marriage among young adults:

Nominally religious young adults are in a vulnerable position: they are religious enough to be pushed into early marriage, for instance, but, lacking the social support mediated by an in-the-flesh religious congregation, they don’t reap the benefits of involvement in a religious community. Instead, religion may become a source of conflict.

More here

People may not come to church but they’ll come to a bowling alley: Random thoughts and links on sacred space

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The quotation comes from the pastor of a church in Birmingham AL:

People may not want to come to a church, but they’ll come to a bowling alley. People have needs other than spiritual needs. There’s a need for safe, clean, uplifting, family-oriented entertainment.”

Read it all here

Laura Ortberg Turner reflects on the sacrality of different churches which she has attended:

The church I attend now is two thousand miles away. We take communion every week, walking down squeaky hardwood floors—all one hundred twenty of us—past stained glass windows, toward the giant cross behind the stage. The smells and history and personality of this building shape my experience of worship, too. The strong wine a regular testament to the shock of the resurrection; the pews an invitation to sit close to the people I don’t know but already love; the constant, drafty chill a reminder of the building’s history in a city where everything else seems new. There is a sense in the room that we are surrounded by people who are not there, and if I don’t quite mean ghosts. I also don’t mean just those who are alive and present. It is full of that great cloud of witnesses that has filled the sanctuary for a century before us.

Steve Swayne ponders the differences between what he labels “stadium” and “sanctuary” culture. Thinking about the way people milled around a college commencement ceremony, he connected that behavior with “stadium” culture. He much prefers “sanctuary” culture.

And beyond lower blood pressure and better health outcomes, sanctuary culture at its best forces us to see and hear more of the world around us. It helps us to see and hear that world better. And if the history of lectures and libraries and liturgies shows us anything, the deliberation inherent in sanctuary culture, more than the carnivalesque nature of stadium culture, holds the key to make our world better than it is today.

Just a couple of quick observations about that. First, I’m not sure that “lectures” participate in “sanctuary” culture, or that they have for thirty years. I remember a class at Harvard for which I was a Teaching Fellow in 1987. The class enrolled almost 1000 undergraduates and we often remarked that the room was never quiet. Students were always coming and going.

And the idea that people sit quietly in church or concert halls is a relatively recent phenomenon as well. Pews only came on the scene in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and we know from sermons throughout the preceding history of Christianity that preachers complained bitterly that their congregations were milling about, coming in and out, engaging in conversations (even transacting business deals).

And I wonder what Swayne would think about the phenomenon of Social Media Sunday?

At the same time, physical space does shape us profoundly and helps to form us as human beings and as Christians. Worshiping in something that looks very much like an auditorium or movie theater invites behavior appropriate to those places.

 

How to fill the faith-shaped hole in modern life

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A lovely collection of essays in the New Statesman on ritual after God. It includes Rowan Williams’ description of how he begins his day in silent prayer and meditation.

Lucy Winkett has this to say:

If rituals help us navigate the thresholds of life when emotion is high and the tectonic plates of desire, fear, hope and despair collide, then the truth is that I travel a long way not just when I’m celebrating the Eucharist but while I’m walking the dog. Ordinary life is full of grief and miracles. Rituals are performed at the boundaries, on the border. What we do almost every day, sometimes without noticing, is step over the line.

The Diocese of Milwaukee and the Diocese of Pittsburgh

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The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Milwaukee has recommended to Bishop Miller that he permit clergy to preside over same-sex blessings, as I wrote a couple of days ago. For support, that document appealed to Bishop McConnell of Pittsburgh, who gave such permission in spite of his own reservations.

I was interested to read that Bishop McConnell recently granted clergy permission to officiate at same-sex weddings. Lionel Deimel quotes extensively from the opinion of the Diocesan Chancellor. It seems Bishop McConnell’s concerns centered around whether an Episcopal priest could officiate at a wedding that made use of the trial rite (which isn’t Holy Matrimony). The Chancellor’s opinion is yes, because Pennsylvania law does not stipulate the form of the rite, only that there has to be a marriage certificate. Bishop McConnell’s revised guidelines are here.

Although same-sex marriage is currently on hold in Wisconsin and civil law varies widely from state to state, these guidelines and questions will be helpful as we move forward.

Update on Same Sex Blessings in the Diocese of Milwaukee

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The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee has published its report on the feedback it received from parishes on the trial liturgy for Same Sex Blessings. It has also made a recommendation to Bishop Miller on how he might respond to those findings.

I would like to highlight a few things in the report. First of all, most parishes responded in some way to the Standing Committee’s request. Second, out of the forty-three parishes that did respond, only one expressed itself strongly opposed to the authorization of the use of the liturgy (1 on a scale of 1-5). In contrast, 13 parishes were strongly in favor (5 on the scale of 1-5), and 11 were generally in favor (4 on the scale). 11 staked out middle ground (3). To put that in percentiles: 55.8% were either strongly or generally in favor; 18.6% generally or strongly opposed; with 25.6% in the middle.

When looking at how these parishes break down in terms of average Sunday attendance, a total of 16.1% of total Sunday attendance were either generally or strongly opposed over against 59.7% of total attendance in parishes either generally or strongly in favor (with over 40% attendance in parishes strongly in favor). What both of these figures show is wide-ranging and overwhelming support for the trial rite.

