On the coast road where Trent Lott had a home. This roof was still in good shape -- it's just the house beneath it that was gone. 

Close to the coast. 

After the deluge. 

On the ground in Mississippi. 

Katrina Diaries: The View from the Front Porch

Another multi-analgesic day: gutting the interior of Alfred Jackson’s house. Mr. Jackson, an 82-year-old African-American man, has lived his entire life in the house we stripped to studs today. Katrina was the first storm to flood his house, and she left it under eight feet of brackish water.

The work is brutal in the 90-degree heat, and it doesn’t leave much time for conversation so I don’t know much about Mr. Jackson’s eight decades in Mississippi. I do know he had built a nice home with beautiful paneling on many of the walls, and shelves filled with books and the mementos of a long life.

Katrina’s winds and water swept away the books and many of the mementos. They ripped the veneer right off the walls. They also ripped the veneer that has glossed over racial politics in America. But they left behind a Bible, a bit worse for the beating it suffered, but still carrying the promise that someday justice will roll down like mighty water and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

An octogenarian in Mississippi has probably seen a lot of water roll by. He could be forgiven for a certain sadness in the wake of these angry waters, yet as he sat in the shade of a tree in his front lawn watching us carry out the stuff of a lifetime, Mr. Jackson’s eyes were still bright, hopeful and focused on the future as he told us – eyes twinkling – that he’d been thinking about redecorating anyway.

Yesterday we drove along the beach front road where Sen. Trent Lott’s house was destroyed. President Bush joked about sitting on the front porch again when it is rebuilt. I don’t suppose the president will ever sit out under the tree in Alfred Jackson’s front yard.

He should. Familiarity does not breed contempt; it cultivates concern and compassion. Many political observers have noted President Bush’s apparent discomfort with poor folks in general and poor African-Americans in particular. The First Lady may be honest in her insistence that Mr. Bush cares for all Americans; nevertheless, her heated defense of her husband does not change the fact that folks like Alfred Jackson will never be among Mr. Bush’s circle of familiarity and concern.

As for me, in better – and cooler – times, I am pretty darn sure that I’d rather spend an afternoon sitting in Mr. Jackson’s front yard than on Trent Lott’s front porch. The view of the Gulf of Mexico may be much better from Sen. Lott’s porch, but the view of America is better from Mr. Jackson’s.

Katrina Diaries: Lord's Day

The best way to describe this Sabbath is that it has been a four ibuprofen day. We made of our work a worship, and recalled with our backs that the Sabbath was made for humankind not humankind for the Sabbath.

The “worship” began with prayer at 8:30, followed by a chorus of chain saws at 8:45. Before dinner was mercifully served at 7:00 we had gutted one house down to its bare studs and removed a ton or more of trees and debris from outside of another.

We are in an area spared the worst of the storm, and still the devastation along the shore is indescribable. Tornados reduce homes to matchsticks; hurricanes do the same thing and then sweep the matchsticks out to sea.

Such storms strike with a great egalitarian furry, sweeping away mansions and shacks alike. Along the beach road in Pascagoula we passed what, we were told, was the home of the wealthiest man in Mississippi. It is now a see-through – or, perhaps, sea-through – structure. The neighbor’s car rests in a swimming pool. One perfectly intact roof sits squarely on the foundation of a house swept away by the storm surge. The roofers would be proud of their work, but a bit mystified as to the whereabouts of the house they did it on.

Two blocks inland the homes are far more modest – two bedrooms on a slab qualifies as middle class; working class folks inhabit trailers. Just a few days ago all were six feet under the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, while the wind and waves were no respecter of class, the economic structures that will determine the course of rebuilding are entirely class driven. There is a class of folks who are insured and another class of folks who are not. There is a class of folks who can afford to rebuild and another class who cannot. The wealth on the coast line here is not as deep as the flood waters were, and thus the outpouring of volunteers is crucial. Free labor is all some folks can afford.

But it will not, on its own, be enough to ensure the return of ordinary working folks – the shipbuilders, the fishers, the shop owners, police, fire fighters, school teachers, service employees and factory workers who have lived along this coastline in homes just a stroll away from the water.

Ensuring their return will take a massive influx of public money justly distributed. These days, the tens of thousands of folks all along the Gulf Coast need the concern of the federal government.

