The Scripture says, "You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord." (Leviticus 19:32)
Today was spent with family in Virginia, helping to move a relative who can no longer adequately take care of herself, and who needs, if not constant, fairly close supervisory care. It was the second move -- and the second downsizing -- within the space of a year. Most of her precious treasures, culled from the accumulated substance of a vigorous life, were parted from her the last go 'round. This one is even more severe. Mercifully, events intervened so that she was not present for the actual move, to see her things sifted, sorted, and scattered.
Among the many knick-knacks, framed items and assorted memorabilia that were casualties to necessity today, there were quite a few photographs. Family gatherings. Children. Children's weddings. Grandchildren. And some people whose identities, and therefore stories, were indecipherable to the little platoon of kin whose melancholy task it was today to decide what was really needed, and what not.
One photograph drew nearly everyone's attention. It was a wedding pose, taken outdoors in a grove, with hints of architecture that made the setting look like up north someplace, perhaps among the New York relatives. The photographer's autograph in the corner read, "Bachrach 1923". In the center of the picture, a bride in a simple white dress holding a simple bouquet of flowers -- perhaps carnations or daisies or wildflowers -- gave a wan smile to the camera, in accordance with the custom of the day, even then just emerging from the more severe poses of the previous century. To her left, the viewer's right, a tall young man with round-lens spectacles and a moustache, crisply attired: evidently, the groom. To his left, a young woman whose features could only be described as "handsome" in a dark dress. Perhaps the groom's sister? To the bride's right, another couple. The man, on the left end as I looked at the picture, was throwing a somewhat sardonic or rakish smile. The woman next to him, between him and the bride, was clearly with him. She was attempting to be in the spirit of the occasion. But there was something else in her eyes: was it perhaps fear? or disillusionment -- some deep sadness? Only her eyes gave her away in what was otherwise a perfect mirage of carefree joy.
No one knew the identity of the people in the print -- which had been carefully preserved for many years and was in pristine condition. Guesses were made, possibilities hazarded; but no one could say for sure. Five lives. Five stories. Five young and bold faces, gateways to five people whose mortal bodies are all, almost certainly, dust.
All of us, winding up our journey in this world, leave behind these fragments of a life. Whether it's images in old sepia, a few furnishings and papers, or -- as in the case of our relative -- a small menagerie of glass animals, these bits and pieces so soon become the property, or problem, of those after us. Along the way, they tell something of who we have been, and what has driven us, and to what we have aspired, and whether we have achieved it -- or settled instead for the "possible" and the "expected".
And in the midst of such a personal catastrophe, so periodically predictable in the history of nearly every family, how do we care for those who are going through it? Even where creeping dementia is now accentuating the (usually less endearing) character traits and patterns of thought and action, how can we smooth and ease the passage from one stage of life, one narrowing of horizons and vision -- to the next, so that the journey can be accomplished with dignity and without despair? For each of us is but a few short days and weeks from the same chapter in our own lives.
The ancient law -- God's law -- commands us to revere the elders among us. In so doing, we give new value to our common humanity. And in the example we set our children thereby, we make a statement of hope and a plea for our own selves, farther down life's trail.
(Providence, Prince Frederick, Maryland)
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Organizing Community
There's a story about President Abraham Lincoln, that one day he was in the White House with a rag and some polish, working away on the leather of his boots. As the President was shining them up, in strode William H. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State and one of his erstwhile competitors for the presidency -- indeed, a man who seemed to have felt entitled to the office and a worthier candidate for the job than the railsplitter from the Illinois frontier during the race of 1860, and whom some believe to have wanted to be the real power pulling the strings behind the gangly, rough-hewn lawyer from Springfield. Seward -- sufficiently partician never to have condescended to such a menial task -- is supposed to have said, "Mr. President, I don't believe you should be polishing your own boots." To which Lincoln, with quick wit and an even sharper assessment of character, is supposed to have replied, "Well, then, Mr. Seward, whose boots do you think I should be polishing?"
It is one of the sad staples of human behavior, that we attach lofty ideals to unworthy intentions, and never more so than when it comes to neutralizing the dreams and aspirations of others, and maintaining the status quo ante.
Rev. Ken Phelps, rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church in Sunderland, deserves kudos and support for his efforts at organizing the congregations of Calvert County for action in the hopes of breaking down the dividing lines and barriers of race, class, and interest, and using the political muscle represented by the members of Calvert's religious community creatively for the benefit of the wider society. He is not alone: in numerous churches up and down the Route 2-4 corridor that marks the femoral artery within Calvert's boot-shaped territory, like-minded leaders and volunteers are beginning to emerge with the intention of overcoming the divisions and inertia which keep the current state of affairs, the state of affairs for tomorrow. This, while issues like affordable housing, environmental health, and the effective disenfranchisement of minorities through a refined tokenism, hold sway in our midst.
