Donna Freitas in the Washington Post: On remaking the Catholic Church

Donna Freitas, another Catholic, writes about how liberation theology can remake Roman Catholicism:


As the Catholic hierarchy sweats in the harsh glare of media scrutiny, as they backpedal about investigations into past and current abuse, and get defensive in all the wrong ways, the question "Should the pope resign?" is valid -- the man at the top has been harboring criminals. There is no defense for this. There is no defense for those who shuffled around priests known to be guilty of rape and assault and other forms of abuse, be you the pope, a bishop or cardinal.

But now is also a moment with extraordinary potential for grassroots reform in the Catholic Church, and Catholic theology offers a powerful history and tradition of ground-up resistance and civil disobedience in its feminist, womanist, mujerista, and liberation theologies.

So what can these theologies offer in response to the abuse crisis?

Well, they call for no less than a revolution.

At their core, feminist and liberation theologies are concerned with the abuse of power, righting injustice and discrimination, dismantling oppressive hierarchies, and clearing space for the disenfranchised to have a voice in the tradition and a central role in its transformation. By their very nature these theologies are grassroots and practical--they start and end with everyday Catholics, the very people who have been denied power, who have been oppressed and silenced. In the 1970's, the liberation theologies of Gustavo Gutierrez, Jon Sobrino, and Leonardo Boff were instrumental not only in addressing poverty, but toppling oppressive governmental regimes that perpetuated poverty and forbade dissent. For five decades feminist, womanist, mujerista, and asian-feminist theologians (all types of liberation theology) like Elizabeth Johnson, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Diana Hayes, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Dorothee Soelle, among many others, have been speaking out about the rights of women and children, and in particular, addressing the problematic implications for all Catholics of an all-male, hierarchical governing body.

For these same reasons--how powerful liberation theologies are in restructuring oppressive hierarchies--the Vatican has issued statements lashing out against them, publicly silencing theologians for speaking out, perhaps most famously with Leonardo Boff. (See the following Vatican documents for examples, "Instruction on Certain Aspects of "Theology of Liberation," "Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation," and "On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church"--all of which came out of the office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during Ratzinger's tenure.) [Editor: links are in Freitas' blog post.]

Isn't the average Catholic today--those of us still in the pews--now also the disenfranchised in the wake of this second wave scandal? The abuse and criminal negligence rampant throughout the hierarchy has marginalized all of us. Staying Catholic does not equal approval of the pope, does not make someone complicit in criminal behavior. Our faith and our tradition are being stolen out from under us by a powerful few who fear responsibility and are terrified of being held accountable for harboring criminals and perpetuating abuse for decades in the process.

But liberation theologies speak directly to us, the marginalized Catholics, and provide us frameworks to move from disgust, dismay, paralysis, and disempowerment toward transformation and change.

And if the vast majority of us are now the disenfranchised, it is from this place that we can begin to remake the church. The Vatican is so embattled and its power undermined by the scandal that the center of the Catholic Church has shifted sideways as a result--if we claim it from this place on the margins. If we speak in large numbers from this place as Catholics who are the Church.

We have strength in numbers. There are far many more of us than them. And liberation theologies empower the average Catholic to enter into theological discourse. They take theology from the hands of the few, from the pope, the cardinals, and the bishops, and put the task of theology into our hands. They anchor the Catholic Church in the laity and its ordinary priests and nuns, effectively dismantling the hierarchy's power and redistributing it on a grassroots level, where it obviously belongs if the hierarchy's behavior tells us anything at all.

These frameworks of resistance and reform are the very structures that empowered me to stay, to remake my own place and sense of Catholic identity in a way that gave me a strong voice and solid place to stand. I do not speak as a Catholic approving of the hierarchy--absolutely not. I speak as a Catholic disgusted by it, certainly, but who also knows that reform must happen from within and will happen via those of us who stay and make it happen. I speak as a Catholic empowered by liberation theologies.

We are living in a different world than in the 1980's when the Vatican lashed out at liberation theologians, requiring their silence. Between today's technologies and the widespread disgust at the Vatican, the places where and opportunities for lay Catholics and disenfranchised victims to speak up and out are many--and the Vatican can do nothing to stop this.

For the Catholic laity, for the theologians and clergy who want change--in not only leadership but overall institutional reform and what the Catholic tradition stands for--now is the time for us to speak up and loudly.

For a particularly powerful, thoughtful, and thorough perspective on reform, please see feminist theologian Mary Hunt's article, "Father Does Not Know Best: How To Fix the Catholic Church" at Religion Dispatches.

On Leadership: A step-by-step plan for the Catholic Church

Bill George, a management professor at Harvard Business School, has some management advice for Pope Benedict.


Q: Pope Benedict XVI's efforts to deal with the Church's sex scandal raises this question: Can a leader hold managers to account on an issue where his own past performance is in question?

Pope Benedict XVI is facing the greatest crisis of his long career. It's not just his leadership of the Vatican that is on the line, but the reputation of the entire Roman Catholic Church. If the Pope fails to face the reality that problems of pedophilia by priests have brought on the church, many Catholics may lose faith that their church leaders practice the same high moral standards that they preach. This situation is ironic for a Pope whose hallmark has been enforcing moral and sexual standards for one billion of the faithful. Does he have any choice but to require his priests to do the same?

Why is it so hard for the Vatican and especially this Pope to face reality? Is it denial? A cover-up? A double standard? Or simply a desire to protect its own leaders?

First of all, doing so means acknowledging that the church in not dealing as harshly with sexual deviants as civil law and basic morality would require. To suggest that these problems are limited to very few priests or a distant problem corrected long ago only accentuates public denial of the depth of these problems and widespread knowledge of them throughout the church hierarchy.

While addressing a crisis of this magnitude is painful, it must start with the Pope admitting mistakes the Vatican has made, including his own. Next, the Pope needs to deal as aggressively with past defenders as would be expected in a court of law. Then, he needs to install a compliance system that will prevent future occurrences and ensure the early identification of offenders. Finally, Pope Benedict XVI needs to make the Vatican itself much more transparent in order to prevent covering up problems in the future.

These steps, which are similar to what would be expected in government, public corporations, or other religious denominations, are required to protect children who believe in their church. Their protection is far more important than preventing wayward priests from being held to high moral standards.

Washington Post: The Worst Ideas of the Decade - Religion

Kathleen Falsani issues a scathing critique of the Prosperity Gospel in this article for the Washington Post.

In the Gospel of Saint Matthew, we are told that Jesus said, "You cannot serve both God and money" and, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

The "prosperity gospel," an insipid heresy whose popularity among American Christians has boomed in recent years, teaches that God blesses those God favors most with material wealth.

The ministries of three televangelists commonly viewed as founders of the prosperity gospel movement - Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland and Frederick K.C. Price - took hold in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the oldest and best-known proponents of prosperity theology, Oral Roberts - the television faith-healer who in 1987 told his flock that God would call him home if he didn't raise $8 million in a matter of weeks - died at 91 last week.

But the past decade has seen this pernicious doctrine proliferate in more mainstream circles. Joel Osteen, the 46-year-old head of Lakewood Church in Houston, has a TV ministry that reaches more than 7 million viewers, and his 2004 book "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential," has sold millions of copies. "God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us," Osteen wrote in a 2005 letter to his flock.

As crass as that may sound, Osteen's version of the prosperity gospel is more gentle (and decidedly less sweaty) than those preached by such co-religionists as Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes and the appropriately named Creflo Dollar.

Few theological ideas ring more dissonant with the harmony of orthodox Christianity than a focus on storing up treasures on Earth as a primary goal of faithful living. The gospel of prosperity turns Christianity into a vapid bless-me club, with a doctrine that amounts to little more than spiritual magical thinking: If you pray the right way, God will make you rich.

But if you're not rich, then what? Are the poor cursed by God because of their unfaithfulness? And if God were so concerned about 401(k)s and Mercedes, why would God's son have been born into poverty?

