Marilynne Robinson’s When I was a child, I read books

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Her new book of essays is out.

One of the essays is here (Guernica)

We should drop the pretense that we know what we don’t know, about our origins and about our present state. Specifically, we should cease and desist from reductionist, in effect invidious, characterizations of humankind.

I would like to propose a solution of sorts, ancient and authoritative but for all that very sporadically attended to. What if we were to say that human beings are created in the image of God? It will certainly be objected that we have no secure definitions of major terms. How much do we know about God, after all? How are we to understand this word “created”? In what sense can we be said to share or participate in the divine image, since the Abrahamic traditions are generally of one mind in forbidding the thought that the being of God is resolvable to an image of any kind?

But it is on just these grounds that this conception would rescue us from the problems that come with our tendency to create definitions of human nature that are small and closed. It would allow us to acknowledge the fact, manifest in culture and history, that we are both terrible and very wonderful. Since the movement of human history has been toward a knowledge and competence that our ancestors could not have imagined, an open definition like this one would protect us from the error of assuming that we know our limits, for good or for harm. Calvin understood our status as images of God to have reference to our brilliance. He said, truly and as one who must have known from his own experience, that we are brilliant even in our dreams. There is much that is miraculous in a human being, whether that word “miraculous” is used strictly or loosely. And to acknowledge this fact would enhance the joy of individual experience and enhance as well the respect with which we regard other people, those statistically almost-impossible fellow travelers on our profoundly unlikely planet. There is no strictly secular language that can translate religious awe, and the usual response to this fact among those who reject religion is that awe is misdirected, an effect of ignorance or superstition or the power of suggestion and association. Still, to say that the universe is extremely large, and that the forces that eventuate in star clusters and galaxies are very formidable indeed, seems deficient—qualitatively and aesthetically inadequate to its subject.

Another essay from the collection “Reclaiming a Sense of the Sacred” Chronicle is particularly thought-provoking and moving.

 

When I write fiction, I suppose my attempt is to simulate the integrative work of a mind perceiving and reflecting, drawing upon culture, memory, conscience, belief or assumption, circumstance, fear, and desire—a mind shaping the moment of experience and response and then reshaping them both as narrative, holding one thought against another for the effect of affinity or contrast, evaluating and rationalizing, feeling compassion, taking offense. These things do happen simultaneously, after all. None of them is active by itself, and none of them is determinative, because there is that mysterious thing the cognitive scientists call self-awareness, the human ability to consider and appraise one’s own thoughts. I suspect this self-awareness is what people used to call the soul.

Modern discourse is not really comfortable with the word “soul,” and in my opinion the loss of the word has been disabling, not only to religion but to literature and political thought and to every humane pursuit. In contemporary religious circles, souls, if they are mentioned at all, tend to be spoken of as saved or lost, having answered some set of divine expectations or failed to answer them, having arrived at some crucial realization or failed to arrive at it. So the soul, the masterpiece of creation, is more or less reduced to a token signifying cosmic acceptance or rejection, having little or nothing to do with that miraculous thing, the felt experience of life, except insofar as life offers distractions or temptations.

Having read recently that there are more neurons in the human brain than there are stars in the Milky Way, and having read any number of times that the human brain is the most complex object known to exist in the universe, and that the mind is not identical with the brain but is more mysterious still, it seems to me this astonishing nexus of the self, so uniquely elegant and capable, merits a name that would indicate a difference in kind from the ontological run of things, and for my purposes “soul” would do nicely.

Another excerpt is here (Commonweal)

Reviews are here:

A comparison of her and Terence Malick (Tree of Life)

Making use of digital media: Madison Episcopal Churches get national publicity!

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I was at the CEEP (Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes) conference last week and met Jake Dell, whose insights I value. He blogged on the conference over the weekend, offering suggestions on how mainline denominations might utilize digital media more effectively. Here’s his original post.

One of his suggestions seemed to fit in very well with what we are already doing here in Madison. I shared our joint website with him and he has now blogged about our efforts and offered more suggestions. Read his follow up post here.

Our efforts began quite by accident as we brainstormed how we might leverage our limited funds for publicity more effectively. It’s also a direct result of our common efforts in other areas, all of which were generated because we Madison rectors meet regularly for lunch.

