The problem with using the Bible as the basis for running a society is that it would always be somebody's interpretation of the Bible, and a worst-case scenario is that it might be your interpretation, Mr. Klinghoffer.
I too have read and studied the Bible all of my life, and I just can't recognize the Bible in so much of what you have said in our "dialogue." I really work at finding common ground with people across the political spectrum on moral issues that transcend ideology and politics. But we have been unable to find much common ground in this dialogue. I still find many of the things you have said absolutely astonishing.
I still can't get over your contention that most of what the Bible says about the poor doesn't apply to America because our poor people are so well-off here. I replied that most Christian clergy and Jewish rabbis that I know would find that statement incredulous, but got no direct reply from you. In your latest post you say, in an equally unbelievable way, that wealth is the most consistent test of whether a society is righteous in God's eyes. I read the Hebrew prophets in a totally different way -- that the best test of a nation's righteousness is how it treats the poorest and most vulnerable. That is always how God judges a society. Read Isaiah, Amos, and Micah.
Then you say that war is just a "tool of statecraft." Really? The Hebrew scriptures warn against militarism -- "not trusting in horses and chariots" -- and Jesus calls we Christians to be peacemakers and love our enemies. In fact, you note in your book Christians who believe that:
Quakers, Amish, and Mennonites, among others, can point to the teachings not only of Jesus himself but of ancient and medieval sages -- Tertullian, Origen, Francis of Assisi, Menno Simons, down to a twentieth-century figure like Thomas Merton.
It's interesting that "Jesus himself" and the earliest church fathers were all opposed to war. So, what happened? You say, quite correctly, "With the conversion of the Emperor Constantine (324 C.E.), all that changed." Indeed, it did. And you then cite such esteemed theologians as Oliver Cromwell and Gen. George S. Patton. When you say in your latest post that war is merely the normal tool of statecraft, does that mean all wars? Every time a nation decides to go to war as an expression of its statecraft is justifiable? What about when one nation with Christians and Jews decides to go to war with another nation with Christians and Jews? Are both nations justified? Is there any religious critique or discrimination possible here? Let me guess: You support all the wars America has fought. I could never get you to tell me what you think about the war in Iraq.
I could go on, issue after issue, but I don't think that would be productive. We just disagree, profoundly, on what biblical imperatives suggest about society and politics. I am very glad that America has a separation of church and state and that people who would prefer a more theocratic vision of society (as I interpret you to prefer) don't get to run things they way they would like. We both have to convince our fellow citizens that what we believe is best for the common good. That's a good thing, and I welcome that debate. Thanks for this one.
"Don't shoot -- I want to grow up," read the protest sign an 11-year-old boy held in the wake of 30-plus shootings of Chicago schoolchildren this school year. The Supreme Court's recent assertion of the individual's right to own a gun for self-defense stands in sharp contrast to the anguished pleas of the father of one of the schoolchildren to stop the tragic gun deaths in our community, and to get rid of the guns so available on our streets. His pleas reminded me of Jeremiah's account of Rachel weeping for her children.
We are a violent nation. Forty-nine percent of U.S. households have guns in the home (Just Facts, 6/08). The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence reminds us that 80 Americans die from gun violence every day in America. The Supreme Court decision is a blow to the scourge of gun violence in our communities and probably will be used to seek to block passage of common-sense gun laws that require background checks, forbid bulk sales of handguns, and other efforts. However, the decision as reported did not give license to "any gun, any time, for anyone" (Brady Center), and those of us who want to eliminate readily available guns have a lot of work to do to see that reasonable restricting laws are enacted.
The affirmation of the individual's right to bear arms must also be countered by us, as people of faith, with what is in the interests of community, of public safety, and what makes for the common good. We shouldn't be silent about this tension.
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.
Last week's headlines blared the news: The Supreme Court has ruled that there is a constitutional right to gun ownership. I'm not surprised -- disheartened, dismayed, disappointed, yes -- but not surprised. The photo accompanying the headline was of jubilant gun rights supporters carrying signs saying "Guns Save Lives." "The Great Object: Every Man Be Armed." "If guns kill people, do pens misspell words?"
And that's the real problem with gundamentalism (and I do see this ruling as an offshoot of gundamentalism). Its adherents believe that nothing is as important as the right to own a gun. Or many guns. Or many kinds of guns. The fact that 30,000 people a year, 80 a day, are killed by guns is not nearly as important as the right to own a gun. The day before the Supreme Court announced its decision, a worker in a Kentucky plastics plant shot and killed himself after shooting five coworkers and wounding a sixth.
What are the responsibilities that go along with this newly bestowed right? The Court's ruling does make room for sensible gun control. But as people of faith we must ask deeper and more difficult questions: Where do we place our trust -- in God or in guns? Who do we serve -- God or the second amendment? Where do we find our sense of worth and purpose -- from God or from guns? How do we bring about God's reign - with an open heart or with a gun in hand?
"All things are lawful," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other.
In the days of my childhood, summer was the season of the big-tent revivals. More than any other of the myriad things that summer could be and was, it was the revivals that were for me the major descriptor of what a complete and proper summer was. This rather peculiar fixation was, no doubt, due in large measure to the fact that I was forbidden to even get near the things. For my Ph.D., Presbyterian father, everything that happened under those tents was suspect, and most of it was downright dangerous.
In those pre-air-conditioning days, we would often get in the car after supper and go for a drive simply to cool off enough to go to sleep. Windows down and breeze blowing, we would drive up and down the wider streets and most of the back roads surrounding the university town where we lived. And we would pass them. We would pass those great, gray-brown interruptions staked out like monoliths on empty city lots and in unmown fields. Always the naked lightbulbs swung by the dozens from strings of overhead wiring. Always the sawdust ... oh, I loved the sawdust and ached to be barefoot in it. Always the metal folding chairs in "discobbobalated" (my mother's word for them) rows, like snaggled teeth in the mouth of a 6-year-old. But more than that, more tantalizing and more forbidden ... always there was the music that passed through the windows of our passing car.
I don't like music particularly, at least not in the popular sense of having an iPod or a fine collection of CDs or even a favorite radio station. Music gets in my head, if I let it get near me, and then it takes over. I can't hear the words of my profession for all the nonverbal conversation of the music. But when I was a child, I didn't know that. I just knew that that music, that 1930's revival music, was my soul fulfilled and still feasting. This reaction was, of course, no doubt the precise reason why my father forbade our going to the things in the first place. The only time I can ever remember his breaking his rule, in fact, was one summer night in my seventh or eighth year when I was weepy with longing. To pacify my mother who, undoubtedly, was desperate to pacify me, he stopped the car, took me by the hand, and let me stand just inside the ring of sawdust and listen for perhaps five minutes. It was heaven, or as near as I had, at that stage of life, ever thought to be.
But World War II brought a lot of changes with it, as well as a lot of misery and a lot of goodness. No war is ever without a mixed bag of consequences. One of the war's consequences was increased urbanization and much better technology. Both of them forever changed the tent revival, or if not the revival per se, then certainly its music. The men and women who belted out or wept out or crooned out the glories of my childhood had not grown up on electricity, much less on electrified instruments. No, not at all. So they had played instead the acoustic instruments of their own childhoods -- the guitars, fiddles, mandolins, harmonicas, and guitars of their own past. And it was this sound, I later realized, that I so loved.
After the war, when music began to electrify and musicians began to entertain, instead of speak for, their audiences, there were apparently more folk than I who yearned to go home to the sound of the old ways. Bluegrass was born. Wonderful, fulsome, acoustic, down-home bluegrass. Lord, how I loved it. In fact, my great claim to fame (if you will forgive my bragging a bit here) is that once I was on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry as a guest of a friend and was standing just back of the wash of the stage lights and adjacent to the corner of the band's dais. Bill Monroe had just finished a set when, in turning from the front of the stage toward its back, he somehow caught his foot on the corner of the dais and fell straight into my arms, mandolin and all. It is not an immodest exaggeration to say that once upon a summer night, I saved Bill Monroe from some kind of nasty discomfort and his mandolin from certain destruction.
All that digression aside, however, the truth still is that bluegrass was and is just the revival glory of the '30s come into the 21st century. Blessedly, it still wrings out its sweetness with acoustical instruments and alternates its leads and riffs with egalitarian elegance. If it doesn't include so many hymns now, it still sings the certainty of goodness that those hymns were about. And it is that certainty, I now understand, that drew me as a child and still draws me now. I realized this -- in the sense of at last perceiving it at a level I can articulate -- last Saturday.
That day, Sam and I left Lucy, Tennessee, where we live, and drove about 60 miles southeast to Williston, Tennessee. Neither of those places is what anybody would call a major geographic site or a strong economic center. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that the Harrison Crawford Bluegrass Festival is held every June on the old Crawford farm just south of Williston. There's no tent, of course, but there is a huge metal-roofed, open-sided shed that Mr. Crawford built for the festival long before he died. And there is a stage of sorts -- adequate certainly for bluegrass needs. And all the straggly rows of mismatched chairs. And the concessionaires and the porta-potties and the campers and the two-acre parking lot and the music ... Oh, Lord, there it is, rolling over dozens of acres and who even knows how many people as set after set is played, and people clap and sway and clog and, then, transport to that place they all came hoping to go to in the first place. That place where goodness dwells so fully that nothing other than goodness could ever be there.
Ah, the goodness. And I left that afternoon of bluegrass and of swaying, clogging, clapping people knowing, yet once again, that my father was right about two things: The music is untamed, and the music can seduce you. He was wrong -- my beloved father -- only in that he himself was, by time and circumstance, forbidden to see or say that the Lord of the Dance calls by many tunes and many means. It is a good and joyful thing for me this summer Sunday to be able to know and understand that.
A friend of mine recalls a dinner-table conversation one day when she was a schoolgirl. Her dad had come home unusually frustrated from his job as a city planner. "D#@*$% environmentalists!" he said over dinner. "Dad, I thought you were an environmentalist," she said. "Why are you so upset?"
"All day long," he answered, "environmentalists come to me with problems and complaints, and business people come to me with ideas and projects. Why can't the environmentalists be proactive and come to the table with some creative ideas to make things better, instead of just trying to get in the way of things they don't want to see happen?"
This city planner would be encouraged to read the Sierra Club's first-ever report on faith communities engaging with environmental activism: "Faith in Action: Communities of Faith Bring Hope for the Planet."
So would all of us who remember -- not that long ago -- when too many people of faith considered the environment a political concern rather than a spiritual and moral one. Back then, those of us for whom faith and environmental concern were as integral as faith and church-going felt pretty alone. But the tide is turning -- in no small part due to the efforts of Sierra Club activists such as author/project manager Lyndsay Moseley and her co-author, Anna Jane Joyner.
The Sierra Club, it turns out, isn't a bunch of secular leftist anti-God nature-worshippers, as some folks might have tried to paint them in the past. Nearly half of the club's 1.3 million members attend worship regularly, and Sierra Club leaders like Moseley and her boss, Melanie Griffin, are deeply committed to -- not to mention thoughtful and articulate about -- the intersection of faith and environmental activism. Americans in general, it turns out, are further along than many of us realized: 67 percent of all Americans, when asked why they care about the environment, explain that it is God's creation. Their love for God and their love for God's creation are inseparable -- naturally.
"Faith in Action" is a colorful, easy-to-read booklet and after a brief introduction, it is pure stories -- stories of Baptists and Catholics, Quakers and Congregationalists, synagogues and mosques, Vineyard churches and Buddhist communities, creatively expressing care for God's beautiful earth. They're launching projects as varied as their backgrounds -- fighting mountaintop removal, protecting watersheds, changing light bulbs, tithing C02, building energy-efficient buildings, promoting energy conservation, sponsoring local agriculture, sponsoring retreats and bike rides, and in scores of other ways building deep commitment to "keeping the faith by keeping the earth."
I got tears in my eyes as I read these stories of faith and care for God's beautiful earth. I imagine my friend's father would have felt pretty moved too: people of faith, committed to the environment, not just preaching or complaining, but putting faith into action in positive, proactive ways. If you want to inspire your congregation (or yourself), consider using this one-of-a-kind resource -- printed on mixed-source paper, of course! You can download a copy and get more information at www.sierraclub.org/partnerships/faith.
Nobody has said it much better than Sierra Club founder John Muir: "All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land ... or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love."
Brian McLaren is an author and speaker and serves as Sojourners' board chair. You can learn about his books, music, and other resources at brianmclaren.net.
Comedian George Carlin died this week. While his humor could often be profane, there was one of his standard pieces that I loved the first time I heard it and have ever since. It was titled "Baseball and Football," and hilariously summarized the difference between the two sports. For a lifelong baseball fan, it confirmed my passion. The piece ended with:
In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!
As a convert to Orthodox Christianity, I have come to appreciate the strong connection in our tradition between spirituality and creation. Many of our great feasts, minor celebrations, and daily prayers involve joining prayer, blessing, and the material world. Unlike Western Christians who remember the three kings on Jan. 6, 13 days after Christmas we celebrate Theophany, the feast of the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. Part of this feast includes blessing water in our churches or processing to a nearby pond, sea, or ocean where a priest will toss a cross into the water, transforming the whole body into a holy water font. We annually commemorate our loved ones who have fallen asleep in the Lord by making and blessing koliva -- boiled wheat with fruit, sugar, and spices. The wheat recalls the words of Christ, that "unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain," while the cinnamon, clove, and pomegranate remind us of the sweetness of the resurrection to come. And each liturgical day begins in the evening with vespers and the chanting of Psalm 102, a hymn of the goodness of the natural world: "The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which he planted, where the birds make their nests ...."
Because of this intertwining of spirituality and sacred materialism, environmental awareness can be easily encouraged by our spiritual leaders. His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew I (whom The Guardian has named "The 'pope' of hope" and elsewhere has been called the "green patriarch") in particular has become a leader among clergy who are dedicated to rallying people of faith to care for the environment. He has organized environmentally responsible cruises for political leaders, journalists, and scientists on the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and the Amazon river in an effort to use his ecclesial rank to change attitudes and policies related to the environment. The patriarch also gave new significance to Sept. 1, our church new year, by calling for prayer and supplication for the environment on this day.
In his book Encountering the Mystery, the patriarch writes, "In the Orthodox liturgical perspective, creation is received and conceived as a gift from God. The notion of creation-as-gift defines our Orthodox theological understanding of the environmental question in a concise and clear manner while at the same time determining the human response to that gift through the responsible and proper use of the created world. Each believer is called to celebrate life in a way that reflects the words of the Divine [Eucharistic] Liturgy: 'Thine own from Thine own we offer to Thee, on behalf of all and for all.'"
Abayea Pelt is the office manager and receptionist for Sojourners.
For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
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Last week, I posted a piece about speaking at a graduation ceremony inside Sing Sing prison in New York. I was moved by quite a few comments to the piece, so I thought I'd share some of them for those who may not have read them.
I think that seminary in prison is a good idea. I worked in a prison for 2-1/2 years, and the men need something to motivate them when they get out. Prison is not reality -- has nothing to do with the real world. If they have something to "hang on to" when they are released, especially something spiritual, it might help. The ministry might also give them a goal for when they are released. Transitional housing, and transitional programs to help offenders transition from prison to reality, are sorely needed. May I say God bless them, one and all. (Posted by: Anita)
Thank you for reminding us of the wonderful potential of those most downtrodden in our society. As an elementary teacher in Minneapolis Public Schools I saw with great sadness these children who never had a chance. I am sorry they had to go through those years of dispair and violence and imprisonment. But I am so thankful that someone gave them the opportunity to learn and grow and become a blessing to others. They will do it in ways I never could! Praise the Lord! (Posted by: Jean Eittreim)
Thank you so much for your article bringing that wonderful program at Sing Sing to public attention. I am one of dozens of people in Kentucky working to expand jail and prison ministry to be a channel of hope while they are incarcerated and to help "to-be ex-offenders" see desirable options for their lives upon release. Sing Sing's Seminary gives one more model to hold up. (Posted by: Sr. Dorothy Schuette)
I also was really moved by this post. I found myself sobbing in my office this a.m. -- at work, no less. My daughter is incarcerated in Beaumont, Texas. She is a Christian who, like the rest of us, made some serious mistakes. I am so thankful that Jesus loves and forgives her -- and all of us. (Posted by: Betty Ann)
So pleased to hear that those who go inside to minister to the incarcerated come out more blessed than they! Mr. Wallis, as the wife of one with whom you spoke that evening at Sing Sing, as well as a friend of Darren's, thank you. To have one come in with the respect and appreciation for the hard work these men have put forth, and with the faith you brought with you that night, changes the "inmate" to a human. The opportunity for college education is transforming for these men. To have their convictions to go forth bringing healing to the society they'd once harmed taken seriously, and to be given the open door and tools their education provides to do so, is an unimaginable blessing. Couple this with a God encounter and the recidivism rate is near zero! Just FYI, there is a KAIROS OUTSIDE which ministers to the female relatives of the incarcerated, addressing the special emotional and spiritual needs of those who have an incarcerated loved one. I have been involved in the Mid-Hudson chapter for over three years and have seen miracles there also. Check out the Web site! (Posted by: Lauren Young)
In so many prisons throughout this country education departments and college providers are working to provide opportunities for people who are incarcerated. They are the unsung heroes whose real satisfaction comes from such seeing such graduation ceremonies. There is nothing more powerful than seeing a person get a GED and then a college education in prison. Your story was very powerful Thanks, Jim, for reminding me that God can always do something good with any situation. Praise God for those who have this opportunity and those who are blessed to serve in this way. (Posted by: Lin Smallwood)
Last week, I blogged about Dr. Alfredo Quiñones Hinojosa, a former migrant worker and now world-class brain surgeon. This man and the topic of immigration have sparked some heated conversations in our blog community. I invite you to find out more about Dr. Quiñones in Hopkins, a new miniseries on ABC that features Dr. Q and his colleagues inside and outside the operating room. Check out the clip below where he talks with his kids and the camera about being "illegal" and his path to citizenship. Hopkins airs tonight at 10 p.m./ 9 p.m. central.
Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners.
The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA.org) was launched in 1979, in response to growing concern "over an increase of [sic] questionable fund-raising practices in the nonprofit sector." As their Web site explains, Sen. Mark Hatfield challenged "a group of key Christian leaders" to begin policing their own mission agencies as a kind of "Christian Better Business Bureau."
Perhaps 30 years later, evangelicals, because of "an increase in questionable rhetorical practices in the nonprofit sector," need to form the ECRA: The Evangelical Council for Rhetorical Accountability. Those of us who have a lot of pew time know ... not to mention those who listen to religious broadcasting and partake of religious literature, Web sites, and blogs (!) ... that such accountability is sorely lacking.
The need for an ECRA became clearer than ever to me this week when a beloved elder in the evangelical broadcasting community spoke out against Sen. Barack Obama. What is evident to me in this interchange is not just a difference in policy, but also a ...
Whenever I hear those three little words -- "the latest poll" -- I generally tune out. Pollsters and survey-takers seldom ask the right questions, I've found, so the responses they get are less than reliable. One exception is the surveys conducted by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and the organization's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, released Monday, June 23, proves why.
The Pew survey not only asks highly specific and carefully worded questions but also asks participants to provide detailed information about themselves. Demographic breakdowns go well beyond, say, the evangelical/mainline divide to subgroups such as Baptists in the evangelical tradition, the mainline tradition, or the historically black church traditions; mainline Christians who pray daily and regularly attend church services; and Catholics who consider religion to be very important in their lives.
So we know who Pew talked to, and that makes the results of this survey particularly compelling -- and encouraging to those of us who stubbornly hold on to the hope that we can effect political and social change by building on the common ground that unites us as Christians. And the meticulous wording of the survey enabled Pew analysts to recognize such nuances as the indirect influence of religion on political life.
Here's what I see in the survey as cause for hope:
Seventy to 87 percent of all Christians expressed dissatisfaction with the political system and the direction the country is taking. Imagine what we could accomplish if we turned that level of dissatisfaction into action.
Even though 48 percent of evangelicals prefer a smaller government that provides fewer services, 57 percent believe the government should do more to help the poor, even if it means going into debt. That may seem incongruous, but I don't think it is. To me, it indicates that evangelicals place a higher value on helping the poor than on some other governmental services.
Fifty-four percent of evangelicals believe stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost. That's compared to 64 percent of mainline respondents, which dispels the long-held myth that mainliners and evangelicals are clearly divided on this issue.
While only 48 percent of evangelicals favor diplomacy over military strength as a means of ensuring peace, I have to believe that's an improvement. (38 percent favor military might over diplomacy, with 16 percent responding "neither," "both," or "don't know.")
The gap between evangelicals and mainline Christians is also much narrower than was once the case with regard to foreign affairs. Fifty-four percent of evangelicals and 52 percent of mainliners believe we should pay more attention to domestic problems than to international problems.
That last question is one of the few I think could have been better worded. The alternative response was, "It's best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs." Given that wording, I would have also opted for paying more attention to problems at home. But the question makes no distinction, for example, between involvement in Iraq and involvement in Darfur. If it had, the responses likely would have been different.
In any event, the survey results indicate, among many other things, that Christians of all stripes are far more united on some social and political issues than our politicians and religious leaders would have the American public believe. And that's good news -- no, great news -- for everyone who favors working together to solve problems over battling it out along partisan or denominational lines.
I arrived in the West Bank the afternoon of Saturday, June 7, and hit the ground running. The next morning we starting filming for a film on Palestinian nonviolent resistance I am working on this summer. That Sunday, we did a long interview with Daoud Nassar, whose family owns a plot of land in the Palestinian village of Nahalin, just a few kilometers south of Bethlehem. The legal documents to the land date back to 1916, yet the family has been battling in Israeli courts for more than 15 years to have their ownership recognized by the Israeli state. The land lies on a hill surrounded on all sides by Israeli settlements. The neighboring settlement of Neve Daniel already has a master plan to expand across the land of the Nassars and their neighbors.
Parallel to the legal battles, the Nassars have done everything to prevent the confiscation of their land. In the summers they host children's summer camps and nonviolent resistance training camps. They also continue to come up with creative ways of resisting Israel's intention of removing them from their property by gathering winter rains when they are not permitted to connect to the water system of the nearby village, and digging out old caves because they cannot legally build above ground. Israeli land annexation is occurring all over Israel, yet the Nassar's case reveals a rare example of perseverance and creativity, and they have achieved international support to persist in fighting for their land.
On Thursday, June 19, after months of back-and-forth movements, a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas finally came into effect. With this rare time of calm between Israel and Gaza, many Palestinian farmers with land on the border areas are taking the chance to begin clearing their fields of the damage from recent Israeli incursions. The Egyptian-brokered agreement entails a gradual prisoner exchange and an immediate loosening of the siege that was intensified after Hamas' takeover of power in the Gaza Strip one year ago. Gazans who over the past year have experienced a severe shortage of all sorts of building materials, such as cement, wood, and glass, are hopeful that the agreement will actually be carried through in order to revive some local businesses. In recent months, the most vital commodity to be cut from the Gazan market is petrol. With insufficient supplies, life has been slowed to an excruciatingly slow pace. In such dire days, there is hope that the cease-fire will improve life, yet four days after its start the agreement has allowed for little change to be felt on the ground.
The day prior to the onset of the cease-fire, I had the longest day of filming in my life, from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. In the village of Ghwein, the last Palestinian community before the border between the West Bank and Israel, lies a small community whose inhabitants live in caves as their ancestors have for hundreds of years. In 1948, such farming communities all over the country were forcefully displaced by Israeli troops, the inhabitants of Ghwein also were pushed out of half of their village in the valley. Since that time more and more land has been confiscated, dividing the village from access to much of their farmland and even more vital wells. In these forgotten village lands, Israel will destroy any home that is built, so life in the caves remains frozen in time. Having experienced a dry rainy season, they have barely sufficient water to make it. Life is becoming increasingly unsustainable. If the families leave, tempted by the luxuries of city life, Israel is certain to annex their land for the construction of another settlement, like it has in so many other locations around them. So the families of Ghwein are remaining steadfast in resisting the occupation.
In Ghwein, Abu Mohammed told us of the realities of growing up as a farmer under occupation. Life is suddenly whittled down to the very basics: land and water. This Palestinian Life takes an oral history approach to the Palestinian experience by featuring farmers such as Abu Mohammed, rather than the "expert" opinions of journalists, historians, and political analysts.
Together with a Palestinian film crew from Bethlehem, producer Julie Norman and I have just a week left to capture stories of resistance in the West Bank. Next week I will travel to Gaza to film a final sequence connecting these stories to those of a Gaza under severe siege.
Philip Rizk is an Egyptian-German Christian who lived and worked in Gaza from 2005-2007. The film project is still underfunded -- check out the film site and make a contribution at thispalestinianlife.blogspot.com.
James Dobson, of Focus on the Family Action, and his senior vice president of government and public policy, Tom Minnery, used their "Focus on the Family" radio show to criticize Barack Obama's understanding of Christian faith. In the show, they describe Obama as "deliberately distorting the Bible," "dragging biblical understanding through the gutter," "willfully trying to confuse people," and having a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."
The clear purpose of the show was to attack Barack Obama. On the show, Dobson says of himself, "I'm not a reverend. I'm not a minister. I'm not a theologian. I'm not an evangelist. I'm a psychologist. I have a Ph.D. in child development." Child psychologists don't insert themselves into partisan politics in the regular way that James Dobson does and has over many years as one of the premier leaders of the Religious Right. He has spoken about how often he talked to Republican leaders -- Karl Rove, administration strategists, and even President Bush himself. This year he tried to influence the outcome of the Republican primary by saying he would never vote for John McCain or the Republicans if they nominated him, then reversed himself and said he would vote after all but didn't say for whom. But why should America care about how a child psychologist votes?
James Dobson is insinuating himself into this presidential campaign, and his attacks against his fellow Christian, Barack Obama, should be seriously scrutinized. And because the basis for his attack on Obama is the speech the Illinois senator gave at our Sojourners/Call to Renewal event in 2006 (for the record, we also had Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republicans Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback speak that year), I have decided to respond to Dobson's attacks. In most every case they are themselves clear distortions of what Obama said in that speech. I was there for the speech; Dobson was not.
I haven't endorsed a candidate, but I do defend them when they are attacked in disingenuous ways, and this is one of those cases. You can read Obama's two-year-old speech, [audio link] which was widely publicized at the time, and you can see that Dobson either didn't understand it or is deliberately distorting it. There are two major problems with Dobson's attack on Obama.
First, Dobson and Minnery's language is simply inappropriate for religious leaders to use in an already divisive political campaign. We can agree or disagree on both biblical and political viewpoints, but our language should be respectful and civil, not attacking motives and beliefs.
Second, and perhaps most important, is the role of religion in politics. Dobson alleges that Obama is saying:
I [Dobson] can't seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial-birth abortion because there are people in the culture who don't see that as a moral issue. And if I can't get everyone to agree with me, it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the Scripture. ... What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.
Contrary to Dobson's charge, Obama strongly defended the right and necessity of people of faith in bringing their moral agenda to the public square, and he was specifically critical of many on the left and in his own Democratic Party for being uncomfortable with religion in politics.
Obama said that religion is and always has been a fundamental and absolutely essential source of morality for the nation, but he also said that "religion has no monopoly on morality," which is a point I often make. The United States is not the Christian theocracy that people like James Dobson seem to think it should be. Political appeals, even if rooted in religious convictions, must be argued on moral grounds rather than as sectarian religious demands -- so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. Religious convictions must be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. Religious people don't get to win just because they are religious. They, like any other citizens, have to convince their fellow citizens that what they propose is best for the common good -- for all of us, not just for the religious.
Instead of saying that Christians must accept the "the lowest common denominator of morality," as Dobson accused Obama of suggesting, or that people of faith shouldn't advocate for the things their convictions suggest, Obama was saying the exact opposite -- that Christians should offer their best moral compass to the nation but then engage in the kind of democratic dialogue that religious pluralism demands. Martin Luther King Jr. perhaps did this best, with his Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other.
One more note. I personally disagree with how both the Democrats and Republicans have treated the moral issue of abortion and am hopeful that the movement toward a serious commitment for dramatic abortion reduction will re-shape both parties' language and positions. But that is the only "bloody notion" that Dobson mentions. What about the horrible bloody war in Iraq that Dobson apparently supports, or the 30,000 children who die each day globally of poverty and disease that Dobson never mentions, or the genocides in Darfur and other places? In making abortion the single life issue in politics and elections, leaders from the Religious Right like Dobson have violated the "consistent ethic of life" that we find, for example, in Catholic social teaching.
<p>Dobson has also fought unsuccessfully to keep the issue of the environment and climate change, which many also now regard as a "life issue," off the evangelical agenda. Older Religious Right leaders are now being passed by a new generation of young evangelicals who believe that poverty, "creation care" of the environment, human trafficking, human rights, pandemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and the fundamental issues of war and peace are also "religious" and "moral" issues and now a part of a much wider and deeper agenda. That new evangelical agenda is a deep threat to Dobson and the power wielded by the Religious Right for so long. It puts many evangelical votes in play this election year, especially among a new generation who are no longer captive to the Religious Right. Perhaps that is the real reason for Dobson's attack on Barack Obama.
Recently I had the privilege of attending a health-care debate at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Inspired by Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters, two groups of five people debated the following resolution: Government-sponsored health care programs should be expanded to cover the uninsured. The group arguing against the aforementioned resolution carried the day. They dismantled their opposition by critiquing Medicaid, Medicare, and the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP), and lamenting the financial cost of health care expansion. Beneath the bludgeoning, however, the affirmative group constructed a moving closing argument.
Up until that point, both sides obscured the flesh-and-blood dimension of the debate: 47 million people -- including 9 million children -- currently do not have health care in this country. After raising legitimate concerns about funding and program efficiency, the negative side callously contended that America is a country founded on individualism and that "those people" -- the millions without health care -- simply need to exercise more responsibility in taking care of their bodies. The affirmative position countered these assertions by crafting a poetic refrain centered on "those people." Those people, they intoned, possess a financial stake in America's fiscal policy through paying taxes. Those people, they continued, are mothers and fathers who need the benefit of health care in order to maximize their contributions to America's economy. Those people, they concluded, are included in the portion of our Constitution's preamble, which speaks of promoting "the general welfare."
As we approach the presidential election in November, we can be sure that the health-care debate will intensify. Unfortunately, we can probably be equally sure that "those people" will be dehumanized into statistics, attacked with personal responsibility exhortations that obscure environmental and genetic factors, and otherwise pushed to the periphery of public policy discussions. Hopefully, "those people" can also be sure of something -- that the faith community will join with them in humanizing the health-care debate by infusing the discussion with anecdotes, aspirations, and accounts of our uninsured brothers and sisters.
Andrew Wilkes is a policy and organizing intern for Sojourners. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary.
In the late summer of 2004, a seminary colleague and I pondered the possibility of another four years of Bush 43. The polls were very close, and it seemed highly possible that we could be faced with four more years of G.W. Bush, coupled with both houses of Congress under the Republicans. My colleague observed ruefully, "Perhaps unified Republican rule would be the best education for the people to see just how much they don't want it." Before I could respond, he added, "Though, I really don't know if we can afford four more years of Bush and a Republican Congress." It turns out he was right -- on both accounts.
One could easily bewail the manifold profligracy of the last incarnation of conservative rule, and what it will cost to recover from it. However, I focus my attention here on the extent to which Congress in general and the Bush presidency in particular have served to fuel an exodus from Bushian conservatism. It was Immanuel Kant who once wrote that David Hume awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers, and in like fashion I rejoice -- indeed, give thanks to God -- for the extent to which many Christians have been awakened from the dogmatic slumbers of narrow moralism to a broader moral agenda, one more consistent with the one whose name we bear when we call ourselves Christians. So, I find myself in an odd place as a progressive follower of Jesus, giving thanks to God for a man generally viewed as the enemy of progressive Christianity -- G.W. Bush.
My thanks, though, would remain too abstract without some attempt to be more specific, and I readily grant that, at best, I am trying to find a silver lining in an otherwise profoundly dark cloud. Yet, it is hard to imagine any one thing that has contributed more to the transition of so many young Christians away from the narrow agenda of many of Bush's right-wing Christian enablers than a presidency that stands in such contrast with the values of Jesus. My good friend and Sojourners colleague Jim Wallis likes to express his puzzlement over how Jesus came to be seen as "pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-American." It is now obvious that under the excesses of GWB, many more have come to be similarly puzzled. What could stand more in opposition to our Lord's injunction to be peacemakers than the Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive war" -- unless it be his willingness to put the development and use of nuclear weapons back on the table? What could stand more in contrast to the values expressed by Jesus in the second half of Matthew 25 than the Bush penchant for tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts paid for on the backs of "the least of these"? What could be more opposed to the God-given obligation to steward the environment than "clean air" rules that worsen air quality, "clean water" rules that worsen water quality, the utter inattention to our dependence on non-renewable energy sources, and the propagandized denial of climate change? Finally, could there be any stronger expression of hubris vis-à-vis the rightful concerns of our global partners than Bushian unilateralism?
On the one hand, George W. Bush will leave a somber legacy, from which it will take years of our best thinking and acting to recover. We rightly bewail this legacy and, sadly, must to some extent own our complicity for allowing his "all fear, all the time" mantra to bewitch us. On the other hand, just as our deepest appreciation of the light often comes in the midst of the darkest hour, perhaps it took the darkness of Bushian conservatism to help us see its bankruptcy on Christian grounds. If this be the case, then maybe there will be one positive, lasting legacy of this administration: Perhaps, for a generation, we will not allow ourselves so easily to be distracted from the simple message of Jesus -- "Blessed are the peacemakers, care for the least of these, think first of the interest of others, love your enemies ...." May it be so.
Chuck Gutenson is the chief operating officer for Sojourners.
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Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
It is no secret that young evangelicals are opting out of the 'religious right' in ever-larger numbers, and are becoming more (what for lack of a better term we'll call) progressive. With the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, many young evangelicals are asking tough questions and beginning to make connections.
Our politics are coming out differently, but it is not that we reject everything our parents believe. Rather, we take seriously something beneath the rhetoric. We are pro-life, but realize this doesn't end with the womb. The U.S. War on Terror, the death penalty, genocide in Darfur, the AIDS crisis, and global warming also violate the sanctity of human life. We are pro-family, but realize that gays and lesbians are being used as a scapegoat by the Right. The commodification of sex, housing and healthcare costs, mass imprisonment, and raids on immigrant communities are all forces tearing families apart.
