Advent connections

At Camas Friends Church last Sunday, it was my turn to say a few words at the opening of our meeting for worship. On that first Sunday of Advent, I referred to a quotation I've used three or four times before on this blog -- perhaps the closest you'll get to a George Fox quotation on Christmas:

We must not have Christ Jesus, the Lord of Life, put any more in the stable amongst the horses and asses, but he must now have the best chamber, the heart, and the rude, debauched spirit must be turned out.

Turning out the rude, debauched spirit is not the work of a moment. Maybe that is the reason we need a whole period of fasting and contemplation -- in other words, Advent -- to consider how we will make room to receive the Baby.

Is it fair to ask, after nearly two millennia of preparation, why we still need to turn out that rude spirit? Part of the reason might be that spiritual bondage is embedded and wily (think of addiction as an example), and combines with our individual appetites and blind spots in unique combination. There is no social evil that doesn't confront me with a personal challenge: do I challenge or acquiesce, and at what cost?

Source.  

To take the spotlight safely off myself for a moment, I've been thinking about William Penn recently. This evening I was reading a biography of Penn published in 1851. It included a detailed, dramatic account of the Penn-Mead trial, widely credited with establishing the independence of trial juries. Author William Dixon observes,

Here we again observe William Penn enlarging the contracted sphere of his sect. The ordinary Quaker, in the simplicity of his heart, would have defied the unjust law, and suffered like a martyr -- satisfied with an appeal to conscience. Penn joined a larger amount of that worldly wisdom, which, like the rest, he fancied he despised, to his more ardent zeal. He knew his country, and his country's history. His legal studies at Lincoln's Inn had not been thrown into a barren soil. The circle of his mind was large, and he never sunk the Englishman in the sectarian. He was anxious about civil as well as religious liberty. Wisely therefore he took his stand on the old charters, and made his appeal to the public in their own cause. [Source, page 99.]

Just as he did in his earlier imprisonment, where he challenged the absurdity of imprisoning people for their theology, he made a direct connection between Quakers' freedom to preach in Grace-church Street and the rights of British citizens to a fair trial. He was not satisfied simply to be a good Quaker, but required of himself to be a full-fledged citizen as well, and he required the Court to respect his stand. No doubt, for him it was not a matter of "as well," because he made the connection.

With the advantage of three centuries, we wish he had made another connection. During the Penn-Mead trial, as the jury was led away to yet another night in jail for having rendered an unsatisfactory verdict, Penn looked at them and said, "You are Englishmen, mind your privileges. Give not away your rights." His courageous witness to those rights went well beyond that era's common understanding; a short time later he was back in trouble for defending the rights of Roman Catholics, despite his opposition to many of their doctrines. But when it came to his colonial estate in Pennsylvania, and in the laws of that new colony, those rights extended only to Englishmen. William McNeill writes, 

Penn’s Quaker professions of equality and fair play counted for little or nothing once confronted with a rapidly growing province with an acute shortage of labour to work the lands and carry out the multitude of tasks demanded by rural and urban Quaker society. Wage labour at this time was difficult to obtain in a Pennsylvania where land was cheap and fertile and where credit was readily available. Quaker pragmatism therefore, demanded the labour of slaves.

McNeill describes the roles of slaves in Penn's own estate. Penn's 1701 last will and testament would have freed them at his death, but no such clause appeared in the next two versions.

I don't consider myself wiser or more courageous than William Penn. What connections do I still need to make in order to welcome the infant Jesus into a prepared heart? Is there a clue in the reference to simplicity that follows? Happy Advent!

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A good question:

Dialogue with John Robinson, Lieutenant of the Tower, as the authorities were trying to trick William Penn into a situation where he could be required to take the oath of allegiance, against his principles. (Source, pp. 114-116.)

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Do we need Advent?

Turning out the rude, debauched spirits.

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It has been forty years since we heard about these four Roman Catholic churchwomen from the USA who were killed in El Salvador: Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan. Margaret Swedish retells their story and makes the connection with today.

