In Need of Allies

We are all in need of allies.

To be an ally requires sacrifice, thoughtfulness, awareness, intention.

To have an ally – what does that require?  Humility enough to ask for the help, I suspect.  Willingness to match our pace to the one we’ve asked to walk with us, perhaps.  Ability to recognize our own need for such, a certainty.

In the world of nations just now, the United States needs Turkey as an ally, but it is not at all clear whether Turkey needs the United States.

And to be an ally always seems to involve a cost-benefit analysis, at least in the world of nations.

But what of the world of individual relationships?

Where then is the cost?  Is it fair, right, appropriate, to count the cost?

Well, Jesus tells those who would follow him to count the cost before taking even the first step – his point being, as I would gather, that there is always a cost.

Knowing, then, that there is a cost to the other in walking alongside, in being an ally, how can I ask anyone to take on such a role for me?  Is it ‘fair’ to ask for help knowing in advance that the help will be costly to the other?

But are we not made to walk in tandem?  To help as, where and when we can?

Bonhoeffer speaks of Christian fellowship as burden bearing.

That rings so true to me.  It also rings true that all of we Christians – not just the professionals among us – are to be burden bearers, each with the other.

Does this change my understanding of burden bearing?  Perhaps.  Perhaps it is just taking turns the way we did when we were kids.  Sometimes I’ll follow you, sometimes you’ll follow me.  Sometimes I’ll help you and sometimes you’ll help me.

But allies do more than simply help or provide succor.  Allies are advocates of a sort – the ones who do not stand silently by when bad stuff comes to town.  Allies walk alongside, provide practical aid, raise their voices in protest.

There, surely, is the greater cost, given the great resistance of humankind to such activity in all but the rarest of occasions.

Which brings us back to the beginning – allies – where to find them?  How to ask them?  How to be one?  If these were easy questions, one suspects, there wouldn’t be much need for allies in the first place.

So I am left to wonder – who have been your allies?  Did you ask them for help or did they merely appear at the needed time?  Have you been an ally?  How did you know you were needed?  What prompted you to act this time when you had not, perhaps, acted before?  What did it cost you to be an ally?  What did you gain from having an ally?

Those are the questions I’m asking today.

To My Fellow Christian Sarah Palin: Baptism, Enemies, and Truth – Words That Matter

Governor Sarah Palin recently delivered an address to a gathering of NRA folk in Indianapolis.  I listened to the speech in its entirety and recommend you do the same.

Reasonable people can and do differ on a great many issues, gun use and access among them.  And Governor Palin and I are on different sides of the question.  Fair enough.

What is not so fair, I would suggest, is the appropriation of the language of our shared faith; the clinging to a gospel that is rejected in the same breath; and a disregard of facts (truth) when speaking of one’s enemies.

Regarding our “enemies” (by which Gov. Palin is referring to terrorists), she says, “. . . if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.” [huge applause and cheering]  

1. The appropriation of the language of our shared faith Baptism is the rite, the ritual, the sacrament – the holy sign (one of only two for Protestants) – the outward evidence of the inward reality of having been claimed as God’s very own in Christianity.  When Jesus himself is baptized, the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, descends upon him and God proclaims Jesus as God’s own son, in whom God is well pleased.  (Matthew 3.16-17).  Waterboarding shares with baptism only the use of water.  Waterboarding is to baptism as torture is to the doctor’s smack of a new-born baby’s butt.  To call torture baptism in a speech using other language of faith and God ignores Jesus’ own gospel message, a particular affront in this Easter season, when Christians world-wide celebrate the resurrection of the one who was himself tortured to death by state actors.  I want to believe that Gov. Palin is using the language of ‘baptism’ in a secular way (as in being ‘baptized’ by fire, meaning to be introduced to a certain way of being/acting in extremis).  The problem is that the remainder of her speech is peppered with the language of faith in a way that makes such a dismissal virtually impossible, because she weaves faith into her speech in such a way as to suggest that to carry a gun is not merely a constitutional matter, but also a biblical right or even imprimatur.

