Happy New Year!

Judge Harlington Wood, Jr. R. I. P.

I just received word that Judge Harlington Wood, Jr. died yesterday afternoon in Petersburg, Illinois. It is a tragic loss to all knew him and whose lives were touched by his. Prayers for his wife Cathryn, his daughter Alexis, and his two grandchildren.

Update: Article "Judge Wood Gave Everyone a Fair Shake" and obituary at The State Journal-Register.

A video clip of a 1994 interview is available here. Below is a brief biography prepared for the 2003 American Inns of Court award:

Judge Harlington Wood, Jr. graduated from the University of Illinois in 1942, and entered its School of Law. His legal education was interrupted for service in the United States Army, where he rose to the grade of Major and served in the European and Asiatic Theaters. Upon his return from the service, he returned to law school and received his J.D. Degree in 1948 and entered private practice with the firm of Wood & Wood in Springfield, Illinois.

In 1958, he was appointed by President Eisenhower as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, and served until returning to private practice in 1961. In 1969, he became Executive Head of the U.S. Attorneys; United States Department of Justice in Washington, DC, and in 1970 was named Associate Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice. In 1972, he was appointed by President Nixon to be the Assistant Attorney General in Charge of the Civil Division. In 1973, President Nixon appointed him U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Illinois, where he served until 1976 when he accepted the appointment of President Gerald Ford to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Professionally, Judge Wood is most well known for his involvement while serving in the Department of Justice in two separate Native American stand-offs: the first at Alcatraz Island, in San Francisco Bay, from 1969 through the summer of 1971, and the second in 1973 at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. But his accomplishments and impact as both jurist and statesman include participation in much of the recent dramatic history of the world, which he has circled three times, and include Russia, Outer Mongolia, Europe, Cambodia, Greenland, China, Japan and South America.

Judge Wood is a true native of the Land of Lincoln, and is in fact, one of the country’s most outstanding authorities on the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. He is a former member of the cast of “Forever This Land” at Lincoln’s New Salem State Park, member and former president of the Abraham Lincoln Association, and former chairman of the Lincoln Legals Project.

I am so glad that he lived to see Barack Obama elected President. I can think of none other than Judge Wood, stalwart Republican and Abraham Lincoln scholar, who could have better appreciated the difficult course Obama has set for himself.

The Dark Knight

Apparently I was one of the few people on earth who did not see this movie until it just came out on DVD. I found it fascinating and troubling. One especially thoughtful review I found was "Batman's War on Terror" by Benjamin Kerstein writing in Azure. Read it all, but for a taste, this is its remarkable conclusion:

In this sense, The Dark Knight is a perfect mirror of the society which is watching it: a society so divided on the issues of terror and how to fight it that, for the first time in decades, an American mainstream no longer exists. Perhaps this is why the film has struck such a responsive chord with audiences: The ambivalence it expresses is the same ambivalence with which most Americans—consciously or unconsciously—regard their current predicament. Americans want to defeat terrorism, but they want to defeat it without upsetting the basic ideals of a free society. They want terror to be fought by any means necessary, but without any of the attendant horrors and compromises of war. And The Dark Knight may well be correct in positing that the only possible resolution of such a dilemma is not to resolve it at all, but to live in a society based, in some manner, on a lie. Because society, in order to be society, needs the lie. It is a noble lie, perhaps, but a lie all the same. The alternative, the film seems to say, is to become a society of Harvey Dents or, worse still, Jokers. It is, ironically, not a particularly happy or optimistic message, but it is one which a great many Americans appear ready, and even strangely gratified, to hear.

Lord have mercy

The Holy Land Experience.

Prayer request

Prayers requested for Martha.

Martha was scheduled to serve as eucharistic minister at the 5:00 p.m. early mass for Christmas Eve. She was not there - not so unusual for people to forget but unusual for her. We tried calling around to see if anyone knew if she decided to go out of town to visit family or if anyone knew anything. One of her daughters came to midnight mass, and when asked about her mother, she shook her head and went off to go check up on her.

Martha fell in her home on Sunday afternoon and had been lying on the floor with a chair on top of her, unable to reach a phone or otherwise call for help. She was badly bruised and dehydrated but does not appear to have broken any bones. She is lucid and in the hospital in critical care at the moment, but she is not sure exactly what happened. She may have had a stroke. The rector has visited her twice and says she seems weaker today than yesterday. Please add Martha to your prayers. Hold her up to the light.

(photo © Lukasz Jernas for openphoto.net)

Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt R.I.P.

Listen to Eartha talk about "Santa Baby" ("No one owns me but me") and other thoughts in this NPR radio tribute from this morning's news. Go to the same link for a written biography, as well. I suspect her speaking up about the Vietnam War at a White House would entitle her at least a posthumous "Brick of the Day" award from Mad Priest.

Press clipping

Well, our midnight mass on Christmas Eve made the front page of the local newspaper, December 25, 2008 edition. Kind of nice given that most of the reporting of religious news and holidays around here invariably focuses on the Roman Catholics (the vast majority of the religious of the local residents here with the many people of Italian, German, and Polish descent). Nothing against the Romans, but it's nice to be noticed for a change.

Il est né le Divin Enfant

Adrian Worsfold has some excellent reflections on "A Meaning of Christmas" - the divinity of the Universal Baby. I often find the emphasis on the baby in Christmas somewhat puzzling and, at times, a bit cloying, especially when our church music includes lullabies and bouncy, childlike melodies. This video, featuring a decent recording of one of my favorite Christmas songs along with sentimental pictures, reflects something of the schizophrenic feelings I sometimes have, torn between the hope and wonder (in the music) and all the kitsch (in the pictures). Anyway, Adrian did a fine job of giving a cross-cultural perspective which, for me at least, restores a bit of sanity.

In the bleak midwinter

Once in Royal David's City

I pray God, rid me of God

I've been mulling some time over Father Terry's latest essay on "Christians as Atheists" as well as the videos and Peter Rollins' websites he points to. It hits home in many respects, especially this from Ikon's Evangelism Project:

An analysis of human interaction over history teaches us that there are two dangerous temptations each of us face when confronted by a stranger, i.e. by one who thinks and acts in a way that is foreign to our cultural or religious practices. The first is a desire to transform that stranger into our own image, endeavouring to eclipse and replace their cultural and religious practices with our own. The second is to exclude and reject the stranger entirely, viewing them as a threat which must be guarded against. In one the stranger is rendered into a clone while in the other they are made into an enemy.

But even more compelling is the testimony of someone who is living this out, Kirstin, who continues to write more deeply each day at Barefoot and Laughing. Here is a small bit from a recent post, "Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now":

God is not a personified image in my head anymore, at all. I realized that, sometime yesterday. God is, simply, love, interwoven into every fiber of the universe’s being. In what appears as a sterile concrete jungle, flowers. In the last places you'd think to look, grace.

[Which makes "Father" even harder to say, and more ridiculous, when God is "Ground."]

Taken in its full context of what Kirstin has experienced to reach that realization, I suspect that her words reflect the answer to Peter Rollins's prayer: "I pray God, rid me of God." It's not an -ism, an ontological or theological view, it's living in and with God, who has no name, no face, no image but nevertheless who can be found everywhere, among the homeless, the hungry, the forgotten; among friends and enemies; in the darkness, shadowy streets, and blazing light; and in sickness and in health.

Rediscovering Narnia

Watching the snow in the stillness of the middle of the night reminded me of the first time I entered the world of Narnia. It was not until I was well into middle age and decided to pick up the books not long after I was confirmed as an Episcopalian. I knew C.S. Lewis as a literary critic and I had read Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters (which left me cold) a few years earlier at the suggestion of the Lutheran pastor who was trying to help me get past my cold feet about affirming the creeds and renouncing Satan at my son's baptism. But I had yet to read anything from the religious side of C.S. Lewis that I felt compelling. I wondered if I delved into the fantasy world of Narnia whether I would find something of what drew both its author and myself back to religion in later life.

