Rejoice and be glad...

“Sermon on the Plain” Jesus Mafa series, Cameroon [François Vidil], Vanderbilt University. Source.

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Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. [Matthew 5:11-12]

You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. [Exodus 20:16]

It’s no longer Republican vs. Democrat.
It’s not even common sense vs. crazy.
It’s America-loving vs. America-hating COMMUNISTS, and today’s Democrat [sic] Party has shown us who they really are.
Democrats want to destroy America. Republicans LOVE America and will FIGHT to keep the United States the greatest country in the history of the world. [Mike Johnson, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives]

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I cannot necessarily advise you to rejoice and be glad in this season of rhetorical venom now dominating all forms of media. Nor can anyone guarantee that today's insults and falsehoods won't lead tomorrow to actual persecution. For some, it already has. But even if you understandably want to retreat from this noise and take some time for peace and quiet, you're entitled to rejoice. You're in good company. "In the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

The interpretation I've often heard of Matthew 5:11-12 is that it refers to the persecution that Christians experience when they testify publicly to their faith. There are places in the world where skeptical publics or oppressive governments make public faith hazardous. But by and large the USA is not one of those, although performative victimhood may claim otherwise.

Here's the more likely situation: Sometimes it's Christians who are doing the insulting and false witnessing.

Howard Carter ("The Jesus Guide to Happiness, part 8"):

... This beatitude runs contra to the predominant way in which we think of people who are blessed, or happy in our society. We are a society that values comfort and ease, getting ahead and being liked, we want the worlds high five not to be slapped down. We would see the absence of persecution and opposition and oppression, not its presence, as a sign of being blessed. Being maligned or imprisoned or disadvantaged for doing the right thing or believing in Jesus does not readily sound like something to rejoice over, party down about, it seems far from being blessed.

Jamie Arpin-Ricci asks the obvious question "why would we be persecuted? Why should our faithful commitment to build a kingdom characterized by humility, mercy, peace, reconciliation and justice cause people to hate us and harm us?" It’s a good question isn’t it? His response is that "the sad truth is this: Injustice is a profitable venture.. the power structures of the world, be they political, economic, military or even religious have a long history of establishing their power base through the casual neglect or blatant exploitation of others, all too often the poor as we become a people characterized by making justice in the world, calling other to join us, we actively threaten those very systems and powers of injustice."

It may be sadly ironic that Christian politicians such as Mike Johnson, Russell Vought, and Pete Hegseth join with the forces of persecution against Christians who prioritize the Sermon on the Mount, but let's not waste time feeling smug and superior, or in sharpening our own verbal swords. Here's Jamie Arpin-Ricci ("Pope Trump? Politics and the Normalization of Contempt"):

What's especially important to recognize is that this approach is not exclusive to Trump or those who support him. While the right has unquestionably taken this further than most, everyone is prone to this tendency. It is a pattern anyone can fall into, particularly when emotions are high, the stakes feel existential, and, perhaps above all, we believe we have the moral high ground. Even after I posted about this dynamic recently, one of the first responses agreed with me, then when on to call Trump a "piece of crap." The irony wasn’t lost on me.

This isn't about tone-policing or respectability politics in the face of injustice. Anger has its place, and naming harm is essential. If someone is functioning in ways that reflect fascism, then calling them a fascist is not out of line. But the impulse to strip people of dignity, even those causing harm, mirrors the same logic used by those we oppose: that some people simple deserve it. That logic underwrites every form of systemic oppression. When we adopt it, even against oppressors, we reinforce the very dynamics we claim to resist.

Look at it this way: when we normalize contempt and dehumanizing language, we are implicitly saying that such behaviour is acceptable when you are "in the right". However, since everyone believes that of themselves, it simply reinforces the pattern. Here’s the catch: the marginalized and oppressed always pay the highest price in these dynamics, so by contributing to the normalization of this behaviour, we contribute to the very harm of those we are seeking to protect.

In case we miss the point, this Scripture is in the same sermon in which Jesus says, (verses 43 and 44, context), 

You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you....

How can we love our political and spiritual opponents and thereby experience the joy and gladness Jesus promises? There is a blessing, even a joy, to be gained in practicing restraint, in resisting the temptation to give someone the what-for, and instead persistently, prayerfully, intelligently focusing our resistance on the specifics of correcting biblical malpractice and the specifics of advocating justice in season and out of season, and thereby defending the precious reputation of the Gospel.

Repentance may be unlikely, but it's not impossible, and we are not the ones to block it.

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Related:

• Are we agents of Lucifer?
• The socialists are coming!!
• A grievously neglected commandment
• Do you want to be offended?
• Valiant for the Truth, and first principles 2.0
• The golden age of evangelism

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More commentaries on Matthew 5:1-12: Amy G. Oden. Osvaldo Vena. Jillian Nelson. Elaine Wainwright. Andrew McGowan.

How people in seven countries see the US. (Yougov survey.)

Why Trump-supporting Christians are driving Gen Z away from church. (Premier Christian magazine.)

Live Laugh Love on the road: some of the places Kristin Du Mez will be visiting on her book tour.

Poetry from Nancy Thomas: "Things that defile."

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"Clothes Line (Wrap It Up)." I've heard the Nightcats perform this song live several times, and I've also posted it here several times. This is the most recent version, I think:

"Where there was a wish, there was a way"

Source.  

Early in her new book, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez (author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation) gives us some context for her major history of the Christian trends that are now seeking to dominate the USA:

It was my effort to make sense of the experiences of Christian women that led me to this new account of American Christianity writ large, and ultimately, to a clearer understanding of the spiritual underpinnings of our current cultural and political landscape.

While Live Laugh Love complements Jesus and John Wayne, it presents a more complicated narrative. To trace the roots of modern Christian women’s culture, I needed to reach back to an earlier era, to the dynamic religious landscape of nineteenth-century America. I also needed to extend beyond evangelicalism to include mainline and charismatic Christianity, Mormonism, and “secular” philosophies of positive thinking. Women’s relationship to power is more complicated than men’s. Women exercise agency, but it is often circumscribed by the authority of the men in their lives. Like Jesus and John Wayne, however, this is a book about whiteness. Although women of color have participated in aspects of this consumer culture and at times have voiced astute critiques of it, the book describes a consumer marketplace that caters primarily to white women’s needs and desires.

Also like Jesus and John Wayne, this story ends in a dark place, as perhaps any history of the United States that runs up to the present must.

The research that gave rise to this book was full of twists and turns. Early on, I was surprised by the frequency with which twentieth-century Christian women quoted the wisdom of Hannah Whitall Smith. A nineteenth-century “holiness” preacher, Smith had popularized a more optimistic version of Christianity than the one I had heard preached from the pulpit of my church. In contrast to Calvinism’s depiction of the persistence of sin even in the lives of believers, Smith taught that a simple act of faith granted believers victory over sin and a profound sense of peace, well-being, and happiness. Despite the fact that Smith had written one of the best-selling religious books of her time, most histories of American Christianity mentioned her only in passing. Why was Smith everywhere in the sources, I wondered, and why had so many other Christian women repackaged her ideas more than half a century after her death?

