Can you believe?: evangelism

Showing posts with label evangelism. Show all posts

29 January 2026

Once again, baby and bathwater

Source.

Several times over the past twenty-plus years of this blog, I've referred favorably to the expression "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

For example (April 2006):

Friends began, not as a relativization of Christianity, but as an intensification of Christianity. We did not throw away the Baby with the bathwater, but (sorry if you've heard this rant before!), the new scented bathwater in use among some seems to be so fine that the Baby can be left in the cold, and this is somehow called Quakerism!

More recently, in July 2024 I mentioned where I first saw this expression used among Friends:

As an old London Yearly Meeting poster once proclaimed, as nearly as I can remember, "Tired of organized religion? Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater." Let's just watch out for that exceptionalist temptation, whatever our corner of the Quaker world—to replace the Baby with our own bathwater, whether that be the subtle rose-scented water of liberal Quakerism or the soggy cliches of imported evangelicalism.

Just in passing ... my memory is that London Yearly Meeting published a number of other clever posters in the 1970's. My favorite was something like this: Don't just do something. Sit there.

My own personal interpretation of the baby/bathwater warning in the Quaker context: those early Friends no longer trusted the religion industry to interpret either faith or practice adequately, but, contrary to the angry charges of their Christian opponents, they did trust Jesus.

("Angry charges"? Read the accusations and responses in William Penn's tract, "A Key, Opening the Way to Every Capacity; How to Distinguish the Religion Professed by the People Called Quakers, from the Perversions and Misrepresentations of Their Adversaries.")

Today I was following up some Internet rabbit trails on deconstructing faith, and I found Jim Palmer's comments on the usefulness and limitations of the baby/bathwater expression. The responsibility is always upon us (individually and as a community) to define who/what the "baby" is that we are being advised not to throw out.

Palmer points out that, honestly, nobody actually advocates throwing out a baby with its bathwater, so the expression is sometimes used manipulatively. Yes, your deconstruction can go so far, but no farther. Palmer challenges us to decide for ourselves Who or what the baby is.

So ... should we Quakers still be using this expression in addressing prospective seekers? We're promising that, by giving up the structures, doctrines, and ceremonies of their previous affiliations (or the choices they dislike in the religious marketplace), they'll still be able to keep that which is essential. But will they really do so? Take that story of the (alleged) Philadelphia Quaker culture that the late Gordon Browne told (according to my imperfect memory):

A recent convert went into a Friends meeting in Philadelphia and burst into enthusiastic testimony: "Friends, I have to tell you—I've met Jesus! I've found religion!" Not content with one outburst, he got up again and said, "I can't hold it in! I'm reading the Bible—I've found religion!" After a third such exclamation, an elder stood up and addressed him directly: "Friend, you may have 'found religion' but you didn't find it here."

I want to say, gently (because this can certainly be overstated!), that the fastidious reserve of particular Quaker cultures has become a sort of bathwater that obscures the Baby and deserves to be drained, or at least diluted! After those cultures have molded several generations of Quakers, the centrality of Jesus has, at times, faded, to our loss and our potential irrelevance.

How would we know whether Jesus is still at the center? We could dutifully answer, "By gathering in his presence and prayerfully seeking his guidance in our decisionmaking," but that requires

persistence in discernment, not falling for convenient shortcuts—formulas, ideologies, rhetorics of shame, and persuasive personalities that can distract us from listening deeply to each other as we wait for clarity;
knowing and loving ourselves and each other to such a degree that we learn what helps and hinders each of us in our own hearts in seeking (or avoiding) clarity, and we discover who among us has shown this capacity to speak God's guidance clearly.

To quote Thomas S. Brown ("When Friends attend to business"):

We are called to love those present enough to listen to what they have to say and to speak what is worth their hearing.

If Jesus is not relevant to a seeker's condition, there are certainly many other options in the religious marketplace, including the deceptive anti-baby of Christian nationalism. But we Friends who have experienced the liberating power of Jesus, can continue to offer (or ought to offer) a thoughtful and passionate devotion to the Lamb's War combined with a radical skepticism concerning the religion industry and its claims and priorities.

That skepticism is not a license to indulge in Quaker exceptionalism. It ought not to stand in the way of our cheering the Anglican communion for having chosen Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to serve in that office.

From the Daily Quaker Message: Primitive Quakerism Revived.

From "Discrediting" the Military to High Treason and Terrorism: Sergei Davidis on the evolution of political repression in Russia since the start of the current war. It's a disastrous and discouraging progression for those who yearn for "the beautiful Russia of the future."

In summary, political repression in recent years has clearly intensified: sentences have lengthened, convictions under the gravest articles (treason, terrorism) have reached record highs, and the victim count continues to grow. At the same time, measured as a proportion of the population directly subjected to politically motivated criminal prosecution, the scale remains comparatively moderate—especially relative to Belarus (where the per capita rate of political imprisonment is significantly higher) and, even more so, the Stalinist period of the 1930s-1950s.
This scale likely reflects the «functional» nature of current repression: it provides the regime with adequate control at minimal cost. Several thousand imprisoned for political reasons (plus thousands facing criminal charges without incarceration and tens of thousands prosecuted administratively) suffice under present conditions. Several factors facilitate this efficiency. First, the modern information environment vastly amplifies the deterrent effect of even targeted repression. The variety, unpredictability, and broad social and geographic reach of charges foster a widespread mindset of keeping one’s head down. Second, society has been conditioned over 25 years of deepening authoritarianism to accept the status quo as inevitable and without alternative.

Tom Gates connects Rene Girard's mimetic theory and Quakers as "scapegoat caste."

Becky Ankeny on prayer as the most important act of resistance to evil.

A Tornado through our Republic: A message by Doug Bennett at Durham Friends Meeting, Maine, USA.

As promised, another back is scratched. Curtis Salgado, Igor Prado Trio, Ivan Márcio, Roger Guttierrez. São Paulo, Brazil.

07 August 2025

"Protecting Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace"

William F. Buckley (Firing Line) interviews prominent atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, 1971. Screenshot from source. Also see "Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That We Need Not Fear the Religious Right," 1993.

