Episcopalians at Key Moment

The Episcopalians are meeting in Ohio and could soon make a decision about the election of gay bishops that could break apart the worldwide Anglican community:

The threat of a split in the worldwide Anglican family hovered over a national meeting of the Episcopal Church on Thursday, as delegates considered whether they should preserve unity by temporarily barring gays from becoming bishop.

New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, pleaded with the church General Convention not to enact a ban.

If Episcopalians "see Christ in the faithful lives of our gay and lesbian members," they should have the courage to say so, no matter the potential consequences, he said.

"Please, I beg you, let's say our prayers and stand up for right," he said, at a hearing Wednesday night on the issue that drew a capacity crowd of 1,500 people.

Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, head of a network of conservative Episcopal dioceses that opposed Robinson's consecration, told delegates the progressive and conservative wings of the church should acknowledge their differences and part.

"We've reached a moment where it is very difficult, indeed I think we've reached an impossible moment, in holding it together," Duncan said.

The convention is deciding the church's response to the 2004 Windsor Report.

That document sought ways to keep the global Anglican Communion together and asked Episcopalians for a moratorium on electing more gay bishops and repentance for the turmoil over Robinson's 2003 consecration. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. arm of the communion.

However, the main proposal before the convention does not include a moratorium. Instead, it asks dioceses to "exercise very considerable caution" in electing leaders. Delegates can revise or reject the legislation.

Archbishop of York John Sentamu, the second-highest ranking cleric in the Church of England, is attending the convention and said he did not think the proposals went far enough.

"Will it actually be sufficient to secure this impaired friendship? Personally, I'm doubtful," he said. "Windsor wanted space to be creative, and I'm not sure that these resolutions have created the space."

The majority of overseas Anglicans believe the Bible prohibits same-sex relationships, and they want the Americans to follow that teaching or leave the communion.

The committee shepherding the legislation reconvened Thursday morning with the goal of putting the measure before delegates as quickly as possible.

Although the convention runs through next Wednesday, church leaders hope voting on the issue will be completed before the election of their new presiding bishop on Sunday. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, the top official of the 2.3 million-member denomination, is finishing a nine-year term.

If Anglican leaders dislike the outcome of the convention, the loose association of churches that trace their roots to the Church of England could break apart.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, has repeatedly expressed concern about the future of the fellowship.

"We cannot survive as a communion of churches without some common convictions about what it is to live and to make decisions as the Body of Christ," he wrote in a message to the General Convention.

The Rev. Bradley Wirth, a delegate from Montana, said apologizing for Robinson's consecration would violate the beliefs of many Episcopalians who supported his election. Backers of gay ordination contend Scripture does not prohibit monogamous same-gender relationships.

"When many of us are asked to regret, apologize or repent or be cautious," Wirth said, "we believe we're being asked to turn our back on the Holy Spirit."

Mass Changes

The Catholic Church is considering changes to its Mass:

Roman Catholic bishops are considering the most sweeping changes to the Mass that American parishioners have seen in about four decades.

At the behest of the Vatican, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is planning to vote Thursday on a new translation for the Order of the Mass that adheres more closely to the Latin version.

The changes would be the most significant to the Mass since parishioners first began worshipping in English instead of Latin in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.

The new translation would alter the wording of 12 of the 19 texts spoken by Catholics during worship, including the Nicene Creed, the Gloria, the Penitential Rite, the Sanctus and Communion.

Some bishops, however, worry that the new translation will alienate Catholics at a time when the church can least afford to do so. Mass attendance has been declining, the priest shortage has left a growing number of churches without a resident cleric, bishops and parishioners have been battling over the closure of old churches and schools, and the prelates have been trying to rebuild trust in their leadership after the clergy sex abuse crisis.

"My big concern is people are going to feel like they're being jerked around. They finally got used to the English translation and now they have to get used to another translation," said Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University and a Jesuit priest.

"It's going to cause chaos and real problems and the people who are going to be at the brunt end of it are the poor priests in the parishes who don't need any more problems."

The Vatican recently issued updated guidelines for the translation of the Latin texts with the goal of arriving at a more accurate translation, as well as one that reflects "a deeper language that's more expressive and more poetic," said Monsignor James. P. Moroney, who leads the liturgy office for the bishops' conference.

Our tiny denomination can't make the changes it really needs to make, so who am I to criticize the Catholic Church. Still, making changes to the Mass seems less important than dealing with their really big problems, like the critical shortage of priests.

