Bill's 'Faith Matters' Blog

What we can learn about Pius XII and about us: 3-13-19

As I mentioned at the bottom of this post the other day, Pope Francis has agreed to open all the Vatican archives pertaining to what Pope Pius XII (pictured here) did or didn't do during the Holocaust.

It's the right decision, though it took the church too long to make it.

We don't yet know whether the archives will show that Pius did the best he could under terrible circumstances or whether what seems to have been his relative inaction in saving Jews was even worse than we imagine now.

But this editorial from The Guardian (which, by the way, is doing some of the best journalism around these days), takes the right approach.

"The historical record," the paper notes, "shows Pius did very little to condemn the Holocaust, and nothing effectual to stop it. He was the Vatican’s chief diplomat before becoming pope in 1939. He held the office all through the second world war and the first decade of the cold war. Since his death he has been accused of crimes ranging from active collaboration with the Nazis to passive acquiescence in their crimes and indifference to the suffering of their victims. It is also charged against him that he dissolved the Catholic lay party in Germany, when that party might have been a bulwark against Hitler’s rise."

And yet, the editorial concludes that "the charge against Pius of active collaboration is certainly unfounded."

Those were harrowing times, and it's pretty clear that the world's secular and religious leadership failed in all kinds of ways to stop Hitler's death machine that wound up murdering about six million of the nine million Jews of Europe. Was the failure of Pius XII more egregious than the failure of the leadership of the United States and other countries that reacted too late and too ineffectively to stop the killings? Probably not. But perhaps when scholars and others are able to read through the Vatican archives they can answer that question more definitively.

An answer about this history is important. But it's also important to know what political leaders around the world are doing right now to stop the oppression of religious people in all kinds of countries. What kind of oppression? The latest annual report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom lays it out in disheartening detail.

Are you even aware of such a report? Are you demanding that your elected leaders take whatever action they can to stop religious persecution around the world? If not, why not? The issue is not just about Pope Pius XII. It's also about us.

* * *

NEED A QUR'AN IN BRAILLE?

I like this RNS story of a blind Muslim couple in Texas creating Qur'ans in braille. It's not just an inspiring tale of people solving their own (and others') problem but it shows once again that various kinds of disabilities pay no attention to the categories of religion, race, sex or anything else that humans create. Which means disabilities are simply part of normal human existence.

Why religious illiteracy is no longer an option: 3-12-19

One of the almost-inevitable results of people becoming more religiously literate is that they gain a deeper understanding of their own faith tradition, if any, and they deepen their commitment to it.

That's clearly what happened to Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest and author, who for years taught a course on world religions at a small college in Georgia. She describes all that in her terrific new book, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, being published today.

Taylor opens herself up -- and seeks to open her students up -- to the wisdom, insight and unique approaches found in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism, recognizing that in 15 weeks she can barely touch the surface of those faiths, but hoping that she will cause her students to investigate their own faith commitments and not be afraid to learn from others.

The book's title comes from Taylor's confession that "I found things to envy in all of the traditions I taught. Some were compatible with Christian faith. . .others forced a choice. . ."

Throughout the book, Taylor tells great stories about her own experience and the experiences her students had while visiting mosques, synagogues and other houses of worship. Some students (almost all Christians) were persistently baffled about how to make sense of what they were learning while others were quick to see how their new knowledge could enrich their own own faith.

What she makes clear to her students is that, as she writes, "religious illiteracy is a luxury they can no longer afford." That's true for medical professionals, who must know how to treat people of various religious backgrounds. It's true for people in business, who "can benefit from knowing how people of different faiths view borrowing and lending money." It's true for teachers, who "need to know where the major holidays of their students fall on the academic calendar." And on and on.

Religious literacy is not about conversion. In the U.S. it's simply about recognizing the increasing religious pluralism in our culture and our need to learn how to live in harmony with people whose beliefs and practices may be different from our own. And Taylor makes that abundantly clear.

"I want the young people in my classes to know," she writes, "that religion is more than a source of conflict or a calculated way to stay out of hell. Religions are treasure chests of stories, songs, rituals and ways of life that have been handed down for millennia -- not covered in dust but evolving all the way -- so that each new generation has something to choose from when it is time to ask the big questions about life."

And as she notes of herself as a Christian: "However many other religious languages I learn, I dream in Christian. However much I learn from other spiritual teachers, it is Jesus I come home to at night." And yet she recognizes that other Christians may see things differently because: "When you have met one Christian, you have met exactly one."

Taylor also is often critical of the way many Christians approach questions of faith, and especially how they view religions other than their own: "Who," she asks, "had convinced us that faith was a competitive sport that only one team could win for all eternity? With an attitude like that, who could blame a neighbor for sensing that Christian love was mostly charitable condescension?" Good questions.

What religious literacy can produce, she argues, is, finally, some humility. That, and the idea that "engaging the faith of others is the best way to grow your own."

