Morality and the Federal Budget

Jesus said, "…come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

Jesus did not say, “…come you that have all that you need and more and inherit the kingdom; for I was hungry and you called me a freeloader, I was thirsty and you told me to fend for myself, I was naked and you called me too lazy to get a job, I was sick and you told me that to ensure that we all have healthcare would be to infringe on your God given freedom (even though nothing in scripture is written about your freedom of contract), I was in prison and you left me there.”

As the western world continues to slip ever deeper into the unholy alliance of government abdication to market forces and corrupt klepto-capitalism, society is becoming ever more capricious and callous in its attitudes toward the poor.  The result is a growing lack of moral imagination and the capacity to truly appreciate the needs and dreams of our neighbors and the dehumanizing force of market-centered morality.

In her compelling book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo paints a picture of life in a Mumbai slum that could fail to move only the most callous of hearts.  She explores the intricate reality of life in this sprawling area in the shadows of Mumbai’s airport and the growing luxury of the market driving class.  It is a moving human story that invites the reader to stand in the shoes of a resident in Annawadi and, for a moment of imagination in the pages of the book, know what it is to be cast aside in deference to “progress.”

Standing in stark contrast to Boo’s book is the budget recently passed in the House of Representatives.  An appalling breach of the social contract, the budget is more troublingly a giant step toward a society united not by a common bond of humanity but by the forces of the market. 

The implications of allowing the market to supplant our common humanity as the centering force of society are vast.  In a market driven society, an individual’s contribution to the Gross Domestic Product becomes the metric for that individual’s worth.  There is no inherent worth in the market, there is only assigned worth.  When the market becomes the centering principle of our society and our social morality, it becomes not only easy but acceptable to simply ignore the poor, undereducated, marginalized or anyone else deemed to lack value to the system. 

That Jesus’ message rejects this sort of market centered ethic is beyond question.  To make the claim that an Ayn Rand fueled Atlas Shrugged style individualism has any purchase in the word of God is bordering on the absurd.   Nonetheless, this is the central argument of the “market as morality” movement.  It is only, they say, when we respect the individual’s right to rise or fall all on their own that we can be truly free. 

How can the imprisonment of hunger, poverty or marginalization be free?!

The budget passed by the House is, nonetheless, rooted in this ethic.  It removes the generations old social safety net and replaces it with a glass walled abyss.  It declares that as a nation we will invest only in those people who offer some measurable return on our investment (i.e. millionaires get tax breaks because they supposedly create jobs but poor families get their SNAP food support cut because there is nothing to be gained by feeding them.)

Thankfully some voices from within the church have spoken up on the issue of our national budget and what it means for our common life.  The 54-page “Priorities for a Faithful Budget” http://faithfulbudget.org/files/2012/03/Priorities-for-a-Faithful-Budget1.pdf is a call to our leaders to put care for neighbor and respect for all as the central principle in the federal budget.  I am pleased that my own denomination’s leaders (in the PCUSA) have signed on to this document. 

A wise preacher once said, “you can tell a lot about a nation by the way it spends its money.”[i]  What will our nation’s budget say about us?  Will it reflect a common respect and care for the inherent value of humanity or will it reflect the growing ethic of a value-added humanity?  Will it reflect care for “the least of these” or underwriting the wealth of the few?  Will the centering principle be “we the people” or “me the person” and the radical individualism of klepto-capitalism?

This is one of those places where the three taboo topics of religion, politics and money intersect.  And this is no time for the church to yield to Emily Post politeness.  We, as the community of Christ, need to speak up for an ethic of care and respect and against the destructive and dehumanizing forces of market-centered morality.

Jesus stood in solidarity with all those whom society deemed without value.  As the body of Christ in the world, we, the church, must do the same whether in the slums of Annawadi or in the halls of power.

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[i] I do not recall who wrote the sermon from which this line comes.  If anyone knows who deserves the credit, please let me know and I will gladly make proper attribution.