Fortunately, once I entered that world I pretty much put all thoughts of religion behind. I loved the look and feel and smell of the wardrobe, its warm darkness and fur coats, and the forest and the clearing, where everything was dark and still with the dim glow of the gaslight on the snow. That quiet moment of wonder in the still night, the pause before the faun spoke, was something that could only be truly experienced reading the words on the page.

I was intrigued when I read about Laura Miller's desire to examine what it was about Narnia that captured her so as a child, something she felt was spoiled when she later discovered all the Christian elements that C.S. Lewis had quite consciously interjected into the tale. I had gone to Narnia for those elements yet, while I could scarcely not see them the way she first did, they fell to the wayside for me, so much so, that when I got to the crucial scenes in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I wept in part because the "real" version in the Bible and the Tradition was not nearly as good.

I had not thought much about it since. In recent years I have wondered in moments of both self-criticism and disillusionment whether it was the magical elements of Catholicism and later Anglo-Catholicism that drew me "back" to Church, which made Christianity somehow more accessible and acceptable to me, despite my strong antipathy towards the Jesus-Man, the Son, and my inability to imagine God in any form but the Father's loving arms. I haven't been sure what to make of all that psychologically, but I have suspected that if the eucharistic magic were gone, there would not be much left for me, who in the depths of my heart and mind has always been a hard-core skeptic, as well as a mystical seeker.

Laura Miller has brought me back to my first encounter with Narnia and the thoughts and feelings it inspired. I realize now it has not so much been the Father/Son aspect of Christianity that I have often found so off-putting, but rather, despite all the words and images about the Incarnation, Christianity has never given me a God I could touch and feel, only clerics and conflict, stone buildings and pretty music, at its heart lifeless and empty. Father Terry often writes about the story of the boy caught in a thunderstorm who wants a god with a skin on. I wonder if what the child in me has always wanted most is a god with fur on.

Anyway, this is what Laura Miler wrote and quoted from C.S. Lewis that made me recall what it was like to dig into and be enveloped by that fur, to have a god who let not just the children but the girls come close and be the ones who best knew and were touched by him:

Unlike the God I was raised to worship, he [Aslan] is a god you can touch, and a god to asks to be touched in his darkest hour. "Lay your hands on my mane so that I can feel you are there and let us walk like that," he says to Lucy and Susan as he goes to his execution at the stone table. After he has been killed, the weeping girls come to kiss "his cold face" and stroke "his beautiful fur," in a far more raw and tangible evocation of grief than anything in the New Testament. Then, after Aslan has been resurrected, the girls climb onto his "warm, golden back," bury their hands in his mane, and go for a breathless cross-country ride through a Narnia you can almost taste, thanks to one of Lewis's most exhilarating descriptions:

"Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the bits and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or gray or chestnut back of the horse the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind. And then imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn't need to be buided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree trunks, jumping over brush and briar and the smaller streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all. And you are riding not on a road nor in the part nor even on the downs, but right across Narnia, in spring, down solemn avenues of beech and across sunny glades of oak, through wild orchards of snow-white cherry trees, past roaring waterfalls and mossy rocks and echoing caverns, up windy slopes alight with gorse bushes, and across the shoulders of heathery mountains and along giddy ridges and down, down, down again into wild valleys and into acres of blue flowers."

Laura Miller, The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia (New York: Little, Brown and Company 2008) at pp. 34-35.

A Skeptic's Adventure in Narnia

The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventure in Narnia
by Laura Miller (Little, Brown & Company 2008)

I just got this book for Christmas. I've only just begun, but already I love it, even though I never read Narnia as a child and only read a few volumes late in adulthood. This is a book for for those who fell head over heels in love with books and the worlds where they transported us, and then... kept reading and reading, sometimes in spite of rather than what we learned later about reading critically and thinking about where an author was leading us.

The entire introduction is marvelous in itself, but here is an excerpt from an excerpt:

There is yet another reason to devote the kind of attention to the Chronicles that critics ordinarily reserve for the works of writers like Flaubert or F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it may be the most persuasive of all. In An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis floats the idea that we can determine how good a book is by how it is read. This was an offbeat notion at a time when most critics judged a book by how it was written, and it would become an irrelevant one a few years later, when deciding how “good” a book was would seem immaterial to most academics. But Lewis — who was, above all else, a passionate, omnivorous and generous reader — thought that this might be the best way to appreciate a book’s worth, especially since he regarded the literary mandarins of his day as slaves to pernicious intellectual fads.

A hater of progress, newfanglement and vulgarity, Lewis was not a notably tolerant man, but reading brought out the populist in him. He worked out a set of criteria for identifying truly “literary” readers; their ranks include people who re-read books, those who savor what they read for more than just the plot, and those for whom the first encounter with a favorite book is an “experience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison. Their whole consciousness is changed. They have become what they were not before.”

Nothing on this list dictates what type of book the literary reader ought to prefer; it is the quality of the attention brought to it that matters. There is an uncharacteristic radicalism to Lewis’s further suggestion that if we can find “even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were changed, then, however little we could see in it ourselves and however it was despised by our friends and colleagues, we should not dare to put it beyond the pale.”

He is, among other things, describing the way certain children read certain books, with a fervor that can inspire mystification and awe in their adult counterparts. Such experiences can’t be merely ephemeral, meaningless, but they often seem entirely inaccessible when we look back on them years later. This, at least, is what Clive James felt upon returning to Professor Challenger, and so he was forced to dismiss the whole situation as merely comical. Still, how could he have failed to be formed as a man and as a reader by Doyle’s adventure yarns? We would not expect any other overwhelming emotional experience from his childhood to have left him untouched. Today, James is a gifted, witty critic. Perhaps there is more to Professor Challenger than meets the eye.

The relationship between book and reader is intimate, at best a kind of love affair, and first loves are famously tenacious. A first love teaches you how to be with another human being by choice, rather than out of the imperative of blood ties. If we are lucky, our first love shows us how to negotiate the paradox of entering into a union with someone who remains fundamentally unknowable. First love is a momentous step in our emotional education, and in many ways, it shapes us forever.

From an excerpt printed here. More about the book from the author at Laura Miller and another excerpt, "Talking to the Animals" printed at Salon.

Dialogue and Deliberation

HowardW, a brilliant jazz musician, dear friend, and one of the most clear-sighted, patient, compassionate human beings I have ever met, once regularly took on the right-wing ideologues at Thom Hartmann's online forums. I often marveled at how he not only always kept his cool but also could actually get some of the most troll-like posters to talk out of the box. I knew it took more than just playing "nice" or being open to those with whom he disagreed. However, it took me a long time before I actually asked how he did it.

That was when Howard told me about David Bohm and Dialogue. He sent me a number of links, which provided me with an introduction to the subject. I cannot say that I ever got into it as deeply as I would have liked, let alone learned the discipline and applied it, but it seems like now is a good time to examine it more carefully. For anyone else who may be interested, listed below are some of the links that are still active.

But first, let me highlight one of the authors Howard recommended, Richard Moore, he wrote Escaping the Matrix — How we the people can change the world. Here are a few quotes from the Moore's website about the book:

Our Harmonization Imperative

Our societies and political systems are characterized by competition and struggle among cultural factions and political parties. When we try to change this system by forming adversarial political movements we are playing into this game – a game rigged so that elites always win. If we really want to change the system, we need to learn how to come together as humans, moving beyond the ideological structures that have been created to divide us from one another. We are all in this together, and a better world for one is a better world for all. It’s not about winning, nor really even about agreement: it’s about working together in pursuit of our common interests.

The dynamics of harmonization

Our usual models of discussion and deliberation reflect the adversarial nature of our society generally. We argue for our position over the other position: one side wins, the other loses, or we settle for a compromise – and the underlying conflicts remain unresolved. Harmonization is about a different kind of dialog, based on respectful listening, and aimed at developing solutions that take into account everyone’s concerns. This kind of dialog can be readily facilitated in any group of people, and it is an ancient human tradition, capable of transforming conflict into creative synergy. We the People are capable of working together wisely and harmoniously.”