Following footnotes and traveling to archives, I began to piece together a narrative almost entirely unfamiliar to me. My sources brought me to the court of Louis XVI and to the woods of upstate New York, to the Chinese mission field and along the Mormon Trail. When I ended up back on the terrain of twentieth-century evangelicalism, the familiar had become strange. By then, three interlocking strands had come into focus: Smith’s holiness evangelicalism, Mormonism, and the philosophy of New Thought.

Du Mez totally keeps her implied promise of tracing those "interlocking strands" right through to this very year, including the ways Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, along with the religious publishing, marketing, and broadcasting enterprises and the phenomenon of multi-level marketing, became part of the mix.

Early in the book, Du Mez addresses her audience:

This book is for the men in the room. It is for readers who have never heard of Beverly Lewis or Rebecca St. James, for those who wouldn’t dream of buying a Thomas Kinkade print or waiting in line for a Magnolia cupcake. You have no idea what you’ve been missing. But this book is especially for the women. It is for girls who braided their hair like Laura Ingalls and tried to obey like Elisabeth Elliot. It is for women who made all the crafts and know all the songs. It is for those of us who were not pretty enough or sweet enough or white enough. It is for women who loved Beth Moore and for women who still love Beth Moore. It is for all of us.

As a white male who came to Christian faith as an adult, I'm among those who never heard of Beverly Lewis or Rebecca St. James. I was aware of the "prairie fiction" and "Amish romance" genres, and of authors Janette Oke, Elisabeth Elliot, and Catherine Marshall, simply because I've worked in three different Christian bookstores, but I was completely unaware of the underlying influences and messages directed at women. 

I was aware of Hannah Whitall Smith's book The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, because it was on my Canadian charismatic relatives' bookshelf as well as on the shelves of those bookstores. It had been in print ever since it was published in 1875.

In this book, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, Smith identifies with "we Quakers," the faith of her family and young adulthood, although later she and her husband were baptized by the Baptists and became Holiness celebrities in the context of Atlantic-culture evangelicalism. (She eventually rejoined Quakers through Baltimore Yearly Meeting.) What I didn't realize until reading Live Laugh Love was how her book was appropriated for the purpose of creating a specific message to women: you must decide to be happy, whatever your outward circumstances; that's (more or less) the only control you have. Other parts of her spiritual heritage, particularly the freedom she insisted upon to preach as a woman, and her belief in universal salvation, were de-emphasized and forgotten.

Du Mez mentions the neglect of Smith in histories of American Christianity. (I just checked Peter W. Williams's 604-page America's Religions and found one tiny mention of her, misspelled, paired with David Updegraff as "Quakers with evangelical leanings..." in a list of those participating in an early stream of the Holiness movement. No mention of her book.) This lack of recognition reminded me of Agnes Sanford, whose central role in the healing-prayer movement of the twentieth century while almost invisible to the academic world, was documented in William de Arteaga's book Agnes Sanford and her Companions: The Assault on Cessationism and the Coming of the Charismatic Renewal. (See this post.)

But the main reason I'm referring to Du Mez's careful study of Hannah Whitall Smith's work is that it is just one example of how she presents her many sources and the ways they influenced each other to this day, including the role of women in the Christian networks that now seek to remake the USA into a theocracy.

I found insights, references, and connections to highlight on practically every page of this book. It took over my life these last few days. Du Mez's writing is intense ... sometimes I was struck deeply by the bondages imposed on women under Christian pretenses, sometimes I cheered the Christian resistance to those bondages, but I was never bored. If you have any interest in these themes and variations of faith, politics, and culture, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

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Hoping I'm not stretching fair use to the breaking point, here's another excerpt, this time related to the book's name.

Two years after William James published The Varieties of Religious Experience, an Iowa woman named Bessie Anderson Stanley submitted a poem to a magazine contest asking readers to define “success.” The person who achieved success, Stanley wrote, was one who “has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.” The poem won the $250 cash prize, enough to pay off the mortgage on Stanley’s home. Reprinted in various anthologies, the poem entered the popular lexicon in condensed form. Over the years, one variant was mistakenly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, an error popularized by advice columnists Ann Landers and her sister, Abby. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, few bothered to ask where the phrase gracing glittery tumblers, decorative throw pillows, and Hobby Lobby wall art had originated. In 2021, online retailer Wayfair stocked more than fifty-six thousand Live Laugh Love products, and DIY marketplace Etsy reported over one hundred thousand searches and listed more than eight thousand products carrying the words. ... But the phrase’s popularity was more than a décor trend associated with “basic” white women. Its ubiquitous appearance on wall stencils and household items was a result, in part, of the enduring popularity of mind-power—if the mind could shape reality, then visual reminders to think positive thoughts could produce positive transformations. Where there was a wish, there was a way....

Live Laugh Love is a book about love and fear, longing and greed, about Mary Kay makeup, Christian romance novels, Joyce Meyer Ministries, and Ballerina Farm. Its cast of characters includes true believers and charlatans, well-intentioned people and predators, and it is not always clear who is who. This is also a book about politics. White Christian women often claim to be apolitical; if you ask them, they will tell you that their lives revolve around faith and family, yet what they think about faith and family informs their views on education, taxation, welfare, economic inequality, immigration, law enforcement, and what it means to be American. Far from trivial, the products women consume influence how they see the world they live in and the world they hope to create. Ultimately, this is a book about power—about women’s power to define their own lives, men’s power over women, and the power women wield over one another. It is about discipleship and devotion, authority and submission, manipulation, cruelty, and control.

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These excerpts and my comments are based on a digital galley proof obtained through Netgalley. I was made aware of the galley when I joined the Live Laugh Love Launch Team. When the book is printed and made available in September, I may need to check and revise these quotations. However, what you've read so far accurately represents the author's promises to us readers, and the amazing work she has put into fulfilling them.

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Lamorna Ash, author of Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion, which I reviewed in this post, will speak at Westminster Quaker Meeting's meetinghouse on Saturday, June 20, 7 p.m. London time, in person and online. Theme: "Quakers and a new generation’s search for religion." Details here. (Thanks to Bunhill Fields Quaker Meeting's newsletter for the link.)

Elderchaplain Greg Morgan on Rosalie, her gratitude, and her quilt.

Pope Leo XIV and artificial intelligence: the encyclical. "...A religious imperative...." "...Counterbalancing alarm with hope...."

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When I first heard this song as a teenager, I honestly didn't understand it but I couldn't stop listening.

#livelaughlovebook

A fair comparison?

Source.  

The last book I finished reading in 2025 was Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson, by Claire Hoffman. I'm sure I am not the first person to compare McPherson, the founder of the Foursquare Church, with our Quaker pioneer, George Fox.

I already knew the broad outlines of McPherson's three decades in the public eye as an evangelist, healer, pastor, and founder of the USA's first megachurch. Hoffman's book gives a fascinating and balanced account of her life. She begins the book with one of the most dramatic events of McPherson's life—her disappearance from a Los Angeles beach in 1926—but provides historical, biographical, and theological context for her precedent-breaking career as a whole. The author gives us plenty of material from which to draw some connections with Fox.

