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February 2015

Government as God's sheriff: 1-19-15

I regularly hear criticism -- most of which I agree with -- that condemns ISIS, or the Islamic State, and even the government of Saudi Arabia for enforcing strict religious standards on the populations each controls or thinks it controls.

LashesISIS, indeed, has imagined that it has recreated an Islamic caliphate, or nation, and that its job is to make sure that nobody does anything or says anything that is in conflict with its leaders astonishingly rigid misinterpretation of Islam.

The most recent example of similarly outrageous behavior in Saudi Arabia is the 10-year and 1,000-lashes sentence imposed on a citizen who started what's described as a liberal online forum to encourage discussion and debate in the kingdom.

In both cases, as I've written before, what this shows is that the leaders of both groups think Islam is weak and needs all kinds of violent protection to survive. Which is silly.

But before we (especially those of us in the West) do nothing but criticize such behavior, it would serve us well to understand our own history.

Oh, my.

The reality is that Christian leaders used to act in the same way. Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the 1600s, when the Protestant Reformation had created considerable turmoil across Europe and the so-called Thirty Years' War (a religious conflict, to be sure) had pummeled the land.

At this time, says David Nirenberg, in his book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, "the vast majority of theologians agreed that God expected governments to enforce religious conformity and to punish violations of his laws, without mercy or tolerance."

He then quotes John Calvin, the theological father of my Presbyterian Church (USA), as saying this: "Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and blasphemers in punishing them, makes himself an accomplice in their crime and guilty as they are."

And since the Fourth Century, Nirenberg writes, what he calls "mainstream Catholic Christianity" believed "it was the duty of government to punish infractions of God's law. Failure to do so, it was widely believed, would dishonor God and bring down his wrath on the polity."

Eventually, through the American and French revolutions and other developments, governments slowly got out of the business of being God's enforcers. Thank God. But perhaps it also helps to remember that Christianity has been around 500 or 600 years longer than Islam and that matters of faith and doctrine and practice often take a long time to work themselves out.

I'd say the world is ready for an end to ISIS and to the heavy hand of the House of Saud on its own people. But let's not imagine that they dreamed up such reprehensible actions ex nihilo with no historical precedence.

* * *

THE POST-SELMA SPEECH

In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, here's a link to the speech he gave March 25, 1965, at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery march. As you read it, try to imagine how things were just 50 years ago.


Turning anger toward solutions: 1-17/18-15

Anger seems to be what is fueling the world these days.

Icofa-4* Blacks are angry at whites for lots of things, from slavery to Michael Brown to white privilege.

* Muslims are angry at non-Muslims for criticizing and satirizing Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.

* Jews are angry at Palestinians and Palestinians are angry at Jews, each for a long list of reasons.

* Catholics who would call themselves conservative or traditional are angry at Pope Francis and Pope Francis is angry at economic systems that oppress the poor.

The world has an anger management problem. And maybe one way to deal with it is to hear about someone else's experience of dealing with whatever anger has caused a problem in his or her life.

In that spirit, I offer you this intriguing piece by a Muslim man who grew up in The Netherlands and who was surprised at how angry he became when others didn't understand why he was offended by dipictions of the Prophet Muhammad. The author, novelist Abdelkader Benali, writes this:

Islam told me God is One and the Prophet is his messenger. Adhere to the five pillars and all will be well. But we were living in a non-Muslim country. But I wasn’t Dutch, nor was I secular. I had to find a way to reconcile my religious background with a secular world. I felt orphaned.

And resolving that dilemma is much harder in a secular society that seems to have stopped struggling with these big questions altogether.

In the end, I didn’t find the answers in holy texts. I found them in literature.

The good news is that he found answers and help. The scary news is that he felt drawn to the kind of radical Islamist behavior that we saw on 9/11 and so many times afterward, including the recent Paris and Nigeria killings. These are the kinds of young men that people like Eboo Patel are working to help through his Interfaith Youth Core so they can find non-violent answers and not get drawn into extremism. 

We need to help organizations like that so that the call of wild Islamist radicalism is countered among vulnerable young people.

(The photo here today is one I took a few years ago at Friday prayers at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Mich. And I frequently think about the little boy in the photo and hope he's on the right path.)

* * *

WOULD YOU TRUST THIS BYLINE?

A boy who almost died in a car wreck and then wrote a book about how he went to heaven now says it was all made up. Maybe the first clue should have been the kid's name, Alex Malarkey.


