Answering Dr. Mohler

In a posting entitled, "Yet Another Tragedy in Mainline Protestantism," Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, criticizes the recent decision of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to modify its standards of ordination so that sexual orientation is no longer necessarily considered an issue in who is ordained as deacons, elders, and clergy.  He reprimands PC(USA) for in his estimation proclaiming the Lordship of Christ but denying the authority of the Bible.  It is his contention that the Bible clearly teaches that homosexuality is a sin, and he concludes, "This is yet another tragedy in the sad history of mainline Protestantism’s race toward total theological disaster."

We see things differently, Dr. Mohler.  We see that for centuries, self-proclaimed Bible believing Christians quoted the Bible to justify their persecution of Jews.  They insisted that the Bible "clearly teaches" that Jews killed Christ and therefore deserve to be persecuted.  For centuries, supposedly Bible believing Christians quoted the Bible to justify slavery.  They insisted that the Bible "clearly teaches" that the children of Ham are inferior, cursed, and deserving of slavery.  For millennia, these same so-called "Bible believing" Christians quoted the Bible to justify forcing women into second class citizenship in the church.  They insisted that the Bible "clearly teaches" that women are inferior to men.  They may not hold positions of authority in the church nor may they voice their opinions.  We see these things, we are appalled, and we will not be bound by unjust readings of scripture.

We reject such readings in light of the person of Jesus Christ.  We are convinced that God in Christ is just, compassionate, and intends peace for all of humanity and for creation.  In the person of Christ, we see a man who allowed a woman to sit at his feet as a disciple and included women in his inner circle of followers.  We see a man who touched lepers with a healing touch.  We see a Jewish man who spoke with a Samaritan woman and otherwise showed amazing acceptance of Samaritans.  He did not look down on the poor or the sick while the pious folks of his day despised Samaritans, lepers, tax collectors and other "sinners."  They judged women inferior.  They judged the sick as having done something evil to deserve their illness.  Jesus did not.  He looked on these "sinners" with compassion and sought to free them from the pharisaical chains of the pious.

We understand that some words in the Bible can be read in a certain way to justify persecution of Jews, blacks, women, and homosexuals.  We also understand that most of those words can be read in more than one way, and while you choose to read them in a way that justifies persecution we choose to read them in ways that justify compassion and justice.  We have friends and members in our churches who are faithful, committed Christians and who also happen to practice alternative lifestyles.  They tell us they did not choose their sexual orientation, and there is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting what they tell us.  Simple justice, in sum, required this change in our standards of ordination.  Christ's example gives us the motivation to do so.

If all of this is a tragedy that impels us toward "total theological disaster," then we embrace (celebrate, actually) the tragedy and the disaster.  But that isn't the case.  We remain followers of Christ, committed to realizing the Kingdom, and certain that we have taken one very small step in his name and under the inspiration of the Spirit in that direction.  Amen.

Worship Attendance in Britain

It is widely understood that attendance at Christian worship and participation in church life is dwindling across Europe and much of the English-speaking world.  The statistics for northern Europe are especially grim.  But now comes word of a reversal in the decline in Britain.  The Church of England has just released data showing that worship attendance in its cathedrals rose by 7% last year and has been growing steadily for a decade at a rate of about 4% per year.  Mid-week services, special services, and baptisms have all shown similar growth. The Rev. Lynda Barley, Head of Research & Statistics for the Church of England, is quoted in a news release as saying,"The ministry of cathedrals is valued by many people. They have a treasured place in the heart of the nation and are actively used at key moments in individual lives and on public occasions."  That may well be, but it does not explain why attendance at cathedral worship is growing so steadily and significantly in the face of general decline elsewhere.

Is this growth an anomaly?  Does it portend a change in worship statistics generally for all churches in Britain?  We don't have answers to these questions at the moment, but something is going on in Britain worth keeping an eye on.