Nowhere has the prosperity gospel flourished more than among the poor and the working class. Told that wealth is a sign of God's grace and favor, followers strive for trappings of luxury they can little afford in an effort to prove that they are blessed spiritually. Some critics have gone so far as to place part of the blame for the past decade's spending binge and foreclosure crisis at the foot of the prosperity gospel's altar.

Jesus was born poor, and he died poor. During his earthly tenure, he spoke time and again about the importance of spiritual wealth and health. When he talked about material wealth, it was usually part of a cautionary tale.

Cathleen Falsani is the religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the author of "The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers."

NYT: Catholic Group Supports Senate on Abortion Aid

The NYT has an article about how the Catholic Health Association is breaking with the Conference of Catholic Bishops on abortion provisions in health reform. Abortion is one of the issues that could torpedo a deal (the other biggest being taxes).

WASHINGTON — In an apparent split with Roman Catholic bishops over the abortion-financing provisions of the proposed health care overhaul, the nation’s Catholic hospitals have signaled that they back the Senate’s compromise on the issue, raising hopes of breaking an impasse in Congress and stirring controversy within the church.

The Senate bill, approved Thursday morning, allows any state to bar the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion and requires insurers in other states to divide subsidy money into separate accounts so that only dollars from private premiums would be used to pay for abortions.

Just days before the bill passed, the Catholic Health Association, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the country, said in a statement that it was “encouraged” and “increasingly confident” that such a compromise “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.” An umbrella group for nuns followed its lead.

The same day, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called the proposed compromise “morally unacceptable.”

The divide frames one of the most contentious issues facing House and Senate negotiators as they try to produce a bill that can pass in both chambers.

For months, the bishops have driven a lobbying campaign to bar anyone who receives insurance subsidies under the proposed overhaul from using them to buy coverage that included abortion. Citing the bishops, a group of House Democrats forced their liberal party leaders to adopt such a provision and threatened to block any final legislation that fell short of it. Abortion rights supporters, in response, have vowed to block any bill that includes such a measure.

Officials of the Catholic hospitals’ group and the nuns’ Leadership Conference of Women Religious declined to comment.

Catholic scholars say their statement reflects a different application of church teachings against “cooperation with evil,” a calculus that the legislation offers a way to extend health insurance to millions of Americans. For the Catholic hospitals, that it is both a moral and financial imperative, since like other hospitals they stand to gain from reducing the number of uninsured patients.

And in practical political terms, some Democrats — including some opponents of abortion rights — say that the Catholic hospitals’ relative openness to a compromise could play a pivotal role by providing political cover for Democrats who oppose abortion to support the health bill. Democrats and liberal groups quickly disseminated the association’s endorsement along with others from the nuns’ group, other Catholics and evangelicals.

“I think it is a sign that progress is being made, that we are getting there,” said Representative Steve Driehaus of Ohio, one of the Democrats who forced the House to adopt the stricter restrictions in its bill. The hospitals’ statement, he said, recognized the Senate’s compromise as a meaningful step, making him “optimistic” that Democrats could find a bill that he and other abortion foes could support.

Other abortion opponents argue that liberals are overstating the hospital association’s influence. “They don’t carry the same sway,” said Representative Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat who led the effort that resulted in the House bill’s including a full ban on abortion coverage in any subsidized health insurance plan.

Mr. Stupak said he still had commitments from at least 10 Democrats who voted for the House bill and pledged to vote against the final legislation if it loosened the abortion restrictions — enough to keep the bill from being approved. “At the end of the day we are going to have something along the lines of my language,” he said. Abortion rights supporters said the signs of openness from Catholic groups were helping some Democratic abortion foes accept the Senate compromise.

“We have known for quite some time that the Catholic hospitals and also the nuns are really breaking from these hard-line bishops and saying, ‘This really is our goal: to get more people into health care coverage,’ ” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado.

The abortion rights faction of the House Democrats was initially dubious about the Senate bill’s provision but has warmed up to it after reassurances from their Senate counterparts, Ms. DeGette said. President Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders say they aim to follow 30-year-old rules blocking the use of federal money for elective abortions, but lawmakers have fiercely disagreed over how to do so.

Guardian: 'I stay because I love God'

Stephen Bates writes a very moving article for the Guardian.

With some leading Anglicans calling for gay people to be killed (and the archbishop staying quiet), we visited one congregation to see if they're still proud to be CofE.

As the tills ring merrily on high this weekend, softly, in the distance, if you listen carefully, you may just catch the distant note of a Christmas carol. Today, tomorrow and right up to next Friday, the English will be paying their annual low-key obeisance to Christianity.

Three million of us will crowd into Church of England services for midnight mass or Christmas morning eucharist and at least as many again for the services of other denominations - three times the normal Sunday attendance. It may be only a fraction of the population and they may not darken a church's doors again for another year, but deep down some distant, ancient, folk memory stirs; even if, as some clergy say, they're asked not to make the services too Christian these days.

"Christmas is our huge opportunity," says Paul Timms, the dean's verger at Southwark Cathedral. "It's a time when people are positive. This is a sacred space and a beautiful building. If only they could bottle the atmosphere in here."

Indeed it is a beautiful building, despite being hemmed in between the commuter rail lines heading for London's Charing Cross and Cannon Street stations. Shakespeare knew this church and people have worshipped on this site since Saxon times.

Southwark Cathedral will have had 26 carol services by the end of next week, including a singalong with brass bands, a Finnish choir and a service for the Financial Times. For their concert, Barclays had security guards to protect their chief executive - a banker now not even deemed safe in church - and the Greater London Authority called up the 100-strong London gay men's choir for theirs.

The cathedral is a good place for them, a notably liberal church within Anglicanism these days, much condemned and derided by conservative evangelicals for the welcome it offers to gay people and female clergy (As the Very Rev Colin Slee, the dean, and one of the CofE's most combative defender of liberal causes, called for volunteers at the lunchtime singalong carol service on Wednesday, he added wryly: "We're looking for three kings, but, as this is Southwark, I don't mind if there's a queen or two.")

But what sort of Church of England are people visiting this week? After yet another year of strife, some self-inflicted wounds and some haplessly imposed, the Church of England as an institution looks more battered than ever.

It remains mired in controversies which impact directly on how it deals with, and appears to, the outside world, especially about sexuality and personal morality, but also equality and discrimination, particularly how it regards its female clergy and its gay and lesbian members. Issues that have become largely settled in secular society still tie the church in agonised and constipated knots, partly because its synodical form of government encourages highly politicised factions.

Much of this passes the weekly worshippers in the pews by, or leaves them cold. They don't go to church for politics, but for worship, prayer and companionship. Ask most of them about gays in the clergy and you get a baffled shrug.

Simon Sarmiento, a lay member of the congregation at St Albans Cathedral, who runs a blogsite called Thinking Anglicans, said: "There is a lot of goodwill towards the Church of England, though some worry that the church is losing its grip. The image is definitely harming the church, but primarily [among] people outside whose only contact is what they read in the newspapers. If your knowledge is drawn from what the Daily Mail tells you, then the bits about its mission and work in society is bound to pass you by.

"I am very comfortable being a member of the Church of England. I just think a lot of people in it don't understand much about the meaning of Christianity."

And here's Matthew Knight, Southwark Cathedral's administrator, who's gay, and liberal, but goes to a conservative high church parish in Brighton, not because he agrees with its vicar but because he likes the music and the liturgy: "I don't care if they disapprove. I don't believe the church is here to tell me what to do. I like to follow my own conscience. The Anglican church is not my moral compass. It annoys me that the church is so obsessed with what people do in bed."

Yes, well, that sort of view would give some churchmen these days conniptions. The evidence is that the Church's tolerance of a range of worship and worshippers is waning in the faction fighting.

Nowhere is the division sharper than over the position of gay people. The Church's continuing wrangling over the issue makes some despair. One senior London cleric, himself in a gay partnership, says: "We are asked to make sacrifices of relationships, of part of our lives, that are unimaginable to our heterosexual colleagues, which they would never be asked to make. There is a failure to stand up for honesty, against prejudice, that is quite horrible. I stay because I love God and love the church, but it is like being in an abusive relationship."

