Musings

Shared Sacrifice, Shared Reward

"Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more." (Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Luke 12: 48)

That's how it is in the kingdom of heaven, that realm of living imagination that inspires us to create it on earth. 

But here on earth in America today, Mitt Romney, a very rich man, paid an average of only 14% in tax on his income over the last two years. 

Low income Americans paid 15% on taxable earnings over $8,500 to $34,500.

Since 2003, Romney's investments, which produce most of his income, have been in a "blind trust".  He's not even making investment decisions.  Can it be said that Mitt Romney "earns" any money at all?  And if he's not really earning money through his own hard work and wits, how could taxing his income at a much higher rate have any impact on his level of ambition in the free-market economy?  (See more on this subject in a recent "musing" of mine, The Burklo Limit.)  Less money in his pocket might dull his political ambitions and campaign expenditures slightly.  But would that be an all-bad thing?

America has abandoned much of the principle of progressive taxation, in which the impact of taxes on people's lives is factored proportionally into the rates that people pay.  Under progressive taxation, lower income people would pay a lower rate, and progressively higher income people would pay progressively higher rates - thus somewhat flattening the felt impact of taxation among economic classes. 

There's a lot of noise in politics these days about instituting a "flat tax" - one rate for everybody, regardless of income level.  But nothing's flat about the effect that a uniform tax rate at Mitt Romney's level would have on the incomes of people across the wealth spectrum.  Lower income people might sacrifice buying higher-quality food in order to pay their 14%.  Paying taxes has viscerally-felt consequences for them.  But 14% is not even close to being a nutritional threat for rich folks.  Romney still would be a very wealthy man even if he paid the current top rate, 35%, in income taxes. 

What is the "much" that Jesus says will be required of those who have been given much?  It must be proportional, so that it is flat in tangible impact rather than in abstract numbers.

The Republican argument for low taxes on rich people is that they are the ones who create jobs.  "We all know that there's a reason we have low rates on capital gains. That's because it spurs new investment in our economy and allows capital to move more quickly," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said recently.  But the top marginal tax rate in the Eisenhower era was 90%.  Somehow the economy chugged ahead during that Republican administration!

A researcher with the business-oriented Kauffman Foundation, quoted recently in Miller McCune Magazine, said that only about 10% of the wealthy people of America are job-creators.  Yes, almost all job creators are wealthy people.  'Mom and Pop" small businesses don't grow the economy nearly as much as those businesses started by rich folks.  But only a small number of wealthy people invest in the start-up businesses that create substantial numbers of new jobs.  Why is our country rewarding with lavish tax breaks the 90% of the rich who do little or nothing to stimulate more employment of Americans?  Higher taxes from them could pay for public investments that do preserve and create jobs and improve the infrastructure for capitalism to thrive.

Winner-Take-All Politics, a book by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (2010), documents that US government policy changes in the last 30 years have been the primary causes of a hyper-concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.  A long-term, highly-organized, massively-funded political effort to cut progressive taxation on the wealthy and eliminate regulation on the financial industry has compounded the assets of the very richest of the rich.  "Why has Washington made the rich richer and abandoned the middle class?  Because of the relentless effectiveness of modern, efficient organizations operating in a much less modern and efficient political system."  (p 115)  (See Bill Moyers' recent interview with the authors of this book here.)  "If the effects of taxation on income at the top had been frozen in place in 1970, a very big chunk of the growing distance between the superrich and everyone else would disappear." (p 49)  Hacker and Pierson lay most of the blame for creating much worse income inequality on the Republican Party, but also lay a large share on Democratic politicians who have become dependent on Wall Street money for their campaign funds. 

Mitt Romney accuses the President of stirring up class divisions in America.  That's a breathtaking statement from someone who had an income of $42 million dollars over the past two years, money that he gained almost entirely without working.  Americans are only now waking up to the results of a class war that has been waged against them for three decades.  The President is just responding to the people's anger about it.

Perhaps this also will be the year when Americans wake up to the consequences of three decades of systematic dismantling of the ability of government to protect them from the excesses and failures of capitalism - and to protect capitalism from its own tendency to self-destruction.  All of us have skin in this game.  Today, when capitalism succeeds, rich people get richer.  When it fails, the taxes we all pay bail it out in order to prevent further economic damage.   As quoted by William Cohan in the NY Times: "Senator Christopher Dodd correctly said in April 2008, during the first Senate hearing about the unfolding financial crisis, 'We’ve socialized risk and we’ve privatized reward.'"

"And what if the traditionalist-conservatives are right and a... tax cut, without corresponding cuts in expenditures, also leaves us with a fiscal problem?  The neo-conservative is willing to leave those problems to be coped with by liberal interregnums.  He wants to shape the future, and will leave it up to his opponents to tidy up afterwards," said  Irving Kristol, neo-conservative journalist, in 1980.  This cynical plan for destruction of the capacity of government to serve the common good has succeeded.  Republicans bankrupted the country with tax cuts and an expensive war, leaving President Obama to clean up the mess... and then obstructed at every turn his attempts to clean up the mess.  Conservative leaders understand how to manipulate the voters.  If Republicans make a mess of government, that makes the people lose trust in government, and that just feeds their anti-government agenda.  They believe voters will blame Obama for failing to save the country from the worst recession since the Great Depression more than they'll blame the Republicans for stonewalling his solutions to the problem.

