VICTORIA_CONCORDIA_CRESCIT

Adele Gonzales, Life is Hard but God is Good (Orbis, 2011)

2011-10-09T02:45:00.000-07:00

Here’s a brilliant, ‘progressive Catholic’ attempt to ‘present the best theodicy possible.’ Adele Gonzales knows about suffering – via losing her beloved father unexpectedly when she was 14; soon afterwards she was shipped to Florida from Cuba without any English language skills; and she’s suffered emotionally, spiritually, physically (rheumatoid arthritis) - and ecclesiastically in a conservative Catholic church - in many ways…

Her vocation includes leading seminars and doing personal spiritual direction with other sufferers. Early in her career, when confronted in a meeting at which she was speaking on all this with a question about God, evil and suffering, her instinctive response was ‘Shit happens!’. Fortunately a wise bishop who was present mollified the shock-and-awe in the place by agreeing with her!

Back to losing her father: because he was a Mason she was told he went to hell: fortunately a wise and caring priest convinced her otherwise, via the story of the Prodigal’s father…

Why 9/11? Well, don’t forget ‘we Americans experienced on our own soil the terror, despair, and powerlessness other nations live with every day’. And Hurricane Katrina? ‘The entire world saw firsthand the poverty and misery of the black community… [and witnessed] city leaders blaming state leaders who in turn blamed the federal government’. How does one make sense of the Haitian earthquake? God’s vindictiveness over their voodoo superstitions? No. Haitians – 80% of whom are Catholic – believe God is good, even though life is hard: La vie est dure, mais Dieu est bon.

Who is this God?

I am in the air you breathe;

I am in the wind you ride;

I am in the song you sing;

I am in the tears you cry.

I am living water;

I am dance and song;

I am pain and sorrow;

I am fire and love.

I am the one living God:

I am the fountain of life;

I have come to bring you peace;

You are unique and you are mine…

How does God best do that? By becoming incarnate in Jesus and suffering with us and for us. (Versus the traditional nonsense about God being ‘impassible’ – not able to experience suffering).

But yes, evil is always the greatest obstacle to believing and trusting in God. As theologian Hans Kung wrote: suffering or evil is the ‘acid test’ for every religion.

Christians have tried to theologize it all via the Augustinian notion of original sin. But Sister Gonzales would prefer to say that though evil and suffering are real, as Anne Frank writes in her diary while hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam: ‘Everyone has inside of them a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love!’

· Structures and institutions? ‘Sometimes I sense darkness in the room, and have to leave immediately…’ Their crimes against the common good go beyond the accumulation of the sins of their members… (Example: those who manage the institutions of the church and its finances are mostly removed from the Church’s pastoral life).

· Hell? It’s not so much about fire and heat as about the absence of God.

· A great contemporary evil? ‘Noise’: ‘I don’t blame Apple, or Sony, or any other corporation for the noise, but I think the evil of greed lurking in the background has a lot to do with it.’

· War? As Pope John Paul II said: ‘War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity’. But we didn’t listen, and invaded Iraq anyway…

· Unforgiveness (to an angry divorced woman): ‘This jerk made your life miserable for ten years and now you’re giving him fifteen more free of charge so that he can continue to ruin your life?’ Result: an instant ‘aha’ experience and the woman decided to get counseling. Forgiveness takes place in 5 different contexts – Accepting God’s forgiveness, forgiving ourselves, asking to be forgiven, forgiving God, forgiving others (people, communities, institutions)…

Gonzales’ conclusions:

· ‘It may sound crazy, but I believe that without the energies of love, pain, anger, and many others, creation would be less than it was meant to be. Growth and development involve change, and change is always painful and frustrating. [So let us] put our energies… into positive actions that could lead to healing, rather than in wasting them in hatred, anger, and revenge.’

· ‘I know I am a better person because of… evil. My father’s sudden death, our exile from our country of birth, my mother’s blindness, my little cousin’s leukemia, the struggles to finish graduate school, my many illnesses since I was young… are experiences which have made me the person I am today. I believe that the greatest good that has come out of these “evils” is the ability to empathize with someone else’s pain and to walk in their shoes, to be a woman of hope, to enjoy and share a great sense of humor, and to believe without any doubt in the goodness of God and of the universe…’

· Yes there’s mystery here: and by definition a mystery is unknowable. But as an eastern spiritual master put it, wisely: ‘Pain is part of living, but suffering is optional’. Francis of Assisi endured a lot of physical, emotional and spiritual pain, but he was joyful. William O’Malley: ‘The sufferings of Christ did not cease when Jesus died. Christ still suffers when we suffer, and – we trust – our suffering is redemptive just as his sufferings were redemptive’

· Finally, Richard Rohr: ‘If you do not transform your pain, you will surely transmit it to those around you and even to the next generation’.

Rowland Croucher
September 2011
jmm.aaa.net.au

The Gist of Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

2011-08-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, Jossey-Bass, 2011

Falling Upward is, in my view, his ‘best yet’ – with more quotable quotes than any of his previous writings.

Here I’ll simply list a pot-pourri of his most memorable sayings, in three sections:

The first half of life
The second half of life, and
The age-old principles for moving from one mode of doing life to the other...

1. THE FIRST HALF OF LIFE

Cultures before the postmodern era valued law, tradition, custom, authority, boundaries and a clear morality... (a lever, with a place to stand – Archimedes). These gave us the necessary security, continuity, predictability, impulse control and ego structure we need before the chaos of real life shows up. Healthily conservative people tend to grow up more naturally and more happily than those who receive only free-form, ‘build it yourself’ worldviews. Law and tradition are necessary in any spiritual system both to reveal and to limit our basic egocentricity, and to make at least some community, family, and marriage possible.

Cesar Milan, the ‘dog whisperer’ says dogs are happier when they live within very clear limits and boundaries.

The Iroquois Nation asked ‘What would be good for the next seven generations?’

... Climbing the ladder of ‘success’: building a tower of self-importance – a personal ‘salvation project’ (Thomas Merton).

In one sense, as Jesus said, unless we become like a little child, we will not enter the Kingdom of God (Mt 18:3). He says this in response to the egotistic and ambitious question of the apostles, who were asking him ‘Who is the greatest?’

There’s the danger of staying on the same path – even if it’s going nowhere. This is the tragic path of many elderly people who have not become actual elders, probably because they were never eldered or mentored themselves.

Those who whine about parents and authority for too long invariably remain or become narcissists... And unfortunately some stay narcissistic until old age – they never grow up... and it saddens me when old folks are still full of themselves and their absolute opinions about everything... [So] do not waste a moment of time lamenting poor parenting.

The first journey is always about externals, formulas, superficial emotions, flags and badges, correct rituals, Bible quotes, and special clothing, all of which largely substitute for actual spirituality (Mt 23:13-32). But being preoccupied with titles, perks, and religious externals... law, ritual and priestcraft... becomes a compulsive substitute of actual divine encounter or honest relationship. This does not bode well for the future of any church or society.

Unfortunately, most Christians are not well trained at holding opposites for very long, or living with what could be very creative tension. First naivete is the earnest and dangerous innocence we sometimes admire in young zealots, but it is also the reason we should not elect them or follow them as leaders

Notice how no American president can fully admit that his war or his policies were wrong – ever. Popes and clergy have not been known for apologizing.

Almost all groups and institutions are first-half-of-life structures. Don’t expect or demand from groups what they usually cannot give. Doing so will make you needlessly angry and reactionary. They must and will be concerned with identity, boundaries, self-maintenance, self-perpetuation and self-congratulation. That is their nature and purpose. And the religious groups formed in the name of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed mostly define themselves by exclusion and ‘againstness’ because throughout history they have been asking first-half-of-life questions. (Remember that the first half of life defines itself by ‘no’ and the second half of life by ‘yes’). Nothing is going to change in history as long as most people are merely dualistic, either-or thinkers.

2. THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE

We discover the ladder of success is leaning against the wrong wall.

Falling upward is a secret of the soul not known by talking or proving but by risking.

Finding home and returning there...

We must let our ego-structure go and move beyond it.

Jesus the Jew criticizes his own religion the most, but never leaves it.

Pope John XXIII’s motto: ‘In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things, charity’.

Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the dark and light side of things.

The death of the false self is often the birth of the soul.

Jesus and the Jewish prophets were fully at home with the tragic sense of life. Life, as the biblical tradition makes clear, is both loss and renewal, death and resurrection, chaos and healing at the same time; life seems to be a collision of opposites... Where you stumble and fall, there you find pure gold (Jung). First there is the fall, and then there is the recovery from the fall – and both are the mercy of God (Lady Julian).

You will and must ‘lose’ at something. This is the only way Life-Fate-God-Grace-Mystery can get you to change, let go of your egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey. I wish I could say this was not true, but it is darn near absolute in the spiritual literature of the world. Three of the parables of Jesus are about losing something, searching for it anew with some effort, finding it, and in each case throwing a big party afterwards.

There will always be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand... Many depressed people are [those] who have never taken any risks, never moved outside their comfort zone, never faced necessary suffering, and so their unconscious knows they have never lived – or loved!

Your True Self is who you objectively are from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God, ‘the face you had before you were born,’ as the Zen masters say.

Beyond rational and critical thinking, we need to be called again. This can lead to the discovery of a ‘second naivete,’ which is a return to the joy of our first naivete, but now totally new. Inclusive, and mature thinking (Paul Ricoeur)

Our mature years are characterized by a kind of bright sadness and a sober happiness, if that makes any sense.

By the second half of life, you have learned... that most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image... Think of the cold Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, or the monk who tries to eliminate all humor in The Name of the Rose, or the frowning Koran burners of Florida. Holier-than-thou people usually end up holier than nobody... The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.

First we fall, and then we recover from the fall, and both reveal the mercy of God (Dame Julian).

Great people come to serve, not to be served. It is the twelfth and final and necessary step of the inspired Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Until and unless you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level. By the second half of life you learn to tell the difference between who you really are and how others can mirror that or not. This will keep you from taking either insults or praise too seriously. In the second half of life people have less power to infatuate you, to control you or hurt you.

Mature spirituality has invariably insisted on soul friends, gurus, confessors, mentors, masters, and spiritual directors for individuals, and prophets and truth-tellers for groups and institutions.

3. THE BEST WISDOM GOVERNING THE TRANSITION

The second law of thermodynamics: everything winds down unless some outside force winds it back up.

God hides holiness where only the humble and earnest will find it.

The human ego prefers just about anything to falling or changing or dying.

It is not love but death that makes the world go round (Ernest Becker).

Never forget ‘the way of the wound’ (‘when I am weak then I am strong’ –Paul) is the first step to spiritual growth (Francis, Therese of Lisieux, AA). There is always a wounding, and the great epiphany is that the wound becomes the secret key, even ‘sacred’, a wound that changes one dramatically, which, by the way, is the precise meaning of the wounds of Jesus! [In classical mythology] the hero or heroine finds eros or life energy, and it is more than enough to undo thanatos, the energy of death.

The opposite of rational is not irrational but trans-rational – bigger than the human mind can process (eg. love, death, suffering, God, infinity). ‘People are so afraid of being considered pre-rational that they avoid and deny the very possibility of the trans-rational. Others substitute mere pre-rational emotions for authentic religious experience, which is always trans-rational’ (Ken Wilber)

It’s often when the ego is most deconstructed that we can hear things anew and begin some honest reconstruction.

One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning (Jung).

We need to construct strong wineskins for new wine.

Your shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see. The more you have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, the more shadow work you will need to do... Neither our persona nor our shadow is evil in itself; they just allow us to do evil and not know it. I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then I must watch my reaction to it.

The saint is precisely one who has no ‘I’ to protect or project. His or her ‘I’ is in conscious union with the ‘I AM’ of God.

Democracy is not the best form of government, just the safest (Plato, Jefferson). But a truly wise monarch might be better at getting things done (‘no hate letters please’).

You can’t step more than one level beyond your own consciousness. So those ideas/people much higher/deeper will invariably appear wrong.

Religious people tend to love the past rather than the future or the present.

Prophets don’t care whether you’re ready to hear their message. They say it because it has to be said and is true.

In the ‘muddled middle’ “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” (W B Yeats).

Both God’s conditional love and also God’s unconditional love are found in the same Scriptures, like Deuteronomy and John’s Gospel. The only real biblical promise is thatunconditional love will have the last word. Jesus is never upset with sinners (check it out!); he is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners! Organized religion has not been known for its inclusiveness or for being very comfortable with diversity.

The only consistent pattern I can find is that all the books of the Bible seem to agree that somehow God is with us and we are not alone.

‘Infantile grandiosity’ (Dr Robert Moore)... recurring Greek hubris. Some even appear to make it to the ‘top’, but there is usually little recognition of the many shoulders they stood on to move there, the many gratuitous circumstances that made it possible for them to arrive there, and sometimes the necks they have stood on to stay there. They ‘gained the whole but lost their soul’ as Jesus put it.

There are finally only two subjects in all of literature and poetry: love and death.

If you accept a punitive notion of God, who punishes or even eternally tortures those who do not love him, then you have an absurd universe where most people on this earth end up being more loving than God.... Jesus touched and healed anybody who asked for it; there were no prerequisites for his healings. Check it out yourself. Why would Jesus’ love be so unconditional while he was in this world, and suddenly become so conditional after death?

The classic spiritual journey always begins elitist and ends egalitarian (Ken Wilber). The ego clearly prefers an economy of merit, where we can divide the world into winners and losers, to any economy of grace, where merit or worthiness loses all meaning.

Either God is for everybody and the divine DNA is somehow in all of creation, or this God is not God by any common definition, or even much of a god at all.

Disclosure: I’ve read 8-10 of Richard Rohr’s books, been listening to him on cassette tapes then CDs and at conferences for nearly 30 years, attended his week-long retreat for men in Arizona, lunched with him on the day John Paul II was buried, and entertained him as a friend in our home.

Rowland Croucher

August 2011

Bishop Gene Robinson: In the Eye of the Storm (2008)

2011-07-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

Bishop Gene Robinson is perhaps the third best-known Episcopal/Anglican bishop around the world (after the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Desmond Tutu): all because he’s been – reluctantly – the ‘Martin Luther’ of a new reformation in the church, advocating equality for glbt people.

Wikipedia tells us that ‘the existence of homosexual bishops in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and other traditions is a matter of historical record, though never, until recently, considered licit by any of the main Christian denominations. Homosexual activity was engaged in secretly. When it was made public, official response ranged from inaction to expulsion from Holy Orders. As far back as the eleventh century, Ralph, Archbishop of Tours had his lover installed as Bishop of Orléans, yet neither Pope Urban II, nor his successor Paschal II took action to depose either man.

The article continues:

It is in contemporary Anglicanism that the issue of homosexuality and its relationship to people in the episcopate has been confronted openly. Indeed, the only large mainstream church to ever consecrate an openly gay bishop who was not celibate has been the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, a member of the Anglican Communion, which consecrated Gene Robinson diocesan bishop of Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003. [1]

More from Wikipedia, on Vicki Gene Robinson (born May 29, 1947): ‘[He] went public with his sexual identity and divorced in the 1980s. Robinson was elected bishop by the New Hampshire diocese on June 7, 2003, at St. Paul's Church in Concord. Wearing a bullet-proof vest he was consecrated on November 2, 2003 ([and] Retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated that he did not see what "all the fuss" was about’) [2]

In the Eye of the Storm Gene Robinson’s passionate (but graciously expressed) thesis is that ‘the planets seem to be aligned today’ for the full civil rights of glbt people - a struggle similar to those of the civil rights and feminist movements. He asserts that the way we think about sexual orientation today was unknown in biblical times. He supports sexual abstinence outside of committed relationships, and theologically would be regarded as a ‘moderate conservative’. His God is a God of radical inclusion, who wants to lift up all the oppressed, including women, minorities and the poor.

In the Eye of the Storm is a book of Robinson’s favorite homilies, spiced here and there with a few autobiographical details - like his childhood in a poor, uneducated, and deeply Christian family in rural Kentucky where his parents were tenant farmers; his first marriage by which he had two children; his treatment for alcohol dependence (there’s only one sentence about that); and his twenty-year commitment to partner Mark Andrews – about whom we learn almost nothing.

He comes across as a sensitive, warm and forgiving man – traits not always practised by many of his critics – who is utterly committed to the prophetic call to ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God’ (not – as the Prayer Book wrongly states – to ‘love justice [and] to do mercy…’) [3]

Gay issues are essentially about social justice, and he views acceptance of lgbt people as inevitable.

Here are some bits I marked:

· ‘Some estimate that between 40 and 60 percent of Roman Catholic priests are gay’ (18) [4]

· ‘We’ve seen more promiscuity among gay men, not because both men are gay, but because both men are men. Studies of lesbian women show little or no interest in promiscuity’ (41)

· ‘Literally hundreds of rights and protections afforded heterosexual couples at the utterance of “I do” are not available to us. The kinds of protections that became instantly available to Britney Spears – who, on a lark, decided one night in Las Vegas to get married – are not available to Mark and me despite twenty years of love and fidelity’ (48)

· ‘[A Canadian bishop is] being lambasted around the world for blessing the union of two same-gender loving people. He and his people may be wondering why, if we can bless fox hunts and fishing fleets, we cannot bless two people who pledge to love one another in a faithful, monogamous, life-long-intentioned union and who seek the church’s blessing on that holy endeavor’ (98)

· ‘To many, asking gay folk to return to church is like asking an abused wife to return to her abusive husband’ (99)

Gene Robinson knows that he will ‘never again be in a “small room.” Because of the high level of media attention, followed by the close scrutiny of those who oppose me, I'm never in a trusting, safe environment where I can let my guard down. Someone is always watching and will use anything I say against me’ (46).

I want to echo the heartfelt words from Desmond Tutu’s Foreword: ‘May I wholly inadequately apologize to my sisters and brothers who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered for the cruelty and injustice that you have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of us, your fellow Anglicans; I am sorry. Forgive us for all the pain we have caused you and which we continue to inflict on you. Gene Robinson is a wonderful human being, and I am proud to belong to the same church as he.’

[1] Wikipedia article ‘Gay Bishops’
[2] Wikipedia ‘Vicki Gene Robinson’

[3] p. 125

[4] Elizabeth Stuart, Chosen: Gay Catholic Priests Tell Their Stories, 1993

Shalom!/Salaam!/Pax!

Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.aaa.net.au

July 2011

Harvey Cox, The Future of Faith (2009)

2011-07-22T02:41:00.000-07:00

I have an unusual hobby: I collect generalizations. The scholars who supply them have a magisterial grasp of their subject, and can offer outrageously simple ‘global statements’ without fear of contradiction. This book is full of them.

Harvey Cox retired from the Hollis Chair of Divinity at Harvard University in October 2009 (he was the ninth person to hold this prestigious post which, established in 1727, is the oldest endowed professorship in American higher education.)

I remember as a theological student reading his The Secular City when it was first published in 1965: and I’m not surprised it’s sold one million copies.

An ordained Baptist minister, Cox’s main area of interest has been trends in global Christianity (its history, geography, theology and spirituality) with a special focus on Latin American liberation theology. In 1900 90% of Christians lived either in Europe or in the US but today 60 percent live in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. Dr Cox writes: ‘Since the vast majority of people in this “new Christendom” are neither white nor well-off, their theological questions center less on the existence or nonexistence of God or the metaphysical nature of Christ than on why poverty and hunger still stalk God’s world. It is little wonder that liberation theology, the most creative theological movement of the twentieth century, did not originate in Marburg or Yale, but in the tar-paper shacks of Brazil and the slums of South Korea.’

This readable book is a cross between autobiography and polemics. Cox takes us on a journey through three phases of the evolution of Christianity: the Age of Faith (kiboshed – my word – by Constantine), the Age of Belief and the Age of the Spirit. His sympathies are categorically with the first and last of these, and his vitriol is mostly reserved for institutional and theological fundamentalisms of all kinds. The early churches were vibrant, enthusiastic communities dedicated to ‘following’ Jesus. But in ‘The Age of Belief’ from the fourth to the twentieth centuries, faith became entangled with rituals, liturgies and creeds, orthodox theology mostly replaced personal religion, and a stifling clericalism developed.

So the gist of The Future of Faith can be summarized thus: the church world-wide is in good shape when it jettisons at least three concomitants of ‘Constantinianism’ – institutionalism, hierarchicalism, and creedalism. These three destructive tendencies are not compatible with the church as a missional community; they destroy faith (as distinct from ‘beliefs’). Cox reckons the Pentecostals in Latin America (those influenced by the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, and liberation theology rather than Western notions of ‘prosperity theology’) point the way to a dynamic ‘Age of the Spirit’. One of the key secrets of these ecclesial communities’ social justice ministries? They make lists – lists of people in their neighbourhood who need help. And – importantly - they and the Catholic ‘base ecclesial communities’ are not imprisoned within a fundamentalism of ‘Jesus as personal savior whose mission [is] to rescue them from a sinful world…’

‘Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying. The spiritual, communal and justice-seeking dimensions of Christianity are now its leading edge as the twenty-first century hurtles forward, and this change is taking place along with similar reformations in other world religions’ (p.212). So the healthiest Christianity emphasizes faith as a way of life (rather than the fundamentalists’ doctrinal boxes we must tick), respectful inter-faith dialogue, and ‘deeds not creeds’ (his quote from conservative pastor Rick Warren).

‘Christianity came to birth in the midst of cultural change — it is a movement born to travel – it takes on life with each succeeding cultural transition. But for this to happen again, some old wine-skins must be discarded, and the incubus of a self serving and discredited picture of Christian origins must be set aside’ (p.184). ‘We stand on the beautiful threshold of a new chapter in the Christian story – Christians on five continents are shaking off the residues of the second phase (the Age of Belief) and negotiating a bumpy transition into a fresh era for which a name has not yet been coined. I would like to call it the Age of the Spirit’ (p.8).

For Cox, faith starts with awe, not propositions. ‘It begins with a mixture of wonder and fear all human beings feel toward the mystery that envelops us. But awe becomes faith only as it ascribes some meaning to that mystery.’ (Interesting that. As I pondered where my Christian faith began, I have to say it wasn’t awe – though that came later – but a commitment to the person and teaching of Jesus…).

Harvey Cox would probably not categorize himself a ‘theological progressive’, but critiques that movement as he does all others. (You’ll be hard-pressed to find here any reference to Spong or Crossan: Borg, I think, is mentioned just once – or N T Wright or John Stott for that matter. And interestingly he doesn’t cite any websites in his references/ endnotes).

Here’s the best quote in the book:

‘I have often seen what damage both fundamentalist literalism and historical-critical skepticism can do to otherwise thoughtful and serious people. Take the critical specialists with a grain of salt: they are not experts in what the Bible means for today. And the fundamentalists? Their literalistic reading is a modern and questionable one.’ (p. 168)

This readable book is a real page-turner! You can get the paperback edition post-free from the Book Depository for AUD $14-78: excellent value.

~~

Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.aaa.net.au

July 2011

Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso (1937)

2011-07-11T03:55:00.000-07:00

This is a study of how much pain can be communicated by a human face. It has the features of a specific person, Dora Maar, whom Picasso described as "always weeping". She was in fact his close collaborator in the time of his life when he was most involved with politics.

Let your eyes wander over the sharp surface and you are led by the jagged black lines to the picture's centre, her mouth and chin, where the flesh seems to have been peeled away by corrosive tears to reveal hard white bone. The handkerchief she stuffs in her mouth is like a shard of glass. Her eyes are black apertures. When you are inside this picture you are inside pain; it hits you like a punch in the stomach.
Picasso's insistence that we imagine ourselves into the excoriated face of this woman, into her dark eyes, was part of his response to seeing newspaper photographs of the Luftwaffe's bombing of Guernica on behalf of Franco in the Spanish civil war on April 26, 1937. This painting came at the end of the series of paintings, prints and drawings that Picasso made in protest. It has very personal, Spanish sources. In May 1937 Picasso's mother wrote to him from Barcelona that smoke from the burning city during the fighting made her eyes water. The Mater Dolorosa, the weeping Virgin, is a traditional image in Spanish art, often represented in lurid baroque sculptures with glass tears, like the very solid one that flows towards this woman's right ear. Picasso's father, an artist, made one for the family home.

This painting takes such associations and chews them to pulp. It is about the violence that we feel when we look at it, about translating the rawest human emotion into paint. Its origins lie in the tortured figures of Picasso's Guernica (1937), whose suffering is calculated to convey you beyond the photographs of the bombing to sense momentarily what it was to be there. In Guernica there is a screaming woman holding her dead baby, her tongue a dagger pointing at heaven. The baby's face is a cartoon of death. Picasso followed Guernica with his series of Weeping Woman paintings in which the woman's mourning continues, without end. She cries and cries. In different versions the Weeping Woman's face is crushed to an abject lump, twisted out of recognition.

Extract from an article by Jonathan Jones, May 13, 2000, The Guardian

http://www.inminds.com/weeping-woman-picasso-1937.html

Love is an Orientation (Andrew Marin, IVP, 2009)

2011-06-20T22:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a unique book by a unusual young man - a 'straight, white, conservative, evangelical male' with a belief in 'the Bible as the inerrant word of God' - who addressed a large conference of not-necessarily-Christian Gays/Lesbians and received a standing ovation!

I've never heard of anyone with his general theological stance who's done that and had a reception like that. The common mantra for his kind of Christian is 'love the sinner hate the sin' - something he doesn't use (mostly because those people don't generate love as Jesus did, so Andrew suspects there's something wrong with that approach).

What's his secret? Simple, really: do what Jesus did, immerse oneself in the culture of the marginalized, and honour them as human beings also made in the image of God. Don't preach at them. Don't offer the Pharisee-talk ('Change... and you'll be acceptable around here': for Jesus it was the other way around - acceptance *preceded* repentance). Listen to their stories (and as he found, the question about whether a gay lifestyle is a freely-chosen one answers itself in the vast majority of cases). Share their pain (especially when they've prayed to be changed from a same-sex attraction, and wakened 'every morning not having that prayer answered... wondering whether there really is a God, or [being convinced] that [one] is condemned to hell because of attractions [one] can't figure out').

Also - and this is important - don't get bogged down arguing about the 'clobber texts' from Leviticus, Romans and 1 Corinthians. Again do what Jesus did: in the Gospels he was asked 'closed-ended' questions 25 times but only directly answered three or four of them (pp. 179 ff.). So leave the hermeneutical questions to biblical scholars, and the aetiology of gender-orientation to the scientists, and start loving/accepting the marginalized.

'They'll know we are Christians, not by our proof-texting, but by our love' writes his mate Shane Claiborne in a commendation on the first page.

Now, Andrew's theological approach isn't quite mine. Except for Thomas Merton (quoted, I think, twice) all of his 'respected theologians and Bible scholars' are fundamentalists or conservative evangelicals (my terms - people like John MacArthur, et. al).