In the Garden Today

Macy's Pride shrub rose. This is a fully double white rose with flowers reaching four to five inches in diameter. It was named to commemorate Macy's centennial. The lemon yellow flowers open to creamy white and then age gracefully to a very light pink.

Kudos to President Bush

I don't often say it but for this he deserves it:

President Bush will create the world's largest protected marine area today, designating as a national monument a 1,200-mile-long chain of small Hawaiian islands and surrounding waters and reefs that are home to a spectacular array of sea life, senior administration officials said last night.

In his second use of the 100-year old National Antiquities Act, which empowers the president to protect important cultural or geological resources instantly, Mr. Bush will enact a suite of strict rules for the area, including a five-year phasing out of commercial and sport fishing, officials said.

The chain of largely uninhabited atolls, seamounts, reefs and shoals, which sweeps northwest from the big islands of Hawaii, is called the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and is home to some 7,000 species of marine life, including endangered green sea turtles and Hawaiian monk seals and millions of breeding seabirds.

Earlier yesterday, the region, which at 140,000 square miles is nearly the size of California, was to have been named a national marine sanctuary, a different kind of protection that could have taken a year to enact.

But Mr. Bush, in a last meeting to consider the plan and timetable, decided to cut things short, said a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to take attention away from Mr. Bush's public statement today. "He said, Look, I've got this authority, I'm going to use it," the official said.

"What we avoid is another year or more in process when we already have consensus," he said, noting that national-monument status avoided the prospect of lawsuits over proposed sanctuary regulations. Since the Clinton administration, environmental campaigners had pushed for marine sanctuary status for the area, and as recently as early last night they were girding for months of public debate over the proposed sanctuary rules with a few groups representing Pacific fish-processing companies and fishing fleets.

Last night, representatives of the conservation groups were at first startled by the sudden switch, but were then exultant.

"This is really for the first time saying the primary purpose of this area of the ocean is to be a pristine, or nearly pristine, kind of place," said David Festa of a private group. "It would take it off the books as a fishing ground. That's really the first time we'll have done that in any kind of sizable area."

How to Govern Like the Taxpayers League

John Gunyou was Minnesota's Finance Minister under Republican Governor Arne Carlson and is now Minnetonka's City Manager. He takes a crack this morning at governing like the Taxpayer's League and their favorite Republican Governor, Tim Pawlenty, who promised to never raise our taxes, but said nothing about fees and local property taxes, which have skyrocketed:

Here's a civics question to start the day. Who provides your public services like police and fire protection, education, parks and roads? Is it: (a) cities, counties and schools, (b) Uncle Sam & Cousin Tim, or (c) the Minnesota Taxpayers League?

Listening to the Taxpayers League and their political sycophants crow about our state's drop in tax rankings is a little hard to take for those of us actually responsible for delivering the services those taxes pay for. It's a whole lot easier to pontificate about downsizing government when you don't have to figure out how to stretch shrinking resources to patch crumbling streets.

Still, a good bureaucrat should always be open to new ideas, no matter the source. Maybe we've been thinking about public services all wrong. Maybe it is possible to cut funding and improve services at the same time.

In the city I manage, speeding and road repair are our residents' two greatest concerns. Like most cities, more than two-thirds of the property taxes we collect are allocated to our police and street budgets.

We also fund our roads with a share of the gas tax, but the state hasn't raised that user fee for 18 years, so our allocation has been largely frozen. Asphalt obviously costs more than it used to, so we've had to double the property taxes devoted to our local streets in recent years.

We've been thinking that we need to invest even more resources in road maintenance and traffic control. Silly us. We should be tackling those problems like the Taxpayers League would.

So here's what I came up with: inverted speed bumps. Rather than patch potholes, we should embrace them as traffic control devices. That way, we could forgo the expense of road repair AND cut funding for public safety. And the true genius is, we'll save more and more money every year as our roads continue to deteriorate and motorists are forced to drive even slower!

Why, there's no limit to this kind of creative thinking. Here's another one: perpetual student teachers. Indentured servitude was good enough for our founding fathers, so why not use it from preschool through grad school?

Rather than pay all those exorbitant professional salaries that consume three-fourths of our school budgets, we could replace teachers with rolling interns -- seniors would teach the juniors what they learned last year, juniors would teach the sophomores, and so on. Since our test scores are already high, we can keep passing on all that good knowledge year after year, and never have to support another school referendum!