One important factor that isn't a parallel is, of course, gender. However we feel about McPherson's claim to be empowered directly by the Holy Spirit, she had plenty of talent, giftedness, persistence, and amazing audacity behind her ascendancy as a woman to a status of, arguably, the most famous Christian celebrity in the USA of her time, far beyond her Pentecostal community. There were occasions when she could draw spontaneous crowds of tens of thousands of people, of whom thousands simply wanted to experience her healing power.

Here are some of the points that caused me to compare McPherson and Fox.

They both emphasized the possibility and importance of the immediate experience of the Holy Spirit. Theologically, McPherson was rather a centrist in the spectrum of evangelical Christianity of her time. She didn't deviate much from the fundamentalism of her early Christian experience, but her presentation of Christian faith emphasized grace and intimacy with God rather than legalism and fear of punishment. I think that many of Fox's evangelistic presentations in his itinerant ministry, and his epistles, could have (with updated English) come from McPherson as well.

They both used the communication channels of their time effectively. For Fox and his companions, it was the printing press, which is where McPherson also started, but she became a radio pioneer as well. (Toward the end of her life, McPherson was researching the possibilities of television.) Both of them published constantly, not only to present their own message, but also to argue with detractors. Fox and his movement were, at times, under attack from the Christian establishment and under persecution by their government. They responded nonviolently but certainly not passively as they flooded the market with books, tracts, and petitions. McPherson's disappearance and subsequent very controversial reappearance led to massive campaigns both for her and against her in the mass media of her times, and in the courtrooms of Los Angeles.

Both Fox and McPherson relied on women gifted in administration, fundraising, and oversight. Aimee Semple McPherson's support and accountability person for much of her career was her mother, Mildred Kennedy. For George Fox, Margaret Fell took on this role, alongside her evident gifts as theologian and communicator, and eventually she and Fox married. 

In both cases, they developed leadership structures, with boards and committees, and those structures (with major changes over the years) exist to this day. The Foursquare Church continues as a worldwide fellowship, and so do we Friends. We have dispersed accountability and leadership arrangements compared with the more unified and centralized Foursquare structure, and we don't have one official statement of faith as Foursquare does, but we've both managed to take a fellowship that began with a single powerful personality and make it durable.

This leads to another similarity. Both movements have succeeded in honoring their founders without exaggerating their status as heroes. At the end of Claire Hoffman's book, she emphasizes this point about McPherson; there's little evidence of a personality cult around her in the present-day Foursquare Church. Neither is she hidden; she gets full credit for her role in starting the church, but is not an object of adoration. Fox's status among us Quakers is rather ambiguous; we quote him when it suits us, but often leaving out the full context of his intended meaning. In both cases, some of these leaders' more extravagant behaviors and claims have been downplayed since then. Speaking in tongues and healing continue to be expected in Foursquare fellowships, but Fox's accounts of miraculous healings (such as those included in Fox's Book of Miracles) have not led to similar expectations among us.

Contents of George Fox's 'Book of Miracles',
compiled and introduced by Henry Cadbury.

The expansion of the Quaker movement in Fox's lifetime was remarkable, although in the succeeding centuries we have lost momentum numerically, to say the least. It may be too soon to draw comparisons with Foursquare's growth. Nor did we ever have megachurches or anything resembling McPherson's Angelus Temple. The differences between our two movements may be just as fruitful to explore as the similarities; I just wanted to point out those similarities as I closed the covers of Hoffman's fascinating book. What instructive differences and similarities occur to you?

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Related: Happy Birthday, charismatics. (2010.)

Something even older: here's an interesting article by Carey Mcwilliams on "cults" in California, from the March 1946 issue of The Atlantic. It was cited in the notes of Claire Hoffman's book.

Another year's worth of "useful theology from a Quaker-shaped Christian," Mark Russ.

From archive.org: Public Domain Day 2026.

Martin Kelley (Quaker Ranter) traces the origin of the Quaker SPICES testimonies.

A favorite-books list I always look forward to: Nancy Thomas. PS: We agreed about Sister, Sinner.

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Sue Foley is a force of nature....

Fiercely inspirational

Source.

Source.

Two writers in two countries, published 64 years apart....

Lamorna Ash.

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Sometimes, as I sat in the outer ring of chairs during my silent Sundays at the Muswell Hill meeting [London; link added], I wished I could have seen Quakerism as it was in its beginning: an exuberant, fiercely heterodox expression of the Christian faith. [Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion (2025), page 136.]

In line with the secularisation-theory sociologist Steve Bruce, Dandelion notes how liberal forms of British Christianity are contributing to their ‘own demise through diffuse belief systems, poor belief transmission and the lack of seriousness’, all of which discourages conversion. He includes Quakerism among this trend. And while Quakerism might function as a gateway drug to ‘religious seriousness’ for the 47 per cent who come from ‘no immediately prior religious affiliation’, it is often the features which first draw the non-religious to Quaker meetings—a laxity and neutrality in the place of dogma and formality—which then sends them off to other denominations, looking for services with a more robust structure, elders and leaders who might help teach them how to believe. [Page 128.]

The year reached its end, and I was still attending St Luke’s [West Holloway, London, link added] any Sunday my hangover did not intern me to bed. I learnt the order of ceremonies. Each time I felt something unlock within me as I admitted my guilt for whomever I had harmed that week alongside everyone else in the congregation, after which the associate priest, Rev. Martin Wroe, would say, ‘Whatever it is, whatever it was, whatever it will be, God forgives you. Forgive yourselves, forgive each other,’ and then offer us the sign of the Cross. Not every time, but most times, after taking communion I felt a further unlocking, even a coming together of the disparate parts of my life. [Page 280.]

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Albert Fowler.

Members of the Society of Friends are increasingly disturbed by the comment that Quaker Meeting is a fine place for seeking, but one must go elsewhere if one’s object is finding. [Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought: A Statement of Belief (1961), page 12.]

Much has been made of the argument that the universal variety of Quaker belief is the growing edge of the Society of Friends. Large numbers of convinced Friends have come in through this door. That the universal may also be the dying edge of the Society is seldom mentioned, but many would-be Friends turn away when they find the Christian ties of a Meeting no longer binding and the drift toward what John McCandless calls practical atheism running strong. Paul Lacey tells of people he has talked with who have found the Society of Friends a kind of incubator where they can develop just enough to realize that the real conditions of life and worship lie outside it. Many of these people, having looked to the Quaker Meeting as a source of inspiration and deepened faith, pass beyond it to find fuller meaning elsewhere. [Page 19.]

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I first heard about Lamorna Ash in the pages of The Guardian. The opening teaser for Ash's edited excerpt in The Guardian, "Could I become a Christian in a year?", was irresistible:

After two friends unexpectedly converted, Lamorna Ash discovered a new generation of young people turning to faith. As she investigated the phenomenon, one of her first steps was to spend a week on a working retreat on Iona. And then something strange happened…

This intro is a bit misleading. In just about all of her fourteen chapters plus prologue, introduction, conclusion, and epilogue, strange things are happening every few pages, so the intriguing part of the teaser is not the "something strange" dot dot dot, but "a new generation of young people turning to faith." This is not your typical glib summary of contemporary church life in Britain. In any case, the excerpt sold me: I had to buy the book. And, most likely, so should you.