Interestingly, Andrew has chosen the fundamentalists' arch-enemy Brian McLaren to write the Foreword - which Brian does with what is now his famous parable (expanded in his recent book A New Kind of Christianity) about 'sincere well-intentioned religious people who believe in their religion so fervently they would die for it but also would kill for it - literally or metaphorically...' Brian McLaren urges us to hang in there until the last page, and not 'check-list' Andrew's approach or opinions against our own preconceived ideas... That's excellent wisdom for a book and a topic like this...

Here are some summary-statements; and others which 'gave me pause':

* 'Unless you have been sexually attracted to someone of the same sex you can never fully grasp, as a heterosexual Christian, what that means'... 'From my experience, the GLBT community's default system is to never take anything Christians say as genuine' (33)

* 'The Christian community has only ever known one way to handle same-sex sexual behavior: take a stand and keep a distance' (37)

* 'In general, Christians' default belief system is that [same-sex attraction] is environmental... I know many Christians who enjoy playing psychologist - talking to GLBT people to figure out if they had an absentee dad or a domineering mom... or experienced some kind of sexual abuse in their youth... Research suggests that on average only 7 to 15 percent of the GLBT community was sexually abused in their youth' (39, 42)

* 'Among gays and lesbians " love the sinner, hate the sin" is the most disdained phrase in the Christian vocabulary' (46)... [As Christians we have] 'an opportunity to change the culture by... offering hope and compassion to a people who have been burdened with a thick dose of stigma and shame in all aspects of their life' (53)

* 'Even as recently as 2002 there were still fourteen states [in the U.S.] that upheld the sodomy law, and in Idaho, one could land a lifetime sentence in jail for engaging in gay sexual behaviors' (55)

* 'The word homosexual is offensive to someone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. So instead use words like gay, lesbian, GLBT, gay and lesbian community' (60)

* 'Gay Christians believe that the passages in the Bible that condemn same-sex relationships are not referencing long-term, committed monogamous relationships. Rather, [they're] talking about inhospitality, heterosexual rape, pagan ritual sex and orgies, and pederasty (men having sex with boys)' (73)

* 'Currently in many circles both gay and straight, scientific and religious, there has been a more common acceptance of homosexuality's etiology as a combination of biological, environmental and social factors that all contribute to gay orientation' (75-6)

* 'Gay Christians have started to change the mainstream's mindset that GLBT people crave random sex, are STD-laced, and have alcohol and drug problems' (76)

* 'There is no wrong way to humbly listen and learn! ... I... trust in the faithfulness of my loving Father to fill in the gaps that I can never understand'... I promise that God loves his children enough that he will always tell them what... is best for their life' (78-9, 86)

* '80% of the GLBT community want nothing to do with [ex-gay ministries]' (99); according to the ground-breaking book unChristian, [among] 16-29-year-olds the three most common perceptions of present-day Christians are that they are anti-gay (91%), judgmental (87%) and hypocritical (85%)' (100)

* 'A great open-ended question is, "What's it like to be you?"' (163). 'I don't care if gays and lesbians are or aren't born that way... Here is a good question: "How do you think your genetic make-up relates to God's desire to be called your Father?"' (182)

* 'I know some people who say that they once had same-sex sexual attraction but are now attracted exclusively to people of the opposite sex, and in fact are married and have kids and are living a happy life. Just the same I know people who have tried and tried and tried, and have not been able to "change their sexual orientation," and therefore have stopped trying and are actively involved in the GLBT community: all these people from both life experiences are telling the truth as they perceive it, and each falls somewhere different on the spectrum of change' (184)

* Marin's conclusion: 'We're not called to posit theories that support our assumptions. We're not called to speculate about genetics or development experiences or spiritual oppression in faceless groups of other people. We're called to build bridges informed by the Scriptures and empowered by the Spirit. We're called to let God be the judge of his creation. We're called to let the Holy Spirit whisper truth into each person's heart. And we're called to show love unconditionally, tangibly, measurably' (187)

If Andrew Marin read more mainline theologians, he would appreciate quotes like this one, from Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination:

'Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural, but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness...

'Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion. The norms of law (social control) are never accommodated to persons, but persons are accommodated to the norms. Otherwise the norms will collapse and with them the whole power arrangement. Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context.'

Shalom!/Salaam!/Pax!

Rowland Croucher http://jmm.aaa.net.au

June 10, 2011

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom: A Novel

2010-11-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

Nearly a decade after publishing his prize-winning novel The Corrections, Franzen has done it again. Freedom is currently (November 2010) the most-discussed contemporary work of English-language fiction in the U.S. and Australia and who knows where else.

Freedom is the complicated story of an unfree, deteriorating middle-class Minnesotan family (parents Walter and Patty Berglund, children, lovers, assorted relatives, neighbours, friends, shysters and enemies) who battle all their lives with unresolved family-of-origin issues. Walter's main agenda - as also with his Swedish male ancestors - is to avoid facing the threatening realities of deeply-buried emotions. Patty's emotional life is dominated by the pain of her parents' preoccupation with high-flying professional and political agendas, a date-rape incident, and of course relating to her one-dimensional husband.

Nearly a decade after publishing his prize-winning novel The Corrections, Franzen has done it again. Freedom is currently (November 2010) the most-discussed contemporary work of English-language fiction in the U.S. and Australia and who knows where else.

Freedom is the complicated story of an unfree, deteriorating middle-class Minnesotan family (parents Walter and Patty Berglund, children, lovers, assorted relatives, neighbours, friends, shysters and enemies) who battle all their lives with unresolved family-of-origin issues. Walter's main agenda - as also with his Swedish male ancestors - is to avoid facing the threatening realities of deeply-buried emotions. Patty's emotional life is dominated by the pain of her parents' preoccupation with high-flying professional and political agendas, a date-rape incident, and of course relating to her one-dimensional husband.

Walter and Patty are university graduates. He's a naive, nice, corporate lawyer/do-gooder, who resigns from 3M and moves into nature conservation, working for a minerals magnate who wants to turn some of his ill-earned millions into saving a small woodland bird, the Cerulean warbler. You might judge (if you're naive) that this is triple-bottom-line stuff, but there's only one outcome that magnate is interested in...

Franzen's main offering is a many-layered analysis of the Berglunds’ marriage. He tells the story partly via the device of Patty's journaling for her therapist - which, oddly, is composed in the third person.

The Berglunds are, at the beginning, NQR (not quite right) caricatures, nonentities who are nevertheless redeemed at the end. (I won't spoil it by disclosing the story-line). The main message: nonentities are people too. If they're willing to be humble and vulnerable and name their demons, they (and their families/marriage) can be saved.

So there's really a collision of 'freedoms' here. Every prodigal is free to flee to the far country (New York etc.) to escape family-of-origin realities, but there, in the loneliness of various pig-pens, each comes to realize that there's no place like home, if only they could figure out how to reconstruct home from the debris of past hurts.

Sample: 'He'd needed an extra brother to love and hate and compete with. And the eternal tormenting question for Walter... was whether Richard was the little brother or the big brother, the f***up or the hero, the beloved damaged friend or the dangerous rival' (131). (Note: they're my ***'s. You'd better cope with the four-letter words here or you'll get distracted...).

(Client: tell me how all this generally resonates with your story).

Sex is a major theme. Mostly problematical sex. Like here: 'Walter was what he was, and he wanted what he was to be what Patty wanted. He wanted things to be mutual! ... Eventually after years of resisting, she managed to get him to stop trying altogether. And felt terribly guilty but also *angry* and *annoyed* to be made to feel like such a failure... Sex seemed to be a diversion for young people with nothing better to do' (140-1).

There's also spectacular sex, sex within intersecting love-triangles, feral sex, half-hearted sex, depersonalized sex, phone sex, date-rape, promiscuous American College sex, and lots of other kinds of sex you didn't think you needed to know about. (Speaking of which: do you know any other author who's described in somewhat graphic detail how someone retrieved a wedding ring they'd swallowed?).

On the sub-themes of endangered bird-species, and overpopulation, I noted these:

* 'Too many damn people on the planet. It's especially clear when we went to South America. Yes, per capita consumption is rising. Yes, the Chinese are illegally vacuuming up resources down there. But the real problem is population pressure. Six kids per family versus one point five. People are desperate to feed the children that the pope in his infinite wisdom makes them have, and so they trash the environment' (219).

* 'The low-end estimate of songbirds daily murdered by cats in the United States [is] one million, ie. 365,000,000 per year (and this... [is] a conservative estimate and did not include the starvation of the murdered birds' chicks' (545). Back on page 222: 'Every year in the U.S. one *billion* songbirds are murdered by domestic and feral cats... but no one gives a s*** because they love their own individual kitty cat'.

* 'Walter had never liked cats. They seemed to him to be the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries, saluting the uniforms of killers as cat-owners stroke their lovely fur and forgive their claws and fangs. He'd never seen anything in a cat's face but simpering incuriosity and self-interest; you only had to tease one with a mouse-toy to see where its true heart lay' (548).

The central metaphor - until you get to the denouement at the end - is not freedom but duplicity. It's Franzen's long sermon on the topic 'How Should We Then Live?' Someone on Amazon.com wrote: 'The apocalpyse, when it comes, clears the way for a postlude, set in Minnesota, that is as haunting as anything in recent American fiction. Visiting her daughter’s university, Patty observes a stone engraved with the words, “USE WELL THY FREEDOM”. The warning is there throughout. With its all-encompassing world, its flawed heroes and its redemptive ending, “Freedom” has the sweep of a modern “Paradise Lost”.'

Well, you get the idea. Professional reviewers and book clubbers (the 'chattering classes') will like it (there are glowing reviews in the NYT, Time, the Economist, etc.) but the comments by ordinary folks at Amazon.com - innocents who are prepared to say the emperor has no clothes - often only give it one or two stars out of five. Franzen has too many contrived conversations and improbable happenings (like a 19-year-old arms dealer traveling to Poland and Paraguay to make procurement purchases of spare parts for broken-down military trucks in Iraq).

I had three '!!!' moments: Walter's 'Welcome to the middle-class' speech (to which I responded, aloud, 'yoo-hoo!); a beautifully lyrical paragraph (485) on the wonders of bird migration; and a moving set of reconciliations towards the end (when I cried).

A little warning or two: for me this novel started slowly, but 'took off' about half-way through. Franzen could have reduced the number of characters by a third (to help folks with a 73-year-old brain to remember who's who). And he's verbose - maybe he'd have said more in 30 percent fewer pages. He writes brilliantly, of course (but not as fluently as John Updike), offering a lot of detail about this and that which had me skimming paragraphs.

If you enjoyed this you should also read Garrison Keillor (funnier), Tolstoy (who's in a league of his own) and John Updike (a better wordsmith).

Rowland Croucher

November 2010

Understanding the Bible: Three Helpful Volumes

2010-07-15T17:26:00.000-07:00

These three books have different target-audiences. Philip Fogarty SJ 'Navigating the Gospels: John' aims to help the Catholic faithful get to grips with the essence of the purpose and teachings of the Fourth Gospel. Dean Drayton's 'Which Gospel? Three New Testament Perspectives' is an excellent summary of the NT's understanding(s) of what 'Good News' really means. And 'The Children's Bible: New Revised Standard Version' is aimed at young people.

1. Philip Fogarty SJ, 'Navigating the Gospels: John' is written by an Irish Jesuit, a former headmaster, whose aim is to reinforce the essential belief-system of Catholics against the unhelpful emphases of liberal theologians on the one hand and Protestant fundamentalists on the other. To the liberals he affirms Jesus was God; to the fundamentalists Jesus was truly human.

Although he's done his homework in terms of the way the fourth gospel was put together (we learn a little about the sitz im leben of the Johannine community in 80-110 AD, especially their need to be encouraged in the basics of the Christian faith after being driven from the Jewish synagogues); and how this gospel was written and later redacted etc. there are hardly any references to the findings of biblical scholars. This book is a simple paraphrase of the stories and 'signs' in John, with a final chapter quoting the Second Vatican Council's statement on what it means for the Bible to be the inspired Word of God. A good, readable introduction especially helpful for Catholics who are beginning their quest to seriously understand this important New Testament gospel.

2. Dean Drayton is a well-known scholar-missiologist in Australian Uniting Church circles. This book - Which Gospel? Three New Testament Perspectives' - gives a helpful overview of various understandings of the notion of 'The Gospel' throughout Christian history, and suggests that all of them were lacking something important when put side-by-side with key New Testament emphases. Essentially, the Gospel is 'the Gospel of God' - it's God's initiative - not just a temporal/eternal palliative for individuals' needs for forgiveness, happiness etc. Again, although Dr. Drayton has read the scholars and is familiar with the findings of modern literary-historical criticism, very little of this is cited in this volume, which is aimed to help study-groups of thoughtful laypeople (with excellent prompts for personal and group reflection at the end of each chapter).

Here are some gems I marked to provoke thought:

* Bidden or unbidden, God is present

* Hebrews and Luke shun the term 'the gospel'

* The early church focussed its message on the resurrection of the crucified Jesus rather than his message of the Kingdom of God

* Isaac Watts' hymn 'When I survey' (c. 1707) is one of the first to use the personal pronoun

* Wesley was the last English-speaking mass-evangelist to have had a University education. (Others, notably Dwight D. (sic) Moody and Billy Graham weren't in that league)

* Liberal and Fundamentalist alike are rationalists

* The biblical God is not a 'democratic' God of choice, but a God of power

* The key understandings of the Gospel should arise from our 'aboriginal' (Drayton uses that generic adjective four or five times in this little book) documents, the texts of the New Testament.

Again, readable, thoughtful, useful for church adult study groups...

3. Children's Bible (New Revised Standard Version, Abingdon).

Here's a colourful edition of the most popular version of the Bible in use in mainline Christian churches, targeted especially for young people. The colourful illustrations would appeal mostly to four-to-eight year olds; the helps (glossary, maps, summary-paragraphs throughout etc.) to eight-to-14+ year olds, and the paragraph titles (Colloquy ! etc.) to 14-plus year olds. You choose the age at which you give this to your child/ren. As Evangelical churches and Sunday Schools still mostly use the NIV translation, this one might have to sit on the shelf at home for further study.

Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/

July 2010

CHRISTIANS HAVE A BIBLICAL MANDATE: BE POLITICAL

2010-04-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

Published in The Age (Melbourne), Opinion, September 4, 2003

by Rowan Forster and Rowland Croucher

The comments by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer about clergy ‘rushing for cheap headlines’ by getting involved in political statements, and the subsequent debate got us thinking…

Barney Zwartz, in his article on meddlesome priests (The Age, Opinion, 2/9), notes that the Judeo-Christian faith is not only about personal piety, but also social justice. Interfering clerics and prophets have, for 3000 years, been the bane of those who benefit from an unjust political system.

Take for instance that troublesome Baptist minister, Martin Luther King. He really should have kept his nose out of political issues, and kept his dream to himself. The duly elected Governors of Alabama and Mississippi were doing just fine until he came along. Why is religion getting mixed up with human rights?

Then there were those interfering archbishops, like Desmond Tutu in South Africa and Janani Luwum in Idi Amin’s Uganda. They should have left their political leaders alone, to govern as they saw fit. Same goes for Cardinal Jaime Sin in the Philippines under the enlightened rule of Ferdinand Marcos, and church leaders who opposed Pol Pot in Cambodia.

And what about Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador? If only he’d kept his mouth shut, he might still be alive. As for the likes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller in Nazi Germany, they should have stayed inside church cloisters instead of blundering into political activism.

Closer to home, meddlesome clerics like Tim Costello and Ray Cleary shouldn’t be shooting off their mouths about gambling and other social issues. Don’t they realise gambling addicts have a democratic right to sacrifice their homes and families and commit suicide if they want to, without interference from religious do-gooders?

And it’s not just clerics, either. Look at all those religiously minded laymen and women who have meddled in matters that don’t concern them. Like William Wilberforce dragging his Christian faith into the slavery issue, or the Earl of Shaftesbury interfering in the politics of child labor and other forms of exploitation. Or William and Catherine Booth meddling in issues of social and economic inequality, and founding the Salvation Army.

Then there’s Elizabeth Fry interfering in the field of prison reform; Florence Nightingale who founded the modern nursing movement; Cicely Saunders who founded the modern hospice movement; Henri Dunant who founded the Red Cross; and other meddlesome religious zealots who founded Alcoholics Anonymous, Amnesty International, Habitat for Humanity, Opportunity International, World Vision, TEAR Fund, and a host of other enterprises that can be traced back to a religious motivation.

Is a world without religious interference what we really need? The resultant welfare bill would send all governments flat broke. Expediency would be more likely to triumph over conscience, and brute force over moral persuasion. There’d be less of a check on the excesses of genocidal tyrants, murderous despots and ruthless pragmatists.

New Testament Christians, as Karl Barth pointed out, faced the dilemma of relating to Nero’s Rome, which in Romans 13 is a divinely-ordained institution to be obeyed, but in Revelation 13 is ‘the beast from the abyss’. When governments invoke order at the expense of freedom, tyranny usually results. But, yes, freedom without order is anarchy. The Christian social philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr used to say ‘There is no peace without power, and no justice with power.’ So a Christian has two responsibilities: to support legitimate law and order, but also to promote social justice.

Christians with a social conscience – whether clergy or not – have a biblical mandate to get involved in political debate. Pericles put it well: ‘We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics minds his own business. We say he has no business here at all.’

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/1768.htm

MARK DURIE: THE THIRD CHOICE

2010-04-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

Mark Durie, The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom (2010)

Critiquing Islam, some can be so "truthful" they come across as bigoted (one Christian politician wants "no more Muslim immigrants"); others are so "politically correct" they can be guilty of appeasement. Mark Durie, in this well-researched book, works hard to "speak the truth in love". An expert on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Dr Durie has published several books and many articles on Christian-Muslim relations.

Throughout Islamic history, conquered peoples could convert to Islam, die by the sword, or accept "dhimmi" (inferior) status and pay tribute under sharia law. A benign explanation of dhimmitude (like Wikipedia's) emphasizes "protection", "guarantee of minority peoples' rights" etc. Mark isn't so sure. Rather, these subjects – Christians, Jews and others - are often denied basic rights and personhood. Consider, for example, the two million lives lost - many of them Christians - in the Sudanese jihad; in Egypt or Turkey it's difficult (and in Saudi Arabia impossible) for Christians to get permission to build churches. Many other examples are cited.

Durie 'tells it like it is'. Example 1: Why do Muslims - one in twenty of Denmark's population - comprise the majority of the country's convicted rapists? 2. "Even in non-Muslim societies some Muslims can be aggressive and confrontational in pressing for their rights, and yet take offense when non-Muslims insist on theirs". 3. "The Muslim world has not to this day apologized to non-Muslims for jihad and dhimmitude. Muslims have not confronted their bitter past". 4. "The precedents for violence in Muhammad's life have absolutely no parallels in the life of Christ".

But what about the Old Testament? And the sometimes bloody history of Christianity - forced conversions, Crusades etc? I'd also have wished for more insights from Muslims living in Western countries (like the mysterious U.S.-based Turkish educator Fethullah Gulen, who asserts that "Terrorists are as bad as atheists, and both will go to hell”).

A fascinating chapter links historic Islamic psychology to episodes of rejection in Muhammad's life.

It's a great read: and I learned a lot from chasing many of the excellent footnotes on the Web.

Rowland Croucher

John Mark Ministries

More: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/keyword/i-12.htm

****

Mark's response:

I have written elsewhere a comparison of violence in the Bible and the Quran, including the Old Testament, but Christian violence was not the subject of this book. The book is also not intended to be a comparison of Christianity and Islam. It would have grossly distorted its presentation to have gone in that direction. One of the problems of the current culture of political correctness and self-inculpation is that one is not allowed to analyse Islam without criticizing Christianity at the same time. Self-inculpation becomes a knee-jerk response. This is debilitating and illogical. Let us give Islam the respect it deserves, and treat it on its own terms. Christian crimes throw no insight on the problem of understanding the dhimma - they are quite irrelevant.

Yes, I could have dealt with the mythology of the crusades as an act of aggression against peaceful Muslims, and referred readers to e.g. Robert Spencer on this. However I already had material like this, e.g. in reference to the Andalusian 'golden age' mythology, and did not really wish to rehash the already widely-available material on the history of Islamic jihad.

In fairness, I did acknowledge the origins of some fo the dhimma laws in the Christian Byzantine legal treatment of the Jews. (I used that comparison with Jesus to help people understand Muhammad, not to try to make an comprehensive comparison of Christianity with Islam).

Fethullah Gulen is by no means a moderate, but a master of taqiyya. He is widely understood to be driving the Islamization of Turkey. I will send you a few articles. There are liberals in the Muslim world, and you are correct, I did not engage with their proposals. This is because of irrelevance. They tend to overlook or downplay the issue of dhimmitude and have little relevant to say about it. In some cases they just lie, for example Tantawi (recently deceased) has a commentary on 9:29 in which he claims past Muslim scholars have shown that dhimmis enjoy equal rights with Muslims. The scholars he cites actually say exactly the opposite. I could have used Tantawi - a 'moderate' of sorts, despite his anti-semitism - as an example of deception and denial, but I already had plenty of that.

In all fairness, I did cite some Muslims who are concerned about the treatment of non-Muslims and have been willing to speak up about it. I have written elsewhere on the issue of "reforming" Islam and the difficulty of achieving this. However the lived reality of non-Muslims under sharia law today shows a trend towards sharia implementation, not liberalization. There is no global liberal Islamic movement comparable, say, to Reform Judaism, only isolated individuals, whose voice is marginal and very existence is threatened.

Mark Durie

SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE

2009-09-24T19:14:00.000-07:00

Spiritual Intelligence: A New Way of Being, Brian Draper, Lion, 2009.

We know about rational intelligence (remember those IQ tests at school?). And emotional intelligence (you’ve read Daniel Goleman’s best-seller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ). So if our cognitive and affective behaviors can be measured in terms of performance, someone had to come up with an equivalent for the dimension of the spirit. And this happened quite recently, apparently, when in the year 2000 Oxford academic, philosopher and spiritual writer Danah Zohar coined the phrase ‘spiritual intelligence’. ‘She suggested that it forms the central part of our intelligence, the part in which our values and beliefs are nurtured and in which we can work towards our full potential as created beings’ (p. 12).

Brian Draper, British freelance writer, seminar-leader, contributor to BBC Radio 4’s thought for the day etc. says spiritual intelligence is figuring out who we were created to be in the first place – the ‘unique you’. (Parker Palmer teaches similarly in the United States). It’s about listening to the child’s voice within us, and to the riches buried in our traditions – ‘riches that help us to make those soulful reconnections that many of us, deep down, yearn to make – with the world around us, with each other, with our selves, and with the higher power often called God’. It’s really all about common (or uncommon?) sense. Or a ‘spiritual’ person’s equivalent of ‘smelling the roses’.

The standard contemplative wisdom is here: listening to our breathing, eliminating invasive noise (eg. by trying a week without TV), and being still. One of Draper’s favorite questions is the Gen X writer Douglas Coupland’s: What do we do when the power fails? It’s not about conquests but connecting with our reality. As Marcel Proust wrote, ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes’. It’s about ‘seeing the world from up here’ as Robin Williams’ character Mr. Keating tells the boys when he climbs on to his desk in Dead Poets Society.

Spirituality is about the tension between contemplation (being) and action (doing). It’s about what you’re not (a consumer of this world) versus what you are (in communication with the world). Take some time to write your obituary. Our ego attaches itself to things around us, or the desired perceptions of others. So in this uncertain world, as Eckhart Tolle reminds us (Draper probably quotes Tolle more than any other wise person) ‘you can assume that virtually everyone you meet or know lives in a state of fear. .. Most become conscious of it only when it takes on one of its most acute forms’.

You get the idea… This is the book to read before Tolle’s The Power of Now. It connects us with ancient wisdom (though I reckon Draper could have used more biblical material: conservatives might accuse him – and they’d be wrong - of being ‘New Age-ish’). And he could have tapped more into the traditional wisdom of the church, which has been wrestling with all this for 2000 years under the rubric of ‘Spiritual Theology’ (he quotes Augustine, but I don’t think Meister Eckhart gets a mention, though, surprisingly for a Brit, American Franciscan Richard Rohr does, fairly frequently).

Near the end is a quote from D H Lawrence: ‘I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections./ And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill, / I am ill because of wounds to the soul’. Yes!

Get it for your family-member or friend who’s not yet had their mid-life crisis and is still moving too fast across the face of the earth trying to prove their worth by out-performing others. (You know the best description of a mid-life crisis? It’s realizing you’ve reached the top of the ladder, but it’s leaning against the wrong wall). And read it slowly – digest a couple of pages a day for a couple of months. Write ‘ouch!’ occasionally in the margins (as I did), and it could even be life-changing.

Rowland Croucher

August 2009

Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/

Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/

EXPLORING ECCLESIOLOGY

2009-09-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

Review: 'Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical
Introduction' (Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger, 2009).

Here's a good textbook for a basic course in 'Ecclesiology 101' (or what
used to be called 'Church, Ministry and Sacraments' back in my seminary
days). Though written 'densely' in text-book fashion (a few good
stories, lots of Bible texts, with some useful quotes and endnotes) it
would also comprise an excellent study-guide for church leaders.

The Recommended Reading List features authors like Donald Bloesch, Tony
Campolo, Mark Noll, D. Elton Trueblood, and Robert Webber: for those in
the know, they're more (progressive) evangelical than 'mainline' (eg.
the Alban Institute isn't, I think, mentioned) or ecumenical (eg.
published statements from 20th century Conciliar conferences don't
feature either). But there's a good balance between history ('the church
did not begin with us') and postmodern concepts (eg. the way many/most
churches are imprisoned within their secular cultures).

It strongly critiques conservative evangelical churches' addictions to
individualism (individual persons, families, churches - and note the
words of their 'praise choruses') and consumerism (there's more movement
of 'consumers' between churches and even across denominations than ever
before). And since the 'Scopes Monkey Trial' in the U.S. conservative
Christians have had a tendency to operate outside of the public square -
except for the two 'Focus on the Family' issues of abortion and gay
marriage - and marry their eschatology with 'left behind' Dispensationalism.

A summary of the authors' theological approach: the church is a
trinitarian community, constituted through its communion with the Triune
God: and the likeness between God and humanity is fundamentally
relational; eschatologically understood: the church is 'the instrument
of the coming kingdom' which involves the redemption not only of the
church but of the whole creation; missionally driven: not simply having
'missions' as one emphasis-among-many; varied in terms of ecclesial/
authority models; and ideally 'community' in Henri Nouwen's sense:
'community is the place where the person you least want to live with
always lives'.

As I said, it's more 'Evangelical' than 'Ecumenical'. Only
Fundamentalist/Evangelical 'scholars' use the Bible as a 'flat text'.
For example, it's mostly poor scholarship to quote ecclesial concepts
from Paul's early letters and 'the pastoral epistles' in the same
sentence without noting the progression in thinking between these
contexts. And only conservatives keenly anticipate 'the marriage supper
of the Lamb' (mentioned probably a dozen times).

