As the world awaits the results of last Saturday's election in Zimbabwe, the stakes are high. Here's one firsthand account of Robert Mugabe's tyrannous rule and disastrous mismanagement of the economy (just two of the problems that, as the April issue of Sojourners described, have prompted anti-Mugabe protests by people of faith).
Oddly, the main street of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, is much like Disneyland. There are massive casinos, tourist shops on every corner, and luxury hotels replete with stereotypical African décor: large elephant tusk-lined foyers, thatched roofs, and zebra rugs abound. This part of the city is meant for the tourist.
What is not meant for the tourist, and what president Mugabe does not want the rest of the world to see, are the markets and backstreets, the hovels and the empty grocery stores - the reality of Zimbabwe. At the Zimbabwe/Zambia border crossing, multitudes of women and men line up at all hours of the day, in hopes of crossing into Zambia to sell their wares, where the Zambian Kwacha fares a much better rate than the Zimbabwean dollar. Women wait - patiently, fervently, with their babies wrapped to their backs, balancing baskets on their heads for hours on end - in order to sell enough soap, homemade sadza, or beads to feed their children for the day.
When I spent time in Zimbabwe last summer, banks were open, but they had no money. American dollars were coveted, but hyperinflation made them impossible to use. The Zimbabwean government had fixed the exchange rate so that, even as its own dollar lost value by the hour, individuals seeking to legally exchange American dollars for Zim dollars would do just as well to simply give the banks their money.
The problems in Zimbabwe are much deeper than fiscal. It is uncouth to publicly say the name "Mugabe"; if it must be spoken, it is to be whispered. I learned this quickly. After sitting in a restaurant with fellow volunteers and referencing him in conversation, the entire restaurant grew silent, and I felt all sets of eyes on me. Civilians are not able to speak freely of their opinions of Mugabe. At the mentioning of his name, even in casual conversation, lips tighten and eyes avert, for fear of imprisonment or worse.
Few expected last Saturday's election in Zimbabwe to be conducted fairly, and many now look to the future of Zimbabwe with hopelessness, with or without Mugabe's leadership. But this situation is not, and cannot be, regarded as hopeless - for to concede as much would be tantamount to dismissing the future of all Zimbabweans. The truth is, there is a power in the people of Zimbabwe that cannot justly be ignored. In the history of justice movements, nothing has ever been accomplished by conceding to lost causes. Mugabe is undeserving of the amount of international attention he has received; the real story is found in the hope of his people.
Anne Junod spent last summer volunteering in Zambia and Zimbabwe with the U.K. based volunteer organization African Impact.
We've gotten enough calls and e-mails from folks concerned about my state of mind for me to think it's probably time for a more upbeat post. If you've been among those worried, you can rest assured that I'm far from despair. On the contrary, I can't remember ever feeling more alive than I have these past few years in Cincinnati, in spite of all the trouble and confusion we've found here. My worldview surely has been shaken some, but my soul is safe and sound.
Not to boast, but, amidst our many mistakes in starting over as servants of God, it turns out that Marty and I did right the single, most important thing we had to do right: We didn't try to do it by ourselves. If nothing else, we have learned on this adventure that loving people well - and loving poor people especially - is a team sport. And if I feel alive and well instead of utterly defeated, it is mainly because the other members of our somewhat intentional community here give me strength and security on a daily basis, whether or not they mean to do so.
I say 'somewhat intentional' to avoid giving the impression that we are some kind of religious order, with formal rules and a common purse and a weekly regimen of prayer. If you thought that, I'm afraid you'd be sorely disappointed when you came for a visit. What we are instead is a handful of families and individuals who have moved next door or around the corner from each other on purpose. This is so that we can share our lives and our meals and our stuff more easily, and so we can all love the same neighbors without having to walk very far. We still have our own jobs and houses, but because the houses weren't very expensive the jobs don't take all our time, and there's more left for each other and for the folks we're trying to bless one way or another.
For example, recently, when Marty and I weren't sure about inviting a struggling kid who's on his own to come live with our family, we ran next door for Karen's advice. The week before, Karen, Ric, and Marty handled the whole Monday night dinner party because my plane home from Vancouver was delayed. The other night, Sarah walked over to talk through her career options now that she knows she doesn't want to be a massage therapist forever. The night after that, Sarah offered to tutor the neighborhood girl the rest of us just couldn't fit in.
If that kind of give and take sounds appealing to you, well, join the club. Especially for those of us with kids, it is a pure joy to have such wonderful brothers and sisters around to help raise them. And when it comes to coping with the often absurd consequences of our beloved neighbors' bizarre combinations of poverty, neglect, and dysfunction, well, we're all better off with plenty of partners to share the load.
Out on the road as a speaker, when people tell me they admire the sacrifice of our 'radical' inner-city ministry lifestyle, I can't help but smile. If they had any idea how amazing it is to daily be surrounded by the kind of love, support, understanding, and practical help that my family takes for granted here, I think their admiration might turn to envy instead. After all, who else gets to live so close to their friends?
Please don't worry. This street-level ministry stuff is indeed much harder than I remembered, mainly because I know better now what it means for a child not to have a decent parent, or for a parent not to have a decent job, or for a family not to have a decent place to live. But it is richer now, too, because I also know better the true value of love, which is our God. And because here, in that knowledge, I am not alone.
Bart Campolo is a veteran urban minister and activist who speaks, writes, and blogs www.bartcampolo.com about grace, faith, loving relationships and social justice. Bart is the leader of The Walnut Hills Fellowship www.thewalnuthillsfellowship.org in inner-city Cincinnati. He is also founder of Mission Year www.missionyear.org, which recruits committed young adults to live and work among the poor in inner-city neighborhoods across the USA, and executive director of EAPE, which develops and supports innovative, cost-effective mission projects around the world.
The United States prides itself on being a country of laws. There is the settled conviction that here citizens obey the laws of the land and that those who do not are duly punished according to the nature of the violation. Christians who oppose the presence of undocumented immigrants turn to Romans 13 to emphasize that these people are breaking local and national laws and that the appropriate penalties should be applied. This passage is a quandary, too, for some of those who are more sympathetic to the plight of immigrants. They are torn between the harshness and contradictions of the laws and this biblical mandate to submit to the authorities.
Several observations can help put this passage into proper perspective. To begin with, Christians must recognize that their agenda is set in the previous chapter of Paul's letter. Chapter 12 tells believers not to be molded by the "pattern of this world" (12:2). Their lives should be characterized by service to others, love, and compassion—even toward enemies (12:3-21).
The authorities, however, have a different purpose and a different way of doing things, and this is spelled out in Romans 13. Christians are called to respect the government, says the apostle, but this does not mean sanctifying everything that it might legislate or do. Citizens of the U.S. have the right to disagree with the government, and, motivated by their principles, Christians do this in multiple ways: at the ballot box, through publications, by organizing educational, legal, and civic organizations that defend other points of view, by participating in peaceful protests of many kinds for a host of causes, and the like. Each of these actions in its own way expresses reservations about the state of affairs and the things that the government is mandating. Immigration is an example of an area where many believers diverge from the goals and enforcement of current legislation.
What is more, the U.S. government itself admits that legislation on immigration must be changed. Leaders from across the political spectrum recognize that what is in place now is not working. Recent efforts to craft a comprehensive immigration policy are clear evidence of the need for new immigration laws.
Therefore, to point to Romans 13 and adherence to the law in debates on immigration, without nuance or biblical and historical depth, simply will not do. Christians should search all of the scriptures for guidance in evaluating the development of immigration policy and engaging its challenges. From that foundation, Christians can begin to move forward to the legal issues. In other words, discussion on legality cannot be limited just to questions about complying with current laws, laws that all know are impractical and will soon be replaced. If these laws are problematic—theologically, humanely, and pragmatically—and if all sides agree that reform is needful, the call to submit to the authorities in Romans 13 should be rethought in fresh and constructive ways. Respect for the nation's present laws can be coupled with and informed by the move toward a new set of laws. Ideally, laws should embody the best moral principles of a nation. Clearly, immigration legislation does not measure up.
But what of immigrants who are Christians? How do they respond to Romans 13? They know that they are violating the law by living and working here. But, they also have experienced personally the law's inequities. For example, the government turns a blind eye to many employers because the country needs cheap labor, but then it makes access to social services increasingly difficult for these same workers. Hispanic immigrant believers admire the efficiency of the legal system of the U.S. and want to contribute to society, even as they work for a better life. Many do their best to obey the laws in every area that does not threaten their jobs, homes, and children's education and welfare. Many desire to be model 'citizens' as part of their Christian duty and in order to gain the respect of the majority culture in which they live. All fervently want a fair legal resolution of the situation.
Where can we go from here? If one evaluates immigration law in the U.S. as confused and unfair, and if one believes that these laws do not square with the teaching of the Bible and the ethical demands of the heart of God - let alone the historic openness of this country to foreigners - then these Christians will not say, "What is it about 'illegal' that you don't understand?" Instead, they might declare with the apostles, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God" (Acts 4:19).
Before this statement raises all kinds of alarm, let me make it very clear that I am not advocating civil disobedience on a large scale, just as most Christians who have strong misgivings about undocumented immigrants are not lobbying for a massive national deportation operation to rid the country of one and all. It is a narrow understanding of the nature of law and the Christian's relationship to human government that must be questioned. We need to move ahead towards constructive change with Christian humility and charity, with respect for those placed in authority over us but especially with an eye to the higher calling of the people of God to be a blessing to the world.
Dr. M. Daniel Carroll Rodas is a distinguished professor of Old Testament at Denver Seminary, and author of Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible (Baker Academic Books), from which this post is adapted.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The question we need to ask with any spiritual discipline is, What does God want to accomplish through this practice? ... Perhaps we can see, then, that the discipline of fasting has to do with the critical dynamic of accepting those limits which are life-restoring. Our culture would seduce us into believing that we can have it all, do it all, and (even more preposterous!) that we deserve it all. Yet in refusing to accept limits on our consumption or activity, we perpetuate a death-dealing dynamic in the world. That is whey the discipline of fasting is so profoundly important today.
We were never likely to get away with "transcending" race in this election as the early Obama campaign suggested to some. The demons of race in America simply run too deep and were bound to eventually rear their ugly heads. And so they did with the now infamous taped sound bites by Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the furious media response to them. I've said before that the constant replaying of the tapes has become a metaphor for the continual replaying of our old racial tapes in this country. Black anger and frustration because of real grievances, provoking white indignation revealing the lack of white understanding, causing more black frustration and alienation etc; it just goes on and on.
So Barack Obama had to give a major speech on race that he likely hoped not to have to give. But it was an historic statement, offering a deeper vision and hope of our forming "a more perfect union" than we had heard in many decades. After the speech, the ball was again in America's court—in white America's court in particular. Would the nation respond to Obama's hopeful vision, of turning a corner from racial anger and frustration to new opportunity and unity, or would his candidacy be derailed by his pastor's mixture of prophetic black preaching and unfortunate overstatements? While it will likely take weeks and even months to know the final answer to that central question, the first polls taken since Wright tapes and Obama's speech suggest that it has not hurt his candidacy in the ways that some had feared. As the Pew Research Center reported yesterday on its new poll, "the Wright controversy does not appear to have undermined support for Obama's candidacy."
Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding. … That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today.
Because this issue is now about much more than a candidate or an election, but about the issue of race in America, the poll results and the voice of the highest-ranking black official in the country provide a small glimmer of hope that the nation may be ready to try and take a step forward. Obama should be judged, as should any candidate, on the basis of his policy positions and leadership capacity, not because of our old racial tapes.
The recent controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright has initiated a new conversation about race in America. It has done so by making clear to white America what almost every black American knows—that 40 years after the civil rights movement, there are still two Americas. More pointedly for Christians, it is manifestly evident that we have two churches. After the integration of schools, the military, and the workplace, the church remains the single most segregated institution in America.
Across this divide, black Christians necessarily maintain a double consciousness, knowing how to talk to their white brothers and sisters while also keeping alive the distinctive language of the black church. White Christians, however, are taken aback when they hear the "angry" tone and anti-American sentiments of prophetic black preaching. It is hard for us to believe that such rhetoric could be called Christian.
Like any pastor, Rev. Wright has been wrong. (I do not, for example, think it is prophetic to say that whites created the HIV virus.) But we would do well to remember that the same pastor who Barack Obama has distanced himself from also gave him the phrase "the audacity of hope." While it has made for a good book title, its origin in the prophetic tradition of black preaching points us to the peculiar nature of Christian hope.
Apocalyptic hope is one of the distinctive marks of black preaching. We pay lip service to this tradition in our annual Martin Luther King Day services, but we are tempted to water it down. We overlook the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. spent the last year of his life criticizing America's role in the Vietnam War. It is almost never mentioned that on April 4, 1968, just hours before he was assassinated, King phoned Ebeneezer Baptist Church to say that his sermon title for the next Sunday would be "Why America May Go to Hell."
Black anger is not now nor has it ever been absent from prophetic black preaching. Like Jeremiah Wright after him, Martin King preached to a church that knew firsthand the extent of injustice in this nation. Many things have changed in forty years, not the least of which is the fact that a black man is seriously contending for the presidency of the United States. But the black church knows that the wealth disparity between blacks and whites has not changed since 1965. Black Christians in America know that nearly one half of their sons will not finish high school and a third of them will go to prison. Divorced from our black brothers and sisters, most white Christians do not know this reality.
But if we learn to tell the truth about race, what can Christian hope look like? It cannot be the hope of false prophets who say, "'peace, peace' when there is no peace," pretending that blacks and whites do not continue to suffer from a racial wound. But neither can our hope be entirely satisfied with progressive politics that calls us to move forward by getting along. Apocalyptic hope is audacious enough to admit that the problem is deep in all of us and the only solution is a love that comes from beyond us.
In the civil rights movement, no one was angrier about the plight of black people in this country than James Baldwin. His gift with words only served to sharpen his criticism and make his attack on white power more pointed. Yet, it was James Baldwin who wrote in a letter to his nephew, "the really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept [white people] … for these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand."
One great gift of the black church that has been largely overlooked in the case of Rev. Wright is the tradition's ability to hold together apocalyptic criticism with radical love. This is the double miracle of the black church: that after hearing the gospel from their oppressors, black people found liberation in Christ and then loved the so-called Christians who had been their enemies. If the Enlightenment reduced our confidence in a God who performs miracles, the story of the black church alone should be enough to restore it.
What we need to heal the racial wound in America is nothing less than a miracle. Barack Obama cannot fix us, and thank God, he is honest enough to admit it. We Christians would do well to take a cue from his frankness and remember that judgment begins with the house of God. We should have the audacity to hope that racial divisions could be transgressed within the church so that the world might know another way is possible.
Such hope may seem apocalyptic from where we stand, but the resurrection of Jesus is a reminder that the end of all things has already interrupted history. On this side of Easter, we're invited to live a way that wouldn't make sense if miracles don't happen.
Will Zimbabwe's parliamentary and presidential elections, coming up Saturday, be a complete sham, like their predecessors? The government of Zimbabwe, under Robert Mugabe, has left Zimbabwe's economy in ruins and permitted the HIV/AIDS crisis rise to catastrophic levels, prompting protests among people of faith.
Here are a few websites to check for perspectives and news:
This is Zimbabwe, a blog by the protest group Sokwanele, offers on-the-ground info, including a Google Maps-based schematic of places where the government has taken steps to rig the election. At the bottom right, there's a list of other Zimbabwe-themed blogs.
ZimOnline, a South Africa-based online newspaper about Zimbabwe.
