Quick To Listen

by David Bartlett

I frequently mutter about writing outraged letters to the media but seldom do anything about it.  However after the Democratic debate in Pennsylvania on ABC I not only sent off an immediate e-mail I signed an angry petition the next day, and if anybody had sent me more petitions, I would have signed them, too.

The most blatantly annoying tactic employed by Messrs. Gibson and Stephanopolos was to focus the first sixty per cent of the debate on questions loosely focused on niceness and electability.  The nation is in crisis and we’re trying to figure out whether Senator Clinton really ducked sniper fire or whether Senator Obama not only was in the same room with Professor Ayers but, God forbid, might have said something to him.

But of course as a clergyperson I saved my greatest annoyance for the questions and comments on Jeremiah Wright, having long since noticed that the mainstream media are blithely clueless about 1)church; 2)rhetoric; and 3)prophetic ministry.  (Tell me, Amos, what do you mean when you say “God will get Judah?”)

And what moved me from annoyance to something approaching fury was Stephanopolos’ question to Senator Obama: “Does Rev. Wright love America as much as you?”

First, what kind of a question is that?  I’ve spent some time visiting Chinese churches and the great divide between the acceptable and the marginalized churches is: “How much do these congregations and their leaders love China?”  Is that our model for religious life in America?  When I was very young the FBI showed up to hear my father preach because someone wondered whether he loved America as much as say, Joe McCarthy did.

Second, why would anyone think that was a question Mr. Obama should answer?  I very much do not want my parishioners or my students (or my family) to make public pronouncements on how much I do or do not love America.

And third, since the Rev. Mr. Wright gave six years of his life to serving in the Armed Services while Mr. Stephanopolos and I had other agendas, I found myself wondering:  “Who the hell does he think he is to ask?”

That’s what I found myself wondering.

by Jarrett McLaughlin

What makes the Bible such an interesting collection of writings is also what makes them so maddeningly frustrating at times.  The fact that the Bible holds together so many different documents and different theological perspectives is precisely what makes it so timeless.  At times, however, the more peculiar theological trajectories contained in these pages rears its head in some really quite disastrous ways.  Take this pastoral call I received for instance…

In my place of ministry, the pastoral staff alternates weekends of being the recipient of messages from our on-call answering service.  It’s our way of making sure that people can always get in touch with a pastor if need be.  Several weeks ago, I received a message from the service from a woman who I knew to be mentally ill in some way, but I really had no understanding of her condition as I dialed her number.  For the next thirty minutes I listened to her agonize over the guilt she felt for failing to remain in a constant state of prayer, for being constantly lured away from her spiritual duty by the everyday acts of eating or sleeping.  It broke my heart to hear her speak of the depths of her sinfulness and how tired she was of being tested by God.

As I listened, I began to wonder where she internalized these messages of what is good and what is bad and why the Lord is constantly testing her faithfulness.  Then it occurred to me that it would not be so very hard to internalize such expectations and theological convictions from simple reading of the Bible or an attentive ear to a sermon.  1 Thessalonians exhorts us to “pray without ceasing,” which given free reign in a legalistic faith would easily translate to a guilt over not praying without ceasing.  Then there is Job, of course, where a totally faithful servant of the Lord is put through countless tests, all with God’s permission, to see if he will in time come to despise the Lord.  Again, at a naïve read, it would be all too easy to hear in this story that God tests us without ceasing to ensure that we are in fact faithful. 

I know that these texts are complex and that, with proper exegesis, we can deduce valuable insights from the wisdom contained therein.  I do not want to say that we should avoid these texts or any difficult texts for that matter.  But there is also another level at which these texts are heard, and sometimes that is the straightforward sense of the text.  It grieved me to see an already troubled woman further damaged by her association with the Christian faith, a faith that I would hope could offer comfort and peace to her already fragile mind. 

I feel as if there is some lesson to be learned here for homiletics.  When dealing with a particularly multivalent text, especially one where the logical conclusion of the text leads us down a dangerous theological and psychological path, we owe it to our communities to say up front, in plain speech, what the text is and is not about.  If there is a harmful conclusion to be drawn from that reading, let’s refute it right up front and not defer that task to the delicate matters of rhetoric and homiletic style.  After all, we really must come to grips with the fact that, for many listeners in a worship pew, the first five minutes is all they’re going to give us.

by Robert K. Martin

A decisive moment in my shift to understanding church as a verb, as enacted, as an incarnational reality, occurred as we were tromping through the wilderness. Literally. In the middle of a North Carolina forest near Ashville, I had taken a group of divinity students on a wilderness adventure in which a near-disaster was redeemed.

At the time I was a professor at Yale Divinity School teaching a course entitled, “Encountering God in Creation.” The course was designed around a ten-day camping trip in a wilderness area where there would be no showers, no electricity, no take-out; nothing but raw nature. Somehow we had the crazy idea that we would come to encounter God in a deeper way if we loaded ourselves up like pack mules and left all traces of civilization. By the end of the first day of arduous hiking with seventy pound backpacks, we had become a collective voice crying in the wilderness, hoping for our path to be made straight, wishing we were anywhere but there, praying that around the next bend a Holiday Inn would appear.

As a boy scout, I had done a little camping in my youth, but my most recent experience of sleeping outdoors was in our backyard with my children, neither of whom lasted the night. I was certainly not qualified to lead anyone off the beaten path, much less into a wilderness area where we would be setting up camp, cooking, and avoiding wild beasts. So the camping trip was organized and led by two wilderness guides, both of whom were rather hardcore Outward Bound drill sergeants. Their idea of fun was marching every day from dawn till dusk up and down steep mountainous terrain, finding our “limits”. What even our guides had not anticipated was the capricious temperament of Mother Nature, who blessed us with every form of precipitation possible. We marched through snow, slid on ice, and slogged through torrential rain. It was awful and we were miserable, and our frazzled spirits reflected our harsh conditions. We growled and snapped at each other as we set up tents, cooked our gruel, and collapsed from utter exhaustion in soggy sleeping bags.

By the way, God was nowhere to be found.