Our joint website is here: http://madisonepiscopal.org/

Thanks for the hat-tip, Jake, and for the other suggestions. I’m sure we’ll be talking about them when we meet again tomorrow.

 

Symbols: Living and Dead–lectionary reflections for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

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This week’s readings

Next Sunday’s gospel includes what is probably the most famous verse in all of scripture John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have everlasting life.”

I wonder whether Episcopalians, indeed anyone who isn’t an Evangelical Christian, can hear in those words the transforming and life-giving power of the gospel. Their ubiquity in contemporary culture (the placard with John 3:16) a fixture at sporting events since the early 1980s has numbed us to their power, and perhaps turned us off. During the Eucharist, when the moment comes for the “comfortable words,” I find myself avoiding John 3:16 and reading a different verse.

Words and images have power. Often that power comes not from what they refer or point to directly, but rather to associations we make with them. In the case of John 3:16, what comes to mind for me when I see that combination of word and number, is all of the ways Christianity succeeds in alienating people. After all, who, besides a Christian, would know the words to which John 3:16 points? To those who understand, the words may be life-giving, but to those not in on the language, they are meaningless. To the rest of us, John 3:16 is a dead symbol.

There’s a case before the European Court that tests the English government’s decision to ban the wearing of crosses by Christians. It’s a silly decision, on one level, for a cross on a chain is more a fashion statement than a faith statement, which is what the Archbishop of Canterbury seemed to be getting at. You can read about the controversy here.

So there’s John 3:16, a symbol of something, that is interpreted differently by different people. There’s another symbol in this week’s texts, that of the bronze serpent, which is lifegiving and life-preserving for the Israelites, and is used in the gospel of John as a symbol of Jesus Christ: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so too must the Son of Man be lifted up.” That bronze serpent became a symbol of something else over time, so that when King Hezekiah cleansed the temple in the 8th century BCE, he destroyed the bronze serpent which had become an object of devotion (II Kings 18:4).

Symbols are powerful and they are often powerful, or become powerful in ways that we who use them can’t imagine or expect. It’s easy in Lent, and especially as we move closer to Holy Week, to focus our attention on the cross. It is a symbol of our faith, a symbol of Jesus’ Christ’s suffering, but it can often allow us to ignore other aspects of our faith, other possible symbols, or the ways in which a symbol like the cross, can become embedded in a whole culture or web of meanings that we don’t intend. It sometimes seems like Lent and especially Holy Week, become a time when we worship the cross. I thought of that this afternoon as I began planning our Good Friday service, which includes the veneration of the cross.

The cross is not just about my (our sins), Jesus’ suffering, and the doctrine of the atonement. It is also about Roman power, and God’s love, or in the words of the collect:

You stretched out your arms in love on the hard wood of the cross, that everyone might come within reach of your saving embrace

College and faith

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I know the controversy is so last week. But I finally got around to reading Garry Wills‘ eminently reasonable response to Santorum’s complaint that colleges destroy religious faith:

Minds grow by questioning things, and adolescence is a great period of questions. Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken learned to cross-examine the Bible all on their own, without any help at all from college. An unquestioned faith is not faith but rote recitation. The opposite of such questioning is not deep belief but arrested development.

A report on research by Richard Putnam (Bowling Alone) and David Campbell on young adults, Christianity, and the culture wars: . A free summary of the Putnam and Campbell Foreign Affairs article is here. To quote Putnam, young Americans are saying, “If religion is just about conservative politics, I’m outtahere.”

But it’s not just conservative Christianity that turns college students and young adults away. There are significant cultural factors as well. Christian Piatt cites seven, not one of them connected with conservative politics or the culture wars.  Instead, he mentions:

  • that there’s no natural bridge to church when teens leave home
  • distraction
  • the need to filter out the vast quantities of information (and advertising) that assault young people.

In other words, we’ve got our work cut out for us. Especially in light of Christian Smith’s ongoing research, which I’ve mentioned before. Another take on that is here:

Elaine Pagels on Revelation

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I previously blogged on Pagels’ most recent project. She lectured at UW Madison a couple of years ago. Here’s what I said then:

she seemed to suggest that the author’s Judaism was in some way more important for making sense of the visions than his belief that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. I think you can do that only if you separate out the letters to the seven churches from the visions. For if the same audience is implied then the most important context is the relationship between Christianity and the empire, not Judaism and the empire.

