"The Secret of England's Greatness," Thomas Jones Barker, National Portrait Gallery, London (my photo—I wanted to include the frame).
In my series of blog posts, almost six years ago, on building trustworthy churches, one of the posts was centered on Gordon Aeschliman's book Cages of Pain: Healing for Disillusioned Christians, published in 1991. I read that book in preparation for my service at Friends United Meeting (1993-2000), which began during a period of theological and cultural conflict at FUM. That all happened before I'd heard of deconstructing one's faith.
By the time I wrote the post "Choose curiosity, part two," the reality of deconstruction was more familiar to me, particularly through the actual experiences of people I trusted. As I say in that post, I thought about the factors that helped explain why I hadn't had some of the disillusioning experiences that had caused them to question their earlier understandings of faith.
As I continue to wonder how I can support Friends who care about building a trustworthy church, I've thought about those factors. How have I been sheltered from pain and disillusionment?
One very jarring moment happened a couple of months ago at the National Portrait Gallery in London, when I stood in horrified fascination in front of T. Jones Barker's painting, "The Secret of England's Greatness." This painting may have been inspired by an anecdote, one version of which is recounted in the gallery's description of the painting, in which Queen Victoria supposedly explained to her colonial visitors that the Bible, rather than England's wealth or military might, explained her nation's greatness.
"Black History Walks" on the "Greatness" painting. Screenshot from this video.
I was stunned by the painting's blatant colonialist condescension, an observation that I'm hardly the first to make! The original intention was surely to elevate piety and charity as noble characteristics of the Empire and its self-attributed civilizing mission. And if it were possible to neutralize the imperial agendas from Christian missionaries' work in the golden age of Western missions (some would say not possible!!), there were cumulative blessings in many places. (See Robert Woodberry's "The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy.")
But it's equally true, as historian Michael Ohajuru quotes in the "Black History Walks" Youtube video on that painting, "When England came to Africa, they had the Bible, we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land."
Part of what shook me at the gallery was the realization that, had I been around in 1863, when this painting was first exhibited, I probably would not have been shocked. I would have been sheltered from the Empire's coercive cannons. From what am I now being sheltered?
Scot McKnight's blog recently featured a guest post by Aimee Byrd, "Her Aversion to Christian Language." After commenting on a number of words and phrases dear to most evangelicals I know, she says,
I’m not tossing out the whole Christian vernacular. I’m not saying, let’s get rid of the language. Or that the language is bad. But I don’t put my trust in the words. And I see how they can catch a virus, or how bacteria multiplies on them, and they can make you sick. It’s a tricky sickness because it disguises itself and masks as sanctification, another tainted word.
I am having to dig deeper, read wider, listen stronger, ask more questions, and be more descriptive about what is meaningful, beautiful, agonizing, disintegrating, real, and good. This is more difficult and much richer.
Given that her situation, and her aversions, are shared by many in our Quaker yearly meeting, and by countless others who are clearly not sheltered, I need to pay careful attention.
Speaking of Scot McKnight, I've just finished reading a book that he wrote with co-author Tommy Preson Phillips, Invisible Jesus: A Book about Leaving the Church and Looking for Christ. The authors use their own experiences of deconstructing former certainties, as well as many quotations and case histories of others with similar experiences, and statistical data about developments in North American institutional Christianity, to open up the major crisis represented by today's exodus from established churches.
McKnight and Phillips believe, and try to document, that most of those exiles still feel attracted to Jesus—just not to those who claim to be his official representatives and spokespeople, and the structures, methods, and toxic propaganda that those who hold power in the church are using to try to keep the rest in line. The authors describe how that power and propaganda are used, and the painful results for so many.
Invisible Jesus is not an apologetic aimed at those exiles and refugees to try to lure them back, nor a handbook of strategies for church leaders to use for that purpose. It's more a book for people like me, who are trying to understand what's going on. In today's Christian establishment, why is Jesus so invisible!? For that analysis, I think the book is an effective resource. It is eloquent on the beauty and centrality of Jesus (and on the importance of identifying anything that gets in the way of authentic relationship with him). It doesn't deal directly with the situation of those who have even given up on the reality of Jesus himself, although there's a lot of value in their careful distinction between the Jesus who never gives up on us, and the figurehead presented by toxic theologies. I recommend the book.
