Category Archives: Uncategorized

Who are the “poor in spirit”?

Posted on by
2

That was the burning question last night at our first Lenten Bible Study on the Sermon on the Mount. We began and ended with the Beatitudes, exploring what they meant in the historical context, in the context of Matthew’s gospel, and in the context of our own lives. The behaviors and attitudes Jesus blesses (declares happy), are they things to which we should aspire?

We struggled most with “poor in spirit.” What does  that mean? One powerful suggestion was that it refers to those who are beaten down by life, dejected, depressed, hopeless. Perhaps it refers to those who are spiritually empty, or empty themselves spiritually to receive God’s grace.

Frederick Buechner proposes that the poor in spirit “are the ones who spiritually speaking, have absolutely nothing to give and absolutely everything to receive …” That fits with another theme in Matthew’s gospel, the emphasis on the weakest, most vulnerable, “the little ones” (cf Mt 18:6).

In Christian communities, our tendency is to do just what we do in the rest of life, distinguish between the proficient and the struggling, the powerful and the weak, the successful and those who fail. God’s reign entails a reversal of values. We’re somewhat comfortable when the values that are reversed are material, there’s plenty of biblical precedent for that. What if God’s reign entails a reversal of spiritual values, too? What might that mean?

Remaking the Image of God: A Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, 2014