Barbara Brown Taylor is a voice of wisdom and a voice of humility about what she doesn't know with certainty. In that way, she's a good model for the rest of us wrestling with faith.

* * *

A PLEA FOR MINDFULNESS

The author of this column in the Boston Globe says the Buddhist "fad" of mindfulness has been around for 3,000 years, meaning there's clearly more to it than a passing fancy for 21st Century Americans. "Strip it back," he writes, "and mindfulness, at its core, simply means to be present, aware, undistracted, and not lost in thought. Rather than fumbling through life’s daily highs and lows in the dark, it’s the equivalent of turning on the light and seeing everything more clearly." Let's do some of that today. And tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. . .

* * *

P.S.: Speaking of religious literacy, as I was above, I hope some of you will join me at 9 a.m. this Sunday and next Sunday at Second Presbyterian Church of Kansas City as I lead a class about Bible translations and why we should care about them. The link will take you to a Facebook page with details.

How are the Mormons mostly holding it together? 3-11-19

The most successful (by several measures) indigenous American religion is Mormonism, the name used to refer to the faith taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

From its start by Joseph Smith outside of Rochester, N.Y., in 1830, the LDS church today says it has more than 16 million members worldwide.

And as this Vox article reports, the Mormons today are among the most successful faith communities in keeping members and, thus, preventing the kind of membership decline experienced by all kinds of Christian denominations in the U.S. That's not to say that the Mormons aren't losing members. They are. But at a considerably slower rate than some other denominations.

"In an era marked by unprecedented religious decline," the Vox piece says, "Mormons appear to be holding their own."

Why is that? Here's the Vox answer: ". . .more than the rules, rituals, and rigorous theology, the success of the Mormon Church may have to do with their unrelenting focus on the family. Few religious communities have made the development and maintenance of traditional family structures such a central priority. Eighty-one percent of Mormons say being a good parent is one of their central life goals. Nearly three-quarters say having a good marriage is one of their most important priorities in life, and a majority of Mormons — including nearly equal numbers of men and women — believe that the most satisfying type of marriage is one in which the husband provides and the wife stays home."

Those approaches may account for why the Mormons leaving the church are mostly from the younger generation. As Vox notes, "Jana Riess, author of the upcoming book The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church, argues that younger Mormons are leading the way out the door, at least in part over the church’s hardline stance on LGBTQ issues."

(I have just received a review copy of the Riess book and expect to say more about it here on the blog in the next week or two.)

Strong families with rich faith traditions certainly can be attractive to lots of people -- and should be, if you ask me. The question is whether, in the long run, some of those traditions will smash up against societal values that challenge tradition, such as the now widely (but not universally) accepted idea of same-sex marriage.

That issue certainly has roiled the United Methodist Church now. But as the Vox article notes, the Mormons seem to have started taking a gentler approach to LGBTQ questions, and that may help keep some younger members around. As the piece concludes, "The reasons Americans leave religion are varied, often complex and incredibly personal. As a result, there is no single tactic that will ensure the vitality of religious congregations in the U.S. But the Mormon experience is instructive. At a time when the American family is undergoing seismic shifts in structure and function, the church appears to be leaning into its emphasis on traditional family life and roles. However, the church appears much more willing to change its approach and rhetoric, if not theology, when it comes to LGBTQ members."

(By the way, LDS church leaders are moving away from the use of the term "Mormon," but in this RNS column, Riess describes why, as a Mormon, she'll keep using it.)

* * *

IS YOUR BIBLE AUTOGRAPHED BY THE PRESIDENT?

Maybe it's just me, but I think people who got all whacked out of shape when President Trump signed people's Bibles on his recent trip to see the tornado destruction in Alabama and comfort people there were just looking for a fight. No foul, no harm, in my book. And yet if it had been my Bible I might have told him this: "You can sign this if you can find 'Two Corinthians' in less than 15 seconds." Again, maybe that's just me.

Unpacking the debate over supposed antisemitism: 3-9/10-19

On the whole, citizens of the United States and Christians generally around the world are much less antisemitic than was the case 50 or 100 years ago. Which isn't a huge compliment, given historical American anti-Jewish bias and, especially, Christianity's long history of anti-Judaism.

In fact, maybe 15 or so years ago I heard a rabbi address religion journalists at a conference in Washington, D.C., and say that most American Jews now have very little personal experience with antisemitism.

I don't think he'd say that today. Things have gotten worse since then, though, as I say, nowhere near as bad as they were back when legal restrictive covenants kept Jews from buying homes in certain neighborhoods and when there were strict quotas on how many Jews could get into certain top American universities.

The issue today is multifold and complicated. It has to do with, among other things, the general permission President Trump has given people to express their opposition and even hatred toward people whom they think of as "the other," whether that means Jews, African-Americans or immigrants from Central and South America. It also has to do with the use of the term anti-Zionism to conceal what is, at base, antisemitism. I wrote about that here recently when I reviewed a new book on the subject.

