No More Deep Throat

It's been interesting reading the Washington Post these past few days, what with Deep Throat revealed and the end of this city's favorite parlor game. I came of age politically during the summer of Watergate hearings. I read all the early books about the scandal and was practically waiting in line when All the President's Men opened.
It's amusing to listen to the remaining Nixon loyalists this week attacking the integrity of the FBI man who leaked crucial information to Woodward and Bernstein. I used to be surprised when Nixon's supporters looked everywhere but at the Oval Office and its occupant to place the blame. These days I recognize it as a habit too ingrained to break.
Now that the identity of Deep Throat has been revealed, it's clear he was a man of many and mixed motives. It has always been clear that power politics played a central and crucial role in Nixon's downfall. Now we know that personal politics played a part as well. But mixed motives and power politics pale beside the truth, and the information that Mark Felt suplied all turned out to be true.
The truth ought to set us free. The truth was that the Nixon administration abused its power and broke the nation's laws. Truth freed the nation from the strange, paranoid grasp of Richard Nixon.
Alas, as Sen. Hiram Johnson put it during the first World War, "the first casualty of war is truth." The war on terror certainly counts truth among its victims -- from truths about weapons of mass destruction to those about prisoner abuse. The lies of the current Oval Office occupant have shaped the fearfulness of our time, stoking legitimate fears far beyond reason and using them as pretext for much mischief.
There is no more Deep Throat to leak unpopular truth and free us from this fear. While, as they used to say on the X-files, the truth is out there, we choose to ignore it and go on living in the grasp of our own strange paranoia.
So long, Deep Throat. Thanks, and rest in peace.

A Narrative of Hope

I did two things last weekend that, in distinct but related ways, prepared my heart and mind for reflecting on the story of the great flood on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
First, my sons and I went to see the new Star Wars movie, and second, the whole family accompanied some out-of-town friends to Arlington National Cemetery.
More on Revenge of the Sith in a moment. First, the cemetery. We went to a few of the famous graves: Audie Murphy, Joe Louis, and, of course, the Kennedy’s. We watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown.
Now, I should mention that the man we were with, a good friend from Cleveland, is a self-described conservative, gun nut, military enthusiast. You can see immediately why I might be drawn to him – with all that in common!
It was more than a little bit interesting to walk through Arlington National Cemetery with him. The two of us walked together along the same paths, cast our eyes upon the same scenes, but perceived a profoundly different set of stories emanating from the headstones, markers and memorials.
Where he saw stories of honor, courage and sacrifice for the ideals of the country, I saw stories of horror, fear, suffering and the failure of humankind to live into God’s intention for creation as human behavior devolves into the singular emotion of hatred.
I think he saw the stories that the custodians of Arlington, and of the national memory of war, want each of us to hear. I, on the other hand, was left wondering if another story is possible. Is it possible, in our time, to imagine a narrative of hope?
Now, the two of us are friends, and we can talk easily about the sharp divergences in the ways that we see the world.
“Surely,” he insisted, “there are stories of honor, courage and sacrifice.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “surely there are, and just as surely, we should mark them and honor them.”
And so, on this Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend, we do. Please, do not forget that however you feel about the war we are now engaged and engulfed in – especially now when so many young Americans are once again serving under arms.
Let President Kennedy’s famous words, carved in stone there at his gravesite, remind us of the debt of gratitude we owe to all who have answered this call, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
But let the words of scripture remind us that the narratives we recall on a weekend such as this are never unambiguous. The story of the flood lifts up the profound ambiguity at the center of human life: we are torn, each of us at many moments, between the better angels of our nature and the potential for horror and, indeed, evil, that resides also within each of us – Noah notwithstanding.
That tension, that ambiguity, lie at the heart of the Star Wars saga. In compelling ways, the new movie deepened my reflections about the stories of Memorial Day and of Noah and the flood. This film explores the same terrain and its narrative stretches between the same poles as it tells the story of how the Jedi Anakin Skywalker – the one they called “the chosen one” – turns to the dark side and becomes the evil Darth Vader, he of the heavy breathing and wonderfully black outfit! His journey from light to dark underscores the wisdom of my favorite theologian, Jedi master Yoda, who reminds us that “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
That’s a story we would prefer to forget on national days of remembering. But it’s a story that’s never far from the surface, even when buried in shrines at places like Arlington National Cemetery.

Cry the Beloved Country

I've been reading Alan Paton's apartheid era classic, and am struck by how remarkably contemporary it remains almost 60 years after its publication. The passage from which the title comes is a wonderfully accurate description of what it feels like to live in the United States in these nights of empire, days of terror.
"We do not know, we do not knonw. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the rapture of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be exterminated, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all. ...
"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh to gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. for fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."
Ah, but our land is so beautiful, too.

A Way Out of No Way

Last week was a difficult one: a challenge on scales both grand and global, and intimate and local.

It’s been a difficult week for the progressive church as our Roman Catholic brothers – I can’t hold the sisters accountable as they have no voice – our Roman Catholic brothers call a pope who ran the church office formerly called the Inquisition, who says that homosexuality is “objectively disordered and homosexual practices are sins gravely contrary to chastity,” who sees no way forward for women in the church and finds church teachings on contraception more important than the lives of millions of the world’s poorest who will die of AIDS.

Closer to home, Sen. Frist went on TV to tell the nation that progressives are out to filibuster faith – whatever that pernicious phrase means.

All of this is deeply troubling on a large scale. It is enough for the week, to be sure.

But this has also been a deeply troubling week on an intimate scale as well, as we have struggled to help our children with the reality of a bus wreck that struck very close to home. Our children were not on the bus the crashed in Arlington, but it carried some of their close friends and classmates, several of whom were hurt and hospitalized.

It’s been a difficult week in our household, and, for many progressives, it’s been a difficult week in the household of God.

The question for me this week then is this: is there a theological renewal possible that is both large enough to answer the challenge of a conservatism that borders on fundamentalism, and intimate enough to speak to the broken hearts of children and families?

It is perhaps providential that the lectionary placed before the church on Sunday one of those baseline places, one of those foundational passages of scripture. If we are to renew theology and the church we must not merely account for such passages but, indeed, we must be guided by them.

That’s a steep challenge for the progressive church when the passage includes John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Unfortunately, this passage is one of those billboard pieces that conservatives too often use to build a barbed-wire fence of orthodoxy around the garden of faith.

If we are to imagine and then articulate a theology and a vision of church that is expansive enough to respond to the challenge of fundamentalism and also intimate enough to respond to the suffering of grieving families we’ve got to spend some time dwelling in the garden of faith; we’ve got to tear down the fences around it; and we’ve got to embrace the rich and wondrous variety of creation that springs from its soil.

So, what then are we going to do with a passage that is so well known, so often used – and, let’s face it – so often abused that it shows up on signs at baseball games? I’ve got a radical suggestion this morning: let’s take it seriously. Indeed, let’s take it literally – more literally than the literalists and, perhaps, more fundamentally than the fundamentalists.

“I am the way, the truth and the life,” says Jesus.

This is one of those passages often used as a weapon by evangelists of a certain stripe. It was a motto of the crusades, it was no doubt used by the Inquisition, and it still gets used today by some Christians to construct the gates for the club of the saved and keep out the riffraff who don’t fit the mold of a particular conservative orthodox creedal perspective.