Posted on by
1

Like some of you, I have heard and read scripture for most of my life. I also studied it academically and taught it for more than a decade. On top of that, I preach it regularly. While I am not one of those people who has memorized vast swaths of the text and from time to time I encounter stories or ideas that are quite new to me, many of the texts we read on Sundays are as familiar to me as the back of my hand or an old pair of blue jeans.
But that’s not the case for everyone. Even a story as familiar as the story from Genesis 3 that we heard this morning is unknown to many in our society. That basic ignorance of the biblical story came home to me during my last semester of teaching when I made an off-hand reference to Adam and Eve in a Religion class I was teaching and a student asked, “Who are they?” She may not have known the story but she had an advantage over those of us who are familiar with it. She could read it as it appeared on the page without the two thousand years of Christian biblical interpretation and doctrinal development. For the story we know is not the story that appears in the text.
To point out several obvious points—nowhere is sin mentioned; neither is Satan, nor fall, nor even temptation. Even the decision by the editors of the lectionary to read it today, on the first Sunday of Lent, in conjunction with the gospel story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, contributes to our mis-reading of this foundational story of Judaism, Christianity, and western culture. Is it about original sin? If by original sin, one means the human condition, then yes.
The inclusion of the verses from chapter 2 helps us understand the authors’ perspective on human beings and on creation. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden, the Hebrew literally reads, “to serve it and to guard it.” Human beings were created to be in partnership with the garden, to protect it and preserve it. It’s a very different notion than that which appears in Genesis 1, when God commands the humans to have dominion, lordship, over all the animals and plants. We see here a sense of human beings cooperating with creation, given responsibility to protect it. One more point—there’s no sense here that before the fall, humans were intended to live in idleness, rather, they were placed in the garden for an end and a purpose. Created in the image and likeness of God, God intended them to flourish and to aid in the flourishing of creation.
But something happened. They met a talking serpent who gave them a different way to think about themselves and God. The serpent questioned what God had told them and promised them that by eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would become like God.
Everything the serpent tells them is true, if somewhat one-sided. They did not die after eating of the fruit of the tree and they did gain knowledge. And the fruit was desirable. Eve ate because the fruit was beautiful, good to eat, and would make one wise—all of these are appropriate reasons for her decision. And, I would add, of the two humans, at least the woman showed some agency: “she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.”
What were the consequences? They gained knowledge; most immediately, of their nakedness. They were ashamed. So whatever intimacy the two beings, “bone of bone and flesh of flesh” had had was suddenly gone—they needed protection from each other. And they needed protection from God. Their nakedness and exposure broke the pair’s intimacy with each other; it also broke their intimacy with God. Instead of becoming like God, they becoming frightfully aware of their difference from God. They wanted to escape from God but God wasn’t done with them. God sought them out in their hiding place, and when God located them, God showed continuing care for them by sewing clothes for them from animal skins. Any punishment would come later.
It’s a story of disobedience and rebellion against God. God created the humans for a purpose, for relationship with God and to participate with God in the care of God’s creation. Rejecting that purpose, they chose to aspire to be like God and so spurned their true nature, having been created in the image and likeness of God. It’s the story of humanity; it’s our story. Like Eve and Adam, we grasp for the beauty and knowledge we can see; and in grasping for what we want, we turn away from God and deface the image of God in us. The knowledge we gain is knowledge of our own fallen humanity, knowledge of our shame and embarrassment.
In the story of the temptation of Jesus, Satan asks him, “If you are the Son of God…” This story follows immediately on Jesus’ baptism, when he hears the voice telling him, “This is my Son, my Beloved.” The temptations of Jesus are temptations about what that means to be the Son of God, just as, in the garden, the temptation was about what it means to be human. The temptations of Jesus are temptations about what sort of Son of God Jesus is. Is he the Son of God in the sense that Roman Emperors were sons of God—the most powerful men on earth with all the trappings of power, wealth, and status?
Or is he the Son of God in some other way? Satan tempts him with other ideas about what it means to be the Son of God. He also tempted Jesus to prove he was the Son of God by forcing God to act in a certain way. But Jesus rejected both of them and in the end, was the Son of God who died on the cross.
We are at the beginning of Lent. On Ash Wednesday, many of us heard those words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.” They’re a reminder of our humanity, our frailty, and vulnerability. Today, in the Great Litany, we heard centuries-old language that confronts us with our sins and shortcomings, as individuals and as the human race. Lent confronts us with our humanity; it opens up for our reflection and inspection all of the ways we have fallen short of our human potential, all of the ways we have ruined the image of God in us.
But that’s not all. Lent is also about a God who loves us in spite of the fact that we have turned away from God, in spite of the fact that we have defaced God’s image in us. God loves us even when we hide from God like the man and the woman in the garden. Just as God continued to care for the two who had rebelled against God, sewing clothes for them from animal skins, God continues to love and care for us.
It’s easy to hear the language of sin in the Great Litany and throughout Lent as language of condemnation and rejection. It’s easy to recoil from that language, especially in our culture of self-help and self-actualization, our culture of gratification and enjoyment. We often want our religion on similar terms. Lent doesn’t allow that. But that’s not the end of the story or experience of Lent. It’s not the whole story of the Christian faith.
The purpose of our confession of sin, the purpose of our self-reflection in this penitential season is to receive God’s grace and love in all of its fullness. Lent is an opportunity for us to strip off our fig leaves of self-deception and self-protection, to allow others and God to see us as we are, and to let God begin to remake us in God’s image. Lent is an opportunity for forty days to experience briefly what the Christian life should be like 365 days a year, receiving God’s grace as we joyfully are remade in God’s image and fully realize the potential God has created us to become. I pray that all of us experience some of that joy and renewal in these forty days.Re

Gracious Ashes: The Contested Space of Ash Wednesday

Posted on by
Reply

I love Ash Wednesday. I love the power of the day’s liturgy. I love the simple gesture of marking the sign of the cross in ash on someone’s forehead while saying, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I love doing and saying that while looking into the eyes of people I’ve gotten to know over the years I’ve been Rector of Grace; people I’ve been in conflict with, people I’ve grieved with and celebrated with, people I’ve prayed with, and people who have ministered to me. I also love doing and saying that while looking into the faces of people I’ve never seen before. I wonder as I do it what brought them here on this day, for this ritual.

I love the multiple ironies of the day: a gospel reading that warns us about displaying our piety in public even as we do it; a lesson from Joel that calls on priests, the ministers of God, to weep between the vestibule and altar; a call to all of us to the observance of a Holy Lent as we get ready to go about the business of our daily lives with hardly a thought to the ashes on our forehead until someone looks at us quizzically, to go about the business of our daily lives after having been called to repentance and fasting.

