Tag Archives: Human Rights

Scapegoats, Villains, and American Fear

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Terror

In the wake of the bombings in Boston and the pursuit of the suspects, I’ve been trying to find a way to respond. Something that wasn’t part of the noise. Something that was honest to my experience of needing to watch, but knowing that the coverage would be far too speculative. Studies of the effects of the media on the public narrative have proven how important those first stories are, and how inaccurate reporting becomes a permanent part of the narrative–stories that are untrue, lead to permanent elements of the overarching storyline.

As a Christian, I also was moved to respond with courage and conviction that our response to tragedy is not to encourage the making of more tragedy, but in the seeking of love and compassion.

On Wednesday, Miroslav Volf posted on Facebook something that spoke to my heart:

We cannot love Jesus without loving *both* those killed/maimed in Boston and the prisoners, not charged with a crime and tortured, at Gitmo.

That our love remains persistent and not somehow removable. I am reminded of a quote that chilled me years ago, when the verdict in the Timothy McVeigh trial was read–that he was to be put to death. Outside, the people scratching at the chainlink fence like rabid dogs, invited by a reporter to way in on their feelings that one of the men responsible for the bombing in Oklahoma City was to be executed by the state. This woman, looking straight into the camera, cackling with joy exclaimed:

He gave up his right to live.

I have never been so frightened. Never before or since.

Response

I remember a bit by David Cross from deep in the aftermath of 9/11. He was going on about the coverage and response. That we had “no idea why” al Qaeda and bin Laden would want to attack us. “Well, actually it is because…” and he goes on to list several reasons. Then he says “How do I know? Because he told us!”

We act as if the violence is senseless. That there is no reason. That it’s perpetrators must be sociopaths or crazy. Unlike us. They are the depraved.

Then we sing “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”.

This act of terror was Monday.

On Wednesday, a minority of Senators filibustered all attempts to create safer gun laws. Laws that might prevent future tragedies.

On Thursday, Congress passed CISPA, an act whose purpose is to give immunity to corporations who break contracts with people so that they can hand over any information they gather online to the government. It doesn’t provide new power to prevent terror, but civil immunity to the corporation.

This isn’t politics as usual. This isn’t ideological gridlock. This is purposeful. This is what some people actually want.

It is times of tragedy, like these, that we must look inward, at our own hearts to see ourselves; to recognize our own evil, our own sadistic tendencies; our own wishes for torture upon another person’s soul in the name of “justice”; an obfuscation of our true desire for vengeance and murder.

That we turn, rather from our cultural priorities, to the instruction that we received long ago. That in telling those wandering Hebrews that they are to take an eye for an eye is to restrict retribution to the scale of the crime. It is our heart’s desire to escalate and fantasize the revenge on another, like Jacob’s sons, who murder all the people of the village for one man’s rape of Dinah.

Scapegoats

Sometimes, I wonder if the scapegoat is of value. Whether the culture needs a demon to exorcise. Whether that might be the only way we can deal with the outrage.

Then I recognize that it is the only way we ever have.

We seek out the one who did it. The other. The evil one. The one that comes from somewhere else. We even blame our own actions on him. He is the one. He made me do it. I had no choice.

In the end, it is us. We are responsible. Because we are so afraid of the evil the others do, yet we refuse to even recognize the evil for which we are responsible.

Because this was true from the beginning.

When we look back at our foundational stories, we can see who we really are. Where we came from shows us where we’ve been and where we’re going.

We came from the puritans. They traveled halfway across the world to escape religious persecution. And when they got here, they persecuted others. And each other.

This new start in a new land was a new opportunity to be the abuser. That is why we do what we do.

There is a reason, we are called into baptism. Why we are invited into transformation. So that we may not be a people of murder and selfishness and fear. That we may be co-creators of the Kingdom.

A Kingdom expressed in love, mercy, and forgiveness.

Love King? Live Kingdom.