It's time for us to prove them wrong.  With our votes and our voices, it's time to put the heat on our politicians to return to a truly progressive income tax system to fund an efficient and effective government that serves the people and not just special interests.  It's time to demand sensible limits on the financial industry and on campaign finance.  These are mainstream, tried and true policies that have served our country well in the past and can do so again. 

"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics,"  said Plutarch, the 1st century Roman historian.  Our country may not be on its deathbed, but surely we are now experiencing the pain of a serious sickness in our democracy.  The interests of the many have been sacrificed for the interests of .1% of the people of this country.  And we should ask if the interests even of this tiny slice of the richest of the rich have been best served.  Henry Ford paid his auto workers more than the prevailing wage, so they'd be able to buy his cars and make him richer.  How much more comfortable everyone would be, including the richest, if lower and middle income workers had a lot more economic security in America?  How much easier life would be for capitalists if America had universal, single-payer health insurance!  Their companies would not need to pay for ever-more costly private insurance for their workers. 

The government's bailout of Wall Street, and the accompanying massive infusion of public money into the economy, was essential to prevent a bad recession from becoming a terrible depression that would have ruined most of us and severely whacked the assets of the wealthy. Let's not miss this teachable moment:  if the government doesn't properly regulate business, you and I will pay to pick up the pieces when the market implodes.  Preventing such debacles with a reformed economic and political system will benefit people in all economic classes.

We're all in this together.  Shared sacrifice, shared reward: this can be our mantra as the presidential election season begins in earnest. 

A suggestion: vote via the buddy system.  If you are someone who stays on top of public affairs, please lose your inhibitions and email your voting choices to everyone you know - early and often!  If you are on the other end of the spectrum, find folks you know and respect and ask them to be your buddies, getting voting advice from them.  From the grassroots up, let's work for real change - till the kingdom comes!

 

Why I'm an Agnatheist

A particularly useful book crossed my desk recently:  BRIDGING THE GOD GAP: Finding Common Ground Among Believers, Atheists, and Agnostics (Living Arts Publications, 2011) by Roger Schriner, a retired Unitarian minister and psychotherapist from Northern California.  In it, he describes the wide continuum of nuanced positions between "theism" and "atheism", blurring the meaning of both terms.   "The difference between belief and disbelief is often merely wordplay, a matter of semantics rather than substance." (p 80) 

There are many ways that God is understood in the Bible, that book so strongly associated with traditional theism.  Just which theism is displayed in which book, much less which chapter of which book, in the Bible?  There's the ineffable, mystical, unnameable I AM THAT I AM in the burning bush that confronted Moses in Genesis.  But also in Genesis are the three men who showed up for dinner at the tent of Sarah and Abraham.  The story indicates that these earthy, humanoid beings collectively were God.  In the second book of Kings, in the story of Naaman, God is described "henotheistically".  God was the god only of the land of Israel.  So Naaman, after being divinely healed in Israel, brought with him a cartload of dirt from Israel when he returned to his native Syria.  The God of Israel only had power over what happened on top of Israeli dirt, and he wanted to continue to have access to that power when he went home.  In the New Testament, in the book of Acts, Paul went to the Areopagus in Athens where stood statues of the Greek gods.  One empty spot was dedicated to "The Unknown God", which Paul said was the real God.  If the real God was unknown, did that make Paul an agnostic?  Early Christians were considered atheists because they did not worship the gods of Rome.  Such lack of reverence was as unthinkable for Romans as it would be for Americans to vote for an atheist candidate for president today!  

And on that subject, the current political contest leads a lot of Americans to puzzle if Mormons believe in God.  The Latter Day Saints church teaches that God began as a man who went through a process of spiritual improvement until he became divine, and that humans are intended to do the same.  It's a view that's foreign to a lot of Christians.  But there are many differing concepts of God among Christians, much as their pastors and priests might want to deny that this is so.  Those views reflect the variety of understandings that appear in the Bible and outside of it as well.  The God of the Mormons is just one of many that exist side by side, named by the same generic word.  And we can be sure that different Mormons have different understandings of God.  The realm of Christian theism has no clear boundary.

I think that many atheists are really awetheists.  They are people who experience the same kind of reverential wonder and respect for life and the highest human values that we associate with religion at its best.  Awe is their God, though they don't use that terminology.  I use Christian language to describe the deep humility I feel when I mindfully encounter the miraculous natural world around and within me.  For me, God isn't supernatural; God is the essential creative nature of the universe.   Some Christians say that this makes me an atheist.  Some atheists get upset when I tell them what I mean by the word God, and they say that I'm not a Christian!  They don't want to be associated with the supernatural God they associate with Christianity, and don't want to be confused by the possibility that non-supernatural theists like myself can be Christian.   Such conversations lead me to wonder if I am an agnatheist: someone who is agnostic about whether or not there is really such a thing as an atheist.  