Many of these crises are perceived as 'liberal' issues. Polls show that young evangelicals are voting increasingly for Democrats is all but a given. The temptation I pray we will avoid is hopping in bed with the Democrats like previous generations did with the Republicans. It is my hope, that instead of becoming more liberal, we would become more biblical. We need to be more realistic about partisan politics, both its capacity to exploit and use the church and its limits in creating large-scale social change.
In Matthew's Gospel, when the mother of James and John asked for positions of power for her sons in what she thought would be Jesus' revolutionary government, he replied: "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..." Essentially, Jesus was saying the practice of government is domineering and self-serving; disciples are to understand and exercise power in a different way.
We should not place our hopes solely on our representatives, senators, or presidents to enact our values for us. Rather, we should learn how personal the political truly is, by living out the changes we want to see take place in the wider world. Then, the political choices we make will flow naturally out of the work we're already doing as part of being the church. What I mean is, part of the faith community's vocation is feeding the hungry, providing shelter for those who have none, caring for single mothers, working for peace, and so forth. Casting a ballot should simply be an extension of that prior service--not an excuse for noninvolvement with the marginalized--but a chance to further the work we should already be doing.
Widespread social change will not come merely from the election of a "change candidate," but from the movements of nonconforming minorities, faith communities, and others, whose lives take the shape of servanthood and whose voices are joined with those on the opposite side of the power equation. This is our real work, to which we must be committed for more than one day in November.
American Public Media recently launched Budget Hero--an interactive game that lets people explore the major issues of the election by changing the federal budget to match their stands on issues and values. Budget Hero tries to bring a level of clarity and simplicity to the federal budget. It is bound to be controversial since the game puts numbers against issues like bringing the troops home from Iraq soon, versus gradually or not at all, and providing options on taxes, Social Security, and Medicare.
"Partisan messages tend to cloud the real issues at play during campaigns," says the Web site, "and most candidates are loath to attach detailed financial impacts to solutions which make up their platform." American Public Media worked with the Congressional Budget Office, Government Accountability Office, and many others to gather the data for the game. Commentors are already suggesting tweaks: "I would have liked a 'cut the Military by 70%" button,'" says Jim from Boston. "Everything would have been paid for, and it would put us in line with the rest of the world." (For more on U.S. military spending and the Biblical mandate for peace, see 'A Theft from Those Who Hunger' by Frida Berrigan.)
Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.
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For you have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling.
I walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.
I kept my faith, even when I said,
"I am greatly afflicted";
I said in my consternation,
"Everyone is a liar."
Welcome to summer. Officially and totally summer in the Northern Hemisphere. It's certifiably summer by every means of our accounting, be it psychological or physical, historical or theological. Which of these we choose to employ makes no difference. This is still Summer, with a capital "S."
Experientially, spring began to morph into summer weeks ago for most of us, but astrologically or geologically speaking, that transfer was not complete until last Friday...last Friday at 7:59 p.m. EDT... last Friday at the exact moment of the Summer Solstice...last Friday on that night which, for our ancient forebears, was the most mysterious of the year.
Before the Christianization of Europe, the mystery was seen as the death of the Oak King and the advent of the Holly King. It was the slip or rift in time when the Earth began to bear down in birth to deliver her bounty. It was the interruption of the ordinary through which the spirits, dressed in new foliage, danced in the moonlight to the devils' tunes. Litha, they called it, and Litha it still is for Wiccans and Neo-pagans. And Litha the whole season will be for them until Mabon....Mabon that comes this year just as precisely and on point as Litha did--except in September, not June. In September, at 11:44 EDT on the 22nd; for that is the time of the Autumnal Equinox.
While physicists and astronomers may speak in the patois of the sciences and while Wiccans may speak in the hoary vernacular of their heritage, most of us in this hemisphere speak either not at all, or almost not at all, about the strange slippage of spring into summer. Those of us who live in the country, as I and my family do, still mark the seasons, but not so often the sky. Our view is more horizontal than that these days, and our physical world considerably less God-haunted. But liturgy, of whatever origin or persuasion, has always given form and formality to what the body knows and can not otherwise convey to the mind. Such is the function of liturgy, in fact, be it Christian or otherwise.
In the case of Christianity, which is the tradition in which my own faith is implacably rooted, and in the case of the liturgy which gives it form, our secularly un-remarked upon passage away from spring is still very much remarked upon during the first full week of summer. That means that twice this week, Christians will stop and consider, hopefully to our souls' benefit, the stories of two men. One of them biblical, the other not. The biblical saint is so well-known as to need no great mention here. That is, on Tuesday, the 24th, Christians will say prayers of thanks for the life of John, the Baptizer, herald and forerunner of Our Lord. And on Saturday, the 28th, we will give thanks for Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons.
Now, most of us, whether Christian or simply Christianized, secular or other, to some greater or lesser extent, have a sense of who John, the Baptizer was. Irenaeus, on the other hand, is a bit of a stretch. Irenaeus lived in the second century, dying in old age at some point near or just before 200 C.E. He was, as his citation indicates, bishop of Lyons, the second one for that city ever to have, in fact. The whole idea of "Church" was that new in the mid- and late decades of the second century. Yet it was that very "newness" of institutionalization that makes Irenaeus so important, so worthy of being the non-biblical saint with whom summer opens.
Irenaeus, you see, was a disciple of Polycarp; and Polycarp had been a disciple of St. John, the Evangelist and Gospeler. That is to say, Irenaeus knew intimately the man who had known intimately the man who had known intimately Jesus of Nazareth. And what Irenaeus learned from Polycarp and, through him, from Polycarp's own mentor, was sufficient. It was sufficient for Irenaeus to stand against the persecutions of the emperor Marcus Aurelius from 161 - 180 C.E.; and it was sufficient for him to become the first theologian of that tenuous entity that was becoming the Church. It was sufficient, as well, for him to be the first Christian to argue for the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as authoritative and, more than that, as their being the only authoritative ones.
When Christians speak of the canonical Jesus, they can speak because of Irenaeus. And conversations about the historical Jesus or the theoretical Jesus or the edited Jesus or whatever other way one may choose for arriving at a distant Jesus always, eventually, trip over old Irenaeus. There he stands, haloed by the centuries right smack at the beginning of summer and saying, "This. This is what I heard from the man who knew the man who saw and heard and recorded it." All of which is a sobering way to enter, God-haunted, into summer.
The church as the community of the king must be a demonstration of the values of the kingdom. We must flesh out what it means to love one another, to do justice, to serve others.
You asked for specific issues from a Biblical perspective.
Let's start with idolatry. I agree with your definition that it is "setting up moral authorities in competition with, or to the negation, of God." But you then turn it into a partisan polemic against the Democratic Party, and what you call its "aggressive secularism" and "classic pagan hallmarks." I do not agree that the "chief crisis that any would-be political leader today needs to address" is the idolatry of secularism. The far greater crisis is those who call themselves Christians (or Jews), but put other loyalties ahead of their loyalty to God
The reality is that the idolatries that rule in the U.S. include nationalism, materialism, racism - ideologies that compete with the rule of God and for the loyalties of people of faith.
I've told the story many times about when I was in seminary, and our group of students did a thorough study to find every verse in the Bible that dealt with the poor. We looked for every reference to poor people, to wealth and poverty, to injustice and oppression, and to what the response to all those subjects was to be for the people of God We found several thousand verses in the Bible on the poor and God's response to injustice. We found it to be the second most prominent theme in the Hebrew Scriptures--the first was idolatry, and the two often were related.
On Bush's "idolatries." I recount in God's Politics how often George W. Bush has confused the American nation with the people and the purposes of God in his use of Scripture, hymns, and his calls to arms in his war against terrorism. I do believe that Bush's theology has led to disastrous consequences and has embarrassed American Christianity and damaged our image around the world.
On same-sex marriage. I believe in equal protection under the law in a democratic, pluralistic society for gay people and everybody else. Some would debate whether civil unions are necessary for that, or whether other legal protections are adequate. And that's a fair discussion. But, I have consistently said that I don't think the sacrament of marriage between a man and a woman should be changed.
On abortion. I have repeatedly said that I believe abortion is wrong and always a moral tragedy. The number of unborn lives that are lost every year is alarming. But I also do not believe that the best way to change that is to criminalize abortions and just force them underground. The question is how can we actually prevent unwanted pregnancies, protect unborn lives, support low-income women, offer compassionate alternatives to abortion, make adoption much more accessible and affordable, carefully fashion reasonable restrictions, and thus dramatically reduce the shamefully high abortion rate in America? You say you want to respect the will of the people. Well, every opinion poll shows the same thing - substantial majorities think that there are too many abortions and that we should pursue measures to reduce and restrict the number, but they do not support overturning Roe v. Wade.
Finally, on poverty. You say that we can agree that some needs should be addressed by government. But in your book, you say that "I can find nowhere in the Scripture where the state is commanded to extend generosity to the impoverished." I suppose it depends on how you define "the state." It was very different in ancient Israel before the monarchy, but the Bible is full of laws that govern leaving the corners of fields unharvested, not shaking olive trees and grapevines a second time, the Jubilee year of redistribution - all aimed at compelling those who "had" to hand over some of their plenty to those who did not. And there are laws governing fair wages (think minimum wage), unfair interest rates (think outlawing payday lending), and other ways of ensuring some degree of economic justice. It's the gap between the rich and the poor which seems to most concern the prophets and reducing the economic chasm is a priority for them.
Then, in perhaps the most outrageous statement in your book, you say that "It is debatable whether the Bible's many admonitions to care for the poor really apply today, in the United States, other than to a relatively small group of people." Do you really believe that trying to support a family of four on $20,000 a year (the official poverty measure) isn't really poverty? Thirty-seven million people living below the poverty line is not a small group. I couldn't believe your statement when I read it this week. And it tells me that you have never lived in a poor neighborhood or had any poor people as your friends. Do you see the news these days, with stories of families having to choose between paying the rent or buying food, between keeping the electricity on or buying needed medications? And what about all the children who are poor, and even hungry, in America. Do you think that it is all just their fault? Do I need to tell you the heartbreaking stories of what happens to families in the poorest neighborhoods in Washington DC where I have lived for three decades? There is real and painful poverty in the U.S. today, David, and the Bible's admonitions certainly do apply. And frankly, most all the rabbis that I have been blessed to know over many years would completely disagree with you on this. Your incredible statement about the biblical imperatives not applying to the poor in your country makes me think that we will never agree on very much about what the Bible says about politics.
Finally, who I personally vote for is not the issue. In our work, we have successfully worked across the aisle on a number of issues. On TANF (welfare reform) reauthorization, we convened a group of senior Republican and Democratic staff to work on a bipartisan approach. We worked with former Republican Senator Rick Santorum on the CARE Act, supported the direction of his Republican anti-poverty platform, and several other measures. My closest friend in the U.S. Senate for many years was former Senator Mark Hatfield, Republican from Oregon. Sadly, I have not been very enthusiastic about the voting choices we have had in many recent elections. But what says more about my politics are the causes and movements which have compelled my time and energy. It's not who I may vote for, but who I work with as allies toward common ground and common goals.
Sojourners: What's the biggest challenge you see facing young Christians now? In the years to come?
Luna: While there are many signs of hope, young Christians are in the thick of a culture of individualism, consumerism, lack of reconciliation, and violence. The idea that individually we must struggle, work, and survive is deeply ingrained in our communities. My experience has been that this radical individualism is what weighs most heavily on the human soul, that we cannot count on our neighbors to care for us when we are in trouble, because there just simply is too much competition and not enough time to care for ourselves, much less anyone else.
Also, young people live in a "zero tolerance" culture; if you mess up, your mistakes are often held against you with little hope of reconciliation. As one of my pastoral ministry professors at St. Thomas said, "We talk about reconciliation, but there are young people in this community who have never experienced forgiveness." This type of culture puts a lot of pressure on young people.
What one thing would you most like to tell Christians?
Jesus' life was about crossing borders and bringing loving compassion to the marginalized. The feeling we get when we see the elderly struggling to work just to be able to keep up with bills, the anger we feel when we hear an arthritis-stricken veteran pleading with someone on the phone to please extend his housing assistance, the tug at our souls to stop and talk to a homeless woman on the side of the road, that which compels us to give money to the poor, the pain we feel when we see young men and women getting into drugs and violence, the deep compassion we experience when we hear of an immigrant's struggle across the ocean or through the dessert in order to provide for their families ...all of these and countless more are opportunities to experience Jesus.
God places in our paths countless opportunities for grace; we must pray for the courage to accept those graces by overcoming our hesitation to encounter the poor and marginalized with love.
Khartoum seems determined to give new meaning to the phrase "repeat offender." The proxy militias it arms, in concert with the Sudanese military, continue to destroy villages and bomb schools in Darfur. Ahmad Harun--who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for recruiting and ordering Janjaweed to commit mass rape, murder, and looting, and who should be on trial in The Hague--instead continues to be the Sudanese government minister in charge of supervising (and impeding and expelling) humanitarian workers in Darfur.
Instead of enabling Khartoum's behavior by our inaction, the international community should be putting concerted economic and legal pressure on Khartoum, and on specific officials such as Harun, to get the promised U.N. humanitarian protection force on the ground in Darfur, and to get a real peace process started like the one that won an agreement stopping Sudan's previous civil war (which was north-south, rather than east-west). Instead of replicating that success, though, we've been letting Khartoum undermine it: Last month the Sudanese Armed Forces "burned the strategic town of Abyei to the ground, leaving the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) at extreme risk, " as John Prendergast of the Enough Project pointed out to the U.N. Security Council in a briefing on Tuesday.
Read Prendergast's Tuesday Security Council briefing and Enough's new report on how to get humanitarian protection and a long-term solution in Darfur. The world has stood idly by too long.
Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
The months of May and June are always a special time for school commencements. And, each year, I really enjoy my opportunities to give commencement addresses at universities and seminaries across the country. But the one I gave last week was very special indeed.
Last Wednesday evening, June 11, I was blessed and honored to give the commencement address at Sing Sing Prison. The New York Theological Seminary offers a program of theological study leading to the degree of Masters of Professional Studies, with all courses taking place inside the walls of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. In twenty-six years this extraordinary and courageous seminary training program has graduated hundreds who then go on to ministry, both inside the prison system of New York and back in the community when their sentences are finished.
I have often told the story of the first time I visited this unusual and inspiring program at Sing Sing. My book, The Soul of Politics, was being read by the students as part of their seminary curriculum, and I received a letter from the prison inmates themselves, inviting me to meet with them and discuss my book. It sounded interesting, so I wrote back to ask when they would like me to come. A young man wrote to me on behalf of his fellow Sing Sing students saying, "Well, we're free most nights!" He went on, "We're kind of a captive audience here!" The prison authorities were very accommodating and I got to spend several hours with about 70 guys in a crowded room deep in the bowels of the infamous penal institution.
The animated book conversation was one of the most stimulating and rigorous of any I've ever had. I vividly remember much of that discussion, and especially the riveting comment of one young man who said to me, "Jim, most of us at Sing Sing come from just about four or five neighborhoods in New York City. It's like a train. You get on the train in my neighborhood when you are nine or ten years old, and the train ends up here....at Sing Sing." But this young man had experienced a spiritual conversion inside of that prison, and was now enrolled in the New York Seminary program training pastors to work inside the prison system and to go back and work in those neighborhoods from which they had come. After the session that night, the young man came up to me to say goodbye, looked me in the eye, and said, "When I get out, I am going to go back and stop that train."
A few years later, I was in New York City to speak at a town meeting on poverty. Guess who was up front, helping to lead the meeting? I immediately recognized two of the young men I met that night at Sing Sing--Julio Medina and Darren Ferguson. Last week, Julio came back to the commencement at what NYTS calls their "North Campus," now as an illustrious alumnus who spends his days running a very successful drug rehabilitation program in NYC. Darren was being the newly installed pastor of a church in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Queens where some recent shootings had him out on the streets that night instead of at the Sing Sing commencement.
These are very special graduates. To get to where they were last Wednesday night, twelve men had to overcome so many obstacles. I told them, in my commencement address, that they "had an advantage." The advantage they have is in knowing what faith really means, how much it costs, and how it can completely change your life and the world. They know that faith is for the big stuff. And they know that if you have faith, even the size of a grain of mustard seed, you can move mountains. And that's what these men had to move to get to this place on a warm Wednesday night in the visitors' room inside Sing Sing prison. They got to take off their prison jumpsuits, and put on shirts, ties, and graduation robes to wear in front of their beaming and tearful mothers and fathers, wives and children, extended family, and so many friends.
Theo Harris was selected by his fellow students to give the "class reflection." He spoke of the "School of Hard Knocks" whose three core curricula were "street education, peer pressure, and ghetto economics." He said all his fellow class members had to go through the school of hard knocks before they got to go to this school of preparation for the ministry. Theo said he had learned "the greatest lesson of my life....that no one is beyond redemption. That is what sustained me, that is what motivated me, and that is what brought me to where I am today: redeemed." He then named each of his fellow graduates, observed their special gifts and vocations, and then concluded, "We have expressed our desire to make a meaningful contribution to our community. Now, all that remains is for us to go out among them, roll up our sleeves, and really make a difference."
It was a night of rich gratitude and profound hope. And while I have often been inspired by the faces of the young bright graduates facing me on brilliant spring days of school commencements, I have never felt more grateful and more hopeful than I did looking into the spiritually-chiseled faces of these redeemed graduates on a summer's night at Sing Sing prison. Thanks be to God.
