The Beginning of the End

For opponents of gay marriage. The significance of today's ruling by the California Federal Appeals Court that Prop 8 was unconstitutional is not only that it is what supporters of gay marriage like me hoped for, but more importantly that it was decided by a judge appointed by Ronald Reagan and argued jointly on behalf of the plaintiffs by noted conservative and liberal attorneys. This puts a lie to Family Research Council president Tony Perkins who said after the ruling that "far Left" was "using liberal courts to obtain a political goal they cannot obtain at the ballot box." What liberal court would that be?

This case will likely make its way to the Supreme Court, and everybody knows the current Court leans far right, but it is difficult to imagine the swing votes on this court siding with social conservatives. Getting the constitutionality of gay marriage into the federal courts is the best thing that could have happened. It is very much reminiscent of past courts striking down discriminatory laws in the civil rights era.

Religious communities will continue to be able to choose to not marry gays and lesbians, which is their wrong choice but protected right. But eventually they will no longer be able to legislate their view of morality on the rest of us. I am very much looking forward to the day when I can officially officiate at gay weddings.

Ban the Burqa?

Claire Berlinski has a thoughtful post in the National Review online about the evolution of her thinking on the veiling of women. She lives in and reports from Turkey. This was her thinking when she moved:

One woman here told me of her humiliation in childhood when her family was ejected from a swimming pool because her mother was veiled. I believed her. All stories of childhood humiliation sound alike and are told in the same way. It was perverse, she said to me, that she should be free to cover her head in an American university but not in a Turkish one. It seemed perverse to me as well. It would to any American; politically, we all descend from men and women persecuted for their faith. I was, I decided, on the side of these women.

...The argument that the garment is not a religious obligation under Islam is well-founded but irrelevant; millions of Muslims the world around believe that it is, and the state is not qualified to be in the business of Koranic exegesis. The choice to cover one’s face is for many women a genuine expression of the most private kind of religious sentiment. To prevent them from doing so is discriminatory, persecutory, and incompatible with the Enlightenment traditions of the West. It is, moreover, cruel to demand of a woman that she reveal parts of her body that her sense of modesty compels her to cover; to such a woman, the demand is as tyrannical, humiliating, and arbitrary as the passage of a law dictating that women bare their breasts.

This is her thinking now:

There are already many neighborhoods in Europe where scantily dressed women are not safe... Parents in these neighborhoods ask gynecologists to testify to their daughters’ virginity. Polygamy and forced marriages are commonplace. Many girls are banned from leaving the house at all. According to French-government statistics, rapes in the housing projects have risen between 15 and 20 percent every year since 1999. In these neighborhoods, women have indeed begun veiling only to escape harassment and violence. In the suburb of La Courneuve, 77 percent of veiled women report that they wear the veil to avoid the wrath of Islamic morality patrols. We are talking about France, not Iran.

...The debate in Europe now concerns primarily the burqa, not less restrictive forms of veiling, such as the headscarf. The sheer outrageousness of the burqa makes it an easy target, as does the political viability of justifying such a ban on security grounds, particularly in the era of suicide bombings, even if such a justification does not entirely stand up to scrutiny. But the burqa is simply the extreme point on the continuum of veiling, and all forced veiling is not only an abomination, but contagious: Unless it is stopped, the natural tendency of this practice is to spread, for veiling is a political symbol as well as a religious one, and that symbol is of a dynamic, totalitarian ideology that has set its sights on Europe and will not be content until every woman on the planet is humbled, submissive, silent, and enslaved.

...Veiling cannot be disambiguated from the problem of Islam’s conception of women, and this conception is directly tied to gender apartheid and the subjugation and abuse of women throughout the Islamic world, the greatest human-rights problem on the planet, bar none. Nor can the practice of veiling be divorced from the concept of namus — an ethical category that is often translated as “honor,” and if your first association with this word is “honor killing,” it is for a reason: That is the correct association. The path from veiling to the practice of killing unveiled women is not nearly so meandering as you might think.

It could be that I am stretching here, but I couldn't help but read this and think of the Church of the Brethren tradition of women having their heads covered. It is mostly gone but still practiced in some parts of the Brethren world. The argument for it, of course, is that it is scriptural. But the deeper question is how much is this scriptural argument in its context and in its present day practice is tied up with a patriarchal view of women that sees them as either inferior or dangerous?

I am sympathetic to the women who argue from whatever religious tradition that veiling is an act of liberation or personal religious choice. The problem is that there are often men who are a part of these traditions who see it as a woman's appropriate duty to God and religion. And they too often have the power in families and religious communities. Our free choices are rarely as free as we think they are.

Speaking of Moral Examples

I have intentionally been out of the 24 hour news and blogosphere cycle for awhile. As I dip my toes back in one of the first stories I read concerns Shirley Sherrod, the USDA official who was forced out of office after a Washington Times columnist and Fox News regular passed on a snippet of an old speech she gave that had her talking about not wanting to help a white farmer because of his race. Sherrod is black.

Apparently without even checking the facts of the story the Obama Administration dropped her like a hot potato. But if you actually watch the extended clip of her speech you see that she was telling the story of how she had to overcome her learned prejudices and learn to treat all people equally. She is telling a great story about her growth as a moral person.

Shirley Sherrod is exactly the kind of person we need working in government. It is embarrassing anyone in the Administration took seriously something from Fox News and disgraceful that she was let go. Hopefully Obama will quickly make amends.

On Being a Good Example

Yesterday I started reading Philip Gulley's If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus. In his opening chapter he tells the story of being a young person in church hearing a preacher say "Some people will tell you Jesus is only an example for how we should live. But anyone can be an example."

Thirty years later Gulley says he knows better than ever that this isn't true. Living the kind of virtuous life that makes one a worthy example for others to follow is very difficult. To say that it somehow diminishes the story of Jesus if he is 'only' a moral example is to ignore the simple fact that we rarely encounter individuals who so embody the qualities associated with Godly virtue. In our lifetimes we are fortunate if we come under the influence of a few who come close.

If Jesus was one of these rare individuals - and I suspect he was - it is not hard to understand why he would have attracted both followers and enemies. Authentic individuals who actually live by the highest values attract company. We want to be in their presence. We want to learn from them. We want to be like them.

They also attract enemies because they have authentic power, not supernatural power or power obtained through violence, wealth or stealth, but the kind of power that comes naturally from becoming during their life-times a brighter and clearer light, the kind of light that stands in sharp contrast to and exposes the corruption and dishonesty and violence that so often are the tools of those who are in power.

It has been my experience that taking Jesus off the Only Son of God pedestal and making him fully human actually makes it much for difficult to be a follower. What we are being called to do as followers is not to believe in him but to live as he lived. Imagine what the world would be like if Christians simply lived more simply, or forswore the use of violence of any kind. The world as we know it today would truly be turned upside down. We would say the kingdom of God has come on earth.

Am I asking too much? The world is fallen and we need the grace of God to save us? Then we are looking for the easy way out - or up. Making Jesus into our ticket to heaven is cheap grace. Letting him be an uncommonly virtuous son of God who challenges the rest of us sons and daughters of God by word and example to live as he lived calls us to a lifetime of growth and transformation.

Oh, that Jesus would 'just' be an example that we spent our lifetimes emulating.

Fish Story

We have a children's story in worship every week and thankfully I have nothing to do with scheduling it and we have many people willing to take a turn on the schedule. But last week when the children came forward for a story no adult stood up so I took an impromptu turn.

What to talk about? Well I told a story from my fly-fishing experience the previous week. I asked the children if they ever fish or like to fish. Then I told them that I like to fish and I usually make it a practice to 'catch and release' the fish I catch, and I explained what that meant.

Then I related that during the past week I had caught a fish that did not survive as I brought it into my net. I talked about being sad about the fish dying. I then told them that I kept the fish, brought it home, and ate it for dinner.