From http://escapingthematrix.org.

Here are also some of Moore's reflections on how he came upon the ideas of for the book:

My studies and dialogs since 1998 have been devoted to this question. I've considered election reform, media reform, public education, personal transformation, political movements, revolutionary movements, third parties, and indeed I've looked at every way social change has been brought about throughout history. None of those have ever achieved the goal because they have always led to some form, new or old, of hierarchical rule by elites. As long as people are divided into factions, interest groups, or political parties, we will be controlled by the mechanism of divide-and-rule. (Before so-called `democracy' and so-called `socialism' came along, we were simply ruled by force under kings and emperors).

By this process of elimination, I came to the conclusion that we must, somehow, learn how to come together and find inclusive consensus at the grassroots level. I was inspired by Carolyn Chute, who said, "There is no left and right, only up and down. All the fat cats at the top having a good time, and the rest of us down here struggling to survive." In my email, I began using the signature, "We are all in this together." But I didn't know any means by which "the rest of us at the bottom" could find our common identity and purpose. How could the fundamentalist sit down with the tree-hugger? (so to speak) ….”

And then, fortuitously, I found myself in a meeting which, like many meetings, fell apart in misunderstanding, debate, frustration, etc. Someone stepped forward and began facilitating. Within seconds she enabled a new space to come into existence, a space where we were able to really listen to one another, a space where the people-as-fellow-humans were primary and the dialog an experience of shared discovery. I then began studying the technology of facilitation and the results achieved by facilitated processes, much of that being in the corporate context, and some in the social or activist context. It turns out that the technology works, and the results on-the-ground have been amazing. . . .

From http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/rkmGlblTrans.html

Here are the links to other resources:

About Dialogue at http://www.uoregon.edu/~mears/about.html

“Dialogue, a Proposal” by David Bohm, Donald Factor, and Peter Garrett
at http://www.uoregon.edu/~mears/proposal.html

“For Truth, Try Dialogue” by David Bohm
at http://www.uoregon.edu/~mears/truth.html

National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
at http://www.thataway.org

The Dialogue Group at http://www.thedialoguegrouponline.com/

Selected Websites on Dialogue
at http://laetusinpraesens.org/links/webdial.php

Also these groups and online forums at

The World Cafe
http://www.theworldcafe.com/twc.htm

Civic Reflection
http://www.civicreflection.org/

EveryDay Democracy
http://www.everyday-democracy.org/en/index.aspx

Public Conversations Project
http://www.publicconversations.org/pcp/pcp.html

National Issues Forum
http://www.nifi.org/

Three Cups of Tea

I haven't followed Thom Hartmann for a long time, but once upon a time I read his early book, The Prophet's Way. It's a book that is difficult to describe, one which I had a heck of a time finding until I discovered it on the "New Age" shelf at my local Barnes & Noble. Nevertheless, a reviewer, Jay Fikes, quoted in Amazon, managed to sum it up pretty well: "Thom Hartmann exposes many of the ugly truths hiding beneath the surface of contemporary ‘civilization.’ Hartmann’s book masterfully combines autobiography, science, and Christian spirituality and shows us how to rehabilitate our world with acts of compassion rooted in spiritual humility and faith in the Creator of all creatures and cultures. Easy to read, hard to practice."

One can debate whether Hartmann's career has since lived up to the ideals he set forth in that book, but in light of both his personal testimony and conversations I've had with people who worked with him and others at Salem children's projects throughout the world, I think his perspective on the following is well worth considering:

Three Cups of Tea for Rick Warren
By Thom Hartmann

Rick Warren is providing the invocation for the presidential inauguration. As a pastor whose books have been read by tens of millions of Americans and whose voice is respected by an equal or larger number, he has tremendous influence and power. And as an open homophobe who aggressively works to wound gay people in this country (as well as pretty much anybody else who doesn’t believe with his own particular and peculiar recently-invented version of Christian theology) he should be the guy with the bull’s-eye on his back for the progressive movement.

But consider that metaphor for a moment. In Pakistan there are entire regions filled with people who not only hate gays but hate Americans as well, regardless of religion. We've tried bombing them (as the Soviets did, and the British before them). Three consecutive Western empires have tried threatening them, starving them, poisoning them, infiltrating them, and overpowering them - all without success.

And then Greg Mortenson came to one of their villages, had three cups of tea with them (a metaphor for hospitality - they nursed him back to health after a mountain climbing injury - and the title of his best-selling book), and now in dozens of these formerly Taliban-controlled villages the people are rejecting the Taliban, embracing modernity, and openly proclaiming themselves as our friends.

His "weapon" for this conversion? He built schools for their children, particularly their previously-banned-from-school girls.

We pushed the Palestinians on the West Bank to have open and democratic elections, assuming that because they were using the tool of our culture (the secret ballot) they’d vote in people reflecting the values of our culture. Instead, they voted in Hamas, a group that is openly hostile to us and our allies. Hamas’ “weapon” for winning the hearts and minds of the Palestinians? They supported schools, hospitals, and fed and clothed people.

You’d think that we’d have learned from these experiences - particularly those of us who call ourselves “progressives” - that you get your desired results faster when you embrace, engage, and nurture your “enemies” than when you physically or rhetorically bomb them.

Barack Obama has learned that lesson, and is applying it in inviting Rick Warren to perform the invocation for his inauguration. In doing so, he is reaching out a hand to those who today are - out of fear and ignorance - pushing away gays the same way their intellectual ancestors pushed away African Americans when anti-miscegenation laws were supported by most of these same “fundamentalist” Christian churches in the 1950s and 1960s.

Joseph Lowry, who is providing the other bookend to the inauguration with the benediction, is the other side of the balance Obama is bringing to this inauguration. Lowry has said, for example, “The same folks who are against progress for black folks are the folks who are against progress for women and gays and farmers and young people and peace activists. We have to understand it’s one struggle. This is ONE AMERICA, and the sooner we learn that the more effective our world will be.”

And the more effective we will be at changing the hearts and minds of people like Rich Warren and his followers. This is a tremendous first step, and I congratulation Barack Obama on his wisdom, walking metaphorically in Greg Mortenson’s shoes to eventually bring the enemies of America’s true values of love and tolerance over to our side.

From ThomHartmann.com

Rick Warren - Opportunity for Learning?

The prevailing narrative that has been spun on the Rick Warren controversy goes something like this: Rick Warren has marketed himself as a "moderate" conservative evangelical Christian whose "purpose-driven" ministry focuses on poverty and AIDs rather than engaging in the culture wars -- until he recently decided to campaign for Prop. 8. This proved that he was homophobic just like the rest of the religious right, a wolf in sheep's clothing, who needed to be exposed for who and what he really is. And, wouldn't you know it, he went on television and finally made it perfectly clear that he not only is a homophobe but that he, like his brethern, have nothing but contempt for those whom he likens to pedophiles and those who commit bestiality. Therefore, he must be condemned, repudiated, and removed from the public stage. Every effort must be made to exert political pressure on Obama and anyone else who might naively think that it is o.k. to pal around with the likes of Rick Warren. Good liberals and progressives are like conservatives -- they must put walls around themselves and do whatever it takes to keep their base angry, upset, and ready to demonize and scorn the Enemy.

I haven't checked but I'm sure there is a counter-narrative to this going on at places like Faux News. Something like, see, the fascist liberals are at it again, ya-da-ya-da-ya-da. Which will mean that the liberals will counter the counter by saying, see, you cannot build bridges to these people, it's a waste of time and effort, because no Warren supporters would ever want to cooperate with the Obama administration on anything, and it is a travesty to hold out the olive branch to them all for the price of this terrible insult to gays and lesbians who are tired of being told they are no better than dogs, which is what people like Orombi and Akinola say -- the ones that Warren pals around with over in Africa.