Or how about random drug dispensing? If we mixed in cheap placebos with the real pills, prescription drugs would be far more affordable, pharmacists wouldn't have to decide who they want to serve, and we'd cull the herd of costly sickos. OK, this one needs a little more work, but you get the concept.

With a little creative thought and courageous political leadership, it really is possible to get something for nothing. The Taxpayers League was right all along.

The sad part about this is that this wouldn't bother the Taxpayer's League at all. When you are rich you can avoid little headaches like poor roads, silly public schools, and a messed up healthcare system. If the rest of us can't fend for ourselves without the help of the government, then we are just getting what we deserve.

Southern Baptists Have New Leader

The Southern Baptists have chosen a new president, Frank Page, a mega-church pastor from South Carolina. He was the most moderate of the three candidates, although there really aren't any moderates left in the Southern Baptist Convention. He will serve a one year term and have the opportunity to be re-elected once. He had a good quote:

"I believe in the Word of God," he said. "I am just not mad about it. Too long Baptists have been known for what we are against. Please let us tell you what we are for."

I also noted the last paragraph in the New York Times article:

Early in the afternoon, delegates viewed a videotaped greeting from President Bush, who thanked Southern Baptists for backing his recent Supreme Court nominees and for supporting the troops in Iraq. Mr. Bush reminded the convention of his opposition to what the law calls partial-birth abortion.

I wonder if the President sends greetings to the United Methodists, his own denomination. I doubt it.

In the Garden Today

Nepeta. I am unsure of specific variety. Every year I resist the temptation to completely remove this plant because it is a hummingbird favorite. But it is very invasive and would take over the entire bed within a couple of years if I didn't dig much of it out after its first big bloom.

Coffee is the Magic Elixir

It picks you up in the morning. It is rich in antioxidants. It helps prevents Parkinson's Disease, Type 2 Diabetes, and gall stones. And now it protects your liver if you drink:

Researchers report that drinking coffee cuts the risk of cirrhosis of the liver from alcohol -- by 22 percent per cup each day...

I remember when I used to feel guilty about drinking 3 or 4 cups a day. Of course, I also remember the days in graduate school when my hands would shake after 8-10 cups a day. Moderation in all things. But god bless the java.

Pittsburgh Holds Its Breath

The city of Pittsburgh and Steeler fans like me are holding our breath this morning:

Not 200 yards from the emergency entrance to Mercy Hospital sits Ryan's Auto Glass, its frontage on Forbes Avenue displaying an array of helpful information.

"Most windshield repairs," one sign says, "take about 20 minutes."

Good to know, but how long does it take to repair a quarterback who hits a windshield, spider-webs it like a 240-pound brick, and then bounces off the pavement?

That was, essentially, the sickening question that flattened the city's quotidian rhythm into a grim daze just before noon yesterday and never really let up.

	Al Bello, Getty Images for STM Sports

Big Ben Roethlisberger, almost as though he were carrying out the inevitable cataclysm foreshadowed by amateur clairvoyants from Bill Cowher to Terry Bradshaw, plowed his motorcycle into a car on his way to the Steelers' offices, turning himself into a helmetless projectile at the mercy of auto glass, concrete, and providence.

Roethlisberger became the poster child for small college players who dream of making it in the big leagues when he became an instant star and Super Bowl winning quarterback in only his second year in the league. Now, after shattering his jaw and losing his teeth, he becomes a poster child for those who drive motorcycles without helmets. Let's hope he heals well enough to play football soon. And lets hope that he puts on a helmet the next time he gets on his Harley. And... let's hope the lesson that this can happen to even the big football stars sinks in with a few others who think that helmets are a nuisance because they mess up their hair.

Edomites in the News

In the Hebrew Bible, the Edomites are said to be the ancestors of Esau, Jacob's twin brother; they are portrayed as an enemy of Israel during the reign of kings David and Solomon. But in history, their existence as an organized society capable of challenging Israel has long been doubted. But maybe the biblical story is true:

In biblical lore, Edom was the implacable adversary and menacing neighbor of the Israelites. The Edomites lived south of the Dead Sea and east of the desolate rift valley known as Wadi Arabah, and from time to time they had to be dealt with by force, notably by the likes of Kings David and Solomon.

Today, the Edomites are again in the thick of combat — of the scholarly kind. The conflict is heated and protracted, as is often the case with issues related to the reliability of the Bible as history.

