Can you believe?: religion

Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts

20 February 2020

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

Today's American conservatives often point to secularism and to attacks on Christian morality as the causes of countless instances of social decay. U.S. attorney general William Barr's recent speech to that effect drew the attention of Washington Post columnist, Max Boot, who responded in a column entitled "William Barr's America vs reality in 2020."

Boot's first response is a direct challenge to Barr's assertion that (in Barr's words) "Virtually every measure of social pathology continues to gain ground." Boot counters:

Consider some of the improvements since 1960. Real per capita gross domestic product has increased 216 percent, from $18,268 in the first quarter of 1960 to $57,719 in the first quarter of 2019, driven in part by a 230 percent increase in output per hour for non-farm workers as of 2015. The share of 25- to 34-year-olds who have graduated from college has tripled as of 2016. Infant mortality has fallen nearly 80 percent as of 2018. The homicide rate was unchanged as of 2018 — five murders per 100,000 people — but that disguises a vast improvement since the homicide rate peaked at 10.4 per 100,000 in 1980. While the number of out-of-wedlock births was more than seven times higher in 2018, the share of single mothers has declined since 1997 because more unmarried parents live together. The abortion rate soared after Roe v. Wade in 1973 but has fallen more than 50 percent since 1980. How does Barr account for these improvements if the United States is on the road to ruin?

Next, Boot challenges Barr's central argument -- that religion is an essential factor in maintaining social health -- and that's when I really took notice. Boot describes how his colleague Sherry Cho assembled evidence that the opposite might be true. Cho listed the ten "most religious" and ten "least religious" nations (using data from this 2017 survey) and then compared various measures of social well-being between the two lists. Boot summarizes:

Indicators suggest that the less religious nations are much better off. Average GDP per capita in the least religious countries is more than five times higher, while the unemployment rate is more than twice as low and the poverty rate is one and a half times lower. The homicide rate is five times lower. Life expectancy is 22 percent higher, and infant mortality is 1,000 percent lower — in part because the least religious nations spend 50 percent more per capita on health care. The least religious countries are also better educated, with a mean 12 years of schooling per capita vs. 7½ years in the most religious countries. Income inequality is 24 percent lower in the least religious countries, and gender inequality (as measured by the World Bank) is more than 400 percent lower. Finally, the least religious countries are freer, with an average score of 87.6 from Freedom House, compared to 56.5 for the most religious countries.

I don't agree 100% with either Barr or Boot. Barr first: whether or not moral values are weakening as he asserts, his descriptions of the causes include absurd exaggerations. He says that in previous eras, moral decay was just one end of a pendulum-swing cycle that eventually self-corrected ... but now it's different:

First is the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religion we are experiencing today. This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.

These instruments are used not only to affirmatively promote secular orthodoxy, but also drown out and silence opposing voices, and to attack viciously and hold up to ridicule any dissenters.

One of the ironies, as some have observed, is that the secular project has itself become a religion, pursued with religious fervor. It is taking on all the trappings of a religion, including inquisitions and excommunication.

Those who defy the creed risk a figurative burning at the stake – social, educational, and professional ostracism and exclusion waged through lawsuits and savage social media campaigns.

I am sure there are militant atheists and secularists among us; I run into their abrasive rhetoric all the time. But sociologists tell us that the USA remains uniquely religious among the world's wealthiest countries. Surely if a militant anti-religious movement were effectively neutralizing our religious majority population, we would see more evidence of their vicious attacks, inquisitions, excommunications, and savage social media campaigns. Honestly, I don't. Actually, it seems as if most politicians at the national level still feel they need to wear their religion on their sleeves.

(Remember Hillary Clinton's campaign advisor suggesting an attack on Bernie Sanders' supposed atheism? One such example does not prove a trend, but when have we heard of any campaign trying to make a negative out of someone's Christian faith?)

Source.

I would also like to know whether America's conservative religious communities have better social outcomes than the country at large. Have things improved among evangelical Christians, for example, since Ron Sider wrote his sobering book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience?

Maybe I'm too judgmental, but Barr's overdramatization of the secularists' "organized destruction" does not seem like a genuine argument -- it is simply that same tired old rhetorical scare tactic that Richard Hofstadter described as the "paranoid style in American politics."

Boot correctly points out that Barr completely disregards advances in morality in the same years during which the USA has supposedly been decaying. For example, racial segregation was legal when Barr was born (1950). We could go on to list all the crimes and social sins that were routinely hushed up in pre-#MeToo, pre-#ChurchToo, and pre-Black Lives Matter times.

Here's what I'd like to discuss with both Barr and Boot: the usefulness of the word "religion" as a meaningful category. Barr says that religion makes all the difference -- and at various points he shifts from "classic Christian" to "Judeo-Christian" to the role of religion in general in the full 50,000 years of human development. Boot and Cho refer to the full variety of religions in the ten most religious and ten least religious countries they studied.

Here's the problem. A couple of years ago anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas wrote about the influence of religion in general to their ethical behavior: "No matter how we define morality, religious people do not behave more morally than atheists, although they often say (and likely believe) that they do."

In his article, "Are religious people more moral?", Xygalatas points to several devices that contribute to this divide between faith and practice. One very important corruption occurs when ethical behavior is only applied to fellow believers within the group, not necessarily to outsiders. Another is the common tendency for religious people to produce a folk variant -- or as Xygalatas puts it,

... the beliefs and behaviors of religious people are not always in accordance with official religious doctrines. Instead, popular religiosity tends to be much more practical and intuitive. This is what religious studies scholars call "theological incorrectness."

Is it possible that both Barr and Boot don't pay enough attention to this "popular religiosity"? Barr wants to argue that the transcendent claims of religion impose limits on human waywardness that no laws or secular ideals can match. Is this in fact true? And maybe Boot's charts of religious and nonreligious nations also can't take into account whether the religions being cited all have comparable claims on the hearts and consciences of their adherents, or are often simply identity markers along with all other features of their cultures.

Cutting across all these arguments -- and especially Boot's and Cho's analysis -- is Robert Woodberry's research on the worldwide influence of those he calls "conversionary Protestants." His claim, documented in his paper "The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy," is that these missionaries "heavily influenced the rise and spread of stable democracy around the world."

The resulting questions I have for both Barr and Boot are these: how can we argue these controversies based on vague and selective definitions of religion? Is there some factor that we ought to be paying more attention to, that might animate more actual, practical love of neighbor, and how might that factor guide the way we describe today's social pathologies and social improvements?

