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| Sergey Kadyrov's audiovisual Christmas card from Elektrostal, Russia. Link to video. |
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| Methodists organize Christmas Eve vigil at ICE facility, Portland, Oregon. Source. |
For me, the constant theme for this year has been faithfulness to Christian discipleship in a country under occupation.
Enough of these posts over the past year have been on this theme, so it's not necessary for me to belabor it here. I'm just grateful to be part of a faith community that has not surrendered to the intolerable.
Two of this year's high points for me involved my relationship with the land where I was born. In July I was present for the departure of the sloop-replica Restauration, sailing from Stavanger to New York City on the 200th anniversary of the original departure of the first organized emigration of Norwegians to the USA. And in November I received word that my application to regain my Norwegian citizenship had been approved. (It had been lost when I became a U.S. citizen at a time when Norway didn't allow dual citizenship, which it now does.)
By long practice, my last post for 2025 is a selection of the year's posts, one per month....
JANUARY: 1975: From Mississippi to Moscow.
My 1975 visit to Russia began even before I left London. Shortly after I boarded Aeroflot's IL-62 to Moscow, before I had taken my seat, the airplane began taxiing. The two seats next to mine were occupied by two delightful middle-aged women who had boarded in San Francisco and who now helped wedge me into my seat. Almost all the floor space was taken up by their numerous bottles and packages of goodies (apparently no need to secure carry-on items!), but after a bit of rearranging, I was fine. Soon they were offering me all kinds of yummy pastries, and insisted on adding cognac to my coffee.
FEBRUARY: Enthusiasm and politics.
It is no surprise that many Americans have not heard of the "network of networks" that compose Independent Charismatics, particularly those centered on Peter Wagner's New Apostolic Reformation. (See this post, Are we agents of Lucifer?, for a brief introduction.) Those of us who just catch occasional glimpses of Pentecostal and charismatic subcultures may find them either absurd or disturbing, especially if we rely on video clips of "preachers gone wild" and the like. We are therefore likely to underestimate the appeal and reach of those subcultures.
MARCH: The tax covenant.
Ideally, by paying taxes, we citizens are simply upholding a covenant we have with each other. We have made promises to each other—"to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" (preamble to the U.S. Constitution), setting up a government for these purposes and assigning that government, through our legislature, the practical tasks needed to fulfill those promises. We know that these tasks cost money, so our legislators make a list of those costs and institute sources of revenue, including taxes. That's the covenant: to decide on the tasks needed for the "general Welfare," from which we all benefit, directly or indirectly, and to pay our fair share for those tasks
Too bad it doesn't end there!
APRIL: Malice in Wonderland, part two.
Looking back at the first principles I proposed back in November, are they adequate for this era of flagrant and gleeful cruelty? I still feel strongly about not dividing our country into pro- and anti-Trump populations, and resisting the degradation of civil discourse. What other disciplines and practices should we consider? For myself, I'm constantly drawn back to Jesus, who was himself mocked and whipped before being crucified. What can we say to those who proclaim faith in Jesus even as they mock and whip others and look to their MAGA audiences for approval? The case for actual evangelism seems more urgent than ever.
MAY: Patriotism revisited.
Of course the USA is not the only country in the world whose citizens, or at least some of them, believe they live in "the greatest land of all." And, they might even be able to explain why they believe this. In the case of the USA, my idealistic preferred explanation to justify claims of the USA's greatness is John Gunther's famous line that the USA is "a country deliberately founded on a good idea"—an idea whose most succinct expression might be the first three words of the U.S. Constitution: "We the people...."
As an aspiration it is powerful, and it's part of our notorious American exceptionalism, but in these fractious times, are "we" still "we"? And as for "the people," is our government still, in Abraham Lincoln's words, "of the people, by the people, for the people"?
One thing seems clear to me about American patriotism. If it becomes detached from that "good idea," then it degrades into cultish compulsory slogans, chiefly useful for attacking one's political enemies.
JUNE: Belonging to Friends.
As I got more and more acquainted with Quaker ways, I learned that the process of realizing that one "belonged" had various names, especially "convincement" and "conversion." In my own life, conversion came first, earlier that same year, when my reading of the Sermon the Mount, Matthew's version, led me to trust Jesus. I concluded for myself that conversion was a matter of opening my eyes and heart to an inward light that could illuminate a path through life. Becoming convinced, on the other hand, meant that, at least in my specific case, the companionship of Quakers provided the best, most direct guides along that path.
All this was no random accident, I realized. My family's chaos (combined, ironically, with its cult of obedience) and the public agonies of the Viet Nam War era, had already led me to nonviolence and a rejection of authoritarianism. I couldn't say where worldly contingencies and the Holy Spirit's guidance merged in my case. But once I realized that I didn't want to practice my newfound faith all alone, a peace church with almost zero hierarchy was bound to appeal. I wanted to go public. I wanted to belong officially!—whatever that meant.
JULY: The whole Jericho Road.
"... We all hold critical roles...." [Libby Willcomm, on working to rescue now vs working for systemic change.] Exactly. And here's what I would love to see: that "mutuality" would also become mutual accountability and mutual trust. The next time the question of how to prioritize our resources comes up, I hope I'll remember (or better yet, someone else will remember!) to invite us to go around the group and ask how we arrive at our priorities, and how we make our contributions accordingly.