Chronology is at the crux of the debate. Exactly when did the nomadic tribes of Edom become an organized society with the might to threaten Israel? Were David and Solomon really kings of a state with growing power in the 10th century B.C.? Had writers of the Bible magnified the stature of the two societies at such an early time in history?

An international team of archaeologists has recorded radiocarbon dates that they say show the tribes of Edom may have indeed come together in a cohesive society as early as the 12th century B.C., certainly by the 10th. The evidence was found in the ruins of a large copper-processing center and fortress at Khirbat en-Nahas, in the lowlands of what was Edom and is now part of Jordan.

Thomas E. Levy, a leader of the excavations, said in an interview last week that the findings there and at abandoned mines elsewhere in the region demonstrated that the Edomites had developed a complex state much earlier than previously thought.

Not everyone is convinced, though:

Most criticism has come from advocates of a "low chronology" or "minimalist" school of early biblical history. They contend that in David's time Edom was a pastoral society, and Judah not much more advanced. In this view, ancient Israel did not develop into a true state until the eighth century B.C., a century and a half after David.

More widely held in recent years is the estimate that Edom did not become a complex society and kingdom until the eighth or seventh centuries, presumably as a consequence of rule by the Assyrian empire.

Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University and a leading proponent of the low-chronology model, has said the new research does "not shed new light on the question of state formation in Edom." He argues that perhaps the copper operations were controlled by chieftains in Beersheba, to the west, and supplied material for urban centers west and north of Edom.

Dr. Levy and Dr. Najjar said their excavations showed that "this image of external control is not convincing."

Piotr Bienkowski of the University of Manchester, England, and Eveline van der Steen of East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., who have excavated the Edomite highlands, criticized the statistical analysis of the new dating and suggested that the data had been used to support an unjustified interpretation.

"One 'fortress' does not make a kingdom," they argued in a paper...

It does, however, make for lots of reasons to keep digging.

In the Garden Today

The Penstemons are in bloom. This is Penstemon Digitalis, Husker Red, 1996 Perennial of the year.

















This is Penstemon Barbatus, Rondo.














In the middle of this photo there is a Catbird, joining the Robins and Cedar Wax Wings who are feasting on Serviceberries.

Break Over

Back from 4 days of camping at Whitewater State Park. I wish it had rained here as much as it did there, but Mary Ann and I and Meagan had a good time anyway. Ryan, unfortunately, was tied up with work.

666

It is June 6, 2006 today. Or 6/6/06. Why is that significant? One obscure reference in the most frequently misused and misunderstood book in the Christian scriptures sure has made for lots of superstitution over the centuries, not to mention been the inspiration for countless books and movies. Here is the passage from Revelation 13:

11 Then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. ¹²It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. ¹³It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all; ¹⁴and by the signs that it is allowed to perform on behalf of the beast, it deceives the inhabitants of earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that had been wounded by the sword that had received the plague of the sword and yet lived; ¹⁵and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. ¹⁶Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, ¹⁷so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. ¹⁸This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six. (NRSV, Oremus Bible Reader)

What's it all about? Most biblical scholars place the writing of the book of Revelation during the reign of the emperor Domitian (81-96 CE). The writer, John, tells us he has been exiled to the isle of Patmos for being Christian. We don't know for certain whether there was state-sanctioned persecution of Christians under Domitian, but there was widespread oppression and local persecution. In addition, Domitian demanded emperor worship, which was anethema to Christians.

John's Revelation is a work of apocalyptic. Whatever is happening on earth is symbolic of a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil in the spirit world. And John sees symbolism in everything, including colors, numbers, and names. It is widely believed that 666 represents the emperor Nero, under whose reign Christians were blamed and persecuted for the burning of Rome. How do we get 666 from Nero? The numerical value of the Hebrew letters of Neron Caesar (N-50; R=200, etc.) add up to 666. However, if you take away the letter n from Neron and go with Nero Caesar you get 616, which is how the number appears in one early manuscript of Revelation.

The beast is the reborn Nero, Domitian, who has secretly marked his servants. John urges Christians to stand firm in the cosmic battle that is underway.

For centuries Christians have been fascinated with the book of Revelation. Many have read it literally and in the context of their own situation in time and believed that the beast is whatever despot or dictator is wreaking havok on their world and become convinced that the "end" is near. And in our day, some enterprising Christians have played on this fascination to get rich by writing books like the Left Behind series.