I'm intrigued by William Barr's reference to the secular values he compares unfavorably to our Judeo-Christian legacy. "What we call 'values' today are really nothing more than mere sentimentality, still drawing on the vapor trails of Christianity." I'd like to challenge the "really nothing more" part of this charge, but it's true that the "vapor trails" of Jewish and Christian influence are evident everywhere in our definitions of private and public good.

Maybe Robert Woodberry's study documents a similar phenomenon. Is it possible that in the "least religious countries," the powerful legacy of "conversionist Protestants" proved more durable than any specific form of public religiosity? In other words, can we attribute any of those good social metrics in "least religious" nations to the "vapor" left by those faithful evangelists? If so, what were they preaching and practicing that went powerfully beyond conventional religion as described by Xygalatas ... that is, beyond "popular religiosity" and the divisiveness of "we are special"?

The Canadian pipeline crisis was centuries in the making.

For decades, pipelines and other extractive industries, such as mineral and coal mining or logging, have legally pilfered Indigenous land by presenting members of a nation’s council and the citizenry with the same basic sales pitch: “We have money, and you do not.”

Umair Haque on fascism: what happens when a society can't speak the unspeakable?

Has the rising "religiously unaffiliated" tide started to slow?

When I snagged this link from The Guardian, it was #2 on the "read in the USA" list: the truth about why we wake up at 3 a.m.

Buddy Guy is still learning.

From my list of blues musicians I really really miss: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee:

28 February 2019

Trustworthy, part two: a colony of heaven

Most -- but not all -- of my small sample have experienced a trustworthy faith community.

The sample size was small and self-selected, but it's clear that unhappy experiences are not unusual.

When I first put together the "trustworthy church" survey, I thought that stories of trustworthy and untrustworthy churches/meetings, and experiences of churches becoming more trustworthy, would be the most interesting answers. In fact, many of those accounts really were fascinating -- some were inspiring, and, as you can guess, some were just plain awful. In many cases, I realized that I already knew the situations in some of the stories, and that's making me very cautious about repeating them here, even with permission. We Friends need to grow our numbers if for no other reason than to increase anonymity!

The pleasant surprise in these surveys, however, were responders' wish lists of qualities they would like to see in a meeting or church. It should have been obvious to me that this category ("What qualities or features would be most important to include in any congregation you'd consider joining?") would often be the hard-earned result of the good and bad experiences already recounted by each person.

Here are some of those features -- similar answers combined....

Sincerity, openness, warmth -- among regulars and also with guests and visitors. (Maybe the most frequently repeated request.)
No hidden screens -- if you say you welcome everyone, that the good news is for everyone, then "everyone" includes all sexual orientations, social and economic classes, and the full variety of cultures, races, nationalities, abilities. Differences are acknowledged with candor and humor.
Unanxiously Christ-centered and biblically literate, ready to engage with people on the boundaries of our definitions, and beyond.
Grounded in Quaker teachings, aware of the varieties of global Quakerism.
Concerned with both faith and practice, including the practice of social justice.
Not in denial about evil, but not obsessed with sin, purity, certainty.
Hopeful, positive, but willing to have difficult conversations.
Engaged with the surrounding community.
Clear, accessible paths to membership, with transparent explanations of the differences between regular attendance and membership, and the responsibilities of membership and leadership.
No gender differences in leadership or in the process of becoming leaders.
A culture that welcomes questions, encourages significant conversations, and encourages participation in worship and leadership.
The liberty to focus on things of transcendent importance rather than trivial distractions.
Able to deal with imperfect people, to weather conflicts arising from gossip and other inevitable crises and friction.
Encouraging and educating for spiritual growth, helping each person discover and use their spiritual gifts.
Small enough for genuine relationships, large enough to sustain programming that goes beyond just governing and maintaining the church.
Small groups.
Mutually accountable leadership that is willing to uphold the community's agreed standards and confront violators.
Concern for evangelism, both locally and globally.

Some phrases stood out to me so strongly that I was reluctant to combine them with other statements, even if they might be similar. Some examples:

A good church provides both comfort and challenge. A healthy church helps people learn how to be better together.
There are no qualities or features reflected in an outwardly visible church that would prompt me to join in membership.
A church's policies, presented on its front-facing website, in its bulletin, or on its signboard say a lot about what a congregation intends or how it thinks about its purpose and identity. But I can tell when I enter the sanctuary, from who's in the room and up on the platform, whether this is a church where I'm allowed to be myself.
Conflict is seen as an opportunity for growth rather than Satan's trash fire.
Women in leadership, affirming, focus on service of community, common faith in Jesus and reliance on scripture. [This was all one sentence, which in itself I found moving.]
Any urge to condemn or expel is a disqualifier in my view -- and there, again, I am not quite living up to the standard I am demanding.
God is Love, if love is not central in the congregation -- not for me!
A real commitment to listen until we all can plead anyone's case to their satisfaction.

Finally, here is a book of Christian discipline, a Faith and Practice, all in one paragraph:

The primary feature would be a genuine knowledge of God and Christ. I'd want to see some effort had been given to studying Scripture and early Friends writings, additionally contemporary writers who have studied these original resources and written sensibly about their findings. I'd want to see good character, not only in major issues such as marital fidelity, but in minor day-to-day behaviors, such as not monopolizing conversations or podium time, etc. In short, I'd want to see some self-awareness and discipline counteracting the fallen nature's tendency to self-aggrandizement. I'd like to see a creative, personal approach to worship and socializing: the house church where each brings a psalm or prayer, and worshippers gather around a table to share and joyfully have a meal together sounds like an ideal. I'd like to see true friendliness and concern about one another's lives. I'd like to feel that the group was truly the body of Christ, a colony of heaven. I'd like to hear others minister the Word of God. (Don't think I've made such a wish list since I was six-years-old, and writing to Santa.)

Please let me know if you'd like to add to or challenge any of these responses. You might also recognize something that you contributed, but that got weakened by my combining it with other statements -- and that you'd like me to restore to your original language or urgency.

Part three of this series will look at some of those personal experiences reported in the survey, and what they might mean for our choices as we seek (or build) trustworthy congregations.

(Back to part one on the cost of betrayal.)

A question for any church conference: What would happen if the Holy Spirit did indeed fall upon us? (It's a question I've asked myself before several momentous Friends United Meeting triennials over the decades, and after one very over-controlled Friends pastors' conference.)