ReliefWeb's roundup of news stories and nonprofit press releases about Zimbabwe (as assembled by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs).
Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.
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I come together with others not out of need, but out of the recognition that they belong to the same heart I belong to, and that they cannot fulfill the deepest yearning of my heart. Why? Because God has created in me a heart that can only be satisfied by the One who created it.
I come together with others not out of need, but out of the recognition that they belong to the same heart I belong to, and that they cannot fulfill the deepest yearning of my heart. Why? Because God has created in me a heart that can only be satisfied by the One who created it.
Five weeks ago, we began a series of posts on the cost of the war in Iraq. We have focused primarily on the human costs – the death and suffering of Americans and Iraqis after five years of war. There have been moving posts from soldiers, veterans, their parents, Iraqis, peacemakers, and theologians. We launched a statement – "A Call to Lament and Repent" – which more than 26,000 of you have now signed – and publicized it with ads in the online editions of Christianity Today, Relevant, and The Christian Century.
While that series is formally ending, the war and the suffering go on. On Easter Sunday, four U.S. soldiers were killed in Baghdad, bringing the total to 4,000. Around the country of Iraq, more than 60 people were killed in attacks. The Iraq Body Count database has now documented 90,000 civilian deaths – other estimates go into the hundreds of thousands. And this week, new fighting is raging in several Iraqi cities, causing additional casualties.
More than ever, as our statement says, "The American occupation must end, a transition to an international solution to Iraq must be found, a peaceful resolution is possible and must be pursued. Our country should end this war; not try to "win" it; and we must help the Iraqi people build a safer and more peaceful country."
While the media pundits continue to debate levels of violence, "surge" successes and failures, and the lack of political progress in Iraq, we must continue to raise the larger and deeper issue of how fundamentally wrong it was to launch a pre-emptive and primarily unilateral war against Iraq. There were far better ways to deal with the evil of Saddam Hussein and the threats of terrorism - which this war has only made worse. Repentance means a fundamental change in direction; and that is what we must now call for in U.S. foreign policy.
On Easter we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the new life he brings. Where is Easter, that new life, for Iraq? How long will the suffering and killing go on? The need to lament, to repent, and to continue praying and acting to end this war is more important than ever.
In March 2006, Sojourners editorial projects intern Celeste Kennel-Shank wrote a great feature article for us titled "Green Hair, Grey Hair" about the D.C.-based project "We Are Family" started by Mark Anderson. Now, for the first time on the independent screen, one of our articles has inspired a movie! Read the description below about the new film directed by Katrina Taylor and produced by Rachell Williams:
What do punk rockers and senior citizens have in common? As Washington D.C. rapidly gentrifies, a low income African American community is threatened. The documentary "Green Hair, Grey Hair," takes a look at the struggles of living in a city in the midst of change, and the unique relationships that can develop. Mark Anderson, a writer, activist and punk rocker, created "We Are Family" to provide an outreach network to a group of senior citizen. Through an existing group he worked with - punk rockers - he used similar DIY and punk rock ethics, to bring the two together. Through grocery deliveries, advocacy about the neighborhood, and visiting, "We Are Family" provides a unique model for changing the way we look at old age. Very punk rock.
Celeste (who is the daughter of Sojourners Senior Policy Adviser Duane Shank) is a 2004 graduate of Goshen (Ind.) College with a degree in environmental studies and completed her master's degree at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Ill. She now works for the Mennonite Weekly Review and is based in Chicago.
Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.
We may not like the other but we are called to love. We may certainly not validate or condone his or her actions. But we are called into a radical sense of our interconnectedness as creatures and children of the same God. To perceive this deep level of interdependence, especially with those whose worlds are fashioned differently than our own or perhaps with those who would seek to harm or destroy our worlds, seems a nearly impossible task. Yet the Gospels prod us on.... At the furthest reaches of our capacities to love, we are urged, "Love even your enemies."
Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the Lord,
whose deeds are in the dark,
and who say, "Who sees us? Who knows us?"
You turn things upside down!
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?
Shall the thing made say of its maker,
"He did not make me";
or the thing formed say of the one who formed it,
"He has no understanding"?
In the Washington Post and throughout the blogosphere, debates rage about the recent spate of violence between Palestinians and Israelis, each side condemning with righteous indignation the sins of the other and proclaiming their own side's innocence. In a recent Post letters section, for example, Yaffa Klugerman wrote, "I was shocked to read [the] assertion that the murder of eight students in a Jerusalem seminary ... was reminiscent of a 1994 attack by Baruch Goldstein, a Jew who shot a group of Palestinians at prayer" (killing 29 Muslims and wounding another 150).
Another writer decried the Post's lack of balance in putting the seminary killings on page one and having no mention at all of an attack a few days later in which Israelis killed five Gazans. (A short news item in the April issue of Sojourners magazine reported on Hamas rocket attacks that sparked reprisal raids into Gaza by Israeli Defense Forces, but the magazine went to print before the killings at the seminary.)
For those seeking to justify their next round of violence, there will always be another provocation to point to; revenge and retaliation will never end anything, but merely create the rationale for the next bloody attack. And both sides can legitimately condemn acts of inhumanity committed by the other. The only way to stop the deadly spiral is to stop – to recognize that all life, on both sides of the conflict, is sacred, and that the proper, humane response to suffering inflicted even on one's enemy is mourning, not vengeance. Until then, violence will continue to beget violence, and hopes for peace in the Middle East will remain a pipe dream.
Environmental consciousness seems to be gaining momentum with increasing numbers of "eco-friendly" products out there from organic bath towels to hybrid cars. But are we really being more environmentally conscious when we buy these products? Are we actually thinking twice about the ecological consequences, or are we just switching from "brand x" to "brand organic"? A recent Washington Post article, Greed in the Name of Green, critiques the idea of the "new green consumer" and challenges the notion that we can buy our way into environmental sanctification.
Paul Hawken, a well known environmentalist and author, comments that we may actually have to alter lifestyles and perhaps buy less, rather than simply buying green. I appreciate Hawken's sentiment, as our culture is constantly shouting at us through advertisements in all sorts of mediums to buy more. Buy more to make yourself feel good. Buy more if you are feeling good. Buy more if you are unsure of how you are feeling but because it's cool and everyone is doing it. The same strategy is being used on the eco-friendly consumer.
True environmental consciousness will challenge the way we respond to our culture of consumerism and create changes in lifestyles. I do think that you can be an environmentally conscious consumer. However, this will most likely mean being less of a consumer to begin with, and when you do have to put on your consumer hat, be critical and read between the lines of "brand organic" (as well as everyone else's) advertisements.
Reduce, Reuse, then Recycle. And if you still need something new, do your research before you hit the stores and know what all those "green labels" are/are not actually telling you.
In writing my new book, Founding Faith, I was struck by two things of possible importance to today’s religious progressives.
First, the 18th century evangelicals had a very different approach to religious freedom than many of their 21st century descendents. They were crucial advocates for separation of church and state. This ought to be a challenge to both modern liberal secularists who assume that evangelicals are awlays on the side of tyranny, and for religious conservatives who have disowned the arguments of their ancestors. If not for evangelicals, we wouldn’t have religious freedom.
Second, the Founders mostly assess religion through the prism of one question: does it promote good behavior? Though each of the Founders I studied in Founding Faith (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison) started at different religious places, they ended up at the end of their lives whittling their creeds down to a few simple items:
Benjamin Franklin: "That the most acceptable service we can render to [God], is doing good to his other children."
John Adams: "I have learned nothing of importance to me, for they have made no change in my moral or religious creed, which has for 50 or 60 years been contained in four short words: 'Be just and good.'"
Thomas Jefferson: "1) That there is one only God, and he all-perfect. 2) That there is a future state of rewards and punishments. 3) That to love God with all thy heart and they neighbor as theyself, is the sum of religion." (Click here for an online version of the Jefferson Bible that shows how he cut out the miracles from the Bible, and highlighted the moral teachings.)
George Washington: "In politics, as in religion, my tenets are few and simple; the leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves, and to exact it from others; meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap-hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant and happy." (Washington letter to James Anderson, December 25, 1795, as quoted in Chadwick, p. 487.)
It’s not accurate to say these men were not religious. I don’t believe it’s even accurate to say they were Deists, since most of them believed in a God that intervened in history and in their lives. But it is clear that they judged the success of religion by whether it inculcated good behavior, and created good citizens.
It is hard for me to forgive someone who has really offended me, especially when it happens more than once. I begin to doubt the sincerity of the one who asks forgiveness for a second, third, or fourth time. But God does not keep count. God just waits for our return, without resentment or desire for revenge.
The earth dries up and withers,
the world languishes and withers;
the heavens languish together with the earth.
The earth lies polluted
under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws,
violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore a curse devours the earth,
and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;
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In our little circles, we've been talking a lot about the need to create new holidays and rituals of remembrance as a Church–this peculiar, set-apart people of God. The early Christians talked a lot about how they no longer celebrated the "festivals of the Caesars" or the holidays of the empire, but had new eyes through which they looked at the world (this is a major theme of our new book Jesus for President). They had a new calendar. They had new heroes and sheroes (not just kings and presidents and fallen warriors). And they had new liturgies and songs. That's what Holy Week is all about, a new holiday–Easter is our President's Day. And our Holy Week here in Philly was magnificent, a stunning celebration of the Commander-in-Chief who loved His enemies so much He died for them.
One of the highlights was Good Friday at Lockheed Martin.
My mom and pop came into town. On Good Friday my mother and I went to a worshipful vigil–walking the stations of the cross, remembering the sufferings of Jesus–held on the property of Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin is one of the world's largest weapons contractors and profiteers from war, headquartered right outside Philly. So it was there that we took the cross of Jesus.
Being the 5 year anniversary of the bombing of Baghdad, I was asked to reflect on my Easter in Baghdad in 2003. So I did. With mom looking on, I shared how she had supported my trip. I recalled how she had learned to ache with Abraham, Mary, and the parents of children in Iraq, all of whom have had to watch their own kids face grave danger. At one point, mom said to me, "The children in Iraq are just as precious to God as you are. How can I tell you not to get too close to their suffering?" And every night she prayed–weeping, hurting, groaning with God for an end to that suffering. As I spoke, I looked out and saw her eyes filled with tears. (NOTE: It was my mom's first "protest," so even though she had tears in her eyes, she also had a mischievous smirk as she stood next to a clever banner that read: "Lockheed Martin…. Making a Killing!")
After some speakers, scripture, and music, we walked through the stations of the passion narrative which led us onto the base of Lockheed Martin. There a dozen folks stood, holding crosses, in prayerful vigil.... And then, one by one, they were arrested for trespassing. It was an incredible embodiment of gentle dissent and vigilant hope – that holy mischief we see in Jesus as he triumphs over the empire's cross. Not the Fourth of July or Veteran's Day or Columbus Day – but Good Friday. Passover. Easter. Pentecost. These are our most beautiful holidays. So during this season of death and resurrection, we remember the contemporary sufferings of Christ, the other baby refugees being born amid the wars and genocides of our Herods. And we remember the Gospel promise that in the end life conquers death. It may be Friday, but Sunday is coming.
On Easter Sunday sermons about new life and transformation, resurrection and redemption abound. At our church we celebrated the baptism of a young man living in a half way house and doing work-release in our community. The genuine hugs and welcome from the mostly black congregation for this young white man were warm and genuine. One church member sponsors work release, another church member picks up the four to five who come for events and church, and this young man felt touched by God in the welcoming community. He stood holding the baptismal candle and asked God and us for help for the journey of restoration ahead.
Three to four thousand people are released each year into our low income, African American, two square mile community. National statistics show a 67% recidivism rate, with costly results in human lives and our national pocketbooks. Congressman Danny Davis has been pushing and cajoling Congress for six years to pass the Second Chance Act, helping former inmates reenter our communities with funding for job training, substance abuse treatments, housing, tutoring, etc. The bill finally passed the House and Senate.
In his summation, Congressman Davis noted that major religions speak about resurrection and redemption, and that is how lawmakers should view helping ex-offenders reenter society and rebuild lives. He went on to say, "We are a country that preaches redemption in our churches, synagogues, and mosques. That we can practice what we have preached is what we want to show with this measure."
It will take God's touch in peoples lives, people willing to reach out and help, along with government's assistance to really reclaim the many lives from incarceration and recidivism. This is but a small, hopeful start to new life.
Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners.
And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.
[Prayer] is an invitation to recognize holiness, and to utter simple words—“Holy, Holy, Holy”—in response.... It is ordinary experience live with gratitude and wonder.
Jesus came with a job to do, to complete the work to which Israel was called. This work, from the call of Abraham onwards, was to put the human race to rights, and so to put the whole creation to rights. As the gospel writers tell the story, this task was to be accomplished by Jesus bringing about the sovereign healing rule of the creator God. Jesus was addressing the question, "What might it look like if God was running this show?" And answering, "This is what it looks like: just watch." And then, "just listen." In what he did, and in the stories he told, Jesus was announcing and inaugurating what he referred to as "the kingdom of God," the long-awaited hope that the creator God would run the whole show, on earth as in heaven.
But the problem was, and is, that other people are still running the show. Other kingdoms, other power structures, have usurped the rule of the world's wise creator, and the forces of evil are exceedingly powerful and destructive. Jesus' task of inaugurating God's kingdom therefore necessarily led him to meet those forces in direct combat, to draw upon himself their full, dark fury so as to exhaust their power and make a way through to launch the creator's project of new creation despite them. That is one clue at least to the meaning of Jesus' crucifixion, though that event, planting the sign of God's kingdom in the middle of space, time, and matter, remains inexhaustible. But let's be clear. As the gospels tell the story, Jesus' death was the culmination of several different strands: a political process, a religious clash, a spiritual war, all rushing together into one terrible day, one terrible death. And in the light of that, according to Jesus himself and his first followers, everything in the world looks different, is different, must be approached differently. With Jesus' death, the power structures of the world were called to account; with his resurrection, a new life, a new power, was unleashed upon the world. And the question is: How ought this to work out? What should we be doing as a result?
If we are to think Christianly, then we must think according to the pattern of Jesus Christ. And that means that the first place we should look for God in the "War on Terror" would be in the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers, and then in the ruins of Baghdad and Basra, the shattered homes and lives of the tens of thousands who have through no fault of their own been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the angry superpower, like a rogue elephant teased by a little dog, has gone on the rampage stamping on everything that moves in the hope of killing the dog by killing everything within reach. The presence of God within the world at a time of war must be calibrated according to what Paul says in Romans 8, that the Spirit groans within God's people as they groan with the pain of the world. The cross of Jesus Christ is the sign and the assurance that the God who made the world still loves the world and, in that love, groans and grieves.
But God wants his rebel world to be ordered, to be under authorities and governments, because otherwise the bullies and the arrogant will always prey on the weak and the helpless; but all authorities and governments face the temptation to become bullies and arrogant themselves. The New Testament writers, like other Jews at the time, saw this writ large in the Roman empire of their day. Those with eyes to see can see it in other subsequent empires, right down to our own day.
It is the task of the followers of Jesus to remind those called to authority that the God who made the world intends to put the world to rights at last, and to call those authorities to acts of justice and mercy which will anticipate, in the present time, the future, coming, final victory of God over all evil, all violence, all arrogant abuse of power. And where the world's rulers genuinely strive for that end, the Christian church declares as the ancient Jews did with the pagan king Cyrus, that God's Spirit is at work—whether the authorities know it or not.