Organizing is a third tier of community ministry response for congregations, Christian and otherwise.
1. The first and most basic level is the provision of direct services. In Wesleyan theological language (representing my tradition), these can be described as "works of mercy". Jesus directed His disciples to feed the malnourished, clothe the ill-clad, and minister to the sick and jailed (Mt 25). He also made statements along the lines of Mt 10:42, to the effect that those who give even a cup of cold water will find a reward.
In Calvert, direct services by the religious community assume many forms, from the provision of foodstuffs through about 8 pantries up and down the county, to emergency housing with Project ECHO and Safe Nights, to the medical care offered through the ministrations of the Lutheran Church, to name three examples. These are important works, and not to be neglected. They also tend to be the most congenial for religious communities, and least threatening -- even with the odd voice which will condemn such ministries as mere band-aids that help to aid and abet the systemic evils which make them necessary in the first place. It is hard to imagine a bona fide religious community not engaging in such efforts, without being totally moribund. Some churches, indeed, are largely organized around them.
2. The second level of social ministry is advocacy: becoming a voice for the voiceless, defending the weak and becoming the empowered proxy for the powerless "widows, orphans, and sojourners" among us. When Catholic Charities or ECHO apply for grants to continue and expand their work, or when testimony is given at meetings of the Commissioners or state government on behalf of the poor or the homeless, when pregnancy care centers plead the cause of children saved from abortion and their mothers, we are in the realm of advocacy. Still fairly congenial because of the social distance often entailed between provider / advocate and client, advocacy still sometimes threatens the tranquility of some minds by crossing over into making a case in the political realm, or drawing on public monies to expand the work. We begin to hear comments like: "The church shouldn't get mixed up in politics." The separation of church and state is held up as an ideal for the church to follow, even negating its first-amendment rights (and therefore responsibilities) -- an abuse of the concept never envisioned by the Founders.
Still, advocacy is a Biblical concept, though we must often seek for it, not in the guise of our western democratic traditions, but the patronage and power structures of ancient societies. When Luke, for instance, makes an appeal to the mysterious "Theophilus" (a person? anonymous "lover of God"? powerful Roman? or the emperor himself?), he is pleading the case for a group falsely charged with subversive activity and dangerous sedition against the principate -- i.e., he is engaging in advocacy.
3. The third -- the most political and therefore the most potentially troubling to the good folks in our pews and sanctuaries -- is organizing. Here we are, again in Wesleyan terms, engaging in "acts of justice" or "works of righteousness", seeking to embody and march with the power of God in history as a sign and foretaste of the Kingdom. Organizing brings people together, not only ecumenically across confessional divides, but on an interfaith basis as faith in God and obedience to the revealed truth of God (however that is held) becomes a motivator for bringing people of faith together to demand accountability and enact positive change. When public officials, understanding that in smaller jurisdictions an election may turn on a few votes, begin to turn out and responsively answer questions from the faithful gathered together, and when injustices long endured whose remedies have been long delayed are suddenly and satisfactorily addressed after the people loving God have banded together, we see evidence of organizing.
The rise of Senator Barack Obama to become the 44th President has, among his political opponents, somewhat tarnished the gleam of community organization in their eyes. This is to be expected. Still, for all that, organizing is also a New Testament concept. We see it in the spiritual realm with St. Paul's call to prayer in Ephesians 6:18. But we also see it throughout the Book of Acts, in the collective community support for Paul as he makes his way to Rome for the purpose of giving testimony before no less than Caesar himself, in the leveraging of the city leadership of Ephesus for his own exoneration of the charge of sedition (Acts 19), and in Paul's use of the resurrection doctrine to leverage a division between Pharisees and Sadducees (Acts 23). The circumstances and institutions are different; however, the skilled use of political leverage through influencing the body politic is constant.
"Keeping the church out of politics" is a perennially-popular cry. It even has some resonance within certain branches of the Protestant Christian family (notably, the Anabaptists, such as the Amish). Recent studies have shown (e.g., David Kinneman's "UnChristian", that young people are turned off by what is seen as the politicization of church life. But this refers to partisanship, not the effective use of civil process. It is a robust social witness within the majority tradition. It was, moreover, precisely through the political action of the faithful that many of the great evils of past centuries have been addressed, such as slavery and prison reform. Organizing is not a weapon to be left idle in the arsenal when great, or even moderate, goals are to be attained.