More troubling is her blaming Athanasius for the canonization of Revelation. His wasn’t the leading or primary voice. There were too many other things in its favor, particularly, by that time, the universal assumption that the author of the gospel of John and the author of Revelation were the same person. And it wasn’t just Athanasius who attacked alternative visions or revelations. Early Christianity is filled with such visions, and attacks on them. Unfortunately, Pagels’ bias against orthodox Christianity, the Great Church, whatever you want to call it, in favor of the personal experience emphasized by the Gnostics and others, blinds her to historical reality

Adam Gopnik’s review in the New Yorker is here.

Martin Marty comments here.

An interview with Pagels is here.

One excerpt is here. Another is here.

The conversation on the Church’s Budget: Updated. Updated again (3/12)

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Updated with a link to the feedback site. Add your thoughts!  http://jscpbf.blogspot.com/

It’s heating up. If you want to follow some of the more active participants, I commend to you:

Are there others?

This week in Anglican Covenant news

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Last week, three Church of England dioceses voted down the covenant; one narrowly approved it. Details here. Complete results of the voting so far is here.

Overall, it looks like it may be heading for defeat. If it passes, it will be a very close thing, proving that it lacks widespread support (the bishops are fairly united in favor, but clergy and laity are less enthused). This turn of events has given rise to considerable comment

From Tobias Haller, here and here.

The letter from Diarmaid MacColluch to the Church Times is priceless.

As momentum against builds, the forces in support continue to marshal lame arguments in support.

  • From the Bishops of Bristol and Oxford. Tobias Haller’s response.
  • the Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a video in support (surely a sign of growing desperation)
  • other essays in support linked from Thinking Anglicans

Diarmaid MacCulloch’s video response to the ABC:

Mark Harris on the “scramble for votes”

All this suggests increasing desperation on the side of the covenant’s supporters. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the effects to the Anglican Communion’s leadership if it isn’t approved by the Church of England General Synod–and for it to be debated there it needs a majority of yes votes from the dioceses. It’s clear that its primary constituency in the CoE is the bishops. They support it overwhelmingly, while both the laity and clergy are split narrowly between supporters and opponents. Hopefully, the close votes in CoE diocesan synods will allow many who are somewhat swayed by the lame arguments of the ABC et al, to resist whatever “bonds of affection” they may feel, to resist the temptation to submit to the leadership’s requests.

The importance of place

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We are working on our parish mission statement. I pointed out at a recent vestry meeting that the current version, and the drafts we are working on are disembodied, general, not particular. When we have conversations about Grace’s mission, inevitably we talk about our location, on the Capitol Square of Madison, but our location hasn’t been articulated as part of our mission. The sense of place we have has not been clearly defined for ourselves and others.

Jeremiah Sierra had a brief reflection today that addresses the “sense of place.” He talks about his sense of sacred space, memories of the scent of his church in childhood, and the nomadic existence of the church he now attends, which meets in a Zen Center in Brooklyn. He concludes:

It’s useful for every community to periodically reflect on its relationship to its place (and not simply by asking whether it is time for another capital campaign): What kind of space best serves your community? Can you use your building to nurture other worthwhile organizations? Could your community survive without its building? How is your community welcoming others into its sanctuary or parish hall?

 

Read it all here.

Craig Bartholomew has some similar things to say is working on a theology of place. Here’s an interview with him.

Among his comments:

What we are experiencing in our world is a wide sense of displacement, which does not lead to human flourishing. Outside Christian circles, the literature on the crisis of place is huge, but within Christianity, it’s only starting to get attention.

Contemporary life roots against this deep implacement through the speed of culture, technology, the automobile, and the state of economics. The middle class is always on the go through places and are not generally deeply rooted in a particular place.

 

And this:

The diagnosis is that we have lost a robust doctrine of creation. Place is rooted in the doctrine of creation. If we recover that doctrine of creation and see the wonderful redemption in Christ as God recovering his purposes for his whole creation, then suddenly all these issues—like city, home, gardening, and farming—are spiritual and thus not second-rate.

