Silence on the Drones, revisited

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Well, Archbishop Tutu has spoken (and was acknowledged by the Episcopal Cafe) but still from progressive American Christians, little else.

Teju Cole in The New Yorker writes:

We now have firsthand testimony from the pilots who remotely operate the drones, many of whom have suffered post-traumatic stress reactions to the work. There is also the testimony of the survivors of drone attacks: heartbreaking stories of mistaken identity, grisly tales of sudden death from a machine in the sky. In one such story reported by The New York Times, the relatives of a pair of dead cousins said, “We found eyes, but there were no faces left.” The recently leaked Department of Justice white paper indicating guidelines for the President’s assassination of his fellow Americans has shone a spotlight on these “dirty wars” (as the journalist Jeremy Scahill rightly calls them in his documentary film and book of the same title). The plain fact is that our leaders have been killing at will.

Also in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer explores the differences between torture and drones:
In some ways, what’s most disturbing about the Obama white paper is not that it tried to set limits in order to ensure that the drone program was within the laws of war. Rather, what seems more worrisome is what it didn’t attempt to figure out, and which no one else seems to be addressing either: namely, whether conventional laws of war should still apply to America’s unconventional counterterrorism program, particularly now that it is over a decade old, and is seemingly morphing into an endless worldwide lethal manhunt. Drones per se are weapons, and they are not so much the problem as the parameters of the war in which they’re being used.
Mayer’s position notwithstanding, Kelsey Atherton points out something quite obvious though it’s been overlooked by almost everyone, including myself. The so-called “drone memo” isn’t actually about drones at all. It’s about “targeted killing,” in other words assassination. The use of drones is only one possible way in which the US targets suspected terrorists from afar:
We may talk about the “drone war” and debate the drone memo, but we’re not really looking at the use of a specific technology. Instead, the “drone debate” is about policy, and how the United States chooses to attack its enemies in the War on Terror. Fancy as modern drones may be, it’s the policy that makes this kind of war new.
By the way, President Obama refused to deny that he had the right to target an American citizen on US soil with a drone strike.
If Atherton is write to say that to debate drones is to debate the technology and not the underlying policy, then we have an obligation as Christians to engage that deeper debate, whether our nation should assassinate those we proclaim to be militantly opposed to us, without recourse to any legal or judicial framework for making those judgments. It seems to me that such policy is untrammeled, unchecked power which always leads to abuse.

Ashes in the Public Square: What do they mean?

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There’s a lively debate in Episco-land about the appropriateness of “Ashes to Go” an effort that began several years ago to bring the liturgy of Ash Wednesday into the streets. Here’s a press report from USA Today (last year).

Here are views from several priests. From Scott Gunn:

The world is more full of seekers and wanderers than it is of disciples. Our task, as Christians, is to share the Good News and preach a gospel of hope in a world without much real hope. If we limit ourselves to those who would cross our thresholds first, we will be limited indeed. The imposition of ashes is not a sacrament. One need not be baptized to receive them. And, it seems to me, the act of receiving an ashen cross and a reminder of one’s mortality is as good an invitation to repent as many will ever receive. That gray cross is a powerful sign, even when that’s all there is.

From Susan Brown Snook (she wants to take Easter to the streets, not Ash Wednesday):

But Ash Wednesday?  Surely there are more enlightening ways to touch people with God’s grace.  Leaving aside the facts Everett points out – that this quick “ashing” comes without repentance, and directly countermands what Jesus tells us to do in the Ash Wednesday gospel – that is, don’t wear your piety on your forehead for all to see and congratulate, but practice it quietly – there are other problems.  After all, what is the most immediate experience of getting “ashed”?  It is a reminder of our mortality:  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

In past years, I’ve written about my own experiences sharing ashes on the sidewalk as well as my ambivalence about doing so.

As I’ve continued to reflect on it as well as on the arguments pro and contra, I’ve come to think about another aspect of the rite, the imposition of ashes, and of carrying around that sign of the cross on one’s forehead all day.

The liturgy itself focuses on our individual piety: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” But immediately upon departing the church, especially if we receive the ashes in the morning or in the middle of the day, that smudge on the forehead becomes a very public display. The gospel of the day cautions us against displaying our piety in public but unless we immediately remove it, the ashes will linger as a reminder to all of what we have done this day. It is a public act and whatever its meaning for us, people who encounter us throughout the day will also attach meaning to it.