I rarely read the book of Revelation. It has a few beautiful images, like that of the New Jerusalem found in chapter 21. But mostly it portrays a vision of Christianity and the cosmic order that I do not share.

The Wal-Mart Family Needs America's Help

The Senate is worried sick about the financial well-being of the Hilton and Wal-Mart family again, and is set to take care of them this week by voting to repeal the estate tax. Paul Krugman reminds us why this is both an economically foolish issue and a moral issue:

The Senate almost voted to repeal the estate tax last fall, but Republican leaders postponed the vote after Hurricane Katrina. It's easy to see why: the public might have made the connection between scenes of Americans abandoned in the Superdome and scenes of well-heeled senators voting huge tax breaks for their even wealthier campaign contributors.

But memories of Katrina have faded, and they're about to try again. The Senate will probably vote this week. So it's important to realize that there's still a clear connection between tax breaks for the rich and failure to help Americans in need.

Any senator who votes to repeal the estate tax, or votes for a "compromise" that goes most of the way toward repeal, is in effect saying that increasing the wealth of people who are already in line to inherit millions or tens of millions is more important than taking care of fellow citizens who need a helping hand.

To understand this point, we need to look at what Congress has been doing lately in the name of deficit reduction.

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which was signed in February, consists mainly of cuts to spending on Medicare, Medicaid and education. The Medicaid cuts will have the largest human impact: the Congressional Budget Office estimates that they will cause 65,000 people, mainly children, to lose health insurance, and lead many people who retain insurance to skip needed medical care because they can't afford increased co-payments.

Congressional leaders justified these harsh measures by saying that we have to reduce the budget deficit, and there's no way to do that without inflicting pain.

But those same leaders now propose making the deficit worse by repealing the estate tax. Apparently deficits aren't such a big problem after all, as long as we're running up debts to provide bigger inheritances to wealthy heirs rather than to provide medical care to children...

Who would benefit from this largess? The estate tax is overwhelmingly a tax on the very, very wealthy; only about one estate in 200 pays any tax at all. The campaign for estate tax repeal has largely been financed by just 18 powerful business dynasties, including the family that owns Wal-Mart.

You may have heard tales of family farms and small businesses broken up to pay taxes, but those stories are pure propaganda without any basis in fact. In particular, advocates of estate tax repeal have never been able to provide a single real example of a family farm sold to pay estate taxes.

Nonetheless, the estate tax is up for a vote this week. First, Republicans will try to repeal the estate tax altogether. If that fails, they'll offer a compromise that isn't really a compromise, like a plan suggested by Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, that would cost almost as much as full repeal, or a plan suggested by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, that is only slightly cheaper.

In each case, the crucial vote will be procedural: if 60 senators vote to close off debate, estate tax repeal or something close to it will surely pass. Any senator who votes for cloture but against estate tax repeal — which I'm told is what John McCain may do — is simply a hypocrite, trying to have it both ways.

But will the Senate vote for cloture? The answer depends on two groups of senators: Democrats like Mr. Baucus who habitually stake out "centrist" positions that give Republicans almost everything they want, and moderate Republicans like Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island who consistently cave in to their party's right wing. Will these senators show more spine than they have in the past?

In the interest of stiffening those spines, let me remind senators that this isn't just a fiscal issue, it's also a moral issue. Congress has already declared that the budget deficit is serious enough to warrant depriving children of health care; how can it now say that it's worth enlarging the deficit to give Paris Hilton a tax break?

Signs of Desperation

How do we know Republicans are desperate? Here's how:

President Bush and congressional Republicans are aiming the political spotlight this week on efforts to ban gay marriage, as the Senate opens three days of debate on the issue.

They have given us high gas prices and no energy policy, two failed nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a stagnant economy and an out-of-control deficit, and a culture of corruption. They are in deep trouble and they know it. Their only hope now is to try and change the subject, energize their religious base, and polarize the nation further.

Kersten 1, Jesus 0

Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten takes on the United Methodists and their sagging membership this morning. The clear loser in her column is Jesus:

Why the sagging Methodist numbers? Perhaps many folks in the pews don't share their leadership's left-wing political agenda. Today, the average United Methodist would probably be uneasy about gutting America's defense budget when Iran is on the fast track to building nuclear weapons.

What would Jesus do? That's the important question. Not what George Bush would do, or what the average Methodist might think is the best thing to do. What would Jesus do? Would he really want us to keep that big defense budget just where it is? Would he want us to have a defense budget at all?