And it has to do with the deep political divisions in our country, which often are exacerbated by disagreements over such international matters as the Arab-Israeli conflict and the so-called war on terror, which has targeted radical extremists who come out of an Islamic background.

Mix all of that together and you shouldn't be surprised to find Congress all stirred up about which of its members are saying antisemitic junk and which are simply criticizing Israeli government policy in an appropriate way. In response to all this, the House passed a resolution on Thursday condemning antisemitism and almost any other kind of bigotry you could think of. And by a 407-23 vote. (I don't think all 23 no voters are in favor of bigotry but, rather, thought the resolution was flawed in some other way.)

This Vox opinion piece, longer than articles to which I usually link you, helps to unpack what has been going on in that regard in Congress recently, including the fight over remarks made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (pictured here), D.-Minn., that many considered to be antisemitic.

"Omar," the piece says, "also has vocal defenders in both the Democratic Party and the broader left-progressive community, including some prominent Jewish leftists. Her defenders argue she is being attacked in bad faith as a Muslim woman of color who dares to criticize Israel, pointing out that anti-Semitism on the right doesn’t get nearly this much attention.

"Nor, they argue, does Islamophobia get taken as seriously: Just this week, Republicans in the West Virginia Legislature put up a viciously Islamophobic poster connecting Omar to the 9/11 hijackers, without nearly as much fanfare as Omar’s comparatively tame comments. This backlash, particularly from progressive members of Congress, appears to have caused Democrats to delay the vote on the anti-Semitism resolution — and potentially rewrite its text entirely." (The Vox piece appeared before Thursday's vote but still has lots of good insights.)

In the meantime, the question for individual Americans and the groups to which they belong, including their faith communities, is whether they recognize bigotry and participate in it in some way, be it antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism or any other kind of sweeping prejudice. The Vox piece may help us with all of that in that it gives us a chance to think about how others hear the words we say or the actions we take.

We may have no ill intention but still use words or do actions that needlessly offend. That doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize what needs criticism. But it does mean that we should understand when our words are saying things to others that we really don't mean. In other words, we must listen with the ears of others.

* * *

WHAT DID THE METHODISTS DO?

There's still lots of confusion about what the United Methodist Church did by reaffirming its anti-LGBTQ teachings at its recent conference in St. Louis. This Religion News Service story tries to explain what happened and what happens next. The denomination's Judicial Council meets in April to determine whether the plan that was adopted, the so-called Traditional Plan, is constitutional. Once that's clear, expect Methodists who identify as moderates or progressives to begin to decide whether they can stay in the church or feel they must separate. Lots left to happen. Lots of pain still to be delivered to LGBTQ people, sadly. Right after the church's conference, here is what I wrote about it and about a recent Vatican meeting to discuss sexual abuse.

Why we should care about turmoil in India: 3-8-19

I know that most Americans are not focused on developments in India. It's a long ways away, for one thing. And the conflict between India and Pakistan sometimes seems just as convoluted and intractable as the Arab-Israeli conflict. (But I have a special interest in India, given that I lived there for two years of my boyhood.)

Still, India contains more than a billion people and has a huge economic, military and even spiritual influence on the world. So we would do well to pay attention to the recent military flareup between India and Pakistan over Kashmir (again) and to the upcoming elections in India, in which it appears that the destructively nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in office since 2014, will be affirmed in power.

This New Yorker piece does a good job of explaining how Modi's party has encouraged religious radicalism among some Hindus in India and how that is battering the Indian nation.

In that article, writer Eliza Griswold focuses on a radical Hindu group called Bajrang Dal: "The militant Hindu nationalism that the group espouses is not new. Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Gandhi, on January 30, 1948, was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or R.S.S., a violent right-wing organization that promotes Hindu supremacy. Members of the Bajrang Dal are the movement’s foot soldiers, deployed in instances of mob violence or for targeted attacks against Muslims and other religious minorities.

"Paul Richard Brass, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Washington, has called the Bajrang Dal 'a somewhat pathetic but nevertheless dangerous version of the Nazi S.A.' — or the Brownshirts, the Nazi Party’s first paramilitary organization.

"For much for the past thirty years, the Bajrang Dal has either been banned or has lurked at the margins of Indian society. But in 2014 Narendra Modi, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, or the B.J.P., a right-wing political party that was an offshoot of the R.S.S., was elected Prime Minister. Since then, the militant group has been legitimized and grown exponentially more powerful."

A subcontinent in turmoil would be religiously as well as economically, geo-politically and militarily disastrous, and yet that's what Modi seems to be offering to the Indian electorate and, by extension, the world.

In the background of all this is an idealistic effort by Markandey Katju, former justice on India's Supreme Court and a childhood friend of mine who has remained a friend for more than 60 years. Katju recently launched an international effort to reunite India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which were separated (violently) in 1947 when India achieved independence from Britain.

Katju's Indian Reunification Association already has been drawing in hundreds of people who catch his vision of a unified subcontinent too busy improving lives to continue fighting over needless religious and political issues. While you're on that IRA site, take a look at the series of addresses to the Indian nation that Markandey has made since launching the IRA.