As with Seward's question to Lincoln, sometimes resistance to the idea of people using their own abilities and power to make positive changes in their lives and others may mask as an appeal to purity, but it is actually a trap that holds the unwary in the thrall of an unjust status quo.
You never know whose boots you may then find yourself polishing.
Providence; Prince Frederick, 24 February 2010
It is one of the sad staples of human behavior, that we attach lofty ideals to unworthy intentions, and never more so than when it comes to neutralizing the dreams and aspirations of others, and maintaining the status quo ante.
Rev. Ken Phelps, rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church in Sunderland, deserves kudos and support for his efforts at organizing the congregations of Calvert County for action in the hopes of breaking down the dividing lines and barriers of race, class, and interest, and using the political muscle represented by the members of Calvert's religious community creatively for the benefit of the wider society. He is not alone: in numerous churches up and down the Route 2-4 corridor that marks the femoral artery within Calvert's boot-shaped territory, like-minded leaders and volunteers are beginning to emerge with the intention of overcoming the divisions and inertia which keep the current state of affairs, the state of affairs for tomorrow. This, while issues like affordable housing, environmental health, and the effective disenfranchisement of minorities through a refined tokenism, hold sway in our midst.
Organizing is a third tier of community ministry response for congregations, Christian and otherwise.
1. The first and most basic level is the provision of direct services. In Wesleyan theological language (representing my tradition), these can be described as "works of mercy". Jesus directed His disciples to feed the malnourished, clothe the ill-clad, and minister to the sick and jailed (Mt 25). He also made statements along the lines of Mt 10:42, to the effect that those who give even a cup of cold water will find a reward.
In Calvert, direct services by the religious community assume many forms, from the provision of foodstuffs through about 8 pantries up and down the county, to emergency housing with Project ECHO and Safe Nights, to the medical care offered through the ministrations of the Lutheran Church, to name three examples. These are important works, and not to be neglected. They also tend to be the most congenial for religious communities, and least threatening -- even with the odd voice which will condemn such ministries as mere band-aids that help to aid and abet the systemic evils which make them necessary in the first place. It is hard to imagine a bona fide religious community not engaging in such efforts, without being totally moribund. Some churches, indeed, are largely organized around them.
2. The second level of social ministry is advocacy: becoming a voice for the voiceless, defending the weak and becoming the empowered proxy for the powerless "widows, orphans, and sojourners" among us. When Catholic Charities or ECHO apply for grants to continue and expand their work, or when testimony is given at meetings of the Commissioners or state government on behalf of the poor or the homeless, when pregnancy care centers plead the cause of children saved from abortion and their mothers, we are in the realm of advocacy. Still fairly congenial because of the social distance often entailed between provider / advocate and client, advocacy still sometimes threatens the tranquility of some minds by crossing over into making a case in the political realm, or drawing on public monies to expand the work. We begin to hear comments like: "The church shouldn't get mixed up in politics." The separation of church and state is held up as an ideal for the church to follow, even negating its first-amendment rights (and therefore responsibilities) -- an abuse of the concept never envisioned by the Founders.
Still, advocacy is a Biblical concept, though we must often seek for it, not in the guise of our western democratic traditions, but the patronage and power structures of ancient societies. When Luke, for instance, makes an appeal to the mysterious "Theophilus" (a person? anonymous "lover of God"? powerful Roman? or the emperor himself?), he is pleading the case for a group falsely charged with subversive activity and dangerous sedition against the principate -- i.e., he is engaging in advocacy.
3. The third -- the most political and therefore the most potentially troubling to the good folks in our pews and sanctuaries -- is organizing. Here we are, again in Wesleyan terms, engaging in "acts of justice" or "works of righteousness", seeking to embody and march with the power of God in history as a sign and foretaste of the Kingdom. Organizing brings people together, not only ecumenically across confessional divides, but on an interfaith basis as faith in God and obedience to the revealed truth of God (however that is held) becomes a motivator for bringing people of faith together to demand accountability and enact positive change. When public officials, understanding that in smaller jurisdictions an election may turn on a few votes, begin to turn out and responsively answer questions from the faithful gathered together, and when injustices long endured whose remedies have been long delayed are suddenly and satisfactorily addressed after the people loving God have banded together, we see evidence of organizing.
The rise of Senator Barack Obama to become the 44th President has, among his political opponents, somewhat tarnished the gleam of community organization in their eyes. This is to be expected. Still, for all that, organizing is also a New Testament concept. We see it in the spiritual realm with St. Paul's call to prayer in Ephesians 6:18. But we also see it throughout the Book of Acts, in the collective community support for Paul as he makes his way to Rome for the purpose of giving testimony before no less than Caesar himself, in the leveraging of the city leadership of Ephesus for his own exoneration of the charge of sedition (Acts 19), and in Paul's use of the resurrection doctrine to leverage a division between Pharisees and Sadducees (Acts 23). The circumstances and institutions are different; however, the skilled use of political leverage through influencing the body politic is constant.