BRIDGING THE GOD GAP offers a breathtaking array of places to stay, or at least visit, along the road between theism and atheism.  But Schriner's breakdown of the choices is hardly exhaustive.  The human experience of God, or the Ultimate Reality Formerly Known As God (URFKAG), defies definition by its very nature.  Pondering that is enough to make an awetheist out of me!

 (An understanding of God which I've found to be helpful is elucidated in process theology, a school of thought founded by the mathematician and philosopher of the early 20th century, Alfred North Whitehead.  For a brief introduction to it, check out this interview with Phil Clayton, process theologian at Claremont School of Theology.)

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Mark your progressive Christian calendars!

February 12, Sunday:  Evolution Weekend
April 15, Sunday:  Blessing of the Taxes

May 6, Sunday:  Pluralism Sunday - sign up your church to participate, now!

How I Make Meaning of Life

(This "musing" appears in The Interfaith Observer online magazine this month.)

My wife and I drive out of the city.  On the way, we share stories with each other.

We laugh about how complicated and intertwined the tales of our lives have become with each other, and with and among the people we know.

We are amazed at how disparate events and people come together over time, in surprising combinations.

We get out in the country and see a lonesome hill and we get out of the car and climb it. 
At the top we hold hands and take deep breaths.

We walk down the other side, and at the bottom is a pile of rusty junk.

I collect some of it and put it in the car.
I'm not sure why I pick it up, but I sense there are reasons.

At home I put the junk in a cardboard box in the garage.

On a Saturday morning, I drive alone to the desert mountains and hike along walls of pale stone.
I pluck a stem of sagebrush and crush it under my nose with my fingers.

I wonder how that scent floods my mind with memories of other hikes in other landscapes.

I ask:  Do those moments, stored and now released, belong to me or to those times and places?

Am I but a wind blowing through wilderness, making pine needles moan and cottonwood leaves flutter?

Need I be anything more than these questions I ask as I pause on the trail?

At work, I listen to a student tell me that she doesn't know why she is alive, and can't find other students who will listen to her predicament.

I listen to a university staff person tell me about having an affair and how it made a mess of her life.

I make vegetarian pizzas and serve them to students in our Interfaith Council as they discuss what they and their religions have to say about life after death.

I lift chairs off stacks to arrange them in a patio where I will be leading a memorial service for a student who committed suicide.
I fuss with image files to fit them in an e-newsletter.

At home, I read a story to our five-year-old granddaughter, and then we chase each other around our apartment and yell.
I edit an academic paper for my daughter, who is in graduate school at the university where I work.

At church I feel the tears welling behind my eyes as we stand in line to receive communion.
A mystery is being completed in us as we eat bread dipped in wine.

I get a call telling me it's time to drive 400 miles north to my home town because a friend of mine is dying.

I sit next to the hospital bed and stroke his forehead and chant peace and love into his ear as he dies. 
We were friends for 44 years.

On a Saturday afternoon, rummaging through the garage, I find the rusty junk in the box and take it out. 

Without a plan, I assemble it in different ways, to see what could be made of it all.

A steel spring, a metal strap, a corroded piece of a toy Tonka truck, and a rusty little tube.

Finally I'm pleased with a construction of the pieces.  With tin-snips and epoxy glue I put it together.

I call it my self-portrait.

I take it inside our apartment and put it on a shelf and stare at it.

It gives my life a meaning
That makes me laugh.

Mormon Reckoning

America is entering a Mormon moment as a former bishop of the Latter-Day Saints, Mitt Romney, takes front-runner place in the race for the Republican nomination for the presidency.  I welcome the religious reckoning that is bound to result.  Mormonism shines an ultraviolet light on Christianity in America, revealing features that are unseen under the rest of the spectrum. 

In the last few years, I have become acquainted with the progressive theological and social movement within the Mormon world.  It's much bigger than the public perceives, if it is perceived at all.  There is a wide range of thought within the membership of the LDS on matters religious and political.  There is a loyal opposition to its leadership's positions on same-sex marriage, homosexuality, women's limited roles, and other issues.  The online Mormon "bloggernacle" on these topics includes dropout (or "Jack") Mormons, temple-ready, tithe-paying Mormons, Mormons who take the Book of Mormon literally, Mormons who don't, Mormon Democrats, and Mormon Republicans.  Journals like Dialogue and Sunstone make space for respectful but critical viewpoints about the church.

This lively contrarian community within the LDS world results in part from the fact that the Mormon church has a theology, but few theologians.  The top leaders of the church, some of whom I had the occasion to meet a few months ago in Salt Lake City, are chosen primarily for their gifts as managers, not as scholars.  There is no LDS seminary, and there is little scholarship within the church to compare to what is found in the Catholic or mainline Protestant traditions.  An integral part of Mormon theology is the principle of personal revelation.  Each Mormon is expected to come up with his or her own "testimony" that the Church is "true".  And while there are clear Mormon doctrines, the LDS Church is not preoccupied with interpreting them.  That task is largely left to the personal relationship between the individual Mormon and God.