I will begin with some positive news of growing international pressure on the Zimbabwean government. The United Nations secretary general has demanded an end to the violence and lifting of the ban on food aid. The U.S. secretary of state has called a meeting with African leaders to discuss the situation, and the Botswana government has issued this statement: "Botswana is alarmed by these arrests and detentions as they disrupt electoral activities of key players and intimidate the electorate, thus undermining the process of holding a free, fair and democratic election."
The latter is particularly remarkable because this is the first government in the region that has issued an official statement condemning the violence. Botswana has always been a model of democracy in Africa but is now proving to be a model of statesmanship. Other leaders have followed suit and have together presented a document calling for an end to the violence and for free and fair elections. It is encouraging to witness this swell of support. Let us continue to pray for the process to continue and materialise in concrete action.
Sadly the situation on the ground has not yet changed, and violence continues. Yesterday when I felt overwhelmed by the violence, I recalled an African parable. It is a parable about a chick that was snatched from its mother by a hawk; the chick was asked why it was crying in such a hopeless situation. It replied, "I am not crying because I hope that someone will save me but because I want the world to know what happened to me."
For the sake of many who are victims of violence or have lost family members, it is our responsibility to tell their story to let the world know what is happening. As people of faith, we go further than the chick and trust that God will hear and act through people. Please continue to pray especially as we approach the week of the elections.
Nontando Hadebe, a former Sojourners intern, is originally from Zimbabwe and is now pursuing graduate studies in theology in South Africa.
It is well with those who deal generously and lend,
who conduct their affairs with justice.
For the righteous will never be moved;
they will be remembered forever.
They are not afraid of evil tidings;
their hearts are firm, secure in the Lord.
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I was touched recently to hear Dr. Alfredo Quinoñes-Hinojosa, honored by the Merage Foundation for the American Dream for his contributions in the field of medicine, tell his exceptional story. Dr. Quiñones' journey began at age 19, just as it has for millions of his Mexican paisanos - hopping the U.S.-Mexico border's perilous chain-link fence. Unable to provide for his family, he remained firm in his decision to head north, even after he was initially caught by the border patrol and deported back to Mexico. He eventually succeeded and labored as an undocumented migrant farm worker in the San Joaquin Valley. The same hands that picked tomatoes in the hot California sun now perform neurosurgery on brain tumors in the halls of Johns Hopkins University. Educated at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard, he has reaped great rewards from his determination to succeed and his optimistic attitude towards life. Many would say he has realized "the American Dream."
While hearing the story of Dr. Quiñones, I thought of the millions of hardworking and goal-driven students whose dreams to attend college in the U.S. have been put on hold because of their documentation status. The failure of the DREAM Act in Congress last fall halted the aspirations of high school graduates who would otherwise qualify for in-state tuition to public colleges and universities. If we continue to punish these students for decisions made by their parents years ago to bring them to the "Land of Opportunity," we are squashing their aspirations to become world-class brain surgeons, business professionals, teachers, and contributors to the fabric of America.
I heard Dr. Quiñones speak at the National Leadership Awards banquet at which the Merage Foundation for the American Dream was honoring several first-generation immigrants who have made outstanding contributions in the U.S. (Several of us from Sojourners had been invited in recognition of the work of Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform). But who knows how many (or how few) awards will be handed out in the future, if our country's immigration policies continue to deflate immigrants' hopes and dreams on a daily basis?
Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners.
I won't even try to describe all of the maddening details of finding a HUD apartment for a homeless, no-income family that consists of a mother, five kids under the age of nine, and a nurturing father. It suffices to say that after three weeks of slogging through that kind of absurdity and ugliness, I began to understand why the mother, our friend Jaleena, tried to kill herself when her original building got condemned. Even with all that, we barely managed an awful apartment, and by the time we did, most of the furniture Jaleena had left in the old place had been stolen by her former landlord.
So there I was last Saturday, along with our friend Kwami (the nurturing boyfriend), loading and unloading a truckload of secondhand bunk beds and bureaus, wondering how long my surgically-repaired ankles and arthritic hands would hold up. I could have found somebody else to do it, of course, but no one I trust enough to do it right. Strange as it sounds, moving donated furniture into a family's worn-out HUD apartment is a delicate job.
It wasn't about the furniture, after all. It wasn't about all the phone calls, waiting in line, sidewalk hot dogs, application fees, and driving all over town. That stuff is valuable sometimes, but it sure isn't enough to keep us here in this neighborhood on a bad day. No, the real job - the job that keeps us here - is about communicating genuine, garden-variety love to vulnerable, poor people who may feel that they aren't worthy of your interest, let alone your friendship.
To do that well, you can't act too cheerful about giving up your Saturday. On the contrary, you have to whine about the heat and swear out loud when your thumb gets crushed between the couch and the doorjamb, like you would if you were moving your sister's stuff. You take the beer if they offer it, and hint around if they don't. Either way, you let the guy know he'll be helping you move some of your stuff soon enough. There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but I can't really explain it to you. Nobody can. That's the problem.
These days I encounter lots of people who want to love poor people, just like Shane Claiborne or John Perkins or Dorothy Day or some other radical Jesus-follower they've heard of or read about. Some of them want to move to the inner-city, or to an African slum, or an Indian orphanage, or a Native American reservation. Others want to reach out right where they are. Either way, their enthusiasm for serving God's people in need is positively thrilling to me. And yet...my first instinct is to keep them away from Jaleena and Kwami.
Perhaps it would be easier for us to welcome these people if we were running a soup kitchen or a shelter, but we have no program standing between us and our neighbors here. We have no clients, after all, only friends, and given all the differences and fears and brokenness among us, keeping those friendships genuine is a tricky business indeed. I am often amazed at the beauty of our little fellowship, but I am always aware that it must be protected.
So then, forgive me if I complain about my sore ankles and aching hands, but then won't let anybody but Kwami help me with the furniture. It's my job after all, and I'm glad to have it.
P.S. For those of you looking for an update, Bobbie hasn't yet passed her truck driver's license test, but she hasn't given up on it either. It turns out she has four tries before she has to start all over again. Her school will keep working with her for as long that takes, but I still fear Bobbie's opportunity may be slipping away. Honestly, she's going to need more grace than I'm used to counting on. Pray for us.
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 U.S., and executive director of EAPE, which develops and supports innovative, cost-effective mission projects around the world.
This Training for Change conference was a good experience, one that I did not expect and that challenged me deeply. One of the tools we practiced was learning to tell our personal stories to build relationships with each other. I'm not very good at that, and I have a hard time finding the desire to open up to strangers.
But the more the ideas of "relationships" and "stories" were drilled in, the more they became real to me. I began to see the passion and the honesty in all of the other conference goers, which surprised me because I didn't know that there were people so willing and determined to create change in this society. It was very inspiring, and I was happy to get to know a great bunch of people. And the people who work for Sojo are crazy...about justice.
Donna Almendrala just graduated from UC Berkeley in May 2008 with a degree in Chemical Biology. She is currently looking for an outlet that will blend her science background and desire for social justice.
It is sad to see that, in our highly competitive and greedy world, we have lost touch with the joy of giving. We often live as if our happiness depended on having. But I don't know anyone who is really happy because of what he or she has. True joy, happiness and inner peace come from the giving of ourselves to others. A happy life is a life for others.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Father's Day was especially poignant this year with the shocking weekend news of the death of Tim Russert, the long-time and extraordinary host of Meet The Press. I knew Tim a little, mostly from the times I have been on the show or at Washington events that we both attended. Watching Meet The Press is a Sunday ritual for me; one of the very few things on television that I always tape. Tim Russert's unexpected passing broke the heart of official Washington and the outpouring of emotional remembrances was highly unusual for this cynical city. Listening to so many of the heartfelt tributes to Tim Russert made it painfully clear how much the people in this city and around the country knew him well and loved him dearly. The outpouring of praise from his colleagues spoke of Russert's brilliance as the best--always tough but fair--interviewer on television. They spoke of his consistent and daunting preparation before each show, and how much the leading politicians of our time knew they had to really be prepared for an interview with Tim Russert.
We often hear the words, "speaking truth to power," but in watching Tim Russert each week you got a ringside seat to that "prophetic" vocation. And unlike so many of the television talk show hosts of this era, his show was never mostly about him, but rather about holding politicians' feet to the fire of accountability to their own words and positions, and giving the American people the opportunity to evaluate what they say and what it really means. Russert's work ethic came right from his working class roots in Buffalo, which he never forgot, and helped make him much more likeable and accessible to ordinary people in America than the media elite who often act as if they are celebrities, not journalists who are supposed to ask the hard questions of important people. His producer reported that, after every Sunday show, Tim would call his dad back in Buffalo, "Big Russ," a retired sanitation worker, to get his opinion of that week's Meet The Press which, Russert said, was the cheapest and best focus group a journalist ever had.
Tim Russert was also a man of deep personal faith, a Catholic whose religion meant much more to him, again, than it often does for many of his media colleagues. He regularly had faith leaders as guests on Meet the Press and treated the subject of relgion and public life with both knowledge and respect. I remember one show that I was on, along with Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton, and Richard Land. Russert kept probing deeper and deeper, often with good insight, trying to avoid the religious food fight that often breaks out in politics. We sometimes discussed how the perspective of faith could help get us beyond the narrow confines of the "right" and "left" political categories and maybe even help the nation to find some common ground on the crucial moral issues like poverty. Russert himself was known for generous involvement in many causes that served the poor.
Many of the tributes went even deeper than the numerous accolades for his many gifts and skills. Tim Russert was not only the premier political journalist in America, as everyone agreed, but was also a real "father figure" to many people, from the whole family at NBC News to the extended community of journalists in this city--even to many of his rivals. And so many of Russert's colleagues and friends spoke of his interest in their children, and how much he meant in the lives of their own families. Story after story recounted how often he would inquire after how someone's children were doing, and how Tim was often "there for you" in times of personal and family crisis. I recall him asking me about my kids, and us smiling when we realized that we both had sons named "Luke."
Tim Russert and I were about the same age when he died so unexpectedly last weekend, a fact that was not lost on my own son Luke. On Father's Day, it was his role as a faithful father to his own son and very attentive "godfather" to so many other people's sons and daughters which most broke through to me. Later on this Father's Day, our Little League baseball team, the Astros, had its last game of the season and a celebration pool party. One of the greatest blessings of my life has been to coach my nine-year-old Luke's team for the last several years, and now also help with five-year-old Jack's as well. Before we passed out the medals to each kid and talked about our season together, I remembered Tim Russert with a few words on Father's Day for the boys and their parents by saying that the premier American journalist of our time would have thought this--kids, baseball, parents, family, community, and celebration--to be the most important thing of all. And in being faithful to that priority himself, in the midst of an enormously busy and significant public life, Tim Russert is a role model for every dad and mom; every uncle, aunt, godparent, teacher, and coach; and every adult who realizes how much kids need people to love and teach them the important things of life. Thanks Tim, we won't forget you.
Your post is difficult to respond to. I am not interested in trying to debunk your caricature of me and my ideas point-by-point. It appears to be mostly one-liners and sweeping generalizations about whole groups of people without much substance. For example, there are those you would call liberals who have a very strong ethic of personal responsibility and family, and those you would call conservatives who do not. And, of course, vice versa. Real life often defies easy stereotypes.
David, it is possible to call for personal moral responsibility and social responsibility at the same time, moving beyond the old paradigms of liberal and conservative.
Both are important. I believe that a common good agenda, rooted in the moral center, could unite diverse people on the really big issues. It is possible to "find common ground by moving to higher ground" and actually make some progress on the most important questions of our time.
If you know anything at all about me and my books, you know that what you're attacking is neither what I say nor what I believe. If you want to debate someone who is pro-abortion and who is willing to defend what you call a "socialist-activist role for government", find someone else. It's not me.
So, let's go back to the big picture. I'm glad that you think I've done "an amazing service in helping to legitimize the idea ... that spiritual values deserve a role in shaping political values." It's what I have been saying and writing for more than thirty-five years. I'm very happy that the idea has now become a mainstream idea, with many voices saying what we've been saying for a long time.
But you say that we should have a "litmus test for whether a candidate really feels God should have a say in the ordering of our laws." There is a very large difference between grounding political ideas in spiritual values and thinking God should write our legislation, or that we can clearly know what God would write.
I have great respect for Judaism and the witness of the Hebrew Bible. I have written that the place to begin to understand the politics of God is with the prophets, the ancient moral articulators in the Scriptures who claimed to speak in "the name of the Lord." Their topics were quite secular--land, labor, capital, wages, debt, taxes, equity, fairness, courts, prisons, immigrants, other races and peoples, economic divisions, social justice, war, and peace--the stuff of politics.
They usually spoke to rulers, kings, judges, employers, landlords, owners of property and wealth, and even religious leaders. They spoke to "the nations," and it was the powerful who were most often the prophets' target audience; those in charge of things were the ones called to greatest accountability. And whom were the prophets usually speaking for? Most often, the dispossessed, widows and orphans (read: poor single moms), the hungry, the homeless, the helpless, the least, last, and lost. Is God into class warfare? No, God wants the "common good," but speaking for the common good can get one accused of calling for class warfare--usually by the elites who control the political discussion and do not want too much conversation about what God thinks of our political priorities. But, you probably think the prophets believed in a "socialist-activist role for government."
As a Christian, my worldview is also shaped by the call of Jesus to a new order and a new community - an alternative community living a new way of life, visibly demonstrating the values of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. That is my starting point for faithful political witness. And with that as the vision, concrete political priorities and policies can be judged by whether they bring us closer to it or farther away from it.
I have written that on many of the critical issues of the day, I believe that there is common ground to be found. And I believe that the prospect of real social change can be animated by the testimony and action of faith. But I also believe that political appeals, even if rooted in religious convictions, must be argued on moral grounds rather than as religious demands--so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. Religion has no monopoly on morality, it must be disciplined by democracy and contribute to a better and more moral public discourse. Religious convictions must therefore be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. We don't get to win just because we are religious. Like any other citizens, we have to convince our fellow citizens that what we propose is best for the common good-- for all of us and not just for the religious. We must make our appeals in moral language; secular people should not fear that such appeals will lead to theocracy.
We have to get beyond the caricature of people and groups and talk about real substance, real ideas, and real policy issues. Can you do that, David? I never did get a response to whether you think that your share of our more than 500 billion tax dollars (so far) have been well spent on the war in Iraq.
I, like most, have multiple tribes of which I consider myself a part. This weekend I ate with, spoke with, worshiped with, learned from, and was amazed by a new tribe of people. There was kinship, and a sense of shared experience, struggle, fear, and hope among this new tribe.
I was glad to hear something in Brian McLaren's session on "scared to talk politics in church?" It wasn't something Brian said but rather something from someone who doesn't look like me, and who had on a shirt I probably wouldn't wear. He spoke up in the Q&A at the beginning of the session (which was a fantastic idea, thanks Brian). This man had noticed in many conversations in the working groups and among conference attendees that while no one was out and out bashing either political party he noticed that more often people would speak favorably about the "more progressive" political party and "jabingly" about the "more conservative" political party. Now as one who is coming from a more conservative background and who is now very much wanting to find a political third way to let my faith fully inform my public policy, I noticed this underlying level in conversations happening here.
I understand that for many Americans who grew up democrat, progressive and Christian, or came to faith later in life, the current dominance of hyper-conservatives in the national faith conversation, namely the "religious right," has left them hurt, angry and wanting the balance to change. They have fought for justice and felt other Christians fighting against them.
This issue is real. The hurt is real and the pain is real. The polarization this country has experienced divides Christian who share the same Christ, just as it has divided the rest of the country. Theology may differ some or a lot, political agendas may be wildly different, and we may come from different sides of town, but we share a common God and ought to behave like it.
McLaren already planned to deal with this issue in his PowerPoint presentation. The conversation was wonderful when we came to that slide. He pointed to many places where conservatives are right and where they are wrong, and where democrats are right and where they are wrong.
All this being said- these people are my tribe. We share a faith in Jesus. I now share a budding passion for justice, ending poverty and for ending human trafficking with people who I have stayed separate from in my public and faith life. This conference is not the beginning of the process of reconciliation for me, but it is a major stepping stone in the continuing process. I am called to love my brother and the stranger.
God cares for the poor, so should I. God cares for the stranger, so should I. God cares for creation, so should I. God cares for the orphan, so should I. God cares for people who don't vote like me, so should I. God cares...so should I.
It sounds so simple to seek first the Kingdom of God. I make it very complicated.
Shelton Green works as a government affairs consultant in Texas and blogs at www.inreformation.com.
Yesterday I was in a class where we were trying to frame up the story of ourselves--not just an idealistic fluffy tale--but one that when you told it, others would understand in their gut why you felt the way you feel and maybe even get a glimpse of the "real" you and move a little bit closer to you as a person. A gentleman shared with me his negative feeling of experiencing that vulnerability. I do believe that most people feel this way...scared to go deeper....scared to really talk about raw happenings and going beyond the issues to a place that is personal. I think that may be very natural, especially surrounded by strangers whom you are meeting for the first time. In reality, being vulnerable to strangers has always been easier for me, than being vulnerable with those I am close to in many ways. I realized that I may be different than others in that respect, and I'm okay with that. Thinking about what this man said took me back to a page in The One Year Daily Grind by Sarah Arthur, a devotional I have been reading for the last year, that addresses what she calls "The Secret of Weakness".