It’s telling that Weil has risen to new prominence in the same moment as Arendt: both are safely dead, safely female (and so, it is assumed, feminist); perhaps above all, both are so safely historical in their antifascism that readers can pick and choose what to apply and what to allegorize, what to take as eternal truth and what to dismiss as being simply of their time, or their unique, unreproducible personality.
Part one (last week's post) was my April sermon as guest speaker for Spokane Friends Meeting. In May, again hosted by Spokane Friends, I continued the theme of grace on Pentecost Sunday. Here's that sermon.
Among the questions we looked at last time was how, historically, the church has handled the extravagance of God’s grace, trying to figure out how to communicate this wonderful gift of God’s unmerited favor and blessing to a needy or skeptical audience, and maybe how to manage and filter it so that we might remain dependent on a hierarchy.
Today, I’d like to try to look at it from God’s point of view, if I dared. What I mean is, history tells us that we’ve had a hard time believing all that goodness is really ours. After all, my understanding of history as a political scientist is that it’s mainly a constant tug of war between the idealists and the cynics, and even I, idealist that I am, too often find myself looking at the scene around me and becoming a bit cynical. What does God have to do to reach us and open us up to that grace that represents God’s powerful love for all that God has created?
Fermilab's Don Lincoln on cosmic background microwave radiation. Screenshot from source.
Sabine Hossenfelder on uses of CMBR data for testing the Standard Model of cosmology. Source.
When I came up with the subtitle to today’s message, “windows of grace,” I really had in mind an illustration from astronomy. Maybe you’ve all heard about the phenomenon known as cosmic microwave background radiation. It’s a form of radiation that pervades the whole universe. It even has a temperature…about two or three degrees above absolute zero. If you look at an old-fashioned analog television attached to an old-fashioned antenna, pre-cable and pre-Internet, and tuned it to an empty channel, you’d see and hear what we used to call “snow.” That static was mostly interference from nearby electromagnetic pollution, static from motors, even electrical noise from beyond our planet. but if we could filter out all interference, some tiny percentage of that snow would still be there, that cosmic microwave background. And it is a remnant, an all-pervasive souvenir from the moment our universe was created, 13.8 billion years ago.
I interpret that moment as God populating the universe with God’s beloved Creation. It grew and spread all that time to the present day, when we appeared among God’s beloved creatures, including each one of us sitting here today. Even as parts of that grand opening solidified into stars and planets and carbon and creatures, God’s burst of extravagant love continues to pervade every little corner of creation, whether we choose to receive and enjoy that universal godly energy, what I call grace, or not. We humans have our little conceits—our rules, tribes, borders, uniforms, hierarchies, conventions, prejudices—but grace is gloriously indifferent to all those filters. What matters in the universal ecology of grace is whether we choose to receive it and pass it on.
I don’t know whether that residual universal presence of cosmic microwaves, originating with the very first moment of Creation, are literally an echo of God or just some kind of side-effect. I can play with that image of the analog television set as a window of grace, but it’s really just a tiny bit of evidence. God has had far more effective ways to open grace up to us, and open us up to grace, and today’s holiday of Pentecost is one of my favorite examples.
Most of you have probably heard this Pentecost story many times, often captioned as the “birth of the church.” According to Luke in the book of Acts, at the time of the Jewish Pentecost, that is, the close of the season of Passover, lots of pilgrims of all sorts of backgrounds and languages were crowded into Jerusalem. From the place where the disciples of Jesus were meeting, marked with tongues of fire, these visitors heard the Good News being preached. Each member of the audience heard it in their own language. As Luke takes up the account…
Acts 2:12-18. Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning!
No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.’”
The good news of God’s love cannot be blocked by ethnic or linguistic boundaries; God made a direct way to experience God’s power and to invite this audience into community with the followers of Jesus so that they could learn to live with this power. And hundreds were added to the community and inaugurated a movement that we participate in to this very day.
As the movement spread and organized itself, with the help of that new convert Paul, they continued to experience this power, but they wondered whether raw grace was sufficient to maintain an orderly community. Even Gentiles, with no history of participation in God’s people, whose men weren’t circumcised, were being touched by the Holy Spirit and experiencing this grace. The apostles gathered for a meeting for business, and James was the clerk. As Luke continues the narrative,
Acts 15:12-20. The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
“‘After this I will return
and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it,
that the rest of [humanity] may seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles who bear my name,
says the Lord, who does these things’—
things known from long ago.’
“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.”
