Trends on College Campuses

Two articles in the Op-Ed section of the Boston Globe caught my attention this week. Cathy Young in her article, "Balancing views on campus," in the Monday Globe reported on a conference held by the National Organization of Scholars November 17-19, an organization, concerned with the issues of political correctness on college campuses. She cites a statement by lawyer Harvey Silverglate, a liberal advocate for civil rights, that many issues and statements that would be considered worthy of debate in society are considered discriminatory on college campuses. Another presenter, Robert Johnson, a Brooklyn college historian noted that the University of Michigan website indicates that the university has 26 full time professors teaching American History, and of those 11 focus on race and ethnicity in America, and another nine specialize in women's history. As he notes, there are no classes taught by military or diplomatic historians.

In her Op-Ed article "Unlearning literature," in today's Globe, Elizabeth Kantor, cites a recent study conducted by the University of Connecticut and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute which concludes that seniors know less about U.S. history and government than do incoming freshman. Noting that colleges students not only learn about different subjects, they also learn attitudes and behaviors which shape character. She writes,
But too many of today's politically correct college professors aren't interested in persuading young Americans to adopt any such traditional attitudes as patriotism, civic responsibility, or traditional morality. In fact, may American colleges seem to be teaching students to spur the very things that students used to learn and delight in.

Universities are full of trendy English professors who don't read Shakespeare for the beauty of the poetry or its peerless insights into human nature. The point is to uncover the oppression that's supposed to define Western culture: the racism, "patriarchy," and imperialism that must lurk beneath the surface of everything written by those "dead white males"...

To a lot of professors, Western culture is something students need to be liberated from. It is not something to pass on and preserve.
I personally believe that there are all kinds of fundamentalism, not just that of the right. I come into contact with a lot of what I call liberal fundamentalism and am just as concerned about the homogenizing and forced uniformity this creates as well. I am especially concerned about this lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses. I'm wondering what thoughts you might have about this issue.

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Thought for the Day

Waiting is not a very popular attitude. In fact, most people consider waiting a waste of time. Perhaps this is because the culture in which we live is basically saying, "Get going! Do something! Show you are able to make a difference! Don't just sit there and wait!" For many people, waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go. And people do not like such a place. They want to get out of it by doing something.
In our particular historical situation, waiting is even more difficult because we are so fearful. One of the most pervasive emotions in the atmosphere around us is fear. People are afraid - afraid of inner feelings, afraid of other people, and also afraid of the future. And fearful people have a hard time waiting.
-- Henri Nouwen

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Uncertain Certainties

Richard Schweder, a professor of comparative human development at the University of Chicago had an interesting Op-Ed article with the title, "Atheists Agonistes" in the 11/27/06 issue of the New York Times. He began by noting how gauche it is considered in polite and cosmopolitan society to bring up God with any sense of seriousness in a conversation, say at a dinner party. To many people "who live in secular enclaves, religion is automatically associated with darkness, superstition, irrationality and an antique or pre-modern cast of mind. It has long been assumed that religion is opposed to science, reason and human progress; and the death of gods is simply taken for granted as a deeply ingrained Darwinian article of faith."

He notes the plethora of books now on the market such as best selling books, Daniel Dennet's Breaking the Spell and Richard Dawkin's God Delusion deriding those who believe and follow God. But as others have noted, like sociologist Christian Smith in The Moral, Believing Animal, atheists have their own myths of the world and how it became the way that it is. The attacks on people of faith are in part, he believes, the result of the secularist myth created by the Enlightenment crumbling as a viable way of actually understanding the world. He writes,

The Enlightenment story has its own version of Genesis, and the themes are well known: The world woke up from the slumber of the "dark ages," finally got in touch with the truth and became good about 300 years ago in Northern and Western Europe.

As people opened their eyes, religion (equated with ignorance and superstition) gave way to science (equated with fact and reason). Parochialism and tribal allegiances gave way to ecumenism, cosmopolitanism and individualism Top-down command systems gave way to the separation of church from state, of politics from science. The story provided a blueprint for how to remake and better the world in the image and interests of the West's secular elites.

Unfortunately, as a theory of history, that story has had a predictive utility of approximately zero. At the turn of the millennium it was pretty hard not to notice that the 20th century was probably the worst one yet, and that the big causes of all the death and destruction had rather little to do with religion. Much to everyone's surprise, that great dance on the Berlin Wall back in 1989 turned out not to be the apotheosis of the Enlightenment.

Perhaps with a twist of irony, he suggests that these secular elites might themselves be more tolerant of the religious and seek for understanding as opposed to vilification. Touche.

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Thought for the Day

Long periods of well-being and comfort are in general dangerous to all. After such prolonged periods, weak souls become incapable of weathering any kind of trial. They are afraid of it. Yet it is a fact that difficult trials and sufferings can facilitate the growth of the soul. I know there is a widespread feeling that if we highly value suffering this is masochism. On the contrary, it is a significant bravery when we respect suffering and understand what burdens it places on our soul.
-- Alexandria Solzhenitsyn

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Evil and the Justice of God, con't

In the third chapter, "Evil and the Crucified God," Wright moves his focus from the Old Testament story of God's risky plan to deal with evil through Israel, to the New Testament story. He writes, "The Gospels tell the story of how the evil in the world--political, social, personal, moral, emotional--reached its height, and how God's long-term plan for Israel (and for himself!) finally came to its climax. They tell both of these stories in--and as--the story of how Jesus of Nazareth announced God's kingdom and went to his violent death."