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. And she wonders out loud about her own path. Should she remain an outside observer, or should she be open to crossing the line into conversion territory; and is she being influenced by what we, the readers, might think?

Lamorna Ash's paternal grandmother "was the last true Christian in our family. She went to an Anglican church every Sunday of her life, except for the few years she attended a Quaker meeting in Muswell Hill." For part of the time of Ash's writing project, when she wasn't on one of her many research visits elsewhere, she attended that same meeting, which led to some very interesting comments about British Friends. I couldn't help remembering some of Albert Fowler's words from his 1961 pamphlet on Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought, quoted above.

I don't want to press the parallels between Ash and Fowler too hard, because I know that many British Friends are already aware of contemporary liberal Quakerism's weaknesses as well as its strengths (and the same goes for Friends in the USA), and I personally know that some of them would certainly not fit into the "laxity and neutrality" description. Also, I'm not sure those early Friends were "fiercely heterodox" exactly, since Fox and others were arguing for a more faithfully biblical Christianity. "Fiercely nonconformist," maybe. Even so, I am grateful for the frank assessment from this clear-eyed young commentator who has seen Christian alternatives many Quakers would either not know about or perhaps shrink from with horror.

Lamorna Ash has a lot of credibility with me simply based on the homework she's done. (I'm sure she'd have a more fun way of putting it.) You already know she references Ben Pink Dandelion, who has, she suggests, "the best name in academia." She also knows one of my favorite contemporary British books on Christianity, Francis Spufford's Unapologetic. (My comments on his book are here.) Her other sources include Harold Bloom, Julian of Norwich, Gillian Rose, George Fox, Rosemary Moore, Thomas R. Kelly, Karl Rahner, William James, David Bebbington, Tanya Luhrmann, Krista Tippett and Eugene Peterson in conversation, Pope Francis, and two Augustines.

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Yesterday's MAGA scandal of the day (or at least in the top five): According to the Washington Post, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to be sure that no federal disaster relief money would go to agencies or nonprofit organizations that help undocumented immigrants.

Also among the top five: Chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Mark Russ and Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre team up for a six-session online course: Whose Friends are we? Mark explains on his blog: "Emerging from my PhD research on Quaker theology and Whiteness, I’ve developed an online course for Woodbrooke reflecting on what it might mean for Quakers to be friends of God, Christ and each other in the 21st century." Mondays, October 13 to November 17. More details here.

Discipline and Punish: Kristin Du Mez assesses James Dobson's legacy.

Cherice Bock explains the background of the chapter she wrote with Catalina Morales Bahena for the new book Hungry for Hope: Letters to the Church from Young Adults, due to be published today. Their chapter is entitled, “Reclaiming ‘Enough’: Away from Scarcity Toward True Abundance.” For more on the book, visit hungryforhopebook.com.

Abolitionism and compromise, a Jay family/Indiana Yearly Meeting case study. (Thanks to Martin Kelley for the link.)

John Kinney at Spokane Friends, speaking on contemplative prayer: "If we don't get this right..."

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Flaco Jiménez and Raul Malo, "Seguro Que Hell Yes," a video we sometimes used in class in Russia for its specific glimpses of USA culture. (And it's a song I can always recall to kill earworms.)

A clip from Flaco's memorial service. From puroconjunto210's caption on YouTube: "Flaco Jiménez, conjunto legend passed away July 31, 2025. A memorial service was held in San Antonio at the Carver Community center. Artists included Santiago Garza, David Lee Garza, Dwayne Verheyden, Max Baca, and Josh Baca all played their hearts out celebrating his Life!"

Prayer and place, twelve years later

Underground prayer cell, Transfiguration
Monastery, near Buzuluk, Russia.

I wrote my first post on prayer and place in the context of the Pussy Riot controversy twelve years ago in Russia, when the dissident rock band of that name managed to get into the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, near the Kremlin, and performed their musical prayer against Vladimir Putin.

In the post, I confessed my "mixed feelings about the very concept of sacred space." In my final post about the controversy, I wrote, "I have grown to have a lot of respect for them [the dissident musicians], but it's a complicated respect." I also wondered whether we Westerners with our diminished sense of reverence (is this fair?), were qualified to comment.

On reverence (freely expressed or compulsory), I also wrote a separate post.

All of these related themes came back to me when I read Mark Russ (Jolly Quaker) posting about Thicc places: a Quaker on pilgrimage. My best service to you now would be to reduce my own verbiage in favor of persuading you to read Mark's post. I'll just add a couple of thoughts:

First: I utterly agree with Mark that both the journey and the destination are important, for the reasons he expresses so well. I also want to take into account our varying temperaments. For some of us, the regular pilgrimage, perhaps every week, to our usual places of worship, and the anticipation and fulfillment of the worship itself, are all that we need. Those who go on pilgrimage to a more remote or special location might anticipate a more immersive experience than they experience in that regular cycle; are those of us who find no such need in ourselves qualified to deny them?

My red flags would go up only if those pilgrims inform us on their return that they're now superior to the rest of us. That's never happened in my experience; what actually happens is that they're eager to share the riches they've gained with the rest of us, and we listen eagerly, to everyone's benefit. It was wonderful to hear my cousin Johan Fredrik Heyerdahl talk about walking the Camino de Santiago when he was about the age I am now. I experienced a somewhat similar pilgrimage without leaving home when I read Timothy Egan's marvelous book A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith.

In my experience, this last century of Russian history, with religious repression followed by Orthodox triumphalism and state-church enmeshment, has intensified and complicated all concepts of sacred space.

Second: Might it be true that those who argue for a flat and fastidious Quakerism, one that denies any forms of specialness, are often perfectly happy to go on holiday to interesting and, to them, exotic destinations? Maybe they would be willing to consider that traveling with a spiritual intention or hope would be equally legitimate? This line of questioning does have its own complication: the cost of such travel, whether or not it is for spiritual gain, surely puts some forms of pilgrimage beyond the reach of many people.

I'm reminded of my dislike of the way spiritual books are sometimes marketed. See my comments on Richard Foster's Sanctuary of the Soul—go to this post and scroll down past the movie stuff.

If I'm making unfair correlations, let me know!

We Quakers generally downplay sacred actions as well as sacred places, but maybe you'll see why I loved this Threads post from Karen Swallow Prior, which I present not to one-up anyone, but simply as a reminder to remain tender:

My parents love their church immensely. For health reasons, however, they’ve had to join the service online for some time now.

Yesterday, I was taking them lunch and unintentionally arrived before the service had ended. It was communion Sunday.

When I saw the two tiny cups of juice and two tiny crackers my father had set on the kitchen table, I felt like I had entered some of the holiest, most sacred ground I’d ever been honored to enter.

Now, please go to the post that provoked these thoughts, from Mark Russ.

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While we're enjoying Mark's good company, here's more to think about: Dirty religion.

Other related items from my own blog: To see light more clearly. Memories of Buzuluk. Quaker communion.

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Helen Benedict on Israelis, Palestinians, and ending the cycle of revenge.