Last Tuesday, bishops in the House of Lords were still fighting for the church's right to discriminate in employment, not just among the clergy (there is already exemption for them), but its other employees too. They were opposing the government's equality bill and, since it is unlikely that they want to discriminate against black or disabled folk, one must presume it is sexual orientation that is at issue. Dr Peter Forster, bishop of Chester, argued that the proposed legislation "concentrates too ... excessively on the rights of the individual, essential as these are".

More culpable than this little reported rearguard action has been the Church of England's response to two events on opposite sides of the world: the election, in Los Angeles, of a suffragan bishop, Mary Glasspool, who is openly gay and has lived with her partner Becki Sander for the last 21 years.

This temerity on the part of Californian Episcopalians in choosing the bishop they wanted produced a shocked reaction within hours from Dr Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, a man once thought sympathetic to the vocation of gay people. Glasspool's selection, he warned, posed very serious questions for the church. He took comfort in the possibility that her election might not be confirmed by the US house of bishops, even though no bishop has been rejected there since the 1870s.

What made his intervention worse was that at the same time he was maintaining an embarrassed silence about proposed legislation in the Ugandan parliament that would mandate the death penalty for some homosexuals, life imprisonment for others and prison sentences for friends and relatives who failed to inform the authorities of their existence.

Some Ugandan Anglicans have gleefully supported the plans: one, the Rev Michael Esakan Okwi, recently described gays as cockroaches and Bishop Joseph Abura warned against the wicked west "exporting" homosexuality to the developing world: "They want it to become a virtue ... Ugandan parliament, watchdog of our laws, please go ahead and put the anti-gay laws in place."

Through all this, there has been the muffled sound of gritted teeth from Lambeth Palace, all the more remarkable because the Church of England has long opposed capital punishment. A previous archbishop, Michael Ramsey, spoke against hanging and anti-homosexual legislation in Britain in the 1960s, and the Anglican communion calls on its clergy to minister sensitively to gay people, which would breach the Ugandan law. And yet Williams and John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, who is Ugandan and was once a judge there, kept quiet.

It was only last weekend, after even US conservative evangelical pastor Rick Warren had vigorously condemned the Ugandan proposals, that Williams, finally, sotto voce in an interview in the Daily Telegraph, murmured about the proposed law's "shocking severity".

It seems the death clause may have been withdrawn, but the threat of imprisonment remains and now neighbouring Rwanda is reportedly considering similar legislation. Meanwhile, the possibility of being expelled from the Anglican communion, or downgraded within its counsels, hangs over the US Episcopal church.

It comes to this, wrote the Guardian's commentator Andrew Brown: "Under Williams, the church that marries two women who love each other is to be thrown out of the Anglican communion. The church that would jail them both for life and revile and persecute their defenders stays snugly in its bosom. Not even the archbishop's gift for obfuscation can conceal these facts forever."

Tom Butler, the bishop of Southwark, who retires in March, said: "Rowan is an enigma. I don't think he is a pushover. He is patient and stubborn and he frequently says with God the impossible is always possible. The Ugandan situation is extremely sensitive. Archbishop Sentamu's advice is taken extremely seriously."

Ask him whether he condemns the legislation and he spars uncomfortably before finally admitting: "It's obviously a wicked law, which I could not possibly support, but whether I would help the situation by denouncing it publicly, I don't know."

And what of women? They now provide between a quarter and a third of the church's clergy, though many give their services unpaid, but, 15 years after they were first ordained, they still can't become bishops, because a handful of male clergy insist they could not accept their authority or abide their episcopal touch.

In October, Pope Benedict XVI stuck his oar into the Church of England's internal controversy by offering those opposed to women's ordination a refuge, a sort-of separate corral where they will be able to follow some Anglican rites while essentially converting to Catholicism. The words poisoned and chalice come inescapably to mind, since the offer is not quite as it first seemed, but it leaves Williams looking even more buffeted.

Now the dust has settled, Anglo-Catholics within the Church of England believe only a small handful of high-church vicars may be tempted - most of those opposed to women's ordination left for Rome years ago.

The irony, says Andrew Nunn, sub-dean of Southwark, himself an Anglo-Catholic, though one who supports women's ordination, is that the refugees might find themselves having to use Anglican rites when they have been saying Catholic mass for years in their own church. "Their bluff has been called," he said. "They are beginning to realise they will lose the freedom they have enjoyed as Anglicans. What church other than us would allow people who don't accept its teachings to be ordained?"

The liberals within the church nevertheless feel isolated, as conservative evangelicals - themselves a small minority - flex their muscles to wrest the church in their direction, one which in its more extreme fringes scorns the ancient rituals, its prayers, some of its hymns and certainly its vestments. These are among the churches that rip out pews, carpet the floors and erect video screens over the altars.

There is a fundamentalist tendency, says Slee, but it is not just in the church. "Fundamentalism is not just a Christian phenomenon. There's an appetite for hard-edged certainty. It's as if we can't cope with debate or difference and that is a real danger to humanity."

With tactics remarkably like those of the Militant tendency in the 1980s, the church's conservative evangelicals are getting their people in place. Recently, Peterborough found itself with a fundamentalist bishop on record as saying that non-Christian religions are a "sinful perversion of natural revelation" - something which may not go down well with the large Muslim population in the Rt Rev Donald Allister's new diocese. Meanwhile in Kent three lay people from the same aggressively evangelical Sevenoaks parish church have got themselves elected to the six-person delegation which will choose the next bishop of Rochester on behalf of the whole diocese.

Yet, all this is as distant rumbling to the pervasive Christmas spirit. Up in North Yorkshire, the Rev Julie Nelson is vicar of a group of parishes spread between seven villages in Wensleydale. Two of her four churches date from Norman times and all are listed buildings. Each will have its carol service and she expects half the population of 2,000 to turn out this week. "It's the church that holds the villages together," she says. "There's only one shop left around here.

"People have a longing to get back in touch. They like to revisit the old story. They are astonished by the divisions in the church. It doesn't really impinge on them. They see the sexuality questions as a distraction from the church's real mission. We'll be out carol singing round the place, in the snow. It always snows round here when we go carol singing."

Back at Southwark, Bruce Saunders, the cathedral's canon pastor, sighs: "I don't do groups myself - I don't belong to any factions. I always say there's a distinction between the kingdom of God and the Church of England and I'm prepared to die for the former, but not the latter."

Sojourners: Obama's Brand of American Exceptionalism (Brian McLaren)

While troubled by some aspects of President Obama's Nobel acceptance speech, Brian McLaren offers a reflection at Sojourners where he shares how he is heartened that Obama, unlike many in the Bush administration, does not think American exceptionalism confers immunity from international laws and norms.

Jackson Browne: The Rebel Jesus

Hat tip to Episcopal Cafe. Happy holidays!!

NYT: Robert P. George, the Conservative Christian Big-Thinker

David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times has an excellent article about David George, the key intellectual force behind the Manhattan Declaration, a conservative Christian document that conservative Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Evangelicals have signed on to.

George is a natural law theorist, who argues that things like same-sex marriage and abortion are against the natural law - they are so repugnant that it is self-evident they are wrong. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights invokes natural law in that it asserts no logical basis behind the declarations. However, people should be very cautious when invoking natural law, since it can be a cloak for all sorts of unjustified prejudice. And prejudice against the LGBT community, for example, shouldn't be allowed under natural law - it can be demonstrated that the LGBT community is harmed by legal as well as social prejudice, and it is much harder to demonstrate that heterosexuals are harmed by allowing them to marry. Moderate and progressive Christians must challenge the Manhattan Document.

An excerpt from the article:


On a September afternoon, about 60 prominent Christians assembled in the library of the Metropolitan Club on the east side of Central Park. It was a gathering of unusual diversity and power. Many in attendance were conservative evangelicals like the born-again Watergate felon Chuck Colson, who helped initiate the meeting. Metropolitan Jonah, the primate of the Orthodox Church in America, was there as well. And so were more than half a dozen of this country’s most influential Roman Catholic bishops, including Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, Archbishop John Myers of Newark and Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia.