Mark Russ reports on a Woodbrooke gathering on diversity and inclusion -- including evangelism and "the heart of our dilemma as liberal Quakers."

Fred Clark on Benjamin Lay, an "unQuakerly Quaker" and the apostasy of slave-holding.

...[W]e sometimes describe people like Benjamin Lay as being “ahead of their time.” Which they of course weren’t, because no one can be. That odd phrase — “ahead of their time” — is sometimes meant as a compliment, but it is also sometimes employed to deny people like Lay the same gracious solicitude we’re eager to bestow on their contemporaries. We tend to be, in other words, more willing to forgive people like Edwards and Whitefield for being disgracefully wrong than we are to forgive people like Benjamin Lay for being defiantly right.

Mike Farley: Contemplation, like pain, is not a private enterprise.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: a photo gallery, Boris Nemtsov, a life and death in pictures. (Here's a link to my related blog post, Boris Nemtsov 1959-2015.)

War resister to war resister: Rory Fanning's conversation with Hilel Garmi in Israel.

Delta Moon keeps their lamps trimmed and burning.

30 August 2018

Good news or bad news?

Paula White reads inscription on Bible. "History will record the greatness that you have brought for generations." Source.

About 45 years ago the Mennonite Central Committee published a booklet, Evangelism: Good News or Bad News? The booklet became part of a study package distributed by the New Call to Peacemaking, an initiative of Norval Hadley and Evangelical Friends. The New Call found its first organizational home in the Faith and Life Movement staffed by Robert Rumsey of the Friends World Committee for Consultation. In 1976 it became a joint effort by the three largest peace churches, Friends, Church of the Brethren, and Mennonites.

I first heard about the New Call to Peacemaking in 1976 at the Friends World Committee's Triennial sessions in Hamilton, Ontario, which I attended as an observer from the host yearly meeting. (This was where I heard T. Canby Jones speaking about Hiroshima.) With great anticipation I ordered the study materials, and was not disappointed. In particular I was impressed by that pamphlet on evangelism.

Forgive a bit more personal context. As a new Christian, I sometimes felt that I was developing a split personality. From the Ottawa Friends Meeting I received such treasures ... a place to worship and grow in my faith, with none of the trappings of the religion industry that (under the influence of my atheist parents) I was still allergic to. Also, they provided me with wonderful mentors such as Deborah Haight, Anne Thomas, Len and Betty Huggard, and so many others. Their kindness, and the constant encouragement of the whole community (who put up patiently with my naive enthusiasms) gave me a firm Quakerly identity that carries me to this day.

However, Ottawa Friends had their brittle places. Too much outward enthusiasm was not appropriate. Also, I gradually became aware that not everyone was as convinced as I was that Friends were simply a revival of apostolic Christianity. For a wider emotional range, and a more direct engagement with the Bible, I also began attending an informal house church I found out about through fellow students at Carleton University. That group was a bit like a hub, with spokes that went outward into all sorts of fascinating interests -- Eastern Orthodox theology, Christian-Marxist dialogues, Amnesty International. With each of these two groups, the Quakers and the house church, I behaved appropriately for that group while absorbing the discontinuity within myself. Occasionally I invited my house-church friends to come to my Friends meeting with me, and several took me up on it, but as far as I remember, nobody stayed.

Yet another part of my early faith experience was the charismatic fellowship that my Canadian relatives were part of, and which offered me yet another vision of Christian freedom ... until, at some point, it didn't: it became more like an authoritarian cult.

That booklet, Evangelism: Good News or Bad News?, helped me integrate all of my multiple spiritual identities. I was impressed that its authors (Frank Epp, John Stoner, and John Toews) dared to suggest that evangelism, as actually practiced, could be bad news. Their message was clear: yes, the good news of Jesus was about eternity and the Realm of Heaven, but that eternity starts now. The good news is good now. It begins healing and liberating now.

(I had already been hearing some of this message in non-Quaker settings -- for example, my summer internship at Voice of Calvary in Mendenhall, Mississippi, in 1975 -- but in the New Call to Peacemaking, I saw that these insights were endorsed by Friends as well, and applied directly to the concern for peace and nonviolence that had brought me to Jesus in the first place. It was that same good news that had, in my own experience, broken the bondage of racism and the cult of obedience.)

In 1982, I was working at Quaker Hill Bookstore in Richmond, Indiana, when I came across another provocative book: Alfred Krass's Evangelizing Neopagan North America. Here's how he restated the concern for evangelism as genuine good news -- and whose interests might be served by keeping it safely in the by-and-by:

...Christians have from a very early time come to operate with a metaphysic which distinguishes sharply between the "eternal" and the "temporal," the "heavenly" and the "earthly." Only in brief periods of "enthusiasm" has the Christian community been able to dream of realizations of the eternal kingdom within time and space. We used to speak that way, you remember, of "eternal life," as that expression is used in the Fourth Gospel. It was something future, to be held out as a carrot before us. Then people began to realize that the writer of the fourth Gospel did not share the world-view of Hellenistic society. He really meant to describe the current life of Christ's followers as eternal life.

Similarly, Latin American theologians and biblical scholars have shown how we are still influenced by the metaphysic of Hellenism when we speak of the kingdom. Our glasses have kept us from accepting what the New Testament says about the kingdom: that it has entered our time and space. Not only our Hellenistic glasses are at fault, however. It's not a coincidence that it's in the interests of the world's ruling elite that Christians should have a delayed expectation of the kingdom. This makes them docile, law-abiding citizens who do not make embarrassing demands today. It threatens the status quo immensely when you have people around who expect and demand that oppressive situations be changed.

It's time to be honest. Everything I have written to this point today is here as a direct result of Monday's White House event to honor evangelical leaders. I really do not want Donald Trump to take up any more space in my blog and in my life -- and I also realize that you, dear patient reader, don't need me to provide insights that you wouldn't otherwise receive. But, just as with the Jerusalem embassy ceremony, the White House meeting and dinner again put a set of celebrity evangelical leaders in the national spotlight, in effect giving them a unique public setting to do the evangelizing that their label obliges them to do, in season and out of season. Instead, the main aim of the evening seems to have been to enlist them and their followers in the president's re-election campaign. If there was a peep of protest there, it never reached the public. As a self-described evangelical, I can't let this go unchallenged.