I learned from these women about the courage of stepping into reality and allowing it to touch you, to change you or, as Maura put it, to “strip you and show you God.” I told their stories over and over again for 23 years as coordinator and director of the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico in Washington, D.C. Over those years, I came to know many of their friends and family members. The four women became so much a part of my life that to this day I cannot believe I never met them in person.

I fervently wish that a younger generation will come to know their story because it expresses a historical thread that runs through our history to this day. It runs to our southern border where hundreds of Central Americans are languishing in misery because we refuse to open our border to them and in the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in recent years.

Clive Thompson on monetizing space -- the economics, ethics, and risks.

The unexpected costs of Bezos-style space exploitation are, as yet, a little distant—decades, at least. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned from observing the human and environmental wreckage of the industrial era, it’s that history is like space travel: The path you set at the beginning is critical. Changing course later on is much harder. So it behooves us to plan now. Are there ways to avoid the worst possible outcomes in space? How is commercial life in space going to unfold?

An open letter to the Christians of Belarus: English. Russian.

At the Royal Society in London, a Quaker's portrait is unveiled: Jocelyn Bell-Burnell.

A "Rethinking Thanksgiving" toolkit. Thanks to David Finke for the link.

Giving Tuesday has passed, but there's still time to contribute to Christian Peacemaker Teams through my online Giving Tuesday campaign.

The Internet Archive makes room for classic flash animations, whose files must be played with software that is no longer supported. (However, the Archive doesn't seem to have my own favorite series, Masyanya.)

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Vanya B. Goode! Denis Mazhukov and Ksenia Fedulova.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Christian reappraisal

Source.  

On the evening of February 19, 1944, the assistant minister of St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, Howard A. Johnson, walks across the street to the White House. He's been invited to have dinner with Eleanor Roosevelt. To his surprise, he is ushered into the family quarters and finds Franklin Roosevelt, alone, waiting for him.

As it turns out, Eleanor is running late, so just the two of them get started with their evening. The first topic of conversation is a writer they both like, Dorothy L. Sayers. To Roosevelt, Sayers is an author of detective stories that help him relax. Johnson adds, "You know of course, Mr. President, that Dorothy Sayers is even more important for her theological writings."

No, in fact, Roosevelt hadn't known that. Woolverton and Bratt, authors of the fascinating new book A Christian and a Democrat: A Religious Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, recount this evening as an illustration of the president's spiritual curiosity, especially in light of the war and the vivid reality of evil. After Eleanor and another dinner companion arrive, the discussion of Sayers as a theologian continues. Then Johnson throws out a link:

"You know, of course," he said, "that many moderns like Dorothy Sayers derive from Kierkegaard." No "of course" about it to Roosevelt. "Who," asked the president, "is Kierkegaard?" Johnson rose to the occasion with a lively sketch of the philosopher and his thought. He located its impact on modern thinking in its central premise of (in Frances Perkins's words) "man's natural sinfulness and his helplessness to reform himself except by the grace and help of God." This was the venerable doctrine of original sin but with a difference: not the traditional ideal about a moral taint or legal guilt inherited from Adam and Eve, but the name for the existential reality that each person has assented to, or willingly takes part in--his or her fallen nature. ... As Perkins said: "Johnson pointed out that the recent interest in Kierkegaard was chargeable to the current break-up of the humanistic illusion under which men had been laboring for a hundred years or so."

After piecing together more of the evening's conversation (for which no transcript exists), and providing background on Kierkegaard's rising reputation in those years, the authors of A Christian and a Democrat recount this subsequent incident:

The issues of "humanistic illusion" and original sin stayed with FDR. "Some weeks later I happened to be reporting to Roosevelt on problems concerning the War Labor Board," wrote Secretary [of Labor Frances] Perkins. "He was looking at me, nodding his head, and, I thought, following my report, but suddenly he interrupted me, 'Frances, have you ever read Kierkegaard?'" Perkins replied, "Very little -- mostly reviews of his writings." "Well, you ought to read him," Roosevelt said with enthusiasm. "It will teach you something." Perkins thought the president meant that it would teach her something about the War Labor Board. But no. "It will teach you about the Nazis. Kierkegaard explains the Nazis to me as nothing else ever has."