2. Clinging to a gospel the speaker rejects all in the same breath Use of the language of ‘enshrinement’ – the language of the sacred or holy –  (as in gun-ownership being ‘enshrined’ in our constitution); referring to baptism when speaking of waterboarding; giving the gratuitous shout-out to prayer in school;  and wrapping up with: “Celebrating family, faith and freedom . . . God shed his grace on thee, America, so stand and fight . . .” co-mingles the language of faith and Christianity in particular with the torture of enemies (waterboarding), killing with a gun as a problem-solving technique (my cold, dead hands language and the implied warning to Attorney General Eric Holder, “you don’t want to go there, buddy”); and the very specific link of “enemies” with torture as an indictment of the claimed lack of political will of those who differ with her on this issue (they would coddle the enemies that she, if in charge, would waterboard) – all this leads to a conclusion that for Gov. Palin, Jesus’ gospel is a call to arms.  The problem, of course, is Jesus, who actually happens to be very specific when it comes to enemies:  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? . . .”  (Matthew 5.43-47; also Luke 6.27 & 35).  You simply cannot, with any integrity, wrap yourself in the gospel and advocate the torture of your enemies in the same breath.  Jesus recognizes the human habit of responding to enemies in exactly the way Gov. Palin recommends.  He recognizes it and rejects it out of hand.  Advocate torture if you will.  But you cannot, you may not, you must not, clothe yourself in The Risen One to do it.

3. Disregarding the facts when speaking of one’s (political) enemy It is popular to the point of hardly meriting notice, let alone response, for folks in the political sphere today to make false claims against their opponents.  But it isn’t okay that they do nor that we allow it to pass by.  Truth matters.  Facts matter.  False claims of facts and truth matter because they misshape our perception of reality.  Gov. Palin takes on and carries as a theme in her speech, with references to the various bracelets she is wearing, a claim that Attorney General Eric Holder advocates the wearing of some sort of tracking bracelet by gun owners.  There is only one problem with the claim: it is false, as attested by the presumably liberal TPM and presumably conservative Bearing Arms.  Facts and truth matter to our faith as well as our practical day-to-day lives (if there can even be any separation of the two): we follow the man who self-identified as the way, the truth, the life, who instructed his followers to allow their yes to be yes, their no, no. (Matthew 5.37).  It may well be that Gov. Palin and/or her speechwriters  believed what she said about the Attorney General to be true.  But that doesn’t solve much: when we are speaking, it is our duty to assure that our words are true, that they are accurate.  That is actually part of the job of being a Christian.  Truthfulness is so important that it is actually enshrined (unlike our constitutional provisions) in our holy writ, which we refer to as the Ten Commandments, among which is the provision: Thou shalt not lie (or more accurately, bear false witness – that is, to say something not true about another person).  Before we say it, it is our job to know whether it is true and if we cannot or do not know, we should not say it.  The fact that it took me less than 5 minutes to find two sites online that referenced the Attorney General’s actual remarks indicates that the truth was easily discoverable.  One simply had to wish to find it.  Gov. Palin claimed that the Attorney General wants to track by bracelet those who own guns.  What he actually said was that there was interest in exploring smart guns that can only be used by the actual owner (via a chip in the gun which links electronically to a bracelet worn by the owner).

Truth matters.  Taking care to tell truth matters.  Taking special care not to speak ill of enemies falsely (recognizing our own inner tendency not to give our enemies the benefit of the doubt) matters.  Making claims about the gospel which directly contradict it matters.  Clothing ourselves with the gospel of the Prince of Peace while proclaiming things like torture matters.

As a fellow Christian, Governor Palin, I beseech you: make your case, but please, please, please, stop standing on Jesus’ back to do it if you're not willing to grapple with the ways in which the gospel challenges your views.

Please.

9 Misconceptions Non-Believers Seem to Have About Christians

1. Only stupid people believe in God.  Yes, there are people of not much intelligence who believe in God.  And there are people of stellar intellectual brilliance who do not.  But there are bright people who do believe in God and not-so-bright people who don’t.  It’s not about intelligence, so get down off your high horse.  Need some examples?  C. S. Lewis.  J. R. R. Tolkein (you know you love his books).  James Polkinghorne (physicist).  Jesus (pretty significant philosopher and teacher in his day).  Immanuel Kant.  Galileo.  Pascal.  Descartes.  Newton.  Francis Collins (genome project).  Martin Luther King, Jr. All Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc., etc., etc. 