And I love that Ash Wednesday has become another contested space in the Episcopal Church. The movement to offer ashes on the street–Ashes to Go–has become a point of conflict as we struggle to adapt our faith and worship to the twenty-first century. Passions run high as a quick check of comments on various posts concerning Ashes to Go on the Episcopal Cafe or other blogs will reveal. Thoughtful people have written passionately and profoundly on both sides of the question whether offering ashes outside of the liturgy of the day is appropriate. They’ve written beautifully about their experiences when offering ashes; they’ve written beautifully and convincingly about the importance of the overall liturgical context. Others have written with grace about their own ambivalence about this new practice.

In a way, the conflict over Ashes to Go mirrors other conflicts in the church. But there’s also something unique about it. I think what sets it apart is the stuff, the sign, itself. Ashes are just a little strange. Ashes are at best a by-product, the remains of a fire. Usually, they are meant to be discarded, dirt, a nuisance. Contrast that with the water of baptism or the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Ashes are dirty, unclean, impure. For many of us in the church they are a reminder and sign of our mortality. Putting them on our forehead (or allowing them to be put on our forehead) is a profoundly transgressive act. It requires us to overcome cultural and personal norms of behavior. It requires us to be open and vulnerable, to be made dirty and impure.

Ashes remind us of our mortality. They remind us of our origins (“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return”). They also connect us with parts of ourselves that go deeply beneath the veneer of modernity and post-modernity. There are those who say that human beings’ efforts to control fire are linked to the origins of civilization. Ashes remind us of all that and more.

When we touch and are touched by ashes, all that and more threatens to come to the surface: our mortality, our humanity, our brokenness and pain. When we touch and are touched by ashes, we touch and are touched by the power of fire and the power of God. When we touch and are touched by ashes, we make ourselves vulnerable to God’s forgiving and redemptive love.

In the end, even my effort here to make sense of what we officiously call “The Imposition of Ashes” fails, because whatever meaning I make of it is just that, “my meaning” and not someone else’s. Who knows what it might mean to a passer-by who isn’t a Christian, or to someone who has never attended an Ash Wednesday liturgy? Who knows what meaning they might make of it, what emotions it might evoke, or how it might open one up to an encounter with God? We (the clergy, the Church) can’t control how people interpret and experience the liturgy, whether it’s within the four walls of a church or on a busy street corner. We can’t control the movement of the Spirit. She can use ashes to change hearts, but she can as easily change hearts without ashes–or without our help for that matter.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about me, I’ll be on the street corner on Wednesday after services at 7 and 12 noon, offering ashes to passers-by. I’ll be at the same place I am every Sunday morning before services, greeting passers-by and those who enter our doors. If past years are any indication, I’ll put ashes on a few foreheads. I’ll also have plenty of interesting conversations and encounters–but then that happens pretty much every time I walk out the door.

Some other reflections about Ashes to Go:

From Scott Gunn:

The chief complaint about Ashes to Go is that it is cheap, since you don’t have to go to an entire liturgy; one merely receives ashes in a public place. My sense is that in our culture, wearing ashes is costly. This is why Christians love to rationalize wiping them off pronto. Indeed, the Gospel for the day exhorts us to, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.”

If wearing ashes on your forehead were viewed as cool (and you’d know this because celebrities and powerful people would wear their ashes on the teevees), then we would want to remove them pronto. But I suspect a smudge on one’s forehead is actually a bit embarrassing to most people. It invites questions, “What is that, and why is it there?” In other words, there is a cost to that ashen cross. So when someone in a train station receives this reminder of their mortality, they are doing it at some cost — as opposed to the socially acceptable way of getting into a station wagon and driving to church where the ashes are quickly removed in the narthex after mass, which is, from the perspective of culture, cheap and easy.

From Jared Cramer:

Most importantly, we need to remember the point of the Ash Wednesday liturgy. The imposition of ashes is important. The Litany of Penitence is important. The celebration of Holy Eucharist, a reminder of the consequences of our sin and of the extravagant grace that covers those sins, yes this is so very important. But the point of Ash Wednesday is to invite people into a Holy Lent. The reason this day exists is for the purpose of one paragraph of the liturgy,

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

And this is the point of “Ashes to Go.” It’s not to get people their ashes—the ashes are only a symbol of something larger. True, some people may think that they are simply getting this checked off their list, but they are mistaken. Because when that ash is smudged, they are invited to something deeper.

