As we move deeper into Lent and its emphasis on repentance, spiritual introspection, self-examination and self-denial, many of us choose to practice Lenten disciplines. If we have become involved in the season's imagery and expectations, we may find ourselves reading biblical texts from a spare and minimalist perspective. When we read the familiar Lukan parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, we may be especially severe, heaping further epithets on the one we call prodigal: he is wasteful, we say, and reckless, dissolute, uncontrolled. If our spiritual resources are running low from our Lenten disciplines, and our emotions running close to the surface from the stress of fasting, we may identify with the elder brother. We cannot tolerate the young son's abuse of a cherished inheritance. We cannot understand why he did not respect and appreciate the gift of inheritance, especially when his acceptance of it suggests that he prefers monetary gain to a relationship with his father. We tend, especially if we ourselves feel restricted, to believe that there is only so much blessing available, and that we should be careful to allocate it appropriately.
When we do this, we are thinking of life as a zero-sum game in which one person's gain or loss is exactly balanced by another's losses or gains. In this mind-set, the total when all gains and losses are calculated is always zero. It is impossible for both players to win. Cutting a cake, for example, is zero-sum because taking a larger piece reduces the amount of cake available for others. Children are subject to the emotional challenge of the zero-sum theory, especially when two sibling players are vying for pieces of cake offered by the parent, who controls the "global profit or loss."
When I was a child, my mother did not allow many sweets in the house, so we children relished any opportunity to eat dessert. Our grandmother once sent my sister and me a box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. I was about 12; Catharine was two, and eating in a high chair at the dinner table. The treats came two to a package, so one night we opened a package and each took a roll. As is typical of a two-year-old, Catharine ate hers immediately, focusing intensely on that one moment of pleasure in the sweet gift. But I held onto my half and anticipated the pleasure. I told my parents about something at school, gesticulating with the cake roll in my hand, waiting to savor it when the time was right. This was more than Catharine could bear. She saw the cake waving in front of her, and before I knew it she had grabbed it and stuffed it into her mouth. Mother wouldn't open another pack, so I was left with no dessert—and Catharine was left with a smiling, chocolate-and-white-frosting-covered mouth. Storing my treasure meant that I didn't get to enjoy it, while Catharine enjoyed the gift wholeheartedly, confident that if she needed more, it would be provided.
When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they came to rely upon God for a daily provision of manna as well as for all that was needed for their spiritual life. But as they entered Gilgal, they began to eat the produce of the land to which God has brought them. In the old wilderness way of life, scarcity had taught them to eat sparingly because there was just enough manna to sustain life. But now they lived in non-zero-sum abundance as a community of people able to exercise their own control over what they ate. When they celebrated the Passover, they remembered God's abundant blessings and mighty acts of deliverance as a win-win situation for everyone.
In a December 2000 interview in Wired, President Clinton said:
The more complex societies get and the more complex the networks of interdependence within and beyond community and national borders get, the more people are forced in their own interests to find non-zero-sum solutions, . . . win-win solutions instead of win-lose solutions. . . . We do better when other people do better as well—so we have to find ways that we can all win.
We are part of a culture and world in which resources are limited. They require conservation, and the use of one resource by one party limits its availability to another. We tend to think that like natural resources, God's love and forgiveness are similarly limited. Like the brothers in this parable, we fail to comprehend that the Father's bounteous material gifts and love are available to all without limit. The younger brother believed that squandering his share of the inheritance meant that no more would be available upon his return; the older brother believed that because of his sibling's careless spending, his inheritance and his portion of their father's love were irretrievably diminished. Like them, we expect a zero-sum game, but we must remember that it is not so with God's love.
Sharon Ringe suggests that the title for this lesson should be the "Parable of Two Beloved Sons." Whether we view the story from the younger or the older brother's perspective, the result is the same. The younger brother sees his father squinting as he watches his beloved son approach, then runs to embrace him and pardon him for everything that has come between them. The elder brother has his father's abiding presence, a share of all he possesses, and the joy of celebrating their love in daily life. With God, as with this earthly father, there is no end to the love. This is not a zero-sum game but a win-win situation.
Beth Sanders is pastor of College Park First United Methodist Church in College Park, Georgia.
What does God's love smell like? Like honeysuckle on a warm spring day? Like a salty ocean breeze? Can God's love also smell like a person who hasn't bathed for days? For the people in the story in John 12, God's love smells like their brother Lazarus, who has just been raised after four days in a tomb. Now his friends and loved ones are sharing a dinner in celebration and thanking Jesus, who has come out of hiding to see his friend Lazarus enjoying his new life.
How do they feel that night as they gather in Lazarus's home at Bethany for dinner? Perhaps Lazarus is reclining at the table, recounting what it was like being dead and how blinding the light was as he stumbled out of the tomb. He has bathed, of course, but there is still a faint scent of myrrh about him, still a few twigs of cloves stuck in his hair. The smells of freshly baked bread and of the fattened calf roasting reach the guests, and soon they're at the table. Then, while everyone is eating and talking, Mary comes in quietly, carrying her best bottle of fragrant oil. She walks over to Jesus and without a word kneels, uncorks the bottle and pours all of the oil over his feet. Jesus closes his eyes and lets the cool oil soothe his dusty, calloused, aching feet. Soon the others are sniffing the air, wondering what strong, sweet smell is cutting through the aroma of beef and wine. The smell of death has been with these friends, but Mary shows us that God's persistent love smells even stronger, and that it will triumph in the defeat of Jesus' death.
When I was an associate pastor in a large church in Atlanta, part of my responsibility was to tend people who came off the street seeking balm for the outward signs of their poverty. One afternoon I met with a man who seemed to have gone many days without bathing. I spent at least 30 minutes counseling him in a small office. When I came out, others nearby asked how I could breathe in his presence. In addition to having doubts about tolerating the smell, some might consider it wasteful to spend time listening to the man's paranoid rants. But the old Brylcreem ad that "a little dab'll do ya" has never been in God's plan when it comes to the generosity of spirit that we are to show to those who need us.
Judas gets a good whiff of Mary's perfume and remarks, "Isn't it better for that precious bottle of perfume to benefit more than just one person?" Surely Jesus, who always taught the disciples about caring for the poor and downtrodden, will see it Judas's way. But Jesus wants us to see Mary's confidence in the boundless capacity of God's love. He knows that piecemeal acts of charity will not dissipate the aroma of poverty—spiritual, emotional, physical and economic—that clings to us.
In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, widower Atticus Finch raises his young son and daughter amid the racism and classism of Depression-era Alabama. Jem and Scout face the taunting of neighbors and school peers when Atticus agrees to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. Mrs. Dubose, an elderly neighbor, sits on her front porch and torments the children with comments as they walk home from school. One day Jem takes his revenge by grabbing a baton and bashing all of Mrs. Dubose's prized camellia bushes. Atticus punishes the children by having them go to her home and read aloud to her for two hours every afternoon for a month. Scout remembers, "An oppressive odor met us when we crossed the threshold, an odor I had met many times in rain-rotted gray houses. . . . It always made me afraid, expectant, watchful."
Each afternoon, they read while Mrs. Dubose sleeps and drools until an alarm clock rings, and then the children run outside to breathe fresh air. Finally the month is up, and not long afterward, Mrs. Dubose dies. The children are surprised when Atticus tells them that she was addicted to morphine, and that their reading sessions helped her to wean herself so she could die in freedom. He says, "I wanted you to see what real courage is. . . . It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."
Mary pours out her whole bottle of perfume without regret because she knows it is only a trifle compared to the magnitude of God's love that she sees in the Messiah before her. Mary knows that Lazarus will die again, and she knows that Jesus will die, but she believes with even greater passion that Jesus can bring victory over death. Though she anoints him for burial, she also wipes the oil away, because it will not be necessary to cover up the smell of death. While Martha had said, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days," Mary smells things differently around Jesus. She smells the fragrance of new life, and her joy over it releases that sweet smell to fill the house, the church and the world with the abundant fragrance of Christ's love.
In this moment between the stench of Lazarus's four days in the tomb and the spicy scent of myrrh and aloes with which Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus will embalm Jesus' body, the sweet aroma of God's love is wafting in the air. It sticks in Mary's hair as she brushes it against Jesus' feet and fills the house wherever she goes. Has anyone caught a whiff of God's love on us 21st-century Christians lately?
Beth Sanders is pastor of College Park First United Methodist Church in College Park, Georgia.
Thousand Foot Krutch shows admirable ambition on Welcome to the Masquerade, deftly juggling metal, pop, rap and post-grunge. The trio mostly succeeds in making it all appealing, and the album's sound is ultimately more inventive than derivative—this is not just another mainstream-aping Christian rock band.
The clean cohesion and pop sensibility owe much to producer Aaron Sprinkle (of Poor Old Lu fame), who impressively keeps all the sonic plates spinning. "Fire It Up" fades in as if from a nimbus cloud, then grabs the listener with jagged guitar riffs and a half-spoken, half-shouted refrain. (Listen for the guitar solo by Pete Stewart of Gramma train.)
Elsewhere Masquerade walks on the mild side and stumbles. "Watching Over Me" lurches dangerously close to the should-be-banned category of metal power ballad, with its treacle string section and Brylcreem-smooth angel imagery. Given how original much of the album sounds, this song sticks out like a Spandex-covered thumb. More appealing in the softer spectrum is the album closer, "Already Home," which plants a massive, anthemlike hook atop piano and acoustic guitar, though the strings again sound candied and grandiose.
Lyrically the band serves up easy-to-swallow declarations of faith, which could use more punch in terms of imagery and wordplay. Yet the ballad "Look Away" moves with its storyline—references are to cutting or attempted suicide—toward a redemptive power that lies beyond the pain: "Take all these cuts, and make them shine/ Don't want to be perfect, just alright."
When Masquerade rocks, as much of it does, it sounds like a rowdy house party with a small army of righteous harmony singers in full mosh-pit mode. Witness "Smackdown," with its beat breakdowns tipping the hat to either Billy Squier's "The Stroke" or Run-D.M.C.'s "King of Rock."
We've heard all the elements before, but not quite in this combination. Masquerade wins the listener over on multiple levels: you can stage-dive to it, rap to it, hum it in the shower and most certainly be uplifted by it.
Following their collection of 1960s covers, power-popsters Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs (of the Bangles) assay '70s hits by Bread, George Harrison and Todd Rundgren. The duo sticks to the scripts, emulating the originals' feel (and keys) with pleasing results. On Fleet wood Mac's "Second Hand News," Sweet and Hoffs re-create Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's vocal vibe. (Buckingham guests on guitar.) Their take on John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" boasts just enough bite, though Big Star's "Back of a Car" could use more edge to counter its jangle.
If "Amazing Grace" is your favorite hymn, you're in luck: this disc delivers 14 renditions of the John Newton classic. Katie McMahon's plaintive vocal version features bagpipes; Lisbeth Scott's pop rendition percolates with drum loops and sweeping strings; Walela gilds the tune in tribal hand percussion and a synthesizer drone. While it's hard to imagine listening to the same hymn 14 times in succession, this fascinating musical exercise would make a fitting soundtrack for spiritual meditation. Perhaps most poignant: William Neil's instrumental, played on a faraway church organ.
Paulinho Garcia is one of the best Brazilian fingerstyle guitarists and singers in the United States. On My Very Life he leads a ten-piece band in a grand tour of Brazilian styles, from bossa nova to marcha rancho. The album also showcases his talents as a songwriter. "Cintura Fina" bounces with joyous Portuguese scatting, while the title track sketches out a ballad of marital bliss that's sunnier than Ipanema in mid-January. The upbeat album closer "Disfrutando a Boa Vida" surprises with martial drumming and lead guitar work reminiscent of Carlos Santana.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has its own music scene, with a wealth of artists in many styles. This 16-track disc features several of the most prominent, including vocalist Peder Eide (with Bob Stromberg on the gentle "Abba, I Belong to You"); Jonathan Rundman (getting grungy on "Hey Hey Samuel"); and Richard Bruxvoort Colligan (poppy and perky on "God's Love Endures Forever"). The first of five discs in a series, this collection is well suited for youth-group gatherings and upbeat retreat worship.
The second praise album by Kutless sounds all too pat. It's cookie-cutter hard rock that's not too hard, produced from a deep-fried, alt-rock recipe. True, vocalist Jon Micah Sumrall has a voice that glides between a baritone growl and a tenacious tenor. But "What Faith Can Do," the album's first single, contains enough lyrical banality to outsurplus the loaves and fishes: "Everybody falls sometimes / Gotta find the strength to rise / From the ashes, and make a new beginning."
Even after a century of Christian expansion worldwide, Europe still matters immensely in the map of the faith. According to the World Christian Database, Europe—including Russia—has 580 million Christian believers, which is more than a quarter of the global total.
Though few of them realize it yet, a great many of these Christians are about to experience a far-reaching change in their legal, political and cultural environment. Europeans who have long been familiar with established churches are soon going to find themselves living with a U.S.-style separation of church and state, enforced by powerful secular-minded courts.
This revolutionary change results from the process of European unification. What was in the 1960s the European Economic Community morphed rapidly into the European Community. Now there is the European Union, with a set of emerging federal institutions, and prominent among these is the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, which has the power to judge and condemn the statutes and policies of individual nations. Suddenly, and with remarkably little discussion, Europe has acquired something like an overarching supreme court.
As in the U.S., religious affairs are attracting judicial attention. Last year, the Court of Human Rights heard a complaint by Soile Lautsi, who felt that the display of crucifixes in Italian classrooms violated the secular principles by which she wished to raise her children.