Helping to understand suffering: 1-16-15

As I noted recently in this blog posting, the question of evil and suffering has been with humanity from the beginning -- and religion has no exhaustive, satisfying explanation for it.

Alan-TilsonBut over the centuries, artists, poets, playwrights and theologians have explored suffering, particularly instances rooted in mental illness, poverty and free will.

Perhaps no playwright gave us a clearer picture of such tragedy than William Shakespeare in "King Lear," in which the main character goes mad and winds up essentially homeless and bereft of love or sympathy.

Now a friend who is a wonderful local actor and an Episcopal priest, Alan Tilson, has created a one-man, one-hour adaptation of the play that he's calling "Poor Lear," and he'll be presenting it as a benefit for the the Homeless Services Coalition of Greater Kansas City.

"Poor Lear" will be performed at 2 p.m. on Feb. 15 at Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City. It will also be performed in New York City in association with the Episcopal Actors Guild at the Little Church Around the Corner on April 12. A $10 or $20 suggested donation will be taken at the door. 

Poor LearI saw Alan do a version of this a year or so ago at the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre in Kansas City, where he performs and serves on the board of directors. It was quite engaging, but now Alan says he's produced a new and improved version. In this modern adaptation, Lear is a homeless veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder.

As I've noted before, the question of suffering and evil is the open wound of religion. But efforts such as Alan Tilson is offering can help us think about our personal responsibility to respond to suffering when we see it.

(By the way, my pastor, Dr. Paul T. Rock, gave a fabulous sermon this past Sunday on the question of suffering and evil. A video of it is online here.)

* * *

GIVING THE GIFT OF JOY

A woman who struggled mightily with breast cancer has written a book about it. Here is an excerpt of Fight Back With Joy from Religion News Service about what Margaret Feinberg learned about God and joy the day she almost died.


Our stressed-out American clergy: 1-15-15

American clergy, it turns out, are suffering many of the same battles with weight and obesity afflicting the rest of the population, a new Baylor University study has found.

StressIndeed, about one-third of clergy are obese, "with stress, longer hours, being underpaid and lack of self-care among the reasons," says a Baylor press release announcing the results.

The standard joke among Christians, of course, is that pastors have a cushy job, working only an hour or two per week on Sunday. Not all attempts at humor are funny or appreciated.

In my experience, hardly anyone I know has worked harder or for longer hours under extraordinarily stressful conditions than clergy and health care professionals.

Just based on the times I get e-mail and text messages from my current pastor, I would guess he puts in a minimum of 60 hours a week -- and it's probably closer to 80.

What are pastors doing all that time? The list is almost endless: Preparing sermons, which means studying; regular prayer times to support their congregations; meeting after meeting with various church committees, from buildings and grounds to adult education to mission to worship and on and on; calming internal-congregation storms; overseeing an office staff; thinking strategically about where the faith community is going; visiting the sick and shut-in; helping to oversee this year's budget and plan next year's; participating in regional and national governing bodies of their faith; doing marital and pre-marital counseling; teaching and encouraging youth; meeting with potential new members; meeting with families to prepare for funerals; meeting with families to prepare for baptisms, bar-mitzvahs and similar life-cycle events; teaching congregational classes on a variety of topics. I could go on for at least double the current list, but you get the idea.

All of this requires clergy to be well balanced personally in many ways. They need strong support from their own families -- even if those families are other clergy living in the same house with them, as sometimes happens in the Catholic tradition. They simply cannot afford to succumb to sickness on a regular basis, so they must maintain a healthy lifestyle, which is what the Baylor study is worrying about. And they must have a long-term sense of their commitment to their faith tradition and to (as we Christians would put it) where God is calling them to be at this time. That requires discernment, which some clergy have and some don't.

In the end, it is up to members of congregations to recognize the kind of workload clergy are being asked to sustain and to help make sure that not only are they paid fairly for that but that they are supported in other ways, too. Too many congregations fail at those tasks, leading to clergy burnout and unhappy congregation members. What about yours?

The kind of obesity the Baylor study identifies is not the problem. It's a symptom of deeper problems, and wise congregations will recognize it as such and do what they can to address those matter.

* * *

INSULTING MUHAMMAD AGAIN

It took awhile, but the al-Qaida branch in Yemen finally claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre. In fact, it called the attackers "heroes of Islam." In some parts of the world, black is white, up is down, thugs are heroes. The term "heroes of Islam" can be applied to lots of people, but to apply it to the Paris murderers is a profound insult to the Prophet Muhammad.