Eating Their Own

The Guardian reports today on family feud that is breaking out among evangelicals:

In his consulting room in a suburb of Montgomery, Alabama, gastrologist Randy Brinson is a worried man. A staunch Republican and devout Baptist, Dr Brinson can claim substantial credit for getting George Bush re-elected in 2004. It was his Redeem the Vote initiative that may have persuaded up to 25 million people to turn out for President Bush. Yet his wife is receiving threats from anonymous conservative activists warning her husband to stay away from politics.

"They've been calling my house, threatening my wife," said Dr Brinson. "The first time was on a day when I was going up to Washington to speak to Republicans in Congress. Only they knew I'd be away from home. The Republicans were advised not to turn up to listen to me, so only three did so."

The reason he has fallen foul of men whose candidate he helped re-elect is that he has dared to question the partisan tactics of the religious right. "Conservatives speak in tones that they have got power and they can do what they want. Only 23% of the population embraces those positions but if someone questions their mandate or wants to articulate a different case, for the moderate right, they are totally ridiculed."

In his office in Washington DC, Rich Cizik, vice-president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the largest such umbrella group in the US, is also feeling battered. His mistake has been to become interested in the environment, and he has been told that is not on the religious right's agenda.

Mr Cizik, an ordained minister of the Evangelical Presbyterian church and otherwise impeccably conservative on social issues such as abortion, stem-cell research and homosexuality, believes concern for the environment arises from Biblical injunctions about the stewardship of the Earth. The movement's political leadership, however, sees the issue as a distraction from its main tactical priorities: getting more conservatives on the supreme court, banning gay marriages and overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 abortion ruling.

"It is supposed to be counterproductive even to consider this. I guess they do not want to part company with the president. This is nothing more than political assassination. I may lose my job. Twenty-five church leaders asked me not to take a political position on this issue but I am a fighter," he said.

Another Washington lobbyist on the religious right told the Guardian: "Rich is just being stupid on this issue. There may be a debate to be had but ... people can only sustain so many moral movements in their lifetime. Is God really going to let the Earth burn up?"

Is God really going to let the Earth burn up? I suspect that there is a fair number of right-wing religious folk who think the answer to that question is a definite yes. In fact they they can't wait because they are confident they won't be Left Behind. Still, it is heartening to see that there are some evangelicals who are able to see that being the storm troopers for the Republican Party is probably not exactly what Jesus had in mind.

Why Talk About God

While perusing the website of The Center for Progressive Christianity, I saw the following text from an educational flyer of another progressive church (unnamed). The title of the flyer is Why Talk about God?

Most people haven't any interest in religion - mainly because they haven't any interest in God. If asked as part of a survey whether they "believed in God", many would say that they did, but there be would few if any differences in their lives compared to those who deny the existence of God.

For most people, the subject of God is completely irrelevant, and that is an enormous pity. Does God exist? If so, what's he/she/it like?

These are pressing questions for all who bother to think about it, but because so many of the claims made by Christians are so odd and so simplistic, many thinking people shake their heads and walk away. It's obviously not possible to believe everything, even if it were desirable. The Internet is crammed with websites devoted to all sorts of beliefs, ranging from the sensible to the ludicrous. We don't have the time or the energy (or the inclination) to investigate most of these, and so we tend to dismiss them out of hand.

The problem with religion is similar to the problem with fiction: thousands of novels are published in English each year, and without literary critics and judging panels for awards like the Booker Prize, we'd be floundering around without any idea as to what might be worth reading and what probably isn't. Just as we need guides to help us through all the books, we need some way of sorting out the reasonable beliefs from the ridiculous ones.

Only a philistine would dismiss the very idea of religion out of hand: so many people find it meaningful that to see them all as misguided would be hugely arrogant. Although truth isn't established on the basis of a show of hands, there comes a point when the number of hands raised is so great that at the very least it should give us pause for thought.

The great world religions constitute an obvious short list of potentially reasonable beliefs, but even this is too long, unless we are prepared to give all our time to becoming familiar with each of them. The only practical solution is to focus on the religion that is dominant in our own culture. Although we live in what is often called a multi-faith society, the dominant religion is clearly Christianity. So when faced with the phenomenon of Christianity, what is the interested outsider to make of it?