Insofar as the last five years have constituted a wake-up call to sleepy western Christians to think urgently about issues of global justice and governance, we can see God, I believe, in that new stirring, warning us that we have a task and that we haven't been doing it too well. In particular, we must face the deeply ambiguous question of the present power and position of America. I am not anti-American when I criticise some policies of some American leaders, any more than I am anti-British when I criticise some of the policies of my own elected leaders. To suggest otherwise is simply a cheap way of avoiding the real questions. The creator God allows societies to rise and fall, empires to grow and wane. And though things are massively more complicated than this, we could see in the rise of America as the current sole superpower some great possibilities for bringing justice and mercy, genuine freedom and prosperity, to the whole world. Empires always carry that possibility. But empires also face the temptation to use their power for their own prestige and wealth. The challenge now is to provide a critique of American empire without implying that the world should collapse into anarchy, and a fresh sense of direction for that empire without colluding with massive abuses of power.
Where then is God in the war on terror? Grieving and groaning within the pain and horror of his battered but still beautiful world. Stirring in the hearts of human beings the desire for a more credible structure of global justice and mercy. Burning into the imagination of human beings a hope that peace and reconciliation might eventually win out over suspicion and hatred, that the world may be put to rights and that we may anticipate that in the present time. The Christian gospel, revealing the mysterious God we discover in Jesus and the Spirit, offers a framework for discerning where God is at work in the midst of the dangers and opportunities that confront us. All of us in our different callings are summoned to this task; some of you, perhaps, to make it your life's work. Jesus is Lord. The Spirit is powerful. God is doing a new thing. Let's get out there and join in.
I'm on vacation with my family this week, but in reflecting on the significance of Easter, I thought I'd share this passage from one of my books, The Call to Conversion. In a world wracked by war and violence, we are a people whose life and faith are rooted in the resurrection.
What is the good news? When all that sin had done, or could ever do, was laid on Jesus, it did not overcome him. Death could not swallow him. The grave was denied its victory. The witness of history and of his followers is that "he is risen." He is alive. He has triumphed over all. He is the victor over every sin, hate, fear, violence, and death. Nothing is stronger than his victory—nothing past, nothing present, and nothing future.
On Easter morning, and each day of our lives, we celebrate the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which triumphs over every other reality. In the face of the world and its systems, we proclaim the resurrection, saying, "We have seen the Lord." We see him in the lives of our brothers and sisters. We discover him in the faces of the poor, in the faces of all the victims, and in the faces of our children. We see him in the lives of Christians who have suffered and died because they believed. And we see the Lord in the bread and the wine. He shows us, as he did his disciples, the evidence of his suffering. He invites us to reach out, take, eat, and drink; he wants us to remember him, to see him, and to know his victory.
His way is life. The world's way is death. We can now stand before the world's false realities and securities, free to deny them, denounce them, and remove ourselves from them. We stand before the reality of the resurrection and confess with the first disciples that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
We stand before the world as fools. We are foolish enough to believe that Jesus' way is stronger and truer than the way of the world. We rest secure in the knowledge that he has, and will, overcome. We are called to be fools for Christ, a people saved by his cross and converted, finally, by his resurrection.
Throughout his book, The God Hypothesis, Victor Stenger appears to be obsessed with the need for concrete proof that the son of God was a real man. He feels that if Jesus of Nazareth really walked on the earth, someone would have unearthed his actual bones.
Now, I don't want to get medieval here, but frankly, how many Christians in the 21st century need the bones of Jesus as proof of their faith? After all, according to the resurrection story, Christ transcended matter as Mary Magdalene found an empty tomb, not a body.
During my recent trips to Israel and Jordan, I lost track of the historical discrepancies regarding where a given bit of biblical business occurred. Despite the debates over the exact place where Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, the specific church that marks the spot where Gabriel brought to Mary the good news that would change the world, and other historical critical snafus, I seemed to feel the presence of God's saving grace throughout history every time I stepped on a piece of seemingly sacred soil.
Also, look at the Easter story in its proper sociopolitical context for a sec. Right about now, Jesus and his crowd were persona non grata (mild understatement). The so-called leader of this ragtag group of rabble rousers had just been crucified. Unless Jesus rose from the dead, all their years of following him would have been for naught. Before they encountered him on the road to Emmaus, they had no clue if Jesus was the real deal, or if they had just drunk the wrong Kool-Aid by following a false prophet. They were left leaderless and scared for their lives, knowing full well they might be next on Pontius Pilate's hit list. Suffice to say, tensions were running pretty durn high.
As expected, the Romans did everything in their earthly power to prevent this resurrection myth from developing legs. The tomb was sealed, and guards were posted outside the cave 24/7. No way they would have let the disciples steal the body and run around claiming that Christ had risen. No siree. From a historical standpoint, the resurrection story could not have occurred without some kind of divine intervention. Check out a timeline of the early church and it's pretty clear that saying you believed in the risen Christ was a deadly move. Why would so many people risk banishment, torture, and even death for such an elusive myth?
My soul’s house is cramped. Expand it, so that you may enter in. It is in ruins. Restore it. It must offend your eyes. I confess and know it, but who will cleanse it? To whom shall I cry but to you? Clear me from hidden faults, O Lord.
- St. Augustine Hungering for God: Selected Writings of Augustine
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I was conscripted into the South Africa military in the late 1980s. Still in my teens, I was shipped off to do two years of "service" for my country. This included not only military training, but also indoctrination about "the enemy." I was taught about the threat of communism, of the dangers of insurgents and the evil inherent in those who wished to destroy the "freedoms" we held so dear in our land.
South Africa was a country divided. Its history is reasonably well known to the world because of all we have since achieved. But the late 1980s were dark days, at the height of the apartheid regime's attempts to retain power in the face of growing international opposition and internal chaos.
One day, at home on leave, I was reversing my car out of our home's driveway in Randburg, Johannesburg. A knock on my window startled me. A young man, slightly out of breath, motioned for me to roll down the window. Slightly nervous, I lowered it a few centimetres. He asked if I could give him a ride. To this day I don't know why I agreed, as I am not in the habit of picking up hitchhikers. But, that day, I said, "Yes. Get in."
As we drove away, he calmly told me that he had just escaped from the police cells at the nearby magistrate's court. He was a political activist and had been arrested as a member of the ANC. He wanted me to take him to a nearby township where ANC cadres were known to hideout. But, he explained calmly, if I felt otherwise, I could take him up the road and hand him over to the police again.
Not many people are confronted with these sorts of choices. Not only was I under immediate pressure: Were the police coming down the road in hot pursuit? Had they seen me? But I was also being confronted with a mindset shift. Deep down inside I had a vague understanding that apartheid was wrong and that it should be opposed. But as a teenager, what chance had I to process these thoughts, or choose to do something about it? Now, what would I do? Whose side was I on?
It's difficult to explain to someone who hasn't lived in a propaganda state how much can be hidden from the citizens by the government and selective media. And how much apathy there is in those not directly affected by the violence such a state perpetrates.
I wish I had done more to oppose apartheid. I can claim that I was young, and that apartheid was almost dead by the time I came of age. But so many young people gave their lives for justice. There are no excuses. I wish that day I had done more than I did. I drove that young man about five kilometres away, and then dropped him off on the side of a busy road where I knew he would quickly be picked up and taken to safety. I should have done more.
Maybe I should be doing more now.
This may be an overly harsh assessment, but some of what has happened in America under the current administration in the name of a "war on terror" looks and feels remarkably like the workings of that apartheid machine I grew up in. And the most concerning thing is that, just as many South Africans – white and black – were sucked into the apartheid system's mindset, so too the average American does not seem to notice it happening.
In the name of freedom, freedoms are gradually removed. The state spies on its own citizens, and explains that it does not need to explain why. In the name of peace, we declare others to be "the enemy" and wage war on them, crushing them with overwhelming superior force. Worst of all, we declare ourselves outside international agreements and norms. We can torture, because it's not really torture, and besides, the end justifies the means. We can refuse to sign international treaties, because what are others going to do about it anyway?
I hate to point it out, because the memory of that type of state is so fresh in the minds of South Africans like myself. I hate to point it out, because I would like to think that the most powerful country in the world is what it also claims to be: the most free, the most civilized and the most advanced. I hate to point it out. But I must: The so called "war on terror," most obviously evidenced by a 5-year ground war in Iraq, is nothing more or less than apartheid was proclaimed to be: a crime against humanity. It is a dark blot on our human soul.
And all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing about it. How I wish I had done more. But, how proud I am today to be a South African – part of the story of a nation of people who collectively decided that change was possible, and who each did just a little bit to make that dream a reality.
Dr. Graeme Codrington is a researcher, author, presenter and consultant on issues of people strategy. He works internationally from bases in Johannesburg and London, and can be contacted at graeme@graemecodrington.com.
We are told the war in Iraq is a necessary part of the "War on Terror" (WOT), and its goal is to bring democracy to the Middle East. Despite this rhetoric it is blatantly clear the US is pursuing its own interests at the cost of democracy in the region. This raises the level of anger in the Muslim world more than Americans can imagine.
Nowhere are the hypocrisy and contradictions in US policy more apparent than in
Pakistan, a long time US ally, whose citizens have consistently demonstrated their commitment to democracy, most recently in their February 18th election. Despite this staunch democratic commitment, the US continues to act in ways that undermine democracy in this crucial country. The contradictions in America's Pakistan policy go back decades, at least to the late 1970s when the US worked with the Islam-touting dictator, General Zia ul-Haq and Pakistan's intelligence services to arm the groups that have naturally morphed into al-Qaeda and the Taliban. That story is well known.
Less publicized are the contradictions in current US policy. Since 9/11 we have given over $9.6 billion in aid to General Musharraf's regime (plus an additional $5.3 billion in reimbursements for Pakistan's assistance with the war in Afghanistan) – even though he unconstitutionally remained chief of the army while also serving as president, and despite the fact that in the 2002 election he whipped up Islamicist parties to generate a base of support for himself – a ploy the Pakistani people have now seen through and completely renounced in last month's election. But he is Bush's friend because he allows US planes to bomb inside Pakistan, and last November 3rd he unconstitutionally imposed a state of emergency, suspended the constitution and dismissed all the judges who were not willing to swear a new loyalty oath to the emergency order. While the press widely reported he did this to prevent the court from ruling against him remaining army chief during a second term as president, he also did it to thwart the Supreme Court's demand that he account for hundreds of people who have been "disappeared." Many of these people have likely ended up in US interrogation cells in other countries.
For the first time Pakistan's government is "disappearing" its critics. It now dares such impunity because this has been normalized by the US's use of the practice within the country. It is one of the horrible contradictions of the WOT – we fight a war 'for democracy' by undermining the global commitment to habeus corpus and fair trial rights. The other contradiction is that in that move Musharraf killed the independence of the judiciary and the free media, two other democratic practices sacrificed to this war to bring democracy. What was the US response? Some noise but no serious demand to restore the constitution, nor to reinstate the court, nor to give an accounting of the disappeared.
On December 27th former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated and Musharraf's government acted in ways that smacked of a cover-up. Again, the US's response was very muted, despite the fact that "BB" was the first democratically elected woman leader of a Muslim country, and she had a long and close association with the United States. Why the waffle? Because more than wanting democracy in the Muslim world, the US wants a free hand to run the WOT by any means it deems necessary, to serve the US interests du jour. In Pakistan's case this means not only complicity in disappearing people into the rat holes of the US's secret global interrogation system, but also the freedom to continue to conduct bombing raids on Pakistani territory – increasingly without even consulting the Pakistani government. This practice, which is to be stepped up – at least until the US election next November, will likely undercut Pakistan's newly elected government.
Muslims everywhere see through these contradictions and the hypocrisy in US policy. It fuels their anger, which in turn fuels militancy and less willingness to dialogue or compromise. Without that willingness there can be no movement in any peace process: not for Palestine/Israel; not for Iraq; not for Afghanistan.
Cris Toffolo, Ph.D, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and in the Justice and Peace Studies Program at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
"Speak to the earth, and it will teach you…The life of every creature and the breath of all people are in God's hand". --Job 12: 8, 10 (NCV)
Iraq has a rich biological history. The Mesopotamian marshlandswere among the most fertile areas of the globe until they were decimated by Saddam Hussein's government in an attempt to quell an uprising after the 1991 Gulf War. The latest Iraq war has destroyed the land, air and water quality even further.
According to the Iraq Development Program, more than 50% of the Iraqi population depends on natural resources for survival. Subsistence farmers, herders and grazers have lost their only known way of living while wildlife and clean drinking water disappear by the minute. A 2003 MedAct Report estimated that 40% of the water and sanitation systems in Iraq were damaged during the first 6 months of the U.S. attack, forcing people to the only remaining source of water: polluted rivers. The United Nations has managed to restore nearly 80% of the prewar infrastructure in Baghdad, but nearly 5 million people are still without access to any sanitation.
In rural areas, Iraqis depend heavily on irrigation as a means for prosperous agriculture. As irrigation pumps are destroyed and waste water can no longer be removed, we see a greater salinization (salt build-up) and desertification (drying out) of the soil. A high saline content in the soil makes growing crops more difficult, driving farmers to use chemical fertilizers on their fields. These fertilizers degrade the soil by removing natural nutrients, forcing farmers to bring in more (salt) water, starting the cycle anew.
Last year the Department of Defense began seeking environmental specialists to serve as advisors for the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) engineers. Working with local Iraqis, the PRTs have rebuilt much of the physical infrastructure that was destroyed since the 2003 invasion, but little is being done to correct the havoc that warfare has wreaked on the Iraqi environment. The World Bank estimates that it would cost upwards of $3.6 billion to jumpstart the recovery of the agricultural sector alone in Iraq.
As Christians, our obligation is two-fold: to care for God's creation, and to ensure the continued existence of the Iraqi people. We must do this through a combination of academic, legislative and humanitarian efforts, and we must begin now. It is up to Americans and Iraqis to work together to demand a change in policy and in practice.
For the people of Iraq, this is much more than just an environmental issue; it is an issue of survival.
Lindsay Hildebrant is a recent graduate of Adrian College in Adrian, MI with a degree in Environmental Studies, Philosophy and Religion. She is currently interning with the Policy and Organizing Department at Sojourners.
The vision that Jesus gives us is this: That I am unconditionally loved, that I belong to God, and that I am a person who can really trust that. When I meet another person who also is rooted in the heart of God, then the spirit of God in me can recognize the spirit of God in the other person, and then wew can start building a new space, a new home, a house, a community. Whether we speak about friendship, community, family, marriage, in the spiritual world we are talking about spirit recognizing Spirit, solitude embracing Solitude, heart speaking to Heart. And where this happens, there is an immense space.
Jesus called them to him and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."
Like many (I hope most) people, I was deeply moved and impressed by Senator Obama's speech on race. Almost as interesting as the speech itself have been the responses to it, which usually come in the form of opinions:the speech was good or bad or didn't go far enough or went too far, and so on.
Opinions often don't tell us much about the content of the speech - it's truth, beauty, or goodness - they tell us more about the perspective, bias, fears, hopes, and interests of the commentator. I hope we can go beyond talking about the speech to talking about America and the state of race relations in America. I hope we can go beyond offering old and often utterly predictable opinions and instead, through honest engagement and dialogue about the speech, seek to have our opinions modified and improved and deepened, and perhaps even challenged and changed.
We have many places for people to react and practice opinion-giving and other forms of punditry, but what we seem to lack is space for people to have a more generous and generative kind of intelligent shared reflection and consideration. So I decided it might be worthwhile to offer some commentary on the content of the speech along with questions for conversation so that people could download the text, make copies of it, and read it through together - stimulating potentially constructive dialogue about a truly important subject.