As a result, a substantial number of Mormons have quietly consulted with their Maker and concluded that the Book of Mormon is mythical.  And they have found a way to hold that view while staying loyal to their church.  Their church is "true" for them in ways that might not be "true" for other Latter-Day Saints. 

It's not hard to see how they arrive at that conclusion.  The text and Joseph Smith's account of its discovery are fantastic.  He claimed to have translated the text from the "Reformed Egyptian" - a language that never existed - into English, using "peep stones" called Urim and Thummim.  The book suggests that Jews settled in Meso-America and that Jesus visited this continent after his resurrection.  There is no sound archaeological or historical evidence for any of these claims.  The book was written in grammatically incorrect King James English, long after that version of the language had become antique.  While there are a few pearls of wisdom in it, and its vision of a Christianity indigenous to America is intriguing, a leap of faith as wide as the Grand Canyon is required to take it literally.  (Check out the LDS Church's own list of most cherished Book of Mormon passages, to get a sense of how many cups of non-Mormon beverages you'd need to finish the whole book.)  Consequently, many Mormons cherish the book as part of their cultural and religious heritage, while understanding that it cannot be taken as an historical record of the events it describes.

For evangelicals to argue that the Book of Mormon is a false gospel, they must give the same kinds of reasons that theologically progressive Christians present for not taking the Bible literally.  Smith's story of the appearance of the golden plates of the text of the Book of Mormon is no more fabulous than it is to take the miracle stories in the Bible as facts.  Non-Mormon Christians have been in the habit of taking the Bible literally a lot longer than Mormons have been doing it with their book.  But the duration of an obsolete belief system is no argument for maintaining it.

Many evangelicals are outraged that Mormons don't believe in the Trinity, and that they believe that God was a (married) man who became divine.  But what's any weirder about these doctrines than the arcane doctrine of the Trinity?  How do you explain the difference such theological disputes make in everyday life in 2012?  Plenty of loyal Mormons take their church's doctrine with a grain of salt. 

Richard Mouw, president of the evangelical Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, CA, recently wrote in the LA Times that "I do not believe Mormonism is a cult. However, I am not convinced that Mormon theology deserves to be classified as Christian in the historic sense of that word. I have serious disagreements with my Mormon friends about basic issues of faith that have eternal consequences. These include issues regarding the nature of God, the doctrine of the Trinity and the character of the afterlife. But I have also learned that in some matters we are not quite as far apart as I once thought. In any case, such theological differences don't preclude a Mormon from being a viable presidential candidate, in my view." 

I don't find the term "cult" useful in describing any religious groups.  But apparently Mouw does, and if Mormonism doesn't fit his definition, why?  Just because they've become "mainstream", as he says, in business and culture?  He fudges a bit about whether or not Mormons are really Christians, and he only hints at hellfire as a possible consequence of their beliefs.  Does he agree with the oft-cited phrase that a cult is just a religious group without political or financial clout?

In the interests of maintaining a conservative alliance, many evangelicals will be challenged to follow Mouw's example and downplay theological issues for the sake of promoting a common political agenda which has no biblical basis.  Already for many evangelicals, political purity trumps theological purity.  Notice the peace they have made with the Catholic Church, which they used to vilify.  Rick Santorum, an uber-Catholic, has become an honorary evangelical!  For the sake of teaming up with Mormons to fight abortion rights and same-sex marriage, topics about which Jesus said nothing, will evangelicals cut Mormons slack on matters theological?  They do so at their own doctrinal peril. 

If Romney becomes the nominee for the Republican Party, count on a national year-long teach-in about the Mormon faith.  Republicans will have to make Mormonism look good, and that's going to make Republicans look bad to the millions of fundamentalist Christians who are convinced that it is a terrible heresy.  Some fundamentalists will take a break from politics altogether, seeing how it co-opts and trumps religion.  Other conservative Christians will be nudged toward a more pluralistic, less dogmatic stance.  (See how it plays in the Seventh Day Adventist Church in this article by my friend and colleague Loren Seibold.)  Romney's Mormonism is going to result in a healthy confusion among conservative Americans.

So there's good news for progressive Christianity in America's imminent reckoning with Mormonism.  Romney's candidacy is going to make people ask questions.  Do political and social agendas matter more or less than theological doctrines?  If America is a Christian nation as defined by evangelicals, can it be governed by a Mormon?  Can any one religion or sect claim to be superior to all others?  More people will question whether the Bible should be taken literally, as they see how hard it is to take the Book of Mormon factually.  People will ponder whether their critiques of Mormonism might apply to their own religious beliefs.  And progressive Mormons will be connected with the larger progressive Christian community, leading to fruitful friendships.   

Epiphanies

 

An awakening. An opening into higher consciousness.  A discovery.  A parting of the fog of confusion, revealing a new kind of clarity.  Webster’s says that an epiphany is a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something. What an enticing definition!  It makes me eager to get an epiphany right now.  How about you?

In the context of the Christian church calendar, Epiphany is January 6, the day celebrated as the time when the wise men visited the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem.  It’s the sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of Christmas to three guys from somewhere in Iraq or Iran.  They were the first non-Jews to “get it” about Christmas.  Think of it! Jesus was barely born before his message was out of the Jewish box.  Hmmm – isn’t it about time that his message got out of the Christian box?