When Israel got eliminated: 1-14-15

There's a difference, it turns out, between being sensitive to the views of others and, on the other hand, caving in to myopic prejudice and radical wishful thinking.

Caesarea-8This is what HarperCollins discovered after it published a map of the Middle East (for distribution in the Middle East) that purposefully wiped Israel off that map, as reported by Walter Brasch on Jan. 9 on his "Wanderings" blog. Brasch, like me, is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

As Brasch reports, "This was a willful and deliberate decision by executives of the HarperCollins subsidiary, Collins Bartholomew, which concentrates on maps, to wipe Israel off the map—literally. The reason, said the company, was because of 'local preferences.' In this case, 'local preferences' means, said a representative for Collins Bartholomew, to include Israel on a Middle East map would be 'unacceptable' to certain Middle East countries. 'Unacceptable' translates solely as a loss of sales."

The world is well aware that certain Middle East organizations and factions (I'm looking at you, Hamas) are dedicated to destroying Israel. Indeed, Israel has been a target since it first became a modern nation in May 1948.

But to obliterate Israel from maps so as not to offend those who wish to destroy Israel seems like one of the most bone-headed decisions a publisher could make. If a publisher wishes to add a note to a map that says this territory or that is in dispute, fine. But Israel exists as a nation, and I view the action by HarperCollins to wipe it off the map as outrageous antisemitism.

(The photo here of the Israeli flag is one I took in 2012 in Caesarea.)

* * *

MORE SAD ECONOMIC REALITIES

In reading a bit about the trip Pope Francis will take to the Philippines starting tomorrow, I learned that 10 percent of the Filipino people work abroad to be able to support their families. It's one more obvious reason this pontiff is so committed to ministry to the poor.


The cost of ideological failure: 1-13-15

Imagine, if you will, that you have decided upon several major goals in life -- goals that will engage much of the world and that, you hope, will turn the world toward your way of thinking. These goals will require a set of actions, and you prepare well to execute them.

Je-suis-charlieAnd now imagine that you have accomplished the acts you set out to do. The problem, it now turns out, is that every one of your acts has achieved the opposite of the goals you wanted -- save one.

This is exactly what has happened to the murderous thugs who, in the name of Islam, murdered so many of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, the Paris satire magazine. Let's consider:

* The terrorists wanted to shut down the magazine. It not only will continue to publish but millions of people around the world who had no idea it even existed now are supporters of it.

* The terrorists wanted to frighten other journalists and cartoonists into silence. But around the world journalists (like my friend Rick Horowitz) and cartoonists (like The Kansas City Star's Lee Judge) are speaking up even more loudly for freedom of expression.

* The terrorists wanted to advance the cause of Islam by taking a stand against defamation of the Prophet Muhammad. But by their actions they have smeared Islam, however unfairly. And they have made it even more likely that others will engage in satire at the expense of the prophet.

* The terrorists wanted to die. Selfish mission accomplished, though at the vast expense of other lives. But most of the world will remember the terrorists not as martyrs to a just cause but as fools, misled radicals, violent thugs unworthy of any honor at all save a special spot in history's trash heap.

* The terrorists wanted to attract other would-be terrorists to violent extremism. Given the sometimes-perverse nature of the world, they seem to have a chance of achieving this reprehensible goal, but so far we don't know if they will.

The Parisian terrorists failed at almost everything they tried to accomplish. The sad result, however, is that the world will be paying for their failure for a long, long time and that religion itself has been dealt another body blow because they hid behind an ancient and honorable religion to justify their ideological warfare. It's a price we cannot afford.

* * *

THE POPE DEFENDS HIMSELF AND THE GOSPEL

Pope Francis says he's tired of being called a communist because of his emphasis on helping poor people, which is what the gospel requires. If you can't tell communism from Christianity, you'd have been happy to live under Stalin.


Ben Franklin's civility model: 1-12-15

Philch-26

Over the years, people of faith -- though obviously not enough of them -- have stood for civility in public discourse. But that is precisely what is so clearly lacking today, as talk show hosts outshout guests and as flamers and trolls clog Internet comment sites with industrial-strength personal attacks.

It's disgusting. And it's one reason I shut off comments here on the blog a couple of years ago. It turned out that I had created one more platform for uncivil discouse in this country, and I didn't want to be responsible for that. I should have cut off comments sooner than I did, in retrospect (though readers can always e-mail comments to me; my e-mail address is on the right side of this page).