And, apparently, those at the meeting for business all said “approved,” and the resulting minute was sent out.
I interpret this episode as affirmation that grace was sufficient, that a structure of rules from the original community need not be imposed on top of the work of grace. It’s hard enough for us hard-headed human beings to believe that grace is really true and available directly; let’s not get in grace’s way.
When James was summing up the sense of the meeting, he referred to a prophecy from the prophet Amos, which I’ll repeat in a modern English translation from the Septuagint, the version of the Hebrew Bible that those Greek speakers would have been familiar with:
Amos 9:11-12 [context]. In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and will rebuild the ruins of it, and will set up the parts thereof that have been broken down, and will build it up as in the ancient days: that the remnant of men, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, may earnestly seek me, says the Lord who does all these things.
Maybe you remember the context here: Amos has been reading the riot act to the people of Israel, particularly to the Northern Kingdom, accusing them of the same crimes of idolatry and oppression that he has seen in the surrounding Gentile nations, and saying that God demands the same purity and the same ethical standards of all of them, Israelites and Gentiles alike. He warns Israel that the woes that will fall on those Gentiles will also fall on them. You can’t mock God.
But, according to Amos, this is not God’s final word. When the Day of the Lord comes, using a phrase that would become an important phrase for George Fox and the early Quakers, God will restore the tabernacle of David for the sake of the remnant of both Israelites and Gentiles who earnestly seek God. There will be a shrine of hope, a window of grace, even after all the mischief we humans get up to in defiance of God’s demands for purity and justice.
Doesn’t this sound like a cycle we’ve been through before? Over this past couple of years as I’ve had these chances to speak with you, we’ve revisited the story of Noah and the flood, and God’s rainbow command for us to live bountifully; we’ve considered Moses and Pharaoh and Exodus, and God making a way for the oppressed, to the point where Moses says “Wouldn’t it be great if all God’s people were prophets?” We’ve considered Ezekiel’s litany, “Then they shall know that I am the LORD.” Over and over, we as individuals or whole nations enter seasons where it seems like we either forget the presence of grace for ourselves, or withhold the message from others. It’s important to say that God’s grace doesn’t come and go in cycles. It’s our capacity to receive it and pass it on that seems so variable.
The cycle didn’t end with the Bible, of course. Aside from all the other waves of war and peace, the church has had its own struggles keeping its channels of grace clear. And in one of those eras when doctrines and territory and tradecraft seemed more important than the purity and directness of grace, George Fox and Friends, among other reform movements, rose up to take our turn at restoring that simplicity and transparency.
Here’s a final story for this morning. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, icons are considered windows of grace, or windows into grace. But even here, we humans can get a little crosswise with God’s ways.
The great icon writer, Andrei Rublyov, created an icon back in the early 1400’s, popularly called The Trinity, also known as The Hospitality of Abraham. For over three centuries, this icon was part of the iconostasis, or screen separating the main hall of the church from the area around the altar, at the Trinity Cathedral in Sergiev Posad, not far from Moscow.
This icon was deeply respected because it was closely associated with Andrei Rublyov himself, and because of its location at this important center of Orthodoxy, but for most of the years at the cathedral it was nearly covered with a metal mask that showed only the faces of the Holy Three, and it was not associated with any miracles. Traditionally, all consecrated icons are equal, in that all serve as windows of grace, but in Soviet times Rublyov’s Trinity gradually became regarded as a high point in Russian art and became enmeshed in what we sometimes call civil religion.
The icon's fragile condition required constant monitoring and ideal conditions of air purity and humidity, and because of this it has been kept in a special chamber at the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow for most of the last hundred years, and Judy and I have visited it on many occasions. Occasionally it has been allowed to make guest appearances, but only over the strong protests of conservators. So about two weeks ago Vladimir Putin ordered that the icon be returned to the Orthodox Church. After a time of display at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, it will be re-installed at Sergiev Posad.
According to much of the commentary I’ve read about this decision, this is not an assertion of grace, but of power, particularly in the context of the war in Ukraine. Every indication is that Vladimir Putin wants to go down in history as the gatherer and restorer of the Russian World in Capital Letters, and he has appropriated this symbol of faith on behalf of his campaign, even as Orthodox believers are bombing and shooting at other Orthodox believers. There is no theological support for moving this icon to its earlier home, because a consecrated copy of the icon is already at Sergiev Posad, and a consecrated copy is supposed to be equal in value to the original. Wherever the icon is located, its own message cannot be changed by a politician’s will: it is a window into the life of the Holy Three, the Creator, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and so are all those other windows God has provided us to see and receive grace.