The court agreed in a sweeping ruling that raised fundamental questions about countless aspects of ordinary life. Not only should crucifixes be kept out of classrooms, said the judges, but so should any signs that suggest the school environment "bore the stamp of a particular religion. This could be encouraging for religious pupils, but [it was] disturbing for pupils who practiced other religions or were atheists."
Religious freedom implies the freedom not to believe in any religion, the court said, and that means the right not to be confronted by "practices and symbols which expressed a belief," especially when these are associated with the state itself.
The Lautsi decision would not surprise Americans, but it is quite explosive in the European context. However secular Europeans seem to be, a majority still takes very seriously the notion of established churches. (France is passionately committed to laïcité and strict secularism, but it is in the minority.) In Sweden, for instance, a land which many academics take as a classic model of extreme secularization, governments still do things that would strike American observers as alarmingly theocratic. Although church and state were formally separated in 2000, Sweden's list of public holidays includes Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Whitsun/Pentecost, All Saints and Christmas. The very secular Netherlands has a similar list, while Denmark adds Common Prayer Day.
Like many European countries, Sweden still levies a church tax. Though voluntary, it is collected by the public revenue service. Some 70 percent of citizens still pay this levy, which in effect constitutes membership dues in a church that is a symbol of national identity. Across Europe, church taxes represent big money. Germany collects some $12 billion annually, giving the country's churches a rock-solid financial foundation.
In other aspects of public life, too, religion is hard to miss. Not long ago, an English court attracted some transatlantic astonishment when it ruled on the troubled issue of who exactly qualified as a Jew. A decision on this matter was essential because England has a system of state-supported religious schools, which gives the government a strong interest in ensuring that denominations enforce their rules consistently and equitably.
On a less charged matter, English schools have no problem in accepting explicitly religious displays such as Nativity plays. (These need not be too sophisticated theologically: recall the film Love Actually, in which one little girl in a Christmas pageant plays the First Lobster.)
Europeans, in other words, know little of the separation of church and state. But Lautsi means that they might be about to learn. Lautsi ruled that people should not be placed in a position in which they would have to use "disproportionate effort and sacrifice" to avoid officially supported religious manifestations. Although the court did not have the power to enforce its policy directly—for instance, by banning crucifixes in schools—it could order substantial damages, and the threat of litigation would make it difficult for individual states to defend their policies in the long term. The Lautsi decision opens the way for a thorough purging of religious labels and institutions from education, from the calendar and from much public symbolism.
Following the controversy over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad a few years ago, European intellectuals began an impassioned debate about the role of religion, with many expressing the sense that the Christian contribution had been severely undervalued. The latest moves toward official secularism promise to keep that discussion very much alive.
In January, almost a year after its heated debate over the science curriculum, the Texas State Board of Education started meeting to revise the state's social studies program. The board's once-a-decade decisions on curriculum are nationally significant. As the nation's second-largest textbook market, Texas shapes the content of textbooks sold throughout the country.
On U.S. history, the Texas education board features a virtual standoff between two worldviews. One segment of the board adheres to the myth of the U.S. as a Christian nation. Worried that mainstream educators are indifferent to the nation's Christian identity, these members want textbooks to put more stress on the central role of Christianity and on the unique and even divinely ordained mission of the nation. The other segment of the board is not opposed to revising the history curriculum, but it wants revisions to reflect the best scholarship.
On the urging of conservative members, the board's review process has called on "experts" David Barton and Peter Marshall. These men are not scholars, but they do represent a certain evangelical Christian worldview, which includes the tendency to be reflexively suspicious of intellectual elites and detached from mainstream scholarly discussions.
Barton founded and leads an organization called WallBuilders, which aims to present "America's forgotten history and heroes"—by which he means its Christian heroes. Whereas most scholars have concluded that the nation's founders blended a rationalist version of Christianity with Enlightenment deism, Barton contends that the founders were evangelical Christians. Marshall is a pastor who objects to current textbooks' positive mentions of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court justice, and labor leader César Chávez. According to Marshall, Chávez—who as a union organizer sought to improve conditions for immigrant farmworkers—is not a positive example of citizenship.
Julio Noboa, a University of El Paso history professor who has been part of the history standards committee, summarized the views of one education board member this way: "He wanted a nice whitewashed view of American history, with no pimples" (Noboa was quoted in the Wall Street Journal).
Self-serving or whitewashed versions of history do not serve citizens, nor do they serve Christians. Christians, being mindful of the pervasiveness of sin, should more than most people be ready not only to acknowledge national failures but to recognize the complex, multifaceted factors that drive events and decisions.
How a people or nation tells its history is rightly a contested matter. History is always being revised in light of new evidence, new concerns and new interpretations. But revisions should arise from a rigorous attention to evidence, not from ideological pressures; they should reflect an expansion, not a narrowing, of historical awareness and sympathy. That is not an "elite" approach to history; it is an approach that respects the truth.
Mark A. Potok heads up the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project and is editor of Intelligence Report magazine. The SPLC, founded as a law firm specializing in protecting civil rights, is one of the chief monitors of race-based hate groups and other extremist activities. Before coming to the SPLC in 1997, Potok spent almost 20 years as an award-winning reporter. While at USA Today, he covered the 1993 siege in Waco, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the trial of Timothy McVeigh. In 1996 he was nominated by his editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his stories on racism in Texas public housing.
The SPLC has reported that the number of hate groups and hate crimes has risen since the election of President Obama. How do you explain this increase?
In the past year there have been two new factors. First is the economy. Hate groups have tried to exploit the economy and blame the downturn on "illegals."
Second is the election of a black man to the presidency. Obama's ascension represents the massive demographic change that is under way. Every white supremacist knows and fears the year 2042—the year when, the Census Bureau predicts, the number of whites falls below 50 percent of the population.
It's not merely that the country is changing; it's that the die is cast—nothing will prevent this country from becoming a genuinely multiracial democracy in which no racial group dominates. Even if we were to seal the borders today, whites would still lose their majority.
Do you see a connection between mainstream talk show hosts and right-wing domestic terrorists?
Engaging in democratic protests is not the same as blowing up federal buildings. That said, I'd contend that when Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and their ilk make defamatory and almost always completely false attacks on various groups, there are people who take their words as gospel.
One interesting fact about hate crimes is that they are very often carried out by young men who see themselves not as thugs but as righteous and brave defenders of their communities. Very often, the typical hate criminal is the young man who has listened to his parents complaining about immigrants or about the people of color who moved in down the block. Or it's the man who has listened to Lou Dobbs ranting about people crossing the borders or who has heard some incredibly nasty sermon about homosexuals and thinks to himself, "My race, my people, my tribe are under assault, and the brave young men of the tribe have to protect it."
At the time when the Lou Dobbses of the world were most vociferously and viciously condemning immigrants, anti-Latino hate crimes in this country went up by 40 percent, according to FBI statistics.
What influence has the Internet had on far-right movements?
When the Internet first became a big thing in the mid-'90s, most of these groups thought it was going to solve all their problems. They thought: if only we could speak directly to "the people," then they will rise up in righteous anger and turn us into an all-white nation. They imagined that what stood between them and the people were the editors at the New York Times.
It turns out there aren't all that many people who share their views. The Internet helped the far-right groups in certain ways, but it didn't help them push their ideologies terribly far.
But the Internet makes it easier for people to organize. The average white supremacist of 25 years ago was a man standing alone in his living room shaking his fist at the ceiling. Today the average white supremacist gets up in the morning, turns on his computer and finds 50 stories that have been forwarded to him. Included are listings of activities in which he could participate as well as animated discussions of ideology. The person who formerly felt isolated and powerless now knows that he is part of a movement. The Internet has helped to give a kind of momentum to many white supremacists and hate groups.
The Internet also allows people to explore this world from behind a screen, with total anonymity. An interesting case: on January 21, 2008, the day after Obama's inauguration, a young man in Brockton, Massachusetts, stormed out of his house and started murdering black people. He killed two, raped and almost killed a third. He later told police he planned to kill as many blacks as he could. He had spent the six months since Obama's nomination on the Internet, perusing white supremacist Web sites, and had concluded, without any personal contacts in the movement, that the white race was being subjected to genocide and that he had to fight back to defend his people from extinction.
What else is going on among the groups you monitor?
In the past four years we've seen the appearance of about 350 new anti-immigration groups. These are groups—like the Minute Men—that don't rise to the level of being hate groups by our criteria but nevertheless are filled with conspiracy theories about what people with brown skin are up to.
On top of all of that, we have the resurgence of the militia groups of the 1990s. These groups see the primary enemy as the federal government. The difference today from the 1990s is that the face of the federal government is the face of a black man. That has helped to racialize the militia movement.
Meanwhile, the Tea Party crowd is filled with very familiar conspiracy theories about the government planning to impose martial law, about Obama really being a nefarious socialistic one-worlder. There is a great deal of cross-pollination between these groups, and back of it all is real anger at the way this country is changing.
Amy Frykholm is special correspondent for the Century.
Anthony Siracusa came to First Congregational UCC in Memphis in 2002. A legally emancipated 17-year-old and a high-school dropout, he came with sadness and anger but also with ideas and hope. He was living in an anarchist commune and working as an apprentice at a local bike shop. He had heard that First Congregational had space to share.
"Can I use some space in this old building to set up a bike shop?" he asked Cheryl Cornish, the church's pastor, and Julia Hicks, its director of mission. "I'm imagining a place where neighborhood kids can bring their bikes for repairs, learn how to be bike mechanics and recycle old bikes back into the community." Cornish and Hicks agreed to the plan.
Inspired by Bikes Not Bombs in Boston—one of several nonprofit bike shops and cycling organizations around the country—Siracusa started a shop called Revolutions in a church building. He saw cycling as a way to bring diverse people together, improve the environment and to encourage physical fitness. He also thought opening a repair shop would give kids a place to belong. Siracusa imagined Revolutions, First Congre gational provided the space, and both found themselves transformed.
Siracusa brought in tools and parts, and he sent out a word-of-mouth invitation through neighborhood children. Then he opened the doors, and the place filled with kids. Siracusa was at the shop four days a week, and he quickly became a local hero. He called running the shop "an exhausting experience of productive chaos."
Revolutions began to thrive, and the church council decided to make Anthony's bike shop an official church ministry. But the ministry faced setbacks. The shop was broken into and robbed four times within a few months, and each robbery made it more difficult to continue the ministry. Siracusa began living above the bike shop, an arrangement that provided security for the shop and gave him a place to live.
Meanwhile, he'd begun a series of weekly conversations with Cornish. He calls her "the mentor I had always needed. No one had ever given me time the way she did."
Cornish encouraged Siracusa to attend Sunday worship. He wasn't interested—he wondered why a group of well-meaning people was spending $800,000 to renovate a sanctuary. "People in this neighborhood need food more than they need a place to get together and sing hymns," he pointed out. And just think how many kids could have a new bike with that amount of money?
The conversations continued, however, and one day Cornish told Siracusa that she planned to talk about him and Revolutions in that week's sermon. "Come join us," she said, "and I'll introduce you to some people who haven't met you. It would be good for you to know what this congregation is about."
That Sunday Siracusa overslept. Suddenly hearing the organ music, he pulled a t-shirt over his head and ran downstairs in time to catch the second half of the sermon. "Our church is a body, people who take care of their own," Cornish was saying. "We support one another, and that creates a healthy body—a body with abundant gifts to share throughout the surrounding community." Siracusa began to see that he was living the truth of her words.
He decided to give the church a chance. He attended weekly potlucks, helped lead youth-group meetings, gave building tours to visitors and joined the music program. He got involved with the Freedom Journey Project, a civil-rights-history immersion program, and he met regularly with the mission council. Around that time a church group that had been meeting to discuss simple living took a big step: college professors, computer programmers, social workers and public school administrators sold their homes and moved into the church's north building to live in community. Siracusa had company, with all the challenges and work involved with communal living.
The church had become Siracusa's life, and its conflicts and blessings added to what he was learning in his conversations with Cornish. She suggested that he get his GED and apply for admission to a local college. He applied to Rhodes College and was shocked when he was accepted.
Siracusa recently graduated from Rhodes with honors, majoring in African-American studies and history. At school he developed an interest in social movements and how to organize, sustain and manage them. He won the Vanderhaar Student Peace Award for his community work at Revolutions. Siracusa has also been awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which is allowing him to spend a year traveling over four continents, studying bicycling communities. He wants to learn how the bicycle can be a catalyst for building healthy communities.
Siracusa calls his work providing affordable bicycles for kids a kind of radical reciprocity. "Generous giving is a challenge; receiving out of life's abundance is also a challenge. Giving and receiving freely—it's the way we all grow together into the best self, the best community, we can be."
Revolutions is now run by Kyle Wagenschutz, and Siracusa is proud of the smooth transition—the shop is well organized and has more staff and more young people involved. Last year the church was able to give 50 bikes to students at Orleans Elementary, a school in a low-income neighborhood. Some students received bikes as an award for perfect attendance, others for improvement in their grades. Others were given a bike because they had showed compassion.
Though Siracusa himself has moved on, First Congregational will continue to provide bicycles for children in the neighborhood and at Orleans. "I needed a place to belong," he says, looking back at why he came to the church. "Growing into my life with this church, I have found a life that matters."
Elaine Blanchard is a writer, actor and storyteller (porchswingstories.com) in Memphis.
At the end of every yoga class we practice dying. Our teacher cautions us that the corpse pose, or shavasana, is the most difficult of all yoga postures to master, but for those of us whose legs and arms are trembling from an hour's exertion in warrior pose, downward-facing dog and cobra, the prospect of relaxing horizontally on one's yoga mat brings both relief and the impertinent question, "How hard can it be?"