Reunification, he acknowledges, is a long-term goal. But the cooperative spirit behind the idea is what the subcontinent desperately needs now, especially given the growing Hindu nationalist militancy against Muslims and the Muslim pushback to all of that.

(The image here today shows what the IRA vision of what the borders of India would look like with the three countries combined.)

* * *

DOES THIS GUY EVEN HAVE A CREDIT CARD?

In remarks at the start of this Lenten season, Pope Francis urged people to avoid the “clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness.” Oh, come on. Now he's attacking the very foundations of the American economy. 

* * *

THE BOOK CORNER

Your Life Is Worth Living: 50 Lessons to Deepen Your Faith, by Fulton Sheen. The famous Catholic evangelist and bishop, Fulton Sheen, has been gone for almost 40 years, though he still has fans. He was bishop in Rochester, N.Y., when I was there in the late 1960s as a reporter and had several opportunities to meet and hear him. He was quite a presence. This new book, just released this week, is a collection of his thinking, speaking and writing. It's, well, like hearing an engaging Catholic voice from what now seems like a rather distant past, and yet at times a voice that foresees something of what's ahead. For instance, in a chapter called "Sex Is a Mystery," he talks about "the mess the sex instinct has us in today with uncontrolled use of pornographic literature. . ." Imagine what he might think today with an internet marinated in porn. In his chapter on "The Sacrament of Marriage," his thinking doesn't come anywhere close to imagining the legality in all 50 states today of same-sex marriage. And it reflects this pre-feminist view: "Man talks more about business, and woman talks more about persons." Sheen also rails on about the scary communism of the mid-20th Century, saying that communists "have unsuccessfully tried to convince us there is no God, but they have convinced us there is a devil." And he argues steadfastly for the Catholic view against artificial birth control, suggesting that people who say they can't afford more children are wrongly putting economics above the value of humanity. If you missed this kind of approach to faith when it was being offered or if you heard it then but still miss it, this is your chance to experience it and see what you make of it. I view it as a time vault into a rather different -- at times strangely out-of-touch but sincere -- time.

An otherwise-worthy book has a deep flaw: 3-7-19

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, N.M., deservedly has countless fans and followers.

He's been a wise spiritual guide to many, and they've been awaiting his latest book, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe. It was published on Monday.

In it, he further unpacks ideas he's been thinking, speaking and writing about for some time. He wants people to remember that Christ isn't Jesus' last name. Rather, it's a title that means Messiah. But even beyond that, Rohr says, Christ is a cosmic term that refers to the divine presence throughout the universe, a presence that's been there from the moment of creation on.

The problem, he contends, is that from the time of the Great Schism of 1054, when the church split into Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, "we gradually lost this profound understanding of how God has been liberating and loving all that is. Instead, we gradually limited the Divine Presence to the single body of Jesus. . .Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply."

So, he insists, there has been more than one incarnation of God. The first one came at the creation, "when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything." What Christians usually think of as the incarnation, meaning the birth of Jesus, therefore is really the second incarnation, Rohr writes.

What Rohr wants us to ponder and adopt is a view of God that is both personal and universal: "A merely personal God becomes tribal and sentimental, and a merely universal God never leaves the realm of abstract theory and philosophical principles. But when we learn to put them together, Jesus and Christ give us a God who is both personal and universal." (Rohr likes italics.)

All interesting stuff. And worth reading.

But there are some issues with this book. One is that Rohr never quite makes clear how his vision of what he calls the Universal Christ differs from what Christians call the Holy Spirit. At times, the Christ that Rohr describes can sound quite similar to a traditional understanding of the Holy Spirit. But this subject gets into what can be the tangled weeds of Trinitarian theology, and perhaps Rohr wished not to go down that fraught path. Still, a short clarification about this would have been helpful.

Another issue is that Rohr tends to wander. Mostly it's useful wandering, meaning that he veers off his primary point until the reader wonders what his words have to do with that main point, even though the path has turned up some intriguing ideas. But it's wandering nonetheless and sometimes the reader may feel as if taken on a ride not bargained for.

But the most serious problem with this book is, frankly, shocking. Describing that problem will require a little background.

Almost from its beginning, Christianity has preached a vicious anti-Judaism, which, among other things, described the Jews of Jesus' time and even later as "Christ killers." If you want a long explanation of that sordid history, here is my essay on it.

It has taken the church universal, including the Catholic Church, most of 2,000 years to turn away from its anti-Jewish teachings. (That renunciation gained considerable speed after the Holocaust.) Indeed, it wasn't until 1965, in a Vatican II document called Nostra Aetate (meaning "In Our Time"), that the Catholic Church finally declared that Jews should not be blamed for the death of Jesus. The relevant phrase from that important document says this: "True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today."

The phrase "what happened in His passion" includes, of course, Jesus' crucifixion, which caused his death. So the church finally was saying that not all Jews back then and certainly no Jews alive now should be blamed for Jesus' death.

