Category Archives: Uncategorized

Obama, Gay Marriage, and Christianity

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Obama had this to say about the role his faith played in his decision:

you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated.

CNN asked black pastors from across the country to weigh in.

Rachel Held Evans asks whether the short-term political victory of the Religious Right in North Carolina this week means the defection of a generation: “How to win a culture war and lose a generation.” Her blog, rachelheldevans.com, is worth following:

When I speak at Christian colleges, I often take time to chat with students in the cafeteria.  When I ask them what issues are most important to them, they consistently report that they are frustrated by how the Church has treated their gay and lesbian friends.  Some of these students would say they most identify with what groups like the Gay Christian Network term “Side A” (they believe homosexual relationships have the same value as heterosexual relations in the sight of God). Others better identify with “Side B” (they believe only male/female relationship in marriage is God’s intent for sexuality).  But every single student I have spoken with believes that the Church has mishandled its response to homosexuality.

Jonathan Fitzgerald reminds us that at base, gay marriage is a political issue, not a religious one.

I’ll be curious to see the effect of President Obama’s statement on debates within The Episcopal Church on same-gender blessings. President Obama was referring to “civil marriage.” Part of the issue for us is that clergy act as agents of the state when we sign marriage certificates. I don’t know why the Freedom From Religion Foundation and other advocates for strict church-state separation don’t go after that. I’m uncomfortable with that role and would be happy to be rid of the responsibility.

The Death of Postmodernism? Inquiring minds want to know

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Blogger Tony Jones points us to a brilliant article by Alan Kirby: The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond | Philosophy Now.

Jones, a leader in emergent Christianity continues to fight battles with conservative Christians and deploys Kirby on his side. However, what I found most interesting in Kirby’s piece was the last paragraph:

This pseudo-modern world, so frightening and seemingly uncontrollable, inevitably feeds a desire to return to the infantile playing with toys which also characterises the pseudo-modern cultural world. Here, the typical emotional state, radically superseding the hyper-consciousness of irony, is the trance – the state of being swallowed up by your activity. In place of the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism, pseudo-modernism takes the world away, by creating a new weightless nowhere of silent autism. You click, you punch the keys, you are ‘involved’, engulfed, deciding. You are the text, there is no-one else, no ‘author’; there is nowhere else, no other time or place. You are free: you are the text: the text is superseded.

It’s a scathing analysis of contemporary culture and the contemporary self, with devastating implications for Christianity, beginning with his notion that the typical emotional state is “the trance” and the concluding riff: there is nowhere else, no other time or place. You are free: you are the text: the text is superseded.

And speaking of postmodernism, the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions recently passed. An assessment of its impact on science, philosophy, and culture by David Weinberger.

 

Torture’s back in the news, and in our culture

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A 60 Minutes interview with Jose Rodriguez in which he defends the use of torture has largely passed unnoticed by the mainstream media. But Andrew Sullivan continues to force us to pay attention to crimes perpetrated in the name of the US.

Here’s Sullivan on why Rodriguez destroyed tapes of torture interviews:

watching live-action tapes of waterboarding would have brought the reality of torture – and the rank incompetence and brutality of the torturers – into stark relief. It would have destroyed any remnants of Bush’s and Cheney’s reputation and America’s moral standing in the world. It would have forced the American people to realize that their leaders really were and are war criminals.

Sullivan on the 60 Minutes interview itself, quoting Lesley Stahl: “we used to think waterboarding was a war crime.” Yes we did, when the Nazis and Khmer Rouge did it. Moral people think its a war crime when Americans do it, too.

And the argument that torture helped to get evidence used in the assassination of Osama Bin Laden is also refuted by the CIA and by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The investigation by Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee (The Republicans wouldn’t participate) has concluded “there’s little evidence that our so-called enhanced interrogation techniques produced key intelligence.”