Fascinated, I report to my husband, "Every day at the conclusion of yoga class we practice dying." "That's interesting," he says, trying to share my enthusiasm. "It's kind of like Lent," I venture, "except it's a physical practice, not so much a spiritual one. Lent is when we're supposed to practice dying, right?"
When I was a young woman and my best friend died of lung cancer, my minister told me, "You've been given a terrible gift at so young an age, Kay. A terrible gift." That two-word phrase, "terrible gift," functions as a parable for me. New Testament scholar Brandon Scott re minds us that the Greek word parabole can mean to "throw beside." Most typically a parable throws something beside something else—unexpectedly.
Take the kingdom of God being like a woman, for example. That must have been a real howler to first-century listeners of Jesus. The kingdom of heaven is like a woman? No way. Women are property. Women are chattel. Women are impure. The kingdom of God is like a woman? Impossible. Ridiculous. Insulting.
But this is what a parable does. Like a belly flop into a lake, a parable leaves one feeling emotionally and theologically stinging, breathless, disoriented—like "terrible" and "gift." They aren't ordinarily thrown down beside each other. But that's what Lent does. It throws life down with death, and death with life. We practice dying. We learn living.
With the advent of hospice, many of us have been given the terrible gift of walking alongside those we love who are dying. When my mother's dying began in earnest she'd call from her bed, "Girls!" My sister and I would come running. "What, Momma?" "You've got to do something about all these children playing under my bed." My sister Amy stood at one side of the bed, I on the other. Our eyes met. This wasn't the first time those children had been caught playing under Mom's bed. We had a plan.
"Mom, you're having another hallucination." She lay quietly. Several minutes passed as she absorbed the information. "Right. It's a hallucination. I'm dying," Mom said slowly and patiently to us (as if my sister and I were a couple of slow-witted children). "But could you please take all these children out from underneath my bed and outside to play? They need sunlight and fresh air. Give them a good lunch. I'm going to rest while you and your sister take care of them. I just love having them, but I'm too tired."
Amy bent down on the far side of the bed, I on the other. Together we gently shooed imaginary children out from under the bed. As we opened the door to the backyard, Mom expended the last drop of energy she had for that day, calling out, "Thank you, girls!" Then, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Amy and I sat down outside in the Oklahoma sun and did both.
Lent, if we accept its terrible gift, gives us 40 days to practice dying. Para doxically, Lent's terrible, life-giving wisdom is painfully simple: each of us dies the way we have lived. I don't mean that the easiness or difficulty of our dying is determined by our living. Physically speaking, my mother's death was a difficult, traumatic one. But in her death, my mother, who spent her life caring for children as an early childhood educator, was herself cared for—and kept company by—children. In the last 21 days of her life, Mom whispered to us about "the most darling little boy" who was holding her hand.
As I watched my mom with those imaginary children, I was reminded of another dying time, when, as a graduate student at the Univer sity of Chicago, I was a reader for theologian Joseph Sittler at the end of his life. He spent his last days precisely as he had lived his best ones: with a relentless hunger for God, poetry, wisdom. He wanted to hear Emily Dickinson's poems read aloud. He was restless for a note-by-note harmonic explanation of the most exquisite moment of Bach's Saint John Passion so that he might, as he said, "know exactly what Bach is doing right here."
Those rambunctious children under Mom's bed and Sittler's unquenchable thirst for wisdom during the final heartbeats of his life make Lent's typical claim on us seem abstemious. Bittersweet, that during the church season in which we anticipate our dying we preoccupy ourselves with small things, inessential things "given up" for 40 days.
Thomas Merton noted the uncanny way North American culture focuses our attention on the inessential. Spiritual teachers for centuries call such misplaced focus "distraction." Merton excoriated our North American preoccupation with the question, "Am I happy?" as exemplifying the diversion of our lives to banality, superficiality and achingly empty living:
When we live superficially . . . we are always outside ourselves, never quite "with" ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions . . . we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives. (Thomas Merton: Love and Living)
Although Merton did not live to see the Columbine massacre or the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, he anticipated their possibility, warning that lives adapted to the American pursuit of happiness create an uncontrollable monster called self-alienation that seeks release in "dramas of violence." In an unpublished lecture to novices, Merton insisted that the right question, the true question, is not "Am I happy?" but "Am I free?"
The question "Am I free?" is the terrible gift Lent comes bearing in its arms for us this and every year. Lent asks us how we are living our lives, and reminds us that we die the way we live. Lent is the time not for giving up something of little consequence, but for identifying what is most essential in our lives, what it is that we are living for. As Merton put it, "Ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for" (My Argument with the Gestapo). That is Lent's terrible gift: an examination of our living.
Recently, in a conversation with a woman whose faith was great, I couldn't help asking, "What do you think happens when we die?" Without a pause she said, "I think Jesus sends someone to comfort us. Someone particularly special to us that only Jesus would know about. Not a saint. Jesus would never send a saint or anyone 'big' in the pantheon of the church."
Wishing desperately to believe such a thing but unable to get my theological worldview wrapped around it, my mind's eye went to the final weeks of Mom's dying and to that darling little boy who held her hand—the one we never saw, but whom we suspect of being the source of her smile every once in a while, even long after she'd lost consciousness.
We die the way we lived. Of course Mom died with a little boy's hand holding hers and Joseph Sittler with Bach's Saint John's Passion in his strong hands. Lent is a perfect time to spend 40 days becoming crashingly clear about the lives we are living, and a great time to practice dying so we that can live.
Kay Lynn Northcutt teaches preaching and worship at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is the author of Kindling Desire for God: Preaching as Spiritual Direction (Fortress).
Evangelist Billy Graham, 91, was cited by 21 percent of Protestant pastors as among the most influential figures in their lives in a survey taken of 1,000 pastors in November by LifeWay Research. Graham was named three times more often than the runner-up in the telephone survey, author-pastor-radio personality Charles Swindoll. Charles Stanley of Atlanta, Rick Warren of Lake Forest, California, and John MacArthur of Sun Valley, Cali fornia, also registered high on the list. The only mainline minister to make the list was author Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest and religion professor at Piedmont College. Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, an arm of the Southern Baptist Con vention, said he was surprised that the top ten names mentioned were almost all theological conservatives. He said the poll sample included liberals and conservatives, mainline and evangelical pastors.
L. Gregory Jones, dean of Duke University Divinity School since 1997, has been named senior adviser for international strategy at the Durham, North Carolina, university. Jones, a regular Century contributor for the past decade, will step down as dean at the end of the current academic year. Richard Hays, who holds an endowed chair in New Testament, will serve as interim dean for two years during the search for Jones's successor, school officials announced.
The (Anglican) Church of England's main legislative body said February 10 in London that it recognizes and affirms the desire of the breakaway Anglican Church of North America to remain in the Anglican fold. But the General Synod simultaneously said that it was not ready yet to be in full communion with the conservative group. American Anglican Council President David Ander son, a former Episcopal priest, told Episcopal News Service he was pleased with the outcome, despite the lack of full acceptance. A representative of the Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, said that the U.S. church does not interfere in the decision-making of other Anglican provinces but that Episcopal leaders continue to object to the fact that some foreign provinces have "actively interfered in the affairs of the Episcopal Church."
The general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Olav Fykse Tveit, has written to the finance ministers of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations to thank them for pledging to write off Haiti's outstanding debts to G7 countries. At the same time, Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran, warned that the approval by the International Monetary Fund of more loans to Haiti after its earthquake in January would cause extra problems for the stricken country. "The decision of the IMF approving more loans to Haiti after the earthquake will only add to Haiti's burden, nearly doubling the country's debt to that institution, as there is no clear willingness or definitive moves yet to cancel the country's current debt," Tveit wrote.
The top executive of the National Council of Churches is challenging investment giant Goldman Sachs to use half of its $20 billion bonus pool to help rebuild Haiti after its devastating earthquake. Haiti's entire gross domestic product (the basic measure of a country's overall economic output) is $8.5 billion, which is less than half of Goldman Sachs's bonus pool. The government's bailout in 2009 left Wall Street's biggest name with a much-discussed amount of money. Last September, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said, "Compensation continues to generate controversy and anger. In many respects, much of it is understandable and appropriate." In light of the dire need in Haiti, Michael Kinnamon, the NCC general secretary, and George Hunsinger, professor of systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, urged Goldman Sachs to donate half of its bonuses to Haitian relief.
The wooden box, not quite big enough to hold a pair of shoes, sits on the reception desk, just inside the Sherwood, Oregon, YMCA. Once a day, Roger Button empties the box, finds a quiet place to sit and prays over the slips of paper he finds inside. He prays for someone's son struggling with drug addiction; for a friend who needs a job; for more blue, figure-8 rubber exercise bands. "Sometimes people mistake the prayer box for a suggestion box," Button shrugged, unbothered.
As the first ordained chaplain to serve a single branch of the Portland-based YMCA of Columbia-Willamette, Button is one of the people gradually trying to replant the Christian values at the heart of the YMCA—and, in this case, in the Pacific Northwest, where church affiliation is relatively low.
There are 2,686 YMCAs in the U.S. They operate autonomously, interpreting their common charter according to the needs of their communities, said Mamie Moore, a spokeswoman for the YMCA's national office in Chicago. No one keeps track of how many Ys are reclaiming their Christian heritage, she said.
A conference last October in Colo rado for YMCA chaplains drew about 90 people from 40 Ys around the country.
The regional Y in Oregon is reminding people who see it as a good place to work out or find dependable child care that the "C" in Young Men's Christian Association still means broad Christian values inspired by Jesus' life.
"My role here is to minister to the staff and members who call the Sherwood YMCA their home," Button said. "I feel blessed to be able to be here and be a listening ear."
Many of the people he listens to aren't churchgoers, he said, but again, that does not bother him. He describes himself as a "Metheran" or a "Lutherist," the child of Christian parents from two denominations who didn't go to church very often. As an adult, Button shifted from the Church of Christ, in which he was ordained, toward the Quakers. "I think of myself as pan-denominational," he said.
Another official convinced that the organization has a significant spiritual role to play is Bob Hall, president and chief executive officer of the five-county regional YMCA around Portland. "There are a lot of hurting people in the world," Hall said, citing economic troubles, personal trials and a longing for community and spirituality, if not religion.
"We're not a church. We're not a denomination. We're not an army," he said, referring to the Salvation Army, which is, in fact, a church.
"We're not in the business to replace churches, but many people who step inside a YMCA may never set foot in a church," he said. "Our mission, our purpose, our reason why is to teach, train, equip and see people taking responsibility for their own physical, mental and spiritual well-being. We believe in the whole person."
In his effort to "illuminate the C" in the Young Men's Christian Association, Hall reactivated the chaplaincy—there hadn't been one for decades—hiring ordained minister Bob Reichen as vice president for mission advancement. Reichen ministers to staff, volunteers and members across a five-county region.
"We were founded on Christian ideals: love, respect, honesty, responsibility and service," Hall said. Stated so simply, they describe any moral person, but he insists that they are inspired by the life of Jesus and foundational for the YMCA.
The YMCA was founded in Britain in 1844, at a time when the Industrial Revolution drew young men to London for work. George Williams and a group of businessmen wanted to offer a Christian alternative to the sordid street life. The first YMCA offered beds, Bible studies and wholesome activities. By 1854, there were 397 YMCAs across seven countries, claiming 30,369 members.
Since the Portland YMCA opened in 1868, attention to its core values has fluctuated, but the time is right to reclaim them, Hall said. The local YMCA served 86,000 individuals with early childhood centers, before- and after-school programs, youth sports and teen development programs, three health and fitness centers, and a camp.
"These are all tools for building character," Hall said of the facilities and programs. A person can build muscles or strength at any fitness club. But at the Y, "we offer an opportunity to exercise, challenge your mind and encourage your spiritual life." -Nancy Haught, Religion News Service
Uganda's Anglican church proposes amending existing antigay laws over new bill
The Anglican Church of Uganda says it now prefers to see some changes to existing antihomosexuality laws rather than passage of a totally new bill that many international church and secular leaders have condemned.
Still, the church has said there is a need for a law that would clearly address gay issues in the east African country, and that Ugandan Anglicans remain strongly opposed to the acceptance and promotion of homosexuality.
"The Church of Uganda associates itself with the concerns expressed in the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009," Arch bishop Henry Orombi said in a February 9 statement.
"However, instead of a completely new bill, the church recommends a bill that amends the Penal Code Act addressing loopholes, in particular: protecting the vulnerabilities of the boy child; proportionality in sentencing; and ensuring that sexual orientation is excluded as a protected human right," said the archbishop. "The ideal situation would be one where necessary amendment is made on existing legislation to also enumerate other sexual offenses."
In his first official comment on the subject since the tabling of the bill in October, Orombi said he agrees with the bill's concerns because of what he sees as loopholes in the existing legislation.
"The church appreciates the bill's objective of protecting the family in the light of a growing propaganda to influence younger people to accept homosexuality . . . to provide for marriage as contracted only between man and woman," said the archbishop.
The Anglican Church of Uganda wants the country's parliament to streamline existing legislation to protect the confidentiality of medical, pastoral and counseling relationships, including those that disclose homosexual practices.
Other proposals by the church include the prohibition of lesbianism, bestiality and "other sexual perversion," and a ban on the procurement of homosexual material and the promotion of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle.
"Homosexual practice has no place in God's design of creation, the continuation of the human race through procreation, or his plan for redemption," said Orombi.