The U.S. president, on February 6 of this year, ordered the creation of a Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. The first two paragraphs of Section 1 of his order gave the legal underpinnings for this task force's mission, then went on to say, "Yet the previous Administration engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses." The first impression left on me by this order is not the voice or reflection of Jesus; it is venom toward the previous administration, laced with false witness.

Aside from the merits, or lack of merits, of these cases of "targeting peaceful Christians," the most glaring problem with the president's decree is that anti-Christian bias is the only sort of bias to be "eradicated." There are no mentions of other faiths (except possibly in Section 3iii and 3iv, but even there, nothing explicit).

A first report from the Task Force was due no later than 120 days after the order, but I've seen nothing that purports to be this initial report on its work. Instead, the Justice Department organized a Task Force hearing on April 22, with three witnesses complaining about their treatment during the Biden administration. The Baptist News Web site summed it up: "‘Anti-Christian bias’ task force focuses solely on grievances of evangelicals." (More commentary on The Convocation Unscripted.)

With this background, you might forgive me for some initial skepticism about the more recent "Protecting Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace" memorandum issued by Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. federal government's Office of Personnel Management. Indeed, the first paragraph includes what seems nowadays to be an obligatory tribute to the president's leadership on the issue.

News coverage of the memorandum reflected this crediting of Donald Trump as the inspiration for the policy. (CNN headline: "Trump administration allows federal workers to promote religious beliefs.") However, beyond that nod, the memorandum seems moderate and defensible, and the examples of items that federal workers are allowed to wear or display go beyond specifically Christian symbolism. The guidance seems to protect faith expressions in general. It also places limits on those expressions: reserve work hours for actual work, and don't try to persuade anyone of your beliefs when they've asked you to stop. Also, "Title VII does not cover all beliefs. For example, social, political, or economic philosophies, and mere personal preferences, are not 'religious' beliefs within the meaning of the statute."

Wearing religious jewelry, having a Bible or rosary on your desk, or a religious poster on your wall, may seem a bit aggressive in a U.S. culture that privatizes religion and frequently treats it as some kind of inadequacy. However, whenever two human beings have business with each other and no prior ties, there are always risks involved, as well as (we hope) mutually beneficial rewards. It would seem like a sad—and impractical—accommodation to those risks if we end up expecting all public servants to adopt a bland exterior that reveals nothing of their individuality, personality, and values. What we can expect is that they treat us with the same fairness as the director of the Office of Personnel Management expects their co-workers and us to treat them.

Other familiar conflicts can arise when someone decides to take offense at a religious expression. I remember a U.S. Supreme Court case I wrote about here, Town of Greece v Galloway, where I agreed with the majority that the town was within its rights to allow religion-specific prayers at its legislative functions. But I had another priority as well. (Quoting myself!)...

But in any case, I think it is time to challenge the idea that being offended is, without evidence of actual coercion, a trump card in political discourse. If you are offended by someone else's religious speech, maybe managing your feelings rather than suing for relief is part of the price you pay for being in a country where there is religious freedom for the local majority as well as the local minority.
Maybe you're thinking, "OK, Johan, that's easy for you to say; you're too often in the majority; you don't know what it's like to be in the minority." And you're probably right. But you might be surprised by how easy it is to offend me. Just say "Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists." Call me an anti-Semite for criticizing Israeli apartheid. Put a Hitler moustache on a picture of Obama. Tell me I shouldn't say "Merry Christmas." Label Quakers as "heretics" or evangelical Christians as "theologically bankrupt" as people have done to my face. I keep having to remind myself what a therapist once told me: "People have a right to be wrong."

Back to the case at hand, Scott Kupor's memorandum. It has two major gaps, to my mind.

First: what about people who don't identify with any religious faith? Could atheist federal workers have on their desk, for example, a clearly visible copy of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian?

Are atheists and agnostics covered by this policy in the memorandum's second section? ...

Employees may engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature.

Consistency would require attempts to persuade others of, say, Bertrand Russell's viewpoint as equally protected, but I'm not sure that was contemplated in preparing this policy.

The second gap: the policy is naive regarding the power differentials involved, both between supervisor and employee, and between the employee and citizens requiring a service. It is not hard to come up with a hypothetical.... In a federal employee's office, would a picture of Trump at his desk with Jesus standing behind him, hand on Trump's shoulder, be just this side of coercive? Would a plaque quoting "Those who curse their mother or their father shall be put to death, Exodus 21:17" in majestic calligraphy be a bit over the line? Would that one be okay in the Department of Transportation but not in the Department of Justice? The subordinate or client who would be tempted to argue in more equitable circumstances could well decide, "I'll stuff my feelings rather than argue and lose my access to the services I need." Is that acceptable? But on the other hand, would the cost of preventing outliers smother the more general freedom Kupor's policy is designed to protect?

I'm always puzzled by some Christians insisting on what can come across as in-your-face religiosity, which seems far more likely to repel than attract. Just because your favorite Christian celebrity, or Scott Kupor, or Pam Bondi says you can make your affiliation obvious in your workplace doesn't mean that it actually serves the cause of evangelism. Here's a passage from a former atheist who became an advocate for "permission evangelism." ...

Many times in my life, actually most of my life, when people tried to evangelize me, it caused more harm than good. Many of the scars I carried through my life that kept me away from seeking truth in God were delivered at the hands of well-meaning Christians. They had no idea who I was or what I was seeking, but they interrupted me and tried to force their beliefs down my throat. I've never bought a product that way, and sure wasn't apt to buy God that way. If going to church subjected me to hundreds of those kind of people, I definitely wasn't headed there. Like much of today's society, I chose not to be come assumptive and insensitive, so I incorrectly chose not to be a Christian.
The very next day after I accepted Christ, I prayed that God would never allow me to forget what it was like to live a life without knowing Him. I asked for the emotions and experiences to remain present with me so that I could always relate to non-Christians, forever remaining empathetic. I have prayed that prayer numerous times in my life, and God has always honored that request. Now I was given the insight to use the heart God had provided to be as effective as possible. It is exciting to use the methods of the world to reach the world, yet see eternal results.
The purpose of permission in evangelism is to create trust, get around the legal and social barriers to discussing your faith, and most importantly, to discern the leading of the Holy Spirit in someone's life. ... Evangelism, when asked to tell someone about Jesus, is easy and resembles giving an answer for the hope that you have, rather than forcing an answer on a person yet to ask a question.