2. Religion (particularly Christianity) is responsible for the ills of the world.  Really?  And I thought you were bright.  It’s never that simple, is it?  People manipulating others to their own ends and to great destruction happens through the agency of religion, yes.  But would you really assert that the religion is the cause (as opposed to the means)?  To so hold, you must actually believe that but for Christianity, Adolph Hitler would have been a nice guy or that there would have been no Holocaust.  And then, of course, you’re left to explain the holocausts visited on their peoples by Stalin and Mao (avowed believers in no religion or god).  The role of religion in doing harm should never be taken lightly.  But it’s a bit glib to simply blame religion as a way of understanding the ills of the world.  God or no God, we humans have proven very capable of all kinds of horror.

3. It doesn’t make any sense.  I’ll grant you that: faith doesn’t make much sense.  But you say that as if we (practitioners) don’t know that.  It may or may not be news to you, but Christianity’s founding documents (the New Testament) include statements to the effect that the claims about Jesus are nonsensical by the world’s standards  by one of its premier thinkers (and most prolific writers of the texts we have today): Paul calls the Christian’s claims about Jesus and the cross to be foolishness to those who do not believe it (1 Corinthians 1.18ff), inexplicable to the ways and wisdoms of the world (1 Corinthians 2.14); and says that if we’ve gotten it wrong, we are the most pitiable of all people (1 Corinthians 15.19).  

4. There is nothing good about it.  We might argue about ‘good’, but I’m going to take as a given that we probably agree on some things.  So consider: the next time you visit a hospital whose name contains the name of a church or synagogue or the name of a saint or person of faith, that hospital was begun by people of faith because of their faith – that is, because of their faith in God, the people who began that hospital were moved to provide care for the sick, especially those who were poor, when no one else was.  Do you think universal education is a good idea?  A fundamental right or privilege of living in a free society?  Thank a Christian.  Universal education was born out of the Reformation idea that all should be allowed free access to the holy text of their faith.  In order to do that, all had to be taught to read.  Universal education was brought about so you could read the Bible for yourself.  The Civil Rights Movement was born in the African-American churches of the day.  The movement and the way in which it was conducted were based on scripture.  Dr. King was a prophet preacher.  Every word he spoke he understood to be divinely given.  Every reference he makes that so stirs even today comes from his interpretation of the biblical texts he often quotes.  

5. Social justice happens in spite of and not because of the church  Seeking to change the world is one of the great contributions of the church to the world.  Missionary women (and yes, missionaries have much to answer for, but you already know that.  What you may not know) in China ended the practice of foot-binding and in India the practice of sati (the wife being thrown upon the fire at the death of the husband).  They brought hospitals and books and perhaps most of all, the idea that universal education is for girls as well as boys.  So when you’re standing at an Occupy protest or fighting for the Imolakee tomato pickers or marching against war, or donating to Amnesty International, look around – chances are a bunch of the people there alongside you or who got there before you are people of faith who are there because of their faith.

6. Christianity squelches creativity  Much of the great art of the western world is inspired by, thematic of, and paid for with the dollars of Christians.  Maybe that’s a mere accident of history.  Maybe it’s because the artists were grappling with big issues.  Maybe it was God-inspired.  But like it or not, there is no running from the great tradition of Christian art.  

7. Church makes everyone be just like everyone else  Church is an institution.  And it has all the problems and foibles of one.  They are not inconsequential.  But there is something in the very structure of that peculiar institution that breeds protestors and world changers too, even as it would attempt to squash them.  

8. Church is a tyranny  The structure of the Presbyterian church was the model for our form of government in the United States.  If we appreciate that model, we must appreciate from whence it came.

9. Church uses laws to force its ways on others   Sometimes.  And sometimes that’s a bad thing – a very bad thing.  But sometimes it isn’t.  Do you think child labor was a bad thing?  Thank a Christian that you don’t have to go to work at age 6.  Think prisons should be humane?  Thank a Quaker.  Think the Magna Carta (as a check on royal power) was a good thing?  Thank the Archbishop of Canterbury.  

It’s one thing to have examined the ‘evidence’ and made your own clear-eyed conclusion.  It’s quite another to engage in the very same small-mindedness non-believers so often accuse believers of having.  Ignorance is ignorance, regardless of its peculiar bent.  And many non-believers I encounter who carry bitterness, anger, or garden-variety resentment are speaking not out of a general belief that religious people are perpetuating a harmful myth so much as out of the effects of a negative encounter in their own personal journey.

Those negative encounters matter.  But here’s my problem with negative encounter being dispositive of the question of God or no God for anyone: I don’t know about you, but I’ve had at least my share of negative encounters with all kinds of folks: teachers, physicians, lawyers, journalists, and yes, even church folk.  But those encounters did not make me stop ‘believing’ in or seeking education, health care, justice, freedom of expression for everyone, or God.