At the center of the event was Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic who is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker. Dressed in his usual uniform of three-piece suit, New College, Oxford cuff links and rimless glasses , George convened the meeting with a note of thanks and a reminder of its purpose. Alarmed at the liberal takeover of Washington and an apparent leadership vacuum among the Christian right, the group had come together to warn the country’s secular powers that the culture wars had not ended. As a starting point, George had drafted a 4,700-word manifesto that promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage.

Two months later, at a Washington press conference to present the group’s “Manhattan Declaration,” George stepped aside to let Cardinal Rigali sum up just what made the statement, and much of George’s work, distinctive. These principles did not belong to the Christian faith alone, the cardinal declared; they rested on a foundation of universal reason. “They are principles that can be known and honored by men and women of good will even apart from divine revelation,” Rigali said. “They are principles of right reason and natural law.”

Even marriage between a man and a woman, Rigali continued, was grounded not just in religion and tradition but in logic. “The true great goods of marriage — the unitive and the procreative goods — are inextricably bound together such that the complementarity of husband and wife is of the very essence of marital communion,” the cardinal continued, ascending into philosophical abstractions surely lost on most in the room. “Sexual relations outside the marital bond are contrary not only to the will of God but to the good of man. Indeed, they are contrary to the will of God precisely because they are against the good of man.”

...

FOR 20 YEARS, George has operated largely out of public view at the intersection of academia, religion and politics. In the past 12 months, however, he has stepped into a more prominent role. With the death of the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran minister turned Roman Catholic priest who helped bring evangelicals and Catholics together into a political movement, George has assumed his mantle as the reigning brain of the Christian right. And he is in many ways the public face of the conservative side in the most urgent culture-war battle of the day. The National Organization for Marriage, the advocacy group fighting same-sex marriage in Albany and Trenton, Maine and California, has made him its chairman. Before the 2004 election, he helped a coalition of Christian conservative groups write their proposed amendment to the federal Constitution defining marriage as heterosexual. More than any other scholar, George has staked his reputation on the claim that same-sex marriage violates not only tradition but also human reason.

It’s part of a philosophy that has found support among a group of Catholic bishops who have become some of the most persistent critics of President Obama and the Congressional Democrats. George serves as their intellectual point man. In the past few years, many of the evangelical Protestants who once defined the religious right have turned inward after their disappointment with President George W. Bush. In their place, George’s friends among the Catholic bishops have stepped to the fore, hammering Obama for his pro-choice Catholic cabinet nominees, for being invited to speak at Notre Dame’s commencement, for his stem-cell research policies and most recently for his health care proposals.

As Democrats have stepped up their explicitly religious appeals to Catholic voters, these bishops have pushed back against the intrusion on their turf. While Democrats talked of finding common ground on abortion, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, the informal leader of this side of the American church, gave a much-publicized speech denouncing Obama as “the most committed abortion rights candidate in history.” Chaput chose to publish his remarks on the Web site of a think tank co-founded by George — the man who had himself argued in an essay disseminated widely last fall through conservative circles, Fox News and Christian radio that Barack Obama was “the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek” the presidency.

...

Last spring, George was invited to address an audience that included many bishops at a conference in Washington. He told them with typical bluntness that they should stop talking so much about the many policy issues they have taken up in the name of social justice. They should concentrate their authority on “the moral social” issues like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage, where, he argued, the natural law and Gospel principles were clear. To be sure, he said, he had no objections to bishops' “making utter nuisances of themselves” about poverty and injustice, like the Old Testament prophets, as long as they did not advocate specific remedies. They should stop lobbying for detailed economic policies like progressive tax rates, higher minimum wage and, presumably, the expansion of health care — “matters of public policy upon which Gospel principles by themselves do not resolve differences of opinion among reasonable and well-informed people of good will,” as George put it.

A few months later, in a July 17 letter to Congress, the bishops did something close to that in the health care debate. Setting aside decades of calls for universal coverage, the bishops pledged to fight any bill that failed to block the use of federal subsidies for insurance covering abortion. “Stalin famously asked, ‘How many divisions has the pope?’ ” George wrote to me in an e-mail message after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed a vote on an amendment that satisfied the bishops’ demands. “I guess Pelosi now knows.”

In the American culture wars, George wants to redraw the lines. It is the liberals, he argues, who are slaves to a faith-based “secularist orthodoxy” of “feminism, multiculturalism, gay liberationism and lifestyle liberalism.” Conservatives, in contrast, speak from the high ground of nonsectarian public reason. George is the leading voice for a group of Catholic scholars known as the new natural lawyers. He argues for the enforcement of a moral code as strictly traditional as that of a religious fundamentalist. What makes his natural law “new” is that it disavows dependence on divine revelation or biblical Scripture — or even history and anthropology. Instead, George rests his ethics on a foundation of “practical reason”: “invoking no authority beyond the authority of reason itself,” as he put it in one essay.

Sojourners blog: Beyond ‘Diversity’: New Creation and a Mestizo Vision

Chris Rice blogs for Sojourners on the vision of diversity that God has for the church.

“Integration” and “diversity” do not express God’s purpose for reconciliation deeply enough. What we need is a fresh paradigm that declares our new culture in Christ.

A workshop last month in Cincinnati at the Christian Community Development Association conference (CCDA) confirmed my conviction that Christians need fresh language regarding our mission and identity in a divided world.

During my workshop, I remarked that as “reconciliation” becomes both increasingly popular and contested, and as such potentially unhelpful, the critical question is “reconciliation toward what?” I mentioned two dominant paradigms.

• Integration is the first paradigm — overcoming oppression through social equality and access to mainstream benefits. There has been deep progress in this area, at the same time the fierce historical opposition to racial and economic integration in American life is a sign of a captivity which is yet to be overcome. Yet as early as the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott Martin Luther King Jr. argued that integration would not go far enough to heal America: “The end,” preached King, “is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community.”

Notions of integration easily lead to “equal and separate” and avoid even more difficult and holy work. As Charles Marsh has argued in The Beloved Community, “[W]hile the civil rights movement defeated segregation and forever changed American society, the nation has experienced precious little repentance, reconciliation, and costly discipleship.”

• Diversity has been the other dominant response to “reconciliation toward what?” Over the last ten years there has been an explosion of initiatives and literature around “inclusiveness” and “diversity.” Some Christian denominations and institutions are diversifying their leadership and constituencies in ways which are transformative and should be celebrated. Pastor Mark DeMaz pointed out to me recently the traction that “multi” has gotten in the evangelical world: “multi-ethnic” (InterVarsity Christian Fellowship), “multi-cultural” (David Anderson of Bridgeway Community Church), “multi-racial” (sociologist and author George Yancey). This is long overdue, and Soong Chan Rah’s much-discussed book The Next Evangelicalism shows how far there is to go.

Yet at CCDA I said that “multi” does not capture the work of the Holy Spirit within history powerfully enough. The story of creation and humanity as diverse and good must be completed by the story of God’s redemption of the ways the fall deformed the gift of difference through the trauma of sin. The trajectory of the Christian story is an interruption and transformation of historical identities and fixed groups (Jew, Greek, male, female, slave, free) toward a fluidity of identity and culture: when the Antioch church becomes a new people across these lines, a community and politics (where Jesus is Lord, not Caesar) comes into existence that is so strange, it requires a new language. It is at Antioch that the disciples are first called “Christians.”
If integration and diversity are insufficient paradigms for “reconciliation toward what” in an increasingly multicultural America and world wracked by intensifying polarizations, what’s the alternative?

“Consequently, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh; even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer. So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation…” 2 Cor. 5:15-18

What’s the alternative? I believe we find it in the above passage.

At the CCDA, I suggested that we consider the implications of “New Creation.” New Creation breaks beyond tribal self-sufficiency to a “toward what” grounded in the story and power of God’s gift in Jesus Christ which interrupts the ground of injustice and divides with conversion toward a new community, new desires, and a new Lord.