Religious freedom, religious discrimination, anti-LGBT bigotry

Posted on by
1

Like so many others, I’ve struggled to understand the recent debates over religious freedom and discrimination. There are the corporations like Hobby Lobby that are perfectly willing to pay for contraceptive coverage for their employees until the ACA came about. There are Catholic institutions like the Little Sisters of Mercy who assert that even filling out a form offends notions of religious freedom (tell that to all of my relatives who filed for Conscientious Objector status over the decades). There was the Federal Court smackdown of Notre Dame this week.

Then there are the efforts to give cover to businesses that want to refuse to sell or provide services to LGBT clients. On the one hand, I don’t know why anyone would want to have their wedding photographed or buy a wedding cake from a vendor that didn’t want to honor their relationship. On the other hand, I worry about the analogies with Jim Crow and with the idea that the state can permit bigotry and hate. That Governor Brewer has vetoed the bill in Arizona, and that legislators in other states like Ohio have withdrawn their bills begs the question.

There have been some interesting perspectives from Evangelicals and political conservatives that have criticized or rejected these efforts to enshrine bigotry into law. But the question that’s perhaps most interesting is how these vendors deal with other issues. Willamette Weekly asked some difficult, embarrassing, and silly questions of two vendors who refuse to provide services to LGBT couples. It turns out they are happy to provide cakes for divorce parties, baby showers for unwed couples, and the like.

The incredible pushback over these laws–from the business community, from the NFL, even from politicians who initially voted in favor of the bills, shows that something fundamental has changed very quickly. Even in Arizona, polls show that slight majorities are now in favor of gay marriage.

The courts are moving even faster. In the midst of this enormous sea change, it’s quite likely that many social conservatives are simply losing their bearings. The old answers and responses no longer resonate as they did even a few years ago. That’s true for politicians but it’s also true for people in business, in local communities, even in churches. The ground has shifted and it’s hard for them to get their bearing in this changing landscape. That they might seek legislative help to help them negotiate is hardly surprising. But it’s clear that the politicians are as disoriented as the ordinary population. A vote that they thought was safe and a nobrainer even two or three weeks ago suddenly is revealed to be absurd. That explains why Arizona state senators suddenly ask the governor to undo something they could have prevented with their no votes.

It’s easy for opponents of such laws to ridicule these efforts. But I think it’s important that we understand where they are coming from and help those who are feeling such disorientation to make sense of the world in which they now find themselves. For those of us who are Christian, it’s our responsibility to help our brothers and sisters who are struggling in this new context to figure out how to express their faith consistently and openly and to engage this rapidly changing culture in ways that witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ.

I think much of the same could be said of the conflict over contraception.

Justified Anger: Town Hall on Racism in Madison

Posted on by
Reply

I attended Alex Gee’s town hall meeting on racism this afternoon. It was very interesting. A standing room only crowd, traffic jams on Badger Road, politicians of all stripes including Senator Ron Johnson came together to listen to Alex speak about what’s happened in his life since his article in December. We learned about the coalition that has emerged in the African-American community and hopes for real change to some of the wide disparities in achievement, economic status, and incarceration.

In the comment period that followed, we heard from people eager to participate, some ideas on what to do, and the need to engage other people of color in this conversation. We also heard about some of the challenges faced by the African-American community–the problems faced by people who are trying to reincorporate into society after prison; problems of under- and unemployment among African-American women, and the absence at this conversation of people from the under-class. We also heard about efforts over the past decades–reports of inequities and racism in Madison going back to the sixties and people who had tried to initiate change in previous generations.

It was heartening to see so many people come together across the great divides in our city. We are separated by class, economic status, and education, and more often than not, we are also deeply divided by our faiths, including divisions within Christianity.