Obama uses prayer breakfast to challenge host, Uganda
President Obama chided conservative religious and political leaders at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, condemning an antigay bill in Uganda and challenging them not to question his faith or his citizenship.
"We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are—whether it's here in the United States or . . . more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda," he said at the February 4 event in Washington, D.C.
Critics have linked sponsors of the annual breakfast—a secretive and politically connected group known alternatively as the Family or the Fellowship—with ties to the controversial legislation. Gay groups had pressured Obama to combat the Uganda issue head-on at the breakfast.
The president, displaying the same assertiveness he has recently projected in the wake of a string of political setbacks, focused on the need for civility between people of different faiths and political ideologies.
"Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable," Obama said. "Now, I am the first to confess I am not always right. . . . But surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith, or, for that matter, my citizenship."
His comment drew both laughter and applause from the crowd of some 3,000 people, including members of Congress, military brass and representatives of more than 140 countries.
The prayer breakfast, which is traditionally opposed by church-state separationists, has been criticized this year by gay activists. In recent months, members of the Family have been accused of exporting U.S. culture wars to Uganda and inspiring its antihomosexuality bill, which would punish gay rights advocates and severely criminalize homosexual acts.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and David Bahati, the member of parliament who introduced the bill, are both members of the Family, according to Jeff Sharlet, whose book The Family investigated the organization.
Openly gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire came to Washington earlier in the week to urge Obama to address the Uganda bill. "I think this raises awareness about what's going on and about the connections to the religious right in this country, so I think that's all to the good," Robinson said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who gave the keynote address at the breakfast, said she had spoken with Museveni, "whom I have known through the prayer breakfast, and expressed the strongest concerns about a law being considered in the parliament of Uganda."
Obama also spoke of his personal prayer life—"I assure you I'm praying a lot these days"—and said it includes petitions for a spirit of civility. "Progress comes when we look into the eyes of another and see the face of God," he said. -Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service
In my (southern) Baptist tradition, preachers don't generally use the lectionary. If we come up with a decent reflection that's somewhat related to one recognizable biblical passage, it's been a good week. But these three passages together pack a powerful punch. They offer insights into the entire sin-alienation-forgiveness process, which is so central to human life and to Christian existence.
The psalmist doesn't tell us what his "sin" or "transgression" was, just that he literally "wasted away" from its effects in his life. It ate him up. It sapped his strength. As long as he carried this unconfessed sin on his shoulders, he "groan[ed]" under its weight.
Now it may be that we have a classic sin-punishment theme going here. The psalmist may be attributing his illness to his sin. This is a theological move often made in scripture but often challenged in scripture as well (see Job). It is a move we still see today, as when Pat Robertson attributes a country's troubles to its 200-year-old pact with the devil.
Or it may be that this psalm is not about a sin-punishment dyad but instead a sin-alienation-grief triad. It may be that we have here a very realistic depiction of an experience that probably all of us have had. We have done something constituting "a breach of friendship with God and others," in Gustavo Gutierrez's deceptively simple definition of sin. The result of our sin is estrangement and alienation from God and others.
That might not be such a problem except that in our pride and hurt we do not want to do the one and only thing that will repair the breach. We do not want to confess. We would rather remain silent and alienated than speak at the cost of self-abnegation.
We do not know how long it took for the estranged son of a loving father to reach the point at which his grief over his alienation exceeded his fear of the self-humbling involved in confessing his wrongs.
It doesn't look as if it was a quick process. There was the long journey to the distant country, the dissolute lifestyle that squandered all the inheritance he had snatched prematurely, the long period of need during the famine, the unhappy days of pig farming. But finally he was ready to take the long walk back home, ready to trade penury and pride for a chance at reconciliation with his father.
The process calls to mind some difficult days about a decade ago in my marriage. My wife and I—now happily marking 25 years, having come through the period I speak of and out the other side—could not resolve the differences that arose from the challenge of integrating an adopted child into our family.
I developed a pattern during those dark days of withdrawing after each unresolved conflict and each regretted word into silence and alienation. My friendship with my wife was breached, as Gutierrez would say, and I simply could not and would not take the steps required to heal the breach.
It wasn't always breached. We didn't live in that place every day. But in the periods of alienation I did indeed "waste away" and "groan" under its burdens. I suppose we encounter people every day who find ways to live in fellowship with many while living in alienation from the one at home. I was never very good at that. Actually, I was a wreck.
I was going to call this reflection something clever like "Forgiveness, with Music and Dancing," until I realized that there are no titles on these meditations [in the print edition]. But that's where all three of these passages eventually go. They go to forgiveness, with music and dancing.
It's there in Psalm 32:11, the happy conclusion to the psalmist's journey from sin through confession and into forgiveness: "Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous; and shout for joy, all you upright in heart." The NRSV commentator suggests that those addressed here are the psalmist's family and friends—they've been worrying over their loved one, wasted away to mournful gristle and bone—so now they are shouting for joy, because he's come clean with God and learned how to smile again.
The theme is obviously there in the story of the prodigal son (and prodigal God, as Tim Keller reminds us). The return of the straying son and his reconciliation with his father has brought the son a robe, ring and sandals and brought the household a fatted calf, music and dancing. "We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found!"
The theme of "forgiveness, with music and dancing" is present as well in our last text, which contains Paul's famous musing on Christians as ambassadors of reconciliation. Paul is speaking about the amazing news that "[Christ] died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them." Christ's death and resurrection have inaugurated a world so different that anyone who enters it can be described as a new creature, and the world itself as a "new creation." "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself." There need never be a "breach of friendship with God" again because in Christ God has taken the first step to end alienation and bring reconciliation.
Cue the forgiveness and the celebration, the music and the dancing.
David P. Gushee is professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University.
I spent my entire childhood in Vienna, Virginia. From infancy to my eighth year we lived on Hillside Circle. In the back yard, a swing took me up above a honeysuckle bush with every push from my mother. I can still smell the honeysuckle. Eventually Mom and Dad bought a nicer home, and although they sold it several years ago, I remember every beloved detail of the place. I can "return home" to experiences that happened in every room of that house, and especially in the front yard, which became our neighborhood baseball field.
These passages from the Hebrew Bible have to do with Israel's return home from exile in Babylon. The reading from second Isaiah offers a prophetic anticipation of that return. The entirety of chapter 43 offers a beautiful and vivid reaffirmation of God's redeeming love for this exiled people, Israel. Speaking in the divine first person, the text says, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine" (43:1). The passage promises Israel that she will be rescued and returned home in the sight of all nations, through the intervention of her loving God.
"For your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars, and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentation" (43:14). Then God will "make a way in the wilderness," just as in earlier days God made a way in the sea and drowned the oppressors.
Any moment now, Israel will be going home. Israel's God is not new, divine miracles of deliverance are not new, and where the people are going is not new, and yet God is "about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" This is a text perched on the borderline between hope and reality, promise and fulfillment.
Psalm 126 appears to reflect a moment just after that borderline has been crossed. Just after, not long after, because the brief passage splits halfway through. Verses 1-3 celebrate an event that has already happened. "When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy." And yet verses 4-6 offer a prayer for the restoration of fortunes now that Israel is back home. The prayer is focused on a good harvest in the new land. Both passages mention God's provision of water in the thirsty desert. It is one thing to be home. It is another thing to have one's needs met once you get there.
Every earthly home is temporary. Every moment in which it seems that we have always lived here and will always live here is a moment of convenient forgetfulness.
The last time I saw my old home in Virginia was a few years ago around Christmastime. I was on a business trip, and I made the sentimental journey across town. Everything was different. The forested backyard had been stripped of its trees. The baseball field was gone, and with it the visible reminder of thousands of hours with my friends and with my father. There were kitschy Christmas decorations everywhere—huge inflatable monstrosities. I registered the shock, then fled.
Israel's experience of return from exile was also marked by disappointments. The glories the people envisioned for rebuilding the city and the temple gave way to more modest realities. The unity found in collectively yearning for home gave way to divisions experienced among those who went home and between those who went back home and those who stayed where they were.
The diasporic experience for Israel proved to be a lasting one. What began as exile eventually became a pattern for this resilient people, who learned to adapt their religion and their lifestyle to being a minority in foreign lands. Home was redefined: it could be found in any land as long as elements of rootedness such as family, Torah and synagogue could be carried forward into each new locale.
Christianity borrowed and embraced this loose relation to geography. I don't know any Christians who pray in the direction of Jerusalem. Ours is a mobile religion, equally at home on any continent in the world, in storefronts or backyards or bars or brick-and-mortar churches. An earthquake can destroy a church building, and the people of God will still have church on Sunday. You can count on it.
So, drawing too tight a connection to any earthly home fits neither with reality nor with Jewish or Christian history. Humans are too transient and so are our homes.
We will be shorn from all other homes until that day we find our home with God—or, rather, God with us: "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes" (Rev. 21:3-4).
David P. Gushee is professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University.
Few things are more humbling for a professor than to hear your classroom assertions parroted back to you. In the student's puerile response you hear an echo of your own pronouncement—but on undergraduate lips the thought sounds unbearably stupid.
I've come to feel a bit that way upon rereading Resident Aliens. While I still believe just about everything Stanley Hauerwas and I said in that book, I've come to have a few regrets.
In Resident Aliens we stressed that Christianity is a communal tradition that gives us the skills, habits and practices that enable us truthfully to know the world in the way of Christ and subversively to resist the toxic pressures of the world's godlessness. We got more specific about how the church does that in a sequel, Where Resident Aliens Live, which bore the subtitle Exercises for Christian Practice. A constant theme in the second book was the necessity of developing practices commensurate with the peculiar demands of Christian discipleship in North American culture. In a chapter titled "Practice Discipleship" we even quoted from a Wall Street Journal article in order to praise the U.S. Marines for demonstrating that, if one desired to transform the character of drug-dealing or racist young adults, one could do so only by teaching them practices that were different from the practices of modern American culture.
Of course, along the way we cited philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre's definition of a practice as:
any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the results that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.
Note anything missing in MacIntyre's thick definition of "practice"? God.
Hauerwas and I did not originate the notion that Christianity is best defined as a "socially established cooperative human activity" rather than as a set of beliefs or a type of experience. But we certainly gave a strong shove to that idea, and to the notion that there is nothing wrong with the church that can't be cured by restoring it as a place of practice. I bear some responsibility for the now popular conviction that Christianity is a practice and that Christians are best described as people who have adopted certain practices. So I feel I should share why I am now having grave doubts about describing Christian spirituality as a practice.
Practice has become a primary term not only in describing Christianity but in speaking about religion in general. It is acceptable to speak of Christianity as a practice in company who would not tolerate a conversation about "Jesus Christ as Lord." That should tip us off to some of the theological hazards of this approach.
Resident Aliens did not introduce the idea that Christianity is a set of countercultural practices. Søren Kierkegaard in 1850 wrote Practice in Christianity (sometimes translated as Training in Christianity). Kierkegaard attacked the idea that one becomes a Christian simply by accepting intellectually some supposedly rational set of arguments for the validity of Christianity. He asserted that the challenge of being a Christian is not to understand Christ or devise some philosophic system based on Christ but to obey Christ, to follow him, to put one's trust into practice. Kierkegaard based his approach on the peculiar nature of Christ himself and on the way that Christ taught—through parables rather than abstract ideas, through miraculous actions rather than metaphysical speculation. As Kierkegaard said, Christ calls people not to admiration but to discipleship.
While Kierkegaard's thought has something in it that presages the current infatuation with Christianity as a practice, the striking thing is that his practical Christianity is based on the "infinite qualitative distinction" between God and humanity that is seen in Jesus Christ. By contrast, much contemporary talk about practice appears to be based on certain vague anthropological (rather than theological) assertions about the way human beings behave—such as that our lives go better when we inculcate certain allegedly salubrious habits like Sabbath-keeping, prayer, meditation and hospitality.
Kierkegaard is fairly clear that Christians ought to live in a certain way because of the odd God we have in Jesus Christ. Discipleship has few intellectual allies. It is counter to the way human beings are wired. Jesus is against our natural inclination. Therefore, as I read Kierkegaard, practices are those ways that one must live if one is convinced that Jesus Christ is the full revelation of God.
A vast literature has arisen to extol the virtues of Christian practices apart from the God who makes Christian practice interesting in the first place. Recently a pastor of my acquaintance applied for a grant at a church-related foundation and was told by another friend who had received a grant, "Whatever you propose to them, you need to be sure that the word practice is in the application. That's the only way you'll get the money."
One of the things that first appealed to me about the discovery of Christianity as a practice was that the practices of any faith are so wonderfully specific and odd. They tend to be incomprehensible without reference to the specific experience of God that has occurred in that faith. This approach seemed to offer a wonderful corrective to the classic liberal theological construal of religion as a set of ideas (beliefs) about the divine.
But classic liberal theology of the 19th-century German variety is hard to break. A warning sign of the possible error of construing Christianity primarily as a practice is the propensity of books on Christian practice to describe the Christian faith in general. Christianity, generally conceived, shares much with other faiths, generally conceived. Generic conceptions of Chris tianity, or any other religion, as a practice are as intellectually misleading as conceiving of Christianity as a system of general beliefs. When Christianity is conceived as a practice, a set of paths toward God which some people have found helpful but which lead in much the same direction as every other path, then Christianity has been misconstrued.
For instance, a number of Christianity-as-practice books extol the virtues of recovering the practice of keeping the Sabbath. Yet I search in vain in these descriptions for the theological grounding of such a peculiar activity. Nor do they recognize the ways in which Jesus Christ, a well-documented Sabbath-breaker, is presented in the Gospels as inimical to the Third Commandment.