The best case scenario would be for mixed groups to read and discuss the speech together – gathering a group of friends from work or a sports team or a neighborhood or church. Three questions would guide this kind of dialogue: What can we learn about America? What can we learn about people of other races? What can we learn about ourselves?
The goal here is not agreement, but understanding. Each participant has to desire more to understand than to be understood, and more to learn than to teach.
In response to the racially tinged controversial remarks made by his former pastor, Barack Obama's speech on the current state of race and politics in America is one that I believe every American should listen to and/or read. It is with this in mind that I wish to address the specific challenges and hindrances that white progressive Christians, like myself, may encounter in our discussions about this topic, and particularly those that occur across racial lines. It would be easy for progressives to smugly say "tisk, tisk" to the rightwing talk show hosts and pundits that have conflagrated Rev. Wright's most divisive remarks as a way to undermine the most viable black presidential candidate in our nation's history. However, I am not convinced that the Christian peace and justice movement has enough solid ground to stand on to convince America that they have moved much beyond the superficial and politically correct discussions that dominate the discourse. Many of our progressive churches are just as segregated as they were decades ago and our political protests and social activism, though well-intentioned, often fail to mirror the kingdom reality that we hope to see realized in the broader society. To be honest, I'm not sure if any of us white people will ever fully grasp what it means to be a person of color in America. However, this realization should not be a cause for discouragement from engaging in this dialogue, but a reason to pause and reassess our level of commitment and to retain a posture of humility.
Sometimes we've become too much like the eager know-it-all kid at the front of the classroom itching to regurgitate the textbook answers. When our teacher is not impressed by our lack of genuine perceptiveness, we scratch our heads and wonder what we said that was so inadequate. Our book knowledge somehow has made us lose sight that these discussions are not opportunities to reassert an ideology, but an exercise in confession and reconciliation that deals with the emotional and sometimes illogical human heart. Likewise, these discussions are opportunities to move forward in creating real systemic change that reflects the integrity and sincerity of our repentance.
Similarly, understanding the facts of racial injustice in our society does not naturally lend us knowledge of the felt experience of oppression. Unfortunately, I have seen too many white Christians walk away from difficult discussions about race discouraged because they wanted the cut-and-dry, "just the facts ma'am" answers, and instead their black or brown, brother or sister insisted on sharing the emotional scars and deep-seated wounds of their daily lived experience. It is right then for Obama to point out that, "…the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."
It is important, as well, to point out that indignation from a biblical perspective is not in and of itself a sinful or wrong emotion. Jesus and the prophets had harsh words for the religious and political establishments of their day, and most notably, in a fit of rage Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers in the Jewish temple. His explanation: "My house should be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers." Our worship glorifies God, but our segregated worship hours often reflect a specific cultural expression.
The rhetorical style of the "jeremiad"—defined as sermons or prose characterized by lamentation and anger as a response to societal injustices—is considered by many historians as black civic religion's most significant contribution to the American rhetorical tradition. Of course, the word jeremiad has its roots in the name Jeremiah, referring to the biblical prophet. The jeremiad, as a form of both religious and political communication, highlights the role, born out of necessity, that the black church has historically played as a surrogate political institution for the disenfranchised. It may be difficult for white Americans, even progressive white Christians, to recognize or validate a rhetorical style and tradition that has its roots outside of their cultural experience, but has always been a traditional and mainstream expression of the black church. It's a gross stereotype of white progressive Christians, but those who trend toward the organic-buying-acoustic-guitar-playing-bohemian-dressed-new-monastic-urban-missional-emergent-yuppie-with-dark-rimmed-glasses should be aware that even their cultural choices made out of social consciousness are not racially neutral and are certainly not one-size-fits-all.
Finally, we white progressive Christians should realize that this conversation will continue regardless if we choose to participate in it or not. As Obama pointed out, this is a conversation that happens with regularity around the kitchen tables of those who live outside the mainstream of white culture. If our friends who live this reality invite us into this conversation we should make it a priority. To table this discussion for another day, when we have more time or energy is to exercise the white privilege that requires us to only think about race when it convenient. Inviting you to the table to talk about these most difficult and painful experiences is not your right, but a privilege that is sacrificially offered to you for your benefit. We should all be so honored to be invited into the conversation.
Sondra Shepley is the speaking events manager for Sojourners.
When I interviewed Phyllis Tickle for Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church, she reflected on the seismic changes she sees occurring in contemporary Christianity. "Evangelicalism has lost much of its credibility and much of its spiritual energy as of late, in much the same way that mainline Protestantism has." Lest anyone find this news so depressing they want to run for cover, Phyllis offers some much needed historical and hopeful perspective. "About every 500 years, the church feels compelled to have a giant rummage sale." During the last such upheaval, the Great Reformation of 500 years ago, Protestantism took over hegemony. But Roman Catholicism did not die. It just had to drop back and reconfigure. Each time a rummage sale has happened, in other words, whatever held pride of place simply gets broken apart into smaller pieces, and then it picks itself up and to use Diana Butler Bass's term, "re-tradition.
As I ride along the religious superhighway, I find I need some new tools to help me navigate this process. For starters, Andrew Jones' blog provides excellent ongoing reflections of the changing Christian landscape from a global perspective, as Proost UK offers worship resources that help refuel me and recharge my batteries. Recently, I caught wind of Tickle's radical yet totally orthodox retelling of the gospel. In The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord with Reflections Tickle categorizes the sayings of Jesus into five categories: Public Teachings, Private Instructions, Healing Dialogues, Intimate Conversations, and the Post-Resurrection Encounters.
"Psychologists have demonstrated many times over that what we say is tailored to and informed by the audience to whom we say it. In a sense, in other words, while each of us may be an integer, we have various configurations or arrangements of our "self" that we modify, exchange, and employ according to our perception of those whom we are at any given moment engaging. Jesus of Nazareth, being fully human, followed that same pattern, though once again I had never perceived or even entertained such a possibility until I began listening to Him shift emphases, adapt rhetoric, and fashion varying modes of analogy to fit those with whom He was speaking."
Thanks to Lacey's latest and, unfortunately, last book, The Liberator (a revolutionary retelling of the New Testament), the Inspired by the Bible Experience: New Testament audio CD (nothing says "Oh my God" like Samuel L. Jackson channeling the voice of the Almighty), and Tickle's commentary, I've been immersed in scripture from some rather unique vantage points. Over the past year, instead of trying to memorize scripture and verse, I'm allowing these sweet holy words to fall on my ears and into my mouth. It's like I'm falling in love all over again with this radical love-making, rule-breaking, life-taking Christ.
So what do we do, my friends, in the face of our undeniably incongruent histories—which give us reason to forever suspect one another, a reason dramatically subverted by the call to embrace one another in the way of Jesus?
I believe Diana Butler Bass, again, shows us a way forward. She made the following comment while participating in a panel discussion at the last American Academy of Religion conference. The original context of her thought was the pursuit of friendship (referred to as "convergence") between post-mainline and post-evangelical Christians, yet it struck me as pertinent to this discussion:
"When I'm in rooms of clergy and theologians ... and we start talking about post-conservatism and post-liberalism ... I always remind them that those 'posts-' come out of a very distinctive historical experience. And those historical experiences are always going to remain part of our identity. They don't just go away because … [we] say we want to be friends. We're going to be standing in our conversations having coffee[, and] I've got Schleiermacher standing with me all the time, not John Stott. If we think about that conversation happening not just here and now but in that larger communion of saints … we are opening up conversational space for people who once killed each other. That is very gentle [work], and you can't just say, 'That never happened!' We're going to be doing this convergence work, but holding onto the things that we love and the things that make us who we are. ... It is a potential, terrible misstep for people who have been schooled in liberal Protestantism to let go of their identity for the sake of one happy, big family. ... We need to be who we really are ... but it doesn't mean we can't form something new together."
Change the context by switching the protestant ideological references to racial and socio-cultural ones and the gist of her argument remains credible. While you may stand with George Washington as the great hero of the American Revolution, I stand with Crispus Attucks. While you may have reconciled with John Brown, Emerson, and William Lloyd Garrison - of whom I am ever appreciative - I also stand just as proudly with Nat Turner, Geronimo, and Harriet Tubman. I stand with Sojourner Truth, while you may celebrate Robert E. Lee. To any conversation, in addition to the aforementioned, I also bring Olaudah Equiano, Marcus Garvey, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Zora Neal Hurston, Vernon Johns, Richard Wright, Stokely Carmichael, Sonya Sanchez, Wallace D. Mohammad, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin , James Baldwin, and many others of varying ideological stripe - and in welcoming me, you welcome them as well.
As a person of color in America, I have been constantly asked to honor, even celebrate, white men and women of historical and contemporary note, over and apart from less-than-honorable, glaring, even odious aspects of their public lives. Isn't it time all saw fit to afford one another the same grace, instead of holding one another completely hostage to our shortcomings? In post-racial hope, can we be that vulnerable with one another?
Even if you totally disagree, please don't make the ridiculous accusation that I am professing bigotry in any form or am aligning my-postmodern/postcolonial/postracial-self with Wright's thoroughly modern (and thus justifiable in that context) theology or politics. However, I must be able to own that I am inextricably bound to him in a common history of what it means to be black in America and that be okay. Perhaps we would not say we are completely ready for such a conversation, but it appears to be the one God is sending us.
Growing up, my Uncle Ralph taught me that you can't expect the unconverted heart to act converted. So I understand when some in the media don't handle this business of differing experiences well: they lack the resources. But we familiar with the way of Jesus can set an example worth emulating. In a brave new wiki-world, the privileged must stop making the ahistorical demand that the under-privileged take a moderate, conciliatory, even deferential posture to all past, present and future acts of disrespect, hostility or excess (and vice versa)—if we are to create something more beautiful, conversant with one another. This is, perhaps, the only way we can move forward together without our demons getting the best of us.
Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.
The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seeds into God.
For fools speak folly,
and their minds plot iniquity:
to practice ungodliness,
to utter error concerning the Lord,
to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied,
and to deprive the thirsty of drink.
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The genetically hip Bianca Jagger addressed the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's global summit in London last month—challenging Britain to lead the world in dismantling its nukes. "Who's going to give them up first?" she asked.
Of course, spiritual and religious leaders have long condemned the inhumanness of nuclear weapons. As Douglas Roche points out the current Sojourners magazine (Sleepwalking in a Nuclear Minefield, Sojourners, March 2008), "Nuclear weapons and human security cannot co-exist."
In 1983, the World Council of Churches, a fellowship of 347 denominations from virtually all Christian traditions in more than 120 countries, unequivocally rejected the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. (See more of the churches' statements.)
In Pope Benedict's 2006 World Day of Peace message, he criticized the idea of nuclear arms for security as "completely fallacious." He said, "The truth of peace requires that all—whether those governments which openly or secretly possess nuclear arms, or those planning to acquire them—agree to change their course by clear and firm decisions, and strive for a progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament. The resources which would be saved could then be employed in projects of development capable of benefiting all their people, especially the poor."
Even "The Governator" Arnold Schwarzenegger said in speech last fall, "Mistakes are made in every other human endeavor. Why should nuclear weapons be exempt? … A nuclear disaster will not hit at the speed of a glacier melting. It will hit with a blast. It will not hit with the speed of the atmosphere warming but of a city burning. Clearly, the attention focused on nuclear weapons should be as prominent as that of global climate change."
Roche, who is chair of the Middle Powers Initiative, states in his article in the current Sojourners magazine, that Congress has authorized the Bush administration "to develop and submit to the Congress a comprehensive nuclear weapons strategy for the 21st century." The centerpiece of this strategy is not nuclear disarmament. Instead, the plan is to upgrade our nuclear arsenal
Isn't it time we take real and effective action on containing nuclear weapons and nuclear materials? Dismantling the weapons is the first step. Who's going to take it?
Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.
Holy Week this year brings with it a sobering coincidence. As the church prepares to remember Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection, the nation is marking five years of war with Iraq. In response, Sojourners has released A Call to Lament and Repent for the sin of this war – signed by Jim Wallis, a number of Red Letter Christians and Sojourners board members, and nearly 25,000 friends and supporters.
The statement begins, "this season of Lent, we are truly living 'in darkness and in the shadow of death' as we mark, on March 19, 2008, the fifth anniversary of the war with Iraq. It is a war that is being waged by our country, financed by our taxes, and fought by our sisters and brothers. As U.S. Christians, we issue a call to the American church to lament and repent of the sin of this war."
It was an amazing day, and, we may look back to conclude it was a historic day. Before Barack Obama's speech yesterday, after the now infamous statements from his former pastor; the issue seemed to be a test of him. But after what may go down as one of the most significant addresses ever given about the history and future of race in America, the issue may now be a test of us. The examination of a candidate was transformed yesterday into an examination of a nation.
A young African American leader, more than four decades ago, told us about his dream for our nation. Yesterday, another young leader, who is also a black man, outlined what it would take to make that dream into a "more perfect union." No political leader has ever delivered such a comprehensive and, I would say, prophetic treatment of race in America.
Every American needs to watch and listen to Barack Obama's speech about the future that the U.S. could have. And I would suggest we watch the speech with our children. After watching, we should ask ourselves, and ask our children, if this is the vision for the U.S. that we and they really want. If it is, we will have moved from an issue over controversial comments to much higher ground. After the constant replaying of the same video tapes (which seems like a metaphor of our recent racial history in America), we listened to an invitation to turn the page and move forward.
We heard the vision of a new generation today, one that understands how injustice does indeed breed frustration and anger, but that to remain stuck in past anger and present frustration can be counter-productive and even self-destructive. We heard a vision characterized not by incendiary recrimination but by the possibility of changing the realities that have kept us stuck in a racial "stalemate" and a mired in a "cynical" and "static" view of America's painful divides. This was a speech that actually posited new hope for opportunity and equality, and even the beginning of the kind of racial reconciliation and unity which few have dared to speak of since the end of the civil rights movement.
We heard a political leader who, as a black man, can also sympathize with white resentment and frustration over racial politics, and who can see both the anger of a black mentor and the racial stereotypes of a white grandmother as both part of him and part of America. The most honest and compelling speech about race in decades could open the promise of a deeper national conversation about our racial past and future than we have had for some time. Obama's speech leaves the choice to us. The issue now is whether we will choose not to allow the angry and frustrating past prevent a more fair and hopeful future; or whether we will be forever bound by that past. To the question of whether race will continue to divide and conquer our hopes for a better America, Barack Obama had his answer, "Not this time." Now we each have to answer the question for ourselves.
This is not just about a candidate now, or a campaign; it is about the country and the choices we have to make about whether we will decide to bind our progress to one another - including those beyond our own tribe. Ask your children what they would have us do.
On a Sunday when Americans flooded houses of worship seeking words of comfort, hope, and healing, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago dared to forgo the singing of "God Bless America." Instead, Senator Barack Obama's pastor claimed the prophetic biblical message of the hour ought to call us to proclaim, "God Damn America."
The words remain jarring and infuriating. Wright's comments seem at best incomplete and untimely. At worst, they imply that God is vindictive, vengeful, and bloodthirsty, even during a time of tragedy--that the judgment of God is appropriately meted out through the tragic deaths of innocent people through terrorist acts of hatred and evil.
On Sept. 15, 2001, Rev. Wright was wrong. His words failed to connect with the pastoral needs of a nation in mourning.