They certainly aren’t getting the concern of some insurance companies unless they have flood insurance. Homes utterly destroyed by the 25-foot storm surge aren’t covered by standard policies because the damage was caused by water not wind – never mind that the wall of water was driven by 150-mile per hour winds.

One home we worked on today was totaled by the storm surge. It had to be completely gutted, which we did. The insurance agent told the home owner to expect $10,000 to cover the roof of their shed, which was blown off by the wind, but to expect nothing for their house which was under eight feet of water when the surge rolled through. The family of five is homeless, but their shed will have a nice roof.

For now, the kindness of strangers is all that holds together many such families. Such kindness marks the first step on the road to recovery. There’s plenty of work to be done. Will there be enough strangers to do it?

Katrina Diaries: Heroes Highway

It is a long, long, long way from Arlington, Virginia, to Gautier, Mississippi. My butt is molded to the seat of this minivan! In my road stupor I am convinced that I rolled through northern Alabama listening to Jackson Browne singing “After the Deluge.”

The long, low ridge that emerges from the broad coastal plain just south of Birmingham marks the southern end of the Appalachians, and it seems to me utterly disconnected from the rest of those mountains. The distance is more than geographic and may be measured better in time than in miles. History in the south is Faulknerian: “the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”

I cannot drive through Birmingham without recalling its critical place in the Civil Rights Movement. The pictures from the Gulf Coast of black people fleeing raging water are more helpless and, perhaps, hopeless, than the pictures from four decades ago of black folks fleeing water aimed with rage by Birmingham police. After the deluge there were no buildings fit to keep the children dry.

I am a southerner, born in Tuscaloosa just a few years before Gov. Wallace stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama promising “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” I know intimately, having graduated from Chattanooga High School with a class that was 50 percent white and 50 percent African-American, that the South has changed.

But sometimes I think those remarkable changes have been overtaken by other equally significant yet almost unremarked upon changes in the broader culture. The Civil Rights Movement itself reminds me of a time before we all became consumers instead of citizens, before we became bound more by a common market than by common humanity. I cannot think about the Movement without recalling the music that kept spirits high; a recollection that makes the destruction of music-filled New Orleans all the more dispiriting.

Yet driving down the “Heroes Highway,” as the interstate from Montgomery to Mobile is called, I saw a few signs of hope as I sped along in an ad hoc caravan of concern. Trucks hauling mobile homes for FEMA, Red Cross crews, other church groups – all heading for the battered Gulf Coast in an effort to close the distances that have separated us one from another for far too long.

Even after the deluge and amidst the apparent triumph of consumer culture, we remain, each of us and all of us, creatures of one earth. Perhaps we may recall this fundamental truth and live into it again as creation reveals its secrets by and by.

Katrina Diaries: A Long Day's Journey

I've been down on the Gulf Coast for a while, with no access to the cyber world but need deep in the muck of the real world. Over the next several days I will post reflections on my time in Mississippi.
If Frederick Buechner is right – if call emerges at the intersection of deep joy and deep need – then I am less called than confused. Why am I heading to the Gulf Coast to join a group of volunteers from National Capital Presbytery? The pictures from Katrina’s wake are compelling, to be sure. I am a pastor, and pastors are supposed to serve, right? After all, I have some experience in cleaning up after hurricanes and in leading mission trips. In addition, to my great surprise, an openly gay member of my congregation is heading down with the team. I am surprised at his participation not for doubts about his gifts – he holds a construction e license – but because the last time he joined a Presbytery mission trip he and his partner had to reenter the closet for the sake of the sensibilities of their Kenyan hosts and the experience was more than a little abusive. I am going, in part, to support Tom.
So I feel obligation and duty, longing and loneliness but little joy as I drive south. Already I miss my children and my wife and wonder about the faithfulness of leaving them and the congregation I serve behind.
Of course, while I may sense little joy as I embark on this journey, the dire need that awaits us in Mississippi is not in doubt. The images that have flashed across screens for the past two weeks are unprecedented in my lifetime. Although we’ve seen utter destruction before and too many times, the scope of Katrina’s devastation exceeds any natural disaster in the United States in the past half century.
On top of the breadth of destruction, the storm’s effects have clearly split along lines of class and race, and thus made clear the deep divisions and fault lines still running through American society. What most Americans don’t want to know or believe about their country has been laid bare in the Third World images beamed out of New Orleans. The commonwealth has collapsed.
A generation of Reaganomics and neo-conservative policies has eviscerated the public sector, intensified the radical individualism of American culture and widened the gap between the haves and have nots to a distance not seen since the Gilded Age. Grover Norquist, who has been called “field marshall of the Bush plan,” once famously remarked that he would like to shrink the federal government to the size where it can be flushed down the bathtub drain. The response of FEMA as New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were being flushed down the drain suggests that Norquist’s dream has come true – with disastrous consequences.
Meanwhile, right-wing Christianity, with its focus on narrowly circumscribed personal piety and individual salvation, has played chaplain to this movement.
In the faces of the women, children and men abandoned in the rising flood waters we are confronting the limits of the conservative social and theological imagination.
The deep need of the world is in those faces. They call forth both the immediate response of disaster relief – the hands on, boots in the mud work of thousands of volunteers, and also for a sustained political engagement confronting the powers in the board rooms of the corporations that will profit from this misery or fail to cover its victims adequately, and the hearing rooms of a Congress that still seems more interested in cutting the taxes of the wealthy than in meeting the needs of the poor.
Christ is in those mud-smeared faces, too. The incarnate one is in our midst: homeless, poor, feeling as abandoned as on the cross. As I drive toward Mississippi, I am realizing that it does bring me deep joy to witness to the reality that some still seek Christ in such places. When that joy of encounter meets such desperate need, Christ beckons – calling us to the public square and to public squalor to be repairers of the breaches in both places.

