I can't count the times I've heard, read, and appreciated the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke's Gospel, in which the conventionally religious people pass by the injured robbery victim, and the despised foreigner proves to be the merciful neighbor and comes to the rescue. Rarely, if ever, have I taken into full account the provocation for the story: the lawyer's question, "And who is my neighbor?"
More precisely, I've become interested in the motivation for the lawyer's question. Having won Jesus' approval for his reading of the requirements for eternal life ("Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself”), he wants more:
"But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'" (My italics.)
In "justifying" himself, what was the lawyer trying to accomplish? Several commentators point to other examples of Luke spotlighting people who are more concerned about their own reputations than the essence of faith (Luke 16:14-15, 18:9-14, for example). Sharon Ringe's commentary on Luke (in the Westminster Bible Companion series) suggests that the lawyer, aside from showing off, was trying to get Jesus to put manageable boundaries on the concept of neighbor, perhaps to fit the lawyer's own comfort level.
Ringe ends her fascinating examination of this parable with these words:
No one can simply have a neighbor, one must also be a neighbor. Neighboring is a two-way street. The parable changes in a fundamental way how the question about neighbors is usually framed. The Gospel records no one's response to this story -- neither the lawyer's nor the onlookers'. The story simply stands as another challenge to the transformation of daily life and business as usual, which lies at the heart of the practice of discipleship.
I'm not surprised that the lawyer's and onlookers' responses are not recorded. What counts is Jesus' challenge to the lawyer's motivation -- his seeking to be seen as an expert on the law, and his desire to keep mercy in reasonable bounds. The response to Jesus' challenge that counts is ours.
Meme on Facebook.
The death of George Floyd and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter has put racism in the USA on trial in dramatic new ways, particularly in the polarizing context of this political season. As a sort of reaction, I've seen many variations on a theme that goes something like this: "I don't see race; I just see people." (Sometimes the tagline of this approach is "All Lives Matter," frequently accompanied by conspiracy theories about the Black Lives Matter movement.) My problem with this approach is that it reminds me of the lawyer who wanted to justify himself. First: he wants to show his own command of the law, and, to be fair, in doing so he is literally correct -- we are to love God and love our neighbor. In Black Lives context, we are to put an end to all false and unjust distinctions based on race. I can imagine Jesus saying, "Good! Do this and you will live."
In the Good Samaritan story, the lawyer still wanted to justify himself. In asking for a definition of "neighbor," the lawyer sought to prioritize his own comfort. Here we see a crucial lesson for our own dialogues on race: our personal story and our personal comfort are not the priority! You and I might personally not "see race," if that were possible in a nation that deliberately baked racism into every aspect of social and economic life for centuries. However, our smug certainty does not change life for anyone whose actual skin color makes life actually risky, who must "see race" to avoid those risks. And those who bear testimony to the risks of racism are our neighbors.
The man who was rescued by the Good Samaritan had been traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. In commenting on this passage, Martin Luther King proposed a logical extension of the Samaritan's mercy:
On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [Source.]
This is what being a neighbor means now. For white followers of Jesus, it means not being obsessed with the need to prove that "we don't see race" and are obviously superior to those deplorables who do. It means learning to discern, with God's merciful help, what racism has done to all of us, and to engage in a deliberate collaboration with all the mystics and activists of all races, liberals, progressives, and conservatives alike, to pull down the strongholds of racism. Then we will know that All Lives Matter.
I have a hard time imagining not seeing race, but maybe that's just me. I see no particular value or demerit in my white skin color, but I do have pride in my Norwegian heritage (especially as it has been shedding its near-homogeneity in the last half-century). I want to learn about and enjoy the pride that people from other cultures have, whether or not those cultures are linked with skin colors different from mine. When I was in high school, the expression "Black is Beautiful" gained currency; am I to deny this? The Black church was my first consistent exposure to Christianity; am I to betray that legacy?
At the time I'm posting this, Aleksei Navalny, Russia's best-known opposition leader, is fighting for his life. This link is likely to be outdated in a matter of hours. More from Meduza. I've also been following coverage on this Russian site, Dozhd TV, which passes on a report from the head of Navalny's anti-corruption organization that Navalny's body contains a substance that is hazardous to those around him.