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As we observe Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I have decided to do us all a favor and keep my reflection brief. MLK was a visionary, not because he was a civil rights leader or because he was faith leader, but because he understood Jesus’s vision. And he cast it out for us to see. A world in which we lived the Kingdom of GOD, not just paying it lip service. A vision in which he famously dreamed of his daughter playing alongside someone completely different. Not as two color-blind children, but as two children of GOD.

picture from iheardin.com

picture from iheardin.com

As we celebrate today, with the confluence of the presidential inauguration and the observed day of a famed civil rights leader, let us take a moment and acknowledge something fundamentally missing from the narrative.

This isn’t just about race.

This isn’t just about equality.

This isn’t just about faith.

This isn’t just about geography.

This isn’t just about politics.

This isn’t just about tradition.

This isn’t just about charisma.

This isn’t just about the United States of America.

This isn’t just about people.

This isn’t just about today.

This isn’t just about a dream, a fiction, or a hope.

This is about what GOD has called us to do, what Jesus came to show us, and what the Holy Spirit is guiding us toward: a radically transformed world with different values than the empire. It is about making that happen. Everything else is a small piece in a much bigger puzzle. A puzzle we call the Kingdom of GOD.

For more on King, go here.

What I Heard Phyllis Say

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At the end of last week’s Emergence Christianity conference (#EC13) there was a confusion. Phyllis Tickle, the conference keynote speaker, who presented her work on Emergence Christianity throughout, made a couple of controversial statements. Julie Clawson makes a good accounting for them here. However, I heard her differently.

emergence phyllis weird

First, I will state that I self-identify as a feminist. This is to declare at the outset that I did hear and understand what many expressed in response to her final session. My disagreement is not because I’m a dude or I don’t understand the plight of women.

Second, the confusion began when several people in the room tweeted objections which were put up on the screen behind Phyllis as she spoke. This brings new meaning to “talking behind someone’s back.” It felt incredibly rude and helped set a very confusing tone.

What I heard.

Phyllis’ final presentation spoke to the nuclear family and the change brought the 20th Century. In her landmark book, The Great Emergence, she references the nuclear family as the result of the Great Reformation and Protestantism. She raises this as evidence of the new thing that was Protestantism and as evidence of how different Emergence is. To say that Phyllis was advocating going back would be equal to her suggesting we reject Emergence for Protestantism. Which she doesn’t.

This further colors the way she concluded her talk. She told a personal story of transmitting the Christian story in a way that demonstrated fidelity to the core value of Emergence: what we used to call authenticity. Her current work on the revelation of the Spirit and the ways Emergence Christianity seeks to make community meaningful and consistent and of value all but required her to speak to a meaningful, personal, and local practice of storytelling.

There is no doubt that her comments about women’s roles in family and church were bound to stir people up. I also recognize that she didn’t articulate her vision clearly. However, to hear her comments about the Pill and “menses” as negative is to ignore all that Phyllis has written and spoken to previously, including the previous 24 hours! And further mistakes an important aspect of her thesis: the death blow to Sola Scriptura is the sex stuff: particularly the rise of women in leadership and the place of LGBT in Christian community. She argues that the biggest game changer in the 20th Century is the Pill. She didn’t denigrate the Pill (though she did make a couple of bad jokes), but raise it up as the lighting rod for the 20th Century’s culture war.

When people blame something for something else (the Pill for our current state of affairs), they are doing two things.

  1. Scapegoating something
  2. Calling something else bad

We see this all the time. For example, the decline of “traditional” marriage has to do with those gays wanting to get married is the popular argument. Implicit in that argument is that something (LGBTs wanting to get married) is the reason something else is bad (that “traditional” marriage has declined) due directly to the interaction of the two “somethings”. The same argument is made about the Pill, premarital sex, sex education in school, and any number of other things.

The problem with suggesting that Phyllis blames the Pill for the current state of affairs is found in that connection, particularly as it applies to number 2. She doesn’t think that the way things are is bad. She doesn’t speak negatively of the “decline” of church or the need to bring the “glory days” back. In fact, she is incredibly positive and hopeful about the way things are.