And the lack of civility in the culture today is the reason for such books as:

* The Case for Civility, by Christian author Os Guinness.

* You Don't Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right, by Rabbi Brad Hirschfield.

* In Defense of Civility: How Religion Can Unite America on Seven Moral Issues that Divide Us, by James Calvin Davis.

* Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World, by Richard J. Mouw, former president of Fuller Theological Seminary.

But what if in this time of fading religious influence, we had a more secular source to inspire us toward civility?

We do. I've found him. He's Benjamin Franklin.

In Walter Isaacson's wonderful biography, Ben Franklin: An American Life, which I'm reading, the author recounts how in Franklin's early days in Philadelphia, he created something of a debating and discussion society, known as the Junto, in which Franklin "began to work on his use of silence and gentle dialogue."

One way he did that, Isaacson writes, "was to pursue topics through soft, Socratic queries. That became the preferred style for Junto meetings. Discussions were to be conducted 'without fondness for dispute or desire of victory.' Franklin taught his friends to push their ideas through suggestions and questions, and to use (or at least feign) naive curiosity to avoid contradicting people in a manner that could give offense. . .It was a style he would urge on the Constitutional Convention sixty years later."

Franklin, of course, was right to encourage such respectful conversation. My guess is that if he were a guest today on the Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly show, he would be shouted down, in effect, with what Franklin once called "talking overmuch. . .which never fails to excite resentment."

I wouldn't want to subject old Ben to that, but I would like for some of today's uncivil yakkers to learn from him.

(The photo here today is one I took in Franklin's "City of Brotherly Love" a few years ago -- and although civil discourse does not require love, it certainly couldn't hurt.)

* * *

DISHONORING ISLAM

I was moved by words said by the brother of the police officer (a Muslim) slain in the Charlie Hebdo massacre: “My brother was Muslim and he was killed by two terrorists, by two false Muslims.” Terrorists who claim to act in the name of Islam, by their actions, repudiate the religion. 

* * *

THE BOOK CORNER

Simply-Good-News

Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good, by N.T. Wright. It having been several weeks since the former bishop of Durham in the Church of England, Tom Wright, came out with a new book, his many fans were becoming a bit anxious. But not to worry. Here's his latest work of Christian apologetics and explanatory theology. On the whole, it's quite good. He urges readers to return to the core meaning of the term "gospel," which means good news, and to think about the fact that Christianity's offering to the world is this news, not so much a new set of doctrines or advice about how to live a better life. Rather, Wright emphasizes, the news is that Jesus has been raised from the dead, that God has defeated death and, in the end, that changes everything. Wright's talent is to get to the central points of the faith and help people see them again, see them in new ways. He reminds us, for instance, that in Christ, the all-powerful creator of the universe came to humanity in weakness. And that reveals something crucial about a God who would, in fact, die for us to rescue us. Tom Wright is squarely in the center of traditional Christianity, unlike popular authors and scholars like John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. And he holds his ground there because he's insightful enough to show us old truths in new ways.

* * *

P.S.: So sorry to learn of the death Sunday of Fuzzy Thompson, who made Kansas City a better place in which to live. He pushed us and pushed us to do the right things.


A city that God owns: 1-10/11-15

Sometimes it's hard not to feel some sympathy for elected people who love God and who think that the culture around them could use a bigger dose of the divine.

Winfield-councilMany are sincere and good citizens who simply want the best for their communities. But it's also true that at times they ignore the fact that their job as public officials is not to preach and evangelize.

A recent good example comes from the City Council of Winfield, Ala., which in late December adopted a resolution saying that "God is the owner of the City of Winfield." (The council is shown in this photo from the city.)

You can read the full resolution at the link I gave you, but clearly what we have here are public officials who really, really want good things for their community but who, in the process of trying to be leaders, have confused their job with that of religious leaders.

If a local church, synagogue or mosque (my quick search turned up no synagogues or mosques in Winfield) had adopted and publicized that resolution, no one would have had any constitutional basis for objecting. And even though the resolution does not identify which God is referred to, it's pretty clear that the context is Christian.

Most religions urge followers to make their faith part of their whole lives, not compartmentalizing faith over here and the secular over there. Faith, thus, should inform all of life, most religious leaders would say.

So it can be hard to abide (or abide by) church-state separation -- which, in terms of human history, is a relatively new approach.