Issa Amro: "It's a miracle that I even exist." His organization, Youth Against Settlements, has just won the Right Livelihood Award, one of the prizes sometimes known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize."

Forum 18 reports that a wide range of religiously-oriented Web sites have been blocked to Russian audiences. (Also: the Discord messaging platform is now being blocked in Russia.)

If you would like to join Friends United Meeting's "Living Letters" group, visiting Cuba in January 2025, the registration deadline is November 10.

Becky Ankeny finds comfort and consolation in the blunt words of Micah chapter 3.

The Washington Post's guide to helping people in distress owing to hurricanes Helene and Milton.

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This afternoon at St Olave's Church and its free concert series every Wednesday and Thursday, we heard a wonderful piano concert by Kanae Furomoto, including the famous "Raindrop" prelude by Chopin. Here it is performed by Alice Sara Ott: 

Palm Sunday (USA, 2024)

Entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem (1320) by Pietro Lorenzetti; source.

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The arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem, just days before his arrest and execution, is sometimes called the "Triumphal Entry." It wasn't triumphal to everyone, of course; there was already plenty of controversy about Jesus and his activities. Still,  his own disciples celebrated enthusiastically: (from Mark 11, verses 9 and 10, New International Version)

Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

     “Hosanna!”
     “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
     “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”
     “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

I love the matter-of-fact next verse in Mark: "Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve." Nevertheless, the shouts of those who greeted Jesus as he entered indicated high expectations of his arrival in this politically sensitive place. He might be the one to restore David's throne!

It soon became apparent that Jesus was completely redefining what his "kingdom" was all about, and throwing its gates open to everyone who was ready to receive him, including all who might have been left out of earlier invitations, right up to you and me today.

Those original celebrants, yearning for a political triumph, may have misunderstood what was about to happen, but it's hard to blame them. Today, we see a similar confusion: many of those we would expect to help Jesus keep those gates wide open to all who would receive him, are having a hard time. Many of them seem determined to repel anyone who is not planning to vote for their hero in November.

Just to set the record straight: Jesus, who was executed for redefining his kingdom and its radical invitation, is very much alive. Come and see for yourself.

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Last week I had barely enough active neurons to write a few sentences on my blog. It turns out that I needed abdominal surgery, which happened yesterday, with good results. By next week I hope to be back to my full blog format. For today, I'll close with a slightly different form of blues dessert, from the film Horowitz in Moscow.

"Let us become more aware of Your presence"

The congregation sings the chorus "I Speak Jesus"
(screenshot from source)

These words from the praise song "Holy Spirit" sum up what I've gained from watching several hours of YouTube feeds of the nonstop worship from Asbury University, that began a week ago yesterday.

At the moment, I have the audio from Hughes Memorial Auditorium on my headphones as I write. I'm completely aware of the conflicting ways we Christians view revivals of this sort, or even how we define them. We can see them as worship events that overflow the usual formats we use to fit worship into our lives and schedules. We can see them through the lenses of mass psychology. We can worry about manipulation; we can wonder whose agendas are played out in these events.

As with any group behaviors, we are right to exercise discernment. But after these hours of enjoying (yes, enjoying, in the midst of this time of loss and pain and bondage), I keep noticing these features of what is going on in that auditorium and campus:

• student leadership
• prayer from the front, at the edge of the platform, in small groups, and on many faces
• beautiful, soaring aspirations conveyed with quiet, modest rhetoric
• no celebrities, no slogans, no coercive exhortations
• no flashing lights or pounding bass
• cycles of contemplative songs followed by more lively songs, again followed by contemplative songs
• expressions of joy, expressions of repentance, of gratitude, of intercession
• behind the scenes, amazing efforts to keep people safe, fed, moved in and out of the worship space
• emphasis on God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, without sharp dogmatic elbows
• No dramatic claims that these days foreshadow End Times; the fruit of these many hours remains to be revealed.

The online coverage has been free and fragmented, with people apparently using their mobile phones to share their experiences, trading off without apparent planning, and no centralized control. I can't recommend any single channel; I've just jumped from one live feed to another as they start and stop. [UPDATE: See rules and schedules now in place.] 

The comments are fascinating, too. I've seen so many languages, including Russian and Ukrainian, the tone overwhelmingly respectful even as occasional sour moments also occur.

In my first few minutes of watching these feeds and clips, I had a twinge of regret that there was no way I'd get to attend in person. That ended as soon as my eyes were opened to the reality that we were already a global congregation, upholding and being upheld by each other, wherever we were. There were people we know who are physically present, and others we know are sharing their reflections—all testifying to the authenticity of this experience.

Wherever we are, we are fulfilling the yearning of the chorus. We are becoming more aware of God's presence.

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In case some background to this story would be useful, here are a few links:

UPDATE: Sarah Thomas Baldwin wrote a book about this outpouring, based on her personal experiences in the midst of the event.

Contemporary links:

"Why students at a Kentucky Christian school are praying and singing round the clock." Bob Smietana, Religion News Service.

Video: Shane Claiborne interviews several students as well as Clint Baldwin of the faculty. Interesting comment from Lena, one of the students, concerning terminology: "… I’m kind of transitioning from using the word 'revival' to an 'encounter' because I feel like with 'encounters,' when we encounter God, God also encounters the people that we’re close to." (Yesterday Shane Claiborne spoke again with Clint.)

The Roys Report, which I'd consider an unsentimental observer of the church, posted this article, "Opinion: What is Revival—and is it Happening at Asbury?"

"We're witnessing a surprising work of God." Thomas McCall of Asbury Seminary (a separate institution; he's writing for Christianity Today).

"When the dust settles." Some thoughts from an Asbury student leader on life beyond the revival.

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Quakers were born of revival. May you find a blessing in these sober words from George Fox:

All Friends every where, in the living spirit, and living power, and in the heavenly light dwell, and quench not the motions of it in yourselves, nor the movings of it in others; though many have run out, and gone beyond their measures, yet many more have quenched the measure of the spirit of God, and after became dead and dull, and questioned through a false fear: and so there hath been hurt both ways. And therefore be obedient to the power of the Lord, and his spirit, and his spiritual weapons; war with that Philistine that would stop up your wells and springs. Jacob's well was in the mountain, (read that within,) he was the second birth. And the belief in the power keeps the spring open. And none to despise prophecy, neither to quench the spirit; so that all may be kept open to the spring, that every one's cup may run over.

For you may all prophesy one by one, and the spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets. ‘Would all the Lord's people were prophets,’ said Moses in his time, when some found fault; but the last time is the christian's time, who enjoys the substance, Christ Jesus; and his church is called a royal priesthood, offering up spiritual sacrifices; and his church are his believers in his light. And so in the light every one should have something to offer; and to offer an offering in righteousness to the living God, else they are not priests; and such as quench the spirit cannot offer, but become dull. ‘I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh, in the last time,’ saith the Lord, which is the true christian's time, God's sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and old men shall dream dreams; ‘and on my servants and handmaids I will pour out of my spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy.’ Now friends, if this be fulfilled, servants, handmaids, sons, daughters, old men, young men, every one to feel the spirit of God, by which you may see the things of God, and declare them to his praise; for with the heart man doth believe, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation; first, he has it in his heart, before it comes out of his mouth: and this is beyond that brain-beaten-heady stuff, which man has long studied, about the saints' words, which the holy men of God spake forth as they were moved by the holy ghost: so the holy ghost moved them, before they came forth and spake them. And therefore, as I said before, do not resist the holy ghost....

from epistle CCLXXV, 1669

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Nancy Thomas's valentine may not win the prize, but I like it!