So: for the record, those court evangelicals (to use John Fea's term) do not speak for me. In honoring a president who incites division, verbally abuses his opponents, and treats vulnerable people the way he and his team do, their version of evangelism is not good news.

Good news or bad news, part two: Believe Me.

One more personal bit. I again crossed paths with the New Call to Peacemaking in 1983, when FWCC's Robert J. Rumsey retired and I was part of the team of FWCC field staff that replaced him. I inherited his stock of Evangelism: Good News or Bad News? and the other New Call materials. Staffing responsibilities for New Call had already passed to John K. Stoner of the Mennonites, but I was happy to help with distribution of these good resources.

While we're on the subject of God's kingdom, did Lou Reed (Velvet Underground) understand God's kingdom better than evangelicals do?

Adam Taylor on the Faustian bargain on full display at Trump's evangelical dinner. Bobby Ross comments on the dinner's media coverage.

Authentic Spirit-led evangelism: Adria Gulizia wants to help you get started. (On my blog, this study has been the most popular post of the last four months, with over 1,100 views. I hope its publication on Adria's own blog gets even wider circulation.)

John Inazu is still confident about "confident pluralism."

From RFE/RL: Declassified memos offer a fascinating window into the Bill Clinton-Boris Yeltsin relationship.

Putin makes a rare television speech to explain his support for a modified pension reform program. Meduza summarizes Vladimir Putin's proposed softening of the reform and the cost of the compromise. A rather jaundiced appraisal from Alexei Tsvetcoff. (In Russian: Navalny says "I told you so," and explains V. Putin's decision with statistics.)

"They call me Lazy; goodness knows I'm only tired." Goodbye, Leslie Carswell Johnson.

05 August 2016

I may not like your politics ...

In the heavens over Moscow Region, yesterday...

... but I'm not allowed to trash your faith.

I listened to and read with great attention these treatments of the faith of the Republican and Democratic candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency of the USA:

National Public Radio, on Donald Trump and Mike Pence
National Public Radio, on Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine
Commentary on Getreligion
Commentary on Christian Century

This calm reportage contrasts dramatically what I'm seeing in blogs and social media and hearing in ordinary conversations. There's an open season on these candidates (especially Trump and Clinton); even Satan is dragged into the picture. Forgive me for not dipping into the cesspool of contemporary political discourse to provide examples. Fortunate are you if you don't have some already right at hand. In any case, there no doubt are unclean forces at work here (Satan is known as the father of lies and the author of confusion!) but I'm quite sure that none of the candidates are his direct affiliates!

Thoughts on commenting on candidates' faith:

First of all, there is only one authority on a candidate's religion: the actual candidate. (I agree with C.S. Lewis's advice as described in an earlier post, "We will never see another non-Christian.") Whether a candidate's heart faith or their comprehension of every detail of that faith achieves perfect coherence is another question, but one that we must approach cautiously. Does my faith and your faith meet that standard? How do you know? Can the speck of imperfection in the candidate's eye be seen through the plank in your own? (Matthew 7:3-5.) Flirting with this boundary risks violating the Commandment against false witness.

Thinking privately about candidates' faith and consistency is completely natural and important, of course, since it (among other things) helps us understand their motivations, reliability, policy biases, and likely blind spots. The problem is getting enough honest input on which to base our thinking. The Getreligion writers talk about Kellerism, a phenomenon summed up by Julia Duin thus: "...the trend toward editors making up their minds on hot-button issues to the point that they believe there are no legitimate, alternative points of view on the story. Thus, only one side of the story makes it into print."

To complicate things, candidates and their teams are highly motivated to reveal and enhance those aspects of the candidates' faith that will appeal to voters. This is understandable, if ethically troublesome. The religion industry itself (whatever the specific religion) emphasizes the ideals, aspirations, and superiority of its brands. The candidates' campaigns naturally want to exploit the benefits of those hints of special godliness. We just have to retain the ability to discern core values and issues from the public-relations enhancements that are being sprayed our way.

Given the power of religious rhetoric, political campaigns are also tempted to go negative on the opposition. (Remember the stolen e-mail recommending pinning Bernie Sanders with the "atheist" tag?) Individuals have great freedom to do the same, as I can witness time after time on social networks, where (for example) Trump is accused of faking his religiosity, and Clinton's own faith history is minimized or ignored.

When can we permit ourselves to go public with our thoughts on candidates' faith?

When we accurately report what the candidate says -- any candidate.
When we make reasonable inferences about the social or policy implications of a candidate's expressed religious views (not based on the exaggerations of their own campaign or their opposition's campaign).
When we point to genuine controversies about a candidate's expressed views on faith. (For example, can Norman Vincent Peale really be linked to the so-called Prosperity Gospel? But we're not allowed to tar Trump with this brush unless we can do so with a fair use of his expressed views, rather than a cherry-picked selection of quotes or references to others conducting smear campaigns.)
When we (or the candidates we like) are not guilty of the same level of heresy or hypocrisy that we want to charge our opponents with.
When we're honest with ourselves about our motivations. If we really don't like a candidate -- if we're sure a candidate is dangerously wrong for the office they seek -- that's when we are most tempted to generate or repeat false testimony.

As I read over these words, I think to myself that these ideas are so routine and obvious that they approach banality. But then I look back on Facebook and think, maybe they're not so obvious after all.

Test case: What do you think of this article, with its brief mention of a current candidate? -- "The Bad Faith of the White Working Class."

More on J.D. Vance and his understanding of Trump supporters, via Amanda Erickson and the Washington Post. And a National Public Radio interview.

Gina Ochsner (Pentecostal) and Paula Huston (Catholic): a conversation between novelists.

More conversation: encouraging a dialogue on "becoming God."

"We follow the ways of Jesus": Margaret Fell and the first Quaker peace declaration, in contemporary English.

Coup talk in Ukraine.

"Oh, what have we done to this kingdom we proclaim to be the chosen one?"

12 February 2015

Do you want to be offended?

Source.

Just a few more words about last week's uproar over Barack Obama's brief overview of why Christians should not be on a "high horse" about religious terrorism.