This is why I say that I heard what was offensive and understand where it is coming from, but an essential part of the argument is missing: that the Pill is to be blamed for something, since she didn’t appear to be arguing that something else was bad. As always, she chronicled the events of the 20th Century and highlighted what changed our course and then ended with an Emergence (not Protestant) example of transmission of identity. One that appropriately challenged me to be more honest and Spirit-filled in all of my life, including who I am with my family. It was a weird way to end the conference, but it certainly got us thinking and talking. I’ve got to say, I like that about it.

If you were there, what did you think about the conference?

Mary, the Witness

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a Sermon for Advent 4C
Text: Luke 1:39-55

Learning about Mary

One of the things that excited me as a priest and presbyter of the church is how many people have mentioned Fr. Steve Bancroft’s sermon a year ago. Several people have come to me and spoken of that moment in which they heard for the very first time some new things about Mary, the Mother of God.

Most poignant is what textual criticism has revealed about the word, long translated into English, thanks to the King James Bible, as virgin is actually better translated as “girl”. In fact, there are three similar words in the Greek relating to young women. There is one that would be translated into English as “virgin”, and yet, Luke uses the Greek word least descriptive of her sexuality. The one that speaks more to her age and place.

This discovery for many here was as profound as it is to all of us that have heard it: that our picture of Mary is incomplete. And actually, quite troublesome. That our interest in Mary is as an appropriate vessel for God, for her sexual status was of greater import than her social status.

Nothing could be further from the gospel than that.

Why Mary?

Our picture of Mary, thanks in no small part to the many Christmas pageants we’ve endured and the TV specials and the annual services in which virtually everyone who claims to be a Christian actually shows up to church, speaks to her mostly in relation to the birth—her status as a virgin, being engaged to Joseph, to the humble stable birth itself—but little to the more pressing question: of all the girls in the world, why does GOD pick Mary?

We assume that because GOD picks Mary, we should then notice her. That her importance for us comes in being selected as the great God Bearer. And because GOD has selected her, we can look to see what GOD sees in her.

And yet, Luke gives us a vivid picture of Mary before the birth, in which Mary herself responds to her situation. Her response gives us a better understanding of who she is.

Who is Mary?

We already know Mary is a girl. We often see the suggestion that she is probably around 14. She is engaged to be married to Joseph, a man. In an example of traditional Biblical marriage, Mary’s father has no doubt made a contract with Joseph, like transferring the title of one’s car over to another party when it is sold. Mary is property. She doesn’t come from a wealthy family and she is not going to a wealthy family. She has virtually no rights or wealth or place in her society.

Not to mention the unmarried pregnancy. The child to be born out of wedlock. The bastard, Jesus.

And in this experience, Mary is given incredible insight into the very nature of GOD. She bursts into song, praising GOD for the good things GOD has done! The spontaneous and grateful response to GOD that isn’t a prayer from a book, or a silent reciting of the Lord’s Prayer in the solitude of one’s room, but a public song of praise!

Singing as we often do, a song like “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!”

She sings that GOD has blessed her, someone with nothing and of no consequence, destined to be forgotten by history, she has been made unforgettable. She has the ultimate responsibility, to not only birth, but raise the savior of the world.

But that isn’t the end of the song.

She sings of GOD’s mercy and strength. GOD’s conviction and support for the low and the marginalized, the poor and the powerless. That GOD favors them—people like her. Perhaps most poignant is when she sings

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

These words in the past tense describe the character GOD has shown in history and the way GOD interacts with the world continuously: giving “good things” to the hungry and “emptying” the rich; “[bringing] down the powerful” and raising “the lowly”.

The Word came to humanity in the most humble of beginnings, blessing those with nothing, just like Mary.

Our Marys

The more we learn about Mary and her place in the Incarnation, the more difficult she becomes for us in the Latinized world. Mary speaks of GOD’s preference for the poor from her experience as poor. She speaks of GOD’s preference for the powerless as one without power. And for many of us, this is not our situation. We are comfortable. We aren’t the lowly. We have our struggles, of course. But does Mary speak to all of us?