With all of FDR's familiarity with the Bible and the church's prayer book and hymns, and his service as a church warden his whole adult life, Woolverton and Bratt do not claim that Roosevelt was either a theologian or a man of deep mystical devotion. However, in describing his family, education, and entry into public life, they make a convincing case that his formative years were saturated in a specific Christian culture, that he was shaped by that culture and its expectations of duty and commitment to the public welfare, and that he drew upon that culture for his own personal support, and for his public rhetoric.

That Christian culture had some apparent paradoxes that help explain Roosevelt's political vision and style. For example, it was theologically liberal but expected strict self-discipline, illustrated in this book by the spartan lifestyle and athleticism of the Groton School for Boys. The school's founding rector and headmaster, Endicott Peabody, became a lifelong mentor to his former student.

Another apparent paradox: this version of Protestantism was the religion of much of the USA's upper class. At the same time it was politically progressive, even to the extent that some of its prominent exponents, such as the Baptist pastor of J.P. Morgan's church, advocated socialism. For his own students, headmaster Peabody was deliberate about making connections between faith and social justice. He invited leading theologians and social advocates as chapel speakers and lecturers, and made sure that the students saw poverty first-hand. For some Episcopalians, that progressivism may have remained social, aspirational, and theoretical, with its practical expression limited to token acts of charity and philanthropy. For others -- and specifically for FDR as he entered public life -- the religion of the Sermon on the Mount and the "faith, hope, and charity" passage of 1 Corinthians 13 shaped a political vision for the country. It was a vision that was all the more urgent in the early 1930s as the Great Depression unemployment figure reached 30%.

His own overwhelming crises came earlier, including the polio that might have ended his career permanently. The Groton culture's combination of both endurance and mutual generosity may have been a key element in Roosevelt's ability to endure the physical hardships resulting from the disease. Furthermore, those daily hardships required constant help from others, which may have mellowed his early cockiness and strengthened his capacity for empathy.

Years later, the stresses of World War II did not cause Franklin to lose sight of his progressive vision. Consider his 1944 State of the Union speech, in which he proposed a second Bill of Rights, to be added to what he called the "political Bill of Rights" adopted with the U.S. Constitution. His enumeration of these eight rights (in the masculine-gendered language of the time):

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman large and small to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination of monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

How would a set of proposals like this be greeted in today's political climate? In any event, I think these eight points could well summarize what Roosevelt meant to say in a telling incident that gave the book its name. At a press conference, he was asked about the source of his "political philosophy." As the authors of the book put it, "Momentarily dumbfounded, he replied that he was a Christian and a Democrat."

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The last section of the book includes comparisons of the spiritual formation and self-understanding of Abraham Lincoln and FDR, and then Herbert Hoover and FDR. Both comparisons are fascinating.

As a Quaker I wondered how Hoover would fare. The authors point out many similarities in the political philosophies of both men, as evidenced by the sheer number of progressive proposals for political and social reform credited to Herbert Hoover in his long public service. In addition to their shared ideals, both men were ambitious. One of the crucial differences between the two may be their temperaments -- Hoover, the fierce individualist, distrustful of politics and politicians, and Roosevelt the master of political congeniality.