I asked them if they liked to eat fish or burgers or chicken. I asked them if they knew that the meat they ate was once a living animal. I talked some about how important it is for us to know that we live in a web of life where some animals give their lives so that other animals can live. I finished up by talk about my feelings of reverence for life and explained what that word meant to me.

Did they get it? I had one parent relate to me that their child had not a clue what I was talking about apart from fishing. I had another parent tell me that they thought I was making a commercial for PETA. Ha. I had another parent tell me that just the previous week their child had said to them after watching a tv show that had chickens running around that the child had said "chicken, we eat chicken" which had prompted an interesting conversation and gratitude from the parent that I had picked up the subject while it was fresh on the child's mind.

I have vivid childhood memories of working on relatives farms and learning first hand that the animals I enjoyed (cows) or feared (pigs) would soon be on the dinner table. I have the same kind of childhood memories from fishing and hunting. I learned about the cycle of life; I learned about reverence as I watched animals die so that I could eat.

I also have vivid memories of taking my suburban raised daughter to a farm when she was a youngster and her breaking into tears as she protested that "my milk does not come from a cow it comes from the store." Living in an urban area there can be a certain disconnect between the food we eat and the real life and work that brings us that food.

I think we have a responsibility in our religious communities to somehow make that connection. Whether it is our food or our consumer lifestyle or our energy consumption: some animal or some plant or some person is giving their life so we can live. I think about that every time I go fishing.

The Tragic Nature of Human Life for the Earth

Andrew Sullivan links to gruesome video and sobering statistics on the number of birds killed by wind farms:

The American Bird Conservancy estimated in 2003 that between 10,000 and 40,000 birds were killed each year at wind farms across the country, about 80 percent of which were songbirds and 10 percent birds of prey. "With the increased capacity over the last seven years, we now estimate that 100,000 – 300,000 birds are killed by wind turbines each year," said Conservancy spokesman Robert Johns. By our math, that comes to 274 to 822 birds a day killed by wind farms across the country.

For some reason this Henry James saying came to mind:

Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths--the depths of an essential dearth in which its subjects roots are plunged...The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.

I don't know how it is possible to ponder what it means to be human for the rest of life on the planet and not have a sense of tragedy. We are fouling the Gulf of Mexico with our oil and this is only the most immediate and visible cost of our addiction to oil. We are doing the same thing to our mountains and streams with coal mining.

We are told we need to move to more earth-friendly forms of energy: like wind. Wind farms are sprouting up all around the country. And killing staggering numbers of birds.

There is no escaping the conclusion that even when we are acting at our best, which isn't very often, we are exacting a terrible toll on the planet. And there really isn't much we can do about it except to strive to keep our environmental footprint to a minimum, protect and preserve as much of nature as we can, and grieve for the birds and fish who die so we can live.

How Diverse Can a Church Be?

James McGrath asks this question on his blog: how diverse can a church be? I think there are couple of ways of thinking about an answer. One is that it depends a lot on the emotional health an intelligence of the people in leadership at the church. Emotionally healthy people have clearly self-defined values and boundaries and are not threatened by people who have different beliefs. If the leadership is healthy they can model healthy dialogue and conflict and the congregation can tolerate, perhaps even welcome, a certain amount of diversity. On the other hand if the leadership isn't emotionally healthy then they will probably be threatened by diversity and seek to enforce adherence to a more narrow theology or doctrinal position. (And this has nothing to do with liberal or conservative theology; it is true across the spectrum. Emotionally healthy leadership seems to attract more diversity of thought and opinion around whatever the spiritual orientation is.)

Another way to think about it is what I learned from evangelical church planters whose training I attended nearly 20 years ago. At the time there was no training available for liberal church planters, at least not that I was aware of. The one teaching that was driven home over and over was that the group of people planting the church must all agree on essential matters of theology and doctrine. Therefore, I was taught, it was very important to hammer out a set of core values that clearly define where you stand on how you read scripture, understand Jesus, think about culture-war issues like homosexuality, etc. The leadership needs to agree on these issues and then when the church gets underway new members also need to be in essential agreement. It is better to say to someone "You know there is another church down the road that might better meet your needs" rather than be so desperate for new people that you welcome those who have fundamental disagreements about core issues. I heard these trainers say that there would be more than enough diversity to deal with even among those who are in agreement on core values.

For the most part we followed this advise as we started Open Circle. I knew starting the church that there were certain issues that were important to me that I no longer wanted to have to be fighting about in a congregation: gays would be welcome, I would not be interpreting scripture in a literal way, and Christianity was not the only valid spiritual path. I was clear about these issues as I talked to potential members and those who stayed were in agreement on these issues. When we had enough of a core group we worked out a set of core values and then we clearly published these in all of our literature. We still do.

In some ways our congregation is not very diverse. We are mostly white, theologically and politically liberal. In other ways we are quite diverse. We have a lot diversity in religious background: Catholic, many flavors of Protestant, pagan, atheist, Jewish. We have a growing diversity in age. We started out with mostly boomer individuals and families; now we run the gamut from young families to seniors, singles, cohabitating and married couple with and without children, gay and straight. We have city dwellers, suburbanites and folks coming from small towns and the country, some driving 30 miles to get to church.

I have found it to be true that even with clearly defined core values there is plenty of diversity that presents continuing opportunities for dialogue and challenges for the congregation as we chart our way forward. We have constant conversations around the issues like these: what does it mean to be a Christian or a follower of Jesus today; how do we relate to our denomination, The Church of the Brethren; how do we best deploy our people resources to serve church and community? We have some strong differences of opinion in the congregation about these issues.

I wish we were more racially diverse than we are and interestingly enough, we were more racially diverse when we started than we are now 17 years later. I am not sure why that is but I would guess that part of it has to do with the fact that I do not have great cross-cultural skills and it is not one of the passions that drives me as a pastor, like say being welcoming to glbt folk does.

It is interesting to note that my answer to this question doesn't even touch on some of the issues found in this response.

Two Words for Harry Reid

Everything I read this morning seems to suggest that Nevada Senator Harry Reid was the big winner in last night's Republican party primary as the looniest candidate, Sharron Angle, won. I have two words of warning for Reid: Michelle Bachmann.

An Inadequate Response to Trouble and Disaster

I am with Bob Herbert on the joblessness crisis and the lack of adequate response from Obama and Congress:

Policy makers have acted as if they are unaware of the magnitude of this crisis. They have behaved as though somehow, through some economic magic perhaps, or the power of prayer, this ocean of joblessness will just disappear. That’s a pipe dream.

Even if we somehow experienced a sudden, extraordinary surge in job growth (which no one is expecting), it would take a very long time just to get back to the level of employment that we had when the recession started in late-2007.

...For all the money that has been spent so far, the Obama administration and Congress have not made the kinds of investments that would put large numbers of Americans back to work and lead to robust economic growth. What is needed are the same things that have been needed all along: a vast program of infrastructure repair and renewal; an enormous national investment in clean energy aimed at transforming the way we develop and use energy in this country; and a transformation of the public schools to guarantee every child a first-rate education in a first-rate facility.

This would be a staggeringly expensive and difficult undertaking and would entail a great deal of shared sacrifice. (It would also require an end to our insane waste of resources on mindless and endless warfare.) The benefits over the long term would be enormous.

Bold and effective leadership would have put us on this road to a sustainable future. Instead, we’re approaching a dead end.

The problem is that even though there is lots of anger on the street that anger is mostly misdirected, i.e. the Tea Party, or misinformed like those who are blaming Obama for not being angry enough about the gulf oil spill. But for all the throw the bums out anger on the street the politicians in Washington don't feel that anger every day; what they feel every day is touch of money that streams into their campaign coffers from the big players in finance and business who have everyday access to Washington politicians. These people are not personally hurting. What is a little unemployment to them? What they worry about and pay for access to talk about is regulations and tax breaks and the threat of inflation that is out there somewhere if we don't tame the deficit. So we get a tepid response to the real and festering unemployment crisis. And despite an epic disaster in the gulf it is still drill-baby-drill, put off only briefly until the cameras go away from the gulf.