"..the secret of weakness is not primarily about that God is trying to teach us in the midst of our struggles but how God wants to bless others in the midst of our struggles. People seek out the church, not necessarily because Christians are strong and vibrant and healthy, but because honest Christians have known what it is like to be weak. They have known suffering. They have felt the stab of pain and loss. They have held each other in their sorrow- they have knelt at the beds of dying people, prayed in the ER, handed tissues to someone at the end of a rough day. And the reason people come through the sanctuary doors week after week is not because Christians have it all together or have eliminated suffering from their schedules but because they are still able to say, after all this, 'We know that our Redeemer lives.'
The world is looking for saints to pray with who have known the depths of weakness, because that's where this world is. It doesn't want light, fluffy spirituality. It wants to kneel next to the Jobs who have seen the face of God. And that's what we as a Christian community can be for the hurting. Out pain and suffering are not some kind of spiritual liability. They're how God positions us to bless others."
This speaks to me in that I don't have to be ashamed of my weakness--that God can use it to help others that are hurting. Yesterday in the panel discussion: What about our faith calls us into this work? Embodying the Kingdom of God, Alexia Salvatierra and Alexie Torres-Fleming talked about how we need to work alongside the hurting. We can be so much more effective when we can pull from the depths of our souls the pains and trials we have suffered, and at the same time extend the hope that everyone deserves. We have a Savior to back us up.
Jessica Culp is a wife and mother, as well as a fundraiser for Cunningham Children's Home in Urbana, Illinois.
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A few years back 50 Cent starred in the movie "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" about a young drug dealer who leaves his dealing to pursue a career as a rap star. The contrast is stark: utter poverty or incredible wealth. No matter the level of material poverty or wealth, believing that more "toys" is the goal will never overcome widespread poverty.
I ran into an acquaintance here at Pentecost 2008 who reminded me of how this "get rich or die trying" message is ingrained in our psychology at every economic level. As we caught up, he filled me in on how he's excited to be here because he just took a job in his hometown of Philadelphia as a community and church organizer. He's most interested in addressing the issue of the streets in Philly where poverty invades every inch of life, but "get rich or die trying," as 50 Cent likes to promote, is the ruling philosophy. Coming from a similar background, he has emerged with a different philosophy that drives him to bring change to the youth who are living in the same situation that he once found himself in. How does he empower his community to not fall into the trap of having getting super-rich as their only aspiration?
I have the same questions, but I come from a different economic background, solidly middle-class and college-educated for generations. I too work with youth struggling against socially imposed boundaries of class, race, poverty, and lack of education. At the same time, I am trying to work on my own struggle to overcome my culturally acceptable addiction to wealth (often glossed over as "practicality" or "security") with a theology of enough.
Conversations with others who come from different backgrounds are key to understanding how to answer these questions and lead the next generation. Although our lives have different backdrops, we agree that the get-rich gospel is not fulfilling. Together we're claiming similar values, asking similar questions, and reaching out to one another for answers.
Sarah Campbell is finishing her time as a volunteer in the Discipleship Year service corps in Washington, D.C., where she has been learning to break her cultural addictions through simplicity and intentional community. She is planning to study in a dual-degree program for a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of Social Work.
As I attended Pentecost 2008 I was reminded that Dr. King's Poor People's Campaign is celebrating its 40th anniversary. On Friday, Mary Nelson (Board Member of CCDA) and I facilitated a workshop on "Building the Beloved Community." Building the Beloved Community was one of the central messages of Dr. King's ministry. The Poor People's Campaign of 1968 serves as a tangible example of what the Beloved Community looks like when lived out. In November of 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr. and SCLC met to discuss what direction the movement should go in after the passage of civil rights legislation and the urban riots of the previous summer. SCLC decided to launch the Poor People's Campaign in response to the economic injustice that plagued many Americans of all races. The Poor People's Campaign was to be a widespread campaign of civil disobedience. The poor from across America would come to Washington, D.C. to challenge the government to pass an anti-poverty package that would include a commitment to full employment, a guaranteed annual income and increased construction of low-income housing.
The Poor People's Campaign included poor whites from Appalachia, poor African-Americans from rural and urban areas, poor Hispanics and Native Americans. This group all came together to build Resurrection City which became the headquarters of the campaign. This "city" consisted of shacks built by conference participants and included a school, an arts and cultural program, and a medical clinic staffed by volunteer doctors. In this community African-Americans shared gospel music with Appalachian whites who in turn shared their bluegrass music. This Resurrection City was a place of Beloved Community. Sadly, the goals of the Poor People's Campaign were not accomplished due to the assassinations of Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy, bad press, and days of constant rain.
The unfinished work of the Poor People's Campaign is now our responsibility. For forty years we have been wandering in the wilderness of economic injustice but if we can unite regardless of our differences to create the Beloved Community we can get to the promised land of economic equality.
One tangible way you can honor the legacy of the Poor People's Campaign is by joining Sojourners in its Vote out Poverty campaign. Participants of Pentecost 2008 are being trained to return home to mobilize their churches, campuses and communities to "Vote out Poverty." Building the Beloved Community is necessary to doing this work.
Onleilove Alston is a native of Brooklyn, New York, and serves Sojourners in the Policy and Organizing department as a Beatitudes Fellow. She is a student in the dual M.Div/MSW program at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University. In NYC she organizes with the Poverty Initiative and New York Faith & Justice.
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What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?
Officially speaking and despite what we may all be thinking about the June heat wave the nation is plowing its way through right now, summer is actually not here until the summer solstice. But we can take heart; the solstice is upon us at last. To be precise, it is slated to occur this Friday, June 20, at 7:59 EDT. After that, it will be summer, and we will all be free to begin accumulating the stories and experiences that will become our common archive of what "The Summer of 2008" was like.
But this season that is to come upon us within the next few days will not be an ordinary summer. Not only will we be moving through the ramp-up of presidential campaigns and rhetoric, but our economy will either begin to heal during the next three months or else, heaven forbid, continue to flounder its way toward thousands of private heartbreaks and disasters. The earth will be sending us intensified messages -- or perhaps our receptivity to her messages will be intensified -- about how we can, and cannot, continue to live on and with her. The XXIX Olympiad will play out not only games of sport, but also those of geopolitics, and Web 3.0 will become a more familiar concept whose implications will begin to feather out into a more general conversation. No, this one will be no ordinary summer.
With all of this (and more) in mind, it seems a good and salutary idea to think about setting aside, on a routine basis over the coming three months, some fixed segment of time in which to rest a bit, to feed our hearts a treat or two, to be thankful, even, for life itself and for the presence of soul in each of us. What better time for such an enterprise than Sunday itself, and what better time than the early morning? What indeed?
So it is that each summer Sunday from June 22 through Sept. 21, I will be here as a guest of God's Politics, hoping you also will wish to be their guest with me. I think it is fair to say that nobody at this point knows exactly what will be said here, because nobody has yet lived the summer of 2008. When we come to Sept. 21, however, and to the autumnal equinox, I pray it may be said of all of us that we have spent our time together with benefit and to all those good ends that can come from responsible conversation.
Sojourners' June issue features a cover story by Amy Green and a column by Jim Wallis about the new paths of young Christians, plus a set of mini-interviews with 10 next-gen Christian leaders. Here's a taste: part of Sojourners'interview with Mark Wallace, the Facilitator for School Violence Prevention, K-12 for the Newburgh Enlarged City School District in Newburg, New York. People's journeys often follow a complicated path, which can include becoming an "emerging leader" much later in life. After serving almost two decades in Sing Sing prison, where he earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree and helped found the Rehabilitation Through Arts program, Mark Wallace is a youth worker and mentor.
Sojourners: How would you describe your job or leadership role?
I am more or less a mentor/counselor, I would say, [or] group therapist. The [Newburgh School] district has allowed me to set up a classroom setting where young men and women from diverse ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic-status backgrounds, can come and actually voice their concerns, their opinions, and deal with whatever issues or hardships they may be faced with. We get into the heart of all types of matters, whether it be racism, gender, community, policing, how they feel about school, the curriculum, their ambitions, their goals--short-term, long-term--you name it, we talk about it. It's been very refreshing for the students because they feel that here is a forum where somebody's finally listening to what's going on in their lives.
As you think about your work, what's your biggest passion?
Wallace: The kids themselves. The students. I'm a "people" person, so to watch, say, for instance, a young man or woman who comes in who really may be anti-social--they may act out in unproductive behavior--to see them come through this process and then at the end of the school year, just have this 180 degree turn. For me, that's the best reward I could ever receive, or anyone could, because it's life we're talking about here. For me, that's the greatest reward I could receive--that I've helped affect someone's life, put them on the right track.
As you work with the youth, do see them as different in any way from youth of previous generations?
Each generation always says, "oh man, these kids today are not like we were." That could be in my mother's era, her mother's era. There are differences, I guess, in each generation. I find with these young men and women, that they really, in many cases, are more disrespectful towards adults than in my generation. And a lot of them are very angry and very bitter. There are many factors that we can attribute this to. But what I've come to find is that a lot of them, given time to reflect, will come out of that negative, rebellious type of phase that they are in.
A lot of things that have been taken away and cut back from. A lot of these kids in Newburg, they don't have anywhere to go. They come home from school and all they have is the block. When I was young you had boys' clubs, you had the YMCA, you had PALs (Police Athletics Leagues). The kids up here, they don't have any place or anywhere to go.
A lot of them are just angry. That's why gangs thrive so much. They just want to be a part of something, without realizing whether it be negative or positive, and not really taking that into consideration. You want to be a part of something, you want an identity, you want to feel like somebody. And sometimes saying, "I'm a Blood," or a Crip, or MS-13, or whatever it may be, is saying that you are somebody, because a lot of the time they don't feel like they're anybody.
And, may we ask, how old are you?
I'm 45.
Amen. That's a great decade to be in.
Wallace. Yes it is. My father used to tell me--he said, "Son, you're not going to start to live until after you're 30." And I didn't understand, but now I see.
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Thanks for your post, David. I'm looking forward to this discussion with you.
You claim that the Bible has a conservative rather than liberal worldview. I would suggest that the Bible is neither "conservative" nor "liberal" as we understand those terms in a political context today. I have written about what I call "prophetic" politics that leads to a fourth option -- neither liberal, conservative, or libertarian. It is traditional or conservative on issues of family values, sexual integrity, and personal responsibility, while being progressive, populist, or even radical on issues like poverty and racial justice. It affirms good stewardship of the earth and its resources, supports gender equality, and is more internationally minded than nationalist -- looking first to peacemaking and conflict resolution when it comes to foreign policy questions, instead of bowing to the habit of war.
Yet in all those areas, the Bible does not prescribe specific policies on the issues facing us today. While we can use scripture as a normative vision, we must, as the National Association of Evangelicals puts it, "do detailed social, economic, historical, jurisprudential, and political analysis. Only if we deepen our Christian vision and also study our contemporary world can we engage in politics faithfully and wisely."
Let's take the issue of taxes that you raise. We cannot simply use historical texts from the Egyptian or Hebrew monarchies of 3,000 years ago as a policy prescription for the 21st-century United States. But, as a preacher, I couldn't resist looking at the texts. Genesis 47 is after a famine, when the people had lost all their land. Joseph proposes that they return to farming the land and give one-fifth to Pharaoh. Their response was "You have saved our lives! We are grateful to my lord and we shall be serfs to Pharaoh." The condition of serfdom was certainly better than starvation. In 1 Samuel 8, the point of the story is not the 10 percent rate that the king will take, but that the king will give it to his "eunuchs and courtiers" rather than benefiting the society. And in 1 Kings 12, the complaint of the Israelites is about forced labor, not taxation. In the dialogue, they ask Rehoboam to "lighten the harsh labor," to which he replied, "My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke." It wasn't taxes at issue.
But deeper than that, you say that people should be responsible for how they spend their money. The ideal of democracy is the collective will of the people speaking through their elected representatives. Our polity is certainly flawed. But I'd be willing to do a test. Let's ask the people if they'd rather have spent more than $500 billion over the last five years on jobs, education, health care, and housing, or on the war in Iraq. I'd be willing to accept the result, would you?
The problem is that our taxes are dreadfully misused, not that they exist. In the 2008 discretionary budget (excluding Social Security and Medicare), the Defense Department plus the additional spending specifically for the Iraq war is 60 percent of the budget. Every other function of the federal government receives 40 percent. The problem, David, is priorities, not taxes. In the 1 Samuel passage you cited, the first warning about a king is about his warmaking: "He will take your sons and appoint them as his charioteers and horsemen."
Let's move to a specific issue -- overcoming poverty. There are now 36.5 million people below the official poverty line ($20,614 for a family of four). In looking for the appropriate policies to deal with that problem, I apply two fundamental principles of Catholic social teaching. First, the common good -- what benefits the society as a whole, particularly the weakest and most vulnerable; and subsidiarity -- every problem should be dealt with at the lowest possible level.
There are three sectors of society that have a role in overcoming poverty to which we can apply the principle of subsidiarity. Faith-based and community organizations have a role -- local congregations and organizations, and national denominations and organizations. Government at all levels has a role -- local, state, and national. The private sector has a role -- small businesses and large national corporations, along with labor unions.
The challenge in overcoming poverty is to find the appropriate role for each level of each sector with a unified strategy. It is true that local congregations can provide mentoring and support networks for people in ways that government never could. But congregations cannot provide health insurance for 47 million people, jobs for the 8.5 million who are unemployed, and housing for the millions who have lost their homes through foreclosure. That requires efforts from government and the private sector.
Charity, as you propose in your book, is important, David. But good public policy for government and a committed private sector are also important. Wouldn't you agree?
I'll be attending Sojourners' Pentecost conference this weekend. Why am I excited? What am I expecting? I'm looking forward to honesty about the challenges we face when we are serious about overcoming poverty.
One of my greatest struggles around large issues like poverty is that I either feel like I'm not informed well enough or that I'm not doing enough. On one hand, I talk in circles about an issue without creating change. Or, I find myself working so hard for an issue that I lose my ability to engage in meaningful conversation with others who are not so gung-ho. Both understanding and action are important.
So I'm looking forward to learning concrete ways that I can live out a radical, inclusive economy of God's kingdom. I'm looking forward to the joyful accountability that comes from an earnest, Spirit-led desire to be in communion with God, God's people, and God's creation. I hope that this weekend I will engage in meaningful dialogue with others who can help me grow through reflection and can challenge me to deepen my commitments to creating justice.
Sarah Campbell is finishing her time as a volunteer in the Discipleship Year service corps in Washington, D.C., where she has been learning to break her cultural addictions through simplicity and intentional community. She is planning to study in a dual-degree program for a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of Social Work.
I feel like I try so hard and I'm not sure what I'm actually doing. That is one reason why I wanted to go to Pentecost 2008: Training for Change. I want to be part of something bigger and know that we as a larger group have the passion to really do something. I've been sick of the way things are going and how, it seems, the church is growing cold in many ways. It makes my stomach sick to think that I would leave my children this world the way it is. How can I make a difference?
I've grown this conscience that is unrelenting. I can't just throw that piece of paper away, I have to wonder what would happen if everyone threw away that piece of paper. I can't just fill my styrofoam cup with coffee, I have to wonder how many times I can use it before throwing it away. I can't stand that a television is plugged in all day, but that I didn't use it once. I've got to unplug it. I can't just walk by a homeless person and not give them something. I can't hear a baby cry without feeling an aching, wondering if they are being loved. I can't just assume people will do what the Bible says. I feel pressure to yell at people who don't care, and I feel like I don't know where to start doing something that will turn things around. I want to scream: "Move, people, move! Do something! Quit being so comfortable."
I heard a Christian say to me a few years ago, "Who cares? This is why God gave us the planet -- [God] is going to come back soon anyway." I can't stand that kind of thinking anymore, and I've got to be a part of the change I want to see. I'm starting with this conference.
Jessica Culp is a wife and mother, as well as a fundraiser for Cunningham Children's Home in Urbana, Illinois.
How long, O Lord, must I call for help?
But you do not listen!
"Violence is everywhere!" I cry,
but you do not come to save.
Must I forever see these evil deeds?
Why must I watch all this misery?
Wherever I look,
I see destruction and violence.
I am surrounded by people
who love to argue and fight.
The law has become paralyzed,
and there is no justice in the courts.
--Habakkuk 1:2-4a
Habakkuk's lament reflects the lament of many in Zimbabwe. Incidents of violence continue to be widespread, intimidation of the opposition continues and lately the setting up of "re-education" camps designed to communicate one message namely that citizens have only one choice in the elections and that is to vote for the current government. All these activities are considered "preparation and campaigning" for a "free and fair" election. Clearly these are not actions of a confident and self-assured party that can hold its own ground and face its opposition head-on in a free and fair election!
However, in the midst of what often appears to be a hopeless situation, glimmers of hope are emerging. Three stand out for me. The first is the upcoming visit by the U.N. special envoy to Zimbabwe to assess the situation. Secondly, the announcement by President Mbeki of South Africa, who is the appointed mediator of the Zimbabwean situation on behalf of the 14 countries in Southern Africa (a.k.a. SADC), that election monitors will be sent before the elections to ensure that the conditions for a free and fair election prevail. Finally and significantly the financial contribution as well as pressure from the USA is responsible for both these initiatives. We thank you for your prayers and support. Please pray for the success of these initiatives. God heard and responded to the lament of Habbakuk. God will indeed respond to the lament of the people of Zimbabwe.