Kristin Du Mez: Jerry Falwell, Jr., and the legacy of evangelical machismo. (That's my term, not hers.)
Aside from controversies over "All Lives Matter" and the supposed socialist hell being prepared by Democrats, the evangelical support for Donald Trump is often driven by the anti-abortion movement. Supposedly, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are "hell-bent" to pull out all stops on abortion. I tried to encourage cooler rhetoric in this post from a year ago last spring. Randall Balmer has this interesting resource (PDF) to put this relatively recent evangelical concern into historical perspective.
Why do missionaries leave the field? In particular, what are the cultural factors? Andrea Sears presents data from 714 survey respondents.
Friday PS: I just saw this Washington Post article about interracial conversations among evangelical leaders and the dramatic effect of Trump's presidency. This quotation from Emmanuel Acho leapt out at me, just hours after I'd published this week's post:
"Some Christians say, 'It’s not about race, it’s about grace. It’s not about skin, it’s about sin,'" Acho said in an interview. "It’s hard for Black people to attend predominantly White churches, specifically when White pastors are silent on the issues that matter to Black people."
It may be a hard and uncomfortable time to be a white Christian. But it is time for the church of Jesus Christ to sit with that discomfort–maybe even to kneel in it–knowing how much more “uncomfortable” it is to be a person of color in this country; and recognizing that the Church has played a role in the violence of inequality.
-- Rev. Erin Wathen, "Truth and Transformation: Can The Church Survive Confronting Racism?"
I attended the regular monthly meeting of Camas Friends Church's Peace and Social Concerns Committee. We had invited anyone in the church interested in our agenda to attend (via videoconference), so we had excellent participation. The agenda included questions about how to observe Juneteenth (June 19) or participate in community events dedicated to this occasion. The agenda was posted before the most recent global whirlwind caused by the extrajudicial killing of George Floyd in full view of the whole world, so the concern for wholehearted attention to racial realities was close to all our hearts.
I don't feel free to go into great public detail about what we said to each other, so I just want to make a general point: it is not easy for a majority-white church congregation to take our hunger for justice, our frustration with the world and sometimes with ourselves, and our sense of urgency, and translate all that into concrete action.
Furthermore, it is also hard to confront embedded racism in majority-white churches and meetings without inadvertently making the people of color among us seem invisible or marginal to the conversation -- or giving them the task of fixing us.
(Referring back to Erin Wathen's article, one thing that does not happen at Camas Friends Church is any complaining that we are "being too political.")
It's been my experience with race-related conversations with other white people, starting with my high school years in the late 1960's, that we're desperate for "resources." We want to know what to read or watch to educate ourselves. This can have the effect, as Lauren Michele Jackson pointed out in her visit to the Slate Culture Gabfest, of choosing great writers such as James Baldwin and Toni Morrison for their utility in our self-improvement rather than opening ourselves to a full, direct encounter with their works. Not surprisingly, books and seminars on race for anxious whites are also doing a brisk trade.
As I try to contribute to these conversations, I don't want to be preoccupied with my motives, slaloming between the hazards of self-flagellation and virtue-signalling. I want to learn how to "dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord...," and to see that beauty in all my fellow creatures made in the image and likeness of God, and share that dwelling with them, delighting in the joy of reconciliation.
And I want to know what gets in my way.
"What gets in our way" ... there's the rub! I remember Little Richard's version of "Joy In My Heart" where the second verse goes like this: "The devil doesn't like it but it's down in my heart, down in my heart...." When we look at the past, we can and should trace the destruction caused by racism, not flinching to look at the full picture, not avoiding the lament and repentance involved, not overly concerned with our own fastidiousness but acknowledging the reality of our own limitations, addictions, vested interests, denials. The devil won't like it, but here's the best part: when we turn around and look into the future, there is joy awaiting us in that dwelling place, a joy that is made complete when every system of exclusion is torn down.
Yes, that's political, but it's also biblical. Can we go there together?