Coming Out

Nobody says it better than Bill Moyers, and he was at it again recently in a speech at Union Seminary in New York. His warnings about the dangers of theocracy were echoing in my mind when I received a call from a local congregation wanting to use space in the building of the church I serve. We're close to public transportation rail lines, so it's not unusual for groups to ask and we often accommodate such requests. But this time the request was for a room for a support group for men and women "seeking a way out of homosexuality."
I'll confess that I stopped seeking further information right there. After all, in a More Light Presbyterian congregation that is welcoming, affirming and empowering of individuals regardless of sexual orientation, one that hosts "coming out" support groups for people discerning their own sexual identity, anything resembling the "ex-gay" movement is incongruent with our mission. The request to use our space may have been motivated by deeply held values of compassion and concern. It came from a main-line Protestant church that would surely eschew the label of fundamentalism. Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that such a request is also deeply intertwined with the very thing about which mowers warns.
As he put it, "This is the crux of the matter: To these fundamentalist radicals there is only one legitimate religion and only one particular brand of that religion that is right; all others who call on God are immoral or wrong. They believe the Bible to be literally true and that they alone know what it means."
The problem, of course, is that the witness of scripture is multivalent and overdetermined. Just as there are conservative scholars who insist on a quasi-literalist reading of the handful of passages sometimes interpreted as relating to homosexuality there are many others who insist that such readings are, at best, inaccurate and, at worst, based more on contemporary prejudice than Biblical scholarship.
For my money, the best brief and readable such progressive critique remains the one authored more than 20 years ago by Walter Wink.
As Wink insists, "The Bible only knows a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, culture, or period."
Any program that attempts to push, pull, prod or persuade a gay man or a lesbian woman that their sexuality is deviant and unholy -- rather than a part of the incredible variety of God's good creation -- misses the mark of the love ethic.