By telling this rather sour story of an attempt to control a channel of grace, I’m not encouraging us to feel totally superior to Putin and the Kremlin. Here in the USA, Christian nationalism is yet another way some of us apparently would like to obscure the universal reach of God’s grace. How shall we respond?
Although I’m a bit cynical about moving icons about in a display of power, I’m not the least cynical about icons themselves. There’s a miniature of the Trinity icon right here behind me as I speak to you, and here’s a very simple icon that I brought back from the Soviet Union in 1975. Jesus looks straight at us, holding open the Gospel to his words, “I give you a new commandment, to love one another.”
When we understand that God’s grace is for each of us, then each of us can become transparent windows of grace, icons on legs, challenging every every idolatry, injustice, prejudice, conceit that holds us and our beloved neighbors in bondage. Let’s make our church, our community, a laboratory and incubator and beacon of grace.
As I re-read that last paragraph from the sermon, I want to remind all of us that we're not all equally ready to be "icons on legs" all of the time. As I said in part one, sometimes we need to take turns holding each other in grace. And that's not even taking into account that the "on legs" metaphor obscures the reality that not all of us have the use of both legs. In any case, the most constant evidence I have for the very existence of grace is not static on a television, nor a compelling image on wood, but the love and care of my global church family.
@elenakrumgolde There are news that the unique house-museum of Pelageya (Polina) Rayko is under water now because Kahovka Dam was destroyed. This war is killing not only people and animals, but also unique art. Polina Rayko (1928 - 2004) was Ukrainian naïve painter who started painting her property at the age of 69. Her home is a national cultural monument of Ukraine. 💔 Поліна Андріївна Райко (1928 - 2004) — українська художниця-самоучка в жанрі наївного мистецтва. Не маючи художньої освіти, у 69-річному віці почала малювати. Образна система мисткині поєднувала християнську, радянську та язичницьку символіки. Розписала власний будинок, літню кухню, хвіртки, паркани і гаражні ворота, використовуючи найпростіші та найдешевші фарби — емаль ПФ, де відтворила власну біографію, свою родину, домашніх тварин, картини природи. На фарби і пензлі витрачала майже всю мізерну пенсію. Будинок Поліни Райко охороняється Законом України «Про охорону культурної спадщини». Цінність її творчості підтверджена багатьма як українськими, так і іноземними експертами. Творчість народної художниці ставлять в один ряд з мистецтвом Марії Примаченко та Катерини Білокур. #folkdesign#folkart#artbrut#naiveart#stopwar#oleshki#ukraine🇺🇦#kahovkadam#kakhovka#kahovka#stopwar♬ You Are Holy - Josué Novais Piano Worship
Thanks to the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine, the extraordinary house-museum of Polina Rayko is underwater. I found out about this possible loss of an artistic treasure from a Tiktok video by Elena Krumgolde. A Guardian news article gives additional details.
Here is the first post in Beth Felker Jones's new series on "Reframing Paul on Sexual Ethics." (And she's just posted part two.)
Why are we here at Meeting? I’ve found myself wondering. And if it seems so important that we’re here, why are there so few of us? Even more I’ve been wondering that too. Are we special? What do others know that lead them to make other choices on Sunday mornings? What are we missing that those others get? Or what are they missing?
There are many positive things to be gained from an exploration of Celtic spirituality. However, as a PhD student researching theology and race, I have some observations and questions about the whiteness of Celtic spirituality to wrestle with if it is going to form a part of my faith journey.
The late Tina Turner and her post-Ike performance of "A Fool in Love."
These days, references to "radical" often come up in connection with the anxious question, "Where was [suspected terrorist's name] radicalized?" For better or for worse, the word has overtones of "extreme."
In the early 1970's, when I was a new Christian, left-wing evangelicals liked to remind each other that "radical" was associated not with extremism, but with the Latin word radix (= root). To be radical was to be firmly rooted in the faith. The magazine Radix (Web site; core sample) sought to demonstrate the full breadth of cultural and social awareness that such rootedness made possible. In my own case, this understanding of "radical" got me involved with Christian-Marxist dialogues, among other things.