This is politics as usual. And yes, the implication of what Warren has said about homosexual conduct and gay marriage is awful. But unlike most of his ilk, he came out and talked about it at considerable length. Rather than simply hide between the usual scriptural verses and talking points, he talked about sexuality in general, his own urges, desires, and temptations, and how he related all that to homosexuality.

Is it ugly for gays and lesbians to listen to? Yes, I'm sure it is. But in the desire to both condemn and escape from this kind of talk, something valuable is being lost -- the understanding that might be gained by listening to it carefully, thinking it through, and using that knowledge to try to combat that kind of thinking. For one thing, Rick Warren did not use the words "incest" or "pedophilia" or "bestiality" -- he talked about brothers and sisters and an old man and a young person. Of course, he meant the same thing, and it could have been pure cunning and guile, but I'm not so sure about the latter. This is a guy who has long said publicly that heterosexual promiscuity and infidelity are much more important religious and social issues than homosexuality and, until recently, he hasn't been actively involved in campaigning against homosexuals. The fact that he was so open with his talk suggests to me that, for better or for worse, he really means what he says about looking at sexual sin as all being pretty much the same, focusing as much, if not more, on heterosexual sin than what he considers unnatural behavior by a small group of people.

Does this make him a nice guy, a better person, more reasonable, open to change, etc? No -- or at least I make no such assumptions. What I see is someone who was given enough verbal rope that he, in effect, hung himself with it. But maybe, just maybe if more attention is paid to those words, those who oppose the ideas behind them can get more traction for trying to eradicate them from not only those who utter them but those who do not.

While GLBT folks may have heard and focused on the words that, quite naturally, give them great offense, I must say that as hetero I found pretty bizarre his talk about his "natural" urges to have sex with "every beautiful woman I meet" and resisting internet porn. While it was not exactly surprising, I think it pays to listen closely when people like Warren reveal the extent to which they are (pardon the expression) pretty screwed up in their thinking about sexuality in general -- the whole, sex with Da Wife is good; everything else with anyone else is bad. I suspect that it is no coincidence that some of the guys at Viagaraville have their own stories of heterosexual excess in their youth (sometimes aggravated by alcohol or drug abuse), from which they believe that their strict, menacing, Calvinistic god has saved them and will save everyone else who will take his wrath and judgment seriously.

People have long talked about the "ick" factor with respect to homosexuality. I suppose that those terribly afflicted with cannot be budged from their views. But I've long wondered if what propels the anti-gay marriage laws is really fear and prejudice arising from heterosexual views of homosexuality based entirely on a conviction that homosexual orientation is not only all about sex (i.e. erotic biological urges) but it also is about impulses for the wild and naughty, no different from impulses and urges they have experienced (and sometimes even acted upon) that have been destructive to themselves and/or others. In a culture where there is much fear of "anything goes," it is not difficult for some people, especially when bombarded with misinformation and anti-gay propaganda, to at least question, if not believe, that letting persons of the same gender marry (gay or otherwise) is going to undermine sexual morality and social structures. It's not logical in terms of reason, but on an emotional level it apparently has a big appeal.

Someone like Rick Warren may reveal by both his words and his laughter that he is deeply uncomfortable with homosexuality. But, at least until now, it may have been true that he held no particular animus towards homosexual persons and was willing to allow people of the same gender to join together and live in Civil Unions for what legal protections they might afford. I know full well that that is not good enough, that such supposedly benign or neutral or "moderate" views only act to give cover to deep prejudice and fear that can erupt in hate at any time. But, I still think that it pays to not only understand where these folks are coming from but also to try to speak their language and to start engaging in dialogue based on shared values and goals.

For a long time "straight" culture has benefited from the gadfly role of gay culture -- its deliberate upending of conventional norms, its wit, its satire, its humor, and scathing criticism. I'm not going to presume to tell GLBTs how to be, as either citizens of the world or political constituents in the U.S. or elsewhere. But I would like to suggest that one avenue of advocacy for full equality is for gays and heteros to tackle together the confounding issues of human sexuality from a perspective that recognizes that persons of various sexual orientations face many of the same human problems with respect to coming to terms with their sexuality and learning to live with it in peace with oneself and others.

I don't know about Rick Warren personally, but his words convey an attitude towards sexuality that is no more healthy for heterosexuals than it is homosexuals. People have sexual urges, some stronger than others. People in hetero marriages can and do engage in all sorts of sexual behaviors (with various body parts, as well) out of boredom, self-gratification, pleasure, and assertion of power. Sex poses the same temptations towards evil or good for just about all of us. Someday I hope we can all get to that understanding and simply deal with it. But until then, it seems to me that we've got to start talking about all of it more openly and honestly. While I wouldn't want to submit Rick Warren as the poster child for such talk, I would like to suggest that the occasion of this latest controversy might be used to get such conversations going, to talk through some of the things Warren said with all sorts of people, not just try to silence him. Some people can be reached, sooner or later, one by one, step by step. But if they are continually shunned and shunted aside, I do not see what hope there is that progress will be made.

Mad as Hell and Not Going to Take it Anymore?

There are few who enjoy engaging in outrage and righteous indignation as much as I do. I'm sure there is ample evidence of it at this blog as well as around blogland. In addition, I've got more than one family member to remind me of it, especially the teenagers who just can't wait to find themselves in a car with their friends with their mom driving somewhere and gesticulating wildly about the latest news article, court opinion, video clip, or Anglicana dust-up that has appeared online. Ordinarily, I dismiss their lack of interest in the latest life-or-death controversy as shallowness on their part. I take very seriously my causes and the careful reading I do to keep informed. Those who don't keep up and, worse yet, don't want to, are to be scorned, tolerated, or pitied.

Well, I hope I haven't been as bad as all that, but I'm not taking any chances anymore. Moral outrage and righteous indignation is cheap, easy to come by, easy to spew forth. The character Howard Beale in the 1976 movie Network epitomized this in his famous speech, taking up the troubles of the people in the audience and using them to arouse the ire of everyone (and in the process, boost the network's sagging ratings):

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

[shouting] 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

IMDb. As the film critic Roger Ebert pointed out twenty-five years later, the movie turned out to be "like prophecy. When Chayefsky created Howard Beale, could he have imagined Jerry Springer, Howard Stern and the World Wrestling Federation?" (Wiki quoting Ebert's 2000 review). And I might add, could he, in writing the "Ecumenical Liberation Army" into the plot, have imagined what the internet would end up doing to religious discussions and debate?

There are, of course, plenty of things worth getting mad about. Outrage is a good thing when it finally wakes people up out of a slumbering apathy, out of the sense that well, things aren't always what we'd like them to be, but we think we can muddle through just fine, taking care of ourselves in the here and now, and giving no mind to those who might be out to harm us or our neighbors or worse yet, not seeing how we can extend a helping hand to those in need. Sometimes one has to stand up for oneself and others who need fighting for, to speak up, shouting if need be, to take to the streets, the law courts, the legislature, and, when all else fails, maybe even take up a stone or musket or... whatever.

But aside from the usual worries about which causes are worth pursuing, whether some ends ever justify the means, what can and must be done for the least of us, there is the problem of just plain getting stuck in the white hot flash of anger that comes with most fervent expressions of moral outrage and righteous indignation. I got deeply mired in it myself during the closing days of the election campaigning. While there was nothing inherently wrong with appreciating the best of what Olbermann, Maddow, Stewart, and Colbert (among others), had to offer, to follow the news and the arguments, pro and con, there came a point for me when that's about all I could do. I was so angry that I found myself freezing up at a phone bank one evening, unable to make another call. I became so fearful that after an entire lifetime of being, for the most part, on the losing side of almost every political campaign or any other kind of cause I participated in, that I'd end up in a country with Sarah Palin at the helm, one in which no one cared about reason, science, justice, corporate malfeasance, economic inequality, war, peace.... or anything else that really matters, that religion, especially, would be left in the dung heap of those who might commandeer any human institution for their own greedy and selfish ends. I thought I was concerned about the country, but really, it was all about me, how the wrong result was going to offend, aggrieve, irritate, and confound me personally, as if that could really matter in the larger scheme of things.