On the eighth and gloomy morning of our wilderness ordeal, the day’s agenda was to break camp, pack up, celebrate eucharist, and head home. A few of the young men traipsed off to a nearby river for a swim. While the rest of us were cleaning up from breakfast, we could hear their howls of pleasure and pain in the distance as they played in the frigid water. Their delight lifted our spirits and washed away our melancholy. When they returned from their icy baptism and we began to pack up for our departure, the mood of our entire troop lightened, and in agreement, the clouds parted and the sun shone lovingly on us. Read more…

by Mona Eltahawy

The second real Muslim was elected to Congress last month.

I say “real” because Andre Carson, a Democrat who won a special election in Indiana to replace his grandmother who represented the state in Congress for 11 years until her death in December 2007, is not a closet or “stealth” Muslim as right wing commentators and opponents of Barak Obama have tried to make him.

Obama, who continues to lead Hillary Clinton in the race to become the Democratic candidate in presidential elections later this year, has said countless times he is Christian. His Kenyan father was born to a Muslim family but was an atheist. Obama’s opponents have ignored all that and have “accused” him of being a Muslim, as if it were a crime. Such rumor-mongering is a sad indictment of the fear and ignorance of Muslims that sadly exists among too many in the U.S.

Which is where Carson, 33, and the Keith Ellison (D-Minn), 44, the first Muslim congressman, come in.

Both men African-American converts to Islam. Comfortable as both Muslims and Americans, they are proof that not all Muslims in the U.S. are immigrants or newcomers who don’t understand American values.

When he took the oath standing next to his wife and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Carson said he was a “proud Muslim, a proud American and a proud Hoosier”.

Their comfort with both their American and Muslim identities makes them great role models and examples of why more Muslims in the U.S. should enter politics. They show young American Muslims that it is possible to be elected, despite the hateful comments of the right wing. And they are hopefully deterrents to the hateful comments of some of their fellow elected officials, some of whom have urged the bombing of Muslim holy sites while others have tried to paint all Muslims as terrorists. Read more…

by David Bartlett

A few weeks ago I spent a few minutes reading yet another review of the recent works of the evangelical atheists—Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens.  Now I have not read any of the books being reviewed, though I’ve read essays by each of those authors.

My general sense was that their image of the way in which people decide for or against religious faith is this: the seeker sits in a den or study with paper and pad.  In the left hand column he or she totes up the reasons for religious belief (a short list indeed); in the right hand column he or she jots down the reasons against it (along and impressive list).  Being totally dispassionate and rational, the seeker becomes a non-believer and lives happily, or at least rationally, ever after.

That afternoon I went to a women’s prison in our town to teach a Bible study.  We were talking about the raising of Lazarus (talk about irrational), and when the women talked they did not talk about evidence or rational decision making.

They talked about how faith made it possible to get through incredibly difficult lives. 
They talked about the social structure that the prison’s chapel services and Bible study provided. They talked about how they counted on church to provide the context that would help them make it when they returned to the larger world. They talked about forgiveness.  How they knew it.  How they shared it.

There are interesting intellectual arguments to be made for or against any particular set of religious beliefs.  (Arguments against religion in general are usually just bizarre.)  But what the gang of three seems to miss is the sheer social thickness of the faithful life.  Faith is who people are, not just what people believe.

To miss that is pretty much to miss the point.

by Susan Andrews

The Season of Passion has always been the most significant rhythm of the year for me as a spiritual pilgrim. One of my earliest memories of the church is sitting in the three hour Good Friday service – my Dad preaching one of the “seven last words” – and my mother singing, in her rich pain filled voice, “he was despised and rejected – a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. (I found out years later that my mother felt despised at the core of her being, deeply acquainted with the grief of having been beaten and bruised by her father when she was a little girl). What I remember about those three hour marathons was how I felt. For me, sitting in those dark pews in dark sanctuaries with dark music and dark words was very comforting. Somehow I felt safe – sure that the love of God in the story of a sad and suffering Jesus was enough to protect me, no matter what. And, that nothing could ever separate me from the dependable arms of a dependable God..

And yet, as I’ve grown in the Christian faith, I have found myself very uncomfortable with the traditional theory of atonement. The idea that Jesus suffered FOR me simply doesn’t match that childhood experience of Jesus suffering/living/ fearing WITH me. And so, a theory of substitutionary atonement simply doesn’t work for me. In addition, as a decades old feminist, I am all too aware of how “suffering for others” has become the expected Christian script for women in a way it has never defined men.

And yet, I am also beginning to realize that when we turn Jesus into a fellow sufferer, instead of a mighty savior, we can also fall into a diminishment of God that leaves our faith strangled by human finitude.

Recently, as I march resolutely toward the age of 60, I am all too aware of my human finitude. My back gave out in November – and I had to actually cancel out on a pastor’s trip to Nicaragua – a humiliating realization that I am not in charge, and that my leadership is expendable. And my now daily routines of stretching and sitting a certain way and anticipating twinges of pain have permanently destroyed the illusion that I am still a “young woman.” Combine that with a daily glimpse of wrinkles and brown spots - and the horrifying experience of trying to find a mother-of the-bride dress that doesn’t scream “matronly” – well, I now know in a new and visceral way that I am not omnipotent and eternal. So, thank God, God is!

And so, I am even more grateful for the story – for the reality – of the cross, Yes, as the arms of the cross continue to hold me tight, I know that God is WITH me in every moment of sorrow and suffering, pain and disappointment, anger and doubt – and in every moment of sin and brokenness and violence and greed in this badly bruised world. God does not do FOR us what we must and can do as the image of God in the world. God does not rescue us from the darkness of living, but holds and pushes and prods and challenges and saves and loves in the midst of it all.

BUT, as a seasoned servant of life, I also know that there is a kind of darkness and brutality and tragedy and horror that I simply can’t endure as a finite human being – and it is at those moments, that God suffers FOR me and FOR you and FOR the world which God loves.

AT-ONE-MENT with God. Sometimes it’s up to you and sometimes its up to me. Sometimes it’s up to God and us together. And sometimes it’s only up to God. AT-ONE-MENT is a dance – and it is a dance that celebrates the complexity and confusions of life. And it is a dance where the human and divine partners share the privilege of taking the lead – as the music and patterns continue to unfold.