But on the other hand there's a fairly strong social concern/justice
message throughout the book. Item: Archbishop Oscar Romero got into
trouble with the rich and powerful because he refused to baptize their
babies in segregated services - away from the poor - or separate rich
and poor at communion. A nearby comment: A church in the U.S. decided to
focus on outreach to the wealthy, 'cos you get more 'bang for your buck'
that way.

And there's both praise and criticism of the Emerging Church movement:
hanging out at Starbucks is not the same as kneeling together at the
communion rail; a latte is not an adequate substitute for bread and wine.

I wrote 'Yes!' to these statements:

* [Modern] Churches [mostly] focus on being vendors of religious goods
and service providers to expectant consumers... doing what it takes to
make sure their fellowships survive in the religious free market, where
only the fittest survive (p. 43)

* It is typical among Evangelicals... for worship... to be a 'warm-up'
for the main event, which is the preaching of the scriptures (p.106)
[which, I noted, is a very limited understanding of the concept of
'worship']

* The one category of prayer that has not been as widely retained,
especially among American evangelical churches, is that of confession
(p. 109)

That's enough. This book emphasises corporate as well as individual
faith. It has a more 'holistic' approach than most books in its genre.
Although the authors are evangelicals they've done their best - with
mixed success - to incorporate insights from Roman Catholic, Orthodox,
and progressive Protestant traditions and thinking.

Rowland Croucher

September 2009

RELIGION AND VIOLENCE

2009-08-29T05:16:00.000-07:00

29 August 2009

I attended a seminar today where Professor Camilleri (Professor of International Relations, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia) spoke on Religion and Violence. Here are some of the notes I took (I hope they represent what he said: they certainly are what I heard; he speaks very quietly, and was without a microphone).

* There have been 138-145 wars in the post-war period (ie. since 1945)

* There were over 1m deaths in the Korean and Vietnam wars, 800,000 in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands in Algeria

* The two 'world wars' were mainly between 'Christian' nations (main exception - Japan)

* In the last 10 years there were very few 'civil wars' unrelated to external influences

* Religion has increased its presence on the world stage. Note, for example the Vatican's key role in the demise of the Iron Curtain, the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church, the conflict in Northern Ireland (hopefully now behind us), the resurgence of Hinduism in India, and of course, the rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism

* Islam is back with a vengeance in Europe: More people in Europe worship on Fridays than on Sundays. Remember that the centre of Islam, population-wise, is not in the Middle East, but in S E Asia (Indonesia with the highest Muslim population in the world, followed by India)

* The sacred texts of all of the major religious traditions emphasize the sacredness of life, the dignity of human beings, the importance of 'the sacred', treating others as you wish to be treated, strong notions of justice etc.

* At their core all the conflicts with a 'religious' flavour actually have socio-cultural-political causes (including Northern Ireland)

* So the key questions are:

1. Is there anything about a particular religious faith-tradition which *leads* to violence?

2. Are there 'believers' acting contrary to their tradition?

3. Most important: what have the leaders of any particular religion done to *promote peace*? How many have said 'We have done a grievous wrong here'? What have they done to address the structural issues behind the war/s? For example: In Sri Lanka 80,000 lives have been lost in the 30-year war with the Tamils. What have Buddhists, Christians, Hindus done to end the conflict? (It is 'in pause' militarily at the moment, certainly not over yet). It is unusual for religious communities around the world to hold political leaders to account. The Pope opposed the Iraq war, but American Catholic bishops were mostly silent...

* Unfortunately the tendency is for religions to adopt a 'bunker' mentality, instinctively reinforcing the solidarity of their group

* We now have two means (nuclear weapons and climate change) to destroy our planet: just 10% of the world's nuclear bombs would destroy the earth 20 times over, and the mathematical probability of terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons in the 11 (?) countries which currently possess them is very much greater (actually probably inevitable) than if only 2 or 3 countries possessed them. That would spell the end of the 'just war' doctrine. We must collectively sort this out or collectively perish

* In general, for the first three centuries of its existence the Christian Church opposed force under any/all circumstances

* The Americans pre-emptively invaded Iraq for the same reason Japan bombed Pearl Harbour - *because they could*

* Those in power making political decisions generally don't take kindly to others (like religious leaders or ethicists) telling them what ought to happen.

Note: see an article here on the last point: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/1768.htm

Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/

CHRISTIANS & HOMOSEXUALITY

2009-08-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

A few brief notes on BEYOND STEREOTYPES: CHRISTIANS & HOMOSEXUALITY (The Evangelical Alliance Working Group on Human Sexuality), Australian Evangelical Alliance, 2009, 108 pages.

My thesis: Evangelicals who believe in ‘the supreme authority of the Scriptures’ have come a long way in terms of freedom for slaves, equality for women, and grace for the divorced, and are now on a similar journey as they relate to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people…

Interviewer (to Evangelical Church Leader): Remember when, just a couple of generations ago, we used to fight about Christians not dancing, not drinking alcohol, not remarrying after divorce, not working on Sabbath/Sunday, not giving leadership roles to women etc.? What’s the current situation?

Evangelical Church Leader: Wow, yes, times have changed haven’t they? Significant paradigm shifts have occurred in all these areas – and others. Now we allow divorced people to be leaders, even pastors; now many Christians drink alcohol – hopefully in moderation; these days we can cope with whatever people do on Sundays (they can even enjoy themselves!); and yes, we have women in leadership at every level in our denomination. (And once we could make an excellent case from the Bible against these positions).

I: OK let’s talk about sex. In your evangelical tradition, what’s prohibited?

ECL: That’s simple, really: no sex before marriage, no adultery after marriage, no sex between people of the same gender.

I: So fornication, adultery, homosexual sex are out. Which is worse of these three areas of sinfulness?

ECL: They’re all equally sinful.

I: Are they? Has your denomination had a task-force on homosexuality?

ECL: Yes, every denomination has.

I: On adultery?

ECL: No, we leave discipline in that area to local churches, unless pastors are involved, and they’re disciplined according to best-practice protocols…

I: Fornication?

ECL: Our pastors preach against it, and do pre-marriage counseling in this area, and that’s about it.

I: Do you know the incidence of church members (especially young people) who marry in your churches who’ve had sexual intercourse before their wedding-day?

ECL: No, but I guess it would be a majority…

I: Not only is it a majority, but according to surveys among pastors who really know their people, it’s somewhere between 70-90% in mainline evangelical churches in Western countries. Now, if all three areas of ‘sexual sinfulness’ are to attract attention/discipline, wouldn’t you think that area would too?

ECL: Sure, when you put it like that.

I: But it doesn’t eh? Why is that?

ECL: I frankly don’t know.

I: I’ll tell you. The rationale is not theological but personal – they’re our children! The problem is not what we believe, but what the Chinese call ‘face’!

I for one call that gross hypocrisy: no wonder thoughtful people despise churches for such ‘selective indignation’. [1]

In my work as a counselor-of-clergy (and others) over the past 25 years, theological and pastoral issues surrounding the complexities of this subject have come up hundreds of times. It’s currently the # 1 issue-of-contention in churches around the world. Here are just two very common cries-from-the-heart I hear regularly:

• ‘Rowland, I want to be faithful to the Scriptures, but when I counsel homosexuals pastorally my “proof-texting” approach isn’t working. When asked what my position is I’ve used the old mantra about ‘hating the sin and loving the sinner’ but the response is always ‘But then why don’t I *feel* loved by people who say that?’

• Or: ‘I’m nineteen, and have been sent to you by my pastor and parents. My father is an elder in the church I’ve attended all my life. Last month I finally ‘came out’ and told my family I’m gay. I think I’ve always been that way, I didn’t choose to be erotically attracted to other guys, but women just don’t turn me on at all. I’m a committed Christian and want to be faithful to God’s Word, but this whole thing is tearing me apart. I’ve recently heard of two young people like me who’ve committed suicide because they couldn’t cope with the negative responses they got when they came out… What am I to do?’

‘Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives; and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals. How am I to fit together my religious past with my spiritual present?’ (Philip Yancey [2])

I can relate to that. Theologically, I’m evangelical in roughly the same way Bishop N T Wright is: ‘I believe in the authority of Scripture. I believe in the appropriate sub-authority of tradition – respecting the wisdom of the church as it has wrestled with issues. But I also believe passionately in the importance of reason… ‘ [3] .

(An important little digression. A woman parishioner was married to a diagnosed psychopath, who beat her and her children, sometimes to the point of their being hospitalized. I talked with them both, and he denied it all. Eventually, she said ‘I can’t stay: I can cope but I don’t want to bring up my children in this fearful violent home.’ I agreed with her, and eventually she divorced her husband. By the way, he had a gun, and threatened to shoot me. Question: on what grounds did I have the authority to encourage her? The Bible? Not on its own: there’s no ‘exception clause’ in terms of divorce for domestic violence, only for adultery. Tradition? No: the church has been predominantly patriarchal. Reason? Well, yes, but sanctified by grace. I did what I believe Jesus would have done. The majority of Christians – even conservative Christians these days – agree with that approach in this sort of situation. Keep this analogy in mind as we discuss this other great paradigm-shift).

Re homosexuality, Wright goes on to say: ‘The more I’ve been on the edge of the debates the more I’m aware of the complexity of the issues…’ which is why, he says, he hasn’t (yet) published anything substantive on the subject. [4] I’m also not ready to write a major piece on this topic, so my approach here will have a tentative flavour about it.

However, when I read the Australian Evangelical Alliance’s Beyond Stereotypes I realize that I’m on the progressive end of the evangelical spectrum. I was for some years a member of the Council of the Victorian Evangelical Alliance, and was invited in the 1980s to be Australian national director for the EA. I know most of the people on this working group - a couple are close/good friends. They have done a good job - over three years - to produce this 108-page study-guide which, as far as it goes, is thorough, readable and irenic.

‘Evangelical’ clergy/pastors/scholars can *very roughly* be categorized four ways. Judgmental fundamentalists tell me ‘I preach the Word. I don’t compromise. It’s then up to individuals to respond or not: that’s their choice.’ (Crazies in this group – like the Westboro Baptist Church people – hold up placards at gays’ funerals proclaiming ‘God hates fags’). Conservative Evangelicals: ‘Scripture is clear: even though a homosexual’s orientation might not be *chosen*, their only life-choice is to be celibate.’ Progressive Evangelicals tend to identify with Tony Campolo’s well-known advice (paraphrased): ‘Even if our approach is to affirm the authority of Scripture, we must do more than simply exhort these people to be celibate.’ More radical Evangelicals: ‘The Bible has to be interpreted in its socio-cultural context. The same-sex liaisons behind the biblical prohibitions related either to exploitative sex or sexual rites in pagan religious contexts. A homosexual ‘orientation’ as such wasn’t known back then…’ [5]

Now that’s all dangerously simplistic of course. The nuances within each approach can’t be confined to one generalizing paragraph. And note I’m not talking about people like Bishop Spong who are certainly not ‘Evangelical’ in the sense I’m using the term.

Three of the ‘working-group’ which produced Beyond Stereotypes were clergy, three laypersons; five men, one woman. None were (of course?) practising homosexuals, though one of them – Debra Hirsch – confessed to having lived for a while as a lesbian.

On the first page of the Preface, the authors deplore ‘simply arguing about texts’ and express a ‘deep concern that the church was often handling the issue in a judgmental or unloving [way]’. But they also deplore a ‘cavalier’ approach to ‘the truth’ (p.v). This grace/truth tension pervades the whole book. Many times we come across something like this: ‘We acknowledge that homosexual people have been needlessly hurt and made to feel that God’s love is withheld from them. This is a great wrong…’ (p.5).

Their conclusions are standard ‘conservative evangelical’. Like:

• ‘Genetic determinism for sexual orientation is unlikely’ (p.29). (My note: yes, scientists haven’t found a ‘gay gene’ but they haven’t found a heterosexual gene either).

• ‘There is no research that proves that upbringing or early development is responsible for the direction of sexual orientation in adults’ (p.32). (Though I have found Elizabeth Moberly’s notion that homosexuality is a reparative drive, an attempt to repair a lack of affection from significant others of the same sex useful in some – but not all – counselling situations).

• Then we confront the explosive question ‘Can sexual orientation change?’ Spitzer’s 2003 study of ‘aversive therapy’ with 200 subjects leads our working-group to conclude that yes, ‘if there is a will for change, change is possible – though not necessarily easy and not necessarily complete.’ (One of the important questions we face here, of course, is the longer-term effectiveness of such ‘therapy’. I for one am pessimistic, having listened to stories of people who submitted to ‘aversive therapy’ in the 1980s and 90s. Spitzer is very critical of the way conservative groups use his research[6]).

• The section dealing with the biblical material begins, commendably, with an affirmation that all – whether gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gendered or straight - are made in God’s image and are deeply loved by God… But Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 cannot be simply dismissed as a matter of ‘pre-modern ignorance’ (p. 38). Although ceremonial, sacrificial, food, hygiene etc. laws have been superseded by ‘the coming of Jesus and the inauguration of a new age’ (p.38), what of the ‘moral law’ and behavior described as an ‘abomination’? Well, Jesus inaugurated ‘a time of grace… [to the adulterous woman] he offers both forgiveness and a call for repentance’ (p.40).

• Jesus ‘took people back to first principles and reaffirmed the divine plan of male-female complementarity…’ (pp.41,42). (It’s interesting that Jesus’ comment about eunuchs ‘born that way’ - Matthew 19:12 - isn’t, I think, mentioned).

• ‘Paul’ (1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10) ‘was not homophobic. Same-sex sexual activity is listed along with a range of [other sins] – adultery, theft, greed, drunkenness, slander… Christians have been wrong to single out homosexual sin for special condemnation’ (p.43). Romans 1:26-7 ‘refers to homosexuality… not pederasty (homosexual relationship to children)…’. Paul calls homosexual activity ‘unnatural’.

• In terms of the law of the land, our authors affirm that Christians of all people should encourage fairness – whatever our opinion of same-sex unions, divorce, the protection of children etc.

• ‘We affirm that monogamous heterosexual marriage is the only form of partnership approved by God for full sexual relations today… Erotic homosexual relationships are sinful’ (p.56). It may not be possible to determine with certainty the ‘causes’ of a person’s sexual orientation, so we should avoid condemning those with a homosexual orientation. On the other hand we face ‘the reality that many aspects of…human physical and social life need to be redeemed’. So we must avoid blanket ‘condemnation and also commendation’. (p.57).

The book concludes with two appendices: Deb Hirsch’s ‘conservative-to-progressive’ and Bill Lawton’s ‘radical’ approach to these key questions.

I commend the working group for doing the hard work of facing the tough issues, and providing excellent discussion questions.

+++

Now for some of my main concerns (I’ll write more on these and other issues when I’ve done further research/reflection on them. Meanwhile see [7]):

1. Hermeneutics: 1-1. Suffering vs. Proof-texting. In the Gospels Jesus uses ‘the Bible’ to counter the temptations of the Devil and the criticisms of the ‘Bible people’ – the religious leaders. Jesus’ teaching about the poor and marginalized is done via example (partying with them) and parables. Why? Theologian Jurgen Moltmann has given us one of the best rationales for a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ about proof-texting on matters of social justice: ‘In Christian theology suffering must precede thinking… Christian theology becomes relevant when it accepts solidarity with present suffering.’ [8] Why? Because it’s possible (probable?) that one can know the Bible but miss the point. I hear a very different hermeneutic from those who work with AIDs patients than from over-educated, white, heterosexual predominantly male elites. (The authors of Beyond Stereotypes belong to this group. There is little indication – except for Deb Hirsch and the out-of-sync Bill Lawton – that they had immersed themselves in the ‘gay scene’ to hear the stories of these often marginalized people. I would have recommended also that a couple of GenX’ers with their ‘why the fuss about all this?’ approach should have been invited on to the panel).

1-2. More specifically, the two common contexts in the ancient world addressed by the same-sex prohibitions – cultic sex, and exploitative sex, for example with slaves – are, according to the majority of non-conservative commentators, the background to the prohibitions against same-sex liaisons. The life-long exclusive/faithful commitment of two persons of the same sex was extremely uncommon in the ancient world (except occasionally among aristocratic elites).

1-3. The radical re-orientation of the early Christians towards Levitical prohibitions – eg. the story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts - surely addresses not only forbidden foods etc. , but everything else in the Holiness Code as well. See Keith Dyer’s article [5] for an excellent discussion of this important point.

2. Aetiology: (a) Most theological and social conservatives believe a homosexual orientation is somehow caused by one’s own choices or factors in the person’s environment; (b) most scientific researchers believe homosexuality has an ‘in-utero’ origin. Most of the twin studies seem to favour the latter view. See [9] for a useful summary of the pros and cons. I reckon the jury’s still out on this one (but the gays and lesbians I talk to overwhelmingly believe they were born that way).

3. Should churches discriminate against homosexuals in terms of ministry leadership etc.? Only if people who are guilty of ‘sins of the spirit’ – greed, hypocrisy, slander etc. - are treated the same way!

4. As a pastor/pastoral counsellor, whom should I 'bless'? Only one category of persons actually – those made in God’s image. I tend not to bless institutions (they’re inherently degenerative, as sociologist Robert Merton used to say). I hear all sorts of crazy confessions, every week. But I can’t think of anyone I’m not prepared to bless. I reckon Jesus today would still do that with people on the margins: and no one is more marginalized – indeed traumatized - than ‘GLBT’ people who have been rejected by their biological and/or church families.

5. How can I, a heterosexual (currently ‘coming out’ as an ex-Pharisee), who’s been very happily married for 50 years tell anyone they have to accept their lonely/celibate existence due mostly to factors utterly beyond their control? (The priest and the Levite in Jesus’ parable would certainly have had their conservative theology all sorted out… but the wounded wayfarer is still bleeding on the Jericho Road… )

6. Finally, how should we behave towards one another during paradigm shifts? With great humility, love and tolerance.

Conclusion: The Lord has yet more light and truth – and grace – to be discovered in his holy Word. Let us be patient with our conservative friends as they catch up with ‘what the Spirit is saying to the churches’ about relating with grace to our GLBT brothers and sisters…

*****

[1] Note: you’re wondering who did the research on that 70-90% figure? I did, with hundreds of pastors at dozens of pastors’ conferences.

[2] Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor, 2001, p.5

[3] YouTube video – http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/22687.htm
But I – Rowland - would add – ‘and also personal, empathetic experience – of God and others’… I reckon we won’t get anywhere in debates on this subject, without this dimension.

[4] Ibid.

[5] See this excellent article by evangelical New Testament scholar Dr. Keith Dyer - http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/20763.htm

[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwE6_dLweYo

[7] See these articles for the pros and cons of the issues: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/keyword/h-9.htm et. seq.

[8] See e.g. Hope and Planning (1971), A Theology of Hope (1964 )

[9] http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_caus3.htm

Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au

August 2009

JOY IN DISGUISE: Meeting Jesus in the Dark Times

2009-08-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

JOY IN DISGUISE: Meeting Jesus in the Dark Times by Edward S. Little (Morehouse Publishing, 2009).

‘I lived for a year on a street graced by the presence of three churches. The first, next door to my apartment complex, was the True Love Church. Just down the block stood the Greater True Love Church. A bit farther on was the Reformed Greater True Love Church. It didn’t take much imagination for me to conjure up the scenarios: church fight, division, another fight, another split, and on and on and on.’ Conflict, writes Bishop Little, ‘is always a complex reality that includes multiple elements and many layers. I have a theory that conflict issues from three sources: principle, personality and power’.

I enjoyed this book: it’s an easy read, down-to-earth, and full of pastoral wisdom. Indeed, Episcopal wisdom. I finished it in one day, secretly desiring that I had a pastor like Edward Little. The Bishop of Northern Indiana is humble (he doesn’t brag about pastoral successes, but writes honestly about his ministerial stuff-ups), irenic (he’s a ‘loving brother and friend’ of practising homosexual Bishop Gene Robinson even though he voted against him, and is an interesting raconteur (especially about movies).

I have only three small reservations… It’s difficult to write or preach with a paragraph-by-paragraph/expository approach and be interesting. Our bishop is conservative, and fellow-evangelicals in my experience want so much to ground their preaching-authority in the biblical text that they often commit the cardinal sin for preachers of being uninteresting. ‘People do not come to church wanting to know what happened to the Amalekites’ says the old quote, or the Greek word for this or that. Second, the title and sub-title were probably chosen to sell the book rather than faithfully describe its contents. Sure, we are helped by traveling with Paul during his hard times, but the title may promise more counseling/pastoral help ‘in the dark times’ than the book delivers. Paul, for many moderns, lived in another world – in all senses. And occasionally there’s a bit of editorial slackness (it’s koinonia not kononia).

But the book is an excellent resource for preachers, if you aren’t bound too tightly to the lectionary and want to earth a month’s sermons in Philippians. And good for a month’s devotions too.

Rowland Croucher

August 2009

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/

THE JESUS I KNOW

2009-07-30T21:54:00.000-07:00

Ed. Adam Harbinson, The Columba Press, 2009

Here’s an interesting pot-pourri of ‘testimonies’ written by a disparate group of people – a few Catholic priests, three or four ManUnited fans, well-known raconteur Adrian Plass, a singer/songwriter who sources the story of the woman taken in adultery in Matthew’s gospel (instead of John’s), a couple of journalists and CEO’s, a victim of sexual abuse, a troubadour, someone who was grateful Jesus heard her soundless screams in the night, a follower of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (believed by his followers to be the Messiah), one or two professional theologians, etc. But all, I think, English, Welsh or Irish.

The chapter by Adrian Plass is a classic. As a boy he heard a preacher talk about Jesus on the cross: ‘In the eyes of the man beside him [the dying thief] saw an invitation to be loved and wanted… Jesus’ eyes were saying “I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care what you are. I don’t care what others say about you. I don’t even care what you think of yourself. You’re coming with me. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right…” The preacher’s words seemed to be meant especially for me… a puzzled little boy who had wanted so much to stop his mummy and daddy arguing so that they would be happy…’

Another wrote: ‘The Jesus I know… caught Martin Luther King in his arms on a balcony in Memphis and sat behind Rosa Parks on a bus in Montgomery Alabama… [he] somehow manages to laugh, cry and dance and joke with every expression of human emotion.’

These people come from all walks of life, and they’re honest. One laments his undisciplined praying; another wants just ten minutes with Jesus to ask him about death, suffering, injustice and natural disasters. Another is profoundly challenged by the anonymous poem ‘Risk’: ‘To live is to risk rejection/ To live is to risk dying/ To hope is to risk despair/ To try is to risk failure/ One of the greatest dangers in life is to risk nothing.’

An anonymous writer attacks a large church for spending a million pounds on its building: ‘One million pounds would pay the salaries of 2000 pastors in South Sudan for ten years! One million pounds would feed, clothe and educate 1000 children in Uganda, Ethiopia or Zimbabwe for five years!’

A ‘freelance theologian’ tells us that ‘If God has set eternity in the hearts of human beings, then Jesus Christ sets humanity in eternity’.

The Jesus many of these people know is not a cardboard Christ or a pale Galilean, but someone who causes trouble, but, as one reminds us, ‘we in the West have designed our lives to avoid trouble at all costs.’ For everyone here Jesus is real, but he’s not static. ‘He is not a proposition to be mastered, but a person to be known,’ writes one of them. ‘He is to be related to rather than reasoned about… He prefers to be found in a community rather than a creed.’

J B Phillips wrote about ‘Christ our contemporary.’ Here’s a good montage of how that actually works in various people’s lives. He is many things to many different people. You won’t relate to everyone’s experience here. And you might quibble about this and that (for example, I don’t think it was C S Lewis who coined the saying about ‘simplicity on the other side of complexity’). And if you want to get to know these contributors better, half of them have set up personal websites.

Rowland Croucher
jmm.aaa.net.au
July 2009

LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK

2009-06-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

Parker J Palmer, Let Your Life Speak (2000).

Here's a very readable short book, written with an elegant simplicity, and transparent honesty, about 'being who you are' rather than 'being what others want you to be'. It's a modern commentary on the adage 'To thine own self be true... And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any[one].'

At the beginning (p2) Parker states his purpose: 'Seeking a path more purposeful than accumulating wealth, holding power, winning at competition, or securing a career, I had started to understand that it is indeed possible to live a life other than one's own'. From our first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take all our clues about living from the people and powers around us.

How is it possible to listen to your 'self' without being selfish? Parker notes that the deepest vocational question is not 'What ought I to do with my life?' It is more elemental and demanding: 'Who am I? What is my nature?' He quotes Frederick Buechner, who defines vocation as 'the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need.'

Here's something I said an audible 'Yes!' to (he was telling my story as well as his own!): 'Teaching, I [came] to understand, is my native way of being in the world. I am white, middle-class and male - not exactly a leading candidate for communal life. People like me are raised to live autonomously, not interdependently. I had been trained to compete and win, and I had developed a taste for the prizes.'

Parker (and I, too) serve education from outside institutions - 'where [he writes] my pathology is less likely to be triggered - rather than from the inside, where I waste energy on anger instead of investing it in hope... ' Parker says he has a 'tendency to get so conflicted with the way people use power in institutions... I spend more time being angry at them than I spend on my real work.' He writes about pathological bosses or corporate culture getting rid of people whose propensity for truth-telling threatens the status quo. (I uttered an audible 'Yes!' again).

Another quotable quote: 'The social systems in which people try to survive often try to force them to live in a way untrue to who they are. If you are poor, you are supposed to accept, with gratitude, half a loaf or less; if you are black, you are supposed to suffer racism without protest; if you are gay, you are supposed to pretend that you are not. It is tempting to mask one's truth in situations of this sort - because the system threatens punishment if one does not.' No punishment anyone might inflict on us, says Palmer, could possibly be worse than the punishment we inflict upon ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment.

And here's a good word for pastors and other people-helpers: 'One of the "oughts" I had absorbed: "Of course you need to be loved. Everyone does. And I love you." It took me a long time to understand that although everyone needs to be loved, I cannot be the source of that gift to everyone who asks me for it... If we are to live our lives fully and well, we must learn to embrace the opposites, to live in a creative tension between our limits and our potentials.'

Back to the question about 'self': Thomas Merton makes an important distinction between the 'true self', and the 'ego self' that wants to inflate us (or deflate us, another form of self-distortion). The true self has been 'planted in us by the God who made us in God's image - the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be.'

Parker Palmer's journey towards truth-telling was enhanced by two other journeys - through failure/rejection (when he lost a job, not because he was bad at it, but, as he discovered later, his heart would never be in it) - and, later, dark clinical depression.

His writing style reminds me of my key-mentor-preacher's - John Claypool - who also had a gift of uttering profound truths in simple, direct language.

One of the highlights in this book is Parker Palmer's description of the discernment exercise he did with some wise Quaker friends at a crucial juncture in his life. I can think of a couple of intersections in my vocational history where I might have chosen another route if I'd had access to this sort of group-wisdom. (Would I have left a terrific church in Melbourne, Victoria, and gone to Canada? Probably not: though God was in that painful time across the Pacific [1]).

One question gives me pause: how many human beings throughout history have the privilege of submitting their lives to so many options/choices?