Nontando Hadebe, a former Sojourners intern, is originally from Zimbabwe and is now pursuing graduate studies in theology in South Africa.
Our faithfulness will depend on our willingness to go where there is brokenness, loneliness, and human need. If the church has a future it is a future with the poor in whatever form.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.
The latest news on Today in history, Midwest floods, Unemployment, Life expectancy, Criminal justice, Canada apologizes, Iran, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Iraq, and Op-Ed.
Recently I served on a panel at BookExpo America that explored evangelicals' changing attitudes toward politics. As each co-panelist spoke, I mentally applauded his assessment of how evangelicals are responding to, and changing, the current political climate. While there were some areas of disagreement, there was a much greater area of common ground among the four of us.
Except when it came to identifying and labeling political factions, that is. Who, exactly, comprises the evangelical left? How about progressives? Who are they? Or the "evangelical centrists" that David Gushee, a panelist, so effectively defined in The Future of Faith in American Politics? His use of a term he popularized was actually called into question, as was the panelists' use of the word evangelical --- even though the title of the forum was "Evolving Evangelicals."
Green rightly began by attempting to clarify just who the Religious Left is. Those of us who have been around for a while recall that even before the Religious Right inserted itself into American politics, all we had to do was utter the phrase "social justice" to be labeled a liberal; the "Religious Left" seemed to include anyone who cared about, or merely expressed interest in, those issues that fell outside the theological focus on bringing people to Christ.
But then the political Religious Right came to prominence, and the rift between the right and left was defined more clearly in political rather than theological terms (though it was assumed that your politics defined your theology and vice versa). There was little or no room for moderates until recently, as many evangelicals became disenchanted with and embarrassed by the Religious Right.
Certain labels came into more widespread use; evangelicals who were previously reluctant to use the term "progressive," for example, began feeling comfortable with that definition. Little did they know that the label identified them as theological liberals as well as political liberals, at least according to Green; many people who consider themselves to be evangelical progressives are also theologically conservative. The labels muddied rather than clarified who they were politically and theologically.
I don't know. I'm often referred to as a progressive (Green places me somewhere along the progressive-Religious Left continuum), but any more I'm not sure what I am. After reading Green's comments and his detailed, head-spinning definitions of political sub-groups (he identifies "progressive centrists" as political moderates who are theologically liberal, for instance), I'm more confused than ever about where I fit in along the religious-political spectrum.
Whatever labels people use to define us, one thing is certain: the likes of Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Tony Campolo, and countless others who served in the trenches for decades have paved the way for liberals, the left, progressives, moderates, centrists -- and any other left-of-right category -- to emerge as a force to be reckoned with. But I agree with Green; even as others are heralding the demise of the Religious Right, Green says this:
If one means that the religious right no longer plays the dominant role in American faith-based politics, these analyses are probably correct. The new prominence of the religious left is one important reason why this may be so. But one would want to be cautious about assuming that the religious right's organizations, leaders and voters have left politics. They have not.
Yes, the influence of the Religious Right has waned, and I would add that in particular the influence of the right's leadership has waned. But firmly entrenched and heavily invested beliefs die hard, and it's likely that even those conservative evangelicals who have been feeling skittish about the right's political entanglements will revert to old habits come November.
Even so, given Green's estimate that the population of religious progressives -- broadly and imperfectly defined as I've just discussed -- just about equals that of the Religious Right, this newly recognized category could very well be a formidable political factor.
Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;
Due to a planned technical upgrade taking place on Wednesday June 11th, the Beliefnet Blogs will not display any new content, and commenting will be disabled.
We aim to be back up and running by the end of the day, and thank you in advance for your understanding.
The fact that an African American and a woman each ran so strongly in the long primary season of this election year speaks very well of the country. Having two “firsts” competing for the presidency, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, makes this a very historic political year. But it was perhaps unfortunate that the two firsts ended up running against each other. After a hard-fought campaign, there inevitably remain some hard feelings among the supporters of both candidates, but especially among many women, who were the core of Clinton’s campaign.
Many of them feel she was treated badly by the press, with many instances of overtly sexist attitudes and commentaries that would never have been directed at another male candidate. I, for one, think they are right -- there were many media comments about Senator Clinton that were sexist and that would never have been used against a man. Indeed, there are often regular comments in the media about women that would simply not be acceptable if similar things were said about men or even ethnic minorities. As a culture, sexist assumptions, attitudes, and language are still far too acceptable to us.
Race is a factor in this political year too, and will undoubtedly appear in the fall campaign. The fact is that we were not going to transcend the realities of either race or gender in this election year because the demons are simply too great and run too deep in our society. But the fact that an African American and a woman did so well, despite the racism and sexism that is still with us in America, is a cause for grateful celebration. And now, as many have said, it’s time for some healing.
While I agree with those who saw sexism in the primary political coverage, I also agree with most political commentators who don’t think it was the ultimate reason Senator Clinton came short of becoming the Democratic Party nominee. I won’t rehearse the now commonly agreed-upon analysis of some of the Clinton campaign’s mistakes and miscalculations or how the Obama campaign ran a little smarter strategy, but, clearly, several strategic considerations were decisive factors.
It is also clear that this political year will be a “change” election. All the candidates, in both parties, ended up running on the country’s clear desire for a change in direction after eight years of the Bush administration. Barack Obama made change the core of his message, and John McCain has been a beneficiary of that same mood in the Republican Party. And while Hillary Clinton was also clearly a change candidate, as the first woman with a real chance to become president, she was still a Clinton, which also made her a “restoration” candidate as well as a change candidate. That ultimately hurt her this election year.
But after her gracious and magnanimous speech endorsing Barack Obama this weekend, the tremendous and historical accomplishments of her presidential campaign are clear for all to see and celebrate. Regardless of whether everyone agrees with her positions on every issue or whether they liked all of her campaign tactics, a clear breakthrough for women in America has taken place. It will now be much more acceptable, possible, and “normal” for women to compete for every political office in the land, and that fact will open up even more doors for women in virtually every area of public life and leadership in this country. And for that, we all have a great deal to thank Hillary Clinton and her loyal supporters for. Marie Wilson, founder and president of the White House Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that aims to advance women's leadership, wrote this weekend in The Washington Post about
this country's next generation of female leaders -- women of all ages and persuasions who have been searching for the means and encouragement to step into positions of leadership in their communities; women of all political affiliations who thank Hillary Clinton for making the impossible finally appear possible.
Many moving things have been said about how so many little girls now believe that they can be anything they want to be because of Clinton’s impressive campaign. But I want to also point out the impact on little boys, like my own two young sons. They have grown up with a mom as a priest, an ordained clergywoman who they have often seen preaching, speaking, presiding over the Eucharist, and doing weddings and baptisms. The leadership role of women in the church is simply normal and expected for them—it’s what mom does. Clinton’s presidential bid has had a very similar effect on both of them.
My 9-year-old son, Luke, considers Hillary a “friend,” having met her at a New Year’s weekend retreat that both of our families attended. Hillary very graciously sends him little personal notes to congratulate him on his Little League baseball successes. It's a wonderful gesture that utterly defies the harsh commentaries on her style that she sadly so often receives. At the CNN candidate forum on faith, values, and poverty that Sojourners co-sponsored last June, Luke got to meet her again and told the senator privately, “Hillary, I can’t vote, but if I could, I would vote for you.” She beamed the biggest smile back to my son and said, “Oh Luke, that means so much to me!” Luke has remained totally faithful to Hillary during the primary political season, proudly wearing a Clinton button on his safety patrol belt, and was one of her disappointed supporters when she finally had to concede. Five-year-old Jack voted just the way his big brother did in their D.C. public school primary, resisting the Obama landslide.
My boys, like lots of little girls and boys, now believe that a woman running for president is normal, possible, and to be expected, as they do for an African-American candidate. Luke is looking forward to the day when a black woman will be able to run. “Wouldn’t that be cool, Dad?” he says. It surely would, and for that we have both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to thank.
2. not in accordance with what is just or reasonable: unconscionable behavior.
3. excessive; extortionate: an unconscionable profit.
I have had some "unconscionable" things on my mind a lot lately as I have been working with the 20-somethings who make up Orlando Food Not Bombs and University of Central Florida’s Rock For Hunger. All three of these definitions of the word apply to the actions of the city of Orlando, in enacting an ordinance to try and stop these groups from sharing food with the poor and homeless in downtown Orlando.
Orlando Food Not Bombs (FNB) has been sharing food with the poor and homeless in Lake Eola Park since the summer of 2004. Some local business owners and residents, who were upset with seeing the poor fed in the park, complained to city government leaders. The mayor and city council reacted by passing an ordinance specifically designed to stop FNB from sharing food. The ordinance limits a group that is going to feed 25 or more people to no more than two such feedings in a park per year, and requires that a permit be obtained.
When the ordinance was first passed, the groups moved to the sidewalk and streets a block or so away from the park, but after continued city harassment moved back to the park. FNB, acting with churches and groups such as Code Pink and the ACLU, began sharing food in a manner that strictly complied with the ordinance. Each group would serve no more than 24 people, had a table clearly labeled with its name, and the dishes (which are collected and washed) were counted to make sure there were no more than 24.
Despite all of this, on April 4, 2007, at the conclusion of an Orlando police undercover investigation that, according to the Orlando Weekly, cost taxpayers $65,000, FNB member Eric Montanez was arrested. His alleged crime: feeding more than 24 people. His weapon: a ladle.
The result was twofold. One: A jury who understood the concept of "unconscionability” found Eric “not guilty.” Two: The arrest scared away groups and people who were participating, especially some of the church groups, who were afraid of being labeled "law-breakers."
Yes, it is unconscionable to let people go hungry, in a city of plenty in a nation of plenty. It is a higher magnitude of unconscionability to persecute those who feel called to serve the poor and subject them to arrest and prosecution.
A month later, six more FNB members were arrested for violating another city ordinance, “disturbing … (the) repose of any individual ....” The specifics of their offense: protesting the anti-feeding ordinance outside a restaurant venue where the mayor was holding a campaign fundraiser. Again, even in a country with a president who confines dissenters to fenced-in “free-speech zones” out of the line of sight of where he is appearing, last month an Orlando jury who understood the concept of “unconscionability” found them all “not guilty.”
Orlando Food Not Bombs and Vagabond Church of God have filed suit in federal court in Orlando to overturn this unconscionable ordinance. This matter has been working its way through the courts for more than a year and has survived all of the city's legal challenges to stop it. The federal court trial begins in Orlando this week. Let us pray for a court that understands “unconscionability.”
Rev. Alan Clapsaddle is a Social Justice Advocate/Blogger in Orlando, working with the National Homeless Coalition and LA2W.org. Alan serves at First UCC Church of Orlando.
Mr. Philip A. Belisle
United States Department of the Treasury
Internal Revenue Service
Kansas City, MO 64999-0025
Dear Sir:
On May 9, 2008, I received an “economic stimulus payment” from you for the amount of $600.00. I’m concerned that I received this check in error. As I understand it, you are $9 trillion in debt. You have outstanding bills with:
a) 47 million people in the United States without health insurance
b) 27 million Iraqis
c) 35.5 million Americans living without adequate food
d) 744,000 people in the U.S. without a place to live
e) 2.9 million disabled U.S. veterans
f) at least one polar bear
According to Psalm 37:21, “The wicked borrow, and don’t pay back, but the righteous give generously.” The money you gave to me was borrowed against your debt. As I see it, this is neither wise nor just.
I’m also concerned that your attempt to “stimulate” your way out of what you owe directly panders to covetousness and human greed (“The Splurge Urge”). Jesus specifically cautions, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).
If I have received this check in error, please let me know and I will return it to you immediately. Otherwise, I will assume that you are continuing a bad habit of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
If I do not hear from you within 10 days, then - on your behalf - I will remit the $600 to Mary’s House Catholic Worker in Birmingham, Alabama. There they care for the sick, work against war, feed the hungry, and take in homeless families. I don’t know if they assist polar bears, but as they are Franciscan in spirit, I expect they are amenable in this way.
I recognize that sending your money to Mary’s House Catholic Worker is only a small gesture of overcoming the unsustainable debt you are carrying. But it is a human gesture - done in love - nonetheless.
Sincerely Yours,
Taxpayer XXX-XX-1234
Rose M. Berger
Washington, D.C.
Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet. She sent her check to Mary’s House CW, 2107 Avenue G, Birmingham, AL 35218.
Following is an interview with Michael Christoffersen, director of Milosevic On Trial, a documentary I watched at the Tribeca Film Festival, which demonstrates the horrors that can happen when religion becomes intermingled with empire.
What attracted you to want to follow this entire trial?
By coincidence, I did the documentary Genocide: The Judgment (1999) for BBC and SVT about a trial at the Rwanda court. I made some friends there and found out that the trial of Slobodan Milosevic was going to happen. So, while some journalists came and went, I stayed around. Eventually, I got exclusive access to the tapes and was able to secure interviews with both Milosevic's defense lawyer and the prosecution team.
Explain how you got the trust of these players, so that they would open up and talk with you.
In the beginning, nobody wanted us there. We had to convince them that we were people to be trusted. That took a while, and it wasn't until much later that we were able to get some of the interviews. It takes a lot of stubbornness and you also have to be a little naïve to some extent. It also helped that we were just a small production company. In addition, we were not affiliated with a particular group, so we were able to be seen as not having an agenda.
How did you maintain your objectivity as a filmmaker given the brutality of these crimes?
I wanted to create a historic record that reflected to a certain extent what actually happened. At the same time, film is drama. It's not just dry historic records. So, it's not a totally neutral observation but my interpretations.
Of all the footage, what was most disturbing was the scene in which the Orthodox priest blesses the Scorpions. This is followed by a montage of the brutalities committed under this elite Serbian army.
It was very disturbing. It's a well-known fact that the Serb Orthodox Church was giving their blessing to the Serbians. This proved that it was not only an ethnic war but also a religious one as well. I'm not saying the Muslims have always been innocent victims. But in this instance, the church knew about the ethnic cleansing and was giving their approval. I've had some Serbs dispute the footage, claiming that the group this priest was blessing didn't perform the shootings that followed. But it's been investigated and the Scorpions that were blessed were the ones who did those acts.
How did you obtain footage like this?
We relied on material that was used during the trial as evidence. The only time we went outside was when we interviewed some of participants.
Why do you think there was so little coverage of the trial in the United States?
Except for some Balkan journalists and my documentary crew, I seldom saw any other media covering the trial.
How did you react to the sudden death of Milosevic during the trial?
At the time, it was terrible as there was no real closure. Looking back at it, the fact that there wasn't a judgment rendered gives an opening for people to talk about the issues raised at the trial.
What are the future plans for this film?
Milosevic on Trial will be seen at the Silverdocs: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, held June 16-23, 2008, in Washington, D.C. Also, we only used about 1 percent of the material in the documentary. So we're in the process of making an archive where people can access all of the material. We might include information about Saddam on Trial, where I served as one of the producers. For more information, log on to our Web site (www.team-productions.com).
Becky Garrison was cited by Publishers Weekly as one of "four evangelicals with fresh views," alongside Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, and Ron Sider
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Teresa and her husband, Rich, have been at my church for about four years now. Like several of our members, their faith in Christ and desire to live out the gospel not only humbles me but helps shape the depth and direction of our church. Teresa started a blog titled Jewels in the Ashes and actively serves on the board of directors at World Aid based here in Seattle. World Aid focuses much of their energy and work serving and empowering Internally Displaced People (IDP) in Burma and refugees on the Thai/Burma border. If you're looking for someone trustworthy to donate money toward the relief efforts in Burma, Teresa and World Aid will get those funds where they need to get to.
I got this incredible "insider's look" from Teresa, who received this from friends who are working within Burma. Do yourself a favor and take three minutes to read this:
As Westerners we want Western solutions for Burma. We want planes to fly in supplies to save people who we know could be saved. We live in a world where we can replace bad hearts with good hearts, clone organs, and do bone marrow transplants. We think putting men on the moon is old school. Flying in a planeload of life-saving supplies should be child's play.
In Burma making a phone call is difficult. Only seven percent of the country's 52 million people have electricity. For Burma's excessively paranoid generals we might just as well ask them if we can fly in a planeload of anthrax as one of aid. To them, this act might save lives but it would poison the culture, and while it may be a culture of fear and defeat, they unfortunately see it as their culture to defend.
To make a difference in Burma we have no choice but to deal with what is, not what we as Westerners think should be. I detest the current regime. I can't for the life of me comprehend their cruelty. This is the side of humanity that makes me want to throw up my hands in utter despair and quit, but I can't because quitting is what allows governments like this to continue.
I am so proud right now to be working with a group of people who haven't quit Burma. A group that spans the globe, a group that is organizing in the face of utter despair and effectively getting help to cyclone victims in ways that could get many of them arrested if they were ever found out.
What is in Burma is that international aid is failing; goods sent in to help disaster victims are being co-opted by the government. The military, once stuck with the problem of how to feed and clothe their 400,000 soldiers, now has enough rice stores to feed them for years to come. Likewise with medicine.
However, what is also happening in Burma is that internal aid is working. Granted that it lacks the fairy-tale effect of a white horse riding in, complete with knight in shining armor, or wizards with magic wands that can turn the horrible truth into a happy ending, but in a very real way, in a very empowering way, Burma's people are saving themselves -- despite the generals.