May it be so!

by Jessica Tate 

It is a complicated week in the life of the church.  A Holy Week, but a week that involves many things, with many mixed emotions. 
 
There’s the excitement of Palm Sunday.  Jesus enters Jerusalem and crowds gather to welcome him, to put down their cloaks, to shout hosanna, blessed is he!  But even that excitement is tempered with irony.  The crowds shout hosanna and call Jesus their king.  A few days later that title will come back at Jesus when the prosecuting Roman governor asks, “are you the king of the Jews?”  These adoring crowds will, in a few, short days, change their cries to that of “crucify him!”  The excitement of Palm Sunday turns to the anguish of betrayal on Maundy Thursday.  It moves to the deep grief of death on Good Friday and the loss of hope on Saturday.  Then, however, on Sunday, there is the empty tomb.  There is the resurrection, the assurance of new life.  There is victory over death; there is restoration of hope.  This week is a collision of religious expression and a collision of emotions.
 
Perhaps this collision is exactly where we need to be.  Rather than staying in the triumphal entry, rather than to moving on to the passion and depths of Jesus’s suffering, rather than skipping right ahead to the joy of Easter, perhaps we need to stay in the confusion of all these things happening simultaneously.  Rather than wrapping things up nicely and neatly, we stay right here, in the collision of joy, pain, suffering and anticipation.  We stay right here in the collisions and complications and learn how to cope with them. 
 
Because life is this way.  It isn’t black and white.  It is shades of gray.
 
Sending your child off to the bus stop for the first day of school isn’t black and white.  It’s an exciting milestone.  Yet it is scary to let go and trust that he can cope with school.  There’s pride in watching that little person step out on her own.  Yet it is painful to recognize that she can be part of the world without you.  It’s shades of gray.
 
Faith is this way too.  The Christian faith is a story of complications and collisions.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Anyone who will lose their life shall save it.  We are simultaneously sinners and set free from our sin.  God is great and God is humble.  The kingdom is now and the kingdom is yet to come.  Absolutes are not what we’re after.  Experiences of love and grace are.  And neither of those is clear-cut. 
 
Love can mean saying no to a child.  Love can mean setting boundaries and expectations for the people who ask the church for financial assistance.  Love can mean turning off life support.  Love is a messiah entering Jerusalem on a stolen colt.
 
Grace is an empty tomb.  Grace is a crucifixion.  Grace is a lamb sitting on the monarch’s throne.   
 
Delving into these collisions of emotion, we begin to see that what is complicated and complex can be broken down into smaller parts and named.  Finally, in that delving and naming we arrive at what is most true, most sincere in our experience and being.  It is not black and white.  It is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark. 1:1).

by Jim Burklo

Nothing is more effective at turning a person into a theologian than witnessing somebody else’s personal crisis.

Recently, I lost my job, or my job lost me.  I’m still not sure which description is more accurate.  In any case, it’s my first experience with unemployment.   I’m blessed with very supportive family and friends (including so many of you, dear readers of my “musings”).  But it’s still been a trying time.

People want to say and do the right things.  Their attempts at compassion are sincere.  While I am learning to receive gratefully their underlying intentions, some of their expressions make me wince.  And make me muse about what helps, and what doesn’t work so well, in offering sympathy to people in crisis. 

So in addition to the wonderful kindness that is being showered on my wife and myself, I am getting an off-the-job training course in compassion.

Consider these words which have been said to me, in one form or another, quite a few times in recent weeks:  “When God closes one door, He always opens another.”  When I first heard this one from one of my parishioners, right after my employment imploded, I was taken aback.  What about the people in Baghdad?  I thought.  When their doors are kicked in by men with machine guns, does God magically open another door for them to exit gracefully?  All too often, the answer is no.  Lots of people lose their jobs and go bankrupt.  Do we worship a God who washes away the front door of your nice house in New Orleans with a devastating flood, and then opens a trailer door for you in a bleak vacant lot, months later?  Are we expecting divine intervention to solve our personal or social problems, or are we taking action to make sure that when a door is closed, another one will open to something good?

And yet, the people who said it meant only the best for me.  Kind and caring souls who really did want another door to swing wide for me, with an even better job on the other side.  And of course that is what I want, as well.  So I took deep breaths and politely thanked them for their concern.

I don’t believe in a supernatural door-opening-and-closing God.  I believe in the God who is the door that opens to love.  We practice that divine love when we open our hearts to the pain of others, and listen, ask questions, and stay present for them.

Another line I heard repeatedly was this one:  “When it’s all over, you’ll be grateful for this.  You’ll wind up with a much better job than this one, and you’ll be glad this happened.” After enduring this assertion several times as my job was collapsing, I realized it had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The idea of stocking shelves at Home Depot began to look like a blessing by comparison.  Those well-wishers had no more clue than I do about what my next job will be like. They forgot, if they knew in the first place, that mostly I really liked the job I lost.  It did not serve me to hear their assurance of something that’s impossible for them to predict.

But again, they meant well.  They were just revealing their discomfort with the stark reality that things can, and often do, get worse instead of better.  It was a spiritual discipline for me to be gracious in accepting their caring thoughts and their unconscious self-revelations.
 
Not even God can predict what will become of my career after this current debacle.  I am hopeful and in good spirits.  I am grateful for my severance package.  I get a lot of encouragement and I have some really good job leads.  I am in much better circumstances than so many other unemployed people.  But nobody can be sure how this current crisis will play out.  For me, it seems more God-like to accept my ignorance of the future, and just be present in the moment.