Some of the thoughts I've highlighted include:

* Burnout is a state of emptiness - trying to give what I do not possess.

* We are led to truth by our weaknesses as well as our strengths.

* The distortion of the true self comes from living from the outside in, rather than from the inside out.

[1] http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/17347.htm

Rowland Croucher

June 5, 2009

MAKING LIFE DECISIONS

2009-05-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

AN EXCELLENT MANUAL ON DISCERNMENT

Making Life Decisions: (Journey in Discernment) by Geoff Pound (2009).

Good books about discernment - or 'guidance' as our forefathers preferred to call it - are not common. Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak has a beautiful illustration of the Quaker model of group discernment, and Marva Dawn's Joy in Divine Wisdom is a collection of 'group wisdom' from many cultures on this important topic.

Geoff Pound's approach is to combine the personal and group quests for discernment, spread over forty days plus perhaps seven group sessions.

Each day's discipline begins with an 'Approach' where we centre down and 'focus our lives before God.' Then there's a Scripture, a time for silence (that's a challenge for mind-busy Evangelicals and noisy charismatics!), a Reflection, suggestion for journaling, selecting a 'souvenir' (something to keep in mind for further reflection), a time for prayer, and finally a commission: something practical to take away on our journey.

In terms of the group meetings, the excellent suggestion of making this exercise a church-wide one is good. (I found when a practising pastor this sort of coordinated activity gives folks something other than a sporting event to talk about 'after church'!).

People like me make judgments about whether an author is worth reading by looking at her/his endnotes. Geoff combines the best of a broad range of Christian traditions, though his approach is predominantly what I would call 'progressive evangelical.' Someone who finds John Claypool, Thomas Merton, Sam Keen, the Book of Common Prayer, Richard Foster, Richard Rohr, Karl Barth, and Frederick Buechner - among many others - worth quoting, plus a lot of Bible, is my kind of mentor!

Geoff now lives not far from a middle eastern desert. He's lucky. All the biblical leaders spent significant chunks of their lives in deserts. Finding a desert in cities and suburbs (i.e. where you can't hear a phone or door-bell) is a great challenge.

I would highly commend this book to individuals and church-groups who want to 'go deeper' into the quest for discernment. I've begun a forty day journey-with-coffee each morning with the help of this manual.

Google Amazon.com or AbeBooks to locate a copy.

Rowland Croucher

'They Told Me I Had To Write This' (Kim Miller)

2009-05-08T17:49:00.000-07:00

Parker Palmer, in his brilliant little book Let Your Life Speak, bemoans the fact that many/most of us live lives 'other than one's own'. We allow what happens to us - especially the wounds inflicted deliberately or unintentionally by others or by circumstance - to rob us of our true/free self. As a result, no punishment anyone might inflict on us can be worse than what we inflict upon ourselves: we thus 'conspire in our own diminishment'.

Kim Miller's latest book, 'They Told Me I Had to Write This' (Ford Street Publishing, 2009) is a brilliant narrative-commentary on Parker Palmer's wisdom, written as a teenage boy's conversations with himself via letters to his grandmother - about school, friends, fights, teenage romance, sexual abuse, relating uncomfortably to a single-parent father (whose wife, the boy's mother, died as she was giving birth to him: that's a key to just-about-everything-else...).

And how does one deal with all these painful loose ends? Tim Miller's wise suggestion: through the help of skilled and caring significant others who help us face our demons, do a thorough job of 'reality-checking', and facilitate reconciliation with the important people in our lives.

This is a book I planned to skim, but I got hooked, and read every word. It's a terrific read. But for whom? I'd give it to intelligent teenagers and their parents/teachers - indeed anyone who wants a glimpse into the lives and vocabularies (heard of ODB - 'oppositional deficit behaviour'?) of contemporary adolescents. There's a couple of counselling verbatims between teenagers and a school-teacher and priest that are worth the price of the whole book. Thanks Kim!

Rowland Croucher
May 2009

TWO RESOURCES FOR LENT

2009-02-23T20:37:00.000-08:00

1. Is This the End? Drama and Puppet Plays for the Easter Season by Paul Clark (The Hive, 2008).

Making children's time in church services interesting/funny can be a challenge. (Back in seminary, theologs irreverently called it the 'Brats' Chat').

Here we have some very creative ideas to get the Easter message across to young people. They include a 'Shrek' donkey telling the Palm Sunday story. It's rated 'comedy' and it's very funny - 7 minutes of it, if your congregation can cope with some humour. Palm Sunday is the setting for a political rally - with placards etc. The 'sideways look' at communion will be also challenging for people who don't smile much (with its party food - a packet of chips, bottle of coke, basketball etc.).

The Easter weekend has four more serious offerings - 'Is this the End?', 'The Body Snatchers', 'Inspector Clueless Investigates Easter', and 'Emmaus'.

Brings back memories of skits we used to do at Beach Missions. Very entertaining.

****

2. Not a Tame Lion: A Lent course based on the writings of C. S. Lewis, by Hilary Brand (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008).

C. S. Lewis has done more than almost any other writer to make Christianity believable for better-than-averagely-educated moderns. But what of those for whom he's just too complicated or dense?

Here'a book of very thoughtful group studies for anyone, well-read or not. It has everything: scriptures, getting to know you ideas, film clips, 'brainstorming' prompts, quotes from the great man, discussion and reflection material, meditations and prayers, etc. etc. (It's so practical, that in the Leaders' Notes section there's a tip about how to manage DVDs: if there are two clips, 'the best time to change over to the second clip is during the first "reflect and share" session')!

Hilary Brand uses excerpts from three films: The Chronicles of Narnia's The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, and Shadowlands (the Attenborough cinema version). C. S. Lewis's Aslan was not a tame lion; and the Christ of the Gospels 'is not always a comfortable Saviour', so this Lenten course is sometimes confrontational, especially in the discussions of Lewis's hard views on suffering and hell (which softened after his wife died).

Excellent for groups. But also - and this is not the primary purpose of this book - it's the best introduction to C. S. Lewis for folks who've never read him that I've ever seen.

Here are some of the famous quotes Hilary gets us mulling over:

'Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home'. 'There are two equal and opposite errors... One is to disbelieve in [devils'] existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them'. 'The Christian faith is what it is and was what it was long before I was born and whether I like it or not'. 'All the great religions were first preached and long practised in a world without chloroform.' 'Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.' 'Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible'.

Those of us who've had a fairly thorough theological education can easily be handicapped by all that when reading a 'layperson' like C. S. Lewis. Yes, we can argue with some of his 'complicated simplicities'. But if we allow the child in us to be astonished at his insights and wordsmithing we too can still be 'surprised by joy' as he was.

I wish I'd had a resource like Hilary's when I was pastor of a congregation.

Rowland Croucher

February 2009.

See here for more on C. S. Lewis

UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE

2009-01-18T00:16:00.000-08:00

Review: The Gospel of Grace: Tools for Building a Positive Understanding of the Bible (Mark Wickstrom, 2008)

How about this (a humorist writing to a Fundamentalist Christian): 'I've heard you say you take the whole Bible at its word. Please help me understand the following: Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own a Canadian?'

Most modern Christians would not take this text literally. But why does one verse demand a literal interpretation and another verse does not?

Dr Wickstrom, a progressive Lutheran, helps address these problems by using the analogy of a building:

[1] 'The gospel of grace is the inerrant and divinely inspired framework that holds the Bible together' [p. 14]. And God's mercy is shown to people throughout the whole biblical drama.

[2] 'Timeless truths' are the internal walls: here 'literalists' and 'selectivists' mostly agree: All are sinners, God invites us to pray, God wants us to love our neighbour etc. However, they may also disagree: literalists might hold a particular view of baptism, or the role of women in leadership, or even the value of snake-handling to increase their faith. Selectivists would rather emphasize timeless truths (eg. 'in Christ there is neither male nor female') rather than apply literally ancient ideas to modern church-life.

[3] Then there are 'cultural norms' (the analogy being the colors of paint with which we decorate our house): like all decorations, these 'cultural norms' are changeable. For example, the Roman Catholic church in medieval times believed in 'limbo' (where unbaptized infants go after death) but this was revised in 2006. Strict Pentecostals believe everyone should speak in tongues (even real foreign languages as in Acts 2); most Christians are flexible on that one.

[4] The fourth category: personal opinions - like those of Job's comforters or the philosopher in Ecclesiastes, or Paul's opinions about marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. Most Christians believe these opinions might be valued, but are not authoritative for us today.

[5] Then there are 'random, unusual texts' about whose meaning no-one can be certain. Who are the 'Nephilim' in Genesis 6 who married the daughters of human beings? Then, in Acts 5, the sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira: 'Is there any message about grace to be gleaned from this story? I don't see it' writes Wickstrom. (See http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/2400.htm for my attempt to understand this dramatic event). Later, Paul was 'caught up to the third heaven'. Meaning what? No one can be sure.

Summary: Which texts will we categorize as a timeless truth or a non-binding cultural norm or personal opinion? We must each decide, but on the basis of some wise hermeneutical principles which Wickstrom unpacks in the last half of this little volume. His discussion of homosexuality (pp. 87 ff.) is particularly helpful.

Here's a book, with exercises for individual and group study, written by a pastor for his thoughtful parishioners. I'd recommend it for that purpose, rather than as a textbook for scholars (there's no reference I could find to household names like Crossan or Marcus Borg, for example).

Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au
January 2009

APOSTLES OF FEAR

2008-12-10T20:06:00.000-08:00

Christians, says the famous cop-out, 'are not perfect, just forgiven'.
But some imperfect Christians have a higher profile, and their evil is
more sinister, than others'.

Of course such imperfections/evil are not confined to one branch of
Christ's Church. Catholic bishops moving predatory priests from one
parish to another; the Exclusive Brethren's nasty habit of breaking up
families; the Presbyterian-based Melbourne cult 'The Fellowship' doing
the same [1]... the list goes on.

Morag's is the second book I've read about the malpractices of some
Australian Pentecostal leaders. The other: Barry Chant's 'Heart of Fire'
(1973, 1984, 1998). Barry has been, and Morag will be, vilified for
their exposes. My response in principle: the more whistleblowers of
their ilk, the better.

'Apostles of Fear' traces the sordid history of a cult-like Pentecostal
movement, whose churches (Melbourne Christian Fellowship, Brisbane
Christian Fellowship, et. al.) attracted people via promises of
doctrinal certainty (what, you haven't heard of 'Latter Rain'?), an
infallible route to Christian 'perfection', and their appealing music.

'Cults' as we're using the term here, are religious groups whose leaders
make concerted efforts at influence and control of their adherents.
Members, former members, and supporters of cults are manipulated,
exploited, or even abused. The followers zealously adhere to the
leaders' belief system: no dissent is allowed. The leadership dictates,
sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel. The
group works hard to protect itself from all the evils in the outside
world, or emanating from other groups. [2]

One of the key founders of Immanuel/Christian Fellowship Churches, Ray
Jackson, had the misfortune to have succumbed in a big way to all three
of the classical evils - abuses of money, sex, and power. Morag
interviewed people 'in the know' who claimed that Jackson probably paid
no taxes, and had a habit of carrying around large amounts of money in
paper bags. I have heard first-hand accounts of his and others' sexual
predations. He and his co-leaders mastered the art of sending followers
on 'guilt trips': blaming people for deaths in their families, and
especially by uttering terrible warnings against 'touching the Lord's
anointed' to keep critics in line. (I still occasionally hear this text
used in abusive/threatening ways in fundamentalist and Pentecostal
churches). Jackson was a really a classical small-time dictator: he
maintained a bevy of flatterers and informers, and lived in luxury
whilst expecting his followers to make extreme sacrifices (including
'double-tithing') to maintain the leaders' lifestyles. The 2008 ABC Four
Corners program [3] covered quite thoroughly the current abuses of power
in the Brisbane Christian Fellowship in particular. (How could an
eminent doctor be seduced by all this, to the extent that his marriage
came apart?).

I know personally half a dozen people mentioned in Morag's
well-researched book. I have the highest regard for one of them, Kevin
Conner, a godly and gracious servant-leader, who separated himself and
his family from Jackson's immediate influence by going in 1971 to the
U.S. to minister. I'm somewhat mystified by Kevin Conner's inability/
unwillingness to expose Jackson's misdeeds other than privately. The
whole nation rightly castigated Anglican Bishop Hollingworth for a
similar silence about sexual abuse, when he had the opportunity to deal
with it more justly.

Morag Zwartz did a thorough job of investigating this cult. She says she
left out a lot of bad stuff (alleged incest, questionable paternity,
predatory behaviour, suicide etc.). Sometimes she lands a judgment on
someone without supporting evidence, though we can be sure she has the
allegations well-covered within her extensive research. Some of the
details in the book (lists of names etc.) won't interest anyone other
than those in some way associated with these events, but at least they
underline the widespread dysfunction in this movement. (A minor
correction: there were no Montanists in the first century, as Morag
asserts (pp. 15, 18). Montanus started prophesying in the second
century, and his movement took off from the third century onwards -
until probably the 7th or 8th centuries. At least the Montanists
demonstrate that the essence of 'Pentecostalism' predated the Azusa
Street 'Revival'.)

We are in Morag Zwartz' debt: she interviewed all the relevant people
willing to talk (obviously some key people refused) and the result is a
wake-up call for all of us.

[1] See Morag Zwartz' 'Fractured Families: The Story of a Melbourne
Church Cult'
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/9982/the-story-of-a-melbourne-cult

[2] More: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/catalog/keyword/c-29.htm

[3] http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2282791.htm

Rowland Croucher

December 10, 2008.

*****

Responses:

"I am currently reading the recently released book by Morag Zwartz. It
is a tragic story and the injustices done to so many people over so many
years needs bringing to the light and confronting appropriately.

My dad, Kevin Conner, was involved in Immanuel (now Melbourne Christian
Fellowship) in the very early years. Ray Jackson was the leader of the
church at the time and after becoming aware of some of the immorality
taking place, my dad confronted Ray directly. Unfortunately, Ray did not
respond and he began to shut my dad down and eventually excommunicated
him from the church. My dad continued to help people as he was able but
was basically cut off from the church. Our family moved to the USA in
1971 where we lived for 10 years. When we returned in 1981 we became
involved with Richard Holland and Waverley Christian Fellowship. By this
time Richard had cut off all relationship with Immanuel. Essentially, my
dad has had nothing much to do with Immanuel since 1971.

Morag had a brief meeting with my dad and I while doing research for her
book. Unfortunately, because my dad didn't know Morag, he chose not to
say very much at all to her about his experiences with Immanuel. As a
result, Morag ends up shedding a fairly negative light on my dad and his
perceived lack of action in confronting issues within this church. Due
to people such as my dad not saying much to Morag, she makes a number of
unsubstantiated claims in her book and she lacks some of the details
needed to paint a complete picture of what actually took place.

What I do know is that my dad has been very saddened by the developments
that have taken place in Immanuel after his departure and the many
people who have been hurt. He believes that he did all he could at the
time in confronting Ray Jackson and he has helped as many people who
have left as he has been able to.

Hopefully, this book will be a wakeup call against all forms of abusive
leadership within any church, a leadership style which is so
un-Christlike. I pray it will also encourage those within cultic groups
characterised by fear, manipulation, and control to leave and to know
that there is hope and healing available for them."

Mark Conner
Senior Minister
CityLife Church

2008-11-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

F W Boreham: A Packet of Surprises, John Broadbanks Publishing, 2008

I've been a Boreham collector for 50 years, and have often reflected on why he's still so popular. Yes, he's an outstanding wordsmith (how often have you alluded to 'rich clusters of tawny filberts' in passing?); yes, he's widely read (at least a book a week for most of his adult life); and yes he touches issues about which 'the common man' has a deep interest.

Boreham had a prodigious memory. I have in my possession a photocopy of one of his 10cm x 15 cm cards with hand-written headings from which he preached. His biographer Howard Crago tells us each sermon was preached from memory in almost the exact words in which it was printed.

But I reckon there's another reason for his popularity: respect. Frank Boreham had such an abiding respect for his audiences, that, bower-bird-like, he assiduously collected thousands of quotes, literary allusions, stories and ideas - and indexed everything. This discipline produced some astonishing 'connections' in his sermons and essays.

This new volume of 'the best of the best' of Boreham's essays and sermons begins with Dr Geoff Pound's introduction/rationale for making his selection; then there's a profile of Boreham's life and work by Howard Crago (whom I was privileged to know, when I was his pastor for eight years). At the back there's a subject and name index.

From his first pastorate Boreham resolved 'never to condemn anything but always present a positive aspect. (As he put it) "the best way to prove a stick is crooked is to lay a straight one beside it".' His many hearers and readers obviously appreciated this softer irenic approach: in each of his three pastorates he doubled the membership. (But, if I might add a footnote to that, many drifted away from at least one of those churches - Armadale Baptist Church in Melbourne - when he left).

Each of these chapters is just long enough to develop a theme, to be read in a short sitting. (But they're never so long that you flip to see if you're near the end. People wonder about that with sermons in church too, don't they?). The longest chapter here (15 pages) is from his first major book - The Whisper of God - with its thesis: 'The truth of a whisper is as great as the truth of a shout. A whisper from God is enough to tell me that God is, it is enough to tell me that he cares for me... God never thunders if a whisper will do'.

Here are some examples of his wonderful 'turns of phrase':

* '... Our best Sunday clothes, with clean collar, brightly polished boots and finger-nails destitute of any funereal suggestion...'

* 'There are books that we bought by mistake; books that we know to be valueless; books whose room is of much more value than their company'

* 'I drew aside to collect my thoughts. But my thoughts politely, but firmly, declined to be collected'

And a rare mixed metaphor: 'No menagerie since the world began could hold a candle to it'

We meet Frank Boreham the man here: a couple of his favourite places were the Melbourne Art Gallery, and Melbourne Cricket Ground. He writes about one of his major detestations - 'ready-made clothes'; another was the telephone (he's in good company there!).

Some of his most famous sermons are here: 'He Made as Though' (on the story of the Emmaus Road); A Prophet's Pilgrimage (Jonah); The Powder Magazine (Paul and Barnabas's dispute over John Mark); and perhaps the best in the book - and maybe in all of Boreham - his great missionary sermon 'The Candle and the Bird' (with its thesis: 'a period of spiritual sterility invariably represents, not the extinguishing of a candle, but the frightening away of a bird').

He has an essay on the astonishing coincidences in his own life, and elsewhere (pp 245 ff.). I won't spoil it for you by mentioning them, but Boreham has the impertinence to suggest that any one of us will find 'a wealthy hoard' of similar coincidences stowed away in our memories. Well, most won't, sir, at least not on this scale!

The chapter on Interruptions is brilliant. I remember an experienced minister reminding me early in my pastoral career that most of Jesus' healings were the result of interruptions: 'Interruptions,' my wise friend said, 'are not disturbing your ministry-plans: they *are* your ministry!'

Finally, a few insightful and/or memorable tid-bits:

* (The cryptic utterance of a parishioner): 'When I've shut the door, I've shut the door'

* 'Doubt is a very human and a very sacred thing...'

* 'The gravest mistake made by educationalists is [to suppose] that those who know little are good enough to teach those who know less'

* 'Ritualism [is] perilous. "Now abideth"... what? Altars? vestments? crosses? creeds? catechisms? confessions? Now abideth faith, hope love - these three; and the greatest of these is love'

* 'Orthodoxy and heterodoxy stand related to truth just as those wonderful wickerwork stands and plaster busts that adorn every dressmaker's establishment stand related to the grace and beauty of the female form'

A minor complaint: Boreham would not have liked his writing being 'corrupted' by American spellings (luster, favorite, gray, molded, behavior; but interestingly 'gaol' is retained). If we're going to fiddle with spellings, why not do the same with his sexist language? Now that would be a challenge!

See also http://tinyurl.com/6rzr5g

Rowland Croucher

November 2008.

BARACK OBAMA'S VICTORY SPEECH

2008-11-05T22:07:00.000-08:00

One of the most inspiring speeches I've ever heard:

CRAZY TALK

2008-11-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

Crazy Talk: A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms, ed. Rolf Jacobson, Augsburg, 2008.

If the authors have German names, the book is published by Augsburg Press, has a chapter on Reformation, and prefers 'Communion' to 'Eucharist/Mass', you'll guess it has an 'Evangelical Lutheran' flavour. Here's a racy - yes, sometimes crazy - easy-to-read little pocketbook which is an excellent introduction to many theological terms, without dumbing it all down too much.

But first: If this book is for beginners, try defining these terms: Adiophora, Adoptionism, Happy Exchange, Hypostatic Union; Kenosis, Ontology, Perichoresis, Theodicy.

Still breathing?

Adiophora = 'something not worth fighting about', like human traditions; Adoptionism = the heresy which believes that Jesus didn't become God's Son until the age of about 30; Happy Exchange = Christ carries our sins/burdens on the Cross, but we are, in baptism, 'clothed with Christ'; Hypostatic Union = the two natures of Jesus, divine and human, are united in one person (but it's a bit more complicated than that); Kenosis = Christ emptying himself to become truly human (ditto about complication); Ontology = 'metaphysical reflection on the qualitative difference between the essence of various entities, for example, margarine and butter' (which is why 'you'll be reassured to know that nobody has a full-time job as an ontologist - at least not a paid one)'; Perichoresis = 'the attempt to describe the numbers "three" and "one" without using math'; Theodicy = 'the attempt to explain why the one who created everything and saved everyone doesn't live up to our expectations'.

'Saved everyone'? Well, there is a chapter on hell (but not universalism: this book's written by Evangelical Lutherans, remember) which says, in part: 'In the New Testament, hell is pictured as a place where there will be much gnashing of teeth - and where there will be no dental plan or health care of any kind. And there's a lake of fire but no indication of what lakeshore property is going for... Hell is the place where there is no relationship with God. In any case, you can trust Jesus to steer you toward much better real estate. As in all real estate, remember: location, location, location!'

A book which can reduce very serious matters to such absurdities can't be all that bad.

Rowland Croucher

October 2008

F. W. Boreham, Second Thoughts

2008-10-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

Dr F W Boreham was introduced at an international conference of pastors in 1936 as 'the man whose name is on all our lips, whose books are on all our shelves and whose illustrations are in all our sermons.'

Frank Boreham lived in England, New Zealand and Australia between 1871 and 1959. He authored 55 books, wrote 3,000 editorials in major papers and was a premiere preacher. He is the most 'collectible' religious author Australia has produced.

Michael Dalton (USA) and Geoff Pound (UAE) have teamed up to establish John Broadbanks Publishing to produce new books by or about F W Boreham. So far, All the Blessings of Life: The Best Stories of F W Boreham (2007), Lover of Life: A Tribute to F W Boreham's Mentor (2007), Second Thoughts (2007) and The Chalice of Life: Reflections on the Significant Stages of Life (2008) have come off the press.

Second Thoughts comprises five of Boreham's typically brilliant essays - Second-Hand Things, The Second Crop, Second Fiddles, Our Second Wind, and Second Thoughts. This last week I've read one each day. (Ravi Zacharias in his Introduction/Tribute says he tries to read one Boreham chapter every day: a wonderful discipline).

How about this for a wordsmith's brilliance (in Second Hand Things): 'Hester Spanton - Auntie Hester, as everybody called her - was the tenant of a large second-hand store and a small asthmatic body. I used at times to think that the adjectives might be regarded as interchangeable...' Or this: 'The lamp by which my path is lit all day, the lamp that burns in heaven's eternal noon, is second-hand...'.

When I was pastor of a Baptist Church in Melbourne, a couple of our parishioners were members of a church where Boreham was an interim minister (Kew Baptist Church). They showed me a note he wrote to them on an important milestone in their lives, and affirmed him as a 'wonderful encourager and friend'. The story of Dan and Mollie (The Second Crop) has priceless pastoral insights. The text was from Obadiah: 'The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.' The message (as we would put it today): one person can have lots of stuff, and not enjoy any of it; another just a few possessions and enjoy them all. (I must give away more books I won't need again).

The chapter on The Second Fiddle really got to me. Is a person a 'first fiddle' because he or she cannot be a 'second fiddle'? Gladstone and Disraeli were both first fiddles, and had to form separate political parties because neither could tolerate being a second fiddle...

About endurance in stressful times: 'The Duke of Wellington used to say that British soldiers were no braver than Frenchmen, but they could be brave *five minutes longer*.

And an idea I've never thought before: 'Conscience expresses itself like the lightning, instantaneously; the mutterings of reason and self-interest, like the thunder, come lumbering along later.'

As Geoff Pound writes in the Preface, 'Frank Boreham said that within the everyday, commonplace things there was a romance, a quality that was usually not immediately apparent.' So true.

If you see any Borehams in second-hand bookstores or church fetes, snap them up. Keep them at your bedside, and read a chapter a day. You won't be disappointed.

Visit http://fwboreham.blogspot.com/ to order.

Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/

October 2008

THE THREE KEYS TO ALL RELATIONSHIPS

2008-08-28T05:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a precis of the talk I gave to the Australian World Vision staff yesterday:

Friends, it's good to be here again. Early in the 1980s World Vision Executive Director Harold Henderson asked me to work for WV as a 'Leadership Enhancement Consultant'. My job: to wander around the country and be a resource for pastors and churches. A secondary mandate: the churches generally were suspicious - even resentful - of World Vision 'taking money from our people'. I think we were able to turn that around: I don't hear complaints like that very much these days...

They were heady times: I spoke to about 100 pastors' conferences in Australia and in other places; and to about 700 churches. We produced a Leadership Letter - 'GRID' - which I was told was the only literature sent to all the pastors (and others) in Australia - 23,000 of them. Some of those articles can be found on the John Mark Ministries website (see, e.g. http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8202.htm, http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8109.htm etc.).

Part of my responsibility was to take Church leaders to various parts of the world to meet 'the poorest of the poor'. On one of these trips I vividly remember Pedro, a day-labourer who with his wife Isabella lived in one of the 400 favellas/slums around Fortaleza, in north-east Brazil. They had five children (from nine live births) - all malnourished. Pedro could only get work about every third day; Isabella made clothes on a basic sewing-machine lent by World Vision. But sometimes they had no food at night, and to stop their starving kids crying from hunger Isabella would feed them little balls of rolled-up moistened newspaper, sprinkled with sugar. These had almost no nutritional value, but at least the children wouldn't cry so much and Pedro could get some sleep. They'd owned a black bean farm, inherited from Pedro's father and grandfather, and one day the police, bribed by a wealthy landowner, drove them off their farm. They had no legal redress - the authorities were in the pockets of the rich.

We asked this couple, through an interpreter: 'What do you need?' Isabella replied, 'We have only one blanket for the children, and when the roof leaks they get wet and cold and sick, and many children here have died. I would like a blanket for each child.' And Pedro: 'I need a job every day to feed my family.' What else? Pedro: 'I want my farm back, and for justice to be done in my country.' Anything else? 'Yes, where is the God we worship at Mass every Sunday? Why are we treated like 'the scum of the earth'?

Hold that in a part of your memory-bank: we'll return to that story...