So if you’re someone who’s had a negative encounter of the religious type, I am sorry – sorrier than I can put in words – that such happened to you.  I do not take such things lightly nor do I suggest that you should.

That a religious or spiritual journey was made unsafe for you is unconscionable.

But please, please, please remember that the person or persons you encountered in such a harmful way are not themselves God.  Nor are they representative of God.  They should not be allowed the final word when it comes to faith and things religious any more than the physician breaking his or her oath should have as to things medical.

For my own part, I will share, debate, wrestle, with you any time you care to, but I will not proselytize.  If I have anything of value to share when it comes to the life spiritual, you will know it by the fruits of my life.

In short, I will refrain from sentences that begin with “All atheists . . .”  Won’t you do the same for me?

If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, 

I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.

                                                                        –Kurt Vonnegut, author and secular humanist

Science is Not My Problem, Dr. Tyson, but You Might Be*

When a scientist in the United States posits that religion is just wrong – always has been, always will be – they’re usually referring to Christians of the fundamental persuasion in our time and place.  They’re usually referring to literal interpretations of texts such as the creation narratives of Genesis that insist on overlaying these texts of faith upon current scientific understandings.

Physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson is no exception.**

And fair enough: the conservative voice insisting upon literalism is the most prominent voice one not in church on Sundays is likely to hear.

The problem is that this voice is not representative of the full panoply of Christian voices in this point in time, let alone the history of Christianity, or of the religions of the world.

Moreover, and I say this with a great deal of humility, having never succeeded in high school science classes: in holding that science and religion are irreconcilable, Tyson’s definition of science may be too narrow.

If memory serves, some in science refer to fields of study outside the material world as ‘soft sciences’ (as opposed to the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, chemistry and biology, for example).

But in seeking intersections between faith or religion and science, what of the social sciences?  What of their conclusions that we humans are better in quantifiable ways when we give to, think about, take into account, the other?

What of the science of philosophy?  And its sub-set, logic?

To hold that there is or can be nothing outside the universe smacks to me of pride, but more, of a broken logic: if there is an inside, is there not logically, an outside?  Or what of the logic proposition that we cannot know what we cannot know?

On a practical level, the laws of the hard sciences aren’t (necessarily) logical, that is, they’re not ‘discovered’ through inductive and deductive reasoning.  They’re often discovered not from reasoning at all, but from trial and error (experimentation).  In fact, the greatest discoveries seem to have come from what are called leaps of logic (which aren’t logic at all – that’s why they’re leaps).

And that’s probably my biggest argument with the practitioners of the hard sciences in our time when they seek to use their discipline (science) to invalidate mine (religion): they don’t actually use their own discipline to do it.  They don’t use astro-physics to disprove God.  What they use is what they call ‘reason’ by which they mean logic.

Hypothesis: scientists are poor logicians.

The problem in any debate is that the debate must begin with some givens, some things that are taken as true, or given, between the parties to the debate.  That’s much harder than you might think.  And it’s the problem here: this is not a debate between religion (of the conservative persuasion) and science, because neither side has agreed to any set of givens, each rejecting all the givens of the other.  That process is not the discourse of debate: it’s the process of competing monologues.  There is no engagement, no clash of ideas, no meeting of minds even on the givens.

That’s a problem in any discussion; it’s a fatal flaw in the discourse that is debate.

My own observation is this: when it comes to anything in the body human, and here, when it comes to science and religion (as propounded by the scientists in question), the whole Genesis discussion is a straw man.***

Why do I say that?  Do not ‘creationists’ (whatever that may mean) argue from Genesis?

Yes they do.  But they are beside the point.  Here’s why: your opponent does not frame the debate any more than you do.  The debate (that is the argument/discussion/reasoning our way through an issue) is framed before you come to the table by some consensus of the issue to be debated.

No consensus of the issue?  No debate.  Argument, perhaps.  Diatribes, often.  But no debate.

Here’s an example of the straw man non-debate exercise by Dr. Tyson – a man with a wonderful, incredible mind and body of knowledge who apparently spent no time on a college debate team:

TYSON “Figurative interpretations” came “after” science.

Here, Tyson seems to mean that Christians like me who understand the Genesis narratives of creation to be figurative or better, explanatory of the human experience of God (as opposed to explanatory of the hard-science processes of how we came into being), are some sort of post facto apologists for what was originally intended by the author(s) of Genesis.