Throughout his career, however, Rev. Wright has been "right" more often than not. He has followed in the traditions of Hebrew Testament prophets, challenging his nation to live up to its own creeds of justice and opportunity for all - including African Americans, other minorities, and the poor.
Wright is in good company. When his provocative language is read alongside the vitriolic words of many Hebrew Testament prophets, Wright's words ring true. The prophets connected their nation's injustice and neglect of the poor with the destruction of Israel, often using vitriolic language. The prophet Amos once described the wealthy women of Samaria as "fat cows." Isaiah referred to once faithful Israel as a prostitute.
Not only are most of Rev. Wright's words biblically correct; they are also historically accurate. The U.S. has participated in many acts of evil. From slavery to Jim Crow segregation, from sexism to the internment of Japanese during World War II, from environmental disasters to the neglect of the poor, America has a record on par with that of Hebrew Testament Israel.
When it comes to foreign policy, the U.S. did financially invest in South Africa during the days of apartheid, used the CIA to enact coups against democratically elected leaders in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s, and remains the only nation to use nuclear weapons. Perhaps these domestic and foreign policy actions prove that Rev. Wright was right.
But this is only a part of the picture. While the U.S. is far from perfect, the nation has made significant progress regarding rights for minorities and women. The U.S. has often been a force for good in the world, from helping to rebuild Japan and Western Europe after World War II to the vast amounts of private and government funds offered to deal with global crises like the HIV-AIDS and malaria crises in Africa. Rev. Wright was not entirely right.
On March 18, Barack Obama used his speech about race to appropriately distance himself from the most vitriolic of his pastor's rhetoric. He has also removed Rev. Wright from a position on his campaign's spiritual advisory committee.
In the Hebrew Testament, prophets were as a rule not insiders in the royal palace. Jeremiah's words of prophetic judgment became so disruptive to the King threw the prophet into jail. Just over 40 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave up his access to President Lyndon Baines Johnson to prophetically speak out against the war in Vietnam. Put simply, prophets and presidents don't mix.
Thankfully, Senator Obama was careful not to condemn the entire prophetic ministry of Rev. Wright. Our nation desperately needs the prophetic voice he has embodied over decades of public ministry. And no matter who our next president is, he or she would be well served to consider the words of Rev. Wright, for he has been more right than wrong.
Troy Jackson is senior pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and earned his Ph.D. in United States history from the University of Kentucky. His book Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader (The University Press of Kentucky, 2008) will be available in the fall. Troy is a participant in Sojourners' "Windchangers" grassroots organizing pilot project in Ohio to work on the Vote Out Poverty Campaign.
The week before the invasion of Iraq, I was locked in an e-mail debate over the war with a friend of mine from my home church in Texas. I explained to him why I was opposed to the war. He responded by saying that while he understood my opposition to the war as an Iraqi, as a Christian I should support it because it put America "on Israel's side – which is God's side – and that is the winning side."
A week after the fall of Baghdad he emailed me the following joke:
A Cowboy, an Indian, and an Arab were sitting around a table. The Cowboy was kicked back in his chair with his hat pulled down over his eyes. The Indian looked at the Arab and said, "My people used to be very great in number, but now they are very few in number. This is so very sad." Then the Arab said, "My people used to be small in number, but now we are very great in number. Why do you think this is?" Then the Cowboy sat up, tilted his hat back, looked at them both and said, "That's because we ain't played Cowboys and Arabs yet."
The man who sent it to me knew my Arab background, but even more appalling was that he had been educated in Christian schools and colleges, been active in full-time ministry, and was a lay leader in our church.
This past Palm Sunday, he and others like him probably waved palm branches in remembrance of the day Jesus entered Jerusalem before his crucifixion. What is interesting to note is that in Jesus' day, the palm branch was a sign of nationalism and military victory. By waving those palm branches, the people showed that they were expecting Jesus to rise as their military hero, overthrow their enemies and re-establish them as the top power in the world. But they failed to realize that Jesus came to overthrow a greater enemy than Rome, to redeem all of humanity and to establish a kingdom where the last would be first, the hungry would be fed, the homeless would be sheltered, the sick would be healed, the widow and orphan would be cared for, and where enemies would be forgiven ... and even invited to the table.
I think it is significant that Holy Week falls on the same week of the fifth anniversary of an unholy war. Why? For two reasons: First, because too many pastors and churches - from the run up to the war until now - have waved the flag before the Cross. In doing so, they missed the "Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven." And second, because it presents an opportunity for reflection on what the Cross accomplished for all of humanity, and for repentance for the sins that have been committed against the people of Iraq at the expense of our own ignorance and idolatry … and really bad jokes.
Rev. Omar Hamid Al-Rikabi is a campus minister at the University of Arkansas Wesley Foundation. He is the son of a Muslim father from Iraq and a Christian mother from Texas. He shares his stories on his blog at www.firstbornstories.com
If properly understood, Senator Barack Obama's remarks yesterday at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, constitute one of the most significant and honest public addresses ever made on America's 400-year struggle with race. Had we heeded DuBois' 1903 prophetic warning, The Souls of Black Folks, it may have found voice in the 20th century. There is a conversation America has, literally in some cases, been dying to have. That conversation is not in favor of any particular presidential candidate. Please don't relegate and dismiss it on those grounds. However, it is unlikely that we would be so inescapably confronted with such issues outside of a person of color experiencing some measure of success in a bid for the highest elected office in the land.
In her post, "Putting Rev. Wright's Preaching in Perspective," Diana Butler Bass implored us to listen better to one another. Now let me suggest something to listen for. The thought is simple, but the lesson is not: Not everyone has experienced America in the same way. And we must lay down the self-absorption that makes us think this doesn't matter, if we are ever to begin to appreciate each other.
Permit me this timely example. If you are not Black, you may not know that the Black church is the theatre in which Blacks have historically exorcised their demons - with the pastor as both theologue and thespian embodying the collective process of redemption for his/her people every week. Initially, church was the one place we could go that we weren't under massa's whip, which is why we relish it. Eventually, it became the center and sustainer of our community. So most of us understand Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a way that may escape others.
Church equaled life for us. Where else could we go to exorcise the demons of injustice and intransigence? Where else could we go to exorcise the marginalization and invalidation, the defeat and depression, the struggle and scorn? Where else could we go when our children asked - as my daughter did while coloring just the other day- if Jesus were brown or white? My answer was that he was born to Jewish parents, people of color, whom we usually refer to as olive-skinned. And her heartrending response at 5-years-old was: "Why can't he be white? In all the pictures, he's white!"
It was in church that we heard the story of a people who were considered least among the nations, scattered and subject to the whims of others. Their story taught us how to survive in exile. We listened close and learned that a healthy nationalism has been the most broadly successful defense against the ravages of imperialism. Thus, it was in the womb of the incontestable sense of ethnic validity given to me by Black liberationists/nationalists like Rev. Wright who were "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian" that I finally found enough courage to reach beyond my own tragic racial history.
From outside the Black experience, you can't legitimately critique this. Western Christianity hadn't been true enough to forestall the savageness of chattel slavery (a peculiar and altogether new institution of bondage in which for the first time in recorded history a people were legally, socially, theologically and scientifically defined as property, a thing, subhuman), let alone genocide, apartheid or discrimination. If an amalgamation of Black pride and Christological hope were the only way those of us who held onto it could remain Christian, so be it.
Notwithstanding, there have been those like King, non-nationalists, who by divine grace cultivated eyes to see and ears to hear glimpses of the kingdom that heretofore had escaped almost all of us. He and those like him caught a glimpse of a post-racial reality in God. (Not a non-racial reality—a well-meaning sociological nonentity—but post-racial: those who have suffered through the crucible of race and come out the other side determined to live beyond race—still in visceral awareness of its worst and unequivocal opposition to even the slightest of its indignities.) You and I could have such eyes and ears and tongues and lips, we're just not practiced enough.
Lest one be tempted to brandish the name of King in vain, as many are apt to do, we must immediately confess that 'post-racial' is a martyrdom posture in a relentlessly racial modern world. Forty or more years of privilege can alter the collective memory of a nation. But I remember. It was not the majority of middle- and upper-class blacks and whites who loved King while he was alive. I remember. He became America's hero only once dead. I remember. King and Shabazz were assassinated only as they moved closer to each other and closer to embodying justice as the birthright of the entire human family. I remember. Robeson was blacklisted and Hughes domesticated in children's literature texts. I remember. DuBois was expatriated and Washington's message appropriated to justify segregation. And I remember Douglass, magnificent Douglass, who up and decided one day "that however long [he] might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when [he] could be a slave in fact" - and vowed to give as good as he got from any person who thought otherwise. (And he did.) With a ferocity and intimidation unmatched by a mere mortal such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Douglass voiced a irresistibly brilliant and no less scathing critique of America that succeeded in having him sent abroad 'in service to his country' at the very time his eloquence and intellect were most sorely needed here. I remember.
So what do we do, my friends, in the face of our undeniably incongruent histories - which give us reason to forever suspect one another, a reason dramatically subverted by the call to embrace one another in the way of Jesus?
[to be continued...]
Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.
We must continually work hard so that each of our actions is a way of carrying on little conversations with God, not in any carefully prepared way but as it comes from the purity and simplicity of the heart.
- Brother Lawrence (c. 1605-1691)
The Practice of the Presence of God
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.
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Five years ago today, on March 18, the British Parliament debated whether or not to support the pending U.S. attack on Iraq. It was already clear that the Bush administration was determined to attack, and desperately needed support from the U.K. That morning, Sojourners placed an ad in five major British newspapers – The Guardian, The Independent, The London Times, The Telegraph, and The Financial Times.
The ad was signed by five American church leaders who had met with then Prime Minister Tony Blair a month earlier in London – Jim Wallis (President of Sojourners), John Bryson Chane (Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C.), Clifton Kirkpatrick (Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA), Melvin Talbert (Ecumenical Officer of the United Methodist Council of Bishops), and Daniel Weiss (Immediate past General Secretary of the American Baptist Churches in the USA).
Headlined, "Prime Minister Blair, it is two minutes before midnight. We need you to be a true friend to America in this critical hour," the ad began, "The world needs you to find a 'third way' between war and inaction. It is two minutes before midnight, and the world's people are desperate for an alternative to war." It outlined a six-point plan with solid options for disarming Iraq without war.
The debate in Parliament was heated, and we heard that the text of our ad had been read on the floor. Nonetheless, the final vote approved the government's motion calling for military action against Iraq. There were significant defections by Labor Party members voting against their prime minister, and several high-level resignations from the cabinet. But the U.K. was committed to supporting the U.S.-led war.
Five years later, with the American, British, and Iraqi lives that have been lost, and the hundreds of billions of dollars that has been spent, we cannot help but wonder how history might have turned out differently had that appeal been heeded.
Duane Shank is the senior policy adviser for Sojourners.
It has simmered throughout this campaign, and now race has exploded into the center of the media debate about the presidential race. Just when a black political leader is calling us all to a new level of responsibility, hope, and unity, the old and divisive rhetoric of race from both blacks and whites is rearing its ugly head to bring down the best chance we have had for years of finally moving forward.
And that is indeed the real issue here. A black man is closer to possibly becoming president than ever before in U.S. history. And this black man is not even running as "a black man," but as a new kind of political leader who believes the country is ready for a new kind of politics. But a new kind of politics and a new face for political leadership is deeply threatening to all the forces that represent the old kind of politics in the U.S. And all the rising focus on race in this election campaign has one purpose and one purpose alone—to stop Barack Obama from becoming president of the United States.
Barack Obama should win or lose his party's nomination or the presidency based on the positions he takes regarding the great issues of our time and his capacity to lead the country and the U.S.'s role in the world. He must not win or lose because of the old politics of race in the U.S. That would be a tragedy for all of us.
The cable news stations and talk radio are playing carefully selected excerpts of the most potentially incendiary statements from Rev. Jeremiah Wright's fiery sermons. Wright is the retiring pastor of Barack Obama and his family's home Trinity Church in Chicago. Obama, while affirming the tremendous work his church has done in his city and around the nation, has condemned the most controversial remarks of his pastor. But the whole controversy points to the enormous gap in understanding between the mainstream black community in the U.S. and the experience of many white Americans. And that is what we are going to have to heal if we are ever to move forward.
Here is what I mean.
There is a deep well of both frustration and anger in the African-American community in the U.S. And those feelings are borne of the concrete experience of real oppression, discrimination, and blocked opportunities that most of America's white citizens take for granted. African Americans across the spectrum of income and success will speak personally to those feelings of frustration and anger, when white people are willing to listen. But usually we are not. In 2008, to still not comprehend or seek to understand the reality of black frustration and anger is to be in a state of white denial - which, very sadly, is where many white Americans are.
The black church pulpit has historically been a place of prophetic truth-telling about the realities that black people experience in their own country. Indeed, the black church has often been the only place where such truths are ever told. And, black preachers have had the pastoral task of nurturing the spirits of people who feel beaten down week after week. Strong and prophetic words from black church pulpits are often a source of comfort and affirmation for black congregations. The truth is that many white Americans would indeed feel uncomfortable with the rhetoric of many black preachers from many black churches all across the country.
But if you look beyond the grainy black-and-white clips of the dashiki-clad Rev. Wright and the angry black male voice (all designed to provoke stereotypes and fear), and actually listen to what his words are saying about the U.S. being run by "rich white people" while blacks have cabs speeding by them, and about the U.S.'s misdeeds around the world, it's hard to disagree with many of the facts presented. It's rather the angry tone of Wright's comments that provides the offense and the controversy.
Ironically, a new generation of black Americans is now eager and ready to move beyond the frustration and anger to a new experience of opportunity and hope. And nobody represents that shift more than Barack Obama. There is a generational shift occurring within the black community itself. This shift is between an older generation that is sometimes perceived to be stuck in the politics of victimization and grievance, and a younger generation that believes that opportunity and progress are now possible—not by ignoring, but by being committed to actually changing the facts of oppression and discrimination.
Barack Obama represents that hope of dealing with the substance of the issues of injustice while at the same time articulating the politics of hope, and even the possibility of racial unity. Obama's attraction to many who are white, especially a new generation, demonstrates the promise of a new racial politics in the U.S. But to be a leader for a new generation of black Americans, Barack Obama had to be firmly rooted in the black church tradition, where the critique of white America, the sustenance of the African-American community, and God's promise for the future are all clearly articulated. That's why he began attending Trinity Church, where he was converted to Jesus Christ in the black liberationist tradition of, among others, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
So it would be a great tragedy if the old rhetoric of black frustration and anger were to now hurt Barack Obama, who has become the best hope of beginning to heal that very frustration and anger. Obama has never chosen to talk about race in the way that Rev. Jeremiah Wright does on the video clips that keep playing, and indeed has never played "the race card" at any time in this election. It's been his opponents that have, especially the right-wing conservative media machine that wants the U.S. to believe he is secretly a Muslim and from a "racist" church.
This most recent controversy over race just demonstrates how enormous the gap still is between whites and blacks in the U.S. - in our experience and our capacity to understand one another. May God help us to heal that divide and truly bless America.
