Exploring the Connections

Jesus versus GOP

by Gary Kamiya
Salon, February 7, 2012

There has never been a more loudly Christian group of presidential candidates than this primary season’s GOP contenders. From the start, the campaign has been an exercise in Christian one-upmanship. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann set the standard for religious fervor, boasting of setting her alarm clock at 5 a.m. so she could read the Bible and issuing born-again testimonials like “I radically abandoned myself to Jesus Christ.” Herman Cain said that he was inspired to run for president by the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. Rick Perry released a video in which he intoned, “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian … As president, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion and I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage.”

Bachmann, Cain and Perry are no longer sharing their spiritual rectitude with a national audience, but the remaining candidates continue to flaunt their Christianity. Newt Gingrich, who has noisily proclaimed that his conversion to Catholicism saved his soul, repeated Perry’s charge, accusing President Obama of launching a “war on religion” by requiring that church-owned hospitals and universities provide insurance that covers birth control. “It’s a fundamental assault on the right of freedom of religion,” Gingrich said. “On the very first day I’m inaugurated I will sign an executive order repealing every Obama attack on religion.”

Gingrich has framed the election as a battle for America’s soul, warning that if Obama is not defeated, the United States is in danger of becoming a “secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists.” Such apocalyptic warnings, combined with statements like “I can’t imagine being comfortable with an atheist in the presidency,” insinuate that Obama is a fake Christian – a widespread belief among the religious right. (That’s actually a comparatively moderate view: The hardcore see him as the Antichrist.)

Rick Santorum went even further, essentially calling for America to become a theocracy. At the Thanksgiving Family Forum last year, Santorum said, “Our civil wars have to comport with the higher law … That’s why as long as abortion is ‘legal,’ according to the Supreme Court, we will never have rest, because that does not comport with God’s law … As long as there is discordance between the two there will be agitation.”

The Republican strategy — loudly proclaiming one’s Christian faith, while attacking Obama as an agent of secular evil, if not actually Satan himself – is right out of the Fox News playbook. As the voice of the American far right, the ultimate undeclared super-duper-GOP-PAC, Fox News has embraced the cracked “birther” movement and generally done everything within its latitudinous definition of “fair and balanced” to portray Obama as a fake-Christian, foreign-born, America-hating Muslim. (Fox’s “War on Christmas” rants appear with such clockwork regularity at Christmastime that I use them as reminders to open my Advent Calendar.)

The only GOP candidate who has not openly pursued this strategy is the front-runner, Mitt Romney. Romney has avoided the subject because as a Mormon, his own Christian credentials are suspect. But as the ultimate political panderer and opportunist, he would play the Christian card if he could. Like all the GOP candidates, Romney has tried to paint Obama as an alien Other, elite, mysterious, malevolent – in a word, slightly satanic. And also like them, Romney presents his free-market, anti-government ideology as more “American,” and by implication more “Christian,” than Obama’s.

Who Can Mock This Church?

By Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times, May 2, 2010

Juba, Sudan

Maybe the Catholic Church should be turned upside down.

Jesus wasn’t known for pontificating from palaces, covering up scandals, or issuing Paleolithic edicts on social issues. Does anyone think he would have protected clergymen who raped children?

Yet if the top of the church has strayed from its roots, much of its base is still deeply inspiring. I came here to impoverished southern Sudan to write about Sudanese problems, not the Catholic Church’s. Yet once again, I am awed that so many of the selfless people serving the world’s neediest are lowly nuns and priests — notable not for the grandeur of their vestments but for the grandness of their compassion.

As I’ve noted before, there seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan. The Vatican certainly supports many charitable efforts, and some bishops and cardinals are exemplary, but overwhelmingly it’s at the grass roots that I find the great soul of the Catholic Church.

The Vatican believes that this newspaper and other news organizations have been unfair and overzealous in excavating the church’s cover-ups of child rape. I see the opposite. No organization has done more to elevate the moral stature of the Catholic Church in the United States than The Boston Globe. Its groundbreaking 2002 coverage of abuse by priests led to reforms and by most accounts a significant reduction in abuse. Catholic kids are safer today not because of the cardinals’ leadership, but because of The Boston Globe’s.

Yet the church leaders are right about one thing: there is often a liberal and secular snobbishness toward the church as a whole — and that is unfair.

It may be easy at a New York cocktail party to sniff derisively at a church whose apex is male chauvinist, homophobic and so out of touch that it bars the use of condoms even to curb AIDS. But what about Father Michael Barton, a Catholic priest from Indianapolis? I met Father Michael in the remote village of Nyamlell, 150 miles from any paved road here in southern Sudan. He runs four schools for children who would otherwise go without an education, and his graduates score at the top of statewide examinations.

Father Michael came to southern Sudan in 1978 and chatters fluently in Dinka and other local languages. To keep his schools alive, he persevered through civil war, imprisonment and beatings, and a smorgasbord of disease. “It’s very normal to have malaria,” he said. “Intestinal parasites — that’s just normal.”