During the Christmas season of 1969, I was home alone. One sister was in the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute in Chicago; the other was in Germany with my parents, tending to my mother's parents, who were in fragile health. On Sunday, December 14, my neighbors invited me to attend the Christmas party at Evanston's enormous Protestant cathedral, the First United Methodist Church, where my neighbors introduced me to their legendary minister Dow Kirkpatrick.
The party began with a dramatic presentation on racial justice. Ten days earlier, Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark had been killed in a hail of gunfire from a combined city/county/FBI force, the official cover-up was in full swing, and emotions were high all around. The whole country was also still reeling from the My Lai Massacre revelations. I had never been to a church event of any kind before (at least not since my Lutheran baptism as an infant in Norway), so my eyes and ears were wide open. However, my hosts were twitching with impatience during the presentation. "Come on, let's get to Christmas," said one of them.
The problem is, we can't really get to Jesus without an encounter with truth.
Reality check: Radley Balko presents his updated evidence of racial bias in the police system. (If you can't access this because of the paywall, contact me for a PDF version.)
Meet the artist who painted the George Floyd murals on the Israeli separation wall.
Igor Yakovenko introduces us to "ordinary racism" in Russia, and how recent events in the USA brought it into the daylight.
Ethan Zuckerman on why video recordings of police violence are not the accountability tools we had hoped they'd be. (Thanks to Oregonlive for the link.)
The institutions that protect police officers from facing legal consequences for their actions—internal affairs divisions, civil service job protections, police unions, "reasonable fear"—work far better than the institutions that hold them responsible for abuses.
"I could be a Quaker under those terms. Where do I sign up?"
"Elites always feel entitled to take what belongs to others."
"As the article notes, some Friends believe that private schools ought not to exist. But it is also true that many Friends are strong supporters of private schools."
'"Quaker values can be remarkably flexible' is one hell of a backhanded compliment."
"My loathing of organized religion is infinite."
These are among the lively and sometimes profane Twitter reactions to a story in The Atlantic last month, "When Quakers Become Takers: Sidwell Friends, one of the nation’s most elite private schools, cites its religious values in seeking government money." Commenters vented about the spectacle of a Friends school with an annual tuition of over $40,000 and an endowment of $54 million accepting CARES Act assistance.
Until the rise of nearly-universal public education, Friends communities worldwide made providing a Quaker education to its children and young people a high priority. Many newly-established Friends meetings in those earlier generations prioritized building a school first, then a meetinghouse -- or else combining the two functions into one building. The intention, at least in part, was to provide a "guarded education" to ensure that Friends values were instilled along with instruction in "all things civil and useful in creation," to quote George Fox, implying that a Quaker curriculum would not promote vain distractions.
A few years ago, in her article, "Westtown's Integration: 'A Natural and Fruitful Enlargement of Our Lives'," Margaret Morris Haviland gave us a case study in the changing environment that caused many Friends schools to modify their mission. The arguments of nearly a century ago, both for and against removing the denominational "hedge" around Westtown School, continue to be part of the debate about the propriety of Quaker education to this day. (Notice, for example, the pressures Westtown faced as a result of the Great Depression.) At the same time as we continue to debate the merits and demerits of Quaker schools, it's also true that dedicated public school teachers make up a significant part of nearly every Friends meeting and church that I've been involved with in my four and a half decades among Friends.
One serious charge against the large and well-established Friends schools in the USA and elsewhere is hinted at in the Atlantic story and its trail of comments, namely a form of elitism that comes with charging the levels of tuition required to support the low student-teacher ratios and lavish facilities forced on them by the private school market. (According to the article, less than 25 percent of Sidwell Friends families require financial aid.) I'm sure that no Friends school consciously adds "elite status" to the list of Quakerly values in its mission. Probably all of them are trying figure out how to compensate for this danger by enlarging their financial aid programs -- some more than others -- even though a culture already shaped by wealth might not be easy to change.
Back to the Westtown case. An early participant in the debate over possible changes to its mission, Carroll T. Brown summarized the three principal arguments for change, and dismissed two of them. However, the third reason he identified for opening the school struck him as particularly compelling,
"... that our treasure [our Quaker faith (Haviland's note)] serve as many persons as possible." Brown believed that the General Committee needed to discuss this reason fully. But he cautioned that only when the Committee and the Yearly Meeting were sure of what they believed should they act.