Labor of Imagination

The Third World nature of the images from the Gulf Coast are almost beyond description: they paint a scene of destruction, desolation, despair, chaos and hopelessness – all coming with oppressive tropical heat that adds a veneer of sweat to the misery.
Underneath it all runs a current of outrage as survivors begin to raise questions that the nation must address in the days to come – questions of racial justice, economic justice, budget priorities, security choices. As is typical, James Carrol offers some of the sharpest and most eloquently phrased response to such questions. His words provide context for the images that continue to emerge. As is also typical, David Corn offers a less eloquent, more pointed critique in his response. Both are worth the read.
Where, in all of this volatile mix of fear, despair and anger, do we find images of hope? What now will call forth and inspire the labor of imagination? To ask the peculiarly Christian question: Where in all of this can we find resurrection?
I hope people of faith found a bit of it when they gathered in worship in recent days. There were undoubtedly some voices in some pulpits last weekend speaking of God’s judgement and wrath. But the God of resurrection hope is not the author of human suffering. Only those of too limited imagination – and of too short memory – would make such claims in response to the images of suffering coming from the Gulf Coast in the past days.
No, now is not the time to speak of God’s judgment – at least not in such simplistic terms. Instead, let people of faith and hope speak together of the memory of God’s infinite imagination and the call to us to participate in such times as this in the Godly labor of imagination. For only through such imaginative work can we move beyond paralyzing fear. As Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, insists, “the work of imagination is serious business because through it we build or destroy the world.”
There has been more than enough destruction; now is the time to build.
In his memoir, The Story of a Life, the Israeli writer and Holocaust survivor Aharon Appelfeld writes, “memory pulled toward the now and imagination sailed toward the unknown.”
In times of crisis we are challenged to hold these two together – memory and imagination. As a people of faith, a people called, shaped and informed by a particular story, a particular collection of memories, we gather strength from the memory of God’s transformative power and of its work in the lives of those who have come before us. Exodus reminds us that the water was parted to transform a people – to liberate captives and found a new people shaped and formed around the memory of justice.
A people shaped and formed by justice cannot turn their backs on injustice anywhere. However, when we ask, “what is the work of justice in this context” our discernment calls us into the labor of imagination as we cast a vision of a future otherwise, a future in which the poor are not consigned to the most dangerous living conditions and resigned to the back of every line for assistance in times of crisis.
The gospel stories of Jesus calming the seas remind us of Jesus’ transforming presence in the lives of the disciples, calming the storms around them and encouraging them to live without fear. A people shaped and formed by the love which casts out all fear cannot ignore the cries of those living in the midst of such fearful conditions. However, when we ask, “what is the work of such love in this context” our discernment calls us into the labor of imagination as we cast a vision of a future otherwise, a future in which refugees find a welcome and hospitality casts out fear.
And even – especially – in the midst of such a time as this, the words of the psalmist call us to sing: and to sing a more profound hallelujah, to lift our voices in praise, to join the chorus of creation and to worship with imagination. When we recall the apostle Paul’s admonition to make of our very lives a worship, we begin to move toward the labor of imagination that is required of us if we are to look at the images from New Orleans and imagine those waters parted, those communities rebuilt, those lives restored, those homeless welcomed, those mourning comforted, those naked clothed and hungry fed.
The memory of stories of transformation should not leave us wallowing in nostalgia, but rather they should and must and will pull us toward the now and help us imagine a future of restoration. What lies immediately before and around is horror. Lives and communities have been dis-membered; now they must be re-membered. They must be rebuilt, restored, reformed, reimagined.
For, if imagination sails toward the unknown, it sails toward a future that is, nonetheless, shaped by the play of memory and imagination.
The images that have touched us so deeply during these past few days leave us profoundly unsettled. It is as if the present moment is the unknown. Powerful images work on us that way. As the poet Adrienne Rich said, art isn’t “enough as something to be appreciated, finely figured; it [can] be a fierce, destabilizing force, a wave pulling you further out than you thought you wanted to be.”
Di Bartolo’s Crucifixion works that way on me. For in drawing me in, it pushes me out further than I want to be – out to where I encounter compassion that is almost beyond my imagination.
Jesus eyes, from which I want to turn away, beckon me into a landscape of suffering and of suffering with that does soul work on my imagination.
Vincent Van Gogh once wrote, “I prefer painting people’s eyes rather than cathedrals, for there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral – a human soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a street walker.”
During the past few days I have tried not to turn my eyes away from the eyes of those on the Gulf Coast. They are tired, full of despair. They are like the eyes of warriors who have witnessed too much death, too much destruction. They are like the eyes of Jesus on the cross.
If, as they say, the eyes are windows to the soul, these eyes remind us that the human soul is sacred space. These eyes beckon us into the present moment and call us to the labor of imagining and constructing a future otherwise.
When I confront the eyes of the people in the pictures overwhelming us these days, I encounter a suffering almost beyond imagining. Nevertheless, when I remember the work of Christ on the cross, when I look into those eyes, I encounter a compassion that is far beyond my own limited capacity to imagine – except for the story that I recall – or, that recalls me. The story of a love so immeasureable as to encompass all my fears and despair and all of those of creation itself. The story of a love from which nothing will ever separate us: not heights of smashing waves, not depths of stagnant water, not rulers who are inept or unjust, not powers of awesome wind, not present images of chaos, not even death itself – nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.The story of the cross insists that we encounter a God whose imagination soars far beyond our limits – even our limits of death. For even where Jesus, as depicted by di Bartolo and reflected by the gospels, experiences utter abandonment, isolation and alienation, God imagines new life, new community, new hope. As we give of our time and treasure in the days to come – in response to this and other suffering as well – may our labor be imaginative, may it be shaped by the memories of our faith, and may it be labor filled with faith, hope and love enough to shape a future otherwise for those dwelling now in despair.