— Michael L. Simpson, Permission Evangelism: When to Talk, When to Walk.

Note to Quakers: If your reading tastes were formed by the likes of Thomas Kelly and Caroline Stephen, Michael Simpson's book might come across as cliche-ridden and glib. (Who wouldn't?!) Give him a chance! I believe his insights, suggestions, and his reframing of marketing in the service of ethical evangelism, are valid, or at least worth putting into the mix. If we actually care to help our communities be more accessible, and spread the message of grace to heal the wounds left by white Christian nationalism, and the resulting cynicism we have to contend with, his book might be very helpful.

Elizabeth Bruenig in The Atlantic: Who counts as Christian?

Adria Gulizia: Spirit-led evangelism.

Jade Rockwell in Friends Journal: Risking Faithfulness: Quietism and experimentation in unquiet times.

Early Friends were led to start our movement as a way to recover a wayward Christianity that they felt had taken too many wrong turns for it to be reformed from within the existing churches. But despite the inspiration of early Friends, it is the Quietist period that I think in many ways has most shaped the beliefs and practices that we cling to in our meetings and churches.

Windy Cooler: Angela Hopkins tells the truth about the hidden costs of ministry.

Israeli author David Grossman now "can't help" using the term genocide.

Racism: an informal five-question survey.

McKinley James with his own song, "This Is the Last Time."

01 May 2025

Love, theoretically

Source.

FCNL via Facebook

friendsincubator.org

fwcc.world

Three of the gospels tell the story of the rich man who asked Jesus what he (the questioner) needed to do to get eternal life. Jesus sums up the commandments, and the man says that he's been observing them all his life. Jesus says that he lacks just one thing: he needs to sell all he has, give the proceeds to people in poverty, and follow Jesus.

Matthew. Mark. Luke.

I remember one particular sermon on this passage. Judy and I were on Boston Common on a rainy day in October 1979, on the first day of Pope John Paul II's visit that fall to the USA. In his sermon, the Pope pointed out a detail that only Mark's version has: namely, "...what the young man in the Gospel experienced : 'Jesus looked at him with love' (Mark 10:21)," before explaining what the cost of his hopes would be.

The love of Christ is unconditional; it precedes our response. The response that Jesus gave the wealthy man was not just theoretical, saying "yes" to a doctrine; it was practical. And if the first part of the advice to the man seemed difficult (and Jesus says it will be, for it's harder for a rich person to enter heaven than for a camel to go through a needle's eye), the second part of the advice is more than compensation: "Then come, follow me." In other words, you won't be alone.

With a certain bit of irony, Jesus expands on this compensation:

... No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.

The way Jesus looked at the inquirer—with love—is the way he looks at each of us. No exceptions, as the Friends Committee on National Legislation campaign puts it. And as I've mentioned before, we are to "regard" each other the same way.

At least, that's the theory. The important thing in my life was that, having decided to trust Jesus, I did not have to work out the practical implications alone! The nuclear family that didn't understand or like my conversion receded into the background (not entirely, of course) and my earliest emotional support came from my Canadian relatives, with whom I was living as I went through all the stages of grief at losing one sister to murder and another because of being asked to leave my home. Then Ottawa Friends, and wider circles of Canadian Friends, came alongside me. They decided to make this utter newbie a representative to the Friends World Committee's triennial sessions in Hamilton, Ontario, and I soon realized I had a global family. A couple of years later, I was serving that extended Quaker family in Boston, Massachusetts, and there I met my life companion, Judy.

Now many of us are in a season of persecutions. The values that are precious to us, particularly equality and nonviolence, are under sustained attack. On a more doctrinal level, the gospel is being grievously misrepresented by Christian nationalists and their toxic enmeshment with state power—and not just in the USA.

Again: we don't have to work out the implications alone! Our Quaker and ecumenical and interfaith networks are alongside us. Our traveling Friends ministers and community-building events (see posters above) can give us ideas and spiritual refreshment from far and near. The gift-based division of labor means that we equally treasure our mystics and our activists, our evangelists and tax refusers, our street theater organizers and our potluck dinner organizers. They are all part of the "hundreds of times as much in this present age...."

There are three particular gifts that I want to hold up, and they're closely related. First: how do we extend the blessing of no exceptions to those who seem to be spreading counterfeit gospels at the expense of immigrants and other marginalized people, not to mention the reputation of the gospel itself? After we get good and angry (speaking personally, here!), then what? I love the idea of the "Truth Brigade" Judy mentioned in this post, and hope that those of us who are suited to, and called to, this kind of ministry of fierce love will find encouragement for their work.

Second: we need evangelists who understand that all our theories of love will atrophy if our communities are closed to new people, and when we subconsciously assume that all marginalized people are external beneficiaries rather than being among us as equal participants. So ... to the gifted evangelists still among us: please forgive us when we seem to pretend that you don't even exist; and help us identify the barriers and filters that too often result in welcoming only people who match our prevailing demographics.

Third: we need pastors and elders who understand the rhythms of enthusiasm and discouragement, help us when we get on each other's nerves, and know how to help us spell each other as needed.

"Love Your Neighbour" is not just a Friends Committee on National Legislation campaign, it is also the theme of this year's World Quaker Day, October 5.

Another occasion of mutual care in the global family: the Africa Section of the Friends World Committee for Consultation is hosting the next FWCC global online meeting for worship on June 8, 4:00 p.m. Nairobi time.

"Love in Motion: Friends Traveling in Ministry" (see graphic above): Brian Drayton will help us consider the specific role of traveling in the ministry, which I see as part of the ways we can be each other's encouragement in challenging times. This online presentation and discussion is scheduled for May 21, 8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Eastern U.S. time. (By the way, Brian Drayton signed Judy's and my certificate of marriage for the registry of vital records in Boston, nearly 45 years ago.)