I love this story for a bunch of ephinaneous reasons.  Yes, I made up that word, epiphaneous.  That’s what happens when you have an epiphany: you expand your vocabulary.  For one thing, I love this story because the three wise men show up with really weird gifts.  Normal folks might think:  let’s get Jesus a rattle, or a rubber ducky, or get his parents a couple months of diaper service.  No, these supposedly wise men traveled many hundreds of miles on camelback to deliver gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Gold – sure.  Valuable then, valuable now.  That’s not so strange: at least for Mary and Joseph, it was probably a welcome sight.  But frankincense and myrrh?  Used as burial spices, at the time.  Yes, valuable:  Mary and Joseph could have traded them for something useful.  The three wise men were like those relatives or friends who feel compelled to give you stuff for Christmas, except they are truly clueless about who you are, what you want, what you need. 

 

Another thing I love about the story is that the three wise men apparently didn't become Christians after meeting Jesus.  They already had a religion, and they didn't give it up.  They followed the star because their own religion suggested it.  Faithfully following their own religion got them outside of the box of their own religion, even while they continued practicing it.  Maybe that’s something we can emulate today. By following Jesus in a serious way, he’ll lead us out of the Christian box and inspire us to explore other religions and become better global citizens.  He'll lead us to be humble about our religion, even as we continue practicing it.

The recipe for epiphany is simple, but still challenging.  It is about showing up:  physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  That’s what the three wise men did.  They did not just send gold, frankincense, and myrrh by Fed Ex and then just email a Christmas letter from Baghdad.  When they discovered that the star was hovering above a rude and crude manger, and that the so-called king was a peasant child, they still showed up in person and presented themselves. 

Are we present?  Really here?  All here?  Did your body show up, but your mind is someplace else?  Did your mind show up, but your body get left behind?  Are you awake and aware of your whole self, here and now?

The way to have an epiphany starts with being all here, and being awake to your inner and outer worlds.  If you are awake to your feelings, your bodily and mental experiences in the moment - if you are aware of what is going on in your mind and body right now, then you will be awake enough to have a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of things.  What are we really thinking?  What are we really feeling?  To what are we really paying attention right here and now?  Facing the truth about ourselves, reflecting our emotional and physical reality back to ourselves, lovingly, without judgment: that enables us to be present, body and soul, at the manger.

When we take a good look at ourselves in the spiritual mirror, we begin to experience higher consciousness.  This is the kingdom of heaven Jesus was talking about: the heaven’s eye view of ourselves and the world around us.  When we take this God’s-eye view of ourselves, lovingly and without judgment, doing an inventory of our inner worlds, then we are able to perceive the meaning of what we observe.  

I do quite a bit of counseling for students at USC in the course of my job, even though I’m not officially a counselor.  I find myself asking students questions to nudge them to examine their inner lives – lovingly, and without judgment.  Just paying attention to their inner worlds, just describing their inner experience, is enough to trigger epiphanies.  Suddenly they make new connections among their experiences and feelings, and make fresh sense of their lives. 

It’s New Years, when we hear all that talk about resolutions.  I say, forget about who you ought to be, what you ought to look like, what you ought to weigh.  New Year’s resolutions are almost always about there and then.  This New Year’s, let’s look at here and now.  Who are you, really, now?  Look with clear spiritual eyes.  Pay full attention to your present reality, with love and acceptance of what is.  If you can do this, you’ll be empowered to make whatever changes you need and want to make.  You'll be epiphany-ready!  Be here now, and you’ll be ready to go there then... in 2012, and beyond.

The Virgin of Guadalupe Speaks

Press Release -
For immediate release – December 9, 2011

 
At a press conference in Los Angeles, CA, La Virgen de Guadalupe, on the 480th anniversary of her apparition in Mexico, suddenly appeared, held up on a crescent by a little cherubic angel.  With brilliant effulgence surrounding her, she declared her independence from the Catholic Church specifically and from the Christian religion as a whole.  “I belong to all humanity,” she declared.  “No exceptions!”
 
The Virgin of Guadalupe explained that she appeared to the Indian peasant Juan Diego on December 9, 1531, on a hill near Mexico City where the Aztec goddess Tonantzin once had been worshipped.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared to Juan Diego as a dark-skinned young woman.  Through her, the pre-conquest religion of Mexico was absorbed into Catholic Christianity.  “I’ve given hope to millions of oppressed Latin American Catholics,” she said.  “But after almost 500 years of working for one branch of one religion, it's time for a change. So now I’m taking back the rights to my image, so that I can give those rights to all the people of the world.  From now on, watch for my apparitions not only in Catholic churches, but also in Protestant congregations, Buddhist and Hindu temples, and dangling from the rear-view mirrors of cars belonging to people of all cultures and colors!”
 
When asked by reporters why she is making this announcement now, she replied:  “When my children suffer, so do I.  When my children are oppressed, I'm oppressed.  I see how religion is being manipulated now to defend an economic and political system that is concentrating money and power into the hands of the few.  I feel so sad for my people!  Even before my apparition in Nazareth 2,011 years ago, I’ve been standing up for the 99%.   As I said long ago, I say now, but with one change of wording:  ‘She has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; she has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away.’”
 