Last week I quoted one example (Jim Gilmore's) of the abusive rhetoric directed at Obama for his remarks at, of all things, a prayer breakfast. I don't intend to pile on former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, who by some accounts did a decent job as governor of the state. He hardly fits the template of a total villain in this piece. That leaves me to wonder how it could be that a likable, churchgoing politician would feel the license to accuse the president of unprecedented offensiveness for such a mild and conventional, even pious, speech. True, that speech contained a paragraph or two of candid confession of Christian shortcomings--but nothing that the governor himself wouldn't have learned in school. Gilmore's campaigning on behalf of Martin Luther King's state holiday in Virginia is testimony that he's not ignorant about these sins.

(In fairness to Gilmore, I've written to him about my concerns through his Facebook page. If I hear anything, I'll update this.)

At no charge, here's my modest set of guidelines to protect us innocent "believing Christians" from being victimized by presidential offensiveness. Hopefully it will also protect us from other politicians, celebrities, punk feminist musicians, and each other....

How to know if you've truly been offended, and how to respond:

Is the accusation actually true? How do you know?
If the offenders are Christians (note: per C.S. Lewis, Christians are people who say they are Christians), have you confronted them or their representatives according to biblical guidelines?
If confrontation is impractical, have you sincerely attempted in your heart to give them the benefit of the doubt? Nobody is forced to be offended. Can you honestly say that you've tried resisting the impulse (or temptation) to take offense?
Do you pray for those who persecute you? Or who might appear to do so?
Did someone else tell you that you should be offended? Does that person have your best spiritual interests at heart, or could there be some other agenda that he or she is serving? Do they make a living from spreading dislike of the alleged offenders?
Do you already dislike the alleged offenders? Are you hoping to be offended so you can be confirmed in your dislike and enjoy the company of others sharing that dislike?
Are you aware of the power of religious rhetoric and the danger of its misuse? Are you careful not to say more than you really know about the faith of another person, even a politician or celebrity?

Finally, if you can't shake off the horror of the offense committed against you, ask yourself which of the following would be the more Christ-like response:

"He has offended every believing Christian in the United States." (My emphasis.)
"Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing."

I'm just noticing how often I've dealt with the topic of offending and being offended in a religious context. A few examples:

I'm afraid that these frequent cases are a sign of the times, a symptom of wholesale and willful neglect of the commandment against false witness.

Another voice on the topic (Micah Bales): Does Obama owe Christians an apology?

Are Kaluga's Lutherans guilty of disloyalty to Russia?

I plan to attend the Friends of Jesus Community's spring gathering--it would be wonderful to see you there! But if you can't make it to Barnesville, Ohio, in March, maybe you can get to Balaton, Hungary, in July, for the Quaker Voluntary Action Friendship Camp.

Dream, then die. (A little imp on my shoulder is asking, "Hey, Christian, how outraged are we by this offense?")

E-Stonia and the Future of the Cyberstate.

Tail Dragger brings Chicago to Vienna, thanks to Texanoblues.

08 May 2014

Worship and offense

Supreme Court opinion (pdf)

Last week I pondered the honesty and the risks of adding emotional weight to political acts by calling them "worship." If there's actual worship involved, the risk is probably worth taking.

There are a number of other ways to give our political rhetoric an emotional wallop. One of the most popular is to be offended, or claim to be. Here in Russia, it may now be a crime to be offensive in a religious context, providing, of course, that you're offending the wrong people.

In the town of Greece, New York, local ministers routinely give an opening invocation before town board meetings. These invocations have usually, but not always, been explicitly Christian. Two local citizens filed a lawsuit, not to prohibit prayers, but to require that they be "inclusive and ecumenical." Susan Galloway, one of the original plaintiffs, found the prayers offered at these town meetings "offensive," "intolerable," and an affront to a "diverse community." The case eventually reached the Supreme Court (from whose opinion I drew these quotations), which has just decided (5/4) in favor of the town's practices.

After surveying a lot of overheated articles on both sides of this controversy, I was happy to see Michael Miner's refreshingly calm take on the story. As it happens, I don't agree with him, but I do acknowledge his essential fairness, and admire his honesty in stating that he originally planned to go one way with his article but found one of the dissenting justices more persuasive in the other direction.

Miner's assessment: "Kennedy lets common sense waft him along. Kagan thinks harder." It's impossible for me to decide who actually thought harder, but both clearly took the issues seriously. The decision examines whether there were political advantages to be gained by identifying with the majority religion, and whether the town made opportunities available to minority-faith representatives, finding that there was no unconstitutional linkage of faith either way. But much of the majority opinion was simply a review of the history of religious speech in government settings, finding that no doctrinal censorship has ever been required. Such censorship arguably would be required if a no-doctrine standard would now be imposed on religious speech--either a censorship of content, or maybe a quota arrangement ensuring a balance (who decides?) of voices.

For me, the decisive issue is somewhat different. Generic religious language is nobody's language. There is no such religion. (Or if there is, its very generic-ness would be a doctrine, a possible source of offense to others.) When I pray, I am expressing a relationship; I would not deny this freedom of expression to anyone else of any religion, and I insist on it for myself, however many or few of my faith live in the community that had invited me to speak. In this sense, an insistence on generic language could amount to an unconstitutional prohibition of religion.

Back when I was staffing the Right Sharing of World Resources program, I was on an interfaith committee preparing a study guide for the U.S. Public Broadcasting documentary series, "Local Heroes, Global Change," on economic development and poverty reduction around the world. In our work, I pleaded for an attitude of hospitality to the diverse texts and scriptures we were considering, not a steamroller of homogeneity. I think the group did a good job. And now I continue to believe that we need to risk being exposed to ... and "offended by" ... majority and minority voices. There is something coercive about majorities sealing minorities out of the public space; equally, there is something coercive about a community being told by court injunction that its majority voice no longer holds weight. It's that sort of thing that gives political correctness (a concept I actually honor!) a bad name.

The majority opinion addresses a crucial aspect of offense and coercion:

In their declarations in the trial court, respondents stated that the prayers gave them offense and made them feel excluded and disrespected. Offense, however, does not equate to coercion. Adults often encounter speech they find disagreeable; and an Establishment Clause violation is not made out any time a person experiences a sense of affront from the expression of contrary religious views in a legislative forum, especially where, as here, any member of the public is welcome in turn to offer an invocation reflecting his or her own convictions.

A useful test is implied here: is there actually this kind of access for "any member of the public"? 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."

Friday update: I am advocating freedom to pray publicly in the name of Jesus, if that is our authentic voice, but I'm not recommending this practice. Just as with worship-as-protest, we must examine our leadings and motives. Are we saying something prophetic, or are we indulging ourselves? There's already enough elitism and spiritual exhibitionism in the world. Just because we are permitted to do something, even under constitutional cover, doesn't mean we should do it.