"Dear Pope Francis": Diana Hadjiyane writes about Francis, community, and ecumenism from her Eastern Orthodox perspective.

Speaking of love, Levi Gaytán's "wildest dreams" came true.

Elderchaplain Greg Morgan:

.... Death sometimes arrives with no forewarning: a massive heart attack, a brain aneurysm, an accident. Past a certain age, though, we are more likely to die from conditions that progress relatively slowly: cancer, congestive heart failure, or simply old age. This is largely a blessing, I think, as it gives both the dying person and their loved ones time to prepare, and to share conversations that can be among the most intimate and meaningful of their lives.
But this blessing brings with it a challenge....

The monthly gathering of the Bremerton (Washington) Friends worship group is happening again this Sunday at 4 p.m.

The latest United Nations humanitarian situation reports on Palestine: the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Another global family, Playing for Change, presents their version of "Crossroads."

23 January 2025

1975: From Mississippi to Moscow

My 1975 visit to Russia began even before I left London. Shortly after I boarded Aeroflot's IL-62 to Moscow, before I had taken my seat, the airplane began taxiing. The two seats next to mine were occupied by two delightful middle-aged women who had boarded in San Francisco and who now helped wedge me into my seat. Almost all the floor space was taken up by their numerous bottles and packages of goodies (apparently no need to secure carry-on items!), but after a bit of rearranging, I was fine. Soon they were offering me all kinds of yummy pastries, and insisted on adding cognac to my coffee.

Russia, what will I do with you? You beguiled me from those first moments on the plane and all through the twelve days of my first and only visit during the Soviet era. I knew a lot about your history, including your capacity for cruelty to your own citizens, but your language and culture had been my fascination from my mid-teens on, and now (that is, fifty years ago this year!) I was going to see you for myself. For the most part, I only saw your good sides during those twelve days in 1975, but now you're slipping back into those old ways....

I've mentioned my first visit to Russia several times, but now I'd like to give a few more details, if only to express a bit of the combined nostalgia and grief that accompanies these memories. I choose not to indulge in russophobia, and won't apologize for my life-long fascination, even as I agree with Dmitrii Bykov's sad assessment after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine: "It is clear that Russia crossed many red lines. It cannot live any longer as it did in the past. The world will no longer see [in Russia] a place of spirituality, a place of great culture, a place representing victory over fascism."

Back in this post—Mississippi mellowing?—I wrote about my other significant involvement in 1975, my months at Voice of Calvary in Mendenhall, Mississippi, which were directly followed by my departure for the Soviet Union via the UK. I said then that, between those two places, Mississippi was the larger culture shock.

In the post Sapsan shorts, I mentioned the feeling, during that 1975 visit to Russia, of being so far away from everyone I knew. And in Return to Sergiev Posad, I explained how there was actually a link between those two experiences, Mississippi and Russia, and that link was the American Friends Service Committee.

In that last post, I described my first visit to the city of Sergiev Posad, to the Orthodox campus known as the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, back when the city of Sergiev Posad was still known by its Soviet name of Zagorsk. But there I only told the story of our tour group's visit to the worship service in progress. But as we left the service and were on our way to the next stop on the tour, I spoke quietly to our guide, telling her that I wanted to visit the Orthodox seminary if possible. To my surprise and delight, she told me how to get there, and promised to hold the bus for me when the others had completed the planned tour.

At the seminary, I wasn't sure what kind of reception I would get as a Protestant, possibly a sectarian (Quaker) in their eyes, and moreover as a 22-year-old American with long hair and (to put it charitably) undistinguished clothing. A dignified man who seemed to have the title of "inspector" greeted me very kindly just inside the front door, and soon I was on a fascinating tour of the seminary, while he listened to my story. Everyone along the way treated me as an honored guest! Needless to say, I was walking on air when I rejoined our tour bus, and to this day I wonder what kind of intuition that tour guide had. It's hard to imagine the same thing happening now, but, honestly, who knows?

Churches played a role in several other incidents during those days in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). On my first full day in Moscow, I went to the Novodevichy Convent, in whose cemetery many famous people are buried—Khrushchev, Gogol, Chekhov, Scriabin, and (just before my visit) Shostakovich, among many others. As I approached the convent's gate, I saw an artist at work in a clump of bushes, and his paintings were on the grass, available to purchase. I asked him if he was a believer, and he said, "Of course!" When I asked whether painting was his work, he laughed and said, "I'm a parasite on society." In the language of Soviet sociology, the term meant that he was not usefully employed within the approved structures, but he seemed to enjoy announcing his title! Of course I bought a painting, which is included in the slide show above.

I brought the painting back to my hotel room at the Mozhaiskaya hotel, which was on the Mozhaisk highway beyond the main circular highway around Moscow. The next day, when I returned from my sightseeing in the city center, I found that my painting had been carefully pinned up on the wall. When I asked the service staffer taking care of my room whether she know how the painting got there, she just gave me a quiet smile.

The following Sunday, I decided to go back to Novodevichy Convent for a church service. It was a lovely service, but I noticed that I was about one-third the age of most people there, and one of the few males. Afterwards, outside the church, I was approached by two young women, Lara and Sonya, who wanted to know what possible interest a young person like me could have in attending an Orthodox church service. They were mainly interested in the architecture, they explained. I tried to explain a little about my own faith. We decided to hang out for a while, and they took me to a nearby museum and exhibition. Lara then had to go, so Sonya and I went on to Gorky Park, where Sonya tutored me in the Soviet skill of working two lines at the same time: one for an amusement-park ride, and the other for shashlyk. The only problem: we arrived at the front of both lines simultaneously, so, laughing, we had to try to eat our food while twirling around on the ride.

Every day I ran into interesting people and unplanned encounters. For example, I visited the Kremlin, but the church/museum I wanted to see was closed, so I sat down in a nearby park. Pretty soon a Polish man came up to me and started a conversation. Somehow Zbigniew and I got onto the subject of political humor, and so there we were in the heart of Soviet power, trading jokes about Brezhnev and his tribe.