New Creation is a call to being changed (metanoia) in a visible new way of life and sharing together (koinonia, including a new economic life between rich and poor, see Acts 2 and Acts 4, and including life with strangers who become companions). This is why, for example, I prefer to speak of “interracial” churches. In saying “interracial” (e.g. interracial churches or interracial marriage) instead of “biracial” we point to a cultural intimacy, interdependence, and mutual transformation which is a sign of a “new humanity.” There is a rich literature around “transcultural” or “third culture kids” who make up a kind of “new people” who don’t fit into the homeland their parents left nor the culture they are living in. As a missionary kid who grew up in Korea, I identify profoundly with this.

Yet the English language may itself be so ridden with dichotomies that it cannot capture how New Creation interrupts us in the “sluggish in between” of human life between Jesus’ resurrection and return. But another language does.

Here is how Duke Divinity School scholar Edgardo Colon-Emeric expresses it:

According to the seer of Patmos [John's vision in Revelation 7:9-17 of a multitude from every nation, tongue, language, worshipping the Lamb], the Church is a mestizo assembly gathered from every nation in praise of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Reflecting on this Spanish word mestizo, Edgardo, who is also the director of Duke’s Hispanic House of Studies, adds:
Mestizo … refers literally to a mixture. The term was first used to describe the children of the violent encounter between European fathers and Amerindian mothers. Neither European nor Indian, these children belonged to a new people, a people of mixed heritage. But this mixed heritage is not simply a historical or ethnic marker; it is also the goal of Christian existence. In the words of Mexican-American theologian Virgil Elizondo ‘the future is mestizo,’ not because of ethnic mixing, but because the new humanity in Christ is a mestizo humanity of Jews and Gentiles.

My friend Edgardo goes on to say, “The church needs leaders who have eyes to see that all ethnic ministries are provisional because the future is mestizo.” To repeat the key claim, “this mixed heritage is not simply a historical or ethnic marker; it is also the goal of Christian existence.”

As I told those who attended my CCDA workshop, I am not advocating being blind to or forgetful of the history of oppression and how this trajectory deforms community, institutional, and church life. A notion of cheap “reconciliation without memory” leads to assimilation into the dominant culture and its values. This is exactly why New Creation matters: We are freed from captivity through shared journeys and communities of conversion which make difference meaningful in an exchange of gifts and a vision of mutuality which is both truthful about the grip of sin and reaches toward a new place of life together.

Through the ministry of Maggy Barankitse in the east African country of Burundi, orphans of violence between rival Tutsi and Hutu groups have lived for years together at Maison Shalom (”House of Peace”). On top of former tribal killing fields, they share intimate daily life with the multiplicity of people who come there including from the “Twa” minority, nearby Congo, and “Muzungus” (outsiders) from Europe and the U.S. Over time, their identities become reshaped and quite confused in this new community. When questioned about her ethnic identity, one orphan speaks of herself as being a “Hutsi-Twa-Congo-Zungu” — pulling all these peoples into a kind of one new humanity.

Integration and Diversity do not state the power of the Holy Spirit’s interruption of history deeply enough. To emphasize Edgardo’s point, “all ethnic ministries are provisional because the future is mestizo.” Diversity and integration lack a telos, a goal, a “for what purpose?” New Creation and a mestizo vision properly understood within God’s work of “reconciling all things in Christ” (Col. 1:15-23) offer a fresh paradigm of “toward what” that is not only deeply transformative but beautiful, a bit scary, and subversive to the way things are. Not to mention a deeper way to holiness and vision which requires God.

Chris Rice is co-director of the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School. He is author of Reconciling All Things, Grace Matters, and More Than Equals. He writes regularly at his blog, Reconcilers with Chris Rice. This article appears courtesy of a partnership with UrbanFaith.com.

[Editor: To be sure, mestizo isn't a perfect analogy, since they were likely treated better than the fully Indigenous Americans by the Europeans. Nonetheless, the point is a good one.]

Liberation theology is alive and well

Walter Altmann writes for Ekklesia.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, twenty years ago, many critics have been quick to sign liberation theology's death certificate. Most of them did so because they understood it to be an apology for bygone Soviet-style socialism. It seems, though, that this death certificate has been issued prematurely.

It is true that liberation theologians – some more than others – used Marxist categories for socio-economic analysis and for a moral critique of capitalism's evils. However, the core of liberation theology has never been Marxism.

It is rather the compassionate identification with the poor and their struggle for justice, inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus himself, which is at its heart. Instead of concentrating on social analysis, which was seen as a methodological tool, from the outset liberation theology placed greater emphasis on the crucial role of God's people committed praxis – or, in other words, the Christian communities' action inspired by faith and informed by theological reflection.

Liberation theology is spiritually grounded in – and gets its motivation from – the life changing encounter with Christ as liberator and with our neighbours in need. Their suffering is not a result of fate but of systemic injustices and oppression, which can be overcome by transformative action.

If we look at our reality today, we are reminded that poverty has by no means been overcome in the world. On the contrary, the recent international financial crisis, produced by unrestrained capitalist forces governed by greed and private and corporate interests, has increased the number of the poor – or rather, the impoverished – in the world by hundreds of millions.

Liberation theology emerged in the late 1960s in Latin America. The ground had been prepared in the 1950s by Christian base community movements aiming for social, political and economic reforms in society, and for the active participation of laypeople in pastoral activities within the church.

Latin America being predominantly a Catholic continent, the new theological approach was widely linked with pastoral and theological developments within the Roman Catholic Church, although it was from the very beginning an ecumenical endeavour. The very term "liberation theology" was proposed almost simultaneously by the Roman Catholic priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, from Peru, and the Presbyterian theologian Rubem Alves, from Brazil.

It is not surprising that in the seventies and eighties liberation theology had a strong influence on the ecumenical movement, including the World Council of Churches (WCC). The relevancy of its actions in supporting struggles for human rights under military dictatorships in Latin America, in developing effective methods of overcoming illiteracy (as did the exiled Brazilian pedagogue and WCC education adviser Paulo Freire), and in combating racism, mainly in Southern Africa, has been widely recognised.

As a contextual approach, aimed at critically reflecting on the praxis of God's people, liberation theology was never intended to become a static, dogmatic theoretical construction. Its intention was not to highlight a neglected theological theme, but rather to propose a new way of doing theology. It naturally underwent changes over the decades. At the outset it focused on the living conditions of the poor. Later, it incorporated other issues, like indigenous peoples, racism, gender inequalities and ecology.

Nowadays, liberation theology deals with the interpretation of cultures and with anthropological questions, for example the temptation of power. The goal of striving towards a more just society where there is "room for all" persists, yet the way of achieving it has shifted towards civil society action.

The influence of liberation theology goes way beyond the realm of the churches. Its contribution towards overcoming military dictatorships in Latin America and apartheid in Southern Africa has already been hinted at. Today it helps shape Latin American political efforts towards a model of democracy which overcomes poverty and social injustices. Several Latin American presidents – Lula da Silva in Brazil, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Ortega in Nicaragua and Lugo in Paraguay - have all in different ways had close contact with Christian base communities and liberation theologians.

But, above all, liberation theology continues to be very much alive and well within civil society movements and Christian base communities.

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(c) Walter Altmann is president of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil and moderator of the World Council of Churches Central Committee.

Ekklesia: Sharing a liberation meal

As Americans go to share Thanksgiving meals with family, Rev. Giles Fraser writes for Ekklesia about the liberation meal that Christians share over Eucharist:

“I promise you that many will come from the East and from the West to take their place at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in heaven’s reign.” So it says in Matthew's Gospel (8.11).

Well, we as a family drove up from south to North London, from Putney to Finchley. And there we took our place around the dining- room table to celebrate Passover with our friends the Levys.

As well as the traditional Haggadah, with readings and singing in Hebrew and English, there were readings about slavery from the American South and from the War saw ghetto. We were reminded how many people continue to live in slavery of one sort or another, whether as sex workers or as child soldiers or through sheer poverty.

We listened to Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech with that extraordinarily rousing climax: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” Chag pesach sameach — Happy Passover.

