Bill's Faith Matters blog

Why pain is both unwelcome and a serious privilege

Berkeley, Calif. -- I'm here to celebrate my birthday with my oldest sister, who lives here, and my youngest sister, who lives in Chicagoland. My third sister, a Cape Cod resident, couldn't make the trip because of a previous trip she took a few weeks ago, an unexpected trip that landed her on her back and that broke a bone or two.

If I had a brother, he'd be here, too, or else have a great excuse. But he's off the hook because he doesn't exist.

Before I left Kansas City, I was following the devastating news about the wildfires in the Los Angeles area, and thinking about how the laws of nature -- some would call them God's laws -- are both dependable and destructive, life-giving and life-destroying, protective and painful.

It's why I sometimes joke that the world was God's science fair project -- on which God got a D.

Parts of the Bible attempt to consider the creation, though there seems to be a bias in scripture toward its magnificence, without a lot of mention -- except for one huge metaphorical flood -- of its destructiveness via wind-driven wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis and on and on. For instance, here's part of Psalm 8 from the Hebrew scriptures (in the updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version):

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars that you have established;
  what are humans that you are mindful of them,
    mortals that you care for them?

  Yet you have made them a little lower than God
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
  You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
    you have put all things under their feet,
  all sheep and oxen,
    and also the beasts of the field,
  the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
    whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

 O Lord, our Sovereign,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

I love that Psalm but I also recognize that the same God who gets credit for the majesty of nature has created a world in which the rules of the physical world can result in catastrophe.

In the late 1990s, Philip Yancey and Paul Brand wrote a book that helped me incorporate this stressful conflict into a more cohesive theology. It was called The Gift of Pain. Pain, they argued, warns us that something is wrong. If, for instance, we didn't feel pain when we put our hand on a hot stove we'd end up with a thoroughly burned hand because we wouldn't know to snatch it a way from the heat.

In that book, Brand writes this: "I do not desire, and cannot even imagine, a life without pain." And this: "(T)he human species has among its privileges the preeminence of pain."

It's hard to think of pain as a privilege, but I think the idea is on target, particularly when thinking about pain caused by things or conditions that are trying to hurt or kill us. They are warnings to us.

In that sense, the California fires have revealed to us again how out of balance human life can be when it is in conflict with the laws of nature. One result is climate change, with its supply of devastating results -- more wildfires, more destructive rain storms, more blazing heat. Climate change is a form of pain that warns us we are on the wrong track and that we are not living in harmony with nature but in opposition to nature's laws and ways. Our actions produce pain, and that pain is both abhorrent and a privilege.

(The photo above came from this ready.gov site.)

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BAD GOD, GO TO YOUR ROOM

In addition to being the cause of pain, suffering and stupendous loss, the wildfires in the Los Angeles area also are producing some pretty mediocre theology. In this story, for instance, "longtime Altadena residents (Raul and Claudia De La Rosa) say they are trying to stay optimistic about their future and urge their four kids -- ages 6 to 14 -- to trust that God will help them find new housing and rebuild their lives." So far so good. But then Claudia is quoted this way: "God does things for a reason." The obvious implication is that God caused or allowed the wildfires to start and to cause such astonishing destruction. As if God never heard a warning from Smokey Bear. As if God uses natural disasters to punish sinners. As if, as if. . . Sounds like someone needs a more helpful and generative theology.

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P.S.: The organization Equal Justice U.S.A. Evangelical Network is sponsoring an online webinar on restorative justice this coming Wednesday, Jan. 22. You can register for it here.

An important church creed is turning 1,700 years old. So?

When I served on a committee that helped to oversee the theological education of Presbyterian seminary students in my area, we would require those students to write a new "statement of faith" each year. (I'm not sure if that still is required, but I hope so.)

The idea was that the students' understanding of Christianity and its foundational beliefs should grow or mature in some way each year and that such growth could be expressed in such statements, or confessions (another word for what we were after).

The Presbyterian Church (USA), in fact, has a whole Book of Confessions that you can read it here. It contains a dozen different creeds, starting with the Nicene Creed, which is also seen in the graphic here today (though someone thought it would be good to scream the creed in all caps).

Presbyterians and other branches of Christianity often note that such creeds are a secondary witness to the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The Bible always outranks the confessions as such a witness. That's because the confessions in many ways are time-bound and sometimes reflect thinking and conclusions that the church -- or parts of the church -- have later discarded, changed or ignored.

I raise all of this to introduce this intriguing piece from Religion Unplugged about the Nicene Creed and its historic importance. As the article, written by Richard N. Ostling, a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, notes, this new year "marks the 1,700th anniversary of this credo, which was produced by bishops attending Christianity’s first recognized 'ecumenical' (that is, universal) council, as opposed to regional councils and synods. They met in the town of Nicaea, present-day Iznik, Turkey, to decide nothing less than who is the Jesus Christ we worship, believe in and follow.

"Five weeks ago," Ostling writes, "Pope Francis formally invited Eastern Orthodoxy’s Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to join him in marking the Nicene anniversary at Iznik, an encounter likely to occur in late May."

Ostling also explains that "the Roman Emperor Constantine I, a.k.a. Constantine the Great (272? – 337), issued the summons for bishops to confer in A.D. 325, hosted the council sessions in his imperial palace, delivered the opening address and attended the meetings, though he left most of the theologizing to the experts."