In The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments and the Christian Life Hauerwas and I commended keeping the Sabbath as a Christian discipline, but we stressed that it is a practice done in the light of Christ, and we tried to indicate the tension that Jesus introduced into the notion of Sabbath-keeping. When Sabbath is commended apart from the story of the salvation and sustenance of Israel as God's people—when it is commended as a means of helping us achieve balance in life, a way of helping us stay centered, or a mode of resistance against the clutches of consumerism—then Israel's way of keeping Sabbath becomes degraded and incomprehensible.
Nowhere in the faith of Israel is keeping the Sabbath presented as a practice that is good for everybody no matter which god you worship. Sabbath is what Yahweh commands Israel to do. Sabbath is what we are compelled to do on the basis of our attempt to love the curious God who has loved us.
For some time Hauerwas has engaged in a polemic against "practices based on atheism." I worry that our infatuation with practices could be but the latest phase of atheism. Since God is now mute and absent, we try to locate a set of habits that will make us feel better about our situation.
For instance, Karen Armstrong says, in The Case for God, "religion is a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of the mind and heart." Apparently the god that Armstrong is making the case for is the innocuous god that most North Americans already believe in. By defining religion as "a practical discipline"—that is, a set of practices—advocates like Armstrong seem to feel that they can sidestep the tough theological decision required when one is confronted with the question, "Is this god whom you are following actually God or not?"
My worry is that attention to practices deflects our attention from the living God. With the focus on practices, Christianity quietly morphs into a species of unbelief; we take revelation into our own hands.
The question to ask of any allegedly Christian practice is, "Who is the God being served through this practice?" Pelagianism is a tough thing to shake. The idea that we must do something for God before God will do anything for us, the concept that my relationship with God is sustained by my actions or feelings or inclinations, the notion that "religion" is something I do rather than God's effect upon me—all these ideas appear to be lurking behind contemporary discussions of practice.
John Wesley could be justly regarded as a father of the Christian practice movement. Influenced by William Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, Wesley pioneered and perfected a number of spiritual disciplines, like small accountability groups, lay Bible studies and other methods whereby Christians may "grow in grace." These disciplines have wonderful resonance today. Yet toward the end of his life, after his movement of spiritual discipline had spread throughout the English-speaking world, Wesley wrote:
I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.
Typically, Wesley mentions "doctrine" before he says "discipline." He worries about "the form of religion without the power." I think Wesley is pointing here toward a problem that also afflicts current talk of Christianity as a practice.
Worship's object determines the nature of worship. Some of the "spiritual practices" being urged upon us today seem too tame for a people who are evoked by the wild, untamable Word. Speaking as a preacher, I would argue that the spiritual practices needed by faithful Christian preachers are those that give us the guts to be in conversation with, and to speak up for, a true and living God who loves to meet people through the Word.
The great Scottish theologian P. T. Forsyth emphasized that preachers require a peculiar kind of prayer life. Prayer for the preacher "is only serious searching prayer, not prayer as sweet and seemly devotion at the day's dawn or close, but prayer as an ingredient of the day's work, pastoral and theological prayer, priest's prayer." I am reminded of the preacher who, in a discussion of "necessary homiletical disciplines," said that for him the important step in sermon preparation was a two-mile jog at dawn on Sunday. Why? "God uses that time to get me pumped up enough to have the guts to stand up and preach at 11 o'clock to people who mostly don't want to hear what I feel compelled to say."
If Sabbath is mainly about taking time to be spiritual, then Islam and other faiths have marvelous disciplines for taking over time in the name of God. The faithful follower stops everything and prays. It must be an effective way of taking time for God. Similar disciplines are practiced in monastic spirituality.
Mainstream Christianity has generally taken a different view. We do not, perhaps we cannot, take time for God. God in Christ takes time for us and interrupts us, throughout the day, if we have the eyes of faith to see it. God takes time from us. God does not wait for us to fine-tune the spiritual disciplines. God grants us the freedom to be about our vocations in the world, doing what we have to do in this life. Then God suddenly shows up, unexpectedly becomes an event in our time, disrupts our lives. While we are busy planning a wedding, God interrupts, impregnates and enlists a young woman in a revolution (Luke 2). Eventually, God promises to take all time from us; all of us will die and be subsumed into God-determined time, like it or not. An eschatological concern is one of the basic Christian affirmations that tends to be absent from discussions of Christianity as a practice.
Christians have learned from bitter experience that many of our allegedly helpful means of climbing up to God are easily perverted into ways of defending ourselves against God. We're always in danger of reducing Christianity to a matter of our experience. The true God can never be known through our practices but comes to us only as a gift of God, only as revelation. This is why I can say (as a Wesleyan) that Christian practices are not primarily what we do. Rather, our practice of the faith is something that God does for us, in us, often despite us.
Today's talk about spiritual practices could be just one more in a long line of attempts to take time on our terms. Thank God we don't have to devise a set of practices to take time for God; in Jesus Christ, God takes us.
This article will be part of the forthcoming book Reflections on the Spiritual Life (Westminster John Knox), edited by Allan Hugh Cole.
William H. Willimon is United Methodist bishop of the North Alabama Conference.
Somehow my shaking fingers kept pushing the buttons on the phone. All I could think as a voice answered was, "God help me."
"Hello," I said. "This is Eric Swenson. Is Reverend Greene there?" Maybe there was still a chance that I could leave a message.
"This is Lloyd Greene," came the deep and resonant reply. My heart sank. I had no choice but to go forward.
"I am calling you in your capacity as chair of the Committee on Ministry," I ventured. "I am wondering how to go about a name change." I hoped the quaver in my voice wasn't noticeable.
"All you need to do is write a letter to the committee and tell us what you want to change your name to."
It sounded easy enough. I hoped this would be the end of the conversation, but instead he continued, "What do you want to change your name to?"
Hesitantly, I answered, "Erin Katrina Swenson."
A long silence.
At last Greene said, "Why do you want to change your name to that?"
I took a deep breath. "I am in the process of changing my gender expression from masculine to feminine. I thought that would be a more appropriate name."
The cat was out of the bag. I hung up the phone that day in 1995 feeling both relief and apprehension. I knew that Greene would be calling the leaders at the presbytery office. Since the beginning of my gender transition I had become accustomed to being talked about behind my back. The sensation had inspired a germinating paranoia that I have since learned is common for people struggling with gender issues.
Greene called back 30 minutes later. In my letter to the committee, he said, I should address two issues: first, my gender transition, and specifically whether I anticipated medical treatment or surgery. Second, what my intentions were for my ordination. Did I intend to keep it?
Perhaps I had been naive to think that I could get the presbytery to simply change my name. While I had been ordained for 22 years, most of the time had been spent as a pastoral counselor in private practice. I wasn't a high profile pastor and I had imagined that I could hide in the large Atlanta presbytery. The request that I address the question of my ordination exposed the naïveté of my plan. The shame of being exposed to the church community I had grown up in seemed impossible to endure.
I wrote the letter, worrying the words to death in an attempt to say not too much or too little. First, I asked for the name change from Eric Karl Swenson to Erin Katrina Swenson. Much time and energy had gone into the selection of my new name. I liked the androgyny of Erin, phonetically similar to the Hebrew Aaron. In a previous era, transsexuals had been urged to choose distinctly feminine names in order to reinforce an emerging feminine persona. This approach encouraged transsexuals to change their surnames and put distance between their past and present, breaking with all aspects of their former life, including family, friends, career and community. I was glad that this was not demanded of me.
I desired no complete break with the past; I had never desired to be extremely feminine. I just wanted to be a woman, like the powerful women I admired. Changing just that small c in Eric to n allowed me both the continuity and the feminization I so desired.
After I requested the name change, I did my best to describe the process I was undergoing. I outlined the list of accepted medical protocols, including psychotherapy, hormone therapy, a year living experimentally as a woman, and finally the possibility of surgical procedures. In my letter I was tentative about the surgery, although I had a deep and inexplicable desire for it. I didn't want to put myself in a position of asking the church for permission to have sex reassignment surgery.
Finally, I wrote that I wanted to continue in ordained ministry. Though the briefest answer of the three, I knew it was the most difficult.
Why was I going to all this trouble? Why not set aside my ordination as a Presbyterian minister? It certainly would have been easier for the church, and it would have removed all kinds of complications in my life. The idea of confronting church people with my plans for a gender transition made me physically ill. Images of faces twisted with disgust filled my mind, along with fingers pointing in derision and voices raised in anger. As a marriage and family therapist fully licensed by the state of Georgia, I could easily carry on my work without ordination.
I knew that my ministry would continue with or without the church's acceptance. I knew there was no magic in ordination. In my more than two decades of ordination, nothing magical had happened. The Presbyterian Church recognizes this reality by teaching that ordination does not confer any special status on the holder. Ordination simply denotes a person set aside for a particular purpose that serves the church.
What kept me from walking away was a very practical concern: my daughter. Lara was born when I was in my first ordained church position. She was premature by ten weeks and very sick. When Lara finally came home from the hospital, she had permanent and severe disabilities. Her mother and I were devoted to her care, while also trying to be good parents to her older sister. The insurance policy that I held as an ordained minister was our financial oasis in a desert of multiple hospitalizations, antiseizure medications, wheelchairs, expensive adaptive equipment and many doctors.
When I began to think about a gender transition, insurance was a major consideration. I checked with the insurance agency of the Presbyterian Church to see if I could maintain coverage if I left the ministry. The answer was no. What if my ordination were taken away from me? Again, no. I explored the possibility of getting a private insurance policy. After only a few calls, it was clear that no one would insure both me and our disabled daughter. And because the likelihood of a medical emergency requiring astronomically expensive treatment was always high with Lara, anything that threatened insurance coverage was not an option. If I was to do this gender transition, it would have to include keeping my ordination.
Eventually, Greene called to say that the Committee on Ministry wanted me to come to its next monthly meeting. The relief of not having been dismissed without a hearing was quickly replaced by the terror of facing this powerful committee.
For the very first time, I wondered if anyone had done this before. It had been 40 years since Christine Jorgenson brought transsexualism into the American vocabulary. But had any pastors walked this road ahead of me? I looked hard in seminary libraries for evidence of gender transition and found nothing but a copy of Janice Raymond's biased and hate-filled Transsexual Empire in one library. Awareness slowly grew that I was very alone in this.
My prayer life had always been a quiet sense of God's presence that fell over me at various times of the day. I often said a simple prayer of thanks when I walked outside. Just as often, I might issue a complaint (I call them prayers of complication). As I waited for the meeting with the Committee on Ministry, my prayers of complication increased. God, how could you? What do you mean saddling me with this? I had no idea what I was doing, and I found no guidance anywhere.
As the day of the meeting approached, I faced a concern unfamiliar to me, but certainly well known to women: what to wear. My hair had been growing for almost nine months and thankfully was long enough that I wouldn't have to wear a wig. Makeup was a skill I had acquired over many years of closeted cross-dressing. I had had my first clearing of facial hair by an electrologist. It was the clothing that worried me the most.
Meeting with the committee members was perhaps the most important thing I would do during my transition, and they would examine what I wore as intensely as anything else—as they would any woman who met with them, it occurred to me. This was a new awareness, and a kind of resentment came with it. I wondered, "Do all women feel this?"
Several months earlier I had decided to go through with the transition to become the woman I had always wanted to be. I had no idea what would happen in my life, but for the first time, as I made that decision, I felt whole. At that very moment, I had a strange feeling of thankfulness for being who I am. God, I prayed, how strangely you have made me! And how thankful I am to you for it.
The memory of that moment helped as I pulled into the presbytery office parking lot in an office park not far from where I lived. An administrative assistant ushered me to a waiting area cordoned off with ropes, like one would find at a movie theater. Am I the feature presentation? I laughed to myself.
When at last I was called into the meeting room, it was washed in the unfriendly glare of fluorescent lights. A dozen folding tables were arranged in a large three-sided formation. On the other side of the room, facing the tables, was the single chair where I was to sit. It was a long walk, a kind of gauntlet, to my seat. I tried to quiet myself with a prayer, "Please help me to keep my heart open to them."
Lloyd Greene opened the meeting by recounting the events since we had first spoken by phone. He described how the committee had been taken by surprise at my request. "There are obviously many questions and concerns," he said, "and we will want to get to these. But first why don't you tell us a little about how you came to be here?"
I took a moment to look around. There were two people on the committee I knew, a few others I recognized. But most were people I had never seen before. Now, for the first time in my life, I told my terrible secret to strangers. I told them of my normal childhood and of my first awareness—at age ten—that I wanted to be female. I told of joining the church at 12. I spoke of my call to ministry, my marriage and children, my work as a pastoral counselor. I told them of all the lying and diversion that went into hiding my secret. Everyone listened intently. When I was finished, Greene asked for more clarification about the transition.
I had anticipated the question, and I had decided to lean heavily on the medical standards for individuals who desire to physically change their gender. These standards, arrived at by medical and counseling professionals, are designed to ensure that decisions regarding irreversible medical procedures, such as hormone therapy and surgery, are made as carefully as possible to protect both the physician and the patient. They have been continually revised over the past 30 years and are currently in their sixth edition. I described the therapy I had undergone over the past two decades. Hormones and androgen blockers had been part of my daily regimen for the past six months. I was required to live for a year as a woman before I would qualify for surgery. I was in the process of obtaining a legal name change in order to live more comfortably in my new role. I told them that the gender transition had so far been a wonderful experience for me.
When the floor opened for questions, a middle-aged man who sat with his arms and legs tightly crossed asked, "Isn't it true that you are seeking a surgical solution to a psychological problem?"