You remember the Rainbow Wig Man who used to show up at sporting events with Bible verses plastered on signboards? He used John 14:6 almost interchangeably with John 3:16 – “for God so loved the world …” In interviews, the Rainbow Man said that he was spreading the good news about Jesus to save those souls who were condemned to hell for all eternity if they did not confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, to use the words of the church’s most ancient confession. He seemed to know quite well who was in and who was out, who was us and who was them, who was saved and who was condemned.

But the funny thing is, in this wonderfully rich passage from John, Jesus doesn’t say a single thing about creedal statements or confessions. He simply says, “I’m going to fix a room for you, and believe me, Dad’s house has plenty of space: there’s a room for you there. You know the way: just follow the road.”

When Thomas gives voice to our question – which road is that, Lord? – Jesus simply says, “I am the road.”

No particular church or confession or dogma or denomination or faith tradition is lifted up here. Simply Jesus himself, his very life, a life marked by the breaking of barriers and the breaking of bread; eating with the tax collectors; touching the lepers; breaking bread and breaking silence with women of less than sterling repute; welcoming first the children and claiming a special place for them in the household of God.

Rather than creedal confession, rather than guardian of orthodoxy, Jesus offers relationship. Truth is found in relationship with God, Jesus is telling us. The way of his relationship to God – a way of deep prayer, of utter self-giving, of absolute obedience to the will of God – this is the road to the household of God.

Truth lies not in orthodox theology but in deep relationship. Cardinal Ratzinger would probably tell me that such thinking begins the slippery slope toward the tyranny of relativism, but I’m just trying to take Jesus at his word here. If Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, then the way is one of heterodoxy, the truth is manifest in relationship, and the life is one of such excessive exuberance that no creed can capture it.

Come to think of it, saying “Lord, Lord; I believe, I believe” might be a whole lot easier than following this way of Jesus. This way of Jesus might take us into places where we’d rather not go: to places of heartache and suffering, to place of deep doubt and fear, places of loneliness and persecution, places of poverty and brokenness.

That’s often the case when we are called. For although our true calling will be a place of deep joy, it is almost always also a place of deep suffering and pain, for we are called to respond to the deepest needs of the world.

Sometimes those places of deep need are quite public. These days, as Pope Benedict XVI begins his reign, one place of deep public need is for the witness of progressive Christians speaking out for the full inclusion of all women and of all men – no matter their sexual orientation – in the full life and leadership of the church catholic. Also these days, as Senator Frist takes to the airwave in support of the American conservative effort to hijack Christianity in the name of a narrow partisan agenda, another quite public deep need is for the witness of progressive Christians in the public square and on the phone to the offices of elected officials to remind them that the language of faith has no place in a partisan fight over Senate rules.

At the same time, many places of deep need are quite personal: the needs of young people for support and mentoring as they navigate the often overwhelming path of adolescence; the needs of families as they struggle with the many and manifold challenges of raising children; the needs of young couples trying to chart a way forward. And this week, in particular, the needs of children and families in our community trying to cope with an unfathomable loss.

The conservative orthodoxy embraced by the Roman church today and its Protestant twin upheld by American conservative evangelicals fails these tests. It fails because in the face of the heartbreak of the AIDS pandemic it offers nothing but death; in the face of the overwhelming and obvious giftedness of women leaders and gay and lesbian leaders, it offers nothing but flatfooted literal readings of ancient texts; and in the face of grieving families, it too often offers up a remote God of atonement theology who sacrifices a child for the sins of the world, a God whose purposes too often require human suffering. Such a god would surely not hesitate to snatch away two young children for some cause that we cannot discern, and, if you listen, you will surely hear such a god attested in many conservative pulpits in the face of tragedies as massive as the tsunami and as local as the bus accident.

To all that the progressive church must say “No;” for such a god is not worthy of our worship. But we must also say much more than “No.”

A progressive theology, a progressive church worthy of the name of Jesus Christ, must be capable of responding to each and every one of those needs. For the way that we follow is a way of compassion, the truth that we uphold is one founded in a relationship of love, and the life that we seek to emulate is one filled with grace and trust, love and justice, passion and compassion.

We follow this way, because the road that Jesus walked took him always first to the places of deepest need, to the dwelling places of those who had the most difficult time imagining for themselves a place in the dwelling place of God. Those dying from AIDS, teenagers – gay and straight – struggling to come to grips with their sexuality, women barred from the priesthood, pacifists in the midst of war, the street people looking for a handout or a hand up, families isolated in grief, children to whom the world seems so large and scary and impossible to understand. These are the ones to whom Jesus went first preaching good news.

These are the ones with whom Jesus wept in the face of deep grief, saying by his very presence, “you are beloved, you will be restored, you will be made whole.” By his very presence he acknowledged the reality of their pain and reassured the broken hearted that God was not the author of their suffering but rather offered a way through which that suffering might be redeemed.

Perhaps Jesus simply understood that in those places and times of desperation, people are more apt to recognize their need for salvation – for wholeness and healing and communion, as the Latin roots of the word salvation connote.

Let that understanding beckon the progressive church. We live in a time of often deep desperation. The world stands in need of salvation. In ways both grand and global as well as those local and intimate, creation stumbles in the dark, lost and searching for a little light by which to find a way home.

To a desperate world seeking more than anything a way home, Jesus says, “fear not, for there is room for you all where I am going.”

Christ bids us to follow the way into relation with the Holy One whose dwelling place has many rooms. The way is one of joyous service. Christ bids us to follow the truth expressed in his life: that we are the beloved ones of God. Christ bids us to follow the life he led – an abundant life of overflowing cups, of breaking bread and breaking barriers.

The way, the truth and the life: they will make a way out of the no way of weeks like this past one.

New Pope, Old Story

Lots of ways to look at today's selection of Pope Benedict 16. First, I'm wondering about the name choice. I was hoping for Jake or Elwood -- weren't the Blues brothers canonized for the miracle salvation of St. whatever-it-was? But, alas, was not to be. I'll admit that, good Protestant that I am, I have no clue about the whole "naming of the Pope" thing, but I do hope that the speculation I heard today about the previous Benedict's efforts to bring peace to Europe amidst the chaos of the first world war accurately reflects the present Benedict's desire to be a peacemaker.
I certainly have more than a few doubts. His incredibly conservative orthodoxy seems bent on taking the church back a whole lot further than the early 20th century. If religious pluralism is at the root of any of the world's rifts and conflicts the man who railed against the "tyranny of relativism" and stated clearly that not all religions are equally true does not seem particularly well suited to healing sectarian divides.
On the other hand, if the root of the world's major divisions is the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor, perhaps Benedict will have a significant voice to offer. He seems to share his predecessor's conviction concerning a preferential option for the poor. If he places the full weight of his office behind the work of economic justice and economic democracy, perhaps he may be part of reviving the truly old, old story concerning the one who came preaching good news to the poor. That's an orthodoxy that even I could get behind.
Of course, that's the most hopeful thing I can imagine saying today as this incredibly conservative man takes over the leadership of the world's Roman Catholics. Our sisters need not apply for leadership there. Our gay brothers and lesbian sisters will not find an open door. Those living under the constant threat of the global AIDS pandemic will find a pious, self-righteous option for orthodoxy over life-saving condom use (so much for the culture of life).
The list of deep concerns is too long to enumerate. It is a new pope who brings the same old story. Suffice it to say, that while I am holding my Roman Catholic sisters and brothers in the light today, I am also thanking God for Luther and Calvin. Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda!