The hotel. A photo from the 1970's. Source.

Back at my hotel, its restaurant was an important feature of the place; the hotel was very new and was built in a relatively undeveloped area with no nearby urban amenities. (I think it was part of the tourist infrastructure ramp-up to the 1980 Olympics.) But the restaurant also attracted local people, and on one memorable evening, one couple pleaded with me to stay after dinner and hear the band. "They play forbidden music!" I became pen pals with another such new acquaintance, and for a while we traded records. Among other things, he sent me David Tukhmanov's avant-garde record By the Wave of My Memory, and I sent him B.B. King Live in Cook County Jail.

All my travel and transfers (airport to hotel to train to hotel to airport) were part of a package, which for most ordinary private tourists was the only way to visit the Soviet Union. In my case, everything seemed to work well, and in one situation, extraordinarily well: I was already at the train station for my overnight train to Leningrad when I realized, to my horror, that I'd left my Novodevichy painting in my hotel room, still pinned to the wall. No problem! An Intourist staffer got on the phone, and well before my train left, someone met me in the station with my painting securely packed into a tube. Five decades later, it's on our dining room wall in Portland, Oregon, reminding me of the faith of a "parasite," and our shared laughter.

From Leningrad I went to stay with my grandparents in Oslo. A few days later, I got a call from my cousin Johan Fredrik Heyerdahl: would I like to hear a presentation by the writer Andrei Sinyavsky? Of course! Another chance to connect with Soviet reality. Sinyavsky, accompanied by his host in Oslo, the journalist Per Egil Hegge, gave his lecture at the Nobel Institute, and Johan Fredrik and I were there.

Sinyavsky had served six years for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. His co-defendant Yuli Daniel had also been sentenced under this same charge—it may have been the first time this charge was applied to fiction. After Sinyavsky 's release, he had eventually emigrated to France where he was a professor of Russian literature. (Per Egil Hegge had his own brush with Soviet power; he was expelled from the USSR while serving as Aftenposten's correspondent in Moscow.)

At the Nobel Institute, Sinyavsky told us that there were three principal types of dissidents in the USSR. Some fought for a nationalist myth or the communist ideal, and sometimes even welcomed their punishment. But Sinyavsky's highest praise was reserved for those, such as Sakharov, who were ready to help anyone without exception, especially for the sake of freedom.

Later, I had my own couple of minutes with Sinyavsky, during which he confirmed something that I thought he'd hinted at in his lecture—that he was a Christian believer. I realized that he also valued being a writer, rather than being stuck in the category of "political dissident."

If you've managed to read this far, thank you for your company! Most of my diaries will probably never see the light of day, but it has been both pleasant and sobering to leaf through some of these pages from 1975.

Now I have a question for you. Are you interested in Russian language or culture or spiritual resources? I'd love to hear from you (privately if you like) because I personally know very few people younger than me, particularly among peace church people, who have this interest. In my desire to accompany spiritually grounded peace people in Russia one way or another (and they do exist), I'd love to think that there are more potential partners out there for this ministry.

I originally got introduced to this whole field because I took Russian language classes in high school. I think the popularity of high school and college Russian language and area studies has shrunk dramatically over the last fifty years, so it's not surprising that this specific concern might attract fewer people, but I figured it was worth asking....

PS: Even if you're not younger than me, I would still love to hear from you!! And if you know someone I should contact, I'd love to reach out. Finally, I'd also love to know whether there are other organized efforts to respond to this concern.

The Guardian's Anna Betts: Mariann Edgar Budde, a bishop and (as it turns out) evangelist for the actual Christian faith.

Some advice for U.S. Catholics on discipleship during Trump 2.0 ... and not just for Catholics.

Sarah Scott speaks to Spokane Friends on grief.

"No hatred will be tolerated." A repeat from one of those earlier posts about Russia. It seems like a song whose time has come again.

12 December 2024

More on deconstruction and curiosity

"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.

William Barr, Max Boot, and "the vapor trails of Christianity"

Jamie Wright's challenge

The dilemma of the uninvited missionary

The "theology of disillusionment" in the Russian Orthodox context.

On Russia and Syria, diagnoses and prognoses. (However, on the Russian bases in Syria....)

Whose Simone Weil? A survey by Jack Hanson.

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.

Friends Peace Teams' work in Chechnya.

Blues from Dnipro, Ukraine. "Help Me."

05 September 2024

Growth for growth's sake

Tree of discipleship. Source.

Q: "Should Friends seek to grow?"

A: "I don't believe in growth for growth's sake."

I've had (or overheard) exchanges of this sort several times among Quakers and other church people. I always have this perverse desire to say "Well, I do!"

To be fair, I think I know what those skeptics mean: they don't believe that a statistical increase in numbers, without attention to quality or ethics, is a goal worth chasing.

However, I doubt that anybody believes in pure statistical growth without regard for people. I'm eager to see people added to our numbers anytime that it's a result of those people hearing about our faith, coming to check whether we live by that faith, and gaining enough hope in our trustworthiness that they've decided to remain, at least for now.

That criticism of "growth for growth's sake" may be a polite way of saying, "I'd just as soon operate a chaplaincy for the people already among us, and those sufficiently like us to float into our orbit on their own steam." However, let's take the phrase at face value, and continue the conversation: "Then, what kind of growth would you favor?"

If I honestly believe (backed by experience) that ...

Quaker faith and practice is a way of knowing and following God;
Our communities are trustworthy, leadership is based on spiritual gifts rather than social distinctions, and the pathways for new people to become members and leaders are made clear;
We have a message and a practice that is very different from the toxic agendas of white Christian nationalism and other distortions that have brought the word "Christian" into disrepute;
I have found healing and hope in this faith and the community it has shaped...

... then, shouldn't I feel an obligation to care about growth? I believe so. It seems urgent to me to work toward ensuring that our faith and the communities formed by that faith are accessible to anyone who might need that kind of community.