If that was his intention – to dismiss even ‘liberal’ Christian understandings of Genesis as some sort of wishful thinking with this after-the-fact reinterpretation, there’s a problem: it’s not true.  Not even a little bit.

In debate, as in the hard sciences, facts matter.  And Dr. Tyson’s suppositions are just that.  And they’re wrong; a quick trip to that (not-so) obscure source Wikipedia proves it:

Some Jews and Christians have long considered the creation account of Genesis as an allegory instead of as historical description, much earlier than the development of modern science. Two notable examples are Augustine of Hippo (4th century) who, on theological grounds, argued that everything in the universe was created by God in the same instant, and not in six days as a plain account of Genesis would require; and the 1st century Jewish scholar Philo of Alexandria, who wrote that it would be a mistake to think that creation happened in six days or in any determinate amount of time. [emphasis mine]   Wikipedia

The allegorical treatment of ancient biblical texts is not a modern phenomena: it even happens in the New Testament, as in Galatians 4.21-31, wherein Paul expressly treats the children of Hagar and Sarah allegorically.

3rd century Origen of Alexandria treated texts allegorically, noting three levels or layers of meaning, not all of which are present in every text, because, quite simply, “ sometimes the lessons could only be taught through stories that, taken literally, would "seem incapable of containing truth.” De Principiis IV.15

Origen specifically speaks of the creation account as allegorical rather than literal:

For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? And that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? And again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.  De Principiis IV.16

Medieval Jewish scholars, such as Maimonides, Zohar, Nahmanides, and Gersonides argued for an allegorical or symbolic understanding of the Genesis creation narratives and some for the insistence that biblical understandings must conform to scientific knowledge (that is, interpreters must not interpret the sacred writings in a way that contradicts current knowledge of the way things work).

The problem isn’t that Tyson doesn’t know his science – it’s that he doesn’t know religion.

I am not a Christian apologist (defender of the faith).  I believe a faith worth having requires no defense.  It simply is – kind of like gravity.

But I am right weary of scientists (who should know better – they’re pretty bright folk, after all) of the atheist persuasion telling me what the holy texts of my faith do and do not say or do and do not mean.  I am weary of it because they speak from the very thing they eschew in people of faith: ignorance.

So I’ll make a pact: I won’t argue science if you stop arguing religion.  Neither of us are really up to the job, now are we?

But because our disciplines do differ in substantial and meaningful ways, I can accord you a freedom you can not and should not cede to me: I’ll grant you the freedom to have your own understanding of God/no-God and live it accordingly.

Just stop telling me why I’m wrong for the decision I made.

Really, trust me – you don’t know anything about it.


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*The title is provocative.  I wrestled with a title and am not very satisfied with this one.  How to convey in ten words or less the issue I take with Dr. Tyson’s dismissal of religion based on false predicates?  The recurring problem of bright (thus far men) of science who eschew religious belief based at least in part (if we take what they say as representative) on their ignorance of religious teachings?  To challenge the best and brightest of the other side of the question to give me the same courtesy they demand for themselves: intellectual integrity?  Believe or do not believe.  But being a proselytizer brings with it a concomitant duty to fairly represent both sides about which one speaks.  I find that largely absent in the discourse of well-known scientists and others of the atheist persuasion when it comes to the teachings of my faith and the exercise of logic (which is not a discipline of their specialities as a general rule.  Christopher Hitchens may have been an exception).

**Dr. Tyson recently appeared on an interview with Bill Moyers, during which he opined that religion and science essentially are irreconcilable.

*** ‘straw man’ – an argument put forth for its lack of merit, in order to strike it down to (seemingly) prove one’s point.

Moyers-Tyson interview

Moyers-Tyson clip on religion and science

Murder in a Used Book Store

I love used book stores.  In fact, I love book stores of all kinds.  So it was with some sadness and frustration that I walked into a used book store in Chicago yesterday.  I was smitten with the retro post cards on offer and loved the variety of books and categories – until, that is, I came to the religion section, where in dusty aisles somewhere in Chicago, I met up with the cause of my sadness and frustration.

There were sections on Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, but none on Christianity.

[Sigh]

I forget how, in some circles, it’s ‘popular’ not only to not believe, but to act as if Christianity in fact does not exist.

Next to these stacks was a section entitled ‘theology’.  That’s where the Christian stuff was.