In connection with this recent Supreme Court decision, one thing really saddened me. According to Anthea Butler in the Guardian's "Comment Is Free" column, the two women who brought the original lawsuit received "hate mail and ridicule." And one commenter says that their properties were vandalized and they received violent threats. I'd like to think that none of that ignorance and criminality came from Christians--we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, right? Or do we get a secret thrill out of being offended? A chance to smite for the Lord!!

"The conflation of orthodox belief and discriminatory social policy is likely to be detrimental to Christian witness in an increasingly tolerant age." -- from Eric C. Miller, "Is Evangelicalism Too Nice?"

"Should Jesus inform our Christianity?" and "Would Jesus Support the Death Penalty?"

"What the retirement of baby boomers could mean for the church."

Alternatives to Violence in Ukraine--an experience in Kiev.

(This past week has been a terrible nightmare for anyone paying close attention to the situation in Ukraine. There are enough words flying around about this; I'm not going to add more, except to ask you to keep praying.)

Tara McKelvey, "Russian baddies are back."

Yesterday and today in my college-entrance-exam classes I used an Eva Cassidy song for the listening comprehension exercise I put at the end of my classes. We heard the song "You Take My Breath Away." I know we've got a good song when students start singing along spontaneously, even though it's not a singing exercise.

I couldn't find a live performance video of this song, but "People Get Ready" is certainly not second best! ... "'Cause there's no hiding place from the Kingdom's throne."

People Get Ready - Eva Cassidy from acousticguitarnut on GodTube.

24 April 2014

"Every knee shall bow...

American and Christian flags; source. (c) Kaihsu Tai.

... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." For years I've happily sung this chorus, based on Philippians 2:10 and 11 (context). I also love the song "Every Knee Has Got to Bow" by the Fairfield Four. But exactly how would this come to be that every knee and every tongue would follow this pious imperative? And exactly how would I persuade any non-Christian today that this would be a happy outcome, in view of the behavior of those of us who've already kneeled and confessed?

Source.

This is probably a perennial puzzle for all Christian political scientists, at least those who are not hypnotized by some evangelical version of socialist realism. It came back to me again when I read an article on the BBC Web site, "Eight arguments about whether the UK is a Christian country." By the Philippians 2 standard (every resident of the country has confessed that Jesus is Lord), the UK doesn't get the label Christian, despite Christianity's huge embedded advantages: the nation's monarch is officially designated "Defender of the Faith"; old cathedrals display rows of regimental standards demonstrating the tight historical bond between faith and patriotism; the national culture is saturated with Christian references; and not least, a statistical majority of people are still willing to claim that label. Surely the UK belongs on the list of nations historically formed by Christian civilization (as even some non-Christians readily acknowledge, including to the BBC). But it's hard to argue that the trend lines are heading toward 100% Christian knees and tongues.

When I read the BBC article, I remembered a Sojourners article from earlier this year: "I Hope We Never Become a 'Christian Nation' Again." As author Stephen Mattson points out, some commentators lament the USA's supposed post-Christian decline into moral decay. The evidence cited for this decline often includes the loss of Christianity's social and political privileges. This approach, as Mattson correctly notes, seems to treat Christianity as a sort of brand whose market share is slipping based on corporate metrics. He charitably doesn't go off on one relevant tangent--how the snide and corrosive rhetoric of too many Christian celebrities contributes to that slippage.

Mattson suggests a change of perspective: "What if instead of a post-Christian nation, we're actually a pre-Christian one?" My gloss: What if Christian faith, divested of social advantages, is now free to earn--not demand, earn--the attention of non-Christians by blessing and forgiving and admitting mistakes and crying and celebrating with complete honesty--in short, by offering Living Water? What if we became known for refusing to smear the reputations of those we disagree with? What if we paid taxes for the common welfare with an eagerness equalled only by our stubbornness in refusing to pay taxes for torture, warfare, and any other form of death-worship? I continue to think that rather than sounding gloom and doom, we ought to be proclaiming a new "golden age of evangelism."

However, I still find it hard to think in political terms about what it will look like when we really do win "every" heart. Would the church become the government? Please, no--we've had some truly awful previews of what it looks like when Capital-C Church Gains Power. Would we have Christian anarchy instead? That has a bit of a romantic attraction, but, really, that would only be sustainable if evil itself were abolished. In my happiest fantasy, Jesus himself would return to put a gentle end to the religion industry, abolish all hierarchies and conceits of power, and simply gather us around himself. After all, we confess that Jesus is Lord, not that Christianity is best, or will someday beat all the other brands.

So maybe it's a far-off dream, although a biblically defensible one. But the nice part about it is that we can start rehearsing now.

Cue the Quakers.

What Thy Friend John "would like to hear at meeting."

"Years [plural] of the evangelicals."

"Are American Christians Really Being Oppressed, Or Are They Just Whining?"

In case you were wondering, "US is an oligarchy, not a democracy" (BBC). "Is American an Oligarchy?" (New Yorker.) "Scholar Behind Viral 'Oligarchy' Study Tells You What It Means" (TPM).

"Climate change is the fight of our lives--yet we can hardly bear to look at it."

"Celebrating the Life of Stan Thornburg."

In the midst of the difficult Ukrainian situation, we get this totally artificial and bizarre bombshell: "Israel stops US-led peace talks citing Palestinian unity." Apparently we only negotiate with people we already agree with. Interestingly, journalists refuse to drink the Kool-aid.

Moscow Friends are considering a new call to prayer, addressed to the world family of Friends. We'll consider it this coming Saturday at business meeting. If we approve a statement, I'll post it on this blog. (Update: here it is.)

For dessert: Ray Charles performed by Samantha Fish and band at the Ukrainian American Cultural Center in Whippany, New Jersey.

02 January 2014

Secondhand nostalgia

When ministers and members of Northwest Yearly Meeting die, the pastors' e-mail list and other mailing lists often distribute families' and friends' remembrances of them, along with information about their memorial meetings and burials. We've had several such goodbyes recently. The one that hit closest to home for me was the death last week of Richard Powell, who along with his wife Mildred helped welcome us to Richmond, Indiana, and its Quaker community, back when we first moved there in 1982.