There is only one person who has the bully pulpit and who could make the case for a real jobs bill and a real energy policy. I am still hopeful but also increasingly worried that another crisis (or two) is going to be wasted.

The Un-Empty Nest

Meagan moved back home last night from St. Peter as she ends a job in Mankato and begins a new job next week in Bloomington. Fiance Michael and monster dog Kato are residing at Michael's parents' home in Burnsville. Suddenly a bedroom is cluttered, we are buying milk again and there is already a whirlwind of activity in and out.

She voiced her unhappiness about this situation last night and it is hard not to share it. However, she is very fortunate in this economy to have found a decent paying job and her mother and I are hopeful that she will be able to save some money leading up to next summer's wedding. Then we can go back to being the empty-nesters we have grown accustomed to being.

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up

Was Jesus a cynic-like sage or an apocalyptic prophet? Crossan or Allison? Maybe he was both. Adam Gopnik offers this analogy in an article in The New Yorker What Did Jesus Do?:

And yet a single figure who “projects” two personae at the same time, or in close sequence, one dark and one dreamy, is a commonplace among charismatic prophets. That’s what a charismatic prophet is: someone whose aura of personal conviction manages to reconcile a hard doctrine with a humane manner. The leaders of the African-American community before the civil-rights era, for instance, had to be both prophets and political agitators to an oppressed and persecuted people in a way not unlike that of the real Jesus (and all the other forgotten zealots and rabbis whom the first-century Jewish historian Josephus names and sighs over). They, too, tended to oscillate between the comforting and the catastrophic. Malcolm X was the very model of a modern apocalyptic prophet-politician, unambiguously preaching violence and a doctrine of millennial revenge, all fuelled by a set of cult beliefs—a hovering U.F.O., a strange racial myth. But Malcolm was also a community builder, a moral reformer (genuinely distraught over the sexual sins of his leader), who refused to carry weapons, and who ended, within the constraints of his faith, as some kind of universalist. When he was martyred, he was called a prophet of hate; within three decades of his death—about the time that separates the Gospels from Jesus—he could be the cover subject of a liberal humanist magazine like this one. One can even see how martyrdom and “beatification” draws out more personal detail, almost perfectly on schedule: Alex Haley, Malcolm’s Paul, is long on doctrine and short on details; thirty years on, Spike Lee, his Mark, has a full role for a wife and children, and a universalist message that manages to blend Malcolm into Mandela. (As if to prove this point, just the other week came news of suppressed chapters of Haley’s “Autobiography,” which, according to Malcolm’s daughter, “showed too much of my father’s humanity.”)

The whole article is a good read.

Oxymoron Watch

Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary E. Landry on how cooperative BP has been in responding to the oil spill:

BP, from Day 1, has attempted to be very responsive and be a very responsible spiller.

It appears that this is could be an epic environmental disaster for the gulf coast. The only silver lining is that it should kill the Obama plan to open up new coastlines for drilling.

Atheist Delusions

I have been reading David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies. Hart is taking on the so-called New Atheists who argue that Christian history is marked by its violence, ignorance, and opposition to science. I am only about half-way in but I find Hart making some good points.

One is that the Christian way of life was a marked upgrade from the pagan way of life that preceded it. He makes basically the same point here that Rodney Stark makes when Stark talks about how the Christians and pagans responded so differently when the Roman empire was visited by the plagues. The pagans fled for the hills, including the pagan doctors. The Christians stayed and took care of the sick. The result was that many of the pagans who survived converted to Christianity. It was a better way of living.

Why did the Christians stay and take care of the sick? Because at the heart of the Christian story there is a suffering God. On the surface it sounds like a terrible marketing strategy: my God gets hung on a cross, suffers and dies; how great can he be? It is a stumbling block. But in practice it leads to care for the suffering because this is where God is present. So widows are cared for, orphans are cared for, sick people are cared for. Christians are to stop supporting the games where humans suffer and die for sport. Christianity treats humans with more dignity; human consciousness evolves thanks to Christianity.

Christian culture brings us not only hospitals and better care for the suffering but a flourishing of the arts: literature, music, painting and sculpture. Creativity is encouraged; beauty is valued. And so the argument goes. The end of the pagan era was not the end of a golden era replaced by a thousand years of night until the enlightenment once again lit the mind on fire. The Christian era was in many ways a huge step up for humanity.

Another point, on Christian opposition to science, Hart essentially asks this question: in what culture did Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler to name just a few history-making scientists, make their history? Christian culture. Where did they do their work? In universities created and funded by Christian institutions. Where they had remarkable freedom to study and write as they pleased. Hart talks at some length about Galileo's silencing at the hands of Pope Urban VIII over the issue Galileo's support of Copernicus' heliocentric theory. Hart repeats an argument I have read before that Galileo's problem was not in holding a view of the earth's place in the universe that the church found threatening. His problem was that he was a pompous ass who needlessly offended his erstwhile friend and patron the Pope. Even then his punishment was very mild. The pope and the church were not anti-science.

Hart acknowledges the reality of violence at the hands of Christians against Jews, witches, and Muslims, and he discusses the causes and consequences of the "dark ages" in western Christianity after the fall of the Roman empire. He notes, though, that Christian culture thrived in the East, and that this was gifted to the Muslims in their conquests and expansions. He traces the movement of ancient literature and learning back to the West during the Crusades. And that is as far as I have gotten.

One thing I will say for Hart and I am not sure this is a complement, he can match Dawkins and Hitchens snark for snark. The cultured despisers have no monopoly on the ability to hurl witty epithets at opponents.

Although I haven't finished the book my hunch is that Hart is worried about our future as we move into a post-Christian world that is losing its grounding in Christianity's great idea that charity and self-less love is the heart of God and the heart of a better way of living. I don't know the answer to that. Are we falling backward or are we evolving into a better future? I would say there is no way of knowing.

I wonder, though, if it is possible to be a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian and keep hope alive. The theology of Christianity doesn't work so well for me anymore, at least if that theology includes some kind of belief in a supernatural world, but the incarnational side that has God becoming human (in us all) and more particularly God being present in suffering and our calling to respond to that with love and service, that works for me. It is enough for me but is it enough for Christianity and for our culture?

I wonder to what hope there is when so many Christians identify their Christianity with militarism and capitalism. Christianity was once a better idea. It might still be but how would we know when you can't tell Christians apart from anyone else?

Ross sisters - Solid Potato Salad

A friend sent along a copy of this YouTube clip of the Ross sisters performing in 1944. at first I was surprised by the scanty costumes, although even the belly button is covered. Then I was amused at the subject of the music, although they more than do justice to potato salad. And then about one minute in I was pretty much blown away. You don't see this on American Idol.

Capitalism Works When...

It is heavily regulated. E.J. Dionne gets it right:

It is, indeed, naive to expect Wall Street to act as charitably as the Salvation Army, and you have to respect Fabulous Fab's brutal candor about this. Which brings us back to socialism.

Marx's predictions about the inevitable collapse of capitalism have been wrong so far because the system has worked reasonably well, thanks to the rules and redistributive programs established after the Great Depression.

The lesson is that the surest way to save capitalism is to regulate it in the public interest. The surest way to create socialists is for everyone to experience the economic consequences of counting only on the goodness in the hearts of Mr. Potter and Fabrice Tourre.

It was the unwinding of the post-Depression financial regulations, which allowed the free hand of the market to run loose, that brought us the worst recession since the Great Depression. There is a classic lesson here about human nature and it always amazes me that conservatives who supposedly believe in the lessons of human nature don't believe they apply in the economic arena. Or they don't care.

Capitalism only works well when it is heavily regulated by the government.