Emily Provance begins a series of posts on institutions. "The best thing that institutions do is perpetuate existing patterns. The worst thing that institutions do is perpetuate existing patterns."

We still receive bulletins intended for USA citizens in Russia. Reuters describes the latest such bulletin, which can be summarized in one word: "Leave." (And I keep dreaming of the day we can visit again and be reunited with former students and colleagues.)

An astronomical phenomenon described as "a colossal and utterly spherical blast..." or, in other words, a "kilonova."

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Just audio this time: "... You're going to need King Jesus on your bond." Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Jimmy Bond.

The Gospel according to Al Sharpton

(Al Sharpton, part one)

Source.  

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One of the things ... that I’ve always had to deal with is, critics would say, “All Al Sharpton wants is publicity.” Well, that’s exactly what I want. Because nobody calls me to keep a secret. — Rev. Al Sharpton, 2020 (from the 2022 film Loudmouth).

Before the summer of 2004, as I hinted in my 2004 post about Al Sharpton, my impressions of him as a preacher and public figure reflected what those critics were saying. Probably most (but not all) of those critics were White people, perhaps feeling the heat of his rhetoric. Until Sharpton's speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, I think I lazily assumed that this conventional criticism was more or less correct.

Yesterday, I watched much of Tyre Nichols's funeral in Memphis. It made a deep impression on me for a number of reasons: It was the expression of a community's grief over a full-on tragedy. Its cultural context was the Black church in the USA, with all the modes of expression available in this culture. (It was also a political event, with speakers giving explicit support for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which seemed utterly appropriate in that setting and in that situation.) But what kept me from feeling an outsider/voyeur was that the funeral was, above all, a Christian celebration of life and faith.

Therefore, I listened to Al Sharpton's eulogy as a fellow minister. I wanted to follow his spiritual and scriptural grounding as well as his words of comfort to Tyre's family (and relatives of others killed by police actions, also in attendance), the connections he made with Memphis history and Martin Luther King, and, finally, his prophetic message yesterday to all his audiences.

Three central themes emerged in his sermon, all tied to Genesis 37, the story of Joseph left by his brothers to die in the pit: 

First, the sacrifices made by King and others to end segregation in Memphis law enforcement and politics, and the betrayal of those sacrifices by the police who fatally wounded Tyre Nichols;

Second, the desire of Tyre, of George Floyd, of perhaps all of us to "go home," to be back in our mothers' care, to be safe, to question the forces that make us unsafe;

Third, the perspective of Martin Luther King's last speech in Memphis, April 3, 1968, when King said he had been to the mountain top. Sharpton called us all to be mountain climbers. "Don't stop 'til we get to the top."

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Yesterday's funeral, and Al Sharpton's eulogy, reminded me that I'd heard about a recent film about Al Sharpton. I downloaded and watched it today: Loudmouth.

All the preacher does is take biblical stories and use the story to therefore get to the moral message, or the ethical message they’re projecting. I transfer that into social justice, whether it is Michael Griffith being killed in Howard Beach, or whether it’s somebody choked to death by a cop in Staten Island years later, Eric Garner. It is the story, but the issue is racial violence. But you need the story to make the issue live. — Rev. Al Sharpton, 2022 (from Loudmouth)

As critics have pointed out, Loudmouth is not a journalistic documentary. It makes no claim to be objective. I would call it a video memoir, with lots of archival footage from Sharpton's emergence as a teenage youth leader through George Floyd's funeral and a bit beyond. Woven into the historical segments are commentaries from Sharpton, which he delivers directly into the camera for this film, and which form the framework of the film.

Tom Snyder (Tomorrow Coast to Coast, 1981): Are you in any way predicting a long hot summer? You’re not predicting urban strife, you’re not predicting disorder, anything like that?

Al Sharpton: Well, what I’m saying is, you know, at home you have an oven. There are flames on top of the oven, and there’s heat in the oven. We always discuss whether there’d be a flame on the top, and don’t discuss that it’s already 600 degrees inside. 

The film is undeniably a setup for a positive presentation by Sharpton of his own legacy as an activist, and doesn't pretend to inventory all his pluses and minuses as a human being, minister, or celebrity. There's a brief confrontation with a critic who points out his wealthy lifestyle, to which he replies that he and his movement worked hard to open up access to those things. The film does pay significant attention to the Tawana Brawley controversy, and in a comment to the camera he addresses the controversy directly, if (to my mind) very incompletely.

Another important point of self-revelation was the contrast between his early rhetoric and the course he followed after getting some important advice from Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King's widow. As he tells the camera, she said:

“Al, do you realize that words have power? So you ought to be careful with that.” She says, “You can either go for the crown” (that we talk about in Christianity) “or you can go for the crowd.” 

However much he softened his rhetoric, some things did not change.

The question that I always hear from Whites: “Reverend Al, why do you make everything about race?” And the Black question that’s just as troubling is: “Why are you doing that? Ain’t nothing going to change.” It’s somewhere between these two questions that I’ve had to do a lot of my work in activism … to explain to Whites that every Black born in America is born into “it’s all about race.” (2022)

That things do change is part of Sharpton's testimony in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd:

But I’m more hopeful today than ever. Why? Well, let me go back—Reverend Jackson always taught me, “stay on your text.” Going back to my text, Ecclesiastes. There is a time and a season. And when I looked this time and saw marches where in some cases Whites outnumbered the Blacks marching, I know that it’s a different time and a different season. When I looked and saw people in Germany marching for George Floyd, it’s a different time and a different season. When they went in front of the Parliament in London, England, and said it’s a different time and a different season, we need to go back to Washington and stand up in the shadows of Lincoln, and tell them, this is the time of building accountability in the criminal justice system. (2020)

Yesterday, Sharpton told the mourners at Tyre Nichols's funeral to keep climbing the mountain, as he himself intends to do. At the end of Loudmouth, he thinks about what he will have left behind when he reaches the end of his own path on earth.

… And when I see my mentors in Heaven, I can tell them, I got some stuff done.

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After nearly six decades of activism, Rev. Al Sharpton has lots of admirers, and also many critics. The comments on the YouTube page with the trailer for Loudmouth include a sampling of typical reactions to this divisive figure. The Internet has an ample stash of harsh criticisms of Sharpton, some of them probably justified, but I see Loudmouth as a fascinating, coherent, very worthwhile presentation of his own side of the ledger—in the context of a country where racism, though weakened, remains embedded as a satanic stronghold. As a Christian minister in the Quaker tradition, struggling to reach the mountain top, I see Sharpton—with all his complications—as a mutual ally. His errors and excesses may be partly his own, but (for example, in the Brawley case), I see them also as an aspect of the smoke and chaos that racism continues to generate, that obscures the view and frustrates the designs of activists and observers alike. I'd rather have imperfect prophets than none at all.