I strained to thank him for his question as I remembered my prayer about keeping my heart open.
"It's difficult when your gender is normal to understand what it is like to look in the mirror and see a stranger looking back at you," I said. "I have seen therapists regularly for over 20 years trying to repair what seemed to be psychologically wrong with me. I even became a therapist myself, hoping that I could somehow find the secret that would release the hammerlock on my life.
"There are a few counseling professionals who claim they are able to cure transsexualism. These are aversion therapies that have great potential for harm and have never proven reliable when subjected to peer reviewed testing. Gender transition is the treatment of choice and has a high success rate when compared with other treatments. In fact gender transition as a treatment is more effective for gender identity disorder (the medical term for what I am dealing with) than angioplasty is for arterial blockages."
I waited to see if he had a follow-up question, but I could tell that I had completely overwhelmed him. "Does that help?" I queried. He nodded his head. He clearly wanted to hear no more.
"Tell us about your marriage and your daughters," one of the several women on the committee asked. "Will you divorce your wife? How will you fulfill your obligation to your children?"
The committee seemed surprised when I told them that Sigrid, my wife, was supportive of my gender transition. She had just recently divorced me, mostly because she had had enough of my inner turmoil. She still loved me, as did our daughters. Our older daughter was struggling mightily with my transition. Lara had accepted my new identity as a woman but was angry with me for the breakup of our family. I explained that much of my practical need to continue in ordained ministry was related to the importance of keeping Lara's insurance coverage through the church.
Two hours later, I left the committee meeting and returned to my car, baking in the April heat. Tears formed in my eyes, and then I was sobbing. The committee members had been respectful and attentive in every way. Their questions were pointed and sometimes awkward, but they had opened themselves to a new and unfamiliar dialogue. Thanks be to God, I prayed. But I still felt very alone.
A few weeks later Bill Adams, the head staff person of the presbytery, called to tell me that the committee had approved my request, but there was another step. My request would be placed on the "consent agenda" at the next presbytery meeting. It could be approved with a number of other routine items at the beginning of the meeting. Bill warned me, "Anyone can ask for an issue to be taken off the consent agenda." He urged me not to attend the meeting, because people were sure to barrage me with questions.
A few months later, I was sitting in the Atlanta Gender Explor ations booth at my first ever Gay Pride Parade when one of the members of the Committee on Ministry called to report about the meeting.
"Erin," he said somberly. "It was a difficult meeting. Someone asked that your name change be taken off the consent agenda. He then requested that we send the report back to committee for further study. His motion passed by a large margin."
My heart dropped. "For further study" was often the way the presbytery buried things it didn't want to deal with.
The next afternoon, my situation got more complicated. I came home to find a message from Gayle White, religion editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She was writing a story on the presbytery meeting and urged me to call her. She wanted to do a pro-and-con story, she said, with my story on one side and the committee member's objections on the other.
I was devastated. I wanted to take the whole ten months back, to climb back into my womb of shame and secrecy and live there as best I could. But as I spoke with her, I realized that cooperation would be the best option. It was better to tell my story than to have it told for me.
Eight weeks later, the newspaper article appeared. The pro-and-con approach had been scrapped, and the title was "Seeking Acceptance." It was a good story, accurately and compassionately told. Best of all, my story was told as one of several of transgender clergy. Even so, the fallout was considerable, and it changed me as much as anything in my gender transition had.
Amid the calls and letters of both support and hatred that I received, one voice in particular stood out. A woman left a message on my machine. She said simply that she had read the article and asked me to call her back.
I anticipated the worst, imagining that the tension I had heard in her voice was hostility. I expected another lecture on accepting my God-given gender. Instead, she introduced herself as Ida. She had been among the first group of patients to go through the sex reassignment program at Johns Hopkins University.
Ida and I met for breakfast at the Majestic, a dingy, if historic, Atlanta institution. As I approached the worn concrete of the diner's front porch, I saw an old woman with a cane, wearing a rather stylish beret.
"Reverend Swenson?" she called out.
Over greasy eggs and bacon, Ida told me that she had been raised an only child in a small town in south Georgia. As a very young man, she began treatments in Baltimore that would allow her to become a woman. She returned to Atlanta and met and married a man with whom she spent most of her life. I imagined myself becoming an old woman like her, and I liked the prospect.
Ida had been raised in a Southern Baptist church, but she discontinued her churchgoing as she transitioned. When she entered a retirement community after her husband's death, she found herself walking through the large wooden doors of a nearby Presbyterian church. She discovered a community there and became a regular piano accompanist for church dinners and Sunday school classes. I expressed delight to find a Presbyterian in the same boat as me, but her face turned glum and she pulled away. "I have never actually joined the church," she said.
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. "I could never join the church because I am a transsexual. No one there knows about me. I didn't think God wanted me in the church. That's why your story was so amazing to me."
At that moment, questions about insurance policies and discreet transitions faded. Jesus was sitting with me at a greasy spoon in midtown Atlanta in the form of an old transsexual woman. He was calling me to a place I had never considered and, to be honest, a place I didn't really want to go. My heart was bursting with grief for her, for a lifetime of believing that she was not acceptable in the community of God's people because she was transsexual. Not acceptable even to God. I remembered the text, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." I heard the message. The church I loved had to be set free. Ida, and everyone like her, needed to experience the church's embrace.
A couple of weeks later, when I received a phone call from the Committee on Ministry and was asked, "If we could find a way to cover insurance for Lara, would you consider resigning your ordination?" my answer was clear. No. I had a call to the ministry, and I had no choice but to follow. And I was no longer alone.
In 1996, the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), affirmed Erin Swenson's ordination.
Erin Swenson practices pastoral counseling and psychotherapy in Atlanta, with a specialty in gender identity. She has been a member of the national board of More Light Presbyterians and serves on the religion council of the Human Rights Campaign.
Having lived in the town of Jonathan Edwards and his grandfather Solomon Stoddard for some 20 years, I've come to feel a kinship to the 17th- and 18th-century Puritan divines—as if they were relatives who somehow got left off my family tree. When I walk past Stoddard's Manse or the gothic First Churches on the site of Edwards's original meeting house, I can't help thinking that a hidden stream of the old religion still runs below the surface of Northampton, Massachusetts, our hip, spiritually polymorphic city-on-a-hill. I may not be able to pull up the sidewalk to locate the underground stream, but at least I can perform that most Puritan of exercises: I can read. I can read myself halfway if not wholly back to the pietist past and see in the everyday streets the emblems of sin and salvation.
It is astonishing that a small group of plain-speaking sectarians equaled the greatest English writers in capturing in one frame the beauty of creation, the goodness of common things, and the deformity of the human heart. As Étienne Gilson said of the medieval Cistercians, the Puritans and Non conformists gave up everything except the art of writing well—and, like the medieval Cistercians, they wrote allegory. Although they were loath to interpret the Bible in other than its literal or typological sense, they had no hesitation about interpreting the visible world as a realm of images and shadows that, come the millennium, would give way to the transcendent realities they represented. To depict spiritual regeneration they used allegorical conceits at once biblical and natural: the knight of faith clothed in the whole armor of God, the perilous quest, the long pilgrimage—images that are stirring, martial and exuberant. Viewed thus, life with its inevitable sorrows and anxieties becomes a spiritual adventure rather than an incalculable series of buffetings.
That's why I'm rereading The Pilgrim's Progress—I know no better antidote to spiritual lethargy than this allegorical dream-vision of John Bunyan. I suppose this makes me one of the millions of Bunyan lovers who, since they don't subscribe to his strict Calvinist covenant theology, struggle to articulate exactly what it is they so passionately admire. For Samuel Coleridge, Bunyan's "piety was baffled by his genius." For the literary critic F. R. Leavis, the moral significance of Bunyan's classic—he calls it a masterpiece in the "art of social living"— overrides its particular theology. As Bunyan scholar Roger Sharrock sees it, "a 17th-century Calvinist sat down to write a tract, and produced a folk-epic of the universal religious imagination."
But I rather think that Bunyan produced not a universal but a uniquely Christian myth. It is universal only in fulfilling the mandate to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth, which it certainly has done. The most widely disseminated Christian book after the Bible, The Pilgrim's Progress has been translated into more than 30 European and 130 non-European languages and has shed much of its "Englishness" and some of its Calvinism in the passage to India, Africa, East Asia and Oceania. I have a copy rendered in Inuktitut in the 1950s by an Anglican missionary to Baffin Island; the pictures show Bunyan's characters in Inuit caribou parkas. The burden on Christian's back looks like a whaler's chest, and the House of the Interpreter is an igloo. But the gospel is plain enough.
Unfortunately it's no longer the case that, as Lord Macaulay put it, "in every nursery the Pilgrim's Progress is a greater favourite than Jack the Giant Killer" or that "there is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turnstile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket gate, and the desolate swamp . . . the valley of Humiliation . . . are as well known to us as the sights of our own street." Even 20th-century Scottish writer and politician John Buchan was so shaped by childhood sabbaths spent reading The Pilgrim's Progress that he felt he could reconstruct it from memory. It colored the surrounding woodlands for him, giving him "the Wicket-gate at the back of the colliery . . . the Hill Difficulty . . . Doubting Castle—a disused gravel-pit" and a permanent conviction, embodied in his spy thrillers and military histories, that life is a hard and exhilarating pilgrimage. In Mr. Standfast, the third Richard Hannay novel (after The Thirty-nine Steps and Greenmantle), Buchan's heroes read The Pilgrim's Progress for diversion, deploy it as a code book behind enemy lines, and use it to interpret their most harrowing trials and intervals of "sweet refreshment." Though I'm not normally one for boys' adventure yarns, I find Mr. Standfast, taken with The Pilgrim's Progress, an elixir of fortitude and hope.
There are other allegorical maps of the road from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Many a child has found a Narnian lantern in her backyard or stumbled upon the Dead Marshes in an abandoned industrial waste stream. But nothing beats the Slough of Despond, the Wicket-gate, the Interpreter's House and the Delectable Mountains for those times when Evangelist catches me forgetting my directions.
Stephanie Paulsell teaches the practice of ministry at Harvard Divinity School.
Hardly a day passes without someone declaring the death of the book. Recently Lisa Miller of Newsweek viewed an electronic edition of the Bible that was replete with linked maps, a commentary and dictionary, and 700 paintings depicting biblical scenes. Astonished almost as much as Moses at the sight of the burning bush, she sputtered, "This is the beginning of the end of the Word."
Those of us who care about the church and its future may rest easy. Theologically, the future of the Word as the Bible remains assured. That is because the God met in Israel and Jesus Christ acts in history, and the church (as well as the synagogue) can give no remotely adequate account of its faith and practice without resort to the memory of a story, a story that has been preserved via the spoken and written word. So reading media may change, but reading and "the book" will live as long as anything like Christianity survives.
Still, you can understand Miller's exaggeration. The last decade has been little short of apocalyptic for print magazines and newspapers. In that light, what can we say about the future of the book?
We will think more clearly on this topic if we remember that the printed and bound book is itself a form of technology. And it is not the first technological medium in which books were produced. Books have been written and reproduced on scrolls of papyrus or animal hides. Before that they appeared on wood, stone, wax, bronze, pottery and silk among other media.
The form of the book that many now think is passing away is the codex, in which leaves of paper are bound into a single brick. Invented by the Romans in the third century before Christ, the codex is a remarkable piece of technology—it is compact, durable and affordable. With its folio organizational system (that is, page numbering and chapter labeling) and such devices as a table of contents and an index it is an efficient and precise vehicle of textual memory and communication.
One testament to the usability and endurance of the codex is the way newer forms of technology mimic it. Digital forms of text on computer screens are still referred to as "pages," and e-books are organized by chapters. The Kindle and Sony Reader try to look and work as much as possible like ink on opaque paper.
This borrowing of the new medium from the old is a key recurrence in the history of media. Occasionally one medium more or less replaces an already established form of communication, but the more usual development is that the older medium survives in adapted form. Radio was not replaced by television (as many people predicted) but it did switch from presenting dramatic or comic serials to concentrating on music.
All of this is to say that the book remains a healthy medium, no matter the immediate or eventual fate of the codex. It is likely that the digital book is here to stay, and the codex may increasingly lose its dominance. The signal advantage of the electronic book is its compactness and portability. The Kindle, physically smaller and lighter than most hardcover texts, can store up to 1,500 books. Anyone who has ever moved a home library can appreciate what that means.
The electronic book will continue to develop and improve. Apple's recently released iPad, for instance, can present full-color artwork. Sharpened, consistently reliable search functions for the digitized book will be more efficient than thumbing through printed and bound pages. If—or when—e-book reading devices become easily affordable, the codex may pass into the realm of the art or fetish object—admired and displayed for aesthetic or sentimental reasons, much like vinyl LPs are enjoyed in the age of the compact disc or candles used in the era of electric lighting.
Then again, the codex may not be supplanted to that extent. The electronic book, as its name admits, depends on an abundant and cheap supply of electricity. It has been commonly assumed that electronic reading media would be less ecologically burdensome than the "dead-tree" technologies of print media. But Chris Anderson argues on his blog The Long Tail that "dead-tree magazines have a smaller net carbon footprint than Web media." Nicholson Baker in McSweeney's observes that in 2006 computer server farms consumed 60 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, while paper mills consumed 75 billion kilowatt hours. This means servers and paper mills already leave "a roughly comparable carbon footprint"—and server energy consumption is increasing exponentially.