Jesus Weeps

Note:  This particular blog entry pulls no punches.  Some recent news stories struck a nerve with me and this is one of the few issues on which I believe there is no legitimate “other side.”

Forget “Jesus wept.”  There is nothing past tense about the tears of Christ when it comes to the actions of some who claim faith in him as their excuse for wildly anti-Christian behavior.  Jesus weeps!

The latest outrage by the “Christian” hate group Focus on the Family is their nationwide assault on anti-bullying laws.  Over the last few years many states have, in the wake of a rash of teen suicides, begun treating bullying as what it is; a crime.  Laws, some very good and some in need of tweaking, have been enacted across the country to protect children and teens from the sort of bullying that goes beyond schoolyard pettiness. 

Now to be sure we are not talking here about normal childhood antics.   Always picking the smallest weakest kid last for the kick-ball team may not be nice but it is not what the anti-bullying statues are meant to cover.  These laws seek to address the persistent degrading of a peer in school or, as is becoming more common, on Facebook or other social media.  In one widely publicized case, a young teen girl was bullied about her weight on a social media site to the point that she could see no way to go on.  She took her own life.  Another young man who had bravely acknowledged his own sexual orientation to his family was hazed by peers and ignored by teachers and administrators to the point that he saw no recourse other than taking his own life.

Focus on the Family has taken up the cause of defending bullies in the name of religious freedom and, more specifically, in the name of Christ.  Their logic goes like this.  Homosexuality is wrong.  As “Christians” we are called to reject our GLBTQ peers, neighbors and family unless and until they “repent.”  To prohibit teenagers from treating GLBTQ peers in a demeaning way (screaming “fag” at them, painting pink triangles on their lockers, telling them being gay means you should die, etc.) is akin to prohibiting them of freely practicing their religious faith. Being a good Christian, according to this logic, means bullying children and teens whom you deem less than and is a moral and Christian imperative. In other words, anti-bullying laws stand in the way of faithful discipleship of Jesus Christ.

Like I said, Jesus weeps.

In their defense, these hate groups say that they are neither prejudiced nor intolerant of those unlike themselves.  They claim an ethic of “hate the sin but not the sinner.”  Not only is this not a biblical ideal, it betrays the very intolerance that these groups claim not to embrace. For whatever reason, this is the only “sin” they feel compelled to hate.  And it is protection of their hatred that is at the heart of this anti-anti-bullying movement.

These Christian hate groups are sprouting up across the nation and using the name of the Prince of Peace to promote an agenda that is as far from the gospel as the bottom of the sea is to the far side of the moon.  The gospel, at its heart, rejects the very sort of malignant logic that infects these hate groups.  At no point does Christ proclaim hatred or intolerance of ANYTHING to be a virtue.  A theology that devalues a child of God, especially one as vulnerable as a child or teen, who feels like an outsider already, does violence to the gospel.

Far from what these purveyors of a bastardized gospel would preach, I remain convinced that:

·         Anytime a child of God is belittled or has their humanity trampled upon, Jesus weeps.

·         Anytime a teenager, wonderfully made by God, is told that their life is not worth living, Jesus weeps.

·         Anytime a child of God is made to feel that they live outside the embrace of God’s love, Jesus weeps.

·         Anytime a community allows a child to be literally bullied to death, Jesus weeps.

·         Anytime the gospel is used to promote an agenda of hate, exclusion or, yes, bullying, Jesus weeps.

More and more anti-bullying laws are coming under attack by “Christian” hate groups and too many politicians, more concerned with preserving their seat of power than using that power for the public good, are caving to the demands of these hate mongers. 

We who understand the gospel of Jesus Christ as hope and not fear; love and not hate; promise and not persecution, must stand up and be counted.  There is no legitimate interpretation of the gospel that demands hate and intolerance.  That is not now nor has it ever been the message of Christ.

In this Holy Week, we are reminded that in our silence we are not free from guilt.

As long as we allow the gospel to be hijacked by these voices of intolerance and hatred, Jesus weeps.

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.

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[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!