And then, despite all odds and all my worst paranoid fears, Obama won the election. I knew from the beginning that it wasn't going to change anything overnight, that Obama most likely would make plenty of mistakes, and that his thoughtful approach to problems was no guarantee of any particular results, but...... still, not only did it create the first national hope I can remember since JFK was elected, it showed, at least for a moment, that the voices of hate and unreason were not always going to win, that at least on one day a plurality of Americans could once come together to say "no" to the hard, neo-cons and their allies on the religious right. Yes, that victory was diminished by the failure to gain the majority needed to defeat Prop. 8 in California, but it was still something of a miracle that Obama won the national race.

I don't know today whether the new administration is going to bring any substantial changes to this nation or the world at large. But the fact of its election has, slowly but surely, begun to change me. I very much appreciate the many people I have encountered online who provide companionship and solace to those who are in pain, who are discouraged, and who may need to stand up and shout with no small measure of outrage and righteous indignation over those things in the world around us that cannot be suffered in silence. But I just don't feel like I can or should be a part of that culture of pain and anger and outrage anymore.

I'm tired, so very tired, of the anger all the time, of being angry and reading others' angry outbursts, at least when there is an unwillingness to cut it off and move on to either taking positive action against whatever has provoked the anger or putting it aside and focusing on what can be done here and now. I'm even more weary of the pace at which news erupts, opinions are given, and reactions blown all over the internet, with relatively little time for reflection, deliberation, or thought. I've been as guilty of it as anyone, but it is time to stop -- stop the egotism of believing that individual outrage is worth emitting, day in and day out, and that I and those who think like me are always good and right and fairminded, and that the tone and cadence of our collective outrage is somehow different from what we see spewing forth from the blogs and news sources we have come to hate so much.

This all occurred to me long before this latest controversy about Rick Warren burst on the scene, but I haven't until now tried to take some time to try to pull it together and start thinking about how to put it in practice. As some may have read what I've written elsewhere on the Rick Warren issue, partly in the heat of the moment, let me try to clarify what, if anything, all this has to do with that topic, although I still do not know if I'm up to addressing it in full.

First, I am in no position to judge whether someone else has the "right" to be angry or whether anger, or at least outrage, might be an appropriate or helpful response to a given situation or problem. Second, I don't know what the best tactics or strategies are for changing the laws and the hearts and minds of people with regard to gay marriage. I do, however, suspect that the civil rights approach does not appeal much to anyone but those who already firmly believe in the cause because the emphasis on freedom, autonomy, and choice does not address the values and concerns of those who question the wisdom of opening up marriage to everyone, regardless of gender. Instead of trying to reframe the issue in terms of stability, fidelity, and strong family relationships, the demand for freedom seems to play into the worst fears and prejudices of those who are inclined to think of gay marriage as simply a license for peculiar sexual behavior.

Third, the politics of offense and grievance has never worked well for any minority, yet over and over people - heteros as well as gays and lesbians - seem obsessed with talking about how hurt and offended they are that there are people who do not understand or respect persons who are GLBT and who speak and act accordingly. That seems to be the reality, has been for a very long time. It does not do anything to even try to change the hearts and minds of those who are causing the harm -- it only says that it is terrible that such attitudes exist, that those who express them are wrong and awful and not worthy to speak in public, and that what counts is repeating the demands for respect and equality over and over as if saying it enough times will get the point across to those who think they are really being asked to condone immorality and to respect licentious or unwholesome behavior.

Maybe I'm being insensitive, or stupid or whatever. Maybe I'm in position to be more objective. I don't know for sure. What I do know is this is not a fight I can engage in as long as it requires me to keep beating the drums of anger and outrage at what I know is wrong, just to keep in good graces with those who feel the need to keep at it. There may be a time for casting stones, but the more important work and the longer time required is in gathering them. For now, I'd like to see if I can work on the gathering.

Meanwhile, I want to reiterate that I am not suggesting that no one should ever get mad or express outrage. I do believe, however, that on the issue of GLBT rights, that there must be a concerted effort to get the positive message out that what is at stake is not sexual freedom per se, as the opponents like Warren would have it, but rather the way of preventing teenage suicides, of building up relationships and families, of encouraging and promoting responsible, faithful, loving behavior on the part of all persons, no matter what their sexual orientation. The Rick Warrens of the world want to write off GLBTs as some tiny segment of the total population unconcerned about the good of all, rather than those who are often who are vital members of the larger community, who are friends and family and neighbors and colleagues, who pay taxes, raise children, grow old and pretty much live like everyone else, except to the extent that society creates barriers against them.

That message, however, has to come from those who know the stories as their own, who can give full pictures and accounts of real-life people, their pains and sorrows, their loves and their joys, not just talking points or positions or general statements of offense and injustice. I cannot tell those stories - can only tell others that they are real and important. I can, however, listen with the eyes and ears of an outsider, to suggest, the best I can, those gaps in information or narratives that may not be apparent to those who know them well. I'm good at analysis and criticism, the more measured and carefully thought out the better. If someone wants to make use of those skills, I have them here to offer, for whatever they're worth.

But as for the outrage over injustice and hate and sin -- I'm sorry. I'm just done out on that score. Outrage, disgust, dismay over the evil in the world is not worth the spit and the sputter. It also can put one in mortal danger of making claims of being more righteous and virtuous than the poor soul who is the object of all that wrath and indignation. I don't like what Rick Warren says and does about gays and lesbians. I believe he is deeply wrong. But I am also deeply suspicious of those who truly believe that others are more worthy to give prayers than he is, who are ready to make the judgment that all the work he has done to combat poverty and AIDs is overshadowed by the harm his homophobic views has caused, and that the importance of the prayer-giver is the group or causes he or she is perceived as representing, not the prayers themselves or the God who hears them. In the end, I wonder if there isn't more reason to distrust all those who claim to have God on their side, progressive and reactionary, than there is to distrust politicians. In any event, we'll all have to wait and see what happens. We live in interesting times.

A Time for Casting Stones, A Time for Gathering Them Together

+Clumber's colleague, The Rev. Dr. James B. Simons, of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh issued the following [HT seeking spirit]:

State of the Diocese Report
Special Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh
December 13, 2008

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven”

These familiar words, from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, are often read at funerals and were turned into a popular song in the 1960’s. The preacher, Koheloth, begins to pair opposites such as in “a time to be born and time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh.” Of the fourteen pairings, one has always troubled me, or, I should say, didn’t make a lot of sense to me and seemed to be out of place with the others. It occurs in the fifth verse: ” A time to cast stones and a time to gather stones together”.

As I reflect on the events of the past several years, and more specifically in the Diocese of Pittsburgh over the past several months, I now think I understand this verse, and in many ways it has become the most poignant of them all.

As we move forward as the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, we need to make a decision about which season we are in: the season where we cast stones or the season where we gather them. I would like to suggest that we end the season of stone throwing and enter into a new season — one in which stones are gathered, gathered so that we might rebuild what has been torn down.

Casting stones:

As we seek to rebuild the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, we are not starting with a clean slate. As we move forward we carry the burden and scars of our recent past history. In short, we have developed a culture over the past several years that has not been one of grace and charity. We bring with us patterns of behavior which sought to categorize and judge others by what were in many cases arbitrary measures. We have not thought the best of each other and we have assigned motives for others’ actions, often without speaking to that person or seeking to obtain accurate information. It was a culture of fear and control, and many in this room, including myself, cooperated in the creation of that culture. It was a culture of throwing stones, and I stand before you now to say, “Today that culture ends.”