The "dead-tree" codex remains an elegant piece of technology. Its energy needs are minimal. Once produced, a codex copy requires only the energy of the reader—and some sunlight. Depending on future circumstances, such as the ready availability of electronic energy, factors that are unpredictable but massively consequential, the humble codex may have a long life yet. There are reasons it endured for 23 centuries.
Rodney Clapp's American Soundings column appears in every other issue of the Century.
The Young Victoria, a chronicle of Queen Victoria's early days on the English throne, avoids all the historical-epic pitfalls. It's a trim, robust film whose period-piece trappings—sumptuous production and costume design—never threaten to overwhelm the human interaction or muddy the dramatic arc.
That arc is the education of a young royal. In her first leading performance, Emily Blunt plays Victoria as brisk, witty and independent. She resists the at tempts of her German mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), and her stepfather, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), to use her as a pawn. But her inexperience in statecraft surfaces when she allows herself to be manipulated by a more charming ally, Lord Mel bourne (Paul Bettany), whose counsel she relies on so much that it unfairly disadvantages his political adversary, the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel (Michael Maloney).
Julian Fellowes's script is extremely canny about the ways in which a monarch's private predilections invariably influence the affairs of state. When Melbourne persuades Victoria to enlist his wife as her lady-in-waiting, her favoritism has the bi zarre effect of unseating the government.
Fellowes and director Jean-Marc Vallée juxtapose Victoria's struggle to find her own voice with that of Prince Albert (Rupert Friend), her German suitor. In its early stages, Albert's courtship of Victoria is an act of patriotism: he represents his king (Thomas Kretschmann), who wishes a stronger British-German alliance, rather than his own heart. When he falls in love with Victoria he has to pull away from other influences and become his own man.
Much of the film is a love story between two spirited young people wise enough to trust their hearts. Albert wins Victoria's after she confides in him, in the days before she ascends the throne, that she feels helpless against the politically astute adults around her—and he replies that her only recourse is to learn to play the game better than they can.
From the outset, the marriage is passionate but not easy; Victoria learns that it requires its own set of negotiations. Albert isn't content to be a consort, and he's intelligent and imaginative: he has contributions to make. He's constantly battling ironclad traditions, some of which stopped making practical sense after the Middle Ages—and Albert is a practical man. The queen, advised by Melbourne against letting her husband take too large a role, makes the youthful error of being high-handed with Albert, treating him like a subject. Some of the best scenes focus on Victoria figuring out how to steer the vessel of her marriage—what it means to take on an equal partner—while also learning to steer the ship of state.
The movie is satisfying on all fronts: it's literate, visually pleasing and impeccably acted. Blunt gives a vibrant and sensitive performance in a role that has, strangely enough, rarely been placed in the center of a dramatic work—there have been countless Queen Elizabeths but few Victorias. (The last may have been Julie Harris's justly famous television portrayal half a century ago in Victoria Regina.) Blunt is forthright but brittle, like a Jane Austen heroine.
Rupert Friend is so effortlessly skillful that he's in danger of being overlooked, and the supporting cast is supurb. The marvelous Jim Broadbent plays ornery King William, whose death brings Victoria to the throne. It's a small role, but the filmmakers give Broadbent a memorably funny scene in which the Duchess of Kent's efforts to insinuate herself and her husband into the palace make the old king nearly apoplectic. The chameleonic Bettany is fine as usual, and Miranda Richardson gives a comic performance with an undercurrent of pathos as the interfering mama.
One of Prince Albert's sweetest and most understated qualities is his instinctual kindness to his mother-in-law. In one scene, the duchess admits to Albert that she knows she isn't welcome in her daughter's palace, and he responds with a tenderness that suggests an understanding of the complexities of human relations—which can only enrich his marriage and Victoria's reign. The historical record confirms the movie's point of view. Walking away from The Young Victoria, you feel pretty good about the possibilities of the married state.
Steve Vineberg teaches at the College of the Holy Cross.
In time for Holy Week, this issue features David Cunningham's essay on the destiny of the "other thief" who was on the cross beside Jesus. It also contains William H. Willimon's witness to the radical news of Easter. I suspect I'm not the only preacher who will retell Willimon's story of students on a mission trip being disarmed by the laughter and raucous singing of Haitian children in the midst of unmitigated tragedy.
It is, of course, a central Christian claim that even in the midst of the worst that can happen there is a divine presence that is redemptive, hopeful and ultimately victorious. After four decades of watching the sanctuary fill to overflowing on Easter Sunday, I have concluded that people turn out on Easter not entirely out of convention and custom, but because at the deepest level they want to hear a word about life in the midst of death.
It's tempting to scold people for coming to church only on Easter and Christmas—to wish the Easter congregation a Happy Fourth of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving because you know you won't see many of them again until next December. They will all laugh politely. But they have come to hear what the church has to say about life after death, and in the final analysis that is all we have to offer, and everything.
This issue also contains Vigen Guroian's reflection on Christ's descent into hell on Holy Saturday. Drawing on the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy, Guroian speaks directly to that claim about Christ defeating death. He also speaks to the realities of life in the church.
A year ago a minister I know had to lead her suburban Chicago congregation through an unspeakable tragedy: a member of the congregation shot and killed his wife and her son and then killed himself. The minister had to comfort her congregation and hold it together.
She spoke at a memorial service for the mother and son. What is there to say in that situation? She told the congregation crowded into the sanctuary that there was a phrase in the Apostles' Creed that had always bothered her: the phrase stating that Jesus "descended into hell." She told how the pastor of the church in which she grew up so disliked that line that he went through the hymnals with a large black Magic Marker and crossed it out.
"I grew up saying the creed without that line," the minister said. "Now, this week," she said, "I understand it. We have descended into hell together and Christ has gone before us, into every corner of it. The good news is that when life takes us there, when we have to go there, he goes with us."
"The good news," she concluded, "is that God raised him up and he ascended into heaven that we might be raised with him." Amen—and have a blessed Easter.
John M. Buchanan is editor and publisher of the Century.
The initial humanitarian response to the January 12 earthquake in Haiti has been impressive. Within weeks, Americans pledged over $500 million to the relief effort, almost equaling their response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It's been estimated that half of all American families have donated to Haiti relief.
For all the outpouring of money from around the world and the heroic effort of aid workers, relief efforts remain hampered by Haiti's weak governmental structures and inadequate social services. Supplying basic food, shelter and medical aid is still a challenge, especially in rural areas. Perhaps a third of the displaced people are still waiting to receive plastic sheeting so they can construct a temporary home. Meanwhile, relief workers worry that the camps that have been created for displaced people will soon breed disease and violence. Even worse is the prospect that these refugee camps will become permanent slums for half a million people.
Haiti has long been known as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The history of Haiti seems to be: whenever you think it can't get worse, it does. Prior to the earthquake, half of all Haitians lived on $1 per day and most could not afford basic food and clothing. According to the Overseas Development Institute, nearly three out of every four households relied on the money sent home by relatives living outside the country.
Haiti has also been known as the country with the most nongovernmental organizations per capita in the hemisphere. That fact certainly reflects the extent of need in the country, but it also points to one of the dismal ironies of relief work: while an NGO may succeed in meeting immediate needs, it may also create and reinforce the recipients' dependency on outside help and not fundamentally alter their prospects.
"Build back better" has become the slogan of those who know this history and look to address Haiti's long-term needs. "Better" means creating sustainable jobs and enlisting Haitians in their own development so that donors are not creating new dependencies.
Part of that rebuilding involves reviving Haiti's agriculture (see Paul Jeffrey's article in this issue). Roger Thurow, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who specializes in development issues, notes that for decades international donors encouraged countries like Haiti to reduce their investment in agriculture and instead focus on developing a manufacturing sector, so it could supposedly take advantage of offering low-wage labor on the international market. Astonishingly, a country with one of the world's highest rates of hunger and malnutrition was encouraged to stop growing rice.
In the years ahead Haiti will need sustained investments from governments, businesses and the nonprofit sector, including churches. All who partner in rebuilding Haiti must ask whether they are indeed building back better. Is the project they work on one that Haitians can sustain and one to which Haitians themselves are committed? Does it create viable jobs? Does the agricultural aid accommodate local knowledge and practice? Will residents be able to maintain a new water purification system—or other technical improvements—after the donors go home?
Free meal: The challenge for the church, says Sara Miles, author of Jesus Freak, is to become a permeable body so that all kinds of people are coming in and going out. "Church is actually a place for people to experience we," says Miles. She says she needed "to be knocked around in the great rock tumbler of the church with people I didn't choose—because left to my own devices I'm gonna choose people like me." One of the remarkable things about the church is that it serves a meal—communion—that you can't buy, earn or deserve. It is just given away (interview on Religion Dispatches, February 23).
Staying afloat: Most people assume that Noah's ark was an oceangoing boat with pointed stem and stern for riding the waves. But a 3,700-year-old document recently translated by a British Museum expert suggests that Noah's boat was circular. The ark didn't have to go anywhere, says the translator, it just had to float. The design suggested in this noncanonical document is still used today in Iran and Iraq to take animals across a river or to survive a flood (Guardian, January 1).
Under water: A brochure for the 2009 Financial Empowerment Con ference in Atlanta stated, "Regard less of the media reports, believers are not subject to the recession." But the reality is something different for believers in the prosperity gospel. An elder at a megachurch outside Atlanta said that the homes of between 700 and 800 families at his church are in foreclosure. Even before the recession a Baptist pastor in the area said he ministered to more than 100 former members of a prosperity gospel church. "People had been taught that if they gave money, they would be rich. But when they had a need themselves, they were abandoned," he said. "When they came to us they were at the end of their faith" (Harper's Magazine, March).
Talking to our enemies: Critics have said that the Obama administration's efforts to engage U.S. adversaries is simply appeasement by another name. But Charles A. Kupchan, author of How Enemies Become Friends, argues that "long-standing rivalries tend to thaw as a result of mutual accommodation, not coercive intimidation." To various degrees Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Myanmar have demonstrated interest in engagement with the U.S. Russia, in particular, has worked with the U.S. on arms control and has stepped up efforts to contain Iran's nuclear program (Foreign Affairs, March/April).
By definition: After Joseph Stack flew a small plane into the IRS office building in Austin, Texas, the media and law officials refused to call it an act of terrorism, even though the act seemed to fit the definition of terrorism, according to Glenn Greenwald. "The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity," said Greenwald. A terrorist now means "a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies." The Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Muslim organizations have called this a double standard and asked the government to call the Stack attack an act of terrorism (Salon, February 19 and CAIR news brief).
Saints in their time? Nineteen Catholic theologians and historians— 17 from the U.S.—are imploring Pope Benedict XVI to suspend the process for making Pius XII a saint. Until further research clarifies Pius's record during the Holocaust, these scholars warned, moving Pius toward sainthood would disrupt Catholic-Jewish relations and make objective study of Pius's legacy more difficult. Meanwhile, Pope Benedict approved Mother Mary MacKillop for sainthood. She is Australia's first official saint. MacKillop was briefly excommunicated from the church for inciting her followers to disobey the church. She was also known for helping the needy and for spreading Catholicism throughout Australia and New Zealand in the 19th century (RNS, Wall Street Journal, February 19).
Disentangling the Web: Over a trillion Web pages exist. But despite excellent search tools like Google, finding reliable and pertinent resources can be elusive. For people interested in religion and theology, Meriel Patrick of Intute, the Oxford University Computing Service, has pulled together a rather comprehensive list of Web resources. It includes library catalogs, bibliographic databases, collections of classic works and study tools. Reviews of many of the sites can be found at www.intute.ac.uk (Expository Times, February).
In the doghouse: World Watch estimates that more than half the world's total greenhouse-gas emissions comes from the methane from livestock, the clearing of rainforests for pasture and other emissions from animal agriculture. Two British researchers estimate that the annual ecological "pawprint" of a medium-sized dog is twice that required to build a Toyota Land Cruiser and drive it 6,200 miles. The pet's carnivorous diet is the main culprit. The researchers recommend having pets that are vegetarians, such as rabbits or chickens, and feeding pets leftover food scraps instead of manufactured food (Sierra, March/April).
Just in case: Virginia state legislators passed a bill preventing employers or insurance companies from placing microchips in humans against their will. Mark L. Cole, sponsor of the bill, was concerned that the devices could someday be the "mark of the beast" mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Says Cole: "My understanding—I'm not a theologian—but there's a prophecy in the Bible that says you'll have to receive a mark, or you can neither buy nor sell things in end times. Some people think these computer chips might be that mark" (Examiner, February 14).
Spiritual warfare: When a hooded gunman walked into her crafts store in Frisco, Texas, owner Marian Chadwick pointed a finger at him and declared, "In the name of Jesus, you get out of my store. I bind you by the power of the Holy Spirit." After a customer refused the robber's order to get down on the floor and Chadwick continued to rebuke him, he left the store cursing . . . Carl Black, a veteran cop in Houston, Texas, says that 17 years ago a thug who was resisting arrest suddenly dropped to his knees. Upon seeing Black's badge with the number 666, the thug said, "I ain't fighting with the devil" (Chicago Reader, February 18).
Kässmann quits post as German Protestant leader after drinking offense
The first woman elected to lead Germany's 24 million Protestants in the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Bishop Margot Kässmann, resigned the post days after she was apprehended for a drunk-driving offense.
She said February 24 that she will immediately give up her posts as a bishop and as head of the EKD but will continue as a pastor.
Kässmann, 51, the Lutheran bishop of Hanover since 1999 and chairperson of the EKD, the umbrella organization of Germany's Protestants, was caught driving under the influence on the evening of February 20 in Hanover. She allegedly drove through a red traffic light and her blood alcohol level was found to be three times over the legal limit.