We are convicted by Mary’s description of GOD, and in her very situation. She is not important, but GOD has made her important. She is poor, but GOD has given her a good thing in Jesus. And in this, we are given the image of a pregnant, unwed girl, given the ultimate position.

And yet, we are blessed by this reminder of our GOD’s priorities. That GOD isn’t about making the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. GOD isn’t about worrying about who “deserves” their place in our social order, GOD is about transforming our social order. GOD uses the unlikely servants to convict us and inspire us. GOD is about transforming us to be the generous, caring, loving creations that incarnate GOD’s order. Mary is our challenge to see GOD at work in our midst in the ways we are prone to miss. So that we, like Mary, might discover what GOD is up to. In the coming days, we must keep our eyes open for that is the only way we will come to know GOD!

Sex as Biblical Marriage

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Reading Genesis again for our Bible study, I have found this nuance with regards to how the writers use the concept of marriage quite interesting: having sex with someone makes you married.

sex on the beach

To unpack what this means, we ought to step back from our 21st Century “culture war” arguments about what marriage means or who gets to be in it.

We also should step back from everything else in scripture that speaks to “biblical marriage”. This handy graphic that went around Facebook can help with that.

found somewhere on Facebook

found somewhere on Facebook

We need to strip ourselves down to see what this reveals about our faith. Two reasons:

  1. This comes from some of the earliest historical writings in our faith
  2. This comes from our “origin story,” which speaks to who we were before we were Christians, Jews, or even the Hebrew people.

In other words, this is the first word on marriage in the Bible in the literal, historical, and metaphorical sense. Our understanding hinges upon these first moments.

There are many married couples in the scripture before Isaac and Rebekah, but they are the first to “get married” within the context of the text. And what does it say?

Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death. (24:67)

Aside from the creepy oedipal part, the text tells us that in “taking” her, Rebekah becomes his wife.

The same thing happens with his son Jacob.

Jacob works seven years for the hand of Rachel, but Rachel’s dad deceives him:

Then Jacob said to Laban, ‘Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.’ So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast. But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob; and he went in to her. (29:21-23)

Boys, those are probably not the words you should use with your future father-in-law: “Give me my wife that I may go in to her”. No dad wants to think about that. Ever.

then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel as a wife. So Jacob went in to Rachel also (29:28b and 30a)

Then, when Rachel couldn’t have children, she did this:

So she gave him her maid Bilhah as a wife; and Jacob went in to her. (30:4)

Jacob Encountering Rachel with her Father's Herds

Jacob Encountering Rachel with her Father’s Herds (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course, the whole sordid affair keeps going. You should really read more about it. But the consistent theme here is that two people are promised, they hook up, and are considered married. No big wedding. No betrothal or engagement rings (though Jacob and Rachel were engaged for 7 years before they were hitched). No mothers-of-the-brides or bridezillas. No pieces of paper. No churches or courthouses.

Just sex.

This is entirely consistent and at the same time entirely alien to our current understanding of marriage. Most importantly, I think it reveals the weakness in our current understanding.

We treat marriage as a contractual binding of two people. This has some benefits, but many more limitations. We see couples as gathering their friends and families to make a promise to stick together. A failure to live up to that promise represents a moral failure. Contracts, when entered into by two consenting adults (not unlike the one Jacob makes with Laban) have parameters and limitations. We can determine who can enter into that contract. We can stipulate the limitations of the contract. We can define what each participant’s role is in the contract. The entire thing can be litigated. And the contract may be broken or nullified for a variety of reasons.

We also treat marriage as the ritualistic participation in a maturation process in which marriage constitutes an inevitable milestone. In this way, we cast life as exhibiting a common script for people that can be matched identically based on personal maturation. We go to school, get jobs, get married, have kids, raise those kids, retire from work, then die. This script, while amusingly quaint, leads us to pairing off, not as a sign of mutual discernment, but as finding a teammate with which we may fulfill the base requirements of adulthood. Naturally, this script is conservative and has a false sheen of “traditional” to it.