It's always been my understanding that Constantine didn't really care much about the wording that would come out as the Nicene Creed. He just wanted those attending the conference to make a decision about the nature of Jesus so that Christianity, which at Constantine's order became the official religion of the Roman Empire, would not be divided by controversy.

I'd love to ask Constantine today how he thinks that worked out.

Well, the Christian church is a many-splintered thing today. And although the Nicene Creed has lots of buy-in from Christians around the globe, it is not unchallenged and not any sort of final word about church doctrine. Perhaps that's because Christianity -- like any of the world religions -- is a dynamic, changing, living organism that finds new ways to speak ancient truths and beliefs for each new generation.

What people of any faith must finally remember is that they don't worship creeds, no matter how historic. Rather, they worship God, whatever their sometimes-changing perceptions about the deity may be. It pains me to admit this as a writer, but words in the end are inadequate to capture the fullness of the divine, partly because all words are ultimately metaphors, pointing beyond themselves to some reality, or at least perceived reality. And metaphors always and everywhere can be misinterpreted or misused.

There is, by the way, one phrase of the Nicene Creed that I won't say when I'm part of a congregation reciting it. It's the part that says the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son," because, like early Orthodox Christian leaders, I think that makes one member of the Trinity subservient to the other two, whereas each member is said to be of the same substance and equal to the other two. So feel free to call me a heretic, a few of which the church needs now and then to keep it honest.

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A SMALL STEP TOWARD LGBTQ+ CATHOLIC PRIESTS?

The Vatican has approved a document that, as this RNS story explains, "cautiously opens the door for the ordination of openly gay men to the priesthood." And now, no doubt, begins the resistance to it. After all, the official church catechism teaches that homosexuality is "objectively disordered." So there is much within Catholicism to sort out here, and it's hard to imagine that it will happen without some serious conflict.

In fact, the conflict began shortly after media reports of the story about a possible change in policy. As this story makes clear, church officials insist there's been no change at all, though that seems like an overstatement, too.

Other branches of Christianity, including my own Presbyterian Church (USA), have wrestled with all of this and emerged with theologies that affirm the rights of LGBTQ+ people to be officers and ordained clergy in the church. The resistance to that move is almost always rooted in a misreading of scripture, and if you want to know details about all of that, you can find my take on that in this essay found elsewhere here on my blog.

For now, I am pleased that the Vatican at least seems to have taken this step (maybe we'll get clarity eventually) and I hope that eventually it becomes permanent church policy (just as I hope that one day women can be ordained as priests and deacons). I take that position because I think it would be good for all of Christianity, not just Catholicism.

So let's follow this story as it develops and hope that it will lead to a priesthood that represents all that is true and good in humanity.

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P.S.: After I published this blog post recently about the purposes of religion, my boyhood friend from India, Markandey Katju, who identifies as a Hindu atheist, wrote this piece in response. His conclusion: "All religions are superstitions and false. The truth lies in science, which continues to evolve and refine our understanding of the universe." I told him that I thought his response was just another example of the old "God of the Gaps" idea, to which I pay no serious allegiance. See if you agree with me.

Despite its flaws, this book is an important source of political/religious insight

Over the last several decades, the political climate in the U.S. has turned bitter and disastrous. A new book I'll introduce you to today can help us understand why. And although I recommend that you read it, I am dissatisfied with it in several ways, both large and small.

It's The Politics of Hate: How the Christian Right Darkened America's Political Soul, by Angelia R. Wilson, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester in England. Its publication date was yesterday.

The book is deeply researched over a long period of time. It offers insight into the causes of our politically divisive climate and it's sweeping in its knowledge of the almost-countless organizations the author identifies as part of the "Christian Right."

Before I give you more detail about what is right with this book, let's start with what's wrong. First, the title. It offers a smack-down conclusion before any argument has been made that can sustain such a stark title. Yes, yes, every book needs a title that draws in readers, but to call the work of the "Christian Right" hate without some kind of nuance is misleading and can only add to our division. Perhaps it would have been better to use a question for the title, such as Is This What the Politics of Hate Looks Like?

In the text, Wilson does carefully describe what she means by the "Christian Right," but as a subtitle without such descriptions it's merely a provocative label that may hide as much as it reveals. Beyond that, it turns out that almost nowhere in the book does Wilson point to any "politics of hate" emanating from what might be called the "Radical Left," if we have to label things -- groups like Antifa or the John Brown Gun Club.

No doubt that would have required more years of research and documentation, but making (almost) no mention of -- or examples of -- hateful politics from that end of the political spectrum seems like a mistake of imbalance.

Finally, among my criticisms of this book, there's this: The index is simply awful. It leaves out a great deal and is next-to useless despite there being a need for a good index in such a book full of tons of names of organizations and names of their leaders and followers. An example: The first chapter of the book introduces us to the work of "security strategist Colin Gray." Wilson returns to Gray's work over and over throughout the book. But he's nowhere in the index. Sigh.

I hope Temple University Press takes note of this inexcusable incompetence and fixes this problem for future books that are based on such thorough research -- and indeed for all the books it publishes.

It takes Wilson until near the end of the book to offer a definition of what "the politics of hate" means, though by then most readers will understand that she's talking about a fundamentalist approach to religion that accepts only certain answers and that defines those not part of the in-group as dangerous, unpatriotic and worthy of deep disdain -- indeed, at times almost not human at all.