How are we supposed to relate to one another in a Christian organization like World Vision? One short answer: As Martin Luther put it: 'Act as Christs to each other' (or, conversely, treat others as if they were Jesus). Another: Learn to view one another as more than role-players (IT person, HR person, PA to an executive staff-member etc.). Don't let what *describes* someone/yourself *define* them. To paraphrase C S Lewis: we look around this room and see others with various roles, with whom we work, or see in the cafeteria... If we really understood who they were, created in God's image, we'd be tempted to fall down and worship *them*!

This morning I want to offer some thoughts on three aspects of relating Christianly to others. These three concepts underlie *all* relationships between humans, between humans and God, and even between humans and animals...

Now another story. Being an itinerant ('hit-run') preacher since those days has some advantages. I remember a Sunday evening service in a conservative church in rural Victoria, Australia. They had big black Bibles and severe expressions... They knew their Bibles, and were proud of that. It was a smallish group, so I decided to engage them in dialogue.

'Who knows who the Pharisees were?' They did. 'The Pharisees got a pretty nasty press in the New Testament - especially Matthew.'

'Now tell me all the *good* things you can think of about the Pharisees.' I wrote them up on a blackboard:

The Pharisees knew their Bibles; were disciplined in prayer; fasted twice a week; gave about a third of their income to their 'church'; were moral (very moral); many had been martyred for their faith; they attended 'church' regularly; they were evangelical/orthodox; and evangelistic (Jesus said they'd even cross the ocean - a fearful thing for Jews - to win a convert).

There was a deep silence. I asked 'Peter' sitting at the front: 'What's wrong?' He pointed to the list and said 'That's us!' 'Is it?" I responded. 'Well,' I said, 'You've got a problem: Jesus said these people were children of the devil!'

Then we did an inductive exercise on the question: 'What's so wrong with this list of admirable qualities?' Short answer: it omits what was most important for Jesus. Whenever in the Gospels he used a prefatory statement like 'This is the greatest/most important thing of all...' none of the above were emphasized by him.

What were his emphases? Yes, loving God, loving others, seeking first the kingdom = obeying God the King ... And, from two Gospel verses the Evangelicals/orthodox have rarely noticed - Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42 - justice/love, mercy, faith. Jesus paraphrased the famous Micah 6:8 summary of what life is all about: justice, kindness, and walking humbly with God...

There they are - the three underlying dynamics in all relationships:

[1] First, Justice. Social justice, a major theme of the biblical prophets, is essentially about the right use of power. Injustice is the abuse, misuse, non-use of power. Each of us - psychologically - is the sum-total of all the powerful things said or done to us, positively or negatively... Think about that. We believe about ourselves essentially what others - or our society - have told us we're worth, in terms of achievements, appearance, what-have-you.

But each of us is more powerful than we might realize in terms of encouraging others. As James says in the New Testament epistle that bears his name, our words have great power.

In our marriage enrichment seminars Jan and I talk about the negative power of anger in her life. Her father was an angry and violent man, who beat his children up to the age of about 18. If ever I appear angry with Jan (which thankfully is very rare), she reacts fearfully.

We cannot live as adults as if we did not have these powerful inputs into our lives as children.

Think: * What's the difference between 'power' and 'authority'?

* What gives a person 'power' over another?

[2] Mercy is love-in-action. Where justice/power addresses the origins of someone's personhood (or pain) mercy or compassion addresses the symptoms. Christian love (agape) is the relationship between subject and object which creates worth in the object, rather than responding to worth.

Pause: * What does that mean in terms of the uniquely Christian notion of unconditional love?

* What is the difference between empathy and sympathy?

An essential element of empathy is 'attending' to the other: being 'present' for them as they share a life-story. If we are distracted, or using their words to think up how we can then be heard, we are not truly empathetic (as the Brits say) or empathic (the term used by Americans). See the article 'How to Help Your Friend - and Others' ( http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8541.htm )

A retired clergyman asked what I was going to do with the rest of the day? 'Talk confidentially to a pastor who's thinking of leaving parish ministry.' His question: 'What will you say to him?' My response: 'I want to hear his story first before I can appropriately walk with him through whatever options might be there for him...'

[3] Faith is the third dimension in all relationships. We trust that what we are experiencing with others is true. When faith is tested by, for example, lying, we mistrust others. Faith in God is essentially a commitment that God *is*, and that God is there for us, as God was with his people in the past. Were they always delivered from danger, disease and death? No, and that's the ultimate mystery.

I used to discuss 'faith matters' with an alcoholic parishioner whose family was highly dysfunctional. She'd had nine major operations, including a double mastectomy, and was physically beaten and abused by her drunken family-members. But a miracle occurred for her. What was it? She died at about 70 years of age *of natural causes*! She persevered with the faith she had, and survived, where others might have given up - perhaps given up on life itself. Miracles come in many forms, but most of them are slow and steady!

We have more power than we realize in building up others' faith...

So as we interact with one another today, let us humbly acknowledge where our powerlessness and/or our power lies, and employ power with love. Let us ask ourselves, as the good Samaritan did, 'What resource can I be for this one, or for others, today?' And finally, how can we 'stir up one another's faith' today?

Final exercise: Back to the story of Pedro and Isabella: how do these universal Christian principles relate to their situation?

--

Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/

TAKING GOD TO HEART (Brian Gallagher)

2008-07-20T03:06:00.000-07:00

Review: Taking God to Heart, by Brian Gallagher MSC, St Pauls 2008.

When our family returned home in 1983 after a couple of years in North America, I had two important questions to ask my friends: 'Who is reputed to be the most discerning Spiritual Director in Melbourne? And who's the best teacher of Spiritual Direction here?' A name for each emerged, and (cheekily) I asked one to be my Director, and audited a course by the other!

The course was taught by Brian Gallagher at the Catholic Yarra Theological Union. He had just set up the Heart of Life Spirituality Centre, and he impressed me as someone who had his feet firmly on the ground, while being an authentic person, and pray-er, and a keen student about how humans relate to God.

'Taking God to Heart', writes Father Gallagher is not primarily about Spiritual Direction, though a lot of Brian's approach to this classical discipline is here. It's also not about prayer as such, but about authentic living - including being 'truly present' for others. So the most-repeated 'mantra' is Dom John Chapman's well-known advice 'Pray as you can, not as you can't' (see the Wikipedia article on Chapman for more).

Prayer is about life ('church is the place you go out from' as Martin Luther King said famously). We experience down times, but we can learn (from John of the Cross and others) that such darkness in our relationship with God can be a gift of grace. 'God's presence is not defined by our feeling such presence.' In our busyness, too, many of us have to learn that 'silence is the language of God.'

Brian Gallagher's teachers come from many traditions. A random search (eg. pp. 38-39) has him quoting Thich Nhat Hanh, Jean-Paul de Caussade, Abraham Heschel, and H A Williams - a Buddhist, a Jesuit, a Jew, and an Anglican. He reproduces the famous Australian poet and environmentalist Judith Wright's poem 'Grace', with its evocative last two lines: 'Maybe there was once a word for it. Call it grace/I have seen it, once or twice, through a human face' (p. 70).

Brian Gallagher loves the idea of 'God at work in everyone/everywhere': 'The minister's role is to help people to recognize the God already present and active, to awaken people to the gift they already have' (p. 71). But he's also a traditionalist in some ways: 'Spiritual directors... need to be aware of the work of God's Spirit and any spirits not of God in their own lives, if they are to ensure that their own unfreedoms do not affect their listening to others' (p. 72).

I now will go away to a solitary place and read this wonderful little book a fourth time.

Rowland Croucher
July 2008.

BENEDICT XVI and the Search for Truth

2008-05-29T00:26:00.000-07:00

BENEDICT XVI and the Search for Truth by Robert Tilley (St Pauls Publications 2007).

Pope Benedict’s first encyclical letter ‘Deus Caritas Est’ was a revelation to me. I’d heard from my progressive Catholic friends that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was a hardliner – more concerned, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with enforcing his traditional brand of ‘truth’ than in showing love. But apparently he’s been saying/writing for decades that the path of truth leads to love; and love is the perfection of what it is to be human.

The author of this volume has a PhD from the University of Sydney but teaches philosophy at an inner-city homeless men’s refuge. His language is sometimes dense, sometimes racy.

Two examples, respectively: ‘Meaning is perfected in reason; reason is perfected in philosophy; and philosophy is perfected in metaphysics’ (p. 217). I hope the homeless men can understand that. But at least we were warned, earlier (p. 18): ‘You might find your eyes beginning to glaze over, but resist the temptation; shake your head, go for a walk, get a coffee, and then we’ll continue.’ I did all that, but couldn’t stop the eyes glazing over sometimes.

Tilley’s aim in this 245-page, amply footnoted volume is to ‘help us get a grip on Benedict’s thinking, to discern the logic that informs his writings.’ I’m not sure that this reviewer, with his basic philosophy 101-level understandings, got a grip on Benedict’s theology, but I certainly developed an admiration for this simple man with his complex ideas...

Benedict’s ideological bête noir is Western relativism and its denial of ‘objective truth’, especially moral ‘truths’. His primary authority: the doctrines of the Church (not just the Bible), informed by reason. God’s eternal Reason is embedded in his creation, and everything derives its meaning from Christ. The Eucharist is the ‘causal principle’ of the Church; the Church ‘draws her life’ from the Eucharist.
How does all this work in practice? Here Benedict majors on the necessity of ‘loving community’: union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself; we cannot possess Christ just for ourselves, but also in union with those who have become, or who will become, his own.

So, Tilley writes, there is a close connection between a rejection of metaphysics and the dissolution of the sense of communion: hence the modern rise of the dominant notion of the person as primarily an autonomous individual. And the main error of modern liberalism is that it takes as a given that no absolute religious or philosophical claim is true.

Is Benedict – and Ratzinger before him – a ‘company man’ who could not tolerate criticism of the Church? Colm O’Gorman, Irish founder of the ‘One in Four’ Counselling Centre (referring to the proportion of Irish adults said to have suffered sexual abuse as children) said, in 2005, ‘The Vatican has never, ever accepted responsibility for clerical sexual abuse at all. Never.’ Like John Paul II before him, Benedict has – until recently, when he made some significant statements on his visit to the U.S. – shown little interest in reforming some of the basic policies adversely affecting the lives of ordinary Catholics.

So here we have a brilliant man, a holy man (for whom ‘prayer is a life and death matter’), a complex man. Read all about him: but be prepared for your eyes to glaze over sometimes.

Rowland Croucher

May 2008.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS TODAY

2008-05-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

Thorwald Lorenzen, Toward a Culture of Freedom: Reflections on the Ten Commandments Today (Cascade Books, 2008).

Thorwald Lorenzen, currently Professor of Theology at Charles Sturt University, is one of Australia’s most gifted theologians. His other books include Resurrection and Discipleship: Interpretive Models, Biblical Reflections and Theological Consequences (1995, 2003), and Resurrection-Discipleship-Justice: Affirming the Resurrection of Jesus Christ Today (2003).

He brings two special strengths to his work as a theologian: he is a pastor (most recently, Canberra Baptist Church in Australia’s capital city) and his cross-cultural background (he has taught in Europe and Australia, and is fluent in German and English, as well as the Biblical languages).

This volume on the Torah’s ‘Ten Words’ reads like something produced in a theologian’s study, but honed in real-life situations. So the chapters begin with a few pages of theological comments but then apply the ethical principles of the Judeo-Christian commandments to life, and to contemporary global questions. The book is a marvellous resource for preaching on the Decalogue.

Thorwald Lorenzen is a progressive theologian (as I read him), but who takes the biblical text seriously. So the conservatives – except for some in Eastern Europe who ‘wrote him off’ for not sharing their views about a personal Devil – will generally benefit if they have an open mind about how a competent biblical exegete unpacks the text. And the progressives will connect, for example, with his refusal to use masculine – or any - pronouns for God; Deuteronomy was written in the 7th century BCE etc.

The ‘ten words’, writes Lorenzen, are not restrictive, seeking to spoil humans’ fun. Rather they are liberating, aimed at our enjoyment of life. ‘The ten words are guidelines in our quest to affirm life.’ They’re not intended to be laws or dogmas (note that in the four Gospels Jesus did not quote all of the commandments).

It’s packed full of marvellous insights. How about this, for example: ‘A generation that ignores the wisdom and errors, achievements and failures of its predecessors is ill-prepared to face the future. Would the revolutions of Germany’s youth in the 1960s and of America’s youth in the 1970s have happened if their parents had talked about their war experiences and the associated horror and guilt and doubts?’ (p. 86). Ever thought of that?

Another profundity: ‘Each of us has, or rather is, a conscience. Conscience is the centre of our personhood. It makes us who we are. It shapes our identity. It is worth understanding and caring for’ (p. 20).

And throughout Thorwald writes as a prophet. Try this, for example: ‘When some reformers in the sixteenth century took down the pictures and removed the statues from the churches, they wanted to make room for the living voice of the gospel. They wanted to celebrate Jesus as the one word that we need to hear, trust and obey in life and in death. But soon others, lesser minds and lesser hearts, came along and put a book where the pictures had been. So for many Christians the living voice of the gospel has been frozen into a book, the Bible. And around the world there are many Christians who spend more time and energy fighting about the Bible than in worshipping and obeying the Christ to whom the Bible points’ (p. 52).

Challenging stuff. If you’re a pastor, ‘Preach it, sister/brother!’

Rowland Croucher

May 2008

SEVEN WAYS TO CHANGE THE WORLD

2008-05-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

Jim Wallis: Seven Ways to Change the World: reviving faith and politics (2008).

Jim Wallis is probably America’s highest-profile ‘progressive evangelical’ and advocate for Christian left-wing causes, especially peace and justice issues. His ‘flagship’ publication is Sojourners magazine. Other well-known books include 'The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America' and 'God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get it.'

Wallis is especially scornful of the Religious Right’s misuse of the Bible: ‘Jesus didn’t speak at all about homosexuality. There are about 12 verses in the Bible that touch on that question ... [t]here are thousands of verses on poverty. I don’t hear a lot of that conversation.’

'Seven Ways…' has forewords by Jimmy Carter and Tim Costello. In a commendation of the book, British PM Gordon Brown wrote, ‘Jim Wallis challenges us to create a society which both addresses injustice and stresses personal responsibility, and his call for a global covenant through which rich countries meet their obligations to the poor will have a resonance across the world.’

Jim’s style is readable, racy, and autobiographical. The people he likes – Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Howard Yoder, William Stringfellow, et. al - are quoted often.

His thesis: the Religious Right in America, which has campaigned, negatively, against abortion and homosexual marriage under the rubric of ‘moral values’ is diversifying. The issue of climate change, for example, previously treated with disdain by conservatives, is now – albeit often reluctantly - on many of their agendas. After all, shouldn't ‘family values’ have something to say about the world we leave to our children and grandchildren? Many younger Evangelicals, in particular, are ‘taking back the faith’ as he urged in his book God’s Politics. They’re concerned about poverty and economic injustice, HIV/AIDS, sex trafficking, Darfur, Iraq. We’re experiencing another ‘wave of revival’ similar to the spiritual awakenings that led to the abolition of the slave trade. Even megachurch pastors like Rick Warren and Bill Hybels are getting on board. Barack Obama is linking faith and politics in a dynamic way which appeals to younger generations of Christians - and others. Even conservative columnist George Will is saying that the economic ideology that runs American society has eroded family and cultural stability.

But the shift away from the Religious Right is not necessarily a shift to the Left. This new generation is looking for a ‘Religious Centre’. The progressive Evangelicals in this group are reading theologians like Bishop N T Wright, who in a little book (Simply Christian) introducing thoughtful people to Christianity covers topics such as poverty, the environment and human rights. Thirty years ago, says Wright, these were secondary issues. They’re majoring on Jesus rather than Paul; their commission for mission is in Luke 4 (good news for the poor) as well as Matthew 28 (go and preach). They’re studying the prophets, with the help of scholars like Walter Brueggeman, and re-discovering that God hates injustice, everywhere.

Wallis writes that his concern for social justice has led him to embrace many aspects of Catholic social teaching, with its emphases on the well-being of the community as well as the rights of the individual.

There’s a wonderful tribute to Jim’s dad in an appendix. A list of discussion questions would have been a good idea.

Writing as a fellow-traveler with Jim Wallis en route from conservative Plymouth Brethrenism to following Jesus and the prophets, (I too was taught that the Sermon on the Mount didn't apply to us, but belonged to 'another dispensation') there’s not much here I’d want to argue with. In fact the only bit I marked negatively was his attribution of the famous quote (gleaned from the John Mark Ministries website rather than an original source) in the index to Richard rather than Reinhold Niebuhr: ‘The worst evils in the world are not done by evil people, but by good people who do not know that they are not doing good’ (p. 214).

Buy this book for every person under 35 who's prepared to re-think their childhood faith and/or their inherited conservative political stance!

Rowland Croucher
May 2008

THE BEST BOOKS I’VE EVER READ

2008-04-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

My journey as a Christian, lover/husband, father, and pastor/teacher/ evangelist has covered different terrains during threescore and ten years. Here’s a rough chronological journey listing books that influenced me ‘at the time’. Remember, I’m not ‘back there’, stuck where-I-was. I was brought up in a ‘gentle fundamentalist’ church (Open or Plymouth Brethren) and I’m still ‘evangelical’ but now also somewhat ‘progressive’ and ‘catholic’, conservative about a few things but also radical, encouraging individual initiative but also committed to social justice, compassion and community. As Richard Rohr says in his latest book (Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality) we must incorporate - not reject - Torah/tradition, Prophetic/dissenting perspectives and Wisdom/mysticism – all of these - into a full and complete life of faith, hope and love...

Another caveat: My calling is to minister mainly to practising pastors and to ex-pastors, so this list is slanted towards ‘pastoral theology’ rather than, say, academic theology, or missiology etc. Other gaps in this list include social issues like homosexuality, corporate worship, counselling, pastoral leadership/management, general literature (novels, poetry) - important areas but which would require many more words/titles. I’ve also majored on recommending authors who were pastors for a substantial period of their lives as well as being well-read scholars (Sangster, Claypool, Peterson, Rohr, McLaren, Barbara Brown Taylor etc.). A longer list compiled half a decade ago can be found here.

1. THE BIBLE. As a youngster I was captivated by the wonderful stories of God’s grace in the Bible (KJV), and also its magnificent poetry (eg. Isaiah 40, which as a teenager I learned off by heart). I knew more about ‘dispensational prophecy’ than the apostles did, and read the Bible through several times. (The most readable recent translation: Eugene Peterson’s The Message. The best for study and corporate worship: the NRSV.)

2. ADVENTURE STORIES – especially R M Ballantyne’s; and the William, Biggles and Deerfoot books - gave me as a child a love of reading for pleasure.

3. THE KNEELING CHRISTIAN (by ‘An Unknown Christian’) instilled in me the conviction that genuine Christian commitment is nothing if not fervent. BIOGRAPHIES – of people like George Muller, William Carey, Hudson Taylor, C H Spurgeon and the Ecuador Martyrs – inspired me in my formative years to ‘be the best I can be’ for God and others.

4. C S LEWIS (especially Mere Christianity) and JOHN STOTT (Basic Christianity) were helpful in my accepting orthodox Christian tenets as ‘believable’.

5. MILLAR’S SCM COMMENTARY ON LUKE and (later) WALTER BRUEGGEMANN’S ON THE PSALMS (among others, eg, Abraham Heschel) encouraged me to believe that expounding the Scriptures can be instructive, and interesting and challenging.

6. W E SANGSTER’S sermons, books on homiletics, and magnum opus The Pure in Heart (on spirituality) were wonderful ‘integrative’ elements in my formation as a young pastor. Two decades later Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and later again his Streams of Living Water helped in the quest for an overview of historical/ecumenical spirituality.

7. I got JOHN CLAYPOOL’S sermons once a month by mail for many years, and stopped everything to read them: he’s still the best ‘writing preacher’ in the English language, I reckon. His Tracks of a Fellow Struggler – sermons on Job while his 9 year old daughter Laura Lue was dying of leukemia – has comforted many in their grief. Following Claypool, I think Barbara Brown Taylor’s sermons delight me the most.

8. Three Catholic authors who have enriched/inspired: THOMAS MERTON (his best - New Seeds of Contemplation), DOM HELDER CAMARA (especially A Thousand Reasons for Living), and HENRI NOUWEN (start with either The Wounded Healer or Creative Ministry).

9. My favourite contemporary author is RICHARD ROHR. Start (slowly) with his latest book Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, then Everything Belongs: the Gift of Contemplative Prayer.

10. For young/new Christians no one beats BRIAN McLAREN. His best, I think, is A Generous Orthodoxy. For those enquiring about Christianity give them Finding Faith: A Search for What is Real.

11. Interfaith? Remember the dictum ascribed to Zwi Werblowsky: ‘There are some things about a given religion which can only be understood from inside and some things about the same religion which can only be understood from outside.’ Now here’s a surprise choice perhaps: begin with KHALED HOSSEINI’S The Kite Runner. It gives us brilliant insights into the lives of Muslim families in Afghanistan (and should help soften some of our bigotry about Islam).

12. The number one issue in western theology is the current ‘Jesus Quest’. Conservatives will like CRAIG EVANS’ Fabricating Jesus (2007) or BEN WITHERINGTON’S What Have they done With Jesus? (2006), but I would suggest that a wider stance should be explored – most easily with the dialogues TOM WRIGHT had with MARCUS BORG on The Meaning of Jesus (2000) and JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN on The Resurrection of Jesus (2006).

13. Christianity and Social Justice? Start with JIM WALLIS’S Seven Ways to Change the World (2008).

14. Finally, anything by EUGENE PETERSON is excellent (though there’s quite a bit of repetition in his various writings). His Take and Read: Spiritual Reading, an Annotated List is a good guide, and his recent books on Spiritual Theology – Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (2005) and The Jesus Way (2007) – are an excellent summary/miscellany of his ideas.

Ponder: ‘Beware of the man of one book’ (Thomas Aquinas). ‘The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.’ (Allan Bloom ).

In another article I’ll look at best/favourite blogs and websites.

Rowland Croucher

April 2008

DEAR MR RUDD (Ed. Robert Manne)

2008-04-24T04:39:00.000-07:00

The Gist of DEAR MR RUDD (Ed. Robert Manne, 2008).

Heres a book addressed to Australias recently-elected Prime Minister,
in which 20 experts (mostly left-of-centre, as youd expect if theyre
chosen by Robert Manne) offer ideas and suggestions for Australias
future. This was a rush-job, written and edited during the couple of
months after the November 2007 election, but with some brilliant
offerings by academics and others on such key issues as Aboriginal
affairs, climate change, the economy, human rights, education, health,
the republic... and much more.

Here Ive selected a fairly representative miscellany of
opinions/suggestions one from each contributor. Add these to the 2020
Summit ideas, and Mr Rudd has quite an agenda in front of him, eh?

Dear Mr Rudd hopes to help resume the conversation between public
intellectuals and government, which broke down so badly during the
Howard years (Robert Manne)

On what basis should Australia remain a constitutional monarchy? There
is no credible argument left... If the queen died tomorrow, the streets
of our cities and towns would not be lined with thousands of mourners as
they were in January 1936 with the death of George V, when the empire
stood still and silent in grief (Mark McKenna)

Over the last decade, this nation has experienced a diatribe from
ultra-conservatives attacking Indigenous peoples quest for recognition
as a distinct culture and acknowledgement of past injustices (Pat Dodson)

John Howard presented himself as the protector of the national culture
against the social engineering of the left-wing elites who had got their
hands on state power (Geoff Gallop)

Viewers of the televised segments of [Question Time in Parliament]
would be surprised to learn that past speakers rulings... forbid the
barracking, cat-calling and other nonsense that moves so many of those
viewers to write furious letters about the poor quality of their
representatives (Harry Evans)

Yes Ministers Sir Humphrey put it epigrammatically: If you want to
do those damn silly things, dont do them in such a damn silly way.
Ministers need their departments help... There has not been a single
case since 1901 when a minister has been forced to resign for actions of
the public service about which he did not know or could not reasonably
have been expected to know (Patrick Weller)

After almost 120 years it is time to cut the labour movements Gordian
knot, that most intricate relationship between the fortunes of the
political wing (the Australian Labor Party) and the industrial wing
(trade unions affiliated to the ALP (Mark Aarons, no less!)

Howard [built] his credentials as a national security leader largely on
his close identification with the personality and policies of the US
president, and his standing suffered accordingly as the president and
his policies were discredited... American policy is drifting in a
dangerous direction towards an attempt to build a coalition of
democracies designed to contain Chinas challenge to American primacy
(Hugh White)

[Minister for Foreign Affairs] Stephen Smith... is well-placed to
engage with neighbouring states in a civil rather than a patronising
manner... The Tampa affair ... was orchestrated to win back the votes
of bigots... Achieving ones [foreign policy] goals requires a
willingness to listen rather than preach (William Maley)

When arguments get heated, battles so often occur over words: are
asylum-seekers refugees or queue-jumpers? Is Hamas a terrorist
organization or liberation movement? Was Australia settled or invaded?
(Martin Krygier)

[Professor Ross] Garnaut described the response to climate change as
the defining challenge of our time... Over the years the aluminium
industry has made more threats than any other to take its business to
countries without emission restrictions, and has bankrolled the
greenhouse mafia... If unconstrained, aviation emissions will account
for half or more of Australias total emissions by 2050 and will
undermine all other efforts (Clive Hamilton)

An independent, expertise-based Murray-Darling Basin Authority... like
the Reserve Bank [should] be required to communicate with great
discipline, always mindful of the weight given to its statements (Mike
Young)

The fundamental economic fact of Rudds victory is that he won in a
boom. This is rare... Ultimately, economic growth comes from two
sources: you can get more people into work and/or get the existing
people to work more efficiently... Australia is suffering a skills
shortage, as several industries struggle to find the qualified employees
they need to expand and grow (Andrew Charlton)

The Australian health-care system is a structural and organizational
shambles that has nevertheless produced world-class results... In the
absence of any grand over-arching vision, the system is a product of one
hundred years of short-term fixes... We have too few staff for too many
hospitals, many [of which] are located where people used to live rather
than where they live now (Bill Bowtell)

Australia is the only [OECD] nation with the dubious distinction of
combining long hours over one-fifth of all employees work more than
fifty hours per week with very high levels of casualization... In his
essay on Bonhoeffer, Rudd wrote that the time has come for a vision for
Australia not limited bythe narrowest of definitions of our national
self-interest. The family must not be sacrificed on the altar of
market reality. Two large British studies... concluded that high
levels of group care before the age of three (and particularly before
the age of two) were associated with higher levels of antisocial
behaviour at age three. (Anne Manne)

The Bringing Them Home report... found that race-based child-removal
policies were a special instance of genocide... This is crystal clear,
for instance, in Western Australia, where the instructions and
justification were aimed at eliminating the entire race... Throughout
the last decade , Andrew Bolt, Christopher Pearson and their ilk have
engaged... in polluting Australian political debate with a vicious
account of the nations history... I have heard the life stories of many
of the victims and read the documentary evidence (Marcia Langton)

The ALPs Forward with Fairness policy [re workplace relations]
adopts the notion of fairness as its underpinning ethical principle.
By contrast, the Howard governments WorkChoices revolution arose
primarily from an economic perspective... (Jill Murray)

House prices are now less affordable in Australia than in almost all
other developed countries... Our three levels of government should
cooperate in providing... a scheme to provide subsidies and other
incentives for institutional investors in low-rent housing... At least
initially, the scheme should be managed by non-profit organizations
(Julian Disney)

Australia has just two universities in the top 100 [Shanghai Jiao Tong]
universities [in the world]... ANU at fifty-seven and Melbourne at
seventy-nine. Canada... has two universities in the top forty (Simon
Marginson)

The arts need government patronage because they create minds that
matter... The optimistic claims made by Keating: Culture creates
wealth... Culture employs... Culture adds value... Artist fees in most
art forms remain pitifully low (Juliana Engberg).