An essential piece of understanding Jesus and his ministry is that he totally identified himself with Israel: "taking its vocation upon himself, coming to the point of pain, of uncleanness, of sickness, folly, rebellion and sin." As a result, he bore--literally--Israel's sins. Furthermore, according to the gospels

Jesus suffers the full consequences of evil: evil from the political, social, cultural, personal, moral, religious and spiritual angles all rolled into one; evil in the downward spiral hurtling toward the pit of destruction and despair. And he does so precisely as the act of redemption, of taking the downward fall and exhausting it, so that there may be new creation, new covenant, forgiveness, freedom and hope.

Wright believes that the most adequate way of understanding what Jesus did on the cross, called "atonement," is what he refers to as Christus Victor [Christ the Victor] "the belief that on the cross Jesus has won the victory over the powers of evil."

You might think this is a pretty thin sounding argument given all of the evil and its effects that we see around us every day. But, the key is understanding that what was accomplished on the cross includes "both a backward look (seeing the guilt, sin and shame of all previous generations heaped up on the cross) and a forward dimension, the promise that what God accomplished on Calvary will be fully and finally implemented." In other words, the future has come forward to the present through the power of the Holy Spirit, and we live in the present 'in-between times" trusting God for its fullness in the future. Therefore, "The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love. The cross is not just an example to be followed; it is an achievement to be worked out, put into practice...it is the start of redemption, in which suffering and martyrdom are the paradoxical means by which victory is won."

He states that in the last two chapters he will show how this is all supposed to work out in the world in which we live.

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Thought for the Day

I believe it to be a great mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense in it.... We cannot blink at the fact that gentle Jesus meek and mild was so stiff in his opinions and so inflammatory in his language that he was thrown out of church, stoned, hunted from place to place, and finally gibbeted as a firebrand and a public danger. Whatever his peace was, it was not the peace of an amiable indifference.
- Dorothy Sayers

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The Trinity and the Church

In yesterday's sermon when I was describing the dynamic interaction between unity and diversity in the church I referred to the Trinity as the grounding for this understanding of the relatedness of unity and diversity. To many the idea of the Trinity is an abstract and barren theological concept that has about as much to do with daily reality as the solving of differential equations. But this is far from the truth. Over the last ten to fifteen years there has been a revival of interest in the Trinity and its relationship to life. The best that I have come across is Colin Gunton's book, The One, The Three, and The Many: God Creation and the Culture of Modernity published in 1993 by Cambridge University Press. This book has powerfully influenced my own appreciation for the significance of the Trinity not only to my theology but to my understanding of the fundamental nature of reality.

Gunton writes, "The expectation is that if the triune God is the source of all being, meaning, and truth we must suppose that all being will in some way reflect the being of the one who made it and holds it in being." In other words, if God is triune, "conceived neither as a collectivity nor as an individual, but as a communion, a unity of persons in relation," then one would expect that reality would in some way mimic this ultimate reality.

The fourth century church father, Gregory Nazianzus, whom Gunton quotes said, "No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One." Commenting on this way of experiencing the Trinity, Gunton notes that the result is "a dynamic dialectic [interrelationship] between the oneness and the threeness of God of such a kind that the two are both given equal weight in the process of thought. Thinking about God denies his [Gregory's] mind rest in either unity or plurality..."

The point in all of this is that the foundation for holding a unity with diversity and a diversity in unity is based on the fundamental nature of God. Neither the unity nor the diversity hold a privileged position in relation to the other. This is the reality into which a church needs to "live into" if it has a passion to minister faithfully, effectively, and powerfully in the world. How well do you think that we maintain this dynamic balance between unity and diversity?

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Thought for the Day

Truth keeps the hand cleaner than soap.
--West African Proverb

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Prayer for the Day

Grant me to recognize in other men, Lord God, the radiance of your own face.
--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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The Pope and Islam

The latest issue of Time magazine, November 27, 2006, has the Pope's upcoming trip to Turkey as its feature article entitled, 'The Passion of the Pope."The byline reads, "With his blunt talk on Islam, Benedict XVI is altering the debate between the Muslim world and the West. On the eve of his visit to Turkey, TIME looks at the roots of the Pope's views--and how they may define his place in history." I encourage you to read this article which you can find online at www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/11/19/cover.story.tm/index.html if you don't receive Time. Since his speech at the University of Regensburg on September 12th, he has been in the spotlight primarily in a negative light for fomenting misunderstanding and inflaming the already significant differences and conflicts between Christianity and Islam. Interestingly the Pope received an open letter from thirty-eight well-known Islamic theologians which while not agreeing with his Regensburg speech, "went on to 'applaud' the Pope's 'efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life' and expressed a desire for 'frank and sincere dialogue.'" What are you thinking of the Pope's trip to turkey and the potential for real dialogue?