It's possible that Brown, in his caution, anticipated a risk that may have come true for Quaker education in general -- the wider world, at least in the American context, has influenced the public description of this "treasure" more than the treasure has influenced the wider world. Take a look at the Friends Council on Education's Web site, particularly its page on "What Is Quakerism?" I don't think I've ever seen a description of Friends faith that seems more intended to conceal, rather than reveal, the substance of that faith.
My own education from Kindergarten through high school was in the Evanston, Illinois, school system, starting around the time it was being deliberately and carefully integrated. Every child should have access to education of this quality. As a child of a violent, alcoholic, and white-supremacist family, it was at my public school that I found safety and inspiration. Such schools bless the pupils but also enhance the whole community, including that part of the community that has no children in the public schools. For that reason, I'm skeptical about school vouchers that divert funding away from public schools.
At the same time, school systems vary in adequacy and quality, and families have their own educational priorities as well. Families should always have the freedom to supplement or replace public schooling for their own children, forming their educational choices around the values they hold precious. Our own family took that route at vulnerable points in our children's development, and the way we did it may be the simplest of the Quaker school models, at least beyond home-schooling: the family co-op school. We joined the local Quaker family co-op in Richmond, Indiana, the Children's School. We parents ran the school (through a committee, of course!), we hired the teachers, we had received space on generous terms at West Richmond Friends Meeting, we cleaned the classrooms, collected the funds, and so on.
I don't want to exaggerate the ease and simplicity of this model -- we had our share of arguments about details big and small. The one I remember most vividly echoed the Westtown debates: how much overt Quakerism is too much for a school that was already attracting non-Quaker families? After listening to some of this debate, Earlham's Paul Lacey said to me, "Instead of being 'in the world, but not of it,' too often we Quakers are of the world, but not in it!"
Nevertheless, the model proved its worth, put down sturdy roots, and ultimately grew into today's Richmond Friends School. It outgrew the simplest versions of the parent co-op, but declined to become a voucher school to avoid playing by rules that felt alien (standardized testing, pledges of allegiance, and so on). And to ensure that the fees would not shape a student body that was unintentionally exclusive, the school began raising funds for financial aid. In normal times, almost every donated dollar goes into the financial aid budget.
And just as the Great Depression tested the sustainability of Westtown and that era's other Friends schools, the COVID-19 pandemic is squeezing Richmond Friends School. I asked Marcie Roberts, the Head of School (until the end of last month -- she is moving to Asheville, North Carolina) about some of the effects of the pandemic on the school. On-site attendance ended on March 13. Families in financial difficulty were offered a 25% tuition discount for the months affected by the pandemic, with the hope that other families who could afford to pay the full amount would do so. At the same time the school's income was falling, the spring fundraising event had to be cancelled. At this point, tuition payments don't even completely cover payroll, so voluntary donations are more important than ever. (You don't have to look hard to find the big blue DONATE ONLINE button on the school's home page.)
At the time of our conversation last month, Roberts was open about the uncertainties faced by the school, even as it remains committed to a sustainable and value-centered operation. I hope they continue to receive the support of West Richmond Friends Meeting, the region's Quaker community generally, and the growing numbers of families who've been blessed by the school. This is the sort of community-scaled Quaker educational witness that is worth maintaining -- even while also defending the vision of universal access to good public education.
Just about the time I was reading about Sidwell Friends School and recalling the perennial debates around Quaker education, I got a letter from an old friend, Ellen Cooney, who had moved from Colorado, USA, to Monteverde, Costa Rica, about three months ago. She's the new development director of Monteverde Friends School, serving in a volunteer capacity. Over the years I've heard much about this school, and we have family ties to Costa Rica, so I was eager to learn more about how Monteverde Friends School is facing the global health emergency.
Costa Rica has done a good job of acting fast to limit the spread of the coronavirus, Ellen explained,
... making health care available through the national system etc. so only about 700 cases and 7 deaths (Colorado is just a tad larger, and has 19,350 cases and almost 1,000 deaths). But the impact on the tourist-dependent economy is devastating. The economic crunch is especially severe here in Monteverde where tourism pretty much is the economy. A survey a few weeks ago that focused on Monteverde found that over 80% of workers had either lost their jobs entirely, been cut way back, or had been furloughed. We don’t expect much relief soon, as tourist season – where most people get their annual earnings – is ending soon as we move into the rainy season.