It would have been helpful to offer something like that definition early in the book with an explanation that readers soon will begin to see how she came to such a conclusion through her long research. That would have made more palatable this observation in the book's introduction: ". . .over time, the American Christian Right has morphed into a political industry justifying hate. Do all individuals who espouse a social conservative Christian theology hate? No, not in my experience. . .Do Christian Right political leaders use hate to motivate social conservative voters? Yes." She does then acknowledge that some "on the left use hate to motivate voters," but offers no examples.

Wilson has spent years not exactly embedded in the so-called Christian Right but at least as a dedicated researcher into it. She has attended lots of events put on by Christian Right groups. She has read and saved years worth of emails and other publications to document sometimes-subtle shifts in positions. She has interviewed Christian Right members and others who have studied the movement and its dozens and dozens of organizations that make it up. She really does know what she's writing about, despite my several complaints about the book.

So she can prove it when she writes that "Christian Right organizations advocate for a fundamental shift in the ideological basis for policymaking -- an all-encompassing worldview." 

In the end, her research leads her to conclude that "Christian Right groups may express hate in different ways, and rarely do Christian Right political leaders publicly endorse 'burning hate' (although televangelists adopt this stance more regularly). Nevertheless, the evidence. . .demonstrates that at least one effect of their grand strategy is to evoke disgust, anger, devaluation and diminution of those deemed the 'other'"

One way they do that, she writes, is by a heavy reliance on war language and imagery: "The strategic effect of Christian Right leaders deploying the grammar of war is a politics driven by us/other where there is no space for compromise or permeable boundaries or complexity. You are either for us or against us. And that binary becomes a biblical truth. The grammar of war locks the Christian Right in an unwinnable war of good and evil, producing and reproducing enemies and normalizing a politics of hate."

That seems especially true when organizations aligned with the Christian Right do their best to argue against abortion and against equal rights for LGBTQ+ people. And those two issues often are at the center of such groups' focus. As Wilson points out, at its base, Christian Right politics preaches that doing nothing is not an option: "To get to heaven, and, importantly, to avoid hell, one must stand and fight. Avoiding God's conscription is damnation," which, in a remarkable understatement, she calls "an impressive incentive."

The book is full of much more detail about how many of these organizations operate and who leads them. In that sense, it's also a reference book. Once you've read the book, tell me, in turn, what you think I got wrong about it (or right). And if you want a great example of someone in politics who held conservative Christian views but did not degenerate into hate, watch the late Jimmy Carter's funeral and listen to the ways he's described.

If you also want more detail about the the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, one of the Christian Right groups Wilson covers in her book, read this new Atlantic magazine article, "The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows." It mentions a group called "The Kansas City Prophets," with roots in the 1980s. The link on the group's name will take you to Wikipedia's entry on that subject. The author of the Atlantic piece, Stephanie McCrummen, writes this: "I came to understand how the movement amounts to a sprawling political machine. The apostles and prophets, speaking for God, decide which candidates and policies advance the Kingdom. The movement’s prayer networks and newsletters amount to voter lists and voter guides. A growing ecosystem of podcasts and streaming shows such as FlashPoint amounts to a Kingdom media empire. And the overall vision of the movement means that people are not engaged just during election years but. . .24/7."

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FIRES DESTROY CALIFORNIA HOUSES OF WORSHIP, TOO

The devastating wild fires in California have destroyed many homes, as we all know, but they've also destroyed a number of houses of worship -- Jewish, Muslim and Christian, as this RNS story reports. Among many other reports of loss, the story says this: "At least two United Methodist churches were destroyed: the Community United Methodist Church in Pacific Palisades, whose burning building was photographed by the LA Times, and the Altadena United Methodist Church, according to an update from the California-Pacific Conference of the UMC." Sometimes it's the helpers who need help.

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P.S.: In the city in India in which I lived for a time of my boyhood, a huge religious festival, the Kumbh Mela, starts tomorrow. My friend Markandey Katju, a former justice on India's Supreme Court who writes a lot about what's wrong with India these days, has written this column protesting government funding of the festival. That government, he writes, has no business funding religion in a secular nation like India and the money instead "should be spent on the welfare of our people like building good schools and hospitals." True, but India's current Hindu Nationalist regime has no interest in avoiding ways to support Hindus and crush Muslims. India, under Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi, has become an increasingly autocratic country that treats Muslims as outsiders and second-class citizens. And American political leaders should be protesting, too.

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ANOTHER P.S.: My friends at ReadTheSpirit.com online magazine have put together a year-long list of religious holidays that you can find here. It shows that this Sunday is the day Christians will celebrate the "Baptism of the Lord." And on Monday Sikhs will celebrate Maghi Lorhi. You could look 'em both up.

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A FINAL P.S.: Several organizations are sponsoring "The Pro-Life Call to End the Death Penalty" webinar online this Tuesday evening. You can read details about it here and register to attend.

A foundational question: What the heck is the purpose of religion?

In this blog post last weekend, I introduced you briefly to a new book about the murder of a journalist in India and about India's increasingly autocratic, self-certain and frightening government.

I return to that book again today to raise the question of the purposes of religion. In the context of the book, I Am on the Hit List, author Rollo Romig offers many examples of how false religious certitude leads to conflict, violence and other kinds of disasters. Those examples lead him to ask this question: What is religion for?