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Thought for the Day

Truth is justice's handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion, safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train.
--Sydney Smith

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Marriage, French Style

In today's Boston Globe I read an article entitled, "Among French, little love is lost for traditional trips to the altar." The article informs us that the the marriage rate in France has decreased over 30% and the out of wedlock births have reached 59% for first-born French children. Segolene Royal, the woman who was nominated by the socialist party for president in the elections for next year, and in a cohabiting relationship with her partner, says, "Nowadays, people who don't want to get married don't do it to rebel or to reject religion; they do so because to them, loving someone doesn't have anything to do with society. It's personal." The article goes on to say, Contrary to predictions three decades ago, when the marital downslide began, French family social structures have not disintegrated. Instead, society has accepted and embraced changing attitudes. French laws stopped distinguishing between children born in or out of wedlock more that 30 years ago."

It is interesting to compare this rosy picture of the demise of marriage with actual sociological data. A recent publication by Institute for American Values entitled, Why Marriage Matters, Second Edition: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences, maintains that the conclusions from many sociological studies that have been done over the last several years indicate the crucial importance of marriage especially for children. Following are a few of the findings that relate most to this Boston Globe article:
1. The fact that parents are married increases the probability that both mothers and fathers will have a good relationship with their children. The report says, "Even cohabiting, biological fathers who live with their children are not as involved and affectionate with their children as are married, biological fathers who reside with their children."
2. Marriage and cohabitation are not functional equivalents. Concerning this finding, the report says,
"...children living in cohabiting unions do not fare as well as children living in intact, married families...A major problem associated with cohabitation for children is that cohabiting unions are much less stable than married unions. One recent study found that 50 percent of children born to a cohabiting couple see their parents' unions end by age five, compared to only 15 percent of children born to a married couple."
3. "Marriage, and a normative commitment to marriage, foster high-quality relationships between adults, as well as between parents and children." I want to quote an extended passage from this finding because it addresses the notion that all that matters is love.

Some say that love, not marriage, makes a family. They argue that family structure per se does not matter. Instead, what matters is the quality of family relationships. Others argue that the marital ethic of lifelong commitment needs to be diluted if we seek to promote high-quality relationships. Instead, the new marital ethic should be conditional, such that spouses should remain together only so long as they continue to love one another.

These arguments, however, overlook what we know about the effects of marriage, and a normative commitment to the institution of marriage, on intimate relationships. By offering legal and normative support and direction to a relationship, by providing an expectation of sexual fidelity and lifelong commitment, and by furnishing adults a unique social status as spouse, marriage typically fosters better romantic and parental relationships than do alternatives to marriage. For all these reasons, in part, adults who are married enjoy happier, healthier, and less violent relationships, compared to adults who are in dating or cohabiting relationships.

This report contains many other findings, as well, but these three address the issues that are at least indirectly supported by the article in the Boston Globe. I'm wondering what you think about this new social paradigm of the relative unimportance of marriage.

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Thought for the Day

Pray to God, but keep rowing to the shore.
--Russian Proverb

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Prayer for Thanksgiving Day

I thank you, O Lord, my Lord,
for my being, my life, my gift of reason;
for my nurture, my preservation, my guidance;
for my education, my civil rights, my religious privileges;
for your gifts of grace, of nature, of this world;
for my redemption, my regeneration, in instruction in the
Christian faith;
for my calling, my recalling, my manifold renewed recalling;
for your forbearance and long-suffering, your prolonged
forbearance, many a time and many a year;
for all the benefits I have received, and all the undertakings
in which I have prospered;
for any good I may have done;
for the use of the blessings of this life.
...For all these and also for all other mercies, known and unknown,
open and secret, remembered by me, or now forgotten,
kindnesses received by me willingly, or even against my will,
I praise you, I bless you, I thank you, all the days of my life.
--Lancelot Andrewes

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Three G's

The older I get, the more I am aware of the connection between and the importance of grace, gratitude, and generosity. They are essential ingredients for a life well lived. Grace, God's overwhelming love for us, is the foundation to which gratitude and generosity are anchored. In order of priority I would place gratitude next followed by generosity. To receive life as a gift from God, to understand and accept God's "overwhelming scandalous love," as David Ford phrases it, for us and for the creation, necessarily leads to an incredible sense of gratitude and to the opening of our own floodgates of generosity. The reason for this is that grace is a completely free and undeserved act of generosity on God's part. The experiencing of this kind of generosity renovates and transforms our own hearts, minds, and imaginations so that we seek to become like the One whose been so generous to us. Truly experiencing God's grace at the center of our being without experiencing both gratitude and generosity is like swimming in a lake without getting wet: it's not possible.

It seems to me that the church should be a community of people of unparalleled gratitude and generosity. Unfortunately, the church has a very mixed record in this regard. But I would submit that the healthier a church becomes, the more the three G's will present themselves. What thoughts do you have about the three G's and how The United Church of Christ in Medfield is in this regard? I hope you have a Thanksgiving full of the three G's!