"Keeping the church out of politics" is a perennially-popular cry. It even has some resonance within certain branches of the Protestant Christian family (notably, the Anabaptists, such as the Amish). Recent studies have shown (e.g., David Kinneman's "UnChristian", that young people are turned off by what is seen as the politicization of church life. But this refers to partisanship, not the effective use of civil process. It is a robust social witness within the majority tradition. It was, moreover, precisely through the political action of the faithful that many of the great evils of past centuries have been addressed, such as slavery and prison reform. Organizing is not a weapon to be left idle in the arsenal when great, or even moderate, goals are to be attained.
As with Seward's question to Lincoln, sometimes resistance to the idea of people using their own abilities and power to make positive changes in their lives and others may mask as an appeal to purity, but it is actually a trap that holds the unwary in the thrall of an unjust status quo.
You never know whose boots you may then find yourself polishing.
Providence; Prince Frederick, 24 February 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Delusions of Deicide
Earlier this week, I finally got through Richard Dawkins' popular handbook on anti-religion, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). In our time, when Christian leaders of every stripe need to pay more attention to apologetic, not least for the benefit of those in our own pews who have often been catechetically shortchanged, this book is a virtual must-read. Authored by a man who has done much to popularize science (indeed, his chair at Oxford is in the "public understanding of science), The God Delusion has made a bit of a splash. For me, reading it has been part of the preparation for a coming teaching series on the core creedal statements of the Church.
Sadly, what one comes away with is less a sense of reasoned critique of theism (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any other), but a heavily biased rant, one wants to say the marketing of a highly personal agenda under the banner of "science". A faux-playfully snide and supercilious tone pervades the work, and it is plagued by internal incoherence. (To cite one minor example: on p. 335, he refers to what he considers "reputable" theologians, only later to dismiss all theological reasoning as irrational on p. 360. Dawkins gives, Dawkins takes away ....) Basic categorial and history-of-ideas errors pervade Delusion, as his univocal use of the term "reason" across time and without definition (even though it is a cornerstone concept), and his conflation of "religious faith" and "religion", oblivious to the elementary distinction between fides quae creditur and fides qua creditur. In other words, he doesn't know what constitutes what he doesn't know. Dawkins claims to want to free the world from the chains of religious mis-thinking, especially where it touches the young; but put into action, his recommendations would take us to the secular police-state, where under the banner of "freedom from religion" an atheistic orthodoxy would trample on expressions of faith. (A chilling example of this nascent cognitive imperialism can be found on p.57, where he confidently maintains that fellow scientist -- and atheist -- Stephen Jay Gould "could [not] possibly have meant much of what he wrote ...." Why? Gould wisely concedes that there are philosophical questions which are beyond the competence of the discipline of science to pronounce upon.) My response to Dawkins' invitation to such a future? No thanks.
Two aspects of Dawkins' writing are especially revealing to me. One: his lack of use for the category of "humanity". This is striking, but hardly more so than on p. 297f., when tackling the question of abortion: "Religious moralists can be heard debating questions like, 'When does the developing embryo become a person -- a human being?' Secular humanists are more likely to ask, 'Never mind whether it is human (what does that even mean for a little cluster of cells?); at what age does ... [it] become capable of suffering?" This is hugely revealing; and throughout, humanity is disprivileged as a category.
Two: Delusion is, as much as anything, a statement of faith. Not religious faith, of course: faith in Darwinism and a Darwin-based atheism. Dawkins wrongly maintains throughout his tome that religious faith is all about not asking questions, not using the faculties of logic or curiosity -- indeed, a deliberate turning away from anything which truly expands the understanding or horizons. (This shortsightedness, one must point out, would make it impossible for him to explain any number of religious movements in history.) On the last pages of the book, then, he indulges in what can only be described as great leaps of faith and paeans of praise to the (undemonstrated, undocumented -- by him) possibilities of the unchained (understand: un-, non-, or antireligious) human reason. Indeed, his closing statement I took as a negation of the central thesis of the book, which seeks to put sharp limits and brackets around disciplined thought, along Dawkins' lines, of course.