Those that oppress us had the nerve to try and advise us on how we ought to try to get free from them. We are intelligent enough not to let you tell us what tactics that you are comfortable with…. (1986)

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Related: Here on YouTube is the interview Tom Snyder did in 1981 with Rev. Al Sharpton, Muhammad Ali, and James Brown, from which Loudmouth took the clip about the 600-degree oven.

Melissa Harris-Perry interviews Al Sharpton and Loudmouth director Josh Alexander.

... And Ed Pilkington (of The Guardian) interviews Al Sharpton about the (then) upcoming film.

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More sad and difficult revelations about abuses connected to Jean Vanier and the cult he participated in. Today's L’Arche movement as a whole seems not to have been compromised.

Yet another venerable human rights institution in Russia may be falling victim to repression. The Sakharov Center, already designated a "foreign agent," has been asked to vacate its premises.

John Kinney's take on the parable of the talents.

Greg Morgan on dying and unfinished business.

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Mavis Staples with Rick Holmstrom's band: "I'll Take You There."

Redeeming Germany? (partly a repost)

(c) University of Bern (2015); source.

Germany's political parties are busy assembling possible coalitions to take over the government, but one thing is certain: Chancellor Angela Merkel's time as a central figure of European politics is coming to an end.

In Germany, as in most of Western Europe, Christian politicians do not wear their faith on their sleeve. Merkel is not exactly an exception, but she is more willing than most of them to express a connection between faith and public practice.

And in one particular moment of time -- the refugee crisis of 2015 -- she did not take the despicable path too often pursued by publicly Christian politicians, linking faith with nationalism and cultural "purity." She went a very different direction, one with great political risks: she linked Christian faith with hospitality to refugees, regardless of their religion.

Since 2015, when I originally wrote the post that follows, we USA citizens have had our own literal come-to-Jesus experience with public Christianity. The results have not been pretty.

Back to 2015 ...

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Redeeming Germany?

One reason I have such a visceral dislike of racism and antisemitism is that I grew up with that poison. My German mother believed that she was born into the master race, and that others' inferiority was obvious.

(Her special brand of racism had an unusual asterisk: having been born and raised in Japan, she freely admitted that the Japanese were, if anything, perhaps slightly superior to Germans.)

When my mother left Germany to live and study in Chicago, she did not leave behind this master-race mentality. I can tell you first-hand what it was like to grow up in this family micro-culture, in which any neighbor who didn't match her Teutonic ideal was dismissed. In this way I experienced some attenuated version of the mentality that seduced a whole modern nation into total war and premeditated mass murder on an industrial scale.

Maybe this explains why I'm so moved by German chancellor Angela Merkel's persistent and intelligent defense of her refugee policy, even as some pundits point out the political risks involved. Today the BBC quoted her telling an interviewer, "I'm proud that we are receiving refugees in a friendly and open manner. I don't want to compete to be the country which does best at scaring off refugees." I can't help wondering what my mother would say to that.

What's even more remarkable to me, especially in view of the too-frequent American correlation of conservative Christianity with anti-immigrant views, is (as the BBC article points out) her associating generous refugee policies with Christian faith. In defending her policies, for example, "she claims she's simply exemplifying the Christian values of the CDU" -- referring to the political party she leads, the Christian Democratic Union.

Although her party has no religious restrictions on membership, its intellectual DNA has strong connections with both Catholic and Protestant social ethics, some of whose proponents were in the anti-Nazi resistance or in prison during Hitler's reign. Merkel herself grew up in a Christian family in a politically hostile context, communist-run and USSR-dominated East Germany, where her father was a pastor.

Almost all prominent politicians in Europe are far more reticent to emphasize faith in their public behavior than their American counterparts, and Merkel is usually no different. But refugee and immigration controversies seem to have struck a nerve with her. I found her comments at her European Parliament caucus, as reported by Politico, fascinating and inspiring ... and even redemptive. Quoting the article,

In the party meeting, Merkel was especially tough on European countries that have portrayed the acceptance of refugees as a threat to religion. "When someone says: 'This is not my Europe, I won't accept Muslims...' Then I have to say, this is not negotiable."

European leaders, she said, would lose their credibility if they distinguished between Muslim and Christian refugees. "Who are we to defend Christians around the world if we say we won't accept a Muslim or a mosque in our country. That won't do."

Given my own childhood memories, maybe you can understand the healing effect of hearing such sentiments in a German accent.

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Another instance of Merkel's linkage of immigration and faith happened about a month ago [that is, in September 2015] in Switzerland, where she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern. Her comments on the refugee crisis were widely reported in the English-language press (example). According to McClatchy's Matthew Schofield, "During a news conference Thursday in Bern, Switzerland, Merkel said it was both an honour and a moral obligation for Germany to take in 'die Fluechtlinge,' the refugees."

However, most English-language reporters seem to have ignored her comments on Muslim immigration and Europe's Christian heritage. I found several references in Russian-language news sites. Drawing in part on a Polish source, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic diocese of Novosibirsk headed an article on Merkel's news conference in Bern by quoting her: "You don't want the Islamization of Europe? Go to church!"

She went on to explain, "I would like to see more people who dare to say 'I am a Christian,' who are brave enough to enter into dialogue," noting that she also supports the guarantee of religious liberty in Germany.

[The University's own coverage of the event quoted Merkel in the question-and-answer period following her acceptance speech:

With regard to the question as to how Europe can be protected against Islamisation, Merkel emphasised: “Fear is not a good adviser. It is better that we should have the courage to once again deal more strongly with our own Christian roots.”]

I find it refreshing (in the American context as well) to hear Christians challenged to go deeper into their own faith, and prepare for honest dialogue, rather than be corrupted by fear, identity politics, and searches for enemies. I think that is a reasonable interpretation of Merkel's words; I hope, but can't be sure, that this was the motivation for publishing her words here in Russia, where Islamophobia is also a sad reality.

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Merkel, "Faith in God makes many political decisions easier."

Fast-forwarding to the present (somewhat reluctantly) ...

Heather Cox Richardson, "If this is not a hair-on-fire, screaming emergency, what is?" Robert Kagan's diagnosis and warning.

Nick Turse on our forever wars and the memorial-worthy names we'll never know. (Hint: they're not Americans.)

Christians and dementia: At the University of the West of Scotland, PhD student Tamara Horsburgh is researching "the impact of holding the Christian theologies of hope and suffering, when one is first diagnosed with dementia." She would like to conduct interviews with people "who have been newly diagnosed with dementia (the past 6 months or so), hold their faith closely, and would feel empowered by the opportunity to discuss how they feel about their diagnosis and their faith." Contact Tamara at Maragal16@outlook.com for more details ... and please pass along this invitation.

John Shelby Spong was not my favorite theologian, but I've been interested to read the responses of Quakers and others to his recent death. Here's an appreciation of sorts from getreligion.com: Death of a post-theist shepherd.

Becky Ankeny: Jesus our mother.

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Diunna Greenleaf and Kid Andersen at the Greaseland Studios:

Christmas Eve -- and a country in turmoil

"Happy New Year!" Elektrostal's 2020 holiday tree on Lenin Square, with Kristall ice hockey arena in background. Source.
(Elektrostal was my home from 2007 to 2017.)