It appears to involve believing in the existence of an invisible super-person, who made everything and who keeps an eye on everything. Stemming from this belief are all sorts of other ones, such as the belief in an immortal soul, so that when we die we simply continue in another form, and (if we're lucky) do so in a glorious place called heaven.

Not surprisingly, many intelligent, thoughtful people refuse to have anything to do with any of this, mainly on the grounds that there is no evidence worth speaking of to support it. Their reaction is perfectly reasonable and raises the question whether this belief in a super-person actually is what Christianity is all about.

God is traditionally thought of as a being (albeit a very special sort of being), and if we think along those lines then he/she/it must presumably "exist", in the same way that other beings or things, like people or chairs, "exist". But there are all sorts of ways of understanding the God symbol, with many thinking of God as a sort of philosophical ideal, much as the ancient Greeks might have done.

If the only version of God some people know is the one heard in Sunday School, it may come as a surprise for them to realise that viewing God as a symbol is possible within the church context. But in all other areas of human thought we allow, even expect, development: the understanding of physics of the primary school child is very different from that of the university student. Because adolescence usually marks the end of religious education, people get stuck in a sort of time warp.

The good news is that there is religious life after Sunday School; the bad news is that we have to work at it. Perhaps the best starting point for a sceptic is not to think in terms of trying to "believe in God". To put the work about God in terms of believing is to shut off all sorts of imaginative ways of imagining God.

A better starting point is the recognition that all of us have depths in ourselves, which is what is meant by the word "soul". These depths are what yearn for the profound and the glorious and are not fed by the banal or the superficial. They are what is reached when we respond to music or art or poetry - or religion, which is a way of organising our search for what is most real or significant.

Although many people are able to do without religion, they would be hugely impoverished if they tried to do without any sense of the profound in their lives. Churches need to become places where people gather, not to reinforce their certainties about a being called "God", but to share in the experience of exploring ways of trying to satisfy their mutual spiritual hunger.

The future for organised religion is bleak, unless we work at re-imagining and re-creating the God symbol, so that it really does speak to the spiritual needs of our time.

I am reminded of Spong's work on re-imagining God. God isn't the omnipotent being up in the sky, but the way we talk metaphorically about the inexhaustible depths of love and peace and strength that we are invited and spiritually nudged to visit, explore, and learn to trust.

Methodists Turn

The Methodists annual meeting begins today in in St. Cloud and glbt rights are on the agenda:

Mary Grant isn't gay and doesn't have a gay child. She's not sure what has led her to push for a broader welcome for gays at her church, Woodbury United Methodist, and in the denomination at large.

"This issue touches my heart," said Grant, 70, of Maplewood. "I want to help change our society's view of homosexuality. God doesn't want exclusion and condemnation."

But to Dale Droogsma, also a Methodist, homosexuality is like alcoholism. "You love and help the person, but you don't OK the behavior," he said.

Droogsma, 52, of Elk River, was caught by surprise recently when his pastor, the Rev. Phil Strom of Elk River United Methodist Church, told his congregation that this week's convention of Minnesota Methodists will include votes on whether to back ordination of gays and gay marriage.

People on both sides will open the state Methodists' annual convention today in St. Cloud. Their votes during the session, which lasts through Friday, will constitute a recommendation to the denomination's General Convention, which meets in 2008.

The struggle for justice and equality continues.

The Lost War

The last few days reporting on the war in Iraq has been depressing, to say the least. The CBS crew loses two and a reporter is critically injured in an attack. Despite hints from the government that troop levels are going to go down, we learn this morning that they are going up because of the deteriorating situation in Ramadi:

In Ramadi, "Zarqawi is the one who is in control," the sheik said, speaking to a Washington Post special correspondent in Ramadi. "He kills anyone who goes in and out of the U.S. base. We have stopped meetings with the Americans, because, frankly speaking, we have lost confidence in the U.S. side, as they can't protect us."

Another sheik, Bashir Abdul Qadir al-Kubaisi of the Kubaisat tribe in Ramadi, expressed similar views. "Today, there is no tribal sheik or a citizen who dares to go to the city hall or the U.S. base, because Zarqawi issued a statement ordering his men to kill anyone seen leaving the base or city hall," he said.

A 3500-member armor brigade is being moved in from Kuwait. It won't do any good. At least that's the conclusion this report makes in Sunday's Washington Post:

Every morning the streets of Baghdad are littered with dozens of bodies, bruised, torn, mutilated, executed only because they are Sunni or because they are Shiite. Power drills are an especially popular torture device.