Father Michael may be the worst-dressed priest I’ve ever seen — and the noblest.

Anybody scorn him? Anybody think he’s a self-righteous hypocrite?

On the contrary, he would make a great pope.

In the city of Juba, I met Cathy Arata, a nun from New Jersey who spent years working with battered women in Appalachia. Then she moved to El Salvador during the brutal civil war there, putting her life on the line to protect peasants. Two years ago, she came here on behalf of a terrific Catholic project called Solidarity With Southern Sudan.

Sister Cathy and the others in the project have trained 600 schoolteachers. They are fighting hunger not with handouts but with help for villagers to improve agricultural techniques. They are also establishing a school for health workers, with a special focus on midwifery to reduce deaths in childbirth.

At the hospital attached to that school, the surgeon is a nun from Italy. The other doctor is a 72-year-old nun from Rhode Island. Nuns rock.

Sister Cathy would like to see more decentralization in the church, a greater role for women, and more emphasis on public service. She says she worries sometimes that if Jesus returned he would say, “Oh, they got it all wrong!”

She would make a great pope, too.

There are so many more like them. There’s Father Mario Falconi, an Italian priest who refused to leave Rwanda during the genocide and bravely saved 3,000 people from being massacred. There’s Father Mario Benedetti, a 72-year-old Italian priest based in Congo who fled with his congregation when their town was attacked by a brutal militia. Now Father Mario lives side by side with his Congolese congregants in the squalor of a refugee camp in southern Sudan, struggling to get schooling for their children.

It’s because of brave souls like these that I honor the Catholic Church. I understand why many Americans disdain a church whose leaders are linked to cover-ups and antediluvian stances on women, gays and condoms — but the Catholic Church is far larger than the Vatican.

And unless we’re willing to endure beatings alongside Father Michael, unless we’re willing to stand up to warlords with Sister Cathy, we have no right to disparage them or their true church.

The Lutheran Church Embraces the LGBTQ Community

by Rev. Dr. Cindi Love
The Huffington Post, April 19, 2010

George Bernard Shaw once said, "Certainly all great truths begin as blasphemies." On April 11, 2010, those who identify as people of faith and as "non-heterosexual" were given particular cause to celebrate Shaw's wisdom: a most unlikely church has given a most unlikely people a gift of love and truth, and I cannot stop smiling.

After twenty-five years of deliberation, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Church Council has abolished its anti-gay policies, effective immediately. Following from discussions at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly last summer, the ELCA will now allow people in same-sex relationships to serve as rostered leaders. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) human beings are no longer considered abominations but blessed church members with full standing. Same-sex partners and families can now fully participate in the ELCA Pension Plan.

Best of all, the ELCA is reinstating people who were removed from ministry positions because they were truthful and came out of the closet, as well as those who conducted holy unions for non-heterosexual couples. The ELCA has practiced restorative justice.

The Lutherans -- breaking from Garrison Keillor stereotypes as shy, retiring, or stoic -- said, "Just do it!" All votes passed overwhelmingly, with no votes against and no drawn-out hassles about how to implement the policies.

I'm particularly grateful to the ELCA for adding restoration to its reforms. My colleague, Rev. Paul W. Egerston, faithfully pastored and served as Bishop in the Lutheran church for 31 years. He resigned one month before the end of his term in 2001. Why? He ordained a lesbian as a Pastor and took a public stand for justice in opposition to the official anti-gay policy of the ELCA. Now, Paul and his wife, Shirley, and their six children, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren can take a day off. I believe that through the ELCA's restoration, God has sent them a message, "Well done, my good and faithful servants."

In the midst of this week of celebration, I have been asked, "What about the rest of the churches? How can we get them to change their minds about gay people and our rights as human beings?"

Let me suggest a simple formula: praise, publicize, and participate. It is important that we actively support the ELCA leaders and the early adopters with our public affirmation and praise. Write a letter of commendation of the ELCA to the editor in your local paper and send a copy to the denominational headquarters. Carbon copy your letter to the leadership of non-affirming denominations. Financially support the organizations who "push the envelope" of denominational resistance to change. Anti-gay fundamentalists outspend pro-gays by a ratio of four to one. Participate in community-based engagement efforts. These have proven highly effective in shifting attitudes of fundamentalists towards gays.

The good news is that science is on our side. Consumer adoption theory tells us that the rate at which people accept change or innovation accelerates once early adopters embrace the idea and people hear about the change. This makes sense when you think about the way in which people buy new technology. There are always people who buy the first release. They tell their friends and families. They weather the challenges of operating systems that are less than perfect.

The ELCA has served as the beta test site for a process through which a very traditional faith community can reverse its thinking and policies. They will continue to push the envelope and all of us will learn from their experiences. Other denominational leaders and congregants will be glad that they tested the waters first.

And, soon, as we've seen with microwaves, cell phones, the Internet, and even the Model-T, the rest of us will wade into the water as well.

The Lutherans have made a crack in the dam of religious bigotry that is now set to break wide open for the rest of the fundamentalist world -- we are at a tipping point.