Fair enough, you might say.

But it was also the stack where the books on atheism were.

Christianity and atheism (should I capitalize that?  I really don’t know) side by side as differing ‘theologies’.

[Repeat sigh]

Book store owners should know better: after all, books – the cataloguing and organizing as well as the selling – are their business.

And atheism is not a theology – a ‘word about God’ – it is, if you will, a ‘word about not-God’ – hardly the same thing at all.

I guess I would have put the books on atheism in the adjacent philosophy category.

And isn’t it interesting that of all the faiths represented by the books in that store that Christianity would be present, but not by name?

We are a culture of many experts.

With our freedoms comes the belief that all opinions are equal.

Well, from where I’m standing, they’re not.

I am not, for example, an expert on atheism.

I have some opinions about the non-belief in a deity, but they aren’t particularly well-informed ones.  After all, it’s a view to which I do not subscribe, so there’s only so much I can know about it.

The not-so-veiled commentary on Christianity that the refusal to name it constitutes in that book store strikes me as an uninformed opinion, as does the inclusion of the atheist works among the Christian works.  After all, atheism books were not included among the Buddhist, Islam and Judaism works.

I argued a bit with myself, but ultimately, I put back the post cards and left the shop empty handed.  It just didn’t feel as if the owner and I should be doing business, even the anonymous business of buying a post card, together.  The fact was that I was just too sad to want to anymore, leaving a little of my love on the floor as I walked out.

All opinions are not created equal.

And neither are all book stores.


___________________
SIDE NOTE TO THE ATHEISTS AMONG YOU I am not one of those Christians who believe ‘Happy holidays’ greetings mean you’re trying to murder Jesus.  And when I consider the marginalization of Christianity within the American culture, I ponder it from the point of view of where I stand, as in ‘what are we doing wrong’ rather than in blaming others.  Moreover, the pastor in me took a walk yesterday in front of that store while waiting for my friends to conclude their business, during which I pondered on the failure of my own particular brand of faith to have much to offer others and wondered why.  I know there are a number of answers, all of which sadden me greatly, particularly because it (this faith I call my own) has been such a source of comfort and goodness, rescue and safe haven, for me.  But I daily accept that may not be true for you.  And I cringe probably as often as you do at the statements and behaviors of some of my brethren in the faith.  But even more, I suspect, to the secular humanists among you, truth and facts matter greatly.  And while it is a fact that Christianity has done great harm, it is also true that it has done great good.  Please don’t do the same history rewriting you see among some Christians to try to write out that faith from our shared past.  Please don’t confuse the facts with your opinions.  It’s neither attractive nor accurate on either side of that proverbial fence.  An example: in doing peace work among folk of no faith, MLK’s contributions are characterized entirely as a social (as opposed to a religious or faith) movement.  Omitting the faith element from that period in history creates a false narrative whereby Christian slave owners oppressed those they enslaved without the counter- (and also true) narrative of those oppressed claiming the same faith as their own and resurrecting its own peace, justice and freedom narratives.  If you don’t tell of the faith of many who participated in the Civil Rights movement, you recreate it into your own image, making it something it wasn’t.  Sorry to preach – occupational hazard, I guess.

A Blanket of Caring

Today my friend Twila spoke of Christianity as a blanket to be shared.  I love this image.  The immediate picture called to mind for me was last week’s funeral for Bill Puffenbarger.

During the committal at the cemetery, it was cold and windy, so the funeral home folk had blankets for the family seated around the casket.  The blankets are wide and can cover 3-4 people easily.  From my vantage on the other side of the casket, I watched as Brian spread the warming of the blanket on the already-numb family.  It was a moving gesture of kindness in the form of practical care.

Kindness is a practical thing, isn’t it?

So I come back to Twila’s vision of us as believers spreading the blanket of our love and caring around a world numbed with its own woundedness.

And I am warmed.

May you be surrounded by a blanket of love and caring this Advent season and evermore.

Panning Rise of the Guardians

Santa Clause May Not be a Pacifist, but the Easter Bunny Is!   (Actually, I think Santa Claus is too.)              

There’s a new movie set to be released Thanksgiving week called Rise of the Guardians.  It features an animated Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Sandman, and Jack Frost as the ‘guardians’ of the happiness of the children of the world.

At the risk of entering the saga in the role of Scrooge, I admit that (a) while I love adventure flicks, (b) the previews of this movie bother me greatly.