I have spent nearly two of the three years since Baghdad fell in Iraq. On my last trip, a few weeks back, I flew out of the city overcome with fatalism. Over the course of six weeks, I worked with three different drivers; at various times each had to take a day off because a neighbor or relative had been killed. One morning 14 bodies were found, all with ID cards in their front pockets, all called Omar. Omar is a Sunni name. In Baghdad these days, nobody is more insecure than men called Omar. On another day a group of bodies was found with hands folded on their abdomens, right hand over left, the way Sunnis pray. It was a message. These days many Sunnis are obtaining false papers with neutral names. Sunni militias are retaliating, stopping buses and demanding the jinsiya , or ID cards, of all passengers. Individuals belonging to Shiite tribes are executed.

Under the reign of Saddam Hussein, dissidents called Iraq "the republic of fear" and hoped it would end when Hussein was toppled. But the war, it turns out, has spread the fear democratically. Now the terror is not merely from the regime, or from U.S. troops, but from everybody, everywhere.

At first, the dominant presence of the U.S. military -- with its towering vehicles rumbling through Baghdad's streets and its soldiers like giants with their vests and helmets and weapons -- seemed overwhelming. The Occupation could be felt at all times. Now in Baghdad, you can go days without seeing American soldiers. Instead, it feels as if Iraqis are occupying Iraq, their masked militiamen blasting through traffic in anonymous security vehicles, shooting into the air, angrily shouting orders on loudspeakers, pointing their Kalashnikovs at passersby.

Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis...

The sectarian tensions have overtaken far more than Iraq's security forces and its streets. Militias now routinely enter hospitals to hunt down or arrest those who have survived their raids. And many Iraqi government ministries are now filled with the banners and slogans of Shiite religious groups, which now exert total control over these key agencies. If you are not with them, you are gone.

For instance, in the negotiations between parties after the January 2005 elections, Sadr loyalists gained control over the ministries of health and transportation and immediately began cleansing them of Sunnis and Shiites not aligned with Sadr. The process was officially known by the Sadrists as "cleansing the ministry of Saddamists." Indeed, some government offices now do not accept Sunnis as employees at all.

Based on my visits to the ministries, it is clear that an apartheid process began after the Shiites' electoral success. In the Ministry of Health, you see pictures of Moqtada al-Sadr and his father everywhere. Traditional Shiite music reverberates throughout the hallways. Doctors and ministry staffers refer to the minister of health as imami, or "my imam," as though he were a cleric. I also saw walls adorned with Shiite posters -- including ones touting Sadr -- in the Ministry of Transportation. Sunni staffers have been pushed out of both ministries, while the Ministry of Interior is under the control of another Shiite movement, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (its name alone a sufficient statement of its intentions).

Shiites with no apparent qualifications have filled the ranks. In one case in the transportation ministry, a Sunni chief engineer was fired and replaced with an unqualified Shiite who wore a cleric's turban to work. In all cases, this has led to a stark drop in efficiency, with the health and transportation ministries barely functioning, and the interior ministry operating much like an anti-Sunni death squad, with secret prisons uncovered last November, and people disappearing after raids by shadowy government security units operating at night.

Even shared opposition to the Occupation couldn't unite Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites, and perhaps that was inevitable given their bitter history of mutual hostility. Instead, as the fighting against the Americans intensified, tensions between Sunni and Shiite began to grow, eventually setting off the vicious sectarian cleansing that is Iraq today...

The time came on Feb. 22, when the Golden Mosque of the Shiites in Samarra was blown up. More than 1,000 Sunnis were killed in retribution, and then the Shiite-controlled interior ministry prevented an accurate body count from being released. Attacks on mosques, mostly Sunni ones, increased. Officially, Moqtada al-Sadr opposed attacks on Sunnis, but he unleashed his fighters on them after the bombing.

Sectarian and ethnic cleansing has since continued apace, as mixed neighborhoods are "purified." In Amriya, dead bodies are being found on the main street at a rate of three or five or seven a day. People are afraid to approach the bodies, or call for an ambulance or the police, for fear that they, too, will be found dead the following day. In Abu Ghraib, Dora, Amriya and other once-diverse neighborhoods, Shiites are being forced to leave. In Maalif and Shaab, Sunnis are being targeted.

The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend. In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come.

What an unbelievable mess we have made. Impeach George Bush. Impeach him now.