The Monteverde Biological Cloud Forest Preserve, one of the "Seven Wonders of Costa Rica" (La Nación) is one of the nation's biggest ecotourism magnets. It draws 70,000 or more visitors in a normal year, but this year is far from normal. Local families need fabulous summer seasons to store up income for the low-income rainy seasons that follow, and this year it's not happening. For the school, staff cuts and reductions in work hours are apparently inevitable, as members of the staff have been learning these past days.
There are some similarities between Richmond Friends School and Monteverde Friends School. Monteverde has (at least up to now) about 120 students, about double Richmond's enrollment -- so their scale of operations is relatively similar, especially in comparison to Sidwell's enrollment of 1,100. They are both closely linked with their host Friends meetings; in fact, in Monteverde's case, the school is a direct expression of Monteverde Friends Meeting's own vision of value-centered bilingual education for both local and international students, and was begun practically as soon as the meeting was established. However, there's an important difference -- in comparison to Richmond's three substantial (by Quaker standards!) meetings and a Friends college and seminary nearby, and many more meetings in Wayne and nearby counties, Monteverde and its whole surrounding region have an estimated 50 Quakers. In this time of severe financial constraints, their school needs to call on an international support base of Quakers and others who find its mission inspiring. Once again, donation information is not hard to find.
The story of Monteverde Friends Meeting and its community is told in a new film, Sweet Home Monteverde, whose rollout in the USA was somewhat short-circuited by the pandemic. The trailer and other excerpts on its site promise an inspiring experience; I'm going to see whether our Friends church would like to sponsor a virtual showing of the film. Instructions on scheduling a screening are here.
In presenting these glimpses of these two relatively small schools, Richmond Friends School and Monteverde Friends School, and by noting the recent controversy around Sidwell Friends School's acceptance of a pandemic-related government loan, it wasn't my intention to make snide comparisons or imply that one or another school was more authentically Quaker. Draw your own conclusions. Each school has its own vision of hospitality to the larger community, or to put it another way, to the market. Each has adjusted (muted?) its presentation of Quaker faith and practice to accommodate the breadth of their market. From my work with Crane MetaMarketing Ltd. I remember how difficult it is for any organization, no matter how idealistic its founding and mission, to keep and communicate a consistent set of promises to its best-fit market over the years. I wish all these schools the very best as they confront the pandemic, and hope that the terrible stress that they're undergoing now will clarify and strengthen the values that would make their survival worthwhile.
In place of my usual blues dessert, here is today's memorial service for George Floyd. The eight minutes and 46 seconds of silence that Al Sharpton announced at the end of his eulogy (the length of time George Floyd lay on the Minneapolis pavement, pinned down by Derek Chauvin's knee on his neck), begin at 1:47:20. Note his query at the end of that silence: "That's a long time ... that's how long he was laying there. There's no excuse. They had enough time. They had enough time. Now what will we do with the time we have?"
I'm writing about the death of George Floyd for no reason related to my own insights or wisdom, but only because not to write anything just feels wrong.
Why this death? Why this particular victim of an ancient and constant phenomenon? Is there any indication that the death of Floyd, the shocking scandal of the police violence that killed him, and the subsequent protests and riots, constitute a turning point? I have no answer.
So many potential "turning points" and "teachable moments," of varying degrees of seriousness but blazing diagnostic clarity, have come and gone in recent memory:
Rodney King and the dawn of a new era: witnesses with cameras
The weight of all this evidence is clear: whatever we feel about race, whatever ideals we may have, however our parents and communities of origin shaped us, our actual degree of day-to-day social safety depends too much on our racial appearance. My individual goodwill is beside the point; I'm white, so if you're black and don't know me, you're just a bit safer, statistically, to stay on your guard or avoid me altogether. What is the individual human cost of constantly living with vigilance when around people of another race? What is the cumulative human cost of so much alienation? This is the persistent reality in the USA, and in other countries as well.