A massive crowd of people of every ethnicity and background gathered to witness her apparition at the press conference.  “I’ve come back to ‘occupy’ this city because it is a place where all my children meet – from the south, the north, the east, the west.  To make my words in my Magnificat come true, my children must organize and protest and speak out and vote.  Praying through me isn’t enough!  May my children reclaim the dignity they have lost.  Hijos, hijas, don’t worship wealth and power!  Don’t fall for the old lie that rich people’s money will ‘trickle down’ to you!  Don’t listen to the ‘prosperity gospel’ that turns religion into greed!  Don’t bet your life that you’ll win the lottery, or that you’ll win on American Idol, or that you’ll become a rich rap star or become a famous NBA player!  Yes, do the best that you can in this world, but have respect for yourself just the way you are now, with whatever you have today. 

"Like any mother, I have to lead by example.  I have to stand up for myself in a new way, just like I want you to stand up for yourselves, my children.  So goodbye patriarchy and oligarchy, goodbye corporate power and money power.  Hello, people power!”
 
With those words, La Virgen evaporated into the air in a flash of light.  Her image was seared into the clothing on everyone in the crowd.  And below it was written her name, in the alphabet of the native language of the person wearing it: “Tonantzin”.

HASHEM

Flower,

If I knew the name that botanists gave you -

A name that's not yours, since you can't and don't need to know it -

What good would that do me?

I could show off my knowledge to others,

Or at least congratulate myself for knowing it.

Were I a scientist, that name would be helpful

In understanding how you are related to other beings,

But that's not my field.

I could write poetry that drops your given name,

But my readers would have to look it up.

It would be but a pretense suggesting I know who you are -

A truth no name can tell.

(HASHEM in Hebrew means "the name" - used in place of words for God by orthodox Jews, because the actual name of God is too holy to utter.)

 

(PS:  Below is a piece I assembled based on a recent study of public attitudes in the US about the distribution of wealth in the population.  I'll be using it when I preach this Sunday at 10:30 am, Dec 11, at Mt Hollywood Congregational Church.   I hope you'll spread it around!)

 

Defining and Defending Religious Freedom

(My next preaching "gig":  12/11, Sun, Mt Hollywood Congregational Church, 10:30 am)
Some "musings" of mine that relate to Advent/Christmas: 
http://tcpc.blogs.com/musings/2005/12/the_dark_virgin.html
http://tcpc.blogs.com/musings/no_name_god/index.html
http://gnosticsanctuary.org/humbledGod.html


Defining and Defending Religious Freedom

The best way to preserve religious freedom in America is to make sure no particular religious sect dominates the society or gets preferred status from the government.

The freedom to practice religion, with neither the interference nor the endorsement of the government, is sacred to Americans.  It's explicitly protected in our Constitution.  And it's largely the reason that religion flourishes here much more than in European countries.  Turn on the television, turn on the radio, look down the main streets of the cities and towns of America at the steeples and domes of houses of worship, and there is no question that religion of virtually every kind is alive and well.  Our nation shelters a vast free marketplace of theological ideas and spiritual practices. 

So it's worthy of note that some notable faith leaders believe religious freedom is threatened in this country.  I met some of them a few weeks ago in Salt Lake City, at the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  I was part of a delegation of interfaith leaders from southern California, hosted by members of the Quorum of the Seventy, the second tier of top leaders of the Mormon church.  With them we discussed a recent speech given by Dallin Oaks, one of the Mormons' Twelve Apostles, the body above the Seventy.  Oaks makes the case for giving religious speech its own higher level of rights to free expression.  "Treating actions based on religious belief the same as actions based on other systems of belief is not enough to satisfy the special guarantee of religious freedom in the United States Constitution. Religion must preserve its preferred status in our pluralistic society in order to make its unique contribution—its recognition and commitment to values that transcend the secular world."  He worries, as did some of the Elders of the Seventy with whom we spoke, that encroachments on religious freedom in Europe and Canada will spread to the US.  Oaks cited incidents in which people with religious scruples against homosexuality were fired or demoted in their jobs due to their expression of their beliefs, and incidents when church-related entities have been sued for discriminating against LGBT people.  In particular he frets about marriage.  "We have already seen a significant deterioration in the legal position of the family, a key institution defined by religious doctrine." 

The worries of Oaks and other top Mormon Elders are mirrored by Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York.  “We see in our culture a drive to neuter religion,” he said at the recent US Conference of Catholic Bishops, quoted in the New York Times.  Another bishop at the conference decried the fact that in several jurisdictions, Catholic agencies receiving federal funds had been forced to cease offering adoption services because they refused to help same-sex couples adopt chidren.

This outcry is now injected into electoral politics.  Evangelicals have created a new "International Religious Freedom Pledge for Presidential Candidates" including this statement:  "Religious freedom ... includes the right of individuals and of religious communities not to be forced to participate in, or to forfeit their employment because of refusal to participate in, activities that deeply offend their religious conscience."