I am not above some gratuitous violence in a movie, but this is a children’s movie and it uses children’s icons.

Icons are just that: symbols of something.

Santa Claus, derived from a variety of historical and imaginary figures, has his origins in Saint Nicholas, with the gift-giving tradition arising from stories about his many and secret gifts to the poor.

The Easter Bunny probably arises from pagan observances incorporated into Christian practices in celebration of Easter and the resurrection, the rabbit or the hare and the egg long having been symbols of life itself.

In Rise of the Guardian, Santa Claus is a sword-wielding warrior (modeled by the author on James Bond) and the Easter Bunny throws egg bombs and a “mean boomerang” in the battle against evil.

The problem is this: the icons of Santa and the Easter Bunny, distinctly Christian for centuries, are symbols of the nativity, the herald of peace among people, peace being specifically understood to include justice and care for the poor; and Easter is the defeat of death and the victory of life, achieved not by violence, but by sacrifice.

Mythologies teach us something.  There are important lessons brought by these icons:  care for the poor, the blessing of giving, the understanding of Jesus' advent as a gift for all humanity, God cares for children, humility as a way of life, life itself as divine gift, the certainty of the resurrection promise, to name but a few.  The James Bond lesson that the ends justify the means is a problem.

The Christian tradition recounts the battle of good and evil and the triumph of good.  These icons bear witness to that story.  It is the story of life, of courage, and of sacrifice as the ‘tools’ Jesus uses to bring about the triumph of good.

A sword-carrying Santa and a bomb-throwing Easter Bunny?

Not Good News.

Ann Coulter: Just a Thought

"I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it."   –Ann Coulter

Whatever I am politically, I am not a conservative.  Consequently, I am no fan of Ann Coulter.  And her recent Tweet using a pejorative word to describe the President which is hurtful to others – it was on the playground and it is now -- is not one I appreciate.

That said, I have to admit that I both laughed out loud and admired the spirit of the quote above, cited by Wikipedia's bio.  I have had to wonder whether the same is true of me or not.  Am I a Christian first and all the other things that might describe me second?

The judging me wants to say that if you’re truly a Christian first, you don’t get to be bigoted and mean-spirited at all, let alone second.  But the humor-appreciating woman me wants to say hat’s off for a really good self-lampoon that just might point to a larger truth: there are many ‘mes’ in each and all of us.  To observe that about ones’ self can be a canard – offered up to deceive others with one’s apparent true civility, all other evidence to the contrary.  Or it can actually be a candid moment of self revealing.  In Ms. Coulter’s case, maybe it’s both.  Maybe it’s neither.

But before I go off on a rant at someone else’s behavior, I might do well to stop and take stock of my own and ask what list might be reeled off about my own second-place characteristics and found wanting.

Just a thought.

Enough Shame to Go Around

R. Cort Kirkwood, managing editor of the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record, writes this*

Given the refusal of Moslems [sic] to assimilate**, as well as the range of successful Moslem demands upon European elites for heretofore unimagined 'rights' and public and corporate policies, one wonders when Christendom’s benighted lands will relent and sanction not only honor killing but also bride burning, genital mutilation and the other merry folkways the Islamic horde brought with them...White Swedish women are suffering a wave of unprecedented rape and mayhem at the hands of their country’s Mohammedan [sic] guests***. ... The inevitable Islamic conquest of Europe and its affiliated horrors would never have been possible had Europe remained true to its Catholic faith, the bulwark that stood firmly against Islamic conquest for 10 centuries...Until the West awakens from its spiritual slumber and raises the Cross, it will continue losing the fight not against 'terror' but against Islam itself.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) originates not with Islam, but with Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs and the Roman Empire.  Wikipedia: FGM Indeed, some Islamic scholars have issued fatwas (legal ruling or interpretation of Islamic law by one in authority to so rule) against FGM.

Rembrandt portrays himself as the Levite
placing his concubine on an ass to be
carried home and spark a war

The majority of so-called honor killings in the world today are committed by Muslims, until one expands one’s definition of ‘honor killing’ to include what in the West are called ‘crimes of passion’ (the husband who kills his wife in a fit of rage over her real or perceived infidelity, for example).  Then the shift is dramatic.  Moreover, there is a history of honor killings across Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism.  The Bible contains what modern-day feminists refer to as ‘texts of terror’ against women, one of the most notable being the murder of the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19).