(After reading these chapters with hundreds more generalizations and
suggestions like the above, Ive moved Mr. Rudd up my prayer-list!)

Rowland Croucher

April 2008

THE KITE RUNNER

2008-04-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini).

If the first casualty of the War on Terror (as with any war) is truth, Hosseini’s best-sellers The Kite Runner (2003) and A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) are a terrific read if you want an insider’s view of the situation in Afghanistan. Remember the dictum ascribed to Zwi Werblowsky (Martin Buber Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem): ‘There are some things about a given religion which can only be understood from inside and some things about the same religion which can only be understood from outside.’ Hosseini gives us an insider’s insights into the lives of Muslim families in Afghanistan (and should help soften some of our bigotry about Islam).

Here we’ll look briefly at The Kite Runner. However, as the Chilean writer, Isabel Allende says, A Thousand Splendid Suns is ‘unforgettable’. For a review of that book visit here and for a summary of the Taliban’s less-than-creative (!) ways of taking the fun out of life start here.

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul (1965) and with his family sought political asylum in the U.S. in 1980. He is now a medico and an envoy for the UNHCR, deeply involved in the plight of refugees throughout the world.

Last time I looked there were 2348 customer reviews on Amazon.com for The Kite Runner. It was Hosseini’s debut novel, and offers dramatic insights into Afghanistan’s political turmoil, from the last days of the monarchy to the collapse of the Taliban regime. All that is backdrop to the story of two boys - Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant (who are ethnic Hazaras). The boys are inseparable; they compete in kite-running competitions, and share dreams and stories, until something unspeakable happens, severing the relationship. After Amir and his father flee to America, the guilt and shame of that event still haunts Amir, who later returns to his war-torn country to rescue Hassan’s son after the Taliban murdered his parents.

Many of the great themes of literature and life are here: guilt and redemption, character and country, betrayal and loyalty, courage and cowardice and hope, war and terror and tragedy, children who are motherless and/or fatherless, bullying, rape, and the persecution of minorities...

We have to remind ourselves that this is a (haunting) morality tale – a novel, not a memoir. The plot twists are quite amazing (if sometimes implausible). When we meet ordinary people like these who are swept up in the turmoil of history, it ‘gives pause’ to our simplistic views about (a) how to relate to refugees, and (b) the kaleidoscopic varieties of belief inhabiting all major religions, in this case Islam.

The Kite Runner was also produced as an audiobook read by the author, and was adapted into a film of the same name released in December, 2007. Hosseini’s official website is here.

Rowland Croucher
April 2008.

THINGS HIDDEN (Richard Rohr)

2008-04-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

THINGS HIDDEN: Scripture as Spirituality, Richard Rohr (2008).

Franciscan prophet and teacher Richard Rohr is a mystic rather than a systematic theologian: indeed he believes ‘systematizing’ theology runs the risk of doing it violence and missing the point: theology is to be experienced in a life of faith, hope and love, not organized into creeds.

Is he ‘evangelical’? I would say ‘yes’ though he doesn’t use the term of himself: he has an unqualified commitment to Jesus as Lord and God’s special revelation of God’s character. Is he ‘progressive’? Yes: for example he likes Marcus Borg and reads the mainline liberal biblical scholars. Is he a dogmatist/ fundamentalist? Definitely not: any exclusionary system which divides humans made in God’s image into ‘our people’ and ‘those [heretics] not like us’ is alien to the will of God as experienced in the life and teaching of Jesus.

He writes in the Introduction: ‘Only when inner and outer authority come together do we have true spiritual wisdom. We have for too long insisted on outer authority alone, without any teaching of prayer, inner journey and maturing consciousness. The results for the world and for religion have been disastrous… I offer these reflections to again unite what should never have been separated: sacred Scripture and Christian spirituality.’

He quotes Eugene Ionesco with approval: ‘Overexplanation separates us from astonishment.’ Example: the humble recipient of God’s love in the Eucharist/communion, who gazes at Christ on the cross with awe and wonder and love, is far more likely to ‘get the point’ than a theologian who organizes dogma into theories of the atonement.

Here are some representative quotes:

• ‘Suffering seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering… as “whenever you are not in control”.’

• ‘If you are not trained in a trust of mystery and some degree of tolerance for ambiguity, frankly you will not proceed very far on the spiritual journey. Immature religion creates a high degree of “cognitively rigid” people. If you want to hate somebody… do it for religious reasons… do it thinking you’re following some verse from the Bible. It works quite well. Your untouched egocentricity can and will use religion to feel superior and “right”.’

• ‘It is painful but necessary to be critical of your own system, whatever it is. But do know it will never make you popular. As you know the prophets are always rejected by their own (see Luke 12:50-51)… Until you are excluded from any system, you are not able to recognize the idolatries, lies or shadow side of that system. It is the privileged “knowledge of the victim”. Insiders are by nature dualistic, because they divide themselves from the so-called outsiders.’

• ‘Law is the thesis; it lays the ground against which the Prophets develop a positive antithesis… the Wisdom books are a synthesis and integration of the first two. Transcendance to higher levels of consciousness always means inclusion of the previous levels. Walter Brueggeman finds [a similar progression] in the Psalms: Psalms of Orientation (confirming Tradition), Psalms of Disorientation (the prophetic recognition of things not working or not being true) and Psalms of Reorientation (the Wisdom level of a new faith-synthesis). All three levels are affirmed in the Psalms, and unlike today, one or the other level is not called heretical or faithless. (Although people trapped at stage one will normally call people at the other two levels “sinners” or “heretics”, which is what we see happening in the Gospels.) True transcendence always includes the previous stages and does not dismiss them.’

• ‘True orthodoxy (“right ideas”) is important, but in the Bible orthodoxy is never defined as something that happens only in the head… Jesus consistently declares people to be saved or healed who are in right relationship with him, and he never grills them on their belief or belonging systems… I observe that the people who find God are usually people who are very serious about their quest and their questions, more so than being absolutely certain about their answers.’

• ‘Prayer and suffering are the two primary paths of transformation. Only people who have first lived and loved, suffered and failed, and lived and loved again, are in a position to read the Scriptures in a humble, needy, inclusive and finally fruitful way.’

• ‘My lifetime of studying Jesus would lead me to summarize all of his teaching inside of two prime ideas: forgiveness and inclusion.’

It’s the best book I’ve read for a couple of years. And it’s best read devotionally, in small doses…

Rowland Croucher
April 2008

HISTORY'S WORST DECISIONS AND GREATEST SCANDALS

2008-04-07T17:42:00.000-07:00

History’s Worst Decisions (Stephen Weir, 2005), History’s Greatest Scandals (Ed Wright et. al, 2006), (Murdoch Books/Pier 9).

If you want to occupy part of your holidays – as I have just done – reading about history’s idiots/ idiotics, you can’t go past these two 250-page volumes.

But first, a quiz to test your knowledge of some Very Important Trivia:

(Greatest Scandals): 1. America’s ‘worst president’, who according to e e cummings was ‘the only man, woman or child who could write a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors’.

2. Another US president who was ‘an introvert in an extrovert’s job’ who spent his last night in office drinking, sobbing and praying.

3. He said ‘power is the ultimate aphrodisiac’.

4. Among her lingerie she had a bullet-proof bra.

5. This statement got into Bartlett’s ‘Familiar Quotations’: ‘If “is” means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.’

6. When she died at 67 tales persisted that she’d been crushed by a horse while attempting to have sex.

7. ‘Demons made me do it but Oral Roberts cast them out over the phone’.

8. He created headlines like ‘Man Raped by Banana’.

9. This evangelist amassed a personal fortune of $158 million which he stashed in 47 different accounts – and they were only the ones in his name.

10. Neighbours in the Sydney suburb of Palm Beach heard her crying at night for months on end.

(Worst Decisions): 11. He tried to kill his mother, three times with poison, and one by rigging the ceiling to cave in while she lay in bed.

12. This pope lasted only a month before a papal sceptre was broken over him and he was carried off to a monastery.

13. His army was destroyed because the enemy moved backwards faster than his could move forwards.

14. His rabbits migrated faster than any colonizing mammal anywhere in the world.

15. Stanley delivered a territory 80 times larger than Belgium to him, and was then deemed his private property – a personal domain probably without precedent in history.

16. It was then the world’s largest movable object – with four funnels, only three of which were actually usable; one was just for ostentation.

17. He was good in history and weak in geography, and ordered a ridiculous assault with inexperienced soldiers against an impregnable terrain with no strategic importance at all. He also said ‘I don’t understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes.’

18. Another military leader ordered operations which resulted in over a million casualties in six months with absolutely no gain whatsoever.

19. He killed half the leadership of his country during two years.

20. ‘This outstandingly safe drug can be given with complete safety to pregnant mothers without adverse effects on mother or child.’ Result: 12,000 born with birth defects, and of those one-third died in their first year.

You get the idea. The authors are British, but the Idiotica covers a good selection from all times and places (the earliest – Adam and Eve!). They write interestingly, but the proof-readers did a poor job (with, for example, a couple of dozen wrongly hyphenated words in the middle of lines).

Richard Rohr says we all need a good experience of humiliation every day. These 80-odd humiliations are of a magnitude that is staggering. You’ll gratefully pray through these chapters, as I did, ‘There but for the grace of God go I… Thank you Lord that my stupidities were played out on a much smaller stage.’ And the famous line from George Santayana kept going through my head: ‘Those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.’

1. Warren Harding 2. Richard Nixon 3. Henry Kissinger 4. Imelda Marcos 5. Bill Clinton 6. Catherine the Great 7, Jimmy Swaggart 8. Rev. Canaan Banana, president of Zimbabwe 1980-87) 9. Jim Bakker 10. Evdokia Petrov 11. Nero 12. Benedict V 13. Napoleon 14. Thomas Austin 15. King Leopold 16. The Titanic 17. Winston Churchill (Gallipoli) 18. Douglas Haig 19. Joseph Stalin 20. Drug company Grunenthal’s drug thalidomide.

Rowland Croucher
April 2008

NICODEMUS AS HEROIC RISK-TAKER

2008-03-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

(Expanded version: excerpts are preached relevant to the context).

Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3: 1-17.

We were living in Canada when Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled hit the best-seller lists. His thesis: life is risky; it’s not trouble-free. We’ve done a better job in modern Western cultures of ensuring that life is less trouble-free than any previous generations. But the degree to which trouble surprises us, says Peck, will be the degree of our vulnerability to various neuroses... The riskiest option is to try to live without risk….

Life itself is inherently risky – especially if you did not choose your parents well! When you marry you take a huge risk. Having children is risky. Mothers giving birth – especially if they’re teenage girls in places like Ethiopia – face awesome risks. Being a politician is risky: and as we witnessed this ‘Sorry’ week, being PM or leader of the Opposition is risky.

When a few of us began a ministry to ex-pastors on April Fools’ Day 1991, without the promise of a dollar’s support from anyone, that was risky!

Social and Management Scientists (who tell us ‘what everyone knows in language no one can understand’) say that what we do in every significant action is actually ‘risk assessment’ – we do a ‘costs/benefits analysis’ to judge whether the costs of taking a certain course of action are justified by the expected benefits.

When I ‘speak the truth in love’ to conservative Christian groups, I generally have to encourage them to move beyond legalism and/or dogma: these risk-avoidance stances are inherently inhibiting their growth in faith, hope and love.

But some live with too much risk. Last week at a friend’s 80th birthday ‘bash’ I was talking with someone about a mutual friend who’d died recently. She’d moved interstate, and would phone me every couple of months when she was drunk. She’d had nine major operations, including a double mastectomy; was physically abused by her husband and sons: the boys, when they’d been drinking, sometimes swung her by the hair around the room. I conducted the funeral of one of them, who’d shot himself through the mouth... But she stayed with her family: I was with her when her husband died, and buried him too... This humble, abused woman kept her faith until the end. How do you get that kind of courage?

Our friend Dawn Rowan took huge risks in challenging two governments: she took them to court and won. But even though she’s innocent, she’s likely to lose everything she owns. (Look up her name in Google to read her amazing story).

You can say three things about all the biblical leaders: they took risks, they all failed at some point, and they all spent a disproportionate amount of their lives in deserts... You can put the heading ‘Risk-taking’ over just about every page of the Bible. In the lectionary readings for today we heard about two ‘risk-takers’ – Abraham and Nicodemus.

About 4,000 years ago a family of Semitic nomads left the country we call Iraq and settled in Haran, (now Turkey, on the Syrian border). There Abraham, 75, who was enjoying retirement – ‘in his slippers and growing geraniums’ - received a divine command: ‘Leave your country, your people… and go to the land I will show you’ (Genesis 12:1). So ‘Abram left, as the Lord had told him’ (Genesis 12:4), and journeyed south-west towards the land of Canaan.

His epitaph, in Hebrews 11: ‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called… and he set out, not knowing where he was going’. The Hebrew risk-taker par excellence!

The encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus in John 3 is one of the best-known and best-loved stories in the Gospels. How many of you learned to recite John 3:16 when you were young? Our grandmothers used to crochet John 3:16. Martin Luther called this text ‘the Gospel in miniature’. There’s a guy who travels the world’s major sporting and other events holding up a John 3:16 sign for the TV cameras; the spectators at the Super Bowl saw it on a banner pulled by a small plane. (Actually Jesus’ words to Nicodemus probably end at 3:15, and the writer of the Fourth Gospel tacks on another discourse from verse 16.)

Only John of the four Gospels tells us about Nicodemus – in chapters 3, 7, and 19. Nicodemus had a good education and position, power and wealth as a Pharisee. He always got the best seats at the synagogues. He had considerable authority as a member of the Jewish Council, the Sanhedrin: something like Archbishop Peter Hollingworth who became Australia’s Governor-General for a while. (Only in two modern countries, I think, are religious leaders ex-officio in the legislature – the British House of Lords, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.)

Jesus said something quite startling to him: ‘You must be born again.’ There’s a word-play here which is difficult to translate into English. Jesus could either mean ‘born again’ or ‘born from above’: certainly both. Nicodemus latched on to the first meaning. Actually Ezekiel had said something similar: "I will sprinkle clean water upon you… A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you… I will put my spirit within you…’ Jesus too talked to Nicodemus about the ‘Spirit’ being God’s agent in this process. Later Paul and others taught about ‘regeneration’ – roughly the same idea.

Jesus said Nicodemus must be born of water and of the Spirit. The Church through the centuries has taken this to refer to baptism – the outward sign of the new birth. For Nicodemus, as for many Christian believers in many parts of the world, to be publicly baptized would have been a huge risk. Nicodemus might have thought of John the Baptist out there in the desert, baptizing people, among them some of Nicodemus’s priest-friends. As we think back to our baptism – maybe it was a risk committing ourselves to a life of obedience to Christ, and some of us might have been persecuted for that.

Indeed, the act of baptism by immersion is itself a risky venture. I sometimes say to candidates who are ‘baptized backwards’: ‘I’m going to lower you right under the water, and after a second or two I’ll lift you up. You are utterly dependant on my physical strength for that to happen. I could hold you under – a kind of death – and in a sense that’s what baptism is all about…’

In the U.S. the phrase ‘born again’ has entered the common religious and political language . The Southern Baptist republican candidate Mike Huckabee, I heard on the news last week, will appeal to ‘born againers’, evangelical Christians.

Jesus in the Gospels said only to one person – Nicodemus – ‘you must be born again, if you want to see the kingdom of God’. To another who asked how he could gain eternal life, Jesus told him to sell his possessions and give them to the poor, ‘and you will have treasure in heaven.’ It’s interesting that we’ve universalized the ‘born again’ idea – everyone has to experience it if they want to get to heaven - but we’ve relativized the other: apparently not everyone has to sell up everything. Phew!

But there’s something else here: In the clause ‘You must be born again’ “you” is plural. In English we have one pronoun which can be both singular and plural. Jesus said to him ‘You – plural – you Pharisees; you the religious establishment must be renewed from above’.

What was wrong with the Pharisees, and why did they hate Jesus? The word ‘Pharisee’ means ‘separated one’: they separated themselves from the rest of humanity to keep the Law of Moses – and all the other laws the Scribes had added over the centuries - in every detail. The Sabbath laws are the best known. Here’s the problem: Moses said the Sabbath was to be kept holy, and no work was to be done on that day. The Jews over many generations defined and redefined what exactly ‘work’ meant, and the Pharisees in Jesus’ day had it all tied down. For example, Jeremiah (17:21-24) said you weren’t to carry burdens on the Sabbath day. Now what’s a ‘burden’? How heavy is a ‘burden’? They asked ‘If a woman wears jewelry is that a burden? Or if a man has a wooden leg? Or if you lift a child?’ and so on ad infinitum.

Jesus cut across all this religious nonsense, and said the Sabbath was made for the well-being of people, and not the other way around. The Pharisees were actually very ‘good’ people, but ‘good in the worst sense of the word.’ They were guilty of the ‘neurosis of scrupulosity’ as some of my Catholic friends put it. So laws are codified into ‘constitutions’ and the doctrines organized into ‘systematic theology’. I’ve met people and groups like that: haven’t you? And when they become ‘thought police’ like the Pharisees, they’re quite obnoxious…

I read this in an online sermon: ‘If anyone could be trusted to know what the Bible had to say about anything, it was the Pharisees. Nicodemus’s opening line, when he meets Jesus is, ‘Rabbi, we know ... blah, blah, blah.’ ‘We Pharisees, we know...’ And although what he is claiming to know is quite positive and affirming of Jesus, his certainty that they already know who he is and what he is about has already got Jesus challenging him. Jesus doesn’t quite say, “You don’t know nothing,” but he might as well have.’

He comes to Jesus at night. Why? The sermons I’ve heard suggest he was fearful of being discovered talking to this radical prophet. Possibly: Pharisees were known to advocate death to infidels. Or, he simply desired a private conversation uninterrupted by the crowds; or he wanted to ‘vet’ Jesus and his teaching before he made any judgment about him. Whatever the reason, Jesus seems to have won him over: later, when the Sanhedrin was trying to arrest Jesus Nicodemus defended him: a very risky thing to do. And when they finally crucified Jesus he brought expensive spices to prepare Jesus' body for burial.

So how does the story of this risk-taking theologian Nicodemus challenge us? Let me, in closing, make five brief suggestions:

First, the most important thing about being a Christian is not slavery to a belief-system or a commitment to a codified set of laws. It’s about ‘following Jesus’. Resist any religion which is driven by dogma and legalism.

Second, don’t be afraid of a new idea: ‘the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his Word.’ Who was it said ‘When I resist a new idea simply because it’s new, please begin to dig my grave’?

Third, let us develop what my radical friends call a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ about all ‘received’ wisdom – particularly entrenched ideas that prevent us seeing God at work, even in unlikely people and places... And let us never forget that, as sociologist Robert Merton and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and others have taught us: the evil in institutions is likely to be greater than the sum of the evil of the people within them. ‘The worst evils in the world are not committed by evil people, but by good people who do not know they’re not doing good!’ (Niebuhr). It was institutional evil, perpetrated by Nicodemus’s colleagues, that got an innocent man, Jesus, crucified.

Fourth: knowing the Bible off by heart – as many of the Pharisees proudly boasted – does not guarantee godly behaviour, or even good theology. You can know the Bible off by heart and miss the whole point.

Fifth: let’s not forget our brothers and sisters for whom being a Christian is very risky, and who suffer from institutional evil in many places in our world.. This news item landed in my inbox last week: The Eritrean government has imprisoned more than 2,000 Christians. Some of the imprisoned Christians are kept in metal shipping containers and routinely tortured. As a result there have been cases of prisoners who have died, lost their sight, and/or have been paralysed. Due to the severity of persecution, many churches have gone underground and many Christians have been forced to flee the country.

Sermons on this passage were prepared this amazing week by Australian pastors in the context of our saying Sorry to the indigenous peoples of our land. From one Baptist pastor: ‘Like many Australians, I watched and wept as our newly-elected Prime Minister delivered the long-awaited and long-overdue apology this morning. I wept in shame. Shame for the ways in which previous governments have acted and legislated so atrociously towards our indigenous sisters and brothers, on my and my parents' and grandparents' behalf; shame at the thought that many church organizations, no doubt with the best of intentions, were nonetheless part of the machinery that enabled so many children to be removed; and shame at the memory of my childhood when, as a kid who used to spend his summer holidays on my grandparents' farm in wheatbelt Western Australia, I was ushered to the 'Whites Only' swimming pool, which was separated by barbed-wire from the 'Blacks' Pool'.

‘But I wept also with joy - because as I read through the lectionary texts for this coming Sunday, I was brought to John 3: the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus. And in that encounter, in which Jesus so profoundly speaks about 'new birth', I realized afresh what the core of the gospel is: that our past no longer needs condemn us to a particular future; that my tomorrows are not imprisoned by my yesterdays; that in Christ, there is a new and more hopeful reality that is brought into vision. Today's apology was, for me at least, truly a Lenten miracle, and one that served to highlight powerfully the world-shaking wonder of the gospel of which John 3 speaks.’

Let us pray: Lord help us to understand grace: that the good news is about a gift: a gift of a new birth, a new life, a new relationship with the living God: a life which is eternal – here and now, and also forever. Amen.

As we go into the world to live out a risky faith, let us be challenged by the great prayer of St Ignatius:

Dearest Lord
Teach me to be generous
teach me to serve you as you deserve –
to give and not to count the cost
to fight, and not to heed the wounds
to toil, and not to seek for rest
to labour, and not to ask reward
except that of knowing
that we do your holy will. Amen.

….

Day by day
Dear Lord, three things we pray:
To see you more clearly,
To love you more dearly,
To follow you more nearly,
Day by day…

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Sirit. Amen.

Rowland Croucher
February/ March 2008.

BARACK OBAMA'S SPEECH ON RACE

2008-03-18T17:22:00.001-07:00

The following is a transcript of Sen. Barack Obama's speech, as provided by Obama's campaign, (in response to controversial comments by his ex-pastor).

We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Sen. Barack Obama has said the controversy over his ex-pastor's remarks has been "a distraction" to the campaign.

****

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy.

Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least 20 more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution -- a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States.

What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part -- through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk -- to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign -- to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.

I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together -- unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction -- towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas.

I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners -- an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters.

I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts -- that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity.

Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African-Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough."

We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action, that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.

On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation -- that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain.

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely -- just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice.

Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America, a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Rev. Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems -- two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Rev. Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?

And I confess that if all that I knew of Rev. Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.

He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine, who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth -- by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, "Dreams From My Father," I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note -- hope! -- I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones.

"Those stories -- of survival, and freedom, and hope -- became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.

"Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish -- and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety -- the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger.

Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.

The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Rev. Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.

Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork.

We can dismiss Rev. Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Rev. Wright made in his offending sermons about America -- to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through -- a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.

And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country.

But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination -- where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments -- meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations.

That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families -- a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened.

And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods -- parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement -- all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted.

What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it -- those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination.

That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations -- those young men and, increasingly, young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways.

For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.

That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.

That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change.

But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.

Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor.

They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.

So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation.

Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze -- a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns -- this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy -- particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction -- a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people -- that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life.

But it also means binding our particular grievances -- for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs -- to the larger aspirations of all Americans, the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.

And it means taking full responsibility for own lives -- by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American -- and yes, conservative -- notion of self-help found frequent expression in Rev. Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country -- a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

But what we know -- what we have seen -- is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope -- the audacity to hope -- for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- are real and must be addressed.

Not just with words, but with deeds -- by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.

It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the O.J. trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina -- or as fodder for the nightly news.

We can play Rev. Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.

We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children.

This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st Century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care, who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life.

This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag.

We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for president if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.

And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation -- the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today -- a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, 23-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was 9 years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents, too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time.

And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

March 19, 2008

(From the CNN website)

****

Beliefnet's Washington Editor, David Kuo; Politics Editor, Dan Gilgoff
and Beliefnet Editor in Chief and author of the new book FOUNDING FAITH:
Providence, Politics and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America and
other bloggers are weighing in on Senator Obama's "A More Perfect Union"
speech today.

Here's a quick rundown of pre-speech posts and points of view:

-- David Kuo: Obama's decision to stand by his church is good
Spirituality "He didn't forego his spiritual home for political
convenience. Whether or not that is good politics is yet to be seen.
That it is good spiritually should be applauded."

-- Steven Waldman: Obama can't be held responsible for all Wright's
statements, but he needs to say where he agrees and disagrees.

"Some stay because the Sunday school is terrific. More commonly, I hear
people say something like, "I don't like the minister's sermons, but he
was so wonderful when my father died." We should remember that the main

purpose of a minister is spiritual. If he helps someone get closer to
God, or find meaning, that matters tremendously."

-- Dan Gilgoff (God-o-Meter): With Trinity UCC lashing out at the media
this weekend, this controversy is sticking around for a while.

"One of the main arguments Obama's surrogates have been making in the
face of the Wright flare-up is that voters want to hear about issues
like health care and the economy, not about the ravings of Obama's
pastor. This weekend's ravings from the church are fuel to the fire,
promising the story ain't going anywhere soon."

-- Rod Dreher: Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no MLK: "Martin Luther King....
was a true prophet, in the Old Testament sense,

who did not damn America, but called her to be true to herself. It's
easy to imagine King denouncing the grave sins of this country, because
he did that. It's impossible to imagine him denouncing this country in
the fanatical terms used by Jeremiah Wright. Had he done so, we would be
living in a different country today, and a worse one.

-- Jim Wallis: This controversy is all about race, not religion.

"There is a deep well of both frustration and anger in the African
American community in the U.S. And those feelings are borne of the
concrete experience of real oppression, discrimination, and blocked
opportunities that most of America's white citizens take for granted....

In 2008, to still not comprehend or seek to understand the reality of
black frustration and anger is to be in a state of white denial which,
very sadly, is where many white Americans are."

KATE GRENVILLE'S THE SECRET RIVER

2007-12-31T02:38:00.000-08:00

It's holiday-time, when each of us can most usefully relax with the book-gifts our family have bestowed on us at Christmas. Thanks Karen for another beauty!