But this country won't work if we tear down that wall. And the Winfield resolution represents several large sledge hammer swings at the wall -- by good-hearted but misguided people who, I bet, have better things to do to help their city move forward.

* * *

WHO'S TO BLAME IN PARIS?

USA Today invited someone it identified as a "radical Muslim cleric" to write about the attacks in Paris, and he wrote here that France is to blame for not stopping Charlie Hebdo from riling up Muslims. This kind of thinking also blames women who wear short skirts for getting raped. The technical term for this is, to use the polite-company version of it, hogwash. 


A grain of sand in the universe: 1-9-15

Pillar-creation

Sometimes it's helpful to gain a new understanding of our context. This is true whether we're trying to figure out where our family has been and is headed, how to move our faith community into a new year or where we stand in the vastness of the cosmos.

Let's look at the latter today. To do that we have help from the Hubble Space Telescope operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency. The telescope 25 years ago took a photo out in space of what came to be called Pillars of Creation.

Now it has taken a new look at those astonishing structures, as you see in the photo above. (Photo credit to NASAESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team.)

As a press release from NASA explains, "These columns that resemble stalagmites protruding from the floor of a cavern columns are in fact cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that act as incubators for new stars. Inside them and on their surface astronomers have found knots or globules of denser gas. These are called EGGs (acronym for "Evaporating Gaseous Globules"). Inside at least some of the EGGs stars being formed."

For a fuller explanation, click here.

Sometimes our language is stagnant. We say "God created the world," for instance. Or we call God an "Intelligent Designer." In fact, the creation is an on-going affair, both at the cosmic level and at the human level.

If we understand that, we also begin to understand that there are countless possibilities still ahead of us and that we need not imagine that we've run out of options. As a pastor I knew when I was a kid once put it, "Divine possibilities are always possibilities."

(By the way, The Atlantic did this piece the other day about these Pillars.)

* * *

OPPRESSING CHRISTIANS GLOBALLY

Persecution of Christians around the world reached historic highs in 2014, it's reported, and 2015 may be even worse. This is serious stuff -- not the kind of "persecution" some Americans complain about because of the so-called "War on Christmas" and other such silliness. Which country is worst? No surprise: North Korea, an outlaw and outlier in so many ways.

* * *

P.S.: In the wake of the massacre this week in Paris, here's a helpful piece about why Islam forbids images of the Prophet Muhammad.


The place of Jesus' trial: 1-8-15

In this blog posting earlier this week, I said (again) that biblical literalists often miss the metaphor, myth and allegory in Bible stories, thus sort of missing the whole point.

Nativity-Beth-15That, of course, is not to say that there is no accurate history recorded in the Bible. The reality of Christianity is that it's rooted in the real life of a man, Jesus of Nazareth, who really lived in the Holy Land some 2,000 years ago. And if he lived there, it's also true that certain events in his life would have happened here and not there or over there and not here.

The exact location of his birth, his Sermon on the Mount or his trial doesn't, finally, mean all that much to the development of doctrine and creed. But those locations, if they ever can be verified, do lend credence to the overall story.

Which is why I find it kind of an important development that archaeologists think they may have located the place where Jesus was put on trial in Jerusalem.

I like this quote from the piece: "'For those Christians who care about accuracy in regards to historical facts, this is very forceful,' said Yisca Harani, an expert on Christianity and pilgrimage to the Holy Land."

Well, Christians should care about historical accuracy. It's important. In the end, however, it's not as important as spiritual truths and what those historical facts tell us about the person whom Christians follow as disciples.

(The photo here today is one I took in 2012 in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, marking the exact spot of Jesus' birth -- unless, of course, it wasn't exactly on this spot.)

* * *

'NONE' PLUS 'NONE' FINALLY EQUALS LOTS OF 'NONES'

How do we explain the rise in recent decades of the number of Americans who say they are religiously unaffiliated -- the so-called "nones"? Lots of reasons, probably, but here is a pretty good look at the question from religion scholar Mark Silk.

* * *

P.S.: My latest National Catholic Reporter column now is online here.

* * *

ANOTHER P.S.: In response to the horrific, appalling terrorist attack on the satirical magazine in Paris yesterday, here's a brief word in support of satire and laughter from Gina Barreca, who several times has been a speaker at one of our National Society of Newspaper Columnists annual conferences. I wrote satire for much of my career at The Kansas City Star. Without it we dry up and blow away, taking ourselves far too seriously.