Maybe you have ways I've never heard of, to address the systemic causes or the most effective methods of direct relief. Unless we talk, I might never know. Even if I don't sign on to your priority, I can pray for you, and support you in the direction you've chosen, knowing that our whole community will then be more effective in keeping God's promises ... rather than one-upping each other on which of us have chosen the better path. I think it's also good to let each other know how we arrive at the amounts or forms of giving that we choose.
AUGUST: Fiercely inspirational.
[Lamorna] Ash makes me think about what a conversation between Francis Spufford and Flannery O'Connor might be like. Her survey of Christianity in the UK ranges from rigidity with a happy salesface, to bass-driven ecstasy, to personal histories of toxic power games, to encounters with mysticism ancient and modern, to utter serenity, and everything in between. Her 60 interviewees have variously been converted, disillusioned, reconverted, with all levels of investment in making—or not making—their personal experiences and confessions congruent with the institution they're in at the moment. She candidly reports how this research and writing project is affecting her own life, even as she awaits a diagnosis on her mother's symptoms that suggest dementia may be coming.
She is not simply reporting on what Christianity looks like to some of her Generation Z contemporaries. She's also wrestling with Christianity's own primitive and sometimes compelling strangeness, and its multifaceted persistence. She thinks about the difference between the Nicene theologians wrestling so deeply with the nature of Christ, and those Christian thinkers of our own era who can't get beyond sex.
SEPTEMBER: First principles 3.0?
[An "EXCELLENT post" from "your favorite blogger."]
Two days ago, I had a chance to hear Howard Macy read his draft chapter on "Blessing Enemies" from his forthcoming book with the working title Living to Bless. This chapter of his book is based on Matthew 5:43-48, but not only: Howard traces the "love your enemies" theme throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bible.
Howard's full chapter is a compelling lesson in why and how we bless our enemies, while not denying the dangers they may pose. Here's the challenge for me: its teachings can be applied to our fractured world this very day, if we're willing.
OCTOBER: "The cult of personality and its consequences."
Yesterday morning on our public radio station I heard Meghna Chakrabarti open her On Point program with these words:
It would later be called the Secret Speech, but on February 25th, 1956, a cold morning in Moscow, no one knew what to expect. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stood before the 20th Congress of the Communist Party and did the unthinkable.
For a few wild moments, before she went on to explain her reasons for referring to this speech, my memories flashed back five decades to my student years at the Institute for Soviet and East European Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. In those years, I studied Russian language and literature, Russian history, and the politics of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. The "secret speech" was a landmark event in Soviet history, and I remember being fascinated by the speech itself and the varied commentaries on Khrushchev's motives, what he should have said, what he should not have said, and the uneven progress of the destalinization efforts that followed.
NOVEMBER: Could we end up on the same page?
We Quakers haven't exactly gone through a civil war, but we have had a number of severe divisions, as a result of which (as Kevin [Camp]pointed out) we're often appealing to the same history and the same Quaker language and drawing very different conclusions. Kevin's post urges us not to let divisions demoralize us, and I agree.
In two periods of my service with international Friends organizations—ten years with Friends World Committee for Consultation and seven with Friends United Meeting—I visited hundreds of Friends communities, and I found among them many Friends who, with varying degrees of stubbornness, would fit Kevin's descriptions of people as different as chalk and cheese according to their preferred interpretations of core Quakerism. But over all those years, I caught glimpses of progress as well. Maybe we won't be reading from the exact same page anytime soon, but there are many Friends who are at least looking at each other's favorite pages....
DECEMBER: Continuing the work.
There's a Russian phrase, both precise and vague at the same time, that translates to English as "in times like these...."
In times like these, we write about Friends' service in Russia with love and enthusiasm tempered with discretion. We don't give names of people and partner organizations. We do emphasize our nonviolent and truthful principles, just as we "harmless and innocent people of God" did in earlier turbulent times—the years of our movement's origin.
As a former member of the board of Friends House Moscow, I appreciated receiving this report on the meeting held this autumn in southern France. I'm grateful for the permission to use it here, with one or two edits. Links were added by me.
[The report follows. See the full post.]
Video: On his radio and streaming-video show Full Contact, the acid-tongued Vladimir Solovyov says the mission of Russia is to save humanity on a civilizational level, countering the evil West. Along the way, he makes a point about Donald Trump and Greenland: If the USA deems the annexation of Greenland is necessary for our security, why shouldn't Russia carve itself a piece of land from its neighbors for the sake of Russian security?
On violence and the Bible: John Kinney at Spokane Friends Church. From earlier, here's an interesting exchange among Anabaptists: Why Conrad Kanagy is not a red-letter Christian, and Spencer Bradford on why "Is God violent?" isn't the right question.
Nancy Thomas on the biblical House of Bread.
Are you like this author and me? We just don't use the telephone anymore the way we did not so long ago....
A Christmas rerun. One of the comments on this video of a contemporary Norwegian Christmas song: "When I hear this song, it's Christmas... Thank you for that, Oslo Gospel Choir."
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