Easter

OK, if a pastor can't get irreverent on Easter when can he? Here's a totally silly bit called Where's Jesus. And remember, life is way too short to take everything seriously. (Anyway, my sister sent this -- it's Easter evening, I've had a long day, what did you expect? A thoughtful reflection on resurrection? Hah!) Happy Easter.

Palms and Politics

Palm Sunday – at least the original Palm Sunday – was quite clearly a political action. So celebrate it this weekend by speaking out against an unjust war. (Click here to find a peace vigil near you.)

On that first Palm Sunday, Jesus was leading a rally, a march, on the capitol and the seat of power of his world. Jesus, who was always attuned to the importance of symbol and story, rodes in on a donkey to remind the people of the messianic prophecy: “look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey.”

The crowds responded in kind: “Hosanna! Hosanna!” Or, “save us, liberate us, set us free from the tyranny of our time!”

This is radical, even revolutionary stuff, and it is inherently political. But at the same time it is spiritually transformative as well. The turning of the world implicit in this entry to Jerusalem is at once deeply personal and thoroughly social and political, and the action itself – the marching, the crowds, the shouting and singing – is a spiritual practice.

Every spiritual practice aims to draw us closer to God, to help us experience God’s presence and to be shaped by that experience for lives of discipleship. So get close to God this Palm Sunday weekend by taking it to the streets.

This War is Still Wrong

I was going through some old files this week and I came across these notes from a speech I gave in Cleveland's Public Square two years ago this Saturday. I am saddened at how much of this has come true in the past two years. This war was wrongly conceived, wrongly executed and wrongly continues today.

Later on this evening at Forest Hill Presbyterian, we will gather for a worship service. We’ll confess our sins and pray for forgiveness. We’ll pray for the men and women fighting in Iraq today. We’ll pray for President Bush. We’ll pray for Saddam Hussein. All of this will be good and right and appropriate.

But, first things first. Let’s get one thing straight: this war is wrong!

I’m a preacher, not a policy maker, but it doesn’t take a policy expert to see that this war is wrong strategically. The risks of attacking and occupying a country at the heart of the Arab world far outweigh the risks of isolating and containing that country. This war is wrong strategically!

I’m a preacher, not a politician, but it doesn’t take a pollster to see that this war is wrong politically. It’s not just that American public opinion is divided, or even that today’s attacks threaten to divide America more deeply than it has been divided in more than a generation. No. It’s not that; it’s this: more than 90 percent of the world’s population opposes this war. That matters. This war is wrong politically!

I’m a preacher, not a diplomat, but it doesn’t take a U.N. ambassador to see that this war is wrong diplomatically. President Bush is mistaken: this war is not rendering the United Nations irrelevant. The world’s desire for peace can never be irrelevant to the community of nations. No: what is irrelevant to the community of nations is the American empire’s desire for dominance. This war is wrong diplomatically!

You know what? I’m a preacher … but I am also a parent. Last Sunday evening we held a candle light vigil at Forest Hill, and my three-year-old daughter walked with a crowd of 175 singing, praying, peaceful people of faith holding a flickering flame of hope against the darkness of these days. And when we ended, she looked up at her mother and said, “Mommy, what else do we need to do to stop the war?”

Why can’t our leaders grasp the wisdom of a three-year-old girl? She doesn’t know much about war, but when she asks we just tell her “war means that lots of children get hurt.”

Lots of innocent women, men and children will die in Iraq. Hannah Caitlin, you know this well: this war is wrong morally!

This war is wrong: strategically, politically, diplomatically, morally. This war is just plain wrong!

I’m not a policy maker. I’m not a politician. I’m not a diplomat. I’m a preacher and a disciple of the Prince of Peace.

And so this much I know: “Blessed are the peacemakers!”

I want you to look at the people standing around you. Go ahead.

You are blessed! We are all blessed. It might not feel that way today, but we are blessed because we are peacemakers.

We’ve got some difficult days ahead of us. That much is clear. But now is not the time to despair, for though our generation is tasting the curse of war, we know that the peacemakers shall be called the children of God. Now is not the time to despair, because there’s too much work to be done. Now is not the time to despair, because no matter how dark this midnight feels, joy cometh with the morning that breaks forth with peace. Now is not the time to despair, for though mighty and awful weapons have been unleashed today, we know that day is coming when we shall beat swords into plowshares and study war no more.

We don’t need to study anymore to know this: This war is wrong! This war is wrong and we want peace now!

Peacemakers: what do we want? When do we want it?

Our Bodies, Our Selves

I’ve been thinking about the deep divisions within the church and the culture over sexuality, and I believe much of it comes down to the way we understand ourselves as embodied creatures. We become what we practice; if we practice honoring our bodies we will become those people “shaped by the conviction that the body is sacred, that it is holy, that it is worthy of blessing and care,” to borrow Stephanie Paulsell’s words. There are precious few places in our culture that share such a conviction. For in our culture, bodies are honored insofar as the match an idealized beauty, strength, sexuality.

The church and the culture fracture over images of bodies.

Of course, within the church we ought to remember that Jesus looked beyond these surface considerations, and calls us to do so as well. Of course, we don’t do that very well, no matter what side of the divides we fall on. We also too often forget that Jesus said it’s not what goes into a person but rather what comes out that matters spiritually. There’s deep importance to that insight for it reminds us that Jesus is always more concerned with depth than with surface, with how faith is lived out in the world rather than with ritual observances of binding dietary rules and the like.

On the other hand, the computer programmers’ watchword – garbage in, garbage out – is a good caution for the spiritual practice of honoring the body. Not only does what we consume by way of food, drink and pharmaceuticals have obvious affects on our bodily health, but what we take in by way of the culture has equally significant effects, even if they are often less obvious and more difficult to trace. Here you can imagine a picture of Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, and add to it a long list of porneia, to use the New Testament word that in our age should remind us not only of the various hypersexualized pieces-of-bodies commodified by our media-saturated world but also of the violated bodies-in-pieces of its crude and pervasive violence.

You see, truly honoring the body with fidelity and chastity – to use two words hotly contested in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) – is a profoundly counter-cultural practice, because it reminds us that we are beautifully made in the image of a loving Creator. Honoring the body reminds us that each and every body – no matter age or gender or sexuality or appearance or sickness or health or size or status – each and every body is fearfully and wonderfully made. Honoring the body, then, turns us toward the Creator and away from images and ideologies that would devalue and devour our bodies.

As with so much in Christian practice and theology, we will understand this better if we learn if from those who are poor; in this case, poor in body. I shared a meal last week at the L’Arche community in the District. L’Arche is a global movement begun in France about 40 years ago by Jean Vanier. L’Arch communities create homes for people with severe mental and, often, physical disabilities, who live with their helpers in community. Last week, toward the end of the evening, Andrew, a young man who does not speak beyond grunts, took me by the hand and led me around making sure that I had met each member of the community, as we had gathered after dinners in a couple of houses in Adams-Morgan. Andrew has dancing, smiling eyes, and his grip on my hand conveyed an incredibly deep hospitality.

Sometimes, Andrew has trouble walking. He had a bruise on his chin where he had hit his face in a recent fall. Tuesday evening I was deeply moved by the community director’s simple question: can you imagine what it would be like if falling down were a regular part of your life?