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Thought for the Day

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.
--Saint Ambrose

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Chapter 2 of Evil and the Justice of God

In the second chapter of his book, "What Can God Do About Evil?" Wright focuses on the Old Testament. He notes that there the Old Testament does not forthrightly address the problem of evil in a good world. Yes, there are a few tangential glimpses of evil as an unwanted marauder in God's good creation, but they aren't very satisfying answers. He writes, "The Old Testament oscillates among three things: evil seen as idolatry and consequent dehumanization; evil as what wicked people do, not least what they do to the righteous; and evil as the work of the "satan" (a Hebrew word meaning "accuser"). He acknowledges that none of these are really explanations, and that the Bible "simply doesn't appear to want to say what God can say about evil."

He spends the first third of the chapter discussing the fall, the tower of Babel, the flood, and God's covenant with Abraham and the mixture of good and bad in the stories of Genesis. He then says,

Somehow, strangely (and to us sometimes even annoyingly), the Creator God will not simply abolish evil from his world. The question that swirls around these discussions is, Why not? We are not given an answer; we are instead informed in no uncertain terms that God will contain evil, that he will restrain it, that he will prevent it from doing its worst, and that he will even on occasion use the malice of human beings to further his own strange purposes.

The Psalms frequently lament about the state of affairs: the evil prosper, the good suffer, and it doesn't make any sense. Yet they acknowledge that somehow God remains sovereign over the paradox of good and evil.

Wright then focuses on three specific texts that address evil, Isaiah 40-55, Daniel 7, and Job, and looks for clues in them. He concludes the chapter by making four observations. 1. The satan, evil personified, plays an important but not too important role. 2. The responsibility that humans bear for evil is undeniable and universal in extent. 3. There is a connection between human evil and "the enslavement of creation" but is complicated and unclear. At this point he notes that the Bible offers no theory for natural evil, evil like earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc. The Bible's focus is on moral evil, evil created by human beings. 4. The Old Testament does not address evil in a philosophically satisfying way, with a logically clear and understandable explanation of it. He writes,

At no point does the picture collapse into the simplistic one which so many skeptics assume must be what religious people believe, in which God is the omnicompetent managing director of a very large machine and ought to be able to keep in in proper working order. What we are offered instead is stranger and more mysterious: a narrative of God's project of justice within a world of injustice.

He concludes by stating that within this narrative lie the seeds that he will address in chapter 3, "Evil and the Crucified God."

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Thought for the Day

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.
--William Penn

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A Lament for New Orleans

As a result of a homework assignment of writing a lament (a formal expression of sorrow or mourning written in verse which occurs in the Bible) in her Bible Study, Cindy Brennan, one of the people who went on the mission trip to New Orleans, wrote "A Lament for New Orleans." I thought it was a powerful expression of what we experienced on the mission trip and have her permission to share it with you.

A Lament for New Orleans

A city lies in ruins, neighborhoods empty,
Homes abandoned, destroyed, shells of a past life,
Streets no longer traveled on, ball fields with no games,
No sounds of life--no laughter, no shrieks of joy, no dogs barking,
Just quiet… too quiet.
Why Lord?

Water lines mark each home
Green, brown and black mold envelopes all.
Growing up the walls, around windows, across floors to the ceiling.
Fingers reaching, grabbing what’s left, eating away the remains,
Of a home, of many homes, of neighborhoods, of the city.
Ruined.
Why Lord?

Piles of trash line the street.
Plasterboard, insulation flooring, ovens, curtains, chandeliers,
Recipe books, glassware, dishes, pots and pans.
An old suitcase, straw hats for every occasion,
A box of handmade ornaments – The twelve days of Christmas.
The wedding dress carefully placed on top.
A memory, glimpses of someone’s past.
Why Lord?

Where were you when the rain and wind came?
When the force of the water broke the levees?
When the water rushed down the streets of New Orleans?
Where were you when it engulfed homes?
Swallowing anything in its path, even your people?
Why Lord?

Where are you now, Lord? Where are you now?

You are in the hearts of those who return to New Orleans,
Determined to rebuild their city.
You share in their frustration, their grief, their loss,
Their anger.
You are in their tears, their laughter, their joy, their hope,
For a new beginning.

You are in the thousands of volunteers
Coming from across the street, from the next state, from across the country
From the west and the east and the north and the south.
Choosing to be here, to reach out to each other,
To help tear down, to clean out,
To listen to their stories, share memories and laughter
To give a hug or to hold a hand, to shed tears together.

To rebuild – a family’s home, a street full of homes,
A neighborhood, a city.
Rebirth, a new beginning
The postman delivering mail, traffic jams,
Sunlight’s reflection on the water, flowers pushing through the debris.
The butterflies fluttering around us.
Hope.
There you are Lord, There you are.

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Thought for the Day

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
--William Cowper

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Prayer for the Day

Christ the lowly and meek,
Christ the all powerful,
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak,
In the mouth of each who speaks to me,
In all who draw near me,
Or see me, or hear me!
--St. Patrick

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Evil and the Justice of God

The first chapter of N. T. Wright's book, Evil and the Justice of God, is entitled "Evil Is Still a Four-Letter Word." Wright argues that since the great Lisbon earthquake in 1755 the European philosophy has attempted to deal with the problem of evil. The direction that philosophy took, to his mind, was not in a good direction: it went in the direction of what he calls "automatic progress" which reached its peak in the philosophy of Hegel, but occurs in watered-down variations in a variety of current philosophies. He finds this belief in progress amazing given the blood-letting of World Wars I, World War II, and the Holocaust. He writes, "people still continue to this day to suppose that the world is basically a good place and that its problems are more or less soluble by technology, education, "development" in the sense of "Westernization," and the application, to more and more regions, of Western democracy--and, according to taste, of either Western social-democratic ideals or Western capitalism, or indeed a mixture of both."