I am thankful for those who simply recognize my pain, inquire about my feelings, and offer their presence.  They are my guides in how to offer this kind of compassion to others.  I hope to pay their God-like goodness forward to the next person I encounter who goes through the loss of a job!

by Jarrett McLaughlin

Last week, the session at my Church had the privilege of examining a young woman who was seeking our endorsement for Inquirer status within the Presbytery.  While some may see this as a burdensome requirement of Presbyterian polity, I like to think of it as one of the great privileges of the call process, for both the individual pursuing ordination as well as the Church offering its endorsement.  For the Church it is an occasion for celebration – one of your own is beginning an important journey of discernment as to the shape of the calling God has placed on her life.  For the individual, with any confidence in the connection between yourself and the Church of your membership, this is perhaps the place where you can be the most honest with yourself and with others concerning the state of your readiness for ministry.  After the Session comes the seminaries and the divinity schools who will put a grade on your best efforts at ministry and theological articulation, not to mention the Presbytery Committees who will read your initial attempts at sermon-writing and your earliest constructions of a faith statement and offer their critical feedback.  All of this is important and helpful, but it is also frightening and intimidating, which gives the home Church an opportunity to be a place of grace for inquirers and candidates for ministry.

The young woman we briefly examined and happily endorsed for Inquirer status took avail of such grace in her paperwork, particularly when she confessed “I am a work in progress.  I am a student – still exploring, still learning about God, about myself, about the world around me, and the relationships between each of these.”  I was glad that the Church could be a place where she could feel comfortable expressing her incompleteness as a disciple.  I should like to believe that we all could identify with that feeling, even if we count our time in the ministry by decades rather than years.  As I imagine this young woman’s journey ahead, I know she will meet those who will encourage that sense of humility just as surely as she will meet those who will make her feel inadequate for it and for every tiny misstep she might make as she learns about her place in this strange and God-given calling.

I am reminded of a time when I was exploring my own call to ministry.  My story is one of constantly pushing myself into new arenas of ministry as a challenge, which was in a sense my own way of asking for an endorsement of what I took to be a call to ministry.  Through my college years, I challenged my call by applying for internships at churches in places wholly unfamiliar to me.  I worked in Chattanooga, TN, I worked in Allentown, PA…all the while seeking validation of my call to ministry.  One summer, this North Carolina native decided to really step out and apply for a youth-ministry internship in Colorado.  I remember filling out the unusually large application and wondering at the scope of the questions they were asking.  The one question that still persists in my memory today went something like this: “Describe briefly your beliefs about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, Sin, Forgiveness, the Church, and the resurrection of the dead.” 

I don’t remember what I wrote in response to that question, nor do I remember what I wrote for the other eight essays, but what I do remember as a young man of 20 years old is the phone call I received declining my application.  I remember with clarity how the pastor at this Church hastily explained that the beliefs I expressed did not line up well with those of the Church.  I was too young to recognize it at the time, but I had just been subjected to my first litmus test, and I was found lacking.  Read more…

by Meg Peery McLaughlin

Having recently been ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I pay attention at Presbytery meetings when new ministers are being questioned for ordination or transfer. Two confessions about my attentiveness:  

1. I’m glad it is them and not me up there. It’s intense. 
2. Code words from the new minister’s statement of faith jump off the page when I
read, especially in the Scripture section. words like inerrant and infallible.
The question that comes on the floor of Presbytery about the authority of scripture is not often asked as an authentic theological question, but more of a litmus test. Sadly, scripture’s authority has been an issue that has driven the church into camps. And both camps are guilty of the division.

Last week I read a piece by Walter Brueggemann that helped me reframe this issue. The authority of scripture is not about science and history and certitude. No, Brueggemann claims it is about the authorizing voice of Scripture, and how it empowers communities to live and hope and act in new and transforming ways. Whose is that authorizing voice other than God, the one revealed in the text? I’m left wondering what the difference is between scripture being authoritative and scripture being revelatory.

All Presbyterian elders, deacons, ministers of Word and Sacrament are asked if they believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to them. It is a deeply serious question. Even the language of this question, it seems to me, points to revelation. The Scriptures are an authoritative witness—they point to and testify about and reveal Jesus Christ.

This Presbyterian does not believe in the Bible, but she does believe in God.
I believe in God who has been revealed to me through the words and narratives and miracles and convictions of the Old and New Testaments. I believe in God whose voice summons me to the work of justice and care, to the labor of love and peace.

I recently met with three siblings who lost their mom. Reminiscing over her 90 plus years, they told stories of cardboard dollhouses, cub scouts, and a mother’s love that flowed in and around every corner. They went on to tell me that their mom had started working later in life for a Homes Association. That Association, put together years before civil rights, had bylaws that prohibited African-Americans from renting or owning homes. So this gentle white haired employee took her hand to the White Out. She obliterated any sign of printed discrimination on the documents she sent to new homeowners and tenants. Where did she learn such boldness in the face of bigotry?

Someone was revealed to this woman.  A Holy One. One who spoke through ancient words like, “blessed are the peacemakers” and who was revealed in ancient words like “there is no Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus.” And isn’t this what we want Scripture to do?  To reveal and to empower?

Brueggemann goes on to say Scripture is “infallible” in the sense that it authorizes a way of living and believing that without fail leads us to the work of peace and kindness, self-control and joy. So, perhaps next time I’m reading a statement of faith or hearing the litmus test being administered on Presbytery floor, I will resist the camp mentality. I pray that I will trust that, like me, my brothers and sisters have experienced God being revealed to them in the book—in the text, which is enough for life. The Bible tells me so.

By Mona Eltahawy

When I first moved from Egypt to the US in the summer of 2000, my then-husband – an American from whom I am now divorced – offered to drive me to the neighborhood mosque. He had looked it up so that he could take me there when I arrived in Seattle.

As we approached the mosque, I saw a man coming out who looked as if he’d been lifted from Saudi Arabia, where I lived for many years as a young adult. He was wearing a turban and a white robe and had a huge beard. He represented the most conservative elements of my religion and I wanted nothing to do with him or the mosque. I told my husband to keep driving.

I vowed there and then that I would not join any Muslim community in the US but would find my own way as a Muslim in my new home. I maintained that vow during my time in Seattle.

After I signed my divorce papers, I was offered a job in New York City. I’d been to NYC several times before and always loved it – its energy, the crowds, the non-stop pace, and even the noise. I’m from Cairo, Egypt, one of the largest and most crowded cities in the world and for me, NYC is Cairo right here in the US!