On top of all the progressive political points being made (and well made) by commentators in the wake of George Floyd's death and the ongoing overflow of anger on the streets of Minneapolis, I'm most troubled by the spiritual diagnoses. Read Kyle J. Howard's "Why Do They Riot? Rioting and the Overflow of Racial Trauma," which groups together his series of tweets from earlier today Please read the whole thing. Here are some points that spoke directly to me:
6. White America does not listen to the laments of Black people unless it’s forced to. Historically speaking, white America has always waited until the black community has exploded due to its ongoing trauma & rage at injustice before they’ve been willing to act… out of fear.
7. I do not condone rioting, but I also recognize it as a part of the cycle within a society that establishes caste systems. People who wield power against others can only do so for so long before those under the oppression explode. Power is rarely ever willfully relinquished.
8. It doesn’t have to be this way. Black and white people COULD come together and make a stand against the Kingdom of Darkness and the racialized oppression it has promoted within our world. It will not happen unless there are white people willing to count the very real cost.
Of course, being white, I noticed point 8 right away, and being a Christian, I could not miss theologian Kyle Howard's reference to the Kingdom of Darkness. For me, the church is the obvious laboratory and incubator to test Howard's challenge:
The church is (or ought to be!) independent from the principalities and powers that find it convenient to divide us by race and class, and to keep us helpless in our bondage -- or worse, ignorant that this bondage even exists!
The church is (or ought to be) a place where we regard each other as God regards us, where outward appearance and social situation take their proper place as we recognize that we are all made in the image and likeness of God.
The church is (or ought to be) the place where it dawns on us that reconciliation with God and reconciliation with each other are inseparable. We see how important it is that we discern anything that seeks to block reconciliation -- whether it's internal attitudes or external forces -- and the freedom to disrupt that bondage.
The church is (or ought to be) where we expect miracles and supernatural revival to honor and meet our fears, and feed us with joy. It is that joy, that hope, that trust and abandonment, that can draw spiritually hungry people together, rather than our progressive theories or white people's messiah complexes or performative self-flagellations.
As we envision what it will take for us to "make a stand against the Kingdom of Darkness," it is (or ought to be) the church who learns how to count and share the cost.
To draw on early Quaker references, when we are new creatures in Christ, we go back through the flaming sword into the Paradise of God, where we live once again in peace and equality as helpmeets to each other. I am so hungry to hear that our meetings and churches are enjoying this quality of relationship, taking territory from Satan in the process, and breaking down strongholds of violence and objectification.
This kind of work is not going to be easy. There is plenty to do for all gifted people (and ALL are gifted!) ... from prophets and pastors to teachers and treasurers. As with every front in the Lamb's War, we know that those who temporarily seem like enemies (racist police, for example) are actually in bondage themselves -- though we still expect justice to be served. We will be saddened but not fatally shocked when yet another outrage occurs. America's territorial demon of racism has been at it for centuries, and defeating it is not the work of a day. But, as believers, it is our work.
I was a bit nervous about using the language of spiritual warfare in this post. I actually believe that evil exists, and that its Author is our only actual enemy. All other "enemies" are fabrications designed to alienate us from each other and keep us from working for each other's liberation. Authors as diverse as Walter Wink and C. Peter Wagner have helped me understand this warfare. However, the terms of spiritual warfare have sometimes been used by right-wing Christians to demonize (!) people they oppose. For example, a subset of Donald Trump's "court evangelicals" (John Fea's term) have drawn on this language to exalt his presidency and demean his critics. This misuse of powerful spiritual language, of course, can play right into Satan's purposes.
You may not use this language as I do, or maybe not at all, but maybe you can see my overall point: the structures of objectification, oppression, and violence serve the Kingdom of Darkness -- principalities and powers and evil in high places (see Ephesians 6:11-20) -- and are not simply attributable to the designated human villains we're being told to hate.
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes on the killing of George Floyd: When you are kneeling, you are worshipping ... but whom? [My own contrast: the backlash against Colin Kaepernick for kneeling.]
William H. Lamar IV on the coronavirus, bad theology, and their impact on communities of color. (Thanks to Jim Fussell, via the Quaker Theology group on Facebook, for the link.)