In immediate response to that question, he asks a series of other questions:

"Is it a guidebook to loving and ethical behavior? Is it a framework for coming to grips with a painfully confusing universe that science falls far short of explaining? Is it a method for reconciling the acute sense of alienation we humans feel in our strange, unique, lonely role among animals?

"Is it a compendium of our species' most timeless feats of wisdom and imagination? Is it a tool for finding and binding earthly communities? Is it a propaganda machine for endless war with communities that aren't yours? Is it an emergency help line for times of impossible crisis? Is it a cosmic blame-laundering scheme? Is it a terrible, inscrutable flaming sword of justice? Is it a next-life or afterlife insurance policy? Or it is a magical system for getting what you want, at any cost?"

Romig doesn't pick any of those possibilities, nor does he exactly answer the question about what religion is. His only response to all those questions is this: "I like to believe that religion can encourage goodness and selflessness, but another person's idea of a good and selfless act might be horrifying to me -- patriarchal or repressive or violent. Religion can just as easily justify or even encourage the absolute worst atrocities. . ."

I'm wondering if you'd pick any of Romig's possible purposes for religion or whether you have another thought that has helped you understand the world through theological eyes.

I have a long been attracted to the idea that at the core of religion is the concept of what this online site about etymology calls "religare 'to bind fast'. . .via the notion of 'place an obligation on,' or 'bond between humans and gods.'"

Religion in that sense says to me that it tries to tie together the various and often puzzling aspects of life into a wholeness that makes some kind of sense even if not all of its mysteries are solved. Think of the binding together of families, no single member of which can encompass what the family means.

In that sense, religion is a recognition that at least in this life we cannot possibly understand everything about life's origins and purposes. That should lead to a sense of modesty about what we know, though it rarely seems to.

As I've said before, in the end, religious faith is a wager because there are some things beyond the capabilities of our finite minds and hearts. People (often outside of a religion) sometimes speak dismissively of what they call a "leap of faith," suggesting that people blindly believe things for which there's no evidence. But the truth is that it also takes an equally long leap of faith to imagine there is no object or person worthy of our faith and worship.

The author of the New Testament book of Hebrews perhaps comes as close as anyone to describing what faith is. Here's the Contemporary English Bible's translation of that at the beginning of chapter 11: "Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don't see." (The clear implication is that we always hope for what we don't have but want and that our vision of the past, present and future is never perfect.) And, in turn, religion is where we go when we are seeking such faith.

One way to think about it is that religion is the systematizing of such faith. And that faith can be held either by one individual or by a collective body that pledges to hold each other's hands as we move through the darkness of our ignorance and the light of the gift of revelations. (You're free to argue with me about any of this, but not by just sharing ideas about which you have zero doubt.)

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HOLY AND NOT-SO-HOLY WORDS

A new inauguration edition of the Trump Bible is for sale. No, sorry, it doesn't contain Jack Smith's special prosecutor's report on alleged Trump crimes. You'll have to get that elsewhere if it's released. Wonder if Smith lists which of the Ten Commandments he thinks Trump disobeyed. We'll have to wait to see.

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THE BOOK CORNER

Faith and Community: How Engagement Strengthens Members, Places of Worship and Society, by Rebecca A. Glazier. Because of a decades-long decline in participation in institutional religion, denominations and congregations continue to look for ways to grow -- or at least reduce the decline.

This book makes the case -- based on long studies of congregations in the Little Rock, Ark., area -- that "community engagement" can help. That means such activities as hosting back-to-school events, distributing food to hungry neighbors, holding clothing drives and much more. The problem, as the author, a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, notes is that many congregations are struggling just to hold their members together and to keep their buildings functioning.

Still, she argues, "community engagement has many positive outcomes -- it benefits members, strengthens places of worship and helps society as a whole. The people who are serving feel happy and uplifted; they feel a greater sense of connection to their congregations, which is strengthened in turn, and community members receive needed services. Simply put, community engagement is an all-around good thing."

Beyond that, if congregations are trying to attract younger members -- and they certainly are -- young people, Glazier writes, "want more than just worship; they want to see their leaders and fellow members actively doing good; they are searching for identity and purpose."

All religious congregations -- struggling with issues of decline or not -- can find good ideas in this book about how to grow through service to others.

A Book Corner P.S.: A little over a year ago, I reviewed here on the blog a book that challenged the idea that God is omnipotent. Thomas Jay Oord is the author of The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, in which he argues that God, instead, is characterized by "amipotence," or complete love. Then Oord asked a bunch of folks, including me, to write a chapter in a book in which scholars and others (like me) would respond to the ideas in his book. So I did. Now that book is out (in two volumes). The volume in which you'll find my essay is called Amipotence: Volume 2: Expansion and Application.

The whole idea of denouncing the concept of an omnipotent God and favoring, by contrast, an amipotent God, is intriguing, and my guess is that even though the original book and these two follow-ups are rooted mostly in Christian theology, they raise questions that should interest people of any faith -- and of none.

 

Are non-canonical writings reliable as history or just fun to read?

As many Christians and Jews know, not every ancient religious manuscript coming out of Judaism and, later, Christianity has made it into the Bible. The so-called "gnostic gospels," for instance, failed to get into the canon, the authoritative list of books that make up both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament.