In the eighth chapter of The Gospel According to St. John, Jesus is confronted by a group of religious leaders who bring to him, as John describes it, “a woman who had been caught in adultery.” It is quite possible that this woman had been dragged from her bed, disheveled and partially clothed and forcibly driven through the streets of Jerusalem to the temple itself where Jesus was teaching. A woman found to be in grievous sin dragged to the holiest site of her faith. She is to be an object lesson, and Jesus is asked if she should be stoned, as the law permits. You all know his response, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” And John tells us that one by one, starting with the eldest, the religious leaders turned and walked away. At the clergy renewal of vows two years ago, the preacher recalled this story and asked us to imagine something I am going to ask you to imagine also, namely, that as each man turned to leave he dropped the stone he was holding so the departure was not silent but rather punctuated by the staccato dropping of perhaps hundreds of stones on the pavement of the temple court.

It is time to stop casting stones: it is time to realize with humility that we are all sinners saved by the grace of God, that judgment is not ours to render, and that we would do well to drop the stones we now hold and instead open our hands to each other.

This will be no easy task. The hurts and wounds are very real, and healing will come only when we are willing to let go of the pain. We need to ask for forgiveness and we need to forgive as we have been forgiven by God, and move forward in grace.

Patterns of behavior have been established, many unconsciously, and we need to give each other permission to stop and say, “No, that’s they way we used to treat each other. We’re not doing that anymore.” We’ll need to re-evaluate every aspect of our lives and ask the question, “Is this the way that Jesus would have us behave and treat each other?” We will make mistakes, and there will be false starts. There will be more hurt, but if are willing to be vulnerable to one another and believe the best of each other, the old patterns will begin to melt away and we can move ahead with grace and charity.

Picking up Stones:

But it will not be enough simply to let go of the stones, the old patterns of behavior, and the hurts we have accumulated. We need to start gathering a different kind of stones. Stones that will enable us to rebuild what is in disrepair.

Nehemiah served in perhaps the most trusted position in the Persian Empire. He was cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. It was his job, among other things, to taste the King’s food before the king ate it, so as to insure the king’s safety. Over a hundred years beforehand, the first wave of exiles had returned to Jerusalem, among them Ezra whose task was to begin the rebuilding of the temple itself. Nehemiah, having never been to Jerusalem, receives word that the city is in tatters, that the walls which protect the great city have fallen, and that people are vulnerable to outside attacks. After a long period of prayer, Nehemiah petitions the king for leave to go and rebuild the walls. Permission is grated. Nehemiah makes the journey and completes the task in record time.

I have often described the task before us as “Herculean,” an adjective which evokes the Roman myth of Hercules and his twelve labors. But our task here is not Herculean, achieved by virtue of our own strength. Rather, our task is “Nehemian” – to be accomplished in faith, with prayer, and through obedience to the Lord.

The people of Nehemiah’s time gathered stones in order to build, knowing that their faithfulness would be blessed by God. These are the stone we need to gather, stones of rebuilding, stones of construction, stones that allow us to create, and in that creation to rejoice with the Creator. It is time to gather stones. It is time to rebuild. It is time for us to focus on what unites us, not what divides us. For what unites us is far deeper and more powerful than that which separates.

“What does this look like?” you may ask. I would like to suggest that there are at least three aspects to this rebuilding.

First and foremost, we acknowledge that the foundation stone on which we build is the person of Jesus Christ. We are, and continue to be, a Diocese which upholds the classic formularies of the church — the Nicene and Apostle Creeds — affirming the Deity of Christ, his sonship with the father, his redeeming work on the cross, and his offer of salvation to the world. We believe scripture to be the Word of God and that it contains all things necessary for salvation. It is from this that all else flows, it is on this foundation that we build. All of our outreach, all of our social service, all of our mission work is predicated on these facts and driven by the sure and certain knowledge that we are redeemed people who wish to make Christ’s redemption known to the world. Everything begins from here.

Second is incarnational ministry. In his book The Rise of Christianity, University of Washington sociologist Rodney Stark set out to test the commonly held story that the church, during its first three hundred years, grew exponentially in the Roman Empire. He was asking the question, “Is it really possible that such a movement could grow so much so fast?” His conclusion was “yes” but the reasons were a bit surprising.

What led to the rapid growth of the early church was not a commitment to purity of doctrine. In fact, there were huge theological debates (which make much of what we struggle with today seem paltry), and the first Council of Nicea, which began to bring some uniformity of belief, wouldn’t occur until 325. What Stark discovered was that the church grew because of what I would call “incarnational” ministry. That is, the early Christians “became Christ” to the world.

In the mid third century the plague came to Alexandria, Egypt, and in the course of several months two-thirds of the city’s population died. Those of means abandoned the city, often leaving sick family and friends behind to die. But the Christians stayed. They stayed and ministered not only to their own but also to everyone regardless of their religion. The testimony of this incarnated love was what caused people to be attracted from paganism to a faith in Jesus Christ.

All around the empire this sort of behavior was seen. Christians visited the garbage dumps and collected the infants left to die, they took in the widowed and orphaned, they treated women better than even the official law of Rome would have them treated. They engaged the world with a self-sacrificing love which, like the plague itself, became infectious. It changed the world.

This is the way we need to be. We will build this diocese with the stones of the incarnation. We will show the world what it means to love one another and what it means to love a world which is broken and hostile. To lay down our very lives because of the life which was laid down for us and for the world. The world cannot help but be attracted to that.

Lastly, and I hesitate to use this word because it is so misused, diversity needs to be a hallmark of our common life together. But this is not easy to achieve and will not be brought to fruition simply by our trying to be more diverse.

My undergraduate degree is in stream and lake ecology. My thesis was developing a baseline study establishing the water quality of a large stream in Allegheny County. There is an inherent problem with assessing the water quality of a stream: the water is always moving. If someone is emitting an effluent at intervals, that substance may or not be present when chemical testing is done. What environmentalists have discovered is that the quality of the water can be established by assessing the diversity of the biological life forms found in it. In other words, the better the water quality, the more diverse the community.

The healthier the environment, the more diverse the community is. One does not improve the quality of the water by introducing diversity; one increases the diversity of the community by improving the quality of the environment.

I believe the same is true of every community, including the church. If we want to enjoy the diversity which has been one of the characteristics of the Episcopal Church, we must work to create an environment that fosters such a community.

This brings me back to where I started: we can only do this when we abandon the patterns of behavior to which have become accustomed. We must be in conversation, seeking to understand each other and when possible to rejoice and embrace the diversity God has blessed us with.

This is not to say that there are no boundaries and that everything is necessarily acceptable. But the church is broader than we have allowed it to be here and we need to work at creating a healthy environment that fosters appropriate diversity.

And now we come to the first test in seeing if we can lay aside the old patterns of behavior and move forward, trusting that the leadership which has been raised up is prayerfully seeking what is best for the Diocese and every member in it.

Your Standing Committee has been meeting with representatives of the Presiding Bishop’s office in order to ascertain the best way forward in establishing an Episcopal presence in the diocese at this time, that is to say the presence of a bishop.

There were two possible ways to do this. The first is termed a “Provisional Bishop”. This individual would be elected by the convention and would assume full ecclesiastical authority in the diocese.

The second option is termed an “Assisting Bishop”. This individual would be selected by the Standing Committee to assist the Diocese, while the Standing Committee would continue to be the ecclesiastical authority. However, certain aspects of that ecclesiastical authority would be delegated to the assisting bishop by agreement of the Standing Committee. This is the route we have chosen to take. We believe that it gives the diocese more autonomy in making decisions as we move forward in what is certainly a time of fragility. There is also the reality that the universe of candidates available to be Assisting Bishop is larger, as the role is part-time and would not be for the entire time between now and the election of a diocesan Bishop.

I am pleased to announce that, subject to a letter of agreement being signed, your Standing Committee has asked Bishop Robert H. Johnson, retired bishop of Western North Carolina, to act as Assisting Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. I need to make sure that there is no confusion here. The State of North Carolina has several dioceses and at one time there were two Bishop Robert Johnsons in the state. The Standing Committee has chosen Robert H. Johnson of Western North Carolina, who currently resides in Ashville.