Robert de Neufville comments:

We should not continue to look the other way. We may no longer be torturing people. But now we have established a precedent that we can torture with impunity. Torture doesn’t work, but if we aren’t honest with ourselves about it, we will inevitably torture again.

Greg Sargent wonders whether a President Romney would reverse Obama’s executive order forbidding its use.

Torture In the Game of Thrones: http://prospect.org/article/blood-and-guts-and-fluff

I raise the issue of torture regularly because it is a religious issue.

William Cavanaugh, the author of the brilliant Torture and the Eucharist has this to say about torture:

Torture is a part of the Christian past. From a Catholic point of view, the Church does indeed have penance to do for the Inquisition. But how? I propose that the way to do penance for the Inquisition is to speak out and resist torture as it is practiced now.

The examination of conscience that would precede such penance would require rejection of the many ways that we try to distance ourselves from realization of our own sins. Chief among these in this case is the attempt to put distance between ourselves and torture by relegating it to the past or to the remote Other. Confession of our sin would require not simply the admission that torture has been done in our name, but the confession that only God is God, and not any nation-state that claims to save us from evil.

Christians worship a God who was tortured to death by the Empire. It is this God who saves by saying “no” to violence on the cross. Our penance, then, would take the form of resisting the idolatry of nation and state and its attendant violence.

 

Who would want to get ordained in times like these?

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I haven’t been to many ordination services–a handful, I suppose, including my own. I’ve never been to an ordination service in quite the context we find ourselves in the church today–with all the talk of mainline decline, and the battles in the Episcopal Church over budget, restructuring, and the future.

As I sat in the service and over the last two days, as I reflected also on the celebration yesterday, when one of those two new deacons preached and served at Grace, I wondered about the church that these two young ordinands will serve in twenty or thirty years. What will it look like? In what sorts of programs, ministries, and people will the grace and love of Jesus Christ be expressed and made incarnate?

For a moment or two, I felt I had become like a priest I knew a decade or more ago, when I was first beginning the ordination process. He was close to retirement, near burn-out, and pessimistic about the future. I imagined myself saying to these two new deacons exactly the sort of thing he said to me ten years ago.

The other clergy in attendance seemed much more engaged, sharing in the excitement of the event and of the ministries of these two young men. I wondered whether the reason clergy like ordinations is that by participating in the discernment and ordination of new candidates, our own decisions to have gone this way is somehow confirmed. “Look,” we say to ourselves; “people still want to become priests. That’s proof that our call is valid and our ministry meaningful.”

I thought back as well to my own theological education, and the year I spent teaching at an Episcopal seminary. Of the latter, I remembered most the sense that all was right with the world–that the institutional church was safe, built to last, and that ordination promised a long career in ministry immune from the vagaries of corporate buyouts, mergers, and downsizing. Well, the church is downsizing now, and I wonder if the conversation we are having about the restructuring and the future of the church is also taking place in our seminaries. How are they preparing students for the uncertainties they will face when they graduate?

In other words, why would anyone jump to serve on what may be a sinking ship? Why would anyone seek ordination?

But then came yesterday–a lovely pair of services, one of them largely bilingual, the ministry of a gifted deacon who will serve the church effectively, and conversations with people that reminded of our hope in Jesus Christ.

We can’t control the future. We can do very little about the budget debates and structures of the Episcopal Church. We need to remember, though, that we are not called to create structures or programs, or even denominations. We are called to serve God in his church. What that might look like in five or ten years is hard to imagine; for some clergy and laity, what that ministry might look like today or tomorrow might inconceivable. Nonetheless, we are called to serve God in his church. We are called–lay people and clergy–to serve God.

At Grace, we are beginning a conversation that in some sense parallels TEC’s conversations about restructuring. We’re talking about restructuring, too, but we mean it quite literally. How might we adapt our building for ministry and mission in the twenty-first century? It’s a hard question to answer, because we know what the building was designed for and what sorts of programs have used its space over the decades. But what might a Grace Church adapted for the religious and cultural contexts of the next decades look like? Can we think outside the box, when the box consists of stones and mortar and plaster?

