Leadership Conversations

Sometimes it takes 15 years to get it right.

We have never done much in the way of formal leadership training at Open Circle. We are a relatively small congregation and our structure has been pretty fluid through the years. Leaders have just stepped up and into many positions; for certain positions we have a congregational call process where we ask the congregation to identify the people who best represent the values of our community. Mostly we have been blessed with hard-working, gifted people who have stepped up to get the work done. But not too long ago we had a bad "match" that ended badly and we realized that it would be helpful to have a structure in place to have intentional conversations about leadership with current and prospective leaders in order to get to know prospective leaders and to better match gifts with needs.

Two books we found very helpful in this regard are Bruce Sanguin's The Emerging Church and Anna Christie's Evoking Change. Both talk about the importance of paying attention to the emotional and spiritual health of leaders and both have suggestions for how to better equip leaders.

So we are 5 weeks into a 7 week session on the spiritual and emotional foundations of leadership. It has been a great experience with the group we have. Each week we begin with a meditation; each meditation is led by a member of the group. That person is also responsible that week to share something of their creativity. We have had baking, crafts, writing and journaling thus far. Then there is the information part that includes: spiritual practice, meta-narratives of scripture, faith sharing, self-definition, boundaries, and staying connected across differences. We will close with a session on group dynamics. We have had great conversations about our roles as leaders at church, in families, at work. The benefit of this kind of gathering for getting to know leaders, learning from each other, and better matching gifts with needs is readily apparent.

Two weeks ago we had a very interesting session on faith sharing. Faith sharing is something we don't do much of in progressive churches. We know what we don't believe, and many of us are fairly uncomfortable in settings where people are sharing their faith. But it seems fairly important for leaders in a progressive church to have moved beyond "I don't believe this anymore" to be able to comfortably talk about what they do believe. So the group had a week to do their homework and everyone came with a written statement of faith. None of them sounded anything like the Nicene Creek - Thank God! We are learning something here - but each was well-thought out and articulated a positive statement of that person's faith. It was a great exercise.

It's never to late to learn from your mistakes and change the way you do things.

The Perfect Church

Posted today on a COB listserve:

It strikes me as reasonable that none of us can ever really know exactly what a church is like, until we enter it ourselves, until we become a part of it. And then, of course, that church is "like" what it is like, at least in part, because we have joined it!!

Its kind of the ecclesiastical "Uncertainty Principle." You cannot both know "the perfect church" and be a part of that church, yourself. By joining the church, we make it imperfect! All of us. . . . . .

Running in the Snow

My favorite time of year to be out running is in the fall when the air is cool and the leaves are in color (at least the colors I can see!). But my second favorite time of year to be running is when snow is falling. Today was one of those wet, snowy days - no ice yet - that was perfect for running. I try very hard to avoid being "preachy" about the benefits of exercise, but it is one of the simplest ways I know to feel better immediately with that endorphin high, and long term from being in shape. Why everyone doesn't get that I don't understand.

Headlines That Make Me Laugh

Limits on exec pay cause worries of brain drain

That's the headline from an MSNBC article. Would these be the same brains that led these banking and auto giants into the mess they, and we, are in right now?

Spong's Done Arguing About Homosexuality

I haven't read anything by John Shelby Spong recently not because I find him disagreeable but because I don't really think he has said anything knew in a while. But a friend sent me Spong's recent email posting and I found it interesting:

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy...

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church...

Spong deserves enormous credit for the pioneering leadership he provided on this issue. Long before mainstream Christianity had joined the battle for glbt equality Spong was up to his keisters in the struggle. So it is good to hear him say that the battle has been won.

Is he right? Is the battle over? I think it is. I stopped arguing with conservatives about this issue several years ago for the same reason. The final outcome is no longer in doubt and I see no purpose in arguing with the "flat-earthers" who can't seem to see that they are making the same kind of arguments once made by Christians who defended slavery. Whatever the Bible may say about homosexuality, followers of Jesus should be welcoming homosexuals with open arms and celebrating their out, open, and married presence in the church.

It's one of the (but not the only) reasons I don't do denomination stuff anymore. We are still fighting the battle there and all the while the denomination dies. And the conservatives don't care; they are going to take the ship down. So be it. I have more than enough to do welcoming those wounded by these church wars and figuring out together how we move forward and live into a new and liberating vision of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

So bully for Spong!

Witches in Africa

Apparently it has become something of a competition between some Christian groups in Africa to identify and punish witches:

The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria's 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.

...Sam Itauma of the Children's Rights and Rehabilitation Network said it is the most vulnerable children — the orphaned, sick, disabled or poor — who are most often denounced...

"Even churches who didn't use to 'find' child witches are being forced into it by the competition," said Itauma. "They are seen as spiritually powerful because they can detect witchcraft and the parents may even pay them money for an exorcism."

I hear evangelicals in my denomination and others speak glowingly about the growth of Christianity in Africa and how this is the hope for the future of the church, and a haven for those in this country wanting to find a more comfortable adjudicatory fit.

We stopped burning witches in this country hundreds of years ago and have made continual , if slow and hard-fought, progress in human rights for minorities, women, and gays. And this is the Christianity they want to take us back to. (And no I am not saying any one I know endorses this kind of behavior, but this is the spirit of much of the celebrated African Christianity - ant-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-woman, anti-witch.)

Hummers Still Around

For the last couple of days I have been watching a hummingbird at the feeder. On Friday morning we had our first hard freeze and I woke up early in the morning thinking about the glass feeder I still had outside, worrying that it might be frozen and cracked. So I got up and brought it inside; the contents were frozen but the feeder hadn't cracked.

As it was getting light I watched outside and saw the hummer buzzing around where the feeder was supposed to be. I took the feeder back outside and shortly thereafter the hummer was feeding.

I shared this on Sunday morning with a woman at church whose spouse is an avid birder. He called me up in the afternoon and wondered if he might come and watch for the bird. He was at the house for about half an hour when it showed up. He identified it as a female Ruby-throated hummingbird; I thought I had been seeing some red on the neck but his picture and his better eye than mine didn't see any. In any case he said this was the latest confirmed report of a hummingbird in MN. (Update: On reflection I wonder if he said that if it had been a male it would have been the latest... I will have to find out.)

This morning we woke up to another fresh snowfall of several inches. I went out and cleaned off the feeder posts before light but then didn't watch the feeder until later in the morning. It didn't take long for the bird to show up and it has been in and out of the feeder every half hour or so.

Obama Wins Peace Price

President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, he hasn't done anything yet to deserve it. And I am an Obama supporter. It isn't his fault that he won, of course. In fact, if I am correct nominations were closed for the prize shortly after he took office. So the Nobel Committee was really awarding the American people the prize for moving the country in a different direction.

It will be interesting to see how Obama responds. I hope he either declines it or accepts it on behalf of the American people. If he accepts it he has big shoes to fill to live into its meaning. If we get mired down even further in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the Middle East blows up, or we get hit with a big terrorist strike, this prize will be prime material for political commercials in the next election cycle.

Evangelical Christian Changes Mind on Homosexuality

Evangelical Christian Brent Childers explains in Newsweek how he changed his mind on homosexuality:

So what it is that would bring someone from a place where he once declared himself a "Jesse Helms Republican," a man who condemned homosexuality as a threat to children and society, told his own son that being gay is a ticket to hell, to travel from Hickory, N.C., to the West Lawn of the Capitol building on Oct. 11, 2009? How can one travel from the seemingly impossible road of bigotry to one of acceptance and love for our LGBT brothers and sisters? The answer is one that I hope religious leaders such as Pat Robertson and James Dobson (and most importantly, their followers) will hear.