Of the several hundred thousand churches in the United States, many are property owners. Just imagine if each of these churches attended closely to their property as a place and develop it in healthy—not necessarily expensive—ways. This would make a major contribution to the commons of our culture and bear plausible witness to Christ. Just as the creation constantly declares God’s goodness and power (Psalm 19), so too our places would continually bear witness to this extraordinary God who has come to us in Christ.

Bartholomew connects the importance of place to the doctrine of creation. But it’s also a matter of the Incarnation. How do we incarnate the body of Christ in this particular place, at this time? One of the important challenges to Christianity in the present context is the rise of social media and technology which can create virtual community across wide distances. Yet ours is an embodied faith, an embodied religion, and there must be a way to express our faith concretely, and to experience the sacraments in their materiality.

Thinking clearly about the budget: What questions should we be asking?

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Crusty Old Dean has offered his careful analysis of the Episcopal Church budget, pointing out those areas where funding is being slashed, like youth and young adult ministries, and those areas where, in spite of the deep decline in anticipated revenues, spending will increase. The Curate’s Desk is even more succinct in pointing out these areas.

Crusty Old Dean has also observed that this is a budget that restructures the church in some fundamental ways, whether or not there has been a conversation about that restructuring. Power is being focused more totally in the central offices (should we begin to call it the Politburo?). He also points out a deeply flawed process.

But where do we go? The budget narrative claims that certain fundamental questions have been asked including, “what ministries and programs are done more effectively on the provincial, diocesan or local level, rather than on the national level?” As I tried to point out with my example of the General Ordination Exams, the idea that assessment of ordinands is done more effectively on the diocesan rather than the national level is patently absurd. I could imagine a very different way of administering GOES making better use of technology, but that each diocese should come up with its own process is ludicrous.

So what questions should we be asking? First and foremost should be, what is the purpose of a national denominational structure? Does it exist to create a central bureaucratic repository for certain administrative functions? Should it exist to provide, develop, and express a coherent denominational strategy for mission and ministry and provide resources for carrying out that ministry and mission? Does it exist for itself, or does it exist for the dioceses, congregations, and people who make up the church, and those people whom we are trying to reach with the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Perhaps the answers to these questions are clear. There are certain canonical requirements that seem to demand a central office–can we imagine an Episcopal Church without a Book of Common Prayer or parochial reports? Certain functions might best be done on a national level: Episcopal News Service and other communications efforts come to mind. But what about the rest? Apparently some people can imagine an Episcopal Church without youth, young adult or campus ministries.

I think we’ve got to tackle the central problem head-on. We are a hierarchical church in a culture and world that is rapidly flattening out. Precious resources are bled from local congregations to dioceses and ultimately to the national church. There’s a tacit assumption that this is the way things ought to work–largely because they’ve worked that way for much of the last century. But in a culture in which people are relating very differently to one another and to institutions than they did fifty or a hundred years ago, and a culture where the importance of religion in general continues to decline, we need to change radically.

Our national church structures are based on a hierarchical model, no matter how much we protest that they are democratic. The problem is not just that we have bishops. We are a church based in a particular model of how a church relates to society. Unfortunately, that society has changed almost beyond recognition in the last half-century. We need to reconceive ourselves and our church to adapt to a post-Christian, post-Constantinian era. We need to give up our power and privilege at the center of the nation (including, symbolically perhaps, 815), give up the power and wealth that accrues from periphery to center, and embrace a different model of being God’s people in the world.

In the end, the problem with the budget is that it pays lip-service to restructuring and to this new world in which we live, but in fact it is fundamentally shaped by that old model and worldview and seems to assume that doing things in pretty much the same way (in fact, throwing proportionally more money than before toward the centers of power in New York and Washington) will serve us well for the next three years). If this is the budget that is passed at GC this summer, I may well get on the bandwagon of those who propose motions at diocesan convention not to fund the 19% asking by the national church.

Take up your cross–A sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, Year B

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March 4, 2012

The news recently has been full of stories about the intersection of religion and politics. There’s been all the talk about Mitt Romney and debate whether a Latter Day Saint can be president. There’s been Rick Santorum and his criticism of JFK’s famous speech. We’ve heard the Roman Catholic bishops complaining about the implications of healthcare reform for their faith, and their claims that their religious freedom is being violated. We thought the presidential election was going to be about the economy, and it turns out after all, that it’s going to be another front in the culture wars. Continue reading →