I didn’t want to get on a plane and start a new life six hours later so I decided to drive from Seattle to NYC. I took 18 days to drive across the country, stopping at places I wanted to visit and in cities where I had arranged to meet an old friend and two new ones. My road trip began on Nov. 1, 2002, just over a year after the terrible attacks on Sept. 1, 2001.

It was a time of increasing suspicion of Muslims and all things Islamic. Getting into my car and driving alone through the US was my way of introducing my fear of those suspicions to the paranoia that Americans.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my road trip was also taking me to a community I had been determined not to find in Seattle.

They say it’s not about the journey but the destination but it was about both for me. While the journey was indeed my quest to find my own way in my new home country, the destination was of utmost importance not just because NYC is still my home city but because it also turned out to be the home of a community of Muslims I never thought I’d find.

Looking back, I see a pattern I never noticed before. I see now that my arrival at each of the cities I’ve lived in during my life has heralded a new stage in my faith.

I became a feminist in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia when I realized that the Islam we practiced at home was so different from the Islam outside of my home and which so often discriminated against women and denied them their rights. I became a liberal Muslim in Jerusalem where I lived in 1998 and where my ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbors reminded me of the ultra-conservative Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Seeing the impact that such orthodoxy has on religion, again particularly on women, I was able to start a journey towards liberal Islam that my road trip to NYC completed.

Soon after I arrived in NYC on Nov. 18, 2002, I came across the liberal Muslim website www.MuslimWakeUp.com and made friends with the founder of the site, Ahmed Nassef, and Patricia Dunn, the site’s current managing editor.

Through them and the website, I discovered a community of like-minded liberal and progressive Muslims which I happily joined. For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable sharing my ideas and values as a liberal Muslim.

I’m so glad I drove past that mosque in Seattle and all the way to NYC.

by Robert Martin

Just last week, I returned from a 3 week trip to Nepal. Yes, that Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world, sandwiched between India and China, split from its spiritual cousin, Tibet, by the towering majesty of Mount Everest and the rest of the Himalayan range. If you have perused the “World” section in the New York Times last week, you will have seen that Nepal is convulsing with political unrest as violent protests erupted in the capital, Kathmandu.

The trip was very difficult in many ways, but it was also one of the most inspirational of my life. I went to teach in a Christian church and school for ministry (Bishram Ministries) that was founded only 7 years ago. I’ll have more to say about that in a later blog, but as I reflected on my experiences with that wonderful and amazing community, I realized that I was returning a very different person. For you see, the ministry I visited in Nepal was the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing the church as described in Acts 1-4. Now, I realize that there are problems and conflicts in every community, even in the early church (remember that Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead in Acts 5; so much for spiritual harmony in the church!), but the Bishram community is the most vivid example I’ve encountered of a people in communion, giving their all, and transforming their world.

My experience in Nepal brought to mind other experiences I’ve had of church,
    of church as a verb,
           of being church,
                 of church as a sacrificial and shared life in Christ.

So in this and the next 2 blogs, I’ll talk about 3 experiences of being church in ways that are somewhat different from traditional, congregational life. Perhaps these reflections will help you recall your own experiences of spiritual vitality and challenge that you might not have associated with being church. And then perhaps, just perhaps, we can bring those experiences into our congregations, and shake up the usual suspects and usual practices and allow God to do a new thing among us.

1. Being Church as Doubting Believers

For just over a year I have been acting as the leader of a small covenant discipleship group. But it is a rather odd assortment of folks; they are not the usual suspects. When I think of the kinds of people who would gravitate toward one of these intimate settings of spiritual formation, I imagine that they are ardent believers who are looking for just a little deeper walk with God.

But in this group, it is safe to say only one person in our group might qualify, just barely, for the “ardent believer” type. The rest of them are struggling more with doubt than resting firmly in faith. These are people who are active in an urban congregation but who don’t feel all that spiritual. They want to believe, but the theology of their church doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to them. They believe in God but their concept of God is vague and it is difficult for them to talk about. They don’t know what to do with Jesus, especially the claim about his divinity. Forget the Holy Spirit; it’s just too spooky. When it comes time to pray, they don’t know how or even why to do it. Reciting the Apostle’s Creed makes them feel like they are lying or just going through the motions. For the most part, these folks are drawn to the moral and political mission of this congregation.  The greatest common denominator among this group is their passionate commitment to social justice, their love for one another, and the fact that they are all leaders in the congregation. Read more…

by Tom Are

Jim Burklo got me thinking. In his most recent post (Progressive Christian Elevator Speeches) he identifies the difficulty congregations have these days in knowing how to talk about ourselves.  Even more difficult is talking about ourselves in a way that makes sense to the community at large.  We used to be the “Mainline church,” but we held a memorial service for that term some time back.  Burklo speaks of the desire to describe himself as “progressive,” but acknowledges that this term is increasingly cluttered as well.  Lacking a general term, he opts for what he calls “tag lines.” I would encourage you to read the full list, but a sampling includes:

I’m a progressive Christian who
* keeps the faith and drops the dogma
* experiences God more than I believe in any definition of God
* thinks that God is bigger than anybody’s idea about God

These tag lines speak a fresh corrective to a church that at times has placed a premium on “faith” as belief, while downplaying faith as action.  The present day church has learned anew that Christianity is something that is practiced.  It is not simply believed; it is lived.
In addition, these tag lines question the historical conversation about who God is and how God has been understood and they prioritize the Christian’s personal experience of God. It was Isaiah who confessed, “I saw the Lord high and lifted up.”  This is experiential worship.  Far too often, the people of God gather for worship with absolutely no expectation that God will show up. Burklo rightly asserts experience matters.   

However, as much as I like these tag lines, I also find them raising troubling questions.  Why is it necessary to separate experience from tradition or creed? Our ideas about God are surely limited. Our language falters under the weight of the truth we seek to speak. No definition of God will be adequate.  But the same is true for our experience of God.  God is bigger than our experience. To suggest that God be defined by my experience alone is reductionist.  The present day church that fails to learn how to hold our experience of God in conversation with the tradition of the church impoverishes itself. After all, the tradition of the church is the testimony of how generations before have experienced God.