It's because something deep inside told me that I needed to step out in faith onto a bridge of knowledge and understanding. I didn't know where this bridge would take me but something was telling me it was a path I needed to walk. My own mother challenged me in 2003 to look at my beliefs and the true intent behind the teachings I held in blind faith. "Do you think your views are Christ-like?" she asked me. Her question was dead on: once I walked away from the Church's teachings of rejection and condemnation, my relationship with God transcended to a higher spiritual plateau. I realized an unparalleled sense of spiritual clarity when I opened my heart and mind to a genuine expression of love, compassion, and acceptance of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

This new voice—Christ's voice—became the core principles of my faith: love, compassion, and respect. That voice I now realize was desperately wanting to be heard, a voice no longer comfortable with the place in which I had chose to confine it for so long—a place of bigotry, prejudice, fear, and misunderstanding.

Childers has left the SBC and is now worshiping with Pentecostals and at a non-denominational church.

Everyday Miracles

My newsletter article this week:

I don't often make note of the feast days of Catholic Saints, but September 25 was the feast day of Saint Finbar, an Irish monk who lived as a hermit on a small island at Lough Eiroe, off southern Ireland. According to Catholic tradition, many miracles were attributed to St. Finbar upon his death in 633, among them the sun not setting for two weeks. Finbar's hermitage locale remains a pilgrimage destination to this day.

Finbar's own Christianity, though, was apparently rooted as much in local druidic tradition as Catholic teaching, and was likely grounded not in supernatural miracle but in the everyday miracles of the natural world: "the early Irish texts suggest a God who is immanent in every part of creation -- in Sun, Moon, stars, wind and wave -- indeed , inseparable from the creation, even as the unutterable mystery of the universe confounds our understanding and perception."

I have recently been re-reading Elaine Pagels' book Beyond Belief. Pagels is one of several scholars who think that the Gospel of John was written in conversation with the Gospel of Thomas, or perhaps to correct and combat the teachings of the community of Thomas. Whether Pagels is right about this is a matter of much dispute among scholars and is as we are fond of saying these days "above my pay grade" to know.

What is indisputable, though, is that the message of the Gospel of John that Jesus is God, and that Jesus came to save us, and that we are in need of salvation, and that this salvation is not possible apart from believing in Jesus became the orthodox position within Christianity and was eventually incorporated into the creeds and remains an essential element of Christian teaching to this day. Pagel's book tells the story of how this came to be.

The notion that God is within us, that we don't need salvation so much as illumination, as taught by the Jesus found in the Gospel of Thomas, isn't orthodox. The orthodox position holds that we can't save ourselves or help ourselves because all vestiges of the immanence of God within us were obliterated by original sin and now we need divine help from the outside.

I don't agree with this for a moment. Neither did Finbar, and neither did a host of Christian mystics who would follow through the centuries and keep alive within Christianity the notion that the divine spark is present in each of us and in every tree, flower, wisp of wind, and ray of the sun.

We don't need Jesus to save us. We do need to be reminded from time to time, though, that the divine spark is there within us and around us. If we listen. If we are attentive. What we can learn from Jesus is that there is a way of living that puts us in touch with the God within and around us.

For many Christians, of course, it is the miracles of Jesus and the miracle of his resurrection that make the difference, just as it was the miracles attributed to Finbar that made him worthy of being a Catholic saint. But I will settle for the everyday miracles of friends and community and the beauty that is everywhere we look, if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

Jesus and the Constitution

I missed this the other day when Andrew Sullivan first posted the link, but this interactive "print" of Jesus holding the constitution surrounded by famous God-fearing American leaders is entertaining. Mouse around and you will find Reagan and Kennedy but no Carter and Clinton, among modern presidents. Down in the right hand corner under the influence of Satan, who is present in the picture, you will find a politician, a lawyer, a professor tightly grasping a copy of Darwin's Origin of Species, and a Supreme Court justice covering his face in shame as he realizes the damage he has done to the country. Thankfully the minister is on the opposite - and blessed - side holding his Bible.

Inside Baseball

In a few minutes the hometown Minnesota Twins play their final regular season game in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Next year they get their own brand-spanking-new outdoor ballpark. The way baseball should be played.

It is worth noting, though, that right now it is 44 degrees outside and raining hard. As it has been for most of the past week. Snow is forecast for the weekend, when, should the Twins win today they will be hosting the Yankees. But with global warming on the way by next year I am sure it will be warm here in April and October.

Update: What a game. On to New York to play the evil Yankees. The Twins have yet to beat them this season. But there is at least one more game to be played in the Dome.

Forbes on Moore on Capitalism

Michael Moore says capitalism has to go. Michael Maiello, writing in Forbes, says Moore is partly right:

In practicing what we call capitalism, America has recently been missing the point. Our current system isn't eliminating scarcity and poverty; it's causing scarcity for most people and delivering extreme prosperity to a powerful minority. More than 85% of the financial wealth of the U.S. is held by 20% of the population, says G. William Domhoff, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Over the last decade, wages for most have fallen against very low inflation even as productivity and profits have risen.

We overwhelmingly support unequal outcomes so long as there's something resembling a fair (but not level) playing field. We're fine with rich kids having material and social advantages over poor kids. We just ask that the game not be actively rigged against people. So long as the law doesn't favor Best Buy ( BBY - news - people ) over Circuit City ( CC - news - people ), we can accept that Circuit City will go into bankruptcy and be sold to an online retailer while its former rival moves into its empty storefronts.

But our laws aren't applied equally or fairly. Underneath the Trinity Church in Manhattan's financial district there's a magic revolving door. If you go into it and run fast enough it'll let you out either at 1 Wall, K Street or Pennsylvania Avenue (sometimes it gets stuck and you wind up running into the World Bank).

...The argument for capitalism is that nimble, clever and brave entrepreneurs acting out of self-interest will lead humanity away from want and scarcity. It's hard to see how international conglomerates bribing politicians at home and abroad, exploiting cheap labor and loose environmental standards around the world and depending on the implicit and sometime explicit support of the U.S. military really compares to the capitalist ideal.

I think Moore's a little too flip about how important it is for people to be free to chase their fortunes. Some take Moore's own financial success as irony. I see it as hopeful. We need more Michael Moores. But we don't get them in a system where, say, the telecom, television and radio industries are difficult to disrupt because only the largest companies can afford access to a spectrum that's supposed to be held in the public trust...

If you want a system that encourages more plucky entrepreneurs like Michael Moore then you have to do some things that the big corporations won't like. We need access to higher education that doesn't depend on crushing student loan debt. We need, as Franklin Roosevelt suggested, to look at health care as a right not a perk provided by an employer or a service to be bought and sold. We need a strong enough social safety net so that the risk of failing in an entrepreneurial venture isn't life-crushing penury. Ultimately, we need to take all the love and care that we give to big corporations and transfer that to individuals.

The problem with the right-wing defenders of capitalism is that they don't really believe in free-market capitalism. They believe in big business, which is the only player that has the resources to fund teams of lobbyists and contribute endless sums of money to the system to make sure their interests are taken care of.