For well over 3,000 years, Jews have been celebrating the escape of the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt. In every country on the earth and in every conceivable circumstance, this great cry of freedom has rung out to challenge and inspire. Long may it continue.

Christians have their own version of this celebration: the eucharist. Yes, there is some dispute about whether the Last Supper was itself a Passover meal, the Synoptic Gospels indicat ing that it was and John’s Gospel that it wasn’t. But even those scholars who side more with John (and I don’t) recognise that the institution of the eucharist contains a high de gree of cultural sampling from the seder.

Which means that when we gather round the Lord’s table, we are celebrating our liberation from slavery recognised in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

These days, many self-describing “orthodox” theologians spend their lives falling over themselves to be rude about freedom as a theological principle, dismissing it as a function of liberalism or capitalism, thinking of it as mere wilful self-assertiveness.

Others dismiss liberation-based theologies as being responsible for what they see as the decline in serious theology in the United States, arguing that “serious theology” has been replaced by a politically correct obsession with victims and the marginalised.

This is total bunkum. To under stand the eucharist as a Passover meal is to recognise that the great cry of freedom is loaded deep within the DNA of all orthodox Christian theology. It has nothing to do with liberalism. Freedom is the beating heart of the story of Easter. Our salvation is thus: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

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(c) Giles Fraser is Anglican vicar of Putney, south London. He contributed a chapter called 'Easter's Hawks and Doves' to Ekklesia's 2005 book on the atonement, Consuming Passion: Why the killing of Jesus really matters - edited by Simon Barrow and Jonathan Bartley (Darton, Longman and Todd).

This article is adapted from Giles' regular Church Times column, with acknowledgment.

Ekklesia: How 'unity' can sacrifice justice

Savitri Hensman, writing for the UK Christian think tank Ekklesia, tells us why the search for unity must not sacrifice justice, making excellent and very clear connections between Scripture and global issues.



In August 2008, the prime minister of Japan broke with tradition by refusing to visit the controversial Yasukuni shrine, which honours two-and-a-half million Japanese war dead. Some of those commemorated had been found guilty of war crimes during the Second World War.

In the run-up to that war, the Shinto religion had been used to unite the Japanese people behind an increasingly militaristic state. While the sacrifice of those in the military who gave their lives was in some cases truly heroic, the cause was unworthy, bringing great suffering to many peoples, including the Japanese themselves.

The themes of unity and sacrifice can be found in many religious traditions. These can have negative as well as positive aspects, though it is easier to recognise this in faiths other than one’s own. There is a difference between an ascetic giving up comfort and security in the quest to become wiser and kinder and a widow being persuaded to throw herself into her husband’s funeral pyre in the custom of suttee. Though God, being merciful and aware of the human tendency to get things wrong, may give people credit even for misplaced piety, some practices are damaging, even to those communities whose unity they are supposed to cement.

The Bible indicates something of the complexity of such concepts. There is a difference between the attempt to create unity by fashioning a golden calf (Exodus 32) and the gift of unity through Christ (John 17.20-26), sacrificing sons and daughters to Molech (Jeremiah 32.35) and dying to an old self enslaved by sin so that one can be born into the freedom of the Holy Spirit (Romans 7.4-6, Galatians 5.16-24).

Indeed, sociologist and theologian René Girard has argued that religious ritual often involves uniting communities, at least temporarily, through finding a scapegoat who is sacrificed, literally or symbolically. In his view, Christianity can break through this pattern by enabling people to identify with the victim: through the crucified Christ, we can be freed from the urge to find outsiders to victimise but can instead recognise our common humanity, overcoming our divisions with our neighbours in a way that does not harm others. In today’s world, where societies are often highly competitive and unstable, it can indeed be tempting for people to feel a sense of togetherness, at least for a while, by uniting against a common target.

In responding to recent divisions in churches, some bishops have urged sacrifice in the interests of unity. After all, are these not religious values? However, it is prudent in such circumstances to probe more deeply. What sacrifice will be required, and from whom? What kind of unity is likely to result, and will this be short-lived? Will existing power relationships and prejudices be undermined or reinforced? How closely does this resemble the actions of Jesus and other great leaders who reached out to the most marginalised, and inspired those around them to show compassion across social barriers?

In doing this, it may be helpful to draw on the insights of social science, and the observations of perceptive commentators outside one’s own tradition. It is all too easy for the suffering of those with less prestige or power, or whose experience is outside the mainstream, to be underestimated. Many pious Japanese, for instance, still do not fully understand why many Chinese and Koreans were so distressed when former prime ministers of Japan paid their respects at the Yasukuni shrine.

Sometimes it will indeed be worth giving up something precious for a greater good. But in other circumstances, mercy should perhaps be valued above sacrifice (Matthew 9.13), and divisions may need to be exposed (Matthew 10.16-39) before a deeper unity can be achieved.

(c) Savitri Hensman was born in Sri Lanka and works in the voluntary sector in community care and equalities in the UK. She is also a respected writer on Christianity and social justice. An Ekklesia associate, Savi is author of a number of research essays and a regular column. She has contributed several chapters to the book Fear or Freedom? Why a warring church must change, edited by Simon Barrow (Shoving Leopard / Ekklesia, 2008).

NYT: 3 Clergymen tell how differences of faith led to friendship

Laurie Goodstein writes for the NYT.

NASHVILLE — It sounds like the start of a joke: a rabbi, a minister and a Muslim sheik walk into a restaurant.

The three say they became close not by avoiding or glossing over their conflicts, but by running straight at them.
But there they were, Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie and Sheik Jamal Rahman, walking into an Indian restaurant, and afterward a Presbyterian church. The sanctuary was full of 250 people who came to hear them talk about how they had wrestled with their religious differences and emerged as friends.

They call themselves the “interfaith amigos.” And while they do sometimes seem more like a stand-up comedy team than a trio of clergymen, they know they have a serious burden in making a case for interfaith understanding in a country reeling after a Muslim Army officer at Fort Hood, Tex., was charged with opening fire on his fellow soldiers, killing 13.

“It arouses once again fear, distrust and doubt,” Sheik Rahman said, “and I know that when that happens, even the best of people cannot think clearly.”

The three say they became close not by avoiding or glossing over their conflicts, but by running straight at them. They put everything on the table: the verses they found offensive in one another’s holy books, anti-Semitism, violence in the name of religion, claims by each faith to have the exclusive hold on truth, and, of course, Israel.

“One of the problems in the past with interfaith dialogue is we’ve been too unwilling to upset each other,” Rabbi Falcon told the crowd at the Second Presbyterian Church here. “We try to honor the truth. This is the truth for you, and this is the truth for me. It may not be reconcilable, but it is important to refuse to make the other the enemy.”

Asked what is the hardest issue they have faced, the minister and the sheik simultaneously said, “Israel.”

“Yeah,” the rabbi said, “ ’cause these guys still don’t understand.”

Across the country, interfaith initiatives are multiplying. Jews and Christians have held dialogues for years, but after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many local interfaith groups decided it was urgent to include Muslims. Many Muslims were eager, too, concerned that their faith not be defined by terrorism. There are now interfaith Thanksgivings, interfaith college clubs, interfaith women’s groups and interfaith teams building affordable housing. On Nov. 14 and 15, 100 synagogues and mosques in North America and Europe paired up for dialogues and joint social service projects.

What distinguishes the “amigos,” who live in Seattle but make presentations around the country, is a unique approach to what they call “the spirituality of interfaith relations.” At the church in Nashville, the three clergymen, dressed in dark blazers, stood up one by one and declared what they most valued as the core teachings of their tradition The minister said “unconditional love.” The sheik said “compassion.” And the rabbi said “oneness.”

The room then grew quiet as each stood and recited what he regarded as the “untruths” in his own faith. The minister said that one “untruth” for him was that “Christianity is the only way to God.” The rabbi said for him it was the notion of Jews as “the chosen people.” And the sheik said for him it was the “sword verses” in the Koran, like “kill the unbeliever.”