On the Nest

My Mallard is on the now on the nest pretty much 24/7. I saw her last evening under one of the bird feeders for a few minutes eating then she was back on the nest. She is well protected by the wood pile and the straw that she has piled up around her. I can't get a picture of her except like this one, using a mirror to view out the window - which is above my head - of the back garage door.

The Work of the Devil

Two Washington Post articles on the Catholic Church and the clergy abuse scandal include details of the devil's work. The first is about a planned Latin Mass in DC at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The event organizers, the Paulus Institute, invited a former Vatican official to lead the mass. However the selection of Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos of Colombia has outraged victims' rights group because the Cardinal once praised a French bishop for not telling police about a priest who had sexually assaulted children. Paul King, president of the Paulus Institute knows what is going on here:

At first, King said, divine providence seemed to shine on their efforts. Scheduling conflicts at the Basilica -- the largest Catholic church in North America -- had made it impossible to hold the event in 2008 and 2009. So it was with care that organizers picked April 24, 2010, for their Mass. Weeks later, they realized it coincided with the fifth anniversary of Benedict's papal inauguration.

"It seemed like even the date was selected by God. It was like God himself was blessing our Mass," King said.

Now, he says, a more sinister force seems to be at work. "We've perceived things that are obviously the work of the devil," he noted darkly. "The disruption of this Mass by protesters, for example, is not something we invited."

The second article notes that Thomas Paprocki, an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Chicago, who was announced Tuesday as the church's ninth bishop of Springfield, IL, said three years ago that the principal force behind the waves of abuse lawsuits was "none other than the devil."

What century are we living in?

Who to Support for MN Governor

For those living in MN Dave Mindeman has a great post today on the merits and problems with the DFL candidates. Dave is doing some of the best political blogging in the state.

Spring Clean Up

Spring has come early to Minnesota; warm weather in March has us running about two weeks ahead of schedule. I have been slowly making my way around our gardens cleaning up last year's perennials, removing straw from around the more than 50 shrub roses we have planted and trimming back the dead branches.

There is one area just off the brick patio out back that I haven't touched yet.

What you are looking at here is my winter wood pile that I keep on the patio for outdoor fires. Immediately to the right of it is a small bed that has our only two hybrid roses as well as an herb garden of perennial lavender, thyme, and lemon balm. In Minnesota hybrid tea roses need to be buried completely underground using the Minnesota Tip Method. I usually bury these two but we were back and forth to PA in the late fall as Mary Ann's father declined and I didn't get it done. I piled some straw around them and then we were blessed with heavy snow. I piled it high on the roses and was pleasantly surprised to find them alive this spring.

In any case I usually clean up this area first since it is right off the deck and patio, but not this year. Here is why:



One of our resident Mallards has chosen this spot to lay her eggs. It's kind of amazing to me that she doesn't seem to spend time on them during the day but she comes in every evening and spends the night. Every year Mallards lay eggs somewhere on our property or on a neighbors. They never make it; crows or foxes or skunks get the eggs. We will see if these fare any better this year.

Rowling on Going From Poor To Rich and Paying Taxes

J.K. Rowling has a great piece in the TimesOnline about her indebtedness to the British welfare state and why now that she is rich she doesn't support the party of the rich or simply move out of country to avoid paying taxes:

But wait, some will say. Given that you have long since left single parenthood for marriage and a nuclear family; given that you are now so far from a life dependent on benefits that Private Eye habitually refers to you as Rowlinginnit, why do you care? Surely, nowadays, you are a natural Tory voter?

No, I’m afraid not. The 2010 election campaign, more than any other, has underscored the continuing gulf between Tory values and my own. It is not only that the renewed marginalisation of the single, the divorced and the widowed brings back very bad memories. There has also been the revelation, after ten years of prevarication on the subject, that Lord Ashcroft, deputy chairman of the Conservatives, is non-domiciled for tax purposes.

Now, I never, ever, expected to find myself in a position where I could understand, from personal experience, the choices and temptations open to a man as rich as Lord Ashcroft. The fact remains that the first time I ever met my recently retired accountant, he put it to me point-blank: would I organise my money around my life, or my life around my money? If the latter, it was time to relocate to Ireland, Monaco, or possibly Belize.

I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.

That's a great quote for tax day.

Jennifer Knapp Comes Out

Via Andrew Sullivan I see this Christianity Today interview with singer Jennifer Knapp:

Traveling alone or with your partner?
Knapp: With my partner.
Have you been with the same partner for a long time?
Knapp: About eight years, but I don't want to get into that. For whatever reason the rumor mill [about me being gay] has persisted for so long, I wanted to acknowledge; I don't want to come off as somebody who's shirking the truth in my life. At the same time, I'm intensely private. Even if I were married to a man and had six children, it would be my personal choice to not get that kind of conversation rolling.
I understand. But I'm curious: Were you struggling with same-sex attraction when writing your first three albums? Those songs are so confessional, clearly coming from a place of a person who knows her need for grace and mercy.
Knapp: To be honest, it never occurred to me while writing those songs. I wasn't seeking out a same-sex relationship during that time.
During my college years, I received some admonishment about some relationships I'd had with women. Some people said, "You might want to renegotiate that," even though those relationships weren't sexual. Hindsight being 20/20, I guess it makes sense. But if you remove the social problem that homosexuality brings to the church—and the debate as to whether or not it should be called a "struggle," because there are proponents on both sides—you remove the notion that I am living my life with a great deal of joy. It never occurred to me that I was in something that should be labeled as a "struggle." The struggle I've had has been with the church, acknowledging me as a human being, trying to live the spiritual life that I've been called to, in whatever ramshackled, broken, frustrated way that I've always approached my faith. I still consider my hope to be a whole human being, to be a person of love and grace. So it's difficult for me to say that I've struggled within myself, because I haven't. I've struggled with other people. I've struggled with what that means in my own faith. I have struggled with how that perception of me will affect the way I feel about myself.

I am struck by the persistent questions about her relationship with her partner and wonder if she would get the same kinds of questions if she was straight. But more than that I really like Jennifer Knapp's response that she has been living her life with joy and being gay isn't a struggle for her; or it wouldn't be if the church of Jesus acted like Jesus and welcomed her for the person she is.

The Church and Social Justice

The Washington Post On Faith section is currently featuring a discussion about Glenn Beck's recent statement that Christians should flee churches where social justice is featured. Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler comes to Beck's defense:

My concern is very different. As an evangelical Christian, my concern is the primacy of the Gospel of Christ -- the Gospel that reveals the power of God in the salvation of sinners through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The church's main message must be that Gospel. The New Testament is stunningly silent on any plan for governmental or social action. The apostles launched no social reform movement. Instead, they preached the Gospel of Christ and planted Gospel churches. Our task is to follow Christ's command and the example of the apostles.

The New Testament is stunningly silent on any plan for government or social action. Interesting response. Yes it is true that the New Testament writers don't have much to say about a government plan for social justice. Their government was the pagan Roman Empire and and in the eyes of the empire Christians were a new and suspicious religious movement. Government leaders did not recognize Christianity as legitimate; there was occasional government sanctioned persecution of Christians. The message of the NT writers was either lay low and don't make trouble or pray for the day when Jesus will return and punish the great whore Babylon. It is entirely unsurprising to find the NT silent on any plan for government social action.

What about the Old Testament, though. What about the prophets who railed against religious and political leaders for their injustice? They certainly had a vision for government social action on behalf of the poor and widows. Why isn't that pertinent to the discussion of whether Christians who now find themselves with a political voice and access to political power shouldn't use their voice and power to establish justice through government action? I am always confused about how some evangelical Christians pick and choose their moments to look to the Hebrew Bible for support.

And then there is Mohler's next sentence: The apostles launched no social reform movement. Read this passage from Acts:

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

This sounds a lot like a social reform movement to me. It sounds a lot like a socialist reform movement to me. It sounds like the kind of reform movement you would launch when there is no government sponsored social safety net and you are on your own. It also sounds like a template you might then transfer to the government when, lo and behold, you one day find yourself running it.