That reminded me that some people know they have a body because it hurts.

A few years back, Jean Vanier spoke at Harvard, and he said,

Many people know they have a head because they have learned that two and two are four. They know that they have hands because they can cook eggs and do other things. Many know they have a sexuality because they have experienced strong emotions. But what they do not always know is that they have a well deep inside of them. If that well is tapped, springs of life and of tenderness flow forth. It has to be revealed in each person that these waters are there and that they can rise up from each one of us and flow over people, giving them life and a new hope.

I’m still not sure I know what fidelity and chastity really mean, or if the progressive church can really receive any gift from these words that have done such great damage to so many over the past decade in our denomination. But if there is a gift there to be discovered, I believe it has something to do with the way that honoring our embodied selves can tap that well and allow life and tenderness and love and faithfulness and wholeness and holiness to flow in and through our lives and our communities.

Stephanie Paulsell, “Honoring the Sexual Body” (delivered Nov. 5, 2004; www.covenantnetwork.org/sermon&papers/Paulsell-04.html) 5.

Fidelity and chastity are words inserted into the church’s constitution (G-6.0106b) as part of an effort to bar the ordination of gays and lesbians. Fidelity, or faithfulness, is clearly a concern of scripture and Christian thought throughout its history. Chastity, on the other hand, is not. The idea is more clearly associated with Victorian sexual morality than with scripture or historic Christian thought.

Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community (New York: Paulist Press, 1992) 27-28.

Born Again Progressive

I had the great good fortune to preach Wednesday evening at the monthly worship at Sojourners. We talked together about the third chapter of John's gospel -- the genesis of "born again" and the subject of lots of "John 3:16" signs at baseball games.
For too long now the phrase "you must be born again," has been the trumpet blast of triumphal Christianity. To be born again, from that perspective, means an "unflinching belief and loyalty" to a Christianity that assumes for itslef triumph "over all ignorance, uncertainty, doubt, and incompleteness, as well, of course, asover every other point of view (Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context)."
Such an understanding of Christian faith removes all doubt, and I suppose that is attractive if what you crave in life is certainty and order. Empires, after all, are quite good at imposing order. But if you love the deep mysteries of life, the unfathomable depths of God, then doubt must be part and parcel of faith, and incompleteness must be part of theology itself.
As for me, I am in love with mystery. As Isaiah knew, our thoughts are not God's thoughts nor are our ways God's ways. I find little support for empire in what I know of Jesus. Being born again is not a ticket to the front row in the victory parade of the empire, but is instead a calling to renounce the very identity that empire imposes and reclaim the identity that God gives each of us: we are the beloved, each and every one of us.

Ash Wednesday -- Stories of the Dust

Our lives are surrounded by and suffused with stories that flow together like a river whose source sprang forth eons ago before the dawn of time. It flows past, picks us up along its way and sweeps us on in a weave of infinite complexity on channels and river beds that wind a tortuous route toward an eschatological ocean at history’s end. Sometimes our stories flow together and draw us into community, but often, along the way, each of us somehow comes to believe that our stream is the only one, and thus our lives become fragmented and we become deaf to any other story.

We live in just such a time, when the controlling mythology has us convinced that we are isolated individuals whose lives are radically disconnected from each other. The Marlboro Man is the icon of our age of rugged individualism, and the “welfare mother” is his opposite number. The dominate story in which they play leading roles frames a vision of reality in which poverty or disease are signs of moral failing and compassion is weakness.

The dominant story of our time tells us that we are part of a species that is even more radically disconnected from the rest of creation than we are from each other. In this story nature is merely economic resource, and its beauty is reduced to another consumer good or, too often, simply reduced to waste without even the dignity of returning to dust. But the poet Wendell Berry offers an alternative economy with but a handful of words:

We join our work to Heaven’s gift,

Our hope to what is left,

That field and woods at last agree

In an economy

Of widest worth.

High Heaven’s Kingdom come to earth.

Imagine Paradise.

O dust, arise!

This strikes me as the perfect Lenten discipline for a people journeying from Ash Wednesday’s reminder – you are dust and to dust you shall return. Yes, certainly, but also this: O dust, arise! Imagine paradise! Cast a vision for a future otherwise.

From “The Clearing Rests in Song and Shade,” in Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1998), 49.

High Holy Days

So I sat down to watch a little football, and a church service broke out. American civil religion at its best -- combined choirs of all the armed forces rendering the Star Spangled Banner at its most hymnic, two high priests (er ... ex-presidents), a liturgy of memory honoring "the greatest generation," and then the call for an offering (I mean, of course, commercials). What a worship service! It brought the entire congregation to its feet! Can I get an Amen!
Just once I'd like to see honored a peacemaker, or even someone who has given her life to teaching or working to end poverty.
I don't expect it; it would turn the entire system on its head.
If you want to see a real Super Bowl Sunday sermon, check out the Sunday comics today. In our hometown paper, the Washington Post, these two (Tank McNamara and Candorville) were printed side by side. That'll preach.
Enjoy the game.

Spongebob at the Inauguration

As Ronald Reagan might have said, "now there you go again." You would think that right-wing evangelicals might have learned something when Jerry Falwell went after the teletubbies a few years back, but now James Dobson of Focus on the Family has targeted Spongebob. Apparently Mr. Squarepants is promoting acceptance of diversity, and Dobson fears the cartoon figure is part of a vast conspiracy to force the "homosexual agenda" onto Mainstreet U.S.A.
Don't the people at Focus on the Family have more important things to worry about? Whew ... as Forest Gump would put it, "that's all I've got to say about that."
So, with this abiding fear of animated liberals as the backdrop, President Bush took the oath of office again yesterday. I'll give the man his props here: it was an eloquent speech. It might even be one for the ages, that could be widely quoted in the future. The problem is, for a president to be considered worth quoting by future generations, he must achieve something worth remembering and celebrating in future generations.
Perhaps President Bush would achieve the greatness that his rhetoric aims for if he truly believed what he says and understood its full implications. It would be nice to believe that we will stand on the side of indigenous movements for freedom rather than on the side of military dictators, but our history in Latin America and Africa leave room for plenty of doubt.
Moreover, for all his bold claims about American support for freedom and opposition to tyranny --"Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. Liberty will come to those who love it." -- for all that, the president continues to ignore the tyranny of the concentrated power of wealth both here at home and abroad.
At home just two words should raise all kinds of questions: Enron, Walmart. Abroad, well surely American military power is respected and feared and loathed in various measures around the world, but America's economic power inspires equal amounts of respect, fear and loathing. Certainly that economic power is also admired, and attracts millions to the "land of opportunity," but the powerlessness of local economies in the face of concentrated power identified with the United States must certainly feel akin to slavery to many. Bush is right, eventually the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. The question for the president now is how to answer that call when he presides over power that many find enslaving.
I think most of us have more to fear from the concentrated power of unchecked economic forces than we do from the concentrated power of cartoons. I wonder which one will get more attention in the next four years.