For fools speak folly,
and their minds plot iniquity:
to practice ungodliness,
to utter error concerning the Lord,
to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied,
and to deprive the thirsty of drink.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
The media frenzy over the remarks of Barack Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, raise critical challenge to the prophetic role and voice of the black church. These "incendiary" remarks have set off a firestorm in the media, exposing the deep divide that exists on Sundays - America's most segregated hour of the week. This controversy serves as a stark reminder that the problem of the color line that still divides the U.S. and its churches. This often misguided debate obscures the rich and necessary prophetic role of the black church. Most coverage fails to capture the competing narratives and self-definitions of the U.S. that coexist depending on one's race and social location. While I'm uncomfortable with some of Dr. Wright's overly provocative rhetoric, and disagree with some of his claims (like his suggestion that AIDS was a creation of the U.S. government), I still vehemently defend the prophetic tradition that Rev. Wright has advanced over the course of 36 years of ministry. I agree with the Rev. Otis Moss III, the new Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, that we do a grave disservice by boiling down over 207,000 minutes of Dr. Wright's preaching into a handful of 30-second sound bites, most taken out of context.
Many may be wondering what I mean by prophetic voice and asking why it is so critical for the full vocation of the church and the health of our democracy. Prophets foretell the future in the name of God, speaking truth to power against injustice while calling us back to God's word and kingdom. According to Obery Hendricks, "prophetic speech is characterized by an overwhelming sense of an encounter with God and a message of moral and political judgment that a prophet feels divinely compelled to proclaim … to change social orders that have stratified inequities of power and privilege and wealth so all can have access to the fullest fruits of life". Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and so many other biblical prophets did not mince words or shy away from controversy. Like these prophets, prophetic preachers are often misunderstood, persecuted, and sometimes even killed for their words. Jesus continues this long and rich tradition when he says in Matthew 23:3, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith." This is also exemplified in the gospel of Luke when he overturns the tables of the money changers in the temple just after riding a donkey into Jerusalem on the Palm Sunday that the church just commemorated.
Arguably, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. embodied the best of the black prophetic tradition as one who courageously pronounced judgment against America for the sin of racism and the cancer of Jim Crow segregation. But King also called on America become the beloved community, ensuring that God's demands for dignity and justice and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution were afforded to all Americans. King's life was cut tragically short exactly 40 years ago in April because of his prophetic witness - describing the war in Vietnam as a "demonic suction tube," calling the U.S. "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, and forewarning to striking sanitation workers in Memphis that like Dives in the parable of Lazarus, "America is going to hell if we don't use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children have the basic necessities of life." Our nation is quick to romanticize the Dr. King of Montgomery and Selma, but often ignores the King of Memphis that demanded a living wage, or the King of Riverside Church who declared silence around the Vietnam War as betrayal.
A preacher's job sometimes requires prodding and provoking a congregation, shining a light on some of our most uncomfortable realities and hard-to-accept truths. I find it hard to believe that anyone could attend a church for years and never take issue with at least some of the things that were said by even the most respected and beloved pastor. Black prophetic preaching often criticizes America for its transgressions, contradictions, and hypocrisy, but at its best does this out of a deep and abiding belief in God's justice and love for what America could become if it lived out the full promise of her ideals. When the prophetic tradition holds up a mirror to our nation's misdeeds and imperfections, it stands tall with the biblical prophets of old. This is good company to keep indeed.
Adam Taylor is director of campaigns and organizing for Sojourners.
Jim Wallis talks with Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Harry Jackson (High Impact Leadership), and Sammy Rodriguez (National Hispanic Leadership Conference) about the broadening evangelical agenda. Watch it:
During the last four days, more than 100 Iraq Veterans Against the War combat veterans, academics, and international guests shared their experiences with the world through Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations. They offered their accounts in the hopes that they would induce a bit of accountability in the halls of Congress, and detailed the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the occupations of the few who profit, whose profession it is to ensure the longevity of this and other violent conflicts.
My own involvement was in the form of bearing witness [click here to watch the video] to the intricacies and fallibilities of the Rules of Engagement I encountered in my 14 months in combat. Many other panelists offered corroborating evidence and shared similar stories of inadequate training in the use of deadly force, and some explained the troubling, but verifiable, cases in which such restrictions were utterly ignored or outright rejected. In other panels, testifiers shared their experience with the failure of the VA system, outlined the presence of gender discrimination and racism in the military, and described corporate pillaging and war profiteering. The entire event was streamed live to the Web via IVAW's Web site and blogged live via KPFA Radio. Many news articles were written as a result, and the Department of Defense even issued a statement.
I was in the minority as a professed Christian, and I cannot blame my fellow compatriots for their occasional discomfort with the oft-misrepresented ideologies (Religious Right) of the Christian tradition. To my surprise, it was difficult to even blurt out in my own testimony that it was my faith, and not a reaction to the political, economic, or social reality of these conflicts, that inspired me to lay my weapon down. Furthermore, there was no shortage of personal courage displayed throughout the entire event: testifiers ripping off or tearing up the burdensome medals they wore, tears shed in bitter remorse and agony, and (unfortunately) failure to control one's language in frustration and angst. Our critics (whom we invited beforehand, and whom politely agreed to a rigorous code of conduct—to which they submitted faithfully and respectfully) even had some constructive, informative observations to share.
The weekend was never cast as a protest; there were no picket signs or chanting, no march or formation, and it was closed to the public (making the "Gathering of Eagles" just off campus the only actual protesters in attendance). The members and guests who gave "testimony" (a term with which we in the church are well-versed) did so only in the sense that it was an "account" of their experience.
There was one interruption, during the first panel on Friday, where an older gentleman trespassed onto the campus and shouted that people "lied and good men died." He also speculated that those testifying were betraying good men. Interestingly enough, he was NOT talking about our current commander in chief, who is not only directly responsible (according to military tradition and the UCMJ) for the 4,468 American lives lost under his watch, but also for 935 "false statements" (isn't that the same as a "lie?") his administration made in the months leading up to the invasion of a nation we ourselves armed and financed. Besides, the gospels remind us to be wary of any king of men who would reap what he does not sow, or burden his subjects with a yoke he would not carry himself.
Finally, as carefully as I chose to tread with my own faith background, the immense healing properties of confession were hard to ignore. Tears flowed and men of the highest caliber embraced unashamed and readily admitted their reliance on one another. It was an awesome experience that I will forever be proud to have been part of. These honest and humble accounts are a much-needed and too often overlooked offering that has been laid before the American people, a heavy yoke broken by the power of confession and repentance by contrite hearts.
Will America answer the call to metanoia and turn from its destructive, exploitative ways? Will we lay the idols of oil and nationalism and greed upon the altar, and seek a more firm and lasting peace with our neighbors in the global community?
Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and has co-founded a faith-based veterans assistance initiative called Centurion's Purse, which seeks to provide financial and spiritual relief to fellow service members in need. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.
Five years after bombs first exploded over Baghdad with a "shock and awe" display of staggering military might, the Iraq war continues with tragic costs and still-unseen consequences.
First, we mourn and honor the American and Iraqi dead whose lost lives are the ultimate reminder of war's cruelty. These many thousands gone are not statistics. Fathers, mothers, husbands, and sisters will never come home again. Children will grow up without parents. Grief etched on the human heart does not fade like today's headlines.
The late Pope John Paul II warned before the invasion of Iraq that "war is always a defeat for humanity." It's impossible to calculate the damage done by war to the human spirit. As faithful citizens, we continue to seek justice that is the foundation of all peace. Speaking in a triumphal tone that divided the world into good and evil, President Bush described the "war on terror" as a "crusade." We have learned again during this dark era of fear and militarism that religion used in the service of power – the uniting of cross and sword – is a betrayal of faith's prophetic spirit and call to humility.
Author James Carroll, whose Constantine's Sword documents how Christianity's rise as a religion of empire stoked the historical flames of anti-Semitism, spoke movingly last week at the Washington National Cathedral - reminding us that "No war is holy." The religious imagination should help temper the fervor of American exceptionalism. More than ever we need to reclaim spiritual humility and pray, as Abraham Lincoln once did, that we are on God's side rather than claiming endorsement from the divine.
In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican and former general of the Army, warned that a growing "military-industrial complex" has grave implications for democracy if vigilance is not paid to how freedom can be trampled in the name of strength and security. Six years later, Martin Luther King Jr. preached against the war in Vietnam and said that a "nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." We need to heed these powerful words more than ever.
Along with the profound human and spiritual costs of war, we have squandered billions of dollars that could have been spent providing Americans with health care, living wages, better public schools, and services to help the most vulnerable. Just as the ambitious anti-poverty programs of President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" campaign fizzled in the distant jungles of Vietnam, the Iraq war has drained limited resources from programs essential to building a culture for the common good. The gap between rich and poor has reached Depression-era standards. Our economy teeters on the brink of recession. American jobs are sent abroad as corporations seek cheap labor and minimal regulation. Meanwhile, companies like Bechtel, DynCorp, and Lockheed Martin earn record profits providing weapons and services for the war.
We have also lost a proper respect for patriotic dissent. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans who spoke out against preemptive war were told by a former Bush press secretary "to watch what they say and do." The millions who marched against the war were viewed with suspicion. Speaking for peace was subversive. The best minds of our generations were told to salute the flag and keep quiet. The late Rev. William Sloan Coffin Jr., a Christian unbowed in his will to speak truth to power, once described true patriotism as "a lover's quarrel" with your country. We must reclaim this reverence for engaged dissent.
It's easy to feel demoralized when we look back on these past five years. But the Christian faith teaches us to be undaunted bearers of a hope that refuses to yield to darkness. We look to the future strengthened by the abundant spirit of a God who comforts us in our sorrow and calls us to create the world anew.
Alexia Kelley is the executive director for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, and a member of the Red Letter Christians.
It was perhaps the most practical and personal question asked during a recent meeting of Iraqi civil society leaders who had gathered to advise the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) about its future peacebuilding work in Iraq.
The young Iraqi woman who asked the question saw it as the litmus test of whether "peacebuilding" is just nice talk, or whether it holds promise in an Iraq that has fractured along ethnic and religious lines, and where thousands of families have lost loved ones as a result of the U.S.-led war.
During the buildup to war, I fasted for 40 days. Each day I sent a letter to President George W. Bush, urging him to consider alternatives to war with Iraq. In my 40th letter, I wrote: "The question is not whether the United States can 'prevail' on the battlefield in Iraq. Likely it can. The more important question is what kind of world will there be a year from now and five years from now as a result of war? Will Iraq and the Middle East be more stable?"
Five years, $500 billion, and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of human fatalities later, the situation in Iraq is fragile at best. Almost 700 Iraqis were killed in February 2008. Across the country, many Iraqis are out of work. Most still don't have basic services like regular electricity.
And contrary to President Bush's promise in 2003 that the road to peace in Jerusalem goes through Baghdad, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at a low ebb. The U.S.-led war in Iraq has contributed to the popularity of more radical groups like Hamas. Ironically, the democracies the president promised five years ago have produced leaders that the U.S. fails to recognize or fully support today.
It is true that the number of war casualties has dropped during the last six months - although the numbers are still quite high and have begun to rise again this February and March. U.S. leaders credit the military surge for the positive trend. But the Iraqi leaders who gathered to advise MCC said that casualties are down because Iraqi society has now become almost completely segregated according to ethnic group membership.
They said that a healthy future for Iraq depends not on segregating Iraqis by homogeneous groups, but by developing projects that require Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, Muslims, and Christians to work together for a united Iraq.
The weakness of war as a foreign policy tool is that it undermines the very conditions necessary to create stable societies. Courageous Iraqi civil society leaders will play a critical role in pointing Iraq toward a better future. They deserve our full support.
J. Daryl Byler and spouse Cindy Byler are Mennonite Central Committee's representatives for Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine. They live in Amman, Jordan.
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They lift up their voices, they sing for joy;
they shout from the west over the majesty of the Lord.
Therefore in the east give glory to the Lord;
in the coastlands of the sea glorify the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.
From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise,
of glory to the Righteous One.
But I say, I pine away,
I pine away. Woe is me!
For the treacherous deal treacherously,
the treacherous deal very treacherously.
A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us—not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.
The current media flap over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor, strikes me as nothing short of strange. Anyone who attends church on a regular basis knows how frequently congregants disagree with their ministers. To sit in a pew is not necessarily assent to a message preached on a particular day. Being a church member is not some sort of mindless cult, where individuals believe every word preached. Rather, being a church member means being part of a community of faith—a gathered people, always diverse and sometimes at odds, who constitute Christ's body in the world.
But the attack on Rev. Wright reveals something beyond ignorance of basic dynamics of Christian community. It demonstrates the level of misunderstanding that still divides white and black Christians in the United States. Many white people find the traditions of African-American preaching offensive, especially when it comes to politics.
I know because I am one of those white people. My first sustained encounter with African-American preaching came in graduate school about twenty years ago. I had been assigned as a teaching assistant to a course in Black Church Studies. The placement surprised me, since I had no background in the subject. But the professor assured me that "anyone with experience teaching American religion" would be able to handle the load.
The subject matter was not, as the professor indicated, difficult. The emotional content, however, was. To prepare, I had to read literally thousands of pages of black preaching and theology covering the entire scope of American history. While the particulars of preaching changed through time, one thing did not. Throughout the entire corpus, black Christian leaders leveled a devastating critique against their white brothers and sisters—accusing white Christians of maintaining "ease in Zion" while allowing black people to suffer injustice and oppression.
Typical of the form used by black preachers is Frederick Douglass' address, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" first delivered on July 5, 1852. The address, a political sermon, forcefully attacks white culture. "Fellow-citizens," Douglass proclaims, "above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wails of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them." He goes on to calls American conduct "hideous and revolting" and accuses white Christians of trampling upon and disregarding both the constitution and the Bible. He concluded his sermon with the words, "For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."
This was very hard to take. I confess: nearly everything I read that semester pained and angered me. But four months of listening to voices that I wanted to reject made me different. I began to hear the power of the critique. I came to appreciate the prophetic nature of black preaching. I recognized that these voices emerged from a very distinct historical experience. And I admired the narrative interplay between the Bible and social justice. Over time, they taught me to hear the Gospel from an angular perspective—the angle of slaves, freed blacks, of those who feared lynching, of those who longed for Africa, those who could not attend good schools. From them, I learned that liberation through Jesus was a powerful thing. And that white Americans really did need to repent when it came to race.
Learning to listen was not easy. It took patience, historical imagination, and lots of complaining to my friends—even my African-American ones. Eventually, I figured out that even if your ancestors had been the oppressors, you can enter into the world of those who had been oppressed with generosity and a heart open to transformation.
As MSNBC, CNN, and FOX endlessly play the tape of Rev. Wright's "radical" sermons today, I do not hear the words of a "dangerous" preacher (at least any more dangerous than any preacher who takes the Gospel seriously!) No, I hear the long tradition that Jeremiah Wright has inherited from his ancestors. I hear prophetic critique. I hear Frederick Douglass. And, mostly, I hear the Gospel slant—I hear it from an angle that is not natural to me. It is good to hear that slant.
That is not, of course, comfortable for white people. Nor is it easily understood in sound bites. It does not easily fit in a contemporary political campaign. But it is a deep spiritual river in American faith and culture, a river that—as I had to learn—flows from the throne of God.
Diana Butler Bass holds a doctorate in American religion from Duke University. She is the author of six books including Christianity for the Rest of Us (HarperOne, 2006).
A modern-day version of the story of David and Goliath is quickly unfolding at Ohio's State House. The "Davids" of this story are the faith-based groups, housing advocates, consumer, community action, and other anti-poverty organizations around the state. "Goliath" is the powerful payday lending industry that has grown to more than 1,600 stores and has gross revenues of $2 billion annually. The issue in question is whether Ohio's 12-year-old law on payday lending should be changed to provide basic protections for some 500,000 borrowers. The current law is so weak that it could be best titled, "Ohio's Loan Shark Protection Act."