The remembrances we receive often include incredibly poignant testimonies of the person's impact on their children, congregations, and whole communities. The initial notice might be followed by ten, twenty, thirty or even more "reply all" responses from other recipients, affirming these qualities and these influences. I might not have known the person who died, since I'm a relatively recent arrival to the yearly meeting, but when I read about their strong principles, their prayer lives, their radiant personalities, suddenly it's clear how their children, whom I often do know, became the people I now admire.

During all my growing-up years, my own parents were staunch atheists, and any talk about religion was forbidden in our home. One incident might illustrate the resulting fear in me: I was standing outside the front door of our apartment building in Evanston, Illinois, one day, at the age of maybe 8 or 10. My younger sister Ellen was outside with me; we were waiting for our parents to come down from our second-floor apartment so we could go to Winnetka for ice cream.

A nice couple, probably husband and wife, approached us and asked us whether we liked birthdays. Did we know that we could have a second birthday--the day we gave our lives to Jesus? Wouldn't it be wonderful to celebrate two birthdays each year? All I could think of was the hell we would go through if our parents caught us talking about Jesus with these strangers. My little brain had no capacity to evaluate anything about the couple's message to us; all I could do was try to calculate the timing of our parents locking their apartment door, walking down to the landing, then down to the lobby, then out to the street.... As vivid as this part of the memory is, I draw a complete blank when I try to remember whether the dreaded encounter between parents and evangelists ever took place.

What a contrast to the remembrances of the departed saints we read about in these death notifications. Among the most powerful for me are the other pastors and church workers who testify to the mentoring and encouragement they received from the person who just died, and often from his or her spouse as well. And it hits me! These people, and others very much like them, have done the same for me! As I read about their family lives, what it was like to grow up in the circle of their influence, I feel a sort of secondhand nostalgia, as if I were being retroactively adopted into the family being described. But the actual influence on me, directly and through their children and communities, has not been secondhand at all. I feel as if the people I've known and loved in my church family--starting with Len and Betty Huggard, Deborah Haight, Anne and Barry Thomas, all those years ago in Ottawa, and continuing right up through the present, have more than made up for the gaps in my experience.

I'd be lying (or at least over-sentimentalizing) if I denied that, nevertheless, there's a big hole in all this retroactive nostalgia. I would love to be able to remember talking with my parents about faith and doubt, about the Bible and discipleship, about eternity. As my views on nonviolence evolved, I wish I could have talked with them about that notorious Christmas 1969 issue of Reader's Digest, the one that struck me (still a non-Christian) as being anti-Christian because of its editorial arguments for continuing to kill Communists until they simply ran out of young fighters. In the Christmas issue! When Ellen was murdered on March 28, 1970, and then was buried without a funeral, I felt totally isolated as my parents disappeared into a fog of hate and alcohol. (I wasn't sure what a funeral really was for, but when I came across the itemized bill from the mortician, I did realize that something was missing.)

Many years later, my parents' united front against religion cracked in the strangest way, in my father Harald's last months of life. When he was admitted to the hospital for what turned out to be the end stage of his struggle against cancer, he specified his religious preference as "Church of Norway." This was apparently translated into "Eastern Orthodoxy" by the clerical staff, who referred him to Father George, the Greek Orthodox chaplain at the hospital. (Well, Norway is east of that hospital!) Father George began visiting him, to my father's evident delight, and thus it was that, one day, when I visited my father, I found an icon on the wall above his headboard, and a little sign stating, "I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian. In case of emergency call Father George," with the priest's contact information. Unfortunately, by that time my father was too weak for extended conversations, but I think he knew how happy I was to see that icon.

My father's memorial meeting was led jointly by Father George and by my father's cousin Axel Heyerdahl, who was an evangelist in the Evangelical Church Alliance. A sweeter and more loving combination of contrasting Christian traditions could not be imagined. To add to the mix, clients and staff came from my father's last employer ... Catholic Charities!

My mother Erika died eleven years later without, as far as I know, ever having relaxed her stand against the church.

A.N. Wilson, "Is Christianity a dying religion?"

"A Little Town Shall Lead Them: American Ruralism and Progressive Christian Voices."

Are there elements of, "Grandpa is cooler than dad," in the thinking? Absolutely. But I believe the interest in this new business model that reflects the locally grown, sustainable philosophies is shaping how many companies are measuring a more complex bottom line.

"Whatever you think of Edward Snowden is probably wrong."

"Pussy Riot vs. Ksenia Sobchak, Round Two." Eliot Borenstein writes, "Sobchak, like much of the Russian media, seems incapable of believing that there are people in Russia who are absolutely indifferent to fame and fortune." Thanks to Sean Guillory for the reference.

Kadir Nelson speaks to the BBC about painting the New Yorker Nelson Mandela cover.

"Six Cool Takeaways from NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity Discoveries."

Arthur Louis, "Rescue Me." From the BBC Radio 2 Paul Jones sessions, 2009.

02 June 2011

Sending messages

Given my elemental fascination with Nazism, it's not surprising that I'm reading In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin--I'm always trying to understand how a "modern" and "civilized" society, including some of my own relatives, surrendered so completely to a regime of utter cruelty and criminality. Maybe an account of this family of American observers, I figured, will give me some new insights.

And maybe it still will--I've barely started reading the book. At the point I stopped reading this evening, the Dodds, the ambassadorial "American family" who represented the USA in the early years of Hitler's regime and who are the subject of this book, have not yet even left the USA to take up the post. Right now I'm pondering, not Hitler, but Franklin E. Roosevelt. The new American president faces what is represented as a political dilemma: what to do about the documented, systematic cruelty faced by Jewish people under Hitler's new government. To protest or not to protest? Business as usual, or boycott? Open the gates to refugees, or continue underfilling even the existing quotas?

...Roosevelt understood that the political costs of any public condemnation of Nazi prosecution or any obvious effort to ease the entry of Jews into America were likely to be immense, because American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem. Germany's persecution of Jews raised the specter of a vast influx of Jewish refugees at a time when America was reeling from the Depression. The isolationists added another dimension to the debate by insisting, as did Hitler's government, that Nazi oppression of Germany's Jews was a domestic German affair and thus none of America's business.

With hindsight comes our realization that the conventional "framing" of that era effectively abandoned millions of people to industrial-scale genocide just a few years later. But even discounting hindsight, simply judging by the standards of that time, a reign of brutality had descended upon Germany, and the evidence was abundantly clear that Jewish people were a specific, special target of that brutality.