If what makes two people married is not a wedding, but sex, then we have another thing to think about. Our conservative friends, in this way, are right in encouraging abstinence, but not for the reasons they normally give. It is not about saving it for marriage, but because you are, in that moment, marrying someone. And you might not want to be with that person forever. In a certain way, whomever we partner with after becomes a participant in adultery.

Here, then, enters the example of Jacob’s four wives, which further sets up our confusion when we try to arrange this understanding back into a legal framework.

What if, instead, we hear in this, Jesus’s much later definition of marriage: unifying as one flesh? What if we define marriage not according to the contract entered into, but in the physical and emotional binding of two people into a single human: in which one pleasure and one pain resides? As in the true unity of two persons is made manifest in every conceivable way.

exchanging rings

Perhaps then, marriage is best understood without any official binding, whether before a government or within a church, but in the spiritual unification made one flesh by GOD. Then the church’s place is not to see itself as the agent that binds two people, with all that gatekeeping power that goes with that. It’s place is to affirm and bless what is indeed already taking place: the very expression of GOD’s love in human form.

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David Henson on Marriage

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As I prepare this week’s Eating Scripture, I read this piece on this week’s gospel by David R. Henson:

Just Marriage: Jesus, Divorce and the Vulnerable.

Do yourself a favor and read it.

Failing a Father

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This guest post by Registered Runaway on Rachel Held Evans’ blog is too powerful to ignore.

“Church Stories: Forgive them, Father”

I want a church in which we can all celebrate and live up to the type of fatherhood described in the story. And their children inspire us to be better fathers as this one does for me. Where the church causes pain is precisely where the church should cause celebration.

The Dream 2012

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On the 49th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, it seems fitting to reflect on where we are in fulfilling it.

Back in January, I wrote this for King’s birthday:

It should surprise none of us that a leader villified by the conservative white community as “uppity” would become as innocuous a figure in our time as King has become.  Discussions of race relations in the United States seem to require the opening statement: “let’s begin by recognizing how far we’ve come”.  We bow before the common wisdom that demands that we celebrate that racism is still practiced, but illegal!  That our systems reinforce segregation by income rather than race specifically.  That discrimination based on race is passe, unlike sexual orientation, disability, or felony conviction, which is still wildly popular.  That King’s daughter would still live in a world in which her worth to the labor market is still 77% of a man’s.

For more, you can find the post here.

English: Dr. Martin Luther King giving his &qu...

Dr. Martin Luther King giving his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington in Washington, D.C., on 28 August 1963. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The problem with conversations about race in 2012 is that we are living with a dream unfulfilled. King’s Dream is a dramatic incarnation of GOD’s dream–that King spoke of not only an end to segregation, but discrimination and those means by which the powerful demean and steal the power from others. In our day, it is not only race, but economics, ability, sex, gender, sexual orientation, education, experience, geography, and social diversity that allow the powerful to not only keep, but expand power.The very things that prevent a little black girl and a little white girl from playing side by side.

It was 17 years after that moment that “Trickle Down Economics” was unleashed on the world. A theory that argued for redistributing money to the top of the food chain so that the rest could fight over the scraps. The very antipothy of King’s Dream.

And even now, in this election season, we are having the same conversation as one slate of candidates has made the same ethic its primary economic proposition, calling such distribution a benefit to us all, as it is they who are the job creators.

And yet, it is still so clearly about both race and inequality. About a system that maintains inequality. We defend a system of unfairness because we believe it actually is fair. This was Jesus’s very critique of the Pharisees, whose arguments of fairness to the widow whose son has died are condemned by Jesus as wholly unfair.

We foolishly believe that the issue is about internal prejudice, when the graver ill is systemic oppression. Our race legacy is that we have forgotten the very definition of racism. Until we rediscover it, King’s Dream, as GOD’s Dream, will never be a reality.