One suspects, that the tension between experience and tradition may have less to do with testimony that is deemed outdated or passé, and has more to do with problems that emerge when I cannot define God on my own.  The taglines are presented not as statements defining a “church” but rather a Christian.   American culture does individualism well.  The tradition is the voice of community. It is the shared conversation of how God has been known in generations gone by.  However, as long as my experience governs my understanding of God, I don’t have to be bothered with how others experience God.  Experience matters.  But the experience of an undefined God may run  the risk of experiencing an unknown God.  

If I were to add a tag line or two, I might suggest:

I am a progressive Christian who knows
-Tradition matters: the movement of God’s Spirit today has integrity with the movement of God’s Spirit yesterday, today and every day.
 -Community matters: a faith revealed as love cannot be lived alone.
-Ideas matter: God is bigger than but not removed from our ideas, and can be found in our testimonies.

by David Bartlett

For a few days earlier this month I divided my time between my official job in Decatur,  Georgia and the New Baptist Covenant celebration in Atlanta.  The celebration had been planned by President Jimmy Carter and several other distinguished Baptists as an attempt to bring many Baptists together across the usual lines of our “Conventions.”  (These are not really “conventions” but alliances of churches that have conventions, very much like what other people call “denominations.”)

It was clear both from the attendees and from the agenda that the meetings attracted a certain kind of Baptist—those who found much that was persuasive in the traditional Social Gospel that was rooted in the theology of the Baptist Walter Rauschenbusch and flowered most powerfully in the action of the Baptist Martin Luther King, Jr.

We discovered that we were quite good at singing and praying together, and even at thinking about issues like poverty and AIDS, as long as we did not have to engage in arguments about scriptural inerrancy or local church autonomy.

I was particularly impressed by the speakers I heard or heard about.  President Jimmy Carter and President Bill Clinton I heard; Vice President Al Gore and Senator Charles Grassley I heard about.

What I noticed was this:  at home, with other Baptists, these political leaders were perfectly comfortable talking about their faith.  They did not talk about faith as a kind superficial add-on to their prior political commitments.  They did not use their faith to try to con us into voting for them or their preferred candidates.  It was clear that their social convictions were deeply grounded in their faith, and they could talk about that without shame, embarrassment, or guile.

I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state, and I do not think we want the kind of public religious discourse that suggests that believers make better officials than unbelievers, or, God knows, that Baptists have a corner on public virtue.

But I do wish that the media and the public had some clue to the fact that for these people, of different political persuasions, who might or might not like each other very much,  and for many other leaders, faith is a fundamental part of who they are.

I think many Americans don’t get that, to our loss.

by Susan Andrews

Nine years ago – when I was 49 – I experienced the gift of a three month sabbatical. After 25 years of ministry and 25 years of marriage and 22 years of parenting, I was ready for a break. And so I put together 10 weeks of exploration – some into areas of uncomfortable discovery ( yoga and massage!), and some into retooling for a fresh commitment to ministry. 

At one of the seminars I attended, we spent five days studying the Enneagram – an ancient spiritual practice that invites us to explore the shadow side of our souls.  If you are not familiar with this frightening but life changing way of owning your own darkness, I strongly encourage you to investigate it. Coming face to face with my enneagram style/was the single most helpful discovery during my mid-life years. Which is saying a lot, because owning your enneagram is a way of acknowledging failure. An enneagram type is defined  by the weakness, the sin which is central to our lives – the single flaw that stands in the way of spiritual wholeness and radical dependence upon the grace of God. And the challenge of an enneagram discipline is to transform weakness into strength.

For those of you familiar with enneagram language, I am a Type One – sometimes called the Perfectionist or the Truth Teller. (Other well known Ones are the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, Ralph Nader and Hillary Clinton. You get the picture!). We Ones are emphatic about truth, fairness, moral rectitude and social righteousness. At our best we can build transparency, accountability, order  and justice into the fabric of personal and social community. But at our worst, we are insufferable  - legalistic, judgmental, self-righteous, and unforgiving. And it is only when we see the pitch blackness of our ugly rigidity, that we can begin to let go – and realize that only God is perfect, only God is Truth, only God is Just. And if we invite God to be God, then our moral sensibilities can be subject to God’s grace, instead of our own stubborn certainty.

But enough of me. It has occurred to me, as I once again prepare for the journey of Lent, that exploring our shadow sides is the spiritual task of this season – perhaps the most creative time of the year for our souls. When Jesus wrestled with Satan during those 40 days of temptation, he was offered the opportunity to take virtues and turn them into self-serving vices. Feed the hungry – but do it miraculously with Super Bowl half-time tactics.( an excess of Enneagram Type Two!). Perform a miracle – but for your own aggrandizement instead of pointing to the power of God (an excess of Enneagram Type 4). Grab the authority over all the kingdoms – not for service but for power (an excess of Enneagram Type . Thank God that Jesus resisted – but it took 40 days of struggle and deprivation and brutal self examination before he survived the rigors of his shadow struggle.

My shadow side is just as strong at 58 as it was when I was 20 – but at least now I have the wisdom to recognize it.. And the temptations just keep coming – to judge others, to claim superior truth, to rail at the unfairness of life, to out do every one else’s righteousness – including God’s. And anger – the satanic force in the soul of a Type One – continues to gnaw at my soul.  I KNOW ALL OF THIS! But I still fall prey to the seduction of  the shadowy world. And so I must be brutally honest with my continuing failures. I must courageously explore this endless shadow. And I must earnestly cast my self upon the grace and mercy of God – who loves me – and needs me – failure and all. If my truth can somehow be filtered through God’s Truth, then maybe we can be partners in the ever continuing work of creation.

What is your shadow? Where is your failure? How do you separate yourself from God and pretend to BE God – in ways that distort the world, instead of love the world? And how can your flaw become a tiny flame of holiness in God’s ongoing work of redemption?

Exploring the wilderness of shadow is our Lenten Call.

May it be so!

