You Just Don't Get It, Rick

In a campaign speech in Plano, Texas today, Rick Santorum claimed, “…progressives are trying to shutter faith, privatize it, push it out of the public square, oppress people of faith…”   On its face the statement is the worst kind of political rhetoric and a symptom of the divisive and petty nature of campaigns today.  Beneath the surface, Santorum’s rhetoric is far more dangerous. 

What Santorum is expressing is his disagreement with some public policy directions.  By calling disappointment in public policy “persecution,” he belittles the true suffering many Christians and other religious minorities around the world experience at the hands of their governments and neighbors.  Consider:

·         In America, conservative Christians disagree with recent administration policies on providing birth control.

·         In Egypt, a dozen Coptic Christians were murdered when leaving church because a Christian woman married a Muslim man.

·         In America, conservative Christians who disagree with the legalization of abortion voice their disapproval and campaign to change the law.

·         In Indonesia, churches in some communities have been ordered to close their doors and the pastors and members no longer speak publicly of their faith.

·         In America, Christians of many points of view disagree with the disproportionate amount of our national budget spent on the military.

·         In North Korea, Christian leaders are thrown into military concentration/work camps.

There is real suffering in this world.  Men, women and even children of many different faiths are persecuted and discriminated against and, in some cases, killed for no reason other than the fact that their faith is out of public favor.  The “suffering” of American Christians is nothing compared to the true suffering of religious minorities around the world.  Not getting your way is not the same thing as losing your life.

The very fact that Rick Santorum is free to say such foolish things while running for the highest elected office in the nation is elegant proof of just how hollow his rhetoric is.  If he really aspires to be the leader of the free world, Sen. Santorum would do well to take a moment and appreciate rather than complain about the very freedom he enjoys. 

As a pastor, I am grateful that I have the freedom to speak my mind in the pulpit each week.  My parishioners have the right to express their own faith lives without risk of persecution or prosecution.  Unlike many of my brothers and sisters around the world, my neighbors and I enjoy real and powerful freedom in our religious lives, even when we disagree with our fall out of favor with our government.

Christ was persecuted, Rick Santorum is just not getting his way.

Passion for Hope Not Hate

In late 1942, Joseph Goebbels lamented that the German people were doing an insufficient job of hating the English.  They listened to pirate English radio, accepted as truth English news reports and in general did a poor job of shunning the island neighbor and Allied opposition.  In an article in Das Reich, he went so far as to say that the war effort relied on Germans having enough contempt and hatred for the English.

In one of his German language broadcasts for the Office of War Information, theologian Paul Tillich encouraged the German people to resist hatred for the English and, while they were at it, to resist hatred for Hitler’s National Socialists as well.  That may seem an odd thing for a theologian so vehemently opposed to everything National Socialism would come to stand for in Germany and in history.  Nonetheless, Tillich tells his fellow Germans to resist “being just as the National Socialists want you to be, servants of hatred.”  When we hate as they hate, Tillich said, “we are identical to them to the degree to which you permit yourselves to hate them.”[i]

Those words and that sentiment were broadcast over an official United States government radio service during wartime.

Imagine a theologian, even one of Tillich’s profile and popularity attempting to broadcast into Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran a message similar to the one he shared with the German people seventy years ago.

He wouldn’t make it into the studio much less on the air!

We live in a time when the dominant political chorus is one of division and hate.   A time when your credentials as a citizen are measured not in devotion to the principles of the nation but your vocal hatred of a religious minority or an unpopular population.   Ours is a time when what you believe is far less important than what you reject; when we are defined by what divides rather than what unites.  Because, the chorus goes, if we don’t hate and reject them deeply and harshly enough, then they might just win.  Liberal or conservative, right wing or left wing, the chorus demands that we each take a side and, in taking it, hate the other whatever that other might be.

What Tillich reminded the German people, what he might yet remind us, is that hate can create nothing great, it can only destroy.  Hate leaves only emptiness.  It is passion that builds and passion that leaves hope in its wake. 

Yes, there are institutions and powers and principalities in the world today that demand our resistance.  But as followers of the passion of Christ, the passion of salvation, our goal must not be to defeat something hated but redeem something lost.  It is no coincidence that Hitler went after the church early in his evil rule.  He knew what we too often forget, that the antidote to the institutions of hate in the world is to relentlessly resist them with grace, hope and peace.  It was the light of that grace that Goebbels so feared and it is that same grace that the world needs to hear today.