This way of looking at the world, he believes, leads to three issues concerning what he terms the "new problem of evil." 1. Unless it hits us between the eyes, evil does not show up on our radar scopes. 2. If and when we are confronted by evil, we are surprised by it. 3. We respond to it in naive and dangerous ways. He concludes this section by saying, "We have discovered that evil is still, after all, a four-letter word; but we don't have a clue what to do with it or about it. And, let me add, ignoring it isn't an answer either.

In the middle of the chapter he turns to the issue of postmodernity and evil. What he appreciates about postmodernity is its addressing the modernist view of progress. "I regard the main function of postmodernity under God to be the preaching of the doctrine of the Fall (the truth of a deep and fatal flaw within human nature) to the modernist, post-eighteenth-century arrogance that supposes is has solved the world's problems." But postmodernity's analysis of the world fails on two accounts: it is dehumanizing and it does not allow for redemption. Postmodernism has done away with human responsibility and accountability and while it does acknowledge the reality of evil and its consequences, "it gives us no real clue as to what we should do about it."

He concludes the chapter by naming three factors that a Christian and Jewish view must take into consideration. The first factor is "the flaw in assuming that the Western type of democracy is perfect, complete, the climax of a long process of wise and noble libertarianism stretching back to Magna Carta." The second is that "there is such a thing as human evil and that it takes various forms. These forms include the state in which the people concerned are absolutely convinced, and will often argue very persuasively, that they are not only in the right but are the ones who are leading the way." The third is, referring to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's famous quotation, "the line between good and evil runs through each one of us."

He argues that society needs to strive to "integrate the various insights about evil which the greatest thinkers and social commentators have offered," and the church both critique these insights and offer in a mature fashion some of its own understandings. He concludes, "Evil may still be a four-letter word. But so, thank God, is love.

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Thought for the Day

Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.
--General Omar Bradley

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The Problem of Evil

N. T. Wright has just had his book, Evil and the Justice of God, published by Intervarsity Press. This book is the result of five lectures that he gave at Westminster Abbey in 2003 and a television program that was shown in England in 2005. He has dedicated his book to all those who died in the attacks on 9/11/01, from the tsunami in 2004, from the hurricanes in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in August of 2005, and from the earthquake that occurred in Pakistan and Kashmir in October of 2005. "They are a reminder," he writes in the preface, "that the 'problem of evil' is not something we will 'solve' in the present world, and that our primary task is not so much to give answers to impossible philosophical questions as to bring signs of God's new world to birth on the basis of Jesus' death and in the power of his Spirit, even in the midst of 'the present evil age.'"

Since evil and its existence has came into the spotlight in our society since 9/11, and since N. T. Wright is such a scholarly and yet accessible author, I plan to blog on his book for the next couple of weeks and share with you what he has to say. I hope that you will benefit from this as much as I do.

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Thought for the Day

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.
--Chinese Proverb

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Faith in Politics?

Today's New York Times Op-Ed section has an interesting article, "Putting Faith before Politics," by David Kuo who was the deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2001 to 2003, and the author of Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. Kuo believes that the pundits have not interpreted the election results accurately concerning the evangelical vote. Rather than evangelicals shifting to the democratic party, he believes that "evangelicals aren't re-examining their political priorities nearly as much as they are re-examining their spiritual priorities. That could be bad news for both political parties." He quotes a Beliefnet.com post-election online survey in which over 2000 respondents reported over 40% of evangelicals advocate a moratorium or "fast" from concentrated political activity and instead focus their time and energy on reaching out and helping the poor and downcast.

Quoting John W. Whitehead from the Rutherford Institute, he writes, "Modern Christianity, having lost sight of Christ's teaching, has been co-opted by legalism, materialism and politics. Simply put, it has lost its spirituality." Kuo writes, "C. S. Lewis once warned that any Christian who uses is faith as a means to a political end would corrupt both his faith and the faith writ large." I think that this applies to Christians across the board from conservative to liberal. Whenever politics co-opts our faith, it is bad for our faith and bad for politics. Any thoughts? What do you understand the relationship between faith and politics to be?

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Thought for the Day

We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.
--Cardinal Newman

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Money Well-Spent

In the last couple of weeks I have received gift catalogues from World Vision and Heifer International. The idea is that rather than buying a gift for a family member or friend (who doesn't really need anything), you purchase an item like a goat for a needy family, and your family member or friend receives a card saying that you have purchased the goat in his or her honor. I think this is a great idea which we could utilize to a far greater degree. How often have you sat racking your brain trying to come up with a gift idea for someone who really doesn't need anything and you eventually buy something that may end up sitting in a closet? I am wondering how many of you have tried this route of giving Christmas gifts and how successful it has been. I have had mixed results. Some family members feel that this kind of a gift is too impersonal, I think, and prefer to give and receive specific gifts intended for the person. Others think it's a good idea. How about you?