Not all of us are fine with a playing field that isn't level and rich kids having material and social advantages over poor kids. What ever happened to the idea of merit? How about a system where a kid can't get into an Ivy League school unless he is smart enough to be there. Or a system where an Ivy League graduate who fails at every job he is handed in his life can't be considered a serious candidate to be President of the United States. One of capitalism's biggest recent failures. (Yes it was economic as much as political: the worst President money could buy) In any case...

I think capitalism is the best economic system we know for unleashing creativity and allowing individuals the opportunity to ply their craft and lift themselves up intellectually and materially. When it works the way Adam Smith talked about it, it's not only economically but spiritually liberating.

But Adam Smith never dreamed of multinational corporations that move jobs around the globe to find the cheapest labor. Smith never dreamed of AIG or Exxon. Smith's capitalism was small scale. Smith assumed there would be spiritually-based (Christian) self restraint and concern for the plight of other humans. He assumed a moral framework in the culture for capitalism that no longer exists.

Thus the need for a strong government with regulatory powers and a healthy social safety net that provides health care for all. Power bumping chest to chest with power. It's the only way to rescue capitalism from the people who control the money and practice crony capitalism and corporate welfare and keep the "free market" from being anything resembling free.

I look forward to seeing Moore's movie.

Tornado a Sign from God

Tornado sirens went off yesterday around the metro area as heavy rains and thunderstorms rolled through the area spawning a few small tornadoes along the way. One touched down in downtown Minneapolis near where Lutherans (ELCA) are gathered for their annual assembly. They, like most of our denominations, are having divisive conversations about homosexuality. Yesterday, as the storms were swirling they voted to accept the validity of same-sex relationships that are "chaste, monogamous and lifelong." This sets up a vote, expected Friday, on a proposal to repeal a ban on gay and lesbian ministers from leading churches unless they promise to be celibate.

Could these tornadoes have been a message from God? Via Drew Tatusko I see that John Piper, pastor of preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, has said God sent these tornadoes as a warning to the Lutherans. A gentle warning, thankfully:

The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.

It is worth noting that the tornado did not hit the convention center where the Lutherans are meeting. It did do some damage to a Lutheran Church steeple but most of the damage was done to homes in the area of the church. Thankfully no one was seriously injured.

Unless the homeowners were all ELCA members apparently God saw fit to punish innocent neighbors and homeowners. Or else God missed.

I am wrapping up a message series this week on the biblical view of suffering. There is certainly plenty of evidence from the scriptures, particularly the prophets, that one view of why suffering comes to us is that God is angry and sends armies and storms as punishment or warning. In this view God sometimes wipes out entire populations including lots of innocent people. So Piper isn't saying anything that can't be supported by biblical passages.

That doesn't make him right, though. For one thing there are other biblical responses to the question of why suffering happens, including some that suggest that bad things sometimes happen to good or innocent people and it isn't God's fault or their fault or anyone's fault. For another, we don't live inside that biblical worldview anymore. We know too much about storms and weather and how it works. It isn't a mystery left to be explained by God. This doesn't mean there aren't weather surprises; the tornadoes yesterday were quite surprising considering the relatively cool temperatures. But God isn't behind the surprises. The explainable forces of nature are.

Pastors who say the kinds of things Piper said about this storm are using a fear-based form of religion to maintain their authority with their congregation. If they can keep their people just scared enough to worry that God might be coming after them next if they don't behave then they can also keep them in the pews.

I know that many people are raised in this kind of fear-based religious environment and it works for them. I understand. But I do not have the same kind of understanding for educated pastors like John Piper who feed and nourish this kind of thinking. It is just wrong.

Mushy Faith on the Rise

That's the title of a GetReligion piece by Terry Mattingly where he makes fun of a recent Newsweek article by Lisa Miller who looks at polling data in America that suggests Americans are increasingly comfortable with the notion that there is more than one valid spiritual path. We are all Hindus now, Miller claims.

Mattingly says this news has "no news hook" whatsoever; it's old news. Probably true. But I wanted to take aim at Mattingly's title claim "Mushy Faith on the Rise." I would suggest this is not necessarily true. It certainly isn't true for this liberal Christian.

I was raised in a Christian home, in a predominantly Christian town, in a predominantly Christian country. But it might have been otherwise. I think that our choice of faith is likely to be dictated more than anything else by where we were born. It is highly unlikely that I would be a Christian had I been born in India or Saudi Arabia. I might very well have been born into a family of Hindus or Muslims.

That simple fact gives me pause when I think about the truth claims of Christianity that seem to close the door on the validity of other faith perspectives. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me." Really? Can we really say that with certainty anymore when the world has become so interconnected and when our own country has become so religiously diverse? Are we really ready to condemn to eternal death the majority of the population of the world simply because by accident of birth they grew up in other religious traditions that make their own truth claims?

There is nothing mushy about my belief that this kind of thinking is wrong. I am certain it is wrong. I am convinced that there are many valid spiritual paths, even as I choose to follow in the way of Jesus. I am, in fact, fairly intolerant with those who hold these kinds of intolerant views about Christianity and its supremacy over other faith traditions. It's an ironic position to be in, but there is nothing mushy about it.

I suppose that there are some liberal Christians who have a mushy faith believing that anything goes, just as there as some mushy conservative Christians who see no conflict of interest between being a follower of Jesus and being a super capitalist/militarist.

Mattingly closes his post with the three questions that apparently separate, in his view, the true Christians from the mushy ones ("the fault lines in Christian churches and denominations"):

(1) Are the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this event really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

(3) Is sex outside of the Sacrament of Marriage a sin?

If you hang your hat on doctrine as the dividing line between "true" and mushy faith then these are your questions. It is all about getting your ticket to heaven and believing the right things and living the kind of life that will get your ticket punched. You want to be up there with your tribe sitting at the right hand of the Father.

Me, I'd rather hang my hat on these three questions:

Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?

I want to know whether your beliefs lead you to care about the immense social ills in our world today? Have you done your duty by going to church on Sunday and reciting the creed or by bowing in the right direction at the right time for prayer? Or does that faith lead you to care about changing the world and doing something about it. If the fault line is doctrine - any doctrine - and protecting your heavenly turf, then I think your faith is pretty mushy.

We Need a Populist Movement

I find myself agreeing with this position:

The Obama ''trickle down'' is, sadly, not all that different from the Bush-Paulson strategy. Like its predecessor, it endorses the bailout of giant financial institutions as the linchpin of its economic policy. It is, simultaneously, profoundly anti-democratic and anti-capitalist.

Other aspects of the Obama policy seem likely to prop up Wall Street traders at the expense of the rest of us. The administration's big ''cap and trade'' proposals could prove more advantageous to well-heeled ''carbon traders'' than to the environment. The other big winners may be Silicon Valley venture capitalists, who-- increasingly bereft of their own ideas for making money--hope to cash in on Washington-subsidized energy schemes.

Of course, not all Democrats have sold out. Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and John Tester, D-Mont., have expressed opposition to bailing out ''too big to fail'' institutions. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been fearless in unveiling the enormous Wall Street bonuses--over $32.6 billion last year-- handed out as firms suffered $81 billion in losses and almost drove the world economy to ruin.

Unfortunately, these are exceptions. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin recently admitted that the banks remain ''the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,'' adding that they ''frankly own the place.''