Amidst the Storm

A hymn for this week.

When raging storms push forth a rising tide,
When rain and wind leave nowhere left to hide,
We cling to branches of the tree of life.
Alleluia.

Foundations crumble on the shifting sand.
We search for hope across a broken land.
Amidst the raging storm we seek God’s hand.
Alleluia.

The homeless wonder through the city’s street.
They seek small shelter from the scorching heat.
Amazing grace would be so cool and sweet.
Alleluia.

When on our own we cannot seem to start,
But neighbors are God’s feet and hands and heart
It is as if You’ve made the waters part.
Alleluia.

The captives will taste liberty again.
The suffering find a balm for deepest pain.
The blind will see, the voiceless lift the strain:
Alleluia. Amen.

Tune: Engelberg
If you feel so moved, feel free to use it. Cite as "David Ensign, copyright 2005," and leave a comment. Thanks.

Why I Am Marching

There's a major anti-war demonstration scheduled next month in DC. It will be time, again, to put on a clerical collar and walk through the streets of Washington with my children who grow weary of such things.
Why bother? As I consider that question -- and as I looked through some old files in search of something else -- I came across something I wrote in the fall of 2002, prior to one of the earliest demonstrations in opposition to war in Iraq. It still rang true to me.

"Last night a member of our session raised concerns for the safety of those of us going to Washington this weekend to protest against war in Iraq. Following another random sniper killing in the Washington area earlier in the week her concerns prompted some reflection. Why run the risk, however infinitesimal, of stepping into the sights of a madman? It is a question worth pondering even if the risk is reduced by today’s arrest of suspects in the sniper case.

"In terms of relative risk, of course, I run a far greater one most afternoons when I cross Monticello Blvd. on my way for an afternoon java fix at Starbucks.

"But this decision is not about the kind of risks I choose to run, but rather about the kind of life I choose to lead. Meaningful lives are, ultimately, faithful lives. The opposite of faith is not disbelief or wrong belief. No, the opposite of faith is fear. A faithful life, a life of meaning, cannot be led in fear.

"It is faith that calls me to march in Washington this weekend -- faith in the Christ who said, “blessed are the peacemakers,” and faith that a better world is possible.

"The nation seems bent on a headlong rush into war. The talking heads assure us that most of the nation supports the president as he leads us with seeming inevitability down the same path his father walked 11 years ago.

"Faith compels me to witness: war is never inevitable. War is a choice that national leaders make, and war is a failure that they pursue as policy. Another choice is always possible, and the peacemaker’s calling is to stand in the public square and proclaim that possibility.

"So Friday night I will board a bus in Cleveland Heights with 50-some other Presbyterians-for-peace to make the long trek to the Mall in Washington.

"That 50-some Presbyterians from Ohio would hop on a bus for a 400-mile, overnight trip that will bring us home at 2 a.m. ought to raise all kinds of questions about the depth of support in the mainstream of middle America for this military adventure, but the pundits can ponder that. To me, this congregation of ordinary folk witnesses to an extraordinary truth: the peacemaker’s call compels us into the meaningful lives we would live.

"We trust that the most serious risk we run this weekend is the loss of two night’s sleep. But if our risk is bigger, we run it recalling Bonhoeffer’s reminder: when the Prince of Peace calls us, he bids us come and die. Die to lives of fear and be reborn to lives of faith. Die to lives of conventional wisdom and be reborn to lives of hope. Die to lives of age-old hatreds and be reborn to lives of exuberant love. Die to lives of war and be reborn to lives of peace.

"Why do I march this weekend? For my own offspring – beloved children of God -- I can only answer: blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."

The cyber age is full of ups and downs. If you're reading this, you know that one of the ups is global conversation at the speed of the web. If you're wondering why it's been so long since the most recent post ... well, what is the sound of one computer crashing ... if it's in the woods, does anyone hear it?
Anyway, we were back up and running just in time for Hiroshima Day.

Signs of Hope

In case you missed this declaration, it's worth reading. It's one more sign of hope for progressive people of faith. These days we need all the signs we can find.