“It is a verse taken out of context,” Sheik Rahman said, pointing out that the previous verse says that God has no love for aggressors. “But we have to acknowledge that ‘kill the unbelievers’ is an awkward verse,’ ” the sheik said as the crowd laughed. “Some verses are literal, some are metaphorical, but the Koran doesn’t say which is which.”

Clearly, all three clergymen are in the liberal wing of their respective faiths. Mr. Mackenzie, 65, is a minister in the United Church of Christ, and recently retired from leading a large congregation, the University Congregational U.C.C., in Seattle. As a young man, he taught in Lebanon.

Rabbi Falcon, 67, is a Reform rabbi with a doctorate in clinical psychology who founded synagogues in Los Angeles and Seattle that meld meditation with Jewish tradition.

Sheik Rahman, 59, is a Sufi, a path of Islam focused more on spiritual wisdom than strict ritual. He is the son of a diplomat from Bangladesh, which helps explain his courtly ease. He co-founded an unusual mixed-faith congregation in Seattle, the Interfaith Community Church.

The minister and the rabbi met in a Christian-Jewish dialogue group, and the rabbi and the sheik met later when they were both on the board of a fledgling university that never got off the ground. After Sept. 11, Rabbi Falcon reached out to Sheik Rahman. They conducted several interfaith workshops, and for the first anniversary of the attacks, Rabbi Falcon invited Mr. Mackenzie to get involved, and the events were held at Mr. Mackenzie’s church. When they were over, the three said to one another, why stop now?

They began to meet weekly for spiritual direction, combining mutual support with theological reflection. Their families became acquainted over meals. They started an AM radio show, and they traveled together to Israel and the occupied territories. Recently, they wrote a book, “Getting to the Heart of Interfaith,” (Skylight Paths, 2009).

At one point, the rabbi read a line the sheik had written about the security wall in Israel and announced, “If that line is in the book, I’m not in the book.” After vigorous discussion, Sheik Rahman rewrote the line in a way that both men felt was respectful of their principles.

In the question-and-answer period at the church here, one woman challenged, “It would behoove you to start speaking in mosques.” (They already have some mosque events planned.) Others asked for practical steps to build bridges.

Afterward, Mark Wingate, a computer programmer and a Methodist, said: “Talking about the untruths of each tradition is very courageous. It gets it out of the platitude category and into dialogue.”

Mr. Wingate’s wife, Sally, added: “They had to work really hard to get to that point. Most of us are not willing to work that hard.”

Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis may still be attempting to change sexual orientation

Not long ago, the American Psychological Association said that mental health professionals should avoid telling their clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy. The APA did say that mental health professionals should recognize their clients' religious needs; for some clients seeking to reconcile their religious beliefs and their sexual orientation and/or identity, celibacy is a valid path, but others are not able to find fulfillment and struggle with depression and loneliness.

In light of those recommendations, it is disappointing to read journalist Jeff Strickler's anecdote in the Minneapolis Star Tribune showing that the Catholic Diocese in the city appears linked to programs that purport to help clients change their sexual orientation and treat homosexuality as a disease.

Gay and lesbian Roman Catholics who contact the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for spiritual guidance can find themselves directed toward programs aimed at helping them become celibate.

Called reparative therapy, the programs are provoking national -- and even international -- protests from critics who say they are ineffective at best and, in some cases, harmful.

Many see the programs as an example of the Vatican's swing toward conservatism, and an insulting blow to a decade of bridge-building between the church and the gay community.

"[Retired Archbishop] Harry Flynn came to us -- we didn't go to them, they came to us -- in the late 1990s and asked us to serve as resource people for the church," said Michael Bayly, executive coordinator of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM). "Then a new pope comes in. Now the archdiocese won't even take our phone calls."

So they are speaking out on their own. They're hosting a forum Tuesday at St. Martin's Table Restaurant and Bookstore in Minneapolis that they say will shine a spotlight on what they term the "pseudo-scientific organizations" that endorse reparative therapy.

Under the auspices of its Office of Marriage and Family, the Catholic church's programs are modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous and its sister program for the families of addicts, Al-Anon. The programs, called Courage (AA) and Encourage (Al-Anon), are intended to help gays remain chaste.

The chaplain of the local Courage chapter, the Rev. James Livingston, was out of town Monday and unavailable to comment. In explaining the programs, the archdiocese's website contains links to material that some gays find objectionable. That includes a Q&A with the director of Courage's national office, the Rev. Paul Check, in which he says, "People are relieved to know the condition [of homosexuality] is both treatable and preventable."

...

Check also was not available to comment, but a person in his office became angry when she heard about the forum. Although not an official spokesperson, she said, "We don't tell anyone what to do. We just try to help them live according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church."

A decade ago, the CPCSM was asked to conduct sensitivity training sessions for the archdiocese. "That's how much things have changed recently," Bayly said.

He pointed to an article last November in the Catholic Spirit, the archdiocese's newspaper, endorsing the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Describing itself as a nonprofit educational organization serving people with "unwanted homosexual attraction," it maintains that through therapy, homosexuals can "develop their heterosexual potential."

The rest of the article highlights how celibacy is not a possibility for some people. It interviews Philip Lowe, Jr:

Lowe spent 15 months in the Courage program in hopes of finding a way to reconcile his religion and his sexuality.

"I went to weekly meetings, I went to confession, I did everything you were supposed to do," he said. Through it all, he battled with the feeling that he was supposed to distance himself from who he is. "It wasn't a positive experience."

Again, there are two separate issues here. One is the notion that sexual orientation can and should be changed by religious efforts. This notion is completely and totally false. Any program that teaches celibacy for LGBT people must immediately abandon any reference to this notion.

The second issue is whether or not LGBT people should accept a life of celibacy to reconcile themselves with their religion. Christians disagree strongly over this issue. While I believe that LGBT people should not be required to be celibate, I urge people to recognize that some people do choose celibacy for the right reasons. Celibacy should not be chosen because of shame or it is ultimately self-defeating. Unfortunately, herein lies the problem: the churches that teach celibacy usually incorporate shame about homosexuality into their teachings.

Archbishop of Canterbury tells Pope: there will be no turning back on women priests

As reported by the Times in the UK, Archbishop Rowan Williams stated unequivocally to the Pope at an ecumenical conference that the Church of England will not turn back on women as priests, and presumably as bishops. This comes at a time when the Catholic Church is extending to UK Anglicans an offer that has been made to some Episcopalians in the US - they may join the Catholic Church as congregations while retaining their traditional Anglican style of worship; Anglican priests who transition may retain their ordination status and in some cases, their spouses.

The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday made his most outspoken challenge to the Roman Catholic Church since the Pope invited disaffected Anglicans to switch to Rome.

Speaking before he meets Benedict XVI tomorrow, Dr Rowan Williams told a conference in Rome that the Catholic Church’s refusal to ordain women was a bar to Christian unity.

“For many Anglicans, not ordaining women has a possible unwelcome implication about the difference between baptised men and baptised women,” he said.

The Anglican provinces that ordain women had retained rather than lost their Catholic holiness and sacramentalism, he said.

Addressing an ecumenical conference at the Gregorian Pontifical University, the Archbishop said that the way Anglican leaders dealt with internal arguments offered lessons for senior Catholics.

“Is it nonsense to think that holding on to a limited but real common life might be worth working for within the Anglican family? And if it can be managed within the Anglican family, is this a possible model for the wider ecumenical scene?”

The ordination of women priests — and the prospect of women bishops — is one of the main reasons why disaffected Anglicans may take up the Pope’s offer of a “Church within a Church” that would enable them to retain traditional Anglican practices within the Catholic faith.

But yesterday the Archbishop made clear that there would be no turning back the clock on women priests in order to appease critics. He dismissed the Pope’s offer to disaffected Anglicans as barely more than a “pastoral response”, which broke little new ground in relations between the two Churches.

Aaron Taylor on Sojourners: Caught Between Two Worlds: Progressive and Evangelical

Aaron Taylor, a Pentacostal pastor and member of a Christian Peacemaker Team, blogs about his conflicting experience on Sojourners. I do not agree with his worldview and will write a response, but he has a very genuine commitment to peace and writes very well.