MLK Day

A couple of lines from Dr. King have been stirring around my thoughts during the past few days. The first comes from a speech that King delivered at the Riverside Church in New York in April, 1967, when he spoke out publicly against the war in Vietnam for the first time. If you read that speech today, A Time to Break Silence rings just as true about Iraq now as it did about Vietnam four decades ago -- just substitute "Iraq" for "Vietnam" and "terrorism" for "communism."
Here's the line that's been bugging me:
"A country that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Now it's not so much the truth of this observation by itself that is bugging me these days -- after all, it's been true for decades no matter how you slice and spin the federal budget. What's aggitating me in January, 2005, is the continued truth of the second line:
"There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. . . . But the judgment of God is upon the church [today] as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the 20th century."
There is a deep and profound connection between these two lines, and the continued silence of the mainline church with respect to the war in Iraq and the so-called war on terror damns it as much as its silence in Birmingham. I know that many denominational bodies have written letters that opposed the invasion 18 months ago, but too few congregations are preaching peace and pressing for it. Until the middle of America becomes disgusted with what is disgusting, it will continue. The church's voice could make a difference.

A New Year

It was not a Dickensian year, 2004. Not the best of times, nor the worst of times -- although the biblically proportioned tsunami disaster at year's end makes me hesitate a bit in that observation about the worst of times.
For progressives in the United States, the entire year brought political disasters, but our challenges pale in comparison to those faced by the millions left homeless by this "act of God."
Perhaps we should blame God for all of last year, afterall, it was "his" followers (and almost all conservative evangelicals would refer to God with a masculine pronoun) who claimed victory when President Bush was returned to the White House in November.
But because I do not believe that God is the author of the suffering in Asia nor the political pain of progressives, I can no more believe that a tsunami was an act of God than I could believe that the outcome of an election was an act of God -- even if the side I favor should win and others should suffer the sting of defeat!
There were lots of "theological" responses to the tsunami including, not surprisingly, various suggestions that this act of God was a warning or a test. "This is an act of God that is beyond our understanding," many other voices claimed. Such theology crosses faith lines. For example, a Muslim leader's response in the Guardian echoed almost precisely one I read from a Christian pastor quoted over the weekend in the Washington Post.
Likewise, there were plenty of "theological" responses to the election, including many conservative evangelicals claiming credit for Bush's victory and suggesting, by implication, that God's side had triumphed. Jerry Falwell called the election the greatest victory in the history of conservative Christianity, and he's always been pretty clear that there is really no other kind of Christianity deserving of the name.
Now I am not comparing the disaster of the tsunami with the November elections here. Please. What's at stake is the nature of God as suggested by some people trying to explain complex events after the fact.
Whether its a political outcome or a natural disaster, the use of God as explanation of complex events relies on the same understanding of God as divine puppet master. Such understanding surely has roots in Jewish and Christian scripture. Open to almost any text and you will find passages like God saying to Moses, "Your time to die is near" (Deut. 31:14), or Jesus praying, "not my will but yours be done" (Luke 22:42) just prior to his arrest.
Clearly, most of the writers of scripture understood God as active in the movements of everyday life and in the workings of nature ("You rule the raging of the sea," the psalmist says in Psalm 89.) Just as clearly, the writers understood that God's ways are often unfathomable.
But I cannot see how a god who would use the random deaths of 150,000 people as a test is a god worthy or worship -- awesomely powerful, yes, but not worthy of praise and worship.
I prefer God in weakness, which is probably why I call myself a Christian. Where was God in the midst of the storming sea? Present with those who struggled and parished, and with those who mourn, and with those who respond to mourning with attempts to comfort.
Where was God in the midst of the election? Moving among people of faith calling us all to hold leaders of all parties accountable to a vision of justice, compassion and shalom.
Such a God, present in weakness and suffering, is not a grand ghost in the machine or stage-manager of history, but rather the spirit of love animating life where all love and hope seem lost. That's not much to go on, but perhaps it's enough for times like these, and perhaps it's a starting place for the theological work required of progressive faith in the worst of times.

Christmas Wishes

A few years back our oldest child wrote up a Christmas wish list. All he mentioned were Legos, a box of Altoids and a Star Wars action figure. As they say, the key to happiness is to want what you have and to have what you want. At Christmas, wishing for what is within the realm of possibility is one way to avoid holiday depression.
Now, lest you imagine that we somehow are raising children who have claimed the "live simply that others may simply live" perspective, that same child who was overjoyed to find a box of Legos, an action figure and some Altoids, wants a computer this year. I foresee a bit of holiday depression in his future.
On the other hand, wishing for the impossible is one way to transcendence.
I still want the impossible -- the beloved community, the household of God, the arc of justice bending toward our time and place. But I will not be disappointed when it doesn't show up in completeness next Saturday morning. The impossible will take a while.
The mark of faith is trusting in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change. May the evidence of brokenness, injustice, war and hate shift for you this season, if only just a little.

Progressive Evangelical?

I've been meeting with a group of folks this fall who are trying to sort out the future of the church -- not The Church, just our little church. We are a decidedly progressive lot and, much to our dismay, our conversations continue to return to a decidedly conservative word: evangelism. We feel a deep sense of calling to reach out into our community and tell people about the faith we share, to invite people to explore it with us, to expand the circle of our small community. And this scares the hell out of us.
The very word "evangelical" gets defined as "fundamentalist" and thus is automatically the field of conservatives. But like so much else in the language of Christianity, it has not always been so. The word now firmly associated in the American mind with conservatives, comes from a simple New Testament Greek word that means "one who brings good news."
Despite what Karl Rove might have us believe, progressives should be bearers of good news. According to Rove's worldview, anyone who criticizes the way things are is by definition a pessimist. The laundry list of situations that progressives must critique and condemn is too long for any blog. The challenge to progressives is not only to continue sharp and clear critiques of the status quo (of war without end, of stagnant economies, of deeper division between the affluent and the destitute), but also to say with conviction and imagination that another world is possible.
This ought to be precisely where progressive people of faith -- or, people of progressive faith -- should be reclaiming the mantle of evangelism. After all, we are the ones who have envisioned a world that makes decisions nonviolently, and we are the ones who have shown precisely how that works in the American South, in apartheid South Africa, in colonial India. We are the ones who have shown how people can come together across racial, ethnic, religious and economic divisions to build more just and equitable communities. We are the ones who point toward one who came preaching good news to the poor, release to the captives, new sight to the blind, liberation to the oppressed and jubilee to those bound by an unfair economy. (And if you doubt that, go read Luke's gospel.)
Advent is a season of preparation and expectation. The word itself means "coming." So let this Advent be a time of hopeful expectation and faithful preparation for the coming of the good news. Now is the time for progressive evangelicals to be loud, insistent, joyous, imaginative, hopeful bearers of good news. Another world is possible.
CW