Resident Aliens Revisited

OK. I’ve had a few days to digest Resident Aliens, and here’s one more small response -- although a rather lengthy post -- to add to the volumes this little book has already inspired.

How can we form communities of discipleship in the midst of what is undoubtedly a culture of disbelief? Now I mean that question to be provocative, but I don’t mean simply to suggest that the unchurched don’t believe in God. Indeed, since their numbers are huge and they are diverse in background and perspective, I don’t know what it is that they believe or disbelieve beyond the self-evident fact that few of them believe that getting up on Sunday morning to worship is worth their time and effort.

Moreover, naming our context as a culture of disbelief condemns the church far more than it does the culture. Hauerwas and Willimon are spot on when they suggest that the church itself has made disbelief an easy perspective to take because “we Christians have given atheists less and less in which to disbelieve! A flaccid church has robbed” disbelief of its edge, of its sense of avante guard and its sense of adventure.[1]

The church itself too often works – or, better, fails to work – by way of a functional atheism. This is true internally and externally. In other words, it is true of the church as it performs the necessary acts of maintaining an institution – setting budgets, recruiting and hiring staff, making decisions about its common life; and it is true of the church as it witnesses in the world through acts of mercy and of justice, as it engages the community in service and through political processes.

As Hauerwas and Willimon put it, “The church is the dull exponent of conventional secular political ideas with a vaguely religious tint.”[2]

This is true, they argued, whether we are speaking of liberal social witness or conservative social witness or of the church’s internal functions. In other words, the religious right is indistinguishable from the Republican Party while the religious left is the Democratic Party at prayer. Both sides too often seek to exercise power rather than take up a ministry of reconciliation. Churches left and right look indistinguishable from the Kiwanis Club when they make internal decisions. I’ve seen a lot of church budgets set over the years, in liberal and conservative congregations, and precious few of them developed through a deeply spiritual process of discernment.

If the church is a house of memory, if Brueggemann is correct, if we are drawn together by practices of memory, perhaps we are suffering from spiritual Altzheimer’s disease. We have forgotten that what draws us together, what makes faith a remarkable adventure, what makes our journey together a powerful and transformative witness, is that God has acted decisively in the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and that in and through Jesus Christ, God calls followers of Jesus together to be the church.

When we respond – when we follow Jesus together – we become “salt and light.” We become a sign for the world – a beacon of hope, a way beyond the left and right ways of the world.

The kicker comes here, though. For, as Brueggemann clearly says, we are drawn together by practices that include suffering. This is not a call to suffer for the sake of suffering, but rather to sacrifice for the sake of the gospel and the sake of God’s good creation. When Jesus says, “follow me,” he is inviting disciples on a journey that leads to Jerusalem and to the cross. As Bonhoeffer put it so bluntly, when Jesus calls, he bids us come and die.

Not surprisingly, I suppose, this is the point at which his invitation runs smack up against our deepest desires for security. We are afraid. We live in a culture not only of disbelief, but of deep and abiding fear and insecurity. You don’t have to look very far from where I live in Northern Virginia to understand how deeply this culture values security, nor, I would guess, do any of us have to look any further than our own homes, checking accounts, jobs or investments to see how deeply we, as individuals, value security.

But Jesus calls us to a life together, as church, marked by a radical trust in the sovereign Lord of history and an utterly, foolishly adventurous life of discipleship as we follow him into a life where the poor are blessed, the mourners are comforted, the meek inherit the earth and the peacemakers are called the children of God. That world doesn’t look much like North America, nor much like the North American church, where all too often the poor are blamed for their poverty, the mourners are an embarrassment unless the grieving is “healthy” and brief, the meek are silenced and the peacemakers are called all manner of things from traitor to naïve.

Nevertheless, God is calling us to follow Jesus into the world – into our own backyards now where old memories are giving way to new opportunities – to share this radically counter-cultural gospel of going the second mile, of turning the other cheek, of loving neighbors and enemies.

Now, you have heard it said – on the talk shows, through the internet, from our political leaders, and, too often no doubt from pulpits – you have heard it said that such is not the way of the world, that this is impractical, that nobody really lives this way. But I say to you that God calls us to this life, and, by God’s grace and mercy and love, we can join the great adventure of trying to live it. If we are resident aliens, let's make a joyous noise in a foreign land, and make the life of faith a journey of adventure once again.