There is nothing about this obligation that requires me to exaggerate Quakers' virtues, or to conceal our defects. I certainly don't need to claim that no other faith communities are equally trustworthy or equally capable of healing and giving hope.

By this logic, however, I could argue that we can continue to deny the importance of growth. Since we don't claim superiority (do we?), we can just assume that someone else will meet the needs of those who seek healing and hope. Instead, let's remember how important growth might be, not just for those who might find a place among us, but also for those of us already here.

The dangerous alternatives: we risk becoming stagnant; elitism and Quaker exceptionalism can creep in; we too often allow conflict to become personalized; we lose the urgency of paying attention to what God wants to say and do beyond our own tiny community, through us; we forget how to communicate our faith to those who don't understand our peculiar language; we reduce the chances of someone visiting to verify that our practice matches our faith.

Let's grow, for good growth's sake! (Or, let's at least continue the conversation.)

Hello from Spokane, where Judy is speaking on Sunday morning at Spokane Friends Meeting. Here's a recent local article on Spokane Friends.

Rachel Lonas reviews The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience. Not yet sure I'll get the book, but I certainly enjoyed the review. Have you seen this book yourself?

Amalia Zatari (BBC) on the new far-right in Russia. (Russian original.)

Since books definitely helped me survive childhood, I was drawn to this article: "‘Books saved my life’; the founder of Semicolon Books wants to close the literacy gap."

"Christianity is not a notion but a way." Stuart Masters on "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6) and the various ways Friends have approached related questions of exclusivism, universalism, and interfaith dialogue.

Timothy Jones on the young botanist Emily Dickinson.

Blues dessert: Canadian content! Jack de Keyzer, "I Can't Hold Out."

15 August 2024

Religion and boredom

Word of Life Church (phase two), Flowood, Mississippi, USA. Source.

In her important commentary on the passing of old-school church culture and what might be replacing it, Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, Diana Butler Bass writes,

...[A]nger is not the only emotion people express when talking about religion. Many people are just bored. They are bored with church-as-usual, church-as-club, church-as-entertainment, or church-as-work. Many of my friends, faithful churchoers for decades, are dropping out because religion is dull, the purview of folks who never want to change or always want to fight about somebody else's sex life....

In all of the fifty years since I started attending weekly services, this has not been my experience at all; quite the opposite. However, I cheerfully acknowledge that I am a peculiar case—peculiarly unqualified to comment on Diana Butler Bass's assessment.

Before I deal with my disqualifications, I should acknowledge that she backs up her comments with statistical evidence of alienation from established religion, and that the trends she pointed to twelve years ago, when her book was published, have more or less continued along the same lines. (However, "boredom" isn't an explicit category in any of those statistics!)

In my case, I didn't have any significant contact with organized religion until adulthood, and then it was in part a rebellion against my family, coupled with a personal mystical experience that no church could take credit for. I specifically looked for a church that reflected the raw experience of the first Christians—experiencing Jesus personally and forming a community around that experience—and that's how I fell into the lap of the Quakers of Ottawa, Canada.

In my flush of new-convert enthusiasm, I was not there to be entertained, and I had no prior experience of "church-as-usual" or "church-as-club," but simply wanted to hold onto that very basic expectation that we were there to meet with God, and I wanted to be with others who would understand that eagerness. I gradually understood that not everyone at Ottawa Meeting would describe their own participation in quite the same way, but their kindness and hospitality, and the weekly adventure of unprogrammed worship, gave me a precious start, and that powerful confirmation of my hopes has sustained me to this day.

My experiences of Friends in Ottawa Meeting, and Boston (Beacon Hill Meeting), and Charlottesville, and later in Moscow Friends Meeting, all involved these meetings' unprogrammed worship format, waiting in silence for God to make the first move. Meeting for worship always had that sense of adventure. (The time when an angry visitor burst into our meeting in Moscow and accused us of being a "sect" was probably more adventure than I had bargained for, but ultimately that was a wonderful and instructive incident.) However, I've spent most of my five decades among Friends in meetings and churches that don't use a strictly unprogrammed format. Most of them have simple forms of programming—sermons, music, and so on—along with a time set aside for direct listening for God. Those planned elements may sometimes seem full of inspiration, and at other times seem fairly rote and predictable, but among people who love being together and praying for each other, that programming doesn't seem to get in the way at all. I'm still there to meet with God in the company with others who have a similar hope and a similar need. Boredom is not an issue.

Practically all my Christian experience is among Friends, but I have no doubt that other traditions have equivalent elements that express God's invitation and grace. However, all of our religious institutions—Friends and others—have a whole other reality that may relate more directly to the alienation that Bass describes. What should I call it?—our organizational overhead? Drag? In my first years among Friends, I didn't have to worry about any of that; the arrangements had already been made, and I was carried along by the community's established patterns. Eventually it dawned on me that the sweet adventure of worship, the intimacy of asking for prayer, the insights of a timely sermon, and all the other things that are best experienced together, in community, inevitably require a tedious logistical checklist, and consequently a need for people to decide how to do those tasks in ways that are consistent with our values and priorities. Even a modest house church has to choose times to meet, some minimal plan for leadership and pastoral care, and ways to get the word out.

And as soon as decisions need to be made, we need trustworthy processes to discern the community's will rather than majority rule or the sway of individual personalities. And here's where we can see the increasing awkwardnesses of those imperatives amidst the competing claims on our time from the world around us. For many of us, maybe it's not the experience of community that is boring, but all the tasks that hosting the community requires, from facilities and staff and committees all the way to the most basic task: naming the times and places (and online channels?) we might meet.

Slowly but surely, voluntarily or involuntarily, willingness to undertake those tasks is being whittled away. For many years, I was a creature of that "overhead"—mostly as a denominational worker or committee member (Friends World Committee, Right Sharing of World Resources, Friends United Meeting, five yearly meetings, several ecumenical organizations, pastor, missionary), but those overhead structures seem to be increasingly regarded as nice (maybe) but optional. Shrinking congregations find that old patterns of staffing, volunteering, and keeping up their facilities, aren't sustainable.