---

[i] Paul Tillich “How One Should View the Enemy” OWI Broadcast September 12, 1942

Say a litle prayer for me

Last week was the occasion for the annual National Prayer Breakfast.    Hosted in Washington D.C., the event has become a fixture on the DC social and power calendar.  President Obama continued a tradition that dates back to Eisenhower and spoke the gathered clergy and guests.

I am of two minds about the National Prayer Breakfast.  On the one hand, I think it is a good thing for religious leaders to show that we are concerned with issues of policy and politics.  And on occasion, the breakfast has been an opportunity for speaking truth to power (think Mark Hatfield berating Nixon and Kissinger for the sin of the Vietnam War.)  I am a firm believer in Jefferson’s “wall of separation” between church and state.  The point is to keep one from dominating the other and not to prevent the vocabularies of faith and citizenship from mingling in the same minds.

Then there is the other hand.  The National Prayer breakfast has, over time, devolved to a carefully vetted event peopled by like-minded “leaders” of the church.   The Fellowship Foundation continues to act as host of the gathering.   By most accounts, the Fellowship is a group of mostly evangelical social conservatives.  Because the group is so secretive it is difficult to know who exactly pulls the strings, but whoever they are they can get the President of the United States to show up every year. 

That is power.  And power rarely speaks truth to itself.

There is no religious test for citizenship in the United States.  However, there is a growing de facto litmus test measuring the adequacy of faith’s patriotism.  Through events like the National Prayer Breakfast, the doctrine of American Exceptionalism is celebrated and the power elite clothe themselves in the mantle of religious legitimacy.  

In a time when there is a great deal that the church should be saying to the powers of society,  it borders on the offensive that instead of standing up for the poor, outcast, excluded and downtrodden, these “church leaders” instead sat down and broke bread with those same powers.  Where were the poor?  Where were the foreigners living in our lands?  Where were the prisoners?  Where were the hungry, the thirsty, the suffering and the sick?  These are the people Jesus broke bread with.

Next year, on the first Thursday in February, there needs to be a real National Prayer Breakfast.  Our churches should fling wide their doors and break bread with whomever will come.  The table of fellowship should not be an invitation only table and prayer should not be reserved for the well-heeled and well-connected. 

A Fifth Great Awakening?

Whether or not you agree with Robert Fogel’s thesis that the rise of evangelical Christianity in the 1960’s and 1970’s constitutes a Fourth Great Awakening, there is growing evidence that in the first decades of the new millennium we see the beginnings of the Fifth.

Last year, the Presbyterian Church (USA) joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ by voting to lift the generation old barrier to ordination for GLBTQ Presbyterians. The change that has come to four of the five mainline Protestant denominations has brought with it a renewed spirit of hope for progressive Christianity.

For most of my life and for the entirety of my ministry, progressive Christianity has laid mostly dormant. Those who dared to profess a bold vision of the Gospel as the radically inclusive declaration of God’s love for all God’s children were pushed aside in the church or pushed out entirely. Far too many progressive voices simply gave up on the church and left. In other cases, progressives were purged from denominational leadership as whole denominations were subject to the ecclesiastical equivalent of a hostile takeover. (To wit the putsch in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980’s). How many of our sermons in how many of our churches have been edited on Sunday morning when Saturday’s courage morphed into Sunday’s pragmatism? How many of us let prophetic courage have its sharp corners softened to prevent anyone being hurt by them?

As prophetic voices became silenced, it began to look like mainline Protestantism was destined to be a community with a single voice speaking from somewhere to the right of center. Progressive Protestant Christianity, if not dead, was on life support. The few brave souls who dared to speak against the new mainstream of Evangelical rigidity were rapidly marginalized or excluded.  Like a Gothic Cathedral with only one strong wall and no wall opposite to support it, the church began to crumble. 
Then something began to happen. As the consequences of the Reagan revolution’s war on the poor, the environment, marginalized communities and on the very concept of social justice became evident, progressive Christianity, like Lazarus, woke up and began to speak.