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Thought for the Day

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
--Thomas Carlyle

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Art and Culture

I read an article yesterday in which artist Makoto Fujimura comments on the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. A Christian whose paintings are exhibited and represented by Sara Tecchia Roma Gallery in New York City, and a member of the National Council on the Arts, he had been asked to comment on The Da Vinci Code by several people. Having never actually seen the painting in person, he felt unqualified to comment.

He then flew to Milan and took the opportunity to observe it in Santa Maria delle Grazie where it was painted. It was fascinating to "listen" to him as he described his interaction with this great work. I almost felt as though I was with him as he described what he saw. At one point Fujimura noted that the painting depicts the disciples just after Jesus tells them that one of them will betray him. He comments that betrayal has been with us from the beginning and that artists have commonly depicted it in their works. But he notes that in today's world, we expect betrayal, the media capitalizes on it, and, for example, entertain us with celebrities ongoing woes in this regard.

Fujimura then makes the following observation:

Our culture of betrayal goes way beyond individual failures; it is a culture that has lost the belief in the good, the true, and the beautiful. Without a fundamental confidence in civilization's own integrity--that wrong can be righted, that creativity is a gift to society--no art, and no work of our hands, can be infused with a transcendent vision. The culture of betrayal denies the potential to hope.

Our galleries and contemporary museums (not to mention movie theaters and bookstores) are full of vacuous images, designed to self-destruct. But blaming artists is not helpful: no, rather it is more accurate to say that artists are simply reacting to and honestly recording the conditions of our culture, They are, as Marshall McLuhan would have it, canaries in the cultural mines. Artists smell the poisoned air and sing.

What do you make of what he says? Do you think this is true? I have to admit that it makes sense to me. I thought his metaphor, artists as canaries in the cultural mines, to be especially powerful.

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Thought for the Day

A little more kindness and a little less creed,
A little more giving and a little less greed;
A little more smile and a little less frown,
A littles less kicking a man when he's down;
A little more "we" and a little less "I,"
A little more laugh and a little less cry;
A few more flowers on the pathway of life,
And fewer on graves at the end of the strife.
--Anonymous

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Still More on the Baylor Religion Study

Here are a few more findings from the Baylor study that I thought were interesting:
1. Persons with a more engaged God demonstrate a higher probability of attending church weekly and praying several times during the day.
2. An angry God has virtually no motivational power to encourage people to pray and attend worship services.
3. Both Roman Catholics and Mainline Protestants have a tendency to believe in a more Distant God.
4. Black Protestants and Evangelical Protestants have a tendency to believe in a more Authoritarian God.
5. Jews tend to believe in a Distant God and over 8% of Jews included in the sample were atheists.
6. Of those Americans who have no connection with church, synagogue, or mosque, more than 40% are atheists.
7. Those who feel strongly that God is a "he" have a greater tendency towards a belief in an Authoritarian God.
Any surprises here, or are these findings what you might have expected?

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Thought for the Day

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
--Henry Ward Beecher

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The Sunday Prayer

My God, I give you this day.
I offer you, now,
all of the good that I shall do
and I promise to accept,
for love of you,
all of the difficulty that I shall meet.
Help me to conduct myself during this day
in a way that pleases you.
--Francis de Sales

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More on the Baylor Religion Study

I blogged several days ago about findings from the Baylor Religions Study. The study found two dimensions of people's belief about God: God's level of engagement and God's level of anger. This led to the four different "Gods" in which people believe: Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical, and Distant. They found some interesting demographic relationships in this study. First, gender made a difference. Men had a tendency to believe in a less engaged God and women a more engaged God. Men are more likely to be atheists, as well. Second, they found that African-Americans by a wide margin believed in an Authoritarian God. None of the African-Americans in the sample purported to be atheists. Third, those individuals with lower levels of education and incomes tended to have a more engaged God and those with a college degree and an income over $100,000 are much more likely to believe in a Distant God or be atheists. Fourth, what region of the country that people live in has an important influence on the type of God they believe in. "Easterners disproportionately tend towards belief in a Critical God. Southerners tend towards an Authoritarian God. Midwesterners tend towards a Benevolent God and West Coaster tend towards belief in a Distant God." Do any of these findings surprise you? What do you make of this data?

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Thought for the Day

No man is the whole of himself. His friends are the rest of him.
--Proverb

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Poetry Anyone?

It has only been in the last six years or so that I have learned to appreciate poetry, both the importance of poetry and the skill it takes to write it well (not that I actually have this skill). I have read several books on writing and understanding poetry since I have virtually no training in it. Some have been OK and others dreadfully dull. But I have come upon a wonderful book on poetry, The Ode Less Travelled, that is written for the uninitiated and done so with verve and skill. The British author, Stephen Fry, is a novelist, an actor, and a comedian, and not a bad poet. He begins his book by saying,

I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry. This is an embarrassing confession for an adult to make...And yet...I believe poetry is a primal impulse with us all. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively years to try it...For me the private act of writing poetry is songwriting, confessional, diary-keeping, speculation, problem-solving, storytelling, therapy, anger management, craftsmanship, relaxation, concentration and spiritual adventure all in one inexpensive package.