But Rohr in this new book writes something that makes it seem as if he's never heard of Nostra Aetate:

"Early-stage religion tends to focus on cleaning up, which is to say, determining who meets the requirements for moral behavior and religious belief. But Jesus threw a wrench into this whole machinery by refusing to enforce or even bother with what he considered secondary issues like the Sabbath, ritual laws, purity codes, membership requirements, debt codes, on and on. He saw they were only 'human commandments,' which far too often took the place of love. . .

"It's no wonder his fellow Jews had to kill Jesus, just as many Catholics would love to eliminate Pope Francis today."

I'm not quite sure why Rohr attributes fatal intentions to the most severe critics of Francis, but let that go for the moment. What is deeply troubling is that not only does Rohr dismiss Judaism in the First Century as an "early-stage" cold-hearted religion of nothing but rules, he also does exactly what Nostra Aetate says Christians must not do -- blame all "his fellow Jews" for Jesus' death.

I simply can't imagine how someone of Rohr's sensitivity and background could write that or how any editor (this book is published by Convergent Books, which is a trademark of Penguin Random House) could have allowed those words to go unchallenged.

When I read the offending passage, I contacted the great New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt University, Amy-Jill Levine, to ask if I was misreading this or was missing something. She confirmed that I was on track and then offered a rebuttal to what Rohr has written. My direct question to her about Rohr's words in this passage was: "I simply cannot imagine any way to defend that. Can you?" She answered:

No, but I can imagine the good work you would do by combating such teaching.

 

a. He (Jesus) considered Sabbath essential, which is why he allows people fully to celebrate it by healing them. Hence his comment, “do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets…”

b. He RESTORES people to states of ritual purity, has the cleansed leprous man offer the appropriate sacrifice. 

c. He sets up an inner circle of apostles amid the broader circle of disciples; calls some people and not others, and condemns entire cities. 

d. He USES the debt code to explain his death: as a "ransom" for many. The women in Luke 8.1-3 follow him in response to their healing, which is part of the debt code. 

e. “The Jews” did not kill him; good Christian theology would suggest that “human sin” did.

 

Surely a priest of the Church could do better? 

Another Jewish scholar (Levine is Jewish) with whom I checked about this, Mark D. Nanos, was simply dumbstruck by what Rohr wrote: "Wow, this stuff never ceases to amaze," he told me. If Rohr read the gospels, said Nanos, whose work focuses on the Apostle Paul, he would "see that even if he wants to believe this, the evidence is not there."

Rohr is using here what author, teacher and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor, in her new book, Holy Envy (to be published Tuesday; I'll review it here on the blog soon), calls "the language of contempt." She says that she herself was guilty of such language against Judaism in her sermons without recognizing it until a reader of them called her on it. The reader, she writes, "helped me see how I perpetuated the Gospels' portrayal of 'the Jews' without drawing attention to the imprecision of the phrase or the reasons why it was used (in the Gospels) so venomously." Exactly. I'm not accusing Rohr of venom, but, rather, of astonishing and inexcusable imprecision.

As someone who has appreciated Rohr's work and has learned from him, I normally would be tempted to write this off as an unintentional error by which he meant no harm. But because of Christianity's disheartening history of anti-Judaism, influential writers like Rohr have a special responsibility not to backslide even unintentionally into that brand of hatred. Rohr failed at that in what he wrote in his new book, and I find that terribly disturbing and even stunning. We Christians simply must do better at this, including Rohr.

* * *

CAN THE METHODISTS LEARN FROM THE BAPTISTS?

Nancy T. Ammerman, a religious scholar I first came to know in the aftermath of the fatal Branch Davidian fire in 1993 near Waco, Texas, has written this interesting piece about what the struggling United Methodists can learn from a Baptist division in the 1980s. She writes, "In a very large denomination, spread out across the country, even. . .socially different groups can coexist for a long time without a split. A split also requires an organized movement to 'call the question.' That’s what happened to Baptists in the 1980s, and that is what has happened to Methodists over the last decade. Now that the Methodists have reached the precipice, the very complicated organizational work of division has to get underway, and one thing is sure: Nothing will happen quickly." The impending United Methodist schism, if it comes to that, no doubt will take a different path than the Baptist split, but it will be a fascinating story to follow.

An argument in favor of arguing with God: 3-6-19

I mentioned here on Monday that Lent starts today for Christians with Ash Wednesday, and noted that it's a time set aside to think about what we lament, what makes us joyful, what should cause us to repent and what should produce gratitude in us.

All of those emotions and reactions are found in the biblical book of Psalms. Indeed, that book is often referred to as a hymnbook, but it is more than that. It is a poetic collection of almost every imaginable human emotion. It is, thus, sometimes uncomfortably raw but also soaring.

W. H. Bellinger, the chair of the religion department at Baylor University, recently was interviewed about the breadth and depth of the psalms, and I think he struck a number of right notes that will be useful not just to Christians in Lent but to anyone who has ever sought to communicate with God.