So far in 2009 the Democrats have netted nearly 60% of all campaign contributions that have come from the financial industry, now the largest sector in terms of donations. The biggest donations have gone to such influential Democrats as Sen. Charles Schumer and his sidekick, newly appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, from New York; Sen. Chris Dodd D-Conn., and Majority Leader Harry Reid D-Nev. Schumer, the Street's leading vassal in Congress, has emerged as the rising star in the Democratic leadership. If Majority Leader Reid loses his seat--as is now possible, according to polls in Nevada--Wall Street's main man could well end up a future Majority Leader.

Some Democrats try to have it both ways, playing populists for the peanut galleries but getting cozy with the industry when it matters. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, the House Financial Services Chairman, talks tough but has a history of friendly relations with financial powerhouses. One of Frank's own top assistants, Michael Pease, just went to work for the biggest winner since taking TARP bucks, Goldman Sachs. As left-winger blogger Glenn Greenwald put it recently: ''The only way they can make it more blatant is if they hung a huge Goldman Sachs banner on the Capitol dome and branded it onto the foreheads of leading members of Congress and executive branch officials.''

In the end the faux populist Democrats end up with policies that make Ronald Reagan's ''trickle down'' seem downright Leninist. Harry Truman once quipped that ''There should be a real liberal party in this country, and I don't mean a crackpot professional one.'' Sadly, it's increasingly the latter.

The hypocrisy should open a path for the Republicans as wide as the Grand Canyon. But the ill-named Party of Lincoln still seems to think that the path to power lies in the tired old formula of ultra-patriotism, guns, abortion and religious rectitude. Screaming ''socialism'' may awaken the spirits of some on the old right, but it's hard to make a convincing case when George Bush socialized banking and grew the deficit.

You certainly can't trust big-business conservatives to stop bonuses for the TARP babies, particularly the 25 financial firms deemed ''too big to fail'' by the likes of Ben Benanke. Give GOP big-business leaders higher stock prices, and they will follow you anywhere. Only a few--such as Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa,--have shown they are truly serious about the free market or defending the interests of the regular taxpayer.

Given this sad political picture, the best hope now is to build an alternative perspective that focuses on the basic economic issues. This would not be the media celebrated movement of moderates--Democrats-lite and Republicans-lite--who seek kumbaya through compromise. It would, instead, require a radical third tendency--neither strictly left or right--that would draw on long-term American priorities and values.

These new radicals would focus on basic issues like improving infrastructure, and primary education and bolstering the nation's productive economy. Their inspiration would come from a long tradition of federal successes--from the Homestead Act and the WPA to the Interstate Highway and the space program. They would view the financial crisis not as an imperative for protecting the well-connected but for financial reform, decentralization and innovation.

Such an approach would address what the British author Austin Williams calls our ''poverty of ambition.'' Americans historically have rejected a future constrained by entrenched hierarchies. Most, I believe, would support spending money and paying taxes, if it was spent to achieve big things that would lead to a greater, more widespread prosperity and opportunity.

Just imagine if the upward of $1 trillion spent guaranteeing Goldman Sachs and Citigroup executives giant paydays had instead gone into roads, bridges, subways, buses, port development, skills training, energy transmission lines and basic scientific research. And imagine if instead of protecting Citigroup and Bank of America, we encouraged stronger local banks and solvent financial entrepreneurs to fill the breach left behind by gross failures.

It has made all the difference in the world having a Democrat in the White House directing our foreign policy. No more crazy neo-cons starting wars on false pretenses and planning and hoping for a half dozen more. Sane policies and a touch of humility on the world stage have made the world a safer place for everyone.

But in domestic politics I think the difference is not so much. It will make a difference on health care reform because with Republicans in charge it would simply never happen. But we won't get the radical reform we need for the simple reason that Congress is in bed with the pharmaceuticals and HMO's and insurance companies and physicians and everyone else who has grown rich off of the dysfunctional system we have now.

Same with the financial industry. They own the place. A trillion dollars to bail them out and nothing changes. Big bonuses for those who are adept at moving money around - but not 'down' to the small businesses that need loans or homeowners who are going under. The rich get richer and another long jobless recovery begins where everyone who isn't rich doesn't feel very much like anything has recovered at all.

But thank God we have Wal-Mart!

I think there is something to be said for taking as much money out of the big economy as possible and supporting local businesses and farms and co-ops. And... supporting small operators in emerging economies through micro-loans and SERRV and Ten Thousand Villages.

Politically we need a real populist movement that isn't nativist and fear-based ala Lou Dobbs, but one that focuses on support for decentralized and local economies in combination with a robust federally funded government that takes care of the big items like health care and infrastructure where bigger really is better. What we don't need any more are the too-big-to-fail banks and financial institutions and the politicians who answer first to them.

I am very glad that Obama is President and that Democrats are in charge of Congress. But having them in power just shines a light on how deeply tilted our political system is in favor of the very rich. We need to save them from themselves and remind them of who voted for them and why.

In the Garden Today

Butterflies and Hawks in the backyard.

Conservative Lawyer Takes on Prop 8

I see that Ted Olson, who served in Reagan's Justice Department and as Solicitor General for George W. Bush, and who argued Bush's case in Bush v. Gore, is getting set to challenge Prop 8 in federal court. He has teamed up with his nemesis in Bush v. Gore, David Boies. From the Los Angeles Times:

You and Boies -- you're a version of Hepburn and Tracy in "Adam's Rib."

That's a nice way to put it. I like that. I thought we needed someone who was a well-recognized lawyer but who would provide balance for my perspective. I wanted to convey the message that this was not Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, that this is about human rights and human decency and constitutional law. David was my opponent in Bush v. Gore, but he's someone for whom I have great respect and affection. We spend some time together once in a while socially. We've done some biking in Europe together. He didn't hesitate for a second.

Does your argument have more purchase with conservatives because you're the one making it?

I'm hoping that it does. I hope some people will open their eyes to the decency of getting to the point where we allow gay and lesbian individuals to be married and have a happy life.

I expect some of your fan mail has flipped 180 degrees because of this?

I am getting comments from some segments of the society who feel that it's the wrong thing to do and I'm betraying the conservative cause and things that I've stood for in my life. Some of it is quite hostile. But that goes with the territory. On the other hand, I'm hearing from people, including plenty of Republicans, who are very, very grateful. It has been overwhelmingly gratifying to hear from very decent people who are touched by the fact that we're trying to help.

A woman came up to me in our library in our law firm and said, "You and I haven't worked together, but I'm a lesbian. My partner and I have two children." And she burst into tears. I put my arm around her and she put her arms around me. This stands for what we're trying to accomplish here. It's a principle, but it's a principle that deeply touches human beings. If we're successful, we can help the lives of literally millions of people. And what a great service that would be.

This should be interesting.

Religion at its Best

Episcopalians continue to break down barriers and ordain and promote the best regardless of sexual orientation:

Only weeks after the Episcopal Church ended a de facto moratorium on promoting gay men and lesbians into the church hierarchy, church leaders in Los Angeles nominated two openly gay priests as assistant bishops on Sunday.

The move came a day after a church search committee in Minnesota announced that it had settled on three candidates, one of them a lesbian, for bishop.

Good for them.

Religion at its Worst

Christians attacked by Muslims in Pakistan:

It was the poorest class who lived in Christian Colony, a small enclave of bare brick houses where the mob struck Saturday. Its residents work as day laborers and peddlers in the market, often earning far less than the minimum wage, $75 a month.