Is there a positive way to describe these realities? I'd love to hear from you. How do we learn to be light enough on our feet to continue providing that precious access to the adventures and consolations of meeting with God ... together?

And: are there ways that the "overhead" structures and associations, and their international and cross-cultural partnerships, can serve that learning process?

The church is like ... an incubator, laboratory, observatory.

The church is like ... a lifeboat, portico, garden.

When bad news is good news.

One final word: We Christians are not called to meet together simply to enjoy those adventures and consolations of the devotional life for ourselves. Our faith's credibility, and the vulnerable people we care about, are under direct attack from white Christian nationalists and others claiming the Name of the Prince of Peace for their aggression. This is not the time to get too casual about our priorities, or to complain about boredom. We need to consult, discern, and act.

Dmitry Biriukov: Why sobornost' (an aspect of Eastern Orthodox spirituality that reminds some of us of Quakers' "Gospel Order") is a double-edged sword.

Micah Bales: God asks Elijah at Mount Horeb, "Why are you here?" Good question.

Here's an interesting idea for a study Bible ... The NIV Upside-Down Kingdom Study Bible. Have you seen a copy? (Maybe not; Amazon says it is being published September 10. Take a look at the list of contributors.)

Today I visited Nancy Thomas's Life in an Old Growth Forest blog, one of my favorites. I had planned to choose a post to link here, but I found too many good ones to make a choice. My recommendation: go to the blog and just keep scrolling!

In Oslo, our family enjoyed our visit onboard the polar research ship, Fram, which went farther north (with Nansen) and farther south (with Amundsen) than any conventional ship. A few days ago, I learned about the Fram II mission, an upcoming space flight involving the SpaceX Crew Dragon craft known as Endurance. If all goes well, the journey will be the very first crewed spaceflight to fly over the North and South Poles.

In the meantime, we have not forgotten Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.

Italian blues band: the Blueaces, "Dust My Broom"...

16 May 2024

Barriers revisited (partly a repost)

Source.

THE Truth of God, being received into the inward parts, is found to be of a living, powerful nature, working mightily there for the cleansing and redeeming of the hearts. Yea, this is certainly witnessed, that as the mind joined to deceit is thereby defiled, so the mind joined to the truth of God is, by its power and virtue, purified.
Now, having felt this, and being filled with the love and good-will of God to the souls of others, how can we but testify it to others, who stand in need of God's truth (and its cleansing property and virtue) as well as we; especially being thereunto moved and drawn by the Spirit of the Lord?
— Isaac Penington, published posthumously in 1680; source. (My italics.)

In our meeting, we're frightfully private.
— Member of an unprogrammed meeting in Britain Yearly Meeting.

Yesterday I had my second cataract surgery this year, and I'm still getting used to the results. To reduce screen time on blog night, the solution is obvious: repackage an old post. So the second half of this post is an item I published back in 2016, near the beginning of our last academic year in Russia.

What reminded me of that post, "Barriers," was a conversation just a week ago with a British Friend. We were talking about whether Friends in her meeting felt freedom to reveal their faith. From her comments I gathered that, whatever the reasons, this kind of sharing rarely took place.

It may have been small comfort, but I replied that this sort of diffidence was not unique to unprogrammed Friends. (For a brief definition of "unprogrammed," see the sidebar here.) I particularly remember our beloved First Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, forty years ago, discussing how to grow their rapidly-shrinking congregation. "What we need are young couples," someone said. (I'm sure I've told this story before!) My internal reaction was, "No!" What they needed was more confidence in their identity as God's people. It was a congregation with many mature disciples who had done amazing things with their lives. We found out accidentally that one of the harmless-looking older members had been a worker for racial justice in the South in the late 1940's! We were in great sympathy with the Sunday school teacher who asked those older Friends, "Some of you have been Quakers for 60 years—why can't you tell us more about why you became Friends and what you've learned about God in those years?" One of the answers she got was, "Our generational culture is very private."

In the first generation of the Quaker movement, there was little or no social incentive to be among us; you'd be risking legal danger and possibly mob violence, and you'd certainly earn the disapproval of the religious establishment. Either direct experience of God's power, or the desire to be among people who persuasively testified to such a direct experience, might overcome those dangers and lead you to throw in your lot with those despised Quakers.

What attracts people to us now? I've known Friends who reflect this same power, joy, and convincing conduct, but in my experience, our most attractive feature for many is a social atmosphere of gracious idealism and doctrinal vagueness that draws in seekers who are much like the people already among us. There are variations, of course; some of our churches echo the cliches of the (American) evangelical culture, but however pointed the preaching may be, the ethical consequences of that preaching (discipleship, or if you prefer, the Quaker testimonies) are often weak or absent altogether. If this seems unfair, let me know! (And what drew you?)

One explanation for our reluctance to testify to a powerful faith might be that we simply aren't experiencing the spiritual outpouring that shaped the first generations of Friends. The torch has been passed to others in the Christian movement who are living out a reality that we'd rather read about at a safe distance, for example in quaint ancient Quakerese.

But there's another explanation that may be less pessimistic. We have developed a barrier, an inhibition, that keeps our mouths shut. Maybe, if we dared, we might be free to share words and deeds (according to our gifts and temperaments, and always subject to the discipline of knowing when to speak and when to listen!) that would convey the love of God and the demands of justice.

I'll leave it at that. Here, with some minor edits, is that original "Barriers" post.

"How can I explain something to you if you don't even watch TV?"
A meme found on vk.com (original scene from late-era Soviet film Heart of a Dog, which I recommend).

When I was around eight years old, the subject of God came up one day in my grade school classroom. (There weren't the same restrictions on God-talk in public school then that there are now; that's another discussion.) Our teacher said, "Why should we be afraid to talk about God?" I was startled and panicky—in fact I was afraid to talk about God, and couldn't even imagine making my mouth emit the word.

I made a mental note of this reaction, but didn't analyze it at the time. Later, I connected it with the fact that, in my family, any mention of religion was absolutely forbidden, along with any mention of disease or death. Whatever the roots of this barrier, it blocked me from communicating with anyone about a huge part of what it means to be human.