In that sense, in the sense that both locally and across the church, we need to engage in creative thinking, experimentation, that to use the language of Bishop Sauls from last week, “everything is on the table,” who could imagine a more exciting time to be in the church, a time when all of our creativity, intelligence, and sense of adventure is needed. What better time than now to be ordained a transitional deacon in one’s mid-twenties? Think of the infinite possibilities that lie ahead, the uncharted territory, the future into which God is calling all of us!

So, I suppose I’m just a little bit envious of those two new deacons, envious of the futures that lie ahead of them, of how they will shape their ministries in a context where “everything’s on the table,” envious of all the new ways and new places in which they will encounter God and help others encounter God. And yes, I’ll be praying for them. I hope you will too.

Communion on Chemo < Killing the Buddha

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A powerful essay on living with a diagnosis of incurable esophageal cancer and prayer: Communion on Chemo < Killing the Buddha.

I don’t think I believe my prayers will do a thing to help Sudanese refugees get home, through conflict zones and rainy seasons. I don’t think I believe my prayers for psychiatric patients will diminish their post-traumatic stress, their paranoid psychosis, their fears of life inside and outside locked wards.

But I believe in the healing power of prayer. I can feel the anonymous prayers of strangers in the shawls around my shoulders. I can feel the morning prayers of my friend’s mother, also living with cancer, buoying me up to embrace each day and celebrate life. I can already feel the unction of last rites—the repose that lets you rest, and die, when you need to.

 

Homelessness in Madison–The Future of Occupy Madison

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It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about homelessness. Two statistics, one is somewhat anecdotal, the other backed up by a survey. First, Porchlight reports that they saw higher numbers in the men’s shelter this winter than ever before. There were more than 150 guests many nights, which meant men sleeping on the floors of the overflow shelters, with nothing but a blanket. This, in spite of the fact that we had one of the mildest winters on record.

In addition, the current vacancy rate for rentals in Dane County is around 2%, down from 6% in 2006. Why are there homeless people? For one reason, there’s nowhere for them to go. The recession has seen a drop in home ownership, foreclosures, and the like. People who once owned homes or in a better economy might be purchasing one, are renting, putting pressure on the rental market, which means landlords can raise rents.

But there’s been an interesting development. In spite of the huge numbers of people in shelters, and the large numbers being turned away, Occupy Madison, which has been present on a vacant property on East Washington Avenue for the last six months, has become a center for homeless activism and empowerment. They approached the city about finding a new site for their tent city; testified before City Council, and have raised the issue of homelessness in a new way in this city. We’ll see what happens.

The mainstream media’s coverage can be followed here. Pat Schneider’s blog post is here.

Brenda Konkel has been following the story closely, and has offered insight into the mayor’s and alders’ perspectives. She reports on the testimony of Occupy Madison participants before the Common Council as well as other material.

The reality is that the issue is much larger than any one thing. People become homeless for all kinds of reasons–unemployment, substance abuse, family situations, crime, medical conditions–and helping people to regain stability requires intensive support from many sources and directions. The men’s Drop-In Shelter is just that, a temporary place to stay for men who are on the streets. It’s not transitional housing; it can’t provide the intensive services necessary to help men find solutions to their situations.

Just in the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked to guys who came to the shelter directly from prison, from hospitals, or because their family situation had deteriorated to such a degree that the street was a better place for them. Some of them were working, at least part time, some of them were in school; all of them wanted a little help to get them out of their immediate situation into something better. I have also heard time and again, from various sources, that one of the problems of the drop-in shelter is that it doesn’t provide the kind of community necessary to help people get out of their situations.

I’ve not visited the current site of Occupy Madison (I did when they were located closer to the square, earlier last Fall). But from the testimony to Common Council, it sounds like what has developed there is something of a community, a network of support that can sustain people in their current situation. The city, and social service providers, should find ways to support this community and help it thrive.