A new day dawned in the church and with it a new commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ was awakened. Once again the proclamation that Jesus is Lord of all meant just that…ALL. Through the work of groups within various denominations and groups that transcended denomination and even national lines, the theology of inclusion and care for all God’s children began to be preached and proclaimed and heard. After a generation of political and ecclesiastical policies that work to exclude and marginalize, a growing voice in the church is saying, “enough!”

This moral awakening of the church cannot be denied. The time has come for the Church to stand against the voices of exclusion and bigotry in the world and declare that God’s divine “yes” in Jesus Christ is God’s divine invitation to love and care for one another; progressive, conservative, evangelical, liberal, gay, straight, male, female or in whatever guise the child of God may come into our lives.

As a Presbyterian pastor, I am proud that our denomination has thrown its cap over the wall and taken the path of prophetic witness. Presbyterians were at the heart of the First Great Awakening; perhaps we have a role to play in the Fifth.

With God’s grace, may we all have the strength, courage and faith to recognize the gifts of the Spirit in all God’s children and, trusting in God to guide us, together grow stronger in the light of Christ.

Damn You Autocorrect!

Thanks to an observant friend and reader for noticing that in the seventh graph of the Mormon/Character post below, the word "tenant" was used rather than the intended "tenet."  The penalty of using spellcheck to proof read.

Mea culpa!

It's Not the Mormon Thing, It's the Character Thing

The Republican candidates for president and the pundits of every political stripe have been dancing around the fact that Mitt Romney is a Mormon.  None wants to be accused of being bigoted or narrow minded the way many Protestant leaders were when John F. Kennedy (a Roman Catholic) ran for president.   With all of the tight rope walking and politically correct care being taken not to mention the “M” word, it seems that they are all missing the real issue.

The problem is not that Mitt Romney is a Mormon.  The problem is that Mitt Romney seems to have a problem with Mitt Romney being a Mormon. 

Since he gave his Faith in America speech at the Bush library in 2007, Mitt Romney has been running for president and away from his Mormonism.  In interviews, speeches and on the stump, he has consistently painted himself as a generic evangelical Christian and claimed that any differences between his faith and that of evangelical Protestantism is of little consequence. 

Huh?

There are very real and very deep differences between Mormon theology and that of evangelical Protestants.  In fact, some Mormon nuances on traditional Trinitarian Christian theology would likely find more sympathy in far left Christian communities than far right!  What Romney is talking about when he speaks of the theological connection between Mormonism and evangelical Christianity he is speaking almost exclusively about social issues; marriage equality, abortion rights, the social safety net, etc.  The claim Romney is making is that what you think about gay marriage is what matters.  What you think of Jesus is just trivia.

I know several Mormons and I know from them that this is not core Mormon belief.  Mormons as a whole take their theological beliefs very seriously and do not, in fact, see themselves as just another branch of politically activist evangelical Protestantism.  And Mitt Romney knows this. 

For many years, Romney served as the Stake President in the Boston area.  A Stake is a geographical collection of congregations similar, but not exactly the same, as a Catholic diocese or a Presbyterian presbytery.  The Stake President is the presiding officer of the Stake.  Elevation to such an office surely involves both a deep knowledge and acceptance of the tenants of the Mormon tradition.   Mitt Romney held this office so we can reasonably assume that he is both more aware and more subscribed to the tenants of the faith than many in the pews Mormons may be.  That is his faith and he deserves credit for taking on an unpaid leadership role in support of it.

Yet, Romney has been willing time and again to distort and subjugate his own faith in order to nurture political alliance.  This raises a question about Romney.  Which is it: either Mitt Romney’s faith is not important to him and he brazenly lies when he says that it is or he is simply so craven that he would jettison the faith he claims to hold so dear in order to advance in politics.  Neither seems a very good profile for President of the United States.

The problem is not that he is a Mormon.  It is the way he treats his Mormonism that gives me pause and raises questions about his character.  If he is so willing to throw his faith under the bus to gain advancement, what will he do with the American people? 

Personally, I am glad when a candidate says that his or her faith will inform their decisions in office.   It allows me, as a voter, to determine whether or not those values comport with my own and whether I believe this person will adequately represent me and my neighbors in office.