Here's a good summary, from The Observer

Sunday January 22, 2006
The Observer

The Secret River
by Kate Grenville

Following The Idea of Perfection was always going to be a tough call. Five years on from her Orange Prize-winning bestseller about middle-aged love in the Outback, Kate Grenville has turned to something quite different: historical fiction and a story about convict settlement.

This is a narrative whose outlines we know already: convicts transported to Sydney, eventually pardoned, encouraged to settle what seemed to be an empty continent. They didn't understand, and wouldn't have cared, that the land they were occupying was sacred to the mysterious, dark-skinned people who appeared and disappeared from the forests and seemed to them no more than naked savages.

The William Thornhill born in the opening pages is clearly marked out for poverty, suffering, degradation and criminality. We've been reading this story at least since Dickens...

It does, though, turn out to be worth it. There isn't much underlying moral ambiguity in this book: the costs of settlement are appalling, which makes Thornhill its villain, even while he carries its sympathetic weight. Grenville is particularly good on inarticulate love, and Thornhill's relationship with his wife, Sal, civilises him, makes him a good man and ensures that the reader is on his side. As husband, father and hard-working, decent man, he is also the book's hero.

Once freed, Thornhill falls in love with a point of land up the Hawkesbury River with the visceral desire for ownership of someone who has never been allowed to own anything. He dreams of his own hundred acres, of dignity and entitlement. It never crosses his mind, since the land is not settled, that it could already be owned. Grenville writes exactingly and with passion about the Australian landscape: the bright light, the skinny, grey-green trees that refuse to shed their leaves, the cliffs that tumble into the river through snaking mangroves. Thornhill recognises that this is a landscape that can remake a man.

She is also wonderful on the ex-cons who settle the river, left to get on with things by the authorities. Some, miraculously, find ways to accommodate themselves with the Aborigines, despite their isolation, fear and brutal pasts. Gradually, Thornhill starts faintly to appreciate that the Aborigines most remind him of the gentry back home. They don't appear to work for their food: they spend their days creating art, telling stories, making their babies laugh. And then he has to make a decision. This is where the sense that the book is heading somewhere familiar really works for Grenville; she plays throughout on a threat of impending disaster. It's difficult to read this novel without a heavy heart, because it's obvious that not everything can possibly work out.

Violence is erupting along the river, but a way opens up for Will to keep his wife and children safe and hold on to everything he has worked for. All it would take would be to stomach the necessary bloody, terrible, knowing violence. The Secret River is a sad book, beautifully written and, at times, almost unbearable with the weight of loss, competing distresses and the impossibility of making amends.

*****

This book is a commentary on the universal problem of 'ethnophobia' - fear of the other. There are settlers who are cruel, others kind; the same with aborigines. And when violence spirals into more violence, we have a horrific outcome. Those with the most lethal toys (guns) win. An important book.

Rowland Croucher
December 2007

THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN

2007-12-31T00:58:00.001-08:00

I've just finished reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom (Little, Brown & Time Warner Paperbacks 25 September 2003) - a Christmas present (thanks Karen).

Here's part of the current (December 2007) Wikipedia article on it:

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a novel by Mitch Albom, published in 2003. A television movie of the same name was broadcast by ABC in 2004, starring Jon Voight as the main character, Eddie.

Introduction and Death

Eddie is walking around Ruby Pier, where he works as a maintenance man, and meets a little girl. He makes her a bunny out of pipe cleaners, as he does for other kids at the Pier. Later, Freddy's Free Fall (a ride) breaks down, and the little girl is under it. Eddie dives under the ride to try and save her, but he dies.

First Person in Heaven

The first man Eddie meets in Heaven is the "Blue Man." Eddie was the cause of this man's death. At a young age, a baseball was thrown, and passed in front of the Blue Man's car. When Eddie, as a child, went to get the ball, he was almost hit by the Blue Man driving the car. The Blue Man was incredibly nervous for minutes afterwards and finally hits a truck, the damage of which causes a fatal heart attack.

Second Person in Heaven

The second lesson takes place within the Philippine jungle. The second person Eddie meets is his old captain from the war. The captain teaches Eddie the lesson of sacrifice, where when we sacrifice something we gain something too. The Captain sacrificed Eddie's leg, he shot it. That is why he has the limp. He was trying to save Eddie from walking in a fire. When they tried to get Eddie to a medical unit, the Captain went to go check out to see if the path was safe, and blew up from a mine. In the case of Eddie, he was shot in the leg which caused irreparable damage and crippled him for the rest of his life. However, consequentially, he was given the chance to continue with his life.

"You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices..."

Third Person in Heaven

After The Captain is gone, everything around him changes again, and now he is in a snow mountain. He starts to walk until he arrives at a restaurant where he sees his father. The writer describes the relationship Eddie had with his father since his childhood until Eddie’s father's death. Eddie meets a lady named Ruby. She is the wife of the owner of the Ruby Pier.That is where the "ruby" in Ruby Pier comes from. She is the third person he meets in heaven and she tells him the truth about his father. He died fighting a disease. Eddie's Mother blamed herself for not calling the doctor in time, but Eddie knew it was his drunken father's fault. With this, she speaks about loyalty the human beings must have with people who have been considerable with them. She teaches him the third lesson: Forgiveness. Eddie must forgive his father and does not feel more rage and resentment towards him.

"Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hatred is the weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.

Fourth Person in Heaven

The fourth person Eddie meets in heaven is his wife: Marguerite. She has chosen a wedding place to stay in heaven. Eddie meets her being young as she was when they got married. She teaches him the fourth lesson: Love does not have an end. When people die, love takes a different form, that’s all. To be left out in the dark.

"Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory, memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end," she said. "Love doesn't."

Fifth Person in Heaven

The fifth person Eddie meets in heaven is a small Philippine girl whose name is Tala (means 'star' in Tagalog). Tala is described as being approximately five or six years old with a cinnamon complexion and hair the color of dark plum. Eddie meets Tala in an idyllic stream location where other young children are playing in a stream. It is thought that this nook of heaven is for the children whose memories are so small that an idea of bliss hasn't had the chance to form in their imaginations yet. Tala teaches Eddie that everyone has a purpose to life that not only affects their own lives but unknowingly touches the lives of others. Tala was the person that brought Eddie to heaven, but also died in the shed that Eddie lit afire, proving that Eddie really did see something in the shed. She also tells him that he saved the girl from the falling amusement park ride.

"I was sad because I didn't do anything with my life. I was nothing. I accomplished nothing. I felt like I wasn't supposed to be there." Tala plucked the pipe cleaner dog from the water. "Supposed to be there," She said. "Where? At Ruby pier?" She nodded. "Fixing rides? That was my existence?" He blew a deep breath. "Why?" She tilted her head as if it were obvious. "Children," She said. "You keep them safe. You make good for me."

*****

The only comment I'd make, as a Christian, is that this book portrays a creative approach to heaven's being a 'catch-up' with all the people with whom we've interacted during this life. It will be an interesting... I was nearly going to say... time!

Rowland Croucher

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS

2007-12-26T17:44:00.000-08:00

Graham Tomlin 'The Seven Deadly Sins: and How to Overcome Them' (Lion 2007) and Andrew Cameron & Brian Rosner ed., 'Still Deadly: Ancient Cures for the 7 Sins' (Aquila Press, 2007).

Medieval people were far more horrified by their sins than we are. Sin meant breaking the rules: God's rules, with God being both Lawgiver and Judge. Today's God is more benign, so the seven deadly sins are basically 'seven habits of highly destructive people'. Augustine's idea of 'original sin' - an inbuilt bias towards sin - doesn't sit well with modern notions of freedom. The 'seven deadly sins' emerged in the middle of the first millennium after Christ as a useful check-list to measure goodness or virtue.

Here's a summary of Tomlin's ideas. His book is excellent, modern (even sometimes 'with-it'!), devotionally useful, and scholarly. Tomlin is Principal of St Paul's Theological Centre at Holy Trinity Brompton, London (the church which produced the Alpha courses). Tomlin was previously a member of Oxford University's faculty of theology...

*****

PRIDE is the worst sin, according to most traditional Christian thinkers (from Augustine and Aquinas to G.K. Chesterton and C.S.Lewis). It's the 'primal' sin, our wanting to be independent of God's rules: expressed brilliantly by Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost: 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' Pride looks after 'number one': it is competitive, not wanting to give first place to anyone else. The opposite of pride is humility: the virtue that helps us become more like our humble, self-giving God. How? Through confession, whereby God and another hears our sins and faults and offers grace; and through service to others: 'thinking less about yourself, rather than thinking less of yourself.'

ENVY is the one sin which is not fun at all. It is 'sadness at the happiness of another' (Aquinas). Although no one wants to be renowned for their envy, in our meritocratic culture it is the bait in every advertisement. 'We are caught in a culture that hates envy, yet incites it mercilessly.' Mark Twain was wise: 'We will do many things to get ourselves loved; we will do anything to get ourselves envied.' Ancient wisdom teaches us that happiness consists not in getting what we want, but in wanting what we get. The first murder in the Bible (of Abel by Cain) was driven by envy. How shall we deal with it? First, change the price-tags: things may not what be what they seem. Second, learn to admire what others have without wanting it (Salieri both adored and detested Mozart's genius). Life and your talents are gifts: to be given back to the community. If you have God, you have everything.

ANGER can be an appropriate response to cruelty or injustice, but, as Seneca said, is is 'an acid which can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.' God gets angry at evil, and therefore, as William Willimon says, paradoxically, because he does, we don't have to. Solving problems via anger almost always does more harm than good - often creating an escalating cycle of bitterness. Righteous anger - our anger against evil - can quickly turn into a desire for vengeance. Like most sins anger takes something good - a proper hatred of evil and injustice - and twists it into something destructive. The heart of the Christian approach: it's God's prerogative to exercise wrath. Although our anger might do some good, God alone can sustain righteous anger that will truly sort things out. Part of 'anger management' is to practise silence, so that we do not say things we might later regret.

GLUTTONY headed the list of 7 deadly sins in the 4th century. Gluttony is an inordinate obsession with food, drink, or plain consumption. It's to food what lust is to sex: getting something good out of proportion. Being fat is Very Bad in a celebrity-obsessed culture, so obsessive dieting can be as gluttonous as over-eating. (Half the world lives on less than a dollar a day: each year 1.7 million children die from hunger-related diseases). How are we healed from eating disorders? The crucial first step, as AA teaches, is to hand over control. Traditionally Christians have emphasized not dieting, but the age-old rhythm of fasting and feasting: Easter and Christmas are preceded by the fasts of Lent and Advent - ensuring that we retain control of our appetites rather than being controlled by them.

LUST is not simply sexual desire: it's disordered desire - when sex is the dominating force in a relationship. Sex isn't simply physical: what we do with our bodies affects our souls/hearts/minds. 'It's not so much picking an apple off a tree as disturbing the roots'. Lust is 'the craving for salt of someone dying of thirst' (Buechner). The difference between looking and looking lustfully is about five seconds! We might pretend that we are serious about wanting someone else when we only really want part of them. Extra-marital sex is 'Lying in bed'! How is lust overcome? Not, as the Catholic Church has sometimes taught, by eliminating sexual desire altogether, but, with God's help, relating to others as whole persons.

GREED. The consumer culture is driven by a 'greed-is-good' mentality. Donald Trump put it candidly: 'The point is that you can't be too greedy.' It's not quite the same as self-interest, which, wrote Adam Smith, is the responsibility to look after ourselves and those who depend on us. And healthy ambition spurs us on to greater achievements. The problem is when self-interest impinges on the interests of others. An economy driven by consumption, with governments promised greater growth and prosperity, will inevitably lead to a depletion of the world's resources. 'Over the past 550 million years there have been five major extinctions of species. Who is to say that we might not be next?' We have probably passed the point of no return on global warming. God has provided good things for our enjoyment, but greed is destructive - both of ourselves and of society. A sabbath is a good antidote to greed: it is a regular reminder that the ultimate purpose of life is not to accumulate 'stuff'. But the best counterpart to greed is not poverty (the poor can be avaricious), but generosity. Ultimately we do not own anything: everything is a gift. So let us live simply, so that others can simply live.

SLOTH is the hardest of the 7 sins to define. It's not simply laziness. The old Latin idea of accidia is sometimes translated 'spiritual weariness' or 'despair': essentially 'giving up on life'. Aquinas described sloth as 'spiritual boredom'. Augustine says of the human race, 'They choose to look for happiness not in you, but in what you have created'. So sloth is losing our appetite for God, failing to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. It is substituting something else for God - even religious things like liturgies, church music or theological ideas. Simply enjoying/loving God is an acquired taste. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

*****

Don't bother buying the 'Still Deadly' book. It's too 'Sydney Anglican' - somewhat desiccated, and heady, replete with many Bible texts and evangelical concepts. It has 'in-group' language (ex-Sydney Anglicans will know what I mean), but is quite scholarly, centring the essays by well-known Anglicans like Peter Jensen, Graham Cole, Gordon Preece etc. around the writings of Luther, Augustine, Basil of Caesarea, Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr and Calvin. It's actually a small feschrift for Michael Hill, formerly lecturer in ethics and vice-principal of Sydney's Moore Theological College. Its preface says 'Although you've picked up this book because it seemed interesting, we hope you'll become really, really bored by it... We hope you'll become bored witless by the pathetic pointlessness of [these 7 sins].' (Sounds like undergrad evangelicese preachy language, eh?). I was quite bored: but there are a few gems of ideas here, which I'll put on to the John Mark Ministries website some time (use the indexes)...

Rowland Croucher

December 2007

Copies available from Ridley Melbourne Bookshop - http://bookshop.ridley.unimelb.edu.au/bookweb/

TRANSFIGURATION (JOHN DEAR)

2007-12-23T21:28:00.000-08:00

Review: Transfiguration: A Meditation on Transforming Ourselves and Our World, by John Dear (Doubleday 2007)

Jesuit priest, retreat leader, writer and peace activist John Dear is running with the baton handed on by the Berrigan Brothers. (He spent at least one session in jail with one of them). Which means that he's prepared to do off-the-wall protests to get the attention of the Powers, engaging in nonviolent protests against war, the arms race, and human rights violations. Like Jesus, he says, we are to be non-violent, but this does not mean we are passive.

John Dear has served as the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an interfaith peace organization, and was a Red Cross coordinator of chaplains at the Family Assistance Center in New York City after the September 11, 2001, attacks. He has traveled to the world’s war zones on missions of peace and has been imprisoned repeatedly for civil disobedience in anti-war protests.

In this, the latest of his 15 or 16 books, he offers this basic message: we are to follow Jesus in terms of cultivating peace within, and peace in our world. Actually the journey has three parts - an inner journey, a public journey, and a journey for all humanity. The meditation is broken into five parts - walking in the footsteps of Jesus, going up the mountain with Jesus, recognizing the transfigured Christ in our midst, going down the mountain to the cross, and fulfilling our mission of transfiguration nonviolence in a culture of violence and war. The key? Loving ourselves as we are, diffusing the hatred we might feel towards others, and consciously embracing a choice to live in peace.

In this book John Dear explores of the many meanings in the Gospel story of Jesus' transfiguration (Matthew 17: 1-8). As we travel with Jesus, we too combine a mystical journey within with a life of healing the wounds of the world:

'To be listeners, we have to prepare ourselves to receive the Word, to let it settle in and take root in our hearts. As we become people of contemplative listening, we eventually notice every word that Jesus says, and we try to build our lives on his message, word by word, until we live and breathe his teachings.'

Contemplation is not the prayer of the Pharisees - words, words, words. It is resting in the presence of God and listening to what God is telling us. Action without contemplation is futile.

Not everyone will be convinced by John Dear's approach (unless they already agree with him :-). For example, this, from the Publisher's Weekly: 'Dear also includes helpful suggestions on spiritual practices that lead to embracing nonviolence, as well as questions for individual contemplation or group discussion. Like many who are passionate about their subject, Dear's sense that he absolutely knows God's will is daunting at times. He also stretches some of the biblical texts, arguing, for instance, that Moses and Elijah appear at the Transfiguration specifically to affirm Jesus' call to nonviolence. Dear is much to be admired for his persistence in the call for peace and nonviolence, a mission for which he has been willing to go to prison, and those who already share the author's views will find this book inspiring. Those who do not will probably go away unconvinced that the account of the Transfiguration makes his case.'

Whatever else he is, John Dear is authentic: he lives what he writes. He reminds you of St. Francis, who also sided with the poor, the outcasts, the 'little people'. John Dear writes: "To follow Jesus on the path of transfiguring nonviolence, we have to leave our lofty heights, comfortable safety, and private spiritualities and go with him down the mountain into the world of war, where we must confront the structures of violence head-on. The real discipleship journey begins now, after the Transfiguration, as we follow Jesus on the road to Jerusalem."

John Dear's Jesus 'was incapable of remaining silent in the face of social injustice, infidelity, violence and idolatry, and so he caused trouble wherever he went.'

"Here in this book is a clarion call for us to be engaged in the project for world peace and we ignore it at our peril." —Desmond Tutu, from the Foreword.

At the back of the book are some useful questions for reflection. Highly recommended.

Another modern prophet you might want to check out: Shane Claiborne

Review copy supplied by Ridley Melbourne Bookshop.

Rowland Croucher

WHEN A HOMOSEXUAL CHRISTIAN LEADER ‘COMES OUT’

2007-11-29T23:47:00.000-08:00

Review: Anthony Venn-Brown's 'A Life of Unlearning: a Journey to Find the Truth', 2nd edition, New Holland Publishers, 2007.

The Church has wrestled with a dozen major paradigm-shifts in its history. The first had to do with accepting Gentiles. The Protestant Reformation was built on the radical proposition that we are saved by faith purely on the basis of God’s grace, and that we can trust ordinary folks to read the Bible. Then there was slavery, charismatic renewal, women in leadership... Conservative groups have recently wrestled with issues like dancing, divorce, Sabbath/Sunday-behaviour, dress-codes, and rock music.

And now the Big One: Homosexuality.

After 25 years counselling ex-pastors, what generalizations can I make about Christian homosexual ministers who declare their orientation/ practice?

If they were credentialled by a fundamentalist denomination they will be treated, with very few exceptions, as lepers/pariahs, and even with hate. [1] If from an evangelical background, the neglect will be more benign: they may receive one or two contacts from their colleagues (or they may not). Mainline Christians are less homophobic, but also often uncaring.

Fundamentalists/Pharisees quote Paul: ‘[Do not] associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral... Drive out the wicked person from among you’ (1 Corinthians 5:11,12, NRSV). [2]

Progressive Evangelicals align their stance with that of Jesus, who was castigated by religious leaders for hanging out with 'publicans and sinners’. They might agree with Tony Campolo: 'In the likelihood that most (homosexuals) will still have their basic sexual orientations regardless of their efforts to change, we must do more than simply bid them be celibate. We must find ways for them to have fulfilling, loving experiences so that they might have their humanity affirmed and their incorporation into the Body of Christ assured.' [3]

Anthony Venn-Brown is probably Australia’s first openly-gay Pentecostal leader. His story is both typical (he attempted suicide) and atypical (he attends a Pentecostal Church and has set up a ministry - Freedom 2 B[e] - a network for GLBTIQ - Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer - people from Pentecostal and Charismatic backgrounds).

Wikipedia says he prefers to be known as a gay ambassador rather than a gay activist. [4] That’s also atypical: most homosexual ex-pastors (and serving pastors for that matter) still lie very low.

When I tell clergy conferences that every Christian denomination has pastors and ex-pastors who are gay, that used to be greeted with disbelief. Now, of course, they’ve all moved beyond the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ stance.

And when I write/preach that the Bible has nothing whatever to say about homosexuality as a (non-chosen) orientation, most conservative Christians just don’t understand. Non-chosen? Yes: I’ve not met a homosexual or lesbian client who chose to be that way: most of them would prefer to be a much-less-complicated – and socially more acceptable - heterosexual.

But not Anthony: if reincarnation was true, he writes, he wouldn’t mind coming back as a homosexual. Again, atypical.

Sample paragraph: ‘I was overcome by a feeling of utter failure. I thought about what I’d done to Helen and the girls, the people who might lose faith because of my transgression, the humiliation of everyone knowing my sin, the way I’d discredited the ministry and how unworthy I was of anyone’s love, even God’s... I was a failure as a husband, father and servant of God’ (p. 285).

Anthony’s book is well-written, a ‘must-read’ for all (adult – though some may disagree with that) Christians, especially Christian leaders. It’s confronting, occasionally (appropriately) explicit, irenic, sad, honest, and well-researched. There’s a commendable integrity about his approach. (My main suggestion would be that in the next edition he adds an appendix with a more in-depth summary of the biblical/theological material.)

Two of the most difficult questions for conservative Christians relate to a 'cure' for homosexuality and the issue of same-sex marriages.

Anthony's experience demonstrates that the advice often given to people with same sex orientation - that a heterosexual marriage will solve the problem and be the final evidence that they have received a 'miracle' - frequently ends in a traumatic and devastating experience for the partner and children: one that can take years to heal. Also most will be shocked to learn, from the emails Anthony has received, that some Christian parents and church leaders suggest hiring an opposite sex prostitute to help with the 'cure'. Obviously there is still a great deal of ignorance out there about sexual orientation and church leaders need to be more informed.

On the issue of same-sex relationships, I have said often that there's a great deal of hypocrisy in our churches. In an ABC TV program I suggested that churches have been selective in their indignation re the three so-called 'deadly sexual sins' - adultery, fornication, and homosexual practice. We condemn the first and third, but most (yes, most) of our Christian young people practise the second one: but are not excluded from the memberships of most churches on that account. (Why? They're the children of church leaders!). [5]

Here's a heart-felt comment from Anthony on this question: 'Those who are privileged to have a close relationship/friendship with gay or lesbian couples know that the essentials that build and maintain their relationships are the same as heterosexual marriages: love, trust, respect and a desire to create a life long partnership. These are all honourable traits and should not be condemned as evil but supported by those who believe God's love is for all. To welcome them into our churches is an acknowledgment of the right choices they have made.'

And I would add that no one should be definitive on this broad issue until/unless they have listened carefully to the stories of homosexual people.

We may not agree with all Anthony says, but if our homophobic judgmentalism can't cope with this sort of 'in your face' truthfulness, or if we don’t cry with Anthony sometimes - he cries a lot – my gentle suggestion would be to get help!

Rowland Croucher

November 26, 2007

*****

You can purchase his book here: http://www.anthonyvennbrown.com/

Anthony’s blog - http://alifeofunlearning.blogspot.com/

Freedom 2 b[e] - http://www.freedom2b.org/phpBB2/

*****

[1] http://www.godhatesfags.com/

[2] Put Anthony’s name into ‘Find on this page’ at http://www.christian-witness.org/active/mail/y_letter35.html

[3] Homosexuality: an Interview with Jesus - http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/12135.htm

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Venn-Brown

[5] You can read the transcript and view it here: http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/13440.htm

WHY THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS WRONG

2007-10-24T00:23:00.000-07:00

Subtitled: 'A Minister's Manifesto for Taking Back Your Faith, Your Flag, Your Future', by Robin Meyers, Wiley, 2006.

The cover blurb sums it up well: 'I join the ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus but whose actions are anything but Christian.'

Robin Meyers is a United Church of Christ minister, a contributor to The Christian Century, and 'professor of rhetoric' at Oklahoma City University.

In 2004 he gave a speech at a University of Oklahoma peace rally from which he achieved widespread Internet fame. (You can find the speech by putting the relevant words into Google - or the John Mark Ministries website indexes). It ended with these stirring words: 'Time to march again my friends. Time to commit acts of civil disobedience. Time to sing, and to pray, and refuse to participate in the madness. My generation finally stopped a tragic war. You can too!'

In this speech he introduced himself as 'minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. But you would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor.'

Well, he's still angry, particularly about the moral bankruptcy of the Christian Right, and the Bush Administration.

Fundamentalists, he says, have used the catastrophic events of 9/11 to wage war on irenicism and tolerance. The dreaded military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned against 'has now lost the hyphen and become one word'. There are three main points to his thesis: 'The emperor is naked. The flag is flying upside down. And Jesus has been silenced by his own church.'

The Christian Right, he says, 'seems to have accepted war as inevitable if regrettable and sex as regrettable if inevitable.' They inhabit an either-or world of 'the saved and the "left behind"'. Their familiar bumper- sticker is AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. President Bush 'acts as if we own the franchise on "freedom" and "liberty" and that we alone know what is best for other nations, even if they don't know what is best for themselves.'

In terms of the Christian Right's hermeneutic, they are more concerned with selective legal aspects of the Old Testament than the heart and soul of the New Testament.

Equally illogical of course is the 'war on terror': 'It is better to go on killing more of them, even if they go on killing more of us, so that we can remind everyone how vital it is to kill more of them first'. The book is replete with such sardonic barbs...

We are encouraged here to be thoughtful in our questioning of authority - especially when that authority is claiming to act on God's behalf. America - whose government has been driven by big money and big business - is in deep trouble: the way out is to combine rationality with essential Christian virtues, form nonviolent resistance groups, and vote out warmongering politicians.

A hard-hitting chapter is titled "Christian Fascism and the War on Reason" and includes 14 characteristics of fascism: (1) Powerful nationalism (knee-jerk patriotism), (2) disdain for recognition of human rights (eg. torture, long imprisonments), (3) identifying enemies and scapegoats as a unifying cause (eg. liberals, terrorists), (4) supremacy of the military (see our budget), (5) rampant sexism, (6) control of the mass media, (7) obsession with national security, (8)religion and government intertwined (using religion to manipulate public opinion), (10) suppression of labor power, (11) disdain for intellectuals and the arts, (12) obsession with crime and punishment, (13) rampant cronyism and corruption, and (14) fraudulent elections (eg. smear campaigns, manipulation of boundaries).

Read it with another book which has a similar flavour - Marvin McMickle's 'Where Have all the Prophets Gone?' (see http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/19588.htm ). Well, Marvin, here's one: you two should get to know each other!

Rowland Croucher
October 2007

THE NEW LION HANDBOOK - CHRISTIAN BELIEF

2007-10-22T23:17:00.000-07:00

(General Editor: Alister McGrath, First hardback edition 2006; flexiback 2007)

Here's an excellent 350 page introduction to classic Christian thinking/doctrine.

It begins with a seven-page overview of Christian Church History (try doing that sometime!). Then we explore faith, including an introduction to the creeds, faith and philosophy, religious language, can God's existence be proved?, the place of tradition, interpreting the Bible, introduction to theology, modernity, postmodernity, and Islam.

Next we have chapters on God, Jesus, Salvation, the Church, and the Christian Hope.

At the end is a Concise Anthology of Christian Thought (actually 'church history' via some great Christian apologists and theologians, from Justin Martyr to Tillich, Moltmann and Pannenberg). Then we have a useful 22-page glossary and an index.