The Hameeds were having breakfast when the mob descended, wielding guns, hurling stones and shouting insults (“Dogs!” “American agents!”) through their window. The Hameeds did not appear to have been singled out but had the misfortune of living where the mob entered the neighborhood and happened to be home at the time.

When the grandfather, Hameed Pannun Khan, 75, a house painter, opened the door to see what was happening, he was shot in the temple and crumpled to the ground. The crowd then pushed inside, and the rest of the family — at least 10 people — fled to the back bedroom and locked themselves inside. They listened from behind the door as the mob looted the house, dragging away a refrigerator and a cupboard.

Then came the smoke, thick white plumes under the door.

“Everyone was shouting to escape,” said Umer Hameed, 18. “There was no oxygen.”

They waited as long as they could, until they thought it was safe, and then made a run for it, but not everybody made it. Three women, the two children and a man were trapped when the roof collapsed in flames.

The Legal Drinking Age

My son turns 21 this fall and recently made a comment to me about how ridiculous it was that the drinking age was 21 when in all other matters he was a legal adult at 18. Didn't I agree, he asked. I said no, I thought it was a good idea as it postponed the link between being a new driver and a new drinker. Raising the drinking age had lowered deaths by drinking and driving, I said. I knew I had read that somewhere.

Of course I didn't think the same when the legal drinking age of 19 was snatched away from me in Pennsylvania in 1979. I went from being of age to not while I was in college. How unfair was that?

In any case I see, via Andrew Sullivan, that one of the architects of the national law that raised the drinking age to 21 in 1984 now repents of his earlier work. Dr. Morris Chafet was a psychiatrist who served on the presidential committee that pushed to have the legal drinking age raised to 21:

Chafet describes his effort to raise the drinking age as the "single most regrettable decision" of his career. "To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982," Chafet notes. "But they are lower in all age groups. And they have declined just as much in Canada, where the age is 18 or 19, as they have in the United States."

That observation, while welcome, hardly warrants a "better late than never" response. As Chafet also notes in his piece, the arbitrary age restriction is partially to blame for things like binge drinking, injury, and property destruction. Simply passing a law isn't going to stop young adults from drinking, an activity that has long been a sign of adulthood. Yet because of the fear of punishment, those young adults are much less likely to seek help when the partying gets out of hand, and the results are frequently disastrous. Furthermore, underage drinking only breeds disrespect for the law. So much for keeping people safe.

So, yes it is true that drunk driving fatalities are lower among teens, but they are also lower among all groups. What is that they say about statistics? I can't imagine any political scenario that would undo the current drinking age, but it would be ironic if just as my son turned 21 the legal age was lowered to 18.

The Almost Beer Event

From the press pool here is what the President, Vice President, Sgt. Crowley, and Professor Gates were drinking:

The beers:
POTUS: Bud Light
VPOTUS: Bucklers
Gates: Sam Adams Light
Crowley: Blue Moon

Yikes. I had a Victory HopDevil Ale in honor of the event.

Ernie Lefever RIP

From the Washington Post today:

Ernest W. Lefever, 89, who founded a conservative public policy organization in Washington and was an embattled nominee for a State Department human rights job under President Ronald Reagan, died July 29 at a Church of the Brethren nursing home in New Oxford, Pa. He had Lewy Body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.

Dr. Lefever, a Chevy Chase resident, was an international affairs specialist with the National Council of Churches, a staff consultant on foreign affairs to then-Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.) and a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution before starting the Ethics and Public Policy Center in 1976. The center studies the link between Judeo-Christian morality and national and foreign policy.

In 1981, Reagan nominated Dr. Lefever for the State Department position of assistant secretary of human rights. After months of accusations over conflicts of interest involving his think tank and insurmountable controversy about his views of the human rights job, Dr. Lefever withdrew his bid after rejection by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Among those who spoke against Lefever's nomination were his brothers, Don and John. Don testified against his brother at the Foreign Relations Committee meeting. Don is deceased, but his wife Faye is a member at Open Circle.

I first learned about Ernie when I was at PSU working on a Masters in Religious Studies and was reading Reinhold Niebuhr. My adviser clued me into the work and writings of Ernie Lefever. I was very much attracted to Niebuhr's realism at the time and appreciated the fact that there were other Brethren who "got it." My appreciation for Niebuhr remains although my views have evolved back towards a modified pacifism. I didn't retain the same appreciation for Ernie and his positions.

Prayers for his family.

The Real Cost of Our Health Care Mess

Joe Klein makes a good point in response to talk about how much it is going to cost to cover everyone with health care:

Cover everyone and it costs more--but we don't know how much more, and it may cost less than we think. It will certainly cost less in the areas economists can't quantify, but which have very real economic impacts: in the level of panic and uncertainty that exists in the society, the opportunity cost in entrepreneurial energy among people who might start a new business but are locked into their jobs because they need their health benefits--and a thousand other, non-fiscal benefits.

One of my favorite Springsteen lyrics is, "We've got to start saving up for the things that money can't buy." That's the best argument for a health care system that costs less in anxiety and unfairness. In the end, a conversation about universal health care can't just be about money. It has to also be about values, about what sort of society we want to be--and need to be in an era of economic volatility and uncertainty.

It may very well cost us more money to insure everyone. Our taxes are almost certainly going to have to increase. But it is the right thing to do.

Weddings Brethren Style

This YouTube video went viral, as they say, and the couple was invited to appear on the Today Show. There was a front page write-up in the Star Tribune this morning. The officiating pastor was Jeannine Leonard, an ordained minister in the COB and a member of Open Circle, and a friend. I imagine the ordination committee will be paying her a visit soon ;).

For the Glory of God

I am sitting on my deck this morning. I have with me a book, a laptop, and a cup of coffee. It's a perfect morning.

On the corner of one of our flower beds there is a large nepeta plant, a member of the Lamiaceae or catnip family. It is in full bloom and covered with bumblebees. Periodically a hummingbird zips in and works the small individual flowers that line each stem before moving on to other plants. A couple of times this morning goldfinches have landed on stems of the plant, bending them over to the ground. I don't know if the finches are looking for insects or the seeds that are forming as the flowers are spent.

The flowering nepeta, the bumblebees, the hummingbird, and the goldfinch are all engaged in a frantic effort to use the few summer months we have in Minnesota to perpetuate their individual species. They are unaware of this, of course. They are just doing what nature has given them the tools and drive to do.

The only one aware of what they are doing is me. I have just enough interest in the way things work that I will read about the life cycle and the reproductive habits of the birds and the bees and the plants we have in our yard. For instance, unlike every other bird that makes an appearance in my backyard, the goldfinches are just now getting about the business of laying eggs. They time the arrival of their young with the arrival of their favorite sources of food, particularly thistle seeds, which show up late in summer. I have an interest in knowing these kinds of things about my backyard visitors.

But that's not the first thing that comes to mind when the goldfinch drops in on the nepeta. It's awesome; it's just simply beautiful. For a moment conscious thinking stops; some other part of my mind and body is triggered.

For a moment, and then the goldfinch leaves and I begin to think about what just happened. Where does this aesthetic sense come from? Why are we stunned by beauty, moved by music, overcome with awe when we look up at the stars at night? What purpose does it serve? Is there some evolutionary advantage to be gained by being more attuned to beauty? There certainly is no financial advantage. Wall Street executive or concert hall pianist? Making beautiful music rarely pays well.