"I am shocked at myself, that I could have committed such a terrible mistake," Kässmann told EPD news agency, the news service of the Evangelical Church in Germany. She could face a fine equivalent to one month's salary and loss of her driver's license for up to 12 months, EPD reported.
Flanked by her four daughters at a press conference in Hanover, Kässmann expressed "deep regret" and said she would resign because her effectiveness as EKD chair would be diminished by her mistake.
Her decision to resign was met with regret by the vice-chairperson of the EKD, Nikolaus Schneider, and vice-speaker of the German Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt.
"The Evangelical Church in Germany will miss her straightforwardness and clarity in her theological, sociopolitical and societal positions," they said in a joint statement. "Her resignation is a heavy blow for German Protestantism."
Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who also is president of the Lutheran World Federation, said he learned "with great sadness" of Käss mann's resignation. Hanson described her as "a gifted theologian, an outstanding global religious leader, a prophetic voice for justice and peace, and a colleague."
Her resignation is "a great loss" for Lutherans and the EKD, he said. "We will continue to pray that God will give her strength and opportunities for continued witness and service," he said in a statement issued at the ELCA headquarters in Chicago.
In addition to being the first woman to head the loose coalition of Protestant church bodies, Kässmann was the youngest person elected to the post at the synod meeting October 28. Her election prompted objections from the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church. Arch bishop Hilarion, who directs external affairs for the Russian patriarchate, said he saw protocol difficulties in future ecumenical dialogues with a woman bishop.
Kässmann, who candidly talked about her divorce before being elected to head the Protestant group, also said in a published interview in late December that that Germany's participation in the war in Afghanistan cannot be justified and "must be ended as soon as possible." Surveys in Germany were showing about 70 percent against the German army's role in the war.
Elected for a six-year term to head the Protestant umbrella organization, Kässmann succeeded Bishop Wolfgang Huber, who retired at the end of 2009 at age 67. With 22 regional Lutheran, United and Reformed churches as members of the EKD, the coalition's constituency ac counts for most of the country's Protestants. -Ecumenical News International
A former Presbyterian pastor and nationally known ecumenical leader has been approved for ordained ministry in Wisconsin by a presbytery which noted his declared conscientious objection to denominational standards that rule out ordaining an openly gay candidate.
The John Knox Presbytery voted 81 to 25 on February 20 to ordain Scott D. Anderson in his current position as executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches, a post he has held since 2003. He previously held a similar job for the California Council of Churches and served on the executive committee of the National Council of Churches.
Anderson was a pastor in Sacra mento in 1990, but he set aside his ordination after two congregants revealed publicly that he was gay. Anderson says he has been in a committed relationship with the same man for nearly 20 years and told the presbytery in Wisconsin that he and his life partner would be the "first in line" if Wisconsin were to allow same-sex civil marriages.
A news release from the John Knox Presbytery said that it may proceed with his ordination in light of the Presby terian Church (U.S.A.) General As sembly votes in 2006 and 2008 that allow local church bodies to permit departures from the PCUSA's so-called chastity-fidelity standard for ordaining clergy.
"The presbytery's decision does not overturn denomination-wide policy, nor does it establish any binding precedents for the future," the presbytery said. The statement continued, "Mr. Ander son's departures from official teaching were not serious enough to overshadow his many other gifts."
Anderson argued before the presbytery that the Bible's message is misapplied when it is used to exclude gay people who are in covenanted, lifelong partnerships.
Anderson, 54, told a Presbyterian Outlook interviewer that his ordination service has been scheduled for mid-May but a legal challenge will likely force a delay as the issue goes through church courts.
"The legal process could take a year, and possibly a bit longer," he told the Century. Anderson admitted he was surprised by the large measure of support at the presbytery meeting. "It was a remarkable, grace-filled moment, even in the midst of disagreement. It was the church at its very best."
He said he would welcome the chance to fill his church council position as an ordained minister. "But my long-term hope is to return to parish ministry, which I have always felt provides the fullest expression of my gifts."
A group of 13 Ohio clergy is asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the tax-exempt status of a Washington boarding house used by conservative members of Congress.
The C Street Center, a redbrick townhouse on Capitol Hill, came to public attention last summer when use of the building was tied to several Republican politicians who had admitted to extramarital affairs.
The three-story townhouse is less a church than an "exclusive club for elected officials," the Ohio clergy charged in a statement on February 23.
The group, called Clergy VOICE, also filed IRS complaints in 2006 and 2008 against conservatives in Ohio for allegedly running afoul of tax laws that require nonprofits to remain neutral in political elections.
Clergy VOICE includes pastors from a variety of mainline Protestant churches. Eric Williams, senior pastor of North Congregational United Church of Christ in Columbus told the Washington Post that the letter would be mailed to the IRS February 23.
The C Street Center's tax exemption was partially revoked last year after an investigation by Washington, D.C., officials found that 66 percent of the house was taxable and the rest exempt. The house's estimated worth is $1.8 million.
Clergy VOICE, whose legal counsel is the former head of the IRS's exempt organizations division, says none of the house should be tax-exempt. "An organization whose chief activity is providing room and board to members of Congress is not a church," Clergy VOICE said in a letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.
The C Street Center is affiliated with the Fellowship Foundation, also known as the Family, a secretive international group of Christian powerbrokers. The foundation sponsors the annual National Prayer Breakfast. The foundation's president, Richard Carver, told the Post that "we have no direct connection in any way with [C Street Center] or what goes on at C Street."
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign (R., Ariz.), both of whom admitted to extramarital affairs last year, have ties to the C Street Center—Sanford as a spiritual seeker and Ensign as a resident. -Religion News Service
The initial Baptist reaction to the choice of a controversial national political figure to serve as president of Baylor University has ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical.
The mid-February news that Kenneth Starr, 63, former Whitewater special prosecutor and current dean of Pepperdine University Law School, would head the world's largest Baptist educational institution took virtually all observers by surprise. Leaders officially connected to the school, its independent alumni association and the Baptist General Convention of Texas generally expressed support.
BGCT president David Lowrie ac know ledged that when he first heard the news, "it caught me off guard." But after meeting Starr at a gathering of Texas Baptist leaders, Lowrie said, "He impressed me as a genuine Christian gentleman, a scholar, very articulate and very committed to applying Christian values to the challenges faced in Chris tian higher education."
Starr was raised in the Churches of Christ, the church of his pastor-father. While in Washington, Starr and his wife were active members of a nondenominational Bible church in Virginia and remained supporters of the church while he taught at Churches of Christ-linked Pepperdine in Malibu, California.
When his new appointment was announced February 15, Starr vowed to join a Baptist congregation before his Baylor presidency begins June 1.
Lowrie, pastor of First Baptist Church in Canyon, Texas, acknowledged Starr's religious background as a non-Baptist could mean he has "two strikes against him" in the eyes of some Baptists. "But I believe him to be a genuine follower of our Lord and Savior, and in regard to principles, he seems to espouse the Baptist beliefs we hold onto," Lowrie said.
At the same time, he acknowledged that Starr's role as the independent counsel whose investigation led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton could be an obstacle to unity. Based on first impressions, Lowrie insisted that he was surprised by Starr's lack of overt political partisanship.
[From 1994 to 1999, Starr was independent counsel for five investigations, including the death of White House counsel Vince Foster, the Whitewater real-estate dealings of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the president's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. His report on the latter said Clinton lied about his affair in a sworn deposition. Clinton was acquitted on February 12, 1999, when the U.S. Senate failed to reach a two-thirds majority to convict Clinton on two charges.]
Lowrie noted Starr's personal in volvement in ministries to the disadvantaged and his advocacy for death-row prisoners as evidence of principles that transcend politics. "He didn't strike me as wanting to position Baylor as a Republican school," he said.
The search committee shared with the media an endorsement by former president George H. W. Bush, who characterized Starr as "one of the very finest public servants with whom I had the privilege to work as president of the United States." Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, described Starr as "not only a zealous, brilliant advocate on the biggest issues of the day, but also someone who is deeply concerned about and kind to every individual he encounters."
Baylor regent Duane Brooks, pastor of Tal lowood Baptist Church in Hous ton, praised Starr as "a brilliant thinker" who "listens carefully to others and deliberates before making decisions." Brooks added: "Starr is Baptistic in his theology."
But some Baylor supporters were more skeptical of Starr's nonpartisanship, his commitment to Baptist principles and his ability to unite the school's fractured constituency.
In recent years, Baylor alumni and friends have divided over several issues, such as the school's direction under previous presidents, its embrace of standard science rather than creationism and its devotion to a strong view of church-state separation.
During the last two years of Robert Sloan's ten-year presidency, the Baylor Faculty Senate twice gave him "no confidence" votes, and the board of regents voted three times on Sloan's continuing employment. Sloan stepped down as president in 2005.
About nine months later, the board unanimously elected John Lilley as president. Lilley had earned two degrees from Baylor and had been a licensed Baptist minister. The board of regents fired him in July 2008, halfway through his contract, for failing to "bring the Baylor family together."
Chris Seay, pastor of Ecclesia, a Bap tist church in Houston, posted an open letter to the regents voicing his concerns online shortly after the announcement of Starr's appointment. He pointed to "in tense bickering, verbal assaults and en trenched separation" that have divided the Baylor community since the late 1990s.
"It seemed clear to all that the next president of our great university must be more Billy Graham than Karl Rove," wrote Seay. "Instead of seeking a peacemaker, the board of regents has selected one of the most polarizing public figures in recent history, and in doing so, has injected partisan politics as one more reason to seek division rather than unity in the Baylor family."
Matt Cook, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, said in an open letter that while Starr might not be the hard-bitten conservative ideologue that his popular "caricature" would suggest, the onus is on him and Baylor regents to prove that is the case.
He said Starr should be transparent about his political intentions because this moment in Baylor's history requires a president who will concentrate on "building consensus first and foremost."
Cook advised that Starr be committed to having a diversity of political and theological viewpoints in Baylor's leadership. He said that effort required more than inviting campus speakers representing a broad array of viewpoints—something Starr has been praised for doing at Pepperdine. -Robert Marus, Ken Camp, Associated Baptist Press
Ever since the Great Recession began in the fall of 2008, Christians and other faith leaders have criticized the speculative excess and greed that led to the crisis. A consensus on what to do about it, however, has yet to emerge.
The parameters of the critique were staked out at Trinity Institute's "Building an Ethical Economy" conference in late January at Trinity Episcopal Church in the heart of Wall Street.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams bemoaned the damage that results from "an economic climate in which everything reduces to the search for maximized profit and unlimited material growth."
Williams focused less on short-term action and more on how communities of faith need to examine language and self-image in order to contribute to building an ethical economy over the long term.
There has been no shortage of suggested solutions. Last July, Pope Bene dict XVI proposed a macro solution to the financial crisis, calling for a new world financial order that would reform the United Nations and other international institutions in order to give poorer countries more of a role in international policy.
Others say change has to come about at the level of individuals. Jim Wallis, president and CEO of Sojourners, a Washington-based Christian social justice group, says the necessary questions in the wake of failed banks and 10 percent unemployment are not "When will this economic crisis end?" but rather "How will it change us?"
In a new book, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street, Wallis calls for a "new normal" of biblical values that include broad themes like "Enough is enough" and "We're in it together."
"We know that something has gone wrong when Donald Trump, in the TV reality show The Apprentice, is offered as a cultural role model for a new generation of business leaders," Wallis writes. Wallis criticizes outrageous executive bonuses and calls for more regulation of the banking industry, but he includes 20 "moral exercises" that individuals can take to reset their personal compasses.
Focusing on personal morality is fine, but that doesn't get at the root causes of an immoral system, says Peter Laarman, executive director of Los Angeles-based Pro gressive Christians Uniting. Laarman served for a decade as senior minister at New York City's Judson Memorial Church before joining the PCU staff in 2004.
[PCU co-sponsored a late February meeting in Min neapolis of 20 leaders from flagship churches, seminaries and groups such as Prot estants for the Com mon Good to form task forces that would press "the Jesus ethic" against what Laar man and others called the forces of "militarism, racism and corporate dominance."]
"People should be invited to sober up and to live within their means, but let's look more deeply at the system. We need to curb the unbelievably malign influence of concentrated money in our political system," Laarman said in an interview, noting that the Supreme Court recently loosened restrictions on corporate political spending.
Taking action against economic injustice is a concept solidly rooted in the Bible. "The teachings of the Hebrew scripture are clear about usury (lending money at high interest rates)," he said. In the New Testament, the story of Jesus chasing the moneylenders out of the temple—a system that preyed on the poor—is told across all four Gospels.
Laarman said a problem that took years to develop will take years to dismantle, but he points to an example from three decades ago in which faith groups served as the conscience and the foot soldiers of the antiapartheid movement in South Africa.
"There's no question apartheid was brought to its knees, but this won't be as easy. It's not immediately apparent to everyone that this concentration of power is a cancer. We need to find the moral center of this."
The economic meltdown, he said, is "fraught with core issues for people of faith," but what's needed now is a unified response, Laarman said.
In Massachusetts, the Greater Boston Interfaith Or ganization recently launched a campaign to pressure credit card issuers to lower rates, which can soar as high as 30 percent. The group includes 50 faith-based and community organizations.
More direct, targeted action was the focus of the PICO National Network, a grassroots advocacy group that represents more than 1,000 congregations. Leaders have met with Bank of America officials in California to demand that the bank slow foreclosures and modify mortgages for struggling homeowners.
PICO didn't just talk. One pastor said his church had closed its Bank of America accounts in protest, and others were urged to do likewise. -Solange DeSantis, Religion News Service