The book of Psalms, he noted, contains "prayers of thanksgiving and prayers for forgiveness. But there are more individual laments in the book of Psalms than any other psalm type; they have been appropriately labeled 'the backbone of the Psalter.'”

The psalms, Bellinger said, offer an honest dialogue: "The prayer here is realistic; they pray of life as it is, not an idealistic life as it is supposed to be. Those who prayed these ancient prayers believed in the covenant God who hears and comes to deliver. So when they are in trouble and not being delivered, they plead with God to help. They are crying out to the One who can transform life. The faith community of ancient Israel was defined by the meaning of its name. 'Israel' means one who struggles with God. In the laments they are struggling with God. This kind of prayer is not the whole of the dialogue with God, but it is certainly part of living our relationship with God and growing in that relationship."

I think many Christians have lost (or maybe never had) the freedom or ability to confront God, argue with God, bargain with God, demand that God be God and keep divine promises. By contrast, people with deep ties to Judaism often seem to me to be much more comfortable arguing with God. Perhaps Bellinger is right that this trait goes all the way back to the name "Israel" and its core meaning of struggling with God.

A writer who understood the need for humans to speak honestly to God was the French Reformed theologian Jacques Ellul, especially in his marvelous book Hope in Time of Abandonment. 

"Hope," he writes, "comes alive only in the dreary silence of God, in our loneliness before a closed heaven, in our abandonment. God is silent, so it's man who is going to speak. . .Man is going to express his hope that God's silence is neither basic nor final, nor a cancellation of what he had laid hold of as a Word from God."

The book of Psalms is, in many ways, a reflection of what Ellul is saying. After all, what kind of God would refuse to hear lament, argument, pain?

(The image here today is of Robert Alter's translation and commentary on the book of Psalms. That translation now is included in his new three-volume translation and commentary on the entire Hebrew Bible, a monumental achievement.)

* * *

THE POPE DOES THE RIGHT THING ON ARCHIVES

The Vatican finally has agreed to open all of its archives relating to how Pope Pius XII dealt with the Holocaust, and Rabbi A. James Rudin writes in this RNS post, that it's about time: "Pope Francis’ action is a welcome and constructive step. The time for obscuration, limited access, and fierce public arguments driven not by scholarly findings but by defensive feelings and incomplete data and information has come to an end. Let the sunlight of openness flood the Vatican wartime archives. The entire world awaits." Indeed, the world has waited too long to settle this touchy question.

* * *

P.S.: Mark Nanos, a Jewish scholar who does cutting-edge research on the Apostle Paul, will be giving three lectures in April at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood. They're being called "Discovering Paul Together: A Jewish Perspective on the Christian Apostle." The link I've just given you will tell you what you need to know to attend, which I highly recommend. Here is a Flatland column I wrote about the work Nanos does on this subject.

Here's a two-word explanation for evil and suffering: 3-5-19

One of the most difficult issues that theologians and just regular people of faith deal with is called the question of theodicy. It asks why there is evil and suffering in the world if God is loving and all-powerful.

Here on the blog and in other venues I have referred to that question as the open wound of institutional religion because no one has ever found a fully exhaustive and satisfying answer for it. All theodicies fail ultimately.

But the other night I heard a wise theology teacher who has written a pile of books offer this answer to the theodicy question: "Things happen." And then he acknowledged that he used the word "things" so he wouldn't offend people by using the S word.

Things happen, Warren Carter (pictured here), professor of New Testament at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, said at a talk at Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kan.

That's it. It's just that things happen.

There you go. That seems like a pretty deep theological conclusion, right? Well, maybe it's the right one even if it seems shallow at first.

But let's think about one way that Carter came to that two-word conclusion by raising the question he raised about a story in the gospel of Matthew, the story often referred to as the "Slaughter of the Innocents."

The tale is found in Matthew 2. It says that after the magi had visited the newly born Jesus in Bethlehem, God appeared to Joseph "in a dream and said, 'Get up. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod will soon search for the child in order to kill him.'"

So Joseph, and Mary heed God's warning and escape with their baby.

Meanwhile, Herod figures out that the magi, whom he had told to go find the child and bring word of his whereabouts to him, had fooled him and weren't coming back. So the king "grew very angry. He sent soldiers to kill all the (male) children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger. . ." Which they did, the story says.

Carter's question is where was God, who had protected the baby Jesus by ordering Joseph to escape with him and Mary to Egypt, when the other babies in and around Bethlehem, needed God to protect them from Herod?

"Folks have asked this question for a very long time," Carter said. They've asked the question even if they don't believe (as many scholars don't) that the Slaughter of the Innocents was a real occurrence in history.

One of the people asking that question in the Fifth Century, Carter noted, was a Christian preacher named Peter Chrysologus, who defended the slaughter on the basis that it was God's way of having those babies bypass the trials of life on Earth and go directly to heaven, not passing "Go," apparently, and not collecting $200.

Oh,  my.