I think it is fair to say that early Christians felt a divine imperative to implement social justice reforms within their movement. I think if Rodney Stark is correct they not only did a good job of taking care of their own but they extended that care and hospitality to pagans and this helped win converts to the movement.

But I do not think it is fair to say that because the NT is silent on government-run social welfare programs that Christians should oppose them. There is a Christian social justice imperative rooted in the Hebrew scriptures and reinforced in the NT. There is an explicit reference to ends but not means. We ought to be open, then, to whatever is the most effective method of carrying out that imperative. The unparalleled success of Social Security of lifting the burden of poverty from seniors is but one example of social justice done well by the government, and done in a much more comprehensive way than any patchwork of church charities could ever do. Thanks to liberals, including liberal Christians. Thanks to liberals, including liberal Christians the same will soon be true of health care.

Al Mohler is wrong. Walter Rauschenbusch was right.

Tea Party Demographics

The New York Times surveys Tea Party members and finds, surprise surprise, that they are mostly white, wealthy, and well-educated. They describe themselves as angry at Obama and Washington. What are they angry about? Over half of those surveyed thinks that Obama's policies favor the poor over the wealthy and the middle class. Of course they are also angry about all those bank bailouts. Those poor bankers.

They want smaller government but they also don't want anyone touching their Social Security and Medicare. 9 out of 10 think that Obama is doing a bad job and some of them think he is a socialist and a Muslim:

“I just feel he’s getting away from what America is,” said Kathy Mayhugh, 67, a retired medical transcriber in Jacksonville. “He’s a socialist. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s a Muslim and trying to head us in that direction, I don’t care what he says. He’s been in office over a year and can’t find a church to go to. That doesn’t say much for him.”

One bright note from the survey: many of them don't think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President.

Is There Another Level of Reality?

Rod Dreher raises questions about a new report on the use of psychedelic drugs:

Over the years, as I've read about varieties of mystical experience, I've thought about whether or not the temporary chemical changes psychedelic drugs bring about in our brains cause us to hallucinate things that aren't there -- clearly true in some cases -- and whether or not they cause our brains to become more perceptive to realities that actually are there, but which can't be perceived under normal circumstances. How would you tell the difference?

...I am still left with big questions about all this. First (and to repeat), do psychedelic drugs actually open up a door of perception into dimensions of reality that are closed to our brains under normal conditions, or do they only cause hallucinations? (And how would you know the difference?). Second, given the commonplace testimony from psychedelic drug users to experiences that closely resemble mystical episodes of insight that saints and spiritual geniuses in various religious traditions have had, is it advisable for people in search of enlightenment to assist their quest with hallucinogenic drugs? Why or why not?

(On that last question, my intuition is that it would be the difference between someone making a million dollars through years of hard, disciplined labor, and someone winning the lottery. The money is the same, but the lottery winner has no context in which to place his bounty, and, as studies have shown, is far more likely to have his life ruined by the gift. That said, if medical research can show that using hallucinogenics can help terminally ill or badly depressed people find a sense of purpose, positive meaning or peace with their condition, why on earth would anyone want to deny them that?)

You can count me as a skeptic about whether psychedelic drugs open the user up to another level of reality imperceptible to the brain not on drugs. I think there is only one reality in this life and I think our goal ought to be to learn to live in it with a clear head. Healthy spirituality is all about learning to let go of illusions and delusions and living well in the now.

Having said that I am sympathetic to the use of drugs for terminally ill and depressed people that relieve their physical and psychic pain so they can be more present in the here and now. If psychedelic drugs help by altering the brain chemistry in such a way that the here and now is more enjoyable then they should be part of a physician's arsenal. And I am certainly not opposed to the recreational use of mild stimulants. I like my coffee and beer and although I don't use marijuana I think it should be decriminalized.

It's the notion that there is some other more real or true level of reality that I am skeptical about. Let's make it our goal to grow deeper and happier in this all too fleeting moment of reality.

Super Bugs and Weeds

A new scientific study by the National Research Council says that for many farmers the use of genetically modified crops had helped to cut the use of pesticides and herbicides, reduced the need for tilling which leads to soil erosion, and improved yields. The two biggest uses for genetic modification are "Roundup Ready" crops which are resistant to Roundup and its chemical knock-offs which allow farmers to spray the weed killer around the crops without risk of damage to the crops, and "BT" seeds which contain bacterial genes allowing the plants to produce an insecticide.

What is interesting to me, though, is that Roundup ready seeds have been in use for only ten years and already the weeds are adapting:

Overuse of this seductively simple approach to weed control is starting to backfire. Use of Roundup, or its generic equivalent, glyphosate, has skyrocketed to the point that weeds are rapidly becoming resistant to the chemical. That is rendering the technology less useful, requiring farmers to start using additional herbicides, some of them more toxic than glyphosate.

You can bet Monsanto, maker of Roundup, and its competitors are working on new formulations. But it sounds just like the stories of over-use of antibiotics and how rapidly bacteria have morphed into antibiotic-resistant super bugs.

Weeds and bacteria and probably real flying bugs are just as "smart" as we are in their own way. They want to survive and multiply too and it is pretty amazing how quickly they are able to adapt and thrive as tougher-to-kill species. Somehow I doubt that this is a battle that we will win in the end. Some super bug will come back to bite us big time eventually.

While I am not opposed in principle to the use of genetically engineered seeds it would be far better if we could find a way to farm and live without going there. The more we grow our own food and the more we support local and organic farming the lighter our environmental footprint. I don't know if we need genetically modified crops to feed the world. I know that I don't need them and neither do you. We have a choice about what we grow and eat.

Big Ben Beef Jerk

It's not easy being a Steeler's fan these days. The face of the franchise is quite possibly a criminal who just got away with rape, or at the very least he's a cad. I can't imagine that the Rooney family is going to stand by and not respond with a suspension if it doesn't come from the NFL first. I see the company that brought us Big Ben Beef Jerky has ended its marketing relationship with Roethlisberger. What they should do is just change the name to Big Ben Beef Jerk and promise to donate the proceeds of each unit sold to a women's sexual abuse awareness organization.

More on Beauty and the Church

Rod Dreher posted part of an interview with Barbara Nicolosi-Harrington, an orthodox Catholic who teaches screen-writing in L.A., where she was asked about the clash of values between Hollywood and the church. I thought she had an interesting take:

Again, not to get myself burned in effigy, but Christians feel as alienated from Hollywood as Hollywood people feel watching EWTN or CBN. Hollywood has a value of excellent production value, of talent, and the pagan world absolutely believes in talent, this mysterious gift that comes from they-know-not-where. We know where it comes from; they don't know where it comes from, but they believe in it.

The Church does not believe in talent anymore. We think the most important thing is that everyone feels welcome. So we sit at church and suffer through Doris and Stan, who can't sing, because we don't want to be mean. They would never get a job in Hollywood, because Hollywood has integrity about the beautiful. Or if it's not "the Beautiful" in the classical sense, at least, they value the non-lame.

So when you speak of a tension of values, well, there is the value of the Beautiful, which Hollywood understands and the Church does not, and then there are the values specifically of what is good for human beings. What is it that leads them to their fulfillment, their ultimate destiny, fulfilling their nature? Those things are missing, content-wise, in what you're seeing in a lot of the media.

But in the end, which is more harmful: true words cast in an ugly frame, or untrue words cast in a beautiful frame? I think Hollywood will get people into heaven faster. Even if they have the message wrong, people in the end will turn off some of that. What will really impact them will be the harmony, the wholeness, the completeness of a work.

I think there needs to be a balance in the life of a church. The message that all are welcome and all are encouraged to share their gifts is the right message. There is nothing wrong with encouraging people to sing and read and act in worship even if they aren't great. Everyone needs to feel welcomed and valued.