I’m trembling as I write this one. I’m already isolated within my own faith community (Pentecostalism) for my views on war and peace; and I know that what I’m about to write here may put me at odds with a lot of people in the progressive evangelical community — a community I’m just getting used to. In addition, there’s always the fear of being misunderstood, so regardless of whether you agree or not with me, know that at least it’s my aim to speak the truth in love.

I love Christian Peacemaker Teams. I especially love their motto: “What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to non-violent peacemaking that armies devote to war?” I wish all Christians on the planet would ask themselves that question. I have nothing but admiration and respect for full and part-time CPT workers that live out that motto every day. When I went on a delegation with CPT in October 2007 to the West Bank, it radically changed my life.

So why am I conflicted about CPT? It’s not that I don’t believe in the organization. I do. It’s not even because I necessarily disagree with their anti-proselytizing policy. I understand that every organization has its own purpose and mandate. But as a long-time evangelical missionary and a recent convert to non-violence, I find myself caught between two worlds. On the one hand, I move freely in circles that “pray through the window” and map “unreached people groups.” On the other hand, my devotion to peace and non-violence cause me to move in peace circles — many of which are comprised of theologically liberal Christians.

Never was this more obvious than when I was on the CPT delegation. It took all of about two hours for everyone in the group to realize that I was the “evangelical” in the group. When I was asked to describe myself, I shared with the group honestly about what I had been doing over the past several years: traveling the world and sharing the gospel. Throughout the week, I had many discussions with individuals in the group about why I believe that Jesus is God and why I don’t believe that all religions are equal paths to the same truth. For the most part, the group was respectful, but there was the occasional anti-missionary remark that reminded me of my minority status within the group.

Maybe peacenik evangelical missionaries like myself need an alternative to CPT. Then again, maybe not. I think it’s at least an option that should be looked into, and I’m willing to dialogue with anybody even remotely interested in pursuing the matter further.

My concern isn’t just with CPT, but with the progressive evangelical movement at large. I’m conflicted because I’m concerned about the implications of progressive evangelicals continuing to endorse groups like CPT as “a new face of global missions” in their books and articles. If young people join these kinds of efforts to experience “a new face of global missions,” how many of these young people will eventually jettison their biblical orthodoxy? Even worse, I wonder how many have already jettisoned their biblical orthodoxy?

I just wonder if in our sincere efforts to promote peace and tolerance between people of different faiths, we’re becoming more “progressive” than “evangelical”? I wonder if we’ve gone too far in laboring to share physical bread with the masses that we’ve neglected to share the “Living Bread” with the masses.

I pray that we in the progressive evangelical community will never forget that despite all of our efforts to save the world, the “form of this world is passing away.” May we labor “not for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life” (John 6:27).

Aaron D. Taylor is the author of Alone with A Jihadist: A Biblical Response To Holy War. To learn more about Aaron’s missionary work and his travels around the world, go to www.aarondtaylor.com. Aaron can be contacted at fromdeathtolife@gmail.com

WSJ: Swine Flu + Communion = ?

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the impact of the swine flu on Communion practices in U.S. churches. An excerpt:

In many Roman Catholic churches across the country, lay people no longer receive wine at Communion, and some Catholic clergy have advised congregants not to shake hands or hug at the moment of the liturgy known as "the passing of the peace," when parishioners typically greet someone in, and offer embodied signs of, the peace of Christ. In my own Episcopal parish, I was greeted by a neighbor last Sunday with an elbow bump. At a United Church of Christ congregation in the suburbs of Chicago, Communion servers now slice up bread into bite-sized bits before distributing Communion; they no longer offer congregants a loaf from which to tear a hunk of bread. In the interest of keeping fingers away from communion wine, communicants at All Saints' Chapel in Sewanee, Tenn., are now instructed not to dip their Eucharistic bread into the cup but rather to sip the cup directly, since hands are often more infectious than mouths.

At Cornell University, the Episcopal chaplain, Clark West, has reminded worshippers that they will receive the fullness of the Eucharist if they receive only "one kind"—that is, the wafer and not the wine. "We have alcoholics among us for whom this has been the practice for years without any noticeably adverse effects," quips Mr. West. To emphasize this, he has, on occasion, used a longer liturgical formula, which names the host as itself both "the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ." Less reverently, Mr. West has taken to calling the bottle of Purell hand sanitizer, which now sits prominently on the credence table, the post-modern lavabo. (A lavabo is the bowl a priest uses to wash his or her hands in the Eucharist.)

These liturgical modifications are, of course, all being undertaken in response to H1N1—or, perhaps more precisely, in response to fears about H1N1. But if H1N1 is new, American Christians' choice to let fears about hygiene and health shape Eucharistic practice are not. In the late 19th century, new knowledge about germs—and pastors' keen desire to be regarded as, in the words of one New York clergyman, "thoroughly imbued with the scientific spirit"—prompted many clergy, especially in Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches, to set aside the common cup in favor of individual communion cups (think shot glasses).

That change did not come easily or without debate and old-fashioned organizing on the part of both clergy and physicians. In November 1899, the Brooklyn Pathological Society convened a symposium called "The Pathology of the Common Communion Cup." Doctors and ministers gathered to review what they knew of epidemiology and to urge the use of individual cups at communion. The ministers in attendance did not take much convincing: "My own feeling in regard to the common cup is one of positive repugnance," said one.

Those churches that did move from the common cup to individual cups lost something. They lost the imagery of the church's being, to paraphrase Paul, one body because we drink of one cup. Indeed, fin de siècle advocates for reform understood quite well that the changes they were making were not just about the health of people's physical bodies, but also about the ecclesial and social body. They urged adoption of individual cups not only because of new theories about germs but also, explicitly, because they were troubled by white, middle-class Christians becoming symbolically joined to other sorts of Americans.

My own church continues to use a common Communion cup, and congregants are encouraged to drink directly rather than intinct (i.e. dip the bread in). We also minister to a large number of homeless folks, many of whom attend service. Episcopal and Roman Catholic churches typically use port wine, which is high enough in alcohol to be fairly safe to drink. In light of the swine flu, perhaps we could pour some whiskey into the wine as well...

21 centuries of church history in 4 minutes set to Billy Joel's song We Didn't Start the Fire

This video was done by someone named Janet as a tribute to her own pastor. Yay, Janet!

Wile E Coyote v Roadrunner

Washington Independent: Christian Right embraces libertarian conservative ideals, oddly enough

The Christian Right in the U.S. recently held the Values Voter Summit, featuring Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Mike Pence. The latter is the governor of Texas.

The Washington Independent reports that the conference took a heavily libertarian conservative stance. The Christian Right is reportedly looking to the national debt and the economy as issues for 2010. Romney said that "big government activists" were “substitut[ing] their ideology for the wisdom and good sense of the American people.” Even the moral issues folks at the conference apparently connected their concerns to the economy and government control.

Jesus did not speak directly to the governance of nation states. He claimed his own kingdom was not of this world, and sought to bring about the reign of God on earth. He said that we should treat others as we wish to be treated. He was a member of an indigenous people who suffered oppression at the hands of a really big government. He was tortured and killed at the hands of that government. So, the conservatives may be right to think he would be opposed to big government.

However, the Washington Independent reports that Gov. Perry said "as far as I'm concerned, you can't not legislate morality". And money was the moral issue that Jesus spoke the most about. He was deeply concerned about money, calling it the root of all evil. He said to the rich man, sell all you have. Give the money to the poor. Only then will you enter the kingdom. Jesus did not say anything about homosexuality. As to the family in general, he had only a few choice commands: don't get divorced, and whoever doesn't hate his father and mother has no place as my disciple.

If Jesus were to endorse legislating morality, I have a feeling the values voters would not like what he had to say. I somehow doubt he would come down on the side of the libertarians and their beloved free market economy that doesn't truly serve the needs of the poor. Jesus might well say to Gov. Perry and the values voters, if you don't like the government redistributing your wealth, then you must do it yourselves. Go, sell all you have. Give the money to the poor. Only then will you enter the kingdom.