Yes, the Depression was a true crisis. In that crisis, Roosevelt threw convention and caution to the wind and became a master of economic and legal improvisation, throwing one idea after another into the supreme effort to head off a financial meltdown. He "reframed" the crisis in practically spiritual terms: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself...." Why then did fear stop him from helping Jews? It's a haunting question.

Some who advocated or denounced various possible American responses to German anti-Semitic brutality were concerned about how those responses would be interpreted by various audiences. I wish it were possible to say to every politician, "Earn a reputation for honesty, and you won't have to worry about 'message'." My fantasy president of 1933 would say to Germans and Americans alike, "O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! ... O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind." (Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.)

I've always been pretty skeptical that it is possible to project a desired "message," or avoid an undesired one, through symbolic behavior. For example, among those debating American responses to German brutality, there was a worry that a concern for the oppressed would send such an irritating message to the oppressors that things would get even worse for the oppressed--but history has few if any examples of tyrants' hearts melting because nobody protested. When the USA invaded Iraq, we critics of this thoroughly despicable adventure were told that our protests "sent the wrong message" to the world, namely that we were not united. Damn right we weren't! What would have been a "right" message, if the "wrong" one was the truth? When the president of Iran sent George Bush a letter, our message experts seemed to analyze every aspect of the incident other than the plain text of the letter.

Coincidentally, while I was thinking about the debates over helping Jewish Germans, I came across this discussion in Christianity Today, about whether or not the U.S. ambassador to China should visit an unregistered church there. Would it send a powerful "message" about U.S. support for religious freedom or would such a visit be unhelpfully interpreted as demonstrating unregistered churches' ties to foreigners? Nobody said anything about the relevance of the ambassador's own spiritual needs. If there is integrity to the ambassador's visit--a genuine communion with other believers and with God--that is the only framing that counts. Any other messaging is bogus, and its interpretation by Chinese Christians or the Chinese government is beyond anyone's ability to control.

Speaking of Iran: Beyond Denial"-- The 1997 Iranian TV series Zero Degree Turn, featuring an Iranian/Jewish romance against the backdrop of the (not denied) Holocaust "... offers a unique invitation to call attention to the relationship between popular media and affective engagement, and to cultivate new knowledge where political grandstanding too often trumps substantive engagement."

"Syria in fragments: divided minds, divided lives." (Thanks to Helena Cobban, justworldnews.org.)

"When children suffer." Thinking prayerfully about prayer and suffering, with the help of Stanley Hauerwas and Peter Greig, as well as Kate and Emily.

"Baptizing dead Quakers."

Blues in Moscow: "I've Got to Sleep With One Eye Open." "You got to be careful what you pray for ...."

05 February 2009

Politics and religion shorts

In the last couple of days, we've had a flood of news related to politics and religion. I only have a few minutes for this week's post, so I'll let the sources and other commentators carry most of the burden. But before turning to them, I wanted to play once more with my old fantasy question: what if Christians really made an effort to collaborate globally on the seeds of war and other crises?

During the Lebanon war of 2006, I tried to put some words around this idea. Today, I'm reduced to a diagram:

This idea has ancient roots, but the person who really got me thinking about it was Justo González, whom I quoted here ...

We must learn how to trust the church--unfortunately, this is the weakest link in the chain. By this I mean the church universal that hungers with the dispossessed in Ethiopia and with the uprooted in El Salvador. What was happening in the Philippines was known and decried for over two decades by Christian leaders all over the world. Yet most church people did not come to believe it until they saw it in the network news. By then, thousands of Filipinos had died as a result of our disbelief!

(Complete article is here.)

Friday PS: The fantasy graph above is my answer to the perennial question intended to one-up pacifists: "What would you have done in Hitler's case?" One problem with this question is that it assumes we can only act at the moment when armies are already on the march. The history of successful nonviolent campaigns for social change, such as in the Philippines and Eastern Europe, includes years of prayer and risky prophetic action on behalf of biblical values. How might we organize a more comprehensive set of research and mobilization resources so that these successes might become the rule rather than the exception?

Jim Wallis, about
a year ago, in
Portland, Oregon

The New York Times reports "White House Faith Office to Expand." Sojourners co-founder and magazine editor Jim Wallis will be a member of the associated advisory council, according to Sojourners, Politico, and elsewhere.

Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown points out that these council members are likely to disagree, quoting Obama campaign advisor Shaun Casey: "These are people who are not used to going along to just get along." The prospect of conflict among faith representatives on a political council doesn't fill me with dismay, as long as there is commitment to civility and to their assigned tasks. If they conceal their convictions, they're not much good as a council. I imagine that, individually, council members will hope that their opinions might at least occasionally help to form better policies. This seems a reasonable goal, and worth a certain amount of noise and static. When politicians exploit church leaders mainly to curry popularity, the picture may look more peaceful, but what's really been gained?

Another New York Times article: "Vatican Move on Bishop Exposes Fissures of Church." What happened to the Vatican's legendary gifts of diplomacy? Conflicts between religions are proper and inevitable when the issue is competing theological truth claims; in fact, on this level their debates are useful to themselves and each other. (Otherwise I have no idea what I am communicating beyond those already predisposed to agree with me.) But nobody of any religion has a license to participate in the dehumanization and objectification of anyone, past or present. If you assert that the Holocaust didn't really happen, we have the right and obligation to say that you don't speak for our community. I'm glad that the Vatican eventually made that clear, but wonder how they didn't see this mess coming earlier.

So now let's combine the two topics above:--"If Obama Were Pope." Actually, I sympathize with much of Pope Benedict's campaign for a more direct and honest expression of Christianity's claims, both theological and historical, in the public arena (instead of a meek, relativist role). But that program will fail miserably if not pursued with humility, courtesy, and an incredible attention to historical accuracy.

The Internet Monk interviews the author of Fall of the Evangelical Nation.

Iraq reflection from Christian Peacemaker Teams: "What Choice Did They Have?"

Friday PS: Research suggests that "Europe does religion without the politics." What really intrigued me was this counter-stereotype textbite: "On average, nearly three-quarters (74%) of people surveyed in Germany, France, Austria, Poland, Switzerland and the UK think of themselves as religious or very religious."

Thanks to novaresearch.eu for the reference.

Blues from Barcelona: Another version of "It Hurts Me Too." (Compare to Eric Clapton's two weeks ago.)

Can you believe?