Ohio is ground zero in a battle for the industry's survival. The industry has a privileged position in the marketplace due to special-interest legislation passed in 1995. During that time, the industry received an exemption from Ohio's usury laws that permits them to charge 391% interest on a typical $300 two-week loan. They use a postdated check as security and are not interested in a borrower's ability to repay. When the loan comes due, borrowers are more often than not forced to seek another cash advance to pay off the first one. This starts them down the path of multiple loans, which places them into a debt trap by which they end up owing their soul to the neighborhood payday lending store. A report by the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending, titled "Trapped by Design: Ohio Payday Lending by the Numbers," found that the average Ohio payday borrower takes out 12.6 loans per year. More than 300,000 borrowers find themselves ensnared in a debt trap from which they cannot easily escape.
Three payday lending bills are currently pending in the Financial Institutions, Real Estate and Securities (FIRES) Committee of the Ohio House. Two bills, H.B. 333 and H.B. 358 represent real reform for Ohio consumers, while H.B. 338 is an industry-supported bill that would allow them to conduct business as usual. Early signs in the committee do not seem favorable for consumers. The vast majority of the committee seemed unimpressed when a "whistle-blower" who had worked four years in the industry testified on January 22, 2008. Terrence Jent told the committee how the business model involves preying on the financially uneducated customer and those in significant financial trouble. According to Jent, "Nearly one half of the payday loan customers at both of the companies I've worked for were individuals that were drawing some form of Social Security or other retirement benefit." He described harassing collection procedures and how employees were instructed to encourage customers to go to another payday store if they were unable to pay their loan. Jent also stated that the lender has the ability to electronically debit the borrower's bank account to collect the loan.
Many are closely watching whether the 127th Ohio General Assembly ends up standing with David or Goliath. After all, Goliath has a lot of muscle and consumers did not fare too well last year during the debacle of the consumer sales practice act.
The Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending strongly supports H.B. 333, sponsored by Representatives Bill Batchelder (R-69) and Bob Hagan (D-60). Among other things, the bill would cap interest rates at 36%, limit to one the number of loans a borrower can have at any one time, and create a linked deposit program to provide an incentive to banks to make small loans. Advocates are also encouraged by the growth of alternatives to payday lending, such as those offered by the stretch loan program of many credit unions.
It is imperative, however, that the playing field in Ohio be leveled so that a viable small-loan industry can evolve. In this time of economic hardship and recession, payday loans are counterproductive to a healthy Ohio economy. They enrich the corporations who operate them while stripping wealth from low- and moderate-income borrowers who use them. Ohioans deserve better.
Thomas J. Allio Jr., is chair of the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending
He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."
Society dictates how power is distributed. Institutions and ideologies determine who has privilege to be dominant and who must defer. Some persons are given great power to make choices for themselves and other people and are protected from the consequences of their choices.... Religion serves to define the nature of power and its legitimate uses. Religious leaders must choose whether to collude with the dominant culture as sanctioning agents of abusive power or to be prophetic critics of the way power is distributed and defined.
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Did it matter, now that I stood in front of his body, still connected to tubes and vents and drips, but a body that had already breathed its last?
No, it didn't really matter. I stepped to the bed and laid a hand on his still-warm forehead and prayed. I had always wondered if I would know what to say. And as I opened my mouth, I realized I didn't need to know what to say. If ever the Holy Spirit interceded for me, it was then.
"Oh God, as first you gave this life to us, so now we give him back to you. You know the secrets of our hearts and we pray that this soul may find peace with you. Amen."
The med techs and nurses began to clean the body as I went to get the kaffan, the traditional Muslim burial cloth. We can't—and don't—perform the ritual Islamic washing here in the American hospital in Afghanistan, but we do try to prepare the body as best we can for the family. In some small way, the hospital staff tries to make a difference; though they could not save this man's life, they can at least return the body with some degree of respect and dignity. It is the right thing to do. It just might also save someone else's life down the line.
Because he may or may not have been the bomb-maker. Whether he was or not, the exploding bomb killed him. And as his brother hovered nearby in the ICU, I thought about our small part in the cycle of violence that just maybe had a chance to be broken right here, this very moment.
If he was the bomb-maker, would his brother go home and say, "Even though he planned to kill them, the Americans still tried to save his life …. They operated, they bandaged, and when he died, they washed and wrapped him and prayed over him." And if he wasn't the bomb-maker, would his brother go home and say, "There are people who tried to kill my brother and there are people who tried to save my brother and they are not the same people."
I don't have any answers to that question. I don't know what the brother did when he took him home to bury him. I cannot see into the hearts of people as God does. But I pray for them. And if I am honest, I know I do it for two reasons. Jesus commanded it. And if prayer is as powerful as I believe it is, the neck I save might just be my own.
U.S. Air Force ChaplainCaptain Marianne Kehoe is an ordained elder in the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church. She is currently serving in a large U.S. military hospital in Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, President Bush spoke to the annual convention of the National Religious Broadcasters. In a speech that The New York Times described as "Citing Faith, Bush Defends War Actions", he declared that “The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency; it is the right decision at this point in my presidency; and it will forever be the right decision.” After five years of war, his lack of reflection and, well, characteristic hubris should no longer surprise me, but the very boldness still does.
And why is he so certain he is right? It’s all because he believes in freedom:
I believe - and I know most of you, if not all of you, believe - that every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth has been given the great gift of liberty by an almighty God. And today I want to speak about this precious gift, the importance of protecting freedom here at home, and the call to offer freedom to others who have never known it. … when confronted with the realities of the world, I have made the decision that now is the time to confront, now is the time to deal with this enemy, and now is the time to spread freedom as the great alternative to the ideology it adheres to. … we undertake this work because we believe that every human being bears the image of our maker. That's why we're doing this.
Many U.S. Christians disagree. We also see the image of God in all those who have become the collateral damage of this awful war, and in the countless American lives snuffed out or broken forever. Also on Tuesday, along with Christian leaders on our Sojourners board like Brian McLaren, Mary Nelson, Wes Granberg-Michaelson, Barbara Williams Skinner, and Ron Sider, we launched “A Call to Lament and Repent.”
Rather than celebrating the decision to go to war, we lament the suffering and violence in Iraq. We mourn the nearly 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died, the unknown numbers of both who are wounded in body and mind, and the more than 4 million Iraqis who are displaced from their homes. And we repent of our failure to fully live the teaching of Jesus to be peacemakers.
We also believe that repentance must go deeper than just being sorry – it means a commitment to a new direction. This fifth anniversary of the war is the time for U.S. Christians to rededicate ourselves to the biblical vision of a world in which nations do not attempt to resolve international problems by making unilateral preemptive wars on other nations. While we are not utopians and believe that human beings and nations will have conflicts, given the toll that war has taken in our violence torn world, we must begin to learn to resolve our inevitable conflicts by learning the arts and skills of conflict resolution and a new international approach to just peace-making.
I’m grateful that since Tuesday, nearly 20,000 of you have already joined with us. Yesterday a friend of mine wrote to me. He is a strong Christian layperson, a successful businessman, and a lifelong Republican. But he said, “I have been looking for some form of penance since I argued so strenuously with you back in 2003 that, of course, our government had definitive proof of WMD, or we would not take the enormous geopolitical risk of invading Iraq. This enterprise seemed to be exactly the penance vehicle I needed.”
The 40th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination - April 4, 1968 - will soon be upon us. As I remember Dr. King against the backdrop of this 2008 presidential election cycle, I reflect on what a brilliant political strategist he was. He was able to bring corporations to the point of acquiescence without resorting to violence or bribery. He was able to pass legislation that changed the daily lives of not only blacks but also women, people of faith, and immigrants - without ever being elected to public office or attempting to buy political influence. He was able to garner and leverage the attention of the entire international community on behalf of America's poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised - without ever being appointed to an ambassadorship or other high-profile international post. He was able to remind U.S. citizens what a democracy was and to engender a sense of moral responsibility that, more than 40 years later, challenges us to be the good we want to see in the world. King was a political genius.
With a vision this grand, one would think that the lion's share of King's work would have been on the national and international stage, yet somehow King expected to bring all this about by local, contextual, direct action: organizing to gain political access and self-determination for Blacks, advocating on behalf of unemployed Appalachian whites, striking with sanitation workers. I believe his ability to accomplish each of these things was predicated on a very simple, but profound realization: All politics are identity politics. The question is: whom does one choose to identify with?
We must understand that King didn't identify with whom he did because he had to. King received early admittance into Morehouse College at age 15. He had secured his doctorate by the age of 26. From Boston University, he could have gone any number of places, but he chose to return to the South - the Deep South - the hot-bed of racial tension in America in 1953. This became a habit that he continued to practice all his life. He would position himself in the mist of injustice and turmoil, and though it did not serve him personally, he would stand in solidarity with the marginalized, giving voice to their plight. This was King's identity politics.
Nowadays, when we hear the talking heads in the media discussing identity politics, they talk about groups that share what the privileged like to term "special interests" - Blacks, homosexuals, Muslims, women, the disabled, veterans, immigrants, etc. - as if the interests of these people groups are somehow outside or beyond the mainstream. What is never discussed is that the interests of the already privileged are no less specialized and linked to their identity as well.
Yet King never got caught up into pitting one group's interest against another. He took his cue from Jesus. Jesus consistently chose to identify with those who were oppressed, the captive, the outsider, the poor, the sick, the voiceless. His represented an others-interested politics, an others-interested identity. And his way turns our typical identity politics on its head.
We are admonished daily, at times even from the pulpit, to vote and to seek our own so-called "enlightened" self-interest. Yet I can't recall one story from the biblical narrative in which a situation was improved or resolved by the protagonist attending more carefully to his or her own self-interest.
In his parable of "The Reckoning" (Matt 25:31-46), Jesus tells of those who are rewarded for feeding, clothing, sheltering, and freeing him. They responded to their good fortune with bewilderment: "Lord, when did we ever see you hungry, needy, a stranger, or in prison?" And Jesus announces, "Insomuch as you've done it unto the least of these my brethren, you've done unto me." Even in judgment, Jesus chooses to identify with all of humanity. I can imagine King sitting in his study reading this and saying like a good-ol' Baptist preacher, "If it was good enough for my Jesus, it's good enough for me!"
So in this politically charged season, when race and gender and ideology are, as we have seen already, apt to become weapons in a war for the hearts and minds and hopes and dreams of all U.S. citizens, all politics remain identity politics - but that doesn't mean we have to pit our identity against the identity of another. In the spirit of King - and Jesus before him - we can choose to identify with more than just ourselves. We too can be both privileged and unprivileged, black and white, Asian and Latino, Muslim and Jew, Christian and Pagan, rich and poor, citizen and immigrant, national and international, public and private, veterans and peacemakers, Republican and Democrat, homosexual and unborn, blue collar, white collar, and no collar.
We can know each other's suffering, be acquainted with each other's grief, and work on each other's behalf to heal the hurts that have for too long divided the human family and robbed us of the solidarity that is, perhaps, our only hope of a brighter tomorrow.
Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Power is of God, but like all God’s gifts, humankind has the freedom to misuse power. When this happens, it becomes corrupt, and it violates and dehumanizes others. Powerlessness limits human development and denies persons their promised fulfillment.... We have each been given the power to do what we can do, but are we willing to claim it? To accept it? Or is it safer to ignore or rationalize it away? Is claiming this kind of power worth the cost of change or the risk of rejection?
Helen Bruch Pearson Do What You Have the Power to Do
At that time Jesus said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”
In Ramah, a voice is heard, crying and weeping loudly. Rachel mourns for her children and refuses to be comforted, because they are dead. Jeremiah 31:15
Last week a spate of four deaths in our Chicago high schools was blamed on gangs and guns. Last year, the public high school killings totaled 27, and already this year 18 have been killed. As one commentator said, "It's war on our Chicago streets and in our schools." Kids held up signs saying, "Stop Killing" and "Can't you see we want to grow up?" As we approach the 5th Anniversary of the Iraq war that moved us into devastating violence, we must take stock of our failed policies in Iraq and at home. Our current approach is not working.
Dr. Carl Bell, an expert on youth violence, talked about what prevention will take. He said young people need a sense of connectness, access to medicine and counseling, self-esteem and a sense of community. They also need to be able to communicate when they need help. Mayor Daley blamed glorified gun violence on tv and used as entertainment. So many opportunities for alternatives to violence.
Just think of what could happen if we got out of Iraq and redirected that $400 million A DAY we now spend to revitalize quality public education for all, create alternative life giving work experiences, training and jobs for disaffected youth, enable universal health care. Enabling youth to complete school, find meaningful employment would staunch the one way train to prison (which also costs us $25,000 per person annually). We have the resources. Do we have the will?
Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners.
Jeff Carr was Sojourners' chief operations officer before taking a post as L.A.'s gang czar (anti-gang czar, that is) last summer. He was featured in this report by CBS News, and I'm sure he would appreciate it if you'd join with the Sojourners team in supporting his difficult work with your prayers. Watch it:
When I got an invite to attend a screening of the documentary, Purple State of Mind, I went in expecting to see a blue state v. red state dialogue/debate with some quest to find political common ground.
Wrong.
Instead, I was treated to an honest and humorous dialogue between Craig Detweiler and John Marks, two former college roommates. The year 1984 wasn't only the name of a famous Orwellian book, but this year also signified Craig's first year in the faith, John's last. After this fateful year, the two men went on their separate faith paths. The film picks upon their conversation some 25 years later.
At first I struggled with the depiction of Christianity portrayed by these dudes. As a budding writer, I was far too geeky to be an Uber-high-school-athlete-turned-Christian-missionary like Craig. Nor did I have that Barbie-beautiful-Christian lifestyle that John eventually left behind. Simply put, my dogs ate my Barbies. My childhood was more Felliniesque than fairytale. Even though I was a pre-natal Episcopalian (my late father was a priest so do the ecclesiology and the science and it sort of makes sense), my relationship with the institutional church remains akin to an outsider lurking around the crevices. Except for a brief period in my mid-twenties when I experimented with a variety of religious experiences - including an adult Campus Crusade for Christ bible study, Cursillo, and the Young Republicans - my spiritual life has been anything but certain.
But as the documentary progressed, I began to see how these men's stories paralleled many of my own struggles. I too often wondered where God was in the midst of global conflicts and my own personal pain. Also, I've encountered more than my fair share of faith fakers. So I understand why someone would just give up on the God game. But I have encountered enough spiritual buds in my life that convince me to keep walking forward on this admittedly crooked spiritual path.
While neither Craig nor John compromise their beliefs, these former college buddies are able to maintain a conversation of the heart. Despite their glaring differences on matters of faith, their friendship enables them to move beyond the white noise of the Dawkins vs. Dobson extremists debates and explore where they have common ground in their shared humanity.
Unfortunately, such genuine dialogues are few and far between. Martin Marty, a church historian at the University of Chicago Divinity School, offers some sage counsel as he explores why we're in such an ideological quagmire these days:
"Fundamentalism is an expected reaction to the anomie that comes with social disorganization. When the social institutions become shaky, and uncertainty about the future becomes widespread, people look to religion to provide absolutes and a sense of security in the midst of their changing world."
Looks like both New Atheists and their Christian counterparts are grabbing onto their belief systems like Linus Van Pelt hanging onto his security blanket for dear life. With all that's going on in the world, I get the need to hold onto something safe. But who ever said the Christian journey was safe and comfy? Ever since the late, great Mike Yaconelli edited my first article, "Beavis and Butthead Are Saved," and got me started on this whole weird world of serving God through my writing, "safe" is never a word I've used to describe my faith journey. Scary, sweet, strange, sacrilegious, spiritual - yes. But safe? No way, no how. Never.