Into the Breach

How can you be a repairer of the breach if you don't understand the breach? Red State/Blue State, progressive/conservative, Christian/Muslim, Israeli/Palistinian, rich/poor -- the divisions are so numerous that we grab onto any convenient shorthand because the work of truly understanding these differences is overwhelming.
The church I serve in Virginia is part of the More Light network of Presbyterian congregations. Indeed, we are the only More Light church in the commonwealth. More Light is one of those "inside baseball" phrases that only Presbyterians recognize. It simply means that we welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons into the full life of our congregation and work to pull down all of the barriers to their full participation in the life of the broader church.
That said, my congregation is a More Light church in need of more light -- literally. Our 1940s wired sanctuary is a dimly lit space. So we called an electrician who sent us to a lighting designer who came to visit last week.
In the course of conversation, he told me that he is a member of a Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation. Knowing a bit about that conservative denomination and its fundamentalist perspectives on interpreting scripture, I was eager to talk lights and not theology. It was not a day when I felt like letting someone try to hit me over the head with the Bible and its half dozen passages that are regularly used to deny the full humanity of GLBT folks.
But he kept asking questions about the church and I kept answering them, and eventually he had a pretty good picture of who we are. That's when the fun began.
We talked for at least an hour about the theological divide between us. It was more than civil. It was a first step into the breach taken by people who share a common confession of faith, but come at it from radically different perspectives.
He said several times, "I hope you don't feel like I'm badgering you, but this is the first time I've ever spoken with a progressive pastor who comes at these issues the way you do, and I'm just really interested in trying to understand how you got there."
There were no conversion experiences, but there was some small repairing of the breach. He saw a progressive who is not a monster (at least I hope!), and I encountered a conservative whose perspectives are grounded not in stereotypical bigotry, but in a well-understood theological perspective. The conversation was so much richer than any I have had with conservative Presbyterian lay people, who, on these particular issues have struck me over and over again as naive, misinformed and, well, just plain stupid much of the time. This guy is smart, thoughtful and knows his Bible.
Of course, he interprets scripture through a particular lens -- as we all do with any text we encounter. While I see the arc of the story of scripture as primarily about restoring relationships between and among human beings and between creation and its creator, he sees it as a story of God's call to human beings to be holy. Where I read through a lens of compassion, he reads through a lens of holiness. Where I understand justice as love in action, he understands justice a God's judgement on fallen humanity.
So, if this is the breach, how does one operative within it effectively? How do we go once more into this breach with any hope for mending, healing and wholeness?

Politics and Pulpits

A friend of mine told me the other day about her recent trip to Italy, and of a group in Naples asking what the American churches thought about the war and the present policies of the American government. My friend said she listened as one U.S. Presbyterian leader told the Italians that most American Protestant churches don’t talk too much about politics.
On the other hand, last summer ABC News did a poll about the church and politics and headlined its results as “Most Americans Think Church Should Steer Clear of Politics.” Their survey suggested that two-thirds of Americans believe the church should not try to influence political decisions.
Of course, the same Google search that found that factoid turned up more than six million hits under “church and politics” or “pulpits and politics.” Clearly, there’s a connection between the church, the pulpit and politics, and, just as clearly, that relationship is muddled.
One of the great gifts the progressive church could offer to the wider church and culture is some clarity on this relationship between church and politics, especially in this time of deep divisions in our nation’s political life. Perhaps we have something of value to offer in response to the questions that must press in on us given the church’s troubled history of disastrous romances with political power.
These pressing questions seem quite obvious: should the church be involved in politics at all and, if so, how? But in fact, the obvious questions call forth nothing short of rethinking both the church and politics.
We could simply turn away from the political arena altogether. There are some, particularly in more conservative evangelical congregations, who believe the church should focus exclusively on questions of salvation, and they define salvation in purely spiritual, largely individualistic terms.
Against that spirit, we have the image Karl Barth famously articulated of the faithful pastor being one who held the Bible in one hand and the morning paper in the other. Today, perhaps, one should blog with the Bible in hand!
But even if we remain informed and faithful citizens – guided by a Biblical tradition as we respond to the news of the day – we could limit our scope of work to worship, weddings, funerals, Bible study, blanket drives for the homeless, food drives for the poor and clothing drives for the destitute. These are surely important parts of who we are as church, and some feel that such work marks the extent of our calling as church.
Against that vision of church, I would ask, if we are to care for families in their times of joy and of mourning, should we not also care for their situations in the broader community? And if we are to care for the homeless, should we not also care for the medical and economic and social conditions that lead to homelessness? If we care enough to feed the hungry, do we not care enough to work for an end to hunger? If we are called to care for the destitute of the city, are we not also called to care for the ordering of the city itself when that ordering leaves so many struggling on the city’s margins? If we are to be minister of reconciliation, should we not also be engaged in resolving conflicts?
Obviously, if we do such work we will be deeply engaged in politics.
Now I have friends in the community organizing world who like to say that if you come to the bottom of a cliff and find a rising stack of broken bodies, you need to go to the top of the mountain, find out who is throwing people over the edge and put a stop to it. That’s the work of doing justice, they will argue, and it is the only faithful response to injustice.
Surely they are correct, although, just as surely, someone must stay at the base of the cliff and care for the wounded. That is the work of compassionate charity. Both jobs are crucial, and both are the work of the church.
Of course, one organizer told me last week about trying to invite an evangelical congregation into a faith-based community organization and being told by the pastor, “if you begin by talking about justice, you will lose the people.” Obviously, we’ve got some language barriers.
But we have some deeper barriers of vision. A church that works only on broad issues of justice lacks roots in the lives of suffering people in the community. But a vision of church that focuses only on the work of charity to the exclusion of the work of justice is deficient, for, as important as charitable work is, charity is an inadequate response to systemic injustice.
And the truth is, no matter how you slice these distinctions, every church is always already engaged in politics anyway. The question is, will we pretend to turn away from politics and thereby bless the status quo – itself a political gesture; or will we engage in a politics of compassion that seeks to change unjust systems themselves?
Churches tie themselves into knots over these questions in part, I am convinced, because most of us these days have an impoverished understanding of politics.
For most Americans, it seems, politics refers only to partisan elections and partisan bickering in Congress, statehouses and city halls. People of faith ought to understand politics in the terms the word originally reflected: the arrangement of the polis, or the ordering of the city.
Scripture refers to the city almost one thousand times, and to the public square dozens of times. Clearly, God is concerned with the welfare of the city, and God calls people of faith to witness to that same concern precisely in the midst of the public square.
When Isaiah says, “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter,” (Isa. 59:14) he is not calling on the people to sit idly by and accept an unjust status quo. Indeed, as soon as the judgment is announced, Isaiah pronounces this: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and God’s glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and rulers to the brightness of your dawn” (Isa. 60:1-3).
A faithful politics involves the working out of justice in the public square, and the church is called to be a faithful partner to that process. I am convinced that precisely such visible witness in the public square was what Jesus had in mind when he said, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house” (Matt. 5:14-15).
This is no easy task. As William Sloan Coffin said, “It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos, ‘Let justice roll down like mighty waters,’ and quite another to work out the irrigation system. Clearly there is more certainty in the recognition of wrongs than there is in the prescription for their cure.”
Likewise, it is one thing to respond to Jesus’ call to be the light of the world, and it is another thing altogether to work out the wiring for a world that dwells in deep darkness.
It is an error – legally, strategically and theologically – for the church to tie itself to one irrigation contractor, to one electrician, to any partisan official, candidate or political party.
* It’s an error legally because the tax exemption churches enjoy under the United States tax code depends on the church not endorsing candidates, and the pastor not telling the congregation how to vote. I think many on the religious right overstepped those bounds by a long-shot in the run-up to last month’s presidential election. Jerry Falwell, whose ministry is always more lightening rod than light, has come in for particular criticism.
* It’s an error strategically because good irrigation plans for the waters of justice can arise from many partisan quarters, and sometimes you find more light coming from the least expected party. It does the church’s purpose no service to be bound to a single partisan perspective for then we begin to fight for power rather than for justice.
* It’s an error theologically because God calls us to bind ourselves to God’s purposes and never to the purposes of the powers and principalities even when they may, in any given moment, be working toward the same goals.
Binding the church to a political party is heresy, as the Barman Declaration suggests, and it is the heresy imbedded in Pat Robertson’s recent claims that President Bush is particularly blessed by God and called to be president at this moment in history. For although Robertson denies it, there is a clear and persistent subtext to his comments that suggests one cannot be a Christian without also being a Republican.
God is not a Republican … or a Democrat, and neither is the church of Jesus Christ.
Nevertheless, the church is called to speak boldly in the public square, and thus we are called in this highly partisan period of American history to reimagine politics, to cast a vision of the city that reflects the deepest values of our faith, and to develop new ways of working for that vision that also reflect those core values.
I would like to see people of faith explore a “politics of compassion.” James Carroll, in a recent Boston Globe essay, speaks of a “politics of love,”[1] saying, with W. H. Auden, “we must love one another or die.”
Of course, these are slogans or catch phrases and not anything like a fully realized politics, but they do point toward a foundational truth that the church has, at its best, proclaimed throughout its existence: that another world is possible.
When Isaiah said that truth had stumbled in the public square, he did so in order to proclaim that the Babylonian captivity was the present reality but it was not the only possible future. Isaiah used the prophetic pulpit as a “testimony to otherwise,”[2] and to call the people to a moment of decision.
It would be all too easy, the path of least resistance to be sure, for the captives to choose assimilation, to lose their culture and surrender their identity to the empire. Thus Isaiah offers words of consolation – “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1). But also words of challenge that come in the form of a call to witness, to offer testimony to the fact that the empire is not inevitable, that, indeed, another world is possible. This witness is crucial, argues Walter Brueggemann, for “where there is no speaking and hearing of an alternative world, there is no faith, no courage, no freedom to choose differently, no community of faith apart from and even against the empire.”[3]