None of which means that those extra-canonical manuscripts are worthless or uninteresting. In fact, a few years ago, religion scholar Elaine Pagels wrote a book called The Gnostic Gospels that shows some of the value they can have even if they are, at worst, considered heretical.

I've read, among other gnostic writings, the Gospel of Thomas and a few others. But recently I learned about writing purportedly by (or, more accurately, about) St. Thomas called The Acts of St. Thomas.

Rollo Romig wrote about it in a book that a friend gave me for Christmas, I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India. The journalist in question was Gauri Lankesh, based in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. She was shot in the head in 2017 as she returned to her home from her office one night. Several years later, a trial of various people charged in connection with that murder finally got underway -- and it's still going on.

In his research, Romig travels to Kerala, a religiously pluralistic and multicultural city some 500-plus miles south of Bangalore. While in the Kerala area, he visits the Shrine of St. Thomas, which tells the story of how Thomas, the doubting apostle of Jesus, went to India in the year 52 to preach the gospel. (Whether Thomas really ever went to India still is up for debate.)

Romig describes the The Acts of Thomas this way: It "begins where the Gospels leave off. On the orders of the resurrected Christ, the apostles draw lots to determine where in the world they will go to spread the Word.

"Thomas draws India. He immediately refuses. Send me wherever else you want, he tells Jesus, but I'll not go among the Indians. So Jesus sells Thomas as a slave to a traveling merchant named Abbanes, who takes him to India." And on and weirdly on. Specifically, Abbanes takes Thomas to Kerala. In that city and its environs, The Acts of Thomas says (according to Romig), "Thomas speaks to serpents and dragons and donkeys, resurrects 19 dead people, reattaches a severed arm, cures 330 lepers, gives sight to 250 blind people and even investigates a murder, which he solves by recalling the victim from hell to hear her account."

To older journalists like me, this account sounds like something Geraldo Rivera might make up.

In the end, these non-canonical writings are intriguing but their literal words cannot be trusted to convey what we 21st Century Americans would consider verifiable history.

And yet they do raise many interesting questions, including who was tasked with counting the number of people St. Thomas resurrected, cured of leprosy or restored their sight? And, once he finished investigating that murder, did Thomas send that poor woman back to hell?

If you discover answers to these questions, I'd like to be the second to know.

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TIME TO KILL OFF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Let's also begin the new year be renewing the effort to abolish the vicious death penalty. As the Jesuit priest Thomas Reese writes in this RNS column, "We have to stop thirsting for blood as individuals and as a society. We have to stop cheering the avengers. Responding to violence with violence simply perpetuates the cycle." Beyond that, we've executed innocent people. And the capital punishment system is way, way more expensive than sentencing people to life in prison. So find and support people who are working to change this deadly and unjust system. In our area, that includes Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty.

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P.S.: You can get an email with a link to my blog every time it publishes. Just register here for free. And, trust me, free is better than a buck-two-eighty and a quarter -- or $19 a month.

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ANOTHER P.S.: Almost every religion has a "mystical" path. But how are we to understand the mystics and their teachings? A new book helps with that, and here is my review of it written for The National Catholic Reporter.

Here's more on the private vs communal religion difference

A few weeks ago here on the blog, I wrote about the difference between "private religion" and more communal approaches to being part of a faith tradition.

I invited readers to respond with their experiences of one kind of faith or the other. Today, to start out a brand new year, I want to share a couple of responses to that post because I thought they were insightful for me and might be for you, too.

Reader Ross Warnell has this to say, among other things:

"The point I wish to make is, at age 82, I have come to some conclusions that may not sit well with some.  I consider myself religious rather than spiritual. I consider religion as the re-binding and reconciliation of what has been separated to be a primary consideration. 'Spiritual but not religious' is a copout and leads to navel gazing. The proverbial walking alone in the woods seeking God? All may, none must and some should.

"Not to put too fine a point of it, if our churchgoing is not about healing our divisions, those things that tear us apart and poison and destroy our relationships, then we are wasting everyone's time. While there are many comforts and consolations in a life of faith, there is a hard truth that often gets overlooked: that we allow our precious egos to be crucified and raised up to new and everlasting life by the power of God. That's the only cure for the train wreck that is the human condition, the only thing that will bridge the barrier between the realm of sin and death and the realm of God (lots of theological baggage to unpack there, best left for another day).

 

"Relationship, relationships, relationships. Period."

 

Next, reader McKenna Parker responded this way:

 

"I was raised Methodist, but stopped going to church around early high school and never really found my way back due to a combination of the following:

 

* lack of a thriving youth group/fulfilling peer social connections

 

* overall agnostic beliefs that were perhaps somewhat 'spiritual' - i.e., if Christianity were a La Croix flavor. . .

 

*being queer and not seeing a whole lot of loudly affirming spaces (I'm pretty straight-passing, so organized religion hasn't hurt me to the degree that it has others in the LGBTQ+ community, but nevertheless...)

 

*the teachings didn't feel relevant/relevance wasn't apparent (definitely 'theologically illiterate'!)

 

"Now, I ended up in a faith-based professional space, totally by accident. I found this position from a 'community' angle instead of a religious one.