This is where it gets interesting, especially in our current American context. With the public face of Christianity so often shaped by people who preach messages of hate, exclusion, and who claim to know what is true and right both for themselves and for the world, people who engage in culture wars over things like “Merry Christmas,” what does it mean to enter the public square with an ashen cross on one’s forehead? That sign of humility and repentance, borne in silence, can offer a powerful counter testimony to the loud and shrill voices of conservative Christianity. What might it convey to passers-by who struggle to make sense of their lives and are struggling to make ends meet? How might the sign of the cross help us bear our public Christian witness with humility, and grace, and repentance?

Even more, while the liturgy of Ash Wednesday, and certainly popular understanding of it, may tend to focus on individual acts of repentance, there is also in the liturgy a powerful communal aspect. The lesson from Joel emphasizes communal repentance: “Call a solemn assembly, gather the people.” My understanding of Ash Wednesday has been re-shaped by my experience observing it in the midst of Wisconsin’s protests two years ago.

There was a time when American civil religion involved public repentance–presidents, governors, legislatures would proclaim a day of prayer and fasting. No longer. If they do it today, they are likely ridiculed. As a society, we have lost the ability to repent. We lack appropriate rituals, even language for it. Public repentance is left to politicians or celebrities who have been caught doing something wrong, and for which they will publicly state, “I take full responsibility.,” and go about their merry way. The sinful acts we commit as a society, as a human race, go un-noticed and unconfessed. The very public act of bringing ashes out on to the street can be a prophetic act–a reminder to all those who pass by as they go about their daily business that there is a higher calling, a higher claim to our allegiance than the gods of money and power. It can be a call to our cities and our nation to repent of the sin and violence that occur in our midst and that we commit.

I think there may be no better message that we could proclaim in the public square, in 2013, than an invitation to a holy Lent, a call to repentance, and a reminder that “we are dust and to dust we shall return.”

 

 

The Abdication of Pope Benedict XVI

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It’s remarkable, of course, completely unexpected and one has to look into the distant past for historical precedent. Though as George Weigel points out, we might have seen it coming:

Pope Benedict XVI has said on numerous public occasions including his most recent interview book that were he to come to the judgment that he did not have the physical stamina left to give the church the leadership it deserved, that he would abdicate.

Although many cite 1415 and Gregory XII as the most recent example. His resignation was forced by the Council of Constance in an attempt to overcome the Great Schism that had given rise to first two, then three, claimants to the office.

Celestine V was 79 years old when he was elected pope in the midst of a bitter conclave and deep divisions within the church. A hermit famous for his ascetical life, he was ill-suited to the office and stepped down after five months. He was succeeded by Boniface VIII who eventually imprisoned him. Celestine died after 10 months in prison.

Celestine became a figure of fascination in religion and popular culture. In a time of deep divisions within Christianity and among the European monarchies, his abdication and death became a matter of speculation. Did Boniface have him killed? Franciscans who had resisted that order’s accommodation with papal authority and church hierarchy saw in him a kindred spirit and some “spirituals” as they were called, regarded him the “Angelic Pope.” There were those who regarded his papacy as the last chance that institution had to be a spiritual, rather than a political and economic power.

Many see in lines in Dante’s Inferno III, 59-60, a reference to Celestine’s abdication, which Dante may have regarded as cowardice. Of course, while traveling through hell, Dante encounters a place already prepared for Boniface VIII, who was still alive.

Boniface was embroiled in conflict with King Philip IV of France that ended with his humiliation, a beating, and finally death.

When we contemplate the conflict within Christianity in the twenty-first century, it’s useful to remember that it’s hardly a new phenomenon.

It’s Shrove Tuesday, that means Pancake Races!

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Before Ash Wednesday, there’s Shrove Tuesday. At Grace, that means pancake races:

As a member of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, Ferris helps organize the church’s annual Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper and Races, to be held this Tuesday. Pancake races also are part of the Shrove Tuesday Anglican tradition, one that finds “all my fellow parishioners letting their hair down,” Ferris said.

Racers on the indoor course in the church’s reception hall first sprint to an assortment of British housewife clothes and don aprons, scarves and hats. They dash back to the starting line, where they get a frying pan with a pancake. They then run the course a second time, flipping the pancakes as they go. If the pancake hits the floor, they must start over.

It’s a time to “shake your sillies out — something Anglicans, like conservative Lutherans, are not commonly accustomed to, so it makes for quite an interesting sight,” said Jody Kapp, a church spokeswoman.