Holy Saturday

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Lord God our Father, 
maker of heaven and earth: 
As the crucified body of your dear Son 
was laid in the tomb 
to await the glory that would be revealed, 
so may we endure 
the darkness of this present time 
in the sure confidence 
that we will rise with him. 
We ask this through your Son, 
Jesus Christ our Lord, 
who lives and reigns 
with you and the Holy Spirit, 
one God, now and forever. 
Amen.

From an Ancient Homily:

“What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.

Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam’s son.

The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

‘I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise.

‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.

‘For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form; that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden.

‘Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image.

‘See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one.

`I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.

‘But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God.

“The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages.”

A Sermon from the Early Church Father Epiphanius is available here.

A reflection by Richard Beck.

Was Jesus apolitical? Hardly.

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Andrew Sullivan’s essay “Christianity in Crisis” has received considerable attention. I regularly read his blog. I find it highly intelligent, thought-provoking, and offering links to fascinating material I would otherwise not encounter. Sullivan is gay, libertarian, Roman Catholic. He writes:

This Christianity comes not from the head or the gut, but from the soul. It is as meek as it is quietly liberating. It does not seize the moment; it lets it be. It doesn’t seek worldly recognition, or success, and it flees from power and wealth. It is the religion of unachievement. And it is not afraid. In the anxious, crammed lives of our modern twittering souls, in the materialist obsessions we cling to for security in recession, in a world where sectarian extremism threatens to unleash mass destruction, this sheer Christianity, seeking truth without the expectation of resolution, simply living each day doing what we can to fulfill God’s will, is more vital than ever. It may, in fact, be the only spiritual transformation that can in the end transcend the nagging emptiness of our late-capitalist lives, or the cult of distracting contemporaneity, or the threat of apocalyptic war where Jesus once walked. You see attempts to find this everywhere—from experimental spirituality to resurgent fundamentalism. Something inside is telling us we need radical spiritual change.Sullivan wants to extricate Christianity from the “christianists” as he calls them, the right-wing Christians who use their religion politically. He argues that Jesus was profoundly non-political and appeals to Jefferson’s idea of a Jesus who taught practical doctrines.

Others have offered insightful criticism, Kyle Cupp, for one, here and here.

I think the deeper problem with Sullivan’s argument lies in a series of category mistakes. Was there such a thing as “politics” distinct from religion in the Roman Empire? Not when the Emperor in some sense was responsible for assuring the performances of the rituals of Roman public religion. Not when the emperor in the East assumed titles like “Divine” or “Savior.” Not when the cross itself was an instrument of political power.

One of the problems for contemporary people is realizing that our categories of “religion” and “politics,” even the “secular” which Sullivan uses to describe St. Francis before his conversion, are the products of historical and cultural developments, that the boundaries between them, however contested they are in contemporary culture, exist in our minds. It’s not clear that such boundaries existed in the medieval or ancient world, that a term like “secular” would have made sense to St. Francis.

And of course, to assert that Jesus was “apolitical” is itself a political statement, when it is challenging the right of others to use Jesus or Christianity for political ends.

David Sessions points out that Sullivan is interpreting Jesus along the lines of liberal individualism (not surprising then that he begins with Jefferson’s Bible):

Andrew describes Jesus’ ideas as “truly radical,” for example, “love your enemy and forgive those who harm you; give up all material wealth.” His project is to convince us that these “radical” ideas are also “apolitical,” that when salvaged from the tangle of theological and political movements that have distorted them, they are something pure, spiritual and otherworldly. Like a good liberal individualist, he reads all of these virtues as a kind of private interior experience, something I’m not sure Jesus ever intended them to mean.

It reminds me of two comments I received after a recent sermon. One person congratulated me for not preaching about political topics. Another person, in response to the very same sermon, congratulated me for taking a political stance. Apparently, I confused everybody.