 

"Through my work, I've had the ultimate 'church shopping' experience. And really, 'religion shopping.' I'm frequently exposed to a variety of Christian denominations, I've been to a Shabbat service at a Reform synagogue, work closely with someone from a Conservative Jewish synagogue and I'm at the Islamic Center of JoCo a few times a year, too. Over the last 3.5 years as a faith-based community organizer, I am genuinely so blessed to have a number of annual training opportunities to deepen my knowledge and grow in my theological literacy. . .I've been fascinated every time, and wonder how/why did this message never get to me before? Your post from March 2022 about widespread charity being a sign of widespread failure was another 'highlight' of this religious/social awakening of mine.

 

"Mercy is fundamentally different from justice, and we are called to do both. . .I've gradually found that social justice is everywhere in scripture. 'Duh,' you may say, but it never felt that way to me before! My experience of communal religion growing up was not nearly as rich in meaning as it is to me now. I knew 'Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so' but I never knew that Jesus flipped tables and mocked the powerful, and that his incarnation on Earth represented a radical challenge to the forces of empire which led people to plead for daily bread. If that Jesus had been taught to me, maybe my radical little teenage heart would have been more open to the Holy Spirit. . .

 

"But I'm a firm believer now that The Church -- communal religion -- has to be more than an irrelevant social club. The Church is one of the only social institutions left in our society that can serve both as a moral compass and a source of organized people power. If people's faith becomes so privatized that we lose the communal aspect, the potential of using the institution as a moral compass slips away. And since morality/justice is a central call of the faith, how could we allow for that to happen? We can't!"

 

I'm grateful to Ross and McKenna for their responses and to others who sent me their thoughts about all of this. My conclusion (so far) is that there's a place for private religion, but that type of faith practice is most healthy and useful when it's located within the broader context of communal religion. Religion focused solely on a single person is so far out of balance that, in the end, it can't be healthy and generative given that we all live in communal settings.

 

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CARTER KEPT FAITH AND POLITICS IN PROPER PERSPECTIVE

 

The death of Jimmy Carter a few days ago brought back memories of 1976, when I spent time in his hometown of Plains, Ga., working on a profile of him for The Kansas City Star and later helped cover the Democratic national convention in New York that nominated him for president. Yes, he was a man of unusual ambition and self-confidence (perhaps a bit misplaced at times) but he also was someone who understood the need to see things with an eternal perspective and to commit oneself to faith in something or someone beyond the self.

 

As Douglas A. Hicks, president of Davidson College, writes in this tribute to Carter: "He viewed himself as seeking to follow in Jesus’s footsteps. His Nobel prize acceptance speech was essentially a statement of his Christian faith. At the same time, Carter was a political realist who understood the difference between faith enacted in the private realm and faith in the public sphere, which required an emphasis on justice and the countervailing forces of power."

 

Carter almost certainly will never be ranked among America's top 10 presidents, though his place as our best ex-president seems secure. His whole life is worthy of study to see what he got right that many leaders today aren't getting right.

 

It shouldn't surprise you to know that the Religion News Service story about Carter' death emphasizes his role as a Sunday school teacher at his church in Plains.

 

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P.S.: If you missed my latest Flatland column when it posted this past Sunday morning, it's still available for $0.00 here. It's rooted in the shrinkage of the newspaper business.

 

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ANOTHER P.S.: If you're wondering about what stories in the field of faith might make headlines in 2025, the reporters at Religion News Service have you covered here.

Here's a model of a life that truly mattered

Patriotism, meaning a commitment to one's country, is quite different from a commitment to one's faith tradition. But they share at least this in common: Both require an unswerving willingness to speak the truth, to question and challenge policies and actions that seem destructive and to know not only what you stand for but what, in the end, you must stand against.

That's one reason that the recently published book Patriot, by now-murdered Russian dissident Alexei Navalny is full of lessons not just for people who love their nation but also for people who love and want to protect and promote their religion.

Navalny, an atheist who converted to Christianity after the 2001 birth of his daughter, wanted to do both. And he did, right up until Vladimir Putin's criminal regime ended his life earlier this year when he was a prisoner in an Arctic Circle corrective colony.

It is a remarkable story that should inspire readers to be courageous in the ways they call their governments and their faith communities to stand for truth and justice. Navalny knew of the countless ways in which Putin's reign was based on lies and crimes and he never tired of pointing that out.

Although he doesn't say much in this book about it, he also knew that the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, which he had joined, have sold their souls to Putin and thus abandoned their core theology -- theology that was vital to Navalny's ability to stand up to Putin.

The history of scandals within religions is long and sordid. In recent years in the U.S. it has included the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and the protection of those priests by their bishops. There have also been scandals related to clergy misusing or stealing money and scandals of clergy marital infidelity. And on and on.

Each of those needed a Navalny. Sometimes one would emerge to call attention to what was going wrong, but not often enough. Perhaps it would help if Navalny's new book were required reading for clergy and for lay leaders in congregations and other religious organizations.

And if the U.S. had had more Navalnys in the Vietnam era, we might have known sooner about the lies that U.S. officials were telling us about how that war was going (never well). Imagine the lives that might have been spared, including a couple of my high school classmates.

Navalny is clear about the need of all citizens to know not only what they are against but also what they are for. In the 1980s, for instance, he writes that "people of sound mind" were "against the endless lying on television and in newspapers, against empty shelves in the shops, against the hypocritical party elite wearing their mink fur hats. Even more important, though, demonstrating against the U.S.S.R. was fighting in favor of something positive," after which he mentions everything from rock music to the right to travel abroad to good medical care "without being expected to bribe the doctors. . ."