In this story of a woman who is sacrificed by her husband for rape and murder in order to preserve his own honor and life, it is worthy of note that at the beginning of the story, the woman is identified as being ‘unfaithful’ to her husband.  Her offense?  She left him and returned to her father.  Why include such a detail in the first place?  Perhaps to suggest that her death and mistreatment by all in the story was somehow warranted or justified.

Mr. Kirkwood, you may have forgotten your own religious history, but trust me on this: women have not.  Even today, orthodox Jewish men insist in the United States that they should not be required to ride the bus with women (does this remind anyone of a woman in Alabama who sparked a revolution by staying seated?).  Christians around the world – the majority of them, in fact, as most Christians are Roman Catholic – insist that women are inferior to the point that they may not serve in leadership roles within their own church, based in part on the teachings of a man (St. Augustine) who held that women do not have souls.

And by the way, the Catholic faith that was, as you put it, “the bulwark that stood firmly against Islamic conquest for 10 centuries” is the same faith that gave the world the Crusades.  And ten centuries later, the people of Iraq still remember, carrying as they do the genetic reminder in the random child with red hair or green eyes, the invasion of their lands ‘for Jesus’.

That you still insist on using the language of ‘Christendom’ says much.  Your language choice reveals a willingness and desire to cling to the worldview that Christianity is a conquering force engaged not in spiritual, but temporal, battle.  This, sir, is the worst kind of theology, betraying the man who did not use his cross as a sword, but mounted it as a shield behind which we all may stand.  God may require my allegiance, but the Divine neither needs nor requires my defense, especially when that defense would require me to do violence against others whom God has also created in the divine image and declared ‘very good’ from before the beginning of time.

Do I support the mistreatment of women under any guise?  Of course not.  But please, please, please, do not make your arguments against Islam in general and believing Muslims in particular, on the mistreatment of women.  The mistreatment of women knows no religious, social or cultural bounds.  It is an issue not of religion, but of power.  So, please, climb down off our backs and make your arguments elsewhere.  For the fact is your own heritage, which includes burning women as witches, the torture and murder of Joan d’Arc for the ‘offense’ of wearing trousers, the exclusion and excoriation of women throughout history, the modern-day sanction against women for daring to get on yet another bus and speaking their minds (Nuns on the Bus), the erasure of women from the history of our faith, is one in which you can take no pride, sir.****


__________________
*Taken from a FB entry on We Are All Harrisonburg.  Best research indicates that this appeared as part of a blog post by Mr. Kirkwood in 2007 at Taki's Magazine.  In the posting, Mr. Kirkwood also claims that what he calls Western Europe's 'Catholic culture' of chivalry and the good treatment of women was eroded by Islam.  One hardly knows where to begin.  Medieval poets may have waxed eloquent about chivalry, but women were hardly 'elevated' as Mr. Kirkwood claims.  In point of fact, until very recently in the history of the world, violence against women has been viewed as a male prerogative.

**I never know what folks mean about someone’s refusal to ‘assimilate’.  I can only guess Mr. Krikwood’s intentions here, but I also remember growing up in Fairmont, West Virginia, where there was a huge immigrant population formed during the heyday of the coal mines, when workers were needed to go underground and were sought after from far-away lands.  Thus growing up in Fairmont, many of my friends’ grandmothers did not speak English.  They were all Christians, largely from southern Italy and central Europe.  And I have never taken it as a negative to society as a whole or to me personally that these women largely remained at home.  The impact on them is another question.  But we cannot overstate how very hard it must have been to enter into a society whose language they did not speak and whose ways they did not know.  If there was a problem, maybe it wasn’t theirs.  Maybe it was ‘ours’ – for not making the women more welcome.  In my mother’s hometown of Williamson, West Virginia, an immigrant family from the Middle East rejected the church denomination they had been accustomed to and instead came to the Presbyterian Church my mother attended as a girl because the women there, unlike the other church, made his wife welcome.  Whatever happened to hospitality, Mr. Kirkwood?

***This claim is widespread amongst conservative media outlets in the US, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to locate any accurate, unbiased reportage on the claimed phenomena from any source.  One source reported a gang rape by children against children, claiming that authorities had not released the identities of the perpetrators, but ‘we all know they were Muslims’.  This is hardly objective reporting.

****And if there is to be religious shaming, let us not forget the systematic rape of Bosnian Muslim women by Christian Serbs during the Bosnian War of the 1990s.  Wikipedia