Throughout, I was wondering about Dawkins' audience. My conclusion was that it was written to sway the doubters in religious communities, the "dechurched", the disillusioned, those who through pain or despair or disappointment (or laziness) are looking for a reason to abandon the quest -- as Anselm put it -- of "faith seeking understanding" (another construct which would appear to be a mere word salad to Dawkins). In their nice, compact critique of Dawkins' work by Alister and Joanna McGrath (The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine; InterVarsity, 2007), the authors -- who masterfully blend biting criticism of Dawkins' limits of competency and his method with polite respect overall and quite a dose of graciousness -- make the case that he is preaching to a nonreligious choir which is increasingly alarmed by the irritating persistence of religious faith in the world, belief in God that is annoyingly overdue in fulfilling the confident predictions of the past 200+ years of its imminent decline, demise, and disappearance from the scene.
Dawkins clearly seems to think that he has presented an airtight, popularly accessible case for why God is not only dead, but mouldered beyond identification. His confidence is misplaced. It's his belief that he's made a credible and informed case that is the flight from reason, and his alleged deicide that is the real delusion.
Sadly, what one comes away with is less a sense of reasoned critique of theism (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any other), but a heavily biased rant, one wants to say the marketing of a highly personal agenda under the banner of "science". A faux-playfully snide and supercilious tone pervades the work, and it is plagued by internal incoherence. (To cite one minor example: on p. 335, he refers to what he considers "reputable" theologians, only later to dismiss all theological reasoning as irrational on p. 360. Dawkins gives, Dawkins takes away ....) Basic categorial and history-of-ideas errors pervade Delusion, as his univocal use of the term "reason" across time and without definition (even though it is a cornerstone concept), and his conflation of "religious faith" and "religion", oblivious to the elementary distinction between fides quae creditur and fides qua creditur. In other words, he doesn't know what constitutes what he doesn't know. Dawkins claims to want to free the world from the chains of religious mis-thinking, especially where it touches the young; but put into action, his recommendations would take us to the secular police-state, where under the banner of "freedom from religion" an atheistic orthodoxy would trample on expressions of faith. (A chilling example of this nascent cognitive imperialism can be found on p.57, where he confidently maintains that fellow scientist -- and atheist -- Stephen Jay Gould "could [not] possibly have meant much of what he wrote ...." Why? Gould wisely concedes that there are philosophical questions which are beyond the competence of the discipline of science to pronounce upon.) My response to Dawkins' invitation to such a future? No thanks.
Two aspects of Dawkins' writing are especially revealing to me. One: his lack of use for the category of "humanity". This is striking, but hardly more so than on p. 297f., when tackling the question of abortion: "Religious moralists can be heard debating questions like, 'When does the developing embryo become a person -- a human being?' Secular humanists are more likely to ask, 'Never mind whether it is human (what does that even mean for a little cluster of cells?); at what age does ... [it] become capable of suffering?" This is hugely revealing; and throughout, humanity is disprivileged as a category.
Two: Delusion is, as much as anything, a statement of faith. Not religious faith, of course: faith in Darwinism and a Darwin-based atheism. Dawkins wrongly maintains throughout his tome that religious faith is all about not asking questions, not using the faculties of logic or curiosity -- indeed, a deliberate turning away from anything which truly expands the understanding or horizons. (This shortsightedness, one must point out, would make it impossible for him to explain any number of religious movements in history.) On the last pages of the book, then, he indulges in what can only be described as great leaps of faith and paeans of praise to the (undemonstrated, undocumented -- by him) possibilities of the unchained (understand: un-, non-, or antireligious) human reason. Indeed, his closing statement I took as a negation of the central thesis of the book, which seeks to put sharp limits and brackets around disciplined thought, along Dawkins' lines, of course.
Throughout, I was wondering about Dawkins' audience. My conclusion was that it was written to sway the doubters in religious communities, the "dechurched", the disillusioned, those who through pain or despair or disappointment (or laziness) are looking for a reason to abandon the quest -- as Anselm put it -- of "faith seeking understanding" (another construct which would appear to be a mere word salad to Dawkins). In their nice, compact critique of Dawkins' work by Alister and Joanna McGrath (The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine; InterVarsity, 2007), the authors -- who masterfully blend biting criticism of Dawkins' limits of competency and his method with polite respect overall and quite a dose of graciousness -- make the case that he is preaching to a nonreligious choir which is increasingly alarmed by the irritating persistence of religious faith in the world, belief in God that is annoyingly overdue in fulfilling the confident predictions of the past 200+ years of its imminent decline, demise, and disappearance from the scene.
Dawkins clearly seems to think that he has presented an airtight, popularly accessible case for why God is not only dead, but mouldered beyond identification. His confidence is misplaced. It's his belief that he's made a credible and informed case that is the flight from reason, and his alleged deicide that is the real delusion.
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