Beyond Suffering

A recent posting about the Rev. Adam Hamilton, brings to mind again one of the most difficult questions we face as Christians.  What role does God play in human suffering?  Hamilton is a Methodist pastor in Leawood, Kansas, and he  has recently published a timely book on God and suffering.   The posting describes Hamilton's struggle to understand the death of two close friends while he was in seminary.  He could not believe that God was punishing them and rejected the idea that God wanted them to "come home early."  In the wake of their deaths, he began to study the doctrine of divine providence, God's role in history generally and our personal lives in particular.  Recognizing that there are no easy answers to the question of suffering, Hamilton comes to what seems to be a "karmic" ("what goes around comes around") conclusion.  We live in a universe of cause and effect where there are unavoidable consequences for our actions.  The role of God is not to get us out of things but rather to help us work through them to better endings than we might have otherwise expected.  There are miracles, but in the course of things the daily miracles are those in which people of faith under the leading of the Spirit win through pain, suffering, and tragedy to a better place.

Suffering is a fact of life that, ultimately, we do not understand.  Why is the universe constructed this way?  Why does our particular biosphere here on the Earth involve so much "natural" violence, suffering, and things eating things?  Maybe someday we will gain an understanding of these things, but we haven't yet and aren't likely to any time soon.  What we have come to believe is that there is purpose to our suffering.  It is not in vain.  Indeed, it sets a course for our Christian lives, namely to be a people who lighten the loads of others, helping them live with and through their pain.  Pain shared is so often transformed, somehow, into something much more than merely pain endured.

God has created a universe in which suffering exists and physical pain is necessary.  We have to have pain to survive because of the warnings we get from our pain.  Individuals who cannot feel pain are at much greater risk than the rest of us.  Their "pain free" lives are not to be envied.  And, according to our Christian understanding of things, God submits God's self to the same experiences of pain that we go through.  Pain and suffering touch God as they touch us.  And out of the death of pain and suffering God brings resurrection—a renewal of life, of hope, and of purpose.  Why it has to be this way, we don't know.  We do know that there is something Beyond pain and suffering, which we have experienced in our lives from time to precious time.  Amen.

Capitalism & Christianity

According to data published by the Public Religion Research Institute, a "plurality of Americans believe capitalism is at odds with Christian values."  As the graph (taken from the news posting) shows, some 44% of Americans agree with the statement that capitalism is at odds with Christian values while 36% disagree.  The report notes that a large number of Democrats agreed with the proposition while a less substantial but still large number of Republicans did not.  Independents were split nearly evenly on the question.

The data published on the PRRI website also shows that roughly six in ten Americans believe that the growing gap between rich and poor is one of the biggest problems our nation faces.  Even more (about 2/3rds) agree that wealthier Americans should pay more taxes than the rest of us.

These results are remarkable given our society's overwhelming commitment to the capitalist economic system, at least in principle if not in practice.  They also reinforce the sense that conservative and liberal Americans tend to live in significantly different worlds.  Our views on such things as economics and our understanding of our faith are both driven by our larger worldview.  The tragedy is that we are even less able to talk across the gap between us than were previous generations.  We all know this is true but don't seem to be able to do anything about it.

Stephen Prothero on Bin Laden and Jesus

Stephen Prothero makes some hard points in his posting entitled, "My Take: Poll on bin Laden's death reveals a disposable Jesus." It's worth a look.

Arctic Ice

Al Jazeera recently posted an article entitled, "Arctic Ice melt alarming," based on a report issued by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP), an agency of the Arctic Council of nations, which includes the U.S.  According to the article, the last six years have been the warmest in history in the Arctic, and the Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than previously projected.  Within 30 to 40 years, the Arctic will be nearly ice free during the summer with dramatic consequences for the global environment.  This is not just a concern for a few tree-hugger types who have a "thing" for polar bears.  The Arctic melt-off is going to contribute to an equally dramatic rise in the sea level, which already threatens to sink coastal areas around the world and thus create hundreds of millions of climate change refugees in the decades to come.

With all of the attention global terrorism has received recently, it's worth noting that terrorism poses nowhere near the threat to the future that we are facing in global warming.  The social dislocation will be massive.  Yet, somehow, we just cannot come to grips with it all; and is so often the case, those who have the power and wealth to deal with the challenge are those who are least affected by its consequences.