Obviously, something happened between grade school and my decades of working for the church! But I'm glad that I remember that block. These memories came back to me the other day when I was talking with some colleagues about expanding our students' access to informal English-speaking opportunities. "Some of my students do a great job with grammar and vocabulary," said one colleague. "But when it comes to speaking in a group, they just can't open their mouths. There's that old psychological barrier."

These young people aren't exactly facing the same barrier in speaking English as I encountered in talking about God. (Or, rather, not talking about God.) There's no actual danger in overcoming the language barrier, but there are several hazards in crossing into God-talk territory. For me as a child, there was a safety issue within the family. But, on another level entirely, do we want it to become too easy to talk about God? Is there a place for some reluctance to become glib about the Ultimate?

We Quakers have a number of indirect ways of referring to divine realities—terms such as the Inward Light and the Seed, used generations ago to avoid an unseemly familiarity with holy realities, much as biblical Hebrew and its readers made substitutions for the Name. In my early years as a Friend, I remember hearing vocal ministry that referred to "the Author and Finisher of our faith" rather than naming Jesus explicitly. Nowadays Quaker terms such as Inward Light can mistakenly be used in the service of weakening our ties with Christianity, but that old impulse to curb our verbosity when referring to God still seems valid to me.

Even so, "faith comes from hearing the message," so there is something to be said for not letting psychological barriers get in the way of that communication. Part of our evangelistic task might be to confront the false barrier of cultural piety. Are we marked by a gooey sentimentality, a cloud of goofy cliches, or any other signals that you must, to gain entrance, turn off your critical faculties?

In John Updike's novel Rabbit Is Rich, there is a fascinating scene where the Episcopal priest, Archie Campbell, attends a family meeting to discuss Nelson's and Pru's intended marriage. The minister mildly defends "our brand of magic" while everyone else is trying to negotiate how much or little churchiness is necessary to accomplish the desired outcome—a respectable wedding. Rabbit's own defense of faith is not exactly zero ("Hell, what I think about religion is ... is without a little of it, you'll sink") but the church-wedding discussion is mostly about appearances, not reality.

As long as it seems that the religion industry is just selling one or another form of respectability, people will find their "magic" elsewhere. And rightly so. Maybe it's not a psychological barrier that blocks the audience from yielding—maybe it's a healthy boundary!

What exactly is the alternative that evangelists with integrity are offering? I think that there is no formula, no doctrine, no scare tactic, no magic that equals meeting someone who looks at you with God's love in their eyes, who offers access to a community that is shaped by trust in God. Some people in that community will know how to communicate this invitation quietly, with an assurance that doesn't depend on using loaded words. Others will know how to communicate with contagious enthusiasm, with generous love that covers a multitude of incautious cliches. There are infinite variations on this spectrum, and somewhere in God's economy, they probably all meet some blocked person's condition.

Along my own route, several people and incidents helped me overcome the barrier. Studying Asian civilizations in high school introduced me to whole cultures not shaped by the assumptions of Western materialism. The anti-war movement brought me physically into churches for the first time in my life. (It wasn't as weird in a church as I thought it would be. Specifically, it was the Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Evanston, Illinois.) My high-school fascination with writers such as Dostoevsky and Alan Paton played their part. But I remember a much earlier crack in the barrier: a tract I happened to pick up off the floor of our apartment building's lobby, not so long after the incident with the teacher. This tract described someone's conversion. In the process of getting to know God, this writer would walk way outside of their normal routes to pass a church that had Christ's name on it. That Name had such an attractive power for the writer. Hmmm, that's interesting, I thought. Even though I didn't understand or respond to that tract's invitation at the time, I somehow understood even then what the writer was feeling.

If I have any ability at all to represent the Gospel effectively, I believe that in part it's because I still vividly remember being a non-believer who couldn't even say the word "God." But I am not permitted to define my path or emphasis as the only one. I'm glad to share the responsibility of communicating God's welcome with many others, some of whom have very different approaches to removing barriers.

(Originally published on September 7, 2016. To date there's one comment, from the late Vail Palmer, referring to Adria Gulizia's then-new blog: "That blog about suffering and God's suffering with us is so profound. What else would a God who truly loves us be up to?")

Source.

Right Sharing of World Resources has a new mailing address:

PO Box 2102

Richmond, Indiana

USA 47375-2102

Catch up with Right Sharing's latest news here. And learn more about the search for a new general secretary here.

Diana Chandler (The Roys Report) on the dwindling Christian presence in Gaza.

How the Kremlin wants its audiences to think about Putin's cabinet reshuffle. (Meduza.)

Sam Adams (Slate) asks why A24 is burying its January 6 documentary.

The Fines have called their film nonpartisan, and in a less toxic political climate, its premise, that an election should not be disrupted by mobs in tactical gear assaulting law enforcement officers, ought to be one both sides could endorse without pause or equivocation. But....

Micah Bales asks whether we have been pruned.

From the perspective of our American individualism, this seems like a hard pill to swallow, but it is in fact good news.

Frederick Kaufman (UnHerd) on the mythical masculinity of Donald Trump.

“My power is great, greater than you believe, and I have gold and silver in abundance.” That was [Robert Bly's] Iron John’s promise to his acolyte. It is also Trump’s promise to MAGA and the manosphere. Thus do hordes of Redditers, Snapchatters, Xers, Instagrammers and sundry other amo-packing denizens of incel message boards feel the pain of the billionaire who now stands trial for hiding hush money payments to a porn star. And here, too, Trump will rely on truths Bly articulated decades ago — that much like infants, his followers will “refuse to remember ugly facts”, that they will “look away from disorganisation, abuse, abandonment."

The Open Culture Web site passes along playlists of the "3,300 best films and documentaries on YouTube." View the list at your own risk.

Nancy Thomas writes about choosing books to keep, Henri Nouwen, Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son, and a visit to ... us!

Jason Ricci, "Scratch My Back"—2024 (below) and nine years ago.

Can you believe?