Now, a cautious caveat. Lion Hudson, as this publisher is now called, has generally a 'conservative evangelical' flavour. The editor of this volume - Alister McGrath - may be the UK's most prolific evangelical writer. And J. I. Packer, the associate editor, is probably - with John Stott - one of the two or three modern 'godfathers' of English-speaking evangelicalism. (So, of course, the index has 13 references to John Calvin!).

I wanted to test the integrity of this book in terms of its ecclesiological breadth. My quest began with two articles on women. Here are two representative quotes:

'It is sometimes difficult to appreciate how novel [Jesus'] attitudes were at the time. Jesus' ministry represents an attempt to reform the patriarchalism of his day, and permit women to hold a new kind of authority in religious matters' (p. 139).

'An increasing number of churches have decided that there is no biblical or theological reason against ordaining women... Yet many churches hold that the tradition of the church in this regard must not be changed, and they limit the ministerial roles of women accordingly.' (p. 249).

You get the idea: conservative generally, but also cautiously 'broad church'. But not too broad: Bishop N. T. Wright gets a mention, but not, I think, the Jesus Seminar: though there is a one-page summary of the Quest for the Historical Jesus; the NRSV is used, but also the NIV; and there's two pages (!!) for an article entitled 'Where was the Garden of Eden?'

It's well-illustrated, brilliantly laid-out, and very readable. I'm teaching an Introduction to Theology course at the moment, and I recommended this book as a basic text. It's now (after the Bible) the first resource I would give to a thoughtful young person or adult beginning the Christian journey.

Copies available from Ridley College Bookshop, Melbourne.

Rowland Croucher

IRRESISTIBLE REVOLUTION (Shane Claiborne)

2007-10-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

(Zondervan, 2006).

Shane Claiborne looks, speaks, and dresses like an Old Testament prophet (or John the Baptist). And he makes the same sort of crazy sense. (But he's had a better formal education than most of them).

He's a young (my guess: 30s) idealistic American, who spent time with Mother Teresa's helpers in India, and went to Iraq with other peacemakers (there he was lucky to survive a car accident and other possible horrors). He's one of the founding members of The Simple Way community in very-downtown Philadelphia, and a prominent activist.

A couple of months ago I heard him speak at the Urban Neighbours of Hope conference in Melbourne, and was impressed. (My wife Jan's job at the conference was to provide hospitality - bedding and breakfast, for Shane - and his mother: he's never married - and other speakers, but that's by-the-way). He's a terrific raconteur. Who could forget his lines: 'Patriots you may bring your flags; we're washing feet and will need some rags'? Or his story about throwing $10,000 worth of small change around Wall Street. Or of his grandfather's setting fire to fields because he overloaded a new trailer with hay, which ignited from friction?

This book is a terrific read: those of us over 50-or-so mightn't get some of the modern lingo, but we'll certainly enjoy his humor (particularly 8 or 10 'Just kiddings!').

I have no other comments to make about the book, and would rather use the space here to cite a few representative 'quotable quotes' to whet your appetite:

* (When Roman Catholic authorities began the legal process of evicting homeless people from a deserted cathedral): 'We ran through campus hanging up flyers that read, "Jesus is getting kicked out of church in North Philly. Come hear about it. Kea Lounge. 10 pm. tonight".

* 'You guys are all into that born again thing, which is great. We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemas. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy too'.

* 'If you don't know what a eunuch is, see the diagram in the appendix. Just kidding. Check the phone book and call up a pastor and ask her or him: it should make for an interesting conversation'.

* 'Many spiritual seekers have not been able to hear the words of Christians because the lives of Christians have been making so much horrible noise. It can be hard to hear the gentle whisper of the Spirit amid the noise of Christendom'.

* 'When people move beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, as Jesus did, they get into trouble... Managing poverty is big business. Ending poverty is revolutionary'.

* 'There is one thing I will never forget - (Mother Teresa's) feet. Each morning in Mass, I would stare at them. I wondered if she had contracted leprosy. But I wasn't going to ask, of course... One day a sister said to us, "Have you noticed her feet?" We nodded, curious. She said, "Her feet are deformed because we get just enough donated shoes for everyone, and Mother does not want anyone to get stuck with the worst pair, so she digs through and finds them. And years of doing that have deformed her feet." Years of loving her neighbor as herself deformed her feet'.

* 'The stuff Jesus warned us to beware of, the yeast of the Pharisees, is so infectious today in the camps of both liberals and conservatives. Conservatives stand up and thank God that they're not like the homosexuals, the Muslims, the liberals. Liberals stand up and thank God that they are not like the war makers, the yuppies, the conservatives. It is a similar self-righteousness just with different definitions of evildoing. It can paralyze us in judgment and guilt and rob us of life'.

* 'Bono, the great theologian (and decent rock star) said in his introduction to a book of selections from the Psalms: "The fact that the Scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers, and mercenaries used to shock me. Now it is a source of great comfort".'

* 'The Catholic Workers used to say "The true atheist is the one who refuses to see God's image in the face of their neighbor".'

You get the idea... Every Westerner whose life is fairly comfortable should read a book like this at least once a year.

Rowland Croucher

TRACING THE FOOTSTEPS OF GOD

2007-10-11T04:10:00.000-07:00

C. S. Song, Tracing the Footsteps of God: Discovering What You Really Believe, Fortress Press, 2007.

Here's a readable introduction to 'modern mainline liberal Christian theology' by a professor of theology (Pacific School of Religion) who is also sufficiently esteemed in his denomination (Reformed Churches) to have been voted president of their world body.

Professor Song (he doesn't say, but from his knowledge of Asian religions his family origins are probably Chinese) doesn't like the way our (European) creeds constrict belief. Using the parables of Jesus as his starting-point, he leads us through nine essential questions of faith.

I said he was 'mainline liberal', yes, as distinct from 'mainline evangelical' (for example, he prefers 'God's self' type phrases rather than masculine pronouns for God); or 'liberal radical' (there's not much here referencing the Jesus Seminar presuppositions, though he does quote John Dominic Crossan once or twice). A glance at his citations tells a story: Karen Armstrong, Walter Brueggemann, Feuerbach and Tillich are there, for example, but not Karl Barth...

He begins by suggesting that an exploration into what we mean by God doesn't begin with ideas about God at all, but with what is known through our experience of the world. And when we do come up with some 'answers' they may not be neat or elegant - or even 'correct'. So an appropriate starting-point might be Tillich's question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?'; or the preacher in Ecclesiastes talking about 'a time to be born and a time to die', and the universal experiences of wonder and dread.

From there we look at the 'reality' of Jesus' resurrection (an 'enigma best left to the mystery of God') which was 'real' in terms of the 'inner, visionary, or contemplative experience' of those who 'saw' the risen Christ (but we don't have to believe that the resurrected body was a resuscitated corpse).

Jesus' teaching and healing ministries focussed on the rule of God, addressed to both Jews and non-Jews, and more concerned about this life than another/eternal life. Which leads to the big question about 'Who is saved?' Song leaves us here with the assertion (hard to disprove) that there is truth in all religions, but none of them has the whole truth. (Wasn't it C S Lewis who said - au contraire - that in any mathematical problem there is only one right answer, but some answers are more nearly right than others?). The essence of Christianity, derived from the life of its Founder, writes Song, is more a function of the practice of compassion than assenting to the propositions of a creed. Which is why he has a whole chapter on the Beatitudes: suggesting that they are central/foundational to the teaching of Jesus.

Our mission is to live, as Jesus did, as free people in a pluralistic world, remembering that all humans are made in God's image and therefore, (like the rest of creation actually) 'inspirited' with the creative breath of God. Truly 'spiritual' people may not be aware of their spirituality, but live in freedom from bondages to rites, rituals and creeds...

So Song says an authentic Christianity is more 'Jesus oriented' than 'Christ-centric'. And in the last chapter he actually poses the question 'Who do you say God is?' Answer: the clue is in the life of Jesus, rather than the Pauline and post-Pauline images of God.

And ultimately, when we ask the question 'Who are you God?' the most immediate answer will be silence. 'God as Spirit is the key. Not God as a theological construction, not God affirmed in the belief systems and creeds of the varying churches and religions, not God handed down by religious traditions and authorities...' (p. 153). (I think we've got the message!)

There are excellent questions in each chapter for group discussion, which makes it a very good resource for people 'searching for truth with an open mind'.

Rowland Croucher

October 2007.

EVAN ALMIGHTY

2007-09-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

Jan and I attended a preview of this crazy movie last night, and enjoyed it.

Briefly: this sequel to Bruce Almighty is a comedy of biblical proportions, reportedly costing $175 million (perhaps the most expensive comedy ever?). Steve Carell ('Evan Baxter') is a newly-elected senator on Capitol Hill. What he doesn't know is that he's also been elected by the Lord (an amiable Morgan Freeman) to build an ark in suburban Washington (with the help of a book 'Ark-building for Dummies'). In the process animals and birds appear two by two (177 species altogether), as does a patriarchal beard and sackcloth outfit all of which astonishes his political colleagues.

There are 3 or 4 important didactic themes: a busy politician too preoccupied with the glamour and prestige of the job to pay enough attention to his long-suffering wife (Lauren Graham) and three sons; the rape of the earth by political/industrial complexes for profit and, of course, 'jobs'; the importance of 'acts of random kindness' (ARK - get it?); and the need for humans to learn happy-dancing.

It's all very earnest (several reviewers write that to be truly comic it should have had more jokes).

The rating is PG - I'd recommend a lower-age of 11 or 12 as there are a few bawdy and scary scenes - and is quite short (89 minutes). Of course you've got to suspend credibility: it's all a comic send-up of what-wealthy-westerners-think-is-important.

It's the next movie Hollywood has aimed at (the dollars of) church-folks, after The Passion of the Christ. After your church-group sees it you'll discuss such important-to-trivial questions as: * Is it possible to be both a good steward of God's earth and a politician? * Can you be a Christian in politics and avoid legislative malfeasance? * Why do upwardly mobile professionals tend to neglect their families? * Is it OK to laugh about religious matters? * Did people who are supposed to know their Bibles figure out why the alarm went off at 6:14? * How important is it to shave your nose-hair to look good?

Enjoy!

And if you're a film-buff there's a good article in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Almighty

Rowland Croucher
September 18, 2007.

LOST AND FOUND

2007-09-17T23:06:00.000-07:00

(Here are some notes from which I preached at a Uniting Church last Sunday. Rowland Croucher September 18, 2007).

Luke 15:1-10, 1 Timothy 1:12-17

Losing something can be trivial – mildly frustrating – or deadly serious, even life-threatening. It all depends on the value of what you’ve lost.

Lost people are in the news headlines all the time. This week? Adventurer Steve Fossett, lost somewhere in the Nevada Desert, Madelaine McCann, a little girl lost – probably abducted – in Portugal (and now her parents – parents! – are suspects). A while back, three men in a boat somewhere off the Queensland coast, who have never been found.

We write songs, tell stories and make movies of people lost: David Livingstone, apparently lost in the middle of ‘darkest Africa’; an ‘ancient mariner’ lost at sea; aviator Amelia Erhart; explorers Burke and Wills; Little Boy Lost; the Chamberlain’s baby lost in the Northern Territory desert, ‘Lost in Space’…

We joke about being lost: men aren’t lost, they’re trusting their navigational instincts (women ask for directions). As a young taxi-driver in Sydney while at University, I was lost at least once every shift.

We lose objects all the time (more so, I can tell you, as you approach ‘threescore years and ten’). Everyone has lost something at one time or another. There is even a website now at www.lostandfound.com that acts as a global ‘lost and found’ box.

I’ve lost a car three times: once when it was towed away because I was slow with hire purchase payments; another time in the Disneyland carpark (is it the largest in the world?) until with two little girls 7 and 9 we found it at 2 am!; and at the airport: I’d found a free spot out there, but one weekend they changed the parking rules and had towed my car away…

Losing things isn’t funny: a surgeon discovering after an operation that an instrument’s gone missing; if I lost my diary I think I’d lose my mind (it’s in there!); losing an important email (PTL for Google Desktop!); a loved one losing their memory; a parishioner I knew whose mother was lost, found with another identity in Adelaide. We’ve ‘lost the plot’ in Iraq…

Jesus’ parents lost him when he was 12. (One of our Sunday School hypotheticals: ‘Did Jesus ever lose anything?’ Silly question, like our other one: ‘Did Jesus the healer ever sneeze?’).

Psychologists tell us there are two kinds of lostness: ‘developmental’ and ‘situational’. We grow through various stages in life, and all of us experience a constant cycle of attachments/detachments, closeness/distance, togetherness/ separateness, loss of innocence when we collide with reality… It happens when a baby is born: they lose the security of intrauterine life; and it happens when we get older and various bodily functions don’t work as well any more.

But there’s also ‘situational’ lostness: which can happen to any of us at any time. I have clients whose grief is frozen: they’ve never gotten over the loss of a loved one. We must learn to ‘bury the dead’ twice: physically, and in terms of the grieving process. (We also must get over the grief of what our parents ‘were not’ for us…).

Jesus told three ‘lost and found’ stories in Luke 15: about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and two lost sons. This morning I want to make a couple of comments about the first story, and particularly about Luke’s setting for it.

Kenneth Bailey tells us that a single shepherd probably would not have owned 100 sheep – maybe 15 or 20. Here we have a clan or extended family and the ‘chief shepherd’ would have had ‘hirelings’ to help him look after this number of sheep. But it’s the shepherd-in-charge who goes looking for the lost sheep: note that!

Bailey says that when a sheep is lost in this part of the world it often lies down and refuses to budge. So the shepherd has to place it on his shoulders: he starts rejoicing even in prospect of a long and exhausting trip home. A wandering sheep was lucky it wasn’t attacked by wild beasts. In the meantime the other sheep have been moved from the ‘wilderness’ to the village, and the clan has a party to celebrate the whole event.

But did you notice the setting? Luke says Jesus was eating and drinking with ‘tax collectors and sinners’ – disreputables! – and the religious folks didn’t approve. These three lost and found stories are book-ended with not-so-subtle ‘digs’ at the Pharisees’ awful theology and attitudes: the elder brother in the third story is your prototypical Pharisee.

Now Jesus wasn’t merely consorting with sinners: he was acting as host, ‘welcoming’ these people. So he asks ‘Which one of you…?’ which was a naughty question for these people: they despised shepherds as well.

I was preaching once to a small very conservative congregation. They had big black Bibles and severe expressions. That night I involved them in a dialogue. I asked them to list all the good qualities of the Pharisees: they knew about Pharisees, but obviously hadn’t thought too much about Pharisees being ‘good’: after all, they were Jesus’ main antagonists.

They offered a brilliant list, which I wrote with chalk on a blackboard: most Pharisees knew their Bibles off by heart (our Old Testament); they were prayerful; they tithed (often up to a third of their income); fasted twice a week; were martyrs for their faith in Yahweh and their allegiance to the Torah; they attended ‘church’ regularly; were moral people: many could not remember breaking any of the commandments; they were ‘evangelical’ – they believed all the right doctrines (like resurrection); and Jesus said they were evangelistic missionaries – even crossing oceans to win converts.

There was a hushed silence in that little church. ‘Anything wrong?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ replied the extrovert in the front row. ‘What is it?’ ‘That’s us!’ he said. ‘Is it?’ I responded. ‘If so, we’re in trouble, because Jesus said these Pharisees were “children of the Devil”.’

So what’s wrong with these Bible-believers? Well, look at the two diatribes against the Pharisees in the Gospels, and note particularly Matthew 23:23 and Luke 11:42. Their list didn’t include the ‘most important’ thing of all: justice/love. They didn’t understand the heart of God, who loves lost people, sinners, especially the little people on the margins of society…

They also don’t understand the varieties of ‘lostness’. One can be lost through no fault of one’s own: like the lost coin. Many sinners were actually ‘sinned-against’: my wife who visits women in prison each week says the vast majority are victims of sexual/physical/emotional abuse. Or you can be lost because you’re dumb/stupid – like the lost sheep. Or, as with younger prodigal, you can get lost through deliberate willful choice.

But there’s another category of lostness: the Pharisees, like the elder brother, were lost and didn’t know it. They arrogantly categorized everyone else as lost. I meet these people all the time: they assume they’re ‘saved’ because they believe all the right doctrines: the ‘heterodox’ are lost and going to hell…

You see, the ministry-description of Jesus (and it’s ours too) is to help folks ‘name’ their ‘lostness’ and to bring good news that God is searching for them in their wilderness.

And lostness is something we all experience all the time. The spiritual masters tell us that ‘conversion’ is more an ongoing process of repentance and change and spiritual growth, rather than a ‘one-off’ experience. Now those liminal or peak experiences do happen sometimes, but it’s the little ‘lost and found’ episodes which count most.

Let me finish with two examples, one from a story about Jesus, and another from my own experience as a not-yet-fully-converted Pharisee.

When they brought the woman caught in the act of adultery (John 8) what did Jesus say to her? After ‘Where are your accusers?’ he said something no Pharisee can say: ‘I do not condemn you’ – Pharisees have a ‘ministry’ of condemning others - followed by the Pharisee’s common mantra: ‘Go and sin no more!’ With Jesus, as John Claypool often said, ‘acceptance preceded repentance; with the Pharisees it was the other way around.’ The acid test of the Pharisee, ancient or modern, is this: when someone comes to mind who has committed, say, a sexual sin, do we always associate the person with their sinning, or view them as a loved child of God?

I don’t know about you, but the Pharisee in me rank-orders people according to their sinfulness or heterodoxy or some other ‘not-like-me’ criterion. I’m passionately committed to social justice, but not to violence: so I tend to despise the scruffy protesters police toss into paddy-wagons. I have several homosexual friends, but I’m uncomfortable when they greet one another in church with a passionate kiss. When I hear about Taliban fighters in Afghanistan getting killed, I tend to categorize them as human vermin who should be destroyed, instead of people loved by God…

Jesus welcomed sinners, he hosted a party for them, they were his friends… How many lost publicans and sinners are numbered amongst our friends?

Rowland Croucher
September 2007.

POPE BENEDICT'S APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION AND ENCYCLICAL LETTER

2007-08-01T20:37:00.000-07:00

Review: Pope Benedict's Apostolic Exhortation (Sacramentum Caritatis: The Sacrament of Love, 143 pp., 2007) and Encyclical Letter (Deus Caritas Est: On Christian Love, 71pp., 2006), St Paul's Publications, Strathfield, NSW.

These two booklets are pocket/purse-sized, and intended for the faithful's slow meditative reading.

My first response has to be to the titles: Christian love/charity is not a bad place to start for a newly-appointed Pope, eh?

And they're excellent reading - for Catholics and others.

Pope Benedict XVI was, of course, the infamous Cardinal Ratzinger (the
Church's 'rottweiler' my pro-Vatican 2 friends used to call him). As
'Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith' (1981-2005)
- formerly known as the Holy Office, the historical Inquisition - his
task was to defend the Roman Catholic Church's traditional faith and
values, which he did with ruthless zeal, and a very sharp intellect.

Now that he's Pope - a pastor pastorum - his writings have a pastoral,
more 'soft conservative' stance.

His first encyclical letter on love has 41 short paragraphs. Unlike the
Apostolic Exhortation the language is uniformly sexist - which means
that he obviously wrote it himself whereas he was helped by a more
contemporary amanuensis with the other publication. (However, just
occasionally he exhibits some knowledge of modern ideas - 'parallel
universe', for example). Some of the material has an 'in house' Roman
Catholic flavour: and we have to be patient with his strong traditional
views about Mary, the Eucharist, and the priesthood. He also dances
around the issue of love expressed in terms of social justice: unlike
the liberation theologians, Benedict does not condone the Church's
meddling in politics too much.

All that aside, there are some beautiful, even lyrical, paragraphs here.

Benedict has a first-rate mind, and is an excellent scholar of the Bible and patristics. And most of this is good raw material for devotion and prayer. One example: '...In God and with God I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person, not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern... But if I... [relate to] others solely from a desire to be "devout" and to perform my "religious duties," then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely "proper", but loveless.' (pp. 30-31).

Sacramentum Caritatus is a more substantial theological offering (with 256 endnotes!) about the centrality of the Eucharist in the Church's and Christian's life. It's an excellent introduction to this subject, and I'd encourage Protestants to read it with an open mind. The most frequently-quoted Church Father is, of course, Saint Augustine, which gives the discourse more of an 'original sin' than an 'original blessing' flavour.

Benedict is certainly traditional. The Church has to relate to polygamists gently but 'firmly' but he doesn't help us with the practical details of how to do that with love. 'Separated brethren' are still somewhat separated, and only barely brethren. (He wouldn't like what a radical Catholic priest I know did: concelebrate the Eucharist with the help of Protestant pastors). A couple of times he advocates the
use of Gregorian chants over more modern hymns and songs, encourages priests to master Latin, and urges the daily celebration of the Mass, even when the faithful are not present. And if there are 'non-practising Catholics' and others attending a wedding, for example, the officiating priest should consider replacing a celebration of the Mass with a 'celebration of the Word of God' (p. 67).

But I wrote 'Yes' in the margin a couple of times: 'The quality of homilies needs to be improved' (p. 63). 'There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know him, and to speak to others of our friendship with him' (p. 107).

In my view, whatever the anachronisms of someone who lives in a 2,000-year past (!), if this man has this sort of devotion to Christ, I for one want to hear more from him.

Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au

August 2007.

MEGACHURCHES

2007-06-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

Megachurches: Some Personal Reflections

I was told that at some point in the 1970s we at Blackburn Baptist Church (Melbourne) were one of three 'Megachurch Congregations' in Australia. The other two were AOG Pentecostal – at Mt. Gravatt in Queensland (Reg Klimionok, senior pastor) and Paradise in Adelaide (Andrew Evans). Others in the 1980's and 1990s outgrew those three churches (including Crossway, the new name for the Blackburn Baptist Church, with up to 4,000 attending weekly).

Two definitions: 'Megachurch' for our purposes was 1,000+ attending worship services each week. (Many church consultants, following Lyle Schaller, tend put the figure at 700+; I'm told by Phil Baker that there are 259 Australian churches seeing 500+ attending each week). And a 'congregation' happens when more than 50% of Sunday or weekly attenders are part of a small study/prayer/ministry group: we had more than 60 small study/prayer groups and up to 30 ministry groups, with over 70% of Sunday attenders involved. 'Aggregations', as I use the term, describe churches where the majority of Sunday/weekly attenders are not in a small group: Australia has had several Catholic and Protestant 'megachurch aggregations' in the last 150 years.

More here. Australian Megachurchwatch.

Rowland Croucher

May 2007

AUSTRALIAN RELIGION

2007-06-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

Gary Bouma, Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Professor Gary Bouma, an ordained Anglican priest, is head of the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University. He’s one of Australia’s leading sociologists of religion, and excellently equipped to survey the Australian religious scene.

Australians are more reserved about their expression of religious commitment, writes Bouma, but religion and spiritual life in Australia are not in decline. His firm opinion is that ‘the secularity of the twenty-first century is not anti-religious or irreligious, as it was in the twentieth century.’ ‘While to many educated in the 1960s and 1970s “Australian religion” was a contradiction in terms or at best an embarrassing legacy of a forgettable past, that is not so now’. A 2005 survey found that 35% of Australians in their twenties said ‘religion was important in their lives’ compared with 21% in 1978. And while ‘in the twentieth century religion and spirituality often provided an identity and meaning for people, in the twenty-first century the core is the production and maintenance of hope.’ Another summary-statement: ‘The needs addressed by religion and spirituality are core to humanity: hope, and meaning grounded in a connection with that which is more than passing, partial and broken’ (p. 205).

The references to theoretical and research sources are authoritative, and in my view are worth the value of the book. The suggested reading, references and index at the back of the book are second-to-none. It’s all the work of a careful scholar, who is as familiar as anyone with the main sources of religious knowledge about Australians (the censuses, Christian Research Association, NCLS surveys etc.). And he’s an irenic commentator – even when describing what others might call ‘religious crazies’. (Which means – you guessed it – that he’s on the liberal end of the theological spectrum. He recommends the works of Karen Armstrong, for example).

I’d recommend that all clergy, in particular, read this book right through – even those in mainline churches who are having a hard time attracting new parishioners. (‘The formerly mainstream Protestant groups find themselves on the margins of a world they do not understand’ p. 171). Although a substantial majority of Australians continue to identify with a religious group, religious and spiritual life is becoming more diverse, and less tied to formal organizations. This book is strong on analysis, diagnosis, trends, surveys, aetiology, rather than prescription. The parish clergy I work with want to know ‘How can we in the churches harvest this growing interest in religion/ spirituality, without sacrificing our intelligence to fundamentalism, or our traditions to the latest cultural trends (eg. in music)?’ Bouma’s book doesn’t answer these questions directly, but if read carefully, my dear Watson, there are clues everywhere!

Now, some interesting facts/opinions in the ‘Did you know?’ or ‘Want to argue with this?’ categories:

‘There are now more Australian Buddhists than Baptists, more Muslims than Lutherans, more Hindus than Jews and more than twice as many Sikhs as Quakers’ (pp. 55-6)

‘In the 2001 census [there was] a dramatic rise in the number of Australians who wrote something down that related more to spirituality than to particular organized religious groups’ (p. 61)… ‘Only otiose religion is an opiate; the rest is dynamite’ (p. 197)

Between 1996 and 2001 the following Christian groups were among those suffering from numerical decline (Source: ABS census data): Brethren (down 12.28%), Churches of Christ (- 18.25%), Presbyterian/Reformed (- 5.57%), Salvation Army (- 3.67%), Uniting Church (- 6.46%). Baptists grew by 4.75%, Catholics 4.22%, Pentecostals 11.37%, ‘Other Christian’ 27.95%. [Why have the Baptists roughly kept pace with population growth but their sister denomination the Churches of Christ declined? My opinion: factor in the growth in the greater number of Baptist megachurches and ethnic congregations].

The Christian groups emanating from Britain in the 1800s – Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists etc. – ‘are moving from asking “Will our children have faith?” to “Will our faith have children? …They have effectively lost two generations and are in the process of losing a third’ (p. 67)

‘It is not acceptable to express unhappiness in a Pentecostal assembly. Sadness, grief and guilt are but momentary transitional feelings on the way to ecstasy and praise. Pentecostal forms of Christianity do not demand orthopraxy or orthodoxy so much as orthopassy’ (p. 94)

‘The primary aim of the evangelical movement is to gather people out of society and into the church, not to engage the world or to engage in attempts to shape the world from which they seek to draw people’ (p. 134)

Since the Age of Reason began ‘God was seen as the lawgiver, the source of reason… This era saw the rise of Calvinism and the Jesuits, who quintessentially expressed Christianity via reason. [Hence] the phrase “Think right thoughts and be saved; think wrong thoughts and be damned”. All of this is reflected in creeds, confessions and statements of union, which essentially demand that the believer “Toe the creedal line and you will be all right”’ (p. 166)

Disclosure: I studied with Gary Bouma towards a PhD in the early 1990s – and enjoyed the stimulation of being in academia again - but decided there were too many other competing demands for my time, and ‘demitted’.

Rowland Croucher
June 2007