Bishop Johnson is a Jacksonville, Florida native and was ordained in 1963. He served parishes in Jacksonville and Atlanta before being elected Bishop in 1988. He has been active in CREDO and serves on the board of the Church Pension Fund. He has been married for 46 years and has two grown children. Bishop Johnson most recently served in a similar capacity to what we are asking in The Diocese of Southern Virginia and did a wonderful job. We are thrilled that Bishop Johnson will join us in this capacity. He will be with us approximately two weeks a month and his commitment is until the end of July 2009.

Bishop Johnson’s task will be threefold. First, he will help us to rebuild the infrastructure of the Diocese and be responsible for the day-to-day administrative tasks. Second, he will be available for parish visitations to do confirmations and other sacramental ministries. Third, and most importantly, he will be a pastor to us. Bishop Johnson will help us begin the healing we so badly need. He is, we believe, the right person at the right time.

Our old culture would now start to throw stones. It would “Google” the Bishop’s name and begin to collect writings and voting records, it would be mistrustful and suspicious. It would dwell on the deficits and not the benefits. Perhaps some from whom we are separated will do this.

We need to not do that. Rather, we need to trust that those who have been raised up to leadership have everyone’s best interest in mind and that this is not just a human answer to a situation but a godly one as well. We need to see this appointment as God’s way of moving us forward, to recognize it as another stone we gather in the rebuilding of our common life.

At the end of the book that bears his name, Joshua confronts the people of Israel and asks them to choose this day who they will serve. He is honest with them about the difficulties this choice will bring, that serving YHWH is not an easy task. It is in this context that he utters perhaps his most well-known line, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

And so a similar choice lies before us today. Will we choose the old way, the way of throwing stones and serving the past, or will we choose to serve the Lord, to serve him by picking up stones to rebuild for the future? Serving the Lord by gathering the stones of creating will not be easy, but I believe that we are equal to the task. That to which God has called us He will empower us to complete.

I want to close by making a personal declaration to all you here today. It is simply this: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Andrew Sullivan on Rick Warren

Andrew Sullivan has some additional thoughts about the controversy over Rick Warren's role at the Inauguration from the perspective of Christian gay man. He writes in "Taking Yes for an Answer":

If I cannot pray with Rick Warren, I realize, then I am not worthy of being called a Christian. And if I cannot engage him, then I am not worthy of being called a writer. And if we cannot work with Obama to bridge these divides, none of us will be worthy of the great moral cause that this civil rights movement truly is.

The bitterness endures; the hurt doesn't go away; the pain is real. But that is when we need to engage the most, to overcome our feelings to engage in the larger project, to understand that not all our opponents are driven by hate, even though that may be how their words impact us. To turn away from such dialogue is to fail ourselves, to fail our gay brothers and sisters in red state America, and to miss the possibility of the Obama moment.

It can be hard to take yes for an answer. But yes is what Obama is saying. And we should not let our pride or our pain get in the way.

Read the rest at the The Daily Dish at The Atlantic. Sullivan also shared this post from one of his readers:

All the interpretations of the Warren pick I've read are that he's practicing business as usual, triangulation, appeasing the far-right religious nutters, bashing the gays, and on and on. As a 54-year-old woman, I was fortunate to be born into an era in which the great strides in gender equality were already won by the hard work of our mothers and grandmothers. Yet, I've endured crude misogyny, and have learned that I'm probably not in a small minority.

I run my own successful design business, but spent many early years in work situations where I was the only woman in an all-male shop. The one lesson I learned right off the bat is that equality and acceptance in one's day-to-day life can only be won on the individual level. We all need laws to insure our rights when they are threatened, but one cannot change a closed or bigoted mind by writing an article, or passing laws, or protesting in outrage, or marginalizing the haters, or calling them names, or turning one's back in outrage. The only way to change a mind is to change a heart, and the only way to do that is to open oneself to the other person and slowly slowly allow them to learn that you are not "other," you are not frightening, you are not immoral.

You are just like them. I'm not saying it changes every mind, but every mind that has been changed, has been changed at the personal level by getting to know an individual from the group they fear or despise.

I suspect Barack Obama is exquisitely aware of this from his own life of otherness and assimilation. Has anyone considered that perhaps he chose Rick Warren, not as a maneuver for his own political gain, but rather as a way of keeping Warren close and engaged in order to change HIS heart, therefore changing his mind. Imagine the influence of a Rick Warren telling his followers that he wrong about gays, that they are really OK and just like them? It's an amazing thought, and perhaps improbable, but who would know unless it's tried? I think this is where Obama is coming from, and I, for one, am eager to see just how it will all play out in the ensuing years.

The Daily Dish

A Polarized Electorate Is Not Good Enough

Ghosts of Christmases past and present and maybe Christmas future:

There's the religious absolutism of the Christian right, a movement that gained traction on the undeniably difficult issue of abortion, but which soon flowered into something much broader; a movement that insists not only that Christianity is America's dominant faith, but that a particular fundamentalist brand of that faith should drive public policy, overriding any alternative source of understanding, whether the writings of liberal theologians, the findings of the National Academy of Sciences, or the words of Thomas Jefferson.

And there is the absolute belief in the authority of majority will, or at least those who claim power in the name of the majority -- a disdain for those institutional checks (the courts, the Constitution, the press, the Geneva Conventions, the rules of the Senate, or the traditions governing redistricting) that might slow our inexorable march toward the New Jerusalem.

Of course there are those within the Democratic Party who tend toward similar zealotry. But those who do have never come close to possessing the power of a Rove or a DeLay....

Mainly though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and we wait for a White House scandal.

And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups these days goes something like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach.

I understand the frustration of these activists. The ability of the Republicans to repeatedly win on the basis of polarizing campaigns is indeed impressive. I recognize the dangers of subtlety and nuance in the face of the conservative movement's passionate intensity. And in my mind, at least, there are a host of Bush Administration policies that justify righteous indignation.

Ultimately though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine."

It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. This is not a problem for the right; a polarized electorate -- or one that easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate -- works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government. After all, a cynical electorate is a self-centered electorate.

But for those who believe that government has a role to play in promoting opportunity and prosperity for all Americans, a polarized electorate is not good enough. Eking out a bare Democratic majority is not good enough. What's needed is a broad majority of Americans -- Democrats, Republicans, and independents of goodwill -- who are reengaged in the project of national renewal, and who see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interests of others.

I'm under no illusion that the task of building such a working majority will be easy. But it's what we must do, precisely because the task of solving American's problems will be hard. It will require tough choices, and it will require sacrifice. Unless political leaders are open to new ideas not just new packaging, we won't change enough hearts and minds....

Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of engagement are futile. Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians our paunch-bellied gladiators and those who bother to pay attention just fans on the sidelines: We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side, and if it takes a late hit or a cheap shot to beat the other team, so be it, for winning is all that matters.

But I don't think so. They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way -- in their own lives, at least -- to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves. I imagine the white Southerner who growing up heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that but who has struck up a friendship with the black guys at the office and is trying to teach his own son different, who thinks discrimination is wrong but doesn't see why the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his own son. Or the former Black Panther who decided to go into real estate, bought a few buildings in the neighborhood, and is just as tired of the drug dealers in front of those buildings as he is of the bankers who will not give him a loan to expand his business. There's the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenager's abortion, and the millions of waitresses and temp secretaries and nurse's assistants and Wal-mart asscoaites who hold their breath every single month in the hope that they'll have enough money to support the children they did bring into the world.

I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting.

They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (New York: Vintage Books, July 2008) at 46-47,48-49, 50-51.

Others on Obama's brand of pragmatism (of the Dewey variety, not Clintonesque Machiavellianism) see: Mitchell Aboulafia, "Obama's Pragmatism (or Move over Culture Wars, Hello Political Philosophy)" at TPM Cafe; Christoper Hayes, "The Pragmatist" in The Nation; and Cass R. Sunstein, "The Empiricist Strikes Back" in The New Republic.