Which is to say, “where there is no vision, and no one to give voice to that vision, the people perish.” The vision the church is called to articulate to the world is one of an open future in which we can imagine that outcasts are welcomed, the poor are lifted up, the voiceless are heard.
Some call the church in North America in our time an exile community, and when we answer the believer’s calling to be peacemakers during a time of war, it can certainly feel that way. I know the sting of backlash from speaking out against the war – indeed, I was forced out of a church once for speaking out on the rights of gays and lesbians. But I believe our situation is less like that confronting Isaiah and more akin to the one Joshua faced.
When Joshua declares, “as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord,” he speaks to an affluent, comfortable community that is in danger of sacrificing its identity to the idols of the surrounding culture.
That sounds so much like the church in North America in our time. The nation is remarkably affluent and powerful militarily and economically beyond all reason, and the church is too often complacently cozy with the powers that be in the American empire.
The people before Joshua faced a moment of decision: they could continue to participate in the Canaanite economy and allow it to “work unfettered so that the rich become richer,” or call themselves back to the Mosaic law of jubilee and debt relief. They could “let legitimate authority run loose in self-serving acquisitiveness,” or imagine politics otherwise with Moses’ instructions for a different kind of leadership based on covenant community. They could turn to hyper-individualism or imagine a politics and economy that gave flesh to Moses’ concern for the alien, the widow and the orphan.[4]

At the moment of decision, Joshua declares, “choose this day whom you will serve.”
In that moment, God calls forth “a distinct community with an alternative identity rooted theologically and exhibited ethically,” as Brueggemann puts it.[5]

We are called today, as the church – progressive, inclusive and diverse – to respond to that same declaration and to give voice to that same testimony: the church’s present captivity to the culture of consumption, of domination and of empire is every bit as threatening to the community of faith and to the purposes of God as was the Babylonian captivity. Another world is possible. The future is not cast in stone, and we are called, as church, to embody an alternative community of hope and belovedness and to articulate a clear vision of a broader politics grounded in this hope.
We will ground this vision in our understanding of the God who created the world, who loves us still, and calls us to a ministry of reconciliation amidst the brokenness of a world that has turned away from the God of love to worship other gods.
Where the culture worships material goods and succumbs to consumerism, we will offer compassion and cast a vision for a politics that focuses on care and concern for the least powerful citizens. Where the culture offers domination, our community of compassion will model cooperation and cast a vision for a politics that draws in more voices from across this community and that silences no one. Where the culture trembles in the face of an empire of fear, we will cast of vision of the kingdom of God, the household of belovedness in which we sing praises to the God of hope. We will cast on God all our fears, and fearlessly proclaim that yes, another world is possible.
Now there will never be ballot initiatives that offer you the option to “vote yes for the kingdom of God.” And there will never be a candidate on the ballot whose victory will usher in the beloved community. That does not mean “don’t vote.”
It means that voting is just the beginning. Now that the votes have been counted – at least most of them – it’s time for the work of real politics – the work of ordering the city – to begin. The political work of people of faith is more important today than it was before November 2.
Most progressives were deeply disappointed last month, but now we most hold the victors accountable to a vision of justice and a politics of love and hope.
Maybe next time my friend is in Italy and someone asks about the church and politics, she will be able to answer truthfully, “we don’t just talk about politics at my church, we do it and renew it every chance we get.”

---

[1] James Carroll, “A Politics of Love” in the Boston Globe, Oct. 18, 2004.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Testimony to Otherwise (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001).

[3] Ibid., 15.

[4] This paragraph condenses Brueggemann’s analysis in ibid. 19-21.

[5] Ibid., 6.