---

[1] Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989), 50; they cite Alasdair MacIntyre, The Religious Significance of Atheism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 24.

[2] Hauerwas and Willimon, 38.

Amen, brother!

I've finally actually read Resident Aliens, the 1989 offering from Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon whose title names the church's situation in the midst of a culture of disbelief. Resident Aliens is now considered a classic, and I've read many pieces of it and about it over the years without actually reading the book itself. (Do you have a long list of such books on your shelves, too?)
I'm taken with the church as "salt and light," but not sure that colony is the best image to describe the church in an age of empire. There's way too much to blog on when my children are waiting for me to come up and dish ice cream. Anyway, in the middle of my own reflections on that still challenging book I ran across this post on alternet. I imagine that Hauerwas and Willimon would call the very notion of the religious left fighting back a sign that liberals still long for the age of Christendom, but I'll call it one small sign of hope and say "amen" to the effort. But now, it's time for ice cream.

Back to Camp

I went back to summer camp this year. More than 20 years after serving on the staff of an outstanding Presbyterian summer camp I had the opportunity to return to my roots and spend two weeks as "pastor-in-residence."
First: I had a blast, and highly recommend two weeks at camp for anyone feeling a bit stressed out and over-urbanized or suburbanized.
That said, in twentysome years the place had changed a bit. Its core identity -- a place of building community -- remains remarkably constant. However, the flavor of the community is significantly more evangelical. Praise music has replaced folk music and spirituals at campfires: "My Jesus, My Savior" instead of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot." The story of the call of Samuel has replaced African folk tales as a way of inviting campers deeper into discovery. Intentional Bible study has replaced more general "time for reflection."
In many ways these changes are overdue corrections. It's not that the community was ever too secularized or too accommodating to secular culture. Rather, it simply assumed a familiarity with the songs and stories and traditions of Christian faith that, over time, failed to reflect the reality of its staff or campers. The same is true in the broader church today.
On the other hand, one might argue that the church -- and camp, to a lesser degree -- are actually more accommodating to the culture now. This is something of a stretch at camp where a deep respect for creation, near absence of consumerism and focus on community rather than individual striving remain radically counter cultural. Still, the "Jesus-is-my-boyfriend" praise songs are by and large capitulations to some of the least inspiring aspects of popular culture, and the theology they reflect draws on some of the least inspiring aspects of contemporary church life, too.
Those trends worry me because the signs of an accommodating church are all around us. Non-denominational churches (as well as many main line ones) are springing up as fast as strip malls in sprawling American suburbs -- with architecture often just as uninspiring. Few, if any of these congregations give voice to any prophetic critique of sprawl itself. Churches of all kinds engage in nitch marketing efforts to appeal to religious consumers but rarely offer a prophetic response to consumerism. The church too often supports American foreign policy but remains silent about idolatrous nationalism and militarism.
If you're lucky enough to find yourself at camp this summer, don't let a few mediocre praise songs spoil your fun. But if you find yourself in a church somewhere soon, keep your eyes wide open to the various gods who are being praised.

Going Off Line

Christian Wright is on the road and happily disconnected from the world for the next four weeks. Check back in mid July. Peace out.

The Costs this Time

Been reading Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship again, and am reminded by his prophetic critique of both church and state of the ongoing necessity to speak out at every opportunity against the war of choice we are fighting in Iraq. Although it gets very tiresome after three years to repeat the same opposition over and over, it is more important now than ever because it seems as if the public is finally itself growing weary from the war. Recent editorials in a variety of mainstream papers underscore the increasing discontent. While the infamous Downing Street memo doesn't reveal anything that antiwar activists didn't already assume, it strongly suggests that Congress and the American people were not being told the whole truth about Bush administration plans. Recent news reports suggest the same lack of candor concerning escalating air attacks on Iraq at a time when we were being told that all avenues short of war were being pursued. Although it remains difficult and often extremely unpopular to do so, part of the cost of discipleship in our time must be standing squarely in the public square to say "no" to this war. Truth deserves nothing less.

Hm ...

A wee thought for the day:
"Theology does not dictate political or military strategy, and to identify a particular policy with Christian morality pure and simple is dishonesty and opportunism." Thomas Merton wrote those words more than 40 years ago in reflecting on the Cold War and the moral challenge presented by nuclear weapons. Imagine the heartache saved the body politic if we'd listened to him.