He has given us a book that is eminently readable, accessible, and very funny. I will be reading and suddenly explode in laughter. I wish other authors that teach subjects could be so deft and funny. It would make learning other subjects far more enjoyable. This book is well worth reading whether you are an aspiring poet, or just an ordinary person for whom poetry is mystifying and you want to try to understand it better.

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Thought for the Day

Truth is always strong, no matter how weak it looks, and falsehood is always weak, no matter how strong it looks.
--Phillips Brooks

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More on God vs. Science

I just happen to have started reading Evolution as a Religion by British philosopher, Mary Midgley a couple of days before reading the article "God vs. Science" that I blogged about yesterday. The summary of the book on the back jacket says,

Considered one of Britain's finest philosophers, Midgley is notorious for exposing the illogical logic of a science turned poor doctrine. Never more at home than when taking on the high priests of evolutionary theory--Dawkins, Wilson and their acolytes--she famously described evolution as 'the creation-myth of our age.' In Evolution as a Religion she examines how science comes to function as a substitute for religion, and then exposes it as nothing more than a magnificent sham.

In chapter three she writes, "The arguments for our own faiths, including faith in science itself, lie outside science too. If we have the impression that our own faith needs no argument, being simply self-evident, this is merely dogmatic slumber." She is not debunking evolution as a scientific theory, she is challenging its mythic use portrayed as science. In other words, she is not challenging evolution as science, she is challenging many claims about the nature and meaning of the world that are supposedly based upon evolutionary theory.

This attitude of science as religion that Midgley describes comes through loud and clear in Dawkins statements to Collins. He strikes me as a "science fundamentalist" who won't brook any disagreement with his view. If you have had a chance to read the article, do you think my characterization of Dawkin's attitude is accurate?

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Thought for the Day

Bread for myself is a material question; bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.
--Jacques Maritain

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God and Science

The 11/13/06 issue of Time arrived yesterday and I was eager to read the feature article, "God vs. Science." The article excerpts a debate held in New York City 9/30/06 at the Time & Life Building between Richard Dawkins, professor at Oxford University and author of the recent book, The God Delusion; and Francis Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and author of the recent book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. It is worth reading if for no other reason than understanding some of the important issues being discussed in our society and the nature of some of the leading arguments for dismissing the existence of God. I clearly am not an unbiased observer in this debate, but I must say that I thought Dawkins came across as quite arrogant in the debate. I am tempted to call his position dogmatic atheism--there is a religious cast to his atheism. Actually, I am convinced that there are no true atheists. Something or someone is placed at the center of our lives and no matter what that something or someone is, it is the functional equivalent of God, and all of the attendant "commandments," "rituals," and "orthodoxies" follow. If you have read the article, what observations do you have? What do you think of my notion that there are no true atheists?

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Thought for the Day

The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.
--Cicero

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Too Much Closeness

An interesting article appeared today in the Op-Ed section of the New York Times entitled, "Too Close for Comfort," authored by Stephanie Coontz. With the recent news that married-couple households are now in the minority, she has been receiving many phone calls from people asking advice on how to strengthen their marriages. Rather than addressing that question, she suggests that we need to rethink the way that we currently view marriage as the emotional be-all and end-all for the partners. One of the many reasons for marital break-up is what one might call "emotional overload." Young people today are seeking not marriage partners so much as "soul mates." The search for a soul mate may sound romantic, but it is a setup for a failed marriage.

The solution that she recommends and with which I completely agree both as a pastor and a couples therapist is casting a wider net to have our emotional needs met. She writes, "we have also neglected our other relationships, placing too many burdens on a fragile institution and making social life poorer in the process. " By reaching out to friends, extended family, neighbors, etc., we can receive care that an overburdened spouse is unable to provide. As Coontz points out, for most of human history, marriage was not an intensely intimate affair where partners received most of the emotional support that they needed. Coontz writes, "Until 100 years ago, most societies agreed that it was dangerously antisocial, even pathologically self-absorbed, to elevate marital affection and nuclear-family ties above commitments to neighbors, extended kin, civic duty, and religion."

You can see how the fifth mark of discipleship, spiritual friendships, might help in this regard. I have been preaching and teaching about the importance to the Christian faith for developing and maintaining spiritual friends, Christian brothers and sisters with whom we can share our thoughts and feelings, share our heartaches and joys, confess our sins, receive encouragement, etc. By doing so, we not only strengthen our faith and the life of the church, we also may just help strengthen our marriages.

Given the prevalence of the idea of finding one's soul mate to marry and receive the overwhelming amount of emotional and spiritual support from this person, I wonder what you think about this? What has your experience been?

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Thought for the Day

What value has compassion that does not take its object in its arms?
--Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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Great Expectations

In my sermon yesterday I preached on the purpose of the church: worship and mission. I focused on mission, the idea that followers of Jesus are sent into the world to announce as N. T. Wright put it, "[God] is indeed its wise, loving, and just creator; that through Jesus he has defeated the powers that corrupt and enslave it; and that by his Spirit he is at work to heal and renew it." I also allowed that the Western church tends to be too ingrown, not expecting much from God and not, therefore, risking much for God.