But the church also needs to care about quality and, yes, beauty. It really makes a difference in worship. I have vivid memories of musical horrors in my first church pastorate. While there was a competent organist she was often traveling. The fill-ins and the special music were often positively atrocious. There was no balance between uplifting music and "non-lame."

When I came to Open Circle I insisted from our beginning that we shell out the money needed to have a professional keyboardist. We got lucky and got one with a great voice as well. To be able to sit in worship on Sundays and experience quality music every Sunday makes worship what is should be - uplifting and inspiring.

Churches don't do themselves any favor when they try to save money by using local talent. Yes there are exceptions but by and large you get what you pay for.

Beauty

My newsletter article this week:

Dostoevsky said that man, in the end, will be saved by beauty -- or nothing. What he meant by that I think is that there is nothing in the world with the power to change hearts and inspire minds like beauty. Music, stories, poetry, film, photography, the natural world - all have the capacity to lift our hearts and inspire our own creativity. They touch us at a deep level; they inspire us to find our own talents and add our own beauty to the world.

I am a political animal. I read and watch and think politics. Occasionally I dive in and get involved. I think politics is important. Politics is about the distribution of power and resources and it matters to me that power and resources not be concentrated in the hands of a few. Good politics levels the playing field, knocks down walls and ceilings of injustice, puts food on the table for families.

But the older I get the more I am convinced of the limit of politics. By itself, the practice of modern politics tends toward the corrosive. It wears people down. Spend a day watching FOX or CNN and I think you will know what I mean.

It is interesting to me to think about how much the church, and here I am thinking specifically about Christianity in America, has come to see so much of its mission as political. That is what the culture wars are all about - fighting over who has the power to decide what values will predominate in the public square. Both conservative and liberal Christians have joined the fight. We often define our Christianity and our faith by our responses to these political battles.

I do not share with my Anabaptist ancestors or even some of my friends the belief that we should not even be participating in politics. Again, I think it is important and I think the church should encourage political involvement. Justice matters.

I think, though, that our passion for justice needs to be balanced by attention to beauty. If it seems strange to think about beauty as a church task, remember that there was a time when the church was considered the chief patron of the arts, in music, literature, architecture, art. Of course they were also often the only game in town, the only institution with the resources to support artists.

But there was something else going on as well. The church placed a high value on beauty because it believed that creativity and beauty were characteristics of God and God's creation. To experience and create beauty brought us closer to God. The experience and creation of beauty are not peripheral to what it means to be Christian or spiritual.

What got me thinking about beauty? The music in church on Sunday and the beauty that is breaking out all around us this spring. Both were and are inspiring. I hope you have a beautiful day.

The Star Came to Rest over Minneapolis

Two intellectual heavy-weights of the Republican Party shared the stage this afternoon in the twin cities. FOX News' Sean Hannity was here covering the event live, lending more gravitas to the celestial event.

Our Brain on Costco

What our brain is doing when we shop at Costco:

Consumers aren't always driven by careful considerations of price and expected utility. We don't look at the electric grill or box of chocolates and perform an explicit cost-benefit analysis. Instead, we outsource much of this calculation to our emotional brain, and rely on relative amounts of pleasure versus pain to tell us what to purchase. (During many of the decisions, the rational prefrontal cortex was largely a spectator, standing silently by while the NAcc pleasure centers and insula secretes aversive feelings argued with each other.) Whichever feeling we feel most intensely tends to dictate our shopping decisions. It's like an emotional tug-of-war.

Retail stores manipulate this cortical setup. They are designed to open our wallets: the frivolous details of the shopping experience are really subtle acts of psychological manipulation. The store is tweaking our brain, trying to soothe the insula and stoke the NAcc. Just look at the interior of a Costco warehouse. It's no accident that the most covetous items are put in the most prominent places. A row of high-definition televisions surrounds the entrance. The fancy jewelry, Rolex watches, iPods and other luxury items are conspicuously placed along the corridors with the heaviest foot traffic. (The fresh food is always located in the back of the store, so that we have to parade past the profitable aisles of temptations.) And then there are the free samples of food, liberally distributed throughout the store. The goal of Costco is to constantly prime the pleasure centers of the brain, to keep us lusting after things we don't need. Even though we probably won't buy the Rolex, just looking at the fancy watch makes us more likely to buy something else, since the coveted item activates the NAcc. We have been conditioned to crave a reward.

But it's not enough to just excite the NAcc: retailers must also inhibit the insula. This is where Costco really excels. When consumers are repeatedly assured that low prices are "guaranteed," or told that a certain item is on sale, the insula stops worrying so much about the price tag. In fact, researchers have found that even when a store puts a promotional sticker next to the price -something like "Bargain Buy!" or "Hot Deal!"-but doesn't actually reduce the price, sales of the item will still dramatically increase. These retail tactics lull our brain into buying more things, since our normal response to price tags is pacified.

Fortunately we don't have a Costco nearby yet, just a Sam's Club and I am betting they haven't figured any of this out yet. I do love the free food samples, though.

When the Economy is Bad...

HT: Christianity Today Blog

If We Approached Slavery Like We Aproached Health Care

Minnesota state Senator John Marty, a candidate for governor, (and son of church historian Martin Marty) isn't thrilled with the new federal health care bill:

If the country had approached slavery like we have approached health care," he says, "we'd still have slavery, but Democrats would be bragging that the slaves only work 40 hours a week now. We haven't fixed the problem. There will still be people dying from lack of health care, and going broke.

Where Has Obedience Gone

This is why I could never be Catholic:

So, we had a trade organization — the Catholic Health Association — which calls itself “Catholic” and we had religious Sisters who call themselves Catholic, saying, “Sorry, bishops, you got it wrong, here is the teaching of the Church.” The Lord Jesus Christ, unworthy though the bishops are, called the bishops to lead the people in faith; He did not call anybody in the Catholic Health Association and he did not call any of the Sisters in Network.

The bishops are called to teach, sanctify, and govern. But, as I said before, with regard to the Holy Father, if people will not recognize authority, then they cannot lay responsibility at the feet of those to whom they are disobedient. The pope and the bishops are only responsible when their authority is accepted. The then-Cardinal Ratzinger himself has said, in our contemporary world, the word “obedience” has disappeared from our vocabulary and the reality of obedience has been anathematized.

This is Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin chastising Catholics who disagreed with the bishops on the health care vote.

HT Andrew Sullivan

On Disbelieving Pastors

I said I was going to respond to this article.

For eight years out of seminary I served a Church of the Brethren congregation in northern Ohio. I still remember the Sunday after worship when a parishioner came up to me and told me that my recent sermons were "undermining the faith of our children." I don't remember what I was preaching on; but I distinctly remember the responses I was getting at the time.

Just out of seminary I spent the first half of my tenure at that church getting my pastoral legs under my feet. I spent the second half of my time there beginning to find my own faith. It was a messy process for me. Looking back on my time there it is not surprising to me that some people sitting in the pews must have been wondering why they were paying this pastor to raise question that might challenge their faith.

To be fair to me in many ways I was just tinkering around the edges, sharing a little bible scholarship about sources and sitz im leben and discrepencies in the Greek text of the NT, etc. My own biblical studies were being re-invigorated by the work of the Jesus Seminar, but I wasn't giving them full doses. And I wasn't sharing anything about my own deeper questions about Jesus and the reality of God.

To be fair to them they were a very traditional Brethren congregation. They were mostly pacifist and service oriented, the best of my tradition. They were also mostly union folks and liberal on economic issues, definitely a plus. But they held very traditional and moderately evangelical views on sin and salvation, the "purpose" of Jesus, and the authority of the Bible. And the issue of homosexuality was a "live" issue in that congregation but the subject was taboo. I didn't preach about it from the pulpit but I was talking about it a lot with individuals and families. From their perspective I am sure it felt like I was messing with their faith.

