How Can I Keep from Singing?

Getting away from the topic I can't do anything about (but be outraged) and back to the topic I also can't do anything about (but I actually know something about it): The church.

This is where I have to pause and confess that I get tired of left blogistan. We can't really do anything about anything, but we can by Gawd! get outraged about topics we have no control over. Obama decides not to release some photos, and we all have an opinion on how much like Bush this is (which is bad! It's bad! Except, of course, whenever Bush decided not to do something because Clinton would have done it, that was bad! It was bad!). And we get upset about what some group somewhere is saying about somebody else somewhere (I won't name names. It's pointless, and the examples so numerous you just have to think of one to know what I mean. They're everywhere.) And we tell ourselves our desperately important concerns are desperately important to everyone, and our opinions will change the world!.

And I'm as bad as anybody on the web, and I've complained about this once or twice before (and if I had a secretary and time to set up a system of tags I could mine the archives for the links; but I don't....), and I've just posted three different posts on torture, but that's different because.....well, because.

No, actually; it's not different at all. I really do need to get out more.

But, man! is it tedious. I'm so tired of the outrage I'm into faux outrage over the outrage. How PoMo of me, huh? How meta! How deconstructionist! (well, no, but nobody really knows that what means anyway, so why not misuse it?) So, I'm just going to respond to these comments from the earlier post, the one on something I actually know a (very) little about, and see if I can get my mind right, again.

When the churches were full, I wonder if a goodly portion of the folks were present more for cultural than religious reasons. Could it be that, in fact, not that many people are drawn to the practice of the faith, unless the pressure from the surrounding culture is high?

Grandmère Mimi

Yeah, I think so. It's certainly that, in a very large degree. Although the Catholic church was the culture for Europe for centuries, when the Protestant Reformation forced a split, the RC managed to maintain a culture which kept it in the world but not of the world far better (at least from the outside looking in) than the Protestants did. I understand the complaints against liturgical worship, but I've never seen the saving grace of the "revivalist" culture and the mega-churches and "Gospel of Wealth" it spawned. There was a virtue in the old German E&R "Du muss gehen!" (sorry, I can' muster the German double "s") that is sadly lacking today. Of course, it failed due to the rise of individualism as much as anything else; which is the worm in the heart of the rose of Protestantism, but that discussion ends up with us linking Blake to Derrida, so I won't go there.

But, as Kierkegaard diagnosed in 19th century Denmark, the world was too much with the church, late and soon. The problem, of course, has always been: how do you separate the world from the church? And the answer is: unless you insist the church resemble a monastery, you don't. They are inseparably bound, and the issue is: how do we make the best of this? For while God doesn't need the Church, the Church certainly needs God. But, as Pound said to Browning: "There can be but on 'Sordello;!/But 'Sordello', and my 'Sordello'?" So while we have to insist, we have to be careful what we insist on; because we just might get it.

Consider the situation of the two American political parties as a case study, and a metaphor: one thrives because it has a vision; it is lead by a leader both visionary and pragmatic, and so balanced, he succeeds (the great Christian mystics and church leaders have always achieved a similar balance, from Paul to the present day). The opposition party flounders because it is driven by purity and the need to ostracize all who are not of the body. Jesus famously said: "Those who are not against us are with us." Turn that phrase around, turn it to its usual meaning, and you have the very definition of the circular firing squad. One purifies the group; the other calls the group's very existence into question. When groups prefer the former, they begin to die. When they pursue the latter, they live always with the mysterium tremendums.

But this is what it means to recognize that the Church needs God. It is, indeed, a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Part of it has to do with location. All of the urban churches I have attended have been very gray. However, Emmaus UCC in Vienna Virginia has many young parents and has a vibrant youth ministry.

D2

Yes, yes it does; and we are right back to that question of culture and accomadation again, aren't we? Recognizing this reality, we are also condemned to live in it, to accept the tacit segregation of society by generations, to segregate our congregations by location and who lives where. But the newest developments are not always full of "young people", and the established neighborhoods are not always dominated by the elderly. Yet our churches are. And, as a new comment (at the end) notes, this may not long last. Are we doomed to this condition forever? To some degree, yes, human nature being what it is, the "laws" of sociology being what they are. To some degree, of course: no. We are free agents, not victims of fate or location, not prey to instincts immutable and unalterable. We preach a life-changing Gospel! Why don't we use it directly, to change our own lives? What would a church look like then, that did that?

one of the magic things about Facebook for me was finding members of my church youth group (midwestern suburban SBC) 20 years on, a sizable majority of which are still "churched" in some fashion, including me, the lesbian. Oddly enough though, those that I consider the most spiritual (as opposed to religious, if I can make that distinction) are those not particularly invested in a particular congregation, even as they reconnected to the old peers.

My particular cohort was pretty active in softball, choirs, councils, summer mission trips; intensely socialized, with a lot of individual tolerance and support.

As entwined as protestantism and dominant american culture have become, it may be interesting to think about that time when christianity was viewed as a threat to the dominant culture, primarily because it provided support and encouragement for the oppressed in that society.

Does christianity seem to be adrift for lack of vocabulary, or lack of moral focus? If church means softball games and centuries-old songs, when what you need is a community where you can share baby-sitting and learn how to live on a monthly budget that's half of what you expected, where are you going to go?

Cowboy Diva

Vocabulary is very much an issue in this for me. One of the more spastic efforts of this blog is to establish a functional vocabulary of Christianity which can be used in public (i.e., among non-believers and non-church goers) as easily as the language of the evangelicals and fundamentalists is used (hint: there are many, many more forms of "salvation" and "grace" than are preached of by Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell, or Joel Osteen.). Christianity once was the vocabulary of the public square: see, e.g., the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Of course that was then, this is now, but it was well into the 19th century that theology was the mother of all the sciences. This was no coincidence: Augustine as well as Aquinas, to name two of the greatest pillars, borrowed their language from the world (mostly the Hellenes) consciously and deliberately, much as Paul mixed his Hebraisms with ideas Gentiles were more familiar with (it's noteworthy that the "Letter to the Hebrews" is the only one addressed directly to the community Jesus was born, lived, and died in). Theology has always been a mixed enterprise, taking its language to best convey its ideas to its target audience. In that sense, it is itself the very product of Pentecost.

Is that flame dying now? If so, why? Is there nothing we can do to fan it? Can we not even try, and perhaps do a bit better job than accepting the vocabulary of the world as foundational, accepting the Enlightenment argument that this discussion of "spirit" and "metaphysics" is mostly bunk? The current enterprise in philosophy of religion circles is to craft a religion without metaphysics, perhaps without religion at all. Do we really need to accept the failed experiment of the "God is Dead" movement? Can't we do better than that?

When wilt thou save the people
O God of mercy when?
The people, Lord, the people
Not thrones and crowns but men?
Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they
Let them not pass like weeds away
Their heritage, a sunless day
God save the people

Shall crime bring crime forever
Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it thy will, oh Father
That men shall toil for wrong?
No say thy mountains, no say thy skies
Men's clouded sun shall brightly rise
And songs be heard instead of sighs
God save the people

When wilt thou save the people...
God save the people, for thine they are
Thy children as thy angels fair
God save the people from despair
God save the people - Oh, God save the people (4x)

When wilt thou save the people...
God save the people - save us! - for thine they are - thine they are
Thy children as thy angels fair - Oh, God save the people
God save the people - God save the people - from despair - God save the people
God save the people - Oh, God save the people (3x)

God save the people (3x)

Cowboy Diva, as I see it, if the churches are doing their jobs, they should always be a threat to the dominant culture. Until we look around and see no one trampled underfoot, no one with not enough, no one excluded or oppressed, then the church must be counter-cultural.

Grandmère Mimi

Yes, yes, yes! I would only say: depends entirely on who we are threatening, and with what. The kergyma of the Church should be the Gospel, and the kerygma of the Gospel is the basileia tou theou. That, to my mind, is the only kerygma and source of salvation and purpose of the Church. And that's breathtakingly counter-cultural and affirming, all at once.

I wrote this before reading the thread, other people had some similar ideas.

You are right, that the emptying of the mainline churches is not due, entirely, to the virtual black listing of them and, even more so, their ideas, in the mass media. Like may complex phenomena there is no one cause. But to overlook the potency of the mass media on the minds it increasingly forms isn’t going to get you farther. When I say that the mass media forms the minds of young people now, it’s a continuing and horrifying lesson the extent to which that is true. I see it in my nieces who have been studiously sheltered from most of it. Mass media is inseparable from mass marketing and the experimentally manipulative methods it buys in order to manipulate. Though saturation marketing could explain most of that success.

And if the younger cohort won't attend church because they see nothing in it for them (for any number of reasons), how does the church continue?

As a congregation large enough to support a building and a pastor, it’s a really big problem. I don’t know if a lot of them can without becoming show biz venues, which is what a lot of them become. From what I’ve seen, whoever they serve, it’s not the gospel that Jesus taught or the line of Jewish prophets and teachers who he relied on so heavily.

The protestant churches I respect the most, whose disappearance would be a cultural disaster are those who do what the gospels say they should, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, visit the prisoner, love God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind and their neighbor as themselves. Those who follow the line of advice from Hillel onward to not do to another that which is hateful to themselves. Those who forgive their enemies and pray for them. Those who help individuals form their characters and lives towards those ends.

Those practices aren’t without an effect in the turbulence of society, politics and commerce. You do those things and they’ll try to kill you or to ignore you. In Chris Hedges book “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” he points out that in Aldous Huxley’s dystopia, the control wasn’t through book burning, it was through making it increasingly less desired to read books. It was through pleasuring people out of being human. I’m increasingly impressed with that Huxley’s insights as an important warning.

In the popular and academic cultures, where some see the death of God, I see a concurrent death of the human. As developed in a long blog brawl I had last week, it is the increasing and casually held view of people as objects without any inner light, soul or anything. I do think a large part of that is in the mistaken notion that science, which I never have to stop reminding some people was ever only intended to study the material world, has found out that there is nothing but a large mass of chemical reactions and the physical structures that contain them. Without any more than that to people, there isn’t any obligation to consider them as anything else. Certainly not those that any individual chooses to consider in that way. Without the moral restriction on seeing and considering other people as possessing inherent rights, people will tend to become their own god. A mono-theistic god, who can cast privileges to subject beings at their whim and to withhold their concern on a blanket or selective basis. Many of the people I’ve seen who are the product of the culture we have today are these kinds of ignorant gods, sitting at the center of a wired universe.

The brilliance of much of modern Christian theology, the poetry of a lot of it, hasn’t worked to convince people, it hasn’t kept the families of those who used to come. Maybe it would work better to remember what motivated it all in the first place. Just one observation, it won’t be welcomed by a lot of those who will be inconvenienced by it. There were a few warnings of where the really hard cases would be in the gospels.

I don’t know if it would break through the crust of consumer distraction or to re-spark the deadened tinder in their damaged minds but if the churches made their purpose that of fulfilling the gospels they exist to make manifest in the world, it might work better than adopting the trappings of the very culture that is killing them. It might not work but they’d die doing what they are supposed to be living for. They might find it easier to do if they didn’t have a building to maintain, though some of those would certainly be a useful place to do it from. Jesus wasn’t a building based minister, it was when he came into contact with that big one that real trouble started.

Anthony McCarthy

Some of these need no further comment from me; especially as we move down the comments, and they begin to reflect, like the Bible itself (a collection of books, after all; not a single volume. "Bible" simply means "Books." It's a title we gave it, not God or some prophet. How soon we forget that.) The whole purpose of comments on a blog is summed up in observations like these:

Grandmère Mimi,
You are absolutely right; the kingdom of god is meant to be countercultural. Without that focus on justice and mercy, the church becomes just so much background noise.
Cowboy Diva

And this one comes in just as I am preparing this post, and perfectly captures what I was trying to say:

This post really hit home. We are returning to the US this summer after 4 years in the UK where we attend the local C of E church. In our early 40's we are frequently the youngest at the service, and our kids were the only ones in the Sunday school. I sing in the choir where I am age of the children of the other singers. I finally stopped forcing my oldest two to attend Sunday school, they complained at there being no one else and having to discuss religion with people the age of their grandparents. Once a month we get a family crowd at a "family" service where the readings, prayers, etc. are all conducted by the youth of the congregation. Otherwise the youth and their parents don't exist. If we return in 10 years it would be very hard to beleive there will be any congregation at all. This church actually has 3 members that have joined the ministry after retiring from other professions, and the last two pastors joined the ministry in their 50's. Yes it is good that people can join the ministry with a lifetime of experience to bring to the task, but also sad that we have the same age group talking to only the sage age group.

Our ELCA church in the US has had a different path. Sunday attendance has been flat for over 10 years, but our Sunday school has almost tripled. A steady trickle of families with children has replaced the aging congregation. But it points out the missing group, those between high school and their first children. People come back to church when their kids hit 4 or 5. Otherwise if single or childless, they don't exist. Those returning are returning, they were raised going to church. The unchurched are not attracted. The other smaller group that have joined are older couples moving closer to their grandkids. In a few cases, joining our church because that is where their children and grandchildren attend. I like to think we had some great program that worked, but the ability to stay constant in attendance and add to our Sunday school appears to be mere chance. (We also got a few members back when we decided to write and speak with every member on the rolls, they started attending again because they felt invited back.)

My apologies for the length, but the short point is the mainline churches are not reaching those between 18-35, the childless, and the unchurched. Fewer and fewer are attending for their own religious experience and growth but to provide that for their children or grandchildren.

Peace be with you.

Expat in UK

And also with you; and with you all. This goes to my original impetus which is also, as D2 wisely reminded us at the outset, is the weakness of any one vision: we know only what we know. I am concerned about the "unchurched" and the ability of the church to reach out to those who don't know it and don't need it. But then, we've been there before, haven't we? It may be we all, especially those of us ordained and called into the particular ministry that follows in the footsteps of Peter and Paul, have to take up the mantle of such itineracy again. I am very concerned at the costs a full-time pastor imposes on a church; and the sense of identity a "proper" church gives people. The history of the church, even the recent history, is littered with small groups and small churches that couldn't buck the trend, the expectations, the assumptions of both the culture and the society (and even sociology). But I also know, from my own experience, of exceptions to the rule. There are always exceptions to the rule, and they prove that God is working in the church, as opposed to the church working to do the work of God. (We too easily get that equation backwards.) Certainly the trend seems to be what expat identifies. Some congregations, as D2 reminds us, are reaching the young, the 18-35. But what can the Church do about it? What should the Church do about it?

That is the ecclesiological question today.

Just because you're paranoid

doesn't mean they're not out to get you:

The former Vice President characterized the Iranian goal in negotiations on ending that country's nuclear program as mere stalling for time, and the Europeans as trying to "restrain the U.S." from military action.

"Everybody's in a giant conspiracy to achieve a different objective than the one we want to achieve," Cheney said.

Because, you know, we need to start a third war, the other two are going so well. And then there's this conspiracy! The rest of the world hates us for our freedom! They want to tie down the mighty Gulliver of our military with their Lilliputian webs of deceit!

OTOH, I spent part of the day in a public place, a government agency no less, crowded with people trying to get something they each needed.

I didn't get the sense a one of them cared a wet snap about 40 photographs showing abuse of prisoners by US military personnel, and whether or not they'd ever get to see them.

I really need to get out more. So does Dick Cheney, apparently.

While We're On the Subject this morning....

By the way, pay attention to what Liz Cheney says here. The argument is not just the "ticking time bomb" scenario, but that torture is illegal, so what was done was not torture. This is not accidental. This is, as Lawrence Wilkerson point out, blind panic.



Notice Mr. Robinson is frustrated because Ms. Cheney's argument begs the very question it raises. If we can assume a perfect scenario where we know the outcome before taking the action, then, hey, presto! It's okay!

Real life, of course, doesn't work like that. And Ms. Cheney never mentions how many times we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or what information we got from him. This is the level of the argument now, though: bluster. Small wonder Mr. Robinson soon realized he was arguing with a fool, and how pointless that is.

How Torture Works

Yes, it is disgusting that we have to talk about torture in terms of efficacy rather than as the amoral and unconscionable practice it is. But that's the way the debate is being framed, so we might as well get good at it. And since the Framer-in-Chief of this argument is Dick Cheney and his Nebulous Claims of Security, we really should keep this story in mind when listening to him:

In their book "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," Michael Isikoff and David Corn said Libi made up the story about Iraqi training after he was beaten and subjected to a "mock burial" by his Egyptian interrogators, who put him in a cramped box for 17 hours. Libi recanted the story after being returned to CIA custody in 2004.

And just in case that name isn't familiar:

Libi was captured fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, and he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush administration. He became the unnamed source, according to Senate investigators, behind Bush administration claims in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda operatives. The claim was most famously delivered by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his address to the United Nations in February 2003.

Cheney, of course, still insists the invasion of Iraq was an unalloyed good, and has never admitted any intelligence justifying that war was in error. So his evaluations of the value of torture need to be seen in the light of what we know about him, and his opinions.

I wrote this yesterday, then last night heard Lawrence Wilkerson on Rachel:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And heard about this comment by Jesse Ventura:



(I do love the way Jesse makes Larry uncomfortable with his critique of Bush.)

What can I say? When I agree with Jesse Ventura and a retired colonel who's still in the GOP...well, it's gotta at least be worthy of publication on a blog.

Five lights? Or Four?

We keep circling 'round the central question of torture as a form of interrogation, and that is:

What do we know about interrogation?

Any lawyer who has ever questioned a client, much less a witness, will tell you that cooperation and conciliation works much better than bluster and animosity. You don't intimidate witnesses; you cajole them. I once questioned a witness in an administrative hearing. It was a bit nerve-wracking as I was used to confronting witnesses at trials after having taken their depositions; I knew what they were likely to say. Not so in this case; but the witness was brittle and pompous, and I found it easy to prove her grossly unreliable and foolish. I became a bit harsh, a bit aggressive. Not that it did a great deal for my client's case, but he loved the spectacle. The verbal "torture" I inflicted on the witness (it was hardly that, but as close as one gets in the legal system) delighted him so much he decided he didn't need me anymore when I couldn't do it again. My calmer and more persistent questioning better suited his case, but he wanted the fireworks and sense of triumph. He wanted, in short, what all clients think is best: to crush his enemies and drive them before him, to delight in the lamentations of their women.

This is pretty much what everyone seems to want, from the still out-pouring articles and TeeVee interviews and justifications for torture: all given by people with no experience in interrogating prisoners or getting information out of people who's just as soon not tell you anything. We would never allow torture in a criminal case or a civil case (it was once quite common) because we know it's unreliable. Except we don't know that, when we are told the informants are scary enough. Then, only torture will work.

At least that's what Michael Hayden and Dick Cheney keep saying. And, as Juliet Lapidos points out, this is a standard scenario of blockbuster movies, too. Whenever we want to underline just how vicious the "bad guys" are, we have them torture our "good guys," all in the name of getting information they'd never otherwise give up. Because kindness and blandishments won't work (they are, after all, bad guys, and our good guys know it!), and severe pain will...well, it will prove how tough our good guys are.

Except when it doesn't; as in the STNG episode Lapidos writes about, and from which the picture above is taken. Picard is absolutely broken by the torture; he confesses as much, at the end. And for what? What was the point? To extract information? Or to win a contest of wills? We know the answer. It is plain. Torture is not about extracting information. It is about the raw use of power, about holding someone helpless while you inflict cruelty and savagery upon them. Dick Cheney insists otherwise:

Cheney said that by getting rid of the enhanced interrogation techniques and the Bush adminstration's surveillance program, "you reduce the intelligence flow to the intelligence community upon which we based those policies that were so successful."

But we may soon know whether or not that is true. Even so, it's the utilitarian argument, and loathsome for that reason alone. It is troublesome we are even discussing the issue. How many times do we have to point out:

The point of torture is to violate the integrity of the human person and to coerce the will itself.

How many times do we have to defeat the consequentialist argument, or the utilitarian one? But it's also an argument from ignorance. We don't torture because it is cruel and unusual punishment. We don't torture because it is against US as well as international law. We don't torture because is it not an interrogation technique.

Above all, we don't torture because we are not monsters. Well, some of us are; but that's why we have laws. That's why the situation of Robert Bolt's "Man for All Seasons" applies here, too. We must give the devil the benefit of the laws; but we must also hold the devil to account under those laws. God demanded of the Hebrew prophets that even God be held to account under God's law. We can do no less for the former Administration officials who committed these crimes against our own humanity.

Whose Church Is It, Anyway?

Maybe it's the church I choose. Maybe it's just me.

But thinking about this subject, I realized that, for my entire life, I have always been one of the youngest people in the room in any church I've ever joined or attended. I'm 50 something now, and that has never changed. When I was a child in church, I remember clearly my parents were of roughly the same generation as their friends in church. There were a few people older, but they were a distinct minority. The bulk of the congregants were people of my parents' age. But every church I've attended, visited, or pastored, I've been one of the youngest people there. Consistently.

It didn't used to be this way. It wasn't supposed to be this way. At my age, I should be preaching to my peers. Instead, I'm still preaching to my parents, or people as old as my parents. And most of my peers, like my parents, are set in their ways, and their ways are not the ways of church goers. If they are, they are more likely the ways of the church of their childhood than the church of Bultmann or Crossan or Patterson or Borg or the Jesus Seminar. Or even Niebuhr or Tillich. Certainly not Derrida. Nobody I know knows Derrida. Or Kierkegaard, for that matter.

So some of it is me. Certainly some of it is me. But some of it is the way things are, and the way things weren't supposed to be. True, pastors have always preached to people older than themselves, as well as younger; in that, I'm no exception. But I've never preached anywhere where I wasn't one of the youngest people in the room. And I've only been preaching for about 10 years, now. Which might explain, as much as anything, why young people are leaving the church in droves. It just isn't their place.

What was supposed to bring them back was "popular music." Funny, that's what was supposed to bring my generation back to the church. Yup, that didn't start with Gen X or the rise of the mega-church or the insidious marketing intent of fundamentalist evangelicals. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun. Luther's hymns were the popular songs of the day. Wesley's hymns were the same; why do you think they're still so popular now, at least in churches? Shaped note hymnals were wildly popular at one time (I still remember one from my grandparent's church; and yes, they were some of the oldest people in the room in their little church, so long ago now).

I know many churches now use "popular music," but more often than not it's performed music, meant to be watched; not hymn singing, meant to be sung by the congregation. I can only report from video-tape on some of this, and nothing I have to say has the backing of sociological studies, so it may be too narrow a range of experience to mean anything. But the tapes I saw in seminary of the "mega-church" we were told then was the cutting edge of a "new Reformation" (I still cringe for the professor who told me that) showed mostly people my age or older in the "seeker services." Not a lot of young people there; teenagers, 20 year olds. Not the dominant crowd. The "entertainers" on the "stage" (they seemed more that than worship leaders, to me) were young; but that's because they were energetic. People my age could never generate that much energy. And yet, it still didn't do much good.

Then there's the "ghetto" position of "youth minister." Truly large churches, of course, subdivide their ministries into "youth" and "elderly" and "shut in", etc., the better to serve a truly vast community of persons. (Such as my brother in law's church, a large mainline congregation, almost of "mega-church" size. I considered for a moment that his church might point to a myriad of exceptions to my experience; but I've lectured his Sunday school class, and no one in the room was as young as me, including my BIL, who's almost ten years older than I. And he's one of the younger people in the class.) The youth minister is the person who's supposed to keep the youth in church. But again, my experience with churches with "youth ministers" is that it's a second-class position, under the thumb of the ruling powers (Priest, pastor, church council, session, what have you), and their usual tenure is only a few years. They entertain the "youth," but sooner or later get their chain yanked, or find the youth have all gone on to college, never to return, and their novelty has worn off. The last youth minister my daughter knew was fired by the priest, for reasons obscure and irrelevant. The youth understood what it meant: they were being patronized, catered to, and had no voice in the church, and the one person they related to, could be snatched away as easily as a kleenex could be discarded. My daugher drifted away, as did everyone else in her group. So it goes.

Youth groups have been doing that since I was in church. Some youth ministers have the respect of the church and thrive; most don't. Those who do thrive do so by training up the youth in the ways of the adults, making young adults of them as soon as possible. This is not a slight, it's a fact. The churches I've known where youth ministers stayed on were churches where the youth were funneled into the adult church ASAP, and encouraged to think as much like their parents as possible. This is not a complaint, it's admiration, actually. I imagine the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches thrive (inasmuch as they do) in much the same way: by making the children prematurely adults, binding them with ties of loyalty and fealty and confession that, to outsiders, look bizarre and confining but to them are just and good and true.

I do not sit in judgment. My preference is for Taize forms of worship, for liturgical practice and the almost fanatical adherence to the Protestant form of the liturgical calendar (I don't follow saint's days and most feast days). I understand what Merton meant when he said in the monastery he found the "four walls of [his] freedom." I am, in many ways, painfully traditional, and become so more and more as I find in those traditions the living presence of the clouds of witness and all the saints that surround me. Surely those children who were shaped by those churches (mostly Baptist, in my childhood experience) found the same.

All the same, they are a distinct and dwindling minority. If these numbers can be read to show anything, it's that this decline is across the board, not just among "liberal" churches which are "wishy-washy."

That raises another issue, one Anthony McCarthy raised in comments to the post below. I don't think this decline is a result of a cultural conspiracy, but it is the result of a failure of "liberal" churches to take advantage of the vocabulary of the culture for its own benefit. The roots of the church lie in culture. Peter tried to stay true to Jewish/Hebrew culture (it was one becoming the other in his time). Paul took up the culture of the Gentiles. While Peter wore the shoes of the fisherman, Paul won the debate, and long after him Augustine used the language of Plato and the Hellenes to justify his church as the Roman empire, itself in many ways as Greco as it was Roman, fell. Aquinas, several more centuries after, took up the other "wing" of Hellenistic thought, interpreting Christian doctrine in the language of "The Philosopher," Aristotle. Most of Christian theology still alternates between these two poles. But for centuries, the discussion in those terms was the accepted discussion. Luther was a prolific and profound thinker. Melanchtion labored to put Luther's ideas into systematic form, to give them the intellectual armor of rigor and justification within the philosophical and theological framework of the day. Calvin, a lawyer, was fundamentally systematic in his thought, and fundamentally concerned with detailed and careful analyses of every position of his Reformed movement. There is a reason theology was once "the mother of all the sciences," and it is because it was so deeply interwoven into all of European, and Western, thought. It was the fountainhead, the source.

It lost that position, of course, beginning in the Enlightenment, and long and great was the fall of it. One problem is the "death" of metaphysics; a death that may have been prematurely announced. One response was to declare the "death of God," not because theologians decided to side with Nietzsche, but because they wanted to see what would really happen to theology if they took that stance.

Nothing. Nothing happened. Despite the attention of TIME magazine, no one noticed. But it is clear that Humpty Dumpty has had a great fall, and no one has put Humpty together again. Yet faith persists. It could almost be a mystery.

But the mystery is not the persistence of faith: it is the lack of a vocabulary for talking about religious belief. William James could do no better than to call them "living options" for those who believe. Rudolf Bultmann began the purge by arguing against what he labeled "primitive mythology," but that did more to darken counsel by words without knowledge (Job 38:1) than anything else, and set us all down rabbit trails trying to distinquish "mythology" from "confessional narratives." Enter Paul Ricouer, who helped as much as he hurt (mostly because he's so difficult to understand and, unlike Aquinas, we have yet to decide whether to absorb his observations, or not.) Paul Tillich could do no better than to speak of our "ultimate concern," a term so vague and amorphous it never caught on, and probably led directly to the far more existential and concrete "Death of God" movement (which never felt so well, itself). Ironically, the most popular contribution to our theological discourse has been Reinhold Niebuhr's "Serenity Prayer" (which he discarded almost as soon as he had used it) and his concept of "Moral Man and Immoral Society" (which has inspired Andrew Bacevich, but almost no one else. And it is easy, in the use Bacevich makes of it, to forget Niebuhr was an ordained pastor, the identity he clung to all his life.). This is the central dilemma of Protestantism: if the culture no longer supports your enterprise, do you any longer have an enterprise?

And if it doesn't support it any longer, here and now, at this time, part of the reason for that is that my parents are still alive.

As are most of their generation. By the time my father was my age, his parents were dead; and the cohort of the elderly was small. Now Baby Boomers are nearly elderly, and while demographically the middle-aged and elderly may be the smaller portion of the population, in the churches they dominate. The numbers of young people no longer going to church will tell you that much. And if the younger cohort won't attend church because they see nothing in it for them (for any number of reasons), how does the church continue? Where are the churches for the 20 and 30 year olds? Where are the churches where 40 is old, as in the churches of my youth? The Baby Boomers were supposed to have changed everything, but it was the "Greatest Generation" that returned from war and flooded the churches in numbers never before seen in American history. And they are still there.

It's an interesting problem. In a culture that makes the independence of youth paramount (especially when they are free to spend money!) and emphasizes the importance of the "teen years" as the years when one is most free (and most especially free to spend money, since we expect the parents to pay for the necessities for teens), and in a church (Protestantism) so closely tied, so dependent on, the culture for its very existence: that same church (I cannot speak for Catholics or the Orthodox Christians) cannot, has not, found a way to provide an institution devoted solely to the needs and interests of the dominant demographic of modern society.

And it stands perplexed as to why that group is turning away from it in such numbers. So it goes.*


*I have, in fact, said a lot about this. I'm sure I'll say a lot more, before it's over. And yes, I know this takes us very close to Christ and Culture territory. Maybe we should go there, too.

Justice, or Just Us?

Jane Harman thinks wiretapping is just fine, until her conversations are recorded.

Dick Cheney thinks arresting foreign nationals and throwing them into black prisons or Gitmo with no judicial oversight at all is just fine, but he shouldn't be subject to foreign prosecutions by foreign judicial systems:

"I hear this talk that there is going to be some kind of foreign prosecution of our guys, I just think that’s abhorrent, and I think they ought to do everything they can to fight that.”

Universal jurisdiction for thee, but not for me!

Irony is on the floor clutching its sides, roaring with laughter.

Where's all the people?

You'd think this would be good news for someone like me:

While these young "nones" may not belong to a church, they are not necessarily atheists.

"Many of them are people who would otherwise be in church," Putnam said. "They have the same attitidues and values as people who are in church, but they grew up in a period in which being religious meant being politically conservative, especially on social issues."

Putnam says that in the past two decades, many young people began to view organized religion as a source of "intolerance and rigidity and doctrinaire political views," and therefore stopped going to church.

Sadly, it would be better news if I were more non-denominational. Or otherwise unfettered by institutions, and traditions.

Maybe.

"The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without;..."

Pastor Dan provides me with this new poll from the Pew Forum. The image isn't all that wonderfully readable, and I'm not sure the information is all that new. Indeed, no offense to PD, but much of what he concludes from this I'd already concluded earlier. Some of the numbers, however, are interesting in themselves:

In contrast to opinions on these questions, majorities of those who have become unaffiliated disagree with the idea that science proves religion is just superstition. Only 32% of former Catholics and the same percentage of former Protestants agree that science proves religion to be superstition, and fewer still (less than a quarter) say it was important in their conversion.

I hesitate to jump to the conclusion that the whole "God doesn't exist!" argument isn't really gaining any traction, but that would lead us off into William James territory, and I don't want to go there. It's the reason people leave churches that interests me. Perhaps it's just a personal interest, but the division is very clearly generational:

When asked a separate series of yes-or-no questions about why they left their childhood faith, more than seven-in-ten former Catholics and former Protestants (71% each) who are now unaffiliated say they just gradually drifted away from the faith, making this the most commonly offered reason by both groups. Many also say they left their former religion because they stopped believing in its teachings, with nearly two-thirds of unaffiliated former Catholics (65%) and half of unaffiliated former Protestants (50%) saying they left their childhood religion for this reason. Among both groups, roughly four-in-ten say they departed their former faith because their spiritual needs were not being met. Roughly three-in-ten former Catholics (29%) and more than one-third of former Protestants (36%) were unhappy with their former religion's teachings about the Bible. Most of those who express concerns about the religion's teachings on the Bible say their former religion interpreted the Bible too literally, with only a few saying their former faith did not follow the Bible literally enough.

The "gradual drift away" indicates one of two things to me: either a failure of habit, or a gradual change in the community that leaves the former member feeling unmoored. Which, using the life cycle of my last church as an example, seems to make the most sense.

My last church began as a small "farmer's church," founded by German settlers in what was, 150+ years ago, rural Texas. It is now urban/suburban Houston, and as unrecognizable as farm country as any portion of New York City. When it began, it drew it's membership from a homogenous community. As that community became less homogenous, the church faltered. At one point, it closed its doors, and those who wanted to attend had to ride several miles to the nearest German E&R church. It was re-opened with a new pastor who worked vigorously to encourage attendance, and it remained a "local church" and grew through the '60's, when the neighborhood was full of executives and people moving to Houston, and the church environs were on the "edge" of town, where development was booming. In that boom the church built a sanctuary large enough to hold 300 comfortably. Then the boom ended, and the membership trickled away, all but the members who still lived nearby. Their children grew up in the church, too; but they moved further out, or further away, and attendance shrank and shrank, and the church blended into the welter of buildings on the busy street, even though the sanctuary was easily the largest building on the road, for sheer height and breadth, if nothing else.

While I was a pastor of that church, two church members on separate occasions told me they'd driven by the church for years, before someone pointed it out and they realized it was there, and it was a church. Once it had been the center of the community. Today....

Today, the community has moved beyond it, and left it behind. The largest mega-churches in town (with the exception of Lakewood) have even been forced to respond to this. People simply will not drive long distances through urban areas to attend a mega-church; or not enough will, so the latest trend is to follow the development. Churches in the neighborhood of my old church (which is still basically my neighborhood now) are, as they are able, selling their buildings and moving to where "the people are." Young people with time and money, in other words. Selling a church building isn't all that easy to do (how do you repurpose a church building?) so it isn't done much, but when the opportunity arises, the churches take it. Mega-churches are following this trend by setting up "satellite campuses" (when the largest church opened their first one, the rumor among the pastors I know was that the charismatic pastor of that church flew by private helicopter out to the satellite every Sunday morning, to give the sermon that drew the crowds. It wasn't true, but it seemed like it could be.). They go, quite literally, where the people are; or at least the people they are marketing to (I'm cynical enough to put it that way because I've seen too many "mega-churches" put up billboards around town. That's marketing, not "outreach.") Why do people leave churches? Pastor Dan points out it's partly because of the lack of community or, in some evangelical churches, too much community; and it's our complicated feelings in America, about being a member of a community, and about being an individual. Well, yeah, that fits. But 71% don't have a specific reason; they just "drifted away." Given the reality of modern American life, the fractured days and time necessary just to get the necessary done, and soccer games and track events and activities that crowd into Sunday morning, or the 6+ day a week schedules, all the work that has to be crammed into the weekends (house cleaning, grocery shopping, errands, etc.), "drifting away" sounds about right. Why leave? Why go?

What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God.
Even the anchorite who meditates alone,
For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of God,
Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.
And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour
Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
Nor does the family even move about together
But every son would have his motor cycle,
And daughters ride away on casual pillions.

Except for one or two archaic terms, you'd never know that was from the 1930's. The generation gap isn't so new after all, and while it's driven (literally, sometimes) by technology, the problem is less our technology than our devotion to technology as the "cure" for whatever ails us.

And that's a part of the "generation gap" of it all. If I prefer a "traditional" mainstream Protestant church to an evangelical one, or to one with a "modern" worship service and a pastor who thinks he should emulate Joel Osteen or Norman Vincent Peale or tell me how to have sex with my wife, where do I turn? If I seek a church composed of my generational peers, where do I find it? If I seek a church attractive to those of somewhat a like mind to mine, what would it be? Robert Wuthnow has been examining these questions for decades.

This is an interesting repudiation to the argument that failing Protestant churches aren't conservative enough:

Most of those who express concerns about the religion's teachings on the Bible say their former religion interpreted the Bible too literally, with only a few saying their former faith did not follow the Bible literally enough.

Trying to bring the teachings of Dom Crossan or Marcus Borg to a congregation, however, can be a tricky prospect. Only 36% might be inclined to embrace those teachings; perhaps many more would find them interesting and acceptable. A vocal minority, however, can easily override even 50% who are accepting or encouraging of such an approach.

And why do most of the unaffiliated join a church?

When asked whether a series of specific reasons helped lead to their first becoming affiliated with a religious group, most (51%) say they did so because their spiritual needs were not being met.

This is "new" news (check my original link; in internet terms, it's "old") again because ABCNews has picked it up and quoted the man responsible for the poll (or using it, anyway) as saying: "It's a huge change," largely because "the percentage of "nones" has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans."

Not really a surprise, though, given that the society which denigrated "free thinkers" in the 19th century is no longer around to enforce social conformity to public religious practice.

In other words, this is probably a good thing. Certainly this is:

However, new poll numbers released today from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life show that Americans are overwhelmingly open-minded about faith. A majority of Americans -- 70 percent -- say that many religions, not just their own, can lead to eternal life.

I'm also left wondering what "no religious affiliation" actually means in a post-denominational world. I know a lot of people who attended church regularly, but might not consider themselves members of the church. Denominationalism is not the social identifier it used to be; hence the rise of non-denominational churches and "mega-churches" which are practically denominations unto themselves. So it could be fewer people are going to church (which would simply be the continuation of a trend begun three decades or more ago), or it could be fewer are identifying themselves with a particular church. Mega-churches in particular are known as places where advertising is essential, because the turnover in attendees is so great. It may be a huge number of people attend a mega-church in any given time period. But how many stay there long enough to consider themselves "affiliated" with it?

We may be, in other words, simply seeing the "Bowling Alone" phenomenon in a different setting. If I learned anything about this subject in seminary (and it was old news then, over a decade ago now), it's that it's a complex one, best handled by sociologists like Robert Wuthnow, and best understood in its complexity, not from the results of one poll or another.

I know you think you understand what I said....

One other observation about the torture memos:

The techniques used were, all agree, "reverse engineered" from SERE techniques, which were themselves taken from experiences of captives in the Korean war. Not that many of these techniques were new, or even original. But the effort was made to involve as many bodies of knowledge as possible, as many disciplines as possible. And all such knowledge was used to engage techne, knowledge for making or doing, as opposed to episteme, knowledge engaged in understanding. The techniques SERE trained soldiers in were used by the Koreans for the reasons torture has always been used: to extract "confessions." But there are at least three different meanings of the word confession. In our allegiance to techne over episteme, we've lost sight of that, too.

Techne is the knowledge we esteem today. Episteme is the knowledge we deride. Distinctions between the two barely exist, for techne is the key to understanding how the world works (if something performs its designed function, that is further evidence of our mastery over the world through knowledge), and episteme is merely "theory" that fails to do anything other than obscure our grasp of techne. Theology was once the "mother" of the sciences, not because it provided the literal grounding for understanding the universe, but because it provided the episteme for our understanding. Now we denigrate theology because it is not empiricism and praise, neither science nor empiricism, but their products, as the highest and best use of human reason.

And the problem with this?

First, we lose sight of the ambiguity of words in our insistence that, like the right tool for technology, words have only one meaning, one usage, and that is the one we value most. "Confession" in theology and religion means a public dedication to a deity and a system of belief. "Confession" in the legal realm means admission of guilt to a crime. But "confession" in the common usage means an admission of truth, an absolute telling of what is. With more episteme, we might understand the complexity of a concept like "confession." Wed to our techne, though, we are quite sure we know how words work, and that they work in only one way, and that "truth" is an object hidden in the human psyche which fear and pain will ferret out. It isn't true, of course; but we fill in our ignorance with whatever knowledge lies at hand; and more often than not, the knowledge is techne, not episteme.

Second, we denigrate our humanity in the process. Is torture wrong because it fails the test of utility? Is it right, because it provides the greatest good for the greatest number? The result of advancing techne over episteme is that we discuss torture, not in terms of its morality, but of its efficacy. The central claim of morality, the one even the 19th century agnostics and existential philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre feared losing, was its position as final arbiter of human behavior in all cases. Even as he argued all ethics are a matter of personal choice because personal choice is all that is possible in an existential universe, Sartre understood the importance of the right choice (he did not champion amorality). But in a society that values technology over all, even over human life, the only moral authority is utilitarianism: does the the outcome provide the greatest good for the greatest number?

Thus are the ends made to justify the means. Thus has technology has made moral relativists of us (almost) all.

The Prime Directive

Al-Jazeera reports:

[T]he chaplains appear to have found a way around the regulation known as General Order Number One.

"Do we know what it means to proselytise?" Captain Emmit Furner, a military chaplain, says to the gathering.

"It is General Order Number One," an unidentified soldier replies.

But Watt says "you can't proselytise but you can give gifts."

Um, no; the rule of law isn't that stupid; loopholes are not that easily made:

"The translated bibles were never distributed as far as we know, because the soldier understood that if he distributed them he would be in violation of general order 1, and he would be subject to punishment."

[U.S. military spokeswoman, Major Jennifer Willis] said she was aware of at least one case of a soldier who had been punished for giving out coins that had biblical inscriptions on them.

Jeremy Schahill notes that Lt. Gen. William Boykin made some very inflammatory remarks about Islam and Christianity. What he doesn't note is that, while this footage Al Jazeera just broadcast was over a year old, Lt. Gen. Boykin retired from the military in August, 2007. Which is not to say Lt. Gen. Boykin can't be a poster child for religious intolerance in the military (he certainly worked hard on his own to attain that dubious honor), but he has nothing at all, at least directly, to do with this case.

Are there religious fanatics in the military? Undoubtedly. Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, would seem to be one such. In the video, he's shown telling soldiers they must "hunt people for Jesus," a clear reference to the Great Commission side of Christian soteriology. But is the chaplain directing the soldiers to proselytize Afghans? Or to proselytize fellow soldiers? Or to display Christ-like behavior, to model Christian ethics and teaching the better to persuade people to join you? Those questions are where Major Willis' response becomes relevant again:

... U.S. military spokeswoman, Major Jennifer Willis, said the comments from the sermon were taken out of context and chaplains were told to make clear to soldiers that they could not proselytize while serving.

Lt. Col. Hensley is telling his listeners to evangelize, but read his remarks carefully, and consider exactly what he says:

In a video obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast Monday, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility "to be witnesses for him."

"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down," he says.

"Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That's what we do, that's our business."

Is that directed at Afghans? At soldiers? At US civilian personnel and private contractors? It is simply impossible to know for sure. Does the chaplain make his meaning clear? Not in these excerpts. But does that mean we know what he said?

No.

The chaplain may have been preaching evangelical soteriology, exhorting his listeners to display Christ-like behavior, the better to draw others to their beliefs, and so offer the salvation they see as true and salvific. Or he may have been violating General Order No. 1, and telling his flock to convert the heathen. From news accounts, we simply can't tell.

So what we have here is excerpts from one sermon, which the military says has been taken out of context, and one overly zealous soldier who, the military reports, wasn't allowed to violated General Order No. 1. Conflicting prime directives, if you will, and which one prevailed? The military tells us theirs did. Al Jazeera is less than sanguine, but what the military decrees, and what individual soldiers attempt to do, can be two very different things. This isn't a clash of civilizations, it's a clash of cultures. But even which cultures, and who is clashing, is not even clear.

Morality for thee....

Ultimately, here's the question: is torture a moral absolute, one that cannot be violated, forgiven, excused, or explained away? Or is it just another legal technicality?

Let's ask Alberto Gonzales:

AG: Here’s what I’ll say. I think that the U.S. government provided advice to CIA interrogators based upon the best legal reasoning by the lawyers in the Department of Justice. Was it torture, when that advice was given? No. Were the interrogations harsh? Yes. Did they save lives? Absolutely.

You will note he deftly turns the question from one of legality (it was legal when we said so!) to one of efficacy: "Did they save lives? Absolutely.") Presumably, of course, we have to take his word for that, since to reveal how it saved lives would be to reveal important national security information. But it takes a real Christian to parse the law like a Pharisee.* Here's John Ashcroft on the subject:

Let me follow this. The U.S. military prosecuted our own troops for using waterboarding in the Philippines, tried the Japanese for war crimes for using it against the Allies and the U.S. troops in WWII. And yet, we’re suggesting that it’s not torture. [Applause]

JA: First of all, the word waterboarding can be defined in a lot of ways.

Let’s talk about the definition that was used in these memos—this is a legal document—of the definition of waterboarding. “Lying on a gurney that is inclined with an angle of 10-15 degrees from horizontal, with the detainee on his back. . . head toward the head end of the gurney, cloth pasted over the detainees’ face, and cold water poured on the cloth approximately 16-18 inches—this is the definition. The question is—

AG: Dan, the opinions have been withdrawn. There are no longer binding position of the department…

I understand that, but that doesn’t mean, as lawyers, we can’t sit and discuss whether this was a correct legal assessment. Because it seems to me, in my opinion, that it is impossible to explain how this particular procedure would not be considered torture. [Applause]

JA: Members of the department went and underwent the procedure.

Once or twice, not 266 times.

JA: Many members of our military in training undergo the procedure—

Once or twice.

JA: Were you there?

No, the memos explain it. It’s once or twice.

JA: OK. I don’t know how many times they underwent it. Let me just put it this way. We relied—I relied—on the best judgments of the lawyers in the department. There are 110,000 employees in the department, the lawyers are expert, and they came up with an opinion that became part of a memo. Later, some lawyers came to me and said "We’re not confident that that memo best expresses the law here." And I said to myself, "Well, I’m the attorney general, and if we have stuff out there that’s not the best expression, we ought to amend it. We ought to get the best information we can." You know we’re in a war, you give it to the president, you give information to the other individuals, but you say, you know, they deserve the best judgment. They reworked the memo, and they came a second time, these professionals did, and according to the definition of torture, they came to the conclusion that the procedure as provided along with the advice to our personnel did not amount to legal torture.

Did they get it wrong?

JA: I don’t think they got it wrong. It’s different now.

It’s different in what sense?

JA: Because the law has been changed. [John Ashcroft called me after the event to correct a mistake he made. He wanted to let me know that, in retrospect and after conducting more research on the matter, he realized that no such change in the law was ever enacted.]

The definition of torture?

JA: Yes! The definition of torture.

So the answer then, it sounds like, is the only reason you still believe the legal assessment was correct was because there’s been a change in the law?

JA: I believe that the work of the department by these professionals came to the right conclusion.

That waterboarding is not torture.

JA: That, as described, and as commented on in their memorandum, that it was not torture.

Because if we parse the definition carefully enough, if we twist and turn and mangle the ordinary meanings of words and make superfine distinctions that have no relevance to real-life situations or even to the concept of "interrogation," then what is "medieval" in the worst sense of that word is actually quite legal and American because, after all:

We’re dealing with an enemy that has sworn that they want to destroy us. And they call us the Great Satan, and they have continued to say that they want to fight us and that they want to injure us, and I take them at their word on that.

And, as Condi Rice said, al Qaeda is a greater threat to this country than Nazi Germany, which only overran all of Europe, invaded North Africa, went to war against Russia, and nearly succeeded in invading Britain. But al Qaeda (or somebody) has called us the "Great Satan," so that means torture is a-ok!

What is this all about? Start with the language of Wikipedia on the concept of "Universal Jurisdiction:"

Universal jurisdiction or universality principle is a principle in international law whereby states claim criminal jurisdiction over persons whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of nationality, country of residence, or any other relation with the prosecuting country. The state backs its claim on the grounds that the crime committed is considered a crime against all, which any state is authorized to punish, as it is too serious to tolerate jurisdictional arbitrage . The concept of universal jurisdiction is therefore closely linked to the idea that certain international norms are erga omnes, or owed to the entire world community, as well as the concept of jus cogens - that certain international law obligations are binding on all states and cannot be modified by treaty.

...

According to Amnesty International, a proponent of universal jurisdiction, certain crimes pose so serious a threat to the international community as a whole, that states have a logical and moral duty to prosecute an individual responsible for it; no place should be a safe haven for those who have committed genocide, crimes against humanity, extrajudicial executions, war crimes, torture and forced disappearances.

It is a concept that has international recognition, even by the British in the Augusto Pinochet case. Its roots are clearly in the Nuremberg trials, and in the concept of a universal morality, or "human rights." Small wonder, then, the Bush Administration, in particular, didn't want to recognize it.

Am I accusing Mr. Ashcroft, who has been very public in espousing his religious beliefs, of being a "bad Christian," or even a hypocrite? No. I am pointing out the paucity of his legal acumen, however, and the weakness of his reasoning. He is hoist on his own words. It is, however, odd that a man uncomfortable with the bare female breast of a statue representing Justice, would be so comfortable with carefully wrought rules delineating precisely which forms of pain inflicted on prisoners, is legally allowed. I am convinced the "Great Commission" overrules "Whatever you did for the least of these" for people like Ashcroft, but that's another argument.

When Reinhold Niebuhr published Moral Man and Immoral Society, his brother Richard chastised him for undermining Christian ethics, and giving a reason for people to profess Christianity without following it. Niebuhr didn't invent this line of excusing religious teachings for expediency's sake, of course; he merely described it more accurately than those who engaged in it ever could.



*I speak in anger, and employ the caricature of the Pharisees present in the New Testament. I do not use that term with any attempt at historical accuracy.

Here is the church, here is the steeple...

Open the doors, and where are all the people?

Pastor Dan faces the hard question: what is church for?

I'm honestly not sure that you could make a firm correlation between church size and fidelity to the gospel. My experience has been generally that small churches are more true to the good news as I understand it, but I'm biased. There's nothing necessary about big churches being faithless or vice versa.

What does seem to hold water is that Evangelical churches have largely succeeded in the past few decades because they've been more willing to engage the popular culture as a form of marketing. That's made them grow, but at what cost? (I say that without judgment.)

Galli doesn't take up the problem of someone like Joel Osteen, but it's worth mentioning. Osteen - and others like him - are theologically heterodox, often sounding more like New Age psychological gurus than traditional Christian preachers. They are also often of dubious moral character, as anyone who's read Sarah Posner's God's Profits will readily agree.

The trouble is, they're growing like wildfire, and to many uninformed people inside or outside the church, they appear to be just like any other preacher. It's one thing to give up church members because of something you did. It's quite another to lose them because some charlatan either lured them away or convinced them that all religion really is corrupt.

Purely as a matter of faith, I have no doubt that the Christian church will muddle through. God will keep a faithful and authentic remnant going, despite the best intentions of most of us. That doesn't bother me.

But as a matter of the intersection of faith and politics, I do not know how we can solve this problem. I suppose it begins with denouncing borderline frauds like Joel and Victoria Osteen. What can be done beyond that, I do not know. The fact is that we live in a diverse society, and not everyone cares about definitions of Christianity. That limits what we can say in the public square, and that in turn means we might have more than a little difficulty distinguishing between Evangelicals, Mainliners, and shallower waters.

Terminology in this kind of discussion gets tricky already. Is "success" equal to "church growth"? It's been assumed so since the book of Acts, but is there a necessary correlation? Are we proven true in our kerygma because many people agree with us? Conversely, are we proven true because no one wants to listen to us? Isn't there somewhere in between these two?

Funny thing, I was reading this passage in Proust just last night:

He worried me dreadfully by talking about the Verdurins; I was afraid he might ask me to have him received there, which would have been enough, because of the jealousy I would not have ceased to feel, to mar all the pleasure that I enjoyed there with Albertine. But happily, Robert admitted that, quite to the contrary, he wished above all not to meet them. "No," he said, "I find that type of clerical circle exasperating." I did not at first understand the adjective "clerical" as applied to the Verdurins, but [Robert] Saint-Loup's concluding words enlightened me as to his thought, and to the concessions to linguistic fashion that one is often surprised to find adopted by intelligent men. "They're circles," he said, "where they play at being tribes, where they play be being congregations and chapels. You're not going to tell me it isn't a small sect; they're all sweetness and light to the people who belong, and couldn't be more contemptuous of the ones who don't. The question isn't, as for Hamlet, to be or not to be, but to be one of them or not to be one of them."

Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, tr. John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 2005). p. 409-410.

A fair summation of churches, on one side. And certainly "mega-churches" have "succeeded" through marketing such imagery, such ideas. Lakewood Church used to advertise "We Believe In You!", and the largest Baptist church in town used to run TV ads exhorting viewers to "Come Home"; meaning, of course, to come to their church. Joel Osteen especially is a marketing machine, and preaches a gospel of wealth Matt Taibbi pretty well summed up:

Of all the vile, fake, lying-ass, money-grubbing shyster scumbags on the face of this planet, there is perhaps none more loathsome than Osteen, a human haircut with plastic baseball-size teeth who has made a fortune selling the appalling only-in-America idea that terrestrial greed is actually a form of Christian devotion. "God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us," Osteen once wrote. This is the revolting, snake-oil-selling dickhead that John McCain actually chose to pimp as number one on his list of inspirational authors. So much for "go, sell everything you have and give to the poor," and all that other hippie crap from the New Testament.

Rick Warren has made himself into an industry selling the "Purpose Driven" life and church, but at one point made it clear no gaiis need apply to his church. He's since back-pedalled on all of that because he doesn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. But if that really is a moral issue for him, is his morality best described by a weathervane? Is anybody's?

I do have to say, in response to this legitimate concern by Pastor Dan:

The trouble is, they're growing like wildfire, and to many uninformed people inside or outside the church, they appear to be just like any other preacher. It's one thing to give up church members because of something you did. It's quite another to lose them because some charlatan either lured them away or convinced them that all religion really is corrupt.

Welcome to my world. I grew up in Southern Baptist dominated East Texas, where I was made to feel heterodox because I wasn't a bible-thumpin', evangelical, God-fearin' Christian who knew he was saved. (It was the favorite question of my high-school Christian peers: "Are you saved?" I always answered, in good Lutheran fashion, thanks to my Calvinism through the Presbyterian church, and my Lutheranism through Kierkegaard: "I hope so." I'd still answer that way.) Charlatans have always been with us, going back to the battles between Peter and Paul and coming up through the orthodox Catholics who regarded Luther and his ilk as such, and ending...? Well, it hasn't ended. And it never will.

Which puts us back on a darkling plain, where ignorant armies clash by night. Or among little cliques, all congratulating themselves on how special their group is. Or it merely places us in the world, faithfully seeking God and faithfully holding to our confession among others who share our confession. And the all-too human question is always: how many more such people is enough?

Jesus Wept

CNN

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

Well, not really.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

And dig a bit deeper:

The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations -- such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians -- categorized as "mainline" Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals.

One could say that those who attend church regularly and sit through Protestant worship especially, are inured to pain and endurance and so less concerned with the sufferings of others; but that would be unkind. And, to be fair, looking at these charts, the distinctions between those who attend church weekly, monthly, or never, seem almost statistically insignificant (it goes from 51% with some kind of support down to 42%). What's appalling, to me, is that even 42% of Americans seem to support torture. On the other hand:

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.

So the whole thing may be perfectly meaningless. Still, the correlation between evangelicals who still prefer their sinners to be in the hands of an angry God, and mainline Protestants, is interesting. And saddening.*

Sometimes I'm not sure we worship the same God at all.

*Perhaps I should note that Jonathan Edwards was a Congregationalist, a church now largely a part of the United Church of Christ, itself hardly an "evangelical" denomination, as that term is currently used. It's also interesting, despite his fire and brimstone theology (which I reject), that his reading of the Deuteronomist is essentially mine.

So it goes.

Back to Reality

Let us not forget the APA has much to answer for:

According to current and former government officials, the CIA's secret waterboarding program was designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked office building in Spokane, Washington.

"It's May, it's May! The lusty month of May!"

Don't quite know how Christianity became so associated with sexual repression and sensual asceticism, when its scriptures include the Song of Solomon:

1: The song of songs, which is Solomon's.
2: Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
3: Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.
4: Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.
5: I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
6: Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.
7: Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?
8: If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents.
9: I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
10: Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.
11: We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.
12: While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.
13: A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.
14: My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of En-gedi.
15: Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.
16: Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
17: The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.

1: I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
2: As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
3: As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
4: He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
5: Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
6: His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.
7: I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
8: The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
9: My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
10: My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
11: For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
12: The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
13: The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
14: O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
15: Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
16: My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.
17: Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.

1: Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.
2: Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them.
3: Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.
4: Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.
5: Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.
6: Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.
7: Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.
8: Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.
9: Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.
10: How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
11: Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
12: A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
13: Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,
14: Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:
15: A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.
16: Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

I know it gets explained away as an allegory, but as a friend of mine in seminary said (and she came to seminary as a former fundamentalist), there's no way to read this except as what it is: erotic poetry. And there's nothing wrong with that.

So May Day ain't so pagan, after all!