I challenged us to have Big Hairy Audacious Goals or BHAGS a term that scholar Jim Collins coined in reference to the successful companies that he studied (and that I mentioned in an earlier blog). I shared some of my BHAGS: doubling our budget in two years (going from .5 million to a million dollars), tripling the amount that goes directly to mission (30-35%of budget), partnership ministry in South Africa and Puerto Rico, being integrally involved in finding property and building a Habitat for Humanity house in the Medfield/Millis area, three mission trips a year, and finding space for our youth ministry by either renting space or buying a building. How do you respond to these BHAGS? What BHAGS do you have for the church?

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Thought for the Day

If thou thinkest twice before thou speakest once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it.
--William Penn

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Prayer for the Day

O Lord, you have given us your Word as a light to shine on our path; grant that we may so meditate on that Word, and follow its teaching, that we may find in it the light that shines more and more until the perfect day; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
--Jerome

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America's Four Gods

The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion just published a study called The Baylor Religious Survey. One of their findings is that American's have four different Gods. When they analyzed their data, they found two distinct dimensions concerning belief in God. The two dimensions were God's level of engagement defined as "the extent to which individuals believe that God is directly involved in worldly and personal affairs," and God's level of anger defined as "the extent to which individuals believe that God is angered by human sins and tends towards punishing, severe, and wrathful characteristics." These two dimensions when mixed in all possible combinations result in four arrangements: 1) Type A: Authoritarian God is high on engagement and high on anger; 2)Type B: Benevolent God is high on engagement but low on anger; 3) Type C: Critical God is low on engagement and high on anger; and 4) Type D: Distant God is low on engagement and low on anger.

I hope to discuss the findings of this survey over the next week, but for now I think we might ask ourselves what kind of a God we believe in (not intellectually but operationally, the way we really behave) and what God do you think we believe in as a church? What do you make of this categorization? Do you think there are other "God's" as well?

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Thought for the Day

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
--Aristotle

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Gift or Consumer?

I was struck in my reading this morning of Jean Bethke Elshtain's book, Who are We?, by an observation that she made. In the first chapter where she discusses the human condition in terms of sin and the fall, she uses both Dietrich Bonhoeffer's and John Paul II's theology. She writes,

But each stresses the centrality of our need to be at God's disposal; each celebrates the gift of life and of grace; each insists that we are human insofar as we are in relationship and for the other. This means that each is somewhat opaque to us in late modernity, for we no longer understand the meaning of the donative gift, of putting ourselves at the disposal of another. The gift economy that Bonhoeffer and John Paul embrace, each in his own way, has long since been replaced by a consumer economy that sees us as most human when we are most fully in possession of our self and anything else we can lay our hands on.

The "economy of gift" and the "economy of consumption" are radically divergent ways of both understanding our identities and being in the world. The economy of the church is one of gift, the economy of our current society is one of consumption. I believe that the economy of consumption has infiltrated the church and affects the way we live and minister in the world. Do you see yourself as fundamentally a gift and giver or a sovereign self and consumer? Is worship for you a giving of yourself to God or an act of religious or spiritual consumption? How we answer these questions has huge implications for the vitality of our church.

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Thought for the Day

Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm pulls the switch.
--Ivern Bell

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Tenderhearted

"and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you" (Ephesians 4:32). I love this little passage tucked away in the middle of Ephesians. Imagine a church which took this passage seriously. What a desirous community this would be. In a world where the tenderheartedness and kindness are relegated to the periphery and viewed as weak, a community which embodied these virtues would stand out. People would be drawn to such a community by its magnetic pull.

My problem is that while I want this to be true both of the church and me, I find it hard to practice in my own life when someone crosses me in some real or imagined way. The desire to lash out and the desire to get even always seem to stick their heads up first. I draw comfort and strength from my belief that God is using these times and circumstances to make me more tenderhearted and that in the midst of our life together as a community of faith we will grow together in kindness and tenderheartedness.

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Thought for the Day

No legacy is so rich as honesty.
--William Shakespeare

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Teens and Church

The 11/6/06 issue of Time magazine includes an interesting article in the religious section by Sonja Steptoe entitled" "In Touch With Jesus." The by-line reads, "Sugarcoated, MTV-style youth ministry is so over. Bible-based worship is packing teens in pews now." The author notes how churches tended to believe "that a message wrapped in pop-culture packaging was the way to attract teens to their flocks" and "watered down the religious content and boosted the entertainment." But recent data indicates that this strategy did not work. Sociologist, Christian Smith, writes that "The vast majority of teens who call themselves Christians haven't been well educated in religious doctrine and therefore don't really know what they believe. With competing demands on their time, religion becomes a low priority, and so they practice their faith in shallow ways."

Steptoe then reports that churches are focusing less on entertainment and more on the Bible and enjoying more success reaching teens. At one church the youth pastor vetoed the church purchasing a pool table for the teens because it wouldn't attend to their spiritual needs. Instead his youth group wrestles with questions like, "Why doesn't God answer all prayers?" The youth group has doubled in size over the last year and a half.

It sounds to me as though while youth like entertainment as much or perhaps more than the rest of us, they, too, are looking for meaning, depth, and substance in their lives? The church cheats them out of engaging God and wrestling with the hard questions when it keeps everything light and frizzy. What are your thoughts about ministering to youth and appropriate strategies?

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Thought for the Day

Without perseverance talent is a barren bed.
--Welsh Proverb

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