The ELCA has conducted itself with grace and dignity, and many of us are longing for some of that type of public civility. Their example is going to make people within other embattled denominations long for a better process within their own communities. The ELCA members didn't wage war in public with one another. There was no public outcry that diminished everyone while they worked their way through a quarter century of discussion.

The ELCA press release about the decision reads:

These actions are important because they are a major milestone along the journey of full inclusion. We have a policy that recognizes the gifts of its members [...] and that will allow the return of those who have been removed or alienated [...]. [There will] be new life in the church through new leaders. [...] [W]e have lifted up crucial questions for the church: What is the relationship of sexuality to salvation in Christ? What is the diversity in God's wondrous creation? What is sinful? [...] Who continues to face barriers to ministry and mission? How do we journey together faithfully, in spite of so many differences? What some people have dismissed as a narrow issue has both opened up and profoundly deepened our moral and theological life.

Amazing. It sounds like the Lutherans think LGBTQ people have helped them get closer to God. A great truth has been realized today that Jesus Christ demonstrated throughout His ministry 2000 years ago. It is not blasphemous to include and embrace the prayers and relationships and service of those outside society's gate. In fact, it's a blessing.

PSALM 140: "O God, deliver our nation and our world …"

O God, deliver our nation and our world
from those people in positions of authority
    who resort to violence
    to carry out their objectives.
They sweet-talk us into believing
    they are acting in our interests
    and brainwash us into blind,
    flag-waving allegiance
until we march by their side
    into battles that destroy
    our unity and joy as members of
    the human family.

Deliver all of us, O Lord,
    from the notion that anything of value or worth
    can be obtained by hostile or violent actions.

Our God is on the side of those who are afflicted.
He will deal justly with people who are violent,
    and show his mercy to the victims
    of their obscene actions.

Help us, O Lord,
    even at the risk of our lives and well-being,
    to overcome hate with love
    and to be peacemakers in a world
    that is so racked amnd distorted
    by the atrocities of violence.

Leslie F. Brandt. Psalms Now (Concordia Publishing House, 1974, p. 211)

Keeping justice and holiness together

by David Walker

Thinking Anglicans, Saturday, December 26, 2009

When God acts decisively, as we celebrated yesterday, he is inclined to do so in a manner that (however much Old Testament prophecies might have hinted at it) catches creation unawares. A baby in a manger is scarcely a more likely incarnation of the divine than the one-eyed, slightly chipped tortoise that is the great god OM in Terry Pratchett’s novel Small Gods (it’s Christmas, I’m allowed to read trash). When the church acts decisively it follows much more obvious channels. Hence, some of the first tasks of the post-Pentecost Christian community are about getting the structures right. Matthias is appointed to fill the place of Judas, and then, lest the apostles be distracted from their preaching and prayers by the mundane, and inward facing, tasks of sorting out disputes and allocating resources, seven new posts are created, the first deacons.

There’s meant to be a clear distinction between the apostolic and diaconal roles, but it doesn’t work out. The mistake the twelve have made is in appointing men ‘full of the Spirit’. And the Spirit won’t be tied to the mundane and practical. Indeed in the chapters that follow in the Acts of the Apostles we find two of the seven heavily engaged in proclaiming the gospel to those outside the community. In fact, given that we hear little in the rest of the book about any of the original dozen apart from Peter, James and John, you could say that there’s a higher success rate of apostolic ministry among the seven than there is from the twelve.

Today we celebrate the martyrdom of Stephen, one of those seven, arrested for his preaching and condemned for witnessing to his vision of Christ at the right hand of God. Stephen discovered, as countless others have down the centuries, that you can’t separate the proclamation of the Good News from meeting the practical needs of the poor. And that inseparability is for two distinct and complementary reasons.

Firstly, churches and Christians need to uphold justice and perform good works in order to show the love of Jesus. My friend the Bishop of Peru has a simple rule that no congregation in his diocese can achieve the status as a parish until it has some practical programme of work: a school; a clinic; a project teaching skills to the unemployed. There has to be something that reaches out and lifts up the poor of its neighbourhood. If we are not showing the love of God through our practical actions how can anyone be drawn to him through our words?

But secondly, it was only when he began serving the needy that Stephen was granted his vision of Christ. Twelve centuries later St Francis of Assisi discovered that unless he could see Jesus in a leper he could not truly see Jesus. In that sense the practical tasks we undertake are as much for own benefit as for the well-being of those who are aided by them. We will not see Jesus at the right hand of the Father until we cultivate the habit of seeing him in the drug addict, the beggar, the AIDS sufferer, the sex worker or the homeless person; or in whomever it may be that we and our society are minded to neglect, condemn or despise.

Anglicans too often divide into those who neglect justice in the pursuit of holiness and those who ignore holiness in their striving for justice. In Stephen both are held together. May they be so for us too this Christmastide and beyond.

David Walker is suffragan Bishop of Dudley in the diocese of Worcester.