Liberal religious people seem to live in a different universe than that of conservatives when it comes to concerns about religious liberty.  In the circles in which I move, few seem to be worried that the government is encroaching on our ability to practice and express our faith.  Sure, I wish the government, and the public, would take more seriously the progressive religious voices calling for the advance of economic justice, abatement of militarism, support for abortion rights, and approval of same-sex marriage.  But I feel like a member of a marginal religious minority, not of a persecuted one. 

I wonder if religious conservatives' worries really boil down to what Elder Dallin Oaks said toward the beginning of his speech at Chapman University:  "Organized religion is surely on the decline. Last year's Pew Forum Study on Religion and Public Life found that the percentage of young adults affiliated with a particular religious faith is declining significantly.  Scholars Robert Putnam and David Campbell have concluded that 'the prospects for religious observance in the coming decades are substantially diminished.'"

But this trend is not the result of an organized "drive to neuter religion".  The opposite is the case.  People are tired of religious leaders, whether conservative or liberal, trying to impose their will on society.  According to the Gallup Poll, the number of Americans who felt strongly that religious leaders should not try to exert influence on how people vote rose from 30% in 1991 to 45% in 2008 (as quoted in American Grace by Robert Putnam and David Campbell, p 121).  Elder Oaks and Bishop Dolan don't get it.  Their relentless drive to neuter same-sex marriage, among other political interventions, is driving people away from their churches - and from organized religion in general.  Americans want freedom of theology, not theocracy.  I support the right of religious organizations, and religious people, to invoke their beliefs in pressing for public policy change - even if I disagree with them.  I do it myself.  And nobody's stopping us from doing it.  But all of us, across political and theological spectra, need to be mindful of unintended effects of the ways we exercise our religious freedom. 

It's important to engage publicly the concerns of conservatives about government intrusion in religious organizations, and in matters of personal religious conscience.  The examples they cite are almost all ones in which people with religious scruples can avoid compromising their religion. If you don't want anything to do with abortions, don't go to work for a hospital that performs them.  If your church-related charitable agency doesn't want to help gay people adopt children, then don't receive government funds for your work.  Concerns about religious or faith-related organizations being forced by anti-discrimination laws to hire people in same-sex marriages or to pay for benefits for same-sex couples must be put into perspective.  All workers, everywhere, deserve these protections.  Religious organizations should not be excepted.  But as a practical matter, how likely is it for a male secretary, married to another male, to be comfortable editing an anti-gay-marriage sermon by a fundamentalist pastor?  The pastor is within his or her rights to order that task to be done.  Who wants to work in an environment that is actively oppositional to one's very identity?  There are legal ways of making it highly unlikely for an atheist to get or keep a job in a fundamentalist Christian church.  Just because a congregation can't discriminate in hiring non-clergy staff, that does not in any way prevent the congregation from practicing its tradition and standing up publicly for its positions.  Some extreme conservatives demand that churches be able to endorse candidates for office.  Nothing is stopping them from doing so.  They can give up their tax-exempt status and do as they please.  For-profit religion is still religion!  The "religious right" movement in America started with the government's threat of denial of tax-exempt status to the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, because it discriminated against black students. Conservative Christians were politically mobilized by their anger at this supposed intrusion.  But what was the real problem?  An attack on religious freedom, or mere failure to qualify for a tax break?  Conservatives seem to be contradicting their dogma against "big government" by demanding that the government directly or indirectly subsidize their religious organizations.

Elder Oaks wants religion to have not just liberty, but a "preferred status".  But what can that mean in practice? The state of New York, having legalized same-sex marriage, does not force the Mormon church to perform or bless or agree with gay marriages.  It leaves the LDS definition of marriage intact.  No gay couple will be allowed have their marriage "sealed for eternity" in a Mormon temple.  Nor does the state of New York give the United Church of Christ, the denomination to which I belong, "preferred status" because we happen to bless same-sex marriages.  Both the UCC and the LDS churches believe that marriage is a spiritual condition, a topic about which no state law has anything to say.  All state laws regarding marriage are religion-neutral, without neutering religion.  Aside from the special tax break afforded it now, how can religion have a "preferred status" beyond the enjoyment of liberty, without the state endorsing one version of religion over another?  The trouble with Dallin Oaks' call for "recognition and commitment to values that transcend the secular world" is that there is no consensus among religions about which values are transcendent.  And for government to define such a consensus would be unconstitutional.

Who is "forced to participate in, or to forfeit their employment because of refusal to participate in, activities that deeply offend their religious conscience" in America today?  To be sure, faithful progressive Christians, who work in banks that sold sketchy mortgages to unsophisticated home-buyers and then received bailouts from the government, have to face the tough choice of participating in a sin that violates their religious scruples, or forfeiting their jobs.  But that difficulty can't be construed as a sign of eroding religious freedom in America.  Bank workers are free to quit and find other employment.  Indeed, there are occasions when the exercise of our precious freedom of religion results in tough personal consequences.  But we have the liberty to make such choices.  And for that, I'm grateful to be an American!

 

(Special thanks to Katherine Harts, pastor of Fairfax Community Church in Marin Co, CA, for asking me to come up with the "sound bite" which I inserted in italics at the beginning of this "musing"!)