Pussy Riot Reveals Russian Morality Police

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Or I (heart) Pussy Riot

I’ve only just come across this story as I catch up on my podcasts and as Christian Piatt covered a few days ago. Christian covers the discomfort we have in the prophetic action and the challenge of protest in an admirably personal way. You should really check out his post. It can also give you a little background on the story.

The only piece that I want to add is what was brought up by a reporter in a conversation for On The Media, which is what this reveals about the Russian courts. The entire case against the group of young women was based on several people’s testimony, not that they did it, but that they were hurt by the performance. This is interesting in light of the many things I’ve written about the need for respect, including today’s other post. The law is about offense, the action took place in a church, and the protesters asked for forgiveness at the opening of the proceedings.

Those offended said no.

Christian Piatt rightly references the overturning tables idea of Christ-like prophecy. And it is the Christians testifying, and the Putin regime that stand convicted by this moment.

This is what separates the prophetic from blasphemy and the ethically courageous from the morally cowardly: how we treat one another. Our country was born from early settlers that, to avoid religious persecution, came to a new country, killed its inhabitants, and persecuted one another because of religion and in the name of morality. How this artist collective has been treated by the Russian authorities doesn’t compare with the Salem witch trials. None of them is going to be burned alive. But it is that same unethical persecution for morality at work.

My prayers go out to these women, to those effected by this farcical tragedy, and particularly to Putin. That they all may know what has truly transpired here.

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Who Deserves to Die?

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Have you seen one of these posters?

We’ve moved to a small town, so I haven’t.

This new campaign, with posters popping up in major cities across the country is two things that really get me excited. First, it is a guerrilla marketing campaign that arrests each person that sees a single poster. You stop, you think, and you feel. Like the recent anti-smoking ads with the effects of lung cancer. Or those old Truth ads about what’s in cigarettes. Or even that “your brain on drugs” omelet ad. You are stopped, you are thinking, and you are repulsed.

I also like that it is buzzy and noteworthy. They have us interested in finding out what it is all about tomorrow. I love that.

There is a secret, third reason I like them. They are our message.

I know that they are likely to be a health awareness thing about lung cancer. We are bound to be disappointed by what is revealed, because once we know what they are for, they will cease to motivate us.

Except that the message is much bigger than any one campaign. At least any one campaign that isn’t the Jesus campaign. Or, more precisely, the Kingdom of GOD campaign.

That message, of picking random people and saying that person deserves to die is our greatest sin. The church has taken these posters and made them true. They are our literalism. We have, and continue to vilify the other, the stranger, the friend, the lover, the sister, and the child. We have, throughout history and to this day, told innocent people that they deserve to die because of who they are. Because of what they believe. Because of who they love. Because of what they eat. Or with whom they eat.

We have called on the deaths of so many people. There is no amount of penance Christians can do to make up for its sins. We have been, and continue to be, evil.

And it may seem weak or ridiculous, and it certainly isn’t sufficient, but I am sorry. I am sorry that my people have sinned. That I have sinned. That Christians have been so unworthy of your sympathy or respect.

The campaign, though, is also about shining a light on the ridiculousness of wishing the death of others. It isn’t just a cross for us to bear, but a true opportunity to repent. An invitation to see what many Christians have always believed: that no one deserves to die. That there is no integrity to seek someone’s death, to hope for it. That our reconciling, as the parable of the Good Samaritan teaches, is not about getting back together with friends, but with enemies. That even our most detested, reviled enemies that warrant our hatred, must be given the opposite. That everyone must be given mercy and love. No buts. No exceptions. We can’t other someone and say the line stops with him. “I draw the line at him. What he has done. He is unlovable.” EEERN! Wrong Answer. No exceptions. Not even hipsters. Or cat lovers.

And maybe then we can realize how much of Scripture, and specifically the Torah, we misunderstand. That we aren’t to condemn or kill in the name of GOD.

Ever.