Well, as you can see, when dealing with the theodicy question, it's easy to get tied up in Gordian knots. Perhaps the best way out of that trouble is simply by acknowledging that we have limited knowledge of or understanding about the divine.

Carter described the theodicy question as "unanswerable" and said that "the answer I live with" is simply that things happen. This side of paradise, I suspect Carter is right. It's not an especially comforting answer, but if I had to explain the deaths of Herod's slaughtered innocents to their parents, I'd avoid Chrysologus altogether and go with Carter's answer. And then I'd weep with those who weep.

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METHODISTS' REACTION CONTINUES TO ROLL AND ROIL

The anguished reaction among many United Methodists continues after the church's governing body recently reaffirmed and strengthened the denomination's anti-LGBTQ stance, and this is a column by a Methodist pastor whose heart is broken but who wants to stay and redeem his church. And here is a piece by the Rev. Adam Hamilton, founding pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan. It was written right after the decision was made but before he held congregational meetings to discuss how to proceed.

Toward a season of lament, repentance, gratitude: 3-4-19

In two days, on Ash Wednesday, Christians -- well, some of them, anyway -- will enter the 40-day season of Lent by having ashes placed on their forehead as they hear these words spoken directly and individually to them by the one marking them with ashes: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

In other words, they will be #ashtagged.

Imagine the incredible journey that the atoms in the ashes have taken to get to this or that forehead.

In God’s economy, nothing is lost. So these atoms may have been part of our ancestors once or of some olive tree Jesus may have seen or of some distant star that exploded long ago. Almost certainly the latter is true.

This means that there are parts of us that are older than we are, parts with histories only God knows.

And yet Christians are called to focus not on some unrecoverable past or just some imagined future. Rather, they are called to remember that the kingdom of God, as Jesus called it, is breaking in at this very moment and that, as Christ’s ambassadors, which is what the Apostle Paul called followers of Jesus, they are to announce that good news to all.

So this is a season of both lament and gladness, of both repentance and commitment to transformation. Which raises the question for me of what I will lament over during these next 40 days and what I will be glad for. That is a question for people of all faiths and of none. It just so happens that in the Christian liturgical calendar, this is the time of year when those questions are raised to the top of the list.

Lent often is associated with fasting, with giving up something. And that practice often has led to jokes about giving up fasting or giving up, say, spinach, which I detest. Or just giving up. Fasting can be an important spiritual discipline. Do it, if you're of a mind to.

As for me, I hope to think about what I lament, what brings me joy and how the next part of my life can be more devoted to values that affirm life at its flourishing best.

So I will lament:

-- Our divided body politic and any part I have played in contributing to the division.

-- My failure to treat other people as if they also bear the image of God, which they do.

-- Any ways in which I am part of the problems of racism, ageism and sexism; of environmental degradation; of contempt for legitimate authority; of conspicuous consumption that depletes resources but brings no lasting joy; of any kind of idolatry, including making our nation, our economy and even the Bible an idol.

And I will give thanks for:

--  All the people in my extended family who bring me love and who let me love them; the chance to live in a land where I am free to say and do what I want to within the legal restrictions necessary to keep America from deteriorating into chaos and anarchy; a life of essentially good health, at least after I survived three childhood bouts of pneumonia; all the people who give themselves away in countless ways for others in need, and for people who let others minister to their real needs.

As I say, Lent calls Christians to this kind of introspection, this kind of self-analysis, this kind of exploration of our own lives, in a way similar to how the High Holy Days provide that time for Jews and Ramadan does for Muslims.

Whether you follow any of these traditions or others or none, may this winter-to-spring season be one for you in which you rediscover awe and wonder and gratitude.

* * *

SOME JEWISH-CHRISTIAN COOPERATION?

Pope Francis says that Christians and Jews should work together "in service to those in need and by promoting paths of peace and dialogue with all." Given the appalling history of anti-Judaism in the church, this is a welcome view from the top Catholic. But I hope it's not just words. E-mail me (wtammeus@gmail.com) some examples, if you have them, of Kansas City area Catholics or other Christians and Jews working together in this way.

Roots of religious radicalism can run deep: 3-2/3-19

Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, the character of Islam has changed for the worse, the Muslim author of this commentary piece argues.

"From 750 AD," writes Yasmin Alibhai Brown, "Islamic lands and civilizations were diverse and creative. Sure, there were bad epochs when obscurantists took charge or when European colonisation grabbed power, crushed the will and self-respect of Muslims in the Middle East, far East and Subcontinent. But through all this most Muslims remained open minded, curious, flexible, adaptable, tolerant and internationalist.

"Forty years ago – 1979 – is when all that changed. First came the Iranian revolution, when the Shah was toppled by the pietistic, fundamentalist Shia cleric the Ayatollah Khomeini, who believed – as did millions of Iranians back then – that God had sent him to rescue Iranians from godlessness and western debauchery."