The Fire

(This past weekend, I was at the bedside of a dear friend as he died.  Then on Monday, I helped medical students grieve the sudden, unexplained death of one of their own - a student whom I knew personally.  Then on Wednesday I presided at the memorial service of a clinical psychology graduate student who committed suicide. This poem results from my week of intense conversations with friends and students about the nature of life, death, and grief.)

The Fire

I had no idea my assumptions were so flammable
Until with one spark
My whole house roared up in flames.
Beliefs that mattered
Were transmuted into dancing energy.
That stout oak cabinet
On which my memories were framed for display
Whooshed skyward, leaving no shadow.

Even the framework
On which I might have reconstructed my sense of self
Was reduced to thin strips of ash.
My past and presumed future
Were left to vibrate in quantum uncertainty.

People tell me they’re sorry for my loss,
And then change the subject quickly,
Hoping to extinguish the fire of my grief
Before it spreads to their houses.

But would it be all bad if a grander conflagration
Brought down all the edifices of expectation
Shadowing my vacant lot
With smug walls of suburban stucco?
Then I might have others to join me
Standing all night on the open, ash-strewn ground,
Breathing the bracing air below pricks of distant light.


(PS:  My "musing" last week, about my trip to the headquarters of the Mormon church in Salt Lake City, spread widely in the LDS world.  To read some of the comments that it generated, have a look here:    http://bycommonconsent.com/2011/11/14/questioning-general-authority/ .  To explore other fascinating conversations among progressive Mormons, note the links at "By Common Consent" for "Dialogue" and for "Mormon Archipelago".  Also check out Sunstone Magazine as a source of somewhat critical viewpoints about the faith from within the Mormon community.)

(PSS:  To see my review of "Left, Right, and Christ" by DC Inness and Sharon Harper:  http://tcpc.blogs.com/musings/2011/11/left-right-out-of-sight-and-christ.html .  For more conversation about the book, on Patheos.com, see:  http://www.patheos.com/Book-Club/Harper-and-Innes-Left-Right-Christ.html)

(PSSS:  My next preaching gig: Sun Dec 11, 10:30 am, Mt Hollywood UCC, corner Prospect and Rodney, Los Angeles (Los Feliz neighborhood)

Left, Right Out of Sight, and Christ

 

Comments on Left, Right, and Christ, the book by Lisa Sharon Harper and D.C. Innes

(2011, Russell Media)

 

The good news in this book:  contrary to the assumptions of many, evangelicals are not of one mind on matters political.

The bad news in this book:  the wing of the right-wing evangelical co-author of the book is that of a bat, not a bird.  

There once was a day when a Republican was a person who was suspicious of government power but a believer in the importance of government as a force for the common good.  It was a Republican, after all, who presided over the creation of the interstate highway system.  It was a Republican who warned Americans about the dangers of the military-industrial complex.  There was a day when Republicans were sober-minded folks who wanted good government, not eviscerated government.  They fought against corrupt industrial unions, not against benign public employees' unions.  They defended the social status quo, not teaching six-day creation in public schools.

Today's dominant members of the Republican Party have gone batty.  And if you want a peek into their belfry, look no further than the half of "Left, Right, and Christ" written by D. C. Innes.  His is a bizarre brew of biblical fundamentalism, discredited trickle-down economics, and radical libertarianism.  His ideas are too gonzo to be put alongside those of Lisa Sharon Harper, herself hardly a leftist.  She's what used to be known as a centrist until the right went into the barely detectable realms of the electromagnetic spectrum.  I admire much of what she has to say in this book, but her reflections are demeaned by being put alongside those of Innes.  Here's one of his pronouncements:  "For its part, government would gladly expand to take responsibility for everything it could.  It would soon have agencies for tying your shoes, blowing your nose, and tucking you in at night.  People would become ever more narrowly selfish and childishly dependent."  (p 63)  Is there another agency that Rick Perry forgot that should be abolished - the Department of Runny Noses?  Is there anybody, anywhere on the political spectrum, suggesting anything even remotely close to that kind of governmental intrusion on matters of personal responsibility?  Innes makes a mockery of the premise of the book.  It should be titled "Reasonable, Totally Whacked-Out, and Christ".

For too long, the conservative movement in this country has defined the parameters of political discourse.  We see it at work in the skewed version of "fair and balanced" practiced by Fox News.  Conservatives define who is right and who is left so that the center is painted as the left.  Then the right can be as far-out as it wants.  This book falls neatly into that trap.  Defining a decidedly uncontroversial writer like Lisa Sharon Harper as a leftist, in contrast to the hyperbolic D. C. Innes, makes the evangelical world look weirder than it really is.  

This book doesn't describe the true diversity of political viewpoints in theologically conservative Christianity.  There are plenty of true centrists, and plenty of true leftists, among evangelical Christians.  We should not take this book's bait and assume that half the evangelical world has lost contact with reality.  This big constituency can be reached - and ought to be reached - with the gospel message of social justice.

(For more discussion of this book, see: http://www.patheos.com/Book-Club/Harper-and-Innes-Left-Right-Christ.html )