London, UK, November 20, 2003
Portland, Oregon, USA, March 19, 2006
Another nuance: a "radical" identity sometimes has an allure for those who are discontented or disillusioned with mainstream politics. Nearly fifty years ago Tom Wolfe documented liberal celebrities' "radical chic." More generally, the activist subculture (in my experience) doesn't like being associated with the truncated political spectrum of the white American middle class or of speculative academia. Radicals are skeptical about gradualism; they yearn to disrupt and transform. At many of the large demonstrations I've attended over the years (most dramatically at an Aboriginal people's demonstration on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on September 30, 1974), there have been disruptive participants in the mix, working to provoke violence. It can be a frightening experience.
It's easy for me to dismiss some of these self-proclaimed radicals as self-indulgent practitioners of (in Vladimir Lenin's words) left-wing infantilism, but I don't criticize their discontent. From a Christian viewpoint, we're waiting in hope that "the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God." (Context.) It's hard to wait! Some of us tend to the waiting flock, some envision the coming liberation, and some can't help demanding, with Jeremiah, that we stop saying "peace, peace" when there is no peace! (Context.)
Radical religion can be a creative synthesis, but it can also be attached to a sort of timid marketing conceit, to which liberal Quakers can sometimes be vulnerable. (Yes, I'm aware that evangelical Quakers have our own conceits!) How often have I heard variations on the line, "We Quakers are so radical that we don't even insist on biblical foundations, Jesus, or even God." Talk about cutting one's roots! With this attempt at attraction by non-offensiveness, Friends ironically use the word "radical" to cover the fact that they've been reshaped and thoroughly domesticated by the relentless skepticism of the larger society, rather than asserting a courageous and genuinely radical commitment to the Lamb's War.
Maybe the most genuine radicals among us are not especially concerned about how they're labeled. Example: was Daniel Berrigan a radical? His most persistent self-description was as powerful as it was non-chic: he was a priest, a minister of Christ. But he lived out Greg Kandra's assertion that "being a Christian, in fact, is radical."
What do you think? What is it about being a Christian that can usefully be described as radical? Have you and I been radicalized?
The latest edition of Friends Journal's Quaker Works. An impressive list with a glaring gap: no group primarily involved with evangelism is listed. Did nobody even try to get listed? (Well, to be fair, the Tract Association of Friends is included ... under "Consultation, Support, and Resources.")
At the Elektrostal Exhibition Hall through October 15: Woodpainting by the husband-and-wife team Bronislav and Antonina Kanushin. (First picture: Elektrostal Museum staffer and our former student Maria Bragina shows our group around the exhibition.)
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine and I were discussing a couple of well-known Russian Christian activists. One of them is Orthodox and the other is Baptist. Both are known for their willingness to be controversial.
My friend had some doubts about the efficacy of aggressive activism. He said, look how far the new Protestant mayor of Togliatti, Russia, is getting with his quiet, non-confrontational approach.
As usual, I don't like to have to choose between apparent opposites. Many gifts are represented in the Body of Christ, and their practitioners are sometimes likely to get on each others' nerves. One of the first prophets I ran into among Friends often seemed to find herself quite alone at meetings for business. When the Baptist guy I'm referring to here gets his rhetoric going, you can almost sense people running for cover, but I absolutely admire his ability to point out the biblical signs of the times.
So we have the sensible administrator over here; and over there we have the prophet who rushes in where angels and fools alike fear to tread. Shouldn't they be in conversation with each other, and with the rest of us?
The day after my friend and I had this discussion, I saw a one-line news item online that went something like this: artist nails scrotum to Red Square. Instantly I knew it could only be Pyotr Pavlensky. Earlier this year, he had appeared, naked and wrapped in barbed wire, in front of a government building in St. Petersburg. Last year he sewed his mouth shut and stood in front of St. Petersburg's Kazan Cathedral, holding a sign that read, "Pussy Riot's appearance was a replaying of JESUS CHRIST'S famous action (Matthew 21:12-13)." (Photos here. All three actions summarized here.)
Honestly, I was deeply moved by this latest act. I find it impossible to analyze Pavlensky dispassionately, either in terms of art or politics--and I'm not competent to venture into the territory of psychology. In purely human terms, I'm just very impressed with his willingness to confront Goliath, and not Goliath only, but all of us who are chattering away fully clothed on the sidelines and betting that Goliath will win once again.