Well, 1979 certainly was an important turning point for Islam, but fundamentalist streaks have been part of religion, including Islam, almost from the beginning. In Christianity the term fundamentalism became widespread in the early 1900s when a movement began seeking to reject modernism and cling to certain essential fundamentals of the faith -- at least fundamentals as defined by the movement's leaders. Other religions, too, have suffered from the fundamentalist plague, which in some ways has its understandable roots in a desire to keep a faith tradition on the right path but that then shuts the door to any interpretation beyond its own.

In Islam, the roots of a rigid approach certainly appear well before 1979. Indeed, one of the godfathers of modern Islamism's radical tendencies, as I reported from Cairo in 2002 for The Kansas City Star, is "native Egyptian Sayyid Qutb (pronounced kuh-TAHB) (he's pictured here), born in 1906 and executed as a political prisoner here (Cairo) in 1966 by the Nasser regime, who probably deserves to be called the primary thinker behind the radical version of Islam to which Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and other fanatics have pledged allegiance.

Here's more of what I wrote about him:

Qutb -- sometimes with 20th century Muslim theorist Abul Ala Mawdudi -- often is seen as the one who most inspires bin Laden and his violent ilk.

Qutb's own journey into extremist Islam (which religious scholars sometimes call Islamic revivalism) included a two-year stop in the United States that started in 1948. As an inspector of schools in Egypt, he came to study education in America. But while there, he saw what he believed was cultural decadence, racism and liberty run amok -- however quaint and innocent the late 1940s seems to Americans now.

Even American churches, he concluded, were just sexual playgrounds.

He noted that Americans seemed to go to church more than any other people, but he wrote that "there is no one as removed from feeling the spirituality, respect and sacredness of religion than the Americans."

When he returned to Egypt, he was determined to live according to strict Islamic law and to oppose what he had seen in the West. In effect, he envisioned an Islamic utopia in which church and state never would be separated. As the capitalism-communism debate of the 20th century raged, Qutb argued that Islam offered a third, competing and better world view. Qutb's form of Islamic revivalism came after similar efforts the previous century led by Jamal Eddin al-Afghani and his disciple Mohammed Abdu.

Qutb joined a radical movement called the Muslim Brotherhood (now outlawed here in Egypt but still influential; indeed, the group nowadays is considered almost moderate) and fought for the rest of his life against "jahiliyyah." It's a term from the Qur'an meaning "period of ignorance" and refers to pre-Islamic conditions in Arabia. It has come to include disdain for Western ideals and their influence on Islamic culture.

 "The jahiliyyah order," he wrote, "has to be exterminated root and branch." His book Milestones describes how Muslims can do that and establish a society based on Islamic law.

That law is called Shari'a, though Shari'a extends beyond just Qur'anic law and includes all of religious, political, social, economic and private life. It's based not just on the Qur'an but also on the Prophet Muhammad's life and teachings and on the thinking of Islamic scholars.

Qutb's enemy was not just Western culture and values. He also battled -- even more fiercely -- Muslims whom he blamed for not living by the Shari'a. In that way, he set a pattern for bin Laden, who has attacked the West as degenerate but also has flailed the royal family that rules his native Saudi Arabia, site of Islam's holiest shrines.(Members of the royal family have been close friends of many bin Laden relatives.)

Qutb was a prolific writer. His major work was a 30-volume commentary on the Qur'an, in which he emphasized the unrelenting requirements that Islam places on believers. He continues to be revered for that scholarship. To Qutb, Islam was an all-sufficient system for every aspect of life. In the end, he had no use for Christians, Jews or anyone shaped by Western values.

His influence didn't end with death. As his writings spread  through the Islamic world, they became especially popular in Afghanistan in the 1960s and '70s. Bin Laden's own writing reflects his debt to Qutb as well as to 20th century militant Abd al-Salam Faraj.

In turn, Faraj drew heavily on Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah, who lived from 1262 to 1328 and who sought to justify militancy. Taymiyyah said it was permissible to fight against Muslim rulers who don't live by the Sharia. Sometimes the radical bin Laden version of Islam is called Salafism. The term refers to the pious early generations of Muslims.

Not everyone interprets Qutb the same way, but his works have provided an intellectual foundation for violent radicals. Early in his career, Qutb did not advocate violence, arguing instead that establishing an Islamic order must be willed by the people. But eventually he moved toward violence as a necessity. In the end, he believed jahiliyyah had to be destroyed by any means necessary.

Many Islamic scholars have opposed Qutb's views, but his work still is read and his continuing influence among today's extremists is unquestioned.

So when we search for the roots of today's religious movements, it's necessary to understand not just current times and sources, but also what has come before. Roots, after all, grow trees and plants that bear today's fruit, however bitter.

* * *

GRADING THE VATICAN SEX SUMMIT

Analyses of the recent Vatican meeting on sex abuse in the church continue to pour in. This one, from respected scholar Mark Silk, says he wouldn't give the church a grade of F on the gathering but, rather, a grade of "Incomplete." I think that's fair, though everyone would have been much happier even with a grade of C.