For more information and to get involved in Alex’s emerging efforts, visit the website: http://madisonjustifiedanger.wordpress.com/JustifiedAnger

Christianity and Racism in Madison

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to the Capital Times and to several courageous African-American leaders, there’s an important conversation about racism taking place in Madison this year. Sparked by some shocking statistics–that Wisconsin has the highest incarceration rate for African-American males in the US. At 13%, it’s double the national average. In Madison, the recent Race to Equity report revealed the enormous disparities in Dane County and Madison:

  • the unemployment rate for African-Americans is five times higher than that of whites
  • 54% of African-American residents of Dane County live beneath the poverty line; the rate for whites is 7.8%
  • around  75% of African-American children live in poverty; the percentage of whites: 5.5%

In December, Alex Gee published an impassioned plea: Justified Anger. In an article that included stories about his own experiences with racial profiling (including in his church’s parking lot), he concluded with a ringing challenge to Madison:

I challenge the entire community to become concerned and involved. I challenge African-American pastors to make their voices and concerns known and hold community forums with politicians to demand action.
I challenge white clergy to address racial disparity and discrimination from their pulpits, challenge parishioners to think and act differently and help sound the alarm of the injustice and inequity in our community. I need those pastors to explain how these systems are perpetuated by the silence of “nice” people.

Gee has invited the community to a town hall meeting to discuss racism and inequality in Madison.

Maria Dixon (Patheos) takes a wider perspective. Looking at the tradition of Black History Month, she challenges American Christians to have the serious conversations about race that are necessary:

Despite our efforts and initiatives to eradicate the conditions faced by undocumented immigrants; the educational challenges faced by the poor; or the inequities of justice and wealth– until we engage in the hard conversation regarding the framework that set all of these conditions in motion—the grand American concept of race–we will be still floundering like beached ideological whales 25 years from now.

To engage in hard conversations requires trust and presence, neither one of which we have in the American Church. Our way of dealing with race is to erase difference by folding it in and objectifying it. Rather than dealing plainly about fears, our biases (past and present), and admitting that race sometimes does play a role in our approach to ministry, we render it totally invisible. Sadly, it is the tendency to make race invisible that is most damning for any chance at honest reconciliation. For erasure is the greatest form of dehumanization in a symbolic culture—for it communicates the belief the object being erased is not viable for productive service nor is it worthy to remembered much less esteemed.

In the past few weeks, I’ve had conversations with clergy colleagues, both with Episcopalians and in wider ecumenical contexts about how we might respond. Of course, neither of those conversations included African-American participants. I’ll be attending the town hall meeting to listen, to learn, and to find ways to build relationships.

Overtaken by the forces of History? Episcopalians and Gay Marriage in Wisconsin

Posted on by
Reply

This morning, after I wrote an update for Grace Church on our conversations about same-sex blessings, I learned that the ACLU filed suit this morning in Federal District Court to have Wisconsin’s constitutional ban on gay marriage overturned. This comes as Virginia’s Attorney General has refused to defend that state’s ban, and courts ruling in Oklahoma and elsewhere that such state bans are unconstitutional.

This is a very interesting development both for the state and for the Episcopal Church in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, our work on same-sex blessings continues at Grace. Our draft public state of inclusion is available here:LGBTstatement_revised_01292014

My Continuing Education dilemma

Posted on by
1

I started an interesting conversation on Twitter this evening when I asked several people for advice on how to spend my continuing education funds in the coming year. The early registration deadline for the conference I’ve attended the past two years is imminent, so I spent some time looking at the schedule and learning about the presenters and workshops. While there are a great many things on offer, it seemed to me that the topics were heavily weighted toward institutional maintenance (endowments, clergy transition and the like) and relatively little on topics that would challenge me to think beyond the walls of the building or challenge the way I do and think about ministry.