Don't assume, by the way, that you know who I mean by "Goliath." It's a system, not a person. In the slow-motion drama that is Russia today, and maybe the world as a whole, every human being, and certainly every politician, is playing a role. There are few, if any, total devils or total angels, as inconvenient as that fact might be for those who like to choose sides. We vary only in our degree of captivity or (as I see it in Christian terms) our choosing to accept and proclaim freedom in stubborn solidarity with our neighbors--and then working out through honest dialogue what that really means.
Well, I think it is worth thinking about, anyway. And my thinking recently has been fed by several helpful articles on cynicism in Russia, collected on the site openDemocracy.net. I found "The indiscreet charm of the Russian cynic" especially interesting, in light of Pussy Riot and Pyotr Pavlensky--and in the continuing ability of just about everyone I know to adopt the persona that they need to get through the next routine encounter with power. Without romanticizing a risky path that could lead to perverse self-gratification rather than social blessing, I can't help wondering whether these new tricksters might be provoking a whole new conversation beyond the conventional tugs-of-war of today's conventional politics.
In my first blog post about Pope Francis, I said that John Paul II created and exploited disequilibrium in world politics, and I hoped that Francis would create and exploit disequilibrium in the very nature and understanding of world leadership. It was interesting to see a tiny confirmation of this disequilibrium in what Russian Orthodox protodeacon Andrei Kuraev said about Pussy Riot convict Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's complaints about prison conditions, and about patriarchal representative Vsevolod Chaplin's response (convicts who go to prison for a crime shouldn't expect a resort). From Geraldine Fagan's article, "Russia's spinning moral compass," at openDemocracy.net,
Protodeacon Kurayev’s quite different reaction to Tolokonnikova’s appeal highlights how deep the Church rift over politics has become. ‘Before us is a situation straight from the Gospels – a person is crying in pain, asking for help… Should we make faces and say, ‘No, no, no, until we see an expert analysis in triplicate and officially stamped saying there really are violations and problems there, we won’t waste our compassion’?’
Imagine if such a letter lay on the desk of Pope Francis, asked Kurayev. Would his reaction be the same as Fr Vsevolod Chaplin’s? ‘I don’t think so.’ For the protodeacon, the stakes of clerical support for the regime in the new Putin era could not be higher. ‘This is already a question of the honour of our Church.’
More on Francis and the Christian antidote to cynicism: "Why even atheists should be praying for Pope Francis." There's a massive public response to Francis, which should tell us something very significant about the widespread hunger for Christian consistency.
The discussions I mentioned a couple of years ago about translating Quaker literature from English to other languages have been continuing. We've also been surveying those who have requested Friends materials here in Russia, asking what they've found helpful and what they'd like to see more of. We know there is more research to do.
I continue to be puzzled by several questions--maybe you can help me (and the rest of us) think them through.
How do we take honest account of the cultural values we transmit to a new audience (any new audience) along with our presumably universal insights about Christian faith and practice? How do we connect with the deepest values of the audience's culture?
How do we learn of the bondages and challenges faced by our audience members, so that our communications can address those specific bondages and challenges rather than simply being vehicles for our self-descriptions and our wise prescriptions for world peace, etc.?
Do we know enough about the translation and interpretation work that might already be going on in our audience's academic world? (Tatiana Pavlova, the first modern Russian Friend, found out about us through her academic work on 17th-century England.)
Are there voices already present in our audience that have a prophetic word that we might be in a unique position to recognize--particularly those who are saying things that are needed and also unwelcome in their culture? How will we know?
How do we avoid importing Western Quaker polarizations and controversies, which may be either irrelevant or an actual distraction in the receiving community? For example, post-Christian skepticism has had a huge effect in the West, making many of us assume that any potential audience is very prickly about faith claims. This isn't 100% true in our Western cultures, but is certainly not true of our new audience! Some of us may have entirely forgotten about (or have subconsciously discounted) people who are actually quite ready to listen to someone with an urgent Christian message delivered without manipulation, without exaggeration, without authoritarianism, and with love.
Are there Friends who actually have a direct message on their hearts for our new audience? Perhaps we're not limited to translating existing texts, but will be hearing from someone with a fresh word.
What have other small Christian groups--especially those with a prophetic or dissenting interpretation of discipleship--experienced in "publishing Truth" for our new audience?
Our discussions have already touched on just about all Friends books from the last three and a half centuries that have stood the test of time--but maybe you'd like to suggest books or articles that have been important for you and that you think would travel well into a new audience.