The hour of Christmas nears. I want so much to listen to the music of the season, and to enjoy our Christmas tree and its ornaments, gathered over the four decades of our marriage. But there's a discordant static in the air, generated by the friction and distress of a country in turmoil, a president unresponsive to alarm signals on all sides in favor of his obsession to remain in power, a Congress at a loss for what to do next. Maybe we could ignore all this noise, if our circumstances were happy and isolated enough that our neighbors' health and economic distress made no difference, and we could therefore wrap our gifts and play our happy Christmas music in ignorant bliss.

I doubt that simple happy bliss is your lot today, or you would not have read even this far. I'm grateful that I have some help in describing this strange moment: Elizabeth Spiers, who claims not to be religious as an adult, but grew up Southern Baptist, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that carves up responsibility for our plight with surgical theological precision: "Mike Pence and the GOP are waging the real war on Christmas."

In case the paywall keeps you from reading this whole article, let me summarize some main points.

Her starting point was a Turning Point USA event two days ago at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, at which public Christian vice president Mike Pence was a speaker. While exhorting his audience to keep up the fight for Trump's second term (interrupted by chants of "Four more years! -- four more years!"), he warned of the dangers of what "the Democrats and the radical left want to do...." Now, nobody expects to get a fair and accurate account of Democratic policies and plans from someone like Pence, but these words struck her as revelatory: "They want to make rich people poorer, and poor people more comfortable."

(I'd like to add what Pence says his side does want: to make everyone richer because "a rising tide lifts all boats." Have we actually seen this happen during these last years, when the increasing gulf between our richest and our poorest, already growing at an accelerated pace, has gained speed in COVID times?)

Spiers reveals the assumptions behind the implication that the poor must not be made more comfortable -- 

In the modern Republican version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” the Tiny Tim situation is unfortunate, but private insurance shouldn’t be obligated to cover his preexisting condition, and we certainly can’t give Mom and Dad unemployment just because they lost their jobs — they’ll have no incentive to find new work! After all, it would be grossly unfair to ask Ebenezer Scrooge, a self-made man, to pay a bit more in taxes.

Republicans don’t have to state the case for this callousness overtly because it’s articulated over and over again in policy. In Dickens, Scrooge tells the men soliciting donations for the poor that the poor can go to the workhouse or prison, and if they can’t, they can just die, and reduce the surplus population. If that sounds overly cruel, it’s worth examining GOP policies that try to force people who can’t work to do so, throw people who haven’t been found guilty of a crime into prison because they can’t afford bail or leave them to die for lack of health care. At least Scrooge is honest about his morally abhorrent end goals. Democrats want a War on Poverty; Republicans want a war on the poor. [Links in original.]

Spiers pinpoints the irony: the "war on the poor" is being waged in part by evangelical Christians, the very people whose Gospel requires aid and comfort to those who suffer -- and not just those deemed worthy of help by those with the capacity to help but held captive by their love of wealth. Jesus is quite clear that he is helped -- or rejected -- whenever we help or reject someone in distress. In the feasts of loaves and fishes, there was no means test.

Gospel values, it turns out, make sense as policy values as well. In Spiers's words,

The problem with poverty is not, as the GOP would have it, systemic laziness and bad judgment on the part of the poor. It is the condition itself, which is not conducive to human prosperity and certainly not a de facto crucible in which character is forged. Without any kind of economic safety net, poverty often perpetuates itself no matter how hard the poor struggle to alleviate it. Class mobility via the market is nearly impossible when basic needs aren’t met. Even when people can participate in the labor market — and not everyone can — they need to be able to eat and take care of themselves first. In this context, making the poor more comfortable isn’t just the morally correct position; it’s the only sustainable policy prescription for long-term mitigation of poverty.

Elizabeth Spiers allows that there are many nuances and alternatives in working out exactly what would make up a "sustainable policy prescription" -- but they don't include patronizing and self-serving platitudes claiming that helping poor people does them a disservice.

Marley's ghost; source.

She ends her column by an observation that she might not call "evangelistic," but I do. It is a call to "repent and believe the Good News," but she puts it in the context of Charles Dickens. She points out that Ebenezer Scrooge, after all, did repent and change. Are Republicans (and all of us, for that matter!) willing to do the same? 

One further point, beyond what Spiers wrote.... Another argument that Christian conservatives often use to insulate themselves from pitching in more generously to the cause of poverty reduction is that there is nothing biblical about the government aiding poor people. The Bible assigns that task to the family of faith.

It's true that the Bible asks us to be obedient to the rulers (except when they contradict God, or when God counsels disobedience), but the Bible is also utterly realistic about what rulers will demand of us, and the corruption that can ensue. Now, thanks to a revolution, we citizens of the USA have become our own rulers, with a charter (the U.S. Constitution) that makes "the general Welfare" part of our common mission as a nation. When private philanthropy cannot reach the scale necessary to comfort the poor who somehow haven't earned the Republican Party's compassion, isn't it our democratic right and duty to fulfill our common mission through governmental mechanisms of our choice and that are accountable to us?

To sharpen the point further, we are in the midst of a pandemic, our legislature has already approved emergency assistance at the very moment it needs to be in place for people whose health, or housing, or food security, might be in danger. (Apparently, our wannabe Caesar is choosing to play politics with this aid; so far he has refused to sign the bill.) Is there a biblical precedent for government assistance in crisis? The first example that comes to mind is Joseph organizing Egypt's emergency storehouses, Genesis 41:46-56.

At any rate, let's put more effort into searching for good answers to this question of our national obligation to comfort the poor, and less effort into dodging it under cover of "biblical" piety. After all, few spectacles are more harmful to the reputation of the Gospel than celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace while refusing to see him appearing among us here and now.

A PS to last week's coverage of the conflict at Earlham School of Religion: Chuck Fager tells us what he's found out. Since then, there has been an online worship-sharing among those who are concerned about these developments, to be followed this coming Monday by a strategic follow-up meeting.

Hamilton Nolan: Merry Christmas, Americans.

Margaret Fraser spirals around: "Ministry kind of creeps up on you, and it’s only by looking back that we see pieces that complete a picture."

Molly Olmstead: The USA's most famous nun, Helen Prejean, confronts death. (Part of slate.com's series on the 80 most influential Americans over 80.)

Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, in Germany for treatment for Novichok poisoning, has published a video in which he apparently pranks one of the members of the team that poisoned him with intent to kill. The video (subtitles available) -- note the number of viewers. Some of the fallout in the Russian Internet. On the one hand, this whole episode is an amazing gift (just in time for Christmas) for all those who slog away in the struggle against authoritarianism. On the other hand, what additional risks might Navalny now face upon his return home?

More from Navalny (in Russian) ... the pluses and minuses of contemporary medicine, from one who has experienced both.

Justo L. González reviews how his self-understanding as a minister, theologian, and historian has changed over his decades of service. (I reprinted one of his articles here. In that article, he comments on the "teach a man to fish" dictum which Elizabeth Spiers also mentions.)

Camas Friends Church presents our Virtual Choir: