Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly....

I gotta wonder what people think "Christian" really is....

"IT IS hard to imagine a prime minister doing such a thing now, and even then it seemed rather surprising."

A Prime Minister, yes; especially given the English experience with Puritanism.  An American politician, even an American President?  Not so hard.

I pick this up via the inestimable Grandmere Mimi, who always gives me another reason to blog on.  The original is here.  Now let's get back to it:

In May 1988 Margaret Thatcher went to the General Assembly of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland and gave what would soon be called the Sermon on the Mound. It was an impassioned statement of a certain form of Christianity. The Conservative leader stressed individual salvation over social reform, the legitimacy of moneymaking when combined with altruism, and the “responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ”.

The responsibility, apparently, to get rich and then lord it over those who didn't because, well, you know; if you aren't rich, God doesn't really approve of you.

It was never hard to see the influence of Methodism, born as a reaction to the complacency and privilege of 18th-century Anglicanism, on Mrs Thatcher. She believed in thrift and hard work, and liked the advice of John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, to earn, save and only then give as much as possible. The acts of generosity listed in the New Testament, from the Good Samaritan’s to that of the woman who anointed Christ’s feet, were possible only because the donors had money, she noted.

Oh, let me start here, and call "bullsgeschicte," the way we used to in seminary (all the best scriptural exegetes are German, you see).  You give only from your abundance?  Let's start with Elijah and the widow, shall we?  And then move on to the widow's mite.  Should we point out the generosity of the father of the Prodigal Son is actually, and especially by Baronness Thatcher's lights, a madman and a dangerous radical?  That the woman who anointed Jesus' feet was either rich (Matthew's version) or a prostitute (Luke's).   I don't mean to offend the Methodists in the room, but if that was Wesley's idea (we can only be charitable from our excess), then Wesley was full of...well, I've already named it, haven't I?

No, I am not terribly charitable on this particular subject.  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  Now let's move on.

As I said at Wounded Bird, remind me of the beggars Jesus told to:  "Get a job!"  Remind me of the poor and the destitute Jesus said were unworthy of his attention; that he told to come back when they had a little money, because they weren't worth his time otherwise.  The ptochoi he said were lazy rotters who deserved their state because he didn't have enough in the till at the moment to spare a coin or two, or even the kind word (gotta save those, too, ya know.  Toss 'em around too freely you debase the coinage.)  Don't you remember when Jesus said "Congratulations, you rich!  You've made it to the top!  God is well pleased with you!"

What?  Jesus never said that.  Well, he should have.

And Baroness Thatcher was expressing a "certain form of Christianity"?  Say, rather, that Charles Dickens was expressing a "certain form of Christianity"  in his most famous work, A Christmas Carol.  What Thatcher was expressing was much closer to the ideas of Malthus, who, I remind everyone again, was an economist:

 " A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests."

And, you see, if no one can afford to give you anything well, then, what's to be done for you?  I mean, was Baroness Thatcher her brother's keeper?  What a ridiculous idea!  Especially since everyone knows the great thing is individual salvation and making lots and lots of money, so you can afford to be generous with a bit of it.  But not too much, or you might interfere with the individual's salvation.  Gotta earn that umerited grace, donchaknow?

Because, you know, things were simpler when Jesus was around: 

We must recognise that modern society is infinitely more complex than that of Biblical times and of course new occasions teach new duties. In our generation, the only way we can ensure that no-one is left without sustenance, help or opportunity, is to have laws to provide for health and education, pensions for the elderly, succour for the sick and disabled. 

Which is a) a load of crap, and b) one more reason I find the study of Biblical history so important.  It is far too easy to say "things were different, then," and so slip off any sense of responsibility Christianity may induce in you.  The Romans had as many laws as we do.  What they didn't have was concern for most of the people they ruled over.  Arguing we do that better than the Romans did, is not arguing that we are either a Christian society, or that we've got it all right.  Especially when your next sentence is:

But intervention by the State must never become so great that it effectively removes personal responsibility. The same applies to taxation; for while you and I would work extremely hard whatever the circumstances, there are undoubtedly some who would not unless the incentive was there. And we need their efforts too.

I really don't recall Jesus speaking much about personal responsibility.  Indeed, even his disciples would ask why someone was born blind, or was a beggar, and assume it was the result of someone's sin. Jesus never charged anyone so much as the cost of belief in him (the beating heart of modern soteriology, which is another distinctly Christian problem), yet if we, in his example if not in his name, don't invoke some price for our charity, we run afoul of the great economic terror of "moral hazard."

A hazard that always applies to the poor. but never to the wealthy.  Money is its own morality.


Ms. Thatcher's thesis was that Christianity is about spiritual, not social, redemption.  Let me first say this is the primary reason I no longer value soteriology  I know that's a sweeping statement, but I don't make it lightly.  The emphasis on salvation has, I think, been the single greatest mistake in Christianity.  The famous parable of the sheep and the goats doesn't turn on the purity of intent of the "sheep."  It turns on their behavior, on their willingness to do something for strangers, for the ptochoi, for the sick, for the prisoner.  And God identifies God's self as every one of those persons.  And that identification doesn’t emphasize our life in the afterlife, but our life here and now.  Conveniently the Baroness skips over that inconvenient story.

No surprise there.  The parable from Matthew does nothing to support her thesis: that Christianity is all about the spiritual life, and the spiritual life is all about the individual, and Christianity really has no role in our social life except to make us feel good about being, or wanting to be, wealthy.

Read her whole speech to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; that's what it comes down to.  The idea that spirituality is a communal and social activity, rather than a matter of very personal piety, is not acknowledged.  The idea that spirituality leads one out into the world, that spirituality is the very basis of the basilea tou theou, is never noticed.  And certainly, spirituality is never meant to get in the way of what's really important:

But it is not the creation of wealth that is wrong but love of money for its own sake. The spiritual dimension comes in deciding what one does with the wealth. 

The spiritual dimension, in other words, must mind its place, and offer only counsel; it must never stand in the way of the true purpose of the individual, which is to acquire money.  Social considerations, which can be influenced by spiritual ones, should never get in the way of the individual's pursuit of the individual's interests.  That the individual can't do anything outside a social system, that the individual can't even be born without the social interactions of two people, that money itself is entirely a product of human society, are matters that are never even considered.  That everything we do, we do as social beings, is tacitly disavowed.

Andrew Carnegie would chew her up and spit her out.  That Scotsman understood how he made his wealth was what mattered, and what he did with it did not wipe away the responsibility for how it was earned.

She ends her speech hoping vaguely that the Church will finally teach the world to live in peace; which sounds suspiciously like the Pax Romana, the peace of the powerful free to exploit whomever and whatever suits their accumulation of wealth, which they are then at peace to use for such charitable purposes as they might see fit.  The Church, tacitly, really shouldn't get too involved in that discussion, either.  The Church should just bring us to a state fit to enjoy these comforts without conflict, and then move quietly out of the way, its task performed.  Well done, good and faithful servant;  "I tell you, make use of your ill-gotten gain to make friends for yourselves, so that when the bottom falls out they are there to welcome you into eternal dwelling places."—Luke 16:9 (SV)

Yeah; that's worth applauding.....

"A Father to the fatherless...."

This is really just an excuse to link to this excellent article on day care in America, one that hits home because I knew the story of Jessica Tata and the fire in her day care long before I read this article.

The excuse?  Connect this problem, the problem of day care in America (read the article) with abortion.  You can do it two ways:

1)  the scandal du jour that the national media hasn't covered the case of Kermit Glosnell, because it shows the "ugly side" of abortion.  Bunkum, but if it is true, why wasn't the case of Jessica Tata major news that caused us all to re-examine the national shame of day care?  As the article sensibly points out:

Day care, in other words, has become a permanent reality, although the public conversation barely reflects that fact. The issue of child care is either neglected as a “women’s issue” or obsessed over in mommy-wars debates about the virtues of day care versus stay-at-home moms. Whether out of reluctance to acknowledge a fundamental change in the conception of parenthood—especially motherhood—or out of a fear of expanding the role of government in family life, we still haven’t come to terms with the shift of women from the home to the workplace.

Our national dialogue is dominated by the controversies swirling around abortion.  On the question of what to do with the kids we already have:  crickets.  We aren't squashing the scandal of an abortion butcher who should have been stopped by state authorities much earlier (he's a licensed MD, after all).  We're ignoring the entire question of how we value human beings, by national discussions dominated by ideas, not human beings.  The abortion debate doesn't focus on the children or the mothers; it focuses on the idea of abortion.  Until the same-sex marriage debate started focusing on human beings, on people, it was all about "marriage" and, tacitly, the "ick" factor of gay sex. Most of us have no experience with gay sex, and marriage is such a complex topic we probably never really think much about what it means to us, or our children, our families, our friends.  Far easier to argue the abstract issue than focus on the concrete one.

And that brings me to point no. 2 in why I bring this up:

2) The problem of abortion is, in large part, an economic problem.  From my limited experience, I suspect many women seek abortions because they literally can't afford the child care.  That sounds terribly mercenary unless you, too, have a job making $12 or less an hour (as some of the people who used Jessica Tata's childcare did).  Then it's a very real consideration.  If you can't find childcare, you can't work, and if you can't work, well....

So what do we do in this country to support childcare?  Again:  crickets.  We scream and yell about abortions, we picket clinics, we even kill doctors who perform the procedure.  But is even the Catholic church deeply invested in child care in America?


Honestly, I don't know any church that is.  Perhaps a local congregation offers a "Mother's Day Out," or provides infant care (one did in Austin, when my daughter was an infant).  But those are tiny, local concerns (and God bless them!).  Nationally, who speaks for child care?  Who speaks up for taking care of the children we have?  Who even mentions providing child care as a helpful alternative to abortion?

Crickets.  Noisy things, aren't they?

Read the article.  It really is that good.

The Way You Do the Things You Do

Why do I want to prop the oven door open when I turn on the broiler?

No, I'm serious.  Who taught me to do this?  Why, in fact, is it such a widespread and ingrained behavior that the instructions for my new oven specify that I NOT leave the door propped open when the broiler is on?  Clearly it's a near universal practice that we all need to discard.  This is the first new oven I've ever bought, but the fact the instructions are there doesn't tell me whether this is a recent change in oven design, or a reference to an old practice that hasn't had any practical purpose for decades.

So where did I learn to do it?  When did it become so normative?

I'm not really interested in the particular so much as in what it represents.  Culture persists and pervades human life this way.  I first became aware of it when I took the pulpit of a 150 year old church, and slowly but surely figured out that church hadn't really changed in the 150 years it had been in existence.  Pastors didn't last long there.  Some churches have one pastor at a time, pretty much for that pastor's life time.  Some churches have a pastor for his (usually) career, but it's only because that pastor was unique to the congregation of his pastorate.  Some churches have a new pastor ever three years or so.

Why?

Churches, like any small group that persists over any amount of time, have a heritage.  It can be likened to genetics:  certain traits persist and are expressed throughout the life of the institution.  It's pretty easy to figure out why with churches:  similar people are attracted to the place, they reinforce and establish certain lines of conduct; people of like mind are drawn there and keep that conduct going.  Pretty soon it's set in stone that "we've always done it this way," and one of the ways they've always done things is to, say, run off the pastor after a year or two.  Why?  Because it's become the "genetic heritage" of the institution.

I grew up in a small church like that.  The members of the congregation changed, but not as fast as the pastors.  And yet the more the membership changed, the more the church stayed the same.

Why?

Texas is another example.  In my lifetime, Texas has gone from a primarily rural state to a primarily urban state.  Texas has more large cities in it than any state outside California:  Dallas-Fort Worth; San Antonio; Houston.  Austin isn't huge, but culturally it is hugely influential, more so than it ever was before.  And yet rural voters still run the state, because urban voters (who elected a lesbian sheriff in Dallas County, once home to some of the most famous televangelists in the country, and who elected a lesbian mayor in Houston) don't vote in large enough numbers to swing statewide elections.

Why?

That's always been true in Texas, but why does it persist?  Texas had such a rise in population due to people moving here that it was popular for several decades to try to persuade people not to come here.  And yet the people who came here didn't change the political or social culture of Texas:  they reinforced it, and recently it's only gotten worse.  Texas Governors used to be low-key to the point of invisibility:  now we've had Rick Perry since Bush went to Washington.  Texas US senators used to be almost as invisible as the governors; after Phil Gramm, now we have Ted Cruz, who makes us almost long for Gramm.  Texas was always a hotbed of crazy conservatism.  It wasn't really a surprise Kennedy was shot here, and not somewhere else.  But now the Tea Party has put that craziness on steroids, and Ted Cruz welcomes the calumny of his fellow Senators as proof he's doing something right.

Why?

Why do such ideas persist and get stronger?  Why didn't the massive influx of people who weren't born and raised in this culture alter the culture?  Why, instead, did we alter them?  Why does it seem, if anything, that the culture has just gotten worse, has doubled-down on its own worst excesses?

It's the peculiar persistence of culture.  It shows up in small things, like calling all soft drinks "Cokes."  In Texas, you ask if someone wants a "coke," and if they do, you then ask what kind they want.  "Coke" is not a trademark, its a generic term, like kleenex or bandaid.  You pick that up in the daily language, you figure out what it means, you carry on with the meaning, especially because if you say "pop" people think you mean your father, and "soda" doesn't mean much at all, except maybe you forgot to say "baking" before it.

It's an interesting thing, this persistence of culture.  Some of it, like the oven door, makes a kind of sense.  I probably learned it from my mother, and continued the practice because "you're supposed to do that."  Some, however, don't quite make as much sense.

I was in a car wreck (no injuries) several years ago, and I told the wrecker driver who showed up to move the car out of traffic.  I knew the police wouldn't care, would welcome it, in fact, because no-fault insurance meant there wouldn't be an extensive police investigation with careful measurements and diagrams and witness statements.  That had been the law in Texas for almost 30 years.  And yet the other driver's attorney showed up and argued with me about moving my car; and she couldn't have been much over 30 years old.  She couldn't have learned in law school that a full investigation of an auto accident is required in any and all cases (frankly, you don't learn much about automobile collision investigations in law school) and clearly fender-benders weren't her usual area of practice.  But why did she continue to insist the law was unchanged since my childhood?  Where did she learn that?

The best explanation I have, is that the culture taught her it was so.  That, in the absence of positive information about traffic accidents, she fell back on the common wisdom that "this is what you do;" even though we stopped doing that probably about the time she was born.

Houston, Texas, is the fourth largest city in the country, and one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the country, too.  In some ways that has changed the culture of the city; in some ways it hasn't changed it at all. But there are precious few "native" Houstonians here,  Most of the population growth in this city, for the past 40 years, has been from people moving here.  And yet the basic culture of the city persists.

The town I grew up in is now populated largely by people of my age, my generation; and yet precious few of the people I grew up with still live there.  Nevertheless, the culture of the place has barely changed.  It is part of the area of Texas that now sends Louis Gohmert to the House of Representatives, and he probably could have gone there when I was a child, too.  Again, the population growth is due more to people moving there than to an explosion of births there; and yet the culture of the place is in fundamental ways barely altered.

Why?

I don't know.  I'm not a sociologist; I'm not an anthropologist.  There is undoubtedly much information in the world on this subject that I simply don't have.  This is not so much a profound mystery of existence as it is a fascinating bit of reality we never really look at.  Culture is a powerful determinant of what we do and why we do it.  But we seldom think of it that way.

No communion for you!

My gut reaction is to wonder when Jesus ever said:  "You!  Away from the table!"  Not to the woman in Luke 7; not to Zaccheus; not even to Judas.

And yet:

A Detroit professor and legal adviser to the Vatican says Catholics who promote gay marriage should not try to receive holy Communion, a key part of Catholic identity. And the archbishop of Detroit, Allen Vigneron, said Sunday that Catholics who receive Communion while advocating gay marriage would "logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury." The comments of Vigneron and Edward Peters, who teaches Catholic canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, are part of a polarizing discussion about gay marriage that echoes debate over whether politicians who advocate abortion rights should receive Communion.

I know the historical power of excommunication, but that was some time ago.  I don't know what the Church position, or its canon law, is now on the situation.  Which is to say I don't know what effect it would have for Catholics to deny themselves Communion, or to be denied (other than the public embarrassment) at the altar.  Considering the number of Catholics who are "lapsed" or no longer regularly attend Mass, I'm guessing this is much more a symbolic gesture than ever it was.  And really, the argument being made is a private one:  the authors want to shame, or self-shame, those they disagree with on a moral issue.  I suppose they are without sin, and so get to cast the first stones....

Because it takes some serious stones to put forward a position like this.

What is the morality of refusing someone a place at the Lord's table?  I understand the arguments that it is to be reserved only for the baptized.  My own UCC has in its heritage a service of preparation every E&R church member had to attend in order to take communion (which, in good Reformed tradition, was only served four times a year).  If you didn't bring your token from that service, you didn't get to go to the altar.

Things change, of course.

There was a church in Austin, Texas that made a member of an atheist.  He confessed no faith in Christ, but he was offered membership anyway.  I agreed with that move, though it created a stir within the Presbytery.  Should non-believers be allowed to the table?  Do we defile it by allowing them to come?  That was a hot issue in seminary.  We were challenged to defend a defended table, or a completely open one.  I don't know anyone who practiced a completely open table (all are welcome), but I don't know of anyone who checked baptismal certificates at the door, either.

Well, you gotta draw the line somewhere, right?

Part of this is the laity once again being more devout than the clergy.  Laity love this kind of stuff:  certain people are allowed here, certain people aren't, and ideally the clergy is the gatekeeper.   I actually had a church member insist I bar another church member from entrance to the church; not on theological grounds but on purely personal ones.  I suppose it would be easier for me to refuse to offer him communion, but I would no more do one than the other.  Still, lay people are generally more keen on purity and holiness than the clergy generally are.  Interestingly, the class of people who are usually least interested in purity, and most interested in people, are the monks and nuns who devote their lives to God by devoting themselves to service.  I've always thought their devotion to God gave them the right perspective on matters of holiness.

I don't presume either the professor or the teacher of canon law speaks for Rome, so I don't assume their words carry any more weight than mine.  But it's always struck me as an issue of theology and hospitality (and I contend the two are virtually one, or should be; especially where matters of ecclesiology are concerned), not to mention ethics, about who has the standing to refuse anyone the grace of God's table.*  Jesus, after all, didn't check the baptismal records before he ate with sinners and tax collectors, and there's no record I know of that any of the twelve that night had been baptized and, as I say, one of them turned bad, but was allowed at the table anyway.

Maybe we're supposed to correct that?

(*I suppose someone does if it's the church's table.  Which it is, actually; Protestant or RC, the table is offered by the church in the name of God.  Who, then, do they offer it to?)

It's the viscera, stupid.

Remington 750 semiautomatic hunting rifle. Remington's marketing material promises "super-fast cycling.... Rapid follow-ups are its specialty, but famed Remington one-shot accuracy comes standard."

I have First Amendment rights to speak freely.  Except if I do, I might well lose my job.  If I put a bumper sticker on my car supporting a political candidate or an issue of public concern, my boss might retaliate and I'd end up fired.  Sure, I could sue, but would that get me my job back?  And when?  Safer if I keep my mouth shut, or discuss the politics that is acceptable in my workplace.

Same with freedom to assemble:  sure, I have it, and I can use it to protest.  If I have time after work and personal chores, errands, etc.  And if I'm even paying attention.

Freedom of religion?  Yeah, I can go to church or not, as I choose.  Wudaboutit?

Freedom from unlawful search and seizure?  That's never happened to me or to anyone I know.  Besides, I got nuthin' to hide.  Same with the freedom not to incriminate myself by my own testimony.  I ain't no criminal.

The "freedom" of the 2nd amendment pretty much boils down to this:  it's the only one you can "activate" by maintaining possession of something.  Maybe I see the gun as a fetish object.  Maybe I think people are nuts who claim there are boats in the Port of Houston full of ammunition which the Federal government won't let unload, in order to control or even raise the price of ammunition (I've actually heard this conspiracy theory).  Maybe I don't understand the passion to own a gun, because I don't share it and don't want to; especially where 4 year olds might be present.

But when I think about it in terms of "Constitutional rights," it suddenly becomes clear to me this is the one right that can remain inviolate:  that has nothing to do with what church you do or don't attend; that has nothing to do with what your boss or your friends think about politics; that has nothing to do with assembly and petition and protest that you don't have time for or aren't even interested in.  And it has nothing to do with keeping the criminal investigative arm of the government on a short leash where your privacy is concerned.  It's much, much simpler than any of those.

It's about an object, and your simple, native, unalienable right to possess it.  There isn't much you can possess without challenge:  cars and homes take loans and maintenance and constant supplies of fuel or water to make them useful.  Clothes wear out.  Guns last. You buy it, it's yours.  They can become family treasures.  They abide.

I don't have to sue my boss to keep my guns.  I don't have to go anywhere once a week to keep my guns.  I don't have to assemble, vote, or worry about the police unlawfully searching my home, to keep my guns.  Well, unless they're going to decide to take my guns, by limiting my "right."

But the Constitution says nobody can take 'em away from you.  That's all I know, and that's all I need to know.

Whether it actually says that or not is beside the point.  It's the one point where the Constitution meets the daily life of Joe Sixpack, of Joe Ordinary, of Joe Average Workin' Guy.

And that's why it's so important; not why it should be, but simply why it is.

Still not enough reason to kowtow to the gun nuts, of course.  But I think I see where the lines are drawn; at least between me and the guys who believe in black helicopters and government conspiracies to deny them access to ammunition.

"As you know, we once were told 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' "

Had NPR run this on April 1, I'd have sworn it was a joke.

But the distinction between justice and vengeance is false. A call for justice is always a cry for revenge. By placing their faith in the law, those who justifiably wish to see wrongdoers punished are not disavowing vengeance. If anything, they are seeking to be avenged by the law. No matter what they say, victims aren't choosing justice over vengeance; they are merely capitulating to a cultural taboo, knowing that the protocol in polite society is to repudiate revenge. But make no mistake: When it comes to the visceral experience of being a victim, revenge and justice are one and the same.

And everyone should feel similarly. After all, there is no justice unless victims feel avenged, when they believe that a wrong has been righted and honor restored. And revenge is never just if it is disproportionately delivered—if the retaliation exceeds what is justly deserved, measure for measure. Indeed, vengeance is not irrational (the common knock on revenge)—it's healthy and entirely human. Insisting that justice will suffice when revenge is what victims really want is both intellectually dishonest and factually untrue. Besides, in modern societies where vigilantism is disallowed, we all on some level reasonably believe that it is only by leveraging the law—and having the legal system serve as our proxy—that vengeance can be actually achieved.

An argument based on howlers like this:

For much of human history, the resolution of disputes was a private matter. States were not yet in the business of maintaining legal systems or, for that matter, punishing wrongdoers for crimes committed against another. Law and order was enforced at the most local of levels. Governments became involved—essentially taking a monopoly on vengeance—only during the Enlightenment, when the social contract obligated citizens to surrender to, and faithfully accept, the rule of law.

Or appeals to authority like this:

The philosopher Robert C. Solomon has pointed out that "vengeance is the original meaning of justice. The word 'justice' in the Old Testament and in Homer virtually always refers to revenge.

 I know the popular opinion of the Hebrew Scriptures is that they are soaked in blood, but honestly, the justice demanded by the prophets is really just a call for vengeance?  How ignorant can you be?

And the parts of human history that contradict this sweeping thesis?  On NPR today, Rosenbaum brushed them aside:

CONAN: Here's an email from Anne in Palo Alto: Njal's Saga - I hope I'm not mispronouncing that too badly - from medieval Icelandic traces the change from blood feuds to a centralized, we would call it a government system of adjudicating wrongs after people realized that each time a person was killed, that prompted a revenge killing, which prompted another revenge killing, ad infinitum.

ROSENBAUM: I just - I know we say this. I know you cited two writers on this subject. We would not be a species if every single nation on Earth for millennia had done nothing other than continued a tit-for-tat until they wiped each other out.

CONAN: Nobody said until they wiped each other out. The various clans and tribes may have revenge killings that make their death totals from violence a great deal higher than our death total from violence is now. But that doesn't mean they wipe each other out.

ROSENBAUM: What means is they can't live their lives. They can't go outside. Everybody is held prisoner because my cousin committed a crime and therefore, I'm the next one in line. I mean, even, you know, there have been stories, of course, of tribes that have been engaged in blood feuds and honor killings that have no end. But it's a nasty business, and that's why most nations, most tribes, manage to be able to settle their scores privately and do so with finality.

CONAN: Most nations these days don't have the death penalty.

ROSENBAUM: That's true. But most people around the world live in nations that do have the death penalty. Of course, that's the United States, China and India, and most people around the world support the death penalty.

Need I point out that when one reference to one work of literature can puncture your argument, you don't have a very strong argument?  And what is this appeal to the majority except an ad populum argument?  This guy is a law professor?  I hope he never represents me on an appeal.

Wiki tells me Njal's Saga describes events taking place in 960 to 1020.  Beowulf, written down finally about the same time, describes events centuries earlier than that, and already one can detect in the poet's telling a wish for a society that didn't live on reprisals.  Rosenbaum argues that vengeance achieved a natural balance in tribal societies.  I suppose greed would, too, if we simply allowed it to run unchecked.

Besides, I'm quite certain the roots of criminal law, of the king prosecuting crimes against his subjects as a crime against the crown (the basis for the State in America bringing criminal charges against individuals) dates back to the Medieval period, which ended about 2 centuries before the Enlightenment began.  I'm sure the Enlightenment added more order to this process, but ancient concepts of justice as vengeance weren't swept away with the 17th century, and any argument that contends social order went to hell with the establishment of reason the Enlightenment represents is both ignorant of the history of 17th century Europe, and of the history of human reason.

How can you be a professor of law and reach such mindless and ignorant conclusions as:  "A call for justice is always a cry for revenge"?  The statement is absolutely indefensible.  It wouldn't pass muster in a freshman philosophy course touching on the concept of jurisprudence.

These things that pass for knowledge I don't understand.....

On the passing of Margaret Thatcher

Let us now praise famous men,
the fathers of our people in their generations;
to them the Lord assigned great glory,
his majestic greatness from of old.
Some held sway over kingdoms
and gained renown for their might.
Others were far-seeing counsellors
who spoke out with prophetic power.
Some guided the people by their deliberations
and by their knowledge of the law,
giving instruction from their fund of wisdom.
...
All those won glory in their own generation
and were the pride of their times.
Some there are who have left behind them a name
to be commemorated in story.
...
Their prosperity is handed on to their descendants,
their inheritance to future generations.
Through them their children are within the covenant--
the whole race of their descendants.

Ecclesiasticus 44:1-4, 7, 11-12, REB

Woe to him who says,
"I shall build myself a spacious palace
with airy roof chambers and
windows set in it.
It will be paneled with cedar
and painted with vermilion."
Though your cedar is so splendid,
does that prove you a king?
Think of your father: he ate and drank,
dealt justly and fairly; all went well with him.
He upheld the cause of the lowly and poor;
then all was well.
Did not this show he knew me? says the Lord.
But your eyes and your heart are set on naught but gain, set only on the innocent blood you can shed,
on the cruel acts of tyranny you perpetrate.

Jeremiah 22: 14-17 (REB)

 "They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours."

Margaret Thatcher

One of these things is not like the others.....

Every Man His Own Action Hero

There is no excuse for gunning a man down, in cold blood or otherwise.  I want to start there so my comments are very clear.  Mike McClelland did not deserve to die, and nothing he did or said or thought justifies his murder.

That said, what was he thinking?  That he was the hero of his own action movie?

Rural Texas prides itself as a place where people can take care of themselves, many are not only armed but well armed. And McLelland was a man among them. Joining the Army after graduating from the University of Texas, he held a major's rank in the reserves and served as recently as the Persian Gulf War. After his assistant was ambushed in January, he warned potential assailants that in him, they faced a former military officer who was now armed and ready.

The only thing he wasn't ready for, was somebody walking up to his front door.

This killing is almost out of an action movie.  You know, the one that opens on a quiet American street at a normal American house where somebody walks up to a random door and when the occupants answer, the guy on the door step pulls out an assault weapon and starts blazing away, murdering everybody in the house.

And then the heroes show up.  Because in the movies, the heroes never answer a door and get gunned down.  The hero is certainly never shot in his pajamas.  Even when the heroes run through a hail of bullets, the bullets either bounce at their feet (see!  real gunfire!) or splatter into every object around them but, mysteriously, never strike them, even if all they have for protection is a thin sheet of plywood.

This happens because heroes are always "armed and ready," and that protects them.  But even when it doesn't, the bad guys can't just gun down the heroes in their bathrobes at their front doors, because, dude, it doesn't work that way.

I mention this not to condemn Mike McClelland, but to condemn the attitude he had and so many people have today:  a conviction in their own invincibility, because they "know how to handle guns."  And because they own guns.  Usually, a lot of guns.

Sadly, that didn't do Mike McClelland any good at all.

Mike McClelland should be alive today.  So should his wife.  That this could happen to them is frightening, and law enforcement should do all it can, arm itself as much as it needs to, to apprehend the killer or killers behind this crime.  But any police officer who is stupid enough to think the gun he or she carries is going to protect him or her against the gun the killer carries, should do himself or herself a favor, and sit this one out.  And if the police don't think they can be that stupid, why are the rest of us supposed to think we can?

This is not an action movie, and an arsenal of guns won't protect you.  If it didn't protect Mike McClelland, it won't protect anybody.  It's past time we figured that out.  Law enforcement will bring about justice.  Heavily armed citizens won't do anything except provide weapons and ammunition to people who should have access to neither.

Take, eat, this cinnamon roll is my...uh...this hot chocolate is my....wait a minute....

Here's what we know about eucharist/communion/The Lord's Supper (in Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions; I will not speak of the Orthodox traditions, as I don't know them):

The liquid served must be wine; because Jesus (and Paul) said so.  Alternatively, it can be grape juice, because that's almost wine; close enough for government work, anyway.  But no rice wine, elderberry wine, dandelion wine; only wine or juice from grapes is permitted.

The wine must be red, because, well,  "This is my blood."  So white wine is right out!

The bread must be bread, because, again, Jesus (and Paul) said so.  Unleavened is okay, because...er, Passover.  Except there's no indication the Last Supper was a Seder meal, and in fact the Seder probably showed up after 70 C.E. and the rise of rabbinic Judaism (I'm guessing here, to be honest), and so crackers are okay, or almost anything made from wheat that can be considered "bread."  Leavened bread is actually acceptable, too.  And preferably white (dunno why; but I've never seen anybody serve whole wheat, or rye, or pumpernickel....).

And we know this because....

Well, actually because "we've always done it this way;" that's why.  Now, there's nothing wrong with this state of things; and it is certainly "holy" to some people.  That is, you cannot defile the eucharist/communion/Lord's Supper with elements that are not approved for consumption at the table/altar/rail/in the pews by the blessed hand of How We've Always Done It.  If you begin to suspect some pastoral cynicism, it is because every congregation has some practice/routine/ritual custom which they have "always done," and which is holier and more inviolate than the most central tenets of Christian doctrine or the most hallowed teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.

But I digress.....

We know these things are holy and right and true because we have always known them to be so.  We know these things because this is one of the few sacraments all Christian (RC and Protestant) agree are actually sacred (i.e., sacramental).  We also know these elements are symbolic; or transcendent; or transubstantiated.  Well, there, you see, the consensus begins to break down.  We don't even agree that the liquid has to be wine.  At best we agree it must be derived from grapes; and that the solid portion be derived from wheat; but definitely not a sweet bread.  Not even brioche; or a madeline.  And certainly not a cinnamon roll!

If you're memory goes back far enough, you might begin to suspect where I'm going with this:

I announced a "Love Feast," something I understand is a practice of the Moravian church. I offered hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls on Sunday morning, as a "sort of" eucharist. (I was not ordained then, and my advisors were at great pains to be reassured I would not call this either a "meal" or "Communion," even though I said a communion prayer that morning. This may seem reasonable to someone in an episcopal tradition, such as the RC or the Anglian Communion, but in the loose UCC "traditions," this struck me as almost laughable. It still does.)

(Yes, my blog has been around long enough I can just recycle myself.  Pretty much what I do anyway, but now I can use links!)    I could not, when I served that "meal," call it a eucharist.  Which is really funny, because Paul called it "eucharisto" not to invent a new word, but to use a (then) familiar one.  Today, if it wasn't already a holiday and so a proper noun, we would call it "thanksgiving."  His original interest in it, if his letter to the Corinthians is any guide (and it has been for us for nearly 2000 years) was in equality and egalitarianism, not in a severe definition of the elements:

In giving you these instructions I come to something I cannot commend:  your meetings tend to do more harm than good.  To begin with, I am told that when you meet as a congregation you fall into sharply divided groups....The result is that when you meet as a congregation, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat; when it comes to eating, each of you takes his own supper, one goes hungry and another has too much to drink....Can I commend you on this point, certainly not? (1 Corinthians 11:  17-18a, 20, 22b, REB)

 What then follows are the famous words of institution in which Paul mentions "bread" and "wine" (or "the cup", and again depending on the translation)  9 times in the space of 6 verses.  We can understand, in other words, how the emphasis came to fall on those two elements.

Unfortunately, the emphasis never fell on the verses I quoted, because it wasn't that long ago that churches still divided themselves on Sunday mornings, men on one side, women and children on the other.  And before that they kicked out everybody who wasn't baptized before the eucharist could commence.  And while I grew up expected to attend worship as soon as I was a toddler, it's not unusual today for children to leave worship as soon (and publicly) as possible, the better to maintain order and discipline.  I was never happy with that, but I can tell you it is now "the way we've always done things," and it's not a liturgical hill that you, as a pastor, want to die on.

What was also lost in transition and translation was the idea of the eucharisto as a meal rather than as a set of elements.  There isn't much evidence that Paul instituted the service as we know it, with the elements as we understand them, in every one of his churches.  In fact, the evidence from this passage is that whatever was edible was brought, and Paul's complaint was, it wasn't being shared!  Of course now the church is no longer home (as Paul's churches literally were) and we expect the church to play host and offer, in good hospitality, the refreshments.  Er, excuse me...the elements.

You see, Paul's original emphasis was on the breakdown of social barriers, so that all would be one in Christ; neither male nor female (with the hierarchy that implied), neither slave nor free (no person the possession or possessor), and neither adult nor child (with the power differential that, too, implied).  I still remember one of the best things about church when I was 13, was that I got to be treated like an adult.  No where else in the world did I enjoy that privilege, even if it was, realistically, a limited one.

But we set the breakdown of social barriers aside, too, and insisted the most important part of the meal was the composition of the elements.  I don't bring that up to complain about it, just to point it out.  We drew boundaries and allowed a very narrow set of comestibles to be included in the Venn diagrams of what is "in" and what is "out," of what is part of the "set" and what isn't.  Grape juice was an acceptable non-alcoholic substitute for wine because it was still grape juice; but no other substitute was allowed.  Saltine crackers were acceptable as "Unleavened bread," but cinnamon rolls were right out!

Well, almost.....

The cinnamon rolls I served for the first time on that Christmas morning established a true eucharisto, the first one I've ever experienced (and sadly, one of the last).  There was joy in that room, in a room where there should have been joy far more often (and yes, I'll take responsibility for that lacking the rest of the year).  It became a tradition which I hope they still carry on.  It's been years since I was there, and who can say.  My point was to refresh a dying sense of joy on one of the holy days of the Christian calendar.  And I've always thought it raised the question Jesus raised whenever someone in the gospels accused him of doing it wrong, of violating "We've always done it this way."

"Who do you think these rules are for?" he effectively asked.  Who, indeed?

It's only words

This, by the way, is fascinating.

Write the word "Jesus" on a piece of paper.  Now put that piece of paper on the ground and stomp on it.  Sacrilegious? Blasphemous?  An assault on religion?

Or an exercise in the power of symbolism?

"Jesus," after all, is merely the Anglicization of "Joshuah", based on the transliteration of the Greek

Ἰησοῦ

into Latin (Iesu).  And written on a piece of paper, it is just ink on paper; a series of squiggles that means no more than that set of Greek characters, unless you know how to read those characters.  If I wrote the name of "Jesus" in Chinese pictographs, would it be more or less sacrilegious to stomp on the piece of paper?  How about if I used the Greek characters?  When is this disturbing, and why?

Semiology is the study of signs, of signifiers.  It wasn't until I studied semiology that I even noticed that "sign" is a "signifier" (somehow the pronounced consonant in the latter covers, at least to me, the connection between the two ideas).  A "Sign" was always something on a roadway:  it told you to stop, or yield, or what that name of the business is.  To recognize a sign signifies, is to recognize something new; and it is to recognize the importance of symbol.

If I stand in the pulpit in my black Wesleyan robe, it signifies I am a preacher in the Reformed tradition.  (Well, it used to; now it just means I'm a pastor, whatever that signifies.).  If I wear an alb, it should signify my humility and connection with the working class; but if I wore blue jeans and a t-shirt and maybe some work boots into the pulpit, it would signify that connection far too clearly, and few congregations would welcome me.  Most would feel I was not showing them, or their pulpit, the proper respect.  Symbols do matter to us, even when we don't realize they are symbols.

Which is what makes this story so fascinating.  First, it comes from a textbook:

"This exercise is a bit sensitive, but really drives home the point that even though symbols are arbitrary, they take on very strong and emotional meanings. Have the students write the name JESUS in big letters on a piece of paper. Ask the students to stand up and put the paper on the floor in front of them with the name facing up. Ask the students to think about it for a moment. After a brief period of silence, instruct them to step on the paper. Most will hesitate. Ask why they can’t step on the paper. Discuss the importance of symbols in culture."

Now, of course, "stomp" is a charged word.  It is, itself, a signifier, and it signifies disrespect.  But even putting your foot on a piece of paper with a word on it can be disrespectful, so the signifier "stomp" relates the outrage of those passing on this story from this Florida college classroom.  And I've repeated the term here intentionally, because this story is all about outrage and where it comes from. Because the instructor in this case has been put on leave, having faced a number of death threats.   There are even allegations he threatened a student; allegations I find a bit unlikely, but I don't know the instructor, so who knows?    So what is the story here?  That a teacher went atheist-crazy and told his students to "Stomp out Jesus!"?  No.  The instructor was trying to get the students to consider the power of symbols.  He might have drawn a flag on the piece of paper; that would have been no less controversial. It would also raise the same question:  is the drawing of a flag the same thing as a flag?  Is the name "Jesus" the same thing as the central figure in Christianity?  Or, in the terms of semiology:  is the signifier also the signified?

What if you told the students, instead, that it was the name of a Mexican male?  Pronounce the word with the Spanish "J" instead of the English one?  Is that better?  Why, or why not?

My sympathies are with this instructor.  Teaching is hard enough without facing this kind of vitriol.  I won't link to all the hard-right web sites which have brought calumny down on this teacher.  The college, to its credit, is supporting the teacher:

“As with any academic lesson, the exercise was meant to encourage students to view issues from many perspectives, in direct relation with the course objectives,” said Noemi Marin, the university’s director of the school of communication and multimedia studies.

“While at times the topics discussed may be sensitive, a university environment is a venue for such dialogue and debate,” Marin added.

Of course, the takeaway from this story at that link, is this:

 The university did not explain why students were only instructed to write the name of Jesus – and not the name of Mohammed or another religious figure.

Even after quoting the language of the proposed assignment I provided above, the article writer insists on missing the point.  "Jesus" is a much more powerful symbol in American culture than "Mohammed."

The real question is, what does "Jesus" symbolize?  

Addendum:  I should point out that Sharia law insists you cannot defile the holy Koran in this way (the way described above).  Any Koran, just as any sheet of paper with "Jesus" on it can somehow become holy.  And the Governor of Florida (which is where I really sympathize with the poor teacher) thinks the laws of America (since he speaks as a public official, which means his words carry some weight of law behind them) mean a piece of paper with the letters "J-E-S-U-S" cannot be treated this way, either.

Just sayin'......

Hospitality, Powerlessness, and the Being of God

I don't base my life on mathematics.

Although I understand and acknowledge the importance of mathematics in the world, and even to understanding the nature of the world, I'm not mathematician nor Platonist enough to think that mathematics defines all that is worth knowing in the world, such as my friendships, my family, my wife, my daughter; or myself.

I understand that mathematics is an intellectually rigorous enterprise which requires capabilities I don't have and a mental discipline I have never been able to acquire.  I understand mathematics is capable of explaining many important things and that it is enormously useful, and that what little use I can make of it with arithmetic (I have something of a calculator in my brain; mostly a lot of memorized facts about simple arithmetical equations) is as far as my abilities will ever go.  What I don't do, is make those limitations the basis for a critique of mathematics as a study, except insofar as some mathematician tries to go the Platonic route with me, and argue that mathematics is the true language of reality, or even a reflection of the eternal forms.  Because that's crossing over into philosophy, and there I yield easily to no one.

Which is not the same thing as saying I am a philosopher, or wise in the ways of philosophy.  It's not the same thing as saying I"m a theologian, either, although I'm more of one than I'll ever be a mathematician.

What prompts this reflection is this post at Wounded Bird; and the underlying assumption that, in matters religious, we must all be theologians, or at least acknowledge the superiority of theology, or we must simply be believers, and fall back on our Romantic emotional sense of what is true, because it is grounded in our experience or our childhood or just our "self."  And even to adopt such language is, again, to adopt the language of philosophy; yet how else are we to express our thoughts, and how else are we to explain our understanding, limited though it may ever be, of God?

Negative theology is one such recognition of the limitation.  Negative theology begins with that God is not, because vast though that is, it is more easily understood by human reason than the true nature of God (which is the true subject of theology).  And there's the rub already:  what is the true subject of theology? Julian of Norwich wrote theology, even though it was not recognized as such in the 13th century (nor much today; my categorization is my own, thank you very much).  Kathleen Norris wrote three books of theology, though she famously eschewed the field and all associated with it.  Until the Enlightenment, theology as the mother of the sciences and the foundation of reason in Europe.  It was theology that inspired the preservation of Plato, and the recovery of Aristotle, truly a gift of the Muslims to the Christians.  It was, argued Thomas Cahill, theology (and the Irish) which saved civilization.  Perhaps we should stop here and first define our terms.

Theology is, first, not an Hebraic legacy, but a Greek one.  It arose, not from the teachings of Christ, nor even from the letters of Paul, but from the early church leaders steeped in Greek forms of reason (there are many valid forms of reason; the Greek, though foundational to Western culture, is only one among many).  It arose almost purely, as the later phrase would have it, as "faith seeking understanding."  But it is important to note that "understanding" was sought within the Greek terms of reference, according to fundamentally Greek ideas of reason.  There are, we must understand, other frames of reference available to humankind.

Even the Romans, as influenced by the Greeks as they were, did not wholly fall in line with Greek reasoning.  They had their own views of reality and validity.  The Greek forms are as natural to us as breathing, and even when they don't take the most rigorous forms, like formal logic (which is so akin to modern mathematics), we all, in Western culture,  fundamentally reason as the Greeks taught us to.  Does this mean we are all Greeks, or even all logicians?  Of course not; but we function from reasoning that can easily lead us to Greek logic, if we chose to follow it that far and that studiously.

And the result would be no more certainty than we enjoy without pursuing logic to its formal conclusions.  One of the first rules of formal logic, in fact, is that it doesn't establish truth.  It establishes valid conclusions drawn from the proper application of a formal system of reasoning, but the truth of the conclusion is dependent upon the information brought to the formal system.  Garbage in, garbage out, and the formal system of logic has no function which guarantees garbage is not fed in.  The classic syllogism "All humans are mortal, Socrates is human, therefore Socrates is mortal," is a valid logical conclusion.  But it doesn't establish the existence of Socrates, or the truth that all humans are mortal.

Systems will not do the work for you.  To put it bluntly:  systems will not save you.

Martin Luther's great theological insight was that he was saved by grace, not by faith.  But this insight was not the result of rigorous theological effort; it was much more a cri de coeur, a desperate rejection of the damnation that his studies of Augustine had lead him to fear.  Scholars will tell you Melancthon was Luther's theologian; but outside of scholars, who remembers Melanchthon today?  Luther not only gave us his fundamental idea, one almost universally accepted now; but he also gave us the concept of negative theology.  He understood, in other words, the limits of theology; and he even took advantage of them.

There are, you see, different types of "theology," and some of the most important ideas of theology don't come from expert theologians.  Luther needed Melanchthon, but Melanchthon needed Luther, too.   Any discussion of the nature of God is theology, whether the discussion is coming from Dom Crossan or from Pat Robertson.  The importance of theology has always been as a support to faith; never as a replacement for it.  The idea that theology should, indeed must, replace faith is actually an artifact of the Enlightenment and, like the myth of medieval church men obsessed with angels and pinheads, actually a product of the critique of faith, not of its faithful examination.

I think it safe to say that at some point around the Enlightenment faith and reason were fully separated, although they had never been as one in Christian theology.  Reason was, until the Enlightenment (broadly speaking) a gift of God.  It was reasoning that Augustine employed in his own cri de coeur, his Confessions.  Reason is again paramount for Aquinas, one of the finest reasoning minds to ever record his thoughts.  Both men are instructive here: Augustine's heart famously led him to faith; it was his reason that puzzled out the explanations his Greek-influenced culture demanded, and much of that reasoning was a response to competing theologies which we now mostly remember, if at all, as heresies.  But Augustine's reasoning (along with others) was aimed at supporting faith, not at supplanting it.  The arguments over the heresies was an argument over how to understand the proper parameters of faithfulness as Christians, arguments no different from those Paul had with his churches in Galatia or Corinth or even the church in Rome.  Paul did not establish those churches on reasons alone, but neither could reason fail to be a part of his discussion of the new faith of Christians.  Aquinas, even more than Augustine, applied rigorous reasoning to bring the then newly-discovered insights of Aristotle into what was an already well established theological framework.  And yet, the end result of all Aquinas' work, work that scholars today spend a lifetime studying and still say they do not fully grasp?  He had a vision, after which, he said, all his work was as straw; and he never wrote another word.

The visions of Julian of Norwich were, arguably, beyond reason.  They certainly weren't the end result of reasoning; yet she spent her anchorite revising and revisiting those visions and making sense of them both through her experience and her faith, and through her reason.  She did not reason as Aquinas did, nor even as Augustine did; but is she any less a theologian for that?  Her vision of Christ as Mother preserve a theological insight that might otherwise be lost to Christian thinking, and we are all the richer for it.  It isn't, of course, a conclusive vision, and it provokes all manner of response, even today.  Some emphasize it, some try to explain it away, none make it a pillar of their theological arguments.  But it is a statement about the nature of God; and in line with Luther's negative theology, that we can only truly say what God is not, we need to be careful to say God cannot be Mother as well as Father; not in our understanding, which will always have to explain God or experience God in the frame of reference we already have.

There are, as I say, various theologies:  there is theology as the umbrella term for Christian reasoning about God, and then there is theology, the specific field concerned with the nature of God, as opposed to Christology, which is concerned with the nature of the Christ; and pneumatology, the study of the nature of the Holy Spirit; not to mention ecclesiology, and soteriology, and systematic theology, and the theology of worship.

You get the idea.

Must we be mathematicians who understand geometry both Euclidean and non-Euclidean, and elementary analysis, and calculus, in order to speak of arithmetic at all, or how we understand the workings of the world in terms of quantum mechanics?  I cannot say I am a physicist, but I can understand some of the ideas of modern physics without being ashamed of my inability to follow the mathematics that underpins them.  Neither do I need to understand Christology as Jan Sorbino does, nor theology as Gustavo Gutierrez does, in order to grasp the idea of the preferential option for the poor, or to consider the virtues of liberation theology.  Perhaps I do if I want to discuss the matter with the Pope Emeritus; but if I want to practice the preferential option for the poor as my Christian duty?  I only need a certain understanding of the teachings of the Gospels.  That understanding will be a theological one; but need it be a formal, even a systematic, theological one?  Only if I wish it to be so.  Will that understanding answer all my questions, clear all doubts, confirm all beliefs?  Of course not; nothing will.  Life is messy.  We reason from life to conclusions; never from conclusions to life.

Theology is what we engage in when we talk about God, whether it is to understand our own thoughts about how to be a Christian, or whether it is trying to explain the function and necessity of "natural law".  Theology originated as an endeavour of people trained in Greek reason to speak of God in terms of that reasoning, usually as a way of distinguishing one set of ideas (acceptable) from another (heresies).  That kind of theological effort is apologetics, although it is more and more, and especially since the Enlightenment, seen as the sole purpose of theology.  There are, of course, other uses; and they can be as esoteric as Tillich's Systematic Theology or as deliberative as Barth's Dogmatics, or as narrow as a text I picked up in seminary about the theology of worship.  But it can also be a hymn, a Celtic prayer, a meditation by a poet, a record of a mystical experience, the reason why you react to a psalm or a sermon.  Theology is perhaps even better defined by what it isn't, than by what it is.

And what it primarily isn't is an academic exercise carried out solely by learned practitioners with knowledge and abilities far beyond those of mortal men and women, with insights too deep for untrained minds to plumb and understandings too vast for common people to follow.

The underlying post behind that post at Wounded Bird laments that theology does not lead to certainty; but that, I would argue, is the proper way of faith.  Theology, or more properly scriptural studies in seminary, taught me that the parables of Christ, far from being visions of heaven in an earthly guise, are disturbing pictures of a world turned inside out by the presence of God, a world in which certainty is the failure, uncertainty the hope of faith.  At some point perhaps that leads me to Luther's negative theology; to the idea that I can only know what God is not, based on the revelation in Scripture and through the teachings of my church (we are long past the days of "The" Church).  It is at least better than the certainty that I know what cannot be known.  Or, more accurately, that I need to know what cannot be known.

"Why doth the heathen rage?"

May I point out the internal incoherence here:

Fr. Murray elides the distinction between marriage by the state, and marriage as a Catholic sacrament.  I am an ordained UCC minister, and my church has recognized same-sex marriages since before I entered seminary.  A service for same sex marriages was in the UCC Book of Worship when I bought my first copy.  Does that make the UCC un-Christian?  Perhaps in Fr. Murray's eyes, but I was taught in seminary that the fundamental Christian bond was in baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (which is one reason the baptismal blessing in the UCC did not shift to "inclusive language").

Fr. Murray, in other words, is at least not terribly ecumenical here.  But he's more fundamentally incoherent than that.  He insists a same sex marriage cannot be called "marriage."  First, I have to point out we don't have a French Academy here, which decides what words mean, or which usage is proper English usage.  "Marriage" may be limited to one man and one woman in Fr. Murray's personal lexicon, but he cannot lay claim to control the whole usage by the rest of the country.

Nor can he limit marriage to a word used only by Catholics for the sacrament of the same name.  He says Christian teaching is being caricatured as bigotry, but "marriage" is not an exclusively Christian, nor even Roman Catholic, word or concept.  Further, he says "they" (his opponents) now want to "assert" that "gay marriage is the only rational and Christian thing to do."  There are two arguments there, and he slides them together for his Roman Catholic convenience.

I say that only because the RC considers marriage a sacrament, and therefore it must be performed by a priest properly authorized to perform the sacraments.  That is not the law in America, and hasn't been the law since Protestants divided the Roman Catholic church from the state several centuries ago.  Whether or not the Church in Rome wants to recognize same-sex marriage is a theological and ecclesiological issue for that church.  The UCC allows me to decide whether or not to officiate such a union, although at the moment the laws of my state won't recognize such a union.  There is a legal concept of marriage, and there is a religious one.  Fr. Murray should know better than to presume the two are one, and the one they are is Roman Catholic.  I recognize only two sacraments, and the State is not involved in the administration or oversight of either.  By my tradition the state is free to redefine marriage, but it has no concern in how I define the eucharist, or to whom I administer it (and my table would probably be more open than the Roman Catholic table; but that's merely a point of illustration,  Although that might also make me less Christian in Fr. Murray's eyes).

Marriage is not exclusively Christian in this country, and has not been since its founding; otherwise no person could perform a wedding service except a Christian priest or minister.  Fr. Murray wants to control that term, but his Church lost that battle in the 16th century.  He knows he is free to refuse to marry together two persons of the same gender.  He should also understand they are free to be married according to the laws of the State.  It's been over 400 years; some issues are finally put to rest.

As for the "attack on our freedom to preach what we believe:"  pure nonsense.  I am free to critique what you profess to believe, whether I do it from a Christian perspective or as a disciple of Richard Dawkins.  This is, of course, the argument of a man who wants to say he is the only virtuous one; even as he disavows that line of reasoning because he says it is being used against people like him.

His final point in that clip is flat out stupid.  We don't, he asserts, allow "sinners" to have a legal recognition of their relationship.  In the Great State of Texas, an "informal marriage" can be established just by the couple saying they are married.  That is without benefit of clergy or even a ceremony by the state.  When I was young we called that "living in sin," but it's been the law in Texas since long before I was born.  Which means it's a legal recognition of their relationship.

Sorry, Father.  But what the law requires and what your Church recognizes, are two different things; and it's been that way for a very, very long time around here.

"God setteth the solitary in families"

The acknowledgement of homosexuals among us has led, almost overnight, to the acceptance of gay marriage; which, of course, will lead more firmly to the acceptance of homosexuals among us.

This is a good thing.  What's odd is that there has been, since 1973, no similar acknowledgment of the women among us who seek, or need, abortions. 

I've met those women, and just knowing them briefly was as eye-opening as knowing openly homosexual couples.  Meeting them, I realized they were human beings:  not whores or sluts or party girls or strumpets, or even sorority vixens with rich daddies.  They were just ordinary people with ordinary lives.  Real life, my pastoral care professor in seminary never tired of telling us, is messy.  The women having abortions have messy lives, just like the rest of us; and their decisions to have abortions are not for the convenience of more free, hot hot hot sex!  Nor is it simply to unburden themselves of the weight of another child, or to keep their current boyfriend, or their figure, or whatever other demeaning idea you have in your head.  Their decisions and choices were as individual as their lives; and they are just as messy.

It is the great problem of generalizing, the great danger of systematizing (and why, on a complete tangent, I am, along with Kierkegaard, so against systems of thought of any kind), that we turn individual human beings into things, the better to fit them into our concepts, our ideas, our ideals.  Women are human beings.  Pregnant women are human beings.  Demanding, under force of law, that they continue any and all pregnancies to term, is little more than slavery.  I would gladly argue it violates the 13th Amendment directly.  You may disapprove, you may morally condemn; but if you do, I'd ask you who are without sin to cast the first stone.

I also don't think you should have the full weight of the State behind you.  Not even a little of that weight.  Kate Michelman is right:

By and large, our policymakers have never viewed abortion as a medical procedure - instead placing it under the Pennsylvania Crimes Code -- and therefore have not nurtured a system of abortion care that is woman-focused, readily accessible, and responsive to their medical needs. The Commonwealth's focus has been on denying access, not protecting the health and safety of women who need this medical care. If the charges against [Kermit] Gosnell prove true, Gosnell was an outlaw who repeatedly violated numerous laws and should have been shut down years ago, but the state did not hold him accountable to its own laws and policies.

To the State, abortion is a medical procedure, just as marriage is a civil arrangement to determine who is directly responsible for any children of the marriage, and who owns any property acquired during the marriage.  (I recall that Loving v. Virginia went to the Supreme Court on a violation of Virginia criminal law.  Can anyone today defend interracial marriage as a criminal offense?)  The morality of the marriage, its fecundity or lack thereof, its adherence or lacking to any religious standards, is not the state's concern.  Neither is abortion, within the framework of Roe and Casey.  And why should the state be neutral in this way?

 During a Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee hearing on proposed abortion regulation bills, Tyhisha Hudson, a woman who had obtained an abortion at Gosnell's clinic, was asked why she went to him. She testified that women in her neighborhood knew that Gosnell was the man you saw for the cheapest abortion.

Another Gosnell patient, Davida Johnson, noted in an Associated Press article that she intended to go to Planned Parenthood for an abortion procedure, but was scared away by anti-abortion protesters picketing outside the clinic. An acquaintance suggested she go to Gosnell, where protesters (ironically) were not an issue.

Evidence suggests that a number of factors influenced a woman's decision to seek care at Gosnell's clinic: Medicaid's refusal to provide insurance coverage for most abortions; the scarcity of abortion providers in Pennsylvania (and across the nation); the fear of violence perpetrated by protestors at clinics, and the right-wing culture that has so stigmatized abortion that many think it is still illegal 40 years after Roe v. Wade.

If people were injured by the criminal acts of Kermit Gosnell, the state had an obligation to protect them from those acts, not just to punish Gosnell after the fact.  The State, after all, licensed Gosnell as a doctor; it had a legal obligation to be sure that licensure was sound.  If the women were behaving immorally by seeking abortions, that is between them and their moral community, whoever or whatever that is.  I have met these women, and while I do not know them well, or know everyone of them, I know that their decisions are their own, and the state is no more entitled to interfere than to decide what neighborhood they should live in, or what stores they should shop at.

Box of rocks v. reality

I was going to point out how everything old really is new again, having stumbled across this recent post.  The definition of marriage is back in public discourse, thanks to the ramblings of Ben Carson, who's 15  minutes of fame should be up anytime now. In fact, most of the arguments against gay marriage are back; or, since that post is only 6 months old, they never really went away.  They haven't gotten any more reasonable, either, or, IMHO, defensible.  This, however, does qualify as a new argument:

“You may be as straight as an arrow, and you may have a friend that is as straight as an arrow,” Everhart said. “Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

I had to read that a couple of times before I realized the "free ride" was health care.  Because, you know, this is America, and while you're entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, no way in HELL are you entitled to health care.  Especially just by being married!  I mean, what's next?!  People getting married just so they can have kids?  Or worse, getting married and NOT having kids!  What a sham marriage that would be!

Might have some financial benefits, though; so we'll have to be on the lookout for that.....

Mostly it's because we don't want them here....

Texas has a history of sending our most obnoxious politicians to Washington.  The latest is Ted Cruz, who is an idiot.

CRUZ: And it will become a bigger and bigger part of the state budget and so if Texas did as some other states are doing and signed on to the expansion of Medicaid, what we would see is Medicaid growing even faster than it is now as a percentage of the state budget and crowding out every other priority. So if you think it’s important for the state to continue spending on public education, you should be glad that the state is not signing on to Medicaid expansion. If you want state funds to provide for our prisons and law enforcement to incarcerate violent criminals and keep them off the streets you should be glad we’re not signing up for this Medicaid expansion because every state that does so is going to be regretting it mightily because the pressure is going to crowd out just about every other priority in the budget.

Let me put it in the simplest way possible:  at least one school district will see state funding for the next two years amount to $19.00 per student.  Yes:  $9.50 per student, per year, for two years.  That's all the state says it can afford.*

And yet Texas won't sign on to Medicaid expansion.

Sen. Ted Cruz is an idiot.  End of discussion.

Update:  Maybe Sen. Cruz needs to talk to Gov. Perry.  If only that were the real Gov. Perry.

*unless the budget currently under consideration in the Lege is radically changed; but you might as well expect the sun to rise in the West tomorrow morning.

Bing Googles Easter

Thought Criminal alerts me to the War on Easter brought to you by Google yesterday (I wasn't on the web.  It was Easter.  Hmmmm.....).  And the post there is worth reading, as it is Chavez's own words.

Apparently some on Twitter thought Cesar Chavez was Hugo Chavez (hell, they all look alike, amirite?) (and really, click the gallery of tweets to find out how serious I am), and really resented Chavez being compared to Christ because, well, it's Easter!

Bing got it right; they put up Easter eggs.  Now THAT'S how you observe a religious holiday on a search engine home page!  As FoxNews notes: "A search of Google's past doodles for phrases like "Jesus" produced zero results."

Draw your own conclusions.  One person on Twitter (at the link in the middle paragraph) noted it could be a Ph.D. level study in trolling Christian conservatives.  There's something to that, too.


Because Christians can't be "liberal labor leaders," donchaknow?

“Google scrambled some Easter eggs yesterday. Or, more precisely, it didn’t. It would be silly and counterproductive to exaggerate Google’s eye-poke at Christians, but it would be a mistake not to consider its meanings, too,” Mitchell wrote. On Christianity’s holiest day, Easter Sunday, the Web’s hyper-dominant site’s commemorative screen was an earnestly winsome portrait of American labor organizer, Caesar Chavez.”

He continued: “Sure, no Christian was mocked, defamed, arrested, or persecuted. And heaven forbid any believer needs internet graphics to help bolster their faith. But hundreds of millions of Christians received the clearly intended message that Google doesn’t deign to wish them well on their sacred day. It would rather honor a liberal labor icon.”

 Moving on.....