A couple of weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, I received a call from my cousin. Her father-in-law in Baghdad was dead. His death was not the result a car bomb or a kidnapping. No bullets or beheadings were involved. Instead, it was a kitchen fire. He was badly burnt up and down his legs. They took him to the hospital … but there were no doctors who could help or medicine they could give him. He was killed by a treatable infection.
"What is it about this month?" my cousin asked. Only an exact year ago her brother had been shot to death in front of his house in a Baghdad neighborhood, forcing a new widow and her children to flee to Jordan.
A few weeks later I shared this story with another Iraqi living in Amman. "This is the way it has been for a while," she said. "After the first war, with the embargo, things were slowly getting worse. No medicine. No services. We were losing hope. But we never saw this second war coming. This destroyed it all. Now, there is no hope."
Over the last five years, as I have shared my family's story in churches and chapel services, I get a very common response: "I never saw them as human beings. I never thought to pray for the Iraqi people." This disturbs me. Even more disturbing is that many of the people who confess this to me are pastors and missionaries. They champion the need for food, plumbing, and medicine in so many parts of the world, but seem to hit the breaks when it comes to Iraq and the Middle East. I have visited many congregations around the country – Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, Non-denominational – and I see a recurring pattern: nine times out of 10 the pastor will pray for the safety and success of the troops, but does not offer one prayer for the people and needs of Iraq.
While in Amman last month, I spent time with my two little cousins who now live as orphans and refugees. A family member shared that one of the girls has recurring dreams of her dead father, and is brewing with sadness and anger over his murder. A week later I sat in a church service in the States where the text in the bulletin was James 1:27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (NIV). The "pastoral prayer" turned toward the troops, gay marriage and abortion, but there was not one mention of the 2 million internally displaced Iraqis, 82 percent of whom are women and children under the age of 12 (according to the Iraqi Red Crescent report of January 27, 2008). What a sad irony that the same church that so adamantly supports the "right to life" also supported a war that has robbed so many children of their lives and innocence.
In reality, Iraq has been bleeding to death for more than 15 years. Beautiful people, made in the image of God, have lived with violence and destruction for too long. The church in the U.S has played a major role in supporting that destruction. I have very few positive answers for my Muslim family members when they ask about how Christians in the U.S. perceive Iraq. Once, when I told a family member of some Christians I had met who support and work for human rights in Iraq and equal rights for Palestinians, he responded, "Wow. … I didn't know there were any other Christians who believed that way."
In the first chapter of Nehemiah we find this prayer: "I confess that we have sinned against you. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned!" The key word here is "we." Nehemiah was not even alive when the people's sins, which led to exile, took place. Yet he took ownership of what the people of God had done wrong, and so led the way in confession, repentance, and ultimately, restoration.
How long before more pastors lead their congregations in confession, repentance, and prayers for the people and peace of Iraq? How long before more preachers preach that the life of an Iraqi is just as important to God as the life of a U.S. soldier? How long before we ask our congregations to see Iraqis as part of the human family, made in the very image of God, and in doing so broaden our definition of "family values?" How long before the church truly stands up to vote for a "right to life" for all children that goes beyond the unborn to include the children of those who we thought were our enemies?
I have been in worship services all over the country, and I still see too many churches that rallied for the call to war in Iraq failing to rally for the call of Christ in Iraq.
Rev. Omar Hamid Al-Rikabi is a campus minister at the University of Arkansas Wesley Foundation. He is the son of a Muslim father from Iraq and a Christian mother from Texas. He shares his stories on his blog at www.firstbornstories.com
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What shalt thou do? ... Do good. Do all the good thou canst. Let thy plenty supply thy neighbor’s wants; and thou wilt never want something to do. Canst thou find none that need the necessaries of life, that are pinched with cold or hunger; none that have not raiment to put on, or a place where to lay their head; none that are wasted with pining sickness; none that are languishing in prison? If you duly considered our Lord’s words, “The poor have you always with you,” you would no more ask, “What shall I do?”
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."
Two brothers, Jamal* and Khalid,* were arrested randomly in a raid of their neighborhood by Iraqi Special Police Forces, the Palestinian ghetto in Baghdad. They were tortured and forced to confess on a television program to acts of terror they didn't commit. Other Palestinian refugees have been dragged out of their homes and killed.
Dalia* and Sara,* two sisters, along with other members of their family, were accused of funding the resistance and were detained in Abu Ghraib for nine months. One day their brother's dead and tortured body was brought into their room and thrown on their laps.
In Fallujah, four months after the November 2004 massive U.S. attacks in which 60 percent of the buildings were destroyed - including several schools and the main hospital - the southern half of the city was complete rubble. The Musa Abdulla* family, of 26 persons, was one of hundreds of families that had been forced to return and live in a tent next to the remains of their former home.
Hundreds of Palestinian refugees living in Iraq fled to the Syrian border because of threat to their lives. Only some were allowed to go to a refugee camp in Syria. Others were not allowed into Syria - but also not allowed back into Iraq - so have been living in tents in the no-man's land in-between.
Six-year-old Mohammed was playing on the gate in his front yard when he was shot in the head in the cross-fire of a gun-battle between U.S. Military and resistance fighters. He lost his right eye and the right side of his face is disfigured.
When the surge started, our former neighbor, Alia,* in Baghdad told our peace team, "The increase of U.S. military forces in the city only increases the hell we are living in." A month later her youngest son was injured when a bomb blasted in our former neighborhood.
As a long-time human rights worker, Hameed helped mediate between fighting groups on the streets of his city. He made several trips with a group of Shia, Sunni, and Christians into Fallujah in 2005 to develop peaceful relationships between the different ethnic groups. In 2006 he survived an assassination attempt. He knows that at any time he could be targeted again.
* Real people and situations, but names have been changed
The Hebrew Scriptures clearly call for the children of Israel to make room for the alien. The Israelites are reminded that they, too, were once aliens in a strange and distant land.
[For the Lord your God] …Who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.—Deuteronomy 10:18-19
The New Testament picked up this same admonition as Jesus explained to his disciples that they should treat the alien as they would treat him (Matthew 25:31-40).
St. Francis of Assisi taught his followers that Jesus is mystically present in the alien. They were told that when they look into the eyes of the stranger in their midst, they might see their Christ staring back at them.
Christians need to be reminded that in the only description that Jesus gave of judgment day, he specifically declares that God will inquire how we treated the alien. God will want to know, according to Matthew 25:35, whether or not we made room for "the stranger" to live among us.
Given such Biblical teachings, it is difficult to understand how so many Jews and Christians can call for harsh treatment of those 12 million illegal immigrants who presently reside within our national borders, and how they so often act as though U.S. citizens should not make them welcome.
There is little question that we need these men and women who have illegally entered our country. They are doing necessary work as farm laborers and in the manufacturing sectors of our economy. Elderly persons, like myself, should realize that millions of dollars taken out of these laborers' wages each week go into our depleting Social Security fund. The evidence is clear that overwhelming numbers of these undocumented workers are hardworking, decent neighbors who are contributing much to our nation's well-being.
Having made these points, we must go on to acknowledge that there are good people who justly point out that these illegal entrants have broken the law, and that granting them amnesty will only invite others to do the same. Furthermore, there are concerns about the possibility that criminals, drug pushers, and even terrorists, may be among those undocumented and illegal immigrants who daily come through our porous borders. There are fears that such undesirable persons pose a threat to our nation's security and to the safety of our fellow citizens.
As I reflect on the pros and cons of dealing with amnesty for these undocumented brothers and sisters, I have to start by asking why so many of them choose to enter our country illegally. Could it be that the U.S. has made it too difficult and too expensive for them to come in any other way?
Back in 1910, when my father emigrated to this country, he came as an impoverished Italian peasant. He liked to tell me that when he came through Ellis Island, he came with a few dollars in his pocket and little more than "the shirt on his back." He would go on to declare, in his broken English, that this country was, for him, a land of opportunity, and that he soon had a job and a future filled with hope.
The bad news is that today impoverished immigrants do not have the same opportunity that my father had. Nowadays, "the poor and huddled masses" who come to the U.S. have a much harder time, and the barriers that keep them living in our country usually appear insurmountable. If my father wanted to settle in the U.S. and get a job, given present requirements, he would have to get a "green card," if he wanted to be legal. Getting a green card would take somewhere around two years or more, and would likely cost him a couple thousand dollars in legal fees. (The legal language in the forms is so complicated that often it takes a lawyer to help applicants fill out the forms, costing up to $2000 in fees.) Not having enough money to support himself during the time he was waiting for his green card to be granted, he probably would have his hopes dashed to pieces. Not having the means to hire a lawyer, he probably would have to face the reality that what is required to enter into the American Dream is beyond his reach. In today's U.S., there would be little room for a poor man like my father. I have a sense that his desire for the better life that the U.S. could offer him just might tempt him to become an illegal immigrant.
What I propose is that our country should have a "high wall and a wide gate" at our borders. By a high wall, I mean that our borders should be secure. America should protect itself against drug pushers, criminals and possible terrorists. There should be a background check on every person who crosses into our country so that such undesirables would be kept out.
On the other hand, I believe that the gate should be wide. We U.S. citizens should make it fiscally possible for poor people who want to come and live among us. Green cards should be made available quickly and without the need to go through the kind of legal hoops that require lawyers. It seems to me that people in faith communities should work to create these conditions.
When it comes to dealing with those who are already here, I agree with those who claim that amnesty is not a good idea. These illegal immigrants did break the law, and amnesty would likely invite others to do the same. Law breakers should be dealt with seriously. Allow me to suggest some solutions to this predicament. I propose that undocumented entrants be granted green cards as soon as possible, but that they be required to pay a hefty fine for having broken the law. Also, they should be required to pay back taxes on their past earnings. But, knowing that it would be unlikely for them to have the money to cover these expenses all at once, I suggest that they have as much as 10 percent of their income deducted in the years that follow until such time as these fines and back taxes are paid off. Those who earn the higher salaries would pay off what they owe sooner, while those with lower salaries would have to take longer to fulfill their obligations.
The reality is that so many of these undocumented brothers and sisters are now being paid less than the minimum wage. With green cards in hand, they would be entitled to legal wages, which likely would be more than they are presently earning. Given this consideration, many, if not most, would come out with more money on pay days, in spite of the 10 percent that would be deducted by the government to cover their fines and back taxes.
To people with faith commitments who take the Bible as their guide for living, it seems as though this proposal could go a long way to treating undocumented entrants with God-ordained love and justice. I think that what I am proposing could satisfy those who want law breakers to pay their debt to society while, at the same time, satisfying those who are committed to showing God's grace to those who, full of hope, come to live among us.
Amy has worked tremendously hard these last several years. She was an editor at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (with Washington Post columnist and SojoFriend E.J. Dionne Jr. See the recent Sojournersexcerpt from E.J.'s new book Souled Out.) and at the Washington Monthly. She ran a great blog for awhile on "(Almost) Daily Thoughts on Political Happenings" and somewhere in there she slid in a Ph.D. at Princeton in Religion and Politics.
For the woman who dreamed of being a pundit, we think she's achieved star status with her most recent job as Nation editor at Time magazine. For more on SojoFriend Amy Sullivan, see Salon's recent interview with her. Go Amy!
Rose Marie Berger is an assistant editor for Sojourners.
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Last Tuesday was a great day for low-wage workers in my hometown of Washington, D.C., when the City Council voted to mandate paid sick and safe days for many private-sector workers. The legislation could affect 200,000 District workers who do not currently have the right to a single paid sick day.
In fact, this is an indignity that exists nationwide. Neither the federal government nor any state has granted workers the right to paid sick days. (San Francisco passed a municipal measure in 2006.) As a result, more than 50 million workers in the U.S. must work when they are sick - through colds, fevers, and stomach flus - on pain of lost wages or even lost jobs.
Nearly 100 million workers can't take a day off to care for a family member, such as a sick child or elderly parent. When a worker or a loved one gets sick, she or he must either work anyway or risk losing a day's pay or even her job.
The working poor bear a particularly heavy burden. Less than one-quarter of low-wage workers have paid sick days, although they are the workers who can least afford to lose a day's pay, and whose jobs often require contact with the public or its food supply. (Unfortunately, the D.C. Council passed amendments—at the urging of D.C. businesses and the Chamber of Commerce—that will exempt many of the workers whose employers should actually encourage sick days, including waitstaff and health care workers.)
The injustice and indignity of having to choose between working while ill and losing a day's pay (or your job) is an issue in which many in the faith community have taken a keen interest. Respecting the health and dignity of all human beings is a core value for all faith traditions. This includes not just access to health care, but time away from work to recuperate from illness, as well as to tend to ill family members. Interfaith Worker Justice is working to gather the faith community behind workers and win them the right to paid sick days.
Some 20 national faith groups have already endorsed the Healthy Families Act, federal legislation that would grant seven paid sick days to private-sector workers to care for themselves or their families. These include Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish faith bodies, faith-based organizations, and women's faith groups. And our numbers are growing.
Liz Weiss is a senior policy analyst for Interfaith Worker Justice. For more information, contact her at: lweiss@iwj.org.
As the world awaits the results of last Saturday's election in Zimbabwe, the stakes are high. Here's one firsthand account of Robert Mugabe's tyrannous rule and disastrous mismanagement of the economy (just two of the problems that, as the April issue of Sojourners described, have prompted anti-Mugabe protests by people of faith).
Anne Junod spent last summer volunteering in Zambia and Zimbabwe with the U.K. based volunteer organization African Impact.
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Bart Campolo is a veteran urban minister and activist who speaks, writes, and blogs 
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"Speak to the earth, and it will teach you…The life of every creature and the breath of all people are in God's hand". --Job 12: 8, 10 (NCV)
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Troy Jackson is senior pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and earned his Ph.D. in United States history from the University of Kentucky. His book Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader (The University Press of Kentucky, 2008) will be available in the fall. Troy is a participant in Sojourners' "Windchangers" grassroots organizing pilot project in Ohio to work on the Vote Out Poverty Campaign.
Rev. Omar Hamid Al-Rikabi is a campus minister at the University of Arkansas Wesley Foundation. He is the son of a Muslim father from Iraq and a Christian mother from Texas. He shares his stories on his blog at 
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The 40th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination - April 4, 1968 - will soon be upon us. As I remember Dr. King against the backdrop of this 2008 presidential election cycle, I reflect on what a brilliant political strategist he was. He was able to bring corporations to the point of acquiescence without resorting to violence or bribery. He was able to pass legislation that changed the daily lives of not only blacks but also women, people of faith, and immigrants - without ever being elected to public office or attempting to buy political influence. He was able to garner and leverage the attention of the entire international community on behalf of America's poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised - without ever being appointed to an ambassadorship or other high-profile international post. He was able to remind U.S. citizens what a democracy was and to engender a sense of moral responsibility that, more than 40 years later, challenges us to be the good we want to see in the world. King was a political genius. 
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Two brothers, Jamal* and Khalid,* were arrested randomly in a raid of their neighborhood by Iraqi Special Police Forces, the Palestinian ghetto in Baghdad. They were tortured and forced to confess on a television program to acts of terror they didn't commit. Other Palestinian refugees have been dragged out of their homes and killed.
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The Hebrew Scriptures clearly call for the children of Israel to make room for the alien. The Israelites are reminded that they, too, were once aliens in a strange and distant land.
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