The whole story’s here (behind a pay wall)

Listen to Him: A Sermon for the Last Sunday of Epiphany, 2013

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February 10, 2013

Epiphany is a season during which we are invited to explore the ways in which God’s glory appears to us. This year, brief as it is, we have seen God’s glory in the Baptism of our Lord, in the miracle of Jesus Christ turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. Each year, on the last Sunday of Epiphany, we hear a different gospel version of the same story, Jesus’ transfiguration. It is a story that breaks in upon us, just as God’s glory breaks in upon us, and in its details, its eerie nature, and its resonances, it breaks in upon our sense of time and reality, and invites to look forward to the resurrection, and back to the Hebrew Bible, to Sinai and to the prophets. Continue reading →

The Mission of Sacred Space

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The first draft of Grace’s Master Plan was released this week. You can read more about that here: gracebeyondgrace.net. On the surface, the master planning process seems to be all about physical plant, renovations, and the like. But underneath it all are fundamental questions about mission. What does it mean to be God’s people in this particular place, Madison’s Capitol Square?

 

The Master Plan envisions a courtyard garden that remains beautiful but also becomes a place for mission and worship. With a labyrinth at its center, with opportunities for gathering, and with less permeable barriers between inside and outside, the garden would invite spiritual and human relationships.

It’s important to remember that Grace’s interior spaces have changed over the years. Our nave has been altered in keeping with the aesthetic and liturgical values of previous generations. Here are several historical shots:

1876

1876

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1926

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As I reflect on the nature of sacred space, on Grace’s physical plant and on our rapidly changing culture, I focus on several questions:

1) How do we use our spaces to help our neighbors connect with God? Whether or not they ever join Grace Church, can we invite those who live, work, and play in downtown Madison to find at Grace ways to explore their relationships with God? How do we also create opportunities for them to share Christ’s love with the world?

2) And how do we move from those initial connections and encounters with the divine to deeper relationships? How do we invite and encourage people to join with us as we seek to know God more deeply and to follow Jesus’ call more closely? How do we create opportunities for bible study, formation, and discipleship that are appropriate to the twenty-first century?

3) What is appropriate stewardship of our physical resources for the 21st century? Is it appropriate to have so large a worship space, located so centrally to Capitol Square, that is used so little on a regular basis?

4) How can our worship extend beyond our walls to help people encounter God in their daily lives and help people encounter God who would never imagine attending Sunday morning services?

Others are raising interesting questions about space as mission.

The case for creating a front porch at a church:

I like the metaphor of the front porch, an intermediate space between street and interior, a place for casual interaction that might grow.

How can churches build the front porch, creating a space where people can develop relationships before coming inside?

We’ve got one, it’s our courtyard garden. How can we make use of it?

Even Catholics are asking these questions:

 Indeed, it may not make any sense at all to pour limited resources into buildings used for a few hours on Sunday when what the neighborhood needs is a retreat house, a day care, or a community garden.

That doesn’t mean we stop creating places to celebrate Sunday Mass. It just means that maybe we do it in buildings tied in new and creative ways to the works of justice, mercy, and freedom the Eucharist calls us to in the places we find ourselves in.

Silence on the Drones–updated

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By and large, the silence continues. There are reposted articles on Christianity Today and Religion & Ethics from years ago (I won’t link to them because it can’t be that difficult to find someone who can write 1000 words on Just War Theory and Drones in light of the new information we are receiving.

But a few voices are beginning to be heard (not on religion sites, on the Washington Post, for example, but they’ve not exactly exercised responsible journalism on this issue (or on the larger issues of war and terrorism). Huffpo Religion promises a conversation on drones tomorrow afternoon. And total silence from the Episcopalians, so far as I can tell.

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite writes in the Washington Post:

One of the most inspiring and even profound speeches on both Just War theory and Just Peace theory I have ever heard was President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. In that speech, I argued, “The president said that the ‘old architecture’ of thinking about war and peace is ‘buckling.’ What is required now, argued the President, is to ‘think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of just peace.’” I called this the “Obama doctrine.” I was wrong.

David Gushee of Mercer University, in the Post:

The United States would never accept it if another militarily sophisticated country-China or Russia come to mind-developed a policy in which they routinely launched “targeted” attacks on our soil seeking the deaths of those they identified as “imminent threats” to their national security, accidentally killing innocent Americans on a regular basis.

There is a disturbing combination of American arrogance and self-righteousness at work here. We alone, the exceptional nation, the beacon of freedom and justice, can be trusted with the power to kill our own and others around the world in the name of national self-defense (and global security). And then we concentrate the execution of that policy in the hands of individual officials in the executive branch not subject to external review. This sounds like a people that have forgotten the old biblical claim that “no one is righteous, not one.” Every nation and every individual needs someone looking over their shoulder and checking their exercise of power. All are fallible. Even us.

If you want to understand a little bit of why I am so angry about this, note that today in the hearings for John Brennan, Senators cracked jokes about waterboarding.