I think there is something very admirable about the tradition of Friends doing outreach work that is totally innocent of any proselytizing agenda. But there is a shadow side to this otherwise admirable trait--and it's quite serious. If there is no clear access for the public to worship with us, we may be sending the message that outreach or service is something "we" do for "you"--and "you" should please remain on "your" side of the fence. Activity, no matter how energetic, that conceals its spiritual motivation--or worse yet, becomes unmoored from that motivation--is not entirely honest and is in danger of becoming elitist. We hurt our own community in two ways--by depriving ourselves of the company of those who have experienced deprivation or bondage first-hand, and by marginalizing those of our community who are spiritually gifted to create our public access. Balancing these needs--maintaining the integrity of our outreach from any hint of proselytism, and the same time being sure there is access to our community for those who want it--is worth a lot of thought and discussion.
The Fellowship of Elektrostal Artists provided our city with a wonderful joint exhibition which closed earlier this month. They invited me to the take-down session, during which all the art was packed up for removal, and asked if I would photograph four of each artist's works (a few had less than four on exhibit). With most of the art off the walls, it was easier to photograph them than might otherwise have been the case. I'm not at all a professional photographer and not an expert at taking photos of art that's behind glass, but I am an available volunteer, so I was glad for the task! Several of these artists have become friends and acquaintances over these past few years, and it was an honor to do something for them.
Here's a gallery of that day's work. Not everything is here--some pictures just didn't get photographed as well as I'd have liked. For one thing, I have a lot to learn about preserving color faithfully. After messing around a bit with GIMP, I may have more pictures to add later.
"Russia's Demography: Reversal of the 'Russian Cross'" ... and the disputed role of alcohol. Sergey Zhuravlev on demographic trends in Russia, with commentary by Anatoly Karlin. A fascinating take on a vital subject.
I knew Rich Mullins grew up in the Friends church, but thanks to Danny Coleman, I now know about the documentary film being made about him.
This week's gap-fill musical exercise for my students: "Joliet Bound." I tried to find Rory Block on video with this song, but these guys aren't too bad! ...
Campolo recounts his "famous line": Other than giving our lives to Christ, there's nothing more important than responding to the needs of the poor, with all that we are and all that we have. Lovingly sacrifice--that's what the world's looking for. The world's tired of churches that seem to spend most of the money they collect on themselves. I mean you look at the typical church budget and ask how much money is being spent on keeping the church going and how much is really spent on the poor.
I was speaking some years ago at Wheaton College in a line that made me famous. Few lines make people famous but I have been both praised and condemned for this one line. 'Cause I was doing my best, I was really doing my best to sensitize these young people to the suffering of poor people and why they need to respond and give their lives to the needs of the poor.
And you know at Wheaton they have to go to chapel every day--it's required--and they're sitting there, 2500 of them, and you know they have Billy Graham on Monday and Luis Palau on Tuesday, so, who is this guy? And I'm pumping away as best I can, and I'm frustrated, and I'm an Italian from Philadelphia, and when we get frustrated we lose control, and I yelled, "while you were sleeping last night, 40,000 children died of either starvation or diseases related to malnutrition ... 40,000 children die every single day from starvation or diseases related to malnutrition," and everybody just sat there, and I said, "And what's worse is, most of you don't give a shit." I have never seen an audience wake up like that audience woke up. I mean, you should have been there. They were nudging ... "Did you hear?" All over I saw ... [whispering] "He said 'shit'..." and I said, "And what's worse is, you are more upset with the fact that I said 'shit' than that 40,000 kids died last night, and that's what's wrong with our Christianity."
Around 1993 or 1994, my first or second year at Friends United Meeting, we published an article by Vince Stults in Quaker Life reflecting the passion for holistic mission he (we) wished would become infectious among Friends. In the article, he mentioned Tony Campolo's famous line about Christian students who didn't seem not to "give a shit" about 40,000 children dying of preventable causes every day.
Campolo has recounted that incident many times, but back in the early '90's, probably many of our readers had not heard of it. We expected some discomfort with our use of an expletive in our Christian periodical, and we hoped that on balance Tony's urgency would explain our momentary departure from our normal squeaky-clean editorial practice--that, in fact, our readers would experience that same creative discomfort that Tony surely hoped he had produced among the Wheaton College students.
In fact we did receive some unhappy responses from readers, as well as positive responses. One letter came from a rural Friends meeting in Indiana Yearly Meeting. (Maybe someone can get hold of that issue of the magazine and fill in the details.) That letter politely eldered us for our "carnal" spirit.