I began to realize during my last few years that I could not keep doing what I was doing. I couldn't say one thing from the pulpit - the safe thing, the traditional thing - and think something else. I couldn't not talk about some issues because it made some people uncomfortable. I couldn't lead the congregation in prayer to God when I wasn't sure there was anybody up there listening.

So I decided to resign. The fateful moment actually was brought about by a congregational vote to turn down an offer made by a local company to take a piece of the church's large property and build on it a child-care center paid for by that company who would also share the building with the church. It was in my view a huge no vote to mission and to the viability of the congregation. It was time for me to go.

At first I interviewed at several other churches. But in each case I realized that it wasn't going to work. They were asking me questions about biblical authority and the virgin birth and I wasn't going down that road again. So because of my wife's employment and education situation where we were in Ohio, I began to look for other work there.

When I got the call from a denominational representative to consider planting a church in the twin cities I initially said no. He said he was sending me the material anyway. So it came and I began to realize that this might be an opportunity for me to be a pastor and to be honest about my faith. If I started from the very beginning saying "this is what I believe" then those who came would know what they were getting into and those who stayed would stay because they appreciate this way of being a person of faith.

Seventeen years later I am still saying "this is what I believe" on Sunday mornings. Not "this is what the Bible says you should believe" or "this is what you must believe to be a Christian" or "this is what I believe" (but secretly I don't). I have found it to be a recipe for growing a thriving liberal Christian community where some non-Christians also find a spiritual home. I have also found it to be a recipe for sleeping well at night.

I sympathize with pastors who feel trapped because their own faith experience doesn't match the faith experience of the congregations they serve. I was there once. And I don't think there is one right response to being in this situation. Some pastors have the cross-cultural skills to make it work. They love the people they are with for who they are and have the vision and persistence to work at bringing people along little by little over time. (I realize this may sound patronizing and it is certainly true that growth happens in both ways. But I also make no apologies for saying that it is part of the pastor's job to "bring people along," i.e to grow; and bringing people along towards a more open and progressive vision is in my view a good thing.)

Other pastors don't have the temperament or the skill set. Or they simply have lost their faith. For them there is no sleeping well at night. I know some of them. For their own sake and for the sake of their congregations it would probably be better if they found a new career, or better yet started a new church where they could figure out their faith among like-minded people.

Feeding on Fear

I just received a fundraising appeal from a liberal organization that begins its pitch this way:

We knew that power concedes nothing. So did President Obama. So did the members of Congress who courageously voted for reform, knowing that the special interests and the extreme right wing would retaliate swiftly.

The attacks are fierce. Deceptive ads are hitting the airwaves in swing districts. GOP lawmakers are pushing to repeal reform -- and preventing the Senate from performing basic functions. A few Republican attorneys general have launched a baseless attack to overturn the legislation. But that's not even the worst of it.

A conservative blogger posted the home address of Congressman Tom Perriello, urging tea partiers to "drop by." Other members have had death threats. Democratic offices have been vandalized...

This is one of several similar emails I have received in the last few days from liberal groups. I don't like it one bit. I get that this is a proven method for raising money. I get that the right wing does it too. And I am not disputing the veracity of the charges leveled here. The Republicans are pretty much unhinged from reality right now; some of them are treading in dangerous and possibly illegal waters.

But do we have to stoop to the same level? Do we have to ratchet up the rhetoric to a fever pitch so we can meet them mano a mano in the gutter? If we want cooler heads to prevail on the other side shouldn't we model it on ours?

I don't give money to any organization - political or religious - that uses fear as a motivating tool.

Amish Forgiveness

Apparently the Lifetime Movie Network has taken some liberties with the facts of the story of the 2006 Nickel Mines Amish school shooting. The movie Amish Grace, which will air this Sunday, is based on a book by the same name. The movie has an Amish mother showing up at the home of the deceased shooter the day after the killings and confronting the wife of the gunman. The authors of the book say this never happened:

True, Amish people did show up at gunman Charles Roberts' home within hours of the shooting that left five girls dead. They also visited his parents and parents-in-law, all of whom lived within a few miles of the West Nickel Mines School.

But the Amish people didn't go there to express rage or sling blame. They visited the Roberts family because of their compassion for his kin--victims of the tragedy who were also suffering immense emotional pain. One Amish neighbor consoled Charles Roberts' father with a hand on his shoulder and four simple words: "We love you, Roberts." A few days later, at Roberts' burial, parents of some of the Amish girls he had killed showed up and hugged his widow. It was, said one Amish man, "simply the right thing to do."

The authors make a guess that the movie channel chose a different beginning because it more closely mirrors the typical English? reaction to being harmed: first rage and then hopefully forgiveness as time passes. This, say the authors, is not the Amish way. Deeply ingrained teachings and practices of forgiveness as a first response were lived out at Nickel Mines. It apparently made a difference:

The Amish response was "the beginning of the healing process," Ms. Roberts (mother of the gunman) continues. She describes how it compelled her and her husband to visit all the Amish families whose daughters had been shot, and to invite all the mothers and the surviving girls to her home for tea.

Ms. Roberts continues to host teas and swimming parties for the surviving girls, four of whom have resumed relatively normal lives. Her closest relationship, however, exists with Rosanna, the one survivor who doesn't swim because she's seriously disabled. To this day, Ms. Roberts visits with Rosanna for several hours every Thursday evening.

Perhaps the real story of Amish grace is as touching as the Lifetime movie version of it. But as we note in our book, the story of Amish forgiveness is not about remarkable individuals finding "within themselves" the ability to forgive. It's about a community that valued forgiveness and reconciliation so highly before the shooting happened that scapegoating the Roberts family on October 2, 2006, wasn't even thinkable.

That this kind of behavior is taken to be remarkable in our "Christian" nation says something about the nature of our Christianity.

A Pope in Trouble

I am beginning to think that the stories of cover-up of child sex abuse by priests in America, Germany, and Ireland are going to bring down this pope:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

Change We Can Believe In!

Finally we have health care for all. What a great night for our country.

Scores that Matter

Well I had Minnesota as a sentimental pick to upset Xavier in the first round of the NCAA men's tournament. It wasn't to be as the Gophers shooting went stone cold in the second half. My whole bracket is pretty much going up in smoke.

I have the games on and the volume muted so I can watch the scores. But I have also been following two other scores that are much more important heading into this weekend. The second and most important score is the vote on the health care bill which is currently scheduled for Sunday. The odds are for its passage are looking better and better as several wavering Dems have indicating they will vote yes.

Part of the reason for that is because of the first big score on the health care bill that came back yesterday from the Congressional Budget Office. The reporters and analysts have been all over this and I have nothing to add except to say that this process - of writing a bill and getting it scored by the CBO and making it at the very least deficit neutral - is what good government looks like.

Republicans rail against big government and promise to shrink it but never do when they are in power. Our last two Republican presidents vastly expanded the size and scope of the federal government. And I have no problem with that because I think we need a big government to meet the many needs of a big country. But Republicans are proven first-rate hypocrites when it comes to the what they say about the size of government when they are out of power and what they do when they are in power.

But what is even worse, at least under the most recent President, is that while they were expanding the size of government they were hiding the costs. The true cost of military budgets to support two wars were off the books, not included in the regular budget. When they passed the prescription drug benefit they silenced the chief actuary charged with figuring out its cost, threatening to fire him if he told Congress that the price was going to be far higher than what the President said it was going to be. Not a peep of protest was heard from the Republican Congress. Why? Because they didn't really care about the size of the government or the deficit. What they cared about was staying in power.