I am a preacher. So as I dust the COVID-19 crime scene, I am ultimately in search of theological fingerprints.
What kind of God-talk makes possible a refusal to provide the universal health care that may have mitigated this crisis? What kind of God-talk makes possible a refusal to invest the money necessary to end homelessness? What kind of God-talk makes possible the racializing of criminality and poverty? What kind of God-talk gives political power to science-denying policymakers?
The answer? White evangelical God-talk. The injustices that many communities are experiencing as a result of the novel coronavirus are inextricably linked to this theology. The evidence is irrefutable.
(Are you tempted to try to refute this evidence? I am, but he's got a case. It's not exactly a purely theological case, but we see how race is embarrassingly decisive in how many evangelicals make their policy choices.)
Jonathan Aigner: Worship IS essential, but so is loving your neighbor.
Speaking of John Fea, he reports that Jerry Falwell Jr. designed his own unique COVID-19 mask.
This is a video I embedded here about seven years ago ... now, thanks to widespread use of videoconferencing, it looks strangely up to date! See the comments on the YouTube site to get JR's explanation of how he put the video together. (And here's a recent article about JR -- the musician/scientist, Jean-Rene Ella-Menye.)
Komsomolskaya Pravda: "Ferguson repeats itself in New York...." Screenshot from kp.ru's story.
Last Sunday at Reedwood Friends Church, Judy and I spoke about our Western Christian Advent and its similarities and differences with the 40-day Nativity Fast of the Eastern Orthodox Church. But whether we emphasize anticipation of the coming of Christ (as in the West) or the worthy celebration of Incarnation (East), I ended by saying that neither the glitter and glamour nor the piety of our celebrations should obscure the earthy reality of Christmas--birth, vulnerability, death.
I referred to Anthony Bloom's words about the Russian Orthodox Good Friday service:
We confess faith in Christ, but we've reduced everything to symbols. So, for example, I'm always struck by our Good Friday service: instead of the cross on which a living young Man dies, we have a wonderful service that can move us but that actually stands between us and that rude and ghastly tragedy. In place of the cross we've substituted an icon of the cross. In place of the crucifixion, we've substituted an image. In place of a retelling of the actual horror of what happened, we substitute a poetic/musical reworking of the story.
Of course that reworking does reach us, but we so easily begin to get a taste for that horror, even deeply experiencing it, being shaken and then regaining our calm, whereas the vision of a living person who is murdered is something quite different. That remains as a wound in the soul, you don't forget it; having seen it, you'll never again be the same as you were. And that is what dismays me. In some sense, the beauty and depth of our worship must break it open, and must lead every believer through that opening to the terrible and majestic secret of what is actually happening.
By analogy, I asked our meeting to remember the risky reality of Christmas. In the biblical account, Jesus was celebrated first by a viscerally poignant signal from the baby who would become John the Baptist, leaping inside Elizabeth's womb when pregnant Mary walked into Elizabeth's home. Jesus's birth, in inauspicious surroundings, was followed by Herod's political repressions, and the civil disobedience of the wise foreigners bearing gifts.
Now we are celebrating Advent or the Nativity Fast in the midst of the ripples of Ferguson and Ferguson II, the incomprehensible utter failure of our vaunted "due process" to process the deaths of two unarmed men ... whose tragic stories stand for countless others who remain unknown at least to the white majority in the USA.
If we remember the actual Gospel story, the Ferguson eruptions are not a scandalous interruption in the Christmas celebrations, they are a breaking-in of human reality. Either the Gospel directly relates to this reality or it doesn't; dear Church, which is it? Have the people in shadow really seen a great Light? In that Light can we find the courage to look directly at racism and its satanic grip on people and institutions? And is there any arena other than church where people of all races, incomes, cultures, classes, and alleged sophistication could experience that Light together?