Supported by those who refuse to quit, a quiet revolt is taking place. A strong grassroots movement is evolving to bring goods to those in need. It travels many routes and is crossing continents and cultures -- some routes are above ground -- small convoys of concerned citizens with used clothing and humble donations, businessmen with enough clout and connections to get permission to transport small quantities of relief – many adopting a village and rallying friends to sustain support - and some routes go underground – traveling through bank accounts and well-established black market trades long used by insurgents and smugglers. Even many military officials, appalled by the suffering they face each day, are denying orders and secretly transporting aid.
I was really amazed when the Saffron Revolution was so easily quashed. I was saddened to see the despondent faces of those I passed every day on the street afterward, people who had had the opportunity to support their most revered and had failed to do so. Defeat went well beyond the monks and deep into the heart of the entire country.
But this time is different. Perhaps because of that defeat, perhaps because the general's decisions to refuse lifesaving aid is just more callous than anyone can accept, I'm seeing strength and unification among people who otherwise may have continued to remain passive.
I really don't know if this will come to fruition, if this will be the catalyst that actually unites an active resistance movement and that that movement will grow. I don't know if the temptation of controlling a well-fed army will serve as the tipping point for internal conflict in the military, but what I do know is that in the face of it all, my faith in humanity is once again being restored. So long as we don't give up, there is hope for those cyclone victims still surviving. So long as we don't give up there is still hope that Burma will change for the better, and in our lifetime. So long as we don't give up, others won't give up.
My thanks really goes out to all those of you who continue to lend support, to all of you who understand that the gap between what should be and what is is currently too wide to jump in Burma, that even planes can't cross it, but that this is not a reason to stop helping.
What should be may never come to Burma, but what is is still worth saving.
Many thanks,
Name omitted by request.
Eugene Cho, a second-generation Korean-American, is the founder and lead pastor of Quest Church in Seattle, Washington, and the executive director of Q Cafe, an innovative nonprofit neighborhood café in the city with only a handful of cafés. You can stalk him at his blog at: eugenecho.wordpress.com.
In the Dominican Republic, an estimated 10 percent of children are sexually exploited. According to Project Rescue, the average age around the world for a child sex slave is 13, and the average cost for a child sex slave is $150.
But child sexual exploitation is not only an overseas issue. According to U.S. law enforcement, there are at least 20,000 children manipulated and forced to engage in prostitution on a daily basis -- the actual number is unknown. What is known is that child sexual violence and exploitation has been growing dramatically around the world for the past couple of decades.
Advances in technology and communication have served to exacerbate the problem. But contrary to popular opinion, child pornography is not confined to seedy Web sites. Mainstream Web sites, such as Craig's List, allow for "barely legal" adult offers.
In the U.S., the high demand and easy money is a lure for vulnerable children. In 2005, The New York Times told Justin Berry's story. At 13 years old, Justin entered a life he eventually realized he would not be able to leave without significant intervention. Thankfully, he did obtain the help he needed. But his story exemplifies the evolution and ease of child exploitation in a high-tech world. The article stated,
A six-month investigation into this corner of the Internet found that such sites had emerged largely without attracting the attention of law enforcement or youth protection organizations …. "We've been aware of the use of the Webcam and its potential use by exploiters," said Ernest E. Allen, chief executive of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private group. "But this is a variation on a theme that we haven't seen. It's unbelievable."
Of course, child exploitation goes beyond Internet pornography. After a series of investigations in the early '90s, the FBI stated:
the utilization of computer telecommunications was rapidly becoming one of the most prevalent techniques by which some sex offenders shared pornographic images of minors and identified and recruited children into sexually illicit relationships. In 1995, based on information developed during this investigation, the Innocent Images National Initiative was started .…
The PBS program Now recently discussed child prostitution in the U.S. with Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who said:
It's one of those issues that doesn't get discussed and therefore there's an assumption that perhaps either it doesn't exist at all or the young women and girls who are prostitutes are there by their own free will … [The child prostitutes are] 10 or 11 years old, and the age is getting lower. We're not talking about 17 and 18 and 19-year-olds, although we could.
My friend Rev. Gabriel Salguero reminds us of the need for all of us to use our gifts to combat child exploitation. We must respond to the issue as a community where writers, musicians, politicians, business people, and the religious community use our collective resources to raise one voice to protect the children of our world. He challenges us not to see this issue in terms of nationality or geography but as an issue that calls into question our very sense of humanity.
Rev. Juan Carlos Morales is the senior pastor of Hosanna Assemblies of God in Ellenville, New York. He is also a member of the Latino Leadership Circle, a graduate of the Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME), and a seminarian at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. On Thursday, May 29, the Inocencia Project raised monies in its first public event and fundraiser. Inocencia Project was founded by Emanuel Veras to combat child prostitution in the Dominican Republic and around the world. Inocencia Project is a project of Cigua Palmera Foundation and is supported by Hiccup Media Group and through individual donations. To donate and learn more about Inocencia Project, go to www.ciguapalmera.org.
For more information about efforts to address this critical need, go to:
Clearly, if "no other god" has any real power and, therefore, any real, substantive existence, it is grossly inappropriate that Israel should invest such an object with ultimacy. The [Hebrew] word...however, need not be rendered "idol." It is more properly rendered "image," a visible representation of Yahweh. The temptation, then, is not the creation of a rival that detracts from Yahweh, but an attempt to locate and thereby domesticate Yahweh in a visible, controlled object. This latter reading, which is the more probably, is also more subtle. It does not fear a rival but a distortion of Yahweh's free character by an attempt to locate Yahweh and so diminish something of Yahweh's terrible freedom.
- Walter Brueggemann "The Book of Exodus," The New Interpreter's Bible Volume I
To you, O Lord, I call;
my rock, do not refuse to hear me,
for if you are silent to me,
I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.
Hear the voice of my supplication,
as I cry to you for help,
as I lift up my hands
toward your most holy sanctuary.
Do not drag me away with the wicked,
with those who are workers of evil,
who speak peace with their neighbors,
while mischief is in their hearts.
Sometimes I think I have become immune to Washington, D.C., feeling as though nothing can shock or surprise me, and then I hear a story that brings my expectations to an all-time low. Seven senators -- known as the “Coburn Seven” -- are playing politics with the lives of millions of people affected by deadly diseases by blocking the reauthorization of the Global AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis bill.
AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis cause more than 90 percent of all deaths from infectious diseases around the world. A bill that will help fight these diseases passed in the U.S. House and has strong presidential support, but the “Coburn Seven” have blocked it from coming to a vote in the Senate. They say they want a mandate to shift money from prevention to treatment, but this argument is a fool’s errand; for every person who goes on treatment, there are 2.5 people newly diagnosed.
The Global AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis program includes special provisions for orphans, women, and girls -- some of the hardest-hit populations in disease-ravaged villages and neighborhoods. These treatment and prevention programs are more than charity: They invest in local clinics and pharmacies and train nurses and doctors. They reach beyond the tired prevention debate of abstinence versus contraception and address a broad array of real-world factors that lead to infections, such as gender violence, unsanitary housing, and education.
Next month President Bush will attend the G8 meeting in Japan, and without a signed bill he has little leverage to gain commitments for aid from the partner countries.
More importantly, without the assurance of uninterrupted U.S. support, programs on the ground will begin to decrease their services -- including accepting new patients -- in order to guard their limited budgets.
Fighting pandemic diseases is and should be a nonpartisan issue. Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson recently challenged these obstructionist senators, saying:
Without a five-year U.S. commitment on AIDS funding, other countries would be reluctant to put new people on treatment. And lives would be lost. Each of the Coburn Seven counts himself pro-life. If a bill came to the Senate floor that would save millions of unborn children, one assumes that pro-life members would push to improve it, accept a few necessary compromises and then enthusiastically support the legislation. It is difficult to imagine why pro-life legislation involving millions of Africans should be viewed differently.
Here in Manhattan, the city streets hum with hope following the announcement of the first African American to be nominated for president by a major political party. According to news reports, similar scenarios are taking place across the world. As we celebrate this historical moment in electoral politics, Sarah Cunningham, author of Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation, offers this cautionary tale to her fellow Christians:
When we market ourselves as the hope of the world, or when we believe that other humans hold the hope of the world for us, without proper acknowledgement of Christ as our source, we foster disillusionment.
So how do we keep this hope alive should one’s preferred candidate not win the coveted presidential prize? My prayer is that regardless of who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we can keep singing a hopeful tune. As I've reported elsewhere on the blog, I keep seeing glimpses of the kingdom here on earth that are led not by polticos but by ordinary radicals who are transformed by the words of Jesus Christ. My buddy Shane Claiborne reminds us all, "No matter who is elected on Nov. 4, what matters is how we live our lives as faithful Christians on Nov. 3 and 5."
Sara Cunningham concurs with Shane’s assessment:
We Christians were never the hope. Yes, we were and are carriers of the hope. But we ourselves are only reflections—often dim reflections—of the hope we internalize: Jesus Christ.
In his latest book, Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright explores how we as Christians can implement this hope here on earth. He reminds us:
The kingdom will come as the church, energized by the Spirit, goes out into the world, vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always—as Paul puts it in one of his letters—bearing the body of the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed.
So, as we see hopeful signs all around us, let us remember that as Christians our declaration of hope lies ultimately with the Risen Christ.
Becky Garrison will be featured in the CD 2007 Soularize in a Box, along with N.T. Wright, Rita Brock, Richard Rohr, Brenann Manning, Ian Cron, and others. Check out The Ooze (www.theooze.com) for more information.
Forty years ago, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. I was 16 years old, had just become aware of politics, and his death (only two months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) was shocking. But rather than leading to disillusionment, both of their lives inspired me these past 40 years in the movement for peace and justice.
One of the first political books I remember reading was Kennedy’s “To Seek a Newer World,” published in paperback in April 1968. I re-read parts of it this week and was struck by how similar the situation is 40 years later, with a seemingly endless war and rising poverty. And as a new generation is taking its place in the politics of the country, his advice to my generation then is also true today. He warned of some dangers we would face.
First is the danger of futility, the belief that there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills -- against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements of thought and action have flowed from the work of a single [individual] .... Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. …
The second danger is that of expediency, of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course, if we would act effectively, we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feelings of people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs – that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values. It is thoughtless folly. …
A third danger is timidity. Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.
Robert F. Kennedy’s warnings against futility, expediency, and timidity were true then, and they are true now. As we seek the newer world we still desperately need, both my generation and today’s generation should remember them.
Duane Shank is senior policy adviser for Sojourners.
Sojourners’ June issue features a cover story by Amy Green and a column by Jim Wallis about the new paths of Christians in their 20s and 30s, plus a set of mini-interviews with 10 next-gen Christian leaders. Here’s a taste: part of Sojourners’ interview with Jena Nardella, the 26-year-old executive director of Blood:Water Mission.Started by the band Jars of Clay, this ministry works for clean water and against AIDS in Africa.
What motivated you to get involved?
A billion people in the world lack access to clean water, and women and children are the ones who suffer the most from this reality. I think people can be paralyzed by the social injustices of the world and feel the need to shut it out or feel as though there is nothing that they can do to respond to the injustices. I have always been motivated by the truth that ordinary people can do something extraordinary, if it is done with love, humility, and large doses of hope.
I had no professional training, but I had a load of passion and a willingness to learn quickly on my feet. I got involved because I believed that there was a huge potential to engage young Americans in creatively raising awareness and funds for water and HIV/AIDS support in Africa, and I believed in supporting local organizations in Africa that knew their communities better than we ever could.
What one thing would you most like to tell Christians?
God is author and creator of the world in which we live. God hates injustice and loves mercy. We are free to live for ourselves, but living for something greater than ourselves brings joy deeper than understanding. We live in a deeply broken world, and it needs your love—whether in your family, neighborhood, or halfway across the globe. Just don't miss out.
What’s your biggest challenge personally?
Balancing hope with reality, and staying on the side of hope. After countless visits to African communities in the last four years, I have been on a roller coaster of extreme optimism and utter disillusionment. Poverty cannot be alleviated by charity. Charity cannot just be handouts of leftovers. And leftovers aren't what the world needs.
But even if you give it your all, the challenges that accompany community development, politics, scarce resources, empty leadership, and histories of oppression make hope feel weak sometimes. But I celebrate the seemingly small and yet significant changes that come as a result of hardworking African communities and generous Americans. A simple cup of cool water is something that bears greater hope than I could have ever imagined—because it represents so much more. I have seen more than 250,000 people work toward access to clean water in their communities as a result of a resilient hope. The structures of poverty and brokenness compel us toward defeat. And I choose hope.
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When the historic legislative milestone of the Voting Rights Act finally passed in 1965, I was still a young teenager. Until then, black people in America didn’t have the right to vote. And until the Civil Rights Act passed the previous year in 1964, black Americans had to drink from separate drinking fountains, eat at separate lunch counters, ride at the back of buses, and watch movies only from the balconies of theaters. Then there was all the violence. I remember a civil rights worker from my hometown of Detroit, named Viola Liuzzo, who traveled to the South in order to help black people win the right to vote for the first time. She was murdered for doing so.
I was still in the U.K. on a book tour Tuesday night, just having finished speaking to a forum at the British Parliament with ministers from all three parties about the relationship between faith and politics. Then I stayed up until 4 a.m. to watch Barack Obama claim the nomination of the Democratic Party for president of the United States. It was my birthday the next day, and I recalled those days when the relationship between faith and politics for many black and a few white Christians was that if you stood up for civil rights -- especially the right to vote for black Americans -- it could get you killed. So I was not only blurry-eyed but also more than a little teary-eyed as I watched a young black man announce that he was ready to run for president of the United States, and for most of America to assume that he had a chance to win.
Race was the issue that led to my own confrontation with the church that raised me. It was my “converting issue,” though the conversion led me out of the white church of my childhood, not into the church. A church elder bluntly told me one night that “Christianity has nothing to do with racism. That’s political and our faith is personal.” I was only about 15, but it was the night I think I left, in my head and my heart. And a couple years later, I was gone all together.
The little evangelical church that my parents had started and that was my second home was simply wrong about race -- completely wrong. Race was the issue that fundamentally shaped my early social conscience. What I saw in Detroit and in the country I had grown up to love seemed fundamentally wrong. I learned there were two Detroits and two Americas, one white and one black. And it seemed contrary to the religion my family had taught me to treat people in a fundamentally different way because of the color of their skin. But the church didn’t agree and we parted company for most of my student years, with me only coming back to faith after a fresh encounter with the radical gospel of the New Testament. I came back with the realization that God is indeed personal, but never private, and exploring what that means has shaped the rest of my life.
So watching Obama, a black man, win the nomination of a major party for the presidency brought back a virtual flood of memories and feelings. That Barack is a friend of 10 years made it all the more personal. This morning I heard several interviews on NPR with black Americans about their response to Obama’s nomination. One older woman said, “A black man running for president, did you hear what just I said? A black man running for president of the United States ….” She just kept repeating the words, and succinctly captured my own personal feelings.
Yes, it is truly historic, and the U.K. newspaper headlines captured that sentiment as did papers around the world. Nothing could change the image of America around the world more than this. But it is more than historic; it is very personal for many of my generation. A new generation just sees this as natural -- he’s an inspirational leader who happens to be black, which matters little to them. But for my generation -- I’m dating myself now -- this is a transformational moment, one we didn't think would come in our lifetimes. Race was the issue that changed us, shaped us, determined our path, and even defined the meaning of our faith. Now a black man is running for president of the United States. Amazing grace.
Samuel Huntington, the Harvard political scientist and the author of The Clash of Civilizations, contends that unless things change, we are facing an era marked by religious wars.
Just about every military struggle between 1945 and 1995 was over political-economic ideologies. This was true of revolutions in Latin America and Southeast Asia led by Leninists and Maoists trying to establish Communist regimes, or by the CIA endeavoring to overthrow governments that were antithetical to U.S. interests. But from 1995 on, Huntington points out, revolutions and wars generally have been fought over religion.
In the Philippines, Kashmir, Sudan, and in several other “hot spots,” religious militants have been endeavoring to establish domination in the name of their gods through the muzzles of guns. It remains an obligation by religious moderates to stand up against such militants and to work for reconciliation between conflicting religio-political camps. The alternatives are all-out war on a mega-level, or endless acts of terrorism.
Those of us who are Red Letter Christians have still another concern with respect to these religious wars. We are a people committed to evangelism, and we realize that as religious wars escalate, our opportunities to preach the gospel in many places, and especially in Muslim countries, where it is seldom heard, are dramatically diminished.
At just about every conference on missions, there are regular calls for new missionaries to spread the gospel to the millions of people who live in the 10/40 window. The 10/40 window refers to the land mass that reaches from 10 degrees above the equator to 40 degrees below the equator, and stretches from the Atlantic eastward to the Pacific. The population in the 10/40 window is overwhelmingly Muslim.
It doesn’t take much for Red Letter Christians to recognize that the hostilities between Muslims and Christians have increased greatly as of late because of certain geopolitical events—particularly as we consider what has been happening in the Holy Land and the consequences of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It is not surprising that the Islamic world is growing more hostile toward the gospel than ever before. Around the world, Muslims are viewing the American army in Iraq as a Christian army reviving the likes of the medieval Crusades, which were marked by a massive slaughter of Muslims and the occupation of holy Islamic lands by so-called “Christian” conquerors.
The American toleration of the oppression of Arab peoples in Palestine, which our government could work to stop, has exacerbated a jihad that will settle for nothing less than having the Jewish people pushed off the land and into the sea, and an unbridled hatred of Christian Zionists.