The Ready Market for Rage

Stemming from a discussion of Louis Farrakan, black nationalism, and the attempt of market black POWER products, including toothpaste, Barack Obama wrote:

Questions of competition, decisions forced by a market economy and majoritarian rule; issues of power. It was this unyielding reality - that whites were not simply phantoms to be expunged from our dreams but were an active and varied fact of our everyday lives -- that finally explained how nationalism could thrive as an emotion and flounder as a program. So long as nationalism remained a cathartic curse on the white race, it could win the applause of the jobless teenager listening on the radio or the businessman watching late-night TV. But the descent from such unifying fervor to the practical choices blacks confronted every day was steep. Compromises were everywhere. The black accountant asked: How am I going to open an account at the black-owned bank if it charges me extra for checking and won't even give me a business loan because it says it can't afford the risk? The black nurse said: White folks I work with ain't so bad, and even if they were, I can't be quitting my job -- who's gonna pay my rent tomorrow, or feed my children today?

Rafiq had no ready answers to such questions, he was less interested in changing the rules of power than in the color of those who had it and who therefore enjoyed its spoils. There was never much room at the top of the pyramid, though; in a contest framed in such terms, the wait for black deliverance would be long indeed. During that wait, funny things happened. What in the hands of Malcolm had once seemed a call to arms, a declaration that we would no longer tolerate the intolerable, came to be the very thing Malcolm had sought to root out: one more feeder of fantasy, one more masy for hypocrisy, one more excuse for inaction. Black politicians less gifted than Harold [Washington] discovered what white politicians had know for a very long time: that race-baiting could make up for a host of limitations. Younger leaders, eager to make a name for themselves, upped the anted, peddling conspiracy theories all over town -- the Koreans were funding the Klan, Jewish doctors were injecting black babies with the AIDS virus. It was a shortcut to fame, if not always fortune; like sex or violence on TV, black rage always found a ready market.

Nobody I spoke with in the neighborhood seemed to take such talk very seriously. As it was, many had already given up the hope that politics could actually improve their lives, must less make demands on them; to them, a ballot, if cast at all, was simply a ticket to a good show. Blacks had no real power to act on the occasional slips into anti-Semitism or Asian-bashing, people would tell me; and anyway, black folks needed a chance to let off a little steam every once in a while -- man, what do you think those folks say about us behind our backs?

Just talk. Yet what concerned me wasn't just the damage loose talk caused efforts at coalition building, or the emotional pain it caused others. It was the distance between our talk and our action, the effect it was having on us as individuals and as a people. That gap corrupted both language and thought; it made us forgetful and encouraged fabrication; it eventually eroded our ability to hold either ourselves or each other accountable. And while none of this was unique to black politicians or to black nationalists -- Ronald Reagan was doing quite well with his brand of verbal legerdemain, and white America seemed ever willing to spend vast sums of money on suburban parcels and private security forces to deny the indissoluble link between black and white -- it was blacks who could least afford such make-believe. Black survival in this country had always been premised on a minimum of delusions; it was such an absence of delusions that continued to operate in the daily lives of most black people I met. Instead of adopting such unwavering honesty in our public business, we seemed to be loosening our grip, letting our collective psyche go where it pleased, even as we sank into further despair.

The continuing struggle to align word and action, our heartfelt desires with a workable plan -- didn't self-esteem finally depend on just this? It was that belief which had led me into organizing, and it was that belief which would lead me to conclude, perhaps for the final time, that notions of purity -- of race or culture -- could no more serve as the basis for the typical black American's self-esteem than it could for mine. Our sense of wholeness would have to arise from something more than the bloodlines we'd inherited. It would have to find root in Mrs. Crenshaw's story and Mr. Marshall's story, in Ruby's story and Rafiq's; in all the messy, contradictory details of our experience.

Barak Obama, Dreams from My Father (New York: Crown Publishers, 1995, 2004) at pp. 203-204.

Barack Obama - Mixed blessings of the 1960's and the legacy of "With Us or Against Us?"

One aspect I find fascinating in Obama's writings is his perspective on 1960's ideals and activism from unique standpoint of someone whose parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, who played diverse roles in those times, in the context of different cultures, governments, races, and ethnic idenities. Here is one passage on this theme, which I marked in part because it hit some of the points in time that connect to my own experience growing up in the 1960's as part of a generation between his parents' generation and his own.

I've always felt a curious relationship to the sixties. In a sense, I'm a pure product of that era: As the child of a mixed marriage, my life would have been impossible, my opportunites entirely foreclosed, without the social upheavals that were then taking place. But I was too young at the time to fully grasp the nature of those changes, too removed -- living as I did in Hawaii and Indonesia - to see the fallout on America's psyche. Much of what I absorbed from the sixties was filtered through my mother, who to the end of her life would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal. The civil rights movement, in particular, inspired her reverence; whenever the opportunity presented itself, she would drill into me the values that she saw there: tolerance, equality, standing up for the disadvantaged.

In many ways, though, my mother's understanding of the sixties was limited, both by distance (she had left the mainland of the United States in 1960) and by her incorrigible, sweet-natured romanticism. Intellectually she might have tried to understand Black Power or SOD or those women friends of hers who had stopped shaving their legs, but the anger, the oppositional spirit, just wasn't in her. Emotionally her liberalism would always remain of a decidely pre-1967 vintage, her heart a time capsule filled with images of the space program, the Peace Corps and Freedom Rides, Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez.

It was only as I got older, then, during the seventies, that I came to appreciate the degree to which -- for those who experienced more directly some of the sixties' seminal events -- things must have seemed to be spinning out of control. Partly I understood this through the grumblings of my maternal grandparents, longtime Democrats who would admit that they'd voted for Nixon in 1968, an act of betrayal that my mother never let them live down. Mainly my understanding of the sixties came as a result of my own investigations, as my adolescent rebellion sought justification in the political and cultural changes that by then had already begun to ebb. In my teens, I bvecame fascinated with the Dionysian, up-for-grabs quality of the era, and through books, film, and music, I soaked in a vision of the sixties very different from the one my mother talked about: images of Huey Newton, the '68 Democratic National Convention, the Saigon airlift, and the Stones at Altamont. If I had no immediate reasons to pursue revolution, I decided nevertheless that in style and attitude I, too, could be a rebel, unconstrained by the received wisdom of the over-thirty crowd.

Eventually, my rejection of authority spilled into self-indulgence and self-destructiveness, and by the time I enrolled in college, I'd begun to see how any challenge to convention harbored within it the possibility of its own excesses and its own orthodoxy. I started to reexamine my ssumptions, and recalled the values my mother and grandparents had taught me. In this slow, fitful process of sorting out what I believed, I began silently registering the point in dorm-room conversations when my college friends and I stopped thinking and slipped into cant: the point at which the denunications of capitalism or American imperialism came too easily, and the freedom from the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readily embraced as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement, or claiming moral superiority over those not so victimized.

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (New York: Vintage Books 2006) at pp. 36-38.

He goes on to explain why the Reagan administration, despite its unjust economic policies, had a strong appeal to a nation weary of the tumult of the 1960's, and then says the following about see the new conservatisim that followed:

[F]or a younger generation of conservative operatives who would soon rise to power, for Newt Gringich and Karl Rove and Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, the fiery rhetoric was more than a matter of campaign strategy. They were true believers who mean what they said, whether it was "No new taxes" or "We are a Christian nation." In fact, with their rigid doctrines, slash-and-burn style, and exaggerated sense of having been aggrieved, this new conservative leadership was eerily reminiscent of some of the New Left's leaders in the sixties. As with their left-wing counterparts, athis new vanguard of hte right viewed politics as a contest not just between competing policy visions, but between good and evil. Activitists in both parties began developing litmus tests, checklists of orthodoxy, leaving a Democrat who questioned abortion increasingly lonely, any Republican who championed gun control effectively marooned. In this Manichean struggle, compromise became to look like weakeness, to be punished or purged. You were with us or against us. You had to choose sides.

Ibid. at pp. 41-42.