(A good book to begin an Enneagram journey is called Parables and the Enneagram, by Clarence Thomson. 144 pages.)

by Fred Weidmann

The continuing relevance of the great blues song, Stormy Monday, popularized by T. Bone Walker and re-popularized by the Allman Brothers and—on any given weekend—by various bar bands across the country, is self-evident.  But what might it mean?  One listens to the narrator’s voice work through the (fatalistic?) week, declaring Tuesday “just as bad” as that Monday which gives the song it’s title.  What about the weekend—does it provide a welcome and renewing respite from the difficulties and challenges of the week, or simply a mundane, if perhaps a bit more playful, recasting of the same?  And Sunday—are those Church prayers which are referred to hopeful, thankful, confessional, desperate or some combination thereof? 
 
The brief period of time bookended by Super Bowl and Transfiguration Sunday, on one side, and Ash Wednesday, on the other, punctuated by Super-, or as some would have it, Super-Duper -, Tuesday and concurrently Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras, provide  us with quite an extraordinary, and arguably quite a stormy, set of days.  Political races, whether despite themselves or due to the possibilities they suggest, tend to provide some degree of hopeful, even inspirational, rhetoric; at the same time, they inevitably descend into, or even actively court, mudslinging and contemptuous rhetoric.   Transfiguration Sunday, for those who care—and dare— to engage it, provides some pretty heady, and very gutsy, stuff for our own, and our churches’, journeys.  The Super Bowl—well, is it even about football anymore?  I guess we do see some between the “dot.com,” junk food, and car commercials. Mardi Gras, by its very name, suggests— and by testimony of those involved includes—various “rich” offerings of (at least fleeting) delight.  And Shrove Tuesday, bless it’s quaint and foreign (to most Americans) sounding name, interestingly and insightfully suggests not a one-sided, solemn, guilt-ridden confession, but genuine relationship, consideration, sharing, and even dialogue on the way towards, one hopes and prays, forgiveness and recommitment to, and from, the community. 

Indeed one important and missing (from the lives of all too many in our world) ingredient which might tie together these seemingly disparate days and activities is related to the “shriving” and “shrift” from which Shrove Tuesday takes its name.  Too many individuals and organizations in our “communication age”—now there’s an irony!—give each other only “short shrift.”  That is, we—as a society, as a set of individuals, as consumers and as providers, as competitors on the gridiron or in the (far more ruthless) marketplace, and  even (sadly) as coworkers, team-members,  lovers, family members, etc— simply don’t listen to and engage one another as God intended and intends.  The full phrase in which “short shrift” is found in the old English saying is telling: “short shrift and a long rope.”  That is, as we might translate it into our vernacular, “don’t deal with him/her, let him/her hang.”  We’re good at that!

The Transfiguration Story, in marvelous fashion, joins the glorified Jesus on the mountaintop while he is “in conversation” with that deep and rich tradition of the law and the prophets which provides his religious identity and impulse (Luke 8:30).  And what was the conversation about?  Jesus’ “exodus” (the word is clear in the Greek , if not in most translations).  Peter wants to bottle the moment (v. 33)—not a bad impulse, arguably.  But, God knows, there’s work to be done “down” there (v. 37).  And so Jesus takes his followers there, to encounter and engage others. 

Returning to our song—Tuesday is indeed “bad” in that course of things in which “short shrift and a long rope” rules the day.  But insofar as it may offer some real playfulness along the way, and some real engagement and encounter for the journey, Shrove Tuesday offers a suggestion of God’s will and God’s way for God’s people and for the world.  In every exodus there is the high point of liberation and the low points of wilderness wandering.  Fellow travelers, let us be there for each other along the way in order to point the way to fuller and truer engagement of each other and of God!  Now that’s rich.  And super.

by Jim Burklo

Since The Center for Progressive Christianity came into being in 1994, it has succeeded in widely spreading the term “progressive Christian” around the world.  It embraces a pluralistic spirituality, inclusion of people who have been traditionally excluded from the church, openness to metaphorical interpretations of Christian tradition, and commitment to practicing the faith to make the world a better place.

But now it can be said that there are two kinds of progressive Christianity in America.  In the last few years, the term “progressive Christian” has begun to be used by evangelical Christians who are disaffected from right-wing politics.    Their definition of “progressive Christian” is mostly a political one; they tend to have orthodox, traditional views about religion while standing for economic justice and peace.

By contrast, The Center for Progressive Christianity does not define progressive Christianity in political terms.  It’s 8 Point Welcome Statement embraces people of all sorts of persuasions.  Our movement is committed to inclusiveness at many levels. We care a lot about justice, peace, and environmental responsibility, but we recognize that there are many different ways to approach these goals.  While we encourage political activism, we care even more about values that are more enduring than current political passions.

So it is more important than ever for us to be clear about what we mean when we say we are progressive Christians.  For years I’ve been writing and collecting “tag lines”, short phrases that we can share with others about the kind of Christianity we represent.  Lots of folks are embarrassed to call themselves Christians, because of all the bad things that have been done in the name of our faith, and particularly by the traditional Christian claim that Christianity is the only true religion.  Our progressive Christian movement is about  re-imagining and re-defining our religion, boldly reclaiming our identity, and finding succinct ways to express it:

I’m a progressive Christian who

* keeps the faith and drops the dogma
* experiences God more than I believe in any definition of God
* thinks that my faith is about deeds, not creeds
* takes the Bible seriously because I don’t take it literally
* thinks spiritual questions are more important than religious answers
* cares more about what happens in the war-room and the board-room than about what happens in the bedroom
* thinks that other religions can be as good for others as my religion is good for me
* goes to a church that doesn’t require you to park your brain outside before you come inside
* thinks that God is bigger than anybody’s idea about God
* thinks that God evolves

Do you have any “elevator speeches” you’d like to add to this list?

by Steve Rankin

“Kingdom of God” may well be one of the most common phrases in Christian parlance.  According to the Gospel accounts, it was on Jesus’ mind and tongue a lot.  A whole generation (at least) of theologians, church leaders and members sought to “bring in” the Kingdom by applying the ethical teachings of Jesus.  One seminary I know has a “Kingdom Conference” once (or is it twice?) a year, bringing in well-known scholars, preachers, missionaries and representatives of all sorts of ministries, all seeking to describe, explain and embody the reign of God.