 

So, what am I looking for in a conference? That’s hard to say because I have very little to go on. My experience with conferences has primarily been with academic conferences which fell into two very broad categories. The one sort of conference was the giant, international gathering like the American Academy of Religion that brings together thousands of scholars from all over the world. For me, the AAR was primarily an opportunity to visit the publishers’ displays and to reconnect with friends and colleagues from graduate school. The other conferences I attended were either regional meetings of the larger AAR or smaller conferences that focused on particular issues or fields of study (the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference). These latter conferences offered opportunities to engage deeply with other scholars both on common interests and in interdisciplinary conversation. There also tended to be, especially at the regional meeting, more conversation about pedagogy in our particular contexts. As a teacher and as a scholar, I tended to learn more and think more creatively about my work. One of the most exciting things about those smaller conferences was when the big-name scholars attended the entire event and engaged with graduate students, young faculty, and other established scholars in a variety of settings.

 

As a priest, I have attended exactly two conferences. I have not participated in any continuing education workshops that lasted longer than 2 days; I have not attended seminars of any sort. The one continuing ed event that I attended was quite valuable (staffed by the Alban Institute). Here’s what I don’t need:

 

  • I don’t need to attend plenaries to listen to canned lectures by theological or ministerial “rock stars.”
  • I don’t need workshops in which presenters enthuse about the wonderful and successful programs they’ve created
  • I don’t need to hear the word “missional”
  • I don’t need to attend a Eucharist with a powerful sermon preached by a wonderful bishop that is completely unrelated to the rest of the meeting (and the bishop having flown off to his/her next gig immediately after the Dismissal)
  • I don’t need workshops that are really presentations by organizations trying to sell me their products or services
  • I don’t need opportunities to schmooze and network
  • I don’t need to hear presentations by church agencies or functionaries or seminaries

 

Here’s what I need:

 

  • I need to be fed spiritually. This may be one of the few times throughout the year that I am not presiding at worship. To participate with others in the Daily Office is a great joy; to have opportunities to nourish my prayer life and my relationship with Jesus Christ even as I am being challenged vocationally and intellectually would deepen the overall experience
  • I need help thinking about my particular ministry context. Workshops that are led by people doing creative ministry in particular contexts, sharing failures as well as successes; but followed by conversations with those leaders about one’s own particular context (in other words, less presentation and more conversation; what can we learn from each other, how can we help each other)
  • I would welcome the opportunity to learn about and strategize about specific ministries in specific contexts—so an in-depth exploration of a parish by a group of people from similar contexts working together to learn about a congregation’s successes and failures and imagining new ministry opportunities

 

Let me know if you are aware of any opportunities such as those I’ve listed. I’m desperate enough to think that maybe the AAR would be the best use of the funds I have available.

St. Stephen, the First Martyr and the persecution of Christians

Posted on by
Reply

On this second day of Christmas, we remember St. Stephen, deacon and martyr, who in the account of Acts was the first Christian killed because he confessed Jesus Christ to be the Messiah. It’s worth pausing on this day, as most of us recover in some way from the excesses of Christmas Day, to consider the plight of Christians across the world who suffer for their faith. Yesterday in Baghdad, more than 30 Christians were killed by bombs as they worshiped on the Feast of the Nativity. The number of Christians in Iraq has fallen by half (from 900,000) since the beginning of the US invasion in 2003, and now even Christian leaders in Iraq are urging flight.

In South Sudan, Christians are in the middle of renewed fighting. Jesse Zink is providing regular updates from his close contacts in the country. He also provides some background information here. Of the current Bishop of Bor, he writes:

Bishop Nathaniel’s successor, Ruben Akurdit Ngong, is reported to be in the UN compound just outside Bor. He, along with an unknown—but large—number of other people are seeking refuge there. Again, this is what bishops in this part of the country do. They go to where the people are and stay with them. During the civil war, some bishops were forced to seek refuge in Juba, Khartoum, or abroad. I once asked Nathaniel Garang why he went into the bush with his people, rather than to a city. He looked at me like the answer was the most obvious thing in the world: “Because I was there with the people. If I leave them, the church would not happen. My staying with the people, that’s how they received the gospel.”

Pope Francis spoke publicly today about the persecution of Christians:

“We are close to those brothers and sisters who, like Saint Stephen, are unjustly accused and subjected to violence of various kinds. This happens especially where religious freedom is still not guaranteed or not fully realised.