We Americans have trouble with politics and religion.

A heartbreaking study of Catholics who have left the Church

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The Bishop of the Diocese of Trenton had the courage to invite scholars to survey those who have left Catholicism. It was a self-selected group (people who responded to published invitations, rather than scientific samplings), but still, the responses to the survey break my heart, and should break the heart of anyone with a passion for the Good News of Jesus Christ. Access to the scholars’ work is still not available, but America has posted an article they’ve written. Among the findings:

It should be noted that most respondents said no to our question about any “bad experiences” they may have had with any person officially associated with the church. Mention was made, however, of bad experiences in the confessional; refusals by parish staff to permit eulogies at funerals; denial of the privilege of being a godparent at a relative’s baptism; verbal, emotional and physical abuse in Catholic elementary school; denial of permission for a religiously mixed marriage in the parish church. In one case the parish priest “refused to go to the cemetery to bury my 9-year-old son  because it was not a Catholic cemetery.” Several respondents noted that they were victims of sexual abuse by clergy.

In the context of his reply to this question about “bad experiences,” a 78-year-old male said something that could serve as a guideline for the bishop in reacting to this survey. This man wrote, “Ask a question of any priest and you get a rule; you don’t get a ‘let’s-sit-down-and- talk-about-it’ response.”  It is our hope that there will be more sitting down and talking things over in  the Diocese of Trenton, and perhaps in other dioceses, as a result of this  survey experience.

The authors’ conclusions:

Considering that these responses come, by definition, from a disaffected group, it is noteworthy that their tone is overwhelmingly positive and that the respondents appreciated the opportunity to express themselves. Some of their recommendations will surely have a positive impact on diocesan life. Not surprisingly, the church’s refusal to ordain women, to allow priests to marry, to recognize same-sex marriage and to admit divorced and remarried persons to reception of the Eucharist surfaced, as did contraception and a host of questions associated with the clergy sex-abuse scandal.

The survey invited respondents to provide their name and contact information if they wanted direct connection with the bishop. Of the almost 300 who responded to the survey, 25 offered their information to the Bishop. I would love to be the fly on the wall in those conversations.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we as Episcopalians might respond pastorally to the crisis in Roman Catholicism. Short of putting direct ads in newspapers and other media, how do we communicate that our liturgy is quite similar, that we welcome divorced and remarried people, gays and lesbians, and those uncomfortable with the authoritarian hierarchy. The increasing rigidity of our Roman Catholic neighbors makes our openness all the more important, and our message all the more crucial.

Bishop O’Connell deserves praise for undertaking the study, and for his invitation to meet with respondents.

An earlier discussion of the issue is here.

Millennials and GM: What can we learn?

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There’s an article in the NYT about GM’s outreach to young adults. They’ve got a problem almost as big as Christianity:

In 2008, 46.3 percent of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses, compared with 64.4 percent in 1998, according to the Federal Highway Administration, and drivers ages 21 to 30 drove 12 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 1995.

That’s a 25% decline in a decade, even worse than the decline in the Episcopal Church. The article presents some of the problems with adapting to contemporary culture: the proposed colors (techno-pink, lemonade, denim) will take at least a year before they’re in production, and cars themselves take three years from design to production. So the problems with dashboards will be around for awhile:

“They think of a car as a giant bummer,” said Mr. Martin. “Think about your dashboard. It’s filled with nothing but bad news.”

Kevin Drum comments: “I dunno. I’m 53 years old, and even I’m not feeling the hipness. More like the stink of fear.”

There have been earlier comparisons between corporations like GM and Kodak and the church, but perhaps this comparison is even more instructive. To put it in marketing terms, the “nones” just don’t want our product, and changing liturgical colors (or style, or music) won’t make any difference.

On the other hand, the Episcopal Church never had GM’s market share. We’re something of a niche product, and perhaps, by doing better at communicating what we are about might bring positive results.