The constitution does not impose a religious test for office.  But the way a candidate treats the values and principles of his or her religion is a helpful character test as we decide who should hold office.

If Mitt Romney treats the nation as shabbily as he does his own faith life, that says something very unfortunate about his character.

Some See Red, I Just See Grey

One of the best parts of my life is being at the intersection of so many thoughtful and interesting people.  Really, it is great.  Facebook posts, Tweets, emails and even the occasional book length text message bring with them such a wonderful array of positions, ideas and insights.  That has been especially true since the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced its plans to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood.  The stated reason was a policy that dictates that funding be withheld from organizations under Federal investigation.  The consensus beyond the press release is that SGKF has been under pressure from anti-abortion groups and has “caved” to that pressure.

I have nothing to do with SGKF other than being an occasional donor, so I can offer no insights to their motives.  What the conversation about this controversy has done is bring to the forefront yet again the great unsettled social question of the last half-century; abortion.

In many of the emails, tweets, etc. that have come my way about the SGKF/Planned Parenthood issue has also come the abortion question.  Are you pro-life or pro-choice?

Yes.

That is the only answer I can give to that question.  I am a pro-life pro-choicer.  I am that person who makes the true believers on either side of this issue see red.  If in life there is ever a black or white issue that begs to be treated in shades of grey, it is the question of abortion.

My own thinking on abortion has been shaped and formed by a number of factors.  First, I am a Christian and do have a theological belief in the importance and primacy of life (not sanctity, that is another issue altogether.) Second, I have walked the path of abortion with many parishioners and I know that for those directly involved these are not easy or quick decisions.  Finally, and very importantly, in the end I do not have a uterus and therefore do not get a vote.

Theologically abortion is a complicated issue.  I believe that live begins at conception.  Whether that is human life or not is a metaphysical question of existence and consciousness that goes beyond the basic question of life.   A fertilized egg is life and as a Christian I believe it is both inappropriate and ethically questionable to speak flippantly about life.   That life has value and dignity and should not be dismissed as though it is merely a byproduct in a laboratory.

Yet that life is not a life alone in the universe.  It exists in a very real relationship to another life.  And that life has to be taken into consideration as well.  Abortion abolitionists would sacrifice the life, in its fullest physical, psychological and spiritual form, of a mother for the life of even a fertilized egg.  This position lacks even the most basic sense of human decency and dignity.  If, theologically, human life begins at conception, it certainly does not end after birth.  And the life of the mother must be of great importance.  A hard cast rule that neglects the dignity and life of the mother as much as if not more than the life of the fertilized egg in her womb is not and cannot be a theologically sustainable ethical rule.  If life is valuable, then all life is valuable.

My own inclination is to argue on the side of very strict regulation of abortion.  To allow abortion to be something spoken of as casually as any other thing in the medical world has a tendency to coarsen our public discourse and blind us to the very real ethical issues involved.  My inclination is tempered, however, by bitter experience.   I knew a couple (not parishioners) who learned that their unborn child suffered from a number of severe genetic issues.  Alone none was so severe as to prevent a healthy pregnancy.  Together, however, they were termed “incompatible with life” and the doctors recommended that they abort.  The reasons for the procedure were to prevent an almost certain complicated late term miscarriage that may have impaired their ability to have another child. 

I think about them whenever I read about some of the popular anti-abortion legislation floating around today.  Had she been forced to watch an ultrasound or had to sit through a graphic depiction of the procedure or forced to go home and wait for 72 or 96 hours, what was already a devastating experience would have been made hell.  She was not there to “get rid” of something.  She was there so that those medical professionals could walk with her through what is one of the most horrific things a family can endure. 

I believe we need to have a serious conversation in this country about the issue of abortion and how it can be properly regulated so that we do not devolve to a place where abortion is looked upon as birth control or brushed off as no big deal.  But we need to do that in a way that recognizes that this complicated issue will not have a simple solution and the wellbeing of the mothers and, yes, fathers involved must be a part of that conversation.

Finally, I believe that my voice in this issue is one on the periphery.  As a Christian, I have a place at the table in the church’s conversation about abortion.  As a citizen, I have a place at the table in the nation’s conversation about abortion.  But when it comes to deciding whether or not an individual woman may or should have an abortion, I just don’t get a vote because I don’t have a uterus.