But then the person making the music didn't choose their profession with an eye for retiring wealthy. They were likely moved to tears at some time in their childhood by a piece of music. They wanted to be able to recreate the possibility of experiencing that moment again for themselves and others. So they began to play and practice an instrument. For years and years, just for the sake of beauty. In much the same way that my wife and I have spent the better part of a decade replacing our lawn with a riot of color, just so we can see a goldfinch bend a flower stem to the ground. It makes no sense, really.

For the glory of God is a phrase that comes to mind. Why is there so much beauty? For the glory of God. Which I take it to mean that there is no utilitarian purpose to beauty. Just as there is no utilitarian purpose to the universe itself. Stars explode; planets are born; bumblebees fly against all physical odds; goldfinches take our breath away. And if we are lucky enough or smart enough to be able to lift our noses from the grindstone of the "real" world for a few moments, we might see that there is beauty everywhere we look. For no purpose. But for the glory of God.

Walter Cronkite Dead

Another icon from my childhood is gone. Because of the internet and cable TV there is no one like Walter Cronkite today. Whether I was at home or at my grandparents' homes evening meal time was organized around his evening news broadcast. His influence on the events of the day was enormous. I was too young to remember his reporting on the assassination of President Kennedy; I do remember his reporting on the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and MLK, Jr., as well as his series on Watergate and his editorial comment that the Vietnam war was unwinnable. And I remember watching Dan Rather getting slugged at the Democratic Convention in 1968 and Cronkite commenting on it. We also watched his daily coverage of the first moon landing while at school. Uncle Walter will be missed.

New Brethren Church in Twin Cities

Dunker Journal links approvingly to a new Brethren church plant in the twin cities, noting that it doesn't sound like "they will be opening the circle." The church web site is under construction and nowhere mentions that the church is affiliated with the Brethren Church, a sister denomination to the Church of the Brethren that broke away as a progressive group in 1882 only to be swept by the fundamentalist movement soon after. In any case there is nothing on the website but this list of recent sermon topics:

REVELATION

11/16/08	Introduction (1:1-3)
11/23/08	Jesus Revealed (1:4-20)
11/30/08	The Seven Churches I (2:1-29)
12/07/08	The Seven Churches II (3:1-22)
12/14/08	Setting the Stage – The Throne of God (4:1-5:14)
12/21/08	Is Jesus Really the Reason for the Season?
12/30/08	Preparing for the New Year
01/04/09	Reading the Judgment: The Seven Seals I (6:1-6:17)
01/11/09	Reading the Judgment: The Seven Seals II (7:1-8:5)
01/18/09	Announcing the Judgment: The Seven Trumpets I (8:6-9:21)
01/25/09	Announcing the Judgment: The Seven Trumpets II (10:1-11:19)
02/01/09	The Ancient Cosmic Battle (12:1-14:20)
02/08/09	Pouring out the Judgment: The Seven Bowls (15:1-16:21)
02/15/09	The Judgment of a Culture of Greed, Lust, and Power (17:1-18:24)
02/22/09	The Battle of Armageddon (19:1-20:6)
03/01/09	The Last World War: The Summing Up of All Things in Christ (20:7-22:6)
03/08/09	Revelation for the Church (22:7-21)

Definitely doesn't sound like my cup of tea, but I wish them well. Interestingly, I am just finishing up a series on the "books of the Bible I don't like and why," and Revelation is my last book.

The Limits of Liberal Tolerance

From Reason, Faith, and Revolution by Terry Eagleton:

The liberal principles of freedom and tolerance are dogmas, and are none the worse for that. It is simply a liberal paradox that there must be something close-minded about open-mindedness and something inflexible about tolerance. Liberalism cannot afford to be over-liberal when it comes to its own founding principles, which is one reason the West is caught between treating its illiberal enemies justly and crushing their testicles. As British prime minister Tony Blair remarked in a classic piece of self-deconstruction: "Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain Britain. So conform to it, or don't come here." (p. 127)

One Big Happy Ant Family

I loved this BBC story about the ant super-colonies that live on different continents and how they all get along:

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

...Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the "Californian large", extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.

But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.

Researchers in Japan and Spain led by Eiriki Sunamura of the University of Tokyo found that Argentine ants living in Europe, Japan and California shared a strikingly similar chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles.

But further experiments revealed the true extent of the insects' global ambition.

The team selected wild ants from the main European super-colony, from another smaller one called the Catalonian super-colony which lives on the Iberian coast, the Californian super-colony and from the super-colony in west Japan, as well as another in Kobe, Japan.

They then matched up the ants in a series of one-on-one tests to see how aggressive individuals from different colonies would be to one another.

Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn't get on with those from the Iberian colony.

But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends.

These ants rubbed antennae with one another and never became aggressive or tried to avoid one another.

World domination? Global ambition? Whoever wrote this story has been watching too many old sci-fi movies. These ants and their social behaviors are pretty amazing, though.

Two in One Day

Two of the pop icons of my youth are gone. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Each was tormented by a different kind of demon as adults. May they rest in peace.

And That's the Way It Is

I grew up as a child watching the most trusted man in America deliver the evening news. Walter Cronkite obviously had his biases and faults, but he understood that it was the job of the journalist not only to report the news but to hold the people he reported on accountable to the Truth. Truth with a capital T. There was such a thing then. I still remember watching the reporting out of Vietnam and it was clear that no matter what LBJ or Nixon was saying about the war, the pictures on the screen were telling the real unpretty story. Cronkite reported the Truth about the war.

The MSM long ago lost its belief in the Truth, or at least its belief that it is part of the media's job to dig for the truth and hold officials accountable to the truth. We make fun of Fox News' 'fair and balanced' moniker but only because it is so unabashedly brazen about the fact that what matters on Fox is not the Truth but that their 'truth' outshouts everyone else's truth. It's crude post-modernism on display every night on Fox.

But everyone else does it too now. The media's job is not to report the Truth but to report what competing interests say the truth is. Let the listener try and figure out the Truth if they dare, or care.

Even NPR is apparently too cowed by its corporate sponsors. Is waterboarding torture? When the North Vietnamese were doing it to American soldiers it was torture. By every known human rights convention waterboarding is torture. When Jack Bauer does it on 24 it is torture, vitally necessary to save the free world of course, but still torture. But when the Bush administration does it suddenly it isn't torture. Now it all depends on who is doing it and why they are doing it and whether they have lofty motives. So NPR bars its reporters from using the word 'torture' when they are talking about what the Bush Administration was doing to terror suspects. That would be telling the Truth and reporters can't do that any more.

Glenn Greenwald has a lot more to say about this here.

Beauty Everywhere We Look

A few weeks ago in a Sunday message about the contingency of life and living life with gratitude I made reference to Jonathan Edwards' most famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. I don't share Edward's view that we sinners are in essence being dangled by God above the fiery furnace and at any moment God could justly let us drop. I do, however, think that when we ponder the contingency of life it feels something like being thusly dangled.

In any case a post by Rod Dreher about beauty (and how the aim of artistic expression with regards to beauty as a value or goal has changed over time) got me to thinking about Edwards again.

Beauty was everywhere we look in Edwards' worldview. God was beautiful, love was beautiful, nature was beautiful, the virtuous life was beautiful. Beauty was, for Edwards, both an ontological reality and the ultimate goal of the spiritual life.