Outside of the Christian community, progressives and human rights activists are speaking out. David Cole has 13 questions he wishes the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would ask John Brennan during his nomination hearing.

An earlier piece by David Cole on the released memo addresses moral  and legal questions raised by the use of drones:

In fact, the capabilities of drones raise a number of related questions that go entirely unasked in this paper. Drone technology has made it possible to use lethal force in many situations where we could not or would not have even considered it in the past. Unlike conventional military operations, drone attacks require no “boots on the ground,” and therefore do not pose a risk to American lives. Unlike bombings, they have pinpoint accuracy; they therefore reduce the collateral costs of killing and may be easier to disavow. Because drones can effectively travel the world while being controlled remotely from home, they permit the “war” to move far beyond the battlefield. And drones have made it possible for the US government to do something that was unthinkable before, and should be unthinkable still—to kill its own citizens in secret. In short, drones radically reduce the disincentives to killing. And that may well make a nation prone to use military force before it is truly a last resort. That certainly seems to be what has happened here.

Lenten Resources 2013

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Lent is a week away. As observed in contemporary Christianity, it is a time for renewed focus on one’s spiritual life, an opportunity to explore more deeply Christian faith and to enter more deeply into one’s relationship with Jesus Christ. Many people adopt spiritual disciplines during the period of Lent, fasting or “giving something up.” Others take on spiritual disciplines–reading, a more regular prayer life, or making a retreat. The internet offers many innovative ways of observing Lent. Here are some I’ve found (I’ll continue to update this post in the coming week or so as I learn of new sites).

Lent Madness (Here’s a description of it; and here’s coverage of it from USA Today)

From Episcopal Relief and Development

The Huffington Post collected wonderful materials related to Lent last year. You can visit that site here. We hope they will do the same in 2013.

The Daily Office for your computer; and for your smartphone: St. Bede’s Breviary

Busted Halo’s online Lenten Calendar for 2013

Daily videos from the Society of St. John the Evangelist

And a plan for daily readings from the Church Fathers for the 40 days of Lent

From Nadia Bolz Weber: House of All Sinners and Saints’ 40 Ideas for Keeping a Holy Lent

From Episcopal Charities and Community Services (Diocese of Chicago): A Lenten Devotional Calendar

Silence on the Drones: Another Moral Failure of Progressive Christianity?

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With the release of the government’s memo laying out the case for the extra-judicial assassination by drones of US citizens, the media have finally begun to take a closer look at the whole drone war. Greg Mitchell has a useful summary with links.

Tom Junod’s piece is must-read:

The white paper offers a legal opinion, not a moral one, but the questions that it tries to answer are moral indeed:

Do “informed, high-level officials” have the power to kill their own citizens?

Are “informed, high-level officials” acting in the interests of the state ever liable to the accusation that they have committed murder?

These are the moral questions that the Constitution was written to address by means of a legal framework. The leaked white paper seems to address them in a different way, in a kingly way, in an almost pre-constitutional or perhaps post-constitutional way. And so when we read it, we recognize it for what it is: the kind of document that has always been proferred to power. The kind of document that always ends with somebody dead.

But there’s silence among progressive Christians. Not a word yet on Huffington Post Religion. Not a word yet on Religion Dispatches. Not a word yet from Episcopal Cafe.

My questions for all those outlets and for the people who write regularly for them: Where’s your moral and religious outrage at this raw use of unconstitutional power? Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize (remember that?). He’s been hailed as a close follower of Niebuhr. His Second Inaugural the manifesto for a new progressive American Civil Religion.

Obama has refused us as a nation the necessary conversation and come to terms with our use of torture. He has refused to make those who permitted, advocated and conducted accountable for their actions. Three days after he was inaugurated in 2009, he began using drones to kill people he and his administration claimed were enemy combatants.

Christians need to challenge his claims and his administration’s actions. We need to hold him account just as many of us want to hold the previous administration to account for all of the evil it perpetrated. We need to remind him–he is a Christian, after all–of the moral and ethical obligations of following Jesus Christ and we need to offer a clear, consistent, and loud prophetic voice against this evil program.

The Washington Post does have a piece from a Roman Catholic exploring the memo’s use of Just War Theory.

And there’s this from Lawrence Garcia (who is currently attending Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University):

We, as the followers of the unjustly-crucified Terrorist, should, of all people, be vocally against this inhumane use of military might. After all, our King was also the victim of such imperial tactics and realpolitik, and he calls his disciples to sympathize with his fellow sufferers-under-empire. Remember, the cross is not only where sin was dealt with and where Satan was defeated, but also where empire revealed itself for what it truly was,  dispenser of injustice; no matter how much Pilate continues to wash his hands