There are two specific aspects that I would us to have the freedom to examine together:
First, instead of being trapped by defensiveness, can we please compare perceptions? In my experience, white people (at least those not in the activist subculture) focus on individual cases and are perennially inclined to conclude, "It's sad, but I can understand why the police officer acted the way he did." In fact, that's exactly what one dear weighty (white) Friend said to me last Sunday. But people who don't have the systemic advantages of white skin also know the cumulative cost of racism. The tired denials of people invested in things-as-they-are don't persuade them. Why do things unfold so often in these tragic ways? Is it really all coincidence? When will we begin to trust the perceptions of people whose experiences are not like ours?
By the way, activists should not be exempt from this exercise. What deep listening will help them (us) connect with those who are now judged to be less enlightened?
Second, what's the connection between racially charged violence, anger over immigration policy, and the increased militarization of the USA? Is our state of permanent warfare (see today's TomDispatch) degrading our culture and our humanity?
This year, at this very moment, may Advent Light restore and increase our capacity to see without flinching, and to act in love rather than in fear or defensiveness.
"Right-brained apologetics": David Heim interviews Francis Spufford, whose book Red Plenty I recommended last month.
There's a particular danger, just at the moment, of falling in with the atheist polemicists' endless, tedious, monopolistic concentration on whether God exists. OK, God's existence is logically prior to the possibility of our faith in him, but it isn't biographically prior, it doesn't come first in terms of the life of faith. God's love gets us there, God's mercy. His mere existence is probably God's most boring quality. [Masculine pronouns in original.]
"Ferguson quiets down in anticipation of Thanksgiving." Story on Russia's Channel 1. Screen grab. Source.
Even among predominantly white North American Friends, the story of Ferguson, Missouri, and the grand jury decision not to charge the policeman who killed unarmed Michael Brown, cause dissension.
Two of the pastoral staff at Reedwood Friends Church, Portland, Oregon, joined the Albina Ministerial Alliance to express distress at the events in Ferguson. (Even Portland protesters are significantly divided.) Quakerly reactions varied to our Reedwood pastors' participation in the Portland event. Some supported their involvement, recognizing the very different experiences of black and white citizens in relation to law enforcement. Others said they were upset that Friends seem willing to protest without determining the facts first, or without examining the evidence that was considered by the grand jury. Still others reminded us that by standing in solidarity with black brothers and sisters in ministry, they are granting that black Christians' long-term perceptions of American reality are at least as valid as white perceptions.
I think that these divisions point to the spiritual-warfare dimension of racism. After all, racism is an aspect of the primordial sin of objectification, a perfect expression of violating the commandment against false witness. In many countries and empires, fortunes and whole economic systems are built on a tacit conspiracy not to account for the generational sins of racism and slavery. Is it any wonder that racism's manifestations continue to show the fingerprints of the Author of Confusion?
This Thanksgiving Day, I'm grateful that the USA has erupted over Ferguson. It's past time to raise holy hell. But let's not forget how deviously this spiritual poison acts. When we are tempted to attack police as a class, or an individual policeman, we shouldn't let class prejudice compound the sin. (How many police officers come from the same social circles as their archest critics?) Police must accept that the license to carry lethal weapons carries huge expectations of accountability, but the rest of us ought to support adequate budgets, training, and basic fairness for the police as well. Don't let police become proxy villains, whose vilification would help to conceal the systemic racism that continues to morph and mutate under our inadequate analyses. That too would be a violation of the commandment against bearing false witness.
Russian media have made a lot of the Ferguson tragedy, despite the persistent racism evident in Russia. In fact, a lot of the Russian commentary about Ferguson is itself blatantly racist.
It also reminds me and some of my friends of the Soviet practice of highlighting American racism in contrast to the supposed internationalism and worker solidarity of the Soviet system. Some of my older acquaintances in Russia became so habitually skeptical of the Soviet line on American racism that they assumed that the opposite must be true--it must be black Americans who are on top and whites who are subordinate. In other words, if the Soviet media said something (they were in the habit of assuming), the opposite is likely closer to the truth. We've had to tell our students and their parents that whatever the reality was in the Soviet Union, their reports on the USA were not always entirely wrong.
Here are several items concerning recent Russia coverage of the Ferguson story:
Nancy Thomas: "We’re realizing that the story of William Abel is not meant only for the Quakers of Bolivia. It will be a gift to the San Pasqual Band of Kumeyaay Indians."