But these temperamental differences also coincided with aspects of their spiritual formation as well. Hoover's idea of determining policy mirrored Friends business process: his job was to work out good proposals using the best data and methods. These proposals were to be duly agreed upon by his peers in a thoughtful process that involved no politicking or horse-trading of the kind that FDR loved. Hoover distrusted government initiative that overrode individual initiative, while FDR recognized that the times demanded action on a scale only government could address. As FDR proceeded to convert their shared progressive ideals into government policy, Hoover grew ever more fearful that the end would be socialism. As the authors summarized,

A basic difference between them lay in the contrast between technical efficiency and social adroitness, between the engineer with his infallible facts and figures and the politician with his sensitivity to tides and temperament. Religiously, they represented the two different sides of Protestant aspiration, the tension between the individual's concern for personal salvation and the communal emphasis on an ordered Christian society. In political theory, the mood of the 1930's swung toward security and collective action under the impact of the Depression. Hoover remained in the older camp of individualism, in which setbacks and difficulties were thought to improve character. Roosevelt upheld as the model citizen the one who helped his neighbor. Hoover agreed with that but insisted that charitable action come from the individual, not the government. Both presidents asked, in effect, which of the seven deadly sins most infected the body politic. For Hoover it was sloth, carelessness, and ignorance. For Roosevelt it was avarice, covetousness, and greed.

This debate continues right into the present, and is often conducted with epithets ("socialism!" for example) that were already familiar in the 1930's. After reading this book, I wonder whether the words "a Christian and a Democrat," spontaneously offered by Franklin Roosevelt as his apparently self-evident "political philosophy," would trip so naturally off anyone's tongue now.

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Myles Werntz summarizes Howard Thurman's twofold challenge: those who would be contemplative must identify with those who are suffering, and those who would address suffering must be contemplative.

The Quaker role in the history of economic boycotts.

Marianne Williamson's unorthodox campaign scrambles the categories and intrigues voters. In terms of American religious history, where does she fit in?

God is pleased to give us the Kingdom, but are we afraid to receive it?

Progressives need to start preaching Hell again.

Russia's nuclear accident may not be what you've heard.

How the Kremlin-friendly media portray Moscow's protesters; and the myth of the bourgeois liberal protester. Russia's government-financed RT reports that Russian senator Vyacheslav Markhayev strongly criticized riot police for unnecessary roughness and unprofessional conduct during recent protests.

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Rosie Flores, "It Came from Memphis."

St Petersburg shorts

Crossing St Petersburg's Fontanka River (Lomonosov Bridge)

Soul Kitchen Hostel (recommended!), on the Moika River embankment

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Study in Dostoevsky's final home

The high point of this visit to St Petersburg was, for me, a return to Dostoevsky's final home, his apartment on Kuznechny pereulok.

Looking in on the room where he slept and worked -- the room where The Brothers Karamazov was written -- brought back vivid memories of my only previous peek into this same room. It was 42 years ago. At the time, this study and the attached living room were practically all there was of Leningrad's new Dostoevsky Museum, which had been established in 1971, four years earlier. The museum as it exists now has been carefully developed into a first-rate cultural landmark, with lots of explanatory resources in many languages.

Dostoevsky is not necessarily Russians' favorite novelist. I remember our doctor in Noginsk expressing surprise at my admiration for him; she said, "We consider him rather morbid." I can see her point.  He's a total bundle of contradictions, often rambling and disorganized, prejudiced, cranky. His voices argue with his characters, with each other, with the reader. Maybe it was these somewhat shambolic qualities that attracted me as a reader in my teens; he wasn't just telling stories, he seemed to reach through the printed page and demand my response. I enjoyed reading these comments by Himadri Chatterjee, who expresses some of the same wonderment I feel at liking a writer who's not a predictably perfect fit for our own views.

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Being on the road has not stopped me from following events in the USA. Yesterday was Jeff Sessions's turn to be questioned by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. This particular bit caught my attention:

[Sen. Tom] COTTON: Do you like spy fiction: John le Carre, Daniel Silva, Jason Matthews?

SESSIONS: Yeah, Alan Furst, David Ignatius’ books.

COTTON: Do you like Jason Bourne or James Bond movies?

SESSIONS: No, yes, I do.