What I really liked about Edwards' take on beauty was the way the creation was a spilling-out or overflowing of God's beauty into the world so that the divine beauty was reflected everywhere. God's beauty was the animating force in the universe.

While Edwards could preach hell-fire and brimstone, fear was not what motivated him and he hoped it was not what motivated others to live virtuously. It was the beauty of God that drew us to Him (as he would have said it), a beauty that was always all around us if we have eyes to see.

This was Edwards at his most sublime.

Let the Earth Bear Witness

Via Andrew Sullivan, a music and video tribute from the Waterboys' Dublin singer, Mike Scott to those protesting for freedom in Iran.



Whatever happens from here on out in Iran, we know now that Iran is not just President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards. When we deal with Iran on the world stage, as we must, and when we think about the future of this country, we must remember these people who also want a different Iran. They have been truly inspiring.

The Party of Family Values

What do Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada and Governor Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina have in common? A lot. They are were both 2012 presidential hopefuls. They are both right-wing Christians. They are both members of the "C Street", a Christian Bible-study group on Capitol Hill. There is something else too...

They are both in big trouble with their wives.

Unalloted in Minnesota

I listened to Governor Tim Pawlenty today as he announced his specific proposals for unallotting government funded programs like aid to cities and counties and money for healthcare funding for the poor. The Republican governor and the Democratic-controlled legislature were unable to agree on a way to balance the budget for the next 2 years. The Dems proposed raising taxes and the Governor vetoed their bills. Therefore, a MN statute allows the governor to unilaterally balance the budget by de-funding programs.

The Governor said repeatedly in his talk that just as Minnesota families were tightening their budgets in the face of the recession, so the government should do the same.

This kind of thinking sounds perfectly reasonable but is totally wrong. Imagine if the federal government took that approach. Our deep recession would quickly turn into another great depression. Now is precisely the time when the government needs to step up spending to employ more people and keep the economy from going into a free-fall.

The states cannot fund their budgets with deficit spending like the federal government can, but they can raise taxes to maintain services. Minnesota DFLers (our particular version of Dems) proposed a slight tax increase on the wealthiest Minnesotans along with some small budget cuts in order to balance the budget. The governor, who is now essentially running for President, wouldn't hear of it.

Instead, funding to colleges, hospitals, cities and counties will be cut. People will lose their jobs, thus deepening the state's financial difficulties. State budget belt-tightening in a recession sounds so reasonable but is totally counter-productive.

Megachurch Members Give Less

I see an article was making the rounds Sunday about megachurches and those who attend them. A survey found that megachurch participants are younger, they give less, and they volunteer less:

Conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford Seminary and Leadership Network, the survey of nearly 25,000 people who attend 12 U.S. megachurches was conducted from January through August 2008. It is billed as the largest representative national study of that religious demographic to date.

Each week, an estimated 5 million Americans attend about 1,300 U.S. megachurches, defined in the study as Protestant churches with attendance of 2,000 or more.

To compare the megachurch data to Protestant churches of all sizes, the study relied on the U.S. Congregational Life Study of 2001.

Among the survey's highlights was that many megachurchgoers don't exhibit the behavior the churches expect of members: Nearly 45 percent of megachurch congregants never volunteer at the church, and 32 percent give little or no money to the church.

Is any of this a surprise? Many people go to megachurches so they can be a fly on the wall. They can participate as a spectator. Unless they choose to get involved in some aspect of church life, like a small group or a children's program, they will unlikely step forward to volunteer. In addition they look at the campus, the multiple staff, the professional quality music, etc. and understandably assume that money isn't an issue for the church. Their money isn't really needed. And if they are younger and have children they might not have very much to give anyway of their money or their time.

I don't even think this is a problem limited to megachurches. I don't have the statistics in front of me but Catholics, who typically attend parishes larger than their Protestant neighbors, give less. Over the years I have heard many a priest or active Catholic parishioner bemoan the small percentage of active participants in their parish.

It is just much harder to be a fly on the wall in a small church. And the uninvolved tend not to sit in the pews on Sunday mornings for very long before they become inactive and mostly non-attending members. Those who stay are committed and give more of their time and money.

Why Are Republicans Afraid of a Public Health Care Option?

It is amusing to me to see all the Republican Party fulminations about a public option that would compete with private insurance companies to provide health care to Americans. What are they afraid of? Typically Republican politicians deride the government that provides them a paycheck for, among other things, its bloated bureaucracy, its incompetence, its inability to deliver goods and services as efficiently as the private sector.

But this isn't what we are hearing from them about health care. It appears that what they are afraid of if the government provides a choice in health care coverage is that the government will provide better and more efficient care than private insurance companies can provide. They are not worried that the government will waste taxpayers money or make a mess of the health care system; they are worried that the government will out-compete the private sector.

Isn't that rich?

Bush's Deficit, Obama's Problem

A New York Times article today shows that no matter what Republicans may be claiming now, the exploding budget deficit can still be laid squarely at the feet of former President Bush:

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

Obama's stimulus package is responsible for only 7% of that swing, his spending proposals on items like healthcare and the environment another 3%. The rest of it is the result of policies hatched by Bush and an economic downturn largely caused by Bush.

Nevertheless, it is now Obama's problem and as the article points out he hasn't really started to address it yet. Nor have the Republicans whose own suggested fixes would only make the deficit worse.

Any solution is almost certainly going to include reigning-in entitlements - my entitlements, as a 50-year old baby-boomer who knows that his retirement benefits are going to need to take a hit. Thank God for my Church of the Brethren pension! That was a joke, son.

But I also hope that part of the solution to the deficit problem comes in the form of a significant gasoline tax. A big gas tax would not only help pay for the deficit but it would also make a dent in the global warming crisis. And, I can't imagine the bailouts of Chrysler and GM and their forced retooling to make smaller, more fuel-efficient cars making any sense unless gas prices are a lot higher. Who is going to buy these small cars if gas is cheap? I would imagine that $5 a gallon is going to need to be the floor to get us to the kind of psychological shift that really changes driving and buying habits. We are going to need a gas tax to get us there.

My Amazon Order Has Shipped

But I didn't order anything through Amazon. But wait, way back in September of last year I ordered The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context. That was so long ago I wonder if it can still be relevant!

In the Garden Today

Another Nepeta in the foreground with 'Moonshine' Yarrow blooming in the background.












I seem unable to enlarge this photo, but there is a Ruby-throated Hummingbird at the feeder.

The Ego and the Id

I am reading Ken Wilber's Integral Spirituality and he makes an interesting claim about Freud's famous insights regarding the workings of the ego and the id: Freud never used the terms ego and id:

Not many people know that Freud never--not once--used the terms "ego" or "id." When Freud wrote, he used the actual pronouns "the I" and "the it" (das Ich, "the I," and das Es, "the it.") Strachey (James Strachey who gave us the definitive English translations of Freud) decided to use the Latin words "ego" and "id" to make Freud sound more scientific...

Perhaps Freud's best-known summary of the goal of psychotherapy is "Where id was, there ego shall be." What Freud actually said was: "Where it was, there I shall become." (p. 123)

Which, as Wilber says, is a beautiful summary of what happens when we do shadow work. We find the alienated part of ourselves, the parts we have turned into "its" and we re-own them and make them part of our I.