So, what about the psychology of the Kingdom?  An odd idea?  I’m reading a book by Robert C. Roberts: Spiritual  Emotions: A Pscyhology of Christian Virtues (Eerdmans, 2007).  In the chapter on humility, he reflects on the “psy-chological structure” of the kingdom of God, which is love: “That kingdom [of God] is a society in which each member is so surrounded by and conscious of focused love – both the love of his [sic] God and fellow creatures – that measures and inequalities of the kind that preoccupy us in the current order of things fade into the background of inattention,” (p. 90).  Here is a rendering of Jesus’ response to the religious leader about the greatest command-ment, to which Jesus added the second: “You shall love the Lord your God…and your neighbor as yourself.”  We get the ethics of this command, but do we get the psychology?   

Now, we cognitively “get” all the talk about love within the kingdom of God.  Christians are good at talking about love.  Maybe it’s because we don’t experience it that much, which is a true tragedy.  Maybe it is because it does not penetrate the psychological structure of our souls.  Admittedly, Roberts is really talking about humility, but he shows how the deep penetration of divine love into our hearts – into our psychological structures – is a necessary step on the way to what he calls the virtue emotions like humility. 

A quick aside: talk of humility can quickly elicit a suspicious response.  Feminist and other forms of liberation thought have shown us that when people in power start talking about humility, it mostly turns out to be something that others (i.e., not the ones advocating it) should take up.  I want to acknowledge this tendency.  But if I under-stand Roberts, then even the powerful in the kingdom of God, with psychological structures permeated by divine love, become willing to lose their lives (position, status, prerogatives, control), in order to have the life of the king-dom.

I’m not naïve (I think?  Hope?) about the radical change involved in this sort of Kingdom love transforming our psychological structures.  To experience it usually involves a prior and ongoing death struggle.  But I am taken by the vision: the transformation of psychological structures that show the love of God.  It is, after all, the heart of the Gospel. 

by Roy Howard

It used to be conventional wisdom to avoid religion and politics at gatherings of friends and family. Nowadays, it’s nearly impossible not to talk about them. I think that’s a good thing; after all, for people of faith their religious convictions, if they mean anything at all, certainly inform their political opinions. It’s true for all traditions. When Benazir Bhutto was murdered, I offered condolences to my close neighbor, who a Muslim from Pakistan, and then we spoke about the religious politics of his former country.

For Jews and Christians listening week after week to the teachings of Torah, the Prophets and the New Testament, it is impossible not to have an convictions about the pressing social problems of our time. For instance, I believe caring for God’s people who are hungry, poor, without homes; destitute, sick, in prison and even unborn is a Biblical calling. It is not optional. Neither is it optional to be a good steward of one’s resources while caring for the resources of the earth in a manner that preserves it for future generations. Patterns of consumption that leads to eradication of species and threaten death to the creation, is an offense to God according to the scriptures of both Jews and Christians. Repentance is basic.

How can I teach and preach without these scriptures having some influence on my own political decisions about social policies that will more closely adhere to my religious convictions? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

The current political discussions are focused on the very matters that our scriptures address: care for creation, hospitality to sojourners in the land, fair and equitable economic policy, health care for the sick, lifting up the poor, restraining greed, ending war while preserving peace, protecting the innocent and sustaining human freedom. These subjects are not unfamiliar to people of faith who read the Bible. I don’t expect people to agree on the precise way to address these problems, but I do believe it’s important for Christians to be fully engaged in the process by offering a vision rooted in scripture that corresponds to the hope offered there for all God’s people.

Speaking of people not agreeing, my guess is that not everyone in our congregations agree on every matter of politics, theology or church practices any more than we agree on books, movies or restaurants. People in our congregations, like our larger Church bodies have differences of opinions. That is no surprise and I don’t expect anything else. The real challenge for congregations is the same for our denominations, and our country. Treating one another with respect while disagreeing is the great challenge. At heart, it is a spiritual opportunity to learn how to care truly for another with respect while disagreeing on matters of real substance. The challenge is the same as that facing the country: living respectfully with different people and different opinions. People of faith have a narrative that calls us to such a life. Whether the country does right now is up for serious debate.

by Gordon McClellan

Editor’s Note: This is the transcript of a sermon preached on June 17, 2007. We have decided to publish it now, on the QTL blog, because of the on-going need for religion in America to allow itself to be defined by grace more than by hostility; by including rather than excluding; by humility rather than pious posturing. Some of the references are dated specifically to the week of June 17, 2007, but the point remains the same today as it did on June 17th.

Today’s lectionary reading (Luke 7:36-39), like all lectionary readings, is the reading that was heard in nearly every church around the world this week. Christians from all over the world heard, this week, about the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her hair. It’s an amazing event that Luke records. This woman who had not lived her life very well….who was looked down upon by all, ignored, mocked…..she hears that Jesus – the only one in this woman’s world who did not ignore her or look down on her, but instead reaffirmed his love for her as someone who God made and loves – no matter how much she had marred that image of God – she hears that Jesus was going to be eating at a home nearby and she went there to wash his feet with the best oil money could buy. No one had asked her to be there, and the host certainly did not want her there. But there she was, weeping at Jesus’ feet…her tears of gratitude dropping on his feet which she wiped off with her hair.  Now, we don’t know when Jesus forgave her, Luke doesn’t say. The text, if I have read it correctly, makes clear that she is not forgiven because of the way she washes his feet that night. Her acts of love and gratitude are the result of having been forgiven at another time, and she was so moved, she is so grateful…that when she heard he was going to be nearby, she had to be there.

Now, Jesus often acknowledged and blessed people that the world deemed unworthy. And it was often the response of the religious leaders looking on to see such actions by Jesus, as they did in this case, as clear evidence that he was certainly not divine…certainly not holy….because such radical forgiveness was not a reflection of the God they wanted to know. For God to be so radical, so inclined to love a woman like this, was to expose in neon lights how little these religious leaders and the other guests that night were actually reflecting the God they claimed to know.

There is a message here – a call to each of us to think on how well we know and are willing to reflect the God of Jesus Christ. And it is this message that Jesus wants not only to underscore, but to help his host, the other guests and all of us here understand what it looks like to reflect the God of Jesus Christ. Read more…