Based on these findings, the Standing Committee made the following recommendation to Bishop Miller:

The Standing Committee recommends that Bishop Miller authorize a local option for a rite of blessing of same-gender couples living in committed, lifelong, covenant
relationships. A local option would give permission for individual clergy of the diocese to decide to use the rite or not in his or her own parish.

The entire document is available here: Standing Committee Report2 (1).

Here is Grace’s statement of inclusion: LGBTstatement_revised_01292014, developed in response to the conversations we held over the fall and winter.

Of course, we’ve been talking about this for much longer than that. General Convention 2012 approved the trial use of the liturgy; we had conversations among bishop and clergy in the Diocese of Milwaukee in  the months after General Convention and again in 2013.

Meanwhile, the courts continue to act. Constitutional bans in Kentucky and Indiana have been overturned and just today the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (a court that also has jurisdiction in Wisconsin) ruled in favor of an emergency request by an Indiana couple to have their marriage recognized in Indiana. The story is here:

Some thoughts on the future of Christian formation for children (and their parents)

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I had one of those conversations last week that’s had me reflecting on our assumptions as clergy and churches, the way we do things, and what the future might look like. A few weeks ago, a family visited Grace. We talked after the service and I learned that they hadn’t attended church regularly in a very long time but that all of their kids had been baptized and they were hoping to reconnect. Instead of encouraging them to sign the guestbook as I usually do, I gave them my business card and urged them to contact me. They emailed me a few days later and we set up a time to meet. In the course of our conversation, they asked about resources I might recommend to them that would help them teach the kids about the Bible and Christianity. I told them to check out our Christian Formation program in the Fall, we offer Godly Play for the younger kids and use Re:Form with our Middle Schoolers. The complication for them is that the family is active in athletics and have events scheduled almost every weekend.

 

I spent hours researching materials on the web and pretty much came up empty-handed. A plea for help to colleagues locally and to some folks I know are involved in Christian Formation nationally gave me some ideas. As I talked to people and as I reflected, it became clear that what I’m looking for is something that will help parents as well as children and that while the couple who first asked me had the guts to do so, I’ve heard similar requests couched in much subtler language from parents who are active at Grace. Many of them are uncomfortable talking about their own faith and I suspect many of them aren’t sure how to talk about faith with their children. The difference might only be that they know better than to ask me for help (I’m an intellectual, I don’t have children or grandchildren of my own).

 

The church and clergy have all sorts of models of Christian education shaping our expectations. There’s the traditional Evangelical Protestant of graded Sunday Schools that in a large church would go from toddlers to the aged, with everyone expected to attend every Sunday. There’s the picture of the family at table sitting around as Father reads scripture to an attentive wife and children. Of course, both of those reflect particular historical and cultural contexts. The Sunday School movement is a product of the 19th century; the image of a family reading scripture and praying also a Protestant model from a century earlier perhaps (it depends on literacy and the printing press).

 

There have been very different historical contexts in which Christian education was attempted and there were periods when the basic knowledge of most Christians was at best rudimentary. Protestant pastors in Germany complained in the sixteenth century that their parishioners didn’t attend services or catechism classes and that they didn’t know such basics as the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments or the Creed.

 

We’re much closer to that latter historical context than to the idealized image of twentieth-century churches with cradle to grave Sunday School. The difference between the sixteenth and the twenty-first century is that churches can’t rely on the power of the state to enforce attendance or check religious knowledge.

 

And it’s only going to get worse. One of my clearest memories of my last term of teaching undergraduates in the Spring of 2009 was a student’s question “Who were they?” after I mentioned Adam and Eve in an offhand comment. With increased secularization and the rise of the “nones,” we can no longer assume that most people who come to our churches will have any basic understanding of Christianity or the Bible, so they will have nothing to pass on to their children. And, as I learned over ten years of teaching Bible at a college in the South, even many evangelical Christians no longer read the Bible regularly or know its stories.

 

So here is my question: What does Christian formation for children look like in this context, given these assumptions:

 

  1. That attendance at services (let alone a second hour for formation) will be affected by all of the cultural changes that have occurred over the last fifty years
  2. That parents need tools to help them understand the Christian faith and the stories of the Bible as well as resources that will help them communicate those stories with their children
  3. That the congregation will not be a primary locus for Christian formation (even if everyone including parents thinks it should be)

 

Here are the resources that have been recommended to me. I share them in hopes that readers of this blog will add their own and that someone, somewhere, might have developed something that addresses the three assumptions I make above.

 

  • Manna and Mercy is the Bible told in the form of a graphic novel. The link takes to you a website where you can purchase the book and get study guides and even curriculum. It’s not geared toward any particular age group (some churches use it with adult groups as well as with youth and children).
  • The Jesus Storybook Bible. One of my colleagues who is the Episcopal Chaplain at UW Madison, used this book with students who wanted to learn more about scripture. In addition to the book, the website includes study guides and curricula.
  • Child’s Guide to the Eucharist  This is published by an Episcopal publisher and is intended for children to help them understand what’s going on in Sunday morning worship.
  • The Discovery Series A really good video introduction to the Episcopal Church produced some years ago by the Episcopal Diocese of Texas
  • Father Matthew Presents a series of videos available on youtube explaining briefly and with some humor, basics of our faith, scripture, and worship

 

So, if you know of anything else that might be helpful, let me know; and if you’re a parent looking for something to use with your kids, here are some suggestions.