And he bemoans the reality that quite often "almost all the young democrats, reformers and free-market champions of the 1990s have become fabulously rich while changing their spots to become conservative pillars of the state."

One admirable trait that shines through this book is Navalny's willingness to acknowledge his errors of judgment, including "my blind support of (Boris) Yeltsin (president of Russian from 1991-1999) despite his disregard for the law."

So it's clear that as we speak the truth to power, we also need to speak it to ourselves when we're wrong. And we must recognize the way the systems in which we operate are -- or can be -- corrupt and eventually corrupting of us.

Navalny puts it this way: "(I)f you are behaving corruptly for the benefit of someone else, why would it not be okay to do a little bit of the same for yourself? The system soon swallows you."

So in whatever he did, he writes, he made sure that the underlying principle was transparency.

Transparency is part of what good journalism provides for a country and a culture, as George Packer writes here in the current edition of The Atlantic:

"Journalists will have a special challenge in the era of the Trump Reaction. We’re living in a world where facts instantly perish upon contact with human minds. Local news is disappearing, and a much-depleted national press can barely compete with the media platforms of billionaires who control users algorithmically, with an endless stream of conspiracy theories and deepfakes. The internet, which promised to give everyone information and a voice, has consolidated in just a few hands the power to destroy the very notion of objective truth. 'Legacy journalism is dead,' Musk crowed on his own X in the week before the election. Instead of chasing phantoms on social media, journalists would make better use of our dwindling resources, and perhaps regain some of the public’s trust, by doing what we’ve done in every age: expose the lies and graft of oligarchs and plutocrats, and tell the stories of people who can’t speak for themselves."

Which is exactly what Navalny bravely tried to do.

Navalny made a choice about how to live his one wild and precious life, as poet Mary Oliver called it. And he chose truth over the endless lies of the Russian leaders because, as he writes, "I want our children and grandchildren to know that their parents were good people and that they spent their lives trying to create something positive."

As for Navalny's conversion to Christianity, he doesn't dwell on it much in this book, though at one point he writes this: "The fact is, I'm religious. Which exposes me to constant ridicule. . .But I'm a believer now, and I find it helps me a lot in the work I do." And through it all, he has kept an inspiring sense of humor, writing, ". . .as long as you can see the funny side of things, it's not too bad." In the end, he says that his "job is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else." Bingo.

By the way, as you may know, Navalny's widow, Yulia, (pictured here) continues the important work of her dead husband. You can find her doing some of that on this YouTube channel.

Oh, and here is an interesting Good Faith Media story about Navalny that focuses more on his Christian witness.

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A KC-BASED MEDICAL ASSISTANCE GROUP

Speaking of good works that buck the systems of the world, as I was above, did you know about the Palestinian American Medical Association, which was founded in Kansas City in 2013? I didn't either, until I read this KCUR article about it. It was cofounded by Dr. Majdi Hamarshi, who teaches critical care at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. So as the old year wanders off and the new one muscles its way in, don't lose faith in humanity. There still are good people doing good work out there. Let's join them.

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P.S.: Do you know what the Native American Church is and why its members use peyote in their worship customs? This Associated Press story will give you answers. You're welcome.

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ANOTHER P.S.: My latest Flatland column -- about truth, religion and the demise of local newspapers -- now is online here.

A homey and homely Christmas story from the past

As I've done on a few Christmases here on the blog, I'm resurrecting a Christmas story that I wrote for the now-defunct Sunday magazine of The Kansas City Star in 1982.

It draws on the characters in a manger scene that was in my family's home when I grew up in Woodstock, Ill. I hope you enjoy it, even if you've read it before, perhaps even when it was first published more than four decades ago.

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AN ACCOUNT OF CHRISTIANITY'S RISE

A friend from my boyhood days in India, Markandey Katju, has written this version of how Christianity emerged from Judaism and spread across the world. I'd be interested in your views about what he got right and what, if anything, he didn't. You can email your answers to me at [email protected].

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P.S.: To his great credit, President Joe Biden has commuted the death sentences of 37 federal prisoners to life in prison without parole. It's not quite the same as doing away with the death penalty, but it's a huge step in the right direction. Capital punishment is a moral stain on whatever government allows it. Thanks, Mr. President. But now let's abolish the death penalty in all cases in the U.S. (and around the world).

If there's life beyond Earth, what does it say about God?

The good folks at Linda Hall Library in Kansas City currently (since October) are offering a display that raises the question of whether there is life beyond Earth (not counting temporary residents of the International Space Station).

As usual with Linda Hall exhibits, it's worth seeing, as I did recently. Because the library is focused on science, I wasn't surprised that this exhibit didn't get into the question of what it would mean to world religions if it turns out that Earth is not the only planet in the cosmos that sustains life. But that question is, nonetheless, well worth asking and investigating.

Perhaps, from a Christian perspective, the place to start is by ignoring the biblical literalists who contend that Earth was created in six 24-hour days and that this astonishing (miraculous?) achievement took place just a few thousand years ago. That path will get us nowhere except properly laughed out of science departments at universities.

One intriguing verse, John 10:16 in the New Testament, has Jesus saying this: "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd."

Here and there, over time, a few people have suggested that Jesus was speaking about life elsewhere in the cosmos.