The Collect for the Feast of St. Stephen:

We give you thanks, O Lord of glory, for the example of the first martyr Stephen, who looked up to heaven and prayed for his persecutors to your Son Jesus Christ, who stands at your right hand; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

giotto_3_saint_stephen_1320_5

 

Rituals of Outrage: White Santas, Duck Dynasty, and sharing the good news

Posted on by
Reply

There are occasions when my past as a professor of Religious Studies comes back to haunt me. I left academics just as social media began to overwhelm our culture. In fact, one of the seminal moments for me as a teacher came one day when I noticed that all of the students immediately began to engage with technology as soon as class ended. Cell phones popped out; laptops opened; Ipod earbuds were inserted (this was 2007 or 2008, I think). Not a single student engaged another student or me in conversation. I realized then that not only was an enormous cultural shift occurring, but that we were seeing a transformation in the very nature of community (and this was at a liberal arts college that claimed to value community).

Many people much smarter and insightful than me have had a great deal to say about the effects of social media on culture, community, discourse, and religious life. I agree with much of that analysis. Clearly, tectonic shifts are taking place. What I want to focus on here is what I want call “rituals of outrage.” That’s not quite an accurate descriptor, for what I’m pondering are not precisely rituals, but rather internet memes; and not necessarily memes, but the way in which certain images or stories become identity markers.

Others have pointed this out in different ways. For example, Elizabeth Drescher has written insightfully about the way “prayer” is used on the internet during times of national crisis (Newtown, the Boston Marathon bombings, as examples). There was discussion of how many people turned their twitter avatars or facebook profile photos into the equality symbol after the Supreme Court struck down DOMA. But what I’m interested in is something just a little bit different.

Last week, my twitter and facebook feeds were lit up by outrage after Fox News host Megyn Kelly declared that both Santa Claus and Jesus were white. Now, none of the people voicing their outrage on either feeds were regular consumers of Fox News. My guess is that the only time they accessed Fox was on occasions just like this one—when someone said something outrageous enough to rile them up. The same is true of this week’s controversy over Duck Dynasty. Perhaps of my around 2000 facebook friends and twitter followers a half-dozen or so have actually watched Duck Dynasty; but that didn’t prevent them from posting their displeasure in what whoever said in an interview with GQ.

Why is outrage of this sort posted on the internet? To take the example of the equality symbol that became ubiquitous after the Supreme Court’s ruling. It seems to have been an identity marker, a way of associating oneself with a historical event and marking oneself on the side of change. In the case of Megyn Kelly or Duck Dynasty, something similar seems to be in play. By sharing the post, one easily identifies oneself for everyone else (even though it’s likely that everyone who follows you on twitter or has friended you on Facebook pretty much knows where you stand on such matters). To fail to like or share or retweet such things calls into question one’s integrity as a progressive. Such things—memes, if you must—have become identity markers, necessities to maintain one’s membership and purity in the group.

But as identity markers, they also help to separate. They become identifiers of the division between right and wrong, sacred and profane. They are boundary markers for those who belong and those who don’t. And because they are overwhelmingly visual in nature, they emphasize outward conformity and non-conformity. They simplify and gloss over nuance. And they also arouse emotion, indignation, and outrage. Whether or not what Megyn Kelly and the dude from Duck Dynasty said were incorrect or inappropriate, my question is why do those of us who don’t watch or listen or pay attention to them in normal circumstances, why do we feel a need to take a public stand on them? And more importantly, if we do express our outrage about such statements publicly, are we alienating those who might feel uncomfortable when hearing such statements like those of Kelly’s, but aren’t able to articulate or even imagine what a different approach might be? If we are so concerned to establish our progressive bona fides, do we shut the door to people are struggling to find a way out of fundamentalism and bigotry?

I suppose that what I’m trying to get at is the implications for evangelism of participating in these sorts of memes. Where’s the good news in jumping on the bandwagon of the latest Fox News outrage? The easy thing is to distinguish oneself or one’s church from bigotry and homophobia. The more difficult task is to reach out to those who are struggling to break free from the confines of their closed systems, that they may experience a broader and deeper love of Christ encompassing all of humanity and all of creation. The boundaries and markers we establish and maintain do not make such transitions easy.