COTTON: Have you ever ever in any of these fantastical situations heard of a plot line so ridiculous that a sitting United States senator and an ambassador of a foreign government colluded at an open setting with hundreds of other people to pull off the greatest caper in the history of espionage?

SESSIONS: Thank you for saying that, Senator Cotton. It's just like Through the Looking Glass. I mean, what is this? I explained how in good faith I said I had not met with Russians, because they were suggesting I as a surrogate had been meeting continuously with Russians. I said I didn't meet with them and now, the next thing you know I'm accused of some reception plotting some sort of influence campaign for the American election. It's just beyond my capability to understand, and I really appreciate, Mr. Chairman, the opportunity to at least to be able to say publicly I didn't participate in that and know nothing about it.

COTTON: And I gather that's one reason why you wanted to testify today in public.

(From this transcript, with my unlicensed italicization.)

As much as I suspect that a lot of the Red Threat of Russian mischief is a Red Herring, I understand the need to get a full picture of the situation -- the actual Russian interference (as distinct from sloppy attributions connected with various hackers who also bear tracking down but who might have nothing to do with Russia), and the breakdowns in cyber-discipline and vigilance on the U.S. side.

I also understand how some might look at this whole five-ring circus of Russia-related investigations with incredulity. The Cotton-Sessions exchange is a bit theatrical, given how Cotton presents such a cartoonish summary ("the greatest caper in the history of espionage"). Even so, it seems bizarre that this theme dominates U.S. political news day after day, week after week.

Why all this attention? The answer is relatively simple, and it doesn't primarily involve the supposed danger from Russia. The country is confronted by a challenge that is in itself not provided for by the Constitution or any federal statute: dangerous incompetence at the top of the executive branch, complicated by cowardice in the legislative branch. Neither incompetence nor cowardice are themselves indictable. At the policy level, cruel legislation (health care financing legislation) and devious legislative processes (secret health care financing legislation) are also not statutory crimes. Efforts to change the regime legally and peacefully must necessarily find handles for effective response -- so it is no wonder that those who are alarmed for American democracy have latched onto the Russian scandals.

Thankfully, another track has also developed: lawsuits alleging that the U.S. president has violated his oath of office by not staying clear of foreign emoluments that haven't been approved by Congress. On this track, there is no need to resort to villainous Russian operatives. The villains are mainly domestic. Here, too, however, efforts at changing the regime (either its practices or, failing that, its personnel) may be defeated by venality and cowardice among the Republicans. (Inaccurate scare tactics by Democrats and others don't help.)

The stakes are high; we risk (1) wholesale degradation of ethical standards in government; (2) major damage to social safety nets, environmental regulation, voting rights, and other areas of concern to progressive evangelicals; and (3) disconnection from the global community, including those many millions of actual Russians who have no desire to hack our elections!

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D.L. Mayfield asks whether we are seeking "the welfare of the city," or just our own?

Writer Nate J. Lee, responding to a video put out by Hillsong church to announce their intention to plant a church in San Francisco (including the phrases “God has great plans for this city” and “San Fran, the best is yet to come!”), wrote this: “Any kind of language that implies that God’s work or God’s plan starts when we arrive … is indicative not only of terrible theology, but of white Christian exceptionalism, the oppressive belief that the correct kind salvation and healing can only be facilitated through us, on our terms with our methods—and us always happens to be white missionaries, white pastors, and white churches.”

The same critiques can be said of gentrification in general. The problem is not an influx of resources or more diversity (both of which can be very beneficial to everyone, including long-term residents). The problem is the belief that dominant culture is best—so that people move in and change a neighborhood to look just like the last one they left.

What would you ask the Russian president? And does he now lack a compelling story?

Who benefits from transborder corruption -- and who pays for it?

J.R.R. Tolkien's love story.

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We've often admired the quality of music education in Russia. And here's a bit of the output! ... performers on Nevsky Prospekt we encountered totally randomly earlier today. (If anyone knows the name of this group or its members, I would really like to give credit.)