American Heresies

How’s this for a sensitive, caring approach to Advent? Preach on the all-but-ignored Marine murder of unarmed Iraqi prisoners. Perhaps one could tie that together with the now all-but-forgotten scandal of prisoner abuse in Iraq! Nothing says, “Merry Christmas” like images of helpless prisoners shot or nude prisoners abused.
But no matter how much we may want to look at shepherds and angels and virgins kneeling beside a manger, if we are going to respond faithfully to the call to embody a vision of progressive Christian faith, if we are going to engage with the concerns of this world and bring faith to bear on what most troubles our time, then, no matter how much we may want to, we cannot turn away from such images.
For the video images, photographs and the official responses to the ongoing catastrophe reveal what amounts to heresies at the heart of American foreign policy, and at the root of some of the responses to it in the Arab world. The disaster in Iraq is political, strategic, cultural and moral, and it is also theological.
The pictures themselves, of course, are more than appalling. I can only begin to imagine the suffering they represent, and the suffering they will cause. While much of our inside-the-beltway mindset in the part of the country where I live focuses on the political fallout – which has been almost nil – my first thought looking at the images is of the families of those pictured – both Arab and American families, and what those images must mean to them.
What those pictures may come to mean in a broader sense, and what broad meanings are already being ascribed to them is significant because such meaning will certainly impact policies in the near term. But I’m not sure any broad meaning assigned to the images will be particularly accurate.
For what strikes me most in these images is, to recall Hannah Arendt’s classic phrase about Adolf Eichmann and Nazi atrocities: the banality of evil. These pictures remind me of the pictures of Saddam Hussein crawling out of his rat hole. Hussein – a man accused and no doubt guilty of authorizing the killings of tens of thousands of people and held up for the world as the monstrous representation of evil – turns out to be just a scared old man cowering in a hole – the picture of banality.
And now, American soldiers – held up for the world as the picture of a nation’s virtue, “an army of God raised up for such a time as this,” in the words of one American general[1] – are captured on film in a series of actions that look much like Nazi executions and the horrors of sadistic hazing rituals. American soldiers off-handedly saying, “now he’s dead,” or hamming it up next to the bound, nude bodies of prisoners – again, the picture of banality.
The official response to the evil portrayed in these pictures is one that Arendt would quickly recognize, full, as it is, of stock phrases about American values. As she said so clearly, “Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.”[2]
In addition to that function, they have the further effect of leading us deep into heresy, for denying reality, denying this world is a classic heresy.
Being something of a heretical thinker myself, heresy is not a word I toss around lightly. But, as these stories played out in the news, I have been struck again and again by the heresy at the heart of much of the response to these images.
It is not the job of the church to correct the state’s political and military strategies, but it is most certainly our job to correct errors of theology.
And there are fundamental theological errors – indeed, heresies from the perspective of orthodox Christian theology – at the foundation of the response to these images from both the American and Arab perspectives.
Some in the Arab world, perhaps to further enflame violence against Americans, would have people believe that the images give a complete picture of America. They would reduce us all to the hateful actions of a few of us, and then demand an eye-for-an-eye retribution aimed at all Americans.
Unfortunately, that strategy works all too well, as we can hear in responses such as the the Jordanian businessman who said, “exterminating the Americans is the best way to fight international terrorism,”[3] the Syrian woman who said, “Americans are showing their true image,” the Arab editor who said, “the liberators are worse than the dictator,” and the Egyptian writer who said, “[now] the whole world sees them as they really are.”[4]
How are we, really? Radical anti-Americanism blinds some in the Arab world to the fundamental theological truth that we are all beloved children of the same God – created good in the image of a loving God according to Genesis. This is true of both Arab and American; both prisoner and prison guard. To deny that reality to Americans – as radical Muslim fundamentalists do when they refer to America as the great Satan – is heretical.
On the other hand, in the face of these pictures, President Bush said that “what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know. The America I know is a compassionate country that believes in freedom.” Elsewhere, the President said, “our soldiers in uniform are honorable, decent, loving people.”
But just as some in the Arab world are wrong when they choose to believe only the very worst about America because of the actions of some Americans, the President is wrong when he paints a picture of this nation in such rosy terms. There is deep and profound danger in both of these errors, and both are flip sides of the same theological coin.
When President Bush takes the same broad brush used by those who hate America and dips it into rose-colored paint, he denies another fundamental theological truth that Paul expresses so clearly: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).
The truth is, as the Biblical image of humanity makes clear, that each of us is some strange and volatile mixture of the angels of our better natures and our own profound brokenness. Two of the pictures from last spring in particular captured this truth for me. They were a pair of pictures of the same young American woman in Iraq. In one of them she is smiling as she hugs a young Iraqi child. In the other she is smiling as she stands behind a pile of bound, nude Iraqi men.
So, which is she: “an honorable, decent, loving” young woman or a “great Satan”?
Not knowing this young woman, I would not pretend to offer an answer about her individual nature. But about all of us, we do well to recall the words of the psalmist, “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51: 3-5). While in the very same moment we must remember also that the psalmist says, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).
The young American soldier in those two pictures, along with all of the rest of us, are both of these things: those who transgress, and those who are wonderfully made. And we live, all of us, somewhere east of Eden.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said that we must develop the capacity to forgive, for without that we cannot claim the power to love. Forgiveness begins, he said, when we recognize that the evil actions of our enemies do not express all that our enemies are. This simply means, he said, “within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good.”[5]
King’s vision, which seeks as its goal forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration, stands in stark contrast with the notion, given voice by the leader of our nation, that we are engaged in a war to “rid the world of evil.”[6] This vision, which animates current American policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world, seeks as its goal the imposition of American notions of virtue by force of American arms in the belief that America can rid the world of evil.
Alas, as James Carroll said, “evil, whatever its primal source, resides, like a virus in its niche, in the human self. There is no ridding the world of evil for the simple fact that, shy of history’s end, there is no ridding the self of it.”[7]
Indeed, the notion that this nation, or any nation – no matter how nobly conceived or dedicated – could of its own actions rid the world of evil is perhaps the fundamental heresy upon which so much of our current foreign policy rests.
We cannot rid the world of evil when we so clearly participate in it ourselves. We cannot; any more than we can bring justice to the world by means of an unjust war; any more than we can bring democracy to the world by means of a war that the vast majority of the world’s people oppose; any more than we can bring liberation to the world by means of a war that increasingly leaves the people of Iraq imprisoned by violence and chaos. And the further into the morass of this war we go, the more we become like the very thing we hate.
Some 35 years ago, Dr. King said that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”[8]
Lost amidst the news of photos and videos from Iraq last spring, and then all but absent from the presidential campaign through to election day, was any discussion of the request for the additional $25 billion to cover costs of the war through the end of the fiscal year.
Now, it may not be the job of the church to correct the state’s political and military strategies, but just as it is our job to correct errors of theology, it is also quite clearly our role to warn of the approach of spiritual death.
In the present case, the two are so closely related. We lie and deceive ourselves at peril to our souls. We follow the false gods of power and security, and develop theologies of nationalism to honor them, and we wonder how it is that we become the very thing that we hate.
Theology matters. Show me your image of God, and I will show you your image of humanity. From those images of God and humanity grow the strategies of nations. And when those images are skewed by heresies, and those strategies perverted by false premises, from them develop the images that now dominate our news.
The church’s complacency in the midst of this is shattered – or should be – as we realize that amidst the howls of anguish and anger rising in response to the horrors still coming forth from Saddam Hussein’s notorious old prison, nowhere do we hear the voice of the one who said, “love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). Nowhere do we hear the voice of the one who said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). Nowhere do we hear the voice of the one who said, “Be compassionate as your Father in heaven is compassionate” (Luke 6:36).
Much else lies shattered in these days of broken bodies and broken trust. Beyond pointing out the lies and deceptions of American heresies, let the church hear again its age-old calling to be repairers of the breach.
[1] The words are those of Army Lt. General William Boykin, President Bush’s deputy undersecretary for intelligence who said to a church group, “We are an army of God raised up for such a time as this.” That speech was quoted widely. I cite this from “Abuse Photos Undermine Bush’s Religious Rhetoric,” Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle, May 7, 2004.

[2] Hannah Arendt, The Life of Mind - Thinking - Willing (New York-London: Ed. Harvest/HJB Book, 1978), 4.
[3] See “Shooting of Injured Man Captures Arab Attention,” at http://www.click2houston.com/news/3926356/detail.html
[4] Quoted by Juan Cole, “Arab Reaction to Photos of Prison Abuse” juancole.com, May 1, 2004.
[5] Martin Luther King, Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” a sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Nov. 17, 1957, posted as in the public domain on ipoet.com. As with many of Dr. King’s great phrases, he used this, or almost identical language in many speeches.Montgomery, Alabama, 17 November 1957. Strength to Love
[6] President Bush, speaking at prayer service at the National Cathedral on Sept. 13, 2001, said “Our responsibility to history is already clear: To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”
[7] James Carroll, “Bush’s War Against Evil,” Boston Globe, July 8, 2003.
[8] Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Time to Break Silence,” an address delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, included in A Testament of Hope, ed. James M. Washington (San Francisco: Harper, 1986) 241.