If you want to wander deep into those uncertain woods, take a look at this biblical interpretation site, which offers several possible options for what John 10:16 means.

If, after several months of study you emerge with a clear answer, I want to be the second to know.

And here, at a Catholic-based site, is an essay that looks at a slightly longer passage in John that includes verse 16 and asks the same questions about aliens out in the universe.

"What," the author asks, "if Christ is not referring to the Gentiles as those who are not of 'this fold' but to alien life, or intelligent beings who are not of the one fold of the human race? I believe the remainder of the passage raises this possibility."

If the adherents of the three Abraham faiths -- chronologically, Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- mean what they say about a god who created the entire cosmos out of an impulse of love and who does, indeed, love humanity and all of nature, I can't think of any reason such a god would limit the focus of divine love to humans on Earth. Well, except maybe not wanting to keep track of a family that big and spread out.

That position may make logical sense, but it proves nothing about what's out there in the ever-expanding cosmos that science now says came into existence in a flash some 13.7 billion years ago.

Let's also consider that this is a universe that, from the beginning, has experienced the dissipating effects of entropy, or increasing disorganization, as predicted by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which I wrote about recently here.

That whole discussion, of course, raises difficult questions about the nature of God and about the purpose of creating something that slowly, over billions of years, collapses in disorder as sun after sun burns out and the cosmos finally goes silent, obviating a need for keeping or telling time -- and, thus, a need for alarm clocks.

So my desire in raising all this is to suggest you go see the Linda Hall Library exhibit and to hope that it complicates your thinking instead of simplifying it. People free to express their doubts and admit their ignorance are, frankly, a lot more interesting (and maybe mentally healthier) than people married to false certitude. Which is why I once wrote a book called The Value of Doubt.

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WHAT'S NEXT? PACIFISTS TAKING UP ARMS?

If this isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I'm not sure what is. Methodists -- Methodists -- are engaged in lethal fighting against one another in Africa, as this RNS story reports. The details:

"Violent clashes have broken out between groups of Methodists in Nigeria and Liberia as a divide over the ordination of LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage has split the United Methodist Church.

"In the eight months since the UMC voted to strike a condemnation of homosexuality from its governing Book of Discipline, tensions have arisen in Africa between dissenting congregations seeking to leave the 56-year-old denomination and those choosing to remain. The fighting between the two factions in Nigeria has left one adult and two children dead."

The truly sad thing is that this intra-Methodist fight is really over a tragic misreading of scripture that leads to a dehumanization of LGBTQ+ people. Stop it, Methodists. Just stop it.

Even in the face of a dissolving cosmos, there's room for hope

As we move to the end of a remarkable year that has been challenging in countless of ways, I've been thinking about the big picture. You know, an eternal view. A cosmic sense of things. It's been one way to reconvince myself that I cannot, individually, change everything I want to change in the world -- from ending wars to stopping crime to creating peace everywhere.

I must be both realistic and yet willing to use my prophetic voice to make a difference where and when I can.

To ponder things in this way, it's important to think about how people of faith (I am one) respond to some puzzling realities about the cosmos.

For instance, the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that there is increasing disorder in the universe -- a universe that most people who pledge allegiance to one of the world's great religions believe was created by a force or person we call God. The cosmos is expanding and as it does it's also falling apart. Try holding together that creative tension -- a creator who creates something that, starting with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago, is dissolving into increasing chaos through the forces of entropy.

As Adrian J. Adams writes in his book Which god is God?, which I wrote about recently here, "Time is passive. It simply measures the increasing disorder of the universe. And it always moves toward the future, never the reverse. Time's direction follows the steady unwinding of the universe. . .When the universe runs out of fuel, it will be a cold, dark expanse." He then quotes a theoretical physicist as saying that "once time has nothing left to measure, it will stop."

And then where will you go dancing on Saturday night?

Facing such a long-term reality, it is easy -- and understandable -- to lose hope and to ask about the ultimate purpose of our lives.

But the reality is that the Apostle Paul had it right when he wrote in I Corinthians 13 (King James Version): "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. . ."

In other words, it helps to acknowledge what we don't know and, beyond that, what -- this side of paradise -- we can't know. And if we believe in a loving, creative god, we simply do what we can to respond to that reality in loving and creative ways.

Some friends who have been crushed by the results of the last presidential election have told me they are doing their best to work on what needs to be fixed locally. They are not exactly ignoring what they suspect will be a chaotic and destructive four years of national drama and change, but they are pledging to do what they can where they can and to hope they might be wrong about their national and international fears.

The same approach -- active engagement with what you can change, less worry about what you can't -- also can be a useful way to handle state, local and even family issues. (And the overlap among them all.)

It's too easy, of course, simply to say that God is ultimately in charge and so you and I don't need to worry about -- or do -- anything. That would not please the God I know and it would make it easier for the forces of destruction and chaos to have their way.

So as the cosmos moves toward increasing disorder, our job is to do what W. H. Auden said, in his poem "September 1, 1939", was his job: to "show an affirming flame."

(The image above here today came from this site.)

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I SWEAR THIS IS TRUE

An ancient stone bearing the Ten Commandments is to be auctioned off today with the bidding starting at $1 million, this RNS story reports. But wait. One of the commandments is missing, the one that says "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain." I tell you about that in case you win the bidding and only then realize it's missing 10 percent of the text, an error that causes you to take the Lord's name in vain.