I have really appreciated Wilber's larger point in this chapter that the phenomenological insights of Freud (if not necessarily his explanation of why it happens) and Jung about our shadow and how much of it develops in early childhood is one of the great modern and Western contributions to knowledge of self. We can't grow-up spiritually without learning about our own shadow and where it came from. Wilber repeatedly says that the great meditative traditions, East and West, don't have any way of helping us do this work. They can help make us aware of the presence of our emotions, like our anger, but if we don't do the therapeutic work (learning and working through our history) we are likely to just become more serenely angry.

His summary description of the way shadow works was also very good:

We began with anger as a sample shadow-impulse. The anger starts out as a 1st-person reality (my anger; I am angry, I have anger). For various reasons--fear, self-restriction, super-ego judgments, past trauma, etc.--I contract away from my anger and push it on the other side of the I-boundary, hoping thereby not to get punished for having this horrible emotion. "My anger" has now become "anger that I am looking at, or talking to, or experiencing, but it is not my anger!"(Jay: it becomes 2nd person anger) ...If I push further, that anger becomes 3rd-person: I am no longer even on speaking terms with my own anger. I might still feel this anger somehow--I know somebody is angry as hell, but since it simply cannot be me, it must be you, or him, or her, or it. Come to think of it John is always mad at me! Which is such a shame, since I myself never get angry at him, or at anybody, really." (p. 135)

Funny and too true.

In the Garden Today

This is one of about a half-dozen members of the Nepeta (catmint) family that we have in our garden. They are just coming into bloom now. Every year I have to divide this particular plant in half because it spreads so fast that it would take over the entire bed it is in within just a couple of years. It stays put, though, because when it starts to bloom the hummingbirds begin showing up in force.


Hostas are really beautiful right now. This one is "On Stage" and it is aptly named at 3 feet high and 3-4 feet across.










This is "June" with "Guacamole" on the left and an unknown - to me -member of the Hosta family on the right.






We have a crop of baby squirrels in the garden feeding at the base of the bird feeders but also working diligently to try and defeat the squirrel-proof design of the feeders. They have fresh bushy tails and are as yet unafraid of picture-taking humans like me.



Finally, when is a wild flower a weed? When it shows up unbidden in your garden. But since Mary Ann hasn't planted her annuals in the front of this bed yet, I allowed this Bladder Campion to grow. Today is its last day, though, since it is past its flowering prime and is starting to drop its seed-laden bladders to the ground.

Evolving Values Systems

Several months ago the leadership team at our church read The Emerging Church by Bruce Sanguin. Sanguin is pastor at Canadian Memorial Church in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Emerging Church (not to be confused with the emergent Christian movement), is a reflection and manual about congregational leadership development from a progressive Christian perspective. I highly recommend it, as well as another book that Sanguin draws on heavily, Evoking Change by Anna Christie. Christie is a pastor and therapist and has written a great book about how to grow our emotional health and intelligence, and about how important this is in the church. I wish I had read these books years ago.

In any case, tucked in the middle of Sangin's book is a brief discussion about Spiral Dynamics. Spiral Dynamics was pioneered by the late Dr. Clare Graves, a developmental psychologist, who mapped out a historical time-line of the evolution of worldviews and value systems. Don Beck, a student of Graves, color-coded the map and made it easier for the lay person to understand. According to Graves, for the first humans basic survival was all that mattered. For much of human history they existed at the Arhaic/Survivalist Value System (Beige). Then about 50,000 years ago clans and tribes formed and the Tribal Value System (Purple) replaced basic survival as the over-riding value. The gods existed to protect and help the clan; magic could be used to invoke the Gods. Purple was followed by Red, the Warrior Values System (10,000 yrs ago), the Blue, the Traditional Values System (5,000 yrs ago), Orange, the Modernist Value System (300 yrs ago), Green, the Postmodernist Value System (150 years ago); in the last 3 decades two further values systems have begun to emerge: Yellow, the Integral Values System, and finally Turquoise, the Mystical Values System. You can read much more about Spiral Dynamics here.

Sanguin used Spiral Dynamics to make two points. One, to buttress his case that spirituality is evolving; there is clear historical evidence that we are progressing spiritually. Two, to make the point that individuals and congregations have different colors, or worldviews and value systems. This is important to remember, he says, because although two people may be reading the same scripture text, they are reading it through the eyes of their dominant color or values system. And if they are in different colors they are understanding the text in very different ways. Further, according to Sanguin and Spiral Dynamics, there is no way in the world that a person at a lower rung or spiral can understand it at a higher level. They can evolve over time - that's the good news - but until they do they can't understand a person or congregation who is reading or operating at a higher level of the spiral.

At first blush the whole notion of Spiral Dynamics rubs me the wrong way. It sounds and feels very elitist to me. It also meshes well with a post-modern perspective on the world which also often rubs me the wrong way because it is so frequently used to deny the existence of any truth whatsoever, or to simply dismiss the need for conversation. What is the point of talking if we each have our own truth and we can't really hope to understand each other?

But I have had the experience of sitting with people who have heard my messages and then listened as they tell me what they just heard, and thought to myself, "We are not living in the same world." Sanquin and Spiral Dynamics would say that we are living out of different colors. There is a certain sense in which this does feel elitist, particularly if I presume that they are understanding at a lower level than me. And would I, I wonder, know it if I was the one who was at the lower level? I think not.

I would like to believe, as well, that we are evolving spiritually. I don't think human nature changes but I hope that human values are evolving towards a higher plane. I think the evidence supports this view; after-all there is no one in the western world today who sanctions slavery. No one can deny, I think, that we still have the capacity to do great evil, and our progress has given us the technology to inflict irreparable harm on the earth and its inhabitants, but I think our sights have been raised in terms of what it means to be human and a member of spaceship Earth.

This whole concept does raise an interesting question of whether someone like the Buddha or Jesus was able to transcend the highest values system of their day? Were they just the most enlightened individuals within their day, but still bound by the limits of their (Blue) worldview? Or were they already seeing and living at the highest (Turquoise) level. My guess is that with Spiral Dynamics the answer would be that they were bound by the worldview of their day. I would tend to agree. I just don't think it is very helpful to blame Jesus or Buddha, or Paul, for not knowing everything and getting everything right. It is enough for me to let them be truly inspired visionaries for their day and admit that they were wrong about some things, from the perspective of our more evolved worldview.

Packing Heat in Church

A Kentucky pastor is inviting his congregants to bring their guns to church on the Saturday before the Fourth of July:

"We're just going to celebrate the upcoming theme of the birth of our nation," said pastor Ken Pagano. "And we're not ashamed to say that there was a strong belief in God and firearms — without that this country wouldn't be here."

I just came across this quote in the wonderful book by Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate:

This brand of piety is horrified by the sight of the female breast, but considerably less appalled by the obscene inequalities between rich and poor. It laments the death of a fetus, but is apparently undisturbed by the burning to death of children in Iraq or Afghanistan in the name of U. S. global dominion. By and large, it worships a God fashioned blasphemously in its own image--a clean-shaven, short-haired, gun-toting, sexually obsessive God with a special regard for that ontologically privileged place of the globe just south of Canada and north of Mexico, rather than the Yahweh who is homeless, faceless, stateless, and imageless, who prods his people out of their comfortable settlement into the trackless terrors of the desert, and who brusquely informs them that their burnt offerings stink in his nostrils.

But maybe he finds the smell of gun powder pleasing.