The ramifications of our nation’s “big-stick” foreign policies in the Middle East have been severe for missionary work. For the first time in a thousand years, churches in Baghdad are being burned down. The Coptic bishop of Iraq was kidnapped and later found dead. Christians, facing persecution, have fled Iraq by the tens of thousands, so that a Christian community that once numbered more than 1.3 million is now down to 600,000.
In Pakistan, missionaries are finding it harder and harder to continue their work. Where once there were as many as 400 missionaries, it has been reported that the number is now down to 40.
Red Letter Christians should recognize that there is a certain unity among Muslim peoples that is ritually generated and sustained. Consider the social and psychological sense of solidarity of a billion people around the world who, five times a day, all turn and bow toward the same city, Mecca, and recite the same prayers. It should be easy to understand how this spiritual oneness creates a milieu in which injustice to any of their people can be deemed an attack on the entire Islamic people. It requires little imagination to recognize that America’s militaristic ventures in the Middle East, and the CIA’s toppling of legitimate Muslim governments (check the 20th-century histories of Iraq and Iran) are setting up barriers to the missionary enterprise in the 10/40 window.
It baffles me as to how the same evangelical Christians who are committed to spreading the gospel in the 10/40 window support with enthusiasm military actions and diplomatic policies that make evangelizing those who live in that part of the world nearly impossible. Perhaps in the long run they put nationalistic jingoism and our lust for oil above the call of Christ to go into all the world and preach the gospel.
We Red Letter Christians have a responsibility. We must act quickly to not only stop an immoral war and end the oppression of Arab peoples, but to help our missionary-minded evangelical brothers and sisters understand that America’s militarism is curtailing our capacity to spread the gospel.
Xenophobic violence has generated public debates on a wide range of themes, such as the meaning of “being African”; issues of identity and values; the relationship between South Africa and the rest of Africa; the role of African states in the struggle against apartheid as a corrective to perceptions of "separateness" from the rest of the continent; and a crisis of leadership.
That last point continues to dominate public debates and newspapers. There is a general feeling that a leadership vacuum has been exposed by the xenophobic violence. The events in Zimbabwe are a case in point. Yesterday, June 4, the leader of the opposition party was arrested, detained for eight hours, and was later released. This happened at a time when two of Africa’s most powerful leaders were meeting in South Africa -- the presidents of Nigeria and South Africa. It’s a historic moment and opportunity for these two leaders to use the crisis in Zimbabwe and the xenophobic violence to articulate a vision for Africa informed by human rights, justice, democracy, and nonviolence, and to make a commitment to stand up against any violation of these values in Africa. The situation in Zimbabwe affords them an opportunity to practice and promote this vision and values. It remains to be seen if this moment in history will be capitalized upon or allowed to slip.
Thank you for your prayers. So far there have been no more reports of xenophobic violence. However, the problem currently being faced is the impact of the violence on thousands of foreign nationals. The government has set up temporary shelters. Several organisations, including Oxfam, are monitoring the situation to ensure that the shelters meet health and safety standards. The situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate – please continue to pray. God bless and thanks for your support.
Nontando Hadebe, a former Sojourners intern, is originally from Zimbabwe and is now pursuing graduate studies in theology in South Africa.
What's at issue in the SBC, and in the larger evangelical community (and, we could add, in the mainline and Roman Catholic communities as well), isn't whether faith is political. Nobody (or almost nobody) is arguing for dropping the second half of the great commandment -- so that "loving God" is about faith and is central, but "loving neighbor" is about politics and is therefore marginal. Nobody is trying to divide the world into a spiritual realm that is personal and private and about faith, versus a secular realm that is social and public and about politics. Nobody is trying to say that faith has nothing to say about how people organize and govern themselves - how they seek justice, how they express kindness, how they walk humbly with God and in harmony with themselves, their neighbors, their enemies, and God's creation as a whole.
On both sides of these tensions -- this is worth emphasizing once more, to the point of redundancy -- we're agreed that faith relates to all of life, that faith is, as Jim Wallis wisely and repeatedly reminds us, both personal and social, both private and public. Nobody (or almost nobody) disagrees on this anymore -- thanks be to God.
The problem comes when "politics" comes to mean "dirty politics" or "partisan politics" or "narrow, wedge-issue, litmus-test, culture-wars politics." So when people suggest that caring for the environment is not a political issue, what they really mean (I think) is that it shouldn't be a partisan issue, a wedge issue, a left-right issue. Rather, they're saying that as followers of Christ, we shouldn't begin with the question, "What would Karl Rove (or James Carville) do?" We should ask the more obvious and Christian question. We should start with faith in our Creator and then move to politics in a spirit of justice, kindness, and humility -- not start with partisan politics and use faith to buttress it on the one hand, and not reduce faith to the private, personal realm so it has nothing to do with politics on the other.
So, perhaps when we read articles and hear discussions on faith and politics, we should develop the habit of raising this question, "Before we go any further, what do you mean by politics?"
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A recent New York Times story, "Taking Their Faith, but Not Their Politics, to the People," highlights the challenge faced by followers of Christ who seek to integrate their faith with all aspects of life, including political life in a democracy. The article suggests to me a question that we should raise more frequently when people address "faith and politics," or "faith versus politics," namely: "What do you mean by politics?"
The article begins and ends by recounting a mini-culture war going on in Missouri. It may be no surprise that the conflict involves Southern Baptists, who are known for their willingness to plunge headlong into battle for what they believe is right (in both senses of the word). What's surprising, though, is that the battle isn't between Baptists and secular-humanist-postmodernist-liberal-heathens outside, but rather with fellow Baptists.
It turns out that some members of a SBC-affiliated new congregation called the Journey gather on occasion to discuss theology and life with their unchurched friends in (gasp) a pub. Some fellow Baptists see this as the first step on a slippery slope that may lead to alcoholism, drug addiction, fornication, and (I'm partially joking here) maybe even Democratic and Obama-voting tendencies, so they have agreed not to fund new churches like the Journey in the future.
The article mentions another fissure in the SBC structure. This one pits a 25-year-old graduate of Liberty University - and son of a former SBC president - against Richard Land, SBC giant in public affairs. This David-Goliath conflict concerns not beer but the environment, and whether Southern Baptists have been too timid in addressing environmental issues. Jonathan Merritt, starring as David, took a stand on behalf of the planet and has drawn about 250 others (and counting) to stand with him. Land, seemingly convinced that environmental regulations are presently a greater threat to humanity than environmental degradation, has criticized Merritt and friends, and has in fact persuaded some of the original signors to un-sign.
Dean Inserra, 27-year-old pastor of the Well in Tallahassee, Florida - another SBC church more in the tradition of David than Goliath - offers his assessment of the tension: "There is so much resistance to the environmental initiative because it is a threat to the right-wing agenda that has crept into the Southern Baptist Convention." Then he raises this question: "How is taking care of God's creation a political issue? Since I am pro-life, I am pro-environment."
Inserra's comment, along with others in the Times article, shows how the word "political" is used in different ways. The article's description of "a new generation that refuses to put politics at the center of its faith and rejects identification with the religious right" similarly shows the ambiguity of the word "politics." Consider the previous statement in light of what follows:
They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.
In this light, "politics" means culture wars, litmus tests, anti-gay rights, narrow agendas. Is that a good definition? If we define politics more intentionally - as how groups of people organize and govern themselves - then the NYT article is mistitled and its repeated pitting of faith versus politics obscures the issue.
Child prostitution and human trafficking are a global problem. The Caribbean is no exception. Just last week my wife, Jeanette, and I were asked to speak at Cigua Palmera’s fundraiser for their Inocencia project (www.ciguapalmera.org). Inocencia, is the Spanish word for innocence. The Cigua Palmera Foundation, whose mission is “ to improve the quality of life in the Dominican Republic and Haiti,” is working on a project to create awareness about child exploitation and prostitution in Quisqueya (the indigenous name for the island that includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti). It is reported that one out of 10 children in the Dominican Republic is exploited. This is a human tragedy that requires the church and all people of good will to speak out.
Some of the attendees were a bit surprised to see evangelical pastors as keynote speakers at this gathering. There were young professionals, writers, singers, and artists at this gathering; somehow the assumption is that evangelical clergy are usually not a part of these gatherings. Still, Emanuel Veras, one of the young minds behind this work, thought this is exactly where people of faith should be. Amen! I agree with my whole heart. In an age where innocence is stolen by rape, prostitution, and exploitation, the church should be an audible presence. Emanuel knew that and bravely invited us, even though his experience with “church people” may not have always been positive.
If close to 25,000 children a year are victims of child exploitation and prostitution in the Dominican Republic, the followers of Jesus must say, "Hands off!" We must speak and act. We who follow the one who said, “Let the children come unto me and forbid them not, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” cannot be silent. I, for one, am going to join hands with all those who say the children of the world are not for sale. What I learned from the Inocencia Project is that our solidarity calls us to be part of a message that provides justice and hope. If indeed “the world is our parish,” there continues to be a call to move beyond our local congregations and start organizations or help existing organizations, whether they are faith-based or not, to be a part of God’s transformation and message of hope in the world.
So on Thursday, Jeanette and I moved from leading our small-group Bible study to bringing the gospel to a “secular fundraiser.” Why? Because the scripture we teach demands no less. On Thursday, Line in the Sand, a band from our congregation, joined us at the fundraiser and sang “Loss of innocence” and “Cry.” These songs reflect an artistic outreach of compassion and a lyrical lamentation that says the church is in solidarity. Here’s my discovery: In our attempt to address this crisis, we did not leave the church for a night to attend a secular event. We were being the church in an event that is profoundly faithful to the message of Jesus.
Certainly, all the problems of the world will not be repaired in easy ways. Nevertheless, the message of justice, hope, and love of Christ requires that we be salt and light in the world. In the words of Miguel de Unamuno, “If not now, when? If not us, who?” In a time of tragic loss of innocence we must “preach the gospel and, when necessary, use words.” For if we do not speak against the tragic hijacking of innocence, we ourselves are not innocent.
Rev. Gabriel Salguero is the pastor of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene in New York City, a Ph.D. candidate at Union Theological Seminary, and the director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a Sojourners board member.
But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.
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Every time you sacrifice something at great cost—every time you renounce something that appeals to you for the sake of the poor—you are feeding a hungry Christ.
Some days the material writes itself. As reported by The Washington Post, Mary Stevenson’s son claims that as his mother penned the infamous poem, “Footprints in the Sand,” he seeks any royalties earned from said literary work.
For those of you who tend to walk away from Christian kitsch, “Footprints in the Sand” describes that moment when two sets of footprints morph into one as Jesus goes from walking beside you to carrying you when you are too weak to carry yourself. Inspirational to many, insipid to others, the poem has been plastered on plaques, postcards, posters, prayer cards, and pretty much anything else that can produce a biblical buck.
As a writer, I sympathize with anyone who has found their work used without their consent for commercial purposes. But in this case, it seems to me that the son is playing footsie with the facts. Raise your hand if you’ve heard different preachers take the same folksy story and then repeat it with only slight variations, without giving proper credit. Such stories become woven into the oral fabric of American Christianity to the point where no one really knows where and when they first heard this theological tidbit. Also, skim the sermons delivered across the country on any given Sunday by priests and ministers who use a common lectionary, and you’ll find very similar themes emerging. Such is the nature of the collective consciousness when guided by the Holy Spirit.
Yes, there are genuine copyright infringement cases, but in this case, I think this dude appears to have stuck his foot in his mouth. Given a claim by Brooklyn journalist and literary sleuth Rachel Aviv that she can trace elements of "Footprints" to a sermon delivered in 1880, one does question whether or not Mary Stevenson’s poetic footprints are indeed the earliest fossil record on file. Furthermore, I have to question why her son tiptoed around the issue of copyright given this item was allegedly penned during the Great Depression. While I can't speak for Mary Stevenson, it seems to me that if she had intended to commercialize her work, she or her estate would have secured the necessary copyright a long time ago.
To date, at least a dozen people claim that they received the divine spark that set their pen afire to create these words of wisdom, including one Margaret Fishback Powers, a Canadian poet and "itinerant evangelist" whose marketing efforts appear to have legs. To her credit, she claims to direct what little profits she has made toward her youth ministry programs.
So here’s a modest proposal. How about the parties who claim to have penned this prose promise that any profits garnered from the sale of said Footprints be given to, say, the AIDS Walk, where people actually walk the walk?
I have the pleasure of starting us off. Allow me to jump into the future about 24 years. A freelance language artist, Langstyn Huse (one of several figments of my imagination), has a recently syndicated column, the Absurdity of Modernity. In brief, it's political satire related to the issues of the 2032 election. Enjoy...
No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.
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The world is overcome not through destruction, but through reconciliation. Not ideals, nor programs, nor conscience, nor duty, nor responsibility, nor virtue, but only God's perfect love can encounter reality and overcome it. Nor is it some universal idea of love, but rather the love of God in Jesus Christ, a love genuinely lived, that does this.
I believe that most of our faith metaphors have either been domesticated, adulterated, appropriated, become insular, or are utterly sedate. They either serve little, serve the wrong, serve ourselves, or serve nothing. All of which is a serious problem, for images move the hearts of humanity. They motivate and inspire. If images of a creation saved from a flood of its own contempt, or of a small and wayfaring, yet covenant people given a gift for the whole world, or of an exiled and seemingly forgotten people desperately trying to hold onto a promise of restoration, or the tragicomedy of the violent genocide of all that is good, beautiful, just, and true that gave way to a resurrection no one saw coming that unleashed grace upon the world, sent forgiveness viral and invited all to join in recreation -- if such images do no more than simply make us excited (a feeling of diminishing return, to be sure) or uncomfortable (a feeling we undoubtedly don't like but to which we are easily inured), we're -- or better yet, the world is -- in trouble.
Out of concern for this, I was inspired to organize theGuild, a group of artists with tongues to taste and lips to articulate the justice of the kingdom of God. I've been toying for about two years with the idea of a guild as a metaphor for followers of God in the way of Jesus. A guild seems inherently others-interested and action-oriented, which is essential, I believe, to doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. As bondfellows committed to this, the members of theGuild will ply our arts in hopes of giving you ears to hear and eyes to see the stories of resurrection in new and living ways.
So whenever you see this banner, prepare to be transported to a place beyond the usual posture of argument and counter-argument. A place where we can perhaps see ourselves and not just hear and talk about ourselves. And if we listen closely enough, I have the suspicion we just might overhear the gospel.
In January, I was nominated to be one of the Torchbearers for the Olympic Torch Relay when it came to San Francisco. The theme for the relay in San Francisco was sustainability and caring for our Mother Earth. Part of the nomination process included writing an essay about how I have been involved in caring for the environment and ways I had contributed to helping people. I wrote:
What sustains me on my personal journey for excellence is my faith that God has created all people and all of creation out of love. In this love I am called to respond by being the best person God has created me to be, using my gifts and talents to create a world that reflects love, peace and hope.
My personal journey includes that I am a Catholic Sister. I belong to the order of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity. My calling and experiences have compelled me to work for the communities I am part of, the country I live in, and the world, to promote each person being treated with respect and dignity.
As I carried the Olympic Torch, I also carried with me the many communities I work with, such as the Coalition Against Human Trafficking, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Habitat for Humanity, and the international mission work I've done in Chiapas, Mexico, and Tanzania. People coming together can do so much to make our communities (and our world) places of compassion and justice.
Additionally, I try to live as "simply and as green" as possible, through recycling, not using bottled water, and using alternative methods of transportation. The Christian community of the Sisters of St. Francis to which I belong works to protect our environment through a variety of efforts: particularly in water conservation, the conservation of wildlife and the wetlands, as well as efforts to bring about peace in our world. I spoke about these themes whenever there were opportunities in the Olympic process.
Some of the torchbearers shared together that we were grateful for the protestors supporting the people of Tibet. One of the 80 torchbearers in San Francisco dropped out citing privacy concerns. But, as I told the San Francisco Chronicle, "I'm praying and hoping that we can respect one another and do it peacefully," and added that that protesters denouncing China's human rights record should realise that "there are torchbearers who have similar sentiments."
We thought the protestors who climbed the Golden GateBridge were quite clever and very brave! That act got a lot of attention and was visually amazing, and did not hurt anyone while at the same time it got the message around the world. We also felt the candlelight vigils were another peaceful way to send a message of peace and justice and dignity. However, some family and friends reported that there were a number of the protestors who were "looking for a war," and getting very angry at those who had a different view.
I am honored to have carried the Olympic Torch and found it a true gift as a Franciscan Sister to represent those who follow St. Francis - the one for whom the city of San Francisco was named. St. Francis was a man of peace, a person who respected all people, and who honored all creation. As a Franciscan Sister, I also strive to be a woman of peace, a person who respects others, and who honors all creation. This is what the Olympic Spirit is about: peace, respect, and honor.
Sr. Patricia Rayburn, OSF, lives in Redwood City, CA, and carried the Olympic torch for a block along the Marina in San Francisco looking toward the Golden Gate Bridge.
I come to my garden, my sister, my bride;
I gather my myrrh with my spice,
I eat my honeycomb with my honey,
I drink my wine with my milk. Eat, friends, drink,
and be drunk with love.
- Song of Songs 5:1
I sense that a new spirituality is being born in the church today, flowing from the wounded hearts of the weak and broken who are crying out for friendship. This friendship is also a source of healing for those who answer their cry.
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