Although I grew up in an atheist family and had no personal background in conservative or Holiness Christianity, and my favorite music pre- and post-conversion has been blues (about as carnal as music can get, maybe), it seemed to me that I knew quite directly what the writers meant. They were charging us with gratifying a sensation-loving element in ourselves and our readers--neither edifying the readers nor glorifying God. This kind of conduct doesn't become those who have been made new creatures in Christ. I'm sure those Friends knew we had no intention of being uselessly offensive, but they wanted us to know that we had crossed a rhetorical line that was important to them.
This reluctance to gratify worldliness is an element of the culture that formed most members of Indiana Yearly Meeting and most students at Wheaton College. After all, if Campolo's audience had not come from such a culture, the use of that word would not have made any impact. Furthermore, a word used spontaneously in a face-to-face encounter may be more forgivable than a premeditated repetition in a magazine that ends up in the hands of readers of all ages and conditions.
To this day I still believe we were right not to cut that incident from Vince's article. After all, the church is God's provision for keeping God's promises to the world's poor and oppressed people, and Tony's discontent with the church's response was well-founded. You can be as "holy" as you like, but if evangelical Protestantism can go on for year after year after year and still not be a threat to the principalities and powers who grind the faces of the poor--and if we can even get enmeshed with those unholy powers--then clearly all that respect for propriety is neither edifying believers nor glorifying God. An occasional outburst of indignation is not the issue; putting all our energy into suppressing our emotions would be far more costly than cleaning up after ourselves when we slip up. Should anyone be able to think about 40,000 preventable deaths among children every day without losing it?
But ... but ... at the same time our critics were not wrong! The way we conduct ourselves in the Lamb's War does make a difference. The catharsis of rage has an addictive quality of its own, as does the feeling of superiority when we think we're flipping the bird to the "oppressor"--objectifying that human being who happens to be a banker or broker or politician, while avoiding our own complicity, and basking in the glow of our moral superiority. The demonic patterns that dramatically impoverish and enslave some of us also wreak a more subtle havoc on the rest of us; and all of us--rich and poor alike--have the right to hear the Gospel preached with 100% of the love that it contains for every single hearer. How will a Quaker message that connects the dots of passionate Christ-centeredness and economic discipleship be heard if its bearer does not show that love?
So here's a task that calls mystics and prophets, introverts and extroverts to be collaborative and creative. How does the Christian's word in the public arena--say in the Occupy movement--reflect both the unconditional love of God for all those trapped in oppressive systems, and the urgent need for those systems to be questioned, redeemed, pulled down? And who will carry out the ministry of eldership, as that rural meeting did for us at Quaker Life?
These thoughts were stirred up in part by an article in Index on Censorship: "Voina: Russia's Robin Hoods." (Caution--a lot of offensive stuff in this article.) I know personally that for many people here, even in this post-Soviet space, there is a big difference between what people say privately and what they'll say or do in public. So, I'm already predisposed to like someone who believes "that it was his duty as an artist to express openly what other people fear to express...." And I strongly believe that neither the presence nor the absence of a political message invalidates art. For me, the more complicated question is: where is transcendent hope in campaigns like Voina's? Is it possible to be as audacious, as courageous, as whimsical, as over-the-top as these people have been in their passion for freedom, and still testify, as Quakers and indeed all Christians do, to a love that is directly available to the whole audience, including the security services?
And as I'm thinking about this, I'm reading Eric Metaxas's Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. I just read about Dietrich Bonhoeffer's uncompromising "no" to the representatives of the "German Church" as they put the pressure on him and his fellow German clergy in London. He delivered this "no" time and time again--always with unfailing courtesy to Hitler's heretical errand-boys. No doubt there's sometimes power in passion, even in outrage; there's also power in restraint.
Many thanks to Benigno Sanchez-Eppler and Susan Furry of New England Yearly Meeting for their work on Raíces cuáqueras: Heredad de textos, an online library of Spanish-language Quaker materials and related links.
I just read about Dietrich Bonhoeffer's uncompromising "no" to the representatives of the "German Church" as they put the pressure on him and his fellow German clergy in London. He delivered this "no" time and time again--always with unfailing courtesy to Hitler's heretical errand-boys. No doubt there's sometimes power in passion, even in outrage; there's also power in restraint.