Review Notice

There is a new book review on Rom Phra Khun Reviews. The book is  Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by by Kathleen Norris.

An Important Moment for Presbyterians

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has been debating the question of the ordination of gays and homosexuals for decades.  Its position was that only those who are celibate or in a marriage between a man and a woman could be ordained to any office in the Presbyterian church.  Changes to that position have been voted down repeatedly over the years.  Now, that has changed.  On Tuesday, May 10th, the Presbytery of the Twin Cities voted in favor of Amendment 10A to the Book of Order, which amendment removes any reference to sexual orientation from our denominational standards for ordination and leaves to the presbyteries and local churches the right to determine who they will and will not ordain.  (Local churches ordain elders and deacons.  Presbyteries ordain clergy.)  With its vote the Presbytery of the Twin Cities became the 87th presbytery to vote in favor of Amendment 10A, which means that it has passed the requisite number of presbyteries.  Having been approved by the General Assembly in 2010, it now becomes our denomination's law.

This is a welcome change.  Homosexual individuals and couples have long provided important, faithful leadership in our churches.  It is a matter of simple justice that they have the same opportunities of service as ordained leaders available to the rest of us.  I have supported this change because its is just and Christ-like.  Jesus consistently brought to the center those that others tried to push to the margins.  While this decision is going to cost PC(USA) still more members and churches, it is a good thing we have done.

See the news posting, "Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approves change in ordination standards," at pcusa.org. and a letter to the churches from the Office of the General Assembly for further information and insights. And for the media's treatment of this news story see the posting on CNN.

Osama bin Laden & the Kingdom of God

For some Osama bin Laden's death has brought "closure," for others there seems to be real triumph.  The reaction in the Middle East has been mostly, "Don't bother us, we're dealing with much more important things."  Some Pakistanis are defensive, others are defiant.  There have been, of course, the threats of mass destruction sung to the old tune of "Death to America."  Some Republicans have been almost gracious, others have had to swallow bile.  The Administration has quietly milked this cow for all its worth—with some dignity but a clear note of self-satisfaction.

In the religious media, meanwhile, there has been a much more subdued reaction to bin Laden's death—less talk of justice, of closure, of success and more of a sense of the inherent ongoing tragedy of 9/11 and the violent decade it spawned.  It's not that religious Americans are less patriotic but, rather, that they measure their patriotism in different ways—and with a much more mixed sense of loyalties.  Bin Laden's death seems, in a faith context, to have accomplished much less than  it did in a political or military context.  It was much less of a successful operation because, fundamentally, it didn't achieve justice or peace.

The death of Osama bin Laden did not achieve justice.  He was not tried by a jury of his peers but assassinated in a military operation of debatable international legality.  As we listened to various relatives of the victims of 9/ll, it is not even clear that for many of them it achieved closure.  They spoke with many different voices and expressed many different feelings.  Short term, we have been warned that the U.S. is less secure because of his death, and the jury is still out on whether or not it will make much difference in the war on terror, so-called.  It is hard to see how it makes the world more peaceful even by the world's narrow understanding of peace as "not violence."

The bottom line, for us as Christians, is that this death does not bring us closer to the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom is built on justice and peace.  There is a reason why the God of the Old Testament demanded vengeance as his sole right.  As long as vengeance is in human hands, the cycles of hate do not come to an end.  The other thing about God in the Old Testament is that he was "slow to anger" and quick to forgive, which is why divine vengeance is the only dependable kind.  It does not proceed by violence and has a whole different standard for "pay back."  In our context, in sum, there is little if anything to cheer about in bin Laden's death—much to be sad about.

Along these lines, please also see Erin Lane's posting, "Mourning the Dead."

A North Country Litany

Although written by a poet of the prairies, Kathleen Norris, this brief prayer/litany is apt for the North Country of New York as well.

Cold and chill, bless the Lord
Dew and rain, bless the Lord
Frost and chill, bless the Lord
Ice and snow, bless the Lord
Nights and days, bless the Lord
Light and darkness, bless the Lord.

     - from Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (1993), p. 25.