Now out-of-power Republicans are complaining about the process that is going to bring us this bill's passage, and about secret deals made with some legislators made to get their votes. But the truth is the process has been remarkably visible, straight-forward, and honest. The secret deals have been exposed and removed. Republicans were given every opportunity to participate; remember that the process was dragged out for months to allow the bi-partisan 'gang of six' to see if they could come up with a bill that would get Republican support. (The final bill looks much like what the gang of six came up with but still no Republican support.) Most importantly the bill has been vetted by the CBO and it passes muster as an enormous government expansion that pays for itself. It is possible to be cynical and cast aspersions on the accuracy of the CBO but then who are you going to trust to give an impartial reading on the cost of bills? They are widely recognized as non-partisan and accurate with their forecasts. And imagine what Republicans would be saying if the CBO numbers had come back with big deficit-busting numbers. They would have quoting the CBO report to everyone.

From a progressive's perspective this bill is far from perfect. Single payer or at the very least a robust public option would have been preferable. But the process of getting to this moment, slow and painful as it has been and reaching an end that is not perfect, has been an exercise in good government. The final score matters; I want the bill to pass. But how we get there also matters.

Disbelief in the Pulpit

Via James McGrath I want to call attention to this interesting discussion in the Washington Post based on this article: Preachers who are not Believers. I don't have time today but I plan on commenting on it soon.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I'm not Irish and apart from marking the day with a good Irish Stout the holiday kind of passes me by. But there is one very good reason to celebrate this day. In Minnesota the sun rose this morning at 7:21 a.m. and it sets this evening at 7:21 p.m. Spring officially begins in 3 days but by the sun's reckoning up here in the north it has already arrived. And it is a beautiful day to boot.

Make My Day

The Washington Post is reporting that some Republicans are mounting a repeal movement in the face of the increasing likelihood that Dems are going to pass health care legislation:

Can Republicans win election this fall by campaigning to repeal the health-care legislation now nearing passage in Congress?

Even as House Democrats search for the votes to send the bill to President Obama, dozens of Republican lawmakers and candidates have signed a pledge to back an effort to repeal the bill, should the GOP take control of either house of Congress after this fall's elections.

Started by the conservative activist group Club for Growth, the "Repeal It" movement first won the backing in January of some of the most conservative Republicans in Congress, such as "tea party" favorite Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). It has since expanded to include some of the party's Senate candidates in liberal-leaning states such as New Hampshire and Illinois.

I think this is a great idea. I hope every Republican candidate runs on repealing health care. I can imagine the slogans: No insurance for your children with cancer! Bring back the donut hole! If you lose your job you don't deserve health insurance!

Back in the real world there is not a single Republican running in remotely close-contested elections who is going to campaign on repealing health care this fall. It would be political suicide. It is all bluster.

12,000 Calories a Day

If this was your typical daily diet how big would you be:

In a typical day I'll eat four burgers and fries, a loaf of bread with peanut butter and jam, four servings of meatloaf and mashed potato, a large pizza, a chocolate cake with ice cream and cream, 12 cupcakes, two cheesecakes and fizzy drinks.

This is the diet of New Jersey woman who weighs in at over 600 pounds and is trying to get to 1000. She has set up a website where men pay to watch her eat. She is 42 years old and says she is happy and healthy. She also loves sushi and says she can eat 70 big pieces in "one go."

It's a free country, as many say in America. Unfortunately, though, her health care costs are not free. According to the article it will likely be the taxpayers of NJ who will be paying the tab for her gluttony. I have a problem with that. It is one thing to struggle with weight and deal with all of the social and medical consequences. It is another thing entirely to intentionally destroy your body and stick others with the bill for taking care of you.

Rod Dreher is even less charitable.

Rework Takes on Karl Rove

I haven't read Rework which has been on the bestseller NYTimes bestseller list. But Karl Rove's book recently knocked it off the top spot and the author's of Rework have struck back with this amusing video:



I downloaded a sample of the book to my Kindle. Here is the publishers promo:

From the founders of the trailblazing software company 37signals, here is a different kind of business book one that explores a new reality. Today, anyone can be in business. Tools that used to be out of reach are now easily accessible. Technology that cost thousands is now just a few bucks or even free. Stuff that was impossible just a few years ago is now simple.That means anyone can start a business. And you can do it without working miserable 80-hour weeks or depleting your life savings. You can start it on the side while your day job provides all the cash flow you need. Forget about business plans, meetings, office space - you don't need them.

With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who's ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs who want to get out, and artists who don't want to starve anymore will all find valuable inspiration and guidance in these pages. It's time to rework work.

Update: Make that Amazon's top spot, not the NYTimes.

NCLB Supporter Changes Mind

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and once a supporter of No Child Left Behind. She has a new book out on the subject and writes in The New Republic why she has changed her mind:

As I assayed the evidence about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I concluded that it has failed. The testing regime that NCLB installed in every public school has not improved American education. By mandating that scores in reading and math must constantly rise, the federal law has removed any incentive to teach the arts, science, history, literature, foreign languages, geography, civics, or any other non-tested subject.

NCLB requires that all students must be proficient in reading and math by 2014. When the legislation was signed in 2002, this goal was wildly unrealistic--and now, it is merely laughable. The target date is only four years away, but no state is remotely close to 100 percent proficiency. Indeed, in 2008, 35,000 of the nation’s schools bore the stigma of "failing" because they weren't making sufficient progress toward that utopian target.

What NCLB has done with its proficiency deadline is set a timetable for the demolition of American public education. In an effort to meet NCLB’s unattainable goal and avoid the "failing" label, most states have dumbed down their standardized tests or their definitions of proficiency. Many states claim that large majorities of their students are “proficient” in reading or math, but their claims are refuted by federal assessments (called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP) that are given to all students in fourth and eighth grades every other year. For example, Texas reported that 85 percent of its students in those grades were proficient readers based on year-end state testing, but, on the NAEP, only 29 percent were. Nationwide, NAEP scores have gone up in math since 2003, but the rate of improvement has been less than before the passage of NCLB. In eighth-grade reading, there was no improvement at all from 1998 to 2007.

She has reached a similar verdict on the charter school movement.

Don't Eat the Viking

I'm reading this article on the pesticides, hormones, and plastics that we may be ingesting in our foods and how it may be contributing to our obesity epidemic. This is how they analogize about eating hormone-laden beef:

To bring this all home, imagine you've been in a terrible plane crash in the Andes, like those poor souls depicted in the movie "Alive." The only way to survive is to pick one of the dead folks to eat. You're given the choice of an obese, grotesquely muscled, man-boob-toting Minnesota Vikings lineman with shrunken testicles who's been injecting himself with hormones for a dozen years, or someone of normal size and body type and hormonal function. (One of the Kardashian sisters, maybe.) Which would you choose?

Well, every time you eat conventionally raised beef, you're choosing the Viking.

Makes you think twice about biting into that hamburger. They are calling these chemicals run amok in our diet obesogens. Interesting article.

Cat Confessions

I was awakened in the middle of last night by a loud noise. One of our cats, Sampson, was in the bed and jumped up at the sound. I sat up, looked out the window, listened a moment, and laid back down. No sooner had I dozed off when cat number two, Sadie, jumped onto my chest and started meowing in my face. I rubbed her head, she started purring and laid down in bed.

I got up this morning to find a plant knocked over and the ceramic pot shattered all over the floor. Apparently Sadie was confessing her sin and felt that by petting her I was granting her absolution.

HT for photo to Thomas Verenna.

Sauteed Chickpeas

Mark Bittman recently featured a sauteed chickpea recipe. I went looking for the Spanish chorizo called for but couldn't find it in local grocers. I will keep looking. In any case he said the chickpeas turned from mealy to crispy in the pan and were great alone. So I rinsed, dried, and sauteed a can up tonight and he was right. They were great. I put them into a salad with Romaine lettuce, avocado, mushrooms, and olive oil and vinegar. That was dinner tonight.

Cheater's Bible

Today I received via UPS a copy of The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader's (or cheater's) Edition. It has a translation of all vocabulary words occurring 30 times or less in the NT at the bottom of the page. It's great for someone like me who isn't working in the Greek NT every day